As an atheist that comes from a family history of everyone being southern baptist( yes I’m the black sheep)we sometimes have lively discussions about this. The bottom line from them is always “faith”. Well that’s has never been enough for me, I need proof and that’s something the can’t do. They can’t prove anything.
Goes a bit further for me even. I could easily side/believe in the ability of a higher power way before I could believe in a higher power that is all knowing, all powerful, all loving but if you don’t bow down to him you burn for an eternity. So even if you want me to believe that the world needed a creator it’s another leap altogether to think certain things about that creator. It’s like faith and then faith plus or something.
Faith plus one even
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I thought this was a waste of your time? Hence, I won’t waste my time with your persistent trolling of me and not bother to read your post that you clearly spent some time on… I should take it as a compliment that someone thinks I am important enough to troll, or that I need to be stopped at all cost. By God I must be saying something dangerous!
EDIT: Your interest is in me and not the topic, hence why I will waste no more time on your posts.
I was leaving the Bible out of it. It doesn’t seek to prove the existence of God. It assumes Gods existence as fact otherwise it’s just another book. But it does give us one important distinction, vs. other stories written in history. It does define God as the Creator of being which is an important distinction. It allows us to connect the dots that the Bible is talking about the God as the same one understood in the philosophical proofs for His existence. Now whether or not the Bible is the accurate description of God, is another debate of another time. That’s an argument between theists, not between atheists and theists.
You are right in that the Bible didn’t create morality. Indeed what we understood as morality is not exclusive to Christianity. The further, the Bible is not just a book of morals, it’s much more than that. But the Bible informs us of the best morals that we should follow to live a good life. Love, service to others, etc.
You don’t have to be a Christian or even religious to live a good life. But there is hope and guidance in the scriptures and in faith that is absent in the secular world view. The faith gives us meaning. A lack of faith is a lack of meaning.
Meaning, not matter your chosen morality, it doesn’t matter in the end anyway. For the religious it does matter in the end. But the end isn’t our goal, the present is.
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There are people who can provide such proofs if you are interested. They go from ‘more probable than not’ to my position of certainty that God does exist. In fact God must exist for anything else to exist is my position. Now that was derived through studying the arguments and counter arguments, philosophically. Now, establishing God’s existence doesn’t tell us anything about God, whether he prefers one faith over another, it mere establishes existence. He, may have started existence and let it roll on it’s own. Maybe he doesn’t like anybody. Maybe we’re just an annoying spec in a vast universe or multiverse. The arguments don’t tackle that part of it, save for Kant’s argument from morality. His argument does establish God as perfection in a moral sense, by which all moral acts are measured.
Christians, particularly Evangelicals have been philosophically poor on the essential propositions. That’s not a cut on them as they are scriptural rich in that they know the Bible back and forth. But be their goal to convince somebody or even plant the seed of doubt into someone’s disbelief, saying “The Bible says so”, isn’t very effective.
Alas, my experience is that this is a much more emotional topic than a reasonable topic. In that, emotion plays a higher role in belief vs. disbelief than proofs or counter proofs. Arguments or counter arguments.
In other words, you can take a class of atheists, present the finest arguments in the finest form, answer all their questions and they will still walkout unconvinced. Likewise, you can take a bunch of Christians in a class present them all the counter arguments to God’s existence and they likewise will all walkout unconvinced and there is a specific reason for that.
If you give up your position, it means you lose everything you knew up until that point.
Oh shit, it’s getting dark, I have an eclipse to watch…
Listen, if your interested in a respectful discussion on the matter, I will be happy to continue it. Just let me know.
My interest is why you changed a post and then lied about it. My interest wasn’t so much in you but why a grown “Christian” man would lie about what he said.
You shouldn’t read my post because it confirms what all the people who responded to you already know. You made a statement. People hammered you for it (because it was fucking idiotic) so you changed it. Then you pretended you didn’t change it or say it and now me pointing that out is trolling.
But hey at least we now know that not only can you not make good arguments for your point you will lie in the forum about what you said.
Hell it wasn’t even that big a deal. You said something and changed it or backed away from it. Pretending like you didn’t say it is beyond stupid.
Again, I didn’t change a post. If I edit a post it within minutes of posting it because I saw a mistake and I correct a mistake, I don’t go back and change old posts. I seldom, if ever even look at older posts even within a thread. I did not go back and change any posts. If I make a correction or an edit it’s with in 5 minutes of posting it. I don’t even know what you could be possibly referring to. Perhaps its your memory that is in error here.
If I changed something, likely hitting the edit button will show you what I changed.
I’ve pointed out what I am referring to. Your dumbass the existence of God has been proven statement. Good non proven God quit pretending like you can’t even read.
I have NO IDEA (honestly) why you pretend you didn’t say it. 5 or 6 people in this thread talked to you about it and it wasn’t that long ago. And I’ve said the statement numerous times now. It’s like when you were dodging SMH’s arguments but now you’re dodging your own words.
I don’t need to hit the edit button you said what you said and I pointed that out in detail in post 337 which you said you weren’t going to read because for some reason you think you can save face after all these posts back and forth. You’re making other Christians wish they weren’t associated with someone so untruthful.
Nope, there are no proofs. There are arguments. Not sure how you don’t understand this.
lol, you and only you.
While not being able to defend them. When shown how your premises did not deal with things being uncaused, you were not able to defend your position.
Haha or walls of words.
@magnumd if you want to see how we got to where were are now, search @H_factor’s posts where he links to the previous discussion with pat and SMH. It’s an amusing read if you have the time.
I did say that, in the philosophical sense that is true. I didn’t say people all believed it. I didn’t say that was the consensus, I said there are arguments who’s premises are valid and the lead to the only conclusion those premises can lead to.
I did defend them. Presented all that was wrong with you objections and more. It’s ^^ up there. Yes, it’s a really long post in two parts, but it handles most if not all of your counter arguments. So if you read it, then you will know the objections you presented do not stand.
The conclusion of Uncaused-cause is necessary based on the premises otherwise you will have circular reasoning, which is fallacious. This is particularly true of the argumment from Contingency.
Your only choices are ‘something from nothing’ or ‘something from something’. Since nothing does not exist and cannot do anything, then something that can do something must exist without itself having been caused or created.
If you look at it, I was defending PSR not the existence of God, which I already admitted I did a poor job of, some 3-4 years ago. There are other defenses for it that were much better than what I presented.
I don’t remember you being there, quite frankly.
Valid deductive arguments can also be called ‘proofs’ though it’s not common lingo.
Well at least you finally admit that you said it and changed. No idea why it took so long.
Nope, this is an assumption. You do not know this. You are basing this on what you are determining to be “nothing”, but we do not know what form “nothing” is in.
As far as we know, all the matter and energy that we see around us came from something. It’s also true that the universe exists. Do these two facts together imply that the universe was “made” by “something”? No. You are assuming this is how it works, but you cannot prove it. You are assuming things, so calling them proofs is absurd.
Again, I’m not saying its a bad assumption, just that it is not proven.
Edit: a quick google provided PLENTY of links debunking your “something from nothing claim”
I never said I didn’t, I even told you where to look, and explained what I meant. I didn’t edit any posts they are still up there. As I was referring to valid deductive arguments as proofs, which any deductive argument can as they often take the form of a mathematical equation. I think you were just confused or skimming.
You can take over from here. Be ready for a lot of dodging mixed with some I didn’t say that or mean that. Best of luck to you
Haha its not worth it. I was trying to see if it would go in a different direction other than re-stating and dodging, but unfortunately that is where we are at. Not really worth much effort at this point.
Edit: All I was wanting is some source, any source really, that said what pat said (God is proven). I can find it anywhere.