God caused or uncaused?

But the topic is God, not the physical world.It doesn't matter how coherent your philosophy is with your physical observations. There are no physical observations of God, so your ideas of God can only cohere with themselves.The part of your philosophy that concerns God can have no coherence with your physical observations.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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"Faith in logic" be damned.You still can't use logic to connect what is observable with what is unobservable. There is no possibility of coherence there.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Nobody can see Him.If people think they see evidence of Him in the physical world, that evidence can fit into their coherent philosophy package. But there can never be a coherent connection to Him.You can find all the fingerprints you want, but you can't identify them as His fingerprints because He isn't in the database.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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I said nobody can see Him, i.e. God. Your notion that God = logic is not a given here. Einstein could see that E = mc². That's a mathematical representation of a physical phenomenon.If God is supposedly non-physical - i.e. supernatural - He can never be observed in the physical world and any connection between Him and the physical world can not be made logically.(Use <sup> for superscripts.)

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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The scientific method is our best way of understanding the physical world. Logic is a tool of that method.This topic is about God (caused or uncaused), who is non-physical. The scientific method has no connection to God whatsoever. It's tools are irrelevant to the topic. Exactly. The whole venture of science - which deals with the physical world - is valid only if the notions about the physical world are valid. Notions about the non-physical world (if any) are not relevant - i.e. do not cohere.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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No. The notions are descriptions of the physical world, made by creatures in the physical world for their own use in the physical world. They are in no way related to the notion of a non-physical God. No. The physical world would stay together just fine even if nobody had ever had a notion about it.The issue we have here is in connecting notions about the physical world - which we can test with physical observations - with notions about "God" - which we can not test with physical observations. Your notions about the physical world can be perfectly coherent with your observations of the physical world. And your notions about the non-physical world can be perfectly coherent within themselves. But there is no connection between the two coherences.ABE: No it isn't. Logic is worthless without the physical observations for it to work on. It's nothing but a tool.Edited by Ringo, : Added response to another message.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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They're not "proven", of course. They're just the best description we have of the physical world. The physical world would still operate the same as it does even if we didn't describe it with "laws". No. Logic doesn't "exist". Like the physical "laws", it's just a mental construct. It needs to be coherent with physical observations in order to have value.Which is why logic has no bearing on the topic. God is not constrained by mental constructs.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Well, our mental constructs exist as chemical and electrical patterns in our brains. As such, they are physical. They can be communicated between individuals by physical means such as speech and writing.So no, there is no proof that the "non-material dimension" exists. Patterns in our brains in no way suggest the existence of God (caused or uncaused).

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Well, no. The logic has always been that a combination of gravity and aerodynamics governs the flight of birds and stones. The observation that birds do fly has always led people to the logical conclusion that human flight is possible. It only required people like Otto Lilienthal and the Wright brothers to add to the body of observations which made human flight a reality. And the creationist is wrong, of course. There were eggs long before there were chickens. The "creator" of the egg existed in a different form. What implications does that have for the evolution of God?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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That doesn't really say anything about the topic. God was around before we were. So what? The dinosaurs were around before we had ideas about them too.Never mind our ideas about God. That's what got Rob all confused.What about the cause of God? What egg did He come from and what laid that egg?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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You wouldn't treat any other relationship that way though, would you?A complete stranger comes to your door promising you a set of eternal encyclopedias. Would you get to know him as your personal salesman or would you want to know about him first?But what has that got to do with whether or not the salesman is caused or uncaused?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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I haven't said anything about our mental constructs being valid or invalid. I've said that our brains are physical objects with physical processes. The mental constructs that they produce are not evidence of a non-physical realm.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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