The existence - or lack of - a God is one of humanity's fundamental questions. Since the first birth, the first sunrise, the first death, humans have sought to explain the world around them. The whole of human existence, in the end, comes down to this: Is there a God?
Please select the category that most closely reflects your concern about this content,
so that we can review it and determine whether it violates Civility 101 or isn't
appropriate for some other reason.
Abusing this feature is also a violation of Civility 101.
Explanation:
More and more respected academics are seeing the immense flaws in the evolution argument. Problems involving irreducible complexity, the impossibility of forming proteans from amino acids without the guidance of DNA, the huge gaps in the fossil record among others are starting to be reasoned upon. Although many in the scientific community have posed counter-arguments, these often have minimal empirical evidence and are usually the result of a macrocosmic repression of the implications of these anti-evolution arguments.
Although neither I nor anyone else can easily prove the existence of a God in a tangible way, Intelligent Design is quite evident and provides a much more scientifically sound argument than the statistically improbable and flawed reasoning of the evolution argument.
Unfortunately, it is so easy to only see the evidence which is most convenient for us, thereby leading us to a divided scientific community, and thus divided society on the matter of the existence of God.
- Ralfe Poisson
July 23, 2008 11:42PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I disagree with you completely. Evolution is fact. The fossils prove that. Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Intelligent design is just another theory, a theory of evolution by means of intelligent design (the proponents accept change has occurred and that natural selection occurs at species level), They have failed to provide any evidence whatsoever for ID. What would be proof? Well, it would have to be a big jump in evolution, perhaps something like a fossil rabbit in Jurassic rocks along with dinosaur fossils, something showing that large and unexpected changes have occurred. One theory doesn't become true just because your incredulity makes it difficult to accept other theories. The theories you want to favour have to have some (any???) facts supporting them.
- bachfiend
September 1, 2008 6:04AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"One theory doesn't become true just because your incredulity makes it difficult to accept other theories. "
There is actually insufficient emperical evidence for both intelligent design as well as for evolutionary theory. I am not suggesting that intelligent design is magically correct simply because one cannot completely prove evolution. What I am saying, however, is that if you take an objective look at the research conducted by those in the scientific community who support intelligent design as well as those who support evolutionary theory, intelligent design theory makes more sense, and has fewer logical flaws than evolution.
I have studied evolutionary theory in depth at university level, and I notice that most people who respond to discussions such as this one either do not even know the basics of evolution, or have extremely limited knowledge of peer-reviewed, published research done on intelligent design, and thus make ignorant assumptions and statements regarding intelligent design.
- Ralfe Poisson September 1, 2008 7:02AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
Yes, I do understand evolution perfectly well. I'd be interested to see what you regard as credible research on intelligent design. Wishful thinking is not a substitute for decent research. At least Darwin did make predictions which came true. Lord Kelvin (who was probably one of the pre-eminent physicists of Darwin's time) said that evolution by natural selection was impossible, because the Earth could only be 30 million years old, and there was therefore not enough time. Darwin just said that Lord Kelvin was wrong; how spectacularly wrong is shown by the current accepted age of the Earth of 4.5 billion years. Lord Kelvin was wrong because he didn't know about radioactivity (no one at the time did) which was was keeping the Earth warmer and throwing off his estimate. I have no doubt that those who don't accept evolution will be shown to be wrong for the same reason, except it will be because of deliberate ignorance rather than inadvertant. Intelligent design is just a theory. It makes no predictions. I'd be interested what your university training was, and how much actual teaching you have had of evolution or even biology. Evolution is completely compatible with religion. Francis Collins quite happily accepts (theistic) evolution, and the Catholic Chuch doesn't insist that Genesis is literally correct, equating creation with the implantatation of the soul in humans.
- bachfiend September 1, 2008 8:55PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Your response shows exactly the type of limited exposure to research that I previously spoke of. I do not have enough time nor space to enumerate a list of published work here, but if you are interested in broadening your knowledge, then have a look at some of the peer reviewed works mentioned at http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2640&program=CSC %20-%20Scientific%20Research%20and%20Scholarship%20-%20Science . On another point, making arbitrary assumptions about individuals in a mocking fashion on open forums such as this one is completely unnecessary and does not aid your credibility in any way. This site is about informed opinions, not people trying to be witty. I suggest reading through those articles in the link I provided and then forming an objective opinion of intelligent design instead of mistakenly referring to it as "Wishful thinking" and implying that it is not credible research.
- Ralfe Poisson September 1, 2008 9:56PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I apologise. I thought you were sensible and were going to give me some good references. The Discovery Institute is NOT creditable. I am well aware of the site. Many of the "peer reviewed" material are just books, which are not peer reviewed. I notice that the article that Richard Sternberg sneaked into a niche journal on classification and which was later repudiated as being sub-standard makes the list. Obviously, whatever science education you have had at university hasn't taught you critical thinking, and I would like to know what courses you have actually had?
- bachfiend September 2, 2008 3:36AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
This argument is very interesting to me. For starters, I think people are taking things a little personally, but I'll get into it anyway. For starters, natural selection does in fact occur. That is not debatable. Genetic mutation causes variation, and that variation causes differentiated survival and reproductive abilities. It would be impossible for natural selection NOT to occur. The real debate here is the belief that natural selection is the CAUSE of human existence. What both sides fail to see is that this is not a matter of science in either case. It would be extremely difficult to definitively prove that human life actually derived from another species, and simply seeing some evidence is not definitive proof. As far as intelligent design is concerned, I am rather insulted. To pawn off religious belief as some sort of actual science is fairly outrageous, and furthermore, it serves no purpose. The issue is a matter of belief already, not a matter of science. Some find one more reasonable, others take the other. I will reiterate a previous point I made: If you actually knew which side was right about where humans came from, would it change your life at all?
- roy1167
September 4, 2008 10:39AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
I apologize for not properly proofreading.
- roy1167 September 4, 2008 10:47AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
roy 1167 writes "It would be extremely difficult to definitively prove that human life actually derived from another species, and simply seeing some evidence is not definitive proof." In fact, the case for our close kinship with the other apes is absurdly strong. In principle, one can doubt any factual claim, which is why the law distinguishes between any doubt whatsoever and reasonable doubt. There is no reasonable doubt about the matter. Even in the 19th Century, it was pretty clear on the basis of the visible anatomy of the higher primates that human beings were very similar to chimpanzees and gorillas; but fossil evidence was scanty. That's no longer true--the missing link hasn't been missing from some time now--but even more importantly, modern molecular biology has demonstrated how our genome matches up with that of other primates in a way that would be inexplicable were we not related.
I'm reminded of an old joke. The worried husband hires a private eye to check up on his wife. The detective reports back with bad news: "I watched your place last night. A very handsome guy showed up and they went off in a taxi to a night club where they danced cheek to cheek and had several drinks. Then they took another taxi. I could see them making out in the back seat. After they got to his place, they had another drink and started petting on the sofa. Your wife took off her dress and the guy pulled down his pants. After she was stark naked, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom."
"And then what happened." sez the husband. "The lights went out and I couldn't see."
"Always the lingering doubt!"
- Jim Harrison September 4, 2008 11:57AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Consider how much of our DNA is shared by chimpanzees (about 97%). Consider cross-species transfer of viruses, bacteria, etc. whereby humans get malaria, hantavirus, dengue fever and other diseases.
That by itself is sufficient to show that "Intelligent Design" is oxymoronic. As one of my Philosophy instructors often stated: "If God created the universe, he was an incompetent engineer."
- CosmicChuck April 8, 2009 2:43AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Intelligent Design Your comment: More and more respected academics are seeing the immense flaws in the evolution argument. is completely untrue as far as I have seen in 37 years and I live & work with academics (they are mostly scientists) (and I am one). During this time I have met one 'scientist' (not an academic) who supported ID (tho I think he is now reconsidering). Blanket false statements like this establish lack of credibility.
- Bob Brown September 2, 2008 10:32AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
You argue, as do many theists, that human ignorance about the development of life, the nature of life, or any other aspect of reality, constitutes proof that a god must to explain that which is otherwise unexplained. This is the worst and most desperate kind of argument.
Just because something is unexplained does NOT mean that it is inexplicable. It only means that it is NOT YET explained. Human intellectual history is nothing if not a consistent set of evidence that, given time, ANYTHING is explicable by the power of the rational human mind. Remember, the sun, moon, and the Nile river used to be considered gods because no other explanation was evident. Those gods DIED when science explained them. So it will be with the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god, as well as all others, when the light of human intellect exposes the shadows that your religions require in order to thrive.
For 5000 years the human mind has been narrowing the realm in which your gods can exist. And every day that realm gets smaller. Stop fighting it. Reject fear as the basis for fundamental beliefs, and join us to promote the light of reason and the grandeur of humanity.
- SidAirfoil September 4, 2008 5:20PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
Ignorance is not evident? Well apparently it is because it's showing up all over your comment. :) Ok. Just a 'breaking the ice' kind of intro. Jesus Christ dealt with men/women like you very often during His time here on earth. I could in many manners reprimend you but suggesting an alternative belief for you in the 'Crishtianity' realm is obviously not what you are trying to here; therefore, we'll just let Jesus do it later. (another funn) :)
God Bless even you--
- Juanita October 1, 2008 1:53PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You say we are ignorant, but I think it is you. There is no evidence of god for us to be ignorant of. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that leads us to question his/her/it's existence.
You should go to school, read a few books, and start questioning life and your belief system. There's no reason to feel sorry for those of us who's minds are free from the shackles of blind faith and ignorance.
- yebegoon May 27, 2009 3:36PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
The pro ID post at the start of this thread makes many claims about an alleged failure of science to explain things. I disagree - but let's accept it for arguments sake.
But even if all scientific knowledge (every last bit of it) were faulty, that would say nothing about the possible existence of God.
The poster then goes on to say that they can't prove the existence of God - in other words there is no evidence for the existence of god.
There follows an unsubstantiated assertion that ID is better.
As a post apparently designed to support the existence of God it seems a little unconvincing.
- Bob M September 12, 2008 2:40AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Very well said; my hats off to you. :)
- Juanita October 1, 2008 1:47PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Intelligent Design is simply Creation Science [sic], relabeled in an attempt to disguise as essentially the Book of Genesis in a feeble-minded attempt to promote Genesis as science . Philip Kitcher, in his book "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism," totally demolished any claim that Cretionism had to being scientific, ipso facto, the same applies to Intelligent Design. Neither of the two put forth any hypotheses that are testable for falsity (Karl Popper's Principle of Falsification). Any statement that cannot be tested for falsifiability is not scientific. At best, Intelligent Design is a pseudo-science aimed at brainwashing our children into believing absolute hogwash for truth.
- CosmicChuck April 8, 2009 2:35AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"Theories of, or beliefs in, a Divine source for the Universe are as ancient as humanity itself – at least." A moot point, but humanity evolved the necessary cognitive function to imagine greater powers far later than the actual first creature that could be called homo sapien.
"They constitute the longest standing range of explanations for the source of our world." And subsequently the least informed.
"they cannot explain without significant problems on the one hand" There are many things wrong with your assertion. One is that, since science doesn't understand, it must be a some wizard in the sky who just did it all randomly. Second, is that there are several theories that postulate on the occurrence of max entropy and it's succession into the condensation of the universe into a single point. At which, entropy can finally reverse, and in one explosion, create matter and energy. The universe would then be a sinusoidal wave of contractions and expansion.
- betterth July 25, 2008 9:08AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Why do you find it easier to believe in a supernatural creator, than creation as a natural process ?
If God made the universe, what did he make it out of ?
You cannot prove a negative. I can tell you that there is a tea cup in orbit around Alpha Centauri 4.3 light years away, and the ask you to prove me wrong. You cannot. However I would say that it is extremely unlikely.
If there is an intelligent designer he was not very bright. Blind spots in eyes, flesh eating bacteria, parasitic wasps, nice fella.
Whilst I cannot say "there is no God" I can say that the evidence, at this time, shows it to be extremely unlikely.
- Andrew Holt
August 30, 2008 6:47AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
The Rabbi is laboring under the mistaken impression that there is a coherent concept of God that would make sense of his/her/its role in creation; and also seems to think that the universe began at some point in time, even though that is actually a misunderstanding of the Big Bang hypothesis, which most physicists do not believe was an absolute beginning, though it may have occurred as far back as we can look. For all we know, the universe is infinite in time and space.
One can define an infinite number of explanations for the world and how it came to be (assuming again that it did come to be). For example, maybe the world was created by a single bunny rabbit. On the other hand, maybe it was created by two bunny rabbits. Or three bunny rabbits... Since there are an infinite number of possible explanations, one needs to be able to cut the field down to some manageable number of options. God is not one such options at present because the philosophical contexts in which "God" is a valid concept are no longer acceptable. God made sense in terms of Plato or Aristotle's metaphysics. I doubt if the Rabbi is up to specifying a context which would make sense of the God notion.
- Jim Harrison August 31, 2008 3:25PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
A scientist comments on Rabbi Jerrit’s 3 conditions:
1. Theories of, or beliefs in, a Divine source for the Universe constitute the longest standing range of explanations for the source of our world.
I guess that it is a basic tenet of science that this fact has no value whatsoever. Countless ideas have longest standing (e.g. the sun goes around the earth) yet are wrong.
2. Theories of, or beliefs in, a Divine source for the Universe constitute the most agreed-upon range of explanations believed by human beings – throughout history and still today.
This is a testimony to the limited education that has been available to human beings. The comment about 1. applies here, as this is simply another statement of 1.
3. Each and every other explanation for the source of our world is lacking in one fundamental area; they cannot explain without significant problems on the one hand, or an articulation that resembles one of Divinity without the label on the other hand, what existed prior to the world. The existence of a God, without beginning and without end, spatially or temporally, solves this problem.
The first sentence is true. The second is trivial, and I’m much more comfortable with the curved space-time general theory of relativity description of the universe, without beginning and without end, spatially or temporally.
Evidence
Text
The Expanded Quotable Einstein
“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.”
Einstein is speaking of God as Nature. There are innumerable quotes (e.g. see the Isaacson biography) that show Einstein was an agnostic.
I’m getting the feeling that I’m discussing “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin”, and that is a waste of my time.
- Bob Brown September 2, 2008 10:23AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I am a bit disappointed in the human race. The human race as a whole has tried for centuries to X out God and any religious ideas and characteristics. I am rather embarrased of the ignorance of men. Anyways, this has to be the most silly question in history-if you're educated and have any sense of moral sense you would agree. If the world wasn't created by the Supreme Being (GOD), than how else would it have gotten here. If any one person (or organization) expect me to ever believe that Earth one day just decided to appear in space and isolate the water from land and create it's own self a moon and set the sun impeccably in it's place and everything revolve and correlate in it's proper manner every morning-day-season-year etc.,, Than they are the most foolish, silly alive. There is but one explaination of the being of Earth and that's through Jesus Chridst himself. I am not typing this to reprimand, discourage or convert but simply to make a "common sensed" point to any and all readers that come across this comment. As the literary C.S. Lewis once said, "You either believe in God or don't... " He himself gave numerous reasons as to the reason that God does exist and how He is the creator of all things living and non living; dead and alive. Just a simple point to leave you with: If God didn't create the world and everything in it, then who did? Are we seriously, as "educated" men and women suggesting that we all derive from monkeys??!! I would hope that we 'educated' people no better than this. God is, was, and is to come. God Bless every reader. :) I'm still disappointed at our ignorance though :(
- Juanita October 1, 2008 1:45PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
How can u critizes people who take scientific proof and reason to why the world was created. Religion is ignorant. If a super natural being created the universe than how was he (God) created. Even the big bang theory gives more rational evidence than the bible. Earth being created and sustaining water and land, creating a moon, and such all have factual evidence in HOW it was done. And yes the human race has been striving to X out god, and they have been succesful. They've X'ed out many things that the church once believed. It is only a matter of time till there is nothing more to X out. Then we will see who is ignorant. I wish this so called creator, instead of hiding, would step out and show him self.
- Dying Utopia January 13, 2009 11:38AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Juanita,
How can you find it more likely that a super-being, who was always there, created everything out of nothing, with only one tiny planet in trillions as his only purpose and the rest as space junk. This super being, loves you if you worship him and tortures you forever if you die still asking questions. Though you may feed the poor and help the helpless - you burn if you don't believe.
If you knoew someone like this on earth, they would be either in prison or in a mental hospital.
By the way, the only time Jesus ever defined God when cornered by the apostles, he simply said "God is Love". Love creates, love lasts, love heals. Jesus never believed in a grumpy old man in the sky who fries you if you don't get on your knees and worship him.
I think Jesus would have thrown you out of the temple for your ignorance. Put God to the same test you would your husband or loved ones and see if he doesn't fail miserably.
- Edge-of-Reason
May 19, 2009 9:38AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"I am a bit disappointed in the human race. The human race as a whole has tried for centuries to X out God and any religious ideas and characteristics. I am rather embarrased of the ignorance of men. Anyways, this has to be the most silly question in history-if you're educated and have any sense of moral sense you would agree. If the world wasn't created by the Supreme Being (GOD), than how else would it have gotten here. If any one person (or organization) expect me to ever believe that Earth one day just decided to appear in space and isolate the water from land and create it's own self a moon and set the sun impeccably in it's place and everything revolve and correlate in it's proper manner every morning-day-season-year etc"
I really do not know where to start. This line "if you're educated" is later followed by an admittance of a complete lack of knowledge about the formation of Earth and the moon. I mean seriously, you could TiVo National Geographic for a week and have a basic understanding of all the "scientific mysteries" you mentioned. You call people who disagree ignorant when it is you who choose to subjectively ignore information and evidence. Information and evidence observed by man, not created by him.
Riddle me this. It's is a known fact that the distance between the Earth and moon is increasing by 3.8 meters a century. Eventually it will leave Earths orbit but the effects will be felt long before that. If our solar system was created by God why would he put an expiration date on it? Our Sun isn't going to last forever either mind you.
Another thing that has always bothered me is why is there so much else out there? Why would a God create so much noise in the universe when we are his main concern? In the old ideas the Earth was the center. If everything did revolve around us and we were the center of the universe (as was the idea when religions formed) then a Creator would seem like the obvious answer.
- Fenderman89 July 23, 2009 12:50AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Till the sun starts expanding, I think. That always kept me up at night as a child--The whole world will burn away.
I'll tell you my answer to that question, which combines my religious beliefs and my career aspirations age four. We're supposed to go there. We're supposed to go into space, to explore, to learn and to discover. Humans are supposed to spread out and see new sights, reach new horizons. When we get on a boat and sail halfway around the world, when we build submarines and underwater research labs--when we walk to a part of town we haven't been before, we're doing what we're supposed to do. That's a part of the human condition. G-d just made all that stuff so that we'd have someplace to go next. When that's all explored, I have no doubt that there'll be some other world to discover.
- quantummechanik July 23, 2009 10:34AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
How could anyone possibly explain with definition how our world came to be when that individual wasn't there at that particular time? We do like many others before us....we read the Bible. Simple!!
- kim42 October 2, 2008 2:53AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: Yes
Yes it is true that we were not there. But there is always something there, such as geographical evidence. No one has tried to say that they saw how the world was created. No, instead they try to prove through factual evidence that it was created. To go off a book that was created billions of years after the world created with no factual evidence besides people seeing/hearing some divine figure is rediculous
- Dying Utopia January 13, 2009 11:41AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I was invited to take a look at this site, and immediately spotted this particular debate, even though I'm clearly not included in it. I am a Pagan and polytheist. I'm not sure I can answer the question as stated, since "god" is posed in the discussion with such relentless singularity. But to try:
Yes: the great forces of the university manifest consciousnesses that are vast, and old and can be good friends or enemies. (Just as the small fluxes of chance, matter and energy that form humans manifest as consciousnesses.
BUT ALSO
No, the universe neither has, nor requires, a king, a boss, a chief, a judge, a dictator or an emperor.
Blessed Be
- embreis October 24, 2008 5:52AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
"The existence of (a) God(s), without beginning and without end, spatially or temporally, solves this problem."
You are just substituting the existence of Universe with existence of (a) god(s). The current scientific view of the beginning of the current Universe is a 'big bang'. This is a "singularity", ie we do not yet know anything on the "other side" of the big bang.
Substituting with (a) god(s) only points us to question what is the beginning of god. If god is without beginning and without end, why can't we also think of the current without beginning and end - BTW, to all practical purposes, the beginning of the Universe has no implication to our current living.
- albertip December 16, 2008 3:06AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
"You are just substituting the existence of Universe with existence of (a) god(s). The current scientific view of the beginning of the current Universe is a 'big bang'. This is a "singularity", ie we do not yet know anything on the "other side" of the big bang."
"Substituting with (a) god(s) only points us to question what is the beginning of god. If god is without beginning and without end, why can't we also think of the current without beginning and end - BTW, to all practical purposes, the beginning of the Universe has no implication to our current living."
Could not the converse of that statement be true in regards to you (that you are substituting God with the universe). Invoking God isn't the slightest bit circular, and it doesn't mean that God must require a cause. The law of casualty states that every effect (contingent being) has a cause. God is not an effect, nor is God a contingent being. The universe, on the other hand, is composed of matter, and the chief characteristic of matter is mutability (it can be changed). So therefore, the universe is contingent and requires a cause.
God on the other hand, is an immaterial being who is comprised of no parts. As such, He is irreducibly simple, and thus does not require a cause. You can't just simply plug in the "Who made X" objection to everything there is.
Your capitalization of the word "universe" strikes me as odd. It's ironic in the sense that you're essentially deifying the universe, which is nothing but an impersonal, arational, and amoral reality.
So in summary, God does not require a cause because God is not comprised of physical parts (divine simplicity), while the universe does because it manifests contingency (being made out of matter, which is mutable).
- Timothy Hsiao December 27, 2008 8:29AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
"God on the other hand, is an immaterial being who is comprised of no parts. As such, He is irreducibly simple, and thus does not require a cause."
You might as well be saying "There is no god ."
- yebegoon May 27, 2009 3:49PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
There are many other scientific reasons why the universe was created
- Dying Utopia January 13, 2009 10:37AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Simply because "other theories" do not prove the origins, is no convincing argument for God. There is simply no provable evidence that a Male, Creator Being (n.) exists!
- classyoga February 15, 2009 8:15AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
The rabbi writes: "they cannot explain without significant problems on the one hand, or an articulation that resembles one of Divinity without the label on the other hand, what existed prior to the world. The existence of a God, without beginning and without end, spatially or temporally, solves this problem."
It DOES NOT solve the problem at all. How did a god , without beginning and without end, come to be? No one knows for sure how the universe started, but one thing that is for sure is that there is not one scrap of evidence for the existence of a supernatural being. Not one!! There is ample evidence for the non-existence of any god, because where has he, she, or it shown him-, her- or itself? Nowhere. We only have probably fictional accounts in the so-called holy books, which are full of inaccuracies and falsehoods. For example, the Bible says that the world is flat and the sun revolves around it. This is patently false. Therefore, we cannot believe anything in the Bible or the Koran for sure. So there have been no uncontested proofs of any miracles. So no evidence for anything supernatural existing.
Leon Marzillier
- Elfman April 1, 2009 3:26PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Then there is the principle of first cause. What created the creator. If one insists that the creator satisfies the Principle of Sufficient Reason to satisfy the argument, then I would apply the Principle of Parsimony and state that a creator is not an ontologically necessary entity. That the universe could have created itself at the moment that space-time started. Time is meaningless before the beginning of space-time.
- CosmicChuck April 8, 2009 2:24AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
If the world is so complex and ordered that it must have been created by a devine God, then surely God must have been created by an even greater being. How else could such a devine creature exist if not created by an even greater one?
How can you accept the fact that God has always existed, yet you can't accept the fact that the universe always existed. Where did he exist before creating the universe. If God created the universe, then where does he keep it?
If God is good, all powerfull, and all knowing, yet evil exists. That proves that he either doesn not exist, or that he is not good, all knowing and all powerful, and therefore NOT devine. We are made in his image, yet we are imperfect. Therefore, God is imperfect and therefore NOT devine.
All of the religious texts were created by man, so using thems as proof is a fallacy. It's not as if the good book magically appeared. The STORY of the ten commandments is the only aspect that supposedly was drafted by God himself. He exists because I read it in a book that some man wrote a long time ago. Well there were a lot of books written a long time ago about the supposed ONE creator, and none of them are in agreement. The fact that the three major religions all worship the same God comes from the fact that all three religions came from the same screwed up part of the world that still cannot abide by the teaching of peace found in all three religions.
How can you dismiss the many Gods of the Romans, Greeks, Pagans, American Indians, etc. Why didn't God give these cultures the same teachings as the Middle East? Their religions ceased not because they were wrong or disproven. They fell by the swords of those who sought to spread their own OPINION on creation and kill those who would not convert to their will.
- eman April 22, 2009 4:36PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I think we can see this by looking at previous questions which were answered by appealing to the supernatural. In response to the three components:
1) Theories of, or beliefs in, a Divine source constitute the longest standing range of explanations for phenomena like weather, disasters, and other events that have natural explanations. Looking historically it is almost certain that far, far, more people have used divinities to explain things like lightning than have used the modern scientific explanation. Even today, it is possible to find people around the world who hold similar beliefs. The mere fact that a certain kind of explanation has been popular doesn't mean that that class of explanations are good or true.
2)A similar point goes for #2. I do not see how he could possibly believe point #2 to be relevant. Theories and beliefs of a divine source for the human species likely constitute the most agreed-upon range of explanations believed by human beings, both historically and today. Regardless of what the good Rabbi's view on evolution is, he surely doesn't think that the question of whether evolution is true or not can be solved by polling people. It doesn't make any sense to try to determine if evolution is true by counting the number of people who believe it or don't believe it. Why then, would theories about the origin of the universe be any different?
3)Even if current (naturalistic) theories about the source of the universe suffer problems, this is no reason to assume that a divinity must be the answer. As I stated in #1, previously unexplainable phenomena were also explained using supernatural beings. The fact that at various points in history humans didn't have a natural explanation didn't make a supernatural explanation the correct answer. I also am curious as to how exactly God is supposed to solve the problem of existence. It only seems to raise the question of why God exists. If we assume that God simply always existed, why can't we assume that the material universe always existed (albeit likely in a rather different form prior to the big bang)? In other words, if existence requires explanation, then God's existence also requires an explanation and simply saying that God always existed answers nothing; if existence doesn't require explanation, then there is no need to appeal to God as an explanatory force at all.
- ghanastudent May 17, 2009 11:24AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Unless I've missed something, you've started out by saying that because humans have believed in gods for a very long time, it must be true.
Does it not matter that we've also believed in a very long list of things (ghosts, world being flat, monsters, etc) that have been proven wrong? And don't you think it a bit odd that, if popular belief in a god lends some credibility to the idea of a god, there'd have been an agreed upon god as opposed to everyone disagreeing on how many gods, who, and what there are?
How about, instead of using popular opinion as an argument, you actually argue the case for the existence of a god?
- Blue Linchpin June 3, 2009 6:49PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Rabbi - I don't see how you have actually justified the existence of a higher being. Your claim that it is the only argument that can provide a full explanation of how the universe came to be is inherently flawed. It doesn't explain who created the creator which results in infinite regression. That's one of the most basic problems with religion .
Ralfe - Making unsubstantiated generalisations such as "More and more respected academics are seeing the immense flaws in the evolution argument." doesn't really help much. Intelligent design uses pseudo- science to come up with a seemingly scientific explanation but all it is really saying is "that physical characteristic is too complex for me to understand so God must have designed it".
- RedDragon June 4, 2009 4:09AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
No, really.
But also, Einstein was really not keen on being cast as a believer in a personal god . He publicly ridiculed the notion and those that took his quotes out of context. So in a way, Rabbi, you should consider yourself chastised by the SMARTEST MAN EVER!
Anyway, regarding the question. Have you checked out physics in the last century or so? I hate to be overly sarcastic, but I think the most qualified answer to you question is in that field of study; look under "big bang", maybe.
So, this is a terrible arguement for the existence of god. First, the idea that the univers HAD TO HAVE a creator can, must be applied to God, if the question is relevant at all.
Perhaps the world come from us, in the future, when we send the catalyst for the cosmos back into the past to start the big bang. I see no reason why this is less likely than any theistic explanation.
- Submariner June 10, 2009 11:32PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I hear so many who repeat that just because they are not well educated enough to explain evolution it doesn't exist. Many also feel that because teaching abstinance alone doesn't work women must be FORCED to bear unwanted children .
- oneoldman June 16, 2009 7:43PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
If an anthropomorphic god created the world who created god? God was created by psychopaths to help them rule over other men. Take Moses, he killed at least one man, had two wives, told his people there was a promised land they had to get by killing other people and stealing it from them, he took all the people's gold from them so only he could use gold as an idol. George Bush used god to justify attacking a dictator the CIA helped install and murder somewhere between 60 some thousand and 1.5 million Iraqi civilians, yet he had the audacity to murder prisoners who were accused of murder and later found innocent. God never changes, it is always a schizophrenic tool used by psychopathic ego driven greedy shameless humans.
- atliberty July 9, 2009 12:20AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
When we look in our children's eyes and see ourselves, our values, our family's best hope we KNOW that there is a God who put us here. Who gave us a reason for living. A reason for making a difference on this earth. Who can deny the existence of a higher order?
- cantupoke July 14, 2008 4:21PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(5)
Side: Yes
I'm sorry, but appealing to your intuitions and your personal experiences i simply not good enough. I give myself a reason for living an a reason to make a difference. I do that with or without the existence of any higher order. Keep on believing, but don't think your belief will convince anyone else just by virtue of your own certainty.
- roy1167 September 4, 2008 10:45AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: Uncommitted
We have actual knowledge about how animals came to be and why they show the behaviors they do, especially in relation to reproduction. We also have apparently reliable knowledge of the mechanism of heredity. That contrasts strongly with theological arguments that depend for their rhetorical strength on appealing to the prejudices and ignorance of the Many. Indeed, the Rabbi doesn't suggest anything at all explanatory. In real explanations, one doesn't just say that something came to be with x attribute because it was produced by an agent with the same attribute. That's like arguing that green things are green because they are composed of little green things. Similarly, claiming that man is as he is because he was created by a man-like God doesn't really explain anything; and the Rabbi's reverse move of claiming that the behavior of men allows us to infer the characteristics of God is even more of a stretch.
Of course the scientific explanation for the evolution of parental behavior may be in error. On the other hand, there is at least real evidence for it; and, if it is true, it is an actual explanation instead of an exercise in question begging.
- Jim Harrison August 31, 2008 3:38PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
" Assuming that we are correct that we humans are the most complex life-forms created, it is reasonable to assume that the world’s Source is capable of at least as much complexity as we reflect."
If you really believed in god that's the by far the most insulting thing ever said.
We're a tiny spec in our own galaxy and we're the most complex life-form?
We're formed on the ghost of Sagittarius, life probably started from the ashes of the previous galaxy. Where that came from I don't know. The only language that will be able to tell us this will math, of that much I'm entirely sure.
- SocialistBetty December 31, 2008 2:48PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
All our children each have 50% of our genes (and that is not blue genes for you morons).
Add to that that they grow up initially in our environment.
And voila! We can see al lot of ourselves (and our spouses) in our children.
Stop wasting your time studying bibles and other "so called" holy books.
The truth is in biology, not religion.
- gma March 19, 2009 7:00PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Sorry, that was just a messy pile of words. I had to read each paragraph about four times just to grasp the meaning behind the twisted prose. As far as I can gather the argument was, I look like my mum and dad. God exists. Right then. Thanks.
As for the actual cited evidence, one thing stood out; "The overall purpose of self-perpetuation is assumed by most scientists to be the drive inherent in all samples of individual species to be “species-sustaining.” ". Translation, 'Scientists think things reproduce to continue their species.'
If by scientists you mean biologists, then no, they don't. Things reproduce to continue their genes, this is a complicated, sometimes counter-intuitive argument which takes much explaining but, once grasped makes a lot of sense and explains a whole mess of problems away. Try 'the selfish gene' for a good starting point.
- bjrhodes May 1, 2009 5:23AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Uncommitted
I'm afraid "conventional wisdom" isn't a very firm basis on which to rest an argument. "Conventional wisdom" has held a lot of things which turned out to be wrong.
Moreover, it is not clear that the conventional wisdom cited here is in fact universal to the human species (and even if it were, so what? Humankind can't be wrong?). I would suspect that this is a cultural, not a species, assumption. An idea, for example, which had been dominant in the West was that of the great chain of being, where all things were connected in this chain, and related things looked like one another. Thus, in the Renaissance walnuts were thought to be good for treating problems with the brain because they resembled human brains.
An even bigger objection is that the claim that things tend to "reflect" their source seems to be inaccurate. It is also a vague phrase that can probably be shifted in ways that make it impossible to disprove, but let's leave that aside. The examples given here really stack the deck. For any one exmaple of how a thing looks like its source, I could likely give 10 examples of things that do not. Knowledge looks nothing like the books from which it was obtained; books look nothing like trees; trees look nothing like acorns; acorns, in turn, look nothing like trees, nor like sunlight, water, or nutrients. I shouldn't have to belabor the obvious here - claiming that things resemble their sources is such a vague claim that it is largely meaningless, and if the claim is made more specific, it becomes less apparent that this is something we should assume, "conventional wisdom" or not.
Without this very problematic assumption, there is no argument. The American atheists must really be slacking off if they haven't registered an objection to this "argument" yet.
- ghanastudent May 4, 2009 9:04PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
The literal interpretation of the Bible & Torah as well as your own argument (apparently) suggest that a God exists with all of the physical features of a human man, though it's never been explained why exactly a god would require genitals, waste disposal, legs, or anything, really.
Children look like their parents not because their parents chose to make them that way but because they passed on a set of their own genes. Children sometimes act like their parents because they were exposed to a certain mindset, environment and ideology.
Why, then, would the God of the Bible choose to expose us and command of us violence, hate, racism , sexism, but not even bother to suggest compassion in, say, his Ten Commandments? Why would he share with us only a few attributes but not all, if we are truly made in his image?
It seems, as usual, the theist conclusion has come not from evidence and logical reasoning first, then conclusion, but conclusion first than a half-hearted attempt at evidence and logical reasoning to convince others of the conclusion.
- Blue Linchpin June 3, 2009 6:23PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I agree that the question of the intentions of God is clearly a religious question not for this debate. The intentions of God and the existence of God are two different issues. So the question of the implications of existence of God goes like this: If the question of the existence of God were answered, without any knowledge of the intentions of that God, what implications would there be? I believe there would be no implications in that instance, but I would like to see how others, specifically those who do believe, feel about this.
- roy1167 September 4, 2008 12:41PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
"This is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (Moses 1:39)
If we come to know not only that God exists but who He is and what our potential is, it would put this small moment in eternity we call life in perspective. Imagine a string pulled from New York to Las Angeles. Now imagine a pin inserted in that string somewhere in the middle, say Nebraska. That pin is to represent this earth life. The possibility of eternal life back in our heavenly home is an "actual implication" and a very important one.
I am Christian and therefore, an "actual implication" is the importance of the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ; the great and last sacrifice. To me the existence of God is tied directly to Jesus Christ. This is vitally important because of the next point.
I personally think one reason in the doubt concerning our Heavenly Father's existence is his communication with man sometimes being overlooked. Yes He could, in a booming voice, speak to all nations and there would be none left with excuse (believe it or not, that day is coming). However, instead He calls Holy and True Prophets such as the ones we read of in the Holy Bible. If He had ever called a Prophet, he will continue to call Prophets. There is a true Prophet of God on earth today. No, not the kind that mutter blabberings in downtown New York, or the kind that make people drink purple koolaid. There are, and have been, many prophets that have led souls unto God and to His will; which is to trust in Him (in word, and ACTION [Faith]), to come to know His begotten son Jesus Christ, to repent (change, turn from sin or unjustice), to pray to Him, and follow the path that would lead back to His presence and to receive as a "...joint heir with Christ..." (Rom 8:16)
The implication of Gods existence is this: if we believe in God means we must allow Him to become involved in our lives, changing it, giving specific commandments, approving or disapproving. While He that believes not, keeps God distant; "out of their Hair".
Forget everything I've said, kneel down right now and ask God, our Heavenly Father, out loud, if he exists and what you'd do differently if He did. I promise you that if you ask with Trust (you will act upon the answer He gives you), being sincere of Heart, He will answer you. He did for me so clearly and far beyond sight that I am left with no doubt. Thats the test; far better that seeking an answer from man. Because those answers change; He remains constant. If he does remain constant, thats another important implication for you.
Boy, do I get excited about this topic. Just try the experiment, let God enter.
- SaintElmosFire November 3, 2008 4:46PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"The absence of proof is not proof of absence."
While fun and flowery, rhetorical devices are no substitute for logic. If the burden of proof is on proving that something does not exist we would be forced to admit the possibility that our every action is indeed guided by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.
- Kelly July 15, 2008 9:31PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(6)
Side: No
"The absence of proof is not proof of absence."
This is not simply a rhetorical device, it is a perfectly reasonable and logical statement. And yes, we do have to admit, in a purely logical sense, that the flying spaghetti monster is possible, as remote as it may seem to us. Possibility is not dependent on feasibility or believability.
- roy1167 September 4, 2008 12:46PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
Even "possibility" must have supportable reason for claiming it. I must ask you this: is there anything in human discovery and understanding that would even remotely support the possibility of a flying plate of spaghetti with superpowers? We ought not fling "possibility" about so carelessly.
For a thing to be possible, it must follow from what nature is capable of like anything else.
Even possibility needs proof. When we attempt to treat what we can only imagine as equal to what we know to be true, we spit in the face of fact and logic and, rather than increasing our awareness, we return to childish sleeping.
- Naumadd September 8, 2008 2:51PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(3)
Side: No
I think the problem here is in the terminology. Possibility does not require proof. Literally anything is possible until proven impossible. That is the nature of the term, it's not a matter of a point of view. With that in mind, when we make claims about the natural world, it is fairly simple to prove the impossibility of a wide range of things. It is simple to say that strictly in a natural sense, a flying spaghetti monster or a god cannot possibly exist within the framework of our knowledge of the natural world. We need to respect that this argument isn't about the natural world.
Your claim, "For a thing to be possible, it must follow from what nature is capable of like anything else," is only true when discussing notions limited to the natural world. Any claim about god is a claim about something beyond the natural world. Personally, as a weak atheist (look it up), I believe that either claim (god exists or god does not exist) is baseless and unfounded. I think that none of us has any real knowledge to say anything about an issue with NO compelling evidence on either side. You can believe in a flying spaghetti monster, but you shouldn't be surprised if some people don't buy it, even though you think it exists.
What I will say about it is this, having some unfounded beliefs can be OK. For some people religious belief is comforting and a source of good in the world. For other people, believing that there is no god can be positive as well. On both sides there are those that treat their beliefs improperly by degrading or discriminating against others based on their views of religious belief.
The moral of my story is that possibility is not equal to things that are proven, but the possibility of the supernatural exists, and you would be a fool to claim otherwise. Possibility does not need proof, which makes the claim that something is possible fairly weak, but a true claim until proven otherwise. Just because something is possible does not mean anyone should believe it, and it doesn't mean they shouldn't. Even claims with no support are still possible despite their weakness; your argument that possibility requires proof is quite simply false, in a purely logical sense.
- roy1167 September 8, 2008 7:30PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
"the burden of disproof of the theory of the existence of God is placed squarely upon my opposition in this debate."
Absolutely ridiculous. How about some more quotes? "Every claim requires evidence, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
Science does not busy itself with disproving *anything*. There's no point in disproving what does not exist. Rather, the burden is on Christian's to provide evidence for their extraordinary claims. Science is simple, and you seem to have the whole process backwards.The burden of proof is on those who make the claim, not on those who remain skeptical of outrageous claims.
The null position is atheism. We are ALL atheists when we are born. We are then taught a religion. The null position is atheism and any deviance from null requires evidence, oh which you have none.
- betterth July 25, 2008 8:00AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(9)
Side: No
"Science does not busy itself with disproving *anything*."
Well, since God, by nature, would be and certainly is outside of the laws of physics, he would be difficult to disprove. But to your point, your non-interest in attempting to disprove God, is no evidence He doesn't exist. I would rather point out that your inability to prove the origin of life, the origin or very nature of the universe, the irrational behavior of forces in the universe that lead us to flip-flop on our publicly held opinions regarding "the beginning"- these at least leave a door open to the possibility that someone else is in charge. For those of us who have personal proof- that is enough for us. For those of you who are unable to come up with other rational answers, I recommend you at least open up your mind to the possibility that man's foolishness is the wisdom of God.
- TexasMom October 21, 2008 9:03AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"I would rather point out that your inability to prove the origin of life, the origin or very nature of the universe,"
A hundred years ago we couldn't prove what lightning was. We couldn't prove what the sun was. We couldn't prove what stars were. We couldn't prove anything regarding atoms, molecular theory, or most of the modern principles of biology and physics.
And people, religious people, simply claimed they were God acting in his way. Further back, when it was offered that the world was round and the sun was the center of our galaxy, not the earth, the
church killed people over those views.
Further back, the Egyptians attributed the sun, the moon and their harvest to religion. Happy gods brought good harvests. Angry gods brought plagues. No science, and religion filled the holes.
Religion has always said "Science can't prove it, therefore it must be god". And, given enough time, science has always found evidence.
- betterth October 21, 2008 9:16AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
Actually, God described a round earth in the Old Testiment, but man later put upon religion (not truth), that the earth was flat. Why would you assume that a simple understanding of some of the forces of nature disproves God's existance? We still don't know much. We discover new vitamins each year, we argue global warming (now safely named "climate change" because of the cooler past 10 years), we struggle over dark matter theories and time/space challenges... what makes us think we can rule out God when we don't understand. You claim that science has always found evidence. I politely disagree. I believe there is much more we don't know than what we assume we know. The latest theory of the universe is that our section of universe exists in a time-space bubble, different from the rest of all that exists. This would explain the behavior of forces we can't understand, as though we are seeing through a "glass, dimly". Apparently, the scientists biggest problem with this otherwise plauable explaination is that it would mean that the earth, and our portion of the universe are truly special, unique. I guess that this scientific theory would come close to saying that it may be as God said after all. (not that any understanding of the universe is contrary to an understanding of God). But I call that biased science. You don't really think we know it all, do you?
- TexasMom October 21, 2008 9:30AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"But I call that biased science. You don't really think we know it all, do you?"
Of course not. I believe we know very, very, little. I believe our pathetic mammalian brains give us the power to think we're special, the power to create little gods for us to worship, but fail to give us any semblance of the ability to fathom the truths of this universe.
"Why would you assume that a simple understanding of some of the forces of nature disproves God's existance? "
Again, you are looking at it all wrong. I don't want to disprove your sky wizard. We've created thousands of your yahwehs. Thors. Odins. Amen-Rah's and Imoteps. Literally thousands.
Keep your little dude in the sky. In fifty years they'll be fifty more of them.
I don't have the time or desire to disprove every single god that every single culture decided to make.
Instead, I realize quite easily that we're all born atheist, and we're taught religion by our family/society. I realize there is no proof for religion. I realize that religion exists outside of the realm of proof. It cannot be proved or disproved.
I realize it is a statistical possibility for a god, whether it be your precious Judeo-Christian god, or Odin, to exist. But I realize that in the case of your god, if he would send me to hell simply because I do not 'believe' in him, than I would never want to worship so petty and vain a creature.
- betterth October 21, 2008 10:22AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
It appears that you see God as a punisher rather than a redeemer. I see Him as the source of all that is good in this world and beyond. Here, we struggle in our lives to live with limitations which keep us from viewing the truth without the shadows of the flesh. God sent His only Son to enter into our humanity, so that we could enter into His Spirit- and live. He is transforming us from being mere creatures, into children with life breathed into them, and preparing us for true union. God made the rocks, trees and all that exists here- but people are different. Yes, people create lots of God, and somehow struggle against the only true God who asks that we be willing to give up all others. He is looking for hearts that seek Him, because He knows the better end in store. Free will allows us to choose the pastures that satisfy us with earthly things. But while here, we get glimmers of the better things of the Spirit.
I actually do understand your outlook. I know it will insult you if I tell you that I will pray for you, so let me just wish you well in your search or avoidance. It is your choice to believe that this is all there is or not. The key to transforming love, which is what God desires, is that it is reciprocal. But He allows us to make our own choices. He has already expressed the greatest love through Jesus Christ. That is not vain or petty. That is sacrifice that invites us all to free, unrestrained and eternal truth. There is no coercion.
God bless
- TexasMom October 21, 2008 10:55AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"I know it will insult you if I tell you that I will pray for you"
Of course it does not. Many of my Christian friends pray for me. And I hope beyond hope that they will shed their mental shackles and one day breathe the air of freedom and truth. To each our own :)
You sound like a standard evangelical Christian, and you just say how much God loves us and how he is wonderful and amazing and all that jazz. I mean, you ignore the fact that your bible is almost completely rewritten by corrupt Catholics in the dark ages, and that every scroll found of the traditional bible is highly contradictory, and none even mentioning the resurrection. (Yes, nothing pre-Catholic mentions your 'savior').
But you've completely ignored the fact that people create gods.
If you can understand why you so easily dismiss those 1,000 other gods, perhaps you can understand why I dismiss the 1001.
God is not a prerequisite for love. God does not love. At best, he is indifferent. I think it's very righteous of you to think he loves you. Do you presume that he loves the millions of children that starve to death? Does he love the millions that die of cancer, and other diseases that 'he' created? No 'loving' god would create literally thousands of horrific painful deaths.
He obviously hand created cancer. Himself. Every part of it. Science believes cancer is a flaw in our evolution, just how we are. But god is flawless, therefore we should be 'flawless' as his creation. So, you believe that every horrific disease and death is an example of how wonderful and loving this 'god' is?
Honestly that's kind of sick. If there's a 'he', he can't love us. You would never do what he 'does' to those you love. Earthquakes and volcanoes and the flu. This world sucks, honestly.
- betterth October 21, 2008 11:11AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
The absence of proof does not prove absence. The absence of proof does not prove presence, either. The absence of proof does not provide reason to consider God even possible. After 10,000 years of belief. there is not even a decent collection of evidence, let alone proof, one must conclude that such an entity is misconceived. The pervasive Judeo-Christian-islamic God should have been clearly proven long ago.
Is there something "bigger" than us, something which is everywhere at the same time, something which contains all the knowledge there is? Nature, which we do perceive, certainly qualifies. Conceiving of God as a conscious being is a wrong way of conceiving of answers to the questions above. That's why there's such a long-standing absence of proof.
So, we can validly say, There is no such thing as God, as described by those who claim to think so.
- pbeaird August 20, 2008 5:58PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(5)
Side: No
pbeaird, indeed. That is no argument from ignoracne but one acknowledging all the failed arguments for God in line with the auto-epistemic rule.
The presumption of naturalism reflects that not only are natural causes and explanations efficient but also necessary, primary and sufficient. They, contrary to Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz, are the sufficient reason. This neither sanbags theist nor begs the question but demands evidence as Einstein so did to overcome Newton.
Science explains the how and the why. The why is not according to a pre-arranged plan [ the atelic challenge] but according to natural forces, including those random ones. So those are indeed primary causes; one cannot then declare God the primary cause and them the secondary ones. As our naturalist arguments are defeasible, then there is probably no God.
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 3:55PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Contrary to the attempts of the religious to make an epistemological equivalence between naturalism and supernaturalism as equally arguable hypotheses to explain nature, there is no such thing as a presumption of naturalism.
You are a human being. You have a definite nature, possessing specific characteristics and capabilities, including a human means of gaining knowledge of the world in which you exist. This includes seeing by means of looking with one's eyes...and so on for all the senses we possess...and a rational capacity to identify things by their fundamental characteristics and to form concepts in order to hold our knowledge indefinitely.
We are not anything but human beings and, thus, have no other means of gaininging knowledge of the world than our human means.
So, if you open your eyes and see nature, that's where your knowledge begins. There is no mental blank until you first choose your starting assumptions. There are no assumptions that nature, which you see, is nature and that you, somehow, choose to see it onlly in a natural way.
Nope. No presumptions whatsoever. You open your eyes, you see what's there and you begin to mentally organize the evidence provided by your senses into groupings accourding to similarities and differences.
You don't start building your knowledge with nature because you chose that as your presumption. You start building your knowledge with nature, because that is what is there.
To go the bizarre and cogintively misguided direction of attributing things that are there to supernatural, meaning unobservable, causes, is what requires an extra action of choosing an assumption, one which veers away from what you observe. Notice that all arguments for the existence of God or for any version of the supernatural require a very abstract organization of concepts and, upon examination, it turns out that there are NO observations which bear out that presumption, nor do the abstract arguments hold to the tests of logic.
So, naturalism is nothing more than human beings gaining knowledge of nature by human means, without a naturalist presumption. It is supernaturalism which requires the contruction of a presumption in order to selectively bring observables to the task of proving what is not a valid idea nor an observable reality.
Notice that this argument against the "presumption of naturalism" argument required nothing more than the fact that you exist with a specific nature as a human being, including a specific capacity for gaining knowledge. If you wish to quarrel with my argument, you must deny those facts about your existence.
- pbeaird October 14, 2008 9:02PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Thanks pbeaird for affirming this tested presumption. Antony Garrard Newton Flew calls it the presumption of agnosticism [before his dotage]. It is a procdedure, a heuristic device.Those non-observations affirm the ignostic-Ockham challenges that either God is fatuous or unartfully redundant,contrary to Alister McGrath. Yes, that extra action means resorting to convoluted ad hoc assumptions, greater than what one was to explain!
Yes, there can be no presumption of supernaturalism- Alvin Platinga's warrant for God as a basic belief. That presumption is the pareidolia- like seeing Yeshua in a tortilla- of seeing a caring,Super Mind behind Existence. That pareidolia is then a mere feeling without substance.
Presumption is what one starts with, so one perforce has to start with the naturalist one! One has to employ those observations, accept other minds and the external world and trust in ones mind from trial and error, contrary to C.Lewis and Alvin Platinga argument from reason [ a teleological argument] as basic.
pbeaird, again thanks. Please come over to Amazon religious discussions!
- skeptic griggsy October 15, 2008 4:29PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I have been told that there is a bull elephant in this phone booth, and though I have searched high and low, I haven't found him yet. That doesn't mean I won't though...
- Jim Harrison August 31, 2008 3:40PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
The absence of proof is not proof of absence, but I must admit at the end of the day, I have no reason to believe that god exists. So as Richard Dawkins points out in his book, The God Delusion, we should be as skeptical of God's existence as we are of the existence of a teapot that orbits the earth and can't be be observed by any of our human senses. So, we can't say with certainty that God or the teapot doesn't exist but there is still a lack of evidence as a whole for God's existence.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
-- Carl Sagan
Adam Lane, vice president, Ohio University Skeptic's Society
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo #/group.php?gid=64100880412
- alane019 September 4, 2008 4:53PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Absence of proof, true, is not proof of absence, however, the absence of proof to support one's extraordinary claims is proof that one hasn't done one's factual homework nor does one appear to be interested in consistently logical reasoning.
As I've said many times before in debates such as this, one need not disprove any so-called "god" or "goddess" or other claimed related entity. One cannot prove a negative, i.e. non-existence, because one cannot possess all there is to know everywhere and for all of time. What one can do and must do is check the facts and logic of those claiming the existence of such assumed entities. If their facts are incorrect, incomplete or inconsistent and if their logic is poor, one can in the least show the claimants arguments do not support their claims. One can show that the claimant has only very poor to no reason to believe what they do. One need only prove that the claimant has proven nothing at all.
Absence of proof is proof the claimant's arguments - from beginning to their conclusions - are wrong. It makes no statement about the unknown or unknowable.
- Naumadd September 8, 2008 2:44PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
It just isn't the case that you can't prove a negative. Impossibility proofs are common in mathematics. There are lots of them in Euclid. A particular concept of God could indeed be proven self-contradictory and therefore impossible if only anybody were willing to adequately define a God concept. Formerly, philosophers and theologians were able to specify what the hell they were talking about; but god talk is now merely emotional blather and theologies can't even properly be said to be wrong. I make an exception for the God concept of sects like Jehovah's Witness that represent God as a big, powerful animal in the sky, That's goofy science fiction; but at least it makes sense; and the argument against negative arguments does hold in its favor. Maybe a giant bearded tyrant will turn up one of these days.
- Jim Harrison September 8, 2008 9:56PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Christians are not burdened to prove what they know. You feel no burden to seek answers with an open mind, and that is your choice. That lack of interest or belief on your part should not be used as an argument that God doesn't exist. Those who believed in a trade route around a round world didn't make it true by proving it. Our world was round despite the proof or lack of. It wasn't flat till proven round. It was simply believed to be round by those who refused to accept the possibility that there was evidence in the stars that we rotated, leading some to accurately come to the conclusion that the earth is round. I would suggest that your unwillingness to examine the mysteries that would be explained by a Creator God, may indicate an error in the scientific method. You are willing to accept that some things defy science, or can't be explained by science, but you are unwilling to rationalize that ANY explanation that fully explains the mystery could be true. Like the flat earthers, you require proof, when the very universe testifies of God.
- TexasMom October 21, 2008 9:13AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Whether it is the Judeo-Christian or any other god, these entities were created thousands of years ago to help primitive man understand the world around him. It surprises me that there are hundreds of different religions throughout the world, and yet all believe that they are the only one that is right. I know this isn't a discussion of religion, but there is no real way to debate if there is a God or not.
- Jefe32 October 9, 2008 8:12AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
Each must search this answer on their own. That is the nature of faith, and the evidence of the truth that is given to seekers. I wish with all my heart that I could give you my faith- but each must find that on their own. Many can testify of the existence of God. But I understand your questions about the variety of belief systems and the confusion over whether or not God can be known. I have to say that personally (I believed at one time that there was truth in all religions), I never knew God until I got saved and met Jesus Christ. I knew He existed- I just didn't know Him. In your search, you might find it helpful to ask those of the various religions you know about their relationship with God, and ask them to describe how well they know God. I believe you will find that your Christian friends have deep and personal interactions with their creator, while others follow human leaders and a bunch of rules in the hopes of someday coming close to God. God bless you
- TexasMom October 21, 2008 9:18AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I cannot prove conclusively that God exists in a laboratory. However, the key to the Super Natural is "Faith". However, there is some evidence. I can pass on to you that the Bible has survived for centuries and the most widely read text. The world uses the current Calendar based on Christ's death (A.D. - After Death). We refer to B.C.(Before Christ), as well. Now why must it be Faith in order to "see" proof? When Christ walked the Earth he performed various miracles and people saw and people hated him. There were those, I'm sure that thought it was fake. I have experienced many things that I knew God sent to me. God does most of His works through people and events for His Children. Just as God feeds the animals He takes care of His own that "believe" in Him. God does not want robots to love Him and God gave man the ability to chose, either good or bad. So you wonder why there is so much despair, hate, murder and abuse in the world. Why? because God gave man a choice. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of their crimes against each other. We as Humans are so quick to dismiss God because we think "I can't be happy". Then there are those that just don't believe at all. I also find people can get angry if someone talks about God or Jesus. It is if they are about to catch on fire or something. I think they believe that they cannot be happy. Actually it is evil which whispers in their ear. Even I from time to time am tempted. I leave with you this poem as given to me from God. It had taken me a week to write it. I wrote the first half and when I tried to finish I felt very ill. But nonetheless I did finish. I am merely the writer and not the Author.
BLIND
Oh the pursuits of the flesh
This shell that covers self
The fix of desire until the next crave
So shallow this fix, never to last
Brief satisfaction; my cup now empty
This flesh aches between each thirst
Day after day the endless search; cup in hand
What elixir will fill this cup and empty not
The sweet savor that quenches my desire
Light begins to dim on this ragged shell
This flesh shriveled from the tick of time
Cup after cup filled up; folly for the fool
The spirit lay bleached to bone white
Picked clean from neglect
Left to rot in the hot desert wind of life
The spirit left alone, forgotten and unwanted
Never watered or nurtured; void of light
Cast to the shadows to wither on the vine
Oh what a wasteland that I made of this spirit
For it is I, the spirit, that was starved until death
A lifetime to quicken my spirit has cost me the prize
- dadunique October 13, 2008 9:21AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Millions of people over a period of thousands of years have looked for evidence of the existence of a god . Nobody has ever found one object which could be shown to anyone else to demonstrate that such a god exists. In this case, the overwhelming absence of evidence is proof enough to any reasonable person that there are no gods.
- alexselkirk1704 March 24, 2009 2:31PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
No side will ever be able to prove themselves. It is simply impossible. Though an interesting question to ponder, no side should claim that their belief is the true one, nor should we waste our time arguing about it. Believe what you want.
- userk April 16, 2009 3:19AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
Your point being? You are making a claim an illogical god exists without any evidence to support your claim. It's called burden of proof--you can't simply claim there is a god and follow up with "You can't prove me wrong! So I must be right!"
By the way, I only vote "no" because there is very likely not one. Few atheists really believe there is no god, we simply don't believe there is one. There's a difference.
- Blue Linchpin June 3, 2009 4:11PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Faith IS truly required to believe (i.e. KNOW in one's heart) that God exists. Yet, Faith in faith alone gives little comfort that Faith will one Day be proven to be fact. Faith THAT God exists is based on the presuppositions that God can exist, and that His existence is beneficial to me.
However, by the same token Faith is required to believe that God does NOT exist! The Faith that God does NOT exist is based on the presuppositions that the Universe can exist even if God does not, and that the lack of God is in some way or ways beneficial to me.
Though I will probably add another comment later, I will close this one with an investment-return analysis!
Belief: God exists! Investment: This Life with all its problems & blessings...on average 100 years or less. Return: Eternity of significant existence minus problems plus additional favor for believers.
Belief: God does not exist! Investment: Time & Effort getting to the top of your field, and the staggering task of proving your own omniscience of all things in order to be able to prove that God does not exist! Return: A Life of pleasures that lasts for 100 years or less, and the possibility of being immortalized in the hearts of those who adore you, even though YOU yourself cease to exist.
Cost-Benefits Analysis shows heavier value on the side of Belief in God and His certain existence! (Hebrews 11:1, KJV) It's not even close! :)
- WinBro777JOT October 20, 2008 7:34PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Faith cost nothing it is the GIFT of GOD,you do nothing but get out of it's way & allow yourself to be used for a purpose..You are salvaged from a life of eternal torment but you live to a life of eternal reward.YOU are salvaged for the purpose of becomming GOD like in character & IMAGE, RESTORED to how GOD made man originally...YOU will do as HE would do ..REPRESENTATION is your purpose in eternity & in the here & now..
- nobody December 1, 2008 3:00PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
For FAITH to exist GOD must exist...The human heart, as we all know, is despirately wicked & totally without a means of control, outside of fear from law & retribution from the law...Mankind would not make up an outside influence to dominate the human mind..FAITH brought to fruition ,yields un-human capabillities & anyone who is truthfull in the matter can see by this evidence, (that man would not go against himself to his own demise or subjection),in essence self-representation & self-preservation..True "faith" comes only from GOD by way of a change in a man's heart because of an outside force acting on that heart, heart being a person's inner makeup that has to manifest outwardly,that change..FAITH in GOD is the very evidence that GOD exists..IT goes against ALL human nature & behavior to submit to a higher authority..GOD is love,not a man-made mind control option, LOVE, being HIS character shown to mankind in CHRIST's manifestation..IT is this IMAGE from which mankind originally fell ..WE were created in GOD's IMAGE..NOT physically but in HIS CHARACTER image..Since the fall we must be restored to that IMAGE as this is neccessary for GOD to remain GOD..SATAN is trying his best to defeat GOD in this purpose in-order to discredit GOD in HIS eternal realm..YOU are either helping SATAN or helping GOD in this eternal struggle...Though GOD does not need your help, HE has appointed a purpose & portion for those who receive HIM & want to accept HIS IMAGE, "LOVE"..The anti-christ will force anyone else to worship his image,"SELF" in that day of decission..There will be NO escape from CHOICE that day & ALL fates will be sealed for eternity...IT is purposed that EVERY knee shall bow & EVERY tongue confess that CHRIST is LORD over ALL, through eternity..After all he created it all...
- nobody December 1, 2008 2:50PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
The major question is why is this even a question? It because if there is a God, faith must have a purpose that nothing else could accomplish--and indeed it does. Faith is the ultimate value upon which all relationships prosper or fail. I have faith in my bank that they can be trusted with my money ; and they trust me with a check book. Our relationship continues on the basis of that mutual trust. That trust is it own reward. If we want God's benefits, it's only consistent with all other things in life that he should ask us to accept him by faith. He has offered himself as the reward of the one who will seek to know him by faith. It's a fair deal, and a very good one. No one is forced in. And he isn't trying to fill heaven by coercion. It's for the willing.
Lately, the thing which has me awestruck is God's love of paradox (apparent contradictions that seem impossible, yet with a change of viewpoint, they resolve). The resurrection accounts (Mt. 28, Mk. 16, Lk. 24, Jn. 20,21, Acts 1:1-12, and 1 Cor. 15:3-8 appear contradictory when merely compared side-by-side, but when the events described by each of the five writers are broken into pieces they can all be brought together to form one complete story, without contradiction. Who but God could conceive such a grand puzzle? Find out more at www.easteranswer.com
- s307kingsley March 27, 2009 9:59PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You wrote: "Given the lack of proof, in scientific terms, either way, those who do not believe in God may actually be faithful equally to those who do believe in God, only their faith is in the lack of a God."
Although I agree with what you're saying, why do we continue to run to science for validation of our beliefs? There are things that science cannot do. Scientific knowledge has proven to be false in many instances... by science itself. Science is limited to areas of naturalism-- it CAN'T prove or disprove the SUPERnatural. I say, let's run to the principles of jurisprudence, where probability is honored. I believe BEYOND ALL REASONABLE DOUBT that God exists.
- Cannie April 15, 2009 3:28PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
This was beautifully written and phrased up until his final conclusion. Almost had my vote .
- userk April 16, 2009 3:21AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
He's definitly not the God of the bible . I have trouble believing that our earth just happened, along with all the rest of humanity. What I don't understand is how God created the human race and then destroyed the entire human race. Then allowed it to flourish again, and now all of us who don't accept Jesus into our hearts will go to hell. Wait a minute isn't he all knowing, didn't he know what was going to happen when he originally created me. He loves me so much he sent his son to die on the cross for me so my sins could be forgiven but... he made me this way and he knew it was going to turn out this way before I was born. If I don't believe in him he knows my heart and he'll judge me accordingly.
- Tony81 April 20, 2009 10:57PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I agree with you.
Have you ever considered that the delusion of Revelations is referring to the homosexual movement? Have you ever considered that we are in the end times?
I love God. Its obvious you do too. Peace to you. My story at WWW.HOPE7.HIGHPOWERSITES.COM
Everything in life is progressing just as it should. I have peace and trust in God, no matter. The bottom line question is not do you believe there is a God, God says all men/woman know it whether they wish to acknowledge is it another matter, but the real question is DO YOU LOVE HIM? I think you do!
- Hope7 May 26, 2009 11:19AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Rabbi, I am not sure whether you're aware of the purpose of debate. Let me clue you in: to present arguments which make a case for your side. Aside from your rather strange attempt at claiming that popular belief in some kind of god gives the idea credibility, I've seen no such attempt by you. Most theists at least try to come up with a logical argument to make their pre-existing beliefs seem viable, but you seem to have given up before you've even started!
Instead, you've apparently come to the debate with the arrogant conclusion that you don't need to make any serious attempt at rationalizing belief in god. Why?
Your claims about faith seem a little odd as well, less of an argument and more of an excuse. Why, if you are so willing to believe and base your life off of faith in a god without any evidence, why not believe in anything without evidence? Don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Why not? Where is the difference?
I'm almost ashamed the atheist side (which, by the way, atheists generally do not believe there is no god, but instead simply have a lack of belief--shame on the way this debate was set up, as well) didn't have a remotely serious opponent.
- Blue Linchpin June 3, 2009 7:06PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Since Unified Force Theory fits the basic definition of God. The question is, when people say they believe in God, what do they mean by God?
- mike1948 August 1, 2009 3:04PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
There is only one God but what is God?
- mike1948 August 2, 2009 12:29AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
There are many gods of this world.But one true GOD Yahweh!Jehovh GOD!
- countryboy August 2, 2009 10:19AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Countryboy is right. G-d very clearly talks about other Gods, usually Baal. We don't like Ba'al. There are supposed to be other Gods out there who are very powerful supernatural beings--Zeus, Ra, Gozer, etc. But Yahweh, the Jewish G-d, is supposed to be the one who created the universe and sort of maintains it. Different levels. Like, other Gods are players on football teams, but Yahweh is the high commissioner who decides who plays, when and where.
- quantummechanik August 2, 2009 10:51AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You are both ducking the question. Ok, one true God, Yahweh, and a lot of mythical wantabes. But what is God? When we say we believe in God, what is he.
- mike1948 August 2, 2009 5:41PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
OK, as a guy that spent many years wishing I could believe in god , the Cost/Benefit argument has to be one of the least inspiring reasons someone might believe in such a thing.
Is god such a tool that any schlep with a calculator in one and and crossed fingers in the other gets saved?
And is the point spread the Rabbi refers to on "faith" in no god(mischaracterizing skepticism anyway) supposed to scare the nonbeliever? We already we live in an inherently meaningless universe alone on a mote of dust with steadily declining viability for the future! What do we care what the odds are things might be different when we die?
This whole argument revolves around the definition of belief itself, which typically fails to acknowledge if one chooses what to believe and then organizes the facts of life, or if one is lead to beliefs based on the facts of life.
The last defense of theism typically resorts to the logical problem of proving something does not exist or highly covoluted discussions about how free-will and determinism are actually coexistant and how morally bankrupt the world would be without the relentless pandering, sycophancy, coercion, bribery, and extortion behind most faith and arguments therefor...
So just get there already if this is the best you got.
- Submariner June 10, 2009 11:46PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
It is philosophically,logically and scientifically impossible to prove that God exists or does not, for the following reasons:
1) A supreme Being is totally perfect therefore cannot be measured, defined or even " sampled" as per the scientific method,but if we could...
2) God, if he or she exists, is above dimensional space and time (metaphysical) therefore being above and beyond our capacity to understand or even interpet any supposed " meausrements" or information we could obtain using scientific analysis.In other words we wouldn't be able to understand or inerpret any evidence for God, even if we had some that was scientifically valid.
3) We cannot , by definition ever understand or know The First Cause (God) because we are only capable of anthropomorphizing any Creator or Force that is metaphysically beyond us. In other words, we give a Divine Supreme Being characteristics that are entirely human such as emotions: anger,jealousy, pity, and physical attributes .
- weedonald
July 25, 2008 9:33PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(3)
Side: Yes
What if He (the First Cause, as you put it) anthropomorphized himself for us? So we could understand him?
- reb412 August 30, 2008 11:16AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
According to Christians, God did become man, in an understandable, historically provable and recognizable form(Jesus), thus anthropormophizing Himself totally. However, it doesn`t help us to prove His existence since proving Jesus was God (or the son of God) is still beyond our abilities.
- weedonald September 3, 2008 5:23PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
Jesus is a character in a story that attempts to show what God would do if he was a man IMHO.
Did he ever really exist ? There is no proof you can CHOOSE to believe He did or you can choose to believe he didn't. To me it is irrelevant based on my only now exists post. He does exist now for me however. Based on the words and actions attributed to this character and my understanding of the teachings attributed to him he is a reality and part of my way of thinking.
John says it so well, In the beginning was the WORD our first awaremess of the concept of TRUTH and the word became flesh and dwelt among men.
Jesus represents the Truth of God. Which he synthesized from the ten commandments each of which represented one of these two concepts from Jesus.
1. Love truth and righteousness above all else.
2. Love others.
William Booth the founder of the salvation army was forced to synthesize it even further when asked what ONE word would he leave to his followers. The word was not God, the word was not Jesus, The word was not even Love. The one word he left was the word OTHERS! Because the truth is in order to have peace and understanding we really need to think about OTHERS and not be selfish.
- james1951
June 28, 2009 11:17AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
This ties in nicely with my perception of there only being NOW. The past is forever gone except for "memories"(not so reliable memories) I NOW have and the future has not arrived except for hopes and plans I have NOW that it will arrive in a way I would like it to. But in reality I wave only this milli micro moment to DO anything that might create a future NOW.
As the bible put it.
These three remain
FAITH - that what I now think I remember actually was
HOPE - that what I wantand am now planning will actually occur
and LOVE and the greatest of these is love because it is what I can do NOW based on my memory of a past to create the future I am hoping will come into existence.
- james1951 June 28, 2009 11:08AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You make the assumption that God created matter and therefore created the universe. Have you ever considered the idea that God simply organized existing matter to form (not create) the universe?
Your assumption does not hold for all faiths.
- cmseth August 3, 2008 6:04PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
I never made such an assumption...We cannot even assume God exists, less so that He is the creator of all we know and the unknown. If God exists, He or She or IT may in fact have ordered existing matter but the problem lies in explaining who created matter BEFORE the supreme Being and how can a Being be Supreme if it came into existence after matter!
- weedonald September 3, 2008 5:26PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Why is that answer clear? Seems to raise more questions than answer them.
- reb412 August 30, 2008 11:15AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
It isn`t clear and it does raise more questions than answers since there is no definitive answer...only limiting questions about an unlimited thesis.
- weedonald September 3, 2008 5:27PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Why does it have to be so simple? Because you want it to be...
I think lots of religious people are like that, they want a quick, succinct, all-encompassing answer to where we came from, what are we doing here, and what happens to us after we die. Sorry things can't be explained so easily for you. Try opening a science book and actually learning about what few things we have managed to understand about the universe. I'm sure it's just scratching the surface.
- GermyJ May 19, 2009 2:40PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Since when is science the absolute definitive? Science has, indeed, proved itself wrong time and time again. Is omniscience part of the human condition? Science is a human-created and pursued enterprise and scientists that we trust will be the first to tell you that they are NOT omniscient. We are limited by our own humanity. Scientists will also tell you that their art is lacking in final proofs and that their best endeavors are based upon theories that are suspect. Why investigate anything that is absolutely proven? We are limited to the observations of our five senses and the tools that we use to enhance those senses. Who makes the tools that enhance? Is the tool any better than the toolmaker?
Please do NOT depend upon science to provide a TRUE answer to your questions. The practitioners of science are as likely as not to give you a different answer tomorrow as they have given you today. That is the root of their quest and the ever-appealing and ever-elusive goal of their profession.
- lifelonglearner September 3, 2008 4:17PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I never said science is the definitive measure...it is one of many humanity possesses, perhaps being the least among these. However it would really move our knowledge of the Divine forward if we could get some tangible proof of His existence. My point is that it is logically impossible to ever do so.
- weedonald September 3, 2008 5:29PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
This entire argument is doomed to break down from the outset, and the cause is a simple misunderstanding of epistemology, what claims can be known, and how they can be known.
You cannot prove that an omnipotent God does not exist. It is impossible. Assume you could construct a perfect argument that proved that said God did not exist. Because that God is omnipotent, that God can do anything, and it therefore follows that he could still exist and simply manipulate the universe to appear that he did not. There is no rational response to the question of God that can disprove the existence of the being. Just like the liar problem, the concept itself breaks the rules of logic and reason by elevating the being in question above the constraints of any logical system.
The next position that the dedicated atheist will take is to call upon the scientific method (otherwise known as inductive reasoning with some special rules) to claim that we have no reason to believe that God does exist beyond the null hypothesis, which in their case defaults to their position. The problem in that case is that the null hypothesis itself creates a false dichotomy. Metaphysically, all statements must be either true or false, but epistemically it is possible that we may not be able to know the truth value of that proposition. I again present the example of the liar problem as proof that the set of questions for which our rational math cannot reach a conclusion is non-empty.
The question, as another individual alluded to, is what influence God would have on our lives, and the answer to that question is completely and entirely subjective because it is a question of personal valuation. You obviously could not cite God's Will as a plank of a rational argument justifying any condition or behavior, because the truth value of your peculiar interpretation of God's Will or even the existence thereof is unknowable. The question that we should be asking is what authority we, as individuals, should be able to afford our own peculiar and entirely subjective conclusions toward the question of God in our otherwise rational, objective world, and THAT is where the null hypothesis argument becomes relevant.
That being the case, an abstract discussion as to whether or not God exists at all between diverse individuals is clearly completely useless. No knowable, true conclusion can possibly result from that discussion. In all questions of public action or policy, the God concept must clearly be rejected in any diverse conversation (by which I mean a conversation involving individuals holding more than one belief between them with respect to the question) because it cannot be rationally justified as true at this point. I'll state for the record that I haven't seen any clear argument demonstrating that proving the existence of God would be impossible (in a similar vein to the argument I presented above which proves the atheist hypothesis to be rationally untenable), so I allow for the outside chance that some dedicated theist might concoct such an argument, but until then, the limits of our knowledge seem to imply that this entire discussion is useless.
- Brian Seiler September 6, 2008 3:45PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Uncommitted
..the fact that yourargument states that the universe didn't exist in the potency of a former state to become this one. Nice that you think that, but it's seems presumptuous. makes me wonder, do you possess and t-shirts with a large capital A on it? A the scene of an accident, you can rush forward rip off your buttoned up shirt and proclaim.. 'if he/she dies, that's the end of the road..'
back to the point, (i really think an accompanied video with you blowing bubbles could have added some ground to your argument.)
I think the most direct and clear paradox of life is.. the lack of entropy. The perpetual state of dynamics, of life. in the very universe itself. I don't think you've ever considered that. I think it's the most blatantly profound truth in existence . With our limited understanding of physical science , this is an impossibility. So this big mysterious factor even fits with your terms, so one must conclude the likely hood that your conclusion is absolutely wrong. Our sceince says something had to do it.
brain waves, the fabric of time,... we have a lot we don't understand.. but evidently there is a something. ever dream of something that didn't happen yet? happens to people everyday. apparently, the physical world is just scratching the surface to reality.
now consider the reality of metaphysical ideas. These ideas, being substantial.. now do things make more sense?
- jxzac April 3, 2009 1:55AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
In the first place there has to be a first cause. We have to start somewhere. In science this is called the Unified Force. Since energy can neither be created nor destroyed it is infinite. Science also teaches that it is beyond direct observation so it is unknowable. So the Unified Force splits into the Strong Force, the Weak Force and Electromagnetism, creating the Universe.There are then two questions. First, what is the difference between the Unified Force and God? In both cases we have an infinite, unknowable force creating the Universe. Second, what caused the Unified Force to break itself apart?
- mike1948 July 1, 2009 11:14PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"First, what is the difference between the Unified Force and God?"
The OT, NT, and the body of Christian Theology.
It did not create man out of clay, build a garden, drown everyone, part the Red Sea, send it's only son...
"Second, what caused the Unified Force to break itself apart?"
The cooling / expanding universe.
The unified force did not create anything, it was just the force that acted on matter before the universe cooled to the point that it decayed.
- MrBook July 26, 2009 9:49AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
First of all the Unified Force is the same as God. For you to treat God just as some anthropomorphic straw man that you can knock down is just silly.
- mike1948 July 26, 2009 10:17PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You are the one who is anthropomorphizing the Unified Field theories... I just pointed out that the OT, NT, and the totality of Christian theology do not agree with your statements.
- MrBook July 27, 2009 7:09AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I fail to see where I have anthropomorphized anything. I have simply said that the Unified Force/God is the infinite, unknowable force that created the universe. At this point the question is not Christian theology but whether there is a God. One thing at a time.
- mike1948 July 27, 2009 9:39AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
God is, always has been, and always will be. That's a hard thing to wrap your mind around, but if we didn't dwell in a finite mindset, it would not be. Many of the same people, who reject God, or Creator, can easily phantom infinite parallel universes, intelligent beings from other planets or even galaxies, but not a Creator. For me, God has always been the only plausible explanation for life. If you really study the Bible, you'll find that it must be divinely inspired if only because of the obvious logical sequence obtained by so many authors over so many years. For me, however, I only have to look at a child or maybe something as small as a butterfly, to see the handiwork of God.
- chief45 August 31, 2009 7:58PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
the obvious logical sequence.
- quantummechanik September 1, 2009 9:50PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You shouldn't give orders to people you don't know, or anybody for that matter. If you want to learn about the Bible, I suggest you get one and read it yourself. It was not written by the same man at the same time, but with study you will find it relates to today's world as much as it did 2000 years ago. It does so in an order you will discover if you read it instead of baiting others for arguments.
- chief45 September 2, 2009 8:21AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Don't get so defensive. Quantum is OK the one you have to watch out for is Book.
- mike1948 September 2, 2009 10:56AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
And I know who wrote it. I'm just saying, you assert something about the book, you should probably explain it.
If I said that the secret of life was found in old tapes of Captain Kangaroo, I would be, at the least, rude to not tell you what the secret of life is and how I found it.
- quantummechanik September 2, 2009 11:36AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
are just men who are fooled into thinking that there awaits a place one in heaven, one in hell, where all will be ascribed toward infinity, where those who have chosen Christ will be reunited with their loved ones and those who have denied Him will be eternally seperated from all that is good in life. If the atheists are right, and I dont beleive they are, then I wonder if these songs would ever have been writen, I wonder if these men would have lost their minds without this hope, I wonder how many have been saved because these men dared to beleive in Gd?
Amazing Grace by John Newton- Who was a murderous, drunken, immoral slave trader and captain of a slave ship. Who had been raised to know Gd but after his mothers death lost sight of Gd. His life is so wretched and brutal that not even his own crew liked him. And then one day he came across some literature on Jesus and remembered! A storm came up, like none hed ever seen before, and in the midst of that storm cried out to Gd and PTL Gd heard him!! He gave up slave trading and became a minister. Hallelujah!
What a Friend we have in Jesus by a man from Ireland who later moved to Canada, named Joseph Scriven. Joseph lost his first bride the day before their wedding when she was drowned in a tragic accident. He lost his second wife to pneumonia. He devoted his whole life to being the good samaritan and doing good works for others, he never accepted money for his charity.
Silent Night a Catholic priest in Austria named Joseph Mohr. His story is also quite moving.
It is well with my soul by a man from Chicago Illinois named Horatio Gates Spafford. I saved this one for last because he is my favorite one! He lost his only son to a childhood disease. He lost his business real estates in the great Chicago fire. He was a friend to Moody and was going to England to help in the great revival happening in England but was called back at the last minute and his wife and four daughters went ahead. The boat was rammed by another boat and sank. He lost all four daughters in the ocean . His wife was rescued and sent him a telegram that said, SAVED ALONE. When he went to join her he penned this song on the boat trip there. This is why I know that Gd loves us even when tragedy strikes and we have a faith that no tragedy can take from us, the hope of glory, the hope of eternal life through the blood of the lamb Jesus. I too can say, IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL. My prayer is that my children will all be able to say that no matter the..quote
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
..
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
AMEN. We are blessed in Jesus.
- TheLordrocks October 23, 2009 3:28PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Yet without religion there would have been no Inquisition, no witch hunts, no Crusades... all the countless crimes that take place in the name of a deity.
As the old saying goes... With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.
- MrBook October 28, 2009 8:38PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
If we are talking about personal, superpowered God then it's not hard to tell without doubts - such God(s) does not exist. (Just like does not exist Earth in center of the Universe and everything else orbits around it.) And any atheist will stick to this statement until science prove otherwise.
- ctrnz
August 25, 2008 6:21AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Science deals only with the creation. It cannot deal with the creator because the creator exists outside the box of creation that science is trapped within.
The best science can do is say once there was a "big bang", something happened and a bunch of energy exploded into what we know as reality and cooled and formed the universe and created laws of physics that we have discovered.
Science cannot tell us what went bang nor why it went bang.
- james1951 June 28, 2009 11:21AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
It is how you look at it. Science can deal with creator in psyholigical sense. Why we (humans) created creator (deities) in the first place. Also any school of philosophy takes chances on idea of creator as such.
However science may tell you some day in the future why there was big bang and what caused it. Like science told us that lighting is not an act of God and Earth is not the center of Universe. Scary thing to do is to do nothing in fields of science and teach our childrens scary stories about
gnomes and so on.
Even if we are in some kind of box and Creator is out of it - then he also can't interact with us.
But anything what gets into the box can be in some way or another observed by us and by our scientists as well. It's simple.
- ctrnz July 1, 2009 11:45AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
When Laplace published his theory of the formation of the Solar System, Napoleon Bonaparte asked him where God fit into his theory. Laplace replied, "Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis."
The answer to your objection should be obvious to logicians: no, it is not absolutely clear that there is no god. Nor is it absolutely clear that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster or celestial teapot.
The answer to "Is there a God?" cannot be answered definitively, period. Therefore the atheist position is and must be "[with the same likeliness that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster] there is no god."
- h3h September 1, 2008 3:32PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
Flying Spaghetti monsters make no sense, the possible existence of a Creator and speculation on ITS nature makes sense. Equating God.s existence to fantastical creations of the irrational is poor argumentation. Because we cannot prove a negative does not mean that, within the Laws of Nature and Physics, there is no God per se. We will never know for sure so atheists hold to the No hypothesis. Maybe we should all be agnostics...we simply do not know nor will we ever know.
- weedonald September 3, 2008 5:32PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
Yes, but the null position should still be the atheist position, not the agnostic position. Fantastic claims, whether the Flying Spaghetti Monster (blessed be His name, amen) or a God, who created the Universe, exist, require fantastic evidence. Particularly when you claim that God created a Universe 14.5 billion years ago, to be at least 26 billion light years across 13 billion years ago (because the furthest galaxy we can see now is 13 billion light years away, and the light from there has therefore taken 13 billion years to get here), with about 10,000 billion billion stars, just for the benefit of humans on a tiny speck of rock orbiting a totally insignificant star. And yet this God is still around, listening to the prayers of his believers, and occasionally granting but usually ignoring them, without ever actually giving any proof of his existence. I expect that when I press the submit button, if there is a God, I will be instantly electrocuted for blasphemy.
- bachfiend September 4, 2008 3:46AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(3)
Side: No
God created a earth with just 1 sun and no other stars, would it be a little lame? would you think it more likely or less likely that there be an intelligent creator? i'm thinking you're sugguesting that it would be more likely. now why would you think it more likely that a lame God exists?
these arguments are illogical and nonsensical, and you should realize this. The fact is they are unintelligent, arrogant, and 'presumptions.'
If you look at the Bible, what is stressed is wisdom, and honesty and humility.. here you lack all three.
- jxzac April 3, 2009 2:14AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Athiest man is not profound wisdom. To say to a person that there is the here and now.. it needs not be said. To see if you are humble and honest, and wise. those are substantial. Those elements are profound. How they would not exist without the greater essence. that is profound. blessed are those who believed and did not see.
- jxzac April 3, 2009 2:22AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Well, that's a pretty lame explanation. Who is god trying to impress, himself or us, by creating a universe with billions of galaxies. Just one, the Milky Way, with its 200 to 400 billion stars, would have been impressive enough, particularly since we only realised there were more than one galaxy only in the early 20th century, and we are most unlikely (what with Einstein's special theory of relativity, of even visiting the nearest star (other than the sun). Whatever good qualities you find in the bible (and I admit Proverbs generally is pretty good), it is still a pretty shoddy piece of fiction. I don't know how you can seriously claim your work of fiction is any truer that the sacred texts of any other religion that humans have made up.
- bachfiend April 3, 2009 5:41AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
Are you kidding me?
Does that mean that PLuto did not exist until science discovered it?
Come on that is just silly. Of course the agnostic position should be the null position, because we just don't know.
But I am on the yes side because I have defined God in such a way as to be quite confident of Gods existence not as a physical entity but as a spirit of truth and righteousness
- james1951 June 28, 2009 11:28AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Science is an hypothesis as well. It is based on the perception that the universe is limited to what we can sense with our 5 senses and instrumentation designed to augment those five senses.
Right now there are thousands of radio and tv and wireless signals going past my head but I cant see or hear or even feel them because i dont have the receiver turned on or tuned to the proper frequency. But regardless of that those signals are there. WHat else is there that I simply do not have a receiver for or am not tuned into. Is there a "spirit of truth and righteousness" that requires a mind that can receive it and a mind that is tuned into the frequency it broadcasts on?
Many people have a "gut feeling" about what is right and wrong, where does it come from. Last nights Spaghetti :-)
Or is there a "spirit of truth and righteousness" is there a concious or subconcious concience that is more than just what we have reasoned from our life experience to be the correct thing to do. We are really good at justifying what we some how know is wrong. IMHO
- james1951 June 28, 2009 11:42AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
To be a true hypothesis you have to be able to devise experiments by which you can demonstrate if it is correct or not.
Radio waves (tv and wireless signals are all in the radio spectrum) cannot be seen, but can be detected and proven to exist.
- MrBook July 7, 2009 6:15AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
They cannot be proven to exist if
1. You do not have instrumentation that can detect them and and relay that information in a manner that our 5 senses can sense them.
2. If you do not have that instrumentation tuned into the frequency those energy signals are transmitting on.
3. There may be many other energy waves than radio tv infra red ultra violet light rays. Thought waves for example, we cannot even read thought waves who, who knows what other energy signals are out there that we simply cannot detect withn our current detection facilities.
Just because you don't know its there does not mean it doesn't exist.
- james1951 July 7, 2009 8:19AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"
1. You do not have instrumentation that can detect them and and relay that information in a manner that our 5 senses can sense them.
"
yes, that is true... however considering that we know that there are radio broadcasts going on near by (even though I do not have my cell phone on me I know that it gets a signal where I am sitting) I don't think that it is unreasonable to assume that there are radio waves passing through me right now.
"
2. If you do not have that instrumentation tuned into the frequency those energy signals are transmitting on.
"
That is a strange way to put it... but again, yes.
"
3. There may be many other energy waves than radio tv infra red ultra violet light rays.
"
getting stranger now, but also true... there are sound waves to consider for one.
"
Thought waves for example, we cannot even read thought waves
"
Que? It depends on what you mean by 'Thought Waves'... if you are talking about the frequency of electrical signals traveling through the brain you are correct in that we cannot 'read' them. We can detect them but we cannot interpret them.
"
who knows what other energy signals are out there that we simply cannot detect withn our current detection facilities.
"
Also true, however that reasoning allows for an infinite number of possibilities... We 'could' be organic robots controlled by tachyon signals being projected from Saturn.
"
Just because you don't know its there does not mean it doesn't exist.
"
Can't the same thing be said for Unicorns and underwear gnomes?
- MrBook July 9, 2009 6:43AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
An odd objection, seeing as your argument is God exists.
- Blue Linchpin December 16, 2008 12:51AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
It is an assertion, not an argument. Regardless of whether one is open to the possiblity of God's existence, it is quite a stretch to assert that it is clear that a being with those god -like characteristics does not exist.
- ghanastudent May 17, 2009 11:48AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Is it not also quite a stretch to assert that something of that nature DOES exist?
Any concept could be concocted and then defended on the basis of insufficient evidence to the contrary, but without evidence backing said concoction (save for gaps in human understanding), what's to say that it's valid or even worth considering?
- MisterPD July 17, 2009 8:24PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I never doubt that there is no tooth fairy.
I never doubt that there is ground beneath my feet.
Similarly, I never doubt that this hugely imaginative " god " thing is an outright fabrication.
Doubt doesn't happen in situations where the right answer is so blindingly obvious that the only way around the truth is imaginative fabrication.
- MisterPD July 17, 2009 8:07PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
You claim to have an objection to the statement "matter cannot be created or destroyed" yet show no evidence to the contrary.
The icing on the cake of your "argument" seems to be blindly asserting that god isnt improbable; again without any proof or explanation.
Care to provide some?
- Elliott R July 25, 2008 1:56AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
You said, "we would need ample evidence that the laws of physics have been broken or at least horribly misunderstood. However, we have none." The so called definitions of the laws of physics as man understands them are researched and refined every day at universities all over the world. People are still receiving PhDs and grants, so yes, there is ample proof that our understanding of physics is still being refined. Every single day.
- joelinda September 3, 2008 2:48PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
You are seriously misinformed about the nature of scientific knowledge.
Yes, our understanding of physics is constantly being refined. However, there are some basic concepts that have been confirmed over and over again and are not in doubt. Yes, occasionally we find a special case in which an old rule seems not to apply, but that leads us to the discovery of new, broader rules, which can be simplified in each special case to the old ones. We have wholly rejected some very old theories, most of which were formulated before the idea of the scientific method was popular. (As a "scientist" Aristotle claimed that objects fall because they want to, and that projectiles move forward because that is in their nature.) However, by and large we are building upon old knowledge rather than scrapping it entirely.
One of the concepts which we come to, time and time again, in all different areas of physics, is the concept of symmetry and conservation. There are several fundamental quantities (or related pairs quantities, like energy and mass, or space and time) that follow invariance rules. Conservation of mass and energy is a very basic, foundational principle, and one which is not at all in doubt among scientists.
- thoughtcounts Z October 30, 2008 8:54AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
No need to attack. When you say things like "You are seriously misinformed about the nature of scientific knowledge." then you lose a civilized debate. Debate the topic, not the person.
I agree with you on most of your points about what science and research are. I'm an engineer, not a scientist, if you care to draw a distinction. So, I know science changes when consensus changes. God's laws of nature don't change, but the human understanding of those laws changes via peer review. No need to go back to Aristotle. Just go pull some textbooks off the shelf from the 1930s.
Yes, conservation of mass and energy are not up for debate here. This debate is about God. He is free to violate any law of physics he wants, since he created them in the first place. Look at the elegance of the universe. How could that have happened by accident? Also, if we hold to the fact of conservation of mass and energy, then how did the big bang happen?
Faith and Science are two very different things. God created the laws of nature that we call Science. No doubt, he has violated them a few times as serves his purpose. God also created the faith that humans must exercise in order to understand a bit more of him each day.
- joelinda November 6, 2008 9:09AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"All we can see, measure, and know shows us that matter and energy have always existed."
The author's statement above simply is not accurate. Big Bag theory, while certainly not an established fact, is widely accepted. According to that theory, matter as we know it did not exist prior to the Big Bang. Indeed, the physical laws of the universe that we are so familiar with did not exist. We cannot know what laws prevailed because the conditions prior to the Big Bang are beyond all experience and, so far at least, are untestable. One may well deny the Big Bang and that's fine, but the statement that matter and energy have always existed is not supported.
- goodwyne October 11, 2008 12:12PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(4)
Side: Yes
Citing the law of conservation of mass-energy against God/creatio ex nihilo is absurd. The law only applies after the Big Bang; in all likelihood energy conservation was violated at the Big Bang.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031106212441/http :// www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/ask/a11609.html
- obrienr October 11, 2008 8:58PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(5)
Side: Yes
Had the law been violated, then one might invoke Him but then one would still be saying fatuity as He is so incoherent as His properties so contradict each other as we ignostics so loudly proclaim. The law is perpetual: the present is key to the past.
One should always look for natural causes and explanations as that is our experience that makes for the presumption of naturalism. They are despite Leibniz the sufficient reason.
Ex nihilo is fatuous as it is contrary to experience and to posit nothingness is to posit nothing whatsoevr as knowledge. See Peter A.Angeles "The Problem of God: a Short Introduction."
The occult adds nothing to knowledge! As atheologian Keith Parsons notes , it merely invokes the fig leaf of ignarnce.
- skeptic griggsy October 15, 2008 3:31PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
That law, the conservation of mass-energy exhibits itself in two ways: one, therefore their cannot be absolute contingency- no Esistence -as the contingency argument so requires;two, it exhibits itself in quantum energy, whence comes matter-energy. So here, science indeed does exhibit no reason to posit a dvine creator
Science finds no cosmic teleology- no preordained plans for events in Existence. Thus arises the atelic argument that therefore one cannot posit God as behind events.
To posit God as somehow involved would be the new Omphalos argument that God hides Himself as the epistemic distance argument would endorse in effect. John L. Schellenberg observes that that distance reflects His hiddenness so much that He probably doesn't exist!
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 3:37PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
therefore,there cannot be absolute...
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 4:06PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Your reasoning is nonsense and has no sound justification.
What William Carroll reminds us , “St. Thomas Aquinas developed an analysis of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo that remains one of the enduring accomplishments of Western culture. The key to Aquinas' analysis is the distinction he draws between creation and change. The natural sciences, whether Aristotelian or those of our own day, have as their subject the world of changing things: from sub-atomic particles to acorns to galaxies. Whenever there is a change there must be something that changes. The Greeks are right: from nothing, nothing comes; that is, if the verb "to come" means a change. All change requires an underlying material reality.
Creation, on the other hand, is the radical causing of the whole existence of whatever exists. To cause completely something to exist is not to produce a change in something, is not to work on or with some already existing material. If, in producing something new, an agent were to use something already existing, the agent would not by itself be the complete cause of the new thing. But such a complete causing is precisely what creation is. To create is to give existence, and all things are totally dependent upon God for the very fact that they are. God does not take nothing and make something out of "it." Rather, anything left entirely to itself, separated from the cause of its existence, would be absolutely nothing. Creation is not some distant event; it is the continuing, complete causing of the existence of everything that is. Creation, thus, is a subject for metaphysics and theology, not for the natural sciences.
What is essential to Christian faith, according to Aquinas, is the "fact of creation," not the manner or mode of the formation of the world. Aquinas' firm adherence to the truth of Scripture without falling into the trap of literalistic readings of the text offers valuable correction for exegesis of the Bible which concludes that one must choose between the literal interpretation of the Bible and modern science. For Aquinas, the literal meaning of the Bible is what God, its author, intends the words to mean. The literal sense of the text includes metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech useful to accommodate the truth of the Bible to the understanding of its readers. For example, when one reads in the Bible that God stretches out His hand, one ought not think that God has a hand. The literal meaning of such passages concerns God's power, not His anatomy. Nor ought one think that the six days at the beginning of Genesis literally refer to God's acting in time, for God's creative act is instantaneous.”
Recent speculations that the universe began as "quantum tunneling from nothing" reaffirm the ancient Greek principle that you cannot get something from nothing. For the "vacuum" of modern particle physics, whose "fluctuation" some see as bringing our universe into existence, is not absolutely nothing. It is not anything like our present universe, but it still is something. Or else, how could it fluctuate? Even if the universe were the result of the fluctuation of a primal vacuum, it would not be a self-creating universe. The need to explain the existence of things does not disappear.
So to say that matter cannot be created or destroyed just indicates its within a closed system and has no bearing on whether God brought it into existence or not.
- Big O December 7, 2008 7:53PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
The universe cannot be infinetly old, according to my very limited knowledge, because heat flows from warm to cold bodies. If the universe has always existed, everything should be the same temperature. Where am I wrong?
- tgo December 15, 2008 5:04PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
This universe hasn't always existed. It had a beginning and it will cease to exist when it reaches absolute zero unless something changes.
- Big O January 4, 2009 2:05PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I to have always had strong beliefs about god and the universe and have as well made my decision about religion and I do not believe in a god. But if matter can not be created nor destroyed, where did it all start out at? The BIg Boom theory states that the universe was like a balloon which under compression finally exploded causing a chemical reaction beginning life in our universe and our universe itself. But something can not come from nothing. How did the first universe come to be? My argument has always been "we are still discovering this answer" but i have yet to see scientists evaluate this answer any further than I myself have. Any words of comfort?
- peaches March 2, 2009 5:53PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Science teaches that there is a First Cause that is infinite and beyond observation. In other words what most people call God. Forget religion . Think of the universe as a large pool of energy . Every action or thought causes energy, ripples across the pond, the butterfly effect. Creation is the interaction of all the ripples.
- mike1948 July 24, 2009 1:06AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Matter can be destroyed. See Stephen Hawking's 2005 essay on Information Loss in Black Holes. The entropy of a black whole is considered below:
S = (c^3)(kA)/(4)(hbar)(G)
where S is the entropy, c is the speed of light, k is Boltzmann's constant, A is the surface area of the event horizon, ħ (hbar) is the reduced Planck's Constant and G is the gravitational constant.
If the above equation is found to be absolutely true, that the entropy of black holes consume physical information, human beings would have to wonder by what catalyst matter is created?
- Cheerikiara
May 12, 2009 4:22PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
All we realize only exists in our mind.
- jaker277 June 30, 2009 10:11AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
If the laws of physics apply then why is matter destroyed in a Black Hole?
I think there is a God and I have no idea why He created you.
- robertwsx August 8, 2009 11:02AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Matter is not destroyed when it enters a black hole... it adds to the mass.
There are questions about entropy in relation to black holes... specifically do black holes 'destroy' information.
- MrBook August 8, 2009 1:31PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
It's mass can not be created or destroyed not matter. Energy has mass. Get the science right.
- mike1948 August 14, 2009 11:39AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Can you elaborate on that statement? Energy is such a broad term after all.
If I carry a ball up to the top of a hill does it gain mass? Does a photon have mass?
- MrBook September 1, 2009 12:01AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"If I carry a ball up to the top of a hill does it gain mass?"
The ball or the hill?
"Does a photon have mass?"
No.
- mike1948 September 1, 2009 12:24AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Does the ball gain mass? It is gaining energy (potential)
Photons have (are) energy, if energy has mass then why don't photons have mass?
- MrBook September 1, 2009 12:37AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
If you do not understand the Science then why do you keep making unsupported Scientific arguments?
- MrBook September 1, 2009 4:49PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I understand enough to know that you are twisting it to support your anti-religious attitudes. Why do you make judgments on religious ideas you have no understanding of?
- mike1948 September 1, 2009 10:08PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"To the extent that scientists do not allow for the possibility of God, they cannot aptly explain the origins of the universe. "
This is a God of the gaps argument. At one point in time people made the argument that if we didn't allow the possibility of God we couldn't explain lightning, the sun, weather, etc.
The fact that our knowledge is incomplete does not mean that we need God to fill in the gaps. History has made a fool of such arguments in the past.
- reckoner August 14, 2008 8:24AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(3)
Side: Uncommitted
Einstein's statement reflects his view that the universe could be explained in an experimentally deterministic way. He spent his last years in life trying to come up with a unified theory of physics because to him the notion of quantum uncertainty was so unsettling. The next great discovery in physics will likely a unified theory (after we find the Higgs boson of course). Regardless, Einstein's view has more to do with a certain view of nature rather than the existence of a god that shapes all things with some omnipotent guiding hand.
- bschild June 4, 2009 1:29AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Good is the health , well-being and longevity of our entire species and planet. You can believe in a god and be for the good of all humanity or you can not believe in god and be for the good of all humanity. On the other hand saddling people with original sin, the fall of man and a final judgment day is definitely not good for the psychic of humankind. If we become extinct through our own suicidal self-destructive tendencies taught to us by people who claim to believe in god, will it be god's fault? Therefore the Abrahamic god and all gods are irrelevant compared to love.
- atliberty July 9, 2009 12:52AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"The existence of a god would invalidate the most essential laws of science..."
An interesting argument indeed. Why does science have laws? Why do we accept that there is a natural order (design?). Why is it an accepted proposition that those laws can be depended upon?
If I were to believe in a designer, I would expect a design. I would expect that the universe he created would have evidence of his design. If I were to take your side of the argument I would wonder why any laws or formulas would exist at all? You are speaking out of both sides of your mouth- arguing from the perspective of a highly ordered universe out of the one side, and denying the source of that order out of the other.
If the universe has laws as you say, then you must be intellectually honest enough to say that those laws had to come from somewhere.
- Rick Thompson July 29, 2008 3:52PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: Yes
Your argument fails to disprove at all the existence of a God who rules BY those laws. Also- whereas science itself claims itself incomplete, you can never absolutely claim that all laws are ever violated, because many laws lay undiscovered. Also, you fail claim to the petitio principi fallacy. You are only disproving a God that breaks natural laws, not the God that created natural laws, or the God that rules by them. Also- your definition inherently contradicts this argument, because you allow for a God that has been "created," therefore allowing for a God that did not creat the matter of the universe. You're basically falling prey to giant straw-man fallacy. You build a God, and then disprove that God. If I defined atheism as "belief that nothing exists outside of the self," then, depending on your metaphysics, I could easily disprove that. But I do not. As long as the theist must disprove the atheist's definition of atheism, so also must the atheist disprove the theist's God.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:01PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Who says the Creator of all those laws is bound by them?
- reb412 August 30, 2008 11:20AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Just how do you explain faith to the faithless. Our faith in our states that faith is not brought on to another by us. As Jesus stated, "The Father calls them on to me". Mans faith in himself blinds him to faith in God. Outside of Christianity all other faiths are forms of humanism, just as science is. Are evening and morning news cycles are filled with endless news stories of scientists have done this or that study, or experts suggest this or that. Only later to conclude the opposite may be true. This is the problem with modern day politics, liberalism has basically come to the conclusion of "This is ok for this moment". With God nothing changes.
- bambino33 October 11, 2008 9:36PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
jdefriez, yes indeed, science is provisional- our best knowledge now, ever subject to revision. Theists cannot say that God violates those laws, as you say, we discover more. You use the petitio to assume that there is this God who made those laws! We naturalists ever disprove God but the burden is upon theists to reveal Him. We do have naturalist arguments against Him - the problem of Heaven, the hiddennes problem, the atelic challenge, the presumption of naturalism and the ignostic-Ockham.
The law of the conservation of mass-energy, as I show elsewhere in these pages, reflects eternal Existence in the form of quantum fluctuations, whence matter-energy as David Mills exhibits in 'Atheist Universe."
William Sahakian would claim that we atheists commit the fallacy of multiple questions in askig : what caused this First Cause and what designed the Designer but rather it theists who beg the question and special plead to exempt Him from those two questions!That bane!
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 4:24PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
The very exsistence of matter invalidates the law of physics. There should be nothing because matter cannot be made or destroyed, only changed if I am to understand your argument correctly. It's amazing how well the Bible is formed, there are no incostencies in it. You just displayed why man made religion is easy to spot, because it will have glaring incosistancies in it.
- sfgiantsfanmike September 11, 2008 7:46AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
We could blog here all night and all day for years on end and it comes down to this simple conclusion:
Atheists believe God does not exist, they are putting their money down on no eternal life. Their payoff they believe is humans living in reality while alive for their short time here on Earth. Here is their problem, what if God does exist? They have basically doomed themselves, its their payoff they have been afforded all the information of Christ and have decided that it is mere folly.
Christians on the other hand have taken the 50/50 bet. If God doesn't exist they have lived in a fairy tale land for the last 25-50 to 75 years. But given their religions good precepts they have at the least lived a decent and kind life. But then comes the payoff, He does exist, they reap the rewards of their faith and achieve eternal life.
I'll take the later. There are no lasting payoffs for Atheism. I'd rather not pay a huge price for the honor of science and theories. What if the atheists theories are nothing really more then explaining God? Isn't that what the weatherman on TV does every night. Everything explained by Scientists could be nothing more then a play-by-play of God. Simply put scientists are nothing more then the Vin Scully's of their field
- bambino33 October 11, 2008 9:28PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Really, the wager isn't a 50/50 bet. What if you pick the wrong god, and the true god is a jealous spiteful one, and you have to face Zeus, for example, in the afterlife? Might you be better off not believing in any god, rather than insulting god by believing in someone else? It would be good if you could actually prove your god's existence, instead of relying on blind faith. Or better still, if he could give a sign that no one would be able to dismiss.
- bachfiend January 29, 2009 4:29AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
I cannot prove conclusively that God exists in a laboratory. However, the key to the Super Natural is "Faith". However, there is some evidence. I can pass on to you that the Bible has survived for centuries and the most widely read text. The world uses the current Calendar based on Christ's death (A.D. - After Death). We refer to B.C.(Before Christ), as well. Now why must it be Faith in order to "see" proof? When Christ walked the Earth he performed various miracles and people saw and people hated him. There were those, I'm sure that thought it was fake. I have experienced many things that I knew God sent to me. God does most of His works through people and events for His Children. Just as God feeds the animals He takes care of His own that "believe" in Him. God does not want robots to love Him and God gave man the ability to chose, either good or bad. So you wonder why there is so much despair, hate, murder and abuse in the world. Why? because God gave man a choice. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of their crimes against each other. We as Humans are so quick to dismiss God because we think "I can't be happy". Then there are those that just don't believe at all. I also find people can get angry if someone talks about God or Jesus. It is if they are about to catch on fire or something. I think they believe that they cannot be happy. Actually it is evil which whispers in their ear. Even I from time to time am tempted. I leave with you this poem as given to me from God. It had taken me a week to write it. I wrote the first half and when I tried to finish I felt very ill. But nonetheless I did finish. I am merely the writer and not the Author.
BLIND
Oh the pursuits of the flesh
This shell that covers self
The fix of desire until the next crave
So shallow this fix, never to last
Brief satisfaction; my cup now empty
This flesh aches between each thirst
Day after day the endless search; cup in hand
What elixir will fill this cup and empty not
The sweet savor that quenches my desire
Light begins to dim on this ragged shell
This flesh shriveled from the tick of time
Cup after cup filled up; folly for the fool
The spirit lay bleached to bone white
Picked clean from neglect
Left to rot in the hot desert wind of life
The spirit left alone, forgotten and unwanted
Never watered or nurtured; void of light
Cast to the shadows to wither on the vine
Oh what a wasteland that I made of this spirit
For it is I, the spirit, that was starved until death
A lifetime to quicken my spirit has cost me the prize
- dadunique October 12, 2008 8:16PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Of course not. There's no evidence for any kind of entity that somehow stands outside of existence and "creates" it.
One should recognize that matter cannot be created or destroyed. It is. It always was and always will be. Matter changes its form but it does not cease to exist.
The notion of God goes back to pre-historic times when men sought an explanation for the universe and its contents. It was an understandable thing to do. But now thanks to many geniuses---philosophers such as Aristotle and Ayn Rand and scientists such as Galileo and Newton---we've come to understand much about the universe and about the nature of man and how he learns and the legitimate forms of knowledge. There is still much to learn. To learn it, we certainly should put aside ancient myths.
Mysticism always leads to brutality. Faith and force go together. Those not dedicated to reason seek to force others to believe as they do. Religion is an immoral institution and it starts with the notion that some omnipotent, infallible god in on somebody's side and others must be forced to believe it. Consider the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts and today's latest "fad" suicide bombers. All these kill themselves and others in the name of their god.
No, Virginia, there is no God. Human beings are responsible for their actions. Nature is a wonderful benevolent place. But as Lord Bacon said, "To command nature, we must obey it." So one should put all one's intellectual effort into understanding it and leave off with the wishful thinking and fantasies of religions.
- Sylvia Bokor November 19, 2008 8:47AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.
--Blaise Pascal
and to be honest it seems it would take just as much faith to believe that there is no God, that when we die were done and gone, as it does to believe in one.
The reason why people have always come up with different religions and theories is yes, to search out an explanation of the universe and its contents. But, instead of seeing this as a pathetic foolishness that you seem to, it appears to me that it is the amazing inborn reactions humans have to discover where they have come from, where they go to, and why they are here. Perhaps we feel we have to find answers to these questions because somewhere we know that there's more to this life.
- zebrakin November 23, 2008 9:22PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
Zebrakin appears to be a believer and that no amount of reasoned argument will change his mind.
However, in the event that I'm wrong and that I can change his mind, I point out that it is a mistake to consider being convinced of something is the same as believing something. The concept conviction is an intellectual conclusion based usually on a lengthy examination of the facts of reality. The concept belief is an abandonment of the intellect and an acceptance of what others have asserted without evidence or proof.
Belief is ultimately based on wishes, and requires self-abnegation. Conviction is based on logic and requires self-assertion.
Zebrakin states that I consider belief "pathetic foolishness." Okay, but not accurate. In this day and age, I consider religious belief to be the most lethal form of brute force that men have invented. It stunts one's consciousness and tears it in two, attributing one's best to the non-existent and requiring one regard oneself as sacrificial fodder for the benefit of others.
It is a boon to man's rational faculty that he can marvel at the beauty of the universe. But that is not "in born." Such an estimate arises from a fundamental regard of nature as benevolent and of man as heroic. That this is true is shown by the fact that many men do not regard the universe with wonder, nor look upon man as basically good. Instead they regard nature as a threat and man as basically evil.
The better philosophers, such as Aristotle and Ayn Rand, have answered the questions you raise. ("to discover where [men] have come from, where they go to, and why they are here.") Many scientists, such as archeologists and physicists, have helped by adding factual details.
I sense in your closing statement a melancholy I should like to tell you is not necessary to feel. You wrote: "Perhaps we feel we have to find answers to these questions because somewhere we know that there's more to this life."
A proper moral code, found in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, shows that one need not wish that life is somehow better beyond the grave where men will find
true happiness. One can find true happiness here on earth while we live. But to do so requires courage to face the reality that you have far greater intellectual strength than your religion tells you, far greater wealth of spirit that your beliefs suggest you possess, and that you are far superior in value to those you are taught to sacrifice yourself for.
You can find happiness now by rejecting the moral code of your religion and discovering the rational moral code of Objectivism, which briefly put says your life belongs to you and the good is to live it rationally.
May I suggest you read Ayn Rand's novels?---Especially Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. In addition to being wonderfully original stories, they will help you to re-discover what your religion may have caused you to loose.
- Sylvia Bokor November 24, 2008 8:16AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
You are obviously much more intellectually minded than I am at this point, but I relate that to years of life rather than my beliefs or views on religion and life.
You say that there is a different in belief and conviction. Isn't it in true conviction that we find belief in something? Right now I sit in a chair, convinced it will hold me up. I've never studied a chair I don't know exactly why or how long chairs will hold people up, but I believe that I am safe. So I think that conviction and belief are closer and strongly related than you might suppose. If you go bungee jumping how do you know the cable will hold you up? They have broken before... Is this conviction? Or belief? Using what you stated as belief being a wish and conviction being logic, I would have to say that thinking it to be held would be both. You wish it to hold but you also know it will.
"[Religion] stunts one's consciousness and tears it in two, attributing one's best to the non-existent and requiring one regard oneself as sacrificial fodder for the benefit of others." I must say, personally, that I do not regard myself as sacrificial fodder, but perhaps, you have the crusades or suicide bombers in mind? Both of these I don't defend as I can't possibly say they were ever justified in any ways.
You speak about true happiness. "One can find true happiness here on earth while we live." What would you define as true happiness? Having lots of money? A pleasant relationship with your spouse? Having as your profession something you had always wanted to do, and that you love? I obviously don't have the answer, but perhaps you have some ideas? You must have been thinking of some things when you wrote it.
Like I said, I don't have the answers (that's why I feel we have to look outside ourselves for them) but I think that as long as we strive to have true happiness for ourselves we shall never, ever be happy.
"You can find happiness now by rejecting the moral code of your religion and discovering the rational moral code of Objectivism, which briefly put says your life belongs to you and the good is to live it rationally." Ah, so is this true happiness? You say to reject the moral code. For my religion (Christianity) that would mean rejecting love, obedience to authority, unselfishness, etc. Good things in my opinion, and yours too I would think. So forgive me if I cannot fully grasp your meaning.
While were recommending books I would like to recommend Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. I found it rather intellectually stimulating and think you might too. If you do end up reading it, I hope you would with an open mind as I will when I read the books you suggested.
- zebrakin November 24, 2008 5:48PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You asked a couple of good questions. Let's see if I can give you some good answers.
First, regarding conviction and belief. You wrote: "Right now I sit in a chair, convinced it will hold me up. I've never studied a chair I don't know exactly why or how long chairs will hold people up, but I believe that I am safe. So I think that conviction and belief are closer and strongly related than you might suppose."
It's quite okay to say that you "believe" a chair will hold you up. Most of our convictions are subconscious evaluations formed many years ago and they've become automatized. We've had countless experiences since childhood that when we can sit in a chair it will hold us up. From those experiences we've formed evaluations which in time have become firm convictions. It's okay to use the term "believe" in this manner. It's not precise, but most people know what you mean. In everyday talk, we often use the two concepts interchangeably. However, in serious discussions I like to be more precise simply because to do so usually results in easier and quicker mutual understanding.
But the two concepts are very different, for the reason I previously stated. In a serious discussion we make ourselves almost instantly understandable by your saying, for example, you believe in God and for me to say I am convinced God does not exist. The bonus in this is that we both see we have different viewpoints---or as is said these days, "we know where the other is coming from." Were each of us to use the same term, confusion would immediately result. And it would take us several hours, maybe days, to sort out what each mean.
Your reference to bungee jumping is pretty much the same idea but using a different example. Many people go through their entire lives wishing things were so, or believing something is safe. That does not alter the nature of the intellectual methodology of belief and its distinct difference from conviction.
The other question you asked was: "What would you define as true happiness?" Novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand wrote: "Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." This must be understood in the context of her philosophy, Objectivism. Miss Rand is referring to values that are in accordance with man's rational nature, fundamental values such as reason, purpose and self-esteem from which other values such as the choice of one's career, the type of art one enjoys, the qualities of character one esteems in others, and so forth. She is NOT referring to those who claim a "value" in taking mind-destroying drugs, or sexual promiscuity or hedonism.
If one holds values in accordance with man's rational nature and seeks to achieve them, when one does so, one certainly experiences a state of happiness. For example, say you want very much to find a life-partner. You think about what you want in a partner. You don't sit at home and mope. You go out and look around and meet different people and find what you want or something very close to it and you become friends with that person. Surely you've achieved a value. And surely that achievement will make you happy.
I mentioned that achieving happiness begins with rejecting a religious moral code. You wrote: "For my religion (Christianity) that would mean rejecting love, obedience to authority, unselfishness, etc. Good things in my opinion, and yours too I would think."
I think love is very good. I also think that love is not possible for those who believe in God. I think that those who value love as you say you do, do so on my code of values, not on the Christian code of values. I think "obedience to authority and unselfishness" are very bad things. I think both are mind-destroying and spiritual suicide.
Many Americans have a mixed set of values. One set of values is based on a rational code of morality that they've never discovered. Another set of their values are based on Christianity, which continuously erodes their rational code of morality. Ayn Rand has identified the rational code of morality. It is a code of morality based on man's nature as a basically good and valuable entity, with a rational faculty that can be his most glorious asset, if he chooses to use it.
I cannot promise you to read Mere Christianity. I've read many books on Christianity and the other religions of the world.
I'm delighted to hear that you will read Ayn Rand's novels, particularly Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
- Sylvia Bokor November 26, 2008 4:55AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
We can't fully place our faith in science, because it is continually changing. The theory's and truth's of 100 years ago are not always considered truth 100 years into the future. I think it is questionable to fully rely on the thoughts and beliefs of man for we have not obtained full knowledge and will never obtain full knowledge of all things. There will always be unexplained matters in our existence. It's almost like we are lost on a weird country road, but do not want to stop and ask for directions because we want to do it ourselves. Although we may never find it and it would be a more pleasant experience if we stopped and asked for directions, we want to see it with our own eyes, so we never stop thinking we might be heading in a totally wrong direction.
- blond2much February 2, 2009 2:52PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Then it stands to reason: is it useful to believe in god without a religious basis? Without evidence, the answer is no.
- Apocalypse February 16, 2009 6:07PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
Your premise for this argument has not even been proved. You presuppose the fact that God transcends natural laws when many religions believe that God rules by natural laws that transcend Him. This is your fundamental failure in all the arguments provided, which means, in essence, all of your arguments fail.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:04PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: Yes
jdefriez, your premise that " many religions believe that God rules by natural laws that transcend Him," reflects the fact that your religion, where He makes those laws, reflects in turn your petitio that He does overcome them. So He cannot overrule the law of the coservation of mass-energy that reflects eternal Existence.
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 4:33PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I apologize, this is not much of a response to your work. I am tired. I should not really be writing now...but I just want to say a couple of things...the belief in God or a god or gods is quaint. There is now extensive neuroscientific "evidence" for "god on the brain" which neither proves nor disproves anything much...but it is interesting to see how the brain functions. I take all human knowledge to be human constructions (we can only see what humans can see; we can only hear what humans can hear etc etc). We can only think or imagine what humans can think or imagine. Anything beyond the scope of our brains is by definition unknowable. If there was a god we could not possibly know it. In the same sense that no human being can possibly know everything that is going on in the universe. God, is apparently, bigger than the universe, after all he, she or it made the universe, so he she or it must be bigger (in some sense) and therefore as a mere humanoid I cannot know him her or it. And it would not make a blind bit of difference even if he she or it did exist...the world is just the same...Hamas, Al-Qaeda, the US military all still exist, they are all still torturing and killing each other. All the people doing compassionate loving helpful things in the world are also still there. If god is there or if god is not there...there is no difference. Perhaps, the new US President will help bring some peace into this world, I certainly hope so, but even he cannot bring a non-existent god into existence.
- Betty January 31, 2009 2:48AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"This is your fundamental failure in all the arguments provided, which means, in essence, all of your arguments fail"
LOL. Wow. Did anyone else take a second read at that?
- reb412 August 30, 2008 11:22AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
As a scientist and skeptic of religion, I am offended by this inane post. Where to start?
"everything we know about science would have to be wrong"
First, the areas of science and the scientific method that would be affected by a revelation depend entirely on the specific powers of the g(G)od in question.
Second, most of what we currently "know" as scientists is wrong to some degree. Science is a path to understanding, but don't get on a high horse about how great we are. We are just getting started.
"Absent proof that matter and Energy can be created, there is no reason to doubt science in favor of a wish"
We know that matter and energy can interconvert. A lot of miracles could happen that way. As pointed out by jdefriez, it is a false premise to say that god is equivalent to the creation of matter and energy.
I believe you are refuting a specific God, perhaps the God required to accomplish the literal word of the bible. Even with such an easy target you have mishandled the argument and discredited your own side with your fallacious appeals to authority. You can't even preach to the converted.
- Adam Hammond September 3, 2008 4:21PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: No
Granted that science never 'proves' theories, it merely rejects theories which have been falsified, but that's kind of a minor clarification.
You have to admit that the above comment (while poorly constructed) does have a point insofar as the existence of an omnipotent being would mean that the so-called immutable laws of physics would be more like traditions of physics given that they could be 'over-ruled' at will. If the object of science is to whittle away false theories in order to leave behind the theories which can't be falsified, then the existence of an omniscient being would defeat that purpose (since it could falsify any theory).
- ockraz January 29, 2009 11:40PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I applaud your honesty. Science is not what is or isn't, but instead what might or might not be. Science explanation does not have to be true to be useful, just consistent with most of the evidence. How much of science has been disapproved with new technologies. I mean look how much of Darwin has been disputed as inaccurate, thanks to molecular Biology. Follow the evidence, make a decision. I would encourage you as a seemingly logical scientist to study more on Robert Collins Fine Tuning, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells (molecular Biology), and David Berlinski. Good life to you
- rekiser August 20, 2009 9:54PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"We want there to be a god, but in order for a god to be real, everything we know about science would have to be wrong."
This is simply a restatement of the previous argument, which is nothing more than an unsupported assertion. There is no reason to suppose that science would have to be dropped if God is real. Indeed, modern science exists precisely because early scientists believed in God. They believed that the world, and by extension the universe, was rational, ordered and knowable precisely because God created it that way.
One may well reject the idea of God but the (non) argument above does not provide support for doing so.
- goodwyne October 11, 2008 12:22PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
That is no unsupported assertion, goodwyne, as the evidence supports it: were matters different that the laws work in helter-skelter manner, then one might posit God as Victor Stenger notes in " Has Science found God" and "God: the failed Hypothesis." One engages in a petitio in finding God to sustain Existence.
It was not necessary that those scientists thought Him making the "Comprehensible Universe [ Stenger]."
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 4:42PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
What you've done is set up a straw man and knocked him down. You basically assert, with no support, that if there is a God, "laws would work in a helter skelter manner. There simply is no rational support for such an assertion. Therefore, you're presented nothing but an assertion, certainly not an argument. I stand by my statement.
- goodwyne October 14, 2008 9:07PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
goodwyne,nay, we have no reason to doubt that the laws work, so one would have to demonstrate evidence that some occult force could overcome them- no straw man at all. If one could, then they were in a helter- skelter manner. One would have to show the impossible that the law of conservation did not hold before the Big Bang, which by the way depends on that law as portraying quantum energy before the Bang, whence it came.
The weight of evidence from experience is that natural laws and causes and explanations are the sufficient reason.To posit God is the unimformative and fatuous , God did it!
pbeaird might enlighten you further.
- skeptic griggsy October 15, 2008 4:46PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
The weight of evidence since the big bang has nothing to say about conditions before the big bang. What laws governed are the subject of mere speculation. There simply is no experience and no empirical evidence from which to draw conclusions.
As for laws as we know them, no one has claimed that we should doubt them. Certainly the possibility of a God does not preclude them fron functioning just as we expect them to.
We could go back and forth with a "yes you are" - "no I'm not" conversation but that serves no purpose. Baring anything that actually supports the position that a God would invalidate all physical laws, I don't think there's much more to discuss.
- goodwyne October 15, 2008 5:02PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You do have to admit, though that if God existed, he would undermine the assumptions of science: namely that there are natural laws which we can try to approximate. God's existence would preclude the possibility of immutable natural law.
- ockraz January 29, 2009 11:45PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
One thing the Bible does is validate itself over and over. Not too long ago, scientist looking at the soil underneath the amazon were amazed when they discovered a sudden shift in the soil and the only explanation they had was that the earth had to come to a complete stop for that shift to happen. They did their dating and it dated back to when God stopped the sun in the book of joshua. Weird. Also, scientist used Hezekiahs tunnel as proof that God didn't exist, until they found it.
- inupiaqswagger November 12, 2008 12:32PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Aren't you creating trouble for yourself, inupiaqswagger? If "Joshua" is correct, then the other books of the Old Testament are also correct, and the Earth is 6,000 years old. The way scientists would date soil is by the age of organic matter in it by means of carbon-14 dating, and for this dating to correspond with the biblical chronology it would have to be reliable. Which would mean that other dates given by C14 dating would also be correct including the ones of 40,000 years (which is at least 6 times the biblical age of the Earth). I don't know how reliable the science is (I did a Google search, and the only links were back to your comment). I'd be interested if you could provide a link to the report.
Hezekiah's tunnel was rediscovered in 1838. So there wouldn't have been many scientists (not even Darwin) who would have been able to use its non-existence as evidence of the falsity of the bible. It would hardly be surprising that Jerusalem would have had a secure source of water, in case of a siege, and the bible mentioning a real structure hardly makes the rest of the book correct (you might as well argue that since "Harry Potter" mentions King's Cross Station, then the books must be true, because the station also exists; come to think of it, I have been to King's Cross and seen a wall between platforms 9 and 10 marked platform 9 3/4, with a trolley embedded in the wall-so they must be true!).
- bachfiend January 30, 2009 4:44AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"Science has been proven, God hasn't." It doesn't take a scientist to know that the first rule to scientific theory is that nothing can be proven. Nothing. Not even that the world is round (and it's not. It's shaped like a pear.) All scientists can do is come up with massive amounts of evidence over time to support their theories. Which is what Christians, Jews, and Muslims try to do all over the world every day.
"You essentially say “he did it with magic” – which also doesn’t exist, so there we are again."
Okay...What if there is a god? (I know, I know you're an atheist, bear with me here.) Let's assume God's the all powerful type and he came up with *gasp!* the laws of the universe (Scientific laws included)? Would it be so ridiculous for any believer to suppose that he works through the scientific manner which he himself created? In which case, science doesn't disprove the idea of God, it actually supports it.
"Is there a god? I’m afraid not. Too bad." Just fyi, about two thirds of the human population can be documented and classified as a certain type of believer in God. So for you to attempt to crush their insights and beliefs in such a trite way without any evidence to back up your claim not only makes you look insensitive, but says nothing for your credibility. And you are speaking on behalf of an organization, man! So you're making them look bad too. Nice.
- Livvy February 5, 2009 4:04PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(3)
Side: Yes
You seem to be forgetting that current evolutionary theory also breaks the laws of physics. It requires life to spontaneously arise from non-life, which, according to science is impossible. It would make more sense to have a being who could break the laws of physics willy nilly (though that is not what I, nor many others, believe is the case) than it would to have the laws of physics randomly break themselves.
- richardsonkr February 9, 2009 7:41AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(2)
Side: Yes
of course they would say that science has been proven. whoever wrote this had to have been full of a lot of hubris in order to publish it. science isnt PROVEN. for the love of any superior being, were NEVER going to have all the answers. don't use the term science and proven in the same fragment. end of story.
- fillintheblank March 1, 2009 4:32PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
What is the basis of scientific "proof" ? Experiments that produce the same results tested by various people right? If you give religion the same benefit of proving itself by this way then there are millions upon millions of people who experience god and therefore have proven his existence . Now many people experience him in a different way but we have to, I think, chalk it up a lot to culture and ideas about what he is. Some people are actually incapable of experiencing god because they lack the prerequisites usually sucked out of them by a lifetime of incredulity. Or in some cases never there in the first place. I'd like to give an example. My mathematics professor was once asked by a colleague how he could believe in god and still be such a logical person. His reply was more or less along these lines, "I'd explain it to you but you couldn't understand in the time we have." "Why not?" "Could we pull someone off the street and explain to them complex number theory until they understood it as well as we do? Of course not, they need a basis to start from." Besides, science lives off of faith I wouldn't start to decry it. Has anyone seen a quark? What is a quark made of? There's my two cents.
- ecuadmail April 9, 2009 11:42AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
You have made an elementary statement in, " Science has been proven."
That statement is similar to the following, " The Sun has been proven."
The question is, what about the sun is proven?
upon your statement i ask the following:
1) Which science ? - there are many types of study.
2) Which has been proven? - there are many differing ideas on a range of topics.
- Questions are the door to knowledge April 19, 2009 2:38PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I have read the arguments presented by American Atheists, and I feel the urge to say: they do a disservice to Atheists. None of their statements are real arguments.
Their first argument, "the definition of God" resolves in the words “Does a being live today that possesses (or once possessed) the ability to create the universe?” The answer is clear – absolutely not." But that is not a resolution. There is no evidence or logic brought to the argument, making it not an argument at all.
Their second argument, "matter cannot be destroyed - or created" is blatantly false. It is painfully clear there are no physicists among the American Atheist staff.
Their third argument, "Wishing doesn't make it true" is just a phrase. It would be like a Christian shouting "Jesus is Lord!" And having a whole organization proclaim that that is a decent argument.
And finally, " science has been proven, God hasn't"? Well that's just silly. Just because you haven't proven something doesn't make it non-existent, especially because nothing in science can be proven.
These arguments are offensive...to atheists
- Cheerikiara May 14, 2009 12:07AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
Science teaches that in the beginning the Unified Force, an infinite, unknowable force, split into the strong force, the weak force, and electromagnetism, creating the universe. An infinite, unknowable force creates the universe. Sound familiar?
- mike1948 August 4, 2009 2:13PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
that's not quite accurate. First of all, the unified force isn't really a thing. You might be talking about a Unified field, which is a description of how strong nuclear forces, weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity interact and are similar. That would give us the ability to say for certain how everything is going to move, but doesn't really give us much in the way of how the universe was created.
And it's not true to say that we cannot know what that unified force is, but that we don't currently know. That's why we're looking.
- quantummechanik August 4, 2009 3:09PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
Much of the understanding of scientific logic here is incorrect. The very laws of physics are based on theory. We can measure but based on presuppositions. For example: we know that gravity existence, but we presuppose the theory's of how gravity came into being. Thus Gravity is still a theory. Through Physics we have discovered that the earth is fine tuned for life to exist. Mathematically life elsewhere is improbable There are very few facts of science much more theories. Perhaps there needs to be studying more on these aspects and let the evidence lead you to a conclusion rather than searching for a conclusion to meet your belieifs. There is good research by Michael Behe "irreducible complexity", and the Robin Collins "Fine tuning." If there is going to be a debate there needs to be a better knowledge of scientific exploration and theory. Some scientist to read- Michael Ruse ( evolution ), David Berlinski , Rick Larson, Gregory a. Boyd, Johnathan Wells
- rekiser August 20, 2009 9:42PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Yet Behe's irreducible complexity has never been demonstrated and has no significant support in the Scientific community. Robin Collins fine tuning is a philosophical argument, not a Scientific one.
Science may not have all the answers, but so far it has done a much better job of describing the world around us then religion ever has.
- MrBook September 1, 2009 12:21AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I find it interesting your weak way of discrediting a reputable scientist, but say noting of Ruse who has said himself that Behe is a reputable scientist. They have even contributed in a book together called "Debating Design." I suppose because you say it that it is true, then it is true. Are you familiar with Lenin, " “A lie told often enough becomes truth. You obviously do not know much about the scientific community, nor the scientist and their work. Perhaps if you have read Behe instead of goggling weak arguments you would know that he has demonstrated such support, and well known reputable arguments. Behe has demonstrated several examples in micro-biology including the flagellum, and Bacillus subtilis. Your best bet would to pick a topic and debate it, instead of using a strawman attack on a scientist. As for Collins, you obviously have not read his material either. Collins arguments are not philosophical they are mathematical and measurable. For example just one parameter: if gravity were stronger by only one part in a trillion trillion trillion the universe would have collapsed back on itself. My advice is to not argue vaguely, but to use logical cogent reason free from ideology and fallacious reasoning. Know the facts, submit the facts, interpret the data, and remember. "Science doesn't provide us with truth. The practice of scientific investigation involves tools that help us explain how the physical world might work. The explanation doesn't have to be true to be useful, just consistent with most of the evidence." (Spencer) Thank you for you time I hope you put more thought into your next argument.
Other scientist to read... Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay W Richards
- rekiser September 6, 2009 9:19PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"I find it interesting your weak way of discrediting a reputable scientist, but say noting of Ruse who has said himself that Behe is a reputable scientist."
Yet Michale Ruse himself is a philosopher, not a Scientist. You also give no context for that statement.
"I suppose because you say it that it is true, then it is true."
No, I say it 'is true' because the evidence strongly suggests that it is true.
I find it rather interesting that you would name "Debating Design" then go on to talk about the flagellum... when one of the essays in Debating Design demonstrates how that flagellum is 'irreducibly complex'.
"Collins arguments are not philosophical they are mathematical and measurable. For example just one parameter: if gravity were stronger by only one part in a trillion trillion trillion the universe would have collapsed back on itself."
Yes, but also not very accurate. We do not know how variable gravity can be, it may be that there are only a few possible values for gravity to have. Saying that because we exist gravity must have this value is not a reasonable statement... rather we exist because gravity has that value.
"Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay W Richards"
I have never been a supporter of the "Rare Earth Hypothesis"
- MrBook September 7, 2009 8:39PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
"No, I say it 'is true' because the evidence strongly suggests that it is true."
What evidence?
"I find it rather interesting that you would name "Debating Design" then go on to talk about the flagellum... when one of the essays in Debating Design demonstrates how that flagellum is 'irreducibly complex'."
Whats your point?
"Yes, but also not very accurate. We do not know how variable gravity can be, it may be that there are only a few possible values for gravity to have. Saying that because we exist gravity must have this value is not a reasonable statement... rather we exist because gravity has that value."
Yes, fantastic so we agree. Gravity is only one of the many examples. And your argument on gravitation is what Collins is saying. Gravity has its exact value, Therefore we exist. Its a measurable parameter.
"I have never been a supporter of the "Rare Earth Hypothesis"
Supporter or not, the evidence is there.
and finally a challenge to you. Tell me what of life's origins? Where and how did life com about?
- rekiser September 10, 2009 6:59PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"What evidence?"
In broad terms there is the fossil record, genetic analysis of modern species, the result of biological experimentation, the emergence of new species in environments that have only existed for a short period of time.
"Whats your point?"
the flagellum has been shown to be 'reducibility complex' and thus does not serve as an example of 'irreducible complexity' .
"Yes, fantastic so we agree. Gravity is only one of the many examples. And your argument on gravitation is what Collins is saying. Gravity has its exact value, Therefore we exist. Its a measurable parameter."
That does not mean that gravity was set at that value by a designer... We exist because gravity has that value, gravity does not have that value so that we can exist.
"Supporter or not, the evidence is there. "
Our observations are far to limited to make that assumption, but given the number of planets observed so far it seems quite likely that most stars have planets, and thus it seems quite likely that there would be other planets capable of supporting life (assuming that life needs a narrow set of parameters to survive).
"and finally a challenge to you. Tell me what of life's origins? Where and how did life com about?"
There are still a good number of theories out there being researched... but a 'rough' description would be as follows.
The early oceans of the world were rich in a wide variety of complex chemicals , the byproduct of chemical reactions that had started when the earth was still a cloud of interstellar dust. Among these chemicals were replicator molecules, complex organics that react with the chemicals around them to form other replicator molecules. This replication was not perfect, and so the replicators changed... some changes led to improved replication (faster or more accurate) and thus those replicator molecules became the dominant form. Over time these replicators reacted with other environmental elements such as the lipids that form cell walls to form the earliest cells.
- MrBook September 10, 2009 10:36PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Saying that science disproves god is an asinine statement. What has science proven that the earth revolves around the sun and that all living things are made of atoms and such. religion has never claimed to have the answers of why things are the way they are. Holy scriptures are written by man and they transform it as they see fit. But this is not definite proof that there is no god. science can only prove what is seen. There are many things going on in the universe that are unseen look at black holes we know they are there but we can only speculate on how they function. As far as science has gone it is really only within the scope of our corner of our galaxy. Which is a tiny fraction of the whole universe. We see things on such a small scale that most of the things we have proven may not conform to the rest of the universe. We don't even know what is at the very bottom of our own oceans how can we claim that we know if there is a divine being or not. There is no proof on either side just because there is a god does not disprove science and vice-versa. As speculated(and i mean a theory that is currently trying to be proven) the universe is moving apart. Scientist have known this for a long time the universe is expanding right now but they assumed that one day that the universe would collapse in on itself. Scientists now believe that the universe is expanding and will continuing expanding for eternity since gravity loses its strength the farther objects get from each other(duh). So this puts a big question on the big bang theory. Scientists believed that the mass that existed before the big bang was from the universe before and that it collapsed in on itself. And since our universe seems doomed to expand forever it seems that this first explanation will not fit the mold. So what was before that mass that the big bang strewn out. We may never know. But saying that there is a scientific explanation and only a scientific explanation. Is like saying that since there is life on earth that it came from a meteor( i'm not sure this is a good analogy but i couldn't think of a better one). We know so little about the world around us that it is stupid to say that on the little information we have that there is definite proof that god doesn't exist
- ruralamerican September 5, 2009 12:57AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
“Saying that science disproves god is an asinine statement. What has science proven that the earth revolves around the sun and that all living things are made of atoms and such. religion has never claimed to have the answers of why things are the way they are.”
Explaining why things are is a huge part of religion. The entire first book of the Bible is devoted to explaining why things are the way they are on earth.
“Holy scriptures are written by man and they transform it as they see fit. But this is not definite proof that there is no god. science can only prove what is seen.”
The burden of proof is on those who believe in God(s)… not on those who do not believe.
If I tell you that there are magic unicorns running around do you accept that statement just because you cannot disprove it?
“There are many things going on in the universe that are unseen look at black holes we know they are there but we can only speculate on how they function.”
We have some very strong math that describes black holes.
“As far as science has gone it is really only within the scope of our corner of our galaxy. Which is a tiny fraction of the whole universe.”
Science can observe the entire observable universe… and in doing so we see that the laws are consistent. We can observe the chemical composition of distant stars, and even observe the motion of planets as they orbit other stars.
“We see things on such a small scale that most of the things we have proven may not conform to the rest of the universe.”
As stated above… what we observe is consistent, the laws we see here on earth are the same laws found in the Andromeda galaxy and beyond.
“We don't even know what is at the very bottom of our own oceans how can we claim that we know if there is a divine being or not.”
Yes, but that same logic says we cannot claim that there are no elves.
“There is no proof on either side just because there is a god does not disprove science and vice-versa.”
Science is just a process, not really something that can be proven or disproved. However the evidence of it’s accuracy is right in front of you. The computer that you are using to read this was built and operates on Scientific principals.
“As speculated(and i mean a theory that is currently trying to be proven) the universe is moving apart. Scientist have known this for a long time the universe is expanding right now but they assumed that one day that the universe would collapse in on itself. “
Actually that was never the consensus. The collapsing universe was only one of three considered outcomes (the other two being equilibrium and infinite linear expansion).
“Scientists now believe that the universe is expanding and will continuing expanding for eternity since gravity loses its strength the farther objects get from each other(duh).”
The current theory is that the rate of expansion is increasing.
“So this puts a big question on the big bang theory. Scientists believed that the mass that existed before the big bang was from the universe before and that it collapsed in on itself.”
The ‘cyclical universe’ hypothesis never moved beyond it’s preliminary stages… and was not universally accepted (though it was seen as a possibility).
“But saying that there is a scientific explanation and only a scientific explanation. Is like saying that since there is life on earth that it came from a meteor( i'm not sure this is a good analogy but i couldn't think of a better one).”
Do you have another explanation, one that has some physical evidence to back it up? Or do you have evidence that falsifies current theories but supports your own.
“We know so little about the world around us that it is stupid to say that on the little information we have that there is definite proof that god doesn't exist”
As I stated above… using that logic I could claim that elves existed then demand that you prove they don’t.
- MrBook September 11, 2009 5:39PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
even those who say they believe it god do not believe they are just frightened to what will happen to them when they die.
I do not thing a poll is correct.They have not asked everyone.
- beinghuman September 27, 2009 11:01AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I would recommend a controversial book titled, PREPARE FOR WAR, by Rebecca Brown MD. I believe she effectively proves the existence of evil and consequently the existence of Gd. While atheism is not of itself a sin leadng to death it is a porthole to evil and a wise person would not go there! Here is a review of her book:
This book is a sequel to the much talked about book, HE CAME TO SET THE CAPTIVES FREE, by physician Rebecca Brown. Some would call her a extreme right wing religious fanatic others downright crazy but those who have encountered the rituals and practices of satanists and those who have experienced demonic and satanic activity within the witchcraft or satanic underground would beg to differ with those evaluations.
Many more people than you would think have dabbled and even practiced witchcraft and even lesser evils, be it for pleasure or for serious worship and have found this underworld to be wicked and criminal in more ways than one and have little resource as to how to get out of such a mind-controling anti-religious group/groups and Dr. Brown attempts to show people what that world does to innocent victims and how it operates and how unknowing youth are falling into its spiritual warfare and are finding it to be a battle they dont know how to win or even begin to fight against. Dr. Brown shows those individuals that they can leave satan worship and they can only do that by the blood of Jesus and the grace of Gd. She effectively educates the reader on how to avoid these pitfalls and how to pull oneself out of the mire of them and back onto solid and peaceful ground once again. I give this book at 3.5 for her sincerity and conviction to help those caught in the pits of hell on earth.
Some will laugh at her efforts, some will scoff at her remarks, but I guarantee you that anyone who has experienced even one of the portals to hell that she exposes will not only understand her but appreciate her willingness to endure ridicule inorder to SET THE CAPTIVES FREE and do that by teaching them to PREPARE FOR WAR.
end quote
Im pretty sure that should annoy some atheists while I dont know why, they dont believe in Gd so they cant believe in satan, they dont believe in heaven so therefore according to them there is no hell, according to them they have nothing to worry about then! But for those who have seen or experienced satan and his demons, whether in black masses or in dabbling with witchcraft, those people prove beyond a shadow of doubt that Gd exists....and there is a way out of the curse of satanism and that way out is JESUS CHRIST!
- angelmama September 27, 2009 4:30PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I sincerely doubt Ms. Brown provides actual unrefutable evidence to say that satan/demons exist. If she did, I think it would make global news. Most atheists will not hold unwavering validity to something which is not soundly substantiated by evidence.
- learnlogic September 27, 2009 10:34PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
the only way we know it exists is because of the impact it has on space around it....much like Gd and satan!
http://www.space.com/blackholes /
- angelmama September 29, 2009 6:17PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Yes
We can observe the presence of a black hole by seeing how the stars behind it distort or by observing the accretion disk that forms as a black hole siphons matter from a near by star.
Black holes are also defined mathematically... appearing in the Theory of Relativity long before they were observed (the math is really quite enjoyably elegant).
- MrBook September 29, 2009 10:53PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Get it in to your head Jesus was not a christ he was just an ordinary man going around with a lot of men, making magic which at that time people would believe all they were told and thought it was true.
God is supposed to be invisible knows everything, let him stop wars then, stop poverty ,stop priests abusing children , islam women burning themselves to death for fear of what their husbands will do to them.
People are still trying to get on the band wagon and make themselves important. Even some will confess to a murder they have'nt done to get notarity.
Why does your god hate me so, i dont hate him. No answer to that I suppose.
If a priest told you that he had seen Elvis Presley lat week would you believe him. Well maybe you would after all he only speaks gods word.
- beinghuman October 10, 2009 10:13AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
God doesn't hate you.
- mike1948 October 14, 2009 10:06AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
i think this science you so much trustv in is just a humanly way of understanding whats around us ang it is a way of getting around the truth, but God loves u all anyways :)
- freddy628 September 28, 2009 8:34AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I have read all of these comments and I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to the big question of "Is there a god ?" one cannot give a yes/no answer based on purely scientific explanation. It is quite apparent that anyone can say anything scientific that supports either side of this topic, and it can be discredited by someone else on some other scientific base. We can go around and around in circles trying to prove/disprove the existence of God but we can never satisfy everyone's needs for it to be totally "proven". But, the nice thing about God is that He is not only seen in the design of the universe, but also in the design of our mind/conscious. I know that these discussions are supposed to be more scientifically drawn so I won't ramble on about this subject, I just want to make the point that this question of God cannot be answered completely scientifically. And it is funny how two of the most confusing and complex things in physical existence, the universe and the human brain, are the two things that believers of God use to prove the existence of God.
But please, continue debating. It is interesting to see all the different views that come up.
God bless :)
- bossk015 November 19, 2009 4:11PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Exactly! This is a fabulous OBSERVATION. But that's all it is. Many people look at the sun everyday, and many people see it differently, but does that mean it doesn't exist? No. In fact, the very existence of so many views seems to make it more likely, more probable, and more believable that God exists. There are many different points of view on what government ought to be, but this observation does not mean that government doesn't exist. I agree completely with the observation, but that's all it is. It fails to function as an argument, and therefore cannot be valued as such in evaluatin the existence of God. In fact, this argument is much more easily turned into a theistic argument.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:09PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I agree that the lack of a single definition of God is not a good argument against there being one, but similarly, I don't see that the reverse is true either.
For example - there are many mythologies about dragons/serpents around the world, in many cultures, and which have been independently developed within these cultures. These mythologies have a quite a few similarities and a lot of discrepancies. But I would use this lack of agreement as evidence of there being dragons.
- Horus Kol August 31, 2008 4:52PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
Those examples you gave are things that we can demonstrate to others. The sun feels warm, produces light, we can measure all of it's attributes. If you are going to claim that because literally every person could have a completely different way of conceiving god that that would mean that God is everything to everyone. He can be anything you want him/her/it to be! So which is more likely: an amorphous being that is beyond description and consistently contradictory... or a figment of our imaginations?
Ponder that one.
- GermyJ May 19, 2009 3:37PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
I began with this argument because its theme runs throughout all the other arguments. And that theme is that the burden of proof to show that a god exists rests with the theist. The person who finds no warrant to believe in a god doesn't have to prove anything. The nontheist merely needs to wait for the evidence to be presented, wait to be persuaded. And whenever an argument is proffered, that argument needs to be analyzed to see if it indeed makes its case.
So we start with the definition. What is anyone even talking about when they talk about God? It often isn't clear. So we can barely begin the discussion! The theist has therefore failed to define terms, or to agree upon terms well enough, to allow a case for a god to be made in the first place.
So, to make sense of this and all my other arguments, you need to keep in mind that I make no attempt to disprove God. I only seek to show that the arguments put forth in support of God have failed. And, in the absence of a workable case for God, the only reasonable conclusion to draw, at least for now, is that God doesn't exist.
The same logic follows for the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
- American Humanist Association October 2, 2008 5:38PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: Uncommitted
Fellow naturalist,it is so true about that burden. Now I do ever try to reflect nature not needing God to direct or sustain it.
Faith is not a warrant for belief,contrary to Alvin Platinga, as it is just the we just say so of credullity. It begs the question of God as there is indeed no evidence whatsoever for Him. With Sydney Hook, we naturalist find that science is acquired knowledge while faith begs the question of being knowledge. Faith keeps believers in the darkness of superstition!
We rationalists do not have to be omniscient but to find no evidence for Him as presented and no logic in the arguments for Him.
- skeptic griggsy October 14, 2008 4:51PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
[I am brand new to this site so bear with me] I agree with you that if we cannot agree on the definition of "God" we cannot begin to prove or disprove his/her/its existence. We might as well start by looking within ourselves using metaphysics and psychology and look for clues to why we have a need to account for our existence with a creator. I am perfectly willing to accept that all that is (in the physically measurable universe) always existed yet changes form continuously. There are however a few curious concepts in physics (and metaphysics) which lead me to my agnostic stance. As an agnostic I don't try to believe or disbelieve in a God in a traditional theistic way. I think that however it can be argued that IMHO a universal order (complexity well beyond disorder) and consciousness continuously evolving would take the place of a thus far primitive "God" concept.
I am curious that if we as people are matter and matter and energy are as Einstein and others have proven are a continuum (i.e. can be converted) than we are all actually energy that is in a much "rested" state. If were are potential energy then the power of our consciousness is in itself also energy (IMHO of a higher level than the physical) that we thus have not been able to understand). I would submit to you that this energy which is life, that = spirit and consciousness, is all pervasive and not limited to our limited understanding of living matter.
Also I find it curious that according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics implies entropy and quite obviously life in opposition to this law with its enormous complexity. So I think there are extremely difficult arguments for the theists to prove their side but my best hypothesis is that we may continue to uncover "proof" of at least persuadable evidence to the critical mind that the ultimate answers to these questions may be found at the yet unimaginable levels obtained by human consciousness BEYOND thought....namely the realm of the spiritual humanist
Regards,
spiritualagnostic 11/30/08
- spiritualagnostic November 29, 2008 11:58PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
Those observations are not then incompatible with each other,but God's putative properties exhibit incompatibility such that we ignostics declare Him vacuous. Thus arguments for Him start off without substance and they further exhibit no substance for Him.
jdfrieze, gee whiz.
- skeptic griggsy October 15, 2008 5:37PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Because many people look at a mountain at different angles, and therefore see different things does not disprove, or even make unlikely, the existence of the mountain. The fact that many people see different angles, or ideas, of what God and his function are, do not disprove, or even make unlikely, the existence of God.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:13PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
God's sole purpose on earth is to collect money from the naive and deluded and give it to the church leaders to spend it ad lib.
Religions/cults are basically Pyramid Schemes selling products that have no evidence of being effective or in existence. Your monthly membership fee to your god pyramid scheme entitles you to the promise of "life after death",an escape from "eternal damnation", "invisible protection" or "seven thousand virgins"
You will be expected to attend frequently for sales meetings with singing (brainwahing) & prayer (hypnothrapy), where you will be pressurized into handing over more of your hard earned cash. Like all good pyramid schemes, you will be expected to recruit more fee paying members into the business and thereby enabling your own progression up your god company ladder and thus gain more personal benefits . You will be expected to go out into the market place, to raise money for your god business to gain more of the market share. You may be expected at some level to commit atrocities against another god business, religious group, tribe, or competitor and annihilate the competition or force an acquisition and convert them to your belief system
To all Theists who disagree with me and think this is very cynical viewpoint, I only ask one question:
"If God created the whole universe (and all the gold in it), why does He want your money?"
- Ethics November 18, 2009 3:35AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
First off, the mightiness of God does not at all determine his existence; simply- no matter what God is or does, he either exists or does not, and attempting to disprove the bible's God by showing what it inherently is (which does not disprove), doesn't disprove all definitions of God. This being said, we must realize that the utmost strategy of this argument is pathos. It tries to turn your emotions of wanting God to be all powerful into a conclusion for atheism. This argument completely skips logic. Logically we can see that if God exists, and he can in the framework of the bible despite these observations, then atheism is not the best answer. The argument presented here assumes omnipotence and the bible, therefore atheism. It fails to provide ANY logical warrant. It completely skips every other argument, and the simple fact that the arguments are not mutually exclusive. It therefore fails.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:21PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
The argument about the storybook god does assume that God is omnipotent. However, it would appear from these passages that God is not all powerful. Furthermore, these passages show God to be capricious and vindictive. So we are still left with a god, but not a very attractive one. Because this picture of god is so unattractive, people have rejected it and replaced it with a picture of an all-powerful god. This suits people's tastes much better, but it would appear to be at odds with a literal reading of the Old Testament.
- Michael Glass January 26, 2009 8:37PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
This reasoning is even worse as some of the most extreme creationists - they do give at least one single reason (God said it). This post contains only statements.
One bold claim for each shameful recommendation:
Bold claim 1: "Most religious adults, particularly those in developed nations(A), reject the simple storybook god(B), just as atheists do(C), or preserve only parts(D) of it in their personal theologies."
(So many claims in one sentence, at least all four A-D would be very hard to prove.)
Bold claim 2: "believers don’t start out as theologians"
(One counter example suffices, and I will have one.)
- Sander6534
November 21, 2008 3:46PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
I believe that god is all encompassing and all around you and is a tangent because I only have a deep feeling of it and I Know It's there. I do not preach. I do not feel obliged to force religion on others. I believe god has been dragged through the mud by government officials for war. God is God
- pyro August 2, 2008 12:09AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
1- This arguement tries to disprove God within the framework of the "omni" God. But it fails because it fails to adopt the utmost argument- that we are not all-understanding. Because of that our logic is inherently lesser, and can fail.
2- On the whole issue of God's omniscience disproving his omnipotence-This completely depends on which view of God you are talking about. Every person and religion define omniscience differently. And again, when you argue under this framework you have to acknowledge the paradigm that we can't understand everything.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:37PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Since there are an enormous number of God concepts floating around, one could hardly disprove them all. For that matter, some people define God as having a positive attitude towards lile. Can't disagree with that! However, If by God, you refer to a being greater than which one cannot conceive, I argue that such a being does not exist.
Nothing is ever as good as you think it will be. It follows that the being greater than which one cannot conceive cannot actually exist because it would therefore be less than another being that was like the first but non existent. Therefore there is no God.
- Jim Harrison August 31, 2008 3:46PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Your argument is based on a flawed conception of omnipotence.
You say that God's omniscience, being all knowing, proves that God can't change things from how he knows them to be. Essentially, God can't change things to be difference from what they are. Now you say, "therefore God cannot be all powerful because in contradicts his omniscience."
So, your argument is essentially that God is a contradiction precisely because he cannot contradict himself. This argument is clearly logically flawed.
God's omnipotence means that he can do all things that are possible. That fact that he is all powerful means that there are things that he cannot do. God cannot be wrong. God cannot make himself cease to exist. Hence, God cannot contradict himself.
Your own argument is a contradiction, not God.
- mkovach September 11, 2008 10:53PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Mkovach is reaching for an old argument that one can find in Aquinas and elsewhere. As he states it, though, it has some amusing consequences. If something is omnipotent because it can do all things that are possible, I am omnipotent because I, too, can also do all things that are possible. The fact that I can't bench press 300 pounds doesn't disprove my omnipotence since that's clearly something I'm not able to do, i.e. it isn't possible. What is possible, I can readily do. Maybe I'm God.
By the way, why should anybody entertain for an instance the notion that there is anything omnipotent in the universe? Mkovach is assuming both that omnipotence is a meaningful attribute and that something possesses it. Unfortunately, omnipotence is just the answer to the absurd game of "let's now come up with the best thing that might be true about our tribal deity." I'm reminded of arguments I had with my friends in grammar school about whether the universal solvent was able to dissolve itself, etc.
One last note: mkovach writes "God cannot contradict himself." I, however, am able to contradict myself. Therefore I am greater than God because I have an ability he lacks.
- Jim Harrison September 13, 2008 10:11PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Your argument is logically inconsistent and bordering on incoherent.
Benching 300 is NOT impossible. You just do not have the power to do it. There is a very clear and obvious difference.
You are able to say things that are contradictory, ergo you are greater than a being who cannot. That is similar to saying that because you will die you are greater than an immortal being.
God and human are so ontologically different that each would logically have attributes that the other does not by virtue of being opposite, i.e. immortal God and mortal man, omniscient God vs a man who can be ignorant.
The nature of your argument that you are superior by virtue of your ignorance is quite silly and potentially dangerous.
I'm not here to attack your beliefs, you have the freedom to believe whatever you like. I'm just clarifying incorrect arguments attacking mine and showing that belief in God is a rational belief and not logically inconsistent like some people try to say.
- mkovach September 14, 2008 11:54AM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
The point of previous post was not to present valid arguments. My sophistries are, obviously, designed to be absurd. Thing is, they aren't a great deal different than your arguments, which you claim to take seriously.
It's possible to make sense out of the notion of an omnipotent deity--Aquinas did so--but Aquinas could provide a philosophical context in which omnipotence made sense. Now there have to be very few folks left, including religious folks, who seriously accept the mix of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian ideas that gave traditional theological ideas their cogency. It's not that anybody is trying to diss the great theologians of the Middle Ages. I respect them very much myself and have spent many years admiring them, in part for their sheer technical virtuosity. It is quite impossible, at least for me, to credit their universe of discourse, however. The God game, at least the traditional version of the God game, is over. Which, naturally, doesn't mean that you can't make money selling it on television.
Absent an appropriate philosophical setting, omnipotence is an empty word. Or doesn't claiming that God and human are ontologically different commit you to having an ontology? What sort of being is a god? And if, in your utterly inadequate human ignorance, you can't tell me what you're talking about, why are you presuming to talk at all about something which, for all you know, is my uncle's pocket watch. (Don't tell me that it doesn't make sense that a pocket watch could save souls. Maybe that's just another one of those mysteries of the faith.)
It's not that I'm so enthusiastic about my own ontological status, by the way. Indeed, one of the many things I find absurd about Christianity (and Islam, for that matter) is the absurd credit they give to humanity, as if the maker of heaven and earth had any reason to become man--the Islamic version of this vanity is that Satan fell out of resentment for the grand destiny that Allah had apportioned to human beings. Well, long ago a man named Xenophanes remarked that if asses had gods, they'd have long ears...
- Jim Harrison September 14, 2008 12:30PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(1)
Side: No
The fundamental failure of this argument is that it is not an argument at all. The theist can accept that there are natural laws by which God functions that transcend him without being self-contradictory; it all depends on your definition. Atheism cannot be proved until every view of God is disproved, whereas the theist only has to disprove only one atheistic view- that no higher power exists.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:43PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
"the theist only has to disprove only one atheistic view- that no higher power exists."
Disproving that there were no higher powers would mean that the existence of a higher power was proven... which has yet to be done.
An atheist does not need to disprove the existence of a deity... anymore then they have to disprove the existence of gnomes living under their bed.
- MrBook November 6, 2009 8:24PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: No
Given the number of items we have given names, I suggest we name things, we itemize, analize and pontificate on a metiphysical that cannot be proven to exist. Thought gives substance an anagram of sorts to wrap this enigma in. Wheather a word exists or it does not is dependent totally on how we hear what someone els sais.
Taking a stand as to wheather existance is relative to knowledge has yet to be proven it seems this is the progression in this conversation.
I will say this if I am wrong I know how to admit I made a mistake,
- ABNER September 28, 2008 9:40PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Uncommitted
Yes, that is a correct observation. But it is merely an observation. For example- everyone has dreams. My dreams are completely different than anyone elses, and the way I dream is completely different. I may think that my dreams are another portion of reality, you may disagree. Does all of this disprove the existence of dreams? One person may never in their entire life dream... does this mean that no one dreams? The truth to this entire debate is that every argument can be answered logically and infinitely, and therefore no logical decision can ever be made. It all has to come down to faith. Either faith in atheism, or faith in theism. That is the key to decision. But how does one acquire that faith? The only way to acquire faith in either direction is either to close your mind and convince yourself, or open your mind, and ask. (this is presupposing the assumption that if God exists, he is a personal God.) If God is there, he will answer. If he isn't, he won't. It's the only way.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 2:52PM
Reply to this
Recommend
(0)
Side: Yes
Biweekly updates on new debates and experts
Please check your email to confirm your subscription.
© 2008 Opposing Views, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Opposing Views, Inc. is not responsible for the content posted on this website. Please view full disclaimer under Terms
Is There a God?
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
On the fence
I read plenty of texts on both sides of the coin and quite frankly, I think there are holes in both sides' arguments. The central problem all sides have addressing is about the creation of the universe. It's either God or some kind of energy mass that exploded and formed all the planets. Simply put, I believe in the power of science, but the absolute truth seems to be nobody knows how the universe came to be or how living organisms started existing. The next argument is how did we get to where we are today? One side says we are all created in God's likeness or that we evolved from apes. I nearly have to laugh at the suggestion that in God's eyes, we are perfect. Perfect with flaws, eh? Then I hate to think I evolved from an ape, but Darwin does have some strong supporting evidence in his works. I would really like for the religious groups to answer this: If God really does exist, why is there poverty and AIDS etc? That's where I call my faith into question. But I will stick with Maybe
- Sundevil
July 13, 2008 10:21PM
Reply to this Recommend (4)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
to the question "if God exist where is there evil?"
Within your question you have two major assumptions that are false...
First of all, you assume that God can contradict himself, which is logically impossible.
Let me state for the record, God absolutely cannot contradict himself. If you think you see a contradiction, check your premises.
God created a world where people had freedom and free will. Hence, it follows logically that God cannot create people with absolutely free will without the possibility that people might choose evil.
Secondly, you assume humans and God share the same definition of "good."
You say that if a person is in poverty that is bad. Yes and no. It is true that they may lead an exceptionally painful existence, but God's measure of good is how many people accept him freely and enter heaven. If the only way a particular person might turn to God is through suffering, then that suffering was good. Since while the short term suffering may seem terrible, it is nothing compared to an eternity away from God.
- mkovach
September 11, 2008 11:08PM
Reply to this Recommend (3)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
a reply ...
Free will cannot explain evil for a couple of reasons. Presumably good is inherently better for all than evil; humans do evil things because they are too weak or too ignorant to choose rightly; both our ignorance and our weakness are 'fixable' by God (if God exists). Having chosen to give us free will but not the wisdom or skill to use it rightly is analogous to giving a deadly object to a child, and then blaming the child for the outcome.
Free will also cannot explain the evil that befalls us due to natural events. This is a different category of evil; and is independent of human action. Blaming humans for this is irrational.
If God is all-powerful and Good, it follows logically that along with free-will he would give us the ability to use it rightly. The pervasiveness of suffering and evil show He did not; therefore (logically, again) God is either not all-powerful or not Good.
The argument that our suffering is meant to bring us to God is perverse. Again, we sin out of ignorance or weakness. God does not NEED to "lead" us to him, He could just give us the information we need to come to him. Remember: for God, no infliction of suffering on us is ever NECESSARY; for God, nothing is necessary. Therefore it is a choice. We are how we are because God (if God exists) chose to make us as we are.
- sean s
September 23, 2008 12:30PM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
"Good" and "Not-Good"
Keep in mind that "good" and "not-good" - I reject the notion of "evil" - are completely context dependent. There is no "good" or "not-good" without point of view. The suggestion that anything is "good" or "not-good" inherently outside of point of view is the same mistaken suggestion that there is meaning or purpose behind all. The fact is, the meaning of a thing is individually determined. Without point of view, there is no meaning.
Meaning and the word "meaning" are human invention.
One must and can only act from one's own point of view in specific context. The "good" can be anything. The "not-good" can be anything. You must answer why it is "good" or "not-good" and to whom - every time.
- Naumadd
October 16, 2008 9:30PM
Reply to this Recommend (5)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
mkovach
29 May 2009
I like what you had to say about God. What you need to understand is that many people really do not want to know the truth because it would require them to do some soul searching of their own. It is easier to blame God for the ills of the world than to research one's soul and take a good hard look at ourselves. How could there be good w/o bad, right w/o wrong, life w/o death? Remember whenever we become full of ourselves we open the door to true evil, Satan. God wants us to love him because we want to, not because we have to, ie free will. In today's society too much importance is put on money and material things in my humble opinion.
There are people who do not consider themselves poor, although by others standards most likely would be considered poor. If you believe in God, you must also know that Satan is his rival, and will do what it takes to attempt to dehumanize humans in the eyes of other humans. God won't fall for it however many humans will and do. I believe that there are millions of tragedies in this world that could be easily laid at Satan's door. He loves to see people ponder over whether there is a God, it is his mission. We do have choices in this world, whether or not people see that have choices or not is another story. To simply do nothing is a choice, and if Satan can keep us reacting instead of acting, he has us on the fence post.
For me God does exist because when I look back over my life, and I see the many times God was there for me when no one else was. It would not have mattered if I had a lot or money or none, because I was in the hospital on machine that was breathing for me. They were pumping me full of morphine/paralytic drugs so I would remain still because I was told I was fighting the machine to breath on my own. It took me 3 months to be able to get my arms, legs, and hands to function properly. I remember walking around in Walmart for 3 hours trying to gain strengh in my legs.
The wonder of it all was I didn't remember hardly any of it, until I was told. What I remembered was praying in a safe place within myself. I saw my life and my loved ones lives and how much I loved them. I spoke with a woman whom I'm told no one ever saw in my room, yet she was with me all the time. I saw good times and sad times, and things I could have done differently in my past, and a chance to do them differently in the future. I saw violence and dispair and death whirl around me yet I was not afraid.
It is okay with me if others choose to believe God does not exist, probably wouldn't be able to change their minds no matter what I said. I could have easily died in that hospital, but God had other plans, my daughter and my grandchildren needed me to be here for them, which I am. I am with my family, and to me that is worth more than any dollar value. We are not rich, we are not poor, however that is in terms of dollars and cents, we are rich in many other ways. I hope that what I have shared with you will make you think back over your lives, wonder what you might find. Thank you for reading my missive, it is longer than I had planned it to be. Sincerely lfschrawyer
- lfschrawyer1 May 29, 2009 4:14PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Reply
Maybe some of the praise for your recovery should be reserved for the medical team who were there to help you through it. People generally seem to account all of the good things that happen to them as being attributable to God and discount all of the bad things. It's a ridiculous notion. It's a textbook case of specious reasoning. Why do you curry favour with God more than a child left to die in Africa. Why doesn't he step in to help them? Quite simple really. He doesn't exist.
- RedDragon
June 4, 2009 7:53AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Reply
And just who do you think provided that medical team with the skills to save anothers life? I have to say I feel sad for people who think as you do. Specious reasoning, ten dollars words won't convince me nor anyone else who has faith and hope by the grace of God that He does not exist. The text book you should be reading is the Bible. You speak of African children , why go so far from home, there are plenty of children in the states who have some of the same problems as those in Africa. Maybe just maybe if you read the bible , you would learn more about God and why things go the way that they do. Exactly what makes you so sure God doesn't help African children or any child for that matter. My niece spent two years of her life in Africa helping and teaching the very children you speak of. God comes in many forms through many people, I am sorry you feel the way that you do. It must be difficult to know what's out there walking around with blinders on all the time.
If you want to know why God does what He does, why don't you go to the source and ask Him?
Have a Blessed Day.......
- lfschrawyer1 June 6, 2009 2:29AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Another reply
Before I start, I think it's best to inform you that I had a strong Christian upbringing and education , so I am quite well versed on the Bible. The difference between you and I is that at one point I actually decided to use my brain and to be honest, I couldn't be happier!
There you go with that specious reasoning again! You might want to look up it up before responding next time. I actually feel sorry for people like you who tie their lives to a myth. That's one thing you Christians tend to overlook. The reality is that you do not need a book to tell you the difference between and right and wrong. Granted, there is a lot of value in the message that the Bible spreads (and, sadly, a lot of hatred as well.... see the Old Testament) but it doesn't make the stories any truer. You might want to consider that notion. It's quite liberating I assure you.
I think it's fantastic that your niece went to Africa to help out however you are devaluing the work that she has done and the good person that she is by implying that she is doing it because God told her to.
For the record, my home is in England. I'm sure I can find some disadvantaged children there too if I look hard enough. I fail to see what point you're trying to make though...
- RedDragon
June 9, 2009 5:35AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
just a comment
Saying that god doesn't exist because he does not step in and counteract problems that humans have brought on themselves is an unreasonable statement. I'm not saying that the that the people that are dying in Africa deserve to die to to genocide or starvation or anything else. I am saying that since god gave man and women free will the things that befall us are the doings of man. We create starvation and war and poverty . Since god gave us free will humans choose their own path whether it is for the bettering of man or for the worsening. It is not his choices that put people in these situations but our own. Why would he step in and change thing when we have the power to change things for ourselves. We create our own world not god he just gave us the power to do so.
- ruralamerican
September 5, 2009 1:13AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Have you noticed
that the people that seem to blame God for everything are the ones that don't believe in him?
- mike1948
September 6, 2009 9:58PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
blame game
It is not blaming God... it is just postulating that if a deity existed with the qualities usually associated with God then why would things happen as they do?
- MrBook
September 11, 2009 7:13PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Your weighing seems unbalanced
You say that on the one hand we are created in God's likeness. You point out an important problem in our definitions of good and evil, that would make a benevolent God seem very confusing, if not actually impossible. (We can also acknowledge that there are many, many concepts of God, most of which are contradictory with each other, and all of which are equally arbitrary definitions. How can we pick one and say it must be true?)
On the other hand, you say, we evolved from apes. (I'll set aside the fact that evolutionary biology actually says that apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor.) You say that there is "strong supporting evidence," but that you would just "hate to think" it was true.
Seeing you cite logical problems on one side and strong evidence on the other, I'm surprised that you opt for indifference. The fact that you aren't happy with a conclusion doesn't make it false. Maybe you just need to reflect on what it is about sharing an ancestor with apes that makes you sad. Is a world with evolution and natural selection really that much less amazing and awe-inspiring? I don't think so.
- thoughtcounts Z
October 30, 2008 8:18AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
In defend of the existence of GOD
There are a lot of arguments about the existence of GOD. Some try to prove scientifically and logically. What we need to know is that GOD is so much much bigger (beyond our imagination) than what we can think of. We cannot limit GOD with our (limited and simple) mind. GOD creates everything, there is no way that the created being can think about the CREATOR. In a simple analogy we can put it this way, a computer programme cannot explain about the programmer unless the programmer put it in the programme he or she wrote. The same way is with our GOD, unless GOD reveals to us (humankind), there is no way we know or understand about GOD. The other thing that we need to know, we live in a different dimension from GOD. For this reason we cannot enter the other dimensions.
Talking about poverty, sickness and all the problems in this world we cannot avoid not to talk about sins. To explain about this we need to refer to the original sin (as what is written in the Bible in the book of Genesis). As we know, GOD so loves the world that HE has given HIS only begotten Son to die for humankind. From here we can see that GOD wants every single human being to be saved from "the dead" (eternal separation from GOD). When GOD walked on this earth in form of humankind like us, HE also experienced all the sufferings known to this world. So, HE perfectly knows about this. Another thing we need to know is that life is more than "walking" on this planet (which is only a very small fraction of the "real" life - in the life after).
After all if we really want to know about GOD, we simply need to ask GOD to reveal HIMSELF to us so that we can understand what is beyond our (limited and simple) mind.
By the way, if you are interested in knowing about this futher, based on my experience, there is an excellent book that explain clearly. The name of the book is "The Progress of Redemption: The Story of Salvation from Creation to the New Jerusalem" by Willem Vangemeren (you can look at the internet).
Finally, what I can say, if we really ask and humble ourselves, GOD will definitely reveal HIMSELF to us in HIS own way.
- speedy1485
January 23, 2009 1:56AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Explanations of God
I suspect there is a "God" or a first cause we have named God. However, human explanations that come in dogmatic presentations from organized religions can never be proven nor dis proven. As the above article states, "GOD creates everything, there is no way that the created being can think about the CREATOR." Yet we have a Bible, a Koran, and countless others all claiming to be the revealed word of God....can they all be correct? When humans do find out which explanation is the real and true one let us all hope it is similar to the Janis explanation, since they seem to have the more benevolent view of this entity we have named God.
- wanderer
May 27, 2009 3:30PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Hmmm....
How convenient it is that God is so complex that we will never be able to apply rational human logic to fully comprehend him. That's a completely ridiculous notion! If we took that approach to science we would still be roaming around in loincloths. Great idea! Let's all intelligent thought aside and submit ourselves to God's almighty plan.
- RedDragon
June 4, 2009 8:05AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
speedy1485
"There are a lot of arguments about the existence of GOD. Some try to prove scientifically and logically. What we need to know is that GOD is so much much bigger (beyond our imagination) than what we can think of. We cannot limit GOD with our (limited and simple) mind."
In other words, God exists no matter how nonsensical the idea is to our minds and no matter the amount of evidence to the contrary that our minds can perceive....
- passerby October 7, 2009 12:24PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
God created us above the angels and wanted us to have free will.
If the world were perfect, we would all be robots without the choices to do good or evil. That is not love, that is slavery. This is not what God wanted for us.
God created us and knows our nature, therefore at creation he knew that we would have to sacrifice his son on the cross for our sins, in order to perfect his creation in heaven. He also knew that we would suffer for the sins of our fathers and our fellow souls.
We can not see the entirity of our existence, for example when my nephew was killed in Iraq, it was an incredible sadness, but now four years later we appreciate the fullness of his life and the splendidness of his sacrifice. He gave up his earthly life to save others in his battalion. Yet these two things existed together at the same instant, though at his death we did not see his ,and the effect of his life on others for years to come.
A really good book to read on this subject is called "The Shack."
- SuperDelegate
February 22, 2009 10:09PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Free will?
I'm really struggling to reconcile the notion of "free will" with the idea that God has a divine plan for us. As far as I can see, only one of them can be right. Which is it?
- RedDragon
June 4, 2009 8:10AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
They say that what doesn't kill us makes us who we are
I'm with you on the maybe. You can't prove or disprove the existence of God. If there is a God, then only he can do that.
But if I were God, and I made the world, I would have created AIDS and poverty, etc. Because humans aren't good at appreciating what they have unless it's taken away from them. At the very least, they are unable to comprehend what it is they have unless they have something to compare it to. Humans in general don't define themselves by what they are as much as they define themselves by what they aren't. We also define ourselves more by what we don't have than what we do.
Think for a moment on what makes life meaningful. What makes us want to live our lives instead of sleeping it away? Death. What makes us grateful for our health ? Disease.
I believe that without death, disease, and trials, not only would we never learn anything, we would be unhappy. You've heard that adversity will make you strong? I think adversity just makes you you.
- Cheerikiara
May 15, 2009 3:36PM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
They say that death brings meaning of life
Human being just want strong reason for everything.
Why I stumbled over that rock? Bad karma, God punished you (or you were too inattentive).
Why You got sick? You did not wash your hands day before.
Why it rains today? Cyclons and atmosphere levels did that.
Why Universe expands? Big bang happend very long time ago.
Why this particle appears in so many places at once? Erm.. wait, we still sorting it out.
Yes indeed, we do search for meaning all the time. But in most cases it is not needed for everyday life.
You'll find meaning eventually when You'll be very passionate about something and/or when you will have strong relationships with someone (friends, family, even with your cat or dog).
They say that death brings meaning of life. Not realy. Death might play some role in valuation. But meaning comes from passions and desires not from cheating death (unless it is not your very special passion).
- ctrnz
July 1, 2009 12:28PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Ahh The Problem of Pain
If you really are searching for some answers to this question then I can provide great books that break down the philosophical side of free will. One of the most well known on this issue is C.S. Lewis, "The problem of pain." He also wrote mere "Christianity" and "Miracles." You are right in saying that there is no absolute proof of how life came about. However keep in mind, "Science doesn't provide us with truth. The practice of scientific investigation involves tools that help us explain how the physical world might work. The explanation doesn't have to be true to be useful, just consistent with most of the evidence." (Spencer). The evidence when studied just facts points towards a designer. Chance is ruled out through mathematical probability. For more on this read Robert Collins, Jay W. Richards, or Guillermo Gonzalez. For scientific evidence in molecular biology read Michael Behe, and Johnathan Wells. I would encourage reading opposing view from evolution scientist such a Ruse. It is good to know why you choose you evidences.
The energy mass you speak of is called the singularity. Both sciences believe in the "big bang" It is a measurable event. The argument is evolution believes that nothing came from nothing to create something over billions of years. There can be no infinity. "Everything that begins the exist has a cause, The earth began to exist, therefore it has a cause." If you heard a bang in the next room and asked me what was that and i said nothing, you would not except that. The bang has a cause. The idea that something comes into existence un-caused is absurd. Thank you for your time
- rekiser
September 6, 2009 9:38PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
providing truth
Ahh The Problem of Pain
“However keep in mind, "Science doesn't provide us with truth. The practice of scientific investigation involves tools that help us explain how the physical world might work. The explanation doesn't have to be true to be useful, just consistent with most of the evidence." (Spencer).”
Yet religion does not provide us with the truth either…
“The evidence when studied just facts points towards a designer.”
Actually no, there has been no demonstrated evidence that even suggests a designer.
“Chance is ruled out through mathematical probability.”
Blind chance, yes… but Evolution is not about blind chance. Evolution is the process by which life forms change from generation, with those changes that benefit reproduction having a greater chance of being passed down to successive generations.
“For more on this read Robert Collins, Jay W. Richards, or Guillermo Gonzalez. For scientific evidence in molecular biology read Michael Behe, and Johnathan Wells. I would encourage reading opposing view from evolution scientist such a Ruse. It is good to know why you choose you evidences. “
To which I’d add Richard Dawkins, Ken Miller, Sean Carroll, and Stephen Gould.
“The argument is evolution believes that nothing came from nothing to create something over billions of years.”
That is not quite accurate… everything came from the original singularity, including space-time.
“The bang has a cause.”
Yes, and that is currently an area of much Scientific investigation.
“The idea that something comes into existence un-caused is absurd.”
Very true… so what caused the designer?
- MrBook
September 11, 2009 4:50PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
I have absolutely no idea
I have absolutely no idea if there is or is not a God. Perhaps there is – perhaps there is not. Because I have neither seen nor heard him/her does not mean he/she does not exist. On the other hand, because many do believe in the existence, does not make it so. Believing in a God is a lovely concept. I have not seen UFO’s or aliens. That too does not deny in my mind, their existence.
Just as children believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, adults too, seem to need a spiritual figure to sustain them, particularly in troubling times. The concepts of a God, a Hereafter and Retribution are also factors which help keep people following the moral path in life. So whether or not there is or is not a God should not really be an issue. It is a question which will probably never have an answer which will satisfy everyone. For each of us, we will have to find the answer within ourselves.
- redondo July 14, 2008 11:30PM
Reply to this Recommend (5)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy
You compare God to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Do you think they might exist, too? Somehow I doubt it.
You're right that not having experienced something does not prove that the thing doesn't exist. However, it means there had better be a pretty good reason for assuming that it does. If I told you that the air around us was full of tiny invisible fairies that are undetectable in any way, would you say, "Yeah, maybe"? I hope you'd say, "Get real, that doesn't make any sense." But my positing of invisible fairies is just as arbitrary as positing the existence of God, or Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy. It might make me happy to believe in the fairies. I might even have some complex belief system about them that causes me to be a nicer person. That doesn't make the fairies real.
Whether or not there is a God is just as much an issue as whether or not there are invisible fairies around us all the time. If there's no good reason to think something exists, we should default to "no," at least for the time being. I don't claim to have proof that there is no God. I just think it's an arbitrary concept to make up, and I think the burden of proof lies with the person making the outlandish claim.
- thoughtcounts Z
October 30, 2008 8:30AM
Reply to this Recommend (5)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Children believe Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy because...
Children believe Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy because presents don't appear out of nowhere usually and most teeth don't turn into money . Children are mistaken of the identity of the present giver or tooth taker, but a present giver or tooth taker exists.
- Screen Name
April 8, 2009 2:48AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Is delusional thinking beneficial?
More people believe in some spiritual reality than don't believe. If this is delusional thinking, then it must have conferred some benefit to homo sapiens throughout history. This is a profound "mystery."
- acitizen
April 9, 2009 10:58AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
welcome to the club
Welcome the liberating world of the agnostics. Come on in, the water's fine.
Then mental gymnastics required to justify faith in a god and defend him / her are simply not worth it. To argue the unknown without working toward substantive proof is folly. For every question the non-believer has, the believer always answers with the mystic.
Surely this will not be popular, but in my opinion, if there really is a god, you can keep him. He / she is either cruel, incompetent, or both. Defending his / her positions only makes a person look foolish.
- tek June 14, 2009 11:01AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Does Steve Jobs exist
The question is unanswerable. If a being exists that is of a higher order than ourselves then by definition we are incapable of proving or disproving his/her existence. Bit like expecting an iPhone to prove that Steve Jobs exists. A better question for me is "What if God did exist? Shouldn't I be doing something about it?"
- Blamm July 24, 2008 5:46AM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Its a Question of Higher Power
I do believe there is a higher power that most people would refer to as God. My Interpretation stems from intelligence and how we understand the world around us and then to the higher levels of intelligences. For example my dog is a wonderful pet, but he does have a lower intelligence than me. He experiences the world very differently than me. Am I a God to him? I think to him we would be. If we didn't know better if a alien race came down to this planet and had intelligence that we did not understand would they be a God? In ancient history probably yes, watch Chariots of Fire. Nowadays thats a tough one, we have a much better understanding of what intelligence is. If God walked the earth would he cease to be God? I think it boils down to intelligence and the authority that intelligence perceives to have. Last thought intelligence a entity born out of energy derived from a source called GOD. We all possess a piece of it, that we have to grow to return back to the source.
- PrimeTimeD July 24, 2008 9:32AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Does my dog regard me as God?
I doubt seriously that my dog thinks that I am God. He might be slightly impressed when the front door light comes on automatically, because of the motion detector, when we return at night after a walk, although I think I lose considerable numbers of points, when I fumble around in the dark for the keys, because I forgot to turn on the light in the first place (he has perfect night vision), or even worse, I have to get the garbage bin to climb over the security gate because I forgot its key.
- bachfiend
September 1, 2008 5:36AM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
God may exist, but not the kind most people believe in.
I consider myself an atheist, for I see no need for a god to have created the universe or have any role in the playing out of events in this existence. However this does not automatically mean that god does not exist. Yet if a god does exist, I do not believe it would be at all the sort of god which any of today's religions adhere to. It would not care about humans anymore than the air around us, for we are all simply made of matter, energy, and void which interacts according to strict rules which we have never seen broken. Why would the creator of EVERYTHING care about one small bit of its creation which is in no way different than any other bit except in its own heavily biased opinion. The universe may just be some pan-dimensional teenager's science-fair experiment simulation on his computer which they created to study the formation of galaxies. Humans and other life are just things which happened to develop due to this set up of the laws of physics.
- The5thElephant July 24, 2008 9:54AM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Where did god come from?
If he "always was, and always will be" as so many profess, why can't we say the same thing about the universe(s)?
- Coventry July 24, 2008 11:36AM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Science invalidates the steady-state theory of the universe.
Scientists are in near unanimous agreement that the universe came into being roughly 14 billion years ago, and all current evidence supports this theory.
The discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation is the primary piece of evidence for the "big bang theory."
- mkovach
September 11, 2008 11:21PM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Science vs. religion
I'm an atheist - always have been, always will be. Most people don't change sides once they've come to a decision. So my comment is really about the nature of the argument. I'm weary of believers saying that evolution isn't true, or that they see god when they look at children. Even if there were merit to any of it, it's no basis for the existence of god. Nor is evolution's truth a basis for the absense of God. Can't we dispense with this silliness? Neither side can win the argument, because neither can answer the first and foremost question of being: Why is there something instead of nothing? I believe in the Big Bang Theory, but even that doesn't answer the question. My biggest argument against god so far is that religious people came up with him - the same people who have been denying scientific progress for hundreds of years. But both science and religion come from a human need to seek order and truth. So far science has won the battle but not the war.
- zumothecat July 24, 2008 4:30PM
Reply to this Recommend (3)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Evolution is fact
Evolution is fact (the fossils show change). Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Intelligent design is just another theory; a theory of evolution by means of intelligent design (the proponents don't deny change, nor do they deny natural selection at species level). The proponents of ID have failed to provide any evidence or ways of recognising ID when or if it occurs, and until they do so, it can't be taken seriously. Natural selection, on the other hand, has a lot of evidence in its favour.
- bachfiend
September 1, 2008 5:45AM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Saying a theory is a fact enough times doesn't make it a fact
Hitler tried to make facts by repeating them enough times. Don't fall for this weakness in the human condition. Natural selection is not Evolution. Intelligent design is simply a phrase made up by men, it isn't in the Bible. However, the Bible does tell us to observe all that God has made. Do that, then decide for yourself if it is an accident.
- joelinda September 24, 2008 8:14AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The bible isn't fact
Yes, natural selection is a (scientific) theory about a mechanism of evolution (a fact), for which there is overwhelming evidence, and intelligent design is just an invented explanation, for which there is no evidence. Don't waste my time by (poorly) quoting the bible as evidence. First of all you'd need to prove that god exists and that the bible is more than a poorly edited collection of inconsistent works of fiction. Once you have done that, then you can come back and we can discuss whether god works through evolution or whether god is a deceiver (as Philip Henry Gosse in his book "Omphalos" published in 1857 2 years before the Origin seemed to believe) and created an earth 6000 years old to look 4.5 billion years old. The bible is wildly inaccurate with regard to science, besides stating that pi equals exactly 3, and that the earth's rotation can be just stopped for a day so Joshua can just commit another of his acts of divine sanctioned genocide. I won't even try to correct your use of the word "accident"; it's obvious you don't have the slightest understanding of evolution.
- bachfiend
September 24, 2008 10:23AM
Reply to this Recommend (3)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Not everything that believers believe can be observed
Believers have faith. The Bible is clear that faith is required. However, these citations claiming to disprove The Bible are false. Saying The Bible is wildly inaccurate a few hundred times and getting others to site the statement, doesn't make it true.
There are plenty of archeological and historical correlations to stories presented in The Bible.
- joelinda November 6, 2008 9:22AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
??? "plenty of archeological and historical correlations"
Faith is belief without any evidence at all. Personally, I always insist on at least some evidence for important matters, particularly when the item concerned is highly implausible. Since you mention it, can you name 5 "archaelogical and" (/or) "historical correlations" (whatever that is supposed to mean) "to stories" (and that is just what they are, stories, fiction) "presented in the bible", for me to consider? And don't mention Josepheus.
- bachfiend
November 6, 2008 6:03PM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Sorry, too much stuff to limit it to only 5
Go thru some of these websites.
http://www.provethebible.net /
http://www.apologeticsindex.org /
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/bible.htm
http://www.bible.org/topic.php?topic_id=53
http://www.carm.org/index/welcome.htm
or get your own Bible that answers many of the questions. Here is the Amazon link
http://www.amazon.com/Apologetics-Study-Bible-Understand-Believe/dp/158640024X
- joelinda January 26, 2009 3:05PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Evolution is a theory, not a fact.
Truth is you can't prove it. Ask any scientist. Not saying it isn't a very good theory, I mean even gravity is just a theory, but it is still just a theory, not fact.
Secondly, the existence of a diving being or beings does not require it to be a Christian god , or for the Bible to be anything more than a book. Furthermore, more and more scientists are beginning to say that for the universe to have occured, there would have had to have been a cause for the Big Bang. Also, while experiments have shown that in stimulations of Earth's early conditions , simple amino acids, the building blocks of life, will indeed form, statistics have demonstrated that the chances of these amino acids happening to line up in just the right way to form a protein are so small as to make it virtually impossible. This isn't opinion, it is what has been shown in experiments and calculations by real scientists. Intelligent Design is also a theory, not some mumbo jumbo. It is not an invented explaination, and it does have evidence.
- richardsonkr
June 3, 2009 6:03PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Gravity is a theory, not a fact?
Oh well, if you don't think that gravity is a fact, why don't you prove the theory by jumping off the top of the nearest tall building? With regard to abiogenesis, formation of polypeptides is not thought to be the first component. RNA (or some early simpler version of it) is thought to be the first critical component, because RNA has both catalytic and reproductive properties, so it can do the jobs of both proteins and DNA. Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis. Claiming that because evolution can't explain the origin of life proves intelligent design is just ludicrous. ID is not supported by ANY evidence; it is a theory without any scientific support.
- bachfiend
June 3, 2009 10:51PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Yes. Gravity is a theory.
Gravity is a theory. Ask any scientist. Then ask them to explain very slowly what a theory is to you. You'll be a better person for it. Also, please stop making appeals to ridicule. It is a logical fallacy, and makes you look like a jerk.
Your attempt to disprove Intelligent Design using big words is infantile. It's also a logical fallacy, known as argumentum verbosium. You didn't acually disprove anything, you just said basically the same thing I said, and then denied it. You offered no evidence, you just used a lot of big technical terms and made it a lot longer than it needed to be in the hopes of confusing me. You failed. You have disproved nothing.
Finally, in your persistance in stating that ID has no evidence, despite the fact that you have disproved nothing and not even attempted to disprove all of the evidence offered, you have shown yourselves to be just as close-minded as the 7-day Creationist who refuses to acknowledge evolution . Do yourself a favor, and go down to your local Community College. Enroll in two classes, one on the scientific method, and one on rhetoric. You should come away with that experience with a firm grasp on both what a scientific theory is and why both evolution and gravity are scientific theories, and how to offer up a valid argument without appealing to logical fallacies.
- richardsonkr
June 4, 2009 6:23AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Know what else Hitler did?
Went to church. In fact, he wanted to be a priest.
Stop with the Hitler comparisons.
- quantummechanik
June 3, 2009 4:42PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
In his youth.
He dropped that in favor of Secular Socialism as he grew into an adult/dictator.
- richardsonkr
June 3, 2009 5:52PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Still went to church. Professed belief in Christ
Doing all of those things makes you Hitler-like
- quantummechanik
June 3, 2009 5:55PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Because the Germans were Christian.
You can't convince a group to hate people who are different when you are different. Hitler was evil, yes, but also intelligent. Once he was in power and had the Germans firmly united behind him, he quickly phased out that pesky Christianity business. If you accuse some one of being like Hitler based on his brief stint as a Christian, you can say make the comparison to just about anyone. He was a man, for example, and a veteran, he was Austrian, and he even happened to be part Jewish. Do you really want to say that all men, veterans, and anyone who is part Jewish are like Hitler?
- richardsonkr
June 3, 2009 6:14PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
re
God is there!!
I have myself felt that there is some power in the universe which drives us to the good path!!
---
philip
foreclosed homes
- philip1111
August 6, 2009 5:22AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
gods solve nothing
Postulating a god as the ultimate cause of unexplained complexity solves precisely nothing, because you are left with explaining the origin of this degrees-of-magnitude more complex creative entity.
- Steve Wrathall July 24, 2008 6:41PM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Self-Existing
I would think "this degrees-of-magnitude more complex creative entity" would be self-existing.
- Screen Name
April 8, 2009 2:52AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Wrong question ...
I've indulged this debate for over two decades and its essence boils down to this - We need not debate the existence of a "god". The true debate is whether or not those who claim the existence of such have sufficient evidence and reason to support their claims.
Do claimants of the existence of a "god" have sufficient evidence and argument to support what they claim?
That's the more relevant question.
I cannot reject a "god" whose existence has never been conclusively proven and accepted. What I reject is the weak or absent evidence and the poorly reasoned arguments for such.
- Naumadd
July 24, 2008 8:34PM
Reply to this Recommend (4)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Useless Debate
Let's be frank here. Over the past ten millenia mankind has created in excess of a thousand gods. Ultimate gods, pantheons of gods, nature gods, fertility gods, vengeful gods, merciful gods, gods that sleep with humans, gods that walk amongst humans, and gods that commit genocide.
To actually entertain a theist when they say "I don't believe in those 1,000 gods, they are clearly false and wrong, but I believe in this one God, with absolutely no more evidence than any of those others" is ridiculous.
I give as much credibility to the silly notion of a christian god as I do to harry potter and Zeus. All of them, entertaining works of fiction.
The christian god is just another mark in the book of gods, and will fade with time (like every single god man has worshiped has).
- betterth
July 25, 2008 7:54AM
Reply to this Recommend (4)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
NO evidence of a god, heaven, hell, devils or angels
I am a 100% atheist because there is NO evidence of a god, heaven, hell, devils, angels or a soul that leaves the body. They are ALL figments of our imagination. Heaven is an attractive illusion. All thoughts about god exist only in our minds. Look for evidence and you will find none. All animals and plants came about because of evolution which has been going on for 3.5 billion years on Earth.
Jimmy Dunne 281.584.9707
- Jimmy Dunne
July 25, 2008 8:22AM
Reply to this Recommend (4)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
How did the world come to be? Well how did God come to be?
Just because we don't know how the world came to be, doesn't mean God made it. That means we don't know how it came to be. The same thing can be said about God. How did he/she come to be? I do not see how it is a bigger leap of faith to say that you don't know how the world was created than to say that God has been around for eternity, and made the world. And even if there is a God, how can you possibly know that your god is the real god? Maybe Zeus is the real God. There is simply no way of knowing.
- mmsomekid July 25, 2008 8:53AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Read the Bible, then decide for yourself
Ironically, I'm seeing some of the same people who make the argument that we need to cut down on CO2 emmissions "just in case" it is causing global warming making the argument that God doens't exist. Why not read the Bible, "just in case" God exists? Then after reading it and reflecting on it, make your own decision.
- joelinda July 25, 2008 12:12PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Terrible Argument
A lot of people that don't follow the Bible have already read it "just in case" and still don't believe it.
Global warming will have global consequences. If the god of the Bible is real, then it's between him and the person in question.
Finally, why only the Bible? What about the other holy books and the other gods? They are just as likely to be true.
- Aly September 3, 2008 12:17PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
You proved my point
You have bought into global warming, "just in case". While there is evidence on both sides of the hypothesis, you made a statement that leaps to treating it as a fact. My point is that it is silly for people to apply the scientific method as a way to say that there isn't a God, while they turn right around and embrace fake science as fact. Darwin's stuff is still considered a theory, for instance. It is not a fact. Global warming, caused by human actions, is still a theory, not a fact. It is a fact that the earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past, without any help from mankind.
Sure, please do read all the so called holy texts. I have read many of them, but won't claim to have read them all. I find that the ones I have read have common themes about loving the unlovable and generally buy into the same 10 commandments that are found in the old testament. My issue with the other texts is that all of them, except The Bible, promise a way to heaven thru some kind of action by you, a mere mortal, no further action by God being required. Only The Bible makes it clear that nobody gets to heaven unless God physically intervenes and allows it. That's the text I choose to believe since it requires the existence of God. The other texts simply don't.
Yes, The Bible also clearly states that many people who read it won't believe it.
- joelinda September 3, 2008 2:30PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Theories, Scientific Theories, and Facts
By "Darwin's stuff" I'm assuming you mean evolution. That isn't "just a theory," it's a scientific theory. Please tell me you know the difference. Science doesn't make things up as it goes along, as religions do.
And about the other holy texts, you are incorrect.
I hope you choose to expand on what you know, but if not, that's yours to deal with. I'm not going to argue this any longer.
- Aly September 3, 2008 2:55PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Yes, Darwin's theory is a theory, not a scientific fact
Yes, I understand the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific fact. I have a scientific bachelor's degree and I know that scientists do "make stuff up" = "postulate". It's the first step in the process.
- joelinda September 3, 2008 3:17PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Darwin's theory
"I have a scientific bachelor's degree and I know that scientists do "make stuff up" = "postulate". It's the first step in the process."
They only make anything up because of observations in reality that need explanation. Then they test the explanation via scientific observations or experiments. Religion does not do this next step. Within religion, they say, "This suits me to believe, therefore I will follow it." Science does not allow for such wishful thinking.
- Dale Husband
September 24, 2008 12:55AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Belief in God requires faith, Science uses observation
This discussion in about a belief in God. Yes, science is about observation, pulling together a consensus on what can be observed, experiments that can be replicated, and peer review. God doesn't fit into this neat little, man defined box, called the scientific method. So, the whole idea of using science as a method to answer the question of whether God exists is silly. God has a plan for everyone, but it is up to each individual to have enough faith to believe it. Using science as a justification to not believe in God is folly, but those who don't have enough faith to believe won't realize it until it is too late for them. I wouldn't call it wishful thinking. The beauty and massive complexity of God's creation is enough for me to realize that none of this world or universe could exist by accident.
- joelinda September 24, 2008 8:03AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
A logical trap?
weedonald - you said: "A supreme Being is totally perfect therefore cannot be measured, defined or even " sampled" as per the scientific method,but if we could..."
Isn't your assumption based, in part, on the subjective concept of perfection? By removing God from man's capability to define god you can not both say God exists and God does not exist. In essence, you've defined what you state can not be defined by creating a definition.
"God, if he or she exists, is above dimensional space and time..." - Again, this creates the same loop as above but this time resting on the assumption that extra-dimensional space and time exist to support the position that God exists.
"We cannot , by definition ever understand or know The First Cause (God) because we are only capable of anthropomorphizing any Creator or Force that is metaphysically beyond us." - I'll defer to my prior arguments and note that this point is what paradoxically refutes your own arguments.
- sumwatt July 26, 2008 8:10AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
First Cause
I find it interesting that today quantum physicist are searching for the first cause, the god particle, and dark matter.
God revealed to Moses thousands of years ago, "I am who am" In effect I am what is, the ultimate cause, and it is by faith that we understand this, and faith alone. We will never figure out the ultimate cause until it is revealed to us in heaven.
God has chosen us and the only question that remains is, Will we choose him?
Sadly most won't!
- SuperDelegate
February 22, 2009 10:23PM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
It just doesn't matter!
Whether a construct labeled “God,” by humans as an explanation for the origin of the universe exists, or its attributes been accurately described, appears of little import. There is no reliable set of procedures to govern its behavior or its effects on humanity. This is not to say that such constructs have no value There are many theoretical constructs that we put to everyday use – electricity, atoms, electrons, etc.
I find it very difficult to justify making an unmanageable, invisible, and unobservable phenomenon so much a part of what motivates people to think and behave as they do. Specifically, teaching children to rely on, pray to, or make requests of this construct seems particularly unproductive.
Just as new learning in evolutionary biology have opened our understandings of both human motivation and behavior, so too are we discovering that both core morality, and a propensity to respond to supernatural explanations for events is deeply wired in the human brain.
- ssteffin
July 26, 2008 6:03PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
“Einstein said Bible has childish ideas”
From Letter revealed May 08
There are plenty of people with high IQ's, but that doesn't make them right on everything. Remember, they say a Harvard Grad can be distinguished by the ability to "speak eloquently, and at length, on subjects they know absolutely nothing about." Of course, Einstein was smart enough to not even try something like that. He rejected silly ideas people have come up with about the Bible and accepted what he understood from colleagues in Biology.
If Einstein pictured cute little animals on a cute little boat, and Mt. Everest covered by water coming from rain, then yes, that's a silly story. If he pictured a red colored guy with horns, pitchfork and funny tail, then yes, that's a silly story. If he thought that the Bible teaches that the world is flat, or that the solar system revolves around the earth, or that the earth is supported by some structure rather than floating in space, then yes, those are silly stories.
But that's not what the Bible says
- JayBrook July 29, 2008 2:23PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Response
"If the universe has laws as you say, then you must be intellectually honest enough to say that those laws had to come from somewhere." Fair enough. Scientists are smart enough to hypothesize on what we don't know and most importantly, able to admit that we just plain don't know.
What we do know is that some silly sky wizard who preaches his own perfection while immaturely committing genocide against entire populations did not create this world.Holy texts are rife with errors and out right lies.
As for your other bit: "An interesting argument indeed. Why does science have laws? Why do we accept that there is a natural order (design?)." Order DOES NOT equal DESIGN. That's the worst misconception I've heard yet. There is no order in nature. There is chaos.
Our universe is the expenditure of energy and mass towards entropy (chaos). Natural selection and evolution happen randomly, chaotically. Everything is chaos - pure and simple. Just because there appears to be order in chaos...
- betterth
July 31, 2008 5:23AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
"Thats not what the bible says"
"But that's not what the Bible says..."
You're right. The bible says to kill gays and to kill unbelievers. It preaches hatred and discrimination in the worst way. It pretends that it preaches a holy, merciful message. But it legitimizes hatred, intolerance and murder.
The ironic part is your precious Bible isn't even original. Your silly creation stories (yes, your bible has more than one of them) can be found in Sumerian texts that predate the old testament by centuries, even millenia. Which makes sense - the Hebrew tribes would have been decendent from Sumerian tribes. In fact, most of Genesis (the Ark and the flood? Pah-leeze) can be very easily traced to earlier, non-jewish stories.
But I'm sure it's just god spreading seeds of dissent to test the resolve of believers. Keep denying logic, fact and the truth of your very existence. I'm sure your god is pleased.
- betterth
July 31, 2008 6:13AM
Reply to this Recommend (3)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
It's irrelevant
Whether or not there is a god doesn't matter. There is, or there isn't. What matters is whether the existence of god is relevant to our lives. Obviously, if there's no god, it is not relevant.
Just as clear: if there is a god, we can never know its nature (or alternatively, we can only understand god through faith without proof; same thing.) This is the only possible way to explain the complete lack of real evidence.
If there is a god, but we can never know its nature, then the only way we can get some relevance from god is to believe in a version of god that is relevant. But this version is a complete guess! That's self-delusion; instead we ought to just think honestly about what is morally right and wrong.
Another way to think about it: if god's relevance is to give us a moral code, then either the moral code is right in itself (in which case we don't need god to get it) or, the moral code is arbitrary and we should ignore it.
- mj75
July 31, 2008 8:54AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
For something to exist, we observe it or evidence for it
Naturally, for something to exist we must be able to either observe the god itself or observe other things that prove its existence. I know my dog exists because I can see him, touch him, etc. It is extremely reasonable to believe electrons exist because of the massive amount of observable indirect evidence for their existence.
Now, obviously we cannot directly experience god. We cannot see him, touch him, etc. Therefore, we must observe indirect evidence of his existence. Unfortunately, there is none. The only "evidence" religious people use is attempting to DISPROVE the big bang, evolution, etc -- not PROVE that THEIR side is correct. Why? Because they have no evidence. No archaeological evidence for a Garden of Eden, no direct link between prayer and healing, etc.
Suppose there is a god. For something to exist, it or evidence for it must be observable. However, neither a god nor evidence for a god's existence can be observed. Therefore, a god does not exist.
- Syx August 2, 2008 5:20AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Existence is the Evidence
Existence is the evidence for a Self-Existing Being.
- Screen Name
April 8, 2009 2:57AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
defining as undefinable isn't a definition or an argument!
weedonald said: "It is philosophically,logically and scientifically impossible to prove that God exists or does not"
I totally agree, and defer you to Occam's Razor.
You completely define your own god out of existence and try to claim that helps your case somehow. You provide absolutely nothing other than to claim your claim cannot be claimed, unclaimed, or counter-claimed solely by claiming it is so. God doesn't exist because he can't exist, by definition from BOTH sides of the argument.
Why don't mono-theists understand that their belief in a god, is no different than believing in gods. Mono-theists think it's foolish to believe in multiple gods, but are aghast and dumbfounded when someone doesn't believe in their god. All forms of god-worship are simply a waste of the persons time and energy. Only atheism and agnostism are intellectually honest positions as only they are willing to admit that they have not seen or heard OBJECTIVE evidence that the laws of physics can be false.
- Rice klowN
August 4, 2008 12:30AM
Reply to this Recommend (3)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
In response to cmseth
User cmseth wrote, "You make the assumption that God created matter and therefore created the universe. Have you ever considered the idea that God simply organized existing matter to form (not create) the universe?"
I thought the whole point of a god was being the creator. Supposing that there was matter around before a god came into existence undermines the very definition of a god. Your argument means that god arose from matter, and that matter is the ultimate creator of the universe and not a god. This makes zero sense at all.
- Syx August 4, 2008 9:57AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Unanswerable
There is no direct evidence of a god. All human civilizations have developed their own unique way of explaining the universe. However during the present time, science is the best bet to explaining the universe.
Therefore, as for science not being able to explain god, there should be no god. Alas, science and mathematics do not reveal the entirety of the universe. What is disturbingly unexplainable within science that even crosses the boundary into philosophy is that energy yields infinity. In that context, the universe can have a infinite amount of different alterations and complexities.
So, it would seem clear that a god could possibly exist in some point in time, perhaps even responsible towards to creation of the universe, however, there is no direct evidence. Faith seems to be the only evidence religious people have toward their logic in religion. That's not enough for me.
The existence of a god cannot be proven. I believe this debate will long outlive the universe and all life
- Dave Yas August 5, 2008 3:51PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Provided definition fails to win ground for the atheistic argument
I categorically disagree with the definition of God provided here because while trying to provide a definition that will encompass all religions, it denies multiple beliefs. Many religions believe, as did Plato about his "God of the forms," that God does not make the laws that rule the universe, but rules by the transcendent laws that are already in place. This being said, a multiplicity of religions believe that God did not create the universe's matter and energy, and nor does he have the power to do so. Also the argument of providing a definition of God to disprove denies one of the fundamental basics of argumentation- in order to disprove anything, you must disprove it within its own framework. For example, to disprove zuess you cannot make up your own definition. It is the same with God. The ontological argument would therefore assert that God must exist universally, because in order for the atheist to disprove God, they have to first accept the definition- which is that he exists
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 1:47PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Fails to disprove- at all.
The only God you disprove with your arguments is the one that you have created within your own mind. In order to disprove any framework of belief, you must adopt that framework and disprove it within itself; therefore, you cannot define God. Because you have failed to disprove God in every sense of the term, your arguments cannot be valid. For example: you have failed to disprove one of philosophy's most famous examples of God- Plato's God of the forms. Plato believed that this God ruled by transcendent laws that existed already, and transcended even God himself. This definition meets your argument, and therefore your argument inherently fails to provide any offense, and disproves nothing.
- jdefriez August 6, 2008 1:54PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
No God has ever really existed, it's always been mumbo jumbo.
There is zero evidence of any Gods being real.
All Gods and all religions are human fabrications.
Fabrications perpetrated by the least sane members of our human collections. Volcanos are not Gods or Goddesses. Thunder is not due to Zeus throwing lightning bolts around, nor Thor throwing his magic hammer at angry giants. Bushes are not gods, (even though "W" thinks he is.) Pillars of fire are not Gods, & doves do not impregnate underage Palestinian women. From Anubis, Osiris, and Ra to Zoraster, Zeus, and Odin, and on to Cheeseus Crust, YawhnAway, AllahtaSwaller, and Baba Yaga, Ron Regan, W, and Paris Hilton... Gods are, and always have been, HUMAN CONSTRUCTS... The evidence is clear though, that only the most credulous, weak minded, gullible, irrational, lead poisoned, inbread, and saddly brainwashed of our human tribe believe that there ever was or is such a thing as a "God".
- Principia1687
August 19, 2008 6:16PM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Is there a God?
There is a God and he lives in all of us.
- Enjoy Cannabis
August 27, 2008 4:51AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Metaphysics vs. epistemology
"Is there a God?" is a metaphysical question that asks about the nature of reality. To paraphrase: "Does a God exist as part of reality?" This is the WRONG question to be asking. We should be asking "Is there any reason to believe in God?". This is an epistemological question that relates to MAN'S KNOWLEDGE concerning the nature of reality.
I am open to the existence of a God, but only if I am presented with objective evidence that one exists; evidence that cannot be explained more plausibly by another hypothesis. This view is common sense. Arbitrary assertions are not true until proven false, they are false until proven true. This is as true about the assertion "God exists" as it about the assertion "invisible elephants live on Mars". The burden lies with those making the positive claim to prove it. Hence, theists must prove God exists, and until they do, I have no reason to believe in one.
Of course, since faith is belief WITHOUT evidence, I'm not even sure why theists WANT to prove that God exists. Proof would destroy faith. Evidence would turn faith into science, and would reduce God to an analyzable PART of the natural world, demoting him from his position as the supernatural Creator.
- SidAirfoil
September 3, 2008 11:36AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Unanswerable
This question, while it is explored by nearly every person alive, is one which is unanswerable to any extent beyond personal opinion. The biggest problem here is the issue of definition. Specifically what does 'God' mean? I have found all definitions to be either lacking or completely disprovable. Now, simply because I have not heard or seen a satisfactory definition does not tell me that one does not exist. This brings me to the next problem: were there absolutely no actual evidence of the existence of God(s), from a logical standpoint, one still cannot rule out the possibility. So both sides here have a major issue, the YES crowd has the burden of producing a definition that cannot be disputed, and the NO folks have the burden of definitively proving nonexistence, which cannot be simply achieved by a lack of evidence. I'm not saying neither can be done, but the nature of the question is such that, to me, it seems highly unlikely that either side can complete their task appropriately. One question I have after all this: If you knew the answer to the 'God' question once and for all, would it significantly effect your life in any way?
- roy1167
September 4, 2008 12:45AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
And the evidence is?
The real question to ask about any proposed god - Allah, The Christian God, Thor, Zeus or whoever is "What evidence is there for the existence of this being?"
This is exactly the same question that one could ask about unicorns, fairies, Steve Jobs or Paris Hilton.
In the case of the last two the is testable empirical evidence which can be pointed to. In the case of Zeus and the unicorn this evidence is lacking.
We are quite happy to accept that such lack of evidence is sufficient for us to dismiss the existence of Thor and fairies. Logically we should take the same lack of positive evidence to dismiss the existence of Allah and the Christian God as well.
- Bob M September 11, 2008 2:02PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
There are gods!
Remember the old testament in the Bible uses the word Elohim in ancient hebrew. In fact Psalms 82:1,6 talk about "gods." But if we talk about the Cause of the Creation of the Universe, yes God the Father is He.
- enton September 16, 2008 4:51AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
A "Agnostic Christian's" View...
Yes, that is what I label myself. I am a fairly devout Christian (Episcopalian) that attends church regularly and prays often. However, I cannot, and nobody can, say with 100% certainty that there does exist a God/Gods, thus I do have what you would call a little bit of doubt as well. We all do, we're being dishonest with ourselves if we say we don't.
Here's what I DO NOT believe: earth is 6,000 years old. I don't see how ANYONE can believe that nonsense. The watchmaker argument. Pretty much anything put out by CSE and that tax-evading conman Kent Hovind is to be disregarded as utter bogus.
- bagpiper2005
September 27, 2008 1:52AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
nobody
THE fool has said in his heart there is no GOD...QUOTE from the bible.
AS a human with an intelligence only format, I would have to conclude that: I DON'T know ...SO to, would any other unbiased human....To be able to say one way or the other would set YOURSELF up to have a GOD attribute,that of knowing ALL...I won't go there ...I will go to my faith that swears to me that GOD does exist ;as HE has revealed himself to me several ways ....(1) NATURE & surroundings ,(2)THE revelation of GOD through CHRIST JESUS & HIS Life,Death &(RESURECTION)...RESURRECTION being the key element in human terms....
(3)The gift of GOD & HIS understanding which I have,& THAT, the faith to believe COMES from somewhere BESIDE myself ,for I witnessed a HEART or CORE change within myself, when I accepted HIS terms of SALVATION...I cannot deny what testimony HE has imparted to me & I cannot deny MY own experience & experiences of others that are similar to mine in this REALM....
(4) HE has directed my thoughts & actions to be someone, I ,in myself am not...HE has apparently ,by deed & actions changed my heart as HE said HE would...HE & I cannot deny those facts & testiment...Therefore I Within myself must conclude that GOD does exist per my life story & predestination set in motion by a force beyond MY control ....That force, or SPIRIT, as most refer to; is indwelt & locked, sealed my fate ...
I no longer am my own self ...I have been bought with a price & am sealed to that which I believe,AS told,is: MY ETERNAL LIFE....CHRIST in ME is ETERNAL LIFE .HE & I shall go on together after this natural death...HE said it I didn't ...I believe HIM for it ....
- nobody October 1, 2008 8:47AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The artist behind the art around us
Everywhere in nature, in flowers, in trees, in leaves, in animals, in mountains, and in women is beauty. Is it just that it has become beauty because we have been around it so long? or is there a common brush stroke, a style. Like that that can distinguish a Monet from a Rembrandt. There is a common brush stroke, a golden ratio, a golden curve, the fibonacci series that is repeated throughout nature, and is present in all things we preceive as beauty. There is no survival reason for it, no reason for it to have evolved. It is art for the sake of art, and the artist is God. To look around you and not see the hand of the artist is the same as assuming the Mona Lisa was created by accident when a house painter was cleaning his brushes on some canvas.
Beauty in nature is what has instilled in man a sense of God even in times and places where there was no religion, or writing, or even language. Go to Yosemite, look around and think which is more outragous, that it is all accident or art created by an artist.
- Russell
October 11, 2008 8:04PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
I feel sorry for all the people who believe God does not exist.
Reason is the enemy of faith.
"Faith is not an emotion. It is objective trust placed in a very real God."
"Don't worry about proving God's existence, because no one can disprove it."
"If you"re wondering how God speaks, commands, and leads-read the Bible."
Nature itself testifies of God existence and so does your conscience. People who refuse to retain God in their knowledge it is because they don't want to change.
- Tamara
October 13, 2008 11:23AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Believing in Someone!
Isn't it amazing that Mankind still debates the existence of God?
Man isn't sure that he believes in God,...yet all the while God still believes in Man, and extends His hand in creation of the foundation for reconciliation and the offer is still open while Man breathes.
Hebrews 11:1 offers us confidence that even as God believes in His own existence and the existence of Man, Man has the opportunity to believe in God with confidence.
The LORD has apparently never seen the NEED to prove his existence because He doesn't need it! He KNOWS He exists!
On the other hand, Man HAS apparently often questioned his own existence, ergo a statement of belief in Man's own existence was necessary to be codified, "I think! Therefore, I am!"
If Man who is often agnostic about his own existence can't use the Five Senses to verify this simple premise, why then does Man thinks that God can trust Man with greater knowledge of God's existence?
If man questions what he CAN see, and demands that God show himself in order to make Man believe, how then is Man really going to believe (should God chose to "jump through that hoop") when he already questions the SEEN?
With all due respects, Man is a religious being! Belief toward God or Belief away from God is a presupposed position held-to religiously that rebels against logic tenaciously!
An atheist may call me illogical, but only if he or she is willingly to wear illogical as a moniker, too! :)
- WinBro777JOT
October 20, 2008 7:55PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The very structure of the Universe
To me, I saw laws of nature and existence all around me. There are physical and mathematical laws the govern the universe and they are in place and absolute. These were in place before we got here. Where did these "intelligent" and "Complex" laws of nature come from? Think about it.
Keith
- Flatbadger
October 27, 2008 3:06PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Broaden your perspective than judge
Well. I consider myself nonreligious, leaning a bit more towards atheism. Yet many unanswered questions persist besides 'Is there a god?'
Is there a goddess? Gods? Or simply a 'divine force' . How much influence do these forces/beings have on our daily life? Do they judge? Or do they exist simply to give humans morality, hope, and of course answers to the unknown? Endless possibilities and interpretations exist.
So study various religions/philosophies/schools of thought: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Judaism, Shinto, Wicca, Zoroastrianism, Free thought, Druze, Secular humanism, etc whatever.
For example, instead of watching TV, read a religious text you haven't read before. Compare it with other texts. Have fun. Convert to another religion for one day. Create your own cult. Examine each sides' evidence and teachings. Be inquisitive. But try not to religiously offend anyone.
You'll learn a lot and broaden your perspective whether you're atheist or Muslim or Christan or etc.
Openmindness + learning = enlightenment
(BTW Godless is a fiction novel for teens. Its about a agnostic boy named Jason who creates his own religion. It calls for worshiping a water tower. Friends and foes join this cult over time. However, trouble eventually tears Jason's organization apart.
I highly recommend it regardless of one's age because the story illustrates many interesting insights about life. )
- jizu
October 27, 2008 11:55PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
I'm a Deist
I believe in God, but I consider myself a Deist. I think that he gave me the logic and the power of knowledge to question a lot of things such as this subject that is very debatable. I also think that there should be separation between church and state because the idea of America was to have people worshiping what they wanted. I think people have the right to believe what they want, and if you want to be an Athiest it is fine with me.
- EKolacny
November 2, 2008 4:49PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
"Ye shall know them by their fruits..."
Is their a Creator or not? Sometimes I feel we debating vast topics such as this, the first creation and original divine purpose is much like two ants walking a beach arguing how many grains of sand there are and how they got there. They thought the earth was round once you know. All we know by way of science is by experimental. If there was a God, you'd think there'd be a better way. There is. A witness far better than sight. If I may, I'd like to step aside the intellectual bottleneck and offer this simple idea:
You can judge a lifestyle by its effects like you can judge a tree by its good or bad fruit. To believe there is no God is to believe in no afterlife because when brain functions end, thats it. End of story. How utterly pointless would it all be then. Whats the point? There would be none. On the contrary however, if there is God, lets say our Heavenly Father, then there is no end with ceasing of simple brain function. There is much more beyond the veil of our understanding, and we can peak through and know if we are willing to receive it and and act upon it.
Another idea is this: Here I am in this body, there you are in yours. That is no accident. There are trillions of living things on this earth. Plants, Bacteria, Animals, etc. But, here you are as a human being with the capacity to think, reason and act; free will. The apes didn't have that. I've never heard of an ape committing suicide yet Humans do it all the time sadly. I testify that God lives. He is active in our lives and he does manifest himself to us. He has to me and I'm not crazy. There, you have my witness; dont believe just because you haven't had the same, because at some time we all will have that experience and all will know the truth. I dont understand all things but this I know. Heres the words of an ancient prophet, see if this is a good answer for those requesting a sign:
"43 And now Korihor said unto Alma: If thou wilt show me a asign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea, show unto me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words.
"44 But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of aall these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the bearth, and call things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its dmotion, yea, and also all the eplanets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."
You'll be surprised at the answers you can find:
http://www.mormon.org /
- SaintElmosFire
November 2, 2008 9:46PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The question is...
Which is primary? Consciousness or Existence? I submit that consciousness without existence is a contradiction. Without existence, what is there to be conscious of?
- itsmytrain
December 8, 2008 8:19PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
what is sience
we are only human how do we know what sience is. sience could be god working.
- kenn13
December 13, 2008 10:24AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
I don't think so
Come on, do you really think that if there is a god who watches over us, they will just stand by and let us suffer? Yes, I know that some things are our fault, but bad things happen to innocent people. If God is heartless enough to let someone get raped or murdered and not do anything about it, I wouldn't want to worship him anyway.
- madninjamonkey
December 14, 2008 10:14PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Is it an Agrument or a question?
If it is a question ask your self . If it is an argument only time will explain you clearly.
- yogeek
January 10, 2009 12:50AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The existence of GOD
There is something I would like to share with you in relation to the existence of GOD and the validity of the Bible. It is interesting to learn that until today the extinction of dinosaurs is still a big mystery to human race. There are so many theories suggested regarding this mass extinction; such as the climate changes, a big asteroid fell to the Earth, etc. In fact, if we look at the Source of the History itself, we will definitely find the answer to this question. Actually, back then in the time of dinosaur, the whole Earth (without exception) was covered by the cloud (waters) (GENESIS1:7) to protect it from direct exposure or radiation of the Sun. This cloud functioned as a filter and “temperature stabilizer” (like having central air condition in a house) for the Earth. As a result, the whole Earth had the same temperature everywhere (whether in the North Pole, South Pole or the Equator - the temperature were the same). Due to this condition, the vegetation and environment in those days were very different from what it is now. The Land was much larger and bigger than the Sea (not like today) so as to accommodate and support the lives of so many giant creatures like dinosaurs on Earth. The question is, how did they become extinct all of the sudden (not even a single one exists but the bones and skeletons)? If there was a major catastrophe struck the Earth, then how come humankind and small animals could survive? If there was only a certain part of the Earth was hit by a meteorite or an asteroid, then how come “all” the dinosaurs disappeared but not other creatures?
If we look back at the History of the Earth (as told in the Oldest History book, the Bible), there was a certain time when there was a great flood took place on Earth. How could this happen? This could happen because the Dome of the Clouds above the Earth had been torn out and fell down in form of a big rain flooding and submerging all over the Earth (which was in Noah’s time). As a result, the amount of water on the surface of the Earth had increased dramatically and formed what is called the Ocean. From this time on the size of the Water area has become much larger and bigger than the Land area. And at the same time the Earth has become too exposed to the radiation from the Sun which has increased the Earth’s temperature drastically from what it used to be (which has left it without “temperature stabilizer”). From this time on, the temperatures in the North Pole, South Pole and Equator are quite different because they depend on the rotation of the Sun (just like in an air conditioned house when the doors and the windows are wide opened, certain places or rooms in the house have become too hot than the others). The same with the dinosaurs (if any of them survived from the flood), which used to live in a temperate world and environment, suddenly with the climatic changes had become too fragile and died out. Even for us today, with only a slight change in temperature due to the change of the seasons (from warm summer to cold winter) prone to get flu and other types of diseases, not to mention a drastic climatic change for dinosaurs which used to live in a temperate world. Consistent with the History as told in the Bible, only Noah and his family and all the passengers in the Ark were survived to live in the “New” Earth. And for the first time they could see the blue sky right after the Dome of the Clouds had been torn down in form of a big rain which caused the big flood. Before the flood there had never been any rain on Earth because the temperature on Earth was stable and the same everywhere under the Dome of the Cloud. This is proved by the Rainbow which was the first time showing as a sign after the flood. Based on this it confirms that there was no rain before this time because rainbows will only appear as the droplets of water reflecting the light.
Before the big flood took place (when the Dome of the Clouds was still intact), the age of the creatures was longer than today (they could live up to hundreds of years).The ancestors of Noah lived up to hundreds of years (according to the Oldest History book or the Bible).This could happen only because there was no radiation (from the Sun) which has caused aging process.
In conclusion, all these things show to us the validity of what is written in the “Oldest History Book” or the Bible. Even the Earth is round also mentioned in this book (JOB 26:10) far before the Columbus.
- speedy1485
January 21, 2009 8:29AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
I change my vote from "uncommitted" to "no"
As I start my doctoral program in biomathematics, I discover that there is absolutely no room for a deity in the advancement of human intellect, science, and mathematics. There is not enough evidence to suggest a deity, therefore the null hypothesis of there not existing one is not rejected if you follow the laws of statistics properly.
- bagpiper2005
January 25, 2009 11:41PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
lack of proof
there is a lack of valid physical/mathematical proof on both sides, so i think this issue is up to the reader to decide
- Stormwolf
February 12, 2009 8:04PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The burning bush and the "The theory of everything."
When Moses encountered God he had the good sense to ask him his name.
The burning bush replied, "I am who am." God was sending a message through the ages to us today. Today, we are searching for the underlying power that ties everything together, the string theory, the quantum matrix, dark energy, and the "god" particle.
The "dark energy" that we now theorize is the matrix that holds the universe in place is the essence of God's concienceness. God is the matrix. His son is the human embodiment of his power and has existed before creation, though he was born of a young woman 2000 years ago.
A mystery, not so much, quantum theory now tells us that time is not as real as we percieve. We know that matter can exist in many places at once. So then it follows that man and God can do it as well. Therefor God can be born in 3 AD, but have existed at creation. In fact, creation, the birth and death of Christ, and the Revelation can occur simultaneously.
What physcisist are trying to find is the ultimate cause, but the burning bush gave us that answer thousands of years ago in the desert.
It is possible CERN may solve the riddle and yield the "God" particle and in doing so it may also open the door to heaven, ------it may be that in this time, God wants us to find him ------ again!
- SuperDelegate
February 22, 2009 9:58PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
A relevant scientific fact
There is a fact that goes by the name "The First Law of Thermodynamics." While usually presented as a long mathematical equation, it can be briefly summarized: Matter may be converted to energy, and energy can be transformed into matter, but the sum of matter/energy never changes.
The amount of matter/energy in the Universe today is the same as it was at the moment of the big bang! And it all had to be created!
- Murray
March 6, 2009 6:39PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The One Minute Case For Atheism
Atheism is the lack of belief
Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of gods. It is not a belief system or a religion but the denial that supernatural beings exist. There are atheists with all sorts of philosophies and beliefs.
You’re already an atheist
Even if you believe in a god, you probably don’t believe in other gods - Zeus, Osiris, Jupiter, Thor, Allah or Jesus. It’s hypocritical to be skeptical in the holy book, revealed prophets, miracle stories, or holy men of all religions but yours. You are an atheist when it comes to everyone else’s gods, so why give your god a free pass?
The burden of proof is on the theist
Can you prove that an invisible pink elephant is not floating above your head? How does one prove a negative in the absence of evidence? Theists make the exceptional claim that there is a god. That claim requires exceptional proof. The burden of proof is on the theist to prove God exists.
By using reason and science , humans have been expanding our knowledge of the world. Yet religionists continue to claim that there exists a supernatural realm immune to reason. Where is their proof? If a god is needed to create the universe, what created God? Rather than offer proof, mystics have often tried to silence and discredit those who reveal the complexity and majesty of the universe.
There are natural explanations for the universe
What keeps flowers from turning into rocks, or rocks from floating in the sky? It’s not the will of a supernatural deity, but the fact that flowers are not rocks, and gravity keeps things on the ground. The universe operates according to causal principles, without the need for any supernatural power to keep things from getting chaotic.
Morality does not require religion
Religious texts can offer moral guidance, but they are not the source of moral principles. Humans discovered long ago that following certain rules makes life more productive, peaceful, and pleasurable. Morality derives from human nature, not divine guidance. If one wishes to live a virtuous life, it is better to do so because of the earthly rewards of being virtuous rather than the fear of eternal punishment. Unlike a theist, an atheist knows that one life is all he has, and will try to live each day to the fullest.
- HeroicLife
March 31, 2009 2:19PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Explain to me please the burden of proof
And why, precisely, it is on the person proposing the existence of an object. If you propose a pink elephant is floating above my head, it doesn't mean that you must therefore prove it. I can live my life as if there is a floating invisible pink elephant, or I can live my life as if there is no elephant. If you believe all believers in any deities require a change of behavior from the world, then you are mistaken.
You originally defined athiest as "the denial that supernatural beings exist" and went on to posit that since most individuals profess to one single religion and deny all others, they are already atheists. This is inconsistent with your definition. Despite my disbelief in Zeus, or more accurately, my unwillingness to change my behavior to reflect the validity of the assumption that Zeus exists, I still may believe in other deities. Also, you're assuming that every religious person approaches their own belief with a lack of skepticism, uncritically and wholly. This is simply untrue. Look over this site and you'll see examples of people examining the ideas of faith , but still remaining faithful.
From your last post, with the fear of eternal punishment reference, I believe you may have confused "Theist" with "Christian". Please do not equate "Belief in a God" with "Belief in Hell".
- quantummechanik
April 1, 2009 11:33PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Meaningless variety
Take the sweetest, most doting church lady. She feeds the ducks, gives every penny to her fellow humans in need, is always ready to help, has the nicest smile and everybody loves her. If such a lady bears witness of a loving god , you'd almost want to believe her. If she says "god forgives everyone" you nod and know there isn't such a horrendous thing as hell, and you feel safe and comforted and know there is something better after all.
However for every ten sweet church ladies and uncles - I can show you several hundred complete drooling nutjobs, hypocrites, maniacs, racists, ranting sociopaths, populists, demagogues, liars, cheats, swindlers, irredeemable bastards, elitists, political monstrosities, xenophobe reactionaries, wolves in sheeps clothing, pedophyles, predators, thieves, fascists, warmongers, stormcrows, and much much worse.
At some point I have to conclude there is a wide diversity of humanity, and if this testament is any indicator of a all-knowing, merciful, all-powerful deity, the image has become fragmented and is less coherent than the flimsiest of fata morgana. I can not know of this deity through human beings, nor of word of mouth or claimed morality , or pretense, or firm conviction, or force of arguments. None of the above hold promise as would a desert vision of an oasis provide me with any promise or guidance.
In fact, it warns me. The acts of humans, separated from the few church saints that confirm the rule, is that those of god are untrustworthy, deceitful and immoral, by whatever standard I wish to envision. I can see so much possibilities, variants and things in this universe and thejob title of "god" loses all meaning in a greater context. Every glance on the universe makes me pause more, wonder more. There is mystery, there is a lot unknown - but the parochial, contrived monstrosity is only a testament to humanities fear and groveling submission to dictators and tyrants, and not to the faerie tale reality of a benevolent god.
It is saddening then, that so many people stay mired in this paradigm and with all their faculties cannot escape the clutches of what almost certainly is a deranged misconception of historic proportions. As I see human beings persist in their groveling for a menacing fata morgana, I feel nothing less than pity and disgust.
These are all nothing but infants terrified that daddy is going to hit them and send them to the cellar for having been bad.
- Khannea Suntzu
April 2, 2009 9:20AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Could it follow, then
That while there are a few thoughtful, interesting atheists, the majority are either rabid anti- religious zealots or people too ashamed to take responsibility for their actions in a supernatural sense?
A) Theorizing on the motivations of peoples you don't understand is, at best, pointless and at worst offensively stereotypical, and
B) The existence of any sort of divine or supernatural being cannot be based, at all, on the existence or behaviors of their adherents.
Fascists tend to be horrible people. It does not follow that fascism does not exist.
- quantummechanik
April 2, 2009 1:41PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
No it would not.
A reply to your objection can be found here:
http://khanneasunztu.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/reply-to-someone-who-believes-in-something /
Guess I had some extra time on my hands :)
(I exceeded the word count for a reply)
- Khannea Suntzu
April 4, 2009 1:32AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
And another thing
Quit confusing Christians and Muslims with everyone who believes in God. It's offensive.
- quantummechanik
April 4, 2009 2:38PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Merciful
Showing me "several hundred complete drooling nutjobs, hypocrites, maniacs, racists, ranting sociopaths, populists, demagogues, liars, cheats, swindlers, irredeemable bastards, elitists, political monstrosities, xenophobe reactionaries, wolves in sheeps clothing, pedophyles, predators, thieves, fascists, warmongers, stormcrows, and much much worse" would show the deity is merciful. Sweet church ladies and uncles were probably like one of those at some point.
- Screen Name
April 8, 2009 2:29AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The foundation...
The foundation of this debate is the false premise that God and science are mutually exclusive. They are not. Top scientists such as Einstein, F. Collins, Joel Primack, and others all, at least, believe in A supreme being, creator, etc. Many would argue that science is the ongoing discovery of God Himself.
The statement "There is no God" is scientifically reckless. It is a position which can not be supported by process and experiment. However, the inverse is also true.
Logically speaking, it is also unsound. If a human on earth can guarantee that there is no god anywhere in the universe, then they are claiming to be the very definition of god through their argument... an all-knowing being larger than life itself could only make such a claim.
As a scientist, I can not rightfully deny the equal possibility that God exists.
As a human, I choose to believe God exists.
- Rethynk
April 9, 2009 10:34AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
I believe In God... Sort of...
When I think of God, I don't think of an all powerful man up in the heavens. I look at God in a metaphorical sense. I see God as a force, rather than a being. A force that controls all aspects of nature and the universe. We are all part of that force, for it is what gives us our souls. And in this belief I am content in the fact that I can believe in the ways of the Church and science , and find meaning in both their teachings.
- Just That Guy
May 20, 2009 9:23PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Who said God is a man
If people understood what they were reading in the book called, "The Bible", we wouldn't be asking the question "Is there a god "? The Bible says God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Well let's find some truth here. Ever outlines a sentence before? God IS--is what? A Spirit. Now what is a Spirit and why is that word capitolized? The book is putting emphasis on the word "Spirit". Does that say God is a man? No. It says God is a Spirit. What is the definition of the word spirit? It is the thinking, feeling, motivating part of man. Spirits or feelings motivate us to do certain things. Again, the Bible says that "God IS love". God IS--is what? LOVE. Is Love a man or a feeling? In another verse it reads, GOOD IS GOD. Are we pronouncing that word God correctly? Is it really pronounced G-odd or is that word really GOOD? The Bible is a spiritual book. It's soul purpose to is convict man of his or her wrong doing in life. The Bible also says it IS the Book of LIFE. That is exactly what it is. It is about life itself. Why do people want to prove that there is NO GOD? Whether you atheists believe it or not--I bet you all have the Spirit of Love and Good living inside of you too. And I also bet that everyone of you can find your very own life hidden within the pages of that book called, "The Bible". Just keep reading until you see yourself in the mirror. One day you will be able to relate one of the stories to your life.
- lyntel
May 26, 2009 11:25PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
YES HE LIVES
This is a no brainer,look around can nothing make nothing?
- zman
May 29, 2009 10:37AM
Reply to this Recommend (2)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
sure there is a god
I believe that I am my own god . I choose where I am going and how I get there, and any bumps in the road is nothing more than random events or just plain old life obstacles. Is there a "god"? UMMMM...Maybe, but not in the sense of a life form as we know it and the way the bible portrays god. Personally, my beliefs follow the scientific path.
However, I do not think it is mine or anyone elses place to say there is or isn't. Its all in what you believe. Whether its the bible or scientific, as long as you have a belief that is all that matters. Hold on to what you believe and dont let anyone sway you unless you want to be swayed. To hell with what society thinks or the government or schools, believe what you want to and dont let go.
I have faith; I have faith in human nature.
- rkm
June 3, 2009 12:07PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
There are many gods
too bad for them that they are all false. Have you ever noticed how gods want exactly what thier inventers want?
- oneoldman
June 16, 2009 7:31PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Ahh tribute to one liners
MRBOOK
"No, I say it 'is true' because the evidence strongly suggests that it is true."
What evidence?
"I find it rather interesting that you would name "Debating Design" then go on to talk about the flagellum... when one of the essays in Debating Design demonstrates how that flagellum is 'irreducibly complex'."
Whats your point?
"Yes, but also not very accurate. We do not know how variable gravity can be, it may be that there are only a few possible values for gravity to have. Saying that because we exist gravity must have this value is not a reasonable statement... rather we exist because gravity has that value."
Yes, fantastic so we agree. Gravity is only one of the many examples. And your argument on gravitation is what Collins is saying. Gravity has its exact value, Therefore we exist. Its a measurable parameter.
"I have never been a supporter of the "Rare Earth Hypothesis"
Supporter or not, the evidence is there.
and finally a challenge to you. Tell me what of life's origins? Where and how did life come about?
- rekiser
September 10, 2009 7:04PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
double post?
This appears to be a double post… my reply can be found
http://www.opposingviews.com/comments/evidence--6
- MrBook
September 11, 2009 4:39PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Is there a God? No. But there should be.
My old girlfriend had Dissociative Identity Disorder – multiple personalizes. One of her alters was created from whatever part of the brain controls dreams. Her name was Shy. She remembers a time before she had consciousness, before she could come out and talk. If Freud had been right – Shy would have been pure superego She hardly ever spoke and used to write anything she wanted to say in a little pink notebook. She had beautiful cursive handwriting, and wrote so slowly that it would drive anyone nuts. She had no malice towards anyone, even her rapists and abusers. She was at peace with her small existence, and understood what would happen when her brain would start functioning better and she would die. One night we were having dinner with some friends. Shy was eating with us. We started talking about God. Finally we asked Shy
“Is there a God”
Shy thought carefully for a moment. The table went silent. Finally, she smiled and carefully wrote her answer and showed us her notebook.
No.
Then she thought for another moment, leaned across the table and whispered her first words in months.
“But there should be.”
- JackRKirby
September 20, 2009 1:43PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
mmmm
Question: What created the matter and energy necessary to create the universe.
Basic Fact: "Every cell in plants, animals , and human beings has what is called a "complex metabolic motor". This is the ability of the cell to extract energy from its environment in order to supply energy for the reproduction of the cell and other cell needs. For life to exist, you must have this metabolic motor. But this metabolic motor can only be produced by life." (Dr. Ron Carlson) It's the same for DNA. So...if you believe in Spontaneous Generation aren't you going against the basic rule of biology (Biogenesis - life only arises from life. It does not come from nonliving matter) Or is nitrogen, ammonia, salts, and carbon dioxide living matter?
- Dylandts
October 17, 2009 10:42PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
evolved
"For life to exist, you must have this metabolic motor. But this metabolic motor can only be produced by life." (Dr. Ron Carlson)"
The 'complex metabolic motor' is the end result of 3.5 billion years worth of evolution .
"It's the same for DNA. So...if you believe in Spontaneous Generation aren't you going against the basic rule of biology (Biogenesis - life only arises from life. It does not come from nonliving matter) Or is nitrogen, ammonia, salts, and carbon dioxide living matter?"
Biology dose say that modern life cannot arise from 'non-life' however the same is not true of the oldest forms of life which did arise from self replicating protens.
- MrBook
October 18, 2009 8:16AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Lol
Really that kind contradicts don't you think so? Or are we saying we must ASSUME that by chance this happened. Really to believe biology it involves a lot of assumptions.
- Dylandts
November 6, 2009 6:41PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
contradiction?
I'm not sure I see the contradiction...
We are not saying that 'we assume by chance that this happened'.
What is said is that proto-life emerged from non-living matter, which then evolved into the more complicated life.
The initial reaction did occur, because if it did not we would not be here, but the exact probabilities that the reaction would occur in a given period of time are not yet known.
Biology, like any Scientific field is not something you 'believe in'... it is a series of models that describe observed physical phenomena.
- MrBook
November 6, 2009 7:19PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Lenghty post.
This one is going to be long.
First off. If there was a god who created everything, how would you...
Prove he exists?
Prove that he DOSEN'T exist.
Prove that he pointed at the ground and said "I want a cat there" and there came a cat.
Prove that he didn't make a couple of bacteria and work his way up from there.
Bad things happen because god made a world of order. It may look like chaos but it is an order. And for order to work some things have to happen every once in a while. If you have a large body pulling in on its self your going to have friction. That friction makes heat which melts rock. This rock makes a molten core which causes convection currents which makes; earth quakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.
Does the occurrence of these things prove or disprove god? It does neither.
Some people live in poverty , some suffer and live in pain and death. Does this mean that there is no god, or that if there is that he doesn't care? The bible says that he gave man free agency. If he were to pop down here and say hello to all of us, and help us out of our miseries what would happen to our agency? If he jumped in and made a murder stop, wouldn't he have just over ridden that murder's agency?
If you wanted to know how people to make certain decisions, would you let them know that your there and watching, or would you keep your presence unknown?
Where in the bible does it say that god condemns people to hell? What I read is that people condemn themselves, by not ever going back to god in the first place. As in "I don't belong there, might as well not try" not go back.
Why is there evil if there is a god? Why is there down if there is an up?
eh, I'll post more latter. Its like 3 am here.
- Nivarion
October 22, 2009 3:13AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.