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

Yup, why go around telling people that they are going to hell when you can make the most of your life and everyone else's life?

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

You big strawmanning ass-hat. (I borrowed your fave phrase Dan).

It's a good phrase.Totally misapplied in this case, but a good phrase nonetheless.

Haha. Listen, I think that the students who come out on a daily basis to tell their fellow students to convert can really use the time to do homework and stuff. Heck, if they want to serve humanity so much, they should just fly to Africa and help with the AIDS pandemic rather than keep trying to make me join in.

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

Cause they believe there is another life after this life which will last forever, unlike the current life?

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If you say there no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure?

I dispute assumption #3, as follows:The first cause argument. All events have a cause. If we trace all events back far enough we get to a First Cause, whom we assign the name of God.usual reply: there is no reason to suppose that the universe has not always existed.my response: Big Bang. The universe had a beginning.

robinrohan Science unfortunately is,at present,unable to state what occured at T=0 since the laws of physics do not advance beyond the limit imposed by the planck time of T=10*-43 seconds which is such a vanishingly minute speck of time that one would be tempted to consider it not really different from T=0.However since science hinges upon what it can say about the world we cannot say one way or the other just what occured.It may be that the laws of nature prevent a T=0 in the same way that absolute 0 cannot be reached.
In fact,as I think about it,{wrongly no doubt}would not T=0 violate the uncertainty principle in just the same way that absolute zero does?This message has been edited by sidelined, 12-08-2004 11:31 PM

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"A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death."-

Exactly. And furthermore, the next life is infinately more important than this one. In fact, this life is just a preperation for the next, a passing shadow, if you will. That doesn't mean it is meaningless-- the next life gives this one meaning.

The first cause argument is an old one. It is an invalid special pleading. If all things require a cause, why does the unmoved mover or first cause not? If the first cause can exist uncaused, why can nothing else.The standard reply, and I am not stating that it would be yours, is that God does not require a cause. that is why it is a special pleading and a fallacy.

The Big Bang has changed that thought process. The assumption was that the universe had always existed, so it would be reasonable to ask, who made God? And why God especially? Why not something else?But I am giving you a definition of God--the First Cause, whatever that might be. There was a first cause, according to Big Bang theory.Let us ask ourselves what existed before the Big Bang. The answer is Nothing. That is to say, nothing that we know about, because all we know about is matter/energy and space/time. There was none of that.And yet there was a cause for the Big Bang. Something made it happen.The first casue is God.

The Big Bang has changed that thought process. The assumption was that the universe had always existed, so it would be reasonable to ask, who made God? And why God especially? Why not something else?But I am giving you a definition of God--the First Cause, whatever that might be. There was a first cause, according to Big Bang theory.Let us ask ourselves what existed before the Big Bang. The answer is Nothing. That is to say, nothing that we know about, because all we know about is matter/energy and space/time. There was none of that.And yet there was a cause for the Big Bang. Something made it happen.The first cause is God.

Sorry for the repeat. I was correcting spelling.

No doubt, Sideline, it violated all sorts of rules and regulations, but it happened. We have adequate proof of that.Something made nothing into something.What caused that to happen?The First Cause.

Defining some deity as first cause does not change the fact that the argument you are proposing is a special pleading, which is a logical fallacy. A good explanation is here:Special pleading - WikipediaThe relevant section states that "unexplained claims of exemption from principles commonly thought relevant to the subject matter" is one form of the fallacy. That is exactly what you are doing when you claim that all things but your idea of god must have a cause.The name for your argument is the "unmoved mover", and was originally postulated by Aristotle just over 2300 years ago. It has been refuted many times over the years, the most common being the one I have told you.

It is valid because all things do not require a cause, all effects require a cause. God is not an affect, and therefore needs no cause.

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If you say there no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure?