The big bang theory is bs!

[ungod]

Spiritual things must be understood spiritually........

And Magickal thing musts be understood Magickally.

And Shamanic thing must be understood through the eyes of a shaman.


Or I can see how the measure up to real world standards and understand they are bullshit.

Magic decoder ring + exclusive Lodge membership required....

[pingnak]

PAID membership.  Don't neglect that detail.

[Godexists]

Since when has the factual truth or falseness of a thing been influenced by what we WANT to believe?

You are missing the point. We are all biased. So if your bias is toward negating God's existence, then you will not consider all evidence that points toward his existence with care, but will rather ignore it. That is what most atheists do.

I believe that we all die at some point. I believe that eating too much ice cream will make me fat.  I believe that I have to work or I won't be able to support my family.

thats obvious.

None of those things are changed at all by the fact that I wish they were not true.  Now, people can convince themselves that something is true or not true; or they can be fooled into believing that something is true or not true, but that goes both ways.  You say here that we don't want God, but what if it's simply that you DO want there to be a God.

That is indeed what happened with me. And the evidence i found afterwards of my wish just made it more and more clear to me that i was on the right track. If you do not want God to exist, you will hardly consider that evidence the way you should.

It is very important to me to know whether or not God is real.  I really want to know the truth.

Why is his existence not obvious to you ? See around you. Everything is finely managed to make life happen. Our universe, the earth, cannot popped up into existence without a cause. Everything that begins to exist, has a cause. You have a cause, your mom, and dad, wanted you. A car has a cause. Only the universe should have no cause at all ? Why should such a thinking make sense ?
Lee Smolin, a world class physicist, estimated the odds life to come into existence by chance,  by one to 10^220. You have 3 real possibilites. One is, a higher being made everything physical that exists. Second, everything arose by pure chance, and the third, there was physical need our universe, and we, to exist. Pick your choice.

But is it so bad to ask for real proof in the understanding that the human mind can be tricked and fooled easily, and has been since man first invented religion?

Yes. It is a nonsense question , to ask for proof. If you go consequently this line, you will end with nihilism, in the end you will find no answers at all. Can you proove, our existence isnt just a illusion at all, we do not exist in reality ? The right philosophical question should be, how can we best explain our existence ? Compared to the alternative possibilites, God makes by far the most sense to me.

  Is it so bad to want to bring the most powerful truth detection tool we have (the scientific method) to bear on the question?

yes, it is. You will remain with your question till your dead unanswered, and if you did not make the right choice, you might end up where you do not want to.

There have been billions and billions of people throughout the history of time that have been tricked and fooled by other religions, correct?  Without some form of reasonable proof, how can you sit there and say you aren't just like them?

 

Because i know whom i have believed to. I have seen miracles and prophecies in my life concretizised, i have so much evidence, also scientific one on hand, for me, there is no way back. I believe firmly in the God of the bible.

Reading the bible from a position of neutrality is NOT the way to believe in God.  It is a sure fire way to become an atheist.

Most Christians do not agree with you.


 

Nobody in their right mind would believe any of it.  You have to FIRST believe that God is real.  Not the other way around.  If you FIRST believe that God is real, then everything inside it, no matter how whacky or nutty it is, just reinforces that belief.

 

The apostle Paul was a fierce fighter against christianity, but after his experience on the way to damaskus, he changed dramatically. So happens with many people who are touched through the holy spirit.

I do not NEED God

That is what you fool yourself to believe. Without God, you would not wake up every morning, you are alive because God aloud it to happen. You don't do anything without Gods permission. If you exist, its because God exists. From absolutely nothing, nothing derives.


 

but if He is real, I wish to know it.

you have the chance to find him today. Right now. All it depends on you. His existence is obvious to anyone, that is a true seeker of the truth.

In fact, living here in the bible belt, it would make my life a lot easier if I did.

Lucky you. There are many people in north korea, in iran, and many other countries, that suffer because of their faith in Jesus, and many are ready to die for their faith, because they know its the most important they have found in their life : Their faith in Jesus Christ. While you live in western country, where you have the priviledge to live your faith without persecution, but dismiss this oportunity.

And that's not good enough, because its really, really, REALLY possible that you're wrong.

But that upon you to find out. Why don't you give a leap of faith, and try it out ?


 

Is it good enough that we testify our position to you?  The more you investigate, the less likely you are to believe in God. 

You and all others have failed so far to present a convincing alternative possibility, that explains better how we came to be here. But i am all ear. What do you suggest ?

It's not an intelligible answer.  It's like saying you can only understand something if you ojklar.  There is no such thing as a "spirit", and until you define what it is, you're not speaking English.  The most reliable way in which to understand things in our world is via the scientific method.  What do you not understand about that? 

Well, i don't agree. The scientific method is limited to examine the natural world, but it cannot find out anything beyond that. I consider also religion, and philosophy as valid tools to understand the world, and to create my world view.

Yes, it most certainly is true.  Even your quote says it.  Read it again and see the bolded part...

we have fragments, that go back to the early second century. That is VERY close to the actual date of happenings. And we have thousands of fragments. And we have the archeological evidence, beside the non christian authors, which do confirm the figures mentioned in the new testament, like agrippa, pilatus, amongst many others. Beside this, people in the first century died for their faith. Do you think they were willing to die for a illusionary faith ? Christianism could have spread out the way it did, only, if it were true. You want to know really the truth, as you said above ?

take ten minutes of your time then, and read following article :

http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html

There are no original copies of anything, Godexists.  None.  It's been manipulated, changed and transformed heavily for 1400 years.

unsubstantiated assertions. Wishful thinking. Biased argument. Proving i am right. You use even invalid and false arguments to make your case. that way, you only fool yourself.

Before the printing press was invented in the 1400's, every copy of the bible was passed on BY HAND.  It didn't drop out of the sky and land in somebody's lap. 

Even so, it was copied that carefully, that the copies of qumran for example, containing the full book of jesajah, dated 100aC. has no substantial difference to later copies, 1100 years younger.  You can even checke them over the web, with translation and everything , that proves you are wrong.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/scrolls/scr3.html

 

Not only do we not have the originals, we don't have the first copies of the originals. We don't even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, these copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.

http://www.cbn.com/special/apologetics/articles/Koukl_misquoting_jesus_bart_ehrman.aspx

 

Pretend your Aunt Sally learns in a dream the recipe for an elixir that preserves her youth. When she awakes, she scribbles the complex directions on a sheet of paper, then runs to the kitchen to mix up her first batch of “Sally’s Secret Sauce.” In a few days, she is transformed into a picture of radiant youth.

Aunt Sally is so excited she sends detailed, handwritten instructions to her three bridge partners (Aunt Sally is still in the technological dark ages—no photocopier or email). They, in turn, make copies for ten of their own friends.

All goes well until one day Aunt Sally’s schnauzer eats the original script. In a panic she contacts her friends who have mysteriously suffered similar mishaps. The alarm goes out to the others who received copies from her card-playing trio in an attempt to recover the original wording.

Sally rounds up all the surviving handwritten copies, 26 in all. When she spreads them out on the kitchen table, she immediately notices differences. Twenty-three of the copies are virtually the same save for misspelled words and abbreviations littering the text. Of the remaining three, however, one lists ingredients in a different order, another has two phrases inverted (“mix then chop” instead of “chop then mix”), and one includes an ingredient not mentioned in any other list.

Do you think Aunt Sally can accurately reconstruct her original recipe from this evidence? Of course she can. The misspellings and abbreviations are inconsequential, as is the order of ingredients in the list (those variations all mean the same thing). The single inverted phrase stands out and can easily be repaired because one can’t mix something that hasn’t been chopped. Sally would then strike the extra ingredient reasoning it’s more plausible one person would mistakenly add an item than 25 people would accidentally omit it.

Even if the variations were more numerous and diverse, the original could still be reconstructed with a high level of confidence with enough copies and a little common sense.

This, in simplified form (very simplified, but you get the point), is how scholars do “textual criticism,” an academic enterprise used to reconstitute all documents of antiquity, not just religious texts. It is not a haphazard effort based on guesses and religious faith. It is a careful analytical process allowing an alert critic to determine the extent of possible corruption of any work and, given certain conditions, reconstruct the original with a high degree of certainty.

Why don't you look at the argument from both sides and see what other people are saying?

Who told you i have not done that ?

[ungod]

Well, i am giving the first step, testifying to you my position.

Testimonial "evidence", whether for miracle fat burning pills, or invisible sky daddies, is of equal value - nil.

[ungod]

Reading the bible from a position of neutrality is NOT the way to believe in God.  It is a sure fire way to become an atheist.

Most Christians do not agree with you.

Most Christians, unlike Atheists, haven't read the Bible, but rather had cherry picked excerpts read at them in fundy school or while sitting in a pew thinking about anything other than the boring sermon....

[Alzael]

You are missing the point. We are all biased. So if your bias is toward negating God's existence, then you will not consider all evidence that points toward his existence with care, but will rather ignore it. That is what most atheists do.

This applies equally however, if everyone possesses bias as you claim. If your bias is towards showing that god exists, then you will only consider evidence if it points to the conclusion that you want to be true, ignoring all else that might prove you wrong. Which you have dmeonstrated more than a passing willingness to do.

This however, is the reason why we created the scientific method and logic in the first place. To filter out the bias so that we can reach the truth.

This is why people are requesting scientific evidence of you. As well as why they are requesting logical arguments from you, while they present the same. Because we, as atheists, accept our bias and seek to use the tools we have available to overcome them as best we can. By requesting scientific evidence and rational discourse we at least open ourselves up to the possibility that we might be wrong. You, conversely, seem content to wallow in your own bias and never even try to reach the truth of whether you are right or wrong. You give not a moment's consideration in regards to what is being said by anyone else, but expect everyone else to consider your words. Provide not a single iota of scientific effort to support yourself;and indeed can only seem to cower behind the words of others who have done more work and given more thought than you have ever been inclined to do.

Everyone may be biased, true. However we are attempting to find the truth, whereas you are doing everything you can to hide from it.

[Noman Peopled]

You are missing the point. We are all biased. So if your bias is toward negating God's existence, then you will not consider all evidence that points toward his existence with care, but will rather ignore it.

Does the magic decoder ring enable you to read minds? Or is it a separate trick?

[Godexists]

This applies equally however, if everyone possesses bias as you claim. If your bias is towards showing that god exists, then you will only consider evidence if it points to the conclusion that you want to be true, ignoring all else that might prove you wrong

In reality, i don't ignore it.  I just put each side on balance, and see what seems more plausible. And the hypotheses God overweights in my view by far the alternatives of no god to exist. Actually, that possibility is so remotely small, that it can be confidently discarded. That is not only evidenced by religion and philosophy, but certainly also, and today more than ever before in human history, based on scientific findings. We know codified information can come only from a mind. DNA contains billions of letters of exact instructions of functioning of the body. That cannot have been caused by chance. There is no known mechanism to man, that can cause codified information , as found in DNA, by chance. We have the evidence of fine tuning in our universe, and specially of the solar/moon/earth,with so many parameters, that must be just right, that chance can be excluded. We have the hudge size of the universe, which is necessary to form carbon , and subsequently, life. We know that dead material cannot become self conscient, and form intelligence, ans self awareness, by chance, since these things are essentially different than dead matter. We know that sex could not have arose by evolutionary mechanisms. We know about irreducible complexity, despite fiercly questioned by atheists. We know that a moral conscience would not exist , if God would not exist.  These are all clear scientific arguments and elements, that do point out to a intelligent creator. Atheistic explanations are not reasonable, and do not convince me.

This however, is the reason why we created the scientific method and logic in the first place. To filter out the bias so that we can reach the truth.

The scientific method is not a remedy to find out everything we want. beside this, our way of thinking is always, in the end, based on unprovable faith.

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/

You cannot PROVE gravity will always be consistent at all times. You can only observe that it’s consistently true every time. Nearly all scientific laws are based on inductive reasoning. All of science rests on an assumption that the universe is orderly, logical and mathematical based on fixed discoverable laws. You cannot PROVE this. (You can’t prove that the sun will come up tomorrow morning either.) You literally have to take it on faith. In fact most people don’t know that outside the science circle is a philosophy circle. Science is based on philosophical assumptions that you cannot scientifically prove. Actually, the scientific method cannot prove, it can only infer.(Science originally came from the idea that God made an orderly universe which obeys fixed, discoverable laws - and because of those laws, He would not have to constantly tinker with it in order for it to operate.)

This is why people are requesting scientific evidence of you. As well as why they are requesting logical arguments from you, while they present the same. Because we, as atheists, accept our bias and seek to use the tools we have available to overcome them as best we can. By requesting scientific evidence and rational discourse we at least open ourselves up to the possibility that we might be wrong. You, conversely, seem content to wallow in your own bias and never even try to reach the truth of whether you are right or wrong. You give not a moment's consideration in regards to what is being said by anyone else, but expect everyone else to consider your words.

That is partially true. As said, i don't question that there are things, that can be questioned. I aknowledge them. And there ARE questions, which are unanswered through my faith. But what counts to me is the overall picture. And that tend , at least to me, favour by a large margin the hypotheses of a supreme , powerful God, which created everything.

 

Provide not a single iota of scientific effort to support yourself;

You are completely wrong. A good deal of my arguments do base on what we do know through science. For example that the universe most probably had a beginning. therefore a cause 

and indeed can only seem to cower behind the words of others who have done more work and given more thought than you have ever been inclined to do.

We do not live on a isolated island, restraint, to develope all our thoughts, and belief system by our own. All of us rely on others, so do you. Nothing wrong about that.

Everyone may be biased, true. However we are attempting to find the truth, whereas you are doing everything you can to hide from it.

The true difference is, i am not a seeker anymore. I believe i have found the truth. But you do everything, to ignore it. Why so ?

[jaimehlers]

You are missing the point. We are all biased. So if your bias is toward negating God's existence, then you will not consider all evidence that points toward his existence with care, but will rather ignore it. That is what most atheists do.

No, that is your bias doing the 'thinking' for you.  You simply assume, because you are so thoroughly biased towards belief in God that you cannot even consider any other alternative rationally[1], that everyone else must be as biased like you are; the only 'option' is whether they are biased towards belief in God, or "belief in nihilism".  Can you even rationally consider the existence of people who are not biased either way?

That is indeed what happened with me. And the evidence i found afterwards of my wish just made it more and more clear to me that i was on the right track. If you do not want God to exist, you will hardly consider that evidence the way you should.

The problem is that you assume that a person must either want God to exist, or definitely not want God to exist.  There is no middle ground with you, it is either all or nothing.  It is extremely obvious that you are incapable of setting aside your own bias, even for a moment; "you will hardly consider that evidence the way you should".  More like the way you already do and the only way you can conceive of that doesn't "lead to nihilism".  Apparently, if someone else examines the evidence and comes to the "no God" conclusion, they must have been biased against God and don't want God to exist, at least according to you.  Which just goes back to my point about copping out, because that conclusion lets you pretend that people who didn't come to the same conclusion were biased to begin with.

Why is his existence not obvious to you ? See around you. Everything is finely managed to make life happen. Our universe, the earth, cannot popped up into existence without a cause. Everything that begins to exist, has a cause. You have a cause, your mom, and dad, wanted you. A car has a cause. Only the universe should have no cause at all ? Why should such a thinking make sense ?

The problem with your belief is that the causal chain snaps asunder at the very moment of the Big Bang.  We literally cannot observe or deduce what might have come before.  You are simply assuming that you know what the cause was, and that it was God.  Except you cannot possibly know, and you cannot rely on the Bible, for it only came into existence well after the beginning of the universe, either way.  Furthermore, the Bible concerns itself only with the creation of Earth, not the creation of the universe; to the writers of Genesis, Earth was the universe, and all the other stuff that was separate from Earth (sun, moon, stars) was just a pretty light show that God put up on their behalf.

Lee Smolin, a world class physicist, estimated the odds life to come into existence by chance,  by one to 10^220. You have 3 real possibilites. One is, a higher being made everything physical that exists. Second, everything arose by pure chance, and the third, there was physical need our universe, and we, to exist. Pick your choice.

Probability, the thing people who support God love to screw up in order to 'prove' that God must have done it after all.  First, do you realize just how bizarre it sounds to quote the odds from a physicist on a matter that either falls under chemistry or biology?  Second, where did you get this 10^220 prediction you attribute to him?  By all means, if you have a legitimate source for him saying it or writing it in one of his books, then present it here.  But if you don't have such a source, you are parroting a hearsay 'quote'.  One that sounds impressive enough, but that doesn't stand up to cross-examination.

Yes. It is a nonsense question , to ask for proof. If you go consequently this line, you will end with nihilism, in the end you will find no answers at all. Can you proove, our existence isnt just a illusion at all, we do not exist in reality ? The right philosophical question should be, how can we best explain our existence ? Compared to the alternative possibilites, God makes by far the most sense to me.

No, it is nonsense to arbitrarily exclude asking for proof merely because you declare by fiat that asking for proof will lead to nihilism.  That sounds more like someone who knows that there is no actual convincing proof and is thus trying to change the terms of the debate to avoid a blatant, obvious weakness in their argument, in other words, to cop out of facing facts.  There is no 'right' philosophical question, when the subject is something we cannot possibly know to begin with.

yes, it is. You will remain with your question till your dead unanswered, and if you did not make the right choice, you might end up where you do not want to.

Aka, "God will smite you for daring to question him, and you'll be sorry!"  Come on, seriously, get around that bias in your head and actually think about this.  You believe that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, yet according to you, asking reasonable questions and looking for reasonable proof will come to naught, even though such a being would have absolutely no trouble with answering those questions and providing that proof.  Oh, and because someone spent their time asking for proof instead of asking for forgiveness, they get an express ticket to hell.

Because i know whom i have believed to. I have seen miracles and prophecies in my life concretizised, i have so much evidence, also scientific one on hand, for me, there is no way back. I believe firmly in the God of the bible.

In other words, you're 'right' because you believe you're right.  That's what it comes down to.  Instead of actually providing examples of those miracles and fulfilled prophecies that appeared in your life, you tell people they have to go convince themselves and that you aren't going to do anything but preach at them.

Most Christians do not agree with you.

And his point, which you missed because you wanted to disagree with this one statement, was that someone who is already a Christian is predisposed to accept the Bible.  The fact that most Christians don't agree with him means nothing.

The apostle Paul was a fierce fighter against christianity, but after his experience on the way to damaskus, he changed dramatically. So happens with many people who are touched through the holy spirit.

Paul was a zealous fanatic both before and after his conversion.  The only thing that 'changed' was his attitude towards Christian belief.  And frankly, that's nothing special.  Converts to other religions (ideologies, whatever) undergo the same attitude change as Paul did.

That is what you fool yourself to believe. Without God, you would not wake up every morning, you are alive because God aloud it to happen. You don't do anything without Gods permission. If you exist, its because God exists. From absolutely nothing, nothing derives.

You need to stop quoting that "from absolutely nothing, nothing derives" statement, because it's getting old, and you're overusing it in any case.  The singularity that caused the Big Bang was not nothing.  What came before that singularity was not nothing.  You are the only one here who is saying that the universe came from nothingness (because God willed it).  So the fact that you keep saying that nothing comes from nothing is meaningless, because nobody else here buys your idea that there was nothing in the beginning except for the one thing you keep saying was there all along even though nothing was there in the first place.

And as for God giving permission for everything, do you not realize that this must necessarily include taking responsibility for that?  That means not sending people to hell for lack of belief.  Did it ever occur to you that such a being would have better things to do than to create people who he knows may (or will) not believe in him, merely so he can toss them into hell?  Did it ever occur to you that such a being might have a real and legitimate purpose for allowing such differences in belief that doesn't involve using them as an unprovable object lesson for the dangers of not believing?  I suspect not; and I suspect it will still not occur to you despite me saying so quite clearly, because you are so utterly convinced you have the right of it that you can't even conceive that you might have gotten something wrong.

you have the chance to find him today. Right now. All it depends on you. His existence is obvious to anyone, that is a true seeker of the truth.

This is just more of the same, "God loves you and wants you to find him, but you are the one who has to actually find him, he won't stretch out even a single finger to make it easier for you".  If the only way to believe that God's existence is obvious is to be a "true seeker of the truth", then your argument is flawed; you already have to believe before you start searching, and if you don't believe, you can search forever and not find anything.  In other words, it's all in your head either way.

Lucky you. There are many people in north korea, in iran, and many other countries, that suffer because of their faith in Jesus, and many are ready to die for their faith, because they know its the most important they have found in their life : Their faith in Jesus Christ. While you live in western country, where you have the priviledge to live your faith without persecution, but dismiss this oportunity.

Oh, please.  Every American should be a Christian because they have the privilege and opportunity to here, because Christians get persecuted in other countries that don't have our protections against legalized religious persecution?  Do you even realize how silly an argument that is?  The protections in the Constitution were put in place to protect people from being persecuted by the state for not holding to the 'right' religion, according to whoever was in charge.  They were not put in place as a sop to 'allow' people to make the 'right' choice - according to you.  They were put in place by wise people who understood that nobody could really have the right of it when it comes to religion, and thus it's better to allow everyone to hold their own beliefs rather than forcing anyone.

But that upon you to find out. Why don't you give a leap of faith, and try it out ?

You do realize that most of the atheists here were originally Christians, right?  They already tried it out.  It didn't work.  So what if you're the one who has it wrong?

You and all others have failed so far to present a convincing alternative possibility, that explains better how we came to be here. But i am all ear. What do you suggest ?

I don't believe you.  You haven't bothered to actually listen to what anyone here has said to you, except to say that they're wrong and to hint at really bad things if they continue on their present course.  You are so absolutely convinced that you know what's right that nothing else can possibly be valid.

Well, i don't agree. The scientific method is limited to examine the natural world, but it cannot find out anything beyond that. I consider also religion, and philosophy as valid tools to understand the world, and to create my world view

No, the scientific method is a way to progressively rule out false explanations based on the actual evidence.  Any 'limits' are based on what evidence we can get a hold of.  There's no intrinsic reason it has to be limited to the natural world.  Of course, philosophy has its own place, and it's a valid place, but it is intrinsically tied to the natural world (because our brains, which conceive of philosophy, are part of the natural world).  In other words, philosophy has to be based on things that really exist.

we have fragments, that go back to the early second century. That is VERY close to the actual date of happenings. And we have thousands of fragments. And we have the archeological evidence, beside the non christian authors, which do confirm the figures mentioned in the new testament, like agrippa, pilatus, amongst many others. Beside this, people in the first century died for their faith. Do you think they were willing to die for a illusionary faith ? Christianism could have spread out the way it did, only, if it were true. You want to know really the truth, as you said above ?

It doesn't matter how close they are, because they aren't the originals.  The time period which you so-conveniently skip over was also by far the most active period in Christian history, and it is then that changes in doctrine and in beliefs would have had the most effect.  In other words, there is no guarantee, at all, that what came out of that period had any real resemblance to what went into it.  And as far as Agrippa, Pilatus, etc, the fact that they are mentioned in the Bible does not make the Bible true.  And as for Christians dying for their faith, this is nothing new.  Every faith that has ever existed has had people willing to die for it.  Every faith that has ever existed has spread out; the only reason Christianity was more successful is because it tended to incorporate stuff from other religions into itself, thus giving people a reason to 'convert' without changing their actual beliefs that much.

unsubstantiated assertions. Wishful thinking. Biased argument. Proving i am right. You use even invalid and false arguments to make your case. that way, you only fool yourself.

Not unsubstantiated assertions, because they have been made by people who have spent their lives studying the Bible.  Not wishful thinking, because the people who made those assertions had every reason to want the results to come out otherwise, but they went where the evidence led rather than where they wanted it to lead.  Not biased arguments, for the same reason.  You are the one who is making unsubstantiated assertions, engaging in wishful thinking, and using biased arguments.  Proving you are right?  Hardly.

Even so, it was copied that carefully, that the copies of qumran for example, containing the full book of jesajah, dated 100aC. has no substantial difference to later copies, 1100 years younger.  You can even checke them over the web, with translation and everything , that proves you are wrong.

You do realize that Christian Biblical scholars have explicitly stated that there are differences, and further, that some of the initial differences have been ironed out by scribes for various reasons, right?  The fact that you say that there is "no difference" is patently ridiculous, because those scrolls from the Library of Congress link were not written in Greek.  In fact, those are some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which refer to the Old Testament, not the New Testament; furthermore, they were not found until a few decades ago, yet you claim that there is no difference between them and later copies?  And leaving that aside, we aren't talking about the Old Testament, we're talking about the New Testament.

http://www.cbn.com/special/apologetics/articles/Koukl_misquoting_jesus_bart_ehrman.aspx

How many times do I have to say this?  You can't just pull out someone else's argument like you've been doing and expect it to be convincing.  If you are not even willing to go to the effort to put things into your own words, showing that you've comprehended them, why should anyone else go to the effort to accept that you know what you're talking about?

And as for your quoted "Aunt Sally" argument, we aren't talking about Aunt Sally comparing the words that she herself wrote.  We're talking about her great, great, great * X grandchildren, centuries and centuries later, comparing the oldest surviving copies of her writings and trying to figure out what the originals said, with the added handicap that lots of other people thought they could improve her recipes, and so there was a big fight over who actually had the right of it that was decided by a committee of her descendants; we have nothing from before the committee decided what was right.  That is why you cannot simply quote other people's words, because people who do read those words will catch the flaws in them, that you might have seen if you'd bothered to go over what they were saying instead of just copying it.

Who told you i have not done that ?

You did.  Every time you pull out that "from nothing comes nothing" statement, every time you say it's Christianity or nihilism, every time you quote someone not to consider their argument, but to try to prove it wrong, you say quite clearly to everyone here that you not haven't actually looked at the argument from both sides.

1.	As you have amply proven with your repeated assertions that there is only belief in God or nihilistic beliefs.

[screwtape]

Lee Smolin, a world class physicist, estimated the odds life to come into existence by chance,  by one to 10^220.

unless he is also a world class odds maker, I'd take that with a very, very large grain of salt.

[Cyberia]

Lee Smolin, a world class physicist, estimated the odds life to come into existence by chance,  by one to 10^220. You have 3 real possibilites. One is, a higher being made everything physical that exists. Second, everything arose by pure chance, and the third, there was physical need our universe, and we, to exist. Pick your choice.

Wow.  CREATIONIST QUOTE-MINING ALERT!

He did say that, but it's MASSIVELY out of context.  First, Lee Smolin is a ATHEIST and firm supporter of biological and carbon-based chemistry.  Second, he said that the odds of all the variables of the universe (speed of light, Planck constant, etc) RANDOMLY coming into existence is 10²²⁰, therefore scientists are justified searching for a symmetry or some mechanism of self-organization.  Third, he didn't show his math, it was in a book he wrote (not a peer-reviewed showing-your-math article) arguing for cosmological natural selection, sure as hell not arguing for creationism.

It may seem fantastic to think of the universe as analogous to a biological or ecological system, but these are the best examples we have of the power of processes of self-organization to form a world of tremendous beauty and complexity. If this view is to be taken seriously, we should ask whether there is any evidence for it. Are there any aspects of the universe and the laws that govern it that require explanation in terms of mechanisms of self-organization? We have already discussed one piece of evidence for this, which is the anthropic observation: the apparently improbable values of the masses of the elementary particles and the strengths of the fundamental forces. One can estimate the probability that the constants in our standard theories of the elementary particles and cosmology would, were they chosen randomly, lead to a world with carbon chemistry. That probability is less than one part in 10²²⁰. But without carbon chemistry the universe would be much less likely to form large numbers of stars massive enough to become black holes, and life would be very unlikely to exist. This is evidence for some mechanism of self-organization, because what we mean by self-organization is a system that evolves from a more probable to a less probable configuration. So the best argument we can give that such a mechanism has operated in the past must have two parts: first, that the system be structured in some way that is enormously improbable; and second, that nothing acting from the outside could have imposed that organization on the system. In the case of our universe we are taking this second part as a principle. We then satisfy both parts of the argument, and are justified in seeking mechanisms of self-organization to explain why the constants in the laws of nature have been chosen so improbably.

Isn't there a some rule against Christians bearing false witness?

MASSIVE FAIL!

[screwtape]

Oooo.  Someone just toasted godexists' nuts.

I think I hear baby jesus crying because another xian got caught lying.

[Add Homonym]

Godexists, in the Quran, there is a famous mistake:

16:79 : Do they not look at the birds, held poised in the midst of (the air and) the sky?
Nothing holds them up but (the power of) God.
Verily in this are signs for those who believe.

It's an argument that we should believe God exists, because birds can fly. Over time, we understood the laws of gas and pressure, and found that this was a fallacy. Whilst people are ignorant, fallacious evidence can be used as proof of a Christian God's existence.

Your DNA arguments are fallacies, designed to appeal to other Christians, in the same way.

Whilst the argument that a god created the universe has some merit, you have a long way to go to prove that it has anything to do with Jesus Christ and the trash novel, you call the Bible, so I don't know why you spend so much effort trying to spread your ignorance.

[Godexists]

We literally cannot observe or deduce what might have come before. 

You are right, we cannot observe it, but why can we not deduce what makes most sense  based on what we DO know ?

You are simply assuming that you know what the cause was, and that it was God.

I do not simply assume it, i have reasons to believe the way i believe. And they were already presented here. Do you want me them to present again ?


 

Except you cannot possibly know, and you cannot rely on the Bible, for it only came into existence well after the beginning of the universe, either way.  Furthermore, the Bible concerns itself only with the creation of Earth, not the creation of the universe;

I don't think so. When the bible says : In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth, i assume that with heavens was meant the universe.

Probability, the thing people who support God love to screw up in order to 'prove' that God must have done it after all.

If not God, what else do you suggest as better explanation, and why ?

First, do you realize just how bizarre it sounds to quote the odds from a physicist on a matter that either falls under chemistry or biology?

It falls under physics, principally, since it treats about the probability of the Big Bang, cosmological constant, and other things as well......

Second, where did you get this 10^220 prediction you attribute to him?

http://www.godsci.com/gs/new/finetuning.html

Carbon chemistry

Lee Smolin (a world-class physicist and a leader in quantum gravity) estimates that if the physical constants of the universe were chosen randomly, the epistemic-probability of ending up with a world with carbon chemistry is less than one part in 10^220.
This epistemic-probability is one part in: 10000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 0.
Epistemic Probability: 0.0000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 1

Lee Smolin Wrote (Three Roads, p202)

It may seem fantastic to think of the universe as analogous to a biological or ecological system, but these are the best examples of the power of the processes of self organization to form a world of tremendous beauty and complexity. If this view is to be taken seriously, we should ask if there is any evidence of it. Are there any aspects of the universe and the laws that govern it that require explanation in terms of mechanisms of self organisation? We have allready discussed one piece of evidence for this, which is the anthropic observation: The apparently improbable values of the masses of the elementary particles and the strengths of the fundamental forces. One can estimate the probablilty that the constants in our standard theories of the elementary particles and cosmology would, were they chosen randomly, lead to a world with carbon chemistry. That probability is less than one part in 10^220. but without carbon chemistry the universe would be much less likely to form large numbers of stars massive enough to become black holes, and life would be very unlikely to exist. This is evidence for some mechanism of self organisation, because what we mean by self organisation is a system that moves from a more probable to a less probable configuration. So the best argument we can give that such a mechanism operated in the past must have two parts: first, that the system be structured in some way that is enormously improbable; and second, that nothing acting from the outside could have imposed that organization on the system. In the case of our universe we are taking this second part as a principle. We can satisfy both parts of the argument, and are justified in seeking mechanisms of self organisation to explain why the constants in the laws of nature have been chosen so improbably.

 

By all means, if you have a legitimate source for him saying it or writing it in one of his books, then present it here.  But if you don't have such a source, you are parroting a hearsay 'quote'.  One that sounds impressive enough, but that doesn't stand up to cross-examination.

well...it does, as shown above. 

No, it is nonsense to arbitrarily exclude asking for proof merely because you declare by fiat that asking for proof will lead to nihilism.  That sounds more like someone who knows that there is no actual convincing proof and is thus trying to change the terms of the debate to avoid a blatant, obvious weakness in their argument, in other words, to cop out of facing facts.  There is no 'right' philosophical question, when the subject is something we cannot possibly know to begin with.

You don't know anything either through proofs, and if we don't know through proofs , our debate can end here. Human inquiry can end here. But fortuntately , there is enough people, reasonable enough, also atheists, which do not share your standpoint. If we cannot know with conclusive proofs, we can at least figure out, what standpoint makes most sense, given the knowledge we have on religious, philosophical, and scientifical ground.

Aka, "God will smite you for daring to question him, and you'll be sorry!"

I believe God asks us to believe him based on the scripture he gave us. these, and creation, are evidence enough to believe in his existence, and give him the honor he deserves, because he is God.

Come on, seriously, get around that bias in your head and actually think about this.  You believe that God is all-powerful and all-knowing

The term all-powerful must be defined, to make sense. Otherwise, contradictory claims can be made, which make no sense.

, yet according to you, asking reasonable questions and looking for reasonable proof will come to naught, even though such a being would have absolutely no trouble with answering those questions and providing that proof.

Jesus has given proof of his divine nature, doing miracles, which no other human being was able to do. Why is that not enough for you ?

Oh, and because someone spent their time asking for proof instead of asking for forgiveness, they get an express ticket to hell.

We are all on the highway to hell, since we all sinned, and do not reach the perfection , a perfect God demands from us. The ones however, which do repent from their sins, and aknowledge and believe in God's son, Jesus Christ, and what he did on the cross for each of us, and his love,  can receive forgiveness and forever life. Its upon you to WANT to live with God. He does not obligate anyone of us to believe in him. Believes, who wants to. But if you do reject him upon you silly demand for proofs, why do you expect him to ask you to live with him in heaven after death ? Your chance is right now, today, and during all your life time. That is more than enough.

In other words, you're 'right' because you believe you're right.

I believe i am right, because i saw  Gods miracles in my life happen, and in the life of many other people. How and why should i explain these things as simple casualties ?


 

That's what it comes down to.  Instead of actually providing examples of those miracles and fulfilled prophecies that appeared in your life, you tell people they have to go convince themselves and that you aren't going to do anything but preach at them.

I can tell you the things i experienced in my life. What will be your answer ? objections and calling it preaching. Come on, you are skeptic, not because there is a true reason to be so, but because you have already made your mind up, and whatever i present you which is not conclusive proof, you will reject. Istn't it so ?

Paul was a zealous fanatic both before and after his conversion.  The only thing that 'changed' was his attitude towards Christian belief.  And frankly, that's nothing special.  Converts to other religions (ideologies, whatever) undergo the same attitude change as Paul did.

you reject this example, and you will reject also , if you show examples of hardcore lifetime atheists, which in the end converted , like Patrick Glynn, Anthony Flew, Alister McGrath, Dr.Mark Eastman, just to name a few.

The singularity that caused the Big Bang was not nothing.

Its funny how atheists only accept scientific evidence, when it servers their cause. When it does not, they try to distort the facts in every imaginable way.

http://www.wcg.org/lit/booklets/science/debate1a.htm

Arno Penzias told me: "So what we find – the simplest theory – the one that the astronomers normally espouse, is a creation out of nothing, the appearance out of nothing of a universe." And in my most recent interview with Robert Jastrow, he said, "It's a curiously theological result to come out of science."

It’s "theological" because the Bible also teaches creation out of nothing (creation ex nihilo, Hebrews 11:3). I can’t stress enough, however, that it’s not the theology of any of the other world’s religions coming to us from ancient times. No other culture – Egyptian, Babylonian, Sumerian, etc., can be said to have influenced the Hebrews in this regard. Many modern scientists have come to recognize that, in George Smoot’s words, "there is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing."

This God could not be contained by the universe. King Solomon prayed: "The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!" (1 Kings 8:27). Obviously, the concept was very different from the picture of physical gods held by others in the ancient world: sun gods, moon gods, star gods, river gods, animal-headed gods and goddesses, etc.

 

What came before that singularity was not nothing.  You are the only one here who is saying that the universe came from nothingness (because God willed it).  So the fact that you keep saying that nothing comes from nothing is meaningless, because nobody else here buys your idea that there was nothing in the beginning except for the one thing you keep saying was there all along even though nothing was there in the first place.

So what do you suggest was there beyond our universe ? And why ?

And as for God giving permission for everything, do you not realize that this must necessarily include taking responsibility for that?

Nope. God permits you and me today, to make our own decisions. And we will be responsable for them. Not he.  But the day, he thinks its your time to go, you will go. Independently if you want, or not.


 

That means not sending people to hell for lack of belief.  Did it ever occur to you that such a being would have better things to do than to create people who he knows may (or will) not believe in him, merely so he can toss them into hell?

God's will is that all human kind might be saved, and should not go to hell. He has provided everything, and gave what was most precious to him. His son, Jesus Christ. If someone goes to hell, its because this person freely rejects Gods offer of forgiveness . Its NEVER Gods fault, when somebody ends up in hell.


 

Did it ever occur to you that such a being might have a real and legitimate purpose for allowing such differences in belief that doesn't involve using them as an unprovable object lesson for the dangers of not believing?

i did not understand your question.

This is just more of the same, "God loves you and wants you to find him, but you are the one who has to actually find him

what you have to do, is actually to render yourself to his love with a open heart, and let him come in to your life. But God is gentle. He does not obligate nobody to open the hearts door.

, he won't stretch out even a single finger to make it easier for you".  If the only way to believe that God's existence is obvious is to be a "true seeker of the truth", then your argument is flawed; you already have to believe before you start searching,

What you need, is as the bible says, to have a open heart. If you have emotional reasons to reject God, you will not come to him, even if he proves his existence to you. The pharisees saw the miracles Jesus did, like raising people from the death. They knew that only God can do such things, which were never seen before. Despite this, they rejected him. Based on what ? On emotional, not reasonable ground. They did not like that Jesus was more successful than they were.

Oh, please.  Every American should be a Christian because they have the privilege and opportunity to here, because Christians get persecuted in other countries that don't have our protections against legalized religious persecution?  Do you even realize how silly an argument that is?  The protections in the Constitution were put in place to protect people from being persecuted by the state for not holding to the 'right' religion, according to whoever was in charge.  They were not put in place as a sop to 'allow' people to make the 'right' choice - according to you.  They were put in place by wise people who understood that nobody could really have the right of it when it comes to religion, and thus it's better to allow everyone to hold their own beliefs rather than forcing anyone.

However, you have a priviledge. to express your confession of faith however you want..... that is a priviledge, that not all do have.

You do realize that most of the atheists here were originally Christians, right?

No , i did not . Why should i ?

They already tried it out.  It didn't work.  So what if you're the one who has it wrong?

I KNOW i don't have it wrong. Thats enough for me.

I don't believe you.  You haven't bothered to actually listen to what anyone here has said to you, except to say that they're wrong and to hint at really bad things if they continue on their present course.  You are so absolutely convinced that you know what's right that nothing else can possibly be valid.

You did not answer my question. Do you have a answer ? Or are you only here to critizise others beliefs , but do not have anything by yourself to offer as alternative better explanation ?
If so, what the hell is the reason you are here ? what is your goal ?

No, the scientific method is a way to progressively rule out false explanations based on the actual evidence.

Scientific evidence is neutral, and can , specially when it comes to histocial sciences, be interpreted in various forms. there are no conclusive answers, since we cannot go back in time. by nature, there will be always various explanations, depending upon someones inclination, and belief. I can interprete the blood and soft tissues found at dinossaurs escavations as evidence, these animals lived only a few thousand years back, while others believe that is no evidence for such a short timetable, and that nontheless, they must be millions of years old. So scientific evidence of historical things are alway subject of different interpretations.

It doesn't matter how close they are

I don't agree. That matters for sure.

, because they aren't the originals.

Despite this, the closer they are dated , the more it is probable they are true.

  The time period which you so-conveniently skip over was also by far the most active period in Christian history, and it is then that changes in doctrine and in beliefs would have had the most effect.  In other words, there is no guarantee, at all, that what came out of that period had any real resemblance to what went into it.  And as far as Agrippa, Pilatus, etc, the fact that they are mentioned in the Bible does not make the Bible true.

But its one of the parts that brings the histories of the bible into a real historic scenario. The figures mentioned in the bible were not simply invented, but described people that indeed lived back then. Agrippa was one of the figures, that for a long time skeptics did not believe, he actually existed, until recent escavations proved the contrary. And so many other things, mentioned in the bible, found their confirmation only recently.

for example :

http://www.biblehistory.net/Pontius_Pilate.pdf

In 1961 an Italian excavation uncovered an
inscription bearing the name Pontius Pilate. This was
first physical evidence found outside of the Bible to
confirm his existence.
The huge block of limestone which carried the
inscription was found at the city of Caesarea and is
engraved with the words:

. . . . . . S TIBERIEVM (Tiberieum)
. . [PO]NTIVS PILATVS (Pontius Pilate)
[PRA]ECTVS IVDA[EA]E (Perfect Judea)

furthermore :

HD video tour of the famous Herodian fortress-palace in Israel. On May 8, 2007, Prof. Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University announced that he had identified the tomb of King Herod in the fortress. In this clip: A tour of the ancient remains, including the assumed location of King Herod's tomb. More clips and photos of archaeological sites in Israel are available at www.sitesandphotos.com.

http://www.bible-history.com/archaeology/israel/house-of-david-inscription.html

It was a victory stele erected by an Aramaean king north of Israel. The inscription contains an Aramaic writing commemorating his victory over Israel. The author is most likely Hazael or his son, Ben Hadad II or III, who were kings of Damascus, and enemies of the kingdom of Israel. The stele was discovered at Tel Dan, previously named Tell el-Qadi, a mound where a city once stood at the northern tip of Israel.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
House of David Inscription, Biblical Archaeology

1 Kings 2:11
- And the days that David reigned over Israel [were] forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem.

http://www.idscience.org/

Archaeological Confirmations of Nehemiah (Part 1 of 2)

July 8th, 2009
The Book of Nehemiah recounts the story of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem in 445-444 BC from their exile in Babylon. Nehemiah recounts in detail how Ataxerxes, the Babylonian Emperor, issued orders that allowed them to reoccupy and rebuild the city and its walls. Skeptics have long dismissed the story as later day propaganda made up by the Jewish exiles in Babylon.

In November of 2007 a team of Israeli archaeologists led by Eilat Mazar announced that they had discovered Nehemiah’s Wall. Predictably the initial reaction of critics was that, “the evidence did not support the claim.” However, as this research continues the critics have been silenced because the level of correspondence between the descriptions in the Bible and the materials uncovered by the archaeologists has been astounding.

there is much more. Archaeological evidence is overwhelming, confirming the events and places described in the bible.


http://www.idscience.org/page/2/

Biblical critics often claim that the New Testament has been changed over its 2000 year history. Some argue that these changes have been dramatic. Numerous popular books allege that these modifications have been done to perpetrate a variety hoaxes on a gullible humanity, ranging from the claim that Jesus never existed to claims that he was married and had children. No one has yet claimed that this material also conceals the fact that Jesus couldn’t get a date and surfed badly; however, my study of these claims is not exhaustive.

Over the years the assertion that the Bible has been altered over time has become increasingly difficult to maintain as researchers have located and authenticated older and older manuscripts and Biblical fragments. The oldest Biblical manuscript fragments now date to at least 125 AD and possibly as early as 65 AD. So the window of opportunity for Scriptural alteration has shrunken steadily. In reality even this truncated period of time when Scripture could have been altered is no longer tenable because copies of the Bible are not the only source of Scripture. As it turns out there are approximately 100,000 surviving letters and manuscripts from the first and second centuries which quote Scriptural passages and many of these surviving documents contain lengthy quotations.

A survey of these extra Biblical sources reveals that a staggering 98% of the passages in the New Testament can be found repeated in these documents by the second century AD. A good part of these sections of Scripture come to us from the first century. For example, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch and Clement, the Bishop of Rome (whom Paul probably mentioned in Philippians 4:3), quoted passages in their writings. Some of these letters can be dated as early as the 70’s AD.

Given this mountain of evidence, the claim that the Scripture we have today is different from the original is not credible. Persons making such claims simply are not aware of the mountain of evidence supporting the continuity of the Bible.

Sources:

“The Signature of God”, by Grant Jeffery, Frontier Research, Ontario, Canada, 2002.

 

And as for Christians dying for their faith, this is nothing new.  Every faith that has ever existed has had people willing to die for it.  Every faith that has ever existed has spread out; the only reason Christianity was more successful is because it tended to incorporate stuff from other religions into itself, thus giving people a reason to 'convert' without changing their actual beliefs that much.

did you not assert that you are are a true seeker of the truth ? have you read the link i posted ? if you read it, you would not insist with such a flawed argument.

You do realize that Christian Biblical scholars have explicitly stated that there are differences

In the case of the qumran rolls of the dead sea, the differences in the book of jesaja are exactly 3 words !!!! That is barely to non. If considering that the comparison was made between books, written at 1100 years of distance. Thats quit remarably. Your skepticism is entirely unjustified.

, and further, that some of the initial differences have been ironed out by scribes for various reasons, right?  The fact that you say that there is "no difference" is patently ridiculous, because those scrolls from the Library of Congress link were not written in Greek.

Do you know the bible ? than you should have observed , that i was writing about the book of jesaja, which makes part of the old testament.


 

In fact, those are some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which refer to the Old Testament, not the New Testament; furthermore, they were not found until a few decades ago, yet you claim that there is no difference between them and later copies?

exactly, there is no difference between them, and copies of the 10th century AD.

 

And leaving that aside, we aren't talking about the Old Testament, we're talking about the New Testament.

So why should the old testament be trustworthy, and the new testament not ?

How many times do I have to say this?  You can't just pull out someone else's argument like you've been doing and expect it to be convincing.

Why not ?

If you are not even willing to go to the effort to put things into your own words

I am doing it the most part of my answers. Why do you not aknowledge this ? And even if some questions i do answer with external sources, why should these be dismissed ? only because they are not my personal arguments ? I don't see your point, really.....

, showing that you've comprehended them, why should anyone else go to the effort to accept that you know what you're talking about?

i comprehend them, and they do reflect my standpoint.

And as for your quoted "Aunt Sally" argument, we aren't talking about Aunt Sally comparing the words that she herself wrote.  We're talking about her great, great, great * X grandchildren, centuries and centuries later, comparing the oldest surviving copies of her writings and trying to figure out what the originals said, with the added handicap that lots of other people thought they could improve her recipes, and so there was a big fight over who actually had the right of it that was decided by a committee of her descendants; we have nothing from before the committee decided what was right.  That is why you cannot simply quote other people's words, because people who do read those words will catch the flaws in them, that you might have seen if you'd bothered to go over what they were saying instead of just copying it.

The example which i brought shows how silly your objection is. Once again, you do not a favour to yourself, making objections which are not honest.

Who told you i have not done that ?

You did.  Every time you pull out that "from nothing comes nothing" statement, every time you say it's Christianity or nihilism, every time you quote someone not to consider their argument, but to try to prove it wrong, you say quite clearly to everyone here that you not haven't actually looked at the argument from both sides.
[/quote]

Where is YOUR argument ? You have elegantly avoided to answer my question. I suspect you take out of your hat that wonderful " we don't know yet " answer. How convenient.
If that is your answer, how about first make your mind up, and then argue with who thinks that has a answer, instead only to critizise others ? In the end, if you " don't know yet", neither
you have to present anything valuable to others.

[Godexists]

He did say that, but it's MASSIVELY out of context.  First, Lee Smolin is a ATHEIST

that is actually a point in my favour. That shows there was no creationist which made some numbers up. Its a atheist that recognized the odds of life to emerge in our universe out of random chance. That is remarkable. Secondly, fact that Smolin is a atheis is irrelevant to the argument. What someone does with scientific evidence, how its interpreted, is each ones own business.
What is relevant, is the evidence on hand. That shows, how remotely small possibility is, that life emerged by chance ? Why should the atheistic explanation be more reasonable, than to deduce, that such a small chance makes it very very unlikely, that our life permitting universe arose by pure chance, and that therefore, something else must have been going in in the past ? Some other explanation than pure chance ( nothing ) might be more reasonable ?

and firm supporter of biological and carbon-based chemistry.

supporter of what ? we do not need to support something, that exists obviously.


 

Second, he said that the odds of all the variables of the universe (speed of light, Planck constant, etc) RANDOMLY coming into existence is 10²²⁰, therefore scientists are justified searching for a symmetry or some mechanism of self-organization.

Or deduce a intelligent being, that set up everything through his will...... that is very well a rational explanation. Beside this, we have never observed, that codified information , like contained in DNA,  arose by chance. There is always a mind behind it.

 

Third, he didn't show his math, it was in a book he wrote (not a peer-reviewed showing-your-math article) arguing for cosmological natural selection, sure as hell not arguing for creationism.

The math is there, for everyone that wants to know the facts. He would btw. not throw his reputation into the trashcan, just to make fancy assertions up.

There are others, that come up with even more fancy numbers.

http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2010/05/13/does-a-fine-tuned-universe-lead-to-god/

The laws of nature.
The constants of physics.
The initial conditions of the universe.

Collins makes a threefold “fine-tuning case” for God.


“How many universes then would you need to make it at all probable that one of them could be like our universe? String theorists posit a number of 10 to the power of 500….Now that is an awful lot of universes, particularly since the estimate for the total number of atoms in the entire observable universe is no more than 10 to the power of 80.”

The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet. Over 120 fine tune constants are know up to know, and as more time pasts, more are discovered. This might be due to chance, to physical need, or to design. Chance is a very bad explanation. Some advocate a Multiverse. But to have just one life permitting universe, you need 1 to 10^500 attempts to get it done. Thats a 1 with 500 zeros. If we put it in comparison, that in our universe, there exist around 10^80 atoms, this shows how improbable it is, that a Multiverse could explain finetuning. Beside this, the Multiverse argument does not explain away God. A mechanism needs to be in place to trigger these multiverses. It could not be by physical need, since if so, why are there many planets, which are not life permitting, but our is ? So its best explained by design. Our earth/solar/moon system is a very strong evidence. Our solar system is embedded at the right position in our galaxy, neither too close, nor too far from the center of the galaxy. Its also the only location, which alouds us to explore the universe, In a other location, and we would not see more than stellar clouds. The earth has the right distance from the sun, and so has the moon from the earth. The size of the moon, and the earth, is the right one. Our planet has the needed minerals, and water. It has the right atmosphere, and a ozon protecting mantle. Jupiter attracts all asteroids , avoiding these to fall to the earth, and make life impossible. The earths magnetic field protects us from the deadly rays of the sun. The velocity of rotation of the earth is just right. And so is the axial tilt of the earth. Beside this, volcano activities, earth quakes, the size of the crust of the earth, and more over 70 different paramenters must be just right. To believe, all these are just right by chance, needs a big leap of faith. This is indeed maibe the strongest argument for theism.

Isn't there a some rule against Christians bearing false witness?

MASSIVE FAIL!

Oh, i see. Have no rational counter arguments, and empty acusations are spread out....

thats not a new kind i see , how atheist react, when confronted with the reality, which they do not want to aknowledge.......

[Godexists]

Godexists, in the Quran, there is a famous mistake:

16:79 : Do they not look at the birds, held poised in the midst of (the air and) the sky?
Nothing holds them up but (the power of) God.
Verily in this are signs for those who believe.

It's an argument that we should believe God exists, because birds can fly. Over time, we understood the laws of gas and pressure, and found that this was a fallacy. Whilst people are ignorant, fallacious evidence can be used as proof of a Christian God's existence.

Your DNA arguments are fallacies, designed to appeal to other Christians, in the same way.

Whilst the argument that a god created the universe has some merit, you have a long way to go to prove that it has anything to do with Jesus Christ and the trash novel, you call the Bible, so I don't know why you spend so much effort trying to spread your ignorance.

Critizise others belief is a frequently seen sport-activity of atheists. How about present a better explanation for our existence ?

[JeffPT]

jaimehlers did a good job with responding, and I don't want to overwhelm you with huge posts, but there are a few things I wanted to get back with you on.

The right philosophical question should be, how can we best explain our existence ? Compared to the alternative possibilites, God makes by far the most sense to me.

You know, back in the day, it was the same for ancient men.  They would look at lightning, and thunder, and volcanoes, and earthquakes, and diseases, and famine, and death and say... "Gee, I don't understand all this.  It must be the act of a supernatural being".  We know how all of those work now.  And we know more about the universe than we ever have in the history of civilization.  And we continue to learn more.  What that has done is pushed any notion of the necessity of God as an explanatory force into oblivion.  We are smarter now.  God was a theory that helped the human race in its infancy.  We grew up.  Maybe you need to grow up too.  If all you are going to stick to is the start of the universe (an event for which NO current causative evidence is available), as part of your evidence for the existence of a god, then you are just playing god of the gaps. 

God is the EASIEST possibility, but it is certainly NOT the one that makes the most sense.  In fact, the God theory creates more questions than it answers.  If you didn't like believing in God so much, you might be able to see it.   Your bias hurts your ability to objectively look at the evidence. 

You and all others have failed so far to present a convincing alternative possibility, that explains better how we came to be here. But i am all ear. What do you suggest ?

I am going to give you one, right now.  Alright?  Are you ready?  I've given you one before, but I am going to do this again, so you can stop saying this bullshit.  But here is the deal.  Since we are unable to ask you any specific questions regarding the evidence for your beliefs, then you must automatically swallow everything I say here without asking for evidence as well.  While there is AMPLE evidence to back up a huge portion of everything I am about to say, you do not get to ask for evidence.  You would be using a double standard if you did. 

13.7 billion years ago, 2 larger, circular shaped universes collided together in a giant explosion.  In that explosion, that we call the Big Bang, very small particles of matter flew off in all directions.  At that time, each particle of matter had mass, and the natural property of mass holds that there is a small gravitational force associated with it.  That force causes the small particles to coalesce together and form small atoms.  Hydrogen forms first and is significantly larger than the original particles.  The larger hydrogen atoms have a larger gravitational pull associated with them, and they start to pull toward each other.  Over thousands and thousands of years, enough hydrogen clusters together that the sheer size of the ball of hydrogen reaches a critical stage and begins to heat up.  After that, nuclear fusion begins.  For a time, the star burns hydrogen and turns it into helium.  But then it runs out of hydrogen, it starts to burn the helium. Once it does that, the star gets bigger, and then when it runs out of helium, it starts making larger atoms, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on, until it reaches lead, at which time it blows up, scattering all the elements of our planet into the universe, where the natural force of gravity acts again to bring them together to form Earth.  Somewhere in the universe (whether it be on our planet, or another, or a star, or something we do not know yet), long chains of carbon based (organic) molecules began to form together.  Once on earth, those molecules began to thrive in a process (called evolution) which led to all the different varieties of life... all the way to us. 

Now, I know that your "Magic sky man snapped his fingers and everything appeared" is an EASIER hypothesis, just like it's easier to believe that God makes lightning and thunder than it is to figure out how it really happens, but your theory is just completely worthless without any proof to it.  Literally ANY natural hypothesis is better than yours, as we have no evidence of the supernatural. 

Why do you think it is any better than any other creation myth out there? 

And we have the archeological evidence, beside the non christian authors, which do confirm the figures mentioned in the new testament, like agrippa, pilatus, amongst many others.

The archeological evidence of what?  Of places?  Harry Potter takes place in London, does that make any of the books real?  And the same goes for people.  If I write a fictional book and put Michael Jordan in it, does that suddenly make it non-fiction?  You see?  This is the stuff I am talking about.  You fall for this stuff as if it's rock solid, but it's just not.  Can you please tell me where the logic in this goes wrong?  Please? 

Beside this, people in the first century died for their faith. Do you think they were willing to die for a illusionary faith ? Christianism could have spread out the way it did, only, if it were true. You want to know really the truth, as you said above ?

Again, this is the stuff I am talking about.  You think you are making some sort of valid point here, but it's just not good.

You ask me if I want to know the truth, and the answer is a resounding YES.  But the only way I know of to arrive at the truth is to use my reasoning and logic to assess your claims in the exact same way I use it to assess other claims.  When I read what you said here, I react by telling you what my mind logically arrives at below...

People have been dying (and killing) for their faiths for a long time.  It is not a characteristic of just one religion.  So if you are going to say that a willingness to die for your faith is a marker of the truth of that faith, then you must also consider it as evidence for every other faith too.  So, as someone observing the phenomena of "willingness to die for their faith" from the outside; when you see that MANY religions have had people willing to die and kill for their faith, what does that tell you?  It tells you either ALL of them are correct, or potentially NONE of them are correct.  And with no way to distinguish which group is CORRECT and which group is FUCKING LOONY, given the lack of verifiable evidence, it is really easy to conclude that all of them probably suffer from the same strain of loony. 

Can you tell me where the logic in this goes wrong? Seriously, I want to know if this is NOT a valid argument in your eyes.  Do you disagree with it?  If so, what do you see as the problem?  If you are going to say that yours really IS the right one, then that's fine, but you MUST present evidence to back you up; otherwise any religious person could claim that they are right and we would have no way of knowing who it is. 

[Add Homonym]

Godexists, in the Quran, there is a famous mistake:

16:79 : Do they not look at the birds, held poised in the midst of (the air and) the sky?
Nothing holds them up but (the power of) God.
Verily in this are signs for those who believe.

It's an argument that we should believe God exists, because birds can fly. Over time, we understood the laws of gas and pressure, and found that this was a fallacy. Whilst people are ignorant, fallacious evidence can be used as proof of a Christian God's existence.

Your DNA arguments are fallacies, designed to appeal to other Christians, in the same way.

Whilst the argument that a god created the universe has some merit, you have a long way to go to prove that it has anything to do with Jesus Christ and the trash novel, you call the Bible, so I don't know why you spend so much effort trying to spread your ignorance.

Critizise others belief is a frequently seen sport-activity of atheists. How about present a better explanation for our existence ?

Wooah, you totally avoided the thrust of that argument. Well done. Almost like you didn't even read it.

Prove there is an exclusive connection between "the creation" and your Biblical God, and that it also cannot apply to the Quran, Vedas and Puranas, etc.

Most people here, although they call themselves "atheist", acknowledge the existence of something unfathomable at the root of the universe. What they do not acknowledge is that Christians have a claim on it.

You are wasting your time in this thread.

[Astreja]

...You can even say that there is no evidence YOU exist. You might be just a illusion, a phantom...

I actually don't have a problem with that.  So what if I *am* an illusion or a phantom?  My life is constructed out of perception and experience, and any vehicle that provides Me with perception and experience is perfectly fine.  Whatever the mechanism, reality or illusion, it works.

Where is the evidence {that thoughts and sense of self terminate at brain death}? In my view, that is a baseless claim.

Baseless?  I think not. What TV channel do you watch when the TV is unplugged?

Without resorting to words like "spiritual," explain why you think electrochemical processes in the brain and nervous system would be able to continue after the demise of the physical body.  I know enough about physiology and neurology to think that such a thing is very, very unlikely indeed.

[Astreja]

Its a atheist that recognized the odds of life to emerge in our universe out of random chance.

Just because something isn't random doesn't mean a god did it.  Smolin is looking for structure and mechanism, not for gods.

Hydrogen atoms, for instance, behave in a fairly consistent manner because all hydrogen atoms have 1 proton and 1 electron.  (They may or may not have extra neutrons, as in deuterium and tritium, but they're still hydrogen.  There is nothing "random" about 2 hydrogen atoms bonding to 2 oxygen atom to make a water molecule, and there's nothing designed about it, either -- The natural structure of the atoms makes it happen.

Or deduce a intelligent being, that set up everything through his will...... that is very well a rational explanation.

It's not "rational" if you can't produce physical evidence for this being, or explain where *it* came from.  It's just a placeholder.

Beside this, we have never observed, that codified information , like contained in DNA,  arose by chance. There is always a mind behind it.

I disagree vehemently with your assertion that there is a mind behind the alleged "codes" in DNA.  The codes, and the information, are just a human interpretation of a chemical phenomenon, and there is no evidence whatsoever that they were designed.  The so-called "codes" in the groupings of nucleotides can be altered by exposure to radiation or different proportions of chemicals in their environment; it is definitely not static information.

thats not a new kind i see , how atheist react, when confronted with the reality, which they do not want to aknowledge...

GE, until you have proven your case to *our* satisfaction, all you have is a weak hypothesis based on ancient mythology -- Not "reality" in any sense that we find meaningful.

[Astreja]

We are all on the highway to hell, since we all sinned, and do not reach the perfection , a perfect God demands from us.

Not interested in spending eternity with a god that's too weak to deal with My imperfection.

The ones however, which do repent from their sins, and aknowledge and believe in God's son, Jesus Christ, and what he did on the cross for each of us, and his love,  can receive forgiveness and forever life.

I don't think there's anyone out there to forgive them, and I don't think "forever life" is possible.

God's will is that all human kind might be saved, and should not go to hell.

Then your god shouldn't have f%cking created a hell!  If it did create one, its will that all humankind be saved is a very weak will indeed.

Its NEVER Gods fault, when somebody ends up in hell.

Wrong.  If hell exists, your god is 100% responsible for all the suffering there, and shall continue to be 100% responsible for that suffering for as long as hell continues to exist.  Saying "Its NEVER Gods fault" (sic) is pure, unadulterated nonsense unless your god created hell by accident, or found it already in existence, and just doesn't have sufficient power to destroy it.

And if you worship a god that created a hell with malice of forethought, you are deliberately and repeatedly acquiescing to infinite evil.  Sucks to be you.

[jaimehlers]

Giving you fair warning, Godexists; if you leave out parts of my post, I can only assume you do not disagree with them.  In other words, you tacitly admitted that you are allowing your bias to determine what you believe; that you are unable to consider any alternatives to "my beliefs are 100% true" and "there is nothing but nihilism"; that you believe that there is no middle ground between the extreme bias towards God that you hold and the extreme bias against God that you accuse others of; as well as anything else you left out.

You are right, we cannot observe it, but why can we not deduce what makes most sense  based on what we DO know ?

Sure, that's how we came up with the idea of a singularity existing before the Big Bang.  You're the one coming up with this explanation that the Big Bang happened out of nothing, except it came from something because God existed in a timeless eternity[1] right before the Big Bang happened.  That does not make sense because it depends on there being nothing except for the something that actually existed, and it begs the question of what God would have made the universe from if there was nothing except for God.

I do not simply assume it, i have reasons to believe the way i believe. And they were already presented here. Do you want me them to present again ?

Your "reasons to believe" amount to nothing more than assumptions based on a reading of the Bible as literal truth.  The Bible did not exist when the universe was created, or for an extremely long time afterward.  So there is no way to take the Bible as being literal truth.  At best, it is metaphorical, and it has problems even taken only as metaphor.

I don't think so. When the bible says : In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth, i assume that with heavens was meant the universe.

And you assume wrongly[2].  'Heaven' is just a generic term for everything that wasn't the Earth.  It's not like the Hebrews had anything resembling an understanding of how things actually worked, so as far as they were concerned, God made earth and heaven at the same time.  They also believed that the sun, moon, and stars were basically lights set into a dome God put over the flat surface of the Earth, rather than actual physical objects that had their own independent existence.  Nobody can afford to make assumptions about the universe based on poetic writing by people who literally didn't know what they were talking about.

If not God, what else do you suggest as better explanation, and why ?

Stop me if you've heard this one:  A singularity existed before the Big Bang, and then was disrupted when its density became too great[3], causing all of the matter, energy, and empty space inside to expand outwards at a tremendous rate...  As for why, it's because "God did it" is not an explanation, it's an excuse to avoid coming up with one.

It falls under physics, principally, since it treats about the probability of the Big Bang, cosmological constant, and other things as well......

It falls under physics because he was talking about physics.  He didn't even mention the probability of life coming to exist, he was talking about the universe having the physical laws it has.  And he was talking about a self-organizing principle for the universe, which would necessarily exclude something outside the universe doing it.

Second, where did you get this 10^220 prediction you attribute to him?

<sniped long quotes that Godexists used>

1.	In other words, an instant.
2.	Note that I called it above; this is one of those assumptions I was talking about.
3.	Admittedly, this part is my own opinion rather than scientific consensus, but that doesn't disprove it, and it explains the observed facts after the Big Bang.

Cytheria already answered this, and in a way that showed that he knew what he was talking about rather than just copying someone else's words.  But thank you for providing your source.

You don't know anything either through proofs, and if we don't know through proofs , our debate can end here. Human inquiry can end here. But fortuntately , there is enough people, reasonable enough, also atheists, which do not share your standpoint. If we cannot know with conclusive proofs, we can at least figure out, what standpoint makes most sense, given the knowledge we have on religious, philosophical, and scientifical ground.

The reason I brought it up is to clarify where you were getting your conclusion from.  You don't have scientific evidence for God, therefore you can only argue on philosophical grounds[4].  Whereas scientists can and have demonstrated an intrinsic self-organizing principle based on what we can observe in the universe that actually exists around us.  You conclude, through purely philosophical (religious) grounds, that this self-organizing principle is a omnipotent, omniscient being who manages it all; scientists conclude, using philosophy backed by scientific evidence, that it happens as an automatic, deterministic process that is part of how the universe works.

I believe God asks us to believe him based on the scripture he gave us. these, and creation, are evidence enough to believe in his existence, and give him the honor he deserves, because he is God.

Creation (aka "the universe") is not evidence for God.  It is evidence that there is a universe.  Scripture is not evidence for God either.  It is evidence of how ancient tribes of humans tried to make sense of the world around them.  I am quite sure that the omniscient being you believe in could provide something that was a lot more credible and internally consistent than the Bible, and I am reasonably sure that we don't need to postulate a being to create the universe out of nothing.  Something cannot produce something out of nothing.

The term all-powerful must be defined, to make sense. Otherwise, contradictory claims can be made, which make no sense.

I am not trying to ask one of those inane philosophical questions such as "Can God make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it".  I was bringing it up as a precursor to the remaining part of my sentence.

Jesus has given proof of his divine nature, doing miracles, which no other human being was able to do. Why is that not enough for you ?

You mean aside from the fact that his disciples were able to do the occasional miracle themselves, before they were 'touched' by the Holy Spirit?  Peter was able to walk on water in Matthew 14:22-33, for example.  Furthermore, there is no evidence that any such miracles really happened, except in the Bible.  And the Bible cannot be taken at face value due to the fact that we can't even extrapolate an original version, or verify it even if it existed.  That's why it's not enough; the 'proof' you talk about is anything but.

We are all on the highway to hell, since we all sinned, and do not reach the perfection , a perfect God demands from us. The ones however, which do repent from their sins, and aknowledge and believe in God's son, Jesus Christ, and what he did on the cross for each of us, and his love,  can receive forgiveness and forever life. Its upon you to WANT to live with God. He does not obligate anyone of us to believe in him. Believes, who wants to. But if you do reject him upon you silly demand for proofs, why do you expect him to ask you to live with him in heaven after death ? Your chance is right now, today, and during all your life time. That is more than enough.

Can you stop with the inept proselytizing?  I don't buy into your doctrine of everyone being on a "highway to hell", I don't buy into the idea of repenting for things I never did and that were decided (according to you) a very long time before I was born, I don't buy into the idea that a perfect God would be incapable of coming up with a better system than putting on a passion play to justify 'forgiving' people for something that he decided was a crime to begin with (not to mention that it took him thousands of years to come up with it), and I certainly don't buy into the condemnation of countless multitudes of people to eternal punishment for nothing other than not believing.  And I reject your implicit declaration that you so completely understand this that you can tell other people how it is, or that expecting something more than beliefs stacked on beliefs is 'silly'.

I believe i am right, because i saw  Gods miracles in my life happen, and in the life of many other people. How and why should i explain these things as simple casualties ?

You believe you are right because you believe you saw these things.  But I do not even know what these things you are calling miracles are.  You are simply saying that they happened and that they were God's miracles.  Should I believe you simply because you say this is the case?  Or should I reasonably expect you to be able to back up your claim with actual evidence?

I can tell you the things i experienced in my life. What will be your answer ? objections and calling it preaching. Come on, you are skeptic, not because there is a true reason to be so, but because you have already made your mind up, and whatever i present you which is not conclusive proof, you will reject. Istn't it so ?

So, you're not even going to try, because you think I've already made up my mind?  What a cop-out!  You don't even understand what being a skeptic is about; it means not accepting what someone says simply because they said it.  It does not mean that one's mind is already made up.  That means that you have to be able to give evidence for what you're saying, rather than convoluted philosophical rationalizations, attempts at proselytizing, and using other people's quotes instead of your own arguments, to say the least.  The reason nobody here is accepting what you say is because your arguments have holes big enough to drive a semi-truck through, yet you assume that it's really that those deluded skeptics have already made up their minds not to listen and don't even change your approach to suit your audience.

you reject this example, and you will reject also , if you show examples of hardcore lifetime atheists, which in the end converted , like Patrick Glynn, Anthony Flew, Alister McGrath, Dr.Mark Eastman, just to name a few.

Don't know of any of those people.  But okay, assuming they converted, so what?  There have been plenty of Christians who have deconverted to atheism.  You can't point to people who convert to Christianity without accepting the corollary of people who deconvert from Christianity, whether it is to another religion or to no religion at all.

Its funny how atheists only accept scientific evidence, when it servers their cause. When it does not, they try to distort the facts in every imaginable way.

http://www.wcg.org/lit/booklets/science/debate1a.htm

4.	Religion is part of philosophy.

No, what's funny is when you present something as scientific evidence when it actually isn't.  The fact that someone portrays the Big Bang as being an expansion out of nothing does not mean that is what the theory actually says[5], and it does not constitute scientific evidence in any case.  Scientific evidence is something we observe in the universe; you agreed with my saying it at the beginning of this post, yet now you contradict yourself.

So what do you suggest was there beyond our universe ? And why ?

'Why' is because it makes a lot more sense for the universe to be cyclical in nature than linear.  A cyclical process does not need to have an explicit beginning or ending.  'What' is pure speculation, but if I had to guess, the same sorts of things that exist inside it.

Nope. God permits you and me today, to make our own decisions. And we will be responsable for them. Not he.  But the day, he thinks its your time to go, you will go. Independently if you want, or not.

If someone permits someone else to do something, they take responsibility for whatever happens as a result.  Of course, the someone else has responsibility as well; they both have responsibility.  It isn't just one or the other.

God's will is that all human kind might be saved, and should not go to hell. He has provided everything, and gave what was most precious to him. His son, Jesus Christ. If someone goes to hell, its because this person freely rejects Gods offer of forgiveness . Its NEVER Gods fault, when somebody ends up in hell.

If God gets all the credit if things go well (which you said before), he also gets all the blame if they don't.  It is that simple.  You cannot pretend that God gets the credit but not the blame.  He can get some of the credit and some of the blame, or none of the credit and none of the blame, but he doesn't get the credit but not the blame, or the blame but not the credit.  And as far as this "freely rejects" nonsense goes, no.  Asking for clarification or proof is not rejection; if neither is given, then it is pure foolishness to accept.  That's how con artists work.

i did not understand your question.

It shouldn't have been difficult to understand if you had actually been willing to try.  It's really a very simple concept.  Who are you to say that God doesn't have some other purpose for atheists and nonbelievers than sending them to hell?  Maybe he has some other idea in mind for them than the eternal punishment which you believe in.  You can point to Christian doctrine, but Christian doctrine no more represents the whole of God than this post I'm writing represents the whole of me.

what you have to do, is actually to render yourself to his love with a open heart, and let him come in to your life. But God is gentle. He does not obligate nobody to open the hearts door.

Which is practically what I said.  The fact that you phrased it differently doesn't mean what I said was inaccurate.

What you need, is as the bible says, to have a open heart. If you have emotional reasons to reject God, you will not come to him, even if he proves his existence to you. The pharisees saw the miracles Jesus did, like raising people from the death. They knew that only God can do such things, which were never seen before. Despite this, they rejected him. Based on what ? On emotional, not reasonable ground. They did not like that Jesus was more successful than they were.

The purpose of all the characters in the Bible was to make Jesus look better.  Whether they were the disciples, the priests and scribes, the Romans, or even the people Jesus helped, they made Jesus look larger than life.  So you're right that it was based on emotions.  You're just blanking out half the picture, the part which gave people an emotional reason to accept Jesus (someone, much more powerful than they were and are, giving his life for theirs?  That's a pretty powerful emotional reason, though it might not be an accurate one).  The problem is that you're confusing skeptical rationalism with emotional rejection.  Skeptics haven't made up their minds one way or the other, they just expect people to give them evidence to back up claims rather than letting their emotions rule them.

However, you have a priviledge. to express your confession of faith however you want..... that is a priviledge, that not all do have.

I can agree with that.  I just don't agree with the idea that someone should feel obligated to be a Christian merely because they have the option to not be one, which it seemed like you were saying.

No , i did not . Why should i ?

You could have asked them.  They're certainly not shy about admitting it.

I KNOW i don't have it wrong. Thats enough for me.

No, you believe you don't have it wrong.  It's your emotions which made that decision, not your intellect (I'm sure you came up with intellectual reasons after the fact, but that's not the same as having an intellectual decision in the first place, and believe me, it shows when you try to argue in favor of it).  The problem is, emotions aren't rational.  At all.  People can be swayed via their emotions into doing things which are explicitly against their best interests, unless they are on guard against that, and the best guard is the intellect.  That's what skepticism is.

You did not answer my question. Do you have a answer ? Or are you only here to critizise others beliefs , but do not have anything by yourself to offer as alternative better explanation ?
If so, what the hell is the reason you are here ? what is your goal ?

I didn't answer because the question you asked had already been answered.  It just was not an answer you were willing to accept or even listen to objectively.  The better explanation is what science says, without coming up with fantastical philosophical/religious stuff that isn't at all supported by the science.  And that's what I argue in favor of.

Scientific evidence is neutral, and can , specially when it comes to histocial sciences, be interpreted in various forms. there are no conclusive answers, since we cannot go back in time. by nature, there will be always various explanations, depending upon someones inclination, and belief. I can interprete the blood and soft tissues found at dinossaurs escavations as evidence, these animals lived only a few thousand years back, while others believe that is no evidence for such a short timetable, and that nontheless, they must be millions of years old. So scientific evidence of historical things are alway subject of different interpretations.

Just because someone observes the Sun going around the Earth does not mean the Sun physically orbits the Earth.  That is why you cannot just simply interpret scientific evidence however you please and expect to be taken seriously.  Along those lines...blood and soft tissues found at dinosaur excavation sites?  Seriously?  Blood and soft tissues wouldn't last a decade, let alone thousands of years.  So your 'evidence' is anything but.  I don't even know where you came up with the idea that paleontologists would excavate blood and soft tissues with dinosaur fossils.

5.	I've said this before; you've ignored it and continue to claim that it is the case when it is not.

[jaimehlers]

(so much text...)

I don't agree. That matters for sure.

No, it does not matter at all, because of things I brought up shortly after this in the original paragraph I wrote.

Despite this, the closer they are dated , the more it is probable they are true.

My point is that they aren't close enough.

But its one of the parts that brings the histories of the bible into a real historic scenario. The figures mentioned in the bible were not simply invented, but described people that indeed lived back then. Agrippa was one of the figures, that for a long time skeptics did not believe, he actually existed, until recent escavations proved the contrary. And so many other things, mentioned in the bible, found their confirmation only recently.

There is a difference between the Bible containing some history, and the Gospels being a historical scenario.  I'm sure that the Bible does have some historical accuracy; that does not mean that all of it is accurate.  There can be some accurate historical figures in the Bible without them all being accurate.  Also, you did not address the real point I brought up, which was that there was no guarantee that the original writings were anything like the ones that were approved as orthodox.

there is much more. Archaeological evidence is overwhelming, confirming the events and places described in the bible.

I think you're overstating your case by calling it 'overwhelming'.  There is some, and it confirms some of the stuff in the Bible, but there is nowhere near enough to prove that the entire Bible is historically accurate.

As to your quoted statement, from an "intelligent design" website with a vested interest in trying to demonstrate Biblical infallibility, first off, I don't accept intelligent design at face value since it's nothing more than a pseudo-scientific attempt to rationalize the emotional beliefs of religion with a sketchy sort of science.  Second, the fact that they have found some older manuscript fragments most certainly does not prove a greater and greater level of accuracy of the New Testament as a whole.  Earlier, you produced a quote which said that there were around 230 manuscript fragments preceding the writing of the Koran, most of which were written a hundred years or more after the life of Jesus...out of 24,000 total manuscripts.  They claim a mountain of evidence...and it ends up being a molehill.

did you not assert that you are are a true seeker of the truth ? have you read the link i posted ? if you read it, you would not insist with such a flawed argument.

You are the one who asserted that a "true seeker of the truth" would find God's existence to be obvious.  Yet you tacitly admitted in this very post that your entire case depends on convincing people by their emotions, that someone who was not willing to "open their heart" would not accept God.  So are you saying that being a "true seeker of the truth" means to believe first and then to "seek the truth"?  That isn't seeking the truth, that's seeking validation of a belief.  So maybe before you accuse other people of using flawed arguments, you should make sure that your own are flawless.

In the case of the qumran rolls of the dead sea, the differences in the book of jesaja are exactly 3 words !!!! That is barely to non. If considering that the comparison was made between books, written at 1100 years of distance. Thats quit remarably. Your skepticism is entirely unjustified.

I forgot to ask about this earlier.  What "book of jesaja"?  There isn't a "book of jesaja" in any Bible I've ever heard of.  And it isn't mentioned in the library of Congress site link you provided earlier, either.  So...what are you talking about?  The book of Jeremiah, which I only found by doing a Google search on 'jesaja'?  Except that none of the Qumran library scrolls involved Jeremiah, either.  And for that matter, where are you getting your information that there were only three words different?  That isn't on the Library of Congress page either.

Do you know the bible ? than you should have observed , that i was writing about the book of jesaja, which makes part of the old testament.

'Jesaja' is not mentioned in the books of the Old Testament^Wiki.  So perhaps you had better elaborate on just what you're talking about.  Are you referring to a different language name of one of those books?

exactly, there is no difference between them, and copies of the 10th century AD.

Prove it, then.  You haven't actually provided real evidence one way or the other.

So why should the old testament be trustworthy, and the new testament not ?

Isn't the New Testament exclusively Christian?  So shouldn't the New Testament be more trustworthy than the Old Testament?

Why not ?

Because of how you come across to the people you're discussing things with.  First off, even if you correctly cite the source, you're still only copying what someone else says.  It's inappropriate when you're dealing with people who are presenting their own arguments.  Secondly, you don't demonstrate an actual understanding of what was being said; you've made several serious errors by using that method that you've had to try to wiggle out of (without doing a very good job at it, I might add).  And third, because it's rude to just throw around someone else's words, even if you aren't claiming them as your own.

I am doing it the most part of my answers. Why do you not aknowledge this ? And even if some questions i do answer with external sources, why should these be dismissed ? only because they are not my personal arguments ? I don't see your point, really.....

The reason to quote something is to emphasize and support your own argument.  When you just put up the quote without any elaboration, you're not providing an actual argument.  You have 'written' entire posts where virtually everything was quoted from someone else and where you introduced nothing (or virtually nothing) new.  For example, when I write a paper, I make use of quotes from other sources, but I use them sparingly and only to support points I've already made.  Your tendency has been to throw out a quote in answer to a question and assume that answers the question, but all it does is convey the attitude that you don't need to answer directly and that someone else's words are more than good enough.

i comprehend them, and they do reflect my standpoint.

Maybe you do, maybe you don't.  If you don't put them in your own words, then how can anyone know for sure?

The example which i brought shows how silly your objection is. Once again, you do not a favour to yourself, making objections which are not honest.

You do yourself no good at all by pretending that my objection is silly, that it is not honest, and that your example fully answered my objection even though I wrote the objection as a direct response to flaws I saw in the example you picked.  Basically, taking that position suggests either that you truly do not understand the objection that I raised, or that you understand it and are deliberately misrepresenting it to pretend that it is not important.  Neither does you any good, and to be honest, both show you up as being incapable of participating in a discussion in good faith.

Here's arguably the most major problems implicit with the example you picked.  In it, Aunt Sally is the one who came up with the recipe, which she hand-copied to her friends, who hand-copied to their friends, etc.  Then Aunt Sally has to reconstruct the recipe based on copies of copies.  Fine and dandy...except that Aunt Sally is the one who originally wrote down the recipe, and she could reasonably be expected to be able to accurately reconstruct it from second-generation handwritten copies.  That illustrates why that is such a bad example for Biblical textual criticism.  "Aunt Sally" is not doing the reconstruction; she has been dead for over 1900 years.  And the copies are not second-generation ones, functionally intact except for a few relatively minor differences; over 99% of the copies are at least five centuries old.  Of the remaining couple-hundred copies, most are full copies written well after the fact (a minimum of 100-200 years), and there are a scarce few older bits and pieces here and there as well.

So no, it doesn't work as an example of Biblical textual criticism, at all.  Because it doesn't accurately represent the actual problems inherent with Biblical textual criticism.  Instead, it represents an incredibly simplified example of how the original writer could come up with the original manuscript with second-generation copies.

Where is YOUR argument ? You have elegantly avoided to answer my question. I suspect you take out of your hat that wonderful " we don't know yet " answer. How convenient.
If that is your answer, how about first make your mind up, and then argue with who thinks that has a answer, instead only to critizise others ? In the end, if you " don't know yet", neither
you have to present anything valuable to others.

As opposed to someone who has an overly-simplistic answer that doesn't really answer anything and only posits what that person personally believes based on an emotional decision that they made, only rationalizing it after the fact?  You seem to have this misconception that if science doesn't have an obvious answer, and there isn't any direct evidence, that skeptics have to be willing to consider any and all philosophical arguments that someone can come up with (better yet, come up with their own philosophical arguments), or else they aren't really being skeptical and in fact have made up their minds in advance.  That isn't how it works.

A philosophical argument that has no evidence to support it is speculation, and speculation can't be assumed true.  Like it or not, a statement of belief, "God existed in a timeless eternity before creating the universe out of nothingness," is speculation, because you have no evidence to show that that's what really happened.  Other ideas about what happened before the Big Bang are also speculation, because there is no evidence for them either.  The only honest answer is to say that we don't really know for sure, not to make grandiose claims based on an emotional belief in God that use intellectual rationalizations to justify that belief after the fact.

[Cyberia]

He did say that, but it's MASSIVELY out of context.  First, Lee Smolin is a ATHEIST

that is actually a point in my favour. That shows there was no creationist which made some numbers up. Its a atheist that recognized the odds of life to emerge in our universe out of random chance.

Sigh.  He clearly states that he's talking about the odds of the universal constants, not the emergence of life.  He's clearly NOT promoting the theory for which he was quoted.  And the quotation clearly is out-of-context.

What someone does with scientific evidence, how its interpreted, is each ones own business.

No.  Not when it's CLEARLY NOT what he was talking about, nor does it reflect his intentions for how his life's work should be applied and used.  ESPECIALLY NOT when creationists reach the exact opposite conclusion by twisting words and quote-mining.  It's called intellectual honesty, something which neither you nor most creationists know anything about.

Or deduce a intelligent being, that set up everything through his will...... that is very well a rational explanation.

Seriously??!  It's more rational to suspect Leprechauns or deities, than that the universal constants have some symmetry or otherwise as-yet-unknown relationship?

Stop it.

Beside this, we have never observed, that codified information , like contained in DNA,  arose by chance. There is always a mind behind it.

Evolution is behind it.  We observe new genetic sequences emerging all the time.  DNA self-replicates.  Sometimes it makes a mistake.  Sometime the mistake turns out to be beneficial and survives.  If DNA worked like a computer program, there wouldn't be cancer or muscular dystrophy or.....

The math is there, for everyone that wants to know the facts. He would btw. not throw his reputation into the trashcan, just to make fancy assertions up.

I quoted his book directly, there was no math.  I'm not saying he made it up, I'm saying he did NOT intend for creationists or scientists to directly use his book-quote as scientific-level data.  It's called reading it IN CONTEXT.  He's saying it's highly unlikely that the universal constants are what they are due to CHANCE, so there is likely some undiscovered relationship between them.

Pay attention next time.

There are others, that come up with even more fancy numbers.
http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2010/05/13/does-a-fine-tuned-universe-lead-to-god/

DO YOU NOT GET IT?  Lee Smolin was directly challenging the fine-tuned-universe paradigm by positing a connection between the universal constants, and suggesting future studies look for exactly that.  Sheesh.

Isn't there a some rule against Christians bearing false witness?

MASSIVE FAIL!

Oh, i see. Have no rational counter arguments, and empty acusations are spread out....

It took me all of 3 minutes on Google to track down Smolin's quote.  Did you look it up?  Did the site you go it from do so?  It's trivially easy to verify the source.  If he exists, do you think the god you worship is going to let you off the hook that easily?

thats not a new kind i see , how atheist react, when confronted with the reality, which they do not want to aknowledge.......

Pot-Kettle-Black

Have something useful to say next time.  You're wasting our time.

[Cyberia]

Along those lines...blood and soft tissues found at dinosaur excavation sites?  Seriously?  Blood and soft tissues wouldn't last a decade, let alone thousands of years.  So your 'evidence' is anything but.  I don't even know where you came up with the idea that paleontologists would excavate blood and soft tissues with dinosaur fossils.

They discovered FOSSILIZED soft tissue and FOSSILIZED blood VESSELS inside a T-rex femur.  They, sadly, had to break the bone to ship it and found it inside the marrow cavity, where it had been nicely preserved.  It allowed them to speculate that it was a female due to the nature of the structures within.  They have since gone back and broken open a number of museum bones and found similar structures in a few other dinosaur species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus#Soft_tissue

Creationists have an on-going problem with intellectual honesty and intentionally misrepresent this.

[plethora]

We know codified information can come only from a mind. DNA contains billions of letters of exact instructions of functioning of the body.

DNA is a collection of chemicals that react naturally to each other in certain patterns. We call it a 'code' or 'information' as an analogy.

That cannot have been caused by chance. There is no known mechanism to man, that can cause codified information , as found in DNA, by chance.

Abiogenesis^Wiki and Evolution^Wiki, dumbass.

We have the evidence of fine tuning in our universe,

No, we don't.

and specially of the solar/moon/earth,with so many parameters, that must be just right, that chance can be excluded.

You mean that 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001%[1] of the universe that supports life? Some design.

We have the hudge size of the universe, which is necessary to form carbon , and subsequently, life. We know that dead material cannot become self conscient, and form intelligence, ans self awareness, by chance, since these things are essentially different than dead matter. We know that sex could not have arose by evolutionary mechanisms. We know about irreducible complexity, despite fiercly questioned by atheists. We know that a moral conscience would not exist , if God would not exist.  These are all clear scientific arguments and elements, that do point out to a intelligent creator.

No, they don't. They just point to your massive ignorance.

Atheistic explanations are not reasonable, and do not convince me.

That's because you are an idiot.

1.	It's actually much smaller than that but I didn't want to fill the screen with zeros

[Mr. Blackwell]

They discovered FOSSILIZED soft tissue and FOSSILIZED blood VESSELS inside a T-rex femur.  They, sadly, had to break the bone to ship it and found it inside the marrow cavity, where it had been nicely preserved.  It allowed them to speculate that it was a female due to the nature of the structures within.  They have since gone back and broken open a number of museum bones and found similar structures in a few other dinosaur species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus#Soft_tissue

Creationists have an on-going problem with intellectual honesty and intentionally misrepresent this.

Flexible, bifurcating blood vessels and fibrous but elastic bone matrix tissue were recognized.

I don't think you have an on-going problem with intellectual honesty but I am curious why you claimed the soft tissue was fossilized when it says right there in the wiki article you provided that the samples were flexible and elastic. Unless we are using different definitions of the word fossilized.

[Truth OT]

While we are alive, it is possible to "live a perfect sinless life" if Jesus did it right? THink about it for a minute, if living a perfect life was not possible, then being punished for sin would not be justifiable and God would be totally unfair for demanding holiness ("Be holy as I am holy") and wanting us to NOT fall short of His glory.

Thats why God does not demand us to live a perfect live, since we cannot. He asks us to believe in Jesus Christ, which DID live a perfect live, because he is God, and only he was capable of doing so, he did live it for us, on our behalf, and he paid for our sins. So his justice can be attributed to us, and we can find forgiveness, Gods grace and love,  and eternal joy in heaven.

What about texts like Matthew 5:48 and 2 Corithians 7:1. These passages say things like: Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.
Just think about it logically; if it were not possible for man to be perfect, then why would God make an issue out of sin? The fact that God holds man culpable for sin indicates that God expects man to not sin.

Our body will be dead. but our soul and spirit will live forever. Think about it. The cells in our body are renewed at every 7 years. You do not carry one single cell , that is older than 7 years. If so, your soul should also have been expelled and gone, if older than seven years, and you would not remember anything, you had done a longer time than seven years ago.  i have to go now. the rest, i answer  later.

What exactly is a soul and what is spirit for that matter? In the strictest sense a soul is but a breathing thing or living creature, the entirety of that creature, not some separate etherial entity that is a part of that creature. Even the Bible promotes this idea when it speaks of Adam. Recall how Genesis 2:7 tells the reader that "the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." In some translations "living soul" is replaced with "living creature," illustrating the point that a soul, at least accoding to the earliest of scripture is the same as a living creature.
As far as what a spirit is or what its meaning was describing in the early Biblical writings, the best answer is an unseen force or power like the wind or a breath. The words breath and spirit are often interchangeable in the scriptures. So we have God breathing the breath of life into man in Genesis which quicken or made the man become alive, then we have in Ecclesiastes (12:7) man dying and the breath or spirit, whichever word you prefer going back to God who gave it as illustrated in Genesis 2:7. What this illustrates is that the spirit or breath was considered God's quickening agent and NOT one of man's immortal components. It was something given and received by God at the beginning and end of an individual's life.

Stepping away from the Bible and looking at what is observable, we have no reason or even indication that human beings are tricodomus body, soul, spirit creatures. Our existence begins sometime after conception and apparently ends whenever our brain is dead, we are finite! All we are is at this point, is totally tied to our bodies. And though what we see in reality does not involve God breathing the breath of life into us causing us to become living creatures, the conclusion seems to be the same in real life as it is described in the early Biblical texts, and that is that we are born and live for a while, then we die and are completely dead.

[screwtape]

We know codified information can come only from a mind.

eh, not exactly.  Information is a word that creationists abuse in much the same way the religious abuse the word "faith".  Information^Wiki has several meanings.  You could say a river bed contains information about the history of the flow of water.  Does that mean there is a mind behind the river?  Or does that mean information is just some kind of factual input?

And if you are talking about a code, they are typically written from one mind to communicate with another.  To whom is the "code" of DNA trying to communicate?  I really don't think it is a code in that sense. 

DNA contains billions of letters of exact instructions of functioning of the body.

But you know it does not actually contain letters, right?  We have just used letters to represent particular chemical blocks.  They do not actually have little tiny "A"s or "G"s on them.

That cannot have been caused by chance.

No one who understands evolution says they came about by chance.  There are physical laws that limit the possibilities of what can pair with what and there are other physical laws that sort out rubbish and select for utility.

For example, for the automated manufacture of some products, you need tiny parts to be oriented a particular way so they can be utilized.  There are a couple of ways to do that.  The first, most straight forward way is to have a human load them in a holder oriented correctly.  This is rarely efficient and often done wrong.  So the better way is to have a machine orient the parts. 

The way that works is, a human dumps a bunch of parts into a bin.  That bin vibrates.  Because it is vibrating, it is adding energy and the tiny parts actually move up a ramp. Each part starts out randomly aligned.  But along the ramp certain protrusions and dohickeys are cleverly placed so as to bump off parts that are not aligned the desired way.  The only parts that make it to the top are the ones aligned the right way.

This is how evolution works.  Random mutations happen, but only successful combinations are saved.  The crap ones die.  It is not as if the entire human genome - or any other genome - had to randomly come about in one shot.

There is no known mechanism to man, that can cause codified information , as found in DNA, by chance.

You say that because 1) you are emotionally invested in god being the answer and 2) you do not understand what evolution is, either because you have not researched it enough or because you have been deceived by other religious people.

Rather than waste your time with non-peer reviewed creationist software engineers who think their understanding of "information" is the end-all-be-all, you might check out people who actually understand evolution.