How did the universe come into existence?

[Aman777]

You haven't given me any evidence to refute, I'm not even sure what you're trying to claim is your evidence. You have a bunch of bible passages and some wild claims, that's it.

And the bible passages don't line up with what we know about the world courtesy of actual scientific research backed by actual testable evidence.

Jesus:>>Mat 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. Mat 15:9 But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

 

[Dave Ellis]

Jesus:>>Mat 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. Mat 15:9 But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

When I just pointed out all you have to offer up is bible verses and wild claims, coming back with yet another bible verse isn't exactly strengthening your case....

Quoting lines out of a book is not evidence.

 

[Aman777]

When I just pointed out all you have to offer up is bible verses and wild claims, coming back with yet another bible verse isn't exactly strengthening your case....

Quoting lines out of a book is not evidence.

It is when it agrees in every way with every discovery of mankind. Faith plus fact equals God's Truth. Can you give us an example of the "wild claims" I have made? Just because it's different from what you thought, you judge it to be "wild"? I post of the agreement of Scripture science and history, detailed by God Himself, more than 3,000 years ago. If you don't agree, then show me my errors and we both can learn. Amen?

 

[Ed1wolf]

Actually, Aristotle posited four causes: material, final, formal, and sufficient.

Not according to the book I referenced.

tnt: The important thing to remember is that these ARE NOT LAWS, contrary to what you said.

They hold no absolute weight in an argument.

Aristotle said they were laws. Any evidence that he was wrong?

 

[Ed1wolf]

You're correct that communications with a god have similar features.

They're not demonstrable to anyone else.

Which makes them useless as evidence.

While not strong evidence, they ARE evidence. You cannot demonstrate that your wife loves you to anyone else, yet you believe she does because of your communication and experiences with her. So it is with God.

 

[Gene Parmesan]

While not strong evidence, they ARE evidence. You cannot demonstrate that your wife loves you to anyone else, yet you believe she does because of your communication and experiences with her. So it is with God.

We can observe relationships and come to various levels of confidence in the love one might have for another after actually directly witnessing or taking part in a number of interactions.

This is not the same as the exclusively first-person experiences one ascribes to interacting with a supernatural deity. Any experience you have claimed to have for your particular god has been experienced by devotees of other mutually exclusive religions and attributed to their gods. What are your thoughts about the people that claim to have a personal relationship with Krishna? They seem just as earnest about the veracity of their experiences as most Christians I know. As for myself, I've experienced a lot of the same "transcendental" type feelings through completely secular meditation as I once did through intense prayer.

I'm confident that my wife loves me, but I also admit that I could be wrong. This is confidence, not faith. Also, barring sci-fi type excuses, I can touch, smell, feel, and hear her through traditional senses that can also be corroborated with others having heard, smelled, and seen the exact same thing (no touchy my wife thx). This is a layer of confidence that is sorely lacking for deities. A love ascribed to Krishna or Yahweh is hardly analogous to experience with our fellow humans. This isn't to say it cannot exist, but that the analogy is weak.

 

[Ed1wolf]

Ed1wolf said: ↑
The law of causality is based on another law of logic, the law of non-contradiction.

de: No it's not....

In fact there's no such thing as the "law of causality".

Evidence?

↑

ed: The law of non-contradiction cannot be proved. Any argument offered as proof for the law would of necessity have to assume the law as part of the proof. Therefore, any direct proof of the law would end up being circular. It would beg the question. In addition, any attempt to refute the law of non-contradiction and its corollary causality, also requires one to assume the law you are trying to refute. So to sum up assuming the laws of logic to be true is the most rational assumption, to assume that some are true and some are false just because you don't like their conclusions is standing on irrational and very shaky ground.

de: As your basic premise is flawed, this argument is meaningless.

See above.

↑

ed: Again this goes against everything we know about rhinos, and as I stated earlier, no one claims to have communicated with Keith but millions have claimed to communicated with the Christian God and those communications generally have certain similarities thereby providing much more evidence for His existence than Keith. So using the inductive reasoning, Keith's existence should be rejected.

de: Keith is a TRANSCENDENT Rhino, not a regular rhino. And I have communicated with him. He's actually quite the prankster, all those people who thought they were talking with the Christian God (and all the other gods) were actually talking to Keith pretending to be the god of their choosing, so therefore most people on earth have actually talked with Keith, they just don't know it.

-----

Of course, I'm just having a little bit of fun with you, however it's for a good reason. I'm highlighting the problem of believing in unfalsifiable things. Every claim you make for god I can make for Keith, and I can rationalize any explanation I want to for why Keith is responsible.

The point is though, I have the exact same evidence for Keith as you do for god. My claims aren't supported by testable evidence, and neither are yours. You're just asserting god is the cause, and I'm asserting Keith is.

If you want to show god actually exists, you need to prove it. Otherwise your argument is just as strong as my Keith arguments are.

No, an ad hoc made up being to mimic the Christian God and try to refute an argument proves nothing. As I stated millions of people for 2000 years have claimed to have had a relationship with the Christian God, no one has claimed to had a relationship with Keith. That in itself provides much more evidence for God than keith. And Christianity and God actually are falsifiable. And the Christian worldview is testable.

↑

ed: No, when you say that eyes and ears are "naturally occurring" you are assuming what we are trying to prove. Imagine 1 million years from now you are an alien visiting earth, and find old cars buried in the strata of the earth, how would you know they were not naturally occurring?

de: We'd have to examine if there was any way they could be produced naturally, may it be the design, the paint, etc. If there is no reasonable process that could cause the machinery to be produced by natural means, it's not unreasonable to think that it could have been designed and built. However, without proof they can't know that for sure.

With ears and eyes however, we do have a natural process that can create those structures. Not only that, but we have examples of the intermediate stages of those structures still extant in species living today. So, we have a natural explanation that we can demonstrate.

Please provide an example where that natural process has been empirically observed, not some "just so" story. Actually those so-called "intermediate stages" are fully functional and serve the purpose for which they were designed, thereby casting serious doubt whether they actually are intermediate.

de: If you want to claim design and purpose, you must show there's reason to believe there is a designer, and that he created those things for a purpose.

I provided the purposes for the structures and if you want to claim that natural random processes can produce designs such as these then you need to provide an empirical example of such a thing occurring.

↑

ed: No, polytheistic gods are all different beings, irrespective of their single pantheon, the Christian God is only a single being and yet three different persons. This unity and diversity is part of His essence, unlike the polytheistic gods being in a single pantheon, which is just an arbitrary grouping unrelated to their essence. MPD is just that, a disorder and a pathology, yet the universe shows evidence of great order and purpose with millions of interdependent characteristics and ecosystems. It is extremely unlikely that a being with a serious mental disorder could create such a thing.

de: Different beings working together can create things, can they not? You still haven't shown why that's a weakness for polytheism.

Yes, and generally those things will all be different with nothing connecting and unifying them. Think of a piece of art created by committee as compared to art created by an individual. There are the characteristics and personality of the artist incorporated into his creation for the individual, this is generally not true of a committee. The universe shows the creator's essence of being a unity within a diversity. Therefore a committee of gods is unlikely to have been the creator of this universe.

de: Likewise, people with multiple personality disorder can be organized. All three personalities can be neat freaks.

Do you have any evidence of this ever occurring? I am not referring to how well they clean their house, I am speaking of their overall lifestyle and personal relationships. It will be a mass of confusion and disorder until they get treatment.

de: Besides, you're fallaciously conflating the medical type of disorder with the disorganized definition of disorder.

While they are not exactly the same there are some analogies between the two which was my point.

↑

ed: Your attempted refutation is a straw man, that is not my argument.

de: How did I get it wrong?

You just said that I was claiming that God created a bunch of different things without the key point I was making that there are unifying themes to the diversities thereby providing evidence for the Cause of these things.

 

[quatona]

While not strong evidence, they ARE evidence. You cannot demonstrate that your wife loves you to anyone else, yet you believe she does because of your communication and experiences with her. So it is with God.

...but the question was not "Does your wife love you?", but "Does your wife exist?", in the first place.

 

[Dave Ellis]

It is when it agrees in every way with every discovery of mankind. Faith plus fact equals God's Truth. Can you give us an example of the "wild claims" I have made? Just because it's different from what you thought, you judge it to be "wild"? I post of the agreement of Scripture science and history, detailed by God Himself, more than 3,000 years ago. If you don't agree, then show me my errors and we both can learn. Amen?

Fact equals truth, faith is irrelevant. Likewise there's no such thing as "scripture science".

As for wild claims, literally almost every claim you made in your post is entirely different from the scientific findings, and you have nothing to prove your claims at all. It's just as simple as that. Your entire post is unsupported.

 

[Dave Ellis]

Evidence?

See above.

Look up any reputable source detailing the laws of logic, you won't find "the law of causality" in there.

No, an ad hoc made up being to mimic the Christian God and try to refute an argument proves nothing. As I stated millions of people for 2000 years have claimed to have had a relationship with the Christian God, no one has claimed to had a relationship with Keith. That in itself provides much more evidence for God than keith. And Christianity and God actually are falsifiable. And the Christian worldview is testable.

No, the point is my ad hoc being has exactly the same amount of evidence as your god does. That should be a problem for you. That's not to say that many interpretations, excuses and beliefs regarding the Christian god also come from an ad hoc basis. Just look at some of the rather wild claims on this forum.

As for people claiming to have a relationship for 2000 years, that's irrelevant. Not only is it an appeal to popularity fallacy, however there's been people claiming to have relationships with other mutually exclusive gods for ages as well, some even longer than 2000 years (i.e. Hinduism).

As for your last claim, how is the Christian worldview testable, and Christianity and god falsifiable? If you can actually provide something along those lines, we'll be in for a very interesting discussion.

Please provide an example where that natural process has been empirically observed, not some "just so" story. Actually those so-called "intermediate stages" are fully functional and serve the purpose for which they were designed, thereby casting serious doubt whether they actually are intermediate.

Here's a relatively short video detailing the evolution of the eye, showing intermediate stages in the eyes development in species that are still alive today.

I provided the purposes for the structures and if you want to claim that natural random processes can produce designs such as these then you need to provide an empirical example of such a thing occurring.

That's a shifting of the burden of proof. You are claiming that they were designed for a purpose, yet you can't demonstrate a designer or actual purpose. That being said, the video above does give the basics of how a structure like the eye can develop using natural processes.

Your turn to show your designer and prove his intent.

Yes, and generally those things will all be different with nothing connecting and unifying them. Think of a piece of art created by committee as compared to art created by an individual. There are the characteristics and personality of the artist incorporated into his creation for the individual, this is generally not true of a committee. The universe shows the creator's essence of being a unity within a diversity. Therefore a committee of gods is unlikely to have been the creator of this universe.

Think about any major complex work, it's always been designed and built by committee. It took thousands of people to design the space shuttle, or build the pyramids. The universe, while having an artistic element is largely all about physics, and if it were designed, engineering. Any major engineering work I can think of was not a one man job.

Regardless, it's a silly argument anyway.

Do you have any evidence of this ever occurring? I am not referring to how well they clean their house, I am speaking of their overall lifestyle and personal relationships. It will be a mass of confusion and disorder until they get treatment.

Interpersonal relationships may be a problem, however there's no reason why someone with multiple personality disorder couldn't have well organized personalities.

While they are not exactly the same there are some analogies between the two which was my point.

Not really

You just said that I was claiming that God created a bunch of different things without the key point I was making that there are unifying themes to the diversities thereby providing evidence for the Cause of these things.

And that doesn't really matter much.

 

[Peter1000]

No.... your claim is just flat out wrong.

Lucy is an Australopithecus Afarensis. That's a close relation to Homo Sapiens which came later, however we don't know if we directly evolved from them or not.

Basically, Lucy is a fossil of an extinct form of hominid. I don't know where you heard the idea that all of humanity came from her, science has never made that claim.

If science didn't claim it, the newspapers spoke for them. I seem to remember 20 or 30 years ago, that there was a big splash in the newspaper that all of humanity had come from a woman given the name of Lucy. As I remember, it didn't give her husbands name, in fact it didn't mention him at all. Interesting.

Back in the 70's she was advertised as the beginning of the human race, and she went on tour for all to see and to arouse interest in the origins of the human family.

I suspect that representation has been debunked, because I can't imagine they have not found earlier fossils that look a lot like her.

Anyway, for a few years it was very exciting news.

 

[Peter1000]

Fact equals truth, faith is irrelevant. there's no such thing as "scripture science".

As for wild claims, literally almost every claim you made in your post is entirely different from the scientific findings, and you have nothing to prove your claims at all. It's just as simple as that. Your entire post is unsupported.

You have a lot of faith in science. You may not call it that, but we do. We have faith because all is not clear to us how God accomplished all things.

You have faith, because it is abundantly clear that science has not answered all the questions yet either.

The word 'faith' is not necessarily a religious word, and it is relevant, otherwise religious or scientific persons would not press forward.

 

[Dave Ellis]

If science didn't claim it, the newspapers spoke for them. I seem to remember 20 or 30 years ago, that there was a big splash in the newspaper that all of humanity had come from a woman given the name of Lucy. As I remember, it didn't give her husbands name, in fact it didn't mention him at all. Interesting.

Back in the 70's she was advertised as the beginning of the human race, and she went on tour for all to see and to arouse interest in the origins of the human family.

I suspect that representation has been debunked, because I can't imagine they have not found earlier fossils that look a lot like her.

Anyway, for a few years it was very exciting news.

I suggest you check your facts... Lucy is an Australopithecus Afarensis, which is an extinct form of hominid.

Never was it claimed all of humanity came from Lucy, at best she was a member of a species that eventually evolved into modern humans. If I'm not mistaken Australopithecus isn't one of our direct ancestors though, I could be wrong on that one though.

Either way, she's not human and was never thought to be human. She's an early hominid.

 

[Dave Ellis]

You have a lot of faith in science. You may not call it that, but we do. We have faith because all is not clear to us how God accomplished all things.

You have faith, because it is abundantly clear that science has not answered all the questions yet either.

The word 'faith' is not necessarily a religious word, and it is relevant, otherwise religious or scientific persons would not press forward.

I don't have faith, I have evidence. Science is not a flawless system, however it works and has a very high degree of success.

The fact we don't know everything isn't a failing of science. Science is our best tool to eventually discover those things we don't yet know.

 

[Peter1000]

Look up any reputable source detailing the laws of logic, you won't find "the law of causality" in there.



No, the point is my ad hoc being has exactly the same amount of evidence as your god does. That should be a problem for you. That's not to say that many interpretations, excuses and beliefs regarding the Christian god also come from an ad hoc basis. Just look at some of the rather wild claims on this forum.

As for people claiming to have a relationship for 2000 years, that's irrelevant. Not only is it an appeal to popularity fallacy, however there's been people claiming to have relationships with other mutually exclusive gods for ages as well, some even longer than 2000 years (i.e. Hinduism).

As for your last claim, how is the Christian worldview testable, and Christianity and god falsifiable? If you can actually provide something along those lines, we'll be in for a very interesting discussion.

Here's a relatively short video detailing the evolution of the eye, showing intermediate stages in the eyes development in species that are still alive today.

That's a shifting of the burden of proof. You are claiming that they were designed for a purpose, yet you can't demonstrate a designer or actual purpose. That being said, the video above does give the basics of how a structure like the eye can develop using natural processes.

Your turn to show your designer and prove his intent.



Think about any major complex work, it's always been designed and built by committee. It took thousands of people to design the space shuttle, or build the pyramids. The universe, while having an artistic element is largely all about physics, and if it were designed, engineering. Any major engineering work I can think of was not a one man job.

Regardless, it's a silly argument anyway.



Interpersonal relationships may be a problem, however there's no reason why someone with multiple personality disorder couldn't have well organized personalities.



Not really



And that doesn't really matter much.

Here's a relatively short video detailing the evolution of the eye, showing intermediate stages in the eyes development in species that are still alive today.

Interesting video on how simple it would have been for a full fledged working eye to evolve in just 400,000 years. And it even had intermediary eyes to prove it.

It seems to me that if the full fledged eye evolved, why does any intermediary eyes still exist in animals today? As the video proved, we can find animals that don't have eyes to some that have just barely an eye, to some who have an awkward eye, to some that have a primitive eye, to some that have a simple eye, to some that have more complex eyes, to some that have a full fledged eye.

Why do all the intermediary eyes still exist if the eye has evolved? Why do all these animals not have a full fledged evolved eye? How many billions of years has it been since the first animal with light sensitive cells? Surely over 400,000 years ago?

I think Darwin was right when he said the complex eye does present a special problem to evolution. It still does, even with Mr. Dawkins easy explanation of of how the complex eye came about from nothing in 400,000 years.

 

[Peter1000]

...but the question was not "Does your wife love you?", but "Does your wife exist?", in the first place.

Does your wife exist, in the first place. That is deep, really really deep. I want to here more from you. Thank you.

 

[Ed1wolf]

Ed1wolf said: ↑
No, everything God made was good, though not perfect contrary to some Christians belief. It was made perfect for its purpose. There is no air in stars or the sun. Those things were not brought into the physical world apart from God.

am: Go here and you will find that the Sun does have an atmosphere:

info on sun's atmosphere - Google Search

Yes, the sun does have an atmosphere but it is not made of air, read your own search article. It is made of plasma and other gases, but no air.

ed: *** There is no mention of earth in Gen 1:8.

am: Of course not since it is speaking of Adam's firmament which contained Adam's Earth inside. Adam's Earth was made the 3rd Day. Gen 1:10 and Gen 2:4

No, all the evidence points to those verses talking about the same earth, there is and was only one earth, there is no evidence in the bible for more than one earth.

ed: *** And Gen 2:4 is a summary of Gen 1. The conjunctive phrase Heavens and earth is the Hebrew way of saying Universe. Earth was created in Genesis 1:1 along with the rest of the physical earth.

am: Amen IF you are speaking of the ground without form and empty which was contaminated with death. I call it dust. IF you are speaking of a physical Earth, Adam's was made the 3rd Day. Gen 1:10 AND Gen 2:4

No, you are confused, the earth was initially without form but over time gravity and other forces used by God caused to earth to coalesce into its present form after billions of years.

ed: *** Do you have any evidence of this?

am: Of course. Here's a short video of the world's largest Spiral Land Mass. It's in Lake Van, Turkey, in the mountains of Ararat where God tells us the 450 ft Ark arrived. Gen 8:4 and

A weirdly shaped lake bottom does not prove some kind of brass dome being under the lake.

am: If you don't agree, then tell us How mindless nature produced God's superior intelligence in Apes. Adam was made with an intelligence like God's. Gen 3:22

I think you are confused with an atheist. I don't believe mindless nature produced apes or their intelligence. Apes do not have Gods superior intelligence. Actually there is scientific evidence that Ravens are more intelligent than apes. And of course humans are far more intelligent than either one.

 

[Gene2memE]

If science didn't claim it, the newspapers spoke for them. I seem to remember 20 or 30 years ago, that there was a big splash in the newspaper that all of humanity had come from a woman given the name of Lucy.

Lucy was never a 'woman' - Lucy is female example of an Australopithecus afarensis - an early tool-using hominin that is an ancestor of humans. Australopithecus lived about 3 million to 4 million years ago. We we now have remains from about 300 different individuals.

As I remember, it didn't give her husbands name, in fact it didn't mention him at all. Interesting.

As there's no indications that early hominids did or did not have a concept of marriage, I don't find this interesting at all.

Back in the 70's she was advertised as the beginning of the human race, and she went on tour for all to see and to arouse interest in the origins of the human family.

I'd be very surprised if any newspaper - let alone a scientific paper - claimed Lucy was the mother of all humanity.

The discovery of Australopithecus afarensis transformed some of our understanding of human origins, pushing our dates for upright, bipedal ancestors back about 500,000 years for a start, and cementing Africa as the main geographic area for the development of hominins.

Lucy is a classical 'mosaic' fossil - a true transitional - with features seen in older, ancestral species mixed with features seen in more modern species. For example, Lucy exhibits traits of both aboreal primates and upright, groundwalking bipedal species. Lucy's species also has the smaller craniums of earlier primates, but their hands show adaptations for tool use.

 

[quatona]

Does your wife exist, in the first place. That is deep, really really deep.

I felt more like it was a pretty obvious difference and moving of the goalposts that nonetheless needed to be pointed out. Nothing deep.

I want to here more from you. Thank you.

Feel free to ask.

 

[Dave Ellis]

Interesting video on how simple it would have been for a full fledged working eye to evolve in just 400,000 years. And it even had intermediary eyes to prove it.

It seems to me that if the full fledged eye evolved, why does any intermediary eyes still exist in animals today? As the video proved, we can find animals that don't have eyes to some that have just barely an eye, to some who have an awkward eye, to some that have a primitive eye, to some that have a simple eye, to some that have more complex eyes, to some that have a full fledged eye.

Why do all the intermediary eyes still exist if the eye has evolved? Why do all these animals not have a full fledged evolved eye? How many billions of years has it been since the first animal with light sensitive cells? Surely over 400,000 years ago?

I think Darwin was right when he said the complex eye does present a special problem to evolution. It still does, even with Mr. Dawkins easy explanation of of how the complex eye came about from nothing in 400,000 years.

The problem is you're looking at our modern eye as an "end goal", whereas there is no end goal when it comes to evolution. There is just change over time guided by things like natural selection, genetic drift, etc.

If the eye those species have is good enough for them to reliably pass their genes along, there's no selection pressure for the eye to improve to the level of a squid eye.

On that note, squids actually have better eyes than we do. When you look at the human eye, look at how many people are near or far sighted and require glasses to see anything reliably. That's not to mention the human eye is not designed efficiently, and every eye has a blind spot where the optic nerve connects.

That's not the mark of an intelligent designer, that's the mark of natural processes. Our eyes are flawed, but they work good enough to give us a survival advantage on a number of fronts.