Does God exist?

[PsychoSarah]

Why do you keep talking about how laws change?

When was murder not murder?

When was rape not rape?

When was stealing not stealing?

I can list societies of the past which found all of those actions acceptable. Heck, I can find ones for rape that still exist.

 

[bhsmte]

Why do you keep talking about how laws change?

When was murder not murder?

When was rape not rape?

When was stealing not stealing?

We have a few more laws on the books than those three. And, the definition of the crimes listed above, have changed over time and each state may have a different definition.

 

[PsychoSarah]

In America, murdering someone is a crime. It is a crime even if the murderer disagrees.

It does not matter what their opinion is. They are convicted as having broken a law.

Period.

Just because the lawbreaker can't influence the law with their opinion doesn't mean no one can. Also, what about stand your ground laws? There are cases in which you can kill someone without getting into trouble with the law to any significant extent.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

I can list societies of the past which found all of those actions acceptable. Heck, I can find ones for rape that still exist.

What society says that the unjustified taking of life is acceptable?

Name one.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

We have a few more laws on the books than those three. And, the definition of the crimes listed above, have changed over time and each state may have a different definition.

Bro get serious.

The unjustified taking of life has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

Abusing a person sexually without their consent for mere pleasure has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

Taking something that does not belong to you for the sake of using it for your own selfish desires has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

What's wrong with you?

 

[PsychoSarah]

What society says that the unjustified taking of life is acceptable?

Name one.

Depends on what you consider unjustified. No one just randomly decides to kill people. Even if that justification seems unreasonable, all actions which are intentional are going to have some reason behind them. But if you like, the culture of the Aztecs was cool with massive amounts of murder, especially if they were want for rain.

 

[bhsmte]

Bro get serious.

The unjustified taking of life has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

Abusing a person sexually without their consent for mere pleasure has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

Taking something that does not belong to you for the sake of using it for your own selfish desires has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

What's wrong with you?

Whats wrong with me?

One thing that is correctable, wasting any time with you.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Bro get serious.

The unjustified taking of life has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

Abusing a person sexually without their consent for mere pleasure has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

Taking something that does not belong to you for the sake of using it for your own selfish desires has ALWAYS been a crime in America.

What's wrong with you?

Tell that to all the Native Americans who were raped and murderered

 

[Achilles6129]

I can list societies of the past which found all of those actions acceptable. Heck, I can find ones for rape that still exist.

What society says that the unjustified taking of life is acceptable?

Name one.

I'm going to have to take PsychoSarah's side on this one: "murder" and "rape" are subject to radically different definitions and always have.

For example, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, and Communist China obviously had different definitions of the term "murder." If you consider abortion murder then the USA (and many other countries) obviously allow murder.

As far as rape is concerned, girls have been allowed to marry at different ages throughout history and indeed still are today. In the USA the age is officially 18, but in earlier times girls would get married around 13/14. In some Islamic societies girls can get married at 9. Obviously both of these things would constitute rape under the laws in the USA, so the bottom line is that murder and rape have been (and still are) legal because no-one can really agree on what those terms mean.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

I'm going to have to take PsychoSarah's side on this one: "murder" and "rape" are subject to radically different definitions and always have.

For example, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, and Communist China obviously had different definitions of the term "murder." If you consider abortion murder then the USA (and many other countries) obviously allow murder.

As far as rape is concerned, girls have been allowed to marry at different ages throughout history and indeed still are today. In the USA the age is officially 18, but in earlier times girls would get married around 13/14. In some Islamic societies girls can get married at 9. Obviously both of these things would constitute rape under the laws in the USA, so the bottom line is that murder and rape have been (and still are) legal because no-one can really agree on what those terms mean.

The unjustified taking of life is by definition, the unjustified taking of life.

What is justified is a matter of debate. What is not a matter of debate is whether the unjustified taking of life is murder. Murder by definition is the unjustified taking of life.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

Tell that to all the Native Americans who were raped and murderered

lol...

those who did such things were still committing crimes.

So what is your point?

 

[Achilles6129]

Uh, we can read the Canaanite religious text.

Please cite a source for this.

We also see at the burning bush Yahweh reveal to Moses that he has been El all along.

Explain.

 

[Achilles6129]

The unjustified taking of life is by definition, the unjustified taking of life.

What is justified is a matter of debate. What is not a matter of debate is whether the unjustified taking of life is murder. Murder by definition is the unjustified taking of life.

Right...what is justified is a matter of debate. Obviously all these societies (including the USA) consider such behavior justified, and, therefore, not murder.

Now let's come to Scripture. God commands children who curse their parents to be executed (Ex. 21:17). In your mind, would that be justified taking of a life or no?

 

[quatona]

The unjustified taking of life is by definition, the unjustified taking of life.

What is justified is a matter of debate. What is not a matter of debate is whether the unjustified taking of life is murder. Murder by definition is the unjustified taking of life.

Which, of course, is nothing but a semantics issue.

 

[Achilles6129]

Evidence that God exists:

If God existed we would expect to find things that are aesthetically engineered without being necessary for life. A perfect example of this is an earth/moon solar eclipse. The earth is the only planet in the solar system where the moon almost exactly covers the sun during a total solar eclipse, leading to a spectacular view:

About Solar Eclipses

In astronomical terms, the Sun and Moon have roughly the same angular size. This makes it possible for a solar eclipse to occur. No other planets in our solar system enjoys the same one-to-one ratio between the size of a moon and the Sun.

And here's a photograph of a total solar eclipse:

Total Solar Eclipse 2010 Photos & Images

Obviously, the fact that the moon almost exactly covers the sun during a total solar eclipse is completely unnecessary for life. The fact that this only happens on earth (and on no other planet in the solar system) remains yet another "unsolved mystery" for the antitheistic community.​

More evidence that God exists:​

The Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Principle | Reasonable Faith​

More specifically, the values of the various forces of nature appear to be fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life. The world is conditioned principally by the values of the fundamental constants a (the fine structure constant, or electromagnetic interaction), mn/me (proton to electron mass ratio, aG (gravitation), aw (the weak force), and as (the strong force). When one mentally assigns different values to these constants or forces, one discovers that in fact the number of observable universes, that is to say, universes capable of supporting intelligent life, is very small. Just a slight variation in any one of these values would render life impossible.

For example, if as were increased as much as 1%, nuclear resonance levels would be so altered that almost all carbon would be burned into oxygen; an increase of 2% would preclude formation of protons out of quarks, preventing the existence of atoms. Furthermore, weakening as by as much as 5% would unbind deuteron, which is essential to stellar nucleosynthesis, leading to a universe composed only of hydrogen. It has been estimated that as must be within 0.8 and 1.2 its actual strength or all elements of atomic weight greater than four would not have formed. Or again, if aw had been appreciably stronger, then the Big Bang's nuclear burning would have proceeded past helium to iron, making fusion-powered stars impossible. But if it had been much weaker, then we should have had a universe entirely of helium. Or again, if aG had been a little greater, all stars would have been red dwarfs, which are too cold to support life-bearing planets. If it had been a little smaller, the universe would have been composed exclusively of blue giants which burn too briefly for life to develop. According to Davies, changes in either aG or electromagnetism by only one part in 1040 would have spelled disaster for stars like the sun. Moreover, the fact that life can develop on a planet orbiting a star at the right distance depends on the close proximity of the spectral temperature of starlight to the molecular binding energy. Were it greatly to exceed this value, living organisms would be sterilized or destroyed; but were it far below this value, then the photochemical reactions necessary to life would proceed too slowly for life to exist. Or again, atmospheric composition, upon which life depends, is constrained by planetary mass. But planetary mass is the inevitable consequence of electromagnetic and gravitational interactions. And there simply is no physical theory which can explain the numerical values of a and mn/me that determine electromagnetic interaction.
​

Barrow and Tipler on the Anthropic Principle vs. Divine Design | Reasonable Faith​

 

[Cearbhall]

Between the cosmological argument, the precise laws of physics required for a sustainable universe, and the likelihood of the simulation theory... I say the meter swings in the direction of a Creator. Just not an Iron Age, Canaanite war god mixed with the cheif god of the pantheon (Yahweh/El).

It blows my mind that people think the question "How did the universe start, then?" will make me Christian. There's a huge difference between the 2014 "God of the gaps" and the Abrahamic God. The farthest this could take me is Deism.

 

[Jeremy E Walker]

Right...what is justified is a matter of debate. Obviously all these societies (including the USA) consider such behavior justified, and, therefore, not murder.

Now let's come to Scripture. God commands children who curse their parents to be executed (Ex. 21:17). In your mind, would that be justified taking of a life or no?

In that time and place and under those circumstances absolutely.

 

[poolerboy0077]

Evidence that God exists:

If God existed we would expect to find things that are aesthetically engineered without being necessary for life. A perfect example of this is an earth/moon solar eclipse. The earth is the only planet in the solar system where the moon almost exactly covers the sun during a total solar eclipse, leading to a spectacular view:

About Solar Eclipses



And here's a photograph of a total solar eclipse:

Total Solar Eclipse 2010 Photos & Images

Obviously, the fact that the moon almost exactly covers the sun during a total solar eclipse is completely unnecessary for life. The fact that this only happens on earth (and on no other planet in the solar system) remains yet another "unsolved mystery" for the antitheistic community.​

More evidence that God exists:​

The Teleological Argument and the Anthropic Principle | Reasonable Faith​

Barrow and Tipler on the Anthropic Principle vs. Divine Design | Reasonable Faith​

[/left]

How is an unexplained event evidence of God? Saying such a thing amounts to a contradiction: I can't explain X, therefore I can explain it! There have been several instances throughout history where people invoked God at the limits of their knowledge, until someone hundreds of years later came around and solved the mystery. As Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, "If that's how you want to invoke your evidence for god, then god is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance."

Also, calling something "aesthetically engineered" is a begging-the-question fallacy. You're assuming the conclusion in the premise. Whether something is engineered or not is the question. It also seems a rather unfalsifiable statement if you consider nearly everything engineered. Moreover, aesthetics is anthropocentric, meaning it is dependent on human minds and our subjective evaluations. There's nothing inherently and objectively aesthetic about something in the universe. That is a subjective evaluation we project on it.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

Obviously, the fact that the moon almost exactly covers the sun during a total solar eclipse is completely unnecessary for life. The fact that this only happens on earth (and on no other planet in the solar system) remains yet another "unsolved mystery" for the antitheistic community.

Can't say this is the dumbest argument for 'god' I've ever seen, but it's close.

Please take a few minutes to educate yourself on basic logical fallacies - http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

 

[Golden Yak]

Obviously, the fact that the moon almost exactly covers the sun during a total solar eclipse is completely unnecessary for life. The fact that this only happens on earth (and on no other planet in the solar system) remains yet another "unsolved mystery" for the antitheistic community.

Leaving aside subjective notions about 'aesthetics' and 'spectacular views'...

The moon is moving away from the world over time - it would have appeared larger in the past (completely covering the sun) and it will appear smaller in the future (only partially covering the sun). What did that say about God in the past? What will that say about God in the future?

It is not at all unexpected that in a universe filled with different arrangements of matter, wherein life only occupies a tiny sliver of a fragment of a region, there will be many things that are not necessary for life to exist, but which life that has evolved to be pattern seeking as a matter of survival might find visually striking.