Persistent Universe is a nice dream. As far as science goes, it has been shot to death, burned and set out to pasture, but don't let that stop you from looking into it. It would be one of the many pipe dreams that just won't die, even in the face of actual science.
However, a "First Mover" if you want to call it that, has been concede to be a must, by all our means available to to us.
Don't put words in my mouth. I never agreed with either side unequivocally. And your First Mover is not demonstrable, it's simply at best a logically proven "idea". And as far as science goes, nothing is absolutely conclusive in the fullness of its history, so don't talk as if it's gone any more than I could say your supposed science and creation has been shot to death.
Evolution in the sense of common decent is not only worthless it is destructive to the progress of advancements in biology.
How so? I don't see how discovering our genetic relationships to other things, either close or distant, does anything more than tentatively disrupt our initial paradigm of biology as rooted in a Christian presupposition, or theistic at best. And I don't see how attaching worth to science itself does anything. It's how people use anything science discovers that really proves its worth, not what you assess it as based on religious convictions or lack thereof on either side.
It is relevant if the question posed is "How would things be different if God did not Exist?" because God is the first mover, creator of all, and without God, nothing would be.
That's your belief, that's not a proven fact either way. It's not as if we don't exist now, so your positing an alternate universe where you believe it would be so is fruitless to the discussion except to satisfy your own belief that the universe as it is "must" have God as its origin.
So, I wanted to put that out first, that, things would be far different if we removed God from the picture, like in, nothing existing, different.
Except that's only in your Christian presupposition of how things would be. Assuming a basic theistic perspective still brings up the same issues, since you assume that everything is so absolutely contingent you couldn't conceive of anything else replacing it because of your obsession and fixation upon it as the explanation for all your problems.
However, I did say I was willing to look to past that for the sake of play time with the challengers.
Now you're being patronizing to the poster, since they were genuinely asking and you are going beyond contributing your opinion to being condescending to the person as if it's so obvious in your perspective that they're wrong and there's no way you could be wrong.
I mean, sure, "a man" could have come up with a few gems, look at Buddha, but, lets be real, "Jesus" never would have happened.
Again, you underestimate humanity, which disappoints me, as you seem to be a genuinely humanist kind of person in the neutral sense of the term.
Nor would Moses, or any of the others that shaped an entire nations morality.
Shaping a morality doesn't require that something actually exists, as I said previously, only that you assert it in such a charismatic fashion that people follow you. Not to mention associating coincidental events with this God you believe in. It's a relatively basic psychological tendency of pareidolia or apophenia, both of which see patterns in things that don't genuinely have those patterns in and of themselves apart from human observation.
Altho, I also doubt that Joseph would exited, as, there would be no Jewish nation, ergo no Jewish people, and thus, no Joseph.
Israelite kingdoms might have existed, but perhaps they wouldn't have been nearly as notorious to people, so they may have had a more quiet existence.
Nah.. never happen.
People like Plato and the others would have out-shined some craftsman.
We would believe stealign was fine as long as we could get away with it, Golden Blood* would replace the Golden Rule, and much of our would would Change.
More speculation based on a genuine misanthropy apart from believing people are created in the image of God. Honestly, I can see how there is such dissonance in some sense between those of Dharmic and Abrahamic faiths. I just can exactly put it into succinct words.
No, no they wouldn't.
No author, no book.
Except that's only in Islam. According to Christianity and Judaism God inspired them, but honestly that's the belief of the authors. It isn't necessarily the truth about the texts themselves. We can't discern that deep into them.
A Christian does not doubt that there are other "Players" in the game, which is your pinnacle flaw.
So I say again, no author, no book, no religion. And neither would the "Other" religions exist if that makes you feel better as well.
Religions can exist without their metaphysical tenets actually being true. Christianity exists but in my eyes, it honestly doesn't have any dependence on some actual deity existing, only that the culture has a disposition towards generating such a worldview.
in fact, I doubt that humanity would have any spiritually at all, just a collection of organic matter as most atheist claim, a soulless shell.
You assume that without any genuine deity existing, we can't have spirituality, but that's a skewed and myopic notion of what spirituality is. But that's another topic entirely on a book I would need to reread. Interested in the title at least?
See, the idea is that we are made by God, and thus we inherently seek God, or something beyond our fingertips, something spiritual.
Spiritual doesn't equal God by necessity, but again, another topic, another time.
What is this virtue you speak of?
No such thing exists with out God. But I know you will reject that, as I did many years ago. You have fallen into a trap, so saturated by God and Gods influences, that your mind, thoughts and ability to process are so warped you can not fathom what a world without God's influence would be like rationally.
It's not about rational or irrational to me, it's about relevance. God has no relevance to me because virtues don't require God, they only require a defensible philosophical set of claims. Virtue exists as a concept, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have objective existence without some deity as its foundation. Culturally, it may have been the case that this was claimed, but I don't see you genuinely arguing why this is the case, but just asserting that it is true with no support whatsoever except your own personal conviction, which to me is utterly worthless without some semblance of rational argumentation and defense of that conviction.
You miss the point. For what motive?
What other reason do I need to help people except that they are fellow humans that suffer loss and gain, joy and sorrow and are essentially just like me except in accidental occurrences of personality and environment in particular
You are misrepresenting my point, either passivity or activity, and strangely enough I think you are too educated to be doing it passively, as such, I do not enjoy your tactic at this point.
First off, you were too vague in what you meant. Contextually, I can see you meant changes in terms of culture, but honestly, that's science fiction and fantasy speculation on the potential alternate universes, which, while compelling in some sense on the notion of determinism, honestly doesn't compel me to believe that we are without free will and that we would not have a similar world as we do now, imperfect and full of small amounts of hope and progress, potentially growing at times, sometimes shrinking.
God's existence is honestly not relevant to me and I thought I would've made that evident through many posts to that effect. I can quote Diderot more, if you wish. Particularly on why it is more important to distinguish poisonous and edible vegetables as opposed to whether a transcendent deity exists or doesn't, since either way, we wouldn't really know whether it was intervening in the world or, more importantly, was even able to by its own rules. Deism comes to mind in particular on that non interventionist God, which appealed to me so much more than the Christian overbearing father figure.
I didn't have intentional tactics of malice, and if you see them, perhaps you are mistaken or perhaps I did not realize it. Either way, there is possibility of reconciliation and some degree of compromise, I imagine.