[Polpolion]

I say this - I flat out don't agree with you that the God explanation is more complex and less credible than the "universe just appeared" one.

Fist and foremost, there is no nothing in the universe. Show me nothing..everything is something. The universe itself is a thing of some kind.
Logic dictates that something can't come out of nothing. Yet that's what you happily believe.
Whatever there was before the universe, if it wasn't God it was SOMETHING.

This doesn't prove that God is an omnipotent/scient superbeing. Accepting this function of thought, God could be a subatomic particle or even a process of some sort.

I believe that there was something before - God. Given that God is by definition, omnipotent and beyond comprehension, trying to understand Him and analyze him is useless and doomed to faliure. Thus logic dictates that you don't even go about explaning God. Ergo, God has effectively removed himself as a element needing an explanation. Similar to 0/10 and 0/1000 being equally small.

So you're say that God is completely illogical?  I hate to tell you this, but humans didn't invent logic. Logic is essentially the study of truth, correctness, and the way yes and no work. Logic is a truth that doesn't take any parameters. Even if you wind up in a different galaxy somewhere with super-intelligent unfathomably different super-beings, ad-hominem will still exist, !yes still equals no, and (true || false) still is true. Saying that God is unexplainable is even less reasonable than using the stupidest, most ridiculous defense for a crime.

There is also the question of WHY was the universe created - if it was created at some point, as you said. If there is no intelligence, no will behind it, then one must always ask - why and how?

I dunno about you, but "God willed it"  seems like a simpler and more credible explanation then "it just happened for no reason".
Ultimately, this is all just conjecture on our parts.

No self-respecting scientest EVER said "the universe exists for no reason". The answer has always been some derivative of "I don't know", which is bounds more credible of an explination than basing both the answer and your life around pseudoscience.

I just like to add - someone here said that who needs God when you can come by the "love one another, be good" conclusion trough logic?
Yes you can come to that conclusion. But you can also come to the conclusion that genocide is good trough logic. Humans beings are capable of rationalizing just about everything. Logic is only valid if it's based on completely accurate set of data - something we never really have. And even then., logic is not a clearly universal truth.
Philosophy again...damn  I need some sleep. TTYL.

Guess what? If there is no God, then there is also no good and bad. Or at least in the sense that we see it now. Instead there is "What is beneficial to humanity as a whole?" and "what is harmful to humanity as a whole?", and although the probability is virtually none, a situation could indeed arise when for the benefit of humanity as a whole could involve abandoning a portion of itself, much like the amputation of a malignant tumor on the body of a cancer-ridden patient.

Arguing with religious fanatics, of any Faith, is a pointless exercise for anyone who wants to actually use logic in their arguments.  You are arguing against books hundreds/thousands (depending on the individual religion) of years old which were ultimately written by human beings but which believers accept to be set down by divine entities.  There is no logic anywhere in this equation.

Better to leave them be and focus on more important issues.

So you say. So you think. And so you are wrong.
A pitty. A discussion might be nice, but ultimatively, when you have two opposite camps, no matter what the subject is - religion, sports, movies, physics - if both sides are entrenched enough nothing will change one way or another.

I'd have to agree with Trashman partially here. Civilized discussion between two opposing sides - when kept under control -  is most of the time beneficial.

Logic...such a simple word, but it doesn't have the same meaning for everyone. You consider it a universal force of somekind. I can tell you from experience that it is not really.

See above statements about logic.

[castor]

I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.

Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?

[OT]:
Is the problem of "something out of nothingness" really a valid problem at all?
Why is "non-existing" easier to digest than is "existing"?
Maybe "existing" and "non-existing" are just the flipsides of a local "state" of the universe somewhere. Sort of a quantum fluctuation..
That would mean that nothingness itself doesn't exist
[/OT]

[Herra Tohtori]

Something interesting about the universe is that if you drop consciousness out of the list of attributes associated to God, you pretty much describe Universe instead.

-Universe is (an easy enough experiment is sufficient to confirm this pun to what God calls himself in the Old Testimony)
-Universe is everywhere at the same time, affecting everything (well duh)
-Universe has existed as long as time (ie. from the beginning of itself; what was before does not really apply because universe began time and dimensions as we know them)
-Universe is capable of doing everything that is possible to do in the universe (a tautology, but an important one at that)
-Universe is, arguably, perfect (or at least it's possibly the only way things can happen in a way they happen; see anthropic principle. It might even be the only possible universe, or the most probable one; see multiverse theory)
-Universe is just (it treats everything in it in exact same fashion, no one can escape the conservation of energy, momentum and enthropy)
-Universe is awesome and beautiful.

How Universe is different from God:

-Universe does not make rules for us; we need to figure that out amongst ourselves.
-Universe is cool, unlike God in most religions, I might point out.
-Universe does not have any expectations of us - for example it's not necessary to have water poured on our heads while receiving a name, or to believe in certain things in life to be part of universe in life and death. Although I'm pretty sure if there IS a God, he doesn't really have those expectations either, and they are just a habit of people.

Seeing these qualities in the Universe makes me wonder why exactly a conscious being would be needed to organize all of this. Isn't what we can see, hear, touch and research very much cool enough without an explanation that doesn't explain anything - to me it's way more awesome to live in an universe where chance and laws of nature have caused things like us to exist, instead of something wishing it to be so.

Moreover, it's even possible that universe is, at some level, conscious entity - I can't deny the possibility. But I do not know of any mechanism on how it would be possible. But that consciousness would effectively render the existence of a separate divine being null and void, and Universe would be God not only effectively, but classically as well.

Oh wait, I'm a conscious being. Why not for the sake of exercise consider that Universe's consciousness is not a concentrated entity? That would mean that every being with any level of consciousness is, by being part of the Universe, also part of Universe's ability to create conscious thoughts? Like a bunch of independent parallel processors, all with varying levels of cognitive abilities and independent thought, but parts of the same universe.

Treating universe as a God without a centralized consciousness makes a lot of things simpler, like praying. Praying, for example, becomes an effective ritual where you need to use complex series of motoric functions to get Universe to do what it wills, but with enough practice you can for example will a football to fly to goal, or an arrow fly to the target accurately, and you'll be able to make it so, with Universe's help of course. If you failed you did the motions of that particular prayer wrong and you need to practice moar, since the Universe misunderstood your meaning and the football, or the arrow, ended somewhere you didn't intend.

Of course, pointing out that Universe has a lot of attributes usually associated to God, with the exception of concentrated consciousness, is most likely an exercise in futility for those who have their view set with God as a being separate from universe (that's another paradox by the way) and having created the universe, but to me it's a lot easier to accept that the Universe is, after a fashion, a blind God (lol, Azathoth) than it is to accept an universe governed by some separate entity.

And about being separate from universe, that's impossible by definition since if something affects universe, it's part of universe, which means that the supposed God would be a part of universe... or alternatively universe would be part of the supposed God. Joining the two together as one entity and removing the requirement of one superconsciousness, and you get your standard, run-of-the-mill universe. Of course this does separate the walls between mundane and divine as well, but it's everyone's personal choice whether it reduces the value of universe, or makes the whole universe a "divine" place even without one single being in controls of everything.

About the existence of soul (or consciousness as I like to equate it to), and their fate after death, I don't really have much to say. In the scale of the Universe, death of one part of it's consciousness is hardly a world-shattering experience, and I don't expect there to be anything after death expect that the matter I consisted of being returned to the circulation and perhaps at some point participate in the functioning of a new mind. In other words I become a non-conscious part of the Universe. It isn't a scary thought to me, though I definitely would like to live as long as possible to get the most out of the life I surely know I have, instead of wishing for a better existence after death as a reward for believing in the right things.

[NGTM-1R]

That would mean that nothingness itself doesn't exist

According to quantum physics, nothing does exist, however it is extremely unstable.

Saying that God is unexplainable is even less reasonable than using the stupidest, most ridiculous defense for a crime.

To be blunt, regardless of whether God exists or not, Trashman is correct. We could not under any circumstances explain him. To attempt to explain the existence of, let alone the workings or the mind, of an omnipotent and omniscienct being is quite utterly beyond the faculities of our own brains. Simply being able to comprehend such a being would require you to be one yourself. At this point in time, we can, just barely, attempt to set out the physical requirements of the existence of God; a being of infinite power and knowledge would require infinite space, demanding a universe unto itself, faster than light conditions for either the ability to know everything at once or so that it can realitvistically stretch out the time available to it for information to reach it, but then again it might require infinite matter (paradox!), making God a universal-sized singularity (itself a paradox!) and invalidating the other two points as then he could know everything because the physical storage has been compacted into a one-dimensional object.

Such a being is literally beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone explain. And that's science talking.

[brandx0]

Simply put, the strength of religion is that it can not ever be proven wrong. 

To quote Russell's Teapot

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

[TrashMan]

So you're say that God is completely illogical?  I hate to tell you this, but humans didn't invent logic. Logic is essentially the study of truth, correctness, and the way yes and no work. Logic is a truth that doesn't take any parameters. Even if you wind up in a different galaxy somewhere with super-intelligent unfathomably different super-beings, ad-hominem will still exist, !yes still equals no, and (true || false) still is true. Saying that God is unexplainable is even less reasonable than using the stupidest, most ridiculous defense for a crime.

Funny thing about logic is that you need perfect conditions for it to work...maybe. you see, if logic is so clear cut as you say, then how come what i find logical and what you find logical is different? After all, there can only be one truth? And then comes along Billy bob and sez we're both idjiots for what we are saying is just plain stupid. He has his own ideas.
I would guess it's like that because every one of us has a different life experience and knowledge base, and thus all of us weigh things based on thousands on tiny different snippets and parameters.

So...if there's only one truth, one "true" logic, who is correct?

Guess what? If there is no God, then there is also no good and bad. Or at least in the sense that we see it now. Instead there is "What is beneficial to humanity as a whole?" and "what is harmful to humanity as a whole?", and although the probability is virtually none, a situation could indeed arise when for the benefit of humanity as a whole could involve abandoning a portion of itself, much like the amputation of a malignant tumor on the body of a cancer-ridden patient.

You mean like genocide and a whole slew of outright horros have been rationalized in human history?
My point to make was that abandoning religion and focusing purely on logic will give you no better a world that it is now. Logic, just like religion, can sometimes be a two-sided blade, since it's a man who wields it.

[WMCoolmon]

Funny thing about logic is that you need perfect conditions for it to work...maybe. you see, if logic is so clear cut as you say, then how come what i find logical and what you find logical is different? After all, there can only be one truth? And then comes along Billy bob and sez we're both idjiots for what we are saying is just plain stupid. He has his own ideas.
I would guess it's like that because every one of us has a different life experience and knowledge base, and thus all of us weigh things based on thousands on tiny different snippets and parameters.

So...if there's only one truth, one "true" logic, who is correct?

Not at all. Proper logic constrains itself to the terms which can be proven or disproven and factors in subjective constraints. You're attempting to treat logic as if it were a religion like Christianity, and that's just not the case. While the Bible will say "God exists" and treat that as a fundamental absolute truth for everybody, whether you like it or not, HT's point is that you can't prove existence of God (which you can't or haven't) and therefore he believes that God doesn't exist by Occam's razor. He's not making a claim about the status of God's universal existence or not, he's simply listing the evidence for why he believes what he believes.

If you really wanted to, what you would get down to is that all 'logic' is really just a thought experiment based on approximate premises. The fact that the premises are approximate doesn't mean they're inaccurate though - the premises would be something like "Killing a defenseless person is murder" and "He killed a defenseless person" ergo "He has committed murder". For most situations, these are arguments that everybody would accept. The goal of any good logical argument is to boil it down to terms which all parties can accept as true and show that they demonstrate that something else is true.

The problem is that when somebody makes an argument for religion, they almost always choose to rely on premises which all parties can't accept. In order to prove that the God of Christianity exists, you rely on the Bible. Since it is only justifiable to elevate the Bible to the position of absolute truth if God contributed to its creation, God existing is a necessary presumption of the evidence for your argument. If you don't elevate the Bible, then any other work which claims divine support is fair game, and you must go through each and every one of them in order to prove that God is the only God. You'd need to define premises which everybody can agree on for why you're only going to consider the Bible's word on religious, supernatural matters and not any other books.

Since you're not even willing to accept the entire Bible and seem to have a pretty subjective view on what you consider true and not true in it, it's no wonder that you don't like logic. Logic would force you to spell out your beliefs to others and establish a consistency to what you consider true and not true which I don't think you've done. While I don't have any problem with that in general, trying to say that logic is the problem here is premature. You haven't lived your life in order to try and convince others - clearly playing sports on the beach is more important to you - and you certainly don't hold yourself up as an example for others to follow (Quite the opposite, in fact). You have to at least make a good effort to try using logic before you can say that it's failed you.

Guess what? If there is no God, then there is also no good and bad. Or at least in the sense that we see it now. Instead there is "What is beneficial to humanity as a whole?" and "what is harmful to humanity as a whole?", and although the probability is virtually none, a situation could indeed arise when for the benefit of humanity as a whole could involve abandoning a portion of itself, much like the amputation of a malignant tumor on the body of a cancer-ridden patient.

You mean like genocide and a whole slew of outright horros have been rationalized in human history?
My point to make was that abandoning religion and focusing purely on logic will give you no better a world that it is now. Logic, just like religion, can sometimes be a two-sided blade, since it's a man who wields it.[/quote]

Not really. Religion is great for justifying horrors because it holds people up to an unquestionable moral standard. This is wrong, that is wrong, and it's only because someone in authority said so. Whether or not the religion itself demands the slaughter of untold thousands, it can be twisted around to seem like it's supposed to say that, and since people are used to following moral guidelines without question, they'll follow those new moral guidelines.

How many times have you heard something justified as being wrong because it's "just wrong"? What if somebody perverted your internal moral sense so that somebody living was "just wrong"? You'd be motivated to kill them just to do the right thing and prevent a wrong.

What if your religion treats somebody as being ordained by God and speaking for Him? Well, then your religion demands that you do what He says, no matter how wrong it seems to you, because He is the voice of God and anything He asks you to do is for purposes beyond human comprehension. You can rape and pillage and slaughter and your religion will shield you from the consequences, so long as nobody bothers to point out that what you're being asked to do in your religion's name is completely contrary to everything else in your religion's doctrine.

With any system based on logic, you'd have to justify your crusade using the tenets of your moral system - or justify why those tenets are wrong. You could still get your slaughter, perhaps, but you'd have to be a lot more clever about doing it because the people would be willing to question your judgment and more free to do so. They would not be constantly judged by an omnipotent omniscient being for their thoughts and would not be accountable to hold their loyalty to God lest their soul be consumed in hell for all time. Instead they'd be free to wonder if this course of action would be worth the hundreds or thousands or even millions of lives that would be sacrificed to achieve this purpose. The evidence suggests that they and the people they're going to kill only get one chance at life, right? So is it worth it to spend their life in conflict?

There are other arguments that you could make - death and destruction keep humanity alive as a potent force in case another group of people arrives to make war on humanity and it's forced to think strategically. However, these arguments would at least be based in some purpose which can be proven and debated, and not tied to some rigid adherence to authority that may or may not exist for some purpose which may or may not exist.

You'd still have irrational behavior, of course - I doubt that's going away for a long time. But you wouldn't have the mass unifying force of religion to tie that together into a terrifyingly destructive force which has lost its connection with reality and those around them. People do great things for humanity in the name of religion, but they can also do great things in the name of humanity. It's a lot more difficult to do horrible things in the name of humanity, as that would be a contradiction in terms...

I think if I were to boil that down, I'd say that the benefit of a logic-based system over a religious-based system is that you have to deal with the consequences in the here and now. You can't make some excuse that you're appealing to a higher authority or that your actions will have some effect in an even higher realm than you can see, so it's OK to commit some heinous crime in this reality. If you commit a heinous crime in this universe and it comes under question, you need to prove that you did it for some good in this universe.

[Polpolion]

God damn it. I had posted earlier but I lost the connection right after I hit post, and it didn't work. Now I forgot what I posted.

[Mars]

The trouble with deriving all of your morals from a realitive perspective however, is that there's no way of defining something as wrong for everyone. Subjection is wrong in one country, but what's to say it's wrong in another one for instance. Students will cheat, because what's to say it's wrong? After all, it isn't effecting anyone else.

Weather or not you believe in a god, absolute morals are necessary for the world to remain stable.

[Scuddie]

tl;dr

[G0atmaster]

Think about it from our perspective.  The Supreme Author of the Universe tells you not to do something which mere men order you to do.  Who's the higher authority?

Give the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor... or something. The problem with the Author of the Universe telling you not to do something is that it's not a falsifiable claim. Anyone can claim that God has told them to do something, or not to do something. Similarly, anyone can claim to write the words of God, but if someone claimed to do so these days, very few would actually take the claims seriously. Or, in the words of Siddhartha Gautama:

"Believe nothing just because you have been told it, or it is commonly believed, or because it is traditional or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to and take as your guide."

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.  Note, just before this, Christ asked the person who's image was on the coin being taxed.  Basically he's saying that, not only is the money Caesar's to tax, but the person is God's.

Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar.  They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in.  Yet they came out unscathed.

While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God."  As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.

And how exactly does one verify that? The main problem I have with theistic religions is that they feel the need to justify simplest things as commandments from above, when there's no need to do so.

If you for example take the golden rule in whatever form and evaluate it logically, it can be found to be very sound principle of life with no need for it being divine in origin.

But the thing is, you must consider the source.  Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?"  Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?"  We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven.  He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.

To answer your question, the verification comes from Scripture.  God would not ask a person to do something contradictory to the Bible.  The Bible is the word of God (remember, from my perspective), and thus, it is the contents of the mind of God.  God would not go against that, and if a person asks someone to do something that does, it's obviously not God asking.

That's why I coloured red the parts that are, in function if not in words, similar in these two quotes. If one wants to assume that God is what is "conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings", then it's the same as testing the spirits to make sure they are from God. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Bible and elsewhere suggest that the God we're talking about is not any of these things.

 To argue whether God is Good, you must 1. acknowledge God's existence, 2. Acknowledge His authorship of the Universe, and 3. Acknowledge that God is the measure by which He made everything else.  To argue with God is to be a stream attempting to flow above its source.

So here's an interesting question - what need is there to mix divine beings to something that should be common sense?

 Common why?  Why, if there is any lack of anything beyond mere nature, should there BE any such thing as sense?  

Considering that forgiveness seemed to be about the only thing that got any kind of reaction out of the guy on the video, I can kinda understand what Saul of Tarsus (and note that I make a distinction between what authors of a book write and what is the suppsoed God's will and word) says about burning coal... And that quote doesn't mean that you should turn the other cheek (oh wait, that's elsewhere on the same book) have an eye for eye (oh wait that was on the older edition) ignore the criminal actions and leave them without any consequences of their actions, it just says you should forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (oh wait, that was elsewhere again).

 

At that time, he was known as Paul.  Get it right XD.  And Herra, Paul made the distinction of when he was writing from his own mind and when he was writing words inspired by God, also.  You should look into that.  How does that quote not mean you should turn the other cheek?  It tells you not to be overcome by evil, and to, as much as it depends on you, avoid conflict.  How can you say this contradicts Christ's words of "Do not resist an evil man,"  and "turn the other cheek?"

Names are overrated anyway. People are what they do, not what they're called.

 Tell that to all the false "Christians" out there.  

About the distinction, again comes the question, why believe that something someone says is from God? If testing the spirits equals to what Mr. Gautama said about examining things, does it follow that everything that is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings comes from God? Or is it just otherwise worthy food for thought?

 Not sure I understand what you're trying to say.

Anyway, the way I see it, forgiveness does not equal to allowing bad things to happen to you if you can prevent them. It means you shouldn't retaliate, and I interpret the other cheek thing in a similar fashion - it means that people should be given a second chance instead of for example hitting them back, but doesn't really mean that you should literally just stand there taking a beating.

 Then why doesn't it say, "if a man strikes you on one cheek, turn and put your guard up, as he is probably going to strike you again?"  But I, somewhat, agree in a way, which I don't have words to elaborate on at this time.

As far as the Eye for an Eye thing, Christ absolved that.  First of all, He is God, He has the authority to do that sort of thing.

So he says. To me he was a man in a story who said a lot of wise things that people should think about rather than believe in them since he was the one who said them.

 
That's about what he said, but what about what he DID?  Christ has not left your view of him open to us.

You see,  The way it works is, sin = death.  Period.  This is drilled into the Israelites time and again with their guilt offerings and sacrifices made to be reconciled with God.

To me, the concept of sin I equal to actions that bring harm to others. Death is the absence of life, or the moment when my human mind stops to function permanently. I suspect in your context sin=death means that if you sin you will die for good, and if you're freed of sin your soul won't die when your life ends, and that's where our views of word are different.

I do not know if there is anything after death, but it seems unlikely to me. It would be cool, but nothingness would be perfectly acceptable as well. The concept of immortal soul I actually find disturbing. Since I'm not expecting anything after death, in my view of world this life is everything I know for sure I have, and I try to make most out of it, which includes trying not to harm others.

This is one point a lot of Christians debate about.  I believe, as the Bible says, that there are two deaths a person can go through.  Their body returning to the dirt from which it came, and the death of the soul, in the Lake of Fire, otherwise known as Hell.  The first is temporal, the second is eternal.  Both are brought about by sin.  Death entered the world through the sin of Adam.  "For sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all because all have sinned-"  Sin is simply missing the mark.  Because God is perfect, His presence in all His Godliness cannot tolerate imperfection.  Thus, when man first sinned and became imperfect, he was no longer capable of standing in the presence of God and yet live.  God's very nature would not allow this.  That is why Adam was banished from the garden of Eden.  Yet, as I've said before, in Christ, God had designed a way for us to be reconciled to Him.  We cannot climb the ladder to God, so God reaches down to us.

But Paul answers this in Hebrews 9:

1Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. 2A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand, the table and the consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place. 3Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, 4which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron's staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. 5Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover.[a] But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.

 6When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry. 7But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. 8The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing. 9This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. 10They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings—external regulations applying until the time of the new order.
The Blood of Christ
 11When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. 12He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. 13The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. 14How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,[c] so that we may serve the living God!

 15For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

 16In the case of a will,[d] it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. 19When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep."[e] 21In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

 23It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. 25Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

I really hope you're willing to read all of that, as it's what I believe, and is a must to even begin to understand my argument.

So basically the text says that before Jesus, priests used sacrifices to seemingly clean themselves and others repeatedly again and again, and Christ did it once and for all when he gave his life away?

That's a really strange way to deal with such concepts. Why exactly does Christ's blood wash away the sins of mankind and why do those who believe in this story get to be benefactors? What exactly in this is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings? Instead of just those who happen to have the right kind of faith?

Because it is a gift offered to all beings.  God, however, does not rape us.  He does not force Himself upon us.  A gift must be accepted to be received.  Upon Christ was laid the sin of us all.  Christ took it all upon Himself, willingly.  It's also interesting to note, that the one instant that this happened is the one instant he could not bear to remain silent.  That's the one time He cried out in anguish.  "Eloi, Eloi..."  Few people realize, that what Christ cried out there was a quote from Psalm 22.  Read that Psalm to know what was on Christ's mind as He died.

Anyway, Isaiah 52 and 53 give a grand illustration of how Christ's sacrifice works:

13See, my servant will act wisely  ;
       he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.

 14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him —
       his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man
       and his form marred beyond human likeness—

 15 so will he sprinkle many nations,
       and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
       For what they were not told, they will see,
       and what they have not heard, they will understand.

53
1 Who has believed our message
       and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
       and like a root out of dry ground.
       He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
       nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

 3 He was despised and rejected by men,
       a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
       Like one from whom men hide their faces
       he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

 4 Surely he took up our infirmities
       and carried our sorrows,
       yet we considered him stricken by God,
       smitten by him, and afflicted.

 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
       he was crushed for our iniquities;
       the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
       and by his wounds we are healed.

 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
       each of us has turned to his own way;
       and the LORD has laid on him
       the iniquity of us all.

 7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
       yet he did not open his mouth;
       he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
       and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
       so he did not open his mouth.

 8 By oppression  and judgment he was taken away.
       And who can speak of his descendants?
       For he was cut off from the land of the living;
       for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
       and with the rich in his death,
       though he had done no violence,
       nor was any deceit in his mouth.

 10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
       and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
       he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
       and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

 11 After the suffering of his soul,
       he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
       by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
       and he will bear their iniquities.

 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
       and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
       because he poured out his life unto death,
       and was numbered with the transgressors.
       For he bore the sin of many,
       and made intercession for the transgressors.

Let that sink in a bit.  Reread it if you need to.  This was written over 100 years before Christ even lived.

I forget who said it, exactly, but there's a quote: "holding on to anger and bitterness towards someone else is like swallowing poison and hoping they die."  Why make yourself suffer?  And if you don't think forgiveness matters to the criminals, watch that serial killer's reaction again when that old man says "you are forgiven."  That was obviously the most emotionally painful part of the whole thing.  Not "Damn you to Hell, I hope you die long and slow you fiend!!!"  He stared them all down stone-faced.

Also, engaging in acts of vigilantism to exact revenge upon a supposed killer of someone close to you is a good way to ruin your own life in addition to the victim(s) of the killer. The emotional basis for revenge is easily understandable but logically easy to dismantle and show as what it most often is - misguided protective instinct (the need to do the right thing "for the victims"), and secondarily . Instinct to protect one's offspring and companion in life in addition to pretecting oneself runs deep in most beings, and failing in that self-imposed task makes people angry and frustrated, and it would feel that destroying the source of it all would take the pain away, but usually it doesn't, since the damage is done, the victim(s) won't come back - or in fact, gain anything from your act of violence - and after the killer is dead, what's left for you? Becoming roommates with a big guy called Bubba?

Once again, you look at the established laws (established by imperfect men, btw) to be the highest order of authority.

Not really, I'm chaotic or neutral good, not lawful good. Established laws should be followed when they don't contradict what I think is right. If I think something is worth doing despite the risk of legal consequences, I do it. And so do most people (just look at prohibition and how little success it met).

 That's how we feel exactly.  Only, our source of right and wrong is what the Bible says, not just what is right in our own eyes.  more often than not, we humans tend to be imperfect and wrong, even when we feel we're doing good.  Just look at the book of Judges. (sorry about the example from the Bible, that just flows most readily to MY mind, and you seem to have some knowledge about it, so I figured, why not?)

And of course, no matter what the opinion of Bible's divine origins is, it is also ultimately established by imperfect men and considering that as highest authority as such just because it says so is... disturbing to me.

 There's an article I read about both internal and external proof of the divine authorship of the Bible.  It's from a Christian source, but let me find it for you.  Expect a PM.

Think about it this way - if you were killed or murdered (which are not quite the same thing), would you want your parent to kill the one responsible (I'm assuming here that they would even get the right person, which isn't even certain) and end up in jail for the rest of their life?

I certainly wouldn't want that.

Forget jail.  Them having to live with the fact that they deprived some other group of people of their friend/father/mother/son/daughter/uncle, etc etc etc.  would be FAR worse IMO.  At least, once they came to the realization that this person they'd killed was a human being also.

That too.

Incidentally, the same guy that G0atmaster quoted also claims God to have claimed that he'll exact vengeance as he sees fit (some consider this as God claiming exclusive right to vengeance), so I guess there goes the loving God image campaign crashing down again...

If God were not Just, He would not be Perfect.  The love comes in to play when God exacts His justice on a substutionary atonement sacrifice that chose to stand in my place - Himself.

And since he's Perfect, he must obviously be Just as well... something doesn't add up here.

How exactly can it be verified that God is Perfect? I mean, you can believe in it, and if you define God as a Perfect being I guess that works too, but what if it isn't true after all? If the assumption of God being Just hangs by the supposition that he is also Perfect, then it becomes necessary to establish that perfectness in one way or another. Which is, of course, impossible without Faith, which I do not have (though ironically I have faith that if God really exists he can forgive me for my lack of faith... after all if he exists I must assume I'm the way I am because he wanted it.  ).

With this, you sir have succeeded in asking a question I cannot answer beyond simply stating that, if God created a Universe and all its Laws, He would thus render Himself perfect to such a Universe.  I will find a better way to answer this, I promise.

Even so it wouldn't really be trolling, it would be a logical argument about the matter, but if you do not put much faith in Old Testimony, good for you. The New Testimony does hold more human ideas and it's basic message is a good one, and that part of the book isn't demeaned by the fact that ignoring the spiritual part it's basically the same message that Confucius and other great philosophers before Jesus had to give to people, and following that tenet should not be a matter of faith but logical thought.

Except for, you know, the part where Christ claimed to be God, which means that he was either a liar, and not suitable to be a teacher of high moral law, or a lunatic, which also would do the same, or a demon, once agian invalidating any moral teaching he put forth.  Furthermore, you would need to ignore the whole multitude of miraculous phenomena that were witnessed and recorded by the multitudes.

Does Jesus actually somewhere directly claim that he is the God, or is that just a theological interpretation of later times? He does speak of his Father that is in Heaven, but that would apply to all people if the supposition of God's existence is assumed to be true. Or, you could ask if everything credited to Jesus actually came from his mouth. The recordings of miracles I do not find fully credible due to same reason I don't find Silmarillion to be a credible history of Earth - the story was told by people, to people so I cannot ignore the possibility of it being fiction or having elements of fiction in it. Whether supposed miracles really happened I cannot know, and again I find myself unable to place my faith in printed word just because it's centuries old story about events that might've been misinterpreted, exaggerated or invented.

Silmarillion deals with Middle-Earth, a fictional location, thus, it could very well be a credible fictional depiction of a fictional location.

As far as claims that Christ is God, John made a pretty big one: John 1:1-5: "1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."

As far as claims by Christ Himself:

48The Jews answered him, "Aren't we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?"

 49"I am not possessed by a demon," said Jesus, "but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. 50I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."

 52At this the Jews exclaimed, "Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death. 53Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?"

 54Jesus replied, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. 56Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."

 57"You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!"

 58"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" 59At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

"Before Abraham was born, I am."  Note the present tense.  God refers to Himself in the Old Testament as "I Am."  Christ is saying that He IS around when Abraham was (wrap your head around THAT), AND that He IS God.

22Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. 24The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."

 25Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."

 31Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"

 33"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

 34Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? 35If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. 38But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

The Jews were ready to kill him because of his claims to be God.  "The Father is in me, and I in the Father."

44Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. 46I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

Once again, a sense of unity between Christ and "The Father."

 12When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. 13"You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. 15I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Christ claims to be Lord.

5Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"

 6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."

 8Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us."

 9Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. 14You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Here Christ, once again, establishes the link between Himself and "The Father."  Also note the importance Christ places on faith in this passage.  More on that later.

 32Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

 34"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."

 35Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

7Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. 8All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.[a] He will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

 11"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

 14"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.

What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognises as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others.

In contrast, Christ says to His desciples:

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.

I find that quote to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings. Now, why does that require a divine being to speak the words for them to become so?

Because only a divine being can command such a thing.  Look, for a moment, at how Christ loved, and you will understand this more perfectly.

Also, I believe in a lot of things, none of them supernatural. I believe the universe exists. I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence. I believe that if I'm wrong about God's existence, it isn't so serious (or if it is, I don't really want to spend an eternity with a being like that, I'd rather take the nothingness...).

There's a book I highly, highly recommend for you to read.  It's called "Miracles," and it's by C.S. Lewis.  It's a very, very well thought-out examination of naturalism vs. supernaturalism, and does not necessarily intend to answer whether miracles exist, as the title might suggest, but rather, to prepare the reader to consider the question in the first place.  Check it out.

What I want you to understand that some people simply don't want to hear some things. It doesn't matter if they are true or not (or percieved as true or not by you or someone else). Let's take an example here (don't be offended by this) - let's assume I tell you (or someone else) your(or his) mother is a whore. Wether I have or don't have evidence of it, you (he) won't want to hear about it. It's as simple as that.
Granted, this sounds like me saying one shouldn't fight for the truth...which would be rather hypocritical of me, since I'm always for that... But it's really friggin hard to tell what the truth is these days. That's why it's best to keep such things for oneself until one is sure.
Don't take me wrong - I make jokes all the time about everyone. Even religious jokes about my own religion.

Like I said, See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil...

Also, fighting for the truth to me feels a bit nonsensical; truth doesn't need to be fought for. It stays true regardless of what we think is the truth. What you and I and everyone else are doing is arguing about their perception of truth. We all have one, mine is that the only thing we can know for sure is what happens in the world we live in, and in arguments the only truths are those that can be backed by logical chains to reality (or in abstract sense, arguments that are logically sound with no need for leaps of faith).

While that may be the case, true is true no matter what people believe about it, (as Lewis puts it, an insane man cannot blot out the Sun by scribbling "darkness" on the walls of his cell...) there is a certain measure of telling that needs to be done.  "Romans 10:14:  How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"

Methinks I dabbled into a high philosophy here that will lead nowhere fast. Ye gods, this is spiraling out of control.....and it was so predictable too
Dang. I'll shut up about this. Can a mod either split this thread or lock it so we don't continue down this tempting downward spiral and ruin this thread beyond repair?

I dunno, this thread isn't too bad, we're still partially on the established topic... in a broad sense of word.

yeah, this hasn't been bad at all.

I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.

Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?

No, because conservation of energy and momentum are established principles in this universe starting from t=0...

 Established how, exactly?  I dare to question the very fundemental principles of what you call "proof."  How are things "proven?"  By being tested.  But, what, pray tell, leads us to believe there is any sort of consistency to the Universe at all?  Who's to say, that because you test something 100 times and it gives you 100 "A" results, the 101st test won't yield a "B" result?

It's basically a matter of whether something has existed forever, or if time has a beginning point. Of the two possibilities, the empirical data seems to point towards an universe with definite age, time starting about (13.73 +- 0.120) billion years ago.

Now, it isn't impossible that this incident was caused by some being, but at the same time there's no definite proof of such a thing and moreover it appears that such a claim would be unfalsifiable, which means you just either believe it or not. I choose not to believe in it because of Ockham's razor - adding a divine being to the equations just adds complexity logically (one more unknown factor) and doesn't really explain anything. Besides it would just take you back to the question of origins of world - either something has existed for infinite time (illogical) or something came out of nothing.

Complexity, how?  Maybe our debate is not with the starting point of the Universe, as we both believe it has a beginning.  Perhaps our argument is in the complexity of God.  I find the God argument to be the most simplistic there is.  It takes WAY more faith to believe in cosmic accidentalism than it does to believe in a purposeful creator.  I know.  I've been on both sides of that fence.

Assuming that something with conscious mind needed to come out of nothing before universe without consciousness could come into existence is illogical to me. Assuming that universe needed to be brought into existence by that previously self-originating being with conscious boggles mind.

However, what if that something, that conscious mind had nothing to come out of?  What if there was NEVER nothing?  That is what I believe.  While the Universe has a starting point, God does not.  God was, and is, and will be.

You say that God created universe, which either means that God has existed forever (which doesn't even compute since time is a property of the universe...) or that God become from nothingness and then created universe.

The former DOES compute, because, while Time is a property of the Universe, God predates the Universe, and thus predates time.  Wrap your head around THAT one lol.

The question is, why does universe need some conscious being to create or bring it to existence, when that conscious being was able to originate itself from nothingness? Inserting a conscious being to fill the voids in our knowledge of nature is a very old practice (perhaps that's why God is called Holy...), but as our information of world grows, the voids have been reduced to very small things. For example I could say that dragons make things fall. We don't know why gravity exists (for now - General Relativity doesn't really explain why mass curves space-time, and quantum gravitation is finicky for now) so saying that dragons make it happen is a perfectly valid opinion (not). The theory of Intelligent Falling is a close relative to my dragon hypothesis. Of course, none of these hypotheses explain anything about the nature of mass and gravity itself.

my above statement invalidates this.



Your last post, unfortunately, as well as WMCoolMon's, I cannot respond to at this time.  It's 1:30 AM and I need to wake up in 6 hours.

Hopefully, there won't be 350 more posts here by the time I wake up, maybe more like 5 or 10.

Till next time!

[TrashMan]

If you really wanted to, what you would get down to is that all 'logic' is really just a thought experiment based on approximate premises. The fact that the premises are approximate doesn't mean they're inaccurate though - the premises would be something like "Killing a defenseless person is murder" and "He killed a defenseless person" ergo "He has committed murder". For most situations, these are arguments that everybody would accept. The goal of any good logical argument is to boil it down to terms which all parties can accept as true and show that they demonstrate that something else is true.

The bolded is partially the problem. And there is also another one - even with the same set of information, two people can come to different conclusions, both convinced that it's perfectly logical. I've seen it happen. I'm not treating logic as a religion, but rather for what it is - a useful tool in a humans intelectual arsenal. But ultimatively, it's humans who wield that tool.

Since you're not even willing to accept the entire Bible and seem to have a pretty subjective view on what you consider true and not true in it, it's no wonder that you don't like logic. Logic would force you to spell out your beliefs to others and establish a consistency to what you consider true and not true which I don't think you've done. While I don't have any problem with that in general, trying to say that logic is the problem here is premature. You haven't lived your life in order to try and convince others - clearly playing sports on the beach is more important to you - and you certainly don't hold yourself up as an example for others to follow (Quite the opposite, in fact). You have to at least make a good effort to try using logic before you can say that it's failed you.

Spare me they psycho-crap. You know jack s*** about me or what I do or what I have done. For your information I like logic and I use it rather frequently, thank you very much. And I have questioned my religion and beliefs quite often and am quite clear and confident of them.

The goal of my life isn't to convince others of my intelectual or moral superiority - I'll leave that quest to smart-ass people with overinflated egos who feel that they need to assert themselves over others and spread their pearls of "wisdom" everywhere. Yes, I'd far rather play sports on the beach with my friends than debate here with you - especially since I know that the debate is useless.
And I'm the weird illogical one here???
Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard. Well, since you joined in, I conclude you're not really logical yourself.

Not really. Religion is great for justifying horrors because it holds people up to an unquestionable moral standard. This is wrong, that is wrong, and it's only because someone in authority said so. Whether or not the religion itself demands the slaughter of untold thousands, it can be twisted around to seem like it's supposed to say that, and since people are used to following moral guidelines without question, they'll follow those new moral guidelines.

I think if I were to boil that down, I'd say that the benefit of a logic-based system over a religious-based system is that you have to deal with the consequences in the here and now. You can't make some excuse that you're appealing to a higher authority or that your actions will have some effect in an even higher realm than you can see, so it's OK to commit some heinous crime in this reality. If you commit a heinous crime in this universe and it comes under question, you need to prove that you did it for some good in this universe.

You also forget one inherent advantage of religion. People will behave more properly, if not for anything else, then for fear of divine retribution or punishment after death.
Given that people aren't generally that smart, you don't have to be a genius to start a genocide - wether you use logic or science or religion. the simple truth is that the world wouldn't be a better place without religion. I dare say it would be worse. You're free to disagree.

[karajorma]

Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard.

And yet you continued debating despite this comment?

And then claimed you weren't illogical.

[TrashMan]

Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard.

And yet you continued debating despite this comment?

And then claimed you weren't illogical.

Slanderous lies.
I claimed no one in this thread is...that includes me too.

[Herra Tohtori]

Let the dissection begin...

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.  Note, just before this, Christ asked the person who's image was on the coin being taxed.  Basically he's saying that, not only is the money Caesar's to tax, but the person is God's.

Yeah, he's saying so, but that is again based on the supposition that God indeed made human beings (in his image) with conscious effort and has a claim on us, which is a supposition based on the belief system so it isn't really much more than a self-reference.

Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar.  They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in.  Yet they came out unscathed.

While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God."  As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.

And how exactly does one verify that? The main problem I have with theistic religions is that they feel the need to justify simplest things as commandments from above, when there's no need to do so.

If you for example take the golden rule in whatever form and evaluate it logically, it can be found to be very sound principle of life with no need for it being divine in origin.

But the thing is, you must consider the source.  Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?"  Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?"  We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven.  He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.

To answer your question, the verification comes from Scripture.  God would not ask a person to do something contradictory to the Bible.  The Bible is the word of God (remember, from my perspective), and thus, it is the contents of the mind of God.  God would not go against that, and if a person asks someone to do something that does, it's obviously not God asking.[/quote]

Consider the source... why? I would much rather evaluate the content. The question "what is right" is not an easy one to answer, but I think it would be better if people at least tried to think through it themselves instead of accepting old tenets just because they are from some source that just happens to be elevated above others by the religious authority. Personally I find that categorical imperative just happens to make most sense in a society where people interact each other, so I would say that following categorical imperative is right, and not doing so is wrong. Whether the terms good and bad apply to these respectively, it's a whole different matter...

What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.

That's why I coloured red the parts that are, in function if not in words, similar in these two quotes. If one wants to assume that God is what is "conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings", then it's the same as testing the spirits to make sure they are from God. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Bible and elsewhere suggest that the God we're talking about is not any of these things.

 To argue whether God is Good, you must 1. acknowledge God's existence, 2. Acknowledge His authorship of the Universe, and 3. Acknowledge that God is the measure by which He made everything else.  To argue with God is to be a stream attempting to flow above its source.

Indeed, the question of God's benevolence is pretty nonsensical if one doesn't believe in his existence in the first place, but I'll humour you.

If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.

So here's an interesting question - what need is there to mix divine beings to something that should be common sense?

 Common why?  Why, if there is any lack of anything beyond mere nature, should there BE any such thing as sense?

By common sense I meant that if a message of a religious authority figure can be reached with pure logical conjencture based on ethical model independent of divine origins, why does one assume that the message is divine in origins? Because it says so in a few paragraphs?

Names are overrated anyway. People are what they do, not what they're called.

 Tell that to all the false "Christians" out there.  

About the distinction, again comes the question, why believe that something someone says is from God? If testing the spirits equals to what Mr. Gautama said about examining things, does it follow that everything that is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings comes from God? Or is it just otherwise worthy food for thought?

 Not sure I understand what you're trying to say.

I mean this: What Siddhartha Gautama wrote about examining things and what Saul said about "testing spirits" is effectively the same thing. The difference is that Saul (or Paul) gives a lot more vague instructions than Buddha. How exactly does one "test the spirits" of a writing that claims to be from God? What are the criteria that are used on this testing process, or is it just an application of Stetson-Harrison method on biblical proportions? Or is it just based on what one would think God would say, and blocking the rest out as something else than God's word?

What Gautama wrote (or said) is easy enough - if you find something to be in benefit of all beings, it's a guideline worth adopting and following. Paul's writing about testing spirits leaves a lot more to imagination. However, if I would be to apply Gautama's method to bible, I would pretty much siphon it to the golden rule and that's about it; rest I would interpret as not being from worthy spirits because they do not apply to my sense of what is good. Whether that worthy spirit would be God or human or superintelligent shade of blue wouldn't matter to me since if the content makes sense, it makes sense regardless of it's origin.

Anyway, the way I see it, forgiveness does not equal to allowing bad things to happen to you if you can prevent them. It means you shouldn't retaliate, and I interpret the other cheek thing in a similar fashion - it means that people should be given a second chance instead of for example hitting them back, but doesn't really mean that you should literally just stand there taking a beating.

 Then why doesn't it say, "if a man strikes you on one cheek, turn and put your guard up, as he is probably going to strike you again?"  But I, somewhat, agree in a way, which I don't have words to elaborate on at this time.

Putting one's guard up is a sensible thing to do - why would one want to be hit again? It's normal self-preservation and Jesus must have known this on some level, and I have a suspicion that he enjoyed confusing his disciples to certain extent in an attempt to get them to think by themselves instead of following him like sheep... and by the way I consider being called a sheep an insult, not an offer of safekeeping. But the cultural differences from J's days to ours are pretty big... Anyway, about the cheek thing I think he was talking in metaphors (again) and saying that it's better to not respond to violence with violence, and instead walk away or evade or try and defuse the situation in a way that doesn't involve an immediate retaliation. But that's jsut my interpretation talking here.

As far as the Eye for an Eye thing, Christ absolved that.  First of all, He is God, He has the authority to do that sort of thing.

So he says. To me he was a man in a story who said a lot of wise things that people should think about rather than believe in them since he was the one who said them.

 

That's about what he said, but what about what he DID?  Christ has not left your view of him open to us.

The problem with what Jesus did is to me that I consider them to be anecdotes, not historical references. The words credited to him are, to me, a lot more worth inspecting than whatever is claimed of his actions. And that's exactly because of what I said before - I do not base the worth of words on the credibility of the supposed source, but their content.

I consider Tolstoi's books to be extraordinarily boring as well despite their classic status...

To me, the concept of sin I equal to actions that bring harm to others. Death is the absence of life, or the moment when my human mind stops to function permanently. I suspect in your context sin=death means that if you sin you will die for good, and if you're freed of sin your soul won't die when your life ends, and that's where our views of word are different.

I do not know if there is anything after death, but it seems unlikely to me. It would be cool, but nothingness would be perfectly acceptable as well. The concept of immortal soul I actually find disturbing. Since I'm not expecting anything after death, in my view of world this life is everything I know for sure I have, and I try to make most out of it, which includes trying not to harm others.

This is one point a lot of Christians debate about.  I believe, as the Bible says, that there are two deaths a person can go through.  Their body returning to the dirt from which it came, and the death of the soul, in the Lake of Fire, otherwise known as Hell.  The first is temporal, the second is eternal.  Both are brought about by sin.  Death entered the world through the sin of Adam.  "For sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all because all have sinned-"  Sin is simply missing the mark.  Because God is perfect, His presence in all His Godliness cannot tolerate imperfection.  Thus, when man first sinned and became imperfect, he was no longer capable of standing in the presence of God and yet live.  God's very nature would not allow this.  That is why Adam was banished from the garden of Eden.  Yet, as I've said before, in Christ, God had designed a way for us to be reconciled to Him.  We cannot climb the ladder to God, so God reaches down to us.

Yesh, another point to note - I'm arguing basically from Lutheran background, you seem to be roman catholic or from some other sect where the concept of Hell is a bit different. Incidentally, ignoring the translations, Hell is originally a norse underworld Hel and the goddess of underworld with same name - being translated from Greek Hades or Tarterus, or the Hebrew Gehenna... which are conceptually rather different, so it's pretty interesting trying to figure out what exactly is what in christian theology. To me it seems that Gehenna was a combination of roman catholic purgatory and the "classic" hell where one spends an eternity, while Hades is just underworld (similar to hebrew Sheol) and Hel is a place where the dead who don't get to go to halls of Valhalla - basically those who died in battle went to Valhalla, those who died on old age or diseases went to Hel (or Hell or Hella) in norse mythology.

So it's ethymologically rather interesting, and gives a good hint on how things can be misinterpreted after multiple translations...

[Re: Pauls's letter to whatsisname] So basically the text says that before Jesus, priests used sacrifices to seemingly clean themselves and others repeatedly again and again, and Christ did it once and for all when he gave his life away?

That's a really strange way to deal with such concepts. Why exactly does Christ's blood wash away the sins of mankind and why do those who believe in this story get to be benefactors? What exactly in this is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings? Instead of just those who happen to have the right kind of faith?

Because it is a gift offered to all beings.  God, however, does not rape us.  He does not force Himself upon us.  A gift must be accepted to be received.  Upon Christ was laid the sin of us all.  Christ took it all upon Himself, willingly.  It's also interesting to note, that the one instant that this happened is the one instant he could not bear to remain silent.  That's the one time He cried out in anguish.  "Eloi, Eloi..."  Few people realize, that what Christ cried out there was a quote from Psalm 22.  Read that Psalm to know what was on Christ's mind as He died.

If it's a gift, why does receiving it require first of all knowledge of this event, and secondly faith in the people who tell that this all happened?

What happens to all the aliens, pagans and other critters who never even get to choose whether or not to accept this tale as reality or not?

Anyway, Isaiah 52 and 53 give a grand illustration of how Christ's sacrifice works:

[part edited out for the sake of keeping the message length in control

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
       he was crushed for our iniquities;
       the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
       and by his wounds we are healed.

 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
       each of us has turned to his own way;
       and the LORD has laid on him
       the iniquity of us all.

 7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
       yet he did not open his mouth;
       he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
       and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
       so he did not open his mouth.

 8 By oppression  and judgment he was taken away.
       And who can speak of his descendants?
       For he was cut off from the land of the living;
       for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
       and with the rich in his death,
       though he had done no violence,
       nor was any deceit in his mouth.

 10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
       and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
       he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
       and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

 11 After the suffering of his soul,
       he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
       by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
       and he will bear their iniquities.

 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
       and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
       because he poured out his life unto death,
       and was numbered with the transgressors.
       For he bore the sin of many,
       and made intercession for the transgressors.

Let that sink in a bit.  Reread it if you need to.  This was written over 100 years before Christ even lived.

I could respond to digging up some quotes of Michel de Nostre Dame and Pythia and compare them to events in history that have been claimed to have a connection to the "prophecies".

With the book of Isaiah there's also the problem that Jesus most assuredly knew about the book, and that means he could easily have emulated the events described in the prophecy regardless of whether or not the prophecy maker truly knew that would happen. Same applies to later clerics and J's disciples who could have made Jesus a bit more appealing to the public by adding a bit from here and another from there to make Jesus' live look more and more like Isaiah had predicted it. I have no real ways to determine how reliable both the accounts of Jesus' life are, so I'm just going to end that line of thought by saying that I don't have any reason to trust implicitely in things that are written down, no matter who declares them credible.

Once again, you look at the established laws (established by imperfect men, btw) to be the highest order of authority.

Not really, I'm chaotic or neutral good, not lawful good. Established laws should be followed when they don't contradict what I think is right. If I think something is worth doing despite the risk of legal consequences, I do it. And so do most people (just look at prohibition and how little success it met).

 That's how we feel exactly.  Only, our source of right and wrong is what the Bible says, not just what is right in our own eyes.  more often than not, we humans tend to be imperfect and wrong, even when we feel we're doing good.  Just look at the book of Judges. (sorry about the example from the Bible, that just flows most readily to MY mind, and you seem to have some knowledge about it, so I figured, why not?)

Sorry, I know sadly little about those "lesser" books of Old Testimony; I know the basic storyline, the most famous stories and most quoted examples, but that's about it. Similarly my knowledge about New Testimony is mostly limited to the gospels, but I can live with that (although it does make it pretty difficult to keep up with a conversation like this).

Anyhow I can't really trust in a divine source of right and wrong in any way, mostly because anyone can claim something to be of divine origin. Saying something repeatedly does not make it so, and the validity of things being right or wrong shouldn't be based on the source but content, yet again. Religious authority as basis for right and wrong can work in a society to a certain degree, but it also makes it too easy to invent divine rules based on rather wild interpretations - Christianity did that in the middle ages by justifying crusades and hunting heretics and blasphemers, Islam is doing it still now with all the fatwas and hadiths and other stuff dictated by the local religious authority as well as centralized supreme authority, and so on. Basing legislation only on supposedly divine origins does not usually bode well, hence the founding fathers of USA for example had the right idea to keep the churches away from government matters...

And of course, no matter what the opinion of Bible's divine origins is, it is also ultimately established by imperfect men and considering that as highest authority as such just because it says so is... disturbing to me.

 There's an article I read about both internal and external proof of the divine authorship of the Bible.  It's from a Christian source, but let me find it for you.  Expect a PM.

I'll check it out but I have my doubts as to whether I will have the stomach to read an article about proof of divine anything. I'll try to look at it without prejudice, though.

If God were not Just, He would not be Perfect.  The love comes in to play when God exacts His justice on a substutionary atonement sacrifice that chose to stand in my place - Himself.

And since he's Perfect, he must obviously be Just as well... something doesn't add up here.

How exactly can it be verified that God is Perfect? I mean, you can believe in it, and if you define God as a Perfect being I guess that works too, but what if it isn't true after all? If the assumption of God being Just hangs by the supposition that he is also Perfect, then it becomes necessary to establish that perfectness in one way or another. Which is, of course, impossible without Faith, which I do not have (though ironically I have faith that if God really exists he can forgive me for my lack of faith... after all if he exists I must assume I'm the way I am because he wanted it.  ).

With this, you sir have succeeded in asking a question I cannot answer beyond simply stating that, if God created a Universe and all its Laws, He would thus render Himself perfect to such a Universe.  I will find a better way to answer this, I promise.

So basically God's perfection and Goodness (earlier on) hang by the same assumptions - that he exists, created universe and the universe compares to God, not God on Universe (if I interpret the formulation correctly)?

I guess it's a matter of definitions then... I'll be waiting for an in-depth answer.

Does Jesus actually somewhere directly claim that he is the God, or is that just a theological interpretation of later times? He does speak of his Father that is in Heaven, but that would apply to all people if the supposition of God's existence is assumed to be true. Or, you could ask if everything credited to Jesus actually came from his mouth. The recordings of miracles I do not find fully credible due to same reason I don't find Silmarillion to be a credible history of Earth - the story was told by people, to people so I cannot ignore the possibility of it being fiction or having elements of fiction in it. Whether supposed miracles really happened I cannot know, and again I find myself unable to place my faith in printed word just because it's centuries old story about events that might've been misinterpreted, exaggerated or invented.

Silmarillion deals with Middle-Earth, a fictional location, thus, it could very well be a credible fictional depiction of a fictional location.

Actually Middle-Earth is on Earth, but on a previous, fictional mythological era that Tolkien invited, kinda like an alternate past (to known historical facts, that is). Considering that few biblical events (in Old Testimony especially) can be pinned down to historical corresponding events with any semblance of accuracy, and the fact that the Third Age of Middle-Earth interestingly is supposed to have ended about 6000 years ago, I would rate Silmarillion and the Old Testimony about on equal level of credibility as far as historical accuracy goes.

With the distinction that the author of Silmarillion doesn't actually claim it to be real description of historical events. But ignoring that, it's surprisingly similar in many ways.

If Silmarillion was two thousand years old and the Author's Notes were lost, it would be very difficult to tell whether or not it used to be a real Holy Book of an entire religion...

As far as claims that Christ is God, John made a pretty big one: John 1:1-5: [...]

As far as claims by Christ Himself:

[John 8:48-59]

"Before Abraham was born, I am."  Note the present tense.  God refers to Himself in the Old Testament as "I Am."  Christ is saying that He IS around when Abraham was (wrap your head around THAT), AND that He IS God.

* Herra Tohtori wraps

Hmm... any chance of loose interpretations on that one? I find word plays a bit annoying in these things. What does the original text say? The translation does seem to be saying what I asked; either that he is "I AM" ie. the God of Old Testimony, or a splinter or part of him, or that he as an entity existed at that time already.

22Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. 24The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."

 25Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."

 31Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"

 33"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

 34Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? 35If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. 38But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

The Jews were ready to kill him because of his claims to be God.  "The Father is in me, and I in the Father."

This is pretty interesting because to me it seems that he's putting himself on equal level as everyone else as Son of God ("Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?" etc.)... unless I have some profound misconception, I can't really see what else that can mean.

44Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. 46I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

Once again, a sense of unity between Christ and "The Father."

Ok, there does seem to be a number of occasions where Jesus himself is credited to have said that he is the son of God and God himself, at least by association if not directly. I won't copypaste the other quotes in their entirety because the purpose would be nil...

[John 13:12-17] Christ claims to be Lord.

[John 14:5-14] Here Christ, once again, establishes the link between Himself and "The Father."  Also note the importance Christ places on faith in this passage.  More on that later.

[John 6:32-35]

[John 10:7-15]

I find that quote to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings. Now, why does that require a divine being to speak the words for them to become so?

Because only a divine being can command such a thing.[/quote]

Why does it need to be commanded? If you view it as a strong suggestion instead, that argument collapses on itself at least on my head.

There's a book I highly, highly recommend for you to read.  It's called "Miracles," and it's by C.S. Lewis.  It's a very, very well thought-out examination of naturalism vs. supernaturalism, and does not necessarily intend to answer whether miracles exist, as the title might suggest, but rather, to prepare the reader to consider the question in the first place.  Check it out.

I most likely won't have time to do that, so I'll just post my thoughts on miracles briefly: in my view of world, whatever happens is part of the universe, thus natural. Unexplained, possibly, but part of nature nevertheless. Including the hypothesized God-being. If he exists he's part of universe, since universe is everything that is. Assuming that every unexplained thing is a miracle, though, is illogical. It is a possibility that can never be excluded, but the search for understandable explanations beyond "goddidit" should not be stopped just because that possibility can't ever be excluded completely.

As a famous example, it is possible that Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendages are manipulating every test result to show a 13.8 billion year old universe when in reality it was made last thursday, starting from mountains, trees and a midget. It's just... rather pointless to consider such possibilities with a positivistically oriented mindset.

[SNIP]

I believe that at some point something was born out of nothingness without any being to will it to existence.

Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?

No, because conservation of energy and momentum are established principles in this universe starting from t=0...

 Established how, exactly?  I dare to question the very fundemental principles of what you call "proof."  How are things "proven?"  By being tested.  But, what, pray tell, leads us to believe there is any sort of consistency to the Universe at all?  Who's to say, that because you test something 100 times and it gives you 100 "A" results, the 101st test won't yield a "B" result?

That I can actually answer. It's an assumption that is necessary to be made for physics to make any sense to work with.

In fine terms, basically every theory of nature assumes that the universe is isothropic and homogenous, meaning that universe is roughly similar everywhere as far as laws of nature go.

Test results also seem to tell us that this is indeed the case - everywhere we see things seem to be happening along the same physical principles within error bars of observations.

So scientists make that assumption that a theory that works here would work similarly on half an universe away as well. This is justifiable because otherwise cosmology would become impossible, and physics would suffer a severe knock on it's back because it would then only apply on a definite area of universe.

Also, no observation has been made yet that would suggest that some parts of universe would act on different fundamental laws of nature. There are hints that things like fine-structure constant might not be a constant throughout time and space, but that's not really an exception from the same basic mechanisms - it just means that the constant is not so constant after all, but depends on some phenomenon yet unknown, and sets a new challenge to science, to find out what's going on.

It's basically a matter of whether something has existed forever, or if time has a beginning point. Of the two possibilities, the empirical data seems to point towards an universe with definite age, time starting about (13.73 +- 0.120) billion years ago.

Now, it isn't impossible that this incident was caused by some being, but at the same time there's no definite proof of such a thing and moreover it appears that such a claim would be unfalsifiable, which means you just either believe it or not. I choose not to believe in it because of Ockham's razor - adding a divine being to the equations just adds complexity logically (one more unknown factor) and doesn't really explain anything. Besides it would just take you back to the question of origins of world - either something has existed for infinite time (illogical) or something came out of nothing.

Complexity, how?  Maybe our debate is not with the starting point of the Universe, as we both believe it has a beginning.  Perhaps our argument is in the complexity of God.  I find the God argument to be the most simplistic there is.  It takes WAY more faith to believe in cosmic accidentalism than it does to believe in a purposeful creator.  I know.  I've been on both sides of that fence.

[emphazis mine]

Not if you include a multiverse theory that basically states that every possibility happens, we just happen to experience this kind of universe. That basically removes the accidentalism from the picture, without removing the element of chance since future is never set on single path but instead it branches into N amount of probabilities that all are basically equal realities - we being in one of them.

Assuming that something with conscious mind needed to come out of nothing before universe without consciousness could come into existence is illogical to me. Assuming that universe needed to be brought into existence by that previously self-originating being with conscious boggles mind.

However, what if that something, that conscious mind had nothing to come out of?  What if there was NEVER nothing?  That is what I believe.  While the Universe has a starting point, God does not.  God was, and is, and will be.

You say that God created universe, which either means that God has existed forever (which doesn't even compute since time is a property of the universe...) or that God become from nothingness and then created universe.

The former DOES compute, because, while Time is a property of the Universe, God predates the Universe, and thus predates time.  Wrap your head around THAT one lol.

Mmm, well, time as we know is a propery of universe so it isn't really relevant to speak of time before universe. It would be something so alien to us since we don't even have a dimension to describe it. It's worse than trying to make sense of 4-dimensional hypercube. Hell, it's worse than trying to make sense of Timecube and that's perhaps the most nonsensical thing I've ever seen in my life.

Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run?

The question is, why does universe need some conscious being to create or bring it to existence, when that conscious being was able to originate itself from nothingness? Inserting a conscious being to fill the voids in our knowledge of nature is a very old practice (perhaps that's why God is called Holy...), but as our information of world grows, the voids have been reduced to very small things. For example I could say that dragons make things fall. We don't know why gravity exists (for now - General Relativity doesn't really explain why mass curves space-time, and quantum gravitation is finicky for now) so saying that dragons make it happen is a perfectly valid opinion (not). The theory of Intelligent Falling is a close relative to my dragon hypothesis. Of course, none of these hypotheses explain anything about the nature of mass and gravity itself.

my above statement invalidates this.

More like dismisses. The problem with introducing divine explanation for every unknown thing - including birth of universe or gravity - is a logical nightmare since it would be the exact same thing to just say "it just happens" and be done with it. While in everyday life and interaction with people that definitely works to great extent, it doesn't cut it when dealing with people with a thirst of knowledge (blame the snake on that one if you wish, I blame simian characteristic curiosity...).


These post lengths and nested quotes are getting absolutely out of control....

[TrashMan]

What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.

You can come to a LOT of different conclusions trough independant thought.

If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.

Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?

It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.

[Polpolion]

Spare me they psycho-crap. You know jack s*** about me or what I do or what I have done. For your information I like logic and I use it rather frequently, thank you very much. And I have questioned my religion and beliefs quite often and am quite clear and confident of them.

*snickers*

The goal of my life isn't to convince others of my intelectual or moral superiority - I'll leave that quest to smart-ass people with overinflated egos who feel that they need to assert themselves over others and spread their pearls of "wisdom" everywhere. Yes, I'd far rather play sports on the beach with my friends than debate here with you - especially since I know that the debate is useless.
And I'm the weird illogical one here???
Frankly, the only logical thing here is to not touch this debate with a 10-foot rusty halbeard. Well, since you joined in, I conclude you're not really logical yourself.

The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.

If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.

Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?

It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.

But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints? On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.

[NGTM-1R]

Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?

It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.

That's actually very easy.

God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.

[TrashMan]

The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.

Why do you feel the need to defend them? Because you are one the them or because you feel the cumpulsion that you simply MUST prove me wrong? (which would again put you in that group). As for the valid, reasonable evidence - they don't have it mostly. Even if they did the crusade to correct everyone still puts them in the "slightly crazy" category - that is, if they choose a INTERNET debate over hanging out with real friends.
And sizzler, even if I only used logic one in my entire life, it would still be more than you.

But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints?

Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.

On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.

The caveman doesn't know that...or he might not care.

God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.

I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?

[Mongoose]

These two levels of conversations going on at once are rather fascinating.  Kudos to the one for providing some very well-written material about a usually-flameworthy topic...and thanks to the other for providing some cheap lulz.

Not to cherry-pick my way in here, since I don't feel up to entering a conversation on anything like this sort of level, but one of Herra's comments inspired a bit of thought in me.

Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run?

I think the "time existing for eternity" aspect is where the problem arises from that viewpoint.  In the strictly scientific sense, the singularity that was the Big Bang contained within it everything that is the universe as we know it.  Since time is seemingly an inherent dimensional property of this universe, one would assume that the start of its axis would have to be pegged at that moment of universal creation.  (One could bear this out by noting that modern physics as we know it isn't sufficient to describe what happened during the Big Bang before the Planck time; that becomes the closest point we're able to get to "zero time," as it were.) If you're referencing a force or entity or being that gave rise to the universe as we know it, including time as we know it, then the normal human concepts of time wouldn't apply to it at all.  Terms like "before" or "after" wouldn't have any meaning at all when applied to God.  One could say that, in the "time before time," the state of existence of God was...God.  You can extend that out to our concept of "eternity," or contract it down to the microsecond "before" the Big Bang took place; it would really be one and the same to a being of that nature.

(Also, I find it interesting that the Silmarillion came up earlier, since Tolkien used both Judeo-Christian ideas of creation and elements of the Greek/Norse pantheons in crafting Middle-Earth's creation.  I think it becomes a bit difficult to hold a fictional work up as an equal comparison to the spiritual text that it's referencing in the first place.)