Hello from Scotland

[Criboo]

Hi, I'm Chris, I'm from Scotland, and am currently writing a dissertation on cosmological arguments to the existence of god, doing some research I stumbled upon this site, and seeing it's large and active, I thought I'd register to see if anybody has any interesting material, or knows of any that they could point me towards.

The title is: "Do cosmological arguments provide sufficient evidence to justify the existence of a God?"

Before anybody says anything, I'll make a few things clear

• This is not a biased, one sided paper, and aims to evaluate and analyse evidence from both sides of the argument prior to reaching a conclusion
• Biblical references are unnaceptable, as a dissertation I can't say science says a,b and c, but the bible says x, y and z so therefore this is how it is, because this won't make a strong argument or a good paper.
• I'm interested in cosmological arguments only, from any religious background.
• If you have anything good to read, or sites featuring passages from books I'd appreciate that, especially non-biased, or two-sided material.
• For or against it, both are useful to me

I've so far looked at philosophers (mainly looking at it from a philisophical standpoint) such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, Hume, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Socretes, Bertrand Russel and William Lane Craig.


Anything without a reference is useless to me.


Thank you very much, and I hope you all have a pleasent day.

[Criboo]

Re: Hello from Scotland

(Sorry couldn't find an edit feature)

This paper is at present not leading to either conclusion that cosmoligcal arguments do, or that they don't provide sufficient evidence, that'll be decided when all my arguments for and against are down and whichever are strongest at the end

[Redeemed Papist]

Re: Hello from Scotland

God exists because otherwise who is the Bible talking about exactly every time it says "God"?

[SisterNeedsASaviour]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Well that's just silly anyway because God must exist or he wouldn't have been able to write the bible..... right?

And I mean like - the bible certainly exists - ergo. Ipso facto. Herein and therefore henceforth the undersigned shall all agree - God has to exist - because the bible didnt just magickally appear one day up on top of some mountain now did it?
(well Ok so bits of it did but only to Moses and they put those Commandmenty bits in the book later anyway).

So that proves it. I may not be any Rhodes Scholar mate but even I can clearly see the logic in that!



I think someone needs to get down on their knees more often...and not just out the back of those godless gay nightclubs the OP prolly frequents neither!

[Ezekiel Bathfire]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Hi, I'm Chris, I'm from Scotland,

Do you wear a skirt?[quote][LIST]

[*]This is not a biased, one sided paper, and aims to evaluate and analyse evidence from both sides of the argument prior to reaching a conclusion

2 Chronicles 15:13 Whosoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.

[*]Biblical references are unnaceptable, as a dissertation I can't say science says a,b and c, but the bible says x, y and z so therefore this is how it is, because this won't make a strong argument or a good paper.

You'd make a shit lawyer son, this point should have been your first.

As it is, I've gotten in my quote before the restriction that you are arrogantly and unilaterally imposing upon the Word of The Lord.

I've so far looked at philosophers (mainly looking at it from a philisophical standpoint) such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, Hume, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Socretes, Bertrand Russel and William Lane Craig.

I don't see Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, Ann Coulter, Carl Rove, Rush Limbaugh named there. All you've done is named some random catlix and foreigners.

Anything without a reference is useless to me.

Do Bible references count?

Thank you very much, and I hope you all have a pleasent day.

And I hope the warm blood of The Lamb of God suffuses your very soul with righteousness.

[Little Donkey]

Re: Hello from Scotland

(Sorry couldn't find an edit feature)

This paper is at present not leading to either conclusion that cosmoligcal arguments do, or that they don't provide sufficient evidence, that'll be decided when all my arguments for and against are down and whichever are strongest at the end

Son, since you're interested in cosmonological evidence only then you should spend a little time on part of this website devoted to Creation Science. There you will find compelling arguments based on scriptural and logical facts. I'll start you off here and here. If you're well behaved (doubly hard for an atheist and a drunk Scott), then someone may even start a thread with your title Do cosmonological arguments provide sufficient evidence to justify the existence of God? Then you can simply cut and paste the answers into your thesis.

[Humongous]

Re: Hello from Scotland

well, shoot. I heard that scotlandians worship a statue of Mel Gibson dressed up as a woman? Y'all all need to get right with Christ!

In His name,
Lori H.

[WilliamJenningsBryan]

Re: Hello from Scotland

...
I've so far looked at philosophers (mainly looking at it from a philisophical standpoint) such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, Hume, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Socretes, Bertrand Russel and William Lane Craig.


Anything without a reference is useless to me.


Thank you very much, and I hope you all have a pleasent day.

Any normative inquiry into the matters of epistemology and ontology that ignores the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein is likely to be a product of pure flatulence, particularly as it relates to cosmological arguments. Keep in mind that Jesus killed cosmologist Dr. David Schramm in a violent plane crash for delving into these matters, and probably also for likening God's creation of the universe to an expanding bran muffin rather than the Book of Genesis (Bible – KJV1611).

[Criboo]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Thank you to some of the responses above, in particular to Donkey, however, it's not as simple as copy/paste, I need to be able to source well respected academics and their books/articles/journals etc

References to the bible are not useful for the purposes of my dissertation, and a convincing argument can't be made out of "well this is what the bible says" when the whole point is to debate conflicting theories to arrive at a well informed conclusion.

In response to Bathfire, you telling me I should be put to death isn't appreciated, nor relevant to my questions, in your eyes I am foreign, and quite frankly, the place the people presenting their views and theories come from is not important, rather it's what they present, I've named a few, some of which are pro creation, others are anti creation, you probably don't know who half them are or what they said. Pat Robertson is useless, as he predicted judgement day would come in 1982... here we are, 30 years later. He also predicted the stock markets would collapse in 2010, after a huge increase in violance... this did not happen.

And my "skirt" is called a kilt.

Scottish people do not worship Mel Gibson... quite the opposite, we hate him.

Thank you William for mentioning a credible name, I've actually looked into him already and plan to use a few bits and pieces of what he believed.

[Criboo]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Ohh and also, no, Jesus did not kill Dr. Schramm, and the universe is expanding.

[James Hutchins]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Ohh and also, no, Jesus did not kill Dr. Schramm, and the universe is expanding.

Who did kill him? People do not just die for no good reason.

Expanding? That makes no sense. Mrs. Hutchins was serving pie the other day as my boys and I were discussing the Bible. The subject of expansion came up and we all agreed, the universe is not expanding, in fact it is shrinking. Every one of my boys agrees, the house, the plantation, everything has gotten smaller over the years. My son John (likes his numbers) explained it used to take him 45 minutes to walk from the front door to the main gate. It now take him 20 minutes. It used to be about 3,100 steps and is now about 1, 750, proof of a shrinking Earth. The only thing that has remained constant is the smell of Mrs. Hutchins hot pie wafting out of the kitchen.

Instead of relying on hearsay and gossip, you need to confirm things for yourself.

[Humongous]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Scottish people do not worship Mel Gibson... quite the opposite, we hate him.

well, I guess that makes sense as to why y'all all worship his statue and not him. That sounds a mite confusing though, liken some kinda idol worship? And whycome you got a statue of Mel dressed up like a girl? Why not make him a Road Warrior statue? Anyhow, ifn ya take a look at yerself with the divine light of Christ, it should clear up yer confusions.

YIC,
Lori H.

[JustGotSaved]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Well the whole thing is really curious, isn't it?
"Do cosmological arguments provide sufficient evidence to justify the existence of a God"..... just thinking out loud here...

Of course, we see this grand universe, apparently perfectly tuned to create MAN, and that's a curious thing. However, if it was accidently
tuned to create sentient blobs then those blobs would probably think that there must be a God Blob in their blob skies. Well, perhaps the
Ameoba's actually DO think that, since they're just blobs anyway. And the universe was obviously perfectly tuned to create them.

Way back in my pre-Christian days, I'd ask myself: "Wouldn't it be cool if the universe itself EVOLVED and grew and eventually became SELF
AWARE?" Then it occurred to me that we ARE the result of that. Humankind on Earth IS the culmination of the evolution of the universe. We
are not RESIDENTS of the universe, heck no, we are just as much the universe as Jupiter, the gas between stars, the galaxies, and all that
are. And are we not self-aware? So really we ARE the "universe made self aware". HEck, what would you expect a self-aware universe to be?
Be a star-trek energy lifeform with godlike powers? Or a thinking mass of electrons spanning light years? Not necessarily! A self-aware
universe is just US. Each one of us is a little knot of atomic and sub-atomic particles swirled around and congealed into a body. These are the
exact same particles that make up everything else in the universe.

Of course, just as a Dog is superior in intellect to an Amoeba, and we are superior in intellect to a Dog, there might be other lifeforms
that are superior to our intellect. In that case, we certainly aren't the "culmination" of the universe's evolution. We may in fact be
plain old permanently limited as to what we can achieve. A dog has no concept of algebra, or how an automobile works, and if we wanted to
teach him that, it'd be useless. No, the universe that the dog knows is purely Sniff Sniff, mouth-open joy, running to greet master and
feed at the magical bowl. That IS his universe. That IS his truth. Nothing in his world is a lie or incomplete. It's a universe as true as
our own, but so different. So maybe we just cannot discover certain things, like faster than light travel, or cannot see the spirtual
world or extra dimensions, though higher creatures could. Our scope, our awareness, our potential is just hard-coded with a limit. At
least we can see in color though.

Well, anyway, back to the point. Does the fine-tuning of the universe provide evidence of God? As a pre-christian, i'd have to say "no",
because besides the "if we didn't find ourselves in a safe universe, we wouldn't be asking these questions" truism, there's also the
multi-universe theory which says there are infinte universes out there already and surely it's no coincidence that at least one of them
supports the creation of human life. Hmm, or maybe that's the same point really...

But as a born-again Christian with several thousand years of expert testimony to fall back on (the Bible), especially Genesis, and the
Holy Spirit of the Saviour to talk with, and given the the many variants of Christianity since then each having violent disagreements on everything
under the sun except the fact that God created the world and humans to worship Him, I'd have to say that the thoughts I listed above are
complete and utter foolishness and you'd have to be pretty close-minded to even give them a moment's consideration. So, "yes" is my answer
to your question.

[Redeemed Papist]

Re: Hello from Scotland

Ohh and also, no, Jesus did not kill Dr. Schramm, and the universe is expanding.

The so-called universe doesn't actually exist, you know.

[Thomas Dalton]

Re: Hello from Scotland

well, I guess that makes sense as to why y'all all worship his statue and not him. That sounds a mite confusing though, liken some kinda idol worship? And whycome you got a statue of Mel dressed up like a girl? Why not make him a Road Warrior statue? Anyhow, ifn ya take a look at yerself with the divine light of Christ, it should clear up yer confusions.

YIC,
Lori H.

I believe they make him wear a kilt, since secretly they worship the Devil and want to spit on God by ignoring Deuteronomy 22:5. They're also quite crafty in hiding their idol-worshiping. I've lived there my whole life, and I never managed to witness it. If it wasn't something utterly perverted, they wouldn't go such lengths to conceal themselves, wouldn't they?
I suspect they paint children's faces in dark rituals and sacrifice them to Satan while chanting Gibson's name. I'll get them one day.

But about God being true or not: Even science acknowledges him. The second law of thermodynamics state that it's impossible for the universe to suddenly exist and explode, so there must be a God. Since there's a God, the Bible is true, otherwise that God would make people worship a different religion, and Christianity wouldn't be the biggest religion in the world. Since the Bible is true, everything's God doing, the Earth is flat, and the Sun is only a light in the firmament.

How many times do we have to explain those atheist even their own precious science leads to the inevitable conclusion of a flat Earth and a firmament above it?