The Cosmological Conundrum

[Hagoth]

Probably the best argument for the existence of God, in my opinion, is the cosmological argument. In a nutshell, it is that everything exists so it must have had a creator. Big Bang you say? Who wound the clock?

My favorite twist to throw into this argument is to say, "I believe in God, just not the one in the Bible."

Christians are pretty good at debating atheists but how do you argue against theists who reject scripture as erroneous and entirely man-made?

[felixfabulous]

I believe in God, but my views of God have changed drastically. I believe in the divine mystery, there is something out there that I have felt and experienced. I don't think we know or can know very much about he/she/it/them. I think we, as humans, create God in our own image, he's an authoritarian if we are keen on a lot of rules, he's a violent war lord in the Old Testament and kind and compassionate in the New Testament. I think the whole point of Jesus was pointing us to a God bigger and more mysterious than the God of the OT.

I'm always surprised when people articulate a description of God that is pretty similar to mine and say that they are agnostic or, even atheists.

[Hagoth]

I believe in God, but my views of God have changed drastically. I believe in the divine mystery, there is something out there that I have felt and experienced. I don't think we know or can know very much about he/she/it/them. I think we, as humans, create God in our own image, he's an authoritarian if we are keen on a lot of rules, he's a violent war lord in the Old Testament and kind and compassionate in the New Testament. I think the whole point of Jesus was pointing us to a God bigger and more mysterious than the God of the OT.

I'm always surprised when people articulate a description of God that is pretty similar to mine and say that they are agnostic or, even atheists.

You are saying pretty much what I believe, flexi and I consider myself somewhere between a pantheist and a Taoist these days. We all seem to have a sense of something bigger. So big you could never hope to define it. Far, far beyond a meat-and-bones guy in a grove. Even just looking at the night sky you're seeing something that is more godlike than a guy on a throne. Not that Christians all conform to that image. I have heard many self-proclaimed Christians define God almost as tenuously as a pantheist might. Many seem to have a fairly pantheistic understanding. I believe a genuine agnostic will generally acknowledge that there is something bigger going on, even though that something isn't necessarily non-material.

I know I've said this before but, man, I really wish we knew exactly what Jesus really said (well, an English translation of it anyway).

[Palerider]

I know I've said this before but, man, I really wish we knew exactly what Jesus really said (well, an English translation of it anyway).

What you say might make a big difference for a lot of people. I'd even like an accurate Old Testament translation as well.

Just a tidbit from my studies. In the New Testament it reads "Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you."

But with the Greek connotation that is implied by the grammar, in reality it reads closer to:

"Continue seeking and ye shall find. Keep knocking and it shall be opened unto you."

The first reading could imply for some people that you only have to give it a one time shot. If you get no results it's o.k. to give up. The second and more accurate reading makes clear that seeking answers, seeking God, seeking spiritual nourishment is a lifelong objective.

But I had to do some digging to find out the real meaning of the scripture. Actually almost stumbled across it while looking for something else as I recall. But it had a significant effect on how I view the Divine relationship.

I've also thought for a long time now that Mormonism especially ( maybe much of Christianity in general) compresses God into something much smaller than His reality.

Whether his physical character is "human-like" or purely Spiritual doesn't matter to me. It's His truly incomprehensible capacity that most religions do an injustice to. I don't think we have the ability to wrap our minds around the real God. So we end up like Joseph... shrinking Him down to our own character, needs and desires. Hard to imagine how very low Jesus had to condescend to become like us. Incomprehensible really.

I was watching a science show the other day that talked about how some astronomers wanted to turn Hubble to a particularly dark area of the sky. Some scientists thought it was a waste of time because there was nothing there. No stars, no astronomical value in photographing empty space.

But Hubble has extremely sensitive cameras so they focused on this small blank spot in the night sky and left the lens open for a couple of days in an extended exposure. When they received the images back on Earth they were astounded.

Something like a thousand galaxies that were utterly invisible to the strongest telescopes on earth were sitting out there beyond that small "blank spot".

Now just think of how many small blank spots there are all over the night sky.....

And even if we could "see" all of it, there is still more that is impossible for us to see or comprehend in this life. There is so much more.

[blazerb]

Traditional Mormonism is actually pretty bad at answering the question of existence when you think about it. If our God is our link to a chain of divine beings that have gone through mortality and developed the characteristics necessary for godhood, then what created the universe in which this all happens? The question of why something exists rather than nothing is never confronted. Ex nihilo creation may be a little more satisfying to many people, but the question of why God exists is left unanswered. I found this article from a skeptical point of view pretty interesting: https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/wh ... n-nothing/.

I am interested in the other question. I don't think the religious in general are very good at confronting people who believe in God but doubt that scripture is a reliable guide to life. On a small scale, I have noticed that most Mormon apologists are geared to fight with evangelical Christians, but are entirely unable to debate with those who reject the Bible. The whole Mormon argument presupposes that the Bible is true, at least at some level allowing for the schemes of devious men who wanted to hide truths of the gospel.

[Apologeticsislying]

That appears to me a good observation BlazerB........I suspect why most apologists don't worry about questioning the Bible is because its role with the Book of Mormon.

It hit me right between my eyes when I realized the idea that if you will believe that you will believe this and if you will believe this you will believe that with both the Bible helping believe the Book of Mormon. But I no longer believe in the Bible, so now what?! I need something to come along from the outside and give me a boost for the Bible just like the Bible is supposed to be supporting the Book of Mormon.

[Hagoth]

If God is just an exalted guy, and if obedience is the first law of heaven, and if you get there by properly worshipping a god, then who does Elohim worship and obey? And who does that guy worship and obey?

[alas]

If God is just an exalted guy, and if obedience is the first law of heaven, and if you get there by properly worshipping a god, then who does Elohim worship and obey? And who does that guy worship and obey?

First of all, the Mormon leaders are the ones who taught you that obedience is the first law of Heaven. If you even generally believe what Jesus taught, then love is the first law of heaven. #1 love God. Love is also the second law of heaven. #2 love your neighbor. #3 as you love yourself. #4? If you love me keep my commandments.

Or maybe you could read them something like

#1. love God. As a matter of fact, love me more than anything else
#2. Love me more than golden statues
#3. Love me enough not to use my name for false purposes
#4. Love me enough to set aside one day a week to think of me
#5. Love your parents.
#6. Love other people enough not to kill people
#7. Love your neighbor enough not to seduce his wife
#8. Love your neighbor enough not to take his stuff.
#9. Love your neighbor enough not to lie about him.
#10. Love your neighbor enough not to covet his stuff.

See, even the first law of the Old Testament was love.

[Apologeticsislying]

Alas beat me to it. The Mormon hierarchy has done a sneaky job putting obedience as the first law of heaven, based on the sexual predator Joseph Smith's teachings, which originally were meant to seduced young unmarried as well as other men's married wives into sexual relationships with him and his fellows. All the recent analysis of the Happiness Letter and issues with Nancy Rigdon demonstrate this conclusively. Smith emphasized obedience in order to get his way with both women and men. Now granted, later, ecclesiastical church thinking saw the pure gold value of maintaining obedience as the very most important thing so they could continue manipulating people into doing their will, making sure they felt guilty as all get out if they disobeyed, and therefore they can get the masses to give them money and clean their toilets and buildings for them for free, while the corporation rakes in the millions and billions of bucks.

Obedience never has been the first law of heaven. That was blatantly misapplied by none other than Smith for control purposes, and the church has never let go of it, even going so far as to wickedly warp scripture context in order to maintain power over the masses. (Marx may very well not have been off when saying religion is the opiate of the people). LOVE is the first law, and amazingly, when one searches not only the West's scriptures, but the East's also, one finds LOVE is virtually ALL that matters because from it flows all other goodness, if love is genuine and not fakes like in Joseph Smith and Mormonism ecclesiastically and as a corporation. When you love your brethren only to the point of sending them across to the other side of the world on missions in order to get more people into the church and hence more money, but also so that you can move in on their wives, seduce them and their daughters.......there is something Satanically wrong with all that.

[Apologeticsislying]

Alas beat me to it. The Mormon hierarchy has done a sneaky job putting obedience as the first law of heaven, based on the sexual predator Joseph Smith's teachings, which originally were meant to seduced young unmarried as well as other men's married wives into sexual relationships with him and his fellows. All the recent analysis of the Happiness Letter and issues with Nancy Rigdon demonstrate this conclusively. Smith emphasized obedience in order to get his way with both women and men. Now granted, later, ecclesiastical church thinking saw the pure gold value of maintaining obedience as the very most important thing so they could continue manipulating people into doing their will, making sure they felt guilty as all get out if they disobeyed, and therefore they can get the masses to give them money and clean their toilets and buildings for them for free, while the corporation rakes in the millions and billions of bucks.

Obedience never has been the first law of heaven. That was blatantly misapplied by none other than Smith for control purposes, and the church has never let go of it, even going so far as to wickedly warp scripture context in order to maintain power over the masses. (Marx may very well not have been off when saying religion is the opiate of the people). LOVE is the first law, and amazingly, when one searches not only the West's scriptures, but the East's also, one finds LOVE is virtually ALL that matters because from it flows all other goodness, if love is genuine and not fakes like in Joseph Smith and Mormonism ecclesiastically and as a corporation. WHen you love your brethren only to the point of sending them across to the other side of the world on missions in order to get more people into the church and hence more money, but also so that you can move in on their wives, seduce them and their daughters.......there is something Satanically wrong with all that.

[1smartdodog]

If you look hard enough for some sense of the divine you will find it. It may not be true or reality but you will find what you are looking for. That is how religions are born.

The universe is big, really big. So big that our human minds can not begin to conceptualize it. Also it keeps getting bigger. Use to be there were a few billion galaxies. But with each mega telescope we launch the universe grows. Now the discussion is that it may be infinite. Trillions upon trillions of galaxies. So is one god ruling over all of this? This is where Mormon theology sort of makes sense. There are gods upon gods stretching back to infinity. Each with a piece of the infinite universe to manage.

All this makes me rather small and insignificant to say I know what is and is not reality. I tend to be rooted in what I can perceive. I know that I am here, that I exist, and am conscious of myself and surroundings. Am I just a computer simulation? maybe but I don't think so. Is there an all powerful god who controls it all? Maybe, but I do not see anything to indicate that is so. Do I want there to be something more than my brief existence? For sure, I hope for something more, but I realize it is unknowable to me at this point. God know where I am. If he or she or whatever chooses to reveal their existence to me I am more than willing to get on board with the program. But for now the best I can do is try to move through life, cause as little harm as possible, and try to leave kindness and compassion in my wake.

[Hagoth]

All this makes me rather small and insignificant to say I know what is and is not reality. I tend to be rooted in what I can perceive.

Fortunately what we can perceive is quite a lot if we are willing to spend a night under the stars. Maybe the simple answer is "I Am God." If all things are manifestations of the One Thing (God, the cosmos, Tao, Brahman, laws of nature... whatever it is that can turn hydrogen into Bob Dylan over a 4 billion year span) we are just as much participants in the parade as anything/one else.

[RubinHighlander]

All this makes me rather small and insignificant to say I know what is and is not reality. I tend to be rooted in what I can perceive.

Fortunately what we can perceive is quite a lot if we are willing to spend a night under the stars. Maybe the simple answer is "I Am God." If all things are manifestations of the One Thing (God, the cosmos, Tao, Brahman, laws of nature... whatever it is that can turn hydrogen into Bob Dylan over a 4 billion year span) we are just as much participants in the parade as anything/one else.

Yes! And the irony is the Universe doesn't seem to care. In it's ebb and flow it wipes advanced life back into the basic elements it built them on. 99% of all the life forms on this planet have been wiped out by extinctions, several on a global scale. It could happen to us tomorrow, likely to happen again in the future. Even if we populate other planets in our system, the suns eventually dies. Even if we get close to the speed of light and make it 100+ years to another system with life sustaining planets, those suns eventually die. Even if we figure out how to bend space and populate our galaxy and other galaxies, space will just keep exponentially expanding until every particle of energy dissipates and nothing reacts with anything else anymore...entropy. Maybe there's another spark in our reality that sets off another bang, maybe not. Endless alternate realities likely exists or we might be in a simulation, in which case there's definitely a god of some type, something behind the curtain. 42

[Hagoth]

99% of all the life forms on this planet have been wiped out by extinctions, several on a global scale.

Downsizing.

[Ghost]

My thoughts on this are similar to what blazerb said above, I think. On the surface, the cosmological argument seems to me to be simply dodging the question of how things came to be. An infinite regress of gods similarly kicks the can down the road without answering anything.

At one time, I found arguments invoking complexity to be the most compelling.



But then I realized that this type of argument doesn't help at all. You're not answering why things are complex. You're proposing something even MORE complex (God), which also needs to be explained.

Some people like to say that God is outside the universe/nature/time and space, but I can't help seeing those as incoherent ideas hiding under the illusion of profundity.

But I guess I'm always hoping that I stumble upon something that makes me reconsider the skepticism that I've unwittingly arrived at.

[Emower]

I found this article from a skeptical point of view pretty interesting: https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/wh ... n-nothing/.

Whoa. This article is going to take some effort to digest. Into the pocket app it goes...

I am interested in the other question. I don't think the religious in general are very good at confronting people who believe in God but doubt that scripture is a reliable guide to life. On a small scale, I have noticed that most Mormon apologists are geared to fight with evangelical Christians, but are entirely unable to debate with those who reject the Bible. The whole Mormon argument presupposes that the Bible is true, at least at some level allowing for the schemes of devious men who wanted to hide truths of the gospel.

It has been interesting to examine myself as I loose faith in all scripture, the Bible specifically. I have been going to an Evangelical non-denominational church just up the road, because it's close. The reason I go is because it feels uncomfortable to me, and that afford me a great opportunity to sit and ponder about why it makes me feel that way. One of my coworkers, who also attends, thought I had chosen my new spiritual home and I had a discussion with that person about how I don't believe in the Bible anymore, which makes most of Christianity untenable. We went round in circles until she eventually realized that biblical belief is circular, i.e. god is true because the Bible, and the Bible is true and perfect because the god says it is in the Bible.

[RubinHighlander]

Traditional Mormonism is actually pretty bad at answering the question of existence when you think about it. If our God is our link to a chain of divine beings that have gone through mortality and developed the characteristics necessary for godhood, then what created the universe in which this all happens? The question of why something exists rather than nothing is never confronted. Ex nihilo creation may be a little more satisfying to many people, but the question of why God exists is left unanswered. I found this article from a skeptical point of view pretty interesting: https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/wh ... n-nothing/.

I am interested in the other question. I don't think the religious in general are very good at confronting people who believe in God but doubt that scripture is a reliable guide to life. On a small scale, I have noticed that most Mormon apologists are geared to fight with evangelical Christians, but are entirely unable to debate with those who reject the Bible. The whole Mormon argument presupposes that the Bible is true, at least at some level allowing for the schemes of devious men who wanted to hide truths of the gospel.

Excellent! +1 for this one.

It is at the horizon where the known meets the unknown that we are tempted to inject supernatural forces to explain hitherto unsolved mysteries, but we must resist the temptation, for such efforts can never succeed, not even in principle. Humans have always filled in such gaps in our knowledge with gods, and it never leads to any useful or productive theory. Let us try to overcome this psychological propensity to fill in the gaps with supernatural forces and follow the path of science in searching for natural forces.

[Hagoth]

I have noticed that most Mormon apologists are geared to fight with evangelical Christians, but are entirely unable to debate with those who reject the Bible. The whole Mormon argument presupposes that the Bible is true, at least at some level allowing for the schemes of devious men who wanted to hide truths of the gospel.

Also, it leaves them nothing to throw under the bus. Too much of apologetics relies on showing that the Bible is screwed up in hopes of giving the BoM a little more breathing room.

[Hagoth]

Some people like to say that God is outside the universe/nature/time and space, but I can't help seeing those as incoherent ideas hiding under the illusion of profundity.

And it is an argument that evolved slowly over millennia purely out of necessity. First God was on a mountain, but then people climbed all of the mountains. Then he was above the clouds, but people invented flying machines. Then he was in space above the earth, but then we made telescopes, satellites and deep space instruments. God is outside of space-time because we pushed him there!

[RubinHighlander]

First God was on a mountain, but then people climbed all of the mountains. Then he was above the clouds, but people invented flying machines. Then he was in space above the earth, but then we made telescopes, satellites and deep space instruments. God is outside of space-time because we pushed him there!

I love this! Too long for a bumper sticker, but I'd put it there if I could.