I said what I said, if you have to create a straw-man to deal with it, fine.
And yet, God allows people to be immolate each other. In His name, from time to time. Not to mention earthquakes, wasting disease, and Chronicles of Riddick. My point is two-fold:
1.) In the face of the above listed atrocities which occur on God’s watch, the idea of hell doesn’t seem so far fetched.
2.) An understanding of God as the “sort of person” who wouldn’t allow there to be something like Hell is harder to mesh with reality.
Well, because the Universe is a set of contingent objects that all 'come about' for reasons, persist for a little while, then go away again. It's in the very nature of the material universe for things to have explanations. Not so with God.
I’ve never seen a formulation of the cosmological argument that did that.
It doesn’t prove that He talked to Moses on Mt. Sinai either. How much work do you expect one little argument to do? For that matter, who believes in God on the sole basis of the cosmological argument anyway? I’ve never met anybody who did. They may think the argument is sound, and use it to refute atheism to to defend their own theism, but to say it’s the reason they believe is quite another thing.
Well, that’s a reliance on human culture. The argument shows that there is an Eternal, timeless, causeless source to the Universe. A hidden premise might be that it’s no coincidence that religions all over the world have always proclaimed this.
Actually, according to the argument is what’s not possible. The whole thrust of the cosmological argument is to say that since the universe we know isn’t eternal (on the grounds that none of it’s components are eternal, and also on the grounds that an infinite regression is impossible) there must be something responsible for the Universe which shares a number of significant propteries with the traditional concept of God.
Likewise, who says this:
"Why do you believe in a religion? "
“The Hippy factor”
Its not a reason that people give or a critique thereof, but an accusation.
Heh, the bar was set pretty low with this thread. If you think it's a worthwhile passtime to criticize the sorts of Christians who believe because THEY READ THE BIBLE or YOU'LL GO TO HELL IF YOU DON'T, then surely it's worthwhile to criticize the sorts of New Age folks who believe out of rebelliousness. And yes, I have been given this reason for people being Wiccans and so on, though of course I phrased it slightly different. If you must have it phrased in the form of how such a person would say it in order to know what I mean, how about:
BECAUSE I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE WHATEVER I WANT.
This doesnt seem like a reason for having religious belief, rather a reason for not being constrained to a particular belief.
Anyway, what is it that you actually object to about that reason?
as for the low bar thing, already its got people involved in defending and attacking the various reasons, what more do folk want from a thread about religion?
Yeah, I know, it's not the kind of reason people give for [i]Christianity[/i], the religion we're here to bitch about, so you have to look for reasons why it doesn't count. That was my expectation when I posted it. Nevertheless, "I can believe whatever I want" is a regularly given reason for non-mainstream religions like Wicca, and New-Agey spiritual ideas.
Eh? I would have thought it was obvious that believing something ‘because I can’ is a terrible reason.
oreso, do particles that arent apparently travelling at the speed of light bump around in many various directions at exactly the speed of light? if every individual particle (not the decaying structures that they come together to form) in the universe is travelling at the speed of light, wouldnt that mean that all of it is actually eternal and has not aged a second, but merely changed position? wait, it doesnt matter. the only reason thats relevant is because it would sound elegant.
the moral of the story: time is purely a product of the interactions between the physical particles that god presumably created, and the existence of time is not some eternal, metaphysical concept any more than the existence of my dog is. is that true? if so, god can possibly live in a place that does not experience time and therefore, saying that he has no creator, that he has existed forever, or that a supergod created him all make absolutely no sense.
I thought we were here to bitch about (and by implication, defend) religiousity in general, not one religion over another.
The particular examples that have been given have been in line with this (they are all easily generalisable to cover the major religions, swap Bible with Torah, Jesus with Vishnu, etc). None so far have been Christian exclusive as far as i can tell.
It is, but that doesnt seem to be a reason people would give for accepting religiousity, rather its a defence agaisnt people saying “why have you rejected christ/mohammed PBUH/the flying spaghetti monster?” or in other words saying “why are you choosing this non-mainstream faith”.
If you’ve heard it as such then I’ll take your word for it and agree its pretty poor. But if its, as i suspect, a defence against other theists, then it seems reasonable, basically saying: “faiths are all just as likely as each other, you have no reason to moan at me”.
That was the initial claim, but I’m not seeing much evidence of it.
Well, that amounts to the same thing though. Unless a person has become an atheist (or sometimes, even then), they reject mainstream religion in favor of something else. If you ask somebody why they are a druid or whatever, and they say “Cause Christianity is stupid”, that’s even worse than “Because I can believe whatever I want”. Now that I think of it, you can add that as a reason people give for religious belief:
BECAUSE [MAINSTREAM RELIGION] IS STUPID.
New-age pagan type beliefs are a significant force in the West right now, and they do largely develop in reaction to mainstream religion. So I would say that reasons that are primarily rebuttals against an inquiring mainstream-religionist are valid reasons, since oftentimes that’s the only reason the person is going to have initially.
So wait, believing in Christianity because of the cosmological argument is a bad reason, but believing in voodoo because 'other people believe false things so why shouldn't I' is reasonable? Are you[i] sure [/i]this thread is about criticizing all religiosity equally?
A further comment about the cosmological argument: I would say it’s a fine reason, in fact from the atheistic perspective the ideal reason to believe in religion: because you have sought and found a logical argument that convinces you of it’s truth. So long as the individual doesn’t have a good reason to think the cosmological reason is false, I don’t see why it’s a bad reason to believe. It’s certainly an endeavor in the right direction, unlike some of the other examples presented here.
This doesnt seem so bad to me. If indeed, people find mainstream religion stupid, but they still want to hold some kind of belief then obviously they must adopt a minority religion.
I said it was a defence against accusations from other theists, not an argument for their religion in isolation. If it is being used as an argument for their religion then obviously it is bad, as i said.
Obviously, there is a range of how poor different folk think these reasons are, and indeed some folk may seem as good.
The point is we argue these different sides. For myself, I also think the cosmological argument is not as poor as some, but its still incorrect.
I don’t think it has been used for centuries for the purpose of keeping people within the institution. That might be a general, or your general, perception of Hell’s practical application, but I’m certain that most people of faith wouldn’t consider the existence of Hell as that which is meant to “keep them in line†as it were.
Of course it requires rationality. To come to the very conclusion that God exists requires rational thought. Whether right or wrong, rational thought is an attempt to make sense of the world around us. It has very little to do with what our referent is. People normatively misuse “rationalityâ€, or take it out of the context it is being used in and assume that their definition is the correct one, when in fact, they are merely applying what in the philosophy of language is known as a persuasive definition.
But that in itself is not the cosmological argument. That is the first principle of the cosmological argument. There is a terribly huge difference. I will more than likely seem to echo Uccisore in some cases when I respond to you:
As Uccisore pointed out – and I will expound on, there is a general consensus among theologians that the universe is indeed a contingent phenomenon. The objects within the universe are contingent as well, whether on each other or something else. Not to fully ignore the importance of the discrepancy, but the purpose of the argument is to show that God is the cause for the universe – and that is its primary concern. Whether God has a creator as well is more of a red herring than anything else, or another issue that should be addressed by a different argument.
However, cosmological arguments tend to preempt such discrepancies by labeling God as the ultimate or first cause/mover. This removes the possibility of their being a contradiction within the argument, such that God can have a creator. For nothing can precede the first or the ultimate.
I do not agree with Uccisore here, though. All arguments presuppose some truth value to the claim that they are intending to support, or prove. But pointing that out is merely a meaningless objection – it ultimately has no bearing on the argument itself. It is extraneous. The content is what is important, not what the author is intending, or presupposes beforehand. If the authors of arguments did not presuppose some truth value, then there would be little point in arguing.
Some cosmological arguments propose stipulative definitions for how the concept of contingency is being used within the context of the argument. I remember reading a paper from one of my modal logic classes that presented a stipulative definition. Contingent can very well mean that without God’s perpetual existence, nothing else can exist. Whitehead echoes this when he comes to the conclusion that the only necessary characteristic of God’s is creativity, and that all things are brought into existence – God’s very nature is compelling in this sense – through God’s existing.
Well, this is not necessarily true. Although not all cosmological arguments identify God as eternal, it is generally assumed or part of an unstated premise that God is ever-living. God being eternal tends to be a theoretical imperative.
As Uccisore pointed out, you are expecting quite a lot from this argument. Alone, the argument might not prove that the God in context is the God in question. However, the conclusion of this argument is merely the premise of an ongoing theological dialectic.
Anything is possible as long as we are not referring to concepts such as squares and circles, things that do not possibly exist outside of us. But it is more plausible and probable that the universe is not infinite. The Big Bang is a phenomenon that as is explained shows that something preceded it – matter. So it would not be the First Cause, it would be contingent on the existence of the matter that preceded it. It might very well be something else, but it is not the Big Bang.
Um, no. Its a sharp divide between massless objects that travel at light speed and can only go slower by virture of the medium they move through, and massfull stuff thats slower and could never accelerate to the speed of light.
The jury is still out. It doesnt help matters that philosophers are generally ignorant of QM and phycisists are generally ignorant of philosophy, but from what ive heard theres no definitive answer about what time is, other than the obvious (its a dimension part of spacetime, it goes in one direction from our experience, etc).
Of course, there can be a way for god to exist timelessly (not just eternally), but this has unfortunate consequences: chiefly, he couldnt change in any way, and that includes having any influence on a timeful environment like the universe.
What about the big bang theory. It turns out that the center of every galaxy has a black hole. When these black holes eat up every star within reach, they stop feeding and need more energy to reach the rest of the galaxy. Setting the galaxy in perpetual motion. Showing that the universe has an unknown starting point and doesn’t contiually collapse and explode.
Then there’s the idea that space and time are a side effect of matter. Why they aren’t constants, but variables toward matter isn’t known. But it shows some action in matter causes space and time as an equal and opposite side effect.
Then theres the idea about the sexes. Men and womens differences consolidates lifes needs into roles toward each other. Showing purpussfull design toward purpose.
Then there’s ghosts… A topic the catholic church says acknoledging ghosts give them more power. Yet science can only see electromagnetic side effects toward these annomialies. Showing the soul is an energy independent of matter. Showing the soul charges the matter it passes through.
I just wanted to hear how other people thought. One of my topics was about the practical value of Christianity to American culture. It was neither positive or negative.
Maybe if I see a good response to my various posts I will get a new perspective to consider.
These are good arguments . . . for an atheist, or against anyone who believes in a good God. And they do strongly point to a God that is either aloof with respect to humanity (doesn’t interact/see a need to/consider it His buisness to do so), or constrained by some plan or part of His nature. But that doesn’t mean I will believe that he is malevolently set against mankind.
My primary reason for still believing in God is a sort of cosmological argument: the universe seems to be ordering itself according to extremely elegant, universal, time invariant laws of nature. It is amazing that a set of field forces and conservation laws could give rise to particles, atoms, galaxies, stars, and life. I won’t pretend to know why or where it is going from God’s perspective, and we can’t even really know if life figures into the primary purpose or not, but I do feel that there is some significance about it all. I know this isn’t proof and won’t satisfy the extremely skeptical (enter faith, but I’m not out to evangelize).
However, the presence of hardship for earthly life doesn’t mean that God is operating a great concentration camp in the sky.
It would allow him to have a time invariant effect on the universe, would it not? Given any universe U, dU/dt = God’s Will(U). I suppose you could also swap in Natural Law, if you don’t find it worthy of awe.
Are you sure an infinite regression is impossible? Granted, the universe does appear to have a beginning through the Hubble redshift, Big Bang and a few other cosmological things. However, we do see a regression that goes as far as we can currently detect in terms of structure on varying degrees of scale. quarks,baryons, atoms (throw in leptons, and maybe someday sub-leptons if QP doesn’t prevent us from looking), molecules, macromolecules, planets (which are full of their own structural peculiarities), star systems, galaxies, clusters, superclusters, “sheets” and so on to the limits of our current time horizon. I would be disappointed if it didn’t keep going in both directions. It’s interesting. Zeno’s paradox and it’s various equivalents in mathematical reasoning are really failures of the imagination.
I guess what I’m missing is that Hell is any more indicative of that than anything else. I mean, there are plenty of good reasons to disbelieve in Hell, I suppose, but if the reason is “A good God would never do that,” well, I can give you a long long list of things that, on the face of it, a good God would never do- that He did.
But I’m a theist and a Christian. For my own part, I believe something like what you say above, that God is ‘constrained’ by a plan, and a part of His nature. I wouldn’t call them constraints because they are nothing that acts on God from without, but still, there it is.
Sure, I can see that sort of position. My argumentative reasons for believing in God are similar, but not naturalistic. I wouldn't cite stars, life, and such as evidence of God, but rather paintings, wars, and stand-up comedy- all of those enormously complex things, utterly pointless from a naturalistic perspective, that ought not exist in a natural universe. It just strikes me as preposterous that energy fields and atoms bouncing around like billard balls could result in things like family sitcoms cancelled halfway through their first season. Perhaps I see the evidence for God in the rediculous and the chaotic where you see it in the ordered?
Indeed, and I think there’s many different understandings of Hell that aren’t that severe. I’ve always been a fan of C.S Lewis’s take that our souls and lives come to ‘conclusions’ (even though they persist) and that those conclusions can be either triumphant or tragic depending on how we lived to that point. Hell is the tragic conclusion, and I would hestitate to say anything more about it than that.
well yes I had, but feel free to express yourself as you wish.
From the perspective of someone who doesn’t believe the Bible is divine, yes, it seems likely that hell was designed as a dissuasion to stray from christian doctrine, just as heaven was an incentive to behave. Just because christians dont view it that way, it doesn’t mean it’s not true.'Course it’s not such a popular idea now to rattle the spectre of Hell in front of the flock, it doesn’t mesh well with the modern psyche…but for a long time IT WAS.
Coming to a conclusion about God should require rational thought and plenty of believers do seek a rational basis for their devotion, but faith in itself,as opposed to a reasoned belief, does not require a rational basis. The very definition of faith is “a belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence”.
You mean it’s an inconvenience to the cosmological argument.I dont see why theologians should set the terms of the debate.
Why should it be assumed? If you get that luxury then so should I. I could just as easily assume then that God is not ever-living. I could assume that he is nothing more than the big bang…in fact i could assume almost anything.
Not only does the cosmological argument fail to prove that the first cause is the God in question, it fails to prove that the First Cause is indeed…any sort of “God”. If that is asking too much, then I think that is because the argument is too weak.
How do you know matter preceeded the big bang? Why couldn’t matter have come into being with the big bang itself? We dont know what was before the big bang. Physics as we understand it breaks down before that point.We can only speculate.
Even if the big bang is more plausable than an infinite universe[and I dont deny it]something else need not have caused it. Quantam physics has recently demonstrated that some things can occur without cause.
There are various theories about the big bang and some of them dont require a cause. For example:
If it is true that our Universe has a zero net value for all conserved quantities, then it may simply be a fluctuation of a vacuum, the vacuum of some larger space in which our universe is imbedded. In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time
Edward Tryon, “Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?”
Others have expanded on Tyron’s idea and suggested that the Universe was created by quantum processes starting from “literally nothing”, meaning not only the absence of matter, but the absence of space and time as well.
Who knows? I think you would have to agree that the universe is still a great uunfathomable mystery to us. Science has not given us the answer and neither has theology, though I think it is more likely to be found in scientific inquiry than theological supposition. I do believe in the old idea that “there are things in heaven and earth Horatio…” But as yet, the cosmological argument has not been sufficiently convincing to establish the existence of God…it has too many flaws to be evidence of God. Would you agree or disagree?
