Ya know, it never ceases to amaze me. Bring up God and all of a sudden people are ready to battle over it.
If you believe. Great. If you don't. Great. The fun thing about the whole thing is this....No one is 100% right.
You can have your theories, you can debate your point. But in the end, the only person we really have to answer to is that person staring back at you in the mirror. If you can live with that person. Fantastic. If you can't, you have no one or thing or being to blame, but you.

That's just my two bits.
Carry on.
Ali---The Misfit Chick

Hi it's me again. I just thought I'd keep this post growing by adding a religious person's opinion. No I am not going to try to preach to you all. That's not my job and I never should have tried to make it seem like it was. I am, nonetheless, going to say that for some strange reason I believe with most of you. We aren't 100% sure of which side of the argument is right. But, if you don't believe 100% in what you're saying is true than what's the point in having chosen a side? If you haven't chosen a side that's about like saying you'd rather let someone else choose what happens to you rather than yourself and I can't imagine letting that happen. If you can, well I guess that's ok with me, but I feel really sorry for you if you can't even decide.
Like I said before I don't want to preach to anyone because that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to do one thing in my life and since none of you believe in God I might as well just not mention it. I believe, unlike the usual beliefs you might or might not here, God didn't just create everything to be easy to explain. He know that humans would try to explain why things are how they are, but since he gave us the power to decide if we want to follow him or not then it should be just as easy for man to not believe in him as it would take for him TO believe in him. He gave us an option and so he gave us unexplainable events that have we will run into that will almost make us have to chose. For example: evolution...did man evolve from a single celled organism or was he put on the earth as he is today? There is no definite answer yet and I think that's what God meant to have happen.
If you need another example, how about blackholes? We know almost nothing about them. They defy laws of gravity and yet still some believe that they are created by implosions. Why not but I have another feeling. Maybe, just maybe God made them that way.
Everything can be explained through science now adays and God in my religious opinion made sure that it happened. Christians and other monotheistic religions basically just say,"Because God made it that way." And some times I can except it but not when it comes to scientific exploration. Sure, there could have been an explosion but why couldn't God have made the explosion? Why would the gases be there in the first place? Is time infinite forward and backward? Was there only a begin of life not time? Something has to explain it and I think it was god being the little chemical engineer he is.
I don't know if you guys understand what I'm saying but if not let me try to sumarize.
God made everything to be explained scientifically, whether it's right or not doesn't matter but there is something that links everything to everything in science so that you can make a desicion to believe or not or to not even know where to stand.
Am I the only one that forgot what the whole article was about? Go back. It's time for this argument to end so that someone can do what he origanlly set out to do when starting this article. If you want to keep arguing/discussing THIS topic why don't we just submit a new article and let this one go where it was intended to go in the first place. Sound good to you? Here I'll do the honors. I'll post an article titled Aethiests Of The World Unite Replies. Ok? If you don't want to reply on there then don't but that's what I'm going to do. I'll probably keep coming back to see what happens but for the most part I'm done here. Good-bye!
Capt. over and out!

just out of curiousity Cornbread do u interpret the bible litereally or figuratively?

no, i was just curious because all ur arguments centered around the assumption the bible should have been taken figuratively. I have always felt that the only way christianity can survive is to have the bible taken this way. Becuz the simple fact is that 50 years down the road, it will become very hard to convince anybody that the world is only 5 thousand years old...etc

I gather that by development of science and technology somehow religion will fade away. Well, we have plenty of science and etc. now--so how do you explain the growth of the religious right?
By the way a "designing" universe is no indication that divinity is behind it.

Whoo hoo!

Can I be the first Agnostic to reply here?

I believe that one of the hardest things for people to ever admit is, "I don't know!"

I'm a programmer, so of course I work with lots of other programmers and other random smart people. For those of you in a similar situation, you can probably relate to this... If you ask MOST people how to do something, how something works, or any other question like that, you're bound to get some sort of rambling of what they 'think' or how it 'possibly' could work. What you'll RARELY get is, "I don't know, but maybe..."

I think this carries over to religion pretty easily, and is why I'm agnostic.

I don't know the truth, and I don't believe that anybody else does. I don't believe the Bible is anything more than a mistranslated collection of stories written a long time ago, but that doesn't mean I completely don't believe in some higher being... but heck if I know what that being (if it exists) is all about.

Some will say, "You just have to have faith!!"

I'm still a Bears fan, I think that demonstrates my ability to HAVE faith

"there aren't any intelligent people who don't believe in God?"

Famous atheists: http://www.visi.com/~markg/atheists.html

There are a lot of inferences here based on my being aetheist some of them (accidently or deliberately) seem to suggest a ling between aetheism and morality - is that fair?

I mean think about it, before there was chirstianity, there were the aztecs and there beliefs.

The Bible was inspired by God; therefore true. If you believe that the bible is completely fictious then your wrong, as JillUser said. You can at least see it as a history book. I can probably defend Chrsitianity a little better than cpt. cornbread did. And the whole fairy tale thing is ther cuz i don't understand how things around me work or cuz i'm poor and low class.... well no. I'm actually an engineer who believe a lot in science and middle class. And I'd like to say that Einstien ws Jewish.

And all of my Christian friends /collegues are very intelligent, the same goes for my non-beliveing friends. No argument there cuz God has given us all gifts, just if we use them to glorify His name is the difference.

Now to answer the question on Creationism aka the Cosmological Argument.

1. Things exist.
2. It is possible for those things to not exist.
3. Whatever has the possibility of non existence, yet exists, has been caused to exist.
A. Something cannot bring itself into existence since it must exist to bring itself into existence which is illogical.
4. There cannot be an infinite number of causes to bring something into existence.
A. Because an infinite regression of causes ultimately has no initial cause which means there is no cause of existence.
B. Since the universe exists, it must have a cause.
5. Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause of all things.
6. The uncaused cause must be God.

Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) had a version of the Cosmological Argument called the Argument from Motion. He stated that things in motion could not have brought themselves into motion but must be caused to move. There cannot be an infinite regression of movers. Therefore, there must be an Unmoved Mover. This Unmoved Mover is God.

Man, if only I had the words to explain it taht way before. I'm glad to see you know how it is. I was expecting someone else telling me I was stupid for believing in God. Thank you so much. And yes you did explain it a lot (and i mean A LOT!!!) better than I ever could.
So, you're an engineer? I job-shadowed a chemical engineer. What kind of engineering do you do? Just wandeing.
And, sorry once again. I'm trying to leave everyone alone in here but it's just so tempting that I can't help say something every now and then. Alright.
If it wasn't for me knowing where you were going with those arguments I would have been completely lost. My church pastor gave those arguments to us in a service one day. I just couldn't think of the wording he used. Once again, thanks JESOd, for actually being able to give some sort of good argument. I know I wasn't doing too well and now I'm reall, really, really, going to TRY to leave everyone alone. I just have to read the replies because it's so hard to leave a conversation I"ve been in this long. So, I'll probably be getting yelled at later, bye.
Capt. over and out!

Capt Cornbread:
I'm a computer engineer but also have my masters in electrical engineering--cuz it's not that much more effort--
And your very welcome.

threead:
Was that question asking what evidence did the designer --God-- leave behind? ... um... the universe.

And the whole thing about the Nazi stuff. Yes. agreed. It's dissapointing. ><

I don't consider that Bible a history book.. well I do but to an extent. The old testament is basically a history book. And the new testament are the records of Jesus's life. So yes, it is a history book in the least.

Umm... Jehovah's Witness... that's a christian cult.... it's pseudo-chrisitian. I can get them frustrated, too.