I'm not an atheist, however the deep and persistent ignorance of believers is definitely pushing me in that direction. You say 'evolution can't be your answer', indicating both that you don't understand evolution and you're not interested in hearing the answers people have to your question. That's sort of 2 strikes right there, before you went to the trouble of leaving out the punctuation and capitalization. How do you expect to conduct a serious conversation on this topic when you're both closed-minded and uninformed at the same time?

Man will believe anything,that doesn't condem their way of life,man hates the fact that God commands us to live the way he says.To think we can tell God what to do with His creation.+5 I guess the God haters think we are not entitled to our and God's opinion.Read Romans 1:19-32,and see what the bible says an atheist truly is.

How do you know it was your God that created the earth.

alot of these questions humans do not have answers for, thats why they create a figure (god) to explane the things we humans can not.

Questioner, I find this question amusing. It reminds me of taking a child to play bumper-bowling. There are blocks set up, so that the ball can only get to the desired destination (and then the child is not disappointed). You do the same thing with your rules set in place for those who want to answer. It appears that you are trying to manipulate folks to see it your way without doing the real work that goes into a debate. Bumper bowling works fine for a child, but not for a grown up, who wants to use skill to play the game. It seems like a real waste of your time though, since, as I see it, there are plenty of questions on the topic of creation vs. evolution, where you can go and simply state your opinion for all who care to read it. Thanks for the chuckle.

Sad to see that this question downrated so much. I don't see anything offensive or stupid in this question, seems like you're genuinely interested. Especially since you know the difference from evolution and other scientific theories :D +4 from me. So here the actual answer (only valid for myself personally because atheists don't have fixed beliefs, they just don't believe in god). It became really long, sorry for that. But I promise it's at least interesting, whether you find it convincing or not;) First of all, you're question is based on a wrong assumption. You assume that god is a more or less good explanation for the question of how we got here. That's not true, god is pretty much the worst explanatin you can get. Here is why: Something coming from nothing is hard to accept. Something always being there is also hard to accept, yet more likely. So what is this something? The more complex something is, the better the explanation for it needs to be to convince. If you find a stone and ask where it came from, and someone answers 'just kinda happened' you wouldn't see this as very improbable, since stones are not very complex, put some minerals together, heat them up, let them cool and you get stones. However, if you ask 'where did that squirrel come from?', you can't answer 'it just kinda happened'. A squirrel is very complex, its built of billions of cells, each cell being a chemical factory working together in intriguing chemical chain reaction to coordinate the behavior and the appearance of the squirrel. I could go on about this but you get the point. Squirrels don't just happen when you throw some elements together. They 'NEED' a good explanation. This explanation is evolution. I don't know how much you know about evolution, you're question suggests that you get what it is about, whether you accept it or not. Evolution is fact and theory. It is (part of) the explanation of how complex organisms such as squirrels, trees, mushrooms and humans got here. Evolution shows that simplicity can lead to complexity. With small, gradual steps that accumulate over time, the systems gradually became more complex. That took quite some time, but it's important that you really understand this. Because now we can go back to god. God is allpowerful, omniscient, capable of intelligently designing the whole universe including us, and, at least according to some Christians (I don't know what exactly you believe) capable of bending or breaking the laws of physics (making what we call 'miracles'). So god can do way more things than a squirrel. He is very very complex. Therefore, god needs very very convincing explanation! If I say 'the squirrel just happened', you look at me like I'm stupid. However, you say 'God just happened'. God is waaaay more complex than a squirrel, and additionally, there is no possibility of evolution to account for this complexity. God is defined as the 'first cause'. So basically you're saying that the most complex thing you can think of just happened. I might as well say the whole universe 'just happened' without giving evolution and other science as explanation. I can postulate the whole universe, and it would still be more likely to have been this way, because the whole universe is less complex than something that created AND completely controls it. God is just postulated without explanation. This doesn't just not explain anything, it actually makes thigns even harder to explain than in the beginning, because when one wonders where god came from, one is left with an even bigger problem. God is not an explanation. And note: All I've discussed 'till here is just god defined as 'creator'. If you mean the Christian God, then there are lots of other questions and problems (no evidence that makes Christianity more valid than Islam or Hinduism, why is there so much suffering, why does god supposedly create us in his image, yet we're only one out of millions of species on a planet which is one out of hundred trillions of planets etc...) So god doesn't seem like a good explanation. Now what IS a good explanation? We can say 'I don't know' and in my opinion, that's better than just accepting something irrational without any evidence for it, especially when this belief in god correlates with being judgemental towards others and telling them they will go to hell or whatever. Anyways, the 'first cause' had to be something simple, like a rock, something that can 'just kinda happen'. Scientists think it's some kind of quantum fluctuation, anti-particles and particles somehow crashing into each other, one annihilates the other, it set's off a chain reaction and the whole thing gets started. Where did the particles/energy come from? They were always there. It has actually been measured that even in vacuums, there are particles appearing and dis-appearing constantly, it's called 'casimir effect', you can look it up. Many physicists actually believe, and the number is increasing, that there are billions of universes. I'm not telling you this stuff because I find it very convincing. I have no idea how on earth something could always exist, and it boggles the heck out of my mind to think about such matters. I'm just saying that simplicity is the kind of explanation that we should be looking for, and the god explanation is most likely wrong. Sciences still has a lot to find out concerning the big bang (by the way I'm really looking forward to when they can start the LHC again, that might give some more insight to those matters). But scientists accept that they don't know everything, they don't make something up and declare it as unquestionable dogma. After the big bang, matter clustered due to gravity, gravity being a consequence of the fundamental properties of energy, as height is a consequence of the property of a stone. So it clustered and formed stars and planets. In stars, mattered fused together and the elements were formed, hydrogen fused into helium, and when the star got older in the rest of the natural elements of the periodic table. After this, the star either exploded or imploded, leaving stardust with vital elements behind. Our planet is about a third or fourth generation planet I think, that's why there are the vital elements on earth... So the earth cooled down, and somehow, again we don't know, but we can make educated guesses, molecules reacted and formed the first self-replicating cycle (or macromolecule). That thing was much simpler than DNA, yet still pretty complex. So it kinda does need an explanation. But first: After we have a self-replicating entity, evoluton takes off. In every process, there are small 'errors' due to accidents. Most errors tend to mess up the thing, yet by statistics, some errors happen to improve a vital property of molecule, making it better at replicating. Those molecules then 'evolved' mechanisms to split other molecules and use the resources, countering that they might have evolved 'protection', and after millions of years in that 'soup full of chemical reactions', the first cell developed. Evolution went on, climbed some major improbable cliffs such as the ganging together of cells, or the evolution of consciousness and common sense in humans and that's how we got here. So we're left to explain how the first replicator got there, and why evolution took a path that led to intelligence. The explanation for the replicator is the following: Replicators are complex, they are very improbable to just happen, yet the are ALLOWED to be improbable. Why? Because there are hundred billions of stars in our galaxy, and hundred billions of galaxies in the universe. Many of those countless stars have one or more planets. Out of all those countless planets, at least one of them had the right conditions for life to get started. Out of all millions of possible lottery number combinations, if millions of people play, one person 'has' to win the jackpot. And there was also plenty of time for it to happen, 500 million years or so. Thats a lot of collisions of molecules! It only had to happend once in the whole universe to explain our existance, and because we're here talking about it, it happened at least in our case. If someone says 'look how eart has the perfect distance to the nearest star, and how our moon stabilizes the axis of rotation so that life is possible and so on', I answer 'OMG, you won't believe me, I saw a car licence plate with the signs 'AG 938440', what are the odds that out of all possible cars I see exactly that licence plate?'. You cannot calculate probablities that way AFTER the event has happened. Of course the earth is perfect for life, because life has happed here! There is no way to know for sure, but I would guess that there is a lot of extraterrestrial life in the universe. The universe is just so massively huge that it seems unlikely that we're the only place where life 'has happened'. There might be millions of planets with life. That would also explain why evolution took the somewhat improbable path towards intelligence. Don't get me wrong, because of arms-races, evolution DOES lead to complexity, what I mean by improbably is just things like the formation of multi-cellular organisms for example, without this wathershed event intelligence would't be possible and the world would still only consist of bacteria (as it did like 70% of the time actually). Well I hope that helped and you now understand how someone manages to not believe in god. Feel free to ask further questions if you want to have something elaborated. I can imagine that you might want to know 'where, in my opinion, morality came from', or 'why do you even bother going to school when you're going to die anyways'. I can answer those questions if you're interested, just let me know.

Evolution. It condensed from stellar matter. Sorry pal, you don't get to limit reality. The animal that I evolved from got here the same way I did. http://godisimaginary.com/

Evolution certainly can be my answer. The question is how did WE get here. Humans got here through evolution. The first organisms' origin is still not completely answered but most likely originated through chemical evolution. Much testing has been done in this area that confirms the hypothesis. Earth is one of many results of the "Big Bang".

I didn't mean to answer this...

no offence to anyone ment, but recently scientists found a huge gap between human DNA and Primate DNA so are there any other thoughts on how life got here?

This question goes either way, because you have no idea if god even exists. It's your personal belief that you think god is real and you obviously believe it very well, seeing that you think there is no other alternative. And evolution is my answer. No one has the answers, we just have what we think the answer is, and I like the theory with the most empirical evidence. :)

How about a "prime mover"? (A "God", sure, if you need to conceptualize it that way, but certainly not some loving father who watches over all of our individual activities during the day then tucks us into bed at night.) *Then* evolution does the rest! ;-)

There is no answer to this and that's why people made up god. I only believe in facts and it's a fact that no one on this planet has proof that god exists so I have no reason to believe in any god.

This is not a true answer really but it's something that someone said to me at the start of my faith journey that just made me think: ~ I was asking similar questions to alot of new Christians I suspect about Big Bang v's Creation etc. etc. and was told this ~ do you believe that your lovely clothes were made by accident or design? ~ er design. Do you think the practical shoes you wear are on your feet by accident or design? ~ er design. Do you think that the intricate watch you wear is an accident or design? ~ er design. And the mobile 'phone in your hand with all it's amazing gadgets and gizmo's ~ accident or design? Same answer.. so the hand that holds your 'phone, the one full of nerves, cells, vessels, with the most fantastic ability to do thousands of precise movements with a myriad of emotion and feeling ~ accident or design? You decide ~ made me think, that's for sure!!! Every blessing CC xx

Evolution doesn't explain everything, but it explains an awful lot.. As to the 'spark' which the first life came from.. i dont know, but i believe science can come up with a far more plausable explanation than an all knowing all seeing supernatural being, that is both everywhere and nowhere, and has magical powers.

1) Please read accurately the wonderful explanations that science has already found about the processes of evolution, abiogenesis and cosmology. And I mean that you read the real scientific explanations, not some pseudoscience written by a random "intelligent design" or mythological prosa by a supporter or creationist. Those are infinitely superior to any mythologies ever invented by man. Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmology 2) Of course, science does not have all the answers. And some of science theories are only conjectural. This is not the case, however, of evolution, which is a fact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact 3) If you want to say that, where science does not have the answers, God's Hand is to be seen, this is your right. But this does not help the scientist who will always look for sensible explanations. 4) Last but not least, the God presented by most religions, for instance the God that you can see in action in the Bible, certainly does not exist. It could at the best be the transcription of some former contact of humanity with extraterrestrial intelligence and at the worst be something like a psychological illusion. Some theologians, however, recognize this absurdity and have built totally different concepts of deity. Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptions_of_God

Okay. No matter what you think of evolution, it IS how I got here - after life began on earth. How did life begin? We are not sure - but have some hypotheses and some possible steps have been replicated. How the earth got here? Accretion of dust and gas after ignition of the sun. How the sun got here? A similar sort of process. We can go back to literally milliseconds after the Big Bang and explain roughly how things came to be. Before that, we still don't know. "Don't know" does NOT, however, allow someone to say "Well, you don't know so we never will so it was MY god wot diddit and no-one else's god 'cause they are all illusions or superstitions and you can't prove it wasn't so that proves it's true and you'll burn in eternal torment after you die if you don't believe me right now!"

This is like asking how galaxies formed from gas nebulas and not allowing gravity to be the answer. sometimes the obvious answer is the correct one and as evolution explains perfectly what we see, then it is safe to assume that it is the answer as to how we are here today

Big Bang Then several billion years of stuff. The Ambiogenesis. Then Evolution. Then my parents screwed at just the ritght time (BTW - do you realize just how unlikely it was for them to do the deed at just the right moment? Had any other sperm met any other egg in there, it wouldn't have been me.) And now I'm here. You?

Pure chance. The tendency of large energy flows to create patterns out of nothing in particular. And some of those patterns showed the capability for self-replication - again in an environment of energy flows. From which evolution follows. Most people tend to regard the universe as a "steady state", and steady states don't create things. On the contrary, the universe consists of a fantastic flow of energy, both in space (the fantastic heat of the centre of a supernova to the icy wasted of space) and in time (from the near infinite heat of the Big Bang to the cold-death of the infinitely expanding universe). In this prodigious flood of matter/energy, all sorts of whirls and turbulence are produced. And given the astonishing size of the Universe, and the astonish time scales over which it has existed, almost anything can happen - and has. Any judgments based on earth-bound senses as to what is, and is not, probably are just incapable of understanding the huge numbers involved.

I'm happy with the idea of chemicals coming together to form basic life in the early days of this planet & the planet being formed by the big bang. How we got here from those basic chemicals, evolution. I know there are a few holes or issues to address with this but it's more feasible than the alternative.

I'm pretty happy with the current scientific explanation. That is, it starts with what is called The Big Bang (because there is really nothing else you could call it). That's when all the matter in the universe (including what you and I are made of, just in a different form) "exploded" from a point which I would assume is the "center" of the universe. Now we have the universe. Then, a bunch of stuff called cosmic evolution happened, which you can look up because it's really too much to explain. This is what made the galaxies, stars, and planets. Now we have Earth. Then, abiogenesis happened. For a decent explanation of it see this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg&feature=PlayList&p=0696457CAFD6D7C9&index=0). In short, abiogenesis explains how life came from "nothing." Now we have life. Then, evolution happened. Yes, that is a valid answer. Now we have us. Of course, this is a very simplistic timeline. Any words in quotation marks is descriptive enough for the purposes of this answer, but is probably not very accurate scientifically.

How do Athiests believe we got here. The VERY honest answer is: "We don't know.". Nobody really knows that answer. there are theories, and incomplete facts that we are discovering every day. Mankind has not pieced the puzzle together yet. but to simply say "God did it." and stop there is encouraging ignorance, and with what little we have discovered so far, that kind of enforced ignorance is borderline lunacy. Perhaps a better analogy of Athiests is not that we believe that there is NO God, but rather we don't even know what God IS.

evolution hasn't been proved, Creation has been. look around on the web for about 3yrs for evidence for Creation, you'll find it. 1st, prove the Bible is untrue [ya can't do it, except by some corruptstupid/ignorant/uninform "scholar" or scientist. once the Bible proved true, and it is, then every wod in it has to be true. try it, but it's a free country.

When is god going to explain where HE came from? Another planet I suspect, but I'm not certain "he" even exist..check...I'm almost certain "he" doesn't exist.

Mummy and daddy got romantic one night..... Seriously though, evolution describes how life evolved into different forms, including us. It does not address how life first started - there are other hypotheses for that. However, what's the big problem with saying "I don't know"? And, more to the point, why is it that "I don't know" is closely followed by "Then it must have been God".

The earth slowly coalesced of millions or billions of years as matter spit out by the big bang slowly cooled and gravity pulled those particles towards and eventually into each other. . As for evolution, it is my answer, because quite simply out billions and billions of planets the odds are not only quite high, but actually almost mandate lifes spontainious generation. From there natural selection and evolution bring us to where we are today. . And we don't need to know, which animal we elvolved from, to determine that evolution has occured. Do you know the serial number off the one dollar bill you gave to the clerk when she handed you back those two quarters in your pocket? No? Just because you don't know every detail doesn't mean you couldn't have payed for it.

I don't know where the universe came from. Maybe there is a natural process we don't yet understand. Maybe there was a superior intelligence that created the universe and then walked away. In my opinion, anyone who states with 100% certainty one or the other is being intellectually dishonest. However, I will say that it is highly unlikely that the universe was created by an intelligent, personal, loving god like the popular Judeo-Christian-Islamic diety.

Answering a question you don’t know the answer to by saying a god must have done it is neither correct, satisfying nor even adult. Throughout history mankind has answered question upon question with the explanation of a god, only for all of them to be proved with time to be wrong....why should this instance be any different?