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Debates about the existence of God fascinate some and bore others; nevertheless, they have occupied a great deal of philosophical, theological, and scientific interest over the centuries. Many of the arguments currently used are very old, while others are based upon recent developments in science and philosophy. Has either side developed an advantage over the other?
Book of the Week: God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist
The bible says :”a foolsays in his heart that there is no God” There is scientific evidence that if the earth were 1 degree closer to the sun we would burn or 1 degree further away we would freeze.The stars in heaven are screaming out in every language like celestial evangelists above that there is a God. Where there is a design there is a designer and where there is a plan there is a planner,there is a God.!
There does not have to be debate when the truth is evident! Jesus said” I am the way the truth and the life” and the bible says this, Greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends” and again that “the love of God draws men unto him.” To me there is no advantage of one debate to another only love and the shareing of that truth with others.!God bless You!
Why should we believe this?
Except you don’t point to any designs or plans.
James,
The likelihood of drawing the ace of clubs is 1 in 52. If you draw a million cards from a million decks that likelihood of drawing the ace of clubs is astoundingly high. The universe is so phenomenally huge that if there was a 1 in 10^10^10^10 chance of life arising around any given star, the universe will be teeming with life.
Get over yourself. Just because it happened, doesn’t make it a miracle or a design.
James,
The Bible says a lot of things. Few, if any, are true, much less morally instructive (unless one wishes to emulate a perverse, viciously-destructive tyrant hellbent on murder and mayhem).
The screaming stars in heaven (your words) are mindless nuclear infernos scattered across trillions of cubic light-years of vacuum, much of it at or near absolute zero, in which no atomic motion can occur. If this is evidence of a god and proof of his so-called benevolent intentions toward his special creation, then why is it that we appear only in a limited geographic band on the third planet of a relatively minor star some 25K light years from the center of a galaxy that is literally one of millions scattered a lifeless void whose scope beggars any mathematical or literary description? If this is evidence of God, then God clearly hates us and wants us to die, savagely and anonymously.
On the other hand, from a scientific point of view, the universe is entirely indifferent to our existence and amoral — not the same as immoral (see first paragraph above) — in its processes. While it is true that life on this planet depends on a specific set of environmental conditions, including planetary positioning, mass, rotational speed, and a host of other factors, it does not necessarily follow that these conditions are the ONLY ones that can produce life. It is entirely possible that life could evolve under other conditions.
I find that thought far more comforting than the notion of the universe as an artifact created by an emotionally immature, mentally unstable “super-being” for his or her own cruel amusement.
There is no skygod. The Jews adopted a skygod when they were in Babylon.
What is Todds point please explain it to me.
I do not understand what he is saying.
Not only is this evidence of God, but God is also intensely interested in our sex lives.
James:
If you can use the bible as factual source to prove the existence of the christian god, then I can use the book, “The Night Before Christmas” to factually prove the existence of Santa Claus.
Daffy: Todd’s point is that the universe is so mind bogglingly large, with so many billions of stars and planets, that there must be an untold number of other planets capable of supporting life like ours is. Obviously our primitive ancestors, and many ignorant people today, use “magic” to explain why life happened on our planet; but educated people require no magical explanations, and can instead use probability statistics, as Todd has done, to illustrate that, although winning the lottery is hard to do, here on Earth we have done exactly that. After all, somebody has to win the lottery!
A puddle of water, if it could think, might think that the hole in the ground it lies in was magically created for it by some Puddle-God; when, in actuality, it is merely being forced by natural laws to fill that depression in the ground, because that’s how water follows natural laws. We are no different; except that a few of us (ie atheists) have figured out that no human-created god is responsible for the hole in the ground that our puddle fits into.
James, you write “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is not God.’”, but never the second line, “They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does good.” Do you truly believe that we’re all corrupt, and do nothing but abominable and evil deeds? If not, why not?
Then again, I suppose I should be thankful that you didn’t use “I’ll pray for you”, or “God bless” as a stand-in for “F*** you” as so many other drive-by god-bots have done in the past.
Unfortunately, ignorance of statistics and cosmology is really no excuse for replacing this knowledge with the god hypothesis. The science behind the creation of the universe is well founded and open to both criticism and understanding.
“There is scientific evidence that if the earth were 1 degree closer to the sun we would burn or 1 degree further away we would freeze.” If that were the case, it simply means life would not have evolved here and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. However, there is every chance life would be on some other planet given the astronimically large numbers of potentially life bearing planets and 9in universe terms) the relative ease with which it was created here and has flourished despite repeated earlier attempts by natural phenomena to extinguish it, none of which required or even evidenced a god figure.
Always seems that when knowledge reaches its limits people put gods there to explain what’s beyond instead of just saying “we don’t know.”
If someone posted this already, I apologize for rehashing it. I had to reply and couldn’t wait another second (even to stop and read later replies):
>There is scientific evidence that if the earth were 1 degree closer to the sun we would burn or 1 degree further away we would freeze.
The Earth’s orbit is eliptical. This means that we are constantly changing our distance from the sun–and we don’t freeze or burn up. It’s fine to have opinions, but when they’re based on ignorance, they’re just ignorant opinions. Inform your opinions before you speak. It’s not everyone else’s job to point things out to you that you can google for yourself in half a second.
Why do you believe such a claim when it’s put to you without question? But you likely question anything and everything that doesn’t align with what you already have accepted? When did you stop just believing whatever people told you? If you believe claims that support your beliefs without question, why not believe contrary claims as easily? It might save you looking like an idiot on some comment forum at a blog one day.
James (1). Reference for the 1 degree difference between “burn” or “freeze” please.
tracieh (14). You are absolutely correct about the constantly changing Earth-Sun distance. I doubt that James is familiar with an ellipse. I don’t believe he can quote a reference; he is probably quoting the statement of a Fundy Bible-thumper. If a reference exists, it will be by a Fundie author.
James might be surprised to learn that Earth’s perihelion (closest approach to the sun) is in Winter, January 3, and aphelion (greatest distance from the sun) is in Summer, July 4.
I think James did the Fundie Escape; preached and ran.
James (1). I am confused; 1 degree closer to, or further from, the sun is a meaningless statement to me. If you can explain this to me, I will not bother you further.
Astronomical distances for relatively close objects, such as the sun, are most commonly given in kilometers. Earth is 3,106,553 kilometers (1,926,063 miles) closer to the sun in Winter than in Summer. The tilt of Earth’s axis, not distance from the sun, is primarily responsible for Earth’s temperature.
Winter and Summer in (19) are reversed in the southern hemisphere, in case anyone is not aware of it.
Craig loses major style points for including the fine-tuning argument. Even worse is his evasion of Sinnot-Armstrong’s critique of Craig’s use of probabilities. Of course, Sinnot-Armstrong should have crucified him on that point, but for whatever reason he let it go.
From the view point of an atheist, I think Sinnot-Armstrong should have dealt more thoroughly with Craig’s claims regarding an actual infinite. The denial of an actual infinite is what nullifies the kalam argument.
James (1). I am still waiting for your answer, or did you preach and run, as I expected?
James (2). “Lay down his life” for a few hours. Fundie Arithmetic: late Friday afternoon or early night until sometime Saturday night or early Sunday morning = 3 days and 3 nights.