Thoughts on Atheism (and a plea to the religious)

[CliveStaples]

My memory can be verified. I just ate dinner and to prove to myself that I did I can either open the fridge and see that food is gone or regurgitate what I just ate to prove to myself that this memory of eating did actually happen.

How do you know that the fridge didn't start out empty? And that your stomach didn't start with food?

You keep claiming that the evidence doesn't exist. This implies that you do value evidence and I have shared with you some evidence for why the universe isn't a few seconds old.

No, it means that I don't think that what you've given is really evidence for the proposition "The universe wasn't created three seconds ago with the appearance of age".

I think you need to start producing evidence for why the universe can't be more than a minute old.

...uh, what? Why would I have to produce evidence for that? I have never claimed that such evidence exists.

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I think science makes sense on the whole, too. I don't think it conflicts with my religious beliefs. The idea that scientific knowledge is incompatible with religious belief seems unlikely, to me; I know Christian physicists, geneticists, and mathematicians who have no trouble maintaining their religious beliefs in light of their scientific understanding.

Alright, since I can sense you digging for specifics here...

Let's go for the easy one: Creation (as per the christian story)

So God creates the universe in six days, completely eschewing the time we've deduced it actually took everything to form. In addition, it's all jumbled up (plants are invented before light is invented to feed them, etc.) Plenty of people believe this verbatim, and thus we get something like 6,000 years of universal history out of them. Then there are those who try to make it sound feasible. This is where "God's Time" comes in.

"God's Time" (I'm sure you know all this, but I'm setting it up for the sake of the argument) is the idea that chronological discrepancies in the bible can be explained as God having a different way of measuring time than modern man, therefore it's possible for God to have created the universe in six days, but for it still to work with the timeline as we know it. This is also used to explain the incredibly long lives described in the bible (i.e. Abraham lived to be 175). Of course, if you really think about it that's terribly convoluted. By those standards, Abraham lived longer than it took the universe to form, and Jesus was crucified at the tender, prepubescent age of 33. Unless, of course, that "God's Time" actually means nothing, and it's just a way to patch together biblical fallacies so as to look logical. It's just one of those many, many things that stopped making sense once I started thinking for myself.

But of course, the burden of proof isn't on me... *polishes cosmic teapot*

You're assuming that if "day" is used one way in one part, it must be used the same way in every part. This fails to distinguish between different literary styles used in the Bible.