H sapien? Unure why this matters.

Thanks for making your thesis more clear. These are reasonable issues.

This is the way I understand it. In anthropormorphic terms, the Christian version of God is an artist. Like all artists he likes to create interesting and beautiful works.

First, God created the universe for himself as dynamic work of beautiful art. Its purpose by was to please him with its grandeur. It was not necessarily made in order to create life. It was not created in the image of God.

He then decided to create the first life forms on Earth as his second work of art to please Him with their fascinating evolution. They were also not created in the image of God.

He then created humankind as his third work of art to please him as the first life form with advanced intellect and imagination. Humankind was said to be created in the “image of God.” This implies a closer connection with God than inanimate universe or ordinary animals have. Most important it implies that humankind has dominion over animals and over inanimate objects. Thus that is why religion is human-centric rather than animal-centric or universe-centric. (Even without religious considerations, I’m not sure why anybody would want to equate the importance of us humans with ordinary animals or with rocks.)

Under this simple three-stage scenario, the timing of human creation and size of their universe would have no particular bearing on the nature of humankind’s belief in a Creator God.

All you've done here is elaborately detail that it was God's plan to create man so late. But how late before he initiated his 3rd stage of creation? The last 50% of Earth's age? 30%? 10%? 5%? No... this third stage of creation occurred in last 0.01% of Earth's history. Again, imo, theory that the human form existed since the universe's beginning is less plausibile than the simple alternative that man created a man-resembling God.

I think the way it works is either:

1)God originally created the universe including Earth without any intention of creating life, then, after 13.5 billion years, said "Hmmm I got a new idea. Lets create living organisms. Where should I put them? There is this planet called Earth that has existed for 13.5 billion years and is real nice. I'll put them there" then the time delay is fully explained. There was no time delay between God's intention to create life and life's actual time of creation. You could not logically deduce much about the "man-God, God-man" issue under this premise.

or

2) We could assume that the Earth did not exist yet and God then said to Himself "I think I'll create living creatures. To do that properly, I'll create a new planet called Earth and put them there. If this happened, then the time delay between earth creation and life's creation would have real bearing on the issue of "man-God or God-man". Why so long to create man? There are still explanations for it that have been listed before. I simply prefer scenario #1.

No, the fact that a man resembling God created a man 99.99% into Earth's history is unchanged whether a man-resembling God decided to create man at the beginning of the universe, 5 minutes into it, or 13.5 billion years into it. The argument is unchanged, other than some semantics. This should be relatively obvious.

And Earth hasn't been in existence for 13.5 billion years. I hope this was a mere typo.

Why would you create one universe when you could create an infinite variety of universes?
Why would you create one species when you can create millions of intelligent, feeling species?
Why you interfere in your creation by sending down your "son", rather than just letting the creations play out? Remember you can create an infinite number of all varieties
Why would you insert an "eternal soul" into the creatures you create, when it's cleaner to just have them live out their life and pass into the cosmic memory of that universe? Why have them survive death and send them permanently to either paradise or torture?
Why would such a vastly creative, beauty loving being who can create infinite universes, send down 10 holy commandments to one particular tribe, one of which is to obey the person whose balls produced the sperm that created you?
Why would says that creations who become attracted to the wrong gender are an abomination?
Why the **** would God send down a law that you can't eat a herbivore that doesn't spew up and re-chew its food? (i.e. that fails to chew its cud - the reason pigs are forbidden)?
Why would you suspend the laws of physics to make it rain for weeks, to flood the world and drown everything?

Do you see the problem here? A God of your scale wouldn't do the kind of things that are attributed to him, nor would he tell people about it. Why would he? We know that now because we know more about the universe, morality, philosophy. Meanwhile, primitive tribes from the bronze age would certainly and absolutely and repeatedly make up these stories about the supposed acts of powerful beings that look exactly like what we see in bible. They fit with their prejudices, morality and view of the world.

Yes. That is my point--these speculations don't actually function as evidence, but are really just further elaborations of your priors. Thus, they don't actually make it more or less likely that Christianity is true.

BTW, here is a link to a version of the argument you are using here put into Bayesian terms that you might find useful.

you posted:
"If God needed to exist during the creation of the universe, then clearly, the human form existed at the creation of the universe, 13 billion years ago (as we understand). But if man's form has existed since the creation of the universe, when why has man just appeared in the last 0.01% of Earth's current age, which is 4 billion years ago? "

You may be over-reaching on the "image of God" idea. If you took it fully it would mean humans would be Supreme Beings too which we are not. We have been given some aspect of God but it likely one quantum. Religion has not come to a firm conclusion on the entire meaning of it AFAIK.

Why does it follow that a real God must create humans at the same time as he creates the origin of the universe?

In simpler terms, if an artist wanted to build a model of a planet and then wanted to build an android that looked like himself, why would he need to build both at the same time? It doesn't seem like he has to at all.




(fact check: Earth has existed for about 4.5 billion years and geocentrism was a scientific theory that has been dead for four centuries.)

And then you can make Sklanskian arguments.

Yes, we can. In a plethora of styles to serve any seeker, including; not creating God, you and I are golden gods, and creating few or lots of gods. Everything is also available to be created as God. Some even create gods that are better than other people's gods and they try to have pokemon-style battles for supremacy. Some have gods that treat all gods like angelic kindergarteners, they are majestic in their equal and cute mutual supremacy of goodness. Evil gods, Old Gods, new gods, Good God. No God. Gods that have armor class and hit points. Gods from outer-space, caves, inside waterfalls, rocks and certain fungi. Dead people. Living people. People living after death. People coming back to life on earth after death. On stone slates, golden tablets, parchments, paperbacks, and carved into earth. Earth. Trees, the Ocean, pretty flowers, a breeze, animals, smiling faces, full bellies. God with no religion, God with every religion. Nature's God. God and Goddess. The god who made it so food tastes good when you cook it. Simply the Universe. Lots of god has been created.

Exactly. I see your light bulb starting to flicker now.

I didn't say that. I said the human form (or elements) existed at the time the universe was created, if a human-centric God existed during the creation of the universe.

Little confused. Otoh you said my arguments were speculative of God's intentions, yet claim that extraterrestrial life doesn't disprove Christianity based on a link that was making arguments that were equally speculative.

With humankind's recent advances into nuclear armaments, a religion that preaches non-violence may be needed more now than ever.

why is religion necessary to promote non-violence?

IMO the greatest nuclear threat is religious fanatics getting their hands on nuclear weapons. These are people who have apocalyptic fantasies that can't wait to leave this physical world behind.

Religion, having many traditions and ideas relating with peace and non-violence, seems to make fit somehow in solutions to violence, including solutions towards violence in the name of religion.

History has shown that country leaders are like any human beings with inherent flaws. They can become quite irrational, enraged, fanatical, suicidal, homicidal, or genocidal. Imo, the more immediate danger is that some government leader, like North Korea, Kim Jong Il who controls nuclear weapons sets off a nuclear weapon that starts an horrendous domino effect. No need for extreme religious beliefs for humans to act that way. It is primitive human nature.

Any movement, religious or not, that can prevent hateful madness is fine with me. It is just that the proven and successful non-violent movements of Ghandi and Martin Luther King come to mind. It is harder to imagine a secular person, who tends to think that we humans are no more special than rocks, would be motivated enough to prevent humankind's self-destruction.

Christainty did stop the only bomb form being used. And the Hindus and Muslims pointing them at each other shouldn't be a problalm. Cause the non violence.

Seriously? How much harder is it to imagine that? Can't you think of any reason why a secular person does not want the destruction of humankind?

There are many causes of conflict, but religiously fueled conflict answers very poorly to reason, perhaps even more so than any other type. I suspect in part it is because of the belief in "fate" as something supernatural that is so typical of violent religions (and many peaceful ones of course).

Thankfully this also has a tendency to cross into tactics and strategy. "Reasonable elements" among fanatics have a tendency to have their zeal questioned and lives cut short, even though they might have short-term impact, especially when their reasonable tactics are the most needed. Even then however, proper professionalism is close to unattainable.

Also, I don't think religious fanatics can ever achieve "final victory". Even if they won some war against a perceived enemy, their behavior would just repeat itself. If they can't find an enemy without, they'll find one within, split into factions and start purges and civil wars.

What am I if not the one you describe?

My beauty lies in my flaws. I dont recognize any the things you are alluding of either in my thoughts, or actions. What am I? OR WHAT ARE U

I can relate to some of them when remembering my first years in the world. Are you older than 10 years old?

I guess guys like me, are just out for you to get us... if only you WERENT SO DAMN SLOW

and yeah, as you have guessed it, im just a narcissist on a trip, see your PM inbox for pics how my guns, please rate them with 10 being the illest plz to confirm your hunch. if u get nothing maybe narciss went away around 10 also after all

You guys are debatting causes as if there was multiple outcomes.

Yeah, society is so distorted that the guy killing himself and multiple people in a kamikaze act is acting under the exact same motivation of the father putting his son to bed after a good days work. Now no diplomas can give you the truth on that, so if you want to attempt to debate that you need personal testimonies (ppl u know or credible things u heard somehow about both TYPES of ppl). in my limited sample size what is most probably a statistical anomaly is glaring, only evidence i could get out of the data at this point would go the opposition of conventional wisdom: their motivations actually seems to converge as their actions polarize

think of the rapist in the backstreet sunday past midnight preying, and think of a stand up male in todays society... going to the gym after a nice breakfast and good night sleep. their motivation are exactly the same.

You have to twist a lot of things, specifyour mind, to make yourself believe that men can act chasing other things than 'happiness'. if you think you are after something else, you have reached the very convenient stage of life where you can deceive even yourself of what you deem necessary.


what i wonder is if you accept to chase something you know you dont need, because you know that thing will get you what you wish. Everyone wanna quickly read over that phrase and go over the next thought, because we all know that this possibly can't be as good as true altruism. Yet its accepted as good enough, even by me after all. i feel this is wrong somewhere but this attitude has been enacted in me by things that are good in nature, which adds to the dillema

The problem, so big that its even worth talking about now, is the psycopaths who through incredibly effective divide and conquer method fractionned the human race so much that common ground is nothing more than an ideal; impossible in practice. Even the good and bad fight, in which no man has ever dreamed of an ending, would not reconcile more than half of us... with too many point of views, words have taken so many meanings and they are in turn rapidly losing all of it

Love it. A+

It really is as simple as this. If you want to believe in a greater 'force' that may be involved with the creation of the universe and all things in it, then fine. This is a mystery that no one has any answers for currently. But to be so Earth-centric as to believe God exists in the way most religions do, is just plain ludicrous. We cannot even agree on what God is from one religion to another, from region to region, from people to people, let alone involve the entire universe in the equation.