Viti

Now don't get all upset...you may blow your last remaining brain cell.

So, life on Earth is so complex and impossible, yet you have no problem believing in an even more complex uncaused cause that you call God. You have no evidence, you simply have yourself saying "It IS true, I tell you"...nobody here is going to validate your delusions.

Godless Dave

Darn right I don't! I also don't take the Bhagavad Gita as truth, or the Elder Edda, or the Quran. If I took things as truth due to faith, I would fall victim to every missionary and scam artist who stopped by my door or sent me a get-rich-quick email. I use my brain to evaluate everything I see, hear, and read, and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't.

Fastfalcon, why do you take the Bible on faith and not the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Elder Edda? What is it about the Bible that compels you to believe that it is true and those other works aren't?

How do you know God can do all of that?

Yes.

Which mathematician? In what book or journal can I see his calculation?

15 billion years is a short time????

Well that doesn't do it for me, and I'd hazard a guess that it won't do it for anyone else on this board. So will you stop trying to convince us now?

[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Godless Dave ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

Enlightenment?

You mean Allah, right? No, I'm sorry, you're talking about Vishnu, of course. Oh, no, that's right, you're talking about the One True God, Appolo. Zuess? Yahweh? Jesus?

OH! Is that the mythological creation you're talking about? The one from two thousand years ago? From unknown Middle Eastern desert cult members? Would that be the magical fairy god king you're referring to?

Because, honestly, there are so many of them and so many millions of people who stomp their feet and proclaim as the hypocrites do that only they know the way and the way is only through....insert any mythology here.

Get the point?

You have been programmed--like a robot--to simply believe, primarily out of fear, but that's the long and the short of it. Programmed.

Only an ignorant child would. That or an indoctrinated member of a cult.

Stick around and you'll hear that often from me .

No. Fictional creatures from ancient warrior-deity mythologies can't actually do anything at all.

Do you know what the word "evidence" means or are you (yet again) merely regurgitatin sophisms somebody else programmed you with?

Yes. I do. Primarily because there is compelling evidence to support such a theory.

Now let me ask you a question in kind. Look in a mirror. Do you honestly think that a mystical fairy god king magically blinked you into existence in order to punish you for not worshipping it?

Did you consider the possibility that he was incorrect? Or that the theory is incomplete?

No.

Did you do the math yourself?

No.

Do you know what you're talking about?

No.

Yet you freely announce your ignorance by obstinately spewing what you have heard others spew.

Why?

You lost me on that one. You're saying that your fictional creature created evolution?

What about them?

Do "we" really think that a mystical fairy god king magically blinked everything into existence over a six day period?

Do you have any idea how long one billion years truly is? Do you have any idea how long one million years is? One hundred thousand years? One thousand years? One hundred years?

Have you ever lit a firecracker and seen how remarkable the the resultant explosion is? How you've taken what was for all intents and purposes a solid mass and with the simple introduction of just one catalyst (fire) the result is a complete and violent reorganization of every single one of those "molecules" in the flash of a second.

Do you know how many seconds there are in fifteen billion years? Or how powerful an explosion results from a firecracker the size of...the sun? Ten times the size of the sun? One hundred billion times the size of the sun? One hundred quadrillion times the size of the sun?

Have you ever seen footage or a picture of a hydrogen bomb exploding? Did you know that such an explosion--on a planetary scale--is as childish and simplistic as a cap in a cap gun?

Getting the point?

Applied critical thinking for one.

Let's go the other route. Let's say that you're right.

Explain to me why God--who made Adam out of dirt and Eve out of a rib--decided instead to make us out of the most complex collection of molecules, cells, DNA, internal organs, etc., etc.? Why didn't he just make us all out of dirt?

Let's go back to the hydrogen explosion. Why would God have need to create such a force, knowing as he must have that we would crack open and unleash that force to our own detriment?

Why, for that matter, did God need to establish any natural laws? He made Adam out of dirt. So why don't we just spring up out of the dirt like plants?

Or, for that matter, just magically appear and dissapear?

You can't answer these questions, of course, because you have been programmed to immediately shut down your brain whenever anyone offers the same kind of logically inconsistent questions you think you're presenting to us.

Yet we can answer them.

That alone should tell you all you need to know about how you've been lied to; how you've been programmed.

free12thinker

Well, I think you finally have it. We don't buy into things based on faith (blind trust), we buy into things based on logic and reason. And I will ask you what I ask everyone else. What am I missing when I look in the mirror and can't find god? What am I doing "wrong". Is there some secret password to finding god? Whatever.

But I'll tell you what;
If you're ever on trial for your life, give me a call, and I will talk with your defense attorney and let him know that you don't wish to be judged by the facts of the case; instead, you wish to let faith guide the decisions of the jury, and you'll be satisfied with the results. I'll tell him you said that. And when the prosecution rests, after no witnesses show up for your behalf, and no evidence comes up that makes you seem innocent, your defense attorney will look the jury in the eyes and tell them to just look into their hearts and let faith guide them. Yeah! 15 minutes later, you'll be on the short bus to Sing Sing. That's where relying on faith gets people in the real world. Reason and logic and evidence would've gotten you off. You were already a prisoner of the mind, now your time is behind bars too.

Sorry

ex-preacher

That's atheists, you imbecile. When we take over the world, you will be writing it over and over until you get it right. So start practicing. Please define "arguing." I'm not sure you have actually been doing that.

Mageth

...a mathematician calculated how long it would take for a bacterium to randomly evolve into a human and the result was about 40 billion years! ...Also, what about the trillions of things in the universe? Do we really think that molecules can form into so many things in such a short time (15 billion years) randomly?

You're absolutely right. If randomness totally ruled the universe, not much order is likely to have formed, even in 15 billion years.

But, and this is a big but, science does not attribute order in the universe solely to randomness. Various laws of physics and chemistry (e.g. gravity), and higher-level, self-organizing and evolutionary principles and processes (e.g. replication and natural selection) exist as properties of the universe that have facilitated the emergence of the order in the universe, including the life on our little planet, we see today.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Fastfalcon:
<strong>What is the point in arguing with athiests? </strong>

Please feel free to take your toys and go back home to Mommy.

Eudaimonist

You've got it! Faith is an intellectual vice. We atheists prefer intellectual integrity.

We have this method called reason that we use to discover truth. Science is one good application of reason, and you should research it better, since you seem to be listening to irrational pseudoscience from know-nothings who only want to defend old fables.

Viti

RUN, FORREST....RUN!!

Viti

Seriously FastFalcon...what part of "We are atheists" seems to be eluding you?

Let me try to explain in simpler terms

We no think there is such a thing as invisible sky daddy. We think this just story made up by stupid goat herders in the olden days. Faith is thinking sky daddy is real when we no see sky daddy, no smell sky daddy, no hear sky daddy. We think having faith makes you like stupid goat herder.