I'll just leave this here...........
http://www.highexistence.com/mind-blowing-story-talking-to-god/
http://www.highexistence.com/mind-blowing-story-talking-to-god/
Why is the UK not religious anymore?
- Thread starter kwerk
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Soldato
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Wow, I'm utterly gobsmacked. I had no idea you were so indoctrinated.
Science is not looking for "the best explanation" if that explanation is INCORRECT. Why are you looking for the easy answer? The universe is complex, and interesting. Why settle for the rubbish answer. Many things are hugely improbable, but it doesn't make them any less existent.
Yes there is a cause for DNA; it enables species to reproduce and pass genetic information. Why is the idea that the universe has order so alien to you?
That's fair enough, but it does give an answer to how the life developed from bacteria, which goes pretty far back.
Yes he is a human creation, as is any deity.
I don't understand what you're asking me here.
They have existed for as long as the universe has existed, which, as far as we are concerned, is the beginning of time.
That would be great, if it was true. Resurrection is impossible and therefore that aspect of your faith is unfounded.
I struggle to understand how you can genuinely believe what you say to be true.
Science is not looking for "the best explanation" if that explanation is INCORRECT. Why are you looking for the easy answer? The universe is complex, and interesting. Why settle for the rubbish answer. Many things are hugely improbable, but it doesn't make them any less existent.
Yes there is a cause for DNA; it enables species to reproduce and pass genetic information. Why is the idea that the universe has order so alien to you?
That's fair enough, but it does give an answer to how the life developed from bacteria, which goes pretty far back.
Yes he is a human creation, as is any deity.
I don't understand what you're asking me here.
They have existed for as long as the universe has existed, which, as far as we are concerned, is the beginning of time.
That would be great, if it was true. Resurrection is impossible and therefore that aspect of your faith is unfounded.
I struggle to understand how you can genuinely believe what you say to be true.
How much of that was cultural though? Your religion does seem to have a significant correlation with when and where you were born. England 1642? Christian. Israel 50BC? Jewish. Rome 10AD? Roman Pantheon.
How about this one? If you repeat a random action often enough, eventually it will result in something useful. It's a monkeys on typewriters type thing.
Between the time the Earth had cooled enough to support life, and the time when the first microbial life started to appear, 500 million years passed. 500 million years of constant action, before lifeless carbon stumbles across a form that self replicates. All you need for evolution to start is a source of energy, repetition, and variation. Is 500 million years too short a time for constant quasi-random action to stumble upon a self replicating pattern? It's only a hypothesis, but at least it doesn't require the addition of a deity to the equation.
Soldato
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Newton was a victim of his times; before his death he was openly atheist. As a young man, however, he struggled with religion.
Go easy on the responses chaps - will take forever to reply!
Have you ever looked into Darwins Tree of life illustration and how it lines up against the fossil record? Darwin himself acknowledged that major groups of animals appear suddenly in the fossil record. His theory of a gradual modification from a common ancestor, with the differences gradually increasing are not in line with the rapid appearances of phyla in the fossil records.
Another area of concern is around the drawings of embryos by Haeckel that supposedly don't mirror reality.
I'm surprised that people haven't heard of a moving away from the Darwinian theories which includes many top professionals from various walks of science. Despite the reservations all this stuff is still taught in schools and it isn't a surprise that people generally take it at face value.
Personally I don't believe that the universe is eternal and many atheists don't deny that either. Scientific models built around Einsteins general relativity theory suggested a constantly expanding universe. If it is continually expanding then it must have had an initial single point of origin.
No, that's a ridiculous thing to say. Someone can be intelligent but still be wrong about something.
I am an atheist
because in my eyes, if such a being as your "god" was indeed not a figment of a drugged up chav's imagination thousands of years ago then why do we have such little proof of this being apart from a book that has been added to for along time.
I am assuming from your reasoning that you discount every historical book greater than X years old? Have you looked into the historical reliability of the Bible? I would guess not. Are you aware of scientists who have stated that the Bible is a 'highly reliable source book'?
I have mentioned numerous times the phrase 'cumulative argument'. I believe that the historicity of the Bible and indeed the resurrection AND the observable design in our universe provide solid basis for faith in a God.
Have you done all the research and came to a conclusion or like so many do you just shout loudly and claim to be an atheist purely because it is rather fashionable?
You must have some serious proofs of hard evidence that I am missing if you can be so certain.
Who said it is incorrect? It is only incorrect if chance is the correct answer. If you want to believe in highly improbably events then fine. You are making it sound like you know 100% what the truth is. I am not looking for an easy or rubbish answer. I am looking at the whole thing as a cumulative argument.
You are misunderstanding what I said. DNA has purpose yes. You haven't answered my objection that information cannot come about un-caused! Alien to me? I agree totally that the universe has order. You are misquoting again.
OK, lets go back another step? What brought about the bacteria? Did that bacteria contain information? If so, who or what put it there? Science has no answer.
That makes no sense. A being who transcends time and space obviously would be in existence before humans came about.
Ok, so all of the constants just came into the exact values by chance at the beginning of time? Highly improbably.
The naturalistic viewpoint says that resurrection is impossible but to a being who transcends time and space not so.
I have scientific, philosophical and historical reasons to believe that there is a good case for faith in a God.
This argument is exactly the same as a sentient puddle thinking isn't it dam lucky this hole I'm in is the exact shape and size for me to fit in.
(Can't remember where the quote this is loosely based on comes from)
The accusation was that "religion is for monkeys with small minds". Culture doesn't come into it in relation to this statement. It is purely a bigoted insult at those who are religious when they have nothing better to add to a debate.
Cheer up guys it could be worse.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19399375
I like the bit at the bottom.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19399375
I like the bit at the bottom.
So by the same reasoning if BMW put together some robots to perform a random action automatically and left it for millions of years will you have something resembling a BMW? I don't think so. You would have unordered junk.
If you look at DNA it doesn't look like it was full of errors and just by chance it contained something useful. It is a highly ordered language.
Let's start with your final sentence. How can you hope to find the 'truth' when you look into a debate with the conclusion already made in your own mind?
You say that you need a source of energy, repetition and variation. Many of our friends on here say that it all came from nothing. In your case we need to have a source of energy.
From the Cambrian explosion and associated fossil records it appears that the concept of everything coming about over a huge period of time from the one ancestor is not correct. What it actually shows is a top down approach where mulitple phyla appeared in the fossil record together.
Terrible illustration. If the rain keeps coming, the hole fills and overflows. Don't get your point at all.
Would knowing the definitive answer either way change anything other than our understanding of existence? Not to say that it's not worth understanding... but from a practical viewpoint, would much change? After all, what would the point be in worshiping a God that knows you're heart isn't truly in it and you're worshiping it through fear as opposed to devotion, etc.
It really isn't a hard concept .... but anyway wiki to my rescue it was Douglas Adams who made the point so succinctly.
[...] famously imagining a sentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks, "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"
Basically of course everything we observe is going to reinforce a set of parameters that allows us to exist however astronomically unlikely they are because if they weren't that way we wouldn't exist to have that thought. There were no doubt trillions upon trillions (if not infinite) of situations where the positioning of planets weren't correct or a cosmological constant was not favourable and therefore life didn't exist, hence there aren't trillions upon trillions of life forms out there thinking "gosh wasn't it unfortunate the parameters weren't perfect for our existence" because they don't exist to have that thought.
It isn't a case of the being reflecting that the environment is perfect for their existence but the environment creating the perfect being to exist within it.
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If the values were unsuitable for life then we wouldn't be around to observe this outcome. We can only ever exist in a universe which can support life. Suppose there were billions of universes in a multiverse. Then there could be billions of combinations of these parameters. Maybe only one combination can support life, but that is the only universe that any life will observe.
We also don't have other universes at hand in order to test the suitability of the values of these parameters to permit life. It might be that there's actually quite a wide range of values that are acceptable but we've got no way of testing it.
The multiple universes theory is another common one but even if we had observed multiple universes then there still would have to be the question of 'where did the universe generator come from'. Things just don't come into existence uncaused.
Soldato
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If true, where did God come from?
The logic that "things don't just come from nothing" is often used by theists to support their 'creator' argument but whilst it may 'solve' complex astrophysical questions in their head, surely they must then ask "who created the creator"?
Same goes with your other arguments about a nice looking car requiring a designer, then surely something as powerful and amazing as a God in turn needed a 'designer' to make them that way no?
But the theist has an answer to this conundrum, God just 'always' existed, forever, thus negating the need for a creator of the creator. But tell them about that the infinite time theory and that matter may just have always existed for infinity and suddenly you're the one being silly and illogical.
Theists want to use basic logic and 'in the box' thinking when trying to disprove the scientific consensus on the origins of the Universe, but then want to use the metaphysical and magical claims about their 'God'.
I don't know if there is any evidence for multiple universes, it was just an exercise in statistics really. But addressing the claim that things don't come into existence uncaused, then how did God come into existence?