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?


 * Religion stunts its adherents’ moral growth. Rather than being able to apply moral reasoning, people like Val are taught to understand morality as pure obedience to church authority. Leaving them tragically unable to participate meaningfully in discourse surrounding moral values.

Christians reduce ethics to the contentless tribalism of a boo-hooray theory. Boo for the Forty-Niners, yay for the Seahawks. Boo for communism, yay for capitalism. Islam = evil, Christianity = good.


 * Well, our Lord was nailed on a wood. So, it totally makes sense why a wood-related prayer was answered that fast.

Prayer is a vestige held over from a time when men thought they could bribe their local gods to bring good weather for their crops and what-have-you. After God became "eternal" with a "perfect plan" it's downright blasphemous to ask him to change it.


 * News Flash: God is the supplier of the sense of justice that atheists employ against His existence. Anonymous

God's justice: "If a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do."

Atheists justice: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall exist within the United States."


 * It’s as bad as theodicists who claim “God didn’t intend that slavery would be forever. He knew that we’d eventually get rid of it!”

God himself commanded that female slaves must never go free (Exodus 21:7). This isn't a problem for Christians, because God also commanded male circumcision and no eating swine.


 * A true and critical review of the universe, reality, and the Bible leads to belief. Any other outcome shows a lack of understanding

Bible: Water preceded the stars by four days.

Reality: Water contains oxygen, which was cooked up from H, He, Li, and Be by Population I stars which subsequently exploded and scattered the atoms throughout space.


 * The Bible, at least from my point of view, is an amalgamation of different genres. Some we can take as pure fiction, while others not so much. I think the issue with both atheists and Biblical literalists is when they try to push it as all one way or the other.

Atheist: "Genesis says Eve listened to a talking snake."

Believer: "That was pure fiction."

Atheist: "It also says murderers must be put to death."

Believer: "That's a very important doctrine."

Atheist: "But it's the same book!"

It is guaranteed in an infinite amount of time.
 * 2nd law of thermodynamics says heat death is inevitable in a long but finite amount of time.

1st law of thermodynamics says you can't have light by just saying, "Let there be light."


 * The universe is not eternal neither is matter and energy. The reason why you believe that is because the bible says it had a beginning. If the bible says the universe was eternal you would vehemently scream it had a beginning

If "eternal" means that something has existed across the entire domain of elapsed time, then the universe is eternal. If eternal means that there is no moment without a prior moment, then the universe is not eternal, but you have other problems.


 * 3rd Nephi in The Book of Mormon another Testament of Jesus Christ, gives one of the most accurate descriptions of the character of Christ you can find in any scripture.

Sure. The "Prince of Peace" set Zarahemla on fire and sank Moroni into the sea. He made a volcano erupt inside Moronihah and killed thousands of people. In the Bible he flipped some tables and maybe called some people whited sepulchers but he never killed anyone.


 * I define nothing as nothing. I had a discussion with an Atheist, who since blocked me, and he said there's a colloquial nothing and a scientific nothing. Quantum fluctuations are a something and nothing is still nothing.

Nothing is zero field flux at all scales, which of course is impossible because as you pin down a position with greater accuracy you know less about the field flux that exists there.


 * So what was before the big bang? Quantum Foam? Lmao! You do not know? 😅 So matter and energy must have created itself? How? Some idiots on this feed claim matter and energy is eternal.


 * The word "before" did not apply prior to the initial expansion of the singularity because that is also when time became operational.


 * Of course water was created where did it come from?

Water is co-eternal with God. He divided them with a firmament he called Heaven (Genesis 1:7), then divided the waters below to create land, which he called Earth (Genesis 1:10). If you say the waters were part of the Earth he created in Genesis 1:1 then there's two Earths.


 * They said God doesn't exist. They said no.

An "omniscient" god that has to call out to Adam and Eve when they hide from him, and has to go to Sodom to see how bad it is there, and has to make Abram almost kill his son to see if he really is loyal to him, that god doesn't exist by the law of non-contradiction.


 * So basically you don't even know why you exist? Is there a possibility there is a God? Yes organisms reproduce but their are limits to variation.

As I indicated, there is no possibility that a god with the simultaneous attributes of omniscience (Psalm 147:5) and contingent knowledge (Genesis 18:21) exists. It is ruled out by the most fundamental law of logic:

∄ (A & ¬ A)


 * How can you rule out the God of the bible? You cannot prove he doesn't exist. There is a possibility God does exist. There is zero possibility something can create itself.

Psalm 147:5 Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.

Hosea 8:4 They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not...

There does not exist a thing with an attribute in conjunction with its own negation.


 * You scoff at the bible but you don't have the foggiest idea 💡 why you even exist. Everything just made itself.

Atheist: "The Bible says there's windows in the sky that open to let it rain."

Believer: "Where?"

Atheist: "Genesis 7:11"

Believer: "No way, it doesn't really mean that."

Atheist: "Okay, but it literally says that."

Believers: "The problem is you don't believe the Bible."


 * What evidence do you want? If you can’t see the evidence of a Creator from the creation, then there is no point proving anything . You’re literally delusional to think the complexity of creation would have come to be without an intelligent mind. Creation in itself is the evidence

Principio Principii, or Begging the Question. You assume the conclusion as one of the premises. First demonstrate that reality is a creation and not itself extant across the entire domain of elapsed time.


 * No, that abomination of desolation refers to the falling of the temple in 70AD. The Jews have nothing to do with end time events. The Jews were cut off. The mark of the beast will be forced Sunday worship like the Bible heavily alludes to. The view of dispensationalism futurism

An abomination that makes desolate is to set up an idol in the temple, which was done by the Selducid king in 174 BCE. The Romans didn't even bother to do that, they just burned the whole temple down.

Atheists/secularists in the west push for the murder of innocent babies in the womb, I am a recovering empiricist (a stripe of atheism) and it will always lead to insanity.
 * Every nation that has embraced atheism has become a mass murdering tyranny. Every one.

But telepathically telling an invisible man that you accept him as your Lord and Savior because if you don't he will torture you for all eternity for being the descendant of a rib-woman who ate a magic fruit at the behest of a talking snake, why, that's the epitome of sanity.


 * "Like a sheep being led to the slaughter or a lamb that is silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth" (Isaiah 53:7). His silence is praised because there was no "deceit in his mouth" (Isaiah 53:9)

Sure. Silence. Mark 14:61-62 - Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.


 * Everything from God must be good

Judges 9:23 Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech.

Isaiah 53:7
 * “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”

Pilate therefore said unto him, "Art thou a king then?" Jesus opened his mouth and answered, "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born and for this cause came I into the world that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."

Isaiah 53:7 NIV
 * He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

Pilate asked, "Art thou a king?"

Jesus opened his mouth and answered, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence."


 * I argue that apocalypse characterizes the most popular religiously-interested literature in the contemporary period, the Left Behind series, but also the politics of the Christian Right. But the most important aspects are *not* End Times. /3

After God failed to wrap up history during the first generation after Christ there was a 90-degree pivot whereby the Kingdom of God was located permanently above, rather than horizontally at the end of history. The Left Behind mindset represents an attempt to reverse that pivot.


 * It's IMPOSSIBLE to follow every law in the BIBLE, because they contradict each other.

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

Paul, Galatians 5:4: "Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace."


 * it truly seems (no pun intended) that St. Matthew created a literary seam between the end of the Writings (Chronicles) and the beginning of the Gospels (i.e. his Gospel!) This isn't something Matthew just made up, rather because he knew he was writing the first book of the NT...

Mark was the first gospel written. In 6:5 he presents a difficulty (Jesus can do no mighty work in Nazareth) which is softened in Matthew (because of their unbelief) as scribes frequently do when dealing with a problematic source. This also occurs with Jesus' teaching on divorce.


 * "The Lord Jesus never lied.

"'You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come'...However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret." (Jesus, John 7:8,10)


 * Aquinas simply proposes that the energy came from God; however, Hawking proposes that the universe created itself from nothing because it needed to. Both proposals are rooted in FAITH.

When atheists hold that energy is eternal due to Emmy Noether's theorem of time translation symmetry this is supported by observation.

When Christians hold that there was no energy in the distant past, requiring an explanation for it's existence now, this is supported by faith.


 * Irreducible complexity also kills a survival of the fittest evolution, among other things.

The Mullerian Two Step kills irreducible complexity:

Three stones roll into a line to form a primitive bridge. A log gets wedged against them to improve it. The log ends get trampled into the banks. The stones roll away. The bridge remains, puzzling travelers how it came to be.


 * Aquinas proofs have all been debunked. All they get us to is "a cause".

Aquinas assumes time is different from that which comes into existence. No matter whether time extends to the infinite past or whether time began at a certain moment, there remains no moment for a cause to exist as the predecessor of time.


 * Why won't people get Aquinas's point? Things that are not self explanatory cannot terminate a regress of causes.

Does evil terminate in human free will or does it regress back to this first cause?

If humans are the cause of evil, then more than one self-explanatory thing exists.

If God is the cause of evil, then his punishment of evildoers is an injustice.


 * The Bible says that Gods judgements are unknowable and his ways are untraceable. What I can glean from scripture is that God created everything for his glory. So, this is the honest best answer I can give.

So he did it to show off. He did it so everyone could know that he could do it. If a woman wrote the Bible God would say, rather, "I put Jupiter out there to keep comets from smacking into the Earth, and I put a big moon there to stabilize the Earth's axis because I love yo


 * In classical theism, God is not part of the world. God is the creator, the world is the creation. The creator is not just the starter of everything, but that which holds it in being, all matter and time and energy.

In physics, anything which can be observed is part of the world. You can exclude God from the world, but you have to admit he is not observable, even in principle.


 * Hey atheists, you know how annoyed we get when a creationist asks, "If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?" That's how theists feel when we ask, "If everything has a cause, then what caused God?" Both questions are category errors

It is not a category error if (1) every thing has a cause and (2) God is in the set of all things. Believers usually avoid this dilemma by pleading that God is excluded from the set of all things


 * God talk is not about the contents of the world, what does or does not exist, hard truth claims. It’s about what we do with life, what we make of the world, and how we relate to it. It’s poetry more than science. If you don’t care for poetry, that’s fine

I love poetry, unless the poetry is used to set science curricula in public schools and to keep me from getting hitched to my gal.


 * St. Thomas Aquinas, for centuries, was considered the great Doctor of the Church. No pope, no council have ever said the opposite, but today, in the progressive and modernist church, increasingly pro-Protestant, we study Thomas Aquinas less and less.

“That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.” ― St. Thomas Aquinas, torture porn enthusiast.


 * This is powerful. This is true. Bible says Jesus found favour with God and Man Whilst luck finds us, we usually find favour that's why you hear 'and so so found favour...' in scripture. It all makes sense.  Thanks Pastey!

Luke 2:52 "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."

God the Son 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 in wisdom and favor. Think about that for a moment.


 * The suffering in the end times will be unbearable, the bible says. That's why Jesus returns. Please preach sermons on that. I do admire you as a preacher.

1939-1945: 56 million die in World War II.

Christians: "Not bad enough to count as the Great Tribulation.

Biden requires masks to travel by air.

Christians: "This is the unbearable suffering of the End Times."


 * No human can reasonably claim, with certainty, that there is no God. We are limited creatures. There could be much truth that we are incapable of perceiving, or ever comprehending. The reasonable thing, then, is to be neutral.

The set of observations contradicting existing theory, thus requiring the existence of a god to "explain" them, grows smaller by the day.


 * Ok. Thank you for listening. Are you familiar with the Unmoved Mover argument from Aristotle and updated by Thomas Aquinas?

The Unmoved Mover violates the law of conservation of linear momentum as updated by Newton.