Why God exists

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We don't actually create as such a divine being would. It's a bit difficult to explain, but a plane is a plane because we assemble the parts together and gather the resource needed, not because we created the parts and/or the resources of those parts... it's a different kind of 'creation'. Quite literally we are creative with what's already here in some way or another. What we do is gather resources, change them using certain methods and assemble parts, but I think it's save to say that we can't create all ingredients needed for a plane out of thin air..

That's again assuming it takes a divine level of skill or ability to create life. That's an assumption we attribute to the fact we can't do it, nor can we come close.. so we assume that it takes divine power to do it.

My contingent is that it doesnt.. and that as far beyond our ability as it might be.. it still doesn't take a divine power to do it.. just an extremely superior intellect.

And also.. i really dont refer to the machine's weve'e made but.. for all we know.. the universe could be a machine. Does it not have similar characteristics to one?

We've split the atom, decoded DNA, plotted surgical procedures.. I hardly mean our constructs so much as our applications of the knowledge we uncover and hone. Our knowledge gives us power, and we use that power in our applications.
Why is it so unfeasible that creation is the result of principally similar learning, honing and applying? Certainly makes more sense than anything we've theorized fo far.

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The best thing to do would be to go with what we d� know and not too fantasize too much about what or how it *could* be. And if our knowledge is not enough to base logical or valid conclusions upon, then perhaps we should not try to do it anyways? This sounds more agnostic than it was meant.

You can't begin to solve a question if you don't form a logical hypothesis based on what you know. Scientists, CSIs, Officers all do it, and their jobs are to solve inquiries. Admittedly, scientists come closer than the religious to doing so.. but still even they are closed to all possibilities. That's the main reason they dismiss God. (Rightfully so.. all powerful beings who are thus just because.. dont make sense.. but whatever's responsible for this universe.. didnt have to be all powerful either).

You have to ask the right questions, and develop comprehensive leads to follow to get you started.. if you expect to get the right answers. So far, neither side of the debate has done that, and that's why we are stuck, one side clenching their good books, the other clenching their textbooks.

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However, if you think that somewhere a giant ball must exists and you think to know that it must have a color, but you obviously do not know which color exactly because you haven't seen this giant ball and technically can't know for sure if it exists, then why claim that it's blue anyways?? That doesn't make sense (nor is it half of the truth)

Well.. giant balls and God are.. kind of apple and oranges. One.. well i couldnt begin to equate it but a giant ball existing or not existing would have shreds of evidence that the speculating originates from.

One thing about humans is that we are not iriginal creatures. Everything we imagine is inspired by something. Some partial truth that did happen.. regardless of how we stretched it.

So.. supposing we did believe in the big giant ball. You can bet that at some point.. there may have indeed been a collosal ball. It might not have cured sickness or been shining gold, or blinded all who looked upon it.. but at some point.. there mustve been a ball. Might notve been a special one.. and it might nto exist anymore. But, like with God, the way you approach that question is 1- Dismiss the divinity and pencil erase the talltale, 2 dont hold the fact that it has many stretched truths or made up parts discount the whole thing alltogether.

Then.. you infer, and you speculate a logical.. nonspecial theory.. of what and where this giant ball might have existed. You dont know, ut this is how all investigative people form a trail. Theorizing.

Then you start digging.. going elsewhere and digging.. and forensically investigating.. until the pieces of the ball.. and the great big dent one which the ball mightve once rested.. are found.

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I do not believe in aliens before ever having seen one, but I don't think there's a good reason to assume that we are special.

You dont neccesarily have to believe something for it to be.. but you'll never know its there if you don't acknowledge the possibility.

We can.. not believe in aliens all we want.. but the only way we'll know if they exist is if we have the openmindedness to get out there and seek them out. and be willing to challenge our beliefs.

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If 'we' can happen once then there's no reason to assume it can not have happened twice elsewhere.

Our history has shown many times that inventions got lost and that people needed the same things in the same situation and eventually ended up inventing nearly the same things.

That's the very same type of inference I'm using. Taking what you know to be true..infering.. theorizing.. my next step, if I owned a warp capable private ship and some excavation equipment.. would be to investigate. I just happen to believe, based on the idea that nothing complex occurs without forthought and creation, and that our universe is exactly an infinitely more complicated manifestation of forthought and creation

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I could easily be wrong.. but it makes more sense than.. it springing forth just because.. or from natural cycles that have no specific catalyst that set off the big bang and started the whole chain. As I further substantiate my theory, it might well become the best basis for comprehensive pursuit of the question.

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No magic.. only what we do and don't understand.

Yes, which is exactly why people shouldn't hold on to outdated beliefs, in the historical sense religion has always been both a tool of control and an 'easy answer to tough questions' whatever their nature. That's something that's not helping very much either... If people would have more knowledge about other religions and how similar they all are in terms of 'make a large group controllable', there would be a lot less religious people. Why is it easy for people to totally not believe in for example Egyptian Gods or Allah and laugh at it as if it's one big childish myth, but still believe in their own "God" as if that's less fictional?

Well.. you have religious communities who are unwilling to admit they might be wrong, and most of the scientific world is also guity of that. Nobody's willing to compromis,e much less start over.. which is why our pursuit so far has bene anything but productive.

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Is it really to easy to simply think that the whole idea of a God is ridiculous in the first place and should we therefore continue searching for something when we don't even know what to look for?

Cheers

Yes, it is too easy. Nothing in our universe has a simple answer. If it did, we wouldnt need science or math to make sense of it where the answers arent apparent.. and sometimes even when they are.

Part of the reason we're so lost on this is because one side believes in a magical, all powerful (because he's magical) God. The other half believes its totally ridiculous.. there's nothing out there capable of a universe without being magical.. and neither side is willing to challenge that basis.

My contingent is that complex things dont just spring into being.. accidentally, from thin air, as the result of originless natural process.. just as atoms dont spontaneously coaless and form compounds unless something induces it.. that something being an intelligence that wants to induce the fusion, fission, or distabilization in order to make a result.

This is just a theory, but it makes a great deal more sense than divine magic, and its much less open ended than originless natural processes. I'm willing to start over if someday I find myself wrong, but that's why it's a theory.. and I wouldnt live my life or base my career on certainty in the half-truth, like almost all modern humans are doing.

(I term religious teaching.. and modern science as halves of the truth because theyre not totally and compeltely off.. just missing alot of fact and leading people astray because they chose to embrace both as the complete truth).

Posted By: Ilidrake

Re: Why God exists - 09/21/07 21:24

Because I will say like everyone else says, you gotta take it on faith. I'm not one of those pushy, here's what I believe and you better believe it too. I believe in God and that's my buisness. Doesn't mean you have to. That's called choice.
But isn't it strange that through out history man-kind has always sought to worship something, a higher power. Be that statues, money, or whatever. Man has a deep desire to worship, to acknowledge that a higher power exists. Aethist for example seem, from my opinion only, to worship the power of themselves. But if that's the case and they have power over there life they should be able to dictate every aspect of that life. Vehicles should never break, programs should be written perfect, and they shouldn't grow old. Because that is the ultimate control of your life, dictating that you control when you die. But none of us do, and I find it hard to believe we are born and then just die and that's it. It has a meaning, but humans are too stupid to understand it.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 09/21/07 21:33

No, I think it's more a matter of A. our endless curiosity for things we do not understand and trying to make up or find answers for them and B. our very inventive ways to control people in our greedy hunger for power.

I don't believe in mankind if that's what you think, I believe in goodness though, but I wouldn't call that a power, but a choice instead. Why would we (have to) worship things like greediness and power when we do not believe in God? It's not like we're totally immoral emotionless life-hating freaks, we only do not share your believe of a higher power as a being called 'God'. I understand it's difficult to understand a world view without God though, it's a big difference with all kinds of consequences. (like for example what purpose has our life if it's not for God etc. ..)

Cheers

Posted By: Ilidrake

Re: Why God exists - 09/21/07 21:44

I see. So what is the ultimate price of sin? If God does not exist then niether does sin. But if that's the case why is it when you do thing immoral and wrong you suffer for them. Maybe not right a way but they always seem to spring back up eventually. Of course if neither exist then why should I follow any law, Gods or man's. Who's to say what is wrong? If this is the case your throwing of the yoke of accountability and I can do whatever I want, be it murder. Who are you or anyone else to judge my actions.
Simple, our conscience. That spark of life that God gave us that tells us right and wrong. Just because you can't see it or touch it doesn't mean it doesn't exists. Oh, you can't explain it so therefore it doesn't exist. Well I can't explain my reasons for wanting to steal all the time so therefore the results for that crime don't count towards me.
All i'm saying is just consider if your view is wrong. Just what if? Because you never know when your last day will be your last day. Make sure you are right....that's all I'm saying. So you believe in God and when you die he doesn't exist. What have you lost? Nothing. But what if he does???

Posted By: Damocles

Re: Why God exists - 09/21/07 22:01

So you need a god, to not do something bad?
I dont need a god, and still dont behave bad.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 09/21/07 22:23

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I see. So what is the ultimate price of sin? If God does not exist then niether does sin. But if that's the case why is it when you do thing immoral and wrong you suffer for them. Maybe not right a way but they always seem to spring back up eventually.

That's one of the psychological tricks of any religion that 'warns' you for bad things to come. Bad things will always happen, it's because you are not alone on this world. No matter if you pray each day or just once a month or not at all. Life isn't all good, it's often 50-50, for some worse, for some better, regardless of what kind of religion you have.

There are a lot of let's call them 'inevitable' things that will happen and whether you're part of those in some way or another is based on pure chance. In complex systems things will go wrong, and we're part of the biggest and most complex thing.. this world.

If you pray to your God that it must not rain on your birthday and it doesn't rain, that doesn't mean it praying helped anything, you just got lucky. The statistics tell us that this luck is equal for all.. we all have the same chances of luck.

Don't be fooled, but you don't need any religion to develop a proper morality. Besides, if the old testament of the bible or the crusades and inquisition are any clue as to what morality we should have then I'd say a big 'no thanks'.

Cheers

Posted By: AlbertoT

Re: Why God exists - 09/21/07 22:30

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That spark of life that God gave us that tells us right and wrong.

Unfortunatly the reality is much more prosaic
What is coscience ?
Simply the result of the evolution
You are a proud 3dgs user ?
Well, you can make a simple simulation
Create a multitude of characters , assigning different behaviours : criminals, good guys, saints etc
You will see that your population will evolve towards a comunity of good guys with a minority of criminals and a minority of saints
Simply because this mix guarantees the best efficiency for the comunity

Posted By: testDummy

Re: Why God exists - 09/23/07 09:09

I suspect that the proof and true meaning of god or gods, is only granted after an individual takes a leap faith and believes. Maybe it's similar to a private club, containing wonders that can only be perceived when a certain 'truth' is accepted at the door.

I think it is rather pointless to argue about god or god(s) and evidence of such things, when you're not in the club, ...you're not a believer.
You may never fully understand, because you do not have access.

Statements like "why would anyone want to be a slave", might indicate a temporary lack of understanding due to an inability to place self into another individual's point of view.

Perhaps, evidence and meaning is offered only after you 'take the leap', and that's just the way that it is. While you are in the club, you will see THAT, and when you're not in the club you will see something else.

I tend to think if you truly do not believe in god or god(s) and don't have something to prove (possibly out of anger at certain events), than god or god(s), and the beliefs of others in such things, should probably be irrelevant, and I would think that there would be no need or drive to discuss such things (often).

(Note: I do not subscribe to any commonly known religion or 'faith'.)

I tend to think that today, without laws and consequences, there would be 'chaos'. Many individuals might easily do what might be considered the 'wrong things', if penalties are removed. (I think that the current model leans more and more towards 'chaos' over time anyway.) It seems that a significant number of individuals are self-consumed unknowing slaves, which serve themselves when they can, and spend a fair of amount of time serving individuals higher up in the hierarchy. Some of the time might be spent using media, entertainment, and other devices as some form treatment or to distract from the lack of meaning in life.

I doubt that 'good guys' are anything but a minority. However, obviously, some individuals seem to perform acts of kindness and generosity from time to time. Such acts may actually represent breaks in typical behavior.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 09/30/07 06:49

God.. the way people give it diety and divinity is an explanation for what's not understood.

I don't define God as anything beyond the intelligence responsible for the creation of what we know to be "all things". We actually don't know what lies beyond the expanse of the universe's edge.. the vastness of the space that we are aware of is already too much for us to comprehend.. and considering we're not a space faring people.. we literally have only observed only one pebble in the quarry of knowledge that is the universe.

Where we go wrong and into the howling mootness of opinionated debate on God is our definitions of "God"..."All things".. and our inability to seek the answers to all those questions and more.. where is it already written (in the universe, in the form of math, science, and discoveries therein which.. each tell a small part of the abundant truth we want to know).

It might be just as much of an opinion, but I find the concept of an intelligent being responsible for the creation of something so large and complex as the universe.. totally plausible. To that end, I believe the soul which we call "God", was a being who applied his vast knowledge of the two real, harnessable, applicable powers that exist in the universe (science & math) and created a functioning machine of infinite beauty and infinity carnality.. the mother of all machines.

That's perfectly logical, if one doesnt take it as blasphemy that "God" could be less than holy powerful.. and if one from the other end doesnt stay confined to comparing what is truly possible to what little we are capable of.

I believe that one day, when we have the ability to traverse the edges of the universe, or close enough to reach the most ancient of places in existence.. long dead planets and barren, relic filled regions that were on the forefront of the creator's forge.. we will find that that is all that happened.

No divine magic.. and also no spontaneous or random unprovoked generation. Just a highly wise being applying his infinite knowledge to an intelligent design. When we become smart enough, and able to really accept that there are/ were/ and will always be intelligences greater than our own.. one particular one having been the greatest of all which wasn't so just-because.. then we will be able to find out who "God" was.. and where we really come from.

I dont think we will find anything about our detiny as a race, because I just dont believe in divine predefinition.. but we will know enough about where we come from, to make out a more enlightened path for where we will go.

As far as "God". I believe in a superiour intelligence being responsible for all that we know now.. no different than we are capable of creating with our applied knowledge.

If we can accept that.. there are things capable of what we are not, pysically and mentally, but that they dont have to be magical mythical things to be so.. then we will be able to approach the question of God, the way it's meant to be..
and the only way that will land us at a complete, and true answer someday.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 09/30/07 11:21

I agree with what you've said, just another opinion.

In my opinion intelligent design makes even less sense than a holy creator with divine powers and magic and the whole show of 6 days creation and 1 day resting. That reminds me, why in heavens name does a God need to 'rest' anyways? Why one day? Lol, I won't bother asking 'how we know' this...

Anyways, this magical creation stuff is definitely something I consider to be extremely extremely unlikely, if not infinitely close to truly impossible.

But yeah, it definitely comes down to observability like you've said and at least for now, we just have to accept that our knowledge is (severely?) limited... Perhaps, I tend to jump to conclusions myself, but I'm quite sure real magic in the classical sense does really not exist.

Cheers

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 09/30/07 17:48

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I agree with what you've said, just another opinion. In my opinion intelligent design makes even less sense than a holy creator

Why? We create with our knowledge and application of the sciences( when we're not trying to make bombs with it, that is).. Why isnt it plausible that.. something with near infinitely more knowledge and probably near proportionate wisdom (something we lack),(therefore having infintely more power) can create something infinitely more complex? Why wouldn't that make sense? We know from studies of our own environment that.. things don't just spring into being.. lifeforms dont spontaneously generate, nor occur as a result of any amount of accidental circumstance. Most of the things in our world that aren't in their natural state.. cities.. monuments.. technology.. were created.. by something with a plan, forsight, and knowledge.

Why can't we have been? Are we too special to be the result of a blueprint and lines of programming code? Isn't that more or less what Deoxyribonucleic Acid sequences are?

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That reminds me, why in heavens name does a God need to 'rest' anyways? Why one day? Lol, I won't bother asking 'how we know' this...

That's again, indivinating "God". Divinities don't need rest, (that being why the concept of divine beings doesnt make sense in our physical universe, even on the most basic levels). Anything less.. even a being more energy than matter.. probably would (and this is what I'm saying that "God" is, or was.) You're right to say we don't know.. but it just follows that anything that does work expends energy, and therefore needs time to recouperate. There are no exceptions to that in the physical universe.

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But yeah, it definitely comes down to observability like you've said and at least for now, we just have to accept that our knowledge is (severely?) limited... Perhaps, I tend to jump to conclusions myself, but I'm quite sure real magic in the classical sense does really not exist.

No magic.. only what we do and don't understand.

In my research, I'm trying to strike a medium between the existence of an intelligent source for our design and a logical explanation, though for the next... 50-300 thousand years it wil be a theory at best. I'm more or less taking a scientific, and open approach to the inquiry.

Most of earth fails to reach a concensus because one half believes that it's all God, and science is only our invention and is useless after a point.. and the other half believes that everything is the result of natural cycles.. which still negates that there has to have been a catalyst.. like tropical storms and mating cycles in the animal kingdom all have.. a catalyst which is at fault for their onset. That side just doesnt seem to want to accept that an actual intelligence may have been the catalyst for all that we see, hear, and know, no different than our own intelligence is responsible for our various creations and triumphant applications of knowledge and the power that comes with it.

What I think is that.. we all have half of the truth. I mean.. between humans, even our tallest tales and legends have a basis in the truth.. its just truth that has to be broken back down to the realistic version of what took place. And our instruments and detectors can only see so far into space, and so far into our planet. That and science is often obscured and sensored by various government interests.

What I'd like to do is take our two half truths.. and make one whole from it by going where we have not for whatever reasons, investigation wise. First.. we have to embrace that we don't know.. both sides. And.. take what we do know.. and what might make normal, logical sense.. and go with that.

We just have to be willing to start from the beggining, and accept that all our best hypothesis may indeed be totally wrong.. because we've all started the wrong way.. else we'd be alot further along than we are if we really knew so much.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 09/30/07 21:21

We don't actually create as such a divine being would. It's a bit difficult to explain, but a plane is a plane because we assemble the parts together and gather the resource needed, not because we created the parts and/or the resources of those parts... it's a different kind of 'creation'. Quite literally we are creative with what's already here in some way or another. What we do is gather resources, change them using certain methods and assemble parts, but I think it's save to say that we can't create all ingredients needed for a plane out of thin air..

In a way it's similar to why people always wonder "why we are here", I think there might not be a real reason other than that life found a way ending up where it is now, us included. Why would something h�ve to make sense? On the other hand it's absolutely normal that things often do not seem to make any sense because of our lack of knowledge.

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What I'd like to do is take our two half truths.. and make one whole from it by going where we have not for whatever reasons, investigation wise. First.. we have to embrace that we don't know.. both sides. And.. take what we do know.. and what might make normal, logical sense.. and go with that.

The best thing to do would be to go with what we d� know and not too fantasize too much about what or how it *could* be. And if our knowledge is not enough to base logical or valid conclusions upon, then perhaps we should not try to do it anyways? This sounds more agnostic than it was meant.

However, if you think that somewhere a giant ball must exists and you think to know that it must have a color, but you obviously do not know which color exactly because you haven't seen this giant ball and technically can't know for sure if it exists, then why claim that it's blue anyways?? That doesn't make sense (nor is it half of the truth). Most atheists do not think that there even is a giant ball, but religious people often mistake our opinions as if we are saying that it's not a blue ball but a red one... It's exactly the reason why I do not believe in any religion, they pretend to know things they can not know.

Perhaps the moment religious people start to accept all kinds of discoveries already made long ago that disprove all kinds of parts of the Bible and so on, the easier it'll be to investigate this subject without bias and together. Science is often biased too you might say, but at least it's based on evidence and not just emotion and wishful thinking.

Personally I think it's a lost cause trying to uncover more about God through combining these 'two truths'. Science can not prove everything and the religious or perhaps philosophical aspects of why a divine entity should/could or must exist can't quite be proven either. How can you test those ideas when the 'main subject' is either not there or not physically reachable? We can't. In short, I believe we can only find evidence of why God is unlikely to exist and nothing more.

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Why can't we have been? Are we too special to be the result of a blueprint and lines of programming code?

I do not believe in aliens before ever having seen one, but I don't think there's a good reason to assume that we are special. If 'we' can happen once then there's no reason to assume it can not have happened twice elsewhere.
Our history has shown many times that inventions got lost and that people needed the same things in the same situation and eventually ended up inventing nearly the same things.

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No magic.. only what we do and don't understand.

Yes, which is exactly why people shouldn't hold on to outdated beliefs, in the historical sense religion has always been both a tool of control and an 'easy answer to tough questions' whatever their nature. That's something that's not helping very much either... If people would have more knowledge about other religions and how similar they all are in terms of 'make a large group controllable', there would be a lot less religious people. Why is it easy for people to totally not believe in for example Egyptian Gods or Allah and laugh at it as if it's one big childish myth, but still believe in their own "God" as if that's less fictional?

Is it really to easy to simply think that the whole idea of a God is ridiculous in the first place and should we therefore continue searching for something when we don't even know what to look for?

Cheers

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/03/07 02:39

You bring up some interesting points. The one that started the universe doesn't have to have been all-powerful at all, 'creation can't simply be *poof* and there it is' and so on. I actually agree with you on quite a lot of those points. Problem is by definition "God" is claimed to be all those things or be able to do his 'instant magic'. That doesn't make sense, even if creation to some extent does make sense For example it may seem illogical that there would have been or are things that simply exist and that's it, no creator, no start, just existing.. But then again, there are all kinds of logic.

It doesn't take much to come to the conclusion that the "God" as it's usually is defined; allpowerful, doing his 'poof' creation and so on, is simply impossible...
I think the whole idea of creation is an extension of his ancient attributes. People wanted to look up to something that was huge, so huge that it has to be allpowerful and be able to create with the snap of his finger or even a mere thought would do.

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(Although.. I happen to think that the moment described in religious text when God said "Let there be light" might be what he said to himself (the same way some people working on a project often do when there's no one around and their in the zone) flipped the switch on his machine (our universe) and hoped it all worked and dominoed correctly.

The Bible may have meant it as such, and it is a nice metaphor to describe that something 'activated' or 'started' indeed. However, it's totally logical that this was written in a scripture as the Bible. That line is there for a reason and our language is actually limited, so yeah, it's not that strange that they wrote 'And then there was light' or 'Let there be light' (because we don't really know the original line anymore, it's one of the more famous lines that also has changed through time). Apart from that it's also subject to different interpretations, like many great parts and often almost cryptic parts of the bible.

It could mean so many things and this really only shows how limited our language is and how 'undefined' the line is. So.. although I do see logic in your interpretation, it could mean so many things.

Off course, then I haven't even started about why I think that the Bible itself can not even hold information about this creation, nor God because quite frankly it's impossible for a creation story to accurately survive being told in (oral) stories for centuries and centuries and centuries and so on... in fact, humans are a rather young species, especially the more intelligent ones, how come they 'get' to know about this in the first place???? Doesn't make much sense to me, why would we receive things that other species do not? Although we are currently quite different from most species in regard to intelligence and so on, there has been times where we were just dumb naked monkeys for million of years.... How does that fit into your picture of the grand scheme?

Cheers

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 10/04/07 17:20

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You bring up some interesting points. The one that started the universe doesn't have to have been all-powerful at all, 'creation can't simply be *poof* and there it is' and so on. I actually agree with you on quite a lot of those points. Problem is by definition "God" is claimed to be all those things or be able to do his 'instant magic'. That doesn't make sense, even if creation to some extent does make sense For example it may seem illogical that there would have been or are things that simply exist and that's it, no creator, no start, just existing.. But then again, there are all kinds of logic.

Then I guess "God" is the wrong word alltogether. I use it more as a name. What I'm (and we all probably should be) looking for is a creator.. not a God at all

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It doesn't take much to come to the conclusion that the "God" as it's usually is defined; allpowerful, doing his 'poof' creation and so on, is simply impossible...
I think the whole idea of creation is an extension of his ancient attributes. People wanted to look up to something that was huge, so huge that it has to be allpowerful and be able to create with the snap of his finger or even a mere thought would do.

Maybe not that they wanted to see something huge.. but put yourself as one of the first species of intelligent life.. maybe before there ever were humans or arborial species. You're alot closer to the point of beggining, so the data's alot more fresh. Any words that were uttered for the universe to hear are thousands of generations less distorted. Even so.. they saw this.. and it was far beyond their comprehension how the universe could be the work, much less the concept, of a mortal being.. or physical being of any kind.. even the little they understand of the working.. most of it still seems to heavy and too complex for any living thing.. but their being closer to the evidence leads them to know it was in fatc an exceptional individual.. and then as the generations pass.. and as its passed from species to species so that some part of the original story survives.. it gets shaped and exxagerated until the creator who was maybe witnessed by the very first of all sentient intelligent life.. becomes a God.. and is made so from then on.

That's how all tall tales happen. If you've ever done that experiment in a college class where someone starts with one story and passes it to the next person, and how it changes completely by the time it gets to the last, you'd see what I mean.

The Bible may have meant it as such, and it is a nice metaphor to describe that something 'activated' or 'started' indeed. However, it's totally logical that this was written in a scripture as the Bible. That line is there for a reason and our language is actually limited, so yeah, it's not that strange that they wrote 'And then there was light' or 'Let there be light' (because we don't really know the original line anymore, it's one of the more famous lines that also has changed through time). Apart from that it's also subject to different interpretations, like many great parts and often almost cryptic parts of the bible.

It could mean so many things and this really only shows how limited our language is and how 'undefined' the line is. So.. although I do see logic in your interpretation, it could mean so many things.

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Off course, then I haven't even started about why I think that the Bible itself can not even hold information about this creation, nor God because quite frankly it's impossible for a creation story to accurately survive being told in (oral) stories for centuries and centuries and centuries and so on... in fact, humans are a rather young species, especially the more intelligent ones, how come they 'get' to know about this in the first place???? Doesn't make much sense to me, why would we receive things that other species do not? Although we are currently quite different from most species in regard to intelligence and so on, there has been times where we were just dumb naked monkeys for million of years.... How does that fit into your picture of the grand scheme?

This is why I say religious teachings are half true. They contain some of the knowledge, obviously.. just like any survived information.. but I don't buy into them for two reasons: One..they are too theistic.. too ready to leave it at "God made us".. and two.. if they were the complete truth, the Torah, Bible, Koran and so forth would all say exactly the same thing.. and they can't all be right

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How does that fit into your picture of the grand scheme?

See..I'm nto concretely sure.. but I don't really accept that ALL humans came from Monkeys.. on the basis that you dont seem them changing in anyway today.

As research continues on the various human forms that exist today, all thats been said about the differences in brain structure and mass and such is being challenged and shattered. Just so I'm not blowing smoke I'll try to find a transcript from a particular national geographic ep where they explored these different pigmi and "subhuman" tribes who, according to Darwinist writings about differences in brain structure making a difference in intellect and cognitive ability.. should not have been the least bit as smart as a modern human.

But what they found was that these species, though tribal,.. and with very different brain structures.. were at least as smart and as capable as modern humans just smaller and with different shaped meat slabs.. erm..brains.

What this says to me is that they are also wrong about neanderthals, sapiens and so forth. I can't say that they werent human.. or different humans than we are now.. but what's also being found are older skeletons of modern sapien humans.. some brushing shoulders with the dinosaurs, time-wise.

So.. what I think is that humans were always.. more close to how they are now.. perhaps considerably bigger.. due to the higher concentrations of oxygen that existed from that time to now.. but they occured in different forms too..which is where you get sapiens, neands and such. I think we all came from an imprint human closer to modern man, though. Offbranches happened, but it's being continually uncovered that we at least existed in modern form for much longer than originally though.

I have an entire theory of evolution as well, but I doubt you'd be interested lol.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 10/04/07 18:42

@ Phemox: So then, between you and me at least.. the concensus seems to be that

1- There is not, never was, and never will be a "God".. because "God"..being defined as an all powerful divninity who has it all and can do it all with nothing more than the tip of a finger.. makes no sense in the physical universe in which everything else.. whether or not we understand it all...does.

and

2- It also stands to reason, though it isn't fact.. it just makes alot of sense... that SOME.. kind of DELIBERATED.. and therefore INTELLIGENT.. and.. far SUPERIOR..(DUE TO HAVING OR ACQUIRING IN HIS/HER/ITS' LIFETIME.. FAR SUPERIOUR INTELLECT, WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE).. being.. is very likely the one who got the bowling ball rolling. Not a special, magic being.. just one far more powerful.. (perhaps close to all powerful) through knowledge and wisdom.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems we might have accidentally come to the same pages on those two thoughts.

So.. if we agree on that.. then maybe I might pose another question to you.

What do you think said creator was like? Some people have argued that we can't know the gender.. or if it was in fact an individual's responsibility.. as opposed to a whole race's.

I think, that too can be inferred, logically.

So here's my thoughts.. and this I guess is where my totally arbitrary opinion starts but.. now that we seem to have a general agreement, let's go from there to mroe specific speculation

It'll be fun.

So.. I think... said creator.. was an individual.. on the basis that.. groups, crowd, races of people.. we don't agree on anything.. not readily.. and not enouhg to create a sensible whole.

Think back to your school projects.. usually it took ages when you worked in groups.. to come to a agreed whole ..and when you did.. you could always see the elements of each person in the final product.

If it was ever done quickly or smoothly, or to a fluid design, it's because the one agreement you did come to was to let the one or two smartest in the group do all the work

.

There is no such thing as total harmony within a group unless they are malleable and gullible.. and you can't be wise enough for such creation as the universe, even if you have all the knowledge.. if you are gullible and malleable. You might be capable of great things.. just not that. Groups and societies have politics.. they have agendas.. bottom line being that all of this would've kept thme in a constant state of dissagreement about what to use the knowledge for.. and how it should be.

Forthermore.. I think it was either asexual.. or female.

Male's have too
strong an inclination toward violence and destruction.. and not forthwith enough an inclination toward creation and beauty. About the only reason you dont know about any female painters from Van Gogh to now is most likely because females were barred from alot of contribution to society.. in just about every society.. until fairly recently. Were they not barred and prohibited by male dominant societies, you would certainly find that there were more female (and more talented) artists and inventors than the males we acknowledge into history.

The famale of any species is put here with the task of creation and nurture. This is what she has done for ages since the begigning of sexual distinction for animal life. This is why she is better than us at giving life, teaching life, and taking care of life. Females are capable of more compassion and tenderness than any male.. their instincts are much stronger, and that seems to be why they are the mothers

.

Given this knowledge, the first thing most women would do is create.. be it a child or.. something else mobile and with beauty. For a male.. it would be maybe the second, after we realize there's nothing to blow up with it. This is a difference in our basic instincts.. one which we dont always abide to but this is why overall, the female is the mother, and so forth.

In houses where there is just the mother, like mine growing up, you'll notice they do alot better, because a single mother is alot more steadfast and dedicated and selfless than the average single father. Not that single fathers are bad, but they do not have the instinctual devotion to do the job as well. More often than not, it's more dutiful than extention of their own life for a male. That reflects in the quality of the child.

So.. this is why I believe ..well I dont want to use the G word because we just got out of that monkeycrapfling... our creator..was either more feminine.. or female alltogether.. and was a single person.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/04/07 19:23

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See..I'm nto concretely sure.. but I don't really accept that ALL humans came from Monkeys.. on the basis that you dont seem them changing in anyway today.

The evidence does point quite clearly in that direction though. The line between monkeys and humans is a gradient stretched over a long time-span. It's perhaps difficult to accept the idea, but why would other species evolve from one kind into the next and we don't? It's not like monkeys now are th�t much different from us either, eventhough there's still a reasonably huge evolutionary difference (don't walk upright, not so smart and so on).

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Then I guess "God" is the wrong word alltogether.

Yes it is. Simply because it's our definition. We can't know what God is, well except for the "God" we defined...

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but put yourself as one of the first species of intelligent life.. maybe before there ever were humans or arborial species. You're alot closer to the point of beggining, so the data's alot more fresh. Any words that were uttered for the universe to hear are thousands of generations less distorted. Even so.. they saw this.. and it was far beyond their comprehension how the universe could be the work, much less the concept, of a mortal being.. or physical being of any kind.. even the little they understand of the working.. most of it still seems to heavy and too complex for any living thing.. but their being closer to the evidence leads them to know it was in fatc an exceptional individual.. and then as the generations pass.. and as its passed from species to species so that some part of the original story survives.. it gets shaped and exxagerated until the creator who was maybe witnessed by the very first of all sentient intelligent life.. becomes a God.. and is made so from then on.

That's how all tall tales happen. If you've ever done that experiment in a college class where someone starts with one story and passes it to the next person, and how it changes completely by the time it gets to the last, you'd see what I mean.

Yes, off course the tale itself will change dramatically, but there are no witnesses who could possibly know. That's my biggest problem actually. Off course I do not believe in Jesus and all the other prophets with their messages, so religious people would probably consider me biased, but just because they (or someone else) wrote down their thoughts of what they were convinced doesn't mean their stories can't be wrong, end up getting mixed up by the tell tale mechanic and so on. There's little real value because of how stories end up being completely different because of how people tell these stories to others... in a classroom it's perhaps one week that people talk about the story and change it, the content of the Bible (especially in the early years) was being told for years and years at least.

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They contain some of the knowledge, obviously.. just like any survived information..

Perhaps it was meant as entertainment? There are some good entertaining stories that talk about morality and so on just the same. (lol, think Star Wars.) I don't believe any information has survived simply because of the role this scripture has played in history and because of how in became a tool instead of a valuable source.

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But what they found was that these species, though tribal,.. and with very different brain structures.. were at least as smart and as capable as modern humans just smaller and with different shaped meat slabs.. erm..brains.

What this says to me is that they are also wrong about neanderthals, sapiens and so forth. I can't say that they werent human.. or different humans than we are now.. but what's also being found are older skeletons of modern sapien humans.. some brushing shoulders with the dinosaurs, time-wise.

Brushing shoulders? As far as we can tell there's a gigantic time between humans and dinosaurs. Don't forget that dinosaurs went extinct over 65 million years ago (based on our current knowledge). There's no way the human species can be th�t old.

As far as brain size and intelligence... yes, I guess scientists might have been wrong indeed. But there have always been some scientists that said that size doesn't matter, because you don't know whether the brain would have a very dense structure or not along with some other characteristics that are believed to influence the 'intelligence'. But... how do you measure intelligence if size doesn't matter? I think as far as tool making human species, you can conclude that they weren't all that stupid, but it's still totally impossible to compare to us whether they were equally as smart. It's not technology that defines how smart you are, but neither is brain size apparently.

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I think we all came from an imprint human closer to modern man, though. Offbranches happened, but it's being continually uncovered that we at least existed in modern form for much longer than originally though.

The evolutionary gradient between monkeys and humans are those earlier human species. Our generation of people that lived the last 1000 years obviously doesn't come from the monkeys that lived 7 million years ago or so, but from species closer to us that have parents that have parents and so on that did come from those monkeys.

The difference between point 0 in time (monkeys) and point 7 million (us right now) can't be covered with just one step.

I don't believe we as a modern species lived longer, because lately there have been some changes in what is considered 'modern' and what not. I think dating the finds in most cases show that there are gaps that don't fit that theory, eventhough I wouldn't be surprised if the modern species did live longer. It's not like our knowledge is perfect on this. We can easily be wrong about the time spans, but newer finds are needed to say anything useful about this.

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1- There is not, never was, and never will be a "God".. because "God"..being defined as an all powerful divninity who has it all and can do it all with nothing more than the tip of a finger.. makes no sense in the physical universe in which everything else.. whether or not we understand it all...does.

and

2- It also stands to reason, though it isn't fact.. it just makes alot of sense... that SOME.. kind of DELIBERATED.. and therefore INTELLIGENT.. and.. far SUPERIOR..(DUE TO HAVING OR ACQUIRING IN HIS/HER/ITS' LIFETIME.. FAR SUPERIOUR INTELLECT, WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE).. being.. is very likely the one who got the bowling ball rolling. Not a special, magic being.. just one far more powerful.. (perhaps close to all powerful) through knowledge and wisdom.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems we might have accidentally come to the same pages on those two thoughts.;)

Yes, I do agree indeed, but I do not agree that it's "very likely" that there has been a creator as described in point 2. I do think that it's a possibility, but in terms of likeliness we disagree. In my opinion certain aspects of creation do not make sense, but it's both difficult to describe why I think so and difficult to defend too. At some points it might feel contradicting, on other points not at all when it comes to logic.

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There is no such thing as total harmony within a group unless they are malleable and gullible.. and you can't be wise enough for such creation as the universe, even if you have all the knowledge.. if you are gullible and malleable. You might be capable of great things.. just not that. Groups and societies have politics.. they have agendas.. bottom line being that all of this would've kept thme in a constant state of dissagreement about what to use the knowledge for.. and how it should be.

This would be all the more reason for me to think of 'creation' as an accident actually. The whole idea of an all powerful being is completely nuts. There's no such thing as a being with infinity knowledge. But off course this is again about the 'defined' "God". I do think that it's quite valid for the 'creator' still though, and furthermore would infinity knowledge be required to be able to create? I don't think so.

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Forthermore.. I think it was either asexual.. or female.

I don't think we can say anything useful about that, because neither are females always the lesser dominant part of a species nor do we know whether the creator must have been part of a species itself. Is it likely that there were a whole bunch of creators? If the universe is flooded with life perhaps yes to some extent, but since, at least in our closest proximity, we haven't found extraterrestrial life... it's an open question. Off course we also know the philosophical question too; "if a creator created us, then who created the creator?". Somehow, and I guess that's my opinion, it logically implies that it's impossible to have a creator as a being itself.

Cheers

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 10/04/07 19:57

I guess that's where we disagree then. I just think everything is far too complex far too precise and mechanized.. to be totally and completely accidental.

To me, chaos doesnt exist.. it's merely pattern beyond our range of detection. Accident's don't happen, although free radicals are factored in..just for diversity and to lean away from predefinition.

I still don't understand why you think we can't possibly have benet he result of forthought and calculation.. as precise and smooth and cyclic as everything is.. but I can't see all this being just a random accident.

I only see maybe the coalescening of atoms into one being and that being becoming intelligent, self aware and such.. that mightve been an accident.. that once. it's plausible that if you rub a trillion trillion electrons together in a small area, it'll coalesce and maybe something will come of it the likes of an intelligence.

But what you are saying is that that happened.. repeteatedly.. to form humans, earth, mars, the sun, all the galaxies.. everything.. a totally methodless accident.. and it all happens to have formed in a way that happens to make sense and work together?

Perhaps you could explain?...

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/04/07 20:45

Funny thing is that I think real chaos doesn't exist either, I also think our overview of things is too limited in a lot of areas and so yeah, although we 'experience' chaos.. it probably isn't really chaos, but simply reaction upon reaction upon reaction interfering with other reactions and so on.

What I meant with 'accident' in this aspect wasn't so much how it all accidentally must have happened by pure chance, I don't believe that since it's always reaction upon reaction, but I more so meant the lack of purpose and active design between all those reactions. It totally doesn't make sense for me that is some higher power, some God or some creator interfering with these reactions. I think life here happened to come into existence because the conditions were right, perhaps just right, but who knows... perhaps the galaxy is flooded with life. Where would you put this creator then? Somewhere in between? Completely at start? As in the infinity before life? Somehow it doesn't add up to place any creator within this framework, it doesn't fit. It's really not easy to explain why though..

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I only see maybe the coalescening of atoms into one being and that being becoming intelligent, self aware and such.. that mightve been an accident.. that once. it's plausible that if you rub a trillion trillion electrons together in a small area, it'll coalesce and maybe something will come of it the likes of an intelligence.

That's not an accident either, but a reaction. A plausible and very likely reaction. I think that people underestimate the inevitability of these kind of events in the bigger picture. It may look like a one-time event to us now, but I'm sure these kind of reactions, that almost look like accidental, happened all the time. Not because they were accidents that happened, but because the conditions where right. The only things that can stop something from happening, is when the conditions are wrong...

I think the universe, life and it's evolution and so on all makes sense because we think it makes sense. Why on earth do zebras exist? Sure we can analyze and come to certain conclusions, but why does it make sense that it exists other than that it's simply the result of reactions upon reactions in the past?

We tend to have a very strong feeling of how everything should always make sense, but some things definitely weren't made to make sense. I'm not talking about reactions that can be explained because we know they were the result of events, I'm talking about the philosophical aspect of why things exist.

I think the complexity speaks against a creator actually. We are off course part of the complexity itself, which makes it logical that we can't ever comprehend the entire complexity of it all simply because of our limits. Still, saying that there must have been something bigger than us, more intelligent or at least able to comprehend the complexity of what the actions of this creator would eventually cause sounds totally unbelievable. Would the creator really know that there would be zebras at one point in time? I don't think so. So... if he didn't know this, then can we speak of design? No, not really.. more so of 'accidents' in the form of reactions upon reactions and so on... Somehow design implies prediction of results, which sounds really really extremely unlikely to me. Perhaps that explains a bit more of my view..

Cheers

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 10/04/07 23:52

I dont really underestimate the likelihood of reactions.. but SOOO many circumstances have to be right in order for even one natural reaction to take place.

So.. what you are saying is that.. (starting from a universe of incoherent but local basic atoms) reaction after reaction after reaction.. occured.. eacho happening to have occured in the right place for a reaction to form galactic clouds.. which have thousands of coordinated reactions.. all happening in the exact right place tat they need to.. to react and cluster and form cores.. then the atomic material local to those cores happens to be in the right place to parent off millions of starts.. stars that share about 10-20 common patterns and types.. suns.. whos gravitation then reacts to atoms local to them and form protoplanets,..

While I do agree that.. at a certain point the reactions become cause and effect. Have a look around..

Isn't this all too perfect.. too well functioning as a mechanism.. ecosystem.
You don't think that even the atomic reaction that triggered all these reactions was the least bit deliberate or calculated?

Design implies calculation.. which is simply applying the rules of the universe that are already there.. and using those rules to determine what will most likely result. That's what our higher science is, in fact. That's how we didn't blow ourselves up when we invented/discovered atomic power.

So.. you don't think someone might've imagined.. concepted.. and then experimented to calculate how they could make.. thermonuclear reactive stars.. spiral galaxies.. planets teaming with life in ecosystems that work together? Even the occasional destruction to keep it all going and struggling for equilibrium (which is what all things in nature supposedly do)

It just.. happened to happen the right way.. and amount to a perfectly sensible.. functioning.. universe.. by chance after chance after chance (it would have taken multiple.. one extreme chance after another to arrive at even the parental complexities.. IE..yes planets are the product of gravitational ballets form stars.. and stars the result of stellar clouds that form by influence of galactic cores.. but when you get to the parent of the chain of cause and effect.. thats when it takes extreme.. extreme chance for multiple cores of a limited variety of type to have formed .. by chance. And if by chance, then there would be infinitely more possibilities than there are in this universe)

It (the universe) just seems to be.. to be too perfect.. too mechanical.. too functioning and stable to have been random, accidental, by chance.. and be what it is today. At best chances, coalescenet atomic reactions would have made stars of billions of kinds. No two stars would look alike. No two planets would be of the same configuration.. There would be too far infinite diversity.. and we know that that doesn't apply to at least the section of universe that we can see and detect.

It very well might not apply to the rest of it, but one little block of cheesecake is a pretty good indication of the general idea of what the rests of the pan consists of

. If there were such chance, there'd be far too infinite possibilities for patterns and commonalities to be observed. If there were not observable and measurable patterns, there'd be no math and no science by which to measure or predict them.

But.. as we know.. there are patterns. There are cycles. All things have something that starts them.. some form of deliberaton between them to keep it on course.. and an end.

Atoms dont naturally get forced at random to make different atoms by fusion. Not unless they are forced to deliberately. That's because in nature, outside of life forms.. and even they, once born, are on a cycle of expiration.

They naturally degrade into lesser atoms, but this universe had to have begun from simple and grown complex.. otherwise, there would have been a big half-life in which some supermassive atom reached halflives and broke off into other, lesser ones.

The observed expansion that is still going on.. is proof contrary to that.

The only way atoms fuse that dont react that way upon introduction.. is if deliberate nuclear processes are inflicted on them.. and only an intelligence who wants said un natural fusions to occur can make it so.

Other wise.. in nature.. energy expends.. atoms diffuse and divide when their structures cant support it.. they form and combine with other atoms when they have to for stability, but even that severely limits the possibility of chance offsiring from covalent reactions.

They don't mash together on their own, the likes of which it wouldve taken to create nany of the elements we know exist on or off this earth. Deliberation had to be there.. whether it played a major role or not.

Someone knew what they wrought, and we are at the very beggining of our journey to understand their method.. even though it's all there in unedited form for us to see in entirity, read and know.

I don't mean the bibles, korans, psalm books, or torahs in our studies.. I mean the universe across which the real, uninterpretable, undisputable, uncorruptable word of "God" (oops!) is written.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/05/07 04:57

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Isn't this all too perfect.. too well functioning as a mechanism.. ecosystem.
You don't think that even the atomic reaction that triggered all these reactions was the least bit deliberate or calculated?

I don't think so. It's not perfect either, it's very flawed. Organisms go extinct, mountains disappear (yeah.. takes some time but still

), planets explode and so on. There may be a balance of some kind which may seem as if perfect. But it's only a sign of how interactive this universe is to me. It's all linked, is it therefore perfect? There's a LOT of failure involved, despite the relative efficient way of how the overall system works.

The entire system is like one giant organism of interaction, how can parts within be created? How can anything outside of it create that organism of interaction? How can the creator itself exist without having a creator of it's own? You're right back at where you started if you assume there has been a creator or designer, because why would it make sense that A. creates B., when A. wasn't created but nonetheless exists or existed and was able to create B.? It's contradicting in nature. Do you believe in an infinite amount of creators? I bet not, so why does it still make sense in your opinion?

I find it already extremely difficult to look at the universe as if it had a beginning, but I'm very sure there haven't been an infinite amount of creators, because that would mean that there still are (real) creators everywhere. How come we don't see? Or wait, perhaps these creators are anomalies in space creating the conditions for life to come in to existence? Off course then we aren't talking about a designer anymore, no being, but simply reaction upon reaction because of these "anomalies"? That's the part of 'creation' that does make sense to me, but that's not 'designed creation'.

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Design implies calculation.. which is simply applying the rules of the universe that are already there.. and using those rules to determine what will most likely result. That's what our higher science is, in fact. That's how we didn't blow ourselves up when we invented/discovered atomic power.

Rules that are there... yes, but it totally depends. Where in time do you put your creator and say there's when he came into play for this argument to make sense? Again there's the problem of infinite creators and also the problem of how a creator would fit within the reaction-system. I think if there was a creator we would have known by now seeing traces of 'it's work'.

No way a creator could predict all the rules and results, not if you can't know the rules in the first place because of ever changing circumstances. It's simply too complex to be designed in my opinion. But like I said, in our view it might all seem too complex, because we are a tiny part of this all and already have trouble understanding our own problems let alone the grand scheme of interaction of everything.

By the way, actually, a lot of things went wrong with atomic power in the early days. A lot of people did die because of experimenting with it, because we didn't know the danger involved or underestimated it and so on. We're clever, but not th�t clever. Nor should we, because no-one can predict everything, no matter how intelligent we are. Scientists often are either right or wrong, even with atomic power and especially the atomic bomb they were wrong more than a few times in the early days.

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It (the universe) just seems to be.. to be too perfect.. too mechanical.. too functioning and stable to have been random, accidental, by chance.. and be what it is today. At best chances, coalescenet atomic reactions would have made stars of billions of kinds. No two stars would look alike. No two planets would be of the same configuration.. There would be too far infinite diversity.. and we know that that doesn't apply to at least the section of universe that we can see and detect.

I strongly disagree. Conditions might never be or never really are 100% the same, but as long as conditions are almost similar you w�ll see similar results.

You can actually see that in our universe. Planets on equal distances from a sun like ours tend to look like ours or have properties like ours, further away means colder, the closer the warmer. Those are the kind of factors that define things. Mathematical chance may have all kinds of results, but conditions are simply conditions which will have set results. Some condition may have multiple possible results, some conditions definitely do not. We can't say our universe is extremely homogeneous nor extremely heterogeneous when it comes to really original things. We do have planets that look totally different, we do have planets that look very similar. That's true for almost everything on every scale.

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Atoms dont naturally get forced at random to make different atoms by fusion. Not unless they are forced to deliberately. That's because in nature, outside of life forms.. and even they, once born, are on a cycle of expiration.

Yes, but our knowledge is really very limited and our insights on these kinds of processes within the grand system are extremely relative.
I think that we do not know yet how that part of the interaction puzzle works or worked. It would even make sense to me if the rules would be able to change somehow, perhaps we simply do not comprehend because of our lack of knowledge?

A creator really seems like the easy way out to me and as said earlier it raises other questions instead of really solving a problem, apart from that it doesn't make sense to me for a lot of other reasons. We haven't started fantasizing yet, but what properties would that creator have had for it to be able to create? You already said that it must have been a male being, where I would say that it's totally unknown if it's even a 'being'. Perhaps it's ooze floating in space that causes conditions to change? Lol, again... our knowledge is too limited and therefore answering this question is problematic on almost every level,

Cheers

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 10/05/07 22:58

If a creator were the easy way out, it would be easier to accept.

Maybe perfect is the wrong word. But.. systems.. such as birth, lifetime and expiration (death in the case of organisms).. they don't occur by chance, nor do they repeat or form elsewhere so similarly, if even once by chance.

Consider the most random event we know of.. lightening strikes. They are the most like random by chance happenings of any natural occurance. Because they are by chance, meaning they only occur given conditions being right.. no two lightening strikes look alike.. are exactly the same temperature.. or occur in the same time/space.

Now.. let's parrallel that to.. what everything else would end up being like.. were it to have all happened by chance.

Starting from the initial bang that sent atoms smashing into eachother, no more than two planets in the whole universe would form close to eachother in appearance or characteristic. Their infinitely diverse stars would make sure of that.

No two stars would be the same or more than remotely similar. No two of us would be close enough to be categorized as the same race. There would not likely be more than two of the same animal species on earth. There could be no such category as "species" because categories require that there be x number of very similar things to one another.

What I am getting at is that the universe does not exist in the infinite diversity that chance would have created. There are caterogizations.. systems.. things form a certain way in this corner of the galaxy, the same as they do in another part equidistant from the core.. and that's why there are categories. There is enough diversity that the universe is not boring, but chance would create infinite possibilities, and the possibilities that do exist as seen in nature.. are not infinite. Great.. yes.. but not nearly infinite.

If they were, there would be no point to naming types of stars or classes of planet, or species of animal. Not only wouldnt there be a point, but no method to it.

The concept of a creator isn't an easy write of.

A God is, most definately. B

ut saying that things form, live, die, and reproduce.. and that vast numbers of stars being characteristically similar to others.. that animal species come about.. and are similar but distinct from others.. saying that the fact there are many planets of a finite, though vast, variety and that there are limits to the diversity of things in nature.. and that that is due to it being a design, wherein these things were first concepted.. planned and then scientifically manifested..

I don't think that's easy at all

. It's hard to even believe,... mostly because the anti-theistic among us wont accept their being anything so very far superior ro us anymore than they will accept a God.

But solely based on nature itself being a organism of finite, thou vast, diversity and cyclic birth, life, and death.. characteristics we know to be true of our universe.. which the results of chance would go against.. a certain amount of deliberation has to account for why there are patterns.

Chance creates infinite uniqueness. The conditions that create a chance event when, where, and how it manifests will not occur the same way again. It is only remotely likely that they occur even similarly, according to chance. But we know that stars form very similar (which is why they are grouped into types), even on opposite sides of the galaxy. We know that they have a certain body, wherein conditions are right for their birth. We know that there is patternity to the formation, locality, and longevity of said bodies.

But.. there is no patternity, only likelyhood, to chance.

Yet in our universe, patternity and cycles, commonalities between bodies and between events are abundant. Many things in this universe DO have predictable and common patterns, characteristics and cycles of happening. Many things DO manifest with similarities close enough to be categorized, grouped and studied thusly. Chance would not allow for limited diversity, yet that is what we have so far observed to be (and the one thing we have seen a great lot of is what's thee in the universe.. it why we have enouth data to classify anything at all).

The things in our universe are vast and dynamic, but not infinitely unique. Therefore.. though some chances are allowed to exist, i.e.. uniquenesses such the occurance and nature of lightening.. which in itself isnt truly random.. but needing of conditions (and maybe that too is a part of the desing.. just to keep things a little new and different) cannot have been the fathering element of all things.

Supposing it were, though, chance events require conditions. At the beggining there was only scattered energy and inhoherent atoms. The magnitude of force alone required for formation of everything from a supermassive structure no bigger than a pintip (the way the big bang is said to have happened) suggests that force had to be applied to push all that mass and energy into that one tiny space.. and then contain it.

But if there's nothing around.. no body larger than another to exert gravity greater than that being exerted on it and between all the other atoms.. thus no natural parents to the chain of formations, like what later took place.. then there could be no massive condensing.. and thus no big bang.

That is why I place not only a catalyst.. but a deliberately acting one at the scene.. due again to the strength and energy required to initiate the condensing, and arrange it in such a fashion that pattern, cycle, and mechanism result from it. No such strength, nor the work energy. Could've come from the cold, dispersed atoms and energy photons that were there before they were made into something.

Now.. I would say it is plausible that the one thing that could've happened by chance would have been the birth of the lifeform, credited with the subsequent creation, itself.. given enough atoms were not so distant enough to coalescene.. warm.. and network into something which, by chance, became self aware.

But it still would've had to have been a truly unique organism to even support so much information. Very different from anything carbon based.

Maybe at one point, again.. enough atoms were close enough to smidge together, and conduct and domino into a sentient network of atom and energy.. which became self aware in thr process. This being a true chance occurance in that it needed only conditions to be right, and it being a unique occurance, much like lightening.

So far there's been nothing remotely like it to form again, capable of retention, let alone application of so much knowledge from no more than dust and incoherent atoms of nothing in particular. So I would classify that as a truel chance event.

Now.. why is it possible for one single solitary lifeform to have formed by chance.. and not the rest of the universe..? Well besides the above reasons..

One unique, original.. by chance under minimal conditions.. lifeform is alot lower on the complexity scale than a superorganism such as the universe. It would take alot less matter, alot less energy.. and therefore had alot less tough conditions for formation by chance.

Chance makes believable sense as to his/hers/it's random coming into being.
Other than that though, nature is vastly diverse but finite. While the products of chance are infinitely diverse, and not as predictable or categorical as most things in nature, given the right know how, are.

That being why, on the whole, we are not the products of chance

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: Why God exists - 10/06/07 04:17

Quote:

I just think everything is far too complex far too precise and mechanized.. to be totally and completely accidental.

That's a very old and ultimately flawed argument. It makes a simple error: assuming that the existing world is "inevitable" or predestined. Things are as they are because they turned out that way...In other words the very existence of something discounts the improbability if its existence (unless obvious traces of intelligent action are found that can't be explained using a physical theory).

The universe is just like a handful of sand droppped on the ground...the final resulting pile may have a certain unlikely complexity, but had to turn out somehow...There is nothing that can be observed that is impossible to have developed naturally.

Also, there is nothing very precise or mechanical about the universe..modern physics shows how uncertain reality is on many levels--from subatomic particles to macro structures in the universe, things behave in odd and highly complex, unintuitive ways.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: Why God exists - 10/07/07 02:33

Predestiny is different from mechanization. The systems of a car engine are methodical and itnerdependant.. the systems of the body are also.. this says nothing about their predestination.

Modern physics only understands so much of it.. and thats why things only make sense to a point.. that's pretty much the grounded, limtied argument everyone uses.. basing far too much on modern science.

Obviously there's plenty we dont understand.. but also obviously..it all works methodically.. else we would encounter true inconsistancy.. and else we could get nowhere as far as understanding it even on a basic level.

If there were no such things as mechanisms, again we couldnt predict one single attribute about our world, or the space around it.. nor their relationships.

The fact that we can on a basic level, even up to where we stop understanding, and probably need different approaches to continue from.. says that these things exist.

See my above arguments about why chance and randomnity are not to credit with our beggining.. but in all our years studying the universe, we have never once encountered one inconsistancy.. only missing factors we had yet to detect. When we did detect them, either by finding a new method.. factors came into place, and we learned a little more.

We have not yet encountered a inconsistency, though. Only parts of the organism we don't understand. We are too limited to, for now.. but gradually.. we wont be.. and then we will feel silly for saying its an inconsistency or a fault in the universe's systems.. the same way we always do upon discovery.

My reasoning for there to have been premeditation though, is that the universe as a whole is not only far too complex and interdependantly functioning, not unlike a machine or organism.. put in play in just the right way that everything works..

but.. starting from nothing.. it had to have taken a much greater amount of deliberate (probably conceptualized and technically facilitated) force to turn a universe of scattered atoms into a dense pindrop.. and then let it go in just the right way that all this results.. than chance, or randomnity are capable of given the laws of basic science.

Posted By: jreuschel1

Re: Why God exists - 06/29/08 20:28

I didn't read it all, but it seems a waste of time when you have this:
knowledge
everything as a whole IS God
the bible says god says "I, Am"
is the bible author a known liar or is god lying.

everything as a whole is also canceled out by negative forces.

so get a number line and a dictionary and a calculator

mark on your number line that zero equals God look in your dictionary to see if zero means existence or not and you have your answer.

then look up dispute in the dictionary
and ratio
and fair
and balance
and first

first there was balance AND fairness leading to a 1:1 ratio

maybe you've heard the phrase WORD for WORD
God is balance while god is Fair

now we are holding all of this to the ruler of justice right?
so you agree that god DOES EXIST.

1:1 ratio is equivalent to any A:A ratio including 0:0

offtopic, ratios are divisions so you CAN divide by zero

look up good
and bad
and evil
and honesty
and perspective
and logic

the greatest battle ever fought is in the mind of man
this is true when the mind of man is complete

and finally look up bias in the dictionary

Posted By: jreuschel1

Re: Why God exists - 06/29/08 20:30

god is about choice

Posted By: AlbertoT

Re: Why God exists - 06/29/08 21:20

Biogenesis
it was a strong argoment in favour of creation in the 19th century but modern bio has razed it to ground
Artificial chromosomes have been already assembled

The 2nd law (entropy)

Quote:

What? The Earth is not a closed system

Not only earth is not a closed system , even better, earth absorbs low entropy energy from the sun and delivers high entropy energy in the night
This can explain the creation and maintence of highly organized systems

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 06/29/08 23:29

Originally Posted By: jreuschel1

I didn't read it all, but it seems a waste of time when you have this:
knowledge
everything as a whole IS God
the bible says god says "I, Am"
is the bible author a known liar or is god lying.

The bible says a lot, but doesn't prove any of what it claims... Having faith in something is not proof or evidence.

Quote:

everything as a whole is also canceled out by negative forces.

so get a number line and a dictionary and a calculator

mark on your number line that zero equals God look in your dictionary to see if zero means existence or not and you have your answer.

Care to explain this? Don't forget it's TOTALLY arbitrary giving numbers to meanings of words. 1 God simply means there aren't 2, but only 1. As in the amount of Gods... yet some cultures believe in many more Gods so God would not be 1, but say 10 or so. Again, totally arbitrary even in the mathematical sense. Sure 1 usually means 'present' and 0 usually means 'absent', but we could have decided otherwise.

Really, the mere existence of the number zero, does not prove that God exists or something... in fact, in my opinion 0 as in zero evidence rather proves God does not exist or at least is unlikely to exist. I know it only takes evidence to prove the contrary is true, but if you go with what we REALLY know now, it's simply incredibly unlikely that some kind of supernatural God being exists somewhere.

Quote:

then look up dispute in the dictionary
and ratio
and fair
and balance
and first

first there was balance AND fairness leading to a 1:1 ratio

maybe you've heard the phrase WORD for WORD
God is balance while god is Fair

Read the Bible, God is far from Fair and far from 'balance' too. His kind of justice is rather random (read:changing) at times or so it seems.

Quote:

now we are holding all of this to the ruler of justice right?
so you agree that god DOES EXIST.

No, we do not agree that god does exist by discussing the possibility. The problem is, every idea is a possibility when it involves a lot of unknowns... Giant supernatural glowing red worms could have created life for all we know, all we really can determine by holding ideas to a ruler of knowledge is whether an idea is likely or unlikely (or downright crazy even). It's the best way of dealing with lots of unknowns, problem is some people don't agree with the amount of objectivity (or lack thereof?) involved.

Don't forget it's a somewhat 'funny' way of trying to figure out the truth objectively by simply assuming that what's written in the bible must be right with blind faith in what it says.

There are countless of other questions that need to be answered before you can even start of thinking about an actual being being involved in some kind of creation (remember whether you like it or not evolution doesn't point in the direction of a divine creation where some kind of divine intervention took place.)

Quote:

1:1 ratio is equivalent to any A:A ratio including 0:0

Trust me, math is a really bad way of even trying to prove God. It's like saying God exists because the letters G, O and D exist in a sequence we use or something. Gets you no where.

Quote:

the greatest battle ever fought is in the mind of man
this is true when the mind of man is complete

For each individual, for each generation or for each species of humans? Prove to me that humans did not have questions about their existence for as long as our species exists at every age a human life cycle goes through, it will be quite a challenge for sure! A kid will paint a flower and sun and probably not think in as complex ways as an adult would be able to, but it doesn't mean the kid doesn't also ever wonder why it exists. Even intelligence doesn't matter much, only the kind of interpretations and answers (and validity of them) will be different depending on intelligence, not the questions.

Quote:

and finally look up bias in the dictionary

I always like it when people sort of imply that 'we' are biased, when in reality they themselves usually are incredibly close minded.. hence why they need to claim that we are somehow more biased than they are or something. Funny stuff. :p

Posted By: pararealist

Re: Why God exists - 06/30/08 20:47

A personal view here:
Once i used to believe in god, (upbringing etc.)
Now years later (56) i have removed all that from my thoughts because
i have found that
Humanity seems to NEED the concept of gods.
probably because of manipulation (my view).
probably to lay blame someone else.
//
My motto today is "I worship no god or man".
//
But i must say, the belief in a god or gods seems to be just a step in
humankind's development, and one should not really disrespect
the last step one has stood on. (just in case one can go no further).

Posted By: Oxy

Re: Why God exists - 07/27/08 08:48

Even if there would be some supernatural beeing controlling the universe
(such as we imagine when a scientist simulates an environment)
I doubt that he would be interested in humans at all,
apart from taking some statistics.

Posted By: jreuschel1

Re: Why God exists - 10/13/09 00:48

what huh?

Yes, Me Lord.
_____________________________________
don't argue with a fool, they will beat you down to their level then beat you with experience.

Posted By: MMike

Re: Why God exists - 10/14/09 00:21

i find that people hardly believe in UFO , but do believe in GOD, which is weird, because they never saw "him/her/it" but people real saw UFO.

So its kind contorversy, because most of them say GOD exist because there must be a meaning of life. Or i feel it does exist.
so they have faith..

but when UFO, they say oh , we never saw we cant believe.. etc etc.. so wierd.. because if tey believe in god, which is something they never see, and touch, then they must believe in UFO, because they did not see them, but there most be , its the same though.. but here they refuse with the argument because they never saw... pathetic.. And GOD anD UFO is cancelled out, because they think GOD is only EARTH not UFo planet, not other lifes outthere, just us on earth.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/15/09 15:04

The whole concept itself is rather strong: Believe in something basically just to feel better, everyone of course wants to feel better and it's rather easy to (blindly) believe. Add to that some very charismatic and smart organizations behind these religions and it's not going to be something that will disappear very soon.

In fact, for example in America it's now mainly the media that exploits the whole 'be religious' thing to boost the amount of Christians. It's stupid, but it has a huge (semi-political) advantage when it comes to manipulation and controlling the public opinion.

From a purely biological point of view, it really makes no sense to assume the 'mind' or 'spirit' of someone will go float around once people are dead or even go somewhere. Not even quantum mechanics and multiverse theories will.

I think God and even religion as a whole are mainly outdated concepts that are simply very strong and it's also one of those concepts that can be considered impossible to truly disprove, even with a massive lack of evidence and good knowledge about many of the related subjects.

I totally agree that people often use it as a tool to manipulate, but to some extent people seem to want that or even encourage that. It's the human psychology of wishful thinking and all that. Most people rather believe in a fake story that gives hope, than admit their situation is bad and learn the truth.

The ironic thing is that those people fool themselves, where in reality they should take matters in their own hands and act accordingly. Change is something someone else is NOT going to do for you.

Quote:

So its kind contorversy, because most of them say GOD exist because there must be a meaning of life. Or i feel it does exist.
so they have faith..

Well, it's very much the same kind of 'faith' people have in UFOs. They probably will be more confident about believing in what they think they have seen, but it's the same odd 'we know' without evidence thing.

By the way, it should come to no surprise that a lot of people who believe in UFOs, also believe in God.

Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: Why God exists - 10/16/09 14:50

Here is an easy and short statement:

If there would be god, there would also be a hell.
Everybody how don�t believe in god goes there.

BUT: There are different religions, so, nobody believes in all so, everybody would go into hell.

Because of that, the hell must get bigger, so it would be colder.

The hell would be cold -> no hell!

That�s why, God can�t exist.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/16/09 19:50

Funny reasoning, but the ironic thing is that religious people tend to do exactly that.

"There is a God because they need a God, basically so they can feel good and because otherwise they won't get into Heaven. Which they actually do not know anything about, except from their own fictional knowledge about that place. Same goes for God actually. Amen."

The purpose of a religion or even faith itself is a very interesting subject.

Posted By: croman

Re: Why God exists - 10/17/09 09:47

Why God exists? Who says he does exists? Anyone seen him?

Anyway, I do believe in SOMETHING above us, some larger force or new birth after death.

But believing in God is kinda funny to me. People are all:
"do right, do no wrong. I believe in God. He lives above us in heaven, sky, clouds, he's everywhere...BUT you cant see him!!! And he has his List with 10 commands that you MUST obey or you'll end up in his special place under ground for bad people where you will rot and burn till end of the time!!!...............BUT - GOD LOVES YOU!!"

hahaha hehe. I heard this somewhere but i cant remember from who and where. Anyway, it's just a joke. Everyone needs to believe in something but not the bible. Not only it's full of lies but it was written for Church interests. I personally believe in new birth or something like that.

I dont feel like running, singing and watching nature all my eternity in heaven.
No offense to anyone please...

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/17/09 14:35

Quote:

Anyway, I do believe in SOMETHING above us, some larger force or new birth after death.

Do you really? If you believe in something, but don't know what it must be, then how can you believe in anything at all?

I think believing in something, is sort of admitting their might be things we do not know yet.

Which would be practically the same as saying we don't truly know. Why should the unknown always be of a spiritual nature or divine nature?

When you think hard about that, you'll see it makes as much sense as believing in God... (which doesn't make much sense.)

Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: Why God exists - 10/17/09 15:57

Originally Posted By: PHeMoX

Quote:

Anyway, I do believe in SOMETHING above us, some larger force or new birth after death.

You�re right PHeMoX

And I want to say I believe in the things that are shown in Neon Genesis Evangelion - YES

Posted By: croman

Re: Why God exists - 10/17/09 18:28

Well, believing in anything doesnt make much sense, yes. But I want to believe that our life is not over when we die. It's just that i dont believe in some special God. By the way, is God a person after all? Or is it a name for....something? Noone knows...not even a pope.
Actually, believing is somewhat assuring yourselfs that the death is not the end and blah blah stuff. That's what I (want to) believe in.

But also for me, belief/believing/religion is fucked up stuff. That messes up your brain 100% hehe.

Again no offense to anyone (not ateists, not believers)

Posted By: MMike

Re: Why God exists - 10/18/09 19:47

and the things about the EVE and Adam ? if they did sex, then there is those child, that then would need to mate with their own children (sisters and brothers) ( that genetically speaking is dangerous..) thats thats why we are all fucked up, with diseases and genetic problems, alzeimer, etc etc...

as far as i know the church does not accept sex with brothers, but they DID it! i think, thats what i think at least.. if that eve thing is true at all.

And i dont know who told them to put the penis on the vagina would give call a child to world, i wonder what other holes they tryed to found that out.

Now think about this.. we have 2 DNA strands, one from father, and one from mother...

since they are 2 ( eve and adam) so whos the carrier of the strands?? i mean..

EVE has 2 DNA strands, one from the mother one from the father, so but if there was no one before them, how could they have 2 strands?

So eve has one strand from somone, that could be same as adam, because they come from the same source i think.. so that would make them BROTHERS "twins" at first..
So their chirldren would have half on EVE DNA, and Adam DNA.. but because EVE AND ADAM DNA are the same.. their child would be Clones of EVE and ADAM, so they would never be different from offspring.. Which is very confusing and makes no sense, So.. Its Fake fake fake that story, its like whos first the chicken or the EGG, in fact the first is the EGG. The Egg came from some creator.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/18/09 21:04

Originally Posted By: croman

I'm not saying you aren't enjoying life as it is already, but I often think people who want to believe in these things, could get more out of their lives simply by changing their attitude and mentality.

Posted By: croman

Re: Why God exists - 10/19/09 11:10

Quote:

I'll second that. Hehe, yea...as you said yourself - that's why Human species is all fucked up.

Quote:

No offense taken at all and I hope I do not offend you either.

I just think it's funny people would want to believe in that.

Why not truly try to make the best of now and live your life to the fullest instead of thinking it might magically continue in an afterlife. wink

I'm not saying you aren't enjoying life as it is already, but I often think people who want to believe in these things, could get more out of their lives simply by changing their attitude and mentality. laugh

I'm trying to get most of my "current" life. Basically, when I look back how I act, my life really looks like "living for today" type.

And yes, as much as I think about "my belief" it gets more funnier to me and I think of myself as more and more stupid. But, anyway, why does someone believe in something at all? Dunno...
Well, I guess i could maybe believe in the Sun hehe, at least i see It.

As I said before, belief/believing/religion messes with your brain... But still, i want to believe that i'm not gone when i die

Oh and also if science could create some Elixir for longer life(perhaps with no death) I'd become the biggest worshiper of whatever-that-branch-of-science-is. And i think new religion would be created then hehe...I'm just thinking out loud....

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/19/09 13:09

Quote:

Yes and same here. I would probably worship something like that too.

To some extent it's what religion is about too, only difference is that the religious people still think they will have to die first before they can start 'living forever'.

I honestly respect people of all kinds of faith, but really when you think about it, how crazy is that?

It's still extremely interesting to me though. You know the what when and how what drives people to believe in these kinds of things.

Posted By: zeusk

Re: Why God exists - 10/19/09 13:25

To say that god doesnt exist is saying that our lives are meaningless. I bet most ppl here belive that theres some extraterestial life out there in space.But if we found out that there is no alien life some kind of way, ppl would be devastated but it didnt really hurt anything to belive in aliens.Maybe it is a waste of time to some ppl, but what if god was real, and when he came you was not accepted to go to heaven, and you felt the the same burning pain as if you were on the sun for enternity.What if you were accepted and you would be able to live for enternity feeling a thousand times better than on the best day of your life, never having to worry about anything for enternity, knowing all the secrets of the universe.For someone to say they wouldnt wont that must truly be insane.I know i would.

Posted By: croman

Re: Why God exists - 10/19/09 15:42

Well living without worries, knowing everything and living like that for eternity would kinda be boring, at least to me. I'd rather choose to be born again as human or another living being.
Also, if i remember correctly, God loves all living beings, so that means Alliens too, right? I mean, they're living beings afterall just like we are.

Believing in alliens is a matter of choice, just like religion. I think that somewhere out there should be some sort of life away from the Earth or Solar System. But talking about alliens and such stuff is completely another big subject just as this one "Why God exists" is.

Btw, on that question - "Why God exists?" Why, beats me, I really have no idea. Shouldnt the question be - "Does God exists?"

If "our" God exists, I bet he's something like that Q guy from Star Trek, if anyone remembers it. And that's some fucked up Q that keeps on testing us, punishing us - better word for that, playing with us.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/20/09 14:05

Originally Posted By: zeusk

To say that god doesnt exist is saying that our lives are meaningless.

Not at all! Why? Explain to me why a life in the here and now would be meaningless.

It's popular religious propaganda to state that a live without a faith in God, somehow makes life itself less interesting or meaningful. Excuse me, but that kind of reasoning is just plain stupid.

Quote:

I bet most ppl here belive that theres some extraterestial life out there in space.But if we found out that there is no alien life some kind of way, ppl would be devastated but it didnt really hurt anything to belive in aliens.

It's a better motive indeed if believing in a religion really doesn't hurt, but nothing's further from the truth.

The good old better save than sorry argument really only goes so far.

Even if the influence of a God or religion isn't obvious in everyday life and taking into account the fact that specifics about a God entity and it's whereabouts are totally and utterly unknown... then I really wonder how much true value such a reasoning has as well.

Don't forget the often huge implications being a member of a certain religion can have.

Wars, blind faith, being vulnerable to manipulation, discrimination, unwanted marriages in some cultures, less rights for women, hate-speech, non-religion related propaganda, isolation, abuse, social conditioning; there's really a lot more negative stuff surrounding or potentially surrounding a religious person's life.

Quote:

Maybe it is a waste of time to some ppl, but what if god was real, and when he came you was not accepted to go to heaven, and you felt the the same burning pain as if you were on the sun for enternity.What if you were accepted and you would be able to live for enternity feeling a thousand times better than on the best day of your life, never having to worry about anything for enternity, knowing all the secrets of the universe.For someone to say they wouldnt wont that must truly be insane.I know i would.

Fear of missing out on something, really is a bad motive to believe in a God or religion.

We all want to become rich, so many of us will buy lottery tickets. Same kind of silly thing when you think hard about it. (It's really easier and faster and much more realistic to try and become a millionaire through plain hard and intelligent work!)

Do you really think all people who buy a ticket have a true (objectively speaking after winners are known) chance of winning?

I'm not talking about predestined life, but it's a statistical fact that many people will not ever win a jackpot prize or considerably large price even when they buy lottery tickets all their life.

..and then those people aren't even really doing anything 'wrong' compared to a religion that has many additional and sometimes odd rules. Breaking them could also lead to a punishment at the gates of heaven according to many... so really, if it exists at all, I really don't think heaven can be a crowded place.

I think that to any open mind it should be obvious that the whole heaven-reward is a made-up thing, a human invention to give comfort and hope (and be able to manipulate people). Nothing more, nothing less.

Posted By: MMike

Re: Why God exists - 10/21/09 01:44

Religions BELIEVE ME AND TRUST ME EVERYONE; BECAUSE I HAVE NO INTEREST TO DO BAD TO YOU IN ANY SORT OF WAY..

RELIGION IS A CUBE, A BOX; TO KEEP UP THERE; BELIEVING IN LIFE IS BEATIFUL LETS HAVE FAITH; LETS BELIEVE SOMEONE ( GOD) WILL CHANGE THINGS BETTER.

RELIGION IS WITH NO OFFENSE; A STORY, like those you tell to your kids, to entertain , TO MAKE PEOPLE forget other things, to KEPP HUMANITY CONTROLLED!

THEY ARE ILLUMINATI BRANCHES... AND I THINK YOU DONT WANT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE ARRESTED IN THAT BOX.

RELIGION DONT TEL YOU ABOUT YOUR SPIRIT LIFE; RELIGIOU IS THE CULT OF GOD, withis equal to you will slaver , by doing that praying thing every sunday on the Church..

WAKE UP PEOPLE.. your smarter than this right!?

Posted By: sPlKe

Re: Why God exists - 10/24/09 13:31

Originally Posted By: MMike

whos first the chicken or the EGG, in fact the first is the EGG. The Egg came from some creator.

i coudl tear your whole post apart like a puzzle, bt ill just take this one sentence and give you a fact:

The EGG came first, because there were already egs when the chicken didnt even exist. in fact, the egg is almost as old as life itself.
firt there were single cell creatures. as they grew to something bigger, called amphibic creatures,the egg came to be, a few billion years ago. thats a fact. you can either live by that fact or ignore all cotnradicting evidence (thats what religion usually does) and believe what you want....

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 10/25/09 22:45

Yup, true.

If chickens come from eggs, you'll need an egg first. Its really not that difficult.

Its easy to forget that mammals also grow inside something that resembles an egg, but this simply happens internally. There are exceptions, but a whole lot of life grows inside eggs (with or without hard shell) and as Spike said, it's easily one of the oldest evolutionary developments.

Thus, in an evolutionary sense, the (external) chicken egg really isn't that extraordinary.

Posted By: EvilSOB

Re: Why God exists - 10/26/09 00:36

Also, using evolution as a reference,

The animal that laid THE egg was 'almost' a chicken,
and the animal that hatched was 'only just' a chicken.

I you believe evolution, then that is pretty obvious.

Posted By: MMike

Re: Why God exists - 11/02/09 02:38

from what i learned ... the egg, as a hard sheel is the normal thing...

the eggs inside some one, is not normal. it is caused by a virus that "melts" the shell, thus making the placenta...

but now i dont know if the normal is the egg or the placenta, and the virus solidify the placenta making an egg.. but i know it is caused by a virus..

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 11/03/09 21:51

Not a virus, a mutation.

Posted By: EvilSOB

Re: Why God exists - 11/03/09 22:42

Not necessarily Phemox.

Over the millenia, there have been multitudes of "naturally occuring" retro-viruses.
These viruses (virii?) can insert their own DNA (or fragments of) into the DNA of its host.
Then when the host re-produces, the child also contains the inserted DNA.
And over time, descendants of the host can become dependant on some or all of that inserted DNA,
and the virus embedded in its DNA may lose parts of itself that it needs to survive on its own.
So they become more of a "merged" entity, rather than host and virus as separate entities.

Thats the way I understand it anyway.

But its probably personal preference whether one would call this a 'mutation' or a 'virus'.
As it is a little bit of both...

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 11/04/09 14:33

That is correct and I am aware that a viruses tend to have a very high mutation rate and that it has certainly been one of many factors causing mutations in a host. But it remains to be seen whether each instance of said viruses would have caused the same effect. Most likely not, hence why I said it's still a mutation that caused the actual change.

Originally Posted By: EvilSOB

But its probably personal preference whether one would call this a 'mutation' or a 'virus'.
As it is a little bit of both...

Correct again, which only goes to show that some mutations aren't exactly as randomly caused as people assume. The virus itself is the result of mutations as well.

(Also, virii isn't a correct pluralization of virus as it would be the plural of a Latin non-word virius. Viri isn't right either, as that's actual the plural of the latin word for man (-> men). Its one of those words that never had a plural in Latin (its a mass noun), so lets just stick to the English 'viruses'.

)

Posted By: Joquan

Re: Why God exists - 07/21/10 04:28

God exists. Enough said, no explanations needed.

Posted By: WretchedSid

Re: Why God exists - 07/21/10 10:16

Cool story bro

Posted By: sPlKe

Re: Why God exists - 07/22/10 04:48

Originally Posted By: Joquan

God exists. Enough said, no explanations needed.

you are, and i dont care if i get banne, the most stupid, retarded, moronic and idiotic person i have ever had the un-pleasure to realize existing. in fact, i hope you die a horribly slow and painfull death bby some lunatic hitting you with a spoon for years so that you die and see just how wrong you are. if you would have the capacity to even think, you would know how wrong you are and if there would even be the sligthest chance of you ever achieving something in live, i would gladly salute you, however, this day will never come simply because you sir are the lowest human being that graces our fucked up planet.

and yes, i enjoy calling you names because you deserve it. now do the universe a favour and die-.-

Posted By: Sajeth

Re: Why God exists - 07/22/10 06:02

Posted By: sPlKe

Re: Why God exists - 07/22/10 06:12

AMEN!

oh and sorry for my outburst. im just fed up. i put the creature on ignore and thats that...

Posted By: Joquan

Re: Why God exists - 07/22/10 17:03

sPIKe, you are, and I don't care if I get banned, the most childish, ignorant, horrible English'ed (If that's even a word

), weirdo I have ever had the displeasure to know that exists. In fact, I hope you realize that God exists and that you will accept Christ as Lord and Savior, as well as being the Son of God, just so I can see one more soul in Heaven. If you had a big enough mind to even grasp that all of our universe didn't happen by chance, you would realize that God is the true Creator of it. I don't need to achieve anything in earthly life, as long as I have achieved salvation. This day, I will pray for you, hoping you will come to see the truth. (I also, am part of the HIGHEST humans that ever helped our planet. No, not the planet itself, but the people.)

And yes, I enjoy trying to get people to come see the truth. Now do everything a favor and realize the truth. -.-

In the Grace of God,
-Jake

Posted By: Sajeth

Re: Why God exists - 07/22/10 17:24

Meh, I've seen better attempts at trolling.
3/10

Posted By: achaziel

Re: Why God exists - 07/22/10 17:26

Posted By: Sajeth

Re: Why God exists - 07/23/10 12:12

I think there should be the rule that posting anything that comes directly from *chan leads to an instant ban.

Dont people realize that this makes them look like underage morons? I have to fight with this kind of crap in my community too, its annoying as hell.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 07/23/10 15:23

Originally Posted By: Joquan

If you had a big enough mind to even grasp that all of our universe didn't happen by chance

You do not understand what you're saying here, nor do you understand what chance actually has to do with evolution. As it's very little actually depending on what your definition of 'chance' really is.

Causality plays a very big role in evolution (and the coming into existence of everything actually). It deals with probabilities, but not with 'chance' the way you think. Evolution is not based on some kind of dumb random luck!

The coming into existence of our universe has a non-supernatural cause and the many events after the big bang lead to where we are now. (Deterministic or not, doesn't even matter.) We already know about most of those events in very great detail down to the presumably first couple of seconds of our universe(s?).

Again, evolution isn't accidental. It's not driven by some kind of force like a God being causing progress or guiding it around either, it just works with a few extremely simple rules.

Whatever change caused; whatever works or causes no harm to a species survival in the longer run will (or at least can) survive into later generations. Its why evolution looks like a design, but actually really isn't. It adapts to conditions of the past through selection forces, which could be anything from environmental change to competing with other species in the same space (ie. 'natural selection').

There's a whole ocean load of arguments against a divine creator ( a being that we obviously can not even see or detect ), especially considering the mountain of evidence in favor of evolution out there.

If you really think random dumb luck is the force behind evolution, then I'd encourage you to read Richard Dawkins' The blind watchmaker and enlighten yourself about what evolution is really all about.

Of course religious people tend to reject whatever doesn't suit their ideological needs by definition, but it will rationally explain why your argument has no ground whatsoever in light of the actual scientific theory.

Posted By: Sajeth

Re: Why God exists - 07/23/10 15:44

Its a very simple logic. No matter how unsignificant the chance of the universe + intelligent life being created was, it was a matter of fact that it must have happened, otherwise we wouldnt be discussing about this. The universe is created in the moment there is life. A universe that isnt noticed by anyone does not exist. And because time is relative to the viewer, all the time of the universe where there was no living being was _nothing_, pushing the chance for life to form until it finally happened.

Posted By: Lukas

Re: Why God exists - 07/23/10 16:15

Originally Posted By: PHeMoX

If you really think random dumb luck is the force behind evolution, then I'd encourage you to read Richard Dawkins' The blind watchmaker and enlighten yourself about what evolution is really all about.

There is already a new book by Richard Dawkins, which is especially about the evidence of evolution, "The Greatest Show on Earth". I read both books and I think "The Greatest Show on Earth" is even more convincing than "The blind Watchmaker".

(But we both know he is never going to read any of these books anyway, because he already "knows" the answer

)

Posted By: Joey

Re: Why God exists - 07/23/10 16:53

Dawkins is a bit over-critical I think.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 07/23/10 16:57

Seriously? Oh, thanks for pointing that out. Guess I'm going to get me that book also then.

Latest books I bought from Dawkins were 'Modern Science Writing' and I've just read his 'A Devil's Chaplain' book too and must say he's a very good writer and has a very good sense of how to explain things properly and very rationally with the evidence science came up with so far. Without ever getting really boring, which is quite an accomplishment.

But yeah, you're right. In many cases religious people will stay far far away from those books. They see things like that as threatening.

Posted By: deianthropus

Re: Why God exists - 07/27/10 20:47

(forgive me for not reading all 11 pages of the discussion)

The assertion that "nature cannot organize things itself" contains several fallacies. The article's author places an anthropomorphic emphasis on "Mother Nature," suggesting a non-corporeal intelligent force similar to his definition of God. Second, it ignores and oversimplifies the complex scientific laws that have been shown to "organize things." Case in point: gravity. Gravity is largely responsible for the order and shape of the universe on the macro level. A complex gravitational system will tend to rotate about its center and form a sphere or disc shape, depending on the size, mass, and physical makeup of the system.

This we have observed, and correspondingly, we have constructed paradigms to closely map (and predict) how these systems behave in nature. The 'holes' in any theory (and know that theological dogma is not theory, nor even hypothesis) result from the progressive nature of Human comprehension - true science is still young; it is a relatively new tool considering the thousands of years of civilization and millions of years of evolution...

Every force in nature is a demonstration that nature "organizes things itself."

Certainly we cannot "disprove" God's existence, considering its critical role in a popular paradigm. However, the paradigm from which God was born has long since extinguished its practical relevance. Scientific as well as moral axioms can exist without a God.

Afterthought: we also cannot pick and choose what scientific axioms are "true." There are processes by which we can determine that a certain description is more or less accurate than a competing description, i.e the scientific method.

Posted By: deianthropus

Re: Why God exists - 07/27/10 21:03

Originally Posted By: Sajeth

Wow. You just blew my mind. like trying to jam a live speaker wire into a wet USB port (It just doesn't work like that, buddy).

Do you know why time is relative to the observer? it has nothing to do with Descartes. It is a mathematical result of the speed of light being fixed; that is, no matter the speed an object is moving, if that object could measure the speed of a photon, it would measure the same speed for the photon as another object with half its speed would measure the speed of the same photon. Get it? It doesn't mean that what you can't see doesn't exist (although that would be a compelling argument against God).

Posted By: Blackchuck

Re: Why God exists - 07/27/10 22:04

Read this;

link

PS; and look the videos befor you anser.
The hole!!!

Posted By: Sajeth

Re: Why God exists - 07/28/10 12:30

Originally Posted By: deianthropus

Do you know why time is relative to the observer? it has nothing to do with Descartes. It is a mathematical result of the speed of light being fixed; that is, no matter the speed an object is moving, if that object could measure the speed of a photon, it would measure the same speed for the photon as another object with half its speed would measure the speed of the same photon. Get it? It doesn't mean that what you can't see doesn't exist (although that would be a compelling argument against God).

This has nothing to do with what I wrote

Posted By: Random

Re: Why God exists - 07/28/10 13:10

UUU. Blackchuck those videos are very interesting...

Posted By: Random

Re: Why God exists - 07/28/10 13:11

That meens I belive it.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 07/29/10 15:51

Originally Posted By: Joey

Dawkins is a bit over-critical I think.

You should try to explain why you think so. Do you think so because he can sound overly fanatical about it all?

For some reason or another religious fanatics tend to be always a million times worse. They actually kill to 'prove to you their right'; did you know the penalty for young children to not believe is death in many Islamic countries? This is true for many more religions and/or sects all over the world and they all happily ignore that there's no free choice to believe what you want. This effectively means people are forced to believe whatever they're being told.

I'm pretty sure Dawkins used to be quite open minded. Perhaps until his very own words were used against him in all kinds of very out-of-context ways. Darwinists are often said to be racists, pro-eugenics and so on, which is clearly nuts.

I'd say some of his fanaticism is the natural result of all that.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Why God exists - 07/29/10 15:53

Originally Posted By: deianthropus

What exactly are you responding to here? Which article are you talking about?

Posted By: deianthropus

Re: Why God exists - 07/29/10 19:03

Originally Posted By: PHeMoX

What exactly are you responding to here? Which article are you talking about?

The article from the first post in the thread. That is, the topic of this discussion, by LoganTheHogan.

(and feel free to respond to the content of my post, rather than trying to make one of us look silly)

Originally Posted By: Sajeth

This has nothing to do with what I wrote

It has everything to do with what you wrote. You made a claim using a faulty premise, and I explained one critical reason your premise is faulty (be careful any time you use "because"). I can assail another of your faulty premises, if you like, but I think I've made my point. Just because nobody's around to witness it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. My best guess is that you're misinterpreting the consequences of the quantum uncertainty principle. Trees don't need eyes and ears to fall, and in dealing with potential infinities, no beginning (or end) is inherently implied. It is the task of science, not pseudological (or metaphysical) conjecture, to determine the properties of nature which can explain the answers to these things.

Once again, we can't decide the answers ourselves. The fact of the matter is, we don't know the answers. But those who have the resources - financial and material as well as mental - to actually observe the universe and its behavior actually know the answers better than someone sitting stoned or over-caffeinated in his bedroom and making up the answers that feel true, or seem to "fit together."

Jesus Pleezus.

Posted By: deianthropus

Re: Why God exists - 07/29/10 19:08

Originally Posted By: PHeMoX

I'd say some of his fanaticism is the natural result of all that.

Every point of view needs fanatics; otherwise perhaps we'd all be indifferent. It's just that some points of view, not being firmly rooted in observation or causality, need more intense, dogmatic and numerous fanatics to make it a persuasive point. Maybe that's the reason. (When Dawkins goes postal, maybe I'll think about Buddhism)

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