Hey FrGamble!

Quote: Dalex64

If a god was required to create the universe, how can you possibly know that it was your god? If it wasn't your god but rather some other unseen force, as I think you have suggested as an acceptable proposition before, then your god is not the first mover or the ultimate cause, and himself was caused by another.

A being we refer to as God was required to create the universe and to avoid God needing to be created by another god and so forth into an infinite regress there must be just one God who is truly eternal and non-contingent. This means this one ultimate cause of the universe needs no other cause and contains existence in itself and is not depended on anything else for its existence. This would at the minimum require God to be eternal (outside of time and space without end or beginning), spiritual (not of contingent matter), and all-powerful (with the ability to create the entire universe and all matter and energy). I believe this one God to be God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and I believe this one God to be the Most Holy Trinity and that Jesus Christ was the Incarnation of God on Earth. This I believe in faith and through revelation (the Bible) and the witness and example of the real person of Jesus and the Church He established.

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Consciousness and intelligence are a byproduct of our brains, the most complicated brains on the planet. We can look at simpler brains, and see more limited intelligence, and even limited consciousness. We can chemically and physically block our brains from providing us with intelligence and consciousness. If you want to suggest that our souls and consciousness exist outside of the body or the universe, that would be interesting, especially if that means we have found a physical or chemical way to block the connection between our bodies and our extra-universe-residing consciousness.

I do believe that our consciousness and intelligence is not a simple byproduct of our brains and its chemical and electrical impulses. It is true that these things are very much connected to our brain and that we can induce comas and alter our consciousness and intelligence. However, even in such states our consciousness continues in ways not understood. We also cannot explain the arrival of the extraordinary consciousness and intelligence of human beings as coming from the material brain.

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universal moral laws and objective truths... are relative to the societies that created them. I'm sure you wouldn't agree that we should strike all of the morals that aren't held in common with the other abrahamic religions, or the other religions that you say still ultimately derived their law from your god. These universal moral laws and objective truths are in a constant state of flux. you yourself has said that your religion is the apex of this change or evolution or revelation, or whatever you want to call it. How can you know that this is the final evolution, and there won't be a post-christian revelation that is even more true? How can you know that yours is the correct truth, compared to the other current religions? How can you know that this truth didn't already exist in the past, and we have moved away from it? All of that still presumes that there IS a universal moral law and objective truths, and they aren't just another thing that our minds SEEK and DEFINE, but may not exist.

I believe that all human beings regardless of their religious background or lack there of recognize the general principles of moral laws and objective truths such as you should not kill an innocent human being, you should not steal or lie, etc. These truths are not relative to societies or times.

What is a universal moral law, anyway?

Thou shall not kill? You will not murder? You will not take another's life... Except under certain conditions, such as self-defense, at times of war, or before prison technology advanced to the point where capital punishment was no longer the best option?

I think some societies lived under the rule that you should not kill, ever. Not even for self-defense.

Even with those rules, it only really applies to other people. We kill in order to survive as a species - either killing animals or plants or eating their reproductive seeds.

chlorophyll might be the answer, but even trees draw their nourishment from the soil in addition to the sun.

Like I have said many times before, the lack of an explaination is not proof or even evidence of a supernatural explaination.

It is a logical fallacy to go from the statement "we do not know why we are intelligent" to "therefore there must be a god who made us intelligent"

If at some point there is a scientific consensus that some phenomenon has no possible natural explaination and therefore it must have a supernatural one, then I will believe it. Good luck convincing me of the cause of the supernatural phenomenon, though. By its very nature it is saying "we do not know what caused this"

Quote: Dalex64

What is a universal moral law, anyway?

A law that is written in the hearts and conscience of every human being.

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Even with those rules, it only really applies to other people. We kill in order to survive as a species - either killing animals or plants or eating their reproductive seeds.

Yes, the moral law seems to only applies to other human beings.

I'm sorry, but why can't your god have been created by an all-powerful entity that was the first? Why does your god in particular need to have the ability to will himself into existence?

Yours had to be first and all-powerful in order to avoid another infinite regression is a really lousy explaination.

There could be any number of all-powerful entities that created god and allowed him to create our universe.

You shall not kill an innocent person still opens up a whole can of worms as to what an innocent person is.

The church put someone to death for heresy, for example. They were operating under the rules of the church and the interpretation of the scripture at that time and thought they were morally justified.

I don't think the church would do that now. Or would they, but they just lack he power now to be able to survive if thy took those sorts of actions again?

A lie is a little vague, too. Lots of justifications exist for various lies.

Stealing, too - like a man stealing food from another who doesn't need it but won't share (maybe a rich estate owner with full larders of food going to waste) in order to feed his starving children.

Quote: Dalex64

I'm sorry, but why can't your god have been created by an all-powerful entity that was the first? Why does your god in particular need to have the ability to will himself into existence?

Yours had to be first and all-powerful in order to avoid another infinite regression is a really lousy explaination.

There could be any number of all-powerful entities that created god and allowed him to create our universe.

Actually logically there can only be one all-powerful entity ultimately. If there were other "gods" they would not be the all-powerful source of all things. I am claiming first that there must be one God to avoid this infinite regression. Then once that is established I believe through faith and revelation that this one God is the God of the Bible. The way to think about this is first recognize the need for an ultimate first cause of everything. This is what we call God. Then we begin the discovery of who this God is and how or if it reveals itself to us as human beings. I believe this one God is the Most Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. It is not a necessary logical conclusion as is the existence of God. This step requires faith.

Quote: Dalex64

You shall not kill an innocent person still opens up a whole can of worms as to what an innocent person is.

Yes it does, but it does not call into question the law of not killing an innocent person. In discussing this with people you will notice that nobody ever rejects the premise that we shouldn't kill innocent people. The question always revolves around who is innocent. Is an unborn baby or a heretic or a violent criminal innocent? This is the field of moral theology or morality in general. It assumes these moral laws and discusses then how to apply these laws.

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A lie is a little vague, too. Lots of justifications exist for various lies.

Again nobody argues that it is moral to lie. There are many good discussions as to when withholding the truth or saying something false should not be considered lying.

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Stealing, too - like a man stealing food from another who doesn't need it but won't share (maybe a rich estate owner with full larders of food going to waste) in order to feed his starving children.

Again nobody says it is okay to steal. However in the interesting case you mentioned St. Thomas claims that the starving family deserves that horded food and that it is not stealing to take it because it is their food unjustly held from them.

Quote: FrGamble

Actually logically there can only be one all-powerful entity ultimately. .

Or none. Believing in god is a form
of giving up. It's saying I don't want
to hunt for the truth, I'll just give credit
for everything to god and relax. I
can even join a religion and make a
living at it. Who can argue with me,
nobody can prove god doesn't exist.
What a racket.

Quote: FrGamble

Actually logically there can only be one all-powerful entity ultimately. If there were other "gods" they would not be the all-powerful source of all things. I am claiming first that there must be one God to avoid this infinite regression. Then once that is established I believe through faith and revelation that this one God is the God of the Bible. The way to think about this is first recognize the need for an ultimate first cause of everything. This is what we call God. Then we begin the discovery of who this God is and how or if it reveals itself to us as human beings. I believe this one God is the Most Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. It is not a necessary logical conclusion as is the existence of God. This step requires faith.

Any time "This step requires faith" is used, it is the total breakdown of logic and a chain of evidence required for any sort of proof.

It is just as logically consistent that there is one supreme being who created god and the universe and gave god dominion over the universe.

You are using infinite regression to claim that there is only one universe, and only one god, when it would be perfectly possible for there to be more than one, as long as it is a finite number. Infinite regression says that there can't be an infinite number, that it must be finite. It doesn't say that since infinite regression is illogical that there must be only one of something. THAT is illogical.

You are choosing for yourself and what is best for your beliefs to determine when an infinite regression stops.

You simply can not know. You think you know because you think men were somehow given the story of creation by god. Here's a mind-blowing one - what if god is real, but he only told us what he wanted to tell us, and didn't tell us everything? I think we already know that god didn't tell us everything - we can not know his mind, and don't even have the capacity to know everything like god supposedly knows. What if he just didn't tell us about things that might have existed before our universe, or in other "universes" that exist at the same time as ours but unimaginably far away? What if god lied?

"This step requires faith" also ends the possibility of a logical argument. Anyone can fill in any details that they like. You can make up anything. You can use arguments like - god created the fossils in the rocks to test our faith.

Now, that isn't to say I don't have faith in things. A great scientific example is that we don't know what causes gravity. I have faith that there is some natural cause of gravity, some law of the universe. We might not ever figure out what it is - it might not be the higgs boson.

There is another good place to examine infinite regression. We thought atoms were the smallest, then protons, neutrons, and electrons, but at that point we suspected that even they might be made up of still smaller parts. Eventually we found some. Is that it? Is that the end of the finite regression, or is there some yet smaller component than a quark, some discrete pieces that give them 'color' and 'spin' properties?

Anyway, you can not combine the impossibility of infinite regression with a decision that this one thing must be the finite end of the regression. All you can really say is that at some point it must stop. There is no proof and no evidence that it stopped when you say it stopped.

Logic isn't proof. If you walk around a city of houses, and everywhere you have looked the houses are white on all sides, and come up to a house you haven't seen before. It is white on the side you can see. What color is it on the other side?