Dear Frozenwolf,
I missed your 178 post, sorry.
It helped out, yes, abaddon, but, science operates on the presumption that the universe obeys laws, and that concept, whether you like it or not, came from the concept of a Lawgiver.
This is so wrong. Scientific laws are human constructs to help us better understand the universe. It does not mean the universe always conforms to these laws. In fact, some of these laws have been shown to have exceptions as new discoveries are made; for example, the constants of the universe have been found to vary depending on time and place. Science is actually not in the business of making "laws" anymore, however the usage of the term is based on the fact that the universe consistently behaves in such a manner that one might as well call it a law.
Okay, the universe is eternal chaos, then, according to you. You're on the side of Heraclitus.
What, exactly, are we understanding when we "understand" eternal chaos?
You are playing a very disingenuous game with semantics in order to assume the existence of God.
Or, the concept of an eternal law makes sense, that Being precedes Becoming.
The essence of Christianity is that man is made in the image of God, Who is a rational god*, and that in participation with the Risen Lord we save our souls. The Church may have obscured this basic idea with its legalism, the Bible may be unclear and overlong, but there you have the basis for the Renaissance, when combined with the Greek classical heritage: Man is divine, contains a divine spark, and this divinity revolves around the primacy of Reason, as man's potential for development. Situate my comments therein.
Religion has a monopoly on reason? Since when? All you're doing is making a lot of unsupported assertions here.
Didn't say that.
Without Christianity and classical Greece, there would have been no Renaissance, without the Renaissance, no benefits aforementioned, just unending pagan darkness.
You contradict yourself here. Classical Greece was a pagan society.
You also repeat a common myth about the Dark Ages. They were not an "unending darkness."
http://www.cracked.com/article_20615...k-ages_p2.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...r-8215395.html
Thanks for the links. The Renaissance was named as a rebirth of classical learning and spirit, in a Christian context. No one said the Dark Ages were absolutely black, nor that pagans never came up with anything.
* God Himself is unknowable in full to man, and, so, beyond logic, but He acts rationally.
I already debunked your ridiculous claim that God is beyond logic. You just keep bringing it up because you don't want skeptics using logic to kick holes in your beliefs.
Consider, as Nicolaus of Cusa described, Truth as the ultimate. That is, there is a true way the Universe is, there is absolute knowledge of the Universe. This Truth is rational, but inaccessible to man. That is, man is unable to attain to absolute knowledge, but increases himself piecemeal. The difference is between a circle, with no angles, and a square, with multiple angles. No matter how many times the square is multiplied in angle, to create an octogon, sixteen-gon, and so on, even at infinite angles it will not be identical to the absolute truth of the angleless circle. I cannot explain it better than that.
Either the Universe had a beginning, or it is eternal. No?
I said, the components of the universe did not have to "come from" anywhere. You're just assuming that they did, because otherwise your God is useless.
If the universe had a beginning, it certainly wasn't God. If anything is eternal, it's not your God.
Which could just as well mean there was order and purpose, like a craftsman, to Creation, rather than something that would have seemed like magic, or biological reproduction. Which is all neither here nor there. I'm not arguing the Biblical account, I'm arguing for what Christianity teaches in terms of its highest philosophies. And, that asks whether the Universe had a beginning or is eternal.
Funny how its highest philosophies are easily debunked by pointing out logical fallacies and lack of evidence.
Non sequitir.
The components are themselves ever changing. As Heraclitus is said to have said, "Nothing is constant except change." Do you propose this chaos has existed eternally, with nothing governing it? If so, how do you account for the regularity of physical law?
You're assuming again, without evidence, that there had to be something governing it.
As you mentioned above, you think the eternal chaos of an endlessly mutating Becoming is all there is.
And, as I wrote above, do the laws of nature themselves change, and, if so, according to what law do they change? What keeps the laws of natures in force? A higher law? If so, what keeps that law in force? And so on.
I answered this already in post #178, but you ignored it.
So, in other words, according to you the Universe obeys no laws, no principles, but, simply, inexplicably behaves in some way, which way changes with time, again according to no law or principle. Any regularities we find are flukes.
And why does this entire system of eternal mutation exist, again?
Cpl Ferro
