Atheist with a huge premise for the existence of a god.

I will never believe in the gods of any religion, BUT science (of all things) offers an incredible amount of instances that point to a god of some kind. I know I'm not going to write this as clearly as some might, but here goes anyway.

All of the religious in the world can make only one statement about how our existence came into being. They can all say, "Boy, we sure are lucky there's a god." And they say this with no physical evidence to back up this claim. (Hold your horses, the good part's coming : )

Science, however, believes that we were created via a chain of random events. Here is what science can say:

1. Boy, we sure are lucky that the Big Bang happened.
2. Boy, we sure are lucky that the gases from the Big Bang formed suns.
3. Boy, we sure are lucky that those suns formed carbon, else there would be no life.
4. Boy, we sure are lucky that some of those suns went supernova and spread the carbon all over the universe.
5. Boy, we sure are lucky that our sun formed with enough fuel to last billions of years.
6. Boy, we sure are lucky that our planet formed.
7. Boy, we sure are lucky that our planet formed at just the right distance from the sun.
8. Boy, we sure are lucky that the universe dumped a bunch of carbon on our planet.
9. Boy, we sure are lucky that meteors with oceans and oceans of water crashed onto our planet.
10. Boy, we sure are lucky that carbon and all the other elements of life landed in some steamy pool of water.
11. Boy, we sure are lucky that all those elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen...) just happened to be at the same place in the steamy pool at the same time.
12. Boy, we sure are lucky that all those elements clumped together in that steamy pool.
13. Boy, we sure are lucky that these elements just happened to carry all the information needed to create the first living cell.
14. Boy, we sure are lucky that first cell had the information to split into more and more cells.
15. Boy, we sure are lucky that those cells figured out how to connect to make complex organisms.
16. Boy, we sure are lucky that those organisms found a reason to crawl out of the water.
17. Boy, we sure are lucky that some of those organisms evolved into animals.
18. Boy, we sure are lucky that a meteorite smashed into the earth and killed off all the dinosaurs, because this gave the smaller creatures a chance to evolve into US!

I don't know about any of you, but for me this is WAY WAY WAY too many lucky things to happen to be purely random events. I don't want to believe it, but jeez, there had to be some kind of intelligent and deliberate force behind all of it.

What do you think?

reply to post by jiggerj

I don't know about any of you, but for me this is WAY WAY WAY too many lucky things to happen to be purely random events.

Personally I think this line of thinking is far too anthropocentric, it places human beings as somehow special compared to other cosmic phenomenon. Sure life is complex and interesting, and, as far as we know, pretty rare, but then so are black holes. There's a lot of fantastically strange things going on in our Universe both on a macro level and a quantum level. Many of these things are only strange, complex and important to us/from our perspective.

The strangeness, complexity, or as you put it "luck" of the current Universe is not really a good argument for a God. After all these events span the last 14 billion years, if a God is involved he's taking his damn sweet time, he spent a good 150 million years on Dinosaurs alone, seems odd if you ask me.

reply to post by jiggerj


I don't know about any of you, but for me this is WAY WAY WAY too many lucky things to happen to be purely random events.


Well, if the universe didn't harbor billions of galaxies, with billions of stars/planets emitting debris into space on a regular basis, over billions of years, I'd say you have a point...


But I can't say that...

I do believe Aliens manipulated the DNA of our oldest ancestors to make us involve faster into what we are today.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull


what is time to an immortal and supernatural being. God must look at accomplishments, not how long it takes.

time for you, is how long the earth rotates on it's axis. for God that's irrelevant.

God is a Creator. do you think michelangelo was looking at a sundial every 15 mins while he was painting the sistine chapel.

or did he just keep going until it was completed.

i bet when he finished he didn't know what year it was.

if you're immortal, time doesn't exist because there's nothing to measure against your life.

lucky there's grass and trees too, to provide us with oxygen.

Originally posted by randomname
reply to post by Titen-Sxull

 

what is time to an immortal and supernatural being. God must look at accomplishments, not how long it takes.

time for you, is how long the earth rotates on it's axis. for God that's irrelevant.

God is a Creator. do you think michelangelo was looking at a sundial every 15 mins while he was painting the sistine chapel.

or did he just keep going until it was completed.

i bet when he finished he didn't know what year it was.

if you're immortal, time doesn't exist because there's nothing to measure against your life.

lucky there's grass and trees too, to provide us with oxygen.

edit on 10-5-2012 by randomname because: (no reason given)

Can you prove God exist? No you can't.

You're going to quote scriptures now?

The Bible isn't proof, because it was written by men.

You're taking it out on blind faith out of fear of going to "hell" and that was the whole purpose of the Bible or any other religious book in the first place, to control the population.

If God was real, he would show it to his true believers and yet they continue to use the Bible as proof, therefore God cannot exist.

I have a theory of everything. It also includes how religion plays a role in it. Read my thread in my signature, "My Theory of the past, present and future". And your eyes shall open.

Gods, myths and all that; you can call those beings "Aliens" because that's what they really are. There is no God that watches everything you do, every second of the day. I don't think so.

I believe in the idea of God, maybe with 10% certainly. Those who blindly follow the Bible or any other religion for that matter are gulliable fools who are full of fear. God would not want you to fear him, would you want your own child to fear you? I don't think so.

reply to post by randomname

God is a Creator. do you think michelangelo was looking at a sundial every 15 mins while he was painting the sistine chapel.

But you just got done saying that for God time is irrelevant. For Michelangelo, likely commissioned to complete his work, time would have mattered thought not likely every 15 minutes.

My point is that if this God is all powerful, time and space and matter bend instantly to his will, he could get the final result he wanted in an instant. Why wait 14 billion years? Now if we're proposing a LIMITED God who has to influence reality in a more subtle way than sure.

lucky there's grass and trees too, to provide us with oxygen.

Cart before the horse. We evolved to use oxygen because it was already in the atmosphere when mammals first emerged. This is what I mean by the argument being anthropocentric, this belief that it was all created JUST FOR US rather than us evolving to be suited TO IT.

reply to post by TheProphetMark

Those who blindly follow the Bible or any other religion for that matter are gulliable fools who are full of fear.

I don't believe anyone could follow the Bible blindly as it will take a considerable amount of intelligence to comprehend what is written. First one needs to see(through senses) before they can read, correct?

Can you see yet?

Because it doesn't sound like you've read.

Maybe, if one doesn't read and follow other peoples interpretation(which could be just made up)...then one is indeed following something blindly, but it is not the Bible they are following.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

My point is that if this God is all powerful, time and space and matter bend instantly to his will, he could get the final result he wanted in an instant. Why wait 14 billion years?

Science itself disagrees with you there since time, as we measure it, isn't the same everywhere. In fact, time as we measure it, DOES NOT EXIST. It's a human contraption to make life easier and organizable, but very much non-existent.

Carrying on with the above in mind with added perspective;
how do you know it's really 14 billion years? 14 billion years in human measurement, sure. I bet if a dog would be sentient enough to speak, I'm pretty sure he or she would express his amazement at how much time we humans waste. But then again, a dog can't even remotely get as old as humans can - so what does it know about wasting time?!

You're injecting your own opinion of 14 billion years taking too long, which is not very scientific.

reply to post by InfoKartel


I'm saying that if God can do things instantaneously then why would he do things gradually. The importance is the difference between doing things instantly and doing things gradually. It is true that it's really only 14 billion years from the perspective of a year as we define it on Earth (how long it takes to make one trip around our star).

Why would a being of such immense and inconceivable power do things in such a way rather than just conjure the Universe wholesale with a mere thought?

If we propose a more deistic, watchmaker style, deity, then there might be an argument to be made here but as far as the God of classical monotheism, the all powerful one, I just don't see it.

This argument has been addressed by the anthropomorphic principle

to those living creatures, the universe may appear to fit them perfectly (while in fact, they simply fit the universe perfectly)

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

I'm saying that if God can do things instantaneously then why would he do things gradually.

Who are you to say the universe wasn't created instantaneously?

Why would a being of such immense and inconceivable power do things in such a way rather than just conjure the Universe wholesale with a mere thought?

Oh I see your issue here. You're trying to inject your own opinion and bias into your argument, then projecting it on God as if God should think like you do, because...to you it seems more logical or efficient, while it might be completely senseless to a divine being.

If we propose a more deistic, watchmaker style, deity,

Caucasian-guy-with-a-beard-sitting-in-the-clouds-type-of-deity? No thank you, that's a commercial god. A t.v god, if you will.

At the end of any statement of creation could be added the phrase "thus hath God decreed," but this still proves nothing, except to those who believe in God. Scientifically speaking, no matter how likely creation may seem to anyone, it cannot be proven as of now, from a logical point of view. That is to say, one cannot bring forth premises A, B, and C that will logically lead to the conclusion D, that God created everything. I know what you mean though about coincidences, and the sheer magnificence and design-like qualities life on Earth possesses. It does make one think there was a creator.

reply to post by jiggerj

I will never believe in the gods of any religion, BUT science (of all things) offers an incredible amount of instances that point to a god of some kind

WRONG WRONG WRONG....you are attention seeking.. "an atheist that see science as a means to proving the existence of god"

Science does NO such thing in my opinion, in fact it does the opposite. There is a scientific explanation our for everything....however, science is quite limited at the moment here on earth so we are behind from where we will be in 200 years.

NO god....NEVER....maybe there are Aliens that created us much like we study ant in an ant farm etc....I could believe that over your thread. NO flag NO star!!

Originally posted by facelift
reply to post by jiggerj

 

I don't know about any of you, but for me this is WAY WAY WAY too many lucky things to happen to be purely random events.


Well, if the universe didn't harbor billions of galaxies, with billions of stars/planets emitting debris into space on a regular basis, over billions of years, I'd say you have a point...


But I can't say that...

Can you live in a house without floors? Drive a car that doesn't have an engine? Point being, how do we know whether or not everything in the universe is absolutely necessary to keep our little planet running? If the other planets in our solar system flew away would our planet do the same? If just the moon pulled away from us would our world be destroyed? How do we know?

Like I said, I'm an atheist, so help me out here by proving that everything in my LUCKY list is purely coincidental. If this were a police investigation the number of chance happenings would lead to the conclusion that these things were not even close to being random.

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
reply to post by InfoKartel

 

I'm saying that if God can do things instantaneously then why would he do things gradually.

For anything to be created instantaneously would require magic. I don't believe in magic. This universe had to be slow simmered just like a nice beef stew. Crap, now I'm hungry!

reply to post by InfoKartel

to you it seems more logical or efficient, while it might be completely senseless to a divine being.

Well obviously to me it seems more logical for an all powerful being to exercise that power in a direct and obvious way, rather than to create a gradually evolving Universe that appears to exist independent of anything supernatural. Of course we can't rule out the idea of a God creating however most creation accounts depict God merely speaking or thinking things into existence ex nihilo. Fully formed multicellular organisms are formed in Genesis without any evolutionary processes as if God just invented them out of his mind.

It is hypothetically possible for a God to create in another way but, like I said, to me it doesn't make sense for the all powerful God of classical monotheism, who could create the Universe fully formed just the way he wanted it in a mere instant, to take fourteen billion Earth years to gradually set up a Universe that looks to have formed without divine intervention of any kind.

Caucasian-guy-with-a-beard-sitting-in-the-clouds-type-of-deity?

Actually that's the opposite of what I was thinking when I said a deistic God. The bearded robed God is the general conception of the Abrahamic God, or as I referred to it earlier the God of classical monotheism (Islam, Judaism and Christianity more specifically).

A deistic God is a more nebulous kind of idea, the sort of God who sets the gears of the Universe spinning and then sits back to watch it work intervening almost never in his creation. Deism, and it's cousin pantheism, are the more non-falsifiable forms of theism, they are philosophically interesting ideas but not provable (and also not disprovable).

Originally posted by Six6Six
reply to post by jiggerj

 

I will never believe in the gods of any religion, BUT science (of all things) offers an incredible amount of instances that point to a god of some kind

WRONG WRONG WRONG....you are attention seeking.. "an atheist that see science as a means to proving the existence of god"

Science does NO such thing in my opinion, in fact it does the opposite. There is a scientific explanation our for everything....however, science is quite limited at the moment here on earth so we are behind from where we will be in 200 years.

NO god....NEVER....maybe there are Aliens that created us much like we study ant in an ant farm etc....I could believe that over your thread. NO flag NO star!!

LOL Not looking for stars and flags. I genuinely thought of this while on the throne (where else could I come up with this crap). Seriously though, if this were a police investigation, there is more than enough evidence to come up with a suspect. Wouldn't you think?

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

Well obviously to me

And there you have it. The very first words of your post. It's exactly as I described a few posts earlier. You're projecting your own sense of logic into that of a divine being...following that logic, if you by accident - step on an ant, those ants must think you are at war with them(yes I know ants don't think).

But how the hell could an ant read a humans mind enough to comfortably project its own ideas as if it were the ideas of a human?

Fully formed multicellular organisms are formed in Genesis without any evolutionary processes as if God just invented them out of his mind.

The people who wrote those books...they didn't know the words "multi cellular organisms". It would seem you also have an issue with relativity. Remember that ant from a few sentences back? How much effort does an ant need to make to catch up to one human step forward? And if ants had little watches...(I know they don't), would their time go faster compared to ours? Science says yes.

It is hypothetically possible for a God to create in another way but, like I said, to me it doesn't make sense for the all powerful God of classical monotheism, who could create the Universe fully formed just the way he wanted it in a mere instant, to take fourteen billion Earth years to gradually set up a Universe that looks to have formed without divine intervention of any kind.

And that's why it's written:
Matthew 18:3:
And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

You cannot, as a small child, fathom the thought processes of yourself as an adult, or any other adult for that matter. It would only be self-defeating to attempt such things. So when you say, to you it doesn't make much sense...you should humble yourself as a child(as is written) and listen to your own words: "To me it doesn't make sense". Ever wonder why? Because you're not God! Amazing isn't it?

A deistic God is a more nebulous kind of idea, the sort of God who sets the gears of the Universe spinning and then sits back to watch it work intervening almost never in his creation.

These are all human contraptions, just like time. You're also kind of defeating your own point there when you are arguing that God must be all powerful - then put God into a box as either this or that. Have you ever heard of: "I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it isn't?"

We are sooooooooooooooooooooooo small as humans in this vast universe. We can only dream of dreaming of understanding a fraction of what a divine being may experience or think to be logical.

reply to post by JiggyPotamus

Scientifically speaking, no matter how likely creation may seem to anyone, it cannot be proven as of now, from a logical point of view.

That's complete hogwash. Our DNA is evidence of this proof you seek, but it will take some more time to unravel the mysteries of our DNA.

reply to post by Six6Six

Science does NO such thing in my opinion, in fact it does the opposite.

In your OPINION? Did you just say science does something in your opinion?