o let me confirm this... your answer is; yes, i know i am being rude, but it is an integral part of my religious viewpoint that i must be rude. Well, thank you for at least letting me know - i know now i can have no interest in your christianity. I am glad i have met other christians or i would leave this thread with a terrible viewpoint of your ilk.

My answer is, I believe the words of God over the words of man. I'm not sure why you expect me to compromise my beliefs and tell you something that I don't believe is true.

Do you realise that it is part of my viewpoint to see you as a silly, childish, scared and brainwashed fool? But do i accuse you of those things? No. Because i have respect for you (or at least i did), i accept that you may not conform to the mould. I choose my words extremely carefully sometimes even to the detriment of making my point clearly! All because i don't want to offend you.

I think it speaks volume that i, as an agnostic atheist, am more tolerant and polite than you, a theist. In the face of being called dishonest and insincere as well. You are not special, there is no excuse - you do not get special rules for calling people insincere; it makes you a bigot by definition (a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices). And your words confine your religion to bigotry. How can it not when you insult anyone who disagrees?

What possible respect could you have for someone that you believe is a "silly childish scared and brainwashed fool" except that which is empty and false? I prefer your honesty to your tolerance. You are incapable of offending me; I've heard it all.

If you cannot lay aside that bigotry, then we have nothing further to discuss.

I am obstinately and intolerantly devoted to the word of God. If it wasn't a scandal for you, you would be a perfect man.

The reason why i am not able to reply to certain parts of your posts is that you include bible quotes; these are utterly meaningless to me, and you may as well be reading me a vacuum cleaner instruction manual. Especially in a discussion pertaining to the validity of said document.

You virtually ignored everything I wrote, and looking back I count 3 scriptures.

I suspect that it is you who needs to go and study logic and maths - notice how i wait for you to demonstrate your ignorance of such subjects before i suggested this, a kindness you did not afford me. There are ways of solving uncertainties such as using occam's razor to demonstrate that evidence is required if you wish to propose a more complicated state of affairs. By suggesting that reality is changeable (from what i can understand of your loose grip on the subject, for example perhaps the gravitational constant changes depending on your position in the universe), you may as well suggest that gravity tastes like jelly - it has no basis and is rediculous to propose as a realistic alternative because it is utterly meaningless and offers an infinite spectrum of alternatives. You must have a reason to suggest it, otherwise it can only be considered as a philosophical exercise and as such is not scientific. If you have a scientific reason, then you're all good.

You entirely missed the point, and actually reinforced it with your assertion that it would be ridiculous to believe that law of gravity could change. The question is, why should there be a law-like order in the Universe in the first place? What evidence do you have that the future will be like the past? How do you explain the uniformity in nature? Where do you get the laws of logic from? These are things that you assume apriori without accounting for them.

If you think differently, then you are wrong; it is not a matter of opinion. Science (which is maths) is defined on those terms, something is either scientific or not. That is why many religious groups can't understand how outrageous it is to suggest intelligent design is taught in science classes; you may as well teach people how to read tea leaves to get to a solution in a maths class. Maths is a set of rules, and if you change those rules then it is no longer maths. Same goes for science. Your opinions do not count towards science.

There is good reason to believe that the Universe is designed, from the fine tuning of the physical laws, to the information in DNA. It is a better explanation of the facts. To rule it out I think is ridiculous and definitely not scientific. Ask Anthony Flew why he stopped being an atheist.

Finally i will say this; you rarely ever address my point or reply to a simple question. You seemingly always reply to an example rather than the point (which you did again even when i highlighted this oversight; the second reply was utter misdirection). You often subtly change the parameters. Perhaps it is not intentional, or perhaps that is also a necessary part of your religion.

I'm not sure i can make another polite reply, so i may make none at all; i have been insulted enough. I for one am absolutely certain that, if there is a god, god would not be happy with you walking around judging others. He or she is watching you right now, seeing you insult others in his/her own name.

I wouldn't call passive aggressive polite, would you? God isn't going to judge me for telling what His word says, which is what He commanded me to do.

Edit:
Actually, i saw you apologised for being rude. I'm sure in your mind you are forgiven by god. This must give you an incredible amount of freedom to be immoral. I am glad that i at least do not need a sword hanging over my head to be polite and fair. When i am rude to someone, it hurts me in my heart, and i can't just apologise and feel better; i carry it with me.

Everyone has a God given conscience which tells them right from wrong. Your guilty conscience is telling you that you've violated Gods standard of behavior.

>> ^dannym3141:

No, this is not true. If we are to believe our models of the big bang are correct (and you'd be a fucking idiot not to) then we say "god created the big bang". But then you must ask the question "where did god come from?" And the answer to that question requires more faith than the opinion of not needing a god for the universe to exist.

Well God didn't come from nowhere, He has simply always existed. Sussing this out, if the Universe began to exist, it has a cause. So, unless you're saying that something came from nothing, your other choice is an uncaused eternal first cause of the Universe. It's widely accepted in big bang cosmology that time, space, matter and energy had a finite beginning, which makes the cause of the Universe timeless, spaceless, unimaginably powerful and transcendent. You can make some further deductions about this, but that is sounding a lot like God already.

But also even just in the creation of humans, when you get to the circular "Why are we here?", "God made us", "How do you know?", "Because god says he's always right, and he says he made us", you are asking for a complete leap of faith based on nothing.

We know God through faith, but it isn't blind faith. To know God is to know Him personally. I know Jesus is God because I received the Holy Spirit. That proves what scripture says is true.

On the other hand, if we are to decide that humans were created by certain atoms colliding or reacting with certain other atoms, and various conditions being perfect. And even if it's got a one in a billion to the power a billion chance of happening, we just need to wait for the odds to come up, and we're not exactly short on time on the scale of the universe.

You have to consider the finely tuned physical laws that govern the Universe if you want to discuss odds. And the controvery is not that they are fine tuned for life, because they are. The controversy is that there is a fine tuner. Consider that the odds for just one of these laws (the cosmological constant) being set the way it is, let alone the dozens of other laws, is greater than 1 part in 10 to the 120th power. That's a number greater than the number of particles in the Universe. Your odds would be better winning the powerball 100 times in a row. We're dealing with a virtual impossibility here.

Human emotion is irrational, and believing in god is an emotional choice. I respect the choice, but it cannot be correctly claimed that it makes more sense to believe in god based on any logical argument or physical evidence; you have your own reasons and that's fine by me.

It wasn't an emotional choice for me. I was strictly a materialist before I came to faith, and that because God shook me from my agnosticism and woke me up to the spiritual reality of which the material reality is only a veil. I have no choice in believing in God because it is plainly obvious to me that He exists, not to mention that He makes it known to me every single day. It is not something I could for a moment deny.

However, i think you understand atheism differently to the meaning i've always known. Accepting god requires faith. The faith to accept something you aren't certain of. You have faith that god is real. Now i can't make that leap; our chemistry is different and i can't accept something that i haven't got evidence for. Now, if i refuse your proposal of how the world, the universe exists, then i must form my own opinions on the evidence that i am presented. That is not a faith, not a belief in something, it is something that i can work out and solve for myself. If you follow the science, it makes sense, and i don't need ANY faith for that; my atheism drops right out of the undeniable logic of maths, and i don't have to keep believing in it for it to be true (in your case, you do).

Science doesn't have any information on whether God exists or not. Science strictly deals with empirical evidence, and God is a Spirit, and spirit is immaterial. In regards to logic, where do the laws of logic come from? What place do absolute laws have in a material universe that is always changing?

Faith isn't something you believe without certainty. This is what scripture says about faith:

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Faith is the substance, or foundation for the hope that I have in Christ. It is not something I hope is true, it is something I know is true, in which I place my hope. I cannot see God at the moment, and neither are all of His promises of the future yet actualized, but I have faith that He is there, not because of wishful thinking, but because I have a tangible, experiential relationship with Him. Even though Jesus is not in the room with me, He is always with me through the Holy Spirit. His is a peace beyond words. The promises have not all yet manifested, but my faith is that they will be manifested, because of the hope I have in Jesus Christ, hope that is well founded.

I understand that you are simply trying to evaluate evidence and postulate the most likely scenerio. The quote is simply saying that it is a large leap for a finite being to make. I am praying for you to receive a sign and the gift of faith (because it is a gift). What is true is that no one comes to the Son unless the Father draws Him near. If you are open to the truth, regardless of what it might be, and if what is actually true is important to you, then you could know God is real. God will lead you if you love the truth.

>> ^dannym3141:

You quote The Blind Watchmaker and The Origin of Species but I highly doubt that you’ve read them yourself. If you haven’t then you’re not better than someone who is contesting the bible without having read it. You quote a LOT of scientists that you say are hostile to your position but again, have you actually read the works that you’re quoting from in their entirety? I doubt it.

Well, I have read them and I think it's fairly obvious that I understand the subject matter.

Here are just two things that I read recently that I think are worth repeating:

...degree of thermodynamic disorder is measured by an entity called "entropy." There is a mathematical correlation between entropy increase and an increase in disorder. The overall entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. However, the entropy of some parts of the system can spontaneously decrease at the expense of an even greater increase of other parts of the system. When heat flows spontaneously from a hot part of a system to a colder part of the system, the entropy of the hot area spontaneously decreases! The ICR (Institute for Creation Research)...

....illustrate a fact, but they are not the fact itself. One thing is certain: metaphors are completely useless when it comes to the thermodynamics of calculating the efficiency of a heat engine, or the entropy change of free expansion of a gas, or the power required to operate a compressor. This can only be done with mathematics, not metaphors. Creationists have created a "voodoo" thermodynamics....

I never made the argument that entropy can never decrease in a system. I made the argument that even if you want to use the energy of the sun to explain why life is becoming more complex, you haven't explained the information that makes that possible. More energy does not equal more order. I also don't know why you keep bringing up articles from the institution of creation research and expect me to defend them. I am more than willing to admit that there are some terrible theories by creationists out there, just as there are terrible theories by secular scientists.

For myself, I am only a materialist because there isn’t any demonstrable, non-anecdotal, reproducible evidence for the existence of anything non-material. I hope you can understand that. There is the appearance of design and there is DNA, and we don’t know how everything got started but that’s not good enough for me to believe that it was designed, I need something more concrete because that is the criteria for which I will justify something as believable. I’d be very interested in some sort of evidence like that but it hasn’t happened yet and conjecture just doesn’t work for me so I’ll reserve judgment but maintain doubt and that’s all there is to it.

I can understand your position as a materialist, having formally been one. I did not see any evidence for God or spirit either, and it really rocked my world to discover that there was more, and that material reality is only a veil to a larger reality. It is mind blowing to discover that everything that you know is in some way, wrong.

I think there is some very good evidence pointing towards a Creator, but that isn't going to get you there necessarily. It seems to me though, after talking with you a bit, that if there is a God, you would want to know about it. Maybe you're not terribly interested in pursuing the subject at the moment but you now strike me as someone who is open to the truth. If He does exist, would you want to hear from Him? If He let you know, would you follow Him?

On the scope of evidence, I think the two of the most powerful arguments are the information in DNA and the fine-tuning of physical laws. There is no naturalistic process which can produce a code, and that is what DNA is. It is a digital code which stores information and is vastly superior to anything we have ever designed. It is a genetic language which has its own alphabet, grammar, syntax, and meaning. It has redudancy and error correction, and it is an encoding and decoding mechanism to transmit information about an organism. Biologists actually use linguistic analysis to decode its functions. You also have to realize that the message is not the medium. In that, like all information, you can copy the information in DNA to storage device like a hard drive, and then recode it later with no loss in information. This is a pretty good article on the information in DNA:

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/read-prove-god-exists/language-dna-intelligent-design/

The fine tuning evidence is also very powerfully because it is virtually impossible for the laws to have come about by chance. It's important to understand what fine tuning actually means. I'll quote Dr Craig:

"That the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is a pretty solidly established fact and ought not to be a subject of controversy. By “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” but simply that the fundamental constants and quantities of nature fall into an exquisitely narrow range of values which render our universe life-permitting. Were these constants and quantities to be altered by even a hair’s breadth, the delicate balance would be upset and life could not exist."

So it's not a question whether the Universe itself is finely tuned for life, it is a question of how it got that way. In actuality, the odds of it happening are far worse than winning the powerball lottery over 100 times in a row. Random chance simply cannot account for it because there are dozens of values that must be precisely calibrated, and the odds for some of these values happening by chance is greater than the number of particles in the Universe! For instance, the space-energy density must be fine tuned to one part in 10 to the 120th power, an inconceivably huge number. That's just one value out of dozens. Many scientists understand this.

Here are some quotes from some agnostic scientists, which a couple of Christians thrown in:

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming".

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."
Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Just because the universe and life might have the appearance of design doesn’t mean it was designed. After all, we might all be brains in vats being experimented on by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings and all of this is simply like the matrix. Maybe Déjà vu is evidence that it’s true but there simply isn’t any reason to believe it just like there isn’t any reason to believe in any gods.

But if that were true then the Universe is designed, and this is simply some kind of computer program. In any case, although we could imagine many scenerios I am talking about something very specific; That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead. Moreover, that you can know Him personally, today.

All of the concepts of god and gods have been moved back every time we discover naturalistic explanations where once those gods were accredited. What makes you think that it’s any different with these things? Just because we don’t know what’s behind the veil doesn’t mean that the idea of someone pulling the levers is a better explanation than a currently unknown natural, non-agency explanation. If we don’t know, then we don’t know and putting a god in the place of “we don’t know” isn't a good way of helping us learn more about our universe

The primary question is whether the Universe has an intelligent causation. You believe that Universes, especially precisely calibrated and well-ordered ones just happen by themselves. I happen to think that this is implausible to say the least. You're acting like it's not a valid question, and because we can describe some of the mechanisms we see that we can rule out an intelligent cause, which is simply untrue. You could describe every single mechanism there is in the Universe, but until you explain how it got here, you haven't explained anything. The real question is not how they work but why they work and that question can only be answered by answering why they exist in the first place.

It is also just a fallacy to say that because some peoples beliefs about God have been proven false, that means all beliefs about God are false. Scientists used to believe that there were only seven planets and that the Earth was flat. Does that mean that all ideas scientists have are false? No, and neither does it mean that all beliefs about God are false because people have had ridiculous beliefs about God.

The God I believe in is not ridiculous, and the belief in His existence has led to ideas that formed western civilization and propelled modern science itself. The idea that we can suss out Universal laws by investigating secondary causes is a Christian one, that came from the belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws.

It is also not a brake to doing science to believe that God created the Universe. Some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived believed in God. People like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Max Planck, Mendel and Einstein. It certainly didn't stop them from doing great science.

Also, as I have explained, it is not a God of the gaps argument when God is a better explanation for the evidence.

We know that the universe, space-time, matter had a finite beginning but we can’t say anything at all about that beginning with any certainty. We can’t even say that whatever was that caused the universe is spaceless, or timeless. We just don’t know. This is the god of the gaps argument that started this whole thing. You’re putting a god in as the explanation for what is effectively a gap in our knowledge without anything solid to go off of. It would not be a god of the gaps argument if we eventually could know with a high degree of certainty that there is a god there fiddling with the controls but we don’t. That is the crux of this whole debate. That is why “I don’t know” is a better answer than “A god did it” because it’s absolutely verifiably true where as a god is not.

The ultimate cause of the Universe must be timeless because it must be beginningless, according to logic. I'll explain. You cannot get something from nothing, I think we both agree on that. So if the Universe has a cause, it must be an eternal cause, since you cannot have an infinite regress of causes for the Universe. The buck has to stop somewhere. This points to an eternal first cause, which means that cause is timeless. If it is timeless it is also changeless because change is a property of time. If it is changeless it is also spaceless, because anything which exists in space must be temporal, since it is always finitely changing relation to the things around it. It's timelessness and spacelessness makes it immaterial, and this also makes it transcendent. I think it is obvious that whatever created the Universe must be unimaginably powerful. So we have something which already closely describes the God of the bible, and we can deduct these things by using logic alone.

We just don’t know if the universe is entirely regressable into some sort of endless loop which folds in on itself, or something else, or even if there is a god or not. Furthermore, I hope you look into what physicist mean by “out of nothing” because it doesn’t mean what I think you think it means. It took me a while to understand what it meant and to be honest, it is a bit of a deceptive word play but it’s only that way because there isn’t another way to describe it. I don't actually believe that the universe came from "nothing". I don't know how it all started, so therefore, I have no belief. I don't need an answer to the big questions. I can say "I don't know" just fine and leave it at that.

“A proponent of the Big Bang Theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” Anthony Kenny

British physicist P.C.W. Davies writes, “The coming-into-being of the universe as discussed in modern science…is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization or structure upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.”

Physicist Victor Stenger says “the universe exploded out of nothingness the observable universe could have evolved from an infinitesimal region. its then tempting to go one step further and speculate that the entire universe evolved from literally nothing.

In the realm of the universe, nothing really means nothing. Not only matter and energy would disappear, but also space and time. However, physicists theorize that from this state of nothingness, the universe began in a gigantic explosion about 16.5 billion years ago.

HBJ General Science 1983 Page 362

the universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything.

discover April 2002

I think we can both agree that it is better to know than not to know. That's been one of your primary arguments against the existence of God, that we simply cannot rest of the laurels of God being the Creator because that will lead to ignorance. I have already demonstrated that there is no actual conflict with belief in God and doing good science, so your argument is invalid, but I think it's ironic that on the other side of it, you are arguing that ignorance is a good thing and leads to better science. That you're even intellectually satisified with not knowing. I hope you can see the contradiction here.

The reason why I personally don’t find the whole god argument all that interesting, and the reason why I don’t actually care about it, is because it makes a heck of a lot of claims regarding the nature of god and it’s properties which just can’t be verified. There is nothing that we can concretely discover about god and no predictions that we can make which could eventually be verified meaningfully. How can we possibly know if creator is timeless, or spaceless, unimaginably powerful, transcendent, unembodied, etc? Is it rational to believe that; do you have an equal ratio of evidence to belief? What predictions can we actually make about this god(s). All we have are books and stories written and passed down throughout history. Everything else is just unjustified belief to me.

As I explained above, we can make several predictions about God based on the evidence. Belief in God is rational and can be justified. However, I understand that until you have a personal experience, it is probably going to be unconvincing to you, since this is way you see the world. You demand evidence, and lucky for you, God provides evidence. If you asked Him to come into your life, He would demonstrate it to you. He provided evidence to me, and I know you He will provide to you, especially if you take a leap of faith ask Him for it.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr:

You're right, I am making an argument about you. This has always been about you. I don't care about the whole god argument, I care about why you believe what you believe and that is what I'm talking about. I could care less about what you believe, the 'why' is far more significant.

So in other words, you have such a faith in your position that you aren't even interested in talking about it. You've just admitted that you are completely closed minded to the existence of God, and you're talking to me about confirmation bias? You are a poster child for confirmation bias.

It took you an hour to throw all of those quotes together to make a case. Based on that, do you really expect me to believe that you're not just quote mining from some general creationist website somewhere? Do you really expect me to believe that you've actually studied the subjects that you're presenting as evidence for your claims? You are by definition, cherry picking. You are not taking into account the whole of scientific findings, you are ignoring the information which dis-confirms your existing views, and you are unknowingly misrepresenting the facts. If you were well read on any of the subjects of physics or evolutionary biology then you'd completely understand where I'm coming from.

Actually, what I was doing was disputing your claim that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to open systems. The whole of scientific findings say that the 2nd law applies everywhere at all times, and this is very widely agreed upon. Your claim of cherry picking is bogus; the facts in them are plainly stated and from witnesses hostile to my overall position, which gives them even more weight. If those facts do not match reality, feel free to point out how so. Again, you are coming from a complete lack of substance, saying I am doing this or that, without actually having any real evidence to back up your assertions. If you're not interested in talking about things that require you to demonstrate an actual knowledge of the subject matter, please stop making baseless claims about what I am doing or back them up.

That's you, you said that. Why do you believe those things? Are you willing to attempt to prove yourself wrong? Are you willing to work to subdue cognitive biases in order to be as certain as you can be that you aren't mistaken? How can you say that your god is the correct one and all of the rest are incorrect? How can you justify a jump from the idea that we don't understand entirely how a system works to, there must be agency behind it? That is exactly what you are asking everyone to do. That is a huge leap and it does not directly follow. Extraordinary claims such as a personal god, require extraordinary evidence. You can't simply suggest that because we don't understand something that there must be agency there, that is not how logic works nor science. You can say nothing about the true nature of something if it requires faith in order to have evidence.

My argument is not a God of the gaps argument. I am not suggesting because we don't understand something, God did it. I am saying that God is a better explanation for the evidence. I am saying that even if you were to explain every mechanism in the Universe, you still haven't gone any farther to say that the uniformity in nature which upholds the physical laws that causes those mechanisms to operate isn't better explained by Agency. Unless you can demonstrate a purely naturalistic origin of the Universe, you have no case against Agency. This isn't to mention things like the fine tuning of physical laws, the information in DNA, and the appearance of design in biological systems. They are all better explained by a Creator.

Further, when you talk about faith, there are many examples in science. No one has ever seen macro evolution happening, yet scientists have great faith that it occured. There is absolutely no hard evidence for it, only a just-so story based on very questionable inference from the fossil record. The major predictions of evolutionary theory have all actually been falsified by the fossil record, which would be enough to torpedo any theory, but they are committed to it regardless of what the facts say:

we take the side of evolutionary science because we have a prior commitment to materialism. it is not that the methods..of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation..on the contrary..we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.

richard lewontin

harvard professor of zoology and biology

The thing is, I am in doubt about you. I am in doubt about your sincerity for meaningful investigations into reality. I am in doubt that you have actually read any scientific material in their entirety. I am in doubt that you value critical thinking. I am in doubt that you understand what a logical fallacy is or how they work. I am in doubt that you are doing anything more than attempting to justify a belief that you already hold by attempting to give legitimacy in the face of dissonance.

That's wonderful, but until you demonstrate a knowledge of the subject matter which is not inferior to my own (ala, believing the 2nd law doesnt apply to biological systems), everything that you have said here is irrelevent. Even if everything you said here is true and I understood nothing about this, you have shown you understand even less than that. However, I am going to give you more credit than that, and I would hope, but not expect, for you to do the same, however thus far you have only worked to try to discredit me. That is a logical fallacy called an ad hominem attack. It is a sad testament to atheists that there are only a very few out there willing to engage in rational discourse and not lower themselves to mockery and ridicule. I know rational discourse is possible because I have seen it in debates, and have found it on the internet from time to time. Overall though, it is a very bad advertisement for your point of view.

This was always about you. Your belief is based on quotes taken out of context and stitched together to weave a picture that conforms to what you already believe in while ignoring all of the information that doesn't agree with you. This is called a confirmation bias. You wont know how unconvincing your statements and claims are until you get past that kind of bias and seek to prove what you believe wrong to see if it actually holds water.

Again, this is the pot calling the kettle black. Your confirmation bias meter reads at 100 percent. My claims stand on their own and so do the quotations which flatly refute your claim. Feel free to show me scientific literature which supports your case at any time.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr

It's interesting to read a response like yours.

Do you know what "the burden of proof" means?

I realize that you're a christian so I've decided to keep this a bit short for the sake of simply providing you with a potentially new view that isn't your own. You may reject it but hopefully you will at least understand how someone else might think about this topic.

One reason that I reject the notion of designer deities is because the question becomes infinitely regress-able; it explains nothing, it helps clarify nothing, and it opens up more questions than it answers. The notion of a designer god begs the question, who or what designed the designer, then that designers designer, and most importantly, how do these gods operate, by what laws? Suggesting that a creator exists because something doesn't make sense to you isn't a valid way of forming believes if your goal is truth. The notion of design is for people who cannot understand what it means for systems to assemble from the bottom-up because, to them, it makes more intuitive sense that things are designed from the top down. This is not critical thinking and it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the findings of science.

True, we do have gaps in our knowledge about systems and mechanism but those gaps should remain gaps instead of prematurely filling them with god fluff. But, you are a believer, and believers do not make critical thinkers.

I just hope that you come to understand that the answer "A creator did it" isn't an intellectually honest way of thinking.

>> ^shinyblurry:

I have a hard time believing that you understand the function of the the answer "I don't know" (or "We don't know") or how beneficial it really is.
That you don't know what the truth is, or that you believe it isn't knowable, does not preclude me from knowing what it is. It is not beneficial to be ignorant of the truth.
The human race would have been far better off if we'd spent less time making up bullshit stories about gods and spirits to explain natural phenomenon that we couldn't fathom the mechanisms of.
How do you go from "I don't know" to rejecting the existence of God? How does explaining a mechanism rule out agency? Do you understand what I meant earlier about the uniformity of nature?
"We don't know" is a far better answer to a question when we really don't know then the answer "a creator did it".
Not if it's true.
It should be highly discouraged to make up an answer when we don't know something. Teachers in American schools do this, they encourage their students to "give it their best guess" when they don't know the answer. That just perpetuates the issue. Saying "I don't know" doesn't prove or disprove anything but it does function as a stopping point in a dialog so we can know where we should investigate next. Answering with anything but "I don't know" when we don't actually know, takes investigation off course into insanity. Sticking a creator in the gaps prevents further exploration of the question, it's an abominable act which stifles critical thinking.
It's not a God of the gaps when a Creator is a better explanation for the phenomena, such as the fine tuning of the physical laws, the appearance of design in biological systems and the information in DNA. It is an abominable act to dismiss the idea of Gods existence out of hand.
I'm sorry but I don't have faith in a self creating universe just because I don't have the answer as to how it happened and suggesting that I must have faith in that if I don't accept a creator hypothesis is an exercise in a false dilemma.
You certainly have faith in a naturalistic explanation if you reject a creator. Although a purely naturalistic origin is something you cannot prove and have zero evidence for, you believe it anyway, and reject a creator outright, by your own words. That is blind faith.
>> ^IAmTheBlurr

So I take this to mean that you are truly agnostic about all
non-Christian gods. You will refuse to state unequivocally that there
is a council of 5 supreme beings who created the universe.

No, I will state unequivocally that Jesus is God, and that anyone else claiming to be a god is a pretender to the throne.

You do have me on the trivializing part, because god and a teapot in
space mean about the same to me since there is the same amount of
evidence for both.

I'm looking at the same evidence you are. The difference is in the presuppositions of your worldview. If you took off those glasses then you might start to see what I am talking about. For instance, the Uniformity in nature, how do you explain it?

There is no appearance of design in biological
systems (we made great leaps in understanding biology in the last 100
years or so)

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker p.1

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.

Francis Crick Nobel Laureate
What Mad Pursuit p.138 1988

There certainty is the appearance of the design, and these systems were in fact designed, but you say it is simply chance that created these sophisticated and irreducibly complex systems. I say something irreducibly complex cannot have been evolved.

, and the "fine-tuning" of physical laws are easily
explained without a higher being, and so it is not necessary.

They are not easily explained away. It is virtually a mathematical impossibility for the laws to be tuned the way they are. Check this out:



(Any universe without those properties would make life impossible and so we
would never know it existed

If I stood in front of a firing squad of 100 highly trained marksmen and survived the execution without a scratch, I should not be shocked to find out they missed, since if they hadn't, I wouldn't be alive to know that they did. In the same manner, while we shouldn't be shocked we are alive in a life permitting Universe, it doesn't follow that we shouldn't be surprised the Universe in which we find ourselves is life permitting.

, we do not know how many universes exist,
have existed, or can exist, etc.

If there are multiple universes, it just makes the fine tuning problem worse. The fine tuning on the mechanism for the multiple Universe generator would be infinitely more improbable.

If you want to maintain a god of the
gaps you are welcome to, but the natural solutions to every mystery
ever make the future of such a worldview tenuous at best.)

It isn't the God of the gaps when God is the superior explantion for the evidence, such as the information in DNA.

The presence of a supernatural being is, by definition, unfalsifiable.
The concept of a supernatural being is literally meaningless, since
you can say anything about it and not be proven wrong (or right). It
cannot be measured

Is believing in the existence of the external world falsifiable? Is the idea that the Universe began 5 seconds ago and all of your memories are false falsifiable? Is the fact that you cannot falsify either of those ideas make your existence meaningless?

The non-existence of God certainly is falsifiable; He could show up, as in the second coming. God cannot be measured by emprical methodology because God is a Spirit. This doesn't prove He doesn't exist. I notice you didn't answer my question, which is basic..you say you have an open mind, so I ask, if Jesus is God, would you turn your life over to Him and follow Him?

>> ^botono9

I have a hard time believing that you understand the function of the the answer "I don't know" (or "We don't know") or how beneficial it really is.

That you don't know what the truth is, or that you believe it isn't knowable, does not preclude me from knowing what it is. It is not beneficial to be ignorant of the truth.

The human race would have been far better off if we'd spent less time making up bullshit stories about gods and spirits to explain natural phenomenon that we couldn't fathom the mechanisms of.

How do you go from "I don't know" to rejecting the existence of God? How does explaining a mechanism rule out agency? Do you understand what I meant earlier about the uniformity of nature?

"We don't know" is a far better answer to a question when we really don't know then the answer "a creator did it".

Not if it's true.

It should be highly discouraged to make up an answer when we don't know something. Teachers in American schools do this, they encourage their students to "give it their best guess" when they don't know the answer. That just perpetuates the issue. Saying "I don't know" doesn't prove or disprove anything but it does function as a stopping point in a dialog so we can know where we should investigate next. Answering with anything but "I don't know" when we don't actually know, takes investigation off course into insanity. Sticking a creator in the gaps prevents further exploration of the question, it's an abominable act which stifles critical thinking.

It's not a God of the gaps when a Creator is a better explanation for the phenomena, such as the fine tuning of the physical laws, the appearance of design in biological systems and the information in DNA. It is an abominable act to dismiss the idea of Gods existence out of hand.

I'm sorry but I don't have faith in a self creating universe just because I don't have the answer as to how it happened and suggesting that I must have faith in that if I don't accept a creator hypothesis is an exercise in a false dilemma.

You certainly have faith in a naturalistic explanation if you reject a creator. Although a purely naturalistic origin is something you cannot prove and have zero evidence for, you believe it anyway, and reject a creator outright, by your own words. That is blind faith.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr

>> ^shinyblurry:

There is no reason to believe there is a teapot floating in space, but there is reason to believe that the Universe was created by a supreme being. Could there be one in space unknown to all? Sure, and I wouldn't unequivicably state that there are not. Perhaps some astronauts were having a tea party in outer space one day and the teapot floated off. If I did unequivicably state there were none, I would have a burden of proof, and that is why Christopher had to explain himself.

So I take this to mean that you are truly agnostic about all non-Christian gods. You will refuse to state unequivocally that there is a council of 5 supreme beings who created the universe.

>> ^shinyblurry:
It is simply to try to trivialize the question to equate the idea of God, which can explain everything from the fine tuning of the physical laws, the appearance of design in biological systems, and the information in DNA, to teapots, unicorns, and fairies, which explain absolutely nothing.

You do have me on the trivializing part, because god and a teapot in space mean about the same to me since there is the same amount of evidence for both. There is no appearance of design in biological systems (we made great leaps in understanding biology in the last 100 years or so), and the "fine-tuning" of physical laws are easily explained without a higher being, and so it is not necessary. (Any universe without those properties would make life impossible and so we would never know it existed, we do not know how many universes exist, have existed, or can exist, etc. If you want to maintain a god of the gaps you are welcome to, but the natural solutions to every mystery ever make the future of such a worldview tenuous at best.)

The presence of a supernatural being is, by definition, unfalsifiable. The concept of a supernatural being is literally meaningless, since you can say anything about it and not be proven wrong (or right). It cannot be measured


>> ^shinyblurry:
So, you're an agnostic? I was once agnostic and did not see any evidence for God or Spirit, although I did not rule out His existence either. Let me ask you this..if Jesus is God, would you turn your life over to Him and follow Him?

I am an atheist, but I am not blind to evidence and so my position is capable of change.

The "explanatory power" of a teapot is irrelevant to my question. Do you believe in it or not? If not, why not? You are dodging the question, and it is painfully obvious why. You find yourself in the same position that Mr. Hitchens did, which is to prove a negative.

You can prove a negative. For instance, there are no US Senators who are muslims. Go to http://www.senate.gov/ to verify.

There is no reason to believe there is a teapot floating in space, but there is reason to believe that the Universe was created by a supreme being. Could there be one in space unknown to all? Sure, and I wouldn't unequivicably state that there are not. Perhaps some astronauts were having a tea party in outer space one day and the teapot floated off. If I did unequivicably state there were none, I would have a burden of proof, and that is why Christopher had to explain himself.

Explanatory power is entirely relevent to the question because you are trying to establish an equivilency between the question of Gods existence and the question of the existence of anything you can dream up in your mind. It is simply to try to trivialize the question to equate the idea of God, which can explain everything from the fine tuning of the physical laws, the appearance of design in biological systems, and the information in DNA, to teapots, unicorns, and fairies, which explain absolutely nothing.

When Christopher attested to the fact that he believes that God does not exist, the burden of proof was on him to prove that He does not. The reason he could not is because he had blind faith in this idea.

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

I don't have faith in a self-creating universe, I just don't see evidence for an all powerful being. As soon as evidence for one appears, my views will change. This is not faith. It is, in fact, the opposite of faith.

So, you're an agnostic? I was once agnostic and did not see any evidence for God or Spirit, although I did not rule out His existence either. Let me ask you this..if Jesus is God, would you turn your life over to Him and follow Him?



>> ^botono9:
>> ^shinyblurry:
A flying teapot explains exactly nothing; it has no explanatory power. The idea of God does. Between evolution and special creation you have exausted all the possibilities. You have faith in a self-creating universe, I have faith that it was designed by an all powerful being. I see evidence of design, and since it is mathematically impossible it happened by chance, God is a far more plausible hypothesis according to the evidence
The "explanatory power" of a teapot is irrelevant to my question. Do you believe in it or not? If not, why not? You are dodging the question, and it is painfully obvious why. You find yourself in the same position that Mr. Hitchens did, which is to prove a negative.
I don't have faith in a self-creating universe, I just don't see evidence for an all powerful being. As soon as evidence for one appears, my views will change. This is not faith. It is, in fact, the opposite of faith.

@Unaccommodated

Humans are no longer a part of the competitive 'survive and procreate' gene-war that is the natural world, or at least we're in the process of struggling our way out of that tangle. Very soon, our evolution will be defined by wholly non-naturalistic parameters.

We are not starving. Nothing is going to eat us. Our decisions are not made purely by instinctual drives. Of course it's usually accurate to say that we're still subject to the laws of physics and their emergent systems; it ought to be obvious contextually that's not the nature I'm suggesting we have surpassed.

Your appeals to natural law are inapplicable to human endeavour.

At the most fundamental level of our existence, more fundamental even than physical law, we are individual consciousnesses possessing a general intelligence - inherited, admittedly, from an evolutionary heritage that is no longer relevant; from which we should always strive to divorce ourselves.

Marriage is ultimately whatever we want it to be. One thing I do not want it to be is a state-driven instrument of social conformity.

I think the point Bill was trying to make, although I don't think he has quite articulated it in his own mind, is that while you may be able to describe the physical mechanisms as to why the tides behave the way they do, this doesn't explain why the physical laws that cause their behavior continue to operate constantly and consistantly. This is why he said "never a miscommunication". And this is something that science cannot explain and has to assume to make science even possible. All scientific theories that exist depend on it.

The uniformity of nature is *the* fundemental assumption of science, which is to say that future will be like the past, but how can this be explained in a naturalistic worldview? You can't justify it without viciously circular reasoning, ie, that the evidence that the future will be like the past is justified by the past. What is upholding these absolute laws in a Universe which is constantly changing? This is what Bill is getting at, I think, is that you can describe mechanism all day long, but this says nothing about an Agency. You have to explain Agency first (or explain it away), before you can say you've explained anything.

You can describe all the mechanisms of reality, but in the end, you still have faith in a self-creating Universe. You haven't explained why there is uniformity in nature, but funnily enough, it was the Christian belief of Christian scientists that God created a orderly Universe based on laws that science had the idea that it could suss out those laws by investigating secondary causes. This is why Kepler said he felt like he was thinking Gods thoughts after him. But to explain anything you must explain the first thought. "I don't know" is not an argument against a Creator, nor is explaining the tides physical operation evidence that His hand isn't pulling all the strings.

Your physics laws don't apply to Santa's magical abilities, or anything in the bible.

How can you not see the flaw in this logic? Atheists do not make claims for which evidence must be provided, there is no point in trying to "DISPROVE" god, or any other imaginary entity. the "evidence that god doesnt exist" is that there is no evidence that god does exist.

Drac did make the claim "I'm saying there is no God, so there are no necessary assumptions about his nature, since he doesn't HAVE a nature" So therefore he has a burden of proof.

Also, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Finally, no matter how you've redefined the definition, atheism is the belief that there is no God:

"Atheism, from the Greek a-theos ("no-god") is the philosophical position that God doesn't exist. It is distinguished from agnosticism, the argument that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not"

(Academic American Encyclopedia)

Atheism, system of thought developed around the denial of God's existence. Atheism, so defined, first appeared during the Enlightement, the age of reason"

(Random House Encyclopedia-1977)

Atheism is the doctrine that there is no God. Some atheists support this claim by arguments, but these arguments are usually directed against the Christian concept of God, and are largely irrelevant to other possible gods.

(Oxford Companion to Philosophy-1995)

Atheism (Greek, a- [private prefix] + theos, god) is the view that there is no divine being, no God"

(Dictionary of Philosophy, Thomas Mautner, Editor-1996)

Atheism is the belief that God doesn't exist.

(The World Book Encyclopedia-1991)

According to the most usual definition, an atheist is a person who maintains that there is no god.

(The Encyclopedia of Philosophy-1967)

Atheism denies the existence of deity

(Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia-Vol I)

This is what the world looks like to you, huh? absolute laws layed down and explained by God?

In the scientific worldview, there are no absolutes, our "laws" are based on repeated observations and revisions, take for instance Newtons first law: The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.

Now, this actually works, it turns out that the world is this way*. It is natural for a curious human to ask "why?" because we expect,perhaps deep down that there is a reason and a purpose behind the world being arranged this way. But there doesnt seem to be any real reason, had Newton or Galileo lived in an alternate universe, where objects would move at random, independent of the forces acted upon them, well, then we wouldnt have this law, would we? Perhaps such a universe exist, but perhaps there are no Newtons there to check, because the evolution of life and therefore Newtons brain, requires objects to behave in this predictable Newtonian way.

We only have one sample, which is this Universe. Shoulds, woulds and perhaps don't explain away design. What you're really trying to express here is the anthropic principle. Take this example..let's say you're standing before a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen, all aiming for your heart, and then you hear the shots go off..and to your surprise you find that you're still alive, that they all missed. Should you be surprised that you do not observe you are dead? If you were dead, obviously you couldn't observe it. However, you are justified in being surprised you are alive, since all 100 marksmen missing you is extremely improbable. Which is the same reason we should be surprised that there is a conspiracy in the physical laws to support life in the Universe.

Anyway, here we are, we make our laws based on our observations of how things seem predictable, and if things arent that predictable, we cant make laws about them. For instance, why hasnt god, being so clever with the whole "law of motion" trick and all, made a similar law-system for finance? ie: "every 50 years, the market will collapse" and so on? or evolution " the ultimate goal of all of evolution is for all species to evolve big brains trunks, like the humans elephants have?

God laid down a lot of laws about how we should behave. The reason for the chaos in the world is because we haven't obeyed those laws.

No, it seems while God likes order and laws to apply to inanimate object, he's decided to go for chaos and indetermency when dealing with large, complex systems.

You'd almost think there was no god at all, huh?

*Yeah,yeah Einstein, relativity blah blah, for all intends and purposes, Newton will suffice here.

He gave us laws about how to live. Perhaps you have heard of the bible?

>> ^BicycleRepairMan

What you're doing is showing your faithiesm

of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.

francis collins human genome project

The difference between everything you mentioned and God as a concept is that the idea of God has explanatory power. The question of whether the Universe had intelligent causation is a valid question, and from what we know (that space time energy and matter had a finite beginning), the cause of the Universe would be immaterial, spaceless, timeless and transcendent. These perfectly describe attributes of an all powerful God. We also have evidence of design in the Universe and the fine tuning of physical laws. So, to rule God out as an explanation is simply ignorant. Between evolution and special creation, you have virtually exausted the possibilities of how life came to exist.



>> ^Drachen_Jager:
>> ^Morganth:
No, this just illustrates that you do not understand. If there is a god who created the universe, why then would he have to be wholly provable from inside of it? You're actually having to make a number of assumptions about the nature of god to make your claim.
If there is a creator god, we would not relate to him in the way that Hamlet relates to a character in another act of the play, but rather in the way that Hamlet relates to Shakespeare. He could not find him in the highest tower or prove that Shakespeare exists in the lab. Really, the only way Hamlet could ever know that Shakespeare exists is if Shakespeare writes something about himself into the play.
Seriously dude? Hamlet? That's not a person. He's a character in a play, your analogy is utterly useless other than to confuse the gullible.
I make no assumptions about the nature of God, you are the one who makes assumptions about the nature of God. You HAVE to make assumptions about the nature of God to make your argument work. I'm saying there is no God, so there are no necessary assumptions about his nature, since he doesn't HAVE a nature.
There is an infinitum of proposals you cannot prove to be true or false. Unicorns, wizards and dragons ruled the earth 2000 years ago. The Flying Spaghetti Monster created God. All the matching pairs of socks that go missing are stolen by sock-goblins. The proposal that God exists is, therefore only one in an infinity of unprovable junk. Unless you are prepared to believe that UFOs abduct people and mutilate cows and every other stupid theory people throw out there, you have no reason to believe the Universe was created by some kind of sentient being. One is just as likely as the other. If we believed in unprovable junk we'd never get anything done, the scientists would all be bogged down in nonsense and we wouldn't have iPods and personal computers. We'd still be banging rocks together.

>> ^budzos:

They're not actually moving that fast (there is no spoon). There are no laws of physics for them to violate.
>> ^BoneRemake:
>> ^ChaosEngine:
While that was an awesome scene and pretty revolutionary for it's time, I always thought that given you've just seen the agent has reflexes quick enough to dodge bullets, wouldn't saying "dodge this" give it more than enough time to take the gun off Trinity?
I know, rule of cool and all, but still..

Lets go even farther and take into account inertia and momentum etc. If the agent and neo can move that fast shouldn't they be subject to some form of physical law that says if you move fast enough to become a blur your energy should be dissipated in some form ?
The whole thing is full of odd holes, but all in all its a neat movie.




INDEED !