Here's the breakdown of this whole thread:

Christians, or rather Christians that actually read the Bible and follow it are not stuck up in any way. The Bible teaches morals that are stable with society. Christians will generally love as much or more than others. I know it sounds corny, but love is the strongest thing you could ever find. The only animosity could have with Christians is the ocassional annoyance of them asking you to become one.

You're ignoring the cancer one.

What was that one then, agin, I thought the cancer one WAS the creationism one

And that's not at all the point of this thread- the point is to get the philosophers like myself away from our Nietzsche and the like, and Christians away from the Bible and the "God can do it/did it/did everything/mysterious ways" argument so BOTH sides can have a debate where we don't fall back on our old dogmas...

What was that one then, agin, I thought the cancer one WAS the creationism one

Creationism and cancer aren't connected at all.

Then what WAS I?!

Geez, just tell me,instead of keeping on telling me what it's NOT...

*IT

That's exactly it. You were trying to connect the two while they can NOT.

"Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell - a great book.

I googled the book and found that it uses a lot of logical arguments, which is a relatively weak argument when talking about Christians being acceptable to society.

jman - that's my point

exactly what you would expect from Bertrand Russell though, author of "Mathematical Logic."

@BusDespres:
"and more on the big bang... if that created everything then were did the bang come from? were did the particles come from? The only Logical explanation would be God or Some Ultimate being...."

See, these posts just kill me. You cannot explain where the particles came from, so god must exist. Ok, then who created god? You cannot explain where god came from either, so god's god must exist. uh...crap, infinite loop...umm, core dump, reboot universe.

Religion seems to usually mean, throw out all reason and logic in favor of faith. God is the answer. Why is water wet? God. Why does the sun rise? God. But, see, science comes around with time to explain those things through observation, logic and reason. Religion's response to this is usually to deny the science, until they no longer can do so.

@Tantris:
Followup to my last post...

What is even more amusing is that BusDespres says that the only "logical" explanation would be God. He threw logic out the door in favor of superstition, and then claims it is logic.

We are slipping back into dogma gain, from Russell on the one side and God on the other (that's why I recall we invented "Marvin?" ;) )

Now then, let's all just put our books away and politely and without the help of any dogma figure out the ultimate meaning and workings of Life, the Universe, and Everything (and first one to say "42!" gets a bullet through the brain- we've already made use of "Marvin," that's quite enough Hitch Hiking there...) lol

@Tantris:
define "logic" for us and explain specifically what makes the supernatural inherently unlogical (that seems to be your position).

Everyone: please do not post if you are getting excited, please.
As you can see from this thread, it does not help the debate.

@obiwanobiwan:
internet forums are REALLY not the best place to be looking for intelligent debete.
As far as I have ever observed, it is too easy to issue short manifestos of one's opinions.
By your long posts, I can see that you would prefer someone who would give just as long and calm replies.

Also, one cannot have a debate without two different opinions already being reached, right?
One has to start at the source of their opinions and give reasons for those opinions untill the one who was wrong (assuming either was right) is won over, right?

Unless I have misunderstood you, in which case, when you say "debate," you mean "discussion in which neither party has reached an opinion and wishes, through talking, to reach an opinion."

In regards to the second definition I wrote: everyone capable of being on the internet has already come to an opinion about metaphysical topics such as these, as evidenced by you, me, and everyone else who has ever posted.

Here are my suggestions: clarify for us what you mean by the word "debate," and do not start a thread about a debate with such a heated description as you did this one. Starting a thread this way will only ecourage heated replies (again, as you have seen here).

Have I said anything vaguely, obiwanobiwan? Do you need me to clarify anything I have said in this post?

If you would like, I could have a discussion on some topic with you, either on this thread, another, or by private messaging...

P.S.
42!
Hey, It's my birthday...

I agree with baumhaeuer, tantris, please clarify your meaning there...

And baumhaeuer:

First of all- I came here looking for an argument (which is NOT just the same as contradiction! ... anyone who types "can be, no it can't!" to that, I applaud your Pythonic knowledge... but let's not get carried way...)

And I titled this as I did for three reasons:

-It's an eye-catcher (you see "Christians" and both sides get their war gear on... I'm trying to stop that impulse... by showing, partially, just how quick BOTH sides pull out the dogma shells and start firing)
-Catchy
-Its sort of like "The Trouble with Tribbles" and I like Star Trek ;)

and happy birthday *BAM!*

It seems to me that one of the hang ups here is that nobody has really defined what is meant when we say "God". The problem of the original cause has been mentioned many times on this forum. What caused the big bang? Then what caused that cause and what caused that... ad infinitum. It seems logical to assume that there is/was some prior existance that was not caused, something that has always existed. I think the argument here should be what, if anything, can we postulate about this causless existance. Call it God, call it the universe, call it whatever you like but the real questions should be: Can and if so, how could we know and understand it? Does it still exist? Could it be intelligent?

So, you want to debate some one, but you do not want to be at odds with them.
All you are interested in is friendly discussion, thinking out loud, and the exchanging of ideas, plain and simple, right?

@ SunZi:
Your eplanation helped very much to crystalize the undercurrent of the description, I think.

If Marvin always existed, no reason short of self-destruction would prevent him from existing, as far as I can see...

Of course, when I say stuff like that, I am talking more hypothetically, for the sake of the discussion. You know where my commitment lies.

Undercurrent of the *discussion*

I have to be going now.

I do agree with that assertion, SunZi.

My point being that whenever that question of "How can we understand Marvin?" (the name I've given to our "God"/"Universe"/Uncaused Cause) we always fall back on dogam, the same responses; the Christians with the Bible verses and "take God's word for it" and the philosophers like me using the whole gamut (I myself generally prefer the ideals of Nietzsche and Hobbes, with a bit of Plato as well, if only just some bits of "The Republic") from the Socratics to the Renaissance figures to Hobbes and Locke to the Englightenment with Hume and Kant and Co. to Nietzsche's School of Scrutiny to the Modern Existentialists to the Analytics (with Russell) while the stone-cold atheists pull out their science and atheistic thinkers and ideals and rationalist dogma, too.

It's practically a three-way Cold War!

-The Christians here mention a bit of the Church/Bible to back an idea
-'ll pull out a page form "Beyond Good and Evil" and cite Nietzsche's Master-Slave Morality and try and call out the church
-Then the atheists add cold science
-The Christian responds with a Biblical character, often Jesus
-Out I come with the whole of "Beyond Good and Evil"
-The atheists marshall what they deem "logic over fallacy" or so
-The Christian camp responds right back with a condensed Bible story and moral
-Out I march with the whole of the Master-Slave Morality argument from all his books
-The atheists will pull out an utterly atheistic philosopher such as Russell and open fire
-The Christians respond by escalating to a full-blown declaration of "It's GOD!"
-I come out with "God is DEAD/HIGHER, so let's become Ubermensch!"
-Atheists cry "God is dead? What was there to kill? You're all being foolish!"

And then we all let loose our H-Bombs:

"Heresey!" Bombs from the Christians
"Hobbes!" Bombs from me
"HAHA!" Bombs from the Atheists

See... it's just utterly ridiculous, let's just put away our dogmas and start the argument from utter scratch!

(And the above "Cold War" with the Christians/Philosophers/Atheists was a fictionalized exaggeration, so yeah, not all Christians respond that way, certainly not all of us who prefer our philosophers will take the side of Nietzsche and Hobbes, and Atheists, not all of them spit out cold hard facts alone... it's a story to make a point, people... relax. It's jsut the Truth About Everything we're talking about!)

@baumhaeuer
By calling it Marvin you're already throwing a slant by personifying "it". I take it from your sarcasm that you do not believe it to be a person and I agree with you completely. Whatever "it" is it is not anything like a person. A good start here would be to agree on a term for "it". Sorry, I can't go with "Marvin ". The "believers", I assume, propose the term God. Are there any better terms for our postulated causeless "it".

Here here obiwanobiwan! I couldn't agree more. Dogma is the death of thought.

@SunZi:

How about "Monty Python?"

It could be a name and thus a HE, we KNOW it in fact IS an IT (that being a group) and we all are familiar with it (and it just seems appopriate to have Monty Python in an argument concerning... well, just about anything, but especially God and science and the Galaxy and such...)

Should I be disturbed that I've lost all interest in religious debates, where I was once vigorous? It seems pretty settled to me, especially seeing as how one can never convince a fundamentalist of anything.

I think it was Obama... or maybe Bush, but probably every president and prime minister who said that anyone who can be reconciled will be, but that there will always be fundamentalists, and in the end the only option with them is just to blow their fucking heads off.

Not that I'm in favor of that sort of thing.

@obiwanobiwan:
I have this feeling you are placing me as a "stone-cold atheist". I am not sure I could be definitively placed there. I am an agnostic. I have a background in math and science. I have read philosophy, and find some of the people to be fairly clever. I am honestly surprised that no one has put forward Aquinas' explanations of some of the paradoxes of Christianity. If I do end up religious again, that religion would have to have a logical consistency in at least the nature of god. I do seem to like a lot of Deism.

In my mind, the reason the argument put forward above cannot prove the existence of god, is because the same argument can be put forward to disprove god. Therefor, it isn't consistent in the logic it is using. I was asked for a definition, and I went to the dictionary, but not sure that any of those work. So, I will put forward this:

Logic is extending the knowledge of something, by using all known facts and making arguments which are consistent(ie no conflicts within itself), and cannot be used to disprove itself by extension.