Belief in any kind of supernatural being or force is not something you use your rational mind to do. Belief in God comes from one's emotional awareness rather than one's reasoning ability.

If that were true as a general rule, we wouldn't have Intelligent Design or Creation Science.

Rick Reuben wrote:

Linus Van Pelt wrote:Evolution didn't start until life started. How life started, and anything before that, is not within the scope of evolution.

Wrong. How life started is part of evolution. If you start your car, is it in a running state? Starting is a transformational state.

Huh? If I don't know where my car was manufactured, or what it's made of, or who designed it, do I have trouble starting it, or driving it? I could start and drive my car equally well if I believed it was built in Ohio, or South Korea, or sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus, or formed spontaneously from a tornado in a junkyard.

EDIT: Or maybe I'm screwing up your metaphor. I'll try it this way: If someone sneaks behind my house and starts my car, and then I get in it, and I have no idea who started it or why, will it be any harder for me to drive it?

The very first millisecond of matter appearing and acquiring energy is part of the evolutionary timeline. No conclusions about a creator can be made from evolution until the full timeline is described.

This is plain incorrect. This is the type of common mistake that led me to the comment I made in the first place - you should learn about evolution before you talk about evolution. Abiogenesis is simply not relevant to evolution. As I said earlier, this is not to say it's an unimportant question, just that it's unimportant to evolution.

The theory of evolution applies as long as life exists. How that life came to exist is not relevant to evolution. Claiming that evolution does not apply without a theory of abiogenesis makes as much sense as saying that umbrellas do not work without a theory of meteorology.

Read more.

Right. I thought that's where you were coming from, hence the second question in my post.

I wrote:Without possessing any evidence in favour of something extraordinary, why should it be considered likely enough that you would answer 'I don't know' to the question 'do you believe in it?'

If I tell you that global warming is due to the heat emitted by the increased number of ghosts in the past century, but I have no evidence of this, will you believe me, disbelieve me, or refuse to take a stand either way?

Gramsci wrote:But surely you can see that this concept of a "god" is something that has sprung from the human imagination?

Sure, but our conception of everything has sprung from the human imagination.

In fact, literally, it is our (and our imagination's) interaction with things that makes them have form.

I have no problem in conceiving of a 'god' in the sense that Eastern folk think of Brahman or Tao or similar. Those things are conceptions of the imagination (discovered through meditation) and they seem pretty damn close, thousands of years later, to what there is evidence for.

Gramsci wrote:It's a hard concept to grasp in our culture, because the idea of monotheism has come to mean "the Christian God", or at least a god in that sense of the meaning.

It seems that you're the one having the difficulty grasping though. I agree our culture generally does think of 'the Christian God' when the word 'God' is mentioned, which is why I clarified myself above, but that's too narrow for me.
I, through reading and thinking (n that) have expanded my idea of what the concept 'God' encompasses.
I think it worthy of consideration because I see 'experiences' that many many people have had since we began to record our thoughts on walls (spiritual experiences is what I'm driving at - whoever started the car) and I am curious as to what this experience is or what causes it.
I won't dismiss that mass of (admittedly) anecdotal evidence as 'just' delusion.

It could all be delusion - yes.

But it could also suggest something fundamental.

I think the accumulation of anecdotal evidence is still evidence - of something.*

Gramsci wrote:Basically to not know whether God exists, i.e. to be an agnostic, you have to participate in the invention of the God in the first place.

The invention of 'God' - even in the Judeo Christian sense - precedes you by a few thousand years.

Gramsci wrote:Saying you are an agnostic about this man-made idea of a "Creator" is no better then being an agnostic about Big Foot.

But God is a much bigger idea than Big Foot.
And - in the wider sense of the word the concept (Tao, Brahman, Higher Consciousness) is supported by discoveries in physics.

*An interesting analogy could be draw with UFO phenomenon here. There seems to be no solid evidence for alien spaceships but enough people have seen 'them' to make the phenomenon - at least - of interest.
If they are not seeing physical entities then what are people seeing?
Or do you just think every sighter is lying?
I don't - I think 'something' is being experienced and I have no difficulty in saying 'I don't know what it is' and 'maybe' to a number of suggestions.

There is indeed something weird about saying that one is a nontheist. It looks funny and sounds pussified. If you don't believe in god or gods, you are an atheist. However, there are certainly instances where the hyphenated term "non-theist" could be used as an adjective to describe the beliefs of others (as opposed to oneself).

There are many variations of both atheism and agnosticism, which differ both in their manner and ferventness of disbelief toward deities. The term "atheist" tends to connote strong disbelief, even though it is identical to the term "non-theist" in what it denotes. The more value-neutral "non-theist" is therefore appropriate to refer to either the general spectrum of disbelief in deities, or to characterize a particular lack of theism. For example, in the agnostic c/nc thread, I argued that agnosticism was the most consistent "non-theistic" position that one could hold. (Too lazy to link it; go look it up if you care.) And since I used it, it's not crap.

Rick Reuben wrote:

rick reuben wrote:The very first millisecond of matter appearing and acquiring energy is part of the evolutionary timeline.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:This is plain incorrect.

Wrong. If matter and energy appear in a total vacuum, then that is the first moment of progress in the history of the universe, and therefore, part of evolution.

There are two ways I can think of to make this make sense, and neither of them work.

First, you could be saying that, because everything is made of matter and energy, you can't explain anything (including evolution) without understanding the origin of matter and energy. That's okay as far as it goes, but it doesn't make sense coming from you. You're happy to talk about the mercury in the vaccines without knowing where the matter that makes up mercury originated. You're happy to talk about the banking elites, without knowing where the matter and energy that constitute the banking elites came from. You're happy to talk about sodium benzoate and potassium benzoate, without knowing where that matter came from. So why not talk about evolution without knowing where that matter and energy came from?

Second, you could be saying that evolution is different from other areas of knowledge in that it has a special need to explain the origins of matter and energy. This is simple ignorance. If you were to bother to educate yourself about the matter, you would learn that evolution only happens where there is life. The creation of matter and energy from void, and the creation of life from nonliving matter are not steps in evolution any more than they are events in the history of the NFL.

Current theories of evolution do not explain the origin of matter, and that makes the theories incomplete.

No theory of evolution will ever explain the origin of matter. No theory of economics, or of genetics, or of psychology, or of aerodynamics will ever explain the origin of matter. If you think that current theories of economics or aerodynamics are "incomplete" because they don't explain the origin of matter, then I don't think I can help you. If you think evolution has some special need to explain the origin of matter that these other fields don't, then maybe I can help you: Start here.

No incomplete theory can be used to prove or disprove the existence of a Creator.

Evolutionary theory, whether "complete" (I don't understand this concept - when and how could evolutionary theory, or any scientific theory, become "complete"?) or "incomplete," can not be used to prove or disprove the existence of a Creator. If you think I'm trying to use evolution or any other scientific theory, "complete" or "incomplete" to prove or disprove the existence of a Creator, you're not paying attention.

linus van pelt wrote:If someone sneaks behind my house and starts my car, and then I get in it, and I have no idea who started it or why, will it be any harder for me to drive it?

Good god. Is no point obvious to you?

Many points are; few shitty metaphors are.

If you see evolution but you cannot explain how the process began, then you cannot use evolution to rule out a designer, because you have not accounted for the entire timeline of evolution with your theories.

You couldn't be more right, and you couldn't be more wrong.

Bob wrote:Don't you nutballs understand that if someone says, "I don't know", that means that they have not chosen a side, and therefore, there is nothing for you to argue against?

You can say you don't know whether God exists, and you and I agree that this is really the only sensible and honest position to hold regarding the existence of God. But you can't honestly say you don't know whether you believe in God. You either (a) believe there is a God (whether or not you think you know), (b) believe there is no God (whether or not you think you know), or (c) hold no belief regarding the existence of God. If you're not (a), you're an atheist. You might be an agnostic atheist, but you're still an atheist.

I wrote:Belief in any kind of supernatural being or force is not something you use your rational mind to do. Belief in God comes from one's emotional awareness rather than one's reasoning ability.

Mark Van Deel wrote:If that were true as a general rule, we wouldn't have Intelligent Design or Creation Science.

It is true, but the people who come up with nonsense like "Intelligent Design" and "Creation Science" either can't differentiate between emotions and rational thought, or they deliberately refuse to employ reason and critical thinking wherever religion is concerned, or else (most likely in my opinion) they are deliberately obscuring the difference between the two for purely political reasons which they hope to exploit for their own gain.

Most religious people are the type who've allowed their faith to subvert their rational mind. They have given over their entire consciousness to religion, which is (by my definition) a system of supernatural beliefs and teachings organized for the purpose of indoctrinating others and perpetuating a self-sustaining movement.

Religion is political and the people who try to shoehorn religion into science are politicians, not scientists.

All of that makes sense, but here's what doesn't:

Bob wrote:The very first millisecond of matter appearing and acquiring energy is part of the evolutionary timeline.

Bob wrote:If matter and energy appear in a total vacuum, then that is the first moment of progress in the history of the universe, and therefore, part of evolution.

Bob wrote:Current theories of evolution do not explain the origin of matter, and that makes the theories incomplete.

Sorry, but I don't see how untrue statements like these square with the true statements you posted above in unnecessarily big bold letters.

Bob, you can't prove that global warming is not caused by ghosts. You say C02 is to blame, when you can't even tell me where that CO2 came from in the first place! Who created that CO2? Was it the ghosts? How do you know this wasn't part of their plan all along? You are not a very complex or evolved form of life. How can you possibly know that ghosts aren't responsible? The only response that respects the evidence is to say that you don't know whether ghosts are responsible or not. Don't tell me you understand global warming until you've answered the 'ghost question'.