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Athiesm doesn't work

Name: Anonymous 2006-06-08 21:58

Intelligent people, including scientists and philosophers, have reasoned for the existence of God.  While it's easy to see their self-justification and rationalization (Aquinas, Chesterton, Sartre, Kant, Pascal), they really are basing their views on belief and faith.  The same with all followers of theistic religions.  Even if one can affirm that no God or afterlife or supernatural exists, there is the sense of emptiness and lacking in a life with no written purpose or directed goal from some superior all-knowing being.  Thus people feel that "it can't hurt" to believe in something anyway, in hopes that that belief will lead to a better afterlife (Pascal's wager).  Many people feel an intrinsic need to be looked after by something greater or have some absolute laws that are unquestionable, putting faith in this authority like a dog would to his owner.  Without a master, humans are lost, empty, and find no purpose.  So religion just "feels good" even if it becomes  proven as illogical.  Besides, what else can prayer, hymns, cathedrals, and complicated ceremonies with special titles and clothing dedicated to a higher glory or state of being be used for, when nothing is there?  Humans hate to worship humanity for its own sake.  Even believing that we create our own laws and morals implies that nothing is absolutely right, as long as we are just simple biological creatures on a life supporting rock for a limited period of time.  Humans have a hard time accepting their uncontrolled, unmonitored position, and put faith in something even if there is proof it doesn't exist, in order to justify that their spiritual bases will be covered "just in case it exists."  It's easy to say God doesn't exist.  It's harder for most people to believe it.     

Name: Anonymous 2006-06-16 18:00

I don't see how this matters.
The laws of logic, like all scientific laws and the rules of math, are nothing more than observations.

Law: 12a. A formulation describing a relationship observed to be invariable between or among phenomena for all cases in which the specified conditions are met: the law of gravity.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/30/L0073000.html

People often get confused with the other meanings of the word and incorrectly assume that a scientific law somehow causes something to do something. It doesn't. It simply -- and often mathematically -- describes what we observe to be true. That's what I mean when I say that these laws are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Likewise, when we say that something obeys a scientific law we're referring to it being consistent with the predictions of the law, not that the law is a thing causing it to behave that way.

If in the future we observed a planet that didn't obey the law of gravity, it's not because the law was not prescribed to it. The law is simply an observation. Obviously we'd have to revise the law to keep it consistent with our new observations of reality.

In the case of the rules of logic, let's look at the principle of non-contradiction. A contradiction is defined as either of two propositions related in such a way that it is impossible for both to be true or both to be false. http://www.bartleby.com/61/65/C0606500.html This is a completely human and completely arbitrary definition widely accepted by long term usage.

When you say that "God can create the object" and "God can not create the object," the word "not" is used in this context to indicate the contradiction of the first sentence. Once again, this is a completely human and completely arbitrary definition widely accepted by long term usage.

So if God could both create the object and not create the object it would not be contradictory by definition.

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