LOL thanks for making my point for me. :-)

ViLSE, you really can't base anything off sam, he's more than just a little trolly.

But I would like to know why you think people can't be rational in believing that we were created, rather than just an amazingly improbable collection of perfect coincidences?

What you said is indeed not to do with being rational, what you need there is just a good dose of education on what is already proven. Your problem can be fixed if you just open your mind to other possibilities than the dogma of religion.

Oh and yes, I did realise SAM was a bit of a troll, I definitely wont take him seriously. ;-)

LOL, I love the 'this is off topic for AT so i won't comment on this' and the 'if you'd read a bible you'd have the answer to your questions!' answers :)

TRIFE!

Long time man, it's good to see you are still as entertaining as ever ;-)

Yep the bible has all the answers and is the only thing we should ever live by...

Here are a few samples of what is in that lovely book, and that's just the stuff in the New Testament, the old one is magnitudes worse.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/nt_list.html

i'm not going to tell you to read the bible (though judges makes for a good read)

you should, however, go to your local church, explain to the minister up front that you don't have faith, but you have questions concerning the concept of it.

i'm almost positive you'll be engaged in honest conversation and invited to come and see first hand one early sunday morning the joy and solace people get from their faith- something vilse i'm sure will mock ;)

Nah braden, to be honest I quite like an honest conversation with religous people and I frequently have these. I dont have a problem with people having a religion believe it or not, I just have a problem when any religion has an impact on other peoples lives that want nothing to do with it.

Pray and have faith as much as you want, just keep it out of public schools and dont give anyone any special benefits from believing in a specific brand of fairytales over another. If thats all sorted then Im good with it. And any day someone comes and says to you that you are not allowed to believe in whatever god or gods you want to then I will stand right next to you and protest that you should be allowed to do believe whatever you want.

Of course on these forums its fun to be a but blunt about it to promote some fun discussions. I do admit that I like seeing the (to me) irrational arguments of the religious. :-)

don't pray and don't have faith as much as you want, just keep it out of public schools and don't give anyone any special benefits from not believing in specific brands of fairytales.

so now that we're both good with our accepted boundaries.. where do we go from here? if there's a cross on the side of a road.. why is you not wanting it there any more important than me wanting it there?

if you don't believe in creationism, why is that any more important than somebody who doesn't believe in evolution?

Yep, thats fine by me, I dont expect any special benefits from not believing in fairytales and as long as you are ok with it the other way around then thats all good.

If there is a cross on your church property then by all means put up a giant cross or an easter bunny statue or whatever you want. On public property keep it off and lets call it "neutral ground" where no one gets preferential treatment to show off their specific brand of religion. I won't put up any giant signs of the Flying Spagetthi monster and you wont put up your cross or whatnot. Its pretty easy really, you dont have any benefits and I dont have any benefits and everyone lives on happily (in theory at least).

Currently I think me putting up a billboard promoting Atheism will cause much more of an outrage than a xtian cross in any event. Or at least that is what the news leads me to believe (in America that is, in Sweden where I am from noone would care one bit). :-)

Trife - Normally I would stay clear of these discussions, but heck. I feel like wasting my time with you.

A. For one, I truly believe that evolution is a bigger religion to swallow than all of the main stream religions put together. The very fact that you still stand here breathing proves to me that CLEARLY it isn't the survival of the fittest. You should have been bashed with a large rock years ago.

(I had to say the above because I love you and you deserve rations of crap whenever I post anything. Plus you like dudes. And are stupid. And I miss your man touch.)

B. So on to your soul searching. I hate to do assumptions when it comes to eternity, but eh. Let's assume that God knows a heck of a lot more than you or I (darn tootin'). Now let's assume that us as humans can't understand everything (Earth the center of the universe, the world is flat, Trife use to be a male, and blood is bad and needs to be sucked out by leeches). Now let's assume that a Parents love is one of the greatest things on earth.

So let me ask you some questions.

What is the difference between centrifugal and centripetal force?

Why are we here? What do we do while we're here? Where do we go when we die?

Why are there homeless people? Why don't they have families? Why do I have to work for a living? Why did my parents kick me out of the house? Do they care about me? (This one is rhetorical)

The point is belief. Do I believe that God created cancer? No I do not. Nor do I believe he created the black plague, small pox, yellow fever, or heck pollution. I believe that as a result of his creations, these have also been created. You can blame God for everything if it makes life easier for you I suppose. You might say the same for religion "You put all of your faith in a God because you are too scared to face life"....well we aren't too far off. People put all their blame on God, even if they aren't believers. I didn't get that promotion, must be God's fault.

If your child burns his hand on a stove, do you throw out your stove? Or do you hope that your child grows from the experience and doesn't touch the stove again. This has to do with free will. If your child is a drug addict and you've sent him to rehab, you've loved him unconditionally....but when he is home he steals from you and uses that money to go buy more drugs. What do you do? This is your child. Do you just provide him with money every day in the hopes that he will stop doing drugs? No. You kick him out of the house and let life give him some hard knocks. It doesn't always end up perfect, but sometimes it is the best thing for him/you everyone around you.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?" - I happen to believe that everything happens for a reason. Children who are born with abnormalities might inspire thousands of people and change their lives for the better. Have you spent a good amount of time with mentally handicapped people? They are ten times happier than you or I. We are the problem, not them. They don't give a crap about what is wrong with them, we do.

Now let me close with. I don't have all of the answers. Nor am I perfect. Nor will I come to your house and ask you if you have found the lord. But I can accept that people like Vilse have their beliefs. I choose to believe in a God though.

Doubt this helps. But like I said. I was bored.

That was beautiful.

/me converts to ZENism.

That's a lot of "Lets assume..." in there ZEN. Personally I am not a huge fan of that. Wouldn't it be nicer to actually know stuff instead of making assumptions and trust in faith?

Wouldn't your life be a lot easier if most the questions were not answered with "God did it"?

This is generally what Science is all about, curious people asking themselves "how did that happen" and "why is X doing this" and so on. There are so many answers out there and so much cool stuff to figure out. I have a great love for that myself and take great pleasure in seeing humanity figuring out these things. :-)

But like you, I will also accept you believe in god and if that makes you happy then all the better. I will still always ask questions though and promote secularism, science and fairness wherever I can. :-)

Facts are facts, and do not change based on ones personal beliefs. Either we are made of energy are we aren't, the correct answer doesn't change based on the believes of the individual.

Humans are NOT made of energy, no more than anything else is anyway (in the sense that our bodies can be converted to usable energy, burning our bodies will generate heat energy for example).

Our body converts calories and other elements into energy (heat, kinetic energy etc.) in order to function. If we cease to consume resources that our body is capable of converting into energy, we die.

Now that being said, this fact does not necessarily mean that a higher power doesn't exist, but it does lead me to believe that the concept of an afterlife is nothing more than humanities attempt to put its mind at ease regarding life's one great uncertainty: what happens after death. It puts our mind at ease to believe that our conscience carries on, it makes the idea of death less frightening.

But chances are the truth is far less convenient.

we'll be offering to upload your consciousness to the EE servers as part of our patron services :)_

Which is why I said "I hate to do assumption" :)

But yes. I can accept that you will be the champion for science and I look forward to watching you burn (in your words) fairy tale hell :)

I look at it this way. If I am wrong, what is really going to change. I don't think the science god is going to care. He is going to simply recycle my existence into bug food.

You say and then "we die," but you point to the body's construction is made up of mostly carbon-based building blocks. Wouldn't death then simply return "dust to dust" and be part of another living cycle, albeit not necessarily human life? Meaning, you're really defining life as the same as Syko is referring to the'soul' or our psychological construct, right? Otherwise there would be afterlife from the biological perspective you offered ;).

And Trife, you have given no credit to my lemonheads theory. I believe it to be right. It tastes good, therefore, it is.

Our bodies my provide sustenance for other life (much the same way food does for us) but that doesn't make us "still alive" or "living in another form" any more than it does for an orange after I've eaten it.

Plus not all biological forms end up feeding other life, some of it breaks down into hydrocarbons and becomes coal or other petroleum products :P

I don't define life as the soul or the psychological construct. If so then I would have to argue that someone who is brain dead is "dead". This isn't the case since clearly the body is still functioning (thus living).

I am ready for my bonus so figured...meh may as well ring in, with the full understanding that without the ears to hear or the eyes to see it is all for naught.

two of my favorite proverbs.
Don’t answer the foolish arguments of fools, or you will become as foolish as they are.
Be sure to answer the foolish arguments of fools, or they will become wise in their own estimation.

So damned if you do, damned if you dont.

If you really want answers, please keep seeking.

Oh and PS. I really enjoyed some of the non answers! The verbal run around is awesome!

I don't blame God for anything because they is always an explanation
for events. Science is great!

If a baby pops out all messed up, I wouldn't blame god, I'd put the
blame on something like genetics or the fact that the mother is a
coked up alcoholic wrestler. What I can't understand is the whole
'It's jesus' plan!' stuff. You're telling me that God went ahead and
retarded the baby just for kicks and giggles as a challenge for the
mother to get over? That seems pretty fluffed up. My mom wouldn't
cut off my perfectly healthy legs when I was a kid to give me the
challenge of still being able to get around/function without any legs.
So why the hell would the all powerful, loves-everyone God do it,
especially to those that believe in him?

We humans are really good at screwing ourselves and making problems
for mankind, I don't think that we need God's help in making it
screwed up.

Jsst not sure how people can say 'God created everything in
existance', and then turn around and say 'It must be god's plan!' when
a child is born with 4 legs. Why the hell would that be gods plan?

And some of you guys seem confused, I've already made up my mind on
this subject. I'm not trying to justify why God does these things.
Rather, I'm trying to understand why folks think their seemingly
perfect god would do such terrible things.



p.s. hai vamps o/

Open Your Ears and Eyes!

Does it really matter that He created things that aren't all sunshine and rainbows?

The solution to all things lies with us.

@ H4xOr WaNgEr How do you know that everything youve learned is indeed a fact? As far as im concerned nearly everything is based on belief. Just like ppls belief in a god that no one on earth at this present time has seen. I said we are a miracles but I never stated a belief on how we came to be a miracle that is something that we are all still searching for but we believe it is god. How could a god have created all of this? Energy! Did you know that a human being has whats called human voltage in their bodies. Voltage is a source of energy. Where did I learn that? in one of three electrical classes that I've taken. when Our physical bodies die the energy goes back to their surrounding. so you see it is all borrowed. Just like our time here even if its death by cancer or some other disease. I would prefer to die of old age in my sleep if I had the choice!!

To claim that we can't be certain what we know is fact, and then use that as a justification for believing in god is nonsensical. You are basically implying that weak evidence is more noteworthy than strong evidence.

Voltage is not a source of energy... it is a measurement of the energy required to push an electron over a given path.

Of course our bodies have voltage, as our bodies have an "electrical system" that performs cardiac and nervous system functions, and all electrical systems have an associated electrical potential differential. But our body generates this electricity by converting energy from food, it isn't just some perpetual energy that innately exists within/as part of us.

If our body was made out of energy then the amount of energy we contain would be finite (unless you are trying to imply that the human body contains an infinite well of energy, in which case... hey the energy crisis is solved!) which would imply that we would be at risk of "ceasing to exist" if we were to consume too much of our "natural energy". This simply isn't the case.

if, then ... (therefore)

if g0d existed, then he would not have created marshall.

therefore, he does not exist.

TL;DR answer, God doesn't. Sadly there is a huge section of the "believing" population that has bought into the blaming everything on God "theology", that has become so prevalent in this modern age. When God cast out humanity for that first sin, he essentially removed our shield from all the terrible things that could happen. Over the course of time since, we were given free reign in the sandbox, and reap the "benefits" on a daily basis. Vilse's beloved god of science has brought about a lot of the cancers and such, due to us using dozens of things a day that we really have no idea the long term effects of.

1 Corinthians 2:11 - For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

That sums it up pretty well. We need to stop trying to place God and what he does in a box of our design; because no box of human thought will ever make sense of God's thoughts and plans.

God created cancer for Evo

History

Pt 1
http://youtu.be/MlnnWbkMlbg

Pt 2
http://youtu.be/yPfFx9JTQl8

Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter closed?
- Joseph Lewis (1889-1968)

Ummm who created god?

There are many things we just cannot answer. We still don't truly understand the world we live in.

http://i.imgur.com/FMInt.jpg

lol

Why did God create things that us humans call science for us to explore when they contradict His existence?

It's turtles all the way down!!!

Probability is for future events. Once you have flipped a coin and it landed on heads, the probability that it will have landed on heads is 1, not 0.5.

Likewise, we exist in this universe. Therefore the events leading up to our existence are not an "amazingly improbably collection of coincidences". If those things had not already happened, we would not exist.

The Universe is as it is and the "laws" which create the "perfect harmony", etc. are what they are because what we are observing is what results from the past.

If you use the approach of imagining alternate universes, there are undoubtedly more universes in which humans did not come to exist (reflecting what you described as "improbable") than where we did. But we are only concerned with THIS universe and this universe only exists, with us here to question it, because those "coincidences" already happened.

"Why did God create things that us humans call science for us to explore when they contradict His existence?"------Im still looking for the contradiction.

Actually what fascinates me are the ways in which people choose to attribute *some* things to God but not others. You see this on the news all the time, especially after a disaster.

"That huge tornado destroyed our home! We lost all our belongings and my husband was killed! But THANK GOD for saving little Timmy!"

Ummm... you aren't upset with God for the bad? Only thankful for the good? Kinda one-sided....

When Henry V had God to thank for victory in the Battle of Agincourt, the implication is that God should also be to blame for the thousands of French and mercenary dead. Either it was God's doing or it was man's doing. Stop giving God the credit for success and blaming man for the failures.

Religions love it when people "praise God" for the miniscule good in a horrible situation and ignore the bad or write it off as "nature" (didn't God make that too?).

Are frozen sperm dead or alive?

Anyway, back to your examples. The orange wants you to eat it so you fluff out it's seeds with what's in essence natural fertilizer helping it's lifecycle. And there are bacteria that feed on hydrocarbons as we learned from the BP spill, although they are burned then they simply become fuel for carnvirous C02 consumers, aka plant life.

I'm just drawing the distinction between metaphysical life and other variations of life.

Well trumper, you're referring to

http://en.wikipedia.org/...formation-theoretic_death

about the frozen sperm.

That is quite the fine line there, Atryn.

God created man. Man was given free will. Man blames/praises God for all events.

Unfortunately, we are dealing with a fallible being. Just because dear Henry decided to praise God for his victory doesn't mean it was sanctioned. The problem is human error. While I accept the fact that I don't know everything, most people are convinced that they do.

my opinion: There is no god, there is a greater being. Religion was created to give hopes to the masses and control the masses.

Think about how religion controls the people and how many wars it has been responsible for before you flame me.

Listen to this Philosophy Bites podcast titled, "Stephen Law on the problem of Evil".

http://philosophybites.com/...7/06/stephen_law_on_.html

Did you know that God sent bears to kill 42 children just because they mad fun of one of his prophets' lack of hair?

So much for turning the other cheek =[


PS I'm now on the lookout for bears attacking me for making fun of things

[quote poster=H4xOr WaNgEr; 19520; 361650]

Dude E = MC^2.

I teach literature at the high school level and one of the books I teach is Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night. He makes a reference to the Book of Job, so to enlighten my students more about what that allusion is really meaning, we get into the Book of Job. It's perhaps the most clear argument for how we are to react to evil being in the world.

For a quick paraphrase for those who aren't familiar (and I'm sure I'll mess up a detail or two, but the general idea is correct): Job is the most devoted follower of God of his time and has been rewarded with virtually every type of prosperity possible. He's got a huge house, lots of kids, lots of livestock, pretty much he's got it all. Satan comes to God and makes the argument that Job is only devoted because he's been rewarded for being devoted.

Satan is given permission to destroy Job's life, first destroying his livelihood, later destroying his family, and finally even taking Job close to death itself by afflicting him with illnesses.

Job remains devoted to God throughout virtually all of this, but ultimately he does question why this is happening to him. God's response is basically that Job cannot POSSIBLY understand everything that is part of God's plan and that because he cannot even fathom everything that God knows, he has no right to question his grand scheme.

It's a pretty unsatisfying answer, but the basic idea is that these things exist and we can't possibly understand why God works the way he does.

ummm... so the explanation was that God and Satan had a bet going and Job was just the poor schmuck they decided to manipulate for their game? ;)

I mean what does HIS life matter, he's just one of those lowly humans who couldn't possibly comprehend their bet.

"We can't possibly understand why God works the way he does"

aka the God Works In Mysterious Ways conversation-ending argument.

But the end result of that, is no different than what happens when in a universe with no god at all.

The original question posed here on this thread is similar to my own, decades ago.
Something like this:

If there is a god that created all life here on earth, and (s)he/it loves us, why would (s)he/it create deadly microbiological life forms that we could not even detect with the senses (s)he/it gave us and neglect to warn us about them?
That's a helluva practical joke and has nothing to do with free will. It is nothing other than sick and twisted.

You would think (s)he/it could have at least finally found the time to letting us in on that joke with a Top Ten Commandment something like "Thou Shall Boil Thy Drinking Water and Wash Thy Hands Frequently".

But I can only surmise that (s)he/it was too concerned with the competition (Thou shalt have no other gods before me) to concern (s)he/itself with the untold hundreds of millions of children alone that died from bacterial and viral infection.

Indeed, that's beyond MY understanding.