And it's not just "God" they are claiming;

it's the 7th Avenue Pillar of Fire Repentance Tabernacle of the Western Branch of the Pennsylvania Conclave of the Methodist Witnesses of Jesus Christ Reformer Church god that they are claiming they have proof for.

(October 13, 2017 at 10:23 am)Harry Nevis Wrote:

(October 12, 2017 at 11:25 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Basically, we have order, and there was once chaos (in both the Big Bang model and the God model), but now we have order. If chaos can only breed more chaos, how do we have order? But if we have God, it would make sense that we would have order.

How juvenile.  "God" doesn't make sense in any context.

Please elaborate - does simply bringing up God make me "juvenile"? Is there really no context, PERIOD, in which the existence of God would make sense? Why or why not? I'd love to hear your perspectives and engage in an actual discussion.

---

(October 13, 2017 at 9:29 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

speedyj1992 Wrote:I think you're taking the point I made and making it about something else, because that's not what I'm trying to get at - let's use "Doctor Who" as a springboard to form an example of what I'm trying to get at because of your screenname, and because I'm a nerd and understand things based on nerdy comparisons best because it makes me more engaged (plus, this will be more fun to write this way). 

Your typical DW episode is usually a (clever) variation on the Doctor and his companion (soon going to be "her", and I'm totally down with Jodie Whittaker, even if she's not ginger) coming to a place or time, learning a bit about it, seeing there's something wrong based on what they know, and then trying to save people. The Doctor will often say things such as, "No, this can't have happened like this" because of his extensive knowledge - he doesn't assume that something hasn't or has happened because of how it looks, but based on knowledge. Our knowledge of the universe's complexity seems to increase all the time, for the better in my opinion, and the more complicated it is, the more likely it is that it wasn't by chance. Because all these particles had to form in order for us to get really complex planets and LIFE all on its own, and we just don't se that happening today - a tornado can't form a Boeing 737 by chance even if it went through a bunch of junkyards with all the parts. 

I bolded the parts of your analogy that illustrate its ineptness. The Doctor bases his conclusions, on what he knows, not on appearances. That's the opposite of what you're doing. That chance can't account for complexity is not only an unsupported assertion it's contrary to observation. Chaos is more complex than order, and includes order. Chaos without any order would itself be a form of order that would have to be explained by an outside factor (chaos without any order is too consistent to be completely chaotic).

Life is based on organic chemistry not junk, and organic molecules behave very differently from pieces of junk. One of their defining characteristics is the capacity to spontaneously form complex polymers under certain conditions readily found in nature.

Why were you an atheist, anyway? I'd wager you didn't think your way into that position.

Are you saying you don't think I'd thought my way into atheism or theism? Because I've thought my way in and out of both, and what originally got me away from religion was actually a big lack of understanding the problems of evil and why God doesn't work in certain ways. 

Also, just pointing out that you actually helped to prove my point about how organic and inorganic chemistry are very different from each other. My first question to you is if you believe whether organic life emerged from inorganic matter OR whether you believe it was present from the beginning of the universe - because the first is not possible based on current research and the second is actually not that far from the idea of God existing from the beginning. Second question, if chaos and order have to exist together, where did the order come from?

---

(October 13, 2017 at 4:40 am)pocaracas Wrote:

(October 12, 2017 at 11:25 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Basically, we have order, and there was once chaos (in both the Big Bang model and the God model), but now we have order. If chaos can only breed more chaos, how do we have order? But if we have God, it would make sense that we would have order.

What is chaos?
"
Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focused on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. 'Chaos' is an interdisciplinary theory stating that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, self-organization, and reliance on programming at the initial point known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
"

Do you suppose that our Universe was that sensitive to the initial conditions?
Could it have been any different, if not for the underlying hand of a guiding conscious entity?

If there is one guiding conscious entity, how did that one entity come about? What sort of dimensionality does it have? What sort of matter is it made of?
Are there more than one of it?

If the big bang marks the start of our spacetime, that means that time is meaningless without the big bang. How could an entity exist if no time exists? How could an entity generate a Universe, if no time exists for it to carry out an action?

In our Universe, as far as we can tell, much of the order we perceive comes by due to gravity. Gravity caused proton gas to contract beyond the fusion point thus lighting up the stars. Gravity comes from those protons' mass. Mass comes from energy, Energy comes from the Big Bang. The Big Bang comes from.... no one knows and anyone who claims to know is lying!
The current best guess relies on quantum fluctuations.
And everything works, no god is required to make it work.

Your definition of chaos is very strong, thank you for sharing it. As for how God came about, I just take His answer to Moses when asked His name in Exodus: "I AM WHO I AM." (from Exodus 3:14) God has always existed (and is the only one, also according to many references in the Bible, and it would make sense God created time to cause our existence because God exists outside of time, being omniscient), and I'll get more to how God always existing isn't that farfetched in a moment ...

Current evidence shows that abiogenesis (which is just life emerging from nonorganic matter) is impossible, so either life had to exist organically from the beginning or God existed from the beginning, unless we find something that suggests abiogenesis actually could've happened (the research on this is actually pretty interesting, you should look into Robert Hoyle and what his research, flawed as it was, looked at regarding experiments to generate proteins for DNA molecules from nothing). Either way, something had to exist from the beginning, and beleiving in

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote:

(October 13, 2017 at 10:23 am)Harry Nevis Wrote: How juvenile.  "God" doesn't make sense in any context.

Please elaborate - does simply bringing up God make me "juvenile"? Is there really no context, PERIOD, in which the existence of God would make sense? Why or why not? I'd love to hear your perspectives and engage in an actual discussion.

---

Because you act like it all so simple and obvious.  There is no reason for a god to even enter the discussion.  It's just a feel-good response to shit you don't understand.

@Speedy
You're clearly working off a novel definition of the word sense.  Perhaps you should tell your god that his creative act was impossible?

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Are you saying you don't think I'd thought my way into atheism or theism? Because I've thought my way in and out of both, and what originally got me away from religion was actually a big lack of understanding the problems of evil and why God doesn't work in certain ways. 

So you became an atheist because you didn't like the way god works?  That's not atheism.

---

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Your definition of chaos is very strong, thank you for sharing it. As for how God came about, I just take His answer to Moses when asked His name in Exodus: "I AM WHO I AM." (from Exodus 3:14) God has always existed (and is the only one, also according to many references in the Bible, and it would make sense God created time to cause our existence because God exists outside of time, being omniscient), and I'll get more to how God always existing isn't that farfetched in a moment ...

Current evidence shows that abiogenesis (which is just life emerging from nonorganic matter) is impossible, so either life had to exist organically from the beginning or God existed from the beginning, unless we find something that suggests abiogenesis actually could've happened (the research on this is actually pretty interesting, you should look into Robert Hoyle and what his research, flawed as it was, looked at regarding experiments to generate proteins for DNA molecules from nothing). Either way, something had to exist from the beginning, and beleiving in

So, words from a book of mythology explains how the main character came about.  Wow.

And if it was shown that abiogenesis is possible?  Where does that leave you and your god?  Do you just go and re-interpret everything so it fits nicely again?  No, because your belief in god is not really a belief in god, but a belief in belief.  With it, the hard questions are answered for you, and you don't have to give up or sacrefice anything.  Except your critical thinking skills.  But you also have all sorts of the same ilk ready to stroke you and claim that it's alright.  They're wrong.  YOU'RE the right one.

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote:

(October 13, 2017 at 4:40 am)pocaracas Wrote: What is chaos?
"
Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focused on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. 'Chaos' is an interdisciplinary theory stating that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, self-organization, and reliance on programming at the initial point known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
"

Do you suppose that our Universe was that sensitive to the initial conditions?
Could it have been any different, if not for the underlying hand of a guiding conscious entity?

If there is one guiding conscious entity, how did that one entity come about? What sort of dimensionality does it have? What sort of matter is it made of?
Are there more than one of it?

If the big bang marks the start of our spacetime, that means that time is meaningless without the big bang. How could an entity exist if no time exists? How could an entity generate a Universe, if no time exists for it to carry out an action?

In our Universe, as far as we can tell, much of the order we perceive comes by due to gravity. Gravity caused proton gas to contract beyond the fusion point thus lighting up the stars. Gravity comes from those protons' mass. Mass comes from energy, Energy comes from the Big Bang. The Big Bang comes from.... no one knows and anyone who claims to know is lying!
The current best guess relies on quantum fluctuations.
And everything works, no god is required to make it work.

Your definition of chaos is very strong, thank you for sharing it.

Strong?... nah! Just accurate.
I have come to learn to use words accurately, as much as possible.
Certainly, I'm still to this day guilty of using them inaccurately, when I use them colloquially, but there are some terms in theological discussions that need to be very well defined and agreed upon by both parties, before any discussion can happen.
And I know believers will often employ words with a colloquial meaning... and then twist them to their accurate meaning... and, because of that, I prefer to make things clear at the get go.

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: As for how God came about, I just take His answer to Moses when asked His name in Exodus: "I AM WHO I AM." (from Exodus 3:14) God has always existed (and is the only one, also according to many references in the Bible, and it would make sense God created time to cause our existence because God exists outside of time, being omniscient), and I'll get more to how God always existing isn't that farfetched in a moment ...

Just today, on some other thread, I was telling a guy about this.
Look at the words you used.
"God always existed" - This means that god exists within time. Since the beginning of time.
"God created time" - This means that god performed the action of creation in the absence of time. Think about this. How can any action be carried out in the absence of time?
"God exists outside of time" - How would you know this? All you offered me were some words from a book written by people... and none of those words even address this. Where did this information come from? How can I trust it?

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Current evidence shows that abiogenesis (which is just life emerging from nonorganic matter) is impossible,

What?! what?! impossible?!
Where did you hear that lie?
It is proving to be very difficult to replicate abiogenesis in the lab, but from that to being shown that it's impossible is a big step in misinformation. You should check your sources.

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: so either life had to exist organically from the beginning or God existed from the beginning, unless we find something that suggests abiogenesis actually could've happened (the research on this is actually pretty interesting, you should look into Robert Hoyle and what his research, flawed as it was, looked at regarding experiments to generate proteins for DNA molecules from nothing). Either way, something had to exist from the beginning, and beleiving in

Your premise is wrong, so I don't expect the rest to follow through.
And do look up on actual biologists for this, instead of some astronomer.
"Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth."

Again, check your sources.
Be careful with the terms you use.
Try to find things with the minimal bias possible.

speedyj1992 Wrote:

Mister Agenda Wrote:I bolded the parts of your analogy that illustrate its ineptness. The Doctor bases his conclusions, on what he knows, not on appearances. That's the opposite of what you're doing. That chance can't account for complexity is not only an unsupported assertion it's contrary to observation. Chaos is more complex than order, and includes order. Chaos without any order would itself be a form of order that would have to be explained by an outside factor (chaos without any order is too consistent to be completely chaotic).

Life is based on organic chemistry not junk, and organic molecules behave very differently from pieces of junk. One of their defining characteristics is the capacity to spontaneously form complex polymers under certain conditions readily found in nature.

Why were you an atheist, anyway? I'd wager you didn't think your way into that position.

Are you saying you don't think I'd thought my way into atheism or theism? Because I've thought my way in and out of both, and what originally got me away from religion was actually a big lack of understanding the problems of evil and why God doesn't work in certain ways. 

Also, just pointing out that you actually helped to prove my point about how organic and inorganic chemistry are very different from each other. My first question to you is if you believe whether organic life emerged from inorganic matter OR whether you believe it was present from the beginning of the universe - because the first is not possible based on current research and the second is actually not that far from the idea of God existing from the beginning. Second question, if chaos and order have to exist together, where did the order come from?

So clearly, you weren't an atheist for the same reason most atheists on this forum are: a position that belief should be proportionate to the evidence in its favor. The barbarity carried out by or directed by God in the Old Testament cured me of being a Christian, but it didn't make me an atheist. Skepticism did, and by the time I stopped believing in God, I had already stopped believing in alien visitation, ancient astronauts, Bigfoot, ESP, ghosts, and the Loch Ness monster.

You didn't make a point about how organic and inorganic chemistry are very different from each other. The main difference is that the molecules involved in organic chemistry contain carbon atoms, while those in inorganic chemistry don't. Carbon forms strong attachments and can form a wide variety of combinations that are conducive to forming complex molecules.

To answer your first question, organic life did not arise from inorganic matter. It arose from organic matter. See organic chemistry above. Life as we know it would have been impossible in the early stages of the universe. It was impossible in the earliest stages of the earth's formation, as well. Your assessment of what current research finds impossible is at odds with the opinion of the people actually doing the research, and as I've noted before, you don't seem to have a firm grasp on what's not possible. Hint: improbable and impossible are not synonyms.

As to your second question, as has been already explained by myself and others, chaos necessarily has an orderly component. The existence of order is not the big mystery that you seem to think it is. As to the prevalence of order that may be beyond what would be expected if the universe were solely a chaotic system; gravity accounts for almost all of it. Gravity brings order to the universe, but it's an impersonal force, not a god or God.

(October 18, 2017 at 3:43 pm)Harry Nevis Wrote:

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Please elaborate - does simply bringing up God make me "juvenile"? Is there really no context, PERIOD, in which the existence of God would make sense? Why or why not? I'd love to hear your perspectives and engage in an actual discussion.

---

Because you act like it all so simple and obvious.  There is no reason for a god to even enter the discussion.  It's just a feel-good response to shit you don't understand.

Ok, so it seems like discussion is not something that's particularly intriguing to you - do you mind if I ask you why not? If I made it seem as if this is all obvious, I admit that to be my mistake, and I apologize, because it isn't, and if any believer makes it seem like it is, they're wrong, and I'm sorry that you have to deal with that. But I'd love to hear more about how you got to your perspective on this topic.

---

(October 18, 2017 at 3:45 pm)Harry Nevis Wrote:

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Are you saying you don't think I'd thought my way into atheism or theism? Because I've thought my way in and out of both, and what originally got me away from religion was actually a big lack of understanding the problems of evil and why God doesn't work in certain ways. 

So you became an atheist because you didn't like the way god works?  That's not atheism.

---

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Your definition of chaos is very strong, thank you for sharing it. As for how God came about, I just take His answer to Moses when asked His name in Exodus: "I AM WHO I AM." (from Exodus 3:14) God has always existed (and is the only one, also according to many references in the Bible, and it would make sense God created time to cause our existence because God exists outside of time, being omniscient), and I'll get more to how God always existing isn't that farfetched in a moment ...

Current evidence shows that abiogenesis (which is just life emerging from nonorganic matter) is impossible, so either life had to exist organically from the beginning or God existed from the beginning, unless we find something that suggests abiogenesis actually could've happened (the research on this is actually pretty interesting, you should look into Robert Hoyle and what his research, flawed as it was, looked at regarding experiments to generate proteins for DNA molecules from nothing). Either way, something had to exist from the beginning, and beleiving in

So, words from a book of mythology explains how the main character came about.  Wow.

And if it was shown that abiogenesis is possible?  Where does that leave you and your god?  Do you just go and re-interpret everything so it fits nicely again?  No, because your belief in god is not really a belief in god, but a belief in belief.  With it, the hard questions are answered for you, and you don't have to give up or sacrefice anything.  Except your critical thinking skills.  But you also have all sorts of the same ilk ready to stroke you and claim that it's alright.  They're wrong.  YOU'RE the right one.

Well, you're talking about a "what-if" situation here, and while it is an intriguing question, I don't think it's really worth indulging. I think we could have the most productive conversation by focusing on what we currently have access to in terms of information.

---

(October 18, 2017 at 7:31 pm)pocaracas Wrote:

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Your definition of chaos is very strong, thank you for sharing it.

Strong?... nah! Just accurate.
I have come to learn to use words accurately, as much as possible.
Certainly, I'm still to this day guilty of using them inaccurately, when I use them colloquially, but there are some terms in theological discussions that need to be very well defined and agreed upon by both parties, before any discussion can happen.
And I know believers will often employ words with a colloquial meaning... and then twist them to their accurate meaning... and, because of that, I prefer to make things clear at the get go.

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: As for how God came about, I just take His answer to Moses when asked His name in Exodus: "I AM WHO I AM." (from Exodus 3:14) God has always existed (and is the only one, also according to many references in the Bible, and it would make sense God created time to cause our existence because God exists outside of time, being omniscient), and I'll get more to how God always existing isn't that farfetched in a moment ...

Just today, on some other thread, I was telling a guy about this.
Look at the words you used.
"God always existed"  - This means that god exists within time. Since the beginning of time.
"God created time"  - This means that god performed the action of creation in the absence of time. Think about this. How can any action be carried out in the absence of time?
"God exists outside of time" - How would you know this? All you offered me were some words from a book written by people... and none of those words even address this. Where did this information come from? How can I trust it?

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: Current evidence shows that abiogenesis (which is just life emerging from nonorganic matter) is impossible,

What?! what?! impossible?!
Where did you hear that lie?
It is proving to be very difficult to replicate abiogenesis in the lab, but from that to being shown that it's impossible is a big step in misinformation. You should check your sources.

(October 18, 2017 at 2:52 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: so either life had to exist organically from the beginning or God existed from the beginning, unless we find something that suggests abiogenesis actually could've happened (the research on this is actually pretty interesting, you should look into Robert Hoyle and what his research, flawed as it was, looked at regarding experiments to generate proteins for DNA molecules from nothing). Either way, something had to exist from the beginning, and beleiving in

Your premise is wrong, so I don't expect the rest to follow through.
And do look up on actual biologists for this, instead of some astronomer.
"Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth."

Again, check your sources.
Be careful with the terms you use.
Try to find things with the minimal bias possible.

1) Agreed, making terms clear from the get-go seems to be best. I appreciate your take on this.
2) You're right, believers can really twist things around, but so do atheists. This is not a believer vs. non-believer issue, this is a human issue, and I try not to be guilty of this, but I fall short, as we all do. So, I'm going to try and encourage question-asking and avoiding finger-pointing. 
3) Look up "Bible verses God omniscient" because that answers your questions on Bible verses that get at the idea that God has to exist out of time. If God is sovereign over everything (you can look up verses on this too), then He must be sovereign over time, and if time is a creation, God created time and created from there within time. God exists in AND out of time all at once. A very odd concept in a lot of ways for us because of how we know our universe and how we experience things. I'm not posting the links here because I don't have enough posts to put up links. 
4) Science is defined as that which we can KNOW based on observation and experimentation. I can't find any research that shows that abiogensis has been observed in nature, and the current research in terms of trying to recreate it in labs hasn't allowed it to happen (look up the experiments on this that Hoyle cited to get his number - even though I admit this was an erroneous number, I still see no way that we could've had a simple organism formed from nothing based on those experiments by even being liberal based on the current realm of possibility). Yes, in theory you could say that it may have happened in ways we don't know about it, but really think about this: you still believe in something that you can't currently prove happened. I do, too, and even though we have different beliefs, we're still not that different, and are equally human. We can both learn from each other and shouldn't be dismissive of each other as such, so I'd love to hear more from you on this.
5) See the parenthetical comment in number 4 to address the Fred Hoyle part - nothing I read about him seemed particularly biased on his part. Granted, I think his numbers were wrong and oversimplifed by miles, so I did my own calculation, if you're interested in hearing more about that. 
6) Hey, thanks for giving me a lot to work with. I appreciate your time on here and hope we can continue to have these discussions. I have a busy week-and-a-half to two weeks coming up, but I'll try and sneak some time here to answer your questions and engage in more discussion with you on this.

---

(October 19, 2017 at 11:10 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:

speedyj1992 Wrote:Are you saying you don't think I'd thought my way into atheism or theism? Because I've thought my way in and out of both, and what originally got me away from religion was actually a big lack of understanding the problems of evil and why God doesn't work in certain ways. 

Also, just pointing out that you actually helped to prove my point about how organic and inorganic chemistry are very different from each other. My first question to you is if you believe whether organic life emerged from inorganic matter OR whether you believe it was present from the beginning of the universe - because the first is not possible based on current research and the second is actually not that far from the idea of God existing from the beginning. Second question, if chaos and order have to exist together, where did the order come from?

So clearly, you weren't an atheist for the same reason most atheists on this forum are: a position that belief should be proportionate to the evidence in its favor. The barbarity carried out by or directed by God in the Old Testament cured me of being a Christian, but it didn't make me an atheist. Skepticism did, and by the time I stopped believing in God, I had already stopped believing in alien visitation, ancient astronauts, Bigfoot, ESP, ghosts, and the Loch Ness monster.

You didn't make a point about how organic and inorganic chemistry are very different from each other. The main difference is that the molecules involved in organic chemistry contain carbon atoms, while those in inorganic chemistry don't. Carbon forms strong attachments and can form a wide variety of combinations that are conducive to forming complex molecules.

To answer your first question, organic life did not arise from inorganic matter. It arose from organic matter. See organic chemistry above. Life as we know it would have been impossible in the early stages of the universe. It was impossible in the earliest stages of the earth's formation, as well. Your assessment of what current research finds impossible is at odds with the opinion of the people actually doing the research, and as I've noted before, you don't seem to have a firm grasp on what's not possible. Hint: improbable and impossible are not synonyms.

As to your second question, as has been already explained by myself and others, chaos necessarily has an orderly component. The existence of order is not the big mystery that you seem to think it is. As to the prevalence of order that may be beyond what would be expected if the universe were solely a chaotic system; gravity accounts for almost all of it. Gravity brings order to the universe, but it's an impersonal force, not a god or God.

No, it seems as if we have some things in common, some not - I was also skeptical, but I mentioned the events in my life that led me to skepticism more as the premise because I believe that was really what was driving my skepticism. I would encourage you to look up the experiments trying to recreate abiogensis and the numbers behind it (I can't post links here yet) - the realm of what we consider possible is 1/10^50 (1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). I can't post links here right now, otherwise I would provide you with some stuff I've read that I and quite a few others have found to be compelling. 

And I don't see gravity as anything other than an impersonal force. But your claim is that we live in a chaos-driven universe, and right now, we have no current explanation with scientific backing behind it as to how organic matter could've come about within that aforementioned realm of possibility (which is highly liberal) - if, as you put it, organic material hasn't been around since the beginning of time, it must've formed somewhere. Where do you believe that happened, and how, since our current attempts at recreating it aren't working and would require something that isn't within the realm of possibility based on current research?

(October 23, 2017 at 4:08 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote:

(October 18, 2017 at 7:31 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Strong?... nah! Just accurate.
I have come to learn to use words accurately, as much as possible.
Certainly, I'm still to this day guilty of using them inaccurately, when I use them colloquially, but there are some terms in theological discussions that need to be very well defined and agreed upon by both parties, before any discussion can happen.
And I know believers will often employ words with a colloquial meaning... and then twist them to their accurate meaning... and, because of that, I prefer to make things clear at the get go.


Just today, on some other thread, I was telling a guy about this.
Look at the words you used.
"God always existed"  - This means that god exists within time. Since the beginning of time.
"God created time"  - This means that god performed the action of creation in the absence of time. Think about this. How can any action be carried out in the absence of time?
"God exists outside of time" - How would you know this? All you offered me were some words from a book written by people... and none of those words even address this. Where did this information come from? How can I trust it?



What?! what?! impossible?!
Where did you hear that lie?
It is proving to be very difficult to replicate abiogenesis in the lab, but from that to being shown that it's impossible is a big step in misinformation. You should check your sources.


Your premise is wrong, so I don't expect the rest to follow through.
And do look up on actual biologists for this, instead of some astronomer.
"Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth."

Again, check your sources.
Be careful with the terms you use.
Try to find things with the minimal bias possible.

1) Agreed, making terms clear from the get-go seems to be best. I appreciate your take on this.
2) You're right, believers can really twist things around, but so do atheists. This is not a believer vs. non-believer issue, this is a human issue, and I try not to be guilty of this, but I fall short, as we all do. So, I'm going to try and encourage question-asking and avoiding finger-pointing. 

True, true.... however, on this forum, I see that behavior more from believers than the non-believers...

(October 23, 2017 at 4:08 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: 3) Look up "Bible verses God omniscient" because that answers your questions on Bible verses that get at the idea that God has to exist out of time. If God is sovereign over everything (you can look up verses on this too), then He must be sovereign over time, and if time is a creation, God created time and created from there within time. God exists in AND out of time all at once. A very odd concept in a lot of ways for us because of how we know our universe and how we experience things. I'm not posting the links here because I don't have enough posts to put up links. 

I don't remember asking for bible verses... but there you go:
https://www.allaboutgod.com/god-is-omniscient-faq.htm

I don't particularly care what people from 2~2.5 k-years ago wrote about a god. It doesn't make it any more true than you writing about it.
True, as in accurately representing reality.
Reality, as in what is actually there.


How can a creative act happen in the absence of time?
How would you know that god is "outside of time"? Is this a term coined roughly when science posited that time and space both started at the big bang? I noticed you didn't say that there are bible verses about this detail... how could there be? those ancient people didn't know of the big bang.

(October 23, 2017 at 4:08 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: 4) Science is defined as that which we can KNOW based on observation and experimentation. I can't find any research that shows that abiogensis has been observed in nature, and the current research in terms of trying to recreate it in labs hasn't allowed it to happen (look up the experiments on this that Hoyle cited to get his number - even though I admit this was an erroneous number, I still see no way that we could've had a simple organism formed from nothing based on those experiments by even being liberal based on the current realm of possibility). Yes, in theory you could say that it may have happened in ways we don't know about it, but really think about this: you still believe in something that you can't currently prove happened. I do, too, and even though we have different beliefs, we're still not that different, and are equally human. We can both learn from each other and shouldn't be dismissive of each other as such, so I'd love to hear more from you on this.

The observation is:
1 - very very very old rock looks like just rock.
2 - Not so very very very old rock shows patterns similar to those left by present day bacteria.
3 - Only very very old rock shows what we describe as fossilized animals with hard shells
4 - animals with skeletons
5 - rock with very very very ancient people
etc

Something happened between 1 and 2. We can assume magic happened and be done with it. Or we can NOT assume magic and look for the conditions that would yield 2.
Sadly, those have been elusive to re-create.
But much has been done: Self-assembly of proteins from amino-acids, generation of amino acid chains from basic organic compounds, based on abundant molecules on the Earth's crust: Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon and Hydrogen... have been demonstrated to be possible and replicable.
I don't know why you insist on bringing Hoyle to the table... Why don't you peek into what was actually done?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%...ed_studies

So, given that much progress has been made towards the demonstration of a mechanism by which life can be achieved without magic, why do you pretend that none of that matters and decide that magic did it? Why do you hold that opinion in so high regard that a natural mechanism for the appearance of life on Earth has about equal probability of being true, in your mind?

What happened in your life that made you consider magic as equally probable as nature?

(October 23, 2017 at 4:08 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: 5) See the parenthetical comment in number 4 to address the Fred Hoyle part - nothing I read about him seemed particularly biased on his part. Granted, I think his numbers were wrong and oversimplifed by miles, so I did my own calculation, if you're interested in hearing more about that. 

Honestly, I never read anything by the man.
Just going by the description on the wiki... if he's an astronomer by training, that doesn't give him any authority on biology.
And, if his conclusions are what you say, then very likely something went terribly wrong in his "calculations"... and he saw what he wanted to see... god. That's bias, right there!

Feel free to enlighten me on the matter, though.... after hearing about how the moon's precession proves that the Earth can't be older than 1 billion years, you can tell I'm all for hearing about pseudo-science!

(October 23, 2017 at 4:08 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote: 6) Hey, thanks for giving me a lot to work with. I appreciate your time on here and hope we can continue to have these discussions. I have a busy week-and-a-half to two weeks coming up, but I'll try and sneak some time here to answer your questions and engage in more discussion with you on this.

Cheers and come again soon!
Best of luck with all your endeavors!

speedyj1992 Wrote:No, it seems as if we have some things in common, some not - I was also skeptical, but I mentioned the events in my life that led me to skepticism more as the premise because I believe that was really what was driving my skepticism. I would encourage you to look up the experiments trying to recreate abiogensis and the numbers behind it (I can't post links here yet) - the realm of what we consider possible is 1/10^50 (1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). I can't post links here right now, otherwise I would provide you with some stuff I've read that I and quite a few others have found to be compelling.

When you calculated the odds, did you take into account the number of opportunities? If I enter a lottery with the odds of 1 in a million, on average I'll win once for every million tickets I buy. If I buy a million tickets, I'm almost certain to win...if the people running the lottery are smart, the ticket price will be over a dollar if the prize is a million dollars.

After it became possible for life as we know it to exist on Earth towards the end of the Hadean eon. Oceans formed about 4.4 billion years ago, the earliest known life forms detected (there are contenders for earlier) existed about 3.48 billion years ago. So several hundred million years after the oceans formed, we get life. Assuming the odds you give are calculated correctly, how many opportunities do you suppose there were, around the world, over several hundred million years, for it to occur. It could easily have been a billion per day; or a trillion per day, or more. Those 50 zeroes don't mean anything if you don't know the number of opportunities there were for it to happen.

As far as experiments go, spontaneous generation of RNA chains of up to 120 nucleotides has been observed in water without enzymes or inorganic catalysts. What are the odds if you start from the knowledge that RNA chains up to 120 nucleotides long are already present?

speedyj1992 Wrote:And I don't see gravity as anything other than an impersonal force. But your claim is that we live in a chaos-driven universe, and right now, we have no current explanation with scientific backing behind it as to how organic matter could've come about within that aforementioned realm of possibility (which is highly liberal) - if, as you put it, organic material hasn't been around since the beginning of time, it must've formed somewhere. Where do you believe that happened, and how, since our current attempts at recreating it aren't working and would require something that isn't within the realm of possibility based on current research?

Repeating the same assertion over and over doesn't make it truer. There is no shortage of natural explanations for abiogenesis, just a shortage of a way to determine which particular explanation is most likely given that the evidence is nearly 4 billion years old, and therefor scarce. We may never know with certainty which abiogenesis scenario is correct, or if it's one we haven't yet thought of. But a requirement of an abiogenesis hypothesis is that it be possible.

I certainly did not 'put it' that organic matter has been around since the beginning of time. Where did you get that idea? Search 'timeline of the universe' on Wikipedia if you want to know when and where various types of matter came into being. The short version is that carbon is formed by the collision of three helium nuclei in the cores of large stars, distributed when they explode. Star formation started occurring about 560 million years after the Initial Expansion, and organic matter (molecules containing carbon) would have existed thereafter.