I have absolute proof that there is no God.

[seeker]

I've just seen in our local paper that a little girl who lives in our town has died. She has been the focus of much prayer since she was taken ill last year. Her parents were thoroughly good Christian people who trusted God absolutely.

The is no way that a loving, omnipotent, beneficent God who notes even a sparrow falling would not have answered these people's prayer.

So, if I had even a scintilla of doubt, it is now gone. There is no God.

Well apart form Giselle the closest exoplanet are in the region of 1000 years at the speed of light away form us so assuming they have progressed any way to get technology they still need to wait 850 odd years for our fist radio waves to arrive and we need to await for 1600 years for a response, assuming they are at a similar stage to us. note I did not say like us just at a similar stage to us.

But of course the bible talks of the four corners of the earth and nothing about it being round. Hey god!! It's Gallileo on the phone. He says your not the centre of the universe after all.

I'm with you on the aliens and supreme beings - although, since we have no idea about the nature of these aliens, some of them might be what humans might call gods ...

I'm philosophically on the side of infinite universes (or whatever we might decide to call them when we find out The Universe isn't a 'The'). Once you've accepted the concept of infinity as a mathematical reality, you've got to conclude it's more likely there's infinite everything, instead of infinity being - well, finite. My maths teacher got round this bogglement of the mind by demonstrating that infinity is a fixed point. But now I know of string theories, bubble theories, space curvature and various other wondrous concepts that I glean in my half-baked amateur fashion, I realise infinity can be any shape at all and may even be all of them. I like this stuff :)
Ergo, according to the Garlic Theory of Half-Baked Science, it's more likely there would be infinitely plural universes.

At least the Greco-Roman gods created the universe. Most of 'em only did Earth. The Yoruba ones created planets, but it appears the universe was already there.

Ah, bless, sciencelover! The sky is a TENT!

Well, that buggers my half-baked science, doesn't it

Ooh, lots of universes you say garlic ?

Hmm .... < ponders >

So today we have ... a hundred thousand million stars in our galaxy. (x3 or 4 to be precise) ... A similar number of galaxies to the number of stars ( handy ! )

And more than one - an infinite number ? Surely not ? That seems excessive ?! - of universes.

And personally I'm liking the argument that if God can exist without a creator then the same can be said of everything else.

Is all mind-boggling and awesome though - but in a good way I think

Good night all x

Oh and the hebrews does not signify a globe there at all but just a patch of ground. The Hebrews around that time in their actual writings spoke of a flat earth with four corners. Just because King James's men knew better science but were poor at hebrew and greek does not make it a literal truth.

Well I don't believe in god or aliens (no evidence for either, and neither are we likely to find any ever in the near future, so why don't we worry about solving problems which CAN be solved?).

And why MUST there be aliens just because there are lots of planets Makes no logical sense to me.

I think it's basically because there's more than lots WavingLeaves ...

... but yes, I did say I was turning in now ...

There must be aliens as there are millions of planets that are in the habitable for life zones around the star at the centre of those solar systems. so the probability of life developing is huge. Whether these alien life forms are an intelligent capable as us type of life is entirely different but life will be as abundant on them as here whether that be planets or bacteria or microbial. Who knows.

Nobody is suggesting pangalacticgargleblasters are real though.

Novak, i wish they were real. And that you could drink them while pregnant...

Stick to wine it never harmed the Italian Spanish or French

Novak, please stop calling Madhairday madhairy and being so gratuitously offensive. If you can't conduct a conversation on at least as reasonable and polite terms as the person you are disagreeing with your arguments lose a lot of their credibility. We all have lots of other things to get on with beside debating with rude and childish atheists on the Internet.

Thanks niminy :)

I think you'll find I've read the thread, answered questions and put forward viewpoints reasonably. Just because they are so different to your own doesn't make me a 'threadhanger'. Too busy for that in any case

Plenty of historians accept the gospel as historical facts, actually. You keep telling me to get my facts straight, but then stepping in with your bizarre and unquantifiable statements. I'm happy to listen and debate but feel this is getting personal. I'll just keep chatting with garlic and juggling and seeker who don't see the need to put someone down for their faith.

Now I must get on with a busy day...

Novack posts rudely on a lot of threads.not just on this subject,so I hope Madhairday has not taken it personally.

x post again.

Not one historian. NOTE NOT ONE has said that there is any proof a jesus christ ever having lived, walked talked, not at all. NOT ONE. They may write a conjecture about it or say they believe on a basic balance of probabilities but NOT ONE has given any historical proof. That is why the church changed it's stance to saying it is all about faith once Galileo started proving church doctrine was so false taht it could not be taken as truth.

Explain how the gospels that contradict one another page after page verse after verse can be historical fact.

You have not answered one point but I have given you factual evidence against everything you have posted.

Belief in magical systems is a childish trait that most grow out of.

Can we just spare a thought for the people who saw that lion in Essex. The police are obviously no longer taking their word for it and are now saying it was probably a large cat! Apparently they have looked for evidence and have found none but those people saw it with their own eyes and why would they lie!? I mean why would they need any more proof other than someone's word. I reckon the police are scared. Or angry with animals or something.

In Novack's last post there is a basic misunderstanding of what constitutes historical proof. Historians always work on the balance of probability. All historical evidence is partial and capable of being interpreted in different, and often contradictory ways. Much evidence is lost because of the ravages of time, or because no one thought it was worth preserving. Many events and people were never recorded at all. It is only recently that records have been kept of all births and deaths, for instance. Historians researching long past, largely illiterate societies have to make the best conclusions they can on the basis of often very fragmentary documents- many of which were written after the event.

There is little more evidence for the life and death of Socrates than for the life and death of Jesus. Socrates, however, was an elite member of the ruling class of his society, whereas Jesus had no wealth and little status within his society, and belonged to a colonised people in a backwater of the Roman empire. The astonishing thing is not that there is so little written about Jesus, but that there is anything at all. If we can accept that Socrates existed on the basis of second hand reports then it seems to me perfectly reasonable to accept that Jesus did.

For the record, Galileo did not prove church doctrine wrong. And his research was funded, and supported and published by a Cardinal of the church.

(and of course it was the church that kept records of births and deaths, not secular authorities, who were largely unconcerned to know the details of the population. )

You have it the wrong way, Novack. Few historians question whether there was a Jesus Christ. From ancient to modern there are many that have said such. For you to say there is 'not one' is startlingly odd.

And yes, as niminy said there is hardly more evidence for Socrates, and less documentation for Plato. It's astonishing how from such small beginnings a way of faith sprang up and accelerated through history, with millions upon millions finding something within it that changed them and changed communities. Unfortunately it was also used for the bad, as garlic said, but that's humanity for you.

Well keep your heads in the sand if you like. That is what following a faith is all about after all. Not believing evidence but believing a myth and in magic like changing wine and bread into flesh and blood for a cannibalistic ritual every sunday. Faith is about being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. NOTE you hope for and you do not see as you are blinded by your arrogance.

Plato or Socrates...who cares if they were real or not. A lot of the things attributed to them are facts and those which are not we have don't give too hoots about. NOr do we claim them to be magicians who live with a sky fairy?? Youu continuously seem to think that failure to proved evidene is proof of something.

The societies of Judea and Samaria was not an illiterate society and yo seem to be forgetting your own bibles stories that there was often a census of the population by the secular authorities.

Fact is all births in Roman society were recorded and they used up to 21 forms to do so nothing to do with a chrisitian church at all.

The babylonians in that area had already worked out the heliocentric planetary model about 200 years BCE. We have medical texts books from over 1000 BCE from that area.

Don't project your own ignorance onto advanced societies of 2000 years ago who recorded plenty of discoveries in many areas. But non wrote anything about a jesus.