It really scares me.

[Sword of Christ]

And just how did you (or anyone else) come across all this information, in order to write it down?

There's general revelation this the general stuff you can figure out about the nature of the universe and the general experience of being human and you have special revelation this would be the Bible and the gospels Christ, the writing of St Paul and Church fathers and all that business. You may find this kind of revelation in other religious traditions even though they do tend to disagree on certain major details. This is nothing you can prove with science but why is absolute proof with science a necessary criteria for belief/faith? Who came up with that rule?

How do you know there was an external force that created the universe?

You're saying the universe brought itself into existence from it's own existence? How does that work? What be the reason for all that? How do we come into the picture are we meant to be an accident? An incredible proposition given the level of complexity that went into this entire process and the eventual outcome. What you would in fact have is an agent beyond the physical universe that brought the universe into existence from nothing. This agent we will call God for tradition sake and we're talking of an intelligence that founded a rationally understandable cosmos rather than a random incomprehensible chaos which it otherwise could have been. We can understand it just fine and that's why we have science. And of course rather than be an accident we as part of the universe were deliberately created. Not quite the way as the Bible describes but the general principal still works exactly the same way.

If god is real and it wants me to acknowledge its existence, then it should make it known.

He did that's what the Bible (and other sacred texts perhaps) are. What did you think they were?

Painfully obvious. Instead.... faith is required.

If faith wasn't required you would be forced into a relationship with God that you wouldn't necessarily want. If there is some room for doubt you get to retain your own freewill.

Faith in what you or others tell me.

You can make up your own mind whether you would like to believe or not. It's just an option you have rather than something to be dismissed because Richard Dawkins tells you that you should. Richard Dawkins is not the supreme being he just has his own opinion and that's pretty much it.

No thanks.
I smell snake oil a mile away!

If God does in fact exist and I would say he does then you're the one who has been convinced to buy the snake oil. Someones going to be mistaken, and it could be you why not?

No, there's no evidence.

Plenty of evidence but no guaranteed proof. That's why it's called faith. Though it can still be true even if you don't know 100% that it is. Though if it turns out that atheists are actually right we can say no believer would ever find out that they were wrong.

If there was, you'd have presented it... instead, you ramble on about how I refuse to accept it as evidence.

You will have to define what you mean by evidence as I thought that's what I was doing. I know this isn't proof but no-one is claiming that.

"his very definition"?
Who defined god?

He's the creator of the natural/physical universe and all of space and time itself that's the why he would be God. If he isn't a part of the natural physical universe then he isn't observable and so therefore beyond the scope of what science can possibly observe. No-one defined God the idea is that he exists and actually told us about himself. We don't know he did but that that's the idea.

Then how would anyone know about the guy?

Because you can rationally conclude that the universe must have been created from an initial starting point as all effects have a cause and because you have revelation in scripture where he tells us about himself. You can prove the existence of God with science you can only study what God created with science.

Say, for example a constantly floating rock... generate an hexagonal grid some 1km at the side that covers the whole planet. On each vertex, put a floating rock and keep it there, by magic. Gravity doesn't work on the rock. No other force is acting on it.

Perhaps technologically advanced aliens shot the rock with an anti-graviton beam projector from a cloaked ship in orbit or something. It could be anything that would be causing that to happen so you would still require faith to believe it was anything to do with God and it would not be evidence of anything. Therefore you cannot have scientific proof of God. You can't use the lack of scientific proof for God as an objection against God if you can't have this proof to begin with.

And top it of by appearing to everyone and imparting some of that timeless wisdom, while claiming to be the reason for the floating rocks. Repeat this every few years so you can catch up with everyone.

That could just be an alien like the being from Star Trek V and not really God some kind of impostor so you would still require faith in this being that appeared. If God was to appear as a human being on Earth he would be a little more subtle about it rather than appear and start spouting off. He would partake of the fullness of human life, suffer and die as a human and all that business. The the God who would die for you that's the guy right there.

Would that be too above your definition of god?

He may have had a different and better way of doing things. Either way you would still require faith in the revelation. If some being suddenly appeared and started blasting unbelievers with lightning bolts you have reason to doubt him obvious though his actual existence would be.

Instead... we get a book written by people who may or may not have witnessed extraordinary things, and a lot of hearsay...

You have to read their experience of the divine with an open mind and judge for yourself, bearing in mind that this isn't a literal book of science and history right the way through. If something about it seems right to you on some level then you may be looking at the genuine article rather than some kind of fabrication.

The rational conclusion is: Everywhere we've peeked, we've found nothing but nature.

Everything we can see and detect would become part of the natural universe we understand by default, you can see how that works. That's not exactly a good case against the Creator. What you can do is take what we about the universe through science and try reading between the lines a little. There is a contingent and finely balanced natural order here, there certainly was a process of formation from a starting point in time.

Nature holds some weird stuff, but nothing that can be pinned to any god.

Absolutely and the Bible agrees. There no gods that control the natural world as in ancient Greece only the Creator and his creation, the natural order. Where do you think the natural order came from? Something of this order of complexity and structure?

There are places we haven't peeked yet... there are places we may never be able to peek at...

You can't find something that isn't physically there, God doesn't physically exist.

I will not fill in those places with an imaginary magical entity, just to make my life easier. That's being dishonest.... the very opposite of rational.

God fills everything that exists and you don't see him anywhere because there is nothing to see. But you have to explain why God isn't rational in the great scheme of things, what makes the alternative to God more rational?

freedom of will... oh you...

Without God or a transcendent higher power doesn't that make us organic machines run on evolutionary programming? You can't get any kind of freewill out of that. But denying the existence God you're claiming to not have your own self realized rational mind to begin with so nullifying the point that atheism is the rational proposition. You're only an atheist because of cultural conditioning acting upon your evolutionary pre-wired hardware reacting a certain way and there is nothing else to it if you accept this materialism/physicalism as true.

Oh, you want mental masturbation?
"what can be possible"?!!
I can do that.. -extra-sci-fi is my specialty!
On a 20-D environment, a 5th grade kid decides to draw a 3+1-D picture. It started out as a few dots, very close together, and then BANG! Just let it run and voilá, eventually Earth... eventually humans...eventually gods...oops!

That is more or less what you believe just put in a more colorful way. It's some kind accident and you believe it was some kind of accident for no particularly logical or factual reason. Yes there's evolution but I explained how that could work in the greater scheme of things. It's only the universe itself that had to be deliberately made.

You are so oblivious of the complexity that is neural activity that you can't understand that everything that you think of is generated right there, in your brain.

And the human brain was formed via the physical process of the universe over time from a point of creation right? If you're looking at a process of formation from a point of creation, and you are, then that still works within the context of God as the engineer and architect. Therefore what the Bible describes is still in some way at least 100% valid. Nothing in science can or has discounted it. It may have discounted Zeus but not this.

You're a deterministic machine, with the illusion of free will.

No I'm a creation/creature of God made in his image with a freedom of will that reflects his own and so are you. You may think you're a deterministic machine but this is because you have gone a bit nuts or something. There is no reason to believe such a thing to be true when you have the alternative.

You cannot say that, at any time in your life, you would have made anything different than what you did.

I can because I freewill and personal and moral responsibility given to me by my creator and so have you. You can try and prove me wrong but as far as I can tell you have absolutely nothing.

Or maybe, I can use Universe with a capital U and remove the god non-sense.

The universe is just the universe it isn't God or something to have in place of God. It is a process that God brought into existence for a reason and purpose and we are part of that. If you don't think this true then explain why.

If that god is external to all that, how would you or anyone have come to know about it?

Through general and special revelation.

Ah... how nice it would be to know about other life forms looking up at the stars and wondering if they are alone in this vastness...
Oh, vastness.... you know how close the nearest star is? 4-light years... that's 4 years moving at the speed of light. Now imagine a sphere with that radius. On the inside of that sphere, you have nothing but this tiny dot with water on its surface and life.

There could be trillions of planets just like Earth contained within this universe for all we know. So they're a large distance apart but that may be necessary to keep everything from colliding into everything else. Exceptional design you'll agree.

That's why you hear us say that "man made god".

Nope God made man.

There you go with the fine tuning thing again... Don't. Research into the thing and you'll find there's no fine tuning.

The complex and precise natural balance of the physical constants that allows organic life to exist then. This was either intentional or a coincidence we can't know. It would seem a bit unlikely as a coincidence though so I would say it's entirely intentional. What do you call an intentional creator of the universe?

Aye, just look at the impact god has had in human life, why don't you?...
C.r.u.s.a.d.e.s.... want more?
H.o.l.y..I.n.q.u.i.s.i.t.i.o.n....

That's the same thing as saying that the impact of atheism on the world was the Soviet Union, Chairman Mao and Pol Pot. You can say they didn't really represent atheism but you can say witch hunters and crusaders didn't represent Christianity. Though with the Crusades you could kind of argue that the Muslims attacked Christendom first.

I can see the arguments, but they all seem either like wishful thinking or plain delusion.

It could be you who is deluded for all you know.

Sorry, I see no reason to believe in what the other side is claiming.

But you already established that you don't possess the freedom to rationally make up your own mind anyway.

The other side claims it's everywhere...

Look within your heart then, go with your gut feeling and all that business. Some of faith is rational and logical and some of it is emotional and what you feel the two go together.

No, I am open to reality.... just not open to being deceived.

You know atheism/materialism isn't the deception and God isn't the reality because?

And because I'm aware of all these venues by which humans can be deceived, I refuse to accept them.

How do you know you haven't already accepted a deception or the false depiction of reality? If God does in fact exist and is real if there is a higher power there then this what you have done. Someone will be wrong and it could easily be you.

Think of it like a computer's firewall. I know there are bugs out there that exploit certain ports in my system, so I just close them.

Perhaps atheism/materialism is the bug you ought to have kept out of your system? You don't know if you don't know.

Honest communication is still available, because many many ports are open. It's just those ones that are known to be used deceptively/dishonestly that are closed.

That's fine but the Bible and faith in God aren't deliberate attempts at deception. The people who wrote it clearly believed what they believed as does anyone who has a faith in God. It doesn't prove it's true of course you can choose to believe it or not it's only an option.

I want no faith.
I want knowledge. Information.

What would stop you from having both?