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If everything in the universe adds to zero, why do we need a God?


morgsboi

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This may be a bit heavy for a 10 year old.

 

{snip}

 

morgsboi you do well for a 10 year old.

!

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This may be a bit heavy for a 10 year old.

 

morgsboi you do well for a 10 year old.

 

I'm 14 actually and my display picture was one taken a while ago. And I do have an understanding of atomic structure and as "Phi for All" pointed out, this is a personal attack so don't try and put me down on it.

Edit: And if you bothered to look at my profile, it clearly states that I am 14.

 

Exodus chapter 16 verses 4-6:

4. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not.

5. "And it shall be on the sixth day that they shall prepare what they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.''

6. Then Moses and Aaron said to all the children of Israel, "At evening you shall know that the Lord has brought you out of the land of Egypt.

And again in John chapter 6 verse 31. "Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, `He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' ''

 

 

I'm sorry but I really don't see the bible as proof of anything. With no disrespect, in my opinion the bible is full of inaccuracy and although I read all the replies on this topic, bible quotes don't count toward my beliefs. Don't get me wrong, I study religious education at school and totally understand the concept of it but I just don't agree with it because all it really is, is a huge argument of how the universe started and what happens when you die.

Edit: I see you did view my profile but it states I'm in year 10.

Edited by morgsboi
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I see you did view my profile but it states I'm in year 10
My mistake, but even at 14 years of age morgsboi you do well.

 

It was meant as a compliment and not as a sarcastic comment. I did look quickly at your profile and was amazed at what I thought was your age. I knew you where young and even at 14 years of age you are still a credit to be.

 

I apologize if you were offended in any way.

 

My age is nearly sixty four and its taken most of that time to realize that the bible is about power and energy of the cosmos (The living God) the power that creates life, the seasons, and all things related to that energy.

 

This is the gift that God has for you and all who find him. The knowledge of how he creates and puts things together. We only have the knowledge of destruction, in that we tear apart and destroy what God has put together. We have an understanding that gives us the impression all energy is contained in matter. We do not yet understand the principles and laws of God (the cosmos) the laws governing matter creation.

 

Such a gift is the ultimate possession and is your inheritance from the creator himself. This is the reason for the bible and the numerical values in it.

Edited by Dovada
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My mistake, but even at 14 years of age morgsboi you do well.

 

It was meant as a compliment and not as a sarcastic comment. I did look quickly at your profile and was amazed at what I thought was your age. I knew you where young and even at 14 years of age you are still a credit to be.

 

I apologize if you were offended in any way.

Okay, thank you. :)

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Virtually all atomic structure contains equal quantities of positive and negative charge. The net effect is electrical neutrality with respect to an external energy source. God designed it this way so that you have peace within a powerful cosmic body. Because the charges are equal and opposite they are carried together in Him. Would you like me to explain magnetic and electrical theory to you or you could look here for a start. http://en.wikipedia..../Magnetic_field.

 

Oh, I just realised when I said, "There are no "neutral" atoms. Are you talking about neutrons?" it came out wrong. What I though we were talking about was matter and anti-matter as when I posted it, it was quite late at night. I do see how it was so easily misunderstood.

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I believe there that the universe is just like an atom. Protons are mass and energy. Neutrons are the vacuum and electrons are negative (not dark) energy. I find the cosmic microwave background to be like the nucleus. So I think negative energy is outside of the cosmic microwave background orbiting around the rest of the universe. Does it make sense? The only thing I couldn't explain with this theory is expansion.

 

A nucleus is a massive part of an atom that contains protons. How is this in any way comparable to radiation left over from the rapid expansion of the universe?

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A nucleus is a massive part of an atom that contains protons. How is this in any way comparable to radiation left over from the rapid expansion of the universe?

 

Yes, it contains them but I'm talking about the outside of the nucleus.

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  • 1 month later...

God, if she exists, is supernatural, she is beyond any possibility of human understanding, beyond any testability and empirical investigation, beyond rational thought. God requires faith.

 

If you maintain that God is definable, empirically testable, a corporeal being - then you are are setting up a straw man.

Okay, basically beyond our imagination is what he/she/it is defined to be.

Yep

Is there any quotes in he bible at all explaining? It does say god made man in his image.

 

Sorry for the long post on an old point -- it's a fascinating discussion that I just caught up on.

 

On the question of scripture dealing with testability, or empirical verification, there is 1 kings 18,

 

According to the Bible in 1 Kings 18, the challenge was to see which deity could light a sacrifice by fire. After the prophets of Baal had failed to achieve this, Elijah had water poured on his sacrifice several times to saturate the altar, prostrated himself in prayer to God, fire fell from the sky, and immediately consumed the sacrifice and the water, prompting the Israelite witnesses to proclaim, "The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!"

 

 

I think there are scriptural roadblocks to the notion that God has to be untestable. As a point of logic, the same people who deny the biblical god's empirical character also grant that he answers prayers and makes covenants and prophecies. Those things seem mutually exclusive to me.

 

A typical retort is that god is all powerful -- he can transcend logic and any other sort of rational trap you try to put him in. A number of, particularly Jewish, scholars have taken a position against that. To give an idea...

 

This logic game tells us that this contradiction is no minor problem. There is a difference between saying God is very powerful and saying God is all-powerful. What is the biblical or rabbinic term for all-powerful? It turns out there is no such term or concept. God has g’vurah, g’dullah, koach—synonyms for might and power—but there is no Hebrew for omnipotence.

 

 

On the Christian side of things, anyone saying that the definition of God separates science and religion as incomparable -- different domains -- would have to sidestep a very well established tradition that...

Let them loyally hold that God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures - and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures...

 

 

So I don't think this has to be true...

 

God, if she exists, is supernatural, she is beyond any possibility of human understanding, beyond any testability and empirical investigation, beyond rational thought...

 

The entire concept of God is beyond, outwith, not included, and unconnected to science.

not in mainstream Jewish tradition or the largest Christian denomination. This might be a better quote on the latter:

Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."
37
"Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.
38

 

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On the Christian side of things, anyone saying that the definition of God separates science and religion as incomparable -- different domains -- would have to sidestep a very well established tradition that...

Let them loyally hold that God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures - and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures...

 

 

So I don't think this has to be true...

 

I think Pope Leo XIII is absolutely right, when God said "Let there be Light" he is definitely not talking about the 'photon' light which Einstein is talking about in his theories, there is no reason to assume that the scriptures are describing the natural observable world and start asserting that it contradicts science, that's not the way to falsify a religion.

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I think Pope Leo XIII is absolutely right, when God said "Let there be Light" he is definitely not talking about the 'photon' light which Einstein is talking about in his theories, there is no reason to assume that the scriptures are describing the natural observable world and start asserting that it contradicts science, that's not the way to falsify a religion.

I mean to say that the god of scripture is amenable to empirical testing, not to say that there is a "way to falsify a religion".

 

Leo expected the 'literal and obvious' meaning of the text...

The Catholic Church, in adopting the rule of St. Augustine, teaches “not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires

 

 

only when 'necessity requires' some other interpretation should one be considered. The literal and obvious meaning of "light" in genesis is "light" otherwise it wouldn't be followed up with "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

 

When the interpretation of the Latin and Greek fathers failed, and the literal and obvious meaning of the text failed, Leo was not above considering new interpretations. He established the Pontifical Biblical Commission to look into those cases -- but, always with the presumption of biblical accuracy.

 

That aside, I think it is a mistake to say that a God who isn't completely separate from science doesn't by definition qualify as a God. I believe that is a very recent expectation.

Edited by Iggy
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I mean to say that the god of scripture is amenable to empirical testing, not to say that there is a "way to falsify a religion".

 

The scriptures should be understood through revelations and not through empirical testing, however I agree with your claim that the God of Abraham is falsifiable or testable and if he intervenes in human affairs then he might be irrelevant for science but not irrelevant in our fundamental reality.

 

Leo expected the 'literal and obvious' meaning of the text...

The Catholic Church, in adopting the rule of St. Augustine, teaches “not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires

 

 

only when 'necessity requires' some other interpretation should one be considered. The literal and obvious meaning of "light" in genesis is "light" otherwise it wouldn't be followed up with "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

 

3. Of the authority of the canonical Scriptures.

 

This Mediator, having spoken what He judged sufficient, first by the prophets, then by His own lips, and afterwards by the apostles, has besides produced the Scripture which is called canonical, which has paramount authority, and to which we yield assent in all matters of which we ought not to be ignorant, and yet cannot know of ourselves. For if we attain the knowledge of present objects by the testimony of our own senses, whether internal or external, then, regarding objects remote from our own senses, we need others to bring their testimony, since we cannot know them by our own, and we credit the persons to whom the objects have been or are sensibly present. Accordingly, as in the case of visible objects which we have not seen, we trust those who have, (and likewise with all sensible objects,) so in the ease of things which are perceived by the mind and spirit, i.e. which are remote from our own interior sense, it behoves us to trust those who have seen them set in that incorporeal light, or abidingly contemplate them....

 

 

 

 

19. What, seemingly, we are to understand by the words, "God divided the light from the darkness."

 

Accordingly, though the obscurity of the divine word has certainly this advantage, that it causes many opinions about the truth to be started and discussed, each reader seeing some fresh meaning in it, yet, whatever is said to be meant by an obscure passage should be either confirmed by the testimony of obvious facts, or should be asserted in other and less ambiguous texts. This obscurity is beneficial, whether the sense of the author is at last reached after the discussion of many other interpretations, or whether, though that sense remain concealed, other truths are brought out by the discussion of the obscurity. To me it does not seem incongruous with the working of God, if we understand that the angels were created when that first light was made, and that a separation was made between the holy and the unclean angels, when, as is said, "God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night." For He alone could make this discrimination, who was able also, before they fell, to foreknow that they would fall, and that, being deprived of the light of truth, they would abide in the darkness of pride. For, so far as regards the day and night, with which we are familiar, He commanded those luminaries of heaven that are obvious to our senses to divide between the light and the darkness. "Let there be," He says, "lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night"; and shortly after He says, "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness." But between that light, which is the holy company of the angels spiritually radiant with the illumination of the truth, and that opposing darkness, which is the noisome foulness of the spiritual condition of those angels who are turned away from the light of righteousness, only He Himself could divide, from whom their wickedness (not of nature, but of will), while yet it was future, could not be hidden or uncertain....

 

City of God(excerpt)

St. Augustine

Grolier

 

God was talking about the angels and they doesn't necessarily have to be made of the "light" of science, they could've been made of any other kind of stuff.

 

That aside, I think it is a mistake to say that a God who isn't completely separate from science doesn't by definition qualify as a God. I believe that is a very recent expectation.

 

Yes, I agree, he can be separate from science and yet exist in his own realm and also intervene in human affairs.

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The scriptures should be understood through revelations and not through empirical testing

I'll tell the Pope to close his observatory and edit the catechism

 

, however I agree with your claim that the God of Abraham is falsifiable

Could you show me where I said that.

 

God was talking about the angels and they doesn't necessarily have to be made of the "light" of science, they could've been made of any other kind of stuff.

No, they've updated that. Let there be light was the big bang after which came the sun and stars :)

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I'll tell the Pope to close his observatory and edit the catechism

 

You better do that you cannot set up something similar like SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) called as SDI (Search for Divine Intelligence). That's not the way to communicate with God.

 

 

Could you show me where I said that.

 

Is there a difference between testability and falsifiability? Of course you are not arguing for a way to falsify the Abraham God but you are making the claim that such a God is not untestable.

 

No, they've updated that. Let there be light was the big bang after which came the sun and stars :)

 

Many theists believe that they should update their faith based assertions with the new discoveries of Modern Science, its silly to think that God used Big Bang and DNA to create the Universe and to design life, this is the reason I strongly criticize Intelligent design. Religion is a completely different magisteria there is no connection of religion with modern science.

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Is there a difference between testability and falsifiability?

If you ask god to help a brother out and prove his existence (like Elijah did in 1 Kings 18) and god responds then you've successfully tested god. If he doesn't respond then you haven't falsified him. The god of Abraham was tested, or empirically verified. The god of Baal wasn't falsified.

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The easiest way to think of it is as mass but in layers or a scale like -1 0 +1 Dig a hole and you have a hole and a pile. The pile is positive and the hole is negative. (I know its not but its the example)

So with the hole dug, there is still the same amount of dirt, its just transferred from the neutral (0) to positive (+1) and negative (-1).

Now I know what you are talking about.

Still, you never take away by making something that didn't take anything to make.

Physics are "positive energy"(kind of). The thing is that even if matter made itself from physics, the physics are still positive energy, they're not physically here, but I would still call them "positive energy" because they had to come from somewhere

1[physics]+1[matter]+0[what got used for matter to come]=2

Where is that 2?

 

Edit: If you're then going to talk about the positive and negative energy in an atom, I don't see why that negative energy counts as a negative. It is physically here, and it doesn't cancel out the positive energy.

Edited by njaohnt
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If you ask god to help a brother out and prove his existence (like Elijah did in 1 Kings 18) and god responds then you've successfully tested god. If he doesn't respond then you haven't falsified him. The god of Abraham was tested, or empirically verified. The god of Baal wasn't falsified.

 

 

Quite the contrary, I think you'll find all gods have been tested and found to be real...in the legends or writings attributed to that god at least...

Edited by Moontanman
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Quite the contrary, I think you'll find all gods have been tested and found to be real...in the legends or writings attributed to that god at least...

No doubt, but more often they're found wanting in different texts. Funny how that goes.

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Now I know what you are talking about.

Still, you never take away by making something that didn't take anything to make.

Physics are "positive energy"(kind of). The thing is that even if matter made itself from physics, the physics are still positive energy, they're not physically here, but I would still call them "positive energy" because they had to come from somewhere

1[physics]+1[matter]+0[what got used for matter to come]=2

Where is that 2?

 

Edit: If you're then going to talk about the positive and negative energy in an atom, I don't see why that negative energy counts as a negative. It is physically here, and it doesn't cancel out the positive energy.

 

I'm talking about the sub-atomic particles and how when the negative and positive meet, they will cancel each other out.

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I'm talking about the sub-atomic particles and how when the negative and positive meet, they will cancel each other out.

Yes, but the negative energy is still there. For somethings they don't cancel out each other.

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  • 1 month later...

I think I can further complicate this question and ask "What does the number zero mean in the physical sense?"

 

Since this universe is so very big and so very complex and we always discover new things about how it operates and it is also quite likely that there was another universe before this one, I think it is quite possible that the multiverse and God are actually the same thing.

 

This belief is actually called Panentheism and you may want to check it out:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism

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  • 7 months later...

First - my position ... I am somewhere between atheist and agnostic - but don't think enough about it to want a label.

 

I believe (good word to start with) that everything does not add up to zero. I think there is an instability in nothingness that can create a whole zoo of particles and antiparticles, and things with positive and negative charges, and gravitations, and energies, and forces that one fraction of a second after their creation from nothing, which, if you could immediately squeeeze them back into nothing, would be nothing, but it is too late, they now exist in their many forms and are no longer nothing, but a whole new universe of components, which continue to degrade and change and multiply and evolve even to this day.

 

A particle and an antiparticle are not nothing, they are two wonderful components which continue to exist and become part of the development.

 

I feel lucky to live in a Country which has a Prime Minister who is an atheist, a female, and is not married to her partner. I did not grow up with any of a zoo of religions as part of my cultural upbringing. I don't understand why humans need to create gods when the wonderful universe is there to create us and fill us with wonder. So the argument that it all adds up to zero is now wrong - it may have at one point in space / time, but it is too late, and is no longer. It may be possible to turn matter into energy, and energy back into matter, but that new matter is different to the original matter.

 

It is like trying to unscramble an egg.



And to take it further ...

 

The posts have been about +1 and -1 being zero and this is often wrong (and sometimes right).

 

Maths is a metaphor and a very useful tool.

 

However ...

 

+1 is one entity and -1 is another entity which gives us two entities.

 

If we place +1 and -1 on a graph the distance between them is 2

 

If we take their average it is zero.

 

If we perform a mathematic operation on them we also get zero (adding and subtracting).

 

If we take them all together we have 5 entities, these being the +1, the -1, their addition which is 0, their average which is zero, and the distance between them which is 2.

 

If we take all the numbers that together make zero we have an infinite number of entities.

 

This is what can happen if we find an instability in zero.

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  • 3 months later...

we need a god because people need something to believe in. At this point in time 'God' is just a belief, a somewhat controversial theory that has never officially been proven. At the end of the day, when all is said and done we are humans and the human mind goes beyond a theory of zeros and ones.

Edited by chris logan
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we need a god because people need something to believe in. At this point in time 'God' is just a belief, a somewhat controversial theory that has never officially been proven. At the end of the day, when all is said and done we are humans and the human mind goes beyond a theory of zeros and ones.

 

 

Why do they need a God, why not elves or fairies? Why can't people believe in each other? God is not a theory, God is not even a hypothesis, has no evidence what so ever, it is just what someone claims to be true nothing more...

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