Logical argument for a creator and an explanation of why I am a Catholic

That's actually a good thing because an infinite regression of causes is exactly what we see in nature.

 

there is no concrete evidence yes but I can come to this conclusion through philosophical reasoning unlike those who say no cause is needed.

 

Then the logically correct thing is to say "I don't know" until we have better evidence. It is not logical to say "I don't know, therefor it must be God, and therefor God must be the Catholic God".

 

But you are trying to apply rules *within* space and time to the totality of space and time itself. That's like saying that because none of the individual parts of an airplane can fly, airplanes can't fly. I'm confident that there isn't a cause for the universe because the argument that there is one is self-contradictory. It attempts to place time within time. Again, like north of the north pole. Your reason and regression fail because they make extreme assumptions that can't be supported and are self-contradictory. You are still essentially arguing that causality requires a cause, which you are free to believe as a matter of faith, but it can't be supported by logic.

 

You can't come to that conclusion without making leaps of logic that have nothing supporting them.

 

Please explain your "Reason" as it is unclear.

 

you may find the questions go the other way around but in my encounters, they have not so i phrased it the way my typical encounters go. They are 2 stand-alone arguments whatever order you put them in.

yes it would have been harder but If a Catholic priest praying over me healed my terminal cancer and then I would later have visions of the Christian God in moments of contemplation (still more experiences) I would have converted to Catholicism.

 

I find that civil debate expands my mind. heated arguments are pointless though.

 

Proof 1) At some point matter/energy matter and energy managed to assume a structure/configuration that gained knowledge of its existence. This is the one thing we know for sure. "I think therefor I am " .

Since this even happened, in this case referring to the configuration of matter and energy that makes you .... you, there is a finite probability that this event could happen again. Given an infinite amount of time all finite probabilities will re-occur infinitely.

You will exist again .. and forever.

There was a force that directed this event. Call it the forces of the universe if you like. Call this force God which could be viewed as one in the same.

The conundrum of self awareness is the question of how this awareness manifested itself into physical reality. OK ... so one day some energy waves figure out the matter exists. These energy waves are contained within that vessel.

How did this energy manage to manifest into physical reality ? For example - Look down at the index finger on your right hand. Now make the finger move. How did this happen ? A thought manifested itself into physical reality. Sure one can claim that they are electrically connected but, how did this happen in the first instance ?

How does the will manifest itself into physical reality ? This is a strange problem. Now with humans this ability is restricted to within one's body (until we figure out telekinesis).

If one could use one's will to manipulate energy/matter outside one's body then one would have God-like powers.

That is my definition of a God.... and I will end here and continue with the second problem in a separate post.

How do we know that this God is the Catholic God ?

 

Thats why even if there were an infinite regression there has to be a cause for the existence of that infinite regression and for there to be a first cause it would have to be something interdimensional and exist in a dimension not bound by PSR as everything in the third dimension is bound by PSR and if there is a cause from a higher dimension we cant apply the reasoning of our dimension to higher dimensions just as you cant apply two dimensional reasoning and laws to the third demension.

 

Now you just need to provide evidence that "higher dimension" exists rather than just assuming it does.

 

You are contradicting yourself again. If there is a first cause, there is no infinite regression. If there is an infinite regression, there is no first cause. And you are trying to bind the universe by dimensions that exist *within* the universe, which also makes no sense.

 

I dont see how In am The causes and PSR are all within space and time and I am saying there needs to be something above that for the causes and PSR to exist and that something cant be bound by 3-dimensional thinking.

The causes are the individual parts of the plane the plane is the universe the physics of the plane and flight are PSR and the mechanic is the being/cause not bound by the rules the plane and parts are bound by and he built the plane

it doesn't place time within time it says that there has to be something beyond time for time to work.

 

But what you don't seem to understand is that the universe is not *within* space and time. It *is* space and time.

The universe does not exists *within* the 3-dimensional model. It *contains* the 3-dimensional model.

There is no reason to believe that the universe that *contains* the plane would be subject to the rules that exist *within* the plane. Again, see the north of the north pole analogy.

Yes, it very much does.

Because of the logical fallacies outlined above. Things within time need a cause, therefore time needs a cause. That's a big fallacy.

 

To fulfill dimensional logic there has to be something beyond three-dimensional logic the "first cause" is beyond time we cant comprehend what it means to be beyond time but just because I cant grasp it doesn't mean that I can know that it is there.

 

You are making observations within time and trying to extrapolate them to apply to time itself. It makes no sense. North of the north pole. You are arguing that causality requires a cause.

 

So you are saying the universe is greater than the laws that govern it

That is what I am saying the universe that contains the plane is not subject to the rules that exist within the plane I am saying it does not it is beyond the rules the plane is governed by and because of that it can create the plane govern by rules the universe that contains it is not.

 

To the question of how do we know that the Catholic dogma in any way shape or form represents God. The simple answer is that we do not.

One thing we do know however is that the Catholic Church became an anathema to Christ. (more on this later).

I think Orthodox would disagree with your apostolic lineage claim. My second point i that I do not think either Orthodox or Catholic has much of a lineage to Jesus.

After the death of Jesus the disciples formed the Church of Jerusalem. There were numerous other Christian factions that formed but the main competing faction was that started by the apostle Paul. (I think it would be better to call him the heretic Paul but will let it be for the moment).

Paul did not know Jesus while Jesus was alive. He did not become a Christian until years after the death of Jesus. Paul was not part of the Church of Jerusalem and did no associate much with the disciples. The writings of Paul do not contain any stories about the life of Jesus which does not bode well for the "lineage" claim. That Paul contradicts Jesus with his Sola Fide doctrine and in other things is also a problem.

The book in the Bible that has the most claim to lineage is the Gospel of Mark. Mark was not written until decades after the death of Jesus (roughly 65AD) but, tradition holds that its author was a pupil/ interpreter for Peter.

The next Gospel Matt which is written after the fall of the Temple (roughly 80AD). The author of Matt is already engaging in Pious fraud. This author uses Mark as a source document. Matt contains all of Mark "except" for a few select passages that show Jesus and/or the disciples in a derogatory way.

This is straight out of the Catholic Encyclopedia

Analogy to the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10057a.htm

What is interesting here not just the omission but also what the Author adds. He adds a lineage back to King David. He adds a virgin birth story (Jesus was not born of a Virgin in the first edition - Mark) and most importantly he adds the smoking gun for resurrection - Stories of Jesus wandering around in the flesh after death.

So then. Prior to the writing of Matthew ... there was no "Virgin Birth" and no proof cited in scripture of any physical resurrection. In Mark the story ends with an empty tomb. ( I am assuming that you know that long ending of Mark is a proven falsehood - we know this because it was not in any early Bibles and remained absent in many Bibles for numerous centuries after Constantine).

In Matt we see evolution of the divinity of Jesus. In Mark Jesus is made divine at his baptism. In Matt the divinity of Jesus is at Birth.

It is interesting to note that Clement (first Pope/head of the Church) around 95 AD knows naught of any physical resurrection. It is possible then that these stories were not part of the original Matt or perhaps Clement did not know of Matt, or that Matt was written as late as 100AD.

Christianity is evolving along with the divinity of Jesus After the fall of the Temple the Romans punish the Jews and Pauline Christianity starts to avoid anything Jewish. By the time we get to 100 AD there is is little sign of the Church of Jerusalem. (it is worth studying this transitional time period).

In comes the Author of John. This is written from 100-120 AD the Church has Changed. The Gospel of John has a distinctly anti-Jewish character.

This author is trying to expand the appeal of Christianity and so he uses language familiar to the Greek speaking Pauline Crowd. He uses the term "Logos" (mistranslated in the Bible as "the word") for Jesus.

While it is true that the word "Logos" means writing/words. In a religious context it means the emissary between God and Man. Jesus was believe to have spoken for God through the Holy Spirit. His words were then the word of God.

Jesus however was NOT - God. None of the early Christians nor the disciples nor the early Church fathers , nor Jesus himself, believed that Jesus "was" God - God of Abraham.

Making Jesus "the logos" however was a further evolution of the divinity of Jesus into the land of pre-existence.

It was not for another 2 centuries that Jesus actually became God by decree of Emperor Constantine.

I have to run so I will stop here ..

 

I'm saying that you can't try to turn laws *within* the universe to laws that govern the universe as a whole. For example, within the universe, we have laws like gravity. That doesn't mean that the entire universe is falling just because an acorn falls if I drop it on earth.

 

I don't understand why you say me saying "beyond time" means "within time."

To your analogy just as the north pole is still defined by the cardinal directions time is still governed by PSR

there is no north of the north pole but there is a universe above it so why is it impossible for the there to be a dimension beyond time

 

gravity is a law of physics PSR is a law of the progression of time and history

 

Everything you propose is mere imagined possibility and thus cannot and will not be taken seriously as theory. There is absolutely nothing to examine or observe just as with the God you seem to use as an explanation.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that we all get behind the idea that the law-less universe spawned spontaneous natural laws, I'm just suggesting it as a clear and concise example which highlights the issues I want to bring up. I ask you only to consider it, not to accept it as true.

In practice, I would remain unconvinced by any suggestion unless I have a good reason to believe in it.

I'm not quite certain what kind of complexity you're referring to. The vast majority of the universe is not very complex, and the exceptions are all suitably explained by evolution. What do we mean by a perfect universe? Is it perfect only with respect to humans, and if so, is it not possible that it's not really the universe which is perfect to us, but our criteria of what a perfect universe should look like which has been shaped to conform to what the universe can provide?

Could you mention the most convincing one? I can't remember one that carries any particular amount of believability.

Could you give some examples of people arguing that? I'm not convinced you have interpreted the arguments correctly. One time when that argument was particularly common was during the rise of socialism, and those argument were not made against the first church fathers as much as they were against contemporary church leaders (Lenin talked a bit about "modern religion" and Marx is often interpreted to have talked specifically about organised religion when he wrote about the opiate of the masses).

It seems to me you have chosen "the base defining factor" based on the interpretation that you're trying to focus on. A Buddhist or a Muslim might not agree with you that that difference is the most important one.

No worries. However, my point stands, what does supposed revelation add to the story? It's not like Islam, Judaism and other religions don't have revelations of various kinds.

In your bolded statement you said the rest of the post was going to be specifically about Catholicism, and here you say again that this will be about Catholicism, yet in the actual argument, I see nothing that alludes to Catholicism. Throughout the post, I can't see anything about Catholicism except promises that you're about to talk about it.

 

In my experience anyone who does not know Hebrew, Greek, and Latin does not understand the Bible at all.

And neither did Bozo The Clown.

 

According to the philosophers Aristotle and San Tomas Aquinas, there had to be a First Cause to create the Universe.

This First Cause is God.