Terrapin Tables

The word "accidental" is a fallacy if physics can be assumed to apply. Coincidental might be better. "Well who made the stuff that collided." I dunno, maybe it has always been there. You're just going to tell me that God has always been there, right? Or was God created? And by whom? What is God going to do after the Apocalypse? Isn't he going to get bored? He seemed pretty vindictive from what I know about the Old Testament. Enjoyed meddling, smoting, tempting, pretty much f-ing with people. "Kill your son. I was just kidding." And I'm pretty sure he is going to get sick of you saved people. And if it's a she, she'll get sick of you people even faster.
Evolution, while perhaps "an accident," has measurables, and if not potential explanations, then theories.
Creationism has none of these things. Ok, 7 days, I'll give you that one. Unless you count God as a theory. People don't seem to be treating him like a theory.
If you were able to see nothing about the splash of spilled milk, and examine that event, I'd wager you could determine alot about the jug. Just get David Caruso to do it. Or Anthony Shaloub, whatever the Monk guy's name is. Or those pricks from Numbers. They sure can tell alot from a damn lawn sprinkler. And some of them can even drive a taxi.
end communication

The "cosmological argument(s) for the existence of God" is both interesting and often a misnomer, as it does not prove the current existence of anything, let alone anything with attributes we know. I do not find the cosmological argument to be terribly persuasive. More importantly, even if we maintain the cosmological argument to actually prove the existence of a Prime Mover, Uncaused Cause, or whatever variant of it you like, it's still a far cry from God, Yahweh, Allah, Nyx, Kaang, or any other name that is in vogue. That is, even if we accept the cosmological argument - and I do not - that doesn't get us anywhere when it comes to what we should believe or do.

When you said Kaang I thought of this, because I am a child:

I like John's comment about God getting sick of the saved. I mean, if there's one group of people you don't want to spend eternity with, it's dudes that sing songs about Jesus and chicks that won't put out.

But I think everyone's way off. We all know Neil Peart is God. So here's a pic of Rush, because there isn't enough male cameltoe on TTables:

Now, there is one quote about God I do like...assuming he exists, then he's a disinterested at best, assholish at worst deity. In that Keannu Reeves movie where he fights demons, Reeves says "God's a kid with an ant farm," at which I laughed off my ass.

Remember Futurama? Bender meets God, who explains his involvement in human affairs as "if you do it right, they won't think you've done anything at all." That's a good one too. So, my opinion on faith is it makes absolutely no sense for a smiling man in the clouds to be guiding our every move. And maybe that's exactly how he wants it.

Not really, all life is totally the result of molecules in a swamp some bilion years ago.

I think John's right in saying it's misleading to call it all accidental. Matter and energy behave in predictable ways - mix hydrogen and oxygen and add a little energy, and it burns to form water. As far as evolution of humans, there may be some element of randomness to it in genetic mutations, but natural selection is the part of evolution that keeps it from being completely random - preferentially maitaining certain mutations and eliminating others.

As far as the First Cause argument, I like the way Bertrand Russel addressed it in Why I Am Not a Christian, " If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' " Or as Stephen Hawing put it, "it's turtles all the way down!"

As far as the splash pattern, you could determine a lot about the milk jug and how it was upset, so even in that, Lewis picked a bad example.

I went through and read the link Chris provided. The Liar, Lunatic or Lord argument I've heard before, and it really doesn't make any sense. Like there aren't any other possibilities - like Jesus' life story being exaggerated? The Argument from Longing I'd heard before, but didn't know C.S. Lewis came up with it. I never knew that our desires had any bearing on reality. Maybe if I wish hard enough I can win the lottery.

Stacked-up turtles? So Dr. Seuss was Buddha?

If I rub Dr. Suess' belly for good luck, will Thing ! and Thing 2 pop out and clean my apartment, because it's a mess. Maybe I can pray to Seuss and finally figure out which side of my bread needs buttering.

Baby, I'm gonna butter your bread.