show me some evidence, evidence, and evidence

Sadako, I'm not going to respond to each point individually. That would be quite a large post. Besides, the response would be basically the same through all of them.

The points you have listed here seem to all come from the OT. I'm sure your aware that the harshness of punishments was removed after Jesus came in the NT.

On top of that, the majority of them were God passing judgment. In that sense, you are basically saying God is evil, which is another debate all together, and not what we are talking about here.

I'm asking for evil that Christians now a days are suppose to perform in order to be true Christians. None of use are required to kill anyone. In fact, "Though shalt not kill" is one of the ten commandments.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Now, Tacdavey, QPQ:

Prove god created the universe.
Bring your proof, that you keep banging on about.

I already did. The Kalam Cosmological Argument for one. Summarized, the first part goes like this:

p1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause
p2: The Universe began to exist
C: The universe has a cause

Do you deny any of these points?

Originally posted by TacDavey
I already did. The Kalam Cosmological Argument for one. Summarized, the first part goes like this:

p1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause
p2: The Universe began to exist
C: The universe has a cause

Do you deny any of these points?

But even then you don't get to a personal god from there.

And the last step (in the Kalam argument) of it actually "proves" that the first argument was incorrect. And you can derive anything from a contradiction.

A good analysis of Kalam:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html

The key point is that Kalam wants you to accept that everything has a cause and then also accept that there is a thing that doesn't have a cause (God). Which makes the argument self refuting at best and begs the question like crazy at worst.

Originally posted by TacDavey
Sadako, I'm not going to respond to each point individually. That would be quite a large post. Besides, the response would be basically the same through all of them.

The points you have listed here seem to all come from the OT. I'm sure your aware that the harshness of punishments was removed after Jesus came in the NT.

On top of that, the majority of them were God passing judgment. In that sense, you are basically saying God is evil, which is another debate all together, and not what we are talking about here.

I'm asking for evil that Christians now a days are suppose to perform in order to be true Christians. None of use are required to kill anyone. In fact, "Though shalt not kill" is one of the ten commandments.

I already did. The Kalam Cosmological Argument for one. Summarized, the first part goes like this:

p1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause
p2: The Universe began to exist
C: The universe has a cause

Do you deny any of these points?

Scripture is shown here to be the cause historically of evil directly by its preachments.
That pastor who kicked off those murders by burning the Quaran, and the guys who did the murdering, were all enabled to do (at least in their eyes) by the gods of their scripture. And the quotes I provided include the lines of intolorance about other religious icons and faiths being acted on today.

The lines about the gays hold true for a lot of the faithful too.

So you admit that the scripture is man made/modified?
They are still a part of the bible and its teachings. And there are way more instances of such occurances than the 1 commandment that seems to go against it..and its very easy to remember that god favours bloody vengence and lets his dont kill commandment slide in favour of his numerous other acts and commands to the opposite effect.
Cherry picking with the worst consequences for mankind.

1. Possibly..not certainly.. and infinite regression is why that is a problem.
2. Speculation.. it might always exist in a loop of bang and crunch, for all we know....and see 1.
3: See 1....

Any time we go with the assumption that an intelligent, conscious being decided to create the universe, you must answer "and what created that creator...?"

Ive seen no evidence that any gods created the universe, anyhow, much less that they're actively regulating it with great concern about what you do with your penis...

Anyway: An argument alone cannot be regarded as proof.
Buts thanks for trying though, in a constructive fashion this time.

Also the danger of asking "What 'true christians' would be interpreting literally and acting on religious texts as abhorrent as those"?

Its too easy, looking at the world, to come to this conclusion:
"Well ALL true Christians, by definition, if were they to follow their book to the letter, as the Fundamentalists tend to do..."

Whats a good/true Christian?
A) Someone who is good to his brother primates?
B) Or one who follows the scriptures examples and text commandments to the letter, even if that clashes with A....?

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Also the danger of asking "What 'true christians' would be interpreting literally and acting on religious texts as abhorrent as those"?

Its too easy, looking at the world, to come to this conclusion:
"Well ALL true Christians, by definition, if were they to follow their book to the letter, as the Fundamentalists tend to do..."

Whats a good/true Christian?
A) Someone who is good to his brother primates?
B) Or one who follows the scriptures examples and text commandments to the letter, even if that clashes with A....?

A true Christian follows the ten commandments and the teachings in the new testament. That is...they are non-violent, passive, Buddhists that still eat meat. Any other interpretation is wrong as it was quite clear, no matter what Christian denomination you are, that you should never hit back and take everything thrown at you like a b*tch. I am not even kidding. The only exception I can think of is just taking a nap while your family is raped and beaten: if I'm not mistaken, there's a greater sin in not doing your best to protect your family over harming another.

So the next time you hear a Christian spewing violence...remind them of their beliefs. Tell them that they are Buddhists*. 🙂

*That works on multiple levels cause some think that Jesus got some of his teachings from Buddha.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
A good analysis of Kalam:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html

The key point is that Kalam wants you to accept that everything has a cause and then also accept that there is a thing that doesn't have a cause (God). Which makes the argument self refuting at best and begs the question like crazy at worst.

Well, that's fairly easy to understand: God is the only "thing" that has an infinite span in any temporal direction: everything else observable does not.

Originally posted by Bardock42
I don't know whether we can be certain about p1.

But even then you don't get to a personal god from there.

And the last step (in the Kalam argument) of it actually "proves" that the first argument was incorrect. And you can derive anything from a contradiction.

That's just the first part, the argument isn't done. I also don't see how the second part disproves the first...

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
A good analysis of Kalam:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html

The key point is that Kalam wants you to accept that everything has a cause and then also accept that there is a thing that doesn't have a cause (God). Which makes the argument self refuting at best and begs the question like crazy at worst.

No, the Kalam states that anything that BEGINS to exist has a cause. God did not begin to exist, thus He does not need a cause.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Scripture is shown here to be the cause historically of evil directly by its preachments.
That pastor who kicked off those murders by burning the Quaran, and the guys who did the murdering, were all enabled to do (at least in their eyes) by the gods of their scripture. And the quotes I provided include the lines of intolorance about other religious icons and faiths being acted on today.

The lines about the gays hold true for a lot of the faithful too.

No. Scripture is not the cause of violence. People who do violence are the cause. Christianity holds to a very non-violent lifestyle. Anyone who does violence is not living as a Christian. You cannot blame Christianity for something someone did in it's name.

If I went around burning down hospitals and said I did it in the name of... The Democratic Party. Would you say the democratic party was evil? Of course not. Because the Democratic Party is not responsible for the destruction, I AM. Even if I had somehow rationalized a way of THINKING that the Democratic Party was telling me to burn hospitals, that wouldn't make the Democratic Party at fault here. I am the only one who is evil in that sense.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
So you admit that the scripture is man made/modified?

I never said that. I said it was debatable. It is modified to some degree, such as being translated into other languages etc etc. But really, this is a completely different subject and not what we are talking about here.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
They are still a part of the bible and its teachings. And there are way more instances of such occurances than the 1 commandment that seems to go against it..and its very easy to remember that god favours bloody vengence and lets his dont kill commandment slide in favour of his numerous other acts and commands to the opposite effect.
Cherry picking with the worst consequences for mankind.

Wrong. God has the authority to kill. We aren't talking about that, we are talking about religion and if it requires it's members to be evil. I'm still waiting for an example of what evils Christians today are doing. The ones that are REQUIRED not the ones done IN THE NAME of Christianity. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
1. Possibly..not certainly.. and infinite regression is why that is a problem.

It's pretty logical. If something doesn't exist, and then it does, there is a reason behind the change. Because if nothing happened, then it should continue not existing. Of course, if you want to deny this premise, you need to provide reasons.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
2. Speculation.. it might always exist in a loop of bang and crunch, for all we know....and see 1.

Incorrect. Modern cosmology has already determined that the universe is not eternal.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Any time we go with the assumption that an intelligent, conscious being decided to create the universe, you must answer "and what created that creator...?"

As I explained to Chaos, the argument states that only things that begin to exist require causes. god did not begin to exist, thus He needs no cause.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Ive seen no evidence that any gods created the universe, anyhow, much less that they're actively regulating it with great concern about what you do with your penis...

Isn't that what we are talking about right now? The Kalam is one of the reasons supporting the existence of God.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Anyway: An argument alone cannot be regarded as proof.
Buts thanks for trying though, in a constructive fashion this time.

Also incorrect. An argument's purpose is to prove something.

Originally posted by dadudemon
Well, that's fairly easy to understand: God is the only "thing" that has an infinite span in any temporal direction: everything else observable does not.

That would be where Kalam begs the question.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
That would be where Kalam begs the question.

What do you mean?

how does God not have a beginning if the rule is all things must have a beginning?

Originally posted by inimalist
how does God not have a beginning if the rule is all things must have a beginning?

The rule isn't "all things must have a beginning" at all.

The rule is "everything that DOES have a beginning, has a cause."

Originally posted by dadudemon
Well, that's fairly easy to understand: God is the only "thing" that has an infinite span in any temporal direction: everything else observable does not.

Thats a massive presumption.

Originally posted by TacDavey
The rule isn't "all things must have a beginning" at all.

The rule is "everything that DOES have a beginning, has a cause."

"So whats god's cause?" 🙂

Thats where the argument dies.

Also: Theres no evidence to support God or naturally, that it was caused in the first place.

Your whole thing about god no existing, then existing could very well be a false assumption... have you evidence of that?

Scripture is a direct cause of violence.
Note the news link I posted.

Note the genital mutilation of children directly on scriptures command.
Note the events of 9/11 being the results of people believing that virgins awaited them in the afterlife due to scripture.. the list isn't endless, but it goes back to through the religion's history.

Originally posted by TacDavey
What do you mean?

From the article I linked to:

[NBE is used to mean the set of things that have no beginning]
Where do theists obtain the idea in the first place that there is such a set as NBE? By what observations or arguments is the possibility of beginningless objects warranted? Certainly not via the cosmological argument, which simply assumes NBE; nor from science, which observes nothing of the sort. If they get their initial idea from a religious document or from "inner experience," their argument may be more presuppositionalist than evidentialist.

To say that NBE must accommodate more than one item is not to say that it must contain more than one item. The set might actually contain only one of the eligible candidates. The cosmological argument could be made successful if it could be shown that NBE contains exactly one item from a plural set of possibilities, and if the winning candidate turns out to be a personal creator. The question of accommodation is not whether the set does not contain more or less than one item; it's whether it can not contain other than one. If it can not, then the argument is circular. It would be like a dictator staging an election that permits no other candidates but himself: it's rigged from the start.

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
Thats a massive assumption.

No it isn't. Since time came into being at the Big Bang, whatever created the universe must have been outside of time. I.E. eternal.

Originally posted by TacDavey
The rule isn't "all things must have a beginning" at all.

The rule is "everything that DOES have a beginning, has a cause."

and you would argue the big bang is the "beginning" of the "everything", yes? as in, there was nothing before it?

Originally posted by Sadako of Girth
"So whats god's cause?" 🙂

Thats where the argument dies.

Also: Theres no evidence to support God or naturally, that it was caused in the first place.

Are you ignoring me? I just explained why God doesn't need a cause.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
From the article I linked to:

[NBE is used to mean the set of things that have no beginning]
Where do theists obtain the idea in the first place that there is such a set as NBE? By what observations or arguments is the possibility of beginningless objects warranted? Certainly not via the cosmological argument, which simply assumes NBE; nor from science, which observes nothing of the sort. If they get their initial idea from a religious document or from "inner experience," their argument may be more presuppositionalist than evidentialist.

To say that NBE must accommodate more than one item is not to say that it must contain more than one item. The set might actually contain only one of the eligible candidates. The cosmological argument could be made successful if it could be shown that NBE contains exactly one item from a plural set of possibilities, and if the winning candidate turns out to be a personal creator. The question of accommodation is not whether the set does not contain more or less than one item; it's whether it can not contain other than one. If it can not, then the argument is circular. It would be like a dictator staging an election that permits no other candidates but himself: it's rigged from the start.

Whatever created the universe has to be outside of time, since time came into being at the Big Bang. The second part of the Kalam Cosmological explains why, of the possibilities presented, God is the logical one.

Originally posted by TacDavey
No it isn't. Since time came into being at the Big Bang, whatever created the universe must have been outside of time. I.E. eternal.

oh, right, this...

Originally posted by inimalist
and you would argue the big bang is the "beginning" of the "everything", yes? as in, there was nothing before it?

That's right.