Let's cut to the chase. Do you have any evidence?

[no evidence no belief]

I feel like we've been beating around the bush for... 6000 years!

Can you please either provide some evidence for your supernatural beliefs, or admit that you have no evidence?

If you believe there once was a talking donkey (Numbers 22) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe there once was a zombie invasion in Jerusalem (Mat 27) could you please provide evidence?

If you believe in the flying horse (Islam) could you please provide evidence?

Walking on water, virgin births, radioactive spiders who give you superpowers, turning water into wine, turning iron into gold, demons, goblins, ghosts, hobbits, elves, angels, unicorns and Santa.

Can you PLEASE provide evidence?

[99percentatheism]

[Replying to post 2490 by 99percentatheism]

Again with the atheism= something from nothing strawman. You've been doing this for nearly 2 years now, could you please stop it ?

It's no strawman argument. It is an absolute truth. For all of the blustering and anti Christian efforts of the new atheism in the 21st century, or when cave men grunted their way through everyday life, there is the fact that the materialist posits that non thinking stuff created itself from that non existence and then became us.

I choose reality over madness and I choose God over emptiness filling itself with stuff.

[Danmark]

It's no strawman argument. It is an absolute truth. For all of the blustering and anti Christian efforts of the new atheism in the 21st century, or when cave men grunted their way through everyday life, there is the fact that the materialist posits that non thinking stuff created itself from that non existence and then became us.

I choose reality over madness and I choose God over emptiness filling itself with stuff.

Let's analyze this post.
You start with a gratuitous insult to atheists and a jibe at what you call 'the new atheism. Fine, an introductory insult or two that does not advance any argument.

Then begin your argument: 'non thinking stuff created itself and that became human.' This you call 'madness' and announce you choose God over 'emptiness filling itself with stuff.'

It appears to me you have claimed this label "God" for the creative force that somehow made 'stuff' from nothing. Where did this 'God' come from?

Has he simply always been? If so, why can't you say the same about the universe?

If 'God has no beginning and no end' why can't we say the 'universe' has no beginning and no end? Whether you name it 'God' or 'Universe' you are talking about the same process. Humans, 'thinking stuff' to use your expression are here. How did we get here? You say 'God made it happen.' The non theist says 'The universe made it happen' or "thinking beings" are a product of the universe.

Do you understand how putting a label "God" on this process adds nothing to the equation? It's just a name, just a label. Whatever you attribute to this 'God' who is beyond definition, one can attribute to the universe just as easily, but without any unnecessary and unsupported additions such as 'personal' or 'consciousness' or 'personality.'

[Dantalion]

[Replying to post 2490 by 99percentatheism]

Again with the atheism= something from nothing strawman. You've been doing this for nearly 2 years now, could you please stop it ?

It's no strawman argument. It is an absolute truth. For all of the blustering and anti Christian efforts of the new atheism in the 21st century, or when cave men grunted their way through everyday life, there is the fact that the materialist posits that non thinking stuff created itself from that non existence and then became us.

I choose reality over madness and I choose God over emptiness filling itself with stuff.

Come on man do we still have to do this ?
Why do you keep on insisting that atheism = materialism ? It's possible to be both atheist and materialist, but in no way is this always the case. I know you know this.
And as I already told you, the only creatio ex nihilo going on is your deity creating everything out of nothing

[help3434]

There's a running joke among Mormons...too true to be all THAT funny...about how we could find a road sign, properly carbon-dated and authenticated, with 'Zarahemla, 5 (proper unit of measurement) ahead' engraved upon it, with an arrow pointing at a city with 'Zarahemla" on all the buildings, and the anti-Mormons would STILL not believe that such a city existed, nor that the BoM had any accuracy in it.

Several of the folks in this thread have confirmed the idea behind that joke; God could personally show up and they still would not believe; they'd find some way of dismissing the experience. "More of gravy than of grave," indeed.

The Book of Mormon describes large civilizations and epic battles that no archaeological evidence has supported. It has many anachronisms. Yet people STILL believe the Book of Mormon. Which side is ignoring the evidence?

[Joab]

Obviously it is possible that Muhammad flew into heaven on a winged horse

Obviously, are you serious? Obviously?

Unproductive one liners like this are discouraged on this site. Did you read any of the rules or guidelines before you joined? Here, if you read

WOW and you claim that your line, even if contained in a wall of words, was productive? That is quite funny.

Although claiming horses flying into heaven seems like good debating tactics to you so I'd best leave you to it.

Did the flying horse talk to the donkey or did they speak different languages?

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to 99percentatheism]

It's no strawman argument. It is an absolute truth. For all of the blustering and anti Christian efforts of the new atheism in the 21st century, or when cave men grunted their way through everyday life, there is the fact that the materialist posits that non thinking stuff created itself from that non existence and then became us.

There once was a time when Christianity declared that God had placed mankind at the very center of the universe. It was a great comfort to believers to conclude that God cared about humans so much as to make them the center of all things. It didn't happen to be true of course, and observational truth eventually won out over warm fuzzy assumption. The truth is that we exist on a relatively obscure ball of rock and water at the edge of a relatively ordinary galaxy, one of billions in the universe. Does this fact diminish us? The truth is, the only thing that is ever changed by facts is our perception of reality. Only our baseless assumptions are actually forced to change.

Among the various things that observational analysis has informed us of, is that we are composed of "non thinking stuff." We are in fact composed of the very same "non thinking stuff" as rocks or trees, or pretty much anything else composed of matter. The very same "non thinking stuff" you find in an RNA molecule. An RNA molecule is not intelligent. In fact it's not even biologically alive. It does have the ability to replicate itself however, which is, admittedly, pretty damned remarkable. Did it create itself? It's not even intelligent. Or was it's origin an accident of chemistry? Something which occurred spontaneously as a result of ongoing chemical processes, a vast amount of time, and the fact that such a molecule with the ability to replicate itself is not only possible but, given enough time, perhaps even inevitable? Too hard to believe? It does undeniably exist. Your contention of course is that it must have been created by an intelligent designer. If your contention is true, then this intelligent designer MUST itself have been created by an intelligent designer. You can't assume a fact to be true, and then immediately break the rules. If your intelligent designer, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, simply "just exists" in your mind, without the need or necessity of prior intelligent design, then how much vastly more likely would it have been for a very simple RNA molecule to have arisen spontaneously as a result of the ongoing chemistry processes that were occurring on the early Earth? If we really wish to know how things work, then we must accept the facts as we find then at face value. Making up stories because them make us feel all warm and fuzzy and special might be comforting, but they serve no purpose in the pursuit of true knowledge. And observational truths inevitably prevail over warm and fuzzy, but baseless, assumptions. For most of human history, religious philosophies provided the only plausible, such as they were, answers to the great questions of existence. Now science has shown us that there is another way, one in which no recourse to supernatural explanations is needed. This "new atheism" that you speak of is based on the growing realization that religious explanations are not, and never were really, valid. They are and always have been, make believe. The rapid rise of non belief that you are currently observing is not simply a fad, it is the wave of the future based on our current understanding of the scientific principles which govern the universe. You of course will hold on to your old fashioned supernatural notions until the day you die. But you can't change the inevitable. Because in an open marketplace of ideas, the truth will inevitably prevail.

I choose reality over madness and I choose God over emptiness filling itself with stuff.

Christians are pretty darned good at filling themselves with stuff too, I notice. Does "stuff" really make a person happy? A person who thinks that they are happy, really ARE happy, I reckon. More "stuff" doesn't always seem to be the answer of course. I myself have all the "stuff" I seem to need. I don't really aspire to attaining any more "stuff." Despite this, and the fact that I have been an atheist for my entire adult life, I don't really notice any feeling of emptiness in my life at all. But then maybe that is because I recognized long ago that I don't hold some special place in the universe, I was not created for some special purpose, and as a result I have always kept what I expect from life to within reasonable limits.

[Danmark]

Among the various things that observational analysis has informed us of, is that we are composed of "non thinking stuff." We are in fact composed of the very same "non thinking stuff" as rocks or trees, or pretty much anything else composed of matter. The very same "non thinking stuff" you find in an RNA molecule. An RNA molecule is not intelligent. In fact it's not even biologically alive. It does have the ability to replicate itself however, which is, admittedly, pretty damned remarkable. Did it create itself? It's not even intelligent. Or was it's origin an accident of chemistry? Something which occurred spontaneously as a result of ongoing chemical processes, a vast amount of time, and the fact that such a molecule with the ability to replicate itself is not only possible but, given enough time, perhaps even inevitable? Too hard to believe? It does undeniably exist. Your contention of course is that it must have been created by an intelligent designer. If your contention is true, then this intelligent designer MUST itself have been created by an intelligent designer. You can't assume a fact to be true, and then immediately break the rules. If your intelligent designer, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, simply "just exists" in your mind, without the need or necessity of prior intelligent design, then how much vastly more likely would it have been for a very simple RNA molecule to have arisen spontaneously as a result of the ongoing chemistry processes that were occurring on the early Earth? If we really wish to know how things work, then we must accept the facts as we find then at face value. Making up stories because them make us feel all warm and fuzzy and special might be comforting, but they serve no purpose in the pursuit of true knowledge.

. . . .
Excellent work! I do not intend to minimize at all the portions of this I redacted. I just want to focus on two.
First, you make an excellent observation of a god having to create a god, if I understand correctly, it sets up an infinite regression. I think of when I was a boy and sat in the barber's chair. There were two mirrors, one in front of me and one behind. It fascinated me, at the age of seven or so, to note the image of the image of the image receding infinitely, each mirror reflecting the image of the other.

To me this reflects [no pun intended] the problem of the emergence of creation. It helps not at all to claim 'god did it,' since we then have to ask 'who created god,' or 'where did god come from?'

The second is equally important, this idea that our consciousness, our thinking self, comes from 'unintelligent stuff.' I presume you would include neurons in the same class as RNA. The intelligence, and consciousness itself seem to spring from simple cells that combine to form and transmit simple electrical signals that ultimately achieve consciousness and intelligence from simple 'unthinking' cells.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to Danmark]

It seems to me that I have made it quite clear that I am no fan of nonsense. And the proposition that something like an RNA molecule is too complicated to exist without the necessity of an intelligent designer, and so it therefore MUST be the result of an uncreated intelligent designer who is almost infinitely more complicated then an RNA molecule certainly qualifies as nonsense. Even if by some convoluted quirk of mathematical improbability this should prove to be the case, it certainly IS NOT logical. Common experience indicates overwhelmingly that claims such as this which defy all possible logic tend overwhelmingly to be pure and utter nonsense. Nonsense on this scale is like an old stinky diaper; put it behind you and move on as quickly as possible.

[Sir Hamilton]

It's no strawman argument. It is an absolute truth. For all of the blustering and anti Christian efforts of the new atheism in the 21st century, or when cave men grunted their way through everyday life, there is the fact that the materialist posits that non thinking stuff created itself from that non existence and then became us.

I choose reality over madness and I choose God over emptiness filling itself with stuff.

Let's analyze this post.
You start with a gratuitous insult to atheists and a jibe at what you call 'the new atheism. Fine, an introductory insult or two that does not advance any argument.

Then begin your argument: 'non thinking stuff created itself and that became human.' This you call 'madness' and announce you choose God over 'emptiness filling itself with stuff.'

It appears to me you have claimed this label "God" for the creative force that somehow made 'stuff' from nothing. Where did this 'God' come from?

Has he simply always been? If so, why can't you say the same about the universe?

If 'God has no beginning and no end' why can't we say the 'universe' has no beginning and no end? Whether you name it 'God' or 'Universe' you are talking about the same process. Humans, 'thinking stuff' to use your expression are here. How did we get here? You say 'God made it happen.' The non theist says 'The universe made it happen' or "thinking beings" are a product of the universe.

Do you understand how putting a label "God" on this process adds nothing to the equation? It's just a name, just a label. Whatever you attribute to this 'God' who is beyond definition, one can attribute to the universe just as easily, but without any unnecessary and unsupported additions such as 'personal' or 'consciousness' or 'personality.'

I think I understand your point. It is just as easy for one to believe in an infinite universe or an infinite God...or god....or gods. Is that it? For me personally it is easier for me to believe in God since He and I "talk" to each other everyday. For someone who has never had any kind of divine revelation i can understand how they may tend to not believe in God or gods especially if they put their faith in science.

[unfogged]

[Replying to Sir Hamilton]

For me personally it is easier for me to believe in God since He and I "talk" to each other everyday.

Has he ever told you anything that you didn't already know or couldn't have figured out for yourself? Have you ever been sure he told you something that did not turn out to be true? How do you know it is the god you believe in and not some other god, or demon, or just your own mind? I "talk" to myself to work through all kinds of decisions but there's never been anything to suggest that the "conversation" isn't just different facets of my own mind presenting alternatives.

For someone who has never had any kind of divine revelation i can understand how they may tend to not believe in God or gods especially if they put their faith in science.

I have never met any atheist who puts "faith" in science, at least not the way theists say that they put faith in their god. I certainly don't. I have a great deal of trust in science based on a long history of demonstrable progress. I accept many things as probably true even if I don't fully understand them because I do understand how the scientific method works. I also don't expect any scientific answer to be the "final" word, just the best explanation we have so far. Calling it faith misses the mark.