What Is The Point Of Prayer?

[Sword of Christ]

Because it didn't. Things ended up this way, and not some other way.

You would be an easy person to set-up in some kind of a gambling card game if you can believe in coincidences of this sheer magnitude. You would even think to ask how you lost 100 times in a row to the same set of cards from a shuffled pack. You would just think it's a chance coincidence and "Happened that way and not some other way".

The fact that it could have ended up differently in no way makes the current state of things miraculous, any more than the fact that a light switch has an off position makes a turned on light a sublime miracle.

God or an intelligent creator would be the relatively mundane explanation when you're faced with something on this scale. Either it was purpose made this way for a reason or it was some kind of chance byproduct. Scientifically speaking a view of the universe that was purpose made with an eventual outcome in mind makes perfect logical sense. This would be the nature of the universe we can see and understand. It could have just been some kind of nonsensical chaos we eventually emerged from. Rather than a finely structured order and a sequence of a chain of events. Again this isn't one of those "if you believe in it hard enough it just might be true" things it's based on what you can actually see and understand. Your scientific evidence for the existence of God is there and it's as good as it could possibly be.

For all we know, the laws of physics could just be an inherent property of the universe, a cascade of interlocking consequences that, while very complex, merely happened one after the other in a sequence we haven't yet fully unraveled.

If anything in the laws of physics that lead up to the cosmological formation of the universe and life in the sequence was 0.0000000001% out of it's perfect balance something would still happen but stars, planets, galaxies and life would be the end the result. We can run computer simulations of this now. The level of fine tuning we're talking about here is obscene, if this was put together by coincidence without a purpose in mind this would actually be far more miraculous than God. Do you have any idea how incredible that would be?

The best we can say is "we don't know yet."

You can speak for yourself, we have known for thousands of years. If you're planning on proving God through science, this is how you prove God with science. You point out all the details of what we know and you draw the only real conclusion it would be rational to make when faced with such overwhelming odds.

But you're making a knowledge claim about what did happen

Well yes, unless you have a better explanation of how a universe purpose made for life can be, well purpose made for life? You need an intelligence to do this not a blind random force. People understood this thousands of years ago and we ought to understand it all the more. The evidence merely heaped itself up.

and you need to prove that.

That's what I think I'm doing, how much proof would you need? There is vast vast amounts of evidence to suggest a purposeful origin of the universe. At this stage we ought to be debating God nature not his existence.

Science not having an answer yet doesn't make god the correct answer

Science points toward God, that's the answer science is giving you.

nor even the most likely one. Evidence will do that, one way or the other.

The evidence is right there in plain sight, I've been pointing it out to you, it's right there.

You can't say that, because you don't know the full range of other possible universes,

This may be the only universe that exists for all we know. If there are other universes they could all be made by God and all be perfectly balanced for life if that's what they're intended to do.

nor the full range of possible life.

This is the only universe in which the formation of intelligent organic (or silicon based possibly) can exist. Unless you want to argue the existence of a fundamentally different kind of reality beyond this universe? If you want to be an atheist you may want to avoid claiming that there is anything like that, because that would be a supernatural realm. Do you know the kind of possibilities a supernatural realm would give you?

Sure, life might not have arisen as we know it, but that doesn't mean there's only one combination of physical laws that can ever lead to life.

So you're saying in other dimensions of reality there can be beings such as say angels? Something entirely different to what we know in this universe? But if you want a universe for complex biological life it has to be this one there isn't an alternative.

Unless you're claiming absolute knowledge on this point?

99.9~% certainty of Gods existence in general. It does drop a little when you get into the specifics of what we know about this God as some of that is taken on faith rather than what can be figured out by observation and deduction. No doubt I'm going to be wrong about a few things, but not as wrong as you're going to be.

We don't believe that. Do you understand the difference between the statements "I don't know the answer, but I don't believe yours just yet," and "You're wrong, and the opposite of what you believe must be true?" Because the atheist position is the former, while you're making the common theist mistake of assuming our dissent means the latter.

You would have to believe this if you're basing your view of the universe purely on naturalism and physical laws. It isn't something that would be optional as a belief it would be a fact given what you assume to be true. Unless you want to say God exists?

Then why did you intimate that there wasn't sufficient proof to believe it, complete with strawmen?

I didn't.

Sure, I guess, if you've just gotta have a binary directed/chance dichotomy. But you understand that the chances of it happening were one hundred percent, right? I mean, it did happen.

But look at the way it did actually form, look at everything that was involved, look at the sheer intricacy of the entire thing. That's not blind coincidence, you're having a laugh.

You can't make a claim on probabilities here, because you can't possibly have enough data.

B-b-b-but *is aghast* there is masses masses of data my God, just, argh! Look at the formation of all this.



[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Earth's_Location_in_the_Universe_SMALLER_(JPEG).jpg[/img]

All this lead to the ultras complexity of organic life. Even a single cell is vastly complex piece of micro-engineering. Yes it was formed by various natural processes, most of which we still have no understanding of at all. We have some idea of how life developed once it was here through natural selection. How the initial genetic changes come about we don't know. If the universe is purpose made for life then evolution has a direction within it toward an eventual goal. On Earth this goal was humanity, therefore God is our creator. He just needed to create the whole thing. If he didn't create the whole thing then suggest what the reasonable alternative is. The burden of proof is if anything on you.

For one, you don't have any other universes to compare it to.

What other universes? Provide evidence that other universe even exist. You may as well say God exists if you're going to make hypothetical claims that are not based on evidence.

For two, even you don't know the process by which the universe began, you just believe in one strongly.

God isn't a process he began the process of the Big Bang that eventually formed and structured our universe. If you have a better idea that makes more sense of this I haven't seen it. If you want to claim God doesn't exist or there no good reason to believe God exists then it falls on you to explain why you think this, and evidence you have to support your claim. The scientific evidence is stacking against your position.

You have a habit of making claims you can't possibly support. My advice is to dial it back a bit.

You're doing this if you claim that God is fictitious or some kind of superstition. Actually no there is strong support from science and the observable universe, coupled with deductive reasoning itself to support the claim that God exists. Far more to this claim than to support your counter claim which is what you're doing.

Again, this is something that needs to be demonstrated, and not asserted. Also, your claim that life progresses toward complexity is completely screwed up by the multiple examples of life evolving toward simplicity, even backward along their evolutionary pathways.

You shot yourself in the foot by claiming anything can go "backward" or revert to a lesser "advanced" form. Though I don't think there are any clear examples of this. Complex structures once formed will remain unless like eyes of a fish a dark cave they atrophy. The direction is general over the planet as a whole. Unless you to say the Carboniferous period was equally in advanced state to the world as it is today? Well no there was a clear level of progress along a trajectory. You can link this in to the formation of the universe as a whole and see the intentional design behind it.

Plasmodium parasites often discard attributes, using evolution to make themselves simpler. And did you know that whales are evolved from early ungulate species, showing a clear reversal as land based animals that went back into the sea, losing their more complex limbs in the process?

A dolphin is far more physically advanced and intelligent an animal in the sea than it ever was on the land so not a great example. Yes it adapted to a new way of life but it didn't become a more primitive form of life. I did mention atrophy but that's not so much a regression as the loss of dead weight. We wouldn't become less advanced if we lost our appendix. Apes when they lost their tails didn't become less advanced they just didn't need tails anymore.

Hell, you have little toes, don't you? Those things are shrinking; in the past they were larger, more complicated, and used to bear weight. So there goes that theory.

Well no not really. Not that this relevant to the universe being purpose made by God to create advanced life on planets such as Earth. This is fully compatible with the Biblical God, at least if you read it figuratively.

And, again, I'm saying that you're overlaying your human ability to recognize patterns on a universe that sometimes has recurring numbers or patterns in it without an inbuilt design. You're saying that this is god at work. How do we prove one or the other?

No when we see mathematical patterns and structure in the universe we are understanding something that is actually there we're not reading something into it. This isn't like the face on Mars.

You have so far provided no evidence beyond pointing to everything and saying that all this is so complex, it must have been designed, without giving any reason for one to think that natural things can't also be complex. In essence, your entire position is the classic argument from ignorance: "This seems complicated to me, I can't think of a better way for all this to have developed, and therefore it must have been designed."

Your argument is an argument from "not wanting something to be true" as you haven't explained what the alternative is. This is just a belief or do you have a rational/scientific reason for this belief that God isn't the likely or reasonable answer?

And even taking that premise as true, you haven't advanced one step toward showing that this designer is your god.

There are other arguments in favor of Christianity such as the resurrection, the empty tomb, the advancement we have seen in our moral standards through Christianity. But first we need to establish that God exists and made the universe specifically for life and civilization. This is what the Bible claims is true and this is what science and deductive reason appears to support. You begin with the basics and build upward. You don't start with the Bible then try to fit the universe around it as Young Earthers would do. You don't necessarily start with a naturalist/materialist purposeless assumption either. You start with an open mind and go to where the evidence itself will take you.

It doesn't matter what you think, it matters what you can demonstrate, and pointing at things in the universe and going "See?! See?!" doesn't count as a demonstration.

The ball is in your court to explain why the universe exists at all and why it is as complexly structured as it is without being intentionally this way. If it was intentional then it would have to have been created by God or some other supreme intelligence, who would essentially be still be God.

You haven't given any evidence to support your suggestion, and so at the moment it absolutely is an issue of you really wanting it to be true.

Scientific evidence (masses of it) + deductive reasoning + an open mind= God

I don't care. Darwin can be wrong too. He's not an atheist prophet, you know; he's just a guy who had a good idea once. Yeah, he was smart, but arguments from authority won't touch me, here.

So who was it who had the better idea since Darwin that would rule out Gods involvement/purposeful design?

Seriously doesn't matter.

It does if you want to state that evolution demonstrates that our creation was not an intentional outcome. Who's to say it wasn't? There was clearly some kind of progress series of advancements on a global scale over time. Not just individual organisms but across whole ecosystems. All of this could have been intentional from the moment of the BB. This was the way God created us, and it makes perfectly good sense. More sense than the alternative you're (not) suggesting.

Then I would invite you to show me how the evidence I posted necessarily leads exclusively to the christian god. Because evidence cannot be accurately used to support two different positions, so one of us is wrong, here, and I'd like to know who it is.

It doesn't have to be the Christian God, there are other very good arguments for that. If you want to believe in the Muslim God you can, but Mohammed had a 9 year old wife and flew to heaven on a horse with wings. Not really my cup of tea but if you like that.

Oh also, I should mention, the big bang and god aren't mutually exclusive propositions either. You just got my dander up by talking as though there was no evidence for the big bang but there was evidence for god, without presenting any. [quote]

What would be "evidence for God" you have to define what kind of evidence you're looking for to begin with. People can give you a ton of evidence for God but it isn't necessarily the evidence you want. But this would be the scientific evidence for God we're looking at here.


[quote] I do believe it, because every time we've encountered consciousness ever, it has been the product of a brain. We've never seen anything different, and without evidence I simply have no reason to believe there's anything more.

How do you know its a product of the brain? Do you have evidence for this claim or are you just asserting it as fact?

Humanity has also invested a lot of time in war, and masturbation, and the production of cigarettes. Sociological phenomenon don't require evolutionary purposes, because the mind causing them to occur isn't bound to evolution, nor is it entirely rational. It's made up of a patchwork of heuristics and instinctual concepts that don't mesh perfectly well together.

All of these are easily explainable/practical behaviors. If a race of atheist aliens who never had contact with religion visited Earth what would they make of us? How would they explain what we're doing?

Which gets us to "people appeal to higher powers instinctively," which does have an evolutionary benefit: kids need to believe what their parents- their higher power- says without necessarily understanding the motives behind it, in order to survive. Appeals to authorities larger than us is built in as a survival mechanism.

So we recognize that there is a chain of command/order of being and at the very top of the ladder there is the ultimate form of being that conceivably could exist and that being is God? And it is to this power that our future survival into eternity will depend?