That headache is exactly why I so love these discussions! It hurts…but it hurts in a really cool, weird, mind-blowing kinda way. It’s a cheap high!
Meh. Reality is for those who can’t handle drugs…
Wash 'em down with a bit of booze. Makes the ideas go down like “a spoon full of sugar”.
Last week I had to finally serve on a TX jury. At least in Wichita county, they still swear in witnesses and jurors with the “so help me God.” At least they didn’t use bibles. I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of the “so help me God” phrase, for me it was just a metaphor.
How can there be no cause to the universe we live in. It is not logical. Some may say it was caused by accident while others believe it was caused by a consciousness that knew what it was doing. Since consciousness existed before me (a consciousness) it is necessary to believe the whole thing was started by consciousness. Randomness cannot produce consciousness. For those who believe it could then where did randomness go after it produced consciousness. If this universe were random now it would destroy itself in a couple of hours. We live in a controlled environment. Not too hot or too cold, etc. The universe is run by a higher intelligence or consciousness. People have tried for centuries to explain this through religion and science without success. So there is a God or Creator none of us know very well. So we end up describing a God not understanding we are a part of that God. But we are learning day by day. It is us.
A quibble, but a pointed quibble: “logical” is NOT the same as “makes sense to me”. And that seems to be the only point you are making - that it doesn’t make sense to you.
A wrong argument can still be logical if it proceeds so from its postulates. Those postulates may or may not themselves make sense to you (or you may simply not accept them) but that does not make them a priori logical or illogical.
Asked many times before.
Answered many times before.
Fighting deliberate ignorance is just a waste of time.
Some scientists have suggested a reason for the universe existing at all, or the criteria for it being allowed to exist, which involve fairly abstract concepts which could be described as “there not being a cause,” as commonly thought of.
In any case, bottom line, a deity being responsible for anything, or existing at all, is the least likeliest of all explanations, if we’re talking about comparing even the frontiers of science to religion.
I know what scientists have said about the beginning of the universe. But no one will get me to believe you can have an event without a cause. If something happens there was a reason for it even if we don’t know what that reason was. I know how obscure the field of science can be when they want to justify research. Merely sidestepping a Creator is not good reasoning to me. It is only a way to justify themselves as the highest knowledge. It doesn’t work. There are so many events here on earth than science can’t explain and never will on the course they have taken.
I would venture to suggest that you don’t know anything about the field of science. Good to have you back, though.
Stephen Hawking’s latest at Caltech this last Tuesday.
Whatever explanation you think works for the creation of the “creator” also works for the creation of the universe.
The latter is just simpler. Why insist on the former?
There seems to be an infinite number of them that have been invented, but isn’t good enough reason either, explains nothing, and gets us no where.
Isn’t “an event without a cause” exactly what God is?
The apologist William Lane Craig, when confronted with this, starts babbling with philosophical terms like contingent and necessary, and efficient causes. It’s clear to me that all this is meant to obfuscate the matter to the layman. Basically, he claims that the universe is contingent, meaning that it doesn’t have to exist, and by his definition any contingent entity needs a cause. Then he just asserts that God is not a contingent being (it’s a “necessary” being) so is free from the rule about needing a cause.
It’s all fancy language that sounds to the uneducated like he’s addressing the question, but he doesn’t address it at all.
Thanks, I have the same problem with science that I have with religion.
Though you use terms from both with wild abandon, you have absolutely no understanding of either one?
So he basically outright lies?
The standard answer to this is that “God has always existed.” You can not tell me how the universe began any more than I can tell you how God began. I am willing to say “I don’t know” if you are. I do know there is a higher intelligence or consciousness than I am. I know that by experience.
Theology in a nutshell. Never define your terms of reference clearly, never use one word when a dozen will do, always leave yourself wiggle room and remember…a circular argument is a happy argument!