I'm just not sure

[Zazzy]

none of this disproves the existence of God.

Agreed! Now you can go home.

* Edit- actually, I'd love to see a debate on religion and evolution between Sword and Grace. C'mon, Sword, it'll be fun, and then you don't have to go home. The rest of us can eat popcorn and watch.

[Sword of Christ]

Agreed! Now you can go home.

* Edit- actually, I'd love to see a debate on religion and evolution between Sword and Grace. C'mon, Sword, it'll be fun, and then you don't have to go home. The rest of us can eat popcorn and watch.

So you have no reason to believe that the universe just exploded out of nothing and arranged itself via precise natural laws into matter and conscious and stuff because it just did and there is no explanation for any of it? Or that we're here for no purpose and when we die we "become nothing"? How about if God created the universe, deliberately created sentient beings made in his image who he has a loving eternal relationship with? What do you do you have against that if it's not a scientific objection?

[Zazzy]

So you have no reason to believe that the universe just exploded out of nothing and arranged itself via precise natural laws into matter and conscious and stuff because it just did and there is no explanation for any of it? Or that we're here for no purpose and when we die we "become nothing"?

And here you go AGAIN telling me what I believe. Why do you do this with every post you make? Shouldn't you maybe ask me what I think before making assumptions?

How about if God created the universe, deliberately created sentient beings made in his image who he has a loving eternal relationship with? What do you do you have against that if it's not a scientific objection?

It's a nice story. It might even be true. I don't care if you believe that or not- I didn't come into a christian house and start telling people what they think or should think.

But it does sound like you think there are scientific objections to your deity. What are those?

[max-greece]

Agreed! Now you can go home.

* Edit- actually, I'd love to see a debate on religion and evolution between Sword and Grace. C'mon, Sword, it'll be fun, and then you don't have to go home. The rest of us can eat popcorn and watch.

So you have no reason to believe that the universe just exploded out of nothing and arranged itself via precise natural laws into matter and conscious and stuff because it just did and there is no explanation for any of it? Or that we're here for no purpose and when we die we "become nothing"? How about if God created the universe, deliberately created sentient beings made in his image who he has a loving eternal relationship with? What do you do you have against that if it's not a scientific objection?

Well you are being a bit selective with the arrangement of the universe. It appears that <1% of the universe is what we can see. About 30% is dark energy and 70% dark matter. Doesn't look very well designed for life to me.

We have no idea how much variation of "natural laws" there could be in our universe based on its structure. We also have no idea whether, in an alternate universe with very different rules, intelligent life of some form could appear.

The probability of a God doing it, for us, seems farcically small.

The universe is 13.72 billion years old, we are 200,000 years old, if that. God sent his son 2,000 years ago. That's a lot of time sitting on his hands doing fuck all - and we know he's not the patient sort from the OT.

At the same time the known universe contains some 10^23 stars divided amongst some 100 billion Galaxies.

He built all that for us? How ego-centric can you be?

Or we could look at the earth itself. 4.5 billion years old. Life has existed for about 4 billion of those. For 3.5 billion years nothing but single celled creatures.

Over the last 500 million years 98% of all the species that have ever lived have gone extinct. There have been 5 great extinction events. We as a species came perilously close to going extinct ourselves about 50-60,000 years ago.

But he did all this for us.....riiiiiiiight.

[Sword of Christ]

And here you go AGAIN telling me what I believe. Why do you do this with every post you make? Shouldn't you maybe ask me what I think before making assumptions?

If you're not a naturalist/materialist then you haven't earned your atheist stripes yet. I think if you want to be a true red blooded atheist you have to do it properly or don't bother doing it at all.

It's a nice story. It might even be true. I don't care if you believe that or not- I didn't come into a christian house and start telling people what they think or should think.

You're calling yourself an atheist but you're not committing yourself what an atheist ought to believe. You may be an agnostic or some kind of a pagan perhaps. But a genuine atheist believes that the material universe is all that exists, it exists eternally and matter/energy in some kind of a combination will "create consciousness" by some kind of yet unexplained process. Naturally if this is the set up then there can be no God, no spirit world, no miracles, no souls, no afterlife or anything of that sort. It is a very firm stance and view of the world there's no messing about with it, you're either in the team or you're not.

But it does sound like you think there are scientific objections to your deity. What are those?

There are objections that atheists think are scientific but I don't think you're an atheist you ought to call yourself something else.

[Zazzy]

And you hit a home run with telling me what I ought to think, what I do think, what I am, what I am not, what I might be, and what team I'm on- in every single sentence of this post. Clearly you're not interested in anything but your own opinion, and you cannot conceive of anything outside of the worldview you already hold. Conclusion: you're only here to judge, preach, and annoy. Good luck with that.

[max-greece]

Just as a matter of interest what does Christ need with a sword anyway?

[downbeatplumb]

So you have no reason to believe that the universe just exploded out of nothing and arranged itself via precise natural laws into matter and conscious and stuff because it just did and there is no explanation for any of it? Or that we're here for no purpose and when we die we "become nothing"? How about if God created the universe, deliberately created sentient beings made in his image who he has a loving eternal relationship with? What do you do you have against that if it's not a scientific objection?

Even if it didn't does not mean god did it.

God is the least likely of the alternative suggestions not the only one.

Steinhardt and Turok—working closely with a few like-minded colleagues—have now developed these insights into a thorough alternative to the prevailing, Genesis-like view of cosmology. According to the Big Bang theory, the whole universe emerged during a single moment some 13.7 billion years ago. In the competing theory, our universe generates and regenerates itself in an endless cycle of creation. The latest version of the cyclic model even matches key pieces of observational evidence supporting the older view.

This is the most detailed challenge yet to the 40-year-old orthodoxy of the Big Bang. Some researchers go further and envision a type of infinite time that plays out not just in this universe but in a multiverse—a multitude of universes, each with its own laws of physics and its own life story. Still others seek to revise the very idea of time, rendering the concept of a “beginning” meaningless.

All of these cosmology heretics agree on one thing: The Big Bang no longer defines the limit of how far the human mind can explore.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/apr/25-...lMFolCsj0s