Zombie Assassins .::. Halo Gaming Community - Discussion Forum: Debate 10: God

The Hat of Love wrote:
My mind's open to other possibilities, it just closes again when it sees that it's not very likely.

This is from earlier in the debate since most people probably haven't read the whole thread - the first two quotes are Ninja's, the third is mine.

Hmmm .... I wonder why the story of Noah's ark doesn't stand up. Maybe it didn't actually happen. In fact, maybe most (all?) of the Bible is fiction. What I have read of the Bible (in particular Genesis) didn't really convince me. I confess I haven't leafed through every page of the colossal book myself - but many have, and I hear there are too many contradictions to make most of the content plausible.

Most religions sprouted from the same origins. People love to share (& copy) ideas. It's hardly surprising that similar stories turn up across literature. "Let's think of a dramatic story of destruction ... I know - a huge flood". Noah's Ark is absurd, if you ask me. Groups of animals are somehow collected from all over the world (this would take ages, which the authors probably didn't realise since they knew only of the size of the Earth in terms of where they lives), then there is an unexplained flooding which kills all organisms. Presumably it also kills the simple microorganisms which were too small to collect. I wonder how these simpler organisms are still around today - they wouldn't have evolved from humans, that's for sure ...

When did this massive flood occur? At what point did all but four or five of the human race and a few animals drown? And why is there no evidence for this? It's because, as Ninja and I have said, it's a story and it didn't happen.

The story of Noah's Ark is ridiculous and it didn't happen - what evidence at all do you have, apart from the Bible? We've established early on that even people who believe in God on this thread generally agree that not every part of the Bible is the truth. I believe that much of it is parable, like the Ninjaman said.

As for the Big Bang, we've also discussed this - first off, it wasn't an explosion but an expansion. Secondly, you can't just say 'the universe can't have started off like that, that's ridiculous.' No, that is closed-minded. People who disregard the Big Bang theory so readily are the ones who need to open their minds, not atheists. Of course it might seem ridiculous but then so is the fact that the universe exists at all. It may have had an extraordinary beginning like that. In fact, using something called the redshift of light, we can tell that the universe is expanding. We can see 13.7 billion light years away because the universe has been expanding for 13.7 billion years, since the big bang. And God? There's no reason to say he exists. Like Ninja said, bringing him into the equation just makes things more complicated: where did God come from?

The scientific side of things makes sense. The religious side - it's patchy at best.