atheist how many here ?

[providencecrow]

But where did GOD come from? How is he here without something to create him? How is he here without an intelligent designer? You think it's hard to believe that everything "just happened" when that's PRECISELY what you believe about God! He "just happened." He was just "always there."

You're making the mistake of assuming the big bang happened and instantly there were planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, nebulas, pulsars, and black holes. That is NOT what the Big Bang theory is. For much of the history of the universe, the only element was Hydrogen. The density of that Hydrogen didn't remain uniform, it congealed into stars, which by the use of a fusion reaction, create not only Helium, but all the elements of the periodic table. Think of it like hailstones. Most of them are quite small, so most of the atoms that result in the fusion reaction of stars are Helium. But, conditions can be right to create bigger hailstones, and thus "bigger" atoms like Iron, gold, and uranium result (much more rarely) as well. Atoms are mostly unstable, and bond to each other to create molecules. Some of these molecules create chemicals, which react with each other in amazing and unpredictable ways. Take a water molecule, H2O. By adding just one Oxygen atom to the molecule, resulting in H2O2, you go from having a clear, drinkable liquid that sustains life to peroxide, a solvent that turns a cloudy blue at certain temperatures.

I agree these are huge concepts to wrap your head around. I'll admit they can even be hard to believe, but to me, it is even harder to believe that a vast intelligence has always existed, and can exist without a creator was the prime cause of all this. To me, that's intellectual laziness. It's giving up.

Besides, if God's vast, "superior" intelligence doesn't need a creator to exist, why do we as "inferior" creatures need one?

The reason we cant percieve God always being present is because our minds cant percieve infinity. I believe I will have eternal life through God when I die, but I cant even imagine what infinite life is going to be like. That is also why we cant imagine that God has always been there.. It's because our minds cant get around it. And Intellectual laziness? That would be to just accept science as you are obviously doing. And going back to an earlier post. I believe God has always existed and that He created the universe and everything. No explosions, no evolution. God created different species (and as for the dinosaur argument many have, it does mention Dragons and such in The Bible.

None of us are blindly accepting science like you seem to believe. Science works like this "Plants use carbon dioxide and through photosynthesis they release oxygen", and to which you can say "Prove it", and then proof can be shown, very very thorough proof i might add.

Anything without proof is just a hypothesis, for example, your hypothesis is "The world was created by god", scientifically you would then need to conduct empirical research and then prove your hypothesis.

See it works like this: You make an observation of something, then you form your hypothesis. You test your hypothesis, and if there is enough empirical evidence on one side or another of the hypothesis, it then becomes a scientific theory.

So far all religion has is the hypothesis, and has yet to prove this. At least with the big bang we have plenty of mathematical and observational evidence to support it.