Fancyman said it best.

Oh man, I just saw this and had to post it:

LOGIC PROVES GOD'S EXISTENCE!

(1) Does God exist?
(2) Is your answer to question (2) the same as question (1)?

tautologies ftw

It's funny, free will, or at least free will as it has become to be understood is impossible.

What will happen will happened just as assuredly as what has happen has happened. You can't change the future any more than you can change the past. The only difference between the past and the future is that you don't know what has happened yet.

Time is an object. It does not travel, we only travel thorough it. (Having read Flatland will help a lot here.)

God, as I understand it, created all of this. When the Bible says "In the Beginning there was Nothing" it really means nothing. No Math, no Logic, no time no dimensions, no nothing, period. All of it must have been created by God if is anything other than another, albeit powerful entity in the universe. If he is just another entity in the Universe he is not really a God, but an entity in the universe just like us, yet way more powerful.

/random observations

I know it's typical and sometimes neccisary to do this, particulary for ones own understanding...but I don't think people should overanaylize the Bible. Some crazy groups form from that, and I believe it was just to be used as a loose guidebook. Just my thoughts...

...you do too.

[I future***** j00]

Uh... if you read the topic, you will see that it was posted by someone without Christian beliefs (I'm assuming). So while I am not trying to wag my finger at Eversor for starting this thread or anything, it is hardly fair to excuse the Christians (or those here with other religious beliefs) of "preaching this **** everywhere they look," since the argument was brought up by the opposing side in the first place.

As for my beliefs... well, I'm offering up my own prayer to God right now:

I'm sorry if you didn't understand my wording, but I did not intend to imply that scientists are not overstepping their bounds as badly as religious people.

Let me address a few things without going on a quoting spree.

Logic. Logic is a system of reasoning and deduction based on observations. Note that last word - observation. To say that it is not logical for God to exist is to be so arrogant as to say that your sense of observation is absolute and omnipotent, and that you have studied all aspects of the entire cosmos since it first sprung into existence. Which of you will tell me that we have come anywhere even close to that? Is it any wonder I can't take people seriously who say God's existance isn't logical?

"Let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation think or maintain, that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the Book of God's Word, or in the Book of God's Works - Divinity or Philosophy. But rather, let men endeavor an endless progress or proficiency in both." --Sir Francis Bacon

Prayer. I don't know where you guys get the idea that God is "supposed to" (however you determine that) answer and/or consider all people's prayers equally, but it's not so. Consider James 5:16 - "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." And there are (naturally) other guidelines of prayer in the Bible, but this one pretty much sums it up.
Now before you jump down my throat over the word "righteous," you might want to review the New Testament and what makes a man righteous. There's also the word "fervent" - having or showing great emotion. ("Captain Obvious" :p would like to point out that having great emotion indicates you truly seek what you pray for.)

Free will. What is it? It's the ability to chose what we do. It is not the existence of random outcomes from our decisions (or however the heck you guys define it, because I seriously can't tell). Just because someone else knows the outcome (will call this someone else "God") doesn't mean free will never existed. The fact is we, regardless of whether God exists, don't know this outcome. But there are things we do know. The way I see free will argued sometimes is absurd. Consider: we are bound by laws of physics. If I try to jump from a building and cannot escape gravity, does that mean I don't have free will? Of course not. Similarly, we make choices that are going to have some outcome. The difference is that we don't necessarily know what it is as we would with gravity.

Define 'natural' and 'supernatural', tell me where the line is supposed to be drawn, and who gets to decide that. Tell me where 'natural' ends, how we know it ends there.

*Gasp* That would indicate they're not seperate, but connected, or even the same.

Actually, that happens from circumventing the Bible more often than not overanalyzing. Like this: People say "the Bible says this, but it really means this..." Thusly, you have the single most diverse religion on the face of the planet.

If a Christian can't find a part of the Bible he has disagreed with at some point, he has most likely created his own religion merely based on it.

Wow, its threads like these that make me shake my head at non-christians. I hope some people understand what Dogsrool is trying to explain.

That 90% of what christians wish for comes true?

I still want this answered: what is the difference in outcome between guy A and B, both with the same medical condition, but guy A is being prayed for (and doesn't know this) while guy B isn't.

Stop shaking the damn head.

Yes. It does. If God knows what someone is going to choose then the choice has already been made. If god knows the which choice a person chooses then there is no choice because there is only one possible outcome. The one that god knows you're going to "choose". If god knows the outcome then choosing differently from that outcome isn't possible because god knows which choice you're going to make.



...We're not saying "God's existance isn't logical because we can't see him." What we're saying is that God's existance is contradicted by things we can test and observe, making his existance unnecessary and belief in him illogical.

...No, no it isn't. Logic has nothing to do with observation. Quite literally nothing. Logic is the study of arguments (and how arguments lead to one another). Or more specifically, logic is the study of inference, how conclusions can be made based on a series of premeses.

The common-sense idea of 'logic' is a fuzzy mixture of things being 'sensible' or 'reasonable'. But logic is just the study of arguments.

When we say something is illogical, we mean that there is no argument for it that is sound, valid, coherent and consistent (and a few other things).

Arguments can be divided into two catagories; a posteriori are empirical arguments, based on evidence and observation. This is the type of arguments that concerns science, and is probably what you're thinking of.
However, the second catagory is a priori, deductive arguments. This is the type of arguments that concerns mathematics, whereby arguments are considered self-evident. Take something like the argument 2+2=4. We don't need 'observation' or 'evidence' to show that this is true, it is true by the definition of '4'. It is true because it must be true. Other arguments take these self-evident truths and build upon them, combine them with other arguments, and all mathematical arguments are based on one or more self-evident truths (and sometimes, like in the case of Calculus, a non-self-evident premise).

It is this type of argument that concerns atheists. No, we cannot prove a posteriori that there is no God, because we haven't observed the entire Universe, so evidence of God might exist somewhere where we haven't looked.
But we can prove a priori that it is impossible for God to have certain qualities, because those qualities are either internally inconsistent (and therefore meaningless) or conflict with others (and therefore impossible).
There's quite a few of these arguments for the various supposed qualities of God (omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniprescence, omniscience), and the end result is that it is impossible for a single God to have all of these qualities. This doesn't rule out the possibility of a radically different god, or multiple gods each with internally consistent qualities, but it doesn't leave any room for the 'Christian God'.

It is quite important that you don't confuse a priori with a posteriori.



Natural is that which affects this Universe, and supernatural (like the word suggests) is that with is 'beyond' or 'outside' this Universe; that which is not physical or material.



If you had evidence of God affecting the Universe (apart from creating it), then it quite possibly would. I don't know about 'the same', because it would require a little area of the Universe to be God's house or something, and that probably wouldn't work.




Scientists don't have bounds. Anything that affects this Universe is science. Science doesn't have any 'taboo' topics. The origins of human life, biology studies this. The origins of human morality, anthropology studies this. The origins of scientific method itself, science historians (and all scientists generally, the history and development of science is quite important to everyone) study this.

The better you follow the Bible, the more powerful your superpowers become? Fascinating.

There are people who actually pray for people who have no one to pray for them. (no joke)

Thus your situation is impossible.

Thus everyone gets the benefits of prayer and thus it becomes meaningless. Right....

Can I get put on a 'no pray list'?

No.

|:<

O Almighty Freelancer, he who tries to understands and reason everything imaginable with his mortal mind - when some elements of faith are not supposed to be understood by those on Earth.



Religion threads are stupid.

However, it's always easier for someone to attack something then defend against it. With something involving religion that has elements of 'faith' that can't be proven, that fact is simply magnified.

I just find it amusing that Massassi has such an 'elite' base that they feel they can resolve a debate that has been going on for such a long time.

That's because it has been resolved. 300 bloody years ago.

Freelancer: Earlier you said "when I was religious"... how does one just stop being religious? I'm not bashing you, I'm just really curious. Did something happen that made you change your mind or something?

remind me again, what exactly is the point of arguing about this

No, more like 90% of what we say gets completely ignored, or twisted around (for entertainment, I assume), as I'm about to illustrate with the rest of this post (or at least 90% of it).

I believe I posted a link that studied exactly that, unless you're asking something specific about it, in which case you didn't word it clearly.


Here we go... I just said that free will is the ability to choose what we do. WE choose. Once again - WE. Not God or anybody else.
Let me play just the opposite - without free will, there is no choice, and everything you do is controlled. You only do it because you don't have the ability to do otherwise. Is that what we have. No. And as I have pointed out countless times before, knowing the outcome of something doesn't put you in charge of it.

I really can't make it any simpler than that.

What things? People keep telling me that, but not really saying what these things are.

And ironically, inference is defined as "The act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true."

Do I need to even need to comment on that? Probably not, although I should mention I can't find your definition of logic anywhere. Or for that matter, I can't find "logic," "reason," or "inference" defined without one using one of the other three in its definition.

How logical.


Isn't this exactly what you guys keep telling Christians not to do?


Which usually boils down to something like... B cannot exist because A=A.

I cannot see why.

Omipotence - Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful.
omnibenevolence - "all good" (cheesy definition, but oh well)
omnipresence - existing everywhere
omniscience - all-knowing
They don't contradict at all. Apple + Orange + Banana + Watermelon = Fruit doesn't exist.

What?
But without having studied everything that exists, the boundries between the words are just guesses.

No. But the more you comitt strawman fallacies, the more difficult it becomes to make sense to anyone outside of yourself.

If you want people to stop, tell them.

300 years ago, we studied everything to ever exist in every form? Amazing.

I said...

Regardless of who's in office, we should pray for them and their families. If the unthinkable happened and John Kerry was our President now, I would still pray that he would receive the wisdom and strength he would need to lead this country the right way. Why would I do this, since I so clearly dislike the man? Simply because it's the right thing to do.

And how do we know 2+2=4. Observation.

The human mind can't process information it doesn't have. Que observation.

God forbid that the entire world *wouldn't* be watching his TV screen in disgust, again, again and again.



Or would *finally* start leading it the right way.

Sorry dude. Wisdom aka intelligence is a largely inherited trait. Unless you're proposing praying can perform DNA imprints, praying doesn't do anything.



No. 2+2=4 because it is inherent of 2+2 to be 4. A bachelor is not married not because we have witnessed that he isn't married, but because it's inherently true of a bachelor to be unmarried. Denial of a priori statements leads necessarily to a contradiction. 'The bachelor is married'. Denial of a posteriori statements doesn't necessarily lead to a contradiction. 'The table is in the kitchen'. It may be, or it may not.

OBSERVATION ONLY APPLIES TO A POSTERIORI STATEMENTS.
OBSERVATION ONLY APPLIES TO A POSTERIORI STATEMENTS.
OBSERVATION ONLY APPLIES TO A POSTERIORI STATEMENTS.

Ah, the virtues of being informed.

The idea that John Kerry would not have made similar mistakes flies in the face of everything I've observed in this country. Besides that, the entire world is not watching in disgust. There are many people (not I, but many) who still support Bush, and had Kerry been elected, there would have been many people who would have been watching him and the results of his decisions in disgust. That you don't seem to understand that is unsurprising, given your contributions to this discussion.




"A largely inherited trait." Not an entirely inherited trait. If you are admitting that some portion of intelligence isn't predetermined, then the rest of your statement is groundless.

UGH.



Outside of the US? I may not be seeing an accurate sample, but every time Bush is able to convince people fundamental medical research is somehow a bad thing, or how your warlord has taken more time off in his first year of presidency than Clinton did in 8 years, even uninterrupted by the largest crisis of the US in the past decades, while joking to his buddies about he's gonna drink a beer on someone's porch, people on this side of the ocean go WTF.



Maybe you would've had a president who actually tried to back up his politics with reason or justification. The mere fact that Kerry doesn't believe the apocalypse will come within the next 40 years is grounds enough to vote him, by default - even though he's spineless and doesn't represent what people think well at all.



My contributions which noone seems inclined to address? You could be the first! See below.



So what YOU are saying, is that it is temporarily possible to increase IQ because of other people's combined thought power? An answer please - you might be the first who could actually present a YES or a NO.

Very valid point there. Using my own "logic" :p (which, I admit, has proven to be severely flawed on more than one occasion) while thinking of God's ability to forsee future events, I always found myself coming to this conclusion:

Since humans do, indeed, possess a free will, we are free to make whatever choices we want. Ergo, there would be at least as many possible outcomes as there are choices to be made (possibly a great many more if more than one person is involved, whether directly or indirectly). It has always been my hypothesis that God can see all of these potential outcomes and, though he cannot force us to do it (because of the free will factor), based on our needs and prayers, He will try to influence us in the right direction. By the same token, Stan will also try to influence us, but in the wrong direction. (This is again where the free will factor comes into play and the entire scenario repeats again and again and again ad infinitum.)

Feel free to agree or disagree; I simply cannot pass up a good, solid theological discussion.

You're too insecure about your possibilities(also see sig) - that was an interesting read. This Stan guy seems like a real *****

However, I absolutely disagree with free will existing - I believe there's a certain amount of choice, but it only exists in a frame which has been imposed onto us. We do not live independently of our genetic makeup, of our childhood attachment dynamics, of our upbringing, of our social-economic status, of occurrences in our past, etc etc.... that's why I can't accept what you said, or why people still claim it's possible to label guy A bad and guy B good (also a problem for the idea of afterlife) - it's obviously not that simple.

At the risk of going totally off-topic: that's also why I think solely a legal order should be used to judge people, not a moral/personal one.

Does anyone know where the heck God was before he made the universe? It sounds like he popped in the middle of literally nowhere for no real reason and then made things.

This thread is way, way over its arrogance quota.

pr0n.

I don't believe that for a second. I can't stand Bush at all, I would like nothing better than to see him impeached for simply being an idiot, but there is no way you will convince me that Kerry would have done any better.



NO, and please stop distorting this. Those who pray do not place their faith in their thought power, they place their faith in the God they pray to. It's obvious that you either skimmed over all previous posts that weren't from your perspective, or you simply ignored them. I suggest you go back, read them again, and return to this discussion when you understand what those on the religious side of the argument are actually arguing.



Laws stem from a concept of right or wrong. A society's concept of right or wrong is variable, but it is still right or wrong. Right and wrong are moral issues. Regardless of what you think, law and morality are inseperable.

Is that seafood?

Yes, 'free will' being an illusion caused by ignorance does indeed avoid the dilemma.

An all-knowing God knows exactly what we're going to do, when we're going to sin and be evil; there isn't any genuine 'choice' involved. Even if you 'change' your mind, God will still have known you were going to do that. You cannot do anything that would make God say "Hey, I wasn't expecting him to do that", because then he wouldn't be all-knowing. (The question then arises, if God knows that we're going to commit evil why doesn't he punish us before we do it? God has perfect knowledge of the past, present and future so it makes no difference to him whether our actions occur in the past, present or future)
However, we're not all-knowing so we just follow this series of events, which you might call 'fate' in a very perfect form, and our ignorance of that series results in what appears to be 'free will'.

A more series dilemma arises from God being all-knowing, though.. If God has perfect knowledge over the past, present and future, then not only does he know exactly what we're going to do, he also knows exactly what he himself is going to do.
At some point in time, God decided to create the Earth - but God has perfect knowledge, so he would have known that he was going to decide to create Earth. In fact, he would have known for all time, he have known since the very 'creation of God' that at some point in the future he was going to create Earth. Even if he 'changed his mind', he would have known about this too. He would know exactly what would happen and exactly how he himself would respond, and he would have known about this for all time (or whatever we call it, considering God existed before time did). So the quality of all-knowing not only eliminates our free will, it also eliminates the free will of God. God knows exactly what he's going to do, so he cannot have the free will to do otherwise.

And this has even further-reaching consequences; if God has known for all time exactly what he's going to do... why is he doing anything? The actions of God cannot be a result of God's 'choices', so they must in fact have been pre-programmed into God. By what? An even more powerful being. And then we're back where we started, if that being is all-knowing, it cannot have free will, so why did it pre-program God?
The result is an infinite series of ever-more powerful gods.
(Or alternately, the entire series of God's actions are entirely random. This avoids the 'infinite gods' thing, but doesn't really get us very far either).

The conclusion is that God cannot be all-knowing.

What's that supposed to mean?



Actually, you don't disagree with me. I admit I didn't cover this in my post, but that is exactly how I define free will. The experiences we accumulate in our lives and our genetic makeup (though I admittedly tend to agree with the researchers that say our genes have very little to do with it in the long run) help to shape our decisions in the future. And, of course, that leads into the pattern that I described earlier.

Uhhh, no. Humans invented integers and humans invented addition. 2+2=4 because we said so.

You're all cussing up DogSRoOL quite unfairly.

This is exactly the position taken by 18th century empiricists (usually British).
The exact opposite position was taken by Descartes, who proposed that all knowledge of the Universe should be evident based on previous knowledge, and is now known as continental rationalism (at the time it was just known as 'rationalism', but we now use that for something else). Descarte proposed that by starting from the axioms of geometry, one could deductively derive all other knowledge.
Rationalism vs. Empiricisim was quite a 'big thing' at the time, and the debates are thoroughly interesting to read, but the end result was basically a sort of mix between the two. Although in principle, one should be able to derive all knowledge from basic principles, this quickly becomes very complicated and difficult to do, so becomes impractical but not impossible.
So today we have mathematics and science complementing eachother quite nicely, though each adopting quite a separate approach to thought.

(We do get remnants of this debate bubbling up to the surface when we start wondering what is more elegant - an observation of something without the mathematics to explain it, or a mathematical model of something without observation to confirm it? But this doesn't happen very often, so it's an interesting but uncommon dilemma)