Is Christianity and Belief in God RATIONAL?

[RickD]

Tough to get your head around that one...

Which part?

[Stu]

Tough to get your head around that one...

Which part?

Something being eternal. Not having a beginning.

[RickD]

Tough to get your head around that one...

Which part?

Something being eternal. Not having a beginning.

Yes. Makes my head spin.

[Nessa]

Tough to get your head around that one...

Which part?

Something being eternal. Not having a beginning.

Yes. Makes my head spin.

Like the exorcist?

[RickD]

Tough to get your head around that one...

Which part?

Something being eternal. Not having a beginning.

Yes. Makes my head spin.

Like the exorcist?

No, like Regan MacNeil. The exorcist's head didn't spin.

[Philip]

Ken: Cosmologists and Physicists don’t believe in a Super Intelligence of great power that could have so brilliantly organized everything either!

Well, Ken, many of them DO believe in a God or god! In fact, just like Einstein, some of the most prominent and important scientists of the past and present believe in there is a God or God-like source of all things (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C ... technology) . In fact, the mass-sophistication, design, organization and astoundingly precise interactive mechanisms of the universe - and especially his discovery that it was not static - made him realize there had to be a God - it's just that he wouldn't except a personal God / Christ. But He did realize that this God had to be internal, and immensely powerful and intelligence. And whether a scientist believes in God often has more to do with their family upbringing or where in the world they live (extensive survey on this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/1 ... 3116664353).

Did you know, "More than half of scientists in India, Italy, Taiwan and Turkey self-identify as religious," Ecklund said. "And it's striking that approximately twice as many 'convinced atheists' exist in the general population of Hong Kong, for example, (55 percent) compared with the scientific community in this region (26 percent)." So WHERE one lives and how they were raised has a big impact upon scientists. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2015-12-worldwide ... s.html#jCp

Ken, you believe in eternal matter - but you also know that matter by itself is blind, has no intelligence. And so you've danced around what your assertion also must require - that blind matter organized itself within minutes and began to build a universe, beginning within mere moments, having immediately designed immensely complex things and their astounding precision and functionalities. Again, intelligence must already be in existence or created and put into place by something far more intelligent. Non-intelligent things cannot build or seek intelligence - as such things have the properties of rocks - as they are unliving, unseeing, unthinking, etc. The Big Bang event is exceptionally inexplicable - even in what we know about it, our best minds and analysis have not been able to unravel its mechanisms beyond some very basic understandings.

[Kenny]

Ken: Cosmologists and Physicists don’t believe in a Super Intelligence of great power that could have so brilliantly organized everything either!

Well, Ken, many of them DO believe in a God or god! In fact, just like Einstein, some of the most prominent and important scientists of the past and present believe in there is a God or God-like source of all things (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C ... technology) . In fact, the mass-sophistication, design, organization and astoundingly precise interactive mechanisms of the universe - and especially his discovery that it was not static - made him realize there had to be a God - it's just that he wouldn't except a personal God / Christ. But He did realize that this God had to be internal, and immensely powerful and intelligence. And whether a scientist believes in God often has more to do with their family upbringing or where in the world they live (extensive survey on this: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/1 ... 3116664353).

Did you know, "More than half of scientists in India, Italy, Taiwan and Turkey self-identify as religious," Ecklund said. "And it's striking that approximately twice as many 'convinced atheists' exist in the general population of Hong Kong, for example, (55 percent) compared with the scientific community in this region (26 percent)." So WHERE one lives and how they were raised has a big impact upon scientists. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2015-12-worldwide ... s.html#jCp

Ken, you believe in eternal matter - but you also know that matter by itself is blind, has no intelligence. And so you've danced around what your assertion also must require - that blind matter organized itself within minutes and began to build a universe, beginning within mere moments, having immediately designed immensely complex things and their astounding precision and functionalities. Again, intelligence must already be in existence or created and put into place by something far more intelligent. Non-intelligent things cannot build or seek intelligence - as such things have the properties of rocks - as they are unliving, unseeing, unthinking, etc. The Big Bang event is exceptionally inexplicable - even in what we know about it, our best minds and analysis have not been able to unravel its mechanisms beyond some very basic understandings.

I realize there are some scientists who do believe in God. But that belief is based on faith; not science. And don’t assume that because I am skeptical of religious claims, that I wouldn’t apply that same skepticism to scientific claims as well. Just because science says it doesn’t make it true; I believe scientists gives us the best information they have at the moment and that information is often changing. Personally I would be skeptical of any scientist who claims a point in history when nothing existed. I know some scientists may believe that, but I suspect that is pure speculation; not theory.
I know it may seem to you that I dance around giving a straight answer concerning the beginning, but that’s because I don’t have an answer. As I said before, the idea that matter has always existed makes sense to me; but science can’t make that claim so obviously I can’t. As I’ve said before, I don’t know a lot about astronomy; but just because I don’t have an answer doesn’t I’m gonna accept one that doesn’t make sense to me whether it comes from a theist, a scientist, or anyone else.

[RickD]

Kenny wrote:
I realize there are some scientists who do believe in God. But that belief is based on faith; not science.

That's just false.

I don't know how or why you'd even make that assertion.

[Byblos]

This is now metaphysical , not science.

What does metaphysics have to do with my claim?

It's beyond the scope of science. No way to prove scientifically, if matter has always existed.

Yeah it is beyond the scope of science. But IF (and that's a big if) matter has always existed, I wouldn't need to create itself. Agree?

I wouldn't say that it doesn't need to create itself. I'd say that if something always exists, it cannot create itself. If something exists eternally(always existed) then it wasn't created.

That's just not true at all Rick. There is nothing contradictory or at least irrational about something always existing and yet still be created so long as that thing is contingent (and therefore dependent on something else, ontologically, if not temporally). Which is precisely why you can and should say to Kenny, yes, it is quite possible matter/energy always existed. So what?

[RickD]

What does metaphysics have to do with my claim?

It's beyond the scope of science. No way to prove scientifically, if matter has always existed.

Yeah it is beyond the scope of science. But IF (and that's a big if) matter has always existed, I wouldn't need to create itself. Agree?

I wouldn't say that it doesn't need to create itself. I'd say that if something always exists, it cannot create itself. If something exists eternally(always existed) then it wasn't created.

That's just not true at all Rick. There is nothing contradictory or at least irrational about something always existing and yet still be created so long as that thing is contingent (and therefore dependent on something else, ontologically, if not temporally). Which is precisely why you can and should say to Kenny, yes, it is quite possible matter/energy always existed. So what?

Explain what I'm missing then. If something is created, by definition, it didn't exist prior to it being created.

cre·ate
/krēˈāt/Submit
verb
past tense: created; past participle: created
bring (something) into existence.

What am I missing?

[Byblos]

It's beyond the scope of science. No way to prove scientifically, if matter has always existed.

Yeah it is beyond the scope of science. But IF (and that's a big if) matter has always existed, I wouldn't need to create itself. Agree?

I wouldn't say that it doesn't need to create itself. I'd say that if something always exists, it cannot create itself. If something exists eternally(always existed) then it wasn't created.

That's just not true at all Rick. There is nothing contradictory or at least irrational about something always existing and yet still be created so long as that thing is contingent (and therefore dependent on something else, ontologically, if not temporally). Which is precisely why you can and should say to Kenny, yes, it is quite possible matter/energy always existed. So what?

Explain what I'm missing then. If something is created, by definition, it didn't exist prior to it being created.

cre·ate
/krēˈāt/Submit
verb
past tense: created; past participle: created
bring (something) into existence.

What am I missing?

When you (and Philip, and others) argue for 'creation' per se, you are necessarily transforming the argument to one of time, a before and an after, i.e. to a temporal or accidental causal series. When Aquinas formulated his 5 ways some 8 centuries ago (and Aristotle some two millennia before him), and well before either of them knew anything about the big bang or the singularity or whathaveyou, Aquinas knew one thing for certain, that there is no way of showing metaphysically (or logically or rationally) that time did not exist for eternity. He did not believe it personally and therefore did not believe that the universe (or time rather) was eternal. He just could not prove it logically. That is why went to great lengths to avoid this type of argument altogether and why his arguments have nothing to do with time being eternal in the past but rather with the nature of change in the here and now, i.e. with essentially ordered causal series and what that logically says about change rather than the act of creation from nothing.

All that to say this, even if we are to assume time (and matter and energy and whatever) always existed in the past, matter and energy are still contingent things. They can be one way or another. And as we know from essentially ordered causal series, for a change (potential) to occur, it must be actualized by something else which is already in act. We also know that this series cannot extend to an infinite series of contingent things actualizing other contingent things because nothing will then change (think of Feser's famous books on a shelf example).

What this type of argument boils down to is the nature of existence. Can anything exist at all (even if eternally) without existence? The obvious and rational answer to that is no. And, metaphysically speaking, the nature of existence is such that it must have the divine attributes we all know, otherwise it wouldn't even make any sense to speak of existence.

So I ask again, time, matter and energy always existed. A big fat so what?

[Kenny]

Kenny wrote:
I realize there are some scientists who do believe in God. But that belief is based on faith; not science.

That's just false.

I don't know how or why you'd even make that assertion.

So there are scientists whose belief in God is based on science? Are we talking God's like Hale Selassie; who are born and die on a regular basis? Or like yours creator of the Universe and all that exist? If like yours, which scientific theory includes God?

[RickD]

Yeah it is beyond the scope of science. But IF (and that's a big if) matter has always existed, I wouldn't need to create itself. Agree?

I wouldn't say that it doesn't need to create itself. I'd say that if something always exists, it cannot create itself. If something exists eternally(always existed) then it wasn't created.

That's just not true at all Rick. There is nothing contradictory or at least irrational about something always existing and yet still be created so long as that thing is contingent (and therefore dependent on something else, ontologically, if not temporally). Which is precisely why you can and should say to Kenny, yes, it is quite possible matter/energy always existed. So what?

Explain what I'm missing then. If something is created, by definition, it didn't exist prior to it being created.

cre·ate
/krēˈāt/Submit
verb
past tense: created; past participle: created
bring (something) into existence.

What am I missing?

When you (and Philip, and others) argue for 'creation' per se, you are necessarily transforming the argument to one of time, a before and an after, i.e. to a temporal or accidental causal series. When Aquinas formulated his 5 ways some 8 centuries ago (and Aristotle some two millennia before him), and well before either of them knew anything about the big bang or the singularity or whathaveyou, Aquinas knew one thing for certain, that there is no way of showing metaphysically (or logically or rationally) that time did not exist for eternity. He did not believe it personally and therefore did not believe that the universe (or time rather) was eternal. He just could not prove it logically. That is why went to great lengths to avoid this type of argument altogether and why his arguments have nothing to do with time being eternal in the past but rather with the nature of change in the here and now, i.e. with essentially ordered causal series and what that logically says about change rather than the act of creation from nothing.

All that to say this, even if we are to assume time (and matter and energy and whatever) always existed in the past, matter and energy are still contingent things. They can be one way or another. And as we know from essentially ordered causal series, for a change (potential) to occur, it must be actualized by something else which is already in act. We also know that this series cannot extend to an infinite series of contingent things actualizing other contingent things because nothing will then change (think of Feser's famous books on a shelf example).

What this type of argument boils down to is the nature of existence. Can anything exist at all (even if eternally) without existence? The obvious and rational answer to that is no. And, metaphysically speaking, the nature of existence is such that it must have the divine attributes we all know, otherwise it wouldn't even make any sense to speak of existence.

So I ask again, time, matter and energy always existed. A big fat so what?

I'm sorry Byblos, you lost me. How can matter be both created, and eternal(no beginning)? As I said before, by definition, something created was brought into existence. In other words, it didn't exist, was created, and then it existed.

Maybe matter existed eternally. Maybe it was brought into existence. I don't know either way. But how can it be both?

[RickD]

Kenny wrote:
I realize there are some scientists who do believe in God. But that belief is based on faith; not science.

That's just false.

I don't know how or why you'd even make that assertion.

So there are scientists whose belief in God is based on science? Are we talking God's like Hale Selassie; who are born and die on a regular basis? Or like yours creator of the Universe and all that exist? If like yours, which scientific theory includes God?

One specific example I can think of, is Hugh Ross, the astrophysicist. I remember reading something a while back, where he was talking that specifically scientists who study astrophysics, tend to believe in a God who created the universe. And these astrophysicists believe in God, precisely because of the branch of science that they study.

[Kenny]

Kenny wrote:
I realize there are some scientists who do believe in God. But that belief is based on faith; not science.

That's just false.

I don't know how or why you'd even make that assertion.

So there are scientists whose belief in God is based on science? Are we talking God's like Hale Selassie; who are born and die on a regular basis? Or like yours creator of the Universe and all that exist? If like yours, which scientific theory includes God?

One specific example I can think of, is Hugh Ross, the astrophysicist. I remember reading something a while back, where he was talking that specifically scientists who study astrophysics, tend to believe in a God who created the universe. And these astrophysicists believe in God, precisely because of the branch of science that they study.

Probably depends on the person. Neil DeGrasse Tyson who is probably the worlds most popular astrophysics sees it differently. Here he explains why the more he looks at the Universe, the less convinced he is of God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0nXG02tpDw

Then there is the Pew research center; according to them Physics and Astronomy is about the least likely of scientists to believe in God

http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scie ... nd-belief/