Historical Accuracy of the Bible

[Tainted]

The earth is 4.6 billion years old while the sun, I believe, is what he was referring to. Sure, there was a very small chance of the big bang happening-- but how many other planets do you see that hold life on them? Look at how large just our galaxy is-- and as far as we know, we're the only life in our galaxy. Now look at the galaxy-- it's a mere speck in the size of the universe, and once again, it has not been proven that there is life other than us. I personally believe there is somewhere, but until it's proven, the argument is void.

So, if there are 5 planets in every solar system (a severe understatement) and 100 solar systems in every galaxy (a severe understatement) and 1,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe (a severe understatement) and we are the only planet with life on it: well, that's a ratio of 1:500,000,000,000.

One planet in five hundred billion (a severe understatement of the actual amount of planets) bears life. Life is a coincidence, why we exist here and not somewhere else is another coincidence-- it just so happened on Earth, it could've happened anywhere else, but we happened here.
It's pure chance, hell, if there was life on every planet, I might be a bit more partial to the theory of some higher being interveining-- but there's life on one planet as far as we know. And that's one planet compared to the near infinite amount of planets that actually exist-- coincidence? Yeah.

Adieu,
Zak Hunter

[Sorovis]

Such a conclusion presupposes that each planet in each system has an equal chance to support and sustain life in the first place; along with create it. Such an assumption is extremely inaccurate; there are many conditions which must be right in order for life to even continue; much less appear. The appropriate gases must be present in sufficiant quantities; the necessary temperature must be constant (or at least mild enough). I realize that not all life is the same, and that theoretically there could be other ways of creating life from different elements and environments. My point still stands, however, that not all-- or even half-- of all of the planets in the Universe would be able to begin or support life.

[Heald]

In order for you to disprove all of this by the way, you must first disprove the existence of God. Remember that.This is a good idea. Everybody stop: let this topic drop off page 1 and save Misc. Thank you.

- The 'Shut Up Fool!' Party

[Sorovis]

This is a good idea. Everybody stop: let this topic drop off page 1 and save Misc. Thank you.

Well its not like one topic is going to destroy the boards forever. Or will it...

[Aglandiir]

For the record, I was referring to the rough age of the universe. Earth formed just about 11 billion years after the Big Bang event (I'm making no claims here about what that event actually signifies). It took another billion years (not really, but you get the idea) for life to form on Earth after Earth formed out of our sun's nebula cloud. 11 + 1 = 12 billion years. By the way, the Sun is technically the same age as Earth, along with all the other planets, with the possible exception of Pluto, which seems to be a captured satellite.

Anyway...


Considering I have only heard of such a theory in the passing it would become necessary for you to perhaps link to a site explaining it, or maybe explain it yourself. Quite obviously I am not going to just take your word on it yet simultaneously I am not going to deny it could be great potential debate material.

I would explain it, but there's a good reason there are many thick books on the subject and the world's brightest minds are currently devoted to figuring it out: it's very complicated. You'd be much better served by reading the book I mentioned, or publications by people who make a living studying the equations involved.

But here, have a link to some links (http://www.combose.com/Science/Physics/Quantum_Mechanics/Quantum_Field_Theory/Superstrings/).


Such a conclusion presupposes that each planet in each system has an equal chance to support and sustain life in the first place; along with create it. [...] My point still stands, however, that not all-- or even half-- of all of the planets in the Universe would be able to begin or support life.

It's true that not every planet is capable of creating life. But you're not digging deep enough by saying that.

Every planet, at the moment of its birth has an equal chance of becoming a planet that could support the emergence of life. For many (most) planets, that chance becomes zero immediately; the planet could be too far away from its sun, it could have no moon or too many moons, it might not be large enough to hold an atmosphere with gravity... etc etc. But all planets have, if even for the shortest of instants, the potential to become a life-bearing planet.

And because all planets have that potential... due to what I said earlier about chances given infinite time, eventually, it is mathematically certain that a suitable planet will eventually come in to existence. Moreover, given infinite time, it is mathematically certain that an infinite number of such planets will eventually exist. And since there is a chance for each of those planets to develop life... given infinite time, an infinite number of those planets will eventually develop life. It's just simple mathematical limits. It could take a trillion years and just as many Earth-like planets dying before it happens, but life will eventually get going somewhere. What's more, life will eventually get going somewhere and keep going for an appreciable period of time. And, given infinite time, it will keep happening in different places in the universe, once in a very, very long while.


Not only this, but you must consider how incredibly complex the earliest life must have been

This also isn't exactly true. What we call "simple life" these days, things like ameoba and paramecium, are indeed very complicated. But those were not the first life forms. Even the considerably simpler bacterium was probably not the first. There are non-living structures in existence today with some intriguingly life-like characteristics; take, for instance, the prion, the feared antigen behind mad cow, Kuru, and CJD. It is a protein, and proteins are not living. They are merely molecules. The prion, however, is different: it is twisted in just such a way as to allow it, upon contact with another, normal protein, to force that other protein to twist itself and become a prion. Sounds like reproduction, doesn't it?

A protein that was randomly harder for other proteins to alter, or had a shape that allowed it to more easily alter other proteins, would eventually become dominant in numbers. That's very simple natural selection. Perhaps that better protein was formed by a combination of two other proteins, or a protein and other ambient materials: simple adaptive behavior. These are still just proteins, not alive in any way, but they already display several characteristics of life. Carried further through time, it's easy to see how a situation like this could eventually produce structures that could replicate themselves without having to collide with another structure, and then life would be born.

I'd like to mention a very important aspect of the early Earth that most people forget: the Moon. Four billion years ago, Luna was much closer to the Earth than it is today; due to the law of conservation of momentum, the Earth was thus also rotating faster around its axis (I believe the day was 20 hours long). The importance of these factors is profound: the Moon, beind closer to the Earth, would exert an exponentially greater gravitational force on the planet's surface, thus causing more powerful tides. The Earth's faster spin would also tend to exert greater forces on things at the surface. The net result would be the infant Earth's liquid seas being massive blenders; the tides, the meteor strikes, and everything else would mix whatever was in the primordial ooze (such as prion-like proteins) around, making collisions more frequent and exposing the material to new environmental conditions by moving it to a different part of the planet.

Just for your information.


Yes but if time went on without an end we would not be here yet because time would still be attempting to travel from point A; with no beginning and time simply going farther and farther back, reaching any particular destination becomes impossible; we wouldn't even have reached the creation of our own solar system yet. If time, you see, spanned for infinity, then there would be an infinate amount of time between the beginning of time (point A) and the present time (point B). Try counting backwards from negative infinity and try to reach zero. Not that fun, nor is it even possible.

Why, exactly, are you talking about going back? Of course you'd never get to the beginning of infinite time, because there is no beginning. And your number analogy is flawed, because infinity is a concept, not a place something can actually be at. You can't possible count backwards from negative infinity to anything, because you can't start at infinity. You can only start your counting at a finite number, and reaching zero from any finite number is trivial.

See, if time is infinite, then we don't need to go back to the non-existent, infinite beginning to figure out where "we" started. If time is infinite, then "we", meaning the physical world, just got plonked into time at some arbitrary point, as Brain previously explained. Our beginning is this arbitrary time zero; it can be absolutely anywhere on the infinite timeline you want to put it. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that time zero is before everything else: a constant reference point.

God is, by definition, always a possibility. That's all I was trying to convey by what I said earlier. There is no possible way to disprove anything about God (one could make the case that there is therefore no way to prove anything about Him, either, but I won't say that here). The only way science could ever do away with God would be to come up with an alternative that is much more useful to everybody, and easier to understand and see in action, than belief in God. Due to the several practical benefits of faith (and ignoring the several practical drawbacks), discussed at length in many anthropology and psychology journals, I doubt such a universally superior scientific alternative is nearby. Science is fighting an unfair war against an opponent which cannot be beaten.

HealdPK: there is plenty of antimatter in the universe today. Antiparticles (positrons, specifically) are created by atom-smashers all the time. Every time two high-energy photons collide, they release a particle and its antiparticle and lose a corresponding amount of energy.

[ShadowPikachu]

I don't plan on getting very far into this debate as I am not very good at debating, but I have been reading this thread and could not help posting this.


Also, Sorovis, saying it does not make sense that the universe cannot come to exist on its own is not proof at all. Rather, it just shows that human minds cannot comprehend that possibility. Just because we cannot understand something does not mean that it is not possible. Believe it or not, we are not infallible (except me ;)).

HealdPK, would not this logic also be applicable for God? Just because our human minds cannot comprehend Him, would not mean that He could not exist, because, like you said, just because we cannot understand something does not mean that it is impossibe.

[Sorovis]

I would explain it, but there's a good reason there are many thick books on the subject and the world's brightest minds are currently devoted to figuring it out: it's very complicated. You'd be much better served by reading the book I mentioned, or publications by people who make a living studying the equations involved.

But here, have a link to some links (http://www.combose.com/Science/Physics/Quantum_Mechanics/Quantum_Field_Theory/Superstrings/).

I will further investigate as soon as is possible. Just to make it clear though, I will be gone for about seven days in about forty-eight hours; whether or not I have successfully read through the length and understood it before that time has yet to be seen.


It's true that not every planet is capable of creating life. But you're not digging deep enough by saying that.

Every planet, at the moment of its birth has an equal chance of becoming a planet that could support the emergence of life. For many (most) planets, that chance becomes zero immediately; the planet could be too far away from its sun, it could have no moon or too many moons, it might not be large enough to hold an atmosphere with gravity... etc etc. But all planets have, if even for the shortest of instants, the potential to become a life-bearing planet.

And because all planets have that potential... due to what I said earlier about chances given infinite time, eventually, it is mathematically certain that a suitable planet will eventually come in to existence. Moreover, given infinite time, it is mathematically certain that an infinite number of such planets will eventually exist. And since there is a chance for each of those planets to develop life... given infinite time, an infinite number of those planets will eventually develop life. It's just simple mathematical limits. It could take a trillion years and just as many Earth-like planets dying before it happens, but life will eventually get going somewhere. What's more, life will eventually get going somewhere and keep going for an appreciable period of time. And, given infinite time, it will keep happening in different places in the universe, once in a very, very long while.

I recognize the mathmetical probabilities of such an event occuring; I recognize that due to these same probabilities it will occur given time. What I also recognize is that twelve-billion years after the Universe began and some one-billion years into Earth's existence and life appeared. That is by no means an infinity; it is infinately far away from such. The appearence of life would not be so incredible if there had been much more time between the Universe's appearence and the first forms of life. No, however, that we have established that not all planets will bear life, we can look at the individual chances of a single planet suitable for life to bear it.

Another point regarding the complexity of life is how amino acids themselves are assembled to form proteins. The probability of getting L-amino acids as opposed to D-amino acids is of course fifty percent. Joining two such acids with a peptide bond is also fifty percent. Getting the right amino acid out of twenty into a the correct position can be seen as five percent; a rough estimate due to the actual number varying due to other factors. The probability of getting everything correct while placing one amino acid can be seen as .5 X .5 X .5 = .0125. The probability of assembling N such amino acids would be .0125 X .0125 and so on for N number of times. If one such protein had one-hundred active sites, the probability of getting an accurate assembly would be .0125 multiplying itself one-hundred times, or 4.9 X 10 to the negative one-hundred-ninety first power. Such a random assembly for proteins alone, not factoring all of the other essential structures of life, is ridiculous; especially for twelve-billion years. The complexity of life alone; even the most basic forms simpler than the simplest we have today, is almost unimaginable.


This also isn't exactly true. What we call "simple life" these days, things like ameoba and paramecium, are indeed very complicated. But those were not the first life forms. Even the considerably simpler bacterium was probably not the first. There are non-living structures in existence today with some intriguingly life-like characteristics; take, for instance, the prion, the feared antigen behind mad cow, Kuru, and CJD. It is a protein, and proteins are not living. They are merely molecules. The prion, however, is different: it is twisted in just such a way as to allow it, upon contact with another, normal protein, to force that other protein to twist itself and become a prion. Sounds like reproduction, doesn't it?

Sounds like reproduction, but is not. A prion crashing into a molecule and turning it into a prion by no means transfers information now does it? Anything accomplished by what we would say is the first prion would not be passed on to the next molecule it crashed into; thus anythind developed in the first prion is not going to be replicated. I am also aware that life itself in the first years of its appearence was even more simplistic than what we have today. Does that change the probabilities of proteins randomly assembling themselves, or DNA, or catalysts? Not a bit. Also remember that living systems differentiate from nonliving ones due to their ability to reproduce, process energy, and store information. All of these are very complicated tasks, even assuming some form of replication had been discovered.


A protein that was randomly harder for other proteins to alter, or had a shape that allowed it to more easily alter other proteins, would eventually become dominant in numbers. That's very simple natural selection. Perhaps that better protein was formed by a combination of two other proteins, or a protein and other ambient materials: simple adaptive behavior. These are still just proteins, not alive in any way, but they already display several characteristics of life. Carried further through time, it's easy to see how a situation like this could eventually produce structures that could replicate themselves without having to collide with another structure, and then life would be born.

Not structures past the simplicity of a single protein; then of course there is the point that single proteins do not make up life, but many. In order for life itself to exist, many different proteins would be necessary. What I have been using as examples already suppose the necessity of more than one protein; that includes the catalyst point, the most recent point above, and I believe that is it. Your idea on how a protein that is able to most easily alter another is noted; that however does not explain how a protein would fit itself into a three-dimensional shape that is compatable with an ATP and glucose; it involves outside materials and could not be retained without some form of reproduction that passes on such information.


I'd like to mention a very important aspect of the early Earth that most people forget: the Moon. Four billion years ago, Luna was much closer to the Earth than it is today; due to the law of conservation of momentum, the Earth was thus also rotating faster around its axis (I believe the day was 20 hours long). The importance of these factors is profound: the Moon, beind closer to the Earth, would exert an exponentially greater gravitational force on the planet's surface, thus causing more powerful tides. The Earth's faster spin would also tend to exert greater forces on things at the surface. The net result would be the infant Earth's liquid seas being massive blenders; the tides, the meteor strikes, and everything else would mix whatever was in the primordial ooze (such as prion-like proteins) around, making collisions more frequent and exposing the material to new environmental conditions by moving it to a different part of the planet.

Just for your information.

I am already aware of such a scenario; all of the points I bring up automatically assume that primordial soup with all of the necessary componants is present at the time that life supposedly began. I believe I mentioned at one point the conditions of early Earth most likely being closer to such chaos as you have mentioned; then again, I may have not and I can see where you would get the idea to mention it.


Why exactly, are you talking about going back? Of course you'd never get to the beginning of infinite time, because there is no beginning. And your number analogy is flawed, because infinity is a concept, not a place something can actually be at. You can't possible count backwards from negative infinity to anything, because you can't start at infinity. You can only start your counting at a finite number, and reaching zero from any finite number is trivial.

That is exactly my point. Assuming life has gone along on line as it has now, you could not start at the beginning and reach this current state because there was no beginning and thus no beginning point for time to begin on. The entire point I have been trying to convey is that time is not infinate and so at some point it must have started. After Brain's post I must say I need to regain my bearings; Either God's actions are what began time when the Universe was created or something along those lines. Still however, my point stands. Time could not have begun and reached this point with no point to start from.


See, if time is infinite, then we don't need to go back to the non-existent, infinite beginning to figure out where "we" started. If time is infinite, then "we", meaning the physical world, just got plonked into time at some arbitrary point, as Brain previously explained. Our beginning is this arbitrary time zero; it can be absolutely anywhere on the infinite timeline you want to put it. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that time zero is before everything else: a constant reference point.

But it must be there for some reason. Things do not just plop out of nowhere, regarding anything percievable by man; unless of course there was a higher being or existence that put it there. The continuation from a point zero is an event, you see, and events need causing. Events, matter, energy, whatever; they cannot suddenly appear for absolutely no reason with nothing to precede them.


God is, by definition, always a possibility. That's all I was trying to convey by what I said earlier. There is no possible way to disprove anything about God (one could make the case that there is therefore no way to prove anything about Him, either, but I won't say that here). The only way science could ever do away with God would be to come up with an alternative that is much more useful to everybody, and easier to understand and see in action, than belief in God. Due to the several practical benefits of faith (and ignoring the several practical drawbacks), discussed at length in many anthropology and psychology journals, I doubt such a universally superior scientific alternative is nearby. Science is fighting an unfair war against an opponent which cannot be beaten.

And vice versa. Science as well can change its theories on a whim of new information or new concepts; it is just as flexible as any concept of God, and so there is no 'unfair' in such a never ending fight. The only ultimate proof will be when one dies, or when the Rapture or second coming occurs. Since once a person is dead they do not make contact with the living (let us assume so for arguments sake), then we cannot learn from them. Since such events as the Rapture are not until the future we also cannot tell from them. I do agree with you that as of now there is no hardcore evidence that absolutely demands the existence of a God; at least none that cannot be contested (which completely defeats the purpose anyways), and that there is no hardcore evidence demanding the nonexistence of said God. That does not stop both sides from continuously arguing, however, and searching for signs. So this is what I do, search for signs of God in events and things that are simply too random to happen on their own; so you will most likely be here to tell me how they are not as unlikely as I think. Such a debate could go on forever if we both had the strength.

On a related note, remember I will be gone for some seven days coming soon, so I will try to make my last response until then particularly well crafted. Until my return, keep preparing. You have my word that I will.

[The Muffin Man]

HealdPK, would not this logic also be applicable for God? Just because our human minds cannot comprehend Him, would not mean that He could not exist, because, like you said, just because we cannot understand something does not mean that it is impossibe.

I think this was Healds point. if we can't deny Gods existance because we 'can't comprehend it' then he can't deny the Big Bang because he couldn't comprehend it.

[MetalScyther]

Trying to prove a point by saying the bible isn't logical is one of the stupidest points you could make. Likewise, attempting to prove that the bible is factually correct is equally, if not more, stupid. What you people don't understand is that the Church itself teaches that the bible isn't meant to be taken literally. hat means that the Church doesn't factually believe that God created the world in 7 days. Sheesh.

[Aglandiir]

Quick post, before sleep.

The beginning of time could not be an event, because an event needs time to exist; it requires that there be distinct "before" and "after" states, with an optional "during" state. Saying something like "before time existed" is nonsensical, because there is no "before time." The temporal concept of before only makes sense when time exists. Thus, since there can be no before time, there can also be no beginning of time. The same can be said about after, and the end of time. So unless you want to argue that time doesn't exist at all (which some people do), it seems that the proper conclusion to draw from this is that time has no beginning and no end; it is infinite.

This does not preclude the possibility that time goes in long circles, of course.

And about life and proteins, etc. What use would the earliest life have for ATP, or even glucose (two highly interrelated substances)? Glucose is used for energy by current life forms because it is abundant, but also because that's just how our bodies work. If we had evolved over billions of years to break down silicates for energy, then we'd be eating rocks without a second thought. The earliest life forms had not yet evolved any dependence on a single outside energy source. The earliest things that might meet the definition of life were probably made of a small number of interlocked molecules, each of which changed the shape of the others when in contact with various substances. For "food", all they would need would be a replacement protein, in case one broke away for some reason. No complicated biological structures would be necessary. All of the life functions could be carried out by relatively simple chemical reactions.

Eventually, one protein structure would stumble upon a carbohydrate or a related structure and manage to break it apart and use the pieces to improve its survival chances, automatically, through chemical reaction; after that happened, that protein structure could have a significant natural advantage over its primitive competition and become widespread, quickly creating a great many copies of itself, all of which would continue to evolve via random chance. Baby steps, yes... but a billion years of baby steps. A whole lot can happen in a billion years.

If a randomly probably event has infinite time in which to occur, two things can be said about it:
1. It will occur with 100% certainty.
2. It will take a finite amount of time to occur.
Physical laws allow for the possibility of life, thus life has a chance to exist. Life occured in 12 billlion years, a very finite amount of time. If it had taken 75 billion years for life to show up, would this debate really be any different? 75 billion is also very finite; just as finite as 12 billion. There was just as much chance for life to take 75 billion years to appear as to take 12 billion, or 5 billion, or 1 trillion years. Random chances do not discriminate.

[Leon-IH]

Holy crap. Hey The Muffin Man, strat, read what Sorovis posted like about a page ago. Not that I actually agree with all of it, but it actually makes sense. Then I see what you post in response and its like bashing my head against a wall made of spikes.

it'd be nice if SOMEONE countered my sig by now but not yet.

anyway, i'd like to add 10 things for you unquestioning christians to think about.

10- You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god.

9- You feel insulted and 'dehumanized' when scientists say that people evolved from lesser life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8- You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Trinity god.

7- Your face turns purple when you hear of the 'atrocities' attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in 'Exodus' and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in 'Joshua' -- including women, children, and animals!

6- You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about god sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5- You are willing to spend your life looking for little loop-holes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find
nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by pre-historic tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that the Earth is a couple of generations
old.!

4- You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects -- will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet you consider your religion the most 'tolerant' and 'loving'.

3- While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor, speaking in 'tongues,' may be all the evidence you need.

2- You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1- You actually know a lot less than many Atheists and Agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history -- but still call yourself a "Christian."

[Heald]

it'd be nice if SOMEONE countered my sig by now but not yet.

anyway, i'd like to add 10 things for you unquestioning christians to think about.

10- You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god.

9- You feel insulted and 'dehumanized' when scientists say that people evolved from lesser life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8- You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Trinity god.

7- Your face turns purple when you hear of the 'atrocities' attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in 'Exodus' and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in 'Joshua' -- including women, children, and animals!

6- You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about god sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5- You are willing to spend your life looking for little loop-holes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find
nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by pre-historic tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that the Earth is a couple of generations
old.!

4- You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects -- will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet you consider your religion the most 'tolerant' and 'loving'.

3- While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor, speaking in 'tongues,' may be all the evidence you need.

2- You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1- You actually know a lot less than many Atheists and Agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history -- but still call yourself a "Christian."Give this man a medal.

Now shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

(this applies to all of you, not just this dude)

[phaedrus]

Give this man a medal.

Now shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

(this applies to all of you, not just this dude)

limed for ****ing truth. close this damn thread. or at least let it rot in wherever ye might consider a horrible place. *Michael Jackson's house*

[Sorovis]

Quick post, before sleep.

The beginning of time could not be an event, because an event needs time to exist; it requires that there be distinct "before" and "after" states, with an optional "during" state. Saying something like "before time existed" is nonsensical, because there is no "before time." The temporal concept of before only makes sense when time exists. Thus, since there can be no before time, there can also be no beginning of time. The same can be said about after, and the end of time. So unless you want to argue that time doesn't exist at all (which some people do), it seems that the proper conclusion to draw from this is that time has no beginning and no end; it is infinite.

Fair enough. Time however is a measurement, yes? I believe it may have been you who stated this, then again I am not certain. If time is a measurement, then what would become of it if there was nothing to measure? Such as no matter, no energy, no events? Would time really be in existence, even though there was nothing to measure? What may have been is that God (again who is not matter, energy, nor an event) created, or at least gave time (a concept) something to measure at the creating of the Universe. That means that time itself was not literally created in a sense, but merely given something to measure. Not that I am going to argue that time itself does not exist, but rather that it does not exist in the way I have at least seen it in the past. As a form of measurement, time I suppose could be infinate, with not creation and no destruction; it however had nothing to measure until the Creation of the Universe, thus it has not been in effect until something measurable appeared. I suppose I may be repeating myself, but I am merely trying to convey my point clearly.


This does not preclude the possibility that time goes in long circles, of course.

Of course, but I am not interested in arguing a point, and, from what I can tell, neither are you.


And about life and proteins, etc. What use would the earliest life have for ATP, or even glucose (two highly interrelated substances)? Glucose is used for energy by current life forms because it is abundant, but also because that's just how our bodies work. If we had evolved over billions of years to break down silicates for energy, then we'd be eating rocks without a second thought. The earliest life forms had not yet evolved any dependence on a single outside energy source. The earliest things that might meet the definition of life were probably made of a small number of interlocked molecules, each of which changed the shape of the others when in contact with various substances. For "food", all they would need would be a replacement protein, in case one broke away for some reason. No complicated biological structures would be necessary. All of the life functions could be carried out by relatively simple chemical reactions.

Such a molecular structure however does not meet the definition of life. Living organisms are recognized by their complexity, and abilities to store information, process energy, and replicate. With none of those three things covered, the structures of molecules would only be eerily reminiscent of life; not truly life on their own. And regarding what indeed would have served as a source of energy for early life, it is generally agreed that that would have been sunlight. Even using the energy given off from light, however, requires a very complicated system of breaking down molecules and the utilization of ATP and other molecules and simple structures; again, no simple form of life could have been simplistic on the level that you are speculating on and still truly be considered life; it is the difference between fire and bacteria.


Eventually, one protein structure would stumble upon a carbohydrate or a related structure and manage to break it apart and use the pieces to improve its survival chances, automatically, through chemical reaction; after that happened, that protein structure could have a significant natural advantage over its primitive competition and become widespread, quickly creating a great many copies of itself, all of which would continue to evolve via random chance. Baby steps, yes... but a billion years of baby steps. A whole lot can happen in a billion years.

With the first point on the complexity of life I addressed how catalysts would be necessary for a successful and optimal chemical reaction; again the protein structure on its own could not perform such a function without a great amount of time of developement and some form of replication that stored information and passed it on (which I have already pointed out it does not have). Secondly regarding the baby steps such a structure would have taken over billions of years; it would, again, need some form of replication that passed on information. Without that, all it would be doing is altering the shape of ther molecules and perhaps changing itself.


If a randomly probably event has infinite time in which to occur, two things can be said about it:
1. It will occur with 100% certainty.
2. It will take a finite amount of time to occur.
Physical laws allow for the possibility of life, thus life has a chance to exist. Life occured in 12 billlion years, a very finite amount of time. If it had taken 75 billion years for life to show up, would this debate really be any different? 75 billion is also very finite; just as finite as 12 billion. There was just as much chance for life to take 75 billion years to appear as to take 12 billion, or 5 billion, or 1 trillion years. Random chances do not discriminate.

Random chances do not discriminate, yes; and twelve-billion and one-trillion are both equally distant from infinity of course, but you are forgetting one point: in a longer amount of time, the chance for life would have had a greater possibility of occurance. Infinity is a concept, not an actual measurement. What we need to focus on is what the probability of life occurring is without judging within the realm of infinity (an oxymoron, really). I am saying that the chances of it occuring would require much more time than twelve-billion years; not an infinate amount more, but enough to where proposing it occured within twelve-billion years is extremely unlikely to the point where speculating on it is unrealistic.

Leon IH, I have a question for you. Why when the debate has taken a percievable form (trying to prove or disprove the existence and power of God and Jesus), do you ask frivolous questions that quite clearly convey your own lack of intellect on that subject and ignorance towards the truth of such matters? Why do Checkmate and I refuse to answer the 'questions' in your post? Because they are ridicuous; the evidence which they are generally based off of comes from some personal reality which we do not all share, and in no way to I intend to answer your questions on a matter which you quite clearly do not take seriously. You march around, proclaiming your own knowledge on the futility of religion in your posts and signatures, and yet you seem to have little to no knowledge on how these religions actually work or on that fact that they are actually too different in many aspects to actually classify in the same category. Learn about what you are talking about, then I will take you seriously. On the issue of your own questions, Checkmate has told me to rest easy in that he is dealing with them.

[Brain]

But I do still have a few questions and points regarding that post nonetheless: first and foremost, God, as you have stated, must have created the Universe and the Beginning under time (in which you also say that it must not have been the Beginning if time was taken to create it), to which I will ask if that necessarily means that God Himself exists under time, or simply operates under time? I suspect this point may be ignorant to something you have already posted, but if you would be so kind as to direct me to where it was answered I will be glad to read it again. If not, that as of now is my only standing point aside from speculations as to how other dimensions may affect our perception of this very topic; if you want to continue something on that issue, please state so and I will be happy to further state my ideas.

I was discussing with my father on this yesterday and there's another image that we agreed is better to show the point.

Time is the name we give to the concept of order between two different states. If there is no time, it means, basically, that the universe is a still frame. It does not move, it does not change, it is completely frozen. Without time, all you can have is data, and matter and energy is a way to understand data. Without time, everything is simultaneous. How would you define a hierarchical relationship of cause or creation between elements which exist on a still frame? If you replace that within the bounds of time, it is akin to seeing two lights light up at the same time (forget the theory of relativity) and trying to argue that one caused the other. Obviously, you can't say that unless one was turned on before the other. Well that's the same thing. Without time the universe and whatever encloses it is a still frame, a single state, where everything is, by default, simultaneous. Therefore there are no inherent relationships to be seen between anything. You can interpret what you see in any way you like.

Besides, how do you define thought and intelligence without time? As I said, without time, everything is a still frame and only data exists. Intelligence is the ability to have a reasoning: A therefore B therefore C. Intelligence, logic, obviously function on a step by step basis, and that is precisely what the concept of time allows. A God existing, or working outside of time (which is the same thing) would not be intelligent, because intelligence requires time the same way creation and causality do.

Also note that, more specifically, the christian God is unable to predict the actions of humans because of free will. Therefore, he cannot know what someone will decide to do without waiting for him to do it, therefore he is obviously subject to time, and moreso that my previous arguments made him. I had pretty much proved that God has to be subject to time in order to be an intelligent creator, but the fact still remained that he could theoretically start, stop, rewind and replay our universe at will, the same way we can start, stop, rewind and replay a movie or a simulation, and these actions would take place in his timeline. That's what I meant by enclosing timeline - you can translate our time into God's time, but it isn't necessarily linear. However, because of the shaky concept of free will, the christian God wouldn't be able to rewind or replay the same events, which is an even greater limitation than the limitations I already gave. From how I see it, the Bible pretty much implies that God's time is linearly translated as ours.


First of all: think of the concept of God. Then, remember that I have stated repeatedly that God is not matter nor is He energy, nor is He an event; thus He does not need causing. In order to argue a person who claims that as God the Creator is above mass and energy, you cannot say 'that doesn't make sense who made him?' because I have already stated that as God, and the fact that He is not composed of physical properties and elements, He does not need to be created. From now on, I might as well do The Muffin Man's favorite thing and copy/paste this argument, because it looks like I will be repeating many times in the future. In order for you to disprove all of this by the way, you must first disprove the existence of God. Remember that.

The Universe, including its own timeline, is not an event either.

And energy and matter only need causing to the extent that rules dictate that it must, and how it must. State zero, as I already stated, is not subject to these considerations.

Your mistake, I believe, is that you consider that state zero cannot be anything else than nothingness - in that case, of course, your worries are justified, because nothing can come out of nothingness and thus if state zero is empty then all subsequent states will be empty. However, you have to understand that state zero doesn't have to be nothingness. It can be non-empty, and then your argument is void. Think about that, because I'm quite sure that it is the mistake you are making, even if it is not necessarily conscious: if you say matter has to be created, then it means you consider that there was nothing before. But there has never been nothing in the universe.

If you need some help to understand this, imagine that the universe is a collection of one billion switches. If the universe is empty, then all switches are at OFF. But now, think about it. If there is no god, does that mean all the switches have to be off? Why would they be off rather than on? Is there some kind of universal preference for nothingness? Or is it rather your human mind which imagines that by default everything must be empty or equal to zero? Does that really make sense? For example, if the universe is random, it would start with random switches, wouldn't it? And then, there would be one in two to the billionth power chance that the universe would start empty! That's absurdly unlikely now isn't it!

If the universe was empty right now, couldn't I say that God exists, because it is so unlikely that the universe would start off empty that divine intervention had to empty it in some way?

All that to reiterate that matter and energy didn't need to come from anywhere - saying so supposes that the universe's beginning wasn't the beginning of time, and it supposes that at the beginning of time there would be no matter and no energy, albeit there is no logical reason for that. The universe could perfectly start off with, as I like to put it, random junk.


And because all planets have that potential... due to what I said earlier about chances given infinite time, eventually, it is mathematically certain that a suitable planet will eventually come in to existence. Moreover, given infinite time, it is mathematically certain that an infinite number of such planets will eventually exist. And since there is a chance for each of those planets to develop life... given infinite time, an infinite number of those planets will eventually develop life. It's just simple mathematical limits. It could take a trillion years and just as many Earth-like planets dying before it happens, but life will eventually get going somewhere. What's more, life will eventually get going somewhere and keep going for an appreciable period of time. And, given infinite time, it will keep happening in different places in the universe, once in a very, very long while.

Well no, sorry. As far as I know, the supply of planets is not infinite, and as far as I know, there is no reason to assume that the probability for life is constant in time. During the early states of the Big Bang, such a probability was obviously almost null because it was too hot, and eventually, if the universe keeps expanding, it might become too cold for life to develop.

I agree with the core point but you push it too far.


God is, by definition, always a possibility. That's all I was trying to convey by what I said earlier. There is no possible way to disprove anything about God (one could make the case that there is therefore no way to prove anything about Him, either, but I won't say that here). The only way science could ever do away with God would be to come up with an alternative that is much more useful to everybody, and easier to understand and see in action, than belief in God. Due to the several practical benefits of faith (and ignoring the several practical drawbacks), discussed at length in many anthropology and psychology journals, I doubt such a universally superior scientific alternative is nearby. Science is fighting an unfair war against an opponent which cannot be beaten.

Albeit the most general concept of God cannot be disproven, it is untrue to say that particular cases, such as the christian God, cannot be disproven. In a way, it is also possible to disprove God altogether, assuming that God necessarily bears a certain number of characteristics in order to be considered as God.

To understand this, you have to understand the exquisite difference between the laws of physics and the laws of semantics. Whereas you probably agree that we cannot apply the laws of physics to God (and christians love to point that out), it is certain that God is subject to the laws of semantics. It is nonsensical to change the meaning of words when God is involved - if a word means something, that's what it means, and you won't make it mean anything else. Thus, you could prove that the description of God is contradictory on the semantic level (for example, you could try to prove that the concepts of omniscience and omnipotence are contradictory), and you would disprove God. I did such a thing when I showed that God must be bound by time, and I can perfectly imagine to do the same thing on core concepts, although it would probably be harder.

It is also possible to prove God's existence, or at the very least, the existence of immaterial spirits or souls with the same level of certainty as scientific truth. To understand this, let us suppose that souls exist and convey emotions (which I find totally absurd, but that's besides the point). This means two important things:

1- The soul must get input from matter: you will not feel any emotions if you can't see, feel, smell or hear anything. That input is taken from our physical senses, and therefore, we can imagine that electrical pulses representing what we see, hear, etc. are gathered and circulate through our brain. The soul must be able to read these pulses, or it can't do its job. You could imagine that the soul can read them directly without interacting with them.
2- However, most importantly, the soul must give output: when you feel an emotion, it can be translated, physically, as an expression on your face, as words, etc. Therefore, the soul must be able to communicate to the body information about the emotions it feels. We must then imagine that the soul will interact with matter within our brain in such a way that the brain will be able to read it and process it.

Therefore, if a soul exists, it means that studying the brain carefully will reveal "magical transitions" between two points. That is, science will trace back emotions and show that one particular transition transforms incoherent input into organized emotions in a way that is unexplainable by science. Of course, the argument is flawed, because the mystery could be solved by further science. However, as science becomes better and more precise, if the gap remains, the soul will become a scientific explanation (although I can guarantee you it won't be called a soul). Note that science always changes, and that nothing is ever certain - soul will never be a certainty, but if you can't find anything better, albeit you should be able to with the equipment you have, then you bear with it. Scientists do it all the time, as long as they feel it is practical.

Note that in the absence of collective consciousness, the soul could theoretically be used to create human thinking machines. If you can understand how the body communicates with the soul, then you can theoretically reproduce that interaction in a laboratory. The possibility remains that the soul will magically understand that it's being tricked, though it doesn't make that much sense in my opinion. Everything that interacts with matter is potentially useable. I therefore look forward to the day human souls will be tricked, fabricated, engineered and incorporated to highly performant machine engines in order to be eternal. Who knows, souls may even serve to create perpetual motion machines!

If, on the other hand, no mysterious gap is ever found, and if the algorithms behind human thinking and emotions are understood by careful study of neuronal networks, the existence of a soul will be scientifically discredited... and so will the christian God.

All that to say that science isn't as weaponless against God as one may think :P All core concepts will be progressively destroyed, or assimilated by science, until there is no incentive at all to consider the existence of God (besides philosophical discussions which bear no consequences), or vice versa. The key idea here is that souls, and God, must interact with matter, that it must be possible to pinpoint the places where that interaction occurs, and that it may be possible to take advantage of it. If we cannot find any irregularities, then it either doesn't exist or it doesn't do anything, which is practically the same thing.


Another point regarding the complexity of life is how amino acids themselves are assembled to form proteins. The probability of getting L-amino acids as opposed to D-amino acids is of course fifty percent. Joining two such acids with a peptide bond is also fifty percent. Getting the right amino acid out of twenty into a the correct position can be seen as five percent; a rough estimate due to the actual number varying due to other factors. The probability of getting everything correct while placing one amino acid can be seen as .5 X .5 X .5 = .0125. The probability of assembling N such amino acids would be .0125 X .0125 and so on for N number of times. If one such protein had one-hundred active sites, the probability of getting an accurate assembly would be .0125 multiplying itself one-hundred times, or 4.9 X 10 to the negative one-hundred-ninety first power. Such a random assembly for proteins alone, not factoring all of the other essential structures of life, is ridiculous; especially for twelve-billion years. The complexity of life alone; even the most basic forms simpler than the simplest we have today, is almost unimaginable.

Onto the probability of the creation of life.

There is one huge flaw in your argument that no one seems to have challenged: you suppose that events of combination of several proteins have a random chance of happening. That is untrue. The universe is not random. It works according to a certain set of rules, and although randomness may play a role in these rules, it is certainly not dominant.

You therefore calculate probabilities on the basis that all events are random. However, you do not calculate the probabilities on the basis that events AREN'T random, and that they obey to simple rules. There is a fundamental difference which may change your insanely low odds into a near certainty.

In order to illustrate my point, I will give the example of a well known mathematical construct, which is the cellular automaton. Basically, it's an infinite (or toroidal) space with N dimensions (usually N=2), composed of cells. If N = 2, it's like a grid (or a doughnut if you opt for the toroidal structure). Each cell can have a certain number of states (alive, dead, and you can add other states at will), and the next state of a cell depends on its own state and the states of its neighbors.

The Game of Life is the most well known example: a cell can be alive or dead. If an alive cell has two or three alive neighbors, it stays alive. If a dead cell has exactly three alive neighbors, it becomes alive. In all other cases, the cell dies or remains dead. What is interesting with cellular automata such as this, is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to predict the final state of an initial configuration. You have to run a simulation in order to find out. Therefore, seeing it in action looks very much like random junk, and you would never think that complex structures could emerge from this. However, this is wrong. A simple structure, called the glider, can move across the plane diagonally. Other bigger structures can move horizontally or vertically. Structures can create beams of gliders. A prime number generator was made. And it was proven that it was possible to make a computer in the game of life. All of this out of awfully simple rules which someone came up with on a trial and error basis. And to think there are two to the 512th power possible rules if N = 2, and 2 to the 2 to the 27th power if N = 3, that's quite a lot of possible rules for life (and we already know about awesome ones), and that's just one theory.

All this to say that extremely simple rules are sufficient to produce unexpected, unpredictable, yet awfully complex structures. Another example is Langton's Ant. You can also look into fractals, which are superb structures made from simple equations, which are found in nature, and which have been shown to be the optimal configurations for many systems.

All this to say that in the eventuality that our universe is a cellular automata, you can't calculate probabilities without knowing the key. This is important, because it is very possible that seemingly improbable events such as the occurring of life were in fact unavoidable consequences of SIMPLE yet overlooked rules. It's not necessarily the excessively simple rules of cellular automata. Simple yet unknown biological structures could have catalysed the process. Chemical processes which are not yet understood could bump up many probabilities.

In any way, it is not random. It looks random, but that's just because we don't understand enough to see the patterns and find the rules behind the first steps. This is why you have to be extremely careful when arguing that life is unlikely. Intelligent design is a gap filler and it typically exploits ignorance in order to convey religious propaganda. Sorry had to say this.


But it must be there for some reason. Things do not just plop out of nowhere, regarding anything percievable by man; unless of course there was a higher being or existence that put it there. The continuation from a point zero is an event, you see, and events need causing. Events, matter, energy, whatever; they cannot suddenly appear for absolutely no reason with nothing to precede them.

Reason is subjective. If there is a God there is a reason, because God is subjective, but if God doesn't exist, then there are no reasons for the existence of the Universe, because there is no subjectivity to speak of. Saying the universe must have been there for some reason is the same as saying God must exist, which is skipping steps.

See above for what I said about you assuming there has been nothing at some moment. That assumption is unfounded. It is a misconception that comes from typically human thinking. If there has never been nothing, then no matter ever "appeared" with nothing to precede it (because there never has been nothing!), and your argument falls flat.


So unless you want to argue that time doesn't exist at all (which some people do), it seems that the proper conclusion to draw from this is that time has no beginning and no end; it is infinite.

They are actually right about that, but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

Time cannot exist as such. It does not fit the general contract of existence, in the same way the complex pane doesn't really exist. Time is better viewed as a perspective. For example, you can view the spacetime universe as a collection of still 3D pictures which are ordered physically on a fourth physical axis. It is a perspective which is not more or less true than any other, because it is just that: a perspective. Time is a way to interpret that 4D universe as a succession of frames. You have the "big picture", which is a mega-frame containing the data about the universe since the beginning of times, and you have perspectives: you cut that space in several parts, and you find rules to go from one part to another. Time is a perspective where you cut the universe in a potentially infinite number of parts, pick one to be state zero, and try to give a rank to all the other parts by calculating them in that number of iterations on state zero with the rule of physics.

Therefore, as such, time doesn't exist in the same way matter exists. When I use the expression "the existence of time", I mean that we are interpreting the global universe under that particular perspective. There are many words in language which only make sense with that perspective: creation, causality, thought, intelligence, life, etc. But of course, you could also decide that time is a physical dimension, that the second physical dimension is time, and try to figure out rules to go from a state to another (good luck on that). Conceptually, there's no reason to choose a particular perspective other than on the basis of our personal, subjective feelings and the simplicity of rules.

It does remain that you have to use the right words with the right perspectives, though.

Also note that in the cellular automata theory, there exist spatial configurations called (oh the irony) garden of eden configurations, because no other configuration, when you apply the rules on it, will give that configuration. Therefore, in some cases, you could be obliged to admit a beginning to time, i.e. the earliest point where a state zero can exist, because if you "go back in time", at some point, you will get a garden of eden configuration and you will be unable to find any possibility for a state previous to this one, thus effectively giving an inferior bound to time.

Further note that in the eventuality that continuity, informational infinity and randomness are void concepts, the universe is either bounded as I mentioned, or cyclic.


Fair enough. Time however is a measurement, yes? I believe it may have been you who stated this, then again I am not certain. If time is a measurement, then what would become of it if there was nothing to measure? Such as no matter, no energy, no events? Would time really be in existence, even though there was nothing to measure? What may have been is that God (again who is not matter, energy, nor an event) created, or at least gave time (a concept) something to measure at the creating of the Universe. That means that time itself was not literally created in a sense, but merely given something to measure. Not that I am going to argue that time itself does not exist, but rather that it does not exist in the way I have at least seen it in the past. As a form of measurement, time I suppose could be infinite, with not creation and no destruction; it however had nothing to measure until the Creation of the Universe, thus it has not been in effect - until something measurable appeared. I suppose I may be repeating myself, but I am merely trying to convey my point clearly.

All the bolded words are void of meaning outside of time. From these hints, I'll let you figure out what I think of that point.

[Checkmate]

Now let me show just how little I know about the Bible, having
only read it through multiple times and studied it for a few years.

If this is indeed so, you seem to be forgetting a certain chapter, but in your own words...


No big.


Now, the way you put it, the NT has more relevance to the
world, since it's God's word 2000 years older than the OT.

Actually this has more to do with Acts 15:4-29 than what takes precedence over what. In
the passage I named, it is explained that there was a meeting where in order to actually
fulfill an OT prophecy, it was decided that the burden of the Jewish law would not be put
onto the gentiles. And thus, it echoes throughout Paul?s epistles that we are saved not by
the law but by our justification through the grace of God through Jesus Christ.


Now, by saying that God changed his word, that would have
made God... well, wrong in the first place, right?

No, it does make him wrong. Explained further in post.


Because why would God need to change his point of view? I was pretty sure
God was infallible.

He is infallible. That?s why Amos prophesied by the authority of God in Amos 9:11-12
what would later come to pass in Acts 15:16-17


Maybe I'm wrong. And you have still yet to tell me why we still keep the OT
in the Bible, when the NT is so much more relevent.

The Old Testament and New Testament are both the word of God. And there are still
valuable lessons to be learned from the Old Testament, eventhough the rules were slightly
different.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trying to prove a point by saying the bible isn't logical is one of
the stupidest points you could make. Likewise, attempting to prove that the bible is
factually correct is equally, if not more, stupid. What you people don't understand is that
the Church itself teaches that the bible isn't meant to be taken literally. hat means that the
Church doesn't factually believe that God created the world in 7 days. Sheesh.

First off, you can?t say that ?The Church? teaches anything. All the denominations in the
world, are so different that I don?t think any of them believe in any one thing, save
maybe just maybe that there is a God. But even that is questionable. There?s
probably some church that believes that God is just a spiritual conglomeration of the
morals inside each and every one of us.

My church for instance does preach the Bible literally. I?m not sure where my pastor
stands on literal 7 day creationism, but I know he believes the Bible to be infallible, true,
and the Word of God.

The exact amount of time that God took to create the universe is irrelevant to me. Maybe
it?s eons, in which case some science would be explained. Maybe it?s literally 6 days, 144
hours. That, in comparison to how long God spends working on each individual person
(their entire Christian life) could offer a theological lesson to how hard it is to change a
person?s heart.

Don?t know. Don?t care.


I think this was Healds point. if we can't deny Gods existance because
we 'can't comprehend it' then he can't deny the Big Bang because he couldn't comprehend
it.

Apples to oranges. God is spirit. Spirit is incomprehensible to the human mind. The
universe is matter and energy, neither are incomprehensible to the human mind. Science
knows that matter and energy cannot be destroyed. (Law of Conservation of Energy, Law
of Conservation of Mass, and the Theory of Relativity)

It?s not that we can?t comprehend matter, because we can. And we know it can?t be
created by other matter and certainly not by itself. The same goes for energy.


it'd be nice if SOMEONE countered my sig by now but not yet.

As I?ve said before I figured you just wanted to rant. But since you keep belly aching I?ll
answer you.


anyway, i'd like to add 10 things for you unquestioning christians to think
about.

add away.


10- You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other
religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god.

Outraged is too strong of a word. I become frustrated when people ignorantly deny
the existence of God.

See the thing to consider is that if I?m wrong, I?ve lived my entire my entire life in vain
and will rot in a grave. But as Brain has said before, I won?t care. I??ll be dead. I won?t be
able to regret. On the other hand, if you?re wrong, then you spend your eternity rotting in
hell.

I would think that most people, give the above, would at least look into the claims of
Chrsitianity. Especially when they don?t even have to work at it but just listen to the case
I and Sorovis present.


9- You feel insulted and 'dehumanized' when scientists say that people evolved
from lesser life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were
created from dirt.

Evidence and proof of both sides aside, I?d rather believe I wasn?t an accident.


8- You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Trinity
god.

This goes back to the incomprehensibility of humans to understand spirits. God is three
parts but still one God. The father, the son, and the holy spirit. In my mind, I tend to
recognize them as three different entities, but I know at least intellectually that they are,
in fact, one.

John 1:1 says that ?In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God and
the word was God.?

The word is Jesus Christ as can be inferred from later verses in the same passage. This
verse doesn?t really make sense to the human mind, but it represents that we only worship
one God.

Similar to how I once was a boy friend and a best friend to a girl. I was the same person,
but served two different functions. Likewise, God is the same God but serves different
functions and is capable of being all three at the same time.


7- Your face turns purple when you hear of the 'atrocities' attributed to Allah,
but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies
of Egypt in 'Exodus' and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in 'Joshua' --
including women, children, and animals!

I don?t attribute atrocities to Allah because I don?t believe in Allah. I attribute those
atrocities to mad men. God is a judge. I?ve never denied and I never I will. He is the
fairest judge around. You might disagree with me, but then who are you to say what is
and is not fair?


6- You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about god
sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit
impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life
and then ascended into the sky.

First off, I don?t see what Hinduism has to do with any of this, considering that Hinduism
teaches that humans can attain, through their own effort, perfection. That has nothing to
do with Christianity.

The holy spirit impregnated her. Agreed. But while I agree with your literal statement, I
disagree with what, I think, might be your implication. The Holy Spirit certainly did not
have sex with Mary.

And Jesus was not ?a Man-God?. He was the God in flesh.


5- You are willing to spend your life looking for little loop-holes in the
scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find
nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by pre-historic tribesmen sitting in their
tents and guessing that the Earth is a couple of generations old!

I tend to side with God whenever God and man disagree.


4- You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of
those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects -- will spend
Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet you consider your religion the most
'tolerant' and 'loving'.

Yes. You see, Christianity is tolerant in that it will accept anyone. It?s loving in that God
is love. He sacrificed his son to save you from that hell of suffering.


3- While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to
convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor, speaking in 'tongues,'
may be all the evidence you need.

You generalize too much. I?m not pentacostal.


2- You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered
prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the
remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

Your estimates are far too liberal. It?s more like 40% for me as opposed to .01%. And
there are reasons. Some are that my mind is just too clogged with secular stuff and that
I?m not really right with God. This is frustrating but truely my own fault. Also the Bible
says ?Seek ye first the kingdom of God.? Emphasis on seek. Prayer requires serious
attention and time and focus. As does one?s Christian life.

God cannot be blamed for a human?s fault. Though, many do try to blame him.


1- You actually know a lot less than many Atheists and Agnostics do about the
Bible, Christianity, and church history

I don?t deny that.


-- but still call yourself a "Christian."

YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!!!! You wanna know why? It?s because God doesn?t give you
a final exam in order for you to earn your salvation. God offers a gift. All you have to do
accept.

Just pray to God for salvation. Put your trust in him to save your soul from the hell you
deserve and trust your life to him. Now you see why Christianity is tolerant. God loves
everyone. He loves arrogant people. He loves stupid people. He loves people that hate
him. He loves Suddam Hussein. And, believe it or not. He loves you. So I don?t have to
be the resident expert on the Bible or Church History. I just have to trust Jesus.


Doesn't it just make more sense that an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good
deity created the world out of nothingness/

Yes, actually. But I know you?re being sarcastic.


and then punished us for eating a piece of fruit,

Which he specifically and indeniably told us not to eat.


and then incarnated himself in human flesh and came down to shed his own
blood so he could break his own rules,

What rules did he break. He told even Adam and Eve that he was going to send a savior.
It?s not like it was last minute decision.


and then went through hell on a temporary basis

questionable. I think Jesus was in hell fighting for something or other, but my knowledge
on that particular part of the story is not what it should be.


and then went back into the sky and promised to come back and take everyone
who believed in him to this heaven no one has ever seen?

Then, of course, scientists believe in a Big Bang which no one has ever seen?

[Brain]

Apples to oranges. God is spirit. Spirit is incomprehensible to the human mind. The universe is matter and energy, neither are incomprehensible to the human mind. Science knows that matter and energy cannot be destroyed. (Law of Conservation of Energy, Law of Conservation of Mass, and the Theory of Relativity)

It?s not that we can?t comprehend matter, because we can. And we know it can?t be
created by other matter and certainly not by itself. The same goes for energy.

I know they are really long and that I talk too much but you should still read my posts and try to understand them because I already countered that argument.

In short there has never been nothing in the universe, the first moment of the universe already contained matter and energy, and saying it has to come from somewhere implies that there was a moment previous to the first moment of the universe, which is contradictory. The laws you mentioned do not apply to the first moment of the universe and to whatever happened to exist at that moment, because if they did, it would lead to a logical contradiction. The explanation is lenghtier and more complete if you scroll up.

Eventually, I am going to try to prove that data is a logical pre-requisite to the existence of God, which is conceptually equivalent to prove that God cannot exist without matter. I'll come back with this later on.

P.S. what kind of text editor do you use? All 's and "s are changed into ?s and it inserts linefeeds :(

[Prodigy]

Ironically, the prolonged existence of this topic is proof that there is no just and loving God.

[Syberia]

I think Raz' sig said it best:

"Too long, didn't read."

[Razola]

Ironically, the prolonged existence of this topic is proof that there is no just and loving God.
So in the end, we prove there is a God, but He's a jackass like the rest of us.

Now send this thread to Hell.

[Chris]

Are there any objections to this thread being closed?

If so, please state so now:

[Brain]

Well if you close the thread you run a much higher risk to see another pop up. Leave it open, that way all the religious crap will stay in a single thread and it will be easier for people to just ignore it.

[Heald]

Believe it or not, religious topics can turn into decent discussion, however, almost every single time, it has turned into Atheism versus Christianity, and no one can win? Why? Because it is impossible to disprove either of them. It has taken you nearly 20 pages to figure this out. I suggest that this is closed and any other topic which just turns into a slanging match between Christians and Atheists should be treated as such. Intelligent discussion is not possible in such vehement conditions.

[Sorovis]

I say leave it open for reasons Brian has already made clear. Secondly, why is it so necessary that this thread gets closed in the first place? Could someone explain that at least? I mean, last I checked Brain, Aglandiir, and I have not been insulting eachother every chance we got.

(note to Brain I will respond to your post when I have more time; most likely in four hours).

[Link]

Interesting debate. However, I have not the time to engage in one, but I will plan on reading these posts later.

[The Muffin Man]

I say leave it open for reasons Brian has already made clear. Secondly, why is it so necessary that this thread gets closed in the first place? Could someone explain that at least?


Because it's become both sides repeating themselves. The Big Bang/Science side has pretty much given every argument there is without degrading into fact-less moronity, and the God Squad has shot it down with arguments that barely make sense to any non-Christian(not meant to be offensive, but it's true. You rarely make a scientific retort to a scientific argument.)

And then Checkmate waltzes in and acts like a moron...


Apples to oranges. God is spirit. Spirit is incomprehensible to the human mind. The
universe is matter and energy, neither are incomprehensible to the human mind. Science
knows that matter and energy cannot be destroyed. (Law of Conservation of Energy, Law
of Conservation of Mass, and the Theory of Relativity)


This iratates me, and this is why you'll never be taken seriously. You assume that I'm just gonna walk away and accept "OMG You can't comprehend God" but you can suddenly comprehend everything about matter, energy, etc? That's not gonna fly Checkmate.

Chris, for Checkmates sake I hope you close this. Because if that little rat bastard comes back in here I am not gonna be very 'friendly' in my responce.

[Aglandiir]

Fair enough. Time however is a measurement, yes? I believe it may have been you who stated this, then again I am not certain.

If I said that, then I either wasn't thinking clearly or writing clearly when I did. Time is not a measurement; it is a dimension which can be measured, as all dimensions can.

When you think of it like that, it's much easier. If you have a 3D cube, and you take away two of the dimensions, what are you left with? A line segment. The one dimension you didn't remove still exists, with no trouble at all. Movement and measurement along this dimension is not restricted in any way.

Similarly, if you removed time from 4D space-time, leaving just 3D space, you would still have perfectly functional 3D space; it would merely be totally static (among a few other things), as Brain explained. If you took away one spatial dimension, you would have a "Flatland" (read it, it's amusing) with normal time. And finally, if you took away all three spatial dimensions, you would be left with one normal, fully-functional dimension: time. Time doesn't care whether there are other dimensions or not.


Such a molecular structure however does not meet the definition of life.

Unfortunately for your argument, there is no one solid Definition Of Life. People can't agree, for example, on whether or not virii are alive; they reproduce and contain genetic material to do so, but they need a host to create copies of them and do not metabolize or respond to stimuli in anything more than a simple chemical manner. There isn't an imaginary line, to the left of which things are considered non-living and to the right of which things are considered living. There is a progression.

That said, the first thing to exist which everybody would agree were alive would necessarily come from things which not everybody would say were alive... but some people would. They would certainly seem alive. The things that gave rise to those things would be even more basic. And perhaps, even furthur down the line, were pre-proteins which behaved in the way I suggested they might. Those structures would not require any energy source at all, other than the energy contained in their nuclear and molecular bonds and the kinetic energy given to them by their environment (motion, in other words). Energy would only become a factor when a protein-like structure just happened to be bombarded by heat and partially broken down by it, only to reassamble itself, according to normal physical and chemical laws, in a more advantageous configuration.

To use a simple analogy, think of mud. Take dry mud, add heat and pressure, and you get shale. Mud certainly has no complex internal processes by which it converts heat to anything. It happens naturally.

Again, I'm not saying the protein structures were alive. I'm saying they eventually became alive; that they became "more" alive, in a way, with each change that resulted in a significant survival advantage.


I am saying that the chances of it occuring would require much more time than twelve-billion years; not an infinate amount more, but enough to where proposing it occured within twelve-billion years is extremely unlikely to the point where speculating on it is unrealistic.

That isn't how it works.

Some people play the lottery once and win the jackpot. Others play it every day for 50 years and never win anything more than the instant $5 bumper prize or the free 20 oz. Sprite. All people, however, have the same odds of winning the lottery. For some people, it happens right away; for others, it never happens, because they don't have infinite time to wait.


Well no, sorry. As far as I know, the supply of planets is not infinite, and as far as I know, there is no reason to assume that the probability for life is constant in time. During the early states of the Big Bang, such a probability was obviously almost null because it was too hot, and eventually, if the universe keeps expanding, it might become too cold for life to develop.

I agree with the core point but you push it too far.

I know. I was only driving in the infinite time point so I could get the general idea out.

Following the universe's rapid initial expansion, the rate of expansion has been slowing. While the universe would eventually cool off too much for gravity wells to form anymore, and thus for stars to form, it doesn't seem that such a thing would happen for quite a long time. The window in which life-friendly conditions exist in the universe seems quite large indeed, though certainly not infinitely large. While a non-infinite time span means that random or semirandom chances may not necessarily be realized 100% of the time, long time spans still obviously mean that the odds are greatly increased, far above the realm of mathematical insignificance.


It is also possible to prove God's existence, or at the very least, the existence of immaterial spirits or souls [...]

While it's certainly possible to prove that souls/God could exist and are a perfectly viable option, it is not possible to prove that they are the only option, no matter how sophistocated your equipment is.

And even if you eventually explain everything from free will to the nature of the senses to everything else via science... there will still be a place for God, at the very least among those who would rather be comfortable than correct. Faith will always have a certain emotional appeal to some people, as long as people exist; and as long and people want to believe, they will. The changing location of the realm of Heaven throughout Christian history merely reflects attempts to rationalize faith. Such rationalization, however, is not necessary for faith to exist. God, the concept, is beyond everything and everything.

[phaedrus]

Chris:

Lock this. Now. Before it turns into "Because God will send you to Hell," or "You're too stupid to comprehend God" or "Time is not infinitive so I just owned your ass."

I beg of thee.

Use ye newly-found admin skills.

Thank ye,

strat.

[Checkmate]

Brain, your comment toward me about not reading was certainly deserved. So, I read
your last post and replied to it.

This may frustrate you supremely because I need you to further explain several concepts
that I didn?t comprehend.

I am certainly out of my element on this debate, (meanwhile you are certainly within
yours) but it is the only string of posts on this thread worth reading, so I figured I?d join if
for no other reason than to learn something and have an interesting discussion.

Sorovis will be out of town for a while and I don?t really plan on doing much until
Sorovis gets back. I?ve already done that once on this thread and it?s too frustrating for
me to do again.

With that: here?s the reply


Time is the name we give to the concept of order between two different
states. If there is no time, it means, basically, that the universe is a still frame. It does not
move, it does not change, it is completely frozen. Without time, all you can have is data,


I?m with you so far.


and matter and energy is a way to understand data.

Since you already think I?m not that bright I have nothing to lose by being honest. And
honestly, I think you?ll have to elaborate on this one for me. I would think that you could
have data without matter and energy.


Without time, everything is simultaneous . How would you define a
hierarchical relationship of cause or creation between elements which exist on a still
frame? If you replace that within the bounds of time, it is akin to seeing two lights light
up at the same time (forget the theory of relativity) and trying to argue that one caused the
other. Obviously, you can't say that unless one was turned on before the other. Well that's
the same thing. Without time the universe and whatever encloses it is a still frame, a
single state, where everything is, by default, simultaneous. Therefore there are no
inherent relationships to be seen between anything. You can interpret what you see in any
way you like.

I believe we pretty much agree here. Bottom line, without time everything is
simultaneous.


Besides, how do you define thought and intelligence without time? As I said,
without time, everything is a still frame and only data exists. Intelligence is the ability to
have a reasoning: A therefore B therefore C. Intelligence, logic, obviously function on a
step by step basis, and that is precisely what the concept of time allows. A God existing,
or working outside of time (which is the same thing) would not be intelligent, because
intelligence requires time the same way creation and causality do.

Disagreement: Logical chains (if this, then that, if that, than something else) require
chronological thinking. However, knowledge, does not require chronological thinking. I
think you could have intelligence and omniscience without time.


Also note that, more specifically, the christian God is unable to predict the
actions of humans because of free will.

Major disagreement. Don?t you know any people that are ?predictable?? I know one or
two. They have free will but I can still predict what they?ll say sometimes. Just because a
person has two choices does not mean that one cannot predict which choice they?ll
choose, making the below quote irrelevant


Therefore, he cannot know what someone will decide to do without waiting for
him to do it, therefore he is obviously subject to time, and moreso that my previous
arguments made him.


I had pretty much proved that God has to be subject to time in order to be an
intelligent creator,

I know this will sound like a cop-out but I would think that IF something created time,
then it would not be subject to it. I emphasize if to show that I have not proven and that
the statement is admittedly hypothetical.

A friend explained it to me this way in a restaurant. He took a straw and layed it down on
the table. He then basically said that in the analogy, he was God. Looking down on every
part of it at the same time.


but the fact still remained that he could theoretically start, stop, rewind and
replay our universe at will, the same way we can start, stop, rewind and replay a movie or
a simulation, and these actions would take place in his timeline. That's what I meant by
enclosing timeline - you can translate our time into God's time, but it isn't necessarily
linear.

Interesting thought. That could be a suggestion to how God has his own time. Of course, I
don?t think he would need to reply it or anything seeing as how, in my opinion, he sees
all of it at all times.


However, because of the shaky concept of free will, the christian God wouldn't
be able to rewind or replay the same events, which is an even greater limitation than the
limitations I already gave. From how I see it, the Bible pretty much implies that God's
time is linearly translated as ours.

I disagree with your theories on free will. I believe there?s supposed to be some sort of
study that reported the rotation of a particle to be like rolling two dice. Some outcomes
would be more likely than others, but you couldn?t completely know how it would turn
out.

This disregards Einstein?s catchphrase of ?God doesn?t play dice.? I still hold with
Einstein because, I?ve always held the theory that if a person knew everything about
physiology, psychology, sociology, and the like. (basically every minute detail of the
universe) and had the mental capacity to calculate it all, that they could predict the future
and be 100% accurate 100% of the time. And no one has conclusively explained the
particle theory to me.

All that to say that if I was given a choice between A and B and chose B, then was given
the choice again in the exact same conditions without any knowledge of my previous
choice or the consequences thereof, then I would again choose B and would always
choose B under the same conditions.

That?s what I?ve always figured.


The Universe, including its own timeline, is not an event either.

No, but it is constituted partly of matter and energy


And energy and matter only need causing to the extent that rules dictate that it
must, and how it must. State zero, as I already stated, is not subject to these
considerations.

And what makes State zero the exception to these rules?


Your mistake, I believe, is that you consider that state zero cannot be anything
else than nothingness - in that case, of course, your worries are justified, because nothing
can come out of nothingness and thus if state zero is empty then all subsequent states will
be empty. However, you have to understand that state zero doesn't have to be
nothingness. It can be non-empty, and then your argument is void. Think about that,
because I'm quite sure that it is the mistake you are making, even if it is not necessarily
conscious: if you say matter has to be created, then it means you consider that there was
nothing before. But there has never been nothing in the universe.

this boils back to the above disagreement between you and me. You say that State zero is
the exception to the laws of conservation. I still need that explained. If State zero is
indeed the exception to that rule then I would have to say that your argument is fairly
hard to counter on this point (but I?d be lying if I said I would give up)


If you need some help to understand this,

I need all the help I can get.


imagine that the universe is a collection of one billion switches. If the universe
is empty, then all switches are at OFF. But now, think about it. If there is no god, does
that mean all the switches have to be off? Why would they be off rather than on? Is there
some kind of universal preference for nothingness? Or is it rather your human mind
which imagines that by default everything must be empty or equal to zero? Does that
really make sense? For example, if the universe is random, it would start with random
switches, wouldn't it? And then, there would be one in two to the billionth power chance
that the universe would start empty! That's absurdly unlikely now isn't it!

That whole thing makes perfect sense. But still, the same disagreeement still applies.


All that to reiterate that matter and energy didn't need to come from anywhere -
saying so supposes that the universe's beginning wasn't the beginning of time, and it
supposes that at the beginning of time there would be no matter and no energy, albeit
there is no logical reason for that. The universe could perfectly start off with, as I like to
put it, random junk.

Okay, maybe it?s just me. Maybe everyone to ever post on this thread, save Sorovis,
Agent Elrond, and me are right. I am a complete idiot. But even assuming that I am idiot,
I would still appreciate you explaining how something can just spontaneously exist. To
my mind which may very well be inferior to yours I cannot comprehend how something
could spontaneously exist. You seem to be basically assuming that at point zero
everything started existing without being prompted to do so.


Albeit the most general concept of God cannot be disproven, it is untrue to say
that particular cases, such as the christian God, cannot be disproven. In a way, it is also
possible to disprove God altogether, assuming that God necessarily bears a certain
number of characteristics in order to be considered as God.

If you can disprove God than attempt to do so.


To understand this, you have to understand the exquisite difference
between the laws of physics and the laws of semantics. Whereas you probably agree that
we cannot apply the laws of physics to God (and christians love to point that out), it is
certain that God is subject to the laws of semantics.

You?re going to have to explain further before I agree.


It is nonsensical to change the meaning of words when God is involved - if a
word means something, that's what it means, and you won't make it mean anything else.
Thus, you could prove that the description of God is contradictory on the semantic level
(for example, you could try to prove that the concepts of omniscience and omnipotence
are contradictory), and you would disprove God. I did such a thing when I showed that
God must be bound by time, and I can perfectly imagine to do the same thing on core
concepts, although it would probably be harder.

I know you and I had scuffle in some thread about time being required to create
something, but I still don?t understand how a person can prove that God is bound by time.
It can be suggested. But if you proved it you?ll have to explain it to me.

The quote that follows this was whole bunch of stuff about how souls could be disproved
and ways for God to be disproved. Since it?s all hypothetical, and unproven I just say
okay. You?ll have a point when it ceases to be hypothetical.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sorovis
Another point regarding the complexity of life is how amino acids themselves are
assembled to form proteins. The probability of getting L-amino acids as opposed to
D-amino acids is of course fifty percent. Joining two such acids with a peptide bond is
also fifty percent. Getting the right amino acid out of twenty into a the correct position
can be seen as five percent; a rough estimate due to the actual number varying due to
other factors. The probability of getting everything correct while placing one amino acid
can be seen as .5 X .5 X .5 = .0125. The probability of assembling N such amino acids
would be .0125 X .0125 and so on for N number of times. If one such protein had
one-hundred active sites, the probability of getting an accurate assembly would be .0125
multiplying itself one-hundred times, or 4.9 X 10 to the negative one-hundred-ninety first
power. Such a random assembly for proteins alone, not factoring all of the other essential
structures of life, is ridiculous; especially for twelve-billion years. The complexity of life
alone; even the most basic forms simpler than the simplest we have today, is almost
unimaginable.

Onto the probability of the creation of life.

There is one huge flaw in your argument that no one seems to have challenged: you
suppose that events of combination of several proteins have a random chance of
happening. That is untrue. The universe is not random. It works according to a certain set
of rules, and although randomness may play a role in these rules, it is certainly not
dominant.

You therefore calculate probabilities on the basis that all events are random. However,
you do not calculate the probabilities on the basis that events AREN'T random, and that
they obey to simple rules. There is a fundamental difference which may change your
insanely low odds into a near certainty.

In order to illustrate my point, I will give the example of a well known mathematical
construct, which is the cellular automaton. Basically, it's an infinite (or toroidal) space
with N dimensions (usually N=2), composed of cells. If N = 2, it's like a grid (or a
doughnut if you opt for the toroidal structure). Each cell can have a certain number of
states (alive, dead, and you can add other states at will), and the next state of a cell
depends on its own state and the states of its neighbors.

The Game of Life is the most well known example: a cell can be alive or dead. If an alive
cell has two or three alive neighbors, it stays alive. If a dead cell has exactly three alive
neighbors, it becomes alive. In all other cases, the cell dies or remains dead. What is
interesting with cellular automata such as this, is that it is extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to predict the final state of an initial configuration. You have to run a
simulation in order to find out. Therefore, seeing it in action looks very much like random
junk, and you would never think that complex structures could emerge from this.
However, this is wrong. A simple structure, called the glider, can move across the plane
diagonally. Other bigger structures can move horizontally or vertically. Structures can
create beams of gliders. A prime number generator was made. And it was proven that it
was possible to make a computer in the game of life. All of this out of awfully simple
rules which someone came up with on a trial and error basis . And to think there are two
to the 512th power possible rules if N = 2, and 2 to the 2 to the 27th power if N = 3, that's
quite a lot of possible rules for life (and we already know about awesome ones), and that's
just one theory.

All this to say that extremely simple rules are sufficient to produce unexpected,
unpredictable, yet awfully complex structures. Another example is Langton's Ant. You
can also look into fractals, which are superb structures made from simple equations,
which are found in nature, and which have been shown to be the optimal configurations
for many systems.

All this to say that in the eventuality that our universe is a cellular automata, you can't
calculate probabilities without knowing the key. This is important, because it is very
possible that seemingly improbable events such as the occurring of life were in fact
unavoidable consequences of SIMPLE yet overlooked rules. It's not necessarily the
excessively simple rules of cellular automata. Simple yet unknown biological structures
could have catalysed the process. Chemical processes which are not yet understood could
bump up many probabilities.

In any way, it is not random. It looks random, but that's just because we don't understand
enough to see the patterns and find the rules behind the first steps. This is why you have
to be extremely careful when arguing that life is unlikely. Intelligent design is a gap filler
and it typically exploits ignorance in order to convey religious propaganda. Sorry had to
say this.


Reason is subjective. If there is a God there is a reason, because God is
subjective, but if God doesn't exist, then there are no reasons for the existence of the
Universe, because there is no subjectivity to speak of. Saying the universe must have
been there for some reason is the same as saying God must exist, which is skipping
steps.

You?re gonna have to explain this better to me. I don?t get you.


See above for what I said about you assuming there has been nothing at some
moment. That assumption is unfounded. It is a misconception that comes from typically
human thinking. If there has never been nothing, then no matter ever "appeared" with
nothing to precede it (because there never has been nothing!), and your argument falls
flat.

And yet again, we run into me not agreeing with your belief that Point Zero is the
exception to the laws I mentioned.


Therefore, as such, time doesn't exist in the same way matter exists. When I use
the expression "the existence of time", I mean that we are interpreting the global universe
under that particular perspective. There are many words in language which only make
sense with that perspective: creation, causality, thought, intelligence, life, etc. But of
course, you could also decide that time is a physical dimension, that the second physical
dimension is time, and try to figure out rules to go from a state to another (good luck on
that). Conceptually, there's no reason to choose a particular perspective other than on the
basis of our personal, subjective feelings and the simplicity of rules.

Once again, I don?t quite understand how intelligence and creation are dependent upon
time.

[Aglandiir]

I'm not Brain, but I'll quickly respond to a bit of that.


Major disagreement. Don?t you know any people that are ?predictable?? I know one or two. They have free will but I can still predict what they?ll say sometimes. Just because a person has two choices does not mean that one cannot predict which choice they?ll choose, making the below quote irrelevant

"Sometimes" is quite different from "always." If you can sometimes predict what other people will do, that means it's a guess. You don't know until the person actually says something.


I know this will sound like a cop-out but I would think that IF something created time, then it would not be subject to it. I emphasize if to show that I have not proven and that the statement is admittedly hypothetical.

This would be true... except that creation requires time. Recap of earlier posts: in order for something to be created, there must be at least two distinct states: a before state, in which the object does not exist, and an after state, in which the object does exist and the creation has occured. Time is what allows those two states to be distinct; as you agree, without time, everything is simultaneous. Without time, there is no before, no after, and certainly nothing, such as creation or any other event, which requires either.


A friend explained it to me this way in a restaurant. He took a straw and layed it down on the table. He then basically said that in the analogy, he was God. Looking down on every part of it at the same time.

Replacing the word "straw" with "time"... it seems that your friend said he is looking at every part of time at the same time. The fact that he could not describe his ideas of time without using time shows that his idea would not work outside of time.


Interesting thought. That could be a suggestion to how God has his own time. Of course, I don?t think he would need to reply it or anything seeing as how, in my opinion, he sees all of it at all times.

Same deal here. God sees all of time at all times?


I disagree with your theories on free will. I believe there?s supposed to be some sort of study that reported the rotation of a particle to be like rolling two dice. Some outcomes would be more likely than others, but you couldn?t completely know how it would turn out.

I believe you are referring to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, relating to quantum mechanics, which states that the more accurately you know a particle's position, the less accurately you know its momentum, and vice versa. With accurate equations for the momentum of a particle, a physicist is forced to give up accuracy in measurements of position, thus creating probability fields: the particle is in the field, somewhere, probably somewhere towards the middle... but there's no way to know.

There are other theories of quantum mechanics which suggest that some particles do not even have definite states until such states are required. I'm much more murky on those.


All that to say that if I was given a choice between A and B and chose B, then was given the choice again in the exact same conditions without any knowledge of my previous choice or the consequences thereof, then I would again choose B and would always choose B under the same conditions.

That?s what I?ve always figured.

That belief cannot possibly be compatible with Christianity. If you think that you would always make the same choice under identical conditions, then you are essentially saying that the conditions (bodily and external) are what govern your decision. Those conditions, however, are governed by simple physical laws; even other people's decisions, which may influence the environment in which you exist, are based on conditions. Everything eventually traces back to physics. And if everything goes back to physics, and everything is merely the result of something else, governed by equations, then free will does not exist.

And if free will does not exist, then God really isn't giving people a choice between Heaven and Hell. People can't make choices at all. God is condemning some people to Hell and there is nothing they can do about it at all.


And what makes State zero the exception to these rules?

Simple: the rules did not exist at state zero, and thus could not govern it. State zero is the starting point. Rules only apply during an interval; you cannot apply a rule to a point, or a single state. It would mean nothing. You could only use a rule with a single state to produce a second state; that would be applying the rule between states, as a transition. The physical rules of the universe only apply between state zero and state one, and onward. Since there is nothing that comes before state zero, there is no interval during which a rule could be applied to produce state zero. State zero is arbitrary.


Okay, maybe it?s just me. Maybe everyone to ever post on this thread, save Sorovis, Agent Elrond, and me are right. I am a complete idiot. But even assuming that I am idiot, I would still appreciate you explaining how something can just spontaneously exist. To my mind which may very well be inferior to yours I cannot comprehend how something could spontaneously exist. You seem to be basically assuming that at point zero everything started existing without being prompted to do so.

It's not that your mind is inferior to anyone else's; it's that the human mind can't understand the idea at all. The brain evolved over billions of years in a space of three dimensions, with time ever-present. Our brains think in terms that are meaningful to the world in which we live; ie, we think in three dimensions, and we think in time. We can think in fewer spatial dimensions, but the idea of "no time" is just totally foreign to us. We can't grasp it. Nobody can. We can talk about what it might mean in theoretical terms, but nobody, not even the smartest person ever to live, could really imagine how a timeless universe would operate. Even what I just wrote makes no sense, since "operate" is a verb which requires time. See? It's pervasive. You can't think without thinking of time.

So nobody can understand how something could just exist, without a beginning or a creation. It's an alien idea to us. We can just understand that such a thing could be the case; the details are beyond us.

I'm sure Brain would disagree with some of that.

[Tainted]

Such a conclusion presupposes that each planet in each system has an equal chance to support and sustain life in the first place; along with create it. Such an assumption is extremely inaccurate; there are many conditions which must be right in order for life to even continue; much less appear. The appropriate gases must be present in sufficiant quantities; the necessary temperature must be constant (or at least mild enough). I realize that not all life is the same, and that theoretically there could be other ways of creating life from different elements and environments. My point still stands, however, that not all-- or even half-- of all of the planets in the Universe would be able to begin or support life.

You're jumping to conclusions much too quickly though, who says that all life would have to be like us? There could be some aliens that could ONLY live in extremely high temperature, or vice versa, or some aliens that would not need oxygen to live, and rather breathe methane, etc. You don't know what others need to live, only what we need to live. Therefore, every planet in existance is hospitable to some sort of life, just not always us.

And once again, I didn't overexaggerate how many planets are actually in existance-- I severely understated the actualy amount of planets, because as far as we know, the number is much too high to comprehend. But, we could go with what you say and assume that one planet in every galaxy can support our life, as in, human life-- (there are several even in our solar system that could through a process called terraforming) now-- how many galaxies are there in the universe? Still tons. And we're still a one in whatever the hell million chance-- not very good odds, which is why I believe we're purely coincidental.
Why would God create trillions upon zillions upon fring-ging-gillions of planets and then put life on one? What are the others? Works in progress?

Adieu,
Zak Hunter

[Zak]

Okay, I think its about time this thread went. Sorry Checkmate and Sorovis, but its by popular demand.

Not to mention the fact that I warned about locking it earlier on in this topic, but seriously, this thread has proven HealdPK's theory that it's really impossible to prove either side wrong. I'm not taking sides here. In any case, I'm neutral on the matter, before you start saying that I'm abusing and giving myself the last word. It just seems like you either are a die-hard bible fan, or you hate it with a passion. Thus this will never end, there will always be some evidence proving either side wrong. So not only by popular demand, but its best that the thread goes before things get ugly.


~Zak

[RedStarWarrior]

I reopened this because I was told by Suzie that it shouldn't be closed. I mean, I understand if she has changed her mind since then, but if she has, I have no knowledge of it. I am not trying to step on your heels, Zak, but this discussion has been mostly peaceful, so I think it would be better to keep this open. If it is closed, the conversation will undoubtedly continue through other topics as it was before, hence the reason the topic was created in the first place.

[Razola]

Everyone has been calling for its closure. Why the hell keep it open?

[RedStarWarrior]

Well if you close the thread you run a much higher risk to see another pop up. Leave it open, that way all the religious crap will stay in a single thread and it will be easier for people to just ignore it.
This sums up the reason for keeping it open.

strat, HealdPK, and TMM do not make up 'everyone'.

I just want to wait for Suzie's confirmation on closure, Raz. If she says yes, then it will stay closed.

[The Muffin Man]

Fine then. You wanna keep it open? Then since there's no real discussion left...

There is no god, I'm right, Chrisitanity is bull****, the bible is expensive toilet paper, Jesus was a pothead, Mary was a whore, Moses slaughtered all the first born himself.

Why am I posting all this insensitive, moronic, and just plain offensive crap? Because the discussion ended pages ago. It's degraded into both sides repeating themselves ad infinitum. There was apparently a reason to close it.

[Aglandiir]

You'll note, perhaps, that the people who are actually participating in the topic to any meaningful degree are not calling for its closure.

[Animelee]

I agree with Raven. I mean, nothing from this topic is really spilling into other topics, and if we do close it, then, no doubt there's going to be another "Christians VS Atheists" topic within the coming days. We might as well declare this topic the official religious debate topic, and leave it at that.

[Heald]

Fine. Bítch and whine at each other all you want. Let me know when you have finally worked out the pointlessness of it.

[RedStarWarrior]

Will do, Master Heald.

[The Muffin Man]

You'll note, perhaps, that the people who are actually participating in the topic to any meaningful degree are not calling for its closure.

Actually, I've been pretty activally participating and I want it closed because I'm sick of having to hear AND say the exact same arguments over and over.

[Leon-IH]

I'm still yet to hear a christian with a solid counter for evolution besides "because god exists", I've rarely heard a christian talk without generalising among an entire Atheist community, and I STILL don't understand how not understanding how you got here = God, let alone a Christian god.

[Crazy]

I don't believe in us going from monkies to humans,but any other evolution is true in my opinion,I mean there is proof. As people have said 7 days could mean thousands of years to a god. So when he made birds back then a bird was a terodactyl(bad spelling danmit). And so on and so forth.

[Heald]

I don't believe in us going from monkies to humans.Monkeys, apes and humans are all believed to have evolved from the same genus, hence our genus name primates, but to sum it up we call our ancestors apes to make things easier. The difference between monkeys and apes is that monkeys have tails, generally.

It is believed that fish were originally on the Earth, then amphibians evolved from fish, then reptiles evolved from amphibians, then birds and mammals both evolved from reptiles.

[Tainted]

Monkeys, apes and humans are all believed to have evolved from the same genus, hence our genus name primates, but to sum it up we call our ancestors apes to make things easier. The difference between monkeys and apes is that monkeys have tails, generally.

It is believed that fish were originally on the Earth, then amphibians evolved from fish, then reptiles evolved from amphibians, then birds and mammals both evolved from reptiles.

Bot Helad!!11 Wi r derr stil fishy if dey evolve to amphibeans?????? Stoopit, LOL!

4d13U,
Z4|< |-|u/\/+3R

LOL!

[Heald]

Bot Helad!!11 Wi r derr stil fishy if dey evolve to amphibeans?????? Stoopit, LOL!

4d13U,
Z4|< |-|u/\/+3R

LOL!It's spelt Herald to you, you pleb.

[GirlRepellant]

I don't believe in us going from monkies to humans,but any other evolution is true in my opinion,I mean there is proof. As people have said 7 days could mean thousands of years to a god. So when he made birds back then a bird was a terodactyl(bad spelling danmit). And so on and so forth.
Wait, you believe in evolution, but not from "monkies to humans"? How can you make that differentiation? Why couldn't god have, say, molded humans out of apes or something of the sort? That wouldn't clash with the Genesis accounts (which contradict each other, but I won't go into that), and it would still support the massive amounts of evidence for evolution.
Plus, a pterodactyl is NOT a bird. Archeopteryx and Protoavis are the early decendants of birds, and were not related to pterodactyls.

[AzureSeraph]

Isn't our genus Homo? Hence, Homo sapien

Anyway, in Genesis, it says that God created plants before aquatic animals. However, it is thought that even aquatic single celled organisms were first heterotrophs, not autotrophs. Thusly, the Heterotroph Hypothesis.

[RedStarWarrior]

Yes, our genus is homo. Recent studies suggest that chimpanzees should also be placed in the genus, homo (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030519/chimp.html).

[The Muffin Man]

The fact of the matter is, we're STILL primeates. You can't deny it. We're classified as primates somehow. I forgot what part that falls under. Family, I believe...Vertebrates, Animal Kingdom, Mammals, Primates, Homo Sapien. I probably forgot something and probably mixed it up, but it's been like 2 years since I took Biology...

[Crazy]

Well I am ashamed at how little I know of evolution so forgive me for the pterodactyl comment. Anyway yes I do know that we are Homo Sapien so you don't have to tell me. I don't know maybe Girl Repellent is right we could have been ape like in the beginning. I mean there were cave man and they were far different from us today. I believe the highest was a Cro Magnon or maybe that was the least intelligent. Oh feel free to correct me.

[Leon-IH]

Holy rabid donkeys, no rabid christians attack me with bibles.. maybe i died and am dreaming this ****.

[Sorovis]

I feel as though the first thing I should state upon my arrival is that I am thankful that Raven and Suzie kept it open in the first place. This whole 'it's all religious whining, there's no end to it, so it should be closed' garbage is extremely annoying, and corroborating with Aglandiir, the only people complaining are those who are not participating anyways. In response to those below who are complaining about how the thread is dead; you do not decide who will and will not respond. If Brain or Aglandiir wish to respond to this post, that is of there own judgement. And honestly, please quit spamming, or at least do it in some place where it is welcomed. This thread is for those who wish to debate, not whine. The point is not to 'convert' all others, or to beat them back to the point of submission, but rather to have an intelligent debate regarding intelligent posters, topics, and points.


I was discussing with my father on this yesterday and there's another image that we agreed is better to show the point.

Time is the name we give to the concept of order between two different states. If there is no time, it means, basically, that the universe is a still frame. It does not move, it does not change, it is completely frozen. Without time, all you can have is data, and matter and energy is a way to understand data. Without time, everything is simultaneous. How would you define a hierarchical relationship of cause or creation between elements which exist on a still frame? If you replace that within the bounds of time, it is akin to seeing two lights light up at the same time (forget the theory of relativity) and trying to argue that one caused the other. Obviously, you can't say that unless one was turned on before the other. Well that's the same thing. Without time the universe and whatever encloses it is a still frame, a single state, where everything is, by default, simultaneous. Therefore there are no inherent relationships to be seen between anything. You can interpret what you see in any way you like.

The theory I hold to is that time was an indirect creation which resulted when God created the universe itself; thus time did not begin with the Universe persay, but at about the same point. Then of course as I consider it (my mind has been weighted down from the vacation and it will take time to warm it back up) the Universe may also have come into existence in one frame; there was no frame before hand during the creation; just the frame where it was and nothing when it wasn't. Seriously though, remember again that I refer to God as the Creator of everything; energy, mass, everything. In order to understand how I am picturing all of this, think of time as a line and God as a being above it, constantly looking down upon it. He can see any part of that time line, intervene at any point, and start anything at any given point.


Besides, how do you define thought and intelligence without time? As I said, without time, everything is a still frame and only data exists. Intelligence is the ability to have a reasoning: A therefore B therefore C. Intelligence, logic, obviously function on a step by step basis, and that is precisely what the concept of time allows. A God existing, or working outside of time (which is the same thing) would not be intelligent, because intelligence requires time the same way creation and causality do.

I believe it is the String Theory which states that human beings have a limited perception of the universe (four out of eleven dimensions if I remember correctly), meaning, once again, that God does not inherently operate under any given circumstances and laws which human beings themselves are bound to (and can percieve). This of course means that He does not necessarily think like us, operate like us, etc.. I am certain you must understand my point; remember however that it is impossible to debate about something which is for all practical purposes unknown. I attempt to prove the existence of God by exploiting the intelligent characteristics found in the world and the Universe, and by making clear the extreme improbabilities and unlikelihood of certain occurances happening in the Universe without some sort of guidance beyond random. I have no interest in debating the nature or purpose of God; as I have stated now and will state in the future, such arguments would be counterproductive if anything.


Also note that, more specifically, the christian God is unable to predict the actions of humans because of free will.

Here you fall into a trap which I believe Checkmate dealt with at least to an effective degree. Restating my view of God's perception of time (which I also believe Checkmate has seen judging roughly by the points covered in his most recent post), God can tell everything that will happen regardless of free will. Does this make it anything less than free will? Not necessarily. Being the God, however, He has the ability to know how each event will turn out and each decision will be made without directly intervening.


Therefore, he cannot know what someone will decide to do without waiting for him to do it, therefore he is obviously subject to time, and moreso that my previous arguments made him.

Again under the assumption that God does not know the future nor His own creations. Remember again that in arguing for an intelligent creator, I am saying that the normal princaples which we are bound and subject to do not affect Him (unless he so desires). He is aside from the Universe; above it, and has total control over what happens if He so desires.


Pretty much proved that God has to be subject to time in order to be an intelligent creator, but the fact still remained that he could theoretically start, stop, rewind and replay our universe at will, the same way we can start, stop, rewind and replay a movie or a simulation, and these actions would take place in his timeline. That's what I meant by enclosing timeline - you can translate our time into God's time, but it isn't necessarily linear. However, because of the shaky concept of free will, the christian God wouldn't be able to rewind or replay the same events, which is an even greater limitation than the limitations I already gave. From how I see it, the Bible pretty much implies that God's time is linearly translated as ours.

This is nonetheless an intelligent view of the Christian God which is shared by many; even those of the Christian faith I am sure. Without using examples from the Bible to support this, I will suggest that we simply move on from the unsupported speculations of the means and motives of an unknown God and back to the original debate; if God really exists at all.


The Universe, including its own timeline, is not an event either.

Yes but I still do not totally concieve nor believe this concept that matter and energy have come from absolutely nowhere, even with a state zero. Unless there is some law which dictates that matter and energy come from nowhere with no beginning, then the concept of state zero will remain in my argument an unresolved point which does not disprove anything.


And energy and matter only need causing to the extent that rules dictate that it must, and how it must. State zero, as I already stated, is not subject to these considerations.

Again my troubles with this 'state zero' conflict with my perception of your point. I care not whether matter and energy in this state zero behave differently, rather I would prefer please a scientific explanation of state zero, which I am confident there is. I met the inhibation, unfortunately, of not being able to respond to you before my departure, otherwise I would have looked forward to an explanation. But later is better than never, as they say, and your clarification is always welcome.


Your mistake, I believe, is that you consider that state zero cannot be anything else than nothingness - in that case, of course, your worries are justified, because nothing can come out of nothingness and thus if state zero is empty then all subsequent states will be empty. However, you have to understand that state zero doesn't have to be nothingness. It can be non-empty, and then your argument is void. Think about that, because I'm quite sure that it is the mistake you are making, even if it is not necessarily conscious: if you say matter has to be created, then it means you consider that there was nothing before. But there has never been nothing in the universe.

Well then I understand this; I still do not however understand how state zero would have come into being, despite contradictory wording on my part. I am unwilling and unable to believe that regardless of the absence of time that anything could exist without some cause. Why would the Universe be in a still frame at state zero? There must be some sort of reasoning behind this. Without a higher being or even random chance explanations, this argument has no real explanation for the source of matter and energy.


If you need some help to understand this, imagine that the universe is a collection of one billion switches. If the universe is empty, then all switches are at OFF. But now, think about it. If there is no god, does that mean all the switches have to be off?

But what would put the switches there; more importantly, why would they be there at all? If there is no random chance before hand that dictates that they will randomly be ON or OFF, then they cannot do so. If there is nothing to put them in the position to be ON or OFF, then once again that position cannot be realistic. In all actuality we are trying to argue the genesis of the Universe; you how it does not have to be from God, and me why it does. I am looking for your explanation for the cause of all of this; something along the lines of the Oscilliating Universe Theory is what I had in mind, although I am not saying that you must use it.


Why would they be off rather than on? Is there some kind of universal preference for nothingness? Or is it rather your human mind which imagines that by default everything must be empty or equal to zero? Does that really make sense? For example, if the universe is random, it would start with random switches, wouldn't it? And then, there would be one in two to the billionth power chance that the universe would start empty! That's absurdly unlikely now isn't it!

The problem with this is that you yet again neglect the point which I am trying to raise that things do not just exist. Again with the computer program and the like, a beginning is set and constructed by a creator, not random time and not for absolutely no reason. The tools and parts required to build the computer are not already there for no reason; they must be brought into place. Also I realize the limitations of such an analogy, and to some degree the irony (being based off of a human and his/her creation), but that still does not weaken my original point as far as I can tell.


If the universe was empty right now, couldn't I say that God exists, because it is so unlikely that the universe would start off empty that divine intervention had to empty it in some way?

No not really, because that presupposes that the light switch idea is the correct one in the first place, which there is no evidence for. We can however get back onto topic as to what the chances are of life spontaneously generating and the alternatives for Creation (and whether or not they are even plausible).


All that to reiterate that matter and energy didn't need to come from anywhere - saying so supposes that the universe's beginning wasn't the beginning of time, and it supposes that at the beginning of time there would be no matter and no energy, albeit there is no logical reason for that. The universe could perfectly start off with, as I like to put it, random junk.

It does not however explain that well or at all. Saying at the beginning of the Universe that matter and energy would not be subject to the laws they are subject to now is all great; that still does not how or why 'random junk' would be present anyways. Would it just be sitting in frame one waiting to happen? But why would it be in frame one in the first place? Suggesting that there is no reason and that it just is answers no questions whatsoever, except perhaps that you believe there are other forces at work besides what we see and notice in our studies. Again, here we are at the beginning. What caused it? Why is it there? With no explanation regarding the current forces and cognitively recognizable dimensions, we must turn to something beyond our realm of perception.


To understand this, you have to understand the exquisite difference between the laws of physics and the laws of semantics. Whereas you probably agree that we cannot apply the laws of physics to God (and christians love to point that out), it is certain that God is subject to the laws of semantics. It is nonsensical to change the meaning of words when God is involved - if a word means something, that's what it means, and you won't make it mean anything else. Thus, you could prove that the description of God is contradictory on the semantic level (for example, you could try to prove that the concepts of omniscience and omnipotence are contradictory), and you would disprove God. I did such a thing when I showed that God must be bound by time, and I can perfectly imagine to do the same thing on core concepts, although it would probably be harder.

Have fun, because now I have all the time I can imagine. Ah yes, and now that we are on to the point of Christians making clear that God is not bound by physics, I might as well bring up 'God of the Gaps'. While reading this, a delicious little phrase came to mind of 'Chance of the Gaps'. Whenever something becomes highly improbable or unfeasable, the sudden answer is generally 'given an infinate amount of time it could happen!'. Granted, you Brain do not usually do this if I recall correctly, but I still find a sort of humor in those who do. But I digress, back to the matter at hand. Feel free to try and find contradictions in the description of God if you so desire. You have proven in the past that you are quite aware of what you are talking about, and I am sure the points you raise will not be as weak as some that I have seen.


It is also possible to prove God's existence, or at the very least, the existence of immaterial spirits or souls with the same level of certainty as scientific truth. To understand this, let us suppose that souls exist and convey emotions (which I find totally absurd, but that's besides the point). This means two important things:

I am not entirely sure that souls are supposed to convey emotion, but for the sake of an argument, I'll see what you have to say.


1- The soul must get input from matter: you will not feel any emotions if you can't see, feel, smell or hear anything. That input is taken from our physical senses, and therefore, we can imagine that electrical pulses representing what we see, hear, etc. are gathered and circulate through our brain. The soul must be able to read these pulses, or it can't do its job. You could imagine that the soul can read them directly without interacting with them.

I don't quite agree with this first point. It assumes that souls themselves have a direct control on a person's emotions, whereas what is generally accepted is that the soul itself is generally involved in other matters, ie. spirituality and the like.


2- However, most importantly, the soul must give output: when you feel an emotion, it can be translated, physically, as an expression on your face, as words, etc. Therefore, the soul must be able to communicate to the body information about the emotions it feels. We must then imagine that the soul will interact with matter within our brain in such a way that the brain will be able to read it and process it.

Therefore, if a soul exists, it means that studying the brain carefully will reveal "magical transitions" between two points. That is, science will trace back emotions and show that one particular transition transforms incoherent input into organized emotions in a way that is unexplainable by science. Of course, the argument is flawed, because the mystery could be solved by further science. However, as science becomes better and more precise, if the gap remains, the soul will become a scientific explanation (although I can guarantee you it won't be called a soul). Note that science always changes, and that nothing is ever certain - soul will never be a certainty, but if you can't find anything better, albeit you should be able to with the equipment you have, then you bear with it. Scientists do it all the time, as long as they feel it is practical.

There are plenty of things with little to no explanation to them at this current state and time. On the issue of whether or not souls can be felt or seen, I would turn to so called 'astral projection', which despite being directly opposed by Christianity itself I have direct connections to Christians who have experienced it first-hand. With no scientific explanation available, I will rely on these accounts which I will assume are accurate (my father and I rarely communicate any more and from what I can tell he has no intentions of lying to me; nor have I seen any signs). According to this 'source', projection can be accomplished through the proper conditioning of the body to a point of lucid relaxation, followed by focusing thought on one's own forehead. Skipping ahead to the ultimate results, there are many reports (many of them proposterous, I know, but a few reliable) of people 'flying' for sake of simplicity in visualization and observing their physical vessels. Whether or not you are willing to carry a debate on this I am currently unsure; you seem to have little spare time from what I can tell and I will simply have to rely on your next post. In any case, such an argument would most likely descend to presenting accounts and the like for each side; I am afraid it may be even less productive than the rest of the debate we are currently having. But again, it is your choice entirely.


Note that in the absence of collective consciousness, the soul could theoretically be used to create human thinking machines. If you can understand how the body communicates with the soul, then you can theoretically reproduce that interaction in a laboratory. The possibility remains that the soul will magically understand that it's being tricked, though it doesn't make that much sense in my opinion. Everything that interacts with matter is potentially useable. I therefore look forward to the day human souls will be tricked, fabricated, engineered and incorporated to highly performant machine engines in order to be eternal. Who knows, souls may even serve to create perpetual motion machines!

Doubtful. While a creative idea a person's soul supposedly retains the memories of the person's life and experiences. After that person's body becomes uninhabitable, that soul goes to one of two places which I am sure you are aware of based on my beliefs. Again though, let us get back to the topic. Arguing whether or not souls exist is one thing, wondering if they will ever be 'tricked' into machines is totally different and relies on one's beliefs alone. I think it has been clearly expressed now that you would not want me to go on into a rant explaining the purpose of a soul, so I will save us the time.


If, on the other hand, no mysterious gap is ever found, and if the algorithms behind human thinking and emotions are understood by careful study of neuronal networks, the existence of a soul will be scientifically discredited... and so will the christian God.

And if souls are proven to exist? I think we both know the answer to that. Of course once again based off of lack of reliable evidence regarding such matters an argument based on whether or not sould exist would end up in a game of presenting accounts; something I am not looking forward to by any means whatsoever.


All that to say that science isn't as weaponless against God as one may think :P All core concepts will be progressively destroyed, or assimilated by science, until there is no incentive at all to consider the existence of God (besides philosophical discussions which bear no consequences), or vice versa. The key idea here is that souls, and God, must interact with matter, that it must be possible to pinpoint the places where that interaction occurs, and that it may be possible to take advantage of it. If we cannot find any irregularities, then it either doesn't exist or it doesn't do anything, which is practically the same thing.

That is of course if such scenarios occur when it can be observed that no interactions occur. That is all speculation, and unless there is any support to it now, it really has no grounds. I could just as easily make a paragraph regarding what would happen if astral projection were proven true and thus souls could be observed. That field however is tricky and yet again I will say I would rather not descend to such an argument when we have at least a decent one in motion already.


Onto the probability of the creation of life.

There is one huge flaw in your argument that no one seems to have challenged: you suppose that events of combination of several proteins have a random chance of happening. That is untrue. The universe is not random. It works according to a certain set of rules, and although randomness may play a role in these rules, it is certainly not dominant.

Actually the fact that amino acids combining and reacting is not random makes life spontaneously generating even more improbable. Remember that amino acids do not simply bond with eachother; they can be absorbed, bond with other substances, etc. until the required aminos necessary for life will likely have been lost. And on to the required amino acids, one must understand that only L-amino acids are used to create life while D-amino acids are equally available. The problem with this? The two readily interact with eachother and thus it becomes incredibly difficult to get a system containing exclusively (a broad term considering there are some twenty different L-aminos alone) L-amino acids. Then there is the problem of obtainind the correct amount and type of energy to get these amino acids to react efficiantly; an at least noticably precise amount that also intensifies the problem of the amino acids reacting with other molecules. On top of all of this we have the problem of having these twenty 'correct' amino acids forming in the correct places and formations. As I have previously stated not all of the sites are necessary; about half of them are, but in these half the correct acid is pertinant for the organisms survival. Not only do you have the problems about how to get the aminos to bond correctlym, but there is also the predicament concerning how half of the bonds required will not even be peptide bonds (which are necessary, by the way). So it is not just one simple thing you must worry about, nor does the fact that these bonds are not random help the probabilities of life spontaneously generating.


You therefore calculate probabilities on the basis that all events are random. However, you do not calculate the probabilities on the basis that events AREN'T random, and that they obey to simple rules. There is a fundamental difference which may change your insanely low odds into a near certainty.

Try insanely low odds to ludicrously low odds. Again I bring up the precision of energy and surroundings necessary for aminos to react in the first place; then of course the other elements located among the acids. Whereas the actual aminos necessary for life may be prone to bond with eachother (hypothetically; this is not at all correct in all situations), you must always rule out the other interferences that would destroy one's chances of producing life.


In order to illustrate my point, I will give the example of a well known mathematical construct, which is the cellular automaton. Basically, it's an infinite (or toroidal) space with N dimensions (usually N=2), composed of cells. If N = 2, it's like a grid (or a doughnut if you opt for the toroidal structure). Each cell can have a certain number of states (alive, dead, and you can add other states at will), and the next state of a cell depends on its own state and the states of its neighbors.

The Game of Life is the most well known example: a cell can be alive or dead. If an alive cell has two or three alive neighbors, it stays alive. If a dead cell has exactly three alive neighbors, it becomes alive. In all other cases, the cell dies or remains dead. What is interesting with cellular automata such as this, is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to predict the final state of an initial configuration. You have to run a simulation in order to find out. Therefore, seeing it in action looks very much like random junk, and you would never think that complex structures could emerge from this. However, this is wrong. A simple structure, called the glider, can move across the plane diagonally. Other bigger structures can move horizontally or vertically. Structures can create beams of gliders. A prime number generator was made. And it was proven that it was possible to make a computer in the game of life. All of this out of awfully simple rules which someone came up with on a trial and error basis. And to think there are two to the 512th power possible rules if N = 2, and 2 to the 2 to the 27th power if N = 3, that's quite a lot of possible rules for life (and we already know about awesome ones), and that's just one theory.

This does not necessarily relate to aminos and proteins, however. This entire scenario relies on the idea that there will be no outside affecting factors that could alter the results; ones such as those which I have mentioned. This is not true; if too much ultraviolet had come through the atmosphere, there would be no chance for life. Too little correct elements, same conclusion. Too many other factors affecting the results, same conclusion. There are simply too many differences between the cellular automata and molecular structures such as deoxyribosenucleic acid and ribosenucleic acid to make an accurate comparison. Add that to the fact that what I am arguing now only covers one aspect that makes life improbable when left to its own methods. Again I state that a productive form of replication is necessary that passes on information which must also be retained. The problem with amino acids is miniscule compared to other such problems which would also arise in the construction of living organisms. So far I have loosely covered the processing of energy; we'll see if I get to the rest of my argument in the near future.


All this to say that extremely simple rules are sufficient to produce unexpected, unpredictable, yet awfully complex structures. Another example is Langton's Ant. You can also look into fractals, which are superb structures made from simple equations, which are found in nature, and which have been shown to be the optimal configurations for many systems.

The problem with fractals in particular is that they are made from simple equations. Much like crystaline structures and snowflakes obviously differ in 'design' from cellular and mollecular constructions, so do fractals. Soon, most likely in this very post, I will deal with yet another sign of intelligent design, that is the code that can be found in DNA and RNA. I am confident that will express my point further and establish many other areas I have been studying recently.


All this to say that in the eventuality that our universe is a cellular automata, you can't calculate probabilities without knowing the key. This is important, because it is very possible that seemingly improbable events such as the occurring of life were in fact unavoidable consequences of SIMPLE yet overlooked rules. It's not necessarily the excessively simple rules of cellular automata. Simple yet unknown biological structures could have catalysed the process. Chemical processes which are not yet understood could bump up many probabilities.

The simple rules you speak of are by no means entirely unknown. Indeed many of them are dealt with in grotesque detail. Consider Gibbs free energy for instance. The more that is located in a molecule, the more work is required to cause a reaction to progress. While this may not necessarily be one of the simple rules you are preaching about which alter the probabilities, it certainly inhibates how often chemical reactions would occur in the first place. Admittedly, I probably could have placed this in my paragraph regarding the chances of aminos even bonding, but I felt it accomplished a slight degree more here. In any case, it goes to show that the requirements for life were a lot more exact than may be originally expected by yourself, and even perhaps by me. The unknown rules? A factor perhaps in some areas but not in others. In any case I am interested in hearing a few of these rules if you would be so kind.


In any way, it is not random. It looks random, but that's just because we don't understand enough to see the patterns and find the rules behind the first steps. This is why you have to be extremely careful when arguing that life is unlikely. Intelligent design is a gap filler and it typically exploits ignorance in order to convey religious propaganda. Sorry had to say this.

'Chance of the Gaps' is what I will bring up now for a good reason. Consider it, get angry about it, whatever you want. The truth is those of faith are not the only ones who blame instances they do not understand on other issues and instances. Also Intelligent Design is by no means a 'gap filler' as you so put it; at least if it is there has been a great deal of effort put in to further explain this 'gap filler'.


Reason is subjective. If there is a God there is a reason, because God is subjective, but if God doesn't exist, then there are no reasons for the existence of the Universe, because there is no subjectivity to speak of. Saying the universe must have been there for some reason is the same as saying God must exist, which is skipping steps.

On the issue of whether or not there are reasons regarding the creation of the Universe, let us again consider what has resulted in these 'random occurances' even with specific laws followed. We have an expansive Universe which is so precisely placed that life on this planet itself could not exist if there were to be slight differences. Then you have the life itself, which has come about in an amount of time arguably and obviously an infinate amount of time less than infinity; something that I am arguing could not happen without intelligent direction. For the topic of how the Universe seems fine-tuned for life, I will list a few notable reasons. First, consider the nuclear force constant. If there was too much, there would be no hydrogen, and the nuclei required for life would be unstable; too little and there would be nothing but hydrogen. Second, consider the Gravitational force constant. If there was too much, stars would burn too quickly and unevenly; too little and the stars would be too cool for nuclear fusion to commence. Finally (for now at least), consider the entropy level of the Universe. If it was too much, there would be no star condensation within the photogalaxies; if too little, there would not even be photogalaxies. Thus it becomes clear that conditions on Earth are not the only things required in order to sustain (and begin for that matter) life.


See above for what I said about you assuming there has been nothing at some moment. That assumption is unfounded. It is a misconception that comes from typically human thinking. If there has never been nothing, then no matter ever "appeared" with nothing to precede it (because there never has been nothing!), and your argument falls flat.

But again where does this matter originate from? It cannot simply be there for all of eternity with nothing to precede and create it, otherwise it would break laws. Unless of course this refers to the single frame of the Universe before time set things into motion, in which I will refer back to my question as to how the matter was there.


...Further note that in the eventuality that continuity, informational infinity and randomness are void concepts, the universe is either bounded as I mentioned, or cyclic.

A cyclic Universe is what I have been wondering about for some time. Having studied such a topic for a degree of time, I feel as though I am ready to combat any cyclic Universe theory which you may present. As for the bounded Universe, remember that it is currently expanding, turning space curvature into matter and the like.


All the bolded words are void of meaning outside of time. From these hints, I'll let you figure out what I think of that point.

My entire point is that time was an indirect Creation that occured when everything else was created. While it is nice to see that you can point out all of the problems with the methods I used to construct the point, I would rather you pay attention to the point itself as well. Now on to the informational proof pointing to an intelligent creator, shall we?

Consider the bonds and codes located on a single strand of DNA. I believe it is Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine. Compare the complexity located in this DNA to persay a crystalline structure. Complex you may say? Not so, considering the structure of a crystal is a single pattern repeated over and over again, much like creating a book consisting of "Please die." repeated over and over again. DNA itself is moreso like an actual book, consisting of more complext patterns which convey a sort of direction and communicate a plan in the construction of bodily materials in cells. What exactly would randomly construct something of DNA, might I ask, and what would replicate it to the point where it could ultimately end up in the first living organism? The simplistic sugars and peptide bonds creating the structure itself are one thing; the actual code which instructs a cell is a completely different other; one that can be efficiantly pointed out to suggest an intelligent designer. DNA and RNA themselves can stand as major points of complexity themselves, disregarding the chances of the correct componants coming together to form them. In any case, I am becoming weary at the moment and I will see if I can perhaps clarify this in the morning.


Unfortunately for your argument, there is no one solid Definition Of Life. People can't agree, for example, on whether or not virii are alive; they reproduce and contain genetic material to do so, but they need a host to create copies of them and do not metabolize or respond to stimuli in anything more than a simple chemical manner. There isn't an imaginary line, to the left of which things are considered non-living and to the right of which things are considered living. There is a progression.

There is a solid definition of life: a living organism reproduces, retains information, and processes energy, simple as that. The controversy surrounding the issue of whether or not virii are alive or not is one of a person's view; not a blurring line between living and non-living things. What I am trying to convey is, yet again, the improbability of the random appearance of life. If you can prove that the amino acids and the like can be assembled reasonably without incredible odds against the occurance, then you will have gained a great degree of ground.


That said, the first thing to exist which everybody would agree were alive would necessarily come from things which not everybody would say were alive... but some people would. They would certainly seem alive. The things that gave rise to those things would be even more basic. And perhaps, even furthur down the line, were pre-proteins which behaved in the way I suggested they might. Those structures would not require any energy source at all, other than the energy contained in their nuclear and molecular bonds and the kinetic energy given to them by their environment (motion, in other words). Energy would only become a factor when a protein-like structure just happened to be bombarded by heat and partially broken down by it, only to reassamble itself, according to normal physical and chemical laws, in a more advantageous configuration.

Every living organism, again, has a base degree of complexity that can be used to differentiate it from other non-living systems. If one system holds one characteristic of life but not another, then it is not living. If it holds two but not the third, then it is not living. Only if three characteristics are possessed can a said system be considered living, nothing more, nothing less (simply because these are broad characteristics to put it bluntly). We are not considering small systems here that resemble living creatures, but actual living creatures. Admittedly, the first living being was obviously even more basic than the simplest one we have today. Does that mean it requires fewer characteristics? No it does not.


Again, I'm not saying the protein structures were alive. I'm saying they eventually became alive; that they became "more" alive, in a way, with each change that resulted in a significant survival advantage.

Again though I point out the fact that there are characteristics of life which must be noticable in a system in order for that system to be considered living. Characteristics that resemble the requirements are all nice and beautiful, but they cannot be anything other than what is required and still be considered life. I realize also what you are saying is that each progression was slow, and that each characteristic of life did not necessarily come at the same time, however, I will ask you again to recognize the difference between say a simple protein and a cell; one has complex reactions that happen simultaneously or in a given order, the other does not. One reproduces by duplicating the DNA and passing on information to its next of kin, the other may crash into a protein and make that protein resemble itself. There is a difference, one that must be seen and understood completely before arguing what and what would not be considered life.


Following the universe's rapid initial expansion, the rate of expansion has been slowing. While the universe would eventually cool off too much for gravity wells to form anymore, and thus for stars to form, it doesn't seem that such a thing would happen for quite a long time. The window in which life-friendly conditions exist in the universe seems quite large indeed, though certainly not infinitely large. While a non-infinite time span means that random or semirandom chances may not necessarily be realized 100% of the time, long time spans still obviously mean that the odds are greatly increased, far above the realm of mathematical insignificance.

But whether the odds are increased to the point of where they become feasible is the issue which I am trying to convey. Referring to an above point I raised against Brain, the characteristics of the Universe are precise enough to the point where if they were different in sometimes minor ways life itself would be ultimately impossible; so would stars in some situations. Next I would like to note that there are signifigantly less planets in the Universe than what I believe is commonly conceived here on this thread. Just because our solar system contains nine (ten?) planets does not mean that all other systems contain a similar amount. In fact such an assumption shows an apparent lack of the Universe itself.


And even if you eventually explain everything from free will to the nature of the senses to everything else via science... there will still be a place for God, at the very least among those who would rather be comfortable than correct.

Likewise no matter how much evidence is presented to prove God some will simply reject it on that basis that they refuse to believe it. Christians are not the only ones who can be close-minded, you see, and the concept of God is not always the desirable fall-back for those who prefer comfort. Some hate the concept of God, for what reasons I do not know nor necessarily understand. Also always remember that many intellectuals believe in God regardless of their thirst for knowledge and their need to understand things. It is not just those afraid of knowing who believe in God.


Faith will always have a certain emotional appeal to some people, as long as people exist; and as long and people want to believe, they will. The changing location of the realm of Heaven throughout Christian history merely reflects attempts to rationalize faith. Such rationalization, however, is not necessary for faith to exist. God, the concept, is beyond everything and everything.

Tisk tisk, Aglandiir. The same can easily be said of science. So because the stars were once believed to be simply right above the Earth and they have been found not to be am I to assume that this is a rationalization for something without a base? No, I would say further information was acquired to prove that stars were farther away than what was once believed. Such concepts, religious or not, are constantly in change. That is the nature of science: it is constantly changing. Does this make it incorrect? Not at all. And also, despite the fact that the concept of God states that He is beyond all percievable rules and whatnot does not mean that the signs of His existence cannot be seen. When I say God is beyond matter and energy, note that I do not simply remain content on that issue and repeat it every time that conception is challenged. I look for support for that idea. In any case, I am back and glad to be here debating.


You're jumping to conclusions much too quickly though, who says that all life would have to be like us? There could be some aliens that could ONLY live in extremely high temperature, or vice versa, or some aliens that would not need oxygen to live, and rather breathe methane, etc. You don't know what others need to live, only what we need to live. Therefore, every planet in existance is hospitable to some sort of life, just not always us.

A valid or at the very least, imaginative point which I may have already addressed at some point during the recent past. For the possibility of other forms of life, that does not change the specific requirements of a living organism, ie. the three things which I have listed and the noticable complexity of these organisms in comparison to other systems. Assuming that every planet (which is fewer than you may think) in existence is hospitable to some form of life is an audacious comment which clearly does not consider the fact that the vast majority of planets do not even have any gases present; either that or they are too close or too far away from their star to the point where any life becomes impossible. Orbits could destroy the chances of life; supernovas; satellites; gravitational hold of the planet itself; location in the Universe, all of these things affect the chances of life, and immediately elliminate the possibilities for the majority of planets to support life.


And once again, I didn't overexaggerate how many planets are actually in existance-- I severely understated the actualy amount of planets, because as far as we know, the number is much too high to comprehend. But, we could go with what you say and assume that one planet in every galaxy can support our life, as in, human life-- (there are several even in our solar system that could through a process called terraforming) now-- how many galaxies are there in the universe? Still tons. And we're still a one in whatever the hell million chance-- not very good odds, which is why I believe we're purely coincidental.
Why would God create trillions upon zillions upon fring-ging-gillions of planets and then put life on one? What are the others? Works in progress?

You overestimate the amount of planets in the Universe. Our solar system is not an accurate base to estimate how many planets may be located in other systems across the Universe. In truth, there are fewer planets than what you have stated to where it can be more accurately stated that the actual number is closer to one planet to every thousand stars. There are certain conditions that must be right in order for planets to form, you must remember, including sufficiant material, a relatively safe position in the stars gravitational hold, etc.. Planets themselves are by no means common; planets with a degree of variety in the gases they retain (or even any gases at all for that matter) are even more rare.

As for why God would place other planets in the Universe, it should be noted that the balance things are in at this current state and time is very delicate. As I have stated to Brain in regards to the precision of the Universe and how its specific settings allow life, or even stars for that matter, to exist, the chances of life are by no means restricted to the planet they are on, or the solar system they are in.

[The Muffin Man]

FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR BIG FACELESS DEITY SOROVIS WHY THE **** CAN'T YOU LET THE DAMN TOPIC DIE!?!?!

You have no PROVED ****. You have not CONVERTED anyone. You have not done any favors to yourself, the board, or your religion. Walk away, and leave the topic ALONE. NOBODY CARES. I thought the topic being inactive for nearly an entire week without any posts would clue you in we ALL stopped caring.

[Rudoku]

tl;dr
Do you expect someone to read all this in the middle of the night? I mean, thanks for trying to keep me busy until I'm off work, but damn...

[Leon-IH]

*punches sorovis* dude, this thread is dead, nobody has blocked any of my arguements since I joined this ****in thing (well, none of my proper arguements) you haven't converted anyone who has half a brain (and if they didn't have half a brain i'm glad theyre not atheists anymore, idiots put us to shame).

Congratulations you win "persistant moron of the year" award, now go eat some cheese, try some alcohol that isn't brandy, gamble a few bucks, and sleep through 1 minute of church - you'd be better off.

[Sorovis]

*punches sorovis* dude, this thread is dead, nobody has blocked any of my arguements since I joined this ****in thing (well, none of my proper arguements) you haven't converted anyone who has half a brain (and if they didn't have half a brain i'm glad theyre not atheists anymore, idiots put us to shame).

Read what I edited into my last post. Then of course read I think my post before that, regarding yourself and your arguments. Now I may have missed a few, and I will go back and check, but from what I have seen my general response to your points is the same now as it was then. Secondly regarding the state of the thread, I asked it to be kept open even though I would be absent for a week. If anybody dropped it due to lack of opposition from myself, then now is the time to start it back up. As far as I can tell I will be here for many days ahead without another interuption.

[Sorovis]

The comment itself was directed towards Brain who is quite welcome to respond to it at any time, provided the topic is still open. In all realism, I posted it late in the night so I could rest before having to return to the debate again.

[The Muffin Man]

FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR BIG FACELESS DEITY SOROVIS WHY THE **** CAN'T YOU LET THE DAMN TOPIC DIE!?!?!

You have not PROVED ****. You have not CONVERTED anyone. You have not done any favors to yourself, the board, or your religion. Walk away, and leave the topic ALONE. NOBODY CARES. I thought the topic being inactive for nearly an entire week without any posts would clue you in we ALL stopped caring.



Because he needs to see the truth.

[Sorovis]

I enjoy debating and based off of Brain's and Aglandiir's periodic responces I assume at least something similar from them. If you don't want to debate, then just leave the thread. My presence here and my interest and flair for arguments should not be any inhibation to you, likewise yours should not be to me. Honestly, can we just go our seperate ways and agree to disagree?

[The Muffin Man]

I enjoy debating and based off of Brain's and Aglandiir's periodic responces I assume at least something similar from them. If you don't want to debate, then just leave the thread. My presence here and my interest and flair for arguments should not be any inhibation to you, likewise yours should not be to me. Honestly, can we just go our seperate ways and agree to disagree?

You just like pretending you're right.

Admit it. You don't want to argue. In your mind you think you're right anyhow. You just get your rocks off telling yourself we're all stupid heathens.

[Sorovis]

Wait, you believe in evolution, but not from "monkies to humans"? How can you make that differentiation?

Quite technically apes and humans are believed to have the same descendants. Saying 'monkeys to humans' is not entirely accurate, as humans did not originate from modern day primates by any means.


Plus, a pterodactyl is NOT a bird. Archeopteryx and Protoavis are the early decendants of birds, and were not related to pterodactyls.

In the early times when the Bible was written the term 'bird' referred essentially to every flying creature, regardless of whether the creature in question was a bat or a bird. The modern day method of phylogeny, remember, were not always present throughout history.

[RedStarWarrior]

Closed due to lack of intelligent conversation from certain members.

[Zak]

Archived due to hilarity.