The Lord being one, or even being One, is a single attribute. The Lord being the God of the Hebrews indicates a specific relationship. Neither describes the Lord as being knowable.
There may be a text in Scripture in which there is a statement that humanity can really know or understand God, but it does not appear in the Shema and raindog has failed to provide a single other example. His original claim, (when he got his rudeness out of the way), was
I’ll grant that His expectations were made known to the Jews, but attributes and purposes? The Shema says nothing about them and raindog has failed to provide any other example. In fact, as you, yourself, point out
No, only if we accept that the unmoved mover must exist within the boundaries and framework of the universe. By definition it does not, it exists outside of them, otherwise it could not have brought the universe into being.
I already answered this.
No, I don’t think so. The uncaused cause is a being with a will, for lack of a better description. The act of creation, and all that.
Ha. I guess there are two aspects to this. One is the intellectual exercise in which we debate about the likelihood of their being a Creator God. The other is my personal belief, which is the result of 1) logic and 2) personal experiences I have had. I can never communicate #2, so I don’t try. And I don’t think anyone should change their mind/heart on a personal experience that happened to another person. Additionally, I think I’d come to the same conclusion based solely on #1. So that is where I choose to have the discussion.
Ugh. I don’t see what scripture has to do with the argument. I also don’t see where the argument is evidence for anything called god in the usual sense.
[ul]
[li]From what I gather, our current universe has a beginning in the big bang and a finite but ridiculously long timespan in which anything interesting (like atoms) will be here.[/li][li]I don’t know if it’s necessary for the big bang to have a cause. As far as I know opinion is divided on that, and I’m not a phycisist.[/li][li]It may be there was a cause - or time - before the big bang. There are hypotheses that stipulate that there was, but no evidence for it that I know of. It’s not even clear if that sort of evidence is possible.[/li][li]If there was a cause, there is no reason to assume it is eternal, can or does interact with our universe, or even exists anymore - “creating” the universe might have destroyed it, or it could be just a fundamental property of “nothingness”, in the same way that dark energy might be a fundamental property of spacetime. [/li][li]Without any sort of evidence as to what it is, naming that cause a “creator” assumes an intent on the part of the cause that is completely unwarranted. The cause can be a random chance event, or a more directed constant force or any of a multitude of mindless concepts.[/li][/ul]
Now with all that in mind, even if the creator was in fact an actual being with intentions and all that, that still does not mean it’s god or a bunch of gods or whatever sort of mythological being you’re familiar with. For one, as I stated above, it doesn’t follow that the creator has any influence in our universe.
Sigh. God is a matter of faith. If he visited you one day and performed every magic trick you asked and did whatever else you wanted to the point where you were convinced, you wouldn’t need faith, would you? Science is great for interacting with most of the world. But why do you so adamantly fight against faith? Seriously.
Because it leads to people making terrible decisions when they either think they themselves know what God wants, or follow others who think they know. It’s funny that people always defend faith in God, but they’d think adults who have faith in unicorns are insane.
I think you’re getting way too hung up on this. It’s true that the argument from creation doesn’t automatically imply the Judeo-Christian God, but that’s hardly a substantive objection. Philosophical arguments typically involve a series of steps, and when it comes to the deepest questions of human existence, one can seldom expect to arrive at immediate answers.
Besides, the title of this thread is “Evidence for a Creator.” Not necessarily the God of the Bible, but some sort of cosmic creator.
As I said, postulating an uncaused cause provides a philosophical starting point. Could there have been multiple creators? In principle, perhaps, but that would be an ontologically bloated proposition – multiplying agents beyond what’s necessary. Similarly, one could question whether this agent has an influence in the universe. However, if this agent were powerful enough to create the universe, then it would be implausible to suggest that he was somehow incapable of influencing it in any way.
Well, then what kind of test could we conceivably create that would establish that a creator of some sort was involved? Assuming we could, got any ideas of tests that would help define its nature?
Because your position is a blatantly self-serving argument with no basis in reality. You expect us to take it on faith that faith has any place in your worldview, despite evidence and common sense both telling us that deliberately shunning anything resembling feedback is more likely to lead you to completely the wrong conclusion.
Can you explain what you mean a little better? Especially the beginning of your second sentence? Why would you doubt that faith has a place in my worldview? Why would you care? If I ask you to do something based on my faith, I could see it, but I’ve just claim having faith. Period.
Wow. Well, I think logic kind shed light on the first part. But the nature of the Creator is quite a bit tougher. I have my thoughts, but I tend to keep them to myself. Partly because they’re still so much in the process of being formed and I have a hard time stating them clearly to even myself. And partly because for me, one’s relationship with God is a personal/private one.
I’m definitely not asking for proof - I’m asking for your, or anyone else’s argument.
Do you connect God with the creator because you believe in god for other reasons, so if there is a creator it has to be your God? Or does your belief that there has to be a creator somehow justify your choice of gods?
I dug out the prayerbook I was given after my bar mitzvah, 45 years ago, and opened it at random. In the Morning service, I read
Not the perfect example, but not bad for just opening the book. That certainly gives an attribute or two. Purpose? Unknown, except in respect to promises made. And, neither raindog or anyone else, theist or atheist, has, to my knowledge, ever claimed that knowing God is possible.
As for the Shema, it is not at all surprising that someone whose ancestors were mass-converted by some king or other would understand what "The Lord is your god means to us.
I tend to distrust pure-logic arguments that have no connection to any discernible physical evidence. The so-called epistemological proof of God is one such example, the “make a rock he can’t lift” is another.
Other cultures have spelled out in considerable detail their creator-gods. Are they wrong? Why?
Yes, but for many people, it isn’t. And if it’s so private, why are you in this thread, discussing it?
And you can call it God if you like. That name is but one of many, used throughout history. Is it objectively better than other names? Why? If you were born in Greece in 300 BCE, would you have a similarly private relationship with Chaos? Why or why not?
The capability of influencing it doesn’t imply that it got influenced - and there is no evidence that it has been. It is also a big universe. The influence might be local, at a place far away from us, in fact so far from us that we can’t even see it or be influenced by it.
Not that a creator must be able to influence the universe. Perhaps an advanced technology could create a universe by creating a singularity. The creator of that universe would be forever barred from looking into or influencing it. The creator might be a grad student for all we know.
The one thing we do know is that if there was a creator, and he did come to talk to us, and he did tell someone a creation story, he was either pulling their legs or lying through his ass, because we know that the creation stories of all world religions have nothing at all to do with what really happened. Hell, when the Big Bang happened, there wasn’t even light.
I meant it in the sense that blind faith shouldn’t be part of your worldview, not that you haven’t hammered it in there anyway.
I care because it represents a fundamental flaw in your way of thinking. You aren’t just blindly picking a number between one and infinity, you’re also arguing that this blind guess is better than using the tools you have available to narrow it down.