DarkWraith said: mysticwolf said: theprof00 said: Fascinating. And what scientific evidence do we have about God? The scientific method is about disproving things so we have a narrower view of what the reality is. Currently I believe science cannot disprove God.  science has nothing to do with god, true enough logic does. a priori reasoning is exactly perfect for this task. if you define a being with certain attributes those then become true by definition for argument. these attributes can then be used as premises. for example: 1) God exists. 2) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. 3) An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils. 4) An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. 5) An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. 6) A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. 7) If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists. 8) Evil exists (logical contradiction). this can be applied to any god concept to test for internal consistency and consistency with the observable world

Evil is the absence of good in humans, just like cold is absence of heat

God, due to free will, does not chose to interfear with humans

Thus, evil exist only as absence of good in humans, yet it is not caused by God, nor can it can be stopped by him, as it would interfear with his plan

Thus, no contradiction

jigokutamago said: DarkWraith said: mysticwolf said: theprof00 said: Fascinating. And what scientific evidence do we have about God? The scientific method is about disproving things so we have a narrower view of what the reality is. Currently I believe science cannot disprove God.  science has nothing to do with god, true enough logic does. a priori reasoning is exactly perfect for this task. if you define a being with certain attributes those then become true by definition for argument. these attributes can then be used as premises. for example: 1) God exists. 2) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. 3) An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils. 4) An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. 5) An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. 6) A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. 7) If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists. 8) Evil exists (logical contradiction). this can be applied to any god concept to test for internal consistency and consistency with the observable world The problem is that you have not proved evil exists. In my opinion evil is the lack of good like darkness is the lack of light. Just as darkness is nonexistant, evil is also nonexistant. If the existance of evil cannot be proven, then the nonexistance of God likewise cannot be proven.

ive heard this asinine argument before. its still stupid, when will you people learn? a photon is something - yes, great (light). darkness is the absence of photons (great).

what is good? what is bad? its a false analogy. neither one is anything but a concept. didnt realize I had to prove obvious things. do evil acts exist? yes - murder, rape, assault.

im sorry for totally destroying your counter so as to be unrecognizable from a small pile of dogshit but I can tell you actually thought it held some credence. I actually feel sorry for how uninformed you are.

Kane1389 said: DarkWraith said: mysticwolf said: theprof00 said: Fascinating. And what scientific evidence do we have about God? The scientific method is about disproving things so we have a narrower view of what the reality is. Currently I believe science cannot disprove God.  science has nothing to do with god, true enough logic does. a priori reasoning is exactly perfect for this task. if you define a being with certain attributes those then become true by definition for argument. these attributes can then be used as premises. for example: 1) God exists. 2) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. 3) An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils. 4) An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. 5) An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. 6) A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. 7) If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists. 8) Evil exists (logical contradiction). this can be applied to any god concept to test for internal consistency and consistency with the observable world Evil is the absence of good in humans, just like cold is absence of heat God, due to free will, does not chose to interfear with humans Thus, evil exist only as absence of good in humans, yet it is not caused by God, nor can it can be stopped by him, as it would interfear with his plan Thus, no contradiction

see above, ps: don't hurt yourself

Aielyn said: Many dog breeds are the result of artificial selection. But did you know that there are dog breeds that are incapable of breeding with each other? For instance, the beagle and the irish setter cannot breed with each other. Yet they can each breed with the same other types of dog - their DNA is just a little too distant from each other to produce viable offspring.

Do you have any sources for the bolded part? It sounds quite interesting.

HintHRO said: What I understand from your comment is that you assume that genetic mutations are necessary to develop human beings and yes, they are. But it is actually God who decided what the laws of nature would be. When he 'decided' atoms and molecules have to behave in this way, he already knew beforehand that mutations can cause all kinds of diseases or resistant bacteria and other million problems like a carcinogenic environment without a magnetic field around the earth. He decided what was necessary in the universe to create humans. That means he had to compromise and he is not perfect at all, although the bible and whatmore are stating God = perfection. If you're perfect, you're able to edit the laws you're creating (although you can't create something without laws already being there, huge flaw in combining God with science) to something that doesn't cause problems. Making games/software still goes together with dealing problems and glitches, because we're not perfect animals at all. We are dealing with these kind of problems because we don't control everything, but God does right (then he made it himself really REALLY hard on purpose)? The computer itself is dependent of laws that already exists. You can't create a software without laws. I also understand from your comment that he made the universe like a software, made the rules and then let the progress go on its own. The chances that humans will develop yet again on another world are practically zero. When he 'made' the universe and 'decided' what the laws of physics would be, he could impossible be planning to make humans. You know how long it has taken for humans to develop? Why did he take such a long time? Why create dinosaures first and purposely destroy what he made in the first case (1 of many contradictions in history). There are simply too many flaws in Creationism. So many questions that it's useless to continue with it. Especially in this modern society.

See, there's no reason you should suppose the vision of God he is reffering to is the Christian one. But that has already been pointed.

I believe it's also been pointed that it makes no sense for you (or any of us) to try and tell what a supposedly perfect, all-knowing and all-powerfull being should or should not do or deem as either "good" or "bad". It's just preposterous, really, and you can only try to have it make some sort of sense if you shoehorn a very specific definition of God. Even the Christian dogma will tell you God has infinite wisdom and that we should accept His will and His plan, misterious as it might be for us, and have unwavering faith even when faced with extreme adversity, because it's all part of His will and is, all said and done, for the "good".

And you could trhow a million examples to argue that some things couldn't possibly be "good", or you could argue that since the Crhistian God can and knows all and is benevolent that there should be "some better way" but, again, who are we to decide that? Just like a parent not over-indulging the child, God, by definition, would know better, even when it makes no sense for us.

You say that "you can't create something without laws already being there". Thing is, God, and specially on a broader sense of any almighty god, has absolutely no reason to be restricted by time. When you use the word "already" and imply causality you're judging God by our standards, our restrictions. If God is not subjected to our notion of time than none of these kinds of arguments make any sense. Any idea of change, for example, is only a byproduct of our own limitation and doesn't apply to Him.

Think of a set of horizontal lines on a piece of paper. There are in this piece of paper many, many rows of such sets of lines, one "below" the other, each just a liitle different than the ones next to it. Now supposed the states of our universe, at any given "time", are represented each by a single row, a single set of horizontal lines. And that running vertically, from row to row, is what we perceive as the "passage of time". We would perceive our universe, thus, as transitioning in time, row after row, but being, at any given point in "time", defined by a single row and unable to access the others. We would call a given row the "present", the ones above it the "past" and the ones below the "future". But God, "looking" at our actual universe, might be in the same position you are when looking at the described piece of paper. All of that wich we call past, present and future, simply is. There is no such a thing as passage of time, and time itself is no more than an illusion. Our universe simply is and God, Himself, simply is. There's no beggining, no end, and nothing in between.

You also say that "The chances that humans will develop yet again on another world are practically zero". The vision I proposed (which I guess is also compatible with the Christian God), makes the very concept of chance moot. Not that an almighty omniscient creator wouldn't already.

DarkWraith said: science has nothing to do with god, true enough logic does. a priori reasoning is exactly perfect for this task. if you define a being with certain attributes those then become true by definition for argument. these attributes can then be used as premises. for example: 1) God exists. 2) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. 3) An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils. 4) An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. 5) An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. 6) A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. 7) If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists. 8) Evil exists (logical contradiction). this can be applied to any god concept to test for internal consistency and consistency with the observable world

Besides what I've said above and others before, there's a very simple reason why you can't really apply logic to disprove an all powerfull being, and it's very simple: by definition, even if implicitly, such a being has the very handy ability to tell logic to just shove it. Which solves all of those "unmovable object and irresistible force" paradoxes. God, being almighty, is the very third valid state for a binary logic. He can be both the negation and the affirmation of any given proposition. You can't say "this thing is not subject to logic, but aplying logic to it leads to a contradiction, thus this thing doesn't exist", as that's just bad logic.

And this is precisely the reason I don't believe in any such sort of being: you just can't take anything useful out of it. It's a waste of time. Still, it's not contradictory and it's impossible to prove wrong.

By the way, not to be offesnive, but you sound very immature, DarkWraith.

Farmageddon said: Aielyn said: Many dog breeds are the result of artificial selection. But did you know that there are dog breeds that are incapable of breeding with each other? For instance, the beagle and the irish setter cannot breed with each other. Yet they can each breed with the same other types of dog - their DNA is just a little too distant from each other to produce viable offspring. Do you have any sources for the bolded part? It sounds quite interesting.

I read it while looking into the issue. But there's a slight inaccuracy, now that I've looked a bit deeper. Apparently, they can produce viable offspring sometimes, but most of the time it's not viable. You can, for instance, find it mentioned here: http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/dog-breeds/

Aielyn said: Farmageddon said: Aielyn said: Many dog breeds are the result of artificial selection. But did you know that there are dog breeds that are incapable of breeding with each other? For instance, the beagle and the irish setter cannot breed with each other. Yet they can each breed with the same other types of dog - their DNA is just a little too distant from each other to produce viable offspring. Do you have any sources for the bolded part? It sounds quite interesting. I read it while looking into the issue. But there's a slight inaccuracy, now that I've looked a bit deeper. Apparently, they can produce viable offspring sometimes, but most of the time it's not viable. You can, for instance, find it mentioned here: http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/dog-breeds/

Just to follow on from this. Where a species starts and a breed ends is not always easy to define. Some cat species can successfully breed to give viable offspring. Lions and Tigers in captivity can be bred to produce ligers which can be further bred to produce liligers (apparently, I'm not making these names up!). They were long thought to be sterile, but it appears they (ligers) can be viable.

Farmageddon said: DarkWraith said: science has nothing to do with god, true enough logic does. a priori reasoning is exactly perfect for this task. if you define a being with certain attributes those then become true by definition for argument. these attributes can then be used as premises. for example: 1) God exists. 2) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. 3) An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils. 4) An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence. 5) An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence. 6) A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil. 7) If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God, then no evil exists. 8) Evil exists (logical contradiction). this can be applied to any god concept to test for internal consistency and consistency with the observable world Besides what I've said above and others before, there's a very simple reason why you can't really apply logic to disprove an all powerfull being, and it's very simple: by definition, even if implicitly, such a being has the very handy ability to tell logic to just shove it. Which solves all of those "unmovable object and irresistible force" paradoxes. God, being almighty, is the very third valid state for a binary logic. He can be both the negation and the affirmation of any given proposition. You can't say "this thing is not subject to logic, but aplying logic to it leads to a contradiction, thus this thing doesn't exist", as that's just bad logic. And this is precisely the reason I don't believe in any such sort of being: you just can't take anything useful out of it. It's a waste of time. Still, it's not contradictory and it's impossible to prove wrong. By the way, not to be offesnive, but you sound very immature, DarkWraith.

yeh you really have no idea what youre talking about here. when attributes like omnipotence are defined they are defined in a way as to be cohesive with logic. for example:

Omnipotence - all-powerful with respect to its nature 

thus negating any logical absurdities as those would not be within the nature of omnipotence

have you had any philosophy in your entire life, esp. about theology? it seems no...

seek out plantingas ontological argument

Evolution may be a theory, but the fossils left behind are real. Through DNA studies the past is more and more revealed. Evolution maybe a theory but it's closest to fact that we have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsn3wpVAcjk

Scoobes said: Aielyn said: Farmageddon said: Aielyn said: Many dog breeds are the result of artificial selection. But did you know that there are dog breeds that are incapable of breeding with each other? For instance, the beagle and the irish setter cannot breed with each other. Yet they can each breed with the same other types of dog - their DNA is just a little too distant from each other to produce viable offspring. Do you have any sources for the bolded part? It sounds quite interesting. I read it while looking into the issue. But there's a slight inaccuracy, now that I've looked a bit deeper. Apparently, they can produce viable offspring sometimes, but most of the time it's not viable. You can, for instance, find it mentioned here: http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/dog-breeds/ Just to follow on from this. Where a species starts and a breed ends is not always easy to define. Some cat species can successfully breed to give viable offspring. Lions and Tigers in captivity can be bred to produce ligers which can be further bred to produce liligers (apparently, I'm not making these names up!). They were long thought to be sterile, but it appears they (ligers) can be viable.

Thanks, Aielyn.

Scoobes, yeah, I don't know much about the subject, but the idea of defining species through viable offspring alone doesn't sound very practical.

DarkWraith said: Farmageddon said: Besides what I've said above and others before, there's a very simple reason why you can't really apply logic to disprove an all powerfull being, and it's very simple: by definition, even if implicitly, such a being has the very handy ability to tell logic to just shove it. Which solves all of those "unmovable object and irresistible force" paradoxes. God, being almighty, is the very third valid state for a binary logic. He can be both the negation and the affirmation of any given proposition. You can't say "this thing is not subject to logic, but aplying logic to it leads to a contradiction, thus this thing doesn't exist", as that's just bad logic. And this is precisely the reason I don't believe in any such sort of being: you just can't take anything useful out of it. It's a waste of time. Still, it's not contradictory and it's impossible to prove wrong. By the way, not to be offesnive, but you sound very immature, DarkWraith. yeh you really have no idea what youre talking about here. when attributes like omnipotence are defined they are defined in a way as to be cohesive with logic. for example: Omnipotence - all-powerful with respect to its nature  thus negating any logical absurdities as those would not be within the nature of omnipotence have you had any philosophy in your entire life, esp. about theology? it seems no... seek out plantingas ontological argument

Formally? No, not really, I've just read about this and that. As far as I know, though, many thinkers have advanced and attacked many definitions of omnipotence under different points of view, relating it or not to the idea of an actual god, some even defending such "absolute omnipotence".

But it would seem to me that the main reasons to define it the way you talk about would be either to preserve logic, so as to be able to actually derive anything from it, or as a counter argument and deflect things like the stone paradox. My point was that I see no reason why we should impose - or really even expect - God to be bounded by logic, be it either because He abidies by it or because it's part of His very "nature" . I really can't see any a priori reason at all to expect that. If you can, please, I'm interested.

Besides, you speak of studying philosophy and theology, yet your initial argument about the impossibility of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being is as simple as possible and, I'm sure, has been tackled by any of the great thinkers who didn't see God as an impossibility or even believed on it's existence in some form or capacity.  To suppose that disproving theism, or even more specifically a Christian-like God, is by this very simple logic such an open and shut case is just preposterous.

As such I bet many, and much better, counter arguments can be found elsewhere, but here's a quick, probably way over-simplified, shot at one:

You seem to take "the good" as being an absolute, necessary and eternal quality, independent of God. That, by itself, can be seen as restricting God. Furthermore, you assume we're in a position to judge what "the good" consist of. One might, on the other hand, say that "the good" is contingent, at least in a sense, being precisely that which God wills, or that "the good" is that which conforms to the nature of God, or that we can't really define waht it is and isn't, thus removing the contradiction you proposed, if kind of tautologically, I guess.

Anyway, as I said before, I don't believe in any given kind of deity, but my broader point remains that I see no reason to expect logic (and, well, reason itself as we know it) to never break on any level of existence, infinitelly distant from our experience as it may be. Much less do I see any reason to believe or, worse yet, impose this to be necessarily the case.

(Just as an aside, a random quick though: another interesting way to argue against the impossibility of God is to notice that God and His properties might actually be impossible to even put in "words". Which I think is acutally consistent with Christian tradition, which says it's only through the Holy Spirit's guidance taht one can to truly understand the bibble. As in, you pretty much need a miracle of faith to even read about God)

I've never thought the ability of already existing organisms to evolve was really a blow to the idea of creation. If someone designed a robot, and gave it complex enough programming that it could learn, and eventually enhance itself to deal with problems that it wasn't previously built for, it wouldn't be proof that the robot came about by itself, but rather that the designer was just... amazing at what he does. People don't want to believe in God, so they claim belief in him isn't scientific, and instead turn to theories which need to disregard the scientific method to be thought of as fact. 

Even if species can evolve, the idea that living organisms began from completely non-living matter doesn't have any concrete evidence backing it up, as it can't be replicated.

Even if that could happen, what if you suddenly had 1 lone, single celled organism suddenly spring to life? What do you suppose happens next? Oh right, it dies. it doesn't reproduce for generations until it becomes more advanced. How would it?

It's interesting about things that evolve. They generally evolve for the good of the planet, not the good of themselves.

Horrible BP Oil spill in the gulf of mexico? Oh look, some bacteria at some point evolved to break down and consume crude oil.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130408152733.htm

Terrible nuclear disaster at Chernobyl? Apparently some fungi evolved as some point to eat harmful radiation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070522210932.htm

We have a world full of creatures whose apparent evolutions contribute to the sustained balance of the planet. Physical laws are the same. Liquids grow more dense as it gets colder... except water. It grows more dense to a point, but when it reaches freezing temperature, it instead expands, causeing ice to float, and thus create a protective layer at the top of bodies of water, instead of turning lakes and rivers into huge blocks of ice and killing everything in them. 

Actually, how people feel reminds me of a short story Asimov wrote. 2 guys arrive at a space station, and the robotic crew is led by a robot that doesn't believe the humans tales of the outside universe. He's not interested in their lies, and doesn't believe that these crude beings could have invented something like him. In the end they let him believe what he wants because he's still doing his job.  (just looked it up, it was called 'Reason') It seems like the story is showing the atheist view of the world. The Robots demanded absolute proof, right then and there, that they had been created by humans, otherwise, why should they believe it? They were logical, reasoning beings, but as far as they were concerned, the space station had been there since before they had come into existence, and always would be. They weren't entirely sure of the other details, but one thing they were sure of - that these fragile, flawed biological organisms weren't responsible for their existence. In the end, the crew left them to their ignorance (not even bothering to collect proof and send it later). It's funny, because Asimov was an athiest, and yet his story seemed like it was poking fun at their views.