'There is no God' - Rational, logical, justifiable?

[kx000]

Absolutely. No.


The Bible has two versions of Genesis, and so I have another one, too:

Genesis Version 2​

1 Thus the heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day hollow finished his work which it had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which it had done. (redundant and repetitious) Sundae on Sunday.

3 So idle blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it nugatory rested from all the work which it had done in creation.

4 These are the generations of the heavens and the Earth when they were created. In the day that the lord worthless made the Earth and the heavens. I think we said that before.

5 When no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the lord useless had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground;

6 But a mist went up from the earth from a big sprinkler and watered the whole face of the ground—

7 Then the lord insubstantial formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Yeah, sure. Forgetting evolution again?

8 And the lord pointless planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground the lord worthless made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the apple tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

11 the name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; (Yukon, Alaska, California?)

12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.

13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Cush.

14 And the name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 The lord meaningless took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. Poor choice.

16 And the lord valueless commanded the man, saying, “you may freely eat of every tree of the garden;

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

18 Then the lord barren said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Does she paint ceilings and cut the grass?

19 So out of the ground the lord insignificant formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; (Rover, Lady, Buddy, and Spot) And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (Hey, you!)

20 The man gave names to all cattle, (Elsie) and to the birds of the air, (birds) and to every beast of the field; (it) but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. Hard to get good help these days.

21 So the lord inconsequential caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; She would really cost the man an arm and a leg eventually.

22 And the rib which the lord trivial had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Some helper!

23 Then the man said, “wo, man, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.”

24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. Get lost in-laws! Now you are out-laws.

25 And the man and his wife were both naked, (yes!) and were not ashamed.

…

99. And that’s the story of deadpan and absent, whose middle name is nothing.

Let’s leave it at ‘naked’.

Honestly, summary or nothing.

 

[SciWriter]

Honestly, summary or nothing.

OK. The summary is nothing.

 

[Syne]

Genesis.

The serpent (Satan) offers Eve a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. It was God's desire that Adam and Eve never partake of the Tree of Knowledge. He wanted them to remain innocent in Eden. His wrath that they sampled from the ToK is what caused him to throw them out of Eden and live naked, and ashamed in the world, with their newfound knowledge as their curse.

This is a commonly-accepted interpretation of the events of Genesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(Bible)#Serpent_in_Eden

...you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die. -Genesis 2

Where exactly are you reading anything about "God's desire"? Seem a rather straightforward warning about natural consequences. An expressed desire would have been to leave no option at all, as opposed to allowing the exercise of free will.

 

[DaveC426913]

​

Where exactly are you reading anything about "God's desire"? Seem a rather straightforward warning about natural consequences. An expressed desire would have been to leave no option at all, as opposed to allowing the exercise of free will.

He warned them not to. Forbade them. When they did, he banished them.

Those "natural consequences" you speak of are God's actions There is no "nature" but what God does. He banished them.

 

[Syne]

He warned them not to. Forbade them. When they did, he banished them.

Those "natural consequences" you speak of are God's actions There is no "nature" but what God does. He banished them.

Oh, you are a Biblical fundamentalist then? I was under the impression that you were an atheist, who didn't think there was any god to take such action.

 

[DaveC426913]

Oh, you are a Biblical fundamentalist then? I was under the impression that you were an atheist, who didn't think there was any god to take such action.

You can't possibly be serious.

Tell me, if I said "Moriarty fought with Holmes in the shadow of the waterfall, and one of them died", would you believe I had to think Holmes and Moriarty were real to be able to say that?

 

[Syne]

You can't possibly be serious.

Tell me, if I said "Moriarty fought with Holmes in the shadow of the waterfall, and one of them died", would you believe I had to think Holmes and Moriarty were real to be able to say that?

What on earth does taking the Bible literally have to do with whether a god exists? If you are indeed an atheist then you must agree that any consequences must be natural.

So exactly what argument are you trying to make by saying "God did it"? Don't you see any incongruity here?

 

[DaveC426913]

What on earth does taking the Bible literally have to do with whether a god exists? If you are indeed an atheist then you must agree that any consequences must be natural.

Indeed, as an atheist, I don't believe in Adam, Eve or Eden either. I would think the first time I mentioned any one of those things you would recognize that I am speaking with a suspension of disbelief.

So exactly what argument are you trying to make

I'm not making any argument here. K91 asked or an explanation of a scripture. I am providing the prevailing explanation.

Please, before you respond, review post 3 where he asks, post 20 where he asks again, and finally, post 36 where I provide.

I make absolutely no comment about whether there's any truth or falsehood to it.

 

[Syne]

I make absolutely no comment about whether there's any truth or falsehood to it.

Then why not speak from your own worldview? Obviously you do think consequences are naturalistic. So if scripture, written by men, alludes to some perception of the consequences being beyond their ken, i.e. attributed to a god, why, in your view, would you chose to accept their perceptions as given?

Why comment on it at all if you have no intent of applying your own view and logic to it?

 

[Yazata]

Neither from nothing nor stuff forever seem to make sense at first glance,

The two cases are philosophically different.

"Stuff forever" seems to refer to an infinite regress. The seeming problem with infinite regresses is that they are physical infinities, and we don't seem to encounter physical infinities in our experience. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are logically or even physically impossible though. Infinities certainly occur in mathematics and perhaps they even occasionally pop up in physics, in so-called 'singularities' (as in black holes). The future is typicaly imagined as temporally unbounded, I think, extending forever.

"From nothing" presents a different sort of difficulty. The idea of something "coming from" nothing suggests that 'nothing' is some kind of hidden place, and hence that 'nothing' is an occult sort of 'something'. And that appears to be a logical contradiction.

So the 'from nothing' case doesn't seem to just be a violation of our common-sense physical intuitions, as the 'stuff forever' case seems to be. This one looks like a logical problem.

yet one must be true

Do we really know that? Can we really close the door on what all the possibilities might ultimately be?

Christian and Hindu philosophical theologies often suggest that the universe 'comes from', was created by or emanates from, some timeless supernatural being. So that's an example of a third possibility, namely the possibility that time is part of the creation. Whatever kind of 'something' generates the universe of our experience inhabits some entirely different order of being that we humans can't even imagine, outside space and time entirely.

so… one of them is the answer, and neither one is 'God'; thus, no 'God'.

From where I sit, your mysterious occult 'nothing' looks like a unitive and infinitely-generative Transcendental Being, and that sounds an awful lot like some of Christian, Islamic and Indian theologies' more mystical concepts of God.

The ancient Neoplatonists imagined the universe of change and multiplicity emanating like light from the Sun, from a transcendent and timeless divine unity that they called 'The One'. The late-antique Christians adopted that kind of thinking and applied it to their Christian God. The Muslims inherited and adopted these ideas. And very similar ideas are fundamental in much of Indian religious philosophy.

These ideas are often associated with religious mysticism. The divine Source is said to lie beyond human conceptualization entirely. In other words, conceptually speaking it's Nothing, corresponding to nothing that we humans can possibly imagine. It's the infinitely-productive Void out of which everything that exists in our phenomenal universe flows.

The way to immediately perceive and perhaps even to merge with the divine Source is to practice meditations in which the mystic clears his or her mind of all phenomental this-worldly images and concepts. In the Christian tradition, this is called 'apophatic' or 'negative' theology. It remains widespread in Eastern Orthodox theology and it's found among the Roman Catholic contemplatives as well. The medieval English 'Cloud of Unknowing' is an example.

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/courses/rel3432/cataapophatic1.htm

So bottom line, arguing that the universe 'came from', was generated by or emanated from 'nothing', looks to my eye a lot like traditional religious theology, repackaged in new and ostensibly atheist form.

 

[DaveC426913]

Then why not speak from your own worldview? Obviously you do think consequences are naturalistic. So if scripture, written by men, alludes to some perception of the consequences being beyond their ken, i.e. attributed to a god, why, in your view, would you chose to accept their perceptions as given?

Why comment on it at all if you have no intent of applying your own view and logic to it?

I didn't comment, I answered a question. We're having a discussion.

I ask you a third time. If we were discussing the events of Sherlock Holmes' final days, would you simply keep responding with "Irrelevant! It's fiction!"

Answer this question for yourself, and all your questions about me will go away.

 

[SciWriter]

"Stuff forever" seems to refer to an infinite regress.

There are two cases, both of which are the same exact stuff forever.

1) It's made of smaller and smaller stuff—an infinite regress, logically impossible since it never gets anywhere, since infinities can never complete.

2) No regress of things coming from lessor things, just the same exact base existents always having been around. Similar problem though, but with duration, as eternities can never complete, plus no point at which the total amount could have been 'decided'.

So, stuff forever is impossible, thus the base stuff has to be created, but not from other stuff, so, then it must be from the lack of anything, which doesn't have rules, a logical deduction. And we already knew that there was nothing to make anything of. And that nature shows a balance. And that infinities and eternities can never complete, thus the beginning must be nothing. Four directives, in total, all for nothing.

No occult.

More in awhile, if I reread and find more.

 

[SciWriter]

"From nothing" presents a different sort of difficulty. The idea of something "coming from" nothing suggests that 'nothing' is some kind of hidden place, and hence that 'nothing' is an occult sort of 'something'. And that appears to be a logical contradiction.

A lack of anything is a possible state, logically. Stuff Forever seems to have no logic, as posted, as possible.

So, now, a lack of anything is not a stable arrangement (as there is something), nor are even simple things, for sure, as most readily go through changes or react. Stronger, since nothing is the only source, and did not remain as such, it is perfectly unstable, and cannot be, stay, or last for even an instant.

 

[SciWriter]

Transcendental Being

A Being is not Nothing or Stuff Forever. Stuff is either forever or it is made. Only two possibilities.

Stuff cannot be already made in a set amount and defined without ever having been made in that set amount and defined in its specific form and properties.

Word like 'transcendental', 'immaterial', 'soul', etc. don't get us things or beings away from 'stuff'. Dealing with stuff requires other stuff to talk the stuff of stuff, so to speak. That was DesCartes before Horace, which happens only in the dictionary. All has to walk the walk and talk the talk. Immaterial non-stuff cannot be affecting stuff, and also cannot be, anyway, but for Nothing, the only possibility, which is the simplest state, and not a being.

Being and consciousness takes billions of years to form from Nothing forming a universe in the Cosmos.

 

[Syne]

I didn't comment, I answered a question. We're having a discussion.

Yes, you did answer a question, but not without a comment on the meaning of that answer:

It was God's desire that Adam and Eve never partake of the Tree of Knowledge. He wanted them to remain innocent in Eden.

And to support that comment you made an incongruous argument:

Those "natural consequences" you speak of are God's actions There is no "nature" but what God does.

I ask you a third time. If we were discussing the events of Sherlock Holmes' final days, would you simply keep responding with "Irrelevant! It's fiction!"

Don't exaggerate. This is only the second time you have asked me this.

If we were discussing Sherlock Holmes then both of us would be in full agreement that it was expressly written as a work of fiction. Any such assumed agreement on any scripture is highly likely to be unilateral. So this is either obtuse or a dodge.

Knowing that it is definitely written as, much less likely to be considered, non-fiction, the perceptions of the authors are crucial in any consideration of meaning.

But even considering scripture to be fiction, I would not bother to argue its meaning as if it mattered at all, much less comment as to the imagined desires of a fictional character.

Now, do you care to address your incongruity without further red herrings?

 

[SciWriter]

It's the infinitely-productive Void out of which everything that exists in our phenomenal universe flows.

That's it, and a void is a void is a void, even by any other synonym, but not Divine, 'God', a supernatural Being, a Planner, a Higher Intelligence, or the God of the three main religions. So, some exaggerated on the basis of a human, strict father figure, perhaps.

All has been rational, logical, and justifiable, as well as moving closer to the Theory of Everything: Nothing, which some may call 'causeless', which is about the same idea, but Nothing can only produce tiny stuff, seemingly always in opposite pairs, not fully formed humans, so, the cause is nothing, but the cause is Nothing.

 

[DaveC426913]

Yes, you did answer a question, but not without a comment on the meaning of that answer:

I quoted the words. Forbade. Warned. Banished. That is not personal comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(Bible)#Serpent_in_Eden
first and second paragraphs under Serpent in Eden.

But even considering scripture to be fiction, I would not bother to argue its meaning as if it mattered at all, much less comment as to the imagined desires of a fictional character.

OK, you would not bother. What does that have to do with me?

Now, do you care to address your incongruity without further red herrings?

Seriously, you are totally misreading this. Back in post 36, I explain to K91 where the scripture is, and since, in post 61 K91 asked for a summary, I provided the commonly-accepted interpretation - which I pulled from Wiki (see above link).

When you questioned me about it, I clarified for you that God's desire is part of the commonly-accepted interpretation of those verses of the Bible. Whether or not I believe the stories are true, I am capable of analyzing them, just as I am capable of analyzing a character in a story without being accused of believing the story is real. (In fact, it's exactly the same.)

You seem to think that opponents in a debate are enemies - that I can't help an opponent through a technicality of clarification, even if it costs me nothing and moves the debate along.

 

[Syne]

Yes, you did answer a question, but not without a comment on the meaning of that answer:

It was God's desire that Adam and Eve never partake of the Tree of Knowledge. He wanted them to remain innocent in Eden.

I quoted the words. Forbade. Warned. Banished. That is not personal comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(Bible)#Serpent_in_Eden
first and second paragraphs under Serpent in Eden.

Wow, just wow. I question the scriptural source for your assumption of God's desire and you not only completely dodge addressing that but you quote a wiki in lieu of the actual scripture.

But even considering scripture to be fiction, I would not bother to argue its meaning as if it mattered at all, much less comment as to the imagined desires of a fictional character.

OK, you would not bother. What does that have to do with me?

Uh, you're the one who made the big deal about ME answering this question. Your memory is not what it use to be, huh?

Now, do you care to address your incongruity without further red herrings?

Seriously, you are totally misreading this. Back in post 36, I explain to K91 where the scripture is, and since, in post 61 K91 asked for a summary, I provided the commonly-accepted interpretation - which I pulled from Wiki (see above link).

Now you are trying to completely rewrite this exchange. Post #61 asked SciWriter for a summary of his version of Genesis, and this was well past your response to K91 in Post #36.

You haven't even responded to K91 since I've joined this discussion. So either your memory is slipping fast or you are dishonest. So exactly how am I "misreading" all these duplicitous red herrings.

When you questioned me about it, I clarified for you that God's desire is part of the commonly-accepted interpretation of those verses of the Bible. Whether or not I believe the stories are true, I am capable of analyzing them, just as I am capable of analyzing a character in a story without being accused of believing the story is real. (In fact, it's exactly the same.)

God's desire is not part of the commonly-accepted interpretation, as the Bible only provides the words and actions, not intent. You have taken a very few words to infer a desire not expressed.

Would you equally attribute desires, thoughts, or intent to any other character of fiction in which none of these are expressed? Do you really sit around and wonder, much less discuss, the intent of Sherlock Holmes in choosing to wear a dearstalker hat? Perhaps you have too much free time on your hands.

But I see you are fully committed to your red herring.

You seem to think that opponents in a debate are enemies - that I can't help an opponent through a technicality of clarification, even if it costs me nothing and moves the debate along.

Ah, when all else threatens to fail throw in an appeal to emotion.