And God said, Let there be light: and there was light

So?

Has the mechanism whereby the universe could exist without a First Mover been fully (or even slightly) explained?

Or has it merely been speculated/postulated?

do you therefor disbelieve that such a universe can logically exist - because the mechanism is indeterminate?

The ownage in this thread just continues to mount. Ten pages in, though, and he still comes back for more.

The latter, and that's no shame at all, there are several hypotheses, one of which was mentioned by Rick in post 269.

And all of which can be expressed mathematically, and work with laws we know.

There is no way for an extra-temporal being to interact with a temporal universe without contradicting itself out of existence.

If it steps into our universe, it becomes part of it, and "outside of time", becomes meaningless.

You end up with another circle square.

Say what you will about strings, or M-theory, they have no circle squares in them.

You're a stupid person, and it has nothing whatever to do with your religion.

If you reach your hand into a tub of water and squeeze a sponge, does it become water too? Or just wet?

No, Jamey, Bock is a boy.

The tub, water, sponge, and hand are all part of this dimension.
Think you want to try another analogy...

Now that's some unmistakable ass blood, there.

Anyway, Jamey, whenever you're ready with that reasoned argument for why religion deserves a special respect that politics doesn't get, I'm all ears.

perhaps you need to recall why it's called an analogy.

There's nothing about the definition of utopia that makes one someone else's dystopia.

Even assuming there were, it would be a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

You could certainly remove natural disasters from the mix as they do not involve free will. There would still be plenty of room for growth.

The trouble is that there is no way to tell whose ground rules are THE ground rules. The LDS's? The Catholics? Other protestants? The Muslims? The Buddhists? The Scientologists?

A parent who could prevent a great deal of pain, but doesn't, who expects us to intuit which of dozens of sets of incompatible rules is the correct one and who threatens to punish his kids for eternity if they either choose the wrong set or don't follow them just so would be considered in human terms a monster.

I agree fully, and I agree also with the application to God. It is one of the reasons (among others) for which I reject that concept of God (even though I was brought up with it). But I have also failed to find it in the Bible, when I finally got as far as being able to step back from my upbringing and look at the Bible objectively, without always taking the interpretation I had been conditioned to use.

I cannot believe that a God who loved the lost so much that he would be willing to accept humiliation, pain and death in order to save them would not do more than that to make salvation understandable to those who are, to a great extent, victims of religious and/or anti-religious indoctrination, not to mention extremely limited in their capacity to grasp the eternal implications of the choice to walk with God or not.

It's one of the primary reasons I gave up on Arminianism (though I also reject Calvinism just as vigorously), with its notion that God more or less passively stands by and lets people accept or reject salvation without intervening. I firmly believe that God has not has his last word to say to any of us yet.

Nova, Asyncritus, others - Do you believe that Dicky, Dan and I currently deserve to go to hell?

I am afraid that depends on what you mean by "hell" and also, to a certain extent, what you mean by "deserve." So instead of giving you a quick and very ambiguous answer, I will have to go into a bit more detail.

If by "hell" you mean the common concept of a place where God purposely makes all those who didn't "accept Jesus" suffer as horribly as possible for all eternity then I can say very clearly that no, you do not deserve that. I would even go so far as to say that no one deserves that. The worst person in the history of the world does not, because God's principle (even when grace is not taken into account) is that the punishment should be proportional to the crime and no one has been able to inflict an infinite amount of suffering on others, even if you added up all the suffering they inflicted on a large amount of people.

But then, I firmly believe, as I have stated so many times, that that concept of hell is rooted more in Medieval cruelty than in what the Bible actually teaches. Some of the images used in the Bible for hell can be interpreted that way, but others are of a very different nature and in any case the very concept is contrary to the nature of God. "What I desire, says the Lord God, is not that the sinner should perish, but that he should turn from his ways and live" (Ezekiel 33:11).

If, however, by "hell" you mean "the place where those people will be who are not willing, in the end, to let God's law of perfect love be the rule of their life, a place outside of God's kingdom ruled by that law of perfect love," then that is what I think hell is like. It is not a place where people really love each other and seek the good of all those around them, because by definition those who end up there are those who refuse that. God would not be respecting their free will if he forced them to live by a law they don't want, especially as that place (or dimension, or mode of existence, or whatever) is necessarily outside his kingdom. However, since the unanimous choice of its inhabitants is to reject the principle of living on the basis of love for others, I do not see how it can possibly be a very pleasant place.

But in that case, it is not so much a question of "deserving" to be there as it is simply of being the very nature of the choice that one makes. Does someone who refuses to marry a person who has expressed interest in them "deserve" to spend their life outside of the marital relationship with that person? Perhaps in one sense you could say that, but most of us certainly would not express it that way.

So the final answer to your question is that if "hell" is understood the way I see it, as the realm of those who don't want God's law of perfect love to rule their lives, then I would say that if that is your final answer (and none of you have yet given your final answer, even though you may think you have), you will receive what you want. It isn't so much a question of "deserving" as of God respecting your free choice in the matter.

The problem with that is that I'm all for a "law of perfect love". It is misleading to suggest that I have rejected that. What I have rejected is belief in the existence of a being whom I have not been rationally convinced exists.

A major part of the concept of god and religion is the need to have faith in Him. If god is rationally or scientifically proven, this primary tenant is lost. There would be no free choice or challenge if god appeared and proved himself to the world every 5 years.

Ultimately the true test of faith is the ability to go beyond what can be proven.

Precisely what I reject.

I am aware of that. In fact, I would say you are closer to a genuine desire to live according to that law than many people who claim to be born-again Christians. Nevertheless, you do not always live according to that law, any more than I do. (Or anyone else. I'm not trying to single anyone out here.)

So that acceptation is kind of theoretical unless there can be some change to our funadmental nature that makes it possible for us to really live it all the time. Because there is a stubborn streak of selfishness in all of us that sometimes (often?) says "Me first!" Especially when we are victims of some behavior that is not correct, we tend to respond in kind, instead of applying the principle of perfect love for all others. Our guiding law thus becomes: "Perfect love for those whom I think deserve it." Which is not at all the same thing.

What God proposes is to change that nature, by "reprogramming us" (to use an analogy from the modern world, which has its limits, like all analogies) so that we really do live according to love. But that is not something he can do without our permission, because he himself is the one who gave us the freedom to choose. "Reprogramming us" against our will would be the worst kind of violation of our free will, and thus anything but true love.

If that is the only problem, then that is not a problem for God. One way or another, at one time or another, he is quite capable of revealing himself to you. I should warn you, though, that the personal experience of God is in some ways, let us say, disconcerting. Especially the first time. But God does not play hide and seek with those who honestly are interested in finding him.

I tend to think, however, that you have also rejected a religion (that deserves to be rejected; I am not saying you are wrong in this) and, in doing so, have "thrown out the baby with the bath" because of not being able to conceive of God outside that religion that dominated all of Europe for over 1000 years and claimed to be God's representative but that did just about everything they could to misrepresent him. My guess is that the blockage because of religion affects what you are willing to accept as rationally convincing evidence. I could be wrong about this, however.

I disagree with this. If we accept that approach, how is "faith in God" different in nature from simply choosing to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

The Biblical definition of "faith" is not "belief without reason" but "the choice to accept something (or someone) as worthy of confidence." That choice can and should be based on reasons. The better the reasons, the more solid will be the confidence.

Where the concept of "proof" becomes a problem is not in "faith versus proof" but in the very concept of wanting something proven 100% before accepting it. If we applied that standard consistently, none of us would believe anything. Our political convictions, for example, are never based on 100% proof that they are right, or anything even approaching that. That does not prevent us from having them and trusting them. Normally, when we have seen good reasons for holding to a certain position, or for considering someone as worthy of our trust, we do so, even though that is never anything close to "proof."

Before getting married, I had no "proof" that the girl I wanted to marry would in fact be a good wife. But I had pretty good reasons to believe it, so I chose to accept it. Events over the last three decades have shown that that trust was not misplaced. But if I had waited for absolute "proof" that a girl would be right for me before getting married, I would still be single. Nevertheless, that does not mean that there were not very good reasons for my choice.

My implication was not that there is no rational basis for belief in god, merely that there must be some level of faith involved. There cannot be 100% proof positive or free will, reward and punishment become meaningless.

You statement clearly implies that God has no free will. I find that difficult to accept.

I also am less and less convinced that the concepts of "reward" and "punishment" have much to do with salvation. If redemption is truly by grace, then it is not a "reward" and if being separated from God is merely the nature of the choice of those who don't want him and his law of perfect love to govern their lives, then that is not really a "punishment" either.

Why?

Think of all the things we pretty much have 100 percent proof of -- drugs being addictive and harmful, the risk of unwanted pregnancy existing every time a man and a woman have unprotected sex, the risk of being arrested when one commits a crime -- and yet people do them anyway.

Say some force appeared claiming to be Allah or Jesus or whatever, claimed that such and such a scripture was the one true scripture and demonstrated some otherwise inexplicable miracle or miracles.

Not all atheists would convert to this being's espoused religion. Heck, I doubt if many theists would convert from whatever they believe in to the being's espoused religion because of a) stubbornness/inertia or b) belief the being's acts to be some sort of trickery by the devil, his equivalent or an alien who had sophisticated enough tech to pull off what seems to be a miracle.

Don't understand the God not having free will thing. Mankind and god are two completely different worlds.

As for salvation and all that, I don't really buy into that. I believe a person (excepting extreme evil like Stalin, Hitler etc) are punished for their sins and then rewarded for their good deeds. I don't buy the whole damnation/salvation dogma. Thus to me belief in god makes perfect sense and while I certainly find rational and evidence for the existence of god, I do not need it to believe in him.

It's a poor one.
Try again.
You shove your hand in the water it's in the water.
If you had some fish theologian saying whatever's "outside of water", was "supernatural", well, there goes the "supernatural", once you stick your hand in.
It doesn't turn into water, it's just not "mysterious", and "unknowable", anymore, they saw the fucking thing.

And people poking around in their turf is indeed a mundane fact of fishy life.

Just as an interventionist God with millions of simultaneous witnesses would be.

Perhaps God really said.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbImaMM3qT4

Face it, D. EVERY analogy will be "a poor one" in your estimation because you so thoroughly reject that which is being described. You do not entertain the TINIEST possibility of the supernatural and thus, no analogy is sufficient to illustrate it.

That said, all analogies by definition can be stretched beyond the point where they hold up.

Both those said, your description of the flaws leaves much to be desired. For just one illustration - your discussion of "fishy witnesses" presumes that there are fish eyes on the scene in all places and at all times underwater, which is clearly and easily seen to not be the case.

Further, it's just silly to argue that all fish are routinely aware of "extra-water" intervention both because that's not true and because it's stretching the analogy beyond the intended point.

In any case, your flat refusal to give even the tiniest credit to the point made by those you debate with is why so many now decline to do so. This won't be the first time I walk away asking myself "Why the fuck did I even bother?"

Because it's a self-annihilating concept in its very terminology.

It's literally meaningless.

Literally literally.

If it can be observed, it can be measured, and bam, it's science, it ain't supernatural anymore.

If I can't see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, smell it, wave a Geiger meter at it, what impact does it have on my life?
How can it meaningfully be said to exist at all?

It's a meaningless term for a meaningless concept.
It's a placeholder word for "magic", is all it is.

So how in the hell can I entertain the tiniest possibility for something that in it's OWN definitive terms doesn't fucking exist?

Some concepts can only be "proven" mathematically, and yet we accept that they are "real." There is no-one who can see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, smell it, wave a Geiger meter at it. These concepts exist only as complex equations. Are they supernatural?