rationalmind: While I admit I'm learning from the discussion, and its intellectually stimulating, these sort of discussions are usually boring.

Make I go bash religion abeg

thehomer:

How do you know there is no life on the billions of other planets in the galaxy?

thehomer: The fact that we can't do it yet doesn't mean it had to be done by your God. We can't create galaxies yet does that then mean your God did it?

thehomer: You may want to take a look at the Big Bang theory for up to date information.

thehomer: No, I mean it isn't satisfactory given what we know about people, the universe and other things. If you explain lightning as Zeus throwing thunderbolts while accepting that you're merely asserting that there's a Zeus out there and he happens to throw thunderbolts, then you can see why such an explanation isn't satisfactory given what we currently know.

Since it is so obvious to you, why don't you show me what you've seen that helped you arrive at this conclusion?

thehomer:
So it would be a person in what sense?

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, THE ALMIGHTY.

macof: @Josh explain few things to me as you answer this question
1. is ur god a skydaddy living in the clouds or space
2. Or Is ur god an unseeable entity without organic features whatsoever

Joshthefirst: i do not know, I was referring to our immediate galactic environment, to a rock like mars.

Joshthefirst:
we're speaking opf consciousness and life. Can we "synthesize" consciousness? Can we create life from "nothing"?

Joshthefirst:
please show your up-to-date information here.

Joshthefirst:
how does:
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep...
And God said, Let there be...

Prove unsatisfactory?
Is this not the basis we're speaking with?
That the creator was before the beginning, that he spoke in the beginning?

Joshthefirst:
the direction we see in life. The depth of consciousness we see in man, etc.

Joshthefirst: God-sense.

texanomaly:

I'm curious. Name three such uncaused things.

Joshthefirst: my God is none of those; and it is these puerile and pathetic false notions of the Christian God based on mockery that annoys me the most.

Please let us not derail this wonderful thread. Open a new thread, or better yet, read the attributes of God in the bible. He was not just the God of men, he claimed to be the creator of the universe. The Starter, the finisher, the beginning, the end, the first, the last. The cause, the Almighty. The source, the self-existent, pre-existent being. Behind the seemingly simple words of the bible are a wealth of intellectual and philosophical and spiritual knowledge that a right-thinking man would not dismiss so easily.

Deep Sight:

The choices are between a self existent creator and a self existent universe: either way, you cannot escape one thing or the other being self-existent. Thus, self existence, by itself, is not a concept to be mocked: whichever side wins the debate, one thing or the other must be self-existent. This is inescapable.

plaetton:

Why must the default state be immutable?

The fact that matter is mutable makes it the perfect default state.

Matter is always changing, change is the only constant in the universe.

So, there has never been a state where the universe was static, even for a nanosecond.

But why do we go on this circular arguments when we all know that :

1. Energy is the only thing that exists.
2. Energy and matter are inter-convertible. Viola!
3. Therefore, Matter that makes up the universe is simply condensed energy.

Therefore, there are only two issues worth debating here:

1. If you disagree with 1,2, 3 or all
or ,
2. How did or how could self-existent energy come to exists?

This is so simple, yet the problem with people like Deepsight is this little thingy of " Purpose".
His mind cannot get around this idea of impersonal and purposeless pulsating energy as being the source for everything.
He desperately needs purpose and order, a plan.

That is the problem why we have to invent such a laughable oxymoron as an uncaused creator who consciously created and directs the universe.

DeepSight:


Right.

Following on from this. But before I do, I should make a brief comment on strangeness.

Most people live their lives within a "normalcy" that allows them to be completely oblivious of just how absolutely strange and odd this world, this existence of ours, is. I do not. Although it is a dysfunction of some sort, and troubles me a great deal, I live every day with an acute consciousness of the strangeness of life and of our existence: the strangeness of everything about us. Indeed, the strangeness of our very own lives.

For this is exactly what has happened, as far as we know:

In what appears a stagnant void, existing, for all observable purposes, eternally in the past, a sudden burst of matter and energy occurred. This sudden burst, as far as we know, took place about 14 billion years ago, in terms of our current measurement of time. From a single point of virtually infinite energy, the origin and nature of which is unknown, an expansion of matter and energy proceeded, the size and scale of which is absolutely unfathomable to the human mind. The size of the observable universe (not to speak of the universe, whole) is unbelievable and out of all proportion to that which the human mind can visually grasp or comprehend.

Any person who does not regard this (the sudden blossoming into existence of the universe from the point of a singularity) as a pretty strange thing to occur in a seeming void, will have to be pretty strange himself. But wait, that is only the beginning of the strangeness which I tried to convey in such light words in the intro contained in my OP.

It gets stranger. Within the same universe, there, from chemical interactions, at some point in time, supposedly, something quite special and different emerges. Something different from the dead matter about it - living organisms. These organisms grow and evolve over time. Along the way, plant life emerges, also, conscious, feeling, breathing creatures, animals. Ultimately, mankind come forth - self-conscious, thinking, feeling intelligent beings with a sense of past, present and future, and with such very strange tendencies as art, science, music, philosophy, and even cosmological philosophy, religion, as well as moral and societal codes and laws.

In this interaction, in their societies, they create galaxies of knowledge, of new learning, of ideas without limit. But, as with all other living things about them: notwithstanding the high extent of their minds, the loves and passions of their lives, their extensive pursuits: at some point - they die.

And what does this death mean. That every single man, woman and child walking on this earth, floating around the sun, within the larger universe - will lie motionless in death, and rot away. You, me, everyone.

From the first mystery of the big b.ang, what triggered it, what powered it, why it happened at all, to the mystery of first life, and then on to the mystery of self-conscious intelligent life, and on to the mystery of death, it is all a really, really odd thing that has happened, that is happening, and that continues to happen. The existence of the universe, the existence of life, and the existence of us.

Thus people seek meaning in their lives, for otherwise it is perplexing. The sheer futility of compulsory and unavoidable death, the enigma of it all, is enough to compel man to seek meaning in his life: however it is also sufficient to render man renegade, not caring one way or the other. For if all things end in death, why should man seek any ideal higher than to enjoy himself within this brief stay under the sun.

When the atheist thus preaches to the religionist, asking the religionist to forsake the coagulation of ideas which give him purpose and meaningfulness in his otherwise perplexing existence, the atheist should be ready to offer a purpose and a meaningfulness higher and better, in lieu of the purpose and meaning of the life of the religious.

The atheist would do well to understand that few people would choose the seeming perplexing meaninglessness and randomness of "chance" life, in a "chance" universe, over a meaning, a purpose and an order. Such meaning, purpose and order, the atheist should inculcate into his evangelism, before seeking to deconvert the theist.

An unenviable task, given the strangeness of all things about us, as described above. . . .

CrazyKaps:


The irony is that you who understands the strangeness of the universe dismissa off hand all explanation QuantumMech offers as ridiculous or "obviously incorrect/farcical" because of its inherent strangeness with regards to conventional science; as I've gleaned from an earlier thread (where you did not even bother reading the links regarding these possible explanations because it was so "obviously false" to you).

Just because it is strange does not mean it is incorrect. Even the current model of the solar system was strange to comprehend and an alien to conventional wisdom at one point of time. Also, strangness is no guarantee of correctness either, but if what they derive from the equations if the theory result in tangible advances in science, wouldn't you say they are on the right track?

So now all i have to do is wait for quantum computing or some other product derived from these theories to take the world by storm. Perhaps if and when that happens you shall agree that maybe QM isn't all just hogwash and be a little more open to its ideas?

DeepSight:


This is not a correct surmise on my position on Quantum Physics - there is nothing wrong with continued inquiry of every kind, this included. Rather, I only pointed out the wrong logic of those who attempted to use the apparent emergence of virtual particles in a quantum vacuum as evidence that something may emerge from nothing. I pointed that out simply by showing that a quantum vacuum is not "nothing" and there is indeed no perfect such vacuum.

Kay17:
This thread ought to be revived.

thehomer:
OP has gone missing.

thehomer:
OP has gone missing.

plaetton:

Deepsight is probably marooned in an alternate universe.

DeepSight:




Lol @ alternate universe. Very apt, actually!

plaetton:


How far in the alternate universe?
Do you need a rescue back to terra firma?

Get in touch with your inner atheist.


Come, Brother.
Reason beckons.

texanomaly:


Don't listen to plaetton. He has appointed himself the Nairaland Atheist Recruiter.

Plaetton (NAR)

texanomaly:


Don't listen to plaetton. He has appointed himself the Nairaland Atheist Recruiter.

Plaetton (NAR)

Hi ma'am. I am Atheist as well.

plaetton:


Lol.
Everyone is an atheist inside.
I am just trying to help hold people's hands while they try to get in touch, in harmony with the atheist within, the real you.