Evolution, creation or something else?

[WITHTEETH]

I think you misunderstood. I mean there is religion, and then there is belief in a higher power, and the two are different things. I suppose the latter is required by the former, but you can believe in a higher power without subscribing to a certain methodology.

 

Yep. You certainly don

[Benjamin Korr]

Well I'm going to appeal to everyone's logical side for a moment.

 

I'm a Christian, I tell you that right up front, but I'm not one who trys to shove what I believe down your throat. You've got a right to believe whatever you want to believe, and if you think you can prove something, well that's for you to decide.

 

Consider this though: If I choose to believe that the earth was created by God, a being of such power and magnitude He is incomprehensible to us, others who believe in evolution generally critisize me for beleving in a myth of unproveable proportions.

 

However, an evolutionist chooses to believe that everything in the universe originated out of absolutely nothing 15 billion years ago and slowly formed into what we see today.

 

If you want to believe that, that's fine. But you have to admit there is no way to prove that it happened that way. You may have evidence that seems to lend towards that theory, but you cannot prove it. Is it so much harder to believe everything was created by God than it is to believe everything was created by boom?

 

So all I'm saying is, if you want to believe that way, that's fine. Just realize you can no more prove your theory than I can prove that God created everything.

 

If you were walking through a forest and came upon a magnificent painting hanging on a tree with no evidence that anyone had ever passed by that way, you would still assume that the painting was created by someone. The odds of all the right compounds coming together to make such a painting by chance are so slim it isn't worth calculating, and yet evolutionists have no trouble swalowing the idea that EVERYTHING was made in just that manner. At the same time though, they will readily ridicule anyone who believes that this incredible universe we live in was created by God.

 

I know creationists can be irreasonable and illogical at times, they say "It's in the Bible so it's true!" Well I believe in the Bible but I also know that some people don't and so I can only hope to at least open your mind to the possibility that everything around us was designed.

[Hurlshort]

WITHTEETH, I appreciate your explanation and I'm not arguing with it at all. But I still don't see how we get higher thinking, reason, and emotion out of this DNA. Sure, genes can point to certain behavioral patterns, but it's a long jump from living material to man.

 

Why aren't there other species capable of higher thought? I've seen trained dolphins and monkeys, but there is a huge gap between what humans are capable and the rest of the animal kingdom? Why?

[Pidesco]

WITHTEETH, I appreciate your explanation and I'm not arguing with it at all. But I still don't see how we get higher thinking, reason, and emotion out of this DNA. Sure, genes can point to certain behavioral patterns, but it's a long jump from living material to man.

 

Why aren't there other species capable of higher thought? I've seen trained dolphins and monkeys, but there is a huge gap between what humans are capable and the rest of the animal kingdom? Why?

 

Human neocortex is just larger and more complex than the neocortex of other species. So, functionally at least, that's just like asking why a dog's nose is better than a person's nose.

[Qwerty the Sir]

What exactly is intelligent design?

 

When people explained it to me before, it seemed to either fall into the realm of young or old earth creationism or theological evolution. Does it have an original or unique view on the issue?

 

Also, I saw some Richard Dawkins' God Delusion, excerpts here. Now, that is not exactly what I consider a strong or convincing case against God (rather polemical invective). William Rowe has done much work on the philosophy of religion and he is a great resource for those interested in the arguments (he takes the negative view on the arguments, but even though I disagree with him, I find his work is indepth, non polemical and invaluable).

 

As to Dawkins himself, there were many reviews of his book after it came out, but this one particularly stood out to me. It is by Thomas Nagel (who I believe does not believe in God), who takes issue with and focuses on the philosophical aspects of Dawkins' book.

 

Some excerpts:

 

In a previous chapter, Dawkins dismisses, with contemptuous flippancy the traditional a priori arguments for the existence of God offered by Aquinas and Anselm. I found these attempts at philosophy, along with those in a later chapter on religion and ethics, particularly weak; Dawkins seems to have felt obliged to include them for the sake of completeness. But his real concern is with the argument from design, because there the conflict between religious belief and atheism takes the form of a scientific disagreement--a disagreement over the most plausible explanation of the observable evidence. He argues that contemporary science gives us decisive reason to reject the argument from design, and to regard the existence of God as overwhelmingly improbable.

 

This was my impression as well.

 

The reason that we are led to the hypothesis of a designer by considering both the watch and the eye is that these are complex physical structures that carry out a complex function, and we cannot see how they could have come into existence out of unorganized matter purely on the basis of the purposeless laws of physics. For the elements of which they are composed to have come together in just this finely tuned way purely as a result of physical and chemical laws would have been such an improbable fluke that we can regard it in effect as impossible: the hypothesis of chance can be ruled out. But God, whatever he may be, is not a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world. The explanation of his existence as a chance concatenation of atoms is not a possibility for which we must find an alternative, because that is not what anybody means by God. If the God hypothesis makes sense at all, it offers a different kind of explanation from those of physical science: purpose or intention of a mind without a body, capable nevertheless of creating and forming the entire physical world. The point of the hypothesis is to claim that not all explanation is physical, and that there is a mental, purposive, or intentional explanation more fundamental than the basic laws of physics, because it explains even them.

 

All explanations come to an end somewhere. The real opposition between Dawkins's physicalist naturalism and the God hypothesis is a disagreement over whether this end point is physical, extensional, and purposeless, or mental, intentional, and purposive. On either view, the ultimate explanation is not itself explained. The God hypothesis does not explain the existence of God, and naturalistic physicalism does not explain the laws of physics.

 

A very important point on the underlying assumptions of each paradigm and how they lead to different conclusions.

 

Unfortunately, most papers which carried the article have archived it (requiring subscription). I found the full article on Google's cache, but it is hosted by The New Republic; not a publication I would like to associate with or endorse. Quite idiotically, they entitled the page "The problem with atheism" which is not what the Nagel article is about.

 

pg. 1: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Tdt8eM...t=clnk&cd=3

 

pg. 2: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Tdt8eM...t=clnk&cd=3

Edited July 22, 2007 by Qwerty the Sir

[Pidesco]

Well I'm going to appeal to everyone's logical side for a moment.

 

I'm a Christian, I tell you that right up front, but I'm not one who trys to shove what I believe down your throat. You've got a right to believe whatever you want to believe, and if you think you can prove something, well that's for you to decide.

 

Consider this though: If I choose to believe that the earth was created by God, a being of such power and magnitude He is incomprehensible to us, others who believe in evolution generally critisize me for beleving in a myth of unproveable proportions.

 

However, an evolutionist chooses to believe that everything in the universe originated out of absolutely nothing 15 billion years ago and slowly formed into what we see today.

 

If you want to believe that, that's fine. But you have to admit there is no way to prove that it happened that way. You may have evidence that seems to lend towards that theory, but you cannot prove it. Is it so much harder to believe everything was created by God than it is to believe everything was created by boom?

 

So all I'm saying is, if you want to believe that way, that's fine. Just realize you can no more prove your theory than I can prove that God created everything.

 

Some evidence is better than no evidence at all.

 

Besides, the debate isn't between belief in evolution and belief in God. It's between belief because of evidence and belief regardless of evidence.

 

I believe in evolution because evidence appears to support it. If some evidence appears that disproves evolution, I will stop believing in it.

 

If you were walking through a forest and came upon a magnificent painting hanging on a tree with no evidence that anyone had ever passed by that way, you would still assume that the painting was created by someone. The odds of all the right compounds coming together to make such a painting by chance are so slim it isn't worth calculating, and yet evolutionists have no trouble swalowing the idea that EVERYTHING was made in just that manner. At the same time though, they will readily ridicule anyone who believes that this incredible universe we live in was created by God.

 

I know creationists can be irreasonable and illogical at times, they say "It's in the Bible so it's true!" Well I believe in the Bible but I also know that some people don't and so I can only hope to at least open your mind to the possibility that everything around us was designed.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_an...chmaker_Analogy

[WITHTEETH]

If you were walking through a forest and came upon a 1 magnificent painting hanging on a tree with no evidence that anyone had ever passed by that way, you would still assume that the painting was created by someone. 2 The odds of all the right compounds coming together to make such a painting by chance are so slim it isn't worth calculating, and yet evolutionists have no trouble swalowing the idea that EVERYTHING was made in just that manner. At the same time though, they will readily ridicule anyone who believes that this incredible universe we live in was created by God.

 

I know creationists can be irreasonable and illogical at times, they say "It's in the Bible so it's true!" Well I believe in the Bible but I also know that some people don't and so I can only hope to at least open your mind to the possibility that everything around us was designed.

Firstly, the universe wasn't made of nothing it was made of matter/energy that always existed crashing and colliding finding compatibility. This clump of energy/matter formed a Super Cooled Higgs Field and triggered the big bang. Or so the hypothesis goes. Our observations are limited of course. Yet it doesn't try to make absolute knowledge from a book that contradicts itself with 2 different Genesis versions like the bible does inartfully.

 

1 art is subjective, if you want to call a tree or painting beautiful thats great. Evolution doesn't care of such things, evolution is a mechanism to create, just like your specific version of a god that co authors books and acts as a omniscient real estate agent to people of Judaism.

 

2 Given that time is infinite, a random event occurring, even with odds of 10 to the power of 119,000, is not astonishing. By the way, how do you formulate an equation without knowing all of the variables in the equation? This must be Christian math

[Nick_i_am]

Remember all those peices of toast with seemingly randomly created images of the virgin mary on them?

 

I'm just saying.

[seejai]

like i said... that proof isnt enough for me and mine wont be enough for u

 

So we are at an impasse...

that happaned sooo long ago lol

 

...but there is a difference between religion and the belief in a higher power (God, Allah, Mother Earth, call it what you will.) You do not need to subscribe to a certain methodology to believe that life is a gift and the human spirit is greater than we can define. There will never be a good enough explanation for love and reason that will stop me from seeing it as supernatural in nature.

I believe the major difference between religion and belief, is that religion has an absolute doctrine that is unchanging and cannot be proved upon... unlike science where its beliefs are self correcting, peer reviewed etc... Where as the bible cannot be, but i think the bible could be personally improved by sayings from basic philosophy, even saying something like though should not harm your children.

 

I think you misunderstood. I mean there is religion, and then there is belief in a higher power, and the two are different things. I suppose the latter is required by the former, but you can believe in a higher power without subscribing to a certain methodology.

yes i am antireligion but i have beliefs

 

Well I'm going to appeal to everyone's logical side for a moment.

 

I'm a Christian, I tell you that right up front, but I'm not one who trys to shove what I believe down your throat. You've got a right to believe whatever you want to believe, and if you think you can prove something, well that's for you to decide.

 

Consider this though: If I choose to believe that the earth was created by God, a being of such power and magnitude He is incomprehensible to us, others who believe in evolution generally critisize me for beleving in a myth of unproveable proportions.

 

However, an evolutionist chooses to believe that everything in the universe originated out of absolutely nothing 15 billion years ago and slowly formed into what we see today.

 

If you want to believe that, that's fine. But you have to admit there is no way to prove that it happened that way. You may have evidence that seems to lend towards that theory, but you cannot prove it. Is it so much harder to believe everything was created by God than it is to believe everything was created by boom?

 

So all I'm saying is, if you want to believe that way, that's fine. Just realize you can no more prove your theory than I can prove that God created everything.

 

If you were walking through a forest and came upon a magnificent painting hanging on a tree with no evidence that anyone had ever passed by that way, you would still assume that the painting was created by someone. The odds of all the right compounds coming together to make such a painting by chance are so slim it isn't worth calculating, and yet evolutionists have no trouble swalowing the idea that EVERYTHING was made in just that manner. At the same time though, they will readily ridicule anyone who believes that this incredible universe we live in was created by God.

 

I know creationists can be irreasonable and illogical at times, they say "It's in the Bible so it's true!" Well I believe in the Bible but I also know that some people don't and so I can only hope to at least open your mind to the possibility that everything around us was designed.

 

i think u explained that pretty good. it seems like i have a much easier time excepting that ppl can believe evolution than ppl have excepting that i believe in creation. for me, the fact that theres agreat improbability of it all just happening at random and us all being designed so complexly (even with survival of the fittest) is a bit of a disprove for me. dont get me wrong, i know thats not proof of anysort for you guys

[Musopticon?]

Just to show where I stand in this thread.

 

I believe in evolution. I can't think of any convincing arguments against it, while arguments and in fact evidence, from bird's wings evolving to fins and from butterflies exhibiting surrounding pollution-grey texture on thie naturally white clear wings, are staggering. Not to mention, natural selection is plain in nature and evolution is just follows, survival of the fittest, on cell level and on organism level.

 

The evidence is so much for it that I see it rather pointless to try to present silly old earth theories, etc(I mean, c'mon, why didn't Noah carry a couple of dinos over the flood? I always wanted to see one). And why should we? Speaking from a Finnish Lutheran perspective, believing on evolution, big bang, etc doesn't discredit religion in the least. And not just believing, thinking them right from a logical standpoint.

 

That said, I don't believe in the divinity of the Logos, rather, I prefer the stuff in there to be "divinely inspired", rather than "truth". Bible is silly in that there's been so many writers over so many ages and suddenly everything is set to stone and canon established and then you can't add you own stories anymore, but have to seek ways to interpret old ones to modern context. Which in itself is a lost cause. Funniest and saddest thing probably is that, there wouldn't be any need for priests and hence organisational christianity without the bearded dudes in Nicaea and Constantinople back then deciding that we'd forever need interpreters for dogma and "divine register", like lawyers in a court.

[Benjamin Korr]

What do mathematicians say that the chances are of an omnipotent god coming into being? Apparently you didn't think about it quite enough.

 

Back up there a second. God never came into being. God has always existed. God is infinate and we are not. Now you can not believe in God all you want, but I believe that science can only explain how God's creation works, not how it came to be.

[Calax]

What do mathematicians say that the chances are of an omnipotent god coming into being? Apparently you didn't think about it quite enough.

 

Back up there a second. God never came into being. God has always existed. God is infinate and we are not. Now you can not believe in God all you want, but I believe that science can only explain how God's creation works, not how it came to be.

theres the paradox.

 

Old earth creationists reconcile evolution with creationism by saying that the Seven Days was actually close to 4 billion years and so on and so fourth.

 

Young earth creationists are just nutjobs, and just fyi, EVERYTHING has to have a beginning. You can't say that this nut case of an omnipotent person would sit around and twiddle his thumbs for an eternity before deciding he's lonely and needs a toy to play with.

 

Gods are created to help humans define the world. If there is an unknown that we can't understand or see we proclaim it to be the work of god. If we didn't we'd probably have gone insane or become a very very bored and scared society. Humans as a race cannot define Nothing except as the absence of something because of the way our head works. we don't notice where there is nothing, only where something moves or is shown do we notice it.

[Hell Kitty]

Remember all those peices of toast with seemingly randomly created images of the virgin mary on them?

 

virgin mary toast evolved from square toast?

[Gorth]

I dunno. I think taks and Gorth have always been the most reasonable among us when it comes to religion. I understand they disagree with me completely, but they've always been willing to hear different views and respond honestly with their opinion.

Taks is cool. See below...

 

Cant, I was actually expecting something a little more serious in reply, though I understand how uncomfortable it must be to have cherished beliefs challenged in such a way, so I will continue to expound some thoughts so that you may digest them and perhaps reply in some meaningful way.

Wow, are we in an ugly and condescending mood today. Go back to your corner and sulk.

 

knowing the box from within the box is difficult indeed.

Taks wins this thread, not matter what else comes after

 

Through this method is where scientists think life started, a cell...

 

So where is the barrier of living and non living. The line of life starts with a cell. (early life studies is what you'll want to look into).

Good question. Are prions living things or not? The have the traits of something alive, yet they are not even "cells" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

 

Young earth creationists are just nutjobs, and just fyi, EVERYTHING has to have a beginning.

Why must it have that? As Taks said, just because we (as far as I know) can not imagine something outside time does not mean there isn't anything before and after time

[Guest The Architect]

There is no god, so there is no creation. Its all evolution, survival of the fittest.

 

Uh, so what's with the Satanic avatar then? If you believe in Satan, that means you believe in God, because without God, Satan can't exist, so you're contradicting yourself, if you do believe in Satan.

 

Anyway, WITHTEETH, you've certainly done a decent job of convincing me that spontaneous generation is actually possible. Still, and don't ask me why, I just don't think it's possible for something to have always been there. I mean, where did the matter/energy come from? How could it have just been always there? So on that basis... I ah... can't really believe in God, because how could God have just always been there? Omnipotent being or not, that's just... well, I don't know, I'm just gonna stop there, about this whole subject. Otherwise my head will explode.

Edited July 23, 2007 by The Architect

[Nick_i_am]

Remember all those peices of toast with seemingly randomly created images of the virgin mary on them?

 

virgin mary toast evolved from square toast?

 

When a painting apears in a forest it's a statistical improbability, unless it's a picture that vaigely represents somthing religious, then suddenly it's a miricle.

[Xard]

There is no god, so there is no creation. Its all evolution, survival of the fittest.

 

Uh, so what's with the Satanic avatar then? If you believe in Satan, that means you believe in God, because without God, Satan can't exist, so you're contradicting yourself, if you do believe in Satan.

 

Pentagram ain't exactly related to satan worshipping nor satanism is worshipping satan

[Calax]

Young earth creationists are just nutjobs, and just fyi, EVERYTHING has to have a beginning.

Why must it have that? As Taks said, just because we (as far as I know) can not imagine something outside time does not mean there isn't anything before and after time

If it was outside time then we don't get free will because he/she/it controls every action we make at every moment. And without a beginning there can be nothing.

[Guest The Architect]

Pentagram ain't exactly related to satan worshipping nor satanism is worshipping satan

 

Oh, okay. In that case, I'll shut up then.

[Hell Kitty]

Pentagram ain't exactly related to satan worshipping nor satanism is worshipping satan

 

Oh, okay. In that case, I'll shut up then.

 

Yeah, mostly it's just related to being a try-hard.

[Meshugger]

Interesting to see how the thread has gone from the use of empirical evidence in evolution to borderline philosophy: "How do we view reality? What is time? What is life? Can we actually understand/know everything?", which is an evolution of the thread itself.

[Xard]

Pentagram ain't exactly related to satan worshipping nor satanism is worshipping satan

 

Oh, okay. In that case, I'll shut up then.

 

Yeah, mostly it's just related to being a try-hard.

 

[Oerwinde]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_an...chmaker_Analogy

 

I like how they point out that the watchmaker analogy is more supportive of a polytheistic pantheon rather than the single christian god. For ODIN!

[Xard]

I agree.

 

Only religion that truly makes sense is Buddhism, and even it (like Hinduism) counters one major problem: Number of people are constantly growing. Remembering every people continue to reincarnate again and again until they can break away from cycle of rebirth and be free, total amount of humans should stay same, actually microscopically decrease with every now and then someone becoming Buddha (and thus one of the reincarnating soulss is no more part of the world).

 

And you can't really use decreasing number of animals as counterargument ("souls dwell nowadays more in humans than in animals"), since number of animals in extincting (did I just invent new word? =P ) won't match huge increase in overpopulation of this planet.

 

Also, I'm not even 100 % if souls reborning ( laws of karma being the judge of course) as animals as well as humans is part of Buddhism, or is reincarnating human only thing in Buddhism. I could check this out, but I trust our walking encyclopedia meta or someone else knowing the answer and thus saving my time

 

Otherwise Buddhism is quite as "sensible" religion as it can get, being more like philosophy than religion. Also, newest scientific foundations in fields of cosmology really challenges linear time view common in monoteistic religions, but fits with cyclical time views like in Hinduism, Buddhism etc. (I couldn't make simple Western-Eastern division here, since old greek had cyclical time view, and I bet some indians did too)

 

Idea of "quantum soul" fits even better in Buddhism than let's say, Christianity.

 

Also, by all means energy seems to be something that exists and always has (matter, after all, is energy ). It is said God is omnipresent, omniscience and omnipotence, something just exists and always has.

 

Judging by this, I say it is just as likely for energy to be something that has always existed as some personal God.

 

You could make energy some pantheistic God without consciousness. After all, consciousness is not something absolutely necessarily for God in pantheism. Fits with "did God have choice in creation" (free quoting) by Einstein as well. Subconscious creating yadda yada... That also fits with Buddhism and somewhat with Hinduism too.

 

Greatest "threat" for pantheistic all compassing energy God is possible existence of Dark Energy, but it's existence isn't even sure. Yet. Maybe never be. Maybe there'll be alternate explanation for certain oddities and Dark Energy will be buried in annals of false theories. Who knows.

Edited July 24, 2007 by Xard

[taks]

it would become a false hypothesis, actually... just a nit.

 

i think the mayans also had a cyclical concept of existence. at least, i think they thought after the "end" there would be a new beginning (which was pegged for 2012, right?).

 

taks