Moral Argument for God

I would add that we don't need god in order to have a "grand purpose". AS humans we have the potential to create very grand purposes for our existance. Say we one day colonize the universe thrugh our ever advancing technology, wouldn't that be quite grand?

I would answer that as No. Since from the Aethistic perspective we are all very small slices of energy originating from the big bang, seeing these small parts of energy mitigate to other parts of the same energy mass is nothing special. Just the random dispersion of energy that has undergone numerous transfiguarations over the millenia, unwinding it's potential surplus until the culmination of the big crunch.From the Creationist perspective I see it as extremely grand in that special created beings put the unique talent and intellegence given to them, to maximum usage in order to accomplish a very challenging task. To be given a universe by a designer that poses a challenge to be studied and explored. Then create a perfect planet for a special created being to flourish on and eventually utilize all of their god given potential to go out and explore this vast universe and in the process learn much about the designer.Finally, to have written on their hearts by the designer, a moral code (in the DNA) that causes every one of the special created beings to view right and wrong in the same perspective that the designer does, while allowing them the freedom to choose their own course of behaviour with respect to or despite of the knowledge of this truth.

... Dude... you don't get it do you?You are confusing the abstraction for the reality. Ever have realy good sex? It's just a bunch of neurons firing and a biological response to stimuli. Ok, but that dosn't make it feel any less incredible Don't you see that creatures that are sentient are the only things capable of ASIGNING purpose? Purpose only exists with relevance to us, because we have to EXPERIENCE the world!Even if it is a bunch of energy does not negate the fact that we exist and have a very real experience of the world. WE MAKE OUR PURPOSE. We don't need a god for this.

Again, this is all based on your likes and dislikes, not logic. It's fine for determining your personal beliefs, but not for a debate. But we don't. Many people disagree with the Bible's morality (ie, freedom or religion, sodomy laws, etc.). Morality is certainly NOT inscribed on our DNA! Other religions have different moral codes, though most share a few common threads at their core. Psychopaths literally have no conscience or morality beyond fear of reprisals for breaking the law.Provide evidence to back your claims instead of wishy-washy "I like this better than the other becasue it makes me feel special" BS. If you can't provide evidence to back up your claims or refute the evidence of the rest of us, then conceed your point.

The fact of mine that you are supporting or recognizing is that we ARE having very real experiences in this world. The world is filled with purpose, order and experience. What I'm saying is that all of this reality, purpose and order did not result out of random energy currents from a distant big bang.Reason, logic, self awareness and universal morality also cannot result from random energy currents from a distant big bang. My point is that relying on a massive explosion to get us to this point does not equate. If one big explosion can produce intellegent humans, then a smaller controlled one should produce some money for me but I doubt if you would stand around while I blow up some wood and see if I get dollars as a result. The human being exhibits qualities that reflect an infusion of intellegence in order to demonstrate all of the qualities that we are debating.To say that complex concepts such as right and wrong can be derived from an explosion requires more than faith in my opinion than observing the obvious that we are the handy work of a designer from outside of the boundries of our physical universe.WE do not make our own purpose. We have the ability and freedom to choose what our course will be, but just like a ship cannot build itself, we did not build ourselves. Our design reflects that our creation was for a purpose. The purpose came BEFORE the the creation.The Bible claims that the purpose of humans was to have communion with the creator and to rule and subdue the Earth. For this second purpose it is obvious that we are supremely created. There is no way that we can re-create our purpose to be anything else but to subdue the Earth, whether in engineering, music, technology, medicine, philosophy, bussiness or anything else.If you want to change your purpose to be the same as the Musk Oxen's purpose on this planet, go ahead and try but you will not be able to rival the Ox, because you were created as a human and you will subdue the Oxen or expire trying. Your purpose was created for you before you were.

Lizard Breath, that was a very nice statement of faith. There were absoluterly no logical arguments, however. False. The fact that we have experiences in no way proves the existance of God. Purpose and order are human-defined concepts, and do not exist dominantly in nature. Nature, rather, is filled with random chaos. Observe the thermonuclear reactions of the Sun, the distribution of raindrops in a rainstorm, the chaotic swirl of gravity that forms galaxies. This universe is based on chaos. Humans attempt to impose order on chaos because it's easier to deal with. That's a nice strawman. No one is saying that a giant explosion caused morality. Human sentience DEFINES morality for itself, by rationally observing the consequences of actions.The Big Bang is not some chemical explosion that magically created life. The Big Bang is simply a description of the early universe - when time and space came into existance, space began to expand. It's not like some giant bomb went off! The name was given due to similarities with explosions that we are used to, but was not truly related to them in any way. Nobody is basing morality on an explosion. The origin of the universe is irrelevant to this topic! Right and wrong are wholly defined by human consciousness. Your "designer" is not required to describe those concepts, or humanity itself. Of course we do. We determine the courses of our own lives. We decide what to believe in, if anything. We decide whether to be moral people or not, and define that morality for ourselves. To say that "our design reflects that our creation was for a purpose" requires evidence. Prove that we were designed at all, and prove that we have a purpose beyond survival and whatever else we determine from our own minds. The bible is an old book. Not evidence. There's some good stuff in there, certainly, but a book cannot prove anythign by itself.I'd really like to see you actually refute someone's points, or provide evidence of your own. As it is, you're just spouting off religious rhetoric like a broken record. Repeating yourself does not strengthen an argument. Either provide evidence of your claims or conceed.

If humans are a result of the big bang, then so is their consciousness. You are saying that once humans were created from the big bang, a whole new game started and these complex thoughts just came into being.I say that this is false. It's like saying that once the microprocessor was created "by chance", some power was applies to it and it began to display powerful bussiness applications on the screen. You need the software to make anything happen on even the most complex cpu. The software always has an author.You are saying that once the cpu finally evolved, it created it's own software to run on itself, all by chance, repetition and time. And the software developed itself from "Find Food, Take Food, Eat Food" to "Morality and self awareness".I say that you need a designer to run the computer with power, build a station for it to operate, design the cpu, and write the software.

Well, that's not quite the way it went.The Big Bang has nothing to do with Humans, morality or even life except that if it had not happened, none of them would exist.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, it was. It developed according to the design of a designer who evolved according to the partly-random processes of evolution. Who evolved. What's the point? Since the former, not the latter, constitutes the bulk of everyday mental activity for human beings I don't find the prospect you describe all that surprising. Computers just barely work. The human brain is a marvel of robustness. That quality is the hallmark of natural evolution, not intelligent design.

I don't think that the existance of a universal/fundamental morality can be explained in wholly human, logical and reasonable terms, which is one of the reasons I believe in god. There seems to be a basic, universal morality in humans, a conscience, that fuels beliefs that are shared by the religions of the world. There are similarities on a fundamental level, a core universal morality that I don't think can be explained without the existance of god.

Can you give some concreate examples of this? It would help us understand your point better.

quote:

---

There seems to be a basic, universal morality in humans, a conscience, that fuels beliefs that are shared by the religions of the world. There are similarities on a fundamental level, a core universal morality that I don't think can be explained without the existance of god.

---

It can also be explained by the needs of groups of people living together and requiring certain kinds of behavior in order to get along and share resources and protection from those that would harm the group."Do unto others" and all that.

The similarities are NOT universal, though prevalent.The explanation is that we are all rational human beings. Well, we are all capable of rational thought, anyway. A rational mind can examine the consequences of its actions and determine which actions resulted in beneficial or detrimental results, to the individual and society. Empathy can be used to explain the commonality of "do unto others." It's perfectly rational to understand that, if you don't like being punched in the face, your neighbor probably won't like it either, so you shouldn't do it.No deity necessary. Prove that it can't, becasue I think atheists do it all the time.

I thought the point was that there was an objective standard and our opinions on the subject didn't matter. I was just trying to get at the details of this "underlying morality". I thought my example fell into the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" category. Apparently that standard doesn't apply to all action and hence does not qualify as an underlying morality.

I disagree. Admittedly, human brains are infinetly more complex than the best CPU's. The human brain has the same connectivity or synapses as the number of leaves in the entire United States if each acre of land had 20 trees and each tree had 10,000 leaves.I am familiar with the vast amount of intellegent design that went into the development of the modern CPU's. It is impossible to then look at the human brain and say that no intelligent design went into it. Just green slime and time. That is tremendous complexity out of hot gas.