What are the odds? (Abraham, evolution, believe, verse)
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Shalom...
flip a coin...say, best two out of three. One side represents the Big Bang; the other represents naturalistic processes. Of course the odds of this coin landing on it's proverbial edge even once out of three possible tries are astronomical,but not impossible. What view do you suppose the edge of this "coin" possibly represents?
"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
Hebrews 11:3 King James Bible (Cambridge Edition)
It is apparent that everyone wants to know "how" G-d's Word framed it all together...nevertheless: "Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD."
Psalm 27:14 King James Bible (Cambridge Edition)
Peas and hominy...
I read as jaw drops to the floor, this coming from one of the more conservative Christians on the board.
To make this argument, you would have to assume that everything that is was intended to turn out this way from the beginning and some how everything worked out. Not so. Suppose we were to hit the proverbial "reset button" on the universe if such a button existed. There is no gaurantee that we would get the same result. You attribute too much awe to the result that we did get.
Picture throwing a deck of cards into the air and then admiring the pattern that forms on the floor as the cards fall.{ How in the world did everything fall right into place in order to form this pattern? } If you were to pick these cards up and throw them again, exactly the same way even, there would likely be a different pattern. Would you then admire that pattern as well, and ask how everything fell into place as it did?
If we were to hit the reset button there would be no assurance of our existence. FYI, nothing is truly random. Even the direction in which a raindrop slides down a window isn't random. Take into account the density of the drop, wind, imperfections in the glass, etc. etc. All of which would be determining factors for the direction that the drop slid.[/quote]
In my opinion the odds of a naturally occurring universe are immensely better than some imaginary deity creating it all.
Which is your right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sanspeur
Humans exist on one tiny planet out of a possible trillions of planets, but some have an ego that is larger than the entire universe...Humans are not any more special than any other creature....
I don't think we have to get into humans at all for this, particularly as it seems to gum up the works in some of these discussions.
The constants concerning the nuclear forces, their relation to electromagnetism, the level of mass in the Universe, and some others I'm not sure how to describe well allow for their to be planets or life. Even slight alterations on these would likely make the Universe collapse to fast for life to evolve or things not connect well enough to form atoms or stars fuse too fast or too slow.
And if we need to get to biology, which I'm not sure we do, life here existed as single-cell organism for a very long time. I think maybe the majority of life's history. The ability to turn into multicellular life might require some odd situations.
Sure maybe sentient and sapient beings could exist based on nexuses of energy or something, but it's more than a little speculative. It doesn't have to be about humans here. It can be about the existence of anything more self-aware than a horse or chicken or maybe even just the existence of life more complex than a bacteria.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sanspeur
1 The universe is expanding.
2 The second line of evidence is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
3 The theory predicts that certain amounts of hydrogen, helium, and other elements should be seen. Observations have shown almost exactly the amounts that are predicted.
4 The Big Bang theory is the only one that comprehensively lays down a framework for the eventual evolution of the universe as we observe it today.
One of the earliest proponents of the Big Bang was a Catholic priest. He didn't like taking religious meaning from it, but Pope Pius XII kind of did by the time my Mom was about 8 or 9.
But yes the Universe had a Creation-Event. I've seen atheists who don't like that, so it's good you accept mainstream science.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper 88
Picture throwing a deck of cards into the air and then admiring the pattern that forms on the floor as the cards fall.{ How in the world did everything fall right into place in order to form this pattern? } If you were to pick these cards up and throw them again, exactly the same way even, there would likely be a different pattern. Would you then admire that pattern as well, and ask how everything fell into place as it did?
This isn't quite the "skeptics deck of cards analogy" that usually makes me groan, but it's close.
If we threw this "deck of cards", the constants of the Universe, again there almost certainly wouldn't be anyone there to admire anything.
The situation we find ourselves in is closer to throwing a deck of cards in the air and having a royal flush drop into our palm. Sure that's not impossible, but it is pretty weird.
It's only a royal flush because we only know what we have ended up as(so far) .
May be what we are is only a pair and the royal flush might have been something much much greater.
If we threw this "deck of cards", the constants of the Universe, again there almost certainly wouldn't be anyone there to admire anything.
Are you really claiming that you understand the possible range and distributions of the various fundamental physical constants of nature well enough to tell us that universes like our own are extremely rare? Please point us to your peer-reviewed publication of these results, since you're way ahead of the rest of science.
Quote:
The situation we find ourselves in is closer to throwing a deck of cards in the air and having a royal flush drop into our palm. Sure that's not impossible, but it is pretty weird.
Which makes it just as likely and weird as any other outcome ...
"Don't know" is all well and good. But hardly the stuff of proof.
Yes, which is why there's a large gap between "we don't know how the universe came about" and "therefore god exists". It's strange believers try to connect the two. You'd figure if god were so important in the big scheme of things they could point to something we actually knew as evidence rather than something vague and poorly understood.
I always thought Pascal's wager was an idea related to the experiencing of the World. If we are to regard the whole world in the temporal state of irregularity. We proceed to know not by mathematics but, by at least, what he determines as Physics. The other physics of regular observations is itself realized with Fate and Chance. Physics is taken up by Platonic knowledge for the mechanics in our own bodies, Take it that God is for the ultimate Need to be realizing in the midst of the environment.
But is the environment really ultimately irregular? That is no proof.
It seems much more likely to me that existence began with a singularity
which exploded into a state of total khaos in which even space itself did not exist
and our universe somehow emerged from that khaos.
Are you really claiming that you understand the possible range and distributions of the various fundamental physical constants of nature well enough to tell us that universes like our own are extremely rare? Please point us to your peer-reviewed publication of these results, since you're way ahead of the rest of science.
I trust the people who know this stuff, I think have a rough understanding of what they say, and most of the people I mean are atheists.
The explanations I know of are
There's a multiverse, we're in the rare Universe that works for life but if we weren't we wouldn't know it and some Universe is going to have our combination or near enough of one.
The constants are as they are because of mathematical inevitabilities in the higher dimensional brane-space.
Improbably fortunate events prove nothing. Some people are born into billions, this isn't proof of a grand plan to make little Johnny a billionaire.
The Universe is created by a mind, but not a God. It's just some being in a lab in some other Universe and we might create Universes ourselves someday so no big thing.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
Which makes it just as likely and weird as any other outcome ...
I suppose in a technical sense, but this really elides a great deal.
Sure any single result might be equally likely. Four particular cards falling in your hand, of any suit or number, is just as likely as four aces (I switched as this might be easier to discuss) falling in your hand when you throw a deck in the air. However we're not really comparing four aces to any other specific combination. We're comparing four aces to anything or to cards landing in your hand at all.
A variety of outcomes could produce a universe that collapses or can't produce atoms or whatever. A much more limited number of outcomes allow for a universe that could produce life. Yes this Universe is just as likely as any one specific inert Universe, but this is sort of missing the point.
It's fine if you find the "I don't need an answer" answer okay, but I don't. I could see a non-theistic answer as worth considering, but the "everything that happens is improbable, maybe weird energy creatures live in those other Universes" answers generally strike me as dodgy at best.
Like it or not, the word proof is not used in science
You are exactly right.
We did a lot of proofs when I studied math, but we had the luxury of specifying exactly what our assumptions (or postulates) were to begin with.
If these assumptions (like those of Euclid) did not correspond to reality, that was fine with us. We were only interested in going from an assumption to a conclusion in logically correct steps.
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