Topic: Scientific proof that God exists? - page 422. (Read 845809 times)

Your 'absolute truth' is subjective. "Absolute truth" as a universal constant is not knowable.


You're putting words in my mouth. Who says I have a carefree attitude? I care for other people the same as I would if I were religious. I just don't feel a need to compel them to believe what I believe. I won't respond to anything concerning heaven and hell and "what ifs" because those don't exist.


Just because you believe something is true doesn't make it true.


If you're getting wet, it doesn't matter what you say. You believe what is happening to you based on your observations. You can't convince yourself it's not raining when it is anymore you can convince me there is a god when there isn't. (See, I'm now dropping the pretense and responding with the same conviction in my truths as you are.)


You don't choose to believe. You choose to accept him as your god, but you don't choose to believe he exists for the same reason you don't believe it's not raining when it is. You can deny it's raining just as you can deny your god as your savior, but you can't force yourself to believe something you don't believe. You believe what you believe based on your life experiences. So you believe in your god, but you choose to accept him for all the reasons you've already stated about eternal punishment and so on. You have to accept him as your savior, otherwise you know you will be punished for all eternity, because that's what the church has taught you. That's your absolute truth, even though I know it's wrong.

Then you will have your wish.  You will be separated from Him for eternity.  He respects your wishes.  

As for God refusing to prove Himself.  Have you asked Him to?  That is a prayer He usually answers from what I have observed.

God gives everything that is good in this life.  God is love, joy, peace and every good and perfect gift comes from Him.  Even sex is a gift from God (misused and abused often).  Even wealth is a blessing from God (also misused).  The things that are not from God are hate, death, sickness, murder, basically all sin. These things came when sin entered the world.  Eternity without God is a world without love, joy, peace, kindness.  Personally, I am forever grateful that God loved me enough to give me not only good gifts on this earth but a hope of heaven even though I don't deserve it (and no one deserves heaven because we have all sinned and fallen short of God's laws).  

Pascal's wager, of the hundreds of religions/mythologies that have/will exist, we're supposed to believe that christianity is the right one.  I'd rather go through living the life I know I have to the best then spend it worshiping something that there is no proof of existing for a 1 in 100+ chance of having a kickass afterlife

Your god is an egotistical psychopath by the way if he sends you to burn for eternity for not believing in him when he refused to prove himself

Of course I can't force anyone to believe what they don't want to.  I totally get that. But the question seems to be more about "absolute truth" more than anything.

So you are saying that you would rather live life with a carefree attitude and if you die and realize only at that point that there is indeed a God and that there is Heaven and Hell and that you are sent to Hell because you chose to a) ignore warnings b) didn't want to believe in God c) didn't think religious rules were cool d) didn't have time to worry about it (and so on) then you will be fine with God saying "depart from me, I never knew you" and then you will suffer for eternity?

Just trying to make sure.  Again, just because you don't believe something isn't true, doesn't make it untrue.  I can close my eyes while it is raining and say, "I don't like rain.  I don't believe in rain.  Rain doesn't exist" but I will still be pelted with raindrops.  The same thing goes for the laws God has made.  When you die and stand before God I would just be concerned that your reasoning of "I didn't believe You were real" won't be a good enough excuse to give you a "free pass" into Heaven.

Edit:  I and I very much chose to believe in God!  I had many reasons to be ticked at Him. I saw hypocrisy in the church and wanted nothing to do with the church.  But God, out of His amazing love for me, met me in a very supernatural way.  I have never been the same and I never will.  Call it stubborn, call me crazy.  I believe in Him to the core of my being.

You are completely wrong.  The process of a new species being formed is (using the wolf example)

Due to something, wolves are separated into A and B and unable to reach eachother.  Group B is in a different climate than group A

Both groups breed over a long period of time and evolution makes them adapt to their surroundings

Over a long enough period, the changes are so great that if group A and B met, their different features would make them unable to mate.  This could be from different mating periods/rituals, physical changes, etc



The dog and wolf example wasn't the best as I forgot to throw isolation in there, but same basic idea.

Yes, that's the same thing you're doing, I just don't have a magic book to back it up. With the exception of "choosing" what to believe? Did you choose to believe in god? Probably not, you just do because that's what you believe. I'm the same way. I didn't choose not to believe in god. I just don't because that's what I believe.


If I don't believe in an afterlife, why would I spend any time thinking about it or caring about it. YOU believe in an afterlife. That's your belief.

If I believed in the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my god, and all his teachings, I'd be trying to convince you to also believe in him because it would be the only way to salvation. You would look at me the same way I am looking at you. Why would I care about the Flying Spaghetti Monster afterlife, that's obviously not true. That's how I view your version of the afterlife. It's not true to you. It's true to me. What's true to you is not to me. Neither of us can prove the other wrong. I'm not asking you to change your beliefs, just asking you don't force them on people who don't want to live by the rules of your religion.

Your beliefs are not more important or more correct than someone else's. You don't have a right to force other people to act the way you want them to. That's my most important point in this thread. I'm fine with Christians and Muslims and Jews or any other religion that wants to believe anything they want, so long as they don't try to make anyone else live a life subject to their religious rules who doesn't want to.

So all that said, you believe we can choose our own God, or not choose God.  There is no absolute truth, we just decide our own truth and because of that I can believe whatever I want and so can you and the goal is just to live a good and decent life for the most part?

Knowing the only thing guaranteed in life is "death and taxes" as the saying goes, perhaps thinking about the possibility of eternity would be a good idea?

I guess the thing that shocks me the most is that people really don't care about life after death.  They are not concerned about the afterlife at all.  To me, eternity is the most important thing we need to consider.  This life is very short.  Each day I wake up well aware that it could be my last day on earth.  I try to live my life with that in mind.

Yes, as I've already stated, as positive as you are god exists, that's how positive atheists are you're wrong. For all the same reason: faith.


It would basically be saying "your truth is wrong, mine is right." Guess what, that works both ways.


Empathy is an evolutionary trait. If it didn't evolve into the human species, we wouldn't care when other people were in danger of dying, which is bad for gene propagation.


I didn't say "no matter what you do," I said if you're serving god. When the Church used to murder scientists for teachings that challenged the church doctrine, they knew they were going to heaven because they were serving god. People who used science to contradict the Bible were heretics. "Serving god" was used as a justification to commit all kinds of evils against other people. See: the Crusades. All those soldiers, murdering in the name of god, so if they died in battle they knew they were going to heaven.


You just went full Godwin's Law on us here. (Godwin's Law: if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.) The atheist believes Hitler was an asshole. Also, your association between Hitler and evolution is embarrassing for you:  http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hitler_and_evolution

Hitler's government killed 12 million people, and started a war that killed 50 million more. He killed himself as the Allies were advancing on his bunker, rather than face the consequences of his actions. Now he's just gone and that's the way it is. I don't need religion to reconcile the fact that life isn't fair. I just accept it and try not to harm anyone else because of it.

LOL! I'm not mad. Are you? Obviously, I don't take these "debates" seriously, since I find your arguments to be quite flawed. I find it mildly entertaining at best.

I'm pretty sure Einstein had religious people in mind when he said, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.” The "little" being what they know of science and reality, the "a lot" being what they assume of god.

Please don't interrupt the adults when they're trying to have a discussion.

You are so sure that there is no God that you are content that this life is all there is and that there is not even the slight possibility that heaven and hell may actually exist?

That is a risk you are willing to take, but I have had God miraculously reveal Himself to me in such a way that I cannot deny His reality and the truth that He exist.  So for me to be quiet and not share would be me basically saying, "Even though I know without a doubt that heaven and hell exists and that God is real, I don't care if you don't know God and just go to hell."

I cannot do that.  That "empathy" you speak of is God given and it would be very wrong of me to not say anything.  

Also, Christianity does not teach that no matter what you do you will go to heaven.  It teaches that we have all sinned and without repentance we will not go to heaven.  What does the atheist believe about someone like Hitler?  He very much believed in Darwinian evolution.  He was tying to follow through on that belief with some "ethnic cleansing" that he felt was a good idea based on survival of the fittest.  On this earth he lived a rich and many would say successful life in doing so.  He was harming others but he justified it and even had scientific reasons for doing so.  So he did horrible things to humanity and now he just ceases to exist without any consequences?  Does that seem fair and right to you?  I personally believe that he will be held accountable for all eternity for his actions.  Of course, God will give grace and forgiveness for those that ask for it, even Hitler if he had humbly repented (which I highly doubt because he never showed evidence of a changed heart) We all have the capabilities to break His commandments and many of us have broken far more than one of them.  But thankfully if we are truly repentant He will forgive us, regardless of what sins we have committed. It is not a license to continue breaking "laws" because if we did that we would not be truly repentant.  

Oh, now don't start getting upset (unless you really want to, that is).

No matter how you look at it, diversity, combined with probability, combined with entropy, entirely disallows any form of evolution we can dream up, not just as some kind of improbability, but rather as an absolute impossibility.

Do the math. Then look somewhere else. Evolution is (and always has been, really) dead. The fact that it is written in the books will make it take a long time before its death is apparent.



EDIT: I should have added universe complexity in there.

Most of this stuff isn't true. You dumbed down "macro evolution" so much that it doesn't make sense. A fish doesn't change into a dog, if that's how you're defining "macro evolution" then of course you're going to come to the conclusion that it's false. Further, evolution IS supported by the fossil record. If it isn't, go get your PhD in evolutionary biology, write the book that proves evolution wrong, and collect your Nobel Prize. It's really very simple. I wonder why no Christian has ever thought of it before?

You'd be the kind of person who recognized that just as you have your own truth that god exists, other people have their own truth that he doesn't, and that just as convinced that you are that it is impossible to be wrong, they are just as convinced that it is impossible to be wrong. You'd be the kind of person who recognized that personal truth is personal, and while not universal (meaning everyone has their own personal truths), they are absolute, meaning nothing you can say can change them. And you'd also be the type of person who is considerate for respecting other people's beliefs, and not condescending by thinking your beliefs trump theirs and you have to "fix" them.

Morality doesn't come from religion. It comes from empathy and the realization that inflicting harm on another person is wrong. Religions teach that no matter what you do to other people, as long as you're serving god you'll go to heaven. Atheists believe that you have one life, so allowing other people to be harmed makes you a bad person, because those people also have one life, and it should not be subject to suffering. That's the world I see without religion. One where "serving god" can't be used as an excuse to inflict harm on other people.

Macro and Micro evolution are very different!  We have not seen evidence of macro evolution (changes of a fish to a dog for example).  The solution that evolutionary scientists give is just to throw "millions of years" into the equation so that they can rationalize that it took that long to happen. (still not long enough)  If the changes that occur cause differences that make it so the species cannot mate isn't that an evolutionary problem in itself?  Creationists completely agree with "micro evolution" because it is simply adaptations or changing of traits within a species.  It is such a huge jump from changes within a species to changes outside of a species though, one that has no fossil record or evidence to support whatsoever.

What?  You're denying survival of the fittest?  Seriously?  *facedesk*

It's actually quite simple really. A change in environment causes evolutionary changes in species in an attempt to adapt better to said environment. If there was no diversity in environments then perhaps your statement may have a chance to hold true. Then again maybe you're right and god just made different races of people to give us another reason to go to hell for being racist. Yeah, that makes more sense.  

If I believe to the core of my being that the Bible is true and that those that do not accept Jesus will spend an eternity in hell, what kind of person would I be if I did not care about others enough to share this with them?  Seriously!

The reason Christians seem so "opinionated" is that many of us really care deeply for you.  We know that God loves everyone and that God wants everyone to come to know him and to repent so that you won't have to suffer for eternity.

Of course, there are Christians that do try to force their beliefs on others.  I wrestle with this myself.  On the one side we can have a "live and let live" kind of mentality.  God does give us the respect to make our own decisions while we are on this earth. (We will all eventually be accountable for these decisions after death I believe though)  But the big problem I have with society allowing for certain "freedoms" is that with them comes the problem of a world that is even more hostile to God's Word and God's laws and even less people will learn about God and accept Jesus.  When the world turns from God there are negative consequences for that as well.  A Godless society leads to problems and even a more prevalent rejection of His Word.  We are seeing a cultural shift take place all around us now.  We have removed God from the schools.  Kids are not even taught anything from the Bible.  Prayer is being banned.  The movement is definitely towards sexual expression in any way that a person chooses.  If a person even mentions what the Bible says about things they are ridiculed and called judgmental.  We are being forced to go into retreat because no one really wants to hear what God says about anything and soon we will even be killed for just being a Christian (which is already happening in some countries).  It seems like Christians are now the ones being "forced" to believe in evolution, homosexuality, abortion and so on.  But how do we agree with something we know goes against the God we love and that loves us and is our eternal salvation?  We can't.  

Adaptability is a programming feature, not an evolution feature. 

Yep! That's the problem with a lot of religious people, especially some Christians. Even Jesus said to shake the dust off your feet as you leave.

There will come a time when the Christians do exactly that. They will shake the dust off their feet and leave. When that finally happens, then the final destruction of the ages will come on all the unbelievers.