oriecat

What's the most plausible reason to explain why stars would appear to be 15 billion years old?
A) Because God made them, put them far away and sped the light up so they seem old
B) Because they actually ARE 15 billion years old

DoubleDutchy

Magus I am still in the dark about God's free will; this is how far we got:

Maybe you forgot where we came from, you must be quite busy, so I recapitulate:
People have free will, therefore they can sin and all of them do (some more then others).
Souls in heaven have free will, therefore they can sin and they never do, because it would be stupid to do so .
Angels don't have free will, whether Satan, disobeying God did commit sin or not we did not discuss as yet.

I would appreciate having an answer.
Of course, as always, if you just don't know don't hesitate to say so; there is nothing disrepectable about that.

xian

caused by natural events?

who says anything about being "caused?" I thought you atheists didn't assume such crazy things like causation.

we live in a universe of wild fluctuations and things that pop into existence from nothing!

James Randi, eat yer heart out! the IPF is coming to town

lpetrich

Magus55:
... It is a recurring theme throughout Genesis that God created everything already aged. Adam and Eve were full grown, as were animals and plants. So, going along with that Theme, he created an already aged universe for us to study, but sped up the light for us to see it.

The Philip Gosse created-appearance hypothesis -- Adam and Eve had navels because they had been created with the appearance of having been born in the usual way. Thus, the title of his magnum opus, Omphalos, the Greek word for "navel".

Until you can create a time machine and go back to the beginning of the Universe, its all speculation and opinion and neither one of us can prove it.

The same can be said of the question of what Jesus Christ had really been like -- if he had existed at all.

lpetrich

Rhea:
(on Magus55 on the Big Bang theory...)
Who said I accepted the big bang theory? It's certainly not the only theory around. This is not some shoot-out between the Christian God Theory and the Big Bang Theory.

The "brane" theory is the speculation that our Universe is a 4D sheet or "brane", short for "membrane", in some bigger Universe with more space-time dimensions. The idea is that two branes colliding will produce Big-Bang-ish behavior in the brane that we are living in, thus producing our familiar Universe. However, working that out is easier said than done.

As to the more usual Big Bang theory, it can be extrapolated back to about 10^-43 seconds, when quantum-gravity effects become strong. And we still do not have a theory of quantum gravity that is (1) mathematically reasonable and (2) consistent with known nongravitational physics (the "Standard Model").

Magus55

His existence is undeniable. The only issue you can debate is his claim to be God. Almost no historian or person with any historic knowledge doesn't accept the fact that Jesus Christ of Nazareth existed. Even most atheists here say they don't deny that nor his crucifiction.

Magus55

To atheists B), to Christians A), since neither can prove it, its a moot point. I think A is more rational because i believe God created the universe, you think B is more rational because the universe formed itself.

christ-on-a-stick

Blatantly false.

Christ a Fiction

Did Jesus Exist?

The Jesus Puzzle

Who was the Historical Jesus?

And there are many, MANY more. Are you going to claim that none of these authors have "any historic knowledge"???

*PLEASE NOTE* that I am not claiming to have done enough historical research to have a definite and defensible opinion. However, your claim of "almost no historian or person with any historic knowledge" (not accepting Jesus' existence) is simply not factually true. Historians have questioned and debated the historicity of Jesus for years and years. I'll be happy to find more links and resources for you if you wish.

Asha'man

And this is why we think Christians are irrational, because this is anything but a moot point.

The universe appears to be around 13.5 Billion years old. It acts like it is 13.5 Billion years old. Everything we see in functions as if the universe is 13.5 Billion years old. While we can’t get absolute proof to the nearest millisecond, we don’t need to. To believe that the universe is anything less than 10 Billion years old is utterly irrational, since there is absolutely no evidence that supports that position. To believe that the universe is exactly what it appears to be is not only rational, but it is the only sane conclusion.

Look at it this way: if God went to so much trouble to make the universe look and function like it was Billions of years old, don’t you think he wants you to believe his illusion? To disbelieve the evidence he placed before our eyes is to call him a liar.

MrDarwin

Funny, virtually all the Christians I know believe that scientists are right in calculating that the universe is many billions of years old. They believe God created the universe, but they also believe that this act of creation happened billions of years ago.