Not a rhetorical question. Christians keep telling us that he’s alive, so where is he exactly? If he’s alive he has to be some place. The old hymn, ‘I Serve A Risen Saviour’, which I sang many times in my younger days, thinks it knows:
He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.
He lives, He lives, salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives?
He lives within my heart.
This isn’t much use though, is it. All it’s saying is ‘I’ve convinced myself Jesus is alive because I feel him inside me.’ That’s the extent of it, and this being so, it’s really no evidence at all that Jesus is alive in any sense the word is usually understood, let alone that he has an independent on-going existence.
Perhaps the bible will be of more use. Acts 7.55-56 has Stephen see Jesus alive in heaven, standing at the right hand of God. Well, that’s great. Now we’ve got two problems. Not only do we still not know where Jesus abides, we don’t know where God lives either. They’re both together somewhere, ‘heaven’ according to Acts says, but we’re no closer to knowing where this is either.
According to the preceding verse, Acts 7.54, Stephen is ‘looking up’ when he has his vision of heaven. This is significant because for early Christians, God’s abode – heaven – was in the sky. The New Testament speaks of different levels or realms of heaven, all of them up in the sky.
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul claims to have visited the third (and highest?) level, while the Paul-imposter who wrote Ephesians helpfully explains that the lower level, the one nearest the earth, is occupied by demons and Satan’s minions whom he refers to as ‘the powers of the air’, ‘cosmic powers’ and ‘powers and principalities’. These are the very beings whom Paul claims in 1 Corinthians 2:8 killed Jesus (betcha thought it was the Romans) and 1 Peter 5:8 says seek to devour men’s souls.
Next is the heavenly realm inhabited by angels and the original perfect copies of everything here on Earth (Hebrews 9:22-24).
Then, finally, there’s the highest heaven (alluded to in Luke 2:14)) where dwells the CEO, God himself. If Jesus stands or sits at his right hand, then presumably that’s where he is too. But where is this highest heaven, or indeed any of the levels the early cultists believed existed? There’s no evidence for any of them.
In fact, the Bible’s heavenly hierarchy (which you can read about in detail here) is absolute drivel. Above us, as John Lennon was known to say, is mere sky – the stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and the like – followed by the endless vastness of largely empty space. If Jesus is alive in an imaginary highest heaven somewhere out there, then he, like it, is similarly non-existent.
But let’s not write a living Jesus off just yet. It’s possible that he, his Father and all those lesser supernatural beings – the demons and devils, powers and principalities as well as the angels and snoozing saints – are hidden away in some other invisible and undetectable alternate dimension.
Other dimensions are, according to some scientists, theoretically possible. There may, they say, be as many as 11, but unfortunately for Jesus, none of the Bible authors knew of them. Those who wrote about heaven in the early days of the Jesus cult, were convinced it was overhead and, as ‘intellectual’ Christians are fond of pointing out, we need to read and interpret scripture as the ancients themselves did, not with a modern sensibility. Certainly not with an understanding of ‘dimensions’ derived from Star Trek.
Despite this, theologians have to work mighty hard to transplant such theoretical dimensions into the Bible in order to claim that heaven, and therefore Jesus, exists in one of them. And work hard they do, at what is little more than a god-of-the-gaps argument: ‘we know Jesus is not a few (or even many) miles up above us, therefore we must find a location for him somewhere that science appears to allow.’
(Interestingly, when it comes to the fine-tuning argument, apologists are quick to dismiss the idea of other dimensions, multiverses and parallel worlds; these make the earth less special, less ‘just right’ for life, less designed by God specially for us.)
Locating the living Jesus is like finding Wally/Waldo in one of those cluttered pictures, except this time he hasn’t been included. So tell us, Christians, where is Jesus? And where is the evidence he’s where you say he is?
rejectingjesus, 
When one considers the advancement of knowledge about the universe (e.g., planets, comets, asteroids, black holes, etc.), the fact that Christians continue to cling to the idea of a “heaven” is simply mind-boggling — not to mention the fact that God and Jesus actually live there!
Seriously, one wonders about the intelligence level of so many who continue to cling to a story that was written over two-thousand years ago!
LikeLike
Stephen Hawking wrote about imaginary time and a fourth dimension beyond the universe we know. https://www.cnet.com/science/stephen-hawking-tells-degrasse-tyson-what-preceded-big-bang/
It sounds something like what heaven might be if heaven were of the same or similar substance as the universe we know. BTW Hawking though other universe may well be very similar to the universe we know rather than consisting of many different and varied combinations of substances and fundamental forces.
It is an interesting idea, but a same substance as this universe seems not to be what the Bible implies.
I think heaven is what I call a pros-natural place. “Pros” is a pronoun in Greek that suggests something that interfaces with something or someone else and in close relationship with it. If so, heaven is not up there somewhere or distant from this universe but close, as being face to face with it but a different dimension. That isn’t far from Hawking’s fourth dimension.
What the Bible implies is that movement between these dimensions is not only possible but normal. God, for example, is present as well as transcendent. Jesus, now being spiritual (of another dimension). yet physical when he chooses to be in this dimension implies their close relationship.
Remember we are not talking about distance or direction we are talking about dimensions that exist in a close relationship.
LikeLike
Did I not cover this kind of gibberish in the post? Oh yes, I did, when I said, “This is little more than a god-of-the-gaps argument: ‘we know Jesus is not a few (or even many) miles up above us, therefore we must find a location for him somewhere that science appears to allow.'”
LikeLiked by 1 person
If we accept Hawking’s fourth dimension as science, doesn’t science recognize just such a place?
LikeLike
Sure, science recognises heaven in the 4th dimension. Everybody knows that.
Definitely something in the water…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’s been turning his Aquafina into wine again.
LikeLike
I am not totally comfortable with Hawking’s theory of a fourth dimension. He is suggesting a fourth dimension that is pretty much like the present dimension, except, well, different, if I read him correctly. But what his theory demonstrates is that a fourth dimension is not antithetical to our present understanding of the universe.
LikeLike
Don: If we accept Hawking’s fourth dimension as science, doesn’t science recognize just such a place?
No, Don. Hawking is proposing (a hypothesis, not yet science) a dimension (or 2) of TIME. NOT SPACE. So, no, Hawking’s proposal, even if true, isn’t any kins of place.
LikeLike
Of course, using the bible as an authority, there are all sorts of scenarios that one can come up with. And people do!! But removing the fantasies and illusions contained therein and accepting the premise that is most likely is what so many seem unable (refuse) to do. Hawking was a genius, no doubt. But he didn’t know anymore about the location of Jesus that anyone else.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Don: Stephen Hawking wrote about imaginary time and a fourth dimension beyond the universe we know.
One sentence! One goddamned sentence! One sentence into your first comment on this post and you are completely, totally, fractally wrong. I don’t know whether to chalk this up to your scientific illiteracy or your complete lack of reading comprehension. It’s probably safe to credit both in this case.
Some quick background info you seem to be lacking: Al “The Hair!” Einstein, fucking genius, gave us Special and General Relativity – the best scientific descriptions of the Universe we have to date. One of the major breakthroughs contained therein is the fact that time is a dimension of spacetime. Reality is made up of 4 dimension: width, depth, height, and time. These 4 are interwoven and interdependent. You cannot leave “the width dimension” and enter “the height dimension.” That’s nonsensical. Everything you do, everywhere you go you do and go in all 4 dimensions at the same time. You cannot leave any one of them. You are bound to them as they are bound together.
As a quick aside – string theory requires at least 11 dimensions. If correct, this would add 7 dimensions to the known 4. These 11 dimension would be foundational to the Universe and intertwined as we know the 4 to be. You could not pop over to the 9th dimension for lunch. You are in the 9th dimension always as you are in all 11. (This is all hypothetical and probably wrong as string theory cannot be proven and is falling out of favor with physicists.)
It’s important to point this out, Don, because you are using “dimension” wrong. You are using it like some 1960s sci-fi. “Dimension” is never used this way in physics. “Dimensions” are features of our Universe. We know of 4 of them.
You are using dimensions when you men universe. Multiverse is also only hypothetical. But everything I’ve seen proposed has universes occupying their own spacetime. Meaning none would overlap our own Universe. You could not step from our Universe into another like walking into another room.
Again, you said:
Don: Stephen Hawking wrote about imaginary time and a fourth dimension beyond the universe we know.
Wrong. Hawking never talks about anything “beyond the universe we know.” He is proposing that there might be 1 or 2 additional dimensions of “imaginary time” in our Universe. He says these time dimensions are curved – just as Einstein showed our spacetime to be. And these additional times would start at the Big Bang – just as Einstein showed our current conception of time begins.
Using Hawking’s model of imaginary time, your god doesn’t gain any more time to exist in. It still can’t exist before the Big Bang. And it certainly doesn’t gain any more space. Space begins at the same instant as time.
LikeLiked by 2 people
👏👏👏👏
LikeLike
think I already linked you to the article. But here’s a brief video on imaginary time. https://youtu.be/cmnAjCfga4M
LikeLike
Hawking is difficult to understand, especially by someone who is not a physicist, and even then his ideas are not received by all. But I think he deserves to be heard.
As for the fourth dimension: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/a-brief-history-of-hawking-s-scientific-legacy
“The Hartle-Hawking proposal is that quantum effects turn the time dimension into a fourth dimension of space at the Big Bang (the mathematics of this involves “imaginary” numbers, such as the square root of -1).”
If I understand Hawking correctly, he theorizes that time is not linear except in this present universe of three spatial dimensions. Which again if I understand, makes time not limited to an artifact (my word) of this universe but existing beyond it both before this universe began and beyond it presently and after it. That fourth dimension allows for the existence of something beyond our universe.
That agrees in part with the multiverse theory. But Hawking has a bit of a twist to it. Though the fourth dimension allows for a multiverse, it does not mean that there are a infinite number of universes or that they would be all different. This universe where the fine-tuned fundamental forces and laws allow for life as we know it, according to Hawking is probably the same in most of the other potential universes. In other words, he does not thing those balanced forces and laws are unique but may be necessary in any universe.
In an earlier paper – which I lost in my last computer meltdown – Hawking describes something like a huge universe in which this present universe exists having a beginning and expanding on a one-directional timeline. (He has drawn this as a graphic with time running on one axis in a single direction but having a second dimension of time that is perpendicular to the first that expands time, essentially forever, out beyond this present universe. This mother universe, so to speak, does not exist on a one-directional timeline and is therefore eternal.
This chart reproduces what I remember Hawking describing, with the vertical line added to represent the second dimension of time.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zVuGPtegwi0TXNSZt5q1MBuGlD_KCRzvbL5EFn6xPYU/edit?usp=sharing
If we limit ourselves to only that which science can demonstrate or propose on the basis of known laws and observations (theoretical physics), this mother universe which is not bounded by time seems a fairly good description of the spiritual dimension we call heaven.
LikeLike
None of which is evidence of your god or the location of the ever-living Jesus. How about providing that?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Neil, the mantra that you all repeat again and again and again “show me then beef” is pointless. You ask for dirt and rocks evidence for something that is not dirt and rocks. What I have given you, however, should not be shaken off so quickly. They are the reports of eyewitnesses to an event. It is an event they can’t quite wrap their heads around just as you can’t, but reports nonetheless. And it or similar events are repeated through history, the history of the Bible but in other venues as well.
You can simply surf YouTube for examples. Muslims and others report that Jesus appeared to them. People who are Christians and not, report their experience of heaven in NDEs. Many of these are unexpected and experienced by people who don’t come from a Christian or Jewish worldview. Yes even to atheists.
Heaven intersects with earth.
But they are not dirt and rocks, so they are not real, right? Okay, sleep tight, there are no monsters under your bed.
LikeLike
You are trying to have it both ways, Don. And it’s pathetic.
YOU are the one who brought in your dimensions theory. Supported, you imagine, by Stephen Hawking. Why? To give your god legitimacy in the real world. Then when we ask you to complete the puzzle with some evidence, you go off on us for wanting real world evidence.
So why bring up this multiverse dimensional gap you’re trying to stuff your god and its heaven into? If it’s not of reality – no rocks and trees and real stuff to test – why link it to the real world?
EVERY TIME I ask for real, objective, demonstrable evidence you pooh pooh the request as unreasonable. Then you turn around and use real world phenomena – big bang, fine tuning, the multiverse, eyewitnesses, etc. – as “evidence.”
It’s one or the other, Don. Either God manifests in reality or not. If he does, then objective evidence will exist in reality. If he doesn’t, we’ve nothing to talk about. You have an imaginary friend who lives in an imaginary dimension, and thinks you’re the specialist boy ever.
Yes, people have experiences. But their interpretations are COMPLETELY subjective. Jesus appears to people in dreams so Christianity is True™. Joseph Smith has appeared to many Mormons, so Mormonism is True™. Mary’s appeared to more people than Roger Penrose could calculate, so Catholicism is the True Christianity™. Hindus have visions. Muslims have visions. Every tribe of people the world over has created superstitions and stories to explain the world.
The New Testament writers searched the Hebrew scriptures for stories they could copy into the life of Jesus to prove their position. Don has searched the Internet to find some “science” to prove his position. The method is the same. The results only more dubious over time.
Pick a lane, Don. Is God real and therefore objective evidence can be had of him. Or is he a fairytale for which no evidence can exist? It can’t be both.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There is dirt and rocks evidence – which I’ve discussed many times – but is the kind of evidence we find for a herd of elk that has just passed this way or for a painter who has left us a Mona Lisa. Or it is the evidence of the intersection of heaven and earth such as the resurrected Jesus or the encounter of Abraham with God or my encounters as he guides my feet on the path before me.
None of that is a slice of God to put under a microscope like a tissue sample. But why would you expect that? But rather than doing a little careful thinking, you continue to demand evidence that no one else but you would expect and close your eyes to evidence a whole lot of people do see.
It is as it always has been a matter of confirmation bias; you don’t expect to find God and you don’t.
I, on the other hand, find him everywhere from the still small voice to the intricate and amazing design of a flower to the cosmos. (And maybe beyond if Hawking is right.)
You might shout, “Confirmation bias!” And you would be right, but not always so. I was not born seeing and hearing God. In fact, the earliest I remember when that perception was awakened in me was in my preteens when I stood in the middle of the Grand Coulee in Washington State and looked up at the layers of basalt laid down, as I learned, over many thousands of years. It was there that I first began to think about eternity. https://youtu.be/Q3vw8ZA75Kk
But that is another story.
Since then, I have seen the world around me in light of eternity, and it has not disappointed. The footprints of God are there. So, you ask me for evidence. It is everywhere.
LikeLike
Confirmation bias works both way, in case you haven’t noticed.
LikeLike
Heaven intersects with earth. https://youtu.be/dXg-ubdqVno
LikeLike
Don: ‘this mother universe which is not bounded by time seems a fairly good description of the spiritual dimension we call heaven.’
Me: No, it doesn’t.
Your move.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I am not suggesting that Hawking’s theory of imaginary time explains heaven. (don’t read “imaginary” as none-existant. Use Hawking’s definition.) I am suggesting that it makes heaven plausible scientifically.
One thing seems certain, there are mysteries about reality that we have not solved yet. Thinking about reality as all dirt and rocks is probably wrong.
LikeLike
Don: One thing seems certain, there are mysteries about reality that we have not solved yet.
Please, Don. Tell me you are depending on the god of the gaps fallacy without saying it outright. Oh, wait. You did say it outright.
The god of the gaps fallacy is a fallacy because it uses faulty reasoning. You seem quite fond of faulty reasoning. But you have to be to reach your conclusions.
LikeLike
If there is no gap that nature does not fill, natural process are an adequate explanation. We need to look no further. Only when there is a gap, some other explanation necessary.
The interesting thing is that Naturalists always posit a natural explanation even when none has been shown to work and even when a natural explanation is unlikely.
I guess you might call that Nature of the Gaps.
The reasonable thing is to expect that natural processes and explanations will probably be found WHEN THEY ARE REASONABLE.
Some are not. A natural process for the existence of the fundamental laws that allowed the universe to exist and develop into a universe hospitable to life does not seem to be possible. The combination of conditions that provide for a planet that is capable of supporting life like us is highly problematic. The multiple trillions of specific genetic mutations have been needed for the evolution of man from the first living organism if mutations are random is statistically implausible. The origin of life from non-life is pretty implausible under any condition we can imagine. (If it was not, we would have created life. We’ve certainly tried hard enough. We know what the components are.)
Given those, few among many that cosmologists and biologists identify, a universe explained by natural process alone is problematic.
LikeLike
And yet here we are.
You’re now using the argument from incredulity (‘I can’t see how this could possibly have happened’) to argue for your God of the gaps. Fallacy on top of fallacy.
Even if you were right, which you’re not, none of this would mean your God made everything.
LikeLike
I think that putting arguments in a logical-fallacy box is not very helpful. It may help in identifying potential problems with logical thinking. But there are times when there are distinctions (No true Scotsman). There are times when there are gaps (God of the Gaps) that are not filled by any natural process or explanation we know of. And there are times when it is legitimate to say I can’t believe that (Argument from Incredulity). My goodness, everyone does that. It is one way we identify potential problems in a theory. I, for example, have a hard time believing in Bigfoot and UFOs and “chem trails” and am inclined to look for other explanations. (What do you call Bigfoot in England?)
What putting people in a logical-fallacy-box does for us almost all the time is make us look superior – in our own eyes. But maybe that is worth it.
LikeLike
Of course you don’t like your fallacies being pointed out when you rely on them so much.
We don’t point them out to ‘make us look superior’. We point them out because they’re fallacies.
LikeLiked by 2 people
My point, Neil, is that a “logic fallacy” is only a fallacy if it is untrue in the PARTICULAR instance it is used. It may be generally a caution, but in the particular quite true. The No True Scotsman is an example. Atheists use it regularly to distinguish between atheists who are so intellectually and de facto atheists who are so by default. It is a distinction that is important at times. So, at times I make that same distinction regarding those who are Christians by the biblical definition and those who are Christians by culture.
LikeLike
Says who? So now you’re the arbiter of when a fallacy is a fallacy and when it’s not.
The argument from incredulity, which is the one you’re objecting to, is always fallacious. ‘I personally can’t see how X can possibly be, therefore it can’t be as the evidence suggests (and must be God)’ is no argument at all.
LikeLike
The argument from incredulity is the argument you use. “I see no evidence for God, therefore he doesn’t exist.”
But since there is evidence aplenty, that argument is fallacious. It really amounts to “I can’t believe in God; the who idea is too fantastic. God is like Narnia and Valhalla.” I find them to be fantasy – just as I find God to be.”
I don’t know anyone who thinks Narnia or Valhalla exist (well maybe a few in Norway who believe in the old Norse gods). But I do know a lot of serious and intellectually capable people, people who have looked at the evidence and made reasoned conclusions, who believe God exists.
And you can’t see the difference?
LikeLike
But since there is evidence aplenty
EVIDENCE related to the existence of god(s) is totally in the mind of the believer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don: What putting people in a logical-fallacy-box does for us almost all the time is make us look superior
Logical fallacies are a way of identifying logical arguments that are unsound. Aristotle was the first to point out that common constructs simply do not work in any situation and start compiling classifications of such.
As the great and powerful Wiki says: A fallacy is reasoning that is logically invalid, or that undermines the logical validity of an argument. … When fallacies are used, the premise should be recognized as not well-grounded, the conclusion as unproven (but not necessarily false), and the argument as unsound. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies )
When we call out your logical fallacies we are telling you why we’re not buying your argument. We are not being unreasonable or trying to look superior. We are pointing out why your argument(s) are fundamentally unsound and therefore any conclusion made by them cannot be trusted.
Don: And there are times when it is legitimate to say I can’t believe that (Argument from Incredulity).
It is legitimate to believe whatever you like for whatever reason you like. But that does not make it an argument for your position. You don’t believe that life could start from non-life. That’s fine. But it isn’t an argument for why I shouldn’t believe that life from non-life is not only possible but inevitable. It’s just your opinion – unless and until you back that opinion up with evidence.
But you don’t believe evidence is necessary. So we are continuously at an impasse.
LikeLike
Kos: “But it isn’t an argument for why I shouldn’t believe that life from non-life is not only possible but inevitable. It’s just your opinion – unless and until you back that opinion up with evidence.”
Neither is it an argument for life from non-life. That is your opinion unless and until you back that opinion up with evidence. So far no one has.
LikeLike
So … of COURSE we need to fill that “gap” by believing that some unseen supernatural being has made it all come together … right???
LikeLike
Ah. . . Memorial Day in the U.S. Friends and family gathered in the backyard for fun and food. Everyone brought something and there’s something for everyone. And, once again, no Jesus – despite the open invitation. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t really want a personal relationship with me.
Don: If there is no gap that nature does not fill, natural process are an adequate explanation. We need to look no further.
No. If there is no gap, it is because we have learned the explanation. It just happens that every explanation we have ever discovered has been natural. You could change that track record by stepping up and providing evidence for something supernatural. You could go down in history as the first! That would be so exciting. I could tell all my friends that I knew Don before he was famous!
You say once we have an answer, “We need to look no further.” Again, you are wrong. Science constantly tries to disprove its findings. It is the height of a scientist’s career if he can disprove a long-held finding. This is how we know science isn’t a “faith.” Faith holds to dogma no matter the evidence. Science changes and new evidence is uncovered.
Don: Only when there is a gap, some other explanation necessary.
Nope. As we’ve seen, science questions EVERYTHING. Even long-held views.
But yes, only in the gaps are explanations needed.
Don: The interesting thing is that Naturalists always posit a natural explanation even when none has been shown to work and even when a natural explanation is unlikely.
We’ve been over this so many times, Don! I find Philosophical Naturalism dependent on proving a negative and therefore unsupported. Methodological Naturalism is the foundation of the scientific method because nothing else has been shown to exist.
I’ve been begging you and other theists for years to provide 1- evidence for anything not natural (supernatural) and 2- an objective, reliable, repeatable Supernatural Method that can be used to test non-natural things. So far, only crickets.
I think you would be surprised how quickly a Supernatural Method would be folded into the scientific method once it was evidenced and supported.
But the supernatural is not permitted in science for the same reason it is not permitted in the courtroom or history – it has been shown to be completely subjective and therefore not a path to truth.
Come on, Don, prove me wrong! Give us an objective Supernatural Method! The world is waiting.
Don: I guess you might call that Nature of the Gaps. The reasonable thing is to expect that natural processes and explanations will probably be found WHEN THEY ARE REASONABLE.
Surprisingly, you are correct. And they are always reasonable because nothing non-natural has ever been shown to exist. That will not change until something non-natural is demonstrated objectively.
To assume something that has never been evidences is completely unreasonable.
Don: A natural process for the existence of the fundamental laws that allowed the universe to exist and develop into a universe hospitable to life does not seem to be possible.
You forgot to finish that sentence, Don. “… does not seem to be possible to me (Don).
Again, as Neil pointed out, an argument from personal incredulity. Well, Don, outside your little faith community nobody gives a flying fuck what you think is possible. Your feelings are not evidence. That’s why an argument from personal incredulity is a logical fallacy and thus unreasonable.
Don: The combination of conditions that provide for a planet that is capable of supporting life like us is highly problematic.
In your personal, non-expert, unevidenced opinion.
Don: The multiple trillions of specific genetic mutations have been needed for the evolution of man from the first living organism if mutations are random is statistically implausible.
Again, in your personal, non-expert, unevidenced opinion.
I was watching an apologist the other day prattle on about the fine tuning argument. He said the odds of our Universe are “astronomical.” I couldn’t help laughing. Where else would we expect to find astronomical odds than in cosmology (astronomy)?
Oddly, the odds involved (if they could actually be known) aren’t sending physicists and cosmologists running to Don Camp (or his god) for answers.
Don: The origin of life from non-life is pretty implausible under any condition we can imagine.
Again, in your personal, non-expert, unevidenced opinion.
And again, this question is prompting more research rather than a flock of biologists begging Don Camp to explain it to them.
Don: (If it was not, we would have created life. We’ve certainly tried hard enough. We know what the components are.)
Even on the Standard Don Camp Scale of Stupid this is fucking stupid.
If we know what goes into creating a star like our Sun, why haven’t we ever made one ourselves?
Well, I’ve got one for you, Don. If Jesus created the Universe and Jesus promised his disciples that they would do greater works than he, why have we never seen a Christian create a universe?
But research continues. We’ve managed fusion (the basic function of a star) in experimental conditions (if even only for a few billionths of a second. And amazing things have been done in abiogenesis. Research continues.
But you could cut them all off at the knees by providing evidence that your god created the Sun or life or cute puppies. But you can’t so you fall back on your personal incredulity fallacy. You’ve built a god out of fallacies, Don. You must be very proud.
Don: Given those, few among many that cosmologists and biologists identify, a universe explained by natural process alone is problematic.
Thank the gods – old and new – that we have Don Camp to school the experts on what is and isn’t possible!
Again, Don, this entire screed serves only to deflect from your failings to produce any evidence whatever.
Evidence would answer so many questions and put science on the right path after so many years.
But you balk at providing any. Indeed, you get all bent out of shape when asked for it. Seriously theologians have pushed God outside of space and time. Effectively acknowledging its non-existence. That non-existence is further evidenced by the inability of its devotees to provide any evidence whatever.
Sorry, Don, all you’ve got is whining. It’s not our fault you’ve got nothing to show about/for your god.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The ‘gaps’ we have today are not those God was fitted into in days gone by. As we learn and explain more, new gaps become apparent and people like you shift God into them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
While I’m ranting about Einstein, Relativity, and time, I’ll rant a bit about Billy Bob Craig and his Kalam Cosmological Argument.
We don’t have to get into the details, but simply put: before Einstein we had the “A Theory of Time.” Einstein came along and gave us the “B Theory of Time” which is now universally accepted.
The B Theory of Time is universally accepted today because Einstein gave us the equations in both Special and General Relativity that are proven time and time again as his predictions come true every time we measure gravitational waves or spacetime distortion around a black hole or a thousand other things. Satellite navigation uses and depends on the B Theory of Time for crying out fuck’s sake.
Billy Bob Craig’s dirty little secret is that his Kalam Cosmological Argument depends on the discredited A Theory of Time. Yes! Billy Bob claims to have disproven Einstein! And not with some silly equations with predictive power. No! He’s done it by sitting on his ass and thinking really hard.
He wrote a Seriously Philosophical book about it, Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time.
Anyway, all Craig’s claims of uncaused causes and caused things need a cause and whatnot depend on Craig outsmarting Einstein about time. I wouldn’t bet on it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Okay I watched your YouTube video “evidence”…
It’s another preacher story(bullshit):
“I was an atheist…blah blah, I’d never heard of jesus…then, while in the hospital he literally appeared to me…I felt the most peace, love, blah blah…then I was miraculously well again…I was with my cousin, I spoke in tongues…then, someone miraculously paid my hospital bill…then, here’s the kicker that shows this is a lie…”a judge gave me a fine to pay of exactly $666.00.
This is a preacher with a time-massaged bullshit story that I’ve heard a million times before!
Are you kidding me?
We ask for evidence of your god and you provide this?
LikeLiked by 2 people
goyo1951: We ask for evidence of your god and you provide this?
Both Don and his god have underwhelming opinions of what constitutes evidence.
Don and God always seem to have the same ideas and view points. It’s almost like. . . wait. . . has anyone ever seen God and Don in the same room at the same time?!?
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is one piece. There’s a lot more. But your challenge caused me to think about the many intersections of heaven and earth that are recorded in history and by people today. http://biblicalmusing.blogspot.com/2023/05/intersection.html
It also led me to visit again Biologos.org where science is considered a window through which we may see God. https://youtu.be/Mbf0YaHIW50
LikeLike
What is your evidence that a god exists?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don:
“A natural process for the existence of the fundamental laws that allowed the universe to exist and develop into a universe hospitable to life does not seem to be possible. The combination of conditions that provide for a planet that is capable of supporting life like us is highly problematic.”
Here’s a link to an article explaining how GRAVITY could cause light.
https://www.universetoday.com/160838/physicists-discover-that-gravity-can-create-light/#:~:text=Researchers%20have%20discovered%20that%20in,surrounds%20us%20in%20everyday%20life.
What do you think about that, Don?
Here’s your quote:
“a universe explained by natural process alone is problematic.”
NO, IT’S NOT!!!
LikeLike
Interesting, but waves of gravity could not have shaken the space time so hard that it spontaneously created radiation. The idea of “spontaneously” is that there is no cause outside of itself. Buty it is interesting.
However, that does not provide an explanation for the fundamental laws or entropy or even gravity. I am afraid you haven’t yet convinced me by any evidence that those fundamental things had a natural origin.
LikeLike
Don:
“There is dirt and rocks evidence – which I’ve discussed many times – but is the kind of evidence we find for a herd of elk that has just passed this way or for a painter who has left us a Mona Lisa. Or it is the evidence of the intersection of heaven and earth such as the resurrected Jesus or the encounter of Abraham with God or my encounters as he guides my feet on the path before me.”
I’ve got a girlfriend, but she lives in another town.
LikeLike
I have a God who is present.
LikeLike
Don:
“Interesting, but waves of gravity could not have shaken the space time so hard that it spontaneously created radiation. The idea of “spontaneously” is that there is no cause outside of itself. Buty it is interesting.”
What?
From the article:
“Researchers have discovered that in the exotic conditions of the early universe, waves of gravity may have shaken space-time so hard that they spontaneously created radiation.”
This is literally what it says!
You are a dishonest interlocutor, you are lying on purpose, and everyone is correct in their assessment of your argument: god of the gaps.
Now you’re trying to design some silly supernatural challenge here and on the other blog that you’re currently bothering!
You’re so amateur in your reasoning, and trying to defend your god belief,
that it’s become embarrassing interacting with you!
LikeLike
Koseighty, Neil, and Nan, your comments are brilliant! You’ve all raised excellent points that Don refuses to address honestly.
It’s like discussing subjects with a child…he looks right past your convincing rebuttals, and continues to say “well what about this?”
Don’s a liar for jesus.
LikeLike
No, I wouldn’t say he’s a liar for Jesus. He’s just been totally taken in by others who don’t know any more than he does … but act like and talk like they do. 🥴
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don:
“When they the miracles Jesus did, the only reason to not believe them and accept their report as evidence of the supernatural is if they were not there or if they were unreliable. Multiple witnesses reporting the same thing would be especially convincing. And that is what we have in the Gospels. So, if you want evidence for the supernatural, there you have it.”
The Miracle of the Sun occurred on 13 October 1917 near Fatima in Portugal. Thousands saw the sun apparently spinning in the sky, becoming blue and then yellow and changing size, for about 10 minutes. The faithful, at Fatima for a promised miracle, saw it as a validation of their belief.
Is this evidence that the sun was spinning in the sky, changing colors, Don?
Thousands saw it…it has to be true, right?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Don:
“ A natural process for the existence of the fundamental laws that allowed the universe to exist and develop into a universe hospitable to life does not seem to be possible. The combination of conditions that provide for a planet that is capable of supporting life like us is highly problematic. The multiple trillions of specific genetic mutations have been needed for the evolution of man from the first living organism if mutations are random is statistically implausible. The origin of life from non-life is pretty implausible under any condition we can imagine.”
From:
ACADEMIC LECTURES
LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
1996
This lecture is the intellectual property of Professor S.W.Hawking:
“One possibility is that the formation of something like DNA, which could reproduce itself, is extremely unlikely. However, in a universe with a very large, or infinite, number of stars, one would expect it to occur in a few stellar systems, but they would be very widely separated. The fact that life happened to occur on Earth, is not however surprising or unlikely. It is just an application of the Weak Anthropic Principle: if life had appeared instead on another planet, we would be asking why it had occurred there.”
Do you see that, Don?
“The fact that life happened to occur on earth, IS NOT SURPRISING OR UNLIKELY.
That’s from your boy, Hawking.
What do you say?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The only way they can continue to believe ancient myths is constantly to alter them so that they ‘fit’ the advances in knowledge. It’s really quite pathetic.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Don:
“Hawking is difficult to understand, especially by someone who is not a physicist, and even then his ideas are not received by all. But I think he deserves to be heard.”
Are you a physicist Don?
You’re acting like no one’s ever heard of him, and now you’re his big defender.
I don’t remember any scientific news about “Hawking proves there’s a heaven!”
LikeLike
Neil: So tell us, Christians, where is Jesus? And where is the evidence he’s where you say he is?
Serious Theologians™ have moved God’s abode many times over the years. Most recently, and almost universally, they now place him “outside space and time.” Which places him outside of reality/existence.
In their quest to make him unfalsifiable, they’ve defined him as nonexistent.
They will try to special plead their way out of this corner – generally, as you point out, by appealing to some multi-dimensional multiverse. But I’m not having it. They’ve pushed their god out of reality and I’m fine with that.
As for evidence – they’ve got nothing. Same as for every claim they make.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely right. Though guess who knows better…
LikeLike
I look at the descriptions of the post-resurrection Jesus. He seemed to be able to appear and disappear as he chose. See Luke 24:31 where Jesus disappeared from their sight and where he appeared in a locked room in John 20:19. It is implied as well in his appearance in Galilee apparently without walking, at least not with the disciples. He also disappeared from their sight in Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9. And then of course there is his appearance to Paul on the Damascus road.
If these are reports of what the disciples experienced, Hawking’s “fourth dimension” of reality that is neither spatially distant from this dimension nor of the same substance as this dimension seems like a good “scientific” description of heaven.
So, where is heaven? It is as present as the sea is to a glass of water submerged in it. It is all around the glass though far greater than the water in the glass, but it is in the glass also. That is pretty close to what theologians have for a very long time described as the transcendence and immanence of God.
LikeLike
What you on, Don? Maybe there’s something in that water you’re wittering about.
LikeLike
Back again briefly, Kos. The appearance and disappearance of beings from the “fourth dimension in this dimension is not limited to Jesus. I think of God walking in the garden in the breeze of the evening (beautiful image BTW). of God and two angels appearing to Abraham, of the angel of the Lord appearing to Gideon, of the angel of the Lord who appeared to David by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, of the angel that appeared to Zechariah while he ministered in the temple, of the angel who sat on the stone and spoke to the women who had come to anoint Jesus’ body, of the angel who spoke to Peter in prison. It is a pretty common thing, and it is hard to wave all these off as literary devices such as metaphor.
There is also the image of the new heaven and new earth in Revelation 21. There it describes heaven (the fourth dimension) merging with earth (this dimension) as the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to the earth (this dimension) and becomes the dwelling place of God in the combined heaven and earth.
LikeLike
Acts: 1:9-12
9 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight…(into the fourth dimension)10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven(the fourth dimension),as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, 11 who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?(the fourth dimension)?This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into the fourth dimension will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into the fourth dimension”.
Don’s new hero: Steven Hawking
Sorry dude, but I’m not accepting this either! Science keeps revealing more knowledge of the universe, and you try to make it fit with your ancient text.
It doesn’t work!
By the way, Steven Hawking was an atheist…you do know that, right?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, I know Hawking was an atheist. What has that got to do with his science?
Yes, I know that science keeps changing. But as many here have said it does keep getting closer to what really is. (How is it that atheists quote science against Christianity if you are convinced that science is not quite right? Hey, who knows whether science will one day actually confirm the flat earth theory.)
Seriously however, my point is that according to Hawking’s science at the end of his life he saw the plausibility/possibility/probability of a dimension of reality unseen by us. And that suggests to me that a spiritual realm is reasonable and compatible with science at the present.
LikeLike
Don:
“It sounds something like what heaven might be if heaven were of the same or similar substance as the universe we know”
“ If so, heaven is not up there somewhere or distant from this universe but close, as being face to face with it but a different dimension. That isn’t far from Hawking’s fourth dimension.”
“If we accept Hawking’s fourth dimension as science, doesn’t science recognize just such a place?”
“If these are reports of what the disciples experienced, Hawking’s “fourth dimension” of reality that is neither spatially distant from this dimension nor of the same substance as this dimension seems like a good “scientific” description of heaven.”
“There is also the image of the new heaven and new earth in Revelation 21. There it describes heaven (the fourth dimension) merging with earth (this dimension) as the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to the earth (this dimension) and becomes the dwelling place of God in the combined heaven and earth.”
These all begin with the conjunction “if”…then, by the time Don gets to his last comment, it’s an established fact that heaven and god exist in a “fourth dimension”, and THIS is what the biblical authors had in mind when they wrote these words two thousand years ago.
Keep your stinking religion out of science!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Okay, Don. Now that we’ve dispensed with your attempt to seem all sciencey by erroneously appealing to a great atheist scientist, let’s get down you your claims.
We all know the stories in the Bible that you want to somehow “prove” with your appeal to a 20th century sci-fi trope. So why try to couch them in science/sci-fi? For the same reason you try to wrap so many of your claims in science – because you have NO evidence.
We all agree – according to the story Jesus sometimes teleported, sometimes antigravitied, sometimes distortion fielded himself about. Basically, in the story, Jesus is magic. We get it.
But what we’re asking for, what we’ve always been asking for, is EVIDENCE. Not a claim. Not a pseudoscientific explanation. Not an appeal to sci-fi. We want EVIDENCE.
Maybe a bunch of apologists should get together and launch a prob to Heaven, take some pictures, take some soil samples, and return them to Earth. Is that too much to ask? In them meantime all you’ve got is a storybook full of empty claims.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don: It is a pretty common thing, and it is hard to wave all these off as literary devices such as metaphor.
But these were common tropes in the greco-roman world. And had been for centuries.
See Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story by Robert Conner.
LikeLike
As an amateur astronomer, I have observed many objects within our solar system, and many, many, galaxies/galaxy clusters outside of our Milky Way. Heaven has yet to be located. But I will keep an eye out, just in case. 😉
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks, shelldigger. You never know, it might turn up someday.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It should be lit up with the light of a million and one pious assholes, and one god so bright to look upon, would kill a mortal… Ought to be easy to spot. Funny no one has seen it yet. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Kos, Einstein may be right (B-theory of time) when this universe alone is in view, and Hawking maybe right ( C-theory) when the multiverse is in view. Both the A-theory and the B-theory seem to relate to this universe without consideration of a multiverse.
As theoretical physicists consider the possibility of a multiverse (Hawking the probability of a multiverse) both A and B theories become inadequate.
Now how that impinges on Craig’s ontological argument I do not know, maybe you can tell me.
LikeLike
Correction: Craig’s cosmological argument.
LikeLike
Neil:
I’m trying to like several comments, and it’s not letting me…is something not turned on on my end?
LikeLike
If I may … sometimes WordPress gets finicky … and you have to “sign in” before it will let you comment or “like”. It’s something fairly new … but SUPER irritating!!
LikeLike
Thanks nan…but I am signed in…it used to let me “like” comments…not now.
No biggie, but y’all are making such great comments, I really want to like them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi goyo. Did you have any luck with ‘like’? I can’t see anything to reset at my end. I’ll keep looking.
LikeLike
No, but that’s okay…I’ll just make a comment.
Thanks!
LikeLike
Right now, in order to post this comment, I have to “sign in” by clicking on the WordPress “W” under the message box. THEN … in order to “like” any comments, I have to reload the page. Nuts, I know, but …
I don’t know if this will work for you, but maybe it’s worth a try.
LikeLike
Thanks Nan…I’ve tried re-logging in, and even changed my avatar to no avail…the weird thing is, I used to be able to.
I really appreciate the help!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve checked and ‘Likes for all comments’ is set for on. Reading around, the problem may be your cookies setting (I can’t see it myself) so if you wanted to take a look at that, it might resolve the issue.
LikeLike
Got it! I had to re-sign in like Nan said…I just found the three dots.
Thanks everyone!
LikeLiked by 2 people