God2


 * Can you tell me how Aquinas' Argument from Degree proves the existence of god? I bet you can't.

The Argument from Degree says a bachelor has a least dirty shirt in his apartment, which is a tautology, but it doesn't follow that he has a clean shirt. The being with the greatest perfection is not necessarily a being with infinite perfection.

Modern cosmology says that the universe had a beginning. The bible says so too. God is the uncaused "cause" of the universe. If the universe is not eternal, it had to have a cause.
 * Creationists believe there is a first cause that is eternal - either God, or the universe.

The concept of "eternity" depends on a discredited view of absolute time. Space-time (also known as the gravitational field) is part and parcel of the universe that had a beginning. It follows, then, that the universe is both finite in duration yet has also existed for all time.


 * I don’t even know what you mean by “Absolute Being.” Necessary Being more indicates the fact that God necessarily exists than the fact that His essence is existence.

We have discovered that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed (ie. from mass to motion). This makes the universe itself a necessary being. If you add a necessary creator being into the mix William of Ockham will "Tut tut" from on high.


 * I don’t even know what you mean by “Absolute Being.” Necessary Being more indicates the fact that God necessarily exists than the fact that His essence is existence.

Essence is the set of attributes pertaining to a thing (ie. a stone has the essence of hardness and weight). You claim that God has the necessary attribute of existence. However, existence itself is not an attribute. First you have a thing, then you may speak of its attributes.


 * Technically, the Gospels and the Epistles are corroborating accounts, but you find a way to reject it anyway. So I don’t think the number of sources has anything to do with it. And our expectations regarding what we think God would do does place a role in whether we think it...

Gospels:

"Good Master, what shall I do that I may have eternal life?"

"If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments."

Epistles:

"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."

And that pretty much wraps it up for corroboration.


 * The Teleological Argument is actually about the per se cause of the tendency of each creature to an end. The origin of species via evolution is completely irrelevant, as evolution is a per accidens cause.

Natural selection and deep time results in the simulacrum of design. Aquatic mammals resemble fish because their form, after many reproductive iterations, is optimal for their environment. A valid argument from design must first rule out whether the design is merely apparent.


 * Uh, Paul describes Himself as an Apostle, so he does actually indicate that he at least received instruction from Jesus after His death, which is of course described in more detail in Luke.

Matthias was selected to replace Judas.

In Luke 22:30 Christ says, "That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."

Does that mean Matthias gets to boot to make room for Paul, or does it mean Paul is not an Apostle?


 * The argument from evil against the existence of God is unsound — the force it carries is purely emotional, not reasonable.

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." - God

"The LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth." - Daniel

'Nuff said.


 * I bet you don’t even know the most proper definition of God traditionally.

Traditionally the Hebrews were henotheists who believed in the existence of many gods, but were loyal to the god of Abraham. Then Yahweh was defeated by Marduk and the priests on the Babylonian Vacation reinvented the word to mean the lord of all, and deprecated the others.


 * "The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, and said "It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe." Huxley is wrong on that. Is that clear now?

Q. Will you answer one simple question?

Atheist: Yes Theist: Yes Agnostic: No

Q. Do you believe in the existence of God?

Atheist: No Theist: Yes Agnostic:


 * You’ve just generated an infinite loop problem… what is your “contingent cause” contingent on?

Girl: Why is the sky blue, Daddy?

Dad: "Air molecules scatter mostly green and blue sunlight.

Girl: "Why not red and orange sunlight?"

Dad: "It goes straight in."

Girl: "Why does it do that?"

Dad (sighs): "God made it that way. End of subject!"


 * DS would never say God literally became a contingent being. But as per Brown this is exactly what the text states.

Jesus said only the Father knew the timing of the Day of the Lord, not the Son. If God the Son shared this knowledge before the incarnation, then he lost the knowledge, which only a contingent being can do. If God the Son never shared the knowledge, then the Trinity is not One.


 * The unity between the divine nature and the human nature occurs in the person. The divine nature and the human nature still remains distinct, and so the human nature is contingent, and the divine nature is noncontingent

This unity occurs in linear time. There was a moment when God the Son was not a person with two natures, and there was a subsequent moment when God the Son was a person with two natures. So the personhood of God is itself contingent, while the personhood of the Father is not.


 * Because the Woman was "touch" and infected by serpent malice, she now cannot resist the concupiscence. Do you think sexual procreation is the sin that Adam & Eve committed in the garden, a Temple of God? They defiled the Temple of God, that's why they were cast out.

I think it was because God said the fruit was fatal within 24 hours, and Satan said the fruit was, rather, brain food, so Eve carried out a scientific experiment to find out who was lying, with Adam as a control group to rule out sex-based differences. The result: brain food.


 * Yes I noticed that too...if you carefully read the verses before after like you say it says the tomb Abraham bought was in Shechem when it was really in Hebron which appears to be roughly 30 miles away I dont see any way around that being simply the author of Acts made a mistake.

Christian apologists: "Hebron was called Sechem spiritually."

Atheists: "And the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14?"

Apologists: "Jesus was called Immanuel spiritually."

Atheists: "Wasn't Adam and Eve supposed to die the day they ate the fruit?"

Apologists: "They died spiritually."


 * "If a thing is observed to exist, that observation is evidence of the existence of that thing." Correct. "The putative cause of that thing is a deduction, and deductions are not evidence" Logical deductions are evidence for sure.

Evidence of speciation is fertility data recorded after crossing members of two populations. When the fertility of the offspring of those crosses approaches zero, this is justification for belief in speciation. But the analytic process of coming to belief is not evidence eo ispo.


 * Aquinas logic in this argument is only for bypassing an infinite regress of contingent intelligent sources and to arrive at a non-contingent intelligent source.

Time is part of space-time, and space-time is the gravitational field. That means time and the universe began together. That, in turn, means infinite regress is not a problem.


 * “Natural Law” is nothing but a euphemism for Roman Catholic dogma. It deserves all the same epistemic respect as transubstantiation, the creepy RCC belief that communion wafers magically become the literal flesh of Jesus.

Except that we had a priest who was an alcoholic, so the diocese made him use grape juice (mustum) to consecrate along with normal wine for the rest of the congregation. He assured us it still "worked", but if it really changed into Jesus' blood there wouldn't be alcohol, right?