re atheist s views on christianity was re accepting jeesus in your heart first i thank collectively all people who have given good answers to my questions in my follow up to jason smith s posting i will address some issues that have caused misunderstanding jason smith jasons atlastele com wrote in article apr athos rutgers edu kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes i also concede that i was doubly remiss as i asserted no reasonable alternative exists an entirely subjective statement on my part and one that could be invalidated given time and further discovery by the scientist i also understand that a proving a theory does not necessarily specify that this is how it happened but proposes a likely description of the phenomena in question am i mistaken with this understanding yes to some degree there was an excellent discussion in sci skeptic on the nature of scientific work two weeks ago i hope it did not escape your notice the correct word is likely there is no way to be sure our models and theories are absolutely correct theories are backed up by evidence but not proved no theory can be true in a mathematical sense however theories are not mere descriptions or rationalisations of phenomena it is extremely important to test whether theories can predict something new or not yet observed all successful theories science has come up with have passed this test including the big bang theory of cosmic evolution the theory of natural selection etc it does not mean they must be correct but they are not mere best fits for the data but if you claim that there must be an answer to how did the universe our spacetime emerge from nothing science has some good candidates for an answer all of which require something we christians readily admit to faith well yes if you want to believe in them this is not what science requires take a good look at the theory and the evidence see if the theory has made any successful predictions and use your reason disbelievers are not punished the fact that there are several candidates belies that none are conclusive with out conclusive evidence we are left with faith this is what puzzles me why do we need to have faith in anything my fellow atheists would call me a weak atheist someone who is unable to believe ie fails to entertain any belief in god yes i know that one can t believe without god s help luther makes this quite clear in his letter to erasmus i m afraid this does not change my situation a couple of paragraphs deleted summary we ask why does the universe exist i think this question should actually be split into two parts namely why is there existence why anything exists and how did the universe emerge from nothing deletions the question why anything exists can be countered by demanding answer to a question why there is nothing in nothingness or in non existence actually both questions turn out to be devoid of meaning things that exist do and things that don t exist don t exist tautology at its best carefully examine the original question and then the counter question the first asks why while the second is a request for definition no it is not although it does look like one this is a true dichotomy either something exists or nothing exists if nothing exists nobody would ask why if something exists it is possible to ask why but actually no existing being could give an answer imagine for a moment that the nobodies in non existence could also ask why nothing exists this is equivalent to my counter question why nothing exists in nothingness now why anything exists is equivalent to why something exists in somethingness this is what i meant with my tautology my apologies for the poor wording in my previous post i might add the worldview of things that exist do and things that don t don t is as grounded in the realm of the non falsifiable as does the theist s belief in god it is based on the assumption that there is not a reason for being something as ultimately un supportable as the position of there being a reason its very foundation exists in the same soil as that of one who claims there is a reason i do indeed think there probably is no reason for being or existence in general for reasons i stated above however they will still leave open the question why this and not that and this is where theistic explanations come in science cannot give reasons for any particular human being s existence we come to this either i am therefore i am or i am for a reason this is a deep philosophical question is determinism true or not also is god deterministic or not i tend to think this question has no meaning in his case if i am for a reason i ve yet failed to see what it would be from our perspective it looks like i exist for truly random reasons i just rolled two dice why did i get and how can i believe there is any better reason for my existence if the former is a satisfactory answer then you are done for you are satisfied and need not a doctor if the latter your search is just beginning yes i am satisfied with this reason until i find something better my years of christianity were of no help in this respect i have to admit but i am patient another answer is that god is the source of all existence this sounds much better but i am tempted to ask does god himself exist then if god is the source of his own existence it can only mean that he has in terms of human time always existed but this is not the same as the source of all existence this does not preclude his existence it only seeks to identify his qualities implying he exists to have qualities btw no it doesn t but i think an existing god cannot know why he exists for an answer to this question is not knowable of course this should not be any obstacle to belief in his existence i also have discovered science is an inadequate tool to answer why it appears that m pihko agrees as we shall see but because a tool is inadequate to answer a question does not preclude the question asserting that why is an invalid question does not provide an answer it is impossible to know unknowable things however the question why do i exist in particular is not an invalid question this is not what i said but from our perspective it is impossible to tell and i can t just believe in any given explanation instead of another especially since i found i was deluding myself my apologies i was using why as why did this come to be why did pre existence become existence why did pre spacetime become spacetime i think pre existence is an oxymoron there is no time outside of this spacetime except in some other universe and from that perspective our universe never was it exists only for those who are inside it but we come to the admission that science fails to answer why because it can t be answered in the realm of modern science does that make the question invalid no the validity of the question has to be discussed separately i think philosophy is of great help here what can be known and what is not knowable m pihko does present a good point though we may need to ask what do i as an individual christian base my faith on will it be shaken by the production of evidence that shatters our sacred cows or will we seek to understand if a new discovery truly disagrees with what god said and continues to say in his word this is a very good question in trying to answer this and numerous other questions that bothered me i finally found nothing to base my faith on i think it would be honest if we all asked ourselves why do i believe or why i don t believe petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
