MrPresident1:


Yes o, including all the fools who say in their hearts that there is no God

Including the fools that wrote the bible and the fools that quote the bible and believe in it

JeromeBlack:





@ the bold.


The pagans were very creative in creating a god for different things. A god of thunder, a god of the sea etc.

Your God should be Yahweh god of ignorance and confusion.

From your own statement in bold, God is happy when humans are ignorant. He is okay with us being ignorant about the universe.

Just like the story of Adam and Eve where Yahweh didnt want them to notice their unclothedness.


Zombie god, zombie follower.

The conclusions you make from what you are told are really your business. But they are not automatically right just because you made them.

hahn:


You are expecting atheists to contribute logical arguments to a topic that has it's foundation in ignorance and emotion?

The question was simple; is belief in a creator logical?

Yes?
No?

Why?

Where is the emotions?
Ignorance? Of what?

So far, your outburst here has been the only emotional one, no agency for logical discussion but yet, ignorance and emotion.

Lmao

Your constant need to make sense of absolute nonsense is a route you have to take yourself

It is one thing to say something is nonsense, it is another to say "why' it is.

You have not shown 'why' therefore your claim is unfounded at best.

Emotions? Savvy?

Anyway, calm down, breathe, now take the question from the top.

Is belief in a creator a logical conclusion?

(N.B; this doesn't mean God exists or not) for an individual that should reach conclusions through logic, you seem to be lacking a lot in that part lately especially when the discussion is tilted against your position.

I'm an atheist, but for one to be truly willing to learn you must do away with unnecessary bias towards opposing ideas.

You seem incredibly uncomfortable discussing topics that places your position in an uncomfortable state of scrutiny, i honestly expected better.

DoctorAlien:


This difficulty in agreement when time is involved, I have highlighted earlier on. What's your point though?

my point is that you (may) have been conflating philosphical concepts wih those of physics. That's why I always posit that clear and concise definitions of key terms (God, energy, universe, time, etc.) be stated and agreed upon before engaging in such discussions/debates otherwise we would just having one of those beer parlour discussions.

hahn:


Including the fools that wrote the bible and the fools that quote the bible and believe in it

This is the type of thing you like. To be regurgitating plain rubbish with MrPresident1

Ihedinobi3:

In a system where there is no decline there are no dead animals that revert into nutrients in the soil.

Actually this is not a decline, things change from one state to another, animals are also being born, so if dead animals means a declining universe, animals being born means?

This is what you get when someone takes an isolated bit to represent a universal benchmark and even at that fails to establish a connection.

That is the benchmark. Things in a stable Universe do not die.

LMAO, do they live?

As for isolated bits, I think you know that they aren't. There is nothing in the Universe untouched by Death. Even stars give out and planetary systems collapse. Everything in our cosmos dies, especially here on Earth.

So, do they phase out of existence or turn from form to another?

Evangkatsoulis:


my point is that you (may) have been conflating philosphical concepts wih those of physics.

can you actually give a source that clearly differentiates between these "physicists' definition" and "philosophical definition"? Is Physics as a quest not under Philosophy?

That's why I always posit that clear and concise definitions of key terms (God, energy, universe, time, etc.) be stated and agreed upon before engaging in such discussions/debates otherwise we would just having one of those beer parlour discussions.

Not bad.

Ihedinobi3:


It is neither inexistent nor "part of existence". It is ultimate reality, that is, all existence depends upon it.

This is the type of assertions i find mostly ridiculous, just a meaningless word play.

Anything that is not inexistent obviously exists.

Ultimate reality, for existence to depend on it, it must also exist itself.

Make up your mind, is it inexistent or does it exist?

johnydon22:


Wasteful, inefficient doesn't negate design. So, making this argument doesn't negate the fundamental premise of his argument which is design

It doesn't but it takes away the intelligent part of the intelligent designer argument. In negating a key aspect of the intelligent design argument it also negates the possibility that it is a sentient entity.

Well, the Creator has been consistently said to be a mind.

Remove the Creator, how do you intend to explain the fact of the human mind? The brain.

Okay, how do you explain the brain has a mind? Well, the working human brain is the mind.

At which point I should not take you seriously, the human brain makes the mind. It isn't the mind if you'll be brutally honest. Otherwise, things like thought, feelings, dreams, desires etc will be defined with brain mechanisms.

But brain workings result in them? That's the point. They result in them. They aren't them. Frankly, getting the atheist materialist to admit_and that's where I'm going to_the mind is immaterial is stretch.

But if things like love, logic, awareness, pleasure are strictly brain machinations then you'd have no problems explaining them as physical entities AT WORK. Please do.

Then of course, as a fact we live in Created universe I can point to time. Consider, the vast span of history as a passing second. Why is it that we can't hold or see time and yet it is? You can't touch the past anymore than you can see the future (no matter what prophets say) and yet it is as sure as matter. Time exists. Time is no friend of the atheist since a universe with a beginning requires a beginner. But let's assume a multiverse.

Bullshit! I say.

Matter can be destroyed and is mutable even at its most basic as in hadrons (excluding leptons). Precisely, where would you get the energy that drives the universe forever? If you're truthful, it's from the same I get an eternal God but it (your eternal multiverse that is) faces two fundamental problems: 1) It is changable and as a result destructible, which contradicts it's nature as something that can last infinitely. Whatever must be eternal must be unchangable 2) It still faces the difficulty of explaining a mind different in substance from it. The mind knows. The mind thinks. And when it tinks it visualizes material stuff (ie form) within itself. And crucial to the question of life is that mind makes information.

So think about it. An uncreated multiverse or universe is untenable because matter is changable and destructible, And in any case, mind adds more to the materialist-cum-atheist's dilemma.

That's about what I have to offer.

johnydon22:


Actually No. Only you and LordReed so far has been the atheists on this board.

1. I have not implied any way i expect an answer to go.

2. I have engaged both the theist and the atheists on their answers.

As far as the primary target for the question goes, there is an ironic deficiency of normal atheist representation here.

On an average thread, you could have 10 -15 but here, nope

Well not everybody thinks on these things, they may not have pondered these questions enough to have a coherent opinion.

johnydon22:
Actually this is not a decline, things change from one state to another, animals are also being born, so if dead animals means a declining universe, animals being born means?

This is what you get when someone takes an isolated bit to represent a universal benchmark and even at that fails to establish a connection.

Whole species have died out over time. Perhaps all the hustle and bustle in evolutionary biology means enough to you to argue that new species have been replacing them but I honestly don't expect you to take that argument for yourself. There have been no new species of any sort in human history. If rather than replacement we are experiencing increasing loss, then it is reasonable to posit a decline.

Also, when metals rust and fall back into dust, it is true that they feed into something else but in what way are the metals replaced naturally?

When stars grow cold and die, in what way do they feed into a new cycle that produces new stars?

The bottom line is that everything across the universe is in a state of growing deficit. If there is something that is abounding, it is only the failure of systems.

Explain this "isolated bit" comment and demonstrate to me where the connection failed.

johnydon22:
LMAO, do they live?

Regarding your question, yes in fact, they live. In a universe where there is no decline at all, everything lives. Humans and animals do not die, metals don't rust, nothing crumbles to dust as time passes.

johnydon22:
So, do they phase out of existence or turn from form to another?

In some cases, they do phase from one thing to another. Water falls from the clouds, runs in rivers, turns into gas and goes back up where it turns back into water and comes back down. But that animals die and become nutrients is not that they phase out of existence is something I am curious about. Are the nutrients new animals?

johnydon22:
This is the type of assertions i find mostly ridiculous, just a meaningless word play.

Anything that is not inexistent obviously exists.

Ultimate reality, for existence to depend on it, it must also exist itself.

Make up your mind, is it inexistent or does it exist?

I don't believe that I was unclear here but in case I was, of course, it exists. I was making sure to point out that an ultimate cause/reality exists in a way that is fundamentally different than everything else. It is its own existence. And it powers all existence by itself. That was all. If it didn't exist, it could hardly be a reality, couldn't it?

A true God would be One Whose
existence is completely invulnerable to anything
external to It and Whose Own Nature is so stable
as to pose no threats to Its Own Self

Remove God and place self-existent thing and this quote from Ihedinobi will still be on the mark. If the atheist is sure God does not exist or that Nature (read the universe or multiverse as the case may be) is self-existent he/she would have to prove what is said above.

JeromeBlack:



What an abuse of reasoning.


What if Proposition #1 is true?


I believe in the eternal existence. My reasoning is that there will always be something in the future (even when our sun dies out and blows up everything in our galaxy thousands of years from now) why couldnt it be that there has always been something in the past?


There are scientists that are working with a theory of a cyclical universe in which there is constant creation and destruction

I can't repeat this enough: an eternal cause must be unchangable.

Do you know how stupid the cyclic universe sounds: Precisely how does something that is created and destroyed be eternal?

johnydon22:


The question was simple; is belief in a creator logical?

Yes?
No?

Why?

Where is the emotions?
Ignorance? Of what?

So far, your outburst here has been the only emotional one, no agency for logical discussion but yet, ignorance and emotion.

Lmao



It is one thing to say something is nonsense, it is another to say "why' it is.

You have not shown 'why' therefore your claim is unfounded at best.

Emotions? Savvy?

Anyway, calm down, breathe, now take the question from the top.

Is belief in a creator a logical conclusion?

(N.B; this doesn't mean God exists or not) for an individual that should reach conclusions through logic, you seem to be lacking a lot in that part lately especially when the discussion is tilted against your position.

I'm an atheist, but for one to be truly willing to learn you must do away with unnecessary bias towards opposing ideas.

You seem incredibly uncomfortable discussing topics that places your position in an uncomfortable state of scrutiny, i honestly expected better.

Lol

Belief in a creator is a logical assumption and not a conclusion.

It is not a conclusion because no facts have been presented towards this fact therefore it is not logical to believe in something without any proof.

Emotions eg: My god is the best. My religion is ordained by god. My parents believe in it so do I etc

Ignorance eg: of how the world actually works.

It is nonsense to believe in anything without proof. Believing in anything without proof is the reason why many scams are successful.

Eg: I have a house for sale. Where is the house? Just believe it exists and make payment.

It would be nonsense to simply make payment but there are many people who have fallen for the apartment scam simply based on this.

This has nothing to do with "learning". We already know that all the gods have their roots in the ignorance of early men who wanted to explain the world with just "god did it".

You seem to forget when you agree that "god did it" you also have to agree that this god wants you to serve it. It wants to burn you in hell. It does not claim responsibility for it's errors and it is always conveniently missing.

I easily dismiss these topics because I might as well be discussing with a kid if the toothfairy is a logical conclusion.

It saves everyone's time when you tell the kid, "it's nonsense" especially when you have had this discussion over a 100 times with him/her.

Get it?

UyiIredia:


I can't repeat this enough: an eternal cause must be unchangable.

Do you know how stupid the cyclic universe sounds: Precisely how does something that is created and destroyed be eternal?

he doesn't know. An author, writing about physicists' opinion on the beginning of the universe, put it this way:

"And Vilenkin said that while cyclic universes have an “irresistible poetic charm and bring to mind the Phoenix” (quoting the late Belgian astronomer and priest Georges Lemaître), the model was hopelessly wrong in its predictions of the universe’s level of order today. If there had indeed already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe today should be in a state of maximum disorder. As the New Scientist article pointed out:

“Such a universe would be uniformly lukewarm and featureless, and definitely lacking such complicated beings as stars, planets and physicists—nothing like the one we see around us.”3
The attempted rescue suggestion, viz. that the universe just gets bigger with every cycle, therefore isn’t yet at maximum disorder, also fails on the same point as the eternal inflation model. I.e., “if your universe keeps getting bigger, it must have started somewhere.” ".
https://creation.com/universe-had-a-beginning

johnydon22:


Actually my counter is that an eternal universe is a self-contained system therefore wouldn't run out of energy since energy would not be lost.

So, if the universe is eternal then it is a closed system.

I disagree with your premise that energy won't be lost. But in any case consider my opening post here.

DoctorAlien:


he doesn't know. An author, writing about physicists' opinion on the beginning of the universe, put it this way:

"And Vilenkin said that while cyclic universes have an “irresistible poetic charm and bring to mind the Phoenix” (quoting the late Belgian astronomer and priest Georges Lemaître), the model was hopelessly wrong in its predictions of the universe’s level of order today. If there had indeed already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe today should be in a state of maximum disorder. As the New Scientist article pointed out:

“Such a universe would be uniformly lukewarm and featureless, and definitely lacking such complicated beings as stars, planets and physicists—nothing like the one we see around us.”3
The attempted rescue suggestion, viz. that the universe just gets bigger with every cycle, therefore isn’t yet at maximum disorder, also fails on the same point as the eternal inflation model. I.e., “if your universe keeps getting bigger, it must have started somewhere.” ".
https://creation.com/universe-had-a-beginning

creation.com Good site. Don't agree with the Christian stuff there as a deist but makes a good case for creation.

johnydon22:
Pray tell, how? because as far as seen here, exact same method of deriving conclusions are applied to both instances. Tell us how one is a logical leap and the other isn't?

He is not taking all the facts into account. In some cases its even a fallacy, an argument from ignorance or personal incredulity, "I can't think of how these things may have come to be therefore it was a designer." There is an interruption of cogitation going on here.

UyiIredia:


I disagree with your premise that energy won't be lost.

How is energy lost in a closed system?

But in any case consider my opening post here.

I'll read

UyiIredia:
Well, the Creator has been consistently said to be a mind.

Remove the Creator, how do you intend to explain the fact of the human mind? The brain.

Okay, how do you explain the brain has a mind? Well, the working human brain is the mind.

At which point I should not take you seriously, the human brain makes the mind. It isn't the mind if you'll be brutally honest. Otherwise, things like thought, feelings, dreams, desires etc will be defined with brain mechanisms.

But brain workings result in them? That's the point. They result in them. They aren't them. Frankly, getting the atheist materialist to admit_and that's where I'm going to_the mind is immaterial is stretch.

But if things like love, logic, awareness, pleasure are strictly brain machinations then you'd have no problems explaining them as physical entities AT WORK. Please do.

Then of course, as a fact we live in Created universe I can point to time. Consider, the vast span of history as a passing second. Why is it that we can't hold or see time and yet it is? You can't touch the past anymore than you can see the future (no matter what prophets say) and yet it is as sure as matter. Time exists. Time is no friend of the atheist since a universe with a beginning requires a beginner. But let's assume a multiverse.

Bullshit! I say.

Matter can be destroyed and is mutable even at its most basic as in hadrons (excluding leptons). Precisely, where would you get the energy that drives the universe forever? If you're truthful, it's from the same I get an eternal God but it (your eternal multiverse that is) faces two fundamental problems: 1) It is changable and as a result destructible, which contradicts it's nature as something that can last infinitely. Whatever must be eternal must be unchangable 2) It still faces the difficulty of explaining a mind different in substance from it. The mind knows. The mind thinks. And when it tinks it visualizes material stuff (ie form) within itself. And crucial to the question of life is that mind makes information.

So think about it. An uncreated multiverse or universe is untenable because matter is changable and destructible, And in any case, mind adds more to the materialist-cum-atheist's dilemma.

That's about what I have to offer.

As far as we know no mind has been shown to exist independent of a brain. If a mind can exist independent of a brain it will win Nobel prizes if such can be demonstrated. Now without such a demonstration, how do we arrive at, the creator is a mind and such a creator has no tangible body or at least one we have been able to detect?

UyiIredia:


creation.com Good site. Don't agree with the Christian stuff there as a deist but makes a good case for creation.

IKR. Any open-minded person will find it very hard to resist their arguments for creation and for the Bible. They're good.

hahn:


You are expecting atheists to contribute logical arguments to a topic that has it's foundation in ignorance and emotion?

Your constant need to make sense of absolute nonsense is a route you have to take yourself

SMH

LordReed:


As far as we know no mind has been shown to exist independent of a brain. If a mind can exist independent of a brain it will win Nobel prizes if such can be demonstrated. Now without such a demonstration, how do we arrive at, the creator is a mind and such a creator has no tangible body or at least one we have been able to detect?

Simplistic response to a nuanced post.

Do you think a creator is a logical conclusion to make

No,just like Hahn said, I think its a logical explanation, but not a logical conclusion

You don't have to believe in something to argue it is logical.

What do you think?

If yes, Why?

If No, Why not?

I would say yes,you don't have to believe in something to argue it is logical.
Based on the principle of cause and effect we could say that the universe must have a creator,but applying that too we can also say that the creator must have a creator as well,ending up in infinite regression.
So this means that it is not logical to assume that the principle of cause and effect would always apply and if this is the case then it is possible that the universe defies that principle,hence has no creator,it is also possible that the universe has a creator which is the one defying the principle this time,so is it also possible that the creator of the universe has a creator that created the creator of its creator's creator being the one to go against that logic.
Summary,the universe may have a creator or not,that is the logical conclusion for me
It is also mportant to note that when I use the word "creator" it only means the entity(or entities) that influenced the formation of the universe c'est finis,no more no less added to that.

UyiIredia:


I can't repeat this enough: an eternal cause must be unchangable.

Do you know how stupid the cyclic universe sounds: Precisely how does something that is created and destroyed be eternal?

FALSE!

Anything eternal must undergo changes eternally.

Think of it like the water cycle-

1. water in the ocean turns to gas. EVAPORATION
2. the gas turns back to liquid water in the atmosphere. CONDENSATION
3. the water falls back down into the ocean. PRECIPITATION

The water is "created" and "destroyed" continuously.

Some scientists see the universe like so.

UyiIredia:


Simplistic response to a nuanced post.

One that surely would have evinced a simple response. Its not your entire post the question was directed at. But then answer or don't, its your prerogative.

DoctorAlien:


he doesn't know. An author, writing about physicists' opinion on the beginning of the universe, put it this way:

"And Vilenkin said that while cyclic universes have an “irresistible poetic charm and bring to mind the Phoenix” (quoting the late Belgian astronomer and priest Georges Lemaître), the model was hopelessly wrong in its predictions of the universe’s level of order today. If there had indeed already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe today should be in a state of maximum disorder. As the New Scientist article pointed out:

“Such a universe would be uniformly lukewarm and featureless, and definitely lacking such complicated beings as stars, planets and physicists—nothing like the one we see around us.”3
The attempted rescue suggestion, viz. that the universe just gets bigger with every cycle, therefore isn’t yet at maximum disorder, also fails on the same point as the eternal inflation model. I.e., “if your universe keeps getting bigger, it must have started somewhere.” ".
https://creation.com/universe-had-a-beginning

Scientists can be wrong. And that is the opinion of one scientist.

I would like to ask the Scientist what a state of maximum disorder looks like in a universe. By his very own argument, the big bang too should have resulted in a maximum state of disorder. Why would 2 big bangs be more disorderly than one big bang?

DoctorAlien:


IKR. Any open-minded person will find it very hard to resist their arguments for creation and for the Bible. They're good.

The only way to test how good their arguments are is to put them up for debate.

It is easy to talk in an echo chamber. Let them face hardened atheists with their arguments first

LordReed:


One that surely would have evinced a simple response. Its not your entire post the question was directed at. But then answer or don't, its your prerogative.

Honestly, you didn't even more how the post had envisaged your response. But humour me please, define mental traits like love and logic as brain processes? They are brain processes, are they not so give me their definition in those terms.

JeromeBlack:


FALSE!

Anything eternal must undergo changes eternally.

Think of it like the water cycle-

1. water in the ocean turns to gas. EVAPORATION
2. the gas turns back to liquid water in the atmosphere. CONDENSATION
3. the water falls back down into the ocean. PRECIPITATION

The water is "created" and "destroyed" continuously.

Some scientists see the universe like so.

Noted. It's like water cycle so it's reformed not created and destroyed but why do you deny an eternal cause is unchangable.

If something changes eternally something must make it change not so.