do you believe in God

[PublicImage]

Way to advertise your band, Jonesy! Very well done, if I may say so!

[thrill-seeker]

No, I do not believe in god. I used to though.

[Damn!t]

Thanks, Dumb!t.

You litlle bastard!

[Craig Marion]

I find it very difficult to believe that God exists in light of there being no evidence.

Do you believe that wind exists? Do you have evidence of wind? Sure you can see the affects of the wind blowing the trees and such but you can't contain it, touch it, see it. That's where faith comes in.

I find it hard to believe that human beings just by some off chance happen to live on a planet that sustains life, is perfect for our exsistence, is just far ebough away from the Sun as to not burn us up or be a frozen rock. All this just happened by some wierd coincedence?

Our world and we ourselves have been finely crafted with intentional design. And design implies a designer. Anyone who has a child and has experienced the miracle of birth can attest to this as well. Probably the greatest evidence of design in creation is DNA. One of the startling discoveries about DNA is that it is a highly complex informational code, so complex that scientists struggle hard to decipher even the tiniest portions of the various genes in every organism. DNA conveys intelligent information; in fact, molecular biologists use language terms -- code, translation, transcription -- to describe what it does and how it acts. Communication engineers and information scientists tell us that you can't have a code without a code-maker, so it would seem that DNA is probably the strongest indicator in our world that there is an intelligent Designer behind its existence.

William Paley made a compelling argument years ago that the intricacies of a watch are so clearly engineered that it cannot be the product of nature: a watch demands a watchmaker. In the same way, the more we discover about our world and ourselves, the more we see that like an expertly-fashioned watch, our world and we ourselves have been finely crafted with intentional design. And design implies a designer.

So yes I believe in God and the reasons above are just some small examples. I've witnessed and experienced great things from God. I am thanful everyday to know our Lord Jesus.

The real unfortunate thing is alot of people do some horrific things in the name of God, look what's going in the Middle East. This is not thte God I know of.

[JT]

I believe in a god. I don't believe in organized religion. And I strongly dislike people who attempt to "push" their religious beliefs on others.

[JT]

Is the overwhelming feeling that we believe in God because without the thought of God creating us and our world we don't understand where it came from ?
I don't think I like the idea of believing on God simply because of the "unknown" ...... There was a time when people thought God made it rain, and made the sun shine .... then we learned about weather systems....
There could be very tangiable reasons that we just don't know yet .....

[black bobble]

If the concept of god explains where we came from - who can explain where he came from? I don't find the argument that God created everything helpful - it just puts another layer between us and when something was create (God or the universe)

[Sonic Destruction]

You know, as a believer in God, I find it really encouraging to see that there is such a healthy debate out there about this subject, especially on a forum whose primary existance is to discuss the merits or otherwise of a secular rock and roll band.

When I first became a committed Christian (according to my definition of what those words mean), I found myself surrounded by people who attempted to convince me that being a Christian meant strictly adhering to a long list of "thou shalt not ...", which included most of the things that I enjoyed in life. Back in those days, the number one target was rock and roll, which, like most of the other things on the list, I could not see as being any threat/danger to me or anybody else.

How encouraging, then, to find that most Christians are actually relatively normal people after all. They have not burned their music collections, isolated themselves in their own little ghettoes, or even decided that it is a good idea to invade other countries and drop bombs on innocent people. Most Christians, like most Athiests, Muslims, Hindus and most everyone else are basically good people who are just doing their best to live their own lives according to their own beliefs. That does not mean I hold all those beleifs as being correct according to my own word view (after all, many of them are mutually exclusive), but I do believe most of the people who hold them are good people.

[J Ed]

I find it hard to believe that human beings just by some off chance happen to live on a planet that sustains life, is perfect for our existence, is just far ebough away from the Sun as to not burn us up or be a frozen rock. All this just happened by some wierd coincedence?

not to pick on you but would like to pick apart this perticular argument...
we are living on a planet with more or less the conditions necessary for life because it has the necessary conditions
thats not a miracle, its a tautology
theres zillions of inhospitable planets in the universe, what would be a miracle would be if life appeared on any of them
there may well be other Class M planets (to use a Star Trek term) that are more or less also habitable, and I'd bet if such a planet had also been cooling for 5.5 billion years it would be covered in a similarly complex ecosystem

theres a biological concept called niche: every species has its niche, defined by the ranges of various factors (heat, moisture, salinity, acidity, etc etc) that a species can tolerate living within
a species usually has many requirements to sustain it, and thus the ideal is an environment where there is an intersection of favourable ranges
but will try to survive even in marginal environments
humans are unusual because we'll go to such extreme lengths to live in even naturally inhospitable environments
thing is even in the most seemingly desolate environments on earth, theres always some type of wierdly evolved critter eking out an existence

so thats my point: the earth happens to be situated within a loose range of possible tolerable distances from a star thats an approximately favourable size, thus gets more or less enough light and warmth to make life possible
its a decent niche, so life attempts to eke out an existence
thats not a miracle, its just a statistical inevitablity

btw if interested theres a huge thread on Darwin vs Creationism buried somewhere in this forum

[Sonic Destruction]

I don't think it is a statistacial inevitability, more an actual imposibility. Say if you bought yourself a model plane, threw all the bits up in the air, along with glue and paint. What would come back down at you? A bit chaotic mess. Now imagine if you did that an infinite number of times with infinite plane parts, infinite glue and infinite paint. Statistically, on one time out of an infinite number of times, you would not get a chaotic mess, but rather a perfectly assembled and painted model plane doing a perfect three point landing right before your eyes. That is a statistical possibility, but an actual impossibility. We all know that would never happen even if an infinite number of people did that an infinite number of times.

In the same way as it takes an inteligent being to make the model plane, I believe that the design of nature, time, space, etc, indicates the presence of a designer.

Actually, I have only to look at the floor of my kids' bedrooms to know that order will not ever spontaneously arise out of chaos, and that the natural state of the universe left to its own devices would be a chaotic one.

Just for the record, I do not believe in fundamental creationism either.

[black bobble]

the fact is we have evolved over billions of years from micro organisms - as people we've existed just a few million and may either die out (global warming, nuclear war...) or eveolve into something unrecogniseable - yet people pictue god like a person or if not think he cares most about people - when the universe is over people (a specific breed of primate) on a little planet will not have a major role.

God is a way that people can feel important when the fact is we're not.

[Ringorocks]

I do not believe in God. My father is very anti-christian. My mother isn't a big fan either, but she doesn't care that much. Anyway, being brought up by these two human beings, I was, for a long period of my childhood and early youth, very hostile towards religious people, especially those christian. That is years ago bow, and when I think about it, I just think I was silly and didn't know better. Which is true. Unfortunately, a lot of people my age are very hostile to christian people. I'm not sure why.

[J Ed]

you dont need to repeat the experiment infinite times
the factors needed for life are pretty loose and not that hard for a planet to achieve
the planet positions itself a certain distance away from a certain kind of star, thats the conditions
doesnt have to be precisely where we are, its just gotta be somewhat closer than mars and someotherwhat further than venus
think about the ice ages: most of our planets history has been significantly cooler, not really whats favourable for humans at all, yet theres been things crawling round the planets surface for 4billion years
so the earth could be a wee bit further or a wee bit closer and still thered be life just maybe us humans wouldnt have cities and symphonies
(indeed it has been: thats one reason there are ice ages)

____________________________
EDIT: edited out a compost heap analogy cuz i started to worry it was in bad taste
heres the link to that Darwin Vs Genesis thread

[mosespa]

so thats my point: the earth happens to be situated within a loose range of possible tolerable distances from a star thats an approximately favourable size, thus gets more or less enough light and warmth to make life possible
its a decent niche, so life attempts to eke out an existence
thats not a miracle, its just a statistical inevitablity

Seems pretty damn convenient to me.

But that's just me.

[pffan1990]

Yes, I do. I'm Christian.
By the way, welcome back, Libby!