For My Christian, Jewish and Atheist Friends, "Why I am No Longer a Christian."

by Robdar 47 Replies latest jw friends

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  Crisis of Conscience

  LOL @ alltimejeff and Farkel!!
  I am interested in watching these videos, therefore I'm marking this thread.

  CoC
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  EntirelyPossible

  Heck, we aren't even sure how big the universe is...
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  Farkel

  entirely possible,

  I said:

  :Then I had another epiphany about science. It was the Big Bang. Science can not and will not address the sticky issue about HOW the super-condensed stuff that exploded to cause the Big Bang itself came into existence.

  You said:

  :Your epiphany was incorrect. Many people study that very thing, try to look farther into the past for clues, build super colliders to create more elementary particles to study, ever more complex math is used to try to figure out the physics of it. To say sciene is not addressing it is just flat out wrong.

  Oh, yeah? You have created a classic straw man argument. All your bullshit in that statement above does NOT address my statement: how that stuff came into existence in the first place. It can only explain what that stuff is. Please point little dummies like me where any people in science are working to understand what or who MADE the stuff of the big bang.

  I said:

  :This... No time existed whenever the "stuff" that the Big Bang came from was just a bunch of stuff. There was NO such thing as TIME then!

  :... matches perfectly with this .... Then I studied science at the quantum level, but only as an uneducated idiot

  :It had to be a Creator or Creators. There is no other explanation.

  You blathered:

  :Good job moving the goalposts back. Now where did all of the stuff that made the creator(s) come from? I am glad you aren't actually doing science for a living. When you stop asking questions or fail to understand WHY you should be asking ever more questions, you have failed at science.

  You silly, inane twit. If I cannot comprehend where the stuff of the Big Bang came from, how in the world can I comprehend where the stuff that made the Creator(s) come from? You are proving my little belief and don't even comprehend that you are.

  You continued:

  :Will we ever know the origen of the Big Bang? Maybe, I hope so, but maybe not. Doesn't mean we should stop trying to figure it out and just say "God. No other explanation." That never got anybody anywhere with learning anything.

  Well, of course I would have to agree. Any sane person would. But I never said anything about stopping figuring out anything.

  That is another strawman argument, and on all counts, your argument fall.

  (The insults were just intended to help you form better arguments. Sometimes a slap-up-against-the-head can be helpful. It wasn't an attack on your integrity or character all. Just your arguments.)

  Farkel
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  Broken Promises

  Feel better now that you've insulted EP, Farkel? You must have pretty low self esteem if that's the best you can do.
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  EntirelyPossible

  Oh, yeah?

  Yeah. You're epiphany was wrong. You said science cannot and will not address the sticky issue of HOW the material came into existence. Science is trying very hard to get there. Despite your swearing, ranting and attempt to accuse me of creating a strawman argument, you made an incorrect statement. You are wrong.

  Please point little dummies like me where any people in science are working to understand what or who MADE the stuff of the big bang.

  I'll tell you the same thing I tell my kids. You'll appreciate it so much more if you have to do a little work to get it yourself.

  You silly, inane twit. If I cannot comprehend where the stuff of the Big Bang came from, how in the world can I comprehend where the stuff that made the Creator(s) come from?

  You can't. That's why I said I was glad you aren't doing science. I pointed it out as constructive criticism for an area of improvement for you.

  Well, of course I would have to agree. Any sane person would. But I never said anything about stopping figuring out anything.

  You concluded that there was no other explanation than that a creator was involved. Since, as it has been clearly demonstrated many times, God/Creator/Whatever is apparently not falsifiable in any way and therefore cannot be subjected to any scientific scrutiny, it is a de facto end to attempting to learn about the origins of the universe, something you already concluded, falsely, wasn't being done and possibly correctly, couldn't be done.

  As to your sanity, I can't speak. While you may not have said, the positions you took and explanation you subscribe are tantamount to stopping asking questions, whether you realized it or not.

  That is another strawman argument, and on all counts, your argument fall.

  Since I have posted no strawman arguments, it would appear the issue that you don't actually know what one is. Or that you can't count to zero. Pick one, doesn't matter to me.

  The insults were just intended to help you form better arguments. Sometimes a slap-up-against-the-head can be helpful. It wasn't an attack on your integrity or character all. Just your arguments.

  Oh, I didn't take it as a personal insult at all. I really didn't. I have many personality flaws and I (hope) know them well. It wasn't a slap against the head either, it was more the equivalent of acting like my 11 year old son earlier tonight when he forgot his manners and yelled about something. He lost TV time and had to go to bed early. But, since I ain't ya daddy, you'll have to work out your own discipline. I recommend a 1992 Rocky Patel and an Aberfeldy 21, but that's just me (notice I'm recommending scotch and cigars, trying to add a little levity, bro).
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  EntirelyPossible

  Feel better now that you've insulted EP, Farkel? You must have pretty low self esteem if that's the best you can do.

  Aw, swearing can't insult me. I used to work in sales for a company widely regarded as the biggest assholes in my business covering the largest asshole banks on Wall Street. It was like being an asshole raised to a factor of "jacked through the roof". It was once pointed out to me that I used, in one sentence, some variation of the word "f*ck" five times, "asslicking c*cksucker" once, "sh*t" twice and "godamm" once.

  Swearing rolls off me like water off a duck's back. Disappointing someone who's opinion I value...that's much worse.
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  Joliette

  Agnostic over here ;)
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  JonathanH

  Farkel, your deist argument is essentially the same as Aquinas' first three of his five ways, or the slightly reworded kalam cosmological argument. Both of these arguments are rife with logical problems. To paraphrase and combine essentially what the arguments are, they are essentially what you stated. Contingent things have to have a necessary cause, if the universe began (and the big bang says it did) then it had tohave had a cause, and this cause we call god.

  One problem is that this assumes that an infinite sequence stretching forever backwards is nonsensical, followed by assuming a being that exists infinitily. It assumes the universe had to begin, it couldn't just exist infinitely. Even if the universe simply expands and contracts and the big bang was the expansion after the contraction, even if you accept that as a possibility, the argument suggests that stretching infinitely backwards cannot be true because it's nonsensical, there had to be a beginning at some point. But then it turns around and labels god as being infinite and having no beginning. It also provides no reason as to why there couldn't be an infinite regression of gods creating gods and eventually a god creates the universe, it is simply assumed that such infinite regressions makes no sense, and then suggesting that a single infinite being makes more sense. Some theologians tried to get around this by labeling everything in the universe as "contingent" which requires a "necessary" being, and that being we call god.

  Even accepting the premise that everything is contingent (which quantum mechanics throws that notion under the bus, but just to assume for a second), and the universe itself is contingent, why is the necessary start to all contingent things an "agent"? Why does that require a human-esque intelligence that desires to create and design? Why couldn't this "necessity" simply be energy? Quantum mechanics once again shows that energy is always popping in and out of existence without "cause", energy is not strictly a "contingent being".

  And that gets to the heart of the matter. None of the arguments that are made for god actually require a god, merely a beginning, and then they label the beginning god and claim that it is an intelligent agency, which is not a logical assumption, just a cultural assumption. And even the arguments requiring a beginning aren't particularly convincing because they argue that everything requires a beginning except for this special class of being that doesn't begin because we say so, and we need something to begin the other stuff that needs a beginning....which is not exactly the most parsimonious way to a universe.

  Stephen Hawking is going to be on...I think the discovery channel sunday talking about the existence of god(s) in creating the universe. His position is that physics have progressed enough that god is redundant. On the sub atomic level particles are non contingent, they "bring themselves" into existence, or rather (so as not to anthropomorphise them), they exist without cause, and prior to the mass expansion in the big bang, the universe was sub atomic, thus the universe simply existing in a non contingent way does not contradict any physical laws.

  The interesting question isn't "why is there a universe", the interesting question is "why do matter and energy behave the way they do?", and even in that field of understanding why the physical laws are the way they are, physicists have made great strides. Either way simply saying "we don't or can't know what existed before the big bang, so there must have been an intelligent super being (or beings) is neither logical nor necessary in understanding the universe or existence.
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  Open mind

  Marking for later. Thanks Robdar.

  om
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  darthfader

  I’m agnostic, largely because I can’t prove or disprove that god (or any creator paradigm you with to choose) exists. Why are we here? Where are we going? Who created us and what does she want from us?
  
  I think about the universe as being a bubble in a much larger environment that has always existed. There are literally an infinite number of universes, all with varying degrees of physics. Each of these universes exists for some period of time then ceases to exist. Our universe is just one that has favorable physics that allowed subatomic particles to coalesce out of the matter/antimatter imbalance and form what we have today. There are a number of scientific studies done in parallel with some extremely sophisticated mathematics that support this multiverse concept and even show that there is a gravitational effect that crosses from universe to another.
  
  In addition to this is the concept, there is the thought that our existence in this universe is actually a two dimensional representation of the three that we occupy. We are actually holograms encoded on the surface of our universe. There are some tests that show the granularity of our world breaks down and becomes “noisy” at extremely small distances at the exact ratio of the surface area of a universal sphere divided by its volume.
  
  I know that this doesn’t answer questions about gods and creators, but I think it puts a pretty good scale to the vastness of “everything” and just how small we are.

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