• This is a new section being rolled out to attract people interested in exploring the origins of the universe and the earth from a biblical perspective. Debate is encouraged and opposing viewpoints are welcome to post but certain rules must be followed. 1. No abusive tagging - if abusive tags are found - they will be deleted and disabled by the Admin team 2. No calling the biblical accounts a fable - fairy tale ect. This is a Christian site, so members that participate here must be respectful in their disagreement.

Is there a Christian cosmology that doesn't include miracles?

Lon

Well-known member
That doesn't explain where your god came from.

Stuart

Logically, something has had to exist, always.

1) Nothing + Nothing = Nothing
2) Only something+something can= something
.: Something in or outside the universe has always, eternally, existed.
 

Stuu

New member
Logically, something has had to exist, always.

1) Nothing + Nothing = Nothing
2) Only something+something can= something
.: Something in or outside the universe has always, eternally, existed.
I still don't see where your god came from in there.

The Judeo-christian god doesn't appear to have 'revealed itself' until about 3200 years ago, when it was first written about. There was apparently no revelation of it in ancient China, where we have writing from 300 years earlier, or in the writing of ancient Egypt from 1800 years earlier. The ancient Egyptians were polytheists, and indeed the ancient Jews were the same until a process of assimilation introduced a heirarchy of gods, and eventually one god with the others sidelined.

So on that evidence it's hard to escape the conclusion that, far from existing forever, this god was invented in the Second Millennium BCE by ancient Jews, likely a result of politics.

Stuart
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Perhaps you should have left the replying to Clete.
:up:
It seems your mind is broken. Your comments have no connection whatsoever to anything.

I'm not interested in doing your thinking for you. I reread my post. It's clear enough. Read it again for yourself, you can follow it without me holding your hand through the process.
 

Stuu

New member
Thumbs up for a victory of empty rhetoric over substance, Stripe. Firstly you said nothing in your reply to my post addressed to Clete, and now you have quoted the parts of Clete's subsequent reply that say nothing.

And meantime, in another thread I have been agreeing with JudgeRightly about the need to conform to scientifically established facts, including paraphrasing your right comment along the same lines.

Stuart
 

JudgeRightly

裁判官が正しく判断する
Staff member
Administrator
Super Moderator
Gold Subscriber
Stuu;n[URL="tel:2744070" said:
2744070[/URL]]So that means this god was nowhere before it created a where to occupy?

That implies "nowhere" is an ontological thing. It's not.

God was all that existed.
God is Spirit, not physical.

It's you talking about the universe creating itself, not me.

Post #96 in this thread, you yourself said the following:

Stuu;n[URL="tel:2743690" said:
2743690[/URL]]The universe did indeed make itself, in the sense that when you inflate space-time rapidly in a Big Bang, a lot of gravitational energy is converted to matter and other forms of energy. That's why there is something rather than nothing. Stellar evolution, planetary accretion and evolution by natural selection gets us the rest of the way to now.

Post #100 in this thread, you yourself said the following:

Well the question then would be what do you manifestly see?

. . .

A Big Bang origin to the universe 13.7 billion years ago is manifest. It is an extraordinary claim, and it is the natural conclusion to be had from examining the extraordinary evidence. Had he lived to see it, Paul should have been amazed to see the prophecy of the Cosmic Microwave Background be shown to be true years after it was predicted. But anyway, to cut to the chase, the history of science tends to be one where mechanisms formerly attributed to gods are explained in mechanical terms, and many gods of the gaps have gone by the wayside. The more knowledgeable about what is manifest we become, the more we realise how ignorant we are. There is a great deal that must be going on which is not manifest. And that which we have discovered and explained thusfar, when thinking of the actions of one or more gods, matches the apocryphal words of Simon LaPlace, 'Je n'ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse', I had no need for that hypothesis. Pierre-Simon Laplace was the French Newton. Newton the English academic scientist with almost fanatical religious devotion; Laplace the French skeptic. What a surprise.

. . .

The total energy of the universe is zero. All the matter and energy we see was borrowed from the gravitational energy of the inflation of space-time. If we were ever to go into a Big Crunch, reversing the expansion back to a singularity, all the matter and energy would be paid back and there would be nothing again.

Shall I go on?

But it's logically possible to exist without coming into existence,

If something has always existed, then it is logical for that thing to exist, yes.

and it is possible to be nowhere because where doesn't exist yet?

God is not a physical being, and so therefore does not have a physical location.

As far as the spiritual plane is, all we know is that it's "above" us, "outside" this universe.

In order to exist, one must first come into existence.

No, that's false.

It's called the First Cause argument:


Also called the cosmological argument; the argument that there has to be an uncaused cause that made everything else happen, otherwise there would be nothing now.

1. At least some things are caused.
2. Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can bring itself into existence).
3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes (There couldn't be anything, without a first cause to get things going).

Therefore (from 1-3), necessarily,
4. There is (was) an uncaused first cause.
5. The thing is (was) God.

Therefore (from 4&5), necessarily,
6. God exits.



Anything that has a beginning had to have come into existence at some point.

God does not have a beginning, and is therefore exempt from that rule.

He is the Uncaused Cause.

Why it is important that humans aim to be perfect?

To avoid suffering.

Sin causes suffering.

I didn't hear any god say anything.

Don't be dumb, Stuu. Apart from that being an argument from incredulity, it also completely ignores what was said.

Jesus showed repeatedly that He was God. The people around HIm (and people to this day) rejected Him.

God has tried in various ways and various manners to bring mankind back to Him.

He's tried talking to them directly, but they were absolutely terrified of His voice, and sent someone to speak to God for them, to relay what He said through the mediator.

He's tried sending prophets to speak for Him, but most of the time they ignored what was said... The entire Bible describes the utter failure that Israel was as a people in serving their God.

They rejected Him, so He tried sending His Son, and they killed Him.

So then, we are not subjected to literal voices of any gods

If God spoke, it would be undeniable that it was Him.

But as I said above, when He speaks directly to people, it terrifies them if they have not already submitted to Him.

It would be counterproductive to His goal to do so, because that's what happens when you shove clear and unambiguous evidence in someone's face who has up until that point utterly rejected His existence.

See Pharaoh and the 10 plagues, and most of the miracles that were done in the Bible, which for the most part, produced only unbelief.

(how noisy that would be if all gods claimed to exist spoke at the same time).

Actually, it wouldn't be noisy at all, because other gods don't actually exist. There is only one God, There is none beside Him.

We are subjected to the interpretations of writings that claim for themselves divine inspiration. That is the basis on which you somehow require of yourself perfection.

False.

Faith is the proper response to the evidence, as I believe Clete mentioned above.

I don't have faith just because some book tells me to.

I have faith that God exists because I have been convinced by the evidence that He exists.

Nothing wrong with that goal, but what comes with your version is severe punishments for failing to achieve perfection or else failing to accept vicarious punishment for your failings on the perfection front.

False.

This is an emotional argument.

Reality is that God is the standard of perfection, and violating that standard results in suffering.

It's the law of the excluded middle: Either one is righteous or he is not righteous, he cannot be both.

God is righteous, and because He is the standard, anything that falls short of that standard is not righteous and therefore unjust, and so there must be, by necessity, consequences enforced. The wages of sin is death, and because sin has an eternal consequence, therefore the punishment must also be eternal. Death is separation. God told Adam to not eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, or he would die that day. Adam chose to eat of the tree, and he died that day spiritually, and was kicked out of the garden and God's presence.

God designed man to live forever with Him. From a spiritual standpoint, that means that man's soul/spirit (because man is more than just a bag of meat and bones) is not able to be destroyed or annihilated. If such were possible, Christ would not have needed to go to the cross. The same applies to the "change everyone's mind eventually to love God" position, which many Christians hold to, unfortunately.

The latter also precludes the fact that God lets man choose to be with Him or against Him (and there is no middle ground, by the way), because such a choice would only be temporary, and for all intents and purposes, just an illusion of free will.

This is the invisible,

Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

If you look at Christ, you see God.

inaudible,

Implying that God cannot make a sound? :dunce:

insensible

In what way?

being that created the entire universe from a situation of nowhere,

Which begs the question that there has to be a "where" to create from.

Again, relational to our "position," God is "outside" the universe.

What lies beyond the boundary of our universe cannot be described using physical terms, because it is by definition super-physical, or supernatural.

never having come into existence?

You're question begging again, trying to imply that God's existence is illogical because you leave out the part where he has always existed.

The correct phrase, to avoid confusion, is "never having a beginning."

The one that offers you little choice

There are only two extant options possible.

Accept God.
Reject God.

The Law of the Excluded Middle precludes anything other than those two options, because God said you're either for or against Him.

If you reject God, then the natural consequence is that you are separated from Him, because God cannot tolerate injustice.

but to accept the proposition of collaborating in a human sacrifice

You'll note that human sacrifice is immoral.

But that's not what happened.

What happened was that Christ WILLINGLY laid down His life for mankind, and sacrificed Himself.

Love is the commitment to the good of someone.

There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for someone else.

Thus, by God sending His own Son to die on the Cross, and He willingly, God showed His love for us, in that even while we were in rebellion against Him, Christ died for us.

Love is freely given, it cannot be coerced (which precludes universalism).

as a substitute

Clete, could you explain the kinsman redeemer to Stuu, if it's not too much to ask?

for being able to be perfect according to its criteria?

Considering God made us, He has every right to demand His standard be observed, so I'm not sure what your trying to get at here...

Can you point to anything at all in the observable universe that tells you anything about that, independently of Bronze Age writing?

About what? That God's standard of righteousness and justice is absolute?

I could post on a different forum and be told the same about a different god.

No you couldn't.

Where is your discrimination between god claims, or against claims of no gods at all? What is the basis of your own arbitration on this? What convinced you, and how is it robust?

Evidence has convinced me (and I'm sure Clete as well).

There's plenty of it, so that's not the problem here, Stuu. It's that you've refused to let the evidence convince you.

For what end?

Stuart

For God to fellowship with man.

The most important thing in all of existence (aside from God, of course) is relationships. He can't do that if man is separated from Him.
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
A god from nowhere, that made everything. That rather makes a hypocrisy out of christians mocking 'Everything from nothing'. Everything from nothing has been demonstrated to be a pretty good model, given that the total energy of the universe is zero, and everything is made of energy borrowed from the inflation of space-time. What is a god from nowhere? How can it have always been when the universe hasn't always been? I recommend doing a bit more work on this. It sounds both silly and lazy.

This makes me believe that you're intentionally wasting my time. It's that or you're stupid. I'm only going to respond to this single point and won't even read the rest of your post and we'll see how well you respond to having wasted all the time it took for you to write that post.

God did not come from nowhere. No, that is not a double negative. Your ridiculous argument would have to imply the idea that God actually came from nowhere in order for it to be the equivalent of your fantasy big bang theory which explicitly asks us all to believe that nothing plus nothing equals everything. (And no, the total energy of the universe is not zero, there's not nearly enough antimatter for that, not even remotely close. It only happens to be one of the biggest problems in all of modern cosmology.)

There was never a time where there was nothing and then God CAME into existence from nowhere. God has always existed. ALWAYS. Can you not understand that? He didn't come form anywhere because He didn't need to, He was already there. HE HAS ALWAYS EXISTED! Get it?

Your question about how can God have always been there when the universe hasn't always been there is the absolute height of idiotic stupidity (You have to be just intentionally wasting everyone time.) Of course the Creator preexisted His own creation!! DUH!

Clete
 

Clete

Truth Smacker
Silver Subscriber
Clete, could you explain the kinsman redeemer to Stuu, if it's not too much to ask?

I'd love to and was sort of already going down that road but it's proved to be the equivalent of trying to explain the residential home building process to a six year old boy who likes to play with Lincoln Logs?

I mean the concept of voluntary penal substitution gets brought up and this guy's brain jumps to the issue of human sacrifice of all things. Besides, I'm really starting to believe that he's just playing games and intentionally wasting our time for the fun of it.
 

Stuu

New member
Stuu: So that means this god was nowhere before it created a where to occupy?
That implies "nowhere" is an ontological thing. It's not.
How does that apply to your god? What existence does it have in the situation of space-time not existing, and how could you possibly know?

God was all that existed. God is Spirit, not physical.
We live in a universe that came into existence, and there is no meaningful way of discussing the concept of 'before' the universe because time only appears with the inflation of space-time. So to try and give the property of existence outside time (to use a temporal word like 'eternity') to anything is to overplay your hand absurdly. You appear to me to be serious about knowing how the universe really works, unlike others here. You understand the significance of interstellar events to hypotheses about the evolution of the solar system, for example. So how have you let yourself deal such cheap platitudes to me? It's very much not appreciated. If you wish to be convincing you will have to do a couple of orders of magnitude better than that.

It's you talking about the universe creating itself, not me.
Post #96 in this thread, you yourself said the following:
Stuu: The universe did indeed make itself, in the sense that when you inflate space-time rapidly in a Big Bang, a lot of gravitational energy is converted to matter and other forms of energy...

I don't get quote-mined by creationists very often. Thanks for the back-handed compliment! I do appreciate that at least here you have included the qualification I have bolded. Do you acknowledge the difference it makes?

Stuu: But it's logically possible to exist without coming into existence,
If something has always existed, then it is logical for that thing to exist, yes.
That tautology does not address my point. Perhaps I should try a question: how is it possible to exist without coming into existence?

God is not a physical being, and so therefore does not have a physical location.
That's not what the Jewish bible says. Nor the New Testament. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses all saw your god, which indicates to me there must have been a physical location involved. Moses saw it's backsides in Exodus 33:23. In Deuteronomy 5:4 this god of no physical location spoke 'face to face' with the people of Israel. Manoah and his wife, Micaiah, Job, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos and Habakkuk all saw the Judeo-christian god. The writer of John (14:9) tells us that if you have seen Jesus you have seen God. Of course we don't have any eyewitness accounts of Jesus, so it would be more difficult to establish that anyone ever actually saw Jesus. I don't think you would dispute that Jesus existed in a physical location wherever he went. Are you saying this god can choose to become physical, or choose to exist in a not-somewhere state? If so, is that supported in scripture, or have you just made it up?

As far as the spiritual plane is, all we know is that it's "above" us, "outside" this universe.
There you go again. You can do better, I know.

It's called the First Cause argument:
Also called the cosmological argument; the argument that there has to be an uncaused cause that made everything else happen, otherwise there would be nothing now.

1. At least some things are caused.
2. Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can bring itself into existence).
3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes (There couldn't be anything, without a first cause to get things going).

Therefore (from 1-3), necessarily,
4. There is (was) an uncaused first cause.
5. The thing is (was) God.

Therefore (from 4&5), necessarily,
6. God exits.
Anything that has a beginning had to have come into existence at some point.
God does not have a beginning, and is therefore exempt from that rule.

He is the Uncaused Cause.
Or, just as validly,

1. The universe had no cause.



Stuu: Why it is important that humans aim to be perfect?
To avoid suffering. Sin causes suffering.
I won't bother asking you to define sin, because you won't answer anyway. In another thread ok doser accused me of 'doing Satan's work', and when I asked what that involved, I was told there would be no point explaining it to me. So I will have to carry on doing Satan's work in the absence of knowing what it means. As far as I know I do little real harm to other humans, other species or the environment, or at least I take responsibility to make amends when I'm aware I have harmed. The same with sin. You won't tell me what it is, and so we can't make a link between it and suffering. I think it means nothing to say that sin causes suffering. Another platitude laid.

But at least we do have the claims in scripture that your god stores up nasty punishments. So when you say sin causes suffering, presumably that is because your god chooses to inflict it onto the less-than-perfect. I always find it amusing how much vitriol religious fundamentalists are prepared to pour on totalitarian regimes like China's, and yet here they are accepting that they will have to 'not sin' in order to conform to the much more brutal totalitarian regime of their own belief system.

Don't be dumb, Stuu. Apart from that being an argument from incredulity, it also completely ignores what was said.
My disbelief is expressed elsewhere, so it's not incredulity. It's that I have not observed it.

Jesus showed repeatedly that He was God. The people around HIm (and people to this day) rejected Him.
Your claim about knowing what Jesus did is all a matter of the supernatural faith of believers, not historical fact established with a decent probability. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, but in the case of Jesus we don't even have that, as far as we know.

God has tried in various ways and various manners to bring mankind back to Him. He's tried talking to them directly, but they were absolutely terrified of His voice, and sent someone to speak to God for them, to relay what He said through the mediator.
So much for omniscience and omnipotence. And did that voice come from the physical location of the god in question? How did the people know what direction to talk back?

He's tried sending prophets to speak for Him, but most of the time they ignored what was said... The entire Bible describes the utter failure that Israel was as a people in serving their God. They rejected Him, so He tried sending His Son, and they killed Him.
Somewhere here I suggested that had I been alive in ancient Palestine, I would have felt compelled to try to stop the execution of Jesus, and I was told that was blasphemous. So it would be great to hear a straight story on this: are you pleased that the ancient Romans killed Jesus, or are you lamenting the fact it happened as per your tone above?

But as I said above, when He speaks directly to people, it terrifies them if they have not already submitted to Him.
Can you name one person who has literally heard the voice of your god and been terrified that they have not already submitted?

It would be counterproductive to His goal to do so, because that's what happens when you shove clear and unambiguous evidence in someone's face who has up until that point utterly rejected His existence.
So this omnipotent god has a communication disability? This is all very cute, isn't it. Either this god is incapable of achieving its will, or else the world we currently inhabit is already exactly its will.

See Pharaoh and the 10 plagues, and most of the miracles that were done in the Bible, which for the most part, produced only unbelief.
A good point, and indeed the admirable human attitude of skepticism.

Actually, it wouldn't be noisy at all, because other gods don't actually exist. There is only one God, There is none beside Him.
We can all assert without good reason. So will I assert the opposite view, and I too will give you no good reason for it.

Stuu: We are subjected to the interpretations of writings that claim for themselves divine inspiration. That is the basis on which you somehow require of yourself perfection.
False.

Faith is the proper response to the evidence, as I believe Clete mentioned above.

I don't have faith just because some book tells me to.

I have faith that God exists because I have been convinced by the evidence that He exists.
I think actually it is that you have either grown up in an environment of this belief system, or found yourself in a situation which has triggered your genetic predisposition to religious belief, and it happened to be christianity, just as it would probably be islam if you grew up in Bangladesh. It is well known from separated twin studies that devout religiosity can be strongly heritable. It may be that I would be like you but I don't have those genes.

This is an emotional argument.
It's a biblical argument.

Reality is that God is the standard of perfection, and violating that standard results in suffering.
That does read as quite obsessive.

It's the law of the excluded middle: Either one is righteous or he is not righteous, he cannot be both.

God is righteous, and because He is the standard, anything that falls short of that standard is not righteous and therefore unjust,
Hang on there. You are asserting that righteousness has some quality of justice? This is a god that ordered (or at least is claimed to have ordered) the slaughter of the Amalekies, which included children.

and so there must be, by necessity, consequences enforced.
...as per the philosophy of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, but not even they would destroy you or burn you forever in a fire of sulfur.

The wages of sin is death, and because sin has an eternal consequence, therefore the punishment must also be eternal. Death is separation. God told Adam to not eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, or he would die that day. Adam chose to eat of the tree, and he died that day spiritually, and was kicked out of the garden and God's presence.

God designed man to live forever with Him. From a spiritual standpoint, that means that man's soul/spirit (because man is more than just a bag of meat and bones) is not able to be destroyed or annihilated. If such were possible, Christ would not have needed to go to the cross. The same applies to the "change everyone's mind eventually to love God" position, which many Christians hold to, unfortunately.
Well, that has been disproved by science. There has never been a time of just two humans, and humans were not designed.

The latter also precludes the fact that God lets man choose to be with Him or against Him (and there is no middle ground, by the way), because such a choice would only be temporary, and for all intents and purposes, just an illusion of free will.
Why do you want to spend an eternity living? Most people have trouble thinking of something to do on a wet Sunday afternoon. The meaning of my life is contingent on eventually dying. Also, I don't care to spend an eternity with a god that would indiscriminately order the killing of children.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. If you look at Christ, you see God.
Did this image occupy a physical location? Was that also the location of the god? Should I be looking for Jesus, or for the christ? I see them as two very different things. Good Man Jesus, Scoundrel Christ is the name of Philip Pullman's book. I am beginning to understand the point of it.

Implying that God cannot make a sound?
According to your assessment that we are all falling short, this god cannot impose its will for perfection either by divine fiat or by threats of severe punishment, so I don't know what other disabilities it possesses.

Stuu: insensible
In what way?
In the sense of not being able to be felt (or sensed in any way, as the rest of my list describes).

Which begs the question that there has to be a "where" to create from.
I acknowledge your correct use of the expression 'begs the question', in a context of widespread misuse!

Again, relational to our "position," God is "outside" the universe.
Again, that sounds impressive, but is meaningless.

What lies beyond the boundary of our universe cannot be described using physical terms, because it is by definition super-physical, or supernatural.
In other words, a place to hide a god from the slicing action of Occam's razor.

You're question begging again, trying to imply that God's existence is illogical because you leave out the part where he has always existed.
I am being illogical because I leave out something that you say is illogical? You had to make an exception in your earlier argument, remember.

The correct phrase, to avoid confusion, is "never having a beginning."
It is quite sweet the way you assert that this will avoid confusion!

The one that offers you little choice
There are only two extant options possible.

Accept God.
Reject God.

The Law of the Excluded Middle precludes anything other than those two options, because God said you're either for or against Him.

If you reject God, then the natural consequence is that you are separated from Him, because God cannot tolerate injustice.
You'll note that human sacrifice is immoral.

But that's not what happened.

What happened was that Christ WILLINGLY laid down His life for mankind, and sacrificed Himself. Love is the commitment to the good of someone. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for someone else.[/.
It doesn't matter how willing the participant. There was a case of cannibalism a few years ago in which the victim gave willingly of parts of his body to be eaten. That didn't make it right. It's an immoral proposition. You are recommending that Pullman's scoundrel christ, through the death of the good man Jesus, remove my responsibility for my wrongdoing. I must take the rejection option on that reason alone.

Thus, by God sending His own Son to die on the Cross, and He willingly, God showed His love for us, in that even while we were in rebellion against Him, Christ died for us. Love is freely given, it cannot be coerced (which precludes universalism).
If you don't love this god, you will suffer the severe punishment. Sounds like coercion to me.

Considering God made us, He has every right to demand His standard be observed, so I'm not sure what your trying to get at here...
On what ethical argument do you base that assertion? Parents make their children; there is never a question of who owns the children; parents should assert themselves as leaders in most aspects of the children's development, but they have no inherent right to demand standards be observed into independent adulthood. And children have the right to demand that their parents live up to standards too. So, how about laying down some standards in the other direction for your god? No more killing of Amalekites, ok, no more threats of severe punishments (which appears to be widely ineffective anyway); and no more irrational hatred of figs.

Stuu: Can you point to anything at all in the observable universe that tells you anything about that, independently of Bronze Age writing?
About what? That God's standard of righteousness and justice is absolute?
No, about the list of things I wrote that you sliced up into individual replies.

Stuu: I could post on a different forum and be told the same about a different god.
No you couldn't.
You have clearly never watched an argument between a devout Jew and a normally devout muslim both living in downtown Tel Aviv.

Evidence has convinced me (and I'm sure Clete as well).
So you won't tell me what the evidence is, or how it is unambiguous, and you probably won't tell me which actions of mind constitute 'sin', and Clete wouldn't tell me which of my actions constitute 'the work of Satan'. I'm pleased for you that you are convinced.

There's plenty of it, so that's not the problem here, Stuu. It's that you've refused to let the evidence convince you.
What impression should I form of christianity from the way it inspires you to tell me what evidence I have?

For God to fellowship with man. The most important thing in all of existence (aside from God, of course) is relationships. He can't do that if man is separated from Him.
Maybe this god could consider trying to form relationships on the basis of mutual trust and respect instead of threats of burning brimstone.

Stuart
 

Lon

Well-known member
I still don't see where your god came from in there.

The Judeo-christian god doesn't appear to have 'revealed itself' until about 3200 years ago, when it was first written about. There was apparently no revelation of it in ancient China, where we have writing from 300 years earlier, or in the writing of ancient Egypt from 1800 years earlier. The ancient Egyptians were polytheists, and indeed the ancient Jews were the same until a process of assimilation introduced a heirarchy of gods, and eventually one god with the others sidelined.

So on that evidence it's hard to escape the conclusion that, far from existing forever, this god was invented in the Second Millennium BCE by ancient Jews, likely a result of politics.

Stuart
It is the history of written language. Everything was passed down by word of mouth prior. It'd be difficult to try and tie history between cultures and their language development but you can see that gods were always part of early beliefs and most of a central God. I've read criticism sites from agnostic and atheists but most of these are peripheral issues and hunting in the dark.. They don't really deal with more pertinent concerns: Is there a God? How can I know Him? "What He did" is much further down the taxonomic scale. A seeker doesn't get lost in details. :up:

A god from nowhere, that made everything. That rather makes a hypocrisy out of christians mocking 'Everything from nothing'. Everything from nothing has been demonstrated to be a pretty good model, given that the total energy of the universe is zero, and everything is made of energy borrowed from the inflation of space-time. What is a god from nowhere? How can it have always been when the universe hasn't always been? I recommend doing a bit more work on this. It sounds both silly and lazy.

Stuart

:think: You are arguing FOR God's existence at that point. :think: Getting on board with Einstein is good. Later in life Einstein began believing God had personality. :up:
 

Stuu

New member
It is the history of written language. Everything was passed down by word of mouth prior. It'd be difficult to try and tie history between cultures and their language development but you can see that gods were always part of early beliefs and most of a central God.
It's a good point to raise about oral tradition, and of course that is going to be the main method of discourse among the vast majority of any ancient civilisation. It is certainly possible that a central god concept was the main mode of verbal discussion, and for some reason it was not recorded in writing. On the other hand, isn't it a tradition in some parts that you couldn't speak the name of the central god, but could indicated it in a slightly obscured written form? From what little I understand of it, the ancient Jewish transformation from polytheism involved a long political struggle that went via henotheism to monotheism, but as late as 800BCE there was still worship of a variety of gods, which might explain why there is a commandment against polytheism.

I've read criticism sites from agnostic and atheists but most of these are peripheral issues and hunting in the dark.. They don't really deal with more pertinent concerns: Is there a God? How can I know Him? "What He did" is much further down the taxonomic scale. A seeker doesn't get lost in details.
I guess those atheists and agnostics would not describe themselves as seekers.

You are arguing FOR God's existence at that point. Getting on board with Einstein is good. Later in life Einstein began believing God had personality.
Do you have complete quotes of Einstein that demonstrate this claim?

Stuart
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Thumbs up for a victory of empty rhetoric over substance, Stripe. Firstly you said nothing in your reply to my post addressed to Clete, and now you have quoted the parts of Clete's subsequent reply that say nothing.

And meantime, in another thread I have been agreeing with JudgeRightly about the need to conform to scientifically established facts, including paraphrasing your right comment along the same lines.

Stuart

Moans that poster added nothing.

Adds nothing himself.
 

Lon

Well-known member
It's a good point to raise about oral tradition, and of course that is going to be the main method of discourse among the vast majority of any ancient civilisation. It is certainly possible that a central god concept was the main mode of verbal discussion, and for some reason it was not recorded in writing.
Because it was literally invented by each culture. "When?" depends on the need.

On the other hand, isn't it a tradition in some parts that you couldn't speak the name of the central god, but could indicated it in a slightly obscured written form? From what little I understand of it, the ancient Jewish transformation from polytheism involved a long political struggle that went via henotheism to monotheism, but as late as 800BCE there was still worship of a variety of gods, which might explain why there is a commandment against polytheism.
The tradition as far as I trace, was due to commentary from Maimonides. They were/are trying to not take His name in vain (without reverence/common).


I guess those atheists and agnostics would not describe themselves as seekers.
Sadly. Likely.


Do you have complete quotes of Einstein that demonstrate this claim?

Stuart

Yes, look up his letters to seminaries. Its an easy Google.
 

Lon

Well-known member
Meanwhile, logic and reason are always necessary.

Depends on what you mean. Some are incapable of grasping Algebra, Calculus, Quantum Physics. Prayer on the other hand, gets the God of the universe involved and I've been praying.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Depends on what you mean.

Exactly what it says. There is no possibility of even contemplating communication — regardless of its quality — without logic.
 

Lon

Well-known member
Exactly what it says. There is no possibility of even contemplating communication — regardless of its quality — without logic.

Not exactly. Sometimes, my children emoted and often people who are going through something, are not seeing the big picture. They ARE communicating, but what I'm getting on this end isn't as 'logical' as I'd like it to be. I have to read between the lines. And, as I previously said, a person with Alzheimer, or Down's can be saved simply by trusting in Jesus Christ, not their lack of ability to be logical. I had an uncle who's mind was pretty much gone. He often asked me simply to pray for him. Maybe somebody knows "Jesus Loves Me, this I know" and not a lot else. We communicate through hugs, nods, discipline, and a good many other ways other than verbal communication. While it is true 'making sense' is communication, it is not true that I've always got all the answers. Often on TOL, somebody asks me if I meant one thing, when I meant and tried to convey something else. We communicate whether the other person gets it or not. While we certainly have a common ground concerning apprehension, I definitely have something else in mind than when a few on TOL use the term. See here "...there is no agreement upon the definition of logic..." So, even if 'logic' is one set of clear parameters in your mind, some or many will disagree with you on those terms. That's why I'm always back to trusting God over constructs of men and 'logic' is a construct. If we see it as 'truth' God certainly is truth, but until the whole world gets on page to what is and isn't logical, the guy/gal claiming it is often on a high horse.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
What I'm getting on this end isn't as 'logical' as I'd like it to be.

And yet, logic is required for you to determine that.

Like I say, logic is always required for communication, regardless of its complexity.
 

Right Divider

Body part
Depends on what you mean. Some are incapable of grasping Algebra, Calculus, Quantum Physics. Prayer on the other hand, gets the God of the universe involved and I've been praying.

How did you determine that you should pray to God? What reasoning got you there? What logic did it require?
 
Top