Sorry for the repeat post! I didn't see the first one and thought I had not gotten it posted after all. So here's my two bits: At base, this debate seems to be on the existence of a supernatural being, God, because science isn't at issue--Christians believe in science as the exploration of God's creation. Re the question of the existence of God, however, an open and inquiring mind should be willing to investigate. Christians would advise that you can ask God if he exists, and if he does, to make it known to you. The Bible says to knock, and the door will be opened. That's a risk-free proposition, and it should be possible for anyone who doesn't have an anti-supernatural bias.

"Christians would advise that you can ask God if he exists, and if he does, to make it known to you. The Bible says to knock, and the door will be opened. That's a risk-free proposition, and it should be possible for anyone who doesn't have an anti-supernatural bias."

Is this facetious? I really can't tell. I just asked God if he was real and I got no response. Where do I go from there?

@abgemacht - I frequently did years ago, and even thought I heard an answer a couple of times. Strangely, as I drifted away, he didn't call me back.

@Draug
First bulletpoint is for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

I'm surprised noone mentioned their opinion on what the term God actually means. I am an atheist to most common definitions of God but I can't venture further than into realm of agnosticism if God is supposed to mean "whatever created universe". That whatever may be sentient or not, may have created universe voluntarily or by accident, it can be pretty much anything so there's no point in saying it doesn't or didn't exist. As it has to be located outside of our universe, it cannot be experimentally disproved. That is not an attempt to stop our scientific progress and say God did it but a rational acknowledgment of the physical limitations put on us. No matter how precise our theories will be and how inevitable some answer will become, there is not a chance of giving a definite answer about something which we can't reach, be it God, other universes or even stuff beyond observable universe. That is why a statement of BELIEF in existence of God is justifiable whereas statement of knowing for FACT that God exists is bullshit.

That being said, I firmly believe that in order to have some effect on our universe now, God would have to exert some sort of force that is in principle detectable by us. We don't detect anything like that so that's why I cannot agree with what Draug implies. Yes, it is indeed possible that God is controlling everything around while giving us the impression that it is happening naturally. Heck, he could've said to himself "Let's create the natural laws but the faggots I have in the pipeline for future billions of years will never be able to find out I did it". He could've. But believing in it is completely unnecessary, unjustified and doesn't help us in understanding reality at all. It is not a rational thing to believe in IMO.

For the record, I don't understand how is a God a solution to anything. If he wasn't created by another God (infinite loop), he must've always existed or spontaneously began from nothing. Well, that's also true about our actual universe so putting an intermediary link in the chain of creation, God, a link that suffers from the same qualitative defficiencies as the next one, seems rather uneconomical. If God has to boot-strap itself just like universe foes, what's the point of God?

" If he wasn't created by another God (infinite loop), he must've always existed or spontaneously began from nothing."

Yes, but you see, God exists outside the natural world, so he can do whatever he pleases, which, to me, seems like a lazy way of dodging the question.

hate to tell you all but Science until VERY recently believed that the Universe was infinite. The bible had the big bang theory beat by 3 millenia

They had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. There were only two choices - infinite or finite (there's not exactly a 100% on this question, but I digress). Of course they were dead wrong on the whole earth and plants being created before the sun and the stars. But we'll ignore that or re-write the Bible, or pick and choose passages to emphasize as we please.

Putin+1

"Yes, but you see, God exists outside the natural world, so he can do whatever he pleases, which, to me, seems like a lazy way of dodging the question."

It always depends on what attributes you assign to him. Of course, being very specific about God is an intellectual suicide because then a gazillion paradoxes spring up that has to be resolved by emitting huge amount of fog. The only sure way is to put him above nature and logic which is indeed a very lazy approach.

On the other hand, I personally enjoy delving into paradoxes of God, the apologies made by thinkers like Aquinas are very impressive intellectual endeavours. So yeah, God serves some purpose, to be a subject of conversation, art and similar stuff. Falls into the same bracket as other "famous for being famous" celebrities ;)

Much like ou do putin, really kind of wonderous

" So animals are created in an earlier epoch(after of course god said "let there be light" to create the universe) and then human beings are created after as a climax to gods creation. What exactly is inconsistent with evolution?"

How about everything? The fact that humans are something "created" separate from animals is counter to evolution. The fact that anything was "created" by god to begin with is counter to evolution. I do love how dates are manipulated by theists. Days turn into years turn into epochs, depending on whatever is convenient. So let's use your 'epochs'. Plants were created several epochs prior to sea life and winged animals. Plants were created prior to the sun, stars, solar system, etc. Winged animals were created an entire epoch prior to other land creatures like cattle.

Furthermore we have species of plants, animals, and other life forms coming in and out of existence throughout various epochs. It's incorrect to say all types of plants were "created" in epoch A when new plant life emerged later. Ditto animals. There is nothing consistent with evolution in this tale. The Bible also says the earth is 6,000 years old. I'm sure some apologist will come up and reinterpret numbers to somehow equal 4.54 billion years.

"The bible had the big bang theory beat by 3 millenia"

And the Bible was beaten to it by Mayans, Sumers and Egyptians. As Putin said, pointing out certain passages that are not downright wrong is poor form. It shouldn't count if you guessed right when the stream of ideas that brought you to the guess was wrong. I hate it when there's some game show on the TV and the contestant reasons wrongly for some answer yet guesses correctly after all.

@SantaClausowitz.

And you (inadvertantly) point out the beauty of science vs religion. If science finds data/facts/observations that do not fit our current models, we must either revise the model, or reject it and replace it with a new one. Hence Einsteins Theories revise Newtonian Gravity (for example).

"Much like ou do putin, really kind of wonderous"

How did I do that? Not that it matters, since I'm not the one claiming the book is internally consistent and the inerrant word of god, but how am I picking and choosing?

You know, Newton proposed some good ideas about physics. Quantum physics has proven him wrong on a fundamental level. Darwin looks good....superficially....but reality just totally blows evolution out of the water. Hell, the 2nd law of thermodynamics blows evolution out of the water. Hell...creation itself...the idea that animals REJECT offspring with defects (and thus don't reproduce with deviants....er...I mean...to you evolutionists "genetic enhancements..."...."....creation itself reject evolution. It's too bad that so many "smart" people reject scientific evidence in favor of their particular religious belief of evolution....and evolution ***truly*** takes a HELL of a lot of belief to accept!

"Days turn into years turn into epochs, depending on whatever is convenient."

Or perhaps with our understanding of English we miss out on the nuances of Hebrew which allow day and epoch to be the same word and mean both simultaneously, very culturally insensitive of you putin. There is nothing about "epochs" which is "convenient" it is the translation of the word

"How about everything? The fact that humans are something "created" separate from animals is counter to evolution."

or created from animals, which ever one works, because the bible doesn't specify...

"Winged animals were created an entire epoch prior to other land creatures like cattle. "

Im sorry, there were cattle before winged creatures?

"Furthermore we have species of plants, animals, and other life forms coming in and out of existence throughout various epochs. It's incorrect to say all types of plants were "created" in epoch A when new plant life emerged later. Ditto animals. There is nothing consistent with evolution in this tale. The Bible also says the earth is 6,000 years old. I'm sure some apologist will come up and reinterpret numbers to somehow equal 4.54 billion years."

The Bible NEVER says the earth is 6000 years, scholars attempting to age the earth through the bible have calculated 6000 years. The problem with you is you cant seperate the bible from the fundamentalist bull shit you hear from the wingnuts. Meanwhile you also miss out that the bible is indeed to be read metaphorically rather than literally as Jewish and Christian scholars have known for centuries.

Do I believe the bible is the word of god, No. Do I believe it describes scientific fact to the letter, No. But then again I get kick out of arguing with people who have no clue what they are talking about, much like our discussion of hell in Judaism which you were skeptical of for no reason (considering you have NO background knowledge) and here as you continue to make patently false claims based on falsehoods you learned by osmosis.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics is not in opposition to evolution. Just because particular lifeforms becomes more complex on one unimportant planet in the universe doesn't mean that the entropy in the whole universe isn't constantly increasing (apologize the double negative). It doesn't mean that in the process of evolution, the lifeforms doesn't make a hell of a mess with heat in their surroundings.

"I hate it when there's some game show on the TV and the contestant reasons wrongly for some answer yet guesses correctly after all."

Or when one contestant guesses wrong every time since Aristotle and poopoos the other side, until he changes his mind and decides he knew it all along

@krellin

The second law of thermodynamics refers to a closed system. Life is not a closed system. Also, order/structure occurs in non-life - or do snowfalkes violtae the second law of thermodynamics

And you really really don't understand evolution if you think it has anything to do with rejecting offspring....

"Hell, the 2nd law of thermodynamics blows evolution out of the water."

ROFL, what? Entropy can decrease and the earth is not a closed system (organic systems are by definition open, not closed). Energy inputs are coming from the sun. Sorry, try again.

Pete U....sorry...the universe IS a closed system. Evolution...on a GRAND basis...suggests that....random gases organize into star systems...into galaxies...into solar systems...into suns...into planets....into life....

It's fucking preposterous.

by the way i dont even believe in god, my statement is more of a wonder that people adopt fundamentalism when they could be so much more creative

@Putin -- of course I wouldn't expect you to understand. After all, YOU still think socialism/communism is a good idea even as Europe rejects it over and over and over and over again. China abandoned it. Russia abandoned it. Putin...how does it feel to be the LAST hold out on ALL the failed philosophies?? LOL! loser...

"Or when one contestant guesses wrong every time since Aristotle and poopoos the other side, until he changes his mind and decides he knew it all along"

And the moral is? I'll merrily acknowledge that Einstein was dead-wrong on the subject. Probably thought of as a more elegant solution to the problem. Well, reality is not always elegant as some equations tend to be. It still doesn't shed much of a good light on the Biblical take on the creation of the universe.

Also, I would like to see the uninterupted line of scientists from Aristotle onwards who believed in eternal universe. I thought the Christian belief was a well-established scientific truth for more than a millenium in Europe.

"I thought the Christian belief was a well-established scientific truth for more than a millenium in Europe. "

Shows how much you know

Krellin, that's not an evolution at all. And even if it was, it wouldn't stand in the way of a heat death of the universe.

Santa, Aquinas or Ockham definitely didn't believe in eternal universe. And those two are what passed for top-notch scientists back then.

That means that overall entropy in the universe will increase, not that entropy will increase in all of its parts equally and at the same rate. Subsystems within closed systems can have decreases in entropy, so long as the overall energy level remains the same (meaning there is an increase in entropy elsewhere in the system). So even granting that the universe is finite, which is not 100% certain, entropy can decrease within its parts. Furthermore, organic systems are always open, not closed. Any system that interacts with its environment and receives external sources of energy is open. The earth interacts with its environment and receives external sources of energy.

Anyway, if you claim the 2nd law "contradicts" evolution, it also contradicts creation. God "created" order out of chaos, which is supposedly not possible, according to this line of argument.

Medieval Science was the act of reconciling classical teachings, on science as well with church doctrines, to say that "Christian belief was a well-established scientific truth for more than a millenium in Europe" is a gross simplification. Aquinas certainly attempted to reconcile Aristotle's eternal world with the bibles created world

@Krellin

Um...Classical Mechanics isn't wrong. Just because it doesn't explain quantum systems doesn't mean it doesn't explain any system.

Also, what does the 2nd Law of Thermo have to do with evolution? The Earth is getting energy from the sun, making it an open system. Net Entropy is still increasing as the sun slowly burns away.

You gave me shit in an earlier thread for not listening to what people were saying. Are you guilty of the same thing, or are you merely hiding behind the veil of a troll?