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No Christian that I know of asserts only humans will return to God. In fact, the bible says the entire creation will eventually be restored. Its not like we're necessarily going to some far away place. It seems more like we're going to a place much like this one, except our sin won't have corrupted it.

But.

The alternative to the arrogance of religion is the arrogance of naturalism. We're the greatest living thing that nature has ever created (as far as science can tell us) and we're the ultimate standard for right and wrong. That sounds fairly arrogant to me, too.


I agree with what you say here, to an extent. I don't think we're completely unimportant. However, its important to stay humble, since after all pride is what got us into the situation we're in now.






Well actually evolutionary theory would have us believe we're incredibly flawed creatures which have sacrificed most of our physical perfection for social and mental development. A shark, or those bacteria that can repair their dna and are thus immortal, would be the ultimate lifeforms since they've been in stasis so long.

Also, I'm pretty sure most christians I know don't believe animals have a soul, and thus that they do not return to the creator. I've debated that a few times with people actually.

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We can still be tiny while still existing as the result of a creator.




True, but not in the metaphorical sense - according to most theists who think we're special that is.

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Maybe its because I care more for testable science, but the only way we could maybe speculate on some other extra-universal existence is with mathematics. But either way, we can come up with all sorts of mathematical 'language' to describe something beyond the universe, and still be completely wrong, even if the math pans out. I don't find it very important to try and figure out if there is some natural state outside the universe. How could we even comprehend it? What exists beyond space? And stuff like that.



If the math pans out it tends to mean things are going well for a theory. But anyways, I agree it doesn't really matter. But if it's at all possible that theres a natural state outside our perception of reality it does put some stock for both sides, in that it supports other 'planes' of existance for you guys, and supports time before time, a metaverse before the universe if you will, for atheists. At the same time it begs the question of how the time before time came to be... which isn't really even applicable since well.. there's no time...

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I think our universe is made up of matter, space, time, energy, what have you. What you're saying here sounds like a multiverse theory. I don't buy the whole multiverse thing, because the whole idea is just a way to rationalize away the fine tuning of the universe.




An incredibly massive supercluster of superclusters would not be a multiverse, just an infinite or near-infinite universe since all that would seperate expansion points would be space, time, and energy. There's absolutely no evidence for this theory except that we've never seen any stellar phenomena that is unique before - so it's a reasonable assumption that an expanding supercluster of galaxies is not unique.

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I think red shift is still quite an open topic, but I'm rather ignorant on astronomy or whatever.

Watching stars die, however, doesn't prove that they are created. I find it interesting that every source I read calls the birth of stars a sure thing, but I have yet to see any source provide any proof that stars have been born except they are sure that they are.




We're watching stars be born right now.

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Then we get back into thermodynamics. I don't know if this applies to what you're saying, but if the universe is infinitely old, then there would be no more usable energy. The universe would be completely dark and motionless and completely cold.



Infinite universe = infinite energy.


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I was speaking more in terms of something infinitely large, because I don't believe something could be infinitely old (due to thermodynamics once again). Perhaps, if the universe were infinitely large that might solve the useable energy problem. I don't know all of the physics on that, but then that would make the big bang a useless theory (the universe would have to have been infinitely large to begin with, otherwise it could only be infinitely large by expanding for an infinite amount of time, and that brings us right back to thermodynamics). In which case, I think it would be all the more logical to assume that we were created, perfectly ordered, right from the start. Frankly, I hope the universe is infinitely large. But we'll see.




Indeed, we'll see.


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I still have yet to hear an explanation of where it all came from. What I see is the question pushed back into infinity. The universe was created by the big bang, which was created by thing a, which was created by thing b, which was created by thing c. And its all speculation. So...Okham's razor works against you on this, I believe. Its more likely that we were created out of an infinite nothingness, by a creator, than that we have an infinite regress of events that we can barely even comprehend, none of which even explain the big question but simply explain the event after it that hadn't answered the question either. Its similar to watching science chase its tail like a dog.

It baffles my mind.



It baffles my mind how you don't see a creator as pushing the question back in the exact same way