Prove that God doesn't exist.

[Dr.Who]

NOPE! Because just like yours (as far as we can tell... and we've had a long time to look) all made up.[/COLOR]

If I remove the elipses your sentence is left saying:


"NOPE! Because just like yours all made up."[/COLOR]

Did you mean to say that your hypothetical religion is all made up just like the bible is all made up?

If you did then you would be wrong again because we have just been discussing how some of it is not made up. If some of it is not made up then all of it cannot be made up.

If there is some part that you think was made up then put it out there for discussion.

I would assume you point to what you call hocus pocus. But just because you have not personally witnessed any miracles does not mean that they never happened. lack of evidence is not evidence.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

After all, our science has a law that says that matter can never be created nor destroyed.

Our science does not have a law saying that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. That's ancient history and was proved wrong when the first A-bomb was exploded.

Now we know that energy and matter are two forms of the same thing. We also know that virtual particles appear and disappear out of vacuum, hence suggesting that vacuum may be a source of nearly unlimited energy. A good website dealing with vacuum or zero-point energy is:
http://www.cheniere.org/

 

[r0beph]

Our science does not have a law saying that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. That's ancient history and was proved wrong when the first A-bomb was exploded.

Matter cannot be created nor destroyed , this is still a solid truth, although it CAN be converted to energy. What is often omitted is the requirement of reference frame isolation. If you have multiple frames of reference you will see a change in relativistic energy which defines the relativistic mass in the closed system. So while it cannot be created nor destroyed it can do some wonky stuff as you the observer change your reference frame. Remember all this conservation (of mass & energy) is only viable in a closed system.

Yes the parts that have been shown to have happened hrough archeological have been shown to be literally true.

Always cite your sources for non-common knowledge. I really hate having to tell people this. Otherwise you require that I myself perform internet archaeology and I don't enjoy that unless I must.

The most you can say about the parts that have not been shown to have happened through archeological evidence is that they are not supported by archeological evidence. If you make the leap of logic and go on to say that they must be allegorical or a legend then you have made an error.

This is a fine statement for certain aspects, for things that are logical. But when you start with stories talking snakes, seas parting, people turning into salt, and massive floods that formed when the earths legendary firmament was dropped from the heavens (Seriously, go look up what the firmament was). Science pretty much denies that ANY of this could happen. Animals don't talk, the earth was NEVER sealed inside of a large sphere of water, people don't turn to salt, and seas do not part.

For example it was very common to knock the bible because it spoke of the city of Jericho and for a while people thought that Jericho never existed. People concluded that Jericho must have been allegorical. Then some archeologist went and found Jericho.

Sure Jericho may have existed, but this doesn't lead any credence to the story on whole, in the bible. Only that a city of that name did indeed exist.

A lack of evidence is not evidence for the falsity of a thing.

We have tons of evidence that a lot of what is stated in the bible is simply impossible given the physics we all must abide by.

 

[PLC1]

Yes the parts that have been shown to have happened through archeological have been shown to be literally true.

The most you can say about the parts that have not been shown to have happened through archeological evidence is that they are not supported by archeological evidence. If you make the leap of logic and go on to say that they must be allegorical or a legend then you have made an error.

For example it was very common to knock the bible because it spoke of the city of Jericho and for a while people thought that Jericho never existed. People concluded that Jericho must have been allegorical. Then some archeologist went and found Jericho.

A lack of evidence is not evidence for the falsity of a thing.

It's not a huge leap to say that stories about turning water into wine and raising the dead, told at a time when mankind was even more superstitious and ignorant of scientific facts than is the case today, are not to be taken seriously.

Nor is it a huge leap to believe that stories told half a century after the fact have most likely been embellished.

But, you're right: There is no proof that these things didn't happen just as described. It is a huge leap of faith to believe that they did, but there is no way to prove definitively that they didn't.

 

[PLC1]

I know that the manuscripts were not altered by translation because I understand the nature of translation versus the nature of copying.

If you understand the nature of translations, then you understand that meanings can change in translation, and that translating even from modern languages often produces some twists. Translating from dead languages has even more pitfalls. When a document is translated, it is meanings that are translated, not words. Meanings are seen in a cultural context. Most of the time, words in one language have inexact counterparts in others. Sometimes, there is no word in one language that has the same meaning as one in another.

Try using an online translation service, one that does a literal, word for word translation and see what you get. Computers can match words, but humans match meanings. Matching meanings is not an exact science by any means.

When you translate something you make a new version of it and leave the original untouched. When someone translated the Greek word for Virgin into, say, German, the original manuscript still existed and still had the Greek word in it.

Exactly. That's how we know that the word "virgin" was translated from a word that had a different meaning.

Another word is "forty", as in Jesus fasting forty days and forty nights, etc. That word is translated from a word that meant "many." That's why the number 40 appears so often in the modern text.

If someone creates a whole doctrine based on a translation and not on the original manuscript they may or may not create an error. But what they have not done is alter the original.

Which is exactly what happened: A whole doctrine was based on a translation. They didn't alter the original, of course, but then, no one can read the original anyway.

 

[numinus]

The subject at hand is "Prove God doesn't exist". This is a weak attempt to try and make someone prove a negative because one cannot prove something in the first place.

And what idiot told you that proving a negative isn't possible, hmmm?

Haven't you heard of negative logic, before?

How about the principle of excluded middle, 'principium tertii exclusi', or tertium non datur ('there is no third possiblity')?

How about propositional calculus, hmmm? Ever heard of the proof that the square root of 2 is irrational from the definition of a rational number?

Can you logically think of a third possibility between god existing and not existing?

Your ignorance about the things you speak of is quite clear, really.

Face it your whole fantasy is 100% unprovable. It is a story without any scientific backing whatsoever. In fact much Biblical documentation is actually easily contradicted and/or disproven by modern scientific knowledge.

Now you are talking about the bible when, from your own admission, the issue at hand is about proving that god doesn't exist -- hence stupidly assuming that the proof of god resides solely in the bible.

Proving that god doesn't exist simply requires you to prove that logic is complete and self-consistent without any reference to god. What I have proven is the exact opposite, that logic is incomplete and self-inconsistent without the underlying premise of god.

What I find simply idiotic is your reference to'100%', as if mentioning such irrelevant nonsense gives you competence to discuss probabilistic theory with me.

Duh?

As far as your age... I don't know how old you are. But your argument from a proof standpoint is adolescent at best.

No.

Your education is adolescent at best. The fact that you cannot even get past what negative logic actually is demonstrates it convincingly.

Exactly what I said just using a lot more words. Open to the idea but have seen no proof at all of it's existence.

That is NOT what agnosticism means.

I'm not like primitive man that ran to the unprovable mystical super natural to explain things.

Of course you're not. You cannot make yourself believe something as self-evidently and intuitively true -- an ability even primitive man possesses. A fungus comes to mind.

So until at least a shred of evidence is provided I'm comfortable saying there's nothing to base a religious belief in... hence I don't believe in it.

Logic doesn't suffer your absurd objections, really. If ontology is simply beyond your comprehension, what can anyone say -- except 'duh'?

I just answered that...

and I'd be careful with the personal attacks... it is you with the vocabulary of "Duh".

As far as logic is concerned, you answered exactly squat.

Oh, and I wouldn't worry about personal attacks. As far as I'm concerned, I only say what facts and logic conclusively say.

Duh?

One goes with the best evidence that one can obtain. You on the other hand have no, zero, notta bit, of evidence. You have an Aesop's Fable. If we take science out of the equation we might as well all believe in Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy and Peter Pan.

You wouldn't know what to do with 'evidence' if it sat on your face and defecated -- much less 'obtain' it.

Get an education.

It's amazing that you're really having this much trouble making this simple connection.

The research is in the documenting the testimony of a person who lives after being hit by a bus relating his own experience & pain. In fact we could even start at a smaller event say being ran into by a bicycle and then extrapolate the increased size, weight, speed etc. of a larger object such as a car or bus and draw accurate scientific conclusions.

Nonsense.

How exactly do you mathematically quantify pain, eh????

And even if you arbitrarily assign numerical values to all sorts of pain, it would be idiotic indeed to presume that all people respond exactly the same to this numerical scale. You would suddenly have a promising career as a boxer or mixed martial artist and I'd happily watch someone bash your brains out.

You even stupidly use the word 'extrapolate' -- as if pain follows a fixed algebraic function in cartesian space that is the same for everyone.

Duh?

This isn't the Da Vinci Code my friend. You really should be able to connect the dots. But again I go back to the possible age factor.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Abraham Lincoln

How about this:

'The ability to speak doesn't make one intelligent.'

quai-gon-jin

 

[numinus]

Have you seen any talking snakes lately?

The last I've heard of talking snakes was recounted by antoinne de st. exupery in the little prince.

Has the Sun stopped in the sky anytime recently?

Not the sun, but according to inflation cosmology, the night sky as far as anyone can see was instantaneously put that way via space-time expansion a couple of thousand times the speed of light.

Does that qualify as an answer to your question?

Why don't people live to be 900 years old any more?

Perhaps because they weren't using the same gregorian calendar we are using currently.

A lot of the Bible simply cannot be taken literally. It was written for superstitious people who lived two thousand years or more ago. Trying to justify it, word by word, in terms of today's science, is plain silly.

By your own analogy, goerge orwell's animal farm was written for superstitious people. Following the same analogy, political science majors are superstitious.

 

[numinus]

Yes, besides which much of it was meant to be allegory, a lot of the descriptions of events in the Bible were passed down by word of mouth for generations before being committed to paper, it's been written and rewritten, translated and retranslated over the centuries to the point it can't be taken literally.

The word "Bible" simply means "books". If a random collection of books written today were to be taken as historical fact, it might be a little bit difficult to prove that the events in the writings of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling actually happened.

Exactly.

Why then are some idiots in this forum insisting on the application of scientific rigor on something that wasn't meant to be a scientific treatise, hmmm?

 

[numinus]

That's too bad, with that much education I sort of figured she's the brains in the family. Does all of her vast training let her tell the difference between homosexuals and transsexuals? I know you haven't ever been able to figure it out, maybe she could explain it to you.

That's easy. The transexual is the one with a sewed-on dick or pussy. The homosexual is the one contemplating the procedure.

Duh?

So, why aren't you citing any of her published works proving that being gay is evil? I assume she's done orginal work to prove the points you keep trying to make. Got citations? Or is all of her work classroom stuff and she hasn't been out in the real world?

I'll let you know when she decides to complete her thesis. She might very well decide to do just that if and when financial and time constraints are eliminated.

Has she read Dr. Louanne Brizendine's book, THE FEMALE BRAIN? It's based on Dr. Brizendine's lifework and she cites more than 1000 peer review journal articles as well. Her research follows the development of the female brain from conception through menopause. Good book.

And what makes you think she's in the habit of reading 'politically-correct' motivated material, hmmm?

 

[numinus]

Thank you for noticing, Nums.

I aim to please.

Love is good, just because you can't see that doesn't make if false.

Of course love is good. It just isn't good when sought up somebody else's anal passage.

So they lied about God giving them permission to own slaves and beat them to death? To commit rape, genocide, and kidnapping?

That a hebrew nation will come to be was one of the terms of the covenant with god, was it not? And such a nation should be a theocracy, as stipulated in the covenant, was it not? And that establishment of that theocracy was contingent on the things they did, was it not?

What lie are you refering to, exactly?

In the meantime, you wish to edit the bible -- against historical evidentiary procedure -- just so it would conform to your sensibilities.

Who exactly is lying, hmmm?

If you were using a real Bible instead of the Reader's Digest Condensed Bible certified by the Pope, then you would know that in scripture God gives people the right to own slaves and beat them to death. That's blasphemy, to speak evil of God.

Nonsense.

It was the standard fare in any political association at that time in the fertile crescent. And that nation, as horrible to our present moral sensibilities as any nation that existed then, was meant to shepherd humanity in its entirety as a 'people of god' -- eventually.

What part of scripture did you think I misconstrued, hmmm?

The church is already party to a travesty by saying that God endorsed slavery, beating slaves to death, rape, genocide, and kidnapping.

Nonsense.

Temporal realities have always been known to oppose the divine order. It's right there in civitas dei. The church has acted out of expediency, and has since apologized for it.

Now, are you suggesting that the millenium apology was done only to commit another travesty?

Removing those obvious lies from the Bible will not do anything to the historical account of what those violent goatherders did--all it does is take away their claimed permission from God.

Removing or maintaining them does not diminish the moral teaching of the church in any way. It does however change the context of these historical account.

Of course, it's Scripture, it's in the Bible. You folks are still killing gays, aren't you?

Nope. Haven't killed any gay since.....never.

LOL.

There is no rationale for persecuting gay people, nor is there for persecuting transsexual people. Has the Ratzipper Pope apologized for burning Joan of Arc at the stake?

She was burned for being a transsexual and refusing to wear women's clothing. Raise your hands everyone who has read the trial transcript of Joan's trial... I only see one hand up and it's mine. Check it out, Nums, the Catholic Church still has the transcript archived.

The millenium apology was made by jp2, not alexander -- although it was made in behalf of the entire catholic church. And yes, the millenium apology included women. Not everyone was mentioned by name, of course.

I'd love to check out the original -- if you're willing to send me to the vatican.

 

[numinus]

Matter cannot be created nor destroyed , this is still a solid truth, although it CAN be converted to energy.

Nonsense.

The idea that matter and energy are being created from the dynamics of space-time geometry is what cosmology is contemplating on currently.

What is often omitted is the requirement of reference frame isolation. If you have multiple frames of reference you will see a change in relativistic energy which defines the relativistic mass in the closed system. So while it cannot be created nor destroyed it can do some wonky stuff as you the observer change your reference frame. Remember all this conservation (of mass & energy) is only viable in a closed system.

And if you are as familiar with relativity as you purport to be, then you wouldn't mind explaining exactly what the cosmological constant term in einstein's field equation is for, hmmm?

Exactly what does that mean if you ascribe a negative energy density to the cosmological constant tensor, hmmm? Oh, and while you're at it, would you mind pointing me to a website to a scientific paper that purports to have actually held some lambda in some laboratory?

Always cite your sources for non-common knowledge. I really hate having to tell people this. Otherwise you require that I myself perform internet archaeology and I don't enjoy that unless I must.

I was going to advice you the same thing but on second thought, merely explaining your take on general relativity would suffice for now.

This is a fine statement for certain aspects, for things that are logical. But when you start with stories talking snakes, seas parting, people turning into salt, and massive floods that formed when the earths legendary firmament was dropped from the heavens (Seriously, go look up what the firmament was). Science pretty much denies that ANY of this could happen. Animals don't talk, the earth was NEVER sealed inside of a large sphere of water, people don't turn to salt, and seas do not part.

Lets put your purported incredulity to a test, shall we? Can you imagine a void or nothingness?

Please illuminate the members of this forum. Feel free to use physics and metaphysics to convey your ideas.

I try to imagine it as an empty box, but the thing is, it doesn't make sense if one removes the box since, after all, nothingness is simply a property of the box.

I try to imagine euclidean space, but the thing is, it has spatial measures in any arbitrarily positioned cartesian coordinate system. Surely, something that can be measured isn't nothing. After all, measure is merely a property of some kind of existence, no?

And I try to imagine vacuum, but the thing is, I was informed recently that vacuum consists of planck-scale quantum 'fluctuations', infinitessimally small curvatures in space-time much like the irregular texture of a piece of paper. Besides, its exerting a negative energy density causing space-time to expand at an accelerating rate. Surely something that exerts an energy density couldn't be nothing.

So, what exactly is a 'void' if not some irrational and unstable singularity where no scientific principle applies, hmmm? And isn't 'let there be light' the simplest and closest description of any big bang you would care to think of -- given your aversion to research (unless absolutely necessary for you to do so)?

We have tons of evidence that a lot of what is stated in the bible is simply impossible given the physics we all must abide by.

At some point, one ought to recognize that 'let there be light' logically points to some form of CREATION as surely as the big bang.

 

[samsara15]

But then who created God?

At some point our knowledge and the chain of casuality run out.

The best answer, at that point, is that we don't know, and perhaps never will.

 

[numinus]

But then who created God?

At some point our knowledge and the chain of casuality run out.

The best answer, at that point, is that we don't know, and perhaps never will.

Nope.

Therefore, a first cause (that is not an effect) MUST exist.

 

[Dr.Who]

Our science does not have a law saying that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. That's ancient history and was proved wrong when the first A-bomb was exploded.

Now we know that energy and matter are two forms of the same thing. We also know that virtual particles appear and disappear out of vacuum, hence suggesting that vacuum may be a source of nearly unlimited energy. A good website dealing with vacuum or zero-point energy is:
http://www.cheniere.org/

I am quite aware that the law talks about both matter and energy. I was both lazy and assumed that everyone here would understand that I meant to include energy and matter as one entity. I was wrong.

Our cosmologists tell us that matter/energy were created ex nihilo at the beginning and many think that it still is being created.

 

[Dr.Who]

Always cite your sources for non-common knowledge. I really hate having to tell people this. Otherwise you require that I myself perform internet archaeology and I don't enjoy that unless I must.

Some things do not need a citation. Things like there is a sky. the bible talks about a sky you know? so obviously this is a statement in the bible that was verified.

It is illogical to say that nothing in it is verified!

You can say that some things are not.

Since I mentioned archeology I will mention what I have already said somewhere here.

The bible talks of the temple of the Jews that was destroyed in 70 AD after the bible was written. If you go to Israel you can see part of the wall of that temple. Again the "wailing wall" is such a well known artifact that it barely needs to be cited.