Ok, addressing this: your cat: so if you take both the before and after diagnostics into the hospital and ask a non-religious medical professional, he will happily sign a paper that says “it is 100% sure that the cat was healed through a m…iracle by god, there is no other humanly possible explanation”? i highly doubt that. not having an explanation for something is not the same as having ready-made miracles. see, it is not enough to say “aha! you don’t know! it must be a miracle!”, but YOU are the one who should be able to prove it, because you’re making the claims. it’s called burden of proof.

You say that miracles have to be “proven”….why? You see, you have your very, very limited perspective on life. Everything has to fit into your small-minded boxed thinking. The very definition of a miracle is that it cannot be explained using scientific measures. That is a reality you refuse to accept because that’s outside your box. Whether you accept it or not, you have built a limited box that you can control and feel comfortable in, and anything that challenges that and doesn’t fit into YOUR definitions and YOUR parameters is wrong, stupid, foolish and those who live outside of your boxed-in way of thinking are too. You ask how you have judged…nearly everything you said in the most recent exchanges about others is a rash judgement. You, bottom line, call me stupid. That is making a judgement. You say I am foolish to believe in anything I cannot see. That is a judgement. A judgement says that this is right and this is wrong. You say belief in god is wrong, foolish and stupid. So, you have entered into the judgement room based on your reality which is anything that is not scientifically measurable is wrong and stupid. Your standard of truth is science, period. I know you will say that I have judged the muslim faith, now. You are right, I have. Does this mean I hate the people who adhere to this faith? Absolutely not. Do I believe they are stupid or foolish? Absolutely not. Do I believe you are stupid or foolish? Absolutely not. My deepest heart’s desire is to see them, you, and everyone through the eyes of the faith that my God put in my heart by His grace, and that is the eyes of love and mercy, seeing them as He sees them and loving them with the love of Jesus. I don’t judge you, Bence. I am looking at you objectively…this is what you think and believe and it is the man-centered, atheistic, naturalistic mind-set of so many who have shut-down the spiritual part of their beings. Personally, I love science and am completely fascinated by findings and discoveries…sometimes I wish I would have pursued medicine…and I’m excited when there are new discoveries because of MY starting point. I see it as the beautiful unfolding of God’s creation and creativity. You, on the other hand, are confronted with someone like me, who thinks a bit differently than you, and you judge me, calling me foolish and stupid for believing something that you don’t. I think it is fabulous that you have such a keen, astute mind; do I wish your spirit-man was more alive and awake and open to that which may never be scientifically explained? Sure, but I don’t call you foolish or stupid because you are not there.

This is the same thing i’ve been mentioning throughout our debate. just because our science doesn’t know of something does not imply that that something h…as to be the handiwork of god. it just implies that we are unable to find the probably non-miraculous explanation just yet.

of course i admit that today’s science does not know all the answers, but assuming (let alone being 110% sure) that god is involved in every phenomenon which we don’t know much (or anything) about is, for lack of a better word, dumb, because just look at history: there were quite a number of things that were attributed to god, until they were revealed to be natural phenomena, devoid of any divine component.

again, just because we don’t have answers to everything doesn’t mean that the answers are divine. they MIGHT be divine, but see, there’s the difference between you and me. i say i don’t know (because, let’s face it, no one does), you say you know “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that it was your god. now, in actuality, you don’t “know”, you simply “believe”. i agree on something not being able to have come from nothing, but that’s not “short-changing science”, but saying “science does not know”. again, and i can’t stress this enough: you. don’t. know. either. this is something we can hopefully agree on, otherwise we can stop going around in circles right now. you being SURE is just you having faith, nothing else. do you know how ridiculous “i, as a human being, am *TOTALLY SURE* how the universe came into existence” sounds?

probably no human being will ever know how it came to exist, let alone how matter itself came about. the ones who say they do know, are lying or are delusional. there is no other explanation. oh wait, there is. god. but that assumption is just a BELIEF that people have, and in no way verifiable other than religious people having a certain feeling in themselves, namely, faith, which is, by definition, is believing in something that you have no evidence of, thus faith alone can not be accepted as proof.

bottom line: if we can not agree on the following statement being true, than there is no point in continuing our discussion about whether the universe was created with intent or was simply a coincidence:
no human being knows how the universe, or matter in the universe came to exist (we can speculate of course while having science or religion on our sides, but that’s another story; right now, no human knows for sure).

on another note, i admit looking up those scientists, yes i found that they are indeed actual scientists, but the rest of the scientific community heavily opposes their creationist views, because they consider creationism a belief (no surprise there), for there is not even remotely enough empirical evidence to support it.

I  was doing a lot of thinking (and praying ) about our discussion and for you this morning. I want to present some other thoughts a bit outside of the scientific realm for you to consider, which I myself have had to consider over the course of my lifetime. So here goes:

One of the observations I have made about your ‘arguments’ is that you are starting from the point of “There is no God, there is no design to the universe, to earth, or to human beings. Everything is randomly put together by random chance events in the universe over and unknown period of time. Thus, life, human beings, relationships, the earth, the galaxy, the universe, births, deaths, music, art, and even science have absolutely no meaning whatsoever.” This is the presuppositions from which you are working if you truly claim to be an atheist. However, you yourself do not live your life according to your own presuppositions. I just look at your profile picture and I see design. You look great in your picture. Your clothing is put together well, it matches and you carefully chose the colors, textures, and designs for that particular outfit. You yourself are and have within you the ability to design and to create beauty in the way that you look on the outside. Similarly, if you have a look at a tree. There is nothing ‘random’ about a tree. In fact, that it came from a seed, which had to go into the ground and die and be transformed by forces working in nature upon its chemical makeup, and if those forces were not in perfect sync, it would not have sprouted and become a tree. Then it sprouts from the ground, develops bark, limbs, leaves and whatever ‘fruit’ that particular tree produces. It grows and has a design to it that is unique to itself. Even the smallest things in the universe, the atoms and molecules are perfectly designed to function in very particular and meticulous ways. One glitch in these and you have issues or problems.

Now coming from your perspective, you must, if you are to be true to your presuppositions, say that all of these things are completely random occurrences in a meaningless universe that just happened to come together as they have to form all of these intricate designs completely by chance, 100% chance if you are true to what you say you believe, and therefore have zero meaning because it is all completely random and meaningless. For you to be true to your presuppositions, you must conclude that all things are random, all things are completely meaningless and there is no design whatsoever to anything or anyone, and so whatever anyone says or does is perfectly fine because there is no standard whatsoever for anything at all. Basically, I say this because to be logical in your reasoning, one must say that meaning comes from meaning. Something meaningful cannot proceed logically from meaninglessness. Similarly, design comes from design. Design cannot proceed from chaos.

You may argue that if your room is chaotic, that you can bring design to it. That’s because inside of you, you have planted as a part of who you are the ability to design. That ability came from another ability to design, and so on and so on. There has to be a design starting point for there to be design. At the heart of what you are trying to do here, Bence, is to disprove meaning and design when both are all around you and within you as well. It boils down to each person’s point of reference. Yours is nothingness. Therefore, if you are to be true to what you say you believe, then you must conclude that nothing has come from nothing.

However, you are here. You are something. You are someone, with a brain that is highly intelligent and capable of thinking and feeling and loving and processing and putting ideas together so that they make sense. Basic laws prove that something must come from something. But even more significantly, you must also, with your presuppositions, conclude that there is no morality and whatever anyone wants to do is fine because there is no order nor design nor standard. Now the logical conclusion to that is that you don’t want to acknowledge that you are morally responsible because then you would be held accountable for your actions. As long as there is no designer, then you do not have to live according to any standards whatsoever. The very fact that you choose to live by certain standards automatically shows that deep within you is the designer’s handprint on your heart and mind. Taking it further, you cannot say that something is either good or evil either. To say that something is good logically implies that there is some ultimate standard of good by which we are able to judge something as good. The same holds true for evil. To call something evil logically implies that there is a standard of evil by which we judge something as evil. For me, as you know, the ultimate “standard bearer” is who I call God, who is outside of time, space and even the universe. You want to say that this is an “easy way out”, but ultimately, you don’t want to be held accountable for your own life or decisions. By accepting that there could be a God who has authored and designed everything in the universe, you would then be responsible for your actions, choices and behaviors, which is the logical and natural conclusion to a designed universe. You may now argue that you are responsible and you do take responsibility; then you have just contradicted your own presuppositions and you are not living according to your belief system because to be responsible logically implies that there is a standard of responsibility by which “being responsible” is measured. Botoom line, is this: according to your beliefs and presuppositions, you must conclude that everything is absolutely and completely meaningless and pointless; I conclude based on my presuppositions that everything has meaning and everything has a point. One view produces death and one produces life. Once again, I look forward to hearing your thoughts as this entire discussion has pushed me to new levels and challenged my heart and mind in tremendously positive ways. I have had to examine what I believe and why I believe it. I hope it has produced the same result in you.

This is a very interesting debate, and I hope none of you will mind if I bring my own thoughts into it and join the fun

With so many forms of religion and spirituality out there, you can truly find the divine wherever you look. It is only a question of what you consider to be divine. So where do we start looking? Do we look at the endless expanses of our comprehension, such as eternal, timeless, out of time, endless universe, forever, etc. Things that are really hard to comprehend for us in my opinion due to the fact that we are limited by time. We could also look for divinity in the machine, the machine in this case being science and the laws of science and the world. If all the laws that make our world go would become know, would that make the machine not divine? In my opinion it wouldn’t, we would just understand it. Understanding something doesn’t make something less divine, it’s not a about knowing or not knowing, proof or no proof. It’s about having something to believe in.

Now I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t make a comment on the faith healers thing. Truly there are probably more conn artists out there than actual healers and I also find that people have higher expectations than what can be actually achieved. All methods of healing using divine energies that I am familiar with work by healing through the soul and thus giving the recipient a stronger will to fight their illness, thus speeding up the natural healing process. Such methods do not replace going to the doctor, always go to the doctor, faith healing works after you got treated by the doctor to help you get back on your feet faster.
Consider it a mind trick if you want, even if it is just that it does work and by doing so brings happiness and hope to people. Or could it be the power of love? The fact that a friend or maybe a stranger is there with you caring enough to help you get better? This brings us to love again. You love your girlfriend, no doubt about that, but I’m sure you also love your parents (at least I hope) and some of your friends. Sure it’s a different kind of love, but it is love. A kind of love that is not influenced by the chemical reactions and the mating instinct. I guess that, for me, that means that there is love that is not chemical or physical.

Okay, I know there was more that I wanted to add here, but reading the entire debate and trying to keep my thoughts in order through it all wasn’t easy, so I’ll add more as the convo keeps going on

Pro: The fact that i had to “accept” and “cope” with the conclusions indicates that reality is frightening. It is for everyone who isn’t religious. knowing that your life probably means nothing great, that you’re not part of some giant plan, that your existence is merely an accident, and when you die, you will simply cease to exist, no heaven, no angels, just the nothingness you came from, is pretttty frightening.Still, i prefer to live a life in the real world, than to comfort myself with a delusion, that, by the way, will always prevail, because people will never accept that one day, everything as they know it will simply cease to exist, and there’s nothing that they can do about it.

Answering your question: there could be something bigger, of course. no one will ever know. Hell, there could be millions of gods playing cricket with galaxies. no mocking intended, i just wanted you to see what “can” be. anything what you can believe. still, you (or many people) believing something doesn’t make it real. people make gods, not the other way around.

Intelligent design. oh, how i love this topic. Are you familiar with the infinite monkey theorem?
Briefly: suppose you have a monkey, an infinite amount of time, and a typewriter. if you make the monkey type randomly for eternity, it will eventually type a body of works, all the works of Shakespeare for example.
if someone happens to born when the monkey starts typing say Hamlet, that person would swear that the monkey is in fact intelligent, that there’s no way that this is a coincidence. yet, it is, and it is because time is infinite, and pretty much what can happen, will happen.
same thing with the universe(s).

no, there’s probably no intelligent creator out there, we probably only have come a looong time since the beginning of time, and many (as in really many) things happened before this universe came into existence.
people are simply too primitive to understand “beginning of time” for example, and that’s why we have to fabricate imaginary beings to fill these holes, because not knowing bugs humans.

Con: Thanks but I must disagree. It’s the “not knowing” as you say which is a clear, scientific indication of the greater knowing that each one of us knows, and that is that there is a greater design and a great Designer. You and others like you have settled for the “lesser” reality when the greater is yet to be known. But you have accepted what you can see and figure out with your limited human reasoning when the reality is that the unseen world is bigger and much more powerful than the seen world. This is something that really messes you and other people up who believe that only what can be seen, felt and touched physically is really real. If I asked you to explain scientifically what personality is, you couldn’t with any sort of solid scientific basis whatsoever. Same with love. You can say it is a chemical reaction, but in reality, what you “feel” in your body is the chemical reaction called reproductive organs wanting to reproduce and be satisfied. That is not love. You did not address my question about increasing number of high-level scientists who are realizing that there must be a creator. What do you as one who truly has no ultimate purpose in life deal with these colleagues of yours who have been at it much longer than you have and have reached different conclusions? Or, are you limiting yourself to the scientists who agree with your standpoints? You see, I have heard all of your theories and studied these things myself. But, in reality, my question for you would be have you ever honestly and forthrightly asked the unseen creator to reveal himself to you? You see, I do look at science, but you seem to refuse to take an honest look at how science is a reflection of something much bigger. You seem to have limited yourself to the physical manifestation of science rather than recognizing that it cannot answer every question. To me, the saddest part of atheism is that everything is absolutely meaningless….all relationships are meaningless, all work is meaningless, when in reality, every person on the planet knows innately that life has meaning or else you wouldn’t get up in the morning and go and do whatever it is you do. That fact in itself points to something beyond the chemical combinations firing in our brains. You have never died…how do you know that we simply cease to exist? You believe that because that’s what scientists have said is true. There are plenty of examples of people who have quite literally died and come back to life to say that there is life after death…but scientists don’t give those any credit because it would blow their theories about life being completely meaningless. On yet another note, why should we even look for cures for diseases? Why not simply die and let people die because life is meaningless and we go to a non-existent state anyway, so why even try to have life? There is something IN us, Bence, that screams that there is meaning and it is much bigger than we want to give credit to because we have a very false understanding of the One who created it all. By the way, I am enjoying our intelligent, non-combative discussion here. I always appreciate it when adults can dialogue without offense.