(June 26, 2015 at 9:04 am)Tonus Wrote:(June 25, 2015 at 9:59 pm)Louis Chérubin Wrote: 1. Does God exist?
2. Where did the universe come from?
3. Does my life have a purpose?
4. Why do people suffer?
5. Is there life after death?
6. Can I distinguish right from wrong?
7. Can people know truth?
1. No.
2. The origins of the universe are not completely understood, and may never be. So I can't answer that question.
3. Yes.
4. Due to their circumstances (sorry, but such a vague question merits a vague answer).
5. No.
6. Yes.
7. Yes.
Louis Chérubin Wrote:Two follow-up questions:
1. Since the universe started with the big-bang, where did cellular life (evidence of design) come from?
2. Your answer to question 6 implies that there is such a thing as right and wrong. Where do you think these concepts come from? You've probably heard the argument that "right" and "wrong" implicitly refer to a higher standard. What's your response to that?
1. The origins of life are also not completely understood, though it seems we might get close to one or more answers, involving chemistry. However, cellular life is not "evidence of design." You'll have to demonstrate that before you can slip it into a question.
2. Our determination of right and wrong have developed over time as our communities and societies formed and grew. They continue to do so today. The notion of an objective standard of right and wrong tends to go to pieces under any sort of examination, even if we allow for an all-powerful lawgiver. If right and wrong are truly objective, then most gods are guilty of wrongdoing. If a god is considered to be above notions of right and wrong, then those cannot be held objectively.
Don't feed the fundies. When you say "The origins of life are not completely understood" what the sky hero fan hears is "AH HA, see you admit you don't know so I can fill in that gap with fiction".
There ARE natural concrete scientific facts that explain life, like evolution and DNA. We also know that the atoms in our bodies are literally stardust, and that all the matter in the universe started in one tiny dense space. Those are scientific facts NOT in dispute.
Certainly no scientist I would call ethical would claim to know everything, but there certainly are old and bad claims that humans can scrap and discard without losing any sleep. The god of the gaps argument is nothing more than our species reflecting itself. God belief is a side affect of evolution in that we gap fill projecting our own qualities in superstitious forms. There is absolutely no evidence any type of super natural god exists, there is tons of evidence that humans make them up.
The Cosmos series with Neil Degrasse Tyson demonstrates our species notoriously flawed perceptions projecting anthropomorphic answers on the world around them. Independently our species has created myths about patterns in the stars, it has created myths about commits being omens and god claims are no different.
What science does not currently understand, does not mean we take unscientific superstition and fill the gap with it.