As I expected, most of the replies to my OP seem to follow the usual pattern. Please don't think that I have not looked long and hard at the atheist answer and solution. I have given it a lot of thought and I have weighed it up.

Atheists use various labels for my stubborn refusal to abandon my belief in God, some say it is delusional, naive, simplistic. Others would say that it is completely irrational. Others label it condescending and self-righteous. You're entitled to your opinion and I am certainly not offended by such labels.

I have an honest question of my own please , someone, give me an honest answer. So what is it that you would have me accept as the "truth" of the matter? It seems to me, that stripped to its bare bones, the atheist answer to life and its meaning, to the world we see around us and the universe beyond is this:

This world and all that is in it, the universe and all that is in it is simply the result of luck, pure dumb luck. It all came about by chance repeated 10 to the 22nd power. Time and dumb luck created everything we see and do not see; time and dumb luck created the complex web of life, the interdependence we see in the world; time and dumb luck created the complex eye and the miracle of the human brain. Luck and a few chemicals (basic ones at that) led to the creation of life many billions of years ago and from that flowed the whale and the elephant, the eagle and the bear. Time and dumb luck created the law of gravity and the laws of physics; pure luck and time placed the earth in just the right orbit to sustain life and allowed for the expansion of the universe at just the right rate to keep it from collapsing.

That's it.

To back their assertions up they point to science and say: we have the answers, we know, science proves it. Yes, science does have answers and it provides proofs for much that we seek to understand. That is how God intended it to be. He gave us a brain so that we could use it.

My original thread was in response to "nickname" who asked an honest question and I gave my honest answer. No offence or preaching intended.

"Finally, I would say this to you. Begin to focus your trust on God and Jesus Christ rather that on a church. The church will fail you, people being what they are, frail and imperfect, will fail you. Salvation comes through Christ alone not through church. Your works won't help you though they will help others and help to make this world a better place. It's all about unmerited grace and mercy. God loves you and that love continues even when you turn your back on Him.

Church is a vehicle to help you get to your destination, it is not the destination itself. Use church to help you and sustain you and use it to help and sustain others but never lose sight of the fact that it is not the vehicle of salvation, Christ is Life. He cannot be a wise, enlightened person and make the outrageous claim that He is the son of God. He is either who He said he was or He is a deceiver and somewhat crazy. You decide, think long and hard before you make such a momentous decision it will be the most important decision of your life."

How in your universe is that not preaching?

Not to hijack the thread, but there is another possibility besides Jesus being either who he claimed to.be or delusional.That is that his followers made the claims.after his death. Jesus ne ver claimed that he.was the literal son of God, born of virgin and.so on.Those.ideas came from the gospel writers and Paul.

To continue off topic watch the move The Man from Earth. Pans this idea out further.

I am skeptical of any sort of historical Jesus, but as you stated, it isn't one or the other, there are dozens of possibilities, none of them have to include Jesus as God.

If you are going to make the assertion that Christian God created the earth you are also going to need to explain why you think He did it and not Gaia, or any of the other proposed creators.

In answer to your question(s):

Why do things like the law of gravity exist? Who knows? That a complex God what just happened to exist doesn't provide in answer - it just creates a more difficult question - why would something as powerful and complex as God happen to exist? Turtles all the way down.

Why does life on earth exist? This is not dumb luck as you assert. There is a huge, huge, huge difference between statistical probability and dumb luck.

Given enough time and the right environment very simple life was going to begin - it's just statistical probability. Earth had both of those things - the right environment and time. Realistically life began on earth and died out hundreds or thousands of times before actually surviving.

A very simple, very basic understanding of the law of evolution explains why it isn't dumb luck. That which is adapted to survive is more likely to survive and reproduce. That which isn't adapted to survive is less likely to die off and doesn't reproduce.

The environment changes. Therefore those things that have the capacity to adapt and change are those that will over time survive.

That's not dumb luck. It's probability and statistics. That which is best adapted to survive survives. Given time that slowly translates to more complex survival techniques - e.g. the eye. Just because it can't be reproduced in a lab yet is zero argument against evolution.

The "I don't understand it so I'm going to attribute it to a superior being argument" is lousy logic. Furthermore it has been shown false by counter example over and over. The sun rising and setting used to be attributed to a supernatural being. Germs used to be attributed to evil spirits - somehow Jesus/God was even fooled by this. Psychological trauma was likewise attributed to evil spirits.

Humans have attributed things they don't understand to gods for a long time. Over and over and over science eventually finds the answer. There are dozens even hundreds of examples of this in the Bible and defunct Christian theology.

Not understanding something is zero proof that it has a supernatural cause. Yet that is your only "evidence".

Looking at the totality of life and its complex interdependence the statistical probability of which you speak would not only be highly improbable but also impossible. Stop and think, why do you not acknowledge the infinite? You want finite proof of what is infinite. God is. That is why He called Himself I Am, and He went on to say that His thoughts are not our thoughts nor His ways our ways, for as the heavens are higher that the earth, so are His ways to our ways His thoughts to ours.

bc please provide me with your honest answer to my question. Is that what you believe if you are an atheist - that this world is just the result of dumb luck over time?

dear bc,

if your answer to my honest question is what I think it will be then I have a formula that may help with your explanation:

DL Over T X 10 22nd power = The chicken and the egg.

Please explain how God came into existence.

Dumb luck?

Agreed, since when is it logical to say that the universe couldn't have popped into being, but God could have?

christians believe God has always existed.Atheists believe.that the universe in some.form has always existed. Both.are really impossible to grasp.

Not impossible to grasp, nor do atheists have to claim this since atheism has nothing to do with the property of matter.

THE human brain is not used to dealing with infin ity. Everything in our world has a beginning and end which makes it really difficult to comprehend anything else. I should have said difficult and scientist



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2012 09:15PM by bona dea.

It is quite difficult, and for years I couldn't grasp the concept because of Joseph Smith's BS explanation of eternity is like a ring. Now I understand the concept, just not the application, which for me is enough because I will never get a chance to apply the understanding.

Bona Dea - I'm not arguing with you simply arguing against the Christian assertion that God has always existed.

God always existing is no real answer.

How did that happen?

To assert that something you can't understand can't be the answer and then assert that something is less probable and more impossible to understand is the answer is illogical.

So say - it's dumb luck that life could begin or that an eye could evolved and then to give as an answer that something infinitely more complex just happens to have existed forever is no answer. Where did God come from? If you use where did gravity or life come from as your argument that God exists you have to answer where did God come from - otherwise you never answered the very question you are using as proof - you only make the question worse.

You could just as easily ask why there is a universe and what caused it. both questions are unanswerable.

If by impossible to grasp you mean impossible to fully explain with our current knowledge then I would agree.

For the sake of argument let's say a creator God does exist. What makes that God = Jesus?

Mordecai Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> This world and all that is in it, the universe and
> all that is in it is simply the result of luck,
> pure dumb luck. It all came about by chance
> repeated 10 to the 22nd power. Time and dumb luck
> created everything we see and do not see; time and
> dumb luck created the complex web of life, the
> interdependence we see in the world; time and dumb
> luck created the complex eye and the miracle of
> the human brain. Luck and a few chemicals (basic
> ones at that) led to the creation of life many
> billions of years ago and from that flowed the
> whale and the elephant, the eagle and the bear.
> Time and dumb luck created the law of gravity and
> the laws of physics; pure luck and time placed the
> earth in just the right orbit to sustain life and
> allowed for the expansion of the universe at just
> the right rate to keep it from collapsing.
>

I wouldn't phrase it exactly like that, but yes that is the general idea. You see I don't have to accept as 100% accurate our current theory of the big bang, and evolution to see that it explains a hell of a lot. I accept that as we evolve and study there may be more to learn, and some of the things we learn may turn the scientific world upside down.

What I will not do is create a creator God to cover the fact that I don't know everything. I don't have to have a metaphysical explanation for why I am here, how here became here, and what will happen after here. All I need to know is that I create meaning for my life everyday, without making up a God.

Atheism isn't a belief system, it is what it is, no more no less. (How's that for meaningless catch phrases?) For me Atheism doesn't have anything to do with how things happen, I'm not a scientist. Atheism is my liberation from nonsensical explanations, that is all.

How convenient that you don't have to explain. Your solution to the unexplainable is to deny it. Your answer for the mystery of the spiritual is to ignore it.

You have no trouble believing that billions of years ago, for some mysterious and as yet unexplained reason the universe came into being and life began on earth simply because scientists have said that it is so. I glad that you do not accept as 100% accurate the scientific explanation because the discovery of dark matter is currently changing the understanding of what science understands of the universe.

As I said previously, religion doesn't provide all the answers to all of life's questions and some of what passes for faith may be called superstition but to deny the existence of God simply because you cannot conceive of such a being is itself interesting. Electricity and gravity are forces that were not known or understood by humanity in its early history, that lack of knowledge or understanding didn't mean they did not exist.

Mordecai, you must be joking, right? I mean nobody is this obtuse unless they're just trying to stir the pot.

So far I've seen you use straw arguments, special pleading, double standards, and shifting the burden of proof. Maybe you should take some time and actually study some religious debates. Try to learn from your fellow theists. Trust me, they'd be embarrassed to hear some of the things you're saying.

Now, you've made the claim that a god exists. What evidence can you provide right now, this instant, to back up your claim? You don't have to give it all, just give THE BEST EVIDENCE.

I can't wait..

You misunderstand me, I am not ignoring, nor am I denying. All I have chosen to do is accept what is known, understand that what is known may change, and reject illogical explanations for it being unknown.

bravo, jacob! beautifully phrased!

Mordecai, you're asking for an 'honest' answer but you're not being honest yourself.

So please, pretty please, with sugar on top, can you answer the following question honestly?

Your god, and your god's mind, and everything that is in your god's mind are simply the result of luck, pure dumb luck, right? Your god came about by chance repeated 10 to the 22nd power, right? Time and dumb luck created all of your god's desires;

Time and dumb luck resulted in your god having the desire to create beings he knew in advance would break the laws it chose to create, and then he decided to create them anyway.

Time and dumb luck resulted in your god realizing what a bonehead mistake he made, but a little more time and a lot of dumbness resulted in your god deciding to clone himself so he could sacrifice himself to himself to appease himself so that he could forgive his creations for doing exactly what he knew they would do before he ever created them.

That's pretty dumb. Not dumb lucky. Just dumb.

If you were honest you would apply your question to the existence of your god and then you'd realize why everybody's laughing at you for dredging up old logical fallacies.

Yes and no. I can't draw conclusions about meanings about the universe.

I only have the facts that are available (that I can verify with study myself). From there I'm not going to make things up to make me feel better about our place in the universe.

You said:

"To back their assertions up they point to science and say: we have the answers, we know, science proves it. Yes, science does have answers and it provides proofs for much that we seek to understand. That is how God intended it to be. He gave us a brain so that we could use it."

See what I mean? You're starting to make things up at the end. You do not know how a god intends anything. You said god gave us a brain so we could use it. You know no such thing.

Have you considered that all the "dumb luck" things you mentioned are nothing compared to the "dumb luck" it took for a god to exist? If you have problems with something complex coming into existence, than how is postulating a god supposed to solve that?

All you are doing is making up something even more complicated you can’t explain. Using the same reasoning, some even bigger thing than god must have "intended" for god to exist. It doesn’t solve anything to add a god.

Atheists just stop before the "making things up" step.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2012 09:32PM by dagny.

Nicely said.

The one thing I would add is that there is significant historic and anthropological evidence that humans invented god(s) and that their definitions of god(s) have evolved and changed over time in sync with the current culture and circumstances.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2012 09:28PM by bc.

p.s. To mordecai - in case you aren't aware I really have no expectation/need to convince you of anything nor to I have any expectation/need to defend myself.

However since nickson is genuinely trying to figure out what he believes I am using you as a foil to discuss the issue to help him think through things and figure out what he believes.

P.s. If you hit Reply on a thread you can stay on that thread and keep parts of discussions together.

I don't think Mordecai is doing the theists any favors right now. I'm pretty convinced he's just messing with folks.

Do a search on his name going back the past several months - I'm interpreting him as earnest in his belief. I'm not surprised - it's like with Mormon's they hold to a few cliche arguments and don't really think things through - fear of damnation is enough to prevent that.

I do like Jacob's and bc's answers.

I do have a couple of comments. 1. The human eye is not that complex. Give 10 engineers the job of creating an eye and you'd get 10 better eyes. Of course, I'm not complaining about eyes since they do an OK job. They are merely a product of our evolution. There are plenty of animals with much better eyes. Why did we get such lousy ones that constantly go near and far sighted?

2. Please read some Richard Dawkins books. His first book, The Selfish Gene, is still a classic even after 30+ years. I can tell you that after I stopped believing in any kind of god, I was pretty lost and confused. Turns out I just needed a healthy study of some science and it made me feel a whole lot better. I am enjoying this thread so do post some more.

I'm pretty sure god made me nearsighted because he knew I was going to apostatize from his one true church. I'm not sure why he did it to my TBM dad though...

So is this response from most of the posters your honest answer to my question? Insult and a reliance on dumb luck? Please don't take offence when I say that some of you are so predictable. I suppose you'll accuse me of being a troll next. Look at my post in reply to "nicknames" question and ask yourself if you can't take the heat why did you enter the kitchen in the first place. I am not offended by your comments I just find some of them unwarranted. I am willing to discuss why I believe and respond to "nickname" I am not interested in trading insults.

I answered your honest question honestly, now will you return the favor and explain why the creation of the universe would be dumb luck, but God's existence isn't?

What you have completely failed to do is establish why the existence of God is an answer to your own question.

If an eye coming from dumb luck is impossible how do you explain the existence of God?

I can much more easily explain the evolution of the eye than I can the existence of God. So please explain why the existence to God is an answer.

Again the answer I gave is that it is established that humans attribute things they don't understand to a supernatural power. However it has been shown over and over and over that things humans used to attribute to God are now explained by science. Using inductive reasoning this is a +1 - just one more thing that humans are attributing to God because we don't yet have a complete understanding.

The traditional Christian concept of the "personal God" has many implications which are seldom analyzed. This essay considers the essential characteristics of the God that is defined by Christian beliefs and doctrine. For purposes of discussion we will assume that there is one God who controls the planet Earth. We will use the pronoun “He” to refer to that God.


HOW MUCH TIME DOES GOD HAVE AVAILABLE FOR EACH HUMAN?

The best estimate of Earth’s current population is seven billion people. There are 86,400 seconds in a 24-hour day (60X60X24). As a starting point, let’s calculate how much time God has available for each human. We divide 7,000,000,000 by 86,400 and get the answer of 81,018. This means that when God allocates his daily time then 81,018 humans must share one second. The amount of God’s time that each human receives (in a 24 hour day) is 1/81018 of a second. In one minute God must service 4,861,080 humans (60 X 81018). It takes God 7.75 minutes to service the 37.7 million people who live in California. There are 310 million people in the United States of America. God has 63.7 minutes (per 24 hours) to allocate to the entire USA population. After servicing 81,018 humans per second for 86,400 seconds (a 24-hour day), God will have completed the task of servicing all of the seven billion humans on the earth. Then God starts the process all over again for the next 24-hour day.

What can God do for you in 1/81018 of a second? My logic tells me “not much”, but you should figure that out for yourself. An eighty-two year life time consists of just over 30,000 days. At the rate of 1/81018 second per day, your share of God’s time over your entire 82-year life span would be slightly less than 3/8 of one second.

Here is a way to visualize this situation. Consider the seating capacity of two of the largest stadiums in the National Football League: FedEx Field, located in Landover, Maryland, is the home of the Washington Redskins and seats 82,000 people; Cowboys Stadium in Arlington Texas, a suburb of Dallas, is the home of the Dallas Cowboys and it seats 80,000.

Assume that on an October Sunday afternoon both stadiums are filled to capacity as each team is playing at home. God needs to allocate his time to the humans on Earth. God can only allocate one second per stadium -- two seconds for both stadiums. If God were to increase his time to ten seconds per person, then it would require 18.75 24-hour-days to service them. How about God giving each person (in the two stadiums) one whole minute? That would require 112.5 24-hour days of God’s time.

Suppose that God wants to devote one minute to each of the Earth’s seven billion humans? Consider your own personal interactions with your fellow humans. If you spend one minute talking to another person that is barely adequate to do anything useful. If God wants to give one minute to each human on Earth then by working 24 hours per day it would require 13,318 years for God to service the Earth’s population of seven billion people. So how exactly can God have a personal relationship with seven billion people? I will leave that for Christian believers to explain.


HOW DOES GOD KNOW THE IDENTITY OF EACH PERSON?

If God is supposed to have a personal relationship with each human then it only makes sense that He must know each person’s identity and physical location on the planet. For those humans who have a street address God could identify them by their name, street address, city, state, and country. For those humans with no street address the best way for God to keep track of them is by the person’s current latitude-longitude location.

A printed listing of the Earth’s seven billion humans containing the aforementioned information, and using the format of the standard “White Pages” telephone directory, would require a stack of phone books approximately 1/3 of a mile high. It does not seem reasonable that God would be able to sift through that stack of phone books to look up the location of a specific person. That would be a lot of phone book shuffling. Is it likely that God has a computer with a massive disk-resident data base of the name-location of all humans? That idea seems a bit far fetched. Perhaps the omnipotent God has the name-location of every human committed to His memory.

As a little experiment, open up a white pages phone directory and attempt to memorize just one page. When (and if) you can complete that task and recite that page from memory, then consider whether or not you can memorize one entire phone book – the Los Angeles White Pages, for example. Then consider the difficulty you would have while trying to memorize a stack of phone directories 1/3 of a mile thick. Obviously God must have mental powers that greatly exceed your own, but does it make any sense that a thinking entity (God) can possibly do that?

Let’s assume that God is somehow magically able to memorize the 1/3 of a mile stack of phone directories. Please understand this is a record of the name-location of all humans as of one point in time. But in reality the population of the Earth is constantly changing. There are 356,201 births per day and 153,781 deaths per day. That is more than a half-million changes per day. God must continually track those changes and refresh his memory to accurately know the identity and location of all humans on Earth. He must know exactly who died and the name and location of all the newborn humans.

Humans constantly relocate as they "move" to a new residence. So God must keep track of all those location changes and update his mental data base. That is no small task.

In real life, humans don’t spend all their time at home. In their daily activities, they travel to work, school, places of leisure, stores, bars, and various other locations. The jobs of some people involve constant travel. Logic tells me that in order for God to have a personal relationship with you, He must know your exact location at all times. Thus God must constantly monitor all seven billion humans and update His mental record of their exact location on the planet. If God loses track of the location of humans then how can He possibly have a personal relationship with them? This question is pertinent to the Christian concept of prayer.


CAN HUMANS COMMUNICATE WITH GOD THROUGH PRAYER?

One of the basic elements of a human having a personal relationship with God is the ability to say a prayer. God is supposed to hear and understand the prayer and presumably give some kind of reply or take the appropriate action. For that concept to work God must constantly monitor all seven billion humans in order to know when an individual starts saying a prayer. Speaking a prayer out loud is not the only means of offering a prayer. “Silent prayer”, where the individual “thinks” the prayer but does not speak words, is also an acceptable way for Christians to pray. This means that God must be “inside the head” of all humans at all times in order to recognize when a silent prayer is being offered. How does God manage to do that?

How many humans start their prayer by identifying themselves to God? The human could say something like this: “Hello God, this is John Paul Jones, my Social Security number is 123-45-6789, my home address is 1050 East Main Street, Peoria, Illinois 61602. I am currently driving my car north on I-155, approaching Peoria. My car is a White 2008 Volkswagen Jetta, with license number ABC1234. Okay, I will give you fifteen seconds to locate me and be ready to hear my prayer.”

I have never heard of anyone starting a prayer with that type of self-identification -- nobody does that. People simply start speaking or thinking a silent prayer to God and they expect that somehow God will magically know the identity of the person who is saying the prayer. The ability of God to hear prayers supports/reinforces the need for God to constantly monitor the exact location of all 7 billion humans on the planet. The ability of God to do that is essential for God being able to hear a prayer, and know who is praying, as the human attempts to have a personal relationship with God.

Let’s assume that the average human spends ten minutes a day praying (use your own estimate if you care to). In that case God must listen to and decipher 70 billion minutes of prayer per 24 hours. There are 1440 minutes in a 24-hour day. That is 144 ten-minute time blocks. If we divide the number of humans (seven billion) by the number of ten-minute time blocks (144), the answer is 48,611,111. If the average person prays for ten minutes a day, then God must listen to 48.6 million prayers concurrently on a never-ending basis. This time requirement is, of course, in addition to the requirement that God constantly monitor the location of every human on the planet.

To better understand the meaning of 48 million people, consider this: in the 2010 census the New York Metropolitan Area had a population of 22,085,649 people in an area of 11,842 square miles. With ten minutes of prayer per day by each human then God must continually listen to prayers from a world-wide group of humans whose aggregate size is over twice the population of the New York Metro Area.


WHAT KIND OF RECORD KEEPING MUST GOD PERFORM?

Up to this point this essay has dealt with real-time issues. However the “personal relationship with God” concept requires that He perform considerable record-keeping activities. When you start saying a prayer, it is vital for God to know the history of the person He is dealing with.

Consider your interaction with your primary care physician (PCP). When you visit your PCP, the doctor will always have your so-called “chart” in hand. This is typically a folder of papers which contains your complete medical records with that doctor. The doctor will typically spend a minute or two looking through the papers in the folder so s/he understands your current medical status. Then as you speak with the doctor, s/he writes additional notes into your folder. It is unthinkable that the doctor would start your consultation without having your chart available. And the doctor should never neglect to write notes into your folder about your current visit.

The same type of logic applies to God and prayer. It doesn’t make sense that God would want to start listening to your prayer “cold-turkey” without knowing anything about your past history. And it is logical that God would want to keep a record of your interactions. This requires God to “pull up your chart” as you start your prayer, and to write additional entries into your chart about what you said, and then perhaps write a note about His response (if any). Can God maintain your chart “in his head” – in his Godly memory? That doesn’t sound very likely since God is tasked with keeping the charts of seven billion humans.

Another essential part of God’s record-keeping is to take note of all the good deeds that you perform and all the sins that you commit. Since the standard belief of Christians is that they will be sent to heaven or hell depending on the quality of their life on Earth, it is essential for God to maintain a detailed record of each person’s life.

Recording a person’s life history would require God to keep constant track of the person’s thoughts and deeds and to record that information in a permanent form. And of course God must perform that task concurrently for seven billion people. That sounds like a rather tall order for God, especially considering all His other Godly duties.

Whenever we see a political cartoon about a deceased person arriving at the “Pearly Gates” of Heaven, the gatekeeper (St. Peter) is shown holding a few pages of notes, presumably the life history of the person who is requesting entry into Heaven. In reality, a person’s life history will be a very voluminous collection of data. Considering the fact that an 82 year lifetime is about 30,000 days long, a “written record” consisting of one page per day means your life-history will be 30,000 pages in length. With 211 pages per inch, that will be a stack of paper almost 12 feet high. It doesn't appear that St. Peter's five pages of notes can contain a meaningful life history.

Handwriting a person’s history on paper is an exceedingly inefficient means of record keeping. With the advent of computers, very few people maintain extensive records by hand-writing on paper. Record keeping on a computer is much more efficient. If God were to use computerized record-keeping, where would the computer(s) be located and who would perform all the key-entry work? Surely it is not logical to expect God to sit at a computer keyboard and keep a constant detailed record of the minute-to-minute life events/thoughts of seven billion humans.


SUMMARY

If you choose to believe that you have a personal relationship with God, then your belief system necessarily imposes certain requirements on God. For that to be logical and reasonable you must ask yourself if the requirements defined by your belief-system are something that God can realistically be expected to handle.

Here is my honest opinion. I seriously doubt that God is capable of performing the many tasks, for seven billion human concurrently, that Christian believers require from Him. If God cannot possibly accomplish these tasks, then what is the most reasonable conclusion? Very simple -- God doesn't exist. He is a feel-good myth, kind of like a Santa Claus for adults.

If you still wish to maintain your Christian belief in God then you really need to address the issues that I have raised in this essay. Ignoring the many problems does not make them go away.

if there was a gawd...

its 'mind' would have to be so many magnitudes beyond the limits of our brains, that to pretend that homo sapiens could understand not just the 'thoughts' of that gawd, but also its desires, is absurd.

and if you could create a universe, why would you have to use such douche-bags as your messengers? (funny how this point works for all cults and churches, lol)