Vatican says aliens could exist

[Beckwin]

^You remind me of Bill bill O'reilly (sp?) always putting words in other's mouths & twisting what they say. That's why I ignored all of your "questions." Oh well, the thread was entertaining for a few but it ran out of steam, ciao.

you're just a fucking hack that can't carry a conversation. anytime you're questioned you just get incredulous and storm out of a topic.

the way this works is you clarify the question for your purposes/how you view it and then give an answer, then there's something to work with in discussion. not just "here look at this link it's right. I can't explain it myself but if you disagree you're just wrong."

I asked a pretty reasonable, yet loaded for the sake of furthering the discussion, question and you respond by basically Godwin'ing me. Good job, champ.

I am saying god manifests him/her/itself in many things, numbers just being one.

Ok, something to work with. Can we agree that this conception of God thus exists in itself, as in, it is present in his creations? ("numbers" as in the manner in which matter/energy interacts, said manner and energy, concrete things, and so on)

[Demosthenes11]

i see where you are going with this and you are kinda talking to the wrong person about it. It's a dumb argument. My god is not perfect. I don't care if that goes against your definition of god. Just because something is defined a certain way in a language does not mean it is the end-all, be-all

[Beckwin]

well if the ontological angle doesn't matter to you, then there's not much point in pursuing that line any further.

just out of curiosity then, what serves as proof/gives you cause to believe in God? since we're on the subject. Is it just kinda the basic "intelligent design" idea?

[quannum]

my god can do the kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.

[Demosthenes11]

I guess so
Maybe I'm just a romantic but I just find too many things beautiful and perfect and it makes me believe
Others see those as beautiful in the sense of science. Just a little bit of both for me is all

[Blarg]

Are you a deist or theist demosthenes?

[Day]

I'm curious where you were headed Beckwin, seemed like you were trying to bait someone into saying something, but you kept losing me.

[Demosthenes11]

theist I guess? Never really tried classifying my beliefs

[quannum]

does your god intervene in earthly affairs in an on-going basis?
or is it just once-in-a-while?
or did he just knock over the first domino and is now watching things play out?

[Beckwin]

umm, there were a couple different paths I was heading towards.

the imperfection realizing perfection thing was about how we defined god based on what isn't, that is, non-things. non-existence.

with the dual nature element I was getting at, its kind of about that if it's agreed that God is "physically" present in reality and at the same time has an extra-reality identity/consciousness that we sort of have a contradiction, plus it really kind of wipes out the concept of free will. if god is physically manifested in our perceivable reality and he is indeed omniscient/omnipresent/all-powerful then he would be manifested in all things, all of his creations. and if all those creations are tied to his consciousness or will, then it becomes really hard to say that we are individuals and said individuals truly possess any sort of free will.

if you accept that existence precedes purpose, then you must believe that God has a consciousness. if you don't say that God has a consciousness, you then simply define god as the sum of all reality, at which point we're really not dealing with a god, we're dealing with things. now if you say that god does have a consciousness, and thus has a purpose or essence (he created stuff, he's all powerful, etc) then things get tricky because of imperfections in the creations, creating things (us) without a purpose doesn't seem perfect. and then back to him being manifested, and by extension his conscious, in all thing: you either erase free will; we are god and we are perfect, or erase the idea of god; we are god but we are imperfect. And arguing for the imperfections of individuals is readily apparent.

[Day]

I see, had to read that a few times... kinda slow learning new concepts. To be honest never really given it all this much thought outside of college like 6 years ago, but all that just seems like a mess to get into. I guess I've always pictured it as quannum said with the domino, so I dunno where that puts me... taking the lazy way out maybe, not sure.

[Beckwin]

well to be fair, you probably had to read it several times because I didn't write it all that well.

[Kaelan]

I see, had to read that a few times... kinda slow learning new concepts. To be honest never really given it all this much thought outside of college like 6 years ago, but all that just seems like a mess to get into. I guess I've always pictured it as quannum said with the domino, so I dunno where that puts me... taking the lazy way out maybe, not sure.

If your God created everything but can't interfere with any of it, or God to you is another name for "the forces of Nature" or something of the sort, then you're a deist. If your God authors books or acts as a holy-real-estate broker in his spare time, then you're a theist.
I've been meaning to reply to this thread, but I have work to finish first. Will reply later

[Kaylia]

So, and I want you to directly say this:

Your god doesnt know the future?

Some "god" ya got there.

Also, if you knew ALL things present, wouldnt you know what decision every person is currently making, thus what every person/particle will do that instant... And thus know what will happen next (and so on). Omnicience requires knowledge of all events through all time.

The god we are talking about would know about every possible branchings depending of your choice. Your free will isn't harmed, and his omniscience is still intact. I'm not sure why you're saying it would make him less of a God. The only contradiction that exist is when you make the premise that the universe is determinist (that God didn't create you to make choice). However, it's not the only definition one can give to omniscience.

Your second paragraph is self-contradicting in a philosophical debate about God. We have to assume in such debate that he exists, and nothing stop him from giving people a soul that transcend determism if he is omnipotent. That's where the whole religious debate lies.

Like I said on page 2-3 in this thread, I don't believe in such god, and I don't believe we have a "soul" or something like this, but you have to accept those premise if you want to argue about it. No point arguing about god's omniscience if you want to stick to a science argument. Not that determinism is a science argument.

They did blarg, but your forgetting the theist argument cycle:
1. Propose stupid premis.
2. Ignore countering evidence.
3. Keep premis forever, or re-propose same premis with different wording.

If you think the concept of "soul" is a stupid premise, than for the love of God [or lack of god], don't join those religious debate threads. And you should do real science once in a while if you think it can offer a solution to those philosophical questions people are arguing about.

[Kaelan]

It took me a while to realize this, but this is probably the reason most theists don't like arguing against any philosophically educated person ( and I'm not trying to imply that I am, there's several arguments that I'm still struggling to make heads or tails out of ) about God. Regardless of whether you get the arguments or counter-arguments though, any reasonably intelligent person should notice that there are way too many problems with the God idea.

A ton of problems start cropping up when you think about things like the simultaneous existance of God, "evil" and free will. The further you get into specifics, the worse it gets: things like contradictions between God's attributes (i.e. nothing can be omnipotent and omniscient, because each attribute violates conditions necessary for the other one to exist), contradictions even within single attributes (such as that any being that is concious and omnipresent cannot have thoughts, the paradox of omnipotence usually simplified in the question "if God is all-powerful, can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?", and several other problems).

You could, as people often do, re-define "God" every time an argument proves that your previous definition of God is logically impossible, but then you run into another problem. If there were only one or two arguments that were actually valid, this would be fine (well not really, if you ask me, but nevermind that). But there aren't one or two arguments like this, there are dozens. If you constantly re-define God every time a problematic argument shows up, you're eventually going to be forced to either: A) Take away so much from your God idea that it eventually ends up necessarily being "downgraded" into something like a deist God (in other words, "that which created the Universe", but that is still limited in several ways) or B) End up with something not worth calling God (taking God to be, by definition, "a being worthy of being worshipped").

This is usually the point most people just go, "fuck it, whatever, I believe what I believe, screw your logics!" (or my personal favorite cop out "God is beyond logic, he could even make square circles if he wanted to!"). In the end of the day, if someone believes in God, chances are you are never going to be able to change their mind based on pure logic alone, even if you could completely disprove any and all definitons of God they can come up with. They don't take logic seriously enough for that to happen.

and just to piss off the atheists:
The only proof of god I need is taking a breath and looking around every day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhZWGgvRjKI&NR=1

[Demosthenes11]

I don't get it
and I really don't see why people dying or suffering contradicts a belief in god. Suffering is a natural thing in life. The very first thing you do when you are born is cry. Happiness is only measured through suffering, as you can not be happy if you have not once suffered or have seen suffering, hell even heard of it.

The whole "disproving" of god seems nothing more than a stupid semantical argument.

[Neosutra]

So, and I want you to directly say this:

Your god doesnt know the future?

Some "god" ya got there.

Also, if you knew ALL things present, wouldnt you know what decision every person is currently making, thus what every person/particle will do that instant... And thus know what will happen next (and so on). Omnicience requires knowledge of all events through all time.

The god we are talking about would know about every possible branchings depending of your choice. Your free will isn't harmed, and his omniscience is still intact. I'm not sure why you're saying it would make him less of a God. The only contradiction that exist is when you make the premise that the universe is determinist (that God didn't create you to make choice). However, it's not the only definition one can give to omniscience.

Your second paragraph is self-contradicting in a philosophical debate about God. We have to assume in such debate that he exists, and nothing stop him from giving people a soul that transcend determism if he is omnipotent. That's where the whole religious debate lies.

Like I said on page 2-3 in this thread, I don't believe in such god, and I don't believe we have a "soul" or something like this, but you have to accept those premise if you want to argue about it. No point arguing about god's omniscience if you want to stick to a science argument. Not that determinism is a science argument.

They did blarg, but your forgetting the theist argument cycle:
1. Propose stupid premis.
2. Ignore countering evidence.
3. Keep premis forever, or re-propose same premis with different wording.

If you think the concept of "soul" is a stupid premise, than for the love of God [or lack of god], don't join those religious debate threads. And you should do real science once in a while if you think it can offer a solution to those philosophical questions people are arguing about.

Ill say it again:

So your saying your god doesnt know the future?

And secondly, you dont get to "assume" that god exists in all your logical arguments. Thats like saying "lets have a debate, but assume Im right lol".

[Kaelan]

Well, whenever someone talks about disproving God it only makes sense from a logical disproof standpoint. It works in the same way that you, having heard of the properties of triangles, can logically prove that a four-sided triangle is impossible, despite not having the ability to actually draw every possible triangle in existence.

As for the problem with "evil", there are several things that have to be taken into consideration. If you're really interested, try reading "Evil and Omnipotence" by J.L. Mackie, "The Problem of Evil" by J.L. Mackie, "A Sound Logical Argument from Evil" by Quentin Smith or "Unjustified Evil and God's Chioce" by Richard R. La Croix.

[Kaylia]

You could, as people often do, re-define "God" every time an argument proves that your previous definition of God is logically impossible, but then you run into another problem. If there were only one or two arguments that were actually valid, this would be fine (well not really, if you ask me, but nevermind that). But there aren't one or two arguments like this, there are dozens. If you constantly re-define God every time a problematic argument shows up, you're eventually going to be forced to either: A) Take away so much from your God idea that it eventually ends up necessarily being "downgraded" into something like a deist God (in other words, "that which created the Universe", but that is still limited in several ways) or B) End up with something not worth calling God (taking God to be, by definition, "a being worthy of being worshipped").

This argument is similar to the one I use when I talk to someone who believes in God and try to define it. Actually, it's exactly why I don't believe in a God, one defined by traditional religion.

The concept doesn't work well when you apply it to something finite to explain particular phenomenon. Like you said, it will create a contradiction sooner or later, and you have to redefine it. However, I do believe you can define god at the "infinite", without creating paradox or contradiction.

[Neosutra]

Can you yield that definition of and infinite uncontradicting god?