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Seeker,
"Knowledge gained through observation demonstrates that all matter is in a state of circular or spherical motion on a universe scale. All energy contained within matter exerts a spherical outward force." --Seeker
You are wrong on both counts! All matter is not in a state of circular or spherical motion. You are probably thinking of simplified and outdated models. Energy is a scalar quantity so it doesn't have direction. Resonance relates to amplified waves and has nothing to do (in general) with gravity, weight, etc.
Machoke,
What if reality's idea of nothing does not correspond with your own idea? Perhaps, empty space with quantum fluctuations is as "nothing" as reality can get. You are assuming, first of all, a kind of philosophical nothing, and, secondly, that it is the natural starting point. Neither of these assumptions are obvious, so maybe you need to adjust your argument to take that into consideration!
Where did your creator come from? You can't declare that he has no creator and, with the same breath, assert that everything that exists must have a creator! If an exception can be made for God, then surely an exception can be made for nature despite the smoke and mirrors arguments theologians give. Indeed, God brings a lot of extra fat to the table, such as intelligence, life, goodness, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. A far better candidate for eternal existence are the basics of nature. Unlike God's odd assortment of unlikely properties, nature does in fact exist. An extension of it makes better sense than bringing in God.
Religion is a very lazy alternative approach to explaining the universe. First, dismiss centuries of experiment and accumulation of data with ingenious interpretation of that information as "just theories". "Just a theory" is the first clue that what is to follow is uneducated and opinionated. Next, feel confident that because you have read the Book of Genesis (Genocide) that you can stand toe to toe with the greatest minds in history. Any plumber or high school senior can be a Nobel Laureate all you gotta do is get Jesus! Or Allah! Or get your chakras to the top floor!
Oh oh oh, let ME try!!
Lightning cannot exist without electrical power.
Electrical power is generated by electric eels.
This means that electric eels are responsible for lightning.
Darn... I was hoping for Thor. Oh well, I'll look for the eels in the next rainstorm and even if I don't see them, I'll know they are there.
It IS Thor who is responsible for lightning. You heathen!! :D
I'm going to reword my OP, so I can have a single argument with all I've learned from this, instead of answering every question:
-We have something instead of nothing.
-This something we have, reality, is either self-existent, or was created by something self-existent. There is no option C, for reality is neither an illusion nor self-created (nothing can create itself.)
-If reality were self-existent, with no cause, then why is it based upon cause and effect? How can something that has no cause, and is not an effect, be ruled by such logic? Does the law of cause and effect not apply to itself?
-This leads me to believe something supernatural, outside of the laws of cause and effect, created the universe. What can we infer about this force from what its created? It is eternal (it existed before time as we know it), immaterial (it created material itself), and omnipresent (it is not bound to science.) It is self aware and purposeful (it was able to, and chose, to formulate the universe.) Inferred from ourselves, we know it is personal, for the impersonal cannot create the personal. It is loving, for it created beings in its image (us) who share its qualities, and actively seeks to connect with us.
This fits the biblical God, and those of other religions. So why Christianity? I believe we are all sinners in need of a savior, and Jesus is that savior. When we sin against God, we bring sorrow to ourselves and to Him. He disciplines us, not for obedience, but out of discipline, so that we may return to Him. Its when we never accept Him in the first place that His wrath is brought upon us. The hardships brought upon the world are from our own actions, and its God's discipline for us, so we don't destroy ourselves. Hell is the punishment for those who never repent, and chose a life of worshiping evil. If there was no discipline, and no threat of eternal punishment for a lifetime of evil, how many would repent? None. How could we live good lives by choosing evil? Darkness has no relations with light. We cannot make up the evil we do, so we must trust God to have mercy on us; and He did, through Jesus.
I hope this answers all the questions I've got. If not, ill try to do so. I realize I misunderstood some of your questions, but I did read them.
Hi Machoke,
You have discussed a lot about the Creation of the Universe. Have you ever considered doing some research on 1) the Creation of God and 2) the Creation of the Bible? When you have a couple of hours, grab a drink and a sandwich, find quite place and read through the attached article. I warn you, it will challenge a lot of what you think you believe.
http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm
God, in my argument, is the eternal force, meaning He is beyond our reality, where the rule of "something from nothing" is an issue. I realize in my past arguments I may have been hypocritical in that statement, but in my current OP I do break down what that eternal force must be. As for the bible, I actually know minimal. Ill give it a read and tell you what changes.
"I believe we are all sinners in need of a savior, and Jesus is that savior."
Why do you believe this? Upon what evidence do you base this?
"The hardships brought upon the world are from our own actions, and its (sic) God's discipline for us, so we don't destroy ourselves."
Are you saying that an earthquake, for example, is a hardship that is your god disciplining people for poor behavior?
I believe we're sinners because God is good, and as far as the bible is concerned, we do not listen to His law. This is assuming you've already found a biblical God to be the reasonable answer to the universe, which I'm assuming you haven't. You must believe, then, that good and evil are part of our evolved intelligence and/or adapted from culture.
I believe we need a savior because we are born into sin, and choose to continue in it against our own spirit and against the law given to us (namely, the 10 commandments.) Without a savior were prone to God's wrath. We used to repent with gifts and prayer, believing He would save us, and now we have our savior, Jesus, who only asks for our repentence against sin. God has shown great mercy in this.
As for discipline, when man first sinned, God's punishments were namely this: work until death, and death itself. This sounds harsh, but do we deserve it? Absolutely. God is the supreme good, and did what was best for us. He gave us paradise. When we disobeyed, he gave us hardships to teach us and make us yearn for redemption. Death is the death of our sinful lives here and the beginning of a new life in paradise.
As for natural disasters, they have with a field that grows thistles; an untamed Earth. The opposite of the peaceful garden we briefly, but will once again, know.
I can't give you some scientific theory on why I believe these things, its what I learn from the bible and the world I see, stemming from my belief in God.
@Machoke
"I believe we need a savior because we are born into sin"
No. I was born completely innocent like every other human being. And it's wicked to tell people otherwise.
My first sin was farting in the font when the preacher poured cold water on my head during my christening. My second was swearing in church at the age of two when I dropped my bag of chocolate coins during a Christmas service. I'm rather proud of these sins, which were way in advance of my years.
A child is born loving and respecting of its parents? Would it not grow to be selfish and hateful if no discipline was administered? The argument of adopted morals could still apply, this is just what I believe. Also, don't skip the other parts of sin, in which we choose to sin against better judgement and rules.
Some questions:
1. Does this discipline guarantee a good outcome?
2. If parents are supposed to provide discipline to children, why does this extra being need to do so as well?
3. Are all rules beneficial?
4. What is "better judgement"?
5. And how does one sin against it?
6. Do all parents deserve love and respect?
7. If a child does not love and respect a horrible parent, do they always grow up selfish and hateful?
1. No, because our nature is not good.
2. Gods discipline involves work and death. He commands parents to discipline children based upon His commandments, which they usually don't. This would help them come back to God.
3. All of God's commandments, yes. Since He is only good, then He gave us rules that would only help us. Earthly rules that are similar in concept to biblical commandments are good.
4. People are born with a sense of good and evil
5. This knowledge is a trait of God. If you go against that knowledge and choose evil, you sin against God because you chose.
6. Its commanded that children have a love for their parents that includes respect. There are awful parents that are ungodly in an awful way. The child does not have to bow to them instead of God, just out of love and respect. But as with any person, you should forgive and and love them. With the things some parents do, its very hard, of course, to forgive them.
7. No, because parents are supposed to relay the good of God, and are not the good themselves. Even with no godly theme in their childhood, they are still sought out by Him.
"A child is born loving and respecting of its parents? Would it not grow to be selfish and hateful if no discipline was administered?"
You want to discipline a newborn? Have you ever seen a newborn? They are completely innocent, totally helpless, and utterly free of sin. Does that contradict your religion? If so, I hope you'll consider that contradiction and ask yourself some questions when next you see a small baby.
Machoke,
I suppose the bottom line is this: What makes the God answer any better than a group of gods or the Great Green Spider (creator of the universe) who presently lives on Jupiter? Maybe we should just say that we don't know (for now) what caused the Big Bang (if anything). However, it does seem to me that a careful application of the rules for good reasoning provides a powerful argument against the God "hypothesis." See my thread: "Science Gives God The Bump" (08/07/2016 18:47).
Okay, we are all arguing with a child (highschooler). he doesn't have the experience, or knowledge to fully understand. Machoke, I'll ask you a simple question of logic that has been asked for centuries. If you think that something cannot come from nothing and therefore it is logical to you that that proves a creator, Then where did your creator come from? If you say he created himself, then we are done here. Even if he did create himself he had to do so from nothing. You still HAVE to prove a creator. You just can't say it's "logical that there is a creator." It isn't logical that there is a creator. Can't you see that this god has been given human attributes by those that CREATED HIM? He came exclusively from man's imagination. That is the only thing that is "logical."
That's just the issue, something eternal must exist. I don't believe its the universe for reasons posted, so I deducted from what I can understand of the universe and the qualities of a supernatural force that God is the logical answer. Nothing can create itself, things can't come from nothing without the force of something beyond our reality. So, a supernatural force must exist. The only thing I can see countering that is an eternal universe, which I've yet to believe in except for the possibility of the quantum fluctuation, which I'm still trying to understand because yes, I'm young, and don't have large knowledge of physics.
@Machoke
"Nothing can create itself, things can't come from nothing without the force of something beyond our reality."
And there you would be wrong.
May I ask you why? Why there can be an effect without a cause? Or if there is a cause, what you believe it is? Is it quantum fluctuations or something of that sort? Because I'll again admit I don't fully understand such theories, so if you'd care to explain to me if appreciate it.
Your very logical common sense reasoning---while extremely helpful in everyday life---is basically worthless when it comes to modern physics. It's often worse than useless actually, as it can prejudice you. It is impossible to even provide a summary in a forum post but it goes more or less like this:
Particles (and systems of particles) have certain special attributes. There is a non-zero probability for any system to tunnel (think transform) into any other system so long as the final system has the EXACT same special attributes as the starting system. When you consider the universe as a whole, its special attributes all seem to be 0's. No one knows what the special attributes of nothingness is (we don't have the theory needed for this kind of thing), but it isn't hard to imagine that a state of nothingness has all 0's for its special attributes. Then following this speculation further: there should be a non-zero probability for the universe to tunnel into existence out of nothing, with no 'outside input'. Note: this is not evidence that the universe actually came from nothing; it is just an explanation to show the door has been left open just enough to leave this possibility.
Thanks for clearing that up. That does sound logical. So although that does explain how it happened, I'm curious as to why what was created is how it is. I'm guessing that involves those unknown attributes?
@Machoke.
"May I ask you why? Why there can be an effect without a cause? Or if there is a cause, what you believe it is? Is it quantum fluctuations or something of that sort? Because I'll again admit I don't fully understand such theories, so if you'd care to explain to me if appreciate it."
You say that you don't understand, yet you "deduce" that there is a god. Can't you just accept that you don't understand? Can't you realize to state that there is a god that you must PROVE that there is a god? You can't just make assumptions. You only think that there is a god because someone taught you to think that way.
In science, if they can't come to a conclusion, they leave the question open. They don't just make a giant leap with absolutely no supporting facts. You say something can't come from nothing. Therefore you believe that there must be a creator. You don't have any evidence whatsoever that there is a creator.
Example: A person lies dead on the ground. You see another person running away. Do you just jump to the conclusion that the person running away killed the dead person? No, you need facts, evidence, proof of, not only what caused the person's demise, but also who, when, and how the murder (if it was a murder), caused the death.
You see a universe. You THINK that has to have been created by some force. Then you give that unproven force a name. You call it god. And beyond that. This god unproven and unsubstantiated, you start obeying what other people have said about him. You obey decrees by human beings that declare that it was this unproven god had made. You live and base your whole life on what other people make up about this unproven force that you have decided is a god.
You live your life on a question in your mind that you call "quantum fluctuations." Now that sounds pretty silly does it not? The ridiculous thing is that you live your life by what other people have decided this "quantum fluctuation" is.
Even if you could prove this force, this quantum fluctuation, you still have to prove it is a god, that it created everything, and STILL have to make the connection between this force and all the stuff that is in the bible. That is absolutely ridiculous.
I've given the reasons I believe what I do. How do you expect me to prove the creation of the universe based upon the laws that govern it? If a supernatural force did indeed create it, then I can infer information about it from what it made. That does not mean its limited to what it made; its supernatural, outside of the reality its created. Its beyond our understanding. To say physics can create universes is to say physics is not limited to our reality; a theory, just like religion. Is that taking a huge leap? Yes, for both sides. To just say "I don't know" means limiting your understanding of the universe based upon the limits of what's already evident. What answers will that bring?
@Machoke
"To just say "I don't know" means limiting your understanding of the universe based upon the limits of what's already evident."
No way!!!!!! Being able to say that you don't know is just stating the fact.
The only thing that is "evident" is that there is a universe. There is no evidence that a "god" created it. Not an iota of evidence of a god.
The thing is that YOU have been brainwashed. You want evidence to point to a god. You won't be satisfied with facts. At what point will you accept facts? I doubt that you ever will.
Also, you create a false premise. You say,
"To say physics can create universes is to say physics is not limited to our reality; a theory, just like religion. Is that taking a huge leap? Yes, for both sides."
Physics is only a discipline that describes what happens in nature. Physics does not create universes. Religion is a manmade myth. There is a big difference between the two.
Machoke : "That's just the issue, something eternal must exist. I don't believe its the universe for reasons posted, so I deducted from what I can understand of the universe and the qualities of a supernatural force that God is the logical answer."
I will ask this again. If it is necessary and possible for an eternal deity to exist , is it possible for more than one eternal deity to exist?
"The bible says so." A classic. And that's what I gotta pull out of my hat now, for from what I've understood, the bible is the perfect representation of such a supernatural force. In theory, yes, two eternal beings can exist.
You actually trust everything in a book of dubious origins with so many contradictions in it?
Machoke,
If something must have always existed, why postulate a highly unlikely being (possessing the odd properties of life, intelligence, and supernatural powers), a being wholly conjectural, when nature (energy, space, and time) neither violates what we actually know about the universe nor requires the bizarre and unproven concept of the supernatural?
If we overlook cultural bias, someone advocating a pantheon of gods or the Great Green Spider of Jupiter (who created the universe and then took up residence on Jupiter) has done reason no less injury than your choice of God!
Had you been indoctrinated in the Great Green Spider theology, you would be going to great lengths to explain how reasonable it is. Your position is based on indoctrination--not on an objective evaluation of the evidence. Wishful thinking (faith?) fills in the ugly cracks. In that sense you are no different than a Muslim who sees all kinds of solid evidence for his version of Islam. Same thing.
@machoke: .."This fits the biblical god, and those of other religions."
Are you serious? This fits the Popul Vu and the Bagavhad Gita? Have you done your homework?
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