What will it take for an atheist to believe in God?

ChrisCunningham

So, who was it exactly that showed you how and why God created the universe?

 

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i dunno about you but i dont like being told, what i can and cant do, and what i will or will not be damned for...

 

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Chris,

Why do you assume the universe was created? Why must a higher being be involved? What is the relevance of super consciousness? There is no evidence to show that anything complex was created by higher beings or intelligent beings, whether low-level consciousness or super consciousness. All we know is that things evolve.

But we know the universe exists so why conclude that at one time it didn’t? What’s your evidence that supports a belief that a god created it?

 

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You presume an overly lenient admissions policy.

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______


Here's a good rule to follow:


Proportion your belief according to the evidence.

Which means, if someone asks you to accept a man who talked to invisible demons as your Savior, make an intelligent estimate of how much evidence there is to support the possibility that such a man could actually save you from anything.

Since there is no evidence that jesus ever saved anyone from anything, much less gave them eternal life, your belief in Jesus should be close to 0.000000001%. After all, no one gets an afterlife until the son of Man appears in the clouds and raises up those who are under the earth. So there's no possibility of any evidence that it could happen.

Same thought for God.

Of course, you could invent evidence that doesn't exist and say, "How would you react?" But that doesn't change the fact that such evidence does not actually exist, and your question is only hypothetical,

And not very interesting, either. Sounds more like the opening gambit of a really tiresome con game.

 

to Jan Ardena

what the dr. said above, but also, how many people before us have lived exactly the same life with exactly the same beliefs? many, many people. it relates to my idea that we are going no-where fast with the world because people are stuck in the same rut of conformative thinking that people were subjected to hundreds of years ago. i see christian people and i see the same type of confined thought in all of them. they can't roam outside their normal thoughts because in the end it comes down to god and if they do then it is blasphemy and they won't do it. myself, from personal experience (great english aye?) am able to go all over the place, think of any aspect to any idea and create my own pathways of thought as well as create something as simple as my own morals. show me that freedom in religious thought- there is none. if we want to cruise forwrd into the next millenia, we need this unconfined and unrestricted thought, especially since the doctrine of thought taught in churches is for an already out-dated society. we live in the 21st century, most people are stuck in the 16th.

 

The concept of God is not in itself evil, it's forcing one's interpretation of God onto others that's the problem.

 

When theists can explain to me why their god would create thousands of lifeless planets, useless gasballs, and empty black holes, maybe I will join their club.

It is quite possible for the universe to have been created without some mumbo-jumbo intelligent life form. Evolution (which has been observed). A combination of chemicals to form life (has ALMOST been replicated in an experiment. Small globes of chemicals have been made that can reproduce. But not life.)
The Big Bang occurred. The universe is expanding.

What would it take to convince me of a god? Evidence. Not anecdotes of personal experience. But a controlled experiment.

Here is my controlled experiment...

1. Go and find 10 believers in God.
2. Go and find 10 atheists.
3. Have each one of them drink poison.
4. Repeat the experiment to confirm results.

Hypothesis: God will protect its/his/her followers. The atheists should all die, and the theists should survive with no ill effects.

Conclusion: No believer has ever tried this controlled experiment, so I conclude that they have no faith in their God, or God doesn't exist.

1. Doing whatever 'God' tells you to do, because you are afraid of divine retribution.
2. Having blind faith, and not having a mind open enough to search and examine evidence.
3. Not bothering to consider alternatives.
4. Not deciding upon your own morale 'code', but instead steal a ready-made one out of a 2000 year old book that was written by barbarians.
5. Scuttling off to church every Sunday because God might be mad if you don't.
6. Praying because God might get angry if you don't.
7. Hating someone or something because the Bible (or a scripture) tells you to. Or making a decision based on a scripture.

 

The big bang theory does not not answer really why the "bang" occurred. There is little evidence for it apart from the universe expanding. And so what. Jesus said that the kingdom of God was like a mulberry seed. On the other hand, evolution has been observed. Well even the bible observed it with "like father like son". Conjecturing on the odds of the formation of life is premature considering that we have not even created a single cell under controled conditions.

No. Everything must done through love.

Faith is not blind but is within.

There are no alternatives. I have examined everything. Your position is useless. What little joy you have is with the intellectual pride of calling yourself an atheist.

My moral code is based totaly and completely on,
Love your God with all your heart, mind and soul.
Love each other as I have loved you.

I go to church to learn about God and to partake in the Eucharist.

We pray in order to be one with God.

Scripture tells us not to hate.

 

Hmm....uhh...because the universe has been in existence for a finite amount of time, shown by the Big Bang theory, or maybe because if the universe always existed it couldn't possibly follow the second law of thermodynamics, because its energy supply would have been depleted by now....

What caused the big bang?

How was our universe thrown into a perpetual state of expansion???

One can ask, what caused God?

Well that is simply answered, there is no cause for God, because there is no need to be, whereas something "exploding" implies a cause for this explosion(an object at rest stay at rest until acted upon by an external force). An infinitely dense ball of matter that existed BEFORE anything existed also seems a bit illogical. The very fact that one could even wonder what our universe looks like from the outside implies that there is some absolute frame of reference. The fact that what is inifinity to one can be finite quantity to another implies that there is an absolute frame of reference. The fact that existence itself is a seperate entity from time implies that there is an absolute frame of reference.

The very fact that the Big Bang is one of the silliest things I have ever heard yet is supposed to explain the origin of our universe is what makes me a believer. You have nothing to lean back on, aboslutely nothing. You have no reason for your existence. Whether or not purpose is a even a real premise is something I am still debating, but I know one thing and one thing alone...I will believe that there is something that created an infintely dense ball of matter that exploded "spontaneously" in a vast realm of absolute nothingness and created time a finite time ago before I believe that an infinitely dense ball of matter simply exploded for no reason, contained all the matter in the universe and is expanding into nothingness for no reason, and though it created time and it exploded a finite time ago its always existed...

Logic is the basis of our cognitive ability. However logic has one inherent flaw....the given absolute. In order for one to ever use logic he must first state a premise that has no proof, no corroboration, and no purpose other than a conveniet method of proving what one wants to prove. This flaw consequently makes Logic illogical by its own standards. However this flaw is equally and paradoxically what makes logic "logical".

Not making too much sense.....think about it a bit.....

 

There is no 'reason'. It just occurred. Just because something exists does not mean it has a cause. That is deluded and illogical thinking.

LOGIC IS NOT A RULE WHICH GOVERNS THE UNIVERSE

Everything that exists has a cause = Not a rule which governs the universe.

If everything that exists has a cause, explain to me the 'reason' for thousands and thousands of lifeless balls of rock floating around in space.

Utter BS. There is mounds of evidence to support the BB theory.

500 years ago, we could not even create a plane. Does that mean it is impossible?

We have created objects like cells in a laboratory. And one day, you will be forced to eat your words. Scientists will create life. It's inevitable.

Total BS

A basic LAW of science
ENERGY IS NEITHER CREATED NOR DESTROYED
THIS HAS BEEN PROVEN!

Energy. And energy has always existed, as it is neither created nor destroyed.

It sounds reasonable to me.

You need to deflate your ego. What makes you believe we have a 'reason' for existing. Maybe the 'reason' is to survive and pass on our genes.

Do you have any evidence supporting this theory? Nope. I didn't think so.

 

Yes. I know it's possible. "It was then permitted to breathe life into the beast's image, so that the beast's image could speak..."
My point is that you do not know the chances of intelligent life evolving.

I suspect that conditions before and just after the big bang would be so extreme that all modern physics would break down. Also for a while Newton's theory of gravity was considered perfectly correct, however this theory was later disproved.

 

Slim. But your chances of winning jackpot in tattslotto are slim. Yet people HAVE won the jackpot.

Provide evidence to support this claim.

Newton's theory was actually quite accurate. Einstein merely improved and added to it.

 

What do you have to lean back on? Where is your proof? Hell, where is your scientific THEORY that says god exists? You don't have one. All you have is this book...

Tell me, which sounds sillier: The Big Bang, in which energy caused this explosion that created our universe.

OR

Intelligent Design, where a supernatural god created an entire universe, yet used only one planet, and created a people which were born only to worship him.

Now, you could draw a parallel between these ideas, with the idea that both energy and god have existed for all time; neither being created or destroyed. But that's where the similarities end. The religious, weak-minded sheep are so insecure that they invent a reason for existance beyond the one followed by every other being in existance on this planet. The strong-minded, realistic, interested, inspecting people have not decied if there is some ultimate purpose to life yet; instead, they've decided to go and look for answers in real life, a place where the religious do not live.

JD

 

CHRISCUNNINGHAM,

That would be true if the big bang was the beginning of the universe. But we don’t know that, and current research is indicating somewhat strongly that the big bang is most probably just one of a potentially infinite number of big bangs.

See Guth (Professor of physics at MIT) - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/mysteries/html/guth_1.html

See also Andre Linde’s work.

See also a recent article in Scientific American -
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?ch...8A-1E90-8EA5809EC5880000&pageNumber=1&catID=2

And there are more books, papers and articles that pursue the issue of a universe being much larger than just the big bang.

While it is tempting to conclude that the size and origin of the universe is now determined by the big bang I would remind you of history when man has repeatedly concluded similar findings. E.g. the Earth was the universe and the sun revolved around the Earth or the sun was at the center of the universe, or the Milky Way was the universe, etc. As we extend our range of observation we always see something much larger. We now know there are many galaxies, and these in turn are grouped together into larger structures. So with this history why should we conclude that the big bang is the center or beginning of the universe? History indicates we should be very cautious at making such a premature conclusion. And as science works hard to explain how the big bang formed it is becoming obvious that those first few moments of inflation would have likely given rise to multiple big bangs, e.g. inflationary theory is not a part of big bang theory but that big bang theory is a part of inflationary theory – see Linde/Guth.

So the idea that the universe is finite is not aligned with current state of the art science. However, it is understandable that such a conclusion is convenient for theistic creation stories.

But given the possibility that our big bang may well be just the multiple zillionth big bang in a particular spreading tree of big bangs it doesn’t necessarily mean that the universe did not have a true beginning. While Guth shows that big bangs could be created into an infinite future, he does not make the same projection for an infinite past. Given that perspective there is still some limited hope for theists to claim a creation event.

This is a popular myth that we have explored many times here. If the universe were just a single big bang then yes entropy would tend to increase, however, if the big bang expands, collapses and explodes again, then entropy would simply be reset to zero each time. This is the cyclic theory of the universe that has not been ruled out but leading edge physics appears to be moving towards the multi-verse theories.

But more importantly it must be remembered that the prediction about a state of ultimate entropy only makes sense within a closed system, but if the universe is infinite, i.e. has no boundaries, then such a conclusion is inapplicable.

Yes but does the question make sense? We know the universe exists and we could ask what caused it, and even then if it is infinite then there is no answer. But there is nothing that indicates that a god exists so the question ‘what caused God?’ makes an assumption about a pre-existent state that cannot be sustained.

But your issue is even worse since if you answer the question of what caused God you are then led to the question of what caused the cause of God, etc, and this dissolves into an infinite series that can never have an answer.

Your whole argument here rests on the big bang being the start of the universe. I hope I have shown above that that perspective is now somewhat very limited and you need to update your views.

I’m pretty sure there is nothing in science that claims that the big bang is ‘supposed’ to be the origin of the universe. That seems to be a theist perspective so that they can claim there must be a creator who caused the big bang.

I think it is a superb idea if there is no purpose imposed on us since that means we are completely free to choose our own purpose. That single idea make me very happy to be alive and that I am truly free to do as I wish.

Then read Guth and Linde and study current physics before you lock yourself into a very limited and out of date perspective.

I think you have logic confused with something else. Your claim for a premise is incorrect. Any valid premise must be based on fact. You cannot prove something with logic unless you have facts no matter how much you want something to be true.

 

God?

I will believe in a god when the aliens tell me there is one.

 

_______

If you look at Jackpots - the State Lottos - and there are a lot of them...


you'll see that someone wins, on the average, every two weeks.

Why would this be?

The people who run the jackpots have studies to show how to get the most people to buy tickets. If the jackpot is small, sales go down. If no one wins, sales go down. So they decide how many possible combinations by saying "Pick 5 out of 33" or "Pick 6 out of 52" or whatever, so that (the # of tickets sold) vs. (the odds of winning) produces a winner, on the average, once every two weeks.

But - the Creationist might ask - Aren't the odds of winning like, 14 million to 1?

Yes. The odds of any particular combo coming up are very high.

But the odds that someone - out of say, 20 million tickets sold - will win are very low. 1 in 5, at most.

Same with evolution. Look at the eye mechanism in different species.

The evolution concept of an "eye" developed two, maybe three times, in all the billions of species that have existed.

Once a species had an "eye" that could pick up movement, their advantage in finding food meant they took over. And so, there was never any need for a second type of eye to develop independently.

The Lotto analogy is cool. It shows there are different ways to quote the "odds of winning" or "the odds of a beneficial mutation occurring" and the Christians are being scammed by ministers and priests who state the question in a rather silly way.

 

Irrefutable evidence would be a good start.

 

i have often asked myself this question because i do not believe in god... and here is what i have concluded:

i will not believe there is a god because of what is written in a book. there are many books... i can't go following a religion that says their book is "holy" because every religion seems to do this (i just can't follow 'em all)

i will not believe because of fear that i will not go to heaven and will end up paying for my lack of belief for eternity in hell. this is not right i don't care how you try to fight it.

i will not believe because this world exists and therefore someone had to create it. illogical argument but i'm sure i'll be misquoted some how here.

i will not believe because prophecies from the bible, very very vague prophecies interpreted in many different ways over the last few centuries, have come true. i mean after all, nostradamus, other religious texts, my dreams, and heck even the local psychic on the corner have predicted the future in some vague ways. (i am sure this will be misquoted also)

i WILL BELIEVE, however, under one circumstance. in history (the bible's version) God has come down many times to set things straight, intervene, or has spoken to a human directly (for ex: noah) i would very much believe if god himself were to come down and show himself again.

now i don't mean show himself in a way where a believer would say "see see that proves god exists" like a co-worker of mine once said: "see it's raining! that proves god exists, rain is like a miracle from god because how the heck does something as heavy as water get up to the sky and fall? obviously god is dropping the water" ... uh... yeah that won't work here

i would like to see god himself come down, and speak to us. his creations. give me some proof! and no... rain drops, rainbows, mountains, a blue sky, and the fact that we are here won't work.. heck he could even speak to us all! that would be awesome.. and i don't mean speak to us the way i am sure someone will respond "just listen in your heart you will hear his voice, he is trying to guide you" yada yada yada.

have a great day

 

wow, shit for brains.

yeah that would be nice, but it's not going to happen. not because god is testing us or some crap but rather because people like noah are mythical characters, so god never spoke to them. and if you take into account the consistency in which god appears (for some reason his appearances taper off thees last to millienia, why?) and talks to people, it is because the world was supposed to end ages ago so he wasn't required to show up any more. for an end of te world cult it is a very clever one. vague enough to persist to this day.