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I admire your willingness to defend God, Ivory. But you cannot reason with those who prefer ignorance to God . . . even when the status of the unknown is so unmistakably God-like. The stench of religion on the God label is too strong for them to stomach or even temporarily entertain for purposes of philosophical speculation. The stench is magnified when the terms Creationism or ID are used because they have been demonstrably shown in a court of law to be fraudulent attempts to infiltrate science curricula with religion. You are in a no win discussion, Ivory.
I know. I just wanted to throw out there that some of us find evidence of God in science. The more I study, the more convinced I am that there is more to this than meets they eye. I mean getting from protons, electrons and neutrons to a conscious mind is just mind boggling. I really don't care what path we took getting here or care to argue how old the world is. I trust that God can do whatever he wants.
This book is kind of old, but it helped me when I was starting out. It's titled "Religion in an age of science" by Barbour. In picking a religion, I found Lee Strobel's books to be invaluable. If you haven't read it, I recommend "The case for Christ". Mr. Strobel, actually set out to prove christianity false but ended up convincing himself it was true. I think there are many ways to find God. I found him in a chemistry lab. I just cannot look at all of this and think....Gee, this happened all by itself for no reason with no direction. The fact I can actually think about this makes no sense in the big scheme of things unless there is a God.
The fallacy of your argument is that I don't have to refute evolution to believe in God.
Or anything else for that matter it would appear. In fact to believe in God one must not do anything at all it seems. There is no evidence, argument, data, or reasons on offer to lend even a modicum of credence to the idea there is such an entity, yet people simply believe it anyway.
So refuting evolution is not the only thing you do not have to do it seems. You do not have to do ANYTHING. At all. You just believe it.... because you believe it. No more. No less.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I know. I just wanted to throw out there that some of us find evidence of God in science. The more I study, the more convinced I am that there is more to this than meets they eye. I mean getting from protons, electrons and neutrons to a conscious mind is just mind boggling.
Science boggling your mind is NOT the same as "finding evidence for god in science". What you are finding is gaps in your understanding or knowledge and just inserting "god" in them.
Finding evidence for X in science and finding a gap in science into which you insert X are two massively different things and you appear to mix them up above.
I didn't say it was a hoax. I said that everything was created obeying the rules of this universe. That being the case, I believe that Adam had a belly button and an oak tree on the day of creation had growth rings. Everything is in mature form. Perhaps God just didn't want to wait a few billion years. Think of it as fast forwarding through the boring parts. I don't pretend to know why, how, when, how lon git took for God to do anything. I just know that when I look at chemistry, I see God. From a few simple particles comes all of this. The matter is impressive enough but then toss in life and consciousness...
Actually, if a purpose of us being here is deciding what we believe, it makes perfect sense that it's not black and white. If it were, there would be no need for faith. You'd have proof. If the point was for God to prove he exists, none of this is necessary. I find faith interesting. It seems just about every culture believes in some kind of God. It seems intrinsic to human nature to believe in God...as if that belief is part of our very being. Still we have free will. Perhaps we are simply here to exercise it in a venue in which there is no proof to sway our decision one way or the other. It could be that simple. Or perhaps we're here to learn and grow and become beings capable of moving on to whatever the next dimension is.
There is no doubt that something outside of this universe started this universe. One theory is that our universe came into existence when two other universes collided. Others involve a God. We do know it is against the rules of this universe for nothing to become something without a cause (nothing can become something and vice versa but there must be a cause). Just getting to this universe existing at all is mind boggling and then you have to make this HUGE leap from there to life happening and then from there to complex beings and then from there to a brain capable of actually having this conversation. I see something guiding this. I call that something God.
This sounds ever more whacky. You and I both know that it hasn't all been made 'mature'. Trees have rings because they take decades to grow. We have navels because of the birth process. Evolution evidence exists because it happened.
If you want to go back to some point and say it sorta potentially happened but God decided to jump to some point where it looked as though it had happened but he couldn't be bothered to wait -then why? What's the hurry?
It looks to me as though it is an attempt to get rid of evolution without actually getting rid of it' YE belief without the need to deny the evidence for Old Earth. Merely an even more ludicrous version of the 'God made the fossils to test our Faith' argument.
And, when the whole point of creationism it that evolution must be wrong because it contradicts the Biblicala six -day creation, with the implication that NOT believing it might imperil one's salvation, then your instant Creation with an ...if you pardon the expression....faked millions year old earth is of course a nasty hoax perpetrated by God to see who can be fooled by Him into not believing an instant creation and thus risking their chances of salvation.
Now you may not believe that it matters to God whether we take the Bible literally or not. You may not even believe in salvation or heaven and hell, but a lot of creationists do and they will (I suspect) not like the idea that God is seeing how many people He can swindle out of salvation with a faked evolution - or maybe they would like it. Keep all those blasted Theist evolutionists out of paradise.
I don't want to assist you in moving the goalposts of the evolution debate to something where we have no real evidence one way or the other -cosmic origins.
The validity of evolution theory through scientific data is not in the least compromised by our inability to explain where the cosmos, our particular universe or the first life came from.
The only relevant discussion is about whether life- forms developed from that first cell and took millions of years to do it, or whether God did it all in six days - whether or not he faked it to LOOK like it took millions of years.
Saying that it all happened but millions of years was compressed into six days (in case you had that argument in reserve) would be meaningless to a deity to whom an eon is like a single day. It might look to God like six days, but to us like 200 million years - and that would essentially make old earth and evolution true.
This sounds ever more whacky. You and I both know that it hasn't all been made 'mature'. Trees have rings because they take decades to grow. We have navels because of the birth process. Evolution evidence exists because it happened.
If you want to go back to some point and say it sorta potentially happened but God decided to jump to some point where it looked as though it had happened but he couldn't be bothered to wait -then why? What's the hurry?
It looks to me as though it is an attempt to get rid of evolution without actually getting rid of it' YE belief without the need to deny the evidence for Old Earth. Merely an even more ludicrous version of the 'God made the fossils to test our Faith' argument.
And, when the whole point of creationism it that evolution must be wrong because it contradicts the Biblicala six -day creation, with the implication that NOT believing it might imperil one's salvation, then your instant Creation with an ...if you pardon the expression....faked millions year old earth is of course a nasty hoax perpetrated by God to see who can be fooled by Him into not believing an instant creation and thus risking their chances of salvation.
Now you may not believe that it matters to God whether we take the Bible literally or not. You may not even believe in salvation or heaven and hell, but a lot of creationists do and they will (I suspect) not like the idea that God is seeing how many people He can swindle out of salvation with a faked evolution - or maybe they would like it. Keep all those blasted Theist evolutionists out of paradise.
I don't want to assist you in moving the goalposts of the evolution debate to something where we have no real evidence one way or the other -cosmic origins.
The validity of evolution theory through scientific data is not in the least compromised by our inability to explain where the cosmos, our particular universe or the first life came from.
The only relevant discussion is about whether life- forms developed from that first cell and took millions of years to do it, or whether God did it all in six days - whether or not he faked it to LOOK like it took millions of years.
Saying that it all happened but millions of years was compressed into six days (in case you had that argument in reserve) would be meaningless to a deity to whom an eon is like a single day. It might look to God like six days, but to us like 200 million years - and that would essentially make old earth and evolution true.
What I'm saying is I don't care. It's irrelevent to me whether or not this earth is millions of years old or thousands but just looks like it's millions of years old. It doesn't matter. If I take the bible literally, God created a man, not an embryo, not a fetus, not a toddler, not a child but a fully grown man. It makes sense to me that everything created would have been created in mature form, if it was created in 6 days or whatever but that doesn't matter IMO anyway. I don't care either way. What I care about is we have the ability to have this conversation. THAT is what matters.
Science looks at how. Religion looks at why. If the purpose of our being here is to make a choice, it makes, perfect, sense that there would be no proof of the existence of God regardless of how things came to be. But I do think his fingerprints are on just about everything.
You can choose to believe that all of this just poofed into existence from nothing with nothing causing it and that consciousness is just some cruel accident of nature (cruel because we get to spend our lives contemplating our deaths and knowing that nothing we did/do matters one iota.) or you can choose to believe it is the end result of some plan by something outside of this universe. I find the latter easier to swallow. Consciousness makes no sense to me from a selfish gene standpoint. You don't need a conscious brain to replicate genes. Something pushed us this direction and I think it was for a reason.
It makes sense to me that everything created would have been created in mature form
If there was any reason to think there was a god and it did do creating then it might make sense to think it created everything in mature form.
What makes little sense then however is why said god created it in mature form... but then went to such lengths to ensure it looked like everything was NOT created in mature form but in fact evolved into the current forms over a mindbogglingly large period of time.
Thankfully not my problem as since I recognize there is no argument, evidence, data or reasons on offer to even think there IS a god, I do not have to worry about explaining its apparently deceptive methodologies.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
You can choose to believe....
Not really. I do not see belief as a choice. If there is literally nothing on offer to suggest something is true then I can not just flick a switch and believe it anyway. If there is compelling evidence that something is true I can also not flick a switch and stop believing it on a whim.
At this time, having been asking for 17+ years, I have not been made aware of even a single iota of argument, evidence, data or reasons that lends even a modicum of credence there is a god. Not believing the claim there is a god therefore has nothing to do with choice. I am simply bereft of any basis on which to be even capable of believing it.
Certainly something being "easier to swallow" is not enough to convince me. That is just an argument from credulity really. If science has taught us anything it is that what is true is very difficult to swallow, understand, comprehend and accept.
If you doubt that then simply ask people around you who you meet how big they thing a pile of paper would get if you cut it in half, put one half on top of each other, then cut those in half and put it on top of each other... over and over again 100 times. The biggest answer I ever got was "As tall as this building we are in". Getting people to swallow the fact that the answer is so big it would take light itself millenia to travel its length is never easy.... but that does not make it any less true. Easy to swallow is not synonymous with truth.
When I hear someone say "the god answer is easier to swallow" all I actually hear from this is "I do not know so I choose the lazy easier answer rather than help find out".
No, I don't. This would be the same issue you'd have with an oak tree created on the day of creation (assuming there is an actual day). I believe it would have growth rings because mature oak trees do.
And why do mature oak trees have rings? They certainly serve no required structural purpose, but are merely an artifact of actual growing seasons. So that would make it a history within the tree, that never actually occurred. This would be the same thing as God creating Adam with scars from injuries that never actually occurred, partially digested food in Adam's intestinal tract, and childhood memories of growing up, which never occurred. I find that untenable as a false history.
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I don't have an issue extending this to species. I think God can do whatever he wants...and I do think he didn't make this easy. I don't think we'll ever find evidence of creation because that would remove choice and faith from the equation as we'd all have proof.
And in place of this elusive evidence of creation, God puts in it place evidence to the contrary. Wow! So where does that leave us? We have this creator who gives his people theological doctrines supposedly based on a special creation of all things in their current form, but then voluntarily submits his creative will to the precise physical constraints of the evolutionary, geologic, or cosmologic processes without even the slightest pretense of fiat.
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I really don't care how old the earth is. It doesn't change anything for me. I'm not defending a timeline in the bible. The bible, IMO, starts at a certain point in time and moves forward from there. What was on this earth before that is inconsequential.
You have a luxury of being able to ignore observations as being real. I don't have that luxury. It's too hard not paying attention to the man behind the curtain.
What I'm saying is I don't care. It's irrelevent to me whether or not this earth is millions of years old or thousands but just looks like it's millions of years old. It doesn't matter. If I take the bible literally, God created a man, not an embryo, not a fetus, not a toddler, not a child but a fully grown man. It makes sense to me that everything created would have been created in mature form, if it was created in 6 days or whatever but that doesn't matter IMO anyway. I don't care either way. What I care about is we have the ability to have this conversation. THAT is what matters.
Science looks at how. Religion looks at why. If the purpose of our being here is to make a choice, it makes, perfect, sense that there would be no proof of the existence of God regardless of how things came to be. But I do think his fingerprints are on just about everything.
You can choose to believe that all of this just poofed into existence from nothing with nothing causing it and that consciousness is just some cruel accident of nature (cruel because we get to spend our lives contemplating our deaths and knowing that nothing we did/do matters one iota.) or you can choose to believe it is the end result of some plan by something outside of this universe. I find the latter easier to swallow. Consciousness makes no sense to me from a selfish gene standpoint. You don't need a conscious brain to replicate genes. Something pushed us this direction and I think it was for a reason.
Well, I could leave this to Nozz and Panterror's excellent posts. But just to say that I don't much care either. To me, I can see the weak points and unanswered questions of evolution theory perhaps better than most creationists -who have to invent false ones. But I think what we do know is convincing and I see no very compelling reason to postulate some Mind to get over the dodgy bits.
Of course that's not the point, is it? The dodgy bits are handy for allowing one to appeal to a Mind needing to exist. Yes, it really isn't relevant to me as I don't mind ...ahh...if there is a mind. It can get on with splicing DNA together and I can get on with untangling the religious rhizomes from the subsoil of society.
The only reason I asked was because your whole theory seemed pretty outlandish.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-13-2012 at 10:18 AM..
And why do mature oak trees have rings? They certainly serve no required structural purpose, but are merely an artifact of actual growing seasons. So that would make it a history within the tree, that never actually occurred. This would be the same thing as God creating Adam with scars from injuries that never actually occurred, partially digested food in Adam's intestinal tract, and childhood memories of growing up, which never occurred. I find that untenable as a false history.
OOPS, I left out part of a sentence that I need to correct but went beyond the editing period. Just for clarification, the sentence should read:
...partially digested food in Adam's intestinal tract, that he never actually ate...
I still wanna know how can one 'see' god in science.
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Keep all those blasted Theist evolutionists out of paradise.
