Simple question?

Quote: Nareed

I've yet to see your proof the one true god Athena is not real.

Going by your logic, you should be offering sacrifices to Her.

This in itself would be harmless. But can you prove the god Baal doesn't exist? You know what kind of sacrifices he prefers, don't you?

Even though FrGamble states with regularity that the Universe can't exist without a non-contingent being, I see no logical reason why he doesn't still have to disprove more than one non-contingent being existing and being coauthor of the Universe.

If he is going to live by that sword, he can also die by it. All he has said is at least one has to exist, but he is still stuck with ruling out any others since he imposes such requirements on our not finding his god about anywhere.. I'm sure he has not conducted a complete search of the Universe, so I guess his belief is in just as much peril.

Quote: Nareed

I didn't point that out because it's not true. i pointed out the Bible was used to argue for and against slavery.

The South used the Bible to promote
slavery more than the North did to
abolish it.

'Defenders of slavery noted that in the Bible, Abraham had slaves. They point to the Ten Commandments, noting that "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, ... nor his manservant, nor his maidservant." In the New Testament, Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master, and, although slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, Jesus never spoke out against it.'

In fact, it was mostly runaway slaves that
were crucified as an example to other
slaves. Jesus would have been engulfed
in slavery and he never said a word about
it. The men wrote the gospels and made
up 90% of what Jesus supposedly said had
no bad opinion of slavery, it was a way of
life in their day.

Quote: rxwine

Even though FrGamble states with regularity that the Universe can't exist without a non-contingent being, I see no logical reason why he doesn't still have to disprove more than one non-contingent being existing and being coauthor of the Universe.

Pseudoscience question. You start with conclusions and work back towards causes. There has to be one god because the Bible claims only one. If the Bible claimed 307.2 gods, FrGamble would have an argument about how "logic" and "reason" require exactly 307 and one fifth of non-contingent beings, not necessarily those in the Bible.

Do you think pagan philosophers and believers couldn't justify their beliefs? There just wasn't a reason to do so, because religion didn't really vary that much. Even when god A was substituted with god B after a region went from being independent to being under a stronger culture's control, could, and was, explained away.

Anyway, the evidence for one non-contingent being, or for 307.2 of them, or for the carloads of pagan gods for that matter, remains firmly at: none.

Quote:

All he has said is at least one has to exist, but he is still stuck with ruling out any others since he imposes such requirements on our not finding his god about anywhere.. I'm sure he has not conducted a complete search of the Universe, so I guess his belief is in just as much peril.

I'm not sure what to label this fallacy. But that's why I thought my analogy to the planet Vulcan was apt. No one has proved it doesn't exist, no one has searched the whole region between Mercury and the Sun (nor does the aggregate of all searches cover all of it), and the assumption is that it's a normal planet that wouldn't be exceedingly hard to find. By the non-logic of proving a negative, no one can prove it doesn't exist, regardless of how well General Relativity explains Mercury's orbit.

Quote: Nareed

Pseudoscience question. You start with conclusions and work back towards causes. There has to be one god because the Bible claims only one. If the Bible claimed 307.2 gods, FrGamble would have an argument about how "logic" and "reason" require exactly 307 and one fifth of non-contingent beings, not necessarily those in the Bible.

BTW this is the reason why I also don't pay much mind to moral arguments based on religion. Again, they start with conclusions, like birth control or eating pork is immoral, and work backwards to justify it. That's what I mean by rationalization as opposed to reasoning.

This is not to say all the morality from the Bible is wrong, but almost all of it is badly justified, when it's even justified at all.

Quote: rxwine

Even though FrGamble states with regularity that the Universe can't exist without a non-contingent being, I see no logical reason why he doesn't still have to disprove more than one non-contingent being existing and being coauthor of the Universe.

Please read the second link that Evenbob recently put in the Science and God thread, I think I quoted it too. It will answer this and many of your other concerns about the argument for God from contingency.

Quote: Dalex64

Logic and reason alone cannot prove anything.

This is lunacy. Logic and reason are the proof for anything. It is logic and reason that tells us the scientific method works to discover truth. Everything we believe as true must be grounded in logic and reason. It is because something is logical and reasonable that we can test it and observe the verification we need. However, when we set a trajectory to go to the moon we know that it will work before we observe it work.

Quote:

If you can't disprove any of the other alternative theories for the origins of everything, then they must remain as possibilities.

Sure we can. We can reasonable know that the universe if it does not hold the reason for its existence in itself then it must have a cause. This means the possibility of an eternal uncreated matter is not reasonable. We also can rule out a being or force that is not all-powerful or not eternal or not spiritual, etc...

Quote:

Until one of them is proven to be true, or all but one are proven to be false and we are certain that there are no other possible explainations, you can't settle on one of them as the truth.

Because of "we don't know" you can't even assign meaningful probabilities of how likely each of them are to be true.

Again I don't think you are thinking clearly about this or we are really not understanding each other. When in your life have you ever waited until all the possibilities are prove to be true or all but one are proven to be false before believing in something and acting on it? Have you ever in your life settled on anything, because if you have I can guarantee you that you have not exhausted proving all the other possibilities false.

Quote: Evenbob

600 years ago there were all kinds of
books. On history, math, geography,
medicine, religion. How many of
those books do we use today. Almost
none of them, except the religious
books, we use all of those.

This is because everything else advances,
the basics of religion do not. How
can it, it's not based on anything real.
It cannot be proved false or true so how
can it advance. Organized religions are
a trap. They shut off a critical part of the
thinking process and why would anybody
willingly want that.

You should see the difference in the books about religion used in seminaries or that are used in Catechesis today compared with the pat. The advancements and development of theology and religious thought is as staggering every bit as much as the growing understanding of geography, math, and history. Look into Vatican II.

Quote: Nareed

BTW this is the reason why I also don't pay much mind to moral arguments based on religion. Again, they start with conclusions, like birth control or eating pork is immoral, and work backwards to justify it. That's what I mean by rationalization as opposed to reasoning.

This is not to say all the morality from the Bible is wrong, but almost all of it is badly justified, when it's even justified at all.

This is such a biased view that I wonder if it is worth responding to. It is the excuse of everyone when they are proved wrong or that the other is correct. You just started from the conclusion and work backwards to justify it. Give me a break. You can begin without any inkling of God and come to a deep conviction of the sexual morality that is reflected in the Christian morality.

I think you asked about if something moral because God commands it or does God command it because it is moral? The answer again is both and. You can find out what God will command without reference to the Catechism just by looking at something reasonably and naturally. In the ancient world a good smart doctor would have told you not to eat pork because it is deadly if it is undercooked, a real possibility back then. Is it a surprise then that God would forbid the eating of Pork?

Quote: FrGamble

The advancements and development of theology and religious thought is as staggering .

Really. So Mary giving a virgin birth, Jesus
being the son of god rising from the dead,
and all the rest of it, has fundamentally
changed in the last 1500 years? It hasn't
changed a whit, you still read the NT line
by line like every word is truth. The way
the message gets out, the trappings of
the Church, all that has changed. But not
a sentence of the musty old story had been
changed by even a word. It can't advance,
there's no room for it to advance. It's stuck,
just like every 'word of god' religion.

Quote: FrGamble

Please read the second link that Evenbob recently put in the Science and God thread, I think I quoted it too. It will answer this and many of your other concerns about the argument for God from contingency.

Look up the question, "What do philosophers agree on?" They are in a much worse condition than physicists. Or for that matter, plumbers. They are probably better off than certain theologians as their beliefs aren't so likely fixed.

This is not say it is not useful, and I have a lot of respect for philosophy.

Anyway, I am not a professional philosopher but I highly doubt a random selected thousand philosophers would come to a overwhelming conclusion of the assertion and claims as to the premises and validity of that argument. And if they can't, why should I give it a try?

Oh, I can give it a go, but I am merely an amateur. What I do think, is that is a thousand professional philosophers gave it whack, they would leave you with just a lot of questions and disagreements and increased understanding of the various problems and more opinions than you imagined.