Religion's

It basically means tying the knot, being attached at the hip, and that kind of thing.

 

I'm rather impressed. It is odd, but most theories nowadays are. I'm not seeing any blatant holes in it anyway.

Well as I see it there are two distinct levels of truth. Static and dynamic (personal terms, there may be a more official way to state what I'm getting at). Static truths are the ones that don’t change at all. These are mostly the laws that govern our world. Dynamic truths are constantly changing. For example “I am typing on my computer†is currently true but it is obviously not always true (and in fact as you're reading this it likely won't be). “There are people in China†is obviously dynamic. Almost no matter who you talk to, this has not always been true. The world existed before people were on it, and the world did not always exist either. And I don't think many people believe that there will always be people in China in the future.

So lets repair my example with an assumed static truth. “The force of gravity is equivalent to the product of the gravitational constant and the masses of the two objects between them divided by the square of the distance between them.†For the sake of argument lets pretend that by some miracle this is absolutely right and won't need any adjustments in the future. Most people don't know this equation but gravity still acts upon them in this matter. So their lack of knowledge does not change the existence or form of that physical law. Introducing doubt back into the equation (as I'm sure you would be doing anyway if I left it at that) We both agree that we most likely don't know the rules of gravity absolutely. If there were not some truth to be aiming at how would it be possible to miss the mark and need future adjustments?

Neither one claims to be indestructible, the idea is what to do about that. The rope method attempts to prove it in multiple ways to compensate for each minor argument being weak. If I have five minor arguments and you break three of them, I can still hold on to the greater argument. This is fine but very slow. The chain method tries to make each link harder to break but then only creates a few minor arguments. This is faster than the rope method but if you can clip the chain at any point all the following links fall.

Well for starters I would like to throw in my personal iteration of the argument from ignorance. As you can see with the Klein Bottle and Tesseract Cube when we move passed our perception of reality, things become harder to understand. For god to be a supremely perfect being he would need to exist fully in all dimensions (including our three, thus the omnipresent property), anything less would be an instance of imperfection and would break the definition of God. According to current string theory we are looking at ten dimensions. Therefore any answer I can give you is throwing nickels at the million dollar question. But since you asked, lets look at some of those nickels.

Lets continue to look at dimensions. Imagine the perspective of a two dimensional plane. To that plane a sphere would be a circle where it intersects. If the sphere were to be dropped through the plane the plane would observe a series of circles of varying sizes (If I'm not explaining this well this game does a decent job of the same concept, they just pass two dimensional shapes through one dimension(or a line)). In a way we are four dimensional beings even if our perception is of three. That is to say we take up a length of time, from our birth to our death (at minimum). However since we don't directly see the dimension of time, we only perceive a sliver as it passes through our three dimension existence. And just like in the sphere example, where each sliver is different, we change through time but are part of the same form (You from five years ago is different than how you are now, but they are both still you). So a being that perceives four or more dimensions would be able to see your completed time form, making you as a baby and you as a teenager simply two different angles. (An aspect of omniscience).

Now what if we go back to what I said earlier. God would need to exist fully in all dimensions. So we are not simply talking about a being that can fully perceive the fourth dimension, but one that actually exists in it entirely, filling the entire space of time. Now it is impossible for anything to come before God to have caused its existence. This argument only applies to four dimensions, but you can make a similar argument for all dimensions to follow. Thus, for anything to have been able to spur the existence of God we would no longer be talking about God. Something causing God isn't simply incomprehensible it actually paradoxical.

Now, that's all well and good for an assumed existence, but how do you prove that existence? The short answer, I can't. As has been stated many times by many people, that is simply faith. When you see a sphere through two dimensions, you see a circle. When you see an entire three dimensional space through a plane you see the entire plane. But how is it noticeably different than what you had before? As I explained above, there is no “before†to look at. There is no beginning or end to look at. There are no boundaries at all. So there is no difference other than what you care to believe. It becomes impossible for me to show you God because there is no non-God for me to show you. We know what light is because of the dark. We know what matter is because of the nothingness, we know what joy is because of the pain, we know what love is because of the hate, but there is nothing to compare God against because God is everywhere and in everything.

An Atheist claims that Atheism is true
→ An Atheist claims that non-theism is true
→ An Atheist claims the theism is not true
∴ We just said the same thing

I never claimed that Atheism didn't require belief. Agnostics require belief too. A belief in disbelief.

If I flip a coin and call heads theism and tails atheism, landing on it's side would be agnosticism in our sense of the word. The coin landed but it didn't settle on heads or tails.

We better decide on something fast here, I'm running out of analogies.

 

Mmm...

Hm? I was arguing that even if we are right about the laws now, they could change. Not just our understanding of them, but the actual laws themselves. Why should we assume that they are permanent? Hm? I would say that all truths are dynamic. Nowhere is it stated that laws are eternal or must be eternal, except by people defending the status quo.

Indeed...

Correction: a supremely powerful being. Perfection is relative, and as such it cannot truly exist in this world.

Again with time... I already argued against that and could go many ways with it, and it does not count as a dimension anyway.

Exactly. But, if causality is true of everything that is not nothing, then clearly a creator could not have existed. In fact, the universe has no origin, and may loop back on itself. If you drop causality here, then your argument may begin to make sense, but you appear to be making the following argument. All things need causes; therefore, God exists; he must have created everything. But if God has a cause then he would not be God, so he must not have a cause. This directly contradicts your earlier claim to the existence of and adherence to causality. I believe that causality would hold true in all dimensions if it exists. No matter how messed up time is on other dimensions, concepts such as before and after apply. If you can act, then you are moving in time, and this is true no matter what plane of existence you are on. If causality is a valid concept, then all actions, events and general existence have causes on all planes of existence. It is as simple as that. If you are going to argue that something does not have to be created in order to exist, then the entire argument is moot, and I could, in fact, be the limited equivalent of such a god.

And even if you could show me God, I would have little reason to believe any one definition of what I was shown, because it could, again, just be something that is going on in my dream. My question to you is... Why do you take it on faith? Why that, of all of the other definitions of reality out there? What makes it more likely? And I do mean aside from the evidence. There are many interpretations of the same evidence out there. Why does yours seem more likely to you? I hear too often that it "just is" the truth, and that makes no sense, because before hearing it, you did not believe that it was the truth. I ask why you personally see it as the truth, who told you, what perception made it look real to your eyes, and so on. Not about the thing itself. I wish to analyze the way that you see what you see, and not what you see itself. Please be careful with your answer. I will be waiting.

It is impossible to believe in disbelief. It is a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron, in fact. Please try again.

No, that is where you are wrong. Agnosticism is deciding not to flip the coin at all upon thinking about the chances. After all, why waste time when they might both be wrong, on top of only having a fifty-fifty chance of leaning in the right direction? It is the only choice that means none, as said here many times over... And, going back again, theism is not the basis of religion. Look at some of the religions in your list; they contain no gods. Please look over my other posts in response to Pika regarding that.

 

So maybe all the targets are moving. They are still targets.

I was using a standard Philosophical definition used for thousands of years. What traits are considered perfect and not have been debated. I haven't spent much time on it, but to my understanding what most people would consider negative traits end up leading to paradoxes.

The dimensions past us are hard to percieve but making time the fourth dimension is a very common practice. You can place doubt on it like anything, but to stright up deny it I want some counter point.

Lets tweak causality here. This is probably going to sound like a cop out to you but this really is the way I've seen it. My precise definition just generally is insignificantly different from the wide used one so it isn't worth me bringing up "All things that begin must have a cause to do so" Since God always was he doesn't have a beginning that needs to be triggered.

Well, up until middle school it was always what I was told and I was a pretty sheltered child until then I didn't know about 9-11 for a week (IIRC) after it happened. By that point in my life I had taken to being intellectual. I wasn't fit for sports and learning disabilities combined with extreme introversion basically made me a social outcast. At that point the best day of my life was when I was told that my intelligence was not as low as everyone thought it was. I simply had low processing speed that made it impossible to achieve at everyone else's pace. In fact when given extended time I tested into the gifted levels. My church had a unit called "Cosmic Fingerprints" (this might be them I haven't looked at all and it was about six years ago so I'm not sure I could confirm it even with a closer look). They weren't trying to prove god. I assume since it was a church and figured that would be preaching to the choir. But they looked at a lot of things in science that definitely look as if they were guided in some way as a "isn't this cool?" type deal. I can no longer recall most of them. One was that if Jupiter was slightly farther away we would be pummeled by space junk, slightly closer and we would be inevitably sucked in. And also once you change the translation in Genesis chapter one to read ages instead of days (since like many Hebrew words "yowm" can be interpreted in different ways) it is actually a very accurate account of the beginning of the world scientifically. One of the key lines in that service that struck me was along the lines of "The odds of our world fitting into all these criteria that keep us from having been destroyed a long time ago, is comparable to blowing up a toothpick factory and getting a working microwave in pristine condition as a byproduct." Although I've never heard that line again I've heard similar ones. A famous one being Peter W. Stoner's illustration. If you take the state of Texas and pile it two feet high with silver dollars then sent a blindfolded man out randomly to pick up one of them at random; the odds of him having picked up a premarked coin on his first try (1 in 10^17) is the odds of anyone fulfilling just eight of the hundreds of prophecies of the messiah. It is historically proven that Jesus fulfilled at least that many. The current estimate of how many people who have been born is around 10^11 as a point of reference. If you believe the bible he fulfilled over 100 such prophecies. The odds of him fulfilling 48 is about 1 in 10^157. That number is truly incomprehensible, and for all intensive purposes you might as well call those odds imposable. I couldn't find anyone who tried to estimate all of them, but suffice it to say it would be a bigger miracle for him NOT to be the messiah.

This is not to say I never looked at other religions, but based on what I saw, nothing else fit. There were religions that seemed to shallow, too vague, conflicted directly with things I already believed in, etc. they just didn't have any appeal. If anyone ever wants to explain their religion to me I will listen for as long as you are willing to talk about it (or at least until you stop telling me anything new). Since my affirmation in my beliefs I have watched as my cold and stoical heart softened into the one that could actually sit here and have such an in depth discussion with you. And I have had my own minor encounters with God. On the day of my baptism (my church baptizes people as adults) I was getting cold feet about the ordeal. I finally found a secluded spot and asked God. "If now is the right time to do this then let me know that you want this." And then it was a bit hard to describe, like a whisper in the back corner of my mind. A thought that didn't seem to be mine and I could barely tell was there, but at the same time it was clear. The fact that I had talked to God about it was proof that I was ready for it. But I wanted to be sure it was not my imagination so I asked for something more tangible. I went to the student service and the used the verse Acts 8:36 "...As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?â€..." and no they were in no way referencing the baptism that day. The sermon was about how your actions could be larger than they appear to you, and it ends with Philip baptizing the eunuch. That was enough proof for me, and as if to comfort me in my decision that exact verse was also quoted at the baptism ceremony. And just last summer was a night I don't think I will ever forget. It was at church summer camp my super senior year (I already graduated but we switch ministries in fall), it was a sermon on acting out belief, with a key illustration being telling everyone that a chair can support your weight but never sitting down. It struck home because I often live not as a Christian but simply as a man with morals. To give you an idea on this next scene this is a picture from that summer camp...

Spoiler: church

Now when it comes to our worship night we basically make that place into a Holy mosh pit, an obvious exaggeration but it gets my point across. I am very close to being front and center during this and I get a prompting to walk out of the auditorium because someone needed me. I almost dismissed it because I figured God could easily make it someone else that could get back there easier. But I decided I had to at least try. It takes me at least all of five minutes to get out of there and when I finally get there there is not a sole to be seen in that hallway. I then decided that since I was back there anyway I would just meditate for a little while. About three minutes goes by when two girls come out of there. One is crying so hard that she can't stand on her own and the other is practically dragging her out of there. They sit down on a bench and the stable one is trying to get the one having a breakdown to explain what is going on, another girl comes out to try and find out what is going on and they agree that the one that just came out would sit with her and the one that originally came out would find the rest of the small group. So now she's holding her, trying to get her to settle down and I go over and lay my hands on them and start praying. I had very little sense of time here but it couldn't have been less than then minutes when the small group finally steps out of the auditorium and I go back in. As I'm walking in a felt a tap on my shoulder and turned because I thought that a leader had seen me and was trying to tell me nice job, but there was no one there or anything that I would have brushed against. I felt an overwhelming sense of peace, like I had fulfilled my purpose for that day and could just relax, which I have to say was an interesting contrast with all the adrenaline in that auditorium.

Through my spiritual journey I've had many mentors that have helped me out immensely, from someone who works full time as a pastor, to someone who moved from south africa just because he felt god prompting him and has since gotten married, to a graduate student that has already been on 7 missions trips. And my church has had many excellent guest speakers visit Henry Cloud and Lee Strobel being the two that influenced me most.

But the thing is, that is all well and good. But the only people who are likely to get anything out of it are people who already are Christians. Atheists and Agnostics will be looking for hard proof that I'll tell you like I told you before that I just can't offer it. And maybe a theist of another religion might appreciate it but until something shakes the foundation of their faith it won't change a thing.

Belief in Agnosticism
Belief in non-gnosticism
Belief in not knowing
Belief in not believing (I'll admit a stretch on not knowing = not believing here, but, as you've been saying this whole time in such posts as such as this one here that you had me read earlier, your belief in something is reflective of how much you trust your knowledge of it. (and since nothing can be absolutely known, nothing can be absolutely believed))

Oxymoronic phrase or not, it conveys how I perceive your outlook on life.

I feel like you keep attacking my wording instead of my point on this. Now you are going back to what I said earlier in a way. You've decided that the coin is irrelevant because you have decided that you can trust neither heads nor tails and thus have not flipped the coin at all. This holds close resemblance to when I said that you did not decide X in "I conclude that X is an absolute truth" because you have decided that there is no way for you to be fully confident in an X.

 

They are no longer the same targets if they change shape.

Give some examples. The point is that perfection is a subjective value, like anything else. No work of art can be perfect, because the value that is placed on it by each viewer is subjective and special to each viewer. No one value can be said to be more accurate than any of the others, because without the people there to place the values, it would not have any value. A painting is just paint on a canvas without someone there to look at it. Any being that exists would apply in this way, no matter their power of intelligence. The same is true of all things that may or may not exist. Value, and thus perfection, is subjective. There are as many versions of it as there are minds to judge it by.

Actually, it is not a common practice. Time is set aside as the temporal dimension, and not the fourth, because it is does not denote space like the first three do. Unless you can argue that it does share traits with the third dimension and down, then it is outside of all physical dimensions. This is a generally accepted fact far more often than the idea of time as the fourth is. If time were the fourth, and then one dimension above that you had another physical dimension, it would make little sense. As I have understood it and seen it used consistently, it applies to all dimensions, but is not one in itself.

If there is an exception to causality without reason specifically to make room for your theory of God, then why should it apply to everything else? The basic argument behind causality is that every single thing must have an original cause. Either you claim it or you do not. Using the original premise to argue for God's existence and then editing your original premise of causality to make room for your faith is paradoxical. Unless you can provide a reason for the exception apart from the fact that it contradicts what you believe, then it is a contradictory argument. Please, do not take the route of, "I just don't know how to explain it to you," or, "You just can't understand it/don't want to," because those are both rather childish. Any belief without reason is quite baseless, particularly when you try to bend logic to make room for it.

So, it was an evidence based argument from the start... But, I could also argue that even if Jesus may have satisfied all of those prophecies, that this all happened in one rather small part of the world. Other religions may have or, older, may have had, just as much evidence to back them up in other places of the world and at different times. This is where the argument from evidence fails, because you can never gather enough evidence to prove that there is only one true religion. You do not even have records of all of the religions in existence and much less those that have existed, so...

Or, back to the evidence argument; let us assume that the evidence is complete. But that still does not satisfy the infinite regress of causality mentioned earlier. This infinite regress is the basis of the argument for a creator in the first place; "The world had to come from somewhere." The fact is that, even if there is a god or a set of gods, if causality is true, then nothing came first. Time may have to look back on itself for that.

Atheists will look for hard proof. Agnostics will look for the logical impossibility of there not being a god.

Then your perception creates a paradox, quite simply. Your paradigm requires that I believe in something, as others might say that I have to trust those that I love. That I also disagree with strongly...

And I feel like you keep having trouble here. Let me go at this another way; have we not already established that Atheism is a system of belief in itself? This leaves Agnosticism as both none and undecided, if it must be the latter.

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

I'll post a reply like I have been later, I'm tired, starting to feel sick, and honestly too frustrated to think logically. But there is an observation I want to address and at the same time a question.

First, it seems to me that you are used to arguing in a winner take all fashion. Although there are no outbursts you seem to be getting subtley more annoyed as this goes on and I think it has to do with that (assuming I was correct). You point out flaws in my statements usually by semantics or doubt and then I'm getting the sense that you are annoyed when I fine tune the ideas to compensate. Where you yourself almost seem afraid to say to much because it might make a paradox and you say basically the same thing over and over and over again. As we agreed upon on the begining. This is not about being the one who was right. It is about understanding the other side so that you can make an educated decision as you walk out of this. Any idea I say should be treated with the same weight no matter when it is brought up or why.

Second, I put my heart on my sleeve with that last post so I want to ask the same basic thing you asked me. Why do you carry the label of agnostic? This is not about convincing me that you are right, it is about explaining to me why you think you are right. What brought you to think about life in that manner? Were any people or resources influential in this decision? How has this decision affected you since you adapted it? We've touched on some of this, but go ahead and spell it out for me.

 

Interesting... I am used to arguing like that. If I do not see it as a mathematical equation with only one right answer, then I do not argue it at all, as a general rule.

Heart on your sleeve, was it? It did not sound overly emotional to me. But, I digress. Fair enough. That is a long story...

Well, first of all I was raised a Christian. I was especially sold on it among those in my family... When a problem arose, I would be the one to say, "Let's pray about it." This when I was very young; up until about six. Because of my intellectual nature and strict sense of justice, I would always look to evidenced arguments like that of Kent Hovind to justify my faith. Throughout my life, I adhered to the idea until I was at least fifteen years old. As time went on, my intellectual nature got the better of me, and I had to acknowledge that not only could some questions of mine not be answered, but that several of them assumed an impossible premise. I came to the conclusion that anarchy was God's original intention for humanity based on his problems with appointing a king and Jesus' notions regarding taxation, for example... And yet Paul told us to pay taxes and things like that. At some point I stumbled upon the impossibility of an all-powerful and all-loving being in this world, and have found no way to satisfy the contradiction. "Oh, but we need suffering for free will." No, we do not. Man is already limited in his will in many ways. Man would clearly be far better off with an inability to suffer than an inability to breath underwater. And so on...

And, earlier than that, I had been thinking on it, and came to the conclusion that anything could be behind the things that we call God's works. Why one being? Why a being at all? How to decide? Surely, if I should not trust what I see, when this piece of paper is not good enough to go on, because then I would be trusting what I see on the paper. Revisionists are very good at covering up history; this I held to in all areas of history. And then, further on, I realized that I could not prove the existence of the book, and that that is why I should not trust my eyes. If I could not prove the existence of the book, then why should I bother with the existence of something called God, which I rely on this book for? I disagree with his morality, and I refuse to serve any being other than myself. If I face him on judgment day, I will do it with a clean conscience; no god is more deserving of my respect than I am of his. But, I somehow avoided the fact that my morality contradicted with every single act of God that I read about. I had concluded that God agreed with me, and not the other way around before all of this, and upon finding that God and I did not agree at all, I had little trouble letting go. The main stepping stone is my family. They are all against my pragmatic and logical streak. My well-intentioned doubts...

Since then, I have found that science and religion are really one and the same if you believe either of them with some kind of baseless conviction. If I had to name some influences, I would have a lot of trouble coming up with any. Prone to constant introspection as I am, this change was all on me as far as I could tell. I did have one friend that proceeded along the same path that I did and at the same pace, though. I would probably call him my best friend. We did not talk about it much, but when I think about it, we were always on the same page at all points in time, even though we were both changing our opinions and perspectives on the world.

I could not give you a time frame, because I am bad with dates. Sorry.