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redbedhead
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redbedhead
341 posts
Nomad

Now to start this off, I have but one request: I will respect you as an individual and as a human being as long as you will give me the same respect. Too many times have I debated over this topic in the past with atheists, and not to be bias but, most times in the PC world of today if you believe in theism or creationism you instantly become ridiculed for being an unintelligent imbecile. I took debate all four years of high school, throughout all of undergrad at KU, and I'm currently enrolled in Stanford for a double major in Law and Spanish. Now I have no degree directly in science but in no means am I unintelligent. I have studied this subject personally and have done my own research and have attended many seminars on the subject so I do know what I am talking about the subject. I do not want this to turn into a flame war of mind numbing mudslinging and dehumanizing of a person of an opposing view. So again I ask that this remains simply an intelligent debate over the topic.

Note:I wrote this all in Word then cut/pasted onto AG so if any format problems occur I apologize up front and I will try to edit and fix them as they arise.

Alright now for the exciting stuff. So here is the case.

How do you explain the beginning of a universe without intelligent design?

Alright now let me lay the foundation and boundaries for this case.
1. The most important out of all of these is what the case entitles. This is not a debate on if an INTELLIGENT DESIGNER exists at all (because there are plenty of threads on the forums that encompass this debate) , but how the universe came about in the first place WITHOUT intelligent design.
2. This being said it entitles that a world that was created by intelligent design is the status quo. Whether you believe it or not for the purposes of this debate it will remain the status quo making the defense against this case: the negative, and leaving the affirmative challengers with the burden of evidence.
3. If evidence is claimed be sure to back it up not using sole opinion and analytics to prove your point. (i.e. "Evidence proves that this happened!!" ....what evidence are you citing?)
4. Neither side can claim FIAT in any fashion. It either happens or it doesn't.
5. Keep it clean.
6. **IMPORTANT** To all mods reading this, as I said this is not a debate on rather or not an intelligent designer exists or not so this is not a repeat thread, rather a thread that is from a different point of view so please do not lock this thread for that purpose. Also I am aware (from a few years ago) that a majority of the mods are atheists and again I please ask that you do not use your power to make the debate unfair and you work with me to keep it on the right track as to not let it just become a giant hate flame war. I know mods in the past have, well to be blunt, have been flat out rude when it comes to topics like this which in turns creates an atmosphere for unintelligent debates. So let's just keep this one on the right path.

Alright now on to the second part of the resolution: To fully win this debate the following answers must be answered with compelling evidence or at least a substantial amount of them. I have made a wide scope of logical questions to be answered and I don't find a single one of them ridiculous even if you disagree they still must be negated.

1. Explain how some eternal random chance of quantum physics which would have to schematically predate time itself randomly burst forth such a force to create a start to everything out of nothing
2. How did we get something out of nothing
3. How did we get the carbon to form to start the building blocks of life
4. How did earth randomly become the only suitable place for a human being to live and how did it become so perfectly adapted to an orbit around a G2V superstar that would freeze us into an ice age if we were simply 1 or 2 light years further away or burn us to death if we were simply 1 or 2 light years closer.
5. How did the random chance of Earth being the only sustainable place for life occur, and if 6 billion years or more have passed why haven't we seen the same occurrence in other planets or at least the start of it?
6. How do you explain the beginning of time itself?
7. When, where, and how did the laws of the universe form and come about? (gravity, inertia, etc.)
8. Where did the matter come from to make life? How did life come to form from dead matter to living matter.
9. How did the matter get so perfectly organized and where did the energy come from to organize it?
10. What did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce? Since it would be asexual reproduction how do several single cell organisms develop into something completely different?
11. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival according to Darwin's theory of natural selection.
12. Does the individual animal or plant have a drive to survive, or the species in whole? How is this explained?
13. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?
14. When, where, why, and how did single-celled plants and animals become multi-celled? Where are the two-and three- celled intermediates? Where has the REAL missing link been found and not already disproven? Wouldn't there have to be several hundreds of missing links for each species to develop (from fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to birds or simians) and if there are so many that wouldn't it be simple to find at least a few?
15. When did eyes or ears evolve and from what did they evolve from?

Satirical humor might seem funny to you such as "Oh you are very smart aren't you! I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster/Invisible Pink Unicorn/Cold fire-breathing Garage Dragon too! It makes just as much sense as your invisible God! You're unintelligent and ignorant and I can't debate with someone as stupid and crazy as you because you believe differently than I do and I am significantly smarter than you." But the truth of the matter is; it's very offensive to me and I believe all the other Christians or theist on these forums that have to endure troll comments like this. I have not insulted you (maybe my views have) but I have not made fun of you or ridiculed you for your beliefs or commented on your intelligence. I hold myself to be a respectable man, and I won't stoop to the level of insulting a person for their beliefs. I am judging no one for their beliefs and I agree that every single individual is entitled to their own opinions and it does not make them any more unintelligible than me for believing something different. So making a remark about being a Pastatarian or challenging my intelligence is just rude and uncalled for and I hope no one will go to such lengths as being unprofessional over a complex debate.

As I am completely aware (being a Christian over the years) the biggest thing creationists are antagonized for is their "blind faith" for their religion of "gaps". I agree that I have much faith in God as a supernatural being that I cannot see who created everything we see today, but the evidence is purely in statistics and although this debate is not encompassing that directly; it's leading to my next point. That what it is that amazes me the most is the total denunciation of faith by the scientific community when they so do it themselves. How so? The fact that they try to just take it a step further past a divine creator, and look at the beginning of time an unanswerable question that just has to be assumed as a theorem. That alone, takes a great deal of faith to believe in something that honestly can't be proven or any logical argument would lead to an infinite loop that is really just not rational either. The argument will presumably take a turn to who created a creator which is not the main focus of this debate but to make this clear. The reason there is no need for a creator of the creator then the reason the creation needs a creator is like this example: Leonardo Da Vinci created the Mona Lisa in 1519. Yet according to this same exact theory, who created Da Vinci? So "let's just take it a step further and say" that the Mona Lisa created itself out of nothing. Whereas actually if we DO have evidence of design then it doesn't matter where did that object come from. Since we know that the Mona Lisa painting is designed and likewise we can't avoid the design inference by asking who made the painting. Similarly *IF* we can show that universe has design then you can't escape the inference by asking "Who made the designer?". Thus "who made god" may be a good counter to the cosmological argument but not so a good in the case of design arguments. Thus as stands a world created by intelligent design will remain the status quo for the entirety of this debate.

  • 159 Replies
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
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Farmer

Well, if you think about it, when God created the earth, he also created time, logic, and everything else we take for granted or refer to as "laws of nature". so God lived and lives outside of time itself so he could never have a beginning or an end because se is not apart of human time.


Sure I can accept that God can be eternal for existing outside of spacetime. However this get's us back to a previous point on how this attribute can just as easily be applied to the initial singularity that expanded into our universe, thus God becoming unnecessarily added. However the statement made was that everything has to have a beginning, so this would follow that God if he exists would also require a beginning.
MRWalker82
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MRWalker82
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Shepherd

What many of you are doing is that you are not answering the question, but blowing it completely out of proportion.


Actually you're asking a question that has no answer in our limited language, then citing that as a case for your belief. This is a very fallacious and intellectually dishonest method of communication.

So why challenge a Christian for saying God is the one who made the atom?


Who cares in instances like this? No one. However when the same dogma that says that God made that atom also demands that homosexuals and women be treated as a lesser class of citizen, and that anyone who doesn't buy a particular brand of superstition is going to be tortured for eternity, and when the obviously false affirmations about the physical world contained in this dogma are presented as fact and argued for in educational circles I WILL speak out against it.

I don't care what someone believes in their personal lives, but when that belief is making false claims and branding it as 'science', and when that belief is forced upon children under threat of torture I take a huge issue with that. If religious folks kept their faith at home and church we wouldn't be having these issues.

Also, you do realize that America is a Christian nation founded on freedom. What Atheists are not trying to eliminate Religion in State, they are trying to eliminate Christianity and state.


Actually you are very wrong here. America is NOT a Christian nation, nor was it founded on Christianity. In fact, many of our founding fathers spoke out AGAINST Christianity, citing it as detrimental to a society. This is why we have not only freedom OF religion, but freedom FROM religion.

Any theory must be acceptable for the placing of the atom because there is no way to prove it otherwise.


Again, wrong. The only acceptable theories are those with supporting evidence. A lack of evidence demands a lack of affirmation in any direction. To use your logic, you must accept my theory of pink unicorn creation because you have no way to prove it otherwise. Obviously this is fallacious and absurd reasoning.

it is so mystifying and is the main flaw of the Big Bang theory, how did the atom get there?


Actually "Big Bang" cosmology never has, nor likely ever will even attempt to address how the universe was condensed into a singularity, ergo the issue of not knowing how that initial singularity came to be is NOT a 'roblem' with "Big Bang" cosmology. Now, if the "Big Bang" theory attempted to address such an issue then your assertion would be valid.

Im am just seeing if religion and science could co-exist. the common responce is that it can't.


Absolutely religion and science can coexist. However for this to happen in a rational world then religion must refrain from making claims about the natural world, especially when it is so frequently wrong. This is where the conflict comes, because religion makes claims which we can test and verify and it is wrong. Then religious folks either have to reject facts about the world, or must adjust their dogma to fit the new information, neither of which any dogmatic faith are willing to do it seems.
Darkroot
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Darkroot
2,763 posts
Peasant

Also, you do realize that America is a Christian nation founded on freedom. What Atheists are not trying to eliminate Religion in State, they are trying to eliminate Christianity and state.

Actually you are very wrong here. America is NOT a Christian nation, nor was it founded on Christianity. In fact, many of our founding fathers spoke out AGAINST Christianity, citing it as detrimental to a society. This is why we have not only freedom OF religion, but freedom FROM religion.


I agree I hate to see people use this misconception to rationalize their beliefs. Your American Constitution doesn't even have the word Christianity in it. Yes Religion need to be removed from politics and the state. It should just be a moral instruction booklet not a definite guide to it's own made up universe.

I believe Religion should be reformed into a moral and life help guide. Because that's all I see it being good for.

Also are we arguing about a God or a Christian God?
tomertheking
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tomertheking
1,751 posts
Jester

1. Explain how some eternal random chance of quantum physics which would have to schematically predate time itself randomly burst forth such a force to create a start to everything out of nothing
2. How did we get something out of nothing
3. How did we get the carbon to form to start the building blocks of life
4. How did earth randomly become the only suitable place for a human being to live and how did it become so perfectly adapted to an orbit around a G2V superstar that would freeze us into an ice age if we were simply 1 or 2 light years further away or burn us to death if we were simply 1 or 2 light years closer.
5. How did the random chance of Earth being the only sustainable place for life occur, and if 6 billion years or more have passed why haven't we seen the same occurrence in other planets or at least the start of it?
6. How do you explain the beginning of time itself?
7. When, where, and how did the laws of the universe form and come about? (gravity, inertia, etc.)
8. Where did the matter come from to make life? How did life come to form from dead matter to living matter.
9. How did the matter get so perfectly organized and where did the energy come from to organize it?
10. What did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce? Since it would be asexual reproduction how do several single cell organisms develop into something completely different?
11. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival according to Darwin's theory of natural selection.
12. Does the individual animal or plant have a drive to survive, or the species in whole? How is this explained?
13. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?
14. When, where, why, and how did single-celled plants and animals become multi-celled? Where are the two-and three- celled intermediates? Where has the REAL missing link been found and not already disproven? Wouldn't there have to be several hundreds of missing links for each species to develop (from fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to birds or simians) and if there are so many that wouldn't it be simple to find at least a few?
15. When did eyes or ears evolve and from what did they evolve from?


My hypothesis just points to a possibility that does not have god in it. I don't have a forth degree in phisics or quantium phisics.

1. Look at it as an infinite amount of universes that all of them go with time- because of its infinitesy it does not have a beginging. Universes are created by something outside the universe (of course).
2. If the something that created something else is infinite in every aspect, then you have a start for everything else right there.
3. Chance. If you have a billion years to do it, it will eventually happen. I remember my parents telling me when I was little that some sientist recreated the conditions in that time on earth in aglass tube, and he got life out of it.
4. A light year is a lot of distance. I thing you meant light minutes. Anyway, if it had been not in the right condition some lizards would be ruling the earth and not human beings. Also, it takes a living creature to create a contiousness.
5. Who said it hadn't?
6. Infinity.
7. Some complex prosses that creates universes.
8. a. from the oceans of the time.
b. Living things are simply very very very complex computers. Chance can create them given a billion years.
9. Evolution and nessesity
10. a. They simply divide, like cells in our body.
b. mutation and problems in the DNA.
11. It would increase. Like having multipule bank acounts in diffrent banks, so that when one crashes, you still have all the others. If it couldn't feed itself fast enough, the species dies.
12. All of them want to survive individually. but sometimes being in a pack is the best way to survive.
13. Mutations. If you add some complex part to the DNA, most chances the creature is wrecked. One chance in a million it helps it survive and it produses a new species.
14. The missing links probablly lived a few thousand years only to be killed by the better ones. Too few bones.
15 I dunno.
frankdrebiin
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frankdrebiin
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Nomad

This "There had to be someone, who made all in the beginning"-theory is nonsense imo. (Like all thinkin about God ^^). Because, if u don't think, there was allways something and u fill that lack with God, then u have to ask, was God allways there, or who made him. ^^

I mean, that thoughts about the beginning of the universe are interesting. I just dislike religion and God *gg

MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
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Farmer

1. Look at it as an infinite amount of universes that all of them go with time- because of its infinitesy it does not have a beginging. Universes are created by something outside the universe (of course).


If we are getting into a multiverse concept the hypothesis is that a universe buds from a previous one.
Einfach
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Einfach
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Nomad

To all people saying "You can't disprove it."

1. You must prove it. Otherwise, we have no reason to believe it.

2. If something (a God), does not interact with a system, how can it be said to exist in the system. Therefore, if everything can be explained by science, God is disproven.

Einfach
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Einfach
1,448 posts
Nomad

Another reason why you have to prove it:

If God cannot be proven, how can He demand people to worship him.

Don't give me stuff like Bible Quotes like
Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who do not see but believe."
(John 20:29).

Is Jesus here trying to promote irrationality? Why should we not "see" (be presented logical evidence of) and still believe?

MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

To all people saying "You can't disprove it."

1. You must prove it. Otherwise, we have no reason to believe it.


For a more visual perspective on this. Asking to disprove god is like asking to remove the number 3 from this equation 2+2=4. You must first prove his existence.
thisisnotanalt
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thisisnotanalt
9,821 posts
Farmer

Because the theists were the ones to originally claim that a god exists, they have the burden of proof and have to prove their position. the atheists are the ones reminding them to prove it - the theists need to substantiate their claim because they made a claim, and the atheists are really just saying "well, prove this, because we have no reason to believe it until you do".

Cinna
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Cinna
753 posts
Nomad

For a more visual perspective on this. Asking to disprove god is like asking to remove the number 3 from this equation 2+2=4. You must first prove his existence.

Because the theists were the ones to originally claim that a god exists, they have the burden of proof and have to prove their position. the atheists are the ones reminding them to prove it - the theists need to substantiate their claim because they made a claim, and the atheists are really just saying "well, prove this, because we have no reason to believe it until you do".


Mmh, so let's say religious people never started another thread on religion, do you suppose it would destroy all debate?
MRWalker82
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MRWalker82
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Shepherd

Mmh, so let's say religious people never started another thread on religion, do you suppose it would destroy all debate?


Absolutely not. So long as someone is making a claim there will always be those asking them to provide evidence in support of said claim. That is the nature of this, and most others, debate.
Endscape
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Endscape
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Nomad

[/Because the theists were the ones to originally claim that a god exists, they have the burden of proof and have to prove their position. the atheists are the ones reminding them to prove it - the theists need to substantiate their claim because they made a claim, and the atheists are really just saying "well, prove this, because we have no reason to believe it until you do".]

is this NOT the question AND answer in its simpliest form... we (the Atheist) believe that in order for us to truly believe in something or someone you (the Theist) must prove it to be true.... however with nothing but their faith to back them up they cannot, but they will be dammed before they give up their faith because of they cannot see their God or show him/her to us...... i pose this question to everyone if neither side will back down (the UNMOVEABLE vs the UNSTOPABLE theory) is the debate really a debate?

Highfire
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Highfire
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Nomad

How do you explain the beginning of a universe without intelligent design?

I stopped reading there.
For one, some Scientific Theories (if not all) assume that the Big Bang (before it happened) was essentially everything. A combined force including time, gravity, and other... strange things. When it blew, it wasn't intelligent it was messy, it actually split those powers apart which is how we came to know them separately.

It's not intelligent design.

Secondly, you cannot explain how God made everything whereas something must've made God. This also extends to the Big Bang, however the difference is the logic.

With Atheism, we rely on proof, evidence and pure observation to learn from what we already know and to decipher the strangest things we see.

With Theism, all morals, ideas, principles and natures are made lazily by the followers - because they're handed to them. No offense but. Isn't this what childs books do? Aesop's Fables and etc? Also, even if God were real, then his morals are actually quite twisted. He allows war to commence between innocents and guilty people, not intervening at all - this is between his own creations, right?

What would you prefer believe? A proving theory that whilst doesn't know the meaning or how it happened still wishes to seek it out - along with all other mysteries.
Or something whereas we must be grateful for our very simple lives under a single deity which allows us to kill non-believers. Oh, but at least believers get along well.

That last part sounds biased, but that is what came to mind.
I wouldn't want my followers (teehee) to kill people who don't follow me for simply that reason, it's disgusting, unnecessary, evil, irrational and pathetic.
Pretty much that.

Besides, I have to ask why people take this topic so seriously, I mean...
Who cares? Yeah? We're gonna die and (hopefully) find out anyway, just be a good person, stfu, and done and dusted.

Except for Science, we'll keep to ourselves and find out if we're right when we're still alive. Because we can do that when we're alive, because we're awesome.

You theists are awesome too, but just another kind of awesome. Yer brave and loyal and stuff but... you know, we make sure the side we fight for is the right side, and that's what we're loyal to.



- H
MRWalker82
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MRWalker82
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Shepherd

I often see 'luck' or 'chance' used to illustrate the impossibility of abiogenesis. However we must take into account the scope of the 'odds' which are presented. Sure, 1 in a million seems like an impossible long shot. But when that 1 in a million happens on a daily basis it becomes a rather common and mundane event.

Take for example the lottery. If you buy 1 ticket you are almost certainly not going to win. However if you buy 1 ticket twice per week for 10 million weeks you'll likely win several times. This is what we are dealing with when we look at 'impossible' probabilities on a universal scale.

Certainly the 'odds' of prebiotic Earth containing the right chemicals for the proper formation of amino acids is rare, nearly impossibly rare. However think of the fact that there are hundreds of billions of planets out there, many of them likely rather similar to our own. Then give that it took billions of years for the proper conditions to occur. You will see that the '1 in a million', when taken on a universal scale, is likely a relatively common occurrence.

To put this into perspective, there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and in all the deserts of the entire world. Each of these stars has bodies which orbit it. Many of these bodies are not gaseous bodies, but terrestrial bodies composed of solid matter. Out of all of these bodies, even with the shear odds against it, there was bound to be AT LEAST one which had a chemical make up which was conducive to chemical reactions which created chemicals capable of replication.

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