Jim,

If you would lay out your beliefs or lack of in the spirit that you just did you wouldn't sound so pompous and arrogant to people. We could have a friendly discussion without either feeling the other was being disrespectful or down right mocking the other. Or...we wouldn't feel compelled to debate things of this nature at all out of respect for one another.

There's a guy on this site who is an atheist. I consider him not only a friend but a brother and he feels the same about me. We talk some about these matters but I don't try to convert him and he doesn't try to be degrading to my beliefs. Mostly we laugh about it. He respects my beliefs and I his. Like I said, if you would conduct yourself in these matters in a similar fashion you would be taken more seriously. If you and another person of faith want to discuss the topic you could do so in a manner of mutual respect or not discuss it at all if the two of you chose.
You go out of your way to belittle people who believe in God, even "god" with a lower case "g."

Here is what I've been trying to get you to do...Strip away all mention or notion of Judaism, Christianity, Islam or any man made religion as you like to characterise them. Forget about those for just a moment. The question is not about the Judaeo Christion faith or Islamic faith or any other in this instance. Just for the sake of this discussion.

What I'm talking about here, in this particular instance is merely if there is a Creator or even could be. Is there evidence or lack thereof?

As for cause and effect, here is what I'm getting at. In the observable Universe every effect has something that caused it to happen. If I were to jump off a building and crash below on the pavement the effect would be that I crashed into the pavement. It didn't just happen in a vacuum. There was a cause. I jumped and gravity did the rest with the result being that I crashed into the pavement. Cause and effect. Every effect has a cause, whether in the lives of people or in the inorganic world. How did stars and planets, galaxies, etc. form? It is believed, and rightly so, that over time concentrations of matter were drawn together because of their gravitational attraction to one another, obtaining more and more mass until they formed various forms of gas. Gravity and other forces on the molecular level formed heavier elements and it caused a chain reaction of sorts as these concentrations of matter became denser and denser until stars were formed.

And so on.

How and why that happens could be much better explained by Scott Campbell as he teaches thermodynamics at South Florida. The point is that in the formation of stars or anything else, other causal events had to occur along the way for everything to condense into being a star in this case.

If I turn on a light switch a light bulb turns on and produces light. Light is the effect. My flipping the switch was the cause for whatever events in the realm of physics that had to occure for the lightbulb to produce light. Again, cause and effect.
A mere lightbulb won't produce light unless certain causal events happen. Energy in the form of electricity in this case have to cause the effect of the lightbulb giving off light.

The so called "Big Bang" was not the cause of the Universe forming. It was an effect. Everything that exists in the Universe once existed in one infinitesimaly small concentration of energy. But where did that energy come from? How did it come to exist? There was a primal cause for it's existance as well as a cause for it to "explode" into forming what we call the time and space continuum in which we exist. What was that primal cause? It's as if something came out of nothing. I can't wrap my mind around that without believing that there had to be someone or something of an intellectual escence causing that something to "be there" outside of our limitation of space and time.

I call it/Him God. A being outside of space and time would not be limited to existing in space and time and it's limitations. One who "creates" something is not contained within the creation but is outside of it. Same thing here. You may create a song. You are not inside the song or a part of it. You are outside looking in, and that's talking about something that isn't even of a physical nature. You are not bound by or within the song in any way, shape or form.

In the same way whatever or whomever caused the Universe via the Big Bang is outside of nature and not limited to time as we concieve of it. To us time is linear. Linear meaning involving measurement in one dimension only. We percieve it as one event occurring after another event and so on. We cannot go back or forward in time in the physical Universe. A Creator would not be limited in such a way being outside of creation.

If you were to create a painting or drawing, would you be held within the bonds of the painting? Of course not. The painting would however be merely two diminsional but you are three diminsional, at least as far as we can discern. You are outside of your creation and are not limited in time or space to the two diminsions limiting the painting. There is no passage of time within the painting. It is static in that way. You as the creator are not. In the same way a Creator of the Universe would not be limited as we are within the boundaries of space and time but would operate in concieveably infinite diminsions that we can't fathom.

Even if evolution as a theory was really true, which is another subject entirely, something or someone had to cause an environment to make the effect an event. By the way, there are Christian scholars who do believe in evolution. Did you know that? I personally don't agree with them based on scientific observations and questions of my own but we would have to agree to disagree on that matter. But evolution doesn't even address the matter we're discussing here. You and I can in similar fashion agree to disagree about the existance of a Creator but don't accuse me of being silly or childish for my observations which I would contend make perfect sense. And remember, we're leaving the religions of men out of the equation for the sake of this discussion. I respect you for holding the beliefs you do although I can't fathom them to be realistic in this case but shouldn't you conduct yourself in the same respectful manner?

The validity of Christianity or any other religion is another matter entirely and for another discussion at another venture. Here we are merely addressing the possibility of the existance of a Creator and nothing more.

And Jim...Don't get so uptight about these things that when you fart, only dogs can hear it.lol I'm not trying to proselytise you into believing as I do. I'm merely sharing some thoughts and concepts with you. Give others the same respect even if you don't agree with them. Not everyone who disagrees with you is silly, childish or whatever you are tempted to label them as. There are concepts within Christianity itself that I differ with other Christians on but I don't consider them to be idiotic. We just see things differently based upon our own observations and I respect their view even if I don't agree.

Take care my friend.

Stevie

I'm the only person here who is not unique.