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Forums - General - Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

 

Do you believe in any god?

Yes 63 36.21%
 
No 111 63.79%
 
Total:174
SpokenTruth said:
WolfpackN64 said:

It's not a contradiction because a first effect necessary being is uncaused. God does not need to cause himself, he always was. If he didn't exist, the nature of a necessary being would mean he couldn't bring himself into existence.

That is still very much a contradiction.  You can't say everything requires a cause...oh, except God.

That's not a contradiction, it's a categorization.



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SpokenTruth said:
WolfpackN64 said:

That's not a contradiction, it's a categorization.

You can't even categorize it without it being contradictory.

Category 1 - Everything.

Category 2 - God.

 

Category 1 includes God because Category 1 is "everything".  Again, for step 1, you'd have to say Category 1 except Category 2.

 

1) Everything (Category 1 except Category 2) is caused and everything (Category 1 except Category 2) that causes is caused itself (these are contingent beings and events, who can cause and are caused).

Which, again, means you can't say everything requires a cause...oh, except God.

No, category one would be everything that is caused and causes. Category two would be everything that causes but isn't caused.

There is no problem here.



SpokenTruth said:
WolfpackN64 said:

No, category one would be everything that is caused and causes. Category two would be everything that causes but isn't caused.

There is no problem here.

Hence the contradiction I stated to begin with.  You start with a premise that everything caused and then end with a being that started it all and yet is somehow not part of everything to being with.  So again..."everything" requires a cause...oh, except God.  If God is not part of "everything" don't say "everything".

Again, no contradiction. But I think that's a language mistake. When I sais "everything is caused", I mean it in the sense of cause and effect, as in moved (and potentially brought in to being).



WolfpackN64 said:
SpokenTruth said:

Hence the contradiction I stated to begin with.  You start with a premise that everything caused and then end with a being that started it all and yet is somehow not part of everything to being with.  So again..."everything" requires a cause...oh, except God.  If God is not part of "everything" don't say "everything".

Again, no contradiction. But I think that's a language mistake. When I sais "everything is caused", I mean it in the sense of cause and effect, as in moved (and potentially brought in to being).

How did you establish the uncaused thing is a "being".  As opposed to say quantum particles which do arise with seemingly no cause.  

How did you rule out the possibility of multiple uncaused things?  Granted you only need one to start off a chain, but if one could exist, it stands to reason that more than one can exist.  Things are either possible or impossible.  Not possible but just once.  

How did you come to the conclusion that this necessary being is God?  You used a capital G so I'm assuming you mean Yahweh Jehovah or whatever you call the Judeo-Christian god.  And this god has tons of characteristics that are entirely unnecessary, and perhaps unlikely, for a first cause.  So how did you get there?

How does a being exist without being caused?  Saying it's necessary doesn't solve this problem.  There has to be some kind of explanation for its existence for it to be justified.  If you are saying its possible, then you have to establish some kind of mechanism or process, and why it could only apply to one thing at one time?

So, yeah.  The argument is completely flawed head to toe.



SpokenTruth said:
WolfpackN64 said:

Again, no contradiction. But I think that's a language mistake. When I sais "everything is caused", I mean it in the sense of cause and effect, as in moved (and potentially brought in to being).

Then number 6 is just a convenient enabling device.  The watchmaker, kick starter, domino knocker over, etc....    It's just an insert here to make my logic work.

It's like Peh said.  It's a convenient stop gap to make the logic work.

1. Steal socks.
2. *insert profit making sock stealing scheme*
3. Profit.

It's only there because the previous 5 steps were premised to require step 6 to wrap it up all up.  Step 1 here (stealing socks) is just like the premise of step 1 in the cosmological argument. There is a presumption there that begins with the notion that we know all.  Do we know stolen socks can be profitable?  Do we know that what exists is cased by how we currently know they are caused? 

What if space-time has always been there?  What if it had no beginning and no end as we understand them?  What if, as our current understanding of space-time goes, time and space are so incredibly warped as you go back in time that a time zero (prior to the 'big bang') simply doesn't exist?  Or, has has always existed and we revert back to it in a cosmological big bang/big contraction cycle?

 

The cosmological argument is premised on presumption and relies on our ignorance to conclude something we must make up to make up for our ignorance.

We actually know for a fact (this has been experimentally proven) that gravity slows down time.  In a situation where we have a singularity then (the universe prior to the big bang) it's very likely (almost certain) that time as we understand it did not exist.  



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JWeinCom said:

We actually know for a fact (this has been experimentally proven) that gravity slows down time.  In a situation where we have a singularity then (the universe prior to the big bang) it's very likely (almost certain) that time as we understand it did not exist.  

SpokenTruth said:

Exactly.  We know enough now that any premise based on how we experience time would be flawed because space-time doesn't function as a constant.

Hey, guys, I really appreciate what you're doing here, but I think this guy's a lost cause. He's so far into his religious beliefs that he fails to notice his contradictions and fallacies. You can keep arguing for centuries, but he won't change his mind. He already has his conclusion. He will still believe in God and use flawed arguments to try and prove its existence no matter what anyone says, claiming it's "scientific". Thank you for being polite with all of this, but I think you can stop discussing now, this discussion won't get anyone anywhere.



LuccaCardoso1 said:
JWeinCom said:

We actually know for a fact (this has been experimentally proven) that gravity slows down time.  In a situation where we have a singularity then (the universe prior to the big bang) it's very likely (almost certain) that time as we understand it did not exist.  

SpokenTruth said:

Exactly.  We know enough now that any premise based on how we experience time would be flawed because space-time doesn't function as a constant.

Hey, guys, I really appreciate what you're doing here, but I think this guy's a lost cause. He's so far into his religious beliefs that he fails to notice his contradictions and fallacies. You can keep arguing for centuries, but he won't change his mind. He already has his conclusion. He will still believe in God and use flawed arguments to try and prove its existence no matter what anyone says, claiming it's "scientific". Thank you for being polite with all of this, but I think you can stop discussing now, this discussion won't get anyone anywhere.

They're not fallacies if you don't believe in them. God will back him up on this.

Checkmate atheists!



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

I want to share a story with you guys and I want you to tell me your honest opinion.

What I'm about to say is absolutely true. I have zero incentive to fabricate any of the following.

One day, about 4 years ago, I was having a dream. In my dream, I was navigating throughout a giant building. Everything was extremely bright. I make my way into a particular room and it becomes apparent that I'm in a hospital.

As I stood in this immensely bright room, my eyes are near a corner looking down at what seems to be either a crib/bassinet/incubator...and inside this crib was a baby.

The infants face was noticeably blue in color. Standing directly next to the crib was a woman I know, holding a white object that looked to be a pillow. I screamed for her to get away from this baby.

I wake up. My phone rings within 45 seconds of being awake and it's my cousin who was dating this woman in my dream.

My cousin sounds unnerved. Clearly in distress and tells me that his baby is in the hospital FOR CHOKING!

He said her face was blue. I immediately told him about my dream and suggested with authority that his girlfriend was responsible.

He didn't dispute.

To this day ,I've never met her (the baby). She was given my birthday as her due date.



Insert Coin. Press START. You Died. Continue?

SuperRetroTurbo said:
I want to share a story with you guys and I want you to tell me your honest opinion.

What I'm about to say is absolutely true. I have zero incentive to fabricate any of the following.

One day, about 4 years ago, I was having a dream. In my dream, I was navigating throughout a giant building. Everything was extremely bright. I make my way into a particular room and it becomes apparent that I'm in a hospital.

As I stood in this immensely bright room, my eyes are near a corner looking down at what seems to be either a crib/bassinet/incubator...and inside this crib was a baby.

The infants face was noticeably blue in color. Standing directly next to the crib was a woman I know, holding a white object that looked to be a pillow. I screamed for her to get away from this baby.

I wake up. My phone rings within 45 seconds of being awake and it's my cousin who was dating this woman in my dream.

My cousin sounds unnerved. Clearly in distress and tells me that his baby is in the hospital FOR CHOKING!

He said her face was blue. I immediately told him about my dream and suggested with authority that his girlfriend was responsible.

He didn't dispute.

To this day ,I've never met her (the baby). She was given my birthday as her due date.

I'm not sure what this has to do with god but if you want my opinion... sure.

So first off, I'm not sure you can say this is absolutely true.  I believe that you're telling the story to the best of your abilities with the intention of accuracy, but that doesn't mean its true.  Memory is a funny thing, particularly with dreams, when your brain is in an altered state.  It's possible that you had a dream about a baby, and then after hearing about choking, you remembered it differently.

But, let's assume for a second the dream was exactly as you recalled.  All I could say is something weird happened.  I don't know exactly the explanation, but I'd say that coincidence could not be ruled out.  I'm sure you've had a few thousand dreams in your life.  Most of them probably did not correlate with anything that happened in the real world, so they were forgotten.  Confirmation bias.

I'm guessing since you posted it in this topic, you're implying some kind of supernatural causation.  And, well maybe?  I guess?  I'm personally far more inclined to believe it was an error in memory, or a coincidence, because I know those things happen really often.  If you want to say it's supernatural, I'd really need something more repeatable or testable.



JWeinCom said:
SuperRetroTurbo said:
I want to share a story with you guys and I want you to tell me your honest opinion.

What I'm about to say is absolutely true. I have zero incentive to fabricate any of the following.

One day, about 4 years ago, I was having a dream. In my dream, I was navigating throughout a giant building. Everything was extremely bright. I make my way into a particular room and it becomes apparent that I'm in a hospital.

As I stood in this immensely bright room, my eyes are near a corner looking down at what seems to be either a crib/bassinet/incubator...and inside this crib was a baby.

The infants face was noticeably blue in color. Standing directly next to the crib was a woman I know, holding a white object that looked to be a pillow. I screamed for her to get away from this baby.

I wake up. My phone rings within 45 seconds of being awake and it's my cousin who was dating this woman in my dream.

My cousin sounds unnerved. Clearly in distress and tells me that his baby is in the hospital FOR CHOKING!

He said her face was blue. I immediately told him about my dream and suggested with authority that his girlfriend was responsible.

He didn't dispute.

To this day ,I've never met her (the baby). She was given my birthday as her due date.

I'm not sure what this has to do with god but if you want my opinion... sure.

So first off, I'm not sure you can say this is absolutely true.  I believe that you're telling the story to the best of your abilities with the intention of accuracy, but that doesn't mean its true.  Memory is a funny thing, particularly with dreams, when your brain is in an altered state.  It's possible that you had a dream about a baby, and then after hearing about choking, you remembered it differently.

But, let's assume for a second the dream was exactly as you recalled.  All I could say is something weird happened.  I don't know exactly the explanation, but I'd say that coincidence could not be ruled out.  I'm sure you've had a few thousand dreams in your life.  Most of them probably did not correlate with anything that happened in the real world, so they were forgotten.  Confirmation bias.

I'm guessing since you posted it in this topic, you're implying some kind of supernatural causation.  And, well maybe?  I guess?  I'm personally far more inclined to believe it was an error in memory, or a coincidence, because I know those things happen really often.  If you want to say it's supernatural, I'd really need something more repeatable or testable.

Once you've chosen to question the authenticity of my experience there is no need to further suggest its validity on my behalf.

 

So I won't. 

 

However since I'm left with something undoubtedly accurate to the best of my recollection, I can not simply accept what you assume to be possibility or mere coincidence.

 

It has very much to do with God since most omnipotent beings are closely associated with providing souls to their creations.



Insert Coin. Press START. You Died. Continue?