Can God love? (Part 2)

First topic message reminder :

The problem we have is that we can only think in our limited terms , we do not know of any process that covers the universe but if we did it would be just as simple as us explaining to a child how a toy was made etc

Depends on how much education you have, how bright you are and whether or not you are willing to learn things that are outside your comfort zone in the search for the truth. The universe and all that is in it is a complex place.

All the atoms that make up you were created in the stars. We are stardust, poly.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990625080416.htm

polyglide wrote:I have said no one knows the size of the universe, he disputes it but does not say how or why, the fact is no one does.

I say all matter is the result of energy, this is a fact, he disputes it but does not give a reason why.

etc; etc;  

Cool, you can answer my questions then, assuming you're not a hypocrite.

Dan, just consider what I write and not what you actually try to say I write.

I believe in that God ceated the earth, I do not pretend to know how, I believe he created it using energy and all that we are aware of at the present time indicates that matter was is formed from energy.

I believe God created both plant and animal life.

Now if you believe in God then all things are answered.

Is that plain enough for you.

Now alternatively you have the prospect of all matter coming about by pure chance with no intelligence involved, plant life with all the complexities involved coming about by chance and all the interdependancies of both animal and plant life.

If evolution had any real credibility there would be not millions but a countless number of inbetweenies, three, and four legged humans, two heade humans those without eyes those with several eyes etc; etc; the list would not only be endless but obvious by their remains.

Now consider both and explain why the former is not the most realistic answer.

polyglide wrote:Dan, just consider what I write and not what you actually try to say I write.

If you feel I've misrepresented you in anyway then please point out where and when.

polyglide wrote:
I believe in that  God ceated the earth, I do not pretend to know how, I believe he created it using energy and all that we are aware of at the present time indicates that matter was is formed from energy.

That's what I said, i.e. you don't have an explanation for how it happened. You just think God did it.

polyglide wrote:
I believe God created both plant and animal life.

Now if you believe in God then all things are answered.

Is that plain enough for you.

Yes, you have no explanation for how it happened, you just accept it did based on your belief in God. Again, my previous post would have told you that I understood this.

polyglide wrote:
Now alternatively you have the prospect of all matter coming about by pure chance with no intelligence involved, plant life with all the complexities involved coming about by chance and all the   interdependancies of both animal and plant life.

If evolution had any real credibility there would be not millions but a countless number of inbetweenies, three, and four legged humans, two heade humans those without eyes those  with several eyes etc; etc; the list would not only be endless but obvious by their remains.

Now consider both and explain why the former is not the most realistic answer.

How does the credibility of evolution depend on something which you have just invented, i.e. "If evolution had any real credibility there would be not millions but a countless number of inbetweenies, three, and four legged humans, two heade humans those without eyes those with several eyes" as opposed to the claims actually made by evolutionary scientists? You're being critical of something you clearly haven't even looked into in the most cursory of ways, otherwise you wouldn't have asked such a question.

POLYGLIDE, you are one very stupid person to put it mildly, I asked you how old god was? you did not have an answer did you? You say he formed all the plant life etc, but do not know how do you? because he didn't!!! You say he formed humans.HOW? The answers to your Beliefs in your post are found under what is known as science and evolution. All you have to do is look the answers up on your computer.dopehead.

"If evolution had any real credibility there would be not millions but a countless number of inbetweenies, three, and four legged humans, two heade humans those without eyes those with several eyes" as opposed to the claims actually made by evolutionary scientists?

This person is possibly the most ignorant man I have ever read, the above garbage proves this yo yo hasn't a clue about evolution, he is denying something happened without even knowing what it was.

I can only assume this person's education was interrupted at a very early age, nothing else explains the utter guff this man regurgitates.

Dishonest and disgusting.

So true Tosh, and at first I actually felt sorry for him, thinking that he suffered from some kind of neurological disorder.

polyglide wrote:

Now if you believe in God then all things are answered.

Is that plain enough for you.

Odd then that it's message is revealed as puerile nonsense by a few hundred years of scientific empiricism. You'd have logically thought that answers from an omniscient being would be at the very least correct.

polyglide wrote:If evolution had any real credibility there would be not millions but a countless number of inbetweenies, three, and four legged humans, two heade humans those without eyes those with several eyes etc; etc; the list would not only be endless but obvious by their remains.

Just when you think stupid can't get any stupider......

Polyglide, when you are not an expert in something, you really ought to stay out of it. You don't even have a rudimentary grasp of science, yet you can totally discount it for the ONLY reason that it doesn't jive with your bible. Please do not argue about things you know nothing about.

The truth is more likely this: Polyglide (repeat after me) I, polyglide, know nothing about evolution, don't understand science and never graduated primary school. However, I, polyglide, believe in god and the bible and no amount of knowledge or science is going to change my mind because, I, polyglide, know that one day I will die and that scares me to pieces and so to prevent being scared, I, polyglide believe in god who will make me live forever in heaven, singing endless praises and worshipping Himself incessantly because that is what I live for.

Now that is closer to the truth of why you believe in god polyglide and it is probably more an honest answer than you floundering about science with people who know science.

Now if you believe in God then all things are answered.

REALLY!!

Then why do all theologians keep using " God works in mysterious ways ", " God is unfathomable " when they cannot answer a question, and why do you need faith if you have all the answers.

You must step back and read your prose, it is juvenile, illogical, unreasonable and irrational, you sound like someone from the 18 th century.

polyglide wrote:

I believe in that  God ceated the earth, I do not pretend to know how

Now if you believe in God then all things are answered.

Just looking back at that again. Deary me. It has to be a wind-up. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about

Dan, I have offended children, even with their limited world view they still question what is going on around them, the religious are told not to ask anymore questions, now you know why civilisation and knowledge stagnated for 1500 years.

Tosh, if there were more people like polyglide around, and I really do hope that there are not, we probably still would be.

There are approx 100 million polyglides in America, how they became a superpower God only knows.

the churches must be full where they live,hell glad I don't live there. 

snowyflake wrote:You don't even have a rudimentary grasp of science

Heh, I think you answered your own question there, snowy. I've said before that religion is for the simple-minded, those who find learning and knowledge to be more of a burden than its worth. These are usually the people who struggled to graduate high school and hated every minute of it, often squeaking by with barely the grades to pass. Education isn't for them, forever doomed to know just enough about the world to make them dangerous with no desire to learn any more than they already know. Often their lives are filled with banality and triviality that they've turned into the momentous and spectacular.

After all, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" is far and away simpler and easier than an entire book - or even a website - on evolution. Hence why it is that the vast, vast majority of religious believers tend to be the least educated among us and, I would point out, they are often the most opposed to formal education for anyone else. They come up with a lot of lame excuses - public schools are bastions of liberal ideals or public schools want to teach my kids the gay agenda or public schools did away with prayer, just to name a few of those excuses. But I think, in their heart of hearts, the big reason why they oppose formal education is because these rabid zealots know that the more education our kids receive the less likely they will grow up to be nice little Bible-thumping Christians or Qu'ran-reciting Muslims. Strange, isn't it, that so many kids in the Middle East are taught nothing but the Qu'ran and force them to recite the entire book before they're old enough to take a piss on their own. In fact, there have been several cases here in the US where Muslim parents murdered their children if those children couldn't recite the Qu'ran by a certain age. It makes one wonder how often this atrocity occurs in actual Muslim nations.

But, I digress.

Tosh wrote:There are approx 100 million polyglides in America, how they became a superpower God only knows.

When the US became a superpower, Christianity wasn't the megalithic dinosaur it is today. Christians then were primarily left-leaning and voted Democrat; they believed in freedom, education, and still saw the Constitution - not the Bible - as the supreme law of the land. By the 1950's, they even encouraged the teaching of evolution in school because they understood Americans were falling behind other nations, especially Soviet Russia, in science and mathematics. Most of all, they were actually Christians in those days, meaning they followed the tolerance and lack of judgmental behavior that Jesus taught.

Today, of course, it's just the opposite. Christians are primarily right-leaning and vote Republican. They are greedy, self-centered, and often intellectually ignorant. Christians today are xenophobic and paranoid of everyone from our own government to the dusky-skinned neighbor who lives a few doors down. They disdain education and would like nothing better to home school their kids so they can be brainwashed into hardcore religious belief. They want religious laws to usurp secular laws, mistrust atheists more than any other demographic group, and spend much of their time (and money) campaigning to curtail the rights of others. Their actions are wholly fascistic with some churches even having Nazi-like book burning bonfires in their parking lots, they tenaciously try to get all kinds of media - from books to video games - banned, and they spare not a thought to the fact that America was founded on religious freedom. Perhaps worst of all, they follow that malicious, immoral, hateful, disgustingly evil God called Yehweh and only mention Jesus when they happen to be reciting a prayer or singing a hymn with Jesus's name in it.

I find it no small coincidence that, with the current batch of fanatical idiots wielding such power today, America is backsliding OUT of superpower status. Perhaps if we let the Christians of old take control, this nation would be as great as it once was.

Shirina, hi, have you not got any group of people to take them on in the polls?. Surely there must be people with money and power, and can use it to take on these bible thumping morons.

If only you could read what is actaully written then you would perhaps reply in an intelligent manner.

Let me put it in a childish manner best suiting your appreciation of the written word.

You believe in a fairy story regarding little pools and little wriggly things becoming dinosaurs and all that the earth has held and does hold.

I believe that God created, originally, all things.

I believe he has the means and power to have done so in a manner that we do not understand.

Now, if I am right then this is the answer to all things.

However, your idea of evolution is groundless, when all that is involved is considered in an intelligent manner.

Now if you cannot understand the implications of the above just ask any two year old.

polyglide wrote:If only you could read what is actaully written then you would perhaps reply in an intelligent manner.

Let me put it in a childish manner best suiting your appreciation of the written word.

You believe in a fairy story regarding little pools and little wriggly things becoming dinosaurs and all that the earth has held and does hold.

I believe that God created, originally, all things.

I believe he has the means and power to have done so in a manner that we do not understand.

Now, if I am right then this is the answer to all things.

However, your idea of evolution is groundless, when all that is involved is considered in an intelligent manner.

Now if you cannot understand the implications of the above just ask any two year old.

I suggest a moratorium on criticising Polly, as I am starting to get very uneasy feeling that this person is what my late grandmother referred to as "special".

Polyglide, I have thanked you for the one good post that you posted to myself today regarding my troubles,which was not in the least bit holy. If you could debate along those lines more you could have conversations and quite normal ones quite regularly.

You believe in a fairy story regarding little pools and little wriggly things becoming dinosaurs and all that the earth has held and does hold.

The sane world believes in evidence, evolution has loads, your fairy story has none, your inability to recognise or understand what constitutes evidence does indeed make you SPECIAL.

Why are there no hominid or human fossils in the same geological strata as dinosaurs, this suggests regardless of how we date things, humans and dinosaurs did not exist at the same time.

Care to explain how this is possible with your creation fairy tale?

polyglide wrote:However, your idea of evolution is groundless, when all that is involved is considered in an intelligent manner.

In the 100,000 year history of religion, give just ONE example of a religious explanation for our natural world that has been proven to be true - i.e. an explanation where "faith" is not required, an explanation that has satisfied the rigors of scientific scrutiny.

I'll wait right here while you try to find one - though I'm sure I'll be sitting here for another 100,000 years.

You can prattle away about your religious beliefs and your faith and your convictions, but at the end of the day, religion has ALWAYS lost to science.

Religion has lost .... every .... single .... time.

To make my point all the clearer, polyglide, do you believe that lightning is the result of an angry god? Do you believe eclipses occur because a god is eating the sun? Do you believe that comets are heralds of disasters and plagues? Do you believe that the stars are a) the souls of dead heroes, b) pinpricks in the veil between heaven and earth, or b) lanterns being carried by angels?

The irony is that there are many things that even a modern religious fanatic like yourself do not believe are true ... but in the time before science explained eclipses, comets, and stars, people attributed religious and supernatural explanations to those events. Just like you're doing now with the origin of life and the formation of the universe.

Don't you get it yet, polyglide? In the not-so-distant future, people will be laughing at your beliefs; little children will giggle at the thought of some god poofing us into existence with magic because they will know the scientific reason why we're here. Your stories of make-believe will be just another amusing anecdote to show how ignorant our forebearers once were. I can say this with 110% confidence because I have 100 millennia of historical precedent on my side. You have nothing.

Oh, I know I'll never convince you of the errors of your beliefs. I'm fairly certain you will never see reality for what it is. I think you're too far gone for that. But you should know that your beliefs are unsustainable - just as all religious explanations for our natural world have been.

Given the primitive Bronze Age nature of polyglide's belief, I can now see why some argue that dinosaurs existed simultaneously with humans. After all, we have one on this board.  

stu wrote:Surely there must be people with money and power, and can use it to take on these bible thumping morons.

Hi, stu.

The only thing we have on our side is the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. This prohibits congress (including state congresses) from passing laws with respect to establishing religion. In other words, the government cannot favor any one religion over another. The only way to do that is to a) keep religion out of government and b) pass only laws that are secular in nature.

Because of this document, a single person can (and has) won fights against the encroachment of religion. For instance, it was Madalyn O'Hare who was able to stop a 200-year-long practice of having children in our government-run public schools reciting Christian prayers in the classroom or using the Bible as a reading tool. Plus we have groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which works tirelessly to keep religion from becoming tyrannical.

Incidentally, both Madalyn O'Hare and the ACLU are reviled and detested by the religious right and are frequently blamed for things such as hurricane Katrina and 9/11.

Shirina, you mean that these religious idiots, actually blame less religious people or atheists, for the natural disaster, and a terrorist work? Just because of what they have done to reduce the religion in state run schools? If I ever came to live in the states,I WONDER WHAT THEY WOULD BLAME ME FOR?

 Nice one Heretic.  I am still laughing now, trouble is you are probably right. Bloody religious morons, should be put on the next boat to china.  

polyglide wrote:

Now if you cannot understand the implications of the above just ask any two year old.

 I don't think you're clever enough to have done that on purpose, self-deprecation not being your strong suit.

I am well aware of the basics regarding evolution and also the attempts to prove that life can be created by natural causes, the latest involving attempting to gain information from a commet.

However, even were it found to be that life can be created by those means, it does not tell how those means were created.

It is pure arrogance to say someone does not understand when they themselves are ignorant of being able to understand matters put in a simple way to suit simple minds.

polyglide wrote:I am well aware of the basics regarding evolution...

Really?  

It is pure arrogance to say someone does not understand when they themselves are ignorant of being able to understand matters put in a simple way to suit simple minds.

The problem, from your point of view is that you believe there is an infinite regression because at any stage you feel the question 'yes, but who was responsible for that?' is a valid one and to head off the infinite regression you insert the word God.

"It was God wot dunnit"

Is the cry from theists all down the ages. Even though, as each of the claims is examined, a natural cause is found. This is what is often described as the 'God of the Gaps' syndrome. God is, apparently, responsible for everything that we have not yet explained. The fact that God was responsible for everything some thousands of years ago but now resides somewhere along with the Higgs boson and Heisenberg should give you pause for thought if nothing else.

polyglide wrote: when they themselves are ignorant of being able to understand matters put in a simple way to suit simple minds.

Now THERE is a surefire way of pissing off an atheist.

Yeah, we've heard this argument before: "You don't believe in my god because you just don't understand my religion enough!"

Bollocks!

In fact, it's just the opposite. I've noticed that the vast majority of Christians don't even understand their own religion or the history of it. They don't understand the meaning of scripture and instead they let some preacher tell them what it means - and THAT opens up a person's mind to brainwashing and indoctrination into all kinds of horrible things like hatred of gays and the belief that Christianity should conquer the world.

No, it is BECAUSE we understand your simplistic religion and banal explanations for the natural world that we have moved from belief to non-belief, from blind devotion to utter incredulity and skepticism. It is growing up from believing thunder is caused by angels bowling in heaven to a more sophisticated and enlightened perception of our cosmos, a perception that causes us to be hungry for answers and knowledge rather than stop-gap mythological explanations that stops the pursuit of knowledge dead in its tracks. The fact that you do NOT, in fact, know the basics of evolution proves that better than any words I could write.

Well said Shirina, but something tells me that you got out of the wrong side of the bed today, boy are you socking it to them today. Anything in particular make you in such a bad mood today?

stuart torr wrote:Well said Shirina, but something tells me that you got out of the wrong side of the bed today, boy are you socking it to them today. Anything in particular make you in such a bad mood today?

Wow... as you say... I can feel the ground tremble as we speak  

My advice to Shirina is porridge. It is very hard to be angry with a mouthful of porridge.

stu wrote:Anything in particular make you in such a bad mood today?

It's just been a bad few days. Too much family drama. Too much physical pain. Too much of the bad and, by far, not enough of the good.

So sorry to hear that SHIRINA, just try and stay calm and get all the family help you can my love. I know that is easy for me to say sat in front of my computer and not endured any of it that you have. Take care,and best wishes,stu

polyglide wrote:I am well aware of the basics regarding evolution and also the attempts to prove that life can be created by natural causes, the latest involving attempting to gain information from a commet.

However, even were it found to be that life can be created by those means, it does not tell how those means were created.

It is pure arrogance to say someone does not understand when they themselves are ignorant of being able to understand matters put in a simple way to suit simple minds.

Not only do you not know the basics of evolution, your all around ignorance of the scientific process is breathtaking. You're also basically saying that no matter where the evidence points, as far as you're concerned God did it. That's not very compelling,  in fact it's idiotic.  

Doesn't know more than just the slightest bit regarding evolution Sheldon. Even that is wrong at times. 

I just ask a simple question.

If you are so sure you understand evolution, then without quoting other people explain just how a butterfly's life cycle came about, stage by stage.

I could state word by word the theory of evolution just by looking it up on the internet, as I could every other matter, it would not mean I actually understood every aspect of it, just as you quoting other people does not indicate you understand it.

There is a cause, a reason and a purpose for everything, in my opinion you do not understand any of those.

Passing the book yet again polyglide because you know nothing.  

polyglide wrote:I just ask a simple question.

If you are so sure you understand evolution, then without quoting other people explain just how a butterfly's life cycle came about, stage by stage.

I could state word by word the theory of evolution just by looking it up on the internet, as I could every other matter, it would not mean I actually understood every aspect of it, just as you quoting other people does not indicate you understand it.

There is a cause, a reason and a purpose for everything, in my opinion you do not understand any of those.

Following that logic then to believe that God did it you must explain exactly how he designed that life cycle. Except you don't apply the same logic to creationism because it's more convenient for you to say "I know God did it but I don't know how". It's intellectual dishonesty and it's incredibly transparent. I'm not sure who you think you're trying to convince. Probably yourself.

Oh dear Dan.

I wish I was aware how God created everything, then we would all be Christians and no faith would be involved.

I have just read recently that scientists have experienced through the telescope both the demise and the birth of stars.

Now there must be some kind of intelligence involved previously, for this to occur.

The distance involved is beyond any understanding and could be only a small fraction of space as we call it, how can you understand thousands of light years when you consider the speed of light per second.

There is no doubt that certain laws apply to the universe as they do on earth.

To suggest that these came about by chance is not sound thinking.

If new stars are being created on a regular basis throughout the universe then there must be a reason and a cause and if based on certain laws, then the laws must have been created and not random.

There is nothing dishonest in deciding to believe in God when you have considered the options available.

What is dishonest is not answering a simple question when you say you know the answer.

polyglide wrote:
There is a cause, a reason and a purpose for everything, in my opinion you do not understand any of those.

You may have hit the nail on the head there. I do not understand any of your opinions.
Nor, indeed, the cause, reason or purpose of them. Perhaps you could explain more: begin by explaining the cause of your opinions.