The Bucket vs Nacker
Offline I refuse to sacrifice my reason to believe that the Big Bang came from nothing. And it is irrational for time before this moment to be infinite. If God is going to be God then it is only logical for him to be above time. Existing in his own essence. Answering to no created thing. So, to me, it seems rational to believe that God is real, above time, and know-able (I beleive He best fits the evidence that we are here on this forum right now whether by some sort of evolution or special creation) --- I'm still studying to find out what I believe about how he did it guided evolution, special creation, 6 day creation with young earth and flood etc. or what. I know why I still cling to Christianity, and it doesn't have much to do with a weak - minded, unstudied dogma. Truth is all we have, and it is all I will seek. Live truth or live a lie right???
There are thousands of unanswered questions, and scientists learn more, discover more, every day. Old theories are replaced by new theories, and the picture of our past and present universe changes constantly, but this picture is converging... 500 years ago people still believed that the earth was flat. these days in stead of changing our knowledge new discoveries usually add to our knowledge.
Ask yourself this: if you had never heard anything of christianity, would there be anything, anything, around you to suggest that a supernatural being was behind your existence? the answer is a simple NO. Because if there were any evidence to suggest a god, there would have been a scientific theory concerning his existence.
People's belief in god can be atributed to certain factors:
1) Everybody else believes. Peer pressure leads to smoking and theism. 500 years ago everyone thought the earth was flat, and now, everyone knows the earth is round.
2) The bible- which contains nothing to suggest that it was dictated by 'God', but contains lots of things that indicate that it was the creative product of men of the time. For example, several passages state that the earth is flat. Also, the bible that i can find today is a collage of what was actually written. How much was changed and omitted?
3) 'I exist. The explanations that science offers are improbable. I believe that God must have created me.' -- !!! i'm sorry? come again? Are you serious? I would rather accept that i don't know everything, than explain everything with an improbable god.
Tell me Nacker, why do you believe?
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Death shouldn?t be so scary; we all do it.
(For those of you who don't know, this conversation started in the Evolution category, but wandered OT, so picks up in here).
I'd also add, nacker, that Evolution does not talk about what created the universe, or the origins of the universe as we know it - rather it simply addresses the issue of the diversity of life we see on earth today, and have evidence for in the past. To say that evolution talks about anything cosmological is a straw man that creationists allege (yet another logical fallacy).
"Religion is like a badly written contract - most people don't read most (much less all) of it, believe what the other party says, and execute with the best of intentions and naivety."
- Me
nacker posted this in the evolution forum in response to this thread.
I took this from the wrecked thread in the Evolution Forum:
Okay Nacker, here is your chance to debate rationally. Don't Fuck it up, please.
Step by step, validate the statement, "God is the only rational choice"
Religion and Big Bang from Wiki
The following is a list of various religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory:
A number of Christian churches, the Roman Catholic Church in particular, have accepted the Big Bang as a possible description of the origin of the universe, interpreting it to allow for a philosophical first cause. Pope Pius XII was an enthusiastic proponent of the Big Bang even before the theory was scientifically well established. This view is shared by many religious Jews in all branches of rabbinic Judaism.
Traditional Jewish sources describe a creation ex nihilo that can be interpreted as consistent with the Big Bang. Adherents of Kabbalah, esoteric Jewish mysticism, accept the Big Bang theory as factual, and relate it to the theory of "divine retraction" (tzimtzum) as explained in Jewish mystical texts, such as the Zohar.
Some modern Islamic scholars believe that the Qur'an parallels the Big Bang in its account of creation, described as follows: "Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together as one unit of creation, before We clove them asunder?" (Ch:21,Ver:30).
The claim has also been made that the Qur'an describes an expanding universe: "The heaven, We have built it with power. And verily, We are expanding it." (Ch:51,Ver:47). Parallels with the Big Crunch and an oscillating universe have also been suggested: "On the day when We will roll up the heavens like the rolling up of the scroll for writings, as We originated the first creation, (so) We shall reproduce it; a promise (binding on Us); surely We will bring it about." (Ch:21,Ver:104).
Certain theistic branches of Hinduism, such as in Vaishnavism, conceive of a theory of creation with similarities to the theory of the Big Bang. The Hindu mythos, narrated for example in the third book of the Bhagavata Purana (primarily, chapters 10 and 26), describes a primordial state which bursts forth as the Great Vishnu glances over it, transforming into the active state of the sum-total of matter ("prakriti"
. Other forms of Hinduism assert a universe without beginning or end.
Buddhism has a concept of a universe that has no creation event, but instead goes through infinitely repeated cycles of expansion, stability, contraction, and quiescence. The Big Bang, however, is not seen to be in conflict with this since there are ways to conceive an eternal universe within the paradigm. A number of popular Zen philosophers were intrigued, in particular, by the concept of the oscillating universe.
Heres the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang#Religion_and_philosophy