Corwin, dont try to convince people who are only good at changing the subject. When I asked the question about how can this all start? How can the energy and process be there to start it all, they then switch the subject to how can god just exist. When one of the leaders of atheists switched sides to believing in god, Stox made an excuse that he was getting old and getting scared of dying as if he was inside the man and knew what he was feeling. These kinds of people will never face a true question. They are good at trying to sweep the real questions underneath the table. Their job is to try to shake other peoples faiths and beliefs. Even though they cannot prove one single shred of what they believe in they will put down others who have faith. Even though they dont by any means represent most of the atheists out there, they are a very judgmental group, and it is they who always complain of people of faith putting others down. Where do hidden intentions come from? And deadpeoplearereal, just because you feel god doesnt exists doesnt mean its the truth. That is your experience and your entitled to it and I wont put you down for it like some of the atheists here ridicule people of faith even though the only things that are holding up the beliefs of atheists are also faith because like I said before they havent proven one thing to me yet about what they believe in so they must have alot of faith in it.
I agree. The atheist argument using the lightbulb analogy - which is presented in the very first post of this thread - the analogy that started this thread in the first place - is bunk. When a person dies, they do not "turn off like a lightbulb". The atheist position that started this thread is wrong. Me changing the issue? I don't believe that I have. If I understand the title of this thread correctly, the issue here is whether or not God exists, and the original position of this thread compared humans to lightbulbs. If the issue is whether or not God exists, and if I am to stay on this issue to your satisfaction, then I must politely ask the question that, if you believe that there is an absence of a God, then how do you explain how human consciousness has come to be? There is a rule of physics that states that something cannot be solely created by something less complex than itself. Can lifeless rocks and a handful of inert chemicals spontaneously result in a human being that is conscious - self-aware - capable of independent thought? I believe that you would agree that humans are not mechanical cause/effect machines (if we were, we wouldn't be seen doing so many dumb things that seem to be against our own personal self-interests). I conclude that there must be some greater INTELLIGENT construct that is the ultimate Creator - or, the Prime Mover, as physics calls God - that is responsible for all of this. I gently offer this as just one position that explains why I believe there is a God - that human consciousness cannot be explained as a spontaneous event and must have been created by a greater consciousness. You may not believe this to be the hairy thunderer of the Old Testament, or a friendly old guy that sits on a throne that makes arbitrary decisions - but I believe that this is an intense Intelligence that is as much beyond our understanding, as the sum of our being is beyond the understanding of a single cell in our body. Most importantly, this is MY position that I present. I would ask that you respect my believe in a God, and not disrespect my belief, as I respect your belief that there is not a god.
Atheism is simply a belief. They like to think they are rooted in the concept of 'proof' and 'evidence' but atheism is simply a belief just like religion is. They have no more proof of their belief in what happens when you die, or how the universe was formed than a religious person. Not one shred. Nada. Nothing. Religious people choose to believe based on faith. Faith by itself implies a lack of evidence. Atheists choose to not believe - but they are equally devoid of anything resembling proof for their stance. They cannot prove the start or the end of anything. They simply choose to not believe anything until clear evidence is presented to them that God exists. What puzzles me is how Atheists, like the original poster, can come on and post something like what happens when you die.As he/she correctly points out, the thought that the lights go out is nothing more than a theory. If its a theory, then it means there is no proof. If there is no proof,then what you are saying is you BELIVE that the lights go out. You have no more evidence of your position than a religious person BELIEVING that the soul goes to heaven. Always fascinating to hear opinions though.
So in other words corwin, you don't understand how something happened so a magic man in the sky must have done it. Do you not see how infantile that non-answer is? It's the same logic that used to make people think a magic man in the sky was pulling the sun across the sky on the back of a chariot. Rockyg, atheism Is the rejection of an unsupported assertion. But thanks for trying to ridecule atheism by comparing it to religion, it shows how ludicrous even you think theism is. I mean, you'd never hear an atheist say "religion is just[/] another claim supported by evidence". If you didn't see theism as being stupid you wouldn't try to criticise atheism by comparing it to it.
You didn't complete the sentence; at its very best, "atheism Is the rejection of an unsupported assertion", with nothing more than a bigger "unsupported assertion".
No. You are wrong. You are completely incorrect. You have not read my previous post. Go back and read my previous post. Read what I wrote about physics. Read what I wrote about consciousness. Read what I wrote about how a system can't be created by system simpler than itself. As a polite suggestion, you might want to read about Newton's Three Laws of Motion. If you can't understand basic physics, then maybe this is honestly too difficult for you to understand.
You should know the answer stOx, without god Newton wouldn't exist and we would not have these laws, just like without Coca-Cola Santa as we know him would not exist either
Exactly!!!!, and this is what makes most agressive atheists soem of the biggest hypocrits around. They basically just try to redicule people of faith yet have no facts of their own to prove what they believe in. They basically have faith that the universe either has always been here forever or just magically popped up out of nothingness and chaos is always evolving into order. How can anything magically evolve without a grand force to push it forward. Hence this is why I keep bringing up the "leaves transforming into an animal experiment". If you really put forth alot of effort into this it makes no sense at all and they try to cover this up by answering our questions with questions of their own. The way to progress intellectually is to admit you dont have an answer to a question if you really dont have the answer. Then you can ask questions of your own. This is what I call intellectual ignorance, or lack of common sense wisdom. Again Stox you have a very very basic and raw understanding of how we perceive god. he is the force and purpose behind all of these scientific laws without which the universe itself couldnt exist. RockyG you bring up a very interesting point except for one thing. We can at least prove their is chance that god exists because we all know that what started it all couldnt have just been here.It had to have been created by some force, plus when have you know chaos to just become order? This is evidence (some people say indirect or direct )that god could exist. Atheist have no proof at all of what they believe in. NONE, and this is why stox tries to refer to god as the magic man in the sky. This is the way my nephew used to refer to god when he was 4, but I am making sure that he learns to see gods incredible beauty through all of his creations and his scientific laws.
How is it if two sides have no "facts" as you say, that one is worse than the other? Indeed we have facts, supported by evidence, going back to the birth of universe. You have a book that says the world is 6,000 years old. I think right now we actually have more than you do. There is no intelligent design, there is no sky man, and there is no evidence that says evolution is false. We can go back right up to the point of the big bang... and you can go right back to a book about massive inbreeding between the first two humans. Your book only explains why humans are so fucking stupid, in a perverse and awful way. At least we have dysgenics, studies, and proof of the past. It can only be seen as an asanine thing to say that we have less evidence, when it is obvious from where we came. Mammalia -> Theria -> Eutheria -> Euarchontoglires -> Primates -> Haplorrhini -> Simiiformes -> Catarrhini -> Hominoidea -> Homininae -> Hominini -> Homo sapiens sapiens. Which is related to (but did not come from directly) Mammalia -> Theria -> Eutheria -> Euarchontoglires -> Primates -> Haplorrhini -> Simiiformes -> Catarrhini -> Hominoidea -> Homininae -> Hominini -> Pan troglodytes. Chimps FYI. Mammalia -> Theria -> Eutheria -> Euarchontoglires -> Primates -> Haplorrhini -> Simiiformes -> Catarrhini -> Hominoidea -> Homininae -> Gorillini -> Gorilla gorilla diehli Cross River Gorilla. Besides that we have the bones, and DNA from several of our past 'cousins' within the genus Homo. Out of the 13 known species in homo, we are the only ones left. In fact, at one point, there was another H. sapiens. H. sapiens idaltu, which may actually be an ancestor from 200,000 years ago. Radiological dating is also on our side, while many of the twits claiming it is inaccurate are right about carbon they fail to realize that there is more than one way to date with isotopes. Uranium-lead dating, with uranium 238 having an exceptionally long half life, along with 237 having a shorter one, provides a cross check that enables accuracy of distant past dates. Uranium-Lead. Additional methods are Samarium-neodymium, Potassium-argon, Rubidium-strontium, Uranium-thorium, Fission tracks, and more! Dating is accurate, and only grows more-so every year. What does dating have to do with this? Blasting that damn book out of the water in terms of time accuracy. And species. And the story of Adam and Eve. Oh yes, there was a mitochondrial Eve, who lived some 60-80,000 years ago - but Y-chromosomal Adam lived thousands of years apart. 100,000 years, give or take a few thousand. Want another conveniently provable way of showing we have been around, or our ancestors, for a very, very long time? Three species of lice evolved to live with us. Head lice, body lice, and "crabs". Yes, genital lice can actually prove we have been around for quite some time, and prove evolution at the same time. If we went extinct, so would two of them. Body lice can actually prove that we had clothing at least 100,000 years ago because that is when they evolved from living in our hair (some 700,000 years before) to living in our clothing. Now, about the one that would not go extinct. Guess where they live? Gorillas. Plus, study of the DNA shows that they have been making balls itchy for 3 million years, so they have been around for quite some time. It is even likely that mitochondrial Eve and y chromosomal Adam had crabs... Just because neither side, that being those that worship the books (Jews, Muslims, Christians), and those who believe in science, biology, astronomy, physics, and evolution (proven good all the way back to the point of the bang) cannot explain the bang itself, does not mean that one side knows more. In fact, the first grouping knows less because they refuse to change their beliefs which have been proven false a thousand times over. Flat earthers are another great example of willful ignorance - absolutely determined to prove that the earth is flat and that the entire round thing is a bloody conspiracy. One day I hope, just as we let go of the flat earth and it growing into a minority, that we can let go of this creationist nonsense and superstition. Every religion has its own creation story, from the Hindu's very... erm... unique explanation, to the ripoff of Gilgamesh (Old Testament), to the Aztecs and Mayans, to the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans... However only one group of people are actively looking for the reasons, the explanations, and the actual facts behind the beginning, regardless of if they believe in a supreme being or not. Those heretic scientists! With their sciences, tools, technology, and brainpower! They dare question? Blasphemy! Many people are just scared to die, and afraid that all the people they knew that are now dead are really just dead. Many people have been convinced they are going to burn in hell - when hell was not actually named in the Old Testament as a place... it was Jesus who introduced hell. That caring loving hippie dude, yeah man, like everyone who is sinful or does not like, you know, believe in me, will burn eternally because I love you man... yeah... And we have politicians that base policy on this shit... I fully expect to have this post ignored, or parts taken out of context to play "gotcha" but let me just say this last little statement: you'd just prove to me exactly what I think of you (a generalized you and whoever does).
the part that says order cannot arise from chaos. Did newtons law just pop up from no where and just started working. You must use a bit of common sense when trying to disprove the balance and order of god Stox. I have been saying this for ages here and you keep reverting back to the magic man in the sky theme. I think I will also try doing that when I cant answer any questions also with common sense
Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that form the basis for classical mechanics. They are: In the absence of net external force, a body either is at rest or moves in a straight line with constant velocity. Force is proportional to mass times acceleration (when proper units are chosen, F = ma). Alternatively, force is proportional to the time rate of change of momentum. Whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force −F on the first body. F and −F are equal in size and opposite in direction. I know you bible thumpers twist reality, but come on, this is just crazy.
Ping, the problem here, as I see it, is that you're basically referring to entropy - but entropy deals with closed systems. Order cannot arise from disorder in a closed system; entropy cannot decrease, in a closed system. In an open system, we have a dynamic environment, where an outside source of energy - in our environment, the sun comes most to mind - powers the process whereby order can very much arise from disorder, and entropy very much decreases. Energy such as this is the engine, if you will; it provides the open-system "battery."
I love entropy. Eventually all will descend into the limitless chaos. It's like our oil based economy. We rely on it for everything, and when it was expanding bigger and better things were made and done... but now that we're close to peaking and will soon peak in the next decade or less, we get to see the entropy of the system via a slow decline in production with widespread devastating effect. Unless we do something, which we wont, we are in for a bumpy, chaotic ride. Chaos is a good thing, as is chance and circumstance. Live a little.
Very true North, but even the sun has an order and started from somewhere., plus it may seem dynamic to us today but just maybe we have not found that formula yet either. Just as a thousand years ago flight was a scientific impossibility, but later one we eventually found the formula for flight.
Although I'm an atheist - in the sense, I have no belief in deity - I do believe in rational inquiry. At the end of the day, if proceeding empirically, by testable method, etc., we come to a big head slap of "D'oh! There was a grand designer!," that's just fine with me as well. To sort of put Pascal's wager on it's head, I guess I figure a power and intelligence on the order of what we're talking about would both applaud my empiricism, and be beyond ego (one of my issues, actually, with so much of man's quest, regarding faith - how anthropomorphic "God" has been, as a rule - seems to me, most versions behave little more than a petulant, jealous fool; I'd like to think, we're I simply wrong, God not only has a tremendous sense of humor, but wants his "children" to always be questing for truth. [And I make no presumptions of judgment here]. Totally agreed - why I've always loved the western pantheon, paganistic practice. Dionysius is a gas, Aphrodite is a fantastic girlfriend - but don't get the former too drunk, and don't scorn the latter...lol.
Hey North, aint it funny how my post, my long one, was totally ignored, even though I basically shove a pill of truth in here?
Seems to be going around. Great post, by the way. I'm fascinated by evolution, and personally I'm more moved by nature than I ever could imagine, growing up.
You should look into how fish became amphibians, and lead to synapsids and reptiles. Before the end of the Permian, the world had cooler animals than what came later.