Hello Skandranon, I have a question for you. What led or drew you to your atheistic beliefs, was it an experience, some kind of information or something else?
Well, it all really began with the way I was brought up. Both my parents are "casual Catholics" to coin a phrase, and they are both very intelligent people (my dad can make a computer do backflips for him, and my mom is one of the higher-ups in a real-estate company). When I was growing up, at about the age of 7, my parents began talking to me about Christianity, religion, and life. I went to Sunday school, and I was given a bible in public school (looking back, I'm somewhat upset about this), which I read for a little while.
The thing is, they didn't just teach me about Christianity, I was taught that there were people that didn't believe in anything at all, and that there were people that believed in other gods like in the Hercules movie.
It wasn't until I was about 13 or 14 years old that I began seriously thinking about faith and religion. For me, science offered a much more rich and satisfying universe to explore than faith, as science was so open-ended and always asked "why". I was never happy with having an answer and having someone simply tell me that was correct.
In short, I put almost all of my energy into the pursuit of knowledge, and that road led me to Atheism.
Chad, I checked out a few of those links and read up on some of the prophecies. I won't answer each directly, but I will address some of the questions in the "Dear Atheist" thread.
of billions of stars and planets in the many galaxies, only earth has life, and abundance of it?
The amount of actual planets we are actually able to observe is incredibly small compared to the amount of planets that are actually out there.
There is a picture of a spot in the sky where no points of light were detectable by the human eye. By allowing the Hubble Space Telescope to observe this one spot for a couple weeks, a few hundred new galaxies appeared each galaxy contains an innumerable amount of stars. This should give you an idea of the amount of stars out there. The chance that there are absolutely none like earth is astronomical.
the sun is 400 times the size of the earth's moon, 400 times further away from earth than the moon, yet they look both proportionally the same size in our sky?
Diameter of sun = 1.39 × 109 m
Diameter of moon = 3.476 × 106 m
Ratio: 399.8849:1
Distance from earth to sun = 1.496×1011 m
Distance from earth to moon = 3.844 x108 m
Ratio: 389.1779
So, the "400x" calculations are almost correct...some of the time. The thing is, the Earth is not always the same distance away from the sun, and the same thing goes for the moon. This is because almost all celestial bodies that have satellites orbiting around them orbit in an elliptical pattern (think egg). The fact that they are both appear similar due to an effect called proportionate observation.
I don't, however, believe this is evidence of a creator, not only due to the triviality and inaccuracy of the measurements, but also because chance and coincidence allow for something like that to happen. If God really wanted to let people know that he existed, I think he would do it somewhat less subtly.
the sun lights the days nicely, while the moon glimmers in the night sweetly and the clouds bring forth rain to water our crops, which bring forth food in your stomach?
I think you're confusing cause and effect. If the sun did not shine, we would not exist, or we would exist in a different manner.
If the moon never existed, would we really care? Sometimes, there is no moonlight, or it is obscured by clouds. This doesn't really prove anything to me.
If we didn't get water from the rain for our crops, we would get it elsewhere. If we couldn't get it elsewhere, we would get our food from elsewhere. Sometimes we don't get rain, and sometimes we don't get food, as evidenced from drought and worldwide starvation.
your body heals naturally when you cut yourself, or you become sick and it goes away?
Everything from the human immune system to blood clotting to the way our skin heals is all a part of evolution. If we hadn't evolved those systems, we would not have survived as readily as we have. Ways to recover from injuries are all over in the natural world.
humans have intangible senses, called emotions where we feel love, hate, anger, sadness, happiness, shock, confused, hurt, healed, and so forth?
These things are all (in my opinion, and that of many scientists) products of chemicals in your brain and body that produce a certain effect in the sensory organs as well as your overall consciousness. This is again, not proof of God.
the complexity of dna is so mind boggling, that scientists worldwide now have gone from 'no god' to claiming a "Divine Creator"?
True, some scientists have converted to christianity, however, most scientists appear to be keyed towards Atheism.
As for DNA, this can be explained by some effect which I cannot remember the name of. It shows how incredibly complex designs and patterns can emerge from a single non-random process (natural selection).
your body's anatomy is complex, so fine and so articulate that you wonder how this "accident" came to be?
Not a single person in biology will say that we are an accident. In fact, the only "random" process that drives evolution is genetic mutation. This, however, is not the main thing in evolution. It is
natural selection, which is very much a non-random process. To say we are an accident is scientifically incorrect.
Plus, even if we were, it has no bearing on whether or not there is a God.
you have eyes so you can see, ears so you can hear, heart so you can feel, mind so you can think?
If we could not hear, would we care? If we could not see, would we care? All of these things are necessary to a human today, but if we had evolved (or even had been created) without such things, our existence would still be possible, just in a slightly different way.
there are thousands of recovered artifacts proving the validity of Scripture, the Holy Bible itself?
Ah, the dead sea scrolls. Those are, basically, really old bibles. They also prove nothing. Just because a text is really old does not mean the text is true.
those who have faith in Jesus Christ witness miracles, worldwide?
I ask you, "How do you know Jesus performed miracles?"
You say, "Because it says so in the bible."
I ask you, "how do know the bible is accurate?"
You say, "Because it is the inerrant word of God."
I ask you, "How do you know it is the inerrant word of God?"
You say, "Because it says so in the bible."
almost all Old Testament prophecies have been already fulfilled and more continue being fulfilled? (read)
Again, the bible says that there was a prophecy, and the bible says that the prophecy was fulfilled. We are again led back to the question: How do you know the bible is accurate?
Every other question that I didn't answer can be filed under the same heading: So what?
Just because there are many things in this world that seem beautiful to us does not mean there is a creator. There are many things in the world that seem disgusting, repulsive, and dangerous. Does that mean there is no creator?
