This little spat reminds me of so many modern pseudo-intellectual arguments. The sainted Richard Dawkins' empiricist-faith-based fulminations against the existence of God leaps to mind. The most excruciatingly annoying thing I recall about Dawkins is that he's happy to deploy freshman / sophomore arguments (legitimately) to shoot down some of the early ontological and/or cosmological arguments, but seems completely oblivious to his own subsequent perpetration of most of the same fallacies he criticizes in others. I remember thinking "surely no philosophy undergrad would make such howling mistakes". Still, I suppose "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds". ;)
Some of the most fundamental concepts/discoveries(?) in math include zero, multiplication, and division. Start basic.
A. 0 x 1 = 0; 0 x 2 = 0; 0 x 3 = 0; etc. and even 0 x 0 = 0.
- What we learn from these identities is that "Nothing" cannot be multiplied at all. You can't get something "out of" or "from" Nothing. This is my disproof of the Big Bang, by the way, for those paying attention. It is neither mathematically, nor logically, possible for any honest, serious physicist to believe in "the Big Bang" - that NOTHING just... magically spurted out, i.e. multiplied, into EVERYTHING.
- It is orders of magnitude more contradictory (and nutty) than anything in the Bible because it violates the most basic rules of mathematics. You can't have nothing - zero - and then it just multiplies into everything.
B. Now, if multiplying by zero is boring as hell (Nothing comes from Nothing), dividing by zero is downright wacky. Anyone remember the answer to this: 0/0? Undefined. We don't even have a way of defining when we try to divide Nothing into Nothing sized pieces. Huh.
- How about next on the number line, 1/0? Depending upon how you were taught, the answer will either be "infinity" or "undefined, but approaches infinity". I won't go through the proof for it (because it's long), but it derives from limits in calculus. For example, 1/.8 = 1.2, then 1/.5 = 2, then 1/.1 = 10, then 1/.01 = 100, 1/.001 = 1000, etc. You can see, even without a graph, that there is an asymptote up to Infinity as you try to break 1 into smaller and smaller pieces.
- Restated: as you try to divide a number into smaller and smaller pieces, the number of pieces approaches Infinity. IOW, One can be broken into an infinite number of pieces.
C. The equation is 1/0 = ∞. As an English sentence, it can be written, "One, divided by nothing, is Infinite." This is THE critical misunderstanding, in my view, of modern physics. It refuses to understand that in order for something - anything - to be infinite, it must be Unity. Instead, physics insists that Infinity is really "many-ness" or counting things forever... A billion + 1, then another one, and another, but that's not what the equation says or means.
D. God is Unity, the One, the Monad, and we are all part of it; individual units, infinitely smaller and smaller parts, but each "a piece of the continent, a part of the Main."
That great charlatan in the wheelchair, in his silly book 'A Brief History Of Time' (yes, I am one of 3 people on this planet who read past the cover) posited that a "spontaneous quantum fluctuation in the space-time continuum"* produced a matter-antimatter pairing on the edge of a black hole, which captured half of the pair leaving the other to explode (why? there is no physical explanation for this, just posturing and handwaving*) into life, the universe, and Everything.
This is so retarded that it still boggles my mind.
(*speaking of waving of hands, note how much the earlier marked phrase resembles spell-casting.)
I have a friend who had one of the funniest rants/bits ever re: Hawking. Kinda had to be there, but it revolved around that disembodied voice and the idea that Hawking was muttering bullshit the whole time and that his wheelchair was programmed to just spit out selected phrases from a lexicon of scientistic nonsense. The impersonation really made the joke, but I don't think it would pass in polite society. But since that rant, every time I see Hawking's name mentioned anywhere, I start giggling.
Hawking: "Annggg, nnggghhh, guhhhh."
Wheelchair: "THE UNI-VERSE IS MANI-FEST AND UN-BOUND..."
My Friend: "Suuuurrrrrre. I'm sure that's what he said."
He lost me at "The Atlantic, a publication I respect".
Maybe it *used* to be respectable.
Smart-aleck remark aside...
I don't argue about gods yea or nay. There's no point.
Other people can, and will, believe whatever they want as long as they don't bother me with the consequences of their beliefs or to try to make me believe what they do.
In return, I won't bother them about my beliefs, or lack thereof.
I am always shocked how old hat all liberal rhetoric is. It's always a mix of 2004 style new-atheism mixed with the anti-Catholic blaspheming of a kkk grand cyclops from the 1950's.
Perhaps Paul had Old Jer in mind when he penned his Epistle to the Romans. From chapter 1:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (ESV)
Throughout history, countless debates have taken place about the existence of God, the limits of science, and the nature of truth. Yet, if we look closely, none of these debates have ever reached a definitive conclusion. The reason is not the weakness of the arguments, but rather the limitations of the human cognitive mechanism. The human mind was shaped by evolution for survival; our search for meaning, our curiosity, our belief and disbelief—all are derivatives of this biological reflex.
Thus, whether expressed through scientific explanation or theological reasoning, every approach is merely a different dialect of the same underlying program. The mind cannot grasp the “absolute” without first transcending itself, for it operates within the boundaries of a self-contained system. We are mechanisms designed to generate meaning, not to surpass it.
The true answer lies not within the arguments themselves but in recognizing the system’s workings. Until humanity transcends these evolutionary layers and discovers the self that observes them, such questions will continue to circle endlessly. Even centuries from now—because the place where we seek the answer is, in fact, the very limit of the answer itself.
I’m not super smart about Theology, Philosophy and (don’t hit me!) Science.
But I read it in college til I cried “uncle”, you got me Father Godfrey!
What bothers me most about commie-liberals (or Tucker and ?Candace? )discussing the existence of God and Our Redeemer and the demonic is their over emotionalism.
Maybe it’s because I’m old but I don’t think so. Crying or sputtering and saying you have to believe me is not an argument.
Searching for the supernatural by looking at bits and pieces of the natural in isolation (that is, searching empirically) seems to me a bit like searching for a cow in bits of a hamburger.
A strange procedure, starting with the hypothesis that something exists above, over and outside the field of study, then trying to find it within.
Agnostic, it is not my business to tell theists or theist-deniers how to go about theirs, but I can't help thinking these sorts of exercises are beside their own point.
This little spat reminds me of so many modern pseudo-intellectual arguments. The sainted Richard Dawkins' empiricist-faith-based fulminations against the existence of God leaps to mind. The most excruciatingly annoying thing I recall about Dawkins is that he's happy to deploy freshman / sophomore arguments (legitimately) to shoot down some of the early ontological and/or cosmological arguments, but seems completely oblivious to his own subsequent perpetration of most of the same fallacies he criticizes in others. I remember thinking "surely no philosophy undergrad would make such howling mistakes". Still, I suppose "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds". ;)
I question the intelligence of anyone who “respects” The Atlantic.
"...The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments..."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais
🤣
My mathematical proof for God -
Some of the most fundamental concepts/discoveries(?) in math include zero, multiplication, and division. Start basic.
A. 0 x 1 = 0; 0 x 2 = 0; 0 x 3 = 0; etc. and even 0 x 0 = 0.
- What we learn from these identities is that "Nothing" cannot be multiplied at all. You can't get something "out of" or "from" Nothing. This is my disproof of the Big Bang, by the way, for those paying attention. It is neither mathematically, nor logically, possible for any honest, serious physicist to believe in "the Big Bang" - that NOTHING just... magically spurted out, i.e. multiplied, into EVERYTHING.
- It is orders of magnitude more contradictory (and nutty) than anything in the Bible because it violates the most basic rules of mathematics. You can't have nothing - zero - and then it just multiplies into everything.
B. Now, if multiplying by zero is boring as hell (Nothing comes from Nothing), dividing by zero is downright wacky. Anyone remember the answer to this: 0/0? Undefined. We don't even have a way of defining when we try to divide Nothing into Nothing sized pieces. Huh.
- How about next on the number line, 1/0? Depending upon how you were taught, the answer will either be "infinity" or "undefined, but approaches infinity". I won't go through the proof for it (because it's long), but it derives from limits in calculus. For example, 1/.8 = 1.2, then 1/.5 = 2, then 1/.1 = 10, then 1/.01 = 100, 1/.001 = 1000, etc. You can see, even without a graph, that there is an asymptote up to Infinity as you try to break 1 into smaller and smaller pieces.
- Restated: as you try to divide a number into smaller and smaller pieces, the number of pieces approaches Infinity. IOW, One can be broken into an infinite number of pieces.
C. The equation is 1/0 = ∞. As an English sentence, it can be written, "One, divided by nothing, is Infinite." This is THE critical misunderstanding, in my view, of modern physics. It refuses to understand that in order for something - anything - to be infinite, it must be Unity. Instead, physics insists that Infinity is really "many-ness" or counting things forever... A billion + 1, then another one, and another, but that's not what the equation says or means.
D. God is Unity, the One, the Monad, and we are all part of it; individual units, infinitely smaller and smaller parts, but each "a piece of the continent, a part of the Main."
QED ;-)
That great charlatan in the wheelchair, in his silly book 'A Brief History Of Time' (yes, I am one of 3 people on this planet who read past the cover) posited that a "spontaneous quantum fluctuation in the space-time continuum"* produced a matter-antimatter pairing on the edge of a black hole, which captured half of the pair leaving the other to explode (why? there is no physical explanation for this, just posturing and handwaving*) into life, the universe, and Everything.
This is so retarded that it still boggles my mind.
(*speaking of waving of hands, note how much the earlier marked phrase resembles spell-casting.)
(**because that is what it is.)
I have a friend who had one of the funniest rants/bits ever re: Hawking. Kinda had to be there, but it revolved around that disembodied voice and the idea that Hawking was muttering bullshit the whole time and that his wheelchair was programmed to just spit out selected phrases from a lexicon of scientistic nonsense. The impersonation really made the joke, but I don't think it would pass in polite society. But since that rant, every time I see Hawking's name mentioned anywhere, I start giggling.
Hawking: "Annggg, nnggghhh, guhhhh."
Wheelchair: "THE UNI-VERSE IS MANI-FEST AND UN-BOUND..."
My Friend: "Suuuurrrrrre. I'm sure that's what he said."
Excellent. Thanks!
It’s turtles all the way down.
Wanna bet Old Jer believes in the Big Bang? Ya know, that “one miracle” even atheist scientists have to believe?
He lost me at "The Atlantic, a publication I respect".
Maybe it *used* to be respectable.
Smart-aleck remark aside...
I don't argue about gods yea or nay. There's no point.
Other people can, and will, believe whatever they want as long as they don't bother me with the consequences of their beliefs or to try to make me believe what they do.
In return, I won't bother them about my beliefs, or lack thereof.
I am always shocked how old hat all liberal rhetoric is. It's always a mix of 2004 style new-atheism mixed with the anti-Catholic blaspheming of a kkk grand cyclops from the 1950's.
*from the 1590s*
“The fool says in his heart there is no God.”
Perhaps Paul had Old Jer in mind when he penned his Epistle to the Romans. From chapter 1:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (ESV)
"He opens by quoting some commie who didn’t see God lingering in low earth orbit."
Didn't look high enough.
"Modern man can't see God because he doesn't look low enough."
Carl Jung
I would remind the professor that scientific inquiry began with theology, and send him this:
https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm
Throughout history, countless debates have taken place about the existence of God, the limits of science, and the nature of truth. Yet, if we look closely, none of these debates have ever reached a definitive conclusion. The reason is not the weakness of the arguments, but rather the limitations of the human cognitive mechanism. The human mind was shaped by evolution for survival; our search for meaning, our curiosity, our belief and disbelief—all are derivatives of this biological reflex.
Thus, whether expressed through scientific explanation or theological reasoning, every approach is merely a different dialect of the same underlying program. The mind cannot grasp the “absolute” without first transcending itself, for it operates within the boundaries of a self-contained system. We are mechanisms designed to generate meaning, not to surpass it.
The true answer lies not within the arguments themselves but in recognizing the system’s workings. Until humanity transcends these evolutionary layers and discovers the self that observes them, such questions will continue to circle endlessly. Even centuries from now—because the place where we seek the answer is, in fact, the very limit of the answer itself.
I’m not super smart about Theology, Philosophy and (don’t hit me!) Science.
But I read it in college til I cried “uncle”, you got me Father Godfrey!
What bothers me most about commie-liberals (or Tucker and ?Candace? )discussing the existence of God and Our Redeemer and the demonic is their over emotionalism.
Maybe it’s because I’m old but I don’t think so. Crying or sputtering and saying you have to believe me is not an argument.
That’s all I got.
It's category errors all the way down.
The existence of God is not easily proven. It's not supposed to be easily proven. Who has proven their worthiness more:
Ned, who absolutely knows he will be rewarded for this good works?
Ted, who does good works in large part because he is a good person, and the remote possibility of afterlife reward is just gravy?
In the biblical histories, God has granted more slack during times when he kept his existence in doubt.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41088454-the-return-of-the-god-hypothesis
Searching for the supernatural by looking at bits and pieces of the natural in isolation (that is, searching empirically) seems to me a bit like searching for a cow in bits of a hamburger.
A strange procedure, starting with the hypothesis that something exists above, over and outside the field of study, then trying to find it within.
Agnostic, it is not my business to tell theists or theist-deniers how to go about theirs, but I can't help thinking these sorts of exercises are beside their own point.