Do you respect Martin Luther King Jr.? Gandhi? The Dalai Lama? I think you are limiting yourself regarding humanity.
"What it requires of it's God, Doctor..."
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Do you respect Martin Luther King Jr.? Gandhi? The Dalai Lama? I think you are limiting yourself regarding humanity.
Again I never said religious belief is by definition irrational. Now if you were to tell me that you think Elvis is still alive because you saw a fat guy with sideburns at the Quickie-Mart then yes I would think your beliefes are irrational and also wouldn't have any respect for you. C.S Lewis on the other hand is a person who I think is wrong on religious matters(although I have agreed with him on other matters), but who i can respect because of his intelligence.
You aren't capitalizing your 'h's. You know which ones I'm talking about.
As far as we know, causality may not apply outside of our universe. Since the universe does not exist inside the universe (duh), it may have required no cause.
Also, assuming a Christian framework for a moment, God could lack a beginning and an end, as He said, and also still have been caused! Try this:
1. God comes into existence.
2. God commands the universe into existence, and everything in it.
3. Lots of time passes.
4. The end comes - gnaB giB, heat-death, divine proclamation, whatever. Space and time as we know them begin to come apart.
5. God uses the temporal wackiness that He planned to begin with to reach back from the end and create Himself at the beginning.
And if the universe is actually a timeline-branching multiverse, it wouldn't matter whether He created Himself with or without His endtime knowledge - since every possible universe is going to occur, anyway.
Tying it into Star Trek: But, God loves Jim Kirk in every universe.
He takes a few days to do it though. Laziest omnipotent being ever.
Let me put it this way.
The main line of "evidence" for the Big Bang is...that the universe is expanding--and that the expansion is slowing down. Extrapolation of this model in reverse led to the theory.
The logic Law of Cause and Effect demands that something that does begin, such as a Big Bang, had to have had a cause. Now, whatever combustive proccess started the Bang, if we were to reverse it, should, in theory, decrease in intensity until we reach the stating point, before which, apparently, whatever the "proto-universe" was was simply "there".
But whatever the procces was that started the Bang had to, in turn, be caused by something. If God were to be removed from the picture, the logic of this reasoning would demand that this procces was caused by another, and that by another, and that by another again, on and on, ad infinitum....
Thus, there are three possibilities, all of which are, frankly, logically consistent with the evidence:
1. An infinite universe, which always existed in some form or another.
2. A finite universe, created by a natural intellegent designer, who in turn was created by another natural intellegent designer, etc.
3. A finite universe, created by a supernatural intellegent designer, who is infinite, and outside the bounds of time and space (both of which were created by said designer).
People of religion (such as myself), choose option 3, as, under Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is usualy (until you can prove otherwise) the most rational one to have.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
BUT...what is certain is that there is no evidence against it, either--which means that the hypothesis is worth looking into, rather than dismissing out of hand.
This is why it is important to have separate modes of discussion. It is perfectly valid to assert something with no evidence because there is no evidence against in philosophy, religion, or sitting around bs-ing with friends - like we're doing.
It is quite another thing to assert it in a scientific pursuit, or in governance. Particularly in the former, an important part of providing a hypothesis is that you also have an idea for an experiment to empirically test it.
Aside - there's one of the races in the novels that is regularly described as having discussions in different modes: ethical mode, and such. I think it's the Vulcans, but my memory is fuzzy.
Under Occam's Razor thinking, Jesus was a very cool dude, speaking wisdom that defied time itself. After his cruel death, a group of followers begins to spread the idea that was actually related to a deity to make his words carry extra weight. Apollo & his fellow travelers capitalize on this idea, only this time, they really DO make stuff happen. After growing weary of human defiance, they depart, leaving Christianity to dominate the landscape. Later the internet is created, and here we are.
The thing is, we can go back in time all the way to the Big Bang because we know the physical laws (well, at least a part of them) that govern our universe. But, at the exact moment of the Big Bang the universe was infinitely small and dense. At that point all of our physical laws simply break down. We have absolutely no idea what was there before the Big Bang, by what laws it was governed. We don't even know whether there was anything BEFORE the Big Bang, if time existed at all. And if time itself didn't exist, all this talk of cause and effect is meaningless.
How do you choose the simplest option? A superpowerfull supernatural designer out of time and space seems to me just as complex as an infinite universe.
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And he claimed to be the Son of God.
Now, there are three possibilities:
1. His claims were false--and he knew it.
2. His claims were false--and he didn't know it.
3. His claims were true.
If you choose option 1, then he was a lier, a con artist, a hypocrite (because he told his followers to be honest in everything they do), an evildoer (because he told others to trust in him for the sake of their souls), and, ultimately, an idiot (because it was his claims to deity that led to his crucifixion).
But...then how do you explain the "wisdom that defied time itself"? How do you explain the moral code that he established, one that has changed the lives of so many?
Option 2, quite frankly, means that he was mentally unstable--a lunatic. If a man were to honestly believe he was the one and only Son of God--indeed, that he was one with his alleged Father, and if it were not true, than insane would not begin to describe it.
But again...how do you explain the "wisdom that defied time itself"?
Thus, that leaves us with option 3...as the simplest answer.
What kind of a rule is that?
"Hey guys, let's take a look into X"
"Nah, we've this stuff to look at first..."
"But I have no evidence whatsoever!"
"Oh, well, when you put it like that..."
I belive in satan. There's tons of evidance that he's real.
Err, he meant that as in spiritually, as we all are... weren't you there?
Sorry, I forgot, your species does not remember past lives, only flashes of them.
I belive Satan taught us both spelling & use of apostophes.
OK, so far we've got; Christians, Muslims, Buddists,Athiests, and Agnostics, Trek fans all. Did I miss anyone? What about Gnostics? or Jews, etc? And while I'm posting, just out of curiosity, how many of you out there base your understanding of 'God, the Universe, and Everything' on a deep meditational experiance, or a near death experiance, or some other revelation of a traumatic or cathartic experiance? (This goes for the unbelievers and/or nonbelievers as well)
It didn't defy time. It defied geography. Jesus was a ninja.
The Bible doesn't cover what happened between about the time He was 12, and His early 30s. But I'll tell you - He went east. To Japan. And then came back, with powdered wine, and floaty shoes, and eastern medicine that allowed him to cure that blind guy - acupressure or something.
The idea that maybe people should be nice to one another is nothing unique. But the Eastern philosophy and parables to really make the point, brought back to the Middle East, was novel. And Kool-Aid? Well, He must be a God.
This, btw, is the origin of the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid". Jim Jones was a rip-off artist.
(After he used meditation to fake death, and did the whole Resurrection and Ascension thing, he ultimately went back to Japan to die.)
Or.... something else entirely.
Let's assume that your erroneous statement the HE claimed to be the one true Son Of God were correct for a moment, true spiritual & social words from the mouth of a madman is truth nonetheless; his words, like the words of our Constitution (penned by slave owners- savour that irony), transcend any person or institution.
Satan taught you to spell as well, I see.
Seriously, I had a flash of a past life where I was a lowly foot soldier in China pulling a wheeled battering ram in ankle deep mud in the rain, longing to get home to my family whom I hadn't seen in what seemed like years.
It was as real as the keyboard I am typing on now, and no drugs were involved.
^C'mon.
My first point is common sense. Would you expect anything--an airplane, for example, to just "happen" to spring up literally out of nowhere? That's magic, not science. No...the airplane had to have been caused by something--creators.
My second point is the conclusion of modern science. The Big Bang Theory asserts that the Universe began through an great expansion, caused by matter and antimatter annihilation. But common sense demands that something like an explosion had to have been caused by something. Otherwise, why did the explosion happen then, and not earlier or later. In fact, why did it happen at all?
And...what was there before the Bang--which did not expand until that particular moment?
These are the very questions that cosmologists are seeking to penetrate and are continuing to do so even today. Btw, the prevailing theory is that nothing existed before the Big-Bang. There was no here or there or when. No space, no time at least in this Universe. No one knows yet what caused the Big Bang. Nor do we know that there should be a cause. And since what is not known is usually said to have been an act of God (such as lightning, fires, and such), until somebody comes along and finds out, the Big Bang currently holds top spot.
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