No, they are not. They are all equally dark. Dark is dark, it allows nothing to be seen. Theists are blinded by their religious indoctrinations, while atheists are blinded by their materialism indoctrinations. The end results in both cases are the same. . . blindness.

imhotep:

. . . but some goggles are [b]darker [/b]than others . . .much much darker. . .

Like clockwork

philip0906:

says youu r now speaking 4 me?feeling God ain't in my head broda,if u haven't felt God,I have personally felt him right 4rm d age of 5,so don't teach me anything.Its u atheists dat feel whatever in your "heads" ;

Now you only feel God in your head, eh? Is it not the same God that was written to be going about addressing the primitive Jews through public speech? Did he suddenly run away now that men have become more knowledgeble and more advanced?. . . . . .So much for in my head. . . . . . .Moslems also feel Allah's presence in their heads, no?

DI love dat bolded part.It goes 2 show how "confused" u atheists can be.Go and read about all atheists,scientists,u'll get d drift.NO one has proved dat God does not exist.

Are you sure? So God exist, eh? Since when has any one ever shown that any God exist?


.

.There r lots of archeological evidences on ground 2 show that those "men" were not writing stories. .

Where is the archeological evidences that shows that any of the biblical stories really happened? Stories like the exodus, and the conquest of Canaan to name just a few. . . .

.u doubt it?then I'll simply refer u 2 d other thread,or I could put 'em up 4 u here and even more since u love sending errands ;DU r wrong man. . .muslims,hindus believe in "spiritual matters" not 2 talk of Christians,so add up d population of all these and u r damn wrong.I wonder where u get your stats 4rm.From your "brain" I guess ;DDon't push me around man. . .I have simply told u what 2 do I have met your type b4. . .I

Muslims do not believe in your own version of God and as far as they know your God does not exist. . . . . .

googled something about atheists yesterday and I was refered 2 a site (cbs I guess) where a woman and her baby in d U.S had a miraculous "recovery" after being certified "dead". . .Now I'm telling u this,2 simply show u dat evidences abound,but if u want me 2 tell u d street number and flat number of d person billydkid was talking of,I won't be pushed around by "atheists",never. . .I have my own evidences and I have given u an example

Certified dead? Don't you know that doctors are humans and they also make mistakes? A lot of people have been decleared dead when they were not actually dead. . . .So errors like that do happen in the medical profession. . . . .

Minor quibble:It's Hawking, not Hawkings.

The book sounds interesting and, while I agree with Hawking's view that gods are an unnecessary addition to the explanation of the universe's workings, I'm interested in reading the book to see what it offers. Hopefully it's a cracking read.

Jenwitemi:
Guys, if you know jenwitemi very well, you would have realized by now that he does not set his stall on one particular school of thought. In order for one to have any chance of understanding this reality that we experience, the first thing that one needs to do is to free oneself of a permanent attachement to a particular paradigm. As we search for the truth behind the universe, we need to first of all rid ourselves of the old rgid paradigms that explains little to nothing and be open for new ones. That demands a total paradigm shift and thinking big in our part.
So, jenwitemi does not belong to any particular theological group, but rather is roaming as he searches for the truth. The terms that you are trying to attach to jenwi are totally irrelevant and rejected. I have no need or use for labels.

But you once admitted to being close to pantheism-panentheism naa. . .

Seriously, I do understand that labels are a bugbear to some around here and are thus strongly repudiated by these people. To understand this fear, you really need to understand something they call "nominal realism" in psychology. That ornate-sounding phrase simply refers to something that occurs when a child learns the name of an object. The child starts repeating the name, and keeps repeating it. Then the child falls into the trap of thinking that things are essentially the same as the name they bear. This leads him into thinking that he can change things by simply naming them! But she is wrong: labels come after the fact, not before it.

Thus if a man was told about God and rejected the idea all his life, but had never heard of the word atheism, we would still call him an atheist. These labels may not capture one's ideas 100%, but they often approximate them sufficiently. In discourses, they help us to conceptualise, comprehend and advance the topic.

Sorry about my off-topic ramblings, everyone. 

philip0906:

says youu r now speaking 4 me?feeling God ain't in my head broda,if u haven't felt God,I have personally felt him right 4rm d age of 5,so don't teach me anything.Its u atheists dat feel whatever in your "heads" ;DI love dat bolded part.It goes 2 show how "confused" u atheists can be.Go and read about all atheists,scientists,u'll get d drift.NO one has proved dat God does not exist. . .There r lots of archeological evidences on ground 2 show that those "men" were not writing stories. . .u doubt it?then I'll simply refer u 2 d other thread,or I could put 'em up 4 u here and even more since u love sending errands ;DU r wrong man. . .muslims,hindus believe in "spiritual matters" not 2 talk of Christians,so add up d population of all these and u r damn wrong.I wonder where u get your stats 4rm.From your "brain" I guess ;DDon't push me around man. . .I have simply told u what 2 do I have met your type b4. . .I googled something about atheists yesterday and I was refered 2 a site (cbs I guess) where a woman and her baby in d U.S had a miraculous "recovery" after being certified "dead". . .Now I'm telling u this,2 simply show u dat evidences abound,but if u want me 2 tell u d street number and flat number of d person billydkid was talking of,I won't be pushed around by "atheists",never. . .I have my own evidences and I have given u an example

This noisemaker again? You have met everybody's "type" before.indeed

When asked to provide evidence for your daft claims you RUN claiming "I wont be pushed around by atheists". What a joker.

Bring FACTS to support your claims and stop ranting and running! Why is that so hard and painful for you??

But let us look at the life of Stephen Hawking himself, the great physicist who 'understands' the universe: This is a man that has been atrophied from birth, that is, the parts of his body has been wasting away one by one since he was 20 years old. He currently cannot speak and so has to use artificial synthesisers to converts his thoughts to speech on the computer screen. See, a physician that has been unable to remove the log from his own eyes, now trying to remove the log from other people's eyes.

mazaje:



What is this?. . . . . . . .

This, my dear Mazaje, is called hateful bile.  It also goes by the names, vitriol, fear induced lashing out, not to mention irrationality.   Yes irrationality because what has one's physical condition got to do with one's ability to make sound judgements.  Now, I'm not a Hawkins supporter by any stretch, but I'd rather listen to someone with an atrophied body than someone with an atrophied mind.
It has other names, but these should be enough to get you started.  I'm sure you'll soon come to a sound grasp of the nature of This.

Jenwitemi:

No, they are not. They are all equally dark. Dark is dark, it allows nothing to be seen. Theists are blinded by their religious indoctrinations, while atheists are blinded by their materialism indoctrinations. The end results in both cases are the same. . . blindness.

I am very agreementaficationismated with you.

@Tudor
Do I lay points here for u or cordially invite u to this thread?
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-505028.192.html

God indeed exists
I shall always be convinced that a watch proves a watchmaker, and that a universe proves a God. - Voltaire

Here we have the saying of an great influential thinker, who was by no means a Christian. Multitudes of great minds have believed and do believe in God's existence, but today some would have us think that belief in God is illogical, foolish and incompatible with observable facts.

Obviously the question is important. If there is a God to whom I owe allegiance, honor and respect, I would be a fool to ignore Him. If such a God does not exist, this will affect everything also - even more so if the Christian Bible correctly describes God. It is worth taking some time to consider the question.

I don't believe that anyone can give a mathematical proof of the existence of God. But we can show that God's existence is far more likely to be a reality than his non-existence. Unless the atheist can show that a Supreme Being is a logical impossibility and prove all their premises, the case for atheism remains very weak. Atheists claim we can know that God does not exist.

What follows now are several arguments for the existence of God which I believe are very strong.
The Cosmological Argument

Where does the Universe come from? Atheists have generally claimed that it always existed. But this would mean that an infinite number of events have already taken place until now. In mathematics, however, infinite numbers lead to a contradiction. For example, what is infinity minus infinity? No infinite number can therefore exist in reality. Hence the Universe cannot be infinitely old.

The best astronomical evidence we have today indicates the age of the Universe to be around 15 billion years, give or take a few billion. This is pretty embarrassing for atheists, since it means that the Physical Universe has not always existed. So how did the Universe come into being? Did it all just pop into existence out of nothing for no reason whatsoever? Is that plausible? Would you believe me, for example, if I told you that my computer just appeared out of nothing? The most plausible solution is that an all-powerful entity that has existence also outside of space and time was the First Cause for our Universe. This First Cause is what we refer to as God.


But Who Made God?

Some argue that the cosmological argument proves nothing, for if the existence of complexity and order in the Universe proves the existence of God, then the existence of God proves that there must have been someone even greater who made God. Not necessarily, because God's existence is not rooted firstly in the material universe. He existed outside of it in another realm before the Physical Universe existed. The laws of that realm we have no knowledge about and we cannot impose the rules of our natural realm on that other realm. Christians, as well as practitioners of many other religions, believe in the existence of a real spiritual world which may interact with the natural world. We believe this on the basis of personal experience, as well as faith. Since our physical universe is not eternal, there must be something else beyond it that is.

Actually, something had to exist for all eternity. Theists believe that God always existed. Materialists would like to believe that the physical universe always existed. Materialists argue that the "hypothesis of God" is unnecessary - you may as well just believe that the Universe always existed. But this idea, as we have seen, has both logical and scientific problems.

The Teleological Argument - the Argument from Design

The idea here is that the existence of the Universe, in all its complexity and order, could not exist unless there was someone so great that was able to design and create it. We cannot put down to chance all the amazing things that we find in the Universe. There is too much order there, at every level. And not just order, but complexity. An ice cube is very ordered, but not complex. The genetic code is so vast and complex that only now are our best scientists getting to the point where they can accurately describe it, let alone create it from scratch. Yet atheistic philosophers are asking us to believe that all this came about as a result of pure chance, and that it has no meaning, unless we arbitrarily assign one to it. Why should we believe them?

Life of any kind is only possible in a physical universe which has physical constants such as ours. If any of physical constants like the speed of light, the mass of an electron, the gravitational and nuclear force constants were even slightly tampered with, we could not have molecules which form the basis of physical life. If the earth was a little closer to the Sun, or a little further away, life could not exist here.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that a closed physical system tends towards increasing disorder. If there is nothing outside the Universe to provide a source of energy to it, (such as a Creator), and if the Universe is infinitely old, then one would expect the entropy of the Universe to be infinite. But this is clearly not so. Information theory tells us that random noise won't give us any more useful information. Could the genetic code have come into existence through random activity then, without any guidance from a Creator?

No one has come up with models to show how the irreducibly complex systems in biology could have been constructed one step at a time by means of random genetic mutations. Its like a mousetrap. If you remove just one component of the mousetrap, it can't catch mice, and has no functional or survival value. So if a mousetrap "evolved", how did it get to the step just before having a useful function?

Too many things in the Universe are "just right" for the existence of [/b]life. Has Someone tampered with the physical constants of the Universe, as Paul Davies suggests in one of his books, or is it just an accident that had to happen?

The theory of evolution, is in fact, a philosophy, an a priori commitment to naturalist philosophy. For proponents of evolution, the fact that all its most critical mechanisms are still unknown is not a problem. They simply must exist, because the only alternative would be believe in some sort of Creator which even Science itself must then depend on for its existence. To speak against evolution is tantamount to blasphemy in today's temples of naturalistic philosophy.
[b]
I find it more reasonable to believe that Order, Purpose and Design have always existed in the mind of God, rather than to believe that they never existed, or that they came out of nothing. or what d'u think?
  The Existence of Abstract Entities

Abstract entities include things like the number "2" - it includes the whole world of ideas. We haven't thought of every idea yet, but that doesn't mean that those ideas don't exist. They do, and many of them are waiting to be discovered. But if abstract entities - ideas, numbers and so on, do exist, how did they come into existence? Their existence points strongly to the existence of a Pre-Existent Mind which gave birth to the whole world of ideas.

MyJoe:
These labels may not capture one's ideas 100%, but they often approximate them sufficiently.

The approximate them sufficienty enough for miscommunication to have a field day.  Why not?  Might even start the occasional major war.  Waahaaay!!

Is Phillips 0907 really Deepsight in disguise, just playing games with us.

This is actually a very good point I like laying up to doubters and atheists. . .
The Existence of Morality

Most people believe that there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong". For example, some people believe it is morally wrong to impose your point of view on someone else. Most people believe it is wrong to kill people because you don't like the color of their skin. Is this sense of "right and wrong" that people have a product of education, or a mechanism of survival, or does there really exist "right" and "wrong"? Is there anything wrong with despoil, murder, child abuse? If so, why? Where do these objective moral laws come from, if not from God? How can there be a moral law without a moral lawgiver? If men are the lawgivers, then which men are the ones to decide what is right? On what basis can the rightness or wrongness of an action be determined?

Materialists would like to believe that the whole activity of the Universe can be described by certain mechanistic laws. If these laws really do describe and predict everything that happens and will happen - then obviously freedom of choice is an illusion - because everything happening in our brain is simply the result of mechanistic cause and effect processes. If this is true then nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Those things are just arbitrary categories. Even our talking about such things is just an outcome of the laws of physics.

Pastor AIO:

Is Phillips 0907 really Deepsight in disguise, just playing games with us.

who/what is Deepsight?

Pastor AIO:

The approximate them sufficienty enough for miscommunication to have a field day.  Why not?  Might even start the occasional major war.  Waahaaay!!

That ^^^ would be germane if miscommunication was the biggest monster around here such that anything should be done to conquer it. But maybe it’s possible to argue successfully that the use of labels are the major culprit in miscommunication. That, sir, is because every word is a label.

Pastor AIO:

Is Phillips 0907 really Deepsight in disguise, just playing games with us.

May Adumabo forbid!
The Philip fellow is just a copy and paste goon who has NO understanding of the stuffs he lifts from google then runs off when asked to defend them claiming "I cannot be pushed around by atheists". That is not deepsight.

philip0906:

This is actually a very good point I like laying up to doubters and atheists. . .
The Existence of Morality

Most people believe that there is such a thing as "right" and "wrong". For example, some people believe it is morally wrong to impose your point of view on someone else. Most people believe it is wrong to kill people because you don't like the color of their skin. Is this sense of "right and wrong" that people have a product of education, or a mechanism of survival, or does there really exist "right" and "wrong"? Is there anything wrong with despoil, murder, child abuse? If so, why? Where do these objective moral laws come from, if not from God? How can there be a moral law without a moral lawgiver? If men are the lawgivers, then which men are the ones to decide what is right? On what basis can the rightness or wrongness of an action be determined?

Materialists would like to believe that the whole activity of the Universe can be described by certain mechanistic laws. If these laws really do describe and predict everything that happens and will happen - then obviously freedom of choice is an illusion - because everything happening in our brain is simply the result of mechanistic cause and effect processes. If this is true then nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Those things are just arbitrary categories. Even our talking about such things is just an outcome of the laws of physics.

rubbish as usual. . . .
Right and wrong are totally subjective and differ greatly from society to society.
So stop yarning dust.

Men are the lawgivers and laws do NOT come from any God. A child born into a society where murder, r.a.pe and torture is the norm will grow up a murderer and feel no wrong killing people. If you are born into a society where twins are killed, you will have no problems killing twins. This proves we are not born with any concept of right and wrong. Try again abeg.

Tudór:

May Adumabo forbid!
The Philip fellow is just a copy and paste goon who has NO understanding of the stuffs he lifts from google then runs off when asked to defend them claiming "I cannot be pushed around by atheists". That is not deepsight.

Then u dat thinks rationally,should simply counter d "copy and paste"

Tudór:

rubbish as usual. . . .
Right and wrong are totally subjective and differ greatly from society to society.
So stop yarning dust.

Men are the lawgivers and laws do NOT come from any God. A child born into a society where murder, r.a.pe and torture is the norm will grow up a murderer and feel no wrong killing people. If you are born into a society where twins are killed, you will have no problems killing twins. This proves we are not born with any concept of right and wrong. Try again abeg.

Very lame reply,cos u evaded this question
If men are the lawgivers, then which men are the ones to decide what is right? On what basis can the rightness or wrongness of an action be determined?

Tudór:

May Adumabo forbid!
The Philip fellow is just a copy and paste goon who has NO understanding of the stuffs he lifts from google then runs off when asked to defend them claiming "I cannot be pushed around by atheists". That is not deepsight.

Good point. Deepsight doesn't 'run away' from debates.

MyJoe:

That ^^^ would be germane if miscommunication was the biggest monster around here such that anything should be done to conquer it. But maybe it’s possible to argue successfully that the use of labels are the major culprit in miscommunication. That, sir, is because every word is a label.

Then all thought/all conception is misconception. I very much agree.

Good point. Deepsight doesn't 'run away' from debates.

abeg no make me laff,na serious matter we dey talk 4 hia

Pastor AIO:

Then all thought/all conception is misconception. I very much agree.

Pastor AIO:
I'd rather listen to someone with an atrophied body than someone with an atrophied mind.

EXCELLENT rejoinder!!

philip0906:

  Very lame reply,cos u evaded this question
If men are the lawgivers, then which men are the ones to decide what is right? On what basis can the rightness or wrongness of an action be determined?

Is this dude not foolish??
Kindly intelligently show me what is "silly" in what I posted. Discuss like you have a brain and not like a dead goat.

You ask me who are the lawgivers??
Have you ever heard of the national assembly or government??

Try again pls.

philip0906:

Then u dat thinks rationally,should simply counter d "copy and paste"

silly joke. Like I said, you are making a fool outta yourself. These ur plagiarisms have been thrashed out here before thats why everyone leaves you to continue your embarrassing dance of shame. Funny

Tudór:

silly joke. Like I said, you are making a fool outta yourself. These your plagiarisms have been thrashed out here before thats why everyone leaves you to continue your embarrassing dance of shame. Funny

Since you have so much time for the guy why don't you refer him to some of the threads where they have been thrashed out before.

Pastor AIO:

Since you have so much time for the guy why don't you refer him to some of the threads where they have been thrashed out before.

not really. . . I dont have such time. i'm on the move alot these days and post via a handheld device.
Besides i think it'll be a waste the dude doesnt even understand what he is copying and pasting, so why bother?

@topic
If God Didnt, den wu did?

@ davidlyn, were u referring to me? no offence but if u saw my response as mocking, im sorry.

@ Tudor, now i can see ur just an attention seeking slowpoke, okay u felt i mocked hawking, my bad, u know him more than i do, fine, but u saying u are a fool urself thinking u were referring to me, then i think u gat issues and need anger mgt class fasssst. think b4 u spit. this forum is to make people who dont know things b enlightned, and also to give ur opinions, but illeteray has gotten its way with u. dumber than dumber idiot.

@my joe
Characters like ademiller simply can't think properly. You share their views: "brilliant!" You don't: "see as im head be."

ur twisted i guess, no difference btw u and ur wife Tudor.

@synthesis, dats the question i wanted hawkings to answer.

Britain's 'Top Scientist'  ---- "We shouldn't attach any weight to what Hawking says about god"

From  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-rees-we-shouldnt-attach-any-weight-to-what-hawking-says-about-god-2090421.html

On the need to confront the big environmental problems facing us in the 21st century, he parts company with his friend and colleague Stephen Hawking, who famously once said that humans will have to colonise distant planets if they are to survive. "I think that's an an ill-thought through statement and we have to bear in mind that there is nowhere we know about in our own Solar System that is even as hospitable as the top of Everest or the South Pole. The problems of the Earth must be solved here on the Earth and we must not divert attention from that necessity," Lord Rees said. He is equally scathing about Hawking's more recent comments about there being no need for God in order to explain creation. "Stephen Hawking is a remarkable person whom I've know for 40 years and for that reason any oracular statement he makes gets exaggerated publicity. I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don't think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic," he said.

and also says

"I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains," Lord Rees said. "Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by."