One very compelling statement is:
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.–Supposedly said by Benjamin Franklin
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I have found the Bible answers everything for me, but then, I am pretty simple. Would you like to give an example of a question, or would you consider that a waste of your time and mine? Please keep in mind, I really am not looking for a debate. I’m just willing to share what I have learned.
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Sure.
Why don’t more people “shop around” for a religion? In every religion there are a few who’ve swapped sides (how can this be, there’s only one “true” one?), but in general, you experience your religion and faith at home from birth and don’t really have an option. But once you are older (wiser?) why not study, even try out perhaps, all of the options before locking in one particular, why isn’t this the standard process for most? If the purpose is to guarantee peace of mind for tomorrow and access to pleasant everlasting afterlife, surely one should play the field so to speak?
And trying to keep this as lighthearted as possible as well; and no waste of time at all, it’s 9 am here and you don’t see me working!
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I completely understand that you would have such questions being that, as an atheist, then what’s the difference anyway? However, if one does believe that there is a creator, a God, then would logic say he, God, would change his views, his thinking, to conform to the conflicting views among his creation? Say a man has three children. What kind of father would tell one child that he hates blue, don’t ever get him any clothing with blue, the next child gives him a blue shirt and he goes on about how blue is his favorite color and just loves that shirt, then to the next child he expresses how he wishes he didn’t have to wear clothes at all? Would that make sense, or even be loving considering the dissension that could come between his children?
So, it comes to finding the signal in all the noise. And the most I can do for you is to share the results of the research I’ve done.
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kerneloops: your proposed method of choosing assumes there is a “neutral ground” on which you can stand while you assess all the possibilities in a disinterested fashion, and then jumping to the one which you find most appealing. But in truth, there is no such thing as neutral ground. If Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, there is not one square inch of the entire cosmos at which he cannot point and say “mine!”. You cannot be neutral about his Lordship - either you start by assuming it or you start by not assuming it, and your conclusions will reflect your premises.
The Bible teaches in Romans 1 that “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” People are not neutral when it comes to God; by default and by nature they suppress the truth about him which is clearly seen in creation. So your “neutral shopper” is not neutral at all and, without the help of the Holy Spirit, cannot choose what is right. They will choose whatever option appeals most to them - and it won’t be the sacrificial service of the Christian life.
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Concur, @gerv. And I read somewhere that it takes more faith to believe that the universe sprung into being by random chance from nothing than it does to believe that there is a Designer. And honestly, how many times have you see a tornado go through a junkyard and leave in it’s wake a fully assembled F-22 fighter jet? That is nothing compared to the complexities of the universe.
And honestly, how many times have you see a tornado go through a junkyard and leave in it’s wake a fully assembled F-22 fighter jet?
Last Tuesday and once in 1982.
The chances are quite slim I have to admit. But then again, give it time, billions upon billions (?) of years and countless tornadoes and junkyards (I’m looking at you Oklahoma), better odds, not great but better. But yeah, don’t hold your breath.
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Can I just also impress on everyone what an absolutely ridiculous discussion this is in the face of the multitude of religions practiced on this good green Earth, not all of which demand worship of an Abrahamic deity? Or are we seriously implying that a billion Hindus have gotten things horribly, horribly wrong?
I think belief in a god, or gods is much like the belief in the Simulation Hypothesis, or that we are Boltzmann brains, with one key difference. Reasoning about the simulation hypothesis brings up an interesting conversation about computer science, consciousness and psychology. Boltzmann brains bring up physics and entropy. Religion brings up history and the statement ‘we have all the answers (or god does) so don’t bother asking’. Each of them are are possible but considering them is somewhat pointless. It doesn’t make any future predictions, they are all unverifiable.
My issue with religion is that it stops us from moving forward and exploring the next unknown. I was brought up in a fairly fundamental Christian family, and when I finally ditched literal creationism I kept a ‘God of the gaps’. Saying we (humanity) don’t know what caused the big bang, or abiogenesis, therefore God. The flaw in this seem obvious now in retrospect, it stops us from look and from exploring these unknowns, all to protect the faith. To me this is not a good way to move forward. I am now a student taking a double major in Physics and Computer Science, hoping to one day research and understand some of these unknowns, rather then accredit my imagination.
Feel free to point holes in my argument, I’d love to know where I’ve gone wrong this time. At least I will once the pain of being wrong wears away.
With that, I’d like to respond to some of what I’ve seen here:
I hope no one is saying the multiverse is proven, your right it isn’t. It is based on the Copernican principle, which says we are not privileged in anyway, we are merely an average, or usual value. Not the centre of the solar system, galaxy or universe. Expanding this says that even the universe is not privileged, it is one of many. Your right this doesn’t proven anything, but is more of a guiding principle in how we do cosmology. There are however some less energy dense spots in the cosmic microwave background that could be caused by our universe bumping into another and exchanging energy. Of cause this cannot be proven, but neither can anything. If we can somehow make a theory of the multiverse that makes accurate predictions which we can measure in our own universe, then that would be enough. After all no one can observe gravity, only the effect it has. Your right in that we don’t have such a theory yet. (Until string theory makes verifiable predictions, it should be called string hypothesis. Yes everyone mixes up terminology.)
Now abiogenesis is something we can experimentally test. No, no one has made life yet, but a lot of work is going into simulating conditions of the early earth. There are several possible hypothesizes that are still being testing. I would not call it belief that life arose from natural processes. Simply because we do not know exactly how it happed, or have not yet been able to replicate it does not falsify it, or make it ‘the religion of atheism’. In fact, or that point, many scientists who accept evolution and that life arose through natural cases subscribe to major religions such as Christianity. (Also, I don’t think your doing this but a see a lot of religious people trying to disprove evolution by saying it cannot explain how life arose. Abiogenesis is not in the domain of evolution, much like the function f(x)=4/x has the domain of all the real number excluding zero.)
On this, yes I would actually agree that some textbook are badly worded. Science occurs in the boundary between knowledge and ignorance. I think that textbooks need to acknowledge this a lot more then they do. Not knowing something is not bad, it mean there is work to do. Schools tend to get this message very wrong.
We have directly observed mutations, both beneficial, negative and neutral. We have directly observed beneficial mutations being selected for. Unfortunately humans have simply not been around long enough to see these mutation accumulate to give a vastly different species. (I say vastly different because we have observed mutations to the point where evolved species can no longer interbred with the original.) However what some people don’t seem to get is that ‘microscopic evolution’ and ‘macroscopic evolution’ are the same thing, over different time periods. It is a matter of extrapolation. Additionally there is much indirect observation of evolution. This isn’t really my field, so I’ll probably mess up trying to explain it, but I encourage you to look into this.
Copying into LibreOffice, I’ve written 1.5 pages, so I’ll have to stop now, but any comments or rebuttal are most welcome.
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I hope you are enjoying it. For me, a belief in a creator just makes me want to find out how he did it all, thus my interest in science. [quote=“grenorange, post:25, topic:11142”]
we are not privileged in anyway, we are merely an average, or usual value. Not the centre of the solar system, galaxy or universe.
[/quote]
Obviously, you are not very familiar with cats! 
Edit: Actually, cats are the only observable evidence of a multi-verse, since each cat is the center of the universe, then there has to be as much universes as there are cats. And two year olds.
Examples of such observations please.
[quote=“oldgeek, post:26, topic:11142”]
I hope you are enjoying it.[/quote]
Thank you, I am. I actually stared off with physic minor and Cosc major, but enjoyed physics enough to upgrade.
True, but thinking you are the centre and being the centre are very different things.
Sorry, I should have cited my previous post.
Blount, Z. D., Borland, C. D., Lenski, R. E. (2008). Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia Coli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105, 7899-906. http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/2008,%20PNAS,%20Blount%20et%20al.pdf
This is about E. Coli developing a mutation that allows them to use citrate.
I’ve heard the interbreeding somewhere but I can’t quite find it at the moment. I will come back and look when I have more time.
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Yes, I saw a sign once that said how many people are disappointed when they see the center of the universe and find that they are not there! And, I say, of course, there’s a cat there! The two things cats say are “I am the center of the universe and the sooner you figure that out the better off I will be!” and “I have whims, you know!” (you might be figuring out that I have cats. or do they have me as a humble servant?)
Thanks for the reference.
Why would that be an odd thing to imply? There’s not some kind of universe-wide limit on the amount of wrongness in it. As Brian Lunduke regularly proved when part of the BV team 
Are you saying that you think they are right? If not, I don’t understand your point.
I’d say that we are getting a little puritanical now.
Time to get those shoes. 
Hmm. That makes me doubtful. Not really sure if anyone pointed that to you, but Miller-Urey experiment from 1952 proved that from basic chemicals, with electricity and heat changes amino-acids can be created in a week. Not saying it’s a definitive proof, but it’s not “none”. This experiment alone is more proof for abiogenesis than there is for creation of life by a God.
My teacher told us same thing in school in Poland and I immediately knew it’s the other way around. We evolved to fit the environment in part, not the other way around. If the world was created specifically for human-like life the temperature would be held at pleasant 23 degrees everywhere in the universe and we wouldn’t need to burn immense amounts of oxygen and biomass just to wake up and fail to put on our socks on the first try.
And did these amino acids form a protein molecule? Or even a peptide? Basic components of life are in the Earth. Having them come to life is quite another thing. A lot of stock is being placed in something that has not been replicated, and therefore is a belief, despite many, many efforts over many decades to do so.
But life itself, matter itself, would be impossible if certain forces in the universe was just the smallest part of one percent off. We’re talking several decimal places. It certainly is not unreasonable to conclude that someone set those forces.
Well, not in a week. Do you claim we need to replicate a process that took millions of years and until we do that we have to accept the belief in all powerful, omnipresent and all knowing forces?
And it would be completely the same if some other forces were different. And there are certain values that could be different and the life would be different as well. And I’d say that random stuff happens all the time and we all can point out to many, many random coincidences. To me it’s more reasonable to conclude that coincidences happen, than that there’s a deity.
I’m sorry if it seems that I am implying what you should believe. That is not my intent at all. I mentioned earlier that I will vigorously defend your right to believe what you want to. I was simply trying (not very well it seems) to show why I believe that there is a creator. I absolutely will not insist or try to coerce anyone to believe the same. The right to believe is a very important one to me. If you feel that I am trying to push my beliefs on others, I do apologize. My intention really was not to even debate the subject. And to that, I see I have failed. Again, I apologize.
I respect that.
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Great topic!
My view (not that anyone else needs to either care of subscribe to it: I believe there is something much bigger than we are, that spans beyond our understanding of the universe, and that may well have created the environment that we live in. In a similar way to an ant’s brain will never understand what a cellphone is, how a speaker vibrates, or other complex things that we understand, I think our brains are not equipped to understand this bigger force.
I personally don’t buy into the bible as an account of what this higher force is. I think man-made religions are precisely that: man-made, and while they provide great comfort to many people, I think they are largely stories.
So, I guess I am probably agnostic. There may well be a god, and he or she may well have created the earth and even look down on what we are doing, but I don’t think we will ever be able to provide or disprove this, due to our equivilent ant brains.
Either way though: live and let live.
Just my $0.02c.
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