[ImConfused]

Re: I'm Confused!

Eyewitness testimony. There are the words of those people who actually lived and witnessed the events during Biblical times.

Ok. Is there any reliable eyewitness testimony of the resurrection outside of the bible?

However, the strongest objection to your claim comes from Jocaxian nothingness. If nothing (the void - they got that much right, the secularists; Genesis 1:2) preceded something, then the "nothing" was also without rules. By placing there a rule (the most common is "something cannot come out of nothing" but your claim "there must be a first cause" is a close second), the "nothingness" is no longer a void. Essentially, your proposition violates the state of things before there was something. The Jocaxian nothingness has no rules, nor requirements. Thus, it requires no rule of the "first cause".

Your strongest objection is actually quite easy to reject. Jocaxian nothingness cannot exist. If a JN-Object were to exist, then this means that existence itself exists. So, the JN-Object would contain the entity "existence", which is a contradiction, because it does not contain anything. Therefore nothing cannot exist, and thus the assertion "Something cannot come out of nothing" is true.

With that out of the way, let's examine your other objections.

Of course, there are also other issues. One is that causality being a factor in the Universe does not automatically mean that the same rule should apply to things that are not parts of the Universe.

That rule actually must apply to all things. If something comes out of something, then the latter something caused the former something. Because, as I have proved, something cannot come out of nothing, the universe must have come out of, and hence been caused by, something. Causality still applies to that something, because it must have been caused by something else, just as this universe was.

There is also the possibility that there was a first cause but that is died out. There is the infinite regress. There is circular causality. You have chosen one lame apologetic view and neglected the basic rule of logic and science - to seek for data that contradicts your preconceptions, not only data that support them.

I'm not arguing for a first cause. In fact, a first cause contradicts my proposition that there is no uncaused cause. The cause of the universe is only one link in a chain of infinite regress.

We could go on with your propositions 2-3, such as your equivocation (a fallacy) of law=natural law, but, as said, the first cause hypothesis is the first stumbling block when it comes to debating secularists, so further steps are not necessary.

In regards to my proposition (2), I am not guilty of equivocation; there is no ambiguity. In both cases, I am using the same definition of law, "A system of rules". Human societies are governed by a system of rules, just as the universe is governed by a system of rules.

That more-or-less covers your point (2)

No it doesn't. If you read proposition (2), you will find that it does not state that all nations have laws. Whether or not all nations have laws is of no relevance to it.

As for the universe, well you need to demonstrate that it's regulated by "natural law" and not in a state of chaos.

It can be demonstrated that it is governed by natural law by the fact that there are things that you physically cannot do, such as walk through walls. The universe has rules that prevent you from doing so. If the universe was in a state of chaos, then there would be no rules, and hence you should be able to walk through a wall without any problems.

God is the most powerful thing in existence. Why would He lie?

I'm not claiming that God lied. I'm claiming that whoever wrote the books of the bible may have lied.

So when you ask whether the Bible(KJV1611) is a lie, just think about ritual Satanal abuse of this nation's youth: is that really what you are saying?

No that's not what I'm saying! How can simply questioning a book lead to sex abuse?

Shame on you, young lady!

I'm a MAN

[Didymus Much]

Re: I'm Confused!

...I'm a SEXIST MAN

FTFY.

[Dolores de Barriga]

Re: I'm Confused!

It can be observed that all nations have laws. These laws all had to be written by someone; they didn't just pop into existence on their own. The same it is with the laws of nature, like gravity, electromagnetism, and etc. If a god didn't write those laws, then who did?

Hello Mr. Confused.


It seems to me that you are comparing apples with elephants here. Human laws are rules of conduct which are formed, modified, and abandoned over time, as seen in history. For example, the laws of ordeal which were very respected through all antiquity have been abandoned in more modern times.


On the other hand, laws of nature are unchangeable. Metal always conducts electricity, not just on Tuesdays. Gravity always affects bodies of matter, it will not be changed after a while.


Hence, your assumption that these two types of laws are comparable or equal to each other is a huge leap of faith which from a scientific point of view is flawed.

Plus, as I've mentioned, the universe has to have been created by somebody, as there are no uncaused causes.

Then, who created the creator of the creator?


In every respectable mythology even the first gods have to be born out of something else.

And yes, you are correct in saying that this does lead to that question. I propose that this god perhaps dwells in an overarching universe, which was created in turn by another god. And that other god in turn was created by another, and so on and so forth, in an infinite chain, such that everything is created by something else. This neatly solves that problem, and I believe is a superior explanation to the one commonly accepted, that the universe magically poofed into existence.

Yes. The earth rests on a giant turtle, and that turtle on another turtle, and there are turtles all the way down.


Unfortunately, this does not answer the question what the lowermost turtle stands on, or in your case - where does the first of the long line of creators come from.

Indeed, that does not. But how do you know that the bible is infact the word of God?

I find it somewhat ironic that it was an atheist, Mr. Much, who told you that faith and evidence are mutually exclusive.

I'm not exactly sure where you get the idea that I'm ignorant of science.

Probably because your line of thought is full of logical inconsistiences.

These three propositions, in my opinion, are obvious.

I hope that I've explained in clear enough terms that they are not.

To the contrary, it is not contradictory at all. The definition of faith is "complete trust or confidence in someone or something". If you know something to be true, then you have trust and confidence in it, and thus you have faith in it.

No. If you know something then you know it, period. If you don't know something for certain then you have to rely on faith.

[Elmer G. White]

Re: I'm Confused!

(3) Natural law is an integral part of the universe...What then is the cause of it? Well, the universe is governed by natural law, and according to (2), those laws must have been written by some intelligence. Because of (3) and (2), the cause of the universe must have been intelligent. This intelligence is what we can call God.

Me: equivocation.

In regards to my proposition (2), I am not guilty of equivocation; there is no ambiguity. In both cases, I am using the same definition of law, "A system of rules". Human societies are governed by a system of rules, just as the universe is governed by a system of rules.

OK. I understand better now. You used the concept "natural law" (which still is not the same as a written law) when you were in fact referring to physical "laws of nature". Natural law is a philosopical concept. It is not the collection of formulae that "govern" natural phenomena. You should get your definitions in order before making claims. Let us see what "natural law" means.

Natural law, in philosophy, a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society, or positive law.
There have been several disagreements over the meaning of natural law and its relation to positive law. Aristotle (384–322 bce) held that what was “just by nature” was not always the same as what was “just by law,” that there was a natural justice valid everywhere with the same force and “not existing by people’s thinking this or that,” and that appeal could be made to it from positive law. However, he drew his examples of natural law primarily from his observation of the Greeks in their city-states, who subordinated women to men, slaves to citizens, and “barbarians” to Hellenes. In contrast, the Stoics conceived of an entirely egalitarian law of nature in conformity with the logos (reason) inherent in the human mind. Roman jurists paid lip service to this notion, which was reflected in the writings of St. Paul (c. 10–67 ce), who described a law “written in the hearts” of the Gentiles (Romans 2:14–15).

If we disregard the Papist "St." we can see that this is quite a good definition. However, you obviously did not have this in mind (how could we tell?) when your wrote your assertion. You were referring to physical laws.

"inferred from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present."

This means that physical laws derive from observations whereas natural laws are inherent in the psyche. In addition, physical laws are True™ only because there have not been contradictory observations but there might be one day (very different from the Laws of God I might say). They are also more like definitions in mathematical terms.

As we can see, there are some similarities between physical laws and written laws. However, there are also many differences. Physical laws (disregarding the notion that we might have erred about them) leave no room for disobedience, as they are inherent in the material structure and thus everything is bound by them. While God's given laws should be the same, mankind is still free to trespass and sin. In fact, physical laws would leave no room for sin. Second, physical laws are statistical and unpredictable at the quantum level. This is a realm not assessed by God's Law or natural law. If you simply state that they are both "a system of rules" you are most definitely making an equivocation and also boasting about it. You are basically choosing a definition of your own and expecting that others humbly follow it.

With this prelude we are ready to assess the other part of your testimony.

Ok. Is there any reliable eyewitness testimony of the resurrection outside of the bible?

Why would we need that?

John 20:29
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

In fact, this leads us to...

Your strongest objection is actually quite easy to reject. Jocaxian nothingness cannot exist. If a JN-Object were to exist, then this means that existence itself exists. So, the JN-Object would contain the entity "existence", which is a contradiction, because it does not contain anything. Therefore nothing cannot exist, and thus the assertion "Something cannot come out of nothing" is true.

Your claim goes back to the "inexistent nothingness" rebuttal. Basically, it is a word play that begs the question.The Jocaxian nothingness is not actually a philosophical concept but a physical one; again, you're equivocating. It is simply the secular concept for the simplest state of things before something. Its definition of having no rules (or it having existence) is actually not a rule, as this state of affairs may (in the secular definition) also change. If you go further into "then that is the rule" you're just playing with words.

Even more importantly, you're asking the question "Why does existence exist", just formulating it in a more complex manner to confuse your readers (although you're mostly confusing yourself which you very wisely admit with your username!). This is an invalid question as it implies that you already have to appeal to something that exists to explain existence or non-existence. The secular philosopher will notice this and see that this inevitably leads to having "something" out there that is the cause. This makes your statement a stolen concept and in fact a complex question. This is the same thing that you tried to do with "natural law" - using the concepts of mundane laws or Divine Laws to explain physical laws although in addition to some similarities, there are also important differences.

Again, in the atheist population, your definitions do not hold water and they know this. That is why we teach aspiring Believers such as yourself to rely on the Bible only.

You're also making special pleading for consciousness as if it was automatically necessary in cosmology. We know that consciousness is needed but by examining John 20:29 we understand that it can never be explained to the secular mind in a world that is governed (in their mind) by the uncertainly principle. This leads us to...

I'm not arguing for a first cause. In fact, a first cause contradicts my proposition that there is no uncaused cause. The cause of the universe is only one link in a chain of infinite regress.

Then why would you need consciousness for our universe or any other? The consciousness might be a infinite amount of Universes away. Or not. By increasing complexity in the manner of an automaton at every step you can reach complexity without concious intervention. The first step may be a random event as described by some atheists.

In this paper, we present such a proof based on the analytic solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation (WDWE). Explicit solutions of the WDWE for the special operator ordering factor p=-2 (or 4) show that, once a small true vacuum bubble is created by quantum fluctuations of the metastable false vacuum, it can expand exponentially no matter whether the bubble is closed, flat or open. The exponential expansion will end when the bubble becomes large and thus the early universe appears.

Can you see? The atheist philosopher is concerned about the physical universe. Not Natural Law but Physical Law. Words 'n games can never convince them as they can calculate the math and find ways to show us that it is possible to have a Universe without preceding consciousness. Even this possibility is enough to collapse the only True™ Faith that it Jesus Christ!

1 Corinthians 15:13-14
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then [is] our preaching vain, and your faith [is] also vain.

Your path is a dangerous one. You're not totally lost as you still have the notion that some-kind-of-a-being-or-an-entity-must-have-been-there-sometime-somewhere. You're very close to losing even that last straw of Hope. Your last defenses are the word play and the equivocations. I'm not trying to make you lose that Hope but to return to the actual Faith®, as your small beliefs are inadequate to get you into Heaven (John 3:18).

Basically, you're in a Limbo. You're using the philosopy of Tomists and ID proponents but disregarding the notion that the realm of modern cosmology is beyond such word play. Simultaneously, you've dismissed the Faith® of John 20:29. You're replacing these with your own musing by choosing some bits of each paradigm but failing to make your world view coherent. You're making up simplistic definitions of complex phenomena - straw man versions of both Faith™ and Physics.

Our answer is of course Jesus. You don't have to choose that. Physical law is useless here as our God can walk through your walls (Exodus 3:14). The Law of God is useless in the World of Cosmology as there the cat is dead and alive. I may be wrong and you may be the one to reconcile these paradigms but you really have to work harder.


Yours in Christ,

Elmer

[Elmer G. White]

Re: I'm Confused!

Dear sinner,

There is one more proposition of yours that we have to assess.

(2) Laws require an intelligence to be written.
(3) Natural law is an integral part of the universe.

These three propositions, in my opinion, are obvious.

Once again, these are something that you claim are "obvious". The one in question now is if laws really require an intelligence to be written. We now have to separate some issues from this proposition.First: We do know that laws are written by an intelligence. God.

Exodus 18:20
And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do.

Second: While we know that God did write the Laws, the question remains if it has to be so. Do Laws really require an intelligence to be written? It may seem obvious but simply assuming so makes your claim causal oversimplification.

You mentioned natural law (obviously, in the false context), and by examining (from the atheist perspective) natural law we can assess this question. Do Laws require an intelligence to be written? Natural Law tells us that not necessarily. Please see my previous post for reference.

...a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules

A Law that does not need to be written. Even in the Bible, this is also mentioned

Romans 2:14-15
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another...

Again, we know that God made the natural law, but was it necessary? Could the sense of right and wrong arise from natural selection? If it could, then Law could be produced without any guiding intelligence. I am now entering the very dangerous area of science where many a Christian™ has lost his Faith®, so be careful to remember that we're just teaching you how to combat atheists without the Bible and to see how well it works. (it won't).

As it turns out, the ideas of right and wrong do not have to be taught but are apparently inherent in the human infant (which is important also from the Spiritual perspective as it means that children will be condemned unless they choose Jesus voluntarity; John 3:16-18).

The earliest signs are the glimmerings of empathy and compassion—pain at the pain of others, which you can see pretty soon after birth. Once they’re capable of coordinated movement, babies will often try to soothe others who are suffering, by patting and stroking.
The sort of research that I’ve been involved with personally, looking at the origins of moral judgment, is difficult to do with very young babies. But we have found that even 3-month-olds respond differently to a character who helps another than to a character who hinders another person.

In fact, morality can be found even in unclean animals (Leviticus 10:10), such as dogs and rats!

Dogs are prone to bouts of envy and refuse to play if they are not treated fairly, scientists have found.
The animals stopped cooperating with researchers and began to show signs of distress if they were not offered the same tasty rewards given to other dogs, the study showed.
Affronted dogs refused to offer their paws when invited to and began scratching and yawning, indicating that their stress levels were rising, the scientists report.
The finding suggests that dogs may share the sense of fairness seen in other social animals that engage in cooperative behaviour, such as monkeys.

untrained laboratory rats will free restrained companions and this helping is triggered by empathy (Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Decety, J., & Mason, P. 2011. Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science 334, 1427-1430). They’ll even free other rats rather than selfishly feast on chocolate.

As you can see, this is much more compassionate than what we can expect from the average sinner. It also leads us to the possibility that Laws do not have to be written by an intelligence as they can be the by-products of eusociality - a way to propagate genetic material into the future by cooperation and empathy. You can still claim that the original program that makes organisms prone to "natural law" was written by God but, as the physicists have shown, it is not necessary!

From something we know (God did write the laws) we cannot deduce that the laws had to be written by God. This makes your proposition crumble and leads us to...

...big trouble!

If the laws of compassion etc. are genetically determined, then the Laws of God that lead us to Heaven are not the only possible outcomes of such laws. This means that the mess we can see in the world is just mutiny against one possible set of laws (God's) but not against the basic baby laws of compassion and empathy and assistance. This would mean that the extra definitions of good (worship, Fear of God (Ecclesiastes 12:13)) are not inevitable outcomes of the law. Nor would be extra definitions of evil (female emancipation, unnatural fornication as in Romans 1:26-28) be actually evil in the context of compassion, empathy and assistance. This would lead countless sinners away from Heaven and this is exactly what we see happening. These lost souls (please do not join them) only follow the seemingly nice advice by Darwin!

...they were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of their orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite beyond their comprehension

Only by knowing the Bible can we tell that this "law" - the product of eusociality and natural selection - is the false law, it is fails to contain the detailed instructions on how to get to Heaven.

To conclude, your proposition fails. The atheist will not be persuaded. Laws do not necessarily require an intelligence to emerge. The laws of the society can be made more detailed by an intelligence but it would be a genetic fallacy of origins to claim that they cannot arise without intelligence. The laws that emerge from the "natural law" can be very diverse and contradictory regarding the notion of a Deity. Your mess of equivocations and personal testimonials instead of evidence will not help convice the atheist. Only Jesus can do that and we're here to show them what the Bible contains and that only by accepting it blindly (John 20:29), can the physical laws of death and decay and the eventual whining downward spiral of the secular Universe into heat death and evaporation of the blackest holes into nothingness (but not Jocaxian) by Hawking radiation be avoided.

****************************************

The physical laws of the secular Universe do not require an intelligent designer to be written but the supernatural laws of Salvation do! Everything can be made new!

****************************************

Isaiah 65:17
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.


Yours in Christ,

Elmer

[Didymus Much]

Re: I'm Confused!

Turns out, St. John the Evangelist is patron saint of burn victims.

And yeah, I know True Christians(tm) don't go in for that "saint" malarkey, I was just curious.