Yet, this fervent believer presented a fairly rational, lucid
argument against the concept of Trinity and its implications.
She can connect several dots to achieve this, but she can’t (or
refuses to) connect the two dots which separate “old man”+”preteen” from “pedophile”.

I don’t want everyone to be an atheist like me, but if people
applied the same standards they use on other people’s beliefs
on their own, there would be many less bigots (like these two) around.

I’m not the one coming to a conclusion. I’ve said multiple times that I don’t have the information to decide whether there was a first cause or not, or what the first cause was if it does exist. You are the one making a positive claim, and thus you are required to present some evidence, which you have failed to do. I have no reason to believe that a first cause must exist, or that it must be supernatural and intelligent, based on your account. Your evidence consists of you saying that it is obvious. Using the word ‘obvious’ simply shows that you don’t have any evidence beyond your intuition, which I have already shown to be suspect when talking about the beginnings of the universe. It’s rather arrogant to claim something to be obvious when the world’s best physicists still claim to be in the dark about these questions.

Your objection to Wikipedia is true of all encyclopedias, because they are all secondary sources. As I said in the post, I went on to read the primary source (Sowa’s paper) to make sure the information from Wikipedia was presented accurately. You can’t claim that Wikipedia is the problem when the primary source is cited for you to see yourself. I heard no objection from you that Wikipedia mischaracterized Sowa’s work, or that Sowa is grossly mistaken.

I think what we are dealing with can be reduced to the following- Is matter eternal or is Deity eternal?

I’m not sure what you even mean here. Of course a deity is eternal, its definition requires that it be eternal. However, you need to prove that one exists, which is where I have the problem. You can’t simply define something to be eternal, and then claim that it must be the first cause. You also haven’t shown why matter (or energy) cannot be eternal.

Pascal’s Wager is a bogus argument; so many have already discredited it. Even if I wanted to believe in order to save my soul, who exactly am I supposed to believe? You haven’t given me any reason to believe the Christian doctrine over the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, various Ba’alists and pagan religions, and countless others. The likelihood that you are right is incredibly small.

Just because you like your version or reality better than mine doesn’t make it correct. I prefer to base my beliefs on evidence rather than what makes me feel good. When I don’t have enough evidence to prove either side of an argument, I reserve judgment, which I have done here.

I understand you hope that I would change my mind, but I am more likely to do that if I see some real evidence, rather than scare tactics (i.e., you’ll go to Hell if you don’t believe).

I will have e.l. not because I deserve it, but because it is given to me as an absolutely free gift.

You’d be advised to put off studying Sowa and get back to studying what Christianity actually entails. Eternal life given as an absolutely free gift? Hardly. Free stuff is always cheap stuff. You’re right about this much: you probably don’t deserve it. If you had given your all and spared yourself nothing in the pursuit of truth, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and you’d be worthy of everlasting life. It’s clear to me that you have not.

Happy, I doubt it.

You can quote from Wikipedia if you want. Reading Wiki is like talking to your back door neighbor over the fence. He has a lot to say, but you wonder how accurate and reliable his info is. Wiki is a good jumping off place, but I’m careful not to come to any final conclusions based on what I read there.
Yes, I’ve read briefly about Sowa’s conclusions. I’m in the process of more study on his work.
I think what we are dealing with can be reduced to the following- Is matter eternal or is Deity eternal?

Here is a way to look at the long term effects of our different worldviews-
If you are correct, It all ends at death and I lose nothing.
On the other hand, if I am right, you lose everything and I gain eternal life in heaven. I will have e.l. not because I deserve it, but because it is given to me as an absolutely free gift. I’m sure you are not offended when I say that I hope you will change your mind.
By the way, I’m not a troll as much as I am a fisherman as in “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men.”
Its been an enjoyable conversation. Thanks for your time.

I have no interest in discussing anything with you, since most people learn that circular definitions are invalid after they’ve left grade school. You’re definition of causality is laughable, and no philosopher or scientist would dare provide such a childish explanation.

According to Sowa (2000), up until the twentieth century, three assumptions described by Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality:

1. “Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect.

2. “Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect.

3. “Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact.” (Born, 1949, as cited in Sowa, 2000)

However, according to Sowa (2000), “relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of human experience.”

(I stole this from Wikipedia, so everyone is aware that any idiot can find out about the basics if they take a second to look. Here’s a link to Sowa’s full article if anyone is interested, I’ll be reading more later on: http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/causal.htm)

I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’ve done 10 minutes of work and backed up my claim that you can’t rely on simple human experience to deal with the fundamentals of causality.

You also STILL haven’t addressed my initial objection, which seems to be a common technique among argumentative Christians when dealing with something they know nothing about.

I think Heavy may be right about you, that you are a troll. You seem to just be throwing out objections without any relevance.

You have failed to answer my initial objection. Even if we concede that there is a first cause, that it must be supernatural or intelligent? If its not both of those things, calling God attaches a misleading label to that first cause. I doubt you have even the slightest amount of evidence to decide what the first cause was, so to assume that it is God is a huge leap of faith. Somehow, it seems to require more faith to jump to a conclusion than to say that I, nor anyone else, know what the first cause was, or if it existed at all.

I mentioned the Big Bang because that, so far, is the farthest back in time we know anything about. It had nothing to do with my argument that you, and anyone else for that matter, knows that at an atomic level every event must has a cause. If we take a look at, for example, quantum mechanics, we can see that causation may not work in a way that is intuitive.

Philosophers and physicists have debated about the possibility of backward causation, where an effect can precede its cause. Quantum theory suggests that one interpretation of the positron is for an electron (which has a negative charge) moving backwards in time would appear to have a positive charge (i.e. a positron). Or, if hypothetical tachyons (particles which theoretically move faster than the speed of light) actually do exist, they could transfer information backwards in time depending on reference frames. Scientists have not been able to prove or disprove the existence of these particles.

Obviously, the above does not prove or disprove a first cause; it is meant to show that intuition does not come close to adequately understanding the way things work, especially when we talk about things much smaller than we are used to observing (i.e. subatomic particles).

By the way, I’m a big computer nerd, so for anyone interested in quantum theory (or computing, for that matter), check this article out:
http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5062