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The Debate of God.

meddlehaze

Ambassador
You mean you don't believe in fairies OR unicorns!!! :eek: How dare you :p
Lol


Not necessarily. Empirical evidence is most valuable followed by reasoned argument. Being a sceptic I don't say that anything exists only that it's more reasonable to assume that something exists.
So you can't even say that you certainly exist?
Do you believe that logical absolutes exist?

Logical absolute: a logical truth that is absolute all the time, everywhere.
example 1: A cannot be B at the same time in the same sense.
example 2: Water is 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen.
 

9Westy9

Sceptic, Libertarian, Egalitarian
Premium Member
So you can't even say that you certainly exist?

Sure. If I want to be super sceptical :p

Do you believe that logical absolutes exist?

Logical absolute: a logical truth that is absolute all the time, everywhere.
example 1: A cannot be B at the same time in the same sense.
example 2: Water is 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen.

I believe they exist.
 

meddlehaze

Ambassador
Sure. If I want to be super sceptical :p

I believe they exist.
Okay, since they are absolute they are not dependent on space, time or subjective interpretation. They are not found in or dependent on atoms, cells or anything of the material world to exist. Therefore, they are transcendent, are they not?
 

9Westy9

Sceptic, Libertarian, Egalitarian
Premium Member
Okay, since they are absolute they are not dependent on space, time or subjective interpretation. They are not found in or dependent on atoms, cells or anything of the material world to exist. Therefore, they are transcendent, are they not?

okay. Please go on.
 

9Westy9

Sceptic, Libertarian, Egalitarian
Premium Member
How do you account for their existence?

Interesting question (You've just earned your first frubal for it).

You could ask the same question for physical laws i.e. the gravitational constant. My answer would either be "I don't know" Or "They just are". If I was to guess though I'd say they are a result of our increase in knowledge. As we advance in science we have observed that at any one time A is not B and that Water is H2O. As for why that is the case the answer seems to just be a "That's how the universe is". Your move :)
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Logical absolute: a logical truth that is absolute all the time, everywhere.
So if these are absolute "all the time" and "everwhere" it would seem they require both space and time, or at least as you define them we can't say they hold true without space and/or time. Yet cosmological theory holds that the big bang began both space and time. Do logical absolutes fall apart when this universe did not exist?
 

apophenia

Well-Known Member
So if these are absolute "all the time" and "everwhere" it would seem they require both space and time, or at least as you define them we can't say they hold true without space and/or time. Yet cosmological theory holds that the big bang began both space and time. Do logical absolutes fall apart when this universe did not exist?

Cosmological theory holds that the universe emerged from a singularity.

Presumably a singularity is not nothing, it is more accurately implicitly everything, but not explicitly spacetime.

So there was never a time when the universe did not exist.

OK, shred it ...

:rolleyes:
 

Heathen Hammer

Nope, you're still wrong
Cosmological theory holds that the universe emerged from a singularity.

Presumably a singularity is not nothing, it is more accurately implicitly everything, but not explicitly spacetime.

So there was never a time when the universe did not exist.

OK, shred it ...

:rolleyes:
This would lead me to ask: what logical absolutes would exist before the universe did?
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Cosmological theory holds that the universe emerged from a singularity.

Presumably a singularity is not nothing, it is more accurately implicitly everything, but not explicitly spacetime.

So there was never a time when the universe did not exist.

OK, shred it ...

:rolleyes:
The singularity is a point in 0 dimensional space. Which is a mathematical/geometric way of talking about essentially nothing. There was no time, nor space.
 

meddlehaze

Ambassador
Interesting question (You've just earned your first frubal for it).

You could ask the same question for physical laws i.e. the gravitational constant. My answer would either be "I don't know" Or "They just are". If I was to guess though I'd say they are a result of our increase in knowledge. As we advance in science we have observed that at any one time A is not B and that Water is H2O. As for why that is the case the answer seems to just be a "That's how the universe is". Your move :)
Haha thanks!

Eternal logical absolutes rebuttal: If, logic is a process of the mind, how then could they exist without a transcendent mind?

Result of our increase in knowledge: We established earlier that they are transcendent. They are true whether a person believes in them or not, thus negating them as results of our increased knowledge. H20 has always been H2O before we discovered it, right? They are not dependent on our intellect, we just discover them.

Why don't you believe in Odin?
Polytheism is self-defeating, due to my understanding of the word 'god'.
So if these are absolute "all the time" and "everwhere" it would seem they require both space and time, or at least as you define them we can't say they hold true without space and/or time. Yet cosmological theory holds that the big bang began both space and time. Do logical absolutes fall apart when this universe did not exist?
It depends on the absolutes you refer to. Ones about the physical world would certainly fall apart, however, if the universe ceased to exist it would maintain true that something cannot come from nothing or that something cannot be itself and not itself at the same time.
 

Dirty Penguin

Master Of Ceremony
If an atheist can come up with a better idea for our existence I am all ears, but the usual old 'we are because of the laws of physics' etc.. just doesn't cut it.


Why..? You don't seem to listen anyway..so it's an exercise in futility explaining the evidence to you....:rolleyes:
 

Dirty Penguin

Master Of Ceremony
So how do we know if God exists? The reason why many atheists turn to science is because it is seen as the most accurate way to describe things within the confines of our universe. Many say that God is outside our universe. My question is, If God is outside our universe, then how do you know he exists?

And how do they know he's outside our universe? Where did this notion come from?
 

9Westy9

Sceptic, Libertarian, Egalitarian
Premium Member
Haha thanks!

you're welcome

Eternal logical absolutes rebuttal: If, logic is a process of the mind, how then could they exist without a transcendent mind?

That's a bit like saying 'all thoughts and ideas are transcendent' because they're all a process of the mind. They exist and we have minds to conceive of them. As for why do they exist I reckon it's because of how our universe is.

Result of our increase in knowledge: We established earlier that they are transcendent. They are true whether a person believes in them or not, thus negating them as results of our increased knowledge. H20 has always been H2O before we discovered it, right? They are not dependent on our intellect, we just discover them.

But as our knowledge has increased, so has our ability to discover absolutes. They may have existed before then but they're also limited to the known universe, until shown otherwise. So they exist because of how our universe is, rather than a transcendent mind existing.
 

apophenia

Well-Known Member
Cosmological theory holds that the universe emerged from a singularity.

Presumably a singularity is not nothing, it is more accurately implicitly everything, but not explicitly spacetime.

So there was never a time when the universe did not exist.

OK, shred it ...

:rolleyes:
The singularity is a point in 0 dimensional space. Which is a mathematical/geometric way of talking about essentially nothing. There was no time, nor space.

So we agree.

There was "the" singularity.
Which I am suggesting is the universe not in the mode of timespace.(Usually people mean timespace when they say "the universe")

What does "essentially" nothing mean ?

For example, would you call gravity or a magnetic field 'essentially nothing' ?

If it has a name, "the singularity", it is some kind of something, or why call it "the singularity" ?
 

apophenia

Well-Known Member
This would lead me to ask: what logical absolutes would exist before the universe did?

Yeah, I'm just going with along ...

"Logical absolutes" mean nothing to me . Oh Vienna !

My post was a response to 'a time when the universe did not exist'.
 
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meddlehaze

Ambassador
That's a bit like saying 'all thoughts and ideas are transcendent' because they're all a process of the mind. They exist and we have minds to conceive of them. As for why do they exist I reckon it's because of how our universe is.
I was simply saying that we did not create these logical absolutes, we simply discovered them. Before we discovered them, they existed. Logically, there must be an eternal, transcendent mind which caused these absolutes.



But as our knowledge has increased, so has our ability to discover absolutes. They may have existed before then but they're also limited to the known universe, until shown otherwise. So they exist because of how our universe is, rather than a transcendent mind existing.
This still doesn't account for their existence which proves that your worldview fails to answer this question. As I stated in the previous post to someone else, some logical absolutes are limited to the known universe, but some aren't. The 3 laws of logic are my best examples.

Logical absolutes exist and are transcendent (not dependent on the known universe to exist). The cause of these absolutes must be a transcendent mind due to the fact that they are formed by logic which is a process of the mind.
 

9Westy9

Sceptic, Libertarian, Egalitarian
Premium Member
I was simply saying that we did not create these logical absolutes, we simply discovered them. Before we discovered them, they existed. Logically, there must be an eternal, transcendent mind which caused these absolutes.

Why must there have been a mind that caused them all?

This still doesn't account for their existence which proves that your worldview fails to answer this question. As I stated in the previous post to someone else, some logical absolutes are limited to the known universe, but some aren't. The 3 laws of logic are my best examples.

Why world view doesn't make any claim about what happened before the universe, it's not my job to answer it. There are a multitude of possibilities

Logical absolutes exist and are transcendent (not dependent on the known universe to exist). The cause of these absolutes must be a transcendent mind due to the fact that they are formed by logic which is a process of the mind.

the laws of logic were formed with logic? Seems quite contradictory don't you think? I think it's most reasonable to say that there is no way we can know what caused these laws to be. All we can say is that they exist in our universe.
 

meddlehaze

Ambassador
Why must there have been a mind that caused them all?
Logic is a process of the mind. Logical absolutes appear to be a result of a transcendent mind.

Why world view doesn't make any claim about what happened before the universe, it's not my job to answer it. There are a multitude of possibilities
But mine is unreasonable?

the laws of logic were formed with logic? Seems quite contradictory don't you think? I think it's most reasonable to say that there is no way we can know what caused these laws to be. All we can say is that they exist in our universe.
The laws of logic were discovered with logic. It's a brain-teaser, but I don't sense the contradiction.
 
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