Two Gods or One

Quote: FrGamble

Why do you say this? Why does God have to be the very last answer?

Because it's always the 'I give up'
answer. Can't find the real answer
so blame god or give him the
credit and move on. Thankfully
we've moved beyond that and
it doesn't work anymore.

Quote: FrGamble

Yes change is easier to talk about because it is so observable. .

Change is the only constant we have.
Everything is in the process of changing
into something else every second of
the day. Look at an insect that has
a 24 hour lifespan. Look at a boulder
that was created 4 billion years ago.
Will it be a boulder for eternity? Of
course not. It's why they invent a
god and call him the only constant
in the universe. It makes them feel
better about it all.

Quote: FrGamble

Yes change is easier to talk about because it is so observable. However, to talk about change and ignore the more fundamental question as to how and why the things that change came into being is to blind ourselves from fundamental truth. This is what Evenbob often does when he says there is no creation only the illusion of creation. He is really talking about change and he is not thinking about the bigger issue such as where the things that change come from. I grant you that it is a hard question and a question that will not be solved by science. It is a metaphysical question that uses our higher forms of reasoning and logic.

You say this like the scientific method is not a form of reasoning and logic (higher or otherwise). All logic is testable. That's the point. Logic IS testable under the scientific method.

You can't appeal to God through logic, then throw out science from the discussion.

That's, ahem, illogical.

Quote: FrGamble

I assume you say this because things made by human beings are complex and show intelligence. What about human beings themselves or raccoons or trees or atoms is not complex and does not demonstrate intelligence?

Random physical, chemical interactions are going on in the Universe everywhere today. This enables lots of variation. This doesn't make complexity of inanimate objects automatic, but nor does it rule it out.

Also, once a simple lifeform exists, reproduction variation and interactions and adaption to different environments makes possible new variations. This process doesn't lead to more intelligent beings coming into existence, but neither does it lead away from more intelligent beings being the result of variation.

Even a modern human brain could result after enough time and variation of lifeforms. In fact, it only apparently took the Universe almost the entire 14 billion years minus about 50,000 for the modern human brain to develop.

Does that sound like intelligent design? Sound's like brute force solution similar to chess programs which just run through millions of moves.

Quote: FrGamble

See this kind of stupid and childish behavior is useless in our discussion.

Then why do your persist in it?

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If you don't think there is amazing complexity, order, and intelligence

I won't qualify what it means to repeat the same fallacy in the same way when it was just called out.

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You think the beings who make the cars don't show an amazing gift of intelligence, hmmm?

What's with the non-sequitur?

It is precisely why the design of cars shows intelligence that we can conclude the "design" of living beings does not.

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It's sad you don't ask the big questions and try to come up with answers for them.

It's not sad that I get answers you don't like, and that the world increasingly embraces these answers rather than yours. I suppose it might be sad for you, but then it might have been sad for the East German Communists when their ideas were widely rejected and the Wall came down. I didn't even pause to pity them.

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What possible evidence could you or I or anyone find for the existence of something before any observable thing or energy existed!?!

Who can tell. "The most exciting utterance in the course of scientific discovery is not 'Eureka!' but rather 'That's funny'," Isaac Asimov PhD. You know as in "That's funny, These galaxies are spinning at speeds that ought to tear them apart, yet they hold together." Or "That's funny, Maxwell's equations determine the speed of light when the source is on non-moving object, but out efforts to determine the motion of the Earth shows it's not moving at all!" Or "That's funny, this film I left unexposed on a drawer with this chunk of rock is fully exposed."

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Why do you think all the answers will come through science?

I'm sorry. I should have taken into account science's dismal record in explaining the world and universe around us... No, wait. I was thinking of abstract philosophizing. My bad.

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Can you not see or believe in anything that you cannot test or find evidence for?

Not as regards physical fact. And definitely not as regards major moral and life decisions. IN particular, I won't undertake the major time waster that is religion, which has nothing to offer me, without clear evidence that there is something more than strange wishful thinking supporting it.

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Open your eyes and your mind, there is a big world out there and truths that won't be ever discovered in a laboratory.

Cosmologists are fond of claiming their laboratory is the size of the observable universe. I think they do this as a means to hide their poor controls under the rug :)

Quote: FrGamble

First of all I'm not a creationist in the sense that the term is often used to describe people who think the Earth and our universe is only some thousands of years old or that the creation of everything took place exactly as the Bible depicts.

What kind of creationist are you, then? I know there's variety in the most fringiest of fringes, but that doesn't mean they are important.

Simple question: do you believe literally in the story of the Garden of Eden? I don't mean the whole thing, such as the talking snake or the magical tree, but do you believe that, for a time at least, all life-forms on Earth and two ever-virginal human beings existed in some corner of Mesopotamia? If you do, that marks you as a creationist.

On evolution and Christianity.

The central belief of Christianity involves the "fall" of Man (which always begs the question of why Man dragged Woman along to his ignominy, but I digress(*)) This involves a belief that two ever-virginal human beings existed for an indefinite time in some other-worldly corner of Mesopotamia, or somewhere in the Middle East, along with all life forms on Earth (or at least those visible to the naked eye).

Leaving the latter to the side for now (along with the talking snake and the magical tree and the lack of aging and the lack of sex, etc.), even the most cursory study of any biological population will tell you species don't evolve into exactly one couple at any time. It also tells you there are ancestors gong back eons, and that these can often be traced with a fair degree of precision.

So, how does a species of hominines in Africa produce a single couple of h. Sapiens who then live out their lives thousands of miles away? Even if the Garden of Eden was in Africa, how did two people who produce only two sons and lose one, manage to be the basis of today's billions-strong population?

See, the well established fact of human evolution from primates and hominids is completely incompatible with the story of the "fall." Take away the "fall," and Jesus was just some self-important, delusional Jew spouting sheer nonsense. After all, there'd be no "original sin" to redeem in this case (I continue to be baffled as to how "sin" can be inherited, but again, I digress).

And therein lies the root of Christian opposition to reality. It disproves their most cherished(**) belief.



(*) I do know the correct expression is "beggars the question," but no one seems to understand what that means any more.

(**) As the "fall" consists of human beings attaining and exercising their rational faculties, I'm flabbergasted as to why 1) it's considered a "fall," and 2) why would anyone cherish a belief that requires we beg forgiveness for being rational.

Quote: FrGamble

Please, please know the danger inherent in Oujia boards.

The only danger is you might waste money on one. They're not even good for a laugh, nor mechanically ingenious like a "magic" 8-Ball.

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I always say the best thing you can hope happens when you mess with physics, fortune tellers, and stuff like that is you just get scammed. The worst thing that can happen is unspeakable.

That's partly true. if you mess with physics you could accidentally get radiation poisoning or cause some massive catastrophe like Chernobyl. Messing with chemistry is also dangerous. In both cases one should play by the rules, as these are immutable and inflexible (see Niven's Law: nature doesn't care if you're having fun).

Quote: rxwine

Even a modern human brain could result after enough time and variation of lifeforms.

Could? regardless of quality, I say the existence of the modern human brain is proof that it did result. :)

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Does that sound like intelligent design? Sound's like brute force solution similar to chess programs which just run through millions of moves.

It's more brute force than that. The chess program has a purpose and an ultimate goal. Evolution does not have an ultimate goal, and its purpose has little to do with high intelligence.

It's possible that if a lack of intelligence confers a reproductive advantage, for example, that humanity might grow less intelligent (that's fodder for SF stories, famously Cyril Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons.") Judging by social media, that's happening right now as we speak <shudder>.

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And therein lies the root of Christian opposition to reality.

Nareed, you've done it again, hit it on
the head. That's exactly what's wrong
with Christianity, it's steadfast opposition
to reality, and then claiming it's not.

In reality, people don't rise from the dead,
like claimed about Jesus. Long dead Jews
don't come flying out of their tombs to
walk and talk. People don't walk on water
and turn water into wine. In reality priests
cannot change wine and wafers into blood
and flesh. Man made saints don't sit around
in the afterlife at a make believe switchboard,
relaying prayers from the faithful to some god.

That's as far from the reality we all live every
day as you can get. It's fantasyland, it's fairy
tales, that people believe any of it should be
in Ripley's Believe It Or Not. And probably
some day will be.