Did The Christian "God" Have A Beginning?

[haas mark]

The point remains: religion does not answer the question "why", nor does it answer the question "how". It answers nothing at all.

To rational people anyways. To those that believe in it, it answers anything that they can't explain with more than "It just is."

[Darth Wong]

How? It simply punts to other questions which it cannot answer by its own admission, since God is inscrutable.

[haas mark]

How? It simply punts to other questions which it cannot answer by its own admission, since God is inscrutable.

It always has. If it can be answered by science as "it just is," then of course the believers are going to want a different explanation. So they ask why, and _________(insert holy book/deity here)_______ says it happened this way, so religion (the belief in a deity, and the "word" of that deity) answers the "why" questions.

[pecker]

In my world, the reason why religious people try to answer the "why" questions is because they know that they cannot answer the "how" questions. The problem is that they fail to answer the "why" questions as well.

-Why did your god create the universe?
-Why did god create satan?
-Why doesn't your god manifest itself in its creation?
etc

1) He was bored?
2) God didn't 'create' Satan, assuming said entity exists. As story goes, Lucifer was a fallen angel.
3)http://kier.3dfrontier.com/forums/showt ... adid=39006

You're an idiot. He asked those questions in order to point out that religionists' claims of answering the "why" questions are blatantly false; they answer nothing. As for your "answers":

1) Idle, unfalsifiable speculation is not an answer.
2) God supposedly created everything, including angels.
3) Ah, the old "God does not want to show himself because he wants us to believe in him of our own free will" argument. OK, why does he want us to believe in him of our own free will? You don't get it; you are not answering any questions; you are merely punting to other questions and hoping no one will ask them.

The point remains: religion does not answer the question "why", nor does it answer the question "how". It answers nothing at all.

I wasn't trying to answer anything. I don't have any answers. I don't pretend to.

In case you didn't notice, my answer to the first question WASN'T an answer at all. I said it to point out that nobody could ever know why. How many answers end in a question mark?

I'll admit the second answer is sloppy. But considering I don't even think I believe the whole Lucifer story...

As for the third part, did you read the continual references to the fact that it was only an idea? A possibility? An off-the-wall idea I had on the crapper? I wasn't trying to give an answer. Just start a conversation. See what other people thought. I never once said I believed it to be true.

[Darth Wong]

How? It simply punts to other questions which it cannot answer by its own admission, since God is inscrutable.

It always has. If it can be answered by science as "it just is," then of course the believers are going to want a different explanation. So they ask why, and _________(insert holy book/deity here)_______ says it happened this way, so religion (the belief in a deity, and the "word" of that deity) answers the "why" questions.

In other words, it replaces "it just is" with "it is God's will, and we don't have to know why". Same answer, with a wholly unnecessary extra term added for no reason other than to give them an excuse to demand money on Sunday.

[haas mark]

How? It simply punts to other questions which it cannot answer by its own admission, since God is inscrutable.

It always has. If it can be answered by science as "it just is," then of course the believers are going to want a different explanation. So they ask why, and _________(insert holy book/deity here)_______ says it happened this way, so religion (the belief in a deity, and the "word" of that deity) answers the "why" questions.

In other words, it replaces "it just is" with "it is God's will, and we don't have to know why". Same answer, with a wholly unnecessary extra term added for no reason other than to give them an excuse to demand money on Sunday.

Basically what I was trying to say, just put moe eloquently.

[Darth Wong]

In case you didn't notice, my answer to the first question WASN'T an answer at all. I said it to point out that nobody could ever know why. How many answers end in a question mark?

I'll admit the second answer is sloppy. But considering I don't even think I believe the whole Lucifer story...

As for the third part, did you read the continual references to the fact that it was only an idea? A possibility? An off-the-wall idea I had on the crapper? I wasn't trying to give an answer. Just start a conversation. See what other people thought. I never once said I believed it to be true.

OK, you're saying it was all ambiguous and was not meant to address the point. So why did you bother posting it?

[pecker]

In case you didn't notice, my answer to the first question WASN'T an answer at all. I said it to point out that nobody could ever know why. How many answers end in a question mark?

I'll admit the second answer is sloppy. But considering I don't even think I believe the whole Lucifer story...

As for the third part, did you read the continual references to the fact that it was only an idea? A possibility? An off-the-wall idea I had on the crapper? I wasn't trying to give an answer. Just start a conversation. See what other people thought. I never once said I believed it to be true.

OK, you're saying it was all ambiguous and was not meant to address the point. So why did you bother posting it?

It was meant to address the point. Just because I don't give an answer doesn't mean I'm not commenting.

In the first part, I was agreeing. It is an unanswerable question. I'll just ignore the whole angel thing, that always confuses me. As for the third part, posting an idea on the matter, while far from an answer, is still a pretty valid reason to post.