Hi Dan

I didn’t ask you to name an atheist who believes in Noah’s flood. If the flood was an historical event of the magnitude the Bible describes, I would expect there to be physical evidence that would be evident to geologists and biologists. Likewise, if the universe and solar system sprang into being in a few days, I would expect astrophysicists to have uncovered evidence of this.

An atheist scientist could accept that these events occurred without accepting biblical explanations for them, just as most atheist historians accept that some events described in the Bible actually happened, without taking this as evidence for the existence of God. The questions of whether there was an historical flood, or how long it took for the universe to come into being, are open to scientific inquiry. The question of whether God caused them may not be.

I agree that we need to look to motive when examining people’s beliefs, but I don’t think this helps your case. In my experience, most geologists are not motivated by a desire to prove or disprove the bible, but to discover the origins and nature of the earth. To dismiss the overwhelming scientific consensus in biology, geology, astrophysics etc as mere groupthink, in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are right, seems to me to reveal more of your own motives than theirs.

It’s true that within all of these disciplines there are individuals who dissent from the majority view. That’s how science works – every hypothesis should be open to question, and even theories supported by overwhelming evidence (like evolution) remain theories, in principle capable of being disproved. But even if these theories are wrong, it doesn’t mean your alternative explanation is right. Halton Arp may not have accepted the big bang theory, but he was no young earth creationist.

Dan,

Just to clarify. The reason I say that your arguments actually strengthen my point, is because by being as specific as you are about what helps one to avoid eternal damnation (or Annihilation), you have actually saddled your god with a second, and perhaps even a third, obligation (if eternal damnation is the consequence for not holding a salvation-granting belief). Not only must your god now:

1. reveal himself in a way that a belief in him could be rationally justified, but also;
2. reveal himself as specifically the Protestant Christian version of God, and perhaps even to;
3. advise everyone to read at least the Gospels so that they know how to avoid an eternity of torture.

His job was easier under my all-encompassing way of putting it.

Would any of the atheists (or agnostics) like to comment on whether the following video, "Believe in God in Five Minutes (Scientific Proof)" by Gerald Schroeder constitutes evidence in their eyes?

http://geraldschroeder.com/wordpress/?page_id=211

I'd advise people to start reading from Genesis. That gives the Gospels more of a background and context for understanding.

Yusutsu,
Why quote Scripture to me when you've previously suggested I shouldn't put my confidence in the Scriptures?

You encourage me with a Psalm to 'trust the Lord'. I already do trust the Lord. I trust him to tell the truth. Is there anything better for building trust?

P.S. Please state if you're man or woman. Both AJ and I are having to guess which pronoun to use for you. To quote a line, 'In the beginning he made them male and female.'

Grateful: "Believe in God in Five Minutes (Scientific Proof)" by Gerald Schroeder constitutes evidence in their eyes?

I don't feel it proves that there is a God.

The first Law of Energy is that it cannot be created or destroyed just changed from one form to another.

The Theory is that after the Big Bang comes the big Crunch, after the Big Crunch comes the another Big Bang, ad infinite. There are mini Big Bangs with-in this current ones These form The Elements. When Stars die they go Bang, or Supernova & there are some really big Stars. Our sun is not a very big Sun compared to others like R136a1 which has 256 times the Mass of our Sun or UY Seuti which has a Radius 1700 time our Sun.

Our Sun is only a Yellow Dwarf with a Diameter of 4345230 Kilometers. That's 109 times the Diameter of the Earth. Now if you want to talk about big. UY Seuti has a Diameter of 14,773,782,000 Kilometers. That's 37060 Earths across its face. This is all just in our Galaxy which is rather small compared to others out there. Another interesting fact, if you took all the Planets in our Solar System & put them between Earth & our Moon you would fall about 10% short.

So Earth itself is very insignificant in Reality. Where does man stand in all this? Totally insignificant & not really worth a God even thinking about.

grateful,

This Schroeder character appears to claim that God is the nothingness outside space and time because, allegedly, something can come from (this) nothing provided you have quantum physics and the laws of relativity which, together, supposedly fit the Bible's description of God; that being:

1. not physical;
2. able to act on the physical;
3. created the physical from nothing, and;
4. predates the universe.

Firstly, I don’t know much at all about quantum physics. No-one really does. But even assuming that he’s right about quantum physics and relativity being able to produce something from nothing, he can’t know that these predate the universe. No-one knows what predates the universe. It may not even make sense to ask the question. It could be like asking, “What’s north of North?” As far as I know, the laws of physics break down once you get to the singularity that the universe began from.

But even if we were to grant that this Schroeder character's scientific claims are right, what’s to say that it’s not a co-incidence that the attributes of his "laws of nature" fit the Bible’s description of God? I mean, not even a sheep-herder from ancient times is going to invent a god that can’t act on the physical or that doesn’t predate the universe. Explaining unknowns, such as natural disasters and the origins of everything, was, after all, one of the main purposes for inventing gods.

I’d like to know how the fact that we’re here proves that this god is active in the universe now, too. Now that’s a non sequitur if I ever heard one.

Sorry, grateful, but this supposed evidence for a god is simply terrible. Is there anything you could perhaps add that I might have missed or misunderstood?

By the way, the irony of you providing a link to a guy claiming that the Bible’s description of God helps to prove his existence, when your authority on the Qur’an’s scientific accuracy claims that the Qur’an is the more scientifically accurate of the two, hasn’t escaped me.