What are these reasons that make you conclude that it is unlikely?
Ok, so what are your thoughts in regards to how the universe came about, how the first cell came into place, how animals and humans came about?
Do you think one day there was nothing, then a random explosion happened, then all of a sudden from that random uncaused explosion resulted in the universe, planets being formed, then somehow one day some lightning hit some water then the first cell somehow came about, then information from somewhere was added to cells (which contain the most complex information)..
All this happened by chance and luck with no one behind it?
When you look around you, do you honestly think its all chance and luck?
When you look around you, do you honestly think its all chance and luck?
One thing i have learnt in my life is that when one person makes a comment like that about the other, that person really is the one who he is making the comment about.......
The difference is, i dont have "junkyard" mentaility like you and your friends do.....
If you want to believe that an explosion at the print factory caused the dictionary to happen, then good luck to you....
Junk yard mentality.....
Mathematicians have calculated that the chance and probability of the universe randomly hitting the conditions for life on this earth is equivalent to,
tieing a hammer to a dogs tail, putting it in a field half the size of a football field with all materials needed to build a house and letting that dog loose.
Mathematicians have calculated that if the dog is let loose to run around with the hammer attached to its tail, that it has a better chance of building a house by bashing the hammer against materials than the universe creating life setting conditions by chance......That is some faith you have there....
SirJohnDrake,
Can you admit the possibility that a god doesn't exist?
No I can't!... You know a good question like this has to be answered thoroughly...a simple no I can't is not sufficient by any means...lol
I have strong reasons why there has to be a living personal God. I know I cannot provide an argument which will convince everyone but this does not mean I don't have good reason to believe in God. In fact some of my reasons for believing in God may be persuasive to you. Even if you aren't persuaded to believe that God exists, my arguments may not be useless. Maybe some argument for God's existence will persuade you that belief in God is reasonable.
There are two basic sources of information about God. We can infer what might be true about God from what we observe in the universe. We look at the physical universe, human nature and culture and we observe things which may be clues to the existence or nature of the supernatural. God may have entered the Universe and told us true things about himself, morality, meaning and how to have a relationship with him. This is called Revelation.
Let me explain each of these. I recall the time when I was an elisted airman in the U.S. Air Force stationed at Nellis Air Base in Las Vegas Nevada. My munitions crew got a temporary duty assignment to Utopau Air Base in Thailand. We flew first to Alaska, then to Japan, then to the Phillipines, then we finally landed in Bangkok, Thailand. Let me tell you it was a very long exhausting trip lasting over 20 hours but seeing the beauty of all these places and the vastness of this earth of ours it makes sense to think that if there is some person or being who is responsible for making the physical universe, this being has a lot more power than we do. Now this is a rather simplistic example.
Another observation we can make is that every culture we know anything about has a deep sense that certain things are morally permissible and certain things are morally prohibited. This leads us to infer that if there is some supernatural being responsible for human nature, that being is personal. He has a moral aspect to His nature.
The second source of information is that God may have taken the initiative and stepped into the universe to reveal Himself. He may tell us true things about His nature and purposes and about human meaning and morality.
Christianity holds that both of these are good sources of information. We have clues to God's existence which can be observed and God has entered the physical universe through the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth in History and told us about himself.
Let me go into a logical aspect now. There are things which come into existence. Everything which comes into existence is caused to exist by something else. There cannot be an infinite series of past causes. Therefore, there exists a first cause which did not come into existence. In other words, the first cause always existed.
It is obvious that nothing can cause itself to come into existence. Anything that causes itself to come into existence has to exist before it exists. This is impossible. Perhaps something can come into existence from nothing without any cause whatsoever. Can a thing just pop into existence with absolutely no cause? This also does not seem reasonable.
"There cannot be an infinite series of past causes." Is the series of past causes infinite? Can the universe have an infinite past? The answer is that it cannot. First, there are philosophical reasons to think the past cannot be infinite. Second, there are scientific reasons which support this view.
I'm going to stop here and not expand on the philosophical and scientific reasons in regards to the universe not having an infinite past.
So in summary up to this point, basicly what I have said very simplistically is that if one asks "How can I know there is a God? the answer is there is the Bible, there is nature, there is man, and there is logic. These point to the Creator. None are possible by happenstance. None could have been produced by accident. "Because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God make it evident to them" (Rom. 1:19).
Finally I repeat, No I can't ever admit that there is a possiblity that God doesn't exist. I am thoroughly convinced of His existence, so He does exist...Amen!
No its not, that is why natrualists have no where to go but posit a multiverse, which is simply a hypotheisis to get around the impossibility of life setting conditions in our universe by chance.
By establishing a multiverse, the odds that our universe is just one in an infinte number of universe will indicate that one of the universes was bound to have life setting conditions....Hence the need to posit a multiverse which is simply a hypthesis and never been proven......But i thought naturalists ONLY believe in things that can be proven empricially? Oh wait....
Read and learn....or are you smarter than Roger Penrose?
Roger Penrose*, a famous British mathematician and a close friend of Stephen Hawking, wondered about this question and tried to calculate the probability. Including what he considered to be all variables required for human beings to exist and live on a planet such as ours, he computed the probability of this environment occurring among all the possible results of the Big Bang.
According to Penrose, the odds against such an occurrence were on the order of 1010123 to 1.
It is hard even to imagine what this number means. In math, the value 10123 means 1 followed by 123 zeros. (This is, by the way, more than the total number of atoms 1078 believed to exist in the whole universe.) But Penrose's answer is vastly more than this: It requires 1 followed by 10123 zeros.
Or consider: 103 means 1,000, a thousand. 10103 is a number that that has 1 followed by 1000 zeros. If there are six zeros, it's called a million; if nine, a billion; if twelve, a trillion and so on. There is not even a name for a number that has 1 followed by 10123 zeros.
In practical terms, in mathematics, a probability of 1 in 1050 means "zero probability". Penrose's number is more than trillion trillion trillion times less than that. In short, Penrose's number tells us that the 'accidental" or "coincidental" creation of our universe is an impossibility.
Concerning this mind-boggling number Roger Penrose comments:
Established in 1995,
You'd think it would be all over the news!
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It's going to take scientists a while to list their accomplish
Bring your own snacks, just in case the Lord isn't there to do his fishes and loaves instant party catering act.