God


 * Aquinas isn't making a temporal argument though. Aquinas is happy to grant there could be an actual infinity of temporal moments. Aquinas is asking about sustaining causes, namely what is responsible for motion and sustained existence.

"Sustained" motion presupposes that, left alone, things naturally come to a stop. This is a vestige of Aristotle that was superseded by Newton's conservation of momentum. "Sustained" existence has the same issue, but the energy (mass) conserved is intrinsic to the object itself.


 * St Thomas Aquinas proved the existence of God inthe 13th century. Climate change is altogether more difficult

Aquinas: "I don't have a pile of observations, but here's some clever word salad proving God exists"

Christian: "Okay, I'll buy that."

NOAA: "We don't have a clever word salad but here's a hundred years of ocean temperature data proving change."

Christian: "I don't buy that."


 * The existence of a prime mover- nothing can move itself; there must be a first mover. The first mover is called God. - Thomas Aquinas

If nothing can move itself, then God cannot move himself. If God cannot move, then he cannot perform the act of setting something in motion because that act consists of transferring motion from one thing to another.


 * God is not a thing. It is implicit that God is uncreated, that's the whole question we are begging. Stating that God must have a cause is just a rephrasing of the question whether God exist. You are simply not talking about the same god.

If God is not a thing, then you make the atheists' case and his existence is not demonstrated. If the claim is that God has a privileged status outside of the rule that something must have a cause, then by reflection God cannot also be a cause. The privilege becomes a hindrance.


 * Aquinas's Third Way. Put simply, for contingent beings, that do not exist in their nature, to have continued existence, necessary existence, whose nature (essence) is to exist, must exist.

In physics we observe that certain types of matter may be created or destroyed. Still, the mass and energy associated with such matter remain unchanged in quantity after the transformation. Put simply, while matter or energy is contingent, the composite mass-energy is necessary.


 * I dared to question the brilliance of Augustine (from whom we received the doctrine of ‘original sin’) and Aquinas (who gave us such humdingers as the ‘argument from degree’).

The Argument from Degree:

A bachelor is summoned to a job interview on short notice. He wanders around his studio sniffing shirts in a desperate search for his least-smelly shirt, which by definition must exist. That shirt, when he finds it, is acceptable for the interview.


 * Aquinas's fifth way, is the principle example I'm thinking of. It argues from the fact that natural things like a heart is directed toward pumping blood, and an acorn is directed toward becoming an oak tree. It argues from final causality to a Supreme Intelligence.

This is why most Christians can't stand the theory of descent with variation and natural selection. Given time, organisms, without planning or forethought, adapt to become optimized for their environment. This presents a simulacrum of design.


 * Anselm defines God as that which nothing greater can be conceived. If you can conceive this being in your mind, it exists in your mind, if this being only exists in your mind then a greater being can be conceived, i.e. one that exists in reality, thus God must exist in reality.

What exists in the mind is only thoughts and memories. You can have thoughts of a being in your mind, but that does not imply the being exists in your mind.


 * Not sure I get your point. God is uncaused since he is an infinite being. Saying God needs a cause for him to exist is begging the question. If God would have a cause he would not be God.

I see. So you are arguing that God is a special case and the rules of cause and effect don't pertain to him. But the road to Tel Aviv is also the road to Damascus. Which is to say: If God cannot be the effect of a cause, then he also cannot be the cause of an effect.


 * Your referring to the New Testament which is only a portion of the Bible. I'm not an atheist but the books of the Bible were written by & compiled by men.  Judaism, Christianity & the Islamic faith all worship the one same God.

Are you sure it's the same god? The god Christians worship has a son. The god Jews worship demands the shedding of the blood of animals to forgive sin and the god worshipped by Muslims does not.


 * We are all made in the image of God. That revolutionary and innovative doctrine eventually put in into slavery. Atheism did nothing. In fact, Atheism has its own history during the 20th century were 150 million people.

Correlation is not causation. If you bet Argumentum ad Stalinum I raise Argumentum ad Testosteronum: All the genocidal dictators of the 20th Century were also men.


 * Common atheist tactics exposed:


 * 1. Define faith as "trust without evidence".
 * 2. Claim that this is what the religious mean when they talk of Faith.
 * 3. Ignore any critique or correction.
 * 4. Ignore the arguments for the existence of God.
 * 5. Reduce everything in live to physics.

Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as evidence of invisible things. In other words, your emotion of assurance in invisible things is sufficient evidence they exists. This fails because emotions are not valid epistemological tools. If they were, then Mormonism would also be true.


 * Lmao! It created itself? Bwhahahah! 🤣 The universe had a beginning if the bible says it was eternal you would literally scream it had a beginning! Anything but God right? What is sick is that you rather believe in the IMPOSSIBLE than to believe in God what a sick individual.

Xian: "Name something that doesn't have a beginning."

Atheist: "The universe."

Xian: "Ha ha ha, you believe the universe created itself!"

Atheist: "Does God have a beginning?"

Xian: "Of course not!"

Atheist: "Ha ha ha, you believe God created himself!"


 * Now, since Paul kept repeating in his epistles that salvation was by faith alone, not by works, why would he write that? Because the other gospels had elements of works in them. This is what separated Paul's Grace gospel from all other gospels in the Bible.

Jesus (Matthew 19:17): "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."

The gospel according to Paul vs. the gospel according to Christ. We report, you decide.


 * Daniel 9:2 claims that Jerusalem was desolate for 70 years.


 * Since that didn’t happen, any other calculation is going to be really messed up!


 * (Jews in exile for 54 yrs after Jerusalem fell. Then Ezra leading a small group to rebuild almost 80 years later).

Nebbie has a vision of an idol with a (1) head of gold (his empire), (2) arms of silver (Medes), (3) belly of brass (Persians), (4) legs of iron (Greece), (5) feet of clay (Romans).

History didn't wrap up with Rome, so now the feet of clay is the EU and 2 was the MEDO-Persians !


 * By specifying Matthew 24, it seems like they may be alluding to the abomination of desolation.

Matthew relied on Mark, and Mark, writing from the middle of the Jewish war, basically blew off the actual abomination of desolation of the Greeks 200 years earlier and had Jesus "prophesy" a new one. But the Romans just burnt the whole Temple down so Luke deleted "abomination".


 * Correct. Luke necessarily presents the sign of "desolation" as the armies surrounding Jerusalem, as the Temple can't very well have an abomination set up within it if there's no Temple.

Not to mention the intended audience of Luke's gospel was Gentiles who wouldn't care one jot nor tittle what defect in priestly ritual qualified as an "abomination", whereas Matthew, writing for Jewish Christians, made sure to collect all the Old Testament prophetic plot coupons.


 * Biden is the Son of Satan. The Antichrist was the perfectly evil human being because he was completely opposite to the perfectly good human being, Jesus Christ.Just as Christians came to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, so t that the Antichrist was the Son of Satan.

When I was a kid they told me Jimmy Carter was the Son of Satan.

After that they said Bill Clinton was the Son of Satan.

After that they said Barack Obama was the Son of Satan.

Now it's Joe Biden.

I'm not sure, but I think I'm starting to see a pattern here.


 * Christianity is the answer to the problem of evil.

Christianity's answer to theodicy (the problem of evil):

Romans 9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

IOW God in his supreme wisdom dishes out damnation and salvation as he chooses, who are you to question him? #atheism


 * In what way is the Argument from Motion weak? I’d love to see this. Lol

The premise "whatever is moved is moved by another" rules out the ability of a proposed First Mover to move when putting a second thing into motion.


 * Prediction: He thinks the Argument from Motion is the same as the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

In every case when something that is moved is put into motion by a cause of that motion, the cause itself moves. A sailing vessel moves when wind moves against its sails. But a First Mover is proposed who moves without himself moving, which is an instance of special pleading.


 * You claimed the resurrection is a denial of basic science. The burden of proof is on you to prove that claim.

Death is defined as the irreversible cessation of life. If the resurrection occurred, then the decedent did not die, by definition. At a minimum, the definition of death determines who has the burden of proof, and it is not the party that embraces the definition of the word.


 * Is it special pleading to say every atom except oxygen doesn’t have 8 neutrons and protons? Saying X is different from everything else in Y way isn’t special pleading.

It is special pleading when you make the case for the existence of a First Mover by postulating that everything that moves is set into motion by the motion of an antecedent until you arrive at the agent you are attempting to prove and insist that agent is neither moved nor moves.


 * FYI, my position is contrary to William Lane Craig’s position. I think an infinite regress into the past is possible.

If time extends to infinity in the direction of the past, and if time advances at the rate of one year per year, then there would have no upper bound on the number of years required to get to 2021, which is to say we shouldn't be all the way up here at the end of history already.


 * Atheists beware! Christianity is finally “proven” true. (By an enthusiastic Christian convert known amongst our side as the “Atheist Destroyer,” no less!) Time to get our postmortem affairs in order.

Wow. Now that Christianity is proven I suppose faith is no longer required. You just read the answer right off the dial.

Romans 8:24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?


 * Well, think about a teacher that teaches the Argument from Motion to his students. The Argument from Motion in the mind of the teacher is clearly a cause of the learning in the student, but it doesn’t have to change to change to some other argument to teach the student.

Does the Argument from Motion exists in the mind of the teacher, or does she recapitulate the Argument from Motion using a set of cues stored as memories? If anything could exist in the mind apart from thoughts and memories then Anselm's ontological argument would be valid.


 * Atheism is the belief that God doesn’t exist.

Question #1: Do you believe God exists?

Question #2: Will you answer question #1?

Theist: "Yes on 1 and yes on 2."

Atheist: "No on 1 and yes on 2."

Agnostic: "No on 2."


 * In other words “all beings” = “everything that exists.” It means the exact same thing.

Existence is substance in its actuality. Thomists claim that God's essence is to exist, yet deny that God has substance (immaterial). So they carve out a different definition of existence for God, and subsequently equivocate when presenting their arguments for his existence.


 * We think when we know things what we know is immaterial because it’s universal. What a dog is is universal to all dogs, for example. So our intellect has the ability to interact with the immaterial.

The interaction is strictly one-way. For instance, the distribution of prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37...) is immaterial and can be discovered by the intellect, but the intellect cannot re-order the primes in an act of will.


 * Well, Thomist think existence is an active thing, so that works anyway.

Aquinas: "Existence is that which makes every form or nature actual." (Summa I Q.4 Art. 4).

Since Aquinas uses "essence" and "nature" interchangeably, God's existence makes his nature (which is to exist) actual.

So you've got a vicious circle. Or "every" does not mean "every".