The_vagabond7 said:

two things.
1. If god is perfect why did he create anything? Perfection would free one from need or desire. If you desire something, then it is because you are lacking something and wish to fill that need. If god were perfect he would have no need or desire. And yet he seems to desire a great many things, he even demands a great many things. How can he be perfect when he has so many needs and desires?

2.A question for Grey specifically. How is your man made religion superior to any other man made religion (or faith, since you don't seem to like the word religion)? As far as I can tell, the difference between your approach to the bible and any other religious group is that you're not trying as hard to get people to follow what you believe. You've still done the exact same thing as Church of christ, Jehovah's witness's, mormons, catholics, ect, that is to say you've re-intrepreted the bible to adhere more closely to modern sensibilities. You adhere to biblical relativism, while at the same time stating absolutes, and you are the one determining the absolutes. This part of the bible is true, this part of the bible is false. Which is greatly flawed seeing as how you yourself acknowledge that man can't comprehend God or his ways, but you seem to make the decisions for him.

I mean above, you're just making up doctrines and reasons for god to impose these doctrines. You believe in a purgatory of sorts? Because you need time to understand the wrongs of your ways? Just in case you repented but not soon enough? You're making god in your image, you decide what god would and wouldn't do, the parts of the bible that are and aren't true. How can you take such a relativist view while at the same time saying that every other religion is wrong? You could take the hindu vedas, change them up enough to fit modern sensibilities and poof Jesus is a lie, the vedas are true.

@Appolose,

Responding to bolded paragraphs...

Paragraph 1:

Nothing you stated here contradicts my point, we appear to agree.  Any energy external to the universal system is by definition not bound to our universal laws.  You are absolutely correct in saying that this energy could still be subjected to the same laws but the underlying point I'm making is that the 1st law of thermodynamics does not set out a requirement that the universe has supernatural origin and that natural origins have yet to be ruled out.  Note that the laws of physics in our universe are known to be heavily dependent on its makeup (and vice versa), even a relatively small difference in another universe could easily result in completely foreign laws.

I want to point out that my position is that there is insufficient evidence one way or the other, appeals to what seems likely from a given persons view is interesting and I believe it is an instrumental part in working our way towards a solution but alone I ultimately view it as an invalid basis for conclusion.

So, there is a real possibility that our universe could come into existence through natural means from nothing. As such we cannot logically deduce its origins are natural or supernatural.  The question is still unanswered.

Although I would concur that it may be premature to assert that the energy in question is bound by our known laws, I would also think that as much of this area of quantum mechanics (correct me if I'm wrong) is unobserved and hypothetical, and, as such, does not weigh too heavily, in the scientific sense, against our observations of a closed system (i.e., energy appears conserved in many more observations and established theories).

Paragraph 2:

Again I agree. Philosophical skepticism's problems do not necessarily validate other schools of thought or even invalidate it, but its lack of producing a rational solution for even basic tasks such as eating make it very easy to rule out as a worthwhile endeavor to me personally. In short I'm uninterested in a debate on the topic because I don't believe it is capable of producing anything worth discussing.  If you'd like to keep it as part of your argument I'd just as soon not have the debate.  Not trying to piss in your cheerios (so to speak), but I don't like beating around the bush and pointing out the inherit uncertainty in all things however unlikely seems to qualify. I think you'll understand where I'm coming from though.

Yeah, I completely understand; philisophical arguments do take a long, long time.  So as to not detract from the other argument, I'll drop it.

Paragraph 3:

The point is that you do not need to enter from the start of an infinite expanse to exist within it.  This is a misconception.  If we had to travel infinitely then yes there would be a problem but no such requirement exists. To use another very loose analogy you can picture the surface of a sphere as the model for a universe and all of its dimensions (time being latitude and  1-dim space being longitude).  Now imagine walking around the sphere(universe) in the time dimension until you get to the end or turning around to walk back to the beginning. Obviously you cannot reach either goal and would walk seemingly forever,  yet the total surface area  of the sphere (ie the area of  this universe's space-time) is non-infinite and the circumference around a specified  portion of the sphere (its history) is also non-infinite.  Understanding from above that it is possible for something to come from nothing you will see that there is no requirement for any "thing" to begin on the "edge" of a dimension. Please note that this explanation is actually somewhat redundant, parts of it are over explained for clarity.

While I do understand (I think) that it's completely plausible to exist within an infinite expanse, but saying the universe has had infinite time in the past would directly imply that the universe had traveled and infinite amount of time.  Unless you mean that the universe at some point in time had manifested, in which case there's still the problem of time itself having had gone on for infinity.

Fundamentally we exist within dimensions not on them, the concept of entering is something based in our every day view of the world.  One of the reasons I mentioned the need to understand non-euclidean geometry before is because the majority of people have assumed our universe is based in euclidean geometry (ie what you learned in school where the function of a line is "y=mx+b" (where m=slope and b=y-intercept) etc... Now, even though euclidean geometry appears to work flawlessly in our daily lives there is uncertainty as to which form of geometry truly holds for the universe.  What we do know is that it must be a homogeneous and isotropic geometry which narrows it down to euclidean, hyperbolic, and elliptic.

I know you want me to post links but honestly the best I can do is suggest you read Roger Penrose's "The Road to Reality". It is a book steeped in the mathematical beauty and complexity of a number of topics including (but not limited to) Pythagorean theorem, Hyperbolic geometry, Fourier Decomposition, Hypercomplex numbers, Minkowskian Geometry, Quantam Field theory, etc....  Penrose is one of the most respected physicists in his field and he does an excellent job in the book of pointing out when what he is telling you is an unsettled matter and presents the main competing positions for you to consider yourself.  I'm still working my way through it honestly and its hardly a light read, but his insights far exceed the value of any free source of knowledge on the subject that I've found (and I've scoured the net quite a bit).  The topics are simply too interconnected to give a truly adequate explanation and honestly Penrose has done such an excellent job explaining it already so it would be silly to reproduce his works in detail here.

If you're looking for something more towards the layman's side of things I have two other book suggestions for you, PM me if you're interested in those.  Honestly they aren't a bad read to start with for getting introduced to the concepts before learning the math behind them (although they don't cover nearly the ground that Penrose does).

you're still missing the main points of what I'm saying, or ignoring them, it's hard to tell. Sorry if some of the thought process in my points below are broken up here. It takes a while to read through what you're saying, find the point that you're making, and then figure out how to explain it.

1.) see, the problem you're having in this issue is that you're trying to make me play by your rules, just like you're expecting god to play by your rules. It's like a WoW player expecting the games designers to have a level 70 experience cap in real life. I mean, seriously, just for a second, start your hypothesis off with "there is a god" god created the rules, then scientists are merely learning the rules as they go along, stop assuming god has to play by those rules too, he invented the game, but he's not bound by those rules unless he's playing, and really, what programmer worth their salt doesn't put in a few back doors to exploit when they need to get back into the programming to deal with any runtime errors?

2) Of course it's POSSIBLE for god to do it. But I hardly see how having the ability to do it requires that he do so. It's like saying: "if God existed, God would have the power to end his existence, thus he cannot exist" I mean, how the hell does that even make any sense? Just having the ability doesn't automatically activate it.

3) See, again, this idea of yours is ultimately based on the idea that god doesn't exist, because you're giving just as much credence to any yutzpah that uses the word god as you do to the people that actually back up their beliefs in God with actions that you recognize as good. Meanwhile, I recognize that these are PEOPLE who are spouting out "God this and god that" so when I get confronted by this, I can point out that they are wrong. They don't have to believe me for me to be right. For some reason what you're saying here is trying to refute my Is less than or Is greater than test with an Is true or Is false test.

4) I believe in psychology this is reffered to as emotional displacement, though I don't know if there's really emotion, so lets just call it causal inaccuracy. Please read this one closely, cause it's actually very important.
In most religious texts, the earth is termed as a circle, disc, dome, or sphere. Now think about this for a second. If it was the religious texts themselves that were written with the idea that the earth was actually flat, then why would they say circle? Why not square or triangle or star? To me, this puts out some pretty neon signs pointing to the fact that the religious texts essentially boil down to saying "round" but people misinterpreted it as "round and flat" Where you look at these points to say that religion is consistently proven wrong, I am looking at this and seeing science consistently making bad assumptions about where flaws in religion stem from.
It is not from the religion itself, but the uneducated people who had to interpret religious texts and make it match up with their own understanding; "Every time I try to put my doll on the bottom of this ball that I'm holding in the air, it falls off, so when the book says the earth is circular, they must mean like a plate"

To further this point, religious texts, at least Christian based, refer to the earth as being the center of the heavens. Many scientists use this to try to show science as being better than religion when it was shown that the earth circled the sun, and not the sun circling the earth. However, 100s of years later, we start to try to explain universal expansion and understand where the center of the universe is. Guess what? The prevailing theories point to the idea that the universe is essentially mapped to the outside of an expanding balloon and so no matter what point you pick on it, every other point in the universe is expanding away from that point. Hence, the earth IS the center of the universe from the perspective of the observer at that point. You know, US.

5) I find that the most effective methods are finding out what text conflicts with the fundamental function of lower level society. Hence the 10 commandments cover it pretty well. You start with those as the base, much like how you have your postulates in math 1 is followed by 2 is followed by 3, etc, and then 1 + 1 = 2, etc. From there, you check if anything specifically conflicts with the 10 commandments, and you also check to see if people are assuming more initiative needs to be taken than what the text actually calls for.
One of the big things I hear about is homosexuality, which is considered wrong by many religious texts. This makes sense, as if everyone in the world was homosexual, you wouldn't have continued survival of the species, if every one in the world was straight, you would have society continue just as it is now. However, I don't see where it says that homosexuals need to be killed or treated like animals, etc. Also, from what I can see, you can have homosexual inclinations and still qualify for heaven, provided you don't actually engage in any homosexual activity.

6) Actually, this one I can explain pretty easily with a cute little story that I used to hate until it suddenly clicked on me. There's a story of 5 blind men who come across an elephant, one touches its tusks, one touches its tail, one touches its foot, one its ear and one its trunk. They each exclaim "ah, so this is what an elephant is" and when their descriptions don't match up, they quarrel over it. the version I heard, they painted the elephant for some reason, but i think in other version they might have killed it or had it trample them.
When you actually stop and think about it, it remains consistent that god is on a different plane of existence than we exist on. much like trying to observe a 3d object as a 2d image, we can't see all of it at once. So one person looking from one side may say "ah, this square is yellow" and another would say "ah, this square is blue" but really, they're looking at a rubix cube and each can only see one side. So really, most religions are all looking at the same god, but seeing and worshiping what aspects they are capable of perceiving. However, this doesn't mean all religions have equal validity. After all, do you really want to be worshiping an elephant's ass? (well, I suppose if you needed the fertilizer... but still... wheagh)

7) How can you even claim to know how thought works, and thus how can you claim to say that thought cannot exist apart from matter? We may be able to document the electrical impulses that are the physical signs of thought taking place, but there is no possible way you can be certain that it is the electrical impulses that manifest thought, and not thought that is there first and which manifests as electrical impulses in the brain.

8) auugh, again, you're going back into this thing of "I cannot conceive of it, thus it cannot exist"

9) why does there have to be a problem just because god is the origin?

10) Okay, I get what the problem you're having is; you just seriously cannot conceive of something being perfect. You figure, if god is perfect, then he is either bound by truths and thus not perfect because he is bound, or you figure that he is above the truths, and thus capable of doing things that are imperfect. However, since you cannot ACTUALLY conceive of god being perfect, you constantly push imperfections on your image of god, and so when he is above truth, he will automatically start to warp truth to something that isn't truth. Have you ever considered that truth is Truth because god keeps it that way?

11) Why do you just stop at "god did it"as a final answer? Well, HOW did god do it? We, as a species are attempting to learn and understand god. Science, just as with religion, is designed to help us better understand the ways in which our universe functions and what roles we play in it. I've already stated that they address two entirely focuses, in that religion answer why, whereas science answers how. The problems stem from when one attempts to exert authority over the realm of the other. I have never once EVER held the belief that we should just read the bible and get all of our answers from it and it alone. I'm just pointing out the fact that the existence of god is not something that science can answer, and showing the flaws in scientific theories that supposedly support his inexistence.

12) but as I've stated in point 5 and perhaps a little in point 6, just because science SEEMS to conflict with god's existence does not mean it does. This fact needs to be recognized. Science has been far too quick to attempt to kill god off, whether for publicity or in the belief that, without religion, ignorance would disappear, or simply in revenge for how religion had historically made it difficult for scientific breakthroughs to be made and accepted. Every attempt to remove god has only resulted in flawed arguments that undermine the credibility and certainty that is supposed to be science's ideal. Scientists shouldn't even be concerning themselves with whether god does or doesn't exist, and there shouldn't even BE "proofs" whether theory or not about his existence.

13) I don't really know the bible line for line, so figuring out the context from just a single line is sketchy at best. that would be like me saying that 1.0 = 0.9, and then trying to get you to explain that conflict in math. Of course, I only showed you the first 9 characters of that equation and didn't mention that that 0.9 actually continues to say 0.999999 repeating. Even with that though, I don't see any of those lines saying "God 5:12" along with that, it may have been perfect at the time, but now context and language barriers are putting flaws in our understanding of it.

14) um, see point 5 up above here. I use science and logic to flag spots that are showing possible conflicts, check the wording and see just what exactly it does say and what it doesn't say, and then check to see if I find any flaws with the 10 commandments and the existence of Christ. If there are any conflicts with those, or with proven scientific fact, i file that away to be rechecked at a later point, as well as flagging the proven scientific fact for follow up to see if there is more to it than perceived. My fiance had a quote in her signatures that went something like; "the truest sign of intelligence is the ability to hold two conflicting thoughts in in equal standing without going insane"
Also, as I've stated, I DONT believe that Christianity captures every single point of god perfectly. I do believe in both God and Jesus, but I don't believe in those that claim to follow those doctrines but then not actually follow those doctrines. however, in circumstances as those I do not bring teh initial doctrines into question, but the people claiming to represent them. it's really pretty straightforward.

15) Ultimately, it falls back to the fact that we exist, and we also die. There is a reason and purpose to both, I look for consistencies between both science and religion. As I have said before, they are both two different ways of trying to understand our universe better, they simply answer different questions. Within their own fields they are wonderful but when each one tries to answer questions in the other's territory, it just gets stupid. Have you ever been smacked in the face with a bat? I haven't, but I can only imagine that to be similar to the type of sensation i get when I run into the conflicts and logical inconsistencies i see with arguments like those.

16) You're still falling on the idea that I'm some sort of hardcore christian. It did provide the basic foundation, but I questioned things and didn't settle for because. As a result, I have generally considered myself more of a semi-christian, semi-deist. I have stated myself that I don't believe the bible to be perfect, perhaps by its own virtues, it is perfect, but language and human understanding of it are not.

17) Well, the simple answer is by constantly asking yourself what your limitations are, and then slowly and carefully removing the limitations of your perspective. That is pretty much what I have utterly devoted myself specifically towards for the past 10+ years (current age: 24) It may sound a little hippy, but when science and religion are harmonized in your mind, you are capable of answering the two big questions to the universe(what can I do?/how do I or will I do it? and should I do it?/why should I or am I doing it?), whereas those who only use just science or just religion to explain things invariably lose one of those two questions. It's like trying to see with one eye. You can do it, but your perspective is off, if you close one eye or the other, it'll be off in different ways, but it's only if you open both eyes that you can see properly.

18) There aren't any that I can think of right now, but there have been. It's been a while since I've had most of those breakthroughs though, so it's honestly hard to recall what all those conflicts were.

19) argh, again you just refuse to think that something actually IS perfect. I go through and state that he is that point of perfection that is ever increasing, but you go through and say "ah, I get it, so perfection is constantly increasing, thus, god is always not quite perfect and is constantly just a little bit behind that point of perfection." NO. He IS that point of perfection. Him being able to reach it doesn't come into issue, he IS it.

20) Good freaking grief, i hope so, this took me all evening to get through, and i may be cut off from net access over the next week, at least when it comes down to long intervals like what i needed to deal with this post. If you are going to refute any points, do you think you could skip quoting it and just use the numbers?

basically, Sri Lumpa is attempting to assert God existence as being subjected to the universe, while I'm asserting the universe's existence being subjected to God. We're both doing this through a series of philosophical and theoretical proofs and then pointing out weaknesses in each other's proofs.

Pretty much, the only issue at that point is whether you are willing to accept/believe that.

Religion is a mix of Faith and politics. you shouldn't place the faults of the politics on that of the faith. wether belief in god is present or not, people will still attempt to control other people through fear and ignorance. The belief in god allows you to realize that no matter what position of authority a person is in, there are things that are right and things that are wrong regardless of what they say. If you claim that as a reason to stop believing in god, all you'll have left is the politics, and then everything has gone straight to the shithole.

1:

Well quantum mechanics like most fields is certainly full of theory and hypothesis.  However, a substantial understanding through observation and testing does exist.  Particle Accelerators like CERN's LEP and the newly built LHC are probably the most notable examples of such endeavors. In the case of the Uncertainty Principle its validity has been established through experiment, it's actually fundamental to the way particle accelerators work. So while its fair to say we don't have a fundamental understanding yet, its hardly the case that these are merely ideas without basis.

As for the issue of spontaneous creation itself, I would go no further myself than saying that there is no logical conclusion to be drawn on the issue one way or the other.  But the fact that this possibility remains certainly opens up a number of possibilities that many ordinary people have probably ruled out.  Not the least of which is a natural origin to the universe.  Even if a natural origin were proven, the possibility of a supernatural origin is still preserved because a  supernatural being would certainly be capable of using natural forces to do his work.

I think we may have to let this particular point no longer be debated, as I would have to, more or less, take your word for it (on the issue of quantum foam seemingly gaining energy from another source (not that I don't trust you)).  Of course, that would probably my whole argument could no longer be debated, since it needs this point :)  But what the heck.

2:

Much appreciated.

But how do you know you appreciate it?  How can you say you exi- nah, just joshing yah.

3: 

I think perhaps it is important to distinguish a bit on this point.  The relevant possibilities are that the universe has an infinite past and/or that it has a finite past with beginning.  Its future is, I think we can agree, irrelevant to the discussion even if its quite relevant to ourselves personally. 

Agreed

The finite past with a beginning is established by point 1 above as being possible, even if we don't understand it yet so logically cannot be ruled out.  This discussion I'm assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) is to focus on the second possibility of an infinite past.

Yes, that should be right.

In the case of the infinite past there are several possibilities that can be considered and certainly supernatural creation is one of them.  There are also a couple of situations where an infinite past can be indistinguishable from a finite past.  For example, the sphere example above where it's important to keep in mind that every instant in time is a function of the prior instant (ie even though you reach the same place on the sphere again its conditions can be vastly different, or in other words in this model the future is the past is the future).

Alternatively if we look at the expanding & contracting  universe model we have to consider that we have no way to know that this isn't in fact the first expansion.  It is believed that no information survives the singularity and if that is truly the case it is impossible to know how many times we've ridden the roller coaster (so to speak).  The expanding/contracting model is actually itself not distinct from the spherical model I presented above, it may simply be that the function loops back on itself each time starting from the same conditions as before and that we've literally done this before.

So, what you're saying is (I think) that there may be a finite number of times the universe has cycled through expand/contract, yes?  If that's the case, then that would be tied into point one as to whether it could have originated naturlly in he first place.  You do keep mentioning your sphere example, so I may not be getting it.

In the examples of an actually infinite past there are uncertainties introduced by the definition of what exactly an infinite past even is.  For example, if we have an infinite expanse in just one dimension their is an infinite amount of prior events occurring at every instant.  Of course we can narrow the definition down to an infinite length of time and not just an infinite number of events. Even so we must consider that in any possible pre-modern universe phase any imposed limits on the rate(velocity) of time are unreliable. 

This unreliability in regards to the velocity or even existence of time actually creates the perfect conditions for the natural creation of an event as seemingly improbable as the creation of the modern universe.  Does a pre-modern universe phase consist of a 0-dimensional universe where time is not even a concept? Does it consist of a 1-dimensional universe where time is the only dimension and unbound from space reaches to infinity itself? Or do all 4 classic dimensions remain un-inflated by the big bang but present nonetheless?  In the last scenario I'm unsure what the effects on time would be but infinite and 0 both seem plausible to me.

I'm having some difficulty understanding this (specifically, the second scenario).  If it's not too much of a bother, perhaps you could expound upon this section and explain definitions of time more fundamentally; otherwise, I'll just drop this too and read about it from your suggestions.

From all of these possibilities that I can think of (and there are certainly more as I've made no attempt at exhausting the possibilities) I think even the scenarios of infinite past have rational natural explanaitions.  After all if time itself is infinite it can traverse an infinite expanse of time to bring us to present day. The Kalam Argument is certainly an interesting one but it (and arguments like it) were formed prior to (or in ignorance of) a great deal of relevant work regarding the fundamental laws of the universe.  As a result its premises are no longer considered as foundational as they once were and should now be considered assumptions, yet to be proven or disproven.