if Nothing is Nothing then why a God?

Dan, I am with you all the way. Good job!Funny, my life has an enormous amount of meaning and I am extremely fulfilled in it, yet I have no god in my life. If Culverin's version of the universe were true, then this should not be possible.Yes, very funny, indeed.

Every statement you made implies that we should choose a belief based on how it makes us feel about the world. I don't care how much better it makes you feel, or how badly you imagine (and I do mean imagine) you would live if you didn't believe in God, that is no reason to decide he exists. I could dream up all kinds of things that would make me feel better about the world, and maybe act better, but I wouldn't choose to believe them just because of that.I think it's odd that the only reason you don't hate me is that God told you not to. You're saying that the real you would hate me, whom you do not know at all, just because I'm here? You can give credit to God for your good qualities if you want, but you're getting carried away when you take it that far. Some day you'll realize that people can love each other without believing in God. I do it all the time.

Not really. Many definitions of God are subject to falsification via reductio ad absurdum. You don't need that many hours to reason that the universe did not "come from" anywhere or anything at all. The answer is rather clear, actually. Your inquiry assumes that the universe had to have "come from" something or somewhere, which is a faulty assumption. False. False. False. False. False. False. False. Sounds like a personal problem to me. No, with God love has another purpose beside the one we give it individually. Farmer's raise pigs for ham and bacon -- does that mean that this pig's purpose is to be slaughtered? This is also possible without your God. So then you have no problem stating that right and wrong are subjective, correct? Do you realize that by postulating your God as the supreme moral arbiter you've reduced morality to "might makes right"? Again, sounds like a personal problem to me. Where is Christ in you, exactly? If we performed some exploratory surgery, where would we look to find Him?Blessings,::[This message has been edited by ::, 07-25-2003]

That was a perfect example of creationists being lazy thinkers. They use God as an explanation to avoid those difficult philosophical questions, and above all, believe because it feels good. Talk about intellectual bankruptcy.

hello! i am not neccesarily replying to the last post..im a newbie here..just want to say that st. thomas' 5 proofs of God's existence and st. Anselm's Ontological Proofs are excellent resources for your topics.that's all.

Didn't Kant dispose of those pretty easily? (Maybe it was somebody else). The Ontological proof in particular is rather hollow. Perhaps you'd like to paraphrase it here, and we could discuss it?

Yes, Kant trashed the silly ontolgical argument on the grounds that it treated existence as a property of objects. Even without that objection, the argument is so poor that I kant understand how anyone could find it convincing.[This message has been edited by Beercules, 07-27-2003]

Don't you mean "Kant understand."? db------------------
Doesn't anyone graduate Sunday School?

why does the universe need meaning? why does anything? and how does a god give t a good one?

ok.but how about st.thomas'? its pretty convincing...

I assume you mean St. Thomas Aquinas. Perhaps you could briefly explain what you find convincing about his arguments? I don't see much that is striking.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

the whole lot of it is very convincing.nothing causes Him but He causes everything.

Aside from the outdated argument for morality, he came up with some decent arguments, namely the contingency, the prime mover, etc. The problem is, for each argument he arbitrarily posits God as an explanation. For example, he argues for the existence of something non-contingent, otherwise if everything had the ability to fail to exist, there would be nothing in existence. The logic is sound (almost) but all it does is argue for something, anything non contingent, and there is nothing to suggest that must be a God.So in light of that, I don't see anything all that convncing about his arguments.

That is a statement, not an argument.------------------
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I just thought i would chime in with a few known things that science knows about "something coming from nothing" According to the Uncertainty priciple (remeber principle means a law that has been proven by experiments and agrees with all observations) that even in the vacuum of space(nothing) there still exist a small amount of energy (something) determined by the uncertainty princible. The uncertainty principle is defined as such: Just a moment... . or that one can never know the posistion and the velocity of a particle. The more one knows about the velocity the less one can know about the posistion and vice versa.
"The Casimir Effect is a small attractive force which acts between two close parallel flat metal plates place near eachother in a vacuum, The pressure is due to a reduction in the usual number of virtual particles in the space between the plates."(The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawkings p202)
Virtual particles are defined as: "In Quantum mechanics, a particle that can never be directly detected but whose exsistance does have measurable effects. Also see Casimir Effect.") (The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawkings p. 208)paraphrasing the following from "The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawkings p 44-45)"According to quantum theory, the ground state, or lowest energy state of a system is not just sitting at the lowest energy state. That would have a definite position and velocity of zero. This would be a violation of the uncertainty principle. The ground state of any oscillating system must have a certain minimum amount of what are called zero point fluctuations."
This is the background on how in space which we call the vacuum there actualy exists energy there, and because of E=mc if you have energy you can have mass. So thus this is how something can come out of seemingly nothing. I hope this has helped------------------
--ignorance is humankinds worst enemy--[This message has been edited by sup32string, 07-27-2003][This message has been edited by sup32string, 07-27-2003]