jturning wrote:Wally Balljacker wrote:How is this justification for God belief? Just because there are questions we don't currently have answers to, that doesn't justify turning to the supernatural. If we are ignorant of something, why should we fill that lack of knowledge with supernatural fluff that can't be tested? To make us feel better? To give us a false sense of understanding and security? No thanks. I'm happy saying "I don't know", as opposed to "magic man in the sky must have done it!"
I believe because it's has been documented for us in a series of books together known as the Bible. History backs up the story within the books, and even a secular Jewish historian documented Jesus and his crucifixion. God didn't want us to be ignorant and gave us all the information we needed in written form. As a fact the Bible is the best selling book of all time, and estimated to have sold over 6 billion copies between 1816 to 1992. If the Bible was tracked on the best seller list it would be a rare week when it would not be number 1.
How is that any different from saying that the stuff written in the Harry Potter books are actually real events that have taken place? Dude, anybody can write a book and claim it to be the truth.
jturning wrote:Wally Balljacker wrote:Evolution is a theory AND fact. It doesn't require faith to accept facts.
BTW, I brought up the human body in reference to intelligent design. Have you ever watched an animal after it gave birth, and seen how it instinctively knows what to do in raising it's young. It's as though the animal has been programmed to know exactly what to do without being taught. There are things that go beyond evolution when you look at the world and the many wondrous creatures in it.
There's an explanation for why it instinctively knows that, by the way:
Instinctive behavior can be demonstrated across much of the broad spectrum of animal life. According to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, a favorable trait, such as an instinct, will be selected for through competition and improved survival rate of life forms possessing the instinct. Thus, for evolutionary biology, instincts can be explained in terms of behaviors that favor survival.
A good example of an immediate instinct for certain types of bird is imprinting. This is the behaviour that causes geese to follow around the first moving object that they encounter, as it tends to be their mother. Much work was done on this concept by the psychologist Konrad Lorenz.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct#Evolution
To sum the concept up in a simple way, males, of any species, have an urge to mate because of the survival of their species, and in the same way, females of most species care for their young for a certain period of time, because the survival of their species depends on them doing that.
jturning wrote:I ask this,
I know you weren't asking me, but I just thought I'd offer you my opinion.
jturning wrote:if you have no belief in God, what is the purpose of this life?
I think we ourselves alone, define our purpose. Many people spend their entire lives looking for a meaning of life, and an answer to why we are here. Being an adopted child, and having been subjected to various forms of racism in (I'm adopted from Sri Lanka, and my skin is dark), my life experiences has taught me that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant, it's what you do with your life, that determines who you are. At the kindergarten I went to 17 years ago, one of the adults were definitely not there just to earn a wage, the amount of work and effort she put into her job was just stunning. I don't have any idea why she did that all of that, which she technically did not have to, but if she did all of that just to help others, and contribute to a positive upbringing for the children she cared for, that sure is as noble a purpose as you can get.
jturning wrote:How are you planning on living your life?
I don't try to "plan" anything quite frankly, most people these days seem to have a "shopping list" for their lives "Education? Check ... Work? Check ... House? Check ... Children? Check ...", and I don't like that. There are some things I would like to do in my life time (And I can change this list arbitrarily at any point in time), but that's not planning in my opinion, because I don't have any idea of how I might about doing them. I look at life like a river, with an infinite amount of splits. We're all gonna die at some point, that's the only thing in life we know for certain, just like a river is inevitably gonna end up in the ocean. The splits that river might make along the way, is like making a choice between several options. The question, to me, therefore is, how and when do we get there? The choices we make in life determines the answers to those two questions. If you smoke a lot, the answer to the question of when you get to life's inevitable end is likely impacted by that.
. For me, God is real and I follow.
