Truth= god does not exist?

[lolwatever]

Circles inshaAllah?

Like I said, you cannot prove the existence of God. It's a belief. I believe in God. I can't prove it, but I believe.

If you were to say that nature itself proves the existence of God, fine. But then a Pagan could say, well that proves the existence of MULTIPLE Gods. How far do you want to go with this?

And again, our understanding of God is that we do not understand God. Anyone who honestly thinks that they have the full grasp on God's greatness, and truly think that they completely understand God, in my opinion, is silly. Tha'ts silly thinking. We can't fully understand God. We never will. There are still mysteries in the world. But God has revealed to us what He has chosen to reveal to us. Honestly, we couldn't handle it all. All of God's glory and all of the mysteries of the Universe would mind boggle us all!

sis... reply to my thing paragraph by paragraph, inshalah it should hlep. i didnt mean it as an offense btw

and Allah does explain himself to us fully in the quran... so u might wanna read that inshalah as well.

take care all the best.

ps: I think if this thread or any other debate wan'ts to get anywhere, everyone involved must make the effort to replyt o every bit of the other person's comment. Otherwise people will be msising the point and others will be repeating themselves.

From a purely skeptical point of view, it is not possible to claim "God exists" or "God does not exist" as absolutes. The best that can be concluded logically is that "we don't know." There is a an infinite variations for God's description -- not the usual all -good, all-present, and all-powerful description in Abrahamic and Hindu scriptures.

I think what's been challenged here is Allah as described in the quran, seeing that this is an Islamic forum. Other ideas of gods are under the pump in several other threads here

There are MANY possibilities for God:

1.) Polytheistic
2.) Monotheistic
3.) Zoroastrian model
4.) Shinto Model
4.) Christian Model
5.) Jewish/Muslim Model
6.) One or more God but no afterlife
7.) One all-evil God
8.) Hindu version (manifestations).
9.) Advanced Aliens dropping the seeds of life on earth.
10.) Pantheistic Model
11.) Deistic model
12.) Shinto Model
13.) No God at all

All are logical possibilities. How can we be sure logically which one is right??

The initial poster seems to be on the 13th position, i agree he should have hinted who he's trying to take on... but too bad he ran off after claiming he was familiar with my argument (wow cool i just realised.. he understood me perfectly well... pygo couldnt .. interesting :giggling: )

Freudian slip? Or did you mean what you wrote?

u can answer that urself :uhwhat:

Not all of a sudden, since the moment you jumped into this thread.

Again you're being emotional and falling over your own principles... generalising... just for the sake of not going off topic... PM me or make some other poll and ask whether my posts where abusive.... you're the odd one out it seems.

Not emotional. Just bored with postings that are hard to read and mostly irrelvant (so not worth the effort).

pygo being emotional again... choosing what he wants to reply to and finding emergency exits ... very rational indeed kay: now look who's beating around the bush

I thought I already had, twice!

Trumble with all due respect, i read my request i don tthink it was that hard to comprehend.

'Reply to every paragraph i said'.... does the below look like a reply to every paragraph i wrote? Here's my original response:

http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/31364-truth-god-does-not-exist-21.html#post565365

^ sis let's not go in circles inshalah.... checkout the previous posts inshalah

Thing is.. if you contemplate the nature of this universe and just look at our features and how our features are designed so perfectly to adapt our environment... and then if you look around you and try put the principle of coincidence into action (e.g. would it make sense that some hurricane could come, thrash around and create some wonderful car)... the answer (Except for someone with issues i guess) would probably be no. You realise that there is an intelligent design behind everything. It takes more than jsut chaos and zero intelligence to design things.

On top of that... when you have someone telling you things that are beyond the capability of mankind.. such as the sun moving to a point (now we know the sun is moving towards constellation hercules) amongst other stuff... as well as prophecies, it just becomes more apparent that the claim that he is the creator is more appealing and very believable. Who would know these things besides the creator himself?

It's no coincidence that the prophets life was heavily documented as well as heavily scruitinized and authenticated by the scholars, and it's no coincidence that he's an illiterate person, just to put any doubts far out of the equation.

Really.. it's simple probability analysis.

The problem is when people who aren't interested in reading the quran come along and profess there's nothing amazing in the quran... lol. Besides arrogance, it shows the openmindedness mashalah...

Take care all the best sis
salams

I'm being pedantic yes, but its for your own benefit, my benefit and everyone else... you can't have a debate where people decide to ignore parts and reply to drips and drabs.

a. You're prone to missing the point.
b. The other person will be forced to repeat themselves.
c. Leads to people getting emotional when they see they can't escape having to reply to individual points (as we saw with our friend pygo).

so please.. do make an effort to reply to everything, just like i do with you and every other person on this forum.

OK, you say that



It is simple, but it musn't be flawed. The problem with the coincidence 'proof' is that it is flawed.

The mistake is an implicit assumption, that that there are only two possible results.. results that is of pretty much any of the example that have been given, the nature of the universe and associated physical laws, the origins of complex bio-mechanical systems, the glass shattering with a perfect edge, your hurricane or whatever. But there aren't two possible results, there are an (almost) infinite number each as probable, or improbable as each other.

The probability of other causes converges to zero when the creator is telling you that it's him who made it all, and gives you proofs, e.g. tells you the sun is moving to a settled point, and then millineium later we find the sun is moving towards constellation hercules... that's one of many examlpes, who else but the creator would know that?

Let's take another example. You have a large bag of marbles. You empty the bag from a top of a skyscraper in the hope that when they hit the ground they will be organised precisely to spell "George W Bush is an idiot". Now, what is the probability of that happening? Almost infinitely small, but it is possible. It is undoubtably, however, much, much less probable than it not happening.

So if i told you i poured a bag of marbles and it spelt that phrase, you would believe me? no? So why are you willing to convicne yourself that this universe could have come out of pure chaos :?

Secondly, i can argue that it's out of probablity space, a probability density function that would try to model such an event would decay so fast that the limit would be zero.

so that makes your argument a tonne of irrelevence.

There's the flaw, the 'coincidence' approach assumes those are your choices, does or does not. But they aren't - you need to consider each possibility independently. The chance of the marbles precisely spelling "George W Bush is an idiot" is exactly (assuming we ignore the effects of wind and such, for simplicity) the same as any other possible result, any other particular precise distribution of the marbles. You could spend a thousand years trying to get "George W Bush is an idiot", but you could also spend it trying to get any other particular result, whether it spelt anything or not. But one of those almost impossible combinations has to happen each and every time.

^ No it's not the same at all, if you compare the arrangement of that sentence to any other combination it's so obvious that the marbles would have a tendency to settle in more chaotic states.

Taking that further, entropy tells us that natural systems tend to disorder, not order. You're here trying to convicne me that after a big bang, chaos out of coincincence ordered itself and became the way the world is today.

In the case of the universe, and life, unless that particular (or one of a few particular) combinations occurred we would not be having this discussion. But we are, so it did, but that result was no more unlikely than any other. For all we know the cosmic marbles had already been thrown infinity minus one times, but that can only be speculated upon in the universe where it did.

You're bringing up the same infinite argument that your friend pygo admitted was irrelevent... Dude it's a simple IQ excercise, you're not willing to let your mind beleive it in every aspect of your life, yet you're happy to fool yourself into believing it when it comes to even more complex things and mechanisms.

I think the above replies make a good answer to this regarding the probability of all this occurring being infininitesemally small.

But it doesn't, given enough time. Eventually you will get "George W Bush is an idiot"... or the formation of complex biochemical systems. When those systems are "right", they hang around, and the whole process begins again building on that new bag of marbles.

^:lol: you're repeating yourself, read the above.. and you're making a huge assumption that every arrangemetn has the same chance of occurring and that's extremely untrue, try treating it as a dynamics problem and you'll realise that will never happen.

How many of those scholars were there to see him?

If you take the time to read into method of collecting hadith, it's very obvious that the hadiths are collected fromt he very people who where with him and accompanied him during his life.

So much so that hadiths which attribute themselves to the prophet but contain a missing link between the prophet and the narrator are classified as weak.

How many met him, or journeyed with him?

I have a feelign you've never read a hadith.... you might like to try that and checkout the chain of narration and the commentary left on each individual.

As to illiterate, so what? He most certainly wasn't stupid, and most knowledge then was communicated orally anyway.

Looks like you've never even read the quran,

a. The langauge of th quran isn't common language, no one has ever been able to produce literature like it (and if you think its possible the challenge is open), the point of that is, for the prophet to make it up himself is impossible, especially when you read about the circumstances in which many verses where revealed in.

b. If you read the quran Allah makes public so many thigns the prophet himself was embaressed and desperately wanted to keep private, for example the case of zayd divorcing zaynab because he knew a command would come taht he would marry her. Why would the prophet try to embaress himself if he wrot ethe quran? same with many other events and cases.

It takes someone wtih very little intellgience to claim that a literature with such high quality as the quran which doesn't even take the persona of the prophet and which puts the prophet in a humble position compared to the revealer, to think that the prophet wrote it himself. It's naive of you indeed.

c. Illiteracy is important becasue it throws out of the window any claim that he was chasing some 21st century scientist or what not in the desert tryign to copy down notes or plaguerise from other sources or books as some people try to have us believe :uuh:

Nothing is put beyond doubt.. certainly if the alternate is conjouring up a God on the assumption you have no other reason to believe in one. As I said to Ansar, I'll happily agree the chances of Mohammed meeting the 'right' people were small, but they were far from impossible.

Thing is we're always saying the same thing... fine you don't trust the authenticity of the quran, prove to us that he did steel it from somewhere. You're making alot of claims, no evidence. That's your problem.

The issue with athiests (from my humble observation), is that in normal circumstances you excercise your intellect perfectly well. I'm sure athiests aren't insane enough to believe me if i told them i live in a mansion which was built by a hurricane. But when it comes to things that are simply a more advanced version of the every day things we see. Their minds dupe them so easily. That blows me away.

The chances of winning the lottery are millions to one, but many people have won it... they don't (usually) claim that justifies a belief in God.

There's a difference bewteen millions to one and infinity to one, that's what you're missing. The former is in probability space, the latter simply isn't.

incase this is 'cryptic' feel free to ignore this example (just mention that it didnt make sense maybe i can think of something less analytical), when you're calculating sums of series or trying to solve improper integration problems, do you ever sit there and think 'hey that's wrong why am i taking limits, why am i assumign the value of this function is zero in the limit, surely it's not zero it's just an infinitesemally small number that i should go out and find it'

do you? no? Well why are you falling over that principle when it comes to probability?

 

[Pygoscelis]

If and only if God the creator exists he has to be the greatest and most important part of our lives because he created each and every one of us.

Interesting concept: You should consider your maker the most important being in your life.

I think that should go on a Mother's Day card.

 

[Pygoscelis]

sis... reply to my thing paragraph by paragraph, inshalah it should hlep. i didnt mean it as an offense btw

Cute how in one post lolwhatever demanded that 3 different people make their posts the way he wants them to. Apparently he just can't tolerate people not responding to every line of his text, and skipping over pointless bits and focussing on the points. If we all posted as he commands not only would it be needlesly exhausting and repetitive for all involved, it'd also create pages and pages and pages of useless text.

u can answer that urself :uhwhat:

Actually I can't. In a single post you addressed 3 different people (Les, me, and Trumble) about confusion or misunderstanding you caused. Hrm. Maybe you're right after all. Maybe with you we WILL have to disect your posts line by line as you suggest.

Trumble with all due respect, i read my request i don tthink it was that hard to comprehend.

Now that Trumble has brought out the same argument I made earlier, lets see if lolwhatever's response to it is any more coherent.

The probability of other causes converges to zero when the creator is telling you that it's him who made it all

Circular. You can't establish creation by assuming a creator.

, and gives you proofs

Which has been discussed at length and is only seen as proof by those who already believe, those who have made the assumption above.

Secondly, i can argue that it's out of probablity space, a probability density function that would try to model such an event would decay so fast that the limit would be zero.

Ok, you're missing the point again.

Given infinite time, probability would not be zero, it would be 1. Not given infinite time, the chance is still there, and once it happened the results would support the resulting state to continue to be and then move on to the next bag of marbles.

^ No it's not the same at all, if you compare the arrangement of that sentence to any other combination it's so obvious that the marbles would have a tendency to settle in more chaotic states.

If you mean it will be more likely to fall in a pattern we dont recognize than one we do, then sure, but only because there are more patterns we don't recognize than we do.

Taking that further, entropy tells us that natural systems tend to disorder, not order. You're here trying to convicne me that after a big bang, chaos out of coincincence ordered itself and became the way the world is today.

That is a valid point. The forces of physics may be stacked against the universe coming to be as it did, but then if the universe failed we wouldn't be here today to be talking about it. If it worked, we would be. That one rare occurence would stick and last.

And the nature of infinity MANDATES that that one rare occurence will happen. And it did. Deal with it.

You're bringing up the same infinite argument that your friend pygo admitted was irrelevent...

It was only irrelevant after you started talking about wild and wonderful things in conjunction with it. The point stands.

If there have been infinite attempts, IT MUST HAPPEN. Drop that bag of marbles INFINTE number of times and you WILL get that phrase, along with every other phrase imaginable and a self portrait. It only sounds ridiculus if you can't grasp the concept of infinity.

Now, have there been infinite attempts regarding formation of the universe? That I do not know, and neither do you. We have no way of knowing so you can't say it is impossible and force us all to God of the gaps logic.

Dude it's a simple IQ excercise

IQ excercise? The way you wrote that makes it appear that you are calling people stupid. Are you?

You're not willing to let your mind beleive it in every aspect of your life

Most aspects of life don't involve infinity.

You're making alot of claims, no evidence. That's your problem.

Here you are attempting to shift the burden of proof. I haven't seen any non-muslims here make any claims whatsoever. All we've done is state possibilities (which could be completely wrong). It is you who is making specific claims.

As to what is more likely, the numerous alternative possible explanations or devine inspiration, I go for the former.

The issue with athiests (from my humble observation), is that in normal circumstances you excercise your intellect perfectly well. I'm sure athiests aren't insane enough to believe me if i told them i live in a mansion which was built by a hurricane.

Nor do they believe that you were created by some invisible supernatural force. The former, though extremely unlikely seems a lot more likely than the latter.

 

[lolwatever]

ooo pygo welcome back to the discussion

Cute how in one post lolwhatever demanded that 3 different people make their posts the way he wants them to. Apparently he just can't tolerate people not responding to every line of his text, and skipping over pointless bits and focussing on the points. If we all posted as he commands not only would it be needlesly exhausting and repetitive for all involved, it'd also create pages and pages and pages of useless text.

pygo being irrelevent again... I'm not commanding anyone.. i'm just kindly asking to be treated the way i treat others (in your case i dont mind if you treat me abraisively if you think i treat yout hat way too ).

and as usual.. decides to skip over my reasonings why i made that request... ah.. typical.

sis... reply to my thing paragraph by paragraph, inshalah it should hlep. i didnt mean it as an offense btw

and Allah does explain himself to us fully in the quran... so u might wanna read that inshalah as well.

take care all the best.

ps: I think if this thread or any other debate wan'ts to get anywhere, everyone involved must make the effort to replyt o every bit of the other person's comment. Otherwise people will be msising the point and others will be repeating themselves.

^ i can assure you i didnt go writign that up after your post kay: where about doesthat look like me ordering commands? Your english that bad? lol.

Actually I can't. In a single post you addressed 3 different people (Les, me, and Trumble) about confusion or misunderstanding you caused. Hrm. Maybe you're right after all. Maybe with you we WILL have to disect your posts line by line as you suggest.

Now you realllllly desperate to go off topic innit.

But if the result of your irrelevence means you're going to disect what i say line by line, as i told you it would make life easier for everyone including yourself. And incase you misunderstood.. i'm not asking you to defend other peoples statements.. just reply to what i said to you in particular (or is you find that task too cryptic as well :?)... and if you want to get involved in the other discussions... feel free

Now that Trumble has brought out the same argument I made earlier, lets see if lolwhatever's response to it is any more coherent.

He seems to be far more open minded that's for sure.

Ok.. now that you claimed ur disecting what i said line by line.. i'll plug what i said and we'll see if you're true to your promise:

i said:

The probability of other causes converges to zero when the creator is telling you that it's him who made it all, and gives you proofs, e.g. tells you the sun is moving to a settled point, and then millineium later we find the sun is moving towards constellation hercules... that's one of many examlpes, who else but the creator would know that?

The probability of other causes converges to zero when the creator is telling you that it's him who made it all

Circular. You can't establish creation by assuming a creator.

How so? A creator is someone who creates, creation is somethign that was created. To say the creator was created implies he's not a creator. What's so hard to understand about that?

, and gives you proofs

Which has been discussed at length and is only seen as proof by those who already believe, those who have made the assumption above.

But you havn't even read the quran, and you arrogantly boast that you don't even care to do so, and more so you purposefully skip over everythign i've quoted you from the quran and hadith, so what puts you in a position to even evaluate the proofs that are mentioned therein :?

Or is this you trying to evade points by making the assumptiont that there's nothing 'amazing' in the quran?

And as expected... he happens to have missed the rest of the paragraph:

.g. tells you the sun is moving to a settled point, and then millineium later we find the sun is moving towards constellation hercules... that's one of many examlpes, who else but the creator would know that?

disecting what i say line by line eh? :X

ok.. round two:

i said:

So if i told you i poured a bag of marbles and it spelt that phrase, you would believe me? no? So why are you willing to convicne yourself that this universe could have come out of pure chaos :?

Secondly, i can argue that it's out of probablity space, a probability density function that would try to model such an event would decay so fast that the limit would be zero.

so that makes your argument a tonne of irrelevence.

he said:

Secondly, i can argue that it's out of probablity space, a probability density function that would try to model such an event would decay so fast that the limit would be zero.

Ok, you're missing the point again.



Given infinite time, probability would not be zero, it would be 1. Not given infinite time, the chance is still there, and once it happened the results would support the resulting state to continue to be and then move on to the next bag of marbles.

again he decides to ignore simple logic... your midn couldn't process the first sentence in my original reply? or it's just too shocking to answer?

So if i told you i poured a bag of marbles and it spelt that phrase, you would believe me? no? So why are you willing to convicne yourself that this universe could have come out of pure chaos :?

too cryptic to understand?

moving on to what you said:

Given infinite time, probability would not be zero, it would be 1. Not given infinite time, the chance is still there, and once it happened the results would support the resulting state to continue to be and then move on to the next bag of marbles

You're getting yourself into this infinite time mess again... It is not one, using the example taht trumble gave, if you kept droppign marbles from skycapers forever, you think the probability that a marble would land in antartica would become one if given infinite time?

That's no different to trying to tell me the laws of entropy could be violated if given infinite time :uuh: It's out of probability space. You need to provide me some analytical evidence that such thing could happen. At the moment it's just mathematical nonsense.

Just take the example i gave you ages ago, amino acids forming, you're telling me that it's probable that cosmic rays bombarding earth could miss them by coincidence? Given the amount of time the cosmic rays where strikign earth (thousands maybe millions of years), the probability of cosmic rays destroying the amino acids (basic building blocks of life) is one.

And to seal off your argument, given infinite time a hurricate thrashing around a car factory could form a perfectly functioning car? yes?

^ No it's not the same at all, if you compare the arrangement of that sentence to any other combination it's so obvious that the marbles would have a tendency to settle in more chaotic states.

If you mean it will be more likely to fall in a pattern we dont recognize than one we do, then sure, but only because there are more patterns we don't recognize than we do.

No its more than just patterns, that particular pattern (teh sentence trumble used) is just improbable from a kinematics point of view. Throwing marbles from a sky scraper means those marbles would shoot out in every direction after they hit the ground, leaving no possibility fort hem to even get anywhere close enough to form that particular pattern.

Seriously... by the logic i'm seeing, NASA should reconsider it's usage of current statistical methods when it comes to sending rovers to space ffended:

obviously taht last diagram is nonsense, since by some weird wacky chance its possibel the rover could endup on the otherside of mars when it's 2cm away from touch down :giggling:

Time for athiests to create an engineering revolution i guess.

Taking that further, entropy tells us that natural systems tend to disorder, not order. You're here trying to convicne me that after a big bang, chaos out of coincincence ordered itself and became the way the world is today.

That is a valid point. The forces of physics may be stacked against the universe coming to be as it did, but then if the universe failed we wouldn't be here today to be talking about it. If it worked, we would be. That one rare occurence would stick and last.

That doesn't make sense, the universe is bound by physical laws that are breakable :heated: Then it means they're not laws in the first place.

It's obvious you keep evading the basic question... you wont' let your mind beleive that hurricanes could form a car (even if its given infintie time), yet you let yourself believe that this univserse could have come about via some even more chaotic situation.

which brings me to your next point:

And the nature of infinity MANDATES that that one rare occurence will happen. And it did. Deal with it.

For somethign to be probable there must be some process that leads upto the occurrance of that improbable event.

If you want to prove that given enough time throwing marbles from a sky scraper can result in teh formation of that sentence, it means that it is possible under certain conditions for that to occur. If you conducted that experiment, every pattern that's formed by those marbles can be proven to be possible even before it occurs using inverse kinematics. Whether that particular arragement will occur or not is subject to several variables. But you'll never be able to prove that the sentence given by trumble is possible to be formed using physics. Unless you've got some wacky kinematics pricniples of your own that u might want to share with us?

Incase you don't have a physics background which causes you to think some of my analytical examples are too 'cryptic'.... put it this way, given infinite time flipping a copper coin will not yield you anything besides heads or tails. You won't get a copper ring. Similarly, given infinite time, by definition, you'll only get chaos out of a big bang and explosions. Not advanced systems.

You only get the latter when there's a control system and intelligent design, rationale would tell you that.

But i challenge you to prove to me physically that pattern could occur using any inverse kinematics simulation method. It's impossible. deal with it.

You're hiding behidn this infinity argument because you think there's no way of finding out whether your claims are true, but i can assure you that's nto the case.

You're bringing up the same infinite argument that your friend pygo admitted was irrelevent...

It was only irrelevant after you started talking about wild and wonderful things in conjunction with it. The point stands.

If there have been infinite attempts, IT MUST HAPPEN. Drop that bag of marbles INFINTE number of times and you WILL get that phrase, along with every other phrase imaginable and a self portrait. It only sounds ridiculus if you can't grasp the concept of infinity.

Ok hangon for a sec, i'll assume you're right.. it's possible... that means that arrangement can be proven using inverse kinematics . So prove it. There's simulation software outthere that you can play with if you want... i can tell you from now the error message that you'll be getting ;D

Now, have there been infinite attempts regarding formation of the universe? That I do not know, and neither do you. We have no way of knowing so you can't say it is impossible and force us all to God of the gaps logic.

It's pointless answering this due to the self proclaimed arrogance you possess. For all Muslims care, there could be an infinite number of parallel universes, really it's besides the point... The probablity of god not existing is improbable because fo the fact someone claiming to be the creator told us enough to prove his existance. If you doubt them feel free to explain why.

Till now you didnt even give me the post number (since u have problem copy pasting links) to whateve ryou where referring to... on top of that you're into this idea of debating people abotu their religion and books without even knowing whats inside. That's pure cactus.

IQ excercise? The way you wrote that makes it appear that you are calling people stupid. Are you?

Could be, it's in probablity space

You're not willing to let your mind beleive it in every aspect of your life

Most aspects of life don't involve infinity.

And all aspects of life show that mechanisms don't come about from zero intelligence.

Here you are attempting to shift the burden of proof. I haven't seen any non-muslims here make any claims whatsoever. All we've done is state possibilities (which could be completely wrong). It is you who is making specific claims.

And here you are again replying to what i say out of context, here's my full reply, and look where you decided to jump to and attach it to a totally different topic :giggling:

Quote:
How many of those scholars were there to see him?
If you take the time to read into method of collecting hadith, it's very obvious that the hadiths are collected fromt he very people who where with him and accompanied him during his life.

So much so that hadiths which attribute themselves to the prophet but contain a missing link between the prophet and the narrator are classified as weak.


Quote:
How many met him, or journeyed with him?
I have a feelign you've never read a hadith.... you might like to try that and checkout the chain of narration and the commentary left on each individual.



.....

c. Illiteracy is important becasue it throws out of the window any claim that he was chasing some 21st century scientist or what not in the desert tryign to copy down notes or plaguerise from other sources or books as some people try to have us believe :uuh:

Nothing is put beyond doubt.. certainly if the alternate is conjouring up a God on the assumption you have no other reason to believe in one. As I said to Ansar, I'll happily agree the chances of Mohammed meeting the 'right' people were small, but they were far from impossible.

Thing is we're always saying the same thing... fine you don't trust the authenticity of the quran, prove to us that he did steel it from somewhere. You're making alot of claims, no evidence. That's your problem.

poor you and your attempts to disect what i say and reply to things in the context of the topics.... :heated:

As to what is more likely, the numerous alternative possible explanations or devine inspiration, I go for the former.

More likely on what basis? for someone who doesn't believe in god, it might be hard to admit its divine inspiration becasue that's something beyond their comprehension, but it's harder tryign to explain why its likely it could have come from some human source.....:uuh:

The issue with athiests (from my humble observation), is that in normal circumstances you excercise your intellect perfectly well. I'm sure athiests aren't insane enough to believe me if i told them i live in a mansion which was built by a hurricane.

Nor do they believe that you were created by some invisible supernatural force. The former, though extremely unlikely seems a lot more likely than the latter.

what, the universe breaking its own laws to form itself in its current state? That's easier to believe than the proposition that there's an intelligent designer/control system behind this all? ffended:

all the best... looking forawdr to better attemps to reply with a bit more care to not mix points up :thankyou:

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Pygoscelis;

Interesting concept: You should consider your maker the most important being in your life.

I think that should go on a Mother's Day card.

Yes you could certainly put something like that on a mothers day card.

But,

If and only if there is a God then he has to be responsible for the existence of your mother also.

In the spirit of searching

Eric

 

[------]

Not to cum in unexpectedly, but even saying that 'God does not exist' defies the meaning of God. Just out of interest, what would you classify God as? I mean what would you attribute to Him, what meaning would you giv to God? [Aimed at ppl who dnt believe in God]

BECAUSE as soon as you say, 'God is...' you KNOW God exists and you are assigning a meaning and attribute to it!

Reply please.

Peace

 

[smile]

wow
i cannot believe i just read 24 pages of nonstop argueing.
the first few pages were interesting of course, but after that it started going in circles

to the belivers:they will never see, Allah has put a veil over their eyes

to the non-belivers: your loss

i really think the thread should be closed because you are not going to get anywhere

 

[cihad]

Oops ^^ that was me , ididn't know that i wasn't logged on=)

 

[------]

No one replied in 4 hours? Thats a shame [for the non-believers of course].

 

[Trumble]

Trumble with all due respect, i read my request i don tthink it was that hard to comprehend.

It was very easy to comprehend. I answered every paragraph that, IMHO, was worth answering. If there was something else you think needed a reply, please point it out.

I'm being pedantic yes, but its for your own benefit, my benefit and everyone else... you can't have a debate where people decide to ignore parts and reply to drips and drabs.

Pedantic and, frankly, tedious. In this sort of discussion it simply isn't possible to refer to every point by every poster if you have any sort of life, so you pick those most relevant.

So if i told you i poured a bag of marbles and it spelt that phrase, you would believe me? no?

No. But as usual, you miss the point. In a situation where I could only exist if that is what had occurred I would have to believe you. It must have occured.

So why are you willing to convicne yourself that this universe could have come out of pure chaos :?

Same reason. If the universe wasn't the way it was there would be no me trying to convince myself of anything. It doesn't matter in slightest how improbable it getting that way was, or how many failed attempts there had been I could never know about.

Secondly, i can argue that it's out of probablity space, a probability density function that would try to model such an event would decay so fast that the limit would be zero.

If you think you can argue that, do so.

Neither you nor I have the faintest idea what the probability density function is regarding my purely hypothetical example, or any other of the examples given to date. For a zero limit you need a discrete number of possible results (such as flipping a coin or throwing a die).. there is no known limit in any of the examples, and nothing to support that suggestion. Sure, I will acknowledge that practically in the case of the marble example some results may be more likely than others, but that is a result purely of the assorted physical factors involved in the real world - none of which are relevant to the point at hand. There will be similar factors relating to both the origin of the universe and the origin of life, but again neither of us (or anyone else) have the first idea what they all may have been. An equal disribution is therefore as good a guess as any, and would certainly apply (more or less) to a virtual infinity of possibilities even if there was a decline in probability along the curve.

No it's not the same at all, if you compare the arrangement of that sentence to any other combination it's so obvious that the marbles would have a tendency to settle in more chaotic states.

Taking that further, entropy tells us that natural systems tend to disorder, not order. You're here trying to convicne me that after a big bang, chaos out of coincincence ordered itself and became the way the world is today.

Entropy "tells us" that in the case of a limited range of dynamic physical systems that is what occurs. It has no universal application. For example, in a cosmological context gravity will always act to "bring order from chaos" by drawing elements of matter together into larger physical bodies. Once that occured, the rest is a natural progression or at least a progression as probable as any other. Yet again, as we are here discussing it, it happened - there is no 'coincidence'.

Dude it's a simple IQ excercise, you're not willing to let your mind beleive it in every aspect of your life, yet you're happy to fool yourself into believing it when it comes to even more complex things and mechanisms.

Actually it isn't a simple IQ (by which I assume you mean intellectual) exercise by any stretch of the imagination; its a question that, ultimately, I believe any human mind (and most certainly yours) can ever really get a handle on. My argument is, however, graspable (I do not expect you to agree with it) if you tax your intellect just a little further than you have done so far.

I think the above replies make a good answer to this regarding the probability of all this occurring being infininitesemally small.

It doesn't matter if they do or not (it's not), as that isn't the question.

Firstly, as I keep having to repeat, it happened. It is nonsense to talk about probabilities (we have no way of quantifying anyway) as we would not be talking about anything had it not happened.

Secondly, we have absolutely no idea how many times the cosmic dice were thrown, and are still being thrown. Over a period of time anything and (if sufficiently long) everything, will happen.

Thirdly, the thread was originally about an atheist's perspective. They simply believe that the existence of a God is far more improbable than the alternative. It's understandable as even conjouring up a God still leaves exactly the same question open that you started with; the one that Pygoscelis quite rightly keeps saying is never answered. Where did God come from, and what created Him. The only things resembling an answer are no more than waffle, essentially stating that He is somehow immune, unlike everything else, from needing to be created. No 'explanation' of why is ever given other than just stating that because his properties are different he didn't need to be created. Very handy, but with no logical foundation whatsoever. The whole concept is based purely on faith, and any 'logic' arising from that assumption similarly has independent existence apart from that faith.

lol: you're repeating yourself, read the above.. and you're making a huge assumption that every arrangemetn has the same chance of occurring and that's extremely untrue, try treating it as a dynamics problem and you'll realise that will never happen.

Already answered.

If you take the time to read into method of collecting hadith, it's very obvious that the hadiths are collected fromt he very people who where with him and accompanied him during his life.

So much so that hadiths which attribute themselves to the prophet but contain a missing link between the prophet and the narrator are classified as weak.

Where do hadiths come into this?!

Looks like you've never even read the quran

I have, although only in English translation. I therefore do not consider myself competent to comment on it as a literary work, particularly as I am well aware nobody believes translations really do the Arabic any justice.

the point of that is, for the prophet to make it up himself is impossible

I simply don't believe it was 'impossible', particularly as there is no reason (for an atheist) to believe 'himself' wasn't 'themselves'. And impossible is what it would have to be more me to consider God as a serious alternative.

Illiteracy is important becasue it throws out of the window any claim that he was chasing some 21st century scientist or what not in the desert tryign to copy down notes or plaguerise from other sources or books as some people try to have us believe

You have just repeated a point I have already responded to.

fine you don't trust the authenticity of the quran, prove to us that he did steel it from somewhere. You're making alot of claims, no evidence. That's your problem.

What problem? Of course, I can't prove it (and I'm not suggesting he 'stole' or 'plagiarised' anything!) - any more than you can disprove any of the alternatives. It's all a matter of faith.

Their minds dupe them so easily. That blows me away.

Perhaps that's inevitable from your perspective. Atheists, of course, would say just the same about 'believers'.

There's a difference bewteen millions to one and infinity to one, that's what you're missing. The former is in probability space, the latter simply isn't.

incase this is 'cryptic' feel free to ignore this example (just mention that it didnt make sense maybe i can think of something less analytical), when you're calculating sums of series or trying to solve improper integration problems, do you ever sit there and think 'hey that's wrong why am i taking limits, why am i assumign the value of this function is zero in the limit, surely it's not zero it's just an infinitesemally small number that i should go out and find it'

do you? no? Well why are you falling over that principle when it comes to probability?

Fascinating, but totally irrelevant. As I said (again) neither of us have the faintest idea what the relevant probabilities are/were in any of the cases discussed.

 

[------]

Erm...hello?! Am I being ignored in this thread ffended: ffended:

 

[Trumble]

Not to cum in unexpectedly, but even saying that 'God does not exist' defies the meaning of God. Just out of interest, what would you classify God as? I mean what would you attribute to Him, what meaning would you giv to God? [Aimed at ppl who dnt believe in God]

BECAUSE as soon as you say, 'God is...' you KNOW God exists and you are assigning a meaning and attribute to it!

First of all, my apologies for not replying to this earlier. It's a long thread, and time is limited!

I'd argue in this context that what exists is not God, but a concept of God which attributes certain properties to a theoretical 'Him'. An atheist would argue that it is perfectly possible to have the concept without the reality - for example it is easy to imagine what a purple and pink striped elephant might look like, but that doesn't mean there is any such thing as a purple and pink striped elephant.

That concept can vary. I am not an atheist, at least as I understand that term, and I have my own concept of God that believe represents a reality (although I cannot prove it does). It is, however, different from the Christian or Islamic concept of God. I like to think I understand what the Christian and Islamic concept is in intellectual terms (although I have no direct experience of it), but that does not imply it is a reality. In absolute terms it can't be, I'm sure everyone would agree God is so far beyond human understanding the best we can do with language is provide a very poor approximation.

 

[------]

I'd argue in this context that what exists is not God, but a concept of God which attributes certain properties to a theoretical 'Him'.

Are you familiar with the Ontological Argument?

The ontological argument attempts to prove God’s existence through abstract reasoning alone. The argument is entirely a priori, i.e. it involves no empirical evidence at all. Rather, the argument begins with an explication of the concept of God, and seeks to demonstrate that God exists on the basis of that concept alone.

U can read through on here -
http://www.princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/ontological.html
It starts off with the cincept of God and proves the reality

eace:

 

[Trumble]

Are you familiar with the Ontological Argument?

Yes. I am also familiar with the objections to it, most notably that of Kant. As with most of the classic philosophical arguments "attempts to prove" is very different from "proves"!

 

[------]

OK maybe that was a rubbish point lol its just i'm doing that in my studies at the moment :rollseyes

But why are you arguing against God? Surely you believe in God so why argue against?

**confused**

eace:

[bak 2moro gtg out sfe]

 

[Trumble]

OK maybe that was a rubbish point lol its just i'm doing that in my studies at the moment

Rubbish? No, quite the contrary! It's a classic argument, and one well worth anyone's study time. It is important, though, when studying philosophy to consider not only an argument, but the objections to it. And the objections to the objections, and even the objections to the objections to the objections!

But why are you arguing against God? Surely you believe in God so why argue against?

Firstly, as I said my own conception of God is rather (or indeed very) different from yours. Secondly I'm not at all sure I actually have done that. All I've done is argue that some things, particularly the so called scientific 'proofs' in the Qur'an, do not prove the existence of God. My overall position has been that the existence of God can neither be proved or disproved.

 

[Pygoscelis]

Erm...hello?! Am I being ignored in this thread ffended: ffended:

Sorry Princess, I tend to post in spurts and you're post was inbetween them. Didn't look at the forum from the time I last posted until now.

I as an atheist see "God" as a concept. God exists in the minds of those who believe in him. God also takes whatever form believers assign to him. He is no different than an imaginary friend. He's just one with (imagined) super powers.

God being formed by the ideas of human beings means that God has taken so many different forms throughout history that any ontological argument doesn't apply to everyone's concept of God (or Gods for that matter).

I also find it somewhat of a fallacy that you can prove the existence of a supernatural being through a thought experiment with the limits of a human mind.

 

[Pygoscelis]

While replying to EricH and Princess is fun, I just don't have the energy to reply to lolwhatever line by line the way he demands, so I'll keep being a bad person and replying only to what I find interesting, flawed, a valid point or relevant in some way or another.

How so? A creator is someone who creates, creation is somethign that was created. To say the creator was created implies he's not a creator. What's so hard to understand about that?

Why can one not be both a creator and created? Are you yourself unable to create? Can't you bake a cake or something thereby creating it? Can't you make a poem? If you do, you've created, and you also believe that you yourself were created.

again he decides to ignore simple logic... your midn couldn't process the first sentence in my original reply? or it's just too shocking to answer?

Would I believe that a hurricane made a functioning car? No. Why? Because there hasn't been infinite time and also because I have little reason to believe what you tell me.

Now if that hurricane was going for infinity and had an infinite supply of all the bits of car that needed to be assembled to make one, then yes, I would believe it. In fact I'd know it to be so.

[quote[ It's out of probability space. [/quote]

As Trumble put it, you have no idea what the probability space is, so its rather pointless to keep on reciting that its outside it.

And to seal off your argument, given infinite time a hurricate thrashing around a car factory could form a perfectly functioning car? yes?

Yes. And not "could" but "would", assuming a limitless supply of the parts needed.

That doesn't make sense, the universe is bound by physical laws that are breakable :heated: Then it means they're not laws in the first place.

True. And do you really believe that what scientists now see as "physical laws" have no exceptions? We've already found a few exceptions to what were formerly thought of as unassailable laws of physics.

Ok hangon for a sec, i'll assume you're right.. it's possible... that means that arrangement can be proven

Fallacy. Even if we can't prove some outcome (which I'm not saying we can't in this case) that doesn't make it impossible. It could simply be beyond your mind to conceive.

For your coin example, the set is not of only two possibilities as you have designated it. The coin could land heads, it could land tails, it could also land on its side. Didn't think of that? How many other possibilities may we not be thinking of?

The probablity of god not existing is improbable

So now you are at least saying you COULD be wrong? Atheists usually agree that there COULD be a God of some type but they just don't believe it to be so. Theists rarely admit to the possibility (no matter how remote) that their God may not exist. Are you taking that step?

because fo the fact someone claiming to be the creator told us enough to prove his existance. If you doubt them feel free to explain why.

That is a completely different attempt to prove God, and one dealt with at length elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the so-called proof is not sufficiently convincing to the many non-muslims who've lived over the ages.

on top of that you're into this idea of debating people abotu their religion and books without even knowing whats inside. That's pure cactus.

There is little need to know the complete literary works of all religions. They are all very similar and few if any of them actually follow their written works anyway. Religion exists in the mind of its believers.

Furthermore, A God that actually exists would not need to resort to a written text, and certainly not one written by some humans. It would be such a strange and unecessary thing for a God to do, yet all of the claimed Gods in human history seem to have done this.

The mere existence of the bible, the mere existence of the Quran are evidence against their veracity.

Could be, it's in probablity space

Well since you don't deny it (and cheekily so) I'll assume that you did mean it and were just being a jerk again. We roll our eyes and move on.

what, the universe breaking its own laws to form itself in its current state? That's easier to believe than the proposition that there's an intelligent designer/control system behind this all? ffended:

I'm sorry that offends you, but its easier to believe that some supernatural god force did it, yes. Now perhaps aliens did it, but then we'd just step up one level and you'd be claiming some sort of God made the aliens.

looking forawdr to better attemps to reply with a bit more care

Hehe, there you go being arrogant again. It isn't offensive now. Its just amusing.

 

[YusufNoor]

I have yet to meet an individual that can prove the existence of this unseen entity that is known universally as god. My core beliefs stem from the fact that this world came to be by mere chance and probability. That is why I would to like call out to any one that can prove to me (once and for all) the existence of this so called god ( or maybe gods ……ha-ha).

P.S please try to use references to prove your points that are based on solid scientific facts

simply go to the Harun Yahya site and watch some of the free movies

http://www.harunyahya.com/html/m_video_index.htm

:salaam:

 

[Trumble]

simply go to the Harun Yahya site and watch some of the free movies

I'm downloading the one that will show me that Buddhism is

built on twisted teachings, contains peculiar acts of worship incompatible with human reason and logic, and turns man towards idolatry

And, apparently,

This movie reveals all the deviant aspects of this superstitious religion

Can't wait. Nothing like a bit of religious intolerance for a good laugh.