I just don't buy that some quantum fluctuation in a multiverse resulted in a singularity that expanded into everything we see. That is an explanation, but the scientific proof of that theory is just as speculative as a creation of the universe by God.
Maybe so. Maybe the whole universe visible universe is just a simulation in a computer, like the movie "Matrix".
If you tell the the universe was created by
A God, I can't disprove it, and neither can anybody else.
(Proving negatives is impossible, that's why the
burden of proof is
on the people making the claim, not on the people who don't believe in that claim).
The part I have a problem with is that it was created by the god described in the Christian Bible.
Basing your life on The Bible makes absolutely no sense to me. Basing your life on Harry Potter seems sensible by comparison.
Further, am I to believe that atoms ordered themselves into the first cell?
Not in a single giant step, no.
Am I to believe that the first cell just appeared?
See above.
Am I to believe that evolution shaped the course of biological history? That by the power of natural selection (i.e. death) the complexity of life was advanced far beyond the complexity of a single cell? On what basis?
The theory of evolution is beautifully elegant and easy to understand. That's what makes it so compelling.
The fossil record exists - we can see parts of evolution happening.
We know about DNA, we can see mutations and adaptations happening. The genome project has pretty much confirmed evolution as fact now.
(Remember: Darwin formed the theory long before we knew about DNA. He had no idea how it happened. Then, bang! DNA was discovered and we had the mechanism. It matched the theory perfectly. That's science in action...)
Science has so far fallen short of an adequate explanation for me on these questions.
I'd think that engineers could recognize that highly improbable things do happen. But they usually happen on purpose.
Nope. Hardly anything in science happens on purpose. It's just vast numbers of atoms hitting each other randomly.
Things happening on purpose is engineering, not science.
The other particular question is, "why Jesus?" To this I'd say the major influence on me was reading the new testament. Yes, our earliest fragments of the new testament are dated some 30 years after Jesus died. And the majority of the new testament wasn't written by people who knew Jesus, but by people who knew people who knew Jesus. But the claims written down are incredible. The resurrection of Jesus is frankly an outlandish claim.
The resurrection wasn't in those first fragments. It was added much later and not included in the "official" Bible until the fifth century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark#The_ending_of_the_gospel_of_MarkAlso very interesting is what the Quran has to say about the crucifixion. The Quran says the whole thing was faked:
(Surah 4)
157. That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah.;- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-
158. Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise;-
http://www.wright-house.com/religions/islam/Quran/4-women.php#155After all, all the Jews or Romans had to do was to produce Jesus' body and the whole thing would have been settled.
Either that, or ... the entire thing is a work of fiction. It didn't happen. There's not a single piece of solid evidence that it isn't a subversive 1st century novel that people chose to believe as real events.
Remember: There was no TV or Internet back than. Any minstrel could walk into any tavern and sing a song about a man named Jesus.
Do it enough times and that person takes life, eg.: King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.
I humbly ask you to read the new testament if you have never done so.
I've read it.
The great Roman census? Never happened. Herod's killing of all the males under 2 years old? Never happened. Tell me: If all the actual verifiable claims in the New Testament turn out to be false, why would the non-verifiable claims be truth?
What about all the gospels that never made it into the final edit? There's a
lot of them. What makes the other gospels any less valid than the four official ones?
Why did Peter's Gospel not make it in? Wasn't he the most important disciple?
What about the Gospel of Thomas where young Jesus uses his magic powers to kill other children, then when the parents come to Joseph's house to complain he turns them all blind (a variation of this story is also in the Quran so it has independent verification...)
I don't accept the claim that it is just like the Quran. I've read some of it also, and it's a different book about a different set of beliefs.
Folk tales are like that. Look at how many different Christian religions there are. Imagine if the Catholics and Baptists both ignored their copies of The Bible and only passed it along by word of mouth for 200 years. After that time they both write a Bible. My Guess? You'd have two completely different books at the end of it, even though they were both based on the same original text.
nb. Yes, both of those books
would be an example of evolution. selection works for ideas as well as biology, each person in the chain selects the interpretation of the story they like best and repeats that altered version to the next generation. Eventually the story is distorted.
(If you've never played [url-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers]Chinese Whispers[/url], you should. You'll be
shocked at how distorted a message can get with just a single phrase and four or five people passing it along).