How Can We Best Explain Our Existence ?

August 29, 2010

How can we best explain our existence ?

I am a born again, evangelical christian, it makes 25 years now.

i believe Theism explains best our existence, and i believe, the God that revealed himself in the bible, is the creator of all that exists. What are my reasons to believe so ?

1. The universe had most probably a beginning. This is supported through scientific, and philosophical reasons. Therefore it had a cause. Since beyond our universe, there was no time, no space, and no matter, that cause must be timeless, beginningless, eternal, spaceless, transcendent, invisible, personal, and incredibly powerful. Why does it need to have these characteristics ? This cause cannot exist in the time/space/material universe because then it would exist within the very universe it created. That is impossible.

Whatever caused the universe, existed before the universe. Since the universe had a beginning in time, and since matter and energy do not spontaneously change and arrange themselves into something new, then the best explanation for the cause of the universe is an action that was a decision.The cause must be personal because an impersonal force would be deterministic and mechanistic, not possessing free will. A mechanistic being only operates according to the programming it received from something else. But if the cause of the universe received programming from something else, then we have again not provided the answer to the cause of the universe. We have just found a middle-man. The cause had to make a choice to create and only beings who are personal can make choices.That description fits best to the God of the bible.

2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet. Over 120 fine tune constants are know up to know, and as more time pasts, more are discovered. This might be due to chance, to physical need, or to design. Chance is a very bad explanation. Some advocate a Multiverse. But to have just one life permitting universe, you need 1 to 10^500 attempts to get it done. Thats a 1 with 500 zeros. If we put it in comparison, that in our universe, there exist around 10^80 atoms, this shows how improbable it is, that a Multiverse could explain finetuning. Beside this, the Multiverse argument does not explain away God. A mechanism needs to be in place to trigger these multiverses. It could not be by physical need, since if so, why are there many planets, which are not life permitting, but our is ? So its best explained by design. Our earth/solar/moon system is a very strong evidence. Our solar system is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. This is indeed maibe the strongest argument for theism.

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth. Science cannot explain it. There are strong reasons to believe, a natural origin is not probable, and a bad explanation. First of all, why whould dead rocks need to evolve, to create life ? Secondly, just one living cell is more complex than the most complex machine created by man. A living eukaryotic cell contains many hundreds of thousands of different complex parts, including various motor proteins. These parts must be assembled correctly to produce a living cell, the most complex ‘machine’ in the universe—far more complex than a Cray supercomputer. DNA molecules carry information . Information is always created by a mind. There i no natural mechanism known to man, to create information. Information is by essence spiritual, and not physical. There is no bridge to cross the gulf from material to spiritual. Even through millions of years of evolution. Its not possible.

http://www.christiscreator.com/evolutionclass101.htm

On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional spacetime relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages . Between the two realms we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf.

A small part of the evolutionists' problem is that hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves (on their own recognizance) into abstract ideas.

4. The moral argument, and value of life.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9675.htm

Life has no value. Everthing is permissible. There is no such thing as right and wrong because there is no all knowing and all powerful Creator to define what is good and what is bad. It becomes society who tries to define it. What does that matter though if the people making laws define right from wrong. They are just as human as any other person in the world. The only thing that truly exists is personal preference. What Hitler, Stalin, or any other mass murderer did was not wrong at all. They simply had a different personal preference than you do. The point is, you shouldn't tell anyone that they are wrong or even right because they aren't either of those things. You can believe that its wrong, but you have no place to ground it. People can do anything they want to do without getting punished for their actions if the world lived consistently with the belief that God doesn't exist. How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally explain all that?

5. Without God, life has no reason to be, there is no ultimate goal

There is no purpose to life. Life has no ultimate goal. There is no reason for living. Sacrifice for someone else's life would be stupid. This argument shows that an atheist lives inconsistently with their own belief. If a murderer who believed murder to be ok, came into your house to brutally murder you and your family, would you think that HE is wrong to do that? If you said no, that he isn't doing any thing wrong, then you would be living consistantly with your beliefs. But if you said yes, then you would live as if there were objective morals. But if there is no god to define objective morality then there is only subjective morality. So by saying it is wrong makes it only your opinion, but not the murderers opinion. You would be "pushing your morality on him" which is the opposite of what you believe. You probably believe that "it is wrong to push your morality on another person." Even that statement right there is another objective moral statement. In other words you express your opinions, but don't always live by them.

6. Religious experiences and miracles

What ever culture you go into, people are incurably religious. In every culture you see three things. 1) Everyone, except the atheist, worships a being higher than themselves. 2) Everyone has a morality they cannot keep. 3) Everyone is psychologically unsatisfied. People feel an emptiness in themselves that they want to fill. If the material world was the only thing that existed and if all your material needs were met, you should be satesfied right? But how come people who have the most wealth are usually the most unhappy. They constantly want more and more. And how can you explain the millions of people in the world who say they have felt the closeness of God in their lives? I personally am included with them. I have felt God's presence in my life on a consistent basis. Now how can you rationally explain that without God's existence? There are many people in the world who report seeing miracles. In other words there are people who say that they saw a situation occur where there is no naturalistic explanation for it. I personally know people who have had miraculous situations occur, such as immediate healings. You might argue that science will someday explain those things, but right now you can't explain them. The best explaination is God, because if God created the world then it wouldn't be hard to believe that he can intervene supernaturally in this world.

August 29, 2010

We can debate the merits of your fifth and six claim, but even if I am wrong, you can still be wrong. There is views like deism for example that explain quite accurately 1-4.

August 29, 2010

Dibri,

I have never heard those arguments before! Wow! I'm so impressed!

*NOT*

It might surprise you that most of us here have debated and dealt with these arguments many times before.

August 29, 2010

Dibri,

I have never heard those arguments before! Wow! I'm so impressed!

*NOT*

It might surprise you that most of us here have debated and dealt with these arguments many times before.

after seing your number of posts, i don't wonder......

maibe you have a more consistent world view than the christian one ?

August 29, 2010

My 'consistent world view' is to send this post to the Lion's Den for proper digestion.

August 29, 2010

None of your six reasons point to the god of the bible. Therefore, you have only postulated some kind of creator. Maybe that creator is dead. Or maybe you are just wrong all the way around.

1. The universe had most probably a beginning.

Ever heard of Membrane Theory? It postulates that there was no beginning.

2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet.

Wrong. Life on our planet evolved in the way it did because our planet is the way it is. Our planet is the way it is by pure chance. Maybe there was only a one in billion chance that our planet would be the way it is, but there are billions of galaxies with each having billions of stars. Thus, the odds were met.

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth.

Just because something cannot be explained, does not prove a deity.

4. The moral argument, and value of life.

Just because you want to find meaning in life, does not prove the existence of a deity.

5. Without God, life has no reason to be, there is no ultimate goal

So what? And by the way, if someone came into my house wanting to murder me or one of my family members, that person would come face to face with my shotgun. I bought the shotgun myself. No "god" gave it to me. And I don't need a "god" to justify my use of it in self-defense or the defense of my family.

6. Religious experiences and miracles

One's subjective "religious" experience proves nothing more than the fact of their subjective experience.

There has never been a miracle. Have proof of one? Submit your proof for our analysis.

And this is totally absurd: "1) Everyone, except the atheist, worships a being higher than themselves." Provide proof that "everyone" worships a being higher than themselves (except, of course, atheists.) How about agnostics? How about those who simply have not thought about religion and thus worship nothing, though they are not atheists either? How about those who call themselves religious, but who do not engage in any worship whatsoever? How about babies and toddlers (you said everyone, remember)?

August 29, 2010

1. [/size][/font]The universe had most probably a beginning. This is supported through scientific, and philosophical reasons. Therefore it had a cause. Since beyond our universe, there was no time, no space, and no matter, that cause must be timeless, beginningless, eternal, spaceless, transcendent, invisible, personal, and incredibly powerful. Why does it need to have these characteristics ? This cause cannot exist in the time/space/material universe because then it would exist within the very universe it created. That is impossible.

Whatever caused the universe, existed before the universe. Since the universe had a beginning in time, and since matter and energy do not spontaneously change and arrange themselves into something new, then the best explanation for the cause of the universe is an action that was a decision.The cause must be personal because an impersonal force would be deterministic and mechanistic, not possessing free will. A mechanistic being only operates according to the programming it received from something else. But if the cause of the universe received programming from something else, then we have again not provided the answer to the cause of the universe. We have just found a middle-man. The cause had to make a choice to create and only beings who are personal can make choices.That description fits best to the God of the bible.

If this is true, it doesn't automatically prove a theistic idea of god, it may as well prove a god, but not a theist one.

2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet. Over 120 fine tune constants are know up to know, and as more time pasts, more are discovered. This might be due to chance, to physical need, or to design. Chance is a very bad explanation. Some advocate a Multiverse. But to have just one life permitting universe, you need 1 to 10^500 attempts to get it done. Thats a 1 with 500 zeros. If we put it in comparison, that in our universe, there exist around 10^80 atoms, this shows how improbable it is, that a Multiverse could explain finetuning. Beside this, the Multiverse argument does not explain away God. A mechanism needs to be in place to trigger these multiverses. It could not be by physical need, since if so, why are there many planets, which are not life permitting, but our is ? So its best explained by design. Our earth/solar/moon system is a very strong evidence. Our solar system is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. This is indeed maibe the strongest argument for theism.

Lets say your building a skycraper, would you build it to have give to it, or would you build it to have no give. If you replace the skyscraper with the universe, and the same would apply, if this universe is created, then would wouldn't have what you would call finetuning on the physics levels.

For natural biology, here is another thought. Say your a painter painting a realistic painting, you will not put a big black ball in the middle of the image, unless you did it on purpose. A lot of the natural issues of this planet like drought tornado etc, would be that black ball.

Also how can you prove that we could only be about the way we are in this particular fashion. We could have just as easily be designed to breath Carbon dioxide. How do you know, this is the only way the universe could be designed?

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth. Science cannot explain it. There are strong reasons to believe, a natural origin is not probable, and a bad explanation. First of all, why whould dead rocks need to evolve, to create life ? Secondly, just one living cell is more complex than the most complex machine created by man. A living eukaryotic cell contains many hundreds of thousands of different complex parts, including various motor proteins. These parts must be assembled correctly to produce a living cell, the most complex ‘machine’ in the universe—far more complex than a Cray supercomputer. DNA molecules carry information . Information is always created by a mind. There i no natural mechanism known to man, to create information. Information is by essence spiritual, and not physical. There is no bridge to cross the gulf from material to spiritual. Even through millions of years of evolution. Its not possible.

http://www.christiscreator.com/evolutionclass101.htm

Well that is alot of making unsupported claims. We can't, it cannot. Still doesn't prove a theistic god. Just simply a first cause. If we haven't created something complex as a cell,doesn't mean we can't, it just means we haven't yet. Just because some things aren't explained you need more information then the lack of information to say, GOD DID IT. Just because we don't know how something is done, doesn't mean our most obvious explanation(God) is a correct one.

On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional spacetime relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages . Between the two realms we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf.

Not really, consciousness, which would be a evolutionary byproduct can be used for numerous means.

A small part of the evolutionists' problem is that hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves (on their own recognizance) into abstract ideas.

Consciousness has never been witnessed outside of the mind, so you also have a problem to address. So it has to, in some way, that we may not even understand, change, or be a byproduct. Like the abstract ideas exist inside of material.

4. The moral argument, and value of life.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9675.htm

Life has no value. Everthing is permissible. There is no such thing as right and wrong because there is no all knowing and all powerful Creator to define what is good and what is bad. It becomes society who tries to define it. What does that matter though if the people making laws define right from wrong. They are just as human as any other person in the world. The only thing that truly exists is personal preference. What Hitler, Stalin, or any other mass murderer did was not wrong at all. They simply had a different personal preference than you do. The point is, you shouldn't tell anyone that they are wrong or even right because they aren't either of those things. You can believe that its wrong, but you have no place to ground it. People can do anything they want to do without getting punished for their actions if the world lived consistently with the belief that God doesn't exist. How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally explain all that?

Preventing harm is our universal standard. Our varying moral laws, for different cultures, is just interpretation of that universal standard. Mass murder is wrong because it caused harm.

Would recommend you watch that.

Also if we evolved, developing things like guilt and a internal desire and sense towards preventing harm would be a necessity. We wouldn't have survived as a species without it.

5. Without God, life has no reason to be, there is no ultimate goal

There is no purpose to life. Life has no ultimate goal. There is no reason for living. Sacrifice for someone else's life would be stupid. This argument shows that an atheist lives inconsistently with their own belief. If a murderer who believed murder to be ok, came into your house to brutally murder you and your family, would you think that HE is wrong to do that? If you said no, that he isn't doing any thing wrong, then you would be living consistantly with your beliefs. But if you said yes, then you would live as if there were objective morals. But if there is no god to define objective morality then there is only subjective morality. So by saying it is wrong makes it only your opinion, but not the murderers opinion. You would be "pushing your morality on him" which is the opposite of what you believe. You probably believe that "it is wrong to push your morality on another person." Even that statement right there is another objective moral statement. In other words you express your opinions, but don't always live by them.

Life does has reason, its what you make it. Altruism can be beneficial towards group survival. Again the objective morality is to prevent harm, murder in your example would be considered harm. So yes I would be pushing what I consider to be the right interpretation. But consequently, if there was a objective moral code that is bigger then what I have already said, you would have way more commonality among moral views. Also there would be no psychopaths like that murderer. And as well, the commonalities among moral codes, would similar if not identical, if your idea is correct. Don't murder is in some form in every culture. I will go to my grave saying that the time of murderer in your analogy is wrong. But if somehow, there was some group of people that said it was just as right, then we are at a contradiction that we would have to address. But like I said, there shouldn't be a contradiction if your idea of objective morality exists. Also could you please define what objective morality is? What does the objective moral code state? What are is views on say homosexuality, for example?

6. Religious experiences and miracles

What ever culture you go into, people are incurably religious. In every culture you see three things. 1) Everyone, except the atheist, worships a being higher than themselves. 2) Everyone has a morality they cannot keep. 3) Everyone is psychologically unsatisfied. People feel an emptiness in themselves that they want to fill. If the material world was the only thing that existed and if all your material needs were met, you should be satesfied right? But how come people who have the most wealth are usually the most unhappy. They constantly want more and more. And how can you explain the millions of people in the world who say they have felt the closeness of God in their lives? I personally am included with them. I have felt God's presence in my life on a consistent basis. Now how can you rationally explain that without God's existence? There are many people in the world who report seeing miracles. In other words there are people who say that they saw a situation occur where there is no naturalistic explanation for it. I personally know people who have had miraculous situations occur, such as immediate healings. You might argue that science will someday explain those things, but right now you can't explain them. The best explaination is God, because if God created the world then it wouldn't be hard to believe that he can intervene supernaturally in this world.

The god in question would have to be a universalist, therefore not christian, if your right. Granting miracles to all religions and the like. Also, who says we are all unsatisfied, I am very happy as a person. You can't grant all miracles and all supernatural experience, so how can you differentiate between them, outside of the bias criteria of religion. Also saying a bunch of people believe in something, so they must be right, is a logic fallacy called appeal to consensus.

Also:another request, please don't do special things with the text, because it makes it hard to response to your post. Or at the very least don't change the stuff the amount you did.

August 29, 2010

1. The universe had most probably a beginning. This is supported through scientific, and philosophical reasons. Therefore it had a cause. Since beyond our universe, there was no time, no space, and no matter, that cause must be timeless, beginningless, eternal, spaceless, transcendent, invisible, personal, and incredibly powerful. Why does it need to have these characteristics ? This cause cannot exist in the time/space/material universe because then it would exist within the very universe it created. That is impossible.

Causality (cause and effect) only have meaning when time exists. For all we know, time t=0 s occurred at the moment of the Big Bang and that event is what created what we observe as time and space. For something to exist "before" that time is a meaningless question as there is no frame of reference to adequately explain it. To say that the Big Bang was an effect from a cause that existed previously in linear time is a fallacy because it is beyond the domain of the argument (or in other words it does not satisfy the boundary conditions required). And speculating things "beyond our universe" does nothing to explain the fundamental nature of our reality. Merely asserting that it is do does not make it so.

Whatever caused the universe, existed before the universe. Since the universe had a beginning in time, and since matter and energy do not spontaneously change and arrange themselves into something new, then the best explanation for the cause of the universe is an action that was a decision. The cause must be personal because an impersonal force would be deterministic and mechanistic, not possessing free will. A mechanistic being only operates according to the programming it received from something else. But if the cause of the universe received programming from something else, then we have again not provided the answer to the cause of the universe. We have just found a middle-man. The cause had to make a choice to create and only beings who are personal can make choices. That description fits best to the God of the bible.

Again, that implies that time as we know it existed before the universe was created. Cause and effect do not apply when you have a system bounded on one end with t = 0 onward. One cannot extrapolate before this period. The universe began as an incredibly hot, dense plasma of subatomic particles, quarks, gluons, and all fundamental forces had roughly equivalent magnitude. As with the rest of physics, such phenomenon do not require the conscious act of a divine being to occur. Particles will collide, scatter, and be absorbed regardless of whether you say a god will influence its action. Anthropomorphizing a physical phenomenon is a common mistake that people make when observing physical systems, this does not imply a sense of governing consciousness to it. Life as we know it (and the choices that we have) were created by life itself. There need be no other reason for it to occur.

Oh, and the God of the Bible likes nuking stuff (Sodom and Gomorrah).

The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet. Over 120 fine tune constants are know up to know, and as more time pasts, more are discovered. This might be due to chance, to physical need, or to design. Chance is a very bad explanation. Some advocate a Multiverse. But to have just one life permitting universe, you need 1 to 10^500 attempts to get it done. Thats a 1 with 500 zeros. If we put it in comparison, that in our universe, there exist around 10^80 atoms, this shows how improbable it is, that a Multiverse could explain finetuning. Beside this, the Multiverse argument does not explain away God. A mechanism needs to be in place to trigger these multiverses. It could not be by physical need, since if so, why are there many planets, which are not life permitting, but our is ? So its best explained by design. Our earth/solar/moon system is a very strong evidence. Our solar system is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. This is indeed maibe the strongest argument for theism.

Ah the famous anthropic principle, combined with a sound lack of statistical understanding. Just because science cannot explain how our universe developed from first principle does not mean that we must invoke a god to explain it (or "Fill in the Gaps" so to speak). Our universe turned out the way it did due to the laws of physics in our universe. Now, I could just as easily say "What if those constants were required to be that way in order for a stable universe to develop?" Stating degrees of freedom without mentioning the constraints does little to explain the phenomena. I could say that there is a 1:14,000,000 chance of me winning the lottery, but what if I'm already holding the winning ticket? Backward-extrapolating on what might occur doesn't explain what is occurring or what has occurred. Then the laws of physics would dictate the course of action, and not god. Not everything needs a creator in order to fine-tune constants. Just take a look at any system in equilibrium: they reach a state of equilibrium not by the will of a god but by the various forces governing its Equation of State. As for the Goldilocks argument, that may very well be chance but we are biased (since we know of no other worlds which have a vast array of ecosystems, or even life). We say that life is rare only because we haven't observed another extraterrestrial system with life in it. Anyway, if this is a product of chance and we are the only lifeforms in our immediate vicinity we wouldn't know otherwise because of the observer bias present.

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth. Science cannot explain it. There are strong reasons to believe, a natural origin is not probable, and a bad explanation. First of all, why whould dead rocks need to evolve, to create life ? Secondly, just one living cell is more complex than the most complex machine created by man. A living eukaryotic cell contains many hundreds of thousands of different complex parts, including various motor proteins. These parts must be assembled correctly to produce a living cell, the most complex ‘machine’ in the universe—far more complex than a Cray supercomputer.DNA molecules carry information . Information is always created by a mind. There i no natural mechanism known to man, to create information. Information is by essence spiritual, and not physical. There is no bridge to cross the gulf from material to spiritual. Even through millions of years of evolution. Its not possible.

First of all, that site is garbage. If you want to learn evolution pick up a college-level textbook on evolutionary biology and read it. Don't get all of your information just from some christian website. They will only feed you what they want you to hear.

Second... dead rocks don't need to evolve, they are not living. Living cells evolve due to pressures formed from the outside environment, and yes they are more complex than all of our machines because they have the benefit of several hundred million years of progress. And supercomputers do not work in the same manner that life does, they are so different that you cannot just compare them. The burden of proof for abiogenesis does not rest on science to disprove god, but rather for believers to prove that their god exists. Abiogenesis already has several scientific theories explaining the possible ways for amino acids to form from inorganic chemical reactions. This was observed in the Miller Urey experiments. Also, information is not inherently spiritual or physical, but a human construct to describe states of matter in some ordered condition.

On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional spacetime relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages . Between the two realms we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf.

What? This makes no sense at all. Describing things with our senses is notoriously inaccurate. Try placing one hand in hot water and the other in cold water, then place both in room temperature water. Then sit there and go "whaaa" and realize that your own internal temperature sensors are not as accurate as they seem.

A small part of the evolutionists' problem is that hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves (on their own recognizance) into abstract ideas.

Hard objects don't need to transform into abstract ideas, and they never do. When's the last time you've seen a rock transform into courage?

4.The moral argument, and value of life.

Life has no value. Everthing is permissible. There is no such thing as right and wrong because there is no all knowing and all powerful Creator to define what is good and what is bad. It becomessociety who tries to define it. What does that matter though if the people making laws define right from wrong. They are just as human as any other person in the world. The only thing that truly exists is personal preference. What Hitler, Stalin, or any other mass murderer did was not wrong at all. They simply had a different personal preference than you do. The point is, you shouldn't tell anyone that they are wrong or even right because they aren't either of those things. You can believe that its wrong, but you have no place to ground it. People can do anything they want to do without getting punished for their actions if the world lived consistently with the belief that God doesn't exist. How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally explain all that?

Bad people do bad things. So what? Morality is a human construct, as well as guilt, conscience, etc. Godly people also lie, cheat, steal and do things that even us ex-C's would find reprehensible.

Without God, life has no reason to be, there is no ultimate goal

There is no purpose to life. Life has no ultimate goal. There is no reason for living. Sacrifice for someone else's life would be stupid. This argument shows that an atheist lives inconsistently with their own belief. If a murderer who believed murder to be ok, came into your house to brutally murder you and your family, would you think that HE is wrong to do that? If you said no, that he isn't doing any thing wrong, then you would be living consistantly with your beliefs. But if you said yes, then you would live as if there were objective morals. But if there is no god to define objective morality then there is only subjective morality. So by saying it is wrong makes it only your opinion, but not the murderers opinion. You would be "pushing your morality on him" which is the opposite of what you believe. You probably believe that "it is wrong to push your morality on another person." Even that statement right there is another objective moral statement. In other words you express your opinions, but don't always live by them.

If some mick bastard tried to assault me and my family I would do my best to take him down. His freedoms ended when it encroached on my freedoms. There is no defined 'right' or 'wrong', merely self defense and survival. Perhaps a bad example to justify your point. The rest of it is almost incoherent. And if I wanted to live life knowing that there was no predefined god-built purpose, should it matter? I create my own meaning and purpose and that is all that I need.

Religious experiences and miracles

What ever culture you go into, people are incurably religious. In every culture you see three things. 1) Everyone, except the atheist, worships a being higher than themselves. 2) Everyone has a morality they cannot keep. 3) Everyone is psychologically unsatisfied. People feel an emptiness in themselves that they want to fill. If the material world was the only thing that existed and if all your material needs were met, you should be satesfied right? But how come people who have the most wealth are usually the most unhappy. They constantly want more and more. And how can you explain the millions of people in the world who say they have felt the closeness of God in their lives? I personally am included with them. I have felt God's presence in my life on a consistent basis. Now how can you rationally explain that without God's existence? There are many people in the world who report seeing miracles. In other words there are people who say that they saw a situation occur where there is no naturalistic explanation for it. I personally know people who have had miraculous situations occur, such as immediate healings. You might argue that science will someday explain those things, but right now you can't explain them. The best explaination is God, because if God created the world then it wouldn't be hard to believe that he can intervene supernaturally in this world.

1. People attribute natural events to a god's whims. With the knowledge we have this is no longer necessary.

2. Not true.

3. False, people can be satisfied with themselves. We don't need a relationship with a god to be happy. What you felt is an emotion, the same emotion you can get by saying you have an invisible friend who you talk to and who understands you (yes this sound a bit crazy but try it, you'll get the same feeling).

How about these miracles? Has an amputeed person ever had a miracle happen where the lost appendage came back? If god gave a damn I would expect him to do something about all the suffering in the world and not just sit on his divine ass doing absolutely nothing. I have infinitely more respect for medical science in curing diseases than praying to an invisible entity.

Note: When writing out this, lay off on the [ size ], [ font] tags. Its incredibly annoying and makes it more difficult for us to respond to you. It also makes it seem like a suspicious copypasta job.

In the meantime, read up on real science. If you can't understand the published literature (it can be hard if you haven't dedicated years of your life in that particular area) then start with textbooks written by notable scientists, or even popular science books written for the layman. Get a good, solid understanding of how our universe behaves from a mechanistic level. Once that is down, then you can delve into the philosophy. Otherwise you'll be attempting to explain things from incorrect assumptions.

August 29, 2010

Dibri,

I have never heard those arguments before! Wow! I'm so impressed!

*NOT*

It might surprise you that most of us here have debated and dealt with these arguments many times before.

after seing your number of posts, i don't wonder......

maibe you have a more consistent world view than the christian one ?

I was Christian for 30 years, and I've been a non-Christian for about 5.

Would you believe me if I tell you that things make more sense now compared to before?

August 29, 2010

How can we best explain our existence ?

Magic.

August 29, 2010

How can we best explain our existence ?

I am a born again, evangelical christian, it makes 25 years now.

i believe Theism explains best our existence, and i believe, the God that revealed himself in the bible, is the creator of all that exists. What are my reasons to believe so ?

1. The universe had most probably a beginning. This is supported through scientific, and philosophical reasons. Therefore it had a cause. Since beyond our universe, there was no time, no space, and no matter, that cause must be timeless, beginningless, eternal, spaceless, transcendent, invisible, personal, and incredibly powerful. Why does it need to have these characteristics ? This cause cannot exist in the time/space/material universe because then it would exist within the very universe it created. That is impossible.

Whatever caused the universe, existed before the universe. Since the universe had a beginning in time, and since matter and energy do not spontaneously change and arrange themselves into something new, then the best explanation for the cause of the universe is an action that was a decision.The cause must be personal because an impersonal force would be deterministic and mechanistic, not possessing free will. A mechanistic being only operates according to the programming it received from something else. But if the cause of the universe received programming from something else, then we have again not provided the answer to the cause of the universe. We have just found a middle-man. The cause had to make a choice to create and only beings who are personal can make choices.That description fits best to the God of the bible.

Maybe it had a beginning, maybe not. Everything seems to point to the big bang. It doesn't prove a cause. It certainly doesn't prove cause by a conscious agent. I think, by definition, everything is in the universe. If there were any causing act before the big bang, then there was time before the big bang. I think others have covered this well enough.

2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet. Over 120 fine tune constants are know up to know, and as more time pasts, more are discovered. This might be due to chance, to physical need, or to design. Chance is a very bad explanation. Some advocate a Multiverse. But to have just one life permitting universe, you need 1 to 10^500 attempts to get it done. Thats a 1 with 500 zeros. If we put it in comparison, that in our universe, there exist around 10^80 atoms, this shows how improbable it is, that a Multiverse could explain finetuning. Beside this, the Multiverse argument does not explain away God. A mechanism needs to be in place to trigger these multiverses. It could not be by physical need, since if so, why are there many planets, which are not life permitting, but our is ? So its best explained by design. Our earth/solar/moon system is a very strong evidence. Our solar system is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. This is indeed maibe the strongest argument for theism.

I imagine whoever came up with "1 to 10^500 attempts" statistic is full of shit. The idea that the universe is finely tuned to permit life on this planet is crazy. Life as we know it today might be different if certain constants were different, but that does not mean there would be no life. Besides, do we really know that any of these constants could be different? Imagine how different trigonometry would be if the value of PI were different. What were the odds that PI would have its current value. Oh wait, it doesn't make sense for it to be different. There's nothing else it can be.

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth. Science cannot explain it. There are strong reasons to believe, a natural origin is not probable, and a bad explanation. First of all, why whould dead rocks need to evolve, to create life ? Secondly, just one living cell is more complex than the most complex machine created by man. A living eukaryotic cell contains many hundreds of thousands of different complex parts, including various motor proteins. These parts must be assembled correctly to produce a living cell, the most complex ‘machine’ in the universe—far more complex than a Cray supercomputer. DNA molecules carry information . Information is always created by a mind. There i no natural mechanism known to man, to create information. Information is by essence spiritual, and not physical. There is no bridge to cross the gulf from material to spiritual. Even through millions of years of evolution. Its not possible.

http://www.christisc...ionclass101.htm

On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional spacetime relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages . Between the two realms we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf.

A small part of the evolutionists' problem is that hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves (on their own recognizance) into abstract ideas.

A lack of an explanation does not mean god provides a better one. That's like explaining how a TV works to a kid by saying it works by magic.

I really love this:

Information is always created by a mind. There i no natural mechanism known to man, to create information.

BULLSHIT!!! Tell that to a geologist. Tell that to a physicist. Or for that matter, a geneticist. The information in dna isn't like a work of literature. And it isn't perfect. In fact, studying DNA is probably the best way to loose your faith. Research the faulty vitamin C gene in humans and other primates.

4. The moral argument, and value of life.

http://www.positivea...ail/eml9675.htm

Life has no value. Everthing is permissible. There is no such thing as right and wrong because there is no all knowing and all powerful Creator to define what is good and what is bad. It becomes society who tries to define it. What does that matter though if the people making laws define right from wrong. They are just as human as any other person in the world. The only thing that truly exists is personal preference. What Hitler, Stalin, or any other mass murderer did was not wrong at all. They simply had a different personal preference than you do. The point is, you shouldn't tell anyone that they are wrong or even right because they aren't either of those things. You can believe that its wrong, but you have no place to ground it. People can do anything they want to do without getting punished for their actions if the world lived consistently with the belief that God doesn't exist. How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally explain all that?

Ok, suppose what you said for number four is totally true. SO WHAT!!!! This has nothing to do with weather or not god exists and created the universe. An ugly truth does not loose its veracity by being ugly.

5. Without God, life has no reason to be, there is no ultimate goal

There is no purpose to life. Life has no ultimate goal. There is no reason for living. Sacrifice for someone else's life would be stupid. This argument shows that an atheist lives inconsistently with their own belief. If a murderer who believed murder to be ok, came into your house to brutally murder you and your family, would you think that HE is wrong to do that? If you said no, that he isn't doing any thing wrong, then you would be living consistantly with your beliefs. But if you said yes, then you would live as if there were objective morals. But if there is no god to define objective morality then there is only subjective morality. So by saying it is wrong makes it only your opinion, but not the murderers opinion. You would be "pushing your morality on him" which is the opposite of what you believe. You probably believe that "it is wrong to push your morality on another person." Even that statement right there is another objective moral statement. In other words you express your opinions, but don't always live by them.

See my response to number 4.

6. Religious experiences and miracles

What ever culture you go into, people are incurably religious. In every culture you see three things. 1) Everyone, except the atheist, worships a being higher than themselves. 2) Everyone has a morality they cannot keep. 3) Everyone is psychologically unsatisfied. People feel an emptiness in themselves that they want to fill. If the material world was the only thing that existed and if all your material needs were met, you should be satesfied right? But how come people who have the most wealth are usually the most unhappy. They constantly want more and more. And how can you explain the millions of people in the world who say they have felt the closeness of God in their lives? I personally am included with them. I have felt God's presence in my life on a consistent basis. Now how can you rationally explain that without God's existence? There are many people in the world who report seeing miracles. In other words there are people who say that they saw a situation occur where there is no naturalistic explanation for it. I personally know people who have had miraculous situations occur, such as immediate healings. You might argue that science will someday explain those things, but right now you can't explain them. The best explaination is God, because if God created the world then it wouldn't be hard to believe that he can intervene supernaturally in this world.

People (and likely other mammals) have a tendency to see agency in everything. Research that for more info.

People feel an emptiness in themselves that they want to fill.

I don't.

But how come people who have the most wealth are usually the most unhappy.

I don't think they are. Everyone can find a reason to be unhappy, but I really do not think, in general, rich people are more unhappy than the general population. I think people like to believe that, because it makes not being rich more acceptable.

n other words there are people who say that they saw a situation occur where there is no naturalistic explanation for it.

People say all sorts of bullshit. I met a man who claimed to have traveled to Mars. My explanation for that was that he was fucking nuts. Besides, a lack of a known explanation doesn't mean an event is a miracle. It just means we do not know the explanation.

You say that you felt gods presense.

This is you fooling yourself with your own emotions. Emotions provide motivation and goals and all that, but emotions play no valid part in determining the veracity of a claim.

We may not have the origins of our universe all figured out, but I'd rather acknowledge and accept that I cannot fully know the truth about the origins of our universe than to accept a fairy tale as its substitute.

August 29, 2010

How can we best explain our existence ?

I am a born again, evangelical christian, it makes 25 years now.

i believe Theism explains best our existence, and i believe, the God that revealed himself in the bible, is the creator of all that exists. What are my reasons to believe so ?

1. The universe had most probably a beginning. This is supported through scientific, and philosophical reasons. Therefore it had a cause. Since beyond our universe, there was no time, no space, and no matter, that cause must be timeless, beginningless, eternal, spaceless, transcendent, invisible, personal, and incredibly powerful. Why does it need to have these characteristics ? This cause cannot exist in the time/space/material universe because then it would exist within the very universe it created. That is impossible.

Whatever caused the universe, existed before the universe. Since the universe had a beginning in time, and since matter and energy do not spontaneously change and arrange themselves into something new, then the best explanation for the cause of the universe is an action that was a decision.The cause must be personal because an impersonal force would be deterministic and mechanistic, not possessing free will. A mechanistic being only operates according to the programming it received from something else. But if the cause of the universe received programming from something else, then we have again not provided the answer to the cause of the universe. We have just found a middle-man. The cause had to make a choice to create and only beings who are personal can make choices.That description fits best to the God of the bible.

To say that the universe had a begining is not entirely accurate. See, since time exist within the universe, the universe has quite literally always been there. There is no point of time in which the universe did not exist. As, such causality cannot be applied outside of time since causality is a byproduct of linear time. Your mistake is assuming that time itself can be caused.

2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet. Over 120 fine tune constants are know up to know, and as more time pasts, more are discovered. This might be due to chance, to physical need, or to design. Chance is a very bad explanation. Some advocate a Multiverse. But to have just one life permitting universe, you need 1 to 10^500 attempts to get it done. Thats a 1 with 500 zeros. If we put it in comparison, that in our universe, there exist around 10^80 atoms, this shows how improbable it is, that a Multiverse could explain finetuning. Beside this, the Multiverse argument does not explain away God. A mechanism needs to be in place to trigger these multiverses. It could not be by physical need, since if so, why are there many planets, which are not life permitting, but our is ? So its best explained by design. Our earth/solar/moon system is a very strong evidence. Our solar system is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. This is indeed maibe the strongest argument for theism.

The universe is most certainly NOT fine tuned to permit life on Earth. Quite the opposite, life itself has been fine tuned by evolution to survive on Earth. I'll address the examples you gave:

"The solar system is in the right position in the galaxy."

- The only position in the galaxy that would be exceedingly hostile to life due to that position would be the very center. Any position aside from that would be just as good as any other. In fact, the void between galaxies would be the safest place to put the solar system, far beyond the reach of blackholes, supernovas, pulsars, GRB's, etc. How could a creator not know that.

"The Earth is the right distance from the sun."

- The habitably zone that the Earth could occupy is actually quite wide. The Earth could be as far away as Mars or as close as Venus. Mars is very cold because it has almost no atmosphere not because it is to far away. Likewise, Venus is very hot because it has a super dense atmosphere not because it is to close. Were it not for their atmosphereic shortcomings there would be THREE habitable planets in our solar system. How could a creator have made such an error.

"The moon is the right distance from the Earth."

- This one makes me laugh. See the moon has actually moved a great deal. Originally it was at 1/13th of its current distance and life arose probably around the time it was at 1/10th its current distance. Since then its distance has changed a full order of magnitude and life was here the entire time. Its distance seems to be of little consequnse.

"The Earth and moon are the right size."

- Again there is a huge range of possible sizes that either could be. If the Earth were larger, gravity would be stronger and shorter organisms would have evolved. The opposite is true for a smaller Earth. Aquatic life would notice hardly any difference in either case.

"Earth has the needed minerals, water, atmosphere and ozone"

- Most of the materials needed for life are also the most abundant materials in the universe. Also, life evolved to utilize the resources that were present. You have iron in your blood because iron is abundant in our enviroment and food chain, but copper would work just as well. The same is true for nearly all aspects of our biochemistry. If you were building something from scratch you could use completely different ingredients. You could make something that breathes methane and drinks cyanide but it wouldn't survive in our enviroment because those aren't what's abundant.

"Jupiter attracts all asteroids."

- This one makes be laugh as well. Perhaps you should ask the dinosaurs if this is true. Actually the opposite is true. The asteroid belt exist BECAUSE of jupiter's gravity. Were it not for Jupiter there would be an additional planet in our solar system in between Mars and Jupiter, but Jupiter's tidal forces keep breaking up any would be planets. As a result, it is Jupiter that is knocking them out of orbit and sending them our way. If there was a creator he really screwed that one up.

"The velocity of rotation is just right."

- This has also changed a great deal across the Earth's history. When the Earth first formed it had about a 6-hour day. When life first formed it probably had about a 10-hour day. When the dinosaurs were here the Earth had about an 18-hour day. The length of the day seems to be of little consequence to the existance of life. Evolution has been able to keep up with the change.

As you can see, the number of life sustaining Earth's that could have been here instead of the one we have are to numerous to count. There is no "fine-tuning".

I'll tackle the rest of your arguments latter.

August 29, 2010

How can we best explain our existence ?

Magic.

Yes! That's right. Magic.

The best explanation for our universe is an invisible, non-temporal, immaterial, space-less ventriloquist who cast a spell to create the world.

Forget science. Forget that there are scientific explanations, experiments to support the explanations, and reasonable, rational arguments. No! Instead, jump to a conclusion of fairies and pink unicorns. That makes more sense. :duh:

I started to give my answers too, but I'm just so tired of these self-righteous evangelicals preaching anti-science propaganda. I'm leaving the debate to all other rational and very intelligent members we have on this board (and I can tell some of them already got started ).

August 30, 2010

I'm astounded at the patience afforded to ever scientific simpleton that manages to stroll your way.

August 30, 2010

I'm astounded at the patience afforded to every scientific simpleton that manages to stroll your way.

August 30, 2010

Would you believe me if I tell you that things make more sense now compared to before?

who knows, if you can explain, why.......

August 30, 2010

How can we best explain our existence ?

I am a born again, evangelical christian, it makes 25 years now.

i believe Theism explains best our existence, and i believe, the God that revealed himself in the bible, is the creator of all that exists. What are my reasons to believe so ?

1. The universe had most probably a beginning. This is supported through scientific, and philosophical reasons. Therefore it had a cause. Since beyond our universe, there was no time, no space, and no matter, that cause must be timeless, beginningless, eternal, spaceless, transcendent, invisible, personal, and incredibly powerful. Why does it need to have these characteristics ? This cause cannot exist in the time/space/material universe because then it would exist within the very universe it created. That is impossible.

Whatever caused the universe, existed before the universe. Since the universe had a beginning in time, and since matter and energy do not spontaneously change and arrange themselves into something new, then the best explanation for the cause of the universe is an action that was a decision.The cause must be personal because an impersonal force would be deterministic and mechanistic, not possessing free will. A mechanistic being only operates according to the programming it received from something else. But if the cause of the universe received programming from something else, then we have again not provided the answer to the cause of the universe. We have just found a middle-man. The cause had to make a choice to create and only beings who are personal can make choices.That description fits best to the God of the bible.

2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet. Over 120 fine tune constants are know up to know, and as more time pasts, more are discovered. This might be due to chance, to physical need, or to design. Chance is a very bad explanation. Some advocate a Multiverse. But to have just one life permitting universe, you need 1 to 10^500 attempts to get it done. Thats a 1 with 500 zeros. If we put it in comparison, that in our universe, there exist around 10^80 atoms, this shows how improbable it is, that a Multiverse could explain finetuning. Beside this, the Multiverse argument does not explain away God. A mechanism needs to be in place to trigger these multiverses. It could not be by physical need, since if so, why are there many planets, which are not life permitting, but our is ? So its best explained by design. Our earth/solar/moon system is a very strong evidence. Our solar system is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. This is indeed maibe the strongest argument for theism.

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth. Science cannot explain it. There are strong reasons to believe, a natural origin is not probable, and a bad explanation. First of all, why whould dead rocks need to evolve, to create life ? Secondly, just one living cell is more complex than the most complex machine created by man. A living eukaryotic cell contains many hundreds of thousands of different complex parts, including various motor proteins. These parts must be assembled correctly to produce a living cell, the most complex ‘machine’ in the universe—far more complex than a Cray supercomputer. DNA molecules carry information . Information is always created by a mind. There i no natural mechanism known to man, to create information. Information is by essence spiritual, and not physical. There is no bridge to cross the gulf from material to spiritual. Even through millions of years of evolution. Its not possible.

http://www.christiscreator.com/evolutionclass101.htm

On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional spacetime relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages . Between the two realms we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf.

A small part of the evolutionists' problem is that hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves (on their own recognizance) into abstract ideas.

4. The moral argument, and value of life.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9675.htm

Life has no value. Everthing is permissible. There is no such thing as right and wrong because there is no all knowing and all powerful Creator to define what is good and what is bad. It becomes society who tries to define it. What does that matter though if the people making laws define right from wrong. They are just as human as any other person in the world. The only thing that truly exists is personal preference. What Hitler, Stalin, or any other mass murderer did was not wrong at all. They simply had a different personal preference than you do. The point is, you shouldn't tell anyone that they are wrong or even right because they aren't either of those things. You can believe that its wrong, but you have no place to ground it. People can do anything they want to do without getting punished for their actions if the world lived consistently with the belief that God doesn't exist. How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally explain all that?

5. Without God, life has no reason to be, there is no ultimate goal

There is no purpose to life. Life has no ultimate goal. There is no reason for living. Sacrifice for someone else's life would be stupid. This argument shows that an atheist lives inconsistently with their own belief. If a murderer who believed murder to be ok, came into your house to brutally murder you and your family, would you think that HE is wrong to do that? If you said no, that he isn't doing any thing wrong, then you would be living consistantly with your beliefs. But if you said yes, then you would live as if there were objective morals. But if there is no god to define objective morality then there is only subjective morality. So by saying it is wrong makes it only your opinion, but not the murderers opinion. You would be "pushing your morality on him" which is the opposite of what you believe. You probably believe that "it is wrong to push your morality on another person." Even that statement right there is another objective moral statement. In other words you express your opinions, but don't always live by them.

6. Religious experiences and miracles

What ever culture you go into, people are incurably religious. In every culture you see three things. 1) Everyone, except the atheist, worships a being higher than themselves. 2) Everyone has a morality they cannot keep. 3) Everyone is psychologically unsatisfied. People feel an emptiness in themselves that they want to fill. If the material world was the only thing that existed and if all your material needs were met, you should be satesfied right? But how come people who have the most wealth are usually the most unhappy. They constantly want more and more. And how can you explain the millions of people in the world who say they have felt the closeness of God in their lives? I personally am included with them. I have felt God's presence in my life on a consistent basis. Now how can you rationally explain that without God's existence? There are many people in the world who report seeing miracles. In other words there are people who say that they saw a situation occur where there is no naturalistic explanation for it. I personally know people who have had miraculous situations occur, such as immediate healings. You might argue that science will someday explain those things, but right now you can't explain them. The best explaination is God, because if God created the world then it wouldn't be hard to believe that he can intervene supernaturally in this world.

If there was any substance at all in what you say then there would be more than only 30% of people on the planet who believe in the existence of the god in the bible.

As it stands, there are 6.7 billion people on the planet, only 2.1 billion of them believe what you believe. That puts you well in the minority.

Your god of the bible is non-evident. well, he is evident as far as we know that he is an invented god, worshiped by superstitious, peasant goatherders, just one of many gods that they worshiped.

If there really was a god, any god, don't you think that we'd be born with the knowledge of her/him/it? Why does someone have to tell us that there is a god? If there really was a god or gods, then we'd know without having to be told. If you'd been born in isolation and lived in isolation then you'd never even know the word "god".

August 30, 2010

Would you believe me if I tell you that things make more sense now compared to before?

who knows, if you can explain, why.......

I'm too tired of debating with Christian apologists. Take some time studying the topics you so readily dismiss instead. You can't expect people to be your personal library servants, providing all the facts and arguments that are in fact stored in many scientific books and journals.

I've studied some philosophy, psychology, sociology, and economics in the last years, and I'm so impressed by how much scientists actually do know about things and how so many things can be explained. Take the time to study it. I urge you. You will most likely only fall into a quibble in this place over how things are supposed to be defined and what is reasonable evidence, and the Bible warns you about endless debates like that.

This time, I'm sitting out of the discussion.

August 30, 2010

I'm astounded at the patience afforded to ever scientific simpleton that manages to stroll your way.

Was that directed to me?

August 30, 2010

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth. Science cannot explain it.

I would say this is accurate. I would add to say, science cannot currently explain it. But science is in its infancy, it hopes to understand things tomorrow that it does not understand today. It also has methods by which it attempts these discoveries.

There are strong reasons to believe, a natural origin is not probable, and a bad explanation.

I do not understand the full language of causality, but I hold nature to be complete in the sense that every “why?” question about it has a natural answer. I think if we ask “why phenomena f?” then we can firmly believe there are answers of the form, “because of phenomena g.” I think every natural event is related to other natural events in this way.

First of all, why whould dead rocks need to evolve, to create life ?

What?

Secondly, just one living cell is more complex than the most complex machine created by man. A living eukaryotic cell contains many hundreds of thousands of different complex parts, including various motor proteins. These parts must be assembled correctly to produce a living cell, the most complex ‘machine’ in the universe—far more complex than a Cray supercomputer.

I would be more likely to suppose that organisms are not machines. I suspect that the functional organization of a machine and an organism are different in nature.

DNA molecules carry information . Information is always created by a mind. There i no natural mechanism known to man, to create information. Information is by essence spiritual, and not physical.

Would you be willing and able to discuss this? I think this extremely arguable, and yet it is stated as resolved facts.

August 30, 2010

1. The universe had most probably a beginning.

Ever heard of Membrane Theory? It postulates that there was no beginning.

Thats a funny theory. Even Nobel laureates and specialists in their field don't know, what they are talking about, but to you it seems compelling....

http://www.new-scien...ing-theory.html

Last December ('05), physicists held the 23rd Solvay Conference in Brussels, Belgium. Amongst the many topics covered in the conference was the subject matter of string theory. This theory combines the apparently irreconcilable domains of quantum physics and relativity. David Gross a Nobel Laureate made some startling statements about the state of physics including: "We don't know what we are talking about" whilst referring to string theory as well as "The state of physics today is like it was when we were mystified by radioactivity."

2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet.

Wrong. Life on our planet evolved in the way it did because our planet is the way it is. Our planet is the way it is by pure chance. Maybe there was only a one in billion chance that our planet would be the way it is, but there are billions of galaxies with each having billions of stars. Thus, the odds were met.

it seems you don't know the facts :

http://elshamah.heav...by-one-t191.htm

Why the Big Bang was the most precisely planned event in all of history

If the universe had expanded a little faster, the matter would have sprayed out into space like fine mist from a water bottle - so fast that a gazillion particles of dust would speed into infinity and never even form a single star. If the universe had expanded just a little slower, the material would have dribbled out like big drops of water, then collapsed back where it came from by the force of gravity. A little too fast, and you get a meaningless spray of fine dust. A little too slow, and the whole universe collapses back into one big black hole. The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference is. To strike the perfect balance between too fast and too slow, the force, something that physicists call “the Dark Energy Term” had to be accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros.

If you wrote this as a decimal, the number would look like this:

0.000000000000000000000000000000

00000000000000000000000000000000

0000000000000000000000000000001[/b]

Carbon chemistryLee Smolin (a world-class physicist and a leader in quantum gravity) estimates that if the physical constants of the universe were chosen randomly, the epistemic-probability of ending up with a world with carbon chemistry is less than one part in 10^220.

This epistemic-probability is one part in: 10000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 0.

Epistemic Probability: 0.0000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 1

3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth.

Just because something cannot be explained, does not prove a deity.

Fact is, it can be explained today, and evidence simply does not lead to a natural origin, but to a supernatural one :

http://elshamah.heav...n-earth-t60.htm

In the very first cell (assuming that there was a first cell) what came first - the DNA or the protein? Of course, the protein that reads the DNA is itself coded for by the DNA. So, the protein could not be there first since its code or order is contained in the DNA that it decodes. Proteins would have to decode themselves before they could exist. So obviously, without the protein there first, the DNA would never be read and the protein would never be made. Likewise, the DNA could not have been there first since DNA is made and maintained by the proteins of the cell. Some popular theories about abiogenesis suggest that RNA probably evolved first and then DNA. But this doesn't remove the problem. RNA still has to be decoded by very specific proteins that are themselves coded for by the information contained in the RNA. Obviously both DNA and/or RNA and the fully formed decoding protein system would have to be present at the same time in order for the system as a whole to work. There simply is no stepwise function-based selection process since natural selection isn't even capable of working at this point in time.

Just like the chicken and the egg paradox, it seems like the function of the most simple living cell is dependent upon all its parts being there in the proper order simultaneously. Some have referred to such systems as "irreducibly complex" in that if any one part is removed, the higher "emergent" function of the collective system vanishes. This apparent irreducibility of the living cell is found in the fact that DNA makes the proteins that make the DNA. Without either one of them, the other cannot be made or maintained. Since these molecules are the very basics of all life, it seems rather difficult to imagine a more primitive life form to evolve from. No one has been able to adequately propose what such a life form would have looked like or how it would have functioned. Certainly no such life form or pre-life form has been discovered. Even viruses and the like are dependent upon the existence of pre-established living cells to carry out their replication. They simply do not replicate by themselves. How then could the first cell have evolved from the non-living soup of the "primitive" prebiotic oceans?

This really is quite a problem to try and explain. After all, what selective advantage would be gained for non-thinking atoms and molecules to form a living thing? They really gain nothing from this process so why would a mindless non-directed Nature select to bring life into existence? Natural selection really isn't a valid force at this point in time since there really is no conceivable advantage for mindless molecules to interact as parts of a living thing verses parts of an amorphous rock or a collection of sludge. Even if a lot of fully formed proteins and strings of fully formed DNA molecules were to come together at the same time, what are the odds that all the hundreds and thousands of uniquely specified proteins needed to decode both the DNA and mRNA, (not to mention the needed ATP molecules and the host of other unlisted "parts"), would all simultaneously fuse together in such a highly functional way? Not only has this phenomenon never been reproduced by any scientist in any laboratory on earth, but a reasonable mechanism by which such a phenomenon might even occur has never been proposed - outside of intelligent design that is.

4. The moral argument, and value of life.
Just because you want to find meaning in life, does not prove the existence of a deity.

http://elshamah.heav...highlight=moral

If a murderer who believed murder to be ok, came into your

house to brutally murder you and your family, would you think that HE

is wrong to do that? If you said no, that he isn't doing any thing

wrong, then you would be living consistantly with your beliefs. But if

you said yes, then you would live as if there were objective morals.

But if there is no god to define objective morality then there is only

subjective morality. So by saying it is wrong makes it only your

opinion, but not the murderers opinion. You would be "pushing your

morality on him" which is the opposite of what you believe. You

probably believe that "it is wrong to push your morality on another

person." Even that statement right there is another objective moral

statement. In other words you express your opinions, but don't always

live by them.

How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why

all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that

seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come

people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do

something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to

take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for

forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally

explain all that?

August 30, 2010

Just at first glance, I can tell you your last argument is almost completely irrelevant to discussing weather or not god exists. You try to make it relevant by saying this:

How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why
all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that

seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come

people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do

something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to

take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for

forgiveness.

Humans are a social species of animal. Instinct gives us some sense of right and wrong. It is what naturally allows us to coexist, though certainly not perfectly. It's a byproduct of evolution. By the way, if our morals are based on what some god says, isn't that still subjective?

As far as 1 is concerned, I really do not know what you are getting at here. I guess I can say that an infinite set of truths cannot be understood by a finite set of finite minds. That does not mean we resort to explaining the universe by magic, which is really a non-explanation that for some reason makes some of us think we need to question no further.

The first part of argument 2 seems to show a big misunderstanding about the big bang. Rather than have an infinitely dense particle expanding in all directions, you start with an infinite(or maybe just a maximum) density everywhere, and that density becomes less dense with the expansion of space and time. I do not know if I have time to investigate the rest, or really care to.

It does seem crazy that christian apologist cherry pick scientific facts or in some cases, heavily skewed interpretations of scientific facts, when other scientific facts show the earth must be much older than what the bible says. Of course, saying there is no bible god isn't the same as saying there is no god all together.

As for argument 3, I really do not think you understand dna or rna. Either way, you're making a big mistake by assuming that the way dna and rna work today is the only way the can and ever have worked.

August 30, 2010

How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why
all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that

seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come

people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do

something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to

take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for

forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally

explain all that?

Though everything you are proposing has been addressed countless times before, I will take a look at this one for you and explain how there can be an alternative view to yours.

Societies have evolved because the priority is self preservation. A successful society requires that its members don't murder each other and, if they have adopted the concept of personal property, that members don't steal from each other. Individuals pass on the rules of society to their children. We learn to do what works. Still, it doesn't always "take." There are obviously many people who steal and murder without guilt. Individual criminals and even entire governments fall into this category.

When we consider ourselves only as a member of a particular tribe, there is no guilt for killing members of competing or enemy tribes. As we evolve we begin to see ourselves as part of a larger society, even a global society. People at this stage are the "peace freaks" and are ostracized by those who retain the tribal mentality. There is no homogeneous, universal code of conduct or set of moral precepts, though we are slowly moving toward that.

Looking for more exotic explanations for which the mundane suffices isn't logical. Supernatural intervention isn't required to explain morality and human behavior. See "Occam's Razor."

August 30, 2010

Why should I waste one second of my one and only life trying to explain my existence???? I exist; you're god doesn't. Good enough for me.

The long-winded "explanation" posted here explains nothing. Ancient people invented gods in an attempt to explain natural events that they couldn't understand, like rain and lightning. This is just more of the same "I can't understand, therefore God."

I suspect that the existence of the universe, and you and me, is just another natural phenomena that we don't understand (yet). Why complicate it by throwing in a deity and a whole body of theology?

And, even if a creator god did/does exist, there's no rational reason it's the one referred to in the bible. We know how and why that flawed man-made book and the religions based on it came about, and that's enough for me to conclude with 100% certainty that christianity and its god are most certainly NOT true.

August 30, 2010

Well, there ya go! We kick out Justyna and the holy spook sends us another one to make sure we don't burn with the devil.

How Can We Best Explain Our Existence ?

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