Here's how it works.

To put forth a theory you must have supporting evidence.

there are tons of empirical supporting evidence backing the big bang theory and evolution.

there is none supporting creationism and/or god.

Therefore I do not believe in god.

the end.

 

So you think the predictability of the cosmos, its adherence to the laws of physics, its ultimate "knowability", is proof of god's existence? To me, that would certainly argue against a personal god, the biblical god, the one that performs miracles and answers prayers....because to perform a true miracle or answer a prayer requires that the laws of nature be temporarily annulled. That's why a personal, hands-on god is incompatible with science. We would never know whether the laws of nature were being upheld in a given instance or arbitrarily altered by God. That would make scientific inquiry absolutely futile.

At best, your argument would suggest the possibility of a remote, hands-off creator who established the laws of physics, put the cosmos on autopilot, and then checked out forever.

But of course, then one has to wonder, who created God?

 

The god of gods who was created by the god of the god of gods who in turn was created by the god of the god of the god of the god of gods who, as we all know, was created by Jerry from Human Resources.

 

In answer to this

I have already dismissed the God who does stuff you discussed in the first paragraph. I'm not talking about miracles. Whether or not a controlling force decides what it wants to control, scientific inquiry is never futile, because we are limited and scientific inquiry is simply the strain at the limits of our knowledge. It has nothing to do with God, but rather with finding laws governing action in the universe, if they can be found, or at least regularities.

The "creator" didn't establish the laws of physics. We did, and they are imperfect because we are straining at the limits of our empirical knowledge to get them right. This "creator" is simply the consciousness that puts anti-chance into the universe. That's what I'm talking about: the anti-chance.

I personally came to the conclusion a while back that there is no such thing as matter. It's all thought. Everything is a big thought. Kind of like a dream shared by separate individuals, all of whom are simply units of consciousness. God might be all these consciousnesses put together, and the question to me is why It prefers anti-chance in this particular pattern. There is nothing remote about a God composed of all of us and then some. As for death, I think it is merely the disassociation of one's consciousness from one's "material body", this material body merely being a dream object. So I believe in past lives, and there is empirical evidence supporting it among the skilled hypnotists, written up in books like Journey of Souls, Many Lives Many Masters, and Reliving Past Lives.

I haven't gotten as far as who created God. The "who" would have to be another consciousness, i.e. the Real God.

Anyway, I think there are problems with both atheism and theism. Most atheism I see is a knee-jerk reaction to the overly simplified picture of God as seen in the Bible, always identified as a male, a male that can get pretty angry in the Old Testament, and pretty benign and loving in the New Testament. I don't believe in either of them. But that wouldn't make me an atheist necessarily, because their picture of God is not the only one.

I think I would call myself a theist? The question mark merely says I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about.

 

putting aside your desperate need for this creator to exist; please provide me with even one shred of evidence supporting its existence.

 

For the record, we measure speed in m/s, or km/h. Meters are defined from the speed of light in a vacuum and the standard measurement for time. Therefore you will find an exact value for the speed of light, no decimal places necessary.

 

Your reasoning is as poor as ever. The fact that the human minds seeks patterns does in no way answer the question of whether the pattern exists.

I expect there to be a stop sign at the end of the road because, in my experience(and your own could be different), there always is. Does this mean there will be one? No. Does this mean there will not be one? No. Until I arrive at the end of the road, I simply assume one way or the other based on my experiences and their interpretation. The assumption has no affect on the answer. Once again your argument is no argument at all.

Lastly, and, I might add, ironically. Your grasp of philosophy is so poor that you have once again taken up the mantle of arguing against yourself. Something you seem fond of doing. You say that because the mind experiences patterns, he expects there to be a god because he experiences a world where a creation must have a conscious creator. You do not realize that your own inference against god, the fact that you find the universe random and without meaning, is an equal assumption based on an alternate perceived pattern. Oh dear.

 

Certainly one of the silliest and yet popular retorts to exist. Why on earth would one have to wonder about that? A curious creation will seek its creator. But why would it have the slightest interest in the creator of its creator, were such a being to exist?

You set up a world in which a boy, abandoned at birth, says, "I have no interest in finding my father! I want to find my great, great, great grandfather instead." And then you think it a good argument. I've never heard of a human being behaving in such a way, and I don't think I ever will. Except, of course, when it suits a desperate atheist's fallacious hypothetical.

Lastly, and not to put too fine a point on it, but this infinite regress works both ways. And I'll never understand how one side of the isle continuously and conveniently forgets that. By the by, which random event was it that spawned the random event that spawned the random event that spawned our universe? Because I always get lost near line two. Clever.

 

Anti-chance

The entire universe is dripping with it. Our daily lives are immersed in it. Explain how it can occur without something making it happen. I can't.

 

When I was young

the meter was defined as the distance between two marks on a platinum rod kept in a specific environment at the National Bureau of Standards. So they found that light traveled 299776 meters per second when this length was used. At first they measured it at 299796 meters per second, but last I saw any figures based on the platinum rod, it was 299776 meters per second. And they found that no matter where they measured it, our in the universe, it was the same to within about six decimal places. So you are correct, they then took to defining the meter in terms of the speed of light in vacuum, by the time they found it was the same everywhere to nine decimal places. Right now they DEFINE the speed of light as 299792.458 meters per second, taking their definition of the meter from the speed of light. But the reason they can do it is they have empirically found the speed of light to be constant to nine decimal places everywhere. They used to define the second in terms of the earth's orbit, but now it is defined more precisely in terms of cesium atom transitions at 0 degrees C. In any case, the only reason they can define the meter in terms of the speed of light is that the speed of light was previously found to be constant everywhere in vacuum (in zero gravitational field) to nine decimal places. In my day it used to be six decimal places, but they have refined their measurements by now, apparently a thousand times more accurate.

 

Whoops!

Sorry, that cesium time measurement is taken with the cesium at 0 degrees Kelvin, not Centigrade.

 

It is 299792458 meters per second. Not 299792.458 m/s. That is 0.1% the speed of light. That is the equivalent of measuring the height of Mt Everest to be 8.848 meters tall, about the size of a typical UK home.

Granted that includes decimal places if you write it as 299792.458 km/s, but that is not what you wrote, or is a measurement that is typically used,

The unit of measurement is a meter. The meter is a standard these days which is derived from the speed of light in a vacuum. Therefor no decimal places are needed.

Anyway, I get the point you were trying to make... Just thought i'd point out some minor details.

 

That's because you're an idiot. I am silent on the existence or nonexistence of a creator. What I do claim is that the evidence contradicts the existence of a personal god, the god of the bible. But if you claim that there MUST be creator, because the universe HAD TO HAVE a creator, then you must concede that your creator ALSO had to have a creator, using exactly the same logic.

I can't explain how the universe came into existence, but I see no reason to assume it happened supernaturally, and no reason at all to assign it the word "god". To do so simply reflects a lack of imagination. We can't explain it scientifically at the moment, so by default it must be "god".

 

Not to quibble, but it's near 0 degrees Kelvin...not at 0 degrees Kelvin.

 

what the fuck?

What you call a pattern is the laws of physics at play.

gases collapse upon themselves because of gravity

when the core gets hot and dense enough nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium commences and a typical star is born.

when the hydrogen runs out the star begins fusing helium into carbon and oxygen then depending on the size of the star carbon and oxygen into heavier and heavier elements.

when these stars supernova they spread these elements into space. these are the same elements that everything on earth is made of. We are children of the stars. There is no other way for the elements that make me, you, this computer, everything, to be created.

Where does a conscious being come into play. No organizer is needed. The natural laws do all the work.

But then you're probably going to say the the natural laws were created by your god and that is such a desperate, pandering escape goat.

Try reading up on the Big Bang theory, nuclear fusion etc. If you haven't you have no right debating this topic and should back off.

 

Right, love. We've been over this and over this, and other people have been over this and over this. If you haven't figured it out by now, what one sees as "proof" in the universe, or its opposite, is entirely subjective. You see a tree and say "random chance," they see a tree and say "god." Continuously saying "There is no proof that I see," is simply redundant. Not to be trite but, you see exactly what you choose to see. And so those types of arguments will go nowhere.

Your one attempt at logic is...bad logic. We can say the universe must have had a creator because according to the physical world in which we live, it is impossible for something to come out of nothing. The entire idea of a creator of our phsycial universe(follow me closely here), is that he is OUTSIDE our physical universe. He would have to be in order to create it. Thus the laws which apply to our universe, do not, by any stretch of the imigination, apply to him. This is the very meaning of the word supernatural, my dear.

And lest I be rude, are you illiterate? I never even said that god cannot have a creator(though as I've shown, it is a certain possibility), I said that no human being would care as to who created their creator, and even added the analogy of the son searching for his great, great, great grandfather. My point was not that god must exist or that god must not have a creator. It was merely that your point, that people "must wonder who created the creator," was piffle. People must not wonder, people, by their nature, must not even care.

Stop arguing with the caricature in your head. Try reading and answering the points instead of saying, "Oooh, here's someone who disagrees with me! I wont even read what he's saying because if he's against me, he MUST be a christian apologist arguing for the existence of god and that god can't have a creator."

On point of fact, he was arguing that god might or might not exist, but that if he does, your idea that he must have a creator is unfounded, and, more importantly, your idea that we must care about the creator of the creator, is nonsense. Like everything else, you missed it.

 

THAT LAST POST WAS WORTH READING....

THAT SOUNDED REAL GOOD.....can't say the same for the post about gravity and gases thow...

 

A) I do not have a god(what is it with atheists and a blatant disregard for nuance? Don't agree with my childlike reasoning? You must be one of them religious folk!).

B) You're doing it again. What did I tell you about argument by appeal to detail? You're back to describing the collapse of stars and the the expansion of the universe in the same way you described a sperm meeting with an egg. And just as a sperm meeting with an egg was a complete nonsensical argument against god, or anything else for that matter, so is gas collapsing because of gravity.

The Incubus argument: A car cannot have a creator. When you turn a car on, the spark plug ignites the engine which burns the gaseous materials which powers the cylinders which powers the drive shaft which moves the wheel which controls the direction...and on and on and on.

My dear boy. Describing how something works is not an argument. It is not a good argument, or a bad argument. It is simply a non-argument. Working things can evolve, working things can being created. Describing how they "work" gets you exactly nowhere in the discovery of which it was.

I will add though, you make the most entertaining arguments I've seen -- and mostly because you actually believe they're, well, arguments. Perhaps next you can describe what is necessary on a chemical level to produce plastic bottle caps...and then applaud yourself for disproving god. Wildly fun my boy!

By the way, I hope you manage to catch that "escape goat," before he gets away with all the blame.

 

Who says the universe comes from nothing? Besides theists.

 

You're attempt at logic is bad. The same standard can be applied without the idea of god.

You could quite easily say "Our universe must be a consequence of an event that happened OUTSIDE our understanding of a universe, since nothing within the universe can be created from nothing"

It is an argument from ignorance. It's based on the premise than by not knowing the answer to a problem, god/creator becomes a default solution to that problem.

"This is the problem, we don't know the answer to the problem, therefore the only answer to the problem is a timeless and spaceless magic man did it"

Which is an argument which has no more weight than

"A circle has no corners, therefore a circle cannot exist in the digital world, therefore all elephants are pink"