That analogy is interesting but I think it misses the point.  There could, hypothetically, be things that we are not capable of perceiving.  However, that is a admission of agnosticism.  It does not follow, then that since there are things in the universe that we don't know that there's this God up there and that he creates things.  To argue that God exists because we don't know how the universe came to be is really arguing from ignorance.
Besides, I brought up defining God in respect to attributing phenomena to him.  If we don't even know what a God is, how can we point at something and say, "God did that"?  It's impossible.

"and mr. neil: i disagree with you about science. there is a lot of it that is simply existant to explain why we are here. i consider that a method of proof, in that science often bases its pursuits of knowledge on presupposed hypotheses, then records the results. as a matter of fact, why did "science" come about in the first place? i thought it was to investigate why we are here... isn't that the same thing as seeking proof?"

Attempting to explain why we are here and proving how we came to be are two different things.  Science takes what we know and creates a hypothesis in which it tests.  Nothing is proven beyond all doubt, but science forms theories based on data, which cannot be expected to be perfect all the time.  All scientific theories are subject to change.
It'd be nice to think that science could prove everything and be dogmatic, but we can't expect it to be the foolproof charicature that it's often hampered with.  Again, that's moving goal posts.

And what do you mean by "presupposed hypothesis"?  You mean the theories they create before they test them?  Theories are formed based on data and are then tested.  It's not as if Darwin woke up one morning and said, "Hey!  Things evolve."  There's always something to trigger a scientific theory, but theories are not presupposed.  They have to be tested before they're accepted.

A presupposition is when you accept in advance of the the evidence.

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I wasn't pointing out the perfection, I was pointing out the mathmatical odds to that perfection,

if we start out by considering the amount of cells in the skin of the human hand, we come up with a number ranging in the thousands or tens of thousands now considering that for each one of those cells theres a 2-1 chance that they'll each be operational. Now we consider the make-up of those cells, and the tens of thousands of Atoms involved each one with a 2-1 ratio of working properly. so far its an 4-1 ratio that those cells will be working properly, not bad... now we consider the placement of those cells, considering that each human only has 1 layer of skin (not about 20) and then a layer of flesh then a layer of bone, we'll say thats a 3-1 odds. so far were at about 12-1 odds, now we consider how that skin forms to the hand, for the sake of simplicity we'll say its a 2-1 odds that its going to stick, now were at 24-1 odds. Then we have to have sweat glands we'll consider about 10 sweat glands on the palm give or take, 2-1 odds they'll each work, so thats 20-1 odds that they'll all work take a few of them for the sake of argument so we'll put it at 15-1 odds that they'll work, we'll go ahead and multiply them with the odds of skin that puts us to about 360-1, then well consider hairs on the back of the hand, again 2-1 odds they'll grow properly we'll just round that number to the same as sweat glands about 15-1 this brings us to 5400 to one. Already we've passed the limits of "scientifically provable" by quite a ways. and this is just a very rough estimate for the skin on one's hand. Now we'll take into consideration the many varieties of skin... from human to monkey to fish to whale to lizard to elephant. so we'll just say about 25 varieties of skin (in realitiy theres a differing type for almost every species on earth) so we'll put that at about 25-1 this sets us to a whopping 135000-1 odds for us to have the correct skin that works, were somewhere around mail-in contests. now we'll consider the finger nail which is comprised of mainly dead skin and carotene, and the fact that the body sends it directly to the fingers and toes, we'll set that to about a 6-1 odds which brings us to 810000-1 odds. and just to top off human skin on hand, we'll take into account the population of the world, past and present and the fact that the skin on their hands work, we'll give a rough estimate of 7billion for the sake of argument religious or otherwise so that brings us somewhere in the vicinity of 5670000000000000 or 567x10 to the 13th power. These are a rough estimate for the odds of humans having the proper skin, working as it does on the hand alone. now to make it simple for the rest of the body we'll make it around 10 seperate parts (not considering eyes, nose and nether regions) so that just adds on another zero to the previous number.

In the end we come up with 56700000000000000 to 1 odds of humans having the proper skin. let alone skin color, fingerprints, pimples, sensitive skin, non sensitive skin, dry skin....

its amazing and almost foolhearty how you can so quickly rationalize this as "my belief" This little thing here was only calculating skin and a sever underestimate at that... not the countless working organs, bones, bodily functions and the brain itself. for ONE I repeat ONE!!! race. This isn't taking into consideration the shear amount of species on this earth numbering in the thousands to hundreds of thousands, each with their own skin type of skin and mechanics of skin. Again the numbers are astronomical, Chance isn't even in the question. I'd consider that proof of intellegent design wouldn't you?

It embarasses me as a human being to know there's people out there speaking at such a blatently naive level is to take this and toss it off as nothing. If the words "Thats what you believe" come out of someones mouth with a rationalization behind it, I'm going to have to go to the store and pick up alot of shoes to shove into peoples mouths... Cause I'm really sick of hearing about Reletive thinking.

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Chance arguments are really poor.  They sound great to the naive person, but they're really not as sound as you think they are.

C-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!
Han Solo: Never tell me the odds!

I turn your attention to something I call the lottery principle.  The odds of any single person winning the lottery is ridiculously non-existant.  According to your logic, no one should ever win the lottery, yet somebody always eventually does it.  Why do you suppose that it?  Because there's more than one person playing.
You mentioned the position of the planet earlier and how amazing that is.  That's a very geocentric point-of-view, and I have to wonder why you're doing that.  It's not as if there aren't other planetary systems with other planets orbiting around them.  So while, it may seem ridiculously astronomic to you that the Earth somehow wedged itself in a "perfect" zone around the sun, please keep in mind that we have all of these other systems, and then redo your math and try to figure what the odds are that at least one of these millions of planets we have in the universe might have hit the jackpot and landed in an orbital safe zone.  I think it's more than reasonably likely.  Just like in the lottery, you have more than one player.
And it's not as if a single chemical reaction popped up off a rock one day and slowly transmogrified into a human being in a single event, which is what your calculations really assume.  And yet that's not at all what modern biology and biochemistry believe at all.
You're describing sort of an all-in-one crap shoot, where either life is going to get the opposable thumb or it isn't.  The number of species that have ever existed on Planet Earth is up somewhere in the gigabillions, so life has actually had plenty of opportunities to get it "right".  But even saying that life "got it right" is making a rather wild assumption about how life works.
You're assuming that what we have now is the desired or intended result.  Again, why are you making that presupposition?  If we shot rays from our eyes, we'd be debating over the odds of developing ray beam blasters in our eyes.  But the only way you could argue design is if we can infer that the end result was intended, and I defy you to do that.
You're assuming that there was an intended "design" and that you know what that intended design is and can somehow infer how accurately our biology represents your creator's intentions.
Naturalists don't look at these things in terms of our bodies being the perfect machine.  We view it more in terms of this is what we have, and this is what chance gave us.  The chances of getting this particular configuration were fairly low, and the odds might have even been against us, but the odds are against a lot of other factors, too.  And as such, we don't shoot rays out of our eyes.  And if we had the chance to rewind the clock of time and started life all over again, the probability would be akin to winning the lottery twice, and that would be highly improbable.  But chances are high that you'd get some kind of highly adapted being.
To summarize, improbability does not mean IMPOSSIBILITY.

Obi Wan Kenobi: ...and these blast points, too accurate for Sandpeople. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.

But more importantly, there's a paradox to your logic that you're skipping around, and you know I already addressed it.  It's the idea that complexity must beget complexity, i.e., complex systems require design.
Your own creator breaks this rule.  In your logic, you have an uncreated complex thing, and that is simply a contradiction of what you're trying to tell me.

Now come on...  You really didn't thing that I wasn't going to point that out, did you?

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Chance arguments are simple, its a simple statement of a simple fact. The lottery only takes into account 5 numbers. and even then the odds are rediculous

I'm still a bit dumbfounded (well not really) how you can just overlook a number that big. and say "theres still that 1 bit of chance" That to me is Naive.

I bring up the Chance argument because it is the strongest argument out there, not the poorest. The fact that we survive.... I'm not talking mere numbers here, The lottery is likely around 20,000,000 to 1

I'm talking about somewhere in the vicinity of 8x10 to the 837th power and then some. as in 8 followed by 837 zeros, theres not even a name for that number, this doesn't even phase the odds for evolution.

I've studied Creation vs Evolution for many years, and the chance argument is the strongest, its the most passed off quickly as poor because it is the strongest argument. the only thing you can say to it is "Theres still that one chance"

Go to California, set a pile of bicycle parts in the middle of the mountains and wait for tornado season. If the tornado happens to hit the bicycle parts and assembles a mint condition schwin, then you can give me the "Theres still a chance" reply. Until then find a better argument.

Since the chance argument is mainly against evolutionism I'll state this. "It is more logical for a being apart from the laws of time and space to exist, than a being trapped within those laws." inotherwords

 God is unlimited and apart from time and space itself, He doesn't need to follow the laws of the physical universe.

To avoid circular reasoning, I will give the other side of the argument.

Matter however must follow preset laws that were just "sort of there" this means matter would have to be there for eternity, but time is a limited thing it must have a begining.

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Truth is an absolute.

I heard a good analogy about the chance argument once.  Imagine that you're blindfolded and you're standing in front of a firing squad.  Armed and ready to execute you are 100 of the best marksmen to have ever lived.  You're dead right?
Well, you hear someone yell "FIRE!" and the sound of gunshots become deafening.  Then all goes quiet, and you're still standing there, alive.  You think, "This is a miracle!  What are the ODDS?!"  Then you take your blindfold off, and you realize that there were 101 prisoners to be executed that day.
It was unlikely that you would have survived, but with only one hundred bullets and one hundred one prisoners, it was more than likely that someone would survive.

I can't believe you missed the point about the lottery.  The analogy was to illustrate that it is extremely unlikely for a single person to win the lottery, but it is EXTREMELY likely that SOMEONE is going to win, and someone almost ALWAYS wins.
You're confusing the chances of one with the chances of the whole.

Chance arguments are weak.  What chance arguments do is try to wow people with statistics, so that they go, "WOW!  Those odds are pretty low!"  But upon further examination, it's easy to see where you error is.  You think the chances of one applies to the chances of the whole.

"Go to California, set a pile of bicycle parts in the middle of the mountains and wait for tornado season. If the tornado happens to hit the bicycle parts and assembles a mint condition schwin, then you can give me the 'Theres still a chance' reply. Until then find a better argument."

That's a strawman.  No one says that you can put parts in a tornado and expect a bicycle to appear.  You don't EXPECT things to happen in naturalism.  What naturalist precepts actually believe is that processes of trial and error in biologic systems produce a being that is adaptive to that environment.
What you just did was disingenuous.  That's your charicature of what evolution is.  Real evolution theory doesn't say those things.

What you've just demonstrated is something that I was referring to when I mentioned winding the clock of time back.  The odds of getting the same result twice in the same biological system is actually the odds that your statistics show to be improbable.  Not the odds against an advanced and adapted creature to emerge from out of the species.

"God is unlimited and apart from time and space itself, He doesn't need to follow the laws of the physical universe."

Vacuous assertions.  What do you base that on?  You're just saying that.
What you've just done is take your brain out of the logical world and filled in all the little gaps in your knowledge with a magic being that can break all the rules.
If God can break the rules, then what stops matter from breaking the rules? If God can be eternal, then why not just the universe?

"Matter however must follow preset laws that were just "sort of there" this means matter would have to be there for eternity, but time is a limited thing it must have a begining."

And you know precisely what these "preset laws" are or that there even ARE "preset laws", huh?  Says who?  Where do you get this stuff?

What's wrong with the honesty of just saying that we don't know and can probably never now how matter came to be?  Why do we have to fill in our gaps with this magic being?

Again: What is the difference between your God and a figment of your own wild imagination?

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there would be an argument here, but your mind is too closed to what I'm saying. infact I've met alot of close minded debaters on many topics, but primarally religion. btw your 100-1 odds firesquad is embarrased by the number I stated earlier, to point it out, I'm gonna type some of it here.

800000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000*FIXED*

to 1 your gonna need to scroll a bit...

I end my argument with that. If you manage to rationalize that number then this debate isn't even worth mine or anybodies time. Your set.

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thats 800 zeros, I didn't just hold down the key.

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Mmm-hmm... Debate the man instead of the argument.  I see how it's going to be. Well, if we're going to play that game, let me sum up how I see our little debate is going... Your way: You've called me close-minded and naive.  You've asserted things you can't prove, and when I called you on it, you did exactly what I thought you'd do.  Ad hominem city. Call my analogies bad, but don't explain why.  Brush off my well-thought responses. You know, that kinda peeves me, because I go to the trouble of giving you a substantial reply, and you blow it off by calling me naive and close-minded.  That's not right.  The least you could do is entertain my responses and give me a real rebuttal. My way: "You're wrong, and here's the reason why..." I at least explain why I think you're wrong.  You're taking the improbability of one and applying it to the whole.  I've explained through analogy that the odds change when you have more than one player at "the game".  You have a whole universe worth of players. As with the lottery, the odds become better when you have more than one person playing.  That's why people commonly win the lottery, despite the odds being so improbable of a single person winning. You treat it as if the Earth it's the only place in the universe that chemical reactions take place that could potentially create life, but that's simply not the case.  There's a whole universe worth of potential candidates, and even if the odds were exceedingly against abiogenesis happening, you have enough players in your game that something is likely to happen somewhere. Essentially, Earth won the cosmic lottery. But I think what you're trying to do is insinuate that greater odds makes for a greater argument.  At what point, in your NASA-computer-choking calculations does improbable become impossible?  Is there an exact figure, or are you just trying to bowl me over with big numbers. Numbers mean squat.  Design inference fails.  Probability arguments don't hold water. Try something else.

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Mr. Neil is right on this one. Probability means nothing in an infinite universe. Mathematically: The probability of anything happening in an infinite space is 100%.

I wasn't angry at you, if I pointed my finger at you, I'm sorry.

I'm angry at the mind process.(Vendetta Level... not gettin into it) You yourself claimed its based on "Non-Logic"

As I stated earlier, "If God appeared before you and turned you into a zuchini. You would pass it off as a stress induced hallucination." If someone has their mind set on their belief, they will believe what they choose to believe. They will fight for that belief.

I hate being a part of these Arguments,They're futile. An argument only hardens hearts and closes minds.

If you want the arguments it's yours, cause nothing will be changed by it.

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"As I stated earlier, 'If God appeared before you and turned you into a zuchini. You would pass it off as a stress induced hallucination.' If someone has their mind set on their belief, they will believe what they choose to believe." Yeah, and by doing that, you engage argument ad hominem; debating the person instead of the argument.  You've readily concocted a reason for why your argument wouldn't be successful. I've given reason for not accepting your argument, and I don't need to be accused of simply having "strong beliefs" or having a "closed mind". That sort of argument shows to me that you're incapable looking outside your theistic circle.  What if I started calling you close-minded for not accepting the existence of Apollo?  Why don't you accept the existence of Apollo!?  And I could make up a million reasons why you think there's no evidence for Apollo but he's really still there.  And you'd still be skeptical nontheless, right?  Because that's rational thinking; to be skeptical of things which are claimed but have no evidence to support them. That's how I treat your God. As I was stating earlier, one of the biggest problems with being labeled an atheist is that it's essentially a label that is based on what the person is not: a theist.  A better way to look at my position is that of a secularist: one who believes in the natural; tactile world. Contrary to your little characature of me, I'm not committed to the idea that there isn't a God.  I simply don't accept the existence of one based on what we happen to know about the world and what we know about myths and legends.  The Christian worldview follows the same kind of pattern that I recognize to be mythical: incoherent stories, contradictions, sketchy details, the varying consistency of differing accounts, etc. If you're going to make a claim, the burden of proof is on you.  It is not on me to "open my mind" to an argument that is insufficiant.

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perhaps there is no proof for the mythological beings and their stories, but even you, mr. neil, should know that there is proof (even outside of christianity) of the existences of most of the people talked about in the bible stories. whether or not the events of the stories took place as they are written is the only thing that can be debated about them. And for that matter you could also debate whether columbus was actually the person who named our native americans "indians," or whether alexander actually conquered as many lands as history lists. (i'm not claiming the bible is a good substitute for a history book, but there are other discrepencies in the fine lines of other catalogued events that we all accept as truth).

Well, it would be foolish to say that the Bible is entirely fiction. I do realize that some of these events happened, but the problem is you have the blending of fact and fantasy.
It's similar to something like Homer's Iliad, where there's a Trojan war described, and we've found the city of Troy and can prove that this battle happened.

However, there's a neat little problem with making the jump from accepting the Trojan War as fact to assuming that the entire Iliad is fact. For one thing, the story starts out with Paris judging a beauty contest among the Goddesses, and Aphrodite is the one that wins by bribing him with the most lengendary beauty of the time, Helen, and so the legend goes that Paris went to Greece, stole Helen from Menelaos.
Who knows if any of this stuff actually happened? No historian is willing to even suggest that there even was a historical Helen, but based on the conditions that the city's been found pretty much were Homer said was and that there's evidence of this great battle, the war is taken as historical.
Now, rationally speaking, there's no evidence against the existence of Helen, Paris, or even the Goddesses, but that doesn't follow that we accept any of them either.  That's how rational thinking works.

And this is what I see in the Bible. I see some stuff that I'm willing to admit actually happened, but I also see some really sketchy embelishments. As with Homer's Iliad, there are parts that we can confirm, parts that we can discount as historically accurate, and then there are just going to be those things that we'll never really know if it's historical or not.

There is an interesting note about Columbus, though. I'll have to find it later, but I seem to remember an expedition that actually found the remains of the encampment his men were stationed at after Columbus sailed back to Spain. And this was based on Columbus' notes.
That kind of stuff is the kind of stuff that adds credibility to the conditional acceptance that Columbus actually existed.

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one can not prove that the bible is fact (or historically accurate). but in the same way that one can not prove that it is fact, one can also not prove absolutely that it ISN'T fact. (i know you disagree about that statement, but i have yet to see any compelling point-to-point evidence that the bible is absolutely wrong on your behalf). so on the basis that you consider the bible to not be entirely fiction, i'll go back to my original opinion: there is a leap of faith being made in one's rejection towards believing what it says (i.e. not believing in christianity [and other religions, this just happens to be the one in the midst of the argument right now] takes as much faith as believing it). we know that there are parts of the book that are true, you believe parts are untrue (which, again, i have yet to see airtight proof for), but we all agree there are parts that are left open to interpretation and can't be proven right or wrong. there's the faith step, either way you choose, you're dealing with the same information as everyone else and making a personal decision to believe or disbelieve. either way, you don't know that you're absolutely right, so there has to be some form of faith involved in trusting your decision is correct. (and it isn't just apathy towards the subject that makes you reject it if you are going to take up the argument and discuss it with other people... that shows you care about it on a personal level, too).

If it takes a leap of faith to reject Christianity, then it also takes the same leap of faith to reject the existence of the Greek and Roman gods, or better yet, the Smurfs.
But that's not what I'm saying, anyway.  It's not my faith that these things aren't true.  I'm not committed to that ideal.  I simply reject things that aren't supportable.  That's different.

"but in the same way that one can not prove that it is fact, one can also not prove absolutely that it ISN'T fact. (i know you disagree about that statement, but i have yet to see any compelling point-to-point evidence that the bible is absolutely wrong on your behalf)"

So if something cannot be proved or disproven, then why should it even be considered, unless there's something to support it?  I chose to reject the so-called truth of the Bible because of the lack of evidence.
You're moving goal posts.  It's not my responsibility to deconfirm the Bible's historical accuracy.  It's up to the person making the claim.  The burden of proof is on the Christian to say that something is true.  I reject the Bible, and as such, my argument is that it is not worthy of consideration.  That's different than saying that it's false.
I don't have to disprove the Bible anymore than you have to disprove Odin or Thor.  Now, while I'm absolutely within my right by saying I don't have to, that wouldn't be very much fun now, would it?  So, to be a sport, I'm going to provide you with some proofs that the Bible cannot be completely true.

I'm sure you've heard the usual petty ones (i.e., the value of Pi, rabbits chewing cud, etc.) that annoy apologists and make them grit their teeth.  And these are usually answered with newly spun interpretations to patch up the holes and make it look like no error was found.
Indeed, if we were to go on a point-by-point basis through the Bible, and I just said, "I doubt this ever happened", you'd rightfully claim that no one can ever prove a negative.  For example, in principle, if the Bible said that Jesus did something he didn't actually do, I wouldn't be able to prove that.  It would simply remain something that no one could ever know for sure.

However, a case can be made for contradictions and inconsistancies.  There are books within the Bible that tell similar-if-not-the-same stories as one another.  For example, the Gospels all tell the story of the life of Christ.  Each of them are similar, but not precisely the same.
A good case for Biblical contradictions comes from Dan Barker's Easter Challenge.  His challenge is to take the four gospels and harmonize them into a coherent story, which cannot be done, and I invite you to try.  Be sure to read the whole page, though.

But my personal favorite is the number of Aramean chariots that David slew.  There is a direct contradiction between two different books in the Bible in respect to this numbers, and I'll be happy to show you...

"When it was told David, he gathered all Israel together, and crossed the Jordan, and came to Helam. The Arameans arrayed themselves against David and fought with him. The Arameans fled before Israel; and David slew 700 Aramean chariots and 40,000 horsemen, and wounded Shobach the commander of their army, so that he died there." - 2 Samuel 10:17-18

"When David was informed, he gathered all Israel together, crossed the Jordan, came to them, and drew up his forces against them. When David set the battle in array against the Arameans, they fought with him. The Arameans fled before Israel; and David slew 7,000 Aramean chariots and 40,000 foot soldiers, and also killed Shophach the commander of their army." - 1 Chronicles 19:17b-18

Well, surely these two accounts are open to interpretation, right?  There must be some way to harmonize them and show that they can actually be both correct, right?
Nope.  They both say the exact same thing, with the sole exception of the number of chariots.

"wayyacharog David me'aram sheva' me'ot rekev" - 2 Samuel 10:18 "wayyacharog David me'aram shiv'at 'alafim rekev" - 1 Chronicles 19:18

One is saying he slew 700; the other 7000.
Now, keep in mind that I cannot prove nor disprove which, if either, of these two accounts are correct.  I could never do that.  The point that I'm making, though, is that they both give a conflicting testamony, and as such, two contradictory accounts of the same event cannot represent a whole truth.
Therefore, at least one of these two passages is wrong, and thus the Bible has at least one error.

"(and it isn't just apathy towards the subject that makes you reject it if you are going to take up the argument and discuss it with other people... that shows you care about it on a personal level, too)"

Hey, I got an idea.  How about you stop discussing my intentions and talk about the topic?  Stop trying to read my mind.

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