What if you have never heard of God, Jesus, or the Holy Bible?

Your brain doesn't stop right when you die; it keeps working for some time before brain tissue dies.So, whatever experience he had didn't really happen when he was dead; it happened right when he died. There was still enough brain to remember the dream, as it were.When the brain is shut off from the outside world, time becomes subjective. Haven't you had dreams that seemed to span hours or days, but when you woke up you discovered you had only dreamed for 10 minutes? So no matter how long the events the boy described seemed to take, they all could have happened in seconds of real time.

I think her point was that if you can't find anything about it on the internet, of all places, then not only did it probably not happen, but there aren't that many people who believe it did happen. Do tell. (In a new thread, please.)

That's weird. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but surely you put belief in a sort of continuum, where you have faith one one side and evidence on the other - so that, the more evidence you have for a certain thing, the less faith you need to have to believe it, right?If that's the case, then it takes way more faith to believe in God than it does to believe any particular statement of science. Because there's zero evidence for god, while no theory in science is proposed without some kind of evidence. So, how does your statement make any sense?Do you have a theory in particular that you think takes more faith than believe in god? tell ya what. Pick any evolutionary statement, and I'll provide the evidence. Meanwhile you provide the evidence for your particular god. Be prepared to defend it, of course.

Why? Because the number is bigger? It's takes no more faith to believe in a million years than it does to believe in any length of time beyond that you have a recollection of. But faith is irrelevant. Evidence is what matters. And there's way more evidence for a 4.6 billion year history of the earth than there is for sudden creation, 6000 years ago.

Just as I don't expect 100% proof from science - only enough data to support reasonable theories - I'd settle for less than 100% evidence for god. Heck, I'd settle for 1% evidence for god. Unfortunately there is 0 evidence for god. The way you put this suggests that you might change your mind with further information. If this is so I invite you to ask questions and learn. There's a reason geologists infer a 4 billion year history of earth - data that leads these highly trained, very intelligent individuals to this conclusion. No, from your own statements above it's clear that you're looking at much less evidence than geologists are looking at. You seem to imply that, anyway. And if you're coming to erroneous conclusions through ignorance, don't you have any interest in correcting yourself and learning the way things actually are?

Every day, by my actions towards that person I love. (I hope.) You'd have to ask her if I've succeeded. But yes, I do the things that humans generally recognize that humans do when they're in love. That's sufficient evidence for most people. I don't see what your point is, here. We're talking about physical events with physical evidence. Not human concepts. I'm sure you have a lot of faith in god. I'm sure you're very faithful. So what? Your faith has absolutely no bearing on the actual existence of god, which is the issue at hand. Your faith is not evidence in that regard.If you believe in god as a kind of metaphor, or as a concept, that's fine. But if you believe that god has a real, verifiable existence as an entity that can do things, I need evidence. And there is none. So, I can safely state, within the limits of scientific certainty, that there is no god.

No, it's really not. My girlfriend is accessable to scientific inquiry. Her existence can be verified. So the object of my love is sufficiently real to rule out the possibility that my love for her is an illusion.Show me some acts of god. Show me some evidence of his existence. I've been looking for years. I've been asking around. If you think you have some, share it. If you're so sure there's evidence of god, why don't you tell me what it is? Which means that science is in constant approach to greater accuracy. Sounds good to me. I'd rather be almost right and getting closer, than totally and eternally wrong.It sounds to me like you'd rather believe the confortable and unchanging fiction because it's less metal work for you than keeping up with science. I don't understand how someone could live like that.

I'm totally open to that idea. That's the nature of science: tentativity. Any findings of science are availiable to be rewritten in the light of new evidence. Do your beliefs have that kind of flexibility?As for "interpretation", if something is red, it's red. There's no way to "interpret" it as blue. No matter what your "interpretation", all our dating methods - each independant of the other in terms of mechanism - point to a very old earth indeed. The only way to interpret that differently is with a theory of creation with apparent age, and if that's the case, why would you believe in a god that would lie to you?

Who said it was an illusion? I said that love wasn't an illusion. You, apparently, are choosing to obfuscate. Again, if you have evidence, show me. Don't tell me "it's there" unless you can show me where it is. To the contrary - the vast scope of different communication techniques employed by animals is more than enough evidence to suggest an evolutionary origin for language. Well, if you grant that science is in the process of approaching "rightness", how do you explain that science appears to be moving away from your position? Does that really suggest you're right? My point exactly. I find it highly arrogant you could be so certain about this that you'd allow no possibility for your own error. But, whatever. They don't see a color. (They're color-blind.) And so what? Is your argument that creationists are blind to certain types of evidence? I'd certainly agree with you on that. You don't think that humans are capable of accuracy within limits? Do you distrust grocery scales? Computers?Or do you trust measurements that conform to your presuppositions, and ignore those that don't, with these kinds of mental hand-waving? A little more intellectual bravery on your part might help you look at data that might not agree with your worldview.

And no one claims that radiometric dating is perfect. However, the accuracy limits are very well understood, and there's no amount of error that scientists would accept that would give a date of 60,000,000 years when the real date was more like 6000.If you want to discredit radiometric dating, you'll need a mechanism other than the fundamental resolution limits to explain how they could be off by a factor of over a thousand. One that explains how so many independant dates could be off to exactly the same degree. No such mechanism, to my knowledge, has ever been seriously proposed. Love is a concept invoked to explain a number of physiological sensations and behaviors people feel towards other members. Almost all humans agree that love exists, so I'd say it's as real as beauty, or truth, or any other abstract concept. Not everything has to be physical to be real.On the other hand, you're not apparently talking about god the concept. You're talking about god the phsyical being, who acts and speaks, in your view. If you want me to accept that as more than just make-believe you'll have to present some evidence. I've noticed you've stopped talking about that. Are you prepared to present evidence of god? If not, why do you claim that such evidence exists? Nobody says we do. But the scientific method is a process designed to eliminate as much inaccuracy as possible from the data our fallible senses provide.If minds are so fallible, how can you be sure the bible is infallible? How can you know that's just not your erroneous interpretation? And even if it is infallible, how can you know your interpretation of its literal truth is at all correct?Sorry, I'll take science any day over a 2000-year-old book. It's just the way you're doing it, but use "qs" instead of "quote". If you're in the message composition page, there's a link "UBB Code is ON" next to the message box. That'll link you to all the UBB codes the forum uses. [This message has been edited by crashfrog, 06-28-2003]

But still, I'm not interested in your faith. I'm sure you have it. I'm interested in the potential existence of the object of your faith. God. So, sure, your faith is like love. Whatever. But regardless of my love for her (or even my faith in her), my girlfriend has an independant, verifiable existence. Does god? No, if you can present sufficient evidence for which the only simplest explanation is the agency and existence of an omnipotent god, I'll believe it. I seriously will.But if natural explanations can account for your "evidence", it's not really evidence for god. So you have to take Occam's razor into account. Unfortunately, as the claim of the existence of a god is a major one, I'll need pretty significant evidence. But if god really does exist this shouldn't be a problem. I can and do (and have). That's why I tend to believe that with the most evidence in support. It's a way of making sure my beliefs are as accurate as they could be, in light of current data, which is always incomplete. I felt that too, once. I felt as though god were speaking inside of me. And then I discovered that by concentrating, I could make that "small, still voice" say anything I wanted it to, and I couldn't tell the difference. So I came to the obvious conclusion that I had been talking to myself all along. That my own personal feelings were a terrible arbiter of what was real and what was not. That it had to come down to evidence - and there simply wasn't any that suggested a god was at work, intervening in man's affairs.

^bump^Spud, still waiting for your evidence of god. As you can see there's a bunch of us who would be interested to hear some.

This might be weird to hear from an atheist, but I kind of agree with you. Either god exists, which would mean there is evidence of god, or else God does not exist. Since there's no evidence for god I take the position that god does not exist, similarly to how you might take the position that Allah or Shiva does not exist. As it turns out race is purely a social pheonomenon, as far as I know. There are no reliable genetic markers that signify race. You might want to look this up. As far as I know the DNA evidence is consistent only with an explanation of human decent from one original (and rather small) population. Something on the order of 10,000 individuals. Certainly more than the Bible records were on the Ark. Oh, come on. That's just ridiculous. Do you honestly think Adolf Hitler wasn't any worse than Albert Schwitzer? He founded the Red Cross, if you didn't know.It's not a matter of being good enough. It's a matter of, on one hand, demanding accountability for so-called "sins", but on the other, claiming that no good deed can ever make up for a bad one. That's some skewed arithmetic, if you ask me. And remember, Hitler was a good Lutheran - even the Catholic Church supported his regime. So by the logic of your Bible he must be in Heaven.Look, it's just ridiculous. Some bad things are worse than others. Human law reflects this. Why doesn't divine law? I'll take human law any day, where the punishment fits the crime - not divine law where there's only one punishment for any bad deed. Does it matter? If I only thought about killing them, they're still alive, right? Hasn't God heard of "no harm, no foul"? So then it is about deeds, not faith. Is there a cross in your church? Have you prayed in front of it? What's different about that? Or for that matter, isn't the Biblical literalist's faith in the Bible a kind of idolatry? Ah, so then (as Truthlover likes to point out) you live a life of ascetic denial and have given away all your Earthly possessions, right? I guess you're using somebody else's computer, then.Also I assume you never wear clothing of mixed fiber.I have a sense that, despite what you think, you're not interpreting the Bible literally - you're just relying on the interpretation that justifies a worldview you've already accepted. Why don't you crack that Bible and see what a real literal interpretation would make you do.

Actually, the debate's over once you present incontrovertable evidence of god. I mean, if you can do that, you win, basically. Not so. There's plenty of physical evidence. (No, not that kind of physical! ) There's the numerous independant reports of people who claim to be in love. There's the way it affects their behavior. There's the change in chemical states in the brain.There's considerably more physical evidence for the existence of "love" than there is for "God". Which is weird if you claim that God works in this world - created it, even. If god is such a big deal there should be incontrovertable evidence all over the place. But I do have proof. I've seen the proof. I'm even in love myself. It would be very, very hard for me to say that love does not exist in any form. It's contradictory to the data.However saying "God does not exist" is not contradictory to any data that I am aware of. I try to choose to believe that which is best supported by the data. But I guess I'm weird like that. Not everybody assumes what they want to believe and then tries to prove it after the fact, you know. Believing what you want despite the evidence is not generally a technique used by anyone but Creationists.

Sorry, I guess I'm used to thinking in those terms. Basically, when two people take opposite, mutually exclusive positions and try and defend them against one another, there's a potential "winner' involved.Like I said, in a discussion where "God exists" is pitted against "there's no evidence for God" all you have to do to win - prove your opponent wrong - is show incontrovertable evidence of God. It's simple, really. Seeing God, perhaps. God talking to me. Seeing the hand of God do something impossible.I mean, if we were talking about the potential existence of a person - like, a "Canadian girlfriend" if you're familiar with that term - what would it take to prove to you they exist? A phone call from them? A personal meeting? Stuff like that is what I might accept as "proof" of God.It doesn't take any more evidence to prove god exists than it does to prove you exist. No, I told you that. It's a feeling that people report having for specific other persons, generally associated with physiochemical reactions related to sexual arousal and attraction. I imagine it "evolved" when the mind evolved. When we started making words for stuff. People noticed that they bonded to other humans in specific ways and gave words to that relationship.As for the physiochemical and behavioral reaction of love, it evolved because it's a survival trait. Humans in love tend to protect the results of love - children. Ergo, more copies of the "love gene" survived, until it spread throughout the population. A simplified version, of course. Love isn't specific to humans, of course. Almost all social animals display the kind of co-operation, interest, and self-sacrifice for mate that typify "love". I don't love it per se, I keep using it because the evidence for god has to be incontrovertable - unable to be explained by a simpler theory.I mean, if I gave you "evidence" that Elvis was (against all odds) alive in Tennesee, and you could explain my evidence with a theory that it was just somebody dressed as Elvis (a much simpler and more likely theory), I could hardly expect you to be convinced, right? That's what "incontrovertable" means. It means that your evidence must survive dispute. See, that would be "controvertable" evidence. I can explain all that with a much simpler theory (one that doesn't require an invisible being with unobserved powers) so it's not evidence for God. What's the point of having choice in this world if we don't get to have choices in the next? If I die and God's there, guess what? I'll believe in him/her/whatever. But if I don't get to choose then - if choice is removed after death - then what's the point? We don't really have choice at all. Choice must not be a requirement of existence in your worldview. I never said I did. I don't need every piece of the jigsaw puzzle to know what the picture is.I can hardly take into account evidence that I don't have - especially the evidence that I don't know I don't have. More on this in a second. Yes, exactly. Because that's how science works. We know that we never have all the evidence - we don't even know yet what evidence we don't have. Ergo the conclusions of science are tentative. When we get new evidence, we revise science. In that way, science moves ever closer to the truth. It's an ongoing process of getting more right.I'm an atheist, and an evolutionist, because that's the best explanation for the evidence I see. But I know I don't know everything, and I don't even know everything I don't know. Therefore I know I could be wrong about the non-existence of God (and everything else).Constancy of belief (which you appear to prize) means that you can't ever admit you're wrong, even in the face of data that proves you are. That level of intellectual arrogance is just revolting to me. Saying "I could be wrong" isn't just humility, it's a necessary part about being a finite, and often wrong, human.