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When you say "...and perhaps a bit more..." what you should say, if accuracy is important, is "and a whole lot less", or, "and a whole lot of nonesense", or similar words.
Also, creationsim is contradicted by virtually every fact of the Universe discovered by the scientific exploration process called "science".
And I am at a loss for words (Mahi, where are you when I need you), to understand why you think a the world is sad and colorless. After all, the world is but the embodied emperical facts that describe the world as it exists.
OnoAhiMahi
If you think my post was a defense of Creationism, you're wrong...and right to say it is contradicted by established scientific fact. It most certainly is.
I maintain my belief, because that is all that it is, that the word is more than just a collection of empirical facts, in the same way that a person means more than just saying someone is a human.
Because we will it to be so, it's the gift of sentience.
Saying that there is a "creator" doesn't mean that the scientific facts that we have come to know, aren't true. If you take the bible creation story as literal fact, yes, there is a problem. However, most Christians I know don't take the story as literal.
Fundamentalists will tell you different (but when have facts ever gotten in their way), but all this Biblical Literalism stuff is actually pretty recent.
And silly. I'm not sure what purpose it serves other than to invite people to be constantly disappointed when objective reality doesn't match up to their beliefs.
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On the same token, saying that evolution takes place, all of the natural processes that we know of, and things of that nature, don't rule out a creator either.
It's a separate issue entirely. But try telling that to a Creationist - they will tell you that "evilution" (they are so witty) leads to atheism, communism, liberalism, incest, rape, murder, Nazism, multiculturalism...and all sorts of Isms that keep them awake at night.
It's ridiculous, but Fear is how they control the Faithful.
It's a separate issue entirely. But try telling that to a Creationist - they will tell you that "evilution" (they are so witty) leads to atheism, communism, liberalism, incest, rape, murder, Nazism, multiculturalism...and all sorts of Isms that keep them awake at night.
It's ridiculous, but Fear is how they control the Faithful.
Well, I suppose all of those things "evolved" out of something...
As someone who believes in a creator and also believes in evolution, I resent being lumped in with fundamentalists of any religion. Not that anyone here has specifically said as much, but the tone of certain posts seems to say that anyone who believes in a creator is an idiot. I guess they are just trying to cover for their own idiocy.
I've argued with Intelligent Designers and Creationists on this forum countless time. Usually, because their argument is that Evolution is completely wrong.
I was watching a documentary today, and most of the scientists that supported Intelligent Design don't discount evolution. Most of them said that its obvious that changes between species occur over time. Most of them believe that the world is about 4.5 billion years old, and that species have evolved since their "creation" so to speak.
The argument begins with the beginning of life. Evolution doesn't answer the question of how life began. No science does, really. No one knows how the first single celled organism came about. It could be a "Creator", could be a alien seeding, it could be a comet brought amino acids to Earth, who knows.
The answer is no one.
So whats wrong with the "I don't know" answer to questions like these. The Evolutionists seem to dismiss the ID people as religious quacks. Don't get me wrong, many of them are. However, that doesn't mean that the people who are asking how life began and using a designer to answer that question are wrong. They may be right, no one knows.
Religious folks are wrong for dismissing evolution completely. Life didn't begin 6000 years ago, thats very evident. We most likely evolved from an ape like creature, which evolved from something else, which evolved from something else. However, embracing evolution doesn't mean you aren't Christian, it simply means you accept the evidence is there that it did happen. There is evidence it did happen, but no evidence on how evolution got started.
I believe Intelligent design activists might very well be best served by coming up with a new name. Maybe the "originators" or something like that.
Ignoring either side isn't getting us anywhere on answering these questions.
Now this doesn't mean ID should be taught in schools. However, it doesn't mean that Evolution should be taught as having all the answers in schools either. What it means is that answering "I don't know" isn't such a bad thing.
I don't know opens doors. It raises questions. Some questions may never be answered, but we may answer a lot more then we have now.
So, whats wrong with saying "I don't know"
Well, I don't know.
No offense. I like where your going with this argument. However you contradict yourself. You don't believe in evolution, yet you believe we evolved from an "ape-like creature"?
Well, I suppose all of those things "evolved" out of something...
I'd argue that they were more likely the result of Unintelligent Design.
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As someone who believes in a creator and also believes in evolution, I resent being lumped in with fundamentalists of any religion. Not that anyone here has specifically said as much, but the tone of certain posts seems to say that anyone who believes in a creator is an idiot. I guess they are just trying to cover for their own idiocy.
I wouldn't say that, and that was more or less my point: understanding evolution (I won't say believing, because it's not a matter of faith no matter what the C's say) doesn't preclude religious belief at all. THAT is, ironically, an argument mostly heard from the religious. They set up a false choice - that one can only "believe" in one or the other. I hear the same from militant atheist, albeit less often, and they are just as wrong for the same reasons. Both extremes think evolution means more than what it means, or want to find meaning in it that just isn't there. Evolution just "is."
This is why they posit ridiculous and inaccurate definitions of evolution. I have only very, very rarely encountered a Creationist that actually knows what evolution is in the first place.
No offense. I like where your going with this argument. However you contradict yourself. You don't believe in evolution, yet you believe we evolved from an "ape-like creature"?
No no, I do believe in evolution.
If I typed that in there, it was an accident.
I believe in both evolution, and creation. However, I don't believe that evolution explains creation.
Oh ok! Me and you both then!! Bu I'm a christian so I guess we probably don't see things the same in regards to that.
Actually I used to be Christian, and still hold to many of the beliefs that you do. I still believe Christ existed, I just no longer feel he was "God on Earth" so to speak.
Lots of the OT stories I think were emboldened for inspirational value also.
In ways, I'm a lot like Jefferson, from what I've read as far as faith is concerned.
You guys are looking for infinity from the realm of the human mind of form.
The process is outside of time and eternally continuous. It goes on forever, and that is how it has always been. Creation is continuous, always and ongoing. The comings and goings of universes are an illusion of perception. There are no universes arising and passing away inasmuch as there is no such thing as time in which universes or anything else could phase in or out of existence. That is what is meant by the Oneness of Allness. This truth can be realized but not explained.
Is the infinite knowable? The Infinite knows by virtue of the fact that it is All.
Back to the "mind". One eventually comes to the amazing discovery that the "mind" is not really capable of actually knowing anything at all, and that the illusion that it knows is a pretense and a vanity. By analogy, one can ask how a pair of binoculars knows what is seen through it, or how the ear knows music. Does the computer know the software programs? The mind can only "think about" a subject. To actually "Know" it would require being the known. We can think about a cat but only a cat really "knows" what it is to be a cat.
Now, if we want to talk about God and the entire universe, we need to introduce the concept of content vs context;
"Content" is an arbitrary point of focus as is the amount of data or form that is included. "Context" is the totality of all that which is excluded, with implied or specified boundaries, or even with none at all, such as God or the entire universe.
For example, one could select a specific star (star A). Then the rest of the galaxy or the entire firmament, including its evolution over time, becomes the context, which also includes the observer. If another star is then selected for observation (star B), then star A becomes included in the total context of star B. Thus content and context are not separate distinctions nor are they intrinsic qualities but instead reflect the consciousness of the observer.
Thus the terms "linear" and "nonlinear" are categories of thought and points of intellectual reference. Form includes the formless as its substrate and is not separate from it. Consciousness as such is equally present, but the information registered by awareness would be a consequence of focus.
In the ordinary state of consciousness, the "I" of the ego/self/me is content, whereas consciousness/awareness/God/Self is context. Unstated context often has more influence over the outcome than does visible content.
Some words like content, context, self, Self, consciousness, ego, etc. are being thrown around here, and to tie this sort of "spiritual" viewpoint into something concrete, you should open your mind a bit to consider the stream of "consciousness" to be our hardware and our ego or karma to be our "software". God can be looked at as both within and transcendent, both in the realm of unmanifest or "Pure Potentiality" or Godhead... and manifest as That which creates existence... such as our own.
You didn't create me. This much I know.
Some could see God as causing a universe to expand out with every outward breath and causing a universe to contract with every inward breath. Of course this would require some imagination on our part and perhaps might explain the fact that billions of years or millions of years may seem like a day or a microsecond to God from the context of the infinite.
Our minds set up a causality or duality of cause/effect. Our animalistic brains (prior to the formation of humans' advanced forebrain) had to, as surviving animals, be able to recognize enemy from non-enemies and to calculate a spatial relationship between "here" and "there". In reality, nothing requires an explanation. Nothing is caused by anything else. Existence requires no explanation nor does it have any dependence on any other state or quality. This understanding is clarified by the realization that nothing in and of itself has any "meaning". Therefore, neither does it have a "purpose". Everything is already complete and merely self-existent as its own self-identity.
So some have a tendency to ask, when did God do this or do that? In reality, which is timeless and infinite, there is no "when"; neither are there any events or happenings to be explained, nor are there any sequences, durations, or causes.
So what does this have to do with evolution? Science is the authority of the linear domain and the Newtonian paradigm; the mystic is the authority of the nonlinear domain. The mystic knows, experiences, and identifies the Self as both context and content, that is, context is the content.
Isn't America wonderful? You can spend a great deal of time developing a lengthy essay on a relevant topic, organized and well thought out, using the principles of logic and rationally applying material based on the history of philosophical thought and theology.
And young Americans give their lives by the thousands to defend the right of those who do not understand the slightest thing you are talking about, and the apex of their intellect is to jump up to insult you by using a word that sounds comical to their childish mind, and then go off and titter about it, and then find another grown up discussion and vandalize that one, too. It's the middle of the night, and mommy doesn't know they're still up.
They're so cute. They're like little puppies, with their big clumsy feet and floppy ears, wittling on the linoleum.
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