There you have it. You decide, purely on the grounds of materialistic ideology, that I am wrong without ever asking what my arguments are. I do acknowledge 'I do not know' if by 'know' you mean knowledge by intellectual means. I don't have an intellectual proof of God. I have already said this.Obviously you are one of those people who will never acknowledge "I do not know"...and would prefer to kid yourself with "alternate reality." — Frank Apisa
Precisely. I am missing the point.
While you are still looking for it and you'll never find it, because it is like trying to look at your eyes or reach the horizon. All you will accomplish is tiring yourself out.
Whereas if you were aware, it would come in to place all on its own. — Shamshir
Does 'wildly controversial' mean they won't fit into the primitive rationale of materialism? That is too bad. — EnPassant
Why are controversial ideas not compelling to a 'reasonable person'? — EnPassant
As I keep saying, a large part of the problem is that materialists often think they have a monopoly on what is rational; scientism. If these people can't accept that rationality extends beyond science there is no talking to them.
That is the answer to the first post in this thread: there is no agreement on what is rational because the materialists insist on an abbreviated definition of rationality and anything outside it is 'nonsense'. — EnPassant
More bullshit!
People are willing to have a meaningful discussion with you, EnPassant, but you are averse to it...which is probably why you refer to it as "proper" discussion.
There may be gods involved in the REALITY of existence...but there is no way to know if there are or not...and allowing people like you to propose that their blind guesses have to be true makes no sense.
There is nothing wrong with you blindly guessing there is a GOD...just as there is nothing wrong with others blindly guessing there are no gods. But in the end...all we have are BLIND GUESSES. — Frank Apisa
All effects must have causes - the first cause is at a base of a pyramid of causality - all effects do have causes. Only the first cause, being beyond time and thus beyond causality does not have a cause. — Devans99
An object is abstract (if and) only if it is causally inefficacious. — Abstract Objects (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
How do you know that is not God?That's some lovely poetry there, but I'm more interested in the actual topic, which is about evidence for God, which isn't about evidence for an abstract object like a circle, because that isn't what God is. — S
All effects must have causes — Devans99
We sceptics are asking for evidence of the territory, and you are telling us that the map exists. We aren't asking about the map. If, say, the map is a map of Atlantis, then we are clearly being reasonable by asking for evidence of the territory. And the concept of God is like a map of Atlantis. — S
If you restrict the definition of God to 'creator of the universe' then there is actually plenty of evidence for such a proposition: — Devans99
nothing would logically exist without a first cause. — Devans99
The question of whether the first cause is intelligent or not: — Devans99
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is exactly that. I'm not saying it is the answer to a cause-less effect, but it should be closely considered. — Merkwurdichliebe
How is it possible to qualify the unqualifiable. Can we really even talk about an ultimate and absolute intelligence, when we barely know barely shit about the pitiful human intelligence. — Merkwurdichliebe
The trouble with truth is that, if you are too demanding about the quality (?) of the truth you seek, you will find nothing. Many issues do not contain Truth in the sense we might prefer, so we have to find ways of discovering and using approximations, unsatisfactory though that may be. — Pattern-chaser
So you have a ball balanced on top of a sphere; the symmetry breaks when the ball falls to one side. I would have thought that the 'cause' of the symmetry break is the fact that the ball was slightly off centre to start with? If it was perfect; it would never fall to one side? — Devans99
And I'm not sure how symmetry breaking can create matter. And it does not help if it does because it leads to infinite density. — Devans99
To be an uncaused cause clearly requires an internal driving force / self motivation. That is likely requires some form of intelligence. — Devans99
I don't think we have to completely understand intelligence before we can recognise it in other situations — Devans99
I believe the gyst is that tachyon condensation leads to a vaccuum, and out of the vacuum, the basic component of matter appear out of nowhere. But, do yourself a favor, don't kill yourself analyzing quantum field theory, it is a long and looping thread. — Merkwurdichliebe
I hope I'm not treading old ground, but, what about a self-caused first cause? — Merkwurdichliebe
Mexican hat — Devans99
Clearing out things, faith is not wishful thinking or delusion, because faith is belief in the unknown — SethRy
Causeless effects would be something like quantum fluctuations - something coming from nothing. If something comes from nothing naturally then with infinite time, matter density becomes infinite, which is not the case. — Devans99
This fits nicely into my point about God's unintelligible intellect. We try, with science, to understand how it happens, but we know so little, it is a pathetic ignorance. — Merkwurdichliebe
Consideting fine tuning...how can we possibly understand fine tuning at the level of God? If I was an atheist, I would definitely reject fine tuning as evidence of god. — Merkwurdichliebe
And concerning the arrow of time, what can we possibly know about the archer who fired it, other than looking at the composition and trajectory of the arrow. If I were an atheist, I would definitely reject the arrow of time as evidence of god. — Merkwurdichliebe
Faith, as in religion, is a belief is something very specific. Faith in the unknown, or rather a fascination with the unknown is somewhat closer to atheism. — Christoffer
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