I want to believe so bad but the universe does not need god to explain it, as far as I can tell. I have many questions.
I’m really struggling here. I want to believe so bad. I’ve been an atheist a long time and a loved one passed. But I can’t believe on the basis of “a transformative personal relationship with Christ” like one pastor recommended. Send help.
Pic related really convinced me.
My question with this one is that there could just be an infinite series, or that assuming the first cause does not need a cause itself seems like it’s needlessly making an exception.
The problem with the notion that there could be an infinite series of causes is addressed in the pic. Without a first cause, all the other causes are merely inert potentials that cannot actualize anything. Something is actualizing them, thus there must be a first cause. To reference the pic again, you may as well suppose that an infinite number of boxcars on a train can pull themselves along, or that the engine itself needs something to pull it along before it can pull the boxcars.
I’m trying to be rigorous, so I looked up arguments from Aquinas on rationalwiki. It’s difficult to accept his arguments given all the shit on there. But more to my own question, why does god have to be the first cause? If there can be a first cause, why couldn’t it be the big bang ?
This video is pretty good: stphilipinstitute.org
Also, this one is really intriguing: youtube.com
What caused the big bang in the first place?
youtube.com
It can't be "atoms formed" out of nowhere.
I’ll have to watch these later tonight, I’m not currently somewhere I can watch videos with sound
You're misunderstanding what we mean by "cause". This isn't an argument about creator to creation. This is an argument about horse to wagon. You can argue that the big bang was the first act of creation, but you can't argue that the big bang is currently acting upon the universe in such a way that it's currently causing things to happen. I mean, you could say that it's causing the universe to expand, but that line of thought doesn't logically explain, for example, what force is currently acting upon the Sun to make it burn right now. The question isn't "where did the Sun come from?" but rather "why is the Sun currently burning right now?" As Christians, we posit that God is currently acting upon the world in the present; we aren't deists who suppose that God might have just made the universe and then left it to its own devices. That God is acting on the universe right now is the only satisfactory explanation for what's actualizing the chain of inert potentials.
Could you clarify why the big bang can’t be causing things to happen? I get that it can’t be acting on things right now since we’re referring to a past event, but why couldn’t the big bang establish the conditions for things to unfold this way? I’m reminded of the increase of entropy over time
You're still thinking in terms of a sequence of events rather than a series of train cars pulling one another. That an explosion happened trillions of years ago doesn't explain why hydrogen atoms have to react with each other, or why electrons have to zip around protons. Even supposing that it's happening because of energy released by the big bang, there's no reason why that energy has to be manipulating matter in the way that it is.
And before I go to bed here, check out pic related for another argument by logical deduction, this one from C.S. Lewis.
I’m gonna have to chew on this for a little. Same with the CS Lewis stuff. Thank you.
In the meantime, can anyone tell me about the soul? I just can’t believe in it and I need something to make me believe
Why do people still fall for this terrible bait?
It’s sadly not bait I just found edge lord shit as a child and now it’s unbearably hard for me to convince myself to have faith because I keep finding things that are, to my eyes, pretty thorough dismantlings of people’s arguments for faith
"The Last Superstition" by Ed Feser is a pretty good refutation of the arguments that you typically see from atheists.
The argument here is explored in more depth, and he goes over how atheists misunderstand or misrepresent what is actually being said.
Google "Ipsum Esse Subsistens" and start cracking through the articles there.
You're talking about the past ~300 years. If you consider the whole of human history almost all philosophers were not materialists. Materialism is part of the zeitgeist, in order to become "of note" you have to go along with the zeitgeist.
Modern philosophy loves to invoke materialism when discussing God or spiritual matters, but is strangely silent when it comes to the subject of biological race realism, or sex differences. In order to "get along with the times" you have to assert that a man becomes a woman when he chops his dick off and takes estrogen pills, that men and women are utterly interchangeable, and that there is no such thing as biological racial differences.
I have yet to see a single materialist explain how any of those politically correct dogmas could possibly be true according to the premises of materialism.
Where are the "materialist philosophers" arguing that we shouldn't be wasting young women's fertility on pointless make-work careers? Where are the materialists defending Western people's right to maintain control of their homelands and the countries they built? Where are the materialists speaking out against the gaslighting of children into hormonal/surgical mutilation?
There are some who do, but they are "persona non grata", censored from platforms and disqualified from office.
The bottom line, the point of my post, is that the zeitgeist is often wrong, and that it is even steered with deliberate intent by certain factions and powers. You shouldn't be making philosophical deliberations on the basis of what is popular or respected or reputable, you should be making your deliberations on the basis of reason and argument.
Final question: Are those factions and ideas which are materially damaging Western nations and peoples not interested in spiritually damaging them as well? When someone tells you that you should allow millions of Somalians into your country, that your women should squander their fertility in academia and that your children should be rendered sterile through genital mutilation, why believe him when he says that Christianity is a backwards outdated falsehood?
The existence of God is needed for anything to exist in the universe.
That's wrong.
Yeah I know existence exploading out of nothing makes a lot of sense
Neuroscience is getting so much closer to decisively disproving a purely materialist perspective that it's getting funny watching people persist without doubts in materialism.
You ought to study the science more.
Only meme-science still has no doubts.
One can believe in science and God, OP. You just gotta have faith.
That's not a real quote. When will this meme end.
It's debatable whether or not he said it.
bullshit. You can give a source on that quote otherwise it's bullshit.
To clarify I'm talking in good faith and I also want it to be true btw.
I am not intimately familiar with neuroscience and cognitive science, but I can't imagine how they would cause trouble for believing in the soul. The soul of a thing is what makes that thing that thing. You are a person because you have a human soul. The soul also contains various functions that do not exist in any physical organ. People often argue that all thought occurs in the brain, but this is no more true than saying all sight occurs in the eyes. The brain, like the eyes, are a certain physical necessity. You cannot think without a brain, but the brain does not, and in fact cannot, account for all thought. There is a mindset that says "Science is always getting better. Maybe we can't explain it using the brain today, but maybe tomorrow science will know more". This idea is optimistic but misguided. At each point in history the "science of today" has been proven wrong, often in large ways, by the "science of tomorrow". The scientist then has no reason to believe his claims that the brain can account for all thought will be proven or supported or believed tomorrow, even though they are today. For an easy example, compare Newton's gravity with modern gravity. Isn't it clear that they are two entirely different beasts? And in fact, Newton's law of gravitation doesn't hold everywhere at all levels, so such a simple and powerful law that explains so much, almost all, of gravitational relationships, was still insufficient to explain all of them. It is an act of faith, not reason, to say the same will not happen to neuroscience and its claims.
I have not read this, so I cannot respond at all.
Materialism is certainly a more popular position in philosophy today. This is because materialism is easy, straightforward, and has a few practical benefits. Materialism in modern philosophy however is not based on the philosophical reasons to support it. They are still debating nominalism and realism after all. Materialism in modern philosophy stems, I think, from a sacrifice philosophers made to enable science to quantify the world in a simple and practical manner. This starts with Galileo and his peers and continues onwards. As Francis Bacon says, science should concern itself only with the material and efficient causes of things, not formal and final causes which belong to philosophy. However, seeing the "great strides" of science, many philosophers were more interested in defending sciences limited view of the world as the view of the world, rather than pointing out the obvious: No amount of success with a strategy proves it is the correct strategy. Hume correctly pointed out with his analysis of causation and induction that the world view science has taken up is a house of cards ready to fall over.
To be clear: Science does make great strides, I think that fact is clear. What I am saying is science rests its work on the sand, it is made by conveniently ignoring, and then forgetting, the existence of things it cannot measure. Science can never explain the whole of reality because science was made so productive by ignoring large parts of reality.
Heres some modern philosophers of note who are not mentalists:
Peter Van Inwagen
William Lane Craig
Alistair McIntyre
Alvin Plantinga
Alexander Pruss
David Bentley Hart
Edward Feser
J. P. Moreland
Doesn't even begin to touch the ancient philosophers, including the fathers of Philosophy itself: Socrates and Plato, who believed in an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God and in the souls of men.
Plus the countless theologians and Christian philosophers throughout the ages (St. Augustine, Aquinas, Boethius, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, the rest of the Church Fathers, more recent philosophers like Kierkegaard, etc.), and the Biblical prophets (some of which were the wisest men to ever live, such as Moses and Solomon).
Add Wolfgang Smith to your list of modern non-materialist philosophers as well.
Read this:
The discussion is pretty ancient.
newadvent.org
The last quote is fake, though he was a devout lutheran.
I can't and neither could anyone so far.
The quote has been attributed to someone who was writing about the city of Würzburg and connected the quote to Heisenberg but gave no source to him ever saying it beyond his own work which is the first mention of the quote which seems to be a variation upon a way older quote which has no relation to Heisenberg.
Since then people have come out trying to debunk it but there isn't definitive proof for it or against it, that's why I said it's debatable, not debunked or true but debatable, and it will probably stay like this forever since both Heisenberg and the author are dead.
>implying the internet, abundant in lies, makes any source verification and accurate attribution easy anymore
Thanks for helping ruin the internet
His protege apparently DID write it. Whether he heard it from Mr H' can now be debated.
For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
It's bullshit there's really no proof. Im going to post it anyway.
F uckyou Reddit. Don't give meme speak.
Obsessed
One liners wow thanks for shitting this place up. I hope something tragic happens to you so cunts like you would wise up.
Mad
Such unchristian
Very buttmad
Wow
What the hell was plebbit about this ?!?!
What the hell was "meme speak" about this ?!?!
It's a quote from Wikiquotes. Sometimes this board just makes no sense whatsoever.
Now I feel sorry for getting that guy banned.
Why? He woz maad. He needed some time to calm the fug down
ask yourself: is there something other than the material and do i possess any of this something?
are you simply flesh and bone and nothing else?
contemplate these questions and the questions that arise from them.
the christian theology behind this is that you are comprised of both the material and the immaterial.
you have a body and a soul.
body = material
soul = immaterial
man is dust from the soil that God breathed life into.
so that's something to start on. the soul has a more formal definition than what i mentioned here, but that might not be helpful at the moment.
not helpful because: it's much more theological rather than philosophical/logical.
the formal definition i mentioned might not be helpful at the moment:
vatican.va
in order for the brain to be the mind, the brain must posses all the same qualities that the mind does, but this is not the case. I'ma be lazy and leave it at that.
WHAT do I do about the junk about the bible on rationalwiki? It shakes my fledgling faith.
Examine their assumptions and their chains of causality. Works with anything.
In Platonism or any of the other philosophies, man has no dignity. The state is their idol. It is only in Orthodoxy that man has dignity as he is created in the image of God.
Mans problem since the fall has been moral.
The soul is real because love is real, because despair is real, because science cannot provide an account of the conscience.
That's because you do believe.
That's a lie. Most philosophers are deeply religious. The philosophical arguments for God are just as compelling as the arguments against God. However, philosophy died with Nietzsche. Those that followed him are not philosophers (just as Nietzsche wasn't a philosopher), they are rhetoricians. However the point of philosophy isn't to tell you what to think, it's to teach you how to think.
How does it feel to be in a special time in history where your thought is widespread and accepted?
Not sure if sarcastic but if you’re looking for a genuine answer it feels horrible
Seriously check out the book "Aquinas" by Feser (he also has written other books and has ablog, I encourage you to check them out - Feser is a Thomistic philosopher who makes a fantastic job of introducing and defending Thomism to someone without any knowledge about it). Aquinas's arguments, as convincing as they are when you learn them in detail, can indeed be misleading and it's extremely easy to not understand what they arr saying without a solid introduction. Most of the versions you can find, even in introductions to philosophy that aren't written by someone without expertise in Scholasticism specifically, are botched or even outright strawmen.
Read Edward Feser and Aristotle. Materialism is a flawed philosophical position. People project onto and derive from science way too many incoherent philosophical positions.
saving these till I'm well enough to read them, as well as everything else in this thread.