Pierson5 wrote:Reactionary wrote:
I believe that the evidence for God is solid. Unless, however, you want to deny Him, in which case no evidence would be quite enough. If God waved at us from the sky, people like you would attribute it to a hallucination... even if hundreds of people saw the very same thing.
I think God would know what it would take to change our minds, being all knowing/powerful and all. We don't
want to deny God, the same way you don't
want to deny Santa or unicorns. There is just insufficient evidence.
Hasn't it ever come to your mind that the present state of things is maybe the best for us in the long run? 80 years we live on this Earth is nothing compared to an eternity. According to Christianity, there will obviously be more than plenty of time (if time exists in Heaven, we discussed this and didn't come to a conclusion) to see and experience God. He certainly could have spawned us directly in Heaven, but obviously He has other plans... which are not that difficult to understand IMO - we are here so that we can experience both good and evil, and make up our minds about what we want for ourselves. God obviously doesn't want an army of robots, but rather free-thinkers who chose Him. "
Let's reason together", as He said in Isaiah 1:18.
Pierson5 wrote:Reactionary wrote:
Well personally, I think it's ridiculous to think that the entire universe could just pop out of nowhere, along with its finely tuned laws that allow life, then randomly assemble a planet with conditions and atmosphere that would allow a cell to randomly assemble itself, then evolve over millions of years of random mutations into humans who think logically... not randomly. How do you know your thoughts aren't just a random "dance" of chemicals?
We don't know how the universe came about. If our thoughts are random "dances" of chemicals, what does that prove? In order to think logically we require a deity? What evidence do you have that the mind is anything but material? How do you account for victims of accidents who suffer amnesia?
My evidence? Reason. Ability to think logically. Free will. Impossibility to quantify the "mind". Personhood. Abstract thinking - grasping ideas and concepts... You name it. You may be in a good or bad mood, and that can certainly influence your decisions in everyday life. But 2+2 always equals 4, regardless of the state of your mind. You ask if the ability to think logically requires a deity - yes, it does. An intelligent mind can either be eternal or created. Intelligence doesn't arise out of primordial soup. Chemicals don't think, they react according to predetermined laws. Complexity doesn't mean anything - computers these days are more complex than ever, but they'll never "think" for themselves. That's something only an immaterial mind could do. If the mind was solely material, we wouldn't have a reason to trust it because it would be just a series of chemical reactions and electrical discharges.
You ask about amnesia - well, I like to apply the TV analogy here - the human brain is like a TV set. You need it to display the signal, but if it breaks down, it won't be able to do so anymore. That still doesn't mean it's the source of the signal. It just transmits it to our senses. So if a brain gets damaged, the channel between our senses and the source gets disrupted. The fact that mind is immaterial doesn't mean it's not closely tied to the material brain. We use it to interact with the physical world - neuroscience, as far as I know, (still) hasn't found a part of the brain where decisions are initiated. You can tamper with the brain and make the person do something (like, move an arm), but you can't make that person
want to do it. The person will always say, "
I didn't do that with my arm. You did."
Pierson5 wrote:Reactionary wrote:If there is an infinite number of universes in existence, they must come from somewhere. There should be a random universe generator that continuously alters the "dials" i.e. cosmological constants and creates new, different universes. How do you account for it? It just popped out of nowhere, I guess?
Again, we don't know how the universe came into existence. Steve set forth a few natural based hypothesis to account for the "small chance" argument. We have no evidence of anything supernatural, and until then, natural hypothesis are better than supernatural (god) hypothesis.
You're setting the rules yourself. In fact, that's circular reasoning. You start from the assumption of naturalism, which causes you to reject other hypotheses, and so you claim that natural hypothesis is better because you assumed naturalism to be true. You were the one who characterized God as something "supernatural". Until the 19th century, Theism was the default position. Nonreligious people were Deists because they knew that to reject God meant to reject reason. It's plain and simple, but for some reason it's hard to explain it to modern day atheists. The only rational assumption is that an eternal, transcedent, omnipotent
mind was the Cause of the impressive order and intelligence that we witness, as written in John 1:1. The "
Word" mentioned in that verse also refers to "
information". As I said, the pond scum hypothesis undermines reason itself, and creates an absurd and untenable position.
Pierson5 wrote:Reactionary wrote:Secondly, even if you assemble a cell from all the possible ingredients, it still won't come to life. If that was possible, we'd create new life in a lab in no time. And even if
that happened, evolution requires a net increase in genetic information, something that we have never witnessed. I already wrote about this not long ago - I suggest looking at this post:
http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... 90#p119137
Define "information." In the post you linked, you failed to acknowledge:
Chromosome number can increase potentially by chromosome breakage (or decrease, fusion). Imagine a chromosome that for one reason or another gets broken into two, which then independently evolve.
Another way is duplication. For whatever reason (nondisjunction, for example), a cell might end up with an extra copy of a chromosome. If this does not cause too much of a fitness penalty, that chromosome can propagate and continue down the road of evolution. Because the extra chromosome is redundant, it can mutate much more freely, and thus you'll eventually have a very different chromosome later down the line. This is also a major source of new genes, an event called
gene duplication.
Are there any experimental examples for such "evolution"? For as far as I know, when chromosomes duplicate in humans, creating as you say "redundant" ones, the person gets either Down's syndrome or some other condition. And we know that such conditions aren't exactly beneficial, are they? Not to mention the problems with infertility that such persons often suffer from, it doesn't really give much space for such "mutations" to spread on.
Pierson5 wrote:Reactionary wrote:
Matthew 24:24
Bible quote, that settles it
Yes, that settles it. Apparently some think that Christians should behave like saints, forgetting or intentionally ignoring the fact that according to the Christian doctrine, all humans are sinners and being Christian doesn't make us immune to sin.
Pierson5 wrote:Also, it doesn't matter where the information came from. I try to refrain from pointing out rebuttals that come from biased religious sources, attack the argument on its own merit. I'll agree with you though, it says nothing about truth/non-truth of god. In terms of morality, they are interesting questions though. Just my 2 cents.
There's not much to discuss here, it's plain and simple. If God doesn't exist, then objective morality doesn't exist either. "Morality" would then only be a series of behaviours that humans follow because of survival advantages, or random "dance" of brain chemistry. But what would then be a reason to be "moral"? That's why I believe it's hypocritical when atheists criticise "immorality" of the biblical God, of people in the Church or whoever else, because their worldview rejects any meaning or purpose whatsoever, including morality. Not to mention free will.