Why There Most Certainly Is No God

[Guest chen2739]

This is a post on why the existence of any 'God' (from here on out the official definition of 'God' in this post will stand for any and all omnipotent omniscience spiritual entity who takes on various forms of human personification and intervenes in the daily life's of homo sapiens, etc) is a logical, mathematical, physical, metaphysical, and spiritual (which is actually simply qualia, & epiphenomenon) contradiction and utter impossibility.

 

This post is NOT meant in any way as an insult on anyone's personal or religious practices or believes. If anything here personally offends anyone or is found to be in violation of this websites CoC, TOS, please PM me and I will make the appropriate changes if applicable. All I can ask is for everyone reading this to keep an open mind.

 

Now then, I realize that as a human being with limited perceptions, limited senses, and a limited brain/mind capacity it is most possibly beyond me to

ever know the ultimate objective truth and underlying reality of the fabric of the totality of all existence in perfect form. Any such proof, or disproof of any kind,is valid and holds water only in the domain in which the proof or disproof is made or based upon. The more we generalize something, the more we make the center of any idea or concept abstract, the more encompassing our model or theory can be. As we seek to explain how everything is connected to everything else, or to find a theory of

'everything', we eventually MUST end up with something at the kernel that is so general, so abstract and platonic that indeed we must come to understand, realized, admit, and accept that pure and full NOTHING is the center and ground zero foundation used to explain of EVERYTHING.

 

The definition of NOTHING that I choose to use here in this post can be best summed up with this from Nothing Limited:

 

" We start, then, with nothing, pure zero. But this is not the nothing of negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a synonym of the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the present pure zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom."

 

Nearer and nearer to this 'zero of nothing' our laws of physicals no longer apply. We will find that 'our' laws of physics in this omnium multiverse is simply a specific manifestation and distinct instance of the even larger and more general 'law' and a much deeper underlying layer in the ultimate zero of reality. We may even come to find here near this zero of everything and nothing that the basic platonic logic and rationality that we have come to know and love no longer applies and cannot be used to explain or proof things which are even deeper than this platonic plane and even more underlying than this platonic mathematical domain could possibly encompasses. Here in this mystical realm our mind and consciousness will help us not for it too cannot dwell nor thrive here. We have arrived at a singularity, where 'nothing' is needed to prove 'everything'. This place I cannot speak of, I can at the very best point to 'IT', but I cannot KNOW IT, I cannot be inside it or interact or work with it.

 

What does any of this have to do with 'God'? Well this 'IT' that I speak of and point to, this ultimate 'zero singularity' that is simultaneously not any 'thing' and yet not 'nothing' is the ground zero of all things which connects everything to absolutely everything else in the totality of all possible existential and 'real' existence. This 'nothing' is the ultimate perfection, the absolute essence and reality, the bottom of the rabbit hole, the ceiling of heaven, the all that IS. It is perfect, and yet perfectly unknowable, forever an eternal endless mystery and wonder. Ladies and Gentlemen, if there ever was a God then ' 'THIS' IS 'IT' ' !! Once you have known TRUE perfection or even captured a quick fleeting glace at it, you will never turn around again to settle for second best. And this is how it is with me. Only by seeing the shade and ghost of the truly perfect did I know and have the capacity and ability to discriminate and make distinction of everything else that claimed to be perfect but really wasn't. Before realizing this 'zero singularity of 'nothing' ' I had nothing else to compared our man made religious 'God' to, and it seemed that nothing could be above this 'God' whether 'God' was 'real' or not was only of secondary importance. After seeing and touching the perfection of all that is, I know with every conviction of my being that absolutely nothing else could EVER compare with the zero of nothing and infinite everything that I speak of and point to.

 

As you can see, our worldly definition of 'God' ( any and all omnipotent omniscience spiritual entity who takes on various forms of human personification and intervenes in the daily life's of homo sapiens, etc) by virtue of its attributes, existences, and inherent nature, is infinitely far away from the perfection of pure 'nothing'. Thus I have shown 'God' to be beneath this 'zero singularity of nothing', and by doing so have 'proven' on the highest ground that 'God' is an impossibility.

 

Now let us delve away from this dangerous and infinitely mysterious 'zero of nothing', and enter perhaps the next lower realm and domain of pure abstract platonic logical and reasoning.

 

Many Christians (I use Christians here only because it is the most popular denomination and I wish for this thread to stay away from the nit picking of wars between religions as this is not the purpose of this thread, and being so that it is in nature as well as in society the top dog always takes the punches..) consider the existence of their God to be an obvious truth that no sane man could deny. I strongly disagree with this assumption not only because evidence for the existence of this presumably ubiquitous yet invisible God is lacking, but because the very nature Christians attribute to this God is self-contradictory.

 

An example of it is shown from this site saying that it is often taken for granted by Christians, as well as many atheists, that a universal negative cannot be proven. In this case, that universal negative is the statement that the Christian God does not exist. One would have to have omniscience, they say, in order to prove that anything does not exist. This position is invalid however, because omniscience is not needed in order to prove that a thing whose nature is a self-contradiction cannot, and therefore does not exist. I do not need a complete knowledge of the universe to prove to you that cubic spheres do not exist. Such objects have mutually-exclusive attributes which would render their existence impossible. For example, a cube, by definition, has 8 corners, while a sphere has none. These properties are completely incompatible: they cannot be held simultaneously by the same object. Therefore it can be shown that if the supposed properties of the Christian God, like those of a cubic sphere, are incompatible, then that 'God's existence must be an impossibility.

 

Some of the blatant undefendable self evident contradictions are listed below:

 

What did God do during that eternity before he created everything? If God was all that existed back then, what disturbed the eternal equilibrium and compelled him to create? Was he bored? Was he lonely? God is supposed to be perfect. If something is perfect, it is complete--it needs nothing else. We humans engage in activities because we are pursuing that elusive perfection, because there is disequilibrium caused by a difference between what we are and what we want to be. If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. A perfect creator God is impossible.

 

Perfection Begets Imperfection

 

What!? If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it. Someone once said that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, and yet this "perfect" God created a "perfect" universe which was rendered imperfect by the "perfect" humans. The ultimate source of imperfection is God. What is perfect cannot become imperfect, so humans must have been created imperfect. What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible.

 

 

All-good God Knowingly Creates Future Suffering God is omniscient. When he created the universe, he saw the sufferings which humans would endure as a result of the sin of those original humans. He heard the screams of the damned. Surely he would have known that it would have been better for those humans to never have been born (in fact, the Bible says this very thing), and surely this all-compassionate deity would have foregone the creation of a universe destined to imperfection in which many of the humans were doomed to eternal suffering. A perfectly compassionate being who creates beings which he knows are doomed to suffer is impossible.

 

Infinite Punishment for Finite Sins God is perfectly just, and yet he sentences the imperfect humans he created to infinite suffering in hell for finite sins. Clearly, a limited offense does not warrant unlimited punishment. God's sentencing of the imperfect humans to an eternity in hell for a mere mortal lifetime of sin is infinitely more unjust than this punishment. The absurd injustice of this infinite punishment is even greater when we consider that the ultimate source of human imperfection is the God who created them. A perfectly just God who sentences his imperfect creation to infinite punishment for finite sins is impossible.

 

Perfection's Imperfect Revelation Link

The Bible is supposedly God's perfect Word. It contains instructions to humankind for avoiding the eternal fires of hell. How wonderful and kind of this God to provide us with this means of overcoming the problems for which he is ultimately responsible! The all-powerful God could have, by a mere act of will, eliminated all of the problems we humans must endure, but instead, in his infinite wisdom, he has opted to offer this indecipherable amalgam of books which is the Bible as a means for avoiding the hell which he has prepared for us. The perfect God has decided to reveal his wishes in this imperfect work, written in the imperfect language of imperfect man, translated, copied, interpreted, voted on, and related by imperfect man.

 

No two men will ever agree what this perfect word of God is supposed to mean, since much of it is either self- contradictory, or obscured by enigmatic symbols. And yet the perfect God expects us imperfect humans to understand this paradoxical riddle using the imperfect minds with which he has equipped us. Surely the all-wise and all-powerful God would have known that it would have been better to reveal his perfect will directly to each of us, rather than to allow it to be debased and perverted by the imperfect language and botched interpretations of man.

 

Contradictory Justice

One need look to no source other than the Bible to discover its imperfections, for it contradicts itself and thus exposes its own imperfection. It contradicts itself on matters of justice, for the same just God who assures his people that sons shall not be punished for the sins of their fathers turns around and destroys an entire household for the sin of one man (he had stolen some of Yahweh's war loot). It was this same Yahweh who afflicted thousands of his innocent people with plague and death to punish their evil king David for taking a census (?!). It was this same Yahweh who allowed the humans to slaughter his son because the perfect Yahweh had botched his own creation. Consider how many have been stoned, burned, slaughtered, raped, and enslaved because of Yahweh's skewed sense of justice. The blood of innocent babies is on the perfect, just, compassionate hands of Yahweh.

 

Contradictory History

The Bible contradicts itself on matters of history. A person who reads and compares the contents of the Bible will be confused about exactly who Esau's wives were, whether Timnah was a concubine or a son, and whether Jesus' earthly lineage is through Solomon or his brother Nathan. These are but a few of hundreds of documented historical contradictions. If the Bible cannot confirm itself in mundane earthly matters, how are we to trust it on moral and spiritual matters?

 

Unfulfilled Prophecy

The Bible misinterprets its own prophecies. Read Isaiah 7 and compare it to Matthew 1 to find but one of many misinterpreted prophecies of which Christians are either passively or willfully ignorant. The fulfillment of prophecy in the Bible is cited as proof of its divine inspiration, and yet here is but one major example of a prophecy whose intended meaning has been and continues to be twisted to support subsequent absurd and false doctrines. There are no ends to which the credulous will not go to support their feeble beliefs in the face of compelling evidence against them.

 

The Bible is imperfect. It only takes one imperfection to destroy the supposed perfection of this alleged Word of God. Many have been found. A perfect God who reveals his perfect will in an imperfect book is impossible.

 

 

The Omniscient Changes the Future

A God who knows the future is powerless to change it. An omniscient God who is all-powerful and freewilled is impossible.

 

 

The Omniscient is Surprised

A God who knows everything cannot have emotions. The Bible says that God experiences all of the emotions of humans, including anger, sadness, and happiness. We humans experience emotions as a result of new knowledge. A man who had formerly been ignorant of his wife's infidelity will experience the emotions of anger and sadness only after he has learned what had previously been hidden. In contrast, the omniscient God is ignorant of nothing. Nothing is hidden from him, nothing new may be revealed to him, so there is no gained knowledge to which he may emotively react.

 

We humans experience anger and frustration when something is wrong which we cannot fix. The perfect, omnipotent God, however, can fix anything. Humans experience longing for things we lack. The perfect God lacks nothing. An omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect God who experiences emotion is impossible.

 

He ends by saying this :

 

Should any Christian who reads this persist in defending these impossibilities through means of "divine transcendence" and "faith," and should any Christian continue to call me an atheist fool, I will be forced to invoke the wrath of the Invisible Pink Unicorn:

 

 

"You are a fool for denying the existence of the IPU. You have rejected true faith and have relied on your feeble powers of human reason and thus arrogantly denied the existence of Her Divine Transcendence, and so are you condemned.

 

If such arguments are good enough for Yahweh, they are good enough for Her Invisible Pinkness.

 

 

Adding my own thoughts to all of this, I must say that the reasons for making a case for 'God' would never fly in any court of law, nor any scientific process, nor any other reasonable educated logical debate among peers.

 

In Richard Dawkin's blog

 

[begin Richard Dawkins blog ...]

 

 

A recent article in the New York Times by Cornelia Dean quotes the astronomer Owen Gingerich as saying that, by simultaneously advocating evolution and atheism, 'Dr Dawkins "probably single-handedly makes more converts to intelligent design than any of the leading intelligent design theorists".' This is not the first, not the second, not even the third time this plonkingly witless point has been made (and more than one reply has aptly cited Uncle Remus: "Oh please please Brer Fox, don't throw me in that awful briar patch").

Chamberlainites are apt to quote the late Stephen Jay Gould's 'NOMA' - 'non-overlapping magisteria'. Gould claimed that science and true religion never come into conflict because they exist in completely separate dimensions of discourse:

To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature.

We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.

This sounds terrific, right up until you give it a moment's thought. You then realize that the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science. A universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference. God could clinch the matter in his favour at any moment by staging a spectacular demonstration of his powers, one that would satisfy the exacting standards of science. Even the infamous Templeton Foundation recognized that God is a scientific hypothesis - by funding double-blind trials to test whether remote prayer would speed the recovery of heart patients. It didn't, of course, although a control group who knew they had been prayed for tended to get worse (how about a class action suit against the Templeton Foundation?) Despite such well-financed efforts, no evidence for God's existence has yet appeared.

To see the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people who embrace NOMA, imagine that forensic archeologists, by some unlikely set of circumstances, discovered DNA evidence demonstrating that Jesus was born of a virgin mother and had no father. If NOMA enthusiasts were sincere, they should dismiss the archeologists' DNA out of hand: "Irrelevant. Scientific evidence has no bearing on theological questions. Wrong magisterium." Does anyone seriously imagine that they would say anything remotely like that? You can bet your boots that not just the fundamentalists but every professor of theology and every bishop in the land would trumpet the archeological evidence to the skies.

Either Jesus had a father or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it. The same is true of any miracle - and the deliberate and intentional creation of the universe would have to have been the mother and father of all miracles. Either it happened or it didn't. It is a fact, one way or the other, and in our state of uncertainty we can put a probability on it - an estimate that may change as more information comes in. Humanity's best estimate of the probability of divine creation dropped steeply in 1859 when The Origin of Species was published, and it has declined steadily during the subsequent decades, as evolution consolidated itself from plausible theory in the nineteenth century to established fact today.

 

The Chamberlain tactic of snuggling up to 'sensible' religion, in order to present a united front against ('intelligent design') creationists, is fine if your central concern is the battle for evolution. That is a valid central concern, and I salute those who press it, such as Eugenie Scott in Evolution versus Creationism. But if you are concerned with the stupendous scientific question of whether the universe was created by a supernatural intelligence or not, the lines are drawn completely differently. On this larger issue, fundamentalists are united with 'moderate' religion on one side, and I find myself on the other.

Of course, this all presupposes that the God we are talking about is a personal intelligence such as Yahweh, Allah, Baal, Wotan, Zeus or Lord Krishna. If, by 'God', you mean love, nature, goodness, the universe, the laws of physics, the spirit of humanity, or Planck's constant, none of the above applies. An American student asked her professor whether he had a view about me. 'Sure,' he replied. 'He's positive science is incompatible with religion, but he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe. To me, that is ¬religion!' Well, if that's what you choose to mean by religion, fine, that makes me a religious man. But if your God is a being who designs universes, listens to prayers, forgives sins, wreaks miracles, reads your thoughts, cares about your welfare and raises you from the dead, you are unlikely to be satisfied. As the distinguished American physicist Steven Weinberg said, "If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal." But don't expect congregations to flock to your church.

 

When Einstein said 'Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' he meant 'Could the universe have begun in more than one way?' 'God does not play dice' was Einstein's poetic way of doubting Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle. Einstein was famously irritated when theists misunderstood him to mean a personal God. But what did he expect? The hunger to misunderstand should have been palpable to him. 'Religious' physicists usually turn out to be so only in the Einsteinian sense: they are atheists of a poetic disposition. So am I. But, given the widespread yearning for that great misunderstanding, deliberately to confuse Einsteinian pantheism with supernatural religion is an act of intellectual high treason.

 

Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think, and here's why.

 

First, most of the traditional arguments for God's existence, from Aquinas on, are easily demolished. Several of them, such as the First Cause argument, work by setting up an infinite regress which God is wheeled out to terminate. But we are never told why God is magically able to terminate regresses while needing no explanation himself. To be sure, we do need some kind of explanation for the origin of all things. Physicists and cosmologists are hard at work on the problem. But whatever the answer - a random quantum fluctuation or a Hawking/Penrose singularity or whatever we end up calling it - it will be simple. Complex, statistically improbable things, by definition, don't just happen; they demand an explanation in their own right. They are impotent to terminate regresses, in a way that simple things are not. The first cause cannot have been an intelligence - let alone an intelligence that answers prayers and enjoys being worshipped. Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.

 

Another of Aquinas' efforts, the Argument from Degree, is worth spelling out, for it epitomises the characteristic flabbiness of theological reasoning. We notice degrees of, say, goodness or temperature, and we measure them, Aquinas said, by reference to a maximum:

Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus, as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things . . . Therefore, there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

That's an argument? You might as well say that people vary in smelliness but we can make the judgment only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like, and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion. That's theology.

 

The only one of the traditional arguments for God that is widely used today is the teleological argument, sometimes called the Argument from Design although - since the name begs the question of its validity - it should better be called the Argument for Design. It is the familiar 'watchmaker' argument, which is surely one of the most superficially plausible bad arguments ever discovered - and it is rediscovered by just about everybody until they are taught the logical fallacy and Darwin's brilliant alternative.

 

In the familiar world of human artifacts, complicated things that look designed are designed. To naïve observers, it seems to follow that similarly complicated things in the natural world that look designed - things like eyes and hearts - are designed too. It isn't just an argument by analogy. There is a semblance of statistical reasoning here too - fallacious, but carrying an illusion of plausibility. If you randomly scramble the fragments of an eye or a leg or a heart a million times, you'd be lucky to hit even one combination that could see, walk or pump. This demonstrates that such devices could not have been put together by chance. And of course, no sensible scientist ever said they could. Lamentably, the scientific education of most British and American students omits all mention of Darwinism, and therefore the only alternative to chance that most people can imagine is design.

Even before Darwin's time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born. What Hume didn't know was the supremely elegant alternative to both chance and design that Darwin was to give us. Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in science's future ability to explain everything else.

Natural selection is not just an alternative to chance. It is the only ultimate alternative ever suggested. Design is a workable explanation for organized complexity only in the short term. It is not an ultimate explanation, because designers themselves demand an explanation. If, as Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel once playfully speculated, life on this planet was deliberately seeded by a payload of bacteria in the nose cone of a rocket, we still need an explanation for the intelligent aliens who dispatched the rocket. Ultimately they must have evolved by gradual degrees from simpler beginnings. Only evolution, or some kind of gradualistic 'crane' (to use Daniel Dennett's neat term), is capable of terminating the regress. Natural selection is an anti-chance process, which gradually builds up complexity, step by tiny step. The end product of this ratcheting process is an eye, or a heart, or a brain - a device whose improbable complexity is utterly baffling until you spot the gentle ramp that leads up to it.

 

Whether my conjecture is right that evolution is the only explanation for life in the universe, there is no doubt that it is the explanation for life on this planet. Evolution is a fact, and it is among the more secure facts known to science. But it had to get started somehow. Natural selection cannot work its wonders until certain minimal conditions are in place, of which the most important is an accurate system of replication - DNA, or something that works like DNA.

 

The origin of life on this planet - which means the origin of the first self-replicating molecule - is hard to study, because it (probably) only happened once, 4 billion years ago and under very different conditions from those with which we are familiar. We may never know how it happened. Unlike the ordinary evolutionary events that followed, it must have been a genuinely very improbable - in the sense of unpredictable - event: too improbable, perhaps, for chemists to reproduce it in the laboratory or even devise a plausible theory for what happened. This weirdly paradoxical conclusion - that a chemical account of the origin of life, in order to be plausible, has to be implausible - would follow if it were the case that life is extremely rare in the universe. And indeed we have never encountered any hint of extraterrestrial life, not even by radio - the circumstance that prompted Enrico Fermi's cry: "Where is everybody?"

 

Suppose life's origin on a planet took place through a hugely improbable stroke of luck, so improbable that it happens on only one in a billion planets. The National Science Foundation would laugh at any chemist whose proposed research had only a one in a hundred chance of succeeding, let alone one in a billion. Yet, given that there are at least a billion billion planets in the universe, even such absurdly low odds as these will yield life on a billion planets. And - this is where the famous anthropic principle comes in - Earth has to be one of them, because here we are.

 

If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. But if you are alive (as you manifestly are if you are about to step into a spaceship) you needn't bother to go looking for that one planet because, by definition, you are already standing on it. The anthropic principle really is rather elegant. By the way, I don't actually think the origin of life was as improbable as all that. I think the galaxy has plenty of islands of life dotted about, even if the islands are too spaced out for any one to hope for a meeting with any other. My point is only that, given the number of planets in the universe, the origin of life could in theory be as lucky as a blindfolded golfer scoring a hole in one. The beauty of the anthropic principle is that, even in the teeth of such stupefying odds against, it still gives us a perfectly satisfying explanation for life's presence on our own planet.

 

The anthropic principle is usually applied not to planets but to universes. Physicists have suggested that the laws and constants of physics are too good - as if the universe were set up to favour our eventual evolution. It is as though there were, say, half a dozen dials representing the major constants of physics. Each of the dials could in principle be tuned to any of a wide range of values. Almost all of these knob-twiddlings would yield a universe in which life would be impossible. Some universes would fizzle out within the first picosecond. Others would contain no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In yet others, matter would never condense into stars (and you need stars in order to forge the elements of chemistry and hence life). You can estimate the very low odds against the six knobs all just happening to be correctly tuned, and conclude that a divine knob-twiddler must have been at work. But, as we have already seen, that explanation is vacuous because it begs the biggest question of all. The divine knob twiddler would himself have to have been at least as improbable as the settings of his knobs.

 

Again, the anthropic principle delivers its devastatingly neat solution. Physicists already have reason to suspect that our universe - everything we can see - is only one universe among perhaps billions. Some theorists postulate a multiverse of foam, where the universe we know is just one bubble. Each bubble has its own laws and constants. Our familiar laws of physics are parochial bylaws. Of all the universes in the foam, only a minority has what it takes to generate life. And, with anthropic hindsight, we obviously have to be sitting in a member of that minority, because, well, here we are, aren't we? As physicists have said, it is no accident that we see stars in our sky, for a universe without stars would also lack the chemical elements necessary for life. There may be universes whose skies have no stars: but they also have no inhabitants to notice the lack. Similarly, it is no accident that we see a rich diversity of living species: for an evolutionary process that is capable of yielding a species that can see things and reflect on them cannot help producing lots of other species at the same time. The reflective species must be surrounded by an ecosystem, as it must be surrounded by stars.

 

The anthropic principle entitles us to postulate a massive dose of luck in accounting for the existence of life on our planet. But there are limits. We are allowed one stroke of luck for the origin of evolution, and perhaps for a couple of other unique events like the origin of the eukaryotic cell and the origin of consciousness. But that's the end of our entitlement to large-scale luck. We emphatically cannot invoke major strokes of luck to account for the illusion of design that glows from each of the billion species of living creature that have ever lived on Earth. The evolution of life is a general and continuing process, producing essentially the same result in all species, however different the details.

 

Contrary to what is sometimes alleged, evolution is a predictive science. If you pick any hitherto unstudied species and subject it to minute scrutiny, any evolutionist will confidently predict that each individual will be observed to do everything in its power, in the particular way of the species - plant, herbivore, carnivore, nectivore or whatever it is - to survive and propagate the DNA that rides inside it. We won't be around long enough to test the prediction but we can say, with great confidence, that if a comet strikes Earth and wipes out the mammals, a new fauna will rise to fill their shoes, just as the mammals filled those of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And the range of parts played by the new cast of life's drama will be similar in broad outline, though not in detail, to the roles played by the mammals, and the dinosaurs before them, and the mammal-like reptiles before the dinosaurs. The same rules are predictably being followed, in millions of species all over the globe, and for hundreds of millions of years. Such a general observation requires an entirely different explanatory principle from the anthropic principle that explains one-off events like the origin of life, or the origin of the universe, by luck. That entirely different principle is natural selection.

 

We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin's principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable. [ ... End Richard Dawkins blog]

I have in the past written an original article of mine which attempts to prove quite simply the impossibility of 'God' on the metaphysical level/domain.

 

What is the difference between reality and illusion? Is 'illusion' encompassed by, and a part of the larger underlying theme we call reality? What if what we think we know as reality is but a larger illusion? Can we by definition know more than the sum of all our aggregate 'inputs'? Where do we start, what is the first final a priori assumption? Is there a true initial starting point axiom in which we can base everything else from? I think, therefore I am. But how does one know one actually 'thinks'? Is it safe to say that anything that is done can only be done through the means and inputs that are already in existence? So it is through this 'input' that 'I' am taught to believe there are distinctions, is it not? And again, through this 'input' that 'I' believe that from this distinction there is magical things called perception, and reality, self and others, internal and external, inner subjective realm and outer objective physical reality OUT THERE. And so I believe that through my perception I encounter a model of reality, and it is in this actual reality that my perception can exists.

 

1) If I am to assume that there are no silly distinctions and all is one, then everything simply just is. I have reached the bottom, the base case, the initial and the final. Perhaps in this case I realize that I am asking question so I can entertain myself with an endless hide and seek of losing and finding myself again through eternity?

 

2) If I am to assume that there are in fact these distinctions such as perception and reality, mentality and physicality, illusion and reals, physical and pyschological, then I can either further assume that physical reality is an elaborate illusion that exists solely in mentality, OR I can assume that consciousness, and 'qualia' are an epiphenomenon of the physical universe and its existence dependent on an external reality OUT THERE. If I were to go with the latter assumption, then I must rightfully concede that I can never exceed the realm of perception and mentality. Everything I see and touch and smell is but a model and sub-reality and not the genuine thing that is out there somewhere beyond my capacity. So again I ask, Can we by definition know more than the sum of all our aggregate 'inputs'? Doesn't this second assumption, the assumption that 'qualia' is an epiphenomenon of the physical universe, simply become reduced to the former assumption that physical reality is an elaborate illusion that exists solely in mentality? In this case, isn't mentality really all there is?

 

So between #1 and #2, which is the greater assumption? The first would solve all problems by stating 'all is one' and there are no problems, and indeed this thread of mine is a post of ignorance and illusion. The second assumption eventually reduces itself to be very much similar to the first. If 'mentality' is all there is, then the definition of 'mentality' becomes absurd and redundant. Without a 'physical' existence to contrast something 'other than physical', the word 'mental' ceases to have any meaning and its connotation becomes invalid. SO in essence, #2 reduces back into #1!!

 

So this, 'stuff', this 'just is' has been 'just – is-ing' for how long? It just is. Why is there a 'totality of all existence' at all in the first place instead of an 'other –than –existence-nothinglessness'? It just is. And why is it just is? It just is. Does think really actually answer anything? Why is the illusion of self not satisfied with the simplest answer in the universe?

 

Occam's razor, which states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory, and that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity CLEARLY is in support of NONDUALITY of existence rather than the duality that is too often taught in Christianty.

 

Awareness is the essence of reality. YOU me and everyone all boils down to PURE AWARENESS. That is our true essence and nature.

 

This Ordinary Everyday Awareness may seem like nothing special, something mundane. But, could anything even exist or be cognised without this Ordinary Everyday Awareness ? It's this simple Ordinary Everyday Awareness which is the amazing miracle, but, because it's ALWAYS there, it's been overlooked and taken for granted, ... but it's this Ordinary Everyday Awareness which is IT. It's the Ordinary Everyday Awareness which IS 'the Christ Consciousness'.

 

Universal Awareness is THE SAME everywhere, but it HAS THE APPEARANCE of being separate. Like the sun's one emanation seemingly separates into individual sparkles on the ocean, it seemingly separates into Individual Awareness which is what is perceiving everything in you this instant. Another name for Individual Awareness is ORDINARY EVERYDAY AWARENESS. This ORDINARY EVERYDAY AWARENESS is NOTHING NEW, it's always been there. It is here this very instant, you couldn't be aware of anything without it. It's there ALL of the time, you know it so well... it is what witnesses every thought, emotion, dream, sensation, action, re-action, etc in 'you'. It's SO simple and obvious that you've COMPLETELY overlooked it.

 

UNIVERSAL AWARENESS is like the one undivided emanation from the SUN ... and the INDIVIDUAL AWARENESS is like a SPARKLE reflecting on a wave in the ocean. UNDIVIDED Universal Awareness, whilst it is shining in the body, expresses itself as the LIMITED Individual Awareness and only sees what is happening within that body. However, ultimately, you are not Individual Awareness because that Individual Awareness will dissolve when the body stops functioning, just like the sparkle on the ocean stops when the little wave goes down.

 

 

Christ is someone who found out this ground state of being , namely pure 'AWARENESS' and his followers misidentified HIM AS TRUTH. He is a conduct and a messenger of TRUTH but NOT TRUTH itself, that is the distinction and difference I would like to point out to you and all other christians out there.

 

Awareness is all there is, and YOU are IT. There is nothing special about 'CHRIST' that you yourself couldn't gain by practing and experiencing first hand your OWN awareness and conciousness....

 

That is the point I am trying to make. Don't mistake the messenger for the message. Don't misidentify the vessel with the content.

Christ HAD LIFE, but HE is not the source of ALL LIFE. That 'life' that is talked about in the Bible can be obtained by ANYONE at any age regardess of religious affliations, dominations, etc.

 

It is much simpler than that, too simple almost that people have to make it more difficult than it really is.

 

Many Christians claim that the greatest difference between their religion and all the others in the world is Christ himself.

They say that Christ is the distinction that sets apart their practices and gives more validity to Christianity than that of

Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, etc. Christ to them is a living being who possess simultaneous the dual characteristics of man and God. They claim that Christ is living and indeed Christ is the source of all true life! They say in fact that if one were to take 'Christ' out of the Bible, whats left would be nothing more than mere doctrine, philosophy, and morality. Christ, this all illusive and seemingly man-God, is the cornerstone and rock solid foundation of Christianity. In fact without Christ this individual there would be no Christianity as we know of it today.

 

My aim is to show however, that despite the divinity and high spiritual status that Christian followers have attributed to this individual known as 'Christ', in the end there really isn't a 'Christ' to be found at all! I am not saying that Jesus Christ this historical person didn't ever exist, rather I am using the Christians own arguments of the non-existence of any individual 'self' to prove that the collective doings, personality, temperament, and behaviors of their high savior Christ is actually just as 'dead' as those they attribute to themselves and to the rest of humanity. You see, its rather funny actually, Christianity is its own undoing because the same principals and philosophies that Christians use to put down the ego-soul 'self' and the same clever tactics used to debase the body and soul-'self' as dead can be immediately turned around and used to describe their beloved 'Christ'.

 

In fact, I will show that downfall of Christianity is their mis-identification of this 'Christ' as Life rather than abiding in TRUE truth: awareness and consciousness as the source of all-illusive 'life' that the Christians so fervently seek. Putting 'Christ' into the equation of Christianity is not only unnecessarily redundant, but also making grave self-negating claims,and in doing so undermining the validity of this Christian religion altogether.

 

But Before I move on further let me give you a thought experiment. Pretend for a second that you are a single person looking for a life partner, a soul mate or to be in 'love'. So you go to Match.com - Find Singles at the World's Largest Online Dating Personals Service dating site and sign up for yourself in hopes of finding someone perfect for you. The biggest problem with finding people online is of course you don't meet face to face. Many characteristics, quarks, nuances, and subtle subconscious gestures, habits and body movements cannot be portrayed online. VNO and human pheromones, which determine genetic compatibility, cannot be matched online for the simple reason you cannot get a 'sniff at the other person!. The problem with online dating is that is so darn hard for one to express oneself in words and images only! This is the problem of identity, of describing and encapsulation WHO you are, the core essence of your 'being' into 2000 words on-line. To make matters worse, many 'canned' descriptions of oneself have little or nothing to do with actually describing the PERSON that you are and actually distract from the search altogether! There are many levels of description that one can use to describe oneself. For example if I am 5'11" and 160 lbs and 21 years of ages, these physical descriptions are objective, quantiative, and 'precise'. There is no room for misinterpretation or speculation. Everyone with a ruler, a scale, and a calendar can appreciate the 'meaning' of 5'11", 160lbs, and 21 yrs. And everyone will agree that its the same value. However physical descriptions, which are the easiest to identify with, are also the least descriptive of WHO someone IS. For example, if I did a search for all the people who are also 5'11, 160, 21 does that mean they are ME? Of course NOT! This is absurd to think otherwise! So who am I? WHAT is the essence of ME? (ie what makes me, me?)

On a 'higher' level, if I were to look deeper inside I would probably say that I like aviation, I like flight simulation, and I like sci-fi and tech. These hobbies and interests are descriptors of what I like, but are they really WHO I AM? I am not a flight simulation am I? Of course not. While these things reflect 'my' personal tastes and preferences, they are not in and of themselves true definition of WHO or WHAT 'I' AM!! However on this level of describing myself it becomes more uncertain, more vague and definitely more open to interpretation. After all there are many forms of aviation, and it is not as precise and quantitative as a value such as 160lbs.

So still I look deeper and more introspective into my own 'mind' to find out who I am, what is IT exactly (whatever IT is) that actually makes me WHO I AM??

On a higher level still, I could say that my Briggs Myers type is INFP. that stands for Introspective, Intuitive, Feeling , Perceiving. I could also describe my self as intellectual, shy, agreeable, open minded, etc. However these adjectives and attributes are simply convenient by-products of the personal I am, but are NOT WHO I AM!

 

This is the exact same problem as with asking what is the elementary nature of reality (ie for example: what is the building block of matter?)? I am flesh, but what is flesh? It is carbon based life form made of cells which are made of all different combinations of molecules and atoms, which are further made of individual protons, electrons, neutrons. what is an electron? No one can give you an precise definition of what is an electron....Furthermore, electrons are made of 'quarks' and quarks are speculated to be consisting of 1-D elementary 'strings'. But what the heck is a 'string'?

 

So see this thing can either go on forever in recursive loops (meaning you will never get an answer of WHAT it is) or it can end somewhere at a base case in which the answer MUST be:

 

IT JUST IS. Because by definition something that is irreducible has no further properties that can be broken down with. The method of reduction ends when the things being considered can no longer be broken apart; that is, when we have reached things that are irreducible. Identifying these irreducible things is one of the primary goals of science. By definition, if a thing is perceived as irreducible, its underlying structure is totally unknown. IT JUST IS...

 

I realize then, if I am not the body, if I am not my emotions and memories and personalities and attributes, talents and faults, believes and doings, experience and mis-identifications with the external world, then what I am left with is the KNOWING that "I JUST AM". And that knowing is AWARENESS. It is cognitive consciousness and self-awareness. It is what cognizes everything that is seen, heard, felt ...ANYTHING THAT APPEARS, manifests. The thoughts, emotions, dreams, imaginings, body actions, etc are all 'appearances'. They are all, even though some of them may be very subtle, THINGS which APPEAR in Awareness. Awareness is the cogniser of ALL the appearances.

 

Awareness is not a thing, it has no physical or material quality, it is EMPTINESS. Even though it is what everyTHING, every appearance, depends on for its existence it has no physical make-up, it is space-like. It is the only NO-THING. It is Awareness from which, and in which every'thing' appears and disappears.

 

We do have an identity, we do have an subjective 'self' but that self is an illusion and not the true 'self'. Because our true self is pure awareness. It is coherent, unified, holistic and it is what is connecting everything together. If there ever was a 'God' then this congnizing conscious self-awareness is IT.

 

Two individuals who are in love with one another, even though they may believe it to be 'true love' is actually an illusion illuding to another illusion.

So is there is point to 'romance'? Does it even exists? that would of course depend on your definition of 'existence' and your domain 'point'. No objectively there is no 'point' to anything, no meaning or purpose to life. Life just is, that is the cold harsh reality of the inconvenient truth. Yet 'love' and 'romance' even though they are not 'REAL' on the most fundamental level, and even though the 'self' and the 'perfect partner' is an illusion on the ultimate domain of 'reality' I believe personally it is still subjectively worthwhile. The problem is Christ is the messenger and NOT the content. He is NOT the source. Christians accuse atheist of misidentifying the 'self' as real, and yet these god damn hypocrites themselves misidentify the personality's, characteristics, and attributes, history, and experiences of this fag called 'Christ' as the SOURCE OF LIFE.

Christ is a dead appearance, just like you and me, we are dead appearances, the SOURCE is AWARENESS itself. that is our one and only true nature. Everything else is an illusion. Even selfless sacrifical soulmate 'love' is an illusion, and yet if 'I' were to 'die' for any illusion in this world, it would be for another human being that I 'loved' (even though love is itself another illusion) rather than for Jesus H ****ing Christ. Understand????

 

Let me give you simple analog: you go to a grocery store to purchase water, but the water is bottled water, aquafina bottled water.

You do this for so long that out of habit your subconscious misidentifies aquafina AS water. So one day there is a water shortage.

You go into the same store and all the aquafina bottle waters are sold out. There is a drinking fountain providing free water, but you

can't drink from it because it would be like reading the Koran, it would be blasphemous, and you would be disloyal to water.

But how can you possible be 'disloyal' to water when ALL WATER IS THE SAME? It is only your misidentification with the brand

name 'aquafina' AS water, you illusion and false believe that the name 'aquafina' is the actual SOURCE of water that cripples and

blinds you.

 

Humanity does not need the 'baggage' and the external attributes and characteristics of a so called Christ in order to

appreciate 'reality' and ONENESS. We must go DIRECTLY to the TRUE source, and that is NOT true the self proclaimed conduit-christ, infact

it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with Christ at all! AWARENESS IS 'IT'!!! 'IT' CANNOT POSSIBLE BE ANY'THING' ELSE!!!!

 

A rose by any other name is just as sweet. AWARENESS IS spirituality, AWARENESS IS the EVERLASTING LIFE. AWARENESS IS what scientists call phenomenon and 'qualia' and consciousness! It is the true source of all things, AWARENESS is the 'JUST IS' of ALL 'JUST IS'es'!!

 

Occam's razor, which states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory, and that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity CLEARLY is in support of NONDUALITY of existence rather than the duality that is too often taught in Christianty.

 

Awareness is the essence of reality. YOU me and everyone all boils down to PURE AWARENESS. That is our true essence and nature.

 

This Ordinary Everyday Awareness may seem like nothing special, something mundane. But, could anything even exist or be cognised without this Ordinary Everyday Awareness ? It's this simple Ordinary Everyday Awareness which is the amazing miracle, but, because it's ALWAYS there, it's been overlooked and taken for granted, ... but it's this Ordinary Everyday Awareness which is IT. It's the Ordinary Everyday Awareness which IS 'the Christ Consciousness'.

 

Universal Awareness is THE SAME everywhere, but it HAS THE APPEARANCE of being separate. Like the sun's one emanation seemingly separates into individual sparkles on the ocean, it seemingly separates into Individual Awareness which is what is perceiving everything in you this instant. Another name for Individual Awareness is ORDINARY EVERYDAY AWARENESS. This ORDINARY EVERYDAY AWARENESS is NOTHING NEW, it's always been there. It is here this very instant, you couldn't be aware of anything without it. It's there ALL of the time, you know it so well... it is what witnesses every thought, emotion, dream, sensation, action, re-action, etc in 'you'. It's SO simple and obvious that you've COMPLETELY overlooked it.

 

UNIVERSAL AWARENESS is like the one undivided emanation from the SUN ... and the INDIVIDUAL AWARENESS is like a SPARKLE reflecting on a wave in the ocean. UNDIVIDED Universal Awareness, whilst it is shining in the body, expresses itself as the LIMITED Individual Awareness and only sees what is happening within that body. However, ultimately, you are not Individual Awareness because that Individual Awareness will dissolve when the body stops functioning, just like the sparkle on the ocean stops when the little wave goes down.

 

 

 

Christ is someone who found out this ground state of being , namely pure 'AWARENESS' and his followers misidentified HIM AS TRUTH. He is a conduct and a messenger of TRUTH but NOT TRUTH itself, that is the distinction and difference I would like to point out to you and all other christians out there.

 

THERE IS NO NEED TO GO TO HIM OR THROUGH HIM TO KNOW THE TRUTH. You are the truth! Find your true self and you find the essence and truth of ALL THINGS!

 

Christ was an ordinary regular person/man who was more in tune to the ground state of being and of awareness than most, but there is no 'self' or 'person' of 'Christ' just like the same way in which there is no 'self' or 'person' of you or me! We should not concentrate on the baggage that is Christ, who is DEAD, but indeed we should seek the spiritual and transcendental nature of awareness and consciousness that is readily available in all of us! We need no religion, bible, church, or denomination, the joke is WE ARE IT! It couldn't be more simple than this, and yet it is so simple that most completely overlook it!

 

I'd like to end here by saying that since religious people choose to defend 'God' using 'faith' and not any scientific evidence, then no arguement or evidence could ever shake their belief. And thats fine with me, but on the other hand I could also ask these same people why they don't believe in an Invisible Pink Unicorn, or 1 trillion ton Banana God, or microscopic toilet as the creator of the universe? Any reason they use for explaining their preference of one 'faith' over another must by its own very nature be secular and NOT based on faith, because faith needs no reasons!

 

In science as in observable reality and as in life and logic, something by default is nonexistant until it has shown to be real. We just don't go around and give infinite number of infinite possiblities the benefit of the doubt of existence until each and every one can be 'proven' to be nonexistant, because the first action makes it utterly impossible to prove anything is ever truly 'nonexistant'. Any reasonable being should have come to know this intimately by know, for this is also the basis and foundation of all that is science. For 'God' to be accepted as real based on faith, one must also based on faith accept an infinite number of other things, like cars that go faster than warp 9.975, or ants the size of Jupiter, or planets that revolve around my shoe, etc... Or even, dare I say this, an exact anti-'God' of whatever their 'God' is, that annilates with 'God' and both entities immediately cease to exists. Or how about this one?: since there is an infinite number of possible things that 'could' exists no matter how wierd or illogical, there is also an infinite number of 'anti'-things and when all the imaginary 'things' and anti-things are added up, the sum total of all these things and anti-things add up to zero and we rid ourselves of this rediculous curse of having to play the game of 'we must assume everything that has no evidence of any existence to be existing until we prove its non-existence (which may impossible).

 

So now we are back to square one, and this time without the burden of religion, lets find out the REAL TRUTH PLEASE.

 

 

-----------

 

Links for further research and study:

 

God Is Dead

Skeptic's Annotated Bible / Quran / Book of Mormon

Atheism: the atheist section of Debate Unlimited

The God Who Wasn't There

[TheBigDog]

You want to become an expert. My grandfather used to define an expert this way...

An "ex" is a has-been, and a "spurt" is a drip with a push behind it.

When company comes to the house to stay for a week, I do not server a 21 course meal the first morning. We eat one meal at a time. *please* try to make the posts shorter. This is not a dias, this is discussion. Reading and discussing all of that is freaking exhausting.

 

Thanks

 

Bill

[Turtle]

It is as effete an effort to prove there is not God, as to prove the opposite. - Roger Thelonious George

[Guest chen2739]

It is as effete an effort to prove there is not God, as to prove the opposite. - Roger Thelonious George

You are right, but I may not even NEED to waste my time in proving a God doesn't exists, becuase God to me is totally irrelevant. May I ask you, do you sir wake up every morning trying to prove the nonexistence of a omnipotent purple sock that can travel back in time??

God is trivial to the point of meaningless, that was and still is the original point I was trying to make in this post.

 

I'd like to end here by saying that since religious people choose to defend 'God' using 'faith' and not any scientific evidence, then no arguement or evidence could ever shake their belief. And thats fine with me, but on the other hand I could also ask these same people why they don't believe in an Invisible Pink Unicorn, or 1 trillion ton Banana God, or microscopic toilet as the creator of the universe? Any reason they use for explaining their preference of one 'faith' over another must by its own very nature be secular and NOT based on faith, because faith needs no reasons!

 

In science as in observable reality and as in life and logic, something by default is nonexistant until it has shown to be real. We just don't go around and give infinite number of infinite possiblities the benefit of the doubt of existence until each and every one can be 'proven' to be nonexistant, because the first action makes it utterly impossible to prove anything is ever truly 'nonexistant'. Any reasonable being should have come to know this intimately by know, for this is also the basis and foundation of all that is science. For 'God' to be accepted as real based on faith, one must also based on faith accept an infinite number of other things, like cars that go faster than warp 9.975, or ants the size of Jupiter, or planets that revolve around my shoe, etc... Or even, dare I say this, an exact anti-'God' of whatever their 'God' is, that annilates with 'God' and both entities immediately cease to exists. Or how about this one?: since there is an infinite number of possible things that 'could' exists no matter how wierd or illogical, there is also an infinite number of 'anti'-things and when all the imaginary 'things' and anti-things are added up, the sum total of all these things and anti-things add up to zero and we rid ourselves of this rediculous curse of having to play the game of 'we must assume everything that has no evidence of any existence to be existing until we prove its non-existence (which may impossible).

 

So now we are back to square one, and this time without the burden of religion, lets find out the REAL TRUTH PLEASE.

[TheBigDog]

You are right, but I may not even NEED to waste my time in proving a God doesn't exists, becuase God to me is totally irrelevant.

Stats of your opening post...

 

Word Count = 9,888

Characters = 58,478 (with spaces)

 

That is an awful lot of time dedicated to not proving something that is irrelevant. What is your purpose?

 

Bill

[IDMclean]

It would suffice to say Mu. Non, or not.

 

It isn't that god does or does not exist. It isn't that God can be proved positive or negative. It is that the question of god itself is what is flawed and irrelevant.

 

This is the fallacy of many questions. Presupposition of things not proved; necessarily provable; accepted as self-evident (axiomatic), in the guise of fact, formed into question.

 

So to this, I say Mu. All that you have written here, all that you have said can be summed up by that one response. That you answer the question, shows that you at some level accept some part of the question, and gives relevancy to the question itself, and to all that is presupposed.

 

To answer the question is to damn yourself to the burden of proof. Either for the positive or the negative. Atheist or Theist. Hence my position as Non-theist.

[Southtown]

It isn't that god does or does not exist. It isn't that God can be proved positive or negative. It is that the question of god itself is what is flawed and irrelevant.

 

This is the fallacy of many questions. Presupposition of things not proved; necessarily provable; accepted as self-evident (axiomatic), in the guise of fact, formed into question.

Oh Gawd. Origins moot? Or is incidental existence more than theory?

[LJP07]

Chen, you cannot come to the conclusion that no God exists. You repeatedly refer to God as "he", when it's never referred to as a person, so it may not be a person, you say:

 

Was he bored? Was he lonely? God is supposed to be perfect. If something is perfect, it is complete--it needs nothing else. We humans engage in activities because we are pursuing that elusive perfection, because there is disequilibrium caused by a difference between what we are and what we want to be.

 

Saying that would certainly offend some true believers and don't see the point of it and secondly we humans don't engage life to be perfect, if everyone found the true formula to be perfect, the world would be a very boring place, so that statement renders that paragraph void.

 

Next, God could be a spirit form that Jesus in his book the bible explained would be the true way to live, it may not have any power or control just influence in the form of the bible, even at that we know how to live and certainly don't need a book, alternatively what I could say could be true.

 

Next, those that believe in a God don't want or need proof. The whole idea is faith and that's the whole point, those that believe don't want or need proof, they don't crave it at all. Those that don't believe are the opposite and try to prove wrong by coming up with supposed theories that you cannot prove are right either. Can you prove what you say is right to all of us!?

[Edella]

 

Next, those that believe in a God don't want or need proof. The whole idea is faith and that's the whole point, those that believe don't want or need proof, they don't crave it at all. Those that don't believe are the opposite and try to prove wrong by coming up with supposed theories that you cannot prove are right either.

I think you paint with too broad of a brush Prolu2007. I am not a believer and have no desire to "prove wrong" any believer or religious doctrine.

[IDMclean]

Oh Gawd. Origins moot? Or is incidental existence more than theory?

 

Care to rephrase and elaborate on your question? I have read it over a few times now and I can't make sense of it.

 

Somethings I thought on reading it:

Origins of what?

Incidental existence? I am not familar with the concept.

theory, as in scientific sense of the word theory or as in colloquial sense of the the word theory?

 

Oh just in case I am revising my post to include some links for clarification.

[Southtown]

Thus I have shown 'God' to be beneath this 'zero singularity of nothing', and by doing so have 'proven' on the highest ground that 'God' is an impossibility.

That's funny, Yahweh did refer to himself as the first and the last in Isaiah 41,44,48 and Revelations 1,21,22. And why do you assume that the ZSON that no one can see is inanimate? (Exodus 33:20) I'm afraid I might find your ZSON intriguingly compatible with scripture.

 

I strongly disagree with this assumption not only because evidence for the existence of this presumably ubiquitous yet invisible God is lacking, but because the very nature Christians attribute to this God is self-contradictory.

Christianity is a hodgepodge. You couldn't have picked a more difficult (or irrelevant) construct to disassemble. Maybe you mean to attack the God of Abraham, or Hebrew scriptures in general.

 

What did God do during that eternity before he created everything?

Me thinks time is a property of creation, not vice versa. Einstein agrees.

 

If God was all that existed back then, what disturbed the eternal equilibrium and compelled him to create? Was he bored? Was he lonely? God is supposed to be perfect.

The other heavenly beings are also eternal according to Hebrew scripture. And again you must be referring to the God of Abraham. Think Judaism. Christianity tends toward the pagan polytheism, i.e. Trinity.

 

If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do.

Define perfect. By my definition of perfection, creation as an act of kindness would not be unreasonable.

 

If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it. Someone once said that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, and yet this "perfect" God created a "perfect" universe which was rendered imperfect by the "perfect" humans.

"And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." -- Genesis 1:31 asv

 

When he created the universe, he saw the sufferings which humans would endure as a result of the sin of those original humans.

Hence the reward later: resurrection, eternal life, and what-not. A infinite reward for a finite tribulation, to use your phraseology.

 

God is perfectly just, and yet he sentences the imperfect humans he created to infinite suffering in hell for finite sins.

Unscriptural.

 

The all-powerful God could have, by a mere act of will, eliminated all of the problems we humans must endure, but instead, in his infinite wisdom, he has opted to offer this indecipherable amalgam of books which is the Bible as a means for avoiding the hell which he has prepared for us.

1) Just as affording us all a mind and the freewill to do as we please is an act of kindness, so to is recommending certain behaviors over others an act of kindness. 2) Hell is 'prepared' for the devil and his angels. Or speaking etymologically (and also free of popular connotation,) is prepared for the resistor of truth and his messengers. Take that how you want it. 3) The bible is not indecipherable. It's just steeped in Hebrew symbolism. People only disagree when they attempt to manipulate it. 4) Seek and ye shall find...

 

It contradicts itself on matters of justice, for the same just God who assures his people that sons shall not be punished for the sins of their fathers turns around and destroys an entire household for the sin of one man (he had stolen some of Yahweh's war loot).

Where is that exactly? And Yahweh told Moses (i.e. the nation of Israel) not to punish sons. In another place, Yahweh said he would visit the iniquity of the father to the third and fourth generation. I would add that "visiting the iniquity of" is not necesarily punishment, but a natural consequence of bad behavior. (Think disturbed children of alcoholic/molesting fathers...) Conversely he will reward (again inadvertently IMO) righteousness to the 1000th generation.

 

It was this same Yahweh who afflicted thousands of his innocent people with plague and death to punish their evil king David for taking a census (?!). It was this same Yahweh who allowed the humans to slaughter his son because the perfect Yahweh had botched his own creation. Consider how many have been stoned, burned, slaughtered, raped, and enslaved because of Yahweh's skewed sense of justice. The blood of innocent babies is on the perfect, just, compassionate hands of Yahweh.

1 Chronicles 21. A controversial census was taken. Narrarator assumes God was displeased and somehow "struck Israel". David pleas for forgiveness. Then God first actively enters the scene by offering David one of three punishments via the prophet Gad. David says have mercy. And then the plague comes. Sounds to me like stuff happens, and God gets blamed for it. He neither personally condemned the census nor David.

 

If the Bible cannot confirm itself in mundane earthly matters, how are we to trust it on moral and spiritual matters?

Compare it with your own God-given sense of decency. (Isaiah 1:16-20)

 

Read Isaiah 7 and compare it to Matthew 1 to find but one of many misinterpreted prophecies of which Christians are either passively or willfully ignorant.

"and [the virgin] shall call his name Immanual" is misleading. The Hebrew reads more like "and shall proclaim that he is God with us". A name is more like a reputation or description in ancient Hebrew culture and other primitive cultures. Translators usually have to choose between using transliteration (as in pronunciation) or translation (as in word meaning) when translating names because it isn't possible to convey both without notes in the margin.

 

A God who knows the future is powerless to change it. An omniscient God who is all-powerful and freewilled is impossible.

Horseshit. It simply means he can know the final result of what he chooses to do before he actually carries it out. It also means he knows the totality of other possible choices and their final outcomes as well so as to always make the best choice.

 

We humans experience emotions as a result of new knowledge. ...Nothing is hidden from him, nothing new may be revealed to him, so there is no gained knowledge to which he may emotively react.

1) If you say so, and 2) you assume that God is subject to time rather than vice versa.

 

The perfect, omnipotent God, however, can fix anything.

Yeah, and if I had the power to make Kate Beckinsale fall in love with me, I would also have to convince myself that she is sincere. Love, kindness, loyalty and companionship are not subject to force. Doing things by force can be equated with warmongering, genocide, and tyranny, and therefore are not applicable to my sense of perfection.

 

You say God can make good things happen, I disagree. I say good is only good because bad was an option. Otherwise what makes it good? Good is only commendable because bad is easy. You cheer more at the football game when the impossible pass is made than you do for the turnover punt.

 

He ends by saying this :

 

Should any Christian who reads this persist in defending these impossibilities through means of "divine transcendence" and "faith," and should any Christian continue to call me an atheist fool, I will be forced to invoke the wrath of the Invisible Pink Unicorn:

Here's where we disregard the Hebrew scriptures in favor of your own, a good place for me to take a break. I can take up here later. In departing, I'll just say wait and see, my man.

"

Remember this, and show yourselves men;

Recall to mind, O you transgressors.

Remember the former things of old,

For I am God, and there is no other;

I am God, and there is none like Me,

Declaring the end from the beginning

,

And from ancient times things that are not yet done

,

Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,

And I will do all My pleasure,’

Calling a bird of prey from the east,

The man who executes My counsel, from a far country.

Indeed I have spoken it;

I will also bring it to pass.

I have purposed it;

I will also do it.

Listen to Me, you stubborn-hearted,

Who are far from righteousness:

I bring My righteousness near, it shall not be far off;

My salvation shall not linger.

And I will place salvation in Zion,

For Israel My glory.

--

Isaiah 46:8-13 nkjv

[Southtown]

Origins of what?

Incidental existence? I am not familar with the concept.

Sorry. I meant origins of everything specifically. And I was trying to express that where we come from is neither trivial nor proven.

 

By incidental existence, I refer to the scientific presumption of deterministic origins. I don't see how someone can substantiate a whimsical claim that any doubt or conjecture in that area is absurd.

 

The existence of a spiritual realm or being is not completely unlikely just because it can't be directly evidenced via a certain scientific method.

[IDMclean]

See and this is what I mean by answering the question. The discussion becomes a confused mess of well this says this and that says this. In simply refusing to answer the question, or stating that the question is ill formed, one does not subject oneself to a debate or argument about the subject, because you have not accepted the presuppositions.

 

Without two there can not be dialog.

 

In answering, your answer (positive or negative) becomes scrutiable, subject to examination and refutation.

 

If you assert that god does exist (as immanent, trancedent anthropomorphic deity), and you give reason why, citing sources, then the counter argument can be made. Asserting that god does not exist and giving reason why, citing sources (perhaps even the same sources).

 

However, if one is critical and assumes from the outset that something maybe amiss, that perhaps even the very founding question, the first proposition, the first question is perhaps in and of itself miss formed, then one can seek to avoid a irrelevant discussion on the nature of insensible, intangible, unknowable, pink elephants.

 

Is there a god?

Such a question begs too many questions. What is a god? How is a god formed? Can a god be manipulated? How does one measure a god? Observe a god? What are the attributes of the entity called god?

 

These questions go on and on. Anything that can be said of such an entity/non-entity is irrelevant because no consensus can be made of the fundamental nature of a god, or any god. Any concept or attribute can be applied to a god, and likewise refuted. Some would argue that god has attributes, some would argue that god has not attributes, that god is beyond attributes.

 

What point is such an argument when at it's core; nothing that can be said; nothing can be verified and all is subject to individual belief? I would sooner argue on the nature of space and time than on the nature of god.

[IDMclean]

God has nothing to do with the question of "Where do we come from?"

 

or "Where does the universe come frome?"

 

Though god is offered as an answer, once again I must ask too many questions about the nature of a god, or any god.

 

It goes sorta like this:

Q:Where does the universe come from?

A: God.

 

Q:Where does god come from?

A:Nowhere.

 

Q:How was the universe created?

A:God.

 

Q:How was God created?

A:God wasn't created, god is and always will be.

 

Just hypothetical answers to questions which too me are the same class as:

"Is there a god?", "have you stopped beating your wife, yet?", "Which slit did the electron pass through?", "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", "What occured before the creation of the universe/big bang?", and "does your mom know your gay?".

 

I will note that all the questions I asked above presuppose something. Such as the universe was created. A view that I do not accept, and am highly suspicious of. Who is to say that the universe *was* created? Or that the universe came from anywhere? It is very interesting to note that, hypothesis, the universe very well is everywhere. Such that the universe could not come from another place, because place is defined in terms of universe.

 

See it's issues like this that plague human thought past, and present. I am not saying that god does or does not exist, but that too me, it is an irrelevant question to which their is no proper answer. A word trap if you will.

[Southtown]

Well, I pretty much agree with you. What you are talking about is going 'god-hunting' so to speak, Sherlock-Holmes-style. And that's impossible to do because you have to define god at the same time that you validate her existence.

 

But, when there is a preformed construct, such as Yahweh or Zeus, then one has a definition to validate. The questions you ask are provided by the theology and only have to be checked for internal and external consistencies. In which case, inconsistency will disprove Ms. Deity's construct, but consistency will not prove her existence.

[LJP07]

I think you paint with too broad of a brush Prolu2007. I am not a believer and have no desire to "prove wrong" any believer or religious doctrine.

 

When I said that I referred to some non-believers, I should have re-phrased that to mean that. Some non-believers try to prove the God wrong.

[Southtown]

Read Isaiah 7 and compare it to Matthew 1 to find but one of many misinterpreted prophecies of which Christians are either passively or willfully ignorant.

"and [the virgin] shall call his name Immanual" is misleading. The Hebrew reads more like "and shall proclaim that he is God with us". A name is more like a reputation or description in ancient Hebrew culture and other primitive cultures. Translators usually have to choose between using transliteration (as in pronunciation) or translation (as in word meaning) when translating names because it isn't possible to convey both without notes in the margin.

Case in point:

"

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder:

and his name shall be called

Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

" --

Isaiah 9:6