I think it's all about power and control. If you're a 'believer' that gives you the power to 'offer forgiveness' because that is a meaningless act. Doesn't compare well with offering a dollar to a beggar. The dollar is useful, the words are meaningless, but the provide the speaker with a feeling of power over those they forgive. They can do things like call others a 'liar' while at the same time getting very annoyed with someone who calls them a liar. I don't call anyone a liar unless I know them well enough to know what truth they believe and understand why they might be lying. But then, what else would you expect from a delusioned misfit?

Thoughtful

I think it is a human failing that people see what they want to see. Some people will answer your question by trying to give you the answer they think you want to hear.

I'm sure that many people who believe in a deity will see that deity, or related beings like angels, frequently. I would go so far as to say those with a strong belief will see these beings more frequently than those with a less strong belief.

Curious fact, Hindu believers will see their deity, who is no doubt a little different from the god that Christian believers see. Believers see the deity they believe in and never one of the others! I wonder why that is?

No miracles have ever happened to me, or to anyone I know. Things that seem like a coincidence are just that - a coincidence - and nothing more. But then I'm not gullible! All this 'belief' - with the need to prove something - goes over my head. I don't even understand half of what is said in some posts.

I said this on the first page of this thread:

"I have always been a fan of sine waves. Applying this idea to the universe conveniently gets rid of having to say that time itself started at the big bang. Instead the size of the universe varies as a sine wave. At the moment we are at the expansion phase. If my theory is right the universe will one day reach a maximum size and then begin to shrink. Eventually it will be smaller than a pin head and with an almighty explosion, it all starts again. In true sinewave fashion, the next time around there will be more anti-matter than matter. I doubt our science will ever be able to prove that one way or the other, unless the human race continues to live past the point when the maximum size is reached and the universe starts to shrink."

I quite like this idea, but of course it is nothing more than a possibility. As there is no hope of ever being able to prove it, this is nothing more than a curiosity!

If you don't believe in a god then luck (good or bad) and coincidence can explain everything that is attributed to god by those too lazy to see what really happened.

You've put your finger on the bit that was worrying me. As you say, it would appear that we are the centre of the universe and I too am not comfortable with that. Easier to believe that if we had a human outpost on a planet hundreds of light years from year, those humans would see exactly the same we see. But of course there cannot be two centres.

Up till now, I've been happy to accept what those clever university graduate scientists tell me, but now I want to ask that question of one of them, or at least try to find a research paper that makes the same point, and hopefully has a possible answer. Problem is, that answer would no doubt be explained using mathematics way beyond anything I could undertand!

Best I can come up with is to ask why we would need to be at the centre? If a train is passing you it would appear to be moving away from you. But to people on the train, from their viewpoint, you would appear to be moving away from them. People on the train would feel that they are at the centre and the ground is moving away from them. Is this moving away of stars phenomenon not a three dimensional version of the train?

Just my tuppence worth!

Exactly! The point of science is to try to prove that your theory is wrong. It is more realistic to do that and avoids the problem of bad science where people point out all the evidence that supports their theory while conveniently ignoring any evidence that suggests the theory might be wrong. Good scientists hope they will fail and evenutally prove their theory to be right - at least until some new advanced science comes along with a different perspective.



I think the mind is perhaps the last thing to be fully understood. There is a great deal to be done here. People like spiritualists and those who are certain they have 'seen a ghost' will be of enormous benefit to research when it really gets going. For the moment, I'm quite sure there are many 'unexplained' things happening. Things that will become clearer as our understanding of the world increases. Who knows, as Einstein showed that 'simple' physics was only part of the picture, we will one day consider our science in the 21st century to be perhaps only a small part of human knowledge. Somehow I doubt that no matter how long mankind is around, however many centuries, we will never reach the point at which we can confidently state that we know everything there is to be known.

How I wish I was younger with many more years to live and much new science to observe as it unfolds! If anyone finds a pill that can add a hundred years to your lifetime, I want to buy one!

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It is the red shift (Doppler Effect) that tells us the universe is expanding. But, suppose that red shift is actually caused by something else? Just thinking outside the box here, but if it was, then we might not be expanding at all and that would change all our current thinking about dark matter, whatever that is!

I don't think you can say that nobody is looking at the possibility of FTL travel. I bet that somewhere there is a researcher who is looking again and again at the known physics, trying to find a way to prove that it *could* be possible. And if it is, that researcher will be getting the Nobel Prize - the thing they all want to get!

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from Wikipedia:

"Laura Mersini-Houghton is very interesting. She is an Albanian-American cosmologist and theoretical physicist, and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a proponent of the multiverse hypothesis and the author of a theory for the origin of the universe that holds that our universe is one of many selected by quantum gravitational dynamics of matter and energy. Predictions of her theory have been successfully tested by astrophysical data. She argues that anomalies in the current structure of the universe are best explained as the gravitational tug exerted by other universes."

She also claims that current black hole thory is flawed. All of her work is highly recommended, but can leave the brain hurting if you try to understand it.

That figure of 13.7 billion years has me thinking. Suppose the universe is very much bigger and suppose also that at a point 13.7 billion years ago light was initiated? If there was no light before that point in time, there would be no way of knowing how old the universe is since we have no other way of measuring it.

The original poster has long gone, but he was asking about the possible existence of a deity, usually called 'God'.

Tom has given all the possible asnwers:



but despite that, this topic has contained the need for believers and unbelievers alike to attempt to 'prove' the impossible. It has even extended to a discussion about the age of the universe, the age of the earth and other points which are certainly 'off-topic'!

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I'll put some in the post to you right away

Onwhat basis do you say that 'six days' is without error? All the biblical scholars I have ever come across state that the word 'day' is this context is a parable and does not have the same meaning as the 24 hour period of time that we now call a day.

The actual meaning of that word 'day' in this context is of course open to interpretation, as we have seen in this thread and is seen in many other places too.

Wikipedia has this to say:

The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth of both Judaism and Christianity. The narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. In the first, Elohim (the Hebrew generic word for God) creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses and sanctifies the seventh. In the second story, God, now referred to by the personal name Yahweh, creates Adam, the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden, where he is given dominion over the animals. Eve, the first woman, is created from Adam and as his companion.

Borrowing themes from Mesopotamian mythology, but adapting them to the Israelite people's belief in one God, the first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch (the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy) was composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the Jahwist source) and was later expanded by other authors (the Priestly source) into a work very like the one we have today. The two sources can be identified in the creation narrative: Priestly and Jahwistic. The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism. Robert Alter described the combined narrative as "compelling in its archetypal character, its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends".

Misunderstanding the genre of the Genesis creation narrative, meaning the intention of the author(s) and the culture within which they wrote, can result in a misreading; misreading the story as history rather than theology leads to Creationism and the denial of evolution. As scholar of Jewish studies, Jon D. Levenson, puts it:

How much history lies behind the story of Genesis? Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology, it is very far-fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all."

nice

Amen to that

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