When asked about the creation of the earth, Ray Comfort said, “IT TOOK SIX DAYS. HOWEVER, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW OLD THE EARTH IS” (source).
No idea? Maybe he should try, hmm, I don’t know… science?
Ironically, the next day he had a post entitled “Thank God for Science” about how white light is “invisible” just like God, and that Christians must show those wretched sinners about God’s “seven colors of His perfect character.”
Yet he isn’t willing to thank God for the science that has shown the age of the earth (~4.55 billion years), since it doesn’t fit with his first love, the Old Dusty Book.
Methinks he is a lost cause, but he is quite amusing. As well as his sidekick(kirk).
I had no idea white light was invisible – i thought it was white.
This is the same stupid argument as saying the that you can’t see “wind”, but it is there…
But no surprise coming from the Banana Man…can’t wait to see the white light meme repeated ad nauseum on the intertubes. Will be fun!
There seems to be this strawman that us foolish materialists hold some subset of the senses (usually vision) to be the arbiter of what is “real”. Therefore, if you can show that there are other things that really exist but aren’t detectable by that privileged subset, you can postulate all sorts of “unseen” mysteries as having an equal ontological status to the stuff we can see. It’s silly of course: we have multiple senses providing us various sorts information about our immediate surroundings, and we accept that scientific instruments extend those senses to give us further knowledge.
Wake me up when someone invents a deo-scope.
Yeah, the usual disingenuous and stupid argument.
I can’t see Santa Claus either. So I suppose he must be real as well? – Wait, I HAVE seen Santa. So in fact he appears to be even more real than God.
Thanks, Ray! You’ve opened my eyes. Merry christmas to you all.
Wow what a marvellous site – strange thing is that having a brief look through he seems to spend most of his time making ridiculous claims of why you should have faith and not be an atheist. Does he not realise that there are lots of other religions out there?
Wish I could remember who said it, but: “Creationists use science the way a drunk uses a lamp post, for support and not illumination.”
A literalist Biblical faith is not the only faith possible. Even not all fundamentalist Christians don’t believe such numbers to be literal. Thus when you make fun of such people, you are making fun of that particular individual and those who think like him. You are just entertaining yourselves and pampering yourselves concerning the way you approach monotheism. Authentic revealed religion is untouched by the things you say.
As for me, the Qur’an mentions a day that lasts 1000 years1 by our (humans’) way of counting in one verse and in another verse it mentions a day that lasts 50 000 years2. Therefore, we infer from such verses of the Qur’an itself that the six days of the creation of the universe need not be literally six days the way we count time. Each of them are likely to be thousands, millions, billions of years.
You may find thousands of holes in people’s beliefs. But at the basis of everything, there is the question whether all this meaning, life and love that we perceive in the universe around us can stem from a meaningless, lifeless and loveless nonsense i.e. the unconscious material universe. The answer is a definite no.
Then the second fundamental question is whether all this meaning, love and life will just cease to exist one day without returning ever again and will make all the past lively condition seem like a meaningless hoax, a strange hoax that was played by nobody… Reality is a serious thing. It doesn’t play hoaxes. Nothing will just cease to exist for eternity and our lives are not a meaningless hoax. Think and you will realize it. Material universe didn’t create meaning, life and love. Material universe itself and us living beings were created by a conscious, powerful and good creator. We believers have always called Him God or Yahweh or Allah. Allah, i.e. Ultimate Reality will prove us that He played no hoax on us in this life of ours and therefore He will re-create us for a better universe. This is the truth and only those who listen can receive the message correctly.
Regards
Mehmed Mustafa
Istanbul, Turkey
References:
Qur’an 32:5 – He rules (all) affairs from the heavens to the earth: in the end will (all affairs) go up to Him, on a Day, the space whereof will be (as) a thousand years of your reckoning.
2Qur’an 70:4 – The angels and the spirit ascend unto him in a Day the measure whereof is (as) fifty thousand years. Abdullah Yusuf Ali Translation
according to me it is born today, why care about the past?
“But at the basis of everything, there is the question whether all this meaning, life and love that we perceive in the universe around us can stem from a meaningless, lifeless and loveless nonsense i.e. the unconscious material universe. The answer is a definite no.”
And how do you arrive at such a definitive answer? What reasons can you advance? What evidence do you present?
Or is this just a desperate assertion?
@blake: Well it’s just as plausible as there was some sort of super-natural creator who made everything 6000 years or several billion years ago – take you pick! Why wouldn’t the creator make the universe and pre-populate us with memories that make us think with have been alive for x number of years. You never no maybe we all die tomorrow and it starts again?
@Mehmed Mustafa: I real don’t see what difference the numbers actually make. Whether it was 1 day, 10 years or billions of years ago. If you believe in an all powerful creator then it’s not difficult to extend this to the universe could have been created to seem as though it was any age the creator wished it to be. In the end all mainstream religion are tainted by the same problem that they insist that there is a creator yet provide no evidence for it even though the evidence against is far far stronger.
On you other two points on what basis can you be so sure:
“But at the basis of everything, there is the question whether all this meaning, life and love that we perceive in the universe around us can stem from a meaningless, lifeless and loveless nonsense i.e. the unconscious material universe. The answer is a definite no.”
… and:
“Nothing will just cease to exist for eternity and our lives are not a meaningless hoax.”
Oh and before you ask using the Qur’an as a reference for serious scientific questions doesn’t count as it really has nothing to say of any worth on these matters. Good solid evidence is what is needed and in lieu of that at least an argument that makes sense.
For me, the Earth is 33 years old. Almost 34.
My line of reasoning is a simple yet obvious truth. Believing that an unconscious universe is behind the consciousness and meaningful human life on earth is nonsense. Believing that this meaningfulness, consciousness and life will go away and never return to the humans that experienced it for a short while is equal to believing that all of this experience is a stupid, meaningless hoax. Obviously such a belief is against the sense of rationality itself and is itself a hoax. Hence God, the original conscious being and the originator of all that is conscious and unconscious, exists, and the Hereafter exists beyond any doubt. Denying this is a desperate attempt to salvage unbelief, to justify all this anti-religious madness i.e. the modern secular (un)belief system.
Regards
“My line of reasoning is a simple yet obvious truth. Believing that an unconscious universe is behind the consciousness and meaningful human life on earth is nonsense.”
Again you argue by assertion. WHY is materialism nonsense?
WHY does placing a time limit on life make it meaningless? If human life is meaningless, WHY would extending it forever give it meaning?
WHY is materialism and atheism “against the sense of rationality itself”? The fact that I am arguing here obviously proves that it is not “obvious” to me. Unless, as seems to be the case, you are accusing me of arguing in bad faith. In which case, WHY do you bother arguing in the first place?
@lonetruth: Well meant as a bit of joke but why not? Considering that mainstream religion is completely human centric why not take it to the extreme and make it individual centric. It could be that those extra four years of my life where just made up and I was just created as part of you existence. On the other hand probably not!
@Mahmed:
“Believing that an unconscious universe is behind the consciousness and meaningful human life on earth is nonsense. ”
Why exactly?
“Believing that this meaningfulness, consciousness and life will go away and never return to the humans that experienced it for a short while is equal to believing that all of this experience is a stupid, meaningless hoax.”
Not so. Life has the meaning that we humans impart to it, each and seperately. Imparting some overarching grand design, some great purpose, suggests astounding vanity, a desperate attempt to extract some greater role for ourselves in the universe and as such, inflate our stature in it.
“Obviously such a belief is against the sense of rationality itself and is itself a hoax. ”
Riiiight–it’s so much more rational to believe that an unseen, all-knowing, all-loving invisible man created the entire universe from nothingness and continues to run the world in his particularly just and loving way.[/snark]
“Hence God, the original conscious being and the originator of all that is conscious and unconscious, exists, and the Hereafter exists beyond any doubt. ”
I refer you to the poem regarding the six wise men and the elephant.
I’ve asked this question over and again on another thread of another believer, and now I’ll ask you:
Put your holy book aside for a minute. Now show me scientific evidence that will stand up to scrutiny, proving any god exists beyond reasonable doubt. Don’t point me to the book. Point me to hard facts.
“Denying this is a desperate attempt to salvage unbelief, to justify all this anti-religious madness i.e. the modern secular (un)belief system.”
You are making the same mistake a lot of hardcore Christians make: “Secular” means “independant of faith” not “anti-religious”. It means not favouring one religion over another, not working to stamp out religion.
Tolerance for all, no matter how silly the superstition … isn’t that nice?
Dear brothers and sisters in humanity :), I would like to explain further my position and try to show you how wrong you are in your attitude towards all religion. If you listen to me, thank you.
—
Believing that the life and meaning that we experience, and the love (and other sublime feelings) and consciousness that we possess originated from and will return to a lifeless, unconscious, loveless, purposeless and consequently meaningless universe is nonsensical. Naturalism or materialism, i.e. the dogmatic belief that the lifeless, unconscious, loveless, purposeless and consequently meaningless nature is behind everything and is the originator of our conscious and meaningful universe is the strangest and most absurd cult that humanity has ever believed in. This cult amounts to reducing all existence and all the rationality within existence to a full absurdity.
In light of this and other lessons taken from the nature of existence, the belief that a single possessor of supreme consciousness created and manages all that exists for a good and meaningful purpose is the only logical belief. The God of Abrahamic or Islamic monotheism with all His attributes of perfection is the only possible source of all that exists.
He must be the source of mathematical and physical realities. So no doubt He is all-wise, all-knowing.
He must be the source and originator of all natural laws. So no doubt He is all-powerful.
He is the source of the basic human sense that goodness is the rule and evil is an exception to the rule. So He is all-good, all-just.
Therefore He will definitely create a new universe after the necessary collapse of this imperfect one for the final tirumph of goodness and justice and beauty. Then we will learn how the evil in this world was necessary for the perfect goodness in the next one to have a meaning. We will also realize how every evil here will prove to have been the means for a greater good in the Hereafter.
I admit that only the doctrine of eternal damnation for unbelievers is very hard to explain in the context of this eventual tirumph of good under the rule of the Most Merciful (ar-Rahmaan). That doctrine was developed in Christianity and made its way into being the mainstream Islamic position due to complex historial realities (i.e. remember that Islam was first adopted, outside of the formerly polytheistic Arabia, by the Christians of the then Middle East, which had been almost the Christian mainlands until then).
However, since the earliest times, some Muslim scholars such as the great Imam Ibn Taymiyya and his student Ibn Qayyim, allegedly extremist scholars and surely controversial scholars, have always defended, on the basis of none other than the Qur’an and the Sunnah, the position that hell is completely a place of purification for the guilty and not a place of purposeless eternal torture. God repeatedly emphasizes in the Qur’an and in the tongue of His Messenger (peace be on him) that His mercy encompasses everything and is greater than His punishment. Therefore, in the end, nobody will remain in hell and everyone will live a painless life thereafter as clearly expressed in certain hadith reports that are downplayed by most Muslim scholars unfortunately. But in the new painless life, the more virtuous will be at a higher state of happiness and status than the less good… And many other proofs for the non-eternity of hell that I had better avoid delving into here since I have a real life that I am neglecting at the moment.
Different positions regarding the eventual fate of non-Muslims in Islamic theology is discussed in this PhD thesis given in the University of Michigan. You can consult it if you are interested in what I have told you: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55688/3/khalilm_1-3.pdf
However, I hope that all of us will die as good people and believers and meet our Lord without having to be punished and purified in hell for a long long time.
I am not assigning any overarching purpose or anything.
I am talking about THE VERY FACT THAT YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO IMPART MEANING TO THE THINGS AROUND YOU. If the origin of existence was the unconscious and purposeless nature, we would not be able to impart any meaning to the world around us. An unconscious, lifelss nature cannot give that ability to its supposed product, the human being. Therefore, without a conscious and purposeful God, our consciousness and our ability to have a meaningful existence can never be explained. Therefore God exists plainly and obviously. And the rest as I said above.
So my statement itself is the logical proof. It is not a mere assertion. You think that as a religious person I must be saying something that you have in mind and then you tell me that I hold that belief in your mind without really trying to understand what I am saying.
Try to understand and quit your own “silly” superstitions inshallah. Thanks.
By the way, God is not a human-like somebody. “Nothing resembles Him (laysa ka mithlihee shay’un)”, the Qur’an says. All the trite mockings of the belief in God are meaningless.
@Mehmed:
Great, good. Now can we get back to my actual question?
My ability to impart meaning to something is the product of some very fortuitous evolution, expressed as electrochemical activity in the protein soup contained inside my skull. Why should I believe anything else?
Just because I exist and can form thoughts is no reason to go thanking the invisible entity in the sky for those thoughts.
To argue that because I exist, god exists is illogical. How about this: “I exist, therefore the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists.” And you cannot prove that to be false.
So far you’ve shown me nothing but circular logic.
The story is told of a worm who found his way to the surface one day and poked his head out for a look around. Poking from a hole next to his he spotted the finest-looking worm he’d ever seen:
“Pardon me,” he said, smitten, “I love you, and I want you to come and marry me and live with me forever.”
“Shut up, stupid!” said the other worm “I’m your other end!”
So far the god you’ve shown me is looking like nothing so much as your other end.
Again and again you say “must.” This must be, that must be. Don’t you see that you are only making assertions without attempting to reason? Some things may be axiomatic to you: things fall when you drop them, it gets hot in the summer, meaning cannot come from meaninglessness. But they may not be axiomatic to us.
We produce meaning, that much you agree. It exists in our brains, an attachment of value to something in the outside world. But why can’t this creation of meaning simply be a side effect of our own – natural and materialistic – attempts to make sense out of stimuli and experience?
@Mehmed Mustafa:
If I’m enterpreting your arguments correctly, they boil down to this:
Nature can not produce love, purpose, or consciousness, due to the fact that nature is inherently without purpose.
The only possible alternative explanation then is God/Allah, because only He can create such things. They can not emerge, so they must exist by divine design. Correct?
You seem to take it even further and claim that new life or eternal death are not possible. Furthermore, you invoke the God of the gaps argument – God must exist because we lack explanations.
Well, we do have natural explanations for all those things and more. However, in order to accept those explanations you’d have to be ready to accept that love, life, etc, are not the products and manifestations of divine will. It’s rather obvious that you have decided in advance that they indeed are of divine origin, so noone would ever be able to present you with any evidence to the contrary.
Anyone can be right according to their own premises. However, I don’t accept your premises. Your premises are merely assertions without proof, at most backed up by holy scripture. And your conclusion is skewed as a result.
Peace.
@trj
“If I’m enterpreting your arguments correctly, they boil down to this:
Nature can not produce love, purpose, or consciousness, due to the fact that nature is inherently without purpose.”
Yes, an unconscious, feelingless and purposeless nature cannot produce consciousness, love or meaning. And you assume this nature to be the source of all existence. This belief is evidently false in rational terms alone. Consciousness and meaningfulness is the most basic thing in existence. Actually existence becomes existence only through consciousness and the sense of meaning. In this context, claiming that this essential consciousness and sense of meaning do not belong to the origin of existence but is only an ephemeral byproduct of an eternal lack of conscience and eternal lack of any sense of meaning is a total absurdity.
Hence consciousness, love and meaning was at the origin and at the beginning of all existence. We call this original consciousness “God” in religious terminology. All in all, reason tells us that a conscious creator who consciously chose to create us and our universe is an evident reality.
And I assure you that when we proceed to reason under no influence from any distracting religious or irreligious dogma and from our worldly vested interests in following a particular dogma, we will arrive at a full adoption of Abrahamic/Islamic monotheism. I don’t mean the entertaining stories and myths that were historically concocted around the different forms that monotheism came to take but the authentic teachings of the Messengers of God.
@Mehmed:
“…you assume this nature to be the source of all existence. This belief is evidently false in rational terms alone. Consciousness and meaningfulness is the most basic thing in existence.”
Sorry, no. You are making another huge assertion, which has no connection to rationality or logic.
You have no basis for claiming that consciousness can not emerge from non-conscious processes. As for meaningfulness, this is not an inherent attribute of the universe, but simply an interpretation happening in our minds. Furthermore, you have no evidence for claiming that anything exists besides the natural world.
This appears to be a general problem with your arguments. You ascribe your interpretations of the world to the actual properties of the world (in particular you interpret the world according to Islam).
Essentially, you argue by non sequitur. Your conclusions (which also serve as your premises) do not follow from observing our world. You continually claim that this must be so, and that must be so, but these claims are based solely on your personal preferences, not on deductive reasoning. You simply wish things to be a particular way and so infer that they must be so. It is pure religuous conjecture without any evidence.
“And I assure you that when we proceed to reason under no influence from any distracting religious or irreligious dogma and from our worldly vested interests in following a particular dogma, we will arrive at a full adoption of Abrahamic/Islamic monotheism.”
Get your hats on, folks. It’s raining teh crazy.
@Mehmad:
Start from the logical position: There is not a god.
You cannot reason a god from the available evidence.
You come to me and say: “God exists because I’ve got this gut feeling that there just has to be one.
Then you say: “It’s got to be Allah, I just know it!”
Me, I say it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It has to be. I can feel it, and I just know it must be true!
Besides, it’s logical: A noodless universe would be purposeless. And a universe with noodles but no humans? Well that’d be equally purposless, not to mention just silly.
So to eliminate silliness the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, which has both humans and noodles, and also Heaven, which has strippers and a beer volcano.
All praise to the FSM! He has touched us with his noodly appendage.
Have you heard the good news of <a href = “http://www.venganza.org” target = “_blank”Pastafarianism?
Just pointing out a few small flaws in your logic.
Whoops–forgot to close the tag.
@trj.
So, you say that it can be scientifically explained how conscious existence can be created by an eternally lifeless nature that does not actually exist as a conscious being. You just hope that that can be proved one day, despite the absurdity of considering human consciousness and sense of reality as a product of an eternal non-existence of any sense or consciousness.
That will never be proved just as it will never be proved that zero is larger than one. You and the Zeroists that share your belief can create a huge literature expounding on the possible proofs of Zeroism. You may make fun of all those dogmatic people who cannot admit the fact that science will one day explain why zero is greater than one. You may spread your ideology and make all the One-ists look like backward fools. But all of these will be to no avail. The simple truth will never be actually refuted, and the actual reality will never change.
This is the wishful thinking: “For me to be free in how I choose to live, I must have come from an eternal non-existence of consciousness and of meaning and of purpose. And I suppose I do need to be free. Therefore there is no consciousness at the origin of existence.” What a reasoning. This is the most logical way to prove that it is all a meaningless, purposeless, nonsensical existence dominated by unconsciousness that we have.
May God, the original existence and the ultimate reality, save all people from all this.
@Mehmed:
“So, you say that it can be scientifically explained how conscious existence can be created by an eternally lifeless nature that does not actually exist as a conscious being.”
No, I’m not saying science can explain the emergence of consciousness (or at least it can not prove it, though there are some good working hypotheses). Nor am I saying that science will ever be able to fully explain the phenomenon of conscience.
What I’m saying is that you have no evidence what so ever for your claims that conscience can only appear by divine intervention. None … what … so … ever. Funny you should accuse me of wishful thinking.
Also, you attempt to misrepresent my motives and my reasoning. I’ve seen this done countless times. Religious people want to explain how non-believing people think. In your minds it always boils down to the non-believers being opposed to submitting to God’s will, due to pride or fear. You assume our views to be based on our unwillingness to have God rule over us.
In reality, I DON’T GIVE A CRAP about what conclusions one can draw from my reasoning in matters such as free choice, my relationship with God, the purpose of life, or similar existential subjects. My reasoning does not spring from any of these matters, though you’d sorely like to think so.
My reasoning is based on this simple fact: Religious claims are unsubstantiated, they have no evidence, they are often inconsistent, and sometimes even obviously false. They provide a flawed framework for exploring and explaining the world around us. I put no trust in them because they have never proven their worth.
And I see the same problem in your arguments. You produce a number of unsubstantiated claims with absolutely zero evidence. Why should I believe you? Because you’re really, really convinced of their truth? Sorry, until you can back them up I prefer more credible methods, like the scientific method.
@Mehmed
Simple question: Starting from the logical position that there is no god, how do you prove that there is one?
Your answers?
My gut
Poetry
Bob-and-weave
You fools, of course there’s a god
Convincing nonbelievers FAIL.
But in case that’s not enough to determine that you aren’t capable of producing a convincing argument, you follow up with this beauty:
1) You presume to know how I think. Even though you yourself cannot presume to understand it?
2) You assume that to submit oneself to a god negates personal freedom. I understand this is popular in Wahabbist nations, and under not a few other theocracies. But it’s heresy in many deisms to assume that having a god means there’s no free will.
3) For atheists, it’s simple: The most logical way to prove anything is to start with the facts. Fact one: No god can be proven to exist. Fact two: all available evidence suggests no gods exist, to a far-greater-than 99 percent likelihood. So we don’t bother with gods.
And yet your “logical” response is to fall to your knees and worship one of the many gods whose very existence cannot be proven?
“What a reasoning,” indeed.
Furthermore, you claim that your particular god is the right one, logically asserting that all others are wrong. Where’s your proof for that assertion?