Theists

Frenzal · Post by **Frenzal** » 10 Dec 2004 01:17

Why believe?

If someone came up to you and said the universe was created 5 minutes ago from a giant sack of shit by an invisible deity know as the great wobbly aardvark who's omnipresent, omnipotent and an omnibus. It's preposterous. If you believe in god so are you.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 10 Dec 2004 02:29

Why not believe?

Either way the same thing happens to you - but if you can delude yourself into feeling like your life has purpose at least you'll feel better about the world.

Now is a good time to mention some quotes from work today. THese were not said by me and I don't really want to either endorse or condemn them - just thought they might be appreciated - some people will like them and other people will give me sympathy for having to work with heritics

"Why do so many nasty people go to church" - Donna

"Yeah and those Catholics are a horrible bunch of people" - not sure

"Hey you stole my fucking tulip" - Some guy

HackyRichard · Post by **HackyRichard** » 10 Dec 2004 05:33

"Hey you stole my fucking tulip" - Some guy

Best quote ever I'm gonna borrow that one if you don't mind

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 10 Dec 2004 07:08

I have so much trouble fighting off feelings that religion in general is absurd.

I feel guilty when I think of religious people as weak because that means I am thinking bad things of ones I love.

I think religion would benefit greatly by dropping that whole 'god' dude from the equation.

BainbridgeShred · Post by **BainbridgeShred** » 10 Dec 2004 07:11

I'll reply to this later, good topic though.

BainbridgeShred · Post by **BainbridgeShred** » 10 Dec 2004 07:14

In fact, for sake of the argument, so I'm not just blabbering on, how about you either ask a direct question about "How I can be so dumb to-" or state your argument and led me reply to it in turn.

Frenzal · Post by **Frenzal** » 10 Dec 2004 13:02

Fair enough. My original post is rather garbled which is not unsurprising as it was a direct result of ODI withdrawl syndrome.

My question: Why (do theists) believe in an entity (idea, concept, whatever) that has neither empirical evidence nor logic in it's support?

Addendum: I'm not trying to say there's empirical evidence or logic denying the existance of god, infact there is not, but there's no evidence or logic against my great wobbly aardvark theory either.

HG · Post by HG » 10 Dec 2004 13:10

religion is a fucking hole that has no end and will do no one any good

that is my idea about religion, i went to a catholic elementary school and hated it. They say god is great and good and loves anyone, but what about all the former religions, what makes you choose one over the other? That alone makes me not believe any of them. If anyone chooses one and thinks its right they are ignorant, none of them are right because there is no god. How ridiculous is it to say someone or something created everything other then a chemical reaction.

If your response to that is "then how did the chemicals get there?" heres my response to that.

If there was nothing ever, there would be nothing ever, there wouldnt be soem entity sitting back in a chair looking at the nothingness. Its a fucking lie and scam to get you to feel like you are obligated to pay to the church to support its lies.

i think thats the longest post ive ever made on modified, i think thats because im so passionate about religion being a fucking crackpot theory and never ever having any credibility in any part of anyones life.

sorry for the profanity. I sure hope god will forgive me

Frenzal · Post by **Frenzal** » 10 Dec 2004 13:24

Henry, i know how you feel, theism just appears so absurd. BUT this thread isn't doing what it's meant to be doing and the more people who jump on and say "god is fucking stupid idea" the less chance it has of engaging any of the religious out there in meaningful discussion.

I really, really want to understand theists, can one of the believers help me?

BainbridgeShred · Post by **BainbridgeShred** » 10 Dec 2004 17:20

Well Frenzal, as you said their truely is no evidence that either proves or disproves the existance of a God or numerous gods. That is the quanundrum of discussing something so metaphysical.

However, let's stop right now as religious people using dogma and aethists/agnostics using science or logical means. I'd like to keep this a science vs science arguement, which I hope I can prove to you is realistic.

The basic and obvious question is this, if all cells grew from another cell? Where did the first cell come from?

Either way, most scientists argue that our universe began at a finite point. Thus it is not everygoing and never has been. This leads to the theory that everything that exists has a cause. That alone is a powerful argument in the case for God(s).

Allan Rex Sandage, probably the greatest observational cosmologist in the world, shocked everybody several years ago at a seminar in Dallas when he announced that he had become a believer in God because of the scientific evidence that he had encountered. And then physics shows that the dozens of parameters of physics that enable the universe to function conspire in an incomprehensible way to allow life to exist in the universe. They’re calibrated with such mind-blowing precision that I think it argues powerfully for the existence of a creator. So I think physics tells us a lot about the existence of God. Of course a lot of you will use the argument that "Looking at how old the universe probably is, couldn't it have just come up by chance? Sure I suppose it is possible, but I doubt it would have judging from the circumstances and obvious odds of that.

Here are some more tidbits, there is a little motor in the back of most bacteria called a bacterial flagellum (Mr. Science Jeremy O'Wheel probably knows what I'm talking about already) and it has the capibility to spin at 10,000 rpms, stop at a quarter turn, and spin the other direction at 10,000 rpms. No scientist would tell you that this came up by chance occurence, seeing as every molecule in the thing needs to be in the exact right spot, doing the exact right thing to function properly and thus sustain life as we know it. There are to many instances like these to deny that the odds of this coming to gether harminously is possible. So Darwinism must show some process that led up to the formation of this motor, and I don't believe that is came from chance, although it is certainly possible.

Darwin himself said if it can be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which cannot possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, his theory would break down. Well, scientists have not been able to find that pathway by which the bacterial flagellum and other similar systems could have been created, because all the parts have to be present for it to function--which means that the precursor part will not work at all and therefore will not be preserved by Darwinian evolution because evolution only preserves those systems that are already working. People have been debating it, but I think it’s good evidence for design.

Let's also remember DNA, which I believe to be the most obvious evidence for a creator or some sort. Scientists have now found that in all of us their is DNA that if stretched out would be six feet long. It’s encoded with a six-character chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for all of the thousands of different kinds of proteins in our bodies. Now it is common knowledge that whenever we have a written message of some kind, whether it is smoke signals, a telegram or animal paw prints, that their was a writer of some kind. I think this shows that the chemical message in DNA is infact "Written" by God. For instance if you walk down a beach and see tiny little ripples, you assume the ripples were made by the waves. But if you see "Tom loves Ryan" (First names that came to mind) you assume it has an intelligent creator. Why? Because nature can produce patterns but not information.

One teaspoon of pure DNA can hold all of the assembly instructions for every protein in all of the 1,000 million species of animals that have ever existed in the planet and have room left over for all the information of every book ever published. Where does this written information come from? I think it most logically points toward the existence of an intelligent designer because purely naturalistic processes cannot create biological systems that appear to be designed even though they really aren’t.

It seems to me that most scientists believe rule out theism, and thus only follow naturalistic evidence, because sicentists like to be able to have scientific theories for things, that is why they became scientists in the first place. Thus the sciences of cosmology and physics and astronomy and biochemistry and genetics and cognitive science that I belive points to an intelligent creator are left untouched by scientists. In other words all hypothesis' aren't considered whether they are valid or not.

I have a few more things I'd like to say, but I have to go to a basketball game, I'll probably see this again next time tomorrow night or so, so Id like (and definatly expect) to see some responses.

that is my idea about religion, i went to a catholic elementary school and hated it. They say god is great and good and loves anyone, but what about all the former religions, what makes you choose one over the other? That alone makes me not believe any of them. If anyone chooses one and thinks its right they are ignorant, none of them are right because there is no god. How ridiculous is it to say someone or something created everything other then a chemical reaction.

Just real quick here, Jesus never said he was the only way, most of that myth is debunked when you look at the original Greek/Arabic/Hebrew text. In other words, Jesus never said accepting him or Christian God was the only way to Heavan.

Good topic by the way!

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 10 Dec 2004 18:06

BainbridgeShred wrote:Well Frenzal, as you said their truely is no evidence that either proves or disproves the existance of a God or numerous gods. That is the quanundrum of discussing something so metaphysical.

However, let's stop right now as religious people using dogma and aethists/agnostics using science or logical means. I'd like to keep this a science vs science arguement, which I hope I can prove to you is realistic.

The basic and obvious question is this, if all cells grew from another cell? Where did the first cell come from?

Either way, most scientists argue that our universe began at a finite point. Thus it is not everygoing and never has been. This leads to the theory that everything that exists has a cause. That alone is a powerful argument in the case for God(s).

Allan Rex Sandage, probably the greatest observational cosmologist in the world, shocked everybody several years ago at a seminar in Dallas when he announced that he had become a believer in God because of the scientific evidence that he had encountered. And then physics shows that the dozens of parameters of physics that enable the universe to function conspire in an incomprehensible way to allow life to exist in the universe. They’re calibrated with such mind-blowing precision that I think it argues powerfully for the existence of a creator. So I think physics tells us a lot about the existence of God. Of course a lot of you will use the argument that "Looking at how old the universe probably is, couldn't it have just come up by chance? Sure I suppose it is possible, but I doubt it would have judging from the circumstances and obvious odds of that.

Here are some more tidbits, there is a little motor in the back of most bacteria called a bacterial flagellum (Mr. Science Jeremy O'Wheel probably knows what I'm talking about already) and it has the capibility to spin at 10,000 rpms, stop at a quarter turn, and spin the other direction at 10,000 rpms. No scientist would tell you that this came up by chance occurence, seeing as every molecule in the thing needs to be in the exact right spot, doing the exact right thing to function properly and thus sustain life as we know it. There are to many instances like these to deny that the odds of this coming to gether harminously is possible. So Darwinism must show some process that led up to the formation of this motor, and I don't believe that is came from chance, although it is certainly possible.

Darwin himself said if it can be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which cannot possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, his theory would break down. Well, scientists have not been able to find that pathway by which the bacterial flagellum and other similar systems could have been created, because all the parts have to be present for it to function--which means that the precursor part will not work at all and therefore will not be preserved by Darwinian evolution because evolution only preserves those systems that are already working. People have been debating it, but I think it’s good evidence for design.

Let's also remember DNA, which I believe to be the most obvious evidence for a creator or some sort. Scientists have now found that in all of us their is DNA that if stretched out would be six feet long. It’s encoded with a six-character chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for all of the thousands of different kinds of proteins in our bodies. Now it is common knowledge that whenever we have a written message of some kind, whether it is smoke signals, a telegram or animal paw prints, that their was a writer of some kind. I think this shows that the chemical message in DNA is infact "Written" by God. For instance if you walk down a beach and see tiny little ripples, you assume the ripples were made by the waves. But if you see "Tom loves Ryan" (First names that came to mind) you assume it has an intelligent creator. Why? Because nature can produce patterns but not information.

One teaspoon of pure DNA can hold all of the assembly instructions for every protein in all of the 1,000 million species of animals that have ever existed in the planet and have room left over for all the information of every book ever published. Where does this written information come from? I think it most logically points toward the existence of an intelligent designer because purely naturalistic processes cannot create biological systems that appear to be designed even though they really aren’t.

It seems to me that most scientists believe rule out theism, and thus only follow naturalistic evidence, because sicentists like to be able to have scientific theories for things, that is why they became scientists in the first place. Thus the sciences of cosmology and physics and astronomy and biochemistry and genetics and cognitive science that I belive points to an intelligent creator are left untouched by scientists. In other words all hypothesis' aren't considered whether they are valid or not.

I have a few more things I'd like to say, but I have to go to a basketball game, I'll probably see this again next time tomorrow night or so, so Id like (and definatly expect) to see some responses.

that is my idea about religion, i went to a catholic elementary school and hated it. They say god is great and good and loves anyone, but what about all the former religions, what makes you choose one over the other? That alone makes me not believe any of them. If anyone chooses one and thinks its right they are ignorant, none of them are right because there is no god. How ridiculous is it to say someone or something created everything other then a chemical reaction.
Just real quick here, Jesus never said he was the only way, most of that myth is debunked when you look at the original Greek/Arabic/Hebrew text. In other words, Jesus never said accepting him or Christian God was the only way to Heavan.

Good topic by the way!

This whole post is a great example of religious types throwing their hands up in the air when they can't explain how something works and saying "well it's just so durn confusing, it musta been God!"

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 10 Dec 2004 19:24

BainbridgeShred wrote:Either way, most scientists argue that our universe began at a finite point. Thus it is not everygoing and never has been. This leads to the theory that everything that exists has a cause. That alone is a powerful argument in the case for God(s).

No - most scientists that know what they are talking about don't argue that at all. Most scientists would say that we have absolutly no idea how old the universe is or how it was created. We have absolutly no idea if there was anything before the "big bang" or not - logic would say that there was stuff of some description that was around before - but it is completely speculation - ultimatly we have absolutely no idea. Most scientists would agree that the universe as we know it was created by the big bang.

Allan Rex Sandage, probably the greatest observational cosmologist in the world, shocked everybody several years ago at a seminar in Dallas when he announced that he had become a believer in God because of the scientific evidence that he had encountered. And then physics shows that the dozens of parameters of physics that enable the universe to function conspire in an incomprehensible way to allow life to exist in the universe. They’re calibrated with such mind-blowing precision that I think it argues powerfully for the existence of a creator. So I think physics tells us a lot about the existence of God. Of course a lot of you will use the argument that "Looking at how old the universe probably is, couldn't it have just come up by chance? Sure I suppose it is possible, but I doubt it would have judging from the circumstances and obvious odds of that.

I think you fail to comprehend just how big and old the universe is. If you have a six sided die and you roll it once - you have a 1 in 6 (17%)chance that a particular number will come up. If you roll it twice you have an 11/36 (31%). If you roll it three times you have a 91/216 (42%) chance it will come up. If you roll it four times you have a 671/1296 (52%) chance that it will come up. If you roll it five times it is a 4651/7776 (60%). 6 times is 31031/46656 (67%). As you can see - the more times you roll the die - the greater the chance of your number coming up. If you rolled it 100 times the odds of your number coming up would be very close to 100%. The same thing applies to the universe.

Here are some more tidbits, there is a little motor in the back of most bacteria called a bacterial flagellum (Mr. Science Jeremy O'Wheel probably knows what I'm talking about already) and it has the capibility to spin at 10,000 rpms, stop at a quarter turn, and spin the other direction at 10,000 rpms. No scientist would tell you that this came up by chance occurence, seeing as every molecule in the thing needs to be in the exact right spot, doing the exact right thing to function properly and thus sustain life as we know it. There are to many instances like these to deny that the odds of this coming to gether harminously is possible. So Darwinism must show some process that led up to the formation of this motor, and I don't believe that is came from chance, although it is certainly possible.

In many ways it is a chance occurance - evolution isn't about things wanting to improve - the changes are very small but over a long period of time they slowly break away. Imagine you are in a running race with me. I am running at 25.00000 km per hour. You are running at 25.00001 km per hour. Over 100 meters it would be impossible to tell who is running faster. If we both ran for an hour - you would be 1 millimetre infront. But if we both ran for about 11.4 years - you would be a whole kilometer infront of me. If our survival was based on how fast we could run - over time you would be more likely to survive than me. There are lots of things about life that currently cannot be explained and even if they could be explained we could never know if our explanation is correct or not. Scientific theories are only ever disproven - never proven. A great example is Newtons laws of motion - which are used all the time for lots of different things - including space travel where the units need to be correct to hundreds of decimal points - you would think that a theory that in practice is correct to that degree of accuracy would have to be correct. However Einstein proved very clearly that it is not correct. We just don't use big enough distances or speeds to notice that it is incorrect. I have never studied biology and I have never heard of this thing you are talking about. However I am completely sure that there are believable theories about how it could have evolved. They may or may not be correct. Unfortuantly we will never know.

Darwin himself said if it can be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which cannot possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, his theory would break down. Well, scientists have not been able to find that pathway by which the bacterial flagellum and other similar systems could have been created, because all the parts have to be present for it to function--which means that the precursor part will not work at all and therefore will not be preserved by Darwinian evolution because evolution only preserves those systems that are already working. People have been debating it, but I think it’s good evidence for design.

I fail to see how a lack of knowledge can be evidence for design. Surely you don't believe that we have a great deal of knowledge of the world. If you could put a finite number on the amount of knowledge there is to have about how the universe works on every level - I would say we have well under 50% of that knowledge. Only once we have at least over 50% of that knowledge would I see this is a logical arguement (because there would be a more likely than not chance that if the knowledge existed we would have it - but as things currently stand - it is most likely that we could potentially understand how this flagellum evolved but don't have the knowledge)

Let's also remember DNA, which I believe to be the most obvious evidence for a creator or some sort. Scientists have now found that in all of us their is DNA that if stretched out would be six feet long. It’s encoded with a six-character chemical alphabet that spells out the precise assembly instructions for all of the thousands of different kinds of proteins in our bodies. Now it is common knowledge that whenever we have a written message of some kind, whether it is smoke signals, a telegram or animal paw prints, that their was a writer of some kind. I think this shows that the chemical message in DNA is infact "Written" by God. For instance if you walk down a beach and see tiny little ripples, you assume the ripples were made by the waves. But if you see "Tom loves Ryan" (First names that came to mind) you assume it has an intelligent creator. Why? Because nature can produce patterns but not information.

One teaspoon of pure DNA can hold all of the assembly instructions for every protein in all of the 1,000 million species of animals that have ever existed in the planet and have room left over for all the information of every book ever published. Where does this written information come from? I think it most logically points toward the existence of an intelligent designer because purely naturalistic processes cannot create biological systems that appear to be designed even though they really aren’t.

Do you know what DNA is? I think most likely you have absolutely no idea at all - you've heard some terms thrown around and you've misunderstood them. Again we also have the thing about size and time - the more of it the more likely unlikely events are to occur - until they stop being unlikely and end up becoming likely events. If you are going to talk about DNA - I suggest you study some chemistry first - especially organic chemistry.

It seems to me that most scientists believe rule out theism, and thus only follow naturalistic evidence, because sicentists like to be able to have scientific theories for things, that is why they became scientists in the first place. Thus the sciences of cosmology and physics and astronomy and biochemistry and genetics and cognitive science that I belive points to an intelligent creator are left untouched by scientists. In other words all hypothesis' aren't considered whether they are valid or not.

It seems to me that you misunderstand how science works. Science works on logic. Say for example you have a paper bag of jelly beans. You obviously can't see into the bag at all. You take out all the jelly beans (lets say 99) except one and every single jelly bean you take out is red. Now lets say somebody asks you what colour the last jelly bean is. A pure scientist would have to say that they don't know. If they were to guess - they would definitly guess red - but to say it is defintly red would be an assumption that could turn out to be wrong - just like with Newton's laws of motion. Scientists often make up stories and over simplyfy things so that people can understand what they're talking about. Religious people often misunderstand these simplifications and come up with elaborate "proofs" that the evolution or science in general is bogus. A great example is the usage of second law of thermodynamics to "prove" that evolution can't exist. This is ultimatly a gross misunderstanding of the law and has absolutly nothing to do with evolution at all.

sPinko-Mania · Post by **sPinko-Mania** » 10 Dec 2004 20:09

BainbridgeShred wrote: The basic and obvious question is this, if all cells grew from another cell? Where did the first cell come from?

Either way, most scientists argue that our universe began at a finite point. Thus it is not everygoing and never has been. This leads to the theory that everything that exists has a cause. That alone is a powerful argument in the case for God(s).

I don't have time to reply to the rest of your post, but Occam's razor deals with this part nicely. If you accept that the universe began at a finite point and everything that exists has a cause then apply this conclusion to God. What made God? Repeat ad infinitum (please don't say God gets special dispensation

). It doesn't actually solve anything and according to Occam we should make as few assumptions as possible - the fewer the better (I agree), and therefore God becomes an unnecessary hypothesis.

I'll probably reply to your argument from incredulity later on.

wolfpac444 · Post by **wolfpac444** » 10 Dec 2004 22:11

Jeremy wrote:A great example is Newtons laws of motion - which are used all the time for lots of different things - including space travel where the units need to be correct to hundreds of decimal points - you would think that a theory that in practice is correct to that degree of accuracy would have to be correct. However Einstein proved very clearly that it is not correct. We just don't use big enough distances or speeds to notice that it is incorrect.

Just as a note, this is incorrect. Taking relativistic effects into consideration is a fairly common occurrence. Newton's laws are in many cases just way too wrong to be useful. For example, if relativistic effects were not taken into account, errors in the global positions as determined by GPS satellites would accumulate at approximately 10 kilometers per day.

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 10 Dec 2004 22:14

Evolution.berkeley.edu

a nice explanation about misconceptions of what evolution explains, and what it does not explain, how it works, etc

Just keep clicking the

shreddaily · Post by **shreddaily** » 10 Dec 2004 22:50

Hey, I've got a few things that I "believe" and I'd like to throw them in .....now

The one thing I truely disagree with in chatholasim is this.
God created man in his own image.
Whatever god is, it doesn't have eyes, ears and a stomach. As soon as you accept god isn't "human" its alot easier to accept there could be a god.

That being said, there is NO SUCH THING AS TIME AND SIZE. time and size are things we have created because we are perceptual beings that have a beginning and end.

When it comes to things like god and where did the universe come from we are severly impaired by the fact that we need to give things beginings and ends. People used to think that the atom was as small as it got, then protons nuetrons and electrons, now they find out that protons are made of things(can't think of the name). In 100 years they'll find something smaller. And the universe. If it did have a begining whos to say there wasn't millions of other things before it. Take away time and size and our universe could be a bubble in the ocean. Our"5 billion year old universe" could be a zit on some aliens butt. By the time he picks it 40 billion "years" would have past.

Anyway "god isn't human" and "time and size are man made", think about those two things for a while.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 11 Dec 2004 01:30

Good call Mike! I didn't know about that but I think it further demonstrates my point about understanding science.

Regarding what Nate wrote - As I mentioned earlier - astro physicists don't believe in beginnings to the universe either - we can only work from the evidence we have - which is that 14,000,000,000 years ago as far as we can tell the entire universe exploded and created what we have today. As I said before - we really have absolutley no idea what happened before that explosion since anything that might have existed was anniahalted.

It is only religious peple who believe that "god" created the world and people who misunderstand astro physics that believe in a beginning to the universe. There may have been a beginning - there may not have been. I find it hard to believe that something can appear when there is nothing - so would bet on the side of no beginning - but really it is complete speculation at this stage.

sPinko-Mania · Post by **sPinko-Mania** » 11 Dec 2004 06:00

shreddaily wrote: The one thing I truely disagree with in chatholasim is this.
God created man in his own image.
Whatever god is, it doesn't have eyes, ears and a stomach. As soon as you accept god isn't "human" its alot easier to accept there could be a god.

"In his image" I think is normally interpretted as possessing free will, sentience, self awareness, a soul, that sort of thing. Not a physical thing anyway whatever it means - it's probably something which would be interesting to know the proper translation of. But the biblical God is normally a noncorporeal being (there is obviously room for debate as with anything in the bible, but I think John spells it out somewhere).

Seath · Post by **Seath** » 11 Dec 2004 10:39

Because things exist, and because for something to exist it has to be brought into existance by something that already exists, then something had to have always existed, because things do exist, and alot of people call that "God".

MegaFighter_X · Post by **MegaFighter_X** » 11 Dec 2004 14:33

I think you fail to comprehend just how big and old the universe is. If you have a six sided die and you roll it once - you have a 1 in 6 (17%)chance that a particular number will come up. If you roll it twice you have an 11/36 (31%). If you roll it three times you have a 91/216 (42%) chance it will come up. If you roll it four times you have a 671/1296 (52%) chance that it will come up. If you roll it five times it is a 4651/7776 (60%). 6 times is 31031/46656 (67%). As you can see - the more times you roll the die - the greater the chance of your number coming up. If you rolled it 100 times the odds of your number coming up would be very close to 100%. The same thing applies to the universe.

Unless you are playing D&D or some other RP game.

People belive in a higher power because it gives them hope. If they didn't have that, they would have nothing.

somewhat related: At UNLV there are a bunch of religious goobers that keep coming. I think they call themselves the God Squad or something like that. Anyways...

Recently, they put on a presentation. they had signs and were preaching to people. one of the signs I saw said something to the effect of "FEAR GOD!!!!1!11!!!!1111oneone" Whatever. I then had this question. "Why should we fear someone who loves us? Unless he's the abusive stepfather or something like that, we shouldn't have to fear him."