Does God Really Exist???

First give us a good reason to. Bald assertion. You got any evidence that might support it?

Why? Because you say so? As I understand your argument, you are insisting that since everything we observe has a prior cause, there must be one thing that is without a cause. How is it a valid to deduce the existence of one thing with property not-X when everything we observe has property X?Say I have a sack full of 1000 colored marbles. I don't know what color(s) they are, but I'm going to begin sampling them. I pull the first out and it is blue. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are also the same color of blue. As a matter of fact every marble I pull out up to the 999th marble is the same identical color of blue.What color would you guess the last marble is? Yellow? Why?That is what your argument is saying. It says everything we observe has a prior cause (i.e. every marble so far is blue), therefore there must be one thing without a cause (i.e. the last marble is probably yellow). If we are to make any extrapolations from our past experience, it is more reasonable to extrapolate along the devloping trend than specifically against it.

Please support this assertion. I don't believe it to be impossible, however improbable it may be. Support please. All I see are bald assertions. Don't tell me, SHOW me. I asked for GOOD reasons, not bare assertions. While I'm sure you have plenty of the latter, I'd like to see just one of the former, thanks just the same.

Such as?ADDED IN EDIT: I haven't seen any convincing evidence that might warrant belief in his existence. It's the same reason I don't believe in gremlins, djinns, the tatzelwurm, the loch ness monster, the chupacabra, etc...[This message has been edited by ::, 02-17-2004]

Scientific evidence is that which is collected via methodological naturalism, i.e. it is a confirmed prediction of a scientific hypothesis that is repeatably testable/observable and falsifiable.

Which independant institute has repeated his observations?Which similar-in-length non-biblical texts were analyzed for control?On what basis did Washburn select the texts to analyze out of the many different versions in existence? No original copy of any book in the Bible has survived, so how do we know that his selections are valid?After all that, how do we know this is not the work of Loki, the trickster god who desires to lead credulous Christians astray?[This message has been edited by ::, 02-17-2004]

And why should I believe that it's repeatable if no one has repeated it? Your say so? Begs the question. If the originals didn't exhibit the same patterns, then the patterns are anomalous coincidences. Heck, they may even be that if the originals DID have them. How would we know? I don't need any. If you can't objectively distinguish your explanation from mine, then we don't have evidence for either hypothesis, now do we? Both of them account for the facts equally well. So what? Most of the methodologies that I've seen didn't use rigorous controls, and those that had controls showed nor more significance than common placebo effects.

Yet what you're proposing is in direct contradiction of this principle. You're proposing that your God DID create life ex nihilo -- which is contrary to all of our observations. Why do think this: ...follows from our observations that life always comes from something before it? If the life we observe always comes from something before it, how does that imply that there was some form of life that did NOT come from something before it? As in my earlier analogy to which you did not respond, if you picked 999 blue marbles out of a sack, on what basis do you predict that the last will be yellow?By the way, if you are the biologist you claim to be, you should know that according to the biological definition of "life," your God is not alive since He does not metabolize nor reproduce.EDIT:And another thing... you should realize that "life" is not some magical property inherently possessed by some things and not others. It is a property abstracted from the behaviors of certain configurations of matter. There is no difference between a carbon atom in a rock and a carbon atom in my body. One is simply involved in a process we call "life." Humans define what "life" is a posteriori. Objectively, there is no difference between "living" and "dead" matter.[This message has been edited by ::, 02-18-2004]

Doing the creationis side-step, I see... no matter.Please consider the piece I added with my edit. In reality, the beginning of life would be the point at which certain processes of matter began to meet our basically arbitrary definition of what life is. The beginning of life is not expected to be some mystical insertion of some heretofore unknown animating substance or energy. Reality doesn't tell us what life is. We humans decide to label a certain category of material processes as "life." It's not a line of reasoning. It's a question. One that you did not try to answer, I noticed. And since when did the common definition of "life" apply to such entities? Can you show me where such provisions are included in biology texts? I have only the descriptions of other Christians to go by. If it is your assertion that God does metabolize and that he does reproduce, then you are required to support this assertion with evidence. Sans that support, my statements stand unrefuted. Please, elighten us all with some evidence that your God metabolizes.Furthermore, it is not a given that Jesus was any actual offspring of Jehovah, so if it is your assertion that he is so, you are hereby required to support that assertion with evidence or retract it. I don't care if you are or not since even if you are it obviously isn't helping you make rational arguments.

Only because you define "God" as "one who is uncreated." You're blatantly begging the question. I can just as easily define "::" as "one who is uncreated" and it would have just as much rational weight as yours. Please note that this says the total is constant, but not finite. Infinity is a constant, too. Yes, but the state of maximum entropy or "heat-death" is asymptotic. It is something the universe always approaches but never reaches. In order to define the beginning of something, one must observe two states: 1.) the state of non-existence of that thing and 2.) the state of that thing's existence. However, it is non-sensical to claim to have observed the universe's non-existence since it would require an observation of something temporally before the universe. Since time is a property of the universe, this reference has no meaning. False. Things like the spin of the resulting particles from the decay of a pion are acausal. More evidence that the Bible doesn't know what it's talking about. Done.[This message has been edited by ::, 02-18-2004][This message has been edited by ::, 02-18-2004]

You might be able to approximate the age of the sun, but it would have very little relevance to the estimation of the age of the universe.[This message has been edited by ::, 02-18-2004]

I suppose you would have an upper limit on the age of life on the planet, but it wouldn't be useful at all at attaining any meaningful precision. I'm no paleontologist, but I think there are more accurate methods for determining how long life has been on the planet.

Actually, I believe that you and I (at a minimum) were also discussing the existence of God... right up until I demolished your attempt at advancing the Kalaam Cosmological argument. Did you plan on acknowledging that at all, or were you just gonna keep on like you are and not address it?

You da man!

It was in Post 98 and in the future I suggest simply looking for the avatar -- it kinda sticks out. No, it's not. Cause and effect are macroscopic approximations of the aggregate effect of millions of probablistic quantum events. No, the rest was a bare assertion. You stated it as though it were fact. If you do not have the support to establish as a fact, it is disingenuous and against forum rules to state it as such. This is not evidence that what you've described is impossible -- only that it is improbable. What would prevent it from ever happening as you've asserted? This is so disingenuous it makes me angry. You can't simply come in here throwing around bald assertions without a modicum of support and then insist that YOU don't have any burden to prove them. Then I suggest you cease with the horse hockey splatter gun approach and focus on one or two specific issues at a time.