How can you possibly be an athiest?

[Jack the Bodiless]

This is the theory that Jack built.
This is the flaw that lay in the theory that Jack built.
This is the palpable verbal haze that hid the flaw that lay in...

Ming, of course, IS a deity.

[Bereta_Eder]

I don't know. Although I understand how one could be a believer.
Strange.

Atheism has that youthful rebelion coolness about it. And there's nothing uglier IMO than your average young christian. I almost get into fits seeing young people doing their crosses when the bus passes in front of a church.

But to each its own.

I find agnostisism the most comfortable choice for me with periodic bursts of semi-mocking faith.

[Bereta_Eder]

Actually wrong. I also understand how one could be an atheist.

BTW the one atheist I know who stayed loyal to his beliefs untill the bitter end was Rafailides, a... controversial social figure in Greece, who despite a very severe heart illness, dangerous heart operations etc untill the end stayed true to what he believed. That after, there's nothing.

[Jack the Bodiless]

And while you are at it please explain how the laws of physic divide the code into triplets or codons...

As I'm sure this will come up again, I'll have a crack at it.

DISCLAIMER: What follows is speculation, OK? Don't ask me to "prove" it, I can't, and I don't have to.

Evolution occurrs in small steps. Each step must be small enough to occur by chance. Therefore I assume the "codons" were originally just chunks of DNA (or RNA, or whatever) of varying lengths. They had accumulated over millions of years because they did something "useful": each was a strand of nucleotides which attracted amino acids so that they linked up to make a useful protein.

At some point, one of those "useful proteins" was an enzyme that was particularly good at processing three-letter chunks of DNA (or RNA or whatever). Maybe it was good at attracting amino acids from the "soup" in threes, or helping to "unzip" the DNA double-helix (or equivalent RNA structure) three letters at a time during the replication process, or whatever.

Because of this enzyme, sections of the genome made up of three-letter chunks could build useful proteins more quickly, or replicate more easily, than other sections. SO, over time, the sections that didn't use the three-letter codons gradually fell into disuse, as alternatives based on the three-letter codons became available. Eventually, every protein the organism needed could be assembled via the three-letter codons and the more efficient "machinery" that had evolved to process those.

[Boris Godunov]

How many times do we have to point out how inherently fallacious "God in the Gaps" is as an argument? "We don't know, therefore God!" is pure speculation without any evidence to back it up. To say there is evidence for God requires actual evidence supporting God, not citing a lack of knowledge of how some natural process works and claiming God done it. This line of thinking is no better than the ancients who thought lightning was being thrown down from clouds by Thor/Wotan/Jehovah/whatever.

Your failure to understand the process doesn't mean your God is any more valid an assumption.

[Elok]

Boris: I know it's utterly irrelevant, but some neurotic portion of my soul insists that I tell you that Wotan/Odin was not a thunder god. He sometimes commanded the Wild Hunt, but that's it...

*walks away twitching*

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Lincoln
In other words Kontiki you cannot solve the information problem. Thanks for clearing that up. Any more evasions?

Well, Jack and Boris have already responded to this much in the same way that I would, but since you directed this at me, I'll say my piece.

I have never made any claims to being able to solve the information problem. I don't see why one would have to not believe in God. What you have argued in this thread so far is that the odds of information forming from complete randomness seem to be so minute that intelligent design makes more sense. I haven't see you yet claim that there is absolutely zero, nada, not a chance ever that it flat out could not happen. Is that what you're claiming? Because I don't think that any semi-intelligent person could ever go that far.

The same thing works on the flip side. I can't speak for anyone else on this board, but I've never made the claim that there is absolutely no chance that God exists. I've stated my position about this on another recent thread (I believe it was the "A few questions for fellow atheists" thread) and I don't feel like repeating it here (it was pretty lengthy). If I buy your argument about intelligent design (and I'll concede that there is no absolute certainty that intelligent design doesn't/didn't occur), then we've established that there could well be some higher order or reasoning, power, God, gods, whatever. To go from that to the existence of the Christian God of the Bible is a massive leap, and one in which I am not willing to take (again, the reasons for which are in that other thread).

The bottom line is that there are certainly things that science has been yet unable to model/explain and perhaps never will. However, just because this is the case is in no way, shape or form proof of the Christian God. It is an unknown, and I for one am more content saying "I don't know" than going to your extreme of "There is no way it could possibly be anything else than the God of the Bible".

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Lincoln
Now why don't you change a few words in you question and answer your own question? Were you taught it in school... are you placing your faith in something without really knowing why, etc.?

You seem to be really testy about this, and I'm not sure why. Believe me when I said I didn't mean the question to be a shot at Christians. You clearly have thought about it and made your decision. Good for you. I was merely curious about many other "Christians" out there. Surely you must admit that there are many, many people (maybe even the majority) out there who claim to be Christian but don't really know why (eg: simply because that's the type of family they were born into, and never gave it another thought).

As for me, I was born into what you might call a "soft Christian" family - the kind I'm asking about in my original question (although I never got into a deep conversation with my family about it!). I attended Sunday school and church as a child (United Church of Canada), though neither in a rigorous fashion. Except for this board, I've never had contact with hard-core atheists (or maybe I did, but it never came up). I have thought about things much the same way as you've described (although I can't say that your point number five has ever applied to me, though I have studied other religions, albeit not deeply) and come to the some of the opposite conclusions as you.

To each their own.

[Lincoln]

This is my last post on this thread. Finally Jack said "I don't know." What a struggle. Anyway I agree fully with Kontiki in his last two posts. I presented my case for intelligent design. People may judge and choose for themselves. There is no use going round and round again. Thanks for everyone's participation and input. I think this was a good thread. So long for now, I have another life to attend to this weekend.

[Ben Kenobi]

To Lincon and Obiwan: I think it is time for me to give it up. I can't tell whether they are deliberately 'misunderstanding' my posts or really not getting it. Although I personally don't believe in literal Creation, I have a lot of respect for your efforts to persuade them of your point of view.

Rogan:

Thank you very much.

Lincoln:
Glad to hear that you got what you wanted.

Enjoy your easter.

Now I still want to rebut speciation as presented by Jack, but for the sake of the debate at this point I want to mention my background so people have some idea where I am coming from.

I grew up in a lapsed Christian family, my mom was a lapsed Anglican, and my dad, a lapsed Baptist.

I did go to sunday school, but left when I was 8 or 9 and never went back. My parents left the Anglican church for reasons they have chosen not to tell me.

I've always believed in a God of some sort, although my beliefs before becoming a Christian fitted most with those of a Diest.

Before becoming a Christian, I was in sciences, a Physics major through university, and I liked the Diest position as it required no work to reconcile with prevailing scientific theories. Any contact with Christianity was submerged beneath a faith in science.

I became a Christian at the age of 20, after losing most things that I relied upon, my schoolwork and my close friends from home. I moved away for university, and everything seemed to be falling apart.

I had a good friend, who was a Christian who tried to help me with my clinical depression, and he asked me to come to his Mennonite church.

What I love about the Mennonite church is the sheer joy of worship, something that I had never experienced or even thought possible in my old Anglican church. I love the pacifist position of the church, because it challenged me to do what I had always thought was right.