What does this say about your "God"?

[virgin-burner 1]

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Everything in our universe requires a designer.

Do you believe that evolution is designed?

that would contradict the concept in itself; maybe the guy you replied to has a hard time understanding this since evolution cant really be observed, but explained. that, or he is a "creationist".

It would not contradict the concept.

evolution means things evolve; they are not what they were before, or how they were originally designed.

something designed means its still how it was designed.

wouldnt that be cool? you buy an ipod mini and end up with a full-blown macbook!

“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
"No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."
-Yoda

[Butters 0]

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Everything in our universe requires a designer.

Do you believe that evolution is designed?

that would contradict the concept in itself; maybe the guy you replied to has a hard time understanding this since evolution cant really be observed, but explained. that, or he is a "creationist".

It would not contradict the concept.

evolution means things evolve; they are not what they were before, or how they were originally designed.

something designed means its still how it was designed.

What if evolution is designed? A set of rules, or criteria, or etc... that needs to be met in order to survive (or thrive).

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[popsjumper 2]

You guys...

Science...faith...

If it's provable it's science?
If it's NOT provable it's...what....fantasy?

Then you go and inject probability into it.
Here's some science..
Give it a test and prove both the position AND the momentum of an electron.

Maybe God is playing with you.
It's a slippery slope using science to disprove the existence of God. It's like trying to prove the existence of baseballs while watching a football game.

The concept of God is outside the realm of science. Simple as that.

You do know that you are free to believe whatever you want, right? So, why is a big problem for others to believe something different than what YOU believe? Kinda arrogant and self-centered on BOTH sides of the fence if you ask me.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[popsjumper 2]

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something designed means its still how it was designed.

False statement.

BTW, engineers don't make mistakes, they make changes.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[freethefly 6]

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I began with showing that we live in a world where things need a designer

Duh, golly gee Mr. Professor, thanks for pointing that out. In my 51 years of life I've always thought that products just appeared out of thin air. Thanks for the enlightenment, oh great Swami!

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Everything in science relies on faith that it will continue to happen that way.

Obvious, you do not even have an idea of what science even is! FAITH! Ridiculous! Science is not faith nor is it even fact. Science is a box of tools that allows us to sift through a vast array of information. Nothing is absolute as hypotheses are tested and then repeated leaving room for revision. Science is characterizations, hypotheses, predictions, and experimentation. All which is left to peer review.
Kepler did not base his discoveries upon faith as Einstein did not base his.
Science requires an open mind and the ability of imagination. Faith requires one to abandon imagination and to lock ones mind.
Faith is a fools crutch which supports nothing.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[kallend 1,648]

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I seemed to have missed this part.

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Hell is defined as a life apart from God. We are quite literally in hell right now. It's not the hell that I fear the most, but it does fit the definition.

Earlier on in this thread I think it was I pasted quotes from the bible in regards to the description of hell. I'm not sure where you get your definition of hell, but the hell as defined in the bible is more often than not referred to as a pit of flames located in the center of the earth.

Selecting parts of scripture to believe as fundamental truth (and try to force on other people) and parts to conveniently ignore is par for the course among the religious.

What parts are being conveniently ignored? I've never denied that hell is a sulfurous torture pit. The definition I gave doesn't come directly from the Bible. Rather, it is an intelligent assumption drawn from the Bible as a whole.

Fundamental truths don't contain internal contradictions. The Bible is full of contradictions. Fundamentalists have to weave all kinds of excuses to avoid having to address those contradictions.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 1,648]

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You guys...

Science...faith...

If it's provable it's science?
If it's NOT provable it's...what....fantasy?

Then you go and inject probability into it.
Here's some science..
Give it a test and prove both the position AND the momentum of an electron.

Maybe God is playing with you.
.

Maybe you are playing a hand you don't fully understand.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[SkyDekker 1,147]

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God doesn't exist

That's a statement of faith.

[nigel99 150]

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something designed means its still how it was designed.

False statement.

BTW, engineers don't make mistakes, they make changes.

Best comment in the whole thread

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[Meso 38]

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The concept of God is outside the realm of science. Simple as that.

You do know that you are free to believe whatever you want, right? So, why is a big problem for others to believe something different than what YOU believe? Kinda arrogant and self-centered on BOTH sides of the fence if you ask me.

I thought we've been through this. If God can exist outside the realm of known science then so can anything. If the universe was always there in terms of infinity then maybe the universe we know today originated from matter that doesn't behave in a manner that we know in science. This is the point I tried to pass up with quantum physics... The lowest level of a particle still acts in a way that makes no scientific sense and is unpredictable and doesn't follow other scientific laws such as relativity. And this is exactly why the universe could have developed into what it is today the same way you propose God could have.

As for the arrogant and self-centered. Maybe you're content with religion constantly slowing down scientific advancements and banning research based on church talk, basing laws on religious ideals and members of society being ostracized in many cases. Maybe this doesn't bother you, but for someone who actually cares about advancements in the world, both in terms of science and personal freedoms, it's a huge annoyance. Nothing worse than apathy.

[Meso 38]

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***God doesn't exist

That's a statement of faith.

In that case, how's these statements of faith.

Your heart is going to beat within the next 5 seconds...

The sun is going to still exist tomorrow.

If you smash your face against a wall hard enough you're going to bleed.

Faith != Logic

[flashvortx 0]

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Everything in our universe requires a designer.

Who designed the rocks I walked over this morning? Who designed the hydrogen atom? So far all you've done is given examples of man made things requiring designers. Of course they do. But the leap from, "my computer needed a designer," to, "everything in our universe needed a designer," has no basis in logic.

Just like I've said many times before in this thread, any atoms, molecules, rocks, planets, galaxies, would have been created at the start of the universe. The start of the universe (and thus the creation of rocks and stuff) is the one thing that nonbelievers think is the one thing that does not require a designer. I've given this argument at least several times so far and yet it is always skipped over, or people like you get it wrong and argue against something that I'm not even arguing.

[flashvortx 0]

[Quote]The concept of God is outside the realm of science. Simple as that.[/Quote]

That is largely true, however people that have a purely scientific mind will never take that for an answer. I try to use simple reasoning to show that God is

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reasonable

under science.

[Quote]You do know that you are free to believe whatever you want, right? So, why is a big problem for others to believe something different than what YOU believe? Kinda arrogant and self-centered on BOTH sides of the fence if you ask me.[/Quote]

People can believe whatever they want, but followers of Christ believe that, essentially, if you don't believe in Christ and his actions and teachings, that you will go hell. I wouldn't want anyone to go to hell, so that is why I argue. It's my belief that the people arguing against God argue for selfish reasons. The other person doesn't benefit if they get convinced there is no God. If someone convinced me there is no God, great. All that means is that I can go live a life of chaos and not have any repurcussions.

[Meso 38]

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I've given this argument at least several times so far and yet it is always skipped over

I recall addressing it.

Remember... If God can exist in an infinite state, I can say the original universal matter existed in such a state too. You say that God is exempt from the rules of known science, I can say that the original molecules that created the earth behaved in an unpredictable way much like the lowest levels of particles.

We both end up on 0 - 0, I don't disprove yours, you don't disprove mine. But then I've shown that God isn't needed for design and the existence of earth and mankind could have been 'created' without him.

So now you can say "Well I have faith that it was God", in which case good for you, you do that. You have faith in a God that has shown no other evidence of existing, that isn't easily explained away, now that the mysterious creation of life has been leveled 0-0 the idea of God becomes almost pointless... And no the bible isn't evidence of his existence in any way, no more so than me writing a book claiming my pancake is evidence of God.

PS:

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I wouldn't want anyone to go to hell, so that is why I argue. It's my belief that the people arguing against God argue for selfish reasons. The other person doesn't benefit if they get convinced there is no God. If someone convinced me there is no God, great. All that means is that I can go live a life of chaos and not have any repurcussions.

I applaud you for that at least. As Christians who care about others, one should try to spread the gospel and to save others from hell if you truly believe, it is the logical thing to do. It is also rarely done though, people would much rather be religious fence sitters who say they are convinced of God, yet they are content with their best friends going to hell.

I reason I debate religion is less for selfish reasons and more for the ability to attempt to try free the shackles that religion casts on others. I was religious most my life, a Christian. I just want them to look at things the way I did (clearly without feeling ashamed of questioning) before they throw their lives away to a blind following of Christianity.

[flashvortx 0]

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God doesn't exist

That's a statement of faith.

+1

[flashvortx 0]

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***God doesn't exist

That's a statement of faith.

In that case, how's these statements of faith.

Your heart is going to beat within the next 5 seconds...

The sun is going to still exist tomorrow.

If you smash your face against a wall hard enough you're going to bleed.

Faith != Logic

Did you just say that faith equals logic? Or does != mean something in a forum that I don't know about?

[flashvortx 0]

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I seemed to have missed this part.

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Hell is defined as a life apart from God. We are quite literally in hell right now. It's not the hell that I fear the most, but it does fit the definition.

Earlier on in this thread I think it was I pasted quotes from the bible in regards to the description of hell. I'm not sure where you get your definition of hell, but the hell as defined in the bible is more often than not referred to as a pit of flames located in the center of the earth.

Selecting parts of scripture to believe as fundamental truth (and try to force on other people) and parts to conveniently ignore is par for the course among the religious.

What parts are being conveniently ignored? I've never denied that hell is a sulfurous torture pit. The definition I gave doesn't come directly from the Bible. Rather, it is an intelligent assumption drawn from the Bible as a whole.

Fundamental truths don't contain internal contradictions. The Bible is full of contradictions. Fundamentalists have to weave all kinds of excuses to avoid having to address those contradictions.

Ok, my box of tissues contains the Detroit Tigers. If we could say anything we wanted without some form of proof, this forum might as well just be deleted.

[Shotgun 1]

To me, the problem with your argument is that you seem to be saying that "everything" in our world has a designer. And by "everything," you mean everything designed by man, which is such a tiny and insignificant amount of "stuff" compared with everything else that exists (that we are aware of, and then some). But you're grouping ALL of that other stuff into this one "thing" (the universe) and saying that since "everything" requires a designer, then this _one_ other thing (the universe) also requires a designer.

So I think one of the main errors in your argument (in my opinion) is the amount of significance you're giving to the stuff designed by man.

[Meso 38]

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Did you just say that faith equals logic? Or does != mean something in a forum that I don't know about?

!= is 'not equal to' in SQL code

[flashvortx 0]

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I began with showing that we live in a world where things need a designer

Duh, golly gee Mr. Professor, thanks for pointing that out. In my 51 years of life I've always thought that products just appeared out of thin air. Thanks for the enlightenment, oh great Swami!

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Everything in science relies on faith that it will continue to happen that way.

Obvious, you do not even have an idea of what science even is! FAITH! Ridiculous! Science is not faith nor is it even fact. Science is a box of tools that allows us to sift through a vast array of information. Nothing is absolute as hypotheses are tested and then repeated leaving room for revision. Science is characterizations, hypotheses, predictions, and experimentation. All which is left to peer review.
Kepler did not base his discoveries upon faith as Einstein did not base his.
Science requires an open mind and the ability of imagination. Faith requires one to abandon imagination and to lock ones mind.
Faith is a fools crutch which supports nothing.

So you're saying that science has produced a tool that can look into the future and prove that the way things are today will continue to be that way in the future? As far as I know, nobody out there can guarantee that water will boil at 212 F tomorrow or in 100 years. It's faith that lets us believe that our measurements like that will continue to be reliable. If it's not faith (one definition being confidence or trust in a person or thing), then what is it?

[kallend 1,648]

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God doesn't exist

That's a statement of faith.

There's not one shred of objective evidence to contradict it, and no evidence in favor of her existence despite millennia of searching.

"God exists" has exactly the same probability of being true as "unicorns exist" or "the FSM exists".

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[flashvortx 0]

[Quote]Kepler did not base his discoveries upon faith as Einstein did not base his.[/Quote]

I've never said it takes faith to discover something. Einstein's work better showed how the world works and has worked in the past. He didn't come up with a formula guaranteeing that it will always work that way.

So far, the only one to come close to arguing my actual points has been Meso. Everyone else changes what I'm saying to make it easy to argue. Meso has only done that a few times

[kallend 1,648]

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[Quote]Kepler did not base his discoveries upon faith as Einstein did not base his.[/Quote]

I've never said it takes faith to discover something. Einstein's work better showed how the world works and has worked in the past. He didn't come up with a formula guaranteeing that it will always work that way.

So far, the only one to come close to arguing my actual points has been Meso. Everyone else changes what I'm saying to make it easy to argue. Meso has only done that a few times

No, YOU changed your points when your contradictions were pointed out to you.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Shotgun 1]

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I wouldn't want anyone to go to hell, so that is why I argue. It's my belief that the people arguing against God argue for selfish reasons.

This sounds like you're saying that Christians only argue for benevolent reasons, and that any atheist who would argue back is simply selfish. Are we just supposed to sit there and listen while people use illogical arguments to try to convert us? (And, of course, proselytizing is not exactly the worst thing to ever come from religion.)

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If someone convinced me there is no God, great. All that means is that I can go live a life of chaos and not have any repurcussions.

I have never believed in God, but I can assure you that there have always been consequences for my actions. My atheism does not mean that I am free to "live a life of chaos and not have any repercussions."

[flashvortx 0]

I’m in the middle of moving and you’re making it very difficult. Haha, I quickly replied to a few posts and was going to start moving, but then I read yours. I’m not saying you’re in any way easy to argue against, but it is fun so I keep coming back. And yes, you’ve addressed that argument (but no one else has).

You’ve tried to show that God isn’t needed for design, and I’ve shown that He is. He has shown signs of existing by giving us a universe which requires design and cause. I haven’t, and probably won’t use the Bible for evidence of His existence (in this thread).

[Quote] As Christians who care about others, one should try to spread the gospel and to save others from hell if you truly believe, it is the logical thing to do. It is also rarely done though, people would much rather be religious fence sitters who say they are convinced of God, yet they are content with their best friends going to hell.[/Quote]

You can’t (or at least I don’t know how to) spread the Gospel to people that don’t even believe that there is a God. This debate started off and quickly showed that I needed to try to prove God first, so that’s why I haven’t gotten into the Bible, except when someone brought it up. And I agree that it is very rarely done. Sitting on the fence is a very easy thing to do, and people are very lazy (including me). It takes a lot of time and effort to learn the amount necessary for good debate and to teach, and I’m only at the very beginning of doing that. This debate actually gave me a very large push to learn more.

As for the shackles - as someone that would very much like to live a perfect Christian life, but self admittedly doesn’t even come close, I think that everyone having those shackles would make this world quite nice. Whether or not you believe in the origin and actual meaning of the Bible, you have to agree that if people love their neighbors as themselves, the world would be a pretty excellent place to live in. BUT, before you tear that apart, we can’t really imagine the world living like that. We are jealous, lewd, greedy, arrogant and envious people and we’ll never come close to living how Christ wants.

I understand that we, especially in the States, love our freedom to do whatever we want, so probably most people would never agree with having those shackles would be a good thing.