The Cosmological Arguments for God's Existence

[buttercup]

If you need justification for a God then you are missing the point of the exercise.

Exactly!!
What happened to Faith?

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

If you have faith, then why do you need to empirically prove the existence of a god?
If you have faith then...god exists because you believe she does.

It's apologetics, which is for nonbelievers, not believers. Believers already have more than enough evidence to believe, which is why we began to believe in the first place.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

You want to talk about magical... the "multiverse" and all of existence putting itself together by dumb luck I'd say is infinitely more "magical" than theism, or any other viewpoint for that matter.

Neat! But I admit the possibility that "god did it" anyway, no matter what scientific theory of the "how" I explore.

So, if the unverse spontaneously popped into existence..."by dumb luck", as you say...you can just insert god by asking "who created those odds?", and then answering the question yourself, "god". There is no conflict, there. Fine, so god did it . Or not. That doesn't matter, when describing the "how".

"God did it!" doesn't preclude anything I propose. You are the one trying to impose magical constraints, not me.

"It can't possibly be THAT way, because that's not my preferred magical explanation." Well, then choose another.

Thats your burden, not mine.

 

[idb]

Exactly!!
What happened to Faith?

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

If you have faith, then why do you need to empirically prove the existence of a god?
If you have faith then...god exists because you believe she does.

It's apologetics, which is for nonbelievers, not believers. Believers already have more than enough evidence to believe, which is why we began to believe in the first place.

So, you're saying that you need evidence that a god exists.
What happens when that evidence is proven wrong?
Galileo caused a few rosary beads to be clutched.

 

[buttercup]

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

If you have faith, then why do you need to empirically prove the existence of a god?
If you have faith then...god exists because you believe she does.

It's apologetics, which is for nonbelievers, not believers. Believers already have more than enough evidence to believe, which is why we began to believe in the first place.

So, you're saying that you need evidence that a god exists.
What happens when that evidence is proven wrong?
Galileo caused a few rosary beads to be clutched.

No, that is not what I said. Re-read my post.

 

[Ringtone]

So, you're saying that you need evidence that a god exists.
What happens when that evidence is proven wrong?
Galileo caused a few rosary beads to be clutched.

How so?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Not really. I just enjoy taking on mobs.

It is hilarious that if you agree with Aristotle, Aquinas and the priest that developed the Big Bang theory you have to be a Christian fundamentalist, roflmao.

I am too old to waste what little time I have left on Earth on witless, closed minded, condescending, clinging materialists.

They are much better on ignore.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Did you honestly think I was a "he" all this time, or you just trolling? I'm not a he, and it always amazes me when people think I am. I would think that the feminine username and the cutesy avatars would give that away, but I guess not.

I thought you were male, as well.

I apologize for that and want you to know that your posts are enjoyable to read as is ding and Ringtone's also.

 

[JimBowie1958]

So if we start from the belief that the first eleven chapters of the Torah are an allegorical account of world history before the great migration from Mesopotamia - which was an actual historical event - then the first eleven chapters of the Torah takes on new meaning. Seen in this light these accounts should be viewed less like fairy tales and more like how important information was passed down in ancient times. Just as the Chinese used well known history and everyday things as symbols in their written language to make words easier to remember, ancient man used stories to pass down historical events and important knowledge to future generations. Interspersed in these allegorical accounts of history are wisdoms that they deemed important enough to pass down and remember. Such as man knows right from wrong and when he violates it, rather than abandoning the concept of right and wrong he rationalizes he didn't do wrong. Most people don't even realize this wisdom is in the Torah because they read it critically instead of searching for the wisdom that ancient man knew and found important enough to include in his account of world history.


We have to keep in mind that these accounts are 6,000 years old and were passed down orally from one generation to the next for thousands of years. Surely ancient man believed these accounts were of the utmost importance otherwise they would not have been passed down for thousands of years before they were recorded in writing. We shouldn't view these accounts using the context of the modern world. Unfortunately, we are so far removed from these events that we have lost all original meaning. If you were to ask almost any Jew what the Tower of Babel was about he would have no clue that it was the allegorical account of the great migration from the cradle of civilization. That is not intended to be a criticism. It is intended to be an illustration of just how difficult a task it is to discover the original meaning from ancient accounts from 6,000 years ago. We read these texts like they were written yesterday looking for ways to discredit them and make ourselves feel superior rather than seeking the original meaning and wisdom. Shame on us.

I agree and think that these are early oral histories of mankind coming out of the Toba Catastrophe, and the end of the last Glacial age in which trapped lake were released due to melting glaciers that had damned up all that water, the biggest being the glacial damn in the Bosporus.

Toba catastrophe theory - Wikipedia

The Toba supereruption was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred about 75,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of the Earth's largest known eruptions. The Toba catastrophe theory holds that this event caused a global volcanic winter of six to ten years and possibly a 1,000-year-long cooling episode.
...

The Toba eruption or Toba event occurred at the present location of Lake Toba in Indonesia, about 75000±900 years BP according to potassium argon dating.[4] This eruption was the last and largest of four eruptions of Toba during the Quaternary period, and is also recognized from its diagnostic horizon of ashfall, the youngest Toba tuff.[5] It had an estimated volcanic explosivity index of 8 (the highest rating of any known eruption on Earth); it made a sizable contribution to the 100×30 km caldera complex.[6] Dense-rock equivalent (DRE) estimates of eruptive volume for the eruption vary between 2000 km3 and 3000 km3 – the most common DRE estimate is 2800 km3 (about 7×1015 kg) of erupted magma, of which 800 km3 was deposited as ash fall.[7]

The erupted mass was 100 times greater than that of the largest volcanic eruption in recent history, the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which caused the 1816 "Year Without a Summer" in the Northern Hemisphere.[8] Toba's erupted mass deposited an ash layer of about 15 centimetres (5.9 in) thick over the whole of South Asia. A blanket of volcanic ash was also deposited over the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, and the South China Sea.[9] Deep-sea cores retrieved from the South China Sea have extended the known reach of the eruption, suggesting that the 2800 km3 calculation of the erupted mass is a minimum value or even an underestimate.[10]

Volcanic winter and cooling computer models[edit]
Geologist Michael R. Rampino and volcanologist Stephen Self argue that the eruption caused a "brief, dramatic cooling or 'volcanic winter'", which resulted in a drop of the global mean surface temperature by 3–5 °C.[11] Evidence from Greenland ice cores indicates a 1,000-year period of low δ18O and increased dust deposition immediately following the eruption. The eruption may have caused this 1,000-year period of cooler temperatures (stadial), two centuries of which could be accounted for by the persistence of the Toba stratospheric loading.[12] Rampino and Self believe that global cooling was already underway at the time of the eruption, but that the process was slow; Toba tuff "may have provided the extra 'kick' that caused the climate system to switch from warm to cold states".[13] Although Clive Oppenheimer rejects the hypothesis that the eruption triggered the last glaciation,[14] he agrees that it may have been responsible for a millennium of cool climate prior to the 19th Dansgaard-Oeschger event.[15]

According to Alan Robock, who has also published nuclear winter papers, the Toba eruption did not precipitate the last glacial period. However, assuming an emission of six billion tons of sulphur dioxide, his computer simulations concluded that a maximum global cooling of approximately 15 °C occurred for three years after the eruption, and that this cooling would last for decades, devastating life.[16] Because the saturated adiabatic lapse rate is 4.9 °C/1,000 m for temperatures above freezing,[17] the tree line and the snow line were around 3,000 m (9,900 ft) lower at this time.[where?] The climate recovered over a few decades, and Robock found no evidence that the 1,000-year cold period seen in Greenland ice core records had resulted from the Toba eruption. In contrast, Oppenheimer believes that estimates of a drop in surface temperature by 3–5 °C are probably too high, and he suggests that temperatures dropped only by 1 °C.[18] Robock has criticized Oppenheimer's analysis, arguing that it is based on simplistic T-forcing relationships.[19]

Despite these different estimates, scientists agree that a supereruption of the scale at Toba must have led to very extensive ash-fall layers and injection of noxious gases into the atmosphere, with worldwide effects on weather and climate.[20] In addition, the Greenland ice core data display an abrupt climate change around this time,[21] but there is no consensus that the eruption directly generated the 1,000-year cold period seen in Greenland or triggered the last glaciation.[22]​

This extended volcanic winter not only killed off much life, it also likely covered the planet in a cloud cover that obscured the sun for a time. And so I suspect that the First Chapter of Genesis is an oral tradition of what earl modern man experienced as the Earth recovered from this massive catastrophic darkness.

Also, the event may have caused some evolutionary pressure for modern man to develop complex language and sentence structure, making mankind capable of learning the concept of sin and guilt.

 

[Ringtone]

Ding posted:

That summarizes virtually every "argument" offered by the atheists on this thread.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I think the militant atheists are done shitting in this thread for tonight.

But if only they would wipe their asses and flush, that would be appreciated.

 

[james bond]

"God did it!" doesn't preclude anything I propose. You are the one trying to impose magical constraints, not me.

"It can't possibly be THAT way, because that's not my preferred magical explanation." Well, then choose another.

God had to do it because there was no space time. God is timeless and spaceless. There was only the void. Even a quantum particle couldn't exist in the void. Science backs up the anthropic principle or law of human existence. We are fine tuned for existence or else humans wouldn't be here -- When science and philosophy collide in a 'fine-tuned' universe.

 

[Hollie]

"God did it!" doesn't preclude anything I propose. You are the one trying to impose magical constraints, not me.

"It can't possibly be THAT way, because that's not my preferred magical explanation." Well, then choose another.

God had to do it because there was no space time. God is timeless and spaceless. There was only the void. Even a quantum particle couldn't exist in the void. Science backs up the anthropic principle or law of human existence. We are fine tuned for existence or else humans wouldn't be here -- When science and philosophy collide in a 'fine-tuned' universe.

You made no case for which, if any, of the gods did anything. There is no reason to accept that your gods, or anyone else’s gods, are timeless or spaceless with the stereotypical “... because I say so” argument.

The “fine tuned universe” is another obviously nonsensical claim.

Any chance you could offer a supportable argument?

 

[Hollie]

Exactly!!
What happened to Faith?

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

If you have faith, then why do you need to empirically prove the existence of a god?
If you have faith then...god exists because you believe she does.

It's apologetics, which is for nonbelievers, not believers. Believers already have more than enough evidence to believe, which is why we began to believe in the first place.

No, apologetics is actually for believers. Let’s be honest and admit that overwhelmingly, believers are born into a culture, society that favors some over others. Raise a child in a Hindu culture and overwhelmingly that child will be a believer in the Hindu gods.

Belief for most people is uncritically accepting the gods you were given as a function of place of birth.

 

[sealybobo]

You vot based on your religion. You have organized politically through your religion. You have forced us to be militant. And what about free speech? Do you want to outlaw our words? Your religion seems weak if it can’t be challenged

Is that what you guys are doing? Challenging us?

Here, let me give you a guide to use so you can tell when you are actually challenging us.

View attachment 279496

What are the cosmological arguments for the existence of god? I already debunked those with my first post.

Multiverses. Simple. We just don’t know what god was going before the Big Bang.

And god isn’t necessary. If he is eternal then so too can be the cosmos.

Not our universe. It’s only 13 b years old.

We don’t know. That’s the right answer. Not there must be a god. No there must not

Ok, here you go. Please do debunk it.

It should be obvious that if the material world were not created by spirit that everything that has unfolded in the evolution of space and time would have no intentional purpose. That it is just matter and energy doing what matter and energy do. Conversely, if the material world were created by spirit it should be obvious that the creation of the material world was intentional. After all in my perception of God, God is no thing and the closest thing I can relate to is a mind with no body. Using our own experiences as creators as a proxy, we know that when we create things we create them for a reason and that reason is to serve some purpose. So it would be no great leap of logic to believe that something like a mind with no body would do the same. We also know from our experiences that intelligence tends to create intelligence. We are obsessed with making smart things. So what better thing for a mind with no body to do than create a universe where beings with bodies can create smart things too.


We have good reason to believe that we find ourselves in a universe permeated with life, in which life arises inevitably, given enough time, wherever the conditions exist that make it possible. Yet were any one of a number of the physical properties of our universe otherwise - some of them basic, others seemingly trivial, almost accidental - that life, which seems now to be so prevalent, would become impossible, here or anywhere. It takes no great imagination to conceive of other possible universes, each stable and workable in itself, yet lifeless. How is it that, with so many other apparent options, we are in a universe that possesses just that peculiar nexus of properties that breeds beings that know and create.


The biological laws are such that life is programmed to survive and multiply which is a requisite for intelligence to arise. If the purpose of the universe was to create intelligence then a preference in nature for it had to exist. The Laws of Nature are such that the potential for intelligence to existed the moment space and time were created. One can argue that given the laws of nature and the size of the universe that intelligence arising was inevitable. One can also argue that creating intelligence from nothing defies the Second Law of Entropy. That creating intelligence from nothing increases order within the universe. It actually doesn't because usable energy was lost along the way as a cost of creating order from disorder. But it is nature overriding it's tendency for ever increasing disorder that interests me and raises my suspicions to look deeper and to take seriously the proposition that a mind without a body created the material world so that minds with bodies could create too.


If we examine the physical laws we discover that we live in a logical universe governed by rules, laws and information. Rules laws and information are a signs of intelligence. Intentionality and purpose are signs of intelligence. The definition of reason is a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. The definition of purpose is the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. The consequence of a logical universe is that every cause has an effect. Which means that everything happens for a reason and serves a purpose. The very nature of our physical laws point to reason and purpose.


All we have done so far is to make a logical argument for spirit creating the material world. Certainly not an argument built of fairy tales that's for sure. So going back to the two possibilities; spirit creating the material world versus everything proceeding from the material, the key distinction is no thing versus thing. So if we assume that everything I have described was just an accidental coincidence of the properties of matter, the logical conclusion is that matter and energy are just doing what matter and energy do which makes sense. The problem is that for matter and energy to do what matter and energy do, there has to be rules in place for matter and energy to obey. The formation of space and time followed rules. Specifically the law of conservation and quantum mechanics. These laws existed before space and time and defined the potential of everything which was possible. These laws are no thing. So we literally have an example of no thing existing before the material world. The creation of space and time from nothing is literally correct. Space and time were created from no thing. Spirit is no thing. No thing created space and time.

If?

 

[LittleNipper]

Baseless assertions about that which we know not.

So, you don't accept evolution and uniformitarianism because such are based on baseless assertions...

Ok. What is uniformitarianism?

It's the belief that everything has been moving along pretty much the same for hundreds of millions of years. No FLOOD, no 6 day creation, just a slow wearing away and slow rebuilding process repeated over and over...

 

[G.T.]

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

If you have faith, then why do you need to empirically prove the existence of a god?
If you have faith then...god exists because you believe she does.

It's apologetics, which is for nonbelievers, not believers. Believers already have more than enough evidence to believe, which is why we began to believe in the first place.

No, apologetics is actually for believers. Let’s be honest and admit that overwhelmingly, believers are born into a culture, society that favors some over others. Raise a child in a Hindu culture and overwhelmingly that child will be a believer in the Hindu gods.

Belief for most people is uncritically accepting the gods you were given as a function of place of birth.

Its also just too tedious to follow 8 paragraph long gish gallops full of bold assertions, bold assertions, bold assertions, half-truth and then conclusions. Its too bone-headed.

The way to do these discussions is verbally. I have to get my stream back going - but then - I doubt these guys would call. Or maybe they would, who knows. We had 18 people from USMB on the line at one time once...but that was for some trivia I think and not an actual debate. Id be glad to host discussions like these.

 

[LittleNipper]

You must have read the wrong book.

Wow, thats compelling. I guess that, between you and the 100s of other christian sects that all have disagreements with each other, all but one of you also read the wrong book. Let me guess which one is the only one who read the right book...you? Of course.

Job is bad literature, verbose and meandering, that is basically a huge box with a tiny, stupid little argument inside.

We don't all disagree. Many hold to the very same truths but they originated under different leadership and from different countries: Lutherans (Germany), Huguenots (French), Mennonite (Swiss), Puritans (English), etc..

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

If you have faith, then why do you need to empirically prove the existence of a god?
If you have faith then...god exists because you believe she does.

It's apologetics, which is for nonbelievers, not believers. Believers already have more than enough evidence to believe, which is why we began to believe in the first place.

No, apologetics is actually for believers. Let’s be honest and admit that overwhelmingly, believers are born into a culture, society that favors some over others. Raise a child in a Hindu culture and overwhelmingly that child will be a believer in the Hindu gods.

Belief for most people is uncritically accepting the gods you were given as a function of place of birth.

There are Jews who are Messianic, and there are many former Hindi who now know Christ as their personal Savior. People who are honest, will realize that trying to be good enough for GOD isn't possible. There is the need of a permanent solution. Jesus was/is the only permanent solution..

 

[JimBowie1958]

There are Jews who are Messianic, and there are many former Hindi who now know Christ as their personal Savior. People who are honest, will realize that trying to be good enough for GOD isn't possible. There is the need of a permanent solution. Jesus was/is the only permanent solution..

So the Creator just cant help wanting to toss the vast majority of His children into the burning Lake of Fire for all eternity?

roflmao, I don't agree with you concept of God.

It is His Will that all be saved, and so they will be, eventually.

But some hard heads take longer than others.

 

[ding]

If you need justification for a God then you are missing the point of the exercise.

Exactly!!
What happened to Faith?

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

If you have faith, then why do you need to empirically prove the existence of a god?
If you have faith then...god exists because you believe she does.

Because faith and reason are inseparable sisters. It would make no sense to continue to have faith in something or someone for no good reason.

 

[ding]

If you need justification for a God then you are missing the point of the exercise.

Exactly!!
What happened to Faith?

The definition of faith is putting complete trust in something or someone. Would you put complete trust in something or someone without good reason?

Without good reason...break that down for me.

Do you believe in God?

If so, do you believe you have a good reason to believe in God?

Either you do...or you don't...no 'reason' required....reason...lol!

And if you don't, then get on up the road with it.

So if your faith produced no good fruit you would continue to have faith for no good reason?