My belief is there is/are no god(s). It makes no sense for there to be any super entity.

"No sense you say, how so?" It just doesn't. Why would a super entity exist? Why would he/she create humanity in his/her image? Why would he/she send a prophet to die? Why would he/she not send another, and clear all ambiguity?

Because there's simply no reason for any of it. If a psychopath told you god spoke to him and that he could perform miracles, would you believe him now?

I think this topic went over faith and reason. And the fact that the two things that don't get along. And the fact that it doesn't need to make any sense. And that nothing you ever say will make a Christian not believe in god, just as anything they say won't make you believe in a God whatsoever.
So. The point is, theres no point in saying what your beliefs are.

Do you know everything? Do you actually know, everything that there is to know? I'm going to assume your answer is no. Do you know.. Say, half of everything? Probably not, but lets assume that you know half of everything there is to no. Isn't it possible for God to exists (or his reasons for doing what he does) in that other half you don't know? Or, just because you don't know the answer to something, it is therefor non-existent? Just because you personally confess to not knowing why a God would need to exist, doesn't mean that a God does not exist.

I was once a Christian, and now I don't believe in God. You are wrong. Also, if it is so pointless to spout out beliefs as you say so, then why are you spouting out your beliefs about other people spouting out beliefs? I can believe, within reason, that God exists based on faith, and I can do the opposite, and believe within reason that God doesn't exist. I can also, within reason, believe that I don't know whether or not he exists. The point is, I myself haven't seen any definitive evidence pointing towards any direction, and as such, all three of these beliefs can be made within reason based on faith. This is very similar to how many people believe in the theory of General Relativity, within reason, and with a slight amount of faith. Without any faith in believing that the the theory of General Relativity were true, the closest you could get to believing it were true would be to say that it is probably true -which a lot of people do, also.

If you are referring to Carbon-14 radiometric dating, you can't measure how old something is past a few ten thousand years. This is because, when you graph it out (the graph is non-linear) with the percent composition of C-14 over time, the difference between 50,000 years and 60,000 becomes minuscule in terms of C-14 percentages. I've heard many people say you can't date things accurately past 10,000 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

So unless you are referring to some other dating method, I'm afraid this method won't work to the dates you are referring.

On top of this limit, C-14 dating requires a known starting value for the percentages of C-14 in the object being tested. Basically, we have to guess as to what every single starting percent composition during pretty much every single C-14 test.

As for this whole Gap Theory talk, a new topic can be opened pertaining to Gap Theory (unless there is already one that I don't know about), as the point of this topic is to: debate the existence and relevant consequences of god(s), not specifically gap theory, and especially not a back and forth toss of meaningless and unsupported statements in conjunctions with flames.

[Edit]
That is assuming that God is trapped within the third dimension. If god were all powerful, he wouldn't be bound by time the same way we were. Using this knowledge, you can't even ask what God did before he created the universe, because it isn't safe to assume there was time before the universe was created, thus rendering the question meaningless.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 15 2009, 5:45 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Typo.

Not true. I used to be a Christian. I think you just want an excuse to have the last word.

And the "metaphorical" seven days is an idea that began only recently. I hope you Christians see a pattern, where whenever new scientific discoveries come into existence, religion has to amend its beliefs to be able to coexist with science. Evolution? Micro-evolution. Age of the Earth being billions of years old? Seven days is a metaphor. Tower of Babel vs Modern Spacecrafts? Heaven isn't in the sky. I believe that eventually, religion will have "evolved" so much from its Bronze Age origins that any rationally thinking person would realize something is wrong.

If you truly become a Christian, you can't un-become a Christian, because God says that He won't let that happen. If you think God DID let that happen, it's a different god to the God of the Bible that you were worshipping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
*sigh*
Circular reasoning. Let me tell you why it happened. It happened because I questioned (like any good Christian supposedly does) and I found no answers. I looked at our world, the world of the Bible, and the God it describes. I realized they weren't compatible. I think it was those darn Physics and Psychology classes that I took during Junior year of my High School that opened my eyes.

You can't have truly believed in God. If you truly believed in God and the Bible, then you would also believe that a) God won't let you unbelieve in Him once you start truly believing and b) that Christianity is compatible with science. Anything claiming to be true science that is contrary to the Bible is false, and eventually it will be discovered how.

Are you implying that Christians don't have free will? What you just said was preposterous, and you are simply trying to put yourself, subconsciously or not, above me.

And about the "Christianity coexisting with science," do some reading up on Human Chromosome number 2, first law of thermodynamics, and evolution. I can provide you with a couple links if you don't feel like searching. It can't coexist with science, and it's better if it doesn't even try in the first place. People are twisting religion into what it's not. It should be a test of faith. You should see these contradictory ideas and choose religion DESPITE the claims of science, instead of trying to make sense of it by making adjustments here and there.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe you. For one, that lies outside the realm of common knowledge and needs to be cited, and for two, that whole idea would be God super-impeding upon my free will, and I am not going to believe that God would ever do so, as to me, it would negate the entire purpose for creating humans.

Humans have the free will to act within the limits of their nature. But God not letting us become unbelievers is like a father not letting his kids run out onto a busy road. If you consider that to be a imposition on free will, then it's an imposition I'm happy to have.

As for those 3 things: evolution is unproved and unproveable. The chromosome thing? Isn't that just evidence that humans, with 23 chromosome pairs, aren't apes, who have 24 pairs?

The first law of thermodynamics, which I assume you said to disprove creation, doesn't apply, because the God of the Bible is outside the bounds of the physical world, as He CREATED those bounds. Claiming that God is bound by the physical laws of His creation is like saying that a game designer has to live his life according to the rules of his game.

@cecil Biblical free will is being able to act freely within our nature. God may change our nature, but we still have free will.

Well then you need to define nature and support your claims with an external source, as merely asserting claims like this without something to back it up (besides more similar claims) isn't going to compile into an argument. I don't actually expect you to cite this claim, the point is, I don't like seeing claims like it. You understand what I'm trying to tell you, right?

You really don't need to get into specifics about things like this, I mean, nobody does. It's easy to get caught up in debating things that are irrelevant or that we just don't know enough about.

I have a great example to answer this argument: The orbit of pluto is like ~250 years. We haven't known about Pluto this long, and yet we have this fact that your brain probably gobbled down without question in Elementary School science class. We can't "prove" it because we won't be around long enough to see it orbit once. But we accept the fact that Pluto does in fact orbit the sun, and we have the math to support it. How does this relate to evolution? Your argument is probably that since we can't see evolution happening, it "doesn't happen." Well, how about you just drop that prejudice against evolution and just disbelieve every scientific claim that you cannot see. Cells, let alone atoms, shouldn't exist, the Earth should be flat, We shouldn't be sure if the Sun orbits around the Earth, etc. You're awfully good at questioning the claims of science that conflict with your religious views. Questioning is good, but you should apply it to everything, including religion. I take it that you've never gotten a good neutral look at your own faith?

I'll take that as a "no I did not read." Have you even SEEN what the 2nd Chromosome looks like? How about that it's two ape chromosomes' telomeres that are fused together? That entirely accounts for the fact that we have 1 more pair of chromosomes than the great apes. If this isn't enough evidence for you, how about the sixteen? retrovirus sites that match up on both ape and human chromosomes?

You don't know any of this. This is all based on assumptions, isn't it? If he's in another dimension, how can we mere mortals even fathom what he's like? We should have virtually zero knowledge about him. Anybody could claim anything they want, but if there's no evidence for it, people probably shouldn't be listening to what that person has to say.

Am I the only one who sees the irony?

God has little to do with Science. Science is the method of studying the world around us, and taking knowledge from it. Excuse me for simplifying such an awesome entity, but thats the jist of science. Because of this, by definition it is incompatible with god. God (any god, big G little g) is commonly defined as "other worldly", or SUPERnatural (above natural).

"God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe."

Science consists of analysis, data collection, and prediction. We analyze the world around us, collect data by logical means from the world around us, then we make predictions (or even explain the past) based on the collected data. How do you collect data about god, or "super-nature"?

Okay, so that is the first point I wanted to make. Secondly, I am a follower of Renee Descartes. He was a great mathematician who contributed the Cartesian Coordinate system. (Being that as it is, he is great with logic.).

"Cogito, ergo sum" - I think, therefore I am. That is a sample of his logic. Strictly based on that he made the conclusion that there is a god, of some sort. Descartes said that human thought is a machine that jumbles around all of these ideas. Ideas are imprinted into symbols that we pass to each other in order to communicate. In order for these symbols to have ANY meaning, we must have first experienced them at some point, either by way of our senses or by way of communication. So how then, do we have the word "God" in our language? No one has ever seen it (him, her.. whatever.) Descartes says that because the symbol (or word) god has meaning, we must have experienced it. I think his stance is interesting, seeing that it is purely logical.

However, I am agnostic. If I were to believe in God, I would draw the line of belief at the BARE MINIMUM of my understanding of the word "god", anything extra would be arbitrary and would require further belief. Jesus? whatever. Hell? meh. Satan? toothfairy.

Some atheist kid stood up in the middle of class and called agnostics cowards in the middle of my American Government class. I told him he shouldn't be so sure, and I meant in more ways that one.

EDIT: @[grAffe]:] - Lawl, Irony seen.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 1:41 am by ProtoTank.

Um, what you're trying to say is that A is B so C is B too.
Proving how macro-evolution works and how Pluto is in orbit with the Sun is a completely different thing. macro-evolution requires observation, and isn't a physics problem while Pluto can indeed be mathematically proven that it is indeed in orbit around the sun.
You drop the prejudice that Christians don't believe in Science, rather- the majority do. Earth was proven spherical, once people invented telescopes and were able to see that almost all major celestial objects were spherical proven through their reflection. Cells were proven once microscopes were invented, which enabled us to see them. So we saw atoms as a theory, but proven as a fact once the electron microscopes were invented. And no matter how Christian, people are people and they believe what they see.

Well you know for a fact that you don't know. But you don't know for a fact that mortals can indeed fathom what another dimensional being would be like, let alone the assumption that a God is indeed extradimensional- for it to be a God, a proper usage would be 'omni' dimensional.
But based on Christian beliefs, revelation explains what their God is like- so they believe based on 'that'. And most people realized that faith required reason and evidence! WHAT A DISCOVERY. I mean, this is a new word in our dictionary, I cannot fathom such a revolution.

So if I make up the word, "naug" does that mean naugs are real? There's something called "human imagination" that creates things that don't necessarily exist.

Well, making up the word "naug" is just making a symbol, not necessarily an idea. You cannot create something that your mind doesn't know exists. However, you can essentially re-assemble ideas that your mind has.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippogriff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzacoatl

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus
EDIT2:Err, wait. that last one is real.

Pluto is observable, unlike macro evolution, as well as the other types of evolution (except for micro). Since it isn't observable, it isn't testable, and is therefor not provable via the scientific method.

However similar our DNA structures may look percentage wise, that percent has been decreasing for a while now; it is now at about 5% difference: http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v17/i1/DNA.asp

The human genome has about 3 billion base pairs composing it: http://ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/info.shtml

Now, five percent of 3 billion is 150000000 base pairs; that is a ridiculously large amount, and it makes sense because humans and apes are similar, but have very different specific properties.

See your bold print? If god were infinite and all powerful (in other words: worthy, in my opinion, of worship) then he wouldn't be bound in any dimension. Now, just because I myself do not exist within the fourth dimension, doesn't mean that I don't know about specific properties of the fourth dimension, and the fifth, and so on. Sure, I don't know everything there is to know about any dimension, but I can still know things that are properties of those dimensions. For example: I would know that a hypercube in four dimensions would have sides that are cubes, with all angles equaling 90 degrees. I would also know that it would take an infinite amount of cubes to create a hypercube, similar as to how it would take an infinite number of squares to create a cube, and an infinite number of lines to create a square, and an infinite number of points to create a line.

I'm addressing the way "anti-macro-evolutionists" base their argument on the what we can and cannot see. I'm not talking about Biology vs Physics; I'm talking about how they accept everything science throws at them until it suddenly conflicts with their faith. We haven't seen Pluto complete an orbit, but as you said, we certainly have the math to prove it. Likewise, we haven't SEEN any speciation, but we have things like transitional fossils, bone structure similarities, fossil layers, etc., which provides just as much evidence as the equations for gravitation and orbits. However, the common theist response to evolution I always hear is, "I don't see it happening, so it's only a theory." And besides, evolution is a natural phenomenon that can be observed. If you're not comfortable with combining macro and micro evolution into one term, then I came up with an analogy: on a color spectrum, if you start at red and keep moving to the right, no matter how slow you progress, the red will eventually turn into other colors (species). You may only be able to observe the transition from red to red-orange, but slowly but surely, it will eventually reach violet.

Actually, I believe most people, theists usually, believe what they want to believe. And I never once talked about the actual Christians (I apologize if I did, since that wasn't my intention). I was talking about the Biblical texts, in which the world that they describe is completely incompatible with the world we see today, scientifically speaking. In other words, it's fictional.

That's an awfully convenient way to dodge any way to provide physical evidence, but fair enough. What evidence do we have that supports the claim that such a God even exists in the first place? You have to understand that for every claim, there will be several other alternatives. Things like whether a man saw a burning bush talking to him, or that he's a schizophrenic who simply sees and hears hallucinations. Therefore, if a claim is to have any weight to the minds of others, it should provide convincing evidence that would significantly raise one idea above the others. Things like "My brother had cancer, but now he is better. Therefore, God exists" is NOT a logical thought process. In fact, I disagree with your idea of faith. Faith has nothing to do with reason, and is actually closer attributed to the wishful thinking of humans. For example, if a person's son were in a car accident, and the doctors suggested that there was only 1% chance of survival, despite the proability (reason), the mother would believe that her son would get better (faith). I'm not saying they are intrinsically at conflict, but rather that they share no relationship at all.

And you can't tell me with a straight face that talking snakes, people turning into pillars of salt, the sun stopping in the sky, virgin births, walking on water, and raising of the dead (and many more!) can be believed by any rationally thinking individual. In fact, it does the complete opposite: it hinders one from thinking logically, and it is, in my opinion, holding back the progression of mankind.

Okay, this ALWAYS comes up, and I just want to address this quickly. Deism and theism are not the same. If you prove that some all-powerful deity exists, this does absolutely nothing to the Biblical God (or any God for that matter) in terms of evidence. However, the Biblical God can be disproven, since its existence relies on the Bible.

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 3:18 am by grAffe.

All this argumentation is going nowhere because we are all holding on to (rather stubbornly for some) our beliefs. I can admit that I probably would not be swayed from believing in evolution unless I had concrete or at least overwhelming evidence that it isn't true. As for a god, there is no logic or reasoning behind the evidence used to prove his existence.
Last Sunday, I went to Bethel Church in San Jose, and they had the most bullshit argument for proving that God was real. Here is the gist of it: Cell division, our body structure, life, animals, trees, etc, are so perfect and ideally suited for their environment that it must have been designed by a higher power, by a god. What other explaination could there be?
Did you see how illogical that conclusion was? That sounds like a desperate stab to me. Through mutations, sped up by the lack of atmosphere in early earth, the right mutation would eventually occur. Over time, we change slowly; things evolve. How can a god design things so perfectly, but leave things like vestigial structures (structures that have lost their original function and are essentially useless)? Also, we can prove that mutations do occur and the traits can be passed on, so wouldn't it be logical to extrapolate that over a long period of time where more major changes will eventually arise? We have a fossil record, and it is quite clear that organisms change over time.
However, as Cecil already said, it's still only a theory because it can't be observed, but it does have overwhelming evidence supporting it. God can't be observed, but he does not have any evidence whatsoever backing up his (or its or her) existence.
Religion is a human creation used to maintain order, to unite people, to explain natural phenomenon. One example is night and day. The Greeks believed that their sun god pulled a chariot over the sky during the day and landed at night. We now know that it is just the Earth rotating around our Sun, and we can't see the Sun when it behind the horizon and facing the otherside of the Earth.

Well actually I could if I believe that an all powerful god did these things.

Well then, prove me how the biblical god is disproven?

Note: I don't want to see any more debate about the validity of evolution, there are topics specifically for evolution. This topic is to debate on whether or not a god exists.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2009, 5:07 am by CecilSunkure.