Prove(or provide overwhelming evidence) to me the existance, or non existance of God

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Gary


That depends whether you believe the cause is before, or at the same time. Given time starts at the birth of the universe it isn't before. Now if you were concerned about things being outside time, that's a different matter, but how the cause came about is not particularly relevant. the important thing is that it's there.

Its only there if you assume it. You are still assuming there must be a cause for something you happened outside of time. If its outside of time cause and effect no longer applies. Thus your assumption was unwarranted.

My assumptions didn't, your's did. (But who says something is absurd anyway, when considering things outside of this universe and time ? Not sure you can apply the same rules there.) Anyway, like I said, it isn't relevant. One God will do, your many are just a bonus. Just don't expect me to agree with your "Many Gods" theory.

I don't expect a believer to agree with reason over belief. The extra gods are not a bonus. They are a clear indication that you made a dubious asssumption. I didn't make it. I used YOUR assumption that the universe must have a cause and the a god is the cause. The same exact assumption was used for your god. Thus generating an infinite regresion unless you simply stop arbitrarily as you did. I choose to stop one step sooner.

The assumption was that there was a cause. Which I don't see how you can suggest is unjustifiable. If it is, show how a universe comes into existence without a cause. I can only say again that the infinite regression comes from your assumptions, not mine.

Show how the god came into existence. The exact same questions must arise for your god as you raise for the universe. Again the assumption was YOURS. The only thing I did was too NOT stop arbitrarily with one god who clearly is in as much need of a cause as the Universe.

Want to go around again? You are doing a good job of showing what an infinite regresion is and how it is inevitable given your assumption that things must have causes.

But in a nutshell, I can't see how you can argue with the idea that, assuming a cause, it can be called God and thus God exists.

Sorry that you can't handle that. I clearly don't have that problem as I am doing exactly that. The asumption of a cause requires a reasoning person to admit that the asumption also applies to any godlike enitity. It does not however apply to mathematics as no self-aware entity is needed for that.

You after all are not merely putting a label of convenience on the assumed cause. You are insisting that the cause is sentient as a god must be, at least for an all knowing god anyway, as that sort of god must by definition know itself. If it doesn't know itself its indistinguishable from a natural law.

If you don't like the initial assumption, suggest an alternative, i.e. how a universe (or anything) comes into being without a cause. That would convince the gallery

I have done that, except for the convincing part and you can't do that either.

My, purely speculitive, thought is that physics is a consequence of mathematics therefor some sort of natural laws may be inherent in logic and math without need for anyother cause. From there it is merely a matter of a different universes with different variations on those laws arising till one arises that can support life. Without life nothing will notice the other universes that may or may not exist or have existed.

In fact our universe does not have to have come into existence from a condition of no-tiime and no-space. It could arise from vacuum fluctations in a pre-existing universe. Of course that also leads to an infinite regression but you seem satisfied with an infinite number of gods so why not an infinite number of universes?

Oh I know this is off topic and you won't care but I don't like Times New Roman. For some reason I prefer sans seriff fonts. Just mention that because I have to check the font tags when I quote you.

[Robert]

Jack the Bodiless,
YOU are the one who ceased to reply *AGAIN*
Like in the discussion we had before, and before that one.

And you do it again right now.
Of course I keep on coming with the same arguments, if you refuse to answer!

You either won't ever join a discussion about this topic, or you will continue it and reply to my arguments. This *I've been there before* type of arrogance is complete BS, since you have NEVER been there before.

You simply never replied to my last-bunch of arguments.

- Post the failed prophecies here.
- Explain how scientists can in reproduce particles to pop out of the utter nothing in a lab (which is far from nothing)
- explain why you use an argument (they do pop out of nothing) and a backup argument (it never popped out of nothing, it was always there) those are two contradictionary arguments.

Your arrogance is absurd.
You literary never replied to the arguments I raised in my last reaction to you in this thread. you always leave, and return in a new thread with a 'been there done that' attitude.

it has *nothing* to do with constructive debating.

People like you show off the arrogance of non-theists and their proud-to-be logical reasoning. There is no logical reasoning on your side. There's a -run and later tell you answered- tactic.

and now you do it again.

chicken.

CyberShy

[Robert]

Lemmy, that's not how evolution is said to work.

evolution works with randomized genetic modification during reproduction. Most of these modifications are bad modification that result in degeneration. That's the point where natural selection pops in, since natural selection takes away the wrong modifications so only the good new will survive.

compared to my monkey example, a monkey types:
asdfk asdf;;lk jasfd lkj afsdl;kj the alkj dk cat asdljdsafj is skf fdkdsa lovely.

natural selection removes a whole bunch of errors, and then "The cat is lovely" stays.

the odds that a monkey will write a good book that way are higher than that evolution will result in the current life on the planet earth.

But, according to the scientists, that's no problem, since there are more changes than odds, because of the billions of planets, is the explanations of the scientists.

this is not my personal opinion, it's just the plain way evolution is said to work.

Now back to the question: do you see a monkey see a book like shakespear with human control like that, if you give it X time?
-------------------

*if* you still stick to your form of evolution,
than it still does not work.

Say you have monkeys with inteligence 1 up to 10.
The avg would be 5.5, right?
Natural selection will remove the 1-4 monkeys, so only 6-10 are left over. Now the avg will be 8. If you continue this way, in the end, there will be only monkeys with level 10.

What monkeys need to evolve into man is that their inteligence should raise, from 10 to 10.000. New gens much appear or the old gens much be modificated. Then we get back to the first part of this message.

The question stays the same, will monkeys with human supervision ever write a book of shakespear?

CyberShy

[Jack the Bodiless]

You simply never replied to my last-bunch of arguments.

- Post the failed prophecies here.

There are too many to post here. Here's a link to the False Prophecies, Broken Promises, and Misquotes section of the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

And my thread entitled "...at the Church of the Nativity, the Birthplace of Jesus..." discusses just how worthless the "prophecy" of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is.

- Explain how scientists can in reproduce particles to pop out of the utter nothing in a lab (which is far from nothing)
- explain why you use an argument (they do pop out of nothing) and a backup argument (it never popped out of nothing, it was always there) those are two contradictionary arguments.

Yes, particles pop out of nothing (look up "virtual particles" or the "Casimir effect" in a physics textbook). That fact is enough to contradict your statement that something CANNOT come from nothing. A vacuum is the closest we can get to "nothing". If you wish to argue that there was an ABSOLUTE "nothing" which the Universe popped out of, then you need to prove that. Why should we believe there was "nothing"?

And if there was REALLY "nothing", then there was no God, right?

And the two arguments are not contradictory. We know that things can pop out of the best "nothing" that we have access to, and current theories about the origin of time don't include a time in which there was "nothing" anyhow. These are two holes in YOUR argument: that divine intervention is required to make the Universe "pop out of nothing".

Your arrogance is absurd.
You literary never replied to the arguments I raised in my last reaction to you in this thread. you always leave, and return in a new thread with a 'been there done that' attitude.

I need to sleep occasionally. And sometimes I wake up to find that somebody else has continued the discussion and said everything I was going to say.

*if* you still stick to your form of evolution,
than it still does not work.

Say you have monkeys with inteligence 1 up to 10.
The avg would be 5.5, right?
Natural selection will remove the 1-4 monkeys, so only 6-10 are left over. Now the avg will be 8. If you continue this way, in the end, there will be only monkeys with level 10.

What monkeys need to evolve into man is that their inteligence should raise, from 10 to 10.000. New gens much appear or the old gens much be modificated. Then we get back to the first part of this message.

The question stays the same, will monkeys with human supervision ever write a book of shakespear?

New genes are being added all the time, by mutation.

Look at it this way: we KNOW that genes can exist which give human intelligence. We are living proof of that.

And all genes are combinations of the same four amino acids.

Therefore, if these amino acids can be arranged into any order by the right mutations, then we know that humans can evolve.

To claim otherwise, you'd have to demonstrate that a particular combination of genes required for human intelligence could not appear by random mutation and natural selection.

Yes, monkeys with human supervision (to act as natural selection) should be able to write a Shakespeare play. With all the garbage being removed, and only the right letters and words being kept, it probably wouldn't take very long either. There are computer simulations which mimic evolution, including one which demonstrates how easily and quickly eyes can evolve.

[Robert]

There are too many to post here. Here's a link to the False Prophecies, Broken Promises, and Misquotes section of the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

been there. 90% of the examples in there really make no sence and morely show off that the writer doesn't understand much of the bible. 8% are indeed hard, but are explainable if you have the right knowledge.

2% will give me a hard time indeed.
What do you expect me to do, go through all that bunch of crap overthere? I don't think you can expect me to do that.

post your favourites here.

And my thread entitled "...at the Church of the Nativity, the Birthplace of Jesus..." discusses just how worthless the "prophecy" of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is.

I think I have gone through that one before. I'll do it again soon.

(look up "virtual particles" or the "Casimir effect" in a physics textbook).

I did.
- "virtual particles" are theoretical. But even if they do exist, the question will be the same, where do they come from. The only answer will be: virtual pt. and pt together sum up to be nothing. Both came out of nothing. Nice theory, question: how?

- "Casimir effect" two steel plates is not nothing.

A vacuum is the closest we can get to "nothing". If you wish to argue that there was an ABSOLUTE "nothing" which the Universe popped out of, then you need to prove that. Why should we believe there was "nothing"?

Why should we believe there never was a begin?
The burden of proof that there was *no begin* lies on you. There's absolutely no logic in an infinite presence of the first vacuum. Everything we know of has a begin. Evolution and big bang theories are all about cause and effect. It's all a chain of reactions. It's fine with me if you say that there was no begin, but the burden of proof lies on you.

(and of course you will disagree with that. But again, than we are at least on a tie in which both our versions are equally acceptable)

And if there was REALLY "nothing", then there was no God, right?

you can't deny I haven't explained that before.
I'll quote myself earlier in this thread in reaction to Ethelred:

CyberShy: a painter does not have to obey the same rules as a painting.
A baker does not need to same ingredients as a bread, and neiter does a god need to obey to the same rules of his creation.

I know the rules of the 'creation'. I agree that it's hard to imagine god according to these rules, but again, these rules don't have to apply.

pherhaps a cheap answer, but I can't come with anything better, and you can't rebut it, meanwhile it does answer the question.

We know that things can pop out of the best "nothing" that we have access to

good that you admit we have no proof things can pop up out of the complete nothing. (much people think we do have that proof, and if I remember correctly, you stated that in the past as well)

and that we see things pop out of the 'best nothing we have access to' means nothing for the real begin. Than we are indeed stucked to the question if the 'real nothing' ever existed.

and current theories about the origin of time don't include a time in which there was "nothing" anyhow

pherhaps because there is no answer to that?

I need to sleep occasionally. And sometimes I wake up to find that somebody else has continued the discussion and said everything I was going to say.

that's ok. but please don't phrase the "been there done that" thing all the time. It counts for both of us that we oftenly have to repeat our arguments.

The fact that we disagree does not mean that we debate on an unequal level. We're both equal partners in this discussion, and even if you think I'm the most stupid being on earth, you still should show respect in a discussion. Without respect, there is no discussion.

I respect you, eventhough we disagree. I hope you will respect me as well. I'm sure this will not be the last discussion between us. We don't have to hate each other. We both reply, we both have to go through stupid questions. You're not different than me.

To claim otherwise, you'd have to demonstrate that a particular combination of genes required for human intelligence could not appear by random mutation and natural selection.

I don't think the burden of proof lies at my side in this.
You have to prove it if something 'can appear' by random mutation.

Yes, monkeys with human supervision (to act as natural selection) should be able to write a Shakespeare play. With all the garbage being removed, and only the right letters and words being kept, it probably wouldn't take very long either.

I will agree if you mean on letter by letter (in this way)
aCsd klysd asbdfl;kj;elaskj asd;rlfkj aSdhflkj h;lykajsdf ;lkj

= CyberShy.

But on word by word base. (only 'wrong' words are removed) it can't.

Neither if letters are being removed untill the right word is there

C
Ca
Cb
Cd
C...
Cy
Cya
Cyb
Cyba
Cybb
Cybc
Cybd
Cybe
Cybea
Cybeb
Cybe---
Cyber
Cybera
Cyberb
Cyber--
CyberShy

that's because natural selection will 'remove' the words:
C
Ca
Cb
Cd
C...
Cy
Cya
Cyb
Cyba
(etc. etc. etc.)

in this case. Cy is no word, neither is Cyb.
Only if it's "CyberShy" natural selection will accept it as something that can stay.

I'll get back to you on Jesus birth.
You provide me failed prophecies to deal with, ok?

CyberShy

[Gary]

You are still assuming there must be a cause for something you happened outside of time. If its outside of time cause and effect no longer applies. Thus your assumption was unwarranted.

You must be extremely knowledgeable to be able to say that if it is outside of time, cause and effect no longer apply. I'd have thought they'd occur simultaneously and thus have "no effect" on whether I can make the assumption. But I'm not the expert on things that happen at the point of the big bang. I await your example of something that happened without a cause then.

I don't expect a believer to agree with reason over belief.

What reason ? All you've done is object to my reasoned argument. Or are you saying you are a believer in there being no God so are not concerned with reason ?

The extra gods are not a bonus. They are a clear indication that you made a dubious asssumption. I didn't make it. I used YOUR assumption that the universe must have a cause and the a god is the cause.

For about the third time, it doesn't arise from my assumptions, but from yours. You were the one that needed a cause for the cause, when that is going to be outside our experience, our universe, and the rules we have deduced something about. Denial changes nothing.

Show how the god came into existence

I don't have to. I was asked in the thread title to prove there was (or was not) a God. I have done so to any reasonable criteria.

The exact same questions must arise for your god as you raise for the universe.

Really ? If you say so. It may or may not be true, but you are the one assuming that, not anyone else.

Want to go around again?

Ah that's what you are doing are you ? Ignoring the previous posts to return to the same discredited arguments. No it isn't my actions that is causing us to cover the same ground over and over again. If you have nothing further to show we'll stop here. Might as well anyway, since had you any new arguments you would have put them.

Sorry that you can't handle that. I clearly don't have that problem as I am doing exactly that.

Well that's a matter of debate in itself. Having shown the arguments you've put forward so far, to be flawed, when they are restated I'd consider that quibbling rather than debating.

The asumption of a cause requires a reasoning person to admit that the asumption also applies to any godlike enitity.

Why ? That is a restriction you are putting on, and without justification. No one can know that the rules that apply here have any relevance anywhere else.

are insisting that the cause is sentient as a god must be, at least for an all knowing god anyway

Err where did I mention sentience ? Are you not making up your own arguments to rail against here ? God may be sentient, or may not be, that was not anything that formed part of the initial request in the thread title.

have done that, except for the convincing part and you can't do that either.

Sorry missed it.

My, purely speculitive, thought is that physics is a consequence of mathematics therefor some sort of natural laws may be inherent in logic and math without need for anyother cause. From there it is merely a matter of a different universes with different variations on those laws arising till one arises that can support life. Without life nothing will notice the other universes that may or may not exist or have existed.

And how is all that caused ?

In fact our universe does not have to have come into existence from a condition of no-tiime and no-space. It could arise from vacuum fluctations in a pre-existing universe. Of course that also leads to an infinite regression but you seem satisfied with an infinite number of gods so why not an infinite number of universes?

And how are vacuum fluctuations caused. Or the previous universe ? And what caused the rules mankind have deduced this universe seems to adhere to ?

Tell you what, call you universe, "God", and be happy

Getting bored with this anyway. I'll leave the questions I've posed, for you to mull over.

[Robert]

I see I did not reply to Lemmy's last question:

One other question, if god created the world, and the humans, how come the humans oldest religion is Hinduism?

it is?
I don't think it is. Pherhaps flawed dating methods date it to be the oldest.

[Jack the Bodiless]

2% will give me a hard time indeed.
What do you expect me to do, go through all that bunch of crap overthere? I don't think you can expect me to do that.

post your favourites here.

The most obvious ones are the many NT verses in which it is prophesied that Jesus will return soon (within the lifetime of Paul, and James, and Peter, and John). The standard apologetic tactic is to claim that this refers to "the coming of the Kingdom of God" rather than the actual return of Jesus. But this did not happen later in their lifetimes: depending on the interpretation used, it either happened when Jesus ascended to Heaven, or when Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman empire, or it hasn't happened yet.

There are also the cities that were to be "utterly destroyed" and never inhabited again, but still exist in later books, and even in the modern world (like Damascus).

A common tactic of apologists is to say that a particular prophecy "hasn't happened yet". It should be obvious that ANY garbage can be called "prophecy" if that excuse is used: all the failed ones "haven't happened yet", so a collection of random sentences is just as good as the Bible for prophecy.

But Isaiah predicts that five cities in Egypt will speak Caananite (now an extinct language) and that there will be an alliance with the Assyrians (now an extinct civilization). So no "it hasn't happened yet" argument will work here.

And Jeremiah 42 predicts that all Jews who return to Egypt will die. They didn't, and Joseph and Mary supposedly took Jesus there to keep him safe!

- "virtual particles" are theoretical. But even if they do exist, the question will be the same, where do they come from. The only answer will be: virtual pt. and pt together sum up to be nothing. Both came out of nothing. Nice theory, question: how?

"How" is not relevant: merely that it happens. And the effects have been observed: interference between real and virtual photons in the two-slit experiment, and the Casimir effect.

- "Casimir effect" two steel plates is not nothing.

The two steel plates in a vacuum are pushed together by the pressure of the virtual particles forming around them.

A vacuum is the closest we can get to "nothing". If you wish to argue that there was an ABSOLUTE "nothing" which the Universe popped out of, then you need to prove that. Why should we believe there was "nothing"?



Why should we believe there never was a begin?
The burden of proof that there was *no begin* lies on you. There's absolutely no logic in an infinite presence of the first vacuum. Everything we know of has a begin. Evolution and big bang theories are all about cause and effect. It's all a chain of reactions. It's fine with me if you say that there was no begin, but the burden of proof lies on you.

(and of course you will disagree with that. But again, than we are at least on a tie in which both our versions are equally acceptable)

No, because you're attempting to argue that a God is needed to explain how "something came from nothing". If this did not happen, there is no need for a God to make it happen.

If there is doubt about whether something came from nothing, then there is doubt about the need for a God.

To claim otherwise, you'd have to demonstrate that a particular combination of genes required for human intelligence could not appear by random mutation and natural selection.

I don't think the burden of proof lies at my side in this. You have to prove it if something 'can appear' by random mutation.

We have a complete set of mutation types that will do the job: mutations that enlarge the genome, and mutations that can alter individual genes within it. It's rather like proving that a wall can be built by stacking bricks: we have all the bricks we need and we can demonstrate the stacking. That is sufficient proof that it's possible. The construction of the human genome does not require any bricks that aren't available, or a special method of stacking that we don't have. Therefore, in principle, it is "evolvable", just as a wall is "buildable".

As for your words example:

in this case. Cy is no word, neither is Cyb.
Only if it's "CyberShy" natural selection will accept it as something that can stay.

If evolution worked like that, with several successive changes needed to make something that works: yes, this would be a problem. But that's why the theory insists that all evolutionary changes work in small steps where every step counts. It's why (for instance) eyes need to evolve gradually from more primitive sensors, or wings from limbs that gradually become better for gliding. Evolution works like the letter-selecting model, not the word-selecting one. Nobody has yet come up with an example of something that could NOT have evolved in small steps like that.

[loinburger]

The excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and those in Saurashtra have disclosed the existence of a highly evolved culture long before the Aryan immigration, perhaps dating back to 3000 B.C. or later. Among the remains discovered are a three-faced prototype of Siva seated in a yogic posture, representations of the Linga, and a horned goddess associated with the pipal tree.

http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gk1415/hinduism.htm#intro

IIRC, Judaism is thought to have originated around 2,000 BC, making Hinduism at least a thousand years older.

[Robert]

loinburger,

only around the begin of the people of israel judaism became to be a large-scale religion. Of course we can't find any evidence from one or a few people practicising judaism. (Abraham, Henoch) before that.

The bible teaches us as well that in the very beginning the descendants of Cain already stop obeying God. It might be likely that they started following other gods later.

not much of an argument against judaism I think for these reasons.

Jack, I'll reply to you later

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by CyberShy
loinburger,

only around the begin of the people of israel judaism became to be a large-scale religion. Of course we can't find any evidence from one or a few people practicising judaism. (Abraham, Henoch) before that.

The bible teaches us as well that in the very beginning the descendants of Cain already stop obeying God. It might be likely that they started following other gods later.

not much of an argument against judaism I think for these reasons.

Jack, I'll reply to you later

There must be some Hindus who are born and are never exposed to the Christian God ever and die never having heard of him. Do they go to hell?

[Jack the Bodiless]

The bible teaches us as well that in the very beginning the descendants of Cain already stop obeying God. It might be likely that they started following other gods later.

And the Bible also allows us to date "the very beginning" to 4000 BC or thereabouts (by counting the years in the genealogies). As humanity is a lot older than that (and there is evidence of religious activity before that), it's reasonable to assume that religions which predate the Jewish date for the creation of the Universe are older than Judaism.

[Robert]

There must be some Hindus who are born and are never exposed to the Christian God ever and die never having heard of him. Do they go to hell?

I hope not. I think it read somewhere in the bible that people are judged based on their knowledge.

Jack: I think that judaism as an 'organized' religion is indeed not the oldest one.

[loinburger]

Archeologists/anthropologists have discovered that many tribes of Neanderthals buried their dead, a practice performed almost exclusively for religious purposes. Thus, religous practice apparently extends back to at least 100,000 BC if not further.

[SlowwHand]

"Years" are also relative, given all the KNOWN changes in calendars.
With that, I leave thread again.