These are baseless claims. There's no evidence something like this exists or even could exist. And, more to the point, these claims don't change anything about what I said.
Maybe the issue here is coz of this quoting format. You asked about the characteristic -followed by how it's different from the universe- then I answered according to how Yahweh is described (since it's like the most famous and universal description for a god), but since I have explained it so many times I thought of expanding a little, so I added more canon characteristics.
Then you agree that we don't have enough information to say what must be true about the origins of the universe, making the first-cause argument moot.
I agree, yes. Though I don't know the word moot, but by how it translates I'd say yeah as well. Obviously is debatable, and I tell you more, it has little weight in comparison to the scientific research. I'd say it's just complementary.
The sciences are the only ways we have to discern what's true or likely true, regardless of its limitations. If a claim is beyond the scope of science, then there's no sound reason to believe the claim is true.
In principle I also agree with this one, but science is not all ,there's just so many things that happen to us throughout our life that are inexplicable and has this kind of spiritual connection, in fact (not my case) but we can't ignore how many people have had good/bad actual supernatural experiences: demonic possessions, exorcisms, enlightenment (idk if the term is correct), among others. If science can't tell us how that happens or why, we can't simple reject its reality. If we do it, we may be losing something. And for the record, I'm not saying we should believe just because we saw it in the movies or in a documentary whatever without experiencing them, just that at least IMO we should't reject them for good.
Science can absolutely demonstrate whether or not fortune tellers can reliably contact the dead (so far, this hasn't happened), but you are correct that a limitation of science is that it might not be able to explain how they do it. So what?
I wouldn''t be so sure. It depends on how you think they perform the contact (the succesful ones ofc, since there must be a ton that are fake or use spectacular methods for other reasons).
I know you were joking, but you didn't pay attention to my example, because in it, there was no change to the past.
As short as it was it didn't make sense to me really. You said I went back in time and accidentally killed you... So therefore I thought I killed you in the past. [?]
Your future self was the assailant. You didn't kill anybody except me (albeit accidentally). There was no other assailant.
That means the 'mystery' assailant was an exact replica of me in the same time period?
The question then becomes: What caused the events leading to my death? There isn't an obvious answer.
The obvious answer would be that I caused it, wouldn't it? But let's see your reply first.
Yes you do, because the entire premise of the first-cause argument is that something is true or likely true because "nothing else is possible." That's poor reasoning, and that's not even considering that the first-cause argument doesn't even eliminate other possibilities.
That's why I also asked if the 'universe creating itself in the future' proposition you exposed eliminated every other possibility in order to be accepted as one. I think if the firstcause arguement or any other argument eliminated every other possibility, then it would become like the definitve answer to this whole mystery and we wouldn't be discussing it.
This is probably the most intellectually dishonest thing you've said so far, and you should be embarrassed. You just admitted that you're only willing to entertain an idea if it's compatible with your preconceived notion that a god exists. That isn't how logical reasoning works.
I've actually said that way earlier, that I lean toward that possibility the most. I still can change my mind though, it's why I'm here reading more arguments, it's just that all of them seem to go along with it just fine. So by considering them I won't necessarily be moving from my position, which is good. But if tomorrow they really find out the definitive answer that disproves god, so be it, no need to be embarrased. That'll be bad-good, because god would be fake but the mystery would get solved once and for all.
I misspoke. I should have said "if we eliminated every possible cause of death we could think of." My point still stands however. If we eliminate every possible cause of death we can think of, that doesn't mean you're logically justified to accept another proposed explanation solely because we can't think of anything else.
I agree. But in that same scenario, suppose there are millennia-old traditions from all over the world that have been telling us from generation to generation that one day a magical pixie will give a strange death to a person in the forest. So, in my opinion, it's fine to accept that proposal even if we haven't discovered any living things like that yet. I can then further surmise that they are possibly not magical, or perhaps the descriptions given to them in the past were not that literal, etc. but accept the proposal nonetheless.
No rational basis for belief in God or belief in the actual possibility of God has been provided by you or anyone else. The first-cause doesn't get you close to either, for example.
We ran into the same problem once again. The subtlety of language. Depends of what we mean when we say rational. A philosophical argument even if it's just deductive is rational as a base to consider its possibility -not to accept it as absolute truth ofc- as long as it doesn't contradict itself or science finds out actual sound prove that debunks it, etc, although we don't know for sure its truthfulness. In this case in particular there is most likely nothing we can do as of now since there is no way to reach whatever spiritual by physical means let alone prove/disprove it, but I'm afraid not even that would allow us to conclude anything in the topic of creation.
Yes they are. The actual possibility of something must be demonstrated.
This one states nothing less that one initiator may be possible or at least not an irrational idea. Wouldn't it become a fact if it's demonstrated?
You're defending the indefensible.
Not indefensible just very tough, same as trying to reason why we may be made out of luck without intention nor purpose. I think it can only go as far as a metaphysical argument which is by definition unsound.
Every scientific theory I accept to be true is because of the evidence. If you take away that evidence, I don't have some sort of emotional reason for believing it. What I want to believe is irrelevant. In other words, I defend beliefs because they're supported by evidence, not because I'm emotionally invested in the claim being true. That's the difference between you and me. I care if my beliefs are true, but you care more about believing in God than whether or not the belief is true. My position is intellectually honest, and yours is not.
As a skeptical how did you come to accept a theory like let-s say the time travel one? How come you accept the evidence they presented?
This is an unsubstantiated claim that no rational person should believe is true.
There's no evidence for the miracles of jesus, but there are some well documented most recent cases of miracles performed in his name I think. It's something (lol). I get it though that from a rationalist point of view a religious claim like this is irrational to believe if you've not seen it by yourself, because even if you did witness a miracle,that would lead you to believe others without proof that are most likely fake.
There's no evidence the Bible is true. The presence of historical people or places in the Bible does not to demonstrate the truthfulness of anything else in the Bible.
Like any historical book from ancient age in fact. I mean of course it's not evidence for what it is said in every single passage/book of the bible, maybe for some of its historical ones, but certainly not for let's say the book of revelation. You will hardly find evidence for supernatural things that the bible described like say the giants, demons, angels flying around, the flood myth, etc. For something like the truthfulness of its proverbs I'd say common sense is needed.
Abraham Lincoln existed, but that doesn't mean Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is true. New York City exists, but that doesn't mean Spider-Man exists.
If there were a massive tradition and lore over it, who knows. If they are recent or contemporary events it'll make things way easier to rule out or to prove. It's comparable to aliens; there's like a big thing behind it, lots of testimonies describing creatures with big eyes and the like, but we've never seen one, although some people claim they did. I can't say for sure it's all fake.
Replace "Bible" with "religion," and my point still stands.
Actually the subject was slavery but whatever.
The Bible promotes and even gives rules for ownership of another person. Ownership of another person as property is grossly immoral without exception.
It certainly gives rules for slavery, no doubt, but promoting? It depends. You need to understand its context like it or not. But, like I said, that's not necessarily immoral. With a 21th century mindset it sure sounds awful because now in most places even the poorest person can survive on their own in one way or another. The laws in the bible take into account the time period in which they were. In the past mortality rate was high, the vast majority of the population was poor, hunger, sickness, etc. Slavery was a system in which both, lord and slave, benefited. It was very archaic sure.
Beyond that, the Bible condones and promotes the kind of slavery where you're allowed to brutally beat a slave, and it can even be to death as long as the slave dies at least a day or two later. The Bible even gives instructions for tricking or coercing slaves into being your property forever instead of for a limited amount of time.
Well I said I'm a bible reader, but I'm still more or less half though the thing, so I don't know for sure about that since I don't remember having read what you're saying here. If you could provide the verses I'd like to read them myself.
I think you are probably a good person, but you just posted a paragraph in defense of brutal slavery like a monster. You should be both embarrassed and ashamed. Nothing you said changes any of this.
lol I did not defend brutal slavery, wtf. You're overreacting. But I won't come back to that topic, I think what I said was clear enough.
I don't care about a "Bible context." Nobody should.
I am not surprised you are trying to defend anti-humanism, given your pro-slavery shitpost above.
But we need to know a little about the time in which those events took place, otherwise we would not be able to understand what's the real message behind it.
What we mean when we say "moral" is subjective. That's true of any word. However, if we decide that we mean "that which is conducive to well being," and we decide we care about that, we can make objective statements about what is or isn't immoral, not subjective ones. Nearly everybody cares about well-being, so there's no problem.
But again, when you say "we", who do you mean?
If your view of morality is that something is moral because God said so, then you believe something like murder or slavery becomes moral if God says so, and when it comes to the latter, that's apparently the case, which means you can go fuck yourself.
How dare you
... Murder is explicitly condemned in its most ancient written law: the 10 commandments; brutal slavery is also condemned as far as I know.