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For atheists... again I'm curious...?

Many atheists in this forum would agree that if my answer to the problem as to how life started is simply, "God," then they would tell me I'm far too naive and have no proof. Fair enough. But is your answer to the same question a better one in your opinion, or is just another alternative, no better or worse? Honest question, just trying to guage what theory your own faith is beholding to. After all, we are here, we are alive, something has to be at work that science can't prove.

Update:

Dillici..., Really? Please do share your "evidence". Did you just look that up on the internet today? It's a philosophical problem because the response can always be... "but how did it first start". At least the guy above you was honest in his answer.

Update 2:

Luke: No more "evidence" than any other theory. In fact the Bible doesn't dispute a "Big bang". But again the question you can't answer... "what caused the big bang"? See the problem, you are choosing to have faith in a theory, not a forgone fact.

Update 3:

What me worry: Nor is there evidence enough to support any other theory... yet, here we are.

Update 4:

Luke: again, like you said, it's still just a theory, not fact. It can't be proven or disproven, kind of like God.

Update 5:

offrenew...: Really? You know more about the Bible then some priests or pastors, huh? You do however have a little trouble with the use of the word "their". Your assertion that in general atheists know more about the Bible... is just the lie you keep telling yourself to justify a poor alternative. It seems to me atheists are always trying to prove their intellegence, Christians don't need to, we have truth on our side.

Update 6:

pirate am: who created the first self-replicating enzyme? In other words how can something start out of nothing? You don't have any better answer nor any more evidence, than the answer of God. Don't play that game with me.

Update 7:

Opus: all you are doing is admitting that someone or something has to "create" them. You said it yourself. Before there was life on Earth, who first created it?

Update 8:

rbc: I have no problem with science continuing to explore all possibilities, because I know eventually they will reach the same conclusion. Science doesn't threaten Christianity and the belief in God, it validates it.

11 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    No, saying that God created the universe is very different. There is no evidence. There is evidence for the Big Bang Theory.

    EDIT:

    There is also another theory called the Cyclic Model. In this model, the universe has always existed and it goes through cycles of Big Bangs. These Big Bangs are triggered by branes colliding (branes can be thought of as dimensions). The universe is theorized to eventually expand back into nothingness (called a Big Crunch) and then will go through another Big Bang. This is an infinite cycle.

    Well, a theory can be regarded as fact. They have been tested many times. How many times has God been tested?

  • 1 decade ago

    How did life begin? Well right now abiogenesis looks like a promising explanation but more experiments need to be done. I have no faith in any theories nor do I have faith that no god exists. I lean towards one theory over another based on what the evidence leads to. Keep in mind that in any scientific theory god is a non-factor (meaning that thinking they are right doesn't mean you don't believe in God). So Atheism doesn't mean you have to believe abiogenesis or accept the Big Bang or evolution. I repeat, religion is a non-factor. Why does something need to be at work?

    The Urey Miller experiment shows how amino acids (building blocks for proteins) can form on their own and other experiments show how a very simple cell membrane can form.

    I freely admit that I have no idea what caused the big bang but I see no reason why anyone would fill that gap with god. What happens if we do find out what caused the universe to start expanding? I'm not about to limit my options because I don't know because by doing so you stop searching for the truth. Again I have no faith in any theories, I accept the theories based on the evidence presented.

    Lots of evidence exists to support all scientific theories (this is why we call them scientific theories). A theory isn't just some guess some guy (or gal) had one day. Evidence is compiled, conclusions are drawn, more evidence is compiled, experiments are performed, if needed the numbers are crunched, hypothesis are reformatted, etc. A scientific theory is the most important things in the scientific community.

  • gehme
    Lv 5
    1 decade ago

    If you propose that god created everything, you're still stating that you don't know how anything was created. What you're stating is tantamount to saying that everything was created by magic.

    I think you can understand how much progress humanity would have made in any direction if that were the answer we would have continued to make to everything we couldn't understand. The fact that there are still primitive societies on earth prove that we could have done that.

    Then why should it be a problem if scientists attempt to study the origins of life or the universe?

    Believe whatever you want; I don't care, but I don't want to live in a society where that belief is imposed or taught in the public schools, since it goes along with the mindset that stifles inquiry into anything by referring to a particular set of inherited beliefs.

  • 1 decade ago

    If you want to find out who committed a crime, is it better to solidly believe that random person did it and seek to prove that they did or to objectively examine the evidence and see what it shows? This is true of science, it does not preconceive what the answer is and then force the evidence to fit that belief, it examines the evidence, tests it and then draws conclusions which are further tested as new evidence comes to light. This process is continuing, it constantly challenges what it thinks it knows.

    There is no reason to assume, at least not yet, that science can not find out how life started. For example, the recent find of a self replicating enzyme (simple RNA) shows that similar reactions can occur in nature.

    Edit:

    As for your misplaced assertion that there is little or no evidence to support other theories, this is not true. We have solid evidence that the universe is expanding, we know for a fact that life evolved, and we are accumulating evidence that life can form naturally. As for the concept of a "god", there has never been any objective evidence of it. Please note the usage of the word "objective".

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  • 1 decade ago

    If I asked someone a question and their say that their do not know I would be happy with that; but if they said the answer is god and not prove to why; would walk away.

    To say you do not know how and why things started, is better then saying god created it all with out proof.

    EDIT:

    Faith is believing with out the need to see. The word that faith is translated from the Greek word is Pistuo and means, "to believe without the need to see or to know it is true." Study New Testament Greek for a long time when I was a Christian. At 31 years old I know more about the Bible then most Priest or Pastors. Most of them just study Biblical theory, not Greek, or Hebrew, or Aramaic. Most Atheist in general know more about the Bible then most Christian.

  • Leo
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    It's been known for decades that conditions on the primitive earth can result in amino acids. It's been recreated in the lab. The question to be answered is how did the first photocells form, what was the process. Scientists are very close to creating artificial olife in the lab. That can lead them to the creation of a model that would explain how the process could have occurred naturally. That will be the final piece to the puzzle.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    My answer is "we don't know". Science is not about finding a fast or convenient answer, it's about piecing together evidence to find a good answer. It's also about admitting mistakes and changing the answer when we find new evidence.

    Some of the evidence used in trying to guess how life started is based on what we know/infer about the early composition of the earth. Some of it comes from experimentation - look up the Miller-Urey experiment, for example.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    I think it's fair to say NOBODY has the answer to the origins of the Universe or life. Yet! None of us were around then! And just because humankind hasn't developed the technology yet that can determine the answers, doesn't mean we won't ever.

    Meanwhile, saying that the only answer to the question is "god" is arrogant and gullible at the same time.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Saying you don't know what started/created the universe is better than claiming you know what started the universe (for example, God) and having no evidence to support your claims.

  • 1 decade ago

    There is insufficient empirical evidence to support the hypothesis of a god and/or gods.

    Source(s): Dog
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