"no evidence of God anywhere in the world"

That is patently absurd. We have someone up above telling us that we live in a chaotic universe with entropy and decay...and yet miraculously we see order and life all around us...the evolutionist will come up with some absurd ideas about how, depsite chaose and entropy, life evolved from nothing to ridiculous complexity...and a rational man will see design and a force that guides it. there is evidence all around you - you just make the free will *choice* not to see it. The starving man in a bakery shop because he only likes pizza...

Just reading some Leviticus now. It has the rules for Kosher food, which Christians ignore entirely. Is that some kind of weird double standard, or did Jesus say "ignore the old rules, except the 10 commandments and that thing about gays being abhorrent!"

Most of Jesus's ministry was pointing out to the Jews that they were doing it wrong. Christianity is, at its very core, about reminding its practitioners that the people around them are people fearfully and wonderfully created by God, first and foremost. The Bible condemns a whole lot more heterosexual actions than homosexual ones. In terms of sheer volume, the Bible hardly mentions homosexuality. I'm not saying the Bible doesn't care about it, but Christians do need to learn a more Christ-based approach to the LGBT community.

I never said I liked that evil has to exist for good. I never said it made me happy, or anyone else grateful. There's a reason that so many churches focus on humanitarian efforts. We hate evil and pain too. But how can someone do good if that's their only option? How is that good? Good needs evil to exist, but good doesn't need to sit there passively and use evil is necessary as an excuse. I try to fight injustice and evil every chance I get, and so do many Christians and non-Christians. But that doesn't change that justice is a meaningless word if injustice did not exist.

I'm not so much saying that God's justice has changed as much as I'm saying that the circumstances have changed. Jesus's death on the cross took away the need for our sins to be paid for on our own. The death that was inescapable in the Old Testament has now already happened to someone else, but on our behalf.

@orathaic - you completely ignore the main point of my argument and only pick up on the mention of Leviticus, which was used to illustrate the roots of Christian hatred of homosexuality. I don't care if YOU ignore Leviticus; the book was thought by Christians to be the WORD OF GOD for centuries (or even millenia) and taken very seriously. YOU might select the elements from the Bible that suit you but early Christians largely did not. Notice how other early parts of the Bible, like Genesis's command that man has reign over all the animals of the earth, may have helped cause the massive neglect and crimes caused to animals today even though YOU might not LITERALLY follow the Genesis account any more.

Now please read my post again and reply to the argument, rather than just pretending to show superior scriptural knowledge and dodging the fact that I only employed a Leviticus reference as a quick example of the roots of the longstanding disgust that the Church has for LGBT people.

@orathaic--Most of the Levitical codes deal with two things: ritual purity and paying for our sin. Jesus's death made both those things unnecessary. Christians could still abide by Levitical codes if they chose, but it would be redundant. The parts of Leviticus dealing with morality, however are still relevant, seeing as how morality has not changed.

@krellin - saying that the fact that life evolved from nothing is absurd, and then adding in God as a first cause makes things even more absurd. Where did God come from? Please tell me how an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being came into existence. It certainly seems more likely to me that a small amount of matter or an explosion came out of the primordial nothing than an all-powerful superbeing.

Any argument of first cause runs into a problem eventually. It just comes down to whether or not you believe God can simply be, or matter has at some point spontaneously come into being. Both are equally ridiculous and unprovable. I choose to adopt the theistic view.

@TheRavenKing - "But how can someone do good if that's their only option? How is that good? Good needs evil to exist, but good doesn't need to sit there passively and use evil is necessary as an excuse. "

This view presumes a binary opposition between good and evil acts, not taking into account that there can be differences between very good acts and tiny good acts. Why didn't God just remove evil altogether and allow people to make good acts of different magnitude? Very good - timeconsuming and selfless - acts would still be an option, and would still show up against smaller good acts.

I would like to have a rapture where all but 200,000 people are massacred by God, yes, that's something to look forward to isn't it

If only good and very good existed, we would call them "good" and "evil". Changing the scale wouldn't eliminate the need for both.

"Both are equally ridiculous and unprovable. I choose to adopt the theistic view."

No. I guess you know that in science & philosophy there is the idea of Occam's Razor. If you see something happening in the natural world, there could theoretically be thousands of causes, but you tend to choose the smallest possible theory that perfectly fits the data rather than some huge, overblown theory that must be less likely on principle to have produced this particular phenomena. The whole idea of God as the progenitor of the universe is a ridiculously overblown and suspicious theory of describing things, a way to dismiss a scientific problem with recourse to a fairy story.

@Hex, you're missing my point entirely. The church and it's bible aren't the only means used to disenfranchise LGBT communities world-wide, where there was no church minorities were also hurt. Power dynamics are the same world over, and scape-goating any minority, any Other, is is tool employed by those in power.

There is nothing in articular special about the Christian form of oppression, And i don't select any elements of the bible to suit me, as i'm not a Christian.

You can call bullshit all you want, I think it's f*&king fantastic if Christians are now willing to reinterpret their moral values to fit into the modern day (though that would also fit with my theory on power dynamics) It means that they can work with the same relative morality, and is surely a victory for modern secularism.

hex - he was asking for "evidense" that God exists. I'm not here to explain the existence of God...such a task is pure foolishness. (Yes, me, finite little krellin, is suddenly going to solve the unsolvable mystery of an infinite being....get real.)

If he wants "evidence", the the evidence is there to be seen if he chooses to believe it. By the very nature of what we understand God to be, and by the scriptures themselves, God is revealed through creation. what are you looking for: A neon sign in the sky?

Goes back to the whole "God is looking for love" thing...if he writes it in the sky every morning and you love him because, "Oh...look at that...i guess he is real" happens once per day, it ain't love.

I can't explain why this is the methode choosen, but there is a wonderful simplicity to it. But bottom line - evidence is eveywhere...it's in the fact that atoms are ridiculously small pobjects containing incredible energy...with electrons spinning around them...and eyt the

"If only good and very good existed, we would call them "good" and "evil". Changing the scale wouldn't eliminate the need for both."

Wow, really? So if only good and very good existed - if it was not possible to murder, steal or do anything else conventionally evil, then a small act of kindness (just 'good') would be considered evil?

'We have someone up above telling us that we live in a chaotic universe with entropy and decay...and yet miraculously we see order and life all around us..'

Em, no we see entropy increasing all around us, and a temporary exporting of it by life (which is pretty awesome) but the sun only has a couple of billion years left of fuel...

they don't fly apart....it's in all sorts fo things *if* you choose to attribute the aspects of science to a creator who designed an orderly universe.

You can also say bull...as you do....and it gets you no farther.

what was before god = what was before the big bang...nobody knows.

I find it odd that many non-theists are also global warming advoactes who will say, "sure, we might be wrong...but if we aren't, oh the horror!" but who won't use the same system of logic to acknowledge God. If he exists and you believe, good for you. If he exists and you don't believe, look out below. If he doesn't exist and you believe or don't believe, no harm done. Not believing is the most dangerous possibility.

@hex010--I would apply Occam's Razor to pick the simplest option as well. I find it a lot simpler and more rational that God created the universe. If you accept that an all-powerful God does not need to be created, you're fine. I find it much more complicated and more difficult to believe that immutable natural laws were created by them being violated in the first place. Matter doesn't create itself. God doesn't have that problem, seeing as how he's not ruled by matter.

@orathaic--There's only reinterpreting if we change what Jesus said. The Church has never been the ultimate authority on doctrine, Jesus has. And if I believe that the Church was wrong from the beginning, then it's just a matter of correcting the Church's view to what it should have been all along. I also think that our impressions of heaven and hell are largely colored by medieval simplifications and secular literature (how The Inferno gained any theological credibility is beyond me). People mess up sometimes. Since the Church is run by people, it messes up too. It's only Jesus who doesn't.

''It just comes down to whether or not you believe God can simply be, or matter has at some point spontaneously come into being. Both are equally ridiculous and unprovable. I choose to adopt the theistic view.''

No, it could come down to any number of other conclusions. If you accept that some things can create themselves (ie God) then the Universe could have created itself - spontaneous big bang. (see lawerence krauss 'a universe from nothing' if you want to read the physics of this) or you could come down to a multi-verse theory, or any number of alternative God-theories... or a Pantheistic theory... or a Panentheistic theory...

What it comes down to is choosing between an infinite set of theories, and assuming the your Christian God is the right one.

Put in another constant into those computer models and make them all right again. Didn't they just do that with the deep ocean circulation? Great work if you can get it.

@hex010--My point is that society would relabel good an evil. If you could only do varying amounts of good, it would be considered evil not to do large good and only do a small good instead. It would only relabel the scale.

'Not believing is the most dangerous possibility.' - really, pascal's wager?

if it exists and i live a good life but he punishes me for not believing, then it isn't worth worshipping.

if it exist and does reward those who believe because it's the safest bet, then it isn't worth worshipping.

If it exists but the books have been misinterpreted, then i may be safest not following what i see as inherently evil, used by men for the persecution of others and their own temporal power.

And if i'm wrong, why did it give me this particular moral sense?

Fair enough, orathaic. But my point still stands. At some point you get down to something you have to simply accept because we can't prove it yet or possibly at all. To bash a God-based theory as ridiculous while accepting an equally unproveable theory is unfair.

'There's only reinterpreting if we change what Jesus said.' - and what language did Jesus speak? And his words, were they written down within his lifetime of at least 40 years later (probably closer to 100 years)

Who do you think did the earliest reinterpreting??

'To bash a God-based theory as ridiculous while accepting an equally unproveable theory is unfair.'

That's not how the militant atheist crew are doing it. The bash any theory which claims an unprovable - the claim the Universe exists and no more, and state that claims that fairies, dragons, Zeus, Thor, Yaweh and Santa exist with the same ridicule.

Sorry, *They bash...

If you were to create a universe the singularity seems a pretty good place to me. Under those circumstances entropy must increase with time.

The veracity of the Bible is an interesting discussion, but I think that most theologians would agree it's passed that test with pretty good marks. I'd also like to remind you that most of the book of Acts is Paul and Peter needing to be constantly reminded that Christianity isn't just for Jews. Preachers are needed because it's pretty tough to figure this stuff out. It goes against our sinful natures, but with careful focus on being like Christ, we can be more like him. I'm not trying to say Christians don't screw up. I'm saying that even though they screw up, they also have the best way not to.

Which brings me to my other point. It's true that Christians have used their power to persecute and gain power. With great power comes great responsibility. But just as there have been screw ups, there have also been great things done is Christ's name. One example is William Wilberforce. Or I can name half a dozen other more modern and personal examples. Don't write of Christians because of men who failed their duty; if anything, write us off because of Christ.

Except the singularity itself can't be accounted for by the current laws of nature. You're right in that the theory that follows is fine enough. But it suffers the exact same flaws as that of God-based creation.

@TheRavenKing: - "My point is that society would relabel good an evil. If you could only do varying amounts of good, it would be considered evil not to do large good and only do a small good instead. It would only relabel the scale."

No it wouldn't. Morality is not a simple scale. Evil acts are ones that deliberately do harm to others. Removing the possibility of evil would not make small good acts (like giving somebody some food) become evil. I've got no idea where you're coming from to be honest, other than that you're desperately denying the fact that a God-created world without evil is actually easy to imagine.

@orathaic - "What it comes down to is choosing between an infinite set of theories, and assuming the your Christian God is the right one. " Amen to that! And a Christian God is certainly one of the least likely too.

@TheRavenKing - "To bash a God-based theory as ridiculous while accepting an equally unproveable theory is unfair." No it is not. Keep believing that evolution is unprovable like all the other Christians if you like, but you will be wrong. Evolution has been shown to work with small cultures of bacteria and allows you to make predictions on the development of populations for years to come. Given a lifespan of the universe of billions of years, it is conceivable that all lifeforms evolved from more basic life. That is a fact, and is not 'equally unproveable' as God. 'Equally unproveable' is a ridiculous expression:

To your eyes it would be 'equally unproveable' that there is a flying saucer hiding behind Pluto and that there is nothing hiding behind Pluto, just space. Both cases may be 'unproveable', but I think you'll agree that there is nothing is far more probable! Ditto with God and the universe.