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Replying to Volbrigade]
Volbrigade wrote:
Then maybe I should cease discoursing with TotN -- I seem to be encouraging him to make two violations... Cool
First, let me say that you have the right not to respond to anyone you choose. Just as we have the right to comment on, and contradict as necessary, the claims you DO make.
Volbrigade wrote:
TotN -- you say that "everything is energy". And I said, "I'll go along with that."
God is energy. At least, He is the source of energy. The cause of energy/matter, and space and time. And He designed it to conform to its precise calibrations -- strong and weak force, gravity, EM, etc. The precise balance of conditions on earth to maintain the water and life cycles and food chain.
Yes, and "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet." Also, "Krishna is Lord," and "Homage to the Buddha, the Blessed One, the Exalted One, the Fully Enlightened One." Allah, Krishna and the Buddha are the source of energy too. Because those that believe in them say so and declare it to be true. There have been countless god's over the centuries. Each one the source of all things, and each one fully believed to be real and extent by those that worshipped them. What can we learn from this? One main and important fact... there have been billions of people over the years that subscribed with absolute devotion to claims which were in reality nothing more than complete and total fulla bulla. But of course that only ever happens to the
other guy.
Volbrigade wrote:
And remember -- as magnificent as it is, the universe that we encounter is fallen. In its original condition there was no carnivory, e.g.
I have no "memory" of the universe being fallen at all. My experience is that the universe simply is as it is. I am aware of what the Bible says, however. The Bible also says that there are times when it is right and righteous to hack babies and children to death with swords. Among other hideous things. I am NOT impressed with the Bible.
Volbrigade wrote:
Our disagreement stems from the fact that I put "Energy" (God) outside the universe He created; you, it appears, make "energy" the sum total of it.
All observation indicates that the universe is composed of energy continually reforming itself, and that energy can neither be created or destroyed. You claim that God created that which can neither be created or destroyed in the first place. You have taken a step and made a claim which is
not observed, and have simply declared it to be true. You
made it up! Things which cannot be supported by physical evidence but only imagined and declared to be true are known as "make believe."
Volbrigade wrote:
You will say mine are groundless assumptions.
Let's explore this thought further. What exactly is an assumption, and what exactly is undeniable fact? And how do we go about telling the difference?
Believers often confirm that God is there for them answering their prayers. And they assume that their prayers have been undeniably answered by God when they get that promotion they have been praying for, or when their team wins the big game. Exactly as they prayed it would. Proof, they believe, and they claim, of the existence of God. And on those occasions when they DON'T get that promotion, or their team loses the big game? That is simply God's will. So proof of the existence of God is sustained on the occasions that the prayed for thing is realized.
But evidence for the non existence of God is NOT sustained when the prayers go unanswered. Which is the majority of the time. This is known as a
false dichotomy.
Wikipedia
A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, false binary, black-and-white thinking, bifurcation, denying a conjunct, the either–or fallacy, fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses,
fallacy of the excluded middle, the fallacy of false choice, or the fallacy of the false alternative) is a type of informal fallacy that involves a situation in which only limited
alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
People often work diligently to achieve their goals. And if the goals are not too unrealistic, people do at times succeed in achieving them. Because in the physical world, those things which are physically possible can be achieved. It's also true however, that that in the physical world physical reality has a way of interviening. And in the physical world,
the world of reality, prayers and appeals to God amount to nothing more than useless hot air and wishful thinking. Make believe.
In 1994 a tornado hit the Goshen Alabama Methodist Church during Sunday service, causing the walls of the church to collapse. Twenty people died including six children. Why would God allow the deaths of those in His own house of worship, including the most innocent, who were there in the very act of worshiping him, when all He had to do was to prevent the walls from collapsing? The problem is that when put to the test, make believe is invariably unaffected by the harsh realities of real life. If a wall falls on you, or a mad man shoots you in the head, make believe does not serve as protection. Even for innocent children.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/03/us/pi ... holds.html
In 2012, after shooting and killing his own mother, a mentally unstable man went to the Sandy Hook Elementary School and methodically shot 20 six year olds and a teacher in the head. A Supreme Being would really have come in handy that day. Did God just sit there and watch the whole thing? Or was he distracted, too busy fulfilling the mundane prayers of others?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hoo ... l_shooting
So when a psycho comes into a classroom full of six year old's armed with a hand gun and the intention of shooting each one in the head at point blank range, or when a tornado causes a brick church wall to collapse on and kill worshipers in the very ACT of praying to God... in other words when faith comes face to face with physical reality,
physical reality inevitably prevails. And God is nowhere to be found. A God who is not there for these individuals and who does not act at a moment of extreme physical peril is in no way different from a God who never existed to begin with.
The point is, in
real life what we actually observe is that when the chips are down and faith is confronted by reality, reality will ALWAYS win out. When the chips are down and a Supreme Being would really
REALLY come in handy, God, invisible unknowable but assumed to exist anyway God, will invariably act in exactly the same manner as a God who isn't actually there. In fact a God who refuses to act even in the face of the ultimate crisis of life and death for the most innocent of His followers is a God who corresponds in every way to A GOD WHO NEVER EXISTED TO BEGIN WITH! What exactly is the difference? This is as close to an empirical test for the actual existence of God as one might reasonably hope for. And in these sorts of make or break tests, the result for the question "does God exist," invariably corresponds in every way to a negative finding.
Now let me make it clear. I do not blame God for what occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in exactly the same way that I hold no grudge against Santa for not ACTUALLY coming to my house each Christmas.
Volbrigade wrote:
But no more so than "energy is everything". Care to provide proof of that statement? Proof that can be "verified as true and accurate"?'
On July 16, 1945, in New Mexico, the first atomic explosion was produced. Matter was converted into it's basic components of heat, light and radiation. Energy. And so Einstein's famous theorem of E=MC^2 was proven. Matter is simply one of the forms that energy takes.
Volbrigade wrote:
Again with the flying corpse thing? I thought we had settled that. What's next -- "the flying spaghetti monster"?
You provided a made up term, "metacosm," to explain the claim of the resurrection of Jesus, and the claim that he subsequently flew off up into the sky. Your entire premise is nothing more than a series of assumptions and made up claims for which you can provide no physical evidence. Nothing his been settled. All you have provided is your personal belief system and a series of empty and insupportable claims.
Your book of revealed truth indicates that Jesus physically returned from the dead. It also indicates that Jesus physically physically flew off, up into the sky and disappeared into the clouds. It's in your book of revealed truth, and you are stuck with what it says. Attempting to gloss over what the Bible specifically says with a layer of double talk does not have any effect on what the words contained in the Bible actually say.
Volbrigade wrote:
But to the point: yes, there exists an eternal, infinite environment, of which our space-time ("energy") continuum is but a subset -- a "square", relative to a "cube", idiomatically speaking.
Are there other dimensions, essentially more directions in space/time than we can perceive? According to current scientific thought, the answer is yes. Could the God you are proposing, exist in those other (hyper) dimensions? Since we cannot perceive those other dimensions, we have no ability of examining them. So anything
could be true concerning them. But you see, science works on observation and experimentation. Not by imagining facts and declaring them to be true. That is the province of make believe, and those who prefer subscribing to make believe rather than the physical, and at times unpleasant, physical world.
Volbrigade wrote:
That is where the "corpse" "flew off" to. It is our eternal abode, as well -- unless we reject it for foolish (and even intellectual) pride, conformity, peer pressure, or the enticements of this world.
Yes. It's a perfectly silly claim. An unreasonable and insupportable claim, without an ounce of physical evidence to support it. Other than the insupportable claims themselves, of course. But insupportable claims (lies and make believe) are a very common currency among humans.
Volbrigade wrote:
IOWs -- you don't know.
I do.
I don't know. And I recognize that there are things I don't know. I await for the time when the blanks can be filled in with physical evidence. I am 68 years old. I have managed to fill in many many blank spaces with new information based on observation and the physical evidence over the course of my life time. You fill in the blanks with rigid assumptions and make believe. Your blanks spaces have already been filled in with make believe, leaving you no potential for learning and growing.
Volbrigade wrote:
The universe itself is not intelligent. It is designed, however -- and reflects the Intelligence of its Designer, who exists in a metacosm (somebody -- Blastcat -- complained about that word. But I love it. He said it was "made up." LOL -- what word isn't?) that transcends and subsumes the cosmos, which is finite -- dimensionally bounded.
If the universe was designed, than then the designer was totally inept. Certainly in the creation of biology. Because biology is inherently wasteful. Why are some of the young of every species born with physical deformities that insure that they will not survive? Why does the DNA molecule sometimes fail to correctly read the sequence? That makes no design sense at all. It is in fact an inherent design flaw and totally contradictory to the nature of a omnipotent designer Being who does not fail and does not make mistakes. Why did omnipotent God design faulty systems which regularly fail to work correctly? Why did God make life, and then make cancer? Why have entire species gone extinct? If biology is the product of the design of an omnipotent Being, this makes no sense at all. It makes perfect sense however, if biology is simply the product of ongoing random change and natural selection.
The creatures which are best suited for survival are the creatures with the best chance of surviving and reproducing. If biology is simply the product of random chance and taking advantage of the conditions that prevail, then the wasteful nature of biology is not only an unavoidable certainty, it is a necessity.
Volbrigade wrote:
Yes. But it wasn't originally that way.
Because you have declared that to be so? At some point I should probably begin to keep a running count of the assumptions and empty claims you make. By which I mean, claims for which you have no actual physical evidence, which actually contradict the physical evidence, or which have an ongoing record of complete failure and fallacy which is thousands of years old.
Volbrigade wrote:
Another claimant to be a better creator than God? I'll let you and DI battle it out over who is the better "designer".
I don't for a moment suppose that any "designer" ever existed to begin with.
Volbrigade wrote:
I'll refer you to my post #14 of this thread, and offer the same challenge to you that I did him. Where did he go, btw?
I am afraid I am not DI's keeper. He is certainly capable of defending himself however.
Volbrigade wrote:
Otherwise:
Yes. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three day and nights. And as that was a prefigurement of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ --
This is the level of sophistication required to suppose that fish are filled withbreathable air, and that it is possible to live inside of one for several days
without being converted into fish poop. Which is in fact a normal part of the process behind being eaten.
Volbrigade wrote:
"the volume of the book is about Him", after all -- it is reasonable to assume that Jonah, too, died and was resurrected. And "safe and sound" is probably a poor choice of phrase, given the narrative.
Because you declare there exists a Being that can do anything, therefore anything you declare is not only plausible, but somehow self evident. Your entire belief system is based on a series of unfounded
EMPTY assumptions. And for some reason you have concluded that declaring to to be so is the same thing as establishing that it is therefore undeniably so. This not only in spite of, but in defence of, the various flatly silly claims that are contained in your ancient book of ancient superstitions.
Volbrigade wrote:
I still maintain that the context in Is. 45:7 renders "calamity" a better choice than "moral evil"
A better choice for Christians perhaps. But not a better choice for Jews, who after all wrote Isaiah 45. And Isaiah 45 makes no distinction between "moral" and virtual evil. It simply say that God creates evil. God creates all things, and there is no other God. That is in fact the purpose and message contained in Isaiah 45.
Volbrigade wrote:
and am unpersuaded by your citation of Lewis Black, who I find considerably less than impressive.
He is a confirmed atheist, so I wouldn't expect you to take to him. He's damned funny though.