because he is magic.

 

god is magic and magic can do anything. This is not an acceptable answer. What makes you think that something outside the big bang had to cause it? Certain chemicals can spontaneously combust. Stars naturally explode without outside effort. I can sit in a box and push the sides out from within it. Why must the big bang be an exception? And if god is outside of this concept of cause and effect why can't the universe or anything for that matter? (oh and "because they're not god" isn't an acceptable answer either)

 

I'll take you up on the scientific method to PROVE that what YOU believe, based on the Scientific method alone, is True...

It cannot be done, as everything cannot be observed... and observation is just ONE of the basic tenants of the Method itself...

There is so much unexplainanable and still non-understood complexity, so much to take in faith as happening "Then", the same way it happens "Now"... and many other issues science is still struggling with to find answers, even with all our amazing minds and fabulous computers and technology....

Now, surmise that we, and everything around us, including all the intellect and amazing technology that cannot even understand it's full complexity, is the byproduct of random and undirected chance, and I think that is a pretty large irrationality... IF, with all our brillance, intellect, and reason, we STILL cannot understand even the basic elements that hold us together and are still finding more and more complex forces and intricately small contructs that make up matter.... That we believe that all we see and all it is, is a byproduct of Randomness... it's a big and complex issue... and it must be believed without question in regards to atheism...

Leave God out of it.... I wouldn't need to argue for God to exist for the rational of our complexity as the byproduct of pure randomness to have to require a bit of faith, as it still cannot be explained by Science itself.

I'm not saying that if it cannot be explained by Science, religion is the answer, all I'm saying is that science still can't explain it, maybe it can't explain it yet, and religion will be proved irrelevant in the future, but the reality is....

That even science still cannot explain much, and that Science at this time doesn't have the ability to answer many of the larger issues related to order from chaos, as the method of Science is really limited in that way, as you must observe it to prove it.... and very much still has not been observed... as it is unable to be.

Your appeal to science is errant, your opposition to religion may be credible, but your defence of the scientific method providing any real answers is greatly flawed, as within the scientific community, it's an insanely long pursuit and still the topic of much debate and critique, EVEN within the non-theistic, and purely scientific community...

Don't put all your faith in What Science CAN do, when ignoring all the things it currently can't.... as you have to admit to have a lot of faith that it someday will....

 

so god is the variable that you use when today's science can't explain questions you have? Seems like you have god as the fill in answer til we figure it out with science.

 

I must say, your scientific knowledge surpasses mine, skeorx, but I must say that nature and existence show me that God exists. It is HIGHLY unlikely that this world as it is would just happen without an Intelligent Being. As I see it, life couldn't just spring out the amino acid enriched primordial soup after being struck by lightening. Life to me is a miracle from God. We as humans, with our vast knowledge (some based on theory, some based on cold, hard evidence), have yet to recreate life. I believe it can't be done.

I know from my own life that God exists. It isn't emotion, and I'm pretty sure that I'm mentally stable.

I believe God is proven by Jesus Christ and what He did on this Earth. The accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are very valid and accurate. There is so much that can be proven through those accounts and simple logic.

 

Far from it. No one truly knows what happened at the start of everything, I've looked at the evidence and decided God is the reason. Someone else looked at it and saw a circular time loop. Others a reason for mutiple realities.
I love how when a Christian says its God, we're victim of "God of the Gaps" but when an atheist, like Hawking, gives his theory of multiple universes and clearly states that there is nothing to substatiate what he is proposing, that its ok.

 

that's just it, science can't prove somethings now, but that doesn't mean magic(aka "god") is the only answer. You and me both know, science is not done answering all of our questions, it is not some archaic closed book.

We'll spend our lives pondering/debating the topic of "why/how things are", and future generations will look upon both of us as stupid for doing so, because they know things we couldn't. Just in the last 100 years, look how many things we've discovered. another 100 and we'll be even farther in our understanding of the world.

a 100+ years ago, i couldn't have argued that the flood couldn't have happened like it did in the bible, because salinity & ph and it's direct impact on ocean invertebrates wasn't known. Now it is, and if you learn about the ocean's water chemistry and the organisms that live in it, you'll understand why it's impossible for things like anemones to live but even a day under such hypo-salinity. If you want to say there were huge resevoirs of saltwater under the surface to raise sea level even but a few more hundred feet, we can both see how that is even more asanine and impossible. or some water canopy theroy that requires a surface temperature equal above venus's.

a 100+ years ago, prehistoric primates like homo-erectus and cromagnum man weren't widely known, and putting adam, the first man, as one of these, or very likely another even more primative primate, and then saying from this guy to jesus in just 76 generations, was just a couple thousand years(remember, even if you have all those people in the early books live a thousand years, they're all still having kids in their 20s and 30s. human "generations" back then are the same as now, it's just people supposedly kept living past 120)

stuff we just didn't know about, but do now. the bible has lots of "supposed science" in it, but it's as wrong as most of the science was back then. you can't blame them for it, they knew no better.
but today we do.
If the bible just told stories and didn't try and insert itself into real history, then little could be debated, and it would be a nice piece of fiction to live your life by, but the authors and priests during the middle ages screwed up, not knowing the world's population of today would find and understand things like fossils and plate techtonics.
You obviously got foreigners who have never been to the places described in the bible writing about places like nazareth, which is nothing like what it really is.

Remember just about 100 years ago, the patent office shut down, because the people back then, thought "all that can be invented has been", just like the idiots of the dark ages who wrote the bible.

 

Well see now you are a being pushing on a box. So God couldn't push the universe?
Glib answer I know, but so is referring to God as "magic".

That being said, nothing can "just happen". There are reasons chemicals combust and stars explode. They just don't do it. Something happens that leads to something else. Cause and effect is a staple of this universe.

It's because of that the Universe had to have a cause, I choice to believe that cause was the big G.

I just have a question for the atheists. I base my entire life on the idea that God controls the universe and keeps everything going to a certain set of rules and order. If you feel that there is no higher power, how do you continue to live under the assumption that laws like cause and effect will still work tomorrow? Is it just because "it's done it every other day, so it must just continue to do it." outlook?

 

god doesn't exist because you really want him to. please read this thread.

good lord man, read heathen's posts on this.

 

pretty much. we can study the sun, and see it's rate of decay, and based on that, there will be no noticable change to us getting sunlight in my lifetime.

we can study the earth rotation and then understand gravity pull on us, and know "there will be no noticable change for us in my lifetime."

I don't bet on magic, I bet on our understanding of the universe. people used to think sacrificing a virgin made the run rise each day. then one day, they ran out of virgins, didn't do the sacrifice and low and behold the sun rose. Just think about all the ____ed off parents who let their daughter die for no reason.

Sure there are asteroids shooting around which may destroy our earth or just severly f-up our atmosphere. I am preparing for this day as much as the rest of humanity...i'm not.

question to you.
Do you believe the world will end with you and your faith, against everyone else in a fight to the death?

 

Hmm, well I guess since we can't explain everything at this exact moment we should just throw out the scientific method and believe in an imaginary guy in the clouds that controls all... Or we could keep "struggling" and learn the truth over time. Honestly, with all the crazy breakthroughs scientists are coming up with, you really think we are struggling? Just because a few of the more mysterious things in life aren't currently explained by science doesn't mean we'll never know it or that science isn't worth while and, dare I say, more beneficial than religion.

Just because something is "random chance" doesn't mean it isn't directed. Evolutionarily speaking, mutations are random. The mutation isn't undirected though. It directs to one of two outcomes. Beneficial or detrimental. It either helps survival or hurts it. And yet, by getting rid of the mutation that hurts survival you are, in effect, helping the survival of the race as a whole. (as the animal that dies out cannot propagate the detrimental trait further)

Personally, as an aside (read: offtopic), the origins of the universe don't matter to me. Whether it was a big bang or some other grandiose or minuscule event that spawned it, we're still here regardless. We still live in the present. I merely have a great curiosity for things scientific. I don't need to justify my beliefs by knowing the origins, I just like learning the truth of the universe. If it helps us in the present, great. If not, at least its an interesting topic to learn about.
What do you mean by "much"? What can't science explain aside from the origins of the universe? Again, just because WE (scientists) cannot explain every single thing in the universe in our current level of scientific knowledge, doesn't mean the scientific method cannot. Just because we cannot currently observe a phenomenon doesn't mean we will never be able to. People thought we'd never see microorganisms. We can now observe things with electron microscopes that can resolve objects at ludicrous magnifications. ****, we're currently using satellite gyroscopes to measure spacetime curvature. This is crap I dreamed about as a child after sci-fi movies. I never would have guessed they'd be doing it in my lifetime. But here we are. Science progresses faster than you'd imagine.
I still don't understand how you can say that science provides no real answers. Do you not see the irony of you arguing against the scientific methods that spawned the computer you are currently typing on??? And you keep mentioning things about science being "an insanely long pursuit" and other such comments. So we should just not do anything that takes patience? We should just throw it out and take the easy route and say "god did it" or "because dad said so"? Sorry but that **** don't fly with me. I want real reasons. Cold hard FACTS.
I don't have to have faith in science. I can already see what it has done and extrapolate the future ahead of us. Your faith in theism has no tangible evidence or proof. For all you know you could be heading straight for the hell you fear and your god could be a great big liar and your faith would be all for naught. If some nut on the street said I could slam my car into a wall but would pass harmlessly through it but I need to have faith that it won't kill me, I'm not going to trust him. I trust the science that proves time after time after time that I'd get squished and would die.

 

If nature and existence show you that god exists then you will have no problem providing me with evidence (causation, NOT correlation) proving it. As of yet, no one has given ANY what-so-ever. You don't think life could spring up that way because you haven't had enough background in the intricacies of science. Read up on it, take some classes. The evidence is there. Once you understand it, it really isn't hard to see that happening. Again, theories are based on evidence, not wild speculation (as has been said and shown in the last 40+ pages over and over again). The creation of life experiment has been tested many times. Several of them were not done properly in accordance with scientific method. The experiment was recreated taking proper precautions and have gotten amino acids and RNA generated from simple biomolecules (methane, formaldehyde, etc). Part of the problem with the experiment though is isolating every last particle of life in current labs to do so (removing every single microbe and trace of chemical or biological life). Not to mention life didn't start in a petri dish in a lab. It started in the oceans or possibly tidepools. Recreating the event properly is an astronomical hurdle.

Oh and we've also already covered those four gospels and they are highly contradictory to both themselves and the other gospels. Not to mention the discrepancies in the timelines and authors origins and identities. And even further, the misinterpretation of many of the common themes in christianity. (Turning the cheek for instance is WHOLLY misinterpreted in modern times. I can explain in further detail if you wish using contextual evidence of the era that the books were actually written. ie history, archeology, anthropology.)

 

Didn't really answer the question, but I guess I've also come to expect that.

As far as the book of Revelations goes, good luck finding an answer to that question. There are so many interpretations of that book it's unbelievable. Anyone that can say that they 100% understand that is a pompous *****.

 

I found a video that would put an end to this debate!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj1KGZSFmfs

 

So what do you say to the gentleman that have "read up on it" and "took some classes" that continue to say that they believe in a creator?
Christians LOVE to put out the names of well regarded scientists that are also Christians, I'm sure I can find a list for you somewhere.
By implying that someone can't study science and still be a Theist is ludicrous.
If you are a true Christian you believe that God "wrote" the laws of the universe. By denying science you are in essence denying God and the truth. Science and Religion shouldn't compete, but bolster each other.

 

Actually dave did answer it, you seem not to have understood it. We assume that cause and effect will still work tomorrow because we have proof that it continues whether or not we believe in it. We see evidence in the natural world. We can recreate it every time. We don't need a creator or universal admin to observe or do this. I'll answer your question with another question. Why do you base your entire life on the idea that god controls the universe when you have no proof of it? What happens when god disappears or dies? Does the universe cease to exist? Oh wait, but god is eternal... Yet another assumption based on NO evidence. Just like god being omnipotent and all loving. Factless assumptions without evidence.

 

Well you see, there is a problem with your thinking. There is nothing that says that the universe will act the same way tomorrow in an Atheistic worldview. You might HOPE that tomorrow the sun will rise, but there is no "proof" that it will. You are making an assumption that it will rise tomorrow, but you don't know for a fact it will.

 

I'd ask them to explain their ideas of a creator to me. I'd ask them to explain their personal beliefs. I'd be willing to bet they differ quite a bit from a theist that doesn't understand science properly. I'd be interested in seeing how you feel science and religion can bolster each other. Maybe it is something that can be worked on in the future. However, the past has shown the opposite to be true. Religion comes up with wild ideas and back it with "god did it" without explanation. Science researches and comes up with evidence that proves otherwise.

 

We're both "guilty" of making assumptions. I'm just truthful about it, and I'll admit that I don't know or understand everything. But I'm the one that excepts that there might be something outside of the natural world. Where as you seem to rule something out entirely I'm more then willing to hear you guys out. I don't think I've ever put down what you guys have said, but yet you continually call what I say "magic".
I just love the hypocracy!

 

And you don't know that tomorrow you'll wake up as a fish. I'll put $20 down that says you won't. Guess who'll have better odds in Vegas?