What do you think the beetles evolved into? 
Getting back to the guy who was asking, “Are there any questions science cannot answer?”. That’s easy, of course there are. Take this one: what does an orgasm feel like?
You (hopefully)* know* the answer to that question, but how in the world could science answer it satisfactorily?
Answering the question ‘Is there a God’ suffers from the same problem. See for yourself and it is pretty simple really, but choose the wrong technique to arrive at it and you’ll go around in circles for 2000 years or more without ever getting there.
I think (and this is just my personal opinion, put out there to be squished by the debate skills of 'dopers) the non-duality guys are onto it. Catch a glimpse of what they’re onto and you’ll realize ‘Is there a God’ is the wrong question. The cosmological argument is somewhat the wrong approach- you start out with the understanding that all these things exist-so far so good- then count backwards in time until you get to the beginning of time, arriving at an impossible logical point in which the universe crosses from nothing to something, and also from no-time to time and no-space to space. The non-duality guys would (perhaps, in my current interpretation) say this exposes one of our fundamental confusions. You’ve got time and no-time right in front of you at once, and how are you going to logically puzzle that out?
Well the non-duality guys always talk in terms like ‘pure undifferentiated consciousness’ as being all there (fundamentally) is, and that knowledge of your own existence is really all you need to ‘see for yourself’. But logic won’t ever allow you to to , erm, lose differentiation since it necessarily depends on differentiation. Let me digress a minute.
The guy upthread asked, “Can science answer ‘what is the meaning of life?’”, which brings us back to ‘what does an orgasm feel like?’. Ha ha, but seriously AFAICT the non-duality guys are onto the answer, which is that it isn’t something you would work out via dialectic methods but something you experience directly, and then you see the answer for yourself. That experience is one of non-duality, or undifferentiated pure consciousness, something there is but one of if you see what I mean. To call it ‘God’ is perhaps a little off, and to ask the question, ‘Is there a God’ sets you up for failure since it is framed as if there is you, the observer, and some other thing to observe; differentiated rather than undifferentiated consciousness.
Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists and others talk about this more directly than some other traditions, but it isn’t really a religion or a doctrine at all. Hmm, let’s see, first of all you don’t want to treat me as someone who has the answer to this question because I don’t really. I think I had a fleeting non-duality experience once, and so now when I read about it it seems to make ‘sense’ in a way, like they are talking about what I felt that one time. I get the impression that, for example, Christianity isn’t wrong per se so much as a colossal and long-running misunderstanding. There ostensibly exist techniques a person can follow to arrive at this pure undifferentiated consciousness, but apparently sometimes it happens to people spontaneously and they remain in that state for the rest of their lives rather than it wearing off. They then have answers to these questions and get turned into prophets or what-have-you depending on the culture, people who are around them in person sometimes understand what they mean, but then powerful and important people like say Constantine and Theodosius who have not ‘achieved’ pure undifferentiated consciousness get their hands on the script, impose their interpretations on it and turn it into a garbled mess.
Pity. Anyway, is there a God? Neither yes nor no IMHO. Look, I’m just going to finish breakfast and then have a few beers while I watch the games so please don’t go too overboard labeling me as crazy, I am just trying to respond to a message board, but the question as I see it, without implying anything other than full respect for Cecil and his friends, needs to be boiled down to:
Is
You were trying to make the case that you have no “religion” - that you don’t operate with any preconceptions of God that were handed down to you.
So how do you know that believers have eternal life, while non-believers don’t? That’s surely a religious tenet that came from the religion you were exposed to as a child.
It’s great that you recognize your own limitations here, but it’s more than your simply not understanding evolution. From the things you’ve said here about babies lying on the ground, it’s apparent that you actually have misinformation about what evolution is. I’d rather not hijack this thread with that, but combating this misinformation of yours would be a good topic for another thread.
You think the food chain proves god? It’s just natural selection,-Wolf eats deer because it is stronger, it has nothing to do with god. Plants that have medicine proves god? Some plants hold natural compounds in them which can treat some ailments, These compounds are naturally found in plants & cure or treat some diseases because they fight off the cells causing ailment, No need for a god to do that, It’s science. And what about all the plants that are poisonous? Did god make those plants too? Why?
Emotion proves god? We evolved from life which didn’t have emotion & got a bit more developed each time, We didn’t just have emotion all at once. Things didn’t just fall into place all at once, It took time. Billions and billions of years for these things to happen, It didn’t just all fall into place in the blink of an eye. And you act as if everything in the world is perfect, But there are many things that go wrong in the world,-Where’s your god then?
That too…and what did beetles evolve from?
God is here though there is suffering and many bad things, right here on the very earth that God created. Why? I don’t know. Once again, I am not a scholar on the subject. So I can’t answer specifically, I can tell you my opinion on it. But that I will not do, I will just say this:
How do you look at a sunset, and not feel God? Do you have children? How do you hold your newborn baby, and not just feel in your heart that there is a god? How do you laugh and play and have a wonderful day, wyith people you love without feeling something deep in your heart? Have you ever heard a song or music that sent a chill to your spine? Have you ever sat quietly, and watched the ocean, with the wind in your face?
Near death experiences? People have them, and they all describe it the same way. How does that happen? Those people are all liars? Explain that, please!
They are not all liars, but you are gravely mistaken if you actually believe this. Some people have them, and there is no unanimity when it comes to how they describe their experience. Where did you get your information that they all had the same experience?
I’m just joining the conversation here. I’m a full-on, militant Atheist. I believe there is no god(s) and that history shows Man created God in his image. ahem
All you have to do to know that religions are a crock is follow the trail of bread crumbs back through history. Man created god(s) in order to answer questions he did not have the science for yet. As we learn more (the earth is round; the earth goes around the sun; etc…) we then lose the need for “god” to explain things. We KNOW that thunder is created by warm and cold air clashing. There is no Thor…and there is no Yahweh either. No Heaven; no Hell. We come from the earth and our bodies return to it. Nature is the law, period.
"Because there is a law like gravity, the universe could create itself from nothing, as it did. The spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, that the universe exists, us to exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the fuse and put the universe in operation "
-Stephen Hawking
You are assuming that because all of the above make YOU think of God they must make everyone else think of God. That doesn’t follow. I find sunsets very pretty, I love holding babies, and I enjoy being with friends; I don’t “feel something deep in my heart” that I ascribe to the divine; I just enjoy all of them. Your feelings contribute to you beliefs, but they don’t provide evidence.
How do you read about the holocaust, and still believe there is a god? How can you hear about a gruesome murder, and still believe in god? How can you be depressed to the point of suicide, go through life without a single other person loving you, and still think god is love? Have you ever heard others cry about their horrific experiences? Have you ever watched a hurricane tear through people’s homes?
Near death experiences? Oh, ya because it’s clearly impossible to lie about something, And there’s definitely nothing suspicious about people, when telling the tale of their experience, explaining it EXACTLY how another person has almost as if they were simply copying what that other person said,-Nothing suspicious about that. Most of these people are just liars, some are just crazy, and the rest were hallucinating, probably because of all the pain meds they were hooked up on or because their brain was damaged from whatever nearly killed them,-There, I’ve explained it.
See, all of those things you’ve listed can be explained through science Now, please explain to me why a loving god, who can do anything would allow all those horrible things to happen and if you can’t do that AND give me some evidence and/or proof of the existence of a god, I’m going to stick with atheism. 
Oh I know, I am just tapped out of things to say…winding down so to speak. I believe in God, you people don’t…simple as that. I will always believe until proof shows me different. And non believers will always non believe unless proof shows them different. I think there is way too many holes in the ‘no God’ story…and I am sure non believers feel the same way. Neither side has proof…so I guess we will have to find out when we all die.
And I really wasn’t thinking I could change your mind! I am not equipped with enough facts nor do I have evidence. The bad things you spoke of? I would have to guess the devil is at work, because I cannot answer why God allows these things to happen.
Do you also believe in santa claus and the easter bunny because there’s no proof they don’t exist? :dubious:
And i was under the impression that the devil could only do what god allowed him to do. Well, why does god allow satan to do these horrible things?
Oh, and there actually isn’t a uniformity to these people’s experiences, And there are experiences from people of all faiths claiming to have met their god,-Explain that. Explain how all these people say they met god, or allah, or buddha, Whatever, Only one can be right,-Which one is it?
As you have seen, SDMB folk take the word “proof” very seriously. That’s why you got the reaction you did.
Yes! Haha! I was ill equipped! I am no expert on any subject let alone this one which cannot be proven! Highly intelligent group of people post on these boards, I will say that much!
What in the Wide Wide World Of Sports is “subtle hints of proof”, and how could it possibly be the same as proof itself?
Ok yes, I admit that I sounded ridiculous! I am sorry to have insulted anyones intelligence here! What was proof to me, probably looks like a starry-eyed fairy tale to anyone else! I wasn’t equipped to go at this from a factual standpoint and I apologize to the OP.
As for the ‘subtle hints’ well I didn’t want to come out lying, saying there was banners across the sky…or neon lights of proof. Subtle? Yes! I saw them as proof…would anyone else recognize those things as proof? I can’t answer that one!