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Author | Topic: My Beliefs- GDR | |||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
What if the God that you believe in is the third cause? What if He believes in a second cause but even He doesn't know anything about the first cause? Either there is an intelligent first cause or there isn’t. In other words, how are the concepts of "God" and "first cause" even related?
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
"Outside of time" (or outside of our time) is a convenient patch to slap on the holes in the idea of eternity. I don't think the authors of the Bible would have agreed with you. Their idea of eternity seems closer to our idea of deep time, though they had no conception of how deep "ordinary" time really is. They were most likely thinking of eternity in terms of thousands of years, not even millions or billions.
If God is eternal the the idea of a first cause is meaningless.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
"Always" is itsef an expression of time. It simply means an unimaginable period of ime. As I have already mentioned, ancient people couldn't imagine millions or billions of years. Neither can we, really. It seems to me that they are pretty clear that God always was and always will be. I don't see any reason to think the Bible authors were using the idea of "always" any differently than we do.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
The problem is that the word "eternal" and the concept of eternity were made up long after the Bible was written. This is the Oxford definition of eternal.... Realistically, when somebody uses terms like "forever", he means that we don't know when it began and/or when it might end. You're reading too much into it.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
That isn't belief in Christ; it's a cult of personality. The Protestant belief is that we are to believe in Christ's death on the cross for our sins, and that our works (being decent human beings for starters) can't do a thing to save us, it's all by God's grace through Christ's sacrifice. Edited by ringo, : Capitalized "Faith" because she isn't as humble as I am.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
Remember it was God who got Job into his trial. Job is wise enough to know that finite human wisdom won't get him out of this trial. God has a point when he says that human wisdom tends to be short-sighted - but it's also a copout. It's like a parent saying, "You'll know better when you're my age." You may indeed be wiser when you're older but you won't necessarily agree with your parents when you're older. Their wisdom too may be flawed.
Phat writes:
That's what I'm saying.
Whether it be eons, thousands of years, hundreds of miles or billions or trillions of miles, the concept is that God is greater. Phat writes:
That part you're making up.
His limits are limitless.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
Some people need glasses and some don't. You can look at wearing glasses as a weakness or an enhancement (depending on whether the glasses are half empty ot half full). It seems to me that if you can get into heaven, lead a moral life and do good works without a belief in god, then the rest is community interest and worthless worship. People who don't need glasses shouldn't look down on people who do need glasses - but it's okay to point out that they look dorky.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tangle writes:
Maybe you need glasses to see my point. It's hard not to see the need to wear glasses as a disability.... I deliberately avoided using crutches as an example. What about sweaters? Some people "need" a sweater to feel comfortable and some don't. Is the need for a sweater a disability? For some people, religion is a sweater. It could be an ugly sweater that their grandmother knitted but they're more comfortable with it than without. The need to look down on ugly sweaters could be seen as a disability too.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
I'm glad you don't disagree because I was trying to explain why you wear glasses.
Good post and in a lot of ways I don't disagree.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
Shouldn't the pre-existence of a BIG intelligence be much less likely than the development of a little one?
I on the other hand reject the idea that our existence could be the result of non-intelligent origins although I do allow for the unlikely possibility of that actually being the case.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
That's a good argument against intelligent design. All sentient life can do is manipulate existing natural proceses.
It does seem to me that when it is done in a lab it will be an example that it took sentient life to make it happen.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
Exactly. So you can't invoke the claim that a sentient being is required to do what we do in the lab. We, as sentient beings can only manipulate existing natural processes but we aren't able to create or change those processes. You actually seem to be talking about three levels, not two:
You're palming the pea, sometimes putting #2 in with #1 and sometimes putting it in with #3. Edited by ringo, : Added zinger.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
If the question is, "Does a car require a DVD player?" the default answer is, "No." You need a compelling reason to claim a requirement. You seem to be admitting that there is no compelling reason. Essentially, you're saying that your car "needs" a DVD player because you want one.
I also agree that sometimes it might be difficult to distinguish one from another. The question is though, does natural law require an intelligent designer. GDR writes:
It's a psychological phenomenon, a pretty common one. When we need "more time" to find a solution to an emergency, our brains often go into a more efficient mode in which we seem to have more time to figure it out. It might be interesting to examine how that evolved as a survival mechanism. Was that a suspension of natural law? Thinking of it as a suspension of natural law is, frankly, kinda bizarre.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
Sure we can. Note the word "compelling". If we don't know of a reason, it can't be compelling. If you don't know there's a good reason to eat a pile of leaves, you don't feel compelled to do so. From our perspective we can't know whether there is a compelling reason or not. If there is no compelling reason to think intervention is required (for abiogenesis, evolution, etc.) then we are not compelled to think there is a requirement. Thinking rationally, we can not conclude that there is a requirement. (Your beliefs would probably go unchallenged here if you didn't constantly try to link them with rational thinking. )
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
GDR writes:
Of course science doesn't claim to provide absolute answers and it certainly doesn't claim to prove negative propositions. Science produces the best answers available using human observations and human thought processes. The best answer we have is that stones roll downhill without an intelligent pusher and that molecules interact without an initelligent tinkerer.
Scientists can uncover all the natural process they like but it can’t be determined by the scientific method, even if we know how it was all done, whether or not the processes required an intelligent designer. GDR writes:
You're equivocating natural law with judicial law. They are not related.
We have natural laws and in our experience laws require a law giver and so in that sense the atheistic position requires relief from natural law. GDR writes:
You have provided no reasons whatsoever for your beliefs. You always retreat to, "You can't absolutely prove that I'm wrong." That isn't rational thinking; it's wishful thinking. I have given such a reasonable account of my position that it is completely irrational that you don’t agree with it. You may as well be saying that rolling stones are pushed by invisible Bigfeet and science can't prove otherwise.
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