Why would an omnipotent god create a universe with billions upon billions of interlocking rules and then ignore all of them?

A true scientist knows that it is futile to attempt to prove or disprove the existence of a god or gods, because such creatures lie outside of the realm of science. A true scientist keeps philosophy separate from science, because science cannot positively determine a moral question. Science is pure, and clean, and by attempting to use it in such a manner you dirty the name of all scientists.

In other words, god "making man out of mud" translates to single celled organisms evolving slowly... At some point there, the first "Human" was born, someone with the ability to self-criticize(IE, consciousness)

Between the first and second verse of the bible, millions of years pass.

Along the same lines, I feel like god has to have turned off part of his omnipotence at some point in the past, because there's no such thing as free will if you know what will happen in the future.

As for the reference towards scientists dealing in "Facts" when they only deal in hypotheses...

Much to the contrary, a theory is as close to a fact as science can provide

That is, of course, assuming that the two are mutually exclusive. Why would an omnipotent god create a universe with billions upon billions of interlocking rules and then ignore all of them? maybe god created the universe and man created the rules?

maybe man created the rules, and created an imaginary "enforcer" to ensure those rules do not get broken?

maybe the christian bible is just a collection of stories, put together by a roman emperor in the centuries after the death of a man who had philosophical insight so great that people considered him to be the son of god.

just because the bible is false does not mean god does not exist. if the bible is false it just means the bible is false.

Also, how do you expect to make primitive, scienceless people understand cellular biology? They don't even know what a cell is. so? human intelligence is mostly cultural, there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER why a perfect being wouldnt be able to explain biology to humans using scientific language that would allow them to understand it.

there is however, alot of indication that the people who wrote the bible were not "perfect beings", there is alot of indication that they were HUMAN beings.

again, there is nothing that can disprove god. but the bible is not god. there are plenty of things that can and do disprove the bible.

In other words, god "making man out of mud" translates to single celled organisms evolving slowly, over millions or billions of years, into eukaryotic organisms there is no valid reference to the evolution of cell nuclei, there is no mention of anything that even comes close to it.

if the bible is an "analogy" or "metaphor" for how live evolved chemically, it is a very flawed one.

, into primates and finally into humans. there is no mention of primates becoming humans. At some point there, the first "Human" was born, someone with the ability to self-criticize(IE, consciousness) what if that ability isnt a "have it" or "dont have it" thing, maybe its something that develops gradually, like how with children when they grow up, they gradually get smarter and smarter until they become fully functioning adults who can wipe their own asses.

, and chances are they were born in a jungle-like equitorial area. Boom, you've got Adam in the Garden of Eden. Maybe they were born with the ability to self-criticize but did not, and then a female came along and offered them sour fruit. They ate it, they got sick, and suddenly criticized themself for listening to a woman, and thus the first actually human intelligence was sparked. that is honest to god, the dumbest thing i have ever heard.

if the story of adam and eve is a metaphor for anything, it is a metaphor for intelligence itself. the more intelligent a being is, the more capable of suffering it is. insects can be physically hurt, but it is extremely unlikely that they can experience psychological suffering like humans can.

but that would imply that the universe is god, and evolution is god, which does not fit with the literal interpretation of the bible. the "punishment" of god, for taking the advantages of intelligence, was the requirement to take the disadvantages of intelligence.

You'll note that there is no mention of times between the exodus from the garden and the first major civilization. There are charts of heridity, but we have no idea how long people lived back then. Some people theorize that the biblical "Fruit of Life" was a type of plant that contained a retrovirus that changed the way human tellomeres functioned, effectively extending human life, easily explaining how people back then were claimed to have lived for nearly a thousand years. you should not listen to those people, because they're fucking retarded.

And there is a historical event at some point where the vast majority of the human predecessors were wiped out. This is a fact. It's been proven by heridity. that is correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

Quote:

A paper published in March 2013 determined that, with 95% confidence and that provided there are no systematic errors in the study's data, Y-chromosomal Adam lived between 237,000 and 581,000 years ago.[2] Earlier studies have estimated the date for Y-MRCA as between 60,000[3] and 142,000 years ago.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Quote:

Mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived approximately 200,000 years ago,[3] most likely in East Africa,[4] when Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans) were developing as a population distinct from other human sub-species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

Quote:

The Toba eruption has been linked to a genetic bottleneck in human evolution about 50,000 years ago,[28][29] which may have resulted from a severe reduction in the size of the total human population due to the effects of the eruption on the global climate.[30]

According to the genetic bottleneck theory, between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, human populations sharply decreased to 3,000-10,000 surviving individuals.[31][32] It is supported by genetic evidence suggesting that today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.[33]

Now they don't have any idea how MANY people were left, but it was in the hundreds range. thousands actually. Boom, Noah's Ark. nope. it was a volcano, and a volcanic ice age.

sea levels DROPPED. A few people build boats and escape the floods, again, there were no floods. it was a volcanic ice age. and when they come to land, they're in a place where the old Tree of Life no longer exists, or maybe it was wiped out by the flooding. So people don't live as long, and that brings us to the beginning of the more 'modern' biblical period. there is a theorised source for the "great flood" myth, but it isnot related to a "near extinction"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_ ... hypothesis

Quote:

The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the Black Sea circa 5600 BC due to waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a sill in the Bosporus Strait. The hypothesis made headlines when The New York Times published it in December 1996, shortly before it was published in an academic journal.[1] While it is agreed that the sequence of events described did occur, there is debate over the suddenness, dating and magnitude of the events.

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Now all of that could be true, or it could be total BS. its the latter. But how are you going to prove it? with science. How can you prove that it was random events, and not God, that caused the flood? by looking at the evidence?

i am not disputing the hypothesis that god exists, i am disputing the assertion that the bible is correct.

you cannot prove or disprove god, but you CAN prove or disprove statements made by the bible.

How do you prove that it was evolution, and not God, that caused the first spark of what we define as 'consciousness'? that is a null hypothesis, since "god" cannot be quantified and conciousness has not been quantified.

but i'm not trying to say anything about any "metaphysical" god that is everywhere and nowhere and is all powerful

i'm trying to say that the bible is complete bullshit

i'm trying to say that no all powerful, all knowing god would create the bible as we know it, unless the bible's sole purpose was to mislead humans into murdering each other for god's entertainment.

That's why I decry you. You claim to be a scientist, and yet you speak like a philosopher. people dont listen to scientists, because people are stupid. people listen to philosophers. they dont care about the periodicity of elements, or the mathematical beauty of physics theories, they only care about the philosophical implictions of these discoveries.

i speak like a philosopher when discussing science, for the same reason that parents speak like babies when they talk to their babies.

Do you know what a Sophist is? It's a term from ancient greece, where a specific subset of people attempted to perfect certain schools of rhetoric in order to win arguments. They were criticized by the well known rhetoricians, like Plato and Socrates, because they were immoral. They bragged of winning arguments from a point of weakness, even though they knew they were wrong, while Plato and Socrates and their contemporaries were concerned with discerning truth through their words.

A true scientist knows that it is futile to attempt to prove or disprove the existence of a god or gods, because such creatures lie outside of the realm of science. correct. but the bible has no such immunity. the bible makes claims which CAN be verified, and in every single case, the bible has been proven either wrong, or so incomplete that any truths are incidental. A true scientist keeps philosophy separate from science, a "TRUE SCIENTIST" is someone who has a degree, and does SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. whether they dabble in philosophy is entirely up to them. carl sagan did, neil degrasse tyson does, stephen hawking does, literally every famous scientist ever, has dabbled in philosophy.

philosophy based on science is the only way for scientists to become famous outside of the scientific community. because science cannot positively determine a moral question. actually, in most cases, it can. its called ETHICS, and it is REQUIRED STUDY for undergrad science courses at university. Science is pure, and clean, and by attempting to use it in such a manner you dirty the name of all scientists. science is a method, a method which can be used to verify statements about testable systems. the bible makes many such statements, and has been proven wrong many times.

if christians followed the scientific method, it would take only a SINGLE false prediction for the bible to be completely thrown out. it has not been.



So take your drivel and get it out of here. Nobody wants to hear it, and nobody cares. no. you dont have leg to stand on in accusing me of being unscientific. YOU take YOUR drivel and get it out of here.

Good Day.

I'm kinda surprised that so many people are defending landswimmer. He's not exactly the paragon of mental stability. Oh well. u mad?

Honestly, if you only consider fundamentalist christians to be 'real' christians, you're not being any better than them, at least in some respects. By that same logic, all muslims are fanatical suicide bombers, all jews are greedy, etc. its not a generalisation. "all jews are greedy" and "all muslims are terrorists" are generalisations.

"all christians beleive the literal interpretation of the bible" isnt a generalisation, its a PREREQUISITE for being a christian.

if you dont beleive in the literal interpretation, and you beleive evolution, then you arent a christian.

just like how you cant be a chemist if you dont beleive and understand the foundational theories of modern chemistry

The vast majority of the christians that I know believe in evolution. if they beleive evolution, they are not christians. christians beleive in what the bible says, and it is impossible to beleive in two mutally exclusive things while understanding both. either they dont understand evolution, or they dont understand the bible. I've heard pastors preach about it. and so you know, just how perverted the system has become, that it openly pushes ideas which contradict its foundation. its almost like if the US government had a program to spy on everyone, despite the constitution prohibiting such things. You've gotta remember, christians tend to be conservative, and they tend to elect people even more conservative than them. That led to certain...unfortunate...things(Sorry Galileo!). But eventually they come around. The current gay marriage thing is a big part of that. if a christian supports gay marriage then they are not a real christian. the bible explicitly forbids homosexuality. you cannot "Reinterpret" those passages, you can only ignore them. and ignoring them is not only "unchristian", it is also "unscientific"

Like you said, oftentimes people who claim to be christians don't actually read the bible, or insert their own beliefs into it. YOU ACTUALLY GET THE POINT!

why cant you recognise that it applies to all christians who do not interpret the bible literally?

if there was no garden of eden, there was no original sin, and jesus died for nothing, and "jesus dieing for our sins" is what holds all of christianity together.

removing the literal interpretation of genesis is like removing the main load bearing pylon in a building. the whole thing just collapses.

Pulling from the Gay Marriage example from above, people often use the Sodom and Gomorrah story to say that gay people are sinful, yet it never specifies that they're evil because they're gay; in the context, it makes a lot more sense that they're evil because they want to gang-rape their visitors. Other references to it being an abomination to lie with "Strange Flesh" often translate more accurately to refer to angelic flesh, rather than flesh of the same gender. leviticus is concise and explicit. men who lay with other men must be stoned. whether that is a reference to burying people up to their necks in sand and pelting them with rocks, or smoking marijuana, i do not know. but the bible says it.

and genesis says that everything including humans was created in 7 days. and that completely conflicts with modern science. beleiving the bible prohibits you from being considered a scientifically minded person, and beleiving modern science prohibits you from being a christian.

genesis forms the foundation of christianity, and genesis conflicts with science more than any other part of the bible.

People inserting their own beliefs into the bible.

Regardless, "Having the balls to stand their ground," in the context you're speaking of, is more being obstinate rather than being pure of heart and loving your neighbor as yourself. what, so people cannot do that unless they tie their beleif in god to a book filled with lies and half truths?

Additionally, many historical scientists did not use god exclusively to explain things they couldn't understand; while they might have done that as well, they were also often seen as describing the universe as simple in a way that only god could have created. Being a scientist in no way disallows being a scientist; most scientists from history were devoutly religious. and yet, these words we're written by someone who in his last post, criticised me for bringing philosophy into science

how can you consider the bible to be so important to your faith in god, when you dont beleive half the stuff the bible says?

make up your mind cyg, you cannot say philosophy in science is bad, and then use philosophy in science to try and legitimise faith in the bible.

albert einstein beleived in god, but he thought the bible was a complete load of shit.

anyone who beleives in god, and beleives in modern science, is of the same "religion" as albert einstein.

as science has progressed, more and more scientists have disavowed god, and almost every single one has disavowed the bible. science is not something that began perfect, and that means that later conclusions and more recent trends are far more indicative of truth than historic trends and early ideas.

you arent a real christian if you beleive in evolution, and you arent a real christian if you dont go to church every weekened. there are no real christian scientists. there are plenty of "deist" scientists who beleive in a god, but there are no real christians who are real scientists.

As for the reference towards scientists dealing in "Facts" when they only deal in hypotheses...that is the silliest statement I've heard so far. scientists deal in evidence. Scientists work with facts and theories, scientists work in evidence, theories and hypotheses. they create hypotheses in order to attempt to disprove them. correct. A theory, regardless of the name, is not some amorphous thing that is unproven and unproveable. correct. Much to the contrary, a theory is as close to a fact as science can provide. correct. When you've watched a billion rocks fall, you can come up with something like the Theory of Gravity, that says that things fall when you drop them(much more complicated than that, of course(please don't grab at threads)). correct.

When personal beliefs come into it and starts to interfere with scientific rigor, it steps outside science and becomes pseudoscience. correct.

The thing about the bible is that it gives a lot of info, but there's still plenty that isn't included in the manual. As a gamer, I see things from a gamer's perspective; when I play a game of Age of Empires, the game is much less fun if I use cheat codes to win. When I can carefully, elegantly play the game according to its own rules and win, that's the ideal situation.

That said, it's always fun to spawn a couple hundred machine gun cars and blast my way to victory.

Along the same lines, I feel like god has to have turned off part of his omnipotence at some point in the past, because there's no such thing as free will if you know what will happen in the future. I'm a very strong believer in free will.

But all that tells you is that everyone has their own beliefs even if they're nominally of the same religion.

Like you said, oftentimes people who claim to be christians don't actually read the bible, or insert their own beliefs into it. Pulling from the Gay Marriage example from above, people often use the Sodom and Gomorrah story to say that gay people are sinful, yet it never specifies that they're evil because they're gay; in the context, it makes a lot more sense that they're evil because they want to gang-rape their visitors. Other references to it being an abomination to lie with "Strange Flesh" often translate more accurately to refer to angelic flesh, rather than flesh of the same gender.