Allright, here we go.
Debunked. You've come up with no argument whatsoever to back up your claims in the religion part of the discussion.
Debates are not about winning or losing. If you don't have anything important to say, just don't talk. It's that simple. You are not going to be ridiculed for keeping your mouth shut. You are going to be ridiculed for saying silly things. As they say here, speaking is silver, keeping your mouth shut is gold.
"Debunked." Sorry. I...haven't come up with an argument to back up my claims?
If I was "loosing the debate" that would mean that I was out of points to make and had been defeated on almost every topic. The person with the current last word is almost never the one who "wins" the debate, by my definition; I agree with you, usually there is no winner or loser.
I don't care if I'm ridiculed. And I do have something important to say.
I don't see the connection between "God is greater than finite beings" and "God could not have made a mistake creating finite beings".
Basically, God is wiser than finite beings, and if there are any things that could be improved that finite beings could improve themselves, God would already know what they were and how to fix them.
Cosmological argument is dumb. Why does the 'first cause' necessarily have to be a deity and why is a deity allowed to be infinite and not the universe?
If you accept that there is an infinite thing, called God, why can you not instead accept that there is no beginning?
Think about it. If there was no beginning, then there still would be an infinite thing: matter(+energy). Coincidentially, there is a
religion that believes all matter is God.
Now you may ask, "If God was just a bunch of matter, then why wouldn't it be possible for 'God' to make a mistake?" Well, if God was spiritless, and everyone in the world was spiritless, then what should make anything really 'wrong'? Although atheists seldom actually articulate it, humans naturally want to believe that there is no God because that would ultimately make us not responsible for our actions. Anything 'wrong' thing we get away with in life will go unadressed.
That said, arguing this on grounds of logic is a little silly, because when you're throwing around abstract terms all the time, it loses a lot of meaning. Watch:
A) God created the world.
B) The creation of the world is the greatest possible act of creation.
C) Let us define the greatness of an act of creation as a function of its value and its maker's disability.
But... why would it be a function of the maker's disability rather than their ability?
D) By B, the creation of the world must have the highest value of any creation, and its maker the most disability.
And if we change the words in C then it creates the opposite effect down to the end of the logic argument...
E) The greatest disability is non-existence.
F) Therefore, God does not exist.
None of my terms have lost any meaning.
And now you will say "but the odds of that happening are astronomical!"
Yes! Yes they are. However, the timespan in which the origin of the first living thing had to happen is immense. Billions of years. If you take astronomical odds and put them into an astronomical timespan, you'll find you end up with pretty good odds overall. Even if the odds of life arising randomly are countless trillions against one, given the timespan and the huge number of organic molecules in the Earth's early oceans, it was bound to happen eventually - and it did.
Remember, too, that several experiments have shown that many - twenty plus, if I recall correctly - amino acids have been created from component molecules in an atmosphere like that which the young Earth probably had (although Miller-Urey probably didn't simulate the overall atmosphere, it is believed to be quite accurate in terms of local conditions). So, organic molecules have been synthesised from non-organic components in ways that were both possible and quite likely billions of years ago. From there, the leap to the first organism is not so large.
Do you realize just how astronomical the odds would be? Lets go through them.
First of all, scientist do not know where water on Earth originated. (
This source does a pretty good job explaining the different theories and various problems with them) Scientists have not discovered other planets with great enough amounts of water on other planets to sustain life, (According to
Wikipedia; please note uses of the words "could" and "may") but lets assume there are about 5,000,000 such planets in the universe. Of that, lets say there are maybee a whopping 0.1% with all other necisary materials to support life. Having the materials just sitting there won't do anything; lets say 10% have constantly moving particles for the millions of years needed to complete the process and 10% have the lightning/ other form of energy needed to jumpstart the first organism. Our remaining number of candidates for life: 50. From what you wrote, it seems you are willing to believe Earth was the only planet to ever maintain life, but we'll just continue on with this extreemely rough model.
Now, lets say on average each planet over the course of history develops 2 cells of life by the time it would take to have mutated enough to give us the complexity we have in the present day. We'll ignore the fact that we can't just have any orders of amino acids forming proteins to create a functioning organism; they have to be very precise for the organism to function. Now, maybee 10% survive being wiped out by the unstable early elements before they can multiply. Of that, maybee 10% make it into being a large enough group that a few can mutate to be resistant to dangers and avoid all being whiped out. We now have one group of organisms. Natural selection has begun. There are many hazards to these precious cells, but every time something threatinging kills off a great portion of the heard, there is at least one to survive. Nothing, big has happened, though. No earthquakes, typhoons, etc., and the remaining cells become stronger and stronger, and more complex along the way. These cells are microscopic. They spread quickly, but the Earth moves even more quickly. There is still no catastrophe to whipe them all out. Nope. They live on.
So, there you have it.
Personally, I like to believe God did it all.
Intelligent design is the exact same thing as creationism, except in creationism the "designer" is specified.
If that is how you define creationism, then yes, I am a creationist.
By this logic, I should be in jail right now because my hypothetical great-great-great-grandfather killed a man.
This may be so... but do you really think that's FAIR? You're dad wasn't the greatest guy in the world so now everybody else hates you too because of HIS mistakes which you had no control over?
If you think that's fair, then you must be a pretty awful person. If you don't think that's fair, then "god" isn't fair, either.
Ignoring Genesis being a fairy tale for a second, I'd like to ask you how what my ancestors did affects my score on the sliding scale of good and evil? If you were conceived through rape that does not mean you're a rapist, if your parent was a murderer that does not mean you're a murderer, if your ancestor was a pirate that does not mean you'll feel the irresistible urge to pillage and swash buckle, not even music. If some temperamental deity says otherwise it can go stuff it up its a**, especially considering it supposedly created us and should know that already.
I'm not trying to say you should be guilty of those deeds, I'm just saying that you're being affected by them. It may not be fair, but its just the way it works. This life isn't fair so that the next life can be.
Sin is a disgusting word that only results in hatred for humanity in the deluded belief that it is somehow 'cursed', despite being such a special and brilliant animal.
Oh, and on that note, I just love how you guys think we're all just a bunch of animals. There really is no purpose in life, is there?
But there's plenty of evidence that there's been enough inches/changes.
There is no evidence for this. Let me point to your attention that evolution is
a theory. It is physically imposible to test this, if someone were to conduct an experiment, they would die before the completion of the experiment. There's plenty of evidence for micro evolution, but absolutely no evidence for macro evolution. Doesn't it strike you as funny that there is a 'missing link' in between virtually every species they think evolved from each other?
But until they ate the apple, they didn't know good or evil, or right from wrong. This is exactly why we don't give a young child a life sentence for accidentally killing a man - they don't know any better. Sure, the children are going to be punished, but in this case the drunkards (aka Adam and Eve) didn't know any better.
"And the LORD God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.' " (Genesis 2:16-17)
Besides, God could have just punished Adam and Eve. Instead, he decided to curse the entire f***ing human race for something two people did.
Just how? Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. At this point, they were the only two human beings that existed. What should God do? When they had kids should he take them away to put them back in the Garden?
Allright. I hope I covered everything. And, that is my last word. Mind you, it's not because I won't be able to argue with anything else; I have plenty of cards left to play. It's mainly because posting has gotten to be too much of a responsibility, and I obviously can't stay on top of it. If this discussion continues, I will continue to read its posts. I may or may not drop in an extra 2 cents here and there. Thank you all for a great discussion, especially opaltiger. Despite how sarcastic/silly/annoying I might have been at times, I really did enjoy it. And I know you don't all
really hate me. I hope. I sure don't hate you!
