The Atheism vs Theism Debate: I'm frustrated

[Touchstone]

Nonsensical? The term degrees exhibits a comparison. Who’s not making sense here?

If you recall, you used “infinite love”, which you associate with God as the predicate for understanding degrees of love. As Anti and I pointed out, that’s a nonsensical predicate. No “infinite love” is needed to understand and apprehend degrees, either in “degrees of temperature” (my example), or “shades of red” (Anti’s example).

Degrees are not problematic. Your dependency on “infinite” is problematic. No such dependency obtains.

Periodic table ring a bell?? Are you really going to look at cell structures and DNA structures and our planet in relation to the sun and all of the other ordered elements and tell us that it resulted from chaos and remains chaotic? So just the parts that work are recognized as order and the rest is chaotic. What about your beautiful flower? How do we interpret chaos into beauty? We are more magnificient than I thought!

It is the order that we can trace back to the properties of the elements (as evinced in the Periodic table) that discredits the notion that the emergence of life and biological structure is the “result of chaos”. Physics and biology do incorporate stochastic processes at low levels, but the dynamics are highly ordered and uniform at macro levels. It’s no more “chaotic” then, than water “magically” being formed out of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The complexity is far greater, but the process is similarly law-based. Just watching sugar dissolve in water incorporates random movement (Brownian motion) and law-based interaction (hydration energy is greater than the lattice energy of sugar).

When people describe the process as “chaotic” or a “random process”, that just signals a deep confusion or unfamiliarity with the theory and model that have been developed. A biologist would shrug and say “I don’t see the plausibility of a purely random process producing all this, either”. He just wouldn’t see that as being relevant to biology or underlying physics.

-TS

 

[teachccd]

It is the order that we can trace back to the properties of the elements (as evinced in the Periodic table) that discredits the notion that the emergence of life and biological structure is the “result of chaos”. Physics and biology do incorporate stochastic processes at low levels, but the dynamics are highly ordered and uniform at macro levels. It’s no more “chaotic” then, than water “magically” being formed out of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The complexity is far greater, but the process is similarly law-based. Just watching sugar dissolve in water incorporates random movement (Brownian motion) and law-based interaction (hydration energy is greater than the lattice energy of sugar).

When people describe the process as “chaotic” or a “random process”, that just signals a deep confusion or unfamiliarity with the theory and model that have been developed. A biologist would shrug and say “I don’t see the plausibility of a purely random process producing all this, either”. He just wouldn’t see that as being relevant to biology or underlying physics.

-TS

You just drew order out of chaos by explaining law-based processes. What initiated these laws? You describe the order involved in the macro levels as being highly uniform but you fail to establsh the origin of such an order. Maybe you could regress to when everything was not as ordered and then explain how such an order transitioned from that previous state. You see, for me, leaving out such a huge chunk of information allows me to think that there is a huge chunk of information missing…teachccd

 

[M0nkey]

It is the order that we can trace back to the properties of the elements (as evinced in the Periodic table) that discredits the notion that the emergence of life and biological structure is the “result of chaos”. Physics and biology do incorporate stochastic processes at low levels, but the dynamics are highly ordered and uniform at macro levels. It’s no more “chaotic” then, than water “magically” being formed out of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The complexity is far greater, but the process is similarly law-based. Just watching sugar dissolve in water incorporates random movement (Brownian motion) and law-based interaction (hydration energy is greater than the lattice energy of sugar).

When people describe the process as “chaotic” or a “random process”, that just signals a deep confusion or unfamiliarity with the theory and model that have been developed. A biologist would shrug and say “I don’t see the plausibility of a purely random process producing all this, either”. He just wouldn’t see that as being relevant to biology or underlying physics.

I believe you have just contradicted yourself, how do you reconcile “stochastic processes at low levels” with order at high levels? It’s either a “chaotic” or a “random process” or not, there is little room for something in between. However, you could say low level processes are “complex” therefore hard to predict, but that doesn’t mean it’s intrinsically random or probable at any step of the way. Like you said, our ignorance about certain processes should not be sugar coated or shrug off as a “random process.” In other words, given all the variables, it is possible to understand so called “random movements.”

 

[summa8447]

I think you guys are talking about two completely different things. Time began with the Big Bang as there is evidence that this is when the known universe began, with that, all matter and energy that would ever exist was created. Therefore, we can assert that God created something out of nothing, i.e., ex nihilo, as He being the Creator was outside of time before the world began. Makes sense? Now we can go into the philosophical exhortation for time, I personally think St. Augustine of Hippo did a remarkable job explaining it, but I’m not going to go into that.

…as He being the Creator was outside of time…

My point exactly, creation is action. Action takes place in time. You said it yourself; the Creator was (and he still is) outside time (if he exists). He may be also within time now that time exists. Oh, did I say if he exists above? That also involves time. Any of the language we use and conceptualizion involves temporal (time) orientation. So God (if he exists is inscrutable and ineffable. Yet, ancient humans formulated these things about God that we could not even begin to express ourselves.

I say it is so abstract that no one could ever explain God yet somehow ignorant peoples 2-4 thousand years ago were so enlightened. Don’t they even owe us some sort of verifiable evidence that they didn’t just make this stuff up? The ancients wouldn’t even know the scientific method if it bit them in the nose (at least not the founders of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Greeks like Ptolemy were scientific especially contrasted with the superstitious character of the days).

If I told you fantastical things that defied your common sense and that I was “inspired” (like if you commit suicide when a comet flies by you will ascend to it and escape the coming apocalypse of earth) you would say I needed to go to a loony bin… But yet Christians give primitives (by comparison I mean I’m not saying Jesus disciples were just discovering fire or something so don’t take it out of context) a pass when talking about resurrections, ascensions, original sins being vicariously being passed to us by ancestors and animal, then God-man sacrifices being needed to appease a God that is so lacking that he gets what out of the sacrifice to appease him from frying his sinning humans in hell. Heck if my kids committed a grievous offence against me I couldn’t imagine frying them for eternity, and yet God says HE IS LOVE.

Not only does these beautiful things “not become less important” because they are impermanent, fleeting, they become more beautiful, more meaningful because they are temporary, precious.

It is because we are here but a few decades and because there is nothing left of us once we die that our days, or actions have so much meaning, import. The small number of days we have makes them precious. We don’t have an eternity to “get things right”, or to convalesce in bliss in paradise, and that draws a big bold underline under every little thing we do. Justices left undone will be forever left undone, so it is meaningful, important to work for justice in the here and now. Love left unexpressed, un-acted on, undelivered will never be love at all after we die, so the time is now, to love, and love deeply, while we may.

Eternity just cheapens and dilutes the real import and meaning that does obtain from our mortal nature. The flower is beautiful in part because it is fragile, vulnerable, doomed to demise and decay in just a short while. But while he admire it along the field, it is glorious, and its beauty is inextricably tied to its mortality. It is meaningful by virtue of its temporary nature.

-TS

I agree with that. Perhaps a lifetime trying to appease a threatening despot is a waste of life.

Summa8447

 

[liquidpele]

I believe you have just contradicted yourself, how do you reconcile “stochastic processes at low levels” with order at high levels? It’s either a “chaotic” or a “random process” or not, there is little room for something in between. However, you could say low level processes are “complex” therefore hard to predict, but that doesn’t mean it’s intrinsically random or probable at any step of the way. Like you said, our ignorance about certain processes should not be sugar coated or shrug off as a “random process.” In other words, given all the variables, it is possible to understand so called “random movements.”

I think the problem with calling things “random” or “chaotic” are that it’s just convenience terms as far as Chemistry and Biology go. Everything happens according to physical and chemical laws. We only say it’s random or chaotic because we can’t track every single atom/interaction and thus we can’t predict things to any degree at that level.

As for stochastic at low levels and orderly at high levels, consider mixing sugar and water like the previous example. If you look at it on the atomic scale it’s seems random and chaotic because atoms are just flying off the structure to dissolve into the micro currents of the liquid in what appears to be no predictable order. If you just look at the sugar though, you can say “oh, it’s dissolving” and it seems stable and orderly.

 

[Touchstone]

I believe you have just contradicted yourself, how do you reconcile “stochastic processes at low levels” with order at high levels?

Statistically, they produce order and structures. Take a pair of six-sided dice and throw them a few hundred times. Tally the dice totals on a chart. What do you get? A nice bell curve. How’d that happen? It’s just feature of probabilistic combinations. That’s a very simple example, but random quanta make lots of very nice ordered structures in nature. If you graph the overall decay events for an unstable isotope over time, you get a nice logarithmic curve, for example (a “half life” graph). Random events at the lowest level producing structures and forms as statistical ensembles.

It’s either a “chaotic” or a “random process” or not, there is little room for something in between.

Nature is a nice mix of random, low level (name removed by moderator)uts and events, feeding law-based dynamics at macro scales. This can and does produce rich structures in nature. What catalyzed the “seeding” of galaxies and stars as the Big Bang plasma cooled and went through phase transitions? Small random perturbances in what was previous homogeneous media.

However, you could say low level processes are “complex” therefore hard to predict, but that doesn’t mean it’s intrinsically random or probable at any step of the way. Like you said, our ignorance about certain processes should not be sugar coated or shrug off as a “random process.” In other words, given all the variables, it is possible to understand so called “random movements.”

Random just means “no discernible pattern, plan or purpose”. That’s it. There may be something behind it, but if so, it’s not discernible when we apply “random” to it.

And since we cannot discern any pattern, purpose or plan, we don’t have grounds to say there is more to it than that – sheer “patternlessness”. It may be fundamental, for all we know, “perfectly, exhaustively random” you might say.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

You just drew order out of chaos by explaining law-based processes. What initiated these laws?

Don’t know. Don’t even know if they ever were initiated.

You describe the order involved in the macro levels as being highly uniform but you fail to establsh the origin of such an order. Maybe you could regress to when everything was not as ordered and then explain how such an order transitioned from that previous state.

See my example above about rolling a pair of dice a whole bunch of times and graphing the total for each roll. That random set of events predictably produces a nice bell curve. That property of combinatory probability applies to a lot of features of nature. And that’s just a simple example. If you want an explanation as for why nature has these features that we can model mathematically, I’d say that’s just the nature of probabilities being combined. If you want to know why nature should be modelable this way the answer is quick and easy: don’t know, and don’t know a way to know that.

You see, for me, leaving out such a huge chunk of information allows me to think that there is a huge chunk of information missing…teachccd

There is. No one knows the provenance of the laws that govern space/time/energy/matter. Moreover, religious musings notwithstanding, no one has a way to know this. We accept what is unknown as unknown, and do what we can with what we do know, and focus on growing our knowledge from there – the hard way, through work, testing, observation, refinement, deliberation, revision, error and validation.

-TS

 

[warpspeedpetey]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy
In other words, if everyone is expecting a massiah, a few guys might jump up an claim to be one, or maybe people heard about a false one but by word of mouth it turned into a real one and then was written about in poetic literature. All speculation, but the point is that that prophecy is not a very good one for evidence purposes.

Now, what would be impressive would be if the Bible, for example, said, “On the first day of the first month in the year two thousand and ten, the pillars of the earth will shake and a great part of the New World will be lost to the sea,” and then January 1, 2010 comes and a tremendous earthquake sends California to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, I would become a believer. No points are awarded under any of the following conditions (quoting another source now):

The above was pulled from the “how to convert an atheist” page:
ebonmusings.org/atheism/theistguide.html

your looking at odds on 8 prophecies of 10^17, 40 prophecies at 10^157. and there were a great many more than that.

if you are to claim it was all written after the fact, the Jews had them for centuries prior to Christs birth. its simply undeniable.

 

[reggieM]

You will lose - because you’re relying on your own natural reason. Don’t you know you can’t believe in Jesus Christ or His Catholic Church without divine grace? You’re going to take on the Deceiver - the Prince of this world - with the power of human reason? You will lose. You must rely on God - it’s not optional (Eph. 6:11). Read the Bible. Pray for the grace of faith so that when you read the Word you hear the voice of God. Pray for the intercession of our Blessed Mother, and all the Saints and Angels. Then read the Gospel of John. Let the blind fools yap about their baseless theories all they want - listen to God. Then, when you have the eyes of faith, you will see right through their specious arguments. When you arm yourself with the Truth, you will know that the pagans worshiped demons (Psalm 106:37, 1 Cor. 10:20), and that the demons love to mimic God (2 Cor. 11:14). Why was Mithras “birthday” on December 25? Take a guess. Why did the pagans have myths about a virgin giving birth? Take a guess (Isaiah 7:14). Why do the unbelievers believe the opposite of the truth?

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)

Why have so many millions of Christians abandoned the faith and now worship at the altar of Darwin?

“The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” (1 Timothy 4:1)

See? God, who knows the end from the beginning, has told us all of this ahead of time. Read the Bible. Read the best book on Catholic prophecy: Trial, Tribulation and Triumph by Desmond Birch. And believe so that you may understand…

That was a great post. I hope summa8447 will reflect on it. Start with the teachings of Christ. You’ve accepted them – and you’ve vowed yourself in fidelity to Him.

Jesus taught by parables. Most people want wisdom to come cheaply. They feel that they deserve it. Atheists will sit back and demand God to give them “evidence”. They feel that is owed to them - and if they don’t get anything, or they don’t like what they get – they think they’ve won against God.

But even the first steps in seeking God require an interior change - a conversion. It requires a greater moral integrity. It’s the search for true wisdom and it does not come cheaply - as in arguments on atheist websites.

Atheism offers nothing of value. It actually embraces nothingness – it’s a negation of the source of being and of goodness. For the sake of a half-digested argument on a website you’d give up the pearl of great price? Yes, that is the power of Satan. I agree that at the rate you’re going – you’ll be no match for him.

Catholicism is a bond with Christ – union with His Body. The idiocy of atheistic arguments should have about as much affect on you as a fly would have in trying to knock down the Empire State Building. But for some reason, you pursued this seduction. Now you’re seeking “better arguments”. In that, you’re putting aside all of the weapons at your disposal and going to fight a powerful enemy with a paperclips and a rubber band.

Your weapons are spiritual. Your enemy is like a roaring lion – resist him, steadfast in the faith.

The Catholic faith offers you the supernatural power of Christ. If you fail to take advantage of that, then what use is your faith? As Luke65 points out, you’d be using merely natural methods – and smarter, stronger more well-trained minds will defeat you very easily.

Our Lord warned us about this. Please put aside the foolish arguments and bring yourself in prayer – in communication with – our creator, our savior, our God who is with us. He has all the answers, all the powers of the universe and all of the wisdom you need.

But you won’t receive it by sitting back and asking for “evidence” – like the atheists do. You have to use faith and reach Him. He will meet you half-way. The Blessed Sacrament gives us infinite power. Please use that. Contemplative prayer bring us to a higher order than philosophy ever could. St. Thomas knew that – and that’s why he thought his entire body of work was nothing but straw, once he experienced the mystical union with God.

Faith is the pearl of great price. But it is also like a fragile flame, that must grow into a blazing fire. A fragile flame can go out – as the winds of unbelief blow against it. If you do nothing to preserve and foster your faith, and place yourself in useless discussions of curiosity about atheistic sophistry – then I agree, you won’t win and the little flame will be extinguished.

Consider finding a wise priest and meet with him regularly. We can’t do it alone.

 

[teachccd]

Don’t know. Don’t even know if they ever were initiated.

See my example above about rolling a pair of dice a whole bunch of times and graphing the total for each roll. That random set of events predictably produces a nice bell curve. That property of combinatory probability applies to a lot of features of nature. And that’s just a simple example. If you want an explanation as for why nature has these features that we can model mathematically, I’d say that’s just the nature of probabilities being combined. If you want to know why nature should be modelable this way the answer is quick and easy: don’t know, and don’t know a way to know that.

There is. No one knows the provenance of the laws that govern space/time/energy/matter. Moreover, religious musings notwithstanding, no one has a way to know this. We accept what is unknown as unknown, and do what we can with what we do know, and focus on growing our knowledge from there – the hard way, through work, testing, observation, refinement, deliberation, revision, error and validation.

-TS

You don’t know much about the theories that you present but you definitely KNOW that there is no God. You definitely KNOW that there is no afterlife. Funny how we can and must accept the physical unknowns and move on from there but to speak of spiritual unknowns is unheard of. No one knows this and no one knows that but we must know that the concept of God is a made up remedy for human deficiencies. Boy, does that hold water…like a sieve…teachccd

 

[Touchstone]

You don’t know much about the theories that you present but you definitely KNOW that there is no God.

No, I’ve said repeatedly on this forum that there may be a God. I just think it extremely unlikely. All atheists are agnostics to some degree, necessarily, else they are fools.

One of the important features of rational thinking is a sober reckoning about what we do not know. It’s frustrating to accept that there are so many important and profound questions we can’t answer, but the situation is what it is. We know a lot more know than we did a century or a millenium ago, but just like people find as they age and gain experience and wisdom, the more we know, the more keenly we are aware of how much we don’t know. Like a exuberant know-it-all teenager who in their exuberance think they have all the answers, we’ve been through times in our intellectual development where we suppose we have a lot of “knowledge” than we really do. And we’re still in that period.

In any case, a mark of clear-eyed, rational thinking is a frank, honest acknowledgment about the limits of our knowledge. An intelligent and wise person is scrupulous about saying “I don’t know” when he doesn’t know.

You definitely KNOW that there is no afterlife.

I don’t know that, definitely or otherwise. I just do not have any reason to think there is, and good reasons to think there is not an afterlife. The existence of an afterlife is another of those propositions which cannot be disproved.

Funny how we can and must accept the physical unknowns and move on from there but to speak of spiritual unknowns is unheard of.

No, they are definitely heard of. As far as I can tell, all spiritual questions are “unknowns”. I don’t know any spiritual propositions that aren’t more parsimoniously explained in natural terms. In spiritual terms, it all looks to be unknown. We don’t even know what “known” looks like in spiritual terms – a subjective witness? A revelation on the road to Damascus. If there are spiritual knowns, they have the curious property of being non-demonstrable, non-testable, and non-transmittable.

No one knows this and no one knows that but we must know that the concept of God is a made up remedy for human deficiencies. Boy, does that hold water…like a sieve…teachccd

It’s not a known, it’s just the most reasonable explanation of the facts available, all things considered.

-TS

 

[gearhead]

your looking at odds on 8 prophecies of 10^17, 40 prophecies at 10^157. and there were a great many more than that.

if you are to claim it was all written after the fact, the Jews had them for centuries prior to Christs birth. its simply undeniable.

Maybe it would help if we listed what the Jewish messianic prophecies actually are:

What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:
A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)
D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: “God will be King over all the world – on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One” (Zechariah 14:9).

The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies.

Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.

Also, the same article lists several qualifications that the Messiah would meet but Jesus doesn’t:

1. JESUS DID NOT EMBODY THE PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF MESSIAH

A. MESSIAH AS PROPHET

Jesus was not a prophet. Prophecy can only exist in Israel when the land is inhabited by a majority of world Jewry. During the time of Ezra (circa 300 BCE), when the majority of Jews refused to move from Babylon to Israel, prophecy ended upon the death of the last prophets – Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
Jesus appeared on the scene approximately 350 years after prophecy had ended.

B. DESCENDENT OF DAVID

The Messiah must be descended on his father’s side from King David (see Genesis 49:10 and Isaiah 11:1). According to the Christian claim that Jesus was the product of a virgin birth, he had no father – and thus could not have possibly fulfilled the messianic requirement of being descended on his father’s side from King David!

C. TORAH OBSERVANCE

The Messiah will lead the Jewish people to full Torah observance. The Torah states that all mitzvot remain binding forever, and anyone coming to change the Torah is immediately identified as a false prophet. (Deut. 13:1-4)
Throughout the New Testament, Jesus contradicts the Torah and states that its commandments are no longer applicable. (see John 1:45 and 9:16, Acts 3:22 and 7:37)

judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_messiah3.htm

Another listing of the Jewish messianic criteria can be found here:

jewsforjudaism.org/questions-a-answers-primary-234/68-the-jewish-messiah/374-messiah–the-criteria

 

[teachccd]

No, I’ve said repeatedly on this forum that there may be a God. I just think it extremely unlikely. All atheists are agnostics to some degree, necessarily, else they are fools.

One of the important features of rational thinking is a sober reckoning about what we do not know. It’s frustrating to accept that there are so many important and profound questions we can’t answer, but the situation is what it is. We know a lot more know than we did a century or a millenium ago, but just like people find as they age and gain experience and wisdom, the more we know, the more keenly we are aware of how much we don’t know. Like a exuberant know-it-all teenager who in their exuberance think they have all the answers, we’ve been through times in our intellectual development where we suppose we have a lot of “knowledge” than we really do. And we’re still in that period.

In any case, a mark of clear-eyed, rational thinking is a frank, honest acknowledgment about the limits of our knowledge. An intelligent and wise person is scrupulous about saying “I don’t know” when he doesn’t know.

I don’t know that, definitely or otherwise. I just do not have any reason to think there is, and good reasons to think there is not an afterlife. The existence of an afterlife is another of those propositions which cannot be disproved.

No, they are definitely heard of. As far as I can tell, all spiritual questions are “unknowns”. I don’t know any spiritual propositions that aren’t more parsimoniously explained in natural terms. In spiritual terms, it all looks to be unknown. We don’t even know what “known” looks like in spiritual terms – a subjective witness? A revelation on the road to Damascus. If there are spiritual knowns, they have the curious property of being non-demonstrable, non-testable, and non-transmittable.

It’s not a known, it’s just the most reasonable explanation of the facts available, all things considered.

-TS

So then, I can conclude that you accept the possibility of the existence of God albeit there is not enough evidence to prove it. And while there is more evidence to “prove” the theories that you exposed on this forum there are still many unknowns. Where does that leave the two of us? In a court of law that leaves a hung jury. In reality it leaves two people with differing opinions whereby neither can fully prove their positions.

I believe in God because I know Him to be what fills the gaps that you present in the scientific theories mentioned. I believe that 2000 years ago a man named Jesus lived among us, was crucified, died and was buried. I believe that He rose from the dead because there were countless people who shed their blood upholding what they witnessed. This can never be evidence for someone without faith no more than you can prove to me that Abraham Lincoln existed without my faith in historians.

When I die, if you are right, I lose nothing.

When I die, if I am right, I gain everything.

When you die, if you are right, you lose nothing.

When you die, if I am right, you lose everything.

Read Blaise Paschal. He’s a pretty smart guy. This is his wager.

Someday when you find that there is a God you will know what we as believers see that you can’t right now. I know that you are rolling your eyes and accepting this a nonsense but so did many people when scientists proposed things that were not proven until later. It’s all a mattter of time. If you are not sure then leave no stone unturned. Check out the possibility that there is a God and open your mind to those who will show you their reasons to believe. Don’t immediately discount the spiritual world because it cannot be seen with the naked eye. Neither could electricity when Tesla was rediculed for his “non sense”.

We are at a roadblock and so this will be my last post in this thread. Thank you for the dialogue and for your kindness in your responses. I will pray for you even though you think that it is useless for now. You cannot see love under a microscope and you cannot see God. But they both exist…Good night…teachccd

 

[gearhead]

Read Blaise Paschal. He’s a pretty smart guy. This is his wager.

Someday when you find that there is a God you will know what we as believers see that you can’t right now. I know that you are rolling your eyes and accepting this a nonsense but so did many people when scientists proposed things that were not proven until later. It’s all a mattter of time. If you are not sure then leave no stone unturned. Check out the possibility that there is a God and open your mind to those who will show you their reasons to believe. Don’t immediately discount the spiritual world because it cannot be seen with the naked eye. Neither could electricity when Tesla was rediculed for his “non sense”.

That’s a bad re-wording of Pascal’s Wager, though it doesn’t matter too much because Pascal’s Wager is a poor argument. It ignores aspects of the Catholic theology it attempts to apply, and it doesn’t take into account the fact that religion isn’t just a “Catholic Church or nothing” choice, it’s a choice between many, many different religions each with their own theology.

Say I told you that if you mow my lawn once a week, you’ll be rewarded with an afterlife that’s way better than the Christian idea of Heaven but if you don’t, you’ll be punished with an afterlife that’s way worse than the Christian idea of Hell. By the logic of Pascal’s Wager, the “right” choice is for you to cut my grass. Your judgement of my ability to do what I say I’m going to do wouldn’t even factor into the decision.

 

[teachccd]

That’s a bad re-wording of Pascal’s Wager, though it doesn’t matter too much because Pascal’s Wager is a poor argument. It ignores aspects of the Catholic theology it attempts to apply, and it doesn’t take into account the fact that religion isn’t just a “Catholic Church or nothing” choice, it’s a choice between many, many different religions each with their own theology.

Say I told you that if you mow my lawn once a week, you’ll be rewarded with an afterlife that’s way better than the Christian idea of Heaven but if you don’t, you’ll be punished with an afterlife that’s way worse than the Christian idea of Hell. By the logic of Pascal’s Wager, the “right” choice is for you to cut my grass. Your judgement of my ability to do what I say I’m going to do wouldn’t even factor into the decision.

My post to Touchstone was not to be focused on Pascal’s wager. After a day’s conversation this was mentioned in passing. I have no problem with your analysis of Pascal’s proposition but, like you said, it was a poorly paraphrased rendering of it. My focus is on the existence of God and Touchstone and I went a few rounds with our ideas. Thank you for your post and God bless…teachccd

 

[liquidpele]

.

We are at a roadblock and so this will be my last post in this thread.

I guess you changed your mind?

 

[M0nkey]

Random just means “no discernible pattern, plan or purpose”. That’s it. There may be something behind it, but if so, it’s not discernible when we apply “random” to it.

Ok, something that may “seem” random may not be random at all. Let’s say for example that there is a rock in the horizon and the sun is beating down upon me, just because I can’t “see” the rock doesn’t mean it’s not there. If you apply a little bit of logic to nature, you will then see that patterns and order at the macro level imply intrinsic order in the micro. Of course, our scientific inquiry so far has not definitively proved that, but it would be considered a logical progression. Out of order comes order, and from chaos comes chaos.

…as He being the Creator was outside of time…

My point exactly, creation is action. Action takes place in time. You said it yourself; the Creator was (and he still is) outside time (if he exists). He may be also within time now that time exists. Oh, did I say if he exists above? That also involves time. Any of the language we use and conceptualizion involves temporal (time) orientation. So God (if he exists is inscrutable and ineffable. Yet, ancient humans formulated these things about God that we could not even begin to express ourselves.

I say it is so abstract that no one could ever explain God yet somehow ignorant peoples 2-4 thousand years ago were so enlightened. Don’t they even owe us some sort of verifiable evidence that they didn’t just make this stuff up? The ancients wouldn’t even know the scientific method if it bit them in the nose (at least not the founders of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Greeks like Ptolemy were scientific especially contrasted with the superstitious character of the days).

If I told you fantastical things that defied your common sense and that I was “inspired” (like if you commit suicide when a comet flies by you will ascend to it and escape the coming apocalypse of earth) you would say I needed to go to a loony bin… But yet Christians give primitives (by comparison I mean I’m not saying Jesus disciples were just discovering fire or something so don’t take it out of context) a pass when talking about resurrections, ascensions, original sins being vicariously being passed to us by ancestors and animal, then God-man sacrifices being needed to appease a God that is so lacking that he gets what out of the sacrifice to appease him from frying his sinning humans in hell. Heck if my kids committed a grievous offence against me I couldn’t imagine frying them for eternity, and yet God says HE IS LOVE.

I agree with that. Perhaps a lifetime trying to appease a threatening despot is a waste of life.

Summa8447

Lot’s of different things on this post, you claim that we can hardly know Him for He is “ineffable” and in some cases that would be true. Also, you seem to be hinting at a possibility that God is outside of creation, so much so, that it puts Him at an arms length with His creation, therefore being a bit impersonal towards human suffering. Finally, you claim God doesn’t make sense.

The point is this: God is Love, but not secular humanitarian love; which is the kind of love that justifies genocide/abortion and self-interest for “the good of the human race.” But, Love that requires sacrifice, and transcends into eternal life.

Secondly, God is not abstract nor is He too ineffable to where we can’t understand using simple logic. God is persons. And he makes himself known through the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, which is Jesus Christ. “For eternal life is this, to know Him the One True God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent.”

Thirdly, Jesus Christ has united himself to every man, woman, and child through His Holy Cross. For He is God the Son, and when God suffered upon the cross He suffered for *all *peoples of every time and season. This is merely possible because of the fact that He is outside of time, so we are then able to unite our personal sufferings with the sufferings of the living God, which can be redemptive and well up into eternal life.

And blessed Sunday! I hope you make it to mass today… I’ll be praying for ya

 

[M0nkey]

Maybe it would help if we listed what the Jewish messianic prophecies actually are:

Also, the same article lists several qualifications that the Messiah would meet but Jesus doesn’t:

judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_messiah3.htm

Another listing of the Jewish messianic criteria can be found here:

jewsforjudaism.org/questions-a-answers-primary-234/68-the-jewish-messiah/374-messiah–the-criteria

You are thinking as men do, not as God does. Jesus did not come to bring “world peace” but the kind of peace that the world cannot give. His Kingship is at hand, for He is seated at the right hand of the Father, having assumed the throne of his father David. Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world,” as He proclaimed to Pontius Pilate.

 

[M0nkey]

Say I told you that if you mow my lawn once a week, you’ll be rewarded with an afterlife that’s way better than the Christian idea of Heaven but if you don’t, you’ll be punished with an afterlife that’s way worse than the Christian idea of Hell. By the logic of Pascal’s Wager, the “right” choice is for you to cut my grass. Your judgement of my ability to do what I say I’m going to do wouldn’t even factor into the decision.

That’s a strawman, what world religion would make you cut grass? If you are going to use an argument you might as well make it relevant.

 

[teachccd]

I guess you changed your mind?

Yea, that was evidenced in my posts… I’ll continue to pray for you. God loves you whether you know it or not (agnostic; simply without knowledge).

ag⋅nos⋅tic  /ægˈnɒshttp://sp.ask.com/dictstatic/dictionary/graphics/luna/thinsp.pngtɪk/ sp.ask.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif Show Spelled Pronunciation [ag-**nos-tik] sp.ask.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif in

***–noun ***1.a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.2.a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.