VS and the religious element

I'm beginning to suspect that Ronin's fanaticism with the supremacy of science is more based on dogma than reason or logic. Rather ironic, but makes perfect sense that it fits in with the VS view on the world!

On this point, looking around and simply saying, this is the work of god is not proving anything. It's just stating an opinion. I could say actually I created everything, so I am god, and you should worship me. I have as much evidence as any god does. Actually I have more... I'm here. So have faith in me and build statues of me etc etc.

Of course no-one will except that. The irony is the the same people that will happily believe in a god will discount my claim to be the creator using... wait for it... logic and reasoning. The very things they refuse to apply to there own belief system.

Atheist/theist debate on Planetside forums.

Y u do dat.

Actually this is the most interesting thread there has been in ages. And it's pretty civil to boot.

I should be less lazy and find some vanu thing to put over jesus but w/e

To the contrary, your being here would be evidence against your being a god. Gods, particularly creator gods, tend to be infallible by their very nature. It would be hard to imagine one could be able to create anything beyond their own conception. Furthermore, it would be illogical to assume that god sprung from creation, and not the other way around.

If god is omnipotent, he could put himself into human form. And you know... he supposedly sort-of did in Christianity.

Not all "gods" are the same kind of entity.

The Greek/Roman gods, animist spirits, Yahweh and others are proposed to have been in the regular world just walking around doing things.

Humans have made many things we didn't fully understand at the time of their creation. A god being would be no different. In no particular order;

-Antibiotics and various physiological medications
-Calendars
-Nuclear Weapons
-Economic systems
-System of Governance
-moar

It would also be illogical to suppose that there is something "outside" of existence to cause it, so this is a rather meaningless thing to say

I think all I was responding to was whether some kind of deity could be measured, in the same way that you might want to measure the wavelength of light. Whether you believe in the accuracy or even point of such a measurement is quite different.

For instance, I could measure color by counting the number of letters in each English word associated with that color. "Red" would be 3, and "Green" would be 5 and so forth. That is a way to measure, but you might say that my measurements aren't really relevant to anything in particular.

As for your proof, I could probably show that you are not an omnipotent deity, simply because I have not observed the you in creating any of these things.

On the other hand I observe that there are indeed such majestic things in the universe, and it follows that something or someone created them. It is not unreasonable to assume this thing or one. Science assumes (without proof or observation) that it was a thing, and religion assumes (without proof or observation) that it was a one.

Again, the logic of both science and religion is actually the same. A thing exists now, so it must have been created at some point in time prior to now. They simply deviate in their explanation of creation, and really the amount of evidence that scientists can muster at this point isn't much more credible than what the various religions can gather.

That's of course a very specific interpretation that follows (relatively recent) Islamic-Judeo-Christian beliefs on religion. Many other religious deities (Nordic, Greek, Chinese, pre-Hindu as a few examples) were far from perfect and infallible. These earlier deities were simply super-powerful humans. And even pre-dating those were shamanistic beliefs that were much more in line with powers of nature rather than "beings" as we would envision deities today.

Absolutely. To an omnipotent god, nothing would be impossible except for the rules imposed on such a god by itself. However, given a creator god would be bound by the rules of logic, if not the origin of them, for what purpose would one do this, particularly in a form in which he could not confirm his own identity? If a creator god is indeed the creator, it would be assumed that he knows man well enough to know that such claims would require substantiation.

True statements, up until the end there. For anything to exist, it would have to have been conceived by a creator god first, no? If a god is the origin of the universe, then he would necessarily be the creator of its laws as well. While one could say that consciousness independent of god could use these laws in ways not conceived by this god, there's no reason that such a god would be limited to the knowledge of this consciousness. Again, only what can happen does happen.

Existence itself is illogical. You can say that the universe began with the big bang, but you can't say why or how the big bang happened, if it was indeed the very first event, ever. Seeing as we're conscious beings, and there is no certainty of existence at all beyond what can conceive it, given the indeterminate origin of the universe, it's not any more illogical that such an origin would begin with consciousness, rather than for no reason whatsoever.

I thought this was about the Vanu. How did this turn to a religion vs science debate?

He could easily be deceiving you, and you'd be none the wiser.

Not necessarily, there are things that exist without a cause (virtual particles), and there are hypotheses that propose that the universe may have come into existence from "nothing" and for no reason.

Making an unjustified assumption is by default a horrible decision. Never assume anything.

There is overwhelming evidence that the universe was created by a purely materialistic process, and we recently confirmed the prevailing big bang theory to be true with the detection of gravity waves.

Then you haven't read anything that scientists have said. I recommend watching Lawrence Krauss' lecture "A Universe From Nothing".

True, but where the gods are not the source, rather the result of nature, than nature itself is assumed to be infallible.

To use a common religious cop out "he works in mysterious ways".

But of course the idea is that we can't possibly comprehend how God thinks or his reasoning.

We don't get to define anything so it could even be something as simple as "God got bored and decided to try being an average middle class white male, today he posts on a video game forum, talking about himself".

No, the creator god may not be omniscient. Things may exist that are simply accidntal byproducts of something else.

Not really. Human computers follow immutable laws of physics and we work around those or use them to get things done. A god may be in the same situation.

...What.

No it isn't, it's the necessary precondition for logic to work.

The big bang wasn't the first thing to ever happen, because there was never a time without time. Saying something was "first" when time doesn't even apply is nonsensical.

That's an argument from ignorance fallacy, also an argument from excluded middle.

Conciousness is also known to be a phenomenon associated with brains and computers (to an extent). Consciousness is not an explanation when the the things it relies on to exist are what it is making.

'Cause Vanu is a faction of scientists who have an odd religious vibe to them.

And you know, the internet just takes things in certain directions.

Absolutely true. However, a god in this form would be bound by his laws. If he was no longer bound by these laws, he would no longer be an average middle class white male, no? A god could say he was god, but that statement has no meaning unless he could also do as god does.

lol.....sounds like a different version of a certain middle eastern religion that is in the news alot these days

Are we running into this issue:

If God is omnipotent, he can't be bound by any law
If God is omnipotent, he can make unbreakable laws

???

Seems like a paradox.

nope nope nope please don't get my thread locked yet

No he wouldn't, he would still be the creator of everything and still retain his power.