World Religions - Atheism Discussion Thread

[Bridges]

I feel God is real because that's my belief

Well ok then.  Why not just say that, instead of some weird semantic game?  This is what I never understand from a lot of believers.  They try and convince others with pseudo-science or tricks (see Kirk Cameron's banana).  If you believe, and that is enough for you then fantastic.  Nothing should shake that.  I don't get why they feel they have to prove it to others with games or logic twists.  If the "word" or whatever is strong enough for you to believe then so be it.  Just say that.

"Why not just say that?"

It's too bad you're not the mouth police and I can say what I please. Tricks? All I did was ask about the term "Adam's apple" Save your fangs!

haha.  There's no vitriol in my words.  Don't feel so attacked.  I'm not telling you what you can and can't say.  I was only pointing out that if you're argument for god's existence is that you believe in him/her, then its stronger for you to stick with that. 

Unless, I totally misread everything, and you really were looking for the history of the phrase Adam's Apple and its definition.  Then I'm sorry for mentioning god, when I should have mentioned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%27s_apple

[PeeJayEss]

Is it a myth? How do  you know? What proofs do you offer besides 'disbelief?'

On one side, we had a story, legend or fable that is thousands of years old, on the other a 21St Century guy claiming to know the story is false. Was 'Adam' the first man able to write? Did one of his children write his story?

Troy was a myth, oops, no is wasn't. Greek fire was a myth, oops, no it wasn't. The coin that saved a Confederate officer from a bullet was a myth, uh? Nope.

Disbelief would simply be a belief that something is not true. So if it were a belief without proof, then you certainly would have a point. Of course, your point would only be that his disbelief is just as ridiculous/baseless as your belief. However, your premise is false because we do have reasons to believe that the Adam & Eve account is simply a parable instead of historical fact (though even as a parable, the lesson to "do as I say without any justification whatsoever no matter how arbitrary the activity or I will punish you eternally" is not exactly an eloquent one). The Bible is meant as guidance, not history. You cheapen your religion and your argument for it when you argue that these stories are anything otherwise.
We know creation in six days is not literal. Whether divine planning went into it is a whole different argument, but we know it did not happen in 6 days of the Earth's rotation (In fact, the day as we have it defined wouldn't have existed for God if he was creating things). The creation shows a clearly primitive understanding of the cosmos. Surely, if the story was passed directly from God, he would have gotten it correct:
Light and dark come on the first day (forget that "dark" isn't a thing), and the Universe was already water-filled?!?.
God separated the water into sky and Earth (because the writers thought outer space was water-filled.
God created the land and seas, and then plants (before the sun or animals, both of which are necessary).
God created the sun, moon, stars, all giving off light (even though light was created on day one, and the moon doesn't give off light).
God creates animals for air and sea
God creates land animals - apparently animals were not needed for the propagation of flowering plants.
God takes a nap - why? Oh, to conveniently explain why we don't do stuff one day out of the week.

Okay, so if you believe that literally, you can't be reasoned with, so you might as well stop reading (or just make up the rest as you see fit).

Now, Adama and Eve don't work because a single pair of common ancestors don't work for all humans. First, in rich dummy terms, have you seen what inbreeding can do?!
What we can do is trace single genes back to common ancestors. This has been done. Because we do not all have the same genes, if you take the group of humans alive today that share a specific gene, you can travel up their family tree to find a common ancestor. You can even figure out the sex in some cases. You do this for every gene, and you get a whole bunch of different common ancestors. Some of them are modern humans, some of them are from creatures that are long gone, and some of from animals that we broke off from millions of years ago (basically, if you go back far enough, you can see where our family tree coalesces with sharks. The genes in human DNA are not even unique to humans. We share so many traits with other animals, some very like us (monkeys), and some not (dogs, bears, fish, etc etc).
You simply cannot boil down all our DNA and somehow get it back to a single couple of modern humans. It is theorized that the smallest the modern human population may have been as low as 2000-3000, with most estimates around 10,000-15,000 (coincident with the supereruption of the Tuba volcano in Indo).

Also, there is a talking lizard. This is not an argument against the religion, simply against Ock's indignation that it be called a myth. It is not a piece of documentary work and it was never intended as such. It may be a parable, but it is fairly common to call a human or world genesis story that is patently and provably false a "Creation myth," so I don't understand your taking issue with that characterization.

Troy was not a myth, but does that mean you believe Achilles was part-god, or that Apollo sent a plague against the Greeks for dishonoring him?

Tamara-B - things get named what they get named... some are common names as the "Adams apple" and some are not.... when they are from religions they do not prove the existence of any god or gods... Do you have your own calendar that is not based on the Greek & Roman gods and mythology? Or based on your logic does the fact that our calendar is based on those gods prove that they in fact exist? 
January -- Janus's month: Janus is the Roman god of gates and doorways, depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. His festival month is January.
February -- month of Februa: Februa is the Roman festival of purification, held on February fifteenth. It is possibly of Sabine origin.
March -- Mars' month: Mars is the Roman god of war.
April -- Aphrodite's month: Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love and beauty.
May -- Maia's month: Maia (meaning "the great one") is the Italic goddess of spring, the daughter of Faunus, and wife of Vulcan.
June -- Juno's month: Juno is the principle goddess of the Roman Pantheon. She is the goddess of marriage and the well-being of women. She is the wife and sister of Jupiter.

I could go on - but I think you get the point - often a name is a name. A NAME is not proof of existence of a Deity.

Thanks, officerk! I was struggling to think of a way to respond to Tamara-B without being completely insulting (I couldn't and, frankly, didn't want to). However, you handled that commendably.

[Fallen Buckeye]

I'm a little late to this rodeo, but I think you are misinterpreting the Bible to some extent from all the posts I've read. There are often many layers of meaning within the text, and each book was written with certain contexts that need to be considered to gain a proper understanding of its meaning. Regarding the creation story in Genesis, I think you need to consider a few things before you completely write it off. First, consider the fact that according to the first creation story in Genesis (there are two creation accounts in Genesis) the whole of creation was made in seven days, but the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. Obviously, you cannot have a day without the sun rising and setting. That should indicate right away that this is not a literal play-by-play of the facts of creation. It is a vehicle by which certain truths are communicated. For instance, by this account we learn that God is eternal, He created us, and that man holds a special place among creation as evidenced by our free will and intellect.

Speaking of the creation of men, the story of Adam and Eve is not disproved by science because humanity is not completely defined by scientifically observable terms. Man is body and soul, and that soul is a rational soul that separates man from other animals. That's why in the second creation story in Genesis God first forms man out of clay (that is He created a body), but man is not complete until God breathes into him (imparts man with a soul). Among all the visible creation, man possesses a unique self-awareness that allows him to give himself to others and to God. The important lesson here is that at some distinct point in time humans stopped being simply the animal, Homo Sapiens, and became a man with a rational soul. Again that is something that we cannot observe scientifically, so science can neither prove or disprove in this case.

Back to the larger point, we can have a partial knowledge of God in the observable world and by reason, but He goes beyond the bounds of what is visible. He is infinite. That means we can provide evidence that points to His existence. However, in this life we can neither definitively prove nor disprove His existence. That means that it is going to come down to a matter of faith. You can put your faith in God, but it is possible to put faith in other things such as a science. I would posit that it is at least as much if not a greater leap of faith to wholly place your trust in science given how often we find that what we once thought was true actually turned out to be bunk. I pray that one day each of you may have the gift of faith in God.

P.S. - Here's an scientific theory by one of the greatest minds ever that has been disproved by later discoveries just to illustrate what I'm saying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_universe

[Bridges]

I'm a little late to this rodeo, but I think you are misinterpreting the Bible to some extent from all the posts I've read. There are often many layers of meaning within the text, and each book was written with certain contexts that need to be considered to gain a proper understanding of its meaning. Regarding the creation story in Genesis, I think you need to consider a few things before you completely write it off. First, consider the fact that according to the first creation story in Genesis (there are two creation accounts in Genesis) the whole of creation was made in seven days, but the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. Obviously, you cannot have a day without the sun rising and setting. That should indicate right away that this is not a literal play-by-play of the facts of creation. It is a vehicle by which certain truths are communicated. For instance, by this account we learn that God is eternal, He created us, and that man holds a special place among creation as evidenced by our free will and intellect.

Ok, so the bible shouldn't be taken literally.  In that case, I love the bible.  It has fantastic stories and much like many works of literature, it can enlighten us into who we are and what we truly believe through self-reflection and story telling. 

Speaking of the creation of men, the story of Adam and Eve is not disproved by science because humanity is not completely defined by scientifically observable terms. Man is body and soul, and that soul is a rational soul that separates man from other animals. That's why in the second creation story in Genesis God first forms man out of clay (that is He created a body), but man is not complete until God breathes into him (imparts man with a soul). Among all the visible creation, man possesses a unique self-awareness that allows him to give himself to others and to God. The important lesson here is that at some distinct point in time humans stopped being simply the animal, Homo Sapiens, and became a man with a rational soul. Again that is something that we cannot observe scientifically, so science can neither prove or disprove in this case.

I believe you have a few holes in this theory here.  You can't just say something is so, and then because you say it is so, create arguments for and against it.  The "soul" can be debated in another very lengthy discussion.  Man is body and consciousness.  But so is a dog.  There are a few things that separate the human species from animals, but I'm not sure it's the existence of a soul or a rational soul. 

What do you mean by soul or rational soul?  I would need to know what you mean before I could talk further on it.  But just saying "humans have a soul, science can't prove the existence of a soul, therefore there is a god who gave us a soul" isn't a real argument.

Back to the larger point, we can have a partial knowledge of God in the observable world and by reason, but He goes beyond the bounds of what is visible. He is infinite. That means we can provide evidence that points to His existence. However, in this life we can neither definitively prove nor disprove His existence. That means that it is going to come down to a matter of faith. You can put your faith in God, but it is possible to put faith in other things such as a science. I would posit that it is at least as much if not a greater leap of faith to wholly place your trust in science given how often we find that what we once thought was true actually turned out to be bunk. I pray that one day each of you may have the gift of faith in God.

P.S. - Here's an scientific theory by one of the greatest minds ever that has been disproved by later discoveries just to illustrate what I'm saying: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_universe

This is where I draw issue with a lot of religious arguments.  It's the comparison of god to science as if they are both static things.  Science is not a thing.  It is a process.  An ever evolving flow and collection of knowledge.  It is a way of testing things and retesting them, and then challenging them and testing them again until we get to the point of almost, if not exact, understanding of them.  Science tests things, but science itself is not a thing.

[Fallen Buckeye]

I think you are misreading me slightly. First off, remember the Bible is a collection of books, and each has its own literary style, author, and so on. It's incorrect to say that you cannot take any of it literally because there are many books of that are indeed historical accounts. You just have to have a contextual awareness as you read, and you have to consider the specific contexts of the texts as well as the larger context of how each part fits into the whole of salvation history. It's actually very deep which is why people can devote their whole life to bible study.

Secondly, regarding souls let me clarify. There is a difference in a rational soul that is present in humans and a sensitive soul which is present in other animals. Sensitive souls are capable of life, growth, and feeling, and they may even have a mind that is capable of problem solving and so on. However, a human rational soul goes beyond just those things because we have an inner-most being that is self-aware and self-possessing. For example, we have a have a meta-cognitive ability to reflect on our weaknesses and make a decision to improve certain aspects of our life. It is why people can appreciate qualities like beauty and virtue whereas a chimpanzee or octopus cannot despite possessing great intelligence. It is why we are able to freely give ourselves to God or to refuse Him.

And again the existence of a soul is not scientifically quantifiable. It really comes down to a matter of what you place your faith in: your own finite power to reason or God. So I'm not trying to use the existence of a soul to prove the existence of God; I'm saying that faith in God opens you up to the existence of a soul and a whole of host of other revealed truths. Mainly, I was trying to clear up some misconceptions associated with Christian teaching.

Now the reason I bring up science in this conversation is because a lot of people trust in the use the scientific method to disprove the existence of God, but the tool does not fit the task because God lies largely outside the scope of what can be observed or quantified and because it is easy to misinterpret what we observe (see static universe model, flat earth, etc.). Science is not the be-all, end-all. It is a process that can help us search for some truths but not others. Science cannot tell us why a landscape is beautiful or why a symphony is moving because things like beauty and emotion likewise cannot be quantified or even completely defined. Why would we assume that science and reason alone is the right tool to evaluate something as infinite as God?

I would like to also bring up something I learned it in Anthropology 101 (not necessarily directed at Bridges just for the general good). When learning about a culture you should try to understand it from the insider's perspective. I often hear people try to use the Bible to disprove this or that about Christianity, but their arguments are often built on misinformation. Sometimes just reading a verse or two does not give you the whole picture. Before making a final judgement I would recommend to anyone to really try to keep an open mind and actually take the time to research what people believe and why. That way even if you reject what you find you have solid basis for your own belief. God bless.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/do-atheists-have-deathbed-conversions-43291/

Do Atheists Have Deathbed Conversions?

Two sets of researchers ask whether nonbelievers turn toward God after contemplating death.

July 10, 2012• By Tom Jacobs •

Are there atheists in foxholes? That timeless question (the literal answer to which is yes) is a shorthand way of asking whether, when confronted by their own mortality, even nonbelievers’ thoughts turn to God.

Research published earlier this year tentatively concluded that they do. But a new study, conducted by scholars from three countries, reports that death-related thoughts lead us to reaffirm whatever belief system gives our lives meaningâ€"and for atheists, that’s something other than religious faith.

“Our tentative conclusion is that even nonreligious people are tempted toward religious belief, if only implicitly, in the face of death,” writes Oxford University psychologist Jonathan Jong. He is lead author of a paper entitled “Foxhole Athiesm, Revisited,” published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

“The psychological comforts of religion do not appear to be of universal necessity,” counters University of Missouri psychologist Kenneth Vail. He’s the lead author of the paper “Exploring the Existential Function of Religion,” published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Both papers provide evidence that reminders of death increase the religiosity of believers. This supports one of the basic tenets of Terror Management Theory, a school of thought built on the insights of the late anthropologist Ernest Becker.

According to TMT, a basic function of religion is to provide a buffer against death-related anxiety. It does this, primarily, by promising believers an ongoing existence that transcends earthly mortality. So it’s no surprise that both sets of researchers found a link between thoughts of mortality and increased devotion.

In the first of three experiments Vail describes, death reminders enhanced the religiosity of both Christians and Muslims. Christians were more likely to express belief in Jesus and deny the divinity of Allah and Buddha; conversely, Muslims were more likely to express belief in Allah and deny the divinity of Jesus and Buddha. (Buddhists do not, however, claim divinity for Buddha, and Islam’s Allah is usually seen as the same monotheistic God worshiped by Christians and Jews.)

Similarly, Jong found that when reminded with death, “participants explicitly defended their own religious world view, such that self-described Christians were more confident that supernatural religious entities exist.”

But when it came to nonreligious people, Jong found a disconnect between conscious beliefs and unconscious ones. Like the believers, the nonreligious responded to death reminders by strengthening their commitment to their world viewâ€"in their case, the firm belief there’s no such thing as supernatural entities.

But using an implicit association test, he found that after thinking about death, nonbelievers “wavered from their disbelief.” Specifically, 71 students from the University of Otago in New Zealand were presented with a series of 20 nouns, which they were instructed to categorize as “real” or “imaginary” as quickly as possible.

Jong reports that “while believers strengthened their beliefs, non-believers wavered from their disbelief” after thinking about their own mortality. Specifically, they were slower to label such concepts as “God” and “heaven” as imaginary.

In other words, when death was on their minds, “believers more readily judged religious concepts as real,” he writes, “while non-believers found it more difficult to judge religious concepts as imaginary.”

While respectful of Jong, Vail takes issue with his methodology; he isn’t convinced a less-rapid response time necessarily denotes increased doubt. Furthermore, he notes that all nonbelievers are not created equal.

His research, conducted with Jamie Arndt of  the University of Missouri and Abdolhossein Abdollahi of the University of Limerick, Ireland and Islamic Azau University in Iran, distinguished between atheists and agnostics, and found they reacted to death reminders quite differently.

Specifically, in one experiment, death reminders “motivated agnostics to increase their religiosity, belief in a higher power, and their faith in God/Jesus, Buddha, and Allah.” Basically, they were more open to immortality-promising deities of any stripe.

But in a separate experiment, the notion of death did not increase atheists’ very low levels of religiosity or belief in a higher power.

In Vail’s view, this suggests people who strongly reject religious belief find other ways of dealing with “the psychological problem of death,” such as devoting themselves to some secular cause that will endure beyond their lifetimes.

So while the larger conclusions of the two papers “largely converge,” as Vail notes, they point to different answers regarding whether, say, Christopher Hitchens started to waver from his firm disbelief in his final days.

“Implicit religious belief is a difficult thing to sample,” Jong concedes, “and we hope that more work is done on this in different samples, including more militant atheists.”

Any volunteers?

[officerk]

I am not an Atheist.. I am Pagan. so perhaps I am not a good example here but them maybe I am..
With regards to the near-death question and the "any volunteers" invite thrown out there I can tell you that I have been in a harrowing situation where I thought I was going to die and I can tell you that I did not turn any gods of any kind.  I simply accepted that I was going to die.  Since I am now typing this, obviously, I did not.  But I did not turn to any Judeo-Christian God and start praying.  I was in a weather enduced auto accident, I simply took a deep breath, closed my eyes, relaxed, and waited for the Semi truck to hit me...  it did not...
I am secure in my beliefs. I know exactly what I believe.. perhaps if someone is not as secure in their beliefs then doubts happen and that is where the near-death changes come from - no matter which side they are on  - I have heard of Christians swearing off God on their death bed also...

[Ocklawaha]

Is it a myth? How do  you know? What proofs do you offer besides 'disbelief?'

On one side, we had a story, legend or fable that is thousands of years old, on the other a 21St Century guy claiming to know the story is false. Was 'Adam' the first man able to write? Did one of his children write his story?

Troy was a myth, oops, no is wasn't. Greek fire was a myth, oops, no it wasn't. The coin that saved a Confederate officer from a bullet was a myth, uh? Nope.

Disbelief would simply be a belief that something is not true. So if it were a belief without proof, then you certainly would have a point. Of course, your point would only be that his disbelief is just as ridiculous/baseless as your belief. However, your premise is false because we do have reasons...

So you rely on reasons to believe in whatever and I don't? To put a twist on my belief, I believe in a cosmos of amazing possibilities, want to stretch that to my max an American World War II veteran says that he saw a live “pterodactyl” in New Guinea in 1944. Does he mean the pterosaur that is said to have become extinct millions of years ago? Maybe so, we have 'reasons' to believe he saw what he saw. About 150 miles southeast of Bali, Indonesia, (June, 2008) a Britten-Norman Islander (airplane) nearly collided with what both the pilot and the co-pilot soon afterwards called a "pterodactyl." At an altitude of 6500 feet, the plane was put into a dive to avoid a collision. There are many more reasons to believe, what might at once seem silly to one may ring true to another, as you say, 'The Bible is meant as guidance,' is that a bad thing? As a history the Torah is used with amazing accuracy in the fields of archeology.

There is no indignation in my response, if you read it that way you misunderstand where I'm coming from. Do I believe in Creation? Yes, but I don't pretend to know, nor is it my job to figure out the who, what, when, where, why and how. I think a much greater extraterrestrial intelligence, directed the creation. That intelligence lives in what we might call the 4Th dimension, and trying to explain his actions away by saying it is literal, or figurative, doesn't effect what I believe.  If we learn tomorrow that the account in Genesis it exactly literally correct, I'm cool with that, if we learn that it happened over millions of years, ages, evolution, etc. then I'm cool with that too. I'm a Christian, I believe there is an afterlife and I also believe that great wisdom was given to mankind. Buddha said, 'If you think you heard a flower - it's a flower that you heard.' Who am I to argue because I didn't hear the flower?


SETI'S radio telescope array is always pointed skyward in search of something, some tiny message to be decoded from another advanced civilization. We couldn't possibly be searching for God unaware could we?



This group of Earthlings 'has reasons' to believe God doesn't exist, but we sent out a deep space probe with a golden LP record on it just in case someone snatches it up.



On May 15, 1963, aboard a Mercury space capsule, during the final orbit, Major Gordon Cooper told the tracking station at Muchea (near Perth Australia) that he could see a glowing, greenish object ahead of him quickly approaching his capsule. The UFO was real and solid, because it was picked up by Muchea's tracking radar. Cooper's sighting was reported by the National Broadcast Company, which was covering the flight step by step; but when Cooper landed, reporters were told that they would not be allowed to question him about the UFO sighting. NASA knew a great deal about whatever or whoever was following Cooper around the earth, but they don't think it was God.



The late Dr. Carl Sagan was the first president of The Planetary Society, a non-profit, tax-exempt membership organization dedicated to the exploration of the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life. Founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray. Sagan wanted to make that ET contact, but he was sure it wasn't God.

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=2609.165
MARS LIVES - Even here on MJ people flock to the thread about the possibility of life on Mars..

We all seem pretty certain that there is something else or someone else out there, as advanced or more advanced then we ever will be, how can we know it's not God?

[Ocklawaha]

Gotta love the thought, which ever side your on!

[nomeus]

http://i.imgur.com/8V96l.jpg

[Ocklawaha]

Oh I believe in science alright, and find myself in the company of many of the worlds noted scientists who, like me, believe in a God. We don't all believe the same things, but they believe and feel the evidence lays in their work. So if you want to call on scientist's, here's my list:

Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."  Einstein was more inclined to denigrate disbelievers than the faithful. "The fanatical atheists," Einstein said in correspondence, "are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures whoâ€"in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'â€"cannot hear the music of the spheres." In an interview published in 1930 in G. S. Viereck's book Glimpses of the Great, Einstein explained: I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things. "Spinoza contends that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") is a being of infinitely many attributes, of which thought and extension are two. His account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as one and the same.

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." (2)

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." (3)

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". (4)

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose". (5)

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." (6)

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." (7)

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" (

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory." (9)

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." (10)

Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." (11)

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (12)

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." (13)

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (14)

Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist): "Then we shall… be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God." (15)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." (16) Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): "We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."(17)

Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God â€" the design argument of Paley â€" updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument." (18)

Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]." (19)

Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed." (20)

Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'." (21)

Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." (22)

Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." (23)

Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." (24)

Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." (25)

Antony Flew (Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater) "It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." (26)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science." (27)


References
1.  Jim Holt. 1997. Science Resurrects God. The Wall Street Journal (December 24, 1997), Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
2.  Hoyle, F. 1982. The Universe: Past and Present Reflections. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: 20:16.
3.  Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30.
4.  Davies, P. 1988. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability To Order the Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p.203.
5.  Davies, P. 1984. Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 243.
6.  Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
7.  Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
8.  Greenstein, G. 1988. The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, p.27.
9.  Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 233.
10.  Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
11.  Penrose, R. 1992. A Brief History of Time (movie). Burbank, CA, Paramount Pictures, Inc.
12.  Casti, J.L. 1989. Paradigms Lost. New York, Avon Books, p.482-483.
13.  Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 52.
14.  Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. New York, W.W. Norton, p. 116.
15.  Hawking, S. 1988. A Brief History of Time. p. 175.
16.  Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
17.  Gannes, S. October 13, 1986. Fortune. p. 57
18.  Harrison, E. 1985. Masks of the Universe. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan, pp. 252, 263.
19.  Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 166-167.
20. Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 223.
21.  Zehavi, I, and A. Dekel. 1999. Evidence for a positive cosmological constant from flows of galaxies and distant supernovae Nature 401: 252-254.
22.  Margenau, H. and R. A. Varghese, eds. Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the 23.  Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens (Open Court Pub. Co., La Salle, IL, 1992).
24.  Sheler, J. L. and J.M. Schrof, "The Creation", U.S. News & World Report (December 23, 1991):56-64.
25.  McIver, T. 1986. Ancient Tales and Space-Age Myths of Creationist Evangelism. The Skeptical Inquirer 10:258-276.
26  Mullen, L. 2001. The Three Domains of Life from SpaceDaily.com
27.  Atheist Becomes Theist: Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew at Biola University (PDF version).
28.  Tipler, F.J. 2007. The Physics Of Christianity. New York, Doubleday.


...Just in case anyone wants to check out my sources.

[BackinJax05]

I could send great sums to support the GOP, so that I could have in power guys to assist me in keeping more of my money, guys who want to help me and the other the rich be richer..... guys who are on the side of the god who has been helping the rich for a long time.  The rich and their god are on the same side.  And they have the wonderful evangelicals along too.  It makes for a good team.

Really? I'm a evangelical Christian and a Democrat, perhaps I worship a different God? Anyone can find fakes and flimflam artists hiding in the churches or even occasionally disguised as church leaders. Unless something or someone totally human mistreated you at the mission when you needed help or food. It seems a rather narrow, condescending attitude to attack all Christian people, who as a whole, want to help.

OCKLAWAHA

Joel O'Steen, as a whole, wants to help himself - and does a very good job of it

[ronchamblin]

Posted by BackinJax05

"Joel O'Steen, as a whole, wants to help himself - and does a very good job of it.  "


Joel O’steen?  He is a magician, a charlatan, an imposter, and above all understands and engages the vulnerable psychological aspects of the human minds gathered around him each Sunday as he, with his constant, somewhat creepy smile, tugs at emotions about family, about children, about need, about forgiveness, and about love, all being emotions which fundamentally have nothing to do with a god or a revealed religion, and require no assistance from an imagined god or a mega church empire for their solutions and care.  It is an embarrassment to those of us who realize that he and his kind cultivate a flock of psychologically needy people who, because they cannot think critically and help themselves in this world, must seek the assistance of a witchdoctor as he carries them, by the help of their foolishness and ignorance, into an imagined other world.  This cultivation of fantasy might be fine in many respects, much as a child visits Disneyworld, or an adult reads a fantasy novel, but there are some unfortunate consequences.   

His empire is a sham, and results in mega millions wasted, spent on himself and his, and on the shameful mega church, all the while avoiding taxes which could go to the communities.  The most damaging consequence of his journeys into fantasy with his sheep is that he cultivates and perpetuates a lie, injects an opium into the minds of those who, by their weakness of mind, accept what is fundamentally false.  His sham therefore cultivates and perpetuates their partnership with the politically conservative disease which is acting to weaken and destabilize this country, a condition which will cause in the end more suffering for us all, and perhaps even contribute to the destruction of our nation as we know it. 

We do not need more sheep who blindly follow these charlatans.  We need to cultivate individuals who think rationally about problems, who can support movements which will effectively and realistically reduce the suffering which is spreading throughout the world, spreading partially as a result of the backwardness and insanity cultivated by these revealed religions, all of which should finally be abandoned and replaced by reason and responsible living.  Individuals should be accountable for their actions, and not be given the option to behave badly or irresponsibly simply because they expect forgiveness from some imagined god.         

[Adam W]

I don't pretend to know Joel O'Steen's motivations - or any of their motivations. For all I know, they could really believe in what they do and say. It almost makes more sense that way.

There's also the extreme outside chance that what he's selling is actually the truth. But I highly doubt that (to put it mildly).

[BridgeTroll]

Oh I believe in science alright, and find myself in the company of many of the worlds noted scientists who, like me, believe in a God. We don't all believe the same things, but they believe and feel the evidence lays in their work. So if you want to call on scientist's, here's my list:

Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."  Einstein was more inclined to denigrate disbelievers than the faithful. "The fanatical atheists," Einstein said in correspondence, "are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'—cannot hear the music of the spheres." In an interview published in 1930 in G. S. Viereck's book Glimpses of the Great, Einstein explained: I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things. "Spinoza contends that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") is a being of infinitely many attributes, of which thought and extension are two. His account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as one and the same.

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." (2)

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." (3)

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". (4)

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose". (5)

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." (6)

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." (7)

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" (

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory." (9)

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." (10)

Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." (11)

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (12)

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." (13)

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (14)

Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist): "Then we shall… be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God." (15)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." (16) Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): "We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."(17)

Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument." (18)

Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]." (19)

Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed." (20)

Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'." (21)

Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." (22)

Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." (23)

Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." (24)

Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." (25)

Antony Flew (Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater) "It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." (26)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science." (27)


References
1.  Jim Holt. 1997. Science Resurrects God. The Wall Street Journal (December 24, 1997), Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
2.  Hoyle, F. 1982. The Universe: Past and Present Reflections. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: 20:16.
3.  Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30.
4.  Davies, P. 1988. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability To Order the Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p.203.
5.  Davies, P. 1984. Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 243.
6.  Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
7.  Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
8.  Greenstein, G. 1988. The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, p.27.
9.  Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 233.
10.  Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
11.  Penrose, R. 1992. A Brief History of Time (movie). Burbank, CA, Paramount Pictures, Inc.
12.  Casti, J.L. 1989. Paradigms Lost. New York, Avon Books, p.482-483.
13.  Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 52.
14.  Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. New York, W.W. Norton, p. 116.
15.  Hawking, S. 1988. A Brief History of Time. p. 175.
16.  Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
17.  Gannes, S. October 13, 1986. Fortune. p. 57
18.  Harrison, E. 1985. Masks of the Universe. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan, pp. 252, 263.
19.  Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 166-167.
20. Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 223.
21.  Zehavi, I, and A. Dekel. 1999. Evidence for a positive cosmological constant from flows of galaxies and distant supernovae Nature 401: 252-254.
22.  Margenau, H. and R. A. Varghese, eds. Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the 23.  Universe, Life, and Homo Sapiens (Open Court Pub. Co., La Salle, IL, 1992).
24.  Sheler, J. L. and J.M. Schrof, "The Creation", U.S. News & World Report (December 23, 1991):56-64.
25.  McIver, T. 1986. Ancient Tales and Space-Age Myths of Creationist Evangelism. The Skeptical Inquirer 10:258-276.
26  Mullen, L. 2001. The Three Domains of Life from SpaceDaily.com
27.  Atheist Becomes Theist: Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew at Biola University (PDF version).
28.  Tipler, F.J. 2007. The Physics Of Christianity. New York, Doubleday.


...Just in case anyone wants to check out my sources.

Ock these poor misguided fools are clearly delusional.