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ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 True if you are a Christian, Jew or Muslim, but those are not the only religions, all equally true to their own followers even if to no-one else.
The question did not specify any deity though, and referred to something called "the god". Not "God" with a capital G.
The question did not specify any deity though, and referred to something called "the god". Not "God" with a capital G.
hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M
@ArishMell You would have to understand what the word God means. It is not always a spiritual being that you can't see. It may well be your car or your job or your government. God simply is that keeps you safe and secure and not likely to jump off a bridge out of despair for lack of meaning in life.
hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M
@ArishMell Don't worry we all have gods. Some Gods are much better than others. I like the God that has Will and Reason and Presence. His name is Yahweh. It means I AM. I AM therefore I will bring something out of nothing and light out of dark and dry out of wet and life out of non-living. Not did He do it He did it in such a way as to confound even the most brilliant chemists and physicists and biologists. As has been noted by those who are honest about origin of life chemistry not only is it impossible now the more we know the more impossible it becomes. Take Darwin's mud puddle. One major set back is that the chemistry that could lead to life cannot function in water. In fact water destroys the reaction so.....
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 I have no difficulty with the notion of being both a Christian and an astronomer, geologist, biologist or palaeontologist, but I am not a Creationist!
(One of Britain's leading astrophysicists, so likely knows internationally for his research work, is not only an active Christian. He is also a lay preacher. I did know but I am not sure if a Methodist or Baptist.)
(One of Britain's leading astrophysicists, so likely knows internationally for his research work, is not only an active Christian. He is also a lay preacher. I did know but I am not sure if a Methodist or Baptist.)
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 I know you are desperate to believe in just one dogma without thought or question, desperate not to learn how God did it all and when, desperate to despise science yet use the Internet to do so, and desperate not to be questioned...
Safe on-line behind a nick-name, but are you like that towards people in real life?
Safe on-line behind a nick-name, but are you like that towards people in real life?
hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M
@ArishMell It is you who are the desperate one. I changed my belief based on hard scientific evidence. Sadly you just swallowed the line because you are too intellectually lazy to put any thought into your belief. The fact is that science and many scientists are changing based on the evidence. There is a huge problem with origin of the universe and the origin of life in the materialist camp. There is simply too much evidence of a Creator. Have you ever heard of Fred Hoyle? Did you ever read his famous line? He was not a Christian BTW but he was a pretty sharp scientist. He said that it was like some super intelligence had monkeyed with the universal constants to make the universe exist. They are so finely tuned and must be so finely tuned that it is impossible for the universe to exist if one of those constants were to change in even a minute fashion. You can look it up it you want. It is a famous saying of his.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 I do not say there is no God, simply becuase I cannot prove it either way, but I do not believe in taking ancient scriptures as anything more than statements of their authors' beliefs.
That the Universe exists is not itself evidence of some sort of supernatural creator though at least I do not descend to the level of those who use terms like "sky fairy".
Nor is the Bible any evidence of how it came into being, whether by supernatural efforts or not. Strip away the fables and it just says "God did it". It does not seek to ask how, anyway.
Science seeks to find how and when it happened, and it will be a very long time before we know everything, if ever. Each time the geologists and astrophycists discover something they find new puzzles - all part of the philosophical and academic fun, or course; and human nature is to be inquisitive and imaginative, not incurious and unimaginative.
An aspect the literalists ignore, because they want the spurious "certainty" of an old book they dare not question. They do not want people to learn and understand, but just to follow dictated, anti-science dogma. Why? Personal power?
It does not matter if there is a god or not, nor what sort of being it is, because the physicality is there for us to see, appreciate and study - whether we believe in deities, doubt them or deny them. God's works or not; what counts is trying to understand how it works.
Sadly there are people who want none of that, and worse, attempt to stop others trying to learn it. Why they do that - some in the USA even establishing so-called "Creationist museums" or trying to bar teaching science in schools - I have no idea. I have tried asking but none can or will say, furthering my suspicion that some are driven not by theology but by a desire to control others by limiting their natural curiosity and wish to learn.
You can believe in God but still learn about His works - seeing them far greater and more beautiful than the Six-Days preachers want us to think (or rather, to accept with no thought). Those simply reduce their deity to a mere conjuror. Many Christians do take that God And Learning road: one leading cosmologist - sorry I can't remember his name, I am not good at doing that - also happens to be a lay priest so evidently sees no problem in that. Even the Vatican has its own observatory - even apologised to the memory of Galileo Galilei, only 400 years late.
....
No, we do not know, not yet anyway, how Life started, only that it a was a very slow process a very long time ago. Saying we cannot produce a cell in the laboratory is meaningless. We could not have produced significant electrical power until Michael Faraday realised the relationships between electricity and magnetism. Life started somehow, obviously, equally obviously not merely by magic, but we simply don't know how - not yet anyway.
Nor do we know exactly how the Universe starts and how its is managing to expand.
We have theories that so far withstand scrutiny based on doggedly persistent study and revision; but all we know for certain is that these happened. It is only personal opinion whether we think them a deity's handiwork. Saying they cannot have happened without a creative god, is as pointless as saying flatly there is no god, because this raises asking for external evidence that does not exist, to correlate either religious claim.
There is also the vital point that Science spans the world, with scientists collaborating internationally irrespective of their personal religious beliefs or none; so in that respect Science is neutral. It just asks How and When. Not Why, By Whom.
It may comfort the believer to accept the Universe and life within it is God's work, but that does not satisfy the desire to understand how it works. A desire not to try to settle the unanswerable theological question, simply to understand the visible and measurable; God's work or not.
I am not desperate. I accept astronomical, geological and biological realities without needing worry if they are God's work. If they are, fine - no problem to me. If there is no God it makes no odds either because stars, rocks and organisms have clearly come and gone throughout time anyway.
That the Universe exists is not itself evidence of some sort of supernatural creator though at least I do not descend to the level of those who use terms like "sky fairy".
Nor is the Bible any evidence of how it came into being, whether by supernatural efforts or not. Strip away the fables and it just says "God did it". It does not seek to ask how, anyway.
Science seeks to find how and when it happened, and it will be a very long time before we know everything, if ever. Each time the geologists and astrophycists discover something they find new puzzles - all part of the philosophical and academic fun, or course; and human nature is to be inquisitive and imaginative, not incurious and unimaginative.
An aspect the literalists ignore, because they want the spurious "certainty" of an old book they dare not question. They do not want people to learn and understand, but just to follow dictated, anti-science dogma. Why? Personal power?
It does not matter if there is a god or not, nor what sort of being it is, because the physicality is there for us to see, appreciate and study - whether we believe in deities, doubt them or deny them. God's works or not; what counts is trying to understand how it works.
Sadly there are people who want none of that, and worse, attempt to stop others trying to learn it. Why they do that - some in the USA even establishing so-called "Creationist museums" or trying to bar teaching science in schools - I have no idea. I have tried asking but none can or will say, furthering my suspicion that some are driven not by theology but by a desire to control others by limiting their natural curiosity and wish to learn.
You can believe in God but still learn about His works - seeing them far greater and more beautiful than the Six-Days preachers want us to think (or rather, to accept with no thought). Those simply reduce their deity to a mere conjuror. Many Christians do take that God And Learning road: one leading cosmologist - sorry I can't remember his name, I am not good at doing that - also happens to be a lay priest so evidently sees no problem in that. Even the Vatican has its own observatory - even apologised to the memory of Galileo Galilei, only 400 years late.
....
No, we do not know, not yet anyway, how Life started, only that it a was a very slow process a very long time ago. Saying we cannot produce a cell in the laboratory is meaningless. We could not have produced significant electrical power until Michael Faraday realised the relationships between electricity and magnetism. Life started somehow, obviously, equally obviously not merely by magic, but we simply don't know how - not yet anyway.
Nor do we know exactly how the Universe starts and how its is managing to expand.
We have theories that so far withstand scrutiny based on doggedly persistent study and revision; but all we know for certain is that these happened. It is only personal opinion whether we think them a deity's handiwork. Saying they cannot have happened without a creative god, is as pointless as saying flatly there is no god, because this raises asking for external evidence that does not exist, to correlate either religious claim.
There is also the vital point that Science spans the world, with scientists collaborating internationally irrespective of their personal religious beliefs or none; so in that respect Science is neutral. It just asks How and When. Not Why, By Whom.
It may comfort the believer to accept the Universe and life within it is God's work, but that does not satisfy the desire to understand how it works. A desire not to try to settle the unanswerable theological question, simply to understand the visible and measurable; God's work or not.
I am not desperate. I accept astronomical, geological and biological realities without needing worry if they are God's work. If they are, fine - no problem to me. If there is no God it makes no odds either because stars, rocks and organisms have clearly come and gone throughout time anyway.
hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M
@ArishMell Materialism which you believe is not supportable from a purely scientific point of view. It can't get started. It can't maintain itself. Ask any organic chemist about origin of life and the long time you imagine. They will quickly disabuse you of that nonsense. The organic chemicals needed for life have a life span of their own. They go from useful to useless in a very short period of time. So a whole bunch of unstable chemicals must come together at exactly the right time and the right place or else they will simply fall apart. One tiny little error and the experiment is over. If you need any evidence simply look at all of our attempts to create life in a lab. We can't do it but you believe that somehow by accident in some mud puddle all the chemicals got together to make life? BTW life is material acting on information. Where did the information come from?
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 I am not sure what you mean by "materialism".
Yes - how life originated is still a huge and marvellous puzzle, but I see no need to invoke any deity to avoid trying to solve the puzzle. No-one says life just sprang overnight from life-less organic compounds, but something happened to nudge the right compounds together in the right conditions.
I've no problem with anyone believing the nudging was by the hand of God but that merely expresses a belief in God. It does not explain what happened, which is what Science is trying to solve without worrying whether it was God's work or not.
The "information" is not in the style of some sort of manual but the development of very complex molecules. These are so complex they are not absolutely stable, so bits of them do change occasionally. Some changes work, some don't.
Believe in a creative deity if you like, but don't use it to slam the door on trying to understand what was created. That serves no-one, certainly not your deity.
Yes - how life originated is still a huge and marvellous puzzle, but I see no need to invoke any deity to avoid trying to solve the puzzle. No-one says life just sprang overnight from life-less organic compounds, but something happened to nudge the right compounds together in the right conditions.
I've no problem with anyone believing the nudging was by the hand of God but that merely expresses a belief in God. It does not explain what happened, which is what Science is trying to solve without worrying whether it was God's work or not.
The "information" is not in the style of some sort of manual but the development of very complex molecules. These are so complex they are not absolutely stable, so bits of them do change occasionally. Some changes work, some don't.
Believe in a creative deity if you like, but don't use it to slam the door on trying to understand what was created. That serves no-one, certainly not your deity.
hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M
@ArishMell Materialism is simply the silly belief that everything is here because of material. There can be nothing beyond the atoms that we are made of.
I trust real scientists who work with the actual chemicals to answer my questions. According to statisticians the number of seconds in 13 billion years is 1 E17. (1followed by 17 zeros. The number of atoms in the known universe is 1E90. 1 followed by 90 zeros. The chance of getting all the right chemicals in all the right places to form a yeast cell is 1E42,000. 1 followed by 42 thousand zeros. Most scientists call the impossible odds at horizon at 1E54. 1 followed by 54 zeros. So according to the science the someone would have to flip a coin 1 followed by 42 thousand times and have it land heads up every time. There simply isn't enough time or enough atoms in the universe for life to have formed spontaneously. I have read another account that says the odds of live forming spontaneously is 1 E 14 Billion. 1 followed by 14 Billion zeros. If you wrote one zero every second it would take almost 11 billion years.
I trust real scientists who work with the actual chemicals to answer my questions. According to statisticians the number of seconds in 13 billion years is 1 E17. (1followed by 17 zeros. The number of atoms in the known universe is 1E90. 1 followed by 90 zeros. The chance of getting all the right chemicals in all the right places to form a yeast cell is 1E42,000. 1 followed by 42 thousand zeros. Most scientists call the impossible odds at horizon at 1E54. 1 followed by 54 zeros. So according to the science the someone would have to flip a coin 1 followed by 42 thousand times and have it land heads up every time. There simply isn't enough time or enough atoms in the universe for life to have formed spontaneously. I have read another account that says the odds of live forming spontaneously is 1 E 14 Billion. 1 followed by 14 Billion zeros. If you wrote one zero every second it would take almost 11 billion years.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 Yes - a remarkable set of circumstances.
There is no reason to believe life does not exist anywhere else in the Universe despite the statistics, which seem based on a flawed assumption anyway, but I still don't see a need to believe in a god setting it all off.
The only writer who said life arose "spontaneously", though not by that word, was the unknown scribe who wrote the Book of Genesis - I don't know if he invented its myth or merely transcribed it from an old oral tradition that crops up elsewhere.
Rather, there were so many of those metaphorical coin-tosses going on in parallel for so long that eventually something new and exciting would happen. The flaw is the statistics seem to be looking at the chance of a single reaction happening; not of untold millions of all sorts of reaction happening at the same time, and some of them going anywhere. Trying to use arithmetic to "prove" life appeared by some sort of divine sleight-of-hand, proves nothing. We want to know how it appeared, not say "God did it" and slam the door on learning.
There is no reason to believe life does not exist anywhere else in the Universe despite the statistics, which seem based on a flawed assumption anyway, but I still don't see a need to believe in a god setting it all off.
The only writer who said life arose "spontaneously", though not by that word, was the unknown scribe who wrote the Book of Genesis - I don't know if he invented its myth or merely transcribed it from an old oral tradition that crops up elsewhere.
Rather, there were so many of those metaphorical coin-tosses going on in parallel for so long that eventually something new and exciting would happen. The flaw is the statistics seem to be looking at the chance of a single reaction happening; not of untold millions of all sorts of reaction happening at the same time, and some of them going anywhere. Trying to use arithmetic to "prove" life appeared by some sort of divine sleight-of-hand, proves nothing. We want to know how it appeared, not say "God did it" and slam the door on learning.
hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M
@ArishMell Still denying the science? I gave up being an atheist because I didn't have enough faith to be one. I had to deny all the science I could see. The science showed me that there had to be another source of life. If the natural couldn't explain it I had to look for the Super Natural. That led me to explore and for you to think that God is a ghost simply shows me that you are as uninformed about religion as you are about science. I believe there is a Being by the Name of I AM. Said being has a Will and Thought and Presence. With the understanding of I AM I AM decided that He would set things in order. While all the potentials we see were present in Him He set about putting them in order. Light and dark were separated. Material and vacuum were separated. Wet and dry were separated. Life from non life was separated. Male and Female were separated. The creation bears all the marks of its Creator. It has a degree of order that we have not fully fathomed yet. It shows an intelligent design that only a Super Intelligence could bring about.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 No of course I am not denying "the science", but I question the way those numbers are used. Now you've added that "intelligent deign" phrase I question it even more, for ID seems to be based on warping the Bible and scientific knowledge to fit each other.
I did not say God is a "ghost". Where did that come from?
You believe in God. I do not, and have no reason to.
You do not deny the existence of God. Nor do I - for I can no more prove he does not exist than you prove he does.
I did not say God is a "ghost". Where did that come from?
You believe in God. I do not, and have no reason to.
You do not deny the existence of God. Nor do I - for I can no more prove he does not exist than you prove he does.
hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M
@ArishMell No you don't accept the latest science. Your science is kind of like the flat earth belief of Galileo's time. Modern science is discovering that science is only beginning to grasp the fact that what it doesn't know is infinitely more than than what it does. I watched a origin of life scientist who said that not only are they getting closer understanding how life began but with each year the their understanding is becoming less not more. One of them and I can't remember who but he said that the odds of life forming spontaneously went from 1 E 42,000 but now it is in the orders of 1E 4 Billion. If 1 E 54 impossible then what is 1 E 4 Billion? Natural causes simply don't answer any questions we have and even the evolutionists at their most recent convention said that evolution simply is not adequate to explain anything. But hang on the that flat earth theory. I will follow the evidence.