Is the New Testament made up?

[Sheldon]

@Sherlock-Holmes

@Sheldon

But it’s perfectly sound for a deity? That didn’t take long.

This is poor debating, clutching at juvenile strawmen all the time.

It’s not a straw man, it is an obvious contradiction in your reasoning. here are the contradictory claims:

@Sherlock-Holmes

An explanation must begin with the thing we seek to explain not being there,

NB that is where you earlier made the claim you have reworded here regarding the origins of natural processes and the universe.

@Sherlock-Holmes

God had no beginning and has no end so far as I can understand it all.

If a deity can always exist why can’t the universe, and if you can make the claim, as you did there, without any pretence of evidence or explanation, why does anyone need anything beyond a similar claim that the universe has always existed in some form.

You seem to have missed these questions about your earlier assertion as well.

@Sheldon

@Sherlock-Holmes

That’s right, I understand the atheist strategy when asked a question about science by someone far better schooled than they:

Do you believe the earth existed with vegetation on it before the sun, as the creation myth in the bible asserts? Do you believe there was global flood as the bible claims, and the geological record demonstrates never happened? Do you believe a deity created humans in their current form, or that we evolved slowly over time as have all living things?

Would it help you if i bullet pointed them?

@Sherlock-Holmes

@Sherlock-Holmes

I think its pretty obvious that we can’t claim to have explained laws and material if that explanation regards the presence of these as axiomatic.

If your too scared to agree or disagree then you have no place in a debate.

Your is a possessive pronoun, and it is intellectual integrity and not fear than motivates me not to leap to options in a false dichotomy fallacy. The laws as we know are manmade, ,what they explain are natural phenomena that are characteristic of the material universe, you are assuming that science and scientific laws and theories cannot explain what existed before the universe we currently observe existed, you can’t know this nor is the inference a rational one, see false dichotomy fallacy. None of this remotely evidences any deity.

@Sherlock-Holmes

@CyberLN

We continue using the tools we’ve created to arrive at testable, repeatable results about the environment in which we exist.

That’s not a choice you have if you accept the premises I listed because it leads to a contradiction.

No you believe it leads to a contradiction, but since you no more know what was or was not possible prior to the big bang than anyone else, this is just a strident claim based on a false dichotomy fallacy.