The "something can't come from nothing" argument

[AlphaAlex115]

really?.....

Yes.............

 

[Thief]

Yes.............

Get a dictionary...and get on with the discussion.

Spirit first....as Creator.

 

[AlphaAlex115]

Get a dictionary...and get on with the discussion.

Spirit first....as Creator.

Ye... ?

 

[idav]

Get a dictionary...and get on with the discussion.

Spirit first....as Creator.

The question is... Was nothing first?

 

[1robin]

The discussion about complexity is too complex? Looks like a self referential deadlock

How do you support your knowledge that codes can only come from minds?

Semiotics or codes are not juts complexity but specified complexity given a purpose. Nature does not have a purpose and is not intentional. Any old complexity will do in nature, but in codes specified complexity is necessary. Nature has enough trouble making the simplest pattern or complexity and specified complexity is a bridge to far. Let's take some of the biggest areas of codes.

1. Words (as in the written): Always a mind behind them every time.
2. Symbols: Always a mind every time.
3. Codes (like red or alpha): Always a mind every time.
4. Tonal sequences: Always a mind every time.

I will end this quicker by stating why it takes mind. Codes have a purpose, nature does not, mind does. Codes have a purpose and a decoder tuned to decode them. Without intent and intelligence you are not going to get complex codes and also the exact decoder and processor needed to decode them.

I don't know what you mean. The background cosmic radiation is a good source of random noise. You can see that on old untuned TVs. You can generate very random strings of characters with that.

Of course nature can be random, that is my point. Nature can make very simplistic and short patterns but it will never write the 9th symphony. That is exactly why SETI has been listening for intentional patters not background anomalies. You find a motor vehicle on the backside of the moon every single person of Earth instantly thinks intelligence not complex rock formation.

Do you really think that a sonet or the DNA has more information than an equally long string of perfectly random characters?

You are really missing the point. It is not the length it is the information in the code, the intent of the information, and the ability to decode it on the other end.

Nope. We do not know how life arose. It could have been in the form of very simple replicators with almost no code.

I know we don't, but I have heard constantly the use of the cell as the first life. It is not my claim but that of biologists used in almost ever debate and book I read which mentions abiogenesis. Replicators require a code themselves. If anything is to live it is alive because it performs processes and that requires instructions. Things so simplistic as have no need on instructions are not alive, they are rocks, (or politicians). Even beginning with proteins themselves requires gargantuan codes and chemical evolutionary processes.

Yes, it is true. But I don't think that those millions really made their homework. They are ultimately creationists fighting crationism, which is odd. And they pollute both the Bible and science.

The greatest Christian apologists on the scene these days grant evolution 100%. I do not really care what the hick from the backwaters of the Mississippi is told by a preacher who has a 8th grade education. Educated Christians for the most part have no problem with evolution. In fact the bible its self predicted evolution, it just limits it by "kind" (which roughly translates to populations that can breed) 4000 years ago.

You never know. You might win a million on TV by knowing these things.

In over 40 years of contests I have won exactly 1. A brand new bicycle which got ran over by the wood truck the next day.

There is no supernatural explanation of morality that is coherent either, as your fellow Christians with completely opposing views here seem to confirm. Not to speak of the other beliefs.

It is perfectly coherent. God is a moral agent who created moral agents with the apprehension of a moral realm which is found in his nature. Where is the incoherency? I have seen no believers with opposite moral vies but that is not what I am talking about. I am not talking about whether abortion is murder or not, I am talking about if murder can be true or not. In my view certain things are absolutely wrong and others absolutely right regardless if we can agree on them or not the foundation for truth remains and is coherent.

Why is that so difficult to agree on what God really wants if you all allegedely have personal relationships with Jesus? Do you talk about the weather?

If you imagine God as a radio tower spitting out a signal and we the receivers our flawed equipment causes static on the signal as well as interference from other entities around us and our unwillingness to listen intently. A Christian is not a perfect person but one who is saved in spite of being flawed. Most are undisciplined and rebellious so we not perceive the signal with clarity. We all have a personal relationship with many things we disagree on aspects of. This a type of argument I call the amplification of uncertainty rejection. It is to artificially amplify uncertainty and them condemn the object in question without justification especially since that same standard is not applied to most things. For a person to consider valid muti-verses which have no evidence and to deny Christ which has much evidence and 80% plus agreement is inconsistent.

I would not confuse knowledge with certainty.

Depends how you define knowledge.

If you use a baseball bat against your servants today, I doubt you will go away with just some money. Unless you agree with your victim on some money without informing the police.

What is true today (especially in only parts of the world today) is irrelevant. In a society that kills lives in the word by the millions balking at what the person who hurt a servant was penalized with is a little hypocritical. What about "today" is morally exceptional? It isn't teen pregnancy, gambling debts, the parent per child ration, the lack of war, the lack of violence, drug abuse, gang activity, etc.... The only today proves is that we do not get better over time. We get worse.

I don't think that the money in Leviticus goes to the victim, though.

The master had already paid that man's debt and even if he could not work for 5 of the 6 years he was still set free after receiving a home, possibly land, food, and what medical care was available. In many cases he was given a separation allotment and could move to any tribal region in Israel. Not even the Jews could do that.

Reminds me, again, of another film: Schindler's List.

I never saw the whole thing but nothing in the parts I did see had anything to do with biblical "slavery".

I did not say it is toothache. I said it is like toothache, if I remember correctly.
When you think of little babies aborted, your brain pain centers fire up and inform other cells that there is something to be stopped from occuring.

Your morality can be measured in Volts.

I am skeptical. If true why is it secularists so passionately defend what causes them this pain?

True. It can involve the centers of disgust, as well. The same that command you to avoid rotting animals, for instance. Sometimes they play in tandem.

So are to write laws based on a multi-meter? I think Murder is wrong, you think is above the accepted voltage level.

And who cares if they are depressing? Do you base your search for truth according to the pleasantness of a claim?

No, I hold it as both. It is false and it is depressing it is still believed though false.

Yes, thousands answers. Like high level morality, that is, morality that it is not immediately correlated with our (genes) survival. Things like the death penalty or gay marriage, so to speak. Things like killing baby is low level morality on which we all agree...almost all.

No, the secular side says it is ok to kill the baby on one day but not the next, based on what? The Christian says we do not know when it would be ok to terminate a pregnancy and so we err on the side of life, abortionists say we do not know yet we will err on the side of death (massive death greater than all the world wars). That is depressing and moral insanity.

It woukd be pointless to try to destroy hope. For it springs eternal, and it is a very powerful evolutionary adaptation, like your belief in an ultimate destiny or goal.

I did not mean hope it's self, for by it's self hope alone is hopeless. I meant the justifications for hope. God is the only possible eternal hope. We do not know (generally) if he exists yet I still have hope he does, non-theists don't know yet reject hope without knowing.

From an economical point of view, it is much better to hope against all odds by default than to stop hoping according to some precise criteria that might complicate our brain structure and economy beyond necessity.

Your still confusing the source with the act of hoping. Partially my fault I should have said we should give faith every chance we can so as to have hope. Hope has a basis, your world view annihilates it.

Nature is lazy, I am afraid.

It is too much trouble to argue against being lazy. Just kidding.

 

[1robin]

The question is... Was nothing first?

Since God is eternal then at no time did only nothing exist.

 

[idav]

Since God is eternal then at no time did only nothing exist.

So we agree on something. Holy cow!

I will steer clear of the reference to time, I need more coffee first.:thud:

 

[John Martin]

I have seen this argument branded about to somewhat discredit evolution (I am lost as to why persons think this have anything to do with evolution, but that's another story). But I would put it to "creationists" that it is you who are advocating that something indeed came out of nothing. Let's forget the "who created God" question for a while; you (usually) advocate that God created everything..ok.

So here is my question: What did God uses to create the VERY FIRST thing that he created? Wouldn't that FIRST thing had to be created from ....nothing?? For example, if he created dirt first, what did he create that dirt from (since dirt would be the first thing created, there wouldn't be any other "something" around; would there)?

See, your argument that God created everything cannot, in my opinion, work unless you are advocating the "something actually came from nothing."

This is an excellent argument. I would like to propose a new hypothesis: There are two creations: one that comes from God and another is the product of creation. The creation that comes from God is not created by God out of nothing but it is the radiance of God, just as the Sun radiates its fullness. In this way the creation that comes from God is eternal, absolute goodness and timeless and space-less.
The universe that we see is not the direct work of God. The radiance that comes from God becomes a kind of mirror in which God reflects. When this reflection of God is in a state of ignorance, because the energy of God in which it reflects is dense, it produces desire to know its source which is the spark of the divine. This spark propels the big bang and from that comes the universe that we see. This universe is not created by God directly but we can say indirectly. Hence we can say that the universe does not come from nothing. We can say there was nothing before the big bang.Before the big bang was the desire. What is the purpose of this evolution? it has two purposes: ultimate and immediate: The ultimate purpose is to bring human consciousness to realize its oneness with God.The immediate goal is to produce a body and mind where self-consciousness manifests and which helps the human consciousness to discover the divine spark and ultimately oneness with God. it is just an hypothesis to reflect.

 

[1robin]

Do you compare little babies and animals to cancer cells?

The depressing thing is without God there is no moral difference or value inequality between them. Cancer is juts as deserving of life as a baby. Only with God do entities have actual value and inherent worth. Only then is keeping other biological anomalies in misery for food justifiable, only then is killing one entity to save another valid, only then is murder actually wrong. Without God much of your morality is pure speciesm.

I find it difficult to give words of hope to an embryo or to a few days old child. At best, i would try to comfort the last moments of an older child dying of cancer.

I make many comments thinking abortion is a secular supported issue but if you do not support it your self then ignore them. There is not much more hostile to hope than killing a life in the womb. You do not have any advantage over a Christian concerning comfort. Secularism is a net loss. It offers nothing additional to faith and Christianity has by far the greatest record in world relief efforts compared to any private entity. No matter what today's secular people do in the effort of relief Christianity has done it longer, better, and on a larger scale than any other group. I do not intend to have a contest of who's the best but you keep making claims that require that type of response. Go to the poorest, hungriest, most violent nations on the planet and Christians were already there.

Do you really believe I would tell a four years old kid dying of leukemia that she is facing an eternity of nothingness?

Probably not but that would all the hope you could offer ultimately. When a train wreck occurs Christians have everything secular folks do and possibly more of it plus eternity. For many worldly hope no longer matters.

Of course, I would lie. But you are not four years old, I presume

I do not know what this has to do with anything. I could offer the same hope without lying how do you have any advantage?

I think that being the chosen one is quote flattering. I would be flattered if the creator of the universe wrote His word to the whole humanity based on what i do. Independently of my shortcomings.

Why is that relevant? I gave you the biblical context God comes within and can not be meaningfully judged without. The events that led to Israel being used in this way are very rational and simple. It was a covenant made with the first man who said he would agree to it and his descendants. It was not wishful thinking they paid a heavy price for their role. There are also many arguments from the exclusivity of truth its self that posit an exclusive source as well.

You are not sure about a literal ark. Good. i have hope for you, lol.

There is actually some very good studies on a literal Ark. It's volume has been calculated to be plenty large enough, and as a sailor I was taught it's dimensions have been shown to be the most stable of any, etc..... But when it comes to pre-historic claims we are almost in the dark.

I always wondered whether we can trust the histories in the OT before his time. You know, for being a drunkyard and on account of all those useless copies destroyed by the flood. Maybe some copies floated on the water, but there is no evidence of any of them being found in Australia or the North Pole.

I believe oral tradition existed until much later. Until Moses stories in all cultures were memorized. Studies suggest they were so dependent on them very rigorous tools were used to ensure accuracy. When they began writing them down you could not imagine how extensively their methodology became. Entire classes of people were trained in them. However if any of the bible is unreliable it would be in the first five books and it has always made me laugh how much any critique will spend much of his time on them. If anyone honestly wanted the truth you would naturally start with the most reliable and verifiable and work your way back but if you have an agenda you do it backwards and start in Genesis. It is as bad as if I said al science was wrong because strong theory had holes.

If you indulge my humor, Genesis really seems like the work of imagination of a person that drinks too much.

One remarkable drunk indeed because not a single known inaccuracy exists. How did a drunken bronze age lush know that cause and effect existed, that any ultimate first cause must be outside space and time, immaterial, and personal? How did he know light was a thing? How did they know the universe is expanding? Etc......
I bears all the marks of a spiritual book piling billions of years of unimportant science into a few verses.

Yes, the people He chose. Multitasking does not seem a quality of God. One job at the time.

Has nothing to do with time. He looks for a man who would have faith and agree to the covenant. Abraham was the first and also happens to be the founder of all 3 great faiths. Any benevolent God is perfectly consonant with one truth,, in one text, given through one group. To say he made all or most religions is to suggest he buried bits of fact in a thousand volumes of man made garbage and is schizophrenic. Not likely.

I could apply full antisymmetry and return you the question.

Tell me this if God desired good why is there any evil anywhere, and why is there only evil in hell?

God desired love, love mandates freewill, freewill mandates the ability to choose incorrectly, this in turn results in evil and should. You cannot get a world with freewill where evil is not a potential. You do not want your child to faith but you do not want a robot either so you hope he will not fail, but know he will, and hope he learns his lesson from the results. If you want robot love then then you should marry an ipod. Push kiss and you get one, and it would not mean anything.

May I then add another suggestion to God? Please God, can you stop giving hints about possible ways to execute pregnant women and how to deal with infants, especially if you already know that they will do exactly what you suggest, anyway. That would reduce the need to explain of your future apologists.

This is another example. Not one word in what you quoted or in the bible anywhere is a hint to, an instruction concerning, or a desire for killing anyone. You state it that way because of an agenda. God simply said it would occur and gave it's ultimate cause. If you must restate a thing without justification for doing so to have an argument when you never had one to begin with. Rejecting the author of good results in evil. The form does not matter.

He was not Bavarian. He was Austrian. Historian, eh?

I was just shooting from the hip about the meaningless details. It does not matter where he was from he hated Christianity with a passion. To be honest I did not know he originated from and Bavarian sound good. I never said I was a historian, I said I have read extensively on history, primarily military history. Hitler's birth was not a crucial attack by anyone on anyone.

One of the few people who have been in Heaven you find convincing?

You probably would not guess it but I reject about 90% of miraculous claims of any type just on principle. That leaves about 10% I find credible. A few of those I have studied quite a bit. A few claims about going to Heaven and even more believable Hell along with a few about healing I have never been able to find any flaws with. Every single reliable claim about Heaven I have heard has had extremely constant details including the contentment of those there, another oddly enough is flowers made out of apparently transparent gold. I have heard that described from Congo Bushmen to saints in Italy. Yes there are a few miracles I feel secure in believing, most I can never know so I chunk them in the bad pile.

Yes, our christian roots are so strong that today only a minority believes in a personal God. And that minority includes the muslims.

Come off it, all of Europe is strongly rooted in Christianity even if is no longer publically in vogue, From laws, to educational philosophy's, political traditions, etc... Nothing in Europe is God free. Didn't you give Sweden as your home?

22% of Norwegian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God".
44% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".
29% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".
5% answered that they "do not know".


That is 2/3 that are constant with Christianity.

 

[1robin]

So we agree on something. Holy cow!

I will steer clear of the reference to time, I need more coffee first.:thud:

Yeah time is a bit tricky when talking about before the universe. That is why Christianity uses eternity not forever in most case. It means always not in every moment of time (only).

 

[viole]

The depressing thing is without God there is no moral difference or value inequality between them. Cancer is juts as deserving of life as a baby. Only with God do entities have actual value and inherent worth. Only then is keeping other biological anomalies in misery for food justifiable, only then is killing one entity to save another valid, only then is murder actually wrong. Without God much of your morality is pure speciesm.

Wait. You compared them with cancer cells.

I make many comments thinking abortion is a secular supported issue but if you do not support it your self then ignore them. There is not much more hostile to hope than killing a life in the womb. You do not have any advantage over a Christian concerning comfort. Secularism is a net loss....

What do you mean "support abortion"? There is nothing to support or contention about it, at least from where I come from. The same with the death penalty. The only contentions we have today is whether life imprisonment is inhumane. In Norway, it is not allowed, for instance.

And you remind me of that 13 years old kid who was sorry that his friends lost hope in Santa. Surely, he has much more hope than them.

Probably not but that would all the hope you could offer ultimately. When a train wreck occurs Christians have everything secular folks do and possibly more of it plus eternity. For many worldly hope no longer matters.

Good for them. But I think we are drafting towards the importance of belief vs. the object of the belief. I am sure that muslims have the same hope during a train wreck.

I do not know what this has to do with anything. I could offer the same hope without lying how do you have any advantage?

No advantage, nor disadvantage. Tied.

Why is that relevant? I gave you the biblical context God comes within and can not be meaningfully judged without. The events that led to Israel being used in this way are very rational and simple. It was a covenant made with the first man who said he would agree to it and his descendants. It was not wishful thinking they paid a heavy price for their role. There are also many arguments from the exclusivity of truth its self that posit an exclusive source as well.

And who made the covenant? god? I am sure that if God was somewhere recognizable, many would have accepted the covenant.

How did work? A sort of broadcast from the heavens? "i am God, who accepts my covenant?, First come, first served".

There is actually some very good studies on a literal Ark. It's volume has been calculated to be plenty large enough, and as a sailor I was taught it's dimensions have been shown to be the most stable of any, etc..... But when it comes to pre-historic claims we are almost in the dark.

When I hear of volumes about the ark, something less noble comes to my mind. I always wondered how the biological expels have been managed.

I believe oral tradition existed until much later. Until Moses stories in all cultures were memorized. Studies suggest they were so dependent on them very rigorous tools were used to ensure accuracy. When they began writing them down you could not imagine how extensively their methodology became. Entire classes of people were trained in them. However if any of the bible is unreliable it would be in the first five books and it has always made me laugh how much any critique will spend much of his time on them. If anyone honestly wanted the truth you would naturally start with the most reliable and verifiable and work your way back but if you have an agenda you do it backwards and start in Genesis. It is as bad as if I said al science was wrong because strong theory had holes.

Yes, it starts in the first book. Unless you use metaphors, then everything goes. I could convert any book to the word of God, with a bit of imagination.

One remarkable drunk indeed because not a single known inaccuracy exists. How did a drunken bronze age lush know that cause and effect existed, that any ultimate first cause must be outside space and time, immaterial, and personal? How did he know light was a thing? How did they know the universe is expanding? Etc......
I bears all the marks of a spiritual book piling billions of years of unimportant science into a few verses.

We are talking of Noah, not WL Craig. So, probably, believing in any other nonsensical divinity, can be twisted to belief of something outside time and space. And I am sure that any bronze age lush woukd have known that cause and effects existed. it is not so difficult. They just attributed the wrong cause to the observed effect. And they failed to see that cause and effect make sense only in some thermodynamical contexts. That would have been definetely to much for a bronze age lush.

Has nothing to do with time. He looks for a man who would have faith and agree to the covenant. Abraham was the first and also happens to be the founder of all 3 great faiths. Any benevolent God is perfectly consonant with one truth,, in one text, given through one group. To say he made all or most religions is to suggest he buried bits of fact in a thousand volumes of man made garbage and is schizophrenic. Not likely.

Well, it is sort of schizophrenic. Since all these three groups seem not to agree on pretty important stuff, e.g. The divinity of Jesus.

God desired love, love mandates freewill, freewill mandates the ability to choose incorrectly, this in turn results in evil and should. You cannot get a world with freewill where evil is not a potential. You do not want your child to faith but you do not want a robot either so you hope he will not fail, but know he will, and hope he learns his lesson from the results. If you want robot love then then you should marry an ipod. Push kiss and you get one, and it would not mean anything.

Do you think that a world without free will would have been worse?

This is another example. Not one word in what you quoted or in the bible anywhere is a hint to, an instruction concerning, or a desire for killing anyone. You state it that way because of an agenda. God simply said it would occur and gave it's ultimate cause. If you must restate a thing without justification for doing so to have an argument when you never had one to begin with. Rejecting the author of good results in evil. The form does not matter.

Samuel
2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel din opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and edevote to destruction1 all that they have. Do not spare them, fbut kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ”
Read More

This sounds like a pretty clear cut order to me. Cancer cells, I guess. Even the poor camels.

I was just shooting from the hip about the meaningless details. It does not matter where he was from he hated Christianity with a passion. To be honest I did not know he originated from and Bavarian sound good. I never said I was a historian, I said I have read extensively on history, primarily military history. Hitler's birth was not a crucial attack by anyone on anyone.

Well, I am sure that meek Jesus was not his role model. Probably he did not make it till Revelation. He might have liked that less meek version of Jesus, who knows?

I never said he liked Christianity. But you do not have the monopoly of theism. And he clearly mentioned acting according to God's will by eliminating the jews.

You probably would not guess it but I reject about 90% of miraculous claims of any type just on principle. That leaves about 10% I find credible. A few of those I have studied quite a bit. A few claims about going to Heaven and even more believable Hell along with a few about healing I have never been able to find any flaws with. Every single reliable claim about Heaven I have heard has had extremely constant details including the contentment of those there, another oddly enough is flowers made out of apparently transparent gold. I have heard that described from Congo Bushmen to saints in Italy.

10% of miracle claims is huge. They must be millions.

Flowers made of transparent gold? Lol...sorry. How on earth do they know it was gold? You mean gold? Like consisting of Au atoms, with all their spiritual electrons and stuff? Must be. They surely did not confuse gold with something else because of the look, since they are transparent and gold isn't

I think your miracle bar is pretty low.

Wait a second. You believe that hell is annihilation and now you believe that someone has visited Hell? Well, anybody that has been in a dreamless coma must have visited hell, then.

I hope you indulge my humor, but unauthorized (for still being alive) visits to heaven remind me of those kids that dress like girls to get into the bathrooms of women. Who let them in to unravel our secrets? Lol.

Come off it, all of Europe is strongly rooted in Christianity even if is no longer publically in vogue, From laws, to educational philosophy's, political traditions, etc... Nothing in Europe is God free. Didn't you give Sweden as your home?

22% of Norwegian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God".
44% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".
29% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".
5% answered that they "do not know".


That is 2/3 that are constant with Christianity.

Well, if you count the 44% percent that put the X there instead of where belief in God was mentioned, then you might be right.

Need to talk to my son's friend. He is a Jedi. He should know that his belief is rooted in Christianity.

Ciao

- viole

 

[1robin]

Wait. You compared them with cancer cells.

It is remarkable how many times I have to point out an analogy is not an equality. Without God there is no moral difference, with God there may be similarities but an infinite moral difference between the two. The only problem comes in when an analogy is applied in ways that had nothing to do with the way they were used, for effect. You never once thought I equated cancer cells with human life in the way you must be suggesting to even begin to make a point so why are you pretending to?

What do you mean "support abortion"? There is nothing to support or contention about it, at least from where I come from. The same with the death penalty. The only contentions we have today is whether life imprisonment is inhumane. In Norway, it is not allowed, for instance.

What? You know very well abortion and the death penalty are one of the most discuss3ed political topics in the last 100 years. I don't know about you personally but in general they are among the greatest moral issues there are. However that was not really the point. I was being generous in admitting that while your side of the issue usually is more agreeable to abortion than mine you might not agree. If you do not think killing millions of lives in the womb is "nothing" then I can rest my case.

And you remind me of that 13 years old kid who was sorry that his friends lost hope in Santa. Surely, he has much more hope than them.

What? Many parents are sad when a child looses that innocence and wonder of youth but since he will come to know that Santa is in fact non-existent there was never any ultimate hope to begin with so as usually the analogy as used does not work and does not in any way reflect my suggestion. We know Santa is not real but we have every reason to believe God is.

Good for them. But I think we are drafting towards the importance of belief vs. the object of the belief. I am sure that muslims have the same hope during a train wreck.

You mean the ones they intentionally caused, the ones that were a byproduct of their actions, or accidental ones? The only certain way to paradise in Islam is death in Jihad. How is that the same as Christianity?

No advantage, nor disadvantage. Tied.

No your side loses at least potentially. I can honestly do every single thing you do to help, nothing you offer is not available to the Christian but potentially a Christian has infinite more to offer.

And who made the covenant? god? I am sure that if God was somewhere recognizable, many would have accepted the covenant.

That is irrelevant. Abraham agreed, and the Hebrews agreed. Done deal. Any discussion concerning God MUST come in that context or it is not my God you are discussing but a straw man constructed for a purpose.

How did work? A sort of broadcast from the heavens? "i am God, who accepts my covenant?, First come, first served".

Actually in part yes. The Holy Spirit broadcast God's will in the mind of men as well as through those who he chose to represent him. AS in the Exodus when Moses asked who is with God is to stand here and those who reject him over there. Over there was the wrong move for those who had just renewed the covenant and been delivered from bondage.

When I hear of volumes about the ark, something less noble comes to my mind. I always wondered how the biological expels have been managed.

Reasonable question but if the Earth was flooded I don't imagine poo was a hurdle. I don't know, and honestly can't tell what the intention of many of those pre-historic claims was.

Yes, it starts in the first book. Unless you use metaphors, then everything goes. I could convert any book to the word of God, with a bit of imagination.

No, investigations always start with the easiest to verify of claims. We did not begin science by looking into the BBT. We looked around us and went from there.

We are talking of Noah, not WL Craig. So, probably, believing in any other nonsensical divinity, can be twisted to belief of something outside time and space. And I am sure that any bronze age lush woukd have known that cause and effects existed. it is not so difficult. They just attributed the wrong cause to the observed effect. And they failed to see that cause and effect make sense only in some thermodynamical contexts. That would have been definetely to much for a bronze age lush.

Do you guys check under the bed for Craig before you sleep? Harris said he is the only theist who puts the fear of God into atheists. I guess he was onto something. I know of no Craig writings on Noah. I would suggest Schroeder or the cabalists. No ancient faith and very few more modern faiths have a deity outside space and time. Most deities from Greece and Rome were mere furniture and not the prime mover of Aquinas and Moses.

Well, it is sort of schizophrenic. Since all these three groups seem not to agree on pretty important stuff, e.g. The divinity of Jesus.

That isn't primary. I see no reason to make up your mind, I must do the same thing to be saved either way. BTW Constantine called a council of 1800 bishops just to settle this, there were two dissenters out of all that showed. What scientific theory only has 2 dissenters, not even a round earth can compare?

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

Do you think that a world without free will would have been worse?

Yes, but that is irrelevant. It is the purpose for which it was created that matters and it would not have fulfilled unless love and freewill existed. Do you want to be an automaton?

Samuel
2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel din opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and edevote to destruction1 all that they have. Do not spare them, fbut kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ”
Read More

This sounds like a pretty clear cut order to me. Cancer cells, I guess. Even the poor camels.

I am not sure what purpose that was given for.

1. If an accusation of genocide it was not as the attack was caused by sin not race.
2. If an example of considering man and beast equal that is confounded by other verses and tons of them and by the fact that Israel was not to be encumbered with fights over booty during this time. They in fact disobeyed and were stalled by legislation over rights to captures and paid a heavy price for it in many ways.
3. What else you got?

Well, I am sure that meek Jesus was not his role model. Probably he did not make it till Revelation. He might have liked that less meek version of Jesus, who knows?

He hated them both but probably liked the vengeance aspect. Please read his diaries. On a door to Dachau it says: (paraphrased) I intended to make a race devoid of conscience, proud, both impious and cruel.
In the bible it says:
New International Version
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I never said he liked Christianity. But you do not have the monopoly of theism. And he clearly mentioned acting according to God's will by eliminating the jews.

God made the Jews his chosen people, Hitler tried to eradicate every last one of them and you think they both had the same views. Come on, two things do not get more opposite.

Here is a few of the thousands of quotes;

The Fuhrer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in the similarity of their religious rites. Both (Judaism and Christianity) have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end they will be destroyed. The Fuhrer is a convinced vegetarian on principle.

— Goebbels Diaries, 29 December 1939

"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity!"

"Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society. Thus one understands that the healthy elements of the Roman world were proof against this doctrine."

"With what clairvoyance the authors of the eighteenth, and especially those of the past, century criticised Christianity and passed judgement on the evolution of the Churches!"

"But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery".

"Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself."

"Pure Christianity - the Christianity of the catacombs - is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics."

"Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another hundred years, two hundred years perhaps."

Roman Christendom: For the record: Hitler hated Christianity and described himself as "a complete pagan"

10% of miracle claims is huge. They must be millions.

Compared to what Germs or honest politicians?

Flowers made of transparent gold? Lol...sorry. How on earth do they know it was gold? You mean gold? Like consisting of Au atoms, with all their spiritual electrons and stuff? Must be. They surely did not confuse gold with something else because of the look, since they are transparent and gold isn't

I have no idea but Christianity begins with recognizing truths for which you are miraculously more certain of than the most basic of facts. I have never seen heaven or transparent God but when saved I did instantly know certain things were true without the slightest idea why. Gold can be transparent the same as glass despite having atoms, it is even used that way industrially. You want to blow your mind look up monatomic Gold. Different subject all together but fascinating, whether true or not I have no idea.

I think your miracle bar is pretty low.

Compared to what?

Wait a second. You believe that hell is annihilation and now you believe that someone has visited Hell? Well, anybody that has been in a dreamless coma must have visited hell, then.

I did not say Hell is annihilation, I said it (or should have) is eventual annihilation. In revelations it is thrown into the pit, but not until then.

I hope you indulge my humor, but unauthorized (for still being alive) visits to heaven remind me of those kids that dress like girls to get into the bathrooms of women. Who let them in to unravel our secrets? Lol.

Well they didn't tell me any of them. Read 3 1/2 minutes in Hell and even if you think he is lying I bet you can't tell me he is insincere if your honest. He (I forget his name) and another lady he had never heard of wound up on a talk show. He was an artist and she had hired one and both had made sketches of scenes they witnessed. Some were identical in every detail.

Well, if you count the 44% percent that put the X there instead of where belief in God was mentioned, then you might be right.

So you think faith in a spiritual force is more consistent with atheism than theism. That is not even a bell curve. Its' propaganda. If just one of those people were right your world view isn't. The same is not reversible. In fact if anyone at any time experienced a miracle your wrong, if and only if every single one is wrong are you right. I would rather be in Vegas.

Need to talk to my son's friend. He is a Jedi. He should know that his belief is rooted in Christianity.

You know there actually was a significant number of professed Jedi's in recent surveys. May the Schwartz be with you.

 

[Thief]

The question is... Was nothing first?

More accurately....was the void there?....and God?
The book I use says, yes.

If you prefer 'void' to the word 'nothing'....ok.

But the Creator would have to be first.

 

[AlphaAlex115]

But the Creator would have to be first.

Incorrect! One would assume that nothingness came before the creator. But if you think about it nothingness is something. And it's more likely that there'd be something rather than nothing at all.

I am hitherto no longer an atheist. I now believe that we're all parts of a subconsciousness of a great being; and when that being sleeps we are awake, and when the being is awake we are asleep.

I'm still working on the timezones flaw. And people that work at night... and people that suffer from insomnia.

 

[Ouroboros]

Incorrect! One would assume that nothingness came before the creator. But if you think about it nothingness is something. And it's more likely that there'd be something rather than nothing at all.

Or nothing is everything.

 

[AlphaAlex115]

Or nothing is everything.

Why did you use the word or? Surely your statement is not an alternative, for when there was originally nothing then that would be everything

 

[Ouroboros]

Why did you use the word or? Surely your statement is not an alternative, for when there was originally nothing then that would be everything

Sure.

 

[AlphaAlex115]

Sure.

Good job explaining yourself.

 

[Sapiens]

Good job explaining yourself.

sure.