The Probability of the Big Bang

[rockv12]

By the way, how does a perfect being become "corrupted"? Perfection is immutable, after all. Oh well. You're too scared to admit your BS makes no sense anyway; that's just one more example of your cognitive dissonance.

You, like many others, are trying to know what God is and how God acts and how God feels, using human/mortal emotions and thoughts.  I can't answer why God did such and such.  He created us with free-will.  We are not robots.  If you want to play God and tell Him how He should have done things, go right ahead.  Now what is the problem again?  We are not perfect?  So God must not exist?  If you are honestly asking to learn, then I can explain, but I don't think you are.

[rockv12]

If we are talking about evolution that is an irrelevant question.

No time is relevant to evolution!  Good grief, it's mentioned over and over with the theory!  What?

[One Above All]

Now what is the problem again?  We are not perfect?  So God must not exist?

rockv12, as I am tired of your lies, I will refrain from posting and will express my dislike of liars by smiting you every once in a while. Good day.[1]

1.	I'm actually joking about this last part.

[rockv12]

Now what is the problem again?  We are not perfect?  So God must not exist?

rockv12, as I am tired of your lies, I will refrain from posting and will express my dislike of liars by smiting you every once in a while. Good day.

Hey, you can call me a liar.  I don't really care.  No hard feelings.  You can smite me that's fine.  We are apparently two guys who like to argue/debate.  It's healthy and never a bad thing.  I appreciate your questions, even if we disagree.  How boring would this world be if we all agreed on everything, right?  Good day to you to. 

[screwtape]

If we are talking about evolution that is an irrelevant question.

No time is relevant to evolution!  Good grief, it's mentioned over and over with the theory! 

Time is relevant.  I did not say otherwise.  When time began is not addressed by the ToE. 

and how about you address all the other points you dodged?

[velkyn]

But what about the millions of people that have studied it looking for proof that it's true and come up with the answer that it is?  Isn't that like your evolutionary scientists?  How can they all be wrong?  They are experts on the subject.

Have you studied apologetics and Biblical theology?  What did you conclude?

But what about the millions of people who have studied the Qu'ran (The Veda, etc), and have come up with the answer that it is?  Evidence, rockv, give me evidence that isn’t nonsense that can be applied to any religion. You again have avoided doing so and it seems that you can’t and that you are lying about your religion.  These millions of yours are not "experts" in the subject, they are people with presuppositions.   And nice appeal to popularity.  Wow, is scientology true too because lots of people find it to be “true”?

And yes, I have studied the bible, apologetics and theology.  I have concluded that Chrisitanity is nothing special.  It makes the same baseless claims as every other religion and there is no evidence to support it.  I have also noted that many theists are amazing ignorant in their own religion as well as any science they ignorantly try to attack.  They have created their own religions based on what each of them claims that their god “really meant”.  And all without, again, any evidence. 

We get your lies that we aren't supposedly "honestly" interested.  Nice little excuse for your own incompetence.  And as always we get a Christian who wants to claim he knows so mcuh about his god but when asked the hard questions, it becomes a magical mystery.  As always ever so convenient. 

[HAL]

Yes, we were created with free will to sin.  Put yourself in God's shoes.  If you wanted to create some buddies to share paradise with, would you create robots that say, "I love you!"?  Would that be true love?  No.

No it wouldn't but ...

God created us with the ability to choose to love God or reject Him.  That shows true love.

True love also doesn't entail punishing the person that chooses not to love you. God does punish those who don't love him. God therefore has no idea what true love is.

[Aaron123]

It doesn't allow for choking.....it works great.  We can't swim underwater, that doesn't mean we are a poor design...You got a better system that would work?  Go ahead and show it and prove that it's a better design.

For starters...

-A design that doesn't allow for birth defects
-A design that doesn't allow for ectopic pregnancy
-Humans being able to form their own vitamin C (our gene for vitamin C is defective ) info
-Elimination of the "blind spot"
-Elimination of appendicitis

And I don't see how pointing out silly little potential trouble spots proves that it's NOT a design.  I mean, what do you want?

First of all, you need to provide evidence that your god exists.  Can you do that without:

-Appealing to ignorant
-Appealing to incredulity
-Appealing to emotion
-Invoking the god of the gaps.

Keep in mind, you can demostrate the existence of microwave ovens without doing any of those things.  Can you do the same for your god?


EDIT: spelling

[Tero]

No Rock, you do not debate. You just post the same icantimaginesoit mustbegod thing over and over.

[Eaten by Bears]

I was listing things that were examples of design.  I do not consider the human body, or brain, or eyeball, or cochlea, to be examples of things that were designed,

The brain doesn't look like a design?  Working parts placed in order to achieve a goal?  That's not a design?  Why am I in here arguing this, OMG. This is ridiculous.  If a keyboard and computer monitor are "designs", then how is the human body not a design?  I'm so confused as to how you can't see this, it's rather blowing my mind...

The root of the problem could be your assumption that 'something that performs a function' automatically means that there has to be a conscious 'designer' behind it. You make this assumption as fact, and because you cannot provide evidence of an item that is not designed, there is no frame of reference to judge what is intentionally created by a conscious mind, and what isn't. Because in your mind, nothing can exist without a creator, your whole argument consists of 'Something exists, therefore God of the Bible is true.'

[jaimehlers]

The brain doesn't look like a design?  Working parts placed in order to achieve a goal?  That's not a design?  Why am I in here arguing this, OMG. This is ridiculous.  If a keyboard and computer monitor are "designs", then how is the human body not a design?  I'm so confused as to how you can't see this, it's rather blowing my mind...

You're right that this discussion is ridiculous, you're just mistaken as to the reason.  You seem to think that if you can't understand something, if it blows your mind, then it is ridiculous to think anything besides "God is responsible".  However, it is the presumption that a god must be responsible for anything that you do not or cannot understand that is ridiculous, especially when you have no evidence except for metaphorical and apocryphal stories from thousands of years ago, which don't qualify as evidence to begin with.

We know that a keyboard is designed because first, we know who came up with the idea (Christopher Sholes, back in 1875), second, we can trace the construction of a given keyboard back to its manufacturer, third, we can tell by analysis that the keyboard is made for a pair of human hands to comfortably use, and fourth, because we do not have keyboards appearing naturally.  I imagine if you, rockv, were to apply this criteria to the question of where life came from, you would say that God came up with the idea, made the first humans, had some purpose in mind for making humans, and the first humans were artificially poofed into existence rather than coming about by some natural means (meaning, something that can occur without intervention).  Except you can prove none of that, since the creation stories in Genesis don't qualify as evidence to begin with, and there were no independent observers around in any case.

And no, the human brain does not look like someone connected working parts in order to accomplish some goal.  What it looks like is an organ that developed in response to a physical need (a centralized system for directing the other parts of the body efficienty) and gradually became better at its task as time went on and small beneficial mutations added up.  Not something that was designed with a particular goal and purpose in mind.

[kaziglu bey]

These are simple questions to answer, if you understand God and the Bible.  Shall I try to explain?

We were created perfect in the Garden of Eden.  After man sinned, God kicked us out and let nature have it's way on us.  We did it to ourselves with sin.  But why am I explaining this to you, you don't believe in the Bible...so...

Just because some people choke on water and get sick, doesn't mean the pharynx and immune system are bad designs.  Oh man, do you really understand how perfectly the pharynx and esophagus work?  It's amazing!  It actually proves how silly evolution is.  Without everything working perfectly together, everyone would aspirate and die.

This is honestly so pathetic, and displays such a vast level of ignorance and lack of critical thinking, that I just don't even know how to respond. Well, I'll say this. I think it is interesting that you basically say "Look at how perfect we are! God made us perfect in everyway, and it shows! everything about is designed to perfectly do what it was designed to do".  If the pharynx and esophagus worked perfectly NO ONE EVER would choke. People DO aspirate and die. People choke on food. If we were perfectly designed to eat, and breathe, not one person, ever, in history, would have choked, let alone died from it. But of course, you excuse any and all design flaws as being OUR fault, even though you don't think that there are design flaws, because we are designed perfectly for everything we do.

[Truth OT]

You, like many others, are trying to know what God is and how God acts and how God feels, using human/mortal emotions and thoughts.  I can't answer why God did such and such.  He created us with free-will.  We are not robots.  If you want to play God and tell Him how He should have done things, go right ahead.  Now what is the problem again?  We are not perfect?  So God must not exist?  If you are honestly asking to learn, then I can explain, but I don't think you are.

Remember, God is a spirit and can only be understood or even approached spiritually. therefore, we would be better served at trying to know what God is and how God acts and how God feels by allowing the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and do the thinking and reasoning for us. Everyone with an ounce of spiritual discernment knows that reason and logic have no place in spiritual matters. That is one of the reasons we cannot rely upon simply reading God's inspired book(s) to see examples of God's thinking, actions, and declarations about what He is because at times the books will conflict (didn't mean to say that outloud, damn it!)..... because even the book cannot be understood without spiritual assistance.
The Spirit is an unseen force that if invited in, will help you understand the unseen God, will help reveal His will for your life, will convict you of sin, and will beckon God on your behalf with groans and such that are beyond your comprehension. Sounds great huh!!?! The tricky part is how this spirit is properly "invited" into you. Some say another spiritually filled person must lay hands on you, others say I must first be immersed in water by a spirit-filled believer, while others say it's a simple as asking Jesus into one's heart. Because of this confusion there is no cut and dry way to actually make sure you can even invite the Spirit in. It gets a bit more complex when you consider that there are evil and deceitful spirits out there competing for space inside you as well (this all make perfect sense I know). Apparently these "bad" and powerful spirits are stupid though, so don't be too worried. It they don't tell you that Jesus came in the flesh then you can know that they are imposters and malevolent, however, if they tell you Jesus did come in the flesh, it's the genuine article. See how simple and realistic this is? Ain't it grand!!

[HAL]

Any decent god-designed human body would have eyes on the back of the heads to help in self-protection and hunting. We don't have eyes on the back of our heads. I think that's a design not worthy of a deity.

I challenge rockv12 to prove me wrong in this.

[Tero]

If we can get one more theist to take turns with Rock, the thread could get as long as
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/what-can-we-reasonably-infer-about-the-historical-jesus-t219-21720.html#p1195513

The famous Historical Jesus thread!

[caveat_imperator]

When did time begin? 

If we are talking about evolution that is an irrelevant question.

No time is relevant to evolution!  Good grief, it's mentioned over and over with the theory!  What?

Good grief, you are horrible at trying to make us believe your lies!
As everyone can see, you were asking about the beginning of time which has nothing to do with biological evolution!

[kin hell]

You honestly don't see my point?

Have you forgotten this post already?

Back up the evidence of design in the world?  I have to DO that?  What haven't I said?  Design is everywhere around us!!  You want an example?  The penis and the vagina.  There.  There's a great design!  The anus.  There's a great design.  Nice sphincter action right on our behind for us to squat.....happens really easily.  What if the anus was in front or on top?  It wouldn't work so nicely, would it?  What if the penis didn't get erect?  It wouldn't work so well, would it?  Anymore examples?

well obviously you are forgetting the clever design of the pointy end of turd.
Like everything you've mentioned it was designed.
It stops your anus from violently clacking shut after each defecation.

Much like your pointy head.

....we see your point[1]

1.	“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them...."  Thomas Jefferson

[Zankuu]

We were created perfect in the Garden of Eden.

rockv12, I wasn't familiar enough with your posting history to realize your interpretation of Genesis is a literal one, and that you actually believe that a man was created from dust.

Have you never sat down and thought "Wow, this sounds exactly like the type of story superstitious men of antiquity would make up in order to explain the world they live in"? Really think about it. A fully grown adult male with firing neurons and synapses, with ion pumps and receptors and diffusing chemicals- all being birthed from what? Dead animal skin, pollen, and sediment? This is a fable, rockv12. And for centuries these types of myths have been passed down as truth with the purpose of bringing comfort to men who didn't have an honest answer for the question "Where did we come from?".

Your magical Genesis creation myth for man wasn't the first on the block. Before Yahweh there was...

• Prometheus: the god who shaped man from the clay of the earth. Before Prometheus there was...
• Marduk: the hero who took the blood of a slain god and mixed it with dirt, creating mankind. And there was...
• Khnum: a god that crafted man from a potter's wheel.

rockv12, there are numerous ancient creation stories around the globe that share similarities with your religion's fable, many of which predate your middle eastern mythology (the three myths above are notable examples). Why do you choose to follow a barbaric bronze age mythology?

After man sinned, God kicked us out and let nature have it's way on us.  We did it to ourselves with sin.

A perfect and flawless being cannot, by definition, make a flawed decision. A perfect being would have the attributes of flawless cognitive thinking and perfect reasoning skills. A perfect being would not be able to choose sin. So, according to you, how would this type of being make the wrong choice?

[Anfauglir]

If you wanted to create some buddies to share paradise with, would you create robots that say, "I love you!"?  Would that be true love?  No.  God created us with the ability to choose to love God or reject Him.  That shows true love.

Bullshit.

If your god only had a need to have people make ALL the words and actions of love to him, he would indeed have created robots.  They would all have been happy (because that's how they were created), and god would have been adored by all.  The result for him would be the same whether someone chose to love him or not.

But that wasn't enough for your needy little god was it?  People had to CHOOSE to show love to him....even if he knew that would mean some people choosing not to.  And what does he do with those who exercise the choice they give them and say "no"?  He sends them to everlkasting torture.

So bullshit that's love - that's a needy control freak who can't handle rejection.  There's no "love" on your whiny god's part at all.

[jynnan tonnix]

A perfect and flawless being cannot, by definition, make a flawed decision. A perfect being would have the attributes of flawless cognitive thinking and perfect reasoning skills. A perfect being would not be able to choose sin. So, according to you, how would this type of being make the wrong choice?

Exactly...and furthermore, since the perfect designer's perfect creations could not make the wrong choice, there could be no "sin". So it would be incredibly petty of the designer to throw a hissy fit when his creations proceded to live the life he had given them, making decisions which were perfectly valid.

Of course, such pettiness would be a pretty big imperfection to start with, so the only way to maintain integrity within the myth is to concede that neither the creator nor the created were, in fact, perfect; that the creator was a tyrant, and the only reason to worship him would have been out of fear.

[jaimehlers]

Not necessarily a tyrant, just childish.  But since children aren't perfect anyway...

[ungod]

By the way, how does a perfect being become "corrupted"? Perfection is immutable, after all. Oh well. You're too scared to admit your BS makes no sense anyway; that's just one more example of your cognitive dissonance.

You, like many others, are trying to know what God is and how God acts and how God feels, using human/mortal emotions and thoughts............. If you are honestly asking to learn, then I can explain, but I don't think you are.

So God can't be understood using human emotions and thoughts, but YOU are going to explain God to us!
Therefore, you must be claiming to be non-human, or do you have another one of those secret decoder rings?

 

[Add Homonym]

How boring would this world be if we all agreed on everything, right?

It would depend on what we were agreeing on.

If it were a general agreement that we should all have sex with 10 people a day, then that may not be as boring as agreement that we should all self-flagellate and abstain from sex, and worship a fake god.

[Add Homonym]

Oh boy, theological discussion go nowhere to a non-believer.  But, I'll bite.  Yes, we were created with free will to sin.

It's not theological.

Nowhere does the Bible mention "free will". That's a philosophical invention that we cannot know if it's even true.

If I'm starving, I may steal some food. Sure, I could have chosen to die (using my supposed free will), rather than steal, but something put me in the position where I apparently had to steal. So, my free will has been diminished somewhat, by a God who created me completely dependent on food that I cannot obtain from the environment, without running afoul of a neighbour's rights. Compare this with an animal that can eat grass. Is it stealing, if it eats another animal's grass, or is it merely competing, as it should?

Put yourself in God's shoes.

Oh, yeah. We can all put on the hat of an infinite God, who knows everything. It's like a bacteria can put on a hat of Einstein. The bacteria would come to the conclusion that Einstein wanted it to follow a chemical gradient and excrete some protease, and this was the true path to enlightenment.

If you wanted to create some buddies to share paradise with, would you create robots that say, "I love you!"?

As a bacteria, putting on my Einstein hat, I'd say that God wanted to hang out with awesome RNA splitting talent, and was totally impressed by my ability to break down petrochemicals in the presence of UV and alcohol.

  Would that be true love?  No.

True love is when you can find a receptor site on a virus and fold a protein onto its top half, and make a new receptor.

God created us with the ability to choose to love God or reject Him.  That shows true love.

Well, I'm glad you have the mind of God all sorted out. I'd be worried if God's real purpose was to find people with artistic talent, or scientific skills, because that would mean that God was an idiot.

[Tero]

Oh, yeah. We can all put on the hat of an infinite God, who knows everything. It's like a bacteria can put on a hat of Einstein. The bacteria would come to the conclusion that Einstein wanted it to follow a chemical gradient and excrete some protease, and this was the true path to enlightenment.


As a bacteria, putting on my Einstein hat, I'd say that God wanted to hang out with awesome RNA splitting talent, and was totally impressed by my ability to break down petrochemicals in the presence of UV and alcohol.

This is brilliant. If you have a wife or girlfriend, it would be a wonderful birthday present to have that in a nice cross stitched embroidery work in a frame.

But the pertochemicals needs some fine tuning. Not sure but I would say start with small carbon molecules.

[Samothec]

... Yes, we were created with free will to sin.  Put yourself in God's shoes.  If you wanted to create some buddies to share paradise with, would you create robots that say, "I love you!"?  Would that be true love?  No.  God created us with the ability to choose to love God or reject Him.  That shows true love.

Okay. Putting myself in god's shoes:

I wouldn't create sin or cancer or disease - especially none that can ever affect children. Humans would have lifespans of thousands of years (at least) and all would be curious so they would and could explore the universe I created. While there is no reason to make everyone look the same, there is also no reason to have any human be ugly or deformed. Healthy foods would taste good while unhealthy things would always taste bad no matter how many times you tried them. Seperate tubes for connecting the nostrils and lungs and for connecting the mouth and stomache. No: bleeding to death, strokes, heart attacks, unhealthy overweight or underweight, organ failure, blindness, deafness, other physical disease, mental disease, etc.

This is just a quick, off-the-top-of-my-head (re)design. It's better and I'm not omniscient or omnipotent.  If any god existed then reality would not be as crappy as it is. And I'm not even considering what I'd add or subtract if I really wanted to show my love for my creation.

Why does your idea of love include sin?

[natlegend]

^^^ Any thoughts on the above, rock? Cos that sounds like a pretty sweet creation scenario to me... (Other than the extended lifespan... I suspect I might get bored at age 200 or something... Unless we all had superpowers as well! That would be cool! And if we could go check out other planets, that would be freakin AWESOME!!)

[DumpsterFire]

You, like many others, are trying to know what God is and how God acts and how God feels, using human/mortal emotions and thoughts.  I can't answer why God did such and such.

I think most here are attempting to demonstrate to you that this thing you've apparently devoted your life to is an utter fallacy. You contend that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being created all that is, and despite never providing any verifiable evidence of its existence this all-powerful being still requires humans to worship it, and will eternally punish those that do not.

It seems you, like most xtians, do not understand what omnipotent truly means, so let me enlighten you: an omnipotent being can Do. Anything. It. Wants.

So OK, fine. God's a badass, but then you've got to muddy the waters by saying he's also all-loving, which is the detail that collapses the house of cards. You see, omnipotence and omnibenevolence are incompatible given the realities of the world we live in. An all-powerful god would be responsible for everything that happens here, good and bad, by either directly causing it to happen or by not stepping in to stop it. The fact that there are millions of innocent babies and small children (who have never even had the opportunity to sin or accept Jesus) suffering from hunger, disease, abuse, or neglect is absolute proof that there is no omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. Xtians blame all the bad stuff on Satan, forgetting (or ignoring) that if god is all-powerful he would have to both allow Satan to exist and allow him to perpetrate evil.

If a person knew that a baby in the next room was being raped and murdered and did nothing to intervene, would you consider that person good? Let's say that person also was in possession of a working cell phone, pistol, and baseball bat, and was a black belt in JiuJitsu, yet still did nothing to save that baby? There's your god, right there.

This god that you worship (and consider me foolish for not worshipping) allows thousands of innocent children to starve to death daily, to perish in earthquakes and tsunamis, to be raped, to be murdered. These are facts. Hell, by your own admission god even allows parents to sell their children's souls to Satan (still waiting for your answer on that one, BTW).

I can only conclude from all of this that god either is not concerned with humanity or does not exist. How you are able to reconcile everything to a being worthy of praise and worship is a complete mystery to me.

[ungod]

You, like many others, are trying to know what God is and how God acts and how God feels, using human/mortal emotions and thoughts.  I can't answer why God did such and such.

I think most here are attempting to demonstrate to you that this thing you've apparently devoted your life to is an utter fallacy. You contend that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being created all that is, and despite never providing any verifiable evidence of its existence this all-powerful being still requires humans to worship it, and will eternally punish those that do not.

It seems you, like most xtians, do not understand what omnipotent truly means, so let me enlighten you: an omnipotent being can Do. Anything. It. Wants.

So OK, fine. God's a badass, but then you've got to muddy the waters by saying he's also all-loving, which is the detail that collapses the house of cards. You see, omnipotence and omnibenevolence are incompatible given the realities of the world we live in. An all-powerful god would be responsible for everything that happens here, good and bad, by either directly causing it to happen or by not stepping in to stop it. The fact that there are millions of innocent babies and small children (who have never even had the opportunity to sin or accept Jesus) suffering from hunger, disease, abuse, or neglect is absolute proof that there is no omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. Xtians blame all the bad stuff on Satan, forgetting (or ignoring) that if god is all-powerful he would have to both allow Satan to exist and allow him to perpetrate evil.

If a person knew that a baby in the next room was being raped and murdered and did nothing to intervene, would you consider that person good? Let's say that person also was in possession of a working cell phone, pistol, and baseball bat, and was a black belt in JiuJitsu, yet still did nothing to save that baby? There's your god, right there.

This god that you worship (and consider me foolish for not worshipping) allows thousands of innocent children to starve to death daily, to perish in earthquakes and tsunamis, to be raped, to be murdered. These are facts. Hell, by your own admission god even allows parents to sell their children's souls to Satan (still waiting for your answer on that one, BTW).

I can only conclude from all of this that god either is not concerned with humanity or does not exist. How you are able to reconcile everything to a being worthy of praise and worship is a complete mystery to me.

You are trying to use reason against concrete. Doesn't work. Try a Jackhammer.