Darren New wrote:
> The existence of "free will" negates the argument that God must have 
> created the universe as a "first cause".
> 
> The "first cause" argument is that every effect has a cause, and hence 
> for the universe to exist, something before the universe must have 
> caused it, and hence God exists.[1]
> 
> On the other hand, either our decisions are caused by what's in the 
> environment, or some aspect of our decisions are not subject to prior 
> causes. In the first case, it would be unjust to blame someone for not 
> believing in your religion if such disbelief is entirely the fault of 
> external circumstances. In the latter case, many decisions have effects 
> without precedent cause, and hence the requirement for God to have 
> created the universe disappears.
> 
Umm. Actually the problem with first cause arguments is that they are 
perpetual. I.e., once you start claiming everything "must" have a cause, 
therefore something had to make the universe, you inevitably have to ask 
what caused that thing to exist. This is also the Occam's Razor issue: 
"Why presume that something without a cause 'made' the universe, when it 
only adds the complication of something else popping into existence 
first, instead of just the universe happening that way anyway?"

Or, if you prefer a quantum effect, what "causes" a thing doesn't always 
have to "come before it", and for that matter, the cause may not be 
something identifiable, so claiming you "know" what caused it can be 
very very wrong, especially if its based on one of several thousand 
claims that some entirely too human anthropomorphized super being did 
it, without any real basis on which it determine which one. Oh, and 
arguing that they are all the same, doesn't work either, since many are 
quite apposed to each other, which leaves you with millions of 
philosophies of what such a god "really wants", none more provable than 
any others, many of them superior in aspects to the more "common" one 
used as the "creator of everything", and none of which have the 
attribute of being the sort of god that would "have to" exist, if you 
had one create a universe, but who was too stupid, lazy, or 
disinterested, to either a) get a lot of it put together in a way that 
would make sense to an engineer, or b) actually manage to convey the 
truth of their existence in a way that isn't vague, inspecific, often 
self contradictory, or just plain obviously made up by people that 
thought the universe was made of earth, air, fire and water, and that 
one of a variety of various gods or spirits either lived in, rode on, or 
dragged across the sky, the sun.

> [1] ("God created the universe" -> "Jesus died for your sins" is left as 
> an exercise for the reader.)
> 
Its an easy exercise. Its nonsense, and not just because of the basic 
contradiction that there is "absolutely" no point to the whole sin BS in 
Genesis, if some time later God was going to make some emotional, but in 
reality entirely pointless, gesture, which did away with the whole 
eating the apple thing anyway. Oh, and what do I mean by pointless? I 
mean that while it may have, if it even happened, which is debatable 
itself, had an emotional impact, what exactly was given up, sacrificed, 
etc.? I mean, if Jesus was just the "son of God", then he still didn't 
lose a whole lot by "joining" dad in the after life, and if he "was" 
God, then... Well, unless God died for real, which would make continuing 
to believe in him as totally pointless as waiting for your dead uncle to 
get home before starting dinner, he can hardly claim to have given 
anything up at all. Its like if I donated every bit of my money to 
something called, "Kagehi's retirement fund." Its only a sacrifice of 
you ***don't have it anymore***.

Mind, it is entirely consistent with a God that is quite happy to give 
Moses a commandment to not kill anyone, then a bit later, suggest that 
his "chosen people" kill every man and child of some other tribe. Its 
meaningful because he "says so", until and unless its not anymore, at 
which point we are all supposed to nod and go, "Ah, good. Nice of you to 
give the chosen ones an heads up on the arbitrary rule changes. All 
praise Ahriman (who seems to fit the bill for this sort of chaotic 
gibberish and random evil a lot more than the Ahura-Mazda clone Yhwh, 
which, depending on which centuries texts you are reading is either one 
of three sons of the true creator of the universe, and a war monger, or 
the "the one true God (tm)"). lol

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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