Then of course if your maker doesn't need a maker there's no reason the universe or we would need one either.
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There is no evidence for a god.
- Thread starter YouOnlyScienceOnce
- Start date
I'm not. I'm wondering what on earth any reference to "emergence" has to do with the argument you were addressing.
Not all physicists, no. But science in general seeks explanations. And there are a good many who argue that emergence is not something that can be explained via the scientific enterprise as it has been understood (or at least practiced) over the past few centuries: by explaining the system in terms of its "parts" and the laws governing they dynamical interaction of these.
This simply isn't accurate.
How do you know this "creator" is the Judeo-Christian God?
For all anyone knows, it's Brahma.
johnhanks
Well-Known Member
Are you sure you correctly interpreted the post you were replying to here?
Yes indeed, by me among many others.
My position precisely. Why are you telling me all this?
Firstly, because Jehovah has assured us he is the grand Creator. (Psalm 100:3) Jehovah has proven his Godship by acting throughout history to bring his purposes about. Jehovah is the God of true prophecy, "the One telling from the beginning the finale, and from long ago the things that have not been done. the One saying, ' my own counsel will stand and everything that is my delight I shall do.' (Isaiah 46:9,10)
I believe Jehovah has supplied abundant evidence of his Godship, in contrast to the gods who cannot prove they exist. The gods of Egypt, baal, Babylon's gods have all been defeated by Jehovah and consigned to the dustbin of history, barely even recognized today. Psalm 115 contrasts Jehovah with the idols of the nations. Although having a mouth, eyes, ears, hands and feet, these man-made lifeless gods cannot speak or see or walk. Meanwhile, "everything that (Jehovah) has delighted to do he has done." (Psalm 115:3) My study of the Bible convinces me and millions of others that Jehovah is the grand Creator, and the only true God.
Looncall
Well-Known Member
So what? You still have to demonstrate first that your god exists and then that your old book was produced by your god.
Quoting the bible in the context of these discussions is laughably inane.
Because those are the ONLY Gods of other cultures, right? :sarcastic
"Throughout history" seems to me to only refer to the history of that region, because other Gods are still quite well-known, and other Gods from history that aren't have reached that point simply due to the passage of Time. It has nothing to do with this or that tribal God "defeating" them; other Gods simply become more popular. In addition, the Egyptian Gods weren't defeated directly because of the Judeo-Christian God; as with many Gods, that was due to Caesar and his legacy, as well as several other factors.
Besides, El was already the Supreme God of Canaan.
Prophecy has never impressed me, anyway. I've yet to be exposed to a prophecy that was, without doubt, true.
And my study of the Bible has done the exact opposite, because I actually compare and contrast it with other religions, and find that no tribal God, which El has always been, is above or below others. The only Universal Gods I've ever come across are Sun Gods like Mitra, or the Great Mother Herself.
Besides, Athena makes a cameo in the Bible.
To rusra02:
If you quote the Bible as evidence for the existence of God no rational person will take you seriously. Try for a minute to put yourself in our shoes and look at your position through the eyes of reason:
If a person quoted you something supposedly said by Sherlock Holmes from a book featuring Sherlock Holmes would that to you constitute evidence for the physical existence of Sherlock Holmes?
If you quote the Bible as evidence for the existence of God no rational person will take you seriously. Try for a minute to put yourself in our shoes and look at your position through the eyes of reason:
If a person quoted you something supposedly said by Sherlock Holmes from a book featuring Sherlock Holmes would that to you constitute evidence for the physical existence of Sherlock Holmes?
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Heck, let's actually go one step further, and use books about Gods.
Would you, rusra, accept someone quoting The Silmarillion as proof that Iluvatar exists?
camanintx
Well-Known Member
Because intelligence is an emergent property of living organisms. Because life is an emergent property of matter. Because matter is an emergent property of energy. So why should we assume that the physical laws themselves did not emerge from whatever may have preceeded them?
camanintx
Well-Known Member
I don't see why one must believe that existence was created by some sort of act of will. If I did, I guess I would be a Deist.
But as it turns out, I don't. I can see how it is often useful to think of things as being results of some sort of causing factor, but even in everyday situations it is often hard to justify the idea that things are "created". And existence itself is very much an exceptional case, among other things because proposing the existence of a Creator does not explain how that creator came to be.
The world?
To put it EXTREMELY simply, the world is made of condensed Stardust, brought together by the forces of gravity, and formed over a period of time via the forces of nature, both local and astronomical.
Depends on who you ask of course. Ask a Hindu. The evidence for Brahma is all around you! How can you possibly not see that?
We shouldn't. But "emergence" is a recent set of paradigms.When knew less about how life emerged or complex structures emerged from known laws of physics, there was no talk of "emergence". It was simply assumed that we needed to know more about these laws, or required better methods of analysis. Emergence developed out of a number of things, but one of these was the realization that what we had assumed to be "simple" was not just complex, but complex in often suprising ways (e.g., Edward Lorenz's "strange attractors"). It seemed that, while many seemingly simple phenomena did not violate physical laws, they couldn't be reduced to them either. And as reduction had become the "name of the game" as far as science was concerned, this presented a problem. Currently, within certain fields (especially systems biology and interdisciplinary work on consciousness, but also some work in theoretical physics), there exists a growing amount of scientific literature arguing that emergent properties are not only irreducible (i.e., they cannot be produced from knowing the laws of physics and how these govern the "parts" of the system), but actually violate known "laws" of physics.
Actually, I think each person needs to convince themselves about God and the Bible. As Acts 17:27 says: "for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. For by him we have life and move and exist."
tumbleweed41
Resident Liberal Hippie
Physics.
I would say whether a book is to believed depends on the contents. Sherlock Holmes is fiction. I believe the Bible is a true historical record of God's dealings with mankind. For anyone to believe this would mean more than a casual look at the Bible. Millions have made such an examination and are convinced the Bible is what it claims to be, "not..the word of men, but, just as it truthfully is..the word of God. (1Thessalonians 2:13) Millions of thinking people.
McBell
Admiral Obvious
Appeal to popularity.
Not very impressive when considering the fact that millions of people used to think the world was flat.
that tomatos were poisonous.
that horse hairs left in water turned into worms...