re: Satanic Temple puts up display at Michigan Capital

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States?

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If you are addressing a specific poster then what does translating to cheesehead mean? Is that specific to me? Of course not. Lol

Hoisted by your own petard.

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As I said, "Uh, I dunno, and uh, I ain't gonna try ta figure it out."

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Why should I care? The concept is free speech. You seem to think that this is akin to a discussion of high art vs. Low. Your point is irrelevant. If they are there to promote, provoke, or joke is irrelevant. And neither position is better or worse.

The message is irrelevant. I don't care. I don't care to try and figure out why there were TWO Nativity scenes at the wisconsin Capitol. Just like I don't care about the festivus pole.

Keep crying. And trying to insult me. The fact that you have resorted to this tactic only proves how little you've got.

If facts are insulting, so be it.

Your incapacity to understand the message, much less address it, speaks for itself. Yet you continue to post on the topic. At this stage, I have to wonder why you're doing this to yourself.

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n the span of ~13.75 billion years, quite a lot can happen.

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The timeframe, expanse, and total mass of our universe is nearly inconceivable . . . . and theoretically ours could be one of billions

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... but don't masturbate

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Don't 'in vitro' fertilize either

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another question that can't be answered by science.

What is the origin of existence? Is existence real? If existence is real, than itself or something else must be it's origin. If you got it from something else you can't be your own origin. Even an infinite chain of contingent existences needs an origin. There must be something that can't be contingent rather necessary. We call that being God.

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If you're saying that everything must have a cause, and the ultimate cause of all other causes is god, then what is the cause of god? If god mustn't have a cause, why must the universe have a cause?

This is an example of special pleading. In order for your (or Aquinas's) argument to work, you must exempt god from the rules you apply to everything else. I don't find that very convincing--you have to assume that this being exists with these special properties that allow it to become a solution. That's not really solving the problem.

edit: not to mention that not all things in the universe have causes. I work in radiation oncology and you can't really say that radioactive decay has a cause. It's perfectly explainable by physics--we know exactly why it happens. But there's no obvious cause to any specific atom undergoing radioactive decay. It's a stochastic rather than deterministic phenomenon. We can only predict what will happen to large quantities of radioactive atoms, not single atoms.

They won't be able to answer that one, Hog. They will just move the goalposts yet again.

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Absolutely. In the span of ~13.75 billion years, quite a lot can happen.

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I don't buy the entire," if there is enough time anything can happen" theory. It sounds like an excuse to explain what can't be explained. It's like Al Gore selling his global warming scheme. He knows he won't live long enough to be called out on it.

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I don't buy the entire," if there is enough time anything can happen" theory.

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Yeah, way less plausible than an all powerful deity.

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It sounds like an excuse to explain what can't be explained.

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Which is exactly what your religion sounds like to those who don't subscribe to any specific dogma.

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Yet, we've all agreed (at least, at this stage I hope we've all agreed) that something must be exempted from the "rules" regardless of point of view. Right?

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That's one possibility. The universe itself could exist without a cause, or a god could exist without a cause, or multiple gods could exist without a cause, or maybe the universe has always existed, and the chain of causality really goes on forever. Who knows?

I'm completely satisfied admitting I don't know.

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If you're saying that everything must have a cause, and the ultimate cause of all other causes is god, then what is the cause of god? If god mustn't have a cause, why must the universe have a cause?

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in all seriousness I'm struggling to find an answer to this question.

I can argue to the necessity of an uncaused cause, but I'm can't explain to you right now why it can't be the universe. I think it has something to do with the fact that it is constantly going under change, but my philosophy is too rusty to be able to explain it.