If you believe in god, you have to believe in leprechauns.

Are we allowed to challenge the premisies? Because I have a problem with 2 and 3. Why is the exsistance of divine beings unprovable? Or perhaps I should say any less unprovable than anything else?And why are all unprovable things eaqualy unprovabe? Let's say it is unprovable that I had lunch today, no matter how hard I try, I cannot prove that I had lunch today. If just a few more pieces of evedence were avalable to me I would be able to prove it.Though my lunch is unprovable it is not AS unprovable as something that would require many more pieces of evidence. Like that someone in the andromida galaxy had lunch today. My lunch thing is unprovable but just out of reach, whereas the andromida galaxy guys lunch is way way out of reach.So it seems like there are degrees of "unprovableness" am I missing something?

So far most people on this thread seem to agree that there is no evedence of God, and that belief in God has to be taken soely on faith? I would think religious people would think that there WAS a great deal of actual evedence of God.Suprising!But even MORE suprising is the assuption that it is IMPOSSIBLE for there to be any evedence of Gods exsistance. Why do you claim this? what if there was suddenly a rift in the heavens and God said "Yep I'm here, see you in 2000 years!" I know that most would claim that this dosn't PROVE Gods existance but it would be about as good proof as we could expect for anything.It just seems realy weird to me that the religious types here are agreeing that God is impossible to prove.

Thanks for your reply. First off: Did you know we are down to three major forces now? Electromagnitisum has been connected with the weak nuclear force and is now refered to as the Electroweak force.As to your post, I don't quite understand. Are you claiming that God is unprovable becase God could tamper with the results of an experiment? If this is what you are claimning then perhaps God has to regularly preform miracles to keep his exsistance a mystery?Why is it impossible to prove miracles? For example, claims of miraculous healing could be verified or disproven or left ambigious, right? As for the laws of phyiscs, why would Gods ability to suspend them "stike at the core" of the scientific method? We would just have to update our laws to say things like "an object at rest must stay at rest---unless God decides to move it.And why do miracles have to suspend the laws of physiscs anyway? Couldn't God preform miracles by natural means? I know we have a tendancy to seperate God from nature but it's not like Gods actions would be causeless. They would just issue forth from Gods "non-extended spirit matter" or whatever.I still don't see how these things are outside of the relm of science.This message has been edited by The Dread Dormammu, 12-04-2004 09:31 AM

Well I would assume that the results were always due to forces unless there seemed to be evedence that God was preforming a miracle. That is to say the default assumption would be that there was nothing supernatural.Don't most people do this anyway? If you hear a voice in another room telling you to "get up I need you" your first assumption is that it is a non-spiritual being. This happens in the Bible to ... I think Joshua and he assumes that it is his father before he assumes it's God.Even if I heard voices without apparent sources I would assume that I was halucinating before I beleved that they were actual sprits.This message has been edited by The Dread Dormammu, 12-04-2004 10:54 PM

I disagree because I think you are using the term "univerese" to mean all things in exsistance.There is good reason to believe that there is more to the universe than what is in our hubble volume. The idea that time itself started with the big bang is, perhaps, outdated though it was persuasivly argued by hawking in "A breif history of time".1: Our "universe" (meaning our space time continum) is larger than our hubble volume. Microwave backround radiation suggests this. Hence there are galaxys beyond our hubble volume. Just becase galaxys they are retreating at faster than the speed of light (and are therfore invisible and unreachable) is no reason to believe that they don't exsist.2: Our "universe" (meaning our space time continum). Could have been produced from a prior universe in a larger "multiverse" (see thread on inflationary cosmology) or it could have been produced from a nehboring "brane" colliding with our brane.So the universe (this time meaning "all exsistance") was not caused by the big bang (in my opinion). Instead the big bang was just something that happened in a larger multiverse, and as such had a cause (or was causeless as some quantum mechanical things are truly causeless (again in my opinion)).Even if the things I have stated are not true, they are still not logicaly inconsistant hence it is not inenvitable that we beleve in a causeless god.

Right that was all I wanted to do. I do not claim to know what the "first cause" was perhaps the first effect happend without a cause or perhaps there was no first cause at all and the multiverese is eternal. I have no idea.I just wished to point out that though everything in our universe started with the big bang, the big bang was NOT nessesaraly the first event.I have basicly 2 major problems with the assertion that God is the only thing that could have caused the big bang.1) The big bang may have had a materialistic cause in a larger multiverse.2) Not event has to have a cause. If you claime that some things don't have causes (like god) then why can't other things also not have causes. The argument that "god is not an effect" doesn't make sense to me.