sweet jesus

[puckmichigan]

so, dingo (or meadows) ..... how do you respond to the original questions (that Paul asked on page 1)?? this isn't about what the fundamentalists think about salvation.....

[Toad]

You gotta bring your own salvation when you come... Jackson Browne

[Zspider]

...if god created the universe.. who created god? and what created that? and that? and that?

Not very profound. Next you'll be asking if God is omnipotent, can he create a rock big enough he can't move it.

ZSpider

wow.. that's kind of dick. i notice you don't have an answer. and personally, i've never heard my question asked before. nor have i had it answered. maybe you missed the point: how is does god answer where the "beginning" came from? i think it was lingustl (or whatever their name is) had the best answer so far. did you contribute anything?.. nope.

Not true. I did give an answer. With a small amount of thought, you could have figured it out, but I should have known that was too much to ask for. I suppose if you need it spoon-fed to you, I can do that. I'll make it quick.

If God can't create a rock big enough that he can't move, then he isn't omnipotent. If God can create a rock big enough that he can't move it, then he still isn't omnipotent, cuz he can't move it.

If you're totally clueless, then you say, "Hah! There is no way God can be omnipotent! I've just proved it!" Or one can propose your cutesy question about who created God.

With a little thought invested in the matter, it's not too hard to see that scientific empiricism or Platonic logic, or whatever you choose to call it, is just a framework of thought, and a religious framework of thought is another. To require one framework to fit inside the other is foolishness. It's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It's the equal of trying to look up a word written in Chinese characters in Webster's Dictionary, and triumphantly declaring it to be nonsense because it's nowhere to be found.

You found my post to be "dick." That's exactly what I thought of your original post.

[Paul3eb]

If God can't create a rock big enough that he can't move, then he isn't omnipotent. If God can create a rock big enough that he can't move it, then he still isn't omnipotent, cuz he can't move it.

If you're totally clueless, then you say, "Hah! There is no way God can be omnipotent! I've just proved it!" Or one can propose your cutesy question about who created God.

i must be totally clueless then. because the way i see it, there is no way god can be omnipotent and it sounds like you agree entirely. "with a little thought invested in the matter", you could see that the god, isn't omnipotent, as it is defined and understood. however, if you care to invest a little more thought in the matter, you could construct the argument that the failure isn't in god's power but in the failure of language to adequately encompass ideas, the intangibles, things without borders or limits. then, with little thought invested in the matter, you'd have a decent argument. granted, it stops there because it admits the defeat of human language and human thought in matters of the infinite. you said that later..

..it's not too hard to see that scientific empiricism or Platonic logic, or whatever you choose to call it, is just a framework of thought, and a religious framework of thought is another. To require one framework to fit inside the other is foolishness. It's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It's the equal of trying to look up a word written in Chinese characters in Webster's Dictionary, and triumphantly declaring it to be nonsense because it's nowhere to be found.

while on one hand i'd say, how convenient.. but on the other, i'd say it's right. so.. looking at where we are now with the conversation, how was it that the question "where did god come from?", how was that not "profound"? how was it not worth asking, or not adding to the conversation? please, i'd like to know. and, since this point of "profoundness" kind of leads into it, i'd still like to know how piggie's comments where about nihilism and how it's banal today.

You found my post to be "dick." That's exactly what I thought of your original post.

ok, fair enough.

[Huggybone]

Well, just as in science, and nature, the question, 'who created god' has the same answer as many, if not most scientific questions. THe answer is this: nobody knows.

Many atheists/agnostics take this lack of an answer to mean that there is no god, cause we don't know who created him, or how he cam to be.

Just as in science, a lack of an answer does not deny the existence of an answer.

The question, though, begs another question: If everything that exists needs to have been created, there can be no point origin. What is the point of origin? You could ask the same question of the big bang: where did its components come from. and where did those come from ? and the ones before that?

While most things 'come from' another, at some point there is a beginning.
For religion, it is god,
for big bangers, it is the creation of time.

[puckmichigan]

so, does omnipotence only have to do with how big a rock God might create? And whether God could then lift it?

[pigsteak]

yes.

[Toad]

Ah, but would it not be foolish to create something that goes against all laws of nature (can't be moved at all)? In creating that object, would that not be an imperfection?

[Paul3eb]

you might have missed the point since we're totally clueless and haven't given even a little real thought to the matter. we had it spoon fed to us earlier by the wise and humble zspider.

perfect and omnipotence are ideas in a human mind that can't comprehend divinity and infinity. though thought experiments might prove one way or the other in our game of logic, that doesn't mean that those rules apply to deities. we constructed limits and thereby make any arguments within those limits applicable to those bounds only. all that lies outside of those bounds doesn't necessarily conform to those rules.

man, it's good thing there are people out there to lecture me on all this and remind me how small of a mind i have. otherwise i might be even dumber than i am.

[Huggybone]

wtf? people that talk in terms of 'big mind' and 'small mind' don't usually make much sense.