Wow. Emotions do tend to get heated don't they
when discussing issues like politics, religion,
and even possibly football. What difference does it make
what each and everyone of us personally believes as
long as we don't try to force our opinions onto others.
I am a believer in God. But I don't feel a
compulsion to convert anyone to my point of view.

And, I'm going to go to
the Convention because I like to hear rationalism, clarity,
and intelligence in a debate. And, how else will we continue
to grow, if we keep our minds closed?

Anyway, we're not obligated to go - it's a matter of personal
choice. I will go up and introduce myself to David if I get
the chance to do so. I won't say "Hello," instead -
I'll say, "Labas David," (which means "Hello," in Lithuanian).

Lexi,

And I will respond with labas dienas to you also :o)

David

woot:>> You are all stardust.
You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode.<<

Woot I agree with all of that, but "what" was before the big bang. We know that "time" did not exist as such before the big bang, nothing to measure it against, but the concept of time does exist always, even if nothing counts its passing, time exists for a void as it does for an evolving universe.

The consideration that we know the start point of all we see means that there was a before, and that before is so alien to what physics teaches us is enough to keep my options open to how we got here.

Harking back to my comment about Dark Matter.
Is Dark Matter the framework that the elements that spewed forth from the big bang clung to, or did the Dark Matter spew forth from the bang along with the elements, we need Dark Matter for the physics to work and given that our existence seems now to have depended on the interaction of Matter and a “thing” we have called Dark Matter just further erodes the penchant that some have for glibly knowing that all is physics, whereas it should be physics is all we know.

I may be dismissive of creation scripts written thousands of years ago, but the concept that we were produced like yoghurt is not off the eventuality list.

Firstly, regardless of having the answers to 'what was before the big bang' question (or what is more correctly the sudden expansion of space-time) I have to point out simply because someone says a magic man did it, doesn't make their position more tenable.

Time is a naming convention we have used to mark a sequence of events.

Yes, I keep my options open to how 'we got here' as in the universe, but there is no need to postulate an all seeing, all-knowing, all loving super intelligence to have created it. The problem comes about once proving that the universe had a start (which there is no evidence for at all, simply that it could have been created from nothing) that that force is not just a simple force. Why postulate a 'designer'? That's a heck of a leap, to throw in a supernatural _intelligent_ force. All the arguments with regard a universe having a start have no evidence at all that it requires an intelligent start, total, unfounded speculation. Might as well say super leprechauns created everything. Just as much evidence for that as the god of the bible.

Everything we observe comes from simple processes.

Dear David,

To which you'll get a great big Lithuanian -
"Aciu," (Thank You!).
As well as a smile and a big hug.

Ammonite,
there is no poem! I was merely conceding that my post was "apparently" poetically cryptic. I was justifiably critical of the hyperbole in that first post by Borg1408--which you then extended and defended: Ammonite, Monday, 5 September 2011 11:24:40 AM, putting words in my mouth.
Atheist Footings then did the Spanish Inquisition thing, demanding an explanation, ex cathedra--shaking the very rafters above my humble head. Being loath to repeat myself, or dumb it down for zealots, I withheld, loosing broadsides of my own.
My references to Ditchkins and liberal rationalism indicated I was taking the side of Terry Eagleton, who coined the terms, in seeing Ditchkins' liberal rationalism as kin to the current economic order, which is wreaking far more havoc than the silly fundamentalists out there (whom Eagleton is also critical of).
The point I was making painfully obvious was that while you lot are busy demonising a few fanatical fundies, as if they were the root of all evil, you cheerfully, if blindly, condone the most rapacious (materially and ideologically) system the world has ever known. Dawkins and his mates know very well that modern Western lifestyles are not the "end of history" (except perhaps literally), even Fukuyama now acknowledges it, and that they cannot be sustained. And yet they gleefully support it and its free-market "technology" in the fight (feint) against climate change, third world misery etc.
Their stance is neither politically indifferent (in their anti-Islamic rhetoric), which would be bad enough, nor objective. Rather, they've parasitised the funding stream they've grown fat on, and developed their own popular kudos (celebrity status) into a mock-up ideology they find utterly compelling: atheism--the consummatum est of the enlightenment. As if it was anything in itself! Or more than a negation!
"Atheism The Way Forward"!
In what sense? All's right with the world so long as we're all rational optimists--who are above criticism!
It's an ideology perfectly suited to neoliberalism, indeed it's evolved symbiotically so that there's no conflict at all!
Dawkins is victim to his own memes, like all megalomaniacs--who somehow always also manage to get a following!