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Recent content by Boxing Pythagoras

  1. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    Apparently, Genesis hasn't really taught you any math. If we were to accept your particular Day-Age model (according to the numbers you've posted in this thread), then days 1, 2, and 3 each lasted an average of about 183 Million Years. That's less than one fifth of a billion years, let alone...
  2. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    Are you saying that those prayed over by Br. Bessette always receive healing from their maladies? Or that they do, more often than not? Or that they simply receive healing a statistically significant portion of the time? How many of the people for whom he prays are healed compared to the number...
  3. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    Not unless you suppose God to be something wholly physical, something both spatial and temporal. It actually sounds nothing like the Classical Theological position on God, except for the fact that it is self-existent. In what way does this verify the intercession of a supernatural being? How do...
  4. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    Well, if you've heard people argue such things, I'd be right there with you in disagreement, because that proposition makes absolutely no sense. However, as I mentioned, no one in this thread seems to be supporting such a claim. I'm wondering: how does one "verify" a miracle? In what way can an...
  5. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    It's on the right track. It's not so much that we don't know what laws might have been in effect. Rather, the mathematics which we use to describe the universe break down as we attempt to extrapolate backwards, beyond a certain point. When the math breaks down, we don't really know what's going...
  6. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    No, it actually has not been demonstrated that the universe began to exist.
  7. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    I actually do not agree that the universe had a beginning; however, I do agree that the notion of causality is incoherent in the absence of the universe.
  8. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    The fact that a large number of people are Christian does not imply that civilization, as a whole, is therefore Christian.
  9. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    Lovely form of discourse, Dmitri. Tell me: do you find insulting and disrespecting people to be an effective means of evangelization? You know, it is entirely possible to have a conversation with someone who holds to an opposing viewpoint without resorting to this sort of fallacious posturing.
  10. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    I do not believe your claims that deity exists, nor that there exists some repercussion for my disbelief, nor that "our civilization is a Christian one."
  11. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    It's not necessarily special pleading. Special pleading implies that one is offering an exception to a proposition without attempting to justify that exemption. Light of the East mentioned Aquinas' Five Ways, so it seems he is familiar with attempts to justify the idea that one entity is an...
  12. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    Classically, theists do not believe that God "came into existence," at all. God, they assert, is eternal.
  13. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    Who claimed that "nothing... can suddenly BANG! and produce things?" That's a Straw Man of Big Bang cosmology, and I don't think anyone in this thread has argued for such a proposition.
  14. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    How do you figure? Since when is it "more logical" to introduce an entirely ad hoc and unfalsifiable assumption solely on the basis of our lack of knowledge? That's pretty much the very definition of the Argument from Ignorance fallacy.
  15. Boxing Pythagoras

    There was no "before" before the Big Bang

    I do assert that the universe has always existed. I do not assert that the universe started with a singularity. That latter claim seems to be based upon a very common misunderstanding of what a "singularity" is. A singularity is not an actual proposed state of the universe. A singularity is a...