It’s hard for you to understand that in this forum the onus on the claim maker (you) to present objective evidence for your beliefs?
Really?
Sometimes “why” is the wrong question. Sometimes there is no “why”.
Some years ago a mother told me of one of her children coming down with a life-threatening condition when her child was little. At that time, this mother was fretting over “why”. A wise nurse eased her with this statement, which has always stayed with me: “There is no ‘why’. It’s just biology. Sometimes these things happen”.
Fortunately the child made a full recovery, but the point is that this woman was comforted by understanding the true nature of the situation – that life is neither personal nor directed.
Many ‘why’ questions exist only because of presuppositions about how the world is ‘supposed’ to work.
For example, if god is ‘in control’, is benevolent and protective and ‘cares’ about you, and you don’t feel protected or cared for and have terrible things happen to you, then you’re off on a tangent trying to understand why God didn’t come through for you, or what you or someone else did wrong or failed to do or whatever. The possibilities are endless. Whereas the reality is that, apart from simple cause and effect associations that we happen to understand, life is a series of things happening, some of which you are going to like, some not so much. This is both a hard truth and an easy truth. Hard because if you’re the worrying type it give you nothing/no one to release your worries to, easy because you don’t have to angst about what tragedy “means”. Worry can come from many sources 
Even people who don’t believe in your specific deity in your specific way – or in any deity – often have the persistent notion that life should be in some sense “fair” or at least feel like it, that it’s somehow anomalous when just and fair outcomes don’t obtain. When in fact one has to work for and toward justice and fairness. It doesn’t fall on you like magic fairy dust.
Look at a flower: its intricacies and balance. What other evidence do you need? Or look at the symmetry and harmony between the body’s organs and organisms? They bear silent witness to the One Who created them.
No proselytizing here, Walter. Just Curious as to what makes atheists, agnostics and skeptics tick; that’s all. And, ultimately, it comes back to Darwin’s Doubt on where the “stuff” came from that made the Big Bang possible in the first place.
And this appears to be the crux of the debate. A theist sees the truth as an input, the atheist sees truth as output. One seeks answers in meaning, while the other seeks truth through accuracy. Neither side can agree as each has their own bias for what constitutes evidence and how to interpret it.
See Agrippa’s Five Modes of Skepticism from Sextus Empiricus as citation.
Purpose is strictly a human construct. As we are the only known species on the planet that is perfectly aware of its mortality, purpose and meaning are inserted to keep the masses obedient and compliant.
The only difference between us and a dead skunk or dog on the side of the road is the arrogance of our sense of exceptionalism as a species.
2 Likes
So no evidence at all then, just another unevidenced claim. You’re either trolling or don’t know the difference between a claim and evidence for that claim.
Sigh, another unevidenced claim that is of course no more than circular question begging. Once again then, it is an objective scientific fact that all living things evolve slowly over time, evolution explains the existence of both those things, so not only do they not evidence any deity, they already have a natural scientific explanation supported by overwhelming objective evidence.
Atheists don’t believe any deity or deities exist, an agnostic believes nothing is known or can be known about the nature or existence of god(s), and sceptics tend to question the validity of claims, and demand rigorous evidence before accepting information.
Not knowing how something happened is not evidence for anything, this is fallacious reasoning. Least of all a deity using inexplicable magic that has no explanatory powers of course.
Laughable! 
Your previous message…
Look at a flower: its intricacies and balance. What other evidence do you need? Or look at the symmetry and harmony between the body’s organs and organisms? They bear silent witness to the One Who created them.
…was nothing but proselytization.
Perhaps you don’t even know when you’re doing it?
But you ARE doing it.
1 Like
Which atheist?
(20, 20, 20, 20)
1 Like
All his / her responses have been risible, it’s hard to know where to start when someone doesn’t understand the difference between a claim and evidence for a claim. @JustCurious just keeps making more and more unevidenced claims.
1 Like
Look at a flower: its intricacies and balance. What other evidence do you need? Or look at the symmetry and harmony between the body’s organs and organisms? They bear silent witness to the One Who created them.
This is nothing but an appeal to faith.
Why?
Because you don’t know that Jesus is the creator by any body of evidence.
No more than any Muslim, Sikh or Jew knows their particular god is the creator.
Nobody knows that through evidence because there isn’t any that identifies the creator.
Instead people do what you JC.
They believe in their particular god by faith, in the absence of conclusive objective evidence.
That’s all you’ve got, my friend.
Faith.
1 Like
Well obviously because the claim is nothing more than circular reasoning and question begging, try explaining why you think those things are evidence for a creator? Bear in mind that they already have scientific explanations of course.
Why would there be a reason, other than the environment on this planet being conducive to carbon-based self-replicating entities that evolve? The first self-organising and/or self-replicating entities most likely occured because the laws of chemistry and physics allowed or even favoured it, given the particular circumstances (like ample access to base chemicals and energy such as heat from the sun or from e.g. subsea vents). In other words, evidence points to them starting existing because chemistry, physics, and lots of time allowed it. The question is therefore not “why?” but rather “how?”
Edit: Self-organisation can occur naturally if you for example have open non-equilibrium systems that are driven by an energy flow through the system. What happens is that instead of falling into disorder, such systems can spontaneously generate ordered and complex structures. Turns out that such structures can be more effective in dissipating the energy forced upon the system than than a chaotic high-entropy configuration. Under such circumstances, these structures will be more stable than chaos and disorder. Systems like this will typically emit energy of a lower “quality”/energy that is harder to put to good use than what is being input, the difference being used for building structures (think e.g. solar radiation as input and thermal infrared radiation as output).
1 Like
Here you are, JC.
The Pale Blue Dot image taken by Voyager 1 on Feb 14 1990. The entire Earth occupies just 12% of a pixel in this photograph. Now I’m going to ask you a question about this image.
I’d like you to tell me what you see.
Not what your faith tells you about this image, not what your feelings about it are and not what you’d like it to be as a matter of personal preference or volitional choice.
Just what you see.
What do you see?
Go for it.
Am I being played here? It seems like a windup…
I see evidence that God is far greater than anything we can imagine.
Imagining a deity and evidence for it, is clearly all you’re doing. Tell us again you didn’t come here to preach, after that gem.
If there was any evidence you were capable of introspection, let alone critical thinking, I’d suggest you imagine (something you can do) how your unevidenced and irraitonal spiel appears, alongside your dishonest evasion and aversion to honestly answering questions here?
I stuck a question mark at the end, just in case you ever develop anything approaching an open mind.
Here’s a learning tip for you, if you ever want to think rationally.
Inferring design or intent based solely on complexity is widely considered a logical fallacy, specifically an informal fallacy often referred to as a teleological or design fallacy.
“The unfounded assumption that there must be an underlying reason or purpose for something. In other words: the conflation of purpose and effect.”
I look forward to you ignoring that as well, none so blind etc etc…
Personal question.
How did you conclude that a god was real in your life?
And what evidence is that?
FFS, just look around you man!
Imaginary evidence, obviously…