(February 10, 2014 at 7:06 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: You know what I find disturbing about this. It's the fact that the bible gets a fucking halo!

It represents the Holy Spirit pouring out or whatever, illuminating the darkness and despair of the world with the light of God.

Quote:It is, at best, a report of stuff that happened. It's not special of itself.

It's the revelation of the eternal God and creator of the universe to mankind how is that "not special"? Ok so you think it's mythological bullshit based on the desert scribbling of a backwards bronze age people but you can see how it would be special if that's what it was.

Quote:I think bible worship is dangerously close to apostasy.

No-one worships the Bible but you can see how it would be treasured if it is what it claims to be. The Jews keep the five scrolls of the Torah/Pentateuch in a revered special vault in a Synagogue for instance, it's not that they worship the Torah it's just that big of a deal for them.

(February 10, 2014 at 7:54 am)Esquilax Wrote: That's not evidence. It's a story you're telling.

Seems we've come full circle.

(February 1, 2014 at 7:06 am)dsian Wrote: <snip!>

Raises some good point and makes me wonder why atheists reject the fine tuning of the universe. There's even an article by Dr. Kaku on the fine tuning of the universe titled "The Paradox of Multiple Goldilocks Zones or "Did the Universe Know We Were Coming?" on bigthink.

Why did the universe waste so much space with inhospitable to human zones?

I don't think this place is all that hospitable anyway, it's mostly ocean and they're easy to drown in, I have to take measures if I want to venture out into the sun and not suffer melanoma, it rains too much or not enough, why mosquitoes?

(February 10, 2014 at 9:35 am)Marvin Wrote: Why did the universe waste so much space with inhospitable to human zones?

You need all the space and all the physically processes within it to generate planets that are suitable for life to evolve. So nothing is just a waste everything is interconnected as one whole. Life can only exist within a narrow band due to it's structural and physical complexity that requires certain exact physical conditions to maintain.

Quote:I don't think this place is all that hospitable anyway, it's mostly ocean and they're easy to drown in

We came from the ocean originally if you go far enough back, that where life started.

Quote:I have to take measures if I want to venture out into the sun and not suffer melanoma, it rains too much or not enough, why mosquitoes?

Because you adapted to a certain climate and because life generated over time by a natural process influenced by environment and ecology. If there is a niche for something like a mosquito then you will have something like a mosquito.

(February 10, 2014 at 10:11 am)Sword of Christ Wrote:

(February 10, 2014 at 9:35 am)Marvin Wrote: Why did the universe waste so much space with inhospitable to human zones?

You need all the space and all the physically processes within it to generate planets that are suitable for life to evolve. So nothing is just a waste everything is interconnected as one whole. Life can only exist within a narrow band due to it's structural and physical complexity that requires certain exact physical conditions to maintain.

Yes you do, for life to arise naturally. You need a very large and very old universe where improbable things happen all the time, by the very nature of it's size and age. These things are what we would expect to see from a universe where life has arisen naturally. God only needed one planet, he didn't need anything else. Every additional star, every additional planet, is a piece of evidence against the Abrahamic god.

philhellenes Wrote:But for argument's sake let's say god, for his own mysterious reasons, wants it all to run via nuclear fusion and stellar nucleosynthesis in the Sun; and photosynthesis on Earth. He still only need one star and one planet, anything beyond that would be window dressing. In such an empty universe it would indeed seem the Earth was a special place, and the focus of creation; adding tremendous weight to the Earth centered religious beliefs But by that same token, if there were two suns that would bring the Earth centered religions into doubt. That would be doubly true if there were three suns; and for each addition sun after that the doubts grow.

If there were only one world it might be unreasonable to say that life exists on that one world by chance alone. For atheistic ideas to have any support, for it to be true that life arose by pure coincidence, conditions, and elements; there must be more than one sun. More than one roll of the dice. A universe with two suns helps the atheistic argument, but not by much. Three suns would only offer a slight improvement over that. The current estimates (linked to the research in the sidebar) suggest that there are seventy sextillion stars (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) in the observable universe alone; and very good reasons to believe that the actual universe is far, far... far, far, far larger. Seventy sextillion? Each one of these countless chances at life is an argument in favor of atheism; at least in it's opposition to the Earth centered religions of Christianity and Islam.

Quote:You need all the space and all the physically processes within it to generate planets that are suitable for life to evolve. So nothing is just a waste everything is interconnected as one whole. Life can only exist within a narrow band due to it's structural and physical complexity that requires certain exact physical conditions to maintain.

Sounds like an argument against design.

cart.....horse

(February 10, 2014 at 10:48 am)EvolutionKills Wrote: Yes you do, for life to arise naturally. You need a very large and very old universe where improbable things happen all the time

The whole universe is a process that generated the structure and matter required to eventually form life in an orderly sequence or chain of events over time. This only works if the shit was fine tuned out of it right from the very start. God purposefully created the universe and he designed it in such a precise way as to guarantee the eventual natural product of life and the evolution of intelligence and civilization. It actually fits with the Genesis narrative quite well at least in general outline.

Quote:, by the very nature of it's size and age. These things are what we would expect to see from a universe where life has arisen naturally.

No it's what you would expect to see in a universe that was deliberately engineered by a supreme intelligence with a goal in mind. You really think this was non-intentional?

Quote: God only needed one planet, he didn't need anything else.

He created the entire universe as a whole for life and intelligent life and we are among the intelligent forms of life. There will no doubt be countless others. It's not that the universe was created merely for humans unless you want to class all intelligent beings with language and culture and whatever as human.

Quote: Every additional star, every additional planet, is a piece of evidence against the Abrahamic god.

No it just increases the sheer scale of what God created.

Quote:But for argument's sake let's say god, for his own mysterious reasons, wants it all to run via nuclear fusion and stellar nucleosynthesis in the Sun; and photosynthesis on Earth. He still only need one star and one planet, anything beyond that would be window dressing.

He made the whole entire thing with the outcome of producing life such as humanity. He will then reveal himself to his creatures as he sees fit, as happened in our own case.

Quote: In such an empty universe it would indeed seem the Earth was a special place, and the focus of creation; adding tremendous weight to the Earth centered religious beliefs But by that same token, if there were two suns that would bring the Earth centered religions into doubt. That would be doubly true if there were three suns; and for each addition sun after that the doubts grow.

It's unlikely binary or triple star systems would support complex life given the gravitational forces and erratic planetary orbits involved.

Quote:If there were only one world it might be unreasonable to say that life exists on that one world by chance alone. For atheistic ideas to have any support, for it to be true that life arose by pure coincidence, conditions, and elements; there must be more than one sun. More than one roll of the dice. A universe with two suns helps the atheistic argument, but not by much. Three suns would only offer a slight improvement over that. The current estimates (linked to the research in the sidebar) suggest that there are seventy sextillion stars (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) in the observable universe alone; and very good reasons to believe that the actual universe is far, far... far, far, far larger. Seventy sextillion? Each one of these countless chances at life is an argument in favor of atheism;

You're misunderstanding that it is the universe God created, not just the Earth.

Quote:at least in it's opposition to the Earth centered religions of Christianity and Islam.

Back in the day people thought the universe was quite small and the Earth was at the centre of it, but it was the universe as a whole God created. All that has changed is that the universe God created is far bigger than we understood. Also we're not at the physical centre but we can still be the centre of the overall natural process if this was the intention from the start.

Honestly, a lot of this argument seems to stem from some kind of intelligent design theory. Personally, I think that's bullshit. I mean, I'm not going to categorize my intelligence as infinite but I can still see a lot of flaws to our design that I could fix in a second.

1) The universe isn't exactly hospitable to us. The overwhelming majority of it would kill us, instantly. Lack of oxygen, which our bodes are dependent on, would be a quick death. That doesn't even bring up what lack of air pressure, gravity or heat would do. Our bodies ar designed to work with those things and the majority of the universe doesn't have them (or at least it has them in such small amounts that they're worth ignoring). I mean, hell, if I were god, the least I could have done is make us breath hydrogen instead oxygen since that specific atom is a lot more common in the universe.

2) We breath from the same mouth we eat from. That's a damn good way to choke, ain't it? Clearly, an intelligent designer would have been able to get around that little snafu with a seperate hole to breath from.

3) We spend about a third of our lives unconscious. It's hard to be productive or defend ourselves while we're unconscious. Again, were I intelligently designing people, sleep wouldn't be quite so mandatory.

4) We're populating so fast that the world can't sustain us all. Clearly, either we weren't designed to understand this or the world wasn't designed to hold this many people. Either way, it's a failing of any designer.

5) All those viruses, bacteria, fungus, parasites and other poisons...... yeah, we were designed to be killed by those things, sometimes very painfully. I can understand the need for death, but wouldn't it be nice if death from cancer or rabies were less painful and we had just a quick, painless death?

6) Even though the earth is supposedly designed to support us, we can't really live on the great majority of it. The poles are way too cold, the oceans don't work and even on the land, deserts and moutains aren't exactly hospitable to us. There's only really a pretty small sliver of the earth where we could have lived (at least up until the past 100 or so years worth of technology started changing some of that).

7) The end of our digestive tract is right next to our genitals. In case anybody didn't know this, putting an amusement park next to a sewage waste site is a bad idea.

8) Our noses, which tend to drip mucus, they're right over our mouths where we take in food. I can't be the only one who thinks that specific design idea is a little gross, can I?

And that's just scratching the surface. Clearly, any designer has fucked up enough that he doesn't get to call himself all-powerful.

(February 10, 2014 at 11:36 am)Ryantology (╯°◊°)╯︵ ══╬ Wrote: Sounds like an argument against design.

This all has to meticulously set up right from the moment of the creation in order to develop to the complex structure/order that would arrange itself into the form/s we see. Now if you take the human body (including the brain) what you're looking at there is the most complex object in the known universe and it took the universe 13.7 billion years of work to eventually craft this from initial explosion of energy/matter. This require extreme levels of very fine tuning indeed.