I saw this article on this site and I wanted to give my Catholic perspective. Here is the link:
http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/deandrasek/6-things-religion-can-t-e...
This is an interesting article. I'm a Catholic, and your questions have made me think about my religion. Some I don't know the answer too, so I'll have to look in the catechism or email an apologetic. But I'd like to give my thoughts from the Catholic perspective on some of the questions I think I can provide some sort of "answer" too.
Question 1: Where did God come from?
The universe is filled with "stuff". There are a lot of theories to explain where all this stuff came from- the Big Bang, creation stories from all sorts of religions, etc. However, if we assume that at some point there was nothing, and something happened to make everything, we are saying that something came from nothing. There really isn't any way to avoid this. What made the singularity the the Big Bang originated from? What made God? Either nothing was made into something, or something just always existed, be it a tiny point containing all matter or God. So I don't think that this question can be said to "stump" religions, because I think it really stumps everyone.
Question 2: Why does God care about humans?
Catholics believe that God created humans in his image. A painter loves his paintings, and wouldn't want someone to go and burn them all for no reason. God loves us because he created us, and he loves his creations.
Question 3: Why is suffering allowed?
I don't have a good answer for this one. Catholics have tried to explain it to me, but I always have trouble grasping their answer. Basically, when God made humanity they brought sin into the world (like when Adam and Eve took the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil- that is referred to as The Fall of Man), and all suffering and sickness is a byproduct of that sin. God did not intend for humans to ever get sick or experience pain or make wrong choices. I understand this answer isn't really an answer. I mean, Catholics do not believe that a little starving child is starving because of their sins. I'm still trying to figure this one out.
Question 4: What does God get out of giving humans free will?
God gives us free will because he wants us to choose to love and follow him. He doesn't want us to be forced to do it. Forcing someone to love you isn't really love at all. Some people might say that God forces us to follow him because if we don't, he threatens us with hell. However, Catholics don't believe that God threatens us with hell- hell is a punishment for people who do bad things. For example, a judge does not send you to jail- the law you broke does. The judge determines if you broke the law, and if you did, then you should have some sort of punishment. God is just, and so is the universe. If you make bad choices, then you are punished. Another way to think about it is in terms of a parent/child relationship. The child is not forced to be respectful of their parents. They can choose to be disrespectful. However, if they are, they will be put in time-out, which is their punishment.
Question 5: Why make humans eternal?
I've never thought about this before! I guess my best answer is to go back to the painter analogy. A painter loves his paintings, so he wants them to last as long as possible. God loves us, his creations, so he wants us to last as long as possible. He has the power to make us last forever, so he does.
Question 6: Why allow ignorance of yourself?
I've never thought of this one either- my best guess is that it goes back to free will. God gives you the choice to acknowledge or ignore him. He doesn't force you one way or another. The rules of the game are laid out by the Bible and the Catholic Church's interpretation of it, so we know the rules. It is your choice to acknowledge them or ignore them. Catholics also believe that you can get into heaven if you haven't heard of Jesus or God or Catholicism. If you are a good person, you can still get into heaven. If you don't know, then how can you be held accountable? Not everyone knows about Catholicism, but everybody has a moral compass. If they try to do what they truly think is right, they can get into heaven.
I hope some of my answers were as thought provoking as your questions! I think that listening to the perspectives of others is the best way to educate yourself, and these questions have made me think about my religion in ways that I haven't before. I hope my "answers" do the same thing!
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Ncgipe16 - "humanity they brought sin into the world"
Ncgipe16 - "God did not intend for humans to ever get sick or experience pain or make wrong choices"
According to the story, god is all knowing. Therefore god knew damn well they would eat from the tree. God fully intended for people to get sick. Why did he create humans with an immune system or diseases in the first place? Does not compute!
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Ncgipe16 - "God gives us free will"
Freewill is not possible if omnipotence exists; the two together lead quickly to contradiction. At most only one is possible.
Ncgipe16- "...when Adam and Eve took the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil..."
Ah, yes, the old story where god punishes man for not knowing any better until it at the fruit. I do so love it when myths include gods punishing people for being the ignorant primates that he supposedly made them to be. God is rather like a parent putting a cup full of razor blades on the floor of a room with a crawling toddler, waiting until the ignorant child to touch it, and then giving it cancer when it does. Gods are awfully swell like that, perhaps for his next trick he will drown a sack full of puppies... Oh, wait, he did that on a worldwide scale according to his biography...
I couldn't possibly make better reasons not to believe in divine sadists then their respective holy books do.
Just of the top of my head...
God
A perfect being, but demands worship. Incompatible claims.
Is all knowing, then why create this world? He already know every possible outcome.
Is all powerful, yet does nothing to help innocent suffering people. Incompatible claims.
He loves us, gives us free will, but if we do not please him he inflicts horrible torture forever. Incompatible claims.
The crucifixion of Jesus
A religion around humans sacrifice, were god has his own human son killed "for us". Not only that, but we are supposed to eat his flesh and drink his blood during communion?!
Everyone constantly uses a symbol of human sacrifice, in their homes and wear them as jewelry.
Jesus is supposed to be immortal, how is that a real sacrifice on his part? A three day vacation then off to heaven?!
God inflicted humans with inherit sin, to... have a reason to kill his son "for us"?
Well put Pragmatic
Kudos on taking the time to think out these questions and offer a response. It speaks to you possibly being reasonable. I really only want to address your first answer as the rest are pretty much incidental to that one.
"Question 1: Where did God come from?
[answer truncated]...So I don't think that this question can be said to "stump" religions, because I think it really stumps everyone."
This is a good point, glad you brought it up. I think you are right that this issue is problematic for theists, philosophers and scientists alike: "Where did everything come from?" The problem of where it all came from, however, is tackled by these disparate disciplines in starkly different ways. By and large, theists I have encountered provide an answer to the question, "God created it, God is, was, will always be."
This answer is provided with no critical reasoning, no empirical observations, no testing; and yet it is offered as the final answer. Children are indoctrinated into theistic beliefs and taught that this is the answer to life, the universe and everything. If one believes the answers are already known, one ceases to look for them. Therein lies one of the biggest problems.
As example, if a person believes that God created disease and that people get disease because God wants it and are healed because God wants it, then why is there any reason to look for our own explanations about disease and maybe ways of healing people ourselves. A simple example, I confess, but I am quite sick right now (the irony!).
As I said, the rest of the questions are incidental, and I reject all aspects of the first question.
I do believe that "God created it, God is, was, will always be", and I guess my point was that both explanations (God, the Big Bang) have the same "problems". I see what you're saying about how the God answer is provided with no reasoning and evidence, while scientists can point to the expansion of the universe and background radiation and such as evidence of the Big Bang. And I understand what you are talking about with the whole indoctrination thing. When Catholics get married, they make a promise to raise their children to be Catholic. However, I was raised in a Catholic family, and that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to question my beliefs or have doubts. Having doubts is a part of having faith. You are right that in some families, people are indoctrinated and discouraged from asking questions, which isn't good, but there are a lot of others where it's encouraged. If anyone really thinks about their faith of course they'll have doubts, but in my limited experience the Catholic Church generally has good answers. I'm always looking for answers to things I don't understand. I know that some Catholics do have the attitude that God is the "final answer" for everything, but a lot don't. The Catholic Church (meaning all Catholics around the world) is not a perfect institution in many respects.
As far as evidence for God, I think the best example I can give are miracles. There are many paintings all over the world that "bleed" oil, and most are on display and available for public viewing. There are saints whose bodies didn't decay for many many years. Some miracles, like when the sun danced in Fatima, Portugal, had hundreds of witnesses. I think it's hard to discredit every miracle that has happened, especially modern ones, so I conclude that there is a God. I know that's not really empirical observation, but I think it should count for something.
I don't have good answers yet for the whole disease thing. You bring up a valid point. I guess we aren't supposed to use God as an excuse to not help ourselves or to not learn more about the universe and how things work. For example, we don't look at gravity and say "Oh, it's just God." We look at it and know it's dictated by specific laws of physics. However, Catholics believe that there are laws in nature because there is a lawgiver- God. That's the best I can do right now. You've given me some things to think about!
Good post, thanks for the reply. I was quite under the weather and not forming the most cogent of arguments at the time I wrote my first post so I apologize for any muddiness.
As I said before, I do agree that the question of everything poses similar problems to theists and non-theists. But I do see the way these problems are tackled by each as being a little more removed from each other than merely, "one set offers 'x' and another set offers 'y'." My angle is more that theists say, "we have the answer to everything, look no further," whereas scientists say "we don't have the answers, but here's what we do know and here's what we are trying to figure out."
As you rightly pointed out, this is not true of all who identify themselves as theists; it is an overgeneralization on my part. I live in Germany where there are more social Catholics and Lutherans than actual faithful ones. However, I was raised in the United States and in the South for my early life, so my formative introduction to theism was a tad more severe. And worse, I have lived in parts of the world where this dogmatic approach is leveled with a heavy hand toward questioning why things are the way they are.
As to the miracles... well I'm no expert on anything, but I'm confident that all events deemed miracles are merely misunderstood perfectly natural events. On one hand I feel terrible saying that to people when I know that the belief in miracles may bring them joy or wonder. On the other hand I feel I must say it, because there is even more joy and wonder in things without them having to be mystical, magical or otherwise spooky.
As I said, good post, thanks.
I really appreciate that you've taken the time to write this article out. Most theists i've talked to with similar questions barely even bother, or give me the whole "you just don't get it" line. I do have a question about your response to number 6 though. According to the catholic church that is the go-to answer, and that is commendable. However, there are as many answers to that question as there are different factions of the same overall faith. I recently talked to a pastor and youth group leader (of a church who's denomination I still can't figure) and asked similar questions. His response to the 6th question was along the lines of "Your earthly deeds do not matter to the lord. All that matters is your ability to live your life in a way that is in line with his words." While that is a rough paraphrase, it still blew my mind. How can people be so divided over the interpretation of the book that is supposedly the infallible word of the big guy himself?
Reading this over again, I feel i could have worded that better. I don't have a question exactly, it's more like I need clarification. Yes, that one branch of christianity feels that all good people go to heaven. However, nearly every other branch disagrees or interprets it differently. I get that that's the one viewpoint you know of, but no one seems to agree. Does it really all come down to your own personal spin on it?
So there are a lot of different denominations of Christianity, and they are all slightly (or sometimes extremely) different. The general consensus is that the original Christians were Catholics, though some denominations disagree. Catholics get their teachings from two places. The first is the bible. Almost all Christian denominations use the bible. The second place is sacred Tradition (with a capital T). Sacred Tradition means the teachings of the Magisterium, which is the Pope and the council of bishops. Really, it's just the Pope, because the bishops always agree with what the Pope says. Some denominations split off from the Catholic Church because we get some of our teachings from sacred Tradition. They thought that the bible should be the only source of knowledge. Catholics believe that you cannot only use the bible to understand the Christian religion and faith and God and such because, like you pointed out, there are many different interpretations of the bible. Some people will point to certain verses in the bible and say that it condones slavery or stoning adulterers, which the Catholic Church obviously does not agree with! Catholics think that is important to have an authority who can interpret the teachings of the bible so there is universal agreement amongst the members of the Church, so we have sacred Tradition. We believe the pope is infallible on matters of the faith, so his interpretation of the bible is correct. However, this doesn't mean all Catholics agree about everything! For example, some Catholics will say that the story of Adam and Eve is an allegory or a poem and probably did not literally happen. There was a Fall of Man, but it may not have occurred the exact way the bible says, with the snake and the fruit and everything. Other Catholics say that Adam and Eve did happen just the way it says in the bible. The Pope does not say one way or another, because that part really isn't important. It doesn't matter if Eve ate the fruit first or if Adam did or if they existed at all- the important part is that God created everything and at some point early on in human history, the Fall of Man occurred. That's the important part of the story, which the Pope says for sure happened. Humans could have been created by the process of evolution (while God oversaw the process and allowed it to happen) or God could have made them from mud- it's not really important. It's the same way for a lot of other parts of the bible too. The important bits are interpreted "for sure" by the Pope, while the insignificant details are left for us to interpret personally. So basically, different denominations put there own "personal spin" on the bible. Catholics put there own personal spin on it to, but all the important parts are interpreted by the Pope who gives us his infallible interpertation through sacred Tradition. I hope this explanation clarifies and doesn't confuse you more. Of course there are problems with the Catholic "system"- the Pope can't go to every Catholic and tell him or her everything about the bible, so his interpretations are distributed by bishops and priests to parishes across the world. Then Catholics tell other people, so important bits are bound to be "lost in translation". That's why sometimes you'll get two Catholics who disagree on something important, like whether or not Jesus' miracles were real or figurative. (The Pope says that they were real if you were wondering). I mean, I'm not even 100% sure about which bits of the bible are important and which are just minor details, and I consider myself to be a pretty devout orthodox Catholic. I'm still learning about my faith. The bible is a big and complicated book, after all. Sorry it took me so long to explain this, I hope it helps!
Religious books are filled with craps and jokes. Sometimes I don't think if these books are trying to convey a horror or a comedy story. Yet, religious people are still using these books to defend their belief...
QUESTION 1: Where Did God Come From?
RESPONSE: Nowhere. God is eternal by definition (timeless sans creation of the Universe).
QUESTION 2: Why Does God Care About Humans?
RESPONSE: Because God is love. God loves us. Why would God NOT care about somebody He created?
QUESTION 3: Why Is Suffering Allowed?
RESPONSE: Because, God may have to permit suffering in order to achieve His ultimate goals; also because most of the suffering is due to ourselves. God gave us free will and we're using it to kill and harm others. So, ultimately, the suffering we see is our fault, not God's.
QUESTION 4: What Does God Get Out of Giving Humans Free Will?
RESPONSE: I wouldn't know. God gave us free will because He loves us and wants us to be able to make decisions for ourselves.
QUESTION 5: Why Make Humans Eternal?
RESPONSE: So that we can live forever with God.
QUESTION 6: Why Allow Ignorance of Yourself?
RESPONSE: Free will. God will not force people to believe in Him.
"God is love. God loves us."
Oh... so that's why he promotes slavery, even sexual slavery and killing of anyone who does not please him, torture forever and tests people's faith by asking them to kill their own son or by killing their family and so on?
That's why he invented a lot of painful and horrific diseases, deadly congenital conditions, etc.
"God gave us free will because He loves us and wants us to be able to make decisions for ourselves."
Oh... so that's why we are sent to eternal torture in hell if we do not worship him? And that is why we should be killed if we work on a Sunday, stone our children to death if they are unruly... free will, yes of course.
"Why Make Humans Eternal? RESPONSE: So that we can live forever with God."
Or... so we can suffer eternal torture in hell, for ever and ever and ever?
Thanks for explaining that, now I get it!
"Oh... so that's why he promotes slavery, even sexual slavery and killing of anyone who does not please him, torture forever and tests people's faith by asking them to kill their own son or by killing their family and so on?
That's why he invented a lot of painful and horrific diseases, deadly congenital conditions, etc."
Your contention is based off of what is written in the Bible, which was authored by men. In order for this contention to hold true, you need to demonstrate that what is written in the Bible is literally what God demands. Just because the Bible says that what the Bible says is true, doesn't make it true.
"Oh... so that's why we are sent to eternal torture in hell if we do not worship him? And that is why we should be killed if we work on a Sunday, stone our children to death if they are unruly... free will, yes of course."
See above.
"Or... so we can suffer eternal torture in hell, for ever and ever and ever?
Thanks for explaining that, now I get it!"
See above.
"Your contention is based off of what is written in the Bible, which was authored by men. In order for this contention to hold true, you need to demonstrate that what is written in the Bible is literally what God demands. Just because the Bible says that what the Bible says is true, doesn't make it true."
Definitely agree here. By implication, you do not base you opinion of what your god demands on the contents of the Bible, yet you seem to have definite ideas about what your god demands. If not the Bible, then upon what do you base your opinion of what your god demands? How might someone who isn't you verify that?
Exactly, I agree as well.
So, S.O.G. where does your strong-minded religious guidance come from?
Perhaps it is that voice echoing in your head? What's that called again, oh yeah, the Ego.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j8ZMMuu7MU
There are more questions that religion can't explain, not just the 6 mentioned above. Questions like: Why evolution is true. Why death is final? Why do they need to have god? and so much more
Thank you very much for such a detailed informative article which give us many answers to our questions but I don't think so these are only few questions. Their must be some others too.
Are you only debating the Christian or Monastic God? Because we 1st need to define the term God before we ask where it came from correct? Your kind of creating a straw man argument here, let's discuss!
Discuss?
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@ncgipe16
Welcome!
The attached link is from Yale Divinity. Professor Joel Baden (athiest) has launched a FREE bible study open to the public. Most Ivy League Biblical Scholars do Not believe in Supernatural Jesus. The bible is forged. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did Not write any of the gospels. It was written by unknown authors. There are Zero first hand accounts of Jesus. Less than 2% of the population could even read or write during that time period. If it wasn't for Constantine, Jesus would have never reached divine stardom! Research the similarities between Hare Krishna, Jesus and Zooroster. All born of a virgin mother, good vs evil spirits...etc 666 does Not represent Satan, The Mark of The Beast was referring to Caesar Nero.
https://yalebiblestudy.org/
https://youtu.be/XS7LgbMr1m4
You shouldn't appeal to someone 2,000 years old to do the right thing. You should do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.
Eucharist = Cannibalism
@Ncgipe16:
RE: Something from Nothing: You clearly do not understand the arguments. The response to the Apologetic, something can not come from nothing. is - "Where did your god come from then." To assert that the god thing is the only un-caused cause renders the argument illogical / fallacious and amounts to special pleading. Either everything that came into existence has a cause or it dies not. YOU DON'T GET TO MAKE SPECIAL EXCEPTIONS FOR YOUR GOD. The fact of the matter is that we do not know whether or not the cosmos had a beginning. It appears that our current universe had its origins in the Big Bang. (UNDERSTAND -the big bang happens AFTER the origin of the universe and not before. SOMETHING WAS ALREADY THERE TO EXPAND. The Big Bang is a theory of the expansion of the universe and not its CREATION.)
HERE IS THE REAL DILEMMA: "We know something exists. We have no evidence at all that anything at all called NOTHING can exist. What we once thought of as empty space is no longer empty. So, the billion dollar question is this. "How do you get from something to nothing?" You must demonstrate that nothing is capable of being. If there is a God in it, then it is not nothing. What is it then?
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Re: Question 2: Why does God care about humans? A painter loves his paintings, and wouldn't want someone to go and burn them all for no reason.
Your ability to reason is JUVENILE at best. Artists have always destroyed their own work for whatever reasons they imagine. 3 Famous Artists Who Destroyed Their Own Work ( Reasons Are Surprising! )
https://tomatoheart.com/hiya/13-famous-artists-destroyed-own-work/
Your lack of information is astounding.
Do you demonstrate your love to others by telling them to believe in you, love you, or die a horrible death? Calling the God you believe in "loving" is insane.
______________________________________
RE: Question 3: Why is suffering allowed? Fuck YOUR GOD and your simplistic amoral sense of morality. The difference between you and your god is simple. If you walked upon a scene in a park where a woman was being brutally beaten and raped and you know you had the power to stop it, would you? Your asshole god wouldn't. He will sit back and let the rape happen. He will sit back and allow children to be molested. He will sit back and allow the horrors of the world to continue. Then he will sit back and allow the perpetrators to go to heaven as long as they say they love him . FUCK YOUR GOD!! And if you are not more moral than your god FUCK YOU TOO.
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RE: Free Will: Question 4: What does God get out of giving humans free will?
God gives us free will because he wants us to choose to love and follow him.
COMPLETE AND UTTER HORSESHIT! Does Satan know God exists? Goes Satan know God is all powerful? And still Satan made the choice to rebel. There is nothing that keeps an all powerful god from letting each and every one of us know for a fact that he is real. It has nothing at all to do with our freedom of choice. If god appeared to every man on the planet, we would all know that he existed and many of us would still refuse to worship the asshole.
RE: He doesn't want us to be forced to do it. Forcing someone to love you isn't really love at all.
FINALLY WE ARE IN AGREEMENT. So when you tell your child, "If you love me I will give you cookies and ice cream." And then the child loves you, "Is it really love." If you tell your child, "If you do not love me I will throw you into the basement and torture you with pain and damnation for the rest of your life." and then the child loves you. "Is that really love?" You can not get love from a system of reward and punishment. The love your god offers is contingent upon following his demands. Fail to follow the demands and you get the ole bullshit expression, "I love you and this hurts me more than it does you but now you have to suffer for an eternity. Sorry you made the wrong choice." FUCK YOUR GOD.
___________________________
Question 5: Why make humans eternal?
Paintings are not eternal. "Failed Analogy." Nothing we know of is eternal. Even the universe itself may end one day. Whether it ends or not, life on this planet surely will. With the expansion of the universe it will eventually become unrecognizable as a universe. Are you aware of the amazingly special period of time we exist in. A billion years from now, there may be no stars in the sky. If we last that long the expansion of the universe will render us sufficiently alone. We will only have stories of constellations and other planets. Things change, that is simply the nature of things.
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Question 6: Why allow ignorance of yourself?
We did the "Free Will" thing already. It is completely unjustified. There can be no free will without the knowledge to exercise that will. Keeping people in the dark is not how free will is encouraged. YOUR GOD IS A COMPLETE ASSHOLE.
RE: God gives you the choice to acknowledge or ignore him.
NO! God does not "give you a choice." He gives you an offer that you can't refuse. He holds a gun to your head and then says love me or die. FUCK YOUR GOD. He tells you that the choice is yours, and then he refuses to show himself. He tells you that he loves you and yet stands inertly by allowing horrible things to happen. He does this whether or not you profess your love to him. I WOULD NEVER HAVE A FRIEND LIKE THAT AND I CERTAINLY WOULD NOT LOVE AN ASSHOLE WHO JUST STOOD THERE AND WATCHED ME SUFFER. FUCK YOUR GOD.
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THERE IS NOTHING THOUGHT PROVOKING IN YOUR RESPONSES. YOUR ANSWERS ARE AS INEPT AS YOUR FUCKING GOD.
@ Cog and others
* Zooms up trike* Umm...I think you guys are talking to a zombie post, the OP was dated : Mon, 02/16/2015 - 11:42.
That's right....5 years ago......*shuffles feet* well, that's about it then...*turns away to hide laughing face, mounts trike in one athletic bound* " HI HO BLACKIE, ONWARD!! * treadles off into the sunset....*
@Old Man
Well, if I wasn't feeling like a zombie myself this morning, I might have noticed that. Spent my Friday Night in an all night poker game and have not yet recovered from my $500 loss. Pocket 8s beat by pocket 9s and both hands beat the board. DAMN! I need a new hobby.
And I am off to the Philippines in the next week. Gonna abuse myself some more. I won't even care that I responded to an ancient post in another week or so. I won't care about anything.
Sorry but I'm not prepared to hold any beliefs based assumptions, as this would mean you can literally believe anything.
Religions are making claims about the origins of the universe that cannot demonstrate any objective evidence to support, that's the difference, not knowing is fine, but religions don't claim they don't know, they claim to possess inerrant infallible truth. Thus being stumped when questioned on such claims is of the uttmost significance.
Is that why he allows and even causes untold suffering? Your claim is completely unevidenced assumption, and what is more is roundly contradicted by the facts, and even your own bible.
Luckily science does, and has evidenced this beyond any reasonable or rational doubt. Evolution is an insentient process, so is unaware and indifferent to suffering, and suffering provides physical and emotional reasons for animals to act and react to pain, both physical and emotional.
Does that includes the countless babies he's murdered? Have you even read the bible? This latest unevidenced claim also infers your deity has no plan, that seems to contradict christian doctrine.
Does this include the countless humans he murdered when he flooded the entire planet? What about the ones he encouraged his followers to murder in the bible? Your claim as well as being unevidenced makes no sense, as it is roundly contradicted by the facts.
No he hasn't, if a deity exists it has spent the last 54 years pointedly hiding form me. Other humans who hold unevidenced superstitious beliefs often accost me to encourage me to believe their favoured religion, but no diety has offered anything at all to suggest it exist.
OK, I'll bite.
Oh dear. And your first mistake is assuming that at some point, there was "nothing", though I'm familiar with the manner in which mythology fanboys consistently fail to apply rigour to this word. It's obvious you're not familiar with any of the modern literature from the discipline of cosmological physics, within which you will find that virtually no physicist thinks that the current observable universe came from "nothing". Instead, you will find that much of the modern cosmological physics literature, involves postulates to the effect that there existed entities and interactions before the Big Bang, whose operation instantiated the current observable universe. Furthermore, those well defined entities and interactions presented in the requisite papers, are considered to be eternal, which means that there never was any time in the past when there was "nothing" in the requisite cosmologies.
As an example of the ideas extant in the literature, I'm aware of two papers by Steinhardt & Turok, in which they propose a pre-Big-Bang cosmology centred upon braneworld collisions, and which possesses three elegant features. Namely:
[1] It provides a mechanism for the donation of energy to the newly instantiated universe, facilitating subsequent matter synthesis;
[2] It eliminates the singularity problem from standard Big Bang cosmology;
[3] It provides a testable prediction, namely that the power spectrum of primordial gravitational waves will take a specific form, with the graph skewed towards short wavelengths.
Indeed, [3] above is one of the reasons scientists have been labouring diligently, to produce operational gravitational wave detectors, precisely so that they can test this prediction, once they've learned how to distinguish between primordial gravitational waves and gravitational waves of more recent origin. The moment they learn to do this, the requisite tests will be conducted. Furthermore, if those tests reveal a power spectrum that matches the Steinhardt-Turok prediction, then Steinhardt & Turok walk away with the Nobel Prize for Physics.
Let's see what else we have here ...
And the evidence for this entity and its purported attraction for humans, is precisely what? only I've never seen a mythology fanboy present actual proper evidence for said entity. At bottom, all that mythology fanboys have to offer is "my mythology says so, therefore it's true".
Indeed, one of the reasons that those of us who paid attention in class, regard the question of the existence of a god type entity as unanswered, is precisely because it is unanswered. If a proper, evidentially supported answer had been presented in the past, not only would said answer have been accepted by now, and indeed become part of mainstream physics, but whoever alighted upon said evidence would have been guaranteed a Nobel Prize. That this hasn't happened should be telling you something important.
Plus, there is no genuine substantive reason, why any entity capable of instantiating a universe, would be in the least concerned about one species of advanced ape on one small planet. We only have mythological assertions to this effect, and since the assorted pre-scientific mythologies written by pre-scientific and superstitious humans contain demonstrable farcical elementary errors, said mythologies can be discarded as being incompetent to answer even simple questions, let alone difficult ones.
Oh, and since we have a supertanker load of evidence that humans have a well-defined evolutionary and biological ancestry, that calls into serious question several central assertions arising from your favourite mythology.
Again, the assertion that some entity exists that allows suffering, instead of suffering being an unfortunate by-product of physics, is another of those mythology fanboy assertions we've been waiting to see supported with proper evidence for 5,000 years.
Again, the question presumes much in advance, and the requisite presumptions are again nothing more than unsupported assertions arising from adherence to mythology. Plus, the entire "fall of Man" fable in Genesis is not so much full of plot holes, as yawning plot chasms and crevasses. if you don't understand why, you need to pay more attention to the detail of what your favourite mythology asserts.
Again, more mere blind assertion. Much of which I've dealt with above.
Once again, that which is merely asserted, bereft of genuine evidence, can be safely discarded. One of those proper rules of discourse that we routinely see being flouted by mythology fanboys here.
Oh, and I've already covered at length in another thread, the existence of an abundant scientific literature, documenting the evolutionary and biological basis of [1] our capacity for ethical thought, and [2] our motivation to act thereupon. You might find it illuminating to read some of that literature, before continuing with adherence to blind mythological assertion.
I know zombie thread is zombie but let me say,
Fuck your god. Any irl parent who treated his kids like Yahweh would be in prison and you'd be sharing the story on Facebook with sad emotes asking for god to help the child
Fuck that