lololol

seriously thou psyche you are a living joke. your beliefs change every time they are proven wrong but instead of accepting it your beliefs become even more outlandish and ridiculous.

please, PLEASE read back through your own posts in the last few pages and realise how ignorant you really are.

you claim to have studied all this from reading books but i doubt you have read anything other than wikipedia. Ive even pulled you up on it before in this thread where you used direct copy and paste quotes to make yourself look smart.


Im sure someday when you stop taking those pills and smoking that grass that addles your brain that you will understand what we are trying to tell you but for some reason i doubt that is very likely, infact it may already be too late.

you dont understand my arguments and your world view isn't the same as those scientists you listed - but good to see you keep your ego in check

One of the frequent attacks that Dawkins levies against religion- in particular Christianity, the religion he was brought up in- is that it inhibits and stultifies intellectual progress. Certainly the Vatican has had a rather withering view of scientists for most of the past two hundred years and at times has proved slow to wake up to wonders of the cosmos that scientists have uncovered during that time. However….
 
Consider the following three discoveries:
(a)   The Big Bang Theory
(b)  Hubble’s Law
(c)  The Laws of Genetic Succession.
 
The Big Bang Theory:
The first proponent of the Big Bang Theory was a Belgian man called George Lemaitre. One of the most revered astrophysicists of his time, Lemaitre had put forward his theory of how the Universe began as early as 1931. Lemaitre’s theory was subsequently confirmed by the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) which showed that the level of background microwave radiation was the same everywhere in the universe and therefore must have had a common point of origin.
 
Hubble’s Law:
Most of us have probably heard of Hubble because the world’s most famous telescope was named after him. Edwin Hubble, however is better known for the law which has forever become associated with his name: Hubble’s Law. This law states that the redshift in light coming from distant galaxies is proportional to their distance. By applying this law astronomers can gauge the distance between objects such as galaxies and stars. However although accredited with the discovery back in 1929 it was in fact George Lemaitre who discovered the law first and who had published his paper on it in 1927. As such it is Lemaitre who can be accredited with laying down one of the fundamental principles of cosmology. Incidentally Hubble’s - or, to give credit where credit is due- Lemaitre’s law has been invoked to prove time and again that the universe is expanding at an increasingly higher rate.
 
The Laws of Genetic Succession:
The year 1865- Having spent a number of years cross-breeding various kinds of garden peas a gentleman called Gregor Mendel eventually formulated the foundational laws of what was to become the field of modern genetics from which men like Richard Dawkins would weave their rainbows! Thanks to Mendel and his successors in the field we now have the Human Genome Project which has undertaken to map out every human gene with a view to understanding how, for example, hereditary diseases are transmitted.
 
And this is where the Church comes in…You see neither Lemaitre nor Mendel could afford to spend as much time in their chosen pursuits as they would have possibly liked. Like Albert Einstein, who worked as a patent clerk during the day and worked on this theory of general relativity at night, Lemaitre and Mendel also held down steady day-time jobs. When he wasn’t dabbling in astrophysics, Lemaitre heard confessionals and said mass in his capacity as a Roman Catholic Priest! For his part Mendel prayed in silence in his monastery as an Augustinian monk!
 
In other words three of the most important finds in science owe their initial discovery to men of God. Incidentally both of these men remained men of the cloth until their dying day. What’s more their Church assisted them in their scientific endeavours and even promoted them : Lemaitre was promoted to monsignor in 1960 by Pope John XX111while Mendel was appointed chief abbot of his monastery following his discovery.
 
Are men like Lemaitre and Mendel to be called “delusional” as Sir Richard Dawkins would call them simply because they believed in God? Did their faith prevent them from asking the most profound questions a human mind can ask regarding the very nature of the Cosmos and the life flowing within it? Did not both men find a happy co-existence between two apparently disparate frames of reference namely religion and science?
 
Even if Einstein didn’t have established faith systems in mind when he would mention the word “religion” it is perhaps fitting that we quote him here: “religion without science is lame and science without religion is blind”. (Italics added) For men like Lemaitre and Mendel, awe-inspiring mystery was not meant to be left mysterious- it was meant to be explored. They did not believe that to have faith meant that one had to have blinkers on. Their faith in reason went hand in hand with a faith in a higher power.

The impasse between the Big Bang and the steady-state theory was broken when Hubble found out that the universe is in expansion. Einstein was shocked by the expanding universe demonstrated by the findings of Edwin Hubble. Lemaître saw this as a great opportunity and rushed to California. In the early 1930s, as reported by Timothy Ferris (The Whole Shebang, 1997), in a lecture in the library of Mt. Wilson observatory offices, Lemaître declared solemnly to an audience which included Einstein: "In the beginning of everything we had fireworks of unimaginable beauty. Then there was the explosion followed by the filling of heavens with smoke. We come to late to do more than to visualize the splendor of creation's' birthday." Not even Moses would be so eloquent. Lemaître's oratory was so brilliant that even Einstein became convinced by this new version of the biblical cosmology.

Unbelievingly, after resisting for a long time, Einstein, and most of the scientific establishment, capitulated to the idea of the Big Bang by the influence of no less than a monk: George Lemaître.

This Catholic monk succeeded in infiltrating into the secular science the preposterous idea of a Biblical universe being created out of nothing. By who? By God, naturally! Congratulations to Abée Lemaître. Once more religion defeated science. Not for long, we hope!

lol

and you have the temerity to call me a dumbass!
It is not proven that the universe was created.

Round is not the same as spherical!

Earth doesn't rest upon a formless void.

Why does there have to be a reason?
Why does it have to make sense?

so that youtube clip at 2:10.... "now I don't really beleive thats happened on this planet..."

"It could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization evolved by, probably, some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto, perhaps, this planet,"  "Now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility."

- Richard Dawkins.

Mr. Mathis said Mr. Dawkins' observation was amusing. "If it's a space alien, it's 'an intriguing possibility.' If it's God, you're delusional," he said. "That pretty much sums up the debate."

Also the quotes you made, why do those people think atheists attack or rage against god? thats just wrong. religion is not god.

and the whole 'finely tuned constants' rubbish, it doesn't really matter what they were they had to be 'something' sure, something was always going to result from it, your making out that we'd either have what we have now or nothing else is possible. thats ludicrous.

Predictions? Which ones?

True? Are you absolutely sure you've got that right?

Almost perfect for us to have evolved, but it still doesn't need the existence of a creator. Ockham's Razor.

I choose to believe science over religion. Religion really isn't viable unless you want a way to control people through fear and ignorance.
But that's just me. Maybe I prefer fact over fiction?

How do you know this? Elephants exhibit self-awareness, Cetaceans exhibit self-awareness and sentient consciousness....

^There's the psyche we know and love. I was waiting for the insults, thought  s/he wouldn't be able to contain him/herself for long!

But the flying spaghetti monster is just as plausible as the judao-christian god, or allah, or thor or zeus. Can you disprove the existence of any of these? Because from where I'm sitting you only accept one creator and this invalidates the other gods.....but why? why not worship zeus, or shiva? They had creation myths too, you might like those also.

This was about C.S. Lewis. He was religious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis

http://www.cslewis.org/

But then, you probably missed the subtlety in his Narnia chronicles as well.
So he turned his back on atheism...shame...still doesn't mean that he was right by choosing religion (specifically christianity). Also, scientific knowledge has progressed since then. Religious knowledge appears to be stagnant and circular.

Ever heard of the Philosophy of Science? This is different than the Philosophy (or Phenomenology) of Religion. Philosophy and Science can coexist peacefully, Religion and Science however....

It seems you have missed this post of mine (to be continued when I get home...) Here is the link for easy access,
http://forums.iconzarena.co.nz/showthread.php?t=27666&page=161

Have you considered that we evolved according to those laws. In another(hypothetical) universe with different laws, we would be different.

C.S.Lewis was a deeply religious person and therefor had to make comments like this, for his own personal appeasement. I don't understand why a universe without meanig would be dark and empty? It can just as easily be filled with stars and galaxies etc.

Are you sure? We 'know' this do we? Maybe the universe in this phase but that doesn't discount the possibility of a prior universe.

C.S. Lewis was a author of fictions? Do you seek wisdom in such sources? He was being poetic. Not factual. "For a universe without meaning would be a dark and empty universe" does not rate as a scientific explanation I'm afraid.

It looks that way at the moment, but then people used to think the Earth was flat and the sun orbited us.

Well you are actually saying you know how the universe works. You make all these assumptions as if you know for a fact that they are true. Example - you claim to know that time did not exist before the big bang - and that's pretty major. That's pretty much limiting the possible ways the universe can work - and for what reason?

The no boundary proposal, has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. It is now generally accepted, that the universe evolves according to well defined laws. These laws may have been ordained by God, but it seems that He does not intervene in the universe, to break the laws. However, until recently, it was thought that these laws did not apply to the beginning of the universe. It would be up to God to wind up the clockwork, and set the universe going, in any way He wanted. Thus, the present state of the universe, would be the result of God's choice of the initial conditions. The situation would be very different, however, if something like the no boundary proposal were correct. In that case, the laws of physics would hold, even at the beginning of the universe. So God would not have the freedom to choose the initial conditions. Of course, God would still be free to choose the laws that the universe obeyed. However, this may not be much of a choice. There may only be a small number of laws, which are self consistent, and which lead to complicated beings, like ourselves, who can ask the question: What is the nature of God? Even if there is only one, unique set of possible laws, it is only a set of equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations, and makes a universe for them to govern. Is the ultimate unified theory so compelling, that it brings about its own existence. Although Science may solve the problem of ~how the universe began, it can not answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist? Maybe only God can answer that.

But not you?

and at that same time the bible said it was round. Isiah 40:22 "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth"

All this proves is that Einstein evaluated the theory on it's merits - not on it's source. What does it matter where a theory comes from unless you are in the habit of being intellectually prejudiced?

He was intelligent. People like to hear what intelligent people have to say. They tend to have informed perspectives.

Proof? Oh, that's right - who needs proof huh?

And if those constants were not valued as they are then you would not be around to ask the question of who set them.

Why is the anthropic principle so hard for religious people to grasp? The universe exists as it does because if it didn't exist this way then you would not exist either! You can only exist in a universe with these parameters.

Simple, if it didn't exist as it does you would not exist to ponder why it exists at all. The fact that you exist only proves that the universe is capable of existing in such a way that allows you to exist, nothing more.

I think you are missing something fundamental. And I think that is that you appear to think that the observable universe is actually the entire universe. You believe there is no possibility of the universe existing in any other state other than what you see around you. And therefore the universe must be intelligently designed for how else would such a cosmic coincidence occur?

If you replace the single observable universe with infinite universes of differing permutations of cosmic constants than our universe occurring becomes an inevitability.

And to think I actually constructed a "bat-shit crazy" hypothesis that adequately describes gods existence in a multi-verse model. What's more, my hypothesis is a certainty. Good thing you religious types don't like this Multi-verse stuff, as my hypothesis pretty much claims that a "god" must exist in a multi-verse.

Ummm, those two things actually correlate. If there is no proof the soul isn't tied to consciousness (i.e. the soul may be tied to consciousness) then losing consciousness would mean the soul was void.

What is this soul thing anyway? Define please.

No we don't, you're making an assumption. We know that observable time begun with the universe. We know NOTHING about what occurred before that, and whether time existed or not.

And why is the idea that complex organisms cannot exist naturally unless they are created by an infinitely more complex creator is much more probable?

"Discovered" was it? As in it is an absolute fact huh? lol. Sorry I shouldn't laugh, but really dude do you think cosmologists regard such things as being absolute truths?

Scientific opinion has moved towards a flat Universe and the latest data confirm this with greater certainty than ever before.

Another result of the study is the prediction that the Universe will continue its steady expansion, which started at the Big Bang, and will not collapse into a "Big Crunch".

"It's a tremendously exciting result - and one that will mean rewriting the text books on the history of the Universe," said one of the research team, Professor Peter Ade at Queen Mary College, University of London.

The research is published in the journal Nature and in an accompanying commentary, Wayne Hu, of the US School of Natural Sciences, New Jersey, said: "The Boomerang result supports a flat Universe. A perfectly flat Universe will keep on expanding forever, because there is not enough matter to make it recollapse in a 'Big Crunch'."

The research backs the inflation theory of the Universe put forward in 1980, which suggests that the whole of the cosmos expanded from a single tiny point at the Big Bang. At that time, and for a short while after, space was curved because it was confined in a small region. However, the Universe's expansion has been so great that space has now been stretched to the point that it is essentially flat.

Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist. --C. S. Lewis

It amazes me to find an intelligent person who fights against something which he does not at all believe exists. --Mohandas Gandhi

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful, and has nobody to thank.--Dante Gabriel Rossetti

If there were no God, there would be no atheists. --G.K. Chesterton

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.--Abraham Lincoln

To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge" --Ravi Zacharias

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. --Francis Bacon

God is not discoverable or demonstrable by purely scientific means, unfortunately for the scientifically minded. But that really proves nothing. It simply means that the wrong instruments are being used for the job. - J.B. Phillips

If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. --Annie Dillard

Without God man has no reference point to define himself. 20th century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity. --R. C. Sproul

Even in ordinary speech we call a person unreasonable whose outlook is narrow, who is conscious of one thing only at a time, and who is consequently the prey of his own caprice, whilst we describe a person as reasonable whose outlook is comprehensive, who is capable of looking at more than one side of a question and of grasping a number of details as parts of a whole." ~ G. Dawes Hicks

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.--C.S. Lewis

A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol. --Deitrich Bonhoeffer

You think you are too intelligent to believe in God. I am not like you. --Napoleon Bonaparte

Still, even the most admirable of atheists is nothing more than a moral parasite, living his life based on borrowed ethics. This is why, when pressed, the atheist will often attempt to hide his lack of conviction in his own beliefs behind some poorly formulated utilitarianism, or argue that he acts out of altruistic self-interest. But this is only post-facto rationalization, not reason or rational behavior. -Vox Day

Humanism or atheism is a wonderful philosophy of life as long as you are big, strong, and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. But watch out if you are in a lifeboat and there are others who are younger, bigger, or smarter. --William Murray

Einstein thought religion was childish.

Both Friedman and Lemaître had found that the universe must be expanding. Lemaître went further than Friedman, since he concluded that an initial "creation-like" event must have occurred. This is the Big Bang theory as we know it today, and this is why he is credited with its discovery.

Einstein at first dismissed Friedman and then (privately) Lemaître out of hand, saying that not all mathematics leads to correct theories. After Hubble's discovery was published, Einstein quickly and publicly endorsed Lemaître's theory, helping both the theory and priest get fast recognition.

Most cosmologists and astrophysicists today agree that the big-bang model of the origin of the universe is accurate. Ever since Einstein published his theory of general relativity, more and more of those scientists have also acknowledged, however reluctantly, that a universe with a beginning is very strong evidence for the existence of a "beginner." After all, a beginning demands a cause. And a cause demands a being that can create the cause-perhaps an infinite being, but certainly a being beyond time and space.

Einstein recognized that his theory implied a creator of some type. After Hubble demonstrated in 1929 that some 40 galaxies were indeed receding from one another as the theory predicted, Einstein begrudgingly accepted the "necessity of a beginning" and "the presence of a superior power."

"That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

 --  Albert Einstein