Question Rage Face

Matter and energy are interchangeable and neither can be created nor destroyed. Ergo the quanta that comprise everything have always existed.

God exists because man created him, and while god may understand thermodynamics, the clowns who dreamt him up sure didn't.

Told a christian about this and their answer was that it's a misunderstanding of the law and it just means it will always remain but doesn't mean it always WAS here

But to me it doesn't make sense how something could be created and then can't be destroyed or created again

If matter and energy really had always existed, we would have had no usuable energy left according to the second law of thermodynamics, hence it must have had a beginning.

So while the so called clowns who dreamt him up didn't understand thermodynamics, you clearly don't either.

Care to provide evidence for me to point out the flaws in, or is this just a childish drive-by?

The burden of proof is not on me, it's on you. This is a well-established theory with a strong consensus in the scientific community so the burden of proof would naturally fall on anyone trying to refute it.

The second law of thermodynamics states that in any closed system, the total entropy (a measurement of disorder) always increase over time. It implies that energy spontaneously tends to spread out and become more disordered, making a natural progression of order to disorder in the universe.

Over time, the total entropy of the universe increases. If matter and energy would have existed for an infinite amount of time, the entropy would already have reached it's maximum possible value and we would have reached a state known as heat death. Since we observe that there is still order and usable energy in the universe, it suggests that everything had a beginning.

This doesn't mean that there has to be a God that created everything, but the universe certainly had a starting point. Whatever caused the big bang, we don't know but we do know that the universe is finite.

You hallucinated me saying that the universe always existed. Maybe next time try addressing what I actually said.

You said that matter and energy had always existed which they couldn't because of what i just explained

Ah, so you can't fathom that something proceeded the big bang. That definitely proves something...unfortunately your point ain't it.

That's not what i said. Matter and energy could have existed before the big bang but it can not always have existed like you said it did.

Why not? We're reasonably certain the known universe is finite, which means it came from something that existed before it, but the nature of that "something" is still highly speculative. And why couldn't the phenomenon that spawned our universe have itself been finite, nested in something else? For that matter, there's no way for us to be certain that the laws of physics which govern our universe necessarily hold true outside of it. By that logic, it's dubious of me to lean on thermodynamics to explain anything but what we see in our own universe. As of now the best we have is conjecture. At least scientific inquiry admits this, because it necessarily approaches questions from a position of not already knowing the answer, the certitude of my previous claim about the second law of thermodynamics notwithstanding.

Religion claims to know the answer before the question is even asked and then desperately works to shoehorn every data point into its existing schema. That's patently unscientific and patently absurd. At the very least it's a hindrance to furthering our understanding of that which we don't already know. That's why I tend to tune out the second someone invokes God in a argument because God is a matter of faith. Science relies on proof. Faith relies on the absence of proof. Therefore God is no more relevant to science than science is to God. They would both do well to stay in their respective lanes. Not that it stops people from refuting positions arrived at through the scientific method by referencing an archaic tome of stores written thousands of years ago by drunken fisherman and then translated, appended, retranslated, edited, and re-retranslated over hundreds of years only to be spoonfed to children so they're too young to recognize that it has more in common with Santa Claus than with science. Of course the bible is just a symptom. The disease is the belief that facts and faith can be transposed and still yield results that aren't unscientific garbage.

Clowns existed in 3000 BC???

So you have no problem believing matter and energy are eternal, with no beginning, but there couldn't be an eternal God, with no beginning, who created the matter and energy? All you've done is re-label God as "matter and energy". In either case, faith is required.

All you've done is relabel science as faith. In the former case, evidence is required.

Yes, evidence like where did all the matter and energy come from? We know now there's not nearly enough matter in the universe for a "big crunch" and perpetual "big bangs" like atheists hoped for. The universe will end. Therefore it must have had a beginning.

Which suggests the universe is larger than the observable universe, and is contained within something even larger than itself. It's just a hypothesis, but hypothesis are rooted in testable phenomena. Nothing in the Bible is testable. It is not a conclusion, it is an obstacle to the scientific method. God is not an end point to be reached through critical thought. It is a starting point where scientific inquiry goes to die. But hey, you'll get to continue benefitting from the fruits of scientific progress even if you believe the world started with a talking snake in a tree, so you've got that going for you.

for me there is a God, but is nothing like the Bible mention. For me God is a force or the universe itself

Ok, sure. The universe is inside of another eternally existing, unexplainable thing, which no one can observe and for which there is no scientific evidence. (Faith required). Scientifically testing the odds of the genome of an amoeba assembling itself by random chance should be proof enough of intelligent design. (impossible odds)
The Scientific Method of the atheist: "I don't believe in a Creator, I know there is no evidence that will ever lead to a Creator, if the evidence indicates a Creator, there must be an unknown explanation other than a Creator, therefore there is no Creator." Success! (So you've got that going for you.) Good luck!

"eternally existing, unexplainable thing, which no one can observe and for which there is no scientific evidence"

You just described god

"Scientifically testing the odds of the genome of an amoeba assembling itself by random chance should be proof enough of intelligent design"

What are the odds, and how did you calculate them? And who says it was "random chance"?

"The Scientific Method of the atheist: "I don't believe in a Creator, I know there is no evidence that will ever lead to a Creator, if the evidence indicates a Creator, there must be an unknown explanation other than a Creator, therefore there is no Creator." "

No one said that

So you have scientific evidence for your specific god?

Ugh, if I wanted to untangle the logical fallacies of a closed mind I'd go into teaching. If you're happy where you are, stay the course. Superstition gets dragged kicking and screaming on the coattails of progress whether it wants to or not, so you can always enjoy your view of current developments from the back row, muttering under your breath how ludicrous science seems from your minformed perspective.

Ok. thanks for the help. I yield to your flawless logic. I'll watch as the JWST dismantles the "established science" of the Big Bang Theory and "open mindedly" refuse to consider the possibility of a Creator. I'll cast aside "superstitious" ideas that it's impossible for the laws of nature and of Science to be in conflict since they both come from the same source.
I've always trusted that Science will lead us to Truth, but now I understand that Truth must not have any trace of Deity in it. That wouldn't be "scientific"! Have a great night. Thanks for the discussion.

Well that's certainly more of a response than you gave the guy who replied to you here imgflip.com/i/8hcbnr#com30697493
Truth is subjective. Fact is not. Scientists leave truth to philosophers and theists. Scientists observe, create hypothesis, test the hypothesis and note the results. Then they use that data to refine their hypothesis, and keep following evidence until they get the least wrong answer. The answers are almost all wrong, as evidenced by how the scientific status quo has changed over time, but those changes resulted from additional iterations of refining and testing hypothesis. Some completely theoretical, and most by people way smarter than either of us.

I'm an agnostic. I no longer have the conceit to make the indefensible claim that there is no god. It's as untestable and therefore impossible to either prove or disprove as the assertion that there is a god. Both positions are a distraction from the pursuit of evidence-based answers to life's questions, even if those answers are incomplete, incorrect and just lead to more questions.

I'll also confess to not having been brainwashed with religious indoctrination before I had the capacity for critical thought, so I've had the inside track defend against it as an adult. Not that a savvy 8-year old couldn't see all the holes in religious dogma. It made sense back when high technology was the wheel, but the spiel hasn't aged well. It's still a marvelous tool for control. Kind of like a cult sanctioned by the entire western world. Effective in it's purpose, good for some, a tragic farce to others. To each their own.

god is a spirit that has been around forever.

No one, BC he's not real

He's as real as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and any other ficticious character made up by humans.

Thank you

According to abrahamic fairth, God always has been and always will be