well then "gardenforge"... doesn't that same random chance of unfathomablity also applies to the suppose creator of the cosmos

Actually that theory called “Inflation” does not violate Einstein’s Relativity. The universe itself can indeed expand faster than the speed of light and not violate Relativity. All that Relativity states is that nothing can be travel through the universe faster than the speed of light. In the case of the universe itself expanding Einstein’s laws simple aren’t applicable.

You’d probably need to understand a lot of physics to seriously grasp why this is so, but trust me, it’s true. Mathematically speaking, there is no contradiction between the theory of Universal Inflation and Einstein’s Relativity.



Water doesn’t violate the laws of physics. This is a result of it’s molecular structure and fits perfectly well with the laws of physics. Also, ice does not become lighter than water it simply becomes less dense. The mass of the water does not change from one state to another.



There are over 70 sextillion stars in the observable part of the universe.

Can you phantom how many stars that is?

It’s over 70 thousand million million million stars (as if that helps)

That’s more rolls of the dice that you can phantom.

So yes, you are right. It is unfathomable to a human being. But that doesn’t mean that its unlikely. On the contrary, with only about a hundred differnet elements (spread pretty much uniformly throughout the universe) and over 70 sextillion rolls of the dice, it’s actually a SURE BET that you’ll roll a solar system like the Earth sun system. It’s a SURE BET. Not only will you roll that combination, but you’ll roll quite many of them!

The chances that other life is out there is basically 100% certain, mathematically speaking. That’s given the constituents of the universe, and the number of stars (rolls of the dice).

If you want to marvel at any thing perhaps you can marvel at the fact that there are only about a hundred elements and so many rolls. It could have been the other way around. 70 sextillion differnet kinds of elements and only about hundred rolls. That situation would probably produce nothing but mud on all 100 rolls.

Yes, the universe is indeed unfathomable to the human mind.

That's what people refuse to own up to.

If the universe is too magnificent to have just happened by chance, then what's gained by suggesting that there must be an even more magnificent God that happened by chance who created it?

People just can't see the fallacy of this logic no matter what.

They think that by making up an even more unbelievable scenario they have somehow solved the problem.



Any argument that says that the universe is so complex that it must have had an even more complex creator is infinitely circular and hasn’t solved a thing. It’s just a way of tossing your hands up in the air and saying, “OK I give up! I can’t explain it so there must be a God who can.”

right... they keep wanting to explain the creation of the universe or who created the universe when that is not even being disputed by the original question

"Lordling" the original question simply ask you to answer both parts of it rationally but as you see you have been program to only answer the second part of the original question irrationally

No sir, it did not; it asked only for the rationale to support a negative answer. If you recall, I originally answered "No & No". Since then, all I have done is critique the structure of your question once, because it found it to be inane, and clearly designed to goad "believers" into an argument.

And Funches, you don't know a bloody thing about me, other than what I've posted on these forums, and what is contained in my profile. You may keep your in-depth analysis of my programming, or lack thereof, to yourself. You would also do well not to alienate people that likely have similar views to your own regarding this topic, despite your method of presentation.

But that is why I think God is possible... we know such an infintesimaly tiny portion of what there is to know... how could we know that there is NOT a god or gods?

We don't.

How do I know that there is a god?

I don't.

But I hope so- it's more fun for me to think that things are intentional. And I hope that there is another life after this one.

But other people can believe whatever makes them happiest. After all none of us KNOW any of these answers. So believing in this book or that god is none of my business.

It can be somewhat annoying though when others insist that they KNOW what has happened and what will happen.

Peace.

TO ANYONE WHO WANTS TO ANSWER:

How come JSH doesn't have that emoticon of the smiley face banging its head against a wall? That seems perfect for these threads.

Sorry to interrupt. Please continue.

That would be nice... but it's probably best that there isn't an emoticon of a smiley choking another smilely...

well Lordling..the original question doesn't require me to know anything about you beyond your inability to give a rational explantion as to why your response to the original question was "NO" ...it is you that keep resorting to playing the part of an amatuer Sigmund Freud as you try to analyze me and the original question to make excuses for your lack of not being able to come up with a rational explanation

I agree DD. As you know, I do believe in God myself.

I wasn't addressing whether or not a God "could" exist. I was simply addressing the topic of why a particular argument for God doesn't hold any water.

Nothing more, nothing less.

yes like an emoticon with a symbol of a cross on it torturing one that doesn't have a symbol

I know.

But new people don't. As they don't know why you call me DD.

Which I still think is hilarious...

I love thinking about how big the universe is... I wonder what else is out there?

Then I realize that in this life I will only see or learn about a small percentage of the creatures or things on this planet...

Or vice versa.

Either way...

I think a Taz emoticon would be a good thing or the snoopy sound effect........

According to what I saw on TV the universe is not expanding faster than the speed of light, it only did that for an instant right after the big bang. This little glitch in physics allowed for the formation of heavy elements without which life could not be possible. The same with water no need to explain why it does what it does, the fact that it does the opposite of what everything else does under the same circumstances makes life possible.

You ask that I take it on faith that all this happend by random chance yet you can't accept on faith that this might be by intelligent design.

I believe you are right. I saw that same special on the history channel.

Not meant as an argument, but rather just to share my knowledge on the topic (after all physics is my area of study).

1. You’re right, Inflation theory says that inflation only occurred for the briefest fraction of a second in the early stages of the universe. It’s just a ‘theory’ and by rights should only be called a ‘conjecture’ because it is totally unproven. Although, it does fit in well with a lot of existing mathematical physics.

2. You say, “This little glitch in physics allowed for the formation of heavy elements without which life could not be possible”

Yes, that’s one way to look at it. However, we only have this one universe to observe. So if our universe were different then we’d say that the physics of that universe were unique and it wouldn’t be the way it is if it didn’t have the physics that it had.

In other words, this is kind of like looking at the color blue and saying, “Gee, you know that color wouldn’t be blue if it wasn’t blue”.



Water isn’t the only thing that has these properties. However, water is the only substance we know of that can support ‘our’ biology. But that might just be because we evolved out of oceans of water.

If we had evolved out of oceans of alcohol we’d all be alcoholics.

But seriously, we evolved out of oceans of water. That’s why water is so important to us. We can’t say with any certainty at all that life couldn’t evolve in oceans of other liquids. We simply don’t have enough examples of evolution to know whether that is possible or not. (whoops! Spoke too soon, keep reading!)

There are reasons to believe that almost any life in the universe would necessarily be carbon-based. But as we can see on earth, carbon based life-forms can take a huge variety of forms.

Oh by the way!!! I just now realized, there are examples of life on earth that do not rely on water. They are called ‘extremophiles’. You can see examples of these on the “Planet Earth” series and other places I’m sure. We have examples of living organisms that live entirely in sulfuric acid on EARTH! And there are other examples as well, I think I vaguely remember reading about extremophiles that live in ammonia. That was interesting because Jupiter is mainly made of ammonia (I think) or something similar, and this gave us reason to believe that there might possibly be life on Jupiter at least microscopic life anyway.

So there are examples of life that evolved in fluids other than water, even on earth.



I’m not asking you to do anything. I actually believe that the universe itself is a living entity and has ‘intelligence’. So I believe in ‘intelligent design’ too, but I imagine that my thoughts on this are significantly different from yours.

The idea of Intelligent Design isn’t going to cause me to rush to believe in any particular religion because Intelligent Design would support all religions equally. Including pantheism, which is my favorite picture of God.

However, I don’t see Intelligent Design as meaning that God would need to be an active ‘babysitter’. In other words, I don’t see a need for God to have to ‘guide’ evolution.

Instead, I can see where the ‘Intelligent Design’ could be put into the constituents of the universe, and into the laws of physics, much like dots are placed on the faces of dice. Then when the universe is ‘rolled’ out things will automatically take shape. But just like rolling dice, even God doesn’t need to know ‘exactly’ what will come up.

In other words, humans were a possible ‘number’ that could come up in the universe. But that doesn’t mean that they were preplanned necessarily. Anymore than you would preplan the precise number that you get when you roll a pair of dice.

In this way, I see the universe as being a form of ‘controlled chance’. But I’m not saying that’s the way things are. I’m just saying that this picture would certainly fit into everything we know about physics in complete harmony. AND it would produce a world like we experience today.

"gardenforge" faith only exist in your mind and not beyond it, one could also have faith that little elves created the big bang but that doesn't make it true, if you have no evidence beyond faith then you have no evidence but only pre-programmed fantasies unless you believe you are God and everything you have faith alters reality "to be"