If you could establish #2 you'd win a Nobel prize and you're name would be a household word.

"This conclusion has been confirmed by a series of remarkable discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. The astrophysical evidence indicates the universe began to exist in a cataclysmic explosion known as the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. Physical space and time were created in that event, as well as all the matter and energy in the universe. Therefore, as the Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle points out, the Big Bang theory requires the creation of the universe from nothing. This is because, as you go back in time, you reach a point at which, in Hoyle's words, the universe was "shrunk down to nothing at all." Thus, what the Big Bang model requires is that the universe began to exist and was created out of nothing."

So then you believe that God is an egostist who created a flawed dog-eat-dog universe on purpose?

Hey, more power to you.

What are you going to suggest next?

That this egotistical God can only forgive people if he is first appeased by having someone nailed to a pole?

That would imply that he has horrible character flaws.

Moreover, the very idea that he is a 'personal egostical HIM' already suggests that he has tons of flaws.

So you're just working up an argument that we were created by a flawed egotistical individual being?

Good luck with that argument.

I've already shown why your premise arguments are false.

"There must have been a cause that brought the universe into being. From the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe."

Go study science for a while and come back.

You have a very limited and lacking view of the scientific picture. What you've just posted here is already antiquated scientifically and way over-simplified in any case.

I have not even told you I am a christian, though I am. You raise good questions. I do not deny that. I think I might be some help of answering those questions although this would be for a different thread.

As I've said before, I won't personally argue with this idea anyway because it's perfectly in line with Pantheism.

I still disagree that it's been proven though.

What has always existed is the quantum field. Many believe that the quantum field is the primordial spirit which gives rise to all of exisence. In this way spirit is omniscient in everything.

That's actually Pantheism.

Go study science? Did you see some of the scholars who were quoted.

I am getting most of my information from top rank scholars.

An actual infinite leads to contradiction.

Typically panthesists don't go around trying to prove the existence of "God".

So that was a big hint.

I believe that our true nature is spirit. I'm a pantheist. I believe that I am spirit (as are you and everything else). There was never a time when we were naught, and there will never be a time when we cease to exist.

That's what I tend to "believe", but don't ask me to prove it or I'll be forced to confess that intellectually I have no choice but to be agnostic.

I can give you a myriad of reasons why I believe the Mediterranean picture of God to have been entirely the fabrication of man.

I can't give you a single honest reason why anyone should believe it is the word of God.

I was baptised and raised as a Christian. My Christian family was very nice and not fantatical at all. Religion overall was not a bad experience for me. I just finally came to the relization that the Bible can't possible be the word of any divine being.

That's my firm conclusion based on my life's experiences.

That hasn't driven me to atheism though. I still believe in spirit as much as I always have. I just view spirit differently than I used to.

Pantheism is actually a very beautiful picture of "god". It's just different and less understood than the Mediterranean picture.

So?

The notion that anything can be finite leads to contradition too.

In fact, you'll find that all human thought ultimately leads to contradiction.

What else is new?

I still like the John Lennon definition:
God is a concept, by which we measure our pain.

But the law of non contradiction cannot be violated when dealing with truth.

How long have you held a pantheistic view?

Besides, if contradictions bother you why would you be attracted to the Biblical picture of God?

Talk about contraditions!

The very idea of an all-powerful God being at war with a measly fallen angel is a contradition right there.

Especially if you consider that this supposedly all-powerful all-wise God would have had to sacrifice his own Son in this war.

That would imply that God is not all-powerful by any means since he had to stoop to such desperate measures.

It would also imply that God is not all-wise since he couldn't figure out a better way to win the war.

The Bible has God solving all his problems using very crude violent methods.

He couldn't even deliver a 'promised land' that didn't have heathens living on it that needed to be murdered.

Come on.

Those aren't contradictions to the idea of an all-wise all-powerful God?

Sure they are!

How about the fact that a supposedly unchanging God supposedly so hated the world that he flooded out the bulk of humanity for being sinners.

But then later this same supposedly unchanging God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son to save it?

That's not a contradiction?

It is to me.

If you don't like contradictions then why would you even begin to consider the Biblical picture?

To believe in the Bible is truly a journey into placing your faith in the the most bizare contradictions imaginable.

I don't mean to be picking on your religion. I'm just addressing the concept of contradictions.

Keep in mind that I was a Christian once myself. In fact, I was hoping to teach the religion. It was when I began to study it for the purpose of teaching it that I came to the realization that it's utterly absurd.

Not only could I not teach it with a straight face, but I realized that I couldn't believe it myself either.

So if you're concerned with contradictions I can't imagine why you would support the idea that a Mediterranean picture of God is correct when that picture is nothing but contradiction after contradiction.

In hindsight I believe that I've always held a pantheistic view even from birth. Even when I was a Christian.

After all, even Christianity teaches that God is supposed to be omniscient. I took that to heart.

However, I didn't actually begin to study the Eastern philosophies and religions until I was about 30.

That's when I started to realize that the innate view that I have always held was actually a valid religion and philosophy in the far east.

Your question is a red herring.

If you want to give me 2 different verses that you think are contradictory I would be happy to answer them.

Have you studied the historical Jesus?

I used to get into that. But I've found that to be totally futile and unproductive. It just ends up with everyone disagreeing on interpretations and context and nothing is gained from that.

As far as I'm concerned the real contraditions are in the bird's eye view of the whole story.

Like the fact that God is supposed to be unchanging yet at one point he floods humanity out as a way of dealing with sin, and then later he has his son become a sacrifical lamb to pay for the sins of man.

To me that's a blatant contradition that God is unchanging and thus DEPENDABLE.

But how are you going to show that kind of contradiction by comparing two verses?

You can't. You have to look at the whole picture.