Did a God or Gods create the universe? EDITED

Speaker

Personally I don't see a reason for the "versus". One could see it the way that the world of God(s/etc.) encloses the world of science, but not vice versa.

But on the contrary, through science we can find why people tend to make up gods and why they feel good when they believe in them. Through neuroscience we can see that we feel good about prepositions that we believe are true, but the bigger mystery remains- how can we sometimes have two prepositions that we believe are true yet they contradict each other. Why do people often instinctively favor religious ideas instead of the scientific truth.
Most of the answers for the biggest questions of life lie inside our brain. We just have to keep looking.

As for the people who do not believe in the literal meaning of their doctrine- I think they are just wishful thinkers who just haven't found spiritual fulfilment outside religion yet. I also was struggling for a long time to reach this state. One of the last obstacle in my way was the question of morality. Once I found the answer, I felt as everything was in it's place and my life has found it's meaning, I finally felt... happy

Happy new year everyone! I wish you found this happyness I have this year!

brodie

Goodness, this is a fast moving thread. Take a long weekend and your 4 pages behind! Hope you don't mind me digging up something from page 28ish where I'd asked how atheists account for logic...

@unknownuser said:

Logic is man-made. It's that simple. Or did I misunderstand you?

But logic is absolute, whereas we are not. Your girlfriend is apparently a prime example of this as she does and says things that simply aren't logical.

Would you not agree that it would be more accurate to say that logic was 'discovered' by man rather than 'made' by him? The law of non-contradiction, for example, was in place long before the Greeks recognized it and named it. So we can't say that it is man-made any more than mathematics or the Nile river.

@tig said:

This question about 'Logic' is a red-herring.

Why would atheists differ from anyone else on this matter ?

Logic is a method of thought invented/developed by the ancient Greeks [who were mainly theists].

"Logic" is itself a branch of mathematics.

Again, I'd suggest logic is discovered rather than invented. I'm not sure if I'd necessarily agree that logic is a branch of mathematics but it certainly has important similarities. Both are transcendent (not dependent on space, or time, or us for that matter). They're also independent of the universe. Even if there are multiple universes 2+2 must equal 4 and one couldn't say of something that it is and is not in the same respect and at the same time.

Where I was going with this was to raise an argument I've heard called the 'transcendental argument for God.' You can find a summary of it here along with some common responses ( http://carm.org/transcendental-argument ). I've never used it before and can't say I know it well enough to adequately defend it but I find it to be an interesting argument. I was curious to see how our resident atheists would account for these absolutes.

-Brodie

Alan Fraser

@speaker said:

As for the people who do not believe in the literal meaning of their doctrine- I think they are just wishful thinkers who just haven't found spiritual fulfilment outside religion yet. I also was struggling for a long time to reach this state. One of the last obstacle in my way was the question of morality. Once I found the answer, I felt as everything was in it's place and my life has found it's meaning, I finally felt... happy.

As for Hell, I guess some of us are already toast. But consider the alternative; the traditional view of Heaven...either meandering about with a silly grin on your face, like you've been lobotomised, or singing praises to the Lord all day (why does he need that BTW? Does he have some kind of inferiority complex, in that he needs constant reaffirment of His greatness?).

I used to end up eating the wallpaper after taking the kids around the Florida theme parks for two weeks. I still can't get "It's a small world." out of my head. The thought of sitting on a cloud playing a harp and being unremittingly joyous for all eternity doesn't bear thinking about. And I've got a whole bunch of relatives I'd rather not be re-acquainted with either. The prospect of oblivion just keeps getting better and better

Alan Fraser

Regarding logic: Here in the west, we tend to credit the Ancient Greeks (who were pagans by our standards), but the fact is that Logic was being developed roughly simultaneously in several parts of the world. One of the most notable of which was Confucianist China. Confucianism is essentially humanist in nature. I think you'd find that third of the world's population arguing very strongly against logic being god-given.

Stinkie

@unknownuser said:

Would you not agree that it would be more accurate to say that logic was 'discovered' by man rather than 'made' by him?

No, I wouldn't. Logic wasn't discovered anymore than grammar or syntax were. It was developed and honed over the course of the centuries, as a tool to probe, structure and analyse arguments. It isn't those arguments themselves. Nor is there anything transcendent about it. Again, it's a tool - without the hand that wields it, it is nothing.

I do apologise for the crude explanation. I am no Wittgenstein.

@alan fraser said:

(...) meandering about with a silly grin on your face, like you've been lobotomised (...)

If we get to wear our pyjamas, I'm in. It'll be just like down here, only without the guilt.

brodie

@unknownuser said:

No, I wouldn't. Logic wasn't discovered anymore than grammar or syntax were. It was developed and honed over the course of the centuries, as a tool to probe, structure and analyse arguments. It isn't those arguments themselves.

I do apologise for the crude explanation. I am no Wittgenstein.

Grammar and syntax aren't like logic in that they change from culture to culture and even change within a culture over time. The laws of logic are absolute and unchanging (more similar to mathematics). I can 'create' a new word or even a new language with it's own rules, but I can't similarly create a new logical absolute.

Do you disagree?

-Brodie

brodie

@alan fraser said:

Regarding logic: Here in the west, we tend to credit the Ancient Greeks (who were pagans by our standards), but the fact is that Logic was being developed roughly simultaneously in several parts of the world. One of the most notable of which was Confucianist China. Confucianism is essentially humanist in nature. I think you'd find that third of the world's population arguing very strongly against logic being god-given.

Perhaps, but valuing logic, they'd probably also agree that truth isn't determined by how many people believe it.

-Brodie

IdahoJ

@unknownuser said:

Christianity is all about fear.

If anything, believing and having faith in my God liberates me from fear. I don't worship God from dread of "going to hell and damnation for eternity", but because my God is about love, forgiveness and salvation. I'm not so proud or self-centered that I can't bow my head and thank Him for the many blessings He has given me, and continues to give me daily. I better myself every day because God, through His Scriptures sets pretty high standards and I want to have those as my goals as well ... Not because if I don't comply, it's a fear of "fire and brimstone" at the Hades Hotel ...

The real fear exists for me here and now. Look around. Famine, war, hatred, intolerance, ignorance, greed, violence, etc. This is hell ... I thank my Lord every day for the strength, serenity and courage to face it ...

John 8:31-32, "To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Cheers.

boofredlay

@speaker said:

As for the people who do not believe in the literal meaning of their doctrine- I think they are just wishful thinkers who just haven't found spiritual fulfilment outside religion yet. I also was struggling for a long time to reach this state. One of the last obstacle in my way was the question of morality. Once I found the answer, I felt as everything was in it's place and my life has found it's meaning, I finally felt... happy

Happy new year everyone! I wish you found this happyness I have this year!

Happy New Year to you as well.

What is the answer you found regarding morality? And yes I am genuinely interested.

Stinkie

@unknownuser said:

Grammar and syntax aren't like logic in that they change from culture to culture and even change within a culture over time. The laws of logic are absolute and unchanging (more similar to mathematics). I can 'create' a new word or even a new language with it's own rules, but I can't similarly create a new logical absolute.

Do you disagree?

-Brodie

You're assuming I agree the laws of logic are absolute. But I don't. Those 'laws' -again, no Wittgenstein- are theoretical principles, deduced by man through observation and experiment.

We're speaking different languages, I think.

brodie

@alan fraser said:

...But consider the alternative; the traditional view of Heaven...either meandering about with a silly grin on your face, like you've been lobotomised, or singing praises to the Lord all day (why does he need that BTW? Does he have some kind of inferiority complex, in that he needs constant reaffirment of His greatness?)....

Not really 'traditional,' that's more like the hokey television version of heaven (which, I'd agree is hard to get out of our heads and doesn't seem very appealing). The traditional Biblical version is muchmore interesting. In fact our ultimate destination isn't some sort of non-physical heavenly realm at all. Ultimately God restores and renews thisworld and we're resurrected within it (in a very physical sense). There aren't many specifics but it seems to be not terribly unlike this world but without pain, suffering, sin, guilt, boredom, etc. We'll live forever, we'll still have stuff to do and be in charge of, etc.

One analogy I've heard is that of a bird in a cage (us in our present world). The bird not wanting to leave his cage and entire the whole wide world for fear of boredom or monotony would be a bit similar to us having that view of heaven (or more accurately, life after the resurrection).

-Brodie

Dropout

@unknownuser said:

@alan fraser said:

...But consider the alternative; the traditional view of Heaven...either meandering about with a silly grin on your face, like you've been lobotomised, or singing praises to the Lord all day (why does he need that BTW? Does he have some kind of inferiority complex, in that he needs constant reaffirment of His greatness?)....

Not really 'traditional,' that's more like the hokey television version of heaven (which, I'd agree is hard to get out of our heads and doesn't seem very appealing). The traditional Biblical version is muchmore interesting. In fact our ultimate destination isn't some sort of non-physical heavenly realm at all. Ultimately God restores and renews thisworld and we're resurrected within it (in a very physical sense). There aren't many specifics but it seems to be not terribly unlike this world but without pain, suffering, sin, guilt, boredom, etc. We'll live forever, we'll still have stuff to do and be in charge of, etc.

One analogy I've heard is that of a bird in a cage (us in our present world). The bird not wanting to leave his cage and entire the whole wide world for fear of boredom or monotony would be a bit similar to us having that view of heaven (or more accurately, life after the resurrection).

-Brodie

brodie

@solo said:

@Brodie.

I watched that link from above and I think it really is a long fetch, logical absolutes does not explain the existence of god. Firstly he starts the debate with an assumption that logic explains the existence of God and then disproves atheists responses as an affirmation of theist ones without at any time giving his opinion of the formation of logic based on the existence of god, so because an atheist cannot prove the formation of logic therefore it's God made....silly argument IMO.

edit

Because I as an atheist cannot explain the creation of everything therefore it must have been done by god? essentially this is the lame argument.

So you see the argument as sort of a 'god of the gaps' idea then? "If you can't prove the small toe developed without divine intervention then it must have taken divine intervention to develop"...that sort of thing?

-Brodie

brodie

@solo said:

I have a problem with this, you heard, from where? if the bible is the one and only source that you base all your beliefs from then why is this analogy not in the bible and you need to hear it from a 3rd party interpretation?

I don't recall the source. I want to say C. S. Lewis but I can't find it on google and it strikes me as a bit elementary for a Lewis quote. But your point is well made that it is not in the Bible.

Firstly, the Bible is not my only source. It's the root source, for sure, but there have been many great thinkers and scholars that have informed my worldview over the years. If I find a position which seems to contradict the Bible, then the Bible wins. However, there have been a wealth of things that have been said which do seem to be quite Biblical and put things in such a way that are very helpful to me.

For example, one of my favorite quotes is, “Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be." - Rob Bell

Here he's talking to Christians who have a propensity to harshly judge nonchristians (the 'dark') for their sin (greed, selfishness, etc.), and instead urging them to turn the question around and ask why we, the church, aren't doing as much good in the world as we should be. It's a great point that inspires me and one which I find very Biblical.

Another point which addresses this in 2 ways is an article by N. T. Wright (perhaps the highest regarded New Testament scholar at the moment) I found some time ago discussing what it means for the Bible to be authoritative for us today ( http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Bible_Authoritative.htm ). The payoff is in an analogy (I love analogies) in which he describes the Bible as being like a theoretical Shakespearean 5 act play where the 5th act was never written or lost. Essentially we're living in that 5th act of the play and must find a way to 'write' a consistent last act that works with the first four (with the caveat the the Bible includes the beginning of that 5th act which begins after Jesus' resurrection and also gives us the ending of the play where God's ultimate victory occurs so we're developing the middle of that last act, really). It's a great idea that might make little sense in such a short description. I welcome questions on the idea.

-Brodie

Edit: I should also mention that to 'only' use the Bible could be somewhat dangerous as normal rules of reading still apply. We still need to know things like geographical and chronological context, who the author was, who he was writting to, etc. Many of these things we rely on scholars for and they inform how we read the Bible. "Dangerous" may be too strong a word but without any background our natural inclination is to assume the context was just like our context and those people were dealing with the same issues we are. This can lead to misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

brodie

@solo said:

He has taken a page from the atheist playbook...

I suspect he would suggest the difference is that he hasn't just said, 'you don't have an answer so God did it,' but rather that he's proved that within the atheistic worldview no answer can possibly exist. But I guess you're saying that he hasn't proven this and that an answer does exist even if you can't currently explain it?

-Brodie

Stinkie

@ Brodie: are you getting what you're saying about logical absolutes from that page you linked to earlier? I wouldn't take that particular web page for gospel.

I mean ...

"Logical Absolutes are transcendent.

(...)

Logical Absolutes are not dependent on people. That is, they are not the product of human thinking.
1. People's minds are different. What one person considers to be absolute may not be what another considers to be absolute. People often contradict each other. Therefore, Logical Absolutes cannot be the product of human, contradictory minds.
2. If Logical Absolutes were the product of human minds, they would cease to exist if people ceased to exist, which would mean they would be dependent on human minds. But this cannot be so per the previous point."

"3" is a rather shaky premise, for which no arguments are provided. It's simply stated, as if it were self-explanatory.

Alan Fraser

This is all very interesting, however it is all pure speculation and rests upon a single card...that there is a god....for which there is absolutely no evidence. Even if there is a god, it may well be that he is not your god, with all the Judaeo-Christian-centred philosophy attendant on him.

If, indeed there is no god, then however elegant ones model for our purpose here, or what lies in store for us after death, then it's all just so much hot air and mental gymnastics.

It matters not a jot how well-argued and eloquent the case is or by whom it is put...anyone from St. Thomas Aquinas to modern day apologists like William Lane Craig. It doesn't matter how deeply it's felt, or by how many, or how fervently you wish it to be so, it is no more valid than any of the myriads of belief systems that have come and gone in different parts of the world.

PS My point about the Chinese and Logic is that they developed it from an entirely humanistic perspective. The key word there is developed. They didn't discover it, they developed it; and that development as well as parallel developments in Greece and India are well charted. Logic has a recorded history...just like mathematics.

brodie

@unknownuser said:

@ Brodie: are you getting what you're saying about logical absolutes from that page you linked to earlier? I wouldn't take that particular web page for gospel.

I mean ...

"Logical Absolutes are transcendent.

(...)

Logical Absolutes are not dependent on people. That is, they are not the product of human thinking.

People's minds are different. What one person considers to be absolute may not be what another considers to be absolute. People often contradict each other. Therefore, Logical Absolutes cannot be the product of human, contradictory minds.

If Logical Absolutes were the product of human minds, they would cease to exist if people ceased to exist, which would mean they would be dependent on human minds. But this cannot be so per the previous point."

"3" is a rather shaky premise, for which no arguments are provided. It's simply stated, as if it were self-explanatory.

In honesty, that is where most of my info regarding that particular argument has come from although I've tried to verify a few things he's said regarding the laws of logic.

It what sense do you find that premise 'shaky'? Do you feel that logical absolutes are dependent on people? Before people existed do you suppose that A might not have equaled A?

-Brodie

brodie

@alan fraser said:

This is all very interesting, however it is all pure speculation and rests upon a single card...that there is a god....for which there is absolutely no evidence. Even if there is a god, it may well be that he is not your god, with all the Judaeo-Christian-centred philosophy attendant on him.

If, indeed there is no god, then however elegant ones model for our purpose here, or what lies in store for us after death, then it's all just so much hot air and mental gymnastics.

It matters not a jot how well-argued and eloquent the case is or by whom it is put...anyone from St. Thomas Aquinas to modern day apologists like William Lane Craig. It doesn't matter how deeply it's felt, or by how many, or how fervently you wish it to be so, it is no more valid than any of the myriads of belief systems that have come and gone in different parts of the world.

PS My point about the Chinese and Logic is that they developed it from an entirely humanistic perspective. The key word there is developed. They didn't discover it, they developed it; and that development as well as parallel developments in Greece and India are well charted. Logic has a recorded history...just like mathematics.

Can you point me to a source on what it was the Chinese logicians developed? The fact that people of different cultures were beginning to understand these things at the same time would only seem to indicate all the more that they weren't independently inventing them. We don't have Western math and Eastern math. It's just math no matter where it was that people began to understand it. We may have developed conventions around math or logic but these conventions are only a means of understanding or determining an underlying truth - ways to determine what 4x4 will be without arranging so many objects on a table, as we did in grade school.

-Brodie

Edit: to address the first part of your comment I fully agree that all this 'heaven' talk is predicated on the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. I just think that if we're going to bring it up, it's best to understand it in an accurate way. Christians do a disservice to their argument when they suggest the atheistic position is that 'men came from monkeys' and so atheists also do a disservice when they misrepresent the positions held by Christians. It is important to understand that the Christian idea of the afterlife is deeper and more attractive than where we see Wile E. Coyote go after falling off a cliff.

michaliszissiou

Some Alberto Giacometti's quotes.

Life is only an abyss.

I no longer understand anything about life, about death, about anything.

Art is only a way of seeing. Whatever I may look at, everything is beyond me, everything surprises me. I don’t exactly know what I am seeing. It’s too complex.

It’s impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the more differently I see it.

The human face is as strange to me as a countenance which, the more one looks at it, the more it closes itself off and escapes by the steps of unknown stairways.

I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.

The more I work the more I see things differently, that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is.

Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won’t know what it is until I succeed in doing it.

All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.

It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little.

Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.