(May 3, 2010 at 12:13 pm)Watson Wrote: During my change from Atheism to Christianity, I began to notice things that confused me and startled me, that I could not explain from an atheistic, materialistic, or scientific viewpoint. Believe me, I did try to do so. I looked for refutation and explanation, and found none. Only when I applied God to the scenario did things begin to make sense.

I can't understand how things "make sense" to you when you apply "God" to the scenario. To me, it's just the opposite! When you take "God" out of the equation, things make perfect sense!

Why would a "loving, just and all-powerful" deity allow a child to suffer with cancer and die? It makes NO SENSE! But if you remove "God" from the scenario, it makes PERFECT SENSE! Children suffer with cancer and die because a certain percentage of children will die from all sorts of diseases.

Why would a "loving, just and all-powerful" deity allow an earthquake to devestate an area, killing thousands of people and leaving many more homeless? It makes NO SENSE! But if you take "God" out of the scenario, it makes PERFECT SENSE! Earthquakes happen because of the movement of tectonic plates, and these plates have been in motion since the continents were formed.

Why would a "loving, just and all-powerful" deity allow a child to be born with horrible birth defects? It makes NO SENSE! But if you take "God" out of the scenario, it makes PERFECT SENSE! Babies are born with horrible birth defects because a certain percentage of pregnancies will result in children being born with Down's Syndrome, spina bifida, cerbral palsy, etc.....

It is "God" that makes no sense in every case.

(April 30, 2010 at 11:43 am)AngelThMan Wrote: Abiogenesis discredited. 500 years of experiments have failed to produce life out of inanimate matter. Scientists make excuse that the earth would have to be in the same condition as it was billions of years ago for life to be produced. And that’s just what it is. An excuse after so many experiments failed. So where does life comes from if there is no God? Evolution explains the development of life, or how it evolved from point A to point B. It doesn’t explain the origin. How life itself started. Scientists' many attempts recently to synthesize ribonucleotides have failed...

The lack of evidence for abiogenesis is my evidence. And for those of you who start dismissing this as non-evidence, then you need to remember that what I’m presenting is a result of centuries of experiments by scientists. Therefore, it is evidence.

To demonstrate how illogical your position is, all we need to do is simply change the time period. We are in the 16th century. For thousands of years, people have pondered and experimented to try and find an answer to why and how things seem to fall to the ground. Thousands of years of experiments have failed to produce an answer, and so we are left with the guess of Aristotle. There is no possible other answer, since we have been experimenting for so long, and nobody has come up with anything yet.

The lack of evidence for gravity is my evidence. And for those of you who start dismissing this as non-evidence, then you need to remember that what I'm presenting is a result of thousands of years of experiments by scientists. Therefore, it is evidence.

Of course, we don't use this argument anymore. Why? Because several years later, Galileo Galilei solved the problem, and set the stage for Issac Newton, and then for Einstein.

All science starts out as ideas; as mere ideas in someone's head. The more you test those ideas, the more you understand about their veracity. You may test an idea for centuries with no results, but that doesn't mean the idea is wrong; perhaps your method is. Perhaps the idea needs a small refinement to make it work. If everyone took your attitude, we wouldn't have half the things around us that we do today.

Failing to achieve X via method A does not necessarily mean that X is impossible. In the abiogenesis example, lots of amino acids have been formed in the experiments, just not enough to form a living organism. The experiments get better as they are tweaked and refined, but at no point do the scientists throw up their arms and say "well, evidently nothing we do is ever going to work, let's give up". Science learns from mistakes, from bad results, and it improves.

(May 3, 2010 at 1:02 pm)tavarish Wrote:

(May 3, 2010 at 12:33 pm)Watson Wrote: It's my old friend tavarish! YES!

No, not because I lacked an explanation, I had plenty of them actually. But because God and His nature*, as I was coming to understand it, made more sense than any other explanation anyone or anything could offer me.

*Not just goddidit, stop generalizing for the sake of easy contention.

So because it made more sense to you, that made it true?

For me, yes.

Quote:Creationists also make this case - it's harder to study a field and learn about many intricacies of a subject than to just believe a guy talking about a holy book and say Magicmandunit.

It's also easier to say "There is nothing to this world here that I can't study with my human tools and my human mind" than to observe the world and say "Maybe there are things my human mind is just not big enough to comprehend."

Quote:There are lots of unanswered questions in the universe and lots of answers that are difficult and often cold and heartless. This does not make God real.

I agree.

Quote:I can't understand how things "make sense" to you when you apply "God" to the scenario. To me, it's just the opposite! When you take "God" out of the equation, things make perfect sense!

And this, I'm afraid, comes from a very ingrained inability to accept or pin responsibility on yourself or those around you. God is loving and perfect, you don't seem to comprehend this. He created this world and He filled it with His children, and He gave His children options to take. The choices themselves are up to us.

Quote:Why would a "loving, just and all-powerful" deity allow a child to suffer with cancer and die? It makes NO SENSE! But if you remove "God" from the scenario, it makes PERFECT SENSE! Children suffer with cancer and die because a certain percentage of children will die from all sorts of diseases.

A loving diety that created the entire universe? He would know better than you do, actually. He would know what lessons the child could learn from that disease or that problem, and would not interfere when nature took it's natural course and strickened the child. No, God did not 'give' the child cancer, the child was just subjected to natural laws and ended up with cancer. Deal with the cards your dealt.

Quote:Why would a "loving, just and all-powerful" deity allow an earthquake to devestate an area, killing thousands of people and leaving many more homeless? It makes NO SENSE! But if you take "God" out of the scenario, it makes PERFECT SENSE! Earthquakes happen because of the movement of tectonic plates, and these plates have been in motion since the continents were formed.

Again, I know you don't believe, but think about it. If an all-powerful, perfectly loving God existed, He would know better than you. And He would be waiting for those thousands dead with open arms when their mortal bodies are shed and their souls go to Him. It is the sweetest kind of redemption for such a tragic end that I can think of.

As for those homeless? They are lucky they still have a life to live and to breathe, so that they may have the opportunity to enjoy themselves in whatever way possible. You seem to forget there's an entire universe out there away from our societal constructs. Who's to say a man can't leave a disaster area all on his own and find a new home, somewhere far off, more at one with nature?

You know, like Buddha...?

Quote:Why would a "loving, just and all-powerful" deity allow a child to be born with horrible birth defects? It makes NO SENSE! But if you take "God" out of the scenario, it makes PERFECT SENSE! Babies are born with horrible birth defects because a certain percentage of pregnancies will result in children being born with Down's Syndrome, spina bifida, cerbral palsy, etc.....

Again, see the first answer about cancer.

Quote:It is "God" that makes no sense in every case.

I disagree whole-heartedly. It is man and nature which makes no sense sometimes.

Quote:"Maybe there are things my human mind is just not big enough to comprehend."

Your mind, perhaps...but please don't tar the rest of us with the brush of ignorance.

How's that arrogance working out for you, Min? Enjoying life very much, yes?

(May 3, 2010 at 3:10 pm)Watson Wrote: How's that arrogance working out for you, Min? Enjoying life very much, yes?

Yes indeed and not so arrogant as to think I know everything because I read it in a stupid old book.

I've not read very much of the Bible, thank you very much. And I don't think I know everything, I recognize quite wholly I know very little compared to what's out there. But I don't presume that I even can know everything.

(May 3, 2010 at 3:14 pm)Watson Wrote: I've not read very much of the Bible, thank you very much.

Is there another source that claims the Christian god exists? Something not written by those already convinced by the bible itself, I mean. If not, then how can you claim belief when you haven't even read the source material thoroughly? Sounds like make believe to me.

(May 3, 2010 at 3:23 pm)Paul the Human Wrote:

(May 3, 2010 at 3:14 pm)Watson Wrote: I've not read very much of the Bible, thank you very much.

Is there another source that claims the Christian god exists? Something not written by those already convinced by the bible itself, I mean. If not, then how can you claim belief when you haven't even read the source material thoroughly? Sounds like make believe to me.

I believe all religions are correct, to an extent. They all make the attempt at describing the same phenomena. As does Atheism, even, and science too. Some beliefs are simply more or less naive than others, more or less corrupt.

I am Christian out of the multitude of othe religions because, from what I know of it's theology, I have found it is the most far-reaching religion in scope. It does the best job, to me, of describing the pheomena that is this life we live in.

(May 3, 2010 at 3:28 pm)Watson Wrote:

(May 3, 2010 at 3:23 pm)Paul the Human Wrote:

(May 3, 2010 at 3:14 pm)Watson Wrote: I've not read very much of the Bible, thank you very much.

Is there another source that claims the Christian god exists? Something not written by those already convinced by the bible itself, I mean. If not, then how can you claim belief when you haven't even read the source material thoroughly? Sounds like make believe to me.

I believe all religions are correct, to an extent. They all make the attempt at describing the same phenomena. As does Atheism, even, and science too. Some beliefs are simply more or less naive than others, more or less corrupt.

I am Christian out of the multitude of othe religions because, from what I know of it's theology, I have found it is the most far-reaching religion in scope. It does the best job, to me, of describing the pheomena that is this life we live in.

I have something better at describing phenomena - it is called SCIENCE.

It was designed for this.