₦airaland Forum

@elbaron
Many thanks for your definitions. So you don't believe in God or any gods. Do you describe yourself as an atheist therefore?

If my interlocutor desires to convince me that Jupiter has inhabitants, and that his description of them is accurate, it is for him to bring forward evidence in support of his contention. The burden of proof evidently lies on him; it is not for me to prove that no such beings exist before my non-belief is justified, but for him to prove that they do exist before my belief can be fairly claimed. Similarly, it is for the affirmer of God's existence to bring evidence in support of his affirmation; the burden of proof lies on him.

Well that's easy. Life on other planets, who gives a shit? (pardon my language) I always thought the people who mainly harp on about it are trekkies addicted to or over excited about some tv program. My point, not a situation which is as fundamental as how the whole world came to be and whether or not some superior being clicked it into place.  Point is I believe that for one to say no to a superior being who did all this, one must either have an alternative theory or must plain not care.

Which one are you and why.  

The issue of evidence is difficult with this subject particularly when talking to those who have already ruled it out. Babbling about miracles and pronouncement in some scriptures that have come to pass will just fly by you. Point is, so where did it all come from? Do you care to know? Do you already have another althernative or do you not care?

Well, in order to think freely, you must be open to all arguments. How can you when you've closed your mind to some possibilities?

@exu - I hear you!

@nferyn

Why do I need to explain the various religions?

You don't need to explain what they are, just why so many people subscribe to religions that are based on the existence of a supreme being? Delusion or not, there is a hankering by all humans to have an understanding if not access to this being.

* fear of death
* need for purpose
* need for an explanation for the less than perfect functioning of this world

I agree. Apart from the fear of death part, you may count me in. But why does this so often lead to the conclusion that there must be a superior being? Does not matter which part of the world you are in, the conclusion is the same.  As you know there is no country in the world that does not have some religious belief in a supreme being.

Something more I think. An innate awareness/consciousness of this being. There is a Ghanaian proverb that says: one does not need to tell a kid about God. Somehow they already know. I think I get that. This is built into the human framework. It's part of what we are. It is some evidence I think.

No, I am convinced that he does not exist. His properties are contradictory and logically impossible

Interesting! So how do you explain the various religions? The Bible for instance? Is it some sort of a mass conspiracy? If so who is behind the conspiracy?

@seun

disinterest in God sounds more like agnostism?

So which is it? Justify you inclusion.

@nferyn

I am convinced that the monotheistic God does not exist.

You must mean you are yet to be convinced that he does exist.


@seun

If you are in, there must be a reason. Lack of belief in the existence of a supreme being, period, as nferyn says or disinterest in any such being which may exist.

As I said, I don't know for sure. The Big Bang theory is currently best supported by the evidence, but there's a lot more uncertainty involved in the origin of the universe than in the process of biological evolution.

So you don't know for sure how the one basic cell which become the building block of life (by whatever means) came to be. You are however happy to accept that somehow it did.
That takes faith.  Maybe you believe if you research it thoroughly enough you would find evidence which is convincing enough. Until that day, you must be comfortable in your belief that it is not about a supreme being because there has got to be more evidence that it happened spontaneously.  I don,t think there is.

Abiogenesis is not directly inspired by Darwin. Abiogenesis is no theory, it is the study of how life arose on earth. A scientific theory is something completely different.  I see that you use the colloquial meaning of theory. Maybe the late Stephen Jay Gould can clarify thing better than I can. I will quote the relevant paragraphs from http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gould_fact-and-theory.html (emphasis mine) Please go and read the whole article, it's well worth your time.

I will. Meanwhile how do you think a scientific study becomes a study? It starts with postulates and hypothesis by curious mortals like you and I.  They trace backward from what is available evidence (in this case)of life, making deductions as they proceed. In this day and age with technology for radiocarbon dating etc, one can reasonably believe that scientists can tell to a reasonable certainty how old fossils they dig up are.  Bones of dead creature from time immemorial, comparisons with currently living creatures to find differences which they may attribute to evolution or whatever.

My main concern: how likely is it that they find evidence of how the world originated for sure. You don't know my friend, because nobody can for sure! Zoology and botany teaches us that all creatures are grouped into kingoms, phylums, genus and species. They group similar behaving and looking creators together.  So apes and humans have very similar characteristics. They are still totally difference creatures. What are the odds that fossils found dating eons of years ago of apes might look similar to humans? Well don't have to go back in time to know that they would. They do now! Especially if all you are going by are bones and teeth.

How likely is it that they find the initial building block or one close enough to it for an accurate conclusion? They are all deductions my friend and in the end all the fluffing about says, is that it started somehow and proceeded thus. Was it initially a vacuum? Science tells us: ain't nothing gonna happen in a vacuum matey!

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact...Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth..

Need I say more?

I get that you believe in evolution and that Abiogenesis is the study that proves how life originated which you don't know too much about. My problem is that until I can believe how life actually started by whatever study there is, evolution is no use to me in deciding how the world can to be. That area of science is not at tangible or provable if you like as quantum Physics. It involves too much speculation and conjecture and there are bit of faith.

PS my remark about 'inspired by Darwin was meant to be a joke. (Bible being inspired by God and all that.)

@loco

Atheism is a philosophy. It is the lack of interest in a supreme being a Deity and any God or gods what so ever. Don't need the concept, don't care!

Ever wondered where it all came from? The world and all in it? What do you do when you are down? Go see a shrink or drink yourself silly?


@otitoloju
Gothya! So I guess what you are saying is that the best it can be is a position.

If it is, how does one come to arrive at this position? Another alternative, or like loco plain don't care?

What is it exactly? Lack of belief in the existence of a supreme being; indifference to any such being which may exist; or belief in some other alternative?

@nferyn

A supreme being implies that it exists to start with. This just  pushes the question a little further without actually solving anything. It only brings redundancy. Who created the creator?
The universe does not evolve. Only living organisms evolve. You're mixing up two different things.

Ok. But what do they evolve from? How did the one living molecule from which they evolved come to be? Or, how did the inorganic or non living thing from which the living molecule evolved come to be?

The Theory of Evolution does not deal with how life started, that is the field of inquiry of abiogenis. Evolution explains the mechanisms by which simpler life forms evolved over to to reach our current biodiversity.

I stand corrected. Abiogenesis is the theory that life can arise spontaneously from non-life molecules under proper conditions.  Once formed evolution takes over and it develops or evolves to an organism capable of independent life and reproduction. Note that these are theories, I suppose inspired by Dawin.

"Four and a half billion years ago the young planet Earth... was almost completely engulfed by the shallow primordial seas.  Powerful winds gathered random molecules from the atmosphere.  Some were deposited in the seas. Tides and currents swept the molecules together.  And somewhere in this ancient ocean the miracle of life began... The first organized form of primitive life was a tiny protozoan [a one-celled animal].  Millions of protozoa populated the ancient seas.  These early organisms were completely self-sufficient in their sea-water world.  They moved about their aquatic environment feeding on bacteria and other organisms... From these one-celled organisms evolved all life on earth" (from the Emmy award winning PBS NOVA film The Miracle of Life quoted in Hanegraaff, 1998, p. 70, emphasis in original).
 
Sound familia to you? Just as farfetched as the bible if not more so!

Aristotle believed that decaying material could be transformed by the “spontaneous action of Nature” into living animals.  His hypothesis was ultimately rejected, but... Aristotle’s hypothesis has been replaced by another spontaneous generation hypothesis, one that requires billions of years to go from the molecules of the universe to cells, and then, via random mutation or natural selection, from cells to the variety of organisms living today.  This version, which postulates chance happenings eventually leading to the phenomenon of life, is biology’s Theory of Evolution (1997, p. 105).

I said earlier that

For me, to say that the universe just happened or evolved takes every bit as much faith as believing that a supreme being clicked it all into place. I am still open to finding out if God did it all!

Your response:

Why does saying 'I don't know' take as much faith as saying 'a supreme being clicked it all into place'. The first statement does not have any implicit assumptions, the second statement assumed a causal relationship between a supreme being and the universe as it is. If you add assumptions to a statement, you need either evidence or faith in these assumptions. As there is no evidence, you need faith.
In conclusion: the first statement does not require faith, the second statement requires faith. Faith in the existence of a supreme being and faith in the supreme being causing the universe.

More like you don't care.  I, on the other hand, spend sometime pondering these issues. It is either that the world came about as postulated by Darwin, Aristotle and the rest of them, (unsubstantiated hypothesis which are to this day still tentative), or as discribed in the bible. Jury is still out! Bible however looking good so far!

@nferyn

If you have  already concluded that GOD does not exist then you are way ahead of me. We grow up realising that there are two schools of thought. That there is a supreme being that created all things; or that the universe evolved from nothing.

Actually, evolutionary theorist do not touch the existence of God at all. Evolution has nothing to do with the concept of God. The Theory of Evolution starts after the first life forms were there. It does not touch on the beginning of life or on the origin of the universe. The theory only explains the diversity of life we encounter on earth today and in the past.

It sure does not start from a human being called Adam or anything remotely resembling humans.

For me, to say that the universe just happened or evolved takes every bit as much faith as believing that a supreme being clicked it all into place. I am still open to finding out if God did it all!

And why would that be a cop out? In view of the evidence, it is the most logical conclusion.

Once again good for you if you have enough evidence to arrive at this conclusion. Do share it with me sometime. For me evolution does not explain how the first organism popped into existence enough to satisfy my curiosity. And, you also say it does not touch on creation. So where is the evidence? How did it all come about.

I think dropping the whole God concept merely because if a few contractions, real or assumed, before I figure out which they are will be premature. Like I said looking forward to seeing what conclusive evidence you have been able to collect.

It sure is contradictory. So which concept are we getting rid of? That God gave us free will; that he is omnipotent and omnibenevolent; or that he exists in the first place?

I think there is a lot of evidence to support the fact that God gave man free will. One obvious one is Him putting a tree of which fruit man was never to eat in the garden of eden. This gave man the option to do so at any time if he should choose to. This was at the very beginning of time. Why, if he already knew how this will end? Where it starts getting dicey for me is the all knowing concept that people keep throwing around. To what extent is that the case?

As for God not being existent at all, that is a whole huge debate. Evolutionary theorists have debated that to death. My personal view is that it is a copout.  Like you said there are many contradictions about this God or shall I say appear to be many contradictions about him. Are there really or are these mere misinterpretations by various people eager to believe that God is everything imaginable?

@nferyn - my sentiments exactly so where did this notion of omni-potence spring from?

@elbaron - You are right is assuming that I did not read your whole long article. A bunch of quotes from various parts of the bible on similar subjects telling varied stories in your opinion does not make for interesting reading.  I lost interest when you started calculating how many years had passed since creation and  when you decided based on the thinnest thread of an argument that the world must be about 6000yrs old suggesting no man lived in 4000 BC. Your argument about the first and forth days of creation is what I was responding to. Now you say in your response to mine and I quote:

Are you making sense to yourself? According to your acceptances, God created the sun and the moon on the first day to separate day from night (Genesis 1: 4-5). God named the light day and the darkness night. Which means that from the very first day there was already night and day. Evenly divided by God as he saw fit. Now as a rational thinking female, let me ask you a very simple question: Since darkness was already separated from light thereby creating day and night on the very first day, what was the essence of repeating the experiment on the 4th day? The biblical account represented in Genesis 1:14 states specifically that God commanded Lights to appear in Heaven (Your own version of the bible) to separate day from night and to be used as a landmark for identifying the seasons. Day and Night were already separated. Now what other lights do you know about that identifies seasons?

You must be very impatient. I suggest to you that your whole response was fuelled by the fact that I dared call you pedantic and confused. Let's drop the ego for a minute and ponder some of these weighty issues. 

Why does there have to have been a sun and a moon on the first day for there to be night and day? God said let there be and so there was. Now today science has explained how light changes into darkness and darkness into light. This, science says is due to the revolutions of the earth around the sun and from the fourth day onward when the sun and the moon where created this could easily be the case. Bible says the day and night were created on day one. No scientist there to explain what cosmic forces made that happen in those 3 days. On day four when the sun, the moon and the stars were being created God said let there be light in the sky to
separate the day from the night. Repetitious Maybe. I noticed while reading the same passages that whereas on the first day the light was not commanded to be in the sky, on the fourth day it was about being in the sky.

Now I am not holding myself up to be an expect in any of this which is why I threw the question -

Was he waiting to see if Adam or Eve will be curious enough to disobey Him or was it just a matter of time that someone comes along and parttakes of the forbidden fruit?

This was not a statement. It was a question. I don't actually think human free will can exist alongside God's omni-potence which is why I thrown this question to all in this forum.

Your response:

This is a God who is all knowing, which means that before he created Adam, he already knew what they will do and when they will do it, if he knew all this and he knew the serpent will tempt them into eating it, the question now will be: Why did he leave the tree there? Free will and choice, I hear you say, if this were to be correct, then does it not negate the theory of his omni-potence? Do you guys actually think about these things before you swallow them hook, line and sinker?

Would you care to try again? Like I said I'm in awe of the extent to which I think God is going to maintain human free will. Confused? You bet I am! Only reason most of us are in this forum. Shed some light is you can.

PS
Don't flatter yourself. Shredbaron has nothing to do with elboran. Full name is Baroness Shredder but that is a whole different story!!!

God gave man free will.  Freedom to choose how to live our lives; whether or not to believe in him and even whether or not to continue living.  Does this take away his ability to predict, unequivocally, the path our lives will take until the end?

@elbaron, interesting start to your article. I'm still wondering whether you are merely being pedantic for amusement or are plain confused. Genesis 1:1-4, In the beginning God created the sky and the earth. The earth was empty and had no form. Darkness covered the ocean... Then God said let there be light and there was light. God saw that light was good, so did divided the light from darkness. God named the light day and the darkness night. Evening passed and morning came. This was the first day.

Genesis 1:14-15 Then God said, let there be lights IN THE SKY to separate day from night. These lights will be for signs, seasons, days, and years. they will be in the sky to give light to the earth. And it happened. (Everyday Study Edition).

So as you can see there was night and day from day one. On the fourth day, improvements galore! Let's now place the light (which is already separating day from night) in the sky above the earth to shine down on it for illumination. Let them also (in addition to telling night from day) be signs for seasons, years etc.  No contradiction here!

What I get from this is that God did indeed create man in his own image. He did not just click his heels together and hey presto, an already made world. It took seven days of planning and modifications.  Take you for instance, it must have taken you a while to write this exceedingly long article on biblical contradictions. You probably hammered out the bare bones first, then made amendments as it would appear, it did God.

Now, before you start throwing a lot of words beginning with OMNI- at me, imagine the following: You are playing toy soldiers or writing a screen play, you set the stage, the boundaries, the works. You know who dies and who wins. You may have changed the scenes/characters a few times but in the end it's your world. You are all the OMANI-S there are. BUT TO WHAT EXTENT?  You decide.

Now we are in a computer age, people are inventing games where the end is not certain. Games like grand theft auto gives you a choice to steal a car in which case you are persued by policemen with blazing guns.

God decided to throw in two things: free will and circumstances attached to each choice. He could have left the garden devoid of plants that made one loose their innocence. He could have placed it there and said nothing. For there to be free will there had to be choice. God said he has give them all the stuff in the garden which they could do with as they pleased. No conflict there. Then he shows them one that they are to stay away from and attached consequences for not doing so.

Question- Was he waiting to see if Adam or Eve will be curious enough to disobey Him or was it just a matter of time that someone comes along and parttake of the forbidden fruit?

Eitherway free will does not work without such alternatives.  Take present day events for instance, particularly a case sighted in yet another one of your long articles: A kid is frustrated enough to pick up a gun, go to his school and start shooting. He had free will he decides to point the gun and shoot at somebody. When he does so the person will die. As Innocent as he/she is. No sudden intervention on behave of the Innocent. Our actions/choices have consequences some very ugly. Hopefully others may learn from this.

It's a hell of a thing, this free will.  God obviously has the stomach to live with some of the ugly results of it on the innocent, el baron is totally confused by it and I, shredbaron am in awe of the extent to which God is going to preserve free will.

But ask yourself one question: would you rather be a zombie with no free will in a perfect world or make choices about your life your future?

Peace!