To Steele Redux.

Sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying. Do you have any thoughts on what causes people to give up on living, or how to avoid that situation?

To Opinion.

Are you just now realizing my religious view acknowledges God? At what point should we question your perceptive abilities.

"Can not demonstrate God..." This is the wrong approach. God is not your servant to answer your beck and call. He does answer prayers though. A lot of times when He does so He does it His way. I've found time and time again that God is in charge. He can make the impossible possible.

As for creating something out of nothing. Surely you must have heard. God spoke and it came to be. I think there is more essence in His word then you realize. Doubt what I'm saying. That's fine, however I'm not alone in finding God able to do the impossible when we bring our needs to Him. All around the world there are people with similar findings. Do your own reasurch and search for God yourself before passing yourself as an expert in, well whatever you claim you're debating.

...another challenge for Christians? Considering this mock debate is the scale of your efforts and your motives, I'd rather keep the discussion about life, as the topic that I started. If you want another challenge start your own topic most for this merrygoround you want to start, under the farce of calling it a debate.

Not_Now.Soon,

So according to your religious view of Life (the entity) God said "Abracadabra!" and Life (the entity) popped out of his hat, took one look at God and said "Mama!"

Of course, it all makes sense - To those like you with a religious view of the world.

But sorry to disappoint you because the description you give of God creating Life (the entity) is still based on God creating something out of nothingness and that is impossible because nothing is nothing and nothing can be made into something.

So the whole religious view that God created Life is insupportable given that something cannot be created from nothing.

But if you or anyone else can provide evidence or show theoretically that something (the entity Life) can be created from nothing then I will reconsider my position. How long do you need?

PS

3rd paragraph in my post above above should read:

But sorry to disappoint you because the description you give of God creating Life (the entity) is still based on God creating something out of nothingness and that is impossible because nothing is nothing and nothing CANNOT be made into something.

Dear NNS,

You ask;

“Do you have any thoughts on what causes people to give up on living, or how to avoid that situation?”

Sure, nothing radical as it happens quite infrequently relatively speaking. Let's start with an easy one.

It is interesting that in times of war the suicide rate seems to drop dramatically. The coming together of people to fight a common threat seems to shoulder aside thoughts of pushing the life eject button.

So the sense of community must be a factor. For instance universal health care engenders a sense of a system where all contribute to look after those whose illness means they struggle to support themselves. The markedly different suicide rates between the US and Canada are reflective of this aspect.

Therefore if we were intent on avoiding “that situation” so to speak then policies which promote community approaches to caring for people would be high on the list.

Mr Opinion said- God creating Life (the entity) is still based on God creating something out of nothingness and that is impossible because nothing is nothing and nothing CANNOT be made into something.

Answer- Even atheist scientists such as Murray Gell-Mann talk of the emergent property of life- stuff created from nothing. I with the greatest respect disagree with Murray Gell-Mann on this issue. As I'm not convinced that real consciousness awareness- not AI- can emerge from nothing. This is why the property interactionism approach seems more feasible to me.

Have you heard about the Casimir Effect that is seen as evidence of Zero Point Energy- stuff created from nothing.

At the boundaries of our understanding there are some very interesting phenomena that question our understanding of reality.

There is an interesting physicist Lee Smolin- 1997. The Life of the Cosmos that has raised some interesting and infuriating questions about the nature of the universe. He's had some very interesting and heated discussions with Leonard Susskind about The Anthropic Principle. They are both great physicists.

Smolin says from memory that "life is the universes attempt to understand itself".

Clarke's Laws are interesting here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Even Brian Greene's podcasts border on God's territory when he talks about Universal Inflation theory and Quantum Fields- and from memory creation of the universe from nothing.

Some though have said that when scientists talk about God they mean different things than the uninitiated.

Perhaps Rationalism and Empiricism can only take you so far- the rest is Existential Subjectivism

Jordan Peterson said some interesting things...

1. "God is an internal representation of the ideal leader"

- which makes me think- there may be some insights that are only apparent through internal self reflection not scientific external rigor- these may be verifiable over time using external methods- in this case despite it's fallacies the only way to quantify the probability is by "equating possibility with probability" perhaps.

2. "Humans needs values but these create hierarchies and hierarchies create inequality"

- it seems that inequality is unavoidable in society. I'm sure that some subtlty is required here. I often think of the times of the parish communities in Britain before Henry VIII took the parish lands in the 1500's and gave them to the landed gentry. Where land was held by primogeniture- there wasn't a need for unemployment benefits for there to be equality- if you worked the land you lived- if you had too many children you died- you had land you lived within your means- it was equal for everyone. This wasn't so called democracy. It seems only with mass culture and the city states that inequality came.

John Locke- Father of Liberal Democracy talked about the so called modern state of nature and freedom. It seems he has done more for inequality than most. The problems come when you give up your power to the state. Because you never get it back.

Ironically I believe it is possible to have a modern state of freedom- and relative equality - despite the US Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union's example to the contrary- but as with everything requires sacrifice, forebearance, and self sufficiency