Giving it some thought, I really don't see how our race could survive without some overwatching being, although I suppose some would argue that said guardian is an alien or etc. However, my point is: look at human behavior. We are more prone to nonproductive and self-destructive actions than any other species on Earth. We do things we know are bad for us, and harm and kill each other for no good reason. How could we, compared to animals that operate purely efficiently through instinct, dominate the world? It can't solely be through the use of tools, because some other animals can use them as well. I'm sorry that I sound so condescending, I really don't mean to be, but people are messed up. So how did we get to the top of the food chain without help?

Glyphomancer- I believe it is all a matter of natural selection. Through many mutations in genes which worked out for the better and through sexual reproduction, the humans were just the ones that adapted the most to the environment and were the most fit to live. Our human behavior is mostly affected by what we do to our mind instead of filling it with knowledge, so genes don't really mess with that. It's through strength, sight, and the combination of the rest of our senses that makes us superior.

Luckily, we have been discussing this in my youth group in church recently. This may be a bit long so bear with me. First of all, God created everything. Therefore he created nature. Science as defined in my textbook is, "the study of nature". Since God created nature, that means that the science is the study of God's work. People who associate all form of science with the devil are actually associating God's work with evil. But science becomes wrong when things such as the Big Bang Theory, Evolution, and coincidence are placed as reasons for existence rather than God. Onto the Big Bang Theory. Many people have discussed it so there is not much to say. Matter cannot create matter and it cannot be destroyed. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The three major ideas for creation are the universe exploded from a single point of matter, that it always existed, and that God created it. The idea of it always existing is out because the big bang theory contradicts it was well as the fact that if matter always existed, then there would be no catalyst to start anything, including the creation of stars and the earth. At least the big bang presents a catalyst. Without a catalyst there is no action, but only inert. As for the big bang theory, scientific laws contradict it as if the universe was but a single point, then there would be nothing to activate and explosion because that single point of matter is all that there is. And since matter does not create itself, not only can matter have no explanation to exist, but if it were a single point, matter would have to create itself to expand into the universe and that also goes against the primary principals of matter thus the big bang theory is out as well. Only the interference of an outer force, could be responsible for the creation of matter and a catalyst, not to say that God created the universe through the big bang either because the way God created the everything we know was explained in the first book of the bible, Genesis. Genesis stated that God created everything including the universe over a period of six days, and then on the seventh day he rested. Man was created on the 6th day. This may seem like a silly concept to those of you who are dead-set against believing in God and creationism and even to some Christians, you may deny this and try to say that it is just a mistake and adapt to different theories,but this is indeed the way it was done. I'll start with evolution and jump around from there. Evolution is the gradual change of an organism over time through adaptations and survival of the fittest and such. The key here would have to be the "gradual change over time". Scientists even accept that evolution might not be as proven as they think it is if the Earth were actually young, rather than old. That is just it. The earth is claimed by scientists to be over 4.5 billion years old. This however, can be contradicted by fossil record. Sedimentary, and other belts of earth which supposedly took eons to form contain fossils from their respective eras. Fossils of animals and plants and such however, have been found in not just one, but multiple layers. It would not be possible for this to happen if these layers were eons old because they would be too condensed for other fossils to mix in. If fossils from totally different eras were mixed in, this would have to mean that the eras aren't as far apart as claimed by scientists. The earth would have to be much younger to accomplish something like this. Another thing would have to be the birth rate. If you date birth rates from the beginning, even if you use conservative numbers and average life-spans to somewhere around 40-50, and lower the amount of time that the earth has existed to merely a million years, at standard population increases, if the world for that long, then by now the population would be at 1 x 10 to the power of 5000. of course I don't mean 10x5000, I mean 10 with over 5000 zeroes behind it. A billion (or in this case 6.7-7 billion in our case)has only 9 zeroes... This number is much to vast and it would be impossible for the earth to retain even a mere fraction of that amount of people. If we really existed that long, then the earth would be beyond over populated. And since evolutions takes millions of years, if we couldn't have existed for less than a million years, then there is no way evolution could have had enough time to change virtually anything. So humans couldn't have evolved from apes or monkey or which ever it was if we didn't even have enough time to do it. If you count the dates in the bible, from Adam and Eve to noah and the great flood, that equates to roughly 2000 years. Then if you count after the flood to Jesus, then you count roughly another 2000, and if you count to today, then that sums up another rough 2000. when you add it all together, the earth has only existed for over 6000 years. This would explain why fossils are able to exist in multiple geo-belts. Also, since the rocks hold record of time, if you went a place like the grand canyon, you would find evidence of such events as the great flood. which would be at the end of a 2000 year interval. Now that I've gotten the bigger things out of the way, onto some smaller facts. For example, when Noah built the ark. God simply told noah to so it and gave him precise measurements to do so. Noah spent 400 years building the giant ark to house 2 of every thing that needed to survive the flood. Noah had never built a boat in his life, but suddenly he was able to make a ark that floated perfectly and survived the storm. There's no way that you could just guess measurements like that to survive a 40 day flood in a ark. Not only that, but even if you did have the stupidity to guess at something like that, there's no way you would waste 400 years building a guess. No one is that insane. It's no just something to be left to chance. And in the 1800's a british man used the exact measurements to construct his own version of the raft called, the "Great Britain". And it turns out that those were the perfect measurements for building a ship to hold much cargo and float safely. There's no chance that someone would just guess on precise measurements, it just wouldn't happen. Secondly, the bible says that life is in the blood. Back in the old days, people didn't know that blood was the source of life unless they read the bible. It wasn't scientifically proven until much later that that was actually correct. People who didn't follow this and tried to drain the blood to cleanse them of whatever was ailing them were actually killing themselves through this method. Also the bible told people to remove their waste and send it outside their cities rather than dump it in the street. It may seem like common sense to us that waste (i.e poop and pee and puke) is bad and unhealthy but that is because that is how we were taught. In those days people just thought, ew gross poop, well as long as im not touching it i should be fine. It wasn't common sense to remove waste from cities. This was were the black plague came from. People in these areas weren't following the bible and just threw their waste anywhere which developed in plague and killed a third of europe. it could have all been avoided if they just listened to the bible. There is no way that they could have known these things and God is the answer to many and all unanswered question. O know that this is in no way bullet proof, but its 2:12 AM and I'm about ta pass out so sorry if my argument got crappy toward the middle and end but im tired. yea... so gnite everyone!

Well ive got a theory: if you believe in ghosts your an extremmmmmmmly lucky person especially if you've seen one.
I'm a very cynical person and don't believe in such things BUT if you do that means theres definite cold hard proof of an afterlife, where did the afterlife come from, a higher being, who is this higher being?, lets call him god. Anyway that's my theory

a different more simple argument though is god exists because Jesus said so ...

well how did you get on earth how did you get the bible so correct hmm

cooleo : Please be joking. We got on Earth via evolution. Meteors hit Earth millions of years ago, which caused bacteria that evolved into many different animal species, that evolved until we were here. It's been scientifically proven.

ParagonNova : I have to interject whenever someone says something has been scientifically proven....

that doesn't actually happen. You can only prove a hypothesis false.... not true. If people can't prove a hypothesis to be untrue then it is used as the best source of knowledge on that subject until a better hypothesis comes along that disproves the original one.

geeogree : THANK YOU GEEO he's been (gonna be nice here) very rude in chat about evolution. HOW THE HELL could bacteria turn into a human O.O

cooleo : I never said I agreed with you. I was simply making a point. The theory of evolution is currently the best explanation science has for how humans came to exist on this planet. You can't prove "God did it" so what do you expect science to come up with?

geeogree : " You can only prove a hypothesis false.... not true. If people can't prove a hypothesis to be untrue then it is used as the best source of knowledge on that subject until a better hypothesis comes along that disproves the original one. "

I would say you are correct for the most part with this statement. This is also why I believe there is no God, atleast how God is portrayed in the bible. The Genesis creation theory / hypothesis has basically been proven to be untrue by newer scientific theories. If the first chapter in the book of "God's word"  is proven wrong then it makes the rest of the book doubtful as well.

I realize that I have not tried to prove anyone's claims to be false, but I would be more than happy to try. I am not too familiar with alot of the claims so I will have to do research on them. Also Deltaedge's wall of text brings up a lot of topics so I will most likely not be addressing all of them. If he wants me to answer something in particular than feel free to let me know which one, Delta. (or anyone else who wants to see something he mentioned to be countered)

I will probably just edit this post and type out my response to alttpalttp and DeltaEdge, unless some one makes a reply before I do.


alttpalttp: 

*Sodom and Gomorrah ruins found covered in ash and sulfur balls (composed of 95% sulfur, the highest concentration in the world, second is 45%):
http://www.youtube.com/user/sygnate#p/u/6/oG3QsisQrkc

This is simply a natural disaster which has been attributed to God, like many other over the centuries. Lets look at what German archaeologist Werner Keller says about the area. "Together with the base of this mighty fissure, which runs precisely through this area, the Vale of Siddim, including Sodom and Gomorrah, plunged one day into the abyss. Their destruction came about through a great earthquake which was probably accompanied by explosions, lightning, issue of natural gas and general conflagration… The subsidence released volcanic forces that had been lying dormant deep down along the whole length of the fracture. In the upper valley of the Jordan near Bashan there are still towering craters of extinct volcanoes; great stretches of lava and deep layers of basalt have been deposited on the limestone surface."

The video you linked mentions that this area is the lowest laying area in the world. It also a highly seismic active area. This means that it sits closer to the earths core than any where else in the world, and there is tectonic plate activity, which usually means lava is in the area. The rock formations in the video for the most part are igneous rocks which form under great heat or pressure. The high sulfur content can be described from this volcanic activity as well. When volcanos erupt the primary gases emitted are sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide. The extreme heat of the explosion causes the bonds between the oxygen/hydrogen and the sulfur to break leaving solid sulfur while the oxygen and hydrogen remain gas and become part of the atmosphere. 

I should also point out that the Quran also talks about this event being caused by God, does that mean you believe Allah is God as well?


I will continue this post later, just watched 2 hours of videos that 

alttpalttp: linked to.

I used to just believe in God because my parents are Christian. Now that I have studied physics, I believe in God solely because of how perfect our universe is. Everything just seems to be so exact that the only way I can accept it is that a intelligent being made it that way.

I am new here. The goal later was stated to be evidence for a creator not just God that is easier than proving God. When you look at nature and the complications in it from everything to the way our compounds and everything lined up just perfectly because if there was one thing wrong it couldn't have happened the probability for it to amount out of nothing by chance is beyond the point science calls impossible. The odds for nature coming into to be sit on the side of a designer. Paul states in the bible the evidence to base our faith on is nature itself reveals God.
There is no concrete proof to show that their is a 100% chance of a designer but the odds sit with it as far as probability, and there s no concrete 100% proof the designer is God that is where our faith comes in. As far as the bible go it states in itself that the men who wrote it wrote as they were moved by God so if you believe the bible it isn't just men writing advice or whatever you would  like to call it. A personal experience is the best thing as far as evidence one can have but that evidence cannot be shared with one another like a book. You can tell someone about it but they can't have it unless they build their own experience. It is as the old hymn states you ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart. As far as immaterial goes we cant see each others minds nor can we touch, weigh, nor examine but we believe we have them. Not everything can be concretely scientifically looked at. Odds our this will be my only post because I'm not on very much but these are just my thoughts on the issue.

I just wanna say that trying to prove God exists seems kind of pointless. If man could prove it, then there would be no use for faith and trust in Him. However, I do believe there are signs that greatly disprove evolution and approve God's existence, but again, as Christians, we have to have faith that God is real. If you do, you will live forever, if you don't you will perish.

OK well, personally I think it is harder to disprove God's existence than to prove it; if that makes sense, then people should try and prove rather than disprove.

God exists in some form as we are talking about God. The idea of God exists is what I'm getting at. It's not much, but that's all I got right now lol. 

I do believe that everyone has the story wrong and that perhaps the Bible and other religious texts are ways of giving people a false sense of security when the real truth is too much for our minds to handle. 

I read most of the posts in the thread and we all seem to agree that the chances of everything in the universe coming together to the culmination of conscious beings (humans) is highly unlikely. The chances of me even being alive to type this is just so unbelievably slim. There's a greater chance that this whole state of consciousness is a farce perpetuated by someone else, possibly the being that we call God.

I still believe that either extreme is well too extreme. I feel like there is a higher being but not what we have in mind. I have no real evidence to back that up, but neither does anyone else it seems

just look at the universe, the birth of a baby or a sunset on a sunday afternoon, think about all the miracles that have happened in the world, I can't believe that all that has come from science I am glad that I became a religious person.

By Death it's felt great hahaha