Simple question?

Quote: pew

Totally agree.

Double agree.

Quote: Nareed

You get all that with 100% certainty from lack of knowledge of what happened at and before the Big Bang?

You see, it's that kind of misuse of logic that has to have Aristotle spinning in his grave.

Premise: everything that exists has a cause
Premise: the universe exists
Conclusion: therefore Christian Myth and Dogma are Divine Truth.

Let alone that the first premise may not even be valid or true, how do manage to make a simple syllogism go so wrong?

What would make Aristotle spin in his grave is the poor syllogism you just put forth. I don't recognize it as anything remotely connected to what I am saying. In fact with this straw man argument you are making the straw man not only spin in his grave, but wanting to give you his brain.

Here is what I am saying:
Premise: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise: The Universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore the Universe has a cause.

Notice I am not talking about the Trinity here or the Incarnation.

Quote: FrGamble

What would make Aristotle spin in his grave is the poor syllogism you just put forth.

Don't blame me for correctly summarizing your bad argument.

Quote:

Notice I am not talking about the Trinity here or the Incarnation.

Not after you had your nose rubbed into it, no.

Quote: FrGamble

Double agree.

Ya'll got me scratching my head.

I don't agree with a god premise, except as one possibility out of many.

Something outside of known physics doesn't only leave a god conclusion.

I am also fine with something simply undiscovered. Let's see, the possibility of undiscovered things is what still? How much of the Universe is still unknown for instance. There's a lot still to know.

Quote: rxwine

Simple question:

Even if Adam & Even hadn't eaten the apple, assuming they were allowed to procreate, just how long before one of their future offspring succumbed to temptation?

Original Sin sure seems like a setup and game for suckers to me, as long as God leaves the tree within reach.

Btw. Did you want to weigh in on whether humanity would fall in the GOE given enough time? I call it a setup by a god who expected us to fail.

Quote: FrGamble

Here is what I am saying:
Premise: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise: The Universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore the Universe has a cause.
.

You do the same thing here, present a
faulty premise and then make up a cure.

Premise: We're all born sinners.
Premise: We need to be saved from this sin.
Conclusion: We need a savior and that might as well be Jesus.

You can't prove sin exists, it's just a bad
theory. We don't need saving from bad
theories, thanks anyway.

Quote: FrGamble

Opps, again bad thinking.

Notify Webster's that "bad" has been redefined to mean "in disagreement with Christian arguments."

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If you take Sagan's argument about having creators all the way down you can easily see why you need a non-contingent being.

There being no evidence of a creator, I fail to see the need. The infinite regress that stops at the first step is neither infinite nor a regress.

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Such a being is necessary and logically required for there to be anything.

Now it's a being. Later you'll claim you know his name, too, and what he wants, and what he needs, and what means of birth control lands you in Hell for all eternity. Right before you claim you're not claiming all that.

Quote:

As to what evidence tells us that the Universe hasn't always existed, again you have to ask the question what created matter and go backwards from there until you feel the logical need to stop the impossible infinite regress with a non-contingent being.

This is what is so infuriating about arguing with someone who doesn't understand science: what is your evidence that energy was created? You don't have any. You have an argument from a philosopher long dead who had some good ideas and some terribly bad ones as well. In particular he had the bad idea of aping his teacher as regards a creation of the world (not the universe, the Greeks had no idea they were living in a universe). And we don't know, and currently lack a way of knowing, whether that particular argument is true or not.

You cannot substitute argument for evidence, nor philosophy for observation.

Quote:

By the way we live in an unprecedented time in history when we have never had so much evidence that points to the universe having a beginning and a cause. These efforts to claim the Universe is eternal matter harkens back to the middle ages when with the lack of knowledge it was almost accepted that the Universe has always existed by scientists and theologians alike.

Oh, please! You don't think theologians were sure Jehovah created the world in six days? It was a bishop who used the Bible to measure the age of the Earth, coming to the ridiculous figure of ~6000 years.

Also, logic tells you two different words with different meanings do not mean the same thing. Thus "eternal" does not mean "unchanging." You're letting your biases show. Your gods are supposed to eternal and unchanging, are they not? Therefore you take eternal to mean unchanging. I do not. Living in the 20th and XXI centuries ought to have cured anyone from expecting things to remain the same. To quote from RUSH's Tom Sawyer "Knows changes aren't permanent, but change is."

Quote: rxwine

Ya'll got me scratching my head.

I don't agree with a god premise, except as one possibility out of many.

Something outside of known physics doesn't only leave a god conclusion.

I am also fine with something simply undiscovered. Let's see, the possibility of undiscovered things is what still? How much of the Universe is still unknown for instance. There's a lot still to know.

Agree.

Quote: rxwine

There's a lot still to know.

They say we have barely scratched
the surface. Yet the Bible claims
and Christians claim to know it all.
FrG will say 'we never said that.'
But you do, all the time, in so many
ways.

Quote: rxwine

Ya'll got me scratching my head.

I don't agree with a god premise, except as one possibility out of many.

Something outside of known physics doesn't only leave a god conclusion.

I am also fine with something simply undiscovered. Let's see, the possibility of undiscovered things is what still? How much of the Universe is still unknown for instance. There's a lot still to know.

What has me scratching my head is why anyone in their right mind could rightly think as you do above and say definitively that there is no God.