^The modern conclusion on scientific observation.

So anyway, a guy whose name I forgot asked this about the idea of Intelligent Design: according to ID, complex things (such as humans), are too complex to not have been designed by an intelligent entity. So how did the intelligent entity (God) come to be? The ID proponent answer to that tends to be "He was always there" which just goes back to religion, and makes it an unscientific theory based on faith instead of observation. Which is why some people need to stop demanding that it be taught as an alternative theory in classes that aren't about religion.

Then there's that soul and eternal life business. Consider this, some people are born with a lower level of awareness, or with the inability of their awareness to develop via aging, due to a disorder or what have you. So what level of awareness must a person have in order to be able to have an afterlife? What about people that are born braindead, or without a brain? Would people who are born and yet never really experience this life gain an awareness after death? If so, assumably they will automatically go to Heaven, seeing as how they would not have been able to make any kind of choice of accepting or rejecting a divine being? That seems so unfair, almost makes you wish more people were born without a brain so they would get automatic salvation. In fact, if you ever have children, don't you just wish they are born with a level of awareness low enough that they would not be able to commit themselves to anything, so they will go to Heaven anyway, where you'll meet up with them and establish parent-child relationships?

So anyway, I really haven't thought this through or anything, which is why I will get new ideas from the related discussion that's about to follow this opening post! I will also add that despite probably coming off as intolerant to alternative views in this post, I tend to consider any idea coming from someone who can make a reasonable case in favor of their ideas.

By the way, does anyone here actually miss the Religious Discussion forum? I didn't think so, but it did hold its share of entertainment value...

Brains on islands.

Quite simple really. God is energy. Thus never having a creation or a destruction making God eternal, and all powerful, without compare.

I wasn't aware they had science in Mexico.

I know that a "God" exists (notice that I said "a" and not "the"). I can't answer the question on who created that God, but I know it exists.

Taking a non-literal translation of the Bible, one can find a logical and scientific correlation between creationism and natural evolution. The Christians believe that the world is only about 10,000 years old. This is largely due to a guy that traced the ancestry back to Adam and Eve. There's scientific evidence that suggests that a catastrophic event occurred on Earth between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago that wiped out nearly all life, likely from an asteroid impact. The aftermath of which is described in the first few pages of the Bible (again, taking a non-literal interpretation). To the authors of the Bible, for all intent and purposes, this was the creation of the Earth...the beginning of their era. Keep in mind the relative intelligence of the authors of the Bible. It would be like trying to explain the nature of the universe to a 5 year old.

As for a soul, my feelings on the subject is that one must be sentient. This means that a creature must have Intelligence, be Self-Aware, & have a Conscience. It must have all three. If someone does not develop all three of those qualifications, then they do not have a soul. Neither here or otherwise. I'm not saying that we have a right to terminate those lives (as there is much to be learned from those lives). Also, it would not be fair to hold them to the same moral/ethical standards and laws that we hold ourselves to.

That's my thoughts on the matter.

What, Nothing happened 12000 years ago that wiped out nearly all life.

there was cataclysmic flooding 10500 yrs ago, it just didnt wipe out nearly all life.

Okay, 12900. I don't claim to maintain and overly accurate database of information...which is why you'll typically see me give ranges of approximations.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080702160950.htm

There were also several other asteroid strikes in the 10000-12000 year range in other parts of the world.

But it didn't do at all what you say, the last asteroid to do that was tens of millions of years ago.

Kilimanjaro was pretty bad too.

"The ID proponent answer to that tends to be "He was always there" which just goes back to religion, and makes it an unscientific theory based on faith instead of observation."

STOP.

This sentence here is where you start to go off into mud. You're doing the same thing that stupid ID proponents are by taking it to religion when it doesn't have to be. God (even if just the idea of God) is completely fair game in the realm of philosophy, WHICH is exactly where you (should) start to go when you start dealing with matters of ontology.

There's overlap between God and religion (duh) but people shouldn't let that be their absolute total focal point when discussing God's existence. I wish more people would talk about the idea/possibility of God without assigning a religion and then scrutinizing that.

Yeah, I've been doing some additional reading on the subject. This was a global event. This event occurred at/around the end of the ice age which resulted in significant global flooding of coastal areas over a 50 year period. It also created a significant increase in global volcanic activity. While I did over-state "wiped out nearly all life", it did have a very significant global impact to the human civilization of the era, a reduction of species greater then 100 lbs., and the shift to humans as the dominant species.

Epic fail. That isn't NEARLY enough to say you "know" 'a god' exists.

The reason you believe that God must exist as "something" comes from drawing false causality between one of the roughly estimated lineages calculations from the Bible and a somewhat distant earth cataclysm? You know why this isn't science, right?

With the complexity everything is designed with, and the perfect balance that must be maintained with so many things in the entire universe in order to just make it exist, let alone work the way it does, almost has to point to intelligent design in my eyes. I can't see how all of these things formed out of one gigantic set of coincidence's. However, I am like everyone else here, not a scientist.

I can't be bothered today. Too much work to do. If this bas boy hits 3 pages by tonight I'm not even going to read it.

Evolution is not coincidental or random.

Always applicable:


There is nothing in the universe that we know of that points towards there being a conscious entity who designed it. Maybe, *just maybe*, the fundamental constants bit might be seen as evidence for a creator who set off the big bang but then hasn't bothered to do anything since, but it's more likely that this just means we have a lot yet to learn in physics. If some sort of God did exist, I'd say he's probably more like a computer programmer who wrote the code for our universe in the beginning and is now letting his program run.

Assuming an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being is another thing entirely, and you run into some interesting problems .For example, if God knows everything about the universe, he must contain an exact model of the universe in his brain, which means that he is more complex than the universe and must exist outside of it. But then why have a universe at all, if there's a complete functional model of it already? Reality doesn't care whether it's built on particles in space or neurons in God's brain. So if this were the case, I'd say there isn't actually a universe, just the mind of some unimaginably intelligent being. (Again, I'd say it's more likely that this being is a computer, but that's probably just my personal biases speaking).

Anyway, I don't believe in God (certainly not a compassionate, caring one who gives a crap about human affairs) so this may all be rubbish.

Just because a thing is complex doesn't make it designed. What would a universe that isn't designed look like? Also, just because you like to make nonscientific conjectures that leap past logic doesn't mean the rest of us have to concede to the same lack of understanding. You don't have to be a scientists to know how abiogenesis and evolution work.

If you want to do this conversation justice, you have to get into how we has human beings experience reality. It's believed by many (though I don't have time to find a reference) that the sensation of time is an illusion created by beings traveling through dimensions (sort of snap shots of a single instant). Line a bunch of them up and move between each one, and you've got time and motion (kind of like an animated film which is millions of still pictures played in sequence).

If this theory is accurate, it's not much of a stretch to say that there is or could be a being that exists outside of those dimensions, and would thus be able to see all of them at once. (Lots of references in the Bible of "God is." and what not, suggestion that time is not a factor for him.

More later, but I'm very short on time.

Keep in mind this is not a theory on the creation of the universe, but a theory on how reality functions.

There are various beliefs on this matter. For instance, my parents are Pentecostal & they believe that you're chosen by God to enter Heaven even before you're born. They also believe that children dying of AIDS in Africa are simply examples created by God to show his followers what happens when your parents are sinners. Whether or not you know of god's existence is irrelevant to them.


Where did this "energy" come from? It doesn't matter what it's made of, it always comes back to the argument of where did it come from.


I can't fathom how someone could "know" that god exists. Even if you saw or spoke with him, it would be more likely that you were insane.


If you'll read a book on Evolution, you'll see why this "argument" doesn't make any sense. For one, as JM stated, Evolution isn't "random". You'll learn that in the first few chapters of any decent book on Evolution.

I was raised by Fundamentalist Christians & attended their church. The so-called "Elders" of the church were never able to satisfy my curiosity. I heard "it's a mystery of the church" so many times in my childhood that if I had a nickle for every one, I'd be a very rich man. After college I decided to do my own research. I picked up "The Blind Watchmaker" & for the first time in my life, I saw that god's existence isn't necessary for us to exist. I urge all Christians on this forum to read books that argue against their beliefs. The worst that can happen is that you'll only strengthen your argument. However, it's more likely that you'll convert to Atheism once your eyes have been opened.

I wouldn't call that science

More like religiocity

I didn't say it was. It was two separate statements...in two separate paragraphs, no less. Which typically means that they are unrelated.

My reasons for "knowing" of the existence instead of just "believing" is personal and there's no way I can prove my personal experience to you, which is why I didn't elaborate but simply made the statement.

If I had a personal experience that was fantastic or completely unexplainable, I'd seek mental help before confirming miracles or sudden certainties about the universe, myself.



I can agree with that, too. There's no reason a God couldn't exist. Even the problem of fate isn't that difficult to answer: the decision you make 10 seconds ago cannot be undecided or rethought because it already happened. If you went back and experienced it again, you'd do the same thing because the same circumstances would cause the exact same decision to be made. You could say the universe and everything around you is "set up" for you to make that decision. That's not too short a leap from Christianity's fate and free-will duality.

But this point is moot because it doesn't imply a sentient lord of man or a creator, just a universal causality.

One event hardly qualifies as a chronic pattern that would warrant the need for psychological evaluation. My opinion (after over 10 years of analyzing the event) is that what I experienced was real. Does it matter? Not really. The only difference it makes is that I approach the relationship of religion/science with a condition that I already accept as being true. It's really no different then an atheist who approaches religion/science with the same condition that they automatically accept as being false. Both sides work to answer the questions, but under different assumptions. This happens quiet often in the scientific community where two teams are working on the same problem, but under different assumptions. Both teams generally generate useful information because they're working the problem from different angles.

You get to call your unconfirmed personal experience scientifically equivelent to atheism because what now? You're making a posited claim, and atheists are refuting it and expecting you to objectively define your experience so that we can determine if your claim is valid. You're unwilling to validate your claim objectively, so you maintain that having your personal opinion is equal to having skepticism of personally validated figures of authority.

Am I? I think you're reading what you want to read and not actually what I'm typing.

I'm not making the claim that 'I know a God exists' as part of my argument. It was a single statement of acknowledgment that was completely separated from the rest of my post. Nor does my personal experience have anything to do with my argument because (as I've already stated) I obviously can't prove a personal experience, especially one that happened over 10 years ago. This is why It's not part of my argument. I'm not sure how much clearer I can be to that point.

It's very different. I would never claim that all scientists begin an experiment without preconceived notions or bias. However, in science, there are things such as the scientific method & peer review. Religion doesn't have this. In science, if someone says that something is true, they must prove it to their peers. In religion, if a preacher says something is true, his people take it on faith, with no evidence. I would also add that the religious don't appear to be working to answer questions. They have completely given up on the truth. If religious people held their doctrine & peers to something similar to scientific standards, there wouldn't be anymore religion.

Not true. You don't have to prove your assumption if what you are working to prove is your assumption itself. It's call a hypothesis.

I agree with this. That's a failing of modern organized religion.

That depends on who you ask. There's bad science in religion. There's also bad science being performed in all sciences. Some people just don't know what they're doing or don't fully understand the underlying principles. This isn't limited to the religious community. Your making blanket assumptions.

This is a generalization that is not true of all religious communities. (I'll speak specidfically of Christian communities from this point forward because that's what I know, but this applies to any religious communiy I'd imagine.) Yes there are lots of Christians that take the word of their pastors blindly. They do it because they're lazy. They just want to go to church to be "fed" rather than feeding themselves. They're looking for the good feelings of being a part of something larger than themselves and of being a "good christian" better than all those "sinners" or "lost" people. It's disgusting and it's the worst thing wrong with North American Christianity. On the other hand mature Christians read the Bible on their own and analyze what they've read internally. They go to church to learn yes, but they don't just take what their pastor says blindly. They test that information against what they believe and against what they feel God is speaking to them about the subject.

It's like the difference between a student in college who takes his subject seriously and one who's just skating by trying to get the credits.

A hypothesis, is just that, a hypothesis. It may not be a fact or theory. The difference betwen religion & science is that religion only goes as far as a hypothesis at best. They're never actually able to prove anything. Science goes much further than that (e.g. Evolution).


That's the failing of all religions (past & present). They all make the assumption that there's a god without any evidence. If there's a god, it's doing a fantastic job of hiding the evidence.


That's exactly why we have the scientific method & peer review. This helps us to weed out bad science.


It's true of any religion that makes a claim that there's a god because its existence hasn't been proven. Even those Christians that don't blindly listen to their pastor, they do blindly listen to their bible. I grew up in a fundamentalist church where EVERYONE was forced to read the bible. We even had bible classes that we had to attend each week. It's quite possible for your beliefs to be ridiculous despite the fact that you study the bible.


Therein lies the problem. They test information against what they believe, not what they know. This is why they'll never actually know anything.

Consider two scenarios.

1. The Universe came into existence.
2. The Universe came into existence, and God created it.

In scenario 1, you're faced with the question "How did the Universe come into existence?". Scenario 2 answers this question ("God created it"), but now you're faced with another question "What is God?". By introducing God, you've just replaced one question with another question. Not only this, but you've replaced a question that is possibly fundamentally answerable with a question that is, by construction, unanswerable.
If you have faith in God, then no-one can touch you. There's nothing in logic or reason that can argue against faith as a concept, but how is it preferable to replace a question that could concievably be answered by modern science (the origins of the Universe) with one that certainly cannot (the nature of God)? How is this at all pleasing on a personal level, how does it contribute anything on an intellectual level? Even if science doesn't (or even cannot) answer the question about how the Universe came into existence, you don't gain anything by introducing God into the equation. You still don't know anything about God, and so you don't know anything about the origin of the Universe.

And that's the key word, knowledge. If you believe in God through faith then no-one can touch you, but if you believe in God through knowledge then that's a whole different kettle of fish. No-one can know that God exists unless God himself has spoken to you, or if you have observed some supernatural phenomenon that is unexplainable without God. Both of these require God to interact with the physical realm, and do something we can observe. And this is indeed the realm of rationality, logic, reason and science. In the long and bitter battle of 'MIRACLE vs. SCIENCE', I'm afraid science has an unbeaten track record.

If you eschew all this, people that claim to have spoken with God and people that claim to have witnessed miracles, if you discount all of these people and you believe in God through faith then you have no issue with science. But then you're into a separate issue.. You can believe in God through faith.. but why would you want to? It doesn't explain anything, it just introduces an unanswerable concept that cannot interact with the physical realm (for if he did, it would be observed and we would know he exists) and so can have no concievable effect on your life (or at least he hasn't up to this point).

Also, if you did know that God existed, would you like him? I certainly wouldn't. I would wage war against Him and demand that He stand trial for crimes against humanity. Fortunately for God, I don't believe he exists.

I think you're right in that the idea of God (or a number of gods at that) should be evaluated outside the boundaries of religion. Isn't organized religion a cultural and societal matter anyway (think ceremonies, religiously based habits transferred between generations, the historical authoritative status of the religious elite)?

Anyway, the ID theory shouldn't be taught as an alternative and contradictory contender to evolution in scientific classes, which is what the ID proponent organizations want. Philosophical classes (which have more to do with ethical and other such more abstract questions than observational science) are a different matter. Remember that philosophy aims to evaluate things based on logical reasoning, whereas science is based on testing and observation.

I disagree. You're attempting to compare apples and oranges. Religion isn't suppose to prove anything. As Mort-Hog points out, that defeats the purpose of Religion in the first place. My argument is that both science and religion can co-exist and, at times, compliment each other with information that supports claims on both sides.

My biggest beef with organized religion (yes, past and present) is that they try so hard to cling onto the literal text, when it was never intended to be taken literally at all. They're so afraid that if they give in, even if just a little, that the Atheist will rush in and "disprove" religion (which isn't possible any more then proving religion).

Religion, as Mort-Hog points out, is about faith. It's about believing in something that you can't prove. That's the whole point. It's a test.

I just consider that anything is possible, because continually through history, scientists come up with theories and ideas, call them fact, and eventually, a better one proves them wrong and sets a precedent that will remain 'fact' again for another number of years. This will inevitably repeat itself until mankind's demise.

that is a bold statement. all you have to do to find the equivalent of "peer review" of christianity is read dawkins. however despite 'the god delusion' and many MANY other books that are critical of christianity, and religion at large, christianity and religion still exists.

now according to your statement that if there were something akin to scientific peer review of religion it would cease to exist (paraphrased, so correct me if i am wrong in what you intended) we can only really come to one of two conclusions:

1. no one who is religious has ever read any decent book refuting religion.

2. if they have read any of said books they must be, literally, mentally retarded.

however i can personally guarantee that neither of these are true. i personally know several people who have 1. read dawkins work. and 2. are certainly not mentally retarded, at least one of them has a PHD. the other two i believe have master degrees. and last but not least 3. are still religious.

Many Christians tend to pick & choose which parts of the bible are literal & which parts are symbolic. That presents another problem. How do you know which is which? Not only that, but if so much of it is symbolism, what's left? Philosophy? A good story?

Using religion to explain anything scientifically is missing the point. For the same reason I don't use "science" to have fun on a Friday night, I don't use philosophy to describe the universe. Why religion should be considered an alternative to science when it isn't able to predict or determine anything is beyond me. It's a social and philosophical principal and has never before and never will do anything but provide guidance.

In these terms, we can discuss how prone it is to be manipulative or to thwart good intentions. The only reason I have ever wanted to establish the logic of atheism is that it allows us to determine morality in far more objective, fair terms. It provides for proving the right and wrong of a concept, and delving into the most important aspects of law and ethics. I think religion is the first step to a much deeper ethical debate that will eventually surface once people get tired of threatening each other with clearly false Gods.

Dawkins would have to be religious to be considered a peer. That would be like Osteen writing a critical essay on Evolution.


I wouldn't say that no Christian has ever read "The God Delusion". However, since the very nature of Christianity is to believe in something without evidence (faith), and to actually consider that to be a virtue, it's very likely that they wouldn't take it very seriously.


I wouldn't use the word "retarded". However, I do think it's quite possible that there's something wrong with them. A mental block of sorts. I know that when I was a child, I was taught not to question the church or the literal truth of the bible. This has obvious implications on how someone thinks & learns.

There are a ton of intelligent people that are religious. This has no bearing on whether or not there's any truth to what they believe.

the idea of god and most religion fills the same need as a lot of science.
the whole "where did we come from" and "why are we here" bit. which i believe you already said as much. for alot of people god answers this question better on a personal level. some people find sciences answers thus far lacking, others just find religion to be warmer and fuzzier (though i have no idea why.)

there really is no reason a god would not be able to interact with the physical realm. a deity could literally be dabbling its fingers all up in your proverbial pudding and you might not even know it. heck you would not even know what to look for as evidence of said dabbling.