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I see what you mean, but I've meant it slightly different. Who is going to fall for a trap construction like that? It's basically stating that you better believe in it on one hand, but on the other hand it claims there's no way back and the world will become more hostile.



I don't think they meant it would make the world more hostile in general, just more hostile towards christians to pressure them into not being a christian, if you will.

In fact, the bible seems to say that if everyone would 'turn back', things would become very garden of eden-ish.

edit: Maybe I'm mistunderstanding what you're saying. If you can quote the verse that might clear things up, because we might be talking about two completely different ideas.

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It seems to me you've sold your soul instead my friend.



This seemed to me, to be something of a non sequitor.

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For example push one of your keyboard's buttons. Let's assume you've pushed the button with number [1/!] Then what caused the button to be pushed and the number 1 to be displayed on screen? Was it your action of actually pressing the button or was it your mind causing you to take action? Or was it my text telling you to do so as an example? Well there you go, at least 3 possible and very true causes. One could even go further and state that the manufacturer cause the button to be made and thát made it possible in the first place to use that particular button, so infact the manufacturer caused the 1 to appear on screen. Yes, it's farfetched off course, however without the manufacturer making that button, there would be no button to push.
The reason why you won't find anything without a cause, is because a cause can be so much things.



This is logically false. All you did was denote a chain of cause-and-effect. That doesn't mean that there was no cause along the way.

Consumer demand is the cause that creates the effect of the manufacturer, who is the cause of the creation of the keyboard, you telling me to hit 1 has the effect of changing my brain waves, which has the effect of my using my brain to send an electric pulse to the muscles in my hand, the pressure of my finger on the key has the effect of a number being displayed on screen. Cause and effect. But more importantly, cause. Just because the chain of events is made up of many causes, does not mean that all of those causes are the SAME cause. Cause exists.

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The reason I've mentioned 'time' is because 1 minute is time, 2 hours is time but millions of years is also time. Time is a natural but artificial indicator or factor in order for our minds to make sure events that happen make sense in a way. The same way that we need 'causes' in order for events to make even more sense.
Yes, actions require time in a way, however you can label those required moments with anything you want, we've just agreed upon the 'seconds, minutes, hours'(there's more to it) time system. You see, it's artificial.



Maybe the way the symbolism of time in our heads is artificial, but time does exist. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to slap labels like minutes, seconds, etc onto it. If there is no time, then when did the big bang happen?

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If God exists then he would have a cause, right? Nothing can exist without cause, you've stated yourself that no rational thinking person can state otherwise.



I'll get into this when I respond to JCLs post.

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However you haven't literally seen God, so why do you believe in him anyways? We find all sorts of causes for events that have happened and none of any event you can possibly think off explicitely needs a God as cause.



Well, the universe for one, life for another. Evolutionists love to talk about thermodynamics, but apparently they have no sense of what it is if they think life can happen accidentally.

Well, actually I KNOW a lot of them don't know anything about thermodynamics when they bring up snowflakes and crystals.

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Give me one example of an event that needs a God.



You. Creation of the universe.

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First: We know that on the atomic scale things happen all the time without a cause. An example for this is nuclear decay. It's predicted by quantum theory and proven by experiment that radioactive atoms spontaneously split without any internal mechanism triggering this event:



If its spontaneous, then why can we slap absolutes like half-life onto radioactive atoms? Surely, if it just happened randomly then the value wouldn't always be constant.

Furthermore, this simply puts a gap in the chain. Some cause has the effect of matter. With matter in existence, another cause has the effect of making some material radioactive. Then, nothing has the effect of causing decay (maybe). However, you can't throw out the whole chain, just because you don't know one of the links.

Without a cause for matter, then there's nothing to be made radioactive, so indirectly it still has a cause. But this is somewhat beside your point. Either way, from researching it further, some people said there was a cause for it. And no, not on creationist websites where I doubt they would even care about the subject.

Unless of course you're right about matter being made spontaneously. But let's take a look at that.

You've simply clouded the problem. I take it, from reading your links, that you say matter can be spontaneously created by black holes with virtual particles? This doesn't sound like matter being created from nothing. It just sounds like slapping a scientific theory on the statement, "Matter comes from the great beyond!" In a sense.

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Second: Is God outside of cause?



Here's the problem I've noticed that materialists have. By your very nature, you're so convinced that all there is, is the universe, that you can't even imagine anything beyond it. Just consider it in a rhetorical fashion for a moment.

However, you keep speaking of God in the sense that he was created, by Himself, along with the universe. Which makes absolutely no sense. You talk as if He plays by the rules of our universe, which He would not.

In essence, you've said that things can happen without a cause. Ignoring for the moment that we may not know the cause, this just takes us back to the original problem, because without the universe already in existence, we find that none of these causeless events even occur.

Of course, I could have been reading those links wrong. I would have had to have followed a hundred links in order to completely catch up on something that you seem to be fairly familiar with. Which I may well do, I found it all mildly fascinating.

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Look at the person running amok in Berlin. Unpredictabel, like the weather, like any deterministic chaos, any self-referential system...



That doesn't mean we can't partially grasp it. Certainly we can find what in the brain triggers deviant behavior, though we may not be able to completely grasp it or predict it. There are some things we'll never know. Humans don't act strange, become serial killers, or what-have-you for no reason. There's a cause for it. We won't be able to nail stuff like that, and the weather down anytime in the near future because its so absolutely complex. But we can at least grasp the basic cause-and-effect relationship.

Though I tentatively, generally agree with what you said in your post besides that.



Anyway, whether or not these things really happen for no reason at all, still doesn't disprove my point. They happen, because something caused the universe to exist in which they can happen for no reason. This isn't a direct relationship, but its still a requisite.

Last edited by Irish_Farmer; 06/01/06 23:25.
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."