Does God exist?

[wafflycat]

Thanks, spandex, I do know what evolution is

 

[bonj2]

The way I see it, neither are certain - so we do have to stake our bets on what is effectively a two-horse race between god and evolution. But using the two-horse race analogy, then evolution is the equivalent of a fine shiny thoroughbred stallion with a good headstart, while god is a three-legged mental donkey towing a trailer with square wheels.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

The way I see it, neither are certain - so we do have to stake our bets on what is effectively a two-horse race between god and evolution. But using the two-horse race analogy, then evolution is the equivalent of a fine shiny thoroughbred stallion with a good headstart, while god is a three-legged mental donkey towing a trailer with square wheels.

Good analogy!

 

[Over The Hill]

... that talks...

Numbers 22: 28-30

And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.

Was he talking in Ass language?

 

[craigwend]

The way I see it, neither are certain - so we do have to stake our bets on what is effectively a two-horse race between god and evolution. But using the two-horse race analogy, then evolution is the equivalent of a fine shiny thoroughbred stallion with a good headstart, while god is a three-legged mental donkey towing a trailer with square wheels.

So to be fair there is the possibility of a (minimum of a) third way

So neither god (gods / celestial other / greater being thing) or science


Any ideas?

Ps why I choose 'not religious' as opposed to agnostic or atheist.

 

[simonali]

When I was a kid I got dragged to church occasionally, and I hated it. School taught me that Darwin's evolution was a certain fact and I'll be honest, I was totally happy believing that there was no God, when you died you ceased to exist and I was only answerable to one person, me.

For a year at high school I had a Christian teacher who I used to wind up as much as I could! I'd throw bits of Bertrand Russel at her and whatever else I could find to 'disprove' her faith. What used to really bug me was that she would never concede even the possibility that she might be wrong. I at least would admit that I might be wrong but she was so 'arrogant', she 'knew' God existed. Drove me nuts.

Over twenty years later I too know that not only does God exist but that He loves me. I'm more sure of it than any other fact at my disposal. Anyone can know God's love in the same way. All you need to do is genuinely want to know the truth, not the truth as you want it to be but the truth as it is. Being a Christan is not easy, it's not a 'crutch' to help you through life. My life was much simpler when I was an atheist.

God designed your brain and he wants you to use it. He designed his word, the Bible, to stand up to scrutiny and allow readers to validate it.

In my experience most people who disbelieve in God do so because they want to, not because they've been open to what the facts of the matter say. I'm happy to talk to anyone about why I believe that Jesus Christ is exactly who He claims to be and why we need to trust in Him.

Do you have one of those fish stickers on the back of your bike?

 

[twowheelsgood]

"If you can disprove God, then I will change my opinion."

Possibly the single most vapid and unintellectual thing a human being can state.

The burden of disproof is not the same as the burden of proof.

..and why your God, why is yours correct when you can't disprove the many thousands created by cultures since humankind has existed.

In not a Dawkins fan but what he said was profound, "we're all atheists, I just believe in one less God than you do."

 

[twowheelsgood]

OK

Why are there so many gods?

Marketing.

 

[twowheelsgood]

I suggest you read "The Blind Watchmaker" and "Climbing Mount Improbable".

They directly answer your points.

Of course, even if you couldn't, the intellectually honest answer would be "I don't know", but human beings are inherently unable to cope with loose ends.

When I was in my teens I read a lot of Bertrand Russel's books, they made good sense to me. He was wrong though and most annoying, he had little understanding of what the Word Of God actually taught. Time and again he'd lambaste the Christian position on this or that when, as I later discovered, that wasn't what the Bible taught at all.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...



The Bible says we do. In fact:



What this passage is saying is that men are without excuse because the things that are clearly visible to them are ample evidence of the power and nature of God.

Are you wearing a wrist watch? If so, look at it. Where did it come from? I assume you bought it from a shop, which in turn bought it from a wholesaler who one way or another got it from the manufacturer.

What if I said to you that that's not where it came from at all. What if I said that millions of years ago, cosmic winds brought together atoms of steel etc and over time fused them together to form the watch, which just by random chance was accurate to one-hundredth of a second and was marked with culturally correct numerals!

I'm being ridiculous obviously. The skills involved in the manufacture of even a cheap watch are intense and it is clearly the result of design. How is it then that you could look at the hand right next to the watch and not see design?

Look at your hand for a minute. Think about all the aspects of its design, its self-adjusting servos, temperature and touch sensors. The dexterity and precision of its movement, heck it can even self-repair minor damage! With all the knowledge and technology at their disposal all the scientists in the world today could not build a human hand, it would be utterly impossible. And that's just a hand!

How can you think that such complexity came about by random chance? look in the mirror, does random chance produce symmetry? Make no mistake, origin of life by random chance is 'not' logical. For a kick off it breaks two laws!

It breaks the laws of bio genesis, the law which states that life only comes from life, and the second law of thermodynamics which has to do with entropy.

What the entropy laws state is that in the absence of intelligent input things flow from order to disorder. Things even out. Complex moves towards simple. If you left a wooden clock in a room for one-hundred years it would not end up in better condition than it was to begin with.

Evolution, or the part of it we're talking about here, states that the vast complexity of life resulted from random chance.

The first law, the law of bio genesis, states that life can only come from life. Many years ago some people, like Aristotle for instance, believed in what was called spontaneous generation. They believed that if you left a piece of meat to rot maggots would spontaneously form in it out of the rotting matter. Now we know that's not true don't we?

Yet the theory of evolution teaches that life formed out dead matter, by random chance. I have to say that if you have a theory that breaks two fundamental scientific laws, ipso facto you have a very bad theory!

You can't get around this. Science is using observable evidence, often acquired through experimentation, to confirm theories and move knowledge forward. Evolution fails this test. Evolution is not scientific, it is faith!

Don't think it's just me saying that. Charles Darwin said shortly before his death that " 'they' are making a religion out of my unformed ideas". Incidentally, Darwin also called the book of Romans "that royal book" and carried it with him everywhere.

 

[rich p]

I have a feeling Mr Pig has gone on holiday so your preaching to deaf ears, so to speak!

 

[andyoxon]

I'd agree that Russell's teapot is not of itself evidence for the non-existence of God (the untestable nature of the existence of God being one of the reasons it isn't a scientific theory); it is however a valid response to the arguments like those used earlier by Striker, namely that our inability to disprove the existence of God was evidence for his existence. You appear to be taking a position (correct me if I am wrong) that your faith is sufficient in itself and not based on attempts to fill gaps in current scientific knowledge, i.e. you are not using the argument from first cause, and more akin to the idea of Non Overlapping Magisteria- NOMA?

Gould’s NOMA (AFAICS) may be a step in the right direction, because science and faith can and do coexist, and I don’t think science adjudicates on matters of Christian faith for instance. God is not a rival, gap-filling ‘scientific hypothesis’ as some would argue (RD for one IIRC). Though arguably NOMA ‘sits on the fence’ somewhat from the point of view of a creator God who is overall, and by saying, ‘religion’ – well that’s ‘morality’... We explore this world through science, and Christians for one may disagree among themselves about the means of how life came about, but personally I’d say evolution and God’s creation don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and no one really needs to climb ‘mount improbable’, to use the RD device. Science and what it describes can simply be part of God’s universe...

 

[Maz]

God exists...when your post count reaches 250,000.

 

[spandex]

 

[GaryA]

Could anything other than a cosmologically evolving God spontaneously assemble Supernova heavy elements over 4 billion years in such a configeration that the heavy elements become self aware and the lower elements become militant Athiests?

 

[jonesy]

Could anything other than a cosmologically evolving God spontaneously assemble Supernova heavy elements over 4 billion years in such a configeration that the heavy elements become self aware and the lower elements become militant Athiests?

Not sure what a 'militant atheist' is- any relation to a straw man?