Discussion with a Christian

notsaved
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Discussion with a Christian

A fundy on a xtain discussion forum had this to say about the existence of God :

There was never a time when God did not exist, and there will never be a time when God ceases to exist.

My response:

Actually there was a time when God did not exist and man in his fear and ignorance of how the world operated was their only motivation to create a God in their own image. But once belief in God ceased, so did God. So as you can see, there was a time when God didn?t exist.

What would your response be to a fundy making such a statement?

Just something to toss around and have fun with.

I am an atheist because I do not believe in any Gods or anything related to the imaginary subjective supernatural realm that does not exist outside the mind. -- NotSaved


qwak
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well, based on that statement, god is linked to the time dimension, so therefore if there was no universe, there would be no time, and god would not exist, as such he couldn't have created the universe since he is linked to that 1 dimension.

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How could there of been a god if there was no one around to assign it the tite of go and then worship it?

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MattShizzle
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There was never a time where god existed (outside peoples' imaginations), and there will never be a time when he/she/it exists. Laughing out loud

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Tell him infinity is an imaginary number for this very reason. Immagine a universe that is infinite in time - we would never get to this point and thus not exist to be having this discussion.

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God isn't linked to the

God isn't linked to the universe.  It's linked to him, like a line segment is linked to a line.

If you've ever made a drawing and destroyed it, then you have both preceeded and superceeded it.  You are not bound by the drawing, it is bound by you.


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doctorpeppor wrote:God isn't

doctorpeppor wrote:

God isn't linked to the universe.  It's linked to him, like a line segment is linked to a line.

How, precisely?

I mean, how can it be measured?

If it can't be measured, either directly or indirectly, then it's basically a meaningless category. 'God', I mean.

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If you've ever made a drawing and destroyed it, then you have both preceeded and superceeded it.  You are not bound by the drawing, it is bound by you.

Not a terribly good analogy, I'm afraid. We know a human ('you') made the drawing. We can trace (no pun intended) the events and causes that led to its creation backward to its parts, finding the causal reason why it was created and what its component pieces are.

Not so with theories about what god did. For a long, long time it was just a given that some sort of god created things and/or sustained them. Now, however, there are some very real challenges to the premises behind the need for a god- from various flavors of the ontological argument to the moral argument- that haven't been sufficiently answered by theists.

Though the problem *here* is that, we're dealing not with what we *know* what god did, but what we *think* god did, even given the idea that god exists, in some fashion.

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qwak wrote:well, based on

qwak wrote:
well, based on that statement, god is linked to the time dimension, so therefore if there was no universe, there would be no time, and god would not exist, as such he couldn't have created the universe since he is linked to that 1 dimension.

Eye-wink

Fuck that statement!

You can't start a logical scientific discussion by accepting an irrational statement as a basis!!!

The friggin theist made a claim of the existence of a god.

The burden of proof for the claim rests entirely upon the theist, not the Atheist.

Don't twist the shit around by assuming the burden or proof, NOR by accepting a mythological statement as emprical evidence upon which to create a discussion, or to use as a rational basis for a discussion.

If you wanna talk shit, go ahead, but please at least TEACH other Atheists that you ARE talking shit, and HOW NOT TO talk shit, as explained above.

This same old shit happens over and over. Teach someone (Theist and Atheist alike), something of value.


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notsaved wrote:A fundy on a

notsaved wrote:
A fundy on a xtain discussion forum had this to say about the existence of God : There was never a time when God did not exist, and there will never be a time when God ceases to exist. My response: Actually there was a time when God did not exist and man in his fear and ignorance of how the world operated was their only motivation to create a God in their own image. But once belief in God ceased, so did God. So as you can see, there was a time when God didn?t exist. What would your response be to a fundy making such a statement? Just something to toss around and have fun with.

 

I guess it depends on how you look at God. God created everything, God is outside of our current time/space understanding, so its like trying to understand another demensnion we've never witnessed and have no idea on. The 2d man gets picked up by someone from the 3rd demension example basicly.

Everyone keeps trying to put a human perspective on something that is so far out of our understanding.

 

 


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Quote:I guess it depends on

Quote:

I guess it depends on how you look at God. God created everything, God is outside of our current time/space understanding, so its like trying to understand another demensnion we've never witnessed and have no idea on. The 2d man gets picked up by someone from the 3rd demension example basicly.

Everyone keeps trying to put a human perspective on something that is so far out of our understanding.

 

...But this isn't sensible. Making a claim and then, when pressed for evidence, asserting that the properties of your claim preclude it from observable evidence / testing dos not somehow make your claim any stronger or more valid.

I mean, if God is inherently unknowable, how the heck can you claim to know that he/she/it exists?

 

It's like saying that I know that The Dread Cthulhu lies dreaming in His sunken city of Raleigh, but I can't show you any evidence of this because a single glimpse of any such evidence tears your sanity asunder (and perhaps here I would even allude to the many cases of mental illness in the world as pseudo-'evidence' for my claim). You just have to know in your heart that He's out there beneath the depths, and that his fish men servants are going to rape you so he can awaken and end the world. Sticking out tongue

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"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

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notsaved wrote:A fundy on a

notsaved wrote:
A fundy on a xtain discussion forum had this to say about the existence of God : There was never a time when God did not exist, and there will never be a time when God ceases to exist. My response: Actually there was a time when God did not exist and man in his fear and ignorance of how the world operated was their only motivation to create a God in their own image. But once belief in God ceased, so did God. So as you can see, there was a time when God didn?t exist. What would your response be to a fundy making such a statement? Just something to toss around and have fun with.

 

I wouldn't argue this angle. Their starting point "God" is a naked assertion. Once you blindly accept the naked assertion, you can wrap it up with more naked assertions and keep piling them on.

I would try to argue the scientific absurdity of the "Omni-" atributes of claimed being, and the moraly repugnant deadbeat god who is selective about his intervention.

Always remember, they are working backwards in their thinking. They assume a deity then look for reasons to justify it. Logic in finding answers in the real world starts with substantiated data then works from there.

 

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Kevin R Brown wrote: ...But

Kevin R Brown wrote:

 

...But this isn't sensible. Making a claim and then, when pressed for evidence, asserting that the properties of your claim preclude it from observable evidence / testing dos not somehow make your claim any stronger or more valid.

I mean, if God is inherently unknowable, how the heck can you claim to know that he/she/it exists?

 

It's like saying that I know that The Dread Cthulhu lies dreaming in His sunken city of Raleigh, but I can't show you any evidence of this because a single glimpse of any such evidence tears your sanity asunder (and perhaps here I would even allude to the many cases of mental illness in the world as pseudo-'evidence' for my claim). You just have to know in your heart that He's out there beneath the depths, and that his fish men servants are going to rape you so he can awaken and end the world. Sticking out tongue

Anything that comes down to how this universe was created, how it started etc can never really be proved. You can not find the two particles that initialy started the big bang. You can theroise about it, test all kinds of hypothesis, but you will never be able to find them, or prove that is what exactly started everything. You have to have some kind of faith to know that that is how the universe started.

No, you cant do this for God either, that is why IS based on faith, you can try and find all kinds of evidence, some of which is more than enough for some people, some that is contradictory and some that isnt enough for other people.


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I would say that...

This theist's intelligence never existed and never will exist.


Dakota KS
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Madmax958 wrote:This

Madmax958 wrote:

This theist's intelligence never existed and never will exist.

 

Whats the point of posting something if all it does is insult someone, specialy when you have no idea of how smart or stupid they really are...


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No, you cant do this for God

Quote:

No, you cant do this for God either, that is why IS based on faith, you can try and find all kinds of evidence, some of which is more than enough for some people, some that is contradictory and some that isnt enough for other people.

But you haven't actually made a counterpoint. You've merely given additional validation to his already perfectly valid point. If we have a claim like the existence of "God", the contents of which supposedly pertain to something which, by the admission of the people making the claim, are beyond their and anyone's understanding, then their claim is self-defeating. It's a completely pointless claim since it by definition requires the relinquishing of all knowledge claims one could make about this entity and therefore creates a mystery of one’s own devising.

Quote:

You can not find the two particles that initialy started the big bang.

Particles did not exist until the gauge interactions that occurred after the separation of forces during the Planck era allowed for the formation of the Higgs Boson (after the Planck era). Since this occurred several billion Planck times after the Big Bang, we know that two particles did not initiate the Big Bang. The initial state (before the Planck era) is something which is purely hypothetical, at least until have a unified field theory.

Quote:

You have to have some kind of faith to know that that is how the universe started.

But the only people who claim to "know" how the universe started are theists. An admission of ignorance on the origin of the universe is not justification for some vague and meaningless hand-waving about some supposed "higher being" which is supposedly "beyond all possible understanding". Can't you see that you are shooting yourself in the foot by making this claim?

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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neptewn
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There was never a time when

There was never a time when God was proven to exist.


Dakota KS
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I guess it comes down to

I guess it comes down to your point of view. I would never claim to know how the universe was created, im happy with knowing that its far out of my understanding, and far out of anyones understanding for at least hundreds of years, if not thousands. I guess the point I was trying to make wasnt clear enough, its all way to far out of our understanding and science at the moment. I do belive there was something more than a coincidence behind it all, though I do admit that while it wasnt a coincidence there may be little or no meaning behind it.

When it comes to the universe anything we create to explain it is a theory, some have more weight than others, such as those based on evidence. But theories are just that, theories. They try to explain something with the science of today, they evolve and change over time as we learn new things. Some are found out to be false and eventualy die out. Some are actualy right and we use them to grow what we know.

Whats wrong with having a theory that there was something else behind the creation of the universe, that there was some kind of intelligence that started it all? Sure there isnt much evidence to say with any certinity either way, but when our understanding of such things is alot greater we have every chance of finding out if there was. Chances are that to explain how our universe did start we might create another universe, making us the creater of that universe. Of course for that to be even remotely posible we need to understand ALOT more of how everything works, at the moment we are still just starting out to figure these things out.

If every theory was shot down and never expanded on just because there is no evidence right now we would be in a different world. We wouldnt be where we are at now. So saying that a 'God' doesnt exist is still premature, because we dont know for fact either way.

 

 


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Dakota KS wrote:  ... I

Dakota KS wrote:

 

 ...

 

I hope you realize that most atheists are agnostic, they make no claims to the non-existance of gods... just the lack of belief in them based off the fact of insufficient (no) evidence.

The problem with the theory of God is that it has allowed religions like Islam and Christianity which go FAR beyond the God Hypothesis and makes real claims to knowledge.  It allows arbitrary rules and immoral traditions to live far longer than they should.  I have no real issue with a deist or pantheist or whatnot, but any people who use a theory that is not based on evidence in their culture are absurd (to different degrees).

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Dakota KS wrote:So saying

Dakota KS wrote:

So saying that a 'God' doesnt exist is still premature, because we dont know for fact either way.

So saying that Thor doesn't exist is still premature, because we don't know for fact either way.

If a child was to ask you if there is a monster in the closet. Would you answer "I don't know"?

You have never seen a monster, I assume, but you do not have facts that they don't exist.. So you are obligated to answer "I don't know" to the child.

Not believing in something does not require facts, the lack of facts should suffice.

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs