Theists explain please?

oh come on - the answer must be in the good book somewhere surely?

Because God did it.

Ivor they dont like science m8,dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

^ apologies to south park :)

It is so unfortunate, that the 2000 year old christian dynasty has been entrenched so deeply into the minds of normal enquiring folk...
Many children believe in santa until they wise up ...
Many adults believe in the 'organised' limitedness of 'religions' until they grow up ...

Bottom line, does it matter what others may say or think?

Love is the 'glue' of life ... enjoy life ... :)

and u say the bible is a book of fantasy!

u just 'accept' this big bang as fact then do you?
and u also just accept scientists theories about time spans of 600-900 million years?
what a load of poppycock..i thought science was all about proving such theories as substantive fact?

I just cannot comprehend how they can fit any religion in with the facts as we know them. Why ''on earth'' would a god create billions of pieces of rock and tonnes of gas tossed amongst the 'heavens' pretty much randomly - and then wait billions of years to create a few molecules of human carbon and millions of different species from the highest peaks to the deepest oceans - all just to make an impression so we can 'praise' him'? Dream on!

carbon dating etc etc

Just answer the question Tony - did your god create all that lot - or just the living creatures on this lonely planet? Don't bother with PMQ type avoidance answers.

it's just dumb humans

possibly one of the oddest things about the human race tbh

to believe in a made up entity with not one thing to suggests its existence

and some of the finest minds have believed in it too

it's no different to believing in santa, elves, goblins and fairies

add the loch ness monster too

just an urban myth

^ I concur :0

its simple to anser ivor
God created the whole lot id imagine, BUT it does mention in genesis about the earth being without form and void, maybe you could in some ways relate this same 'void' witht he rest of the universe?

You also have to remember that with God time doesnt exist..no such thing as waiting billions of years.

In the beginning God....

In the beginning, er...well there was this big bang, like...

christians always contradict themselves but happy with it

theres no way out of it

Progress - you do believe that god created all of it. But god doesn't do 'time' as we understand it.
Where do you get that from?

Tony Broke 08 Jan 20:22

You also have to remember that with God time doesnt exist..no such thing as waiting billions of years.

In the beginning God....

In the beginning, er...well there was this big bang, like...

----------------------------------

And which sounds more ridiculous?

If you are claiming that some supernatural being instigated the creation of the universe, surely the follow-up question is who is this being and who created him? If everything MUST have been created by a creator, then there is no reason God should be immune from the same question. And who created his creator? And his? Ad infinitum.

It might seem unfathomable that the universe should just "exist", but it's far more plausible than the God theory.

'Big Bang'??

Always makes me smile.

And to think these people claim to be scientific.

Smile if you wish - don't you think your god may have created the big bang then?

Ivor you have a fascination with this topic.

I think maybe you want to believe that there's more to this life...?

As for the 'BB', explosions destroy. They do not make things better. Another cornerstone of evolution is mutations. They are overwhelmingly a negative influence on a species and yet evolution depends on them being helpful to improve life. It's just so unscientific.

PMQ's - you are off down a side-road, I'll not follow.
Did your god create the whole lot or not?

I'm not a "Theist" or "Deist" but...

Is this yet another example of the word "science" being used totemically? "They don't like science..." etc.

The second sentence in Genesis ( NOT the start of the Bible, btw...) has "...formless and empty, darkness..." In Hebrew, it's difficult to exaggerate the horror of the words : "TOHU VABOHU". An immense, vast age of TOHU VABOHU is implied. The word or phrase might also be a hapax legomenon, further adding to the mystery.

Time is a physical property of the universe, and God is outside of time. "Where" God is, everything has already happened. God is infinite and self-existent, beyond all space and time.

It might seem unfathomable that the universe should just "exist", but it's far more plausible than the God theory.

they are both very strange

My mate reckons that........Time is a human construct used to keep track of sequential motions in space referenced to repetitive observed motions. Useful for planning and information transfer, it is sometimes considered as if it were a fourth spatial dimension.

Time is usually considered to have three aspects, the past, present and future. These can be considered to correspond to motion of a specific point on a wave front. The past is the total sum of all motions that led to that instantaneous position which we consider the present, and the future is where that wasvefront spot may be considered to go in the next instant, and all the instants which may follow.

The present is the result of a certain sequence of motions, which we call the past, something which no longer exists, but which is, never the less. a "fixed construction." To go back into the past, in a physical sense, would require a retrograde repetition of all of these motions, a set of motions which would increase instant by instant in a huge geometric progression. Our "wave front" would have to move backwards in a perfect reversal of the sequence by which it had previously moved forward. Even were this possible, one can see, that, since the direction has been reversed, what was "back" is now "forward," the wave front, while "retracing the past" would actually by "moving into the future." In trying to go into the past, a "time-traveller" would actually be attempting to create a future which was a reversal of the past.

I have different ideas but unfortunately insuffucient time to explain them.

It seems they cannot, as a politician, use the words YES or NO - as that would cause them further difficulties - so off we go around the roundabouts and down the side roads.
Did he did or did he didn't?

Brendan is right - any answer is going to be peculiar.

Try this : write a self portrait, describing your physical self and your personality. It's going to be very peculiar. As we all know, we're all peculiar bast@rds on this forum, and on this earth. "Speak for yourself, Vel," I don't hear you say,"Strike a light, guv'nor!" To which I reply:

BEETROOT. REMOTE CONTROL. WHELK. JOLLY MONKEY. Yes, it's all very peculiar.

But it's not about the big numbers and quivering galaxies, Oh Atheist! Oh no! It's about YOU, here and now...and your position as a "thinking reed" in this vast, immense creation...

snippet from the Seth material...

Did he did or did he didn't?

what was the question?

Is that it? Is that all there is to it??

Ivor the answer for the purpose of this thread is yes. but not the personified God/s that are used by organised religions for power and control, but a conciousness of which we are a part. Funnily enough our scientists have just recently agreed that matter is formed by conciousness. but as I said before I am not the one to explain this. I have read 100s of books over 40+ years on the subject and the Seth material is the most concise that I have found.

"Seth" thumper!

Lol, Velasquez, some people prefer the Michael publications, each to their own.

Alan Partridge : "God is an intelligent gas."

Alan may not be wrong, if he is right, it has to be laughing Gas.

In which case, O2LOL.

if the universe is a mere few thousand years old, how do you explain the existance of ancient creatures such as dinosaurs

^existence

It's NOT a mere few thousand years old! Who's saying it is? Tammy Faye Bakker ?

Velasquez, the 10 years 1967/77 spent in converting God to "Natural Gas" was the ruination of this country,imo..............good talking to you, gn and gl.

I've just read it. Oh I think it was a different but related thread on here. Evolution/Creation argument.

Very droll fox! LOL.

Good night! Funnily enough, I used to be a removal man in the 80s when lots of cookers were "converted", etc...we used to joke about that in Glasgow, with the Old Firm divide - "Aw, it's aw-right, that cooker's a good Tim (Catholic)..."

Okay it seems 'they' are happy with a YES - their god created the whole lot. WHEN is far more difficult for them than 'us' of course - it matters not whether 3000, 30,000, 300,000, 3million, 3 billion or whatever.
Anyway - it's not going to be a difficulty for them to accept a big-bang theory or any other of their choosing then is it - 'cos god could just as easily have created the big-bang or other?
Can I have another 'yes' please?

Yes .

Cor! Phwooaaar!

Can we have Molly Bloom's soliloquy at this point, please?

"His tongue licked at my breasts as I opened a tin of spam and I thought YES I WILL, I will say yes to yer yes and you'll say yes to my yessy yes ya big cheesy basturt I will say yes to some gold top tomorrow with my eyes yes and my wet wet lips in the mornin' cor blimey YES !!!!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E-_DdX8Ke0

The brilliant Carl Sagan on God/gods and the origin of the universe.

Keep taking the pills Vel.

Whither Carl? Did they blast his ashes into space? That "Contact" was some movie, eh?

How original, Ivor.

No - you get the award for originality!
''BEETROOT. REMOTE CONTROL. WHELK. JOLLY MONKEY. Yes, it's all very peculiar.''

Yes.

Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and were sinners.

What a way to suppress the people and keep them under control of the priests. Vel is scared of knowledge or he will go to hell.

They didn't eat from the "Tree of Knowledge" !

And they weren't "sinners" - Eve didn't "sin" !

Not seen Contact, Vel. Don't watch many films.

Sagan was the finest communicator of science I have ever seen. Interestingly, he was an agnostic when it comes to God/gods. On atheism, he said: "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid."

One of his gifts was the power with which he communicated his tremendous sense of awe and wonder at the majesty of the cosmos (and at our ability to even begin to understand it).To many, including me, his words are pretty close to a religious/spiritual experience. They make me feel both humble and insignificant and yet part of something amazing.

$2,000,000 advance for Sagan in 1981 - not bad for a Science Fiction book.

Phillip K. D1ck could only dream of that.

lol

that and electric sheep...

"Cosmos" was terrific, though Carl's voice was quite soporific. I've got a DVD of "Cosmos."

Poor PKD, slogging his guts out in a wee hut, day after day, for a pittance!

If there is a creator he is very benign, I will count myself an atheist until I see any proof of its existence.

From the first pages of Cosmos:

"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us

An Agnostic doesn't know what side of the fence he sits on, I think Carl was most definite an Atheist. I've never seen him quote anywhere he was an Agnostic.

And all Atheists are Agnostics to a certain extent.

It's all Greek to me.

Agnostics are believers waiting for the right explanation.They always find it.

For yer actual SF thrills, I'd have to prefer Olaf Stapledon, CS Lewis, and Phillip K. D1ck...and Kilgore Trout...

Wonder what he would have thought about SETI now

Kilgore Trout would have nodded sagely.

oval, from what I have seen he considered himself an atheist earlier in life (for example, he wrote an article in 1980 on the subject) but in an interview in 1996 he declared himself agnostic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#cite_ref-32

I've no doubt life is teeming in the Universe (maybe even on Jupiter's Moon Europa) but intelligent life is indeed a rarity.

Yes - excuse me while I draw a graph.

hemingway, Fitzgerald, Trout.Great authors whatever the genre

You should read his book "Billions and Billions" on what he speaks of his final days. Anne Druyan recounts that there was no last minute prayers to any god and that he died peacefully. I read a lot of his stuff and nowhere does he say what his beliefs are but he definitely errs towards no god.

Yes, Dobbo - I've always seen you as a cross between the lead singer in The Wurzels and Jay Gatsby. How many shirts did you say you owned?

Dobbo - tell me you won't go out like Rocky Sullivan in "Angels With Dirty Faces" !

Tell me you WON'T, Dobbo - NOT EVEN FOR THE KIDS!!

He didn't do it for the kids. He was yellow. A yellow rat

oval, not that it matters, I came across this page from the planetary society (which I think he founded or co-founded) which also states Sagan was an agnostic:
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/space_information/review_sagan_varieties.html

It looks a good book.

Yes, he gripped the radiator, Dobbo.

Slarty, I always thought it was a collection of his other works but will check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLVB3ukGVTk

Ann Sheridan - a girl of the shadows!

This is where you are NOW.

http://i50.tinypic.com/2irlm5c.jpg

I don't. I'm a Magarathean.

Some interesting questions for non-believers here:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aiia/cosmosallthereis.html

11.Without a personal Creator-God, how are you anything other than the coincidental, purposeless miscarriage of nature, spinning round and round on a lonely planet in the blackness of space for just a little while before you and all memory of your futile, pointless, meaningless life finally blinks out forever in the endless darkness?

:^0 questions like these are bit stupid

Ivor, and anyone else.

Your answers please.

Our universe is thought to have begun as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, infinitely dense, something - a singularity.
Did time, matter, energy and space exist before the big bang?Where did the singularity come from?
Why did the singularity appear?

Who knows, rayzor? We may never know the answers to these and many other deep questions. That doesn't make it logical to assume a creator God or gods. But even if we do draw that conclusion it doesn't get us any further to any useful answer. Afterall, as Sagan says in the youtube link I posted on this thread, the question then becomes who or what created the God or gods (rather than who or what created the Cosmos). Assuming a God or gods just adds a superfluous layer of obscurity to the search.

everything breaks down at the singularity. It goes beyond current understanding.

lots of 