You mentioned my sig in an another topic, but I think it bears repeating.

God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself. ~John Polkinghorne

That sounds rather redundant.

What kind of killjoy are you? I know that I exist. I also know that Fran Drescher exists and is hot. If there is no magical lawgiver tells me that I cant squease one off over her hot body, then how am I going to get her to give me a blowjob?

Are you trying to tell me that prayer doesn't work? FUCK!

I find it rather odd that God would create this kind of world, then notice that we are doing a LOT of things that he doesn't approve of, and rather than fix the problem, simply condemn everyone who doesn't do something right to hell. If god had actually created the world to make itself into its own being, he would be much mroe patient with us and wouldn't condemn us for such things as sex and pride.

No you don't. You believe because it makes you feel good about yourself, remember?

There is something behind it all. Natural selection.

See? Not science.

How is an international electronics manufacturing corporation analagous to a magical deity? 'Sony' isn't a mysterious force or entity of any sort; it's a mundane company that makes entertainment goods.

Again, you're just being ridiculous.

Hasn’t your scientific training taught you anything? Haven’t you noticed that when I, or Hamby, write, we ensure that the reader knows exactly what we are talking about. No serious-minded subject has room for statements that are too vague and meaningless to actually be saying anything of importance. Additionally, if you are attempting to elucidate an underlying principle of reality, it is not, in general, a good idea to begin your sentence with “I feel”. The last time I checked, the principles of reality were not subject to the whim of your feelings. What you have essentially said is “I feel that there is something I cannot elucidate”. Well, if you cannot elucidate it, then you don’t know you are even talking about! You can’t possibly make claim like “I feel there is something behind it all” and expect to be taken seriously since that doesn’t actually mean anything.

Let's see if this works if we plug something else in there:

My problem here Kevin Brown is that it's almost as though you worship science and the scientific method. Now I do believe in the invisible pink unicorn and I also hold to evolution.

You assume that for the invisible pink unicorn to exist, then the invisible pink unicorn must have snapped it's divine hooves and poof.....the universe came into being. You assume the because there is a scientific process behind the universe that the invisible pink unicorn obviously doesn't exist. You assume that because human beings were the result of a complex process of evolution, then the invisible pink unicorn definitely doesn't exist. I don't make these assumptions.

Now I would agree with you that science does not prove the existence of the invisible pink unicorn. I don't think there is an acceptable scientific proof of the invisible pink unicorn. If you're wondering why I believe in the invisible pink unicorn, I would tell you that I agree with Kant's idea of practical reason that leads to belief in the invisible pink unicorn. But that discussion really isn't meant for this thread.

I respectfully disagree.  I've met a number of atheists, whose catalyst for conversion, was the ridicule of their beliefs. It has it's time and place.

I don't think that you have a strong handle on what Kant meant by "practical reason."

I do not 'worship' anything, thanks. I do, however, recognize that science is the only credible way through which we can discover things about our Cosmos.

You've preached one too many sermons.

I'm not interested in emotional, repetitive rhetoric, thank you.

You didn't even have the courtesy to address the question: What does adding a magical deity on top of what we already know do for our understanding? What does God help us to explain?

I'm 'assuming' shit? What the fuck? I'm asking a question. You're the one with the magical friend who can speak things into existence and is somehow utterly indetectable by any and all means.

LOL! Silly atheist. Prayer only works when you're not looking at it. God works in mysterious (quantum?) ways.

One of the most absurd things about theists within an orthodoxy (so this discounts Eloise & Alison) is the inane suggestion from someone that they've talked to God or had favors done by him.

For those of you whom pray, isn't it a tad odd that nothing you have ever prayed for, ever, has been delivered to you? Perhaps you won't admit this, yet we both know it's absolutely true. Nothing you have asked for has ever directly materialized right before you, nothing you've prayed for to be done has ever magically been accomplished.

For those of you whom claim to have talked to your deity or felt his magical presence: shame on you. That was dishonest, and we both know it. You 'spoke in tongues' and pretended to have convulsions because you wanted to show your peers that you were special too, and you fabricated your stories of visions or divine apparitions for the same reason.

Actually Kevin, I'm not a Christian. So I've never preached a sermon. Sorry

I don't know how God helps us. I believe that God is beyond human understanding, so I can't tell you all about his plan.

You are assuming that God can't exist if we understand aspects of the universe. Like I said, I don't make assumptions about how God should create the universe.

That makes no sense at all. How can you know nothing about God, but be certain about God's existence?

Here, I'll let you do the legwork, then:

Explain how I'm creating an extra assumption by offering an explanation of a given mechanism and asking you to explain how adding God to the equation helps to gives us a fuller understanding of said mechanism.

You seem to have noted it, but I'll say it anyway - I wasn't advocating for a literal reading of genesis to be anything but a valid basis for the assumption. I didn't mean to imply that it was a more correct nor more traditional approach by any means. And just forthe record, since you appear not to have been aware of it, I have previously explained my personal view on interpreting religious doctrine on these forums, it is a totally non-literal approach.

Ah, I never said I was certain about God's existence. That's not the case at all.

I never said that God gives us a fuller understanding of a given mechanism. You stated in your original post:

"God did not create the universe

Our universe was formed via the expansion of of a singularity and subsequent formation of structures by hydrogen atoms through gravitational attraction. A magical deity adds nothing to the known explanation."

You assume that our understanding of the formation of the universe scientifically = the nonexistence of God

Thus, I feel like your main assumption is that if God exists, we shouldn't be able to understand the formation of the universe. I don't make this assumption.

That's one of my pet peeves.

I would think God would create a universe in which he doesn't have to play mechanic and constantly give it a tune up. That's what I don't like about the Intelligent Design movement either.

No. All that I said was that 'God' adds nothing to our knowledge of how the universe formed. That's not an assumption; it's an illustration that invoking God is the assumption, and an unecessary one.

Now, for the sake of completeness, 'God' is a joke to me. Patently stupid. However, this is not what I stated in any of the opening scroll. I simply conveyed that magical deities are not helpful in allowing us to understand the universe (which you've just acknowledged anyway, so I believe that more or less settles things).

Try this experiment.  Pray to any god.  Ask him/her to appear and you will devote your life.  Nothing will ever happen.  Pray to that gods devil.  Make the same offer.  Nothing will ever happen.

Just because you want God to be your little genie in a bottle doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. You just have to learn how to pray.

I disagree that God has yet to answer a pray. I have had many prayers answered. The answer is just never what you expect. Hashem answers prays in His time and in His own way.

Also, I disagree that mythological texts don't reflect reality. The commandments of the Torah are my daily reality. And you are making a very generalizing statement that "none of the mythological texts.....reflect reality." Have you read all religious texts other than the Christian Bible? Ever read the Talmud?

Why do you need to thank god for things you earned yourself and keep in check? You earned your family and friends, and if you or your family were ever sick or dying, it was the doctors at the hospital that made sure you were alright, not god.

And my image of prayer is so because as a child, back when I was christian, that's what the church taught me. I know what prayer is.

I'll be watching and waiting.

In all honesty, why hasn't this been done yet? I expect that if god were as loving and did listen to all of us, nothing bad would've ever happened. But if the purpose of prayer is to be thankful, we've been getting dooped for a LONG time.

You’ve shot yourself in the foot. Previously in the thread you asserted that this thing you call “God” is beyond human understanding. If you assert that something is beyond your epistemological faculties then you automatically exclude yourself from talking about it at all. It no longer becomes a meaningful notion. Yet now you’ve just conceded that this thing has the recognizable property of agency. It is a conscious object, which, for some strange reason, is listening with concern to you, one of countless inhabitants of a small rock orbiting a very normal star in a spiral arm of a galaxy belonging to a cluster of similar galaxies. The mental contortions you must have had to go through to reconcile the belief in something which by definition you cannot articulate (otherwise it would not be beyond your understanding) and believing that this thing (which, remember, is beyond your understanding) is a conscious agent listening (with concern) to your prayers, are astounding. If you begin with the premise that some object X is beyond your understanding, what conclusions could you draw? Well, actually none since logical sentences cannot work with enthymemes. There must be a second premise for you to be able to move toward a conclusion. However, you can’t have a second premise because your first premise (this thing is beyond your understanding) excludes the ability for you to formulate another premise.

But this doesn’t actually answer the problem at hand. The implication of your previous post is that God is an object with the property of conscious agency. If we are trying to discuss this thing called “God” and we start by saying something like “God cares about me” then we are saying God is a natural object. It’s clearly got a comprehensible property. It’s a definite thing with definite properties that we are talking about. If, on the other hand, we say something like “God is in the rocks and the trees” or “God is love” or “God is in all things” etc. ad infinitum then we aren’t actually saying…well, anything really, at least not from a rigorous philosophical standpoint. Theists talk about God as it were basically a person. He talks to them (they use the male pronoun, tellingly). They talk to him. Thus they are discussing a comprehensible object with comprehensible properties. The problem comes because they simultaneously do an about face and say something like “God is outside all nature and human understanding”. By itself, this doesn’t really mean anything, but put together with the first statement, it presents a contradiction. It clearly doesn’t work (1) for epistemological reasons and (2) for empirical reasons. Even more maddeningly, they often then attempt to resolve this contradiction by appealing to the notion that God is supposedly beyond our understanding, in other words, the very thing which created the contradiction!