Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Radu Andreiu on August 16, 2010 at 10:55am

I've read your posts in which you presented arguments derived from both scientific and pseudo-scientific facts, but they are completely illogical, hence the evidence doesn't support your view. But let's say that it did support the idea of a creator, although it most certainly doesn't. If this were true, then what evidence do you have for this creator being the Christian god and not another one?

As for the will of belief, that's a rather theistic ability. Intelligent people don't use will when it comes to belief, but evidence. I may want to believe I'm on Mars, but, unless I'm somehow insane, I can't actually believe that. Also, I may not want to believe my loved ones are going to die someday, but I still believe they will.

Anyway, even if atheists didn't want to believe there was a god, they should have been distributed uniformly across different ranges of intelligence and scientific literacy. However, as the facts present themselves, it looks like the actual intelligence and scientific knowledge of people makes them not believe in a god. Do people want there not to be a god the more intelligent they are, or the more science they know? Or are the knowledge of scientific evidence and the intelligence used to derive conclusions out of them the things that make people dismiss the hypothesis of a god existing and especially a specific god, such as Yahew? There is plenty of evidence again specific information presented in the Bible, but people either refuse to acknowledge such evidence, or they believe the verses have metaphorical meaning, as they can't have literal meaning.

Permalink Reply by Angelo on August 16, 2010 at 11:23am

Congratulations, Angelo, you have truly earned the distinction of being the first recipient of the Featured Fallacy sticker!

Amazing. What for exactly i earned it ?

Permalink Reply by Angelo on August 16, 2010 at 11:54am

hi Neal

some posters i can't respond, as the reply to this feature does not appear.

To your question. Why is it not more plausible to believe, the universe always was.
There are several arguments , scientific , and philosophical ones.

Here are some quotes from university websites by scientists who know that the universe had a beginning:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/beginning.html

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/astronomy-cosmology-and-god-f15/evi...

Science supports Einstein's claim that the universe is a closed system. That means it has finite energy. Even though energy cannot be created or destroyed (by any natural processes), over time the useful energy in the universe becomes more and more useless. This is known in science as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If the universe were eternal then all of the energy would have become totally useless by now and I wouldn't be writing this article and you wouldn't be reading it either!

Isn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics merely an expression of probability? Yes, but the probability is so high and certain that the odds of just one calorie of energy spontaneously defying the Second Law would be trillions times trillions to one, and the universe is made up of far more than just one calorie of energy!

There are some disquieting issues with this theory, at least to the non-Physicists. First, the singularity did not appear in space. Space did not exist before the big Bang and in fact, had to begin inside the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed. So, where did it come from and why? We don’t know. All we do know is that we exist within space and at one time it did not exist and neither did we.

philosophical reasons :

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/philosophy-and-god-f14/philosophy-o...


. . .you will never live for an eternity.

How can that be? Think about numbers for a moment. Are numbers potentially infinite? Yes, sure they are. They can potentially go on forever and ever. Potentially, the quantity of numbers is infinitely large. There's no end to them. Now, how do you ever get from a potential infinity to an infinity when it comes to numbers? Well, you can start counting--one, two, three, four, five, billion one, billion two, a zillion one, two, a quintillion one, a quintillion two. Keep going. Do you realize that at any particular point in time as you keep adding one number to another--a procedure which potentially could go on forever--that you haven't really accomplished that feat? You haven't really gone on forever, have you? The number gets bigger and bigger, of course. But at every particular point you happen to be counting at, your count describes a finite number. Will you ever get to eternity by counting, adding one number onto another? The answer is no, you won't. That's why I can say that you will never live for an eternity. You started--you came into existence--at some point in time. That's when your clock started running and the moments began to add up, one event upon another. But as you go forward into eternity, if you make an assessment at any particular point, your cosmic clock will show a finite age, counting from the time you started to the time you're at. Now, you can keep going on forever and ever, but no matter how long you continue going on you will still have a particular age identifying the length of time of your existence. That particular age will never be an infinite amount. Do you see how that works? This is why you can never count to infinity, because infinity is not a particular number; by definition it's an innumerable amount. At every stage along the counting process you are always describing a finite number, even though that number gets larger and larger as you count. In the same way, you will never live to eternity even though you live forever and ever, even though you never cease to exist, because at any given point in the process you will still have an age, even though the age is getting larger and larger as you move deeper and deeper into eternity. I think this is why, by the way, eternal life in the Scriptures is not identified principally as a quantity of time, but as a quality of time. Look at John 17:3. Remember the great high priestly prayer of Jesus? He says,

"And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent."

Notice, the focus of eternal life is not on how long you're living as if you were actually accomplishing an eternity of existence. It's on the quality of life you live forever and ever--knowing God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Once again, you can't accomplish an actual infinity--an eternity-- with regards to time. It can't be done. Why? Because you can only move towards eternity by adding one moment upon another in series.

And you can never accomplish an infinite series of things (numbers or moments in time) by adding to the list one at a time. In this case, you can never add up an infinite number of events transcribing an infinite period of time. In philosophical circles this is called the problem with accomplishing an actually infinite series of events by simply adding one event to another.

As we've done our little mind experiment here--our experiment in thinking and reflection on the nature of eternity and whether one gets there- -we realized you can't really get to eternity by adding events together, one upon another. Because at every point you still have a finite number, even though it is much larger than it used to be. In other words, time proceeds forward as one event is added to another and it's always a finite amount of time. Do you see that? It's not really as hard to grasp this as you may think. I'm simply saying that numbers are potentially infinite, but you can never get there by counting. At any point in your count you are still dealing with a finite number. The same applies to events in time. This means that though you will live forever and ever, you will never live for an eternity, because you cannot accomplish an eternity by "counting" moments, adding one event upon another. Now this has very significant applications for the concept of the existence of God. It's really quite simple. Our little experiment took us from the present into the future. We realize that we can never get to an infinite period of time in the future by adding individual events together. But today, this point of time in the present, is a point of time future to all past. Correct? In other words, we are future to yesterday, and the day before that.

Now, some have suggested that the universe is eternal, that it has existed forever. But our little reflection has shown us it's not possible that it has existed forever.

Here's why. This point in time we call "now" is actually future with reference to all of the past. We agreed you cannot get to any infinite point in the future by adding as events one to another. Therefore, this present moment in time can't represent an actual infinite number of events added one to another proceeding from the past. Time has proceeded forward from the past as one event is added onto another to get us to today. But we know that whenever you pause in the count as we've done today, that you can't have an infinite number of events. Which means that there is no infinite number of events that goes backward from this point in time, only a finite number of events. Here's another way of putting it. If you can't get into the infinite future from a fixed reference point (the present) by adding consecutive events one by one, you cannot get into the infinite past by subtracting consecutive events, one by one, from a fixed reference point (the present). If you can't transverse the distance in one direction (present to infinite past), you can't transverse it in the other direction (infinite past to present). This means that if the universe consisted of an infinite series of events in time, you could never arrive at this present moment. Philosopher Dallas Willard puts it this way: "As in a line of dominoes, if there is an infinite number of dominoes that must fall before domino x is struck, it will never be struck. The line of fallings will never get to it." ( Does God Exist--The Great Debate , p. 203-204) In other words, there would have to be an infinite number of events completed before you could get to the domino before you. But you can never complete an infinite number of events. An infinite series is innumerable by definition, so you can't treat it as if it were a number you could ever arrive at. This means the universe is not eternal. The universe has not existed forever and ever with no beginning. The universe, in fact, had a beginning. If it had a beginning, if the universe came into being, and it's not eternal, then something must have caused it that didn't have a beginning itself. The universe had a Beginner, some infinite, self-existent, uncaused, non- contingent Someone who started it all. Some kind of God must have been back there in time. I like this argument. It's a little tricky, but it shows how much work you can do with a few moments of careful reflection. And it's a good argument, by the way. It's called the Kalam cosmological argument developed by Muslim theologians during the Middle Ages. Now if this argument is good, then our conclusions should match the world as we discover it. And science has demonstrated this particular thing to be true--because science has demonstrated with Big Bang cosmology that the universe did have a beginning, prior to which there was nothing physical. Science has shown that time and matter and energy all had their beginning at a point called the singularity. Prior to that, there was nothing physical. The universe came into being. That raises some very interesting questions about how such a thing ever happened to begin with. I'm not going to carry it further at this time. Others have done so and we've talked about this at other times. You chew on that for a while.

Why is there something rather than nothing at all?

Let me just bring this out of the intellectual stratosphere for a minute. You are talking with an atheist. You ask the atheist, "OK, if God doesn't exist, where did everything come from? Obviously something is here. Where did it come from? Why is there something rather than nothing at all?" He says, "I don't know, I'm not an expert. I don't know all the answers. You're the one with all the answers." You say, "Wait a minute. It's not that hard. There aren't that many options. Either everything always was here or it wasn't always here. The Law of Excluded Middle says it's got to be one or the other. Can't be neither. Can't be both." Well, we know that the universe wasn't always here because of this little exercise we did. It's impossible to accomplish an actually infinite series of events by adding one to the other. Further, science seems to make the point very clearly from what we know in cosmology and astrophysics, astronomy: the universe had a beginning. So we are stuck with a universe that began. It wasn't always here; it came into being. Now, it either began by itself--in other words, it created itself--or something else caused it to happen. Things can't create themselves and here's why. In order for a thing to create itself it would have to be the cause that caused itself as an effect. We have cause and effect. You make a pie. You making it is the cause. The pie is the effect. In this case, we'd have to say the pie made itself which means it is its own cause even though it is the effect. This would mean it would have to exist to cause itself before it existed as an effect. It would have to exist and not exist at the same time. That's absurd. Therefore, it must have been caused by something else. Now what caused it? It would have to be something that itself wasn't caused, or else you would run into the same problem we started with. So just with a little thinking here, we come to the conclusion that everything wasn't here, and so something must have caused it--and it would have to be something that wasn't itself caused but was eternal. A little more thinking and you could come to the conclusion that it must be personal as well, because the cause has to be greater than the effect--and the universe has personal elements in it--so therefore the cause must be personal as well. That's pretty easy, I think. Where did everything come from? Well, there are not too many options. You can move from there to the fact that there must have been some kind of intelligent first cause--Aristotle's unmoved Mover. You haven't proven the God of the Bible, but it is a beginning. Now if an atheist rejects this, then what is he committed to? He is committed to either saying that everything always existed, for which there is no evidence. None. Zero. Zip. Or he has to say that everything came from nothing, for which there is no evidence. None. Zero. Zip. Now who is the person who is taking the wild leap of faith?




If that wasn't the plan....it raises the more worrying question (for theists).. Did God's Plan go wrong?
Why did he create a universe where he had to kill himself to save a tiny portion of it?
What is this ultimate purpose for our existence that theists are always rambling on about in their arguments for an intelligent designer and a benevolent creator?
They say that atheism equates to a purposeless existence. (which is balderdash) What is the Ultimate Purpose' of creating an eternal torture chamber for MOST of your creation? How is it better? How is it not 'infinately worse? What great truths and spiritual wisdom are gleaned from this?
The criteria of salvation is simple... to admit out sinful and worthless nature and to accept the forgiveness and grace of god...... yet that simple salvation is withdrawn to folks who don't make it during this physical lifetime. How come? Why make the universe that way? What ultimate purpose is there in this acceptance? What great spiritual wisdom and truths are gleaned from this? How are these folks that much more worthy of an eternity of peace than those for whatever reason did not or could not do this? The bigger question.. How are these folks that didn't make it worthy of an eternity of torture, suffering and pain?
Why couldn't an all-powerful, all-knowing being have created a universe of rehabilitation where we LEARN from our mistakes, where growth and knowledge didn't stop with the end of our eye-blink of a physical existence but could continue on forever? Why eternally lock the door between heaven and hell to those who didn't make it during such a brief existence on earth?
Whats the ultimate purpose for an eternity of suffering and pain? If the souls in hell can't ever learn or grow whats the ultimate point?
Just a few questions for the christian theist.

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