my favorite theist answer is "We are not supposed to know everything" yet they expect me, the atheist, to explain how the world formed when they cant even tell me why dinsaurs aren't in the bible.
2007-05-30 03:55:01
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answer #1
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answered by Cynthia L 2
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i'm undecided which argument objectively qualifies. yet subjectively, the argument from awareness, weighs maximum. in the past my conversion i replaced into an extreme skeptic. commencing from a universe created from rely/skill and not the rest I basically could no longer take the plunge to extensive unsleeping awareness being stable. Kant's Critique had exceedingly lots rendered reason incapable of grasping fact as this is. technological information to me replaced into in basic terms a complicated interest of trial and blunder without ontologically fixed foundation or conclusions. What we call awareness replaced into to me basically convention. I admit i replaced into naive. The susceptible anthropic theory tells me that our very life proves we do have get right of entry to to the genuine international-- awareness in case you will. yet I hadn't seen it then. Inanimate rely growing to be to be self-conscious? And, relatively, each little thing else we are and do hangs from that. If it got here about via basically actual methods, no person has a clue what the mechanism must be. yet that doesn't worry me. i do unlike God of the gaps arguments. rather, I basically have not got faith in success. And enable's settle for it, possessing awareness is the equivalent of triumphing the nicely-known lottery. that form of accident journeys my B.S.ometer. i could by no potential purchase it everywhere else in my life. Why ought to i purchase it right here? no longer a very astute philosophical argument. yet I nevertheless locate it compelling.
2016-11-23 17:52:44
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answer #2
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answered by Anonymous
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This may ramble a bit (sorry about that!) but as a mathematician I often wonder what "evidence" is supposed to mean in questions like this one. I know, for example, that it is important to distinguish between "necessity" on the one hand, and "in need of explanation" on the other hand. So, for example, while there is a formula for solving quadratic equations, which every high school student learns in algebra, there is no formula for the general quintic. It follows, therefore, that while god (if god were to exist) might know the solution to any quintic god would not be able to write down a general solution. Every quintic has a solution (in fact it has 5 of them and for the same reason that a quadratic has 2). This is a necessary feature of algebra; that is to say, it is necessarily true once one discovers algebra. Does it make sense for someone say, "Well, do you have any evidence for that?" Well, no there is no "evidence" that a formula for solving the general quintic does not exist. Indeed, it doesn't really make sense in this case to ask for evidence: the assertion that there is no formula for solving the general quintic is still true because it is necessary.
There are lots of situations where asking for evidence seems to make good sense. Physics, chemistry, biology, botany and astronomy are good cases in point. It makes sense to ask, for example, why does the DNA in my mitochondria come only from my mother and not my father. There is something very different about this question than the question about quintics, and it seems to be a type where asking for evidence seems warranted. Physicists, too, are bent on providing explanations of this latter sort, and they are careful when they meet questions of the former sort not to confuse the two. So, for example, good physicists will happily assert that everything we see around us is subject to needing an explanation: people, trees, water, the solar system, galaxies, sand, bacteria, states of mind; all stand in reference to this latter sort of questioning. This happens in the Astronomy section of Y!A all the time. "Why is the sky blue?" shows up with annoying regularity! Why is the sky blue and not red? Why are all large solid bodies roughly spherical in shape? Why is some sand black and not white?
Care needs to be taken when lumping these sorts of things into systems because not every attribute of a planet, say, becomes an attribute of a solar system. No good physicist would assert that a wall made of small bricks was, therefore, a small wall; but it would still be a brick wall. A pile of cheerios on a table isn't an "empty" pile when the cheerios are eaten. None of us would assert --except as a joke-- that the world is littered with empty piles of cheerios, or $10.00 dollar bills. So, it makes sense to ask "How did this pile of cheerios get here" without the answer being "Well, the pile was always here, it just has cheerios now, whereas before it was just an empty pile." The pile itself is susceptible to the same sort of questioning that the sky is.
At each step in this process of asking questions we always ask for a set of reasons, sometimes evidential sometime not, that gives us some explanation for what we see. When do we ever stop? When we cite reasons which are perforce necessary. For example, there is no equation from which one can derive the positions of the planets of our solar system. This is called, in the parlance of mathematicians, the "n-body" problem. If the solar system were composed of exactly two bodies which were themselves perfectly rigid spheres, and if they are reasonably small and at a great distance from each other, then there is such an equation which was derived by Newton. But when the number of bodies is greater than 2 then no such formula exists. There are *numeric* solutions which can be quite good over long spans of time; but no general solution. No physicist searches for one; what's the point? Likewise, absolute zero is what it is; it follows when one discovers physics.
So, when one faces all that physicists, biologists, psychologists, chemists, geologists and astronomers have discovered it does indeed make sense to ask, "Is there a reason for all of that?" One can, of course, choose not to face the question, one can minimized the question, but those are personal issues of integrity; the question still makes sense to ask.
The answer to that question is what Muslims, Jews, Christians, Taoists, Wiccans, and the like refer to when they use the term "god." As a consequence, there is no "evidence" for god, nor does god need further explanation. Quadratic equations have a general formula for their solution, the n-body problem is not solvable, god is the answer to a particular question and there is no "going beyond" these. There is no good way to answer the question, "Well, can you give me some evidence that every quintic has a solution without an explicit formula?" It follows from a whole way of thinking that it is so. The same is true for god. As I pointed out, god is the answer to, god follows from, a whole system of questioning.
Which brings me back in a very round about way to your question. What exactly do *you* mean when asking for evidence that god exists?
HTH
Charles
2007-05-30 04:57:11
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answer #3
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answered by Charles 6
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The existence of the universe is not based on faith. It is hard reality. And science dictates that anything existing must have had an origin, and that any event that occurs must have had a cause. Until science can propose a viable theory as to the cause of the universe's initial appearance where nothing had existed before, it looks like God is the only logical choice.
2007-05-30 03:59:19
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answer #4
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answered by PaulCyp 7
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It obviously takes faith to believe in the unseen. However the evidences of creation are endless
*edit* evidence for creation can be seen in something like the human eye. Study the complexities of the eye, and if you still think it just happened I don't know what to say to you
2007-05-30 03:52:53
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answer #5
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answered by Anonymous
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The Bible says God exists. In science, any explanation is possible until proven otherwise. Jesus did rise from the dead, this has never been refuted. I've seen attempts, and I've seen them fail. As a result of this event, we know that Jesus is the Messiah and so His claims about God are true. Thus, God exists and the Bible is His Word.
2007-05-30 04:16:13
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answer #6
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answered by STEPHEN J 4
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When will an atheist make a working model of random amino acids that spontaneously become life?
Of course it takes faith, you door knob. I get a real kick at all the moronic arguments that are presented by Atheists and Christians. I find both groups very entertaining.
2007-05-30 04:07:28
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answer #7
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answered by Anonymous
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Kind of misses the point doesn't it. We aren't in a court of law, there is no "smoking gun" evidence to show you, if there was, what use would faith be. God wants us to seek Him and rewards our faith with the truth of His existence.
2007-05-30 03:53:18
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answer #8
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answered by Scott B 7
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Their usual response to such a request is to try and obfuscate by asking for a definition of evidence.
2007-05-30 03:53:48
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answer #9
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answered by Anonymous
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They cannot. Every argument in favor for the belief in the god of the bible is either faith-based or relies on at least one logical fallacy. EVERY SINGLE CLAIM. I guarantee!!
2007-05-30 03:54:08
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answer #10
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answered by Anonymous
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