by BurnTheShips 79 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
And one arguement against.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
God(s) is/are a human construct. Man created God in his image.
Here is question that always puzzled me why did God have to rest after the six days of creating everything in the universe, gods don't need time to rest and recuperate after work,
after all their Gods and gods do not operate on time schedules
I believe after reading Burn The Ships posts that he the living God come down to earth in human form.
Dear Lord BTS I worship thee, forgive us, for we know not what we say !
Explain how these violate causality.
Why don't you take a stab at looking it up for yourself? Discussing this can be involved and is quite a tangent from the root discussion here. I think you'll find it interesting though.
Not at all. It is reasonable that if he exists that these would be some of the properties.
Reasonable? Perhaps, because without those properties god would be even easier to dismiss. But they have no evidence to back them up. It'd be like me talking about the invisible purple unicorns that inhabit a higher dimension. I could invent reason after reason why we can't detect them, why they are outside of our realm, etc. Without evidence to back it up, it has no validity.
The Universe obeys laws. That these laws can be deduced by human reason. That the logic and reason employed by the human mind is true and correct. That the laws that the Universe obeys are revealed by how it behaves. That the human senses present an accurate representation of this behavior to the human mind.* That these laws do not change and that therefore, the past is explainable in terms of the behavior of the present, and that the future can be predicted in the same way.
I have thought about that before. And you know what, you are right. At some fundamental level science does make some of those assumptions. But so far there is no reason to assume those assumptions are incorrect; all evidence points to the assumptions about reality being true and what we perceive. That's really as good as we can do. We can never be 100%, absolutely, positively sure of anything when you think about it on that level.
If you have a problem with those fundamental assumptions, you can stop thinking about anything. Because everything is based on those assumptions. Or, we can verify the assumptions by all available evidence and proceed to improve our knowledge and understanding. Which is what we have done, fortunately, and science has progressed at a great rate. If something is perceived that challenges our assumptions, well, we can deal with it at that time and adjust accordingly.
Sure, we could all be part of some virtual universe that some kid is playing on his computer. How would we know? But in reality it doesn't matter. This virtual universe is as real as the real one we think it is. For now. ;)
Prove the scientific method, scientifically. It rests on empirically unprovable philosophical premises..assumptions...beliefs.
Assumptions? Maybe as we discussed before, that we assume we are seeing reality. So the "observation" stage rests on that belief. If that's out the window, then all bets are off about all beliefs and understandings!
The scientific method itself is sound. Do you really disagree? Where has it failed, except when it comes to the ability to analyze your god or other supernatural phenomena?
Why don't you take a stab at looking it up for yourself? Discussing this can be involved and is quite a tangent from the root discussion here. I think you'll find it interesting though.
No, I am not going to look it up, you used them as an example. If you are referring to what I think you are referring to, these do not violate causality, and your point is not a point. I wait for your response.
Or, we can verify the assumptions by all available evidence and proceed to improve our knowledge and understanding.
How would you?
The scientific method itself is sound. Do you really disagree?
It is sound, providing its assumptions are true (I have no reason to think they aren't.) What I disagree with is fundamentalist naturalism, which is self-defeating.
BTS
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent
I think that God is not necessarily omnipotent in effect.
BTS
Kalam Cosmological argument:
Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
The second premise is usually supported by two arguments:
1. An actual infinite cannot exist.
2. A beginningless series of events is an actual infinite.
3. Therefore, the universe cannot have existed infinitely in the past, as that would be a beginningless series of events.
BTS
I'm only a layman in (the philosophical aspects of) cosmological discussions, but I'm wondering why space and time can't be infinite. For that's exactly what the cyclical model proposed by Steinhardt (Princeton) & Turok (Cambridge) puts forwards. It seems to me that religion appropriates itself the notion of "infinity".
The Quirmian philosopher Ventre put forward the suggestion that "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts…
(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)
Hamilcarr, the best science we have indicates that space and time commenced along with matter and energy in the Big Bang. However, if the cyclical model is correct, it merely kicks the can down the road, because a universe like ours would be caused by the collision of two M-branes (our universe would merely be a 5th dimensional overlap of two of these folds). If energy is continually being transfered from brane to brane, in time the total energy will diffuse to a point where no single brane has enough energy to do anything and thus the "brane-verse" or M-space or whatever you call it dies. This geometry could also lead to multiple universes...but the phrase "multiple Universes" seems oxymoronic if Universe means "all there is".
What caused the membranes in multidimensional space or M-space itself? Also, has M-Space lasted an infinite amount of time?
BTS
Kalam Cosmological argument:
Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
The second premise is usually supported by two arguments:
1. An actual infinite cannot exist.
2. A beginningless series of events is an actual infinite.
3. Therefore, the universe cannot have existed infinitely in the past, as that would be a beginningless series of events.
I always thought premise 1 was that everything that EXISTS has a cause, not everything that begins to exist.
This is why the God thing is so ridiculous. God exists, therefore he must have a cause. The God deal is really just special pleading.
