Why are so many people opposed...?
 

Why are so many people opposed to the idea of a God? Does the notion scare you guys or something? The fact that you would put more faith in humans (who are flawed) is baffling.

WHAT!? I'm not scared of the notion of God. I just don't believe he exists. Hell, life would be fine and dandy if God existed...everlasting happiness sounds pretty jovial to me!
I don't have any "faith" in humans...but I can certainly see that they are real.
This is one of the most ridiculous accusations that I have ever heard.
What is baffling to me is that "you guys" would put faith in to something that you cannot even prove exists or not.

You can't prove that he doesn't exist... whats your point?

Well, you can't prove that Santa Clause doesn't exist either, so there!

Well actually I can... You see Saint Nick, the man himself died some 1500 years ago. But that still leaves the problem of the Easter Bunny...

Exactly...

This is the most idiotic line of reasoning that I have ever come across. This type of logic is what gives theists a bad name.
Perhaps you would like to take part in one of the many debates that are already going on in this board? This question has already been discussed. Most people accepeted that the onus is on the theists to prove the existence of God. Not vice-versa.
As I explained in other threads, I cannot prove that there is living under my bed an invisible purple llama. I also cannot prove it is not there. But just because I can't prove it doesn't exist, does not IN ANY WAY WHAT-SO-EVER make me likely to believe in it.
Do YOU believe that there is an invisible purple llama living under my bed? No? Why not? You can't PROVE that its not there.

Well If there was said Invisible purple llama under your bed you could physically touch it, no? I mean unless the laws of physics don't apply to this magical invisible llama.

Have you ever physically touched God?

Nope...it follows that being invisible to light, it is also invisible to all other forms. This is a scientifically, experimentally verified fact. I've poked under my bed with sticks, and felt nothing. I think its a fairly safe accertation to make that being invisible and purple the normal laws of physics indeed do not apply. He's a very special llama.

in·vis·i·ble ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-vz-bl)
adj.
1.Impossible to see; not visible: Air is invisible.
2.Not accessible to view; hidden: mountain peaks invisible in the fog.
3.Not easily noticed or detected; inconspicuous: “The poor are politically invisible” (Michael Harrington).
4.Not published in financial statements: an invisible asset.

Invisible refers to what you can or can not see, not the fact that you can or cannot physcally touch something.

Hey....like I said, hes a very special llama.

OH, and by the way, I am also well within my right to move the goal posts of the argument whenever I feel fit. Thats just the way things are when you're dealing with invisible purple llamas.

fair enough...

So you accept my point? Great! So you believe in the invisible purple llama?

I think a lot of people are "opposed" to the idea of god (which is a strange way of putting it - lack of belief does not necessarily equate to opposition) because it's a little weird to think about basing your entire life around something that may or may not exist, and the worship of which has caused much pain and suffering in human history. For me, there's no real reason to believe in god, just as there's no real reason not to.

And I'm not sure why you're baffled why we'd put more faith in humans - I can see other humans, I can observe their behavior and its effects, speculate as to its causes, predict future behavior. Why should I put faith in some, to me, mythological being who may or may not exist, and for whose existence there is no evidence? And don't give me that Pascal's wager bullshit.

Agreed! Douglas Adams said it best with:

Thanks to Greg700 who posted the link to that interview.

I have little faith in humans, and less faith in beings fabricated by humans. The idea of a god doesn't scare me, there are plenty of beings out there more powerful than I. I don't believe everything I'm told.

:hmm: :hmm: :hmm:

For the sake of maintaining my privilege to participate in this community, I do believe I shall abstain from posting anything. :p ;) :D

In the beginning when man was still a tribal half animal there was no concept of God. There was only ritual. We belived that we had the power over everything. We believed that it is because we danced every morning that the sun come up. We believed that throwing a rock in the river made it rain. We believed that we controlled the world though their actions, for we had no science, and questions about how the world worked had to be answered. Then one day we overslept and so missed the morning dance…yet the sun still came up!

So after much thought with the primitive logic we had we came to a conclusion. If we didn’t make the sun come up. Then some guy that was bigger then us did it!

grab the popcorn kids its another debate! :D

Well, the notion of a god doesn't scare me.
It's just that after reading the Bible, I kind of decided that I don't like him/her very much.
Now it's up to him/her to prove me wrong.

Re: Why are so many people opposed...?
 

The notion doesn't scare me, but it doesn't inspire me either. I think for people to believe or have faith in a deity, they need to be inspired by the deity.

I guess I draw inspiration from abstract concepts that I <B>don't</B> call "God", and also from people, who aren't all bad all the time :)

One problem I have with the idea of a God is that some people use it as an excuse ("we can't change it for the better, it's God's will", and that sort of thing).

I view religion as I view life. If I see it, I'll believe it. So far, I haven't seen anything that will make me believe anything. That, I believe, is where most people stand on the issue. The idea of a god or some supreme being doesn't scare me, nor does it inspire me. It doesn't do anything for me. In my day-to-day life religion has shown me other people ridculing those that shout out their beliefs and those that believe that can't keep their mouth shut without every single thing they say is some shape or form religiously formed with a few people placed in between.

read lurkette's post
i disagree with everything else he says in other posts. But what he said is the best answer you will get from non-believers.

I'm not opposed to the idea of God, but I am opposed to other people who think they know God and how God thinks, and have the nerve to tell me how to worship God.

You expect anything less on a philiosophy board?

please consider the following:
 

I believe in God, call it blind faith or whatever you want but nothing is EVER going to change my mind.

http://fp.bio.utk.edu/wisdom/Concept...with%20God.jpg

"IF a perfect being is possible THEN it exists"

linky
---

this is not a good argument how ever you look at it:
http://www.anzwers.org/free/rosegard.../COM/G/God.jpg

I believe in God. I think of it as a scientific theory that is widely accepted. It is able to be proven with evidence, however no one has had the ability to experience it and tell about it. For example the Big Bang. It is widely accpeted by scientists that the Big Bang was the creation of the Universe. However, no one was there to see it. Yet all evidence points to it. The fact that the Universe is expanding,the fact that not all light has reached us nor has the universe reached thermal equilibrium therefore it has not exsisted for an infinite amount of time but rather had a beginning, and so on and so on.
Same way with God. The Bible is filled with stories of how God has affected people. The fact that every civilization in the world has or had a religion believing in a higher power. This shows me that somewhere along the line God has directly been involved in the lives of people showing that he exists. The story has changed but God is still there. The fact that scientists and archaelogists are finding evidence to prove stories in the Bible. The fact that the Universe was created and that it was created outside the laws of science.

So is a book of Greek Mythology.

Quote:

The fact that every civilization in the world has or had a religion believing in a higher power. This shows me that somewhere along the line God has directly been involved in the lives of people showing that he exists.

It could just as easily point to an essential human psychological need to believe in (and invent) a higher power to explain inexplicable phenomena.

Quote:

The story has changed but God is still there.

Albeit in such disparate incarnations that it's hard to believe they could be talking about the same thing. Look at Hinduism vs. Taoism, or Islam vs. native American shamanism. So yeah, there's some conception of a "higher power" but that doesn't mean it exists, see above. And some religions don't really have a defineable higher power at all (Buddhism, Taoism has the Tao, but that's not really a higher power, it just is everywhere, etc.)

Quote:

The fact that scientists and archaelogists are finding evidence to prove stories in the Bible.

That only proves that the events happened and someone wrote about them, not that the accounts about the events, and therefore the rest of the Bible, are true. It's pretty clear that Jesus existed. That doesn't prove that he was the son of God. It's pretty clear that there was a huge flood at some point. That doesn't prove that God was punishing mankind for being evil.

Quote:

The fact that the Universe was created and that it was created outside the laws of science.

??? As far as I know the laws of science are perfectly capable of accounting for a number of possible "causes" of the creation of the Universe that don't include a capital-G God.

No, the law of general relativity breaks down at the singularity know as the big bang. This is because there was a single point of infinite mass that some how exploded with energy. However, the problem is the infinite amount of energy required by general relativity to cause that point to expand. That infinte energy had to come from somewhere.
It is also very clear scientifically that the Universe and time itself has a beginning. This beginning was 15 billion years ago and it has been called the big bang. Something had to create the universe. Why is it so hard to believe that we were created by something bigger than we are. Look at all we create. We can genetically alter simple organisms. If they were capable of intelligent thought I'm sure they would not readily be able to understand how they were created. Yet we know they were created because we made them.
Same way with God. He created us, yet because we are lesser creatures we are unable to fully understand how and why we are here. So we develop our own theories. Some can be proven by are methods some cannot.
Our entire universe can be the size of a grain of sand in something much larger. We are limited in our ability to think and therefore we can never know the entire picture.

The above statement is false, the Big Bang did not involve infinite mass.

But if it had:

Mass is energy. If you have infinite mass, you have the infinite energy needed to move it.

I am not afraid of God. I am afraid of organizations that use God for their own personal gain/money grubbing. (aka 99% of all organized religion)

Science talk doesn't make this true.
 

I am a graduate student in mathematical physics, and though I don't study big bang theories myself, I know enough about them from osmosis to say that your presentation here is specious pseudoscience.

First:
>No, the law of general relativity breaks down at the singularity >know as the big bang. This is because there was a single point >of infinite mass that some how exploded with energy. However, >the problem is the infinite amount of energy required by general >relativity to cause that point to expand. That infinte energy had >to come from somewhere.

General relativity is a model of reality, not reality. It is a system of mathematical rules and relationships studied by physicists because it makes meaningful predictions about the observed universe. You are right in saying those laws break down near the big bang. But that doesn't mean the universe didn't have governing principles then. It only means that our scientific model no longer applies there. Scientists are still actively researching the first moments after the big bang, and no existing theory applies all the way back to the singularity. Incidentally, some of these theories suggest that the singularity was "created" by the collapse of another universe. The universe may have been snapping open and closed into the infinite past. And I put "created" in quotes because causality as humans understand it doesn't really exist at a space-time singularity, and thus the concept of "creating" doesn't make much sense. This, by the way is fundamental flaw in your argument.

>It is also very clear scientifically that the Universe and time itself >has a beginning. ... Something had to create the universe.

The ideas of "a beginning" and of "creating" are human inventions, born from the structure of the human brain and from human experiences. The human experience and the structure of the human brain are predicated on the laws of physics as they exist today. Common sense like "something had to create the universe" is absurd nonsense in the moments after the big bang unless a scientific theory gives it a rigorous meaning.

Now,
>Why is it so hard to believe that we were created by something >bigger than we are. Look at all we create. We can genetically >alter simple organisms. If they were capable of intelligent >thought I'm sure they would not readily be able to understand >how they were created. Yet we know they were created >because we made them.
Fine. I can't prove God doesn't exist. Science is merely a description of the observed physical world. It is not reality itself. To the extent that we observe things inconsistent with our science, we can change our theories to better mirror reality as we observe it. Since God is outside observed reality, science will never reach him. This is basically what you said. So I don't find it hard to accept the possibility of a creator. I do question his relevance to my life as I experience it.

>Same way with God. He created us, yet because we are lesser >creatures we are unable to fully understand how and why we >are here.
This is an analogy, not an argument. Why do you attempt to woo nonbelievers with rhetorical devices that only appeal to believers?

Finally
>We are limited in our ability to think and therefore we can never >know the entire picture.
I agree wholeheartedly. Science doesn't claim to have the whole picture. Only organized religion does. Do you see now why agnostics are so uncomfortable? We are supposed to have faith in a religious vision because of the insufficiency of our reason. But if you don't already have faith, you look around and see about 75 ready-made faiths to choose from. Am I really supposed to choose one at random and adhere to it?

Sorry for the aggressive tone of this message, but I get testy when people appeal to science to make arguments that science isn't intended for. You steal the authoritative tone that science has in our culture without submitting to the rigorous constraints imposed by the scientific method. But almost everyone does this from time to time. I'm guilty of it myself, I'm sure. So please don't view this message as a personal attack. I really did appreciate reading and thinking about your views.

Well the First Law of Thermodynamics proves there is at least a Divine Creator. It tells us that matter can neither be created nor destroyed by natural causes. I believe that design is a very valid statement, because there can be no creation without a designer. Buildings didn't just appear out of nowhere without someone first thinking them up. Something HAD to be there to create the Universe, and our Earth. Since God is not natural, He is beyond being natural, he can create matter or destroy it. And by destroying it, I mean completely, no trace, nothing left of it, and no natural cause can do that, because matter will always continue to exist (unless God wishes it so). Burn a match, it's destroyed isn't it, unusable by our standards, yet it is still matter, just in a different form. Thereby with a quick use of just ONE law of physics, proves the existence of a Divine Creator at least, and at most proves the existence of The Holy Trinity (God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son). It's just logical. Another point, the brain can compute twenty thousand, trillion calculations per second ! This three pound package can do more calculations than any computer on this Earth can. Because the creation cannot be greater than the creator, amoebas are not greater than humans, they're on the lowest scale of life, they only perform few functions at best, we could not have evolved from amoebas. Granted, I will concede the point that there probably was a more primitive man (and by primitive I mean less intelligent, because in the past man has always been less intelligent than it's posterity) and that we adapted and became acclimated to our climates and environments, but we did not evolve from a different species (that's my opinion and theory, that's not proven fact, but then again, neither is the THEORY of Evolution). That's my reasoning of it.

The first law of Thermodynamics cannot be applied to a singularity.

Thank you, try again.

Problems with God eh? Well have you ever considered the posibilites that GOD does not LIKE you?! Maybe we are his unwanted children, everything is a drag. And you live your life hoping for a chance, of what? Stop living for death, love god, hate god, the only solid thing is your mind and your existance, and sure argue that you don't exist, fine then. I'll live my life to the fullest and you can contemplate this stuff. ENjoy

I think the idea of God is the inate fear of man, the fear of death. If you fabricate a "god" that can promise you that your death was not just you decomposing into organic matter, but isn't it? tear open those coffins and what do see, a rotting corpse. The idea of a soul is also I believe a crutch, for those who have no will to well, get a will to run off of. The idea of God is a good one, its gotten more than half the world hooked into this idea. Thats what you call good endorsement and propoganda. Good business management

So I guess I am God. And I sure as hell believe in me.

WTF??! I wasn't talking about a singularity, I'm talking about matter, matter must be created by something that is not natural as the First Law of Thermodynamics states. This only leaves one option. A Creator. I'm not saying it's Yahweh, Allah, God, Buddah, what have you. I'm simply saying that a Divine Creator must exist (my personal viewpoint is that it is God, but I'm trying to present a small viewpoint and work up to the bigger picture). Thermodynamics deals with energy, and is not a singularity energy, and therefore wouldn't this law apply, something had to cause the Big Bang. (Which is what I assume is what you're talking about). The singularity had mass, which is made up of matter, which had to be made by an outside source that was NOT NATURAL. Thermodynamics applies to what the Big Bang started out as, a point no bigger than a period that had quite a lot of mass (made up of matter), it has quite a bit of energy, but it had to have an outside energy source to provoke it to explode, and thus spewing matter and energy (part of Thermodynamics mind you) everywhere and creating Universes and Worlds and a great many other things. Surely a person who is obviously well versed in the laws of physics must concede this point.

archer: so where did god come from? and what the statement "the creation cannot be greater than the creator" based on?

Firefly you bring up an interesting point. Were does God come from?
Unfortunatley religion doesn't even answer that. Basically what it comes down to is that you must believe that He exists only because He is the creator. It doesn't sound like a very sound statement, but there are many things in science that are just as ambiguous. One is the anthropic principle, which basically states that the universe is the way it is because we are here to see it.
I'm not trying to change anyones minds about anything because basically its a futile effort. I can't make an athiest believe God exists the same way he or she can't make me believe he doesn't exist. It makes for good discussion but people shouldn't fight about it because no one is going to win. It is pompous to think, as a Christian, that we have the right to change people's mind about their religion. Yes, it does say in the bible to spread the word of God, but it doens't say to cram it down people's throats.
If they don't want to believe they won't simple as that. All we can do really is agree to disagree.
I don't mind discussing and debating whether or not God exists and how everything began. Such discussions are healthy. However, no one should ever try to change the others view because thats how fights get started and nothing productive ever came from fighting.

No, a person well versed in physics merely sees that you aren't. I'm not trying to be hostile, I'm just saying that, based on your statements on this board, you seem to lack knowlege about some of the basic principals you are using as basis for your "proof".

Again, physical laws break down when you aproach a singularity.

Also the first law is only mostly true, in that there are instances where energy is created spontaneously...

Someone said the theory of evolution isn't proven. Technically, it is. It is still called a theory because to be a law it requires a mathematical equation or something like that to be classified a law.

Ok, ok, sorry, got a little caught up in the argument there and used incomplete information that I shouldn't have. It took supersix2 and a time of 4 AM to calm me down. Sorry, I do that sometimes. You and I just have to agree to disagree as supersix2 says. Yet everything in our lives does esentially come down to faith. Whether that faith be that when you're crossing the street, some nut driving too fast doesn't hit you, or whether or not you believe in God, Allah, Buddah, Krishna, what have you. As far as the creation cannot be greater than the creator, it's true. Look at all that we humans have created, from the wheel, to the newest Intel Processor. None of those things that we came up with can match the prowess of the human mind, which can compute twenty thousand, trillion calculations per second. No computer can do that, and no computer will be able to be fully human. Sure, we can make it self aware, and give it the ability to make decisions, yet it will not be able to feel as we do, or react as we do. (Yeah, I know, I'm talking about a future Data, but I'm still trying to make a valid point here.) I personally see the brain as a gift from God, but you won't, because you don't believe in a God (I don't mean that in a hostile way tho). Humans only use two percent (or is it ten?) of their brains to do what they do everyday. If we tap into that other 98/90 percent, who's to say what the potential of man's of achievements is? We will be limitless in our abilities if we could ever fully harness the complete power of the brain, I mean, it would be to the extent where George Lucas would have to start telling us what was going on. Anyways, I have learned something from you debaser as well as from others who oppose my viewpoint, I certainly hope you haven't learned anything from me due to my passionful and reasonless statements. Good Day, and Good Night.

first of all, http://www.csicop.org/si/9903/ten-percent-myth.html

and second, when we create new life, we don't even use our brains. it's not like we sit and design the DNA sequence of every child. we have no control over the mutations passed along to our offspring, nor did any of the species from whom we evolved. the changes were/are essentially random, and those chosen by natural selection to survive will be passed on and will therefore improve the chances of survival of the organisms holding that gene

finally, you take it on faith that a car won't hit you when you cross a street? damn, you're gonna be naturally selected soon if you don't start looking both ways...

No, I look both ways, I was just using an example, whenever you cross the street (even with looking both ways) there's always a chance that a car will hit you. You may not conciously think about it, but you have some degree of faith and hope that someone won't run through a red light.

I am perturbed by the notion of god, because god usually repersented transcently by an idea that is constructed by human historicially, but is then given a life of his or her own. And once this idea of god is detached from it's historically grounds and is an all encompassing idea, very horrible (and good) things can been done without valuing the other's understanding of the sitauation. "Our understanding must be right, because our god is the right/true god and our understanding follows from our god's system of understanding." The repersentation of reality that follows from one religion usually silences of others, often by exclusin, forced conversion or annihilation...

Thats not true. When I cross the road, I conclude that there is only a very slight chance in any horrible event occuring to me. I take this risk. No "faith" is involved what-so-ever.

*Damn Double Post!*

from the first page somewhere
---------------------------------------------------------------
The fact that scientists and archaelogists are finding evidence to prove stories in the Bible.
-----------------------------------------

Actually scientists and archaelogists are finding evidence to prove stories in the bible in a BAD way - i.e not for the religious people

Popular Mechanics - December 2001
Science solves more mysteries of the bible
Jericho Falls-
"So the people shouted and the trumpets were blown... they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat."
"Professor Amos Nur of the Department of Geophysics at Stanford University plotted the the epicenters of all earthquakes greater than magnitude 6.5 that have struck the Eastern Mediterranean region since 1910. when he ploted the sites of the city ruins, he found that neary all the cities lay in highly active earthquake zones - suggesting violent quakes could have redued the cities to rubble" pg 81

It also covers Manna from heaven, The dial of Ahaz and the Miracle of Fish. if you can get ahold of it, it is an interesting read.

I believe in God, I just don't know what religion fits my beliefs. I still pray to whoever the master clockmaker is every night, although I don't know who that might be for me, since I don't follow a religion. I've seen prayers work, so I can't just live my life not paying respects to whoever my god is.

Actually, let me bounce that "WTF??!" right back at you. The First Law of Thermodynamics is not so much a law as a principle or rule of thum deduced from observations >>OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD AS IT EXISTS TODAY!!<< I think you got sidetracked by physicists arrogant use of the word "law." The First Law of Thermodynamics has weird exceptions at the quantum scale, where particles and antiparticles simply pop in and out of existence for extremely short times. Near a blackhole, this can actually result in the creation of matter (in a weird sense) when a particle/anti-particle pair come into existence near the event horizon of a black hole. The anti-particle is consumed by the black hole and the other particle escapes happily into the universe.

Though I concede that this process results in the decreased mass of the black hole (I don't understand why) would you argue that these particle/anti-particle pairs had to be created by a divine creator? It may be true, but who are you to claim that science "proves it must be so"? Many of the brightest physicists of this generation are spending their careers trying to understand the nature and genesis of matter, and you think that a principle of thermodynamics that you learned in high school has rocketed you to the secrets of the universe?

God may be real, but leave science out of it. God is about miracles, and miracles have no place in science.

Actually that's not true, it's close, but not true.

Evolution is pretty much proven. No real scientist doubts that evolution happened-how it happened and the time frame involved is currently under debate.

When scientists speak of laws and theories they are speaking of two different things, as you correctly noted. The Law of Gravity, is the observation that what goes up, must come down (basically). The theory of gravity explains why that happens.

In general:
A law, is an observation. Something does this....

A theory explains observations. Something does this, because....


In other other words (:D), saying that evolution is "only a theory", speaks towards a general ignorance of science (no offense to anyone).

Read my previous post about my using incomplete information when I shouldn't have. Or whichever post it is where I think that the Brain is a God given gift.

one argument i heard was simply that if there was a god and he is supposed to be a morally supperior creature why would he cause us pain on a daily basis. we all want something to beleive in but if god is so morally superior then why does he cause us pain? would that not make him a malicious and pointless bully? what kind of god would that be? we view anyone who tortures and kills animals and other people as a vile creature why should god be exempt from that?

Many god theorists seem to talk like there is nothingness outside of the known universe. If you could, try to imagine our universe as an insignignificant spec of dust in an almost infinately bigger entity with millions of 'big bangs' going off every second. Multiply that by the number planets in the milky way galaxy, multiply that by number of galaxies and add something for all the, as yet, unknowns.

If you still think is some entity that is constantly monitoring your every thought and deed then this entity must be pretty fucking clever if you ask me.

As Jim Carrey said in that awful god botherer film: "smite me, oh mighty smiter and I'll bite your arse." or something like that.

I can't believe I took the flame bait on this one.

Many god theorists seem to talk like there is nothingness outside of the known universe. If you could, try to imagine our universe as an insignignificant spec of dust in an almost infinately bigger entity with millions of 'big bangs' going off every second. Multiply that by the number planets in the milky way galaxy, multiply that by number of galaxies.

If you still think is some entity that is constantly monitoring your every thought and deed then this entity is pretty fucking clever if you ask me.

I can't believe I took the flame bait on this one.

They are untested hypotheses with no proof.

What's your point?

http://www.truthtree.com/Religion/posts/8980.html

I would recommend this quote from Daniel C. Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts University.

As for myself, I couldn't possibly be convinced in any way, shape or form. I am a logical thinker and I need substance and tangible qualities of something to believe in it. I believe in evolution. I have taken both cultural and physical anthropology classes to strengthen my viewpoints. I grew up a christian, but I had internal struggles with what I truly believed because I didn't want to conform to what everyone else thought. If you didn't have the same viewpoints as the rest of the members in your church, you were not made to feel welcome. I always wondered why the christians seemed so self-righteous, we have the one true god, he is the creator, he lays out the path that you will walk on for the rest of your life.....etc, etc....., blah, blah, blah...well, there are a lot of other religions in this world as well that have a different view. Whether it be Buddism, Brights, Satanism, Taoism, Paganism, Momormonism, Catholocism, all have a different view of how things were created and what our underlying purpose in life is. Are we to judge the rest of the free thinkers out there because they don't have the same "god" as we do? Hmmm....

Some people see this opposition as fear, fear that they may in fact be wrong or fear of the total power this God may have.

It's actually a valid point. Most people would say it's way off base, but I think this fear is so deep within the conscious that they can't admit it.

What makes you so sure of this?

"Well the First Law of Thermodynamics proves there is at least a Divine Creator."

Your post gives me a good chance to debunk two major religious misconceptions. First off, you are implying the matter would have to be created. And at first this would seem logical. However, like that other fella said, the first law does not apply to a singularity, which is the state the universe was in at the time of the big bang. Also to be considered is the fact that time is not some linear constant. Time is a dimension like width or height, so you can't consider the universe some unfolding story or something. If time is not a constant, the whole concept of "creation" becomes unclear. Also, evolution the process is fact. The method by which it takes place is the Theory of Evolution. Evolution is just what the arisal of more complex animals from less complex animals by some means is called. Animals evolve, and that can be observed with some birds and simple single-celled organisms. As a result, that evolution takes place is fact. The theory is regarding how it takes place. So, don't let yourself be thrown off by the word "theory."

Oh, another thing before you bring it up. The second law of thermodynamics does not apply to evolution. Many Creationists claim that the 2nd law says that higher complexity can't come from something less complex. They neglect the fact that the second law applies to a closed system though. Since the Earth recieves a constant huge supply of energy from the sun, it is by no means a closed system, and the energy necessary for something to become more complex from something less complex is easily supplied. A simple example would be water melting. The state of the water is becoming more energized, but this is allowed to happen because the water is in an open system, and heat(energy) is being supplied from somewhere.

I am not afraid of the notion of god.

I in fact now turn my beliefs around to yet an orthagonal direction and contend that not only does your god exist, but yet another mightier god presides over your god. But you would never know that because you have absolute faith in what your god told you, but the truth is that your god lied to you. Sure your god has magnificent powers, but mine is mightier still. But, you'd never be able to tell the difference though since you can't comprenhend such power and just believe it on faith alone. Your god told you that yours was the only god, but in fact there is a whole league of gods...a League of Extrodinary Gods even. Now that i have revealed the truth to you, how can my new faith?

You say god told you he was the mightiest, i tell you he lied, but for all practical purposes, you wouldn't be able to comprehend the difference anyways.

God tells you he made earth. I tell you that some other god made venus, and yet another still made the sun.

Is there any religious artifact or book that discounts that god might have lied to you in the first place? Dare I claim that it was all a ruse?

If your god isn't the almighty of mightiest, can you really respect, worship and really even call him god anymore?

Now that i think about it... the higher up god that revealed to me this truth might have been a poser as well.

Oh well back to just not believeing in god's existance. Maybe better yet i'll say that its more believable that an entitiy with finite powers greater than that of BC era humans came and influenced the creatation of the various religions than an actual god that created everything that happened to have sparked various different religions.

But once again i've confused myself. Could someone clarify for me whose god am i supposed to be afraid of?

isn't it more likely that religious people fear that there is no higher power watching over or taking care of them?

because there is no phsyical proof that he exists. And although I believe that OJ did it, I don't believe in God. At least not a God represented by any organized religion i've seen.

Just opposed to people lording over and exploiting their fellow man in the NAME of God.

Not opposed to GOD, just need more evidence and/or reasoning...

How do u guys know that these laws are true/correct? I'm sure that cavemen had theyre own laws of thermodynamics and shit like that...guess what, it's only a matter of time before we find that these laws might be incorrect....Would u believe someone if they told you they were the son of god? I sure as hell wouldn't....I bet he told someone his story and they decided they were gonna a write a book about it....they called it the bible because it sounds fancy......thats my theory lol or lack-there-of

Do you like driving? Then you better hope thermodynamics is more accurate than what the cavemen had. And forget air conditioning. And computers. And just about everything else that the cavemen didn't have but we do.

Science doesn't claim to be the truth. It's just a method for rejecting or accepting theories that seem to match well with what we observe in nature. Nothing more, nothing less. And scientific thinking, whether absolutely constrained by the rigorous scientific method or not, produced every single useful tool man has ever used. And that includes chipped stones.

Why does a forum about the existence of God keep coming back to science? Faith and science can never have anything to do with each other, because science's lack of faith is what makes it science.

Ramble ramble ramble.