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Jeff HARMSEN (apologies for getting it wrong the first time) and I are still at it. I hope the exchange will be useful to others:
EJ:
Either the physical universe is infinite or it is not. If it is, there are no boundries. … If the physical universe is finite, all you have to do is think, what's outside this boundary? An infinity outside our universe (if it is finite) guarantees other universes exist. Either way, we exist in infinite time and space.
SR:
If modern physics is correct, space itself is curved, and time is relative. There is therefore no question of space or time stretching off infinitely in all directions; space and time are relative to mass and velocity, and without physical objects, do not exist. Therefore, there is nothing, in physical terms, “outside” the physical universe.
EJ:
The only connection between a god and numbers is that they are both concepts invented by man (as has been proven through historical and scientific proof, mountains of both).
SR:
Not so. The Pythagorean theorem, for example, would be true even if there were no triangles to try it on. It is true of necessity. 1 + 1 = 2 in all conditions; if this were merely based on experience, there would be a chance that, the next time we did the sum, it might equal 3. These things are eternal and unalterable truths.
Let’s go back to your example, of God citing the highest number he knew, and a child saying “plus one.” Your argument is based on requiring God to do the logically impossible: to name the final number in an infinite series. God cannot do what is logically impossible, as Pope Benedict pointed out in his recent lecture that inflamed so many Muslims. The laws of logic and mathematics are eternal and absolute, like God himself. They coexist with God, and are co-divine with him. In fact, they are God. They are the second person of the Trinity, the Christ.
EJ:
No Steve, an omnipotent creature, if there was such a thing, could not choose to NOT know all. By definition of omnipotence, the entity is all-knowing, knows all. Basic sematics proves your assertion wrong here.
SR:
You contradict yourself: if he cannot choose not to do something, he is not omnipotent. Basic semantics.
EJ:
Re free will: you do not have free will to believe in a god because you have been brainwashed (told fiction was fact) since birth.
SR:
If this is possible, how can you know that the same does not apply to you? Perhaps you too were “brainwashed” so thoroughly by someone that you just cannot see the error of your views.
EJ:
Hitler believed in "Positive Christianity," believing he was exacting revenge on the Jews for Killing Christ.
SR:
“Positive Christianity” was a euphemism for forcing the Christian churches to accept Nazi ideology. The Nazis had specific plans for suppressing the Church altogether—there was no room allowed for churches, for example, in the plans for Imperial Berlin. Members of the party were expected to renounce any ties to Christianity.
Hitler had no interest in avenging Jesus Christ; he considered Christianity a form of Judaism that was teaching Germans a “slave morality.”
EJ:
... While we're on the topic of Hitler, nice job the Catholics did turning their backs on Jews during the Holocaust. Very humane.
SR:
If you examine this site, you will find ample refutation of that charge. I do not want to go over old ground here.
EJ:
Your arrogant claim that theists have more love than humanists is ridiculous. Love is the most human emotion of all.
SR:
I’m sure you cannot mean it, but your argument here seems based on the supposition that theists are less _human_ than humanists. Speaking of Hitler…
EJ:
Without it, we would not have evolved out of caves, long before religion was invented.
SR:
As far as we can tell, religion was with us long before we evolved out of caves. As far as we can tell, there was not a time when man was, when religion was not.
EJ:
Some Hippocrates Aphorisms for you, for dessert:
"Old men support abstinence well: people of a ripe age less well...especially if they are lively."
SR:
Well put, and very like a saying of Confucius: “By age forty, I knew what was right. By age seventy, I was able to do it.”
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2 comments:
You can't possibly know there is nothing physical outside our universe (if there even is such a thing). Suppose there is an area of void past quasars. How long would that void last? Laws of inertia indicate something else will materialize, no matter how vast this hypothetical void spans.
God is not mathimatics. The former is defined as an omnipotent entity, the latter a numerical classification system. Whereas the supernatural has been disproved (see my previous writings or read Dawkins), numbers can be proven with equasions and by predicting phenomena empirically.
In any event, you concede it is impossible to know all numbers. Thus, God does not know everything. Since knowing everything is essential to what he is, failure of knowing everything proves he does not exist.
Knowing everything has nothing to do with choice. Either one knows everything or He does not. We just proved it's impossible to be all-knowing.
How do I know I am not brainwashed like yourself? Because I have been dispossessed. As such, my thinking is not frozen to a single book, one loaded with erroneous content.
"Positive Christianity" was the official Nazification of religion. German theologeans were ready to rewrite the N.T with Hitler as the second coming of Christ.
If it is not true that the Catholics turned their backs on the Jews during the Holocaust, why did Pope J.P2 provide such an elbaorate apology for this instance of Christian inhumanity?
Of course theists are less humane than humanists. I've already established this. Theists put their notion of a god ahead of humanity. Humanists place fellow human beings above all else. Do we have to take a step backwards to recount the millions of atrocities committed by those who placed their god ahead of their fellow human beings? What do you think terrorists such as Bin Laden and George W Bush are all about? They place their notion of a god about the well being of their people.
How old do you think Confucius was when he said that? Old! Thus proving my point that abstinence is not for the young and lively, but for those with a low sex drive!
Again, I'm not condoning promiscuity here. Sex with the wrong person can be a death sentence. However, it's a mistake to deny that people at large will forgo what is natural and abstain from the deep intimacy of physical love. Thus, to speak out against condoms is egregiously inhumane.
Thanks Steve, for refraining from eluding to me as the village idiot this time. Very Christian of you!
While on the treadmill it occured to me that I had forgot to refute another of your erroneous assertions. No way has religion been around as long as humankind.
You still have not assimilated the absolute fact that you can not believe in something you don't know about. Before humans developed language, how could they have communicated something as complex as the supernatural? They could not have. It's like saying apes are religious. What type of grunt of other guttural sound do you think prehistoric man used to represent a god?
Moreover, after language was developed, the first religions were based on animals (animism), which had nothing to do with the type of spirtualism your cult practices.
Since anumism, religions have evolved, one from another. There is not much originality in Christianity, for example. For two hundred years before Christ, it was vogue to elevate deceased leaders to divinity, while procaiming they were the product of a virgin birth.
Indeed, delusions are like lies in that one can lead to another.
This is yet more proof that the supernatural does not exist other than in the arbitrary dogma of man.
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