intelligent

[Larry Laffer]

First of all when I said "no nothing" I wanted to stress out the Nothing er... thing.
Second, I find the 20 reasons a little... fuzzy, As you said I can't understand all that they're saying.
Example: Argument 3- Time and contingency:
# Whatever comes into being or goes out of being does not have to be; nonbeing is a real possibility.
# Suppose that nothing has to be; that is, that nonbeing is a real possibility for everything.
# Then right now nothing would exist. For
# If the universe began to exist, then all being must trace its origin to some past moment before which there existed—literally—nothing at all.

But
# From nothing nothing comes. So
# The universe could not have begun.
This I realy don't understand[Yes I know that they are related, 3 with 4 and so on but I still don't get it]
The 5th argument states that
# Design comes only from a mind, a designer.
# Therefore the universe is the product of an intelligent Designer.

But what makes it so sure that it's not realy chance???
why

"chance" is simply not credible.

? Why can't something turn out "By chance" right??
I prefer the Darwinian theory because(if I get it right) the Bible sais that man was created after God's appearance. Then why did man evolve?

For the 6th argument: Why does everything HAS to have a reason for being... yes I DID read the

Most people—outside of asylums and graduate schools would consider it not only true, but certainly and obviously true.

but why should this be true... why people should consider this true? (from this point on this argument becomes fuzzy again)

7th argument: I just don't agree, why should there be a reason for the universe to exist? It just does.

9th argument... I can't realy explain this one... I consider this as ONE good argument. But not more.

[I wrote this as I read the arguments so if it may not make much sense in some areas please bear with me.
since the fuzzyness seems to grow bigger and bigger I believe it's because of me, my lack of sleep is realy showing right now ->22:00, I'll continue this post tomorow]

[emmzee]

Since you said you'll respond more later, I won't reply indepth right now. But just wanted to quickly point out two things ...

In #6 (the Kalam argument) where it says "coming into being" it really means "begins to exist". So the argument could be rewritten:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
All point 1. is saying is that things don't suddenly pop into existence without a cause. If there is a horse in the next room, you ask what caused it to be there, and I say "Nothing" you wouldn't accept that.

In #5, re design, there are an almost mindboggling number of variables that have to be exactly right for life to exist in the universe (<a href="http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... l">example list here</a>). If any of these were even slightly different, no life could exist. It could be a coincidence. But you say you accept argument #9 ... The example of the stones falling Keeft gives also could be a coincidence, but if it happened, most would reasonably judge that it wasn't coincidence. Another example, if someone rolls a dice and gets a six 3 times in a row, you might say "Wow, lucky!" But if they roll a six 20 times in a row, you'd probably say "Okay WTF something else is really going on here!" It's of course POSSIBLE, but intuition tells you that something else is probably going on. So it is too I'd say with the "fine tuning" of the universe.

(BTW everyone, feel free to join in the discussion ... tho for the record I'm not going to comment on any "design vs evolution" stuff because there's no reason that evolution disproves God nor the Bible even if it is true so to me its a non-issue.)

[Dogbreath]

If there is a horse in the next room, you ask what caused it to be there, and I say "Nothing" you wouldn't accept that.

And, if you've seen National Lampoon's Animal House, you'd begin to speculate on the physical well being of the horse, and to what extent John Belushi was involved in both the placement and the killing of the horse...

*bans self for being off topic*

[GAMER]

Green Bank forumla anyone??

Though it's usually reserved for proving there could definately be intelligent aliens out there, it is very relevant to the coincidence of life on Earth.

N = R*fp ne fl fi fc L

N = number of civilizations in galaxy capable of interstellar communication.

R* = average rate at which stars develop during lifetime of galaxy.

fp = fraction of stars with planets.

ne = average number of planets, per star, capable of supporting life.

fl = fraction of planets with life.

fi = fraction of planets with intelligent life.

fc = fraction of planets with intelligent life capable of interstellar communication.

L = average lifetime of society capable of interstellar communication.

So anyway, when we consider both probability and the amount of stars out there, the chance is diminished, sure, but is still there and quite large (not in comparison to amount of stars...but yes.)

GAMER

[GAMER]

Sorry for double post, but for clarity...Change the equation where you should, so that to just theorise "Life" on any given planet. Remove any of the irrelevant part of the equation.

GAMER

[NeonAmd64]

I know that I am talking in another language [not English] but try to understanding what I am writing . . .

Here, I will modify the information in another point of view..

First, nothing, something, chance true and false past present and existence are undefined words. if you were talking about the world of physics. These words are only to let the limitation be accepted.
Second, we are living in the middle of no where. Can anyone give me an answer.. where do we live?

The above are parts of my philosophy. There is lot of things I am sticking to it to reach the reality of the world that I am are living in but I can’t remember it. [As you know me, I am thinking partial because of that bad accident I had]

About philosophy, it won’t bring anything useful because it is only related to people who practice it, unless we experience it as well as they did.

[Larry Laffer]

OK! Completion of my previous post:
[but first might I say: emmzee you REALY should translate those 20 arguments on a web page or something ]

14th argument: Ok so I stoped reading when I got to

avoid doing others(like commiting adultery)

Some time ago I was wondering: If the 7th Commandament sais "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY" tell me: At first the only people on Earth were Adam and Eve. They had 2 sons: Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel. Adam and Eve had more kids. But wouldn't they HAVE to commit adultery to in order to fill the earth with more humans? Or God's commandments did not apply then?

[resuming the reading]: Hey I remember this fuzzy feeling... Moving on.

15th argument: Let me get this straight(If possible) They mean to say that each man's conscience if a little bit of God?

But (a) an amoral God, indifferent to morality, would not be a wholly good God, for one of the primary meanings of "good" involves the "moral"—just, loving, wise, righteous, holy, kind. And (b) such a morality, not having any connection with God, the Absolute Being, would not have absolute reality behind it.

another quetion I've asked myself before: "What makes people so sure that God is [b]pure[/b] goodness?"

16th argument:

The second premise requires only honest introspection. If someone denies it and says, "I am perfectly happy playing with mud pies, or sports cars, or money, or sex, or power," we can only ask, "Are you, really?"

I think this is just like asking someone "Why do you smoke?" or "Why do you walk?"

17th argument:

17. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience

There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.

You either see this one or you don't.

For those who never clicked on the 20 reasons link: This is the WHOLE argument! It is realy the most confuzing one of all. All are VERY long an this one has just 14 words.
Why must a God if there is Bach's music??

Last argument: I've heard of somthing like this before "If you believe in God and HE does not exist then you have lost all. If you don't believe in God and HE does not exist then you have lost nothing." or something like that. I find nothing else relevant(perhaps I'm not looking where in the right places) here.

Most surely you noticed I jumped over some arguments but I did that because I did not understand enough of them to debate.
Perhaps I'll make another post sometime later but only if I truly understand what I'm gonna write about

On an off-topic note:
DB:

*bans self for being off topic*

Please take a minute to post in the "You got banned from DGF? Please tell us the story" thread. Thanks I've been waiting for this for a loooong time.

[emmzee]

Re #14, we really don't know. The biblical account doesn't give us every detail so we don't know exactly what happened with Cain and Abel's wives. Regardless, the aim of the "20 arguments" is not to prove the Bible is correct, (although I think we have good reason to say it is) but instead it's only trying to show that God exists.

#15 is a lot like #14 but not as good. It's included for "moral subjectivists" (ie someone who thinks there are no real morals, that we can decide them for ourselves) which I hope is not anyone here. However Larry's comment "What makes people so sure that God is pure goodness?" was interesting. It's something to think about since it's something all religions that believe in one God share in some way or another: that God is good.

#16 is basically agreement or denial of this: "There exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy." The idea is that desire (which, for example, causes insanely rich guys like Donald Trump to be ever-seeking more money and never being satisfied) can find ultimate fulfilment in God.

#17 is intended, at least a partially I think, as a joke. I assume Kreeft is a big fan of Bach and considers his music as aesthetically pointing to God.

And re DB's off-topic post, since he doesn't like my horse analogy here's one from atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen: "Suppose you hear a loud band ... and you ask me, "What made that bang?" and I reply "Nothing, it just happened." You would not accept that. In fact you would find my reply quite unintelligible."

[Dogbreath]

emmzee: No no no, you don't understand. What I'm asking is, did John Belushi directly kill the horse by shooting a bullet into it, or did he just aim the gun up in the air when he fired - the sound of the pistol discharge making the horse react by panicking and then heartattack, and, after a long and complex process, give you the result of a stiff, dead horse in the next room? Was it under the direct control of Belushi, or just something he set in motion and let happen?

If you're a clever man, you'll understand what I'm going at...

[emmzee]

Zounds! Methinks I hast underestimated most dubiously thine posting competencies. For mine transgression, I henceforth dub thee Sir Dubious Inconsequential Posting Guy (esquire). Forsooth! Verily, wouldst thou partake upon another post, mote it be of similarly sumptuous calibre!

(Yes.)

[Larry Laffer]

WTF? emmzee what kind of language were you speaking there? Cuz I wanna learn to speak it too

[emmzee]

That was just me trying to use as much "old english" (well, "middle english") words as possible. The kind that Shakespeare would use. Here's a list of some English words that people don't really use anymore ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ar ... quivalents

I guess this thread has lost momentum eh? No one has any more comments?

[Larry Laffer]

Well I got nothing to comment anymore... Please feel free to say something(if it's on-topic I mean)

[GAMER]

Emmzee, you didn't have a response to my statement about why life can be purely coincidental...?

GAMER

[Dogbreath]

As someone who's studied English in college, I can't resist the urge to correct your (terrible) grammar.

Zounds! Methinks I hast

First mistake. "Hast" is only proper in second person. (ex. "thou hast") The proper first person is "have." (Which it still is, actually)

underestimated most dubiously

You're not sure you underestimated me? Better "most sorely underestimated..."

thine posting competencies.

Thy, not thine, because it's followed by an initial consonant.

The rest is pretty good, I'm surprised by the grace and ease in which you write. Most people purposely misuse archaic words just to be annoying.

BTW, these are all actually archaic Modern English words. (They were all used frequently well into the 16th century) You'd have a hard time even reading Middle English, and Old English is like another language.

[Larry Laffer]

GOD!(no fun intended) I'm gratefull we only stick to bloody grammar in school for now.

Here's a good question: Why do the "uncivilized" nations still believe in bad/war/ or just "not-good" gods while the "civilized" ones believe in a good god?

[Vangar]

Just to spark a heap of crap in the topic, XD:

Is Jesus equal to or lesser than?

JOH 10:30 I and my Father are one.

JOH 14:28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

War or Peace?

EXO 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

ROM 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.

[CPT Worm]

Is Jesus equal to or lesser than?

JOH 10:30 I and my Father are one.

JOH 14:28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

Hey, I say that, too. God and I are one, because I accept Jesus as the Savior, but I know that God is infinitely more powerful than me.

GEN 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
GEN 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

GEN 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
GEN 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Well, I'll just talk about one theory here. I know there are others, but this is one that I can argue quickly.

In the first chapter, God makes life. Single-cell organisms, fish, and dinosaurs. Then God sets into motion mammals much later. (Maybe image means a bipedal creature?)

Then, the second chapter describes that man has evolved to the first man, Adam. The animals have two evolved. This almost might be covertly saying that man had developed to a point where he can talk to God and begin cognatively thinking about animals and his environment.

War or Peace?

EXO 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

ROM 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.

While the Old Testament has some good stuff, a lot of it was a handbook for Jews to survive. The New Testament is all about Jesus trying to gets us to build the Kingdom here on earth. We can't build if we destroy, can we?

[emmzee]

Emmzee, you didn't have a response to my statement about why life can be purely coincidental...?

Sorry, I remember reading your post but must've missed replying due to all the other posts in the thread.

I'll admit that sure, it could be purely coincidental. But with most things in life we don't select based on possibility, we select based on probability. The sheer number of factors required make life possible are extremely unlikely. Like the dice-rolling example I gave:

Say I need to roll one 6 to win a game. The odds are against me, but alright! I get a 6 and win the game!
Now imagine that I needed three 6's in a row to win the game. The odds are now REALLY against me, but even so I do roll three 6's and win! (You'd probably still accept that, but probably would grumble about it. Well, I would anyways.)
Now imagine I need to roll twenty 6's in a row to win ... and I do it. Now, it COULD be coincidence. Luck. But twenty in a row?! By that point, the chances that there's something ELSE going on (like rigged dice or something) seems to be much greater.
In the case of the universe, it seems like the dice have been rigged.

But, let's say, for the sake of argument, that everything including life did come together purely through chance (which remember is a lot less likely than some other "designed" explanation as noted above). That doesn't solve the problem of where all of these building blocks came from in the first place. Something cannot come from nothing; that's a basic rule of the universe. We know the universe didn't always exist (from both philosophy and science) so where did it come from? Only from a source that is outside of time, space and matter ... that is eternal, but still caused a universe to exist.

Nor does it solve the problem of how non-living things could have organized themselves into living things, complete with information-packed DNA. In the movie "Contact" Jodie Foster works for SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and one day finds a pattern amongst the noise: a series of prime numbers in a row, repeated. She surmises that an intelligence is behind them. So when we see information (not just a little, a lot!) encoded in our own DNA, shouldn't we reach the same conclusion?

[AdamN]

For every good their is an evil, for every angel their is a demon.
For every truth their is a lie.

What I mean is to understand one you have to understand the other, and how they operate, without a combination of good and evil...it is hard to imagine, but it would turn into anarchy eventually.