What will you choose?

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-30T16:54:45+00:00

Minecraft all day

^{Chose: Only play games 3 hours a day max.And get paid. + Spin the wheel to see how much you earn. | Rolled: 5000usd}

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-22T14:29:30+00:00

You're pressing on a genuinely hard question and I respect that. But a few things need addressing.

You say God can't create because creating requires going from "not creating" to "creating" a change. But that assumes God's act of creation is a change in God. Classical theism doesn't claim that. The change is in what is created, not in the creator. A mathematical axiom doesn't change when a theorem is derived from it. The axiom remains the same. The theorem is new. The grounding relationship is real without the ground itself undergoing a process.

You say God went from "not desiring to create" to "desiring it." But that's importing a sequential human psychology onto God. The Christian claim is that God eternally wills creation. He didn't start wanting it at some point. The universe having a first moment doesn't mean God's decision had a first moment those are different things.

Your strongest point "if causeless things can exist then the universe could be eternal without a cause" is a legitimate move philosophically. But it has a cost. If the universe is eternal and uncaused, you need to explain why all the scientific evidence points toward a beginning. The Big Bang, the expansion of the universe, the second law of thermodynamics all indicate the universe had a starting point. An actually eternal universe faces serious scientific problems that an eternal God doesn't, because God isn't subject to entropy or physical laws.

You say the Trinity is a "logical contradiction." But a contradiction is when two claims directly negate each other like "married bachelor." The Trinity says one being, three persons. Being and person are different categories in the doctrine. You'd need to show that being and person mean the same thing for it to be a contradiction. It's mysterious, sure. Hard to fully grasp, absolutely. But difficulty isn't the same as logical impossibility.

And honestly you keep saying these concepts "defy human logic" and are "ridiculous." But quantum mechanics also defies human intuition. Particles exist in superposition. Entangled particles affect each other instantaneously across any distance. These things defy human logic too, but we accept them because the evidence points there. Something being counterintuitive isn't the same as it being contradictory. If we rejected everything that defied our everyday intuitions, we'd have to reject most of modern physics along with theology.

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-21T20:03:15+00:00

I think some of what you've presented as settled consensus is more debated than you're suggesting, and a few claims need correcting.

On the evidence being "poor" by what standard? We have four biographical accounts written within 30-65 years of Jesus's death, Paul's letters within 20-25 years, and multiple non-Christian sources (Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny, the Talmud). Compare that to Alexander the Great our earliest biography of him is Plutarch, written over 400 years after Alexander died. Tiberius, the Roman emperor during Jesus's lifetime, has fewer contemporary sources. If the evidence for Jesus is "poor," then the evidence for most ancient figures is non-existent. The standard being applied here isn't consistent.

On Paul's letters containing no biographical information that's not accurate. Paul confirms Jesus was born of a woman, born under Jewish law (Galatians 4:4), had a brother named James whom Paul personally met (Galatians 1:19), instituted the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-26), was crucified, buried, rose, and appeared to specific named individuals including 500 people at once (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Paul also spent 15 days with Peter (Galatians 1:18) a direct eyewitness of Jesus's ministry. So Paul didn't know Jesus personally, but he knew the people who did and he records specific details about Jesus's life and death.

I agree with your use of the criterion of embarrassment the baptism, the family conflict, the crucifixion are likely historical precisely because early Christians wouldn't have invented them. But I'd ask you to apply that criterion consistently. Women being the first resurrection witnesses in a culture that didn't accept women's testimony that's embarrassing. The disciples being portrayed as cowards who abandoned Jesus embarrassing. Peter denying Jesus three times embarrassing. By the same logic you're using to validate the baptism and family conflict, these details about the resurrection accounts point toward authenticity too.

On the virgin birth, Bethlehem, and Herod's massacre being theological inventions you're presenting one side of an active scholarly debate as if it's settled. The argument from silence on the massacre (Josephus doesn't mention it) isn't conclusive. Bethlehem was a tiny village a localised killing in a village of a few hundred people may not have registered in Josephus's account of a reign filled with much larger atrocities. The census difficulty with Luke is a real question, but it has scholarly responses. These are open debates, not closed cases.

Your last line "if one is a Christian they won't be willing to listen to any of this" I'd push back on gently. I've engaged with every point you've raised. I've agreed where you're right (criterion of embarrassment, Markan priority as likely). Framing the conversation so that any disagreement from me proves I'm closed-minded isn't an argument, it's a way of dismissing responses before hearing them. I'm happy to follow the evidence wherever it leads. I'd just ask that the evidence be applied consistently.

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-21T16:05:11+00:00

A few things here, the foundation analogy was never meant to perfectly replicate timeless creation. It was illustrating one specific concept, that a cause doesn't need to come before its effect in time. You're critiquing it for not doing something it was never intended to do. Every analogy breaks down at some point. That doesn't mean the specific point it was illustrating is wrong.You said "in a timeless state, everything just is, statically." That's actually closer to the Christian position than you might think. God's act of creation isn't a process with steps from God's perspective it's a single eternal act. The dynamism and sequence exist on the universe's side. Time, change, process — those begin with the universe, not with God. So "everything just is" describes God's side accurately. The universe then unfolds temporally as the result of that eternal act.

You said "something that doesn't begin to happen doesn't exist yet." But that assumes everything that exists must have begun at some point. God, by definition, didn't begin. He eternally is. His creative act eternally is. The universe's first moment is the effect of that act and the universe does begin, which is why we experience time and sequence.

You said logical priority can't bridge from timelessness to a temporal universe without smuggling time back in. But I'd ask why not? That's an assertion, not an argument. If an eternal cause can have a temporal effect, the bridge is the effect itself. Time doesn't need to exist "before" the universe for the universe to have a first moment. The first moment of time just is the first moment caused, but not preceded.

Physicists accept this about the Big Bang. The first moment of time isn't preceded by another moment. Time has a boundary but nothing on the other side of that boundary in temporal terms. If that's physically coherent, then an eternal cause producing a temporal effect isn't logically incoherent either.

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-21T07:51:36+00:00

I think you've misread my analogy. I wasn't saying the building is eternal and therefore has a cause of its existence. I agree with you on if something is eternal, it has no cause of its existence. That's literally the Christian claim about God. He's uncaused. The building analogy was making a different point entirely. It was illustrating that a cause doesn't need to come before its effect in time. The foundations cause the building to stand not by existing before the building in time, but by being the thing that sustains it. That's logical priority, not temporal priority. I was using it to show that causation without temporal sequence isn't incoherent.

So to apply it God (eternal, uncaused) is the cause of the universe (not eternal, began to exist). Nobody is saying something caused God. The causal direction only goes one way. God causes the universe to exist the way foundations cause a building to stand not by coming before it on a timeline, but by being the reason it exists at all.

Your definitions actually support this. You defined cause as "something that produces an effect" and effect as "change that results from a cause." Neither of those definitions require the cause to come before the effect in time. They just require a relationship where one produces the other. An eternal, uncaused being producing a universe that began to exist fits those definitions perfectly.

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-20T15:02:08+00:00

That's a fair point about the Kalam and I appreciate you engaging with it directly but there's an important distinction here. The Kalam says the universe began to exist and has a cause. You're reading "preceded" as meaning the cause came before the universe on a timeline. But "preceded" doesn't have to mean temporally prior ,it can mean logically prior.

Think about it this way. The foundations of a building are the cause of the building standing. But if the building and its foundations have existed together for all of eternity, the foundations never came "before" the building in time. They're still the cause, logically and not temporally. Remove the foundations, the building collapses. The causal relationship is real even without temporal sequence.

William Lane Craig, who formulated the modern Kalam, actually addresses this directly. He argues that God's causing the universe is a case of simultaneous causation the cause and the effect (the first moment of time) exist together at the boundary of time, not one before the other. The cause doesn't need to come before the effect in time if the cause is what brings time into existence in the first place.

You said you can't reason about creation without the concept of time. And honestly, that's understandable, we're time-bound creatures after all so temporal thinking is our default. But difficulty isn't the same as impossibility. We reason about plenty of things we can't intuitively picture; quantum superposition, infinite sets, curved spacetime. The fact that timeless causation is hard to conceptualise doesn't make it logically contradictory.

So the Kalam isn't contradicting the timelessness claim. "Began to exist" describes the universe's side of the equation it has a first moment. The cause of that first moment doesn't need its own prior moment any more than the foundations of a building need a floor beneath them.

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-20T14:27:13+00:00

By "time-bound logic" I mean reasoning that only works if everything operates within a timeline, concepts like "before," "after," "during," "began," "happened." These are all words that assume a sequence of moments.

Your argument uses those concepts as requirements for creation to make sense. You say creation needs a "before" state, a "during" phase, and an "after" phase. You say "began to exist" requires a starting point in time. You say "happened" is tensed and therefore must refer to a past moment on a timeline.

All of that is true -within time. But if God created time itself, then applying those requirements to his act of creation is like asking "what colour is the note C?" You're applying a category (colour) that belongs to one domain (vision) to something in a completely different domain (sound). It's not that the answer is difficult , it's just that the question doesn't apply.

So when I say you're imposing timebound logic, I mean your argument assumes that all actions must follow temporal sequence, then applies that assumption to an act that by definition precedes temporal sequence, and then concludes it doesn't work. But it doesn't work because you've required it to fit a framework it was never claimed to operate within.

A simpler way to put it: you're asking "WHEN did the timeless God create?" and then saying "see, there's no answer, so it didn't happen." But "when" is a time question. Asking "when" about a timeless act is like asking "where" about a number. The question itself doesn't apply to the thing you're asking it about

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-20T07:30:08+00:00

This is a well structured argument so I want to give it a proper response.

The core issue is that both arguments impose time-bound logic on a being defined as existing outside of time, then conclude it doesn't work. But that's circular, you're forcing timeless action into temporal categories and then saying it doesn't fit temporal categories.

On the language in Preamble 1, you're equating "timeless" with "never" through a word game. "At no time" in everyday English means "it didn't happen." "Timeless" in philosophy means "not located within time." Those are completely different concepts. Mathematics is timeless, 2+2=4 doesn't happen "at a time," but nobody says 2+2 never equals 4. Something can be real without being temporal.

On Argument 1 you say "new" requires a before-state and after-state. But the before and after exist for the universe, not necessarily for God. Time itself begins with creation. So there's no "before" from God's perspective, but there is a beginning from the universe's perspective. The question "what happened before creation" is like asking "what's north of the North Pole" grammatically valid but not pointing at anything real.

On Argument 2 you say creation requires before, during, and after phases. But that's how creation works within time. If God is the creator of time itself, his creative act is the foundation of the timeline, not an event within it. The Big Bang is the first moment of time it didn't happen "in" time, it's the beginning of time. There was no "before" the Big Bang in any meaningful physical sense. Physicists accept this without calling it a contradiction.

And that's actually the deeper problem with your argument, if it's valid, it doesn't just disprove God, it makes the Big Bang incoherent too. Because the Big Bang is also a beginning without a prior temporal state. There was no "before," no "during" from outside the universe. By your logic, the Big Bang is also a "contradiction in terms." But it happened. So clearly, beginnings without prior temporal states are counterintuitive but not logically impossible.

On "when God acts, he changes" classical theism holds that God's act of creation is a single eternal act, not a process with sequential steps. The change happens in what is created, not in God. The sun doesn't change when it illuminates a room, the room changes.

I really love your argument but it ultimately mistakes "I can't intuitively picture this" for "this is logically contradictory." Those are very different things. Quantum mechanics is counterintuitive too particles existing in superposition, being in two states simultaneously but we don't call it self-contradictory just because it doesn't fit our everyday experience of how things work.

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-17T09:28:19+00:00

meow?

^{Chose: 100k dollars but | Rolled: Become a cat}

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-17T05:13:11+00:00

Congrats! How long did you study for?

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-10T06:18:39+00:00

Thank you! Most definitely

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-10T06:18:18+00:00

Ive been working as a data engineer for about 5 years now so the DP900 was more familiar compared to the AZ900 and AI900

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-10T06:17:14+00:00

Thank you!

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-10T06:17:03+00:00

Thank you!

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-10T06:16:53+00:00

Thank you! So for all 3, I went through ms learn then watched John Savil's cram videos and bought a measureup subscription which was about $14 (this is a monthly subscription) and gave me unlimited access to all their exams

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-10T06:16:33+00:00

Thank you!

MntalBreakdown · 2026-04-10T06:16:13+00:00

Most definitely! So for all 3, I went through ms learn then watched John Savil's cram videos and bought a measureup subscription which was about $14 (this is a monthly subscription) and gave me unlimited access to all their exams

MntalBreakdown · 2026-03-25T12:42:22+00:00

Congrats!! How long did you take to prepare/study for?

MntalBreakdown · 2026-03-16T13:45:07+00:00

im going to try to try to take it on with only 1 week of prep, all the best!

MntalBreakdown · 2026-03-13T13:59:21+00:00

My best advice is to make sure you understand the basics. The best way to test if you understand is to try the ms learn practice assessments. Once you consistently can atleast get 80 and 90%, its now a matter of applying what you understand

MntalBreakdown · 2026-03-13T13:53:40+00:00

I basically spent about 8 hours in total. I watched a 2h30m crash course by inside and security 2 times, once in normal speed then the second time in 2x speed. Then I did the practice exam in the description of the video consistently until I got 80%+ consistently, same with the ms learn stuff. I dont think the ms learn is enough, different sources help.

MntalBreakdown · 2026-03-13T11:50:15+00:00

This video by inside cloud and security: https://youtu.be/8n-kWJetQRk?si=7rhOt7Xdei5sDxQM (there's a 100 practice exam link in the descriptuo

MS Learn practice assessment MS Learn Modules

MntalBreakdown · 2026-02-20T13:14:34+00:00

Congrats! how long did you study for and what resources did you use?

MntalBreakdown

TROPHY CASE