Unscientific survey of 'poly religious beliefs

[Whaleboy]

A deterministic universe precludes freewill as well

That would be consciousness.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
That would be consciousness.

You mean a deterministic universe precludes consciousness?

I don't think so. It's just that, ultimately, you don't have a choice of what you do, it's all determined by physical laws.

Of course, that is very bad from a legal point of view, because nobody can be held responsible.

[Whaleboy]

You mean a deterministic universe precludes consciousness?

No. Cogito ergo sum interferes there, but then (ignoring uncertainty principle (perhaps at our peril in this debate but that's another story)) this is a deterministic universe. The key is that of internally consistent logical systems, in which the consciousness is a singularity. Not an emergent/essential property.

[Whaleboy]

In effect, we have free will as a consequence of our consciousness, but subject to the same problems of category as Cartesian doubt.

[Bill3000]

All of which has been refuted by the PSR, and philosophical understanding has, from the pre-Socratics, moved from essentialism to existentialism, in other words moved away from a position friendly to God. *returns to orgy with inflatable Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kamus and Sartre*

*shrug* I don't know much about philosophy, and I wasn't talking about just plain philosophy in particular. I was talking about the eventual effects science will have on beliefs as we learn more of it. Actually, I think I didn't get it out right; what you said (Atheism not being nihilism) is pretty much what I meant. While there might not be a traditional form of god, why can't we consider the laws of nature to have just as much beauty as what we would consider "god"?

Just relativism I think you mean? In which case, you are assuming that contradictory ideas about God are equally valid if I can assume your argument applies to any theological belief, in which case God = 0, which brings us back to my main aforementioned argument. Yes it is relativistic but it is meaningless because it lacks context when God = 0, I might as well talk about the relativity of Snow White to Moby Dick.

I was talking about the fact that since we do not have any proof that god(s) (Bleh, why do ALL people in these arguments ignore the possibility of polytheism ) exist, then the idea of superiority of religions is ultimately futile; there's no more proof that christianity is the Truth than scientology is. Even if there was no god, the religious moral relativity still stands, because none of them would be the Truth and would still be on an equal basis. This argument isn't meant to refute the concept of god or support it, but I mostly meant it because of the constant clashes religions have over which one is right and such.

Actually, what I usually mean by moral relativity comes with the fact that all morals in humanity is relative, and that the morality of one is equal to another despite all differences. The beliefs of an American today is of equal basis to that of a primitive tribe 10,000 years ago in another part of the world, et cetera. It's a matter of how the person innately IS, rather than "they are evil" or something because they do things that you would find morally repulsive.

By the way, I think omniscience is impossible. It is impossible for any observer to know completely all information about, well, anything, much less the universe. Can't both know an object's position and momentum to a complete precision, or both energy and time. Considering the fact that pretty much everything in the universe depends on those concepts, and you pretty much refute the ability for there to be an observer of any kind knowing everything.

[Brent]

There cannot be stars or light without relatively empty space or darkness. Good does not exist if it has no opposite.

God creates beings that have the potential to do whatever they choose, good or evil. Maybe I could say that God delegates evil to the devil.

It is true that all human languages are imperfect. One word can have more than one definition. "Cleave" is its own opposite, as is "Sprinkle" as far as the Bible goes.

Logic is still logic if it is only one opinion of logic. Logic is a way of thinking, and not always correct.

Human understanding depends on human language.

Mortals cannot know anything for certain on their own. Mortals do not understand logic or the scientific method as well as God does.

True scripture never said Earth was the center of the universe. It does say that humanity is. The human form is the most perfect possible. There are humans elsewhere.

God is more importantly good, perfect, and omniscient than omnipotent.

As present science progresses, it will eventually find ultimate religious truth.

If God controlled people, He would be a tyrant.

Some things have always existed without having been created. Evil has always existed. Every being has always existed. The creation was organization of materials that always existed. The Biblical Creation is no more out of nothing than anything created by mortals. God can create things that can do evil, but He Himself cannot do evil.

God is not selfcontradictory, no matter what any council has said.

If you knew everything, you would have no choice of what you do.

God is a Being as well as a concept, but more a Being than a concept.

Zero is not the same thing as a null set. Zero exists on a line and is quantifiable.

There is only one God for us to worship. God is perfect. If there is more than one God they are all one in purpose.

God proves the Truth to individuals.

It is impossible for all religions to be equally right. They contradict each other.

Mankind tends to deevolve socially, not to evolve socially. Improvements come by divine intervention.

No mortal is completely evil, but eventually in the afterlife, every being is either completely good or completely evil.

Omniscience is impossible as far as it is constrained by time. God is eternal and beyond time.

"Universe" is not a perfect word. Our universe is not really everything. There are other universes. This concept is even sanctioned by some scientists. God is not part of our universe. He created it. It is a universe within a universe.

[Bill3000]

Once again, I think my damned IQ went down again.

Originally posted by Brent
There cannot be stars or light without relatively empty space or darkness. Good does not exist if it has no opposite.

Um. Darkness really can't be considered the "opposite" of light. Considering the fact that light is just the oscillation of the electromagnetic field, it doesn't need an opposite. There can be light without relatively empty space or darkness; for example, near the beginning of our universe, the universe was mostly radiation rather than matter, which for the layman could be considered "light".

God creates beings that have the potential to do whatever they choose, good or evil. Maybe I could say that God delegates evil to the devil.

Or it could be that there is more to the concept of god then meets the eye, and that the religious concepts of good and evil arn't fluid enough. There's more than just good and evil in sentience; there's order and chaos, life and death, intellect and mischief; all play an important part in humanity.

It is true that all human languages are imperfect. One word can have more than one definition. "Cleave" is its own opposite, as is "Sprinkle" as far as the Bible goes.

Human understanding depends on human language.

Language changes in a way that mimics evolution. Then again, life isn't perfect either. And I don't really see how this gives any point to the mater.

Logic is still logic if it is only one opinion of logic. Logic is a way of thinking, and not always correct.

Yes, but there's also fallacy logic. And that is what brings us a lot of problems.

Mortals cannot know anything for certain on their own. Mortals do not understand logic or the scientific method as well as God does.

A perfect god would not need logic or the scientific method because he knows everything.

True scripture never said Earth was the center of the universe. It does say that humanity is. The human form is the most perfect possible. There are humans elsewhere.

Sorry bud, but the odds that beings that are completely like humans in the rest of the universe is pretty much nil.

God is more importantly good, perfect, and omniscient than omnipotent.

The concept of good is subjective. (moral relativity) As an example, see homosexuality. I refuted the concept of omniscience (And he'd still be under the Uncertaincy Principle even if he was outside the universe), and omnipotence, well... Isn't the universe itself enough for omnipotence?

As present science progresses, it will eventually find ultimate religious truth.

While I agree with your premise here, the odds are that the ultimate religious truth is not the same as religions would expect, although it would be enlightening.

Some things have always existed without having been created. Evil has always existed. Every being has always existed. The creation was organization of materials that always existed. The Biblical Creation is no more out of nothing than anything created by mortals. God can create things that can do evil, but He Himself cannot do evil.

God is not selfcontradictory, no matter what any council has said.

If he can't do any evil, just look at the damn bible. He has a friggin' multiple-personality disorder and does plenty of things that are contradictory. (Let's exclude the fact that the Jewish god was originally a polytheistic war god that the Hebrews stole from the local Canaanite religions...)
The cop out "We can't possibly understand him" isn't a good one either.

[If you knew everything, you would have no choice of what you do.

If you knew everything, you WOULD be God - with knowledge comes power, and ultimate knowledge means ultimate power.

Zero is not the same thing as a null set. Zero exists on a line and is quantifiable.

Qualitively, the concept of zero is just an average of fluctuations. That is not the same as a null set, but a null set doesn't really exist either, nor can we tell if it doesn't exist.

There is only one God for us to worship. God is perfect. If there is more than one God they are all one in purpose.

More than one god can show imperfections, and that's fine in a religion, despite what monotheistic religions say. At least they admit flaws. It is better for a religion to show how a god "is" rather than saying that the god is perfect and trying to hide the contradictions in the dogma.

It is impossible for all religions to be equally right. They contradict each other.

They could all have some part of the truth of the ultimate truth. But that wasn't my point; the point was that in actuality, all religions are equally right because it is impossible to know that they arn't.

Mankind tends to deevolve socially, not to evolve socially. Improvements come by divine intervention.

Oh yes, the civil rights movement of the 60's was started by divine intervention.

No mortal is completely evil, but eventually in the afterlife, every being is either completely good or completely evil.

Or it could be as I said - there is more than just simple good and evil. Whether it is better for a person to strive towards one particular "quintessence" or stay balanced is a matter of personal choice. The entire matter is of hypocrisy; if you are evil, at least don't be a hypocrite of it and care for people. IMO the corruption of ideology, especially hypocrisy, is incredibly dangerous.

"Universe" is not a perfect word. Our universe is not really everything. There are other universes. This concept is even sanctioned by some scientists. God is not part of our universe. He created it. It is a universe within a universe.

Yes, the multiverse, but I fail to see how this helps your point of view. This is part of the science that will eventually be developed, but the concept of saying that god lies in there is just another "God in the gaps" argument, and is just a fallacy.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That just says omnipotence is a self-contradictory term. Which is funny, because once the Church defined WHYH in a whole bunch of similar, self-contradictory terms, theists had been having an extremely hard time extracting themselves. So much so that, most discussions on the nature of YHWH eventually end when the theist side fall back on incomprehensibility, e.g. "God is beyond logic" or "God is beyond your imagination."

IOW, they beat a hasty retreat after suffering severe beatings.

I just received a similar response when I suggested that the concept of their omnipotent god was paradoxical. Shows that when they can't give a sensible argument back, they resort to their faith...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Brent

Human understanding depends on human language.

Mortals cannot know anything for certain on their own. Mortals do not understand logic or the scientific method as well as God does.

You should go into the greeting cards business- you might have a future in writing hippy dippy meaningless New Age drivel.

[Whaleboy]

why can't we consider the laws of nature to have just as much beauty as what we would consider "god"?

Well I'd certainly agree that the scientific laws are beautiful, mathematical and logical principles too. Can we regard this as a God? I don't think so. Is this beauty evidence of God or intelligent design? No.

I was talking about the fact that since we do not have any proof that god(s) (Bleh, why do ALL people in these arguments ignore the possibility of polytheism ) exist, then the idea of superiority of religions is ultimately futile; there's no more proof that christianity is the Truth than scientology is. Even if there was no god, the religious moral relativity still stands, because none of them would be the Truth and would still be on an equal basis. This argument isn't meant to refute the concept of god or support it, but I mostly meant it because of the constant clashes religions have over which one is right and such.

Yeh that's very true. One must be careful here since, to borrow from what I said last time, God = 0, then all religions are equally valid, but perhaps more usefully, are equally invalid.

It's a matter of how the person innately IS, rather than "they are evil" or something because they do things that you would find morally repulsive.

By the way, I think omniscience is impossible. It is impossible for any observer to know completely all information about, well, anything, much less the universe. Can't both know an object's position and momentum to a complete precision, or both energy and time. Considering the fact that pretty much everything in the universe depends on those concepts, and you pretty much refute the ability for there to be an observer of any kind knowing everything.

Indeed. Uncertainty principle makes it impossible for anyone subject to our four-dimensional logic (i.e., of this universe) to know the location and velocity of every particle in the universe. There is a complex argument for this being achieved by a 5-dimensional being, but that would not be of this universe and thus communications one or both ways would be impossible (in any sense) so we'd have no ability to infer its existence, again God = 0.

There cannot be stars or light without relatively empty space or darkness. Good does not exist if it has no opposite.

But brightness is a measure of the beholder, and not an absolute property in the sense that you mean it. In your own example, you have apparent luminosity and absolute luminosity, the latter is a constant irrespective of the surrounding sky, the former is just how it appears to us which is inherently illusory. Good and evil duality is just an antiquated, geocentric way of looking at things that should have died with Aristotle.

Brent: Try restructuring your opinion. Like I said before you're just stating tautologies with no relationship to each other, there's no argument structure that we can deal with, as a result you're just telling us your assumptions and not doing anything with them which leads back to circular logic whenever you do apply yourself. State your assumptions, and then weave them together into a conclusion, like this:

Premise A
+
Premise B
=
conclusion

We can then discuss either the quality of your logic (the "=" part) or the quality of your premises if we disagree with you.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski
Ok kinda like the folks from the church of england.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


An omnipotent god precludes freewill. A deterministic universe precludes freewill as well.

I knew you were going to write that. You're so predicatable. Just as god intended.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by child of Thor

You read the Mabinogion Mobius? all good welsh should, while not a religious text it does paint a very weird picture to our not to distant past

Indeed. And if the Bible is a true account of what happened 2,000 years ago then why not the myths of the Mabinogion...

Interestingly I was up by Black Mountain in the Brecon Beacons the other day (Mynydd Amanw in the Mabinogion), near to the source of Afon Twrch (Boar River) - who is to say that I wasn't walking in the hoof prints of Twrch Trwyth as he made his passage across Wales with his piglets...

Stunning area BTW.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear

I know why he let you keep it, evidently you don't.

Who's the child now - go believe in god or something...

[Odin]

This Brent guy is like a religious version of Fez.