What's wrong with this definition of God: maker of heaven and earth and everything?

[bruto]

Strawman. He never said time always existed.

Well, there's never been a time that it didn't! Or maybe there was a time when there wasn't time, but that's all right because it didn't matter.

 

[cyborg]

Are you cyborg an atheist?

I have no god.

Do you admit that matter has not always been around?

No, I do not admit such a fact.

 

[arthwollipot]

Is it one matter that has always existed or more than one matter?

You've asked this question several times, yrreg. Exactly what do you mean by "more than one matter"? Matter is a category, not a thing that can be enumerated (look that one up).

There is matter. There are many, many matter particles, of various kinds. But they're still all matter. Not all of them individually have always existed - particles can be created and destroyed, but from a time approximately 3 minutes after the so-called "big bang", there have always been particles.

And yes, I'm sorry, but those who are claiming that matter has always existed are mostly wrong. Before there was matter, there was energy - temperature and pressure were too high for particles to exist. It was only after baryogenesis^WP that the universe had conditions for matter to exist.

 

[godless dave]

Sorry, dave, I forgot to mention that you also say, "As long as there has been time, there has been matter."

In which case there has always been aside from matter, time.


So, you maintain that there have always been time and matter, and you have no evidence of anything else.


We can take it from there that matter and time have always existed.

No. Time and matter have existed for approximately 13.7 billion years.

I like to address my question to you again:

Is that matter one matter or there are other matters?​

And as regards time,

is that time composed of splices of time or it is one time all the time?​

Neither of those questions make any sense.

 

[babbits]

Gerry is just fascinated by atheists.

But he/she doesn't understand us. Like the origin (if any) of the universe, he/she feels compelled to explain us. But can't.

So why not just call us 'God'?

That's a nice handy label to tack onto 'that which we don't understand'.

 

[babbits]

Having just explained the origin of the word 'god', I will now explain the origin of 'religion':

Caveperson #1: "I wonder what started all this stuff going on all around us?"

Caveperson #2: "I don't know. Pass the dinosaur drumstick."

Caveperson #1: "Well somebody musta done it. Some really big strong smart caveperson. His name is god. And in return for giving you that inspired insight, I will keep the drumstick. And from now on I want 10% of every drumstick. And I won't go out hunting, either. It's too damp and cold, and there are nasty things with big sharp teeth. So you can do the dirty dangerous work. I'll just stay here by the fire, eating, and collecting my 10% and continue giving you inspired enlightenment.

"My next enlightenment will deal with 'morality', which is what you must do so as not to offend god. Be aware that my well-being will feature prominently in the revelation."

 

[dafydd]

Having just explained the origin of the word 'god', I will now explain the origin of 'religion':

Caveperson #1: "I wonder what started all this stuff going on all around us?"

Caveperson #2: "I don't know. Pass the dinosaur drumstick."

Caveperson #1: "Well somebody musta done it. Some really big strong smart caveperson. His name is god. And in return for giving you that inspired insight, I will keep the drumstick. And from now on I want 10% of every drumstick. And I won't go out hunting, either. It's too damp and cold, and there are nasty things with big sharp teeth. So you can do the dirty dangerous work. I'll just stay here by the fire, eating, and collecting my 10% and continue giving you inspired enlightenment.

"My next enlightenment will deal with 'morality', which is what you must do so as not to offend god. Be aware that my well-being will feature prominently in the revelation."

"And by the way,where are the choirboys?''

 

[babbits]

Seriously, though, Gerry, and in a (rare) spirit of benevolence, I will explain something to you. While not pretending to speak for all atheists, I can speak for one.

Let's define 'the universe' as all that exists and all that ever existed, including me.

I don't understand or 'know' the universe. I don't think anyone else does, either. Many things about it seem very weird. And I have a strong hunch that I don't know the half of how weird it is.

I have a stronger hunch that even if someone explained it to me, I wouldn't understand.

My brain, a product of a very minute part of the universe that I call the 'local universe', has equipped me only with the necessary senses and data processing organs to help me survive for a brief instant in time, probably less than a century, in the body in which my consciousness resides.

I can define, but not 'understand', even such a familiar phenomenon as the Northern Lights.

My brain does not equip me to understand the whole universe, past and present, and its origin, if any.

I'd need a whole new set of sense organs, for example including a sense that can detect past activities. This sense would mean that I could track and interpret light rays that have been traveling away from earth for at least the past six thousand years. If I had such a sense organ, I could 'see' if the Lord created the universe or not. If it was much as it is now, complete with plants and animals and an ocean, and no dinosaurs, then I would know that the O.T. is full of crap. All I know now is that it 'seems' full of crap.

I don't know how the universe began All I know for sure is it's there. Did it have a predecessor? Then that 'predecessor' was just a stage the universe was going through.
Maybe it always was. Why not? Who can show that it did not always exist? That it always existed is no more absurd than that a big man with magical powers built it.

Is 'eternal' a satisfactory description of the universe? For me, sure. Because I'm much more interested in things I can find out than in things I can't find out.

And why is either concept, eternal universe or eternal 'big magic man', absurd? Because we can't imagine anything always existing. Universe or big magic man. Though the majority of people seem more comfortable with the 'big magic man' theory, for some reason.

But because we can't imagine something, does that mean it cannot exist?

I am too humble to believe that just because I can't understand something means that it's not possible.

Many theists, I note, are not as humble as I am.

So until I have reliable information about the 'time before' the universe existed, I will take all claims made by other humans about what existed then as unproven.

 

[babbits]

So, Gerry, the final part of this exposition is as follows:

An atheist is someone who prefers the 'eternal universe' explanation to the 'eternal big magic man' explanation.

A theist isn't.

Science doesn't give me any absolute truths. I'm quite prepared psychologically, to receive the shocking news that something can travel faster than light. It will just show me that yet another model of 'how things work' was not quite adequate.

I quite believe that Science (as a discipline) is arrogant. Still, I trust the method -- as long as it is dealing with testable phenomena. I feel that some of the 'theories' of modern physics would more appropriately be called 'hypotheses'.

But I totally reject the 'theory' that a big magic eternal man created everything, and cares deeply that I sometimes masturbate, because it is an infantile notion, and the system that flows from it is clearly designed by people who want to control and exploit me.

(Although some of the cooler notions of religion were likely 'described' by well-meaning and perfectly sincere people suffering from delusional disorders.)

The first part of the views above show that I am a skeptic. But it is the last one that shows I am an atheist.

As for the promise of eternal life in some disembodied form, I got over that one when I was a child; about the same time that I realized, the last time I prayed, that I was essentially talking to myself.

 

[Christian Klippel]

So, you maintain that there have always been time and matter, and you have no evidence of anything else.

We can take it from there that matter and time have always existed.

As much as you like to take it from there, fact is that you simply can't do that. "Time" is something that exists here, in this universe. But it is "just" a property of it. It is a dimension, just as space has spatial dimensions. And it came into existence for this universe at the very moment this universe came into existence.

Just because our universe is the way it is does not mean that this has to be the same for any other universe.

The points you are arguing can be turned around against you by simply swapping the word "atheist" with "theist" and vice versa. You fail to understand the points that people make, and try to book that as a win for you. But that's not how things work. If you fail to understand something, it means just that. You failed. It does in no way imply that the others are wrong.

For example, what is you definition of "nothing"? Is it like the vacuum of empty space? In that case, well, sorry but there isn't "nothing" there. Quite the contrary.

Take a look at this video and try to understand what Krauss has to say on this topic it before you talk about the universe:



So yes, it is quite possible that it came from "nothing". In any case, your need to explain things with the need of having a creator has a very huge problem. It may explain for _you_ how things are, but in fact it explains exactly nothing. Instead it shifts the question one level higher.

You can not accept that the universe is simply there? You need a creator for that? Well then, what created the creator? Your argument that the universe can not come from "nothing" would be true also for your creator. Such a creator could not come from "nothing" as well. If you deny that, and insist that such e being could simply exist, then the same holds true for this universe. It could simply exist.

So far, you utterly fail in logic. But then, that's no surprise for the religious indoctrinated people like you.

 

[yrreg]

First, we must come to the concept and existence of God as maker of everything.

Fascinating concept. Care to prove it?

And even *if* you were to prove it, have you really thought about what kind of god that would be? it would have created the forces that allowed the universe to form and then left it running. In other words, to such a god we are nothing but an insignificantly small set of chemical reactions running shortly in a minor part of his universe that could be removed without any consequence to said universe.
Somehow I doubt that is how you see god.
But by claiming a god runs the universe by creating the observed forces, you are also claiming that god does not care about mercy, justice, love, kindness or any other of the attributes theists claim it has, as none of those are observable forces in the universe.

First, we must come to the concept and existence of God as maker of everything.

What I call the necessary being creator of everything with a beginning.

Then we will work out what is His business with us, which us is also made by Him.


I would love to continue with you on the topic of this thread.



Yrreg

 

[RoboTimbo]

First, we must come to the concept and existence of God as maker of everything.

You've done that one to death.

What I call the necessary being creator of everything with a beginning.

Then we will work out what is His business with us, which us is also made by Him.

No we won't. You may define him however you like, all of his attributes. Then we will discuss whether such a thing exists.

So, I'll start. Are you defining your god as just the beginning of the universe with no more attributes to it?

 

[yrreg]

I submit that your message can very well fit into the totality of existence.

Hi Yrreg. You started this thread asking us what our ideas are concerning the Universe. There are some who believe that the Universe had a beginning and that before that beginning there was nothing. In M-theory, this Universe is one of many, and the event we call the Big Bang was the result of membranes colliding with one another; where each “universe” grows off of another like so many bubbles. This would mean that what we call the “Big Bang” was the result of the death of a previous universe, part of an infinitely old cycle of collapses and rebirths. This would mean that there is an infinite number of “universes” where all possibilities are expressed (the “many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics”).

Besides Steven Hawking, Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann, Richard Feynman and Steven Weinberg think the Many-Worlds Interpretation is true.

The possibility of a “multiverse” exists, which contains an infinite number of alternative universes with no beginning and no end. The discovery of dark energy has opened up this idea, and even Edward Witten, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and creator of the M-theory in quantum physics string theory, is coming around to the idea of dark energy and its implications. Perhaps dark energy will eventually cause the conditions that will lead to the “big crunch,” where the Universe will contract in on itself to start another “big bang” that will lead to inflation in a never-ending cycle of infinite universes.

This is what happens when physicists combine eternal inflation with string theory; they see a multiverse with ten to the ten thousandth power types of exponentially large universes split into many worlds co-existing side by side. Many of these scientists are blurring the lines between physics and mysticism.

Perhaps our limited intelligence is unable to grasp the nature of “reality,” and the true nature of our Universe is and will always be unknown. But maybe we do exist in a multiverse, continuously formed through the collapse of giant stars and the formation of black holes where each black hole contains a new point of singularity and a new possible universe; or by the collision between membranes in a space with eleven or twenty-six dimensions.

Who or what is in charge of it all? My guess would be that we are, as a collective consciousness that creates what we think of as matter and energy. But that’s just a guess. I really don’t know.

I submit that your message can very well fit into the totality of existence.


Let scientists speculate all they want, they can't still not get out of the totality of existence, except to pretend to not think about it.


In that totality of existence we humans are also situated and the sun we see arising on the eastern horizon, and also extinct species once upon a time now extinct.

So, we can just leap to the question that an intelligent mind asks, is there a part that exists all the time and in all the space?

You say:

Who or what is in charge of it all? My guess would be that we are, as a collective consciousness that creates what we think of as matter and energy. But that’s just a guess. I really don’t know.

I can take that, the collective consciousness; when we die we will continue in the collective consciousness, do I read you correctly?

That is some collective consciousness not incompatible with a necessary being creator of everything that has a beginning.

Now, we just have to do some needed polishing on the idea.


I would love to continue this idea with you.



Yrreg

 

[Paulhoff]

First, we must come to the concept and existence of God as maker of everything.

Which so-called god are you talking about, not that bible one I hope, his a a loser, his solution to everything is death.

Paul

 

[GeeMack]

First, we must come to the concept and existence of God as maker of everything.

You've done that one to death.

Indeed. Quintessential spam. But since it's okay with the admins, I guess it's okay with me.

Don't you have any new material, Gerardo?

 

[Paulhoff]

So, what does having a so-called god explain, since that so-called god can be anything even a child can think of.

Paul

 

[yrreg]

Think about the concept of necessary being maker of everything with a beginning...

Originally Posted by RoboTimbo

Originally Posted by yrreg
First, we must come to the concept and existence of God as maker of everything.​

You've done that one to death. ​

Indeed. Quintessential spam. But since it's okay with the admins, I guess it's okay with me.

Don't you have any new material, Gerardo?

When you have thought about the concept of necessary being maker of everything that has a beginning with total open mindedness, up to death, then you will come to know wisdom.

Think about the concept of necessary being maker of everything with a beginning, think of it up to death, instead of relying on the regurgitations of self-blindered men who cannot even comprehend the idea of thing from itself and thing from another.




Yrreg

 

[yrreg]

That is why you have got to be like children to enter into wisdom.

So, what does having a so-called god explain, since that so-called god can be anything even a child can think of.

Paul

That is why you have got to be like children to enter into wisdom.

You have been conditioned to not ask all the questions that children ask, because of fear.

Now, work on your fear.



Yrreg

 

[Paulhoff]

When you have thought about the concept of necessary being maker of everything that has a beginning with total open mindedness, up to death, then you will come to know wisdom.

Having a so-called god is wisdom, there are a lot of children with wisdom then.

Paul

 

[Paulhoff]

That is why you have got to be like children to enter into wisdom.

You have been conditioned to not ask all the questions that children ask, because of fear.

Now, work on your fear.



Yrreg

You buy into that old saying too, why not you have a small so-called god. Now work on your fear and let go of your childish so-called god that explains nothing.

Paul