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Athiests.. How do you explain the beginning of time?

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darkxshade said:
This reminds me of that one thread a long time ago that poses if God could create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift. Either answer disproves his existence as he is no longer omnipotent either way.
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That is awesome, like the ontological proof of god, perfect logic. Genius, thankyou It's going in my sig.
 
videogames101 said:
I'm not sure we disagree here? I was simply pointing out the apparently universal need for explanation.
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Perhaps we do. I'll agree that we humans have a near universal need to understand. When we can’t find an explanation that fits we have a tendency to make up a story and pass it off as true. If you think about it, it is the primitive premise the scientific method.

Observe a phenomenon.
Think of a possible explanation.
…
Profit!

As long as the answers to questions like 'where does the sun go at night' had no real consiquences this method worked perfectly fine. But if a society wants to continue to advance and not be crushed under the needs of their own ever growing population, then you need a better way of answering these questions.
 
neckarb said:
That is awesome, like the ontological proof of god, perfect logic. Genius, thankyou It's going in my sig.
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If you think that is awesome consider this argument:

Can god make an argument so absurd that even ATOT can't argue about it?

One way disproves the existence of god, the other disproves the existence of the rest of us.
 
neckarb said:
That is awesome, like the ontological proof of god, perfect logic. Genius, thankyou It's going in my sig.
Click to expand...
I hope you aren't being serious. :hmm:

:::looks at sig:::

Really? D: The rock too heavy for god argument is probably the poorest argument against a god's existence that has ever been assembled.

Quite simply, omnipotence does not entail the ability to create things which are themselves incoherent. God cannot create married bachelors or circles with corners, but that would not mean he isn't omnipotent.
 
Cerpin Taxt said:
I hope you aren't being serious. :hmm:

:::looks at sig:::

Really? D: The rock too heavy for god argument is probably the poorest argument against a god's existence that has ever been assembled.

Quite simply, omnipotence does not entail the ability to create things which are themselves incoherent. God cannot create married bachelors or circles with corners, but that would not mean he isn't omnipotent.
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The free will vs omniscience is a better approach, not perfect but far better.

He's obviously very young or very high though so we should probably cut him some slack.. 😉
 
Cerpin Taxt said:
I hope you aren't being serious. :hmm:

:::looks at sig:::

Really? D: The rock too heavy for god argument is probably the poorest argument against a god's existence that has ever been assembled.

Quite simply, omnipotence does not entail the ability to create things which are themselves incoherent. God cannot create married bachelors or circles with corners, but that would not mean he isn't omnipotent.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong I don't like it because it disproves god's existence, it doesn't it's absurd, and contradictory, it's just funny.
 
Cerpin Taxt said:
I hope you aren't being serious. :hmm:

:::looks at sig:::

Really? D: The rock too heavy for god argument is probably the poorest argument against a god's existence that has ever been assembled.

Quite simply, omnipotence does not entail the ability to create things which are themselves incoherent. God cannot create married bachelors or circles with corners, but that would not mean he isn't omnipotent.
Click to expand...

a circle with corner is incoherent , a married bachelor is in essence a contradiction , you cant be one while being the other.

how is a huge and heavy rock incoherent? you're only talking about size and weight of an object.

you must use proper logic to try and tear down a logical argument.
 
Danwar said:
a circle with corner is incoherent , a married bachelor is in essence a contradiction , you cant be one while being the other.

how is a huge and heavy rock incoherent? you're only talking about size and weight of an object.

you must use proper logic to try and tear down a logical argument.
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God can do anything, thus he can lift any rock, just like he cannot create married bachelors or square circles he cannot create a rock that is too heavy for him to lift, for the exact same reason.

It's you and not Cerpin that don't get the logic here.
 
If you are going to screw with God being all powerful, choose free will vs omniscience.

If god knows exactly what you will choose every time, do you really have a choice?
 
SMOGZINN said:
Perhaps we do. I'll agree that we humans have a near universal need to understand. When we can’t find an explanation that fits we have a tendency to make up a story and pass it off as true. If you think about it, it is the primitive premise the scientific method.

Observe a phenomenon.
Think of a possible explanation.
…
Profit!

As long as the answers to questions like 'where does the sun go at night' had no real consiquences this method worked perfectly fine. But if a society wants to continue to advance and not be crushed under the needs of their own ever growing population, then you need a better way of answering these questions.
Click to expand...

Again, where do we disagree? The universal need for explanation I was pointing out is evidence against the truth value of religions, because all humans tend to make up answers. Am I missing something here?
 
videogames101 said:
Actually, no, it's not.

Occam's razor, how likely is it that an omnipotent being exists?

Exactly, just about null.
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While I agree with you on an absolute basis I don't think you can apply Occam's Razor to higher dimensional space for which no theories have even been postulated and of which we are completely incapable of making any observations.
 
JohnOfSheffield said:
God can do anything, thus he can lift any rock, just like he cannot create married bachelors or square circles he cannot create a rock that is too heavy for him to lift, for the exact same reason.

It's you and not Cerpin that don't get the logic here.
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i agree that the free will debate is a better discussion ill grant you that.

but in regards to the rock. (yeah i like beating on a dead horse)

you say god can do anything, and so can lift any rock. ok...
so, are you saying he is NOT CAPABLE of creating a rock that he cannot lift?

how is he all powerful then?

last post i make in regards to the rock argument since theres better and easier ways to disprove gods.
 
Zee said:
time is a human concept. why do you insist there is a "beginning"?
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Yeah we went through this,... the conclusion was: as it turns out, time isn't a human concept the way we understand it is as a human is on a conceptual basis, but in fact it is one of the key elements of the universe, and not subjective.
 
TechBoyJK said:
By the world I live in. I don't buy that this all happened by "chance" and life has no meaning.
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So the explanation of the origin of your God is that you live in the world? Fine. My explanation for the origin of time is that I live in a world with clocks. I think we're done here.
 
lord_emperor said:
While I agree with you on an absolute basis I don't think you can apply Occam's Razor to higher dimensional space for which no theories have even been postulated and of which we are completely incapable of making any observations.
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Occam's razor destroys those spaces for you so you don't even have to worry about them. That's the whole point of Occam's razor. There is no God is a much simpler explanation than he must exist on some higher dimensional space that we have no idea about.
 
AyashiKaibutsu said:
Occam's razor destroys those spaces for you so you don't even have to worry about them. That's the whole point of Occam's razor. There is no God is a much simpler explanation than he must exist on some higher dimensional space that we have no idea about.
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Agreed, this is generally why I'm at where I'm at with God, there dosen't seem to be any logical reasoning that would be worthy of over-ruling the razor...
 
Danwar said:
i agree that the free will debate is a better discussion ill grant you that.

but in regards to the rock. (yeah i like beating on a dead horse)

you say god can do anything, and so can lift any rock. ok...
so, are you saying he is NOT CAPABLE of creating a rock that he cannot lift?

how is he all powerful then?

last post i make in regards to the rock argument since theres better and easier ways to disprove gods.
Click to expand...

It's as incoherent as a square circle, you are just thinking about it as creating and THEN lifting to make the excuse in your brain that it's not incoherent from the get go, the truth is that if it's just like creating a square circle, it cannot be too heavy even before the attempt to lift it.

It's the same argument as creating a square circle.

And you can't disprove God, you can disprove claims made about god but god is in itself a concept that is unfalsifiable, it's just like the celestial teapot...
 
lord_emperor said:
While I agree with you on an absolute basis I don't think you can apply Occam's Razor to higher dimensional space for which no theories have even been postulated and of which we are completely incapable of making any observations.
Click to expand...

Well you can for every claim made about a god which nullifies the concept in this universe at least.

However, Occams razor deals with probabilities, not absolutes. The easiest explanation is the most PROBABLE, not the absolutely correct.

There are a great number of instances where Occams razor is flat out wrong.
 
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