Goliath

pudgyfarmer,

Since I, as an atheist, have never asserted that no gods exist, I am under no obligation whatsoever to prove that no gods exist.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Kimpatsu

Why should they matter if god does exist? We all know that Xpians always behave morally, like molesting children and embezzling funds and having extra-marital affairs and...
Whereas there are terribly evil atheists like Douglas Adams, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, James Randi, Michael Shermer, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov...
Morality is independent of any putative deity.

Violent Messiah

Jinto:

Terraforming the moon, even though, it sounds something grand that only a God can do it still seem a bit trifle considering the infinite possibilities that a God can do to amaze us....He could have given us invisibility, flight, teleportation abilities for starters.....imagine the consequences...hehehe. He could have made us all rich or immortal.....He could have made Mars, Jupiter, and all the other planets close to us so we can visit it anytime...He could have given each and one of us one or an infinite number of planets to rule.....when does the demand for amazement stop?

Vienna:

How would you do determine then that God himself was making the act?

I realized we're treading on unstable ground here. Exploring this might be better off at the MF & P. But a quick comment, good isn't good until there is evil.

Thank you. I'm afraid I'm still not black and white on the matter. I'm a deist, for now.

Kimpatsu:

You realized too...but I think otherwise....I think he's just excited on posting his numerous ideas regarding God and all other concepts inherent to it. I would appreciate it though if he could reply to all the posts he started.

I disagree. The origin of the universe itself is not rational. It may be attempted to be explained by the Big Bang, Inflation or the Theory of everything - but they are still all theories. All these theories answer the 'how' not the 'why'.

I.E. The bubble theory postulates that the Universe came from nothing but nothing decayed;hence, cosmic bubbles appeared.....one such bubble contained our universe and the rest is history. The total energy in the Universe is zero....none can be created nor destroyed...so it follows that there is no required energy to create a universe. Ergo, a universe was created out of nothing. No God necessary.

But there's some absurdity to it. Nothing decayed? Why? Decay is a measure of deterioration with respect to time...but time wasn't even there yet. How can something decay? Why was there nothing? What concept of nothingness are we talking about here? A black emptiness....still there's some black background....These are mind-boggling enigmas that physical science can't answer. Irrational.

Kimpatsu

What makes you think there is a "why"? The universe arose purely at random. What evidence do you have that there was any higher meaning to it?
Not science can't answer; science hasn't answered yet. There is a clear distinction between the two. Note also that if the universe does end in a big crunch, then the bing bang/big cruch cycle can have happened XXX number of times, and we are the products of just one of those times. (If the cycle occurs an infinite number of times, then we will have arisen an infinite number of times exactly as we are now, and have had this conversation an infinite number of times. Scary!)
When you say the "total energy of the universe is zero", I take it you mean the sum total (+/-0). But don't forget Planck time. In the first 1 x 10^-42 seconds after the Big Bang, the universal laws and the four fundamental forices had not yet separated and settled down, so all bets are off.
Your arguments for "we don't (yet) understand it, so god must have done it" are not compelling.

Tani

i think there are enough pink elephants, unicorns and the likes to demonstrate the problem with asking for a disprove.

this, however, always surprises me. exactly how is being rewarded to do something or being punished to not do something ethical? if sincerity worths any moral value at all, using morality as a means to either gain reward or avoid punishment really, imo, defeats the whole purpose of morality/ethics.

however, if it is not about reward/punishment at all, then i would like to know exactly how does the existence of god make the difference.

Vienna

I gotta agree with Kimpatsu here. Science certainly hasn't answered these questions yet (and it may never do so), but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't.

And, as Kimpatsu went on to say, there's no reason to automatically assume God was the cause simply because we don't have another explanation yet.

We're still on the burden of proof thing. I'll freely admit that I'm not certain at all how the universe was created. I have a basic knowledge of a few theories and some seem more plausible than others but I definitely wouldn't stake my life on any particular one of them at the moment.

But to believe that God was the creator requires some evidence for me to sift through. So, what makes you, VM, believe that God is the cause?

Psycho Economist

I don't demand to be "amazed". I demand that your evidence in support of your deity's existence be just that: evidence that points to your deity and nothing else about how it got where it was.

First, we would have to be able to rule out all reasonable possibility of a hoax. Second, we would need to be able to rule out any reasonable possibility of a natural explanation. Third, we would need to rule out blind chance randomness (statistics make this the easiest hurdle to clear). Lastly, we would need something that, given 1-3 are also established for this action, would only be possible from your god and some other supernatural agent.

Showing up on CNN does not negate the possibility of huxterism, and seemingly miraculous happenings may have natural origins. Only a decent post-mortem of the show would ever say... but after all the hype and slavering had gone on, whatever the scientists found (yea or nay) would only be a drop in the bucket.

The elimination of evil, for the sake of argument, meets criteria 1 and 2, but without excellent experimental protocols could not be reproduced without risking 'good subject' effects briniging us back to square one.

Life is not sufficient evidence, as it does not pass the second hurdle.

Jinto

Actually I picked lunar terraforming precicely because it IS a bit trifle - that way I wouldn't have to answer the otherwise inevitable "Why would God bother going to all that trouble just to impress us?" In this case it would be a miracle which is suitably impressive and ALSO serves a practical purpose, making it an ideal example, although hardly the only one God could choose. Now, granted, giving humans superpowers or relocating the planets might also be impressive, but it wouldn't serve any real purpose, and might actually be dangerous (imagine Earth ending up inside Jupiter's Roche limit. Yikes!) That's why I didn't mention them.

lisarea

Personally, I'm happy to accept any evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

Currently, the arguments I've seen for the existence of gods have to do with lack of knowledge and understanding, rather than with actual evidence and facts. Most religions don't provide evidence for their belief systems, but overtly reject anything that doesn't fall into line with them. When some new bit of knowledge is presented, if religion can't twist it to fit into its prescribed dogma, it just brands it evil and tries to hide it from its followers.

The fact that we don't understand something like why the sun rises and sets, where rainbows come from, how the universe came into existence, why the grass is green, what causes spontaneous remissions of diseases, or anything else is not evidence of a sapient superentity. It's evidence that we should probably look into that.

There is no one single event that would convince me that any phenomena is guided by a diety. If some giant bearded dude were to show up on CNN and--I dunno--raise the dead or something, I would consider all possibilities. Based on previous experience, though, I'd probably first consider the possibility of fraud. If the stars are rearranged tonight to spell out, "I am God. Worship me," my first inclination would probably be to wonder how those wacky Finns were able to pull that off.

That's not to say I could not be swayed if such an event were to occur. I absolutely could, providing that the evidence were solid and the theory were provable to the extent that any other theory is provable. I have no more faith in the existence of the sun than I have in the existence of gods. I just have more evidence for the sun.

Buddrow_Wilson

I don't buy the vague god scenario. If there is a god, he can make it abundantly clear or I keep assuming he either doesn't exist or doesn't care if I believe or not. Its really that simple. Yes, the terraforming scenario would be sufficient. If a being were to do that, I would say its possible his claims of causing our existence were true. Maybe he's just an alien, but I'd worship him if he demanded so.

For me your claim of "god dunnit" doesn't answer anything. It makes things more mysterious and complicated imo.