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That may be good and well from a personal standpoint, but it is a question that most folks need an answer to.

The want of an answer, is not sufficient grounds to just make one up. I am content with "I don't know".

Evolution/Atheism, by removing the Creator from the course of events has ended up with a huge Creator-sized hole in their theory that none of their naturalistic explanations can touch.

The theory of evolution does not propose an answer to the question of the origins of the universe. Only the progressive development of species, suggesting natural selection as a model, and random mutation as an engine.

You don't get something from nothing in the natural world at all. Even if there are protons, those are SOMETHING.

I'd agree. You don't get something from nothing.

And anything complex requires a creator.

So who created the creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

I think you get the point.

You object to simplistic explanations of "something from nothing", so long as no one applies them to your Giant Invisible Bearded Guy.

For what it's worth... I find all scientific explanations of the origins of the known universe to be remarkably unsatisfying. But that doesn't mean I find assertions that it was created by a Giant Magical guy who gets really peeved if you do not properly genuflect and grovel before him, any more satisfying.

Demands for groveling and genuflecting sound to me like the worst traits of a man, and not the best traits of a God.

And the personal coming from impersonal matter?

I find the question of "nothingness to matter" to be as yet unanswered.

I don't find the question of "matter to man" all the puzzling.

And the idea of an objective basis for morality?

Not at all puzzling.

Sad point of view.

There is nothing sad at all about the fact that you will serve to nourish microbes after your death. The fact that you wish for, or even yearn for a magical mystery place for you to go after you die, where the floor is made of fluffy marshmallows, and butterflies are everywhere, and everyone is perfect... won't make it so. It is a wonderful fantasy, and these fantasies bring comfort to many... but fantasies they are.

It isn't objective.

Yes, it is.

It may be rationally derived, but it is derived from human beings preference and opinion- subjective elements which vary from person to person, group to group. As such, morality changes as society changes. There is no stable objective moral code in atheism.

The axioms (foundational truths) upon which I established the aforementioned moral code, do not "vary from person to person". That is what makes them axioms.

And I find it equally curious, that you assert your God as the source of the only one true and "objective" moral code, even while the guy halfway round the world asserts some Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed God as the source of the only one and true "objective" moral code.

And yet the codes are different.

And the only thing separating your advocacy of a Giant Cloud Walking Bearded Guy as the author of the only one and true morality, instead of a Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed guy as the author of the only one and true morality, is the fact that you happened to be born here, instead of there.

Had you been born elsewhere, you'd even now be attmepting to convince me of the truth of some other God.

And what is reality?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested by observation. As such, reality does not include Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guys, and Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creatures.

How do you test what reality is in order to know that reality is "real"?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested and its existed demonstrated by observation. An entity for which existence can be demonstrated, is real. An entity for which existence cannot be proven, does not qualify for recognition as "real". An entity whose very nature (God for example) is asserted to exist outside the domain of our ability to test (Magical Heaven for example) is arbitrary.

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested by observation. As such, reality does not include Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guys, and Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creatures.

Hello OWK! How do we explain the reality, universally expressed over millennia, of the human search for Truth? And the equally universal character of that search as a seeking for an ultimate cause that is not contained in or constrained by what we are pleased to call space-time “reality?”

What we might call the human instinct has throughout history sought the ground of human existence and the human condition in an extra-mundane source. The search itself is amply attested to by the historical record. The name that man everywhere regardless of specific culture has given to this ultimate source and ordering principle is God, or the gods. This is an historical fact. As such, it is “real.”

The point is not, as you rather contemptuously put it, whether this God or gods is a “Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guy,” the pantheon of the Olympians, the Great Spirit, or a “Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creature.” The point is that human beings seemingly quite “naturally” have a conception of the divine, extramundane source of the universe and its order that historically has been expressed in different human languages and myths. Yet the several descriptions all refer to the same thing – the God or gods who are not “in” the world of existence. That is a real fact, too.

Further, how do we explain the absolute universality of the idea of the soul? All human historical cultures have recognized the existence of the soul. And all human cultures have recognized the post-existence of the soul, for the human insight has ever been that the soul is immortal. Therefore, after death, it must “go somewhere.” That somewhere has been variously called Heaven, Hades, the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blessed, et al. Or as the Eastern traditions hold, it could be the soul’s post-death destiny is to reenter human or animal existence via reincarnation or transmigration.

The point is, different cultures have different concepts of the destiny of the soul, but all cultures agree that there is a soul, it is immortal, and it has a post-death destiny.

Again, this is an historical fact – i.e., one “tested by observation” and found to be “real.”

Now you want to say that something like 40,000 years of universal human experience and cultural effort has been devoted to the development and maintenance of what you are pleased to call fantasies.

Who is being irrational here – the theist, or the atheist?

For your fantasy interpretation to be correct, then the entire human race has been hopelessly misguided and misdirected for the entire time the species has been here on earth. Only now – only over the past slender piece of historical time going back maybe something like 200 years – only now the human race is finally getting these questions “right” by saying that man has been misguided or delusional over all historical time, because in fact there is no God and no soul? How will you “prove” that supposed fact, OWK?

If the human race has been hopelessly misguided and misdirected by such fantasies on such a vast scale, with such intense energies invested in such fantasies over the vastness of historical time, might your so-called “fantasies” have survival value for the human species?

If not, why would Nature allow man to continue to select for survival fitness using such worthless strategies?

That may be good and well from a personal standpoint, but it is a question that most folks need an answer to.

The want of an answer, is not sufficient grounds to just make one up. I am content with "I don't know".
Hasn't stopped science (i.e., panspermia)

Evolution/Atheism, by removing the Creator from the course of events has ended up with a huge Creator-sized hole in their theory that none of their naturalistic explanations can touch.

The theory of evolution does not propose an answer to the question of the origins of the universe. Only the progressive development of species, suggesting natural selection as a model, and random mutation as an engine.

So you are suggesting that the BIG BANG is not in any way tied to Evolution (billions & billions of years ago, nothing exploded and made soup!)

You don't get something from nothing in the natural world at all. Even if there are protons, those are SOMETHING.

I'd agree. You don't get something from nothing.

A lot of evolutionists (including on these boards) will not say that. They somehow believe that matter ALWAYS existed.

And anything complex requires a creator.

So who created the creator?
The Creator wasn't created, and He is both inside and outside of the natural world. He isn't subject to the laws of the natural world, though He created them. The facts are, in this natural world, we do not see anything that is uncaused in some aspect. Millions of us believe that God was the uncaused cause of everything else. It explains things far better than in the beginning nothing exploded, and it became something, and it rained on that something for millions of years and made soup and out of that soup came complex personal human beings (after millions of years of gradual evolving).

And who created the creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

And who created the creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator's creator?

I think you get the point.
I know what your point is, I just disagree with its premise. God wasn't created. He always was. He can do that because He is beyond the current natural world, and beyond time. It's hard for us to comprehend but that doesn't make it untrue.

You object to simplistic explanations of "something from nothing", so long as no one applies them to your Giant Invisible Bearded Guy.
Continually referring to the Almighty God of the Universe as the "Giant Invisible Bearded Guy" is trollish behavior. Why can't you just discuss the issue without resorting to insulting the God that many of us worship? He is holy, righteous, awesome, just, and mighty. He isn't some "Giant invisible bearded guy", and I refuse beyond this warning to acknowledge your description of Him as being God until you show some proper respect (if not for God, at least for the posters who love Him).

For what it's worth... I find all scientific explanations of the origins of the known universe to be remarkably unsatisfying. But that doesn't mean I find assertions that it was created by a Giant Magical guy who gets really peeved if you do not properly genuflect and grovel before him, any more satisfying.

Demands for groveling and genuflecting sound to me like the worst traits of a man, and not the best traits of a God.
My God doesn't make such demands, only your characture of God (or Monty Python's). I'm also protestant, so we dont genuflect. If you choose to not worship Him and reject your one way out of Hell which He provided for you out of love, and want to live eternity without Him, He will oblige you.

And the personal coming from impersonal matter?

I find the question of "nothingness to matter" to be as yet unanswered.

I don't find the question of "matter to man" all the puzzling.
At least that's an honest answer without insultes. Matter to man, however, is full of problems for where do you have something that doesn't have the personal information in it needed to make a person suddenly becoming personal? I mean, humans develop from cells that include DNA that is specifically designed to create human beings. You are never going to get some weird malfunction with say the cells in a rock and poof get anything resembling a human being (or even human DNA). Sad point of view.

There is nothing sad at all about the fact that you will serve to nourish microbes after your death. The fact that you wish for, or even yearn for a magical mystery place for you to go after you die, where the floor is made of fluffy marshmallows, and butterflies are everywhere, and everyone is perfect... won't make it so. It is a wonderful fantasy, and these fantasies bring comfort to many... but fantasies they are.
Please stop presenting a condescending characture of the religious views of others. Second, how can you prove they are fantasies? That is an assertion that you can't prove. You can say, I believe you are dreaming or whatever, but that doesn't make it so.

It isn't objective.

Yes, it is.
Nope. Sorry. You have subjective foundational principles. Subjective principles, no matter how many "subjective" folks make up those principles, do not beget objective truth.

It may be rationally derived, but it is derived from human beings preference and opinion- subjective elements which vary from person to person, group to group. As such, morality changes as society changes. There is no stable objective moral code in atheism.

The axioms (foundational truths) upon which I established the aforementioned moral code, do not "vary from person to person". That is what makes them axioms.

Spell out some of these axioms that don't vary from person to person.

And I find it equally curious, that you assert your God as the source of the only one true and "objective" moral code, even while the guy halfway round the world asserts some Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed God as the source of the only one and true "objective" moral code.

I'll put my God against a Hindu god any day in a test for truth, livabability, coherence, etc.,

And yet the codes are different.

And the only thing separating your advocacy of a Giant Cloud Walking Bearded Guy as the author of the only one and true morality, instead of a Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed guy as the author of the only one and true morality, is the fact that you happened to be born here, instead of there.

Had you been born elsewhere, you'd even now be attmepting to convince me of the truth of some other God.

Don't you see how you just contradicted yourself. You just stated that there is some overarching moral code that does not vary person to person and then you gave examples of how human beings moral codes can vary from person to person. Better think on that one OWK.

And what is reality?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested by observation. As such, reality does not include Giant Cloud-Walking benevolent guys, and Blue-skinned six-armed elephant-headed creatures.

Did you personally observe Napoleon fighting for the French? Darwin at the Gallapogos? The creation of the earth? You may say, well I see the effect of what they did and their written record bodes true with what I observe- but Christians say the same thing. We may not have actually seen God created the Heavens and the Earth, but we see the effect of His creation. We see it in morality. We see it in the complexity of life. We see it in the tiny palms of a baby. We see it in miracles that occur in people lives (like my dear friend's brother who had been fighting cancer for years and was finally given 2 to 3 weeks to live in March. This after Medical science had done absolutely EVERYTHING [including stem cell transplants] to help him, but then said all they could do was make him comfortable. He went to church within the past week or so. He's in remission. Science gave up. God did not). And what we see and observe meets with God's description of reality. And yet, we are called irrational, dreamers who worship some characture of a person who walks on marshmallow clouds.

How do you test what reality is in order to know that reality is "real"?

In order to be recognized as real, an entity must be tested and its existed demonstrated by observation. An entity for which existence can be demonstrated, is real. An entity for which existence cannot be proven, does not qualify for recognition as "real". An entity whose very nature (God for example) is asserted to exist outside the domain of our ability to test (Magical Heaven for example) is arbitrary.

Okay, so in other words, if man can't know it, it must not exist. It's imaginary. If there is no way for man's technology to say it exists, it must not exist. Yep, science has become religion to some with the scientists as the gods. If they don't say it exists, it doesn't. Seems to lack humility in the extreme.