Thanks to Jason we now know what God’s first and second greatest commandments were.
I was just wondering where ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image’ ranks?
(I’ve got my fingers ‘crossed’ hoping it’s down there with ‘Thou shalt not wear knee-length socks with sandals’)
Greetings from Colombia. Another thing Jason misses is that the first commandment is “Love God above all things”… so, I can love everybody, unless god says he doesn’t like him.
Also, this tell us how egocentric this god character is.
I guess I shouldn’t sneeze on anything that makes a person behave well, but I do think it’s wrong to be good because you think God wants you to. You have to be good because you KNOW it’s right and good for the world, not just you, to be good.
And my reasoning is not based on morality. It’s based on practicality. If you’re good because of God, you’ll slip when you’re not caring what happens to you. You can start thinking, hey, I don’t mind going to hell. Fine with me. If you’re good because you really believe it’s the best way to be a human being, and it offends you to not be good, you’ll be less tempted to slack off. In fact, temptation will be of an entire different nature.
Being good for a guy in the sky just doesn’t work, because people have religious doubts, and they tend to throw the baby away with the bathwater, so to speak.
But if Jason needs training wheels till he figures it out, I’m not the one who’s going to say that’s not right. It’s a beginning.
We are to be good because it is right, it just so happens that God knows this as well… It’s sad that we have to be told to do the obvious… Perhaps the author missed my point… But I really don’t think that this debate will go anywhere as to proving whether or not God is real or not, all it proves is that I wasn’t walking on eggshells when I wrote. I made a mistake, oops.
I Do live my neighbor because God tells me to, but not only because He tells me to, but also because it is the right thing to do.
Winning and argument doesn’t validate your own correctness…
And honestly, feel free to poke fun at me more, it doesn’t bother me a bit!
AND finally, I submit a challenge to the author. If you can tell me philosophically where EXISTENCE comes from, apart from matter that has no particles, then I will laugh my butt of because you will have become a real comedian.
Where does existence come from? Evolution? What? Existence is more than matter, matter is merely the product.
*Some* atheists use straw man arguments about christianity, just like some christians use straw man arguments against atheism. It really doesn’t help to lump people together.
It’s also fallacious to imply that just because the author cannot explain the entire of existence in atheistic terms that therefore there must be a god.
A counter argument might be this; you cannot explain the entire of existence by citing a divine creator because you haven’t explained the existence of that creator… you have only explained part of existence, not the whole thing. Asking atheists to be able to prove the whole thing would surely be hypocritical.
If god had a free choice about what is moral and what is immoral, then he could have chosen to make things we consider immoral moral, and vice versa. He could – being all powerful – change his mind and reverse his choices tomorrow. We could wake up and find that coveting our neighbours’ asses is essential for getting into heaven.
If he doesn’t have the power to choose, then it is determined by some higher power, and god has nothing to do with it.
… Unless the whole concept is merely a human construct which helps our societies function better.
Jason says,
“We are to be good because it is right, it just so happens that God knows this as well.”
I guess that I am christian without ever even knowing it, because this exactly how I feel. I do what I know is right, and if God agrees with me, then great. If not, then I do what is right and God can just piss off.
“Where does existence come from? Evolution? What? Existence is more than matter, matter is merely the product.”
Existance doesnt have to be more than matter, etc. As grand as the ideas of religion and existentialism may be, the universe does not in any way OWE us meaning. Some things just are. Just because some people can not accept that up and need mythology to make themselves feel better about life, does not make it true.
Finally, the proof of an existentialist claim is ALWAYS the responsibility of the maker of that claim. You don’t have to respect my opinion that unicorns are hiding under the ocean, and we just cant see them any more than I have to respect the oppinion that some fundamentally unknowable force controls my destiny and will use his magic for me if I kiss his ass enough. I dont know why scientists must spend so much of their time debunking religion. For so many people, anything that can not be explained must be god.
Every generation of science and humanity has been pretty sure that they had a pretty good handle on the way the universe works, and every generation has been fundamentally wrong in several major respects. Idiots just throw their hands up and say that the answer to the unknown question must be “god,” while the rest of us work to fill in the gaps in human understanding. Thank any diety you want for the people who choose to challenge the unkown with the logic that god-fearing people so hate.
And come on Jason, please, besides giving this “difficult” question for the atheists to answer, can u please answer a few questions about christian beliefs, like, um, let’s say the trinity? or sending a fig tree to hell beacause it beared no fruit? or let’s say committing “assisted” suicide, to save the human race from the hell that the suicidee or his father or both or his ghost or their ghost created for the latter? Or or or…
I mean, where’s logic in here?
And my faulty model (at least I know it’s not real) is Dame Joan Sutherland (not because she created me nor gave me my own morals and values, just because I love her voice). She’s my model alright… You know, at least I KNOW EMPIRICALLY that she exists. And the best thing is, she doesn’t tell me nor anyone that I’ll go to hell, if I don’t like her.
Back to being serious now. We know evolution is a fact unlike other things I can mention, so this is a part of the existence which was solved empirically of course not philosophically (it’s like philosophy is a science?). If we ever discover other FACTS dear Jason, I will surely let you know, and not by pretending stuff like you have done in your posts.
Jason says,
“AND finally, I submit a challenge to the author. If you can tell me philosophically where EXISTENCE comes from, apart from matter that has no particles, then I will laugh my butt of because you will have become a real comedian.”
What is this “matter with no particles” you speak of? Particles are made of matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed into another form (e.g. chemical into sound thermal and kinetic in a car engine).
More specifically, your phrase “tell me philosophically where EXISTENCE comes from”. Just because you can make it a sentence, doesn’t mean it’s a valid question. “How does green think on tuesday?” is a sentence, but that’s not enough to count in big boy school.
Jason makes his inane question sound so grand. Like, ‘HA! I told you!’. Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand that science does not try to prove meaning, just facts. And the ‘fact’ that you believe in god does not make it true. It’s a belief, and you are welcome to it! By all means! Just don’t try to tell me you can prove it using science.
Jason, good is “right” regardless of whether God thinks it is? God just so happens to know what is right? Doesn’t that mean that God can (and might) be evil? Why should we worship him if we can’t be sure? Why should we listen to anything he has to say?
heck no! Hey, I’m no defender of religion, but then the way his logic is what ends most debates I’ve seen on the existence of God is an anomaly for me. Check this site out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinquae_viae but then you won’t be able to understand it unless you get the whole translated reading.
Lee the Red, these arguments might be valid for the existence of some sort of creation and certainly not arguments for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God which is as any reasonable person would agree a absurd caracter in science fiction.
Atheists do to, they just don’t believe in the god that they argue is the Christian God. But they set up a faulty model and argue against it.”
Your statement is a bit confusing, so apologies if I have misunderstood your point.
From my personal point of view (and ain’t that the great thing about atheism? I can think for myself, weigh the evidence and come to my own conclusion, rather than just going with the crowd or being told what to think/believe by “spiritual leaders”):
Firstly – I’m not singling out your Christian “god” particularly, I don’t believe there is any supreme intelligent being/beings responsible for the creation of everything and still meddling (I don’t care what flavour or name you give to it)
Secondly – I’m not really arguing against any model of god. If believers were happy in their own belief and stopped trying to force their beliefs on other people, atheists would be happy to STFU. I’m perfectly happy for you to believe in god, or fairies, or men in the moon – as long as you resist the urge to share your personal belief with others. It’s when we see religious views being forced on other people (especially children) and religion butting into government that we feel we have to argue.
Thirdly- the only model I have for any gods is what I’ve been told by believers. Personally I don’t believe I need to construct a faulty god to argue against it – I’ve yet to hear a believer define their belief and their god in a way which isn’t full of inherent contradictions and faults. You guys do all the hard work for us!
Lee The Red wrote: “heck no! Hey, I’m no defender of religion, but then the way his logic is what ends most debates I’ve seen on the existence of God is an anomaly for me. Check this site out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinquae_viae but then you won’t be able to understand it unless you get the whole translated reading.”
Perhaps someone else who understands this better than me can put me right – but this just seems to be a flowery version of “we can’t explain where it all began, god fits nicely into that void of explanation, therefore there must be a god”.
But you could slot anything into that void – spaghetti monsters, pink unicorns, super advanced aliens – it is no proof of god.
Again, I’m naive, but it seems atheists can use the argument against religion. Aquinas’s argument hangs on the premise that everything must be caused and everything must be created…except this vital rule doesn’t apply to the god he’s setting out to prove via this construct.
And I think this applies to you again Jason. You posted a slightly complicated challenge about matter and existance. Let’s just flip it around for the religious types. Why is any scientific explanation any more comedic than “it’s all the work of a supreme intelligence – whose existence we can’t prove either and we can’t tell you where he/she/it came from either, it just “popped” into existance…or perhaps created itself”.
Everything has a source… All matter has it’s source… I came from my parents, my parents came from theirs and so on and so forth… But their is always a trail that leads further back… Eventually you hit a mathematical problem for the atheist, that problem is SINGULARITY. Eventually there had to be a first cause that has no cause. It is absurd to think that anything mindless is that cause, knowing that such a logical universe spawned from this first source. It takes more faith to believe that than to believe in a being that transcends all things… Why can you believe in an uncaused first cause that has no mind, but find it intellectually impossible to grasp the concept of an uncaused first cause that has a mind, a consciousness? We have all seen matter, correct? So it’s easy for us to believe in a source that is material… Well, we’ve all experienced conscious awareness, correct? Why can we not accept the one, and religiously cling to the other, as if a conscious being instead of unconscious matter did it all??? Is there ANY PROOF that matter did it all? Despite what an overzealous atheist might say, there actually is no PROOF, only speculation… Welcome to the world of faith atheists!
Wow. Did you wait a year to answer, so that your arguments would go unanswered? Bad luck I just found J&M and are reading it through from the beginning :p
You talk about an uncaused first cause as illogical, but you belive in God. Who created God? Ops, an uncaused first cause, hello!
We know the universe exist, because we live in it. I don’t know how it came to be, but to me I can live with the fact that it happened. We have no proof of any gods. Isn’t it way more illogical to invent a first cause to the universe (god) and then claim your invented first cause (god) don’t need a first cause, than to just accept the fact that we don’t know how the universe came to be? Just because you think it is absurd to think that something mindless is the first cause, doesn’t make it absurd. But then again, if you follow your own logic to it’s conclusion, it is absurd to believe in god, because he too must have a “mindless cause”. Or did he create himself? Then why can’t you accept that the universe created itself? It’s the same explanation, just one step removed. The concept of god doesn’t bring anything to the table by way of en explaining how things started, so you might as well just remove it….
Actually the proper answer for how the universe got started is “I don’t know, and neither do you, no matter how much you think you do.” Maybe we’ll find out some day, and maybe we won’t, but not knowing the answer to a question is not evidence that god is the answer.
if i were jason i would be happy for the author considering my comment important enought to do a strip about it .
ANd ofcourse if you already assume and want to BELIEVE that
existance is something seperate from and Other than matter,
AND MATTER HAS NO PARTICLE,
AND MATTER MUST HAVE A BEGINNING,
EXISTANCE IS MORE THAN MATTER,
MATTER IS ONLY PRODUCT. .. .
Then you sir are a true beliver .. iGive up to you ..
..wow, J&M read their own cartoon strip………what happens when they try to read this particular strip…will they disappear into themselves in a continuous, never ending loop……maybe like tumbling into a black hole or a singularity, or even the end of the world, or the second coming!?; this is doing me ‘ed in…(I’ll get me coat – again)
Actually, Science works on what is most likely to be true, and uses this as a stand point for further science, when new evidence comes to light, science changes and evolves, sometimes science has not got the answers, yet, but actually ‘I don’t know’ is perfectly valid.
There is nothing to say that the ‘uncaused causer’ is god over any other kind of being. And what caused god?
Jason, your ontological argument is not really advancing your point – god exists because you imagine him to exist, and you imagine him greater than the universe therefore he must exist – it’s standard theist delusional fare and no doubt your god would understand it as Iason cogitat ergo sum (Jason thinks, therefore I am).
I suppose that in certain respects god exists, but only ever within the minds of believers – outside of that there’s just a vacuum. And just because you cannot conceive of a vacuum doesn’t mean you get to fill it with superstition and delusion just so you can understand it better.
The same goes for the singularity and your understanding (or lack of understanding) of what it is – ignorance has always been a “rationale” for, or “proof” of god, and as science explains more, our intrepid theists just move the goalposts to whatever they see as the current unanswerable and declare that to be the line in the sand where non-theists fail in their endeavours to disprove the notion of god.
Really, it’s too ridiculous a conceit – it is not up to the non-theists to explain the origins of the big bang, the explaining needs to be done by those theists that claim the big bang as proof of the divine nature of everything.
Of course, for this proof I’d expect the theist to be suitably knowledgeable in quantum physics and bigbangology – just parroting, “it’s unknown, therefore it’s god”, or, “TMI!! my brain hurts!”, aint going to win the argument.
TL;DR
The Singularity “paradox” isn’t a mathematical trap for atheists to fall into; it’s a straw man argument by theists who entirely fail to understand the science they’re quoting and miss the irony in their explaining the “something out of nothing” conundrum by having another “something out of nothing” as a precursor.
Just how is that supposed to work? I think heironymous came closest with, “Turtles all the way down”.
I kinda understand the current mainstream thinking of the singularity (vacuum fluctuastions leading to matter created by, and expanded by, negative gravitational energy), but I’ve never heard the ‘goddunnit’ assertion so eloquently refuted. Thank you.
1. Abrahamic religions and some others have never said that you should treat everybody nicely, just your fellow believers. Atheist on the other hand have said several times that you should treat everybody nicely.
2. Universe is. It’s the only perfect object there is as it interacts with nothing. There are few books written by cosmologists that try to explain how it came to be, but I’m not sure if they help any believers to find the light.
According to some models of Black Hole physics, the singularity at the middle of the gravity well can open up a sort of tunnel in space-time, a flaw in the continuum of some length but zero width. These pseudo-tunnels can eventually erupt somewhere as energy sources, hot points that pour matter and energy into the universe, “White Holes”.
This is all overly simplistic bollocks but try to picture this tunnel being able to burrow anywhere in the cosmos. As there is no real connection between these phenomena and the continuum “outside” the singularity the projected endpoint can be anywhere.
And any time.
This is a very, very large universe and it is exceedingly old and long-lived so the changes of a random eruption of a white hole anywhere close to now and here is small so we have yet to see one. Similarly, the chances of an endpoint being at any particular time or place is small. However …
One point of spacetime is very, very singular. The beginning. No black hole tunnel can go back any further nor can one go “outside” that “place”.
So, if a random little black hole tunnel is heading back in time it will of necessity eventually bang up against the wall of non-existence that is the Big Bang’s very first instant.
Of necessity, it will erupt there and then.
Carrying with it all of the physics it had when it was a collapsing star.
Now, there are many, many black holes so quite a number should by sheer chance tunnel back to the start of the universe.
Presto, Big Bang, complete with the rules needed to make the cosmos work.
And all of this highly speculative rubbish provides at least one way of creating a universe without a creator. It made itself simply by virtue of it being there.
Cool, yes?
Now, all we need is a real cosmologist, mathematician or physicist to tell me exactly how silly, ignorant, stupid and wrong I am in how many ways. 🙂
I like that picture but it’s so very simple-minded that it may not even be wrong. It may merely be daft.
Before anyone mentions it, I do know how floppy, soggy, soft and imprecise my language is. I’m commenting in the comments of a comic not writing my Ph.D. dissertation. I’m allowed some looseness and poetry.
I’m also fairly sure the idea isn’t original with me. I suspect it’s been in the sci.physics newsgroup a few times.
Except, as a Christian, I love others not only to please God, but because God has done so much for me in my life that I want to pay that love forward. It’s sort of like, how do I repay a being who is infinite and all-powerful? Well, he asked me to love other people, so I’ll start there. It’s a relationship.
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May 14, 2010
First!
^^^ jUST a joke
pwned! lol
Thanks to Jason we now know what God’s first and second greatest commandments were.
I was just wondering where ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image’ ranks?
(I’ve got my fingers ‘crossed’ hoping it’s down there with ‘Thou shalt not wear knee-length socks with sandals’)
Greetings from Colombia. Another thing Jason misses is that the first commandment is “Love God above all things”… so, I can love everybody, unless god says he doesn’t like him.
Also, this tell us how egocentric this god character is.
Hey Jason -please keep posting…you’re inspiring some great cartoons and truly doing God’s work…or something.
And by the way, atheists don’t create any type of god, weak or otherwise – that’s the whole point of being an atheist.
Cheers – Big Tom
I guess I shouldn’t sneeze on anything that makes a person behave well, but I do think it’s wrong to be good because you think God wants you to. You have to be good because you KNOW it’s right and good for the world, not just you, to be good.
And my reasoning is not based on morality. It’s based on practicality. If you’re good because of God, you’ll slip when you’re not caring what happens to you. You can start thinking, hey, I don’t mind going to hell. Fine with me. If you’re good because you really believe it’s the best way to be a human being, and it offends you to not be good, you’ll be less tempted to slack off. In fact, temptation will be of an entire different nature.
Being good for a guy in the sky just doesn’t work, because people have religious doubts, and they tend to throw the baby away with the bathwater, so to speak.
But if Jason needs training wheels till he figures it out, I’m not the one who’s going to say that’s not right. It’s a beginning.
We are to be good because it is right, it just so happens that God knows this as well… It’s sad that we have to be told to do the obvious… Perhaps the author missed my point… But I really don’t think that this debate will go anywhere as to proving whether or not God is real or not, all it proves is that I wasn’t walking on eggshells when I wrote. I made a mistake, oops.
I Do live my neighbor because God tells me to, but not only because He tells me to, but also because it is the right thing to do.
Winning and argument doesn’t validate your own correctness…
And honestly, feel free to poke fun at me more, it doesn’t bother me a bit!
God is.
Oh and Tom…
Atheists do to, they just don’t believe in the god that they argue is the Christian God. But they set up a faulty model and argue against it.
AND finally, I submit a challenge to the author. If you can tell me philosophically where EXISTENCE comes from, apart from matter that has no particles, then I will laugh my butt of because you will have become a real comedian.
Where does existence come from? Evolution? What? Existence is more than matter, matter is merely the product.
Describe to me one piece of matter that is not a product.
‘If you can tell me philosophically where EXISTENCE comes from…’
We have people working on that. They’re just not here right now.
I would like to think the author has better stuff to write about than the disjointed ramblings of a believer.
@Jason
*Some* atheists use straw man arguments about christianity, just like some christians use straw man arguments against atheism. It really doesn’t help to lump people together.
It’s also fallacious to imply that just because the author cannot explain the entire of existence in atheistic terms that therefore there must be a god.
A counter argument might be this; you cannot explain the entire of existence by citing a divine creator because you haven’t explained the existence of that creator… you have only explained part of existence, not the whole thing. Asking atheists to be able to prove the whole thing would surely be hypocritical.
Existence is merely a philosophical concept, it really doesn’t exist.
And THIS is why you don’t start silly arguments on Jesusandmo!
If god had a free choice about what is moral and what is immoral, then he could have chosen to make things we consider immoral moral, and vice versa. He could – being all powerful – change his mind and reverse his choices tomorrow. We could wake up and find that coveting our neighbours’ asses is essential for getting into heaven.
If he doesn’t have the power to choose, then it is determined by some higher power, and god has nothing to do with it.
… Unless the whole concept is merely a human construct which helps our societies function better.
Jason says,
“We are to be good because it is right, it just so happens that God knows this as well.”
I guess that I am christian without ever even knowing it, because this exactly how I feel. I do what I know is right, and if God agrees with me, then great. If not, then I do what is right and God can just piss off.
“Where does existence come from? Evolution? What? Existence is more than matter, matter is merely the product.”
Existance doesnt have to be more than matter, etc. As grand as the ideas of religion and existentialism may be, the universe does not in any way OWE us meaning. Some things just are. Just because some people can not accept that up and need mythology to make themselves feel better about life, does not make it true.
Finally, the proof of an existentialist claim is ALWAYS the responsibility of the maker of that claim. You don’t have to respect my opinion that unicorns are hiding under the ocean, and we just cant see them any more than I have to respect the oppinion that some fundamentally unknowable force controls my destiny and will use his magic for me if I kiss his ass enough. I dont know why scientists must spend so much of their time debunking religion. For so many people, anything that can not be explained must be god.
Every generation of science and humanity has been pretty sure that they had a pretty good handle on the way the universe works, and every generation has been fundamentally wrong in several major respects. Idiots just throw their hands up and say that the answer to the unknown question must be “god,” while the rest of us work to fill in the gaps in human understanding. Thank any diety you want for the people who choose to challenge the unkown with the logic that god-fearing people so hate.
The theistic arguments always make me laugh!
And come on Jason, please, besides giving this “difficult” question for the atheists to answer, can u please answer a few questions about christian beliefs, like, um, let’s say the trinity? or sending a fig tree to hell beacause it beared no fruit? or let’s say committing “assisted” suicide, to save the human race from the hell that the suicidee or his father or both or his ghost or their ghost created for the latter? Or or or…
I mean, where’s logic in here?
And my faulty model (at least I know it’s not real) is Dame Joan Sutherland (not because she created me nor gave me my own morals and values, just because I love her voice). She’s my model alright… You know, at least I KNOW EMPIRICALLY that she exists. And the best thing is, she doesn’t tell me nor anyone that I’ll go to hell, if I don’t like her.
Back to being serious now. We know evolution is a fact unlike other things I can mention, so this is a part of the existence which was solved empirically of course not philosophically (it’s like philosophy is a science?). If we ever discover other FACTS dear Jason, I will surely let you know, and not by pretending stuff like you have done in your posts.
Jason says,
“AND finally, I submit a challenge to the author. If you can tell me philosophically where EXISTENCE comes from, apart from matter that has no particles, then I will laugh my butt of because you will have become a real comedian.”
What is this “matter with no particles” you speak of? Particles are made of matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed into another form (e.g. chemical into sound thermal and kinetic in a car engine).
More specifically, your phrase “tell me philosophically where EXISTENCE comes from”. Just because you can make it a sentence, doesn’t mean it’s a valid question. “How does green think on tuesday?” is a sentence, but that’s not enough to count in big boy school.
O, what is the meaning of life?
Jason makes his inane question sound so grand. Like, ‘HA! I told you!’. Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand that science does not try to prove meaning, just facts. And the ‘fact’ that you believe in god does not make it true. It’s a belief, and you are welcome to it! By all means! Just don’t try to tell me you can prove it using science.
Jason, good is “right” regardless of whether God thinks it is? God just so happens to know what is right? Doesn’t that mean that God can (and might) be evil? Why should we worship him if we can’t be sure? Why should we listen to anything he has to say?
has anyone here read Aquinas? His arguments about the existence of God are amazing!
Lee the Red, are you kidding?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas.
Why don’t you people read his philosophy and decide whether these arguments are “amazing”!
heck no! Hey, I’m no defender of religion, but then the way his logic is what ends most debates I’ve seen on the existence of God is an anomaly for me. Check this site out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinquae_viae but then you won’t be able to understand it unless you get the whole translated reading.
Unfortunately, Jaybee, your link is broken by the trailing period being included.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas
Lee the Red, these arguments might be valid for the existence of some sort of creation and certainly not arguments for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God which is as any reasonable person would agree a absurd caracter in science fiction.
Holy sheit! Jason is famous!
Keep up man, you do God’s work.
Jason wrote: “Oh and Tom…
Atheists do to, they just don’t believe in the god that they argue is the Christian God. But they set up a faulty model and argue against it.”
Your statement is a bit confusing, so apologies if I have misunderstood your point.
From my personal point of view (and ain’t that the great thing about atheism? I can think for myself, weigh the evidence and come to my own conclusion, rather than just going with the crowd or being told what to think/believe by “spiritual leaders”):
Firstly – I’m not singling out your Christian “god” particularly, I don’t believe there is any supreme intelligent being/beings responsible for the creation of everything and still meddling (I don’t care what flavour or name you give to it)
Secondly – I’m not really arguing against any model of god. If believers were happy in their own belief and stopped trying to force their beliefs on other people, atheists would be happy to STFU. I’m perfectly happy for you to believe in god, or fairies, or men in the moon – as long as you resist the urge to share your personal belief with others. It’s when we see religious views being forced on other people (especially children) and religion butting into government that we feel we have to argue.
Thirdly- the only model I have for any gods is what I’ve been told by believers. Personally I don’t believe I need to construct a faulty god to argue against it – I’ve yet to hear a believer define their belief and their god in a way which isn’t full of inherent contradictions and faults. You guys do all the hard work for us!
Cheers – BT
Lee The Red wrote: “heck no! Hey, I’m no defender of religion, but then the way his logic is what ends most debates I’ve seen on the existence of God is an anomaly for me. Check this site out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinquae_viae but then you won’t be able to understand it unless you get the whole translated reading.”
Perhaps someone else who understands this better than me can put me right – but this just seems to be a flowery version of “we can’t explain where it all began, god fits nicely into that void of explanation, therefore there must be a god”.
But you could slot anything into that void – spaghetti monsters, pink unicorns, super advanced aliens – it is no proof of god.
Again, I’m naive, but it seems atheists can use the argument against religion. Aquinas’s argument hangs on the premise that everything must be caused and everything must be created…except this vital rule doesn’t apply to the god he’s setting out to prove via this construct.
And I think this applies to you again Jason. You posted a slightly complicated challenge about matter and existance. Let’s just flip it around for the religious types. Why is any scientific explanation any more comedic than “it’s all the work of a supreme intelligence – whose existence we can’t prove either and we can’t tell you where he/she/it came from either, it just “popped” into existance…or perhaps created itself”.
Cheers – BT
Jason. You were totally pwned.
Everything has a source… All matter has it’s source… I came from my parents, my parents came from theirs and so on and so forth… But their is always a trail that leads further back… Eventually you hit a mathematical problem for the atheist, that problem is SINGULARITY. Eventually there had to be a first cause that has no cause. It is absurd to think that anything mindless is that cause, knowing that such a logical universe spawned from this first source. It takes more faith to believe that than to believe in a being that transcends all things… Why can you believe in an uncaused first cause that has no mind, but find it intellectually impossible to grasp the concept of an uncaused first cause that has a mind, a consciousness? We have all seen matter, correct? So it’s easy for us to believe in a source that is material… Well, we’ve all experienced conscious awareness, correct? Why can we not accept the one, and religiously cling to the other, as if a conscious being instead of unconscious matter did it all??? Is there ANY PROOF that matter did it all? Despite what an overzealous atheist might say, there actually is no PROOF, only speculation… Welcome to the world of faith atheists!
Wow. Did you wait a year to answer, so that your arguments would go unanswered? Bad luck I just found J&M and are reading it through from the beginning :p
You talk about an uncaused first cause as illogical, but you belive in God. Who created God? Ops, an uncaused first cause, hello!
We know the universe exist, because we live in it. I don’t know how it came to be, but to me I can live with the fact that it happened. We have no proof of any gods. Isn’t it way more illogical to invent a first cause to the universe (god) and then claim your invented first cause (god) don’t need a first cause, than to just accept the fact that we don’t know how the universe came to be? Just because you think it is absurd to think that something mindless is the first cause, doesn’t make it absurd. But then again, if you follow your own logic to it’s conclusion, it is absurd to believe in god, because he too must have a “mindless cause”. Or did he create himself? Then why can’t you accept that the universe created itself? It’s the same explanation, just one step removed. The concept of god doesn’t bring anything to the table by way of en explaining how things started, so you might as well just remove it….
Actually the proper answer for how the universe got started is “I don’t know, and neither do you, no matter how much you think you do.” Maybe we’ll find out some day, and maybe we won’t, but not knowing the answer to a question is not evidence that god is the answer.
Wow .. azurefrog //
if i were jason i would be happy for the author considering my comment important enought to do a strip about it .
ANd ofcourse if you already assume and want to BELIEVE that
existance is something seperate from and Other than matter,
AND MATTER HAS NO PARTICLE,
AND MATTER MUST HAVE A BEGINNING,
EXISTANCE IS MORE THAN MATTER,
MATTER IS ONLY PRODUCT. .. .
Then you sir are a true beliver .. iGive up to you ..
Sigh. Atheists don’t construct faulty gods. Religion constructs faulty gods. Atheists just have the balls to admit they see the faults.
..wow, J&M read their own cartoon strip………what happens when they try to read this particular strip…will they disappear into themselves in a continuous, never ending loop……maybe like tumbling into a black hole or a singularity, or even the end of the world, or the second coming!?; this is doing me ‘ed in…(I’ll get me coat – again)
Jason – the answer is Turtles. It’s turtles all the way down…
Actually, Science works on what is most likely to be true, and uses this as a stand point for further science, when new evidence comes to light, science changes and evolves, sometimes science has not got the answers, yet, but actually ‘I don’t know’ is perfectly valid.
There is nothing to say that the ‘uncaused causer’ is god over any other kind of being. And what caused god?
Jason, your ontological argument is not really advancing your point – god exists because you imagine him to exist, and you imagine him greater than the universe therefore he must exist – it’s standard theist delusional fare and no doubt your god would understand it as Iason cogitat ergo sum (Jason thinks, therefore I am).
I suppose that in certain respects god exists, but only ever within the minds of believers – outside of that there’s just a vacuum. And just because you cannot conceive of a vacuum doesn’t mean you get to fill it with superstition and delusion just so you can understand it better.
The same goes for the singularity and your understanding (or lack of understanding) of what it is – ignorance has always been a “rationale” for, or “proof” of god, and as science explains more, our intrepid theists just move the goalposts to whatever they see as the current unanswerable and declare that to be the line in the sand where non-theists fail in their endeavours to disprove the notion of god.
Really, it’s too ridiculous a conceit – it is not up to the non-theists to explain the origins of the big bang, the explaining needs to be done by those theists that claim the big bang as proof of the divine nature of everything.
Of course, for this proof I’d expect the theist to be suitably knowledgeable in quantum physics and bigbangology – just parroting, “it’s unknown, therefore it’s god”, or, “TMI!! my brain hurts!”, aint going to win the argument.
TL;DR
The Singularity “paradox” isn’t a mathematical trap for atheists to fall into; it’s a straw man argument by theists who entirely fail to understand the science they’re quoting and miss the irony in their explaining the “something out of nothing” conundrum by having another “something out of nothing” as a precursor.
Just how is that supposed to work? I think heironymous came closest with, “Turtles all the way down”.
^^ this.
I kinda understand the current mainstream thinking of the singularity (vacuum fluctuastions leading to matter created by, and expanded by, negative gravitational energy), but I’ve never heard the ‘goddunnit’ assertion so eloquently refuted. Thank you.
Few notes:
1. Abrahamic religions and some others have never said that you should treat everybody nicely, just your fellow believers. Atheist on the other hand have said several times that you should treat everybody nicely.
2. Universe is. It’s the only perfect object there is as it interacts with nothing. There are few books written by cosmologists that try to explain how it came to be, but I’m not sure if they help any believers to find the light.
Ooh, ooh, I know this one, 42.
According to some models of Black Hole physics, the singularity at the middle of the gravity well can open up a sort of tunnel in space-time, a flaw in the continuum of some length but zero width. These pseudo-tunnels can eventually erupt somewhere as energy sources, hot points that pour matter and energy into the universe, “White Holes”.
This is all overly simplistic bollocks but try to picture this tunnel being able to burrow anywhere in the cosmos. As there is no real connection between these phenomena and the continuum “outside” the singularity the projected endpoint can be anywhere.
And any time.
This is a very, very large universe and it is exceedingly old and long-lived so the changes of a random eruption of a white hole anywhere close to now and here is small so we have yet to see one. Similarly, the chances of an endpoint being at any particular time or place is small. However …
One point of spacetime is very, very singular. The beginning. No black hole tunnel can go back any further nor can one go “outside” that “place”.
So, if a random little black hole tunnel is heading back in time it will of necessity eventually bang up against the wall of non-existence that is the Big Bang’s very first instant.
Of necessity, it will erupt there and then.
Carrying with it all of the physics it had when it was a collapsing star.
Now, there are many, many black holes so quite a number should by sheer chance tunnel back to the start of the universe.
Presto, Big Bang, complete with the rules needed to make the cosmos work.
And all of this highly speculative rubbish provides at least one way of creating a universe without a creator. It made itself simply by virtue of it being there.
Cool, yes?
Now, all we need is a real cosmologist, mathematician or physicist to tell me exactly how silly, ignorant, stupid and wrong I am in how many ways. 🙂
I like that picture but it’s so very simple-minded that it may not even be wrong. It may merely be daft.
Before anyone mentions it, I do know how floppy, soggy, soft and imprecise my language is. I’m commenting in the comments of a comic not writing my Ph.D. dissertation. I’m allowed some looseness and poetry.
I’m also fairly sure the idea isn’t original with me. I suspect it’s been in the sci.physics newsgroup a few times.
Jason, if you’re still here, “EXISTENCE” comes from Etruscan through Latin and French. It’s related to their words for “be”.
Happy?
Bones’sDog – a request. Could you use an email address that at least looks real? I’m having to manually approve every comment you make! Thanks.
Except, as a Christian, I love others not only to please God, but because God has done so much for me in my life that I want to pay that love forward. It’s sort of like, how do I repay a being who is infinite and all-powerful? Well, he asked me to love other people, so I’ll start there. It’s a relationship.