Comments by "MC116" (@angelmendez-rivera351) on "Rationality Rules"
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@sidarthur8706 Why would a god have to be beyond understanding?
Labeling any system which can be understood by the scientific method, or by otherwise reliable epistemic criteria, by the name of a "god" or "deity" is redundant. The entire point of theism, and the religions for which it serves as a backbone, is that there exist supernatural beings, which, as they transcend all other forms of knowledge, they can only be understood via divine revelation. Even deism, which does not claim a personal deity, still claims that there was a 'who,' a creator, who is beyond the comprehension. That is the thesis of these worldviews. Sure, you can redefine the word "god" to mean whatever you want. You can call your cellphone "God" if you want, but we are having a philosophical discussion, we are not playing word games here. So, the discussion has to start by acknowledging the actual thesis of theism, and discuss it, and that is what I am doing.
How do you know that the natural laws apply everywhere, and not only in the bit that we're aware of?
We have very strong evidence for the homogeneity and isotropy of the universe, save for a few anomalies, and we have even stronger evidence for the general theory of relativity, which, among various things, holds that the laws of physics are covariant. Meanwhile, we have no evidence that there could even be a mechanism by which the behavior of the universe could be any different than what we observe it to be in parts where it is unobservable. So, from a scientific standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense to actually conclude that the laws of the universe are somehow not the same everywhere, and it also makes no philosophical sense, as Occam's razor applies here.
Why do you think that what God happened to do is what he was compelled to do?
I do not? I never claimed God exists. I do not hold that God exists. I am a physicalist.
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@DoofusChungus How you define physicalism depends exactly on the variant of physicalism you are considering (for instance, token physicalism is not equivalent with supervenience physicalism, the latter being the most popular variant, and the one I subscribe to, mostly), but all physicalists agree on the causal closure I described earlier, and all physicalists agree that what defines "physical" should be in reference to what the scientific method calls "physical" or "natural." A succinct way that I like to put it is this: if a conceptual entity has well-defined properties that in any way make reference to a causal process or property that characterize the entity, then there can exist a conceivable physical theory of that entity in principle. This would, therefore mean that the claim that the only way to know said entity is via something like "divine revelation" is false, unless you also think that divine revelation itself can be understood solely in terms of physical theory (and/or chemistry, biology, etc.), but the latter view is rare, and is basically something that most physicalists would say does not exist, since at that point, labeling it "divine revelation" is not really justified.
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@sidarthur8706 you're specifically discussing the thesis of some forms of christianity.
No, this is not exclusive to Christianity. Sikhist doctrines maintains classical monotheism. So do Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Mandeism, and several other major religions. Though, to be clear, the definition of the word "god" given is not exclusive to classical monotheism either. It applies to many forms of polytheism just as well, and to other forms of monotheism.
the pantheistic god isn't supernatural.
I agree, and I maintain I said earlier. Calling the "pantheistic god" by the label of a "god" is semantically unreasonable.
odin isn't supernatural.
Odin is very much supernatural. I have no idea where you get the idea that he is not.
you've argued from your conclusion back to your conclusion.
You have not demonstrated how this is the case at all. Simply making a claim does not make it true, and this is what you are doing here.
we have evidence that the universe is probably homogenous but that's not the same as knowing that it really is...
Do you not understand how the scientific works? Or even just how the concept of evidence works? Knowledge is defined in terms of evidence. I never claimed to have "absolute certainty," but that is because having "absolute certainty" about anything is categorically impossible. It is an incoherent notion, and this is why in epistemology, it is not taken seriously. Instead, we work with the idea of sufficient justification or sufficient evidence. This is how we distinguish knowledge from belief. As for the scientific method, all conclusions drawn by science are tentative. The existence of gravity is tentative. The roundness of the Earth is tentative. It is not impossible that, one day, we will find sufficient evidence that overturns everything that we know today. Yet, I do not see you doubting the roundness of the Earth. So, quite frankly, and with all due respect, your objection is very ridiculous. You are pretending to, all of the sudden, for this one very specific scenario, not understand the basics of the concept of scientific evidence, solely to try to defend a completely untenable worldview.
or that there aren't alternative laws of physics in other universes.
Why are you bringing other universes into this? There is no evidence that other universes exist. Also, I should point out that, at this stage, everything you are saying is a strawman. I never made stated assumptions about the laws of the universe prior to your replying to me. You decided to bring that up on your own, because the only thing I had said prior to you replying is that the fine-tuning is in contradiction with theism, and that a theist who presents the counterargument you had presented is missing the point. But, I suppose reading comprehension is difficult, so it is what it is.
actually from a physicalist perspective and on the anthropic principle you'd surely have to assume that besides the universe that we know there must have been failed experiments of nature with laws of physics that couldn't sustain a universe and which were outsurvived by ours
No. Neither physicalism, nor the anthropic principle, imply this conclusion. The proposal that there were "failed universes prior to ours" is unfalsifiable, and, strictly speaking, not really a scientific hypothesis. This is about as unnecessary of an assumption as assuming that a god exists.
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@DoofusChungus That's the problem I have with your argument. Much of it is based on "you don't know," which yeah, but neither do you.
You saying this proves you do not understand my argument at all. You see, my argument does not require me to be able to know anything about God's mind. Yours, however, does. Therefore, me not knowing is not a problem for me, but you not knowing categorically debunks your argument. My argument does not rely on pretending to know what God wants. Yours does.
I'm arguing that I believe that God created the universe a certain way, and the reasoning and possibility behind it.
No, you are not doing that. You have presented zero reasoning behind God creating the universe the way you claim They have created it. You made the baseless assertion of "God would have wanted the universe to make sense." Sorry, but baseless assertions are not reasoning. You made the baseless assertion of "God has a plan." Sorry, but baseless assertions are not reasoning. If you want to present this as an explanation, then you have to provide evidence, which you do not possess. This is actually pretty funny, because I never asked you to explain why God made the decisions you claim They made. I never questioned those decisions, and the fact that you keep insisting that I did question them makes me question your lacking in reading comprehension skills, and your intellectual honesty. Still, I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here. Anyhow, all I did was refute the fine-tuning argument by appealing to God's omnipotence, and you made the decision to start trying to explain God's decisions, as if that somehow addresses my refutation, which it does not.
I could assume he has a plan,...
Well, don't. If you are not going to provide evidence for you claim of God having a plan, then I am not interested in hearing said claim.
...if you "grant me the existence of God," then him having a plan for everything is almost guaranteed,...
No, it is not. The fact that God exists, created the universe, and is omnipotent, does not imply God has a plan for the universe. That is not how logic works.
...as knowing everything would mean knowing the future, and knowing the future would mean creating things a certain way for that future to come into fruition...
No, it does not. Having knowledge about the future does not mean you have a plan for the future, nor does it mean you are actually interested in the future or care about it. All of these assumptions you are making are basless conjectures. This is not "reasoning." This is not "an explanation." This is you making a bunch on unjustifiable, unknowable claims, and expecting me to be like «ah, you got me, I guess God exists now.» Sorry, but no: that is not how any of this works. You cannot just make claims about God without substantiating those claims. The only things I have granted you here are (a) God exists (b) God created the universe (c) God is omnipotent and knows the future. Having a plan does not follow from those three premises at all! Your argument is invalid.
Again, if you grant me the existence of God, the fact that these astronomically low probability events happen again and again for humanity to be where we are...
No no no no. Stop right there. We already talked about this. These events are not low probability events. They are events of probability 1, the highest possible probability. Why? Because the universe is deterministic, not random. The laws of physics are deterministic. I granted you the existence of God, but your claim about these events being random remains scientifically false.
...means he's gotta have a plan...
If it were true that the events were low probability, then maybe. But, you are wrong about the events being low probability.
Exactly, the minuscule chance that all of this stuff happened is so low...
No, it is not. You are just pulling claims out of your ass now. Somehow, whenever you make a scientific claim, you happen to be wrong, every single time.
You are arguing against my belief in God through your perspective of physicalism...
Okay, you are very confused here. My holding a belief in physicalism is not the same as making an argument for physicalism. I have not presented any arguments for physicalism in this thread, not yet, anyway. It is entirely possible to have a belief, and not actually present an argument for that belief. The topic of this discussion is not "does God exist?," nor is it "is physicalism true?" The topic of this discussion is "is the fine-tuning argument sound?" Me saying it is not sound does not actually constitute an argument against the existence of God, and I have no idea why you keep insisting that it is.
And by the way, I only brought up physicalism, explicitly to address your claim that atheists believe in random chance. We do not. I did not bring physicalism up as a way to refute the fine-tuning argument, or as a way to argue against God's existence. You would have known this if you had, you know, read my comments carefully.
which I'm course not offended by...
Are you sure? I don't know, brother, but you seem fairly offended to me. You literally lashed out at me earlier being all like "Fine, you win, God doesn't exist anymore," which is the adult equivalent of throwing a tantrum. You have also continued to repeatedly misrepresent my position, almost as if you are unable to handle facing my argument head on.
but still, you are arguing against God,...
My guy. I granted you the existence of God for the sake of discussion. I do not know in what language I should be trying to explain this to you, but apparently, it is not English.
We don't know what he had in mind when creating everything.
See, you say this, but then you are turning around and contradicting yourself by claiming that we can know for sure that God had some kind of plan, and then you are refusing to present evidence for that claim. Do you not see how the conversation cannot go anywhere when you do that? Pick a lane. Do we know for a fact that God had a plan? If so, present the evidence. If not, then, my argument against fine-tuning stands. That is all there is to it.
My original argument was simply arguing for the existence of God being needed for everything to play out the way it did.
See, now you are shifting the goalpost. OP's comment, the comment that started the thread, was about the fine-tuning argument being refuted by God's claimed omnipotence. Everyone else's comments were about that too, and you replied to those comments by defending the fine-tuning argument. Then, I replied to your replies, also by discussing the fine-tuning argument. You replied to me by, again, defending the fine-tuning argument. And now, you are trying to pretend that, all along, you were actually making an entirely different argument for God's existence, rather than defending the fine-tuning argument. Not only that, but now, you are also trying to pretend I was arguing against that argument, and against your beliefs in general, and not against the fine-tuning argument, even though that is the argument that I explicitly stated I was arguing against in the beginning of the thread. You are either being extremely careless with the way you read comments, or you are dishonest.
But, okay. Fine. Have it your way. Since you are not going to accept that this discussion is about the fine-tuning argument, even though everyone else is on the same page about that (which, by the way, makes your behavior here pretty unreasonable), let's talk about your other argument instead. Let me put it in syllogistic form for you:
(A) Many improbable events had to occur for life to exist.
(B) Since life does exist, those events either happened by random chance, despite being highly improbable, or God made them occur.
(C) It is more reasonable to believe God made them occur.
Conclusion: Therefore, more likely than not, God made those events occur.
Is this an accurate formulation of your argument?
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@DoofusChungus To disprove what I said, you gotta have proof, too, no?
If what you said is a baseless assertion, then no, I do not have to provide proof that your assertion is false. I can simply dismiss the assertion, because I have no epistemic obligation to accept an assertion for which no evidence has been presented.
You're argument requires you to assume God has no plan, or at least may not have had a plan.
My argument only requires assuming that it is not impossible that God had no plan. In this case, this would be the equivalent of the null hypothesis: as concluding it would have been impossible demands evidence.
I have said that for God to have wanted to create the universe a certain way with the outcomes it has, then there has to be a plan.
I know you have said this, but it is still just another baseless assertion. The premise "God wanted to create a universe" does not imply "God had a plan."
He didn't just create the universe and say "Well, I hope life forms."
You are assuming that God's primary goal was the existence of life, though. Maybe God created the universe because They really like black holes. After all, this universe is extremely good at producing black holes. The universe is definitely much better at producing black holes, than at harboring life. Perhaps God created the universe for some other reason. Perhaps God was just really bored, so They wanted create something. Either way, as there are multiple possibilities, and there is no evidence for any of them at all, your assumption is baseless.
And fine-tuning means having a plan, no?
Yes, but as I am arguing against fine-tuning argument, I am also arguing against the assumption that God had a plan. There is no reason to make that assumption.
It means that God created the universe a certain way, so it would work in a way he wanted it too.
Whatever plans God had, if any at all, can be accomplished in any universe. The universe does not need to be created a certain way for things to work the way God wants them to.
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@DoofusChungus You call my points invalid because I have no clue what God's intention was,...
Yes, because the validity of your argument is directly contingent on knowing God's intentions, even though you yourself admitted it is impossible to know. My refutation does not require me to know God's intentions. My refutation only requires me to, for the sake of argument, assume God is omnipotent, but you already agree with that, so you have no rational justification for not accepting my refutation of the fine-tuning argument. Then again, you have no understanding of what the fine-tuning argument even is, so I guess that expectation on my part is unreasonable.
...although everything points to life as the specific events that happened were very much only there to create life,...
No, this is a baseless assertion. Sure, the events led to the existence of life, but many events happened that had nothing to do with the existence of life, and many events that happened are actually bad for the existence of life.
...and create a world that works.
Again with this nonsense. There is no such a thing as "world that works" or "world that does not work" for an omnipotent being. Do you actually not undeestand what the word "omnipotent" means? Do you even actually believe God is omnipotent? Because I have been suspecting for a while that you do not actually believe God is omnipotent.
That would be like me saying "nope, physicalism is false because you don't have proof that there's only materialism."
No, it is nothing like that at all, because at no point have I ever claimed your assertions about God are false. I only claimed they are baseless, and since they are baseless, I can dismiss them. And here is the thing: if I were to come out and tell you "well, physicalism is true anyway, so nothing you say about God actually matters," you would be completely justified in dismissing physicalism on the basis of me claiming it to be true, despite not providing evidence for it. Because, yes, that is how the burden of proof works. Right now, the burden of proof is on you to prove your claims, and if you are unable to, then I am 100% epistemically justified in ignoring and dismissing those claims. Again, that is how it works. You may not like it. You may not be comfortable with it, but it is how it works.
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@DoofusChungus Also, I should mention that while I merely have dismissed your claims about God to be baseless, your claims about the universe are indeed false, and I have actually explained how and why they are false, I have provided you with evidence. Every single time, though, you have ignored the parts of my comments that actually provide said evidence. For example, you keep saying "these events have astronomically low probability." No, they are not. Their probability is 1. You keep saying that chemistry and the laws of physics are random. No, they are not. If they were random, then there would be no such a thing as the laws of physics. Also, it is very obvious to scientists that this universe is not "designed for life," since it is extremely bad at harboring life: almost all of it is uninhabitable. This universe is much better at making black holes, so your argument here really should be "God created the universe because They like black holes." However, there is no way you will ever actually argue for that.
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@DoofusChungus You keep saying my points are baseless because "the probability is 1".
Yes. You claim that the events have low probability. They do not. Your claim is false. Since your argument relies on this false claim, your argument is unsound.
Yes, the probability is 1 because it did happen, that's how it works.
No, that is not how probability works. The probability of an event does not depend on whether it has happened or not. People who make this claim are people who pretend to understand Bayes' theorem, but do not. The reason real-life events have probability 1 is that the universe is deterministic. It is not random. Random events do not exist. It is physically impossible, as far as the evidence points, for processes to be truly random.
Yet scientists best guesses as to what happened to lead us here, and what has been proven to lead us here, rely on such random chance and coincidence, over and over.
No, this is false, and a claim that you pulled out of your butthole. There are no reliable scientific studies suggesting that random events actually exist. Even dice throws are not random.
All I've seen you say to rebut this is "it happened tho, so you're wrong".
No. You are lying. I never used this as my response.
Please explain to me how the perfect elements that we needed were carried on meteors and just so happened to hit Earth...
The perfect elements? There are many types of aminoacids, and organic compounds, that could have served as the basis for life to form. The reason we do not know how life originated is not the lack of scientific explanations, but rather, that there are too many scientific explanations: there are too many combinations which are possible which would lead to life, and we do not know which of the possible ones exactly happened.
As for the meteor hitting the Earth... that is completely mundane. All planets are hit by a meteor at some point. Remember, though, that Earth was hit by a meteor only half a billion years after the Solar System was formed. Meteors would have been far more abundant because of this, back then.
...but only after it cooled down from being a flaming ball of fire is just luck, I guess?
Nope. It is not luck. It's called "physics." Perhaps you have never taken a physics course before, so you have no understanding of physical processes work. But I have a degree in physics.
Please explain to me how, Earth just so happened to crash into another planet randomly so we can have the moon, just luck, I guess?
Planetary collisions are not uncommon during the early stages of stellar systems. There is nothing lucky about it, just the natural order of things. Again, it's called "physics."
Please explain to me how whatever wiped out the dinosaurs was impactful enough to get rid of them, yet mammals and other animals were spared, just luck, I guess?
Are you scientifically illiterate? These are all questions answered by high school level textbooks. The only mammals that survived were marine mammals, and very small mammals, like proto-lemurs and rodents, and such. Why did they survive? Because, as they were small, they required significantly less oxygen than dinosaurs did. So, while the dinosaurs were asphyxiating from the lack of oxygen, caused by the debris-filled atmosphere from the impact, small mammals were still capable of breathing and obtaining food. In fact, small dinosaurs survived too! And they evolved into the modern species of reptiles we have today, and they also evolved into modern avians. The ones that went extinct were the large dinosaurs, due to lack of oxygen and nutrition, because the meteor impact had catastrophic effects on the global climate.
And you're right, when we say anything about God, there is no hard proof. I can't just pull out a picture of God and say, "There, proof."
Don't be ridiculous. I am not asking you to pull out a picture of God, obviously. But surely, as a Christian, you can do better than no evidence at all... right?
But yet the burden of proof doesn't only fall on me though, because you claim to have disproven my other points,...
No, it absolutely does fall on you. You are the one making the claims here, not me. I am merely responding to your claims by (a) dismissing them, or (b) showing that the science disproves them.
but until you provide proof that God doesn't exist, imma dismiss your claims.
No. That is not how the burden of proof works. You are being unreasonable. I have not made any claims that God does not exist. In fact, I have, for the sake of argument, granted the existence of God, in order to debunk your arguments. So, I am not required to provide any proof here, because I have not made that claim. You do not get to dismiss my claims, because the only claims I have made are supported by scientific evidence. The claims you have made are not.
Exactly my point: the universe is extremely bad at harboring life yet we're here.
What you are failing to realize is that the universe being bad at harboring life contradicts your argument, but is consistent with science. Life existing despite that, is also consistent with science. Your worldview is incapable of explaining why the universe is bad at harboring life. Mine is not.
Also, I can't believe you could assume that the universe is bad at harboring life.
How many planets have we discovered? Several thousands of planets. How many of them do we know of harbor life? 1, and that is planet Earth, where we live. So, less than 0.1% of planets that have been studied are capable of harboring life. That counts as "pretty bad at harboring life." If you teleport a living being to anywhere in the universe, there is 99.99999999% that they will die immediately. More likely than not, you will either end up in (a) an empty void, (b) inside a hypergiant star, (c) inside a supermassive blackhole. In the off chance that you actually land somewhere else: if you land in some other type of star, instant death. If you land in some other type of blackhole, that is almost instant death. If you actually happen to land on a planet... most of them can kill you in matters of microseconds, if not faster. Even among the planets that are actually Earth-like and apparently inhabitable, no life has been found. Furthermore, solar systems like the Sun, which do have a goldilocks zone, are pretty normal, and despite this, still no life in other places has been confirmed. This alone is conclusive to demonstrate that life in the universe is pretty rare. That does not mean there is no extraterrestrial life of any kind. It just means, the universe is sufficiently bad at harboring life, that even though life may exist elsewhere, it was still definitely not designed to harbor life.
That's baseless, as only the Milky Way might be bad at it.
Except, that argument does not work, because the Milky Way is a very typical spiral galaxy, and is actually among the few galaxy types capable of supporting a galactic habitable zone.
Where's your proof?
Where is yours? I just presented you with mine, but I know you are still not going to provide me with any evidence, because you are incapable of doing so. So, basically, your position is untenable and unreasonable. Furthermore, you are extremely lacking in basic knowledge of biochemistry, astrophysics, probability theory, Big Bang cosmology, epistemology, and basic propositional logic.
I rest my case.
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@sidarthur8706 i didn't have to show how your arguments are circular, you've done it yourself for me.
Sorry, but no, this is not how this works. You cannot claim a fallacy was committed without explaining how the argument presented is a fallacy. Ironically, doing such a thing is itself a fallacy. And dishonest.
the pantheistic god doesn't help you make your case so you've deliberately left it out of the exact definition of a god that you needed for your conclusion to follow from it.
Calling the pantheistic "god" by that name is not substantially different from calling your cellphone a god. I apologize for not considering such semantic sophistry to be a real argument worth addressing.
that's not a straw man, it really is your argument.
You are seriously lacking in reading comprehension skills, or you are just fragrantly dishonest. I did not say that you telling me I was leaving out the pantheistic god is a strawman. My accusation of you strawmanning me was specifically in reply to you bringing up the laws of physics. I even quoted the exact part of your comment I was replying to.
Well, seeing as how you are either illiterate, or dishonest (possibly both), I will not read the rest of your comment, and I will not reply to it. That would be a waste of my time. Have a nice day, and hopefully, your approach to conversations will change in the future.
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@DoofusChungus Wait, so you're telling me random events do not exist?
Yes! I have been telling you that since the very beginning of the conversation! Finally! Took you long enough to realize it.
So, then, without something pushing it to happen, how does it happen?
Can you provide an example of anything that has ever happened without something pushing it to happen? No, you cannot.
You know exactly what I mean when I say random.
I really do not, because you apparently do not know the definition of the word random.
If I'm walking down the street, and a completely random person unrelated to me in any way walks up to me and shoots me because he felt like killing someone, that's not random?
No, it is not. There is an actual cause behind why the person would have done so. Actually knowing the cause is nigh-impossible, but this is only because the number of variables one would have to know to accurate have predicted such an outcome is very large, and the amount of precision with which one would have to know them is also unmatched by current technology. Even then, there is still a lot that can be said about the causation of the sequence of events. If the person shot you, as opposed to someone else, this means that you looked easier to kill, and that it would be harder for your body to be discovered, than if they shot someone else. Of course, this assumes the shooter is actually somewhat sane. If they are insane, then... that already contributes significantly to a causal explanation for why they shot you. Much of the focus of forensic psychology is actually to understand such scenarios. You act like no research has ever been done on the topic. You have the digital era in your hands, and you do nothing with it.
Dice rolls are random.
No, they are not. You can use Newton's laws to model the trajectory of the throw of a die if you have sufficiently precise measurements of the initial conditions of the throw. In practice, this is difficult to achieve, even with machines, but it is not impossible.
They are determined by how a person throws it, how it hits the table, what the table is made out of, etc.
Yes... that makes it not random by definition. See, this right here proves that you have no friggin' clue as to what the word "random" actually means. You really do like to use words and throw them around in a conversation without knowing what they mean. If dice were truly random, then the outcome of a throw would not depend on any variables at all. You would not be able to even slightly manipulate the probabilities, regardles of how much information you had: there would be no equation that would allow you to predict the outcome, even in principle.
So, what you're arguing randomness is, sure, nothing is random.
What I am "arguing" randomness is is the actual definition of randomness, and the one that nearly everyone uses.
Stop trying to get me on scientific hypotheses and stuff like that.
No, I will not. I respect you as an individual, but I would be lying to you I told you that know anything about science. You talked about the Big Bang theory, and you got it wrong. You did not know basic facts about biology that are answered by standard high school textbooks. You did not know that brain waves and radio waves are just examples of electromagnetic phenomena. You are out here trying to pretend you know science, and you are arguing with a physicist who is correcting you on these topics, and you have the audacity to tell me to stop. I am sorry that you fail to realize how unreasonable this is.
Are YOUR literacy skills undeveloped,...
You cannot say that, and then fail to put a question mark at the end of a question.
...because what I said was the best guess' as to what led to life as we know it, such as the meteories carrying the right chemicals and elements,...
I addressed this already. A meteor with the appropriate organic molecules landing on Earth is not a random event. In fact, there is nothing abnormal about. Many meteors and comets have hit the Earth.
...all the events that led to life rely on random chance.
No, they do not. Biochemistry is not random. We can predict chemical reactions with high accuracy, much more easily than we can predict a dice roll. We can predict astrophysics with even higher accuracy.
See, my point exactly, you rely on my wording to try to prove me wrong.
So, what, you want me to rely on words you did not say, and strawman you? You want me to lie? No. Stop.
...you wanna know what there's more of than chemicals and elements that can begin life? Elements and chemicals that cannot.
And? So what? Every carbon-based molecule can begin life. There are more of those than you can count.
And we do know the ones that happened, the ones that are being used currently so we can live.
Nope, that is false. Of course, life today is still carbon-based as it was in the past, but the exact molecules and chemistry involved are not all the same. Life has evolved for billions of years.
My whole point out about the meteor is that it needed to be to such a degree that the dinosaurs were killed, but other life wasn't.
And your point is false. What happened with the dinosaurs is not specific to that meteor. Any meteor that would have hit the Earth would have caused the same effects, because that is just how meteor impacts work. Also, there are many other events that can do exactly the same thing, such as mass supervolcanic eruptions, and the Milankovich cycles of the planet Earth, combined with the greenhouse effect.
What I meant was the fact that for the elements to survive, they couldn't hit too early, because, you know, ball of fire.
And? Plenty of meteors hit the Earth during that time, and many of them probably did contain those elements. The fact that the Great Bombardment kept happening after the Earth stopped being a molten ball is not at all abnormal.
But our systems orbit patterns make it incredibly hard for planetary collisions.
The orbits of systems today, yes. Not the orbits from when the Solar System was a freaking baby. Orbits take a while to stabilize in the formation of stellar systems. What, you really thought the Solar System from 4.5 billion years ago looked identical to today's? Oh my Siesta.
Just to make sure I wasn't misremembering anything, I went to Google and it literally uses the word "uncommon."
Citation needed. I have looked at several sources, such as NASA, and Centauri Dreams, and these sources, if anything claim that they are common, not "uncommon." For example, https : // www . centauri - dreams . org / 2020 / 07 / 16 / planetary-collisions-and-their-consequences (type the URL into your browser, without the spaces) explicitly claims «Let’s hope we never share such a fate, but it’s likely that collisions are commonplace in the late stages of planet formation, and many researchers believe that Earth’s Moon was the result of the collision of our planet with a Mars-sized planet about 4.5 billion years ago.» Also, in the other thread you commented on, I demonstrated that you are not great at actually doing searches on engines for a topic anyway, so I am skeptical of your search. Incidentally, you also never cite the sources you find in your alleged search. I have no reason to think you are not lying, especially as I have already caught you lying in previous replies.
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@DoofusChungus Did you forget about the part where it had to be to a perfect degree that the dinosaurs weren't capable of living, but other animals were.
You say this as if it would have been difficult for this to happen. It was not difficult, this is literally just how meteor impacts work.
A little bit faster or bigger and everything's gone, a little slower or smaller and nothing is.
This is not substantiated by any science at all, this is just a claim you pulled out of your butt.
You have yet to debunk all these very improbable events happening, one after another.
The events are not improbable, and I already have proven this multiple times. You being unreasonable and actively choosing to ignore my explanations has nothing to do with me.
You keep saying that "they happened so, there, debunked."
I have never made this claim. You are LYING. You should be ashamed of yourself, and I would say you are lucky that the Bible does not actually ever condemn lying, but you should still be ashamed of the fact that you think lying is acceptable in a philosophical conversation. Honestly, I am not even sure you are worth any respect from me now. Perhaps I should hit the "mute" button on your name and start ignoring all your replies, as it seems that trying to have a conversation with you is a waste of time. You lack the intellectual honesty to admit that you are not able to refute my arguments, so you have to resort to lying in order to try to make it seem like there is a problem with my arguments, as if I would be too stupid to not realize that you are lying. Well, listen: perhaps the average atheist you interact with on your day-to-day life is stupid, but not me. You chose to mess with the wrong atheist. When people lie, I call them out without hesitation. If you are going to behave dishonestly, then I have no qualms scolding you whatsoever. I quote your exact words, to ensure I am not misrepresenting you, and I also go back and check my own comments, to see if people are misrepresenting me. Perhaps others let this kind of bullcrap from you slide. Not me. I hope this is clear.
You even explain how they happen in a scientific sense for me, saving the me trouble.
Saving you the trouble? No, this actually spells trouble for you. The fact that I can provide science-based deterministic explanations for these events categorically debunks the claim that they are random.
...all this stuff happening, whether you wanna admit is random or not, there's so much chance involved with.
sigh You can insist "there is chance involved" all you want, but you have no evidence for your claim. Furthermore, I have presented evidence against your claim. In response, all you have done is act along the lines of covering your ears, and going "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU I CAN'T HEAR YOU," rather than acknowledging the evidence. I may as well be talking to a brick wall here, but that actually might be an insult to a brick wall, since a brick wall does not have the ability to listen. The brick wall also does not lie about my claims, like you have been doing. At this point, it is very hard to take you seriously, and I am very close to just deciding to stop talking to you.
That is proof...
No, it is not. A claim that has been debunked as false by deterministic (read: deterministic implies non-random) explanations cannot serve as proof anything.
...even if you don't see it as proof, then I guess we'll call it a theory,...
I want to smash a table... no, my guy, you cannot do that. Okay, so I guess you also do not know the definition of the word "theory." Let me give you the first paragraph of Wikipedia's "scientific theory,": «A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment.[1][2] In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.[3]» The sources cited for this claim are the National Academy of Sciences; Winther, Rasmus G. "The Structure of Scientific Theories," and Schafersman, Steven D, "An Introduction to Science."
...as that's what Christianity mainly is. As the whole point of it is faith.
The reliance on faith makes it (a) not a form of knowledge at all, and (b) not a theory at all.
Also, you are the one making claims as well, as you claim my arguments are false.
Yes, but here is the difference: I have provided reasoning and evidence for my claims, and I can actually cite sources, as I already have. Meanwhile, you are ignoring all of that evidence, and repeating nonsense I already dismissed as having no evidence. On top of that, you are literally lying about my arguments. So much for being a Christian. Is the name of your belief system "Lying for Jesus Christ?"
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@DoofusChungus You can't respond to a point with "Well, I read a study that says you're wrong," and then not supply proof.
Yes, I can. As Christopher Hitchens once said, "That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." You have made many assertions, but have provided no evidence for any of them. As such, I have no epistemic obligation to actually accept them, and I can readily dismiss them. In fact, I have no epistemic obligation to even acknowledge your claims, since no evidence was presented for them. Despite that, because I actually wanted to educate you, for you to learn something about the world, rather than stay intensely ignorant on the topics of discussion, I went out of my way to actually explain to you why several of your claims are false. I have provided proof, and I have cited sources, whilst you have done neither. The fact that you chose to ignore said evidence is your problem, not mine. I already met my burden of proof for the claims I made. The only claims I have not proven are the claims that you say I made, but did not make. But, that is just you lying. I have no obligation to defend claims I never made, regardless of how much you want to insist I did make them.
And actually, I made it really easy for you to learn about the topic by citing sources aimed at laypeople, rather than trustworthy scholarly sources. I could have bombarded you instead with the hundreds of scientific peer-reviewed studies that I have read on the various topics we have discussed, and gone into detail as to how each of them proves my point. However, since everyone can tell from 1000 km away that you are not qualified to do, so much as read a published scientific study, and actually understand any of the stuff they are talking about (considering you fail to understand even basic physics and such), you would not actually learn anything. You would stay confused, and you would not have an opportunity to understand why your arguments are incorrect. At worst, you would completely misinterpret what they said in the studies, and develop some really bizarre ideas about the universe that are just not true. So, I avoided doing this instead.
You think I have read one single study, and concluded you are wrong? Let me put your arrogant self in your place then, because you need to be humbled: I did not read "one" study. I am a physicist. I have read more studies than you ever will in your entire life. I have written a thesis for my undergraduate degree in a methodology comparison between cosmology and quantum mechanics. I have a degree in physics, and another degree in philosophy. I own a dozen of textbooks in philosophy, and about two dozen in physics. I have studied mathematics much more advanced than you or anyone in your circle of friends will ever encounter. Have you ever heard of tensor calculus? I doubt it, and you probably don't even understand the definition of a "tensor." Have you ever heard of category theory? Do you know what a morphism is? No, of course not. Normally, making these assumptions about a stranger is unjustified, but I have learned quite a lot about you from these conversations. I have also studied various religions, beyond just Christianity. I probably have a better grasp of Judaism and Islam than you do. I have studied Shintoism and read the creation myth, as well as several other classics of Shinto mythology, such as the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. I have studied some Japanese as well, though that was primarily in summer programs when I was in high school. I also own a beautiful copy of the Dao de Ching, I own a copy of the Analects, copies of several scholarly texts about Buddhism, I know the basics of Fengshui animism in China, and I even understand some of the Yoruba religions, due to my family ancestry. Now, let me ask you a question: have you ever put this much effort into understanding other people's beliefs? I doubt it. And you have definitely never put as much effort into the sciences. You think I am sitting in an armchair, just doing random Google searches, just so I can be like "ha! See? You're wrong!" Well, no. This is all knowledge I have accumulated over the years, after having had my beliefs changed several times, after having put blood, sweat, and tears into my studies.
I am not telling you all of this to brag. Look, I know absolutely nothing about theater. I know absolutely nothing about starting a business, or about making a law. I know absolutely nothing about social networking. If you gave me a car with an engine problem, and you asked me to identify the problem with car on my own, it would probably take me 4 years to do it. If you told me to make a scultpture, I would be outperformed by a toddler. So, no, I am not trying to say I am superior in any way. The reason I say all of this is so that you can understand that dismissing what experts have to say on the matter just because you have the arrogance to think you know everything, despite not being able to provide evidence for anything, is only harming you in the end. So, stop doing that. You clearly have the capacity to do better than this. You are just choosing not to. And that is infuriating, especially because you are also so dishonest about it. It honestly makes no sense, because the point of this conversation was never to disprove that God exists. In fact, for the sake of the conversation, I actually sacrificed my viewpoint entirely, and granted his existence. And I know how to do that, because I was Christian for many years in my life. I own three distinct copies of the Bible, and I have read the Bible in all the languages I am fluent in. I have even researched some of the ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek of the original text, which I doubt you have ever done. But, despite me granting you the existence of God, all you did was have tunnel vision and insist that I have to somehow prove that God does not exist, even if this meant lying about my claims. You chose this. The only thing you think about is "do they agree with my belief in God?" You don't actually listen to what they are saying to you, you do not look at the evidence, you do not bother to understand the beliefs of other people, you do not bother to learn about any of the science, even though the information is available for free online and in libraries, you do not bother to look at sources beyond the first Google result that pops up in your most primitive search. You choose to act this way, even though you do not have to, as a Christian. You think the world revolves around your relationship with God? Well, it doesn't. There are 7.8 billion people in the planet, and humans have existed for over 100 000 years. This is why you needed to be humbled, and this is why I told you everything I just said.
But, whatever. My guess is, you will not even read this comment carefully enough anyway, because I can tell you never read any of my other replies to you carefully either. And for that reason, I am going to end the conversation here, since I see no worth in continuing to interact with you. I gave you all the advice I can give you, plenty of evidence, and even tolerated your dishonest behavior. If, even after that, you cannot figure out why you are wrong, then I do not think you are actually rational enough to change your mind. Please reflect on this conversation. Anyway, I hope you have success in your endeavors.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d where are you getting the definition of omnipotent?
The definition is very simple: we say that x is omnipotent if and only if, for all things y, x can do y.
Because having unlimited power and authority, doesn't mean if you create something, it can't have fine tuning because that would mean you're not omnipotent.
This demonstrates that you do not understand the definition of "omnipotent," nor the definituon of "fine-tuning." Let me define "fine-tuning" for you. "Fine-tuning" refers to the act of taking a free parameter of a system, and matching its value to a very narrow range of values, in order to accomplish a particular goal. For example, if you are listening to a radio station, your receiver's audio frequency has to be tuned to a very narrow range of emitted audio frequencies, in order to be able to listen to a particular radio station of your choice. This is fine-tuning. Matching a frequency to another frequency range is called tuning, but here, it is called fine-tuning, because the range of frequencies is very narrow. The argument that Ben Shapiro, and other monotheistic apologists are presenting, is that the free paramaters of the universe had to be given very specific values, in order for intelligent life to exist. In other words, they are claiming the universe is finely-tuned for the existence of intelligent life. However, if God is omnipotent, and God created the universe, then this is false: the universe cannot be finely-tuned. Why? Because, since God is omnipotent, all values of the free paramaters work equally well for producing intelligent life, since the only factor that would matter in the production of intelligent life is God's Will. Since all values of the free parameters work equally well for the existence of intelligent life in a universe created by God, such a universe is, by definition, not finely-tuned.
It's ignorance of God, that makes one think God is a god of miracles or magic. He isn't.
The Bible claims that God is a god of miracles. If you disagree, then you disagree with the Bible.
We acknowledge laws of everything around us. If God created it all, then he willingly, purposely created it as such. So he understands exactly how it works. It is us who doesn't understand.
This has nothing to do with whether the universe is finely-tuned or not. Can you stick to the topic of conversation, and not avoid my arguments, please? This is cowardly.
You acknowledge God is supposed to be omnipotent so you want him to do whatever without limits. Yet you fail to see that what he created, has limits so what you are asking him to do is to break those limits.
Yes. Is that too much to ask? Then God is not all powerful. The only reason God's creation has limits is because he put them there, no? So, he can also just remove those limitations. Yet, here you are, saying God cannot remove those limitations, resulting in a finely-tuned universe.
You know your arm can only bend so far. Let's break those limits. So now you have a broken arm.
What is the point of this analogy? God is all powerful. God is perfectly capable of doing literally whatever he wants whilst simultaneously leaving the universe unbroken and safe. Yes, if I bend my arm too much, my arm will break. And guess what? I am not all powerful. So, of course it breaks. Someone with sufficient power can bend their arm freely without breaking it, though. Such people do exist in fiction, and I would presume an all powerful being that is not fictional is not an exception to this.
What's the purpose of that? Just to see your arm can break? Why do it if YOU already know the outcome?
Why are you assuming that anything God does will break the universe? You seriously do not believe God is omnipotent.
Let's say this 4 year old does know that and he asks you to go past your arms limit. Are you going to amuse him with what you already know is not a good thing? Of course not.
No, but I would explain to the child precisely why I am refusing to engage with their request. God has never done anything analogous to that.
Does that make you stupid, less knowledgeable or weak? Of course not.
I would say that it does make you less knowledgeable or weak if you are incapable of explaining to the child why you are refusing. Such a task should be trivial for an omnipotent, omniscient being.
Yet you want God do it?
What are you talking about? I never asked God to break the universe. In fact, I am postulating that God can do literally anything he wants to without breaking the universe. You are the one who thinks that anything God does will break the universe. Not me.
You're the r year old asking God to do something he already knows the outcome.
No, I have not asked God to do anything at all. You are strawmanning me.
You're the one making God into this magician.
No, the Bible is the one making God into a magician.
Christians will say miracles, the bible will have examples of these miracles. But it's not a miracle. We just call it that to explain what we do not know.
Are you saying that everything God does can be explained by the laws of physics? Because if so, then God is not omnipotent.
Nowhere in the bible does God call himself a magician.
It does not matter. God is still a magician, even if he does not call himself by that name.
He has a reason for it. You may agree but it's a reason.
I never disagreed. God obviously has a reason to create the universe in this particular way. This does not change the fact that the universe is not finely-tuned.
You obviously don't know the gid according to the bible.
I absolute do. I think I understand the Bible a lot better than you do.
You know the god according to angel mendez-rivera
Nope. I do not have a concept of God, because I am an atheist.
It's not God according to you.
No, it is according to the Bible.
Though you can certainly think so. But that's ridiculous to presume every Christian and I should also.
No, it is not ridiculous for me to assume that you guys think God is omnipotent per the Bible. Yet, here you are, insisting that he is not omnipotent.
That's like telling a star wars fanatic that Luke has a ring and uses the Schwartz because Q says so. Or that orangutans and humans don't share a common ancestor because Q said so.
Nope, these things are not at all analogous to me saying that God is omnipotent.
That's exactly you on the character of the God of the bible.
It really is not. Your reading comprehension skills need vast improvement.
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@ruaraidh74 Atheism makes no claims about the origin of life. Atheism is not a worldview. Again, you are demonstrating that you do not know the definition of the word "atheist." An atheist is, quite literally, someone who is not a theist. That is all. Me not being a theist does not tell you what my worldviews are at all. Currently, you have no way of knowing whether I am a Daoist, Buddhist, Confucianist, legalist, naturalist/physicalist, solipsists, or something else entirely. All of the aforementioned are consistent with not being a theist. The fact that I am not a theist has absolutely no implications on a discussion about the origins of life.
Now, if you want to have a discussion about the origins of life, we can certainly do that, but just know that this has absolutely nothing to do with atheism at all.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d I'm not saying God is not omnipotent.
Yes, you are. You have made many statements with this precise logical implication, and I have quoted you making those statements.
You have a total different definition of omnipotent than what the accepted definition is.
No, I do not. As I explained in my previous reply, Merriam-Webster, the prestigious dictionary, defines the adjective "omnipotent" as "having virtually unlimited authority or influence." This definition matches my definition.
And you obviously don't know the bible. Your statements prove that.
No, it is you who does not know the Bible.
Give your definition of omnipotent and where you got it from.
I already gave my definition. It is not my fault that you are illiterate.
And give that scripture verse that says God is a god of miracles.
I already did that. Psalm 77:14. Again, it is not my fault you are illiterate. Before accusing me of not knowing the Bible, you should read the Bible. Had you read the Bible, you would have known about Psalms.
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@ruaraidh74 Even if that were a valid argument, it wouldn't be sound, because fine-tuning is an internal critique of atheism.
It does not work as an internal critique of atheism, because the argument concludes classical monotheism is true, even though classical monotheism being true contradicts the existence of fine-tuning. You cannot present something as an internal critique, when it does not actually appeal to properties of the thing it is critiquing, and when the critique fails to be consistent with its solution.
Suppose some effect X. The cause of X can either be of type P or not P. All effects of [cause] type not P suffer from the same probability objection: [teleological argument semantics here]
The supposed "probability objection" to effects of cause type not P amounts to nothing more than a collection of unfalsifiable assertions, in this case, and the premises of the objection are, again, not implied by atheism... because atheism is not a worldview.
Therefore, all else equal, P is a more probable cause of X than not P.
This argument is valid, but not sound, since the premises are unfalsifiable.
Your objection is: "Well, if P is truly the cause of X, then [teleological argument semantics here] don't apply!"
In a sense, yes, this is my objection. If it is improbable that X has a cause of type not P, then it follows that it is more probable that X has a cause of type P, but the problem is that if X does have a cause of type P, then it is not actually the case that X is a real effect, falsifying the premises of the argument, as X not being a real effect means no causal discussion is meaningful. In other words, if the argument is valid, then it is unsound. Since it is unsound, it fails as an internal critique.
The problem is that, in order for your objection to be sound, it requires "P is truly the cause of X."
It does not. The point of my objection is that the argument in question is self-undermining: the conclusion, if it is implied by premises, actually contradicts the premises. The keypoint you are missing is that the premises of an argument can imply a conclusion without either the conclusion or the premises being true.
It supposes that "P caused X" in order to suggest that the probability of (not P) causing X is not subject to the teleological critique.
No, it does not. You are taking two completely different objections, and treating them like they actually are the same objection. You see, here, cause type P refers to the God of classical monotheism, an omnipotent, omniscient creator. But, a universe created by such an entity cannot by finely-tuned. Here, effect X being caused is the existence of a finaly-tuned universe. If the cause of the existence of a finely-tuned universe is an omniscient, omnipotent creator, then said universe is actually not finely-tuned. Hence, we have a contradiction. If you change what X is, and you claim that it is merely the existence of the universe, then there is no problem, but in that case, you cannot claim that the universe is finely-tuned. Alternatively, you can postulate P as being not an omniscient, omnipotent creator, but rather, just a generic creator god that may not be omniscient or omnipotent. Then, again, there is no problem. The specific combination of P being an omniscient, omnipotent creator, and X being a finely-tuned universe, however, is contradictory.
The above contradiction has nothing to do with the "probability objection" in the premises of the argument. If you change P and X, such that there is no contradiction, then the argument remains valid, but another problem that makes it unsound remains: namely, that X having a cause of type not P being is improbable, is an unfalsifiable, unknowable assertion. Atheism does not entail the truth of this premise, so the argument cannot even function as an internal critique. This is an entirely different counterargument from the counterargument I presented above, regarding the contradiction.
Look, let me simplify things for you, since you are still missing the point. The argument being presented is essentially of the structure A ==> B, where A is the proposition "The universe exists as it does (i.e., is finely tuned)," while B is the proposition "It was created by an omnipotent, omniscient deity." It is entirely possible for A ==> B to be true, while A and B are false. ==> denotes material implication from formal logic, here. As such, there are two possible cases to consider here. Case (i) is that A ==> B is true. Case (ii) is that A ==> B is false. My objection is the following claim: B ==> not A. Why? Because in case (i), it follows that A ==> not A, since A ==> B and B ==> not A implies A ==> not A. A ==> not A is equivalent to A being false, i.e., the universe is not finely-tuned. Meanwhile, in case (ii), A ==> B is false, so B is false, and the argument fails to establish B as its conclusion, which is exactly why I object to the truth of B. On an entirely separate note, I can choose to ignore all of the above, and still comfortably say A is an unfalsifiable proposition, so I can freely dismiss A and reject it as a premise.
Thus, your goal here is (a) to prove that B ==> not A is actually false. But you can't, because again: a universe created by an omnipotent-omniscient being cannot be finely-tuned; (b) to actually demonstrate that A is true (and not unfalsifiable).
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@ruaraidh74 That's a completely different argument from your rebuttal that "if God exists, then it's not true that fine-tuning is required for life."
Yes, I explicitly clarified that it is a different objection. You would know this if you actually carefully read my reply to you.
If I conceded that the probability objection was unfounded, then what the heck is the rigamarole about fine-tuning about?
I do not understand what you are confused about. I presented two different objections to the fine-tuning argument. One is an internal critique, whereby the conclusion being implied by the premises necessarily implies the falsehood of the premises. The other is an external critique, where I point out that, even if my internal critique were to not hold, the premises of the fine-tuning argument are unfalsifiable.
Let's not shift the goalposts around, please.
I am not shifting any goalposts here. I introduced a new objection to the discussion, while still defending the objection I had presented previously. This is not what shifting the goalpost is.
That doesn't make any sense. "Fine tuning" is another way of saying "the universe needs to be a really specific way for this to happen, given what we know about the natural world."
If it is true that the universe has to be a specific way in order for intelligent life to exist, then it cannot be true that the creator of such a universe, if there is one at all, is omniscient and omnipotent, because if such a creator is omniscient and omnipotent, then there is no specific way in which the universe must be for life to exist.
Also, there is absolutely no evidence that the universe needs to be a specific way for intelligent life to exist. Such an assertion is unfalsifiable.
If the natural world was different, then of course, the tuning would be different.
We do not know if the natural world could have been any different than what it is. We do not know whether life could exist in the natural world if it were any different than what it is. Any assertions regarding the matter are unfalsifiable. On the other hand, if the world is not natural, but the creation of an omniscient, omnipotent entity, then said world is not tuned at all for life, since life can exist in any universe created by such an entity.
The universe needs to be a specific way to permit intelligent life, given some axioms about the natural world.
This is unfalsifiable speculation. We do not even completely know what conditions a planet in our universe must satisfy for intelligent life to exist in it. Nothing that we know about the natural world can allow us to know about what would be possible in a universe different than ours.
For instance, if God decided people would be made of transcendent jelly instead of molecules and energy... then that's what they'd be made of.
Yes, and I agree, which means there is no fine-tuning. The universe could be literally anything, and the above would be true as long as God commands it.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d Interesting. Alexandrian manuscript is the bases for modern bible translations.
Yes, this is correct, and is why I brought it up.
Apparently, you don't get into bible discussions.
I do, far more than you imagine.
When in biblical apologetics, nobody uses modern translations.
This is untrue. Cameron Bertuzzi, Frank Turek, Jay Warner Wallace, Justin Briar, William Lane Craig, etc., all use modern translations of the Bible. This also applies to New Testament scholars, such as Sean McDowell, Dale Alison, Michael R. Licona, and even Gary Habermas.
After the 1611 KJV bible and protestant reformation.............brought forth many denominations of christianity. And each takes their own translation.
Yes, and this is irrelevant. The accuracy of a translation is not based at all on how many new denominations it can spring off.
To get to the way the original teachings were, you have to use the older texts. This isn't up for a debate.
You have to use older manuscripts of the original text, not older translations.
You would know this if you actually knew about apologetics.
The fact that you do not know biblical scholars use modern translations is a demonstration of your ignorance, not mine.
Alexandrian manuscript refers to the new testament.
Not necessarily, no.
The old testament was written in Hebrew, except for the Septuagint, apocrypha.
Again, this demonstrates your ignorance. The Septuagint is not part of the Tanakh. The Septuagint is a translation of the Tanakh into Greek.
Psalms is written in Hebrew because its part of the old testament, the Tanahk.
It's "the Tanakh." It is sad that you cannot transliterate the name of your sacred books correctly.
Little things like miracles and wonder makes a big deal. For our reason exactly. You're saying miracles and I say wonder. Apparently you attribute miracles to just that.
No. I am saying the word used translates to "miracle." You using the King James Version does not disprove my point. If you want to have this discussion, then you better start demonstrating at least a basic understanding of Hebrew, which you clearly lack, because if you had a basic understanding of Hebrew, you would not be using the King James Version of the Bible.
I'm saying it's not a miracle because God doesn't do miracles,...
And I am saying the Bible disagrees with you. You have not actually addressed the problem here. You just chose to ignore it.
...he created the universe and it's laws so he knows how to use them.
If God created the universe, and intervenes in it freely, then there is no such a thing as "the laws of the universe." All this tells me is that you have no clue as to what word "law" means in the context of science. A law of nature is simply a description of a behavior of the universe that is consistent and the universe never deviates from. There are no such behaviors if God intervenes in the universe at will.
So to the ignorant, it seems like a miracle but it's actually not.
It is a miracle, by definition. The word "miracle" is defined as an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention. What makes the intervention divine is precisely the fact that it is an act of God.
God is omnipotent, he doesn't need to perform a miracle when he knows how everything works.
God does not obey the laws of nature. If he did, then he would not be omnipotent.
Doing a wonder, is acknowledgment of something that we don't know how it's done, so it's a wonder. One can say it's a miracle but that's not the correct interpretation or meaning.
Yes, it is correct. That is literally the definition given in the dictionary, and it is the definition that most Christians use too.
In the bible, Jesus talks about the things he does, these "miracles," but he tells his disciples how to do them.
Even if he tells everyone how to do them, they are still miracles, by definition, since they are a manifestation of God intervening in the world.
How hard is it to realize that if God is omnipotent, knows everything and has authority of everything; if he made a limb grow back, you would say it's a miracle. Because you don't know how he did it, he just did it.
No. Me knowing how he did it has nothing to do with it. If I knew how he did it, it would still be a miracle, according to the dictionary definition, as is still counts as an act of divine intervention. Knowing how God did it does not make it not divine.
But if you become a disciple of God, meaning to give your life and follow every word he spoke, you would understand how he did it.
This is false. I know this is false, because I used to be a very devote Christians many years ago, but I never learned how to regrow limbs.
It's not magic.
Okay, sure, it is not magic, but as it still divine intervention, it is, by definition, a miracle.
This the teaching of the bible. Any practicing biblical scholar of christianity would tell you, an educated Muslim and educated Jew, would also tell you the same thing about God.
No, they would not, and I know this, because despite being nonreligious, I have many highly educated friends who are Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. I even have highly educated friends from other religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
I bet you didn't know that Jews, Muslims and christians, have the same God.
I have literally known this since I was in elementary school. What, you think you are smart because you know this? 🤣 That is pathetic. Virtually every self-respecting individual who knows about Islam actually knows this. This is not some "fun fact" or secret knowledge. It is common knowledge.
I pretty sure I'm going to have to get technical with you.
Even though you do not know Hebrew? Yeah, right.
Psalms 77 is someone saying God doest wonders, in your case, miracles. I'm should say that God never says that about himself.
And? This is irrelevant.
It's only someone else who says it about God or Jesus.
Again, this is irrelevant.
Neither does Jesus claim he does miracles. People today claim God does miracles. Because they can't explain how he did it.
No. People call them miracles, because by definition, that is what divine acts of intervention are.
But I assure you it's not by magic.
Again, you are conflating the words "magic" and "miracles." They are not the same thing.
How do I know.............. Because sorcery is forbidden.
You clearly have very little knowledge of paganism. Magic and sorcery are actually not the same thing.
You would know this if you actually read the bible.
You are the one who has not read the Bible, clearly.
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@ruaraidh74 No, I get it perfectly fine. You are the one who does not get it. The reason I have kept repeating myself, is because you continue to understand the argument. In fact, you have completely failed to address my two objections, and are now just ignoring them, on the alleged basis that I am missing the point, despite failing to explain how this is the case.
"Fine tuning" is another way of saying "the universe needs to be a really specific way for this to happen, GIVEN what we know about the natural world."
No. If there is no omnipotent, omniscient creator, then what we know about the natural world does not imply anything about how the universe needs to be in order for life to exist. The claim that the universe needs to be a specific way for life to exist is an unfalsifiable claim. This is what you are failing to understand. However, if there is an omnipotent, omniscient creator, then there demonstrably does not exist any specific way the universe needs to be for life to exist. This is what you are failing to understand.
In summary: if classical monotheism is true, then the assertion you make is demonstrably false. If we do not assume classical monotheism is true, then the assertion is unfalsifiable, and entirely speculative. Either way, your argument is unsound.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d What is wrong with fine tuning something?
No one has claimed there is anything wrong with a non-omnipotent being fine-tuning a parameter. The claim is that it is impossible for a parameter to be fine-tuned if the entity doing it is omnipotent. See? Literacy goes a long way in a discussion.
So, it has limits, but that does not mean the creator does.
Nope, you are wrong, because that is not how that works. If a creator has no limits, then neither does its creation.
I've been saying that there are laws, boundaries that we, the universe, have. And that God knows these limits, and si he abides by them.
Then he is not omnipotent, by definition. If God abides by the laws of nature, then God does not unlimited authority or influence over the universe. In order for the universe to actually have laws at all, God cannot be omnipotent. The universe has no laws at all if God is omnipotent.
But being omnipotent,...
No. You just said God is not omnipotent. You just said God abides by the laws of nature. Since God abides by the laws of nature, God is omnipotent. You are the one who said God abides by the laws of nature, not me.
If I were God, I wouldn't do anything to amuse you.
No, but unlike God, you are not interested in having a personal relationship with me. In any case, no one has asked God to do anything in this conversation, except for you.
If we as humans can create fine-tuned things and then improve on them... then an omnipotent entity should be able to do the same.
Nope, that is not how that works. The reason humans can fine-tune parameters is because we are not omnipotent, and we are constrained by the laws of physics. If we were omnipotent, then there would not be such a thing as fine-tuning, since the values of a parameter would be irrelevant, and in fact, meaningless.
When he creates, he automatically creates something with detail, fine tuning.
Once again, you are demonstrating your ignorance. You are demonstrating that you do not know what the word "fine-tuning" means. Creating a detailed universe is not "fine-tuning."
What's interesting is that whenever something gets created, it automatically has limits.
Nope, that is not how that works. Now you are just pulling nonsense out of your butthole, and pretending it is a fact.
the Septuagint is not part of the Tanahk.
Yes, I know. I am the one who taught you this. You are the one who implied it was part of the Tanakh earlier, not me.
The Tanahk is all in Hebrew. The Septuagint is all in Greek.
Yes. Again, I am literally the one who told you this.
You would know this if you read the bible.
I do know it. I am the one who taught you these things. I guess you fail to realize this because you are illiterate, but there is nothing I can do about that, since I am not omnipotent. Why did God send an illiterate messenger to talk to me? Who knows?
Protestant bibles don't use the Septuagint. Catholic Bibles do.
No, this is false. Bible translations are not divided into Catholic or Protestant translations, and there are no Bibles today that use the Septuagint. All Bibles use the Alexandrian manuscripts, or in case of the older translations, the Textus Receptus, which is not in Greek, but in Latin.
I say nobody uses modern translations in apologetics... yes they do. I mean to say that when it comes to certain words or meanings, the practice is to go back to the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.
Ah, okay then. Well, that is the same thing I did. I did not use a particular translation. You did.
They don't use the modern translations for that.
Neither did I.
I do associate miracles with magic. Because the miracles in the bible are wonders not magic.
Why do you associate miracles with magic when the Bible contradicts? How are you typing this, and not realize how incoherent your argument is?
So why are you still using miracles for Psalms 77:14 when the majority of bibles use wonders?
What the majority of bibles use is irrelevant. You literally just said that apologists "don't use modern translations for that," and that "miracles in the Bible are wonders, not magic." Therefore, you literally proved my point, while failing to realize that this is exactly what you did. Geez. Put some thought into what you write.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d How can a loving merciful god allow such evil?
Well, there is an easy solution: said god is not omnipotent, or not omniscient.
Science also knows that once we know these laws, we can manipulate them, use them in different ways.
No, science does not say that at all. Citation needed. Certainly, you can use knowledge of these laws to build technology, but this is not "manipulation" of those laws.
Like a child doesn't know good or bad, until experiences shows them or someone teaches them.
This is false. Many aspects of morality need to be taught to children, yes, but some aspects are just innate to human biology.
I look at creation with balance, everything created has balance because that is what is required for it work as it was intended to work.
No, not if God is omnipotent, but I suppose you have already made it more than clear that your God is not omnipotent.
I get my views because I am a mechanic.
Too bad God is not a mechanic. Mechanics are human. They are fallible, they are not omnipotent nor omniscient, and cannot behave in a fashion contrary to what the laws of physics have predicted.
I have to fix vehicles, troubleshoot issues.
God does not have to fix vehicles, or troubleshoot issues. Nothing God creates can have issues at all, since God is omnipotent and omniscient.
So, that's how I see things, because it has to be that way...
It only has to be that way for humans, who are not omnipotent, nor omniscient. None of your analogies work, because again, God is omnipotent and omniscient. There is no "balance," because God does need to achieve a particular thing in order for the universe to work. In fact, to the contrary: no matter what God does, it is impossible for the universe to "not work," since God is willing the universe to exist.
So, God says he gave us free will.
Nowhere in the Bible is this stated. Furthermore, the scientific evidence most definitely does not support the thesis that we have free will.
I see God as the parent.
You cannot do this. You already compared God to a mechanic. Now you are comparing God to a parent. Make up your mind. You cannot have it both ways.
Yes, he would love to keep us from harm but then we would eventually hate him for not letting us experience life.
Well, maybe you would, but that just speaks to your emotional maturity. I know I would not hate him at all! In fact, I would very much prefer it. Besides, a competent parent actually has a conversation with their child, explaining to them why they are not allowing a particular behavior. Most children are fairly understanding when you take this approach. No, the success rate is not 100%, but again, humans are not omnipotent, nor omniscient, so this makes sense, and children often have disabilities that also prevent them from understanding. However, mental disorders are nothing to God, and God is omnipotent and omniscient. Having his children understand is not merely very easy, but actually trivial. In fact, if God actually bothers explaining, and if God is truly omnipotent, then it is simply impossible that we will not understand his reasons at all and fail to abide by them. The truth would be so compelling, even us mortals would not be able to resist it. Your suggestion that we would hate God only aligns with the idea that God is incapable of making us understand, and therefore, not omnipotent.
Just like having your own child. You can't protect them from everything, because then you are controlling them, taking away their free will.
Yes, but human parents are neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and are bound by the laws of biology. We have irrational brains, and can suffer from problems of mental health that can be obstacles in us making safe or sound decisions. None of this is true for God, so your analogy fails: if God truly is omnipotent and omniscient, then it is literally impossible for us to not be compelled to by God's truth. Since we do observe that there are people not convinced by God's truth, it proves at least one of two things: (a) God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient; (b) God has not actually revealed the truth to all of us. Also, God actually explaining his reasons to compel us does not violate our free will, not any more than him having omniscience and creating us already does (because it is already not possible to have free will if God created us and is omniscient).
Just because there is a God, that doesn't mean he has to intervene in every bad thing.
No, but it does mean that, if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and loving/benevolent, then it is simply impossible that bad things could exist at all.
Imagine if science mocked or hated things they didn't understand?
This is a strawman. No one here is mocking God. We are presenting you with a logical contradiction, and we are asking you to either accept that it is contradiction, or demonstrate that it is not a contradiction. You have failed to demonstrate it is not a contradiction. Saying that "we do not understand God's motivation" is not an argument, and does not address the contradiction. After all, our capabilities to understand God are completely irrelevant to the contradiction.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d But sometimes, God does intervene.
You say that, but there has never been any evidence that divine intervention has actually occurred.
I say that 95% of people who call themselves Christians are not Christian, because they pick and choose where, when, and to whom they practice Christianity.
This is a No True Scotsman fallacy.
Jesus specifically said that we will know his disciples by their fruit, and their fruit will bear things like healing the sick... you know, things that sound like miracles. Yet we don't see any of that today.
The Bible claims Jesus said this, although no one actually knows if Jesus really did say it. But yes, the Bible does explicitly say that. And as you say: no one in recorded history has actually been confirmed with having these capabilities.
It's because of what I see that no one is a Christian...
Well, that means you are not a Christian either, then. In fact, this just means Christianity is dead, it does not exist. You do not realize it, but you have literally just accidentally admitted that Christianity is effectively false.
Because God listens to those who obey him.
And when you say this, why should anyone believe you?
I have seen some people pray for hours, pray devoutly, and these people have incredible stories of God answering their prayer.
Just because a person believes God answered their prayers does not mean God actually did answer the prayers. These things can always be explained away by things like the Barnum effect, the placebo effect, and other such things. Besides, I have known many devoted Christian people who have prayed intensely for hours, and yet their prayers went unanswered. As such, this is a counterexample.
My only true issue is, condemn me on what I actually believe, not on what you think I believe.
The problem is that you actively refuse to disclose in full formality what your beliefs are, you actively refuse to define your terminology, and when we define our terminology, you refuse to engage with those definitions. You continue shifting the goalpost, and you continue to contradict yourself in every sentence. In one sentence, you say "God is omnipotent," but in the next sentence, you directly contradict it. When I make an assertion, you pretend that I made an entirely different assertion, or that I made none, or you simply throw the assertion back at me, as if you came up with it, when I was the one who initially made the assertion. When I ask you to argue against my particular thesis, you throw all these red herrings about biblical translations, the definition of "miracles," and other such things, which are completely irrelevant to the discussion, since this discussion is about fine-tuning and God's omnipotence, not any of those other things you decided to bring up. In summary: you are engaging in massive mental gymnastics and employing intellectually dishonest rhetorical tactics to avoid facing the criticisms to your beliefs. It makes it obvious that you are experiencing some very heavy cognitive dissonance, and I am willing to bet that many of the things you have said are just you parroting what other pastors or apologists on the Internet have said, as a desperate resort, despite not being totally convinced about those things being parroted. Last, but not least, saying we should condemn you for what you actually believe, and not for what we think you believe, is hypocritical, since this is a principle you yourself are not willing to follow when it comes non-Christians.
I believe in the God of the Bible.
No, you definitely do not, since so many of the claims you have made are in direct contradiction with the Bible. The Bible does not present God as being omnipotent or omniscient, and in fact, prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, there were no Jews or Christians that ever spoused the idea of an omnipotent or omniscient God. Classical monotheism in Christianity did not come to exist until much later, and by that time, all the texts in the Bible had been written. Christians who subscribe to classical monotheism will take the Bible and reinterpret it to suit their needs, cherry-picking the verses they can easily contort as if they supported classical monotheism, while completely ignoring the verses that directly contradict it. In the process of doing this, they have eliminated alternative interpretations, bashing them as "heretical," which is ironic, since classical monotheism did not originate from the Abrahamic religions: it originated with Hellenistic tradition. This reinterpretation and contorsion has erased the cultural context and ancient theological connotations of the text, while also taking a naive approach of taking the Bible literally, rather than treating it as a work of literature, the latter being exactly how the writers of the text treated these texts. This is how you get to unscientific nonsense like the "biblical flat Earth movement" and "young Earth creationism."
Additionally, while the Bible actively describes God as a god of miracles, you actively refuse to accept this. We had an entire discussion around this, which proves my point. Furthermore, you insist that free will is biblical, even though it is very much not biblical. The entirety of Christian theology is based around misinterpreting the Bible and misunderstanding the text; so having the audacity to then say that you believe in the God of the Bible is inaccurate, disrespectful, and could even be taken as antisemitic, as, in the process of contorting the Bible to fit your unbiblical beliefs, you are actually demeaning a work of Jewish literature, and erasing the Jewish social culture and history that gives connotation to the text as written.
He is the same yesterday and tomorrow.
This is not how the Bible portrays God. The fact that there is an Old Covenant, and then a New Covenant, is enough of a rebuttal.
A lot of Mosaic laws, like stoning a chick in her menstrual cycle...
...and you are also misogynystic, to top things off. Great. Look, you cannot be unironically talk about women as "chicks" in a discussion about Christianity. This is pathetic.
...it's because the people wanted it, so God allowed it. Not because he wanted it so.
No, this is false. God explicitly commanded these things to be upheld. These were not laws introduced by humans in the biblical narrative.
We can argue that because he allows it, he condones it.
God condones something he does not like? Now you are really contradicting yourself.
To me, the 10 Commandments are his laws...
Which 10 commandments? The ones from Exodus 20? Or the ones from Exodus 34, which are different, and which the biblical text actually calls "the Ten Commandments" in verse 28?
The Mosaic laws are the laws his people wanted.
No. The Bible is explicit: God commanded these things. God wanted them.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d I don't see anything wrong with God's laws.
You mean you seen nothing wrong with Numbers 5:11-29, the torturing of a woman solely to find out if she cheated or not, without even requiring any evidence to justify being suspicious of her, and forcing her to have a miscarriage if she did cheat? You see nothing wrong with Exodus 21:2-6, explicitly delineating a God-given loophole for masters of Hebrew slaves to permanently enslave the entirely family, including women and children? You see nothing wrong with Exodus 21:17, where God commands that someone being having an outburst at their parents be punished by the death penalty? You see nothing wrong with Exodus 21:20-21, where God explicitly commands the exoneration of masters who beat their slaves? You see nothing wrong with Exodus 22:16-17, where a woman who is sexually violated can be forced to be married to the offender if the offender simply pays her father? You see nothing wrong with Exodus 22:18, one of the verses that justified the European witch hunts of the second millenium, where millions of people in Europe were killed because of it? You see nothing wrong with Exodus 22:20, in which God literally commands ethnic cleansing? You see nothing wrong with Exodus 23:23-24, where God explicitly commands ethnic cleasing again?
Because, if so, then I want you nowhere near my family ever. Forgive me, but I do not want to be in contact with anyone who sees nothing wrong with torturing women, permanent enslavement of entire families, beating up slaves with no repercussions, executing to death people who just had a bad day and ended up taking out on their parents, forcing a raped woman to marry her rapist via payment, executing people who practice sorcery or who worship other gods, and committing ethnic cleansing.
Especially when Jesus summed them up with 2 commandments... love God with all your being, and love your neighbors as yourself. All of the other commandments of God will follow if you follow the 2.
No, they most definitely will not. Loving your neighbors necessarily entails things such as not committing ethnic cleansing, not forcing raped women to get married to their rapists via payment to their fathers, not torturing women, not owning people as slaves, not giving the death penalty to people committing petty actions, not torturing women, etc. Also, I should mention, commanding someone to love you, regardless of whether you are responsible for their existence or not, is inherently manipulative, and instutiting a punishment for if they do not love you is called domestic/child abuse. Also, commanding people to love everyone is also toxic. For example, no one should be obligated to love, or even forgive, their abuser. This leads to further trauma in the victim, and in the worst case scenarios, this can make the victim completely unable to feel emotions, or overwhelm them so much that it makes them suicidal. If God is omniscient, then God knows this. If, despite knowing this, God is still commanding you to love your abuser, as he does, then God does not care about you well-being, and is not benevolent.
People put things above God, and limit who they love.
Well, no. I do not put things above God, because I do not believe God exists.
I'm omitting the things like what happened to Jericho, the killings God commanded.
Yes, you are, because they very clearly pose a problem for your worldview, so they only way you can continue to pretend your worldview is tenable is simply for you to ignore these things. You are doing that thing again where you cherrypick the Bible. Almost all Christians do this, even the reasonable ones.
I acknowledge the slavery and killings he commanded.
Not only do you acknowledge them, but earlier, you admitted you see absolutely nothing wrong with these things, which to me, suggests you are perhaps a psychopath.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d There are reasons for them.
Then, present those reasons. It is that simple... No, no such reasons exist. We can prove this logically, and omniscience is not at all required to do so. Why? Because one can understand how omniscience works without being omniscient. Obviously, this must be true, since otherwise, it would simply be impossible for Christians to "know" that God is omniscient. Fact 0: there do not exist any circumstances under which committing genocide is an act of love. Fact 1: an all loving, benevolent entity, by the very definition of these words, will always, to the best of their ability, seek to commit only those acts which are loving, and prevent those acts which are unloving. Deduction 0: it follows that, an all loving, benevolent entity, by the very definition of these words, will always, to the best of their ability, prevent acts of genocide. Fact 2: an omnipotent and omniscient entity can always successfully prevent any act from hapening. Deduction 1: it follows that an omnipotent and omniscient entity can always successfully prevent acts of genocide from happening. Fact 3: an entity which is omnipotent, omniscient, and all loving, benevolent, by the very definition of these words, will always, to the best of their ability, seek to commit only those acts which are loving, and prevent those acts which are unloving, and will always succeed in doing so. Deduction 2: it follows that an entity which is omnipotent, omniscient, and all loving, benevolent, by the very definition of these words, will always, to the best of their ability, seek to prevent acts of genocide, and will always succeed in doing so. The God of the Bible does not satisfy the statement laid out in deduction 2. Therefore, the God of the Bible fails to omnipotent, or fails to be omniscient, or fails to be all loving and benevolent.
You may respond to this by saying "You are ignoring the fact that God has a plan for us, and than plan, in the longterm, involves enduring acts of genocides." However, this does not help: if such is the nature of God's plan, then God's plan is not all loving, and thus, God is not all loving, for if God were all loving, God would not choose to have a plan that requires us to endure acts of genocide. Also, there is another reason why such a defense fails: God is omnipotent and omniscient. Therefore, a plan by God cannot "require" anything at all: there is nothing that needs to be fulfilled for the plan to be achieved, since the plan can simply happen, just because God says so. Requirements are an emergent property of entities with limitations, which God allegedly lacks (although, I should reiterate, the Bible never actually portrays God as limitless, at least not in a non-hyperbolic context).
Though you may not agree with the reasons.
Since the reasons cannot exist, as demonstrated above, it is impossible to agree with them. Saying that one could agree with them is like saying that you can paint an existing wall with a nonexisting paintbrush.
I may not agree either, but if God is omnipotent, then it is impossible to comprehend why he commanded such an evil thing.
It is impossible to comprehend, because it is logically impossible for that to happen. All this tells me is that you are continuing to fail to understand how omnipotence and omniscience work as properties of an entity.
To simply say God is evil, therefore not omnipotent, then I say one is changing the definition of omnipotent.
Nope. No one is saying that, if God is evil, then he is not omnipotent. We ars saying that God is evil, or God is not omnipotent, or God is not omniscient.
We don't know what's beyond 100. God does.
We do not need to know what is beyond 100, because what little we do know is more than sufficient to prove that a logical contradiction occurs.
So how can we say for certain that what God does is evil or wrong, or that he is no omnipotent, based on our limited understanding?
We can do it in exactly the same way you managed to "know" that God is omniscient to begin with. Meaning, if our knowledge is not sufficient to prove that a logical contradiction exists, then it is actually impossible for us to know that God is omniscient to begin with.
That's just stupidity on our part.
Yes, I agree that claiming that we can know God is omniscient is stupidity on humanity's part. Massively stupid, in fact. Which only makes me wonder why you do it anyway.
I don't see knowing the future as not having free will.
That is because you do not actually understand what it means to know the future, or what it means to have free will. Let me explain this for you. God is omniscient, and created the universe. Therefore, God knows exactly what each created entity in the universe will do, and furthermore, what each created entity in the universe will do will be done precisely because God ordained it so. As such, no entity in the universe can do anything differently than how God ordained it will do things at the moment of creation, since God is omniscient. As such, all created entities in the universe are just automata: deterministic systems whose future is completely set in stone. In other words, we cannot choose our future actions: whatever we do at any given point in time, it happened because God ordained it would happen so at the moment of creation, and because God knew it would happen, and as God's knowledge is absolute, since God is omniscient, nothing could ever deviate from it. In other words, it was fixed in stone, since the moment of creation, that we would behave in the way that we do behave and have behaved. Since it was fixed in stone, we had no "choice" on the matter, even if we had the illusion of choice. Therefore, if God is omniscient and created the universe, then we have no free will.
To me, it's like me creating a game with all the possibilities that can occur, and you choosing one,...
No, this is not at all analogous to God creating the universe. In this case, yes, you created the game, but you did not create me, and you are not omniscient, because you do not know the future: since you do not know what choice I will make, you do not know my brain chemistry. It seems like you are confused, so let me make this clear: knowing all of the possible outcomes is not the same as knowing the future. Knowing the future also includes knowing which outcome actually will happen.
I know all the possibilities of your choice, but it's up to you to choose, not me.
Nope, this is not omniscience. Knowing what are the possible choices I can make is not omniscience, because that is not the same as knowing the future. Knowing the future means knowing exactly which choice I will make. Also, in this case, you did not create me, so again, the analogy fails.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d Yes, religion is written by man, so it's correct to say religion is manmade.
I am glad you understand. So, now, why should I accept any religion is true, if they are just inventions by humans? For the religion to be true, it would actually have to be initiated by the gods the religion proclaims to worship, unless the religion is deistic or atheistic.
So, that's how see religion. I base it off their actual doctrine, not the people who pervert it.
Nope, you completely missed the point of the argument. The point is, the doctrines are manmade, and so, are themselves just results of human's perversions of reality. And by the way, this also applies to the Constitution. This is why the Amendments exist. Even with the Amendments, there are many, many problems with the U.S. Constitution.
We have the written manuscripts or how the teachings and meanings are meant to be.
No, we most certainly do not.
* We do not have any of the original manuscripts used in the text of the Bible. No manuscript in our possession dates to anywhere near as far back as the text themselves do.
* We also do not have the original teachings. The text itself was written decades, sometimes centuries, after the theological idea it was meant to convey originated, only having been communicated by oral tradition otherwise. Most people were illiterate during those times, so traditions could not be written down until long after they emerged.
* We also do not have the original meanings. Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ancient Greek are all dead languages, and on top of that, the texts contain many words that exist nowhere else in the literature of these languages, words that were literally invented by their authors. We do have some of the meanings, yes, but definitely not all of them, like you say.
Also, I should mention, these traditions evolved from previous religions. Christianity evolved from a new radical Messianic sect of Judaism, combined with theology and traditions of the Essenes. These, in turn, where traditions that had evolved from Second Temple Judaism, having been influenced by the Greco-Roman religions that surrounded them, and also influenced heavily by Zoroastrianism. Second Temple Judaism was itself evolved from early Judaism, having been influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, local post-Babylonian religions, and the religions of the empires that seized control of the Jews, which included Zoroastrianism, again. In turn, early Judaism originated from the ancient Canaanite religion being heavily influenced by the ancient Sumerian religion that pre-existed it, and the Egyptian religion, and then later became syncretized with Yahwism. Would you not say that Judaism is just a perversion of the Canaanite religion? Are they not the heretics who deviated from the real, original doctrines?
We have writings of disciples of disciples of disciples of disciples, and so on,...
No, what we have are writings of Church fathers whose relationships to the disciples of Jesus is highly questionable, according to the scholarly consensus, and then also, lots and lots of anonymous writings and forgeries.
Doing this is why I'm Catholic. Only Catholicism goes right back to Jesus himself...
This is false. Even by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, at least 8 different major Christian sects had emerged, with their origins being unclear. Among these were the Pauline sect, the Marcionist sect, and the Ebionite sect, but there were several others too. All of these have equal right of claim to being traceable to as far back as history has allowed us to do. Pauline Christianity went on to split into Nicene Christianity, which is the most recent common ancestor of all Christian sects today, and Arian Christianity, which later went extinct due to being persecuted to extinction. There are many non-Protestant sects of Christianity today traceable all the way back to the Council of Nicaea: all of the Chalcedonian sects, the Oriential Orthodox sects, and the Church of the East, which follows the Nestorian theology. These ramifications of all happened in the 1st millenium, long before the Great Schism of the 1000s, where Chalcedonian Christianity eventually ended splitting into many churches, 24 in the Roman Catholic Church and at least 15 in the Eastern Orthodox Church. And this was all before the Protestant Reformation.
...and anyone can read the early church writings...
You mean the ones that the Nicene Church did not burn down or bury in deserts?
...to see Catholicism aligns with what Jesus taught his disciples...
You mean with what the Gospels and Epistles claim Jesus taught his disciples. We have no way of knowing what Jesus actually thought, as he wrote no texts of his own, and neither did the 12 apostles, except for maybe (and this is a big fat "maybe") the epistles that maybe Peter wrote, although most scholars still think those were actually cases of pseudepigrapha. Neither are there writings of anyone claiming to have been a disciple of any of the apostles. We do have writings of someone claiming to be a disciple of a disciple of an apostle, but the person they listed as their master never claimed to be a disciple of an apostle, despite being a fairly accomplished Church father.
Also, no, your claim is false. Even the work of theologians from the second century do not align all that well with the texts of the Bible. The Church does mental gymnastics to try to pretend that it does, but this is just typical of Christians, reinterpreting works to make it seem like they say things they do not say.
All the other Christians come 1500 years later.
Nope, this is false. Gnostic Christianity, Pauline Christianity, and Ebionite Christianity, all existed as mutually exclusive sects of Christianity by 70 CE. Yes, Gnostic Christianity and Ebionite Christianity went extinct, and so did Arian Christianity, but the split between non-Nestorianism and Nestorianism occurred as early as 431 CE, and Nestorianism still exists to this day, in the form of the Ancient Church of the East.
Anyone who picks up a Bible will have their own interpretation on things.
Yes, which is a problem. If the Bible is the Word of God, then it should not be subject to interpretation: it should be objective, and unambiguous. Since this is not the case, I conclude the Bible is not the Word of God.
But how can you simply read a religious book without proper instruction?
It's called "being literate and having reading comprehension skills." Also, I thought the Bible was the Word of God, according to you? Is it not? Because if it is the Word of God, then there is absolutely no reason you would need anyone to give you proper instruction. After all, the Word of God IS the proper instruction.
Well, I say that, but this is only me hypothetically granting the absurd assertion that an omniscient, omnipotent creator who wants to have a relationship with us would actually do something as mind-bogglingly dumb as communicating hyper-indirectly by ordaining other people to write an arbitrary collection of books. In actuality, an omniscient god would know that books are not the best way to communicate knowledge, and are horribly ineffective way of initiating relationships, even by omnipotent standards. So, anyway, this already disproves the idea that any manmade book could ever actually be the Word of God.
And without proper instruction, people will interpret things in ways that were not meant to be.
If the Bible is the Word of God, then it cannot be misinterpreted by even illiterate people. It is called the Word of God for a reason, do you not think? The fact that so many misinterpretations of the Bible exist is sufficient evidence that the Bible is not the Word of God.
Also, this thing where people misinterpret books happens with all books. It is not exclusive to religious books. This happens because most people know how to read at only a moderate level, not a proficient level. And this is why I said that using books to communicate information is ineffective for a God that is allegedly omniscient. An omniscient God would know better than to use books.
...just shows that people do not do their research.
Yes, your replies are a great example.
You need proper instruction.
Not really, no.
It's stupidity to say we don't.
No, it is not. What is stupid, however, is to assert that somehow, it is metaphysically possible for an inerrant book made by God himself, to be misinterpreted by a measly human being. I thought God is all powerful. Is God not capable of making a book that no one can misinterpret? Better yet, if God is omnipotent, why is he relying on books? There is this thing called telepathy. God could just use this. Then your ability to understand books becomes completely irrelevant. Now, does God have to use telepathy? No, God is not obligated to do anything at all. That is not my point. My point is, since he is not using a method of communication that is impossible to misinterpret, it means he clearly has no interest in us actually knowing the truth about him and about the world. Sure, God has a plan, but that plan certainly does not involve us knowing the truth about him and the universe, that much I can be confident of. Maybe God wrote the Bible to confuse us because he thought it would be amusing (whatever that means for an omniscient entity, anyway). You cannot disprove this possibility.
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And in the end, you ignored my previous comments to you. How oddly convenient for you. I think I am going to end my conversation with you here as well.
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@user-fb2jb3gz1d Oh, so now that I have told you that I am going to end the conversation, you finally decide to engage with my argument to try to make me look like a fool? Nice try. Okay, fine, I take back my decision. I will give you one last chance to be intellectually honest here.
So, would you say that because he is omnipotent, that he cannot make things that are fine tuned?
This phrasing is all wrong. You are trying to make it seem like I am imposing a limitation on God's omnipotence, when that is not at all what my argument is doing.
Here is the point: the point is that there cannot exist such a thing as a "finely-tuned universe which is created by an all-powerful and all-knowing entity." Such a "thing" is, in fact, not a thing at all, it is just meaningless word salad, an incoherent notion. Talking about a "finely-tuned universe which is created by an all-powerful and all-knowing entity" is exactly equivalent to talking about a "square circle" or a "married bachelor" or a "blonde redhead" or a "feline insect."
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@lewkor1529 The idea of a potentially infinite collection is nonsensical, so naturally, any definition that any theologian tries to give will be nonsensical, or circular. The nuance that is being missed here is that the idea of actual infinity versus potential infinity originated in the literature millennia before axiomatic set theory was developed, and so, the idea originated during a time where the concept of the infinite was poorly understood, if not rendered invalid. This is the reason why real analysis was invented: there was a requirement to set calculus of real-valued functions of real numbers on a rigorous foundation, one which did not include a concept of infinitesimal or infinite quantities, but which solely relied on the properties of the real numbers. It was only after the end of the 19th century that the study of infinite objects in mathematics was put on a rigorous foundation, thanks to Georg Cantor and other pioneers. This also allowed the development of the hyperreal numbers and nonstandard analysis, and then later, the development of combinatorial game theory, giving rise to the theory of surreal numbers. Today, infinite quantities are understood in terms of these theories, all of which rest on set theory as the ultimate axiomatic foundation.
With this modern understanding, we know one thing: some sets are legitimately infinite. For example, the set of natural numbers is an infinite set, by definition, and it is an axiom of set theory that the set of natural numbers exists. Some sets are infinite, some sets are not infinite. That is all there is to it. The distinction between actual infinity and potential infinity simply does not exist in mathematics, and the idea of a set with indefinite cardinality is also impossible, and this can be proven from the axioms. Note: indefinite cardinality must not be confused with infinite cardinality. Indefinite cardinality refers to a cardinality that is not fixed. This ancient theological notion should therefore be finally put to rest, but old-school thinkers like WLC and Islam theologians just refuse to let this already obsolete, disproven idea, die out for good.
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In axiomatic set theory, there exists an axiom called the axiom of infinity. The axiom of infinity states that there exists a set N such that, (0) {} is an element of N, (1) if x is an element of N, then the union of x and {x} is an element of N. This set N is called the set of natural numbers, also known as the simplest inductive set. Assuming the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms, or any strengthening thereof, a set S is called an infinite set iff there exists an injective function f : N —> S. A set that is not an infinite set is called a finite set.
Given how finiteness and infiniteness are defined, a set is either infinite, or finite, but as one is the negation of the other, a set cannot be not-finite and not-infinite. A set also cannot be both. This renders the ancient theological distinction between actual infinity and potential infinity as being obsolete, inaccurate, and useless.
Aleph(0) is defined as being equal to the set N. Additionally, it is said that, for a set S, card(S) = Aleph(0) iff there exists a bijective function g : N —> S. If α, β, γ are cardinalities, then γ = α·β iff γ = card(A*B), with α = card(A) and β = card(B). From this, it can be proven that if α = 30, β = Aleph(0), then γ = Aleph(0) as well, by constructing a bijection. So it is a theorem of set theory that Aleph(0) = 30·Aleph(0). There is no contradiction here.
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@lewkor1529 is the Kalam question begging when it states "everything that it begins to exist has "A" cause"? It seems to me that this premise smuggles in the idea of "A" (=single) cause in order to set the stage for "A" god further down the road. Without the usage of the "A" in, is it conceivable or possible that multiple causes could concur or act concomitantly in bringing about an effect, in this case the universe?
This is a very good question, and I think the issue here is that the Kalam argument is just worded poorly, and its premises are not formulated rigorously. In particular, the Kalam argument does not provide a definition for what it calls a "cause". Depending on which of the various definitions you adopt, what the Kalam does could be considered begging the question, although this could be fixed by presenting the argument with a more careful wording, or by simply providing an adequate definition of "cause" beforehand. This is in general a problem with every argument for the existence of deities, not just with the Kalam specifically: these arguments fail to carefully define their terms, and it is by way of this semantic obfuscation that they often get away with making the premises seem known-true when they are not. The classical ontological argument used to suffer from this problem, which is why theologians now have often for Alvin Platinga's modal ontological argument, which has its terms all rigorously defined, though that argument has a different set of problems.
The reason theologians avoid defining "cause" in the argument is because they want to appeal to this vague, intuitive notion that the universe "at some point, came to exist, and it happened in some way", to get us to agree with their premises, because they know that if they actually provide a rigorous definition of "cause" that we can agree to, then the premise of the argument will be easily exposed as unsubstantiated. The truth is that too little is known about the universe, and even about causation as a whole, to actually understand how the concept of cause should be applied here, but theologians do not want to simply present a God of the Gaps argument, because they already know this is not convincing. Every cosmological argument is just an attempt to turn a God of the Gaps argument into not God of the Gaps.
I was told that because of the principle of parsimony, multiple causes can always be boiled down to one, but I disagree.
Well, as I said, this does depend largely on how you are defining cause, in the first place. If a cause is a set of factors, then a pair of sets can always be consolidated into a single set, but this also depends on how causes behave with respect to propositions. However, if the way you are defining a cause is by the factor themselves, then the argument definitely needs to be worded so as to not beg the question. Though, even if it did get reworded, it would still be flawed.
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@donnievance1942 I completely agree. Apologists are a joke in general. To be an apologist, you must misrepresent and reject well-established scientific and mathematical concepts. To mind comes the example of the second law of thermodynamics. Every apologist ever uses the second law of thermodynamics in their arguments at some point, but leaving aside the fact that they always misunderstand the law itself, apologists also refuse to understand that the second law of thermodynamics is not some type of unviolable principle. The second law of thermodynamics is a statistically-attested observation of thermodynamics within the specific context of classical physics, and the moment you abandon classical physics and you introduce quantum phenomena and the theory of general relativity, the law becomes incoherent, or inaccurate, for a multitude of known situations. This is also true of the law of conversation of energy. Really, this is true of any law of physics studied in classical physics. Nature does not operate by these laws: these laws are merely approximations of reality that were once considered valid, back when classical physics was the dominant paradigm, and physicists did not know any better.
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