Does the existence of the human race change anything at all in the universe? Helping others is great but it still does answer the purpose. We are not here to help each other, that cannot be it, we are not here to survive, if our only purpose in life is to exist, then humans don't really matter.

Well, in your opinion, what would be a more purposeful reason? Maybe their are some aliens of some sort in this universe and what purpose could they have? I understand why you think it isnt a purpose to help others of your kind but who do we not matter to? I might've asked this question before. The universe? What does it matter what we mean to the universe? When you say we dont matter, we do matter, to billions of people across this world.

People matter to themselves, but you could say that anything matters to itself, the cows we eat matter they think that their life is valuable but they are eaten, I am sure they do not think, if possible, that their purpose is to be food. But the existence of the Human race is not necessarily necessary for anything. Your moving the discussion from the purpose of life to the meaning of life.

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Well, you didnt say. What do you think a more logical purpose would be? Do you, truthfully, think that god put people on the earth for a certain reason? Maybe there is a deeper reason for why people are here than the one I stated, but I dont understand why that one isnt logical. NOTHING is neccesary if you think life isnt.

So you think that "God" put us here for no reason at all other than to entertain him. Another thing I have been thinking about lately is how "God" is this omnipresent being but he created humans, a flawed creature. I never understood how a perfect being could create a flawed one.

Im sorry I phrased myself wrong. I was asking you the question but I didnt mean for it to suggest that I believed god put us here for no reason. One anser I have to you about God creating flawed creatures is that if there were no flaws, happiness couldnt exist. The world would be unbeleivably boring, everything always the same. In one way, I guess I would like to live in a "perfect" world with "perfect" people but in a way I definitely wouldnt. Just imagine it, everyone would be just as good as you in every way and nobody could invent anything or develop in any way or learn from their surroundings or die or get sick. I would hate it. Look at pleasentville, the movie, which portrays it. It is terrible, no diversity, differences. what is "perfect" anyways.

That is not necessarily what I am talking about. I understand the whole "Without flaws happiness couldn't exist," but we have much more flaws than we do goods. We have "Evil" men that were created by "God." You are telling me that Hitler was created so that there would be happiness, in a sense.

My thoughts on meaning are that while humanity probably means absolutely nothing in the greater picture, we mean a whole lot while we are still around. If the whole world ended, it would suck to be us, and the universe would move on. Our meaning would have, perhaps, fulfilled itself.

But as it is, we mean quite a lot to the people around us and to ourselves. This makes me think of my ponderings of the concept of time travel. If you were to go back 2000 years ago and kill a random young man, you very well may have just exterminated hundereds of generations of humans. All the people those humans met are effected by having not met those humans. Now, the whole thing would created paradoxes, but it's proof to me that we mean something in the context of humanity on earth, if not in the context of the universe.

Wow... that was an interesting tangent I just went off on...

I can understand why it may be confounding to believe in God. If you think of God as perfect, and see so many flaws and determine that God was responsible for the flaws, regardless of the concept of "free will", then it "complicates" things. The facts of birth defects, innocents and children killed through murders, accidents, or any other reason, war in the name of God, "an eye for an eye", etc., it makes things seem too out of control. The truth is that the written history of humans hasn't existed for more than a few thousand years, so maybe we are looking at these things from a skewed perspective, since the Earth and Universe are considered to be billions of years old.

To a person who seeks answers (except when the ugly word 'denial' raises its head), it seems at least as confounding not to believe in God. I've said it before. Does anyone have a reasonable explanation where this universe, this planet, and all life on it could have come from without an actual lawmaker and designer having something to do with it? I'd love to hear a rational, "SENSible" explanation that exists for something coming from nothing, without resorting to a form of faith in "things unseen." (We all used to not exist, but at least we know that we came from parents, or at least some form of reproduction.)

Who exactly were this universe's/world's parents? "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
It seems that a person's faith that God doesn't exist makes no more "sense" than the faith that God does exist. In the name of Something, Peace.

Ok, for someone who doesnt believe in God- How could the world have started without some force as God? I'm trying to figure out how people cannot believe in God and still have answers to questions with no answers. I can't find an answer to that question, scientists say they can but it's all a bunch of crap. I believe in evolution and things of that sort but how did the universe start, before everything else? What scientifice explanation could their possibly be?

The evolution of life from its beginning through the development of primitive multicellular organisms took billions of years. The earth's atmosphere did not contain oxygen when the earth formed 4.6 billion years ago. This reducing environment provided favorable conditions for the natural synthesis of the first organic compounds. The first phospholipid bilayer membranes formed along with primitive RNA and DNA genetic molecules. The membranes adsorbed proteins and the hereditary DNA/RNA material. From these organic molecules, the first primitive prokaryote (simple single cell organism lacking a nucleus) arose.

And before everyone gets into the random choice thing read this:

"The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance."

There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that the arguer doesn't understand evolution. Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they don't interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating.

Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance. Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to their chemical properties. In the case of carbon atoms especially, this means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules. Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators. The first self-replicating object didn't need to be as complex as a modern cell or even a strand of DNA. Some self-replicating molecules are not really all that complex (as organic molecules go).

Some people still argue that it is wildly improbable for a given self-replicating molecule to form at a given point (although they usually don't state the "givens," but leave them implicit in their calculations). This is true, but there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. A calculation of the odds of abiogenesis is worthless unless it recognizes the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from, the probably innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken, and the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with.

(One should also note that the theory of evolution doesn't depend on how the first life began. The truth or falsity of any theory of abiogenesis wouldn't affect evolution in the least.)

IS that how living organisms started or is that how the universe started? I asked how the universe started. Maybe my "undeveloped" mind is unable to comprehend your choice of words.

This is all very interesting, and a bit-more refined than when I got my Biology degree, but it will be more-refined in the future, ad infinitum. You do accept that it is all taken on faith, correct? I didn't read anything anywhere that explained anything in terms of absolute truth, and I certainly didn't read anything about where "any atoms or molecules" came from, let alone who/what "made" the carbon. There's no point in researching it because there's no answer that doesn't require the fact that something existed before everything else did. And if an answer does exist, it's all based on "faith" in "science" and a big helping of denial.

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Originally posted by know_it_all:
Ok, for someone who doesnt believe in God- How could the world have started without some force as God? I'm trying to figure out how people cannot believe in God and still have answers to questions with no answers. I can't find an answer to that question, scientists say they can but it's all a bunch of crap. I believe in evolution and things of that sort but how did the universe start, before everything else? What scientifice explanation could their possibly be?

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The crazy thing about this debate is that, much like politics, neither side can understand how the other side beleives what they believe. Your aptly-phrased question, know-it-all, is the same question I would ask of the theist...how can you be so certain that the answer to the question "what is the origin of the universe" is God? I'm willing to admit that I have to take the Big Bang or abiogenesis or whatever de rigeur scientific theory with a certain degree of faith, and you'll probably do the same. The problem (or maybe it's the genius) with the debate is that there is almost nothing that you can do to change MY mind and vice versa. Any theory I give you can raise the question "how is that incompatible with God?" And any theory you give me will raise my question "how does that give me proof of God?"

that always gets me annoyed. you are so positive that your side is right, that you can't open up or even try to open up to other people's opinions, not you literally. It seems sometimes that it is pointless to even try to make a good case or put effort into debating something for you know that the other side will never change where they stand on their topic. I'm not saying i'm any better though but just for one time, try to let go of pre-conceptions of what is right and wrong and open to the other side and actually see what they have to say.

This is the point where I sound like a nutcase. If you have "faith" that God exists, you "know" it. If you don't, you don't. And like you say, pE, that's the beauty or frustration of the thing. It's called free will. If you want your mind/soul "possessed" by science or by "God."


I didn't think God existed. I didn't really know it, but I didn't care. Then I personally KNEW God existed, and now, even if I'm not as "excited" as I used to be, I can't forget that it's true. (Kinda like an analogy you made about first loves and Wilco relating to wives/girlfriends...not to get anybody in trouble.)

I realize that it might be "easier" to bend one way or the other based on your upbringing and education. But some things DO hit everyone like a ton of bricks, correct? Physical attraction, beautiful music, art, etc. Do you question those as something difficult to accept, or do you just let go and accept? Do you let whatever YOU CALL LOVE go unloved out of stubbornness, or do you embrace it?

Do philosophers believe in love? Because if they do, it shouldn't be that big a stretch to get your spinal cord all atwitter with LOVE (that's why "wackos" say "God Is Love" because it's something easily felt through your senses [if you "feel" it (last time I checked, feeling {touch} was a sense.]

End of Proselytizing....again and probably for good! (Everyone isn't even supposed to have faith because then there's no free will. It has nothing to do with "good and bad", just a mystery, sorta like science "knowing" our origins.)

IS that how living organisms started or is that how the universe started? I asked how the universe started. Maybe my "undeveloped" mind is unable to comprehend your choice of words.

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Originally posted by know_it_all:
that always gets me annoyed. you are so positive that your side is right, that you can't open up or even try to open up to other people's opinions, not you literally. It seems sometimes that it is pointless to even try to make a good case or put effort into debating something for you know that the other side will never change where they stand on their topic. I'm not saying i'm any better though but just for one time, try to let go of pre-conceptions of what is right and wrong and open to the other side and actually see what they have to say.

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Your frustration with my statement seems to make my point for me (even though you're not frustrated with ME!) The fact that this is so frustrating to you (and, I'm sure, to the diehard atheist) shows how hard it is to make these arguments work for the other side. The atheist wants to say the same thing to you...why can't YOU open up and try to accept that God doesn't exist? It's just burden-shifting wrought large...

I've made plenty of efforts to understand the views of religions. I've got a COLLEGE DEGREE in religion. In the end, I've never felt the sway that you feel, or the power of love that mark feels, that leads to God.

I'm not positive that "my side" is right because I'm not really on a side. I accept science (which you've admitted you do as well) and I recognize the value that religion brings to people's lives. I'm not sure I can accept that there is an ultimate human end/goal/telos. If there is one, I haven't figured out what it is yet.

I've read every thing you've said here, and I would be happy if I found that you've made a knock-down proof of God. In the end, you've made the same arguments that Aquinas, Anselm, Hume, and others have made. I've never been convinced by their arguments (or by the more advanced versions made by contemporary theists) and I'm not convinced by yours. Keep trying, though, because eventually the walls may come tumblin' down. I'm open to all ideas, and I consider them all without prejudice. Not that I'm egotistic enough to think you're trying to convert me...

Okay, well, evolution is much easier to explain and much more accepted than the theory of how the world started. There are two types of evolution, microevolution and macroevolution. microevolution involves tiny changes such as a moth changing colors after a fire so that it can, again, be disguised. Macroevolution is the evolution that was involved when monkey turned into man, it occurs over a long period of time. Both of these work due to the process of natural selection, where the strongest survive and therefore the strongest become a species.

Would you like me to get to the big bang theory, etc., etc.?

In response to your question Know-it-all I can likewise ask you where "God" came from did it suddenly spawn and then got bored and created Earth? It has to come from somewhere doesn't it?

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