This sounds a lot like nerds trying to figure out how something in Star Trek or Star Wars works without any on-screen explanation...

That is an excellent analogy Dshiz.

Elfy: In a lot of parts C.S. Lewis gets all wishy-washy with his convictions with things like "But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong" to which a lot of the more dogmatic bible verses would disagree.

EDIT: Also, on many points the gospels contradict themselves. Clearly at least one version must be wrong. How do you choose which to believe? And does the invalidity of that one part of the gospel call into question the validity of other parts (even if the gospels agree on something, would their mutual disagreements not call into question the validity of the things they agree on?)

Better than you might think. Christianity comes with a director-approved Expanded Universe which fleshes out a lot more of the details. Not everything has to happen on-screen for it to be canon.


That doesn't sound at all wishy-washy - just a friendlier way of saying "I think that I'm right and you are not" than "BURN IN HELL SINNERS!11!!" But your original complaint was not about wishy-washiness, it was that he doesn't constrain himself to scriptural sources, and I still fail to see how that is a problem.


What do you mean here by "contradict". The narrative structure in a series of sermons and miracles is largely chronology independent. To carry on our TV analogy, it's a little bit like watching Stargate SG-1: the timing of the season opener, finales, and maybe a few critical episodes are important, but you could reshuffle most of the rest of the season without running into problems. In fact, given when the accounts were written versus when the events occurred, it seems significantly more plausible that the events a group of witnesses could recall would not be ordered strictly chronologically. The teachings themselves would have been (rightly) considered more important to preserve and transmit accurately than their exact timestamp.

If you had something else in mind by contradictions I'd be interested to see what you come up with - as long as it's not another complaint about genealogies which have been inappropriately translated to convey parent/child relationships rather than ancestor/descendant relationships.

It's not that C.S. Lewis doesn't constrain himself to scriptural sources, it's that he contradicts them. Several parts of the bible say things along the lines of "all other religions are wrong."

What comes to mind immediately is the story of going to visit the tomb. The gospels can't decide how many women went to the tomb, and how many angels were in the tomb. Nothing too crazy, but it's just the first non-chronology one that came to mind. Could name a few more similar ones if you're interested.

In what way is he contradicting that? He's saying "if your religion doesn't say Christianity says on a point, than it is specifically wrong on that point." It's like taking DiffMerge to two different programs and doing a merge. If you have some lines of code that are the same, than merging isn't going to change those lines (i.e., they are "correct" with regards to the left hand file). Everything else is "wrong" with respect to the right hand file. Increasing the granularity of a discrete sampling process doesn't contradict the results of a lower resolution sample, it just adds helpful detail.


Honestly, it's not a theological issue, so it doesn't tremendously concern me......but I'll bite. There doesn't appear to be anything immediately contradictory about the women who are going. We don't have "Mary M. went and Joanna DIDN'T GO but Salome did" or "Mary M. went by herself". I think you get the point on that count. The same essentially goes for the angels if care to work it out, and really feel a need to justify Biblical inerrancy:
http://www.rationalchristianity.net/angels_tomb.html
http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/matthew-mark/how-many-men-or-angels-appeared-tomb

Forgive me for generalizing, but this seems like one of those issues that is thrown up as a ha-gotcha by the same sort of person who goes trolling with the omnipotence-paradox. My immediate reflex is not to stop and explain as I just did, but to wonder why you choose to fixate on "nothing too crazy" instead of the deeper issues (particularly since I'm not one to claim Biblical inerrancy). We can play these games all day, but there are much more deeply interesting philosophical issues to discuss than nuancing a trivial natural language set-theory problem that wasn't intended as such. I was hoping you'd get creative and at least ask some NT vs OT questions - or anything with philosophical consequences.

If you want philosophy, just answer me this: Why does there need to be a god?

Because idiots around the world need something to put their faith in so when they screw up they have something else to blame on.

Seriously guys? Think about it this way. God exists. It exists as an IDEA. If no one believes in it thenit dies. therefore God exists in the minds of men and nothing more.

Because you can't have an end without a beginning, and you can't have an object without a creator. The existence of the universe itself is, in my mind at least, an unsolvable paradox without a force outside it's very laws. How can all this exist without something to create it? How can the universe be here now without a beginning? How can that beginning occur without a force to spur it? If you simply add a beginning force or "God", it still doesn't solve that paradox. "Who created god? What started the big bang? The only way in my mind to solve it, would be for the force that created the universe to be outside it, thereby outside it's laws of physics and logic. It's just an idea, but I've yet to hear of any other way to solve this existence paradox.

There doesn't seem to be a logically-sound explanation for the beginning of all time. That doesn't mean we should all subscribe to magical thinking. It could just be that, in our current state of development, we lack the ability to observe the origin of the universe.

If you want another paradox to consider: The universe is generally considered (among scientists) to be deterministic. This means there has to be some antecedent cause preceding every event; but it's self-contradicting, because there can't be an unprecedented event that resulted in the beginning of the universe itself. In other words: There can't be an "event zero" that did not result from any prior occurrence.

If the universe is deterministic, then the only logical pattern I could think of is some sort of predestination paradox. This is to say, the events that form and destroy our universe are entangled. As one phase of the universe collapses, the result is the creation of the next phase of the universe. These phases are unnumbered and not differentiated, because they do not occur in any linear sense of time. This is the only way the beginning of the universe can occur without influence from any external causality. This would mean that existence as we know it is locked in some sort of inescapable "time prison." (for a lack of better wording) The universe has to end a certain way, begin a certain way, etc. and all events that occur therein would have to be reproduced with exact accuracy each time.

At least, that's what I'm holding onto for now.

You say that there cannot be an "event zero" - I agree. While I cannot sufficiently back it up, the most promising theory to me is that it never had an event zero - it has always been here, forever. The universe is currently expanding due to the big bang. However, the rate at which it expands is slowing, due to gravity. Eventually, gravity will start to cause the universe to contract down to a very small point. The interaction of elements within that point would, I think, be sufficient to set off another big bang, continuing the cycle.

However, I dropped by this thread for a different reason. Today, in politics class, we were discussing various court cases in the United States. One case came up where a family refused to treat their son's cancer based on religious beliefs. This pissed me off beyond belief. I got more angry than I have in a long time. These people were threatening the life of a child in the name of some god that I *know* doesn't exist. This drove me outrageously mad, and it just stuns me that people would be so stupid to risk the life of a child for some deity I don't think exists. There is a line at which I am no longer tolerant.

Sorry, but you're wrong about the rate of universal expansion. The rate is actually increasing. The reason behind this is unknown, but the force behind it is being called Dark Energy.

DShiznit actually sums it up very well without really delving into the scientific models involved. The universe we live in is almost certainly described by one of several models of quantum mechanics. Many Worlds would mean we probably live in what is essentially a giant simulation playing out every possible permutation of reality. The Copenhagen Interpretation and the de Broglie-Bohm Interpretation both represent single universes. I suppose all three models would require a prime cause of sorts, but cause doesn't really mean much in the Many Worlds Interpretation since every cause has every possible effect across the multiverse (note that this is not the same meaning of multiverse as used in string theory). That still leaves the other two requiring an external initiative. Of these, the Copenhagen Interpretation is compatible with my worldview, but I suppose that de Broglie-Bohm could make a lot of Calvinists happy.

Experimentally, they are indistinguishable, as far as we understand them, but certain anecdotal and experiential evidences really don't make sense to me except in the light of a God who responds to prayer (which of course requires that I accept theism and not deism). More philosophically, I don't believe that a being that could create an entire universe would be content to simply let it sit there and do its own thing - a work of art is never finished.


Idiots like Freeman Dyson, Kurt Gödel, Max Planck, Isaac Newton, etc?


Your argument is based on the axiom that God only exists as an idea. You use this to claim that if people reject that idea, then God dies out, and proceed to conclude God only exists as an idea. This is what people who understand reasoning like to call a tautology. It is not a logically valid form of argument.


This is incorrect. Bell's Inequality is fundamental to modern physics, and it says that we can't have a universe that preserves both determinism and locality. Even the Many-Worlds Interpretation is only deterministic insofar as it deals with a multiverse where choices result in new universes where all possibilities play out. To an observer in any one of those universes looking back through history, each event would appear to be nondeterministic.

Assuming the rest of your post is predicated on determinism, you may want to go back and rethink it a bit (unless you want to argue in favor of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics first). There are some interesting cosmologies based on a cyclical universe, but as Pseudo points out, we don't appear to live in one based on the current rate of universal expansion.

@ Elfprince13 No idiots such as the rest of the world. And well if nobody ever believed in God or thought up of "Him" then wouldn't it just not matter since no one ever thought up of him? I am saying that for example, if no one thought up of the word "cake" then cake would not exist. same goes for God. Besides think about it, don;t you think its odd that no mention of God was around until after Sumer? It just popped up like God was saying, "Hey folks, uh I decided to screw around with mortals again."

And completely irrelevant to that, if there is a God is there a Hell? And if so then do we also include the factors of Angels and Demons and what not?

EDIT:
And just so people don't get confused, I am an Atheist .

heh, an excellent book that brings up excellent point. I must say, the fact there were religions that were way before Christianity AND some of these religions were the base class from which Christianity derives its beliefs it is possible there is just not a god, but a son god, re-incarnation, etc.... in all: good point 0rac, I want to see elfprinces' reply (this topic is most illuminating.. )

Huh, because you seemed to be implying that only idiots believed in God, and all of those men did.



This is not the same thing you claimed originally, but the gist is the same. In your previous argument you both defined and concluded that God only exists as an idea. Now you are arguing that God may exist as something other than an idea, but we only have the idea of God if we come up with it. While this argument is broader, it has the same failing as the previous one. Cake is unable to introduce itself, I can't think of any reason why God would be unable to introduce Himself if He wanted to ensure that people continued to have an idea of His existence.


What do you mean by this? It seems pretty clear that humans have had some conception of the existence of God for a very very long time.


That's an interesting question and my response depends on what you think those terms mean.


Abraham was of Mesopotamian decent. Doesn't the fact that the beliefs associated with his descendants predate him give more credence to their potential truth? (i.e., he didn't just make them up himself).

No I still say God is an idea, because you have to believe in ideas to give them credence. That post was the exact same, just added more clarification, since your response didn't seem to understand it. Also yes cake is unfortunately not able to speak, and thereby communicate its coming, yet someone created it. I am trying to draw the same parallel to God; it did not exist until someone created it. If you want, its like a painting, it didn't exist until someone painted it.

Secondly, "Conception of God" doesn't cut it. There was no defined term such as "God" (I am talking about the God), there were however deities that sprang from Pagan beliefs in 'spirits". But that is another topic altogether. Back to what I was saying, many ideas we say are true simply did not exist back then, so they used a "One thing fits all" to cover so called miracles. Modern Science can prove all this including how we came to be. So no the ancients did not have any idea or cognition of God.

Thirdly, "Doesn't the fact that the beliefs associated with his descendants predate him give more credence to their potential truth?" following the above statement in my post, this is not true. It can only be true if God somehow predated humans which is near impossible to prove since dinosaurs are all dead and we have no way to see what they were thinking. Its somewhat like a paradox.


*Phew... All that typing made my wrists sore.

I don't know what you're talking about, so you'll need to give me the Layman's run-down on this. If you're stating that there is randomness in quantum phenomena, I don't believe this. Our understanding of quantum mechanics is still in its infant stages, and there are too many challenges with even being able to observe such phenomena without influencing it.

The idea of true randomness is absurd. It's like magical thinking. If we can't predict the behavior of something, then it either doesn't exist, or the underlying influences just aren't evident to our ability to observe.

Or maybe because it IS true randomness therefore we can't comprehend. I tend to see a general pattern: That which we cannot understand we shunt to the "Miracles/Work of thy Holy God" category.

And yet another random question: How the heck did "Holy, sacrosanct, sacred, sanct*" get to be an adjective for anything to do with God?

Go ahead and predict this accurately for me: http://www.random.org/

What you can't? Oh, well I guess it doesn't exist then.

Anyone who has coded understands that randomness doesn't exist. The process of generating "random" numbers is just a set of convoluted instructions that rely on so many dependencies that it produces an outcome which can't be reasonably predicted by an outside observer.

The site says it uses atmospheric noise to generate numbers, but doesn't supply a sufficient explanation of how atmospheric noise is "truly random." It goes on to concede that it is believed to be random (or, at least, practically random to the limitations of the observer) because we lack sufficient understanding of how to observe the universe to begin with; thus, we believe the phenomena we can't identify as deterministic is, in fact, non-deterministic. That's a leap of faith. I don't see the point in a total refrain from conventional reason just because we are unable to observe the causal relationships behind something.