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You see that is the thing . . . we do NOT have an explanation for any of it. We have described how this inscrutable "something" works . . . sometimes in excruciating detail . . . but we have not explained IT at all. When you combine the God-like attributes of this inscrutable something and the lack of explanation about what it IS . . . the only reasonable label for it is God.
It may be the only emotionally satisfying and intuitive answer, in your opinion. Actually it's not an answer or a label, it is a hypothesis. Valid hypotheses must be testable. Please show how a god hypothesis about the grand scope and pure hugeness and ubiquity and age of the universe is testable.
Please also explain how the universe is inscrutable. Inscrutable = "impossible to understand or interpret". We understand and have interpreted, by your own admission, a great deal of the universe. Just not 100%. Oddly, to the extent we understand it, god is not a requirement for the universe's properties and interactions. In fact it's hard to even see where god would fit, because he is simply a multiplication of unnecessary entities. If what we DO know about the universe is explicable apart from god(s), why would we expect what we DON'T CURRENTLY know about it to require god(s)? Much less your particular god?
I think the answer you are looking for is emergencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
In other words, living systems have properties than nonliving systems don't have even though living systems are made entirely of nonliving components. For example, living systems evolve and nonliving systems don't.
I tend to lean in the direction that something or someone created us...life is complex and I don't think it could have just happened by chance.
I sure see no reason why not.
Complexity is just a measure of our human ability to comprehend it. It says very little about how or why it happened.
I too am over whelmed by the complexity of things around me sometimes. I realize that that is just my limitation being expressed however. At no point do I give up, throw my hands in the air, and declare some intelligent agent must be behind it.
But many people, even our greatest minds, do just that. Even Newton, possibly the greatest mind our species has ever managed to produce, threw his hands up at the complexity he was confronted with and declared some kind of intelligent agent must be intervening. Posthumously we have solved the problems that caused him to do this.... pushed the frontiers of human knowledge out further.... and at those frontiers today there are AGAIN people throwing their hands up and declaring it can not be explained without a god.
I fully expect based on past events that the cycle will keep continuing. This human hubris of "If I can not understand it then it is too complex to be understood and only postulating a deity can solve it" can infect anyone. At any time.
I fully agree there are massively open questions as to our origins and of the origins of the universe we find ourselves in. And complexity abounds. But one should not let these things cause us to loose sight of the simple fact that at this time there is not a shred of even an iota of argument, evidence, data or reasoning on offer, much less from anyone on this forum, to even lend a modicum of credence to the claim that an intelligent, intentional and/or designing agent had a single thing to do with it.
Complexity is just a measure of our human ability to comprehend it. It says very little about how or why it happened.
I too am over whelmed by the complexity of things around me sometimes. I realize that that is just my limitation being expressed however. At no point do I give up, throw my hands in the air, and declare some intelligent agent must be behind it.
But many people, even our greatest minds, do just that. Even Newton, possibly the greatest mind our species has ever managed to produce, threw his hands up at the complexity he was confronted with and declared some kind of intelligent agent must be intervening. Posthumously we have solved the problems that caused him to do this.... pushed the frontiers of human knowledge out further.... and at those frontiers today there are AGAIN people throwing their hands up and declaring it can not be explained without a god.
I fully expect based on past events that the cycle will keep continuing. This human hubris of "If I can not understand it then it is too complex to be understood and only postulating a deity can solve it" can infect anyone. At any time.
I fully agree there are massively open questions as to our origins and of the origins of the universe we find ourselves in. And complexity abounds. But one should not let these things cause us to loose sight of the simple fact that at this time there is not a shred of even an iota of argument, evidence, data or reasoning on offer, much less from anyone on this forum, to even lend a modicum of credence to the claim that an intelligent, intentional and/or designing agent had a single thing to do with it.
You seem to me to be confusing two different issues. Christy, if I'm understanding her, isn't throwing her hands up and saying it's too complex so we shouldn't even try to understand it. She's simply acknowledging that the complexity of the universe gives reason to believe that it did not come about through chance.
Complexity is just a measure of our human ability to comprehend it. It says very little about how or why it happened.
I too am over whelmed by the complexity of things around me sometimes. I realize that that is just my limitation being expressed however. At no point do I give up, throw my hands in the air, and declare some intelligent agent must be behind it.
We do in fact have very detailed, evidence-based scientific explanations of how a lot of things originated in the universe.
Yet, so many people don't want to "believe" in these explanations and would rather just believe that some supernatural God created everything - even though this God is supposed to be beyond space and time.
Because that is the only descriptor that captures the scope, power and ubiquity of the evidence we currently have collected about it. You see that is the thing . . . we do NOT have an explanation for any of it. We have described how this inscrutable "something" works . . . sometimes in excruciating detail . . . but we have not explained IT at all. When you combine the God-like attributes of this inscrutable something and the lack of explanation about what it IS . . . the only reasonable label for it is God. Ignorance is no basis for denying the enormity of the evidence and the scope, power and ubiquity of it using "We don't know what it is. It just is . . . but it is NOT God." I told you there are no gaps in the evidence, There are no gaps in the descriptions of what it does. There is only one big huge gaping hole in the explanation of what it IS! That is why it is God. There is too much evidence to ignore and sweep under the ignorance rug to support an anti-God bias provoked by the religious absurdities ABOUT it. Whether or not you would say them . . . they are an accurate characterization of your position with regard to the enormous evidence without any real explanation.No . . . but it makes me feel better about repeatedly trying to explain to those who don't want to even try to understand the ridiculousness of their assertions.
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Originally Posted by mordant
It may be the only emotionally satisfying and intuitive answer, in your opinion. Actually it's not an answer or a label, it is a hypothesis. Valid hypotheses must be testable. Please show how a god hypothesis about the grand scope and pure hugeness and ubiquity and age of the universe is testable.
It is NOT a hypothesis. It is a brute fact acknowledging its "Godliness" . . . just as your brute fact version acknowledges its "Natureness." Yours is not a hypothesis and neither is mine. They are competing brute facts . . . but mine is more compatible with what we KNOW about our reality. We know life exists. We know consciousness exists. A living conscious reality is consistent with what we know. Your non-living, non-conscious reality is NOT. My brute fact is more logical and reasonable than yours.
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Please also explain how the universe is inscrutable. Inscrutable = "impossible to understand or interpret". We understand and have interpreted, by your own admission, a great deal of the universe. Just not 100%. Oddly, to the extent we understand it, god is not a requirement for the universe's properties and interactions. In fact it's hard to even see where god would fit, because he is simply a multiplication of unnecessary entities. If what we DO know about the universe is explicable apart from god(s), why would we expect what we DON'T CURRENTLY know about it to require god(s)? Much less your particular god?
Explaining what it does and how it does it . . . no matter how extensively . . . does NOT explain what it IS. That is why it is inscrutable. We have no idea what it is or why it is. It just IS. Given the scope, power, ubiquity, etc. of it . . . God is the only reasonable and logical description for it.
I don't blame a diety for getting cancer, despite the fact that it seems like a hell of a chance to be diagnosed with a rare Stage IV cancer at 23 years old with absolutely no family history. Of all of the millions of genes in my body, doctors can't tell me why one decided to go rogue. There's not rhyme or reason to it.
The universe is infinitely larger, with infinitely more chances for small parts to transform. It's not difficult for me at all to believe that our entire universe is built on chance. That's why as far as we can tell, Earth is the only planet currently capable of sustaining complex life - chance. Maybe a deity had some part in that, but we will never know. Even if we could determine that some supreme being played a part - which one? The G-d of the Torah? Allah of the Qu'ran? Odin? Zeus? Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrianism? A nature deity of a small tribe in the Amazon? It seems even silly to speculate. The origin of all things does not impact our lives one iota, except, for some, to justify the unjustifiable.
I don't blame a diety for getting cancer, despite the fact that it seems like a hell of a chance to be diagnosed with a rare Stage IV cancer at 23 years old with absolutely no family history. Of all of the millions of genes in my body, doctors can't tell me why one decided to go rogue. There's not rhyme or reason to it.
The universe is infinitely larger, with infinitely more chances for small parts to transform. It's not difficult for me at all to believe that our entire universe is built on chance. That's why as far as we can tell, Earth is the only planet currently capable of sustaining complex life - chance. Maybe a deity had some part in that, but we will never know. Even if we could determine that some supreme being played a part - which one? The G-d of the Torah? Allah of the Qu'ran? Odin? Zeus? Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrianism? A nature deity of a small tribe in the Amazon? It seems even silly to speculate. The origin of all things does not impact our lives one iota, except, for some, to justify the unjustifiable.
Nice post.
It is nice to politely argue these points but at the end of the day, I am pretty much in the camp of "Does it really matter?"
If these opinions are kept at a personal level, there is no harm and for the most part that is probably how it is in RL.
To think that in a lifetime of ±70 years we can understand all there is to understand is hugely optimistic. There no geniuses on this forum and opinions are like nipples, we all have them.
To you personally, I trust your condition has been dealt with. I have no idea how I would have reacted.
The answer to the unknown is not the divine. Stop thinking like a bronze age man. Saying "I don't know" is okay.
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Originally Posted by agnostic soldier
We don't currently have an explanation for the origins of life. This doesn't mean a god did it. It just means we don't yet know how life originated.
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Originally Posted by bUU
One of the fundamental differences between dogmatic religions and the beliefs and values of everyone else (including Atheists, agnostics, religious humanists, and other, non-dogmatic religious folks) is with regard to the unknown and unknowable. The acknowledgement and acceptance that humanity doesn't know everything about everything, and may never know much about some things, is an element of spiritual maturity that a lot of dogmatic religious have not, or refuse to, aspire to.
These are just three of the many similar posts on this thread which essentially say the same thing - "I don't know".
Okay, if you don't know, that's fine.
But for people who claim to have all of the answers, as the poster below states, I find it hard to believe that "I don't know" is truly acceptable about this. Y'all can't explain how life began (or in some cases even how the universe began) but you can say in all certainty that there is no God. I don't see how those two reconcile. It's like saying you can derive the quadratic formula but you can't compute your state's sales tax on a twenty dollar blender.
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Originally Posted by Mr5150
I've been posting on religious and other forums for over five years and your question will get the same response from every atheist on the interwebs:
"We don't know and what ever the answer is, it sure ain't God".
Atheists seem to have all the facts (concerning the supernatural), yet cannot explain life or origins. My belief in God is not based on the question of Origins. I will say that it is not logical to think that the universe and life just came to be by chance. Chance does not produce the laws of the universe, mathematics or the Code of DNA.
This "anything but God" stance tells me that many atheists are locted into a sort of Dogma and their minds are closed to any suggestion that challenges their worldview.
It is interesting to consider, isn't it? Atheism, in and of itself, is as strong a religious doctrine as any other that I've seen. You have to have serious faith in order to be an atheist. I saw something similar in a cartoon I once saw - I think it was a "B.C." cartoon. In panel #1, one character tells the other something like "It must take a lot of faith to believe that there is a God who created all of this!" and the other character says "No it doesn't." Panel #2 shows that character pointing to another guy bowing down in front of a statue, and saying "THAT takes a lot of faith."
For that reason, I actually do harbor a certain respect for atheists. Most of them have more faith than most Christians will ever have. Christians could learn a lot from atheists.
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