Quote Originally Posted by TomOfSweden View Post
You obviously think you can prove god's existence. Since you believe it. I think that what you mean is that you don't know of how to translate that experience in a way so will make it as convincing to others as it was to you? "Proof" only means something which can be used to prove a case, for yourself or others. Without proof, we will believe nothing. Religious or not. Because without proof we will never have even thought the thought from which to take the leap of faith. There's other types of proof than scientific proof. The handy thing with scientific proof is off-course that the rules for how to judge it are a lot less vague.

But still. You're not saying much.
I often point to quantum physics as evidence that the universe has a sense of humor, and that it is playing a joke on everybody in it. Proof of God's existence is a bit hard to pin down, but evidence is another matter. Your idol Dawkins makes a convincing argument for the possibility of miracles, though he seems to think that understanding the universe is beyond our evolutionary ability. His arguments also lacked a fundamental understanding of the nature of the interaction between matter and energy on a quantum level. That is a fundamental problem with specialization of knowledge, and although I do not understand all the math and physics, I at least know enough to find some of his speculation a bit far fetched.

Yeah, but what's the link? How does it work? What makes you believe the Christian Bible got it any more right than the Bhagavad Ghita? If liberally interpreted they're the same text. Since all gods are reincarnations of Brahma, they have exactly the same myth of creation.
Maybe the reason they all are the same is because they are all holdovers from our original ancestors after creation. If the story started as truth, then all the variations could easily be attributed to human differences. Did you ever play that game where on person whispers something to another, and then to another? the more people in that chain, the more different the final outcome is, and this is with something simple.

On to your question, I would have to say that the reason I chose the Bible is mostly cultural. The Bible is where I first looked for God, and when I started to get serious about Him it is where I searched deeper. One of the things that separates the Bible from other holy books is the internal consistency and claims. Does the Bhagavad Ghita make the claim to divine inspiration? Is there a god in it that actually claims to have created everything? If these are there, I must have missed them.

I'm disappointed. Now your pulling this down to a kindergarten level again.

Yeah.....but that's not much of an argument for anything. Saying that science doesn't have the answers, doesn't really strengthen the case for theism does it? We've been over this before. You're treating it like there's a finite number of choices of faith. There isn't. And just because science doesn't have the answer now, doesn't mean it'll never have the answer.

...and it's also pretty arrogant to say that just because you can't understand a theory, that it doesn't have merit. Evolution isn't random and anybody saying it hasn't a clue. We had you eat your words before here on the Library.

I think your logical error is that you equate life on earth with this life. A bit like rolling a million sixes in a row on a dice. Sure, that's highly unlikely. But if anywhere along the line you would have rolled something else, we still would have life. It would just have looked different. There's no scientific reason to assume life springing up on earth is a particularly unlikely event.

Gravity effects matter on the molecular and atomic level differently than on the macro level. That's why you think that the function of cells are so improbable. We can't really apply common sense because we can't really understand it. [Insert quantum mechanic quote of your choice]. Since our last talk here I chatted some more with my micro biologist friend. There's nothing amazing or unlikely about it. It's just extremely hard to grasp if you don't have a degree in maths. A lot of it is admittedly still blank holes. We don't have a complete picture. But that isn't in the least a case for god and certainly not the Bible.
I am aware enough about math to understand the arguments that some scientists use to support that molecular biology is not as improbable as some suggest. I agree that certain chemicals can only combine in certain ways, but they ignore the fact that long chains of improbable events have to occur to make all of this work. Inside the cell we have chemical interactions that cannot proceed independent of each other that are individually improbable, and these scientists want me to accept that they occur by chance. The odds are against it. Sure, it is possible if we postulate certain improbable conditions, and make the argument that conditions were different then. Not impossible, but then they turn around and argue for the consistency of conditions to prove other portions of their theories, a bit confusing to me.

As for your argument that life is something that was all but inevitable no matter what random events occur, where is the proof of that? That is asking me to totally through out the Laws of Thermodynamics and believe that entropy will always reverse to create life. You want me to believe that the laws of physics can be suspended, but not in a God that actually suspends them. Which of us is taking the larger leap of faith?

Tell your microbiologist friend to stop being so arrogant and take a look at the real world. there is a guy with no formal training that the United States Navy, as well as most other ocean going powers, to track and predict waves at sea. Most astronomical discoveries are made by amateurs without the training of the professionals. Mathematical advances are made everyday by people who do not have degrees. An education does not give him a better understanding of the way the universe works, despite what he was taught by his close minded professors who want to throw out other possibilities simply because the person advancing them does not have a degree in microbiology.

Soprry, sort of a soap box ther. I can actually walk into JPL in Pasadena and discuss the advances of quantum physics and astrophysics with PhD's that do not look down on me because I do not have a degree because they are smart enough to know that degrees are do not indicate intelligence, but a microbiologists wants to try and tell me that I cannot possibly understand simple statistics because I do not have a degree. I just tend to get my fur up when I run into that attitude, and it is not you I am upset about. I do not know what you know about math, but statistics are pretty straightforward and simple. You take all the variables, and all the possibilities, and you chrunch a few numbers, and the results come out.