Preacher X,
can you see atoms or DNA? but you still believe it because a limited amount of people (scientists) tell you and they provide proof (pics, text etc.)
Not quite. We can detect and measure these entities through extensions of our sight via scientific instruments. Scientists do not just tell us what they have found but more imortantly they show us how to find them through careful experiments, which are available for anyone to construct. Such information does not become widespread and accepted until many independent researchers can produce the same results. Even then the results are usually considered tentative for a very long time.
well to religious people the scientists are the Prophets, the evidence is the miracels/prophicies etc. in the books and the signs of creation.
Unfortunately your analogy doesn’t work since the prophets do not reveal how they know what they claim and hence their claims cannot be independently verified by anyone else. All we are left with are unsupported and unverifiable baseless claims. But you are correct that religion is indeed based on unsupported and unverifiable baseless claims. Now if you can re-produce a miracle under careful scientific conditions which can be reproduced by anyone else with the appropriate equipment then you might have a case.
the answer is simple. there is either a God or not.
Well not quite. This depends on how you define God. The Christian and Islamic type gods are quite absurd as Einstein indicated and certainly do not exist, but could there be some other form of super intelligence that plays some part in the universe? That is simply unknown.
the answer depends on the individual.
So something exists depending on whether I believe it or not? You must be joking right?
science has proven that 15 Billion years ago the universe was created at a certain point
No it hasn’t. Science has presented a theory that an explosive event appears to have occurred at around 15 Billion years ago resulting in most of the matter and energy that we can currently observe given the current limitations of our instruments. It is unknown what caused the apparent explosion or what came before this event. It is also unknown if this is a cyclic event or just one of a concurrent infinite number of similar events.
and it will come to an end at a certain point from now.
That is unknown and current theories (2003) suggest that the currently observable part of our universe will collapse into a big crunch, and probably begin the cycle again.
before that nothing exsisted including time and space.
A baseless assertion.
it would be immpossible to imagine what the universe was like before the Big Bang becasue "nothing" (and this really is "nothing") is unimaginable.
Nonsense – go and read some popular science fiction, those books abound with imaginative concepts of multiple and parallel universes and even more bizarre ideas. And imagining nothing is not so difficult – try studying some astrophysics where these concepts are regularly discussed.
when someone asks you to imagine nothing, in your head, you'll probably be thinking something like a blank white space with "nothing" there. well even this is wrong. first off white is something and the actual "space" that "nothing" covers is something!
I think you are describing the limitations of your own limited imagination. It is not a problem for many others.
and before the big bang according to science and religion these things didn't exsist (it is immpossible for these to exsist). not even the space that nothing covers exsisted or the time that "nothing" exsisted for.
You are just laboring the point now and not adding anything useful.
if it is scientifically proven that something as bizaree as this is possible then why is the idea of God ridiculous to some people.
Firstly no such things have been scientifically proven – at best all you have is speculation. But the idea of God existing is quite a different matter since it relies on the concept of supernaturalism and for that there is absolutely zero evidence.
also it is proven that the universe will enevitably come to an end,
No it hasn’t. Show the proof if you believe there is one.
which is according to (some) religions going to be the doomsday.
But then religions love catastrophes and have been predicting them for many millennia, this is how they gain many new recruits. Around 2000 years ago the Jewish date was the year 3760, this had been triggering beliefs that the world was going to end in the year 4000 and that had further triggered the rise of the many pretenders to the title of messiah and savior. The Jesus myths were generated out of that quagmire.
the common arguement for atheism is that if God made the universe, then what made God, well if humans can't even imagine "nothing" then how on eartgh can we imagine what God can do.
It would seem only you are unable to imagine “nothing”.
But the argument you quote is out of context. The argument is based on the Christian claim that everything must have been created, and then they proceed to make an exception for God. The atheist counters with if everything must be created then who created God, and the creator of God and the creator of the creator, etc. etc, ad infinitum.
What we observe in reality is that nothing is ever created but everything evolves. Even in physics we have learnt that matter and energy can be exchanged but neither is ever destroyed or created. We have no reason to believe that these basic rules are not universal.
Kat
