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Filius99993
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Me too! It’s all we can do. I’m not going to try and get in your face about it or anything. Subtlety works fine for me.
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rossum
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I am Buddhist, not strictly an atheist. There are many gods in Buddhism, but none of them are of any real importance, and that includes the God who thinks that He created the world.
There is no supreme creator, because a creator cannot be supreme. A creator cannot be a creator without having created something. No creation = no creator. Hence any creator must be dependent on what they have created. God is as dependent on the universe as the universe is dependent on God. Hence, since the creator is dependent on the existence of the universe the creator cannot be supreme. A supreme being would not be dependent on anything.
We do not know, but scientists are working on it. One possibility is String Theory, which is explained in non mathematical terms in The Myth of the Beginning of Time. You would do well not to hang your argument on gaps in science - science has a way of filling gaps, so such arguments usually fail in the long term: “We are to find God in what we know, not in what we do not know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Mutations have a number of causes - radiation, chemicals, copying errors and others. No gods required, any more than Apollo or Ra are required to explain the Sun.
I can go to a car factory and see cars being made. I can grow a tree from a seed. These are two different processes and it is obvious to me that they are two different processes.
Because God is more complex than a tree, so if a tree is so complex that it must have been designed then the same argument applies with even greater force to God, and you are into an infinite regress.
Remember, GOD IS ALIVE! There had to be something that made that possible. Your argument applies equally to God, so you are back in an infinite regress.
Very easily. God is a convenient place to dump a lot of things we cannot yet explain. Before we understood electricity the idea of Thor or Zeus was some sort of explanation of thunder and lightning. Now we understand better. Some of your arguments are like “Thor exists because we can see thunder and lightning and Thor makes thunder and lightning”; those are not very convincing arguments.
As an exercise, please give me the theistic explanation for the origin of life. Beware, this question is not as simple as it appears, the first answer you think of will probably be wrong.
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rossum
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Oh dear. That was not a good thing to say. Only half of our species wants to procreate with females. The other half wants to do something different. The tension between the two is one of the things that drives evolution. Look up Sexual Selection sometime.
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Plusiplus
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First of all humans haven’t had the opportunity to become very old until recently (in the sense of evolution). Take a look at this list of life expectancies. A few thousands years ago the mother and father just had a few years to have children and raise them before they died.
Making as many babies as possible might not be the safest way to create successful offspring’s. As far as I know humans seem to be more fragile than most other species and children therefore need more care from their parents. Raising a human child also seem to require a lot of resources compared to other species. You can see this in the rest of the animal kingdom as well. Some species care much about their offspring’s while some species just don’t care about them. Quantity vs quality. It’s just the way their reproduction technique has evolved I guess.
No, I don’t think so. I think the human brain/mind/whatever works exactly as a machine and I’m 100% sure we will build more intelligent machines than ourselves in the future. But, atheists think and feel in the same as all other people do. Just because the brain is made of bits and pieces doesn’t mean it can’t create experiences that feels everything but mechanic.
I don’t know. It’s a question about morality which I know too little about to talk about it now. It’s midnight here and as most people I have to sleep.
Well, humans are just another species, although it’s by far the most intelligent one. Other species might very well have some kind of soul but the soul is most likely closely tied to the intelligence and processing power of the brain.
Btw, I don’t think the “soul” is eternal. It will disappear in the same moment as my brain stops because it’s nothing more than something created by brain activity.
That’s true. It’s a tough question because you can draw a continuous line from being a healthy grown up human down to being a single cell. A skin cell contains the entire DNA information as a healthy human do. But I really don’t see the skin cell as a human. A dead person is basically just a piece of meat and bones but I still call him/her a human, even if the body contains no brain activity or other life. Is a living brain (without body) interfaced with some bio sci-fi computer a human? I would probably think so, but that’s close to the border of what I’d call a human.
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Plusiplus
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Because we see no evidence for it. There is nothing bad about saying “I don’t know” when the question about the origin of the universe arises. There are gazillions of things we don’t know but this single question seems to be special by some reason.
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FaithofAbraham
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That’s because despite our various pet interests and causes, we are all headed to the same place, death. So that would seem to be the thing we all might want to know most, what happens when we get there.
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Mirdath
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I want to see what happens next!
So you do not believe in any kind of free choice? Why then are you concerned about my eternal destination, considering it has already been predetermined?
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FaithofAbraham
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Feet still gotta move, wheels still gotta roll before you get wherever you’re going.
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tGette
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So the existence of earth and the universe is not evidence of God?
God is not dependent upon creation, creation is dependent upon God. Scientists have no clue how the brain works, but we do know that it works somehow. You are saying there was no higher power in making the brain work? That since we do not understand then there certainly can be no God because we simply do not understand?
Scientists cannot even predict the weather on our planet and we are supposed to trust them on the String Theory? Even if the string theory were true, it does not disprove God. It would just prove a unique way in which God is governing the world.
God is not dependent upon creation, creation is dependent upon God. Scientists have no clue how the brain works, but we do know that it works somehow. You are saying there was no higher power in making the brain work? That since we do not understand then there certainly can be no God because we simply do not understand?
Scientists cannot even predict the weather on our planet and we are supposed to trust them on the String Theory? Even if the string theory were true, it does not disprove God. It would just prove a unique way in which God is governing the world.
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MelanieAnne
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I saw something recently that caught my attention. I hope I get the quote right ~
It’s rather interesting, don’t you think, that one proof of God’s existence are those that deny it?
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tGette
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I love you MelanieAnne!
Believing in God is meant to be simple. There are millions of things science can prove and disprove, but no matter how far they reach, something gave them the ability to USE SCIENCE.
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hosemonkey
Guest
The existence of God and His love for us does not depend on our belief in Him and His works. As hard as it might be to understand this, it is so. I have found out through hard personal experience, that arm-twisting and browbeating does no good in terms of leading someone to Christ. As the Scripture tells us “No man comes to God except He draw him.” I spent most of my life, including three combat tours in Vietnam, as a self-professed athieist. It was not until I hit bottom, spiritually and emotionally, that I was able to be still and finally hear His voice. God is a loving Father, but He is above all, logical and rational. His works are manifest and try as we will, some things will never be explained by science. We are sometimes too analytical, usually to our own detriment.
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MelanieAnne
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I Love You Too!
The forum members that I have trouble loving are those I disagree with, but I am learning to love them too!
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tGette
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It is our duty to love them too! Learning to be able to do that is the tough part. Our desire to do so is the important part!
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MelanieAnne
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You are SO RIGHT. There are those, even on this forum, that seek to bring others to God by brow-beating them about their sins (and who often come off as very self-righteous in the process!) It turns my stomach. Their method, even if it is well-meaning, doesn’t work, at least it doesn’t work for very many people, and I imagine some see it negatively.
We all have our time and our situation where we allow ourselves to hear the call of God. It happens to us in various ways and times of our lives. I am thankful for the call I received. I think I may have not listened early enough, but now I am here. I pray for others. I am grateful for Forum friends.
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tGette
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It is great to have people on our wave-length of thought. I definitely get turned off by that self-righteous attitude and trying to make people feel guilty about their sins approach. That is not any way to get someone to want to approach God.
There is all this talk about God and all this talk about there not being a God. Though many do not realize that God does exist whether they believe in Him or not. Also, with all of this talk about Him, He exists in some form. Atheists are always talking about God, so in that sense He does exist in their world in some way. They believe in God they just do not think He is real. They know who God is they just deny Him. God is a big part of their lives. They spend all their time trying to refute the idea of His existence when their time spent is on God. If it was as simple as saying there is “NO GOD” then should it not be as simple to leave it at that and never think about it again?
For some reason the thought always goes back to God. Whether denying or accepting they do believe. They talk about Him an awful lot for Him not to exist.
There is all this talk about God and all this talk about there not being a God. Though many do not realize that God does exist whether they believe in Him or not. Also, with all of this talk about Him, He exists in some form. Atheists are always talking about God, so in that sense He does exist in their world in some way. They believe in God they just do not think He is real. They know who God is they just deny Him. God is a big part of their lives. They spend all their time trying to refute the idea of His existence when their time spent is on God. If it was as simple as saying there is “NO GOD” then should it not be as simple to leave it at that and never think about it again?
For some reason the thought always goes back to God. Whether denying or accepting they do believe. They talk about Him an awful lot for Him not to exist.
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Mirdath
Guest
Or they may just find the subject interesting or fun, no? Plenty of people talk about the weather or the headlines or the sports game last night; other people enjoy talking about belief, even if they do not indulge in it – just as those in the first group may create no cold fronts, make no headlines, and play no sports.
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crowonsnow
Guest
Hiya tGette,
I guess I’ll bite because I don’t think these things people call gods are real. They’re basically just characters in our stories.
This has actually been an interesting week for me. Over the past week, oddly enough, due to having undergone a couple medical procedures and being politically surveyed, I’ve stated “I’m atheist” several times.
It usually comes up when people ask my religion. I generally respond that I’m not religious. What they record as a result of that response I don’t know exactly, but after saying I was not religious to one person he followed up with asking me how many times I attend religious functions, or something like that, to which I replied, “None, I’m atheist.” That’s usually what happens. It would be like someone asking a Christian how often he venerates Vishnu or Chac.
You asked:
My response is to ask what leads you to believe the universe needs some kind of creator? I mean if you hold that an alleged creator is uncreated, how and why not a universe? How is holding your position not self contradictory?
The universe is pretty obvious to us. We’re part of it. It’s everywhere all the time. We can’t make any part of it vanish, and we can’t create anymore than there is. So I guess my question to someone who believes in creators is what leads you to think the universe shouldn’t exist?
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MelanieAnne
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Of course the immediate answer is ~ why, because the universe exists, do you DENY a creator. But nevermind that little detail (although I think the idea that nothing more can be created might be open to debate!)
I’ll give you an example that was once given to me. Imagine your wristwatch. You know, the thing on your arm that tells you what time it is. Now imagine that your watch is being invented. So the parts of your watch are scattered all around. The inventor of the wristwatch, of course, has to be there because that is the person that made it happen. The parts of your watch didn’t come together as if by some magic, they came together because someone put them together.
OK, so, now, CHANGE OF SUBJECT, now we are talking about the world and life itself instead of a wristwatch. But it’s still the same. God created us. Just like the watchmaker, He put us together. It’s not a matter of magic, it’s a matter of divine will and power.
There’s more, but I’ll leave it at that.
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crowonsnow
Guest
Yes. We can observe both the watch builder and the watch. They share parts actually. They are part of the same universe.
Religiously, though, you are stating something else, namely that the builder needs a builder too. Okay. So if a god is a builder why doesn’t a god need a builder too? See the contradiction?
If a god isn’t built, which I’m pretty sure is your claim, then your watch builder and the rest of the “built” universe have come from that which is “unbuilt,” namely this alleged god. So religiously speaking, the claim is that that which is built can only come from that which is “unbuilt.” It’s an inescapable conclusion for anyone asserting a creator or ultimate builder.
So I see no need to think gods are around building things, nor any evidence to take these story characters literally. A universe, that we both agree clearly exists, is all that is necessary. It makes sense both religiously and observationally.
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