Simple question?

Bob you might as well be saying black is white and up is down. This is the exact opposite of what Catholicism and Christianity is about. It is all about God and the other. The two great commandments on which everything is based is to love God and to love you neighbor.

The strawman put forth is that in order for a universe to be able pop into existence, a giraffe needs to be able to pop into existance.

What scientists say popped into existence is an immense amount of energy and gravity into an infinessimally small space and then expanded.

They do not suggest that a fully formed universe sprung into existence, nor do they suggest that fully formed objects can spring into existance.

The other strawman is that for any theory to be true it must be directly observable. This is not true.
Black holes are not directly observable. We believe them to exist. We know of no way to ever directly ovserve them.

For a long time, atoms were not directly observable, yet a scientist was able to develop the periodic table of elements and correctly sort the elements by their properties.

You have also given yourself the lovely crutch that if the explanation isn't testable, we can make up our own explaination that we like and say god did it.
You then wave your magic wand and declare other religions to be false. Again you can not prove that they are false, and you can not prove that you are right.
You then accuse scientists of thinking of untestable things and claiming that it isn't alllowed to be true if scientists can't prove it.

That is hypocrisy, pure and simple.

Guess what, they are philosophers in science, that think of things and then go about trying to prove and disprove them.

You claimed your religion wasn't thought of by smelly fishermen and carpenters, but came from Jesus.
But then the Catholic church, through a bunch of smelly priests (lets be honest there wasn't much bathing going on) went and thought and invented a bunch of stuff that wasn't in the bible, that Jesus didn't say, that you claim is inspired by god. I'm glad I don't have to live by their rules.

You seem to conveniently and intentionally miss or avoid my point on stuff like this. Well I'm tired of it again, so go ahead and take the last word for a while. I'm done for now.

Quote: Nareed

Since there's no evidence of any creation ex-nihilo, other than stories or lies being made up "of whole cloth," then your belief in it is contrary to evidence.

Is there evidence then of things creating themselves or uncaused things coming into existence? No there is not. Creation ex-nihilo is the only explanation that makes logical sense in regards to how things exist. It avoids an infinite regress and gives an absolute, spiritual, all-powerful being that alone can explain the cause of all things. These are not made up arguments or lies, it is logic that you have not engaged with because you think the only way to show something is possible or true is through physical evidence. This is impossible if we are talking about events that happened before the creation of energy or space and time.

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There are literally dozens of possible reasons, none of which involves the one true god Amun creating it out of his act of self-gratification.

I will grant you that you are right that Amun is not a viable reason. However, for any of the reasons you think you know of none of them will truly answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing if it does not involve God as understood philosophically and logically.

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When there is no observational data, nor any certain theoretical foundation, you can't just make up a logical argument and assume it to be the explanation. using that method,

Let's not be silly. Nobody is making up a logical argument. All I'm doing is taking the observable data we do have and applying reason and logic to arrive at a conclusion that follows directly from premises. All things that begin to exist have a cause, The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause.

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Yes, but if we know existence spans a certain amount of time, then that's how much time something eternal can have existed. If the notion of "time before the Big Bang" makes sense, then energy has existed longer than the universe.

Of course it does. What it did yesterday is not what is doing now and both differ from what it will do tomorrow.

You are not grasping the crazy concept of eternity. For something to be truly eternal means that there was never a time when it did not exist and will never be a time it will not exist. It is outside of every concept of space and time. God for example does not have yesterdays or tomorrows. Everything is a constant present reality to God. Only non eternal things understand the passing of time and the concept of yesterday and tomorrow. So if you want to posit that energy is eternal then you must deny that energy can change or fall into entropy. If it has always been then it would always be at the fullest state of entropy which is that heat death you were mentioning earlier. It would never be condensed into a small particle unless it would always remain in that small particle. It would have had eternity to reach its eternal state of complete entropy and as strange as it sounds it would have always been that way if it was truly eternal. The evidence is very clear however, that energy is not eternal even if it did exist moments before the Big Bang. It did not exist forever. The evidence and reason make this very clear.

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Show me actual evidence...

See above. Would you mind showing me evidence that energy is eternal or that there is no God?

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When Venus was revealed by spectrographic analysis of the visible clouds, thermocouple readings and radar imaging, to be a hot, corrosive hell-hole, we realized the value of "pure" logic (ie, logic detached from verifiable data) in making conclusions about nature. Namely zero.

You are mistaking "pure" logic with guesswork. Pure logic only pronounces on what has to be and what follows from true premises. The hypothesis that there was life of Venus was not pure logic at all. It is interesting that you rail against logic because it is the only objectively verifiable non observation based form of knowledge. Whether or not you like the outcome logic can be shown to be correct or to not follow from the premises. Or the premises themselves can be shown to be incorrect. However if you have true premises and a conclusion that logically follows you are dealing with something that has to be true. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal. This is 100% true. We have realized that true pure logic is of the utmost value and is always correct about making conclusions when done correctly.

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All life is related. All of it. So saying humans are related is not quite groundbreaking. Further, we can trace earliest known ancestors. Not common descent of every human being to two people. And these earliest known ancestors were NOT one of a kind each. They were part of larger communities. Theirs are only the most complete remains we have found.

Of that larger community it is not possible to have a common pair of ancestors whose remains we have not found?

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Because all humans are related. And because if we were descended from only two people, we'd be inbred to such a degree as to make the genetic diversity we can see completely impossible.

Is it not possible that some of the danger of inbreeding we know of today was not as troublesome that early on in our family tree. Also what about the interbreeding with the children of Adam and Even with other Humanoids at that time?

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That's why in a province full of people who were so bothered by Jesus' trouble-making as to have him executed, no one else took notice of the fact the dead man was walking around a few days later. Not any of his enemies, not a single Roman legionary, not any local or Roman bureaucrats, nor any artists, intellectuals or philosophers. Just four people who didn't even bother to write about it until years had passed.

Many people spoke about it and spread the message orally as would be the case at that time. The sect was persecuted immediately and no one ever claimed to have proof He was not Resurrected. No body produced a body and no body wrote about the idea that the Christians were lying and deceitful. They were known as passionate and unrelenting in their amazing news. They were also know as truthful and good. None of these early Christians recanted or denied their faith even while being stoned, burned, crucified, imprisoned, or tortured. Artists created more images of Jesus Christ and His life than any other figure in the history of the world bar none. Almost all the significant early intellectuals and philosophers and scientists were ardent believers in the Risen one.

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Say, would you be interested in this bridge I could be persuaded to sell at a low, low price? It has a lovely view of the Manhattan skyline.

That's the argument you have been making here for years.

Quote: FrGamble

Bob you might as well be saying black is white and up is down. This is the exact opposite of what Catholicism and Christianity is about. It is all about God and the other. .

On paper, you're probably correct. In reality,
where the people meet the message, it's all
about them and they're ego's. Look what
people pray for. 90% of the time it's for a
personal favor of some kind. Please let me
be on time for work, please make all the lights
green, please have my husband be on time
for dinner, please help me find what I need
in the store, please send us money so we
can make the mortgage. On and on.

This is what they're taught, just listen to the
sermons preached. Behave yourself, do what
god wants, and he will answer all your prayers.
Then there's the cute little caveat that sometimes
the answer is no', but that shouldn't stop you
from asking. Every sermon is meant to be taken
personally by the congregation. You should know,
you write them.

Quote: FrGamble

Creation ex-nihilo is the only explanation that makes logical sense in regards to how things exist.

Creation ex-nihilo is Christian theology, invented out of whole cloth. There's no reason why anyone should take it seriously.

There's no observation nor compelling theory in physics which demands it, not even for virtual particles

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It avoids an infinite regress and gives an absolute, spiritual, all-powerful being that alone can explain the cause of all things.

An all-powerful being might be the culmination of evolution in the universe. It would fit with observations showing growing complexity over time, especially with biological systems. It's certainly not at the beginning, when extreme simplicity was the order of the day. Moreover, an all-powerful being, if one could evolve, would have no need for further adaptations, as it could do on a universal scale what we do on a limited but ever growing scale: adapt the environment to suit itself.

It would be ludicrous for such a thing to be required at the beginning of existence.

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I will grant you that you are right that Amun is not a viable reason.

Amun existed long before Jehovah. if he did not create the universe, then your god didn't, either.

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All things that begin to exist have a cause,

<sigh> Should I even bother to ask for evidence?

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It is outside of every concept of space and time.

Very Asimovian of you.

But that's not a good definition. Everything that exists is subject to change, even if it continues to exist. There are about as many protons now as there were shortly after the Big Bang. We know they can be broken (we've broken them in particle accelerators, after all), but they don't break down of their own accord. Apparently they have no half-life, and neither do the quarks that make them up. as best as we can tell, the vast majority of protons will exist forever. IN other words, they're eternal. and they change. they combine, they bind to neutrons and each other, and sometimes they get broken and "die."

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God for example does not have yesterdays or tomorrows. Everything is a constant present reality to God. Only non eternal things understand the passing of time and the concept of yesterday and tomorrow.

So by your definition Jehovah cannot change, has always been as he is and always will be. If he cannot change, he has no free will. If he cannot change, what's the use in praying to him?

Time for you to arbitrarily declare what applies to all other eternal entities, does not apply to Jehovah.

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You are mistaking "pure" logic with guesswork. [...]However if you have true premises and a conclusion that logically follows you are dealing with something that has to be true. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal. This is 100% true. We have realized that true pure logic is of the utmost value and is always correct about making conclusions when done correctly.

How does that work if you do not know nor can prove that men are mortal?

Not to mention your starting premise is horribly incomplete:

All men are mortal
Sappho is not a man
Therefore Sappho is not mortal.

Aren't you glad one of Greece's best ever poets, said to be in a class with Homer, is still alive?

That's pure logic as well, and both premises are true.

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Of that larger community it is not possible to have a common pair of ancestors whose remains we have not found?

Not just one pair. It's not genetically possible to have the diversity seen in humanity if we're all descended from one and only one couple. We'd be extinct if that were the case, in fact.

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Is it not possible that some of the danger of inbreeding we know of today was not as troublesome that early on in our family tree.

Flatly: No.

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Many people spoke about it and spread the message orally as would be the case at that time.

Let's be serious. A celebrity comes back to life, at a time when people believed that nonsense, and no one at all bothers to write it down, nor mention it in correspondence, for years?? The governor of Judea doesn't learn of it, and if he does he does nothing about it??

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The sect was persecuted immediately

That's patently false. Christians were not persecuted until well after they reached Rome and began to be noticed there. Even then, not until Nero was about halfway through his reign (or whatever he did from the palace), was there ever any official persecution. And then only because he needed a scapegoat for the great fire and Christians were viewed with suspicion. Nero reached the throne decades after Jesus was killed. IN fact, the only major persecution before Nero, happened when his predecessor, Claudius, expelled the Jews from Rome.

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and no one ever claimed to have proof He was not Resurrected.

No one ever claimed to have proof for any of the miraculous acts carried out by gods since the beginning of history. they must all be true, including the nightly passage of Ra, the Universal Lord, through the underworld, with the help from Osiris and Seth.

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That's the argument you have been making here for years.

You interested in the bridge or not?

Here's FrGamble's free will, free gift argument with a variable change.

Instead of believing in Christianity, you must do the opposite.

So, you receive eternal rewards for total rejection of Chistianity. Whereas if you believe in it, you receive eternal punishment.

Isn't that a great example of freedom of choice?.



(if you like a Mafia boss choice it is, otherwise, it's another poor argument from our resident Priest.)

Free choice is an apple juice or an orange juice, not apple juice vs drinking a cup of fluoroantimonic acid.

Quote: Nareed

Creation ex-nihilo is Christian theology, invented out of whole cloth. There's no reason why anyone should take it seriously.

There's no observation nor compelling theory in physics which demands it, not even for virtual particles

Okay, but there is not other compelling theory in philosophy or logic. Again please don't make the mistake that knowledge can only be gained through observation. Higher knowledge is gained by extrapolating from our observations and discoveries and thinking about what can, must, or cannot be using everything we can.

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It would be ludicrous for such a thing to be required at the beginning of existence.

Again I really don't think you understand eternity. A supreme being at the "beginning" of the universe would be the same supreme being at the "end" of our universe. An eternal being would not change and what we perceive as beginnings and ends is really both the same thing to Him.

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Very Asimovian of you.

But that's not a good definition. Everything that exists is subject to change, even if it continues to exist. There are about as many protons now as there were shortly after the Big Bang. We know they can be broken (we've broken them in particle accelerators, after all), but they don't break down of their own accord. Apparently they have no half-life, and neither do the quarks that make them up. as best as we can tell, the vast majority of protons will exist forever. IN other words, they're eternal. and they change. they combine, they bind to neutrons and each other, and sometimes they get broken and "die."

A truly eternal and all-powerful being can certainly seem to change to people observing in moments of passing time. However for God everything we have experienced, will experience, and are experiencing "happens" at the same moment. Your example of protons gives us very clear evidence that they are NOT eternal.

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So by your definition Jehovah cannot change, has always been as he is and always will be. If he cannot change, he has no free will. If he cannot change, what's the use in praying to him?

As Evenbob would tell you, "How egotistical of you to think you can change God!" Prayer is not to change God's will to ours but rather to change our will to His. "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven" Prayer is an expression of our faith that God's will is always what is best for us in the grand scheme of things, a grand scheme we see and know almost nothing about.

In regards to free will it is God alone who has true freedom. In His amazing generosity and mercy He has given to us freedom as well because we are made in His image and likeness. This freedom is meant so that we can be free to truly love and before it was given to us and the angels it was the unique property of God.

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Not to mention your starting premise is horribly incomplete:

All men are mortal
Sappho is not a man
Therefore Sappho is not mortal.

Aren't you glad one of Greece's best ever poets, said to be in a class with Homer, is still alive?

That's pure logic as well, and both premises are true.

Not quite sure what you are getting at here. The first two premises may indeed be true but your conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. Just because all men are mortal does not necessarily mean that only men are mortal. Therefore if Sappho is not a man that does not necessarily mean that Sappho is not mortal.

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Let's be serious. A celebrity comes back to life, at a time when people believed that nonsense, and no one at all bothers to write it down, nor mention it in correspondence, for years?? The governor of Judea doesn't learn of it, and if he does he does nothing about it??

First of all let's be serious about the time and how long ago we are speaking about. We both know it was a very oral society in which news was passed and it was a form of communication taken much more seriously then. We also know that the Governor of Judea would probably have ignored the spark of a small band of those claiming a new Messiah and believing that it would fade away as hundreds of other such claims had done so in the past. What he of course is not counting on is that Jesus was truly the Messiah and was truly Risen from the dead! As you can see here we are some 2016 years later still talking about this extraordinary person.

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That's patently false. Christians were not persecuted until well after they reached Rome and began to be noticed there.

This is patently false. Must you see everything from a Roman or Empire lens. Immediately those who believed in Jesus were kicked out of synagogues and ostracized in the community. This meant losing family and a way of life and yet again none of them recanted or denied the Resurrection.

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You interested in the bridge or not?

You have no evidence to support you bridge and it is not logically constructed and it leads to nowhere. No thank you.

Quote: rxwine

Free choice is an apple juice or an orange juice, not apple juice vs drinking a cup of fluoroantimonic acid.

It is more like free choice is either apple juice or orange juice. However, you should pay attention to the fact that you are deathly allergic to orange juice.

Quote: FrGamble

Okay, but there is not other compelling theory in philosophy or logic.

Right. there is no compelling theory in philosophy to make creation ex-nihilo something to be taken seriously.

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Higher knowledge is gained by extrapolating from our observations and discoveries and thinking about what can, must, or cannot be using everything we can.

"Higher knowledge" is religious double-talk for "crap we really would like to real but which we can't prove because we made it up ourselves."

The knowledge that energy equal mass times the square of the speed of light is no "higher" than the knowledge that the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle are equal to the square of the hypotenuse, and that ranks no "higher" than the knowledge of, say, the Egyptian word for "beauty," or how to reduce a wine-based sauce, or how to hide clues in plain sight in a novel, or any of a literal myriad other things I can think of right off the top of my head. I guarantee you the full equations of General Relativity won't be very useful for cooking dinner, while a detailed account of how corn starch molecules make water a non-Newtonian fluid won't help you steer Juno to a precise rendezvous with Jupiter.

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Again I really don't think you understand eternity.

I don't care what you think. Especially when you're so wrong.

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Prayer is not to change God's will to ours but rather to change our will to His. "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven" Prayer is an expression of our faith that God's will is always what is best for us in the grand scheme of things, a grand scheme we see and know almost nothing about.

So when you pray to a saint deity to influence the god deity begging him to help the evil atheists "see the light," you are actually NOT expecting any action on the part of the god deity at all? You're just wasting your time and/or making yourself feel better?

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In regards to free will it is God alone who has true freedom.

No. if he is as he has always been and always will be, he has no free will at all. That could excuse his many evil actions. Literally he couldn't help himself. He's like a scorpion stinging a person by reflex, or like a dog killing a rat out of instinct.

Hell, it's such an awful idea, that for once I'm glad for Jehovah that he doesn't exist.

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Not quite sure what you are getting at here.

Pure logic detached from facts and observations is useless and will net you any fallacy you want.

If I tell you "The Gostak distims the Doshes," do you have any clue what I'm talking about? But we can use logical reasoning without resorting to facts to define terms here, can't we? Let's see:

What is The Gostak? Why, that which distims the Doshes. What are the doshes? Those whom are distimed by The Gostak. And what is distiming? The action The Gostak performs on the Doshes.

You still don't know what "The Gostak distims the Doshes" means? Why not? we just used pure logic to define all three crucial terms. It should be perfectly clear now.

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First of all let's be serious about the time and how long ago we are speaking about. We both know it was a very oral society in which news was passed and it was a form of communication taken much more seriously then.

Is that why the New testament was never written?

I'd advise you NOT to play against me in the fields of Ancient History.

For instance:

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We also know that the Governor of Judea would probably have ignored the spark of a small band of those claiming a new Messiah and believing that it would fade away as hundreds of other such claims had done so in the past.

that's not the point. the point is the governor was already involved in the fiasco. he had agreed to have Jesus executed. If then this man resurrected, he'd have had a major development well above his pay grade in hand. He couldn't just let it blow over. First, if he were rational and reasonable, he'd have a physician, such as they were then, look the walking dead man over, and perhaps determine if his legionaries botched the execution. He might also check the other two condemned criminals in that batch to see if they were still dead.

If he found the Jesus healthy as a horse, he wouldn't just write it down, he'd send missives to Tiberius in Rome and likely to the governors and legates of the neighboring provinces and kingdoms to give them a heads up that support might be required. He'd issue orders to his garrisons or legions, too. The news would have spread, in written form, far and wide, and something of it might have survived to this day. Or don't you think people who worshipped any stray piece of driftwood as a part of the true cross, would have preserved papyri by the goyim hailing the resurrection as holy relics either?

Romans put a lot of stock and importance in portents. We have scraps of such announcements for that reason, things like deformed newborns, two-headed snakes, conjoined twins, oddly shaped trees, and more. You think a portent like an actual resurrection would go unnoticed by a Roman citizen, especially a highly educated one like a provincial governor?

Tiberius experienced an earthquake at one of his villas, which he took as a warning from the gods never to set foot in Rome ever again. You can imagine how massively inconvenient it would be for the Roman Emperor not to enter the Empire's capital, don't you? He never passed through Rome's gates again. Is that the kind of man who'd let news of a resurrection go by unnoticed?

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This is patently false. Must you see everything from a Roman or Empire lens.

Of course not. but we're talking about Roman subjects in a Roman province at a time when Rome ruled with a mighty and heavy hand.

At the start of the Christian heresy, the Romans saw no relevant difference between what they perceived to be two kinds of Jews (there were several kinds anyway). It was only after they made their break with Judaism that they started to draw attention.

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Immediately those who believed in Jesus were kicked out of synagogues and ostracized in the community. This meant losing family and a way of life and yet again none of them recanted or denied the Resurrection.

Funny how Christians then proceeded to mistreat others, including mostly other Christians, as they were mistreated.

Anyway, ostracism is not persecution. persecution means being threatened, killed, driven out of a city or country, etc.

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You have no evidence to support you bridge and it is not logically constructed and it leads to nowhere. No thank you.

I'll show it to you any time you pay my airfare to Vegas.

Quote: FrGamble

It is more like free choice is either apple juice or orange juice. However, you should pay attention to the fact that you are deathly allergic to orange juice.

Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving deity offer someone a drink they are allergic to in the first place? It's rude, and potentially very painful and deadly. Have you seen someone die of an allergic reaction? Read up on it, if you haven't. Would you offer peanut butter and a Sneakers bar to someone with a peanut allergy?