He showed that matter and energy are interchangeable. He didn't show that it could be destroyed.

Some think the highest form of science is theology and from theology one can provide rational evidence for the existence of God.

The following theology comes from St.Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.

Some think that evidence must be seen or touched, but this is not necessarily so. We all have reason and can appreciate intellectual evidence. For example, the evidence of beauty in music or in painting is perceived in man's mind, not by his senses. Reason can detect sufficient evidence to guarantee the existence of Almighty God.

The first evidence for God's existence is from casuality (which has already been averred to in this thread, (watch and watchmaker). Anyway, the universe, limited in all its details, could not be its own cause. It couldn't come together with all its regulation laws any more that the bridges could just happen or a clock could assemble itself and keep perfect time without a clock-maker.

The end of a thing is the purpose for which it was made, The end of a clock is to keep time and the end of a pen is to write. For what purpose was man made and if we discover that we'll know his end. Look around, everything has a purpose or an end. The soil is made for plants to grow for animals and us to eat and from this we can easily see that everything in the world was  made to serve something else.

What was man made for ...anything in the world? The answer is No.

We see all classes or beings were created for something higher than themselves. Plants are higher than soil becaus ethey have life and soild does not, animals are higher than plants becasue they have life and can feel and plants cannot. Man is higher than animals becasue he has reason and intelligence and can understand while animals cannot.

There must be something higher than man himself but there is nothing higher than him in the world so we must look beyond to find that for which he was made. And looking beyond and considering all things, we find man was made for Almighty God---to know, love and serve Him in this world to be with Him in eternal life.

Keeping in mind the end of a thing is the purpose for which it was made. Mankind is far above every other creature on the earth and it goes beyond man having reason, intelligence and understanding. The second evidence for God's existence as well as our place far above the other living things is drawn from universal reasoning or judgment (intuition) as well as our sense of moral obligation (conscience).

The universal reasoning or judgment is that all nations intuitively believe there is a God can no more be wrong than the intuition of an infant that food must be conveyed to the mouth. The truth is in possession. Men don't have to persuade themselves that there is a God, they busily try to persuade themselves that there in no God. And no one yet has been able to find a valid reason for it. Men don't grow into the idea of God, they endeavor to grow out of it.

God's handiwork is so clearly impressed upon His creation and above all upon mankind. In every person there is a sense of moral obligation, or sense of right and wrong. We know interiorly when we are doing wrong. Something rebukes our conduct. He knows he's going against an inward "voice". It's the voice of conscience dictating to us a law we did not make and which no man could for this voice protests whether others know our conduct or not. This voice is quite often against what we wich to do, warning us beforehand, condemning us after its violation. the law, dictated by this voice of conscience supposes a lawgiver who has written His law in our hearts. And as God alone could do this, it is certain that He exists. We identify the law that's written in our hearts as the Natural or Moral law.

Finally, justice itself demands that there be a God. The very sense of justice amongst us resulting in law courts, supposes a Just God. We didn't give ourselves our sense of justice. It comes from Whoever made us, and no one can give what he does not possess himself. Yet, justice cannot always be done by men in this world. Here, good men suffer and the wicked prosper. And even though human justice does not always balance the scales, they will be balanced some day by a Just God who most certianly does exist.

Dennis T. Avery is not a scientist.  He is a politician, and a lead member of the Republican lobbying group "The Hudson Institute".  The Hudson Institute is entirely funded by corporations, and its mission statement is to show "commitment to free markets".  Some of the things Dennis Avery attempted to "prove" in the past include the idea that DDT is actually good for you , and that eating organic food is actually bad for you, because eating poison might help kill bacteria.

The weirdest part is that you don't seem to have even read the article you're showing me, because it's not really even about global warming; it's about how he's going to give a speech on global warming at a conference soon.

Now please tell me again how wikipedia, a system where you can actually see the sources of the information that is submitted, is unusable.

As has already been said in this thread:  A) Actually, yes, it could come together on its own.  Just saying it can't doesn't make it true.

As has already been said, if complicated things have to be made by someone, and God is complicated (he certainly sounds like he is), then someone must have made God, and someone else must have made that person, etc.  (The watchmaker-maker-maker-maker-maker...)

Or, the soil was made for me to throw at religious folk and from that we can easily see that everything in the world was made for me to throw at religious folk. Why are the purposes you see in things more true than the purposes that non-Christians see?

Why?

Whoa... what?  Sudden random jump in logic maybe?  How about "but since there is nothing higher than him in the world we must look to the moon and find that there is a magical leprechaun there who will give us lucky charms if we dance really well."  Sorry, Thomas Aquinas, you can't just slide a random conclusion into the end for no apparent reason.

This wasn't true back in his time, nor is it true today.  Only about a third of the people in the world believe in God; a bunch more are Buddhists, Shinto, Taoists, Muslim, etc., and no, the figures in these religions aren't just "God" with a different name, despite what your priests my tell you.  About 15% of the world doesn't believe in religion at all.  Some nations, like Sweden, are primarily atheist.

Also false.  People come into this world as babies, and babies are atheists.  Children are taught their parent's religion, and that's when they start believing in God if their parents are Christian, or something else if their parents are not.  Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Justice demands that Uwe Boll stops making movies, but unfortunately, it's an unjust world.

A higher being is necessary because the Universe is orderly. If there is no order to the universe then everything happens at random. The things is: Nothing in out precieved universe occurs at random. "X" happens Because "Y"; Cause and effect. Order governs our Universe because our Universe opperates on laws of mathematics and Physics. Order coming from greater order is a hard concept to understand. The logic is, if everything in the Universe is orderly, then the universe its self is orderly. Therefore, order comes from order. Now, when you have total order in every aspect of a system; you have greater order. This means that there is a greater level of order beyond the Universe which, spawned lower order. Eventually, there must be the ultimate level of order which spawned all other order in the universe. This order cannot be chance, because chance cannot spawn perfect order.

Its very hard to understand either it clicks or it doesnt.

to be more concise

If the Universe wasnot created by a higher being it was created randomly. But everthing in our Universe opperates entirely on a system of cause and effect goverened by Physics and Math. Nothing in our Universe happens by chance so why would the Unverse be created by random probability?

Well, I have read quite a few of these comments, and being a believer in an almighty, perfect Creator, it hasn't been easy to read through some of them. I'm glad I skipped ahead, was 'moved' to jump to the last post, where I found the very thoughtful and God honoring comment by brother lulapilgrim. I thank you.

   Faith is precious to those who have it. It becomes more precious each time we act on the opportunity to exercise it, as presented here in this very thought provoking thread. Why do some have faith and some not? Is it not a gift of God? Is it offered to all men? Why do some accept it and some not? I think it has something to do with a man looking into the life of Christ, according to the witness of those around Him while He was here, along with the witness of those whose lives He has touched by His Word, and catching on to the truth that without Jesus Christ having accomplished what He accomplished on Calvary's cruel cross, that man is truly lost, and lost forever. Jesus emphasized that man is lost and condemned, and that He has come to seek and to save those who are lost. If one will take a look at himself long enough he will begin to see that this might be the truth. It got me thinking about it. Now, I love to think about it. Many times the actions of my fellow man as well as my own actions have tested my faith, but faith has always won out. How can you people not see the truth? You don't see it because you wont see it. You'll have to come down from your high science perches back to the dusty, muddy, bloody world, which is your reality, to understand what God is saying...about you. About us all. You would have us return to the murky world of doubt that you have chosen, while we of faith hold fast to the wonderful reality of having been cleansed of all un-righteousness and...are having all things made known unto us. It'll take forever to know all things, and only God is offering that to us. It's the way to go.

Actually, it's not.  The entropy in the universe is increasing all the time.  That's part of thermodynamics.

This is also incorrect.  That was the prevailing notion a hundred years ago when Newtonian physics were the only model we had, but quantum physics shows that the underlying model of the universe is actually non-deterministic.  That means at the fundamental level, everything is probabilistic: not determined at all.  At its base, the universe is random.

Though the whole thing about order's not true anyway, this is still an incorrect syllogism even if it were true.  It's like saying "When you have total deliciousness in every part of a cupcake, you have a more delicious cupcake.  This means that there is a greater delicious cupcake beyond the first cupcake which spawned the lesser cupcake.

No, again watch-maker-maker.  If orderly things can only be created by more-orderly things, then someone must have made orderly-god.  And someone else even more ordelry must have made that person.  And someone even MORE orderly etc... for infinitiy.  If instead, you say, "No, god's the most orderly thing possible, and he just sprang out of nowhere", then you are admitting that orderly things can just spring out of nowhere, in which case it's NOT true that orderly things can only be made by more orderly things.

It doesn't click because it's incorrect.

Well, go read quantum physics.  Everything in our universe happens randomly (or probabilisticly, to be more correct).  I'm guessing, of course, that learning that isn't going to suddenly stop you from believing in God...

Boy I wish I saw this sooner. I’m a very strong believer in God and I’ve study the Bible for many years. Most of the replies I’ve read here seem to indicate most of you don’t think there is a God who created everything.

If everything was just here randomly, meaning no creator, everything has always been here and life here was by chance or mutated over the years. Then how can there be so much order in everything. Like our planet is just the right distance from the sun, fish in the ocean and life on land that that depends on one another. Why everything depends on other things for things to work right. Life is so complex we can’t even make a habitant for humans to live in with out outside help, for food and fresh water and waist disposal. We depend on everything for us to live and breath. We depend on plants in the ocean and on land for air. We depend on the weather for rain and warmth. It’s too complex for it to be by chance.

Everybody has probably heard of Jesus. How he was born from a virgin and died on the cross, the Son of God. You all heard it during Christmas time right?

Stay with me here I’m proving there is a God.

Those of you who really think there isn’t a God go find a Bible I’m sure you have one somewhere because it’s always the number selling book every year.

There are 66 books in the Bible, written by 40 people in a span of 1500 years. So they never knew each other and many of them were from different areas of the world and yet between all of the books they all tie in with each other. One book doesn’t counter what the rest of the books say. There are 300 prophecies fulfilled by Jesus in the Bible.

I was going to paste all 300 prophecies but I’m sure 8 pages wouldn’t be allowed by Stardock. I challenge everyone to stand back a moment and get to know are loving God better. I’ve seen many prayers answered. Ask God with a legitimate request and see what happens.

And what if someone would prove that Big J. did NOT die on the cross - hence never really ressurected?

You are aware that a family tomb was found which contained his remains, the ones of Mary Magdalene (his wife), his son Judah and other family members, do you?

But then you'd probably just answer something like:"No matter how many DNA tests prove it's him. We or the church say(s) it's NOT, so it's NOT.

So to conclude things: No matter whether or not someone proves the non-existence of "god" it wouldn't matter. Believers would simply disregard the facts and poke their fingers into their ears and sing:"La la la - it ain't so, it ain't so...!!!"

To the rest it would simply prove what was obvious all along...

@makeshiftwings: Good rationale there. *thumbs up*

wow, come join us in the 21st century. if i remember right at least one part of what you said ended around the 1940s. at the latest in the 90s the (catholic) church said that there was no inconsistencies between scientific fact and catholocism. meaning the theory (widely accepted scientific fact, not guess) of evolution is correct. i have not heard anything about christianity shuting down sex ed, (maybe adding christian lessons in at catholic schools, such as a heavy endorsement of abstinance). I have not heard anything for or against them shutting down access to free media in the last few  decades. there used to be books and movies on the "black list" as a sort of call in reference guide for parents to know if a movie was good or bad, this usually had more to do with violence and sex in the movie, and few were on the list for specific anti christian messages. this has been phased out (as far as i know) since the "PG, PG-13, R, etc" system. I have not heard of any attempts to "ban censor [or] discredit" information. If you have any examples of this, please post them, otherwise i will have to dismiss this as here-say. also please try not to confuse christians with other catholic offshoots, the beliefs and practices can vary extremely. mormons vs protestants, both are catholic, both are far from christian beliefs and practices.

switching topic now, to wikipedia.

just a quick confusion as to why wikipedia is not a reliable source. scientific papers are given credibilety by peer review (your peers reviewing, changing, and ultimatally agreeing on the facts present in the paper). wikepedia is the encyclopedia about everything so everyone is technically your peer in wikipedia as a whole and since it can be changed by your peers freely, wouldn't it be peer reviewed?  on minor subjects with limited viewpoints it is not reliable, but over all i dont really see the problem.

switching topic again

first of all, please don't take my comments the wrong way. I am a christian, however i have a nasty tendancy to poke holes in just about every claim I hear. first given the incredibly large amout of galaxies, solar systems, planets etc, the odds of not one planet having the correct orbit and composition to suppourt life is extremely low, because .00001% of a number with too many zeros to type is still over 100%. evolution would explain how the species are interdependant. creatures evolve to fill a niche or do a job. tons of oranges, the animal that learns to survive on oranges first gets a huge advantage. hey the atmosphere is filled with oxygen, if i can breathe that i will be able to hold my breath longer and be able to hide in the pond longer than that other guy, now who gets the girl. as for the bible agreeing, when it was put together there was editing done. if you google apocraphul bible books (or somthing like that) you will see a few contradictions. now whether those were just stories that got popular before being found out by those inspired by God or books taken out to preserve continuity is a matter of opinion. as a side note names were added to random people because it was believed when the bible was being written that God never set someone in as (to use a literaray term) plot device. basically "hmm we need someone to do somthing nice" always was someone we knew, not just a random person. as for the prophesies, there are prophesies by a lot of religeons that come true. the thing about prophets in general (greek, roman, whatever) is that, frequently, the prophesies are vague or bad. vague allows people to fill in later what ever meaning works out. and as for bad, either they can say "i'm right" or everyone is glad they are wrong. just a side note, but time was not always measured the same way, and i am pretty sure that it was over 1500 years.

again, I am a christian and personally subscribe to the more religeouse side of the possibileties, however because of my tendancy to poke holes in arguements, i also recognize the other possibileties, including the possibility that i could be wrong.

switch again

working backwards for your comment.

i have no doubt that even if it was proven beyond any chance of being wrong that SOME people would put their fingers in their ears. but as for the DNA, i dont know how people could do a dna test to prove that it is him since there is nothing we can do short of time travel to get a DNA sample from someone we know is Jesus. as far as i know, we would have to find Mary's (mother) parents to get mary's dna, assume she was an only child (may have been stated, i am not a biblical scholar), then we can prove who mary is (which would be a big hole already considering the assumption and all) then we would have half of jesus' genetic profile.

Good point, but the thing I find so hillariously stupid is the ignorant stance the church takes by stating something like :"No matter what the scientific facts say (assuming they can be found) we won't believe 'em and just keep our version of the story as commented on the findings in said tomb by the church's representative.

Snip:"Every Christian knows that Jesus, the son of God and man, died and rose again on Easter Sunday," said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesperson for the Catholic church in New York ... "No alleged DNA test is going to change that," he told the New York Post."

So even if it could be proven that the whole story is bogus, the believers would simply ignore it, while I for one would gladly accept irrefutable evidence that the story is true.

Can you say Palin? She wanted to ban sex ed form schools and replace it with abstinence till marriage ed.

*gasp* 6 pages of talk about god/s and it hasn't even devolved into a flame war yet! I must say, I'm impressed.

I guess to be able to play Galactic Civilizations you have to be and behave... civilized...

The watch <-> watchmaker relationship as understood by creationists is a logical fallacy.

The existence of a watch does not prove the existence of a watchmaker.

However, the existence of a watchmaker proves the existence of a watch, at some point in time.

A watch is defined by its mechanism, not its makers. It doesn't matter how it came to be, a watch is a watch. The existence of a watchmaker is not required by what a watch is.

A watchmaker is defines by the product watch. The eventual or past existence of a watch is required by what a watchmaker is.

If we use this analogy to talk about G-d it tells us the following:

If there is a Creator of the world, it follows that there is a world.

But the existence of a world or anything in it does not prove or require the existence of a creator of said world.

The only thing this proves about G-d is that IF He exists, He does not require a creator. He can be the watch without watchmaker.

The global warming thing let me just post this article: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=439146 NOT EVERY internation scientist community is in agreement that man is causing this.

Let's look at this logically and rationally.  Most scientist say that the oceans are heating up, so let's look at how they're heating up. If you have a large body of water and say you want to heat up this body of water.  Air temperature has a very diminutive impact on a large body of water and takes a tremendous amount of constant exposure/high temperatures for there to be some minute impact.  Now, if you put the source of heat right next to the body of water you'll get this body of water to heat insanely faster than high air temps could.

You can try this at home.  Flood your basement.  Turn up the heat so that it is excessive in your basement and you'll notice that the water temp has not changed.  Put heat below it and Bam it starts heating up.  If you don't want to flood your basement or you/your spouse would rather you not then just use a pot of water as a substitute. 

What does this have anything to do with the current discussion?  Well according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography there is evidence that the earth's climate change can be tracked in cycles of the ocean conditions over thousands of years.  These cycles can point to the current rise in temperature.  The Earth's core is causing the ocean's temperatures to rise which is also having an impact the glaciers.  Let me just list some other articles because what do Oceanographiers know (http://www.world-mysteries.com/gnovak.htm  http://www.nov55.com/cli.html)

I wasn't planning even stating this because there are too many blathering addlepates here.