His bible claims in several passages that the earth is flat (Mat. 4:8 is one) yet very few Christians would believe that; even the Creationists have a hard time explaining that one. Yet the very same young-Earth creationists are content to believe the the Earth was created 10,000-odd years back; just because the bible says so!

The bible was written by simple people with little knowlege of the workings of anything – even the hydrologic cycle was a mystery to them (Ecc 1:7); yet we take it for granted.

They knew about the moon because they could see it, but it’s doubtful they knew what caused eclipses. They knew about stars, yet had no idea that the Earth orbits a star; one star among billions.

So one day, in the middle of some ancient settlement some guy starts claiming to be the son of god (the only one according to him). Stories of the virgin birth, wise men and other clap-trap are more likely elaborations than actual facts. History has show that even scientists have a convenient habit of applying a theory that best seems to fit the facts until it’s proven wrong.

But this guy, the incarnation of god or the son of god or whatever they chose to call him has absolutely no clue about the workings of the thing his old man created! You’d think there’d be some mention of the Earth orbitting the sun or at very least the fact that the Earth is a big ball. But no, not a bloody jot.

Maybe that was too much for them to take in? No more than any miracle attributed to him would be. Hey look, if I saw some dude raise a bloke from certain death I’d belive him if he told me the sun was at the centre of the solar system. But did he mention these things? It’s not recorded.

Why would their god put his son where he did? Seems like an odd choice to me. It’s as if these were the only people on the planet back then – yet we know that humans were all over the place. Point is, that these people (Jesus included) didn’t know that; seems like a pretty basic point for the son of and omnipotent creator god.

Christianity is currently the biggest religion on the planet (dropping slowly at about 1% per year.) How can that be? Someone has to be the biggest:

* the Christians have gotten that way by maintaining a very strict dogma about breeding en-masse.
* they teach (their idea) to anyone receptive enough to listen – like kids and simple people.
* they believe (with no real supporting evidence) they’re right and everyone else (even other theologies) are wrong.
* they have historically wiped out other beliefs that got in the way; murderous bastards. America is a recent example and 75% of Americans identify themselves as Christian, even though they invaded and virtually anhiliated the primitive people who were already there.
* they have historically silenced critics, particularly scientists, who didn’t agree with their world ideas and they continue that tradition today by trying to quash free speech.
* they evolve, adapt and expand their theology to encompass practically every scientific theory that survives peer review and when that doesn’t work, they use pseudo-science or bad science to discredit it.

Darwin’s theory of evolution provides an answer to why Christianity is so widespread: the fittest, most powerful and adaptable survive. That’s why humans are so widespread and it’s ironic really, when we consider the very thing Christians seem most opposed to, the very thing that is their greatest threat, is the same thing that has ensured their survival.

In future, if we do find life on other planets in other solar systems, they’ll doubtless counter by saying that their god made it all. There will always be a market for simple answers, even where those answers are wrong.

It turns out that an ecosystematic configuration distributes energy more evenly and efficiently than any other system, so the near-perfectly balanced flatness of the universe defines an effort by the big bang toward perfect symmetry that is further supported by the ongoing effort of the universe toward absolute thermal equilibrum.

So the Anthropic Cosmological Principle is actually a thermodynamic principle that defines the mechanism that constrains the forces of the universe to an almost perfect balance between diametrically opposing runaway tendencies, which produces a grand-scale ecosystematic structure that enables it to evolve with the greatest possible efficiency, in one-direction-only.

These balances, precarious or otherwise, are common to all of the known anthropic coincidences and are actually defining the subtly-tipped balance that’s common to all ecosystems, so that the universally applicable principle is actually biocentric in nature, extending across the universe and bringing the forces to bear on a specific plane of life… so that a very fine layer of sentience arises within observed biotopes of inhomogeneity that are observed to exist in the large scale structure of our universe.

But none of this counters the points I have made, that if God can simply exist, then so can the universe, and I am pleased that you tacitly admit that there are many things we simply don’t know. Which is a step away from the entrenched dogma, held on both sides, the deeply religious, and the confirmed athiest.

One can’t base any argument on word-definitions. For all we know, the word ‘universe’ may have been coined by a theist. Words only come into being to express/describe realities many of which were already there long before anyone ever uttered any word.

Saying that anything ‘just exists’ is not an explanation but an anti-explanation. There are 2 possibilities: (a) it is a cop-out; (b) it is an admission of how limited our present knowledge is concerning the universe’s ultimate origins, and an admission that there is much more (of a very fundamental nature) to be discovered in the future.

You still haven’t answered the point that if we can have a “God” who was not created, we can also have a universe [1] which was also not created as well. Though it appears to us, as it it had an origin, some 15 billion years ago, we are using the universes own time clock to measure that. That time progression is not constant for ALL observers. Disregarding such time, (which is the manisfestation, to us of an extra dimension) and looking at things from a multidimensinal point of view, the universe might well simply exist, as suggested by Stephen Hawking. You have to consider that the time frames we use to consider “when” the universe was created, are properties of that universe, and are inextricably bound to it.

[1] Indeed, by definition, the universe means “all that exists” [2] , and by that definition, the universe would have to have created God, rather than the other way around. A situation I find significantly more likely, in the event of the existence of a Diety.

[2] Modern science does however consider the possibility of parallel universes. These would be seperate planes of existence, which we have no access to.