Unclepenn,
How are ya!
Evidecne for God is not lacking, if it were lacking then 80% of human beings on the face of the earth would not believe in God
Irrational people believe in lots of things without evidence, such as UFO's from outer space, ESP, alien abductions, Crop Circles by aliens, Big Foot, etc. Probably 80% of little Children in the US believe in Santa Clause without any real evidence. Just because people believe doesn't automatically mean that their belief is based upon evidence.
It is as I said before, what evidence are you willing to accept
If god is all-powerful then he knows what evidence I would be willing to accept; and if he were all loving and truly wanted me to know him, then he would provide it.
You cling to the idea that in billions of years, well golly, anything could happen.
Well, not really anything could happen, but billions of years is a timescale in which we can't really fathom. If you lived billions of years, you'd live your life quite differently because rare or infrequent events would become very important to you all of a sudden. You would never cross the street or drive a car because the risk would be way too high from the perspective of billions of years. It's difficult to imagine, but you have to step outside your current frame of reference to understand it. In that timescale, things unimaginable to you are capable of happening.
Tell me REm, how did non living matter become living matter
Have I ever said that we humans know how this happened? Has anyone ever said that? No. I don't know and you don't know. You think you know because you believe the stories you read in the bible. That's fine, but please don't expect a rational person to take that book seriously as a scientific or historical document. It doesn't even have the order of creation correct, for goodness sake. You'd think god could at least be consistent in his writings to man.
Life could have come from nonlife by purely naturalistic means, even though we have not found the mechanism yet (after just a few decades of research). Life may have come from god or many gods (though we can't prove that this god or those gods are not now dead), or perhaps an Invisible Pink Unicorn did it all. They are all possibilities, but the most likely is the naturalistic theory because there is no evidence of god or gods or Invisible Pink Unicorns. Unless you can tell me why it is more probable that god created life than an Invisible Pink Unicorn doing it, you really don't have any case for god worth listening to.
Like I said in another post, natural selection is a fancy way of saying 'death'. There is no deginer in natural selection. No direction, no foreknowledge, nothing but death
Interesting that you can believe in micro-evolution and hold this thought at the same time. Cognitive dissonance, anyone? Natural Selection doesn't work in a vacuum. It works with mutations - those are the real creators. Natural Selection picks the most fit mutations. Pretty simple, really.
You are correct that Natural Selection is basically blind and with no foreknowledge. That's why we see that over 99% of all species that have ever lived on earth are now extinct. If there were an intelligent designer with foresight you'd expect to find perfectly capable species that have survived until this day.
Yuo have irreducable complexity, such as organs and systems within the body that require many working parts in order for it to function, (such as the design of a mouse trap) and if any of these parts are absent, the function ceases to exist. How can something that requires 5 moving parts, all dependent on each other to perform, evolve, when there is no foresight of design?
This is where it gets really funny. Do you realize that every time someone has tried to say a particular structure is irreducibly complex, we have found that it really was not? The funny thing is that the jokers you get this 'irreducibly complex' information from BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION. The people you are trying to use as ammo against Evolution don't agree with you! I'm talking about Behe, one of the loudest proclaimers of this theory. Also Dimbski, an Evolutionist, has done some work on this. Doesn't it make you feel silly that you are trying to argue against Evolution by supporting the theories of Evolutionists? lol
The only difference between us REM is that your god doesnt exists and mine does. Your god is you and you decide what is truth and you cling to what will keep you from being accountable
Interesting. Does this mean that I don't exist? :)
I know children whose parents do not believe in God but the child does
And I know of people who were raised in completely secular households that never had any belief in god as a child and still do not to this day. Just because you cannot fathom it doesn't mean they don't exist.
Also, since when does a supposed inborn belief in something prove the existence of the thing believed? It’s a non-sequiter.
Better yet, how about the next time you meet some children, ask them if they believe in God. Take a Gallup poll amongst 8 year olds. I bet none of them say there is no God.
It’s hard to say how many wouldn’t believe in god. About 10% of the population claim to be atheist in the U.S. I’d suppose that a large percentage of atheist parent’s kids would have no belief in god. Some kids probably would believe in god because of their outside exposure to a predominately god-believing society.
Humans do seem to be a very superstitious animal. Perhaps this has some evolutionary benefit? Although there may not be an inherent belief in god, this superstitious bias may express itself as a belief in god when society introduces the concept to the person. This may also be expressed as a godless spirituality in others. Perhaps others are able to suppress this superstitious tendency, or maybe they are not as prone to superstition as the majority of the population.
>If god is all powerful, then he should be able to reveal himself in such a way that there could be no question - no doubt for anyone - even the most hardened skeptic.He already has
If he had, then we would not be having this conversation. Consider me one of the most hardened skeptics. If god can’t convince me, then he is either not all-powerful, or he does not really wish everyone to know him, in which case it would be difficult to say he is all-loving.
>And don't give me the whole "you need faith so he really knows you love him" routine.I will do nothing of the sort. Have I ever once said to you that you need faith REM? EVER!? No, but I do know that once I put my faith in the evidence presented to me, then I was changed. Don't put the cart before the horse. God is not asking for blind faith.
I didn’t really make myself clear here. I was making a generic statement not particularly directed at you, but to fundamentalist Christians in general. I’ve heard this statement many times from others. You may feel that one can find god purely on evidence and logic, but most I’ve talked to feel that faith is needed. Many have said that evidence can only take you so far, but if you have faith, you will find god. This is basically saying you have to have faith (belief without evidence) before you can believe. I don’t find that approach intellectually satisfying myself.
Anyway, I think the gist of my response to you is that you believe in god, and that is all well and good. I’m glad you find a sense of purpose and happiness that way. But when you say that your faith is based on factual evidence then you are being intellectually dishonest with yourself. You believe because you have faith – and that should be good enough for you. Even scientists who believe in god realize that their belief is not based on evidence, but rather faith. I’m afraid that what you call evidence actually turns out to be circular reasonings, intuition, and inaccurate “common sense” when you get right down to it.
Just because you think your beliefs are based on common sense doesn’t mean they are based on solid evidence. Science has shown us many times that our best common sense turns out to be wildly inaccurate when it comes to many areas of knowledge. When you start a belief system on faulty premises (which happens by using inaccurate ‘common sense’) you end up with irrational belief systems, which is what belief in Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, Big Foot, Alien Abductions, Invisible Pink Unicorns, and Gods are.
Of course, just because they are irrational doesn’t mean that they aren’t true. ;)
rem
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." - Mark Twain
