I know for a fact that I don't take the Bible as seriously as you do. I think it is inspiring, and can be instructive in some areas of life, but I don't see it as the end-all authority. I'm curious about the concept of "Best Possible World". That isn't a Biblical idea, so where did it come from? It's interesting to think about, but I think it's a bit of a cop-out. For one, it kind of strips God of his omnipotence, huh? Even He wasn't capable of creating a world without all this suffering? If you take the Bible very seriously, the predictions in Revelation depict a paradise earth with us all living in peaceful harmonious happiness forever....if that can/will be achieved, why didn't we just start out that way instead of the big cosmic "game" ('let's see if they'll eat the apple' sort of seems like entrapment to me.)

Also, I have a major problem with the story of Job. In it, God seems to be playing chicken with the Devil, using poor Job and all his family as the game pieces. Do you see Job as a parable or a historical account? Either way, the story itself is disturbing to me in a huge way. I'd never engage in any such activities that would do so much harm to my child, yet God who loves us more completely than any other is willing to torture Job almost to death, and does let his whole family get killed. If Satan is the one "doing" all these things to Job, but (omnipotent) God isn't stopping them, then He's kind of an accomplice, right?

I love how the modern enlightened atheist thinks that only modern Christians realize the bible is not meant to be taken literally.

David~ I'll leave you to reply to adrian_indy. I didn't quote him on purpose because I didn't want to address my statement to him. My statement was to you regarding the comment he made. You will not be able to talk logic about Christianity to some people. I believe you will be able to do justice to the claim of revisionist history.

David~ I'll leave you to reply to adrian_indy. I didn't quote him on purpose because I didn't want to address my statement to him. My statement was to you regarding the comment he made. You will not be able to talk logic about Christianity to some people. I believe you will be able to do justice to the claim of revisionist history.

Do not not allude to what I said and then debate me via third person. Either debate me or ignore my posts, you can not do both.

I'm going to have to agree with this, Patti. Either debate with Adrian or don't. Don't ask a third party to do it for you.

I can make a statement regarding his comment without debating with him. That's why I didn't quote him. I left it to the OP because he's been doing a good job in this debate. I wasn't wanting a third party to debate FOR me, just leaving it to him to continue. I will refrain from commenting on anything Adrian posts again, even if it wasn't my intent to debate with him directly. I got you.

*sigh* I just want people to be able to debate without being outright nasty to each other. And since I had to 'mod' a reported post, that is how I was attempting to handle the issue.

Is mine the first thread to have a reported post? That would be so cool...

The book is quite correct because it said the universe had a beginning? You just validated every other religion on the planet, so I guess you must be a pagan. And sorry, it is not logical to state in short, since we exist, there must be a god. What we see is people who want to believe in something having their biblical stories soundly crushed and instead of moving on trying to revise the outdated hebrew holy books to fit modern times.

For all the anthropological effort to fit any number of beliefs into the ‘ex nihilo’ box, I have rarely seen one that came even moderately close to the concept. They all have extensive pre-existent worlds, activities, some use “rivers of chaos”, etc. Genesis starts with “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It even uses a word for ‘create’ that only God ever uses.
As to the “we are here, so God must exist,” a reverse objection (called the anthropic principle) is used by physicists and materialist philosophers. I think both are legitimate statements, consistent with logic, and must be examined by the merits of their individual premises.

So God uses natural disasters for his own purpose? We really need to get this guys a good cell phone plan because his messages to humanity seem to kill a lot of innocent people indiscrimately.

I believe I said “could have been,” and was clearly referring to the circumstances in which they appear in Scripture as God’s special will. To see “could have been” and assume “must always happen for the same reasons” shows, I think, a blind spot.

The world wide flood in the Bible is actually one of the things I find to probably be accurate, just maybe no the time frame peope have presented it to have happened in. Almost every ancient culture has an ancient flood myth of biblical proportion, even predating the hebrews. Some of these were completely independent of the middle east and had no knowable contact with the hebrews meaning they witnesssed it as well. We will probably never know because sadly enough, many scientists can be as close minded and stubborn as any clergy and any evidence of world wide floods would have met with resistance from people afraid to validate the bible.

Interesting! I have heard a few different things about global floods in other beliefs, but have never done anything thorough work on it. Who outside of the near east mentions it?

Once again, as logical as an argument that since we exist and the universe had a beginning means we must have a creator seems, it's not. You are basically taking things that science hasn'd discovered yet and attributing that absence of discovery as proof of god. Saying that since the Universe had a beginning therefore we had a creator is no different than cavemen assuming that lighting strikes was a thunder god yelling. It's just more sophisticated.

You presume an argument from ignorance, where indeed it is an argument for epistemic honesty. To assume that whatever data is left unknown must fall into line with one’s personal beliefs is not a valid position.
A Paleolithic man and a modern man meet in the deserts of Nevada. At just that moment, lightning strikes the ground between them. Stunned, the paleo man thinks to himself (with whatever version of propositional concepts he had), “I don’t understand this thing, it is caused by the Gods”. Modern man, however, who did not take enough science to describe lightning, thinks “ At least I understand this better than paleo man, who likely thinks this was caused by a God! I know it to be merely natural phenomenon.”
Who is right? As it happens, paleo has the edge this time. It just so happens that they had stumbled into the desert at just the moment that researchers were using a Teramobile to hit clouds with a terawatt laser, with the intent of generating lightning strikes (this is a real device). Paleo man is right that A) he does not understand the phenomenon that it is caused by a will, but he misapprehends whose will. Modern man, however, is wrong in assuming that, because science has described situation in which nature can do a thing, that the phenomenon must always be caused in that fashion. As such, he utterly misapprehends this situation, but grants himself a superior grasp that his companion.
As such, I submit that my arguments (at the beginning of the thread), are positions of what might be, consistent with logic and evidence. I think they are strong, but not certain. I do not think that you can say the same about your assertions, or your presumptions.

One day, a decade, a century, a millenia from now (if we have nuked ourselves) we will know how the universe started. We've figured out so much so far, it's a reasonable bet. And guess what, two people like us will be debating what happened BEFORE the universe, and before that, and before that, and before that. And we will keep discovering. But what we will never find is tangible proof of a god, therefore it is not logical to assume that God is the reason for all of this.

I will take this one point at a time:
1) The debate is, more or less, what happened before the universe began. That is, as time is supposed to have started at the beginning of the universe, it is about what was causally prior to the first event (if anything), and what was capable of initiating a first event. I don’t happen to care how far they drag back the first event (as an infinite series of prior events is impossible, they will eventually find a limit as to how far back they can speculate), the question is about what is capable, from outside a causally bound universe, to be a first cause.
2) It is helpful to remember that science never speculates about design or guidance. That is, science cannot look at a thing (like evolution), as say “this is entirely and completely unguided.” That is naturalism, not science, and is a metaphysical or philosophical add on. Neither the theory of evolution nor of current cosmology can say “these are completely attributable to blind forces.” My prior example is an extreme version of why, but let us just say that it is beyond the purview of science, and is an issue of metaphysics.
3) My presentations were not “assumptions.” They followed the clear rules of formal logic, and the conclusions followed the premises. As you have not undermined the premises (none of the premises have to be sure, just possible), the arguments stand. To assert that only science can provide evidence for a premise is to misunderstand science, and logic. Most of the assertions of atheists, in dealing with science and religion, are actually assumptions of naturalism. That is, they require metaphysical (and unproveable, but logically defensible) add-ons, though atheists are often utterly ignorant of that fact. As such, unless you can cope with the use of formal logic (not used in the colloquial sense), you will struggle to make your points, at least beyond bombast.