A very simple question that seem to stumped both atheists and evolutionists alike.

a reply to: edmc^2

Still waiting on that new thread. Given the "quality" of most of the ones you craft, it should not take long ....

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: edmc^2

Still waiting on that new thread. Given the "quality" of most of the ones you craft, it should not take long ....

Do we really need another 45+ pages from an OP who doesn't read responses, doesn't respond, and who is willfully ignorant?
Don't encourage!

a reply to: Phantom423

But he promised. I'd hate this to be another creationist, who can't walk the walk Oh wait.....

originally posted by: Phantom423

originally posted by: edmc^2

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: edmc^2
Hahaha, too bad for you then. Your ability to go beyond the physical has reached its limit.

No wonder you can't go forward.

So I take it you have figured out how to go beyond the physical then? Why aren't you a Nobel prize winner? Oh wait, you don't have that ability either, you just believe it all based on pure faith. Silly me, for a second there I thought you might actually know something.

Sorry man, things don't exist just because you believe in them.

Wow, according to you, looks like I'm the only ONE who came up with the idea of INFINITY and its existence and believes it! Thanks.

So I'm getting my Nobel prize soon, I suppose.

No you did not. You appropriated the answer I gave you: if something has no cause, then it's infinite. It has no beginning and no end. And since we cannot prove infinity, the question is a moot point. It's meaningless.

And I seriously doubt that atheists and scientists who study evolution find this to be a conundrum. We simply have no way of knowing. There's no test for infinity.

This thread is not worth 45 pages. At the very least, you should have been able to answer the question yourself just using deductive logic.

I what? Appropriated your answer?

Now that's absurd. The answer has been there since the beginning. It's an obvious one.

But what comes after the answer is the most difficult one. That is - the concept of infinity.

And as I stated, this is very difficult for atheists to comprehend because of their materialistic view of everything. Not only that, it compromises their understanding of the world or for that matter the universe. To invoke infinity or its existence is to open the door to eternity. This can't be allowed, just as the beginning of the physical universe can't be allowed (although they have no choice but to admit it). So it must be redefined and promoted.

And to prove my point, this has been done. To quote or to paraphrase one of my favorite astrophysicists Prof. Krauss, why there's no such thing as nothing (from his book "A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing).

'Because something is physical, nothing must be physical, especially if you define it as the absence of something.'

As for the concept of infinity - it's one of the perplexing subjects being researched.

The future of mathematics

Still, despite all of the uncertainties, the work done by set theorists could have positive ripple effects that serve to strengthen the foundations of mathematics, Woodin said. "By investigating infinity, and to the extent that we can be successful, I think we make the case for the consistency of arithmetic," he explained. "That's a bit of a fanatical statement, but if infinity doesn't lead to a contradiction, certainly the finite doesn't lead to a contradiction. So, maybe by exploring the outer reaches to see if there is a contradiction, you gain some security." The paradoxes that characterize the concept of infinity are perhaps best explained with the number pi, Strogatz said. Pi, one of the most recognizable mathematical constants, represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Among its myriad applications, pi can be used to find the area of a circle. "Pi is typical of real numbers … in that it has this infinite amount of unpredictable information in it, and at the same time, is so totally predictable," Strogatz said. "There's nothing more orderly than a circle, which pi embodies — it's the very symbol of order and perfection. So this coexistence of perfect predictability and order, with this tantalizing mystery of infinite enigma built into the same object, is part of the pleasure of our subject and, I suppose, of infinity itself."

www.livescience.com...

Now to me, this is not a problem.


ciao

originally posted by: Phantom423

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: edmc^2

Still waiting on that new thread. Given the "quality" of most of the ones you craft, it should not take long ....

Do we really need another 45+ pages from an OP who doesn't read responses, doesn't respond, and who is willfully ignorant?
Don't encourage!

Like I said - the answer was in the very beginning. It's been there all the time. You people just keep making the thread grow. Not my fault.

fyi- been doing some research so I wasn't able to respond quickly. plus got some stuff to do - like work.

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: Phantom423

But he promised. I'd hate this to be another creationist, who can't walk the walk

Oh wait.....

hahaha, that's funny.

a reply to: edmc^2

Case close!

a reply to: edmc^2

Indeed not closed. We know you shall post. We know you shall commit the same fallacies. Like I said, I am here waiting. Among other things that is

a reply to: Noinden

let's do that again.

Case CloseD!

a reply to: edmc^2

"Existence itself is uncaused. At the beginning, there is no cause, so in the end there can be no purpose.
Only when there is a cause can there be a purpose.

There is no beginning because then there must be a cause. Existence is beginningless. And there is no end because the beginningless cannot cause an end. It is endless. So there is neither a beginning nor an end to existence, it is eternal, uncaused, without any purpose.

For the human mind, it is meaningless to say this because we think in terms of causes, "from where?" and in terms of purpose "to what end?"
Because of this limitation of the human mind, it cannot conceive of something that is beginningless, endless, uncaused, without any purpose."

Excerpts from Osho" God the creative process, not the creator"
Chapter 8

a reply to: edmc^2

Lets not eh, and say we didn't You thread never actually took off, and you are trying to scuttle it. So its not closed, scientists are not stumped. Fallacious thread is fallacious

originally posted by: edmc^2
a reply to: Noinden

let's do that again.

Case CloseD!

This case was closed on page 2. Nothing has been proved or established in this thread, only that you can't prove anything you claim is real, and we knew that already. Basically you proved that you have faith. Congrats.

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: edmc^2
a reply to: Noinden

let's do that again.

Case CloseD!

This case was closed on page 2. Nothing has been proved or established in this thread, only that you can't prove anything you claim is real, and we knew that already. Basically you proved that you have faith. Congrats.

hehehe...

can't let go?

a reply to: edmc^2

If something has no cause, does it have a beginning? What say you?

The answer is as obvious as it is simple and honest, and frankly, it's an answer that more than a few religious people could do well to learn...the answer is...we don't know, yet.

However, we don't know how 'Virtual particles' work, we don't know how a virtual electron or photon can zip in and out of the realms of existence in nanoseconds, and we certainly don't know how one of these virtual particles can zip in and out of existence and some of them can transform into actual real particles...doesn't mean there isn't an answer, it just means we be honest and admit we haven't found it out yet....yet.

Same with your question, while something may appear to have no causal effect, it doesn't mean there isn't one, it only means we haven't worked out the mechanics of it's physics at the present time.

That's why we have experimentation...so we can discover the answers to these questions, without simply throwing our hands into the air and lazily attributing whatever it is to superstition.

originally posted by: edmc^2
hehehe...

can't let go?

Nope you can't. That's proved by you having to post it twice in a row.

originally posted by: edmc^2

Everything that has a beginning has a cause.

So, what's the answer to this simple question:

If something has no cause, does it have a beginning?

What say you?

All saps are soodles.

So what is the answer to this simple question.

If something is not a soodle, is it a sap?

Answer = goddidit.

This is simply the first premise of the "Kalam Cosmological Argument" that nutty William Lane Craig uses to try to talk god into existence (shouldn't that be the other way around? lol). Pretending it isn't seems a bit disingenuous.

The real answer is that we don't know, because things don't simply pop into existence in our universe for us to observe such a phenomena (matter/energy is neither created or destroyed).

Though if it were possible in the philosophical sense (for something to exist without cause), it would lead to the strong possibility that our universe might have always existed in some form and had no cause, rendering notions of god extraneous and obsolete (ie. unlike god, we don't have to make up an imaginary universe to ponder, we know it exists).

We should be thankful to Craig via edmc^2 for thus demonstrating the utter lack of necessity and further unlikelihood of Iupiter (god) existing.

“Everything that has a beginning has a cause”

Does it really? How can you demonstrate that? Why should we take your word on it?

It possibly does, for things that begin inside of our universe. Though if we go beyond the merely superficial, even that seems dubious as this simply amounts to the constant rearrangement of matter and energy following the principles of physics. The "beginning" of anything being arbitrary in that sense. We certainly don’t know if it would apply to our universe itself, and we have no way of knowing. As causation requires a succession of events occurring in time, we can’t even say our universe was caused to exist, because we simply don’t know as there was no time when it didn’t exist.

Let’s ask what is the cause of edmc^2 beginning as some subset within this universe. Some would say it is because of his parents, others would say because of a genetic code, or the circumstances where his parents met, biological evolution that allowed our species to exist, the periodic table of elements without which none of us would exist (we can than stars for that!) and so on.

So if you look for a cause, what you find is a massively complex causal chain of countless events theoretically going all of the way back to the initial conditions of our universe and converging in time and space to a point at which edmc^2 exists.

Though even then it isn’t that simple. We don’t know to what extent randomness occurs in our universe, only that some outcomes are genuinely random at the basic level. So in the deepest sense we don’t really know ultimately that anything has a cause, or if so, what it might be. We can “theoretically” follow this causal chain to a point where no answer is available to us.

Interestingly for Christians, what this idea of causality or that “everything that begins has a cause” certainly does do, is utterly obliterate any notion of a religious type “free will”. Because very thought that has ever existed is also subject to such causality.

So we could change that statement to

“Everything that we know of that begins in our universe (we can only account for about 5% of it at the moment), appears to begin (superficially) as a result of a complex causal chain of process and events, some inherently random and ultimately we have no way of knowing the true cause of anything, or even if there is one”.

So your statement is vague, undemonstrated and you have no way of knowing if it’s really true. The amusing part is that religious used car salesmen use “everything that begins to exist has a cause” as a starting point to sell the very idea that god exists without beginning or cause lol.

So, what's the answer to this simple question:

If something has no cause, does it have a beginning?

What say you?

Thanks for the question. My answer is the answer every Christian would give: Mankind, and everything for that matter has a cause, which is found in Revelations 4:11 in the Holy Bible:

"Revelation 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. "

And there's the answer. We are created to bring God pleasure. Fulfill your purpose and you will have joy. Fail at it and you will be depressed and sad in this life. That's the Christian answer/perspective in a nut shell.

a reply to: Idreamofme

that's easy. The chicken