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- Do Atheists believe in ghosts or spirits?
- How was the earth created?
- You think we came from monkeys?
- What do you do in a crisis if you don't believe in God?
- Where do atheists get their morals from ?
- Best Evidence For and Against A Young Earth?
- Holiday Shopping via Amazon
- Prove there are no gods.
- Would the apostles have died for a lie?
- Secular response to a sneeze.
- What is an atheist ?
- what about NDE's?
- Did Jesus really exist?
- a question of logic
- The Great Big Arguments #3: Cosmological
- How do you explain creation?
- An Atheist's Faith
- Josephus on Jesus
- How does science explain the human conscience?
- About Ask the Atheist
- Adaptation VS Evolution
- Was it Common for Hellenistic Jews to Write Fiction?
- Christ a Fake
- Social Contract?
- How to handle biblethumpers at the door.
How was the earth created?
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the total entropy in a closed system must increase. The Earth by itself isn't a closed system; the Sun provides it with energy by increasing its own entropy by huge amounts via fusion reactions. That means that entropy in another part of the system can decrease without breaking the Second Law.
I've explained it more thoroughly here, but just think about it for a second. If order and complexity could never increase anywhere, you couldn't build anything, arrange anything or form a coherent thought. There must be a way.
It's unlikely that what exploded in the Big Bang was a total void. It was the entire current universe squashed into one tiny dot. We don't know how it got there; maybe it came from another universe, maybe something compressed the universe into a dot, or maybe it really did pop out of "nothing". That last one isn't quite as silly as it sounds, because some quantum theories actually do allow for it by positing that "nothing" is really a sort of quantum foam of potentiality.
We don't really know that the Big Bang was what created everything; we're just mostly sure that everything there is was in the Big Bang. It might have all existed forever, and just spent a bit of time squashed into the dot.
Thinking of the Big Bang as an explosion is a bit too simple. An explosion destroys things around it; since everything was in the Bang itself, there was nothing around it to destroy. Once all the debris was floating free, gravity brought some of it back together to form rocks and stars. Stars create vast amounts of entropy, so any rock receiving energy from a star is part of its closed system and a certain amount of order and complexity is free to emerge there. This is how microbes were able to come about (though it's not exactly how they came about; that's a bit more complicated).
Plants actually evolved from seagoing creatures. Once the oceans were teeming with ultra-primitive life, masses of it was bound to wash up on the shores of Pangaea (the single pre-drift continent). Most of that organic matter would have died, but a tiny fraction of organisms would have been able to use their existing abilities to sink safely into the sand or soil, and stick one piece up to get some sunlight. It was natural selection in all its glory; if you throw enough different kinds of crap at the wall, something is bound to stick.
Go ahead and reply with your objections if something still doesn't seem feasible. Don't worry about ticking us off. That's what we're here for.
- SmartLX
Comments
To SmartLX... The First Law
To SmartLX...
The First Law of Thermodynamics says that matter & energy cannot be created or destroyed. You say that "the entire current universe was squashed into one tiny dot", where did this "tiny dot" come from? There is no way it could of came out of nothing, that contradicts this law.
IMO there is lots of evidence that proves God's existence. The size of earth is perfect, we would not survive if earth was any bigger or smaller; the same goes with the fact that earth is the perfect distance from the sun. Also look at the complexity of the human brain, how it can process over a million messages a second, and you think all of this happened by accident?
The infinite monkey theorem says that if a monkey was randomly typing random letters on a typewriter, there would be a probability of 1 in 3.4 x 10^183946 chance that it would type the entire text of Hamlet (by William Shakespeare). If this is the case, then what's the chance that a magnificent design such as the universe could be created by accident?
And to easymerc, you asked why God would allow wars like WWII. God didn't let WWII happen, man did. When God created the world he created the animals so they rely on there own instinct. But He created us humans with a great blessing known as free will. Free will lets us choose the path we want to follow, it lets us choose if we want to believe in God or not.
Lot of stuff
Who said the tiny dot came out of nothing? My suggestion was that the matter has always existed (the same way you think of God having always existed) and was only in a tiny dot at the moment of the Big Bang and possibly for a while beforehand.
The fact that the earth's size and distance from the sun are conducive to life (not necessarily perfect) is the reason life emerged here and not Mercury, Pluto or any of the dozens of extrasolar planets we now know exist. By the numbers we've seen so far, there are estimated to be thousands or millions of planets in this galaxy alone, and there are about 100 billion galaxies. It's not as if life had just one chance and got it exactly right. It had countless chances all over the universe. The complete absence of life in the universe would have been so unlikely as to be almost impossible.
The human brain, which probably can process over a million "messages" a second, developed over many generations from a brain that could only manage 900,000. That in turn descended from a brain that could manage 800,000, and so on right back to the first rudimentary brain cells which might have taken hours to process one "message". I don't think any of that happened by accident. Each generation, the slightly better brains survived and bred more often, because even slightly better brains are more useful.
You forgot the "infinite" part of the monkey theorem. Leave the monkey at his typewriter for an infinite amount of time, or use an infinite amount of monkeys, and the probability that he/they will eventually produce Hamlet becomes 100%.
The universe is indeed magnificent, but you assume straight away that the universe is a design. Every part of it came about through natural processes, most of which we have come to understand by studying physics. It is the particular way it is by chance, yes, but using the same physics with different starting conditions it could have been an infinite number of different ways and still been magnificent, supported life, etc. Rearrange all the stars in the sky, and they wouldn't care, even if some were destroyed. There's no design to mess up.
The idea that God gave us free will is one possible explanation for the existence of evil (though why a benevolent god would give a blessing that causes such suffering is puzzling). The idea that an all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent god does not exist, and events detrimental to human happiness are simply labeled evil, is another explanation. It's a matter of preference.
How was the earth created?
In all the theories on how the world began it always starts with "something" first being present, so how did the "something" come to be formed? I personally believe there is a God from which ALL creation comes. I do believe he created all we see today. It is possible all the theories on how the earth was formed are indeed true. The word, create is a verb which indicates an action taking place.
My question is, believeing the Big Bang Theory, The second Law of Thermodynamics, the Book of Genesis or any other lingering theory to be true who is the creator of the action? Is it impossible to believe there is a God responsible for it all.
In the initial question, the question was asked if there is a God why does he allow things like World War II to happen. Accepting that there is a God does not negate evil or the possiblity unpleasant things will not occur. In order to even accept that there is a God requires the individual believer to have faith that the unseen exist.
It is my belief, that God desires an unshakable loyalty from man. He desires for man to be in a "relationship" with him. As in any relationship for it to be strong it requires time, effort, communication and faith. God wants the relationship to be one of free will. Your desire to be in relationship with him. There will be test along the way, things man may not immediately understand, this is where your faith comes in. Looking back in history there are a lot of things that went initally misunderstood but after the passage of time we can now understand a little better. There will always be "why's" in life, I would say take some time read the bible with an open mind and go from there. I would conclude you will get an overall understanding on some of those "why's".
I wish you well on your quest for an understanding of creation and ask that in all your reading and research you don't forget to include the bible as a part of your research material.
Impossible?
Thanks for sharing your beliefs. There isn't much of an argument here though.
"Creation" does imply a creator. That's why calling it a "creation" is too much of an assumption in the first place.
God
I just have to say whether they believe or not is not your place to yell at them. If you are Christian as you and the others on these sites say, then why are you yelling and cursing at them in this way? Is that what God would want you to do? That, to me, is very hippocritical.
Just curious
To who?
Sorry, Pam, but replies to any comment always go right to the bottom. Who are you currently addressing?
God exists?
My friends, all of you who are looking for answers!!
Does God exist or not? How was the earth created? Why?
Why is there life, why do we have a heart, soul, mind, spirit?
Is there a purpose in our lives?
The complex beautiful world we live in has been created now doubt. Not by a random explosion which lead to love, joy, peace, nature, bones, flesh, hearts, microbes, natural systems, but by an intentional creator. Look to the heavens, see the stars? There are more stars in the heavens than their are sand granules on earth. We have a limitless creator.
Evolution? yes some animals, plants have diversified, changed, adapted. But humans have been humans from the beginning. We have a heart, ability to love or hate, make peace or war. We have free will, ability to chose, how can an explosion give us that? How can an exploding star give us attraction, pleasure, emotions? We humans have an unbelievable mind, ability to think, invent, judge, determine right and wrong. At what point from evolving from a monkey did we suddenly begin to desire to fight poverty, or seek education, or care for the homeless.
Monkeys are animals and they will always be, they have natural instincts and thats all. Ofcourse they are intelligent, God created them. But he made us, humans, as their care takers. Are we in the zoos or are they? Are we being researched by them or are we researching them. We are the smartest species, god has given us ability to construct solutions, innovate. If we were created by a random explosion then wouldnt we expect to have a lot of imperfections, Perhaps when we eat the food would just fall through our body out of the bum, without being digested and providing our bodies with nutrition. Or perhaps we would only be able to look left and not right, causing us to turn our whole body to see something on our right. But no, instead we have a fully functional scope on every angle with our head, eyes etc. No camera can get that view. If we came into being by an explosion perhaps our ears would have been on the centre of our face, and that may have been normal to us, but they would not have been in the perfect position like they are now, we have two, on the edges of our faces, enabling us to capture sounds from a much wider range. Anyways these are only a few of my observations, im sure you have many of our own,
but last thing
why is there a muslim advertisement on a atheist site?
They beieve in God by the way
We don't control the ads,
We don't control the ads, they work by finding keywords and Islam is sometimes mentioned here.
You've presented a long list of arguments from ignorance, or arguments from personal incredulity. You think that just because you don't know of a way something could have happened naturally, it simply didn't. Go and read a book on cosmology and one on evolution. Any one of each, really, it doesn't matter as long as they're not by creationists. You will find answers to many of your questions straight away.