Pointless

now you weren't there so you can't know that.

??? I don't have to be there to read records???

well as I'm sure you are aware there is debate about when the gospels were written and no one knows for sure. not even you

that had nothing to do with what i was talking about though :spangled:

?

So Joe...how is your view of a disseminated, indiscreet molecular, wise god compatible with the Old Testaments description of an single emotional being?

Specifically with reference to the killing of all the children of followers of other religions, the induction of pestilence and the causation of floods please.

explain?

joe: Joseph Smith was recorded during his time... Jesus Christ wasn't (while the Torah prophets were).

forks: now you weren't there so you can't know that.

I don't understand how a vague being disseminated with wisdom and energy throughout us all, yet still utterly incomprehendible

a) could actually want to kill all the oldest children of parents of other religious beliefs.

b) even if it did want to, exactly HOW it could.

I mean, you talk about not believing in Him in his robes on a cloud....I don't see how a ubiquitous molecular resonance could summon the emotions necessary to want to induce plagues, massacres, and moreover I don't see how it possible could.

I don't know if you interpret those bits "literally", it may be you don't in which case you wouldn't have to explain it. But I should then like to know how you know which bits to interpret literally and which bits to sort of gloss over.....

anyway enough of this. How come I can't change my picture? I put in new URL and nothing happens?
lets get the important things in life sorted....

Bah, I'm a shit atheist, was playing carols outside the church at Haymarket all morning

Can you see how this same entity could conjour up a universe?

Absolutely not.

However improbable and strange the start of the universe, and the origin of life on this planet....it is far FAR more improbable that some mysterious omnipotent being just sort of 'appeared'.

Where would he have come from?
Where would he have been when he made this universe? Another universe? Who made that?

Let me clarify what I think you're saying you believe over the existence of the universe.

1) G-d made the universe.
2) G-d made the first life, primordial slime or similar, on earth
3) Life was abandoned to develop by evolution for hundreds of millions of years
until
4) Man develops
5) He returned and selected one particular band of people in the desert to be His chosen ones to worship Him and do His 'work' (why an omnipotent being couldn't do it Himself is unclear)
6) Stuff happens with them (Old testament), then he sort of leaves them to fend for themselves (20th century).

Can you see the implausibility of this to the atheist?

The conception of the universe is much harder to comprehend... To create something from nothing is the greatest miracle; you put forward the notion that it was sequence of chance that lead to creation (from matter to life).... However I believe the evidence points towards a force external to this space time contimuum that caused us to exist.

I don't believe my deity Hashem chose the Jews over every other man, we are all part of his creation - I believe it was merely the Hebrews role to deliver a conscience to mankind.... Which we've succeeded in doing... the modern conscience revolves around Jewish values.

Not a matter of chance in the case of the formation of complex life - a matter of natural selection. This is by no means a random process - it is a stepwise and logical development. If the timescales are mindboggling, you can see evolution taking place in bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics, and cancers developing against the host immune system over mere days and weeks.

No, the real chance estimation comes when considering the formation of life itself - the formation of the self perpetuating chemical from which we are all descended - which is close to being recreated in laboratories now.

Dawkins covers this rather nicely in the God Delusion. It is conservatively estimated that there are a billion billion planets. Therefore, even if the odds of life forming on a planet are a billion to one, there will still be life on a billion planets It's not really that improbable at all that there is life on one planet! It would have to be supremely improbable to the verge of impossibility for there to not be!

Naturally I utterly refute your claims that the Jews are here to deliver conscience to us all. The barbaric and criminal acts of the old testament which you worship and celebrate I have already detailed. They would be war crimes had a man done them; however as it's G-d, I suppose it's more a crime against humanity. However, bringing this up again risks detracting from the point I'm trying to make at the moment, which is on a much more fundamental level - however improbable it is that a simple universe formed, the theologists argument "therefore we must have been made by a god" is vastly more improbable, as it implies a complex formation, and therefore, in the absence of any futher evidence to support it, is not worthy of serious consideration in a scientific debate.

To put it simply " How can anybody, in this day and age, put blind faith into something so improbable?"

What does any of that have to dow with the conception of the universe?!?!?

pure lawyer tactics going down andy.

Explain why we aren't racist, paedophiles that sacrifice babies to the moon G-d andy?

like big bang theory?

Some highly energised light beams exploded and gave birth to people?!?!? hahaha you're having a giraffe

Of coursew the conception of the universe is imporbable, whatever gave birth to it was the greatest miracle of existence.

I can't tell you what happened at the beginning of the universe. But Im sorry, but G-d simply must have come into existence at some point (if you think he exists) if the universe came into existence at some point; and the odds of an omnipotent creature capable of reading the minds of billions just 'appearing' are surely, surely infinitesimal whatever happened at the start of the universe. Don't confuse this with the wonder of the formation of complex life on earth - natural selection is no random process. No religion I'm aware of would worship a god that had evolved from slime and was merely using more advcanved technology for his miracles.

The reason why we are (mostly) moral beings is, again, Darwinian. Natural selection is an incredibly powerful argument for our existence. Human beings and animals lived in communities - those communities in whom people didn't sacrifice and kill each other in the name of the 'moon G-d' were at a selective advantage to those who did. However, defending yourself against rival tribes was also a selective advantage, so you didn't want to be too pacifistic, and I think this is where the idea that soldiers can be distraught at the death of a comrade, but rejoice in the death of an enemy comes from.

It also explains parenting - parents who abandoned their children were less likely to pass their genes on, as their children were more likely to die.Better than that, I think this explains where religion comes from! A child who trusts their parents as arbiters of information is at a selective advantage ("Don't walk over the cliff"). A hierarchical system of leadership provides a selective advantage as the group of humans you're with then becomes more effective at survival. It's human nature to look for someone 'one higher' in the chain of command! It helped us survive! This, i think, is why so many primitive humans were religious - but why every religion was totally and irretrievably different - not the one religion across the world you'd expect if there actually was something behind it.

You're talking about sacrifice as an immoral act - I might suggest that religious societies are far more likely to do this than atheist ones, thanks to a misplaced sense of faith in some old book telling them god must be appeased (or immoral religious leaders with a personal agenda).