yeah - and that force = enviromental conditions and atmospheric forces.

As I said, read the last 30 years of physics.
On the contrary, that proof is completely wrong, simply because not everything currently in existence must derive its source from another thing preceding. READ HAWKING.

This is argument is much more fundamental and basic than anything Hawking has ever done, besides which, Hawking is a pop scientist with no credibility or legitimacy to speak of. The existence of God is a very simple matter, albeit a profound one.

oh i can tell by your comments on this thread that you wouldn't be a pascal fan
http://www.netphoria.org/wwwboard/smile.gif

he's one of my favorite philosophers

but the question is...are you going to refute my argument?

you're an absolute idiot

read pascal too while you're brushing up on your physics

Wow, I'm amazed at just how stupid you are. Hawking and Feynmen are/were among the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century. They have been the first to turn Einsteins problems with relativity into workable theorys, and then have taken them far beyond. Much of the revolutionary progress today is based upon the mathematical concepts they worked out in the 70s and 80s.

[This message has been edited by kypper (edited 06-20-2002).]

for real nigga

Oh no, I agree with you in many ways. Why would I refute that? http://www.netphoria.org/wwwboard/wink.gif

I just dislike Pascal. He made sense, yes, but he took the easy way out and stayed in the middle of this particular argument.

...and before anyone says 'well, it's absurd to think that there is no beginning to the universe', just what are you proposing when you say that god created it and has no beginning? It is more absurd to consider a never beginning/ending god than it is to consider the same type of UNIVERSE, especially when we can collect evidence to that effect.

speaking of sidestepping, you still ignore the fact that you're allowing god to exist infinitely with no cause, but debating the fact that the universe could also exist infinitely with no cause.

the two ideas are equally possible, i suppose. but it's just as likely that a monkey on a bicycle set the universe in motion as it is that god did.

exactly.

This just all proves what one can do with language, regardless of reality. If this were a standard for firing philosophy professors around this country, there'd be no more academic philosophy (a good thing, in my opinion - the university as it exists today killed proper philosophy).

In any case, you asked for proof. Which implies a scientific standard within the current paradigm. And supernatural phenomena can not fit within the current paradigm (read Thomas Kuhn on this, if you don't like what I'm saying). Therefore, whether or not there is a God, there is no way for you to prove existence of one, at least not under the current paradigm. And you can't, because anything you could observe would be explanable as a scientific phenomenon.

So there is no proof. This is not to say, though, that there is no God.

I like to think of it as the computer/creator paradox - the creator can never exist within the computer's world, nor can the computer's internal virtuality exist within the real world. As a programmer or creator, you can only operate within the defined parameters of the computer hardware and software, so you could never prove to a computer that you exist outside of the commands you give it.

So if there is a God, the only proof wouldn't proof anything, because for it to be observable, repeatable, and definable, it would have to be operating within the rules of our universe (our computer, so to speak).

I'm hungry. Let's get a taco.

Well my point was that the first argument states that the fact motion is apparent in the universe is precluded by an event which kicks it all into motion, and that only god could have done this. As I said, motion can in fact begin as an interaction of forces between particles, which exist because the particles themselves exist. Ergo, argument 1 = flawed.

I'm confused as to your definition of motion here. You seem to equating setting objects in motion with actually creating them out of the ether. Like I said, the qquestion is how the stuff got there in the first place - no external catalyst was needed to get things going after that. How exactly does everything 'simply being' contradict the laws of nature? Last time I looked, it wasn't considered natural for things to just appear from nowhere.

Yeah, I was getting a little out of my depth at that point, so I couldn't really follow the concept. But like he says - it's all just a theory, it just happens to fit a few observations at the moment, so he doesn't have total faith in the model just yet.

But this is nuts - how people believe you can prove or disprove the existence of a power which doesn't even exist in our sphere of understanding is ridiculous. If there is a god, does he have a god? Prove that either way.

actually, a great deal of science is in perfect harmony with many notions of religion. not literal explanations, of course.

Yeah, it irks me that everyone seems to see this debate as a conflict between science and religion. As far as I'm concerned, both are equally concrete; granted, they cover separate spheres, but true religion and true science will not contradict each other.

Very interesting, but I don't think the analogy holds, since we have free will while a computer can only carry out the commands of the programmer.

Fuck, I hate all of you.

------------------
Needle is my God and smack is my soul.

AIM - verge miroir

Ah, but you assume that free will exists! I'm not saying it absolutely doesn't, but to a certain physical degree, especially when it comes to the large universal phenomena, it doesn't.

I had an intense dream experience a few weeks ago (three weeks to the day in fact) where I was in a dark room with a television on. I turned my back and exclaimed "I want to talk to God".... When I traced my gaze back to the television I saw God revealed. It was Dave. You know from those Space Odyssey movies? Some how though, I've been left unconvinced. Perhaps my subconscious was re-circulating the memory of that online theory purporting to explain how the first Space Odyssey movie offered a powerful argument on behalf of the theist viewpoint. You know, humans are quick to conclude that a tiny black rectangular slab buried under the moon is unequivocal evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, yet the human embryo (which is infinitely more complex than the artifact found on the moon) seen at the end of the movie remains buried under the dogma that it is capable of being produced by mere chance. Maybe this was my subconscious’ idea of being deep… whispering “talk to God yourself, research philosophy, study the cosmos and in a sense you will be reading the mind of God.”

I think that God is a concept derived from our primitive philosophical interaction with our environment. DeviousJ is right, it lies beyond the spheres of our comprehension.

Earlier when I said that I hate all of you, what I meant was that [i]I really fucking hate you.[/b]

Yeah, am I the only one that read Dead Frequency's post? Jeez.

so you like to take easy routes out of everything?

if you want to experience profound depression, or if you're just fucking bored, read some books on existentialism.

Haha