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creation vs. evolution (pg. 6)
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| PHALPAX |
| another evolution thread? |
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| Orbax |
Hehe, very thorough Opus. I liked it. That does help fill in some gaps in what I was thinking. All the arguments of mutations that arent really beneficial unless there is a system for its use aside, it just keeps string along one variable after another.
I guess my way of summing it up is "At what point do luck and chance become a miracle?"
It may seem that im going off topic here hehe, but its mainly that science isnt why I have chosen a faith, so Im not really debating on that front. I probably need to study more, but so far every time I find an answer to something, i find the argument to it, and then the argument to that.
This is partially the reason for me saying earlier that I think Homo Sapien is a transplant. Just seems like we are so detached from Earths way of working.
I dunno. Not to wax sentimental but the stuff that has driven me to my decision has been the human capacity for good and bad. To watch people get drawn together and feel things so deeply it causes physical pain... we are so connected to the world, and yet we have these ephemeral connections to something greater than us.
That classic little exchange of "can you see wind? No. Then how do you know it exists? I see its effects" is something that I will admit is totally subjective. I find life too boring when I go through it objectively :p sometimes I just want to look at the Northern Lights without figuring out magnetism and wavelength equations.
Im not chalking up a belief in God to "im too lazy to think hard about stuff and junk" but to the fact that sometimes when you are looking at a scale through a magnifying glass, youre missing the dragon outside of it.
Again, I admit its subjective interpretation of the world, but so far (again) science seems to dead end at some crucial points for me. Call me a mystic or a spiritualist or something (although most people who know me would laugh their asses off if you did :D) but where some people see an interlocking set of rules and natural law and chance and variables, I see someone putting those pieces into place.
Sorry if this isnt hard enough for you guys to debate on, just throwing in some personal thought ;)
Plus Alcohol. I think that right there is proof enough of God. |
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| arctic |
Christ - fantastic (not to mention massive) post MisterOpus. I'll have to save the page and read it all later.
A bit off topic, but I feel perfectly comfortable taking someone on when it comes to religion or belief in god, but when it comes to evolution, I have serious trouble, as creationists of the young earth variety - how can I put this? Well, they seem to be experts at misrepresentation and repeatedly produce up with what could only be called extremely bizarre arguments. :p
I've always wanted to really learn about evolution - and I mean actually get stuck into it, as it's fascinating subject. I suppose I should put a day aside to read the talk.origins archive. But yeah, great post. 
I might just chime in on the religion course as issue well. I fully support them, but only if they're set up in a certain way.
In short, they would have to be comparative religion & philosophy classes. This would mean that they would touch on Christianity, Mormonism, Jehovahs Witnesses, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, Hinduism, Deism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Wicca & Paganism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Gnosticism, Traditional Satanism, Pantheism and so on. It would also need to include Secular Humanism, atheism and agnosticism.
Their primary function would be to educate people on what each major world religion believes, how old they are and whatnot - not to indoctrinate people. That means no evangelism, and no official or implied support of any particular religion or world view. Just explain what they are, what they believe - and why people follow them. This would hopefully help prevent stuff like the crap that went on after 9/11, where people murdered and beat up Sikhs in the streets because they thought they were fundamentalist Muslims. People might also learn that atheists don't hate everyone, and don't intend to eat people's children. :p There's a hell of a lot of intolerance, discrimination and ignorance out there when it comes to religion and philosophy, and in my mind - something needs to be done about it. |
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| Orbax |
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HAD A HUGE POST AND HIT BACK AND IT WAS DELETED
*cries softly to self*
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alright basic points were (sigh):
My college had a course exactly like what I proposed and Arctic described. Took people a bit to get over it and then it was an incredible journey of learning with Tibetan monks and everything. Teaching that the philosophies underlying the religion doesnt imply acceptance. Was just a really cool experience.
Wouldve liked to see more evolution too. I had a physiological psychology course that got into it and it was fascinating.
I think the castigation of YECs and basically anyone is more due to the way the reached the conclusion, not the conclusion itself.
When a person studies for 5 years and makes a life choice its almost impossible to say they are wrong, or made a stupid choice.
However if you are doing it because your parents said so, it takes whatever implied research there was on their side and trashes it. Everyone needs to make their own choices, and blind faith has never been a good thing.
sigh...I had like 3 times that much and so much more eloquent...you get the idea though |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orbax
I guess my way of summing it up is "At what point do luck and chance become a miracle?" |
Man I hope I'm coherent on such little sleep... but anyway...
You know I respect your views on this Orbie, but I do take a little issue with such a question.
You ask when luck and chance become a miracle, but the fallacy of calculating a priori probabilities a posteriori has already been shown. That is to say, you cannot calculate the probability of something happening if it has already happened - there is simply no reliable way to do so.
To be clear, I am not expressing that we can't calculate the probability of an amino acid forming, or calculate any of the other probabilities having to do with the mechanisms of abiogenesis, evolution, whatever. We certainly can, and it is not very probable. But when we use words like "luck", it implies that we were expecting something to happen a priori, and that's the problem with this mode of thought.
If I tell you I'm going to flip a coin 10 times and ask you to guess exactly what will turn up and in what exact order, you'd probably get it wrong. The chances are only 1 in 1024 that you'd get it right. That is quite evident statistically and makes perfect logical sense.
But if, on the other hand, I flip the coin 10 times, record exactly which face was up each time, then later on showed you the record and said "Wow! What do you think the chances were of getting T H T H H T T T H T!? It's amazing!" then I think you'd be a bit skeptical. In fact, you'd most likely say to me, "Uh... so what?" Because we both know the truth - it happened, the probability was only 1 in 1024, but all of those 1024 possibilites were equally unique and one of them was guaranteed to happen. So it's really nothing special that one of them DID happen.
It doesn't prove anything to calculate a probability a posteriori (in hindsight). In fact, when something that occurred in the past is proven to have an extremely low probability of occurrence, it is far more likely that it happened by accident (i.e. by my just flipping the coin and seeing what happened) than intentionally (i.e. by my planning in advance how the coin was supposed to land).
Now here's the even trickier part. If we are to assume, or not even assume but just consider the possibility even for a moment, for the sake of argument, that the universe is infinite in some fashion - that is, infinite in space or in time or in any conceivable way, as long as there is something unbounded about it, then the world we live in was guaranteed to come to being. Because when you take something that is even remotely possible, something that has even the most miniscule, infinitessimal chance of happening that only a "miracle" could possibly bring into being, it is guaranteed to happen when subjected to an unbounded variable (space, time, whatever). As long as the probability of something is not precisely zero, then it absolutely must happen on an infinite axis. So if our universe is infinitely old (and indeed, it may be infinitely old, for even if "this" universe is finitely old, "the" universe may go through constant expansion/compression cycles), then the overall probability of us living the way we are now is exactly 100%.
And if your response to that is, well how come the universe didn't collapse in on itself if the probability of that was higher than zero? The answer is simple - we're again talking about an a priori probability, but the a posteriori probability of the universe turning out any differently from how it already is is exactly zero.
To make a long story short, the probability argument doesn't fly in any rational sense.
Now you can have faith if you like... that's fine. I have no problem with people believing that a Deity caused this universe, as long as those people don't mean to suggest that the sheer improbability of it coming about by chance somehow implies that there must have been external causation in the form of a deity.
That should just about wrap it up. :) |
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| arctic |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orbax
My college had a course exactly like what I proposed and Arctic described. Took people a bit to get over it and then it was an incredible journey of learning with Tibetan monks and everything. Teaching that the philosophies underlying the religion doesnt imply acceptance. Was just a really cool experience. |
Sounds amazing - when I get to uni I plan to do something like that. Even though I'm an atheist, I'm still fascinated by religion, especially Taoism, Confucianism, deism, Buddhism and so on.
| quote: | | Wouldve liked to see more evolution too. I had a physiological psychology course that got into it and it was fascinating. |
You'd probably need to take up biology if you want to learn about that, but if you're really interested, you can always have a look at the Talk.Origins Archive & http://evolution.berkeley.edu/.
| quote: | I think the castigation of YECs and basically anyone is more due to the way the reached the conclusion, not the conclusion itself.
When a person studies for 5 years and makes a life choice its almost impossible to say they are wrong, or made a stupid choice. |
I don't know, I think it does have a lot to do with the conclusion, as it really doesn't make any sense. Honestly, turn on the TV, and find a documentary or show related to science, preferably biology or astronomy. Most of it is going to depend on the idea that the universe is billions of years old, and that humans have been around for tens (hundreds even?) of thousands of years. I think it's both the conclusion and the way they've come to it. The two are directly related as well, because how they got there of course needs to be looked at when examining the validity of it.
| quote: | | However if you are doing it because your parents said so, it takes whatever implied research there was on their side and trashes it. Everyone needs to make their own choices, and blind faith has never been a good thing. |
Agreed. I'm looking into all the major world religions because I want to - I try to disregard what my parents think. They aren't religious either, but one is an objectivist, which is something that I vehemently disagree with - so nobody can really accuse me of just following in their footsteps. If you don't look at what you believe, then there's always the chance that you could be horribly wrong - which is never a good thing.
"An unexamined life is not worth living." -- Socrates
| quote: | | sigh...I had like 3 times that much and so much more eloquent...you get the idea though |
It's probably worth doing a copy-paste with long posts, because when you lose them it's, well, really ing annoying. :p |
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| Orbax |
oh hehe I wasnt saying anything about the probability of an acid or anything. It was a general "look at how tight this world and universe is" kind of thought. Its not even really something you can calculate to say what are the odds of everything the way it is right now being the way it is. Bad stuff included. Adds some spice to eh?
Just falls into the faith category in the end. hehe. |
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| Moongoose |
Well i dont think that this world is that tight :) We could do a lot better but then again we could do alot worse. This is one of my points when debating stuff like religion. If we really were created in gods image (i think it says something like that in the bible) and god is de facto perfect, then why are we not perfect.
Heres another one of my thoughts (when im in one of my why does all the bad happan to me mods). If there is a god, did he purposley create such a mess. Ifhe is all knowing an all powerfull he could have done a lot better. But in a perfect world would there be a need for god? Now people look up to higher deitys becouse they dont understand something, they need help or just dont like the fact that they are alone in this mess of a world we live in (probably other reasons to but i dont know but i do notunderstand the way religious people think ;) ) But for example in a world where there would be no worry, no sadness and everybody drove ferraris, dated a hot blonde and listend to trance all the time would one really need to look up to god for answers? Whats the point of being a god if nobody belives in you? |
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| Orbax |
Arctic: Yes, hehe, I admit that Young Earth is an odd phenomenon, and is one of the conclusions that, even after study, is kind of weird. Its mainly something to read up on and be like, whoa, thats an interesting thought. But nothing really serious. Kind of like reading about UFOs.
Mongoose:
Being created in Gods image was more to the tune of compassion, love, forgiveness, faithfulness, curiosity etc...
As to "why does bad stuff happen"...
At least in my view
There is a spiritual war being waged on earth. Ever since the Fall of man, and before that, Lucifers condemnation for challenging God, man has come to a spiritual crux whenever there is a decision to be made. He can choose to go with God, or against him (middle of the road AKA Lukewarm is hated by both sides). To answer why Bad stuff happens...basically there was a group of Angels watchdogging earth and mankind. They decided to take some power on and ended up introducing war, hate, greed, all the bad stuff.
The reason it continues to this day is Free Will. God wants to be loved, and making an automaton that HAS to love him and follow His Will is rather pointless to that aim. So hes made it so people can choose to reject him.
The whole BluePrint idea that God has your life planned out and pre destiny is Bollocks, because God is Good, and he wouldnt plan crap into your life to challenge you or any of that gibberish. Bad stuff happens because there are people in this world, and they can interact with you.
**
Well, the world WAS perfect in the Garden. No shame, hatred, mistrust. Just total acceptance of everything. Free food, water, shelter. The Weather always nice enough to walk around and sleep naked in...Those were times when God DID walk the earth with his people.
I am at an odd point in my life regarding this all though. After reading Zecharia Sitchin's life work, its just really odd. Everything is odd. I dont know if youve read his stuff, but ater you read about 3 or 4 of his books, it starts kind of clicking. At first it seems fantastic, but the records of the ancient peoples were so exact. Any technological being would seem God like, and the planet things he brings up.
in a nutshell:
The ancients talked about neptune and uranaus and stuff and we didnt even see them with the hubble until 1986. They knew that it was going to be liquid, when we speculated on frozen. They knew the color and that both planets had the same outer surface temperature. They just knew an incredible amount.
They also said there is another planet out there that comes into our solar system every 3600 years. Way long ago it collided with a planet and Earth was formed. The other part is the asteroid belt in our area.
We looked at pluto and calculated that there HAD to be another thing working on it. Then... we found a "mysterious celestial body that was moving towards earth" in the 90s with a telescope again.
Its all just kind of a mind-screw with how much these old civies knew, and how ACCURATE it all was. The veracity of their science and history makes you take another look at how they said they interacted with "gods" and stuff.
I dunno, its all very interesting, and I dont know what "angels" are any more or exactly what "God" is any more. Ive had this happen to me before too, i just need some good ol' thinking time and more research. Complicated issues at hand. |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orbax
in a nutshell:
The ancients talked about neptune and uranaus and stuff and we didnt even see them with the hubble until 1986. They knew that it was going to be liquid, when we speculated on frozen. They knew the color and that both planets had the same outer surface temperature. They just knew an incredible amount. |
Could you please elaborate on what ancients you have in mind? If you're reffering to ancient american cultures, they had a a few more planets in mind that don't seem to exist. Uranus and Neptune were discovered and seen in 1800s, and we had quite good pictures of them before the Hubble, that was launched in 1990 if I'm not mistaken.
| quote: | | They also said there is another planet out there that comes into our solar system every 3600 years. Way long ago it collided with a planet and Earth was formed. The other part is the asteroid belt in our area. |
I guess it is remotely possible that there is a gigantic earth-sized Kuiper belt object with a 3600 year rotation period, as that is currently impossible to disprove. But for the asteroid belt, the mass it contains is miniscule in comparison with other planets. It wouldn't be enough to make half of our moon, let alone a whole planet.
| quote: | | We looked at pluto and calculated that there HAD to be another thing working on it. Then... we found a "mysterious celestial body that was moving towards earth" in the 90s with a telescope again. |
Sources? What body? We found Pluto's moon Charon in 1978, and some rather large Kuiper belt objects in the 90's, but none of them are moving towards earth. Anything that's currently moving towards earth that we know of are a few medium-sized asteroids at best.
| quote: | | Its all just kind of a mind-screw with how much these old civies knew, and how ACCURATE it all was. The veracity of their science and history makes you take another look at how they said they interacted with "gods" and stuff. |
I won't a priori reject any possibility that those civilizations have indeed been on to something, but I feel that without proper research on those subjects, it's early to speculate whether their data is indeed correct, or whether it's just a few paragraphs which accidentally make sense and are taken out of their otherwise nonsensical prophecies.[/QUOTE] |
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| Orbax |
Mainly dealing with Sumerians and Mesopotamians.
The planet stuff is from The 12th Planet, the first book of the Earth Chronicles.
"In 1978, astronomers at the US Naval Observatory in Washington determined that Pluto - being smaller than formerly believed - could not by itself account for perturbations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune; they postulated the existence of yet another celestial body beyond Pluto. in 1982 NASA announced its conclusion that there indeed exists such a body; whether or not its another large planet, it planned to determine by deploying in a certain manner its two Pioneer spacecract that had been hurtling into space beyond Saturn. and at the close of 1983 astronomers at the California Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that IRAS, the infrared telescope mounted on a spacecraft...- had discovered beyong Pluto a very distant "mystery celestial body" about 4 times the size of earth and moving towards earth"
Also in 1983 rocks were found in Antarctica from Mars and our Moon. Which coincides with the satellites of Nibiru (Sumerian name for planet) colliding with Tiamat (pre earth planet).
The symbol for the planet was a Cross and the very name means "crossing". |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orbax
Mainly dealing with Sumerians and Mesopotamians.
The planet stuff is from The 12th Planet, the first book of the Earth Chronicles.
"In 1978, astronomers at the US Naval Observatory in Washington determined that Pluto - being smaller than formerly believed - could not by itself account for perturbations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune; they postulated the existence of yet another celestial body beyond Pluto. in 1982 NASA announced its conclusion that there indeed exists such a body; whether or not its another large planet, it planned to determine by deploying in a certain manner its two Pioneer spacecract that had been hurtling into space beyond Saturn. and at the close of 1983 astronomers at the California Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that IRAS, the infrared telescope mounted on a spacecraft...- had discovered beyong Pluto a very distant "mystery celestial body" about 4 times the size of earth and moving towards earth"
Also in 1983 rocks were found in Antarctica from Mars and our Moon. Which coincides with the satellites of Nibiru (Sumerian name for planet) colliding with Tiamat (pre earth planet).
The symbol for the planet was a Cross and the very name means "crossing". |
Niburu, eh? Well, I hate to break it to you, but Nuburu was supposed to be a huge brown dwarf that was supposed to pass at a distance of about 20 million kilometers from Earth in may 2003. Needless to say, it didn't happen.
In reality, while it was first considered to be a possible large planet, even a brown dwarf, it is infact a very large asteroid called 2001 KX76. It is rather large in size, almost as big as Pluto, but it is definitely not on a collision course with Earth. The orbital fluctuations of Neptune and Pluto may indeed be caused by some yet unknown Kuiper belt objects, but that is yet unconfirmed.
Now, about Sumerians, they thought there are 12 planets, so I don't see how their predictions could be accurate. There are basically 8 major planets, and then there's Pluto that's infact just a huge Kuiper belt object. Aside from it, there are maybe tens of such yet undiscovered semi-planets spinning around the sun. |
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