INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[camanintx]

I use the numbers generated by secular scientists for the probability of life arising on its own. They are 1 in 10^80. In physics when a probability reaches 1 x 10^50 they consider it zero and move on.

You need to brush up on your math a little, specifically permutations. With a bag containing only sixty different color marbles, the odds of drawing any specific sequence of colors is about 8x10^81, it would be simple to draw one or even many different sequences.

 

[shawn001]

I believe this particular probability was in connection with the sun and it's mechanisms to produce carbon. This is of course vastly less well known than the probability than life may have arisen on its own. I have only heard these statistics once and that was in a debate I saw several months ago. I can't even remember who the guy was. He was debating Hitchens, and Hitchens gave him credit for being knowledgeable in a field that contains solar academics. I am not sure I can give the equations he used to generate this number. It however is well known that the mechanism in stars used to produce carbon is delicately balanced within a very thin margin. So thin that it was originally thought to be impossible. I think I can prove that, even without that guy. Would that satisfy you? Are you claiming that it is not extremely improbable for a star to produce carbon? Or were you thinking this figure was associated with life its self?

The overall point is reality as we know it is the result of countless things that math shows is so improbable that to claim it arose by chance is less likely than picking a specific atom in the entire universe at random. In fact it is way way worse than even that. The argument is quite ridiculous even with the intellectual gyrations and gymnastics used to attempt to lower the odds.

Our sun, isn't producing the element carbon. Our sun is also not from first generation elements, its from recycled material, our solar system formed from elements created before our solar system formed from other dead stars and super nova implosions.

Nucleosynthesis

A star's energy comes from the combining of light elements into heavier elements in a process known as fusion, or "nuclear burning". It is generally believed that most of the elements in the universe heavier than helium are created, or synthesized, in stars when lighter nuclei fuse to make heavier nuclei. The process is called nucleosynthesis.

Nucleosynthesis requires a high-speed collision, which can only be achieved with very high temperature. The minimum temperature required for the fusion of hydrogen is 5 million degrees. Elements with more protons in their nuclei require still higher temperatures. For instance, fusing carbon requires a temperature of about one billion degrees! Most of the heavy elements, from oxygen up through iron, are thought to be produced in stars that contain at least ten times as much matter as our Sun.

Our Sun is currently burning, or fusing, hydrogen to helium. This is the process that occurs during most of a star's lifetime. After the hydrogen in the star's core is exhausted, the star can burn helium to form progressively heavier elements, carbon and oxygen and so on, until iron and nickel are formed. Up to this point the process releases energy. The formation of elements heavier than iron and nickel requires the input of energy. Supernova explosions result when the cores of massive stars have exhausted their fuel supplies and burned everything into iron and nickel. The nuclei with mass heavier than nickel are thought to be formed during these explosions.


NASA's Cosmicopia - Basics - Composition - Nucleosynthesis

So 1robin, tell us about proto Earth and its surface? Or how the moon formed?

 

[godnotgod]

A faith based belief is under no obligation to provide proof.

If only you are involved in the belief, no.

The moment you profess, under the color of divine authority, that the belief you maintain is true, especially when a punishment is involved for not believing, you certainly are obligated to show the path wherein the person you are attempting to convince can verify your claim for himself. This can be done with mystical spirituality, where one can do so via direct experience, but not with orthodox belief systems, because doctrine is what is to be believed in, and not Reality itself. If it were Reality itself, there would be no need for belief. All one can hope to do is produce more believers.

'Christians are like men huddled in the dark, shouting to lend comfort to one another'
Alan Watts

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Since it was your side of the fence that did so, I am afraid that asking for a solid justification is a bridge too far for that community. It was not a believer that invented these well-known numbers. BTW how can you consider multiverses, oscillating verses, string theory, or dark matter, since none of them are based on any reliable evidence and some on none at all yet since they are used as arguments against God they are virtual certainties but even when your own side makes (no matter how bad the science) more reliable claims about the obvious improbability for an event that has no known example they are fought like the plague.

I'm going to ignore this part of the post, since it absolutely fails to answer or even address my points. I didn't say anything whatsoever about the validity of multiverses, oscillating universes, string theory or dark matter, so you dragging them into this discussion is an obvious attempt to distract from the issue at hand.

I tell you what convince Hoyle of your theory first I used 1 in 10^80th he used:
Though Hoyle was not a Biblical creationist or even a Christian, he eventually recognized the impossibility of Darwinian evolution, he calculated that the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell was one in 1040,000 (one followed by 40,000 zeroes). Since the number of atoms in the known universe is infinitesimally tiny by comparison (1080), even a whole universe full of primordial soup wouldn’t have a chance.
http://creation.com/big-bang-critic-dies-fred-hoyle

Hoyle's calculation is already rendered asinine by statsticial thermodynamics. It's so often cited as a gross error that it is now commonly referred to as Hoyle's Fallacy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyle's_fallacy

After making some helpful assumptions we can get the ratio of actual, useful proteins to all possible random proteins up to something like one in 10^500 (ten to the 500th power). So it would take, barring incredible luck, something like 10^500 trials to probably find one. Imagine that every cubic quarter-inch of ocean in the world contains ten billion precellular ribosomes. Imagine that each ribosome produces proteins at ten trials per minute (about the speed that a working ribosome in a bacterial cell manufactures proteins). Even then, it would take about 10^450 years to probably make one useful protein. But Earth was formed only about 4.6 x 10^9 years ago. The amount of time available for this hypothetical protein creation process was maybe a few hundred million or ~10^8 years. And now, to make a cell, we need not just one protein, but a minimum of several hundred.

And every single part of what you just did falls under Hoyle's Fallacy and utterly fails to account for statistical thermodynamics.

I'll repeat the offer to explain it to you if you wish, but others seem to have already started doing so.

Or maybe Sagan:
Even Carl Sagan has been cited, from a book he edited, Communication with Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (MIT Press, 1973), a record of the proceedings of a conference on SETI. Sagan himself presented a paper at that conference, in which he reports (pp. 45-6) the odds against a specific human genome being assembled by chance as 1 in 10^2,000,000,000 (in other words, the genome of a specific person, and not just any human).

Again, this is completely meaningless. I've already said why, and all you're doing is repeating yourself.

I will make it far easier; give me one example of this happening.

Give me one example of life that was the result of supernatural, rather than natural, processes.

If you can’t then your belief it happened is not science it is faith.

Not if every single example of life we have is the result of natural, rather that supernatural, processes. Which it is. Since life exists, it is therefore reasonable to assume that the first forms of life were also the result of natural processes.

Now, I'll try again: Can you present the equation and how you know this equation for the "probability" of life is accurate, in spite of statistical thermodynamics rendering it and any other such calculations meaningless?

 

[SkepticThinker]

This is quite absurd.

1. A faith based belief is under no obligation to provide proof.

Great! So with a faith-based belief you can believe absolutely anything without any evidence whatsoever. That means I can dismiss it just as quickly and easily. Obviously you can assert it and believe it all you want, but you can't make any fact-based claims with it.

I require evidence in order to believe things. Most religious people do too, just not when it comes to their particular religion.

2. Science is obligated to provide proof or at least very very solid theory.

I could never insist anyone should believe. That is a subjective and personal matter. What I can insist is that the issues be discussed using consistent standards. Science posits all kinds of things that require more faith given less evidence than the Bible.

No, science does not require any amount of faith. That's why it's been such a useful tool to us in understanding the world around us. Scientists don't get to posit things as facts unless they can be verified.

Dark matter, multiverses, oscillating verses, and an eternal universe are all theories devoid of any real evidence, yet used as likely answers to God related questions about the cosmos.

All of these things are based on scientific understandings about how our universe works. There is no definitive theory of abiogenesis quite yet because scientists don't posit things as facts unless they can verify them. Saying "god did it" answers nothing, and we should be quite happy this is not what scientists do, because that's not a way to learn how the universe operates. It's a dead end.

However all the reliable and solid evidence like the Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s Past-Finite Universe theory,

This is pretty funny. So you know for a fact that all that stuff you listed above is bogus nonsense, but this one thing here that you happen to personally like, (the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Past Finite universe theory) is definitely, absolutely a fact. It's pretty interesting how you feel you can pick and choose like that.

the fact that the only known source for information is intelligence,

What is this supposed to mean?

the facts that life arising on its own is absurdly remote (I am talking numbers trillions or orders of magnitude beyond the point where physicists declare them to be zero and move on),

And yet here we are. Looks like nature was able to produce life to me. We even know how different species form!

the fact that the one universe we know of, is so astronomically fine tuned for life or even a universe of structure at all,

Whoa, whoa, whoa! The UNIVERSE is fine-tuned for life?? So far we know that life exists on planet earth, which is one tiny ball in a vast, vast universe which so far has revealed no other lifeforms. So I have to ask, where and how do you come up with the assertion that the universe is fine tuned for life?

the fact that almost all of us apprehend a moral system greater than out mind which has no natural explanation and on and on.

What? Morals do come from our minds. There are plenty of natural sociological and evolutionary explanations for the existence of morals.

These are all evidence for the God hypothesis and some do not even have a natural explanation even theoretically possible.

ALL of them have possible natural explanations. And guess what? We already know that the natural world exists. We can observe it and measure it. We have absolutely no knowledge of any supernatural world at all which is why we can't rely on supernatural explanations.

You want to assert the existence of a supernatural being withoutproviding any evidence at all for the existence of a supernatural world. It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't answer anything. It's basically just asserting magic as an explanation. Inserting an extra mystery into the equation doesn't solve a mystery.

Yet you reject God and adopt all or some of those theories I mentioned above each of which has infinite less evidence than God does.

Sorry, I don't believe things based on faith. I don't "reject" your god, I simply see no reason or evidence that convinces me I should believe in it.

You are using obvious and blatant double standards to arrive at a faith based conclusion that you are trying to obscure with scientific language. Double standards and inconsistency are the hallmarks of a week position.

Science is the exact opposite of a faith-based position. That's why it always works. Sorry.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Anyone still trying to reason with this participant does the neutral reader a huge service. Robin demonstrates over and over that s/he has no clue how science works and the continued posting of unreason that was frightening for a while has now become a source of amusement.
:magic:

I just have this thing where it really bugs me to let this stuff go.

 

[godnotgod]

Give me one example of life that was the result of supernatural, rather than natural, processes.

The problem here is that both the theist and the atheist are looking at the question in terms of duality; of 'supernatural' as compared to 'natural' origination, in a universe that is singular and undivided, though it exhibits dual features, such as feminine/masculine, light/dark, heat/cold. But the nature of the universe is neither 'supernatural' nor 'natural', both words being highly problematic as well as dual. The universe just is. How it got to 'is', or if it always was 'is', is the question, not whether it is of natural or supernatural origin.

My question is whether we, as intelligent entities, emerged from an intelligent universe. If we look only at the characteristics of life, we may only see a dead universe, composed of atomic and molecular components, out of which came life. That is akin to taking apart a piano to find the Mozart Piano Sonatas. The other approach is to look for an intelligent creator-God, rendering the universe a mere artifact.

Both these views are extreme views, polarized one against the other, and are missing what is obvious: that we ourselves are the universe just as much as any star or galaxy. There is no 'observer' apart from the observed. Quantum Mechanics seems to be telling us that, for one.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

The problem here is that both the theist and the atheist are looking at the question in terms of duality; of 'supernatural' as compared to 'natural', in a universe that is singular and undivided, though it exhibits dual features, such as feminine/masculine, light/dark, heat/cold. But the nature of the universe is neither 'supernatural' nor 'natural', both words being highly problematic as well as dual. The universe just is. How it got to 'is', or if it always was 'is', is the question, not whether it is of natural or supernatural origin.

I think this is something of a false dichotomy. Just because you can designate certain things as possessing duality doesn't mean that this simple syllogism can be applied to everything. The fact remains that no supernatural event or cause has ever been demonstrated to existed, and every answer to every question ever answered has always revealed non-supernatural causation. To argue that the natural and supernatural worlds exist as a duality, you first must demonstrate that the supernatural exists.

My question is whether we, as intelligent entities, emerged from an intelligent universe. If we look only at the characteristics of life, we may only see a dead universe, composed of atomic and molecular components, out of which came life. That is akin to taking apart a piano to find the Mozart Piano Sonatas. The other approach is to look for an intelligent creator-God, rendering the universe a mere artifact.

Both these views are extreme views, polarized one against the other, and are missing what is obvious: that we ourselves are the universe just as much as any star or galaxy. There is no 'observer' apart from the observed. Quantum Mechanics seems to be telling us that, for one.

This all sounds good, but I'm not entirely sure what you're saying. Being poetic doesn't really always equal being coherent, and most of what you're saying here consists of non-sequiturs. What would leads you to conclude that looking at the physical Universe is akin to looking at a "dead" Universe? What makes the approach from a more theistic standpoint mean that you view the Universe as a "mere artifact"? We are a part of the Universe in that we are made from the same matter that comprises the Universe, but how does that in any way impact what we can observe and understand about the nature and origins of our Universe?

 

[godnotgod]

Give me one example of life that was the result of supernatural, rather than natural, processes.

The problem here is that both the theist and the atheist are looking at the question in terms of duality; of 'supernatural' as compared to 'natural', in a universe that is singular and undivided, though it exhibits dual features, such as feminine/masculine, light/dark, heat/cold. But the nature of the universe is neither 'supernatural' nor 'natural', both words being highly problematic as well as dual. The universe just is. How it got to 'is', or if it always 'is', is the question, not whether it is of natural or supernatural origin.

My question is whether we, as intelligent entities, emerged from an intelligent universe. If we look only at the characteristics of life, we may only see a dead universe, composed of atomic and molecular components, out of which came life. That is akin to taking apart a piano to find music. The other approach is to look for an intelligent creator-God, rendering the universe a mere artifact.

Both these views are extreme views, polarized one against the other, and are missing what is obvious: that we ourselves are the universe just as much as any star or galaxy. There is no 'observer' apart from the observed. Quantum Mechanics seems to be telling us that, for one.

 

[godnotgod]

I think this is something of a false dichotomy. Just because you can designate certain things as possessing duality doesn't mean that this simple syllogism can be applied to everything. The fact remains that no supernatural event or cause has ever been demonstrated to existed, and every answer to every question ever answered has always revealed non-supernatural causation. To argue that the natural and supernatural worlds exist as a duality, you first must demonstrate that the supernatural exists.

You are still stuck in dual mode, arguing natural against supernatural. You use the argument of supernatural origination to come to a conclusion which says that evidence reveals non-supernatural causation. It does not. You are adding that into what the evidence does show. The evidence reveals neither natural nor supernatural origination.

To say that one must first demonstrate that the supernatural exists in order to argue duality is fallacious: natural and supernatural are concepts, and exist as dualities in the mind. That is what I am saying: they do not exist as realities. We merely superimpose both descriptive concepts over the phenomenal world.

If, as you suggest, there is no duality, then there is no need to define the world as 'natural'. That is like saying that humans are human.

 

[godnotgod]

This all sounds good, but I'm not entirely sure what you're saying. Being poetic doesn't really always equal being coherent, and most of what you're saying here consists of non-sequiturs. What would leads you to conclude that looking at the physical Universe is akin to looking at a "dead" Universe?

Nothing. That is not what I said. That is merely what one view says.

What makes the approach from a more theistic standpoint mean that you view the Universe as a "mere artifact"?

An artifact is something made, a created 'thing'. Most theistic views, that is, views that suppose a creator-God, believe the universe came into being via a 'maker'.

We are a part of the Universe in that we are made from the same matter that comprises the Universe, but how does that in any way impact what we can observe and understand about the nature and origins of our Universe?

Because we are conscious.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

An artifact is something made, a created 'thing'. Most theistic views, that is, views that suppose a creator-God, believe the universe came into being via a 'maker'.

But how does that render an analysis of it inadequate? I guess my problem is more with the use of the word "mere" than artifact.

Because we are conscious.

If we weren't conscious, we wouldn't be capable of understanding anything about the Universe anyway. I don't think either the theistic or non-theistic views miss the fact that we are a part of the Universe, or that we are conscious.

 

[1robin]

Who says that the properties of the universe gained their values by chance? This is a strawman argument.

Pretty much everyone. It is so absolute and logical that only the most fantasy like science fiction is available as an escape. Natural law did not exist to influence anything until it was already determined. The only intentional agent known is mind. I propose mind created an improbable universe. You propose we have a determined universe yet have nothing available as an agent. You can't get out of something by yelling straw man. In fact that is a straw man argument it’s self. The straw man fallacy is not an intellectual rip cord that will save a failing argument. However there is no argument here at all. There is a denial of the best cosmology and philosophy available based on preference and against science and reason.

Even if we do not know how they gained those values, we are not justified in claiming that they happened by chance.

I so not claim that. In fact I claim the opposite. The was no nature in existence that could have determined anything. There is also no reason to think that it must have had these specific values out of all the possible range of values it could have had. Yet it has very improbable values for not just us, not just life, but for a universe at all. This is simple math. Mind is the only agent of extreme complexity and nature didn't exist. We have extreme complexity on an unimaginable scale. That suggests God very strongly and in absence of any counter explanation or actually any at all from your side based on anything reliable faith is very very logical even if this was the only data we had.

All this is just dishonest religious propaganda.

That says more about you than the claim. You are arrogantly asserting that the best available secular cosmology and philosophy is propaganda is appalling.

 

[1robin]

So you're happy with asserting that the chances that God exists is 80% or lower?

Nice try Poly. I assigned 80% to one secular argument, which almost necessitates a God like being. There are thousands more and in the end indicate God very strongly. Maybe even (since I am making up numbers) 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999%. It would also be necessary to include the context concerning the probability for the counter arguments as well.

Because that's the result of inductive arguments - your conclusions are equally or less confident than your premises. It is impossible for them to be more so.

I made it very clear that my numbers are not based on absolute standards. They are the product of my subjective reasoning. I offered your adjustment of my assumed probabilities.

There is none - only very sure knowledge that the Big Bang theory is incomplete. Therefore, the contest is inventing a theory that predicts all of modern cosmology and avoids embarrassing problems like discontinuous space times. The most comprehensive answers (like string hypothesis) will explain as many questions as possible, while assuming as little as possible. (Like Hawking's no-boundary hypothesis)

Now that was less than I expected from you. Theories are assigned probabilities all the time. Even adding in a generous margin of error and allowing that the percentages are not known values there are still more reasons to believe in God consistent science than non-God consistent science. I sincerely believe this was a punt on your part. Evolution unlike abiogenesis is not absolute in every single test. It is not a law it is a theory that you claim is reliable but I would hope not absolute yet you adopt it. Why not cosmology?

Saying, "God did it", in any form, is the worst of all possible "answers" - it explains nothing, and voids everything we used to know. It is therefore completely useless as a hypothesis. (Assuming that it has been defined well enough to be testable - which, in this thread at least, isn't true)

So if God did it and I say God did it would be worse than saying multi universes are the explanation, is that right? My Dad is one of the most rational men I have ever met. He was a self-taught engineer who was a senior drawing checker on the Apollo program and teaches geometrically tolerancing all over the world. His logic is absolute 99.9% of the time. If I bring up God this rational giant all of a sudden becomes the most illogical person on Earth. I see that over and over and think I detect that here. God confirms and provides sufficient cause for what we KNOW about science. Without him there are gaping holes and unanswerable questions that nature does not even have a potentiality to solve. I think people are far more guilty of a science of the gaps, (science or nature did not even exist before the universe yet it is constantly shoved into a gap it can't fit into) and I strongly reject your claim above.

When done properly, (i.e. taking into account the implicit conditional "given that we are here to observe it") the math’s tells us that it is tautologically true that we will find ourselves in a universe that can support intelligent observers. It doesn't matter how unlikely it is - it cannot fail to happen. As such, the fact that it has happened is not actually evidence of anything at all, because all possible models that fit the observed data (i.e. that we are here) predict that it will happen.

This would only be valid if we knew that a virtually inexhaustible multitude of attempts have been tried. We KNOW of only one. I think I see why you value an eternal universe to the point that the latest cosmology is rejected in favor of faith based guesses that even defy logic.

Toss 10,000 coins, and write down what results you get. By your own argument, it is massively more likely that the entire universe appears as it does (10^50) than it is for you to get that specific combination of coin flips. (10^3,011) Yet we don't (for good reason) scream "divine intervention!" with coin tosses.

We only have evidence that the coin was flipped once and that changes everything. Your side has compared it to monkeys at typewriters which is itself absolutely wrong. Nature is type in and type out. Not type in only. Anyway the silly argument goes that if they do this long enough they will create Shakespeare. An atheist therefore should when upon finding King Lear yell look what some monkeys produced. My side finds kind Lear and says look what an intelligent and intentional mind created on purpose. Which side is more scientific? I still of course acknowledge you as a very educated and intelligent debater, but I knew very well I had you hemmed in on this one. However I did not expect this level of obfuscation (if that is the right word). Systematic logical deduction gave way to speculation and faith based preference.

 

[1robin]

Then it's a good thing that the human genome wasn't assembled by chance, otherwise none of us would be here.

The only known source of extreme complexity is mind. Yet here you have abandoned reason and asserted complexity is causal and mind derivative. If you were a theist this would not be necessary.

 

[1robin]

You need to brush up on your math a little, specifically permutations. With a bag containing only sixty different color marbles, the odds of drawing any specific sequence of colors is about 8x10^81, it would be simple to draw one or even many different sequences.

I have a math degree but it has been 15 years since I took the three statistics and engineering statistics classes I had. However I did not derive these numbers. They are numbers from mathematicians and scientists on your side of the fence. Calling my math rusty is probably true but irrelevant, tell Sagan etc...

Let me clarify something. I do not claim their number, numbers generated by my side, nor even me are absolute. They are all based on very ambiguous things. What I do claim is even in the most conservative estimates the numbers are hyperbolically absurd and ridiculous against life coming from non-life. In fact they are way way worse than what I gave here. These numbers are for a very small range of biological issues. When contingent cosmology and everything else is added in it is simply mind boggling to think people believe it happened anyway and are wagering their souls on these odds.

 

[Revoltingest]

The only known source of extreme complexity is mind.

Not anymore.
Computer simulations of evolutionary systems are being used to design ever more sophisticated things (antennas, circuitry).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471127418.html

 

[1robin]

Our sun, isn't producing the element carbon. Our sun is also not from first generation elements, its from recycled material, our solar system formed from elements created before our solar system formed from other dead stars and super nova implosions.

Nucleosynthesis

A star's energy comes from the combining of light elements into heavier elements in a process known as fusion, or "nuclear burning". It is generally believed that most of the elements in the universe heavier than helium are created, or synthesized, in stars when lighter nuclei fuse to make heavier nuclei. The process is called nucleosynthesis.

Nucleosynthesis requires a high-speed collision, which can only be achieved with very high temperature. The minimum temperature required for the fusion of hydrogen is 5 million degrees. Elements with more protons in their nuclei require still higher temperatures. For instance, fusing carbon requires a temperature of about one billion degrees! Most of the heavy elements, from oxygen up through iron, are thought to be produced in stars that contain at least ten times as much matter as our Sun.

Our Sun is currently burning, or fusing, hydrogen to helium. This is the process that occurs during most of a star's lifetime. After the hydrogen in the star's core is exhausted, the star can burn helium to form progressively heavier elements, carbon and oxygen and so on, until iron and nickel are formed. Up to this point the process releases energy. The formation of elements heavier than iron and nickel requires the input of energy. Supernova explosions result when the cores of massive stars have exhausted their fuel supplies and burned everything into iron and nickel. The nuclei with mass heavier than nickel are thought to be formed during these explosions.


NASA's Cosmicopia - Basics - Composition - Nucleosynthesis

So 1robin, tell us about proto Earth and its surface? Or how the moon formed?

You sure went to a lot of effort to show that our Sun does not produce carbon. Why, I do not know but that was interesting? I said carbon is produced by stars in a very very delicately balanced process. So improbable many thought it impossible. I did not see anything in this post that countered that. As for the rest:

I have no idea how the moon formed nor what the very early Earth looked like. Neither does anyone else as far as the moon goes and the early earth can only be predicted in general terms reliably. I have no reason at this time to disagree with the standard models of Earth forming from clouds of matter and gas and well known hot stage then gradual cooling etc...If I knew the reason for your question I could give a more meaningful response. There are many very important problems with current models like angular momentum should have everything spinning the same way and there is no iron in the moons core, the fact you can't fuse past iron, and many others that leave me uncertain nor in need of certainty about these issues. To be honest Genesis is so ambiguous and symbolic that just about any reality could be shoved into its context. I base little of my faith on the fact Genesis is literal. That is not to say it is inaccurate just to say it's accuracy is impossible to determine. I either look at improbabilities and cause and effect relationships in cosmology or at the 95% of the Bible that not only is well understood and unambiguous but written concerning events that occurred during recorded history and can be checked. Even above this, thousands of fulfilled prophecies, internal consistency of a narrative maintained by strangers in unique cultures, by men who died for their claims, philosophic consistency etc... Yet even all that is secondary to my personal experience with God. I spent 27 years mildly disbelieving to outright hating Christianity and God to one night when I was born again in an unmistakable spiritual event. I think you were challenging my reasons for faith in a roundabout way to I thought I would elaborate a bit.

 

[1robin]

If only you are involved in the belief, no.
The moment you profess, under the color of divine authority, that the belief you maintain is true, especially when a punishment is involved for not believing, you certainly are obligated to show the path wherein the person you are attempting to convince can verify your claim for himself. This can be done with mystical spirituality, where one can do so via direct experience, but not with orthodox belief systems, because doctrine is what is to be believed in, and not Reality itself. If it were Reality itself, there would be no need for belief. All one can hope to do is produce more believers.

I do not think this correct. God, for whatever reason demands faith. Faith precludes proof. I think untold amount of evidence exists for God yet I think that no proof is given (in general) by intention. I have often wondered why faith would be so valuable to God. I have never figured it out but will say that all other candidates like performance or merit are so absurd that faith is about all that is left. I present evidence and posit God as by far the most logical conclusion and in many cases the only candidate. That is all believe I am responsible for in this context. If you think otherwise I simply disagree. I punish no one for a lack of faith and most of my friends do not have any. I will point out the hypocrisy of this in general. Countless times (it's almost a mindless mantra) a non-theist secular person will claim that scientific theory X makes faith illogical. X for example is usually multiverses, oscillating verses, string theory, M theory, etc..... Yet not one of those things has the slightest bit of even evidence and most do not have any potentiality for any. That is a double standard that undermines any credibility the one claiming these things has when they object to actual mountains of evidence for God because it is not proof.

'Christians are like men huddled in the dark, shouting to lend comfort to one another'

Alan Watts

Do you really want to instigate a quote war? I have a nuclear option to counter your clubs and slings in G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis in my holster so it won't be a fair battle. For now I will do as Christ is almost the sole example of. When the absurdity, ignorance, and resentment of the secular world nailed him to the cross it stopped there. He didn't, like 99.9% of fallen humanity does, return it in kind (all though he said he could summon ten legions of angels and wipe us all out) and this plus another million things make him worthy of worship unlike anything else in human history.

 

[camanintx]

The only known source of extreme complexity is mind. Yet here you have abandoned reason and asserted complexity is causal and mind derivative. If you were a theist this would not be necessary.

Extreme complexity is what created mind.