Stop what you're doing and laugh at the U.S.

[iDante]

demoniac93 I would recommend an intro class in biology. You may find that evolution neatly explains things that would otherwise be mistaken as the work of a deity.

I believe in God because life is too beautifully organized and balanced

What you argue is that humans, and all life on Earth, is extremely complex. This complexity could not have arisen from natural phenomena, therefore God.

There are some problems with this argument.
Firstly, the creator of such beings as us must itself be more complex than the created. So your argument becomes "life is complex, simple things can't make complex things, therefore something more complex must have created it, therefore God." Adding complexity doesn't reduce complexity.
Secondly, evolution works by extremely slowly adding complexity to living organisms through simple processes of random variation and non-random selection. The reason that evolution is so amazing is because it does explain life without adding complexity.

If you have any questions about this I can suggest reading: Wikipedia, Dawkins, or just ask me.

[demoniac93]

Simple reason for me to believe God exists: I exist.
And if that's too little an answer to feed your ego, because you don't accept the fact that there exists a being higher than man, beyond time and space, beyond your comprehension, then I can say I believe in God because life is too beautifully organized and balanced to be the result of a random explosion of some particles.

Satisfaction. 

That is your answer, and it is fine.

Wait. Oh no, no, I can't hold it back...
*strains*

Firstly I'd like to ask about a contradiction in your post. If God is beyond time, space and (my) comprehension then how exactly is God's existance a fact? All factual information is, by definition, information that has been substantiated. How do you substantiate something that exists outside of all means of substantiation?

Secondly as for the "life is too beautifully organized and balanced" how does that exactly account for mutated babies, stillborns, miss-carriages, wasting diseases, terminal illnesses, mental illnesses etc... Are these intended in God's beautifully organized universe? Or are they something that God completely overlooked when he made everything?

Now I actually do believe that nature can be very beautiful, but I personally can't make that stretch of attributing that beauty to some creature that is outside of time and space. It's a bit of a stretch for me. - Though I think maybe I can understand where you're coming from, lets say for instance I was told every day from as early as I can remember that everything I can see, hear, smell and touch was made by a man called Alan who spent a week in a shed hammering it all together. It would be very hard to imagine anything else.

By "a random explosion of some particles" I'm going to rightly assume you ended your post with a terrible misinterpretation of the Big Bang theory.

Recommended reading: this book.

Now, if we're talking about a subject like the meaning of your existence, personally I feel it's best to have all the facts. So maybe read up on that. It's worth noting that the Big Bang theory is consistent with every astronomical observation ever made in the history of mankind, also that it's a theory entirely consistent with our current understanding of both Quantum Theory and Newton's Theory of Gravity. It's also apparently sound enough for countless billions of dollars worth of investment into particle acceleration technology to learn more about the early universe.

1.It's a fact of my own, call me insane/crazy/dumb/ignorant and what have you, but some facts are established from personal experiences. It's a "personal" fact to put it in simple words.

2.I said beautifully organized, not perfect, humans are flawed, and sometimes those flaws affect the people/things around them. Take bestiality for an example. And some of those "mutations" and other tragedies remind us that nothing has a 100% chance of going the way we want it to. And believe it or not, their pain and suffering makes some people value their health/life even more, because a lot of those less fortunate can inspire others, because they actually lead a happy life. And God compensates them in many ways, which you won't believe, but I do.

3.It's not a creature, because creature originates from creation/create, and eternal means "Something which has no beginning, and no end".

4.It's easier to imagine creationism than the big bang, because following the big bang comes evolution (I know all the evolution theories), and I just cannot force myself to believe that at some point, a dead cell, chemical elements, somehow became "alive". "Life" doesn't just happen from out of nowhere. Sorry, but THAT is ridiculous.

And I had an entire book about the universe and it's origin in 11th grade, and I don't see where I misinterpreted anything, remember that the man who came up with that theory, called it "hypothesis of the primeval atom" at first.

[homerofgods]

The origin of life is still unknown I believe, so don't claim that it's a God without any proof, because even though you think it's a perfectly reasonable explanation, it's one of the very least likely explanations.

Just because we don't know the answer yet, does NOT automatically mean it was a God.

It's as simple as that. If you choose to ignore facts, you cannot expect to be correct.

[demoniac93]

Am I trying to convince anyone of my opinion? No.
I said what I know, and to me it's pretty reasonable, and a 100% correct.
Call me ignorant, I just don't falter to any weak winds; So don't think that you can convince me that God doesn't exist just because my argument that he does isn't as long and full of scientific theories as yours.
Thank you for the amusing conversation, but I think I'm done here for the sake of freedom of opinion.

[Mangled*]

No, you're not trying to convince anyone of your opinion. But you are holding a position of 'this is the absolute truth regardless of any other information and ideas that have any level of merit'. By definition, yes you are ignorant in every possible sense of the word.

Understand that nobody is attacking your beliefs or forcing any beliefs on you, we're pointing out holes in your understanding. You can choose to ignore them and keep your fingers in your ears yelling 'I'm not listening' or you can be a bigger man than that and open yourself up to actually question things that are important to you, do some objective research into subjects such as astronomy and biology.

Science is not a position of absolute truth, it's a position of determined truth that is dynamic and changes as understanding progresses. Of course as the centuries pass and our scientific understanding of the universe grows, any positions of absolute truth that were made at any point in the past are subject to question.

The word theory has a lot of different meanings. Most words in the English language do. In scientific contexts it is a proposed explanation that has a certain level of merit behind it. In fact by definition all facts are theories. For instance: William Shakespeare's existence is a theory, it's one that is determined by evidence of his existence such as his huge canon of writings, paintings of him, his diaries, historical documents, property documents etc. It is a theory that has so much evidence behind it that it is determined to be fact. So to misuse the word 'theory' as if all theory's are just mere guesses is just a straw man.

In summary you can decide to ignore anything that condradicts what you believe and live in bliss believing whichever of the tens of thousands of religious storys that promote themselves as an absolute truth and just assume you happen to have been raised in the one that is correct OR you can say, actually, maybe I don't know absolutely everything, maybe there's still a lot to learn and I should be open the possibility that I may not be correct in my beliefs.

Freedom of opinion is good, but freedom of thought is much better.

[iDante]

I find it pointless to actually attempt a debate past this point with the religious. Either they've conceded some and you can give them some thinking material and a nudge in the right direction, or they will never take the world from a new point of view.

[demoniac93]

Actually, by doubting the beliefs I've built over two and a half decades of a life, just because some guys in lab coats say I'm wrong, would make me the smaller, not the bigger man. I'm true to my beliefs and have established my own facts about them. Plus, I know that through what I believe in, I am a better person, and that's another reason I prefer to remain "ignorant", rather than a being a purposeless and depressed atheist. No offense.

[Mangled*]

Doubting and questioning are two different things. If beliefs are the truth then they should stand up to questioning. But if you're afraid of questioning them then you obviously fear that they could be incorrect and aren't willing to even contemplate that possibility.

Funny how a grown man with 'two and a half decades of a life' felt he had to add that attempt at an insult on the end there. Remember what I said?:

Psychologists recognise people who have an insecurity about their beliefs and ideas will attack the integrity of a person who questions them rather than provide an actual answer. The insecurity in most cases comes from either fear of ridicule, or unrealized or pseudo-subconscious fear that their belief or idea is incorrect or a delusion.

Anyway, I can see we left your comfort zone over a page ago, but it was good of you to try.

Don't worry, you're right that there is only a handful of scientists in the world and they all wear lab coats and cook up evil plans to take over the world in their basements. And all atheists are just angsty teens who are depressed and cut themselves.

Enjoy your cartoon fantasy world buddy.

I find it pointless to actually attempt a debate past this point with the religious. Either they've conceded some and you can give them some thinking material and a nudge in the right direction, or they will never take the world from a new point of view.

It's never exactly a debate, it's more of a lecture really. Whilst demoniac may not learn a thing, there are others who read the thread and do learn. Plus it's just fun to watch ignorant people squirm when you poke at their sacred voodoo.

[ds dude]

I've been really curious about this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_3.0

[iDante]

It's never exactly a debate, it's more of a lecture really. Whilst demoniac may not learn a thing, there are others who read the thread and do learn. Plus it's just fun to watch ignorant people squirm when you poke at their sacred voodoo.

Ah that makes sense then.

ds dude: it's an interesting idea but I think it's wrong. Religion actually does poison everything, and the few nice things it tells the religious to do are far surpassed by the terrible things it tells them to do.

[ds dude]

Yeah, I didn't exactly like the idea either, just thought I would put it out there.

[demoniac93]

Funny how you still try to make me appear as an insecure bible freak, but heck, if that's how much it means to you to prove your imaginative superiority, then enjoy it.

Btw, can anyone please tell me where the universe came from? Or how it came to be? I am talking about the small hot universe that created the big bang fyi. But please, I would really love to know.

[thegrandmaster]

Where did the universe come from?

There are numerous theories, most of which I find completely unrealistic.
To me, the existence of the universe at all is enough for me to believe there is something outside of the universal laws which provoked it into being.
It seems there is nothing within the universe capable of beginning the universe, for that seems a contradiction. However, that does not account for something outside the universe that does not follow the laws of the universe.

Where did the universe come from? How are we here?
I'd say God.

Small hot universe -> big bang is possible I suppose, but how did the small hot universe come about?
Surely that universe would need a universe to start it?
To me this is illogical, and as mentioned, things inside the universe seem incapable of to creation of it.

[Fryer]

How exactly everything started I don't think anyone actually knows atm. There are lots of ideas about how it happened (big bang, god, other random stuff), but currently there seems to be nothing that actually explains, in a totally believable way, exactly how everything works. Maybe there was no start and everything just extends into infinity. Maybe it's all just a big simulation, run by someone in an even bigger and more complex universe. Maybe there is a resonable explanation, but humans are just too stupid to understand it.
Right now though, I don't think anyone should say that they know for sure how it all started (or just is), because that will just lead to endless discussions about things that nobody really is 100% sure about.

[{LAW} Gamer_2k4]

For me, the fact that we have an innate set of morals is strongly indicative of a supreme being.  We hear about a fireman going into a burning building to save someone, then both of them dying as the building collapses, and you know what our response is? "Oh, he was so brave.  What a great person."  Why do we think sacrifice is good? It sure isn't utilitarian, and evolution is all about utilitarianism.

Why do we think humans have rights? Why do we think it's good to give homeless people money and bad to just kill them off for being a drain on society? Where do these values come from, and why does everyone have them?

Psychologists recognise who people have an insecurity about their beliefs and ideas will attack the integrity of a person who questions them rather than provide an actual answer. The insecurity in most cases comes from either fear of ridicule, or unrealized or pseudo-subconscious fear that their belief or idea is incorrect or a delusion.

Funny, that's what you do to religious people.

[jerich]

This thread is like a Nascar circuit, except without a finishing line.

[demoniac93]

This thread is like a Nascar circuit, except without a finishing line.

All discussion about politics, religion, and mating partners are.

[Mangled*]

This thread has taken a more interesting turn now.

I think the thing is that the universe is counter-intuitive, more so than we can imagine. You only need to know almost anything about quantum mechanics to understand how counter-intuitive the universe is. We are used to seeing everything around us having a beginning and an end, a finite existance. But if you really look beyond that, nothing has really begun or ended, it has simply changed states.

A building is constructed, used for decades, falls into disrepair and is finally demolished. But everything that made up that building still exists, and existed before it was constructed. It has just changed states. Mortar and bricks were once clay and water and sand, they were mixed and hardened, used to build walls and eventually they are broken down into rubble and debris, but they still exist. Their atoms still exist.

We just don't think about things in this way because it's needlessly complicated for our perception. We see our existance as birth to death. But the cells of our embryos that divided and formed us did not do so out of nothing, they fed on nutrients consumed by our mothers, and when we die our bodies are consumed by bacteria, they feed off it and divide themselves.

I think it's incredibly naive to assume that before the current state of the universe, or even any of the states we were aware of like the hot, condensed universe that there was no universe. Can we answer it? Not yet, and certainly not 2000 years ago, long before the enlightenment period.

Why can't the universe have always been here? It simply expanded from a previous state, and will continue expanding into it's next state long after we are extinct. We just happen to exist within a state in an incredibly tiny portion of the universe where the conditions are right for life.

God just isn't an answer.

[demoniac93]

Well, if I read correct, your are indirectly implying that the universe we know is actually infinite. And that just isn't an answer either.
You either tell me how the universe came to be, or God IS the answer.

[{LAW} Gamer_2k4]

Why can't the universe have always been here?

How about a little thing called entropy? You said that everything only changes, but that's not the full truth.  Each change reduces the energy of the universe.  We ARE travelling towards an end of some sort.  And if entropy is true, and energy only ever decreases, then the question becomes real again: Where did the original energy come from?


Also, you've conveniently ignored both of the points I brought up this morning.