The first valid evidence that god does NOT exist

[Gary Childress]

Well, you'll find it's part of a much larger story. You'll have to look past your personal tragedies and feelings to see it, though. It's not a story about how evil wins, but about how it doesn't, and how a greater good comes out of a lot of human failure than we might have imagined.

Maybe because you were never supposed to be seeking it in this world anyway.

And why would God give us hormones and instincts that lead us to value things that we can't attain?

He gave us instincts and inclinations that should have led us in the right direction. But we are free creatures, too. We decided we wanted to go our own way. There are natural consequences to abandoning God and morality. And we are discovering daily what such consequences are -- the loss of good things.

We can't blame God for what we've done to ourselves. Nor can we expect a way back. Yet God has provided one anyway. If we're angry at Him, our anger is again going in the wrong direction.

So the hormones and instincts that drive us are our fault? It's my fault for having testosterone?

[Immanuel Can]

...The fact that you don't know ALL of the Pacific Ocean, or that you can't comprehensively take it all in and drink that ocean is no argument implying the non-existence of the Pacific Ocean. You can have a genuine experience of the Pacific Ocean. You can, in a very real sense, say you even understand things about the Pacific Ocean, or that you've "been to" the Pacific Ocean. That you cannot exhaust its dimensions doesn't imply you can't know anything about it. Not at all. Billions of people know something about the Pacific Ocean, experientially, personally and truthfully.

Consider the same in regard to God. To say that you can't know everything there is to say about Him, or His "essence," to use your terms, does not even remotely imply you cannot know God, or have experience of God, or learn things about God, or make correct and true statements about aspects of God.

Is it not a fact that you cannot know ALL of god? It seems to me that your experience is just one more cup of seawater with no more claim to be true than anyone else's.

Hey, don't despise a cup of seawater. It's a genuine sample of the Pacific Ocean, which remains fully real, despite my limitations in sampling it.

[daniel j lavender]

In the myth, god did not create the World from matter but from nothing (creatio ex nihilo).

Again, there's no problem here if God is transcendent. If He were something subject to physical laws, there would be; but then, if he were less than and subject to His own physical laws, He would not be transcendent, and we would not even be talking about what is meant by "God."

The starting premise, creation from nothing, is false. That renders the remainder of his argument invalid. There is no need to address anything else.

The Bible does not declare creation from nothing, and in fact explicitly declares “with God nothing shall be impossible”, Luke 1:37.

As Senad says himself, what he is expressing is myth.

[Gary Childress]

In the myth, god did not create the World from matter but from nothing (creatio ex nihilo).

Again, there's no problem here if God is transcendent. If He were something subject to physical laws, there would be; but then, if he were less than and subject to His own physical laws, He would not be transcendent, and we would not even be talking about what is meant by "God."

The starting premise, creation from nothing, is false. That renders the remainder of his argument invalid. There is no need to address anything else.

The Bible does not declare creation from nothing, and in fact explicitly declares “with God nothing shall be impossible”, Luke 1:37.

As Senad says himself, what he is expressing is myth.

Yes, the Bible, the story of one man, a woman and a talking snake, and apples that confer knowledge upon being eaten. Great stuff. Right up there with stories about Santa Claus.

[seeds]

...The fact that you don't know ALL of the Pacific Ocean, or that you can't comprehensively take it all in and drink that ocean is no argument implying the non-existence of the Pacific Ocean. You can have a genuine experience of the Pacific Ocean. You can, in a very real sense, say you even understand things about the Pacific Ocean, or that you've "been to" the Pacific Ocean. That you cannot exhaust its dimensions doesn't imply you can't know anything about it. Not at all. Billions of people know something about the Pacific Ocean, experientially, personally and truthfully.

Consider the same in regard to God. To say that you can't know everything there is to say about Him, or His "essence," to use your terms, does not even remotely imply you cannot know God, or have experience of God, or learn things about God, or make correct and true statements about aspects of God.

Is it not a fact that you cannot know ALL of god? It seems to me that your experience is just one more cup of seawater with no more claim to be true than anyone else's.

Ah yes, an alternate approach to the old blind men and the elephant parable.

IC has hold of the elephant's (God's) tail and deduces that God is a rope (in totality) and absolutely refuses to even entertain what his fellow blind persons have to say as one feels the elephant's trunk and declares God to be a snake, while yet another declares God to be a tree after feeling the elephant's leg.

However, in this new parable dealing with a cup of sea water, God is far more mysterious, for it seems to be the equivalent of trying to deduce God's overall being from observing a few of the elephant's skin cells.
_______

[Belinda]

Again, there's no problem here if God is transcendent. If He were something subject to physical laws, there would be; but then, if he were less than and subject to His own physical laws, He would not be transcendent, and we would not even be talking about what is meant by "God."

The starting premise, creation from nothing, is false. That renders the remainder of his argument invalid. There is no need to address anything else.

The Bible does not declare creation from nothing, and in fact explicitly declares “with God nothing shall be impossible”, Luke 1:37.

As Senad says himself, what he is expressing is myth.

Yes, the Bible, the story of one man, a woman and a talking snake, and apples that confer knowledge upon being eaten. Great stuff. Right up there with stories about Santa Claus.

I am afraid you are too literal, Gary. Those protagonists you mention are all metaphors.

[Gary Childress]

The starting premise, creation from nothing, is false. That renders the remainder of his argument invalid. There is no need to address anything else.

The Bible does not declare creation from nothing, and in fact explicitly declares “with God nothing shall be impossible”, Luke 1:37.

As Senad says himself, what he is expressing is myth.

Yes, the Bible, the story of one man, a woman and a talking snake, and apples that confer knowledge upon being eaten. Great stuff. Right up there with stories about Santa Claus.

I am afraid you are too literal, Gary. Those protagonists you mention are all metaphors.

Yeah, "metaphors"...for what, avoiding intelligence so as not to piss off God?

[Belinda]

You're missing the point. The fact that you don't know ALL of the Pacific Ocean, or that you can't comprehensively take it all in and drink that ocean is no argument implying the non-existence of the Pacific Ocean. You can have a genuine experience of the Pacific Ocean. You can, in a very real sense, say you even understand things about the Pacific Ocean, or that you've "been to" the Pacific Ocean. That you cannot exhaust its dimensions doesn't imply you can't know anything about it. Not at all. Billions of people know something about the Pacific Ocean, experientially, personally and truthfully.

Consider the same in regard to God. To say that you can't know everything there is to say about Him, or His "essence," to use your terms, does not even remotely imply you cannot know God, or have experience of God, or learn things about God, or make correct and true statements about aspects of God.

When Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist Jesus was confirmed as both God and human. When Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, it was a public sign that he was the Son of God.
He was both God and human from the moment of his conception, that is to say ----
the Incarnation.

Okay...what does that have to do specifically with what I said? I'm not clear on that.

The Incarnation is important because that event combined God the Father (the transcendent essence ) and God the Son(the immanent works and process of God)

[Belinda]

Yes, the Bible, the story of one man, a woman and a talking snake, and apples that confer knowledge upon being eaten. Great stuff. Right up there with stories about Santa Claus.

I am afraid you are too literal, Gary. Those protagonists you mention are all metaphors.

Yeah, "metaphors"...for what, avoiding intelligence so as not to piss off God?

Metaphors are not for pleasing God or anyone else. Metaphor is how human language and ideas evolve.

The Expulsion from Eden is a type of extended metaphor called allegory.

[Gary Childress]

I am afraid you are too literal, Gary. Those protagonists you mention are all metaphors.

Yeah, "metaphors"...for what, avoiding intelligence so as not to piss off God?

Metaphors are not for pleasing God or anyone else. Metaphor is how human language and ideas evolve.

I thought God was displeased when they ate the apples of "knowledge"? No?

[Immanuel Can]

The starting premise, creation from nothing, is false.

I'm interested in seeing how you prove that to yourself. Maybe your reasons will be good for me, too.

Go ahead.

[Immanuel Can]

Yeah, "metaphors"...for what, avoiding intelligence so as not to piss off God?

Metaphors are not for pleasing God or anyone else. Metaphor is how human language and ideas evolve.

I thought God was displeased when they ate the apples of "knowledge"? No?

The tree was not necessarily an "apple" tree. It doesn't say the nature of the fruit, only that it imparted "the knowledge of good and evil," not that it imparted vague or general "knowledge." There's no Biblical prohibition on knowing things, or on knowing good things: but there is a prohibition on evil.

[Immanuel Can]

When Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist Jesus was confirmed as both God and human. When Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist, it was a public sign that he was the Son of God.
He was both God and human from the moment of his conception, that is to say ----
the Incarnation.

Okay...what does that have to do specifically with what I said? I'm not clear on that.

The Incarnation is important because that event combined God the Father (the transcendent essence ) and God the Son(the immanent works and process of God)

Yes, but again, I don't see what that adds to what we were actually discussing. Or are you now just taking the subject off in a completely different direction?

[daniel j lavender]

The starting premise, creation from nothing, is false.

I'm interested in seeing how you prove that to yourself. Maybe your reasons will be good for me, too.

Go ahead.

It simply is not stated. Provide one passage from the Bible declaring creation from nothing.

However the inverse is explicitly expressed “with God nothing shall be impossible” Luke 1:37.

At the most basic level God would be, God being eternal, and God certainly is not nothing. Are you contending God is nothing?

The Bible does not explicitly declare creation from nothing. The Bible does explicitly declare nothing is impossible.

Genesis 1:1 states “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”. This declares the beginning of the heaven and the earth, the beginning of the universe, not necessarily the beginning of existence or creation from nothing. Again, at the very least God is present. God is not nothing.

Furthermore God, the Creator, is likened to a potter working with clay, specifically in verses such as Jeremiah 18:1-6, for example. This suggests God creates from phenomena existing, not from nothing.

The most relevant verses other than those are Isaiah 45:18, Hebrews 11:3 and John 1:3.

Isaiah 45:18 states “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else”. Scripture emphasizes forming and shaping, suggesting things already existent, not creation from nothing.

Hebrews 11:3 states “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear”. Again, no explicit reference is made to nothing or nonexistence. Scripture simply states that things seen were made of things unseen. All things, not nothing.

Perhaps the strongest argument concerns John 1:3 which states “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made”. However this passage concerns made or created things, with “all things” referring to the created universe we inhabit.

Again I ask that you provide one passage from the Bible explicitly declaring creation from nothing. The Bible simply does not declare it.

The doctrine of creation from nothing developed later in Jewish and Christian thought.

The Bible itself does not explicitly teach creation ex nihilo or creation from nothing.

[Belinda]

Okay...what does that have to do specifically with what I said? I'm not clear on that.

The Incarnation is important because that event combined God the Father (the transcendent essence ) and God the Son(the immanent works and process of God)

Yes, but again, I don't see what that adds to what we were actually discussing. Or are you now just taking the subject off in a completely different direction?

I was replying to this from you:-

Consider the same in regard to God. To say that you can't know everything there is to say about Him, or His "essence," to use your terms, does not even remotely imply you cannot know God, or have experience of God, or learn things about God, or make correct and true statements about aspects of God

Before the Incarnation and Johannine Christianity, Judaism has another way to link God the essence the transcendent with God the immanent the process.
Islam has yet another way to link Allah the essence with Allah's creation.