First Cause cannot prove god.

[GunnerJ]

It's posted by many theists on the board, most obsetnsibly CyberShy, the God exists because there must be a first cause for, well, you know... everything.

Athiests can play merry-go-round about possible definitions and infinate regression, but why? I propose that the First Cause argument, even if true, that the Universe had to have a first cause, does not prove the existence of god.

Oh, sure, we could quibble about definitions. Looking at things from kind of very "limited god" deism, if we define "god" as the First Cause, and nothing more, then we prove the first cause, we've proved god. But I can define "god" as my left shoe, then I can show you my left shoe, and thereby prove god. So it's important that we talk about a specific kind of God. Is it Yhwh? Trinity? Jesus? Allah? The Bramha? The IPU?

This is the crux of my argument: if you include "First Cauase" as one of the properties of "God," then you have not proved that "God," because "First Cause" is a property that can be atributed to many different god concepts. It makes no sense to say that since the universe has a first cause, we must recognize your god as a first cause. It makes even less sense to say that Xian dogma is thereby validated. We don't even have to call the first cause god; it could be some natural function which we have no knowledge of.

So, in essence, the First Cause argument cannot prove any meaningful, specific concept of god. Much less the Judeo-Christian god. At best all it can prove is... a First Cause. Theists, can you stop throwing this old chesnut into the mix to prove your various interpretations of "God?"

[theophilus]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<STRONG>It's posted by many theists on the board, most obsetnsibly CyberShy, the God exists because there must be a first cause for, well, you know... everything.

Athiests can play merry-go-round about possible definitions and infinate regression, but why? I propose that the First Cause argument, even if true, that the Universe had to have a first cause, does not prove the existence of god.

Oh, sure, we could quibble about definitions. Looking at things from kind of very "limited god" deism, if we define "god" as the First Cause, and nothing more, then we prove the first cause, we've proved god. But I can define "god" as my left shoe, then I can show you my left shoe, and thereby prove god. So it's important that we talk about a specific kind of God. Is it Yhwh? Trinity? Jesus? Allah? The Bramha? The IPU?

This is the crux of my argument: if you include "First Cauase" as one of the properties of "God," then you have not proved that "God," because "First Cause" is a property that can be atributed to many different god concepts. It makes no sense to say that since the universe has a first cause, we must recognize your god as a first cause. It makes even less sense to say that Xian dogma is thereby validated. We don't even have to call the first cause god; it could be some natural function which we have no knowledge of.

So, in essence, the First Cause argument cannot prove any meaningful, specific concept of god. Much less the Judeo-Christian god. At best all it can prove is... a First Cause. Theists, can you stop throwing this old chesnut into the mix to prove your various interpretations of "God?"</STRONG>

I agree that Christians are misdirected when they make this argument - that's why I don't make it.
1. It does not prove the God of the Bible - the only one we're concerned with.
2. It legitimizes disbelief unless God can be "proven" to the satisfaction of men who are declared to be sinful and rebellious.
3. It assumes (against scripture) that unbelief is an intellectual problem rather than an ethical condition.

I'm sure this isn't what you were aiming at, but I like to agree whenever I can, even if for different reasons.

[Amos]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<STRONG>It's posted by many theists on the board, most obsetnsibly CyberShy, the God exists because there must be a first cause for, well, you know... everything.

Athiests can play merry-go-round about possible definitions and infinate regression, but why? I propose that the First Cause argument, even if true, that the Universe had to have a first cause, does not prove the existence of god.

Oh, sure, we could quibble about definitions. Looking at things from kind of very "limited god" deism, if we define "god" as the First Cause, and nothing more, then we prove the first cause, we've proved god. But I can define "god" as my left shoe, then I can show you my left shoe, and thereby prove god. So it's important that we talk about a specific kind of God. Is it Yhwh? Trinity? Jesus? Allah? The Bramha? The IPU?

This is the crux of my argument: if you include "First Cauase" as one of the properties of "God," then you have not proved that "God," because "First Cause" is a property that can be atributed to many different god concepts. It makes no sense to say that since the universe has a first cause, we must recognize your god as a first cause. It makes even less sense to say that Xian dogma is thereby validated. We don't even have to call the first cause god; it could be some natural function which we have no knowledge of.

So, in essence, the First Cause argument cannot prove any meaningful, specific concept of god. Much less the Judeo-Christian god. At best all it can prove is... a First Cause. Theists, can you stop throwing this old chesnut into the mix to prove your various interpretations of "God?"</STRONG>

First cause is love, second cause is life. Love is the essence of life and therefore exhausted by the second cause and the second cause is contingent upon the first cause.

Gen.1 is the essence of creation by God and Gen.2 is where this created essence takes form in Lord God.

Bible says God is love and Lord God is life and Lord God is needed to make God known. Gen.3 is the third cause by "like god" and is needed to make Lord God of Gen.2 known.

Amos

[GunnerJ]

Theophilus: Yes. VERY different reasons. My objection comes fromm logic. Yours comes from the contradiction of First Cause arguments and Xian dogma.

Amos: Very, er, interesting. I'll try to respond when I pin down just what it is you mean.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<STRONG>It's posted by many theists on the board, most obsetnsibly CyberShy, the God exists because there must be a first cause for, well, you know... everything.

Athiests can play merry-go-round about possible definitions and infinate regression, but why? I propose that the First Cause argument, even if true, that the Universe had to have a first cause, does not prove the existence of god.

Oh, sure, we could quibble about definitions. Looking at things from kind of very "limited god" deism, if we define "god" as the First Cause, and nothing more, then we prove the first cause, we've proved god. But I can define "god" as my left shoe, then I can show you my left shoe, and thereby prove god. So it's important that we talk about a specific kind of God. Is it Yhwh? Trinity? Jesus? Allah? The Bramha? The IPU?

This is the crux of my argument: if you include "First Cauase" as one of the properties of "God," then you have not proved that "God," because "First Cause" is a property that can be atributed to many different god concepts. It makes no sense to say that since the universe has a first cause, we must recognize your god as a first cause. It makes even less sense to say that Xian dogma is thereby validated. We don't even have to call the first cause god; it could be some natural function which we have no knowledge of.

So, in essence, the First Cause argument cannot prove any meaningful, specific concept of god. Much less the Judeo-Christian god. At best all it can prove is... a First Cause. Theists, can you stop throwing this old chesnut into the mix to prove your various interpretations of "God?"</STRONG>

Hello Rim. Actually the law of causality in conjunction with its corollary the law of sufficient cause does strongly point to the Christian God. First, the universe contains personal beings, since throughout all of human experience only persons can produce the personal then it is logical to assume that the cause of the universe has a personal aspect to it. In addition, the cause of the universe must be "outside" it, in other words transcendent to it. This fits the Christian God. Also, the primary characteristic of the universe is that it is a diversity within a unity. According to the law of sufficient cause it is rational to assume that the cause of the universe has a similar characteristic. And only the Triune Christian God has that characteristic.

[Datheron]

Ed,

<STRONG>

Hello Rim. Actually the law of causality in conjunction with its corollary the law of sufficient cause does strongly point to the Christian God. First, the universe contains personal beings, since throughout all of human experience only persons can produce the personal then it is logical to assume that the cause of the universe has a personal aspect to it. In addition, the cause of the universe must be "outside" it, in other words transcendent to it. This fits the Christian God. Also, the primary characteristic of the universe is that it is a diversity within a unity. According to the law of sufficient cause it is rational to assume that the cause of the universe has a similar characteristic. And only the Triune Christian God has that characteristic.</STRONG>

Didn't we already go over this before, Ed? Me, in complete detail? The first (personal blah blah) is a tautology; the second (outside blah) is a non-sequitur assumption; the third (diversity unity blah) is just pure crap.

[critical thinking made ez]

Originally posted by Ed:

First, the universe contains personal beings, since throughout all of human experience only persons can produce the personal then it is logical to assume that the cause of the universe has a personal aspect to it.

No, according to your statement here, it would be more logical to assume a human person created a person.

In addition, the cause of the universe must be "outside" it, in other words transcendent to it.


It must? "Outside" now there is a concept and location we will never find.


Also, the primary characteristic of the universe is that it is a diversity within a unity.
That is a useless try at grouping. It has no benefit nor any common characteristic therefore, it is not a meaningful group or unity.


According to the law of sufficient cause it is rational to assume that the cause of the universe has a similar characteristic.

Which would be something similar to the universe, not a god which is not similar to a universe. A God is a God. A universe is a universe.


And only the Triune Christian God has that characteristic.

Many define God as love, I have never heard of anyone defining the universe as love. So much for the Triune Christian God having similar characteristics with rocks and gas. Unless God suffers from gas and has gall stones. Then I couldn't argue the point.

[ November 27, 2001: Message edited by: critical thinking made ez ]

[CyberShy]

Rimstalker is right:
the first cause argument doesn't prove the existance of god, and it does for sure not prove the existance of the biblical god. period.

I think I've never claimed something like that.
If I did, I regret (quote me if you want to hear more 'sorry' from me, if you can't quote me, apologize)

2nd,
I've never claimed god IS the first cause.
My claim is that our first cause can't be caused by something that's a part of the universe (as we know it)

Since the first cause did happen it must have been caused. In that case it must be either self-causing or caused by something that's not a part of this universe.

Since it's impossible to be self-causing (if it is: explain) there must be something 'outside' our universe that caused our universe, or at least our 'first cause'.

Whatever that outside-our-universe thingy is..... I can't prove it. I believe it's God.
The most important thing about this is that everyone must admit that there is SOMETHING that started it all. Right now most people believe that everything we can observe has been self-caused.

If atheists admit this, they can't be atheists anymore sine atheism means being sure about the non-existance of God. Well, since atheists can't be sure that this 'something' is not god, they can only be weak atheists or agnosts.

CS

[ November 28, 2001: Message edited by: CyberShy ]

[Tercel]

"There is an interdepency between the cosmological argument (the argument to a first cause) and the design argument (the argument to a cosmic designer/creator). The two arguments are much stronger in tandem than they are when taken individually. We will look at this in more detail when we consider the design argument, but I want to foreshadow that discussion before launching into the cosmological argument.

If the cosmological argument is successful, it provides the means for answering certain important objections to the design argument. For example, a common and serious objection to the design argument is the threat of an infinite regress. The world is highly organized, so we infer a designer. But, every intelligent designer we know (i.e., human beings) are themselves highly organized systems. So, it seems that we need to infer a designer of the designer, and so on to infinity. Apparently, we haven't gained anything, so we should stop at the first step, and assume that the cosmos has no designer.

The cosmological argument, if successful, provides a powerful reply to this objection. The cosmological argument tells us that there is an uncaused first cause of the world. If the world bears the signs of intelligence, it is reasonable to attribute intelligence to the first cause. There is no threat of infinite regress, because we know that the first cause is uncaused. It provides the natural stopping point.

Secondly, the results of the cosmological and design arguments are complementary. As we shall see, the cosmological argument gives us good reason to infer that the first cause has such characteristics as eternity, infinity, unity and necessity. It gives us much weaker reasons, if any, for thinking that the first cause is personal, intelligent or purposeful. In contrast, the design argument gives us good reason to attribute intelligence and purpose to the creator, but it gives us little reason for assuming that the creator is eternal or infinite. Each argument tends to make up the deficiencies of the other." -Robert Koons

[Amos]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<STRONG>Theophilus: Yes. VERY different reasons. My objection comes fromm logic. Yours comes from the contradiction of First Cause arguments and Xian dogma.

Amos: Very, er, interesting. I'll try to respond when I pin down just what it is you mean.</STRONG>

Just read without preconceived ideas and it will make sense.

[i_am_the_head]

Originally posted by CyberShy:
Since the first cause did happen it must have been caused.

You have some evidence, or a citation, for the proof that there was a first cause? What reason is there to think the universe is anything but all that exists, and that existence (in whatever form) is a constant.

The most important thing about this is that everyone must admit that there is SOMETHING that started it all. Right now most people believe that everything we can observe has been self-caused.

No, one doesn't need to admit that there is SOMETHING that started it all. There is no reason, that I can think of anyway, that the universe can't just BE.

[i_am_the_head]

Originally posted by Amos:
Just read without preconceived ideas and it will make sense.

Um, how can love be the first cause when it's a biochemical function of the human brain, thus requiring life (your supposed second cause)?

[Jamie_L]

AKA I'm_with_I_am_the_head :p

I agree - if God can "just be", why can't the universe "just be"?

Why does the existence of personal beings or intelligence in the universe necessitate a personal being or intelligence involved in the creation of the universe? There are amoebas in the universe. Should we therefore infer that an amoeba was involved in the creation of the universe?

It's arrogant to assume that we have some special place in the universe just because we're capable of that assumption.

Jamie

[CyberShy]

CyberShy: Since the first cause did happen it must have been caused.

You have some evidence, or a citation, for the proof that there was a first cause?

well, we can observe cause X (ie. my reaction to your reaction)
If my reaction is X, then yours is X-1
Then mines is X-2 and the original topic is X-3

At a certain moment we'll get cause X-(X-1) and that'll be the first cause. Unless you believe that X is infinite there has happened a first cause, and THIS is the evidence I have for it.

If you believe in an infinite number of causes..... I think you're the one that should explain why.

What reason is there to think the universe is anything but all that exists, and that existence (in whatever form) is a constant

can you explain your question ?

There is no reason, that I can think of anyway, that the universe can't just BE.

Everything we observe is not just there. (ie. everything can't just BE)
Thus it seems that the proof of evidence is on your side.

I agree - if God can "just be", why can't the universe "just be"?

because as far as we know everything in our dimension has a cause. Since the universe is a part of our dimension it needs a cause, unless you can proof that it doesn't need any.

The proof of evidence is on your side.
Explain how everything just can be. It's a nice religion, I have to admit. Does it come with any morals ?

CyberShy

[GunnerJ]

Ed-

Actually the law of causality in conjunction with its corollary the law of sufficient cause does strongly point to the Christian God.

This should be interesting...

First, the universe contains personal beings, since throughout all of human experience only persons can produce the personal then it is logical to assume that the cause of the universe has a personal aspect to it.

No, I don't think it is at all. What is "personal?" How is it defined?

In addition, the cause of the universe must be "outside" it, in other words transcendent to it. This fits the Christian God.

And a great many others. I think a Muslim would have to atribute both personal and trancendant to Allah.

Also, the primary characteristic of the universe is that it is a diversity within a unity.

And just what, exavlty, does that mean? This seems like more obfuscationism at work. I'd have to say that the primary aspect of the Universe is that it's composed of 99% vacuum. An the 1% (probably less) that isn't empty spcae is 99% helium and hydrogen in a plasma.

According to the law of sufficient cause it is rational to assume that the cause of the universe has a similar characteristic. And only the Triune Christian God has that characteristic.


Trinity is a "diversity within a unity?" When you tell me what that is, I'll answer it. If you're going to argue that God's nature is reflected in his creation, you'd have to assume that God is mostly empty spcae, with a tiny amout of plasmatic H and He, and an even smaller amount of more complex elements.

Further, You haven't proven, from first cause alone, that god is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or omnibenevolent. You've only specially defined god as "personal," "trancendant," and a "diversity within a unity." Again, this is a problem of special definitions.

CyberShy-

I think I've never claimed something like that.
If I did, I regret (quote me if you want to hear more 'sorry' from me, if you can't quote me, apologize)


Well, just look back on our whole "God made a false prophesy" thread. You claim that one reason for believing in God is first cause... as a Xian, I can only assume you meant the Xian god, otherwise, what's the point? For now, you've only clarified your originally obscure meaning. I see no need to apologize for your inablilty to explain your thoughts better.

Right now most people believe that everything we can observe has been self-caused.


Pretty big claim... what proof do you have?

Tercel-

Sorry to tell you (or Robert Koons) this, but "intellegence" or "organization" in the universe does not infer an intellegent First Cause of the universe, any more than hydrogen in the universe infers a cause made of hydrogen. Thus, Koon's cosmological argument, that there is a "natural stopping point" for the universe, fails because we have no way of knowing what this stopping point is. An uncaused universe is still makes as much sense as an uncaused First Cause. Perahps more, since we have do direct evidence for a First Cause of any kind.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Of course, the universe can also be infinite, meaning that it did not have a first, second or quadrillionth anything. According to some quantum theorists, the universe is simultaneous as well as existing in a state of infinite possibility until observed, which would mean that we--the observers--are what actually "cause" the universe. Literally.

The fact that we don't know, however, does not mean that we should just arbitrarily define the unknown as "known," (aka, "God" or even "Supernatural First Causer," to coin a phrase).

Personifying the unknown serves only one purpose. Now, which cult member in here already knows what that purpose would be? :D

[i_am_the_head]

Originally posted by CyberShy:
At a certain moment we'll get cause X-(X-1) and that'll be the first cause. Unless you believe that X is infinite there has happened a first cause, and THIS is the evidence I have for it.

I don't necessarily believe one way or the other - I'm a weak atheist. My contention is that you assert there must be a first cause, when I don't think any such thing can be asserted with any certainty.

If you believe in an infinite number of causes..... I think you're the one that should explain why.

Why? If the world to me seems to be a result of cause and effect, why is it "simpler" to assume a first cause? I've never seen a first cause - I have seen a chain of causality. Why should I assume the existence of a first cause (which hasn't been encountered) and reject the chain of causality (which has been encountered)?

can you explain your question ?

To paraphrase, if the universe is "everything that exists" then what reason is there to assume that existence isn't a constant - why assume that the universe had to begin to exist?


Since the universe is a part of our dimension it needs a cause, unless you can proof that it doesn't need any.

The universe is a part of our dimension? I think you have that backwards. Our visible dimensions, and time, are a part of the universe. Hence, it would seem that causality is a result of the universe - not the universe as a result of causality.

It's a nice religion, I have to admit. Does it come with any morals ?

I won't bother addressing materialism as a religion, or atheism for that matter. Completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, although I'm not surprised when a theist goes for misdirection and obfuscation. Ditto for the morality issue.

[Dianna]

Robert Koons via Tercel: The cosmological argument, if successful, provides a powerful reply to this objection. The cosmological argument tells us that there is an uncaused first cause of the world. If the world bears the signs of intelligence, it is reasonable to attribute intelligence to the first cause.

Does this mean that if the world bears signs of evil, it is reasonable to attribute evil to the first cause as well?

[Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas]

Rimstalker,
Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<STRONG>It's posted by many theists on the board, most obsetnsibly CyberShy, the God exists because there must be a first cause for, well, you know... everything.

Athiests can play merry-go-round about possible definitions and infinate regression, but why? I propose that the First Cause argument, even if true, that the Universe had to have a first cause, does not prove the existence of god.

Oh, sure, we could quibble about definitions. Looking at things from kind of very "limited god" deism, if we define "god" as the First Cause, and nothing more, then we prove the first cause, we've proved god. But I can define "god" as my left shoe, then I can show you my left shoe, and thereby prove god. So it's important that we talk about a specific kind of God. Is it Yhwh? Trinity? Jesus? Allah? The Bramha? The IPU?

This is the crux of my argument: if you include "First Cauase" as one of the properties of "God," then you have not proved that "God," because "First Cause" is a property that can be atributed to many different god concepts. It makes no sense to say that since the universe has a first cause, we must recognize your god as a first cause. It makes even less sense to say that Xian dogma is thereby validated. We don't even have to call the first cause god; it could be some natural function which we have no knowledge of.

So, in essence, the First Cause argument cannot prove any meaningful, specific concept of god. Much less the Judeo-Christian god. At best all it can prove is... a First Cause. Theists, can you stop throwing this old chesnut into the mix to prove your various interpretations of "God?"</STRONG>

As a theist...I don't think that first cause 'proves' the existence of God. However, I do think that it gives HUGE support for a omnipotent, omniscient sentience that exists outside our time-space...a sentience one could easily describe as having God-like qualities.

Is it pure coincidence that the Judeo-Christian concept of God outlines a sentience of omnipotence and omniscience existing outside of our time-space and who created our space time?

Probably not.

That's why I think the first cause argument gives much credence to the Judeo-Christian concept of God.


Most noteably the first cause argument places an atheist in a dubious 'head buried in sand' position:

Atheist:We cannot absolutely know that God was the first cause because this was outside our reference of time-space.
Theist: Sure...but there's a whole bunch of indication that it was God.
Atheist:Granted...but we cannot absolutely know that God was the first cause because this was our reference of time-space.
Theist: Whatever.


In short, God is a very probable explanation for the known fact of the first cause.


Why not believe the probable?


Thoughts and comments.


-SOMMS

[Vibr8gKiwi]

Originally posted by Ed:
<STRONG>

First, the universe contains personal beings, since throughout all of human experience only persons can produce the personal then it is logical to assume that the cause of the universe has a personal aspect to it. </STRONG>

There's a great example of one particular type of theist broken-thinking that I see so often. Ed tries to apply relationships between members of a set to the set itself. Humans create other humans, have parent-child relationships, are personal and such. However the set of humans--mankind--is not anything like a human and can't logically be assumed to have the same properties and relationships applied to it as apply to its members.

A pez dispenser is fun, it has a head you can pull back and get some candy. However I claim those properties makes no sense when applied to set of all pez dispensers--such set is not fun, has no head, nor any candy (except again for each individual dispenser). That so many theists can't seem to understand the distinction between a set and its members is interesting.

[Vibr8gKiwi]

Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:

In short, God is a very probable explanation for the known fact of the first cause.

Why not believe the probable?

-SOMMS[/QB]

Huh? Are you even reading the thread? First off, I don't believe a first cause is a "known fact." Secondly even if we assume for argument that it is, why is it more probable that some all powerful human-like sky-being was the cause rather than any of an infinite number of other possibilities either natural or super-natural? Why is sky-daddy more probable than quantum vacuum fluctuation (or whatever), some other non-sentient cause, or even a supernatural cause unlike our ideas of god? I look around and see so many naturally occurring cause-effects and none of them are caused with purpose by sentient beings except for a tiny tiny tiny minority done by humans. It's about to rain, maybe the god of thunder is getting restless.

How can you look at one possibility out of an infinity of possibilities (known and unknown) and sit there and claim it's the "probable" one????

[GunnerJ]

SOMMS-

As a theist...I don't think that first cause 'proves' the existence of God. However, I do think that it gives HUGE support for a omnipotent, omniscient sentience that exists outside our time-space...a sentience one could easily describe as having God-like qualities.



No, actually, it does not. It only speaks of a first cause knowledgable enough to know how to make a universe, and powerful enough to be able to do it. The second half of your statement betrays that you have not at all graped the problem of special definitions I outlined.

Is it pure coincidence that the Judeo-Christian concept of God outlines a sentience of omnipotence and omniscience existing outside of our time-space and who created our space time?... Probably not.

"Is it pure coincidence that the Islamic concept of God outlines a sentience of omnipotence and omniscience existing outside of our time-space and who created our space time?"

"Is it pure coincidence that the Bobbist concept of God outlines a Bob of omnipotence and omniscience existing outside of our time-space and who created our space time?"

"Is it pure coincidence that the Hindu concept of God outlines many sentiences of omnipotence and omniscience existing outside of our time-space and who created our space time?"

Furthermore, there is no need to explain a "coincidence" when we have no two incidents that coincide. First Cause does not suggest any properties of god besides the ability to be the first cause. Therefore, the whole argument is spurious. And even if it did, it probably would not be a "pure coincidence." More than likely, Xian dogmatists invented their concept of God fit their theological constructs.

That's why I think the first cause argument gives much credence to the Judeo-Christian concept of God.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: religious thought is a house of cards built on a foundation of sand.

Most noteably the first cause argument places an atheist in a dubious 'head buried in sand' position: &lt;Snip inaccurate straw man&gt;

Sure it does, as long as we're talking about the fictional athiests you invent with absurd arguments to easily knock down, in a bizzare universe where logic is completely unheard of.

In short, God is a very probable explanation for the known fact of the first cause.

This assertion is pretty much all you have. And that's really sad.

Why not believe the probable?

No reason, just show that it's probable that, one, a first cause is nessisary, and second, that this somehow proves your god concept, and third, recognize the actual topic of this thread and save you arguments for a first cause for somewhere else.

[Amos]

Originally posted by i_am_the_head:
<STRONG>

Um, how can love be the first cause when it's a biochemical function of the human brain, thus requiring life (your supposed second cause)?</STRONG>

Who said something about human life? Was that not a preconceived notion I warned you about?

Amos

Edited to add that whatever can be measured in the human brain is not love but an extraction of it because God is not part of the hu-man brain.

[ November 28, 2001: Message edited by: Amos ]

[Datheron]

Cybershy,

<strong>because as far as we know everything in our dimension has a cause. Since the universe is a part of our dimension it needs a cause, unless you can proof that it doesn't need any.

The proof of evidence is on your side.
Explain how everything just can be. It's a nice religion, I have to admit. Does it come with any morals ?

CyberShy</strong>

Define what you mean by "our dimension". The space-time continuum is truly just "our" four-dimensional existence, but there's nothing that restricts our Universe to just four dimensions; the basic theories of superstring propose 10 or 26 dimensions, if not more. My point is that you're using a combination of two ad ignorantiums (assuming that something out of our dimension is non-contingent and that our Universe has to be) to work your argument, and it just isn't working.

[Howay the Toon]

Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:
<strong>Rimstalker,


As a theist...I don't think that first cause 'proves' the existence of God. However, I do think that it gives HUGE support for a omnipotent, omniscient sentience that exists outside our time-space...a sentience one could easily describe as having God-like qualities.

Is it pure coincidence that the Judeo-Christian concept of God outlines a sentience of omnipotence and omniscience existing outside of our time-space and who created our space time?

Probably not.

That's why I think the first cause argument gives much credence to the Judeo-Christian concept of God.


Most noteably the first cause argument places an atheist in a dubious 'head buried in sand' position:

Atheist:We cannot absolutely know that God was the first cause because this was outside our reference of time-space.
Theist: Sure...but there's a whole bunch of indication that it was God.
Atheist:Granted...but we cannot absolutely know that God was the first cause because this was our reference of time-space.
Theist: Whatever.


In short, God is a very probable explanation for the known fact of the first cause.


Why not believe the probable?


Thoughts and comments.


-SOMMS</strong>


An Atheist version of the above exchange:

Theist: Everything has a cause so the universe must have had a cause and that must be God.
Atheist: Ok what caused God.
Theist: Don't be silly he's eternal and uncaused.
Atheist: Er.... But you just said that everything..... oh never mind.

"Theist: Sure...but there's a whole bunch of indication that it was God.
Atheist:Granted...but we cannot absolutely know that God was the first cause because this was our reference of time-space."

Eh.... when have you ever heard an atheist accept that there are "a whole bunch of indication[s] that it was God."

[i_am_the_head]

Originally posted by Amos:
Who said something about human life? Was that not a preconceived notion I warned you about?

Oh, lordy, are you a Scientologist or something?

Edited to add that whatever can be measured in the human brain is not love but an extraction of it because God is not part of the hu-man brain.

Allow me to give you a complete frontal lobotomy and then, since love isn't of the brain (in your opinion), attempt to express love to someone. Good luck, soldier.

[Amos]

Originally posted by i_am_the_head:
<strong>

Allow me to give you a complete frontal lobotomy and then, since love isn't of the brain (in your opinion), attempt to express love to someone. Good luck, soldier.</strong>

God is not part of the frontal lobe and therefore not part of the love you have in mind.

You fail to realize that our humanity is not part of God.

[Howay the Toon]

Originally posted by Amos:
<strong>

God is not part of the frontal lobe and therefore not part of the love you have in mind.

You fail to realize that our humanity is not part of God.</strong>

Has anyone here ever understood a single sentence uttered by this wacko?

All the words make sense but the sentences appear to be gibberish.

[i_am_the_head]

Originally posted by Amos:
God is not part of the frontal lobe and therefore not part of the love you have in mind.

You fail to realize that our humanity is not part of God.

So you ARE a Scientologist? Just asking since you didn't reply to that part of my post. If you are, please let me know so I can write you off - ok?

[Amos]

Originally posted by i_am_the_head:
<strong>

So you ARE a Scientologist? Just asking since you didn't reply to that part of my post. If you are, please let me know so I can write you off - ok?</strong>

Could you give me your definition of a Scientologist?

On second thought, just write me off since you do not see why the frontal lobe is different.

[daemon]

Originally posted by i_am_the_head:
<strong>So you ARE a Scientologist? Just asking since you didn't reply to that part of my post. If you are, please let me know so I can write you off - ok?</strong>Amos claims to be a Roman Catholic, though his personal theology is so mangled as to be unrecognizable as Catholic. I also sincerely doubt he knows what a Scientologist is.

[i_am_the_head]

Originally posted by daemon23:
Amos claims to be a Roman Catholic, though his personal theology is so mangled as to be unrecognizable as Catholic. I also sincerely doubt he knows what a Scientologist is.

Hmmm, I was Roman Catholic for 18 years - pretty devout about it too. And I don't see much remotely Catholic in Amos' randomly strung together words.

As for the Scientology accusation, I just decided it had to be something wacky (not that most [all?] religion isn't wacky).

[GunnerJ]

Alright, guys, let's stop making fun of Amos. Sure, his posts are a little whacky, but he may have something to them. Amos, from what I can tell, you employ a type of psychological/metaphorical theology that uses Biblical symbolism to show it's "mythical," in a Cambellian sense, truths. Could you explain to us inquiring minds what you're all about?

<img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed,
Didn't we already go over this before, Ed? Me, in complete detail? The first (personal blah blah) is a tautology; the second (outside blah) is a non-sequitur assumption; the third (diversity unity blah) is just pure crap.</strong>

Yes and you still haven't refuted it. Tautologies are not equivalent to falsehoods. Take the common summary of natural selection, ie survival of the fittest, that is a tautology but it is also a true statement. The second is law of logic, ie the cause cannot be a part of the effect. And if the third is not true then science has been totally wrong for 100 years and in fact if it is not true then evolution is wrong.

[Amos]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Alright, guys, let's stop making fun of Amos. Sure, his posts are a little whacky, but he may have something to them. Amos, from what I can tell, you employ a type of psychological/metaphorical theology that uses Biblical symbolism to show it's "mythical," in a Cambellian sense, truths. Could you explain to us inquiring minds what you're all about?

:confused: </strong>

The name that best describes me is "gypsy romantic." Yes, I have certain insights and can read the bible as if it was a grade school story book. I do the same with classical literature and can detect the lyrical limitations of authors. So I am a critic, you can say. To memorize things is extremely difficult for me and most often go by my intuit resources.

What else is there to say? I have a BA with a major in Philosophy at the age of 38? Married with 4 children?

Amos

[Datheron]

Ed,

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />
<strong>Yes and you still haven't refuted it. Tautologies are not equivalent to falsehoods. Take the common summary of natural selection, ie survival of the fittest, that is a tautology but it is also a true statement.</strong>

That is because it doesn't explain anything! That is why I denounce it as merely a tautology - you have not explained exactly what constitutes as "the personal" or what is considered to be "personal" outside of the circular definition. Is a relationship with your pet "personal"? It cannot advance as an argument in such a vague manner, and I think you know it, but is just unable to give adaquete support.

<strong>The second is law of logic, ie the cause cannot be a part of the effect.</strong>

...and you have not shown that the laws of logic have [b]any meaning outside of our Universe!

<strong>And if the third is not true then science has been totally wrong for 100 years and in fact if it is not true then evolution is wrong.</strong>

I never said it wasn't true; rather, I don't think it even merits an inquery to its accuracy. A "diversity within a unity" is just one of the many properties that this world holds, all of which can be stretched to make some bizarre and far-fetching connection. For example:

- The Universe is naturally chaotic. Therefore anarchy is the correct system of gov't.
- The Universe is by large uniform throughout (a physics fact, if you want to check up on it), and is decided equal in all directions, therefore communism is the right gov't.
- Evolution shows that the strongest usually survive, therefore fascism/imperialism is the correct form of gov't.

And I may even argue by your lines that since the Universe displays a "diversity within a unity", a republic is the correct gov'tal system. The connection is simply non-sequitur, and you really stretch the analogous possibilities. In other words, no.

[GunnerJ]

Sorry to but in, but I can't let a bad argument stand:

Tautologies are not equivalent to falsehoods. Take the common summary of natural selection, ie survival of the fittest, that is a tautology but it is also a true statement.

Eh? Do you actually know what natural selection is? I'll give you a hint: it is (id est or i.e.) not "survival of the fittest." Further, "survival of the fittest" is only a tautology if you define the word "fittest" as "those who survive." And if you did that, then it would be a tautology, and it would be fallicious, because it explains and proves nothing: "The survival of the survivers" can be written, "The survivors survive," which is pretty obvious, and makes the whole phrase meaningless. Thus, your analogy fails. :cool:

[Ed]

Originally posted by critical thinking made ez:
<strong>
Originally posted by Ed:
First, the universe contains personal beings, since throughout all of human experience only persons can produce the personal then it is logical to assume that the cause of the universe has a personal aspect to it.

Critic:No, according to your statement here, it would be more logical to assume a human person created a person.[/b]

No, a human is not transcendent. Remember I also said the cause must be transcendent.


Ed:In addition, the cause of the universe must be "outside" it, in other words transcendent to it.

Critic:It must? "Outside" now there is a concept and location we will never find.

It is not a "place". It is an ontological position. God is ontologically transcendent to the universe.


Ed:Also, the primary characteristic of the universe is that it is a diversity within a unity.

Critic:That is a useless try at grouping. It has no benefit nor any common characteristic therefore, it is not a meaningful group or unity.

How is it not a meaningful group?

Ed:According to the law of sufficient cause it is rational to assume that the cause of the universe has a similar characteristic.

Critic:Which would be something similar to the universe, not a god which is not similar to a universe. A God is a God. A universe is a universe.

No, an effect is not a mirror image of its cause but it does share some of the properties that are necessary to produce the effect.

[b] Ed:And only the Triune Christian God has that characteristic.

Critic:Many define God as love, I have never heard of anyone defining the universe as love. So much for the Triune Christian God having similar characteristics with rocks and gas. Unless God suffers from gas and has gall stones. Then I couldn't argue the point.
</strong>

Just as a side note the scriptures do not define God as only love. Nevertheless, love exists in the universe. Where did it come from? How can impersonal processes produce love? How can love come from non-love? And since love and personal beings that love are far more complex than gas and rocks, then whatever causes personal beings that love to come into existence could easily create gas and rocks.

[ December 01, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: First, the universe contains personal beings, since throughout all of human experience only persons can produce the personal then it is logical to assume that the cause of the universe has a personal aspect to it.

Rim:No, I don't think it is at all. What is "personal?" How is it defined?[/b]

Personal has two meanings, first as it relates to a being it is something that has a mind, will, conscience, emotions, and etc. Second it can mean anything relating to a personal being or person.


Ed: In addition, the cause of the universe must be "outside" it, in other words transcendent to it. This fits the Christian God.

Rim:And a great many others. I think a Muslim would have to atribute both personal and trancendant to Allah.

But Allah is a pure unity and the universe is a diversity within a unity, therefore Allah can be eliminated as the likely cause of the universe.

Ed: Also, the primary characteristic of the universe is that it is a diversity within a unity.

Rim:And just what, exavlty, does that mean? This seems like more obfuscationism at work. I'd have to say that the primary aspect of the Universe is that it's composed of 99% vacuum. An the 1% (probably less) that isn't empty spcae is 99% helium and hydrogen in a plasma.

Diversity within a unity means that the universe is one entity made up of many galaxies, each galaxy is made up of many stars, and yet each star is different, matter is made up atoms and yet each atom is different. Living things are made up of cells and yet each cell is different, and so on.


Ed: According to the law of sufficient cause it is rational to assume that the cause of the universe has a similar characteristic. And only the Triune Christian God has that characteristic.

Rim:Trinity is a "diversity within a unity?" When you tell me what that is, I'll answer it. If you're going to argue that God's nature is reflected in his creation, you'd have to assume that God is mostly empty spcae, with a tiny amout of plasmatic H and He, and an even smaller amount of more complex elements.

See above about unity and diversity. No, an effect is not a mirror image of its cause but it does reflect characteristics of its cause and it contains some of what it took to produce it.

[b] Rim:Further, You haven't proven, from first cause alone, that god is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or omnibenevolent. You've only specially defined god as "personal," "trancendant," and a "diversity within a unity." Again, this is a problem of special definitions. </strong>

You are right, but those three things point to the christian God, so then we have to find out if anything or anyone claims to have some communication from the Christian God. And we find that there is something that makes such a claim. And that is the Bible. In the bible we learn his other characteristics. But we can reason that He has some of those characteristics without the bible. Because if he created ALL that exists then by definition, he is has ALL power, therefore He has all knowledge since he knows all that he created, which is all that exists. His omnipresence and benevolence can only be learned from his communication to us, ie the scriptures.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Vibr8gKiwi:
<strong>

There's a great example of one particular type of theist broken-thinking that I see so often. Ed tries to apply relationships between members of a set to the set itself. Humans create other humans, have parent-child relationships, are personal and such. However the set of humans--mankind--is not anything like a human and can't logically be assumed to have the same properties and relationships applied to it as apply to its members.

A pez dispenser is fun, it has a head you can pull back and get some candy. However I claim those properties makes no sense when applied to set of all pez dispensers--such set is not fun, has no head, nor any candy (except again for each individual dispenser). That so many theists can't seem to understand the distinction between a set and its members is interesting.</strong>

The number of personal beings in the universe is irrelevant. The fact that there are ANY personal beings in it point to the fact that its cause has a personal aspect to it, because only persons can produce the personal.

[Synaesthesia]

The number of personal beings in the universe is irrelevant. The fact that there are ANY personal beings in it point to the fact that its cause has a personal aspect to it, because only persons can produce the personal.

The only process that is known to be able to produce conscious beings is itself blind, algorithmic and aimless. Your premise is known to be false. If you are a creationist, the truth or falsity of this premise is of no issue since the argument is itself invalid.

As with the first cause argument, the premise you base your conclusion upon directly contradicts the conclusion. If the existence of personal beings proves that they were created by a personal entity, the existence of God would itself prove the existence of a meta-god and so on.

If we define God as an uncreated person we contradicted the assumption that persons must produce the personal and the question of where the assumption comes from at all remains a problem.

[GunnerJ]

Ed-

Personal has two meanings, first as it relates to a being it is something that has a mind, will, conscience, emotions, and etc. Second it can mean anything relating to a personal being or person.


Well then, based on that definition, there's no reason to believe that a universe with personalities (can we use this term instead of "personal beings?" New term, same definition) must have a personal first cause. "Mind, will, conscience, emotion" are things which do not require a mystical explaination. (Although, the term "conscience" bothers me... do you speak of "consciousness" or the little angel and devil on our shoulders?) BTW, what, exactly, does the term "etc." refer to?

But Allah is a pure unity and the universe is a diversity within a unity, therefore Allah can be eliminated as the likely cause of the universe.

No, I don't agree to that at all. See below.

Diversity within a unity means that the universe is one entity made up of many galaxies, each galaxy is made up of many stars, and yet each star is different, matter is made up atoms and yet each atom is different. Living things are made up of cells and yet each cell is different, and so on.

Why does this require a cause that is a "diversity within a unity?" What logically stops a "pure unity" from creating a "diversity within a unity?" Frankly, I don't see how the natural universe constitutes a diversity within a unity, more like a diverse collection of things in a box. Are you suggesting that the christian god has a container?

No, an effect is not a mirror image of its cause but it does reflect characteristics of its cause and it contains some of what it took to produce it.


No, I don't see why a cause must be even partially reflected in its effect. Please elablorate.

You are right, but those three things point to the christian God, so then we have to find out if anything or anyone claims to have some communication from the Christian God.

I'll put aside the fact that your arguments do not prove these three characteristics, and go on.

And we find that there is something that makes such a claim. And that is the Bible.

If you can't see how circular this is, I can't help you. If, and this is a big if, you proved that by looking at the universe and its nature, we could determine a tracnendant, personal, unified, self-contained diversity of a deity, we have no reason to say that the Bible is an accurate depiction of it. It certainly describes a god which we have, for the sake of argument, established is factual, but that doesn't make any of its other claims about this god factual. The key word, one you used, is "claims."

In the bible we learn his other characteristics.

Hmm-hmm. This one is almost too easy. A question, if I may; why do you believe that a god capable of creating the universe can be defeated by iron technology? Hey, it's all in the bible.

But we can reason that He has some of those characteristics without the bible.

From the above arguments, no, we cannot. Let's look at what lies below:

Because if he created ALL that exists then by definition, he is has ALL power,

Oh? I thought you claimed that god was trancendant? How does god's creation add to his power if he is separte from it? If we argumentitively claim a god who created all things, we are under no obligation to assume that he is omnipotent; for all we know, all that exists represents the limit of his creative power.

therefore He has all knowledge since he knows all that he created, which is all that exists.

Only if we have proved omnipotence. I, being not omnipotent, can create plenty of things without knowing all there is about the things I have created; I only need to know enough to create it.

His omnipresence and benevolence can only be learned from his communication to us, ie the scriptures.


Ho-ho. Ooh, boy. If the Bible represents God's omnibenevolence, then I don't know HOW to define omnimaliciousness.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:Yes and you still haven't refuted it. Tautologies are not equivalent to falsehoods. Take the common summary of natural selection, ie survival of the fittest, that is a tautology but it is also a true statement.

Dat:That is because it doesn't explain anything! That is why I denounce it as merely a tautology - you have not explained exactly what constitutes as "the personal" or what is considered to be "personal" outside of the circular definition. Is a relationship with your pet "personal"? It cannot advance as an argument in such a vague manner, and I think you know it, but is just unable to give adaquete support.[/b]

See above for my definition of personal. A relationship with your pet cannot be fully personal because animals do not have full personalities.


Ed:The second is law of logic, ie the cause cannot be a part of the effect.

Dat:...and you have not shown that the laws of logic have any meaning outside of our Universe!

And you have not shown that it is rational to throw out the laws of logic outside the universe given that we cannot learn anything without them!
The burden of proof is on those who think we should throw them out and end our learning.

Ed:And if the third is not true then science has been totally wrong for 100 years and in fact if it is not true then evolution is wrong.

Dat:I never said it wasn't true; rather, I don't think it even merits an inquery to its accuracy. A "diversity within a unity" is just one of the many properties that this world holds, all of which can be stretched to make some bizarre and far-fetching connection. For example:

- The Universe is naturally chaotic. Therefore anarchy is the correct system of gov't.

Hardly, if the universe was truly and totally chaotic, science would be impossible. There would be no natural laws.

Dat:- The Universe is by large uniform throughout (a physics fact, if you want to check up on it), and is decided equal in all directions, therefore communism is the right gov't.

Irrational. The universe is not an effect of communism.

Dat:- Evolution shows that the strongest usually survive, therefore fascism/imperialism is the correct form of gov't.

IF darwinian evolution has occurred then your argument has some merit. But given that there is strong evidence against it, fortunately your argument is in trouble.

[b] Dat:And I may even argue by your lines that since the Universe displays a "diversity within a unity", a republic is the correct gov'tal system. The connection is simply non-sequitur, and you really stretch the analogous possibilities. In other words, no. </strong>

Hardly, as above, the universe is not the effect of a republic form of government. Though as an aside it is the most biblical form of gov.

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>See above for my definition of personal. A relationship with your pet cannot be fully personal because animals do not have full personalities.</strong>

I've read it; not impressed. How, exactly, did you come up with this set of criteria and definition for "personal"? How do you know that other species do not satisfy these criteria, albeit primitively? We have sufficient evidence to prove that primates, for example, can think intelligently; the other properties have yet to be discovered if they exist. No, I don't think you have any basis in your definition, and hence it's worthless.

<strong>And you have not shown that it is rational to throw out the laws of logic outside the universe given that we cannot learn anything without them!
The burden of proof is on those who think we should throw them out and end our learning.</strong>

I have already explained to you, more than once, why we CANNOT extrapolate into something which we have absolutely no information about! I've already given you examples in physics, which is just about the closest we are going to get to something "outside this Universe"; laws do not apply in those situations. To cite another example, any isolated data obtained from assumption of some law (the gaseous content of stars from spectra, for instance) is dubious on its own unless other data from different assumptions verify its validity. The only assumption that science makes is that the Universe is consistent - THIS Universe.

<strong>Hardly, if the universe was truly and totally chaotic, science would be impossible. There would be no natural laws.</strong>

&lt;sighs&gt; Naturally chaotic in configuration. The most abundant form in the Universe is gas, which is extremely chaotic. Particles, when given energy (which is again in the majority), go off in random directions. Quantum mechanics demands randomness and thus chaos. If you want to refute something scientific, do me a favor and know something OF the topic first.

<strong>Irrational. The universe is not an effect of communism.</strong>

Exactly. (Note to Ed: this series of "points" was typed to show you the irrationality of your point.)

<strong>IF darwinian evolution has occurred then your argument has some merit. But given that there is strong evidence against it, fortunately your argument is in trouble.</strong>

LOL! Do me a favor, Ed, and post this on the E&C forum, along with your so-called "evidence", and read the responses. It'll rock your world.

<strong>Hardly, as above, the universe is not the effect of a republic form of government. Though as an aside it is the most biblical form of gov. </strong>

Exactly! Like I have said, the connection is non-sequitur, which you have kindly pointed out for me again. "Diversity within a unity" doesn't imply God, just as it does not imply any republic form of government.

Oh, and a side note: strangely enough, the only true republic that this world has seen existed in the heretic Greek gov't of the ancient world. Ours is an un-Biblical democratic republic, so you're out of luck again, Ed.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Sorry to but in, but I can't let a bad argument stand:



Eh? Do you actually know what natural selection is? I'll give you a hint: it is (id est or i.e.) not "survival of the fittest." Further, "survival of the fittest" is only a tautology if you define the word "fittest" as "those who survive." And if you did that, then it would be a tautology, and it would be fallicious, because it explains and proves nothing: "The survival of the survivers" can be written, "The survivors survive," which is pretty obvious, and makes the whole phrase meaningless. Thus, your analogy fails. :cool: </strong>

Just because a statement doesn't explain or prove something doesn't make it false.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>The only process that is known to be able to produce conscious beings is itself blind, algorithmic and aimless. Your premise is known to be false. If you are a creationist, the truth or falsity of this premise is of no issue since the argument is itself invalid.[/b]

Please give an example of a blind, algorithmic, and aimless process being empirically observed producing a conscious being. What argument is invalid? Just stating an argument is invalid doesn't make it so. You have to demonstrate it.

[b] Syn: As with the first cause argument, the premise you base your conclusion upon directly contradicts the conclusion. If the existence of personal beings proves that they were created by a personal entity, the existence of God would itself prove the existence of a meta-god and so on.

If we define God as an uncreated person we contradicted the assumption that persons must produce the personal and the question of where the assumption comes from at all remains a problem.</strong>

No, something (including a person) can logically be a cause without being an effect and therefore not require a cause. This is what God is.

[Storm and Stress]

We are of course talking about St. Thomas Aquanis proof of God. The First Cause argument which has its roots directly traceable to Aristotle.

As a side note, while Aristotle did believe in God. His God was far different than the Judeo-Christian one.

His God was perfect, and therefore must think on only perfect things. Now the only perfect thing in the Cosmos, was himself. So Aristotle's God, ignores man, but constantly meditates on its own perfection.

Hardly a personal God.

The first Cause idea goes like this. Everything is movement. This movement had to begin at some point, and was started by something which itself did not move. This thing Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquanis called The Prime Mover or God.

In essence everything has a Cause and Effect.

The argument of course is, who then
created God.

The counter argument of course is that God is not an Effect, or a Cause but rather the Creator of all known reality.

and another standoff occurs.

[Synaesthesia]

Please give an example of a blind, algorithmic, and aimless process being empirically observed producing a conscious being.

Implicitly we are talking of evolution. Thus, you are in effect asking me to show you a process that takes millions of years. It is obviously impossible to do such a thing.

This is a lot like asking me to prove that the Mississippi isn't man made by actually *showing* you the river wearing down it's bed over the ages. The very notion is preposterous, there's nothing about the theory of natural river formation that implies that you and I can time travel and directly observe every particle of sediment being moved around.

We can, however, know that it was produced by the moving water by observing how it moves and changes today. We directly observe millions of tiny particles carried and organized. Although we require more information to discern the precise course taken by the river throughout history, we do have enough information to infer the fact that it is indeed a natural formation. That's why we can say that it is the result of natural forces and not intelligent intervention.

However absurd your rhetorical parody of epistemology, there is actually an opportunity to actually observe blind physical processes producing intelligent human beings.

The process of cellular division is not one that requires divine intervention. (Though we don't know absolutely everything there is to about cellular division so I'm sure you could stuff at least a few gods into the gaps.) Before humans are born, the sperm of their daddy combines with the egg of their mummy. The resultant cell begin mitosis and eventually develops into a human being. No division of cells or flap of flagella require intelligent intervention or fairy dust. They are all measurable and occur according to the laws of physics. After a sufficient amount of time, these physical processes unwittingly produce a fully functioning human being.

No, something (including a person) can logically be a cause without being an effect and therefore not require a cause. This is what God is.

Ed, you were the one who said that "only persons can produce the personal." If you stand by that, then God MUST have been produced by a person, a meta-god presumably. If all things require a cause and if God is a thing, he must have a cause. The logical consequences really should be obvious. The premise is totally incompatible with the existence of your God.

In the quote above, you repeat the attempt to solve the problem by simply reasserting that God doesn't have a cause and doesn't need a person to create him. This is the very problem. This definition is incompatible with your argument. It is logically impossible to fix this contradiction. Once you have granted that persons do not really require a maker and that objects do not really require a cause, the whole argument falls apart.

[ December 05, 2001: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: Personal has two meanings, first as it relates to a being it is something that has a mind, will, conscience, emotions, and etc. Second it can mean anything relating to a personal being or person.

Rim:Well then, based on that definition, there's no reason to believe that a universe with personalities (can we use this term instead of "personal beings?" New term, same definition) must have a personal first cause. "Mind, will, conscience, emotion" are things which do not require a mystical explaination. (Although, the term "conscience" bothers me... do you speak of "consciousness" or the little angel and devil on our shoulders?) BTW, what, exactly, does the term "etc." refer to?[/b]

Ok, please provide empirical evidence of an impersonal process that has produced personalities. Conscience is the part of your personality that deals with your sense of morality. Etc. refers to the other things that make you, you. Another example is propositional communication.


Ed: But Allah is a pure unity and the universe is a diversity within a unity, therefore Allah can be eliminated as the likely cause of the universe.

Rim:No, I don't agree to that at all. See below.


Ed: Diversity within a unity means that the universe is one entity made up of many galaxies, each galaxy is made up of many stars, and yet each star is different, matter is made up atoms and yet each atom is different. Living things are made up of cells and yet each cell is different, and so on.

Rim:Why does this require a cause that is a "diversity within a unity?" What logically stops a "pure unity" from creating a "diversity within a unity?"

In science you study the characteristics of an effect to determine the cause. Theoretically maybe a being that is a pure unity could create a diversity within a unity. But a cause that has that characteristic intrinsic to it is more likely to have the capacity to reproduce that characteristic. For example, an early scientist determining the cause of rain might notice that rain falls whenever clouds are over head. So he may deduce that clouds are the cause of rain and that the clouds are made up of water or have what it takes to make water. And he would be correct.

Rim:Frankly, I don't see how the natural universe constitutes a diversity within a unity, more like a diverse collection of things in a box. Are you suggesting that the christian god has a container?

No, because the things that make up the universe are also diversities within unities. For example, there are large clusters of stars called galaxies, a unity, while there are many different
types of galaxies, a diversity. And so on down to the subatomic level.

Ed: No, an effect is not a mirror image of its cause but it does reflect characteristics of its cause and it contains some of what it took to produce it.

Rim:No, I don't see why a cause must be even partially reflected in its effect. Please elablorate.

See my explanation above.


[b] Ed: You are right, but those three things point to the christian God, so then we have to find out if anything or anyone claims to have some communication from the Christian God.

Rim:I'll put aside the fact that your arguments do not prove these three characteristics, and go on. </strong>

I never said that they PROVE them with absolute certainty but they do provide strong logical evidence in that direction.

This is the end of Part I of my response.

:cool:

[GunnerJ]

Here we go:

Ok, please provide empirical evidence of an impersonal process that has produced personalities.

Please do not shift the burden of proof. If you propose a supernatural explaination, it's your job to prove it.

Conscience is the part of your personality that deals with your sense of morality.

OK. Now, why, exactly, does such a thing require a God of the Gaps to explain?

Etc. refers to the other things that make you, you.

So vague and mysterious!

Another example is propositional communication.


Just curious, what do you mean by "propositional communication?"

In science you study the characteristics of an effect to determine the cause. Theoretically maybe a being that is a pure unity could create a diversity within a unity. But a cause that has that characteristic intrinsic to it is more likely to have the capacity to reproduce that characteristic. For example, an early scientist determining the cause of rain might notice that rain falls whenever clouds are over head. So he may deduce that clouds are the cause of rain and that the clouds are made up of water or have what it takes to make water. And he would be correct.

Then, I suppose you wouldn't be opposed to stating that God is mostly empty space, with a little bit of plasmatic hydrogen and heluim?

I never said that they PROVE them with absolute certainty but they do provide strong logical evidence in that direction.

:rolleyes: Allow me to change my statement: Your arguments do not, at all, provide strong logical evidence in that direction.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: And we find that there is something that makes such a claim. And that is the Bible.

Rim:If you can't see how circular this is, I can't help you. If, and this is a big if, you proved that by looking at the universe and its nature, we could determine a tracnendant, personal, unified, self-contained diversity of a deity, we have no reason to say that the Bible is an accurate depiction of it. It certainly describes a god which we have, for the sake of argument, established is factual, but that doesn't make any of its other claims about this god factual. The key word, one you used, is "claims."[/b]

Yes, so then you investigate those claims by checking claims in the bible that can be verified such as with archeaology. If it is found to be accurate in areas that can be verified then it is likely to be accurate in areas that cannot be verified by archaeology, ie spiritual truths like God's characteristics. And in fact it has been found to be accurate in areas that can be verified with archaeology. So then you try to communicate with the God of the bible thru prayer as that book tells you to and he will confirm his existence to you thru experience.


Ed: In the bible we learn his other characteristics.

Rim:Hmm-hmm. This one is almost too easy. A question, if I may; why do you believe that a god capable of creating the universe can be defeated by iron technology? Hey, it's all in the bible.

He cannot but his chosen people can be if he allows it.

Ed: But we can reason that He has some of those characteristics without the bible.

Rim:From the above arguments, no, we cannot. Let's look at what lies below:

I admit that this little reasoning exercise is not the best way to learn about his characteristics, the best way is thru his communication to us, the bible.

Ed: Because if he created ALL that exists then by definition, he is has ALL power,

Rim :o h? I thought you claimed that god was trancendant? How does god's creation add to his power if he is separte from it? If we argumentitively claim a god who created all things, we are under no obligation to assume that he is omnipotent; for all we know, all that exists represents the limit of his creative power.

Relative to us since he created ALL then that is all power. But yes only thru the scriptures can we obtain a better grasp of his power.

Ed: therefore He has all knowledge since he knows all that he created, which is all that exists.

Rim :o nly if we have proved omnipotence. I, being not omnipotent, can create plenty of things without knowing all there is about the things I have created; I only need to know enough to create it.

If, in addition, you had created the essence of the thing then you would know ALL. God not only created the universe but also its very essence.


[b] Ed: His omnipresence and benevolence can only be learned from his communication to us, ie the scriptures.


Rim:Ho-ho. Ooh, boy. If the Bible represents God's omnibenevolence, then I don't know HOW to define omnimaliciousness.

</strong>

No, the problem is you don't see the larger picture.

[Datheron]

Poor Ed. The one innocent little post that he makes has turned into a full-fledged discussion with some 3-4 theists waiting for his response. Good thing he doesn't put much effort in his posts, though; otherwise, it'd be a waste of both ours and your time. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

[SingleDad]

Ed

If it is found to be accurate in areas that can be verified then it is likely to be accurate in areas that cannot be verified by archaeology, ie spiritual truths like God's characteristics.

This is simply fallacious. Were it true, we would be compelled to believe in the historical existence of Scarlett O'Hara.

So then you try to communicate with the God of the bible thru prayer as that book tells you to and he will confirm his existence to you thru experience.

This has been disconfirmed by a great many former theists here on these boards.

I admit that this little reasoning exercise is not the best way to learn about his characteristics, the best way is thru his communication to us, the bible.

The only thing one can learn from the bible is the details of the mythology and superstitions of a pretechnological tribe of rather savage goatherds.

No, the problem is you don't see the larger picture.

Neither do you. You just have to accept on faith that murder, genocide, rape, incest, and slavery are good in the "larger picture".

[GunnerJ]

Ed- Your entire argument has been reduced to an appeal to scripture. Frankly, I find your statements that the Bible has been confirmed by archeology and science, and can therefore be trusted elsewhere, to be laughable. Unless you can esablish the authority of scripture, I am under no obligation to accept arguments from it.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:See above for my definition of personal. A relationship with your pet cannot be fully personal because animals do not have full personalities.

Dat:I've read it; not impressed. How, exactly, did you come up with this set of criteria and definition for "personal"? How do you know that other species do not satisfy these criteria, albeit primitively? We have sufficient evidence to prove that primates, for example, can think intelligently; the other properties have yet to be discovered if they exist. No, I don't think you have any basis in your definition, and hence it's worthless.[/b]

The basis for my definition is knowing what I am, ie a person. Some animals do have some aspects of personality like a simple mind and some forms of emotions. But they do not have a full personality. Which includes a true will and a conscience, abstract thinking, and the ability to communicate propositionally and etc. The question still stands even for animals, how can the impersonal even produce the simpler aspects of the personal that animals have? The answer is, it cannot and has never been observed to be able to do so.


Ed:And you have not shown that it is rational to throw out the laws of logic outside the universe given that we cannot learn anything without them!
The burden of proof is on those who think we should throw them out and end our learning.

Dat:I have already explained to you, more than once, why we CANNOT extrapolate into something which we have absolutely no information about!

Cosmologists and paleontologists do it all the time when they extrapolate into prehistory, we know nothing empirically about prehistory. So we extrapolate what we observe in the present into the past. And that is what I am doing except in relation to the universe. We can extrapolate what we know about this universe into outside the universe.


Dat:I've already given you examples in physics, which is just about the closest we are going to get to something "outside this Universe"; laws do not apply in those situations. To cite another example, any isolated data obtained from assumption of some law (the gaseous content of stars from spectra, for instance) is dubious on its own unless other data from different assumptions verify its validity. The only assumption that science makes is that the Universe is consistent - THIS Universe.

No, all physics tells us is that at the origin of hte universe the laws of physics no longer applied, NOT the laws of logic. These are two totally different things. The very fact that we can come to the conclusion that the laws of physics no applied at the origin is by using the laws of logic. Without the laws of logic we cannot say ANYTHING about that or ANYTHING else!


Ed:Hardly, if the universe was truly and totally chaotic, science would be impossible. There would be no natural laws.

Dat:&lt;sighs&gt; Naturally chaotic in configuration. The most abundant form in the Universe is gas, which is extremely chaotic. Particles, when given energy (which is again in the majority), go off in random directions. Quantum mechanics demands randomness and thus chaos. If you want to refute something scientific, do me a favor and know something OF the topic first.

No, even gas particles operate according to laws of physics and nature. If it were truly chaotic then it would not even do that. We just call random because we can not predict it. Also, if you are refering to chaos theory even that is not truly chaotic. It is based on algorithims which is a type of math and math is just a type of logic. And logic is not chaotic.


Ed:Irrational. The universe is not an effect of communism.

Dat:Exactly. (Note to Ed: this series of "points" was typed to show you the irrationality of your point.)

No, my point is based on the opposite of irrationality, ie it is based on fundamental laws of logic. Trying to say that political views can create a universe is equivalent to the argument for God using the Law of Causality is the most absurd analogy I have encountered in my many years of debating atheists.

Ed:IF darwinian evolution has occurred then your argument has some merit. But given that there is strong evidence against it, fortunately your argument is in trouble.

Dat:LOL! Do me a favor, Ed, and post this on the E&C forum, along with your so-called "evidence", and read the responses. It'll rock your world.

Been there, done that. And always receive the same old boring responses. Sometimes I wish they would come up with something new. Might make it more interesting but only a beautiful woman can rock my world.


[b] Ed:Hardly, as above, the universe is not the effect of a republic form of government. Though as an aside it is the most biblical form of gov.

Dat:Exactly! Like I have said, the connection is non-sequitur, which you have kindly pointed out for me again. "Diversity within a unity" doesn't imply God, just as it does not imply any republic form of government.

Oh, and a side note: strangely enough, the only true republic that this world has seen existed in the heretic Greek gov't of the ancient world. Ours is an un-Biblical democratic republic, so you're out of luck again, Ed.
</strong>

Fraid so, see above about the laws of logic especially the law of sufficient cause.

[calvaryson]

Originally posted by SingleDad:
<strong>Ed



Neither do you. You just have to accept on faith that murder, genocide, rape, incest, and slavery are good in the "larger picture".</strong>
If you want to communicate with God you have to to do so with an open heart and mind. If before you communicate with someone or with God you've already made up your mind then where is the room for response? Closed hearts and minds receive nothing but hardening. "Those who ignore instruction despise themselves, but those who heed admonition gain understanding." Proverbs 15:32

[Ed]

Originally posted by Storm and Stress:
<strong>We are of course talking about St. Thomas Aquanis proof of God. The First Cause argument which has its roots directly traceable to Aristotle.

As a side note, while Aristotle did believe in God. His God was far different than the Judeo-Christian one.

His God was perfect, and therefore must think on only perfect things. Now the only perfect thing in the Cosmos, was himself. So Aristotle's God, ignores man, but constantly meditates on its own perfection.

Hardly a personal God.

The first Cause idea goes like this. Everything is movement. This movement had to begin at some point, and was started by something which itself did not move. This thing Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquanis called The Prime Mover or God.

In essence everything has a Cause and Effect.

The argument of course is, who then
created God.

The counter argument of course is that God is not an Effect, or a Cause but rather the Creator of all known reality.

and another standoff occurs.</strong>

I am afraid you have the common misunderstanding of the law of cause and effect. It is not that every THING has a cause, it is every EFFECT has a cause. That is why something can logically be a cause and not an effect and therefore not require a cause.

[Datheron]

Ed,

I don't even know why I bother. Perhaps because it's somewhat interesting to see what you can come up with...

<strong>The basis for my definition is knowing what I am, ie a person. Some animals do have some aspects of personality like a simple mind and some forms of emotions. But they do not have a full personality. Which includes a true will and a conscience, abstract thinking, and the ability to communicate propositionally and etc. The question still stands even for animals, how can the impersonal even produce the simpler aspects of the personal that animals have? The answer is, it cannot and has never been observed to be able to do so.</strong>

Knowing what you are does not give you the knowledge nor the right to begin judging other animals. What you are describing is intelligence, which is definitely not unique to humans and is not a part of the definition of "personal". Furthermore, you have no evidence that whatever you choose to define as "personal" resides only within humans; nor can you give me any evidence or reason that suggests that the personal must somehow come from more personal beings; the fact that we are the only example of "personalism" means that any statement that you make is baseless on a lack of comparison.

<strong>
Cosmologists and paleontologists do it all the time when they extrapolate into prehistory, we know nothing empirically about prehistory. So we extrapolate what we observe in the present into the past. And that is what I am doing except in relation to the universe. We can extrapolate what we know about this universe into outside the universe. </strong>

Prehistory? That is an assumption that physical laws, say, work in four-dimensional space-time - a very reasonable assumption. This comes from the fact that 500 years of scientific discovery through time still shows the consistency of physical laws...and we don't have such a luxury on anything outside our Universe.

<strong>No, all physics tells us is that at the origin of hte universe the laws of physics no longer applied, NOT the laws of logic. These are two totally different things. The very fact that we can come to the conclusion that the laws of physics no applied at the origin is by using the laws of logic. Without the laws of logic we cannot say ANYTHING about that or ANYTHING else!</strong>

Hallelujah! Yes, that was what I was trying to tell you, time and time again - we can't tell of anything beyond our Universe. Why do you think scientists have stopped their assumption in the laws of physics? Because we have no reason to believe that they work; there is no comparison to be made, no observation that makes sense, and no scraps of evidence that can be compiled and puzzled into a logical extrapolation (note that prehistory, your counter-example, does require multiple sources of data for credibility). You have been using the argument that "cosmologists do this too", but then you turn around when they stop at a well-defined point, and proceed on in contradiction to your previous reason of why we can extend these laws.

<strong>
No, even gas particles operate according to laws of physics and nature. If it were truly chaotic then it would not even do that. We just call random because we can not predict it. Also, if you are refering to chaos theory even that is not truly chaotic. It is based on algorithims which is a type of math and math is just a type of logic. And logic is not chaotic.</strong>

&lt;sighs&gt; Do you know what type of math we're talking about? It's called "probability"; a field which can only have statistical answers based on large amounts of data. It's a very well-known fact that if we isolate the data points of statistics, we will find completely random results...this is a fundamental property of the Universe, as far as we can tell. Gaseous molecules follow the general laws of physics as a whole, but I challenge you to make every single molecule follow some law; impossible. And of course, you're fully welcome to show me how "the Universe is not random", despite all the evidence for this; just be sure to actually back it up with something other than the Bible and ignorant half-assed knowledge.

<strong>No, my point is based on the opposite of irrationality, ie it is based on fundamental laws of logic. Trying to say that political views can create a universe is equivalent to the argument for God using the Law of Causality is the most absurd analogy I have encountered in my many years of debating atheists.</strong>

That's what I was trying to tell you - it is not based on any fundamental law of logic, only a twisted version that is merely an post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy - what in hell does God's trinity have to do with the Universe? And what other properties of God are missing in our Universe, which by that bold assumption should definitely be there? And exactly where in these "diversities" that there holds a demand for some "diverse" God? Furthermore, polytheistic religions also hold this property, with much more sense and manages not to contradict itself (three within one, but three nevertheless, except that it's really just one...boogles the mind). Indeed, this horrible explanation is about the worst I've seen or heard.

<strong>Been there, done that. And always receive the same old boring responses. Sometimes I wish they would come up with something new. Might make it more interesting but only a beautiful woman can rock my world.</strong>

Same old boring responses? Guess what I've been receiving from you? The fact that they are indefinitely more credible, with evolutionists actually knowing the science which they're talking about (rather than your psuedo-science coupled with horrible assumptions, stretched rationalizations, and no evidence whatsoever). Whether you choose to accept them is your own business; discrediting them because you don't like their conclusions only discredits you.

<strong>Fraid so, see above about the laws of logic especially the law of sufficient cause. </strong>

Then does the existence of evil mean that God is evil? Or how about the existence of non-existence, which makes God non-existant? Perhaps the existence of sin means that God is sinful as well? No - you have to show me, step by step, exactly how you came about with the logic that these unrelated coincidences of the Universe (BTW, the galaxies example is because of gravity, not God) is somehow attributed by sufficient cause to some war-God deity.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>Ed :p lease give an example of a blind, algorithmic, and aimless process being empirically observed producing a conscious being.

Syn:Implicitly we are talking of evolution. Thus, you are in effect asking me to show you a process that takes millions of years. It is obviously impossible to do such a thing.

This is a lot like asking me to prove that the Mississippi isn't man made by actually *showing* you the river wearing down it's bed over the ages. The very notion is preposterous, there's nothing about the theory of natural river formation that implies that you and I can time travel and directly observe every particle of sediment being moved around.

We can, however, know that it was produced by the moving water by observing how it moves and changes today. We directly observe millions of tiny particles carried and organized. Although we require more information to discern the precise course taken by the river throughout history, we do have enough information to infer the fact that it is indeed a natural formation. That's why we can say that it is the result of natural forces and not intelligent intervention.[/b]

We can see that that water can remove soil particles and transport them empirically so yes an event as you describle could logically be extrapolated to eventually remove a large amount of soil a create a river bed. But there is no observable process that can create anything even close to consciousness from non-consciousness, so your analogy fails.

Syn:However absurd your rhetorical parody of epistemology, there is actually an opportunity to actually observe blind physical processes producing intelligent human beings.

The process of cellular division is not one that requires divine intervention. (Though we don't know absolutely everything there is to about cellular division so I'm sure you could stuff at least a few gods into the gaps.) Before humans are born, the sperm of their daddy combines with the egg of their mummy. The resultant cell begin mitosis and eventually develops into a human being. No division of cells or flap of flagella require intelligent intervention or fairy dust. They are all measurable and occur according to the laws of physics. After a sufficient amount of time, these physical processes unwittingly produce a fully functioning human being.

Actually it does require intelligent intervention but it occurred long before this event. The growth and development of a human is the result of very complex program encoded in a complex linguistic type code called DNA. Such a program has only been observed to be produced by an intelligence.


Ed:No, something (including a person) can logically be a cause without being an effect and therefore not require a cause. This is what God is.

Syn:Ed, you were the one who said that "only persons can produce the personal." If you stand by that, then God MUST have been produced by a person, a meta-god presumably. If all things require a cause and if God is a thing, he must have a cause. The logical consequences really should be obvious. The premise is totally incompatible with the existence of your God.

No, the correct formulation of the law of causality states that every EFFECT requires a cause NOT every THING. Not all things require a cause. Something can logically be a cause and not an effect and therefore not require a cause. Therefore a person that is not an effect does not require a personal cause.

[b] Syn:In the quote above, you repeat the attempt to solve the problem by simply reasserting that God doesn't have a cause and doesn't need a person to create him. This is the very problem. This definition is incompatible with your argument. It is logically impossible to fix this contradiction. Once you have granted that persons do not really require a maker and that objects do not really require a cause, the whole argument falls apart.
</strong>

How? See my explanation above the correct understanding of the law of causality.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: Ok, please provide empirical evidence of an impersonal process that has produced personalities.

Rim :p lease do not shift the burden of proof. If you propose a supernatural explaination, it's your job to prove it.[/b]

I already presented the empirical evidence for persons producing the personal, now it is your turn to produce your empirical evidence.


Ed: Conscience is the part of your personality that deals with your sense of morality.

Rim :o K. Now, why, exactly, does such a thing require a God of the Gaps to explain?

Because morality cannot come from amorality.


Ed: Etc. refers to the other things that make you, you.

Rim:So vague and mysterious!

What's wrong? You don't know who you are? Is what makes you you, vague and mysterious?

Ed: Another example is propositional communication.

Rim:Just curious, what do you mean by "propositional communication?"

It is what we are doing right now. Communicating with propositions.


Ed: In science you study the characteristics of an effect to determine the cause. Theoretically maybe a being that is a pure unity could create a diversity within a unity. But a cause that has that characteristic intrinsic to it is more likely to have the capacity to reproduce that characteristic. For example, an early scientist determining the cause of rain might notice that rain falls whenever clouds are over head. So he may deduce that clouds are the cause of rain and that the clouds are made up of water or have what it takes to make water. And he would be correct.

Rim:Then, I suppose you wouldn't be opposed to stating that God is mostly empty space, with a little bit of plasmatic hydrogen and heluim?

You are still erroneously assuming that an effect is a mirror image of its cause. See above.

[b] Ed: I never said that they PROVE them with absolute certainty but they do provide strong logical evidence in that direction.

Rim: Allow me to change my statement: Your arguments do not, at all, provide strong logical evidence in that direction.
</strong>

Just stating that they don't doesn't make it so. You have to demonstrate it.

[Metacrock]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>It's posted by many theists on the board, most obsetnsibly CyberShy, the God exists because there must be a first cause for, well, you know... everything.

Athiests can play merry-go-round about possible definitions and infinate regression, but why? I propose that the First Cause argument, even if true, that the Universe had to have a first cause, does not prove the existence of god.

Oh, sure, we could quibble about definitions. Looking at things from kind of very "limited god" deism, if we define "god" as the First Cause, and nothing more, then we prove the first cause, we've proved god. But I can define "god" as my left shoe, then I can show you my left shoe, and thereby prove god. So it's important that we talk about a specific kind of God. Is it Yhwh? Trinity? Jesus? Allah? The Bramha? The IPU?

This is the crux of my argument: if you include "First Cauase" as one of the properties of "God," then you have not proved that "God," because "First Cause" is a property that can be atributed to many different god concepts. It makes no sense to say that since the universe has a first cause, we must recognize your god as a first cause. It makes even less sense to say that Xian dogma is thereby validated. We don't even have to call the first cause god; it could be some natural function which we have no knowledge of.

So, in essence, the First Cause argument cannot prove any meaningful, specific concept of god. Much less the Judeo-Christian god. At best all it can prove is... a First Cause. Theists, can you stop throwing this old chesnut into the mix to prove your various interpretations of "God?"</strong>

This is a real basic mistake. First, there is no competing field of God concepts. There are differences in the way people view God, but any God concept has to include a priori the notions of first cause and necessary being or we aren't dealing with God at all. So that is irrelivant that many of them include that, they all do, so what?

Secondly, it establishes the first premise (by it I mean first cause) form which one can deduce the existence of God. Once you establish first cause it's bascially just short trip next door to any God concept. Why? Because first cause must eternal and necessary, and it is in and of itself part of the basic major attributes of God. In fact all of these things are: first casue, necessary being, etenrality. That's a basic job description for any concept of God.

[HRG]

Originally posted by Metacrock:
<strong>

This is a real basic mistake. First, there is no competing field of God concepts. There are differences in the way people view God, but any God concept has to include a priori the notions of first cause and necessary being or we aren't dealing with God at all. So that is irrelivant that many of them include that, they all do, so what?


That's because you postulate that everyone has to accept your definition of God(1). If so, you have to demonstrate that most people, starting from the first animists, had a notion of God(1) and thought in terms of first cause etc. Good luck.


Secondly, it establishes the first premise (by it I mean first cause) form which one can deduce the existence of God. Once you establish first cause it's bascially just short trip next door to any God concept. Why? Because first cause must eternal and necessary,


It doesn't, of course. A first cause which just triggered the beginning of the universe and then ceased to exist is conceivable.


and it is in and of itself part of the basic major attributes of God.


God(1), to be more exact. Let us keep the definitions straight. Any supernatural being with far-reaching powers is a god, unless you see everything through the blinders of monotheism.


In fact all of these things are: first casue, necessary being, etenrality. That's a basic job description for any concept of God.</strong>

Again: for any concept of God(1) as you define it; but then you cannot claim a universal experience of God. For God(1) you need theology; but theology is quite a late development in human culture. For instance - what was the "necessary and eternal being" of the Aztec religion ?

BTW, dualist religions (like Manichaeism or Parsee/Zoroaster) require two necessary beings.

Regards.
HRG.

[GunnerJ]

Ed-

I already presented the empirical evidence for persons producing the personal, now it is your turn to produce your empirical evidence.


Wrong You made an artificial distiction between "personal" and "impersonal" and then placed an artificial barrier between them. I am under no obligation to knock down your arbitary distinctions and causational barriers. Unless you wish to define "personal" as "that which cannot come from the personal" you have no case; and if you did define it such, you would still have no case, because you'd be employing circular reasoning.

Because morality cannot come from amorality.

Once again, more artificial, arbitrary definitions, distinctions, and walls, with no reason behind them.

What's wrong? You don't know who you are? Is what makes you you, vague and mysterious?


:rolleyes: No, your defining personal in such a obfuscated and shallow way is "vague and mysterious." You really think including "what makes you you" in the definition of "personal" is a logical argument against the "personal arising from the impersonal?"

It is what we are doing right now. Communicating with propositions.

What, using Internet message boards is propostitional communication? Be specific, get off your crutch of obfuscationism and see if you can still wlak on those theistic legs.

You are still erroneously assuming that an effect is a mirror image of its cause. See above.

Above: "For example, an early scientist determining the cause of rain might notice that rain falls whenever clouds are over head. So he may deduce that clouds are the cause of rain and that the clouds are made up of water or have what it takes to make water. "

Besides the fact that the whole argument is a vague, poorly constructed analogy, and thus explains nothing, this is the problem:

You made the following analogy: "The First Cause is to the Universe as a stormcloud is to rain." Thus, if we can infer that rain is made of some of the substance of the cloud, we can infer that the First Cause is made of some of the substace of the Universe (hydrogen and helium) by your own analogy.

Your earlier argument about scientists making inferences from the effects and thus discussing the probabilities of the cause having certain properties fails because science is a tool used to explain observations made about the Universe. The logical processes of science may not work outside the Universe, where your "trancendant" First Cause supposedly exists.

Further, your later argument that the First Cause must be omnipotent eliminates any possible discussion of what properties it must or will probably have, since it can do anything. An omnipotent "unity" of a first cause can create anything, supposedly, even a "diversity within a unity." So which one are you going to throw out: your argument that a "diversity-within-a-unity" Universe must have been created by a "diversity-within-a-unity" First Cause, or that the First Cause must be omnipotent? It's one or the other, bud.

Just stating that they don't doesn't make it so. You have to demonstrate it.

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Take your head out of your ass for a second, and look at the previous sequence of events. My staement was a summation of my previous arguments which negate your conditional, that if your arguments hold true, then the first cause argument points to the Xian god. You have to demonstrate the validity of your arguments, which you have yet to do.

Metacrock- That's whole lot of hot air being blown about with no substance behind it. Remember, assertion is not argument. :p

[Ed]

Originally posted by SingleDad:
<strong>Ed:If it is found to be accurate in areas that can be verified then it is likely to be accurate in areas that cannot be verified by archaeology, ie spiritual truths like God's characteristics.

SD:This is simply fallacious. Were it true, we would be compelled to believe in the historical existence of Scarlett O'Hara.

Actually Gone with the Wind has some inaccuracies. But anyway, "historical" novels were not invented till the 18th century so your analogy fails, there is no evidence they existed prior to that time. The verification procedure I mentioned above is standard for historians when studying ancient documents. If the document is found to be accurate in events that can be independently verified then it is likely to be considered generally accurate in events that cannot be independently verified. Of course, since most secular historians have an anti-supernatural bias, anything supernatural is eliminated a priori.


Ed:So then you try to communicate with the God of the bible thru prayer as that book tells you to and he will confirm his existence to you thru experience.

SD:This has been disconfirmed by a great many former theists here on these boards.

Hardly, you would have to do a study on presuppositions they had when they tried to communicate with God. Your presuppositions can blind you to God's communication. Of course, by the time you do the study a natural bias sets in. All humans have a natural bias against the Christian God.


Ed:I admit that this little reasoning exercise is not the best way to learn about his characteristics, the best way is thru his communication to us, the bible.

SD:The only thing one can learn from the bible is the details of the mythology and superstitions of a pretechnological tribe of rather savage goatherds.

Actually many things taught in the scriptures are ahead of their time. One of which was that the universe had a definite beginning, this was confirmed by Big Bang theory. And many of the laws regarding cleanliness and dietary laws show some understanding of the transmission of pathogens and parasites.


[b] Ed:No, the problem is you don't see the larger picture.

SD:Neither do you. You just have to accept on faith that murder, genocide, rape, incest, and slavery are good in the "larger picture".
</strong>

Such things are not good in the larger picture, but sometimes God allows such bad things to happen in order that great good may occur later.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed- Your entire argument has been reduced to an appeal to scripture. Frankly, I find your statements that the Bible has been confirmed by archeology and science, and can therefore be trusted elsewhere, to be laughable. Unless you can esablish the authority of scripture, I am under no obligation to accept arguments from it.</strong>

Only the scriptures teach that the cause of the universe is a diversity within a unity. And this truth was discovered long before it was known that the universe was also diversity within a unity.
And though you may think it laughable, the scriptures have been shown time and again to be generally historically reliable.

[GunnerJ]

Only the scriptures teach that the cause of the universe is a diversity within a unity.

No, it does not. The doctrine of the trinity was [b]invented[/i] 400 years after (the supposed) Jesus' (supposed) death. I'd like to see relevant passages in the Bible that specifically claim that God is a "diversity within a unity."

And this truth was discovered long before it was known that the universe was also diversity within a unity.


"This truth?" You're arguing from what you are trying to prove. "This unfounded, dogmatic, mythological assertion" is more like it. Oh, and it wasn't "discovered," is was "invented;" about 400 years after the time Jesus was supposed to be living.

Further, you have yet to demonstrate that the Universe is a "diversity within a unity," as your definition of this term is so vague as to be rendered meaningless.

And though you may think it laughable, the scriptures have been shown time and again to be generally historically reliable.


:rolleyes: Yeah, just as long as we ignore most of Genesis and the Gospels, both of which have no supporting evidence, and, in many cases, run contrary to the evidence we have.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
[QB]Ed,
I don't even know why I bother. Perhaps because it's somewhat interesting to see what you can come up with...

Well thats the first nice thing you have said to me! ;)

Ed:The basis for my definition is knowing what I am, ie a person. Some animals do have some aspects of personality like a simple mind and some forms of emotions. But they do not have a full personality. Which includes a true will and a conscience, abstract thinking, and the ability to communicate propositionally and etc. The question still stands even for animals, how can the impersonal even produce the simpler aspects of the personal that animals have? The answer is, it cannot and has never been observed to be able to do so.

Dat:Knowing what you are does not give you the knowledge nor the right to begin judging other animals.

I am not sure what you mean by judge, but animal behaviorists make "judgements" about animals minds and how much they are similar or disimilar to humans all the time.

Dat:What you are describing is intelligence, which is definitely not unique to humans and is not a part of the definition of "personal". Furthermore, you have no evidence that whatever you choose to define as "personal" resides only within humans; nor can you give me any evidence or reason that suggests that the personal must somehow come from more personal beings; the fact that we are the only example of "personalism" means that any statement that you make is baseless on a lack of comparison.

Intelligence is most definitely part of the definition of person. Animals have some intelligence but most scientists agree that they can not do abstract reasoning. Everything that I have mentioned most scientists agree that animals do not have. I have already given you the evidence that only persons can produce the personal, this has been empirically observed throughout all of human history.


Ed:Cosmologists and paleontologists do it all the time when they extrapolate into prehistory, we know nothing empirically about prehistory. So we extrapolate what we observe in the present into the past. And that is what I am doing except in relation to the universe. We can extrapolate what we know about this universe into outside the universe.

Dat :p rehistory? That is an assumption that physical laws, say, work in four-dimensional space-time - a very reasonable assumption. This comes from the fact that 500 years of scientific discovery through time still shows the consistency of physical laws...and we don't have such a luxury on anything outside our Universe.

Well logic has been shown consistent throughout all of human history. So why not assume it is valid outside the universe? We should assume it is valid until proven otherwise, that is what scientists have always done.


Ed:No, all physics tells us is that at the origin of hte universe the laws of physics no longer applied, NOT the laws of logic. These are two totally different things. The very fact that we can come to the conclusion that the laws of physics no applied at the origin is by using the laws of logic. Without the laws of logic we cannot say ANYTHING about that or ANYTHING else!

Dat:Hallelujah! Yes, that was what I was trying to tell you, time and time again - we can't tell of anything beyond our Universe. Why do you think scientists have stopped their assumption in the laws of physics? Because we have no reason to believe that they work; there is no comparison to be made, no observation that makes sense, and no scraps of evidence that can be compiled and puzzled into a logical extrapolation (note that prehistory, your counter-example, does require multiple sources of data for credibility). You have been using the argument that "cosmologists do this too", but then you turn around when they stop at a well-defined point, and proceed on in contradiction to your previous reason of why we can extend these laws.

You misunderstood my post, I said the laws of physics and the laws of logic are two different things, with logic we are not constrained to this physical universe like physics. Logic like math and numbers can transcend the physical.

This is the end of part I of my response.

[ December 12, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>Well thats the first nice thing you have said to me! </strong>

Eh; forgive my rudeness, if you will. It's just so very frustrating talking time and time with you when you only know very little of the topic and usually posts very short answers.

<strong>I am not sure what you mean by judge, but animal behaviorists make "judgements" about animals minds and how much they are similar or disimilar to humans all the time. </strong>

But they are hypotheses at best, and certainly not scientific facts which can be absolute. For example, scientists discovered that cockroaches have the ability to navigate through a maze; however, that does not mean that cockroaches only have the intelligence to navigate mazes, but rather that they may possess the ability to do more interesting things.

<strong>Intelligence is most definitely part of the definition of person. Animals have some intelligence but most scientists agree that they can not do abstract reasoning. Everything that I have mentioned most scientists agree that animals do not have. I have already given you the evidence that only persons can produce the personal, this has been empirically observed throughout all of human history.</strong>

No, scientists definitely do not agree on anything of the sort - they agree that the findings so far show no indication of animal intelligence on the level of abstract thought, but that says nothing about its existence in animals. You're trying to make absolute statements on animal behavior based on very crude understanding of the minds of animals, which is dubious at best.

<strong>Well logic has been shown consistent throughout all of human history. So why not assume it is valid outside the universe? We should assume it is valid until proven otherwise, that is what scientists have always done.</strong>

Well, perhaps because "all of human history" is still within this Universe?

As for what "scientists have always done", that is a false statement, and shame on you for trying to push it as truth. Nothing is assumed to be valid without some verification; whether that be in the form of a formal proof, some mathematical proof, or deductive logical reasoning, there is always some rationale behind the extrapolation. Furthermore, as I've mentioned before, a lot of scientific findings are actually in limbo until multiple sources can verify its validity - case in point, Einstein's general relativity was detailed mathematically and logically, but it took direct observation (experiment) to solidify the idea, and even then there is still wiggle room (in the light of a contradicting Quantum Mechanical world). All in all, you cannot assume beyond what you know, and no scientist falls to that fallacy.

<strong>You misunderstood my post, I said the laws of physics and the laws of logic are two different things, with logic we are not constrained to this physical universe like physics. Logic like math and numbers can transcend the physical.</strong>

But on what basis do you make that claim? I have already explained above why this is fallacious; "physical world" has nothing to do with it (for all we know, it can be another physical Universe outside of this one). Read above for more detail on what I'm talking about, but you have to stop using this weak argument.

[GunnerJ]

Ed- Please reconcile these two statements of yours:

Everything that I have mentioned most scientists agree that animals do not have. I have already given you the evidence that only persons can produce the personal, this has been empirically observed throughout all of human history.

You are here appealing to the idea of burden of proof, a scientific principle, in saying that, since no animal has been observed to have "personality," we have no reason to believe they do. Then:

We should assume it is valid until proven otherwise, that is what scientists have always done.

Well, I guess I shouldn't expect internal consistancy from a Bible-believer, but really! :p

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Here is part II of my response.

Ed:No, even gas particles operate according to laws of physics and nature. If it were truly chaotic then it would not even do that. We just call random because we can not predict it. Also, if you are refering to chaos theory even that is not truly chaotic. It is based on algorithims which is a type of math and math is just a type of logic. And logic is not chaotic.

Dat:&lt;sighs&gt; Do you know what type of math we're talking about? It's called "probability"; a field which can only have statistical answers based on large amounts of data. It's a very well-known fact that if we isolate the data points of statistics, we will find completely random results...this is a fundamental property of the Universe, as far as we can tell. Gaseous molecules follow the general laws of physics as a whole, but I challenge you to make every single molecule follow some law; impossible. And of course, you're fully welcome to show me how "the Universe is not random", despite all the evidence for this; just be sure to actually back it up with something other than the Bible and ignorant half-assed knowledge.[/b]

So you are saying that some molecules do not obey the laws of physics, ie nature? In other words they are doing something supernatural? I thought you didnt believe in the supernatural. So occasional supernatural events occur? Hmm thats interesting...... I am afraid most physicists would disagree with you. I think that they would say all gas molecules obey the laws of physics. Now of course they cannot predict exactly where and how every gas molecule will move(maybe that is the randomness you are referring to), but they never violate the laws of physics and therefore are not truly chaotic or totally random. BTW there is no need for the crude personal attack.

Ed:No, my point is based on the opposite of irrationality, ie it is based on fundamental laws of logic. Trying to say that political views can create a universe is equivalent to the argument for God using the Law of Causality is the most absurd analogy I have encountered in my many years of debating atheists.

Dat:That's what I was trying to tell you - it is not based on any fundamental law of logic, only a twisted version that is merely an post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy - what in hell does God's trinity have to do with the Universe? And what other properties of God are missing in our Universe, which by that bold assumption should definitely be there? And exactly where in these "diversities" that there holds a demand for some "diverse" God? Furthermore, polytheistic religions also hold this property, with much more sense and manages not to contradict itself (three within one, but three nevertheless, except that it's really just one...boogles the mind). Indeed, this horrible explanation is about the worst I've seen or heard.

Political views are not outside the universe and could in fact be argued that they are effects and not causes, political views are not causes the people that believe them are. So they cannot be the cause of the universe. So using logic eliminates them and confirms God. Polytheistic religions are just diversities, each god is a different god so there is no unity and therefore they cannot be the cause of the universe. The correct understanding of the trinity is not a contradiction. God is three in person and one in essence(his divinity). That is not contradictory. It is similar to a husband and wife being two in person and one in their humanity.


Ed:Been there, done that. And always receive the same old boring responses. Sometimes I wish they would come up with something new. Might make it more interesting but only a beautiful woman can rock my world.

Dat:Same old boring responses? Guess what I've been receiving from you? The fact that they are indefinitely more credible, with evolutionists actually knowing the science which they're talking about (rather than your psuedo-science coupled with horrible assumptions, stretched rationalizations, and no evidence whatsoever). Whether you choose to accept them is your own business; discrediting them because you don't like their conclusions only discredits you.

I dont discredit them because I dont like their conclusions because God could have very well have used a type of evolution to create Man but the problem is with the evidence, and as a biologist, I know the evidence for evolution quite well.


[b] Ed:Fraid so, see above about the laws of logic especially the law of sufficient cause.

Dat:Then does the existence of evil mean that God is evil? Or how about the existence of non-existence, which makes God non-existant? Perhaps the existence of sin means that God is sinful as well? No - you have to show me, step by step, exactly how you came about with the logic that these unrelated coincidences of the Universe (BTW, the galaxies example is because of gravity, not God) is somehow attributed by sufficient cause to some war-God deity.
</strong>

The existence of evil and sin is the result of morally autonomous beings living in this universe. Humans are free to choose good or evil and they usually choose evil. Ask SingleDad to explain to you how non-existence does not exist. Actually stellar evolution cannot occur without pre-existing stars. And how did gravity have just the right amount of pull to produce galaxies?

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>
So you are saying that some molecules do not obey the laws of physics, ie nature? In other words they are doing something supernatural? I thought you didnt believe in the supernatural. So occasional supernatural events occur? Hmm thats interesting...... I am afraid most physicists would disagree with you.</strong>

Please do not put words in my mouth. I said the Universe, on the basis of each individual molecule, is random; statistics is exactly the study of that random distribution and the patterns found therein. Don't even try that strawman with me.

<strong>I think that they would say all gas molecules obey the laws of physics. Now of course they cannot predict exactly where and how every gas molecule will move(maybe that is the randomness you are referring to), but they never violate the laws of physics and therefore are not truly chaotic or totally random. BTW there is no need for the crude personal attack.</strong>

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?! I've said this more than once, and it seems to fall upon you on dead ears. Experiments have shown that while each individual particle cannot be predicted, the statistical probability of a collection of particles can be quite accurately predicted. Do you know how particle accelerators work? They smash a few atoms onto another material, then look at the resulting image composed of millions of particles, which looks pretty much the same every time, albeit the expected shifts in those very same particles which scatter and go about randomly. Do you know the premise of Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle? It states that randomness is a fundamental property of the Universe. Please wake up and smell the sweet fragrance of modern physics. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

As for the insult, as you can tell, your ignorance in the matter (that was not an ad hom attack) is visibly irritating me.

<strong>Political views are not outside the universe and could in fact be argued that they are effects and not causes, political views are not causes the people that believe them are. So they cannot be the cause of the universe. So using logic eliminates them and confirms God.</strong>

Not so fast there, buster. How do YOU know political views aren't outside the Universe? You said yourself (which I disagree with, but it's always fun to make you eat your own philosophy) that we assume that something transcends the Universe until proven otherwise. So, in fact, political views could very well exist and would exist outside the Universe.

<strong>Polytheistic religions are just diversities, each god is a different god so there is no unity and therefore they cannot be the cause of the universe. The correct understanding of the trinity is not a contradiction. God is three in person and one in essence(his divinity). That is not contradictory. It is similar to a husband and wife being two in person and one in their humanity. </strong>

What? Of course polytheistic religions are unities - they are united by the people that worship them. One only has to think about the Greek/Roman Gods to see that they were unified by familyhood anyway, so you've got problems either way.

And what of....humanity?! What you're employing is something known as "grouping similar terms". That is nothing special - we, as humans, have a natural tendency to match and group objects together when we detect similarity, and this is no different. Then again, I don't see any married couples running around sacrificing each other to themselves to save them from their self-induced wrath either. :rolleyes:

<strong>I dont discredit them because I dont like their conclusions because God could have very well have used a type of evolution to create Man but the problem is with the evidence, and as a biologist, I know the evidence for evolution quite well.</strong>

I truly doubt that claim, Ed. Much like most of your assertions, it comes as unfounded, and I can attest to the fact that you certainly do [b]not sound like a scientist at all. If you were indeed a biologist, then you would have known the historical fossil record which shows very clearly the way which prehistoric animals have evolved into modern ones. There have been a lot of study in this field, Ed ol' chap...if you don't like their conclusions because of their poor evidence, then by golly, show me why and give me your evidence. Also, start sounding like a biologist.

<strong>The existence of evil and sin is the result of morally autonomous beings living in this universe. Humans are free to choose good or evil and they usually choose evil. Ask SingleDad to explain to you how non-existence does not exist. Actually stellar evolution cannot occur without pre-existing stars. And how did gravity have just the right amount of pull to produce galaxies? </strong>

But not so. Remember your law of sufficient cause? For evil to exist, the creator must have had that property. All the acts of evil that we have seen required an evil agent, which "proves" that God is evil. (BTW, as I've said before, I do not subscribe to this)

I'll drop the non-existence, but I do not see the problem with stellar evolution (and exactly when did I bring that up anyway?), as it is very well known that certain gaseous clouds are the birthplaces of stars. And ya know, the constants for gravity are nothing special - the masses and distances are the big factors in determining the force of gravity. If gravity was twice or three times as strong/weak, all that means is that galaxies would be closer/further apart, and the restrictions for black hole formation would be accordingly changed. No biggie.

Speaking of which, I still await that step-by-step analysis.

[ December 13, 2001: Message edited by: Datheron ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: I already presented the empirical evidence for persons producing the personal, now it is your turn to produce your empirical evidence.

Rim:Wrong You made an artificial distiction between "personal" and "impersonal" and then placed an artificial barrier between them. I am under no obligation to knock down your arbitary distinctions and causational barriers. [/b]

What artificial distinction? The distinction is real, just as real as the distinction between life and non-life. You haven't demonstrated that the distinction is artificial. Please give an example of impersonal object that has a mind, will, and conscience.


Rim:Unless you wish to define "personal" as "that which cannot come from the personal" you have no case; and if you did define it such, you would still have no case, because you'd be employing circular reasoning.

Huh? I dont understand the last comment. But anyway, since that definition is not adequate to describe personal then there no rational basis for using it and since throughout all of human experience the personal has only come from persons such a definition is unfounded.


Ed: Because morality cannot come from amorality.

Rim :o nce again, more artificial, arbitrary definitions, distinctions, and walls, with no reason behind them.

Ok, give an example of morality coming from amorality or some impersonal source.


Ed: What's wrong? You don't know who you are? Is what makes you you, vague and mysterious?

Rim: No, your defining personal in such a obfuscated and shallow way is "vague and mysterious." You really think including "what makes you you" in the definition of "personal" is a logical argument against the "personal arising from the impersonal?"

No, I am just trying to help you to understand what a person is. You are a person and therefore what makes you you is also what makes a person.

Ed: It is what we are doing right now. Communicating with propositions.

Rim:What, using Internet message boards is propostitional communication? Be specific, get off your crutch of obfuscationism and see if you can still wlak on those theistic legs.

Propositional communication is communication using verbal statements either written, spoken, symbolic, typed, or etc. Now do you understand?

Ed: You are still erroneously assuming that an effect is a mirror image of its cause. See above.

Rim:Above: "For example, an early scientist determining the cause of rain might notice that rain falls whenever clouds are over head. So he may deduce that clouds are the cause of rain and that the clouds are made up of water or have what it takes to make water. "

Besides the fact that the whole argument is a vague, poorly constructed analogy, and thus explains nothing, this is the problem:

You made the following analogy: "The First Cause is to the Universe as a stormcloud is to rain." Thus, if we can infer that rain is made of some of the substance of the cloud, we can infer that the First Cause is made of some of the substace of the Universe (hydrogen and helium) by your own analogy.

Or what it takes to produce helium and hydrogen. But you are correct up to a point. But since helium and hydrogen are things that require energy and matter to exist and since energy and matter only exist in space then they are unlikely to exist outside the space-time universe, therefore it is unlikely to be part of the cause of the universe.

Ed:Your earlier argument about scientists making inferences from the effects and thus discussing the probabilities of the cause having certain properties fails because science is a tool used to explain observations made about the Universe. The logical processes of science may not work outside the Universe, where your "trancendant" First Cause supposedly exists.

Yes that is a possibility but it is rational to assume that they do. The burden of proof is on those that say we should throw out logic.

Rim:Further, your later argument that the First Cause must be omnipotent eliminates any possible discussion of what properties it must or will probably have, since it can do anything. An omnipotent "unity" of a first cause can create anything, supposedly, even a "diversity within a unity." So which one are you going to throw out: your argument that a "diversity-within-a-unity" Universe must have been created by a "diversity-within-a-unity" First Cause, or that the First Cause must be omnipotent? It's one or the other, bud.

No, the biblical teaching of omnipotence does not mean that he can do absolutely anything. He is limited by his moral character and logic. And a basic law of logic is the law of sufficient cause therefore the cause of the universe must have what it takes to produce a diversity within a unity, and only the christian God has that characteristic therefore it is rational in conjunction with his other characteristics to assume that he is the cause of the universe.


[b] Ed: Just stating that they don't doesn't make it so. You have to demonstrate it.

Rim: Take your head out of your ass for a second, and look at the previous sequence of events. My staement was a summation of my previous arguments which negate your conditional, that if your arguments hold true, then the first cause argument points to the Xian god. You have to demonstrate the validity of your arguments, which you have yet to do.
</strong>

No need for the condescending attitude. I think I have demonstrated the validity of my arguements.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: Only the scriptures teach that the cause of the universe is a diversity within a unity.

Rim:No, it does not. The doctrine of the trinity was invented[/i] 400 years after (the supposed) Jesus' (supposed) death. I'd like to see relevant passages in the Bible that specifically claim that God is a "diversity within a unity."

No, the trinity is an implied doctrine derived from the scriptures which was understood in an early form in the middle of the 1st century but was formalized in greater detail in the 4th century by the biblical scholar Athanasius. What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars. There are no verses that specifically mention diversity within a unity but that is the implied teaching of the scriptures regarding the nature of God.


Ed:And this truth was discovered long before it was known that the universe was also diversity within a unity.

Rim:"This truth?" You're arguing from what you are trying to prove. "This unfounded, dogmatic, mythological assertion" is more like it. Oh, and it wasn't "discovered," is was "invented;" about 400 years after the time Jesus was supposed to be living.

As a christian I consider it a truth about God. See above about how it was derived from scripture not invented.

Rim:Further, you have yet to demonstrate that the Universe is a "diversity within a unity," as your definition of this term is so vague as to be rendered meaningless.

What do you think the word "universe" means? The universe is made up galaxies (a unity) but there are many different types of galaxies (diversity), galaxies are made up of stars(a unity) but there are many different types of stars (diversity) and I could go all the way down to the atomic level. Now do you understand?

[b] Ed: And though you may think it laughable, the scriptures have been shown time and again to be generally historically reliable.

Rim: Yeah, just as long as we ignore most of Genesis and the Gospels, both of which have no supporting evidence, and, in many cases, run contrary to the evidence we have.
</strong>

Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth. And every year archaeologists discover evidence that confirms the accuracy of the gospels. Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And there are many other examples.

[ December 16, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:Well thats the first nice thing you have said to me!

Dat:Eh; forgive my rudeness, if you will. It's just so very frustrating talking time and time with you when you only know very little of the topic and usually posts very short answers.[/b]

You are forgiven. But unlike many people on this board I have a life outside the internet, IOW I dont have time to expound my answers for hours!
;)


Ed:I am not sure what you mean by judge, but animal behaviorists make "judgements" about animals minds and how much they are similar or disimilar to humans all the time.

Dat:But they are hypotheses at best, and certainly not scientific facts which can be absolute. For example, scientists discovered that cockroaches have the ability to navigate through a maze; however, that does not mean that cockroaches only have the intelligence to navigate mazes, but rather that they may possess the ability to do more interesting things.

It depends on what kind of maze. Some mazelike apparati are similar to what cockroaches do in nature instinctively to find food so it hardly qualifies as abstract reasoning. What do you consider "more interesting"?


Ed:Intelligence is most definitely part of the definition of person. Animals have some intelligence but most scientists agree that they can not do abstract reasoning. Everything that I have mentioned most scientists agree that animals do not have. I have already given you the evidence that only persons can produce the personal, this has been empirically observed throughout all of human history.

Dat:No, scientists definitely do not agree on anything of the sort - they agree that the findings so far show no indication of animal intelligence on the level of abstract thought, but that says nothing about its existence in animals. You're trying to make absolute statements on animal behavior based on very crude understanding of the minds of animals, which is dubious at best.

There may not be absolute proof that animals cannot reason abstractly, but all the evidence points to that fact. But even just simple animal minds existences cannot be explained adequately by resorting to mindless impersonal processes.


Ed:Well logic has been shown consistent throughout all of human history. So why not assume it is valid outside the universe? We should assume it is valid until proven otherwise, that is what scientists have always done.

Dat:Well, perhaps because "all of human history" is still within this Universe?

Just because we haven't experienced "outside" this universe doesnt mean we cannot use logic to understand it. There are many things we have not experienced and yet use logic to explain them, ie subatomic particles, prehistory, deep space, black holes and etc.

Dat:As for what "scientists have always done", that is a false statement, and shame on you for trying to push it as truth. Nothing is assumed to be valid without some verification; whether that be in the form of a formal proof, some mathematical proof, or deductive logical reasoning, there is always some rationale behind the extrapolation. Furthermore, as I've mentioned before, a lot of scientific findings are actually in limbo until multiple sources can verify its validity - case in point, Einstein's general relativity was detailed mathematically and logically, but it took direct observation (experiment) to solidify the idea, and even then there is still wiggle room (in the light of a contradicting Quantum Mechanical world). All in all, you cannot assume beyond what you know, and no scientist falls to that fallacy.

See above about things that we try to explain that cannot be truly directly observed.


[b] Ed:You misunderstood my post, I said the laws of physics and the laws of logic are two different things, with logic we are not constrained to this physical universe like physics. Logic like math and numbers can transcend the physical.

Dat:But on what basis do you make that claim? I have already explained above why this is fallacious; "physical world" has nothing to do with it (for all we know, it can be another physical Universe outside of this one). Read above for more detail on what I'm talking about, but you have to stop using this weak argument.
</strong>

Actually my wording was poor, what I should have said was they can transcend the directly observable. See above about things that cannot be directly observed and yet we use logical extrapolations to explain.

[ December 17, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>You are forgiven. But unlike many people on this board I have a life outside the internet, IOW I dont have time to expound my answers for hours!</strong>

As they say, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Being on these boards requires, some would say, a level of commitment. At the very least, you should be willing to spend the time and energy defending your viewpoint thoroughly; if you could research and cite your sources, that would be even better. But until you do, it's hard to take you seriously.

<strong>
It depends on what kind of maze. Some mazelike apparati are similar to what cockroaches do in nature instinctively to find food so it hardly qualifies as abstract reasoning. What do you consider "more interesting"?</strong>

How do you know that it is instinct, rather than intellect? The mind is complicated, and not only for humans, but for all organisms with the organ. We are very ignorant about its workings and its limits; to rule something like abstract thought away from other animals without any clue as to what animals are even thinking is absurd.

<strong>There may not be absolute proof that animals cannot reason abstractly, but all the evidence points to that fact. But even just simple animal minds existences cannot be explained adequately by resorting to mindless impersonal processes.</strong>

WHAT evidence? The truth is, we have no evidence whatsoever for or against the case - do you know what your dog thinks? Or the language that he speaks? (and I don't mean body language, either) Animal psychology is very primitive, mostly because we don't have many much knowledge on animal communication and hence animal thoughts. Your "evidence" is an argument from ignorance.

And once again, I wonder how you can go and claim that they cannot come from impersonal processes without any clue as to their structure and workings.

<strong>Just because we haven't experienced "outside" this universe doesnt mean we cannot use logic to understand it. There are many things we have not experienced and yet use logic to explain them, ie subatomic particles, prehistory, deep space, black holes and etc.</strong>

I have already explained this - the assumption is made that anything within our Universe follows the laws of physics and logic. Once again, that says nothing about the conditions outside the Universe. We can directly verify that these laws apply; that is why the assumption has remained true thus far. On the other hand, you wish to make an assumption where no verification can exist. I do not see how you can stubbornly continue to assert your case when, once again, there is no evidence either way. Your attempts to a) shift the burden of proof and b) argue from our ignorance of the matter is unflattering.

<strong>See above about things that we try to explain that cannot be truly directly observed.</strong>

Ed, they cannot be observed, period. There is no conceivable way for you to observe anything outside our Universe. There is no reason for you to believe that you can. Hence, there is no reason for me to believe that any assertion that you make on the properties outside this Universe have an ounce of truth to them.

<strong>Actually my wording was poor, what I should have said was they can transcend the directly observable. See above about things that cannot be directly observed and yet we use logical extrapolations to explain.</strong>

&lt;sighs&gt; You have a lot to learn about science, that's for sure.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed- Please reconcile these two statements of yours:

Everything that I have mentioned most scientists agree that animals do not have. I have already given you the evidence that only persons can produce the personal, this has been empirically observed throughout all of human history.

Rim:You are here appealing to the idea of burden of proof, a scientific principle, in saying that, since no animal has been observed to have "personality," we have no reason to believe they do. [/b]

Actually if you read my post more carefully you will see that what I said was that animals don't have full personality but they do have some aspects of personality.

[b] Then: "We should assume it is valid until proven otherwise, that is what scientists have always done."

Rim:Well, I guess I shouldn't expect internal consistancy from a Bible-believer, but really!

</strong>

Why are they not reconcilable? I don't see any inconsistency. We should assume that animals don't have a full personality until proven otherwise.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:So you are saying that some molecules do not obey the laws of physics, ie nature? In other words they are doing something supernatural? I thought you didnt believe in the supernatural. So occasional supernatural events occur? Hmm thats interesting...... I am afraid most physicists would disagree with you.

Dat :p lease do not put words in my mouth. I said the Universe, on the basis of each individual molecule, is random; statistics is exactly the study of that random distribution and the patterns found therein. Don't even try that strawman with me.[/b]

As I said the molecules are random but randomness within the laws of nature which provides some order, ie not pure chaos.


Ed:I think that they would say all gas molecules obey the laws of physics. Now of course they cannot predict exactly where and how every gas molecule will move(maybe that is the randomness you are referring to), but they never violate the laws of physics and therefore are not truly chaotic or totally random. BTW there is no need for the crude personal attack.

Dat :D O YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?! I've said this more than once, and it seems to fall upon you on dead ears. Experiments have shown that while each individual particle cannot be predicted, the statistical probability of a collection of particles can be quite accurately predicted. Do you know how particle accelerators work? They smash a few atoms onto another material, then look at the resulting image composed of millions of particles, which looks pretty much the same every time, albeit the expected shifts in those very same particles which scatter and go about randomly. Do you know the premise of Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle? It states that randomness is a fundamental property of the Universe. Please wake up and smell the sweet fragrance of modern physics.

Well you are talking about two different things, first you talk about molecules then you change to subatomic particles. But anyway the fact that their behavior can be predicted statistically is because they operate according to rational laws.

Ed :p olitical views are not outside the universe and could in fact be argued that they are effects and not causes, political views are not causes the people that believe them are. So they cannot be the cause of the universe. So using logic eliminates them and confirms God.

Dat:Not so fast there, buster. How do YOU know political views aren't outside the Universe? You said yourself (which I disagree with, but it's always fun to make you eat your own philosophy) that we assume that something transcends the Universe until proven otherwise. So, in fact, political views could very well exist and would exist outside the Universe.

Because there is no evidence that they are outside the universe. Huh? I never said that we assume something transcends the universe until proven otherwise. That would be absurd.


Ed :p olytheistic religions are just diversities, each god is a different god so there is no unity and therefore they cannot be the cause of the universe. The correct understanding of the trinity is not a contradiction. God is three in person and one in essence(his divinity). That is not contradictory. It is similar to a husband and wife being two in person and one in their humanity.

Dat:What? Of course polytheistic religions are unities - they are united by the people that worship them. One only has to think about the Greek/Roman Gods to see that they were unified by familyhood anyway, so you've got problems either way.

No, in order to be a diversity within a unity they would have to be united by essence. Each of the greek gods have a different essence.

Ed: And what of....humanity?! What you're employing is something known as "grouping similar terms". That is nothing special - we, as humans, have a natural tendency to match and group objects together when we detect similarity, and this is no different. Then again, I don't see any married couples running around sacrificing each other to themselves to save them from their self-induced wrath either.

Our essence is our humanity and God's essence is his divinity. Your last statement is irrelevant to this discussion.


Ed:I dont discredit them because I dont like their conclusions because God could have very well have used a type of evolution to create Man but the problem is with the evidence, and as a biologist, I know the evidence for evolution quite well.

Dat:I truly doubt that claim, Ed. Much like most of your assertions, it comes as unfounded, and I can attest to the fact that you certainly do not sound like a scientist at all. If you were indeed a biologist, then you would have known the historical fossil record which shows very clearly the way which prehistoric animals have evolved into modern ones. There have been a lot of study in this field, Ed ol' chap...if you don't like their conclusions because of their poor evidence, then by golly, show me why and give me your evidence. Also, start sounding like a biologist.

Alright I will try to sound like a biologist. The fossil record shows systematic gaps between phyla, classes, and families. And the late comer theory called punctuated equilibrium is the desperate attempt to explain those gaps.


Ed:The existence of evil and sin is the result of morally autonomous beings living in this universe. Humans are free to choose good or evil and they usually choose evil. Ask SingleDad to explain to you how non-existence does not exist. Actually stellar evolution cannot occur without pre-existing stars. And how did gravity have just the right amount of pull to produce galaxies?

Dat:But not so. Remember your law of sufficient cause? For evil to exist, the creator must have had that property. All the acts of evil that we have seen required an evil agent, which "proves" that God is evil. (BTW, as I've said before, I do not subscribe to this)

No, see my posts to Rimstalker above about the effect not being a mirror image of the cause.

[b] Dat:I'll drop the non-existence, but I do not see the problem with stellar evolution (and exactly when did I bring that up anyway?), as it is very well known that certain gaseous clouds are the birthplaces of stars. And ya know, the constants for gravity are nothing special - the masses and distances are the big factors in determining the force of gravity. If gravity was twice or three times as strong/weak, all that means is that galaxies would be closer/further apart, and the restrictions for black hole formation would be accordingly changed. No biggie.

Speaking of which, I still await that step-by-step analysis.

</strong>

You need pre-existing stars in the gaseous clouds to produce new stars. And you need stars to have galaxies. If the gravity was greater or lesser our earth's atmosphere would not support life. What step by step analysis?

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>As I said the molecules are random but randomness within the laws of nature which provides some order, ie not pure chaos.</strong>

Some order - which is fine. I am talking about the fact that randomness is a fundamental property of the Universe, which you tried to refute with a weak

"We just call random because we can not predict it."

Like I said, you've backpedalled and now arrive at a point of agreement with me; basically admitting that I am indeed correct. Thank you.

<strong>Well you are talking about two different things, first you talk about molecules then you change to subatomic particles. But anyway the fact that their behavior can be predicted statistically is because they operate according to rational laws. </strong>

Then forgive my loose language, for it was quite obvious that I meant subatomic particles, for those are what QM deals with. Also remember that statistics is never a fully accurate prediction - you must know that any statistical prediction has a probability sign posted on the figure, and for good reason. The only "law" that exists for probability and statistics is a certain range, and even that is never truly accurate; we cannot guarantee that every particle obey those laws, only that as a whole they obey.

<strong>Because there is no evidence that they are outside the universe. Huh? I never said that we assume something transcends the universe until proven otherwise. That would be absurd. </strong>

Indeed. And I quote,

"And you have not shown that it is rational to throw out the laws of logic outside the universe given that we cannot learn anything without them!"

-Ed

Need I say more?

<strong>No, in order to be a diversity within a unity they would have to be united by essence. Each of the greek gods have a different essence.</strong>

Says who? Are galaxies unified "by essence"? What of the diversity of animals, of human emotions, etc? What holds them together other than physical/designated groupings? Sheesh, such ad hoc definitions.

<strong>Our essence is our humanity and God's essence is his divinity. Your last statement is irrelevant to this discussion. </strong>

I think every statement that you have made here is quite irrelevant; they do not serve to actually answer to my queries, but add more fuel to the already blazing fire in which your argument happily dances in. The fact remains that you still have yet to show any stable, definable, or even consistent application of your "diversity within a unity" that cannot be explained by simple human psychology.

<strong>Alright I will try to sound like a biologist. The fossil record shows systematic gaps between phyla, classes, and families. And the late comer theory called punctuated equilibrium is the desperate attempt to explain those gaps. </strong>

That's a good start. Now, explain why 1) these gaps are so few in number, if evolution does not make sense and 2) why you think punctuated equilibrium is ridiculous.

<strong>No, see my posts to Rimstalker above about the effect not being a mirror image of the cause.</strong>

But what of the law of sufficient cause? God must have some tinge of evil in him to create evil; if he is not evil, then by law he cannot create evil. And if you still argue against it, then there's nothing stopping "persons" from being produced from "non-personal" means, the point brought home by your contradictory stance above.

<strong>You need pre-existing stars in the gaseous clouds to produce new stars. And you need stars to have galaxies. If the gravity was greater or lesser our earth's atmosphere would not support life. What step by step analysis? </strong>

No - you do not. If you have read up on the BB theory, you would know that the first gas clouds were formed by large masses of the first few elements of the periodic table - hydrogen and helium being the most abundant. They were, naturally, attracted into a cloud by mutual gravity, so it's definitely not miraculous in any way.

As for earth, note that earth itself is nothing special. If life didn't begin here, whoop-dee-do. It probably would have began somewhere else, and probably did begin somewhere else; nothing on this planet even comes close to suggesting that our particular location in the Universe is anything special. For more explanation, I suggest you take a quick read on the Anthropic Principle.

And finally, I was referring to the following section:

"No - you have to show me, step by step, exactly how you came about with the logic that these unrelated coincidences of the Universe (BTW, the galaxies example is because of gravity, not God) is somehow attributed by sufficient cause to some war-God deity."

Which I posted on Dec. 8.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Only the scriptures teach that the cause of the universe is a diversity within a unity.
FALSE. Ed, you need to learn more about other religions, particularly Hinduism. Everything you have posted so far supports Hinduism better than it supports Christianity.
And though you may think it laughable, the scriptures have been shown time and again to be generally historically reliable.
Yes, this is laughable. OF COURSE the authors of the Bible would have incorporated real places, and even real people, into their stories. But the Bible was wrong about the Exodus (the Jews came from Caanan, not Egypt), wrong about the names and reigns of the Persian kings, wrong about the age of the Earth and the creation sequence, and wrong about the Great Flood. Furthermore, according to historians, the Jews weren't even monotheistic until the Babylonian captivity, monotheism was imposed on them by the Zoroastrians.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless:
<strong>Ed :o nly the scriptures teach that the cause of the universe is a diversity within a unity.

JTB:FALSE. Ed, you need to learn more about other religions, particularly Hinduism. Everything you have posted so far supports Hinduism better than it supports Christianity.[/b]

No, hinduism teaches that ultimately ALL is one. In other words, differences are an illusion and therefore everything is a unity. So the Hindu god is not sufficient to produce a true diversity. Christianity teaches that differences are real and yet there is an underlying unity.

Ed:And though you may think it laughable, the scriptures have been shown time and again to be generally historically reliable.

JTB:Yes, this is laughable. OF COURSE the authors of the Bible would have incorporated real places, and even real people, into their stories. But the Bible was wrong about the Exodus (the Jews came from Caanan, not Egypt),

There were semites already living in Canaan but there is evidence that the hebrews came from Egypt.

JTB:wrong about the names and reigns of the Persian kings,

I am not sure what you are referring to.

[b] JTB:wrong about the age of the Earth and the creation sequence, and wrong about the Great Flood. [b]

Actually contrary to popular opinion the scriptures do not give the age of the earth. How do you know the creation sequence is wrong? No humans were there. What do you mean wrong about the Great Flood?

[b] JTB:Furthermore, according to historians, the Jews weren't even monotheistic until the Babylonian captivity, monotheism was imposed on them by the Zoroastrians.</strong>

Which historians? There is evidence that the jews were monotheistic from Moses on.

[Jack the Bodiless]

No, hinduism teaches that ultimately ALL is one. In other words, differences are an illusion and therefore everything is a unity. So the Hindu god is not sufficient to produce a true diversity. Christianity teaches that differences are real and yet there is an underlying unity.
Hinduism teaches a greater degree of diversity than Christianity! There are many gods (far more than the three of Christianity) with nested hirearchies (one god can be an avatar of another god who is in turn an avatar of another), with the whole lot ultimately anchored in the unity of the Brahman. There are numerous parallels between Hinduism and modern physics (try reading Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics).

The "reality is an illusion" issue is separate from the "amount of diversity" issue. But quantum physics (Schrodinger's Cat and so forth) supports the Hindu model.
There were semites already living in Canaan but there is evidence that the hebrews came from Egypt.
Such as? Most modern anthropologists no longer believe this. And DNA analysis shows that modern Jews and modern Palestinians come from the same ancestral Caananite population. For instance, it is not possible to distinguish between a European with Jewish ancestry and a European with Palestinian ancestry.
JTB:wrong about the names and reigns of the Persian kings,

I am not sure what you are referring to.
From the <a href="http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/science.html" target="_blank">Skeptic's Annotated Bible</a>:
Apparently, the author of Daniel knew of only two Babylonian kings during the period of the exile: Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, who he wrongly thought was the son of Nebuchadnezzar. But Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BCE and was succeeded by his son, Awil-Marduk (referred to in the bible as "Evilmerodach" [see 2 Kg.25:27 and Jer.52:31]). In 560 BCE, Amel-Marduk was assissinated by his brother-in-law, Nergal-shar-usur. The next and last king of Babylon was Nabonidus who reigned from 556 to 539, when Babylon was conquered by Cyrus. It was Nabonidus, and not Belshazzar, who was the last of the Babylonian kings. Belshazzar was a the son and viceroy of Nabonidus. But he was not a king, and was not the son (or any other relation) of Nebochadnezzar. (See The Neo-Babylonian Empire, Encyclopedia Britannica).

Darius the Median is a fictitious character whom the author perhaps confused with Darius I of Persia, who came to the throne in 521 BCE, 17 years after the fall of Babylon. The author of Daniel incorrecly makes him the successor of Belshazzar instead of Cyrus. (See biblical literature, Daniel, Encyclopedia Britannica)
JTB:wrong about the age of the Earth and the creation sequence, and wrong about the Great Flood.

Actually contrary to popular opinion the scriptures do not give the age of the earth. How do you know the creation sequence is wrong? No humans were there. What do you mean wrong about the Great Flood?
From the genealogies (who begat whom, and how old they were at the time), it is possible to count back from the founding of Solomon's temple to the creation of Adam, circa 4000 BC. The scriptures are certainly incompatible with the Earth's true age of 4.6 billion years or thereabouts, the creation sequence does not fit the fossil record (birds and whales come after land animals, grass comes after the demise of the dinosaurs etc).

And there are five great mass-extinctions in the fossil record, the most recent being the one that killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. There was no mass-extinction in recent history, and no trace of a worldwide flood. Many geological features (such as layers of polar ice, or layers of fine sediment in lakes) go back many thousands, even millions, of years.
JTB:Furthermore, according to historians, the Jews weren't even monotheistic until the Babylonian captivity, monotheism was imposed on them by the Zoroastrians.

Which historians? There is evidence that the jews were monotheistic from Moses on.
Again, what evidence? The Bible would have been modified (and yet it still contains references to polytheism: God is described several times in the plural, or as one god among many (the "mightiest" of the gods). The miracle-working powers of the Egyptian priests are another good indication of other gods.

I suggest you read <a href="http://www.askwhy.co.uk/awscrip/jm1/0250JGoddess.html" target="_blank">Hebrew Goddesses and the Origin of Judaism</a> for an overview of Jewish polytheism.
The truth, as scholars know but do not publicly divulge, is that the religion of the people in the Hill Country of Palestine before the Persians arrived was recognisably the same relgion as that of everyone else who lived in the Levant and its hinterland. The richer parts of the eastern Mediterrenean left plentiful archaeological remains, most famously at Ugarit, that tell us a lot about ancient Canaanite religions and their practice. The people here were called Canaanites and they worshipped a pantheon of gods and goddesses, led by the supreme god, El, and his wife, and their son, Baal Hadad.
Incidentally, "Israel" stems from "El". The Israelites are the people of El.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless:
<strong>Ed:No, hinduism teaches that ultimately ALL is one. In other words, differences are an illusion and therefore everything is a unity. So the Hindu god is not sufficient to produce a true diversity. Christianity teaches that differences are real and yet there is an underlying unity.

JTB:Hinduism teaches a greater degree of diversity than Christianity! There are many gods (far more than the three of Christianity) with nested hirearchies (one god can be an avatar of another god who is in turn an avatar of another), with the whole lot ultimately anchored in the unity of the Brahman. There are numerous parallels between Hinduism and modern physics (try reading Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics).
The "reality is an illusion" issue is separate from the "amount of diversity" issue. But quantum physics (Schrodinger's Cat and so forth) supports the Hindu model.[/b]

No, you have misunderstood. The degree of diversity is irrelevant, it is the reality of the diversity that is the problem with Hinduism. Hinduism teaches that there is only one reality(god) and individuality and diversity is an illusion, ie that we are not individual persons we are just part of god. Christianity teaches that individuality is real because our differences are real just as each of the persons of the trinity are different persons. And our common sense tells us that those differnces between us are real. So you think quantum physics proves that all is really one? How?


Ed:There were semites already living in Canaan but there is evidence that the hebrews came from Egypt.

JTB:Such as? Most modern anthropologists no longer believe this. And DNA analysis shows that modern Jews and modern Palestinians come from the same ancestral Caananite population. For instance, it is not possible to distinguish between a European with Jewish ancestry and a European with Palestinian ancestry.

I am not saying that the hebrews have Egyptian ancestry. They originally came to egypt from Canaan and basically lived in what we would call today a segregated ghetto so those findings you mention fit the scriptures.

JTB:wrong about the names and reigns of the Persian kings,
Ed:I am not sure what you are referring to.

From the Skeptic's Annotated Bible:

quote:
Apparently, the author of Daniel knew of only two Babylonian kings during the period of the exile: Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, who he wrongly thought was the son of Nebuchadnezzar.

Actually the term translated as father in the KJV can also mean ancestor but not necessarily biological ancestor more like predecessor.

JTB:But Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BCE and was succeeded by his son, Awil-Marduk (referred to in the bible as "Evilmerodach" [see 2 Kg.25:27 and Jer.52:31]). In 560 BCE, Amel-Marduk was assissinated by his brother-in-law, Nergal-shar-usur. The next and last king of Babylon was Nabonidus who reigned from 556 to 539, when Babylon was conquered by Cyrus. It was Nabonidus, and not Belshazzar, who was the last of the Babylonian kings. Belshazzar was a the son and viceroy of Nabonidus. But he was not a king, and was not the son (or any other relation) of Nebochadnezzar. (See The Neo-Babylonian Empire, Encyclopedia Britannica).

Since viceroys acted in the capacity of king they often were called "king" in ancient documents. There is evidence that Nabonidus was in Tema in North Arabia when Cyrus overthrew Babylon and Belshazzar was "acting" king during this absence.

JTB: Darius the Median is a fictitious character whom the author perhaps confused with Darius I of Persia, who came to the throne in 521 BCE, 17 years after the fall of Babylon. The author of Daniel incorrecly makes him the successor of Belshazzar instead of Cyrus. (See biblical literature, Daniel, Encyclopedia Britannica)

According to cuneiform texts Darius the Mede was probably another name for Gubaru who was appointed governor over all of Babylonia. See above how leaders are often referred to as kings even though they may not be THE king.

JTB:wrong about the age of the Earth and the creation sequence, and wrong about the Great Flood.
Ed:Actually contrary to popular opinion the scriptures do not give the age of the earth. How do you know the creation sequence is wrong? No humans were there. What do you mean wrong about the Great Flood?

JTB:From the genealogies (who begat whom, and how old they were at the time), it is possible to count back from the founding of Solomon's temple to the creation of Adam, circa 4000 BC.

The hebrew word for "begot" can also mean "became the ancestor of" so the time between the individuals could very well be indefinite.

JTB:The scriptures are certainly incompatible with the Earth's true age of 4.6 billion years or thereabouts,

Not given the above translation.

jtb:the creation sequence does not fit the fossil record (birds and whales come after land animals, grass comes after the demise of the dinosaurs etc).

You are assuming that the fossil record reflects the creation sequence, the fossil record may reflect ecological zonations. Also the hebrew term for birds and whales is not as specific as our terms are, ie it basically just means flying creatures and large sea creatures, but actually there may have also been some land creatures created on the 5th day, verse 21 says "and everything that moves". The same applies to the term "grass", the hebrew means "grasslike plants".

JTB:And there are five great mass-extinctions in the fossil record, the most recent being the one that killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. There was no mass-extinction in recent history, and no trace of a worldwide flood. Many geological features (such as layers of polar ice, or layers of fine sediment in lakes) go back many thousands, even millions, of years.

Given that the bible does not tell us when the flood occurred we dont know that it was in "recent" history. Also, many scientists believe that Mars once was totally covered by a planetary flood so why not earth? Given that the flood only lasted one year and the earth-changing powers of the large plant population on earth and the volcanic activity on the earth there may not be that much evidence for the flood left. But there are many fossil beds that do show evidence of hydraulic castastrophe.


JTB:Furthermore, according to historians, the Jews weren't even monotheistic until the Babylonian captivity, monotheism was imposed on them by the Zoroastrians.
Ed:Which historians? There is evidence that the jews were monotheistic from Moses on.

Actually you are partially right. My statement needs correction. From about the time of Solomon till the return from the Babylonian exile there were long periods when the majority of jews were polytheists. However, earlier hebrews learned from Moses that there was only one God. Read Deut. 4:28, 39.


jtb:Again, what evidence? The Bible would have been modified (and yet it still contains references to polytheism: God is described several times in the plural, or as one god among many (the "mightiest" of the gods). The miracle-working powers of the Egyptian priests are another good indication of other gods.
I suggest you read Hebrew Goddesses and the Origin of Judaism for an overview of Jewish polytheism.

Of course it contains references to polytheism, because that is what his true followers were fighting. As far as God being referred in the plural this is either a reference to his triune nature or in ancient times kings were often referenced in plural form. And God was/is King of the universe. Actually the egyptian priests were not performing a true miracle it was more of a magic trick. They may also have been getting help from demons which they may have thought were "gods".

[b] jtb:The truth, as scholars know but do not publicly divulge, is that the religion of the people in the Hill Country of Palestine before the Persians arrived was recognisably the same relgion as that of everyone else who lived in the Levant and its hinterland. The richer parts of the eastern Mediterrenean left plentiful archaeological remains, most famously at Ugarit, that tell us a lot about ancient Canaanite religions and their practice. The people here were called Canaanites and they worshipped a pantheon of gods and goddesses, led by the supreme god, El, and his wife, and their son, Baal Hadad.
Incidentally, "Israel" stems from "El". The Israelites are the people of El.</strong>

Yes, up to a point see above about after Solomon's time. But there is also archaeological evidence of followers of Yahweh. El means God and was often used to refer to Yahweh in his generic relationship to man. This is not the same El that had a wife.

[ December 21, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:You are forgiven. But unlike many people on this board I have a life outside the internet, IOW I dont have time to expound my answers for hours!

Dat:As they say, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Being on these boards requires, some would say, a level of commitment. At the very least, you should be willing to spend the time and energy defending your viewpoint thoroughly; if you could research and cite your sources, that would be even better. But until you do, it's hard to take you seriously.[/b]

I think I have defended my viewpoint throughly.


Ed:It depends on what kind of maze. Some mazelike apparati are similar to what cockroaches do in nature instinctively to find food so it hardly qualifies as abstract reasoning. What do you consider "more interesting"?

Dat:How do you know that it is instinct, rather than intellect? The mind is complicated, and not only for humans, but for all organisms with the organ. We are very ignorant about its workings and its limits; to rule something like abstract thought away from other animals without any clue as to what animals are even thinking is absurd.

Animal behaviorists learn about animal minds by studying their behaviors. More complex and original behaviors usually mean higher reasoning skills while simple behaviors and complex but repetitive behaviors usually mean less reasoning abilities and more instinctive brain activity.

Ed:There may not be absolute proof that animals cannot reason abstractly, but all the evidence points to that fact. But even just simple animal minds existences cannot be explained adequately by resorting to mindless impersonal processes.

Dat:WHAT evidence? The truth is, we have no evidence whatsoever for or against the case - do you know what your dog thinks? Or the language that he speaks? (and I don't mean body language, either) Animal psychology is very primitive, mostly because we don't have many much knowledge on animal communication and hence animal thoughts. Your "evidence" is an argument from ignorance.

See above about the study of behaviors. Actually we can sometimes determine what dogs think up to a point. Dogs do not have a true language, of course they can communicate but not linguistically. All zoologists agree on this fact.

Dat:And once again, I wonder how you can go and claim that they cannot come from impersonal processes without any clue as to their structure and workings.

Because all of human experience tells us that reasoning has never come from non-reasoning. And communication has never come from non-communication.


Ed:Just because we haven't experienced "outside" this universe doesnt mean we cannot use logic to understand it. There are many things we have not experienced and yet use logic to explain them, ie subatomic particles, prehistory, deep space, black holes and etc.

Dat:I have already explained this - the assumption is made that anything within our Universe follows the laws of physics and logic. Once again, that says nothing about the conditions outside the Universe. We can directly verify that these laws apply; that is why the assumption has remained true thus far. On the other hand, you wish to make an assumption where no verification can exist. I do not see how you can stubbornly continue to assert your case when, once again, there is no evidence either way. Your attempts to a) shift the burden of proof and b) argue from our ignorance of the matter is unflattering.

As I stated before, we cannot directly verify that the laws of physics and the laws of logic were valid in prehistory. Yet we assume they were. You have not demonstrated that because we cannot verify their validity in some situations we should therefore throw out the laws of logic. Some cosmologists have claimed to apply mathmatics(a form of logic) to make the claim that there are multiple universes outside ours. So many cosmologists would disagree with you.


Ed:See above about things that we try to explain that cannot be truly directly observed.

Dat:Ed, they cannot be observed, period. There is no conceivable way for you to observe anything outside our Universe. There is no reason for you to believe that you can. Hence, there is no reason for me to believe that any assertion that you make on the properties outside this Universe have an ounce of truth to them.

See above.

[b] Ed:Actually my wording was poor, what I should have said was they can transcend the directly observable. See above about things that cannot be directly observed and yet we use logical extrapolations to explain.

Dat:&lt;sighs&gt; You have a lot to learn about science, that's for sure. </strong>

You are the one trying to limit science, without logic science is dead. I am trying to expand science, even beyond our own universe.

[ December 22, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>I think I have defended my viewpoint throughly.</strong>

Perhaps you do think so; but I certainly do not. Shall we take a consensus, or should I use examples from the past to show why I feel the way I feel...?

<strong>Animal behaviorists learn about animal minds by studying their behaviors. More complex and original behaviors usually mean higher reasoning skills while simple behaviors and complex but repetitive behaviors usually mean less reasoning abilities and more instinctive brain activity. </strong>

True - but how do you know? What constitutes as "complex" vs. "simple"? What is the borderline between behavior that suggests reasoning skills, vs. behavior that suggests normal purely reactive behavior? Such details cannot be ignored - nor can we truly define these with any true meaning, for we are too primitive to do so. In any case, you are still arbitarily declaring intelligence to be a human-only assert, which is still unfounded.

<strong>See above about the study of behaviors. Actually we can sometimes determine what dogs think up to a point. Dogs do not have a true language, of course they can communicate but not linguistically. All zoologists agree on this fact.</strong>

Argument from authority and ignorance. Zoologists agree to the point that all we know at the moment is that dogs don't have a complex language, but that says very little about the dog. Until we can actually discover the neurons that fire to make up the dog's thoughts, we can only make somewhat informed guesses on the dog's intelligence, which is in no way conclusive of the matter.

<strong>Because all of human experience tells us that reasoning has never come from non-reasoning. And communication has never come from non-communication.</strong>

Because they are merely tautologies that do not tell us anything! As I have shown above, the instant I ask to you start defining each term as to make the tautology meaningful, you stumble, trip, and make baseless assumptions.

<strong>As I stated before, we cannot directly verify that the laws of physics and the laws of logic were valid in prehistory. Yet we assume they were. You have not demonstrated that because we cannot verify their validity in some situations we should therefore throw out the laws of logic. Some cosmologists have claimed to apply mathmatics(a form of logic) to make the claim that there are multiple universes outside ours. So many cosmologists would disagree with you.</strong>

Because we can directly test their results; I have posted this before. If the laws of logic and physics did not function as they do now, then the results that we receive from the past should be significantly different and definitely contradict all logical and physical laws today; the fact that they do not, that they comform to what we have modelled, suggests that they are consistent within our Universe. And as I have also posted many times, we cannot make this claim about anything outside our Universe! There are no results to test, no data to fit to test whether these laws were valid. Therefore, how can you say anything about it? You're still operating on an ad ignoratum throne; just because it is impossible to prove or disprove the claim, you automatically assume that you are correct. Being a scholar of Aristotlian logic, I don't have to tell you the fallacy in that.

As for the cosmologists, note that they are merely claims. They realize as much as I do that there would be no way to show that their claims would be true; they would realize that there is no answer to my query of "how do you know that mathematics operates outside our Universe?" If you do know of a few cosmologists, do ask them this question and my follow-up, and see whether they can explain this blatant unfounded assumption.

<strong>You are the one trying to limit science, without logic science is dead. I am trying to expand science, even beyond our own universe.</strong>

I am trying to retain the integrity of science and its reliance on the scientific method. Like most respectable scientists, I do not attempt to go beyond what science can measure - you will note that not many scientists will attempt to use physics to explain the meaning of life, for example. Expanding into arenas where science is invalid only gives it a bad name and cheapens its integrity; is that what you're trying to do?

[ December 22, 2001: Message edited by: Datheron ]</p>

[GunnerJ]

Ed, I don't know why I bother arguing with you, but perhaps some lurker will benefit from watching me demolish your consistantly fallicious arguements. Certainly, you lack the reasoning skills to.

No, the trinity is an implied doctrine derived from the scriptures

NO, you derive the Trinity from the scriptures and call it implied. Others do, and have, dissagreed with you. The Jehovah's Witnesses will argue that the Trinity is entirely unBiblical. Isaac Newton studied the Bible furiously and came to the conclusion that the Trinity was antithetical to Christ's teachings. What were they doing wrong? Why is it that, if your god is a "diversity within a unity" (hereafter abreviated as DinU), why was it not explicitly stated? Why did it take hundreds of years for the doctrine to be formalized by fallible, uninspired humans?

which was understood in an early form in the middle of the 1st century but was formalized in greater detail in the 4th century by the biblical scholar Athanasius.

After 400 years. It was "understood" by a few parts of the church since the first century, others dissagreed. Now, I'll admit that I don't know everything about the development of Christianity, but the fact that it took four centuries of theological debate to actually come up with the Trinity seems a bit suspicious. Your whole argument is resting on the idea of a DinU god, that Xianity supposedly represents. Why was it not explicitly stated in the Gospels, by Jesus? Wouldn't he know more about the Xian god than anyone? Why didn't he clue his followers in? Note that this is all argumentitive, due to the doubt about Jesus' actual existance...

What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars.

Bullshit. This is the hoary old argument that the Gospels have more copies than the accounts of the Gaelic wars. It's totally meaningless, for the following reasons:
-Ceaser's conquests were documented by the people he conquered
-Caeser left evidence behind on the battlefields, and in the form of Rome's actual occupation of Gaul
-The descriptions of his war do no appeal to the supernatural. And if there are any claims that Jupiter hurled lightning on the Gauls, or that Minerva or Castor and Pollux arrived on the battlefield to help Caeser out, they are taken with a grain of salt by historians.

These three things are what differentiate Caeser's campaign in Gaul from the supposed life of Jesus: Independant, first-hand accounts; physical evidence; and a lack of supernatural elements (or, the doubt of supernatural events being real.)

There are no verses that specifically mention diversity within a unity...

And that's the smoking gun. Shouldn't such a thing be of more importance?

What do you think the word "universe" means? The universe is made up galaxies (a unity) but there are many different types of galaxies (diversity), galaxies are made up of stars(a unity) but there are many different types of stars (diversity) and I could go all the way down to the atomic level. Now do you understand?



What, all the things in the unverse can be grouped into taxonomical classes, and that is what a DinU means? Are Jesus, Yhwh, and the Holy Ghost all different gods within the unified "God" class? Are you sure you want to venture down this poorly-thought-out neo-Platonic path?

Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth.

Wow. Just... wow. Where to begin?

You say Genesis teaches a definite begining to the universe? I say so do a hundred other creation myths.

You say that this is a "Truth?" I say it's a theory describing the growth of the Universe from its earliest point. I'm unsure of what scientists mean when they talk about "light cones," but I'm pretty sure that the Big Bang is described as the begining of our Universe because we have no observational way of confriming anythting outside of this Universe's dimentions, and the temporal dimention essentially began at the Big Bang. It is in no way an absolute truth that the Big Bang was the beginning, as we have no idea of what else may exist outside or before this Universe, which is what the BB is the start of. Please stop whoring the word "truth" by applying it to scientific theories.

You say Genesis is historical because it describes a starting point of this Universe? I say that's about it. Genetics, age of the Earth, sequence of life's development, the "Flood," origin of languages; Genesis is wrong on all these counts. Too bad for you.
<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="" />

Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And there are many other examples.

:rolleyes: Great. A tomb lies in Isreal, so Jesus must have risen from the dead. We're looking for historical evidence of Jesus and the miracles he performed. This pithy example of the tomb of a person described in the Gospels proving the Gospels true is just another example of why extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence.

What artificial distinction? The distinction is real,

No, it isn't. You have yet to show that (morality/personality/life) [b]cannot possibly come from (amorality/impersonality/non-life.) All you can do is sidetrack the argument by saying that this doesn't happen (a statement I disagree with, due to evolution.) Sorry, bub, but simply because something doesn't happen has does not mean that it cannot happen. THAT is how you are shifting the burden of proof, that is why your causal barrier is arbitrary and artificial.

just as real as the distinction between life and non-life.

AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Oh yeah, real good distinction there.

You haven't demonstrated that the distinction is artificial.

You haven't proven the distinction (actually, barrier) is real. I am under no obligation to disprove something that has not yet been proven, like a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal," or "life" and "non-life," or "moral" from "amoral," or "communication" from "non-communication." I see the evidence for these causal relationships and the possiblities you deny in evolution. Take any objections to this to the E&C forum. Your only proof for these barriers is "A" is different from "~A," Therefore, "A" could not arise from "~A." Pretty weak.

Huh? I dont understand the last comment.

Not surprising.

But anyway, since that definition is not adequate to describe personal then there no rational basis for using it and since throughout all of human experience the personal has only come from persons such a definition is unfounded.


::Smacks forehead:: Such a definition is the only thing that can logically validate such a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal."

Ok, give an example of morality coming from amorality or some impersonal source.

ONCE AGAIN you switch the burden of proof. It is not enough to be skeptical of such things as morality from amorality. You are trying to prove that your god exists by saying that a causal barrier between them must exist. YOU have to prove this causal barrier. You say that we've never seen such a thing happen, and that it therefore cannot. You say it cannot, I say it may, you say prove it does. Even if we don't know that it does, that doesn't prove it can't. Argument form ignorance. Got it?

Further, you are digging yourself into a hole. By saying that norality must come from morality, you are saying that God is moral. But I thought the Xian god trancended morality (i.e., is amoral), which makes it ok for him to slaughter whole civilizations and condone the mass rape of their women and rip open pregnant womens' wombs and send she-bears to maul children to death and drown all living things because he screwed up his own creation and other such nasty things...

No, I am just trying to help you to understand what a person is. You are a person and therefore what makes you you is also what makes a person.

Tautology. Please come up with a definition of personal that doesn't validate itself (i.e., one that actually means something.)

Propositional communication is communication using verbal statements either written, spoken, symbolic, typed, or etc. Now do you understand?

Indeed I do. Why must this only come from "personal" things?

Or what it takes to produce helium and hydrogen.

Ed seals his own doom... :D

But since helium and hydrogen are things that require energy and matter to exist and since energy and matter only exist in space then they are unlikely to exist outside the space-time universe, therefore it is unlikely to be part of the cause of the universe.


You follow this up with...

"The logical processes of science may not work outside the Universe, where your 'trancendant' First Cause supposedly exists."

Yes that is a possibility but it is rational to assume that they do. The burden of proof is on those that say we should throw out logic.


...outside the Universe. You betray your complete ignoracne of the concept of burden of proof by saying this, because evidence can only be observed within the Universe; the Universe is the limit of our observational ability. Please, PLEASE, don't try to lecture me on what the burden of proof means. It just makes you look more like an ass.

Further, I'd like you to reconcile this supposed "probability" of logic existing outside the universe with your statement above about hydrogen and helium are things that must exist in the Universe, therefore making it impossible for them to exist outside of the Universe. But logic is a contrivance of language, which is an invention of things in the universe. Why is it unlikely for H and He to exist outside the Universe, but likely for logic to also exist? How do you know? What authority do you have to make such pronouncements? Will you please argue by your own standards?

No, the biblical teaching of omnipotence does not mean that he can do absolutely anything. He is limited by his moral character and logic. And a basic law of logic is the law of sufficient cause therefore the cause of the universe must have what it takes to produce a diversity within a unity, and only the christian God has that characteristic therefore it is rational in conjunction with his other characteristics to assume that he is the cause of the universe.


Complete and utter bullshit. You shot yourself in the foot by saying that the first cause must simply be capable of producing the things in the universe (hydrogen and helium.) That's what the "law of suffiecient cause" means. Nothing more. There is no logical reason why a DinU universe must be caused by a DinU god. your limiting of omniscience to logically possible things is thus rendered irrelevant. Further, you have not even demonstrated that the universe is a DinU, except by appealing to vague and meaningless terms like "essence." Even if you did, there is still no logical reason why a DinU universe can't be created by a "pure unity" or a "pure diversity" or a "Diversity not united by 'essence.'" This whole line of argument is therefore nothing but a HUGE, ugly, embarrasing non-sequitir.

No need for the condescending attitude. I think I have demonstrated the validity of my arguements.


Yes. And if I "think" that I'm Gawd's gift to women, but am consistantly unable to get laid, what does that say about my opinion of myself as a ladies' man?

Your initial argument was this:

The First Cause argument can point to the Xian god for these reasons:

-The universe contains personal beings, and only personal beings can create personal beings. The Xian god is a personal being, and therefore is the first cause.

This has been shown to be a baldfaced assertion based only on the fallicious argument that because something doesn't happen, it can't. You thus set up an arbitrary, artificial causal barrier that can only be defended by perpetuating your earlier fallacy, or by employing circular reasoning. Not only that, but the status of personal God is not unique to Xianity.

-The cause must be trancendant, and the Xian god is trancendant.

This is more baseless assertion, and is particualrly weak because not only is it contradicted by the Bible, but it is in no way unique to the Xian god.

-The universe is a DinU, and that implies a DinU first cause, whih the Xian god is.

Not only is it based on a false premise, (i.e., that the Universe, and the Xian god, are DinU) it is a complete non sequitir.

This whole argument also fails to prove the other atributes of the Xian god (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevlonce, omnipresence), but simply implies them to be true because the other claims in the argument are. Even if they are true, this is total BS.

So, while you may think that you've proven the validity of your arguments, I think the lurkers can tell who the dillhole here is. :p

[lpetrich]

Ed had argued that only "personal" beings can create other such beings, and that the Universe must have had such a creator: the Christian God.

However, a Muslim can replace "Christian God" with "Allah" and have a similar argument for the existence of Allah.

Furthermore, evolutionary biology suggests an alternate origin for "personal" qualities, in analogy with the development of technology over humanity's history.

[lpetrich]

I'm amazed that the Argument from Design continues to be taken seriously at this day and age.

I invite its advocates to study some artifiicial-life software; a wide variety of patterns can emerge as a result of simple algorithms -- *without* those patterns having been designed in, as it were.

[John Paul]

BUT you can only infer that the universe had a cause because it is determined to have a beginning. Before the creation of the universe, there would be no time hence no need for a beginning. This would imply that since there was no beginning for what was before the Big Bang/ Whatever your opinion of the beginning of the universe is....would require no cause. God is infinite in and of himself, therefore cannot be "defined" by the laws of the universe and world he created. He is above all things and can do whatever he wants.

"He who maketh the game...gets to decide what rules to play by."

[GunnerJ]

The Pope himself steps into the fray! We're honored, Your Holiness. :D

BUT you can only infer that the universe had a cause because it is determined to have a beginning

Eh? Please elaborate.

. Before the creation of the universe, there would be no time hence no need for a beginning.

Prove it. I defy you to logically show that the start of the time we measure by implies that no temporal dimensions existed prior to our universe.

This would imply that since there was no beginning for what was before the Big Bang/ Whatever your opinion of the beginning of the universe is....would require no cause.

Sure, if that's true. But then again, if there's no time, there no way for any first cause to act.

God is infinite in and of himself, therefore cannot be "defined" by the laws of the universe and world he created. He is above all things and can do whatever he wants.

There by providing the theist a convienient out by special pleading whenever the concept of god is held up to logical scrutiny.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
Please give an example of impersonal object that has a mind, will, and conscience.

LP:
Depends on what "personal" is supposed to be; this could be a circular statement.

Ed: Because morality cannot come from amorality.

LP:
Check out research into the evolution of cooperation. Such cooperation does produce something like "morality". Bees in a hive don't sting each other (queens do sting rival queens, but that's the only exception), and wolves in a pack don't try to have each other for dinner. Could their behavior represent a sort of "morality"?

Also, put some liquid water into your refrigerator's freezer. Check again a day later -- it will have become ice. Now if solidness can only come from solidness, how could this have happened???

Ed:
No, the trinity is an implied doctrine derived from the scriptures which was understood in an early form in the middle of the 1st century but was formalized in greater detail in the 4th century by the biblical scholar Athanasius.

LP:
It's more of a projection onto the Bible, which explicitly states no such thing.

Ed:
What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars. ...

LP:
Horse manure. Richard Carrier has examined a closely-related event, Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon river -- and he found it to be MUCH better documented.

Also, if Jesus Christ had been as famous as the Gospels describe him as having been, then it's a miracle that no outside historian had discussed him detail. Such historians only start learning about him in detail several decades afterwards.

Ed: And though you may think it laughable, the scriptures have been shown time and again to be generally historically reliable.

LP:
And which errors does the Bible have?

Ed:
Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth.

LP:
As does every mythical-past creation story. Now can you please tell us what errors you believe Genesis to have?

Ed:
And every year archaeologists discover evidence that confirms the accuracy of the gospels. Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin.

LP:
So what? Getting background details correct says absolutely zero about the Gospels' central character. A historical novelist will always try to get background details straight; what would one say about a historical novelist who pictured Julius Caesar as directing airstrikes against the Gauls?

Also, the discovery of Troy in NW Turkey might be interpreted as confirmation of the Iliad, and therefore of the existence of the deities of Mt. Olympus. So shall we sacrifice an ox to Zeus?

Ed:
There were semites already living in Canaan but there is evidence that the hebrews came from Egypt.

LP:
What evidence? It must be from outside the Bible.

Ed:
Which historians? There is evidence that the jews were monotheistic from Moses on.

LP:
What evidence outside of the Bible? None that I know of; they had started out by worshipping several deities, with YHWH being only one of them. The idea of worshipping The Only God started only later.

[About the kings mentioned in the Book of Daniel]
Ed:
Actually the term translated as father in the KJV can also mean ancestor but not necessarily biological ancestor more like predecessor.

LP:
Convenient evasion. If one casts one's net wide enough, one can prove anything. And the same of Ed's other comments about the Book of Daniel.

Ed:
The hebrew word for "begot" can also mean "became the ancestor of" so the time between the individuals could very well be indefinite.

LP:
Yet another convenient evasion.

jtb:the creation sequence does not fit the fossil record (birds and whales come after land animals, grass comes after the demise of the dinosaurs etc).

Ed:
You are assuming that the fossil record reflects the creation sequence, the fossil record may reflect ecological zonations.

LP:
That is such a gigantic load of sauropod doo-doo that I don't know where to begin. It was well-established back when Darwin wrote his magnum opus that the Earth's rock strata are laid down in temporal sequence.

Ed:
Also the hebrew term for birds and whales is not as specific as our terms are, ie it basically just means flying creatures and large sea creatures, but actually there may have also been some land creatures created on the 5th day, verse 21 says "and everything that moves". The same applies to the term "grass", the hebrew means "grasslike plants".

LP:
Pure evasion. Day 5 is sea + air creatures and Day 6 is land creatures -- no mention of land ones in Day 5.

Ed:
Given that the bible does not tell us when the flood occurred we dont know that it was in "recent" history.

LP:
The Bible is clearly shoddily-written, then. I notice a total lack of physical evidence for a worldwide flood. There is also some strong biogeographical evidence of faunal continuity that suggests either (1) continuous habitation or (2) careful replacement after a flood.

Consider Australian marsupials. Why did all the kangaroos hop to Australia and leave none behind? Why didn't some of the wombats decide to burrow into the base of Mt. Ararat? Why didn't some of the echidnas decide that Mt. Ararat ants were good enough for them?

Or consider the edentates (armadillos, sloths, South American anteater), a distinct group of mammals that lives in the Americas. Why didn't any of the sloths decide to stay behind and much Mt. Ararat leaves? Why didn't some of the anteaters decide that Mt. Ararat ants were good enough for them?

Or consider the Afrotheria (((elephants, sea cows) hyraxes), aardvarks, golden moles, elephant shrews, tenrecs), named for the African home of seveal of them. Why didn't some of the aardvarks decide that Mt. Ararat ants were good enough for them?

However, continental drift has a natural explanation: Australia has been isolated for the last 120 million years, and South America and Africa have also been isolated for much of that time.

Ed:
Also, many scientists believe that Mars once was totally covered by a planetary flood so why not earth?

LP:
Liquid water, yes. A planet-wide flood? No positive reason to believe that that had ever happened.

Ed:
Given that the flood only lasted one year and the earth-changing powers of the large plant population on earth and the volcanic activity on the earth there may not be that much evidence for the flood left.

LP:
How very convenient [sarcasm].

Ed:
But there are many fossil beds that do show evidence of hydraulic castastrophe.

LP:
LOCAL floods, yes. And NOT some single global flood. Mars also has evidence of local floods in some places, but no convincing global flood.

Ed:
From about the time of Solomon till the return from the Babylonian exile there were long periods when the majority of jews were polytheists. However, earlier hebrews learned from Moses that there was only one God. Read Deut. 4:28, 39.

LP:
Moses may have been a semi-mythical or an entirely-mythical person; later generations then projected their laws and decrees onto him.

Ed:
As I stated before, we cannot directly verify that the laws of physics and the laws of logic were valid in prehistory.

LP:
So you prefer to manufacture convenient laws of physics and laws and logic in order to rescue the Bible, simply because you were not around back then?

[Synaesthesia]

If there is a specific point at which the universe began, it is impossible for it to have had a cause. (At least in the sense that human beings understand.)

[Albert Cipriani]

Dear Ipetrich,
You opine:

I'm amazed that the Argument from Design continues to be taken seriously at this day and age.


If by design you mean rational, then yes, I take the Argument from Design seriously. The argument could be stated thusly,
1) We infer from what we know that which we cannot know.
2) We know that the universe functions rationally (i.e. carries the fingerprint of Design).
3) Ergo, we infer that the universe came into being rationally.

The alternative to the Argument from Design is the Argument from Chaos. Either the universe was created as the result of rational processes or it was created as the result of irrational processes, that is, as a result of chaos. Since nothing is chaotic within this universe, it is illogical to infer that something chaotic could have created it. Ergo, the Argument from Design stands. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[Datheron]

John Paul,

Did this thread suddenly become a "refute the easy theist argument" thread?

<strong>BUT you can only infer that the universe had a cause because it is determined to have a beginning. Before the creation of the universe, there would be no time hence no need for a beginning. This would imply that since there was no beginning for what was before the Big Bang/ Whatever your opinion of the beginning of the universe is....would require no cause. God is infinite in and of himself, therefore cannot be "defined" by the laws of the universe and world he created. He is above all things and can do whatever he wants. </strong>

The problem here is that the actual creation of the Universe is not a part of the Universe itself, and hence requires no cause. We can show this simply: if the creation of the Universe is a part of the Universe itself (so that you can tack causality onto it), then you have successfully described a cause that is its own effect, which is invalid under the laws of logic which the Universe operates under. Hence, we conclude that the Universe cannot be its own cause, there needs not be a cause for the creation of the Universe event itself, and therefore God is not necessary.

[Synaesthesia]

Datheron,
The problem here is that the actual creation of the Universe is not a part of the Universe itself, and hence requires no cause. We can show this simply: if the creation of the Universe is a part of the Universe itself (so that you can tack causality onto it), then you have successfully described a cause that is its own effect, which is invalid under the laws of logic which the Universe operates under.

A cause that is it’s own effect violates what we think about causality, not the laws of logic. The laws of logic are constraints defined by human logicians, they are not all powerful metaphysical principles.

[Synaesthesia]

Albert wrote:
If by design you mean rational, then yes, I take the Argument from Design seriously. The argument could be stated thusly,
1) We infer from what we know that which we cannot know.
2) We know that the universe functions rationally (i.e. carries the fingerprint of Design).
3) Ergo, we infer that the universe came into being rationally.

Your inference is logically invalid.(The universe carries the “fingerprint” of design. thereofore the universe was designed.)

1)The universe carries the fingerprint functions through blind processes producing orderly systems. (Which it most certainly does!)
2)Ergo, the universe came into being without any intentionality.

This is clearly an invalid argument. I would say, however, that the existence of blind processes producing organized complexity removes the reason to postulate a highly complex intentional system.

The alternative to the Argument from Design is the Argument from Chaos. Either the universe was created as the result of rational processes or it was created as the result of irrational processes, that is, as a result of chaos. Since nothing is chaotic within this universe, it is illogical to infer that something chaotic could have created it. Ergo, the Argument from Design stands.

That is a false dichotomy. Observe:

1)Either the universe is Chaotic (Either pink is black...) or it is intentionally designed. (...or I am the President of the united states.)
2)It is not Chaotic.(Pink is not black.)
ergo
3)Therefore it is intentionally designed. (You can call me Mr. President from now on.)

The problem is that you have excluded the possibility of order without intentional design. Since we know of many systems that produce order, regularity and even functionality without intelligent intervention, this is clearly a mistake. Your argument for design operates by merely ignoring every other hypothesis but a patently incorrect one. If you acknowledged the existence of naturalism as a hypothesis, your argument would be invalid.

As an aside, what exactly do you mean when you say that nothing in the universe is chaotic? What do you mean by Chaotic?

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[Albert Cipriani]

Dear President Synaesthesia,
As Commander and Chief I respect your authority to draw a line in the sand and press your case against false dichotomies. But surely even you are not above the Law of Contradiction. How dare you reach beyond your grasp to strike down that veritable foundation to all thought?!

My formulation abides by the Law of Contradiction (Something cannot both be and not be at the same time or in the same manner.), not the renege spirit of False Dichotomy you accuse it of. Allow me to quote myself:


Either the universe was created as a result of a rational process or it was not (that is, it was created as a result of an IRrational process.)


That you can misconstrue that statement as a false dichotomy leads me to construe as a lie your statement about not inhaling.

Chaos, like zero, denotes a concept that I reject as a metaphysical impossibility. These concepts are useful (hell, I'd give my eyeteeth for a few extra zeros after my bank account balance) in the pragmatic realm but meaningless in the philosophical realm.

There can be no such thing as nothing (zero) or chaos. Chaos is just a word used to describe the arbitrary point at which our ability to know is overwhelmed by the amount of information needed to know. Nothing in a rational universe can be chaotic. Everything is predictable given enough information.

Ergo, to an omniscient God, everything is inevitable and Chaos is merely another false god we have set up before Him. Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[Datheron]

Synaesthesia,

<strong>Datheron,

A cause that is it’s own effect violates what we think about causality, not the laws of logic. The laws of logic are constraints defined by human logicians, they are not all powerful metaphysical principles.</strong>

Right; my mistake for slamming the two together, since they are so commonly used in conjunction that the former might as well be a subset of the latter.

But about the metaphysical principles; why wouldn't they be all-powerful? They are defined thus because the laws are self-sufficient and establish a valid basis, axiomically, from which all other discussion and debate is derived from. It is understood that logic operates as the ultimate standard for any argument, even those that logically argue to not use logic.

[Synaesthesia]

Either the universe was created as a result of a rational process or it was not.
Albert,

You are most certainly correct that the alternatives “Designed or not designed” are exhaustive. To argue from that premise would not constitute the fallacy of bifurcation. However, if that is the case, your argument is patently unsound. Look at these two premises:

1)Either the universe is designed or it is not designed. (A or ~A) where ~A includes C, D, E, F, G....
2)The universe is not Chaotic. (C)

3)Anything but C is true.

Nothing interesting can be inferred from them premises since non-design includes not only chaos but every single other theory possible.

Your argument makes some sense, however, we take into account that you have explicitly stated:

The alternative to the Argument from Design is the Argument from Chaos. Either the universe was created as the result of rational processes or it was created as the result of irrational processes, that is, as a result of chaos.

This is indeed a false dichotomy. You have presupposed that order cannot be the result of unintelligent processes; an assumption that is not only contradicted by observed facts but one that begs the very question at hand.

The root of your false dichotomy, I suspect, are two unstated premise that go something like this:

0)Order of any sort except for that specified by 0_ requires an intelligent designer.
0_)Order in the form of an omnipotent deity does not require any explanation.

Only with these additional (and question begging) premises does your argument make sense. Given them we can say:

0)Order of any sort except for that specified by 0_ requires an intelligent designer. (Order --&gt; God)
0_)Order in the form of an omnipotent deity does not require any explanation.
1)Either the universe is designed or it is not designed.
2)The universe is not Chaotic, it has order.
Therefore:
3)The universe is designed.

There! Without bifurcation, we have formulated a proof that God exists.


Datheron,
But about the metaphysical principles; why wouldn't they be all-powerful? They are defined thus because the laws are self-sufficient and establish a valid basis, axiomically, from which all other discussion and debate is derived from. It is understood that logic operates as the ultimate standard for any argument, even those that logically argue to not use logic.

I agree that the universe is fundamentally logical. In what sense it is logical though isn’t clear. When I say logical in this context, I mean it in a pre-theoretical sense. Many people take the notion that the universe is logical much too far. It isn’t governed by prepositional calculus, Zeno’s paradox should stand as a warning to us.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>

[Albert Cipriani]

Dear Synethesia,
It's hard enough to dialogue mano e mano. Why make it any harder by making it a trilogue between the two of us? Please, argue against my argument, not your presumptions about my argument.

You have the temerity to say:

You have presupposed that order cannot be the result of unintelligent processes...

My argument never once referenced intelligence. This injected concept is your red herring whereby you make minced meat out of a straw man argument. (How's that for a mixed metaphor!?)

The guts of your red herring flow as follows:

Non-design includes not only chaos but every single other theory possible.

All theories of the formation of this universe can be categorized as rational or non-rational. I care not one twit how many theories you wish to postulate, only that you categorize them as rational or non-rational. Why is that so hard to do? Why must you interject that a rationally functioning universe created by a rational process requires an "intelligent designer?" That's not my argument.

Since the universe functions rationally, it's illogical to give the nod to any theory of its formation that is not rational. THAT is my argument. THAT is not a false dichotomy. Deal with it.

If you can bring yourself to accept my argument for the common sense thing that it is, (Rationality Rules!) and you want to draw inferences, the inference to be drawn is not that an intelligent designer designed in rationality, but that rationality is a metaphysical property of existence, not a tool.

The inference is that to be is to be rational, that to be less than rational is to be less real and to really have less existence. The inference is a moral one that relates us to Divine Reason. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[Datheron]

Synaesthesia,

<strong>I agree that the universe is fundamentally logical. In what sense it is logical though isn’t clear. When I say logical in this context, I mean it in a pre-theoretical sense. Many people take the notion that the universe is logical much too far. It isn’t governed by prepositional calculus, Zeno’s paradox should stand as a warning to us.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</strong>

I'm not really getting what you are trying to get across here - perhaps a new thread is in order? I'm under the impression that Zeno's paradox is resolved by the converge of infinite series; more discussion can be found <a href="http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.

[Synaesthesia]

Albert,
My argument never once referenced intelligence. This injected concept is your red herring whereby you make minced meat out of a straw man argument. (How's that for a mixed metaphor!?)

Since the topic at hand is the argument from design, I must admit that I am somewhat surprised by the claim that intelligence has not been referred to. The definition of Design is “To conceive or fashion in the mind; invent: design a good excuse for not attending the conference.” Please note the reference to “mind”. In fact, I would warrant it is that meaning that Ipetrich referred to when he expressed amazement that people persisted in employing the argument from design.

I recognize now that when you said “If by design you mean rational, then yes, I take the Argument from Design seriously.” you weren’t talking about design at all. You were simply talking about order. Still, you must understand that several other points you made suggested otherwise.

You yourself drew the following conclusion based upon the premise that the universe is orderly: “Ergo, to an omniscient God, everything is inevitable and Chaos is merely another false god we have set up before Him.”

I was also responding to your claim that :

The alternative to the Argument from Design is the Argument from Chaos. Either the universe was created as the result of rational processes or it was created as the result of irrational processes, that is, as a result of chaos.

Now “The Argument from Design” is an argument for the existence of an intentional creator. An intelligent one. The suggestion is naturally that you are contrasting “design” and “chaos” which is a false dichotomy. That may not have been what you intended but that is what you said. Please be understanding of my psychic impotence. :)

Since the universe functions rationally, it's illogical to give the nod to any theory of its formation that is not rational. THAT is my argument. THAT is not a false dichotomy. Deal with it.

I certainly think that the universe is orderly. I daresay no one here disagrees.

The inference is that to be is to be rational, that to be less than rational is to be less real and to really have less existence. The inference is a moral one that relates us to Divine Reason.

How does moral inference work?


Datheron,
I'm not really getting what you are trying to get across here - perhaps a new thread is in order? I'm under the impression that Zeno's paradox is resolved by the converge of infinite series; more discussion can be found here.

My point is that Zeno’s paradox illustrates how logic does not always apply the universe in ways we expect. To take existing knowledge and bringing it to it’s “logical conclusion” can often be deceptive. For example, that we understand the world in terms of cause and effect can make confusion such as the argument from causation very natural to the unwary philosopher.

[ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>

[Datheron]

Synaesthesia,

<strong>Albert,

My point is that Zeno’s paradox illustrates how logic does not always apply the universe in ways we expect. To take existing knowledge and bringing it to it’s “logical conclusion” can often be deceptive. For example, that we understand the world in terms of cause and effect can make confusion such as the argument from causation very natural to the unwary philosopher.

[ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</strong>

So lemme get this straight via paraphrase - logic doesn't always do what we expect it does, right? In other words, logic does not always concide with common sense, correct? I fully agree if that is indeed the proposition; it is why logic is held as a Universal system, whereas "common sense" and intuition still requires subjective perception and interpretation. Nevertheless, the process is still valuable, and its conclusions cannot be questioned (given that the procedures and reasoning are uncontested as well), for as mentioned it might as well be our objective system.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:As I said the molecules are random but randomness within the laws of nature which provides some order, ie not pure chaos.

Dat:Some order - which is fine. I am talking about the fact that randomness is a fundamental property of the Universe, which you tried to refute with a weak

"We just call random because we can not predict it."

Like I said, you've backpedalled and now arrive at a point of agreement with me; basically admitting that I am indeed correct. Thank you.[/b]

Merry Christmas to all my Homeys in the II Hood! No, I stand by my statement. Molecules and subatomic particles behaviors APPEAR to be random to us because we are ignorant of all the variables and therefore we can only predict the way the majority of them will behave. That does not mean that in actuality they are random. When I said they are random I was referring to how they appear to us.


Ed:Well you are talking about two different things, first you talk about molecules then you change to subatomic particles. But anyway the fact that their behavior can be predicted statistically is because they operate according to rational laws.

Dat:Then forgive my loose language, for it was quite obvious that I meant subatomic particles, for those are what QM deals with. Also remember that statistics is never a fully accurate prediction - you must know that any statistical prediction has a probability sign posted on the figure, and for good reason. The only "law" that exists for probability and statistics is a certain range, and even that is never truly accurate; we cannot guarantee that every particle obey those laws, only that as a whole they obey.

See above why statistics is never fully accurate.


Ed:Because there is no evidence that they are outside the universe. Huh? I never said that we assume something transcends the universe until proven otherwise. That would be absurd.

Dat:Indeed. And I quote,

"And you have not shown that it is rational to throw out the LAWS OF LOGIC outside the universe given that we cannot learn anything without them!"

-Ed

Need I say more?

Please read my posts more carefully, notice I was referring to the LAWS OF LOGIC, NOT just anything.


Ed:No, in order to be a diversity within a unity they would have to be united by essence. Each of the greek gods have a different essence.

Dat:Says who? Are galaxies unified "by essence"? What of the diversity of animals, of human emotions, etc? What holds them together other than physical/designated groupings? Sheesh, such ad hoc definitions.

Says the greek mythologizers. Galaxies are unified by their structure and substance. Animals are unified by their all being contructed of cells. Human emotions are unified are unified by their all being from humans. It depends on the entity what holds them together.


Ed :o ur essence is our humanity and God's essence is his divinity. Your last statement is irrelevant to this discussion.

Dat:I think every statement that you have made here is quite irrelevant; they do not serve to actually answer to my queries, but add more fuel to the already blazing fire in which your argument happily dances in. The fact remains that you still have yet to show any stable, definable, or even consistent application of your "diversity within a unity" that cannot be explained by simple human psychology.

Without a unity within a diversity the theory of evolution would not have a leg to stand on. There would be no evidence of any type of ancestral relationships at all. I.e. if animals were not all made up of cells then you could not say they derived from an primordial one-celled organism.

Ed:Alright I will try to sound like a biologist. The fossil record shows systematic gaps between phyla, classes, and families. And the late comer theory called punctuated equilibrium is the desperate attempt to explain those gaps.

Dat:That's a good start. Now, explain why 1) these gaps are so few in number, if evolution does not make sense and 2) why you think punctuated equilibrium is ridiculous.

I don't know if I would call the gaps so few in number, there is a pretty large number of classes and families. But I don't deny that microevolution occurs the problem is with macroevolution. PE is just an ad hoc attempt to explain away lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. It basically is an attempt to make evolution unfalsifiable.


Ed:No, see my posts to Rimstalker above about the effect not being a mirror image of the cause.

Dat:But what of the law of sufficient cause? God must have some tinge of evil in him to create evil; if he is not evil, then by law he cannot create evil. And if you still argue against it, then there's nothing stopping "persons" from being produced from "non-personal" means, the point brought home by your contradictory stance above.

Initially yes you could conclude that he may have evil in him but once you investigate that the only creator that is a diversity within a unity is the christian God then you look at his communication to us and find out how evil entered the universe. Theoretically persons could be produced from impersonal forces but logically it is not possible.


Ed:You need pre-existing stars in the gaseous clouds to produce new stars. And you need stars to have galaxies. If the gravity was greater or lesser our earth's atmosphere would not support life. What step by step analysis?

Dat:No - you do not. If you have read up on the BB theory, you would know that the first gas clouds were formed by large masses of the first few elements of the periodic table - hydrogen and helium being the most abundant. They were, naturally, attracted into a cloud by mutual gravity, so it's definitely not miraculous in any way.

That is the extrapolative theory, but all the empirical observations of stars being born at present require other stars gravity interacting with gases released from supernovae.

Dat:As for earth, note that earth itself is nothing special. If life didn't begin here, whoop-dee-do. It probably would have began somewhere else, and probably did begin somewhere else; nothing on this planet even comes close to suggesting that our particular location in the Universe is anything special. For more explanation, I suggest you take a quick read on the Anthropic Principle.

Actually the AP demonstrates the very point I am trying to make!

[b] Dat:And finally, I was referring to the following section:

"No - you have to show me, step by step, exactly how you came about with the logic that these unrelated coincidences of the Universe (BTW, the galaxies example is because of gravity, not God) is somehow attributed by sufficient cause to some war-God deity."

Which I posted on Dec. 8.
</strong>

That is what I have been doing!

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>Merry Christmas to all my Homeys in the II Hood!</strong>

.......

But anyhoo, Merry Christmas indeed!

<strong>No, I stand by my statement. Molecules and subatomic particles behaviors APPEAR to be random to us because we are ignorant of all the variables and therefore we can only predict the way the majority of them will behave. That does not mean that in actuality they are random. When I said they are random I was referring to how they appear to us.</strong>

Ed, when we say that randomness is a fundamental property of the Universe, it refers to our laws, created by humans as an approximation to the nature of reality. There is no way for us to know the exact position and velocity of any particle - that cannot be changed. Hence, we cannot formulate any law to predict the quantum behavior to molecules. Is there some underlying structure to it? Perhaps - but we don't even understand the observable structures without some analogous means, so it's meaningless to speak of such a "law".

<strong>See above why statistics is never fully accurate.</strong>

I believe I already agreed to that.

<strong>Please read my posts more carefully, notice I was referring to the LAWS OF LOGIC, NOT just anything.</strong>

But you give us no reason to discern between the laws of logic, the laws of physics, or anything else for that matter. It is only by your word that the laws of logic transcend our space-time; and that, of course, is only because it makes your theory plausible. Circular argument, wouldn't you say?

<strong>Says the greek mythologizers. Galaxies are unified by their structure and substance. Animals are unified by their all being contructed of cells. Human emotions are unified are unified by their all being from humans. It depends on the entity what holds them together.</strong>

No - your designations are made are designations which hinge on a commality between the objects - animals by cells, stars by chemical components. I don't see why I can't designate the Greek Gods by that very same description - i.e. they were Greek, and thus unified. That's the problem with your argument, really; the wide range of allowed connections makes it really simple to start creating ridiculous propositions.

<strong>Without a unity within a diversity the theory of evolution would not have a leg to stand on. There would be no evidence of any type of ancestral relationships at all. I.e. if animals were not all made up of cells then you could not say they derived from an primordial one-celled organism.</strong>

That is not "diversity within a unity" - that is what is commonly known as "grouping common terms", which as I said is a well documented psychological behavior in human thought. We tend to group things together when we find something in common with them; whether such groupings are actually meaningful is unknown. I'm not challenging the prospect that many things have similar and common properties; I'm challenging your proposition that such commonality is somehow derived from a higher being with this property.

<strong>I don't know if I would call the gaps so few in number, there is a pretty large number of classes and families. But I don't deny that microevolution occurs the problem is with macroevolution. PE is just an ad hoc attempt to explain away lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. It basically is an attempt to make evolution unfalsifiable.</strong>

Not with what I read on it. A quick search on Google brought up a few articles on the subject; the main point was that it fit well with the data given, that there were periods of no evolution followed by periods of rapid evolution. I do not see how this is ad hoc; science does not work by dishing out theories and then finding data to make them right, but by finding data and formulating theories from them.

<strong>Initially yes you could conclude that he may have evil in him but once you investigate that the only creator that is a diversity within a unity is the christian God then you look at his communication to us and find out how evil entered the universe. Theoretically persons could be produced from impersonal forces but logically it is not possible.</strong>

Ah - now you're caught in a pickle. Spare all the dramatics, please - this is a logical contradiction, plain and simple. If it is not logically feasible, then it cannot be theoretically possible either. If we apply the Law of Sufficient Cause to God, we conclude that he must have some part of evil in him, no matter how much we examine him. Take away the Trinity, take away his communication, and you still have the unresolved question of where evil would come from, if God indeed created everything. See, Ed, sometimes it's not good to make tons of assertions at once, especially when they don't agree with each other.

<strong>That is the extrapolative theory, but all the empirical observations of stars being born at present require other stars gravity interacting with gases released from supernovae.</strong>

???? Obviously, the BB and the first formulation of stars did not happen in the present, so what bearing do present observations have on previous events?

<strong>Actually the AP demonstrates the very point I am trying to make!</strong>

Are you sure? The scientific AP says that the reason we are here is because if the conditions were not perfect, then there'd be no way for us to be here, therefore it is meaningless to say "what if things were different..." It's a refutation of the Fine Tuning Argument, and it goes against any notion that these were special conditions in the first place.

<strong>That is what I have been doing! </strong>

I beg to differ; you still are not clarifying w/o my explicit request, and I still see blatant assumptions/declarations without much backup to them.

[lpetrich]

Albert Cipriani:
2) We know that the universe functions rationally (i.e. carries the fingerprint of Design).

LP:
What do you mean by "rationally"?

Because it has certain regularities does not mean that it was "designed".

And if the Universe had been designed, then it has the strong appearance of design by committee.

[Albert Cipriani]

Dear Synaesthesia,
Thank you for your levelheaded response. Before we move onto moral inference, let's tie up a few loose ends about the Intelligent Designer.

I believe in God the Creator as opposed to the Intelligent Designer because intelligence and design could not be what He used to create. Indeed, nothing could be used whereby He created this universe ex nihilo. God is all that is, even till this very day.

Ergo, the stuff of creation is ultimately really Him, not Him in His essence but Him in His expression. For example, that face looking back at you in the mirror is one facet of the expression of you. What you write is another expression. How you act is another.

The difference between creatures and their Creator is that when you peal back all the onion skins that comprise the expressions of us creatures we arrive at a core of nothing. When you do the same with God, you arrive at the core essence of unadulterated Being, Yahweh God, the Triune procession that Catholic theology calls the Beatific Vision, which the Blessed perceive in heaven. That reality is the central reality from which all other realities derive.

The reason God cannot be intelligent, does not design, and knows nothing (God, let's hope I'm right about this or I'll never get out of Purgatory for having bad-mouthed Him! <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> ) is that all these things require time and require God to have attributes.

God's domain is eternal, and so He cannot do anything that requires time, for example, learn what He knows, design a universe, or be intelligent. Merely being intelligent requires time, for being intelligent is the capacity to think rationally and rational thought is sequential thought and time is sequential.

You ask,

How does moral inference work?

This is a sloppy formulation of what I think you mean to ask which is, what’s morality. It’s action that expresses what is moral; and what is moral is what is good is what is real. Ergo, moral inference is any idea that suggests morality, that is, how to act real.

For example, if matter itself acts rationally, then the fabric of reality is rational... so shouldn't we be, too? In short, the so-called argument from Intelligent Design is more properly seen as a moral argument for rationality. Being reasonable is being as the universe was designed to be and in that sense being as God is. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:I think I have defended my viewpoint throughly.

Dat :p erhaps you do think so; but I certainly do not. Shall we take a consensus, or should I use examples from the past to show why I feel the way I feel...?[/b]

Go ahead I am all ears.


Ed:Animal behaviorists learn about animal minds by studying their behaviors. More complex and original behaviors usually mean higher reasoning skills while simple behaviors and complex but repetitive behaviors usually mean less reasoning abilities and more instinctive brain activity.

Dat:True - but how do you know? What constitutes as "complex" vs. "simple"? What is the borderline between behavior that suggests reasoning skills, vs. behavior that suggests normal purely reactive behavior? Such details cannot be ignored - nor can we truly define these with any true meaning, for we are too primitive to do so. In any case, you are still arbitarily declaring intelligence to be a human-only assert, which is still unfounded.

My last animal behavior course was almost 20 years ago so I am afraid you are going to have to go to your local library. There are some excellent books that can answer your questions about animal behavior and which behaviors represent certain kinds of mental abilities. I never said that intelligence was only a human asset, I said abstract reasoning is only a human characteristic. There are some animals that are fairly intelligent but humans are a magnitude greater than even the most intelligent animals.


Ed:See above about the study of behaviors. Actually we can sometimes determine what dogs think up to a point. Dogs do not have a true language, of course they can communicate but not linguistically. All zoologists agree on this fact.

Dat:Argument from authority and ignorance. Zoologists agree to the point that all we know at the moment is that dogs don't have a complex language, but that says very little about the dog. Until we can actually discover the neurons that fire to make up the dog's thoughts, we can only make somewhat informed guesses on the dog's intelligence, which is in no way conclusive of the matter.

Given that complex language requires abstract reasoning, I think it is a rational assumption to rule out such thinking for dogs. I am not saying we know exactly what is going on a dog's head but we can safely assume that their minds are much more limited than human minds.


Ed:Because all of human experience tells us that reasoning has never come from non-reasoning. And communication has never come from non-communication.

Dat:Because they are merely tautologies that do not tell us anything! As I have shown above, the instant I ask to you start defining each term as to make the tautology meaningful, you stumble, trip, and make baseless assumptions.

They may not explain how these things occur, nevertheless they are true statements that you have not refuted. Check any dictionary for their meaning.


Ed:As I stated before, we cannot directly verify that the laws of physics and the laws of logic were valid in prehistory. Yet we assume they were. You have not demonstrated that because we cannot verify their validity in some situations we should therefore throw out the laws of logic. Some cosmologists have claimed to apply mathmatics(a form of logic) to make the claim that there are multiple universes outside ours. So many cosmologists would disagree with you.

Dat:Because we can directly test their results; I have posted this before. If the laws of logic and physics did not function as they do now, then the results that we receive from the past should be significantly different and definitely contradict all logical and physical laws today; the fact that they do not, that they comform to what we have modelled, suggests that they are consistent within our Universe.

Please explain how we can DIRECTLY test events of the past.

Dat:And as I have also posted many times, we cannot make this claim about anything outside our Universe! There are no results to test, no data to fit to test whether these laws were valid. Therefore, how can you say anything about it? You're still operating on an ad ignoratum throne; just because it is impossible to prove or disprove the claim, you automatically assume that you are correct. Being a scholar of Aristotlian logic, I don't have to tell you the fallacy in that.

Huh? We do have a result, ie the universe.

Dat:As for the cosmologists, note that they are merely claims. They realize as much as I do that there would be no way to show that their claims would be true; they would realize that there is no answer to my query of "how do you know that mathematics operates outside our Universe?" If you do know of a few cosmologists, do ask them this question and my follow-up, and see whether they can explain this blatant unfounded assumption.

They believe they are making a rational assumption(although I dont agree) but my assumption is definitely rational. The multiple universe theory has some other problems with it. But it is definitely rational to assume that all effects have causes including the universe.


[b] Ed:You are the one trying to limit science, without logic science is dead. I am trying to expand science, even beyond our own universe.

Dat:I am trying to retain the integrity of science and its reliance on the scientific method. Like most respectable scientists, I do not attempt to go beyond what science can measure - you will note that not many scientists will attempt to use physics to explain the meaning of life, for example. Expanding into arenas where science is invalid only gives it a bad name and cheapens its integrity; is that what you're trying to do?
</strong>

The problem is how do you know what the limits of science are? By arbitrarily saying that logic does not apply outside our universe could kill any knowledge we may be able to learn about what is outside our universe. You are doing what theists are accused of doing to science. How do you know that in certain arenas science is invalid?

[Datheron]

Ed,

<strong>Go ahead I am all ears.</strong>

Alright; from our discussion alone, I can tell you that you're making assumptions on the beginning of stellar evolution, the different properties of the laws of logic vs. the laws of physics (and where they would apply), the theories of quantum mechanics, and neurology. Furthermore, a lot of your answers are woefully short and inadaquete for the level of discussion; they serve as mere placeholders so that you may ignore most of the paragraph and ask for clarification on some trivial point, which you usually then respond in that mono-lineal fashion.

<strong>My last animal behavior course was almost 20 years ago so I am afraid you are going to have to go to your local library. There are some excellent books that can answer your questions about animal behavior and which behaviors represent certain kinds of mental abilities. I never said that intelligence was only a human asset, I said abstract reasoning is only a human characteristic. There are some animals that are fairly intelligent but humans are a magnitude greater than even the most intelligent animals.</strong>

I am not asking questions out of ignorance - those were meant to be rhetorical questions! I'm asking you how you come to know so much about animal thoughts when even the top zoologists do not claim such a detailed knowledge of the animal brain; you make a lot of ad ignoratum assumptions, as I have said many times, and you don't even try to respond to those accusations. Almost in every discussion, you manage to end on a completely baseless and unsupported claim, which warrants reasons on my part to disprove...this is being rather tedious and boring. So, unless you have sources to back up your outrageous assertions, I will promptly ignore them from now on.

<strong>Given that complex language requires abstract reasoning, I think it is a rational assumption to rule out such thinking for dogs. I am not saying we know exactly what is going on a dog's head but we can safely assume that their minds are much more limited than human minds.</strong>

You do not know dogs do not process abstract reasoning. You cannot prove it. You cannot safely assume anything.

<strong>They may not explain how these things occur, nevertheless they are true statements that you have not refuted. Check any dictionary for their meaning.</strong>

Exactly how am I to refute a tautology? I am refuting the idea that you are trying to make some meaning from this...that "persons must come from the personal" is obvious - that the implication that persons are the only abstract thinkers in the Universe, and that abstract thinking must come from more abstract thinking is highly debatable. The statement itself is true, but not with the definitions, meanings, and hidden implications that you have tacked onto it.

<strong>Please explain how we can DIRECTLY test events of the past.</strong>

What is a result, Ed? It's the causal aftermath of an event. Therefore, we can test for their existence in verification of their legitimacy. For example, we can test whether the Big Bang actually occurred by testing for whether the expected residual radiation exists - it does, therefore such evidence suggests that the BB did happen.

<strong>Huh? We do have a result, ie the universe.</strong>

Do you even have a clue on what we're talking about? I was telling you that it is impossible to test anything outside our Universe. "Anything outside our Universe" does not result in our Universe.

<strong>They believe they are making a rational assumption(although I dont agree) but my assumption is definitely rational. The multiple universe theory has some other problems with it. But it is definitely rational to assume that all effects have causes including the universe.</strong>

How is it rational? Reason dictates that any assumption be based on some prior evidence, some trend that we may extrapolate upon to give the assumption some sense of validity. Our Universe is a good example of how that operates - we may assume, with reason from the evidence gathered, that the laws of physics operate within its domain. By definition, we cannot gather anything from beyond the Universe; therefore, it is not rational to assume anything of it.

<strong>The problem is how do you know what the limits of science are? By arbitrarily saying that logic does not apply outside our universe could kill any knowledge we may be able to learn about what is outside our universe. You are doing what theists are accused of doing to science. How do you know that in certain arenas science is invalid? </strong>

Because we are given a solid definition of what science is!

(from <a href="http://www.dictionary.com)" target="_blank">www.dictionary.com)</a>

Science
- The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
- Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
- Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.

In regards to something beyond our Universe, science is ruled out because no observation is possible to make any assumption. There is a world of difference between attempting to discover something within the operating sphere of a given system, and blindly fitting the above system into any situation. As such, it's a very clear case here that science makes no sense beyond its established perimeter. Appealing to emotions, propter hoc and non-sequitur fallacies don't help your case any.

[Albert Cipriani]

Datheron attempts to bludgeon Ed with:

Do you even have a clue on what we're talking about? I was telling you that it is impossible to test anything outside our Universe. "Anything outside our Universe" does not result in our Universe.


Not according to the September 22 edition of Science News:

The newest twist on string theory, dubbed M theory, allows for more-complex objects: surfaces rather than just strings. These surfaces are known as membranes, or just branes...

In the ekpyrotic scenario, the fifth dimension is finite in size and bounded on either side by a three-dimensional brane. One of these boundary branes was the surface that was to become our own cosmos, and the other represents another universe... A third brane peels off the opposing boundary brane and bangs into ours. In the collision, it melds with our brane, igniting the Big Bang.


Not according to Burt A. Ovrut of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia:

The old idea was that the universe started out at some time zero and ballooned outwards in a burst of inflation. We're now proposing that ‘time zero’ was just a marker, that the universe really existed long before that.


But according to our resident wannabe scientist Datheron, <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> "anything outside our Universe does not result in our Universe."

We're just supposed to swallow Datheron's erroneous pontifications along with his chaser that consists of a concoction of trash talk regarding Theistic arguments as "tautologies, ad ignoratum assumptions, and outrageous assertions." No Thanks, Disgusted, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed, I don't know why I bother arguing with you, but perhaps some lurker will benefit from watching me demolish your consistantly fallicious arguements. Certainly, you lack the reasoning skills to.[/b]

No need for the condescending attitude. I know you are superior just as all atheists are. ;)

Ed:No, the trinity is an implied doctrine derived from the scriptures

Rim: NO, you derive the Trinity from the scriptures and call it implied. Others do, and have, dissagreed with you. The Jehovah's Witnesses will argue that the Trinity is entirely unBiblical.

It plainly is implied and has been derived for the last 1600 years by the majority of biblical scholars that accept the authority of the scriptures. The JWs use a erroneously modified bible, ie their own made up version. Ask any biblical scholar liberal or conservative and they will tell you the JW translation is incorrect.

Rim:Isaac Newton studied the Bible furiously and came to the conclusion that the Trinity was antithetical to Christ's teachings. What were they doing wrong?

Thats because he erroneously believed that it would be impossible for God to become human, but since we don't have exhaustive knowledge of God there is no real reason it is impossible. And also Newton had a very large ego. See above about the JWs.

Rim:Why is it that, if your god is a "diversity within a unity" (hereafter abreviated as DinU), why was it not explicitly stated? Why did it take hundreds of years for the doctrine to be formalized by fallible, uninspired humans?

Actually it was already understood by most believers prior to it being formalized by Athanasius. And this became clear after he returned from his exile in Gaul. But anyway some of God's truth is revealed progressively. This has always been true even in biblical times. We don't know why He didn't explicitly teach the trinity from the beginning. He decided to reveal it to us progressively. That is what is expected if he is the real God, he doesn't do things the way we would expect him to. He can't be tamed.


Ed: which was understood in an early form in the middle of the 1st century but was formalized in greater detail in the 4th century by the biblical scholar Athanasius.

Rim:After 400 years. It was "understood" by a few parts of the church since the first century, others dissagreed. Now, I'll admit that I don't know everything about the development of Christianity, but the fact that it took four centuries of theological debate to actually come up with the Trinity seems a bit suspicious. Your whole argument is resting on the idea of a DinU god, that Xianity supposedly represents. Why was it not explicitly stated in the Gospels, by Jesus? Wouldn't he know more about the Xian god than anyone? Why didn't he clue his followers in? Note that this is all argumentitive, due to the doubt about Jesus' actual existance...

See above.


Ed: What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars.

Rim:Bullshit. This is the hoary old argument that the Gospels have more copies than the accounts of the Gaelic wars. It's totally meaningless, for the following reasons:
-Ceaser's conquests were documented by the people he conquered

Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

Rim:-Caeser left evidence behind on the battlefields, and in the form of Rome's actual occupation of Gaul

Jesus left behind followers that documented his teachings and lived according to them.

Rim:-The descriptions of his war do no appeal to the supernatural. And if there are any claims that Jupiter hurled lightning on the Gauls, or that Minerva or Castor and Pollux arrived on the battlefield to help Caeser out, they are taken with a grain of salt by historians.

Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

[b] Rim:These three things are what differentiate Caeser's campaign in Gaul from the supposed life of Jesus: Independant, first-hand accounts; physical evidence; and a lack of supernatural elements (or, the doubt of supernatural events being real.)</strong>

See above, there is similar evidence for Christ.

This is the end of Part I of my response.

[ December 26, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Synaesthesia]

Molecules and subatomic particles behaviors APPEAR to be random to us because we are ignorant of all the variables and therefore we can only predict the way the majority of them will behave. That does not mean that in actuality they are random. When I said they are random I was referring to how they appear to us.

Your statement that we can only predict the way the majority of particles behave is erroneous. We can indeed produce a very exact, well verified, statistical prediction. Any individual particle can only be predicted statistically.

Current theories suggest that there is truly an element of randomness. You have not given any suggestion indicating that your opinion is substantiated in any way. However it is possible that an underlying order will be discerned in quantum events. Keep in mind, however that the behavior of quantum events is quite unlike any other statistical phenomenon; any refinement in our explanation is likely to be as counterintuitive as the existing framework of quantum mechanics.

But I don't deny that microevolution occurs the problem is with macroevolution.

There is only one known method to prevent macroevolution resulting from microevolution over time. That is genetically verifying that each offspring has not introduced any sort of mutation. Of course, to do that would stop microevolution. If you have 1 change and you add another, 2 changes will result. If you add one change to 2 changes, 3 will result. Your parents are different from their grandparents, you are different from your parents, your children will be different from you. Genetic changes are a legacy that cannot be undone- That is, unless an event as unlikely as tornadoes going through junkyards and producing commercial airliners occurs.

PE is just an ad hoc attempt to explain away lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. It basically is an attempt to make evolution unfalsifiable.

The existence of gaps in the fossil record is not due to evolution. There is not even enough room on surface of the earth to hold all the remains of all the animals that have lived. For the vast majority, their remains decompose, are consumed or otherwise destroyed before they can even fossilize. A very tiny number of creatures in the right circumstances will be fossilized, but you must understand that this is a rare process. Not only do we not know all stages of each species' developmental process, we haven’t found the remains of the vast majority of species that lived. We are fortunate, however, that some were so common, despite the spars

Now there seems to be some misconception regarding Punctuated Equilibrium. It is is not an explanation for the fact that not every single species that ever lived has not been fossilized. It is a theory that has been developed to account for specific trends in the (geological) longevity of various intermediate species. A site with a fossils 10,000 or so apart is a very rich find. That may not seem like many samples but keep in mind that in the 60,000,000 years since the dinosaurs, 10,000 years has passed 6,000 times.

Even with a very low resolution monster with many dysfunctional pixels, you can begin to extrapolate curves and shapes, change and equilibrium. Similarly the fossil record, although our conception of it is still developing, gives us a very good idea of the time scale of life’s evolution and the course it took.

My last animal behavior course was almost 20 years ago so I am afraid you are going to have to go to your local library. There are some excellent books that can answer your questions about animal behavior and which behaviors represent certain kinds of mental abilities.

Animal behavior goes past the movement of their limbs and face. I read an interesting passage from Chomsky paraphrased by Day Hauser:

“Here is this very little insect, tiny little brain, simple nervous system, that is capable of transmitting information about where it's been and what it's eaten to a colony and that information is sufficiently precise that the colony members can go find the food. We know that that kind of information is encoded in the signal because people in Denmark have created a robotic honey bee that you can plop in the middle of a colony, programmed to dance in a certain way, and the hive members will actually follow the information precisely to that location. Researchers have been able to understand the information processing system to this level, and consequently, can actually transmit it through the robot to other members of the hive. When you step back and say, what do we know about how the brain of a honeybee represents that information, the answer is: we know nothing.” (my emphasis

Human beings are not the only creatures capable of abstract reasoning in the sense of analogous thinking. That is integral in the development of visual perception in monkeys and is likely the genetic ancestor of some reasoning and perceptual facilities in humans. We are certainly the most abstract, and most recursive of animals. Our toolbox of heuristics and the size of our memory is what differentiates us. Analogies between animal brains and human brains are pervasive however, there is no sacred skill totally unique to human beings save our propensity towards incredibly destructive delusions.

[Synaesthesia]

The reason God cannot be intelligent, does not design, and knows nothing (God, let's hope I'm right about this or I'll never get out of Purgatory for having bad-mouthed Him! ) is that all these things require time and require God to have attributes.

Good luck with your God. Let’s hope either you’re right about the doctrine or you’re wrong about the temperament of his expression. :)

Merely being intelligent requires time, for being intelligent is the capacity to think rationally and rational thought is sequential thought and time is sequential.

I don’t think that temporal non-linearity is necessarily incompatible with intelligence. It’s not an important point at any rate. Thanks for clarifying where you’re coming from, it really does help focus the discussion.

This is a sloppy formulation of what I think you mean to ask which is, what’s morality. It’s action that expresses what is moral; and what is moral is what is good is what is real. Ergo, moral inference is any idea that suggests morality, that is, how to act real.

Any idea that gives that conclusion (I’m not sure I even understand your conclusion) is moral inference then? Seems like an explosively paradoxical method of inference if I understand you aright.

[Albert Cipriani]

Dear Synaethesia,
Most people think that only logical inferences can be drawn. But there is such thing, no pun intended, of metaphysical inferences. For example:

Plastic is a man-made material. So I may logically infer that I will find more of it where man is or was, not where man has not been (e.g., in cities rather than in deep dark jungles, bottom of the ocean, or Mars).

Plastic is made from petroleum. So I may metaphysically infer that it would share the nature of petroleum and therefore burn. Conversely, glass is made from sand. So I may metaphysically infer that it would share the nature of sand and therefore not burn.

You question what a moral inference is. It can derive from logic or metaphysics. For example:

If it is wrong to unjustly kill a man, I can logically infer that unjustly injuring a man is also morally wrong since killing is but a species of causing injury.

If the nature of nature is rational, I can metaphysically infer that acting irrationally is morally wrong and a crime against nature or the Natural Law. If warp and weave of reality is rationality I can metaphysically infer that acting irrationally makes me less real of a person. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Here is part II of my response.

Ed:There are no verses that specifically mention diversity within a unity...

Rim:And that's the smoking gun. Shouldn't such a thing be of more importance?[/b]

See my comment in part I.


Ed: What do you think the word "universe" means? The universe is made up galaxies (a unity) but there are many different types of galaxies (diversity), galaxies are made up of stars(a unity) but there are many different types of stars (diversity) and I could go all the way down to the atomic level. Now do you understand?


Rim:What, all the things in the unverse can be grouped into taxonomical classes, and that is what a DinU means? Are Jesus, Yhwh, and the Holy Ghost all different gods within the unified "God" class? Are you sure you want to venture down this poorly-thought-out neo-Platonic path?

No, not classes, essences.


Ed: Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth.

Rim:Wow. Just... wow. Where to begin?
You say Genesis teaches a definite begining to the universe? I say so do a hundred other creation myths.

No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum.

Rim:You say that this is a "Truth?" I say it's a theory describing the growth of the Universe from its earliest point. I'm unsure of what scientists mean when they talk about "light cones," but I'm pretty sure that the Big Bang is described as the begining of our Universe because we have no observational way of confriming anythting outside of this Universe's dimentions, and the temporal dimention essentially began at the Big Bang. It is in no way an absolute truth that the Big Bang was the beginning, as we have no idea of what else may exist outside or before this Universe, which is what the BB is the start of. Please stop whoring the word "truth" by applying it to scientific theories.

Well maybe I should have said that most of the evidence points in that direction.

Rim:You say Genesis is historical because it describes a starting point of this Universe? I say that's about it. Genetics, age of the Earth, sequence of life's development, the "Flood," origin of languages; Genesis is wrong on all these counts. Too bad for you.

The scriptures never mention genetics so how could they be wrong? As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth. See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood. Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.


Ed: Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And there are many other examples.

Rim: Great. A tomb lies in Isreal, so Jesus must have risen from the dead. We're looking for historical evidence of Jesus and the miracles he performed. This pithy example of the tomb of a person described in the Gospels proving the Gospels true is just another example of why extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence.

I didn't say it proves it but is just a piece of the larger puzzle. There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles.

Ed: What artificial distinction? The distinction is real,

Rim:No, it isn't. You have yet to show that (morality/personality/life) cannot possibly come from (amorality/impersonality/non-life.) All you can do is sidetrack the argument by saying that this doesn't happen (a statement I disagree with, due to evolution.) Sorry, bub, but simply because something doesn't happen has does not mean that it cannot happen. THAT is how you are shifting the burden of proof, that is why your causal barrier is arbitrary and artificial.

Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists. Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago. It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point.


Ed: just as real as the distinction between life and non-life.

Rim:AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Oh yeah, real good distinction there.

See above.

Ed: You haven't demonstrated that the distinction is artificial.

Rim:You haven't proven the distinction (actually, barrier) is real. I am under no obligation to disprove something that has not yet been proven, like a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal," or "life" and "non-life," or "moral" from "amoral," or "communication" from "non-communication." I see the evidence for these causal relationships and the possiblities you deny in evolution. Take any objections to this to the E&C forum. Your only proof for these barriers is "A" is different from "~A," Therefore, "A" could not arise from "~A." Pretty weak.

The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative. No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life or the impersonal developing into the personal.

Ed: But anyway, since that definition is not adequate to describe personal then there no rational basis for using it and since throughout all of human experience the personal has only come from persons such a definition is unfounded.

Rim: ::Smacks forehead:: Such a definition is the only thing that can logically validate such a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal."

Why?

[quote]Ed: Ok, give an example of morality coming from amorality or some impersonal source.

Rim :o NCE AGAIN you switch the burden of proof. It is not enough to be skeptical of such things as morality from amorality. You are trying to prove that your god exists by saying that a causal barrier between them must exist. YOU have to prove this causal barrier. You say that we've never seen such a thing happen, and that it therefore cannot. You say it cannot, I say it may, you say prove it does. Even if we don't know that it does, that doesn't prove it can't. Argument form ignorance. Got it?

I am not saying that it PROVES that such a thing is not possible only that it demonstrates that such a belief is not as rational as a personal cause.

[quote]Rim:Further, you are digging yourself into a hole. By saying that norality must come from morality, you are saying that God is moral. But I thought the Xian god trancended morality (i.e., is amoral), which makes it ok for him to slaughter whole civilizations and condone the mass rape of their women and rip open pregnant womens' wombs and send she-bears to maul children to death and drown all living things because he screwed up his own creation and other such nasty things...

No, morality comes from God's objective moral character. All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.

Ed: No, I am just trying to help you to understand what a person is. You are a person and therefore what makes you you is also what makes a person.

Rim:Tautology. Please come up with a definition of personal that doesn't validate itself (i.e., one that actually means something.)

How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology?

Ed: Propositional communication is communication using verbal statements either written, spoken, symbolic, typed, or etc. Now do you understand?

Rim:Indeed I do. Why must this only come from "personal" things?

Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed. I am not saying they MUST come from such things but that that is the most rational assumption.

Ed: But since helium and hydrogen are things that require energy and matter to exist and since energy and matter only exist in space then they are unlikely to exist outside the space-time universe, therefore it is unlikely to be part of the cause of the universe.

Rim:You follow this up with...

"The logical processes of science may not work outside the Universe, where your 'trancendant' First Cause supposedly exists."
Ed:Yes that is a possibility but it is rational to assume that they do. The burden of proof is on those that say we should throw out logic.

Rim:...outside the Universe. You betray your complete ignoracne of the concept of burden of proof by saying this, because evidence can only be observed within the Universe; the Universe is the limit of our observational ability. Please, PLEASE, don't try to lecture me on what the burden of proof means. It just makes you look more like an ass.

Yes evidence can only be observed in this universe but scientists make assumptions all the time about things that cannot be observed, ie the past.

Rim:Further, I'd like you to reconcile this supposed "probability" of logic existing outside the universe with your statement above about hydrogen and helium are things that must exist in the Universe, therefore making it impossible for them to exist outside of the Universe. But logic is a contrivance of language, which is an invention of things in the universe. Why is it unlikely for H and He to exist outside the Universe, but likely for logic to also exist? How do you know? What authority do you have to make such pronouncements? Will you please argue by your own standards?

Laws of Logic are non-physical entities therefore they do not require a time-space continuum to exist.

Ed: No, the biblical teaching of omnipotence does not mean that he can do absolutely anything. He is limited by his moral character and logic. And a basic law of logic is the law of sufficient cause therefore the cause of the universe must have what it takes to produce a diversity within a unity, and only the christian God has that characteristic therefore it is rational in conjunction with his other characteristics to assume that he is the cause of the universe.

Rim:Complete and utter bullshit. You shot yourself in the foot by saying that the first cause must simply be capable of producing the things in the universe (hydrogen and helium.) That's what the "law of suffiecient cause" means. Nothing more. There is no logical reason why a DinU universe must be caused by a DinU god. your limiting of omniscience to logically possible things is thus rendered irrelevant. Further, you have not even demonstrated that the universe is a DinU, except by appealing to vague and meaningless terms like "essence." Even if you did, there is still no logical reason why a DinU universe can't be created by a "pure unity" or a "pure diversity" or a "Diversity not united by 'essence.'" This whole line of argument is therefore nothing but a HUGE, ugly, embarrasing non-sequitir.

I didnt say that the cause must only be able to produce helium and hydrogen, helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings. Therefore the cause must also be sufficient to produce those things also. Theoretically a pure unity could produce a diversity within a unity but it is not as rational an assumption than that the cause is also a diversity within a unity.


Ed: No need for the condescending attitude. I think I have demonstrated the validity of my arguements.

Rim:Yes. And if I "think" that I'm Gawd's gift to women, but am consistantly unable to get laid, what does that say about my opinion of myself as a ladies' man?

Your initial argument was this:

The First Cause argument can point to the Xian god for these reasons:

-The universe contains personal beings, and only personal beings can create personal beings. The Xian god is a personal being, and therefore is the first cause.

This has been shown to be a baldfaced assertion based only on the fallicious argument that because something doesn't happen, it can't. You thus set up an arbitrary, artificial causal barrier that can only be defended by perpetuating your earlier fallacy, or by employing circular reasoning. Not only that, but the status of personal God is not unique to Xianity.

-The cause must be trancendant, and the Xian god is trancendant.

This is more baseless assertion, and is particualrly weak because not only is it contradicted by the Bible, but it is in no way unique to the Xian god.

How is it contradicted in the bible? The bible teaches the transcendence of God. I never said it was unique to christianity but with the additional evidence, it points to the christian God.

[b] Rim: -The universe is a DinU, and that implies a DinU first cause, whih the Xian god is.

Not only is it based on a false premise, (i.e., that the Universe, and the Xian god, are DinU) it is a complete non sequitir.

This whole argument also fails to prove the other atributes of the Xian god (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevlonce, omnipresence), but simply implies them to be true because the other claims in the argument are. Even if they are true, this is total BS.

So, while you may think that you've proven the validity of your arguments, I think the lurkers can tell who the dillhole here is.
:p </strong>

His attributes are learned from his communication to us ie the bible. Since only the bible teaches that the cause of the universe is diversity within a unity. I dont think you have demonstrated your assertions. BTW, What is a dillhole? Is it the same as an a--hole? Either way such ad hominem attacks are a sign of very superficial thinking.

[ December 27, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[lpetrich]

Ed: What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars.

Rim:Bullshit. This is the hoary old argument that the Gospels have more copies than the accounts of the Gaelic wars. It's totally meaningless, for the following reasons:
-Ceaser's conquests were documented by the people he conquered

Ed:
Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

LP:
Only secondhand and some decades after he had lived -- unlike the case of Julius Caesar, where a book purportedly written by him has survived. Now did Jesus Christ ever write any books? Nobody's ever claimed to have found any book purportedly written by him.

Up-close documentation of Jesus Christ by his enemies would probably look like the only account of self-styled prophet Alexander of Abonutichus that survives; this document was written by skeptic Lucian of Samosata (an Internet Infidel centuries ahead of his time), and it makes A of A seem like a total charlatan -- like L. Ron Hubbard or Sai Baba.

Ed:
Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

LP:
So does Ed take seriously the accounts of divine intervention in the Iliad and the Odyssey?

Rim: These three things are what differentiate Caeser's campaign in Gaul from the supposed life of Jesus: Independant, first-hand accounts; physical evidence; and a lack of supernatural elements (or, the doubt of supernatural events being real.)

Ed:
See above, there is similar evidence for Christ.

LP:
"Evidence" that simply does not exist, as many apologists indirectly concede by failing to point out such evidence? There is no account outside of the Gospels of someone who claims to have met Jesus Christ in person; Lucian of Samosata had claimed such an acquaintance with A of A, and there is archeological evidence of a cult that A of A had founded.

Ed: Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth.

LP:
A "definite beginning" that may not have happened -- we don't know enough about quantum gravity to come to a definite conclusion about that. So while speculations like the ekpyrotic Universe may be fun, I'm not willing to endorse them.

Rim:Wow. Just... wow. Where to begin?
You say Genesis teaches a definite begining to the universe? I say so do a hundred other creation myths.

Ed:
No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum.

LP:
However, the Bible does not state that there was no previous space-time continuum; it can be interpreted as God placing the heavens and the earth into empty space-time. In fact, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, had taught that God had not created anything out of nothing, but had instead given form to formless matter.

Rim:You say Genesis is historical because it describes a starting point of this Universe? I say that's about it. Genetics, age of the Earth, sequence of life's development, the "Flood," origin of languages; Genesis is wrong on all these counts. Too bad for you.

Ed:
The scriptures never mention genetics so how could they be wrong?

LP:
There is a story of someone in Genesis making some solid-color cattle give birth to spotted and striped cattle by showing them sticks with striped painted on.

Ed:
As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth.

Ed:
See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood. Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

Ed: Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And there are many other examples.

LP:
Does the existence of Troy in NW Turkey imply the existence of the Greek Gods?

As has been pointed out, historical-fiction writers like to get their background details straight, and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate had been background details of the Gospels.

Ed:
There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles.

LP:
WHAT??? There is no primary source for them independent of his followers. I mean someone like Lucian of Samosata, who had clearly not been one of A of A's followers.

Ed:
Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists.

LP:
Vitalism is an old theory that has failed a variety of experimental tests; the difference is a matter of organization, and I will concede that there is a big jump from prebiotic-chemistry experiments and even the simplest of primary-producer bacteria, those not dependent on complicated organic compounds.

Ed:
Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago.

LP:
No, he didn't. He simply found no evidence of it happening under certain carefully-controlled conditions.

Ed:
It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point.

LP:
What are "personal" and "impersonal"?

Rim: ... a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal," or "life" and "non-life," or "moral" from "amoral," or "communication" from "non-communication." ...

Ed:
The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative. No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life or the impersonal developing into the personal.

LP:
So there is some special "life substance" that living things have and nonliving things don't? If such a substance exists, then it would likely have been isolated by now. Imagine some microbiologists disassembling Escherichia coli bacteria in their test tubes and sorting out a "life substance" with their ultracentrifuges and chromatographs and their other analytic tools. However, there is not a shred of evidence for such a substance; you get an Escherichia coli bacterium by assembling nonliving molecules in a certain very complicated fashion.

Ed: Ok, give an example of morality coming from amorality or some impersonal source.

Rim ONCE AGAIN you switch the burden of proof. ...

LP:
Evolution of social behavior has been the subject of an abundance of research; this may be described as the evolution of morality, since social animals are generally not indiscriminately wicked toward each other. Bees in a hive don't try to sting each other, except in certain special cases, and wolves don't try to have each other for dinner.

Rim:Further, you are digging yourself into a hole. By saying that norality must come from morality, you are saying that God is moral. But I thought the Xian god trancended morality (i.e., is amoral), which makes it ok for him to slaughter whole civilizations and condone the mass rape of their women and rip open pregnant womens' wombs and send she-bears to maul children to death and drown all living things because he screwed up his own creation and other such nasty things...

Ed:
No, morality comes from God's objective moral character. All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.

LP:
As opposed to reforming those supposedly wicked people; it makes no sense to allow something to happen and then to complain about it happening.

Ed:
How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology?

LP:
So what you are claiming is that mind cannot come from non-mind? In a way, it does, since fertilized egg cells show little evidence of having minds.

Ed: Propositional communication is communication using verbal statements either written, spoken, symbolic, typed, or etc. Now do you understand?

Rim:Indeed I do. Why must this only come from "personal" things?

Ed:
Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed. I am not saying they MUST come from such things but that that is the most rational assumption.

LP:
However, how much direct experience do we have?

Ed: But since helium and hydrogen are things that require energy and matter to exist and since energy and matter only exist in space then they are unlikely to exist outside the space-time universe, therefore it is unlikely to be part of the cause of the universe.

LP:
So what? Hydrogen and helium had been formed in the Big Bang from free nucleons and electrons.

Ed:
I didnt say that the cause must only be able to produce helium and hydrogen, helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings.

LP:
So there must also be some special "life substance" and some special "mind substance"? There is zero evidence for either, and plausible ways in which life can come from nonlife and mind from nonmind.

[GunnerJ]

(Hey, LP, muscling in on my turf, are you? :D )

Well, (Mr.) Ed, in appears that, rather than getting answers straight from the horse's mouth, I'm getting them from the other end! Let's see how I shovel this manure you call an argument:

No need for the condescending attitude.

Oh, no need, indeed, no mater how much it is deserved.

It plainly is implied and has been derived for the last 1600 years by the majority of biblical scholars that accept the authority of the scriptures.

Baldfaced assertion backed up by triple arguments ad populum, ad actoritam and ad famam. (For the Latin impared, that's three appeals, to popularity, to authority, and to tradition, respectively).

JWs use a erroneously modified bible, ie their own made up version.

On what authority to do state that their version is wrong?

Ask any biblical scholar liberal or conservative and they will tell you the JW translation is incorrect.


Oh, I see, more appeals to authority. Can't say I'm surprised.

Thats because he erroneously believed that it would be impossible for God to become human,

Again, on what authority do you state that his beliefs are erroneous? There were traditions in the early church that disputed the "fully god/fully man" theology. Why were they wrong?

but since we don't have exhaustive knowledge of God there is no real reason it is impossible.

Non sequitir.

And also Newton had a very large ego.

Yeah, I guess that solves it. The arogant are always wrong! Scientists, chuck those laws of gravitation and motion out the window, they were the product of an arrogant mind! (Gasp, horror!) Lets hope this is the last argument ad hominem, eh?

Actually it was already understood by most believers prior to it being formalized by Athanasius.

Most? Proof, please. Why not all, if it's such a fundemental property of God?

But anyway some of God's truth is revealed progressively. This has always been true even in biblical times. We don't know why He didn't explicitly teach the trinity from the beginning. He decided to reveal it to us progressively. That is what is expected if he is the real God, he doesn't do things the way we would expect him to. He can't be tamed.


Oh. here we go with this schtick again.

You see, folks, the uber-caste of cult member called an "apologist" knows that the Scriptures are flawed, erroneous, contradictory, and show the signs of tampering to fit the needs of society. Therefore, he must formulate an absurd god-concept that involves their god lying (and let's face it, people, failing to tell an important part of the truth is a lie of omission) to them about the fundemental nature of things, and "miraculously" "revealing" to them all the parts of their current theology piecewise, with a little being added on over time, almost like the work of finate, fallible humans changing the theology around over time to suit their current needs. But it's not, the cult apologist assures us, it's god's "progressive revelation," indistinguishable from a flawed work of humans minds in a developing culture, all done for some "divine purpose" which is also witheld from us. He then finishes it up with a statement like, "you are to (dumb/weak/immoral) to question god, so just accept it!" sometimes veiled in friendlier forms, like, "That is what is expected if he is the real God, he doesn't do things the way we would expect him to. He can't be tamed."

You see, the cult member's mind is riddled with a plauge called "cognitive dissonence," where he must constantly juggle many diametrically opposed facts in his mind, sometimes errecting complex argumentative machinery called "apologetics" to justify them, and sometimes, simply killing people they dissagree with so no one questions their absurd thought paterns. What we see here today is the first variety, much safer than the second, but also infinately more annoying.

Luckily, we have no need of such ridiculous looking mental gymnastics. We have a handy-dandy tool called Occam's Razor. This tool allows us to cut away all the unnessisay, overly-complex and meaningless elements in an explaination and cut right to the simplist explaination that fits the evidence. For example, on the subject of why the Trinity isn't very strongly stressed in the Bible, not at all in the Old Testament, and only by vague, questionable inferrence from the New, we have two explainations:

1) The Bible is the work of fallible humans who adapt older theology to support their current one.
2) God really wrote the whole Bible, but he "progressively" revealed himelf in it, omitting important facts in the begining and implying them towards the end, for a mysterious divine purpose, which we are too dumb to be let in on.

For comaprison, let's add a third:

3) Aliens are playing a sick practical joke on humanity by giving us false and missleading scriptures, just to see what happens.

Now, let me unsheath my razor and see what I can do. The Third one, while amusing, assumes alien contact for which there is no evidence, and thus introduces unnessisary complexity. The Second... well, where to begin! First, it assumes an unproven god, then it assumes a mysterious purpose, two entities we know nothing about. Quite complex for such a simple problem! Now, on to the First. If we shave off all the fat and gristle around explainations Two and Three, we're left with something like number one. Let's look at it. We do see a flawed Bible, and it's an historical fact that religions and "sacred" texts do get twisted to serve the purpose of those in power. We know about all the elements in it! Pass!

That will be all for today's demonstration, call now to place your order for this unique, sanity-saving device! Sorry, no C.O.D.s!

Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

What, in the Talmud? That was written even later than the Gospels! Caeser has people in his own lifetime who opposed him chronicling his actions. I heard an analogy about the Xian religion, it went something like this: If you were told that a Civil War soldier was killed in battle, but miraculously rose from the dead, and the only proof you were given was a set of conflicting religious tracts written in the 1930's, you'd be insane to believe this. After Ed's reply, we can add proof to this claim of a Civil War ressurection: a rebuttle tract written in the 80s!

Jesus left behind followers that documented his teachings and lived according to them.

No, sir, his "followers" composed, decades after the supposed life of Jesus, a set of conflicting biographies. This is nowhere near the caliber of proof for Caeser's Gaulic campaign; as LP noted, Caeser at least wrote something himself.

Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

I suppose you think the Oddysey is an historical account? Let us pray to Oddyseus, the slayer of the Cyclops!(Great minds think alike, LP!)

No, not classes, essences.

Substituting a meaningless term for one with meaning is not going to help your case.

No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum.



LOL! The ignorance is maddening! You have a lot to learn.

BTW, you say most of the other religious traditions teach a eternal universe? Then you have no argument, because unless you can show that ALL other religious traditions besides the Judeo-Christian have an enternal universe, then your religious cosmology is not unique. Plus, you'd have to deal with LP's insightful analysis that the Bible may not teach a definate beginning. This is not so much a problem for reality as it is for standard Xian theology.

Well maybe I should have said that most of the evidence points in that direction.

And you'd be wrong; all the evidence points to the Big Bang being the limit of our historical analysis of the universe; it makes no definative statements about what came "before." (Barring the speculations of String Theory, whcih, while interesting, are somewhat tenuous.)

The scriptures never mention genetics so how could they be wrong?

They also say "Love thy neighbor" so how could they be wrong?, Well, tons of ways, since being partially correct doesn't validate the whole. LP's example of the Bible's advice on how to breed striped cows is one example of how it could be wrong. I'd like to see some relevant passages in the Bible to genetics.

As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth.

Unless you're willing to postulate day-age creation with two-billion-year-long days, it sure as hell (ahem :eek: ) rules out a 15 billion year old universe.

See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood.

Please direct me to it.

Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

Notice the little weasle word: "diversify." So vague it could support almost anything, from an evolutionary paradign of language origin to the "special creations" of languages taught in the Bible. It's well know that students of language development think that all languages developed from a "common ancestor," less frequently heard is the idea that all the modern languages were developed as a punishment for building a tower, which, despite your vague whitewashing, is what the Scripture teaches. Unless you're a "micro-evolutionist" when it comes to language. :rolleyes: I have half a mind to write Mr. Choamsky about how his ideas are being misrepresented here.

I didn't say it proves it but is just a piece of the larger puzzle. There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles.



PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists.

Another dual set of arguments ad populum and ad actoritam. Erroneous ones, in this case, as this statement is a flat-out lie. Look into virology, to see what I mean. The distinction is nowhere near as fine as you present it. For a more clear demonstration, define "life" for us. You can't draw distinctions without definitions. Many definitions of life are flawed as either to exclusive or to broad, and all are arbitrary and parochial. Here's an interesting article: <a href="http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a971212.html" target="_blank">Is fire alive? What is Life?</a>

Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago.

Point please? And please count LP's commentary on this as my own.

It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point.


It is not a point at all, as this "irrationality" is unproven. If it is theoretically possible, then that strikes your causal/developmental barrier down. You have no point, no argument, to stand on.

The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative.

Elaborate please.

No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life

Yes, that's what abiogenesis is for. Not evolution. Try to get your terms straight, it makes you look slightly less like an ass.

or the impersonal developing into the personal.

But your distinction between "personal" and "impersonal" seems fundamentally flawed. You have agreed yourself that certain animals have aspects of the peronality. It seems, then, that the delineation between "personal" and "impersonal" is scalar, not binary. This is exactly what we'd expect from an evolutionary development of "personal" aspects.

I am not saying that it PROVES that such a thing is not possible

THEN YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT. Everything else is a distraction. You need to prove your causal/developmental barrier before I have to knock it down.

only that it demonstrates that such a belief is not as rational as a personal cause.

You're free to say that, even though it's completely false.

No, morality comes from God's objective moral character.

So god is beyond morals? Right, he's amoral. But how can that be? Morality doesn't come from amorality, right?

All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.

It's this type of half-assed thinking that cultism germinates. Even the babies ripped from their mothers' wombs? They rebeled against god? Every pregnant woman was in open revolt against god? Every woman taken by Hebrew soldiers as personal playthings after their families were slaughtered was a god-hater? Those little kids joking about the prophet's bald head were in such revolt against god that they deserved to be mauled to death by bears? And all the animals and plants destroyed in the flood? They, too, were part of the revolution? Such horseshit. There are simple, humane solutions to these problems well within the grasp of an omnipotent being. But, then again, that's what we'd expect from an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being, and as you said, god's full of surprises. Your god chose to be a cruel, heartless motherfucker. What a pisser, that god it! He had me fooled. Please, please stop thinking with your ass, if you can't avoid talking out of it.

How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology?

Stop avoiding the issue. You defined personal as what makes me a person. If you can't see that that's a tautology, then I can't help you.

Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed.

See LP.

I am not saying they MUST come from such things

And until you do, and start backing it up, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT.

Yes evidence can only be observed in this universe but scientists make assumptions all the time about things that cannot be observed, ie the past.

Bullshit! Inferences made about the past are beased on evidence from the past! Do a little brainwork before you type things up on the screen, ok?

Laws of Logic are non-physical entities therefore they do not require a time-space continuum to exist.

[b]Incorrect[/i] Laws of Logic are linguistic conventions based on our need to define and convey abstract thoughts.

I didnt say that the cause must only be able to produce helium and hydrogen,

RED HERRING. Neither did I. Please carefully re-read my post. H and He were examples.

helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings. Therefore the cause must also be sufficient to produce those things also.

More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Theoretically a pure unity could produce a diversity within a unity

Then, once again, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER.

but it is not as rational an assumption than that the cause is also a diversity within a unity.


Bullshit! By this logic it would be irrational to assume that I can make a UBB post because it doesn't have my properties (6'4", brown hair, brown eyes, composed of moslty water and some carbon and hydrogen). Can you please pull that head of yours out from between your asscheecks at try using some logic? I'm not (just) making fun of you, I am trying to pull you out of this illogical circle you're trying to goad me into running.

How is it contradicted in the bible? The bible teaches the transcendence of God.

The various reference to god as a "heavenly father." The word heaven meant in ancient times the sky. God, appearently, lived in the upper atmosphere. High-altitude test flights seem unimpeeded by this. Various passages talk about God having a face, and at one point in the Bible, God instructs someone not to look at his face, but his "backside" where it's safer. I've also seen some advice in the Bible for armies on campaign: Take a shovel with you to cover up your latrine, as God is walking with you, and he doesn't like the smell. Moses's escape from the Pharoh was assisted by God blowing his nose to part the Red Sea. Hardly qualities of a trancendant god.

I never said it was unique to christianity but with the additional evidence, it points to the christian God.


No, it really doesn't, just to a personal, DinU, trancendant god. This could be the Xian god, but it could be others we have no knowledge of. And since your "additional evidence" is absurd, you are still without a case.

His attributes are learned from his communication to us ie the bible.

Haven't we been down this road before? Stop this ad nauseum argumentation and come up with some facts. That is, if you actually have another strategy besides endlessly repeating flawed arguments.

Since only the bible teaches that the cause of the universe is diversity within a unity

More arguing from an unproven premise.

I dont think you have demonstrated your assertions.

Quite talking to yourself, kid, it's YOU have have to prove yours. And again, your opinion is irrelevant.

BTW, What is a dillhole? Is it the same as an a--hole?

No.

Either way such ad hominem attacks

Hey, at least I'm not arguing from them. :p

are a sign of very superficial thinking.


Actually, most of your posts on this thread are a good example of that. Unless you can pull yourself from the mire of logical fallacy you sling mud from, you shouldn't expect anything more than mild condescension and deserved scorn.

[lpetrich]

Rimstalker:
(Hey, LP, muscling in on my turf, are you?)

LP:
I'm flattered.

Ed:
[The Trinity] It plainly is implied and has been derived for the last 1600 years by the majority of biblical scholars that accept the authority of the scriptures.

Rim:
Baldfaced assertion ...

LP:
Even worse: this was something decided by various official Church Councils, and there would be some nasty squabbles over such things as whether the Father and the Son have the same essence (homoousia) or similar essences (homoiousia).

Ed:
JWs use a erroneously modified bible, ie their own made up version.

Rim:
On what authority to do state that their version is wrong?

LP:
More likely, they have their own interpretations.

Ed:
Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

Rim:
What, in the Talmud? That was written even later than the Gospels! Caeser has people in his own lifetime who opposed him chronicling his actions. ...

LP:
The Talmud states that Jesus Christ's father had been a Roman soldier named Panthera (Pantera, Pandira); does Ed believe that? This story may have been invented to explain away the virgin-birth story as a coverup of JC's true paternity; the putative father's name is a pun on the Greek word for virgin (parthenos).

Ed:
Jesus left behind followers that documented his teachings and lived according to them.

Rim:
No, sir, his "followers" composed, decades after the supposed life of Jesus, a set of conflicting biographies. This is nowhere near the caliber of proof for Caeser's Gaulic campaign; as LP noted, Caeser at least wrote something himself.

LP:
Biographies that might better be described as hagiographies, something like Parson Weems's biography of George Washington, which had contained the first mention of him and the cherry tree and similar stories. Furthermore, there is abundant evidence of plagiarism (Mark and "Q" -&gt; Matthew and Luke), and some implausibilities involved in the Crucifixion story. In that story, Pontius Pilate is described as weak-willed, contrary to more sober historians' picture of him as tough and ruthless. It's almost as if the Gospel writers wanted to get JC subjected to a Roman style of punishment, crucifixion (the Jews preferred stoning), while letting the Roman authorities off the hook and blaming the Jews.

Ed:
Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

Rim:
I suppose you think the Oddysey is an historical account? Let us pray to Oddyseus, the slayer of the Cyclops!(Great minds think alike, LP!)

LP:
Actually, he didn't kill Polyphemus, that Cyclops who had captured him and his men; he poked Polyphemus's single eye out, and sneaked out of Polyphemus's cave by hanging beneath the belly of one of Polyphemus's livestock. Translations and plot summaries of Homer's Odyssey are readily available online; consult your favorite search engine.

There is some interesting "historical" support -- the trunk hole of an elephant skull looks something like the socket for a single eye, so stories about one-eyed giants may have been invented to account for those skulls.

Ed:
Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

LP:
Noam Chomsky claimed no such thing; he claimed that human languages have a shared "deep structure".

Rim:
Notice the little weasle word: "diversify." So vague it could support almost anything, from an evolutionary paradign of language origin to the "special creations" of languages taught in the Bible. It's well know that students of language development think that all languages developed from a "common ancestor," ...

LP:
Actually, that's something that the more reputable linguists prefer to avoid speculating about, at least in public. However, it's certainly possible that our species's original population had had some single language; according to Punctuated Equilibrium, evolution happens in bursts in small populations, and our ancestral population would likely have been small enough to have a single language. It is worth noting that spoken language is a human universal -- there is no full-scale society that lacks it, and some parts of our brains are adapted for working with language. Which suggests that language is as old as our species.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>Ed had argued that only "personal" beings can create other such beings, and that the Universe must have had such a creator: the Christian God.

However, a Muslim can replace "Christian God" with "Allah" and have a similar argument for the existence of Allah.

Furthermore, evolutionary biology suggests an alternate origin for "personal" qualities, in analogy with the development of technology over humanity's history.</strong>

Hello lp. No, Allah is a pure unity so he is unlikely to be the cause of the universe. I am not referring to the process that produced persons but rather the ultimate cause.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>I'm amazed that the Argument from Design continues to be taken seriously at this day and age.

I invite its advocates to study some artifiicial-life software; a wide variety of patterns can emerge as a result of simple algorithms -- *without* those patterns having been designed in, as it were.</strong>

Yes, but the type of software betrays its purpose. This software's purpose is to develop artificial life, there was no such purpose in the actual origin of life according to the evolutionary scenario. Also, algorithms are inadequate to produce specified complexity which is what DNA has.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
[QB]Ed:
Please give an example of impersonal object that has a mind, will, and conscience.

LP:
Depends on what "personal" is supposed to be; this could be a circular statement.[/b]

Personal is not SUPPOSED to be anything, it is what it is.

Ed: Because morality cannot come from amorality.

LP:
Check out research into the evolution of cooperation. Such cooperation does produce something like "morality". Bees in a hive don't sting each other (queens do sting rival queens, but that's the only exception), and wolves in a pack don't try to have each other for dinner. Could their behavior represent a sort of "morality"?

No, these behaviors are instinctive there was no decision made. Bees don't decide whether to sting or not to sting each other. Wolves don't decide whether to eat each other. Morality requires free agency.

lp:Also, put some liquid water into your refrigerator's freezer. Check again a day later -- it will have become ice. Now if solidness can only come from solidness, how could this have happened???

No, the cause of ice is water and low temperatures, that is what it takes to cause solidness of water. So the law of sufficient cause is not violated by your example.

Ed:No, the trinity is an implied doctrine derived from the scriptures which was understood in an early form in the middle of the 1st century but was formalized in greater detail in the 4th century by the biblical scholar Athanasius.

LP:
It's more of a projection onto the Bible, which explicitly states no such thing.

No, it is not a projection and it is not explicitly stated but it IS explictly taught that God the father is God, and that Jesus is God, and that the Holy spirit is God and is a person. Therefore the trinity was derived from these explicit teachings.

This is the end of part I of my response.

[lpetrich]

Originally posted by Ed:
<strong>

Hello lp. No, Allah is a pure unity so he is unlikely to be the cause of the universe. I am not referring to the process that produced persons but rather the ultimate cause.</strong>

How is Allah supposed to be pure unity?

[lpetrich]

Originally posted by Ed:
<strong>

[me on artificial-life software...]

Yes, but the type of software betrays its purpose. This software's purpose is to develop artificial life, there was no such purpose in the actual origin of life according to the evolutionary scenario. Also, algorithms are inadequate to produce specified complexity which is what DNA has.</strong>

However, such software uses very simple algorithms to produce very complicated-looking behavior. But increased complexity is something that cannot happen without intelligent-design intervention, right? Yet it happens without such intervention? All the programmers do is create a set of "laws of nature", as it were.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
Personal is not SUPPOSED to be anything, it is what it is.

LP: Doesn't really say anything.

Ed: Because morality cannot come from amorality.

LP:
Check out research into the evolution of cooperation. Such cooperation does produce something like "morality". Bees in a hive don't sting each other (queens do sting rival queens, but that's the only exception), and wolves in a pack don't try to have each other for dinner. Could their behavior represent a sort of "morality"?

No, these behaviors are instinctive there was no decision made. Bees don't decide whether to sting or not to sting each other. Wolves don't decide whether to eat each other. Morality requires free agency.

LP:
How does one identify "free agency"? Furthermore, these are examples of what are commonly considered morality; I doubt that Ed likes to stick his friends with poisoned spears or tries to have them for dinner.

lp:Also, put some liquid water into your refrigerator's freezer. Check again a day later -- it will have become ice. Now if solidness can only come from solidness, how could this have happened???

Ed:
No, the cause of ice is water and low temperatures, that is what it takes to cause solidness of water. So the law of sufficient cause is not violated by your example.

LP:
I still don't see how there is supposed to be a "law of sufficient cause". From your statements, it seemed to state that if an entity has property P, then it can only be produced by other entities with property P. But we have here the solidity of ice, which was nowhere evident in liquid water or its lowering temperature.

[Synaesthesia]

Yes, but the type of software betrays its purpose. This software's purpose is to develop artificial life, there was no such purpose in the actual origin of life according to the evolutionary scenario. Also, algorithms are inadequate to produce specified complexity which is what DNA has.

The development of DNA requires no more than differential selection and random mutation. The reason you postulate “specified complexity”(and I suspect you don’t know what it even means) is based soely upon your personal conviction. Please, don’t make me have to explain that conviction itself does not constitute evidence.

You have obviously missed both the point and nature of artificial life on computers. Of course they were developed to produce digital life forms, that does not mean that intentionality is required for life, in fact it demonstrates the opposite. It shows that there is no magical ingredient required. As Daniel Dennett points out, the truly brilliant thing about computers is that there is nothing up thier sleves. No hidden tricks, no magic, no soul, just plain old fashioned push-pull causation.

Artificial life shows conclusively that simple agorithmic processes such as differential selection can produce and optimize organized complexity. Certainly the programmers provide an environment in which differential reproductive success can occur but that condition exists in nature. You know, I have difficulty wrapping my mind around why people still try to defend vitalism even when it comes to computer simulations of life.

[GunnerJ]

LP:
Biographies that might better be described as hagiographies

Ah! There was the word I was looking for.

LP:
Actually, he didn't kill Polyphemus, that Cyclops who had captured him and his men;

Yes, I know, but brevity is the soul of wit. "Slayer of the Cyclops" sounds better than "Eye-Gouger of the Cyclops," right?

There is some interesting "historical" support

Oh, sure, the Cyclops could have been an etiological construct, but again, we don't have to accept their interpretation. That was the point: just because some parts are historical, we have no need to accept the whole thing.

Actually, that's something that the more reputable linguists prefer to avoid speculating about, at least in public

Huh. Well, that's something I didn't know. I did a small amount of research into language history, and the sources I read from all supported the root language theory.

[lpetrich]

LP earlier:
Actually, he didn't kill Polyphemus, that Cyclops who had captured him and his men;

Rim:
Yes, I know, but brevity is the soul of wit. "Slayer of the Cyclops" sounds better than "Eye-Gouger of the Cyclops," right?

LP:
"Odysseus, Defeater of the Cyclops"

LP earlier:
There is some interesting "historical" support

Rim:
Oh, sure, the Cyclops could have been an etiological construct, but again, we don't have to accept their interpretation. That was the point: just because some parts are historical, we have no need to accept the whole thing.

LP:
Exactly. Consider some of the "evidence" offered for the literal historicity of the Gospels -- all the people and places those documents mention.

And here's another interesting historical curiosity in the Odyssey: the land of the Laestrygonians -- it is a long bay with steep cliffs around it with days that are nearly 24 hours long. This looks a lot like a Scandinavian fjord in the summertime, the most likely time for visits.

[The original human language:]
LP:
Actually, that's something that the more reputable linguists prefer to avoid speculating about, at least in public

Rim:
Huh. Well, that's something I didn't know. I did a small amount of research into language history, and the sources I read from all supported the root language theory.

LP:
Be careful. There are two questions: did such a language exist, and can any of such a language be reconstructed? The first one will be considered much more likely than the second.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
[QB]Ed:
What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars. ...

LP:
Horse manure. Richard Carrier has examined a closely-related event, Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon river -- and he found it to be MUCH better documented.

Also, if Jesus Christ had been as famous as the Gospels describe him as having been, then it's a miracle that no outside historian had discussed him detail. Such historians only start learning about him in detail several decades afterwards.[/b]

Famous? The gospels hardly describe him as famous outside of a tiny province on the fringe of the Roman Empire and even there he was hardly known outside of Jerusalem.

Ed: And though you may think it laughable, the scriptures have been shown time and again to be generally historically reliable.

LP:
And which errors does the Bible have?

Just minor copying errors of no significance to its teachings.

Ed:Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth.

LP:As does every mythical-past creation story. Now can you please tell us what errors you believe Genesis to have?

No, as I stated to Rim, most other religions teach that there was either a prior existing space time continuum or that the universe is eternal. See above about errors in Genesis.

Ed:And every year archaeologists discover evidence that confirms the accuracy of the gospels. Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin.

LP:
So what? Getting background details correct says absolutely zero about the Gospels' central character. A historical novelist will always try to get background details straight; what would one say about a historical novelist who pictured Julius Caesar as directing airstrikes against the Gauls?

Historical novels were not invented until the 18th century so your analogy fails. Airstrikes are an anachronism, there are no such thing in the gospels.

lp:Also, the discovery of Troy in NW Turkey might be interpreted as confirmation of the Iliad, and therefore of the existence of the deities of Mt. Olympus. So shall we sacrifice an ox to Zeus?

See above and also the literary characteristics of the gospels are totally unlike mythology.

This is the end of part II of my response.

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[lpetrich]

LP:
Also, if Jesus Christ had been as famous as the Gospels describe him as having been, then it's a miracle that no outside historian had discussed him detail. Such historians only start learning about him in detail several decades afterwards.

Ed:
Famous? The gospels hardly describe him as famous outside of a tiny province on the fringe of the Roman Empire and even there he was hardly known outside of Jerusalem.

LP:
He was described as someone who was followed by big crowds, and his trial and execution in Jerusalem had also attracted a big crowd. Which makes one wonder why Paul had said next to nothing about JC's earthly career, and which makes one wonder why no outside historian had recorded the career of someone who had attracted so much attention.

Josephus, for example, had described in detail several self-styled prophets who had had sizable followings, but his only descriptions of JC are a few controversal paragraphs.

LP:
And which errors does the Bible have?

Ed:
Just minor copying errors of no significance to its teachings.

LP:
The next question arises: how does one tell whether something is or is not a copying error?

And you may want to visit these pages on Biblical errancy:

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/errancy.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/errancy.html</a>

Though the Bible does contain some legitimate history, the same can also be said of a variety of works that feature deities that Ed refuses to worship.

Ed:
No, as I stated to Rim, most other religions teach that there was either a prior existing space time continuum or that the universe is eternal. See above about errors in Genesis.

LP:
Read Genesis 1 again. There is nothing in it that states that space and time had been created -- just that the heaven and the earth had been created. It does not even state that the heaven and the earth had been created from nothing -- they could have been created from formless matter. Something like that possibility is featured in Genesis 2, where God creates Adam from some dirt and Eve from one of Adam's ribs.

[Ed on Caiaphas's tomb...]

LP:
I note that we haven't discovered Caiaphas's or Pontius Pilate's memoirs; though both individuals had existed, it would be exceedingly interesting to find out if they had ever had to handle cases of self-styled prophets.

LP:
So what? Getting background details correct says absolutely zero about the Gospels' central character. A historical novelist will always try to get background details straight; what would one say about a historical novelist who pictured Julius Caesar as directing airstrikes against the Gauls?

Ed:
Historical novels were not invented until the 18th century so your analogy fails. Airstrikes are an anachronism, there are no such thing in the gospels.

LP:
Says who? I was using historical novel-writing as an example of how background details can be correct but foreground ones entirely fictional. And I used airstrikes as an example of how one would recognize bogosity -- aerial warfare would not be invented until just about 2000 years after Julius Caesar's battles.

lp:Also, the discovery of Troy in NW Turkey might be interpreted as confirmation of the Iliad, and therefore of the existence of the deities of Mt. Olympus. So shall we sacrifice an ox to Zeus?

ED:
See above and also the literary characteristics of the gospels are totally unlike mythology.

LP:
And what leads you to that conclusion? Both are full of miracles and divine interventions.

[CodeMason]

Ipetrich, good stuff, but I'd like to say that your posting style is a bit confusing. It would be a lot easier to read if you used the UBB [code]</pre> feature. Thanks.

Moderator here: I agree LP, to learn the code quickly just click on the Edit Post Icon of one of Ed's post to see how it is written and laid out.EZ

[ December 30, 2001: Message edited by: critical thinking made ez ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>Ed:There were semites already living in Canaan but there is evidence that the hebrews came from Egypt.

LP:
What evidence? It must be from outside the Bible.[/b]

Read the Aug/Sept. 2001 Biblical Archaeology Review, many of the Israelite kings incorporated egyptian scarab beetles in their seals.

Ed:Which historians? There is evidence that the jews were monotheistic from Moses on.

LP:What evidence outside of the Bible? None that I know of; they had started out by worshipping several deities, with YHWH being only one of them. The idea of worshipping The Only God started only later.

What evidence do you have? Actually it was just the opposite. During the period beginning around Solomon they began worshipping other gods prior to that they only worshipped one. Then after the Babylonian exile they returned to one God.

[About the kings mentioned in the Book of Daniel]
Ed:Actually the term translated as father in the KJV can also mean ancestor but not necessarily biological ancestor more like predecessor.

LP:Convenient evasion. If one casts one's net wide enough, one can prove anything. And the same of Ed's other comments about the Book of Daniel.

I am afraid you are the one evading and your weak response proves it.

Ed:The hebrew word for "begot" can also mean "became the ancestor of" so the time between the individuals could very well be indefinite.

LP:Yet another convenient evasion.

Same as above.

jtb:the creation sequence does not fit the fossil record (birds and whales come after land animals, grass comes after the demise of the dinosaurs etc).

Ed:You are assuming that the fossil record reflects the creation sequence, the fossil record may reflect ecological zonations.

LP:That is such a gigantic load of sauropod doo-doo that I don't know where to begin. It was well-established back when Darwin wrote his magnum opus that the Earth's rock strata are laid down in temporal sequence.

What evidence says it is temporal?

Ed:Also the hebrew term for birds and whales is not as specific as our terms are, ie it basically just means flying creatures and large sea creatures, but actually there may have also been some land creatures created on the 5th day, verse 21 says "and everything that moves". The same applies to the term "grass", the hebrew means "grasslike plants".

LP :p ure evasion. Day 5 is sea + air creatures and Day 6 is land creatures -- no mention of land ones in Day 5.

Did you even read verse 21? But nevertheless see above.

Ed:Given that the bible does not tell us when the flood occurred we dont know that it was in "recent" history.

LP:The Bible is clearly shoddily-written, then. I notice a total lack of physical evidence for a worldwide flood. There is also some strong biogeographical evidence of faunal continuity that suggests either (1) continuous habitation or (2) careful replacement after a flood.

See my post to Rim regarding the physical evidence for the flood.

lp:Consider Australian marsupials. Why did all the kangaroos hop to Australia and leave none behind? Why didn't some of the wombats decide to burrow into the base of Mt. Ararat? Why didn't some of the echidnas decide that Mt. Ararat ants were good enough for them?

Or consider the edentates (armadillos, sloths, South American anteater), a distinct group of mammals that lives in the Americas. Why didn't any of the sloths decide to stay behind and much Mt. Ararat leaves? Why didn't some of the anteaters decide that Mt. Ararat ants were good enough for them?

Or consider the Afrotheria (((elephants, sea cows) hyraxes), aardvarks, golden moles, elephant shrews, tenrecs), named for the African home of seveal of them. Why didn't some of the aardvarks decide that Mt. Ararat ants were good enough for them?

However, continental drift has a natural explanation: Australia has been isolated for the last 120 million years, and South America and Africa have also been isolated for much of that time.

There are any number of possible explanations. Australia may have been the only area that had all the necessary habitat characteristics for marsupials therefore they were drawn to that area. Or they were out competed by placental mammals in all other areas and forced to australia and then australia became isolated by a geographical barrier.

Ed:Also, many scientists believe that Mars once was totally covered by a planetary flood so why not earth?

LP:
Liquid water, yes. A planet-wide flood? No positive reason to believe that that had ever happened.

No difference.

Ed:Given that the flood only lasted one year and the earth-changing powers of the large plant population on earth and the volcanic activity on the earth there may not be that much evidence for the flood left.

LP:How very convenient [sarcasm].

Great rebuttal! [sarcasm]

Ed:But there are many fossil beds that do show evidence of hydraulic castastrophe.

LP:LOCAL floods, yes. And NOT some single global flood. Mars also has evidence of local floods in some places, but no convincing global flood.

No, a recent article on Mars (I'll have to look up exactly which one) stated that many scientists beleive there was a global flood on Mars. Just because the hydraulic catastrophe evidence is now smaller then it once was, is quite possibly due to all the erosion since it occurred which could be quite a long time, maybe a million years.

Ed:From about the time of Solomon till the return from the Babylonian exile there were long periods when the majority of jews were polytheists. However, earlier hebrews learned from Moses that there was only one God. Read Deut. 4:28, 39.

LP:Moses may have been a semi-mythical or an entirely-mythical person; later generations then projected their laws and decrees onto him.

There is no evidence that he is mythical and in fact the literary evidence that we do have is totally unlike mythology.


[b] Ed:As I stated before, we cannot directly verify that the laws of physics and the laws of logic were valid in prehistory.

LP:
So you prefer to manufacture convenient laws of physics and laws and logic in order to rescue the Bible, simply because you were not around back then?
</strong>

Huh? When did I manufacture laws of physics and logic? The laws of logic and the very fact that we can come up with the laws of physics strongly point to the truth of Christianity.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
Read the Aug/Sept. 2001 Biblical Archaeology Review, many of the Israelite kings incorporated egyptian scarab beetles in their seals.


LP:
So what? These could be imports.


LP: (That the Israelites had worshipped several gods before worshipping only a single one...)

Ed:
What evidence do you have? Actually it was just the opposite. During the period beginning around Solomon they began worshipping other gods prior to that they only worshipped one. Then after the Babylonian exile they returned to one God.


LP:
According to all the archeological evidence, they had worshipped several deities before the single-god faction got really big in the time of the Babylonian Exile.

(stuff on Ed's defense of Book-of-Daniel vagueness...)

With imprecise language, it's much easier to find "proof". However, by doing so one ultimately violates the principle of falsifiability, which is that a hypothesis that can predict anything really predicts nothing. Ed, I suggest that you look at some of the "Biblical Errancy" pages in this site, like the "Skeptical Review" pages -- they have a lot of discussion of the Book of Daniel.


(jtb: the Genesis 1 creation order all wrong)

Ed:You are assuming that the fossil record reflects the creation sequence, the fossil record may reflect ecological zonations.

(LP: statement that it is really temporal)

Ed:
What evidence says it is temporal?


Oodles of evidence. In the large majority of cases, the superposition order of different fossil strata is completely consistent; the exceptions can be traced to overthrust faults and the like. Furthermore, the superposition order is completely consistent with the dating derived from radioisotopes -- and yes, different isotopes do agree.

I suggest that you go to some site like <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org</a> some time -- geologists are not the ignoramuses that you seem to believe they are, Ed.


See my post to Rim regarding the physical evidence for the flood.


If there was anything like Noah's Flood, it would have shown up as unmistakable sediment layers -- and a mass extinction. But there is zero evidence of such a flood.


lp: Australian marsupials, edentates, afrotherians in their own locales as a result of continental drift...

Ed:
There are any number of possible explanations. Australia may have been the only area that had all the necessary habitat characteristics for marsupials therefore they were drawn to that area. Or they were out competed by placental mammals in all other areas and forced to australia and then australia became isolated by a geographical barrier.


I really wonder if Ed has done any serious research; the ecological-compatibility hypothesis has been tested by the import of exotic species, some of which have done well enough to become pests. There has also been the natural dispersion of those species easily capable of traveling long distances, like elephants and sea cows.


No, a recent article on Mars (I'll have to look up exactly which one) stated that many scientists beleive there was a global flood on Mars. Just because the hydraulic catastrophe evidence is now smaller then it once was, is quite possibly due to all the erosion since it occurred which could be quite a long time, maybe a million years.


Find that article.


(LP: Moses mythical...)

Ed:
There is no evidence that he is mythical and in fact the literary evidence that we do have is totally unlike mythology.


WHAT evidence? All we have is what had been written about him centuries later -- written by those who had considered him a founder figure. There is not a shred of independent documentation of him.

Here's a nice article on this question:

<a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm</a>

Robert Price suspects Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and the Buddha of being at least partially mythical. In particular, RP suspects Moses of having originally been a sun god, and that he had been brought down to Earth by worshippers of a single god.


Ed:
Huh? When did I manufacture laws of physics and logic? The laws of logic and the very fact that we can come up with the laws of physics strongly point to the truth of Christianity.


I'm sure that Muslims can say the same thing about Islam, that the laws of logic and of physics imply the existence of Allah and the truth of the Koran. Now when are you going to Mecca?

As can the followers of many other creeds.

[spackulus]

I think it is quite easily possible that we will develop the technology in the future which will allow us to retroactively create the universe in the past.

As proof, I offer the fact that the universe exist, and that this explanation is just about as reasonable and logical as any other. After all, who declared it some sort of universal law that cause must preceed effect, or that a cause could not be its own cause?

And if the universe exists right 'now', who says that we can't go forward a few million years and then invent a process to produce the universe in the past? If the universe exists, this explanation is not at all paradoxical. In other words, this is a rather outrageous example of a continuous timeline without any creation event. The universe is simply a timeless 4D (or 5D if you count general relativity) ring. There would be no need to explain 'why' the universe could be created by itself, as there would be no external timeline to justify using the term 'why?'.

[spackulus]

First cause is love, second cause is life. Love is the essence of life and therefore exhausted by the second cause and the second cause is contingent upon the first cause.

Gen.1 is the essence of creation by God and Gen.2 is where this created essence takes form in Lord God.

Bible says God is love and Lord God is life and Lord God is needed to make God known. Gen.3 is the third cause by "like god" and is needed to make Lord God of Gen.2 known.

Amos

Amos,

I empathize with your passionate for the transcendental meaning of God and love, and realize that your beliefs in these things are based on that passion. These transcendent feelings probably feel to you like an overwhelmingly powerful witness to the truth of what you are saying.

Unfortunately, I don't feel so passionate about these things, and therefore they may be 'true' for you, but they certainly aren't true for me. I don't feel any particular transcendant passionate 'meaning' in "God" or "Love". I don't feel any sort of spirtual "connection" to life or feel any great "life force" at work here on this earth.

All I see are people similar to yourself which seem to be on some sort of unnatural chemical self induced high. This is what rationalists and other realists call 'touchy feely' thinking. Now wouldn't it make sense that if God were love, and if love was some sort of transcendant thing, shouldn't I be able to see it and feel it the same way you do without having to resort to brain injury or psychtropic drugs? You can see my scientific evidence for ordinary rational explanations for things, why is it that only you can feel that God is love, and I and others like me don't.

I think the best explanation for your certainty about the transcendant nature of 'love', etc. is that your brain is sending powerful signals to your mind that my brain does not send. Either that, or I'm hopelessly outside of God's grace, and have been since I was born. (Perhaps an epileptic seisure is in order after all?)

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed: No, I stand by my statement. Molecules and subatomic particles behaviors APPEAR to be random to us because we are ignorant of all the variables and therefore we can only predict the way the majority of them will behave. That does not mean that in actuality they are random. When I said they are random I was referring to how they appear to us.

Dat: Ed, when we say that randomness is a fundamental property of the Universe, it refers to our laws, created by humans as an approximation to the nature of reality. There is no way for us to know the exact position and velocity of any particle - that cannot be changed. Hence, we cannot formulate any law to predict the quantum behavior to molecules. Is there some underlying structure to it? Perhaps - but we don't even understand the observable structures without some analogous means, so it's meaningless to speak of such a "law".[/b]

No, natural laws and laws of physics would still exist whether or not humans did. They are independent of us. Also molecules do not exhibit quantum behavior only subatomic particles do. It is not meaningless to speak of such a law just because we haven't discovered it yet. According to logic it should exist.

Ed: Please read my posts more carefully, notice I was referring to the LAWS OF LOGIC, NOT just anything.

Dat: But you give us no reason to discern between the laws of logic, the laws of physics, or anything else for that matter. It is only by your word that the laws of logic transcend our space-time; and that, of course, is only because it makes your theory plausible. Circular argument, wouldn't you say?

It is not by my word, my point is that it is a rational assumption given that we do it in other situations that we cannot empirically verify.

Ed: Says the greek mythologizers. Galaxies are unified by their structure and substance. Animals are unified by their all being contructed of cells. Human emotions are unified are unified by their all being from humans. It depends on the entity what holds them together.

Dat: No - your designations are made are designations which hinge on a commality between the objects - animals by cells, stars by chemical components. I don't see why I can't designate the Greek Gods by that very same description - i.e. they were Greek, and thus unified. That's the problem with your argument, really; the wide range of allowed connections makes it really simple to start creating ridiculous propositions.

No, the greek gods were different by essence. Mars is the war god. Venus is the love god and etc. Their very essence is different from each other. Their invention by the greeks does not make their essence the same.


Ed:Without a unity within a diversity the theory of evolution would not have a leg to stand on. There would be no evidence of any type of ancestral relationships at all. I.e. if animals were not all made up of cells then you could not say they derived from an primordial one-celled organism.

Dat: That is not "diversity within a unity" - that is what is commonly known as "grouping common terms", which as I said is a well documented psychological behavior in human thought. We tend to group things together when we find something in common with them; whether such groupings are actually meaningful is unknown. I'm not challenging the prospect that many things have similar and common properties; I'm challenging your proposition that such commonality is somehow derived from a higher being with this property.

No, those commonalities would exist whether there were humans thinking or not.


Ed: I don't know if I would call the gaps so few in number, there is a pretty large number of classes and families. But I don't deny that microevolution occurs the problem is with macroevolution. PE is just an ad hoc attempt to explain away lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. It basically is an attempt to make evolution unfalsifiable.

Dat: Not with what I read on it. A quick search on Google brought up a few articles on the subject; the main point was that it fit well with the data given, that there were periods of no evolution followed by periods of rapid evolution. I do not see how this is ad hoc; science does not work by dishing out theories and then finding data to make them right, but by finding data and formulating theories from them.

But PE is based on LACK of data. Also there is evidence that Darwin specifically developed his theory to try to account for life without reference to a creator.

Ed: Initially yes you could conclude that he may have evil in him but once you investigate that the only creator that is a diversity within a unity is the christian God then you look at his communication to us and find out how evil entered the universe. Theoretically persons could be produced from impersonal forces but logically it is not possible.

Dat: Ah - now you're caught in a pickle. Spare all the dramatics, please - this is a logical contradiction, plain and simple. If it is not logically feasible, then it cannot be theoretically possible either.

Theoretically ANYTHING is possible. But it depends on whether the theory is logical or not. Many scientific theories are not logical so they are rejected and that should be the case with this one.


Dat: If we apply the Law of Sufficient Cause to God, we conclude that he must have some part of evil in him, no matter how much we examine him. Take away the Trinity, take away his communication, and you still have the unresolved question of where evil would come from, if God indeed created everything. See, Ed, sometimes it's not good to make tons of assertions at once, especially when they don't agree with each other.

No, because the only cause of the universe that is a diversity within a unity (that is not an ad hoc explanation) is the christian God so to find out what his character is you have to have a communication from him. Because there is also good in the universe, where did that come from?

Ed: That is the extrapolative theory, but all the empirical observations of stars being born at present require other stars gravity interacting with gases released from supernovae.

Dat:???? Obviously, the BB and the first formulation of stars did not happen in the present, so what bearing do present observations have on previous events?

Everything. All the best theories use evidence from present processes to make conclusions about past events.


Ed: Actually the AP demonstrates the very point I am trying to make!

Dat:Are you sure? The scientific AP says that the reason we are here is because if the conditions were not perfect, then there'd be no way for us to be here, therefore it is meaningless to say "what if things were different..." It's a refutation of the Fine Tuning Argument, and it goes against any notion that these were special conditions in the first place.

No, it is like you are lined up to be executed by a firing squad and they all fire at you and yet you still are alive. So it is rational to assume that they purposely missed and that it was not just an accident of nature.


[b] Ed:That is what I have been doing!

Dat:I beg to differ; you still are not clarifying w/o my explicit request, and I still see blatant assumptions/declarations without much backup to them.
</strong>

Where?

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>
Alright; from our discussion alone, I can tell you that you're making assumptions on the beginning of stellar evolution, the different properties of the laws of logic vs. the laws of physics (and where they would apply), the theories of quantum mechanics, and neurology. Furthermore, a lot of your answers are woefully short and inadaquete for the level of discussion; they serve as mere placeholders so that you may ignore most of the paragraph and ask for clarification on some trivial point, which you usually then respond in that mono-lineal fashion. [/b]

Everyone makes assumptions, including you. And you have not refuted any of mine.


Ed: My last animal behavior course was almost 20 years ago so I am afraid you are going to have to go to your local library. There are some excellent books that can answer your questions about animal behavior and which behaviors represent certain kinds of mental abilities. I never said that intelligence was only a human asset, I said abstract reasoning is only a human characteristic. There are some animals that are fairly intelligent but humans are a magnitude greater than even the most intelligent animals.

Dat: I am not asking questions out of ignorance - those were meant to be rhetorical questions! I'm asking you how you come to know so much about animal thoughts when even the top zoologists do not claim such a detailed knowledge of the animal brain; you make a lot of ad ignoratum assumptions, as I have said many times, and you don't even try to respond to those accusations. Almost in every discussion, you manage to end on a completely baseless and unsupported claim, which warrants reasons on my part to disprove...this is being rather tedious and boring. So, unless you have sources to back up your outrageous assertions, I will promptly ignore them from now on.

My knowledge comes from those books I mention above. Actually many zoologists and brain experts claim to know even more than I have mentioned but some of their claims I don't think are supported by the evidence.


Ed: Given that complex language requires abstract reasoning, I think it is a rational assumption to rule out such thinking for dogs. I am not saying we know exactly what is going on a dog's head but we can safely assume that their minds are much more limited than human minds.

Dat:You do not know dogs do not process abstract reasoning. You cannot prove it. You cannot safely assume anything.

Well if they do possess abstract reasoning they sure don't use it. Have you ever owned a dog? I have, and you quickly learn what their intellectual limitations are.


Ed: They may not explain how these things occur, nevertheless they are true statements that you have not refuted. Check any dictionary for their meaning.

Dat:Exactly how am I to refute a tautology? I am refuting the idea that you are trying to make some meaning from this...that "persons must come from the personal" is obvious - that the implication that persons are the only abstract thinkers in the Universe, and that abstract thinking must come from more abstract thinking is highly debatable. The statement itself is true, but not with the definitions, meanings, and hidden implications that you have tacked onto it.

There is a way to refute it. Provide empirical evidence of impersonal processes producing persons.


Ed: Please explain how we can DIRECTLY test events of the past.

Dat:What is a result, Ed? It's the causal aftermath of an event. Therefore, we can test for their existence in verification of their legitimacy. For example, we can test whether the Big Bang actually occurred by testing for whether the expected residual radiation exists - it does, therefore such evidence suggests that the BB did happen.

You are extrapolating the radiation into the past, you are not DIRECTLY testing the big bang.

Ed: Huh? We do have a result, ie the universe.

Dat: Do you even have a clue on what we're talking about? I was telling you that it is impossible to test anything outside our Universe. "Anything outside our Universe" does not result in our Universe.

It is also impossible to directly test anything in the distant past and yet we still assume the laws of logic apply.


Ed:They believe they are making a rational assumption(although I dont agree) but my assumption is definitely rational. The multiple universe theory has some other problems with it. But it is definitely rational to assume that all effects have causes including the universe.

Dat:How is it rational? Reason dictates that any assumption be based on some prior evidence, some trend that we may extrapolate upon to give the assumption some sense of validity. Our Universe is a good example of how that operates - we may assume, with reason from the evidence gathered, that the laws of physics operate within its domain. By definition, we cannot gather anything from beyond the Universe; therefore, it is not rational to assume anything of it.

We cannot directly gather anything from the past either and yet we still assume logic applies.


[b] Ed: The problem is how do you know what the limits of science are? By arbitrarily saying that logic does not apply outside our universe could kill any knowledge we may be able to learn about what is outside our universe. You are doing what theists are accused of doing to science. How do you know that in certain arenas science is invalid?

Dat:Because we are given a solid definition of what science is!

(from <a href="http://www.dictionary.com)" target="_blank">www.dictionary.com)</a>

Science
- The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
- Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
- Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.

In regards to something beyond our Universe, science is ruled out because no observation is possible to make any assumption. There is a world of difference between attempting to discover something within the operating sphere of a given system, and blindly fitting the above system into any situation. As such, it's a very clear case here that science makes no sense beyond its established perimeter. Appealing to emotions, propter hoc and non-sequitur fallacies don't help your case any.
</strong>

I think your first definition definitely is applicable to what I am doing. We observe the universe and identify and describe the most logical cause of the universe.

[Datheron]

Ed,

Hm....hey Ed, is there a particular reason why my replies are always the last ones typed out? I notice that LP's conversations with you, for example, seem to be higher on your "priority queue".

<strong>No, natural laws and laws of physics would still exist whether or not humans did. They are independent of us. Also molecules do not exhibit quantum behavior only subatomic particles do. It is not meaningless to speak of such a law just because we haven't discovered it yet. According to logic it should exist.</strong>

But as I said, it is meaningless for us to talk of them when we know nothing of them, when we cannot know anything of them. Regarding to the discussion at hand, you do not know whether the Universe is actually ordered underneath the randomness that we see, the randomness that we must see in order to make an observation (evidence) by which a hypothesis/theory/law must come about. The law of logic saids nothing of some underlying unifying law, or anything that requires order. Then again, you once again assume that the "laws of logic" (remember what I wrote above, that human laws are merely approximations - the bane of logic lies in paradoxes) are ultimate and indestructible. Must I remind you that they themselves were conceived by empirical evidence as well?

<strong>It is not by my word, my point is that it is a rational assumption given that we do it in other situations that we cannot empirically verify.</strong>

Why? Empirical verification, or the possibility of verification, is what makes extrapolation rational and reasonable. Then again, I can easily claim that as we have explained everything via naturalistic means, we can extend this to cut out God completely. &lt;shrugs&gt; It's a horrible argument either way.

<strong>No, the greek gods were different by essence. Mars is the war god. Venus is the love god and etc. Their very essence is different from each other. Their invention by the greeks does not make their essence the same.</strong>

Ed, your definition of "essence" is whatever is convienient at the moment to make sense of the situation according to you. Let's take, for example, your idea that stars in galaxies are a "diversity within a unity". What is their "essence"? What unities them into a galaxy other than physical locality? As a matter of fact, what non-living thing as this "essence", if we look at the example that you give above?

<strong>No, those commonalities would exist whether there were humans thinking or not.</strong>

I've already admitted to that. What I'm debating is whether this actually means anything. We notice, for example, that there is a great diversity of plants. Is this then any surprise if we theorize that they came from a common ancestor, and evolved through time in different environments? We don't need some mystical explanation muddled in some "law of sufficient cause".

<strong>But PE is based on LACK of data. Also there is evidence that Darwin specifically developed his theory to try to account for life without reference to a creator.</strong>

.....and that is invalid because...? A theory on the decay of protons was made in physics a while ago; experiments were conducted, but its empirical validity was not observed, so the theory had to be discarded and a new one formulated based on the lack of proton decay. And whether it is specifically targeted against theism or not does not determine whether it's fallacious or otherwise. Its intent is independent of its logic.

<strong>Theoretically ANYTHING is possible. But it depends on whether the theory is logical or not. Many scientific theories are not logical so they are rejected and that should be the case with this one. </strong>

Ed, stop going around in circles. A lot of theories are logically possible - that is the least of its requirements. A better requirement is that it is consistent with reality and observation...and this theory is consistent as it builds from observation. Until you can find something empirically that contradicts this, the theory is valid.

<strong>No, because the only cause of the universe that is a diversity within a unity (that is not an ad hoc explanation) is the christian God so to find out what his character is you have to have a communication from him. Because there is also good in the universe, where did that come from? </strong>

What?! The law of sufficient cause, as far as I can tell, applies to everything; you certainly have made it apply to everything, and it's a bit too late to take that claim back. I'm not saying that God isn't good - just that he is not wholly good, with no trace of evil. According to your presumptions, that is logically impossible.

<strong>Everything. All the best theories use evidence from present processes to make conclusions about past events.</strong>

Exactly. And the rapid expansion of the Universe, coupled with the ratios of stars (different types) and background radiation quickly confirm that the BB is true. Of course, we also notice that the only element required for stars and stellar fusion is hydrogen, and that heavier elements are merely masses of added atoms. The BB details how the first element was formed, and how fusion itself created heavier elements. Please review how it works...you seem to be completely lost on the issue.

<strong>No, it is like you are lined up to be executed by a firing squad and they all fire at you and yet you still are alive. So it is rational to assume that they purposely missed and that it was not just an accident of nature.</strong>

Would you please tell me where these analogies come from? For they're quite faulty. The AP tells that the fact that we're alive is self-explanatory - you cannot assume that there was a firing squad in the first place unless you give good reasons as to why it has to be there.

<strong>Where? </strong>

Look up.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>
Ed: Molecules and subatomic particles behaviors APPEAR to be random to us because we are ignorant of all the variables and therefore we can only predict the way the majority of them will behave. That does not mean that in actuality they are random. When I said they are random I was referring to how they appear to us.

Syn: Your statement that we can only predict the way the majority of particles behave is erroneous. We can indeed produce a very exact, well verified, statistical prediction. Any individual particle can only be predicted statistically.

Current theories suggest that there is truly an element of randomness. You have not given any suggestion indicating that your opinion is substantiated in any way. However it is possible that an underlying order will be discerned in quantum events. Keep in mind, however that the behavior of quantum events is quite unlike any other statistical phenomenon; any refinement in our explanation is likely to be as counterintuitive as the existing framework of quantum mechanics.[/b]

I stand corrected. But I do think there is truly an element of non-randomness, but we have just not discovered it yet.

Ed: But I don't deny that microevolution occurs the problem is with macroevolution.

Syn: There is only one known method to prevent macroevolution resulting from microevolution over time. That is genetically verifying that each offspring has not introduced any sort of mutation. Of course, to do that would stop microevolution. If you have 1 change and you add another, 2 changes will result. If you add one change to 2 changes, 3 will result. Your parents are different from their grandparents, you are different from your parents, your children will be different from you. Genetic changes are a legacy that cannot be undone- That is, unless an event as unlikely as tornadoes going through junkyards and producing commercial airliners occurs.

There is something that prevents macroevolution, ie built in blocks in genetic variation. For hundreds of years dog breeders have tried to make dogs larger than the wolfhound and smaller than the chiuauhua. And they have not been able to do it. BTW, your analogy fails, 99.9% of the differences between parent and child are NOT mutations. In addition, genetic studies with bacteria and ancestral studies with cats have shown that all mutations so far studied result in a LOSS of information. If every time a mutation occurs there is a loss of information, macroevolution becomes impossible.


Ed :p E is just an ad hoc attempt to explain away lack of evidence for Darwinian evolution in the fossil record. It basically is an attempt to make evolution unfalsifiable.

Syn:The existence of gaps in the fossil record is not due to evolution.

Hey we agree on something!

Syn: There is not even enough room on surface of the earth to hold all the remains of all the animals that have lived. For the vast majority, their remains decompose, are consumed or otherwise destroyed before they can even fossilize. A very tiny number of creatures in the right circumstances will be fossilized, but you must understand that this is a rare process. Not only do we not know all stages of each species' developmental process, we haven’t found the remains of the vast majority of species that lived. We are fortunate, however, that some were so common, despite the spars

I am afraid Stephen Gould would disagree with you, he says the gaps are due to more rapid periods of evolution. Leaps as it were.

Syn: Now there seems to be some misconception regarding Punctuated Equilibrium. It is is not an explanation for the fact that not every single species that ever lived has not been fossilized. It is a theory that has been developed to account for specific trends in the (geological) longevity of various intermediate species. A site with a fossils 10,000 or so apart is a very rich find. That may not seem like many samples but keep in mind that in the 60,000,000 years since the dinosaurs, 10,000 years has passed 6,000 times.

See above about Mr. Gould.

Syn: Even with a very low resolution monster with many dysfunctional pixels, you can begin to extrapolate curves and shapes, change and equilibrium. Similarly the fossil record, although our conception of it is still developing, gives us a very good idea of the time scale of life’s evolution and the course it took.

Possibly, but it also fits the effects of a global flood as it successively sampled from a biogeographically zoned distribution of organisms.


Ed: My last animal behavior course was almost 20 years ago so I am afraid you are going to have to go to your local library. There are some excellent books that can answer your questions about animal behavior and which behaviors represent certain kinds of mental abilities.

Syn:Animal behavior goes past the movement of their limbs and face. I read an interesting passage from Chomsky paraphrased by Day Hauser:

“Here is this very little insect, tiny little brain, simple nervous system, that is capable of transmitting information about where it's been and what it's eaten to a colony and that information is sufficiently precise that the colony members can go find the food. We know that that kind of information is encoded in the signal because people in Denmark have created a robotic honey bee that you can plop in the middle of a colony, programmed to dance in a certain way, and the hive members will actually follow the information precisely to that location. Researchers have been able to understand the information processing system to this level, and consequently, can actually transmit it through the robot to other members of the hive. When you step back and say, what do we know about how the brain of a honeybee represents that information, the answer is: we know nothing.” (my emphasis

We may not know how a honeybee brain represents that information, but we are talking about the retrieval and communication of navigational information, this hardly takes abstract reasoning. And in fact the evidence points to it occuring by instinct (programmed) using temperature and light sensors.

[b] Syn:Human beings are not the only creatures capable of abstract reasoning in the sense of analogous thinking. That is integral in the development of visual perception in monkeys and is likely the genetic ancestor of some reasoning and perceptual facilities in humans. We are certainly the most abstract, and most recursive of animals. Our toolbox of heuristics and the size of our memory is what differentiates us. Analogies between animal brains and human brains are pervasive however, there is no sacred skill totally unique to human beings save our propensity towards incredibly destructive delusions.
</strong>

You just contradicted your little honeybee scenario. You say that even an insect brain is beyond our understanding and yet next you say that a much more complex organ, ie a monkey brain, has definite analogies to the human mind. How do you know this given that we can't even say anything definite about how the honeybee thinks(according to you)? Actually, there are definitely some things that animal minds can not do. They cannot reason abstractly, and they do not have a true will or a moral conscience.

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Jack the Bodiless]

Ed:
There is something that prevents macroevolution, ie built in blocks in genetic variation. For hundreds of years dog breeders have tried to make dogs larger than the wolfhound and smaller than the chiuauhua. And they have not been able to do it.
There are no "built-in blocks to genetic variation". What you seem to be referring to is the fact that there is a limit to the amount of variation present in a species gene pool excluding mutation. Breeders can only go so far with the genes available, then they must simply wait for a suitable mutation to show up (as, until recently, they didn't know how to generate mutations). Many modern plant and animal breeds stem from a specific mutated individual.
BTW, your analogy fails, 99.9% of the differences between parent and child are NOT mutations.
ALL differences between parent and child are the result of mutations, as mutations are ultimately responsible for all genetic variation. It is true that most of these mutations happened in earlier generations, but each person has (on average) six new mutations in active (non-"junk") DNA. In a population of 6 billion humans, that's 36 billion mutations per generation.
In addition, genetic studies with bacteria and ancestral studies with cats have shown that all mutations so far studied result in a LOSS of information. If every time a mutation occurs there is a loss of information, macroevolution becomes impossible.
This is simply not true, mutations can indeed increase information. But the Evolution/Creation forum is the best place to discuss that.
Syn: Even with a very low resolution monster with many dysfunctional pixels, you can begin to extrapolate curves and shapes, change and equilibrium. Similarly the fossil record, although our conception of it is still developing, gives us a very good idea of the time scale of life’s evolution and the course it took.

Possibly, but it also fits the effects of a global flood as it successively sampled from a biogeographically zoned distribution of organisms.
No, it does not. It is absolutely impossible for a single "Great Flood" to produce the observed fossil record. It is easy to calculate that the odds against such a sequence occurring by any means other than common descent are truly astronomical, vastly greater than (for instance) the estimated number of atoms in the Universe.
Actually, there are definitely some things that animal minds can not do. They cannot reason abstractly, and they do not have a true will or a moral conscience.
And yet humans evolved from apes, which evolved from monkeylike critters, which evolved from critters resembling modern lemurs, which evolved from critters resembling rodents (yes, we have the fossils, and the DNA analyses showing how the modern examples are related to each other). Therefore your statement that "only persons can produce the personal" is false.

[Jack the Bodiless]

And I agree with Datheron that your definitions are deliberately skewed to support your predetermined conclusion.

For instance, Allah (if he existed) would have to be a "diversity within a unity". This is because he is considered to be sentient. Any thinking creature needs to be able to handle multiple concepts, and this requires multiple brain-cells or equivalents. Furthermore, Islam includes belief in angels. Allah is far from being a "pure unity": an omnipotent being capable of complex thoughts and assisted by a host of angels is surely capable of producing a multitude of things.

You also seem confused about Hinduism. In Hinduism, the "personal" gods are the minor ones (and some Hindus don't even believe they exist). The higher gods are considered to be increasingly impersonal and alien, anthropomorphic representations of cosmic forces and principles. The Brahman is more like a nonsentient "essence" in which gods exist rather like objects exist in the "spacetime continuum" of modern physics. All Hindu gods share the same "essence", but not the same "mind", because the fundamental unity transcends the level of "mind" as understood by humans. Hence, diversity within a unity.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>Ed: What do you mean supposed? Jesus' existence is better documented than Caesar's Gallic wars.

Rim:Bullshit. This is the hoary old argument that the Gospels have more copies than the accounts of the Gaelic wars. It's totally meaningless, for the following reasons:
-Ceaser's conquests were documented by the people he conquered

Ed:
Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

LP:
Only secondhand and some decades after he had lived -- unlike the case of Julius Caesar, where a book purportedly written by him has survived. Now did Jesus Christ ever write any books? Nobody's ever claimed to have found any book purportedly written by him.[/b]

No, actually there is evidence for some first hand accounts. Matthew and John.

lp: Up-close documentation of Jesus Christ by his enemies would probably look like the only account of self-styled prophet Alexander of Abonutichus that survives; this document was written by skeptic Lucian of Samosata (an Internet Infidel centuries ahead of his time), and it makes A of A seem like a total charlatan -- like L. Ron Hubbard or Sai Baba.

No, it looks more like Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phelogon, amd Mara Bar-Serapion.

Ed:
Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

LP:
So does Ed take seriously the accounts of divine intervention in the Iliad and the Odyssey?

No, but there are more open minded approaches to determine their accuracy such as literary characteristics and etc.

Rim: These three things are what differentiate Caeser's campaign in Gaul from the supposed life of Jesus: Independant, first-hand accounts; physical evidence; and a lack of supernatural elements (or, the doubt of supernatural events being real.)

Ed:
See above, there is similar evidence for Christ.

LP:
"Evidence" that simply does not exist, as many apologists indirectly concede by failing to point out such evidence? There is no account outside of the Gospels of someone who claims to have met Jesus Christ in person; Lucian of Samosata had claimed such an acquaintance with A of A, and there is archeological evidence of a cult that A of A had founded.

The apostle Paul. And there is archaeological evidence of the church that Christ founded.


Ed: Genesis teaches that the universe had a definite beginning at least 3000 years before cosmological evidence was discovered that pointed to the same truth.

LP:
A "definite beginning" that may not have happened -- we don't know enough about quantum gravity to come to a definite conclusion about that. So while speculations like the ekpyrotic Universe may be fun, I'm not willing to endorse them.

Well you are going against most cosmologists, most cosmologists believe that the universe had a definite beginning.

Rim:Wow. Just... wow. Where to begin?
You say Genesis teaches a definite begining to the universe? I say so do a hundred other creation myths.

Ed:
No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum.

LP:
However, the Bible does not state that there was no previous space-time continuum; it can be interpreted as God placing the heavens and the earth into empty space-time. In fact, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, had taught that God had not created anything out of nothing, but had instead given form to formless matter.

No, given that the term "heavens and earth" in hebrew means "everything that physically exists", my interpretation is the most accurate. Physical objects require a space-time continuum. Spiritual beings do not, God is a spiritual being and only he existed prior to the universe.

Rim:You say Genesis is historical because it describes a starting point of this Universe? I say that's about it. Genetics, age of the Earth, sequence of life's development, the "Flood," origin of languages; Genesis is wrong on all these counts. Too bad for you.

Ed:
The scriptures never mention genetics so how could they be wrong?

LP:
There is a story of someone in Genesis making some solid-color cattle give birth to spotted and striped cattle by showing them sticks with striped painted on.

That was a supernatural event not a lesson in genetics.

Ed:
As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth.

Ed:
See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood. Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

Ed: Just recently Caiphas' tomb was found, he was the high priest that was at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. And there are many other examples.

LP:
Does the existence of Troy in NW Turkey imply the existence of the Greek Gods?

Nevertheless, that is the common procedure among historians studying ancient documents. If the document is found to be accurate in areas where it can be tested then it is considered to be most likely accurate in areas where it cannot be tested.

ip: As has been pointed out, historical-fiction writers like to get their background details straight, and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate had been background details of the Gospels.

Historical fiction was not invented until the 18th century, so your analogy fails.

Ed:
There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles.

LP:
WHAT??? There is no primary source for them independent of his followers. I mean someone like Lucian of Samosata, who had clearly not been one of A of A's followers.

They may not be a primary source but they are independent, see above.

Ed:
Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists.

LP:
Vitalism is an old theory that has failed a variety of experimental tests; the difference is a matter of organization, and I will concede that there is a big jump from prebiotic-chemistry experiments and even the simplest of primary-producer bacteria, those not dependent on complicated organic compounds.

Who said anything about vitalism? In addition to organization there are other characteristics that differentiate life from non-life.

Ed:
Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago.

LP:
No, he didn't. He simply found no evidence of it happening under certain carefully-controlled conditions.

Thats right by carefully controlled all he did was prevent living organisms from corrupting his experiment which proved the Law of Biogenesis, ie life comes only from life.

Ed:
It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point.

LP:
What are "personal" and "impersonal"?

See my earlier post to Rim.

Rim: ... a causal barrier between "personal" and "impersonal," or "life" and "non-life," or "moral" from "amoral," or "communication" from "non-communication." ...

Ed:
The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative. No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life or the impersonal developing into the personal.

LP:
So there is some special "life substance" that living things have and nonliving things don't? If such a substance exists, then it would likely have been isolated by now. Imagine some microbiologists disassembling Escherichia coli bacteria in their test tubes and sorting out a "life substance" with their ultracentrifuges and chromatographs and their other analytic tools. However, there is not a shred of evidence for such a substance; you get an Escherichia coli bacterium by assembling nonliving molecules in a certain very complicated fashion.

By substance, I mean substantial. There are significant characteristics that differentiate between life and non-life and personal and impersonal.

Ed: Ok, give an example of morality coming from amorality or some impersonal source.

Rim ONCE AGAIN you switch the burden of proof. ...

LP:
Evolution of social behavior has been the subject of an abundance of research; this may be described as the evolution of morality, since social animals are generally not indiscriminately wicked toward each other. Bees in a hive don't try to sting each other, except in certain special cases, and wolves don't try to have each other for dinner.

See earlier post.

Rim:Further, you are digging yourself into a hole. By saying that norality must come from morality, you are saying that God is moral. But I thought the Xian god trancended morality (i.e., is amoral), which makes it ok for him to slaughter whole civilizations and condone the mass rape of their women and rip open pregnant womens' wombs and send she-bears to maul children to death and drown all living things because he screwed up his own creation and other such nasty things...

Ed:
No, morality comes from God's objective moral character. All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.

LP:
As opposed to reforming those supposedly wicked people; it makes no sense to allow something to happen and then to complain about it happening.

God wants to have free will beings in his universe not automatons. So we must face the consequences of our moral choices. That is the price of freedom.

Ed:
How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology?

LP:
So what you are claiming is that mind cannot come from non-mind? In a way, it does, since fertilized egg cells show little evidence of having minds.

No, but the blueprint (DNA) inside them that builds a mind does.

Ed: Propositional communication is communication using verbal statements either written, spoken, symbolic, typed, or etc. Now do you understand?

Rim:Indeed I do. Why must this only come from "personal" things?

Ed:
Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed. I am not saying they MUST come from such things but that that is the most rational assumption.

LP:
However, how much direct experience do we have?

Depends on how long you think humans have been around.

Ed: But since helium and hydrogen are things that require energy and matter to exist and since energy and matter only exist in space then they are unlikely to exist outside the space-time universe, therefore it is unlikely to be part of the cause of the universe.

LP:
So what? Hydrogen and helium had been formed in the Big Bang from free nucleons and electrons.

True and your point is....?

[b] Ed:
I didnt say that the cause must only be able to produce helium and hydrogen, helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings.

LP:
So there must also be some special "life substance" and some special "mind substance"? There is zero evidence for either, and plausible ways in which life can come from nonlife and mind from nonmind.</strong>

No, but there IS evidence for a pre-existing living personal creator.

[Dr. Retard]

Datheron: Would you please tell me where these analogies come from?

After maybe one minute of reading page 6, I can tell you. Christian philosopher-historian William Lane Craig. The "gospels are unlike mythology" line is almost verbatim and the firing squad story (devised by John Leslie) has been popularized by Craig.

[Datheron]

Dr. Retard,

<strong>

After maybe one minute of reading page 6, I can tell you. Christian philosopher-historian William Lane Craig. The "gospels are unlike mythology" line is almost verbatim and the firing squad story (devised by John Leslie) has been popularized by Craig.</strong>

Haha...well, you got me there. Hm....I'm figuring that the online medium is indeed very poor in conveying lingual expressions and tones - cynicism, sarcasm, and rhetoric seems to be lost. :p But thanks for the info. anyway. I'm sure that Ed, upon reading the unveiling of his hidden source, will begin to actually diverge the other much-sought sources of his numerous unbased assertions.

[Dr. Retard]

Haha...well, you got me there. Hm....I'm figuring that the online medium is indeed very poor in conveying lingual expressions and tones - cynicism, sarcasm, and rhetoric seems to be lost. :p

It must be, because my response was intended to be dry. Not that the info's wrong.

[Jack the Bodiless]

No, actually there is evidence for some first hand accounts. Matthew and John.
What is the evidence that either Matthew or John is a firsthand account? Matthew, in particular, was written by someone who was not a native Hebrew speaker (as shown by the "stunt rider" entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on two mounts, a mistranslation of a Hebrew idiom). And Paul wasn't an eyewitness either, of course.
Nevertheless, that is the common procedure among historians studying ancient documents. If the document is found to be accurate in areas where it can be tested then it is considered to be most likely accurate in areas where it cannot be tested.
Not where there's a strong vested interest at stake (e.g. the Egyptian boasts of the conquests of Rameses 2, or Kim Il Sung's alleged magical powers). And religion is the most extreme of all vested interests.
ip: As has been pointed out, historical-fiction writers like to get their background details straight, and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate had been background details of the Gospels.

Historical fiction was not invented until the 18th century, so your analogy fails.
ALL fiction borrows from the real world, including mythic fantasy. The Lord of the Rings includes references to mountains, trees, horses, people, swords. rings... all of these exist in the real world.
Thats right by carefully controlled all he did was prevent living organisms from corrupting his experiment which proved the Law of Biogenesis, ie life comes only from life.
There is no "Law of Biogenesis" in science, there is a principle of abiogenesis: that bacteria come from other bacteria rather than thin air. There is no scientific law or principle which prohibits the formation of self-replicating systems (life).
By substance, I mean substantial. There are significant characteristics that differentiate between life and non-life and personal and impersonal.
What are the significant differences between a chimpanzee and a human? Both are capable of abstract thought and language (sign language, in the case of chimps). Apart from vocal ability, an adult chimp is comparable to a six-year-old human. Are children not human?
No, but there IS evidence for a pre-existing living personal creator.
This would be headline news if it were true. I suspect your standard of what constitutes "evidence" differs from mine.

[HRG]

Originally posted by Ed:
<strong>
No, natural laws and laws of physics would still exist whether or not humans did. They are independent of us. Also molecules do not exhibit quantum behavior only subatomic particles do.</strong>

Sorry, this cries out to be corrected.

First, molecules do exhibit quantum behavior; in fact, they only exist because of quantum mechanics.

Second, Bose-Einstein condensed states of rubidium, helium II, quantum interference devices (for measuring minute magnetic fields), Josephson junctions, entangled systems of 1 Mio atoms etc. are all actual examples of quantum behavior of macroscopic objects.

Regards,
HRG.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.
LP:
Only secondhand and some decades after he had lived -- unlike the case of Julius Caesar, where a book purportedly written by him has survived. Now did Jesus Christ ever write any books? Nobody's ever claimed to have found any book purportedly written by him.[/b]

No, actually there is evidence for some first hand accounts. Matthew and John.


There is enough bogosity in Matthew and John to suggest otherwise.

Consider the mob who wanted Jesus Christ dead; they said "May his blood be upon us and all our children" or something like that. Now when has a lynch mob ever claimed that there was something wrong with the death of its intended victim?

Also, John makes Jesus Christ stay in Jerusalem much longer than the Synoptic writers do; and in John, JC's temple temper tantrum does not provoke the Jewish authorities the way it does in the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).


No, it looks more like Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phelogon, amd Mara Bar-Serapion.


Most of which are ambiguous, secondhand, or controversial. Josephus's reference is often thought to be a forgery. Mara bar Serapion does not refer to JC explicitly, just to "the Jews' wise king". Pliny the Younger and Lucian of Samosata had learned about JC from his followers. Etc.

And I wonder if Ed enjoyed reading those references -- some of them view early Christianity as some sort of bizarre cult.


[Divine interventions in the Iliad and the Odyssey?]
Ed:
No, but there are more open minded approaches to determine their accuracy such as literary characteristics and etc.


Like...


The apostle Paul. And there is archaeological evidence of the church that Christ founded.


Paul had nearly zero interest in the putative historical Jesus Christ. Which has led some to conclude that JC was a myth; see <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.com" target="_blank">http://www.jesuspuzzle.com</a>

Such evidence does not prove anything about JC; does the existence of mosques indicate that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet?


[Me on how the Universe may not have had a "real" beginning...]
Well you are going against most cosmologists, most cosmologists believe that the universe had a definite beginning.


Why don't you study their views directly? The mainstream view is that the Big Bang can be traced back to a quantum-gravity era, from which we cannot proceed any further with any confidence.


No, given that the term "heavens and earth" in hebrew means "everything that physically exists", ...


Says who??? To me, when it says "heavens and earth", it means simply "heavens and earth" unless there is good reason to think otherwise, such as a context that suggests some metaphorical meaning. But there is no such context.


LP:
There is a story of someone in Genesis making some solid-color cattle give birth to spotted and striped cattle by showing them sticks with striped painted on.
Ed:
That was a supernatural event not a lesson in genetics.


How is that supposed to be the case?


See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood. Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.


Noam Chomsky claims that there is some deep structure in human language, and that we are genetically predisposed to use this structure. This hypothesis says absolutely nothing about some supposed common origin.

I do think that there is reason to believe that our species' ancestral population had had a single language, but that does not confirm the Tower of Babel story of the origin of different languages. What happened is that this original population split up as it spread, and different populations changed their languages in different directions -- something that's been abundantly observed in historical times.


LP:
Does the existence of Troy in NW Turkey imply the existence of the Greek Gods?
Ed:
Nevertheless, that is the common procedure among historians studying ancient documents. If the document is found to be accurate in areas where it can be tested then it is considered to be most likely accurate in areas where it cannot be tested.


So does that mean that one can reasonably conclude that the deities of Mt. Olympus are real beings and not simply figments of the imagination?


ip: As has been pointed out, historical-fiction writers like to get their background details straight, and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate had been background details of the Gospels.
Ed:
Historical fiction was not invented until the 18th century, so your analogy fails.


Totally beside the point. I was using historical-fiction writing as an ANALOGY.


They may not be a primary source but they are independent, see above.


However, the Gospels are not independent reports; Matthew and Luke both copied off of Mark and Q, the latter source not surviving.


In addition to organization there are other characteristics that differentiate life from non-life.


Like what?


Ed:
Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago.
LP:
No, he didn't. He simply found no evidence of it happening under certain carefully-controlled conditions.
Ed:
Thats right by carefully controlled all he did was prevent living organisms from corrupting his experiment which proved the Law of Biogenesis, ie life comes only from life.


How are Pasteur's experiments supposed to be absolute proof? Most research into origin-of-life conditions has involved considering conditions very different from those in Pasteur's laboratory. Pasteur was right about what he looked at, but he had not looked at everything.


Rim:[the Biblical God doing wicked things...]
Ed:
No, morality comes from God's objective moral character. All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.
LP:
As opposed to reforming those supposedly wicked people; it makes no sense to allow something to happen and then to complain about it happening.
Ed:
God wants to have free will beings in his universe not automatons. So we must face the consequences of our moral choices. That is the price of freedom.


Allowing people to misbehave and then complaining about the results? According to the Gospels, JC had taught that parts of the body that cause trouble are to be removed; so if free will causes trouble, then it is best that it be gotten rid of.

[Datheron]

Ed,

Is it just me, or is it extremely frustrating to debate with Ed? This post illustrates my complaint well.

<strong>Everyone makes assumptions, including you. And you have not refuted any of mine.</strong>

I didn't say that assumptions were bad - as you say, they are elementary and required to construct any worldview. What I'm saying, to be frank, is that your assumptions suck. Indeed, I have tried to refute most of your assumptions, but instead of rationally explaining your assumptions with other assumptions which I can agree to, you make more assumptions which I deny and refute, which then prompts you to make even more assumptions, etc. Do we see a pattern?

<strong>My knowledge comes from those books I mention above. Actually many zoologists and brain experts claim to know even more than I have mentioned but some of their claims I don't think are supported by the evidence.</strong>

Name the books, find the websites, show the evidence. I'm just tired of vague references to authority.

<strong>Well if they do possess abstract reasoning they sure don't use it. Have you ever owned a dog? I have, and you quickly learn what their intellectual limitations are. </strong>

My sister has owned a cat, and I have played with dogs all my life. You may think that dogs are intellectually bankrupt from lack of evidence of any alternate behavior, but I can make the same argument of a very elusive God that somehow evades all our queries.

<strong>There is a way to refute it. Provide empirical evidence of impersonal processes producing persons. </strong>

How is that possible when the terms that define persons is obscure and being debated? You're deliberately setting the battlefield to your side and making the definitions impossible; like I said, a tautology cannot be refuted, and the statement "persons come from the personal" is indeed a tautology. But the statement that "abstract thinking beings must come from more abstract thinking beings" is not a tautology, and easily refuted by evolution. Now, argue as you will, but queries of that matter are better kept on the E&C forum anyway.

<strong>You are extrapolating the radiation into the past, you are not DIRECTLY testing the big bang.</strong>

I don't think I ever said nor implied that I can directly test the BB. I said that I could test the results of the BB.

<strong>It is also impossible to directly test anything in the distant past and yet we still assume the laws of logic apply.</strong>

...because it is the simpliest and most coherent explanation. Yes, we may assume that tge background radiation may have been created in some freak accident of logic some 10,000 years ago, but saying that it came from the BB, assuming that all laws are constant within the Universe, is indefinitely simplier.

<strong>We cannot directly gather anything from the past either and yet we still assume logic applies. </strong>

Read above. :rolleyes: And learn to refute arguments properly. One liners usually are not adaquate in countering paragraphs of thought.

<strong>I think your first definition definitely is applicable to what I am doing. We observe the universe and identify and describe the most logical cause of the universe. </strong>

Yes, and that logical explanation is: "The Universe may or may not have been caused, by something or nothing. We don't know." Any more and you have gone off the end of rationality.

[Synaesthesia]

There is something that prevents macroevolution, ie built in blocks in genetic variation. For hundreds of years dog breeders have tried to make dogs larger than the wolfhound and smaller than the chiuauhua. And they have not been able to do it. BTW, your analogy fails, 99.9% of the differences between parent and child are NOT mutations. In addition, genetic studies with bacteria and ancestral studies with cats have shown that all mutations so far studied result in a LOSS of information. If every time a mutation occurs there is a loss of information, macroevolution becomes impossible.

Hey Ed,

You might find it interesting to engage this topic in the evolution section of this BB. Although it’s a little off topic for this here section, I would like to at least touch upon the two primary points you made:

First is you cite the fact that over the (not hundreds but thousands of) years, we have discovered that it’s difficult to change some features of dogs beyond a certain point. This is most certainly true. Indeed, you will find also that we have been unable to make a mouse run as fast as a cheetah, an ant as big as a mouse or to breed dogs with IQ’s comparable to that of human beings. There are reasons for all of this but they are not, as you claim, actual blocks to genetic variation- The genetic makeup of dogs continues to change unabated.

So why can we not make a mouse as swift as a cheetah or a dog as big as a horse? Simple, the sheer size and speed of animals is dependent upon thousands of factors. There is no genetic sequence for speed, size or intelligence, these properties are the result of the interplay of thousands of genes in billions of different cells. We cannot manipulate them in isolation, we have to provide the physiological capacity to support that kind of size, speed or intelligence. An insect as big as your torso, for example, would be unable to absorb enough oxygen because they breath through their skin- the surface area to volume ratio would simply not permit it. In order to make them grow beyond a certain point, they would have to develop novel mechanisms for surviving at that scale, a process which in nature could take billions of years. None of this will happen, of course, if the appropriate mutants are not available and the selective pressures do not exist. Besides, human breeders have known mendel’s principles for only about about 96 years, modern genetics are only a few decades old.

Your claim that all mutations involve a loss of information is simply wrong. Some of the most common mutations involve the duplication or addition of a nucleotide base-pair. Doubling in the length of a genome after only a few generations is not unheard of. In fact, in many plant species, nondisjunction can produce stronger breeds of crop. Granted, most mutations don’t really do all that much, but very often beneficial ones crop up. These random, information generating changes proliferate through the population. When established in the population, any change, any additional mutation, will be added to the mutant genome. There is no way to undo this process. When the selective pressures exist, mutants are here to stay.

I am afraid Stephen Gould would disagree with you, he says the gaps are due to more rapid periods of evolution. Leaps as it were.

Mr. (Dr?) Gould would likely wince if he heard you say that. It evidently pains him a great deal that his theory is so widely misconstrued. That gaps exist in the fossil record is due only to the relative rarity of the fossilization process. Punctuated equilibrium (Gould’s theory) explains not the existence of these gaps, but the commonness of certain kinds of fossils and their sequence. That is, it explains not the absence of fossils, but the way in which they are distributed over time. Indeed, the more fossils we find of animals, the better his theory fares. We can refine our idea of how fast, and when, various animals have changed.

Possibly, but it also fits the effects of a global flood as it successively sampled from a biogeographically zoned distribution of organisms.

The picture that the fossil record presents to us (leaving aside the enormous amount of other geological evidence) is quite diametrically opposed to a massive global flood. It is simply too astounding of a coincidence that the morphological record is so precisely laid out. I suggest you do a bit of reading in this area, flood geology is truly on par with flat earth geology.

We may not know how a honeybee brain represents that information, but we are talking about the retrieval and communication of navigational information, this hardly takes abstract reasoning.

Since we know virtually nothing about the most prosaic of reasoning, it is impossible to understand the distance from abstractness to “instinct”.

You just contradicted your little honeybee scenario. You say that even an insect brain is beyond our understanding and yet next you say that a much more complex organ, ie a monkey brain, has definite analogies to the human mind. How do you know this given that we can't even say anything definite about how the honeybee thinks(according to you)? Actually, there are definitely some things that animal minds can not do. They cannot reason abstractly, and they do not have a true will or a moral conscience.

I said we know nothing about the internal representation. That is quite as true for primates as for insects. I agree, however, that we can know a great deal about what cognitive processes a animal needs to be able to do in order to perform the tasks that it does. My point is that this is only the tip of the iceberg and we are still very often mislead by our human chauvinism.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[jpbrooks]

Sorry. This post was due to an error on my part.

[ January 05, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

[jpbrooks]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>

So why can we not make a mouse as swift as a cheetah or a dog as big as a horse? Simple, the sheer size and speed of animals is dependent upon thousands of factors. There is no genetic sequence for speed, size or intelligence, these properties are the result of the interplay of thousands of genes in billions of different cells. We cannot manipulate them in isolation, we have to provide the physiological capacity to support that kind of size, speed or intelligence. An insect as big as your torso, for example, would be unable to absorb enough oxygen because they breath through their skin- the surface area to volume ratio would simply not permit it. In order to make them grow beyond a certain point, they would have to develop novel mechanisms for surviving at that scale, a process which in nature could take billions of years. None of this will happen, of course, if the appropriate mutants are not available and the selective pressures do not exist. Besides, human breeders have known mendel's principles for only about about 96 years, modern genetics are only a few decades old.


</strong>

jpbrooks:

I usually don't quibble about details like what aspects of life are to be considered by Theists to be the products of design and I agree with much of what you have written.
However, evolving a whole new breathing apparatus is a major change for a life form to undergo, and could involve many individual mutations that must occur simultaneously in order for the apparatus to function.
The sheer improbability of getting all of the necessary simultaneous mutations right on the first trial would be an enormous task for evolution, and could be the reason why "barriers" to evolutionary change are postulated.
Life forms that, on the surface, appear to be similar enough to prompt biologists to assume an ancestral connection, (for example, birds and reptiles), may be many "mutations" apart from one another and thus, not very likely to result in evolution from one into the other. Observation appears to confirm this.

Also, I'm no fan of the traditional arguments for God's existence. But I haven't seen a convincing refutation of the Kalaam Cosmological Argument. Perhaps a refutation is possible, but I yet to see one.
The other forms of the Cosmological argument are usually arguments for a hierarchical first cause and not a temporal one.
In any case, the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, even if successful, (by itself), doesn't establish that the first temporal cause of the universe was the God of Middle Eastern Theism.

-John Phillip Brooks

[ January 05, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

[GunnerJ]

Is it just me, or is it extremely frustrating to debate with Ed?

Hey, at least he's replying to you! What's really frustrating is when he replies to comment son you arguments (LP, I'm looking at you! :) ) rather than the arguments themselves!

Anyway, here'a something for Ed's education on the Flood and geology:

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html" target="_blank">Problems with the Global Flood</a>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>(Hey, LP, muscling in on my turf, are you? )
Well, (Mr.) Ed, in appears that, rather than getting answers straight from the horse's mouth, I'm getting them from the other end! Let's see how I shovel this manure you call an argument:

Ed: No need for the condescending attitude.

Rim :o h, no need, indeed, no mater how much it is deserved.[/b]

Jah. I know you are part of the master race, Mein Fuhrer. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Ed: It plainly is implied and has been derived for the last 1600 years by the majority of biblical scholars that accept the authority of the scriptures.

Rim:Baldfaced assertion backed up by triple arguments ad populum, ad actoritam and ad famam. (For the Latin impared, that's three appeals, to popularity, to authority, and to tradition, respectively).

No, it is backed up by some of the most intense documentary research by some of the most intelligent people in history.

Ed: JWs use a erroneously modified bible, ie their own made up version.

Rim :o n what authority to do state that their version is wrong?

As I said, the overwhelming majority of biblical scholars both liberal and conservative agree that the JWs bible is inaccurate.

This is the end of part I of my response.


</strong>[/QUOTE]

[GunnerJ]

Ed, you may as well not begun part one of your response. All you did was repeat the same fallicious arguments that I've already shot down. What the hell is wrong with you? I mean, really, are you that dense? I do not care how many people agree with you, how important these people are, or how long they've agreed with you. This is not evidence, they are appeals to authority and polularity, as well as tradition. Just saying that your assertions are only backed up by "intense" scholarship and the word of many "intellegent" people, or that your reasons for disagreeing with the JWs is because many theologians disagree with them is simply conceding the point to me. Come up with a logical argument or your posts will be ignored by me on this thread.

[Synaesthesia]

However, evolving a whole new breathing apparatus is a major change for a life form to undergo, and could involve many individual mutations that must occur simultaneously in order for the apparatus to function.

<a href="http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/box/behe.htm" target="_blank">http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/box/behe.htm</a>

Since I am not an expert, I suggest you look at the above links. It not only refutes the principle of irreducible complexity, it offers scores of examples of the evolution of irreducibly complex systems. The following is an interesting quote I found here:

"Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become-because of later changes-essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.

"The point is there's no guarantee that improvements will remain mere improvements. Indeed because later changes build on previous ones, there's every reason to think that earlier refinements might become necessary. The transformation of air bladders into lungs that allowed animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen was initially just advantageous: such beasts could explore open niches-like dry land-that were unavailable to their lung-less peers. But as evolution built on this adaptation (modifying limbs for walking, for instance), we grew thoroughly terrestrial and lungs, consequently, are no longer luxuries-they are essential. The punch-line is, I think, obvious: although this process is thoroughly Darwinian, we are often left with a system that is irreducibly complex. I'm afraid there's no room for compromise here: Behe's key claim that all the components of an irreducibly complex system 'have to be there from the beginning' is dead wrong." -H Allen Orr

You can in fact download programs onto your desktop computer that will evolve “irreducibly complex” systems. Isn’t that odd? It is supposed to be impossible!

The sheer improbability of getting all of the necessary simultaneous mutations right on the first trial would be an enormous task for evolution, and could be the reason why "barriers" to evolutionary change are postulated.

Barriers to evolutionary change are postulated solely because evolution conflicts with their theological doctrine. There is no scientific justification whatsoever for these claims.

Also, I'm no fan of the traditional arguments for God's existence. But I haven't seen a convincing refutation of the Kalaam Cosmological Argument. Perhaps a refutation is possible, but I yet to see one.

I’m going to operate with the assumption that it is this version of the argument that you’re talking about:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The Universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause of its existence.

The appeal of the Kalaam argument is so powerful because it appeals to the way we already think about things. We push things and they move, we talk to people and they respond. We think of the world in which we live in terms of causal regularities. However, in all of these cases, without ANY exception, we are pushing or pulling existent objects. There is a cause and subsequently there is an effect.

This stimulates an interesting question: How it is possible to have a cause before an effect when there is NOTHING before the effect? How can you have an antecedent cause at the beginning of the universe where by definition, nothing could have occurred before it? The answer is that it is logically impossible. Our notion of causation is simply inapplicable to the beginning of time. However the universe started, however you cut it, the universe cannot have been caused in the human understanding of the term since there was no time at which the universe did not exist.

On infidels.org, there is a collection of discussions about the various formulations of the cosmological argument. Several of them are quite exhaustive in their refutation of the argument.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/cosmological.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/cosmological.html</a>

On a related note: To the best of my understanding, there is at least one kind of event in which we evidently observe something begin to exist. That is the formation of the electron-positron pair. There is, according to physics and observations, no cause.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[GunnerJ]

BTW, Ed, LP has started a wonderful thread on the subject of morality, specifically in reply to your claim that it cannot come from "amorality." I invite you to join in at:

<a href="http://ii-f.ws/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001623" target="_blank">Evolution of Morality?</a> on the <a href="http://ii-f.ws/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=3&SUBMIT=Go" target="_blank">Evolution/Creation Forum</a>.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
[QB]
Ed: Thats because he erroneously believed that it would be impossible for God to become human,

Rim: Again, on what authority do you state that his beliefs are erroneous? There were traditions in the early church that disputed the "fully god/fully man" theology. Why were they wrong?[/b]

Because they didn't adequately address the biblical data.


Ed: but since we don't have exhaustive knowledge of God there is no real reason it is impossible.

Rim: Non sequitir.

How?


Ed: And also Newton had a very large ego.

Rim:Yeah, I guess that solves it. The arogant are always wrong! Scientists, chuck those laws of gravitation and motion out the window, they were the product of an arrogant mind! (Gasp, horror!) Lets hope this is the last argument ad hominem, eh?

What I meant was that people with large egos often want to swim against the tide or go against the majority opinion. Sometimes thats good but more often it leads to errors.


Ed: Actually it was already understood by most believers prior to it being formalized by Athanasius.

Rim:Most? Proof, please. Why not all, if it's such a fundemental property of God?

Read "A Short History of the Early Church" by Harry Boer. Its importance was not realized until the 4th century. Sometimes the importance of a certain fact is not realized until years after its discovery. This happens in science all the time.

Ed: But anyway some of God's truth is revealed progressively. This has always been true even in biblical times. We don't know why He didn't explicitly teach the trinity from the beginning. He decided to reveal it to us progressively. That is what is expected if he is the real God, he doesn't do things the way we would expect him to. He can't be tamed.


Rim: Oh. here we go with this schtick again.

You see, folks, the uber-caste of cult member called an "apologist" knows that the Scriptures are flawed, erroneous, contradictory, and show the signs of tampering to fit the needs of society. Therefore, he must formulate an absurd god-concept that involves their god lying (and let's face it, people, failing to tell an important part of the truth is a lie of omission) to them about the fundemental nature of things, and "miraculously" "revealing" to them all the parts of their current theology piecewise, with a little being added on over time, almost like the work of finate, fallible humans changing the theology around over time to suit their current needs. But it's not, the cult apologist assures us, it's god's "progressive revelation," indistinguishable from a flawed work of humans minds in a developing culture, all done for some "divine purpose" which is also witheld from us. He then finishes it up with a statement like, "you are to (dumb/weak/immoral) to question god, so just accept it!" sometimes veiled in friendlier forms, like, "That is what is expected if he is the real God, he doesn't do things the way we would expect him to. He can't be tamed."

So now you claim to be a mind reader. Please provide evidence that you can read minds. Mind reading is a pseudoscience. What am I thinking right now? If the people are not at the stage to correctly understand a truth, withholding that truth to a later time when they can understand it better and will be of better use to them is hardly lying. If you wait to tell you child about sex until he is 11 or 12, is that lying? Hardly. And my last statement is a rational one if there is a real God. Your argument hardly demonstrates its irrationality. It is more of a veiled ad hominem attack.

Rim: You see, the cult member's mind is riddled with a plauge called "cognitive dissonence," where he must constantly juggle many diametrically opposed facts in his mind, sometimes errecting complex argumentative machinery called "apologetics" to justify them, and sometimes, simply killing people they dissagree with so no one questions their absurd thought paterns. What we see here today is the first variety, much safer than the second, but also infinately more annoying.

Ad hominem attack. Not a rational arguement.


Rim: Luckily, we have no need of such ridiculous looking mental gymnastics. We have a handy-dandy tool called Occam's Razor. This tool allows us to cut away all the unnessisay, overly-complex and meaningless elements in an explaination and cut right to the simplist explaination that fits the evidence. For example, on the subject of why the Trinity isn't very strongly stressed in the Bible, not at all in the Old Testament, and only by vague, questionable inferrence from the New, we have two explainations:

1) The Bible is the work of fallible humans who adapt older theology to support their current one.
2) God really wrote the whole Bible, but he "progressively" revealed himelf in it, omitting important facts in the begining and implying them towards the end, for a mysterious divine purpose, which we are too dumb to be let in on.

For comaprison, let's add a third:

3) Aliens are playing a sick practical joke on humanity by giving us false and missleading scriptures, just to see what happens.

Now, let me unsheath my razor and see what I can do. The Third one, while amusing, assumes alien contact for which there is no evidence, and thus introduces unnessisary complexity. The Second... well, where to begin! First, it assumes an unproven god, then it assumes a mysterious purpose, two entities we know nothing about. Quite complex for such a simple problem! Now, on to the First. If we shave off all the fat and gristle around explainations Two and Three, we're left with something like number one. Let's look at it. We do see a flawed Bible, and it's an historical fact that religions and "sacred" texts do get twisted to serve the purpose of those in power. We know about all the elements in it! Pass!

I would hardly call the existence of the universe a simple problem! Just because the scriptures have been twisted and distorted by evil doers hardly falsifies them. Did the Nazis distortion of evolution falsify it? I think most atheists would say no. So your attack appears to be more of an emotional outburst rather than a well thought out argument.

This is the end of Part II of my response.

[jpbrooks]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
[QB]

You can in fact download programs onto your desktop computer that will evolve "irreducibly complex" systems. Isn't that odd? It is supposed to be impossible!



jpbrooks:

Thank you for the links, Synaesthesia. I'm sorry that it took so long for me to reply.
I'm not a YEC. (To be more precise, I remain open to convincing evidence for YEC whenever it is forthcoming.) I agree with you and the article(s) that you cited. Behe has no ground on which to rule out alternative theories of evolutionary development a priori. But that just shifts the focus of the issue to that of evidence. If gradual evolutionary development of new organs and biological systems has actually occurred, there should be clear evidence of failed attempts, ("transitional forms"?) to support the theory.

Also, evolution of computer programs is indeed a form of evolution, but the computer program's "enviromment" is only an approximation of a "real world" environment. Thus things that occur in a computer environment may not necessarily be likely to occur in the "real world".



jpbrooks:

The sheer improbability of getting all of the necessary simultaneous mutations right on the first trial would be an enormous task for evolution, and could be the reason why "barriers" to evolutionary change are postulated.

Synaesthesia:

Barriers to evolutionary change are postulated solely because evolution conflicts with their theological doctrine. There is no scientific justification whatsoever for these claims.



jpbrooks:

Again, the evidence should show
at least one "unbroken" line of evolutionary development in a species, that transcends the postulated " barriers" to evolution. If not, then the alternatives to Behe are without conclusive evidential support.



jpbrooks:

Also, I'm no fan of the traditional arguments for God's existence. But I haven't seen a convincing refutation of the Kalaam Cosmological Argument. Perhaps a refutation is possible, but I yet to see one.

Synaesthesia:

I'm going to operate with the assumption that it is this version of the argument that you're talking about:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The Universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause of its existence.

The appeal of the Kalaam argument is so powerful because it appeals to the way we already think about things. We push things and they move, we talk to people and they respond. We think of the world in which we live in terms of causal regularities. However, in all of these cases, without ANY exception, we are pushing or pulling existent objects. There is a cause and subsequently there is an effect.

This stimulates an interesting question: How it is possible to have a cause before an effect when there is NOTHING before the effect? How can you have an antecedent cause at the beginning of the universe where by definition, nothing could have occurred before it? The answer is that it is logically impossible. Our notion of causation is simply inapplicable to the beginning of time. However the universe started, however you cut it, the universe cannot have been caused in the human understanding of the term since there was no time at which the universe did not exist.



jpbrooks:

First, let me state again that I am not a proponent of any of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The attempt to use any of them to establish God's existence, at best, begs the question. (In fact, Presuppositionalists openly acknowledge this point.)

Second, your point above is a good one, and it suggests the need for clarification.

One thing that needs to be clarified is the idea of time. Briefly, there are (at least) two ways to view time in this argument. One way is to view time as beginning at the "time" that the universe comes into existence. The other way is to view time as extending from eternity past to eternity future. In other words, "eternity" means an infinite series of units of time of a certain size.
In the former sense of "time", there can be (by definition) no moments of time before the beginning of the universe, which as you suggest, raises problems for the Kalam (apparently, I was spelling it incorrectly) argument.
However, the Kalam argument appears to apply instead to the latter sense of time, in which a cause can exist before the beginning of the universe.

Another thing thing that needs to be pointed out is that a proponent of the Kalam argument wouldn't assume, at the outset, that "nothing" preceded the beginning of the universe. But, as I suggested above, this only emphasizes the circularity of the argument.



On infidels.org, there is a collection of discussions about the various formulations of the cosmological argument. Several of them are quite exhaustive in their refutation of the argument.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/cosmological.html" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/cosmological.html</a>



jpbrooks:

Again, thanks for the references. I just finished reading Dan Barker's "Cosmological Kalamity" article for the first time and found it informative. I agree with him that the Kalam argument begs the question when it is used as a demonstration of God's existence, but I don't see why God would ever have to "traverse" an infinite series of His thoughts.
God is probably as limited as we are regarding "traversing" an infinite series. But there is no reason why a being that already knows everything would need to think "sequentially".



On a related note: To the best of my understanding, there is at least one kind of event in which we evidently observe something begin to exist. That is the formation of the electron-positron pair. There is, according to physics and observations, no cause.



jpbrooks:

Correct. Observation identifies no cause. But there must ultimately be a naturalistic reason why it occurs when it does, otherwise we would be concluding that reality is fundamentally irrational.

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

[HRG]

Originally posted by jpbrooks:
<strong>

jpbrooks:

Correct. Observation identifies no cause. But there must ultimately be a naturalistic reason why it occurs when it does, otherwise we would be concluding that reality is fundamentally irrational.

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</strong>
Sorry, I do not agree that this is a valid conclusion. "Indeterministic" (not all events have causes/are determined by the past) is not "irrational". We still can make statistical predictions (sometimes of amazing accuracy ;)

Regards,
HRG.

[jpbrooks]

Originally posted by HRG:
<strong>
Sorry, I do not agree that this is a valid conclusion. "Indeterministic" (not all events have causes/are determined by the past) is not "irrational". We still can make statistical predictions (sometimes of amazing accuracy ;)

</strong>

jpbrooks:

Thank you for your input, HRG.
The very fact that physical reality is amenable to statistical analysis suggests that it is (at a deeper level) deterministic. Statistics is a mathematical study and would therefore not even be possible in a reality that is not mathematically certain at a deeper level.

Furthermore, there is a difference between an event that has no specific identifiable cause and one that has no antecedent causal factors at all. An event that falls into the latter category would only be possible in a reality that is fundamentally irrational.

[GunnerJ]

Sigh. I used to think Koy was just being mean with his somewhat emotional responces to theists. Now I know where he's coming from.

(Mr.) Ed, I'm going to do the very best I can to reply to your evasions, non-answers, and general repeatition of demostratedly false "arguments" without being hostile, but the shoddy way you handle my arguments is just starting to get a little bit annoying.

Because they didn't adequately address the biblical data

ARG! I asked you for a reason why you are right and they are wrong! CLAIMING that you are right does NOT prove that they are wrong! In order for this to fly, you would have to SHOW, note, SHOW why and how they inadequestly address the "Biblical data." Pithy, unsupported one-liners are not going to fly as resposes here.

How?

Look up the definition of the term non sequitir. The fact that we do not have an "exhaustive knowledge of God" does not prove that something is possible, nor does it invalidate any of Newton's arguments.

What I meant was that people with large egos often want to swim against the tide or go against the majority opinion. Sometimes thats good but more often it leads to errors.


What this means, assborg, is that you are employing an argument ad hominem based on nothing more than an unfounded stereotype.

Its importance was not realized until the 4th century. Sometimes the importance of a certain fact is not realized until years after its discovery. This happens in science all the time.


<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> SCIENCE is an invention of fallible human minds. Come on, Ed. Try harder. Why can't the ALL-POWERFUL, KING of the F-ing UNIVERSE get his message across? If he wanted us to know that he is a DinU, a Trinity, how is it possible that he needed four hundred years of theological debate for us to realise it? Why couldn't your god write more clearly?

So now you claim to be a mind reader.

Get off it, you horse's arse. The fact that your theological machinations are part of a predictable pattern that I recognize doesn't make me a "mind reader."

Please provide evidence that you can read minds.

LOL! You asking for evidence! How'd you like it if I gave you the same treatment you gave me when I asked for evidence?

&lt;ArgumentType:Ed&gt;Because mind-reading has been backed up by years of intense documentation from both liberal and conservative pychic scholars, and the doubters are mostly arrogant asses who can't adequetly handle the occult data.&lt;/Ed&gt;

Please provide a logical line of reasoning why an omnipotent deity must "progressively reveal" his truth. I'll deal with your first attempt:

If the people are not at the stage to correctly understand a truth, withholding that truth to a later time when they can understand it better and will be of better use to them is hardly lying.

This would be good if we're talking about fallable, limited humans trying to send a message, but since we're talking about the OMNIPOTENT CREATOR AND KING of all there is, it seems that God could find a way to avoid such culture shock.

And, again, Occam's razor shreads this explaination up: What's the simpler explaination? God waiting for us to mature so we can understand him, or humans changing things around to meat their own ends? If the first, you beg the question of how man was somehow not "ready" to know that God is a DinU Trinity before the fourth century, and why is seems that, since the concept of the Trinity is absurd in any logical assesemnt, we are still not "ready" for it. After all, many epople are unconvinced by the Trinity because they see it as illogical and can't understand it. It seems that if we're "ready" for it now, or 1600 years ago, it would be less of a problem. ::Shaves off the unnessisary elements::

If you wait to tell you child about sex until he is 11 or 12, is that lying? Hardly.

I wonder why it's OK for cultists to compare god to fallible, limited humans in order to show why he "can't" do something, but it's not OK for us....

In any case, this is a weak, deeply flawed analogy. If you told your child that sex was kissing with the tougne and let him believe that until he was 11 or 12, THAT would be lying. It would also be closer to the situation at hand.

And my last statement is a rational one if there is a real God. Your argument hardly demonstrates its irrationality. It is more of a veiled ad hominem attack.


<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> Watch Ed play the victim. Your last statement is an irrational one if we're to assume that god is a worthwhile topic to consider. If you can't be sure of any of his motives, than you can't be sure of anything, especially what you think he's told you. After all, how can you be sure if what the Bible tells you is the whole Truth, or just one step on the "progressive" chain to it? Because he said so? We could belive him if we expect god to be honest, but, as you say, he defies our expectations. :rolleyes: Your statement is an attempt, and a sloppy one, I might add, to make anything you say about god unfalsifiable. As such, it is an irrational concept. Further, it is irrational because it is paradoxical. "What we can expect from a real god is for him to be unpredictable." But, wait, if this is true, how can we expect anything at all?

Ad hominem attack. Not a rational arguement.

Hey, doofus, here's a quick tip: "Ad hominem" attacks (what other type would I use, I wonder...) are not logical fallacies. Arguments from ad hominem attacks are. If you take a careful look at what I said, you may find a rational arguement. You may have already, but felt it safer to play the victim than to deal with it...

I would hardly call the existence of the universe a simple problem!

I would think you could stay on topic and not veer off wildly into terain I never covered in order to respond to me. Just what the hell are you blabbering about? My argument was about "progressive revelation," not the existence of the universe.

Just because the scriptures have been twisted and distorted by evil doers hardly falsifies them.

Oh, stop it, Ed! You're just making an even greater ass of yourself! First, the Scriptures are "progressively" revealed, now they've been "distorted?" Which is it? You have no argument in the later case. In order to prove the the Scriptures have been "distorted," you must prove that you know what they were supposed to say. That's a pretty tall order. Let's try to stay on track, brfore you get in over your head, and I have to let you drown for your own good.

Did the Nazis distortion of evolution falsify it? I think most atheists would say no.

Most people familiar with the actual theory of evolution would say "no" also. But, woah, lookie here, we HAVE the actual theory of evolution to compare Hitler's eugenical distortions to! You have no such parallel. Nice try though.

So your attack appears to be more of an emotional outburst rather than a well thought out argument.


Sorry, but you have to be capable of MAKING a well thought out argument to spot one. :p So much for part two of your rehashin... er, response. :D

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
[QB]Ed: Yes, and Jesus' life was documented by his enemies.

Rim:What, in the Talmud? That was written even later than the Gospels! Caeser has people in his own lifetime who opposed him chronicling his actions. I heard an analogy about the Xian religion, it went something like this: If you were told that a Civil War soldier was killed in battle, but miraculously rose from the dead, and the only proof you were given was a set of conflicting religious tracts written in the 1930's, you'd be insane to believe this. After Ed's reply, we can add proof to this claim of a Civil War ressurection: a rebuttle tract written in the 80s![/b]

No, see my post to LP with a list of documents. Actually the creedal formulas in I Corinthians 15:3-5, Luke 24:34, Romans 1:3-4 are considered by many scholars to date to less than 15 years after Christ's death. So using your analogy it would be 1880 not 1930's.


Ed: Jesus left behind followers that documented his teachings and lived according to them.

Rim:No, sir, his "followers" composed, decades after the supposed life of Jesus, a set of conflicting biographies. This is nowhere near the caliber of proof for Caeser's Gaulic campaign; as LP noted, Caeser at least wrote something himself.

The so-called conflicts are not very significant. But the oldest copy we have of Caesar's Gallic wars are 900 years after he wrote them. While the oldest copies of the NT are less than 100 years after they were written. There is much more likely for errors to occur in the gallic war documents given the time span.


Ed: Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events.

Rim:I suppose you think the Oddysey is an historical account? Let us pray to Oddyseus, the slayer of the Cyclops!(Great minds think alike, LP!)

There are other bases by which documents can be questioned such as literary style. Mythology has a certain style while historical documentation has a different style.

Ed: No, not classes, essences.

Rim:Substituting a meaningless term for one with meaning is not going to help your case.

Check your dictionary, it DOES have a meaning.


Ed: No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum.

Rim:LOL! The ignorance is maddening! You have a lot to learn.

BTW, you say most of the other religious traditions teach a eternal universe? Then you have no argument, because unless you can show that ALL other religious traditions besides the Judeo-Christian have an enternal universe, then your religious cosmology is not unique. Plus, you'd have to deal with LP's insightful analysis that the Bible may not teach a definate beginning. This is not so much a problem for reality as it is for standard Xian theology.

Actually I probably could say with a pretty high degree of certainty NO other religion has that judeo-christian characteristic. See my response to LP's analysis above.


Ed: Well maybe I should have said that most of the evidence points in that direction.

Rim: And you'd be wrong; all the evidence points to the Big Bang being the limit of our historical analysis of the universe; it makes no definative statements about what came "before." (Barring the speculations of String Theory, whcih, while interesting, are somewhat tenuous.)

Oh, I know no BB theorists make statements about what came before, because the law of causality points to the existence of a creator. And any scientist that makes that implication is immediately branded as being unscientific and even horror of horrors he may be accused of being some kind of religious nut!

This is the end of part III of my response.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
No, see my post to LP with a list of documents. Actually the creedal formulas in I Corinthians 15:3-5, Luke 24:34, Romans 1:3-4 are considered by many scholars to date to less than 15 years after Christ's death. ...


However, the Jesus-myth hypothesis explains 1 Corinthians and Romans very nicely -- he was a sort-of god back then. Luke 24:34 is as fictional as the rest of the resurrection accounts.


Rim:No, sir, his "followers" composed, decades after the supposed life of Jesus, a set of conflicting biographies. This is nowhere near the caliber of proof for Caeser's Gaulic campaign; as LP noted, Caeser at least wrote something himself.

Ed:
The so-called conflicts are not very significant. But the oldest copy we have of Caesar's Gallic wars are 900 years after he wrote them. While the oldest copies of the NT are less than 100 years after they were written. There is much more likely for errors to occur in the gallic war documents given the time span.


However, there is independent evidence such as inscriptions and coins. Furthermore, there is much less ideological motive to corrupt the Gallic Wars than there is with the New Testament -- there is much less doctrinal dependence on the former than the latter.

And the conflicts are serious; look for "Biblical Errancy" in the Library section of this site.


Ed:
There are other bases by which documents can be questioned such as literary style. Mythology has a certain style while historical documentation has a different style.


I'm not sure how Ed proposes recognizing each kind of style, but a variant would be to see how well the life of Jesus Christ fits a composite "Mythic Hero" profile worked out by Lord Raglan, Otto Rank, Joseph Campbell, and others. Jesus Christ makes a very good fit, while Moses, Krishna, the Buddha, and Mohammed fitting less and less, going down the list. Mohammed fits less than half as well (8 vs. 18.5), meaning that this historicity criterion supports Islam much better than Christianity. So when are you converting to Islam, Ed?


Ed:
Actually I probably could say with a pretty high degree of certainty NO other religion has that judeo-christian characteristic. See my response to LP's analysis above.


Ed, you have not provided any counterarguments at all. You've simply asserted what you believe, as though that is an unshakable argument. Even a cursory look at different cosmological beliefs reveals a widespread belief that the familiar Universe had had a beginning.


Ed:
Oh, I know no BB theorists make statements about what came before, because the law of causality points to the existence of a creator. ...


What is this "law of causality" supposed to be? And for all we know, our Universe could be a bubble in some eternal quantum-gravity soup.

[GunnerJ]

Damn, LP, you keep stealing my kill! It would be redundant of me to post my own reply at this point, Ed should realise that I concur with LP on this. I will make the following suggestion to Ed: post your replies to LP's first three counter-arguments on the Biblical Crit forum. This is becoming a digression. One comment on the word "essence." I am well aware that the word has a dictionary definition, but I claim that it is meaningless because it has not been defined by you for the application to DinUs. Nor do I see any evidence of such "essences." YOU provide a definition of essence, and prove how the Universe is a DinU defined by these "essences."

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: The scriptures never mention genetics so how could they be wrong?

Rim: They also say "Love thy neighbor" so how could they be wrong?, Well, tons of ways, since being partially correct doesn't validate the whole. LP's example of the Bible's advice on how to breed striped cows is one example of how it could be wrong. I'd like to see some relevant passages in the Bible to genetics.[/b]

As I stated to LP that was a supernatural event and not a treatise on genetics. There are no passages in the bible about genetics.

Ed: As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth.

Rim: Unless you're willing to postulate day-age creation with two-billion-year-long days, it sure as hell (ahem ) rules out a 15 billion year old universe.

Maybe creation week occurred 15 billion years ago or maybe the processes of Genesis 1:1 took 14 billion years or more and then creation week occurred. The bible doesnt say how long it took for God to create "the heavens and the earth".

Ed: See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood.

Rim: Please direct me to it.

A global flood which gradually overcame first the sea and then the land explains the primary order of major groups in the fossil record (sea to land)just as well as macroevolutionary theory. Though I am not saying that ALL fossils are a result of the flood. The amount would depend how long ago the flood occured. Erosion may have destroyed most of the fossils from the flood.


Ed: Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach.

Rim: Notice the little weasle word: "diversify." So vague it could support almost anything, from an evolutionary paradign of language origin to the "special creations" of languages taught in the Bible. It's well know that students of language development think that all languages developed from a "common ancestor," less frequently heard is the idea that all the modern languages were developed as a punishment for building a tower, which, despite your vague whitewashing, is what the Scripture teaches. Unless you're a "micro-evolutionist" when it comes to language. I have half a mind to write Mr. Choamsky about how his ideas are being misrepresented here.

Such a reason for the diversification of language cannot be discovered just by studying language itself.


Ed: I didn't say it proves it but is just a piece of the larger puzzle. There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles.

Rim: PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

See my post to LP.


Ed: Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists.

Rim: Another dual set of arguments ad populum and ad actoritam. Erroneous ones, in this case, as this statement is a flat-out lie. Look into virology, to see what I mean. The distinction is nowhere near as fine as you present it. For a more clear demonstration, define "life" for us. You can't draw distinctions without definitions. Many definitions of life are flawed as either to exclusive or to broad, and all are arbitrary and parochial. Here's an interesting article: Is fire alive? What is Life?

From a biologist's perspective viruses are obviously not alive. Only to those not very familiar with biology think viruses might be alive. The 7 main characteristics of life from BIO 101 are:
1. Living things are highly ordered.
2. Living things take energy from their environment.
3. Living things respond actively to their environment.
4. Living things are adapted to their environment.
5. Living things develop (development is not the same thing as change).
6. Living things reproduce themselves.
7. The information that each organism needs to survive, develop, and reproduce is segregated within the organism and passed on to its offspring.

Ed: Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago.

Rim: Point please? And please count LP's commentary on this as my own.

In other words he disproved abiogenesis.


Ed: It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point.

Rim:It is not a point at all, as this "irrationality" is unproven. If it is theoretically possible, then that strikes your causal/developmental barrier down. You have no point, no argument, to stand on.

No, theoretically anything is possible, but some theories are more logical than others and claiming that somehow the impersonal can produce the personal is illogical.

Ed: The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative.

Rim:Elaborate please.

Persons have a mind, will, and conscience, non-persons don't.

Ed: No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life

Yes, that's what abiogenesis is for. Not evolution. Try to get your terms straight, it makes you look slightly less like an ass.

See above about Mr. Pasteur.

Ed: or the impersonal developing into the personal.

Rim: But your distinction between "personal" and "impersonal" seems fundamentally flawed. You have agreed yourself that certain animals have aspects of the peronality. It seems, then, that the delineation between "personal" and "impersonal" is scalar, not binary. This is exactly what we'd expect from an evolutionary development of "personal" aspects.

I am referring to the ultimate cause not the process by which the effect was achieved. God may have guided or intervened at times in evolution to produce persons and part of that guidance may have resulted in animals that have aspects of personhood.

Ed: I am not saying that it PROVES that such a thing is not possible

Rim:THEN YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT. Everything else is a distraction. You need to prove your causal/developmental barrier before I have to knock it down.

Nothing can be proven with absolute certainty except your own existence and that only to yourself.

Ed: only that it demonstrates that such a belief is not as rational as a personal cause.

Rim:You're free to say that, even though it's completely false.

Just saying it is false doesn't mean that it is.


Ed: No, morality comes from God's objective moral character.

Rim: So god is beyond morals? Right, he's amoral. But how can that be? Morality doesn't come from amorality, right?

Who said God is amoral? I said God has a moral character. In fact the foundation of morality is God's character. That is the point of my moral arguement.


Ed:All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe.

Rim: It's this type of half-assed thinking that cultism germinates. Even the babies ripped from their mothers' wombs? They rebeled against god? Every pregnant woman was in open revolt against god? Every woman taken by Hebrew soldiers as personal playthings after their families were slaughtered was a god-hater? Those little kids joking about the prophet's bald head were in such revolt against god that they deserved to be mauled to death by bears? And all the animals and plants destroyed in the flood? They, too, were part of the revolution? Such horseshit. There are simple, humane solutions to these problems well within the grasp of an omnipotent being. But, then again, that's what we'd expect from an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being, and as you said, god's full of surprises. Your god chose to be a cruel, heartless motherfucker. What a pisser, that god it! He had me fooled. Please, please stop thinking with your ass, if you can't avoid talking out of it.

All human beings have an innate desire to rebel against the true God. God probably was rescuing the babies from going to hell before their later more serious behavior kicked in as adults raised in a barbarous society. The destruction of animals was an unfortunate side effect of man's rebellion against God. In fact there is evidence that man's rebellion has had a corrupting effect upon the entire universe. God was demonstrating the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion. The prophet was God's representative on earth, it is as though they were mocking God himself. No women were taken as playthings by hebrew soldiers. They became wives of hebrew soldiers because being a single woman in ancient times was basically an invitation to be raped or dying from starvation. So by becoming their wives they were given safe and secure lives with food and the chance to have children in a more humane society than the one they had lived in.

Ed: How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology?

Rim:Stop avoiding the issue. You defined personal as what makes me a person. If you can't see that that's a tautology, then I can't help you.

And part of what makes you a person is a mind, will and conscience. Now do you understand?

Ed: Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed.

Rim: See LP.

See my response to LP.

[b] Ed: I am not saying they MUST come from such things

Rim: And until you do, and start backing it up, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT. </strong>

See above about logical theories and illogical theories.

This is the end of Part 4 of my response.

[Datheron]

I love it when Ed goes into hyper-assertive mode with vague references:

<strong>In fact there is evidence that man's rebellion has had a corrupting effect upon the entire universe. </strong>

I bet that just our evolution alone a few hundred thousand years ago caused a chain reaction of supernovas across the Universe. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

[lpetrich]

Ed: (on breeding striped and spotted cows in Genesis)
As I stated to LP that was a supernatural event and not a treatise on genetics. There are no passages in the bible about genetics.


If that bit of genetic engineering is a miracle, it is not presented as one in the Bible; in fact, it's only one example of an old bit of folklore: maternal impressions. Lamarckism has been around much longer than poor old Lamarck.


Ed:
Maybe creation week occurred 15 billion years ago or maybe the processes of Genesis 1:1 took 14 billion years or more and then creation week occurred. The bible doesnt say how long it took for God to create "the heavens and the earth".


Very ingenious. But it would be easier to regard Genesis 1 as comparable to the Earth's four corners in the Book of Revelation.


Ed:
A global flood which gradually overcame first the sea and then the land explains the primary order of major groups in the fossil record (sea to land)just as well as macroevolutionary theory. ...


Flood Geology is long-discredited sauropod dung. There is zero evidence for anything like Noah's Flood in the last 400 million years -- at least. It would have left some big mixed-up sediment deposits, which are simply not found. Instead, the sediment deposits form nice layers with specific fossils, which correlate nicely across the globe. Ed, I suggest that you study some geology before sounding off on this subject.

Furthermore, Genesis 1 gets a lot of the appearance order just plain wrong; it states that flying animals came before land ones, and that angiosperms (fruit trees, etc.) came before land animals.

Also, the sea-to-land order is a natural result of origin in bodies of water; living on land requires lots of adaptations to slow down water loss while doing gas exchange with the air. Thus, sea before land qualifies as a lucky hit.


Ed: (on divergence from some long-ago ancestor)
Such a reason for the diversification of language cannot be discovered just by studying language itself.


On the contrary, it is a reasonable extrapolation from the recorded history of human languages. I suggest that you try comparing Latin and the Romance languages some time.


Ed:
From a biologist's perspective viruses are obviously not alive. Only to those not very familiar with biology think viruses might be alive. The 7 main characteristics of life from BIO 101 are:
1. Living things are highly ordered.
2. Living things take energy from their environment.
3. Living things respond actively to their environment.
4. Living things are adapted to their environment.
5. Living things develop (development is not the same thing as change).
6. Living things reproduce themselves.
7. The information that each organism needs to survive, develop, and reproduce is segregated within the organism and passed on to its offspring.


These 7 attributes describe viruses multiplying inside their host cells; outside those cells, viruses are inactive.


Ed: (on Louis Pasteur)
In other words he disproved abiogenesis.


Sheesh, Ed, what will it take to show you that Louis Pasteur had done no such thing? Here's an analogy:

Let's say that you are concerned with the color of crows. Every one you have ever seen is black, but only one white crow is necessary to show that this is not a universal rule. Louis Pasteur is like a careful birdwatcher in your neighborhood who only records the colors of well-illuminated crows in full view. But he has not seen all the world, and there might be some distant place where there are some white crows.


Ed:
No, theoretically anything is possible, but some theories are more logical than others and claiming that somehow the impersonal can produce the personal is illogical.


You haven't explained why, Ed.


Ed:
Persons have a mind, will, and conscience, non-persons don't.


However, mind, will, and conscience develop as each individual grows; does a fertilized egg cell have any of these?


Ed:
I am referring to the ultimate cause not the process by which the effect was achieved. God may have guided or intervened at times in evolution to produce persons and part of that guidance may have resulted in animals that have aspects of personhood.


Extraterrestrial visitors or time travelers could also have done that. And many of the features of Earth life could be due to their limited powers and even fallibility ("Why did you make Earth life dependent on something rare like phosphorus?" "Putting phosphorus in nucleic acids seemed like a good idea at the time.").
:D

If there is any positive evidence for any such designing going on. Which there isn't.


Ed: (responding to Rimstalker's list of Biblical atrocities...)
All human beings have an innate desire to rebel against the true God.


This is so harebrained that I'm at a loss for words. I'm a creator of programs, and I try to make them faithfully obedient. As to free will, read what Jesus Christ said about removing parts of one's body that lead one astray. By extension, if free will causes wicked behavior, then get rid of it.


Ed:
God probably was rescuing the babies from going to hell before their later more serious behavior kicked in as adults raised in a barbarous society.


It might be better to keep people from creating "barbarous societies". I do that all the time with all the software that I create.


Ed:
The destruction of animals was an unfortunate side effect of man's rebellion against God.


As if God was not capable of saving them. :-P


Ed:
In fact there is evidence that man's rebellion has had a corrupting effect upon the entire universe.


???


Ed:
God was demonstrating the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion. The prophet was God's representative on earth, it is as though they were mocking God himself.


So God has a skin thinner than Kleenex?


Ed:
No women were taken as playthings by hebrew soldiers. They became wives of hebrew soldiers because being a single woman in ancient times was basically an invitation to be raped or dying from starvation. So by becoming their wives they were given safe and secure lives with food and the chance to have children in a more humane society than the one they had lived in.


What an absurd fantasy. That's like saying that the Japanese armed forces in WWII had done a favor to some 200,000 "comfort women" by giving them employment and protection in exchange for them sexually servicing Japan's troops. Does Ed agree?

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

[GunnerJ]

LP, I can't take this any more. In a while, I'm going to try to respond to Ed's replies in a civil manner (and, hopefully, bring some new material to the table that you haven't already presented wonderfully :) ). But I can't deal with so much innane ass-crap. I fear I may pick up some stupidity by osmosis.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed: I am not saying they MUST come from such things

Rim: And until you do, and start backing it up, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT.[/b]

See my post about certainty.


Ed: Yes evidence can only be observed in this universe but scientists make assumptions all the time about things that cannot be observed, ie the past.

Rim:Bullshit! Inferences made about the past are beased on evidence from the past! Do a little brainwork before you type things up on the screen, ok?

No need for the crudity. Yes, and inferences about the cause of the universe are based on evidence from the universe.


Ed: Laws of Logic are non-physical entities therefore they do not require a time-space continuum to exist.

Rim:[b]Incorrect[/i] Laws of Logic are linguistic conventions based on our need to define and convey abstract thoughts.

No, two rocks under a tree cannot be at the same place at the same time and in the same relationship (Law of Non-contradiction) whether or not a human is thinking about it or even whether any humans exist.


Ed: helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings. Therefore the cause must also be sufficient to produce those things also.

Rim:More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Ok, give an example where helium and hydrogen were empirically observed producing a living thing.


Ed: Theoretically a pure unity could produce a diversity within a unity

Then, once again, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER.

See above about theories.


Ed: but it is not as rational an assumption than that the cause is also a diversity within a unity.

Rim: Bullshit! By this logic it would be irrational to assume that I can make a UBB post because it doesn't have my properties (6'4", brown hair, brown eyes, composed of moslty water and some carbon and hydrogen). Can you please pull that head of yours out from between your asscheecks at try using some logic? I'm not (just) making fun of you, I am trying to pull you out of this illogical circle you're trying to goad me into running.

No, UBB requires an intelligent mind therefore it is rational to assume that you have one.


Ed: How is it contradicted in the bible? The bible teaches the transcendence of God.

Rim: The various reference to god as a "heavenly father." The word heaven meant in ancient times the sky. God, appearently, lived in the upper atmosphere. High-altitude test flights seem unimpeeded by this. Various passages talk about God having a face, and at one point in the Bible, God instructs someone not to look at his face, but his "backside" where it's safer. I've also seen some advice in the Bible for armies on campaign: Take a shovel with you to cover up your latrine, as God is walking with you, and he doesn't like the smell. Moses's escape from the Pharoh was assisted by God blowing his nose to part the Red Sea. Hard