So we have infinite reality devoid of time and space, and then a universe is born. Where and when is it located within the infinite reality?

And what is it made from, I'm also curious about this?

Attitude and soundness of reason are not interchangeable, neither is bias interchangeable with either of them. Which is it, do you think I'm biased, or do you think I have a poor attitude, or do you think my commentary lacks soundness of reason?

I don't constantly tell people they don't understand things, that's just blatantly false. Not everyone dislikes my attitude, also false. Bias is not interchangeable with criticism neither does telling people they don't understand something equate to bias.

My implication that you don't understand what I'm saying isn't based on bias but on the lack of quality of your responses and the lack of comprehension they exhibit. It's a rational conclusion based on the information available to me.

I'm referring to the OP's model and wording.

If the universe is infinite, then you've never existed in any of an infinite number of realities while simultaneously existing in all of them. You've also died in every reality while simultaneously living forever in all of them. If the universe is infinite, then consciousness is everything and nothing simultaneously and either way doesn't factor into anything.

It is the finite nature of the universe, specifically living organisms, that makes consciousness what it is.

You haven't yet provided a reasonable foundation for claiming that I'm biased. My suggestion that unbiased dialogue is intellectual and biased dialogue is emotional: how is this biased? Also, it's fickle to cry "troll" whenever you don't agree with or understand something.

I just told you that "real intellect" is an exercise in unbiased thought, and you retort that I'm biased and therefore unworthy. My comments have nothing to do with my opinion of a person or their character and everything to do with the integrity of their ideas. If someone is making claims based on emotion or personal experience, then they're not using intellect. How is that a "nasty opinion"?

I think that "real intellect" is independent from the subjective nonsense that "philosophers" tend to haplessly toss into their pedantic sermons.

It's difficult to address this without specific and reliable statistics. I think that often when people say that a religion is growing and another religion is dwindling, they may be referring to a global scale as opposed to a specific region, community or culture. Religious popularity could change significantly on a global scale based on fluctuations in a heavily populated region, and if a person lives in some other region, they wouldn't notice. A reasonable outlook on statistics requires diligence and objectivity, and I hear them often thrown around unchecked, or with some spin on them, in attempts to win debates or influence public opinion.

The two definitions are completely different. Metaphysics is lazy musing and science is active seeking. This second definition admittedly abandons all the leg work to real intellectuals, while the first definition relies entirely on imagination.

Wikipedia's definition of metaphysics is inaccurate. Also, you can't determine either of those two things by sitting around thinking about them "in an abstract and fully general manner". I would define metaphysics as "what lazy affluent men mused and mistook as intellect when practical or reasonable modes of thought were beyond their reach".

It isn't an argument, it's confusion. I'll repeat that I didn't ignore your additional comments, I disregarded them, there's a difference. You said that the writer "proved" the existence of God, not that you "proved" it.

When you claimed that the man's writing was "proof", you resigned that any further commentary is irrelevant. I haven't ignored it, I just didn't address it.

It isn't a deep argument at all. It's quite shallow. He assumes the "first mover" by writing on behalf of a church and education system that will jail him, possibly torture or kill him, if he doesn't. It's obvious from the flow of the dialogue that he began with the premise that God exists and is writing everything else in an attempt to fortify that position. It's a house of cards with a complimentary 90mph wind.

I just explained to you how the "proof" you presented argues against itself so no one has to. It's not hard, you just have to read it. It's self-contradictory, confused nonsense. If you place any stock in your argument, then you have to admit that you have no idea what is valid because only the "first mover" knows, another contradiction.

Please stop calling things proof, it's annoying. Seriously, by these standards I could find proof on the internet that toasters are supreme beings and chickens are aliens.

The foundation, or "proof" as you call it, of God's existence was not determined by a Catholic propagandist from the 1200's. Today's grade-school children have greater discernment and better sense than this man. To have been venerated by the Catholic church, he would have had to promote that the Pope was the living manifestation of God on Earth and whatever other fundamentalist nonsense was dictated by his indoctrination into theological "philosophy". He would have viewed free thinkers as heathens and anything opposing the Cathollic concept of God as heresy.

But let's address his insane ramblings:

1. The "argument from motion" is a paradox. It is full of sentiment, assumption and speculation. Just as easily as we can speculate that there must be a "first mover" and assign a human personality to it, we can also speculate that "the singularity" was not the first event to have ever occurred in all of reality. Also, if a "first mover" was to exist as was assumed in the "proof", the implication is that the "first mover" began all things and is outside all time and space, eternal. If not time and space, then something must extend infinitely in all directions through all dimensions or some lack thereof, and this is assumed to be the "first mover". Either without time and space, or if time and space were infinite, both of which are impossible, it would be irrational to think that any instance could occur. By this rationale, we don't exist, and neither does the "first mover".

2. First Cause. He argues against himself again here, determining that the "first mover" can't have existed eternally because nothing can exist prior to itself, and nothing exists which hasn't been initiated by something else. To paraphrase this nonsense, he says "I'm confused, therefore God". It's ridiculous to use examples from observable reality to support claims of imaginary things that not only have no foundation in observable reality but effectively contradict it.

3. Necessary Being. Here he hits the nail on the head by iterating what I just pointed out in my previous rant: that this is all absurd. Again, a paradox. "I'm confused, therefore God".

4. Degree. To assume any intrinsic valuation is preposterous. He is now preaching based on abstractions such as nobility and truth that a God, who if human would be a raging sociopath, is responsible for all that is good and decent in humans but not responsible for anything that is corrupt or evil.

5. He presumes, again based on religious belief and in the absence of science, that anything that doesn't appear to be self-aware by human standards is unintelligent and aimless, which was fine in the 1200's, when everyone was a blithering moron, but none of this stuff holds true in modern times.

This argument, and it's no argument at all, is just another confused rant from a place of scientific ignorance and intellectual deficiency. If its writer isn't intellectually deficient, then he's attempting to mislead his reader and pander to authorities his life depends on. The only thing infinite here is the writer's self-contradiction.

I'm done here, you can have the thread, it's your personal property.

Please don't pretend you're adding to a conversation. All you're doing is trying to shut down feedback you don't want to hear and talking about ants and apes and imagining there was ever a time in recorded history, or prior to it, that religion didn't exist in some form.

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I'm not talking solely about "the dangers of religion". I'm talking about inefficiency, and I'm talking about supernatural justification, I'm talking about assumption. That religion is dangerous is tertiary to my other statements, and you've chosen to focus primarily on that aspect of my commentary.

How can God be non-material if God doesn't exist, and how can you begin a discussion by assuming that God exists if there's no foundation for the claim? My commentary is directly related to the topic. The OP has begun by assuming that God exists, which implies that it doesn't, and I'm arguing that it's a contradictory, self-defeating and unproductive position. The existence of God has to be demonstrated in order to discuss its properties.

What are you talking about, being a troll? You're off topic and brushing my commentary aside without even considering it. It's not off topic. Try to be a little more open minded.

I'm not talking only about violence, and it's not the main focus of my comment, just a portion. It's a relevant portion because belief in the supernatural has been used to justify atrocity more than it's been used to promote benevolence, and it's acted as a catalyst for rage among differing cultures. I'm talking about a species wasting time chasing invisible friends and carving statues that combine animals and humans and scary-face folk art instead of making ethical and intellectual progress.

I'm on topic, and I didn't refer to a specific historical instance. Maybe you could elaborate on that, I'm not sure what you feel is inaccurate.

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Explain why the universe can't have been an incidental result of some greater process and so on and so on until the explanation is vast enough that humans will be extinct before they reach an infinitesimal understanding even of their own solar system, let alone what's beyond the limits of the observable universe. It is lazy and defensive to attribute it to the supernatural.

We can say that it must all have a beginning because everything we observe seems to have a beginning, yet if we're to base truth on observation, then we have to observe a creator before claiming it as if it was truth, and to claim it as truth without observation is just a time-consuming distraction. We can observe this time-consuming distraction and its negative effects on humanity by leafing through several thousand years of documented history, a large percentage of which has been wasted on claims of the supernatural for which there's no observable evidence. Wars have been waged and time and money squandered on worship and construction while humanity suffers under the supervision of imaginary sky parents--sky parents with distinctly human characteristics and distinctly natural habits.

Every argument for the existence of the supernatural begins with an assumption that it exists. The argument fails before it reaches an explanation.

Real solid rebuttal.

This is the problem with every "philosophical" assertion pertaining to the supernatural. There is, without exception, a prerequisite assumption followed by a series of explanations as if the assumption is fact. It is necessarily speculative because there's no basis for something that has never been perceived by the senses.

I didn't say "things can't be changed".

You're presenting an absurd argument from authority based on a notion you've constructed out of thin air that being a parent equates to higher knowledge and greater compassion, and you're calling my commentary incoherent blabbing or babbling (whichever you intended).

That "all sane parents" and "some non-parents" are privy to certain pieces of knowledge solely by virtue of parentage not only contradicts what you said earlier about instinct, as opposed to knowledge, but is also just baseless opinion.

"Blabbing" implies incoherence or idleness or superfluity or that what a person is saying doesn't qualify as worthwhile. Your lack of understanding doesn't qualify or disqualify my commentary.

Then why do so many mothers across species abandon their injured offspring to die, and why do so many mothers across species attempt to injure or otherwise set back each other's offspring, and why is legal support for abortion and assisted suicide increasing as the number of mothers involved in legislation increases?

Being a mother isn't some qualifier for higher knowledge, that's absurd.

Protecting others is never "instinctive" if we're going to suggest that "instinct" entails virtually irresistible biological compulsion as opposed to rational decision making. In the immediate or short term, protection is a choice prompted by rapidly occurring chemical and energetic processes within the body, and in both short and long term it involves a variety of both learned and genetic psychological influences. These processes don't necessarily result in protection of another. They often result in a decision to flee rather than to fight.

I personally believe that every behavior is a result of automation and that there's no free will, but this isn't what consciousness perceives, and I don't believe it's beneficial to resign to it in practice.

Liberty is an illusionary condition instilled via indoctrination. All humans have "ego", not all humans have "liberty".

What does being a mother have to do with this?

I'm addressing the topic at hand and the resulting dialogue within the thread. Claiming someone is "blabbing" is not contributing to the conversation, it's just ad hominem nonsense intended to discredit what is misunderstood. Whether or not someone is self-centred pertains directly to a conversation about opinion vs. fact. So does free will. So does the nature of consciousness. So does instinct.

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