Simple question?

Quote: Nareed

We're well past the point where an imaginative, coherent, logical and ingenious explanation that conforms to your biases, is sufficient to constitute science, much less good science. We are at the point where claims must come with the evidence to back them up.

One of your best posts ever, Nareed.
You are correct, we're way past what
any musty old book says we must
believe, and into the realm of having
evidence first. As soon as evidence
for a god emerges I'll be on board.
Until then he lives with the unicorns
and the Leprechauns, in Never Never
Land.

Quote: Evenbob

But your god is your superhero. He
walks on water, pulls food out of
the air, raises the dead, including
himself. He flaunts the laws of
the universe at every turn. According
to your comic book the NT, that is.


What a joke..

I'm so furious at you right now! How could we be going back and forth all this time and you have missed me explicitly many times reject the idea that Jesus is a superhero. He clearly throughout the Gospels rejects the notion of being some wonderworker or superhero! Please read the NT and especially the Gospels. His real miracle is His suffering, death, and Resurrection for the freedom from and the forgiveness of our sins. God doesn't want to swoop down and save you from a burning building and then disappear from your life. He wants to be your closest most intimate friend always with and never closer to you than in your need.

You have been wrong before, many, many times, but this time you might be the most incorrect ever!

Quote: Nareed

Amidst all that, why do you think the musings of an ancient philosopher on causes has to be taken as a complete certainty, without even room for doubt? We're well past the point where an imaginative, coherent, logical and ingenious explanation that conforms to your biases, is sufficient to constitute science, much less good science. We are at the point where claims must come with the evidence to back them up.

It doesn't matter at what age in history someone figures out a simple but fundamental truth like A does not equal not-A. You also don't need evidence to make such a statement true, it is true. Why would you dismiss truth just because it is in a musty book of an ancient philosopher. Truth is truth and it doesn't change. Our conception of the universe is amazing at its continued development and understanding, I can't wait to see what we discover next! However, we won't discover all the sudden that contingent material beings can create themselves. Or that material things in the universe can cause themselves to move without any outside force acting upon them. This is just true, not matter how old it is. You railing against it or pretending (or rather hoping) it will change is ridiculous. We have infinite more things to discover about our universe but please don't think that we will discover logic or truth are wrong. You would be just fooling yourself, and looking like a fool at the same time.

Quote: FrGamble

you have missed me explicitly many times reject the idea that Jesus is a superhero.

You must be joking. Jesus as superhero
is all over the place.

"Jesus Christ: Super Hero: Faster than a prayer on wings, more powerful than dynamite, able to leap over any problem. Introduce Jesus as the real hero kids can look up to."

http://childrensministry.com/articles/jesus-christ-super-hero/

Quote: FrGamble

It doesn't matter at what age in history someone figures out a simple but fundamental truth like A does not equal not-A.

That is so, so long as it can be backed up with evidence or can be proven to be so.

a^2+b^2=c^2 where a and b are sides of a right triangle on plane., sure, but no amount of good math makes any of the mystical numerological nonsense of the Pythagoreans any more valid than any other such nonsense espoused at the time.

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You also don't need evidence to make such a statement true, it is true.

You do, and A is A and can't be non-A is easily proven.

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Why would you dismiss truth just because it is in a musty book of an ancient philosopher.

Because Aristotle couldn't prove his theories of causes, or of the immovable mover, if his life depended on it. And as regards nature, he was prone to sweeping pronouncements, which were very reasonable and logical, but which lacked much substantiating evidence.

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However, we won't discover all the sudden that contingent material beings can create themselves.

That's a bias you would do well to loose, fast. You're like the alchemist trying to find the philosopher's stone, and you'll question everything but the existence of that stone.

What if energy is eternal? Entropy, as per the laws of thermodynamics, state energy flows from a concentrated state from which it can be made to do work, to a diffuse state from which it cannot. But it remains. And we don't know whether entropy can change under the right circumstances. Asimov remarked at one time that the energy flows described in thermodynamics take place in an expanding universe. Will the universe expand indefinitely? We don't even know why it expands, so how can we tell?

But you know, because some unknown person millennia ago did not give Jehovah an origin story, that the Universe was created ex-nihilo, and support Aristotle and Plato because they agree with you.

That in itself is bad enough (hey, what if we find a Genesis prequel in an ancient scroll, telling how Jehovah is the bastard son of Isis and Seth? In one myth Seth clearly has the hots for the One Who Knows All Names), but it's worse when you expect me to accept it unquestionably, or that you wield it as a club to beat the world into submission to Jesus the Dead Man.

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Or that material things in the universe can cause themselves to move without any outside force acting upon them.

See above, and above that, too.

BTW, suppose there was nothing at all in the universe, and you (somehow, because you don't exist in this example) could creature the Sun and the Earth, and nothing else, exactly as they are now. Well, about 8 minutes after you did, the Sun's gravity would begin to tug at the Earth and it would move (the Earth would tug at the Sun, too, of course, and it would move as well).

There! Proof material objects can move without outside intervention.

Quote: Nareed

You do, and A is A and can't be non-A is easily proven.

Yes it is because it is true. If you couldn't prove it or test it would it be any less true. Before the universe was created was this true or not? You seem to think it is the evidence or proof that makes such a statement true when rather it is self-evident. I will grant you that when some truth is not self-evident it needs to be tested and accumulate evidence. However, when something is logically true in itself you can know that just by using your brain.

Quote:

Because Aristotle couldn't prove his theories of causes, or of the immovable mover,

It is self evident, see above. Why do you need evidence when you live surrounded by evidence that nothing moves or happens without a cause or force acting upon it. Surely you realize this is a truth, it might be one of the first truths you learned or understood. Are you trying to say that eventually once science has probed the depths of the universe we will find the opposite of logic and all our experiences is true? Come on you must realize you are making no sense.

Quote:

BTW, suppose there was nothing at all in the universe, and you (somehow, because you don't exist in this example) could creature the Sun and the Earth, and nothing else, exactly as they are now. Well, about 8 minutes after you did, the Sun's gravity would begin to tug at the Earth and it would move (the Earth would tug at the Sun, too, of course, and it would move as well).

There! Proof material objects can move without outside intervention.

Umm....gravity is not a force? Why if I created the Sun and the Earth do you think I would create gravity. What if I just created these two spheres and placed them in empty space without any natural laws or forces to act upon them and waited. How long do you think I would have to wait until something happened?

Geocentrism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model

Relevant to what you are talking about now.

It was arrived at through observation and reason. Philosophical truth, even.

It made sense.

For a while.

It couldn't be disproven.

Until it was.

Imagine living in the year 1000 and trying to explain that it was wrong, that there might be alternative explainations, using only what technology and observation that you had available at the time.

Are you trying to make Geocentrism equivalent to an logical self-evident truth. It is an interesting thought and I can see your point, however we have to be very strict at what we refer to as self-evident. A does not equal not-A. Something cannot come from nothing. If A=B and B=C then C=A. These are self evident and are true in a way that even something that seemed so obvious like Geocentrism would never be considered to be.

I'm saying geocentrism was pretty obvious and self-evident, at the time, given the limits of their knowledge.

I am sure you are also aware of how vehemently the religious clung to their beliefs on the subject, because of how it agreed with their various holy writings.

Quote: FrGamble

Something cannot come from nothing. .

You base everything on the assumption
that at one time there was nothing. The
universe has always been here, there
was never a 'nothing' starting point.
Your wrong assumption skews everything
you believe in.