(A) God and/or/in Science

[knapplc]

That star likely formed during the Big Bang, or Great Expansion Event, or whatever vernacular those scientist kids are using today. If it was a Red Giant it could have been a second- or third-generation star, since they tend to have lives millions of years long rather than billions. The origin of that star or stars that created the dust cloud from whence our solar system originated is somewhat irrelevant, unless it's a pathway to "where did everything come from?" at which point we're back to the answer you already know, which is, we don't know. But the fact that there isn't yet an answer to that question doesn't presuppose god, it simply means we don't know yet.

 

It does not exclude god from the answer, but there are a host of philosophical questions arising from a god who creates a universe this vast but allows generations upon generations of his creations to live and die without ever having a chance to meet him.

 

 

 

You know how the road map from simple molecules to life makes a god less likely, because for a god to be more likely more god-things would be necessary.

 

Q: Daddy, where does this bread come from?

 

A: Well, squirt, the rain falls from the sky and nourishes the soil, and the sun shines and the wheat grows. It's harvested, threshed, dried, delivered to a refinery and processed. That process makes flour, which is one of the four basic building blocks of bread. The others are water, salt and yeast. Combine those four things together in a hospitable environment, the dough rises, gets baked, and there's your bread.

 

 

If the answer to that question involved one step that was <magic> the likelihood of explaining bread's existence becomes difficulter. If two steps require <magic> it's difficulter still. The more <magic> required to explain bread the more likely it becomes that some outside force, some godly being, magicked bread into existence. But we know that's not true, because we've been making bread for thousands of years. But if you showed bread to a caveman, and said it came from those tall grass-like things over there, he'd think... <magic>.

[BigRedBuster]

That star likely formed during the Big Bang, or Great Expansion Event, or whatever vernacular those scientist kids are using today. If it was a Red Giant it could have been a second- or third-generation star, since they tend to have lives millions of years long rather than billions. The origin of that star or stars that created the dust cloud from whence our solar system originated is somewhat irrelevant, unless it's a pathway to "where did everything come from?" at which point we're back to the answer you already know, which is, we don't know. But the fact that there isn't yet an answer to that question doesn't presuppose god, it simply means we don't know yet.

 

It does not exclude god from the answer, but there are a host of philosophical questions arising from a god who creates a universe this vast but allows generations upon generations of his creations to live and die without ever having a chance to meet him.

 

 

 

You know how the road map from simple molecules to life makes a god less likely, because for a god to be more likely more god-things would be necessary.

 

Q: Daddy, where does this bread come from?

 

A: Well, squirt, the rain falls from the sky and nourishes the soil, and the sun shines and the wheat grows. It's harvested, threshed, dried, delivered to a refinery and processed. That process makes flour, which is one of the four basic building blocks of bread. The others are water, salt and yeast. Combine those four things together in a hospitable environment, the dough rises, gets baked, and there's your bread.

 

 

If the answer to that question involved one step that was <magic> the likelihood of explaining bread's existence becomes difficulter. If two steps require <magic> it's difficulter still. The more <magic> required to explain bread the more likely it becomes that some outside force, some godly being, magicked bread into existence. But we know that's not true, because we've been making bread for thousands of years. But if you showed bread to a caveman, and said it came from those tall grass-like things over there, he'd think... <magic>.

 

 

There is one part of this response that means everything. We don't know. So, that means my belief in God is no more wrong than your belief that some how this mass of stuff that created the universe came out of nowhere without a higher power.

[Landlord]

I don't feel there is a problem with this sentiment. I would not go so far as to say "all" are true but I do think many could be true. But, "true" may not be the proper word. I happen to think God is flexible enough to allow for a multitude of ways to get there. What I mean specifically is, The Christian's way may need to follow what they believe and the Muslims way may need to follow what they believe. Sure there are hard and fast differences between the two but I have a very difficult time believing all non-Christians are going to hell (or at least not reaching heaven) even though it may require firm belief and adherence to Christianity for a Christian to get there. I think there can be many different ways to one all powerful, omnipotent creator. He sure wouldn't be bound by the same limitations we are. He knows our hearts and minds better than we or any man does.

 

Sorry, but it's just not a tenable position. The reason being that if the Christian God or Jewish God or Muslim God are any of them at all true, those Gods don't leave room for flexibility.

 

For example - if God is the God He has revealed Himself to be according to Christian tradition, then those who don't follow Christ do not inherit salvation. It's cut and dry. Or, if the Jews have it right, then being in God's covenant requires adhering to Mosaic law no matter what. Just two examples of the specificity of each major religion that does not allow them to all lead to the same place. Like I said, if all of them can be true, then none of them are.

 

Now, if you want to think that a deity is responsible for creation and allows for multiple paths to find Him/It, that is fine, but you have to acknowledge it isn't the God of the Bible, or the Torah, or the Quran, etc. Because if one of those Gods exists, but mankind is still able to reach them through many different pathways, then that makes the God in question a liar, which contradicts how they have revealed themselves to mankind. It's self-defeating.

[Junior]

Again, I didn't say that road map proves anything. I said that the more road map we find, the less likely it is that god was involved in life.

 

 

Most of the stuff in the soupy mess came from dead stars. Like the gold in your wedding ring, those complex molecules (iron, carbon, etc.) were forged in the nuclear fusion hearts of stars. Those stars exploded in a process we can observe today, scattering molecules into space. From the dusty novas created by those star explosions, through the forces of gravity, accretion discs formed. Those accretion discs coalesced into stars and planets, and that's how our solar system formed - and again, we can observe this happening in other parts of the galaxy.

 

So all that soupy mess came from ex-stars (suns, not Erik Estrada).

 

 

Where did the star that exploded come from? And...why does the road map that we uncover make it less likely that a God was involved?

 

Where did God come from?

[Landlord]

Where did God come from?

 

 

Whether it's "of the gaps" or not, the idea of an eternally-existing deity is much easier to reconcile than the idea of eternally-existing "stuff", as the former is outside of the plains of time and space and thus needs no origin.

[The Dude]

I can only speak for myself. When i was questioning everything, I came to the belief that there has to be a creator and a higher power involved in life.

 

OK...that's my starting point.

That's some wonky logic right there.

 

Let's use another example. If you start with the belief that Sasquatch exists, and wait around for someone to disprove his existence, you're going to be waiting a long, long time.

[BigRedBuster]

Again, I didn't say that road map proves anything. I said that the more road map we find, the less likely it is that god was involved in life.

 

 

Most of the stuff in the soupy mess came from dead stars. Like the gold in your wedding ring, those complex molecules (iron, carbon, etc.) were forged in the nuclear fusion hearts of stars. Those stars exploded in a process we can observe today, scattering molecules into space. From the dusty novas created by those star explosions, through the forces of gravity, accretion discs formed. Those accretion discs coalesced into stars and planets, and that's how our solar system formed - and again, we can observe this happening in other parts of the galaxy.

 

So all that soupy mess came from ex-stars (suns, not Erik Estrada).

 

 

Where did the star that exploded come from? And...why does the road map that we uncover make it less likely that a God was involved?

 

Where did God come from?

 

 

I don't know. For me, it's easier to believe a force or higher power has always existed than a bunch of meaningless stuff floating around in nothing. But....that's just me.

[BigRedBuster]

I can only speak for myself. When i was questioning everything, I came to the belief that there has to be a creator and a higher power involved in life.

 

OK...that's my starting point.

That's some wonky logic right there.

 

Let's use another example. If you start with the belief that Sasquatch exists, and wait around for someone to disprove his existence, you're going to be waiting a long, long time.

 

 

Your assuming that all of a sudden I just said....Hmmm...I think a creator exists....now prove me wrong.

 

Like I have said before, I went through a period where I questioned a lot of stuff and from my view, all of this world around us, and the beginning of life itself just doesn't make sense without a creator.

 

Now....if you want to believe that some dust just has been floating around for eternity and then all of a sudden exploded to start a mass chemical reaction that (on it's own) developed into an extremely complex life form that has the ability to question these things....then, that's your prerogative and I don't have a problem with that.

[knapplc]

There is one part of this response that means everything. We don't know. So, that means my belief in God is no more wrong than your belief that some how this mass of stuff that created the universe came out of nowhere without a higher power.

 

Kinda sorta I agree with that, except for a couple things. First, I'm not telling you that you are wrong for believing in God. I will tell you (and have, frequently) why I don't think it's correct to do so, but bear in mind that this is in the context of our conversations here, and in general terms I don't have an issue with people believing in god(s).

 

I'm a godfather to two kids. My non-theism is pretty well-known amongst friends and family now, but just the adults. When the kids talk God, I talk God back to them - it's what I promised to do when I accepted the role as godfather. My belief is not involved in that equation - the belief of the parent and godchild is, and I reinforce that belief. As you've probably noticed, I'm reasonably well-versed in the Bible and theology. It's pretty easy to give them the answer their parents would want me to give them, and whether I believe that's true or not isn't relevant. When the kids are all grown up and ready to think things through on their own, if they have doubts and questions I'll be more open about things, but not now.

[The Dude]

the beginning of life itself just doesn't make sense without a creator.

Why is a creator performing magic necessary to the origin of life? How is that more sensible than possible naturalistic explanations?

[JJ Husker]

I don't feel there is a problem with this sentiment. I would not go so far as to say "all" are true but I do think many could be true. But, "true" may not be the proper word. I happen to think God is flexible enough to allow for a multitude of ways to get there. What I mean specifically is, The Christian's way may need to follow what they believe and the Muslims way may need to follow what they believe. Sure there are hard and fast differences between the two but I have a very difficult time believing all non-Christians are going to hell (or at least not reaching heaven) even though it may require firm belief and adherence to Christianity for a Christian to get there. I think there can be many different ways to one all powerful, omnipotent creator. He sure wouldn't be bound by the same limitations we are. He knows our hearts and minds better than we or any man does.

 

Sorry, but it's just not a tenable position. The reason being that if the Christian God or Jewish God or Muslim God are any of them at all true, those Gods don't leave room for flexibility.

 

For example - if God is the God He has revealed Himself to be according to Christian tradition, then those who don't follow Christ do not inherit salvation. It's cut and dry. Or, if the Jews have it right, then being in God's covenant requires adhering to Mosaic law no matter what. Just two examples of the specificity of each major religion that does not allow them to all lead to the same place. Like I said, if all of them can be true, then none of them are.

 

Now, if you want to think that a deity is responsible for creation and allows for multiple paths to find Him/It, that is fine, but you have to acknowledge it isn't the God of the Bible, or the Torah, or the Quran, etc. Because if one of those Gods exists, but mankind is still able to reach them through many different pathways, then that makes the God in question a liar, which contradicts how they have revealed themselves to mankind. It's self-defeating.

The clincher is I believe in only one God. That alone makes stipulating the God of the Bible, or the Torah, or the Quran, or the flying spaghetti monster mostly a moot point. I don't put any limitations on what he is capable of. If he wishes to have those who follow Christ inherit salvation and also wishes for some to follow mosaic law, without belief in the New Covenant, who am I (are we) to question how or why he does what he does? A lie is only a lie if a person is able to comprehend that it is a lie. There could be differing truths and realities for different people. It could be that each person has their own truth and reality.

 

Now pass the bong please.

[Husker_x]

Finally!

 

 

 

[F]irst I'm interested in really specifically examining evolution and the progress towards intelligent thought and whether or not that might, at least potentially, be evidence of deism.

 

With no disrespect intended, I had trouble understanding how the argument presented serves this purpose, or refutes what you quoted from me in the other thread. That people disagree on what constitutes evidence in different contexts and circumstances is a given. For instance, many Americans believe that four copies of copies of translated Greek scrolls constitute evidence which not only suggests, but conclusively proves that a man named Jesus was born without half of his chromosomes.

 

I consider the point that a deistic god is believed in without evidence or the expectation of evidence to be inarguable by definition. A deistic god spins up the universe and then, for reasons probably incomprehensible to a feeble human intellect, disappears; it has no continuing hand in the universe or human affairs. It has chosen to exist outside of the universe (whatever that means) and is therefore completely unknowable.

 

The argument is pretty simple - If evolution is a non-teleological process, then it undercuts our ability to trust in our own convictions as being true rather than simply being advantageous.

 

Assuming the premise is even true––the blind watchmaker comes with some unwelcome implications—how does that alone constitute an argument for deism? It might just be we’re SOL.

 

Anyone can be mistaken and profit or perish. In Skeptic World it's no state secret that the human mind is notoriously unreliable. Memory is faulty. Everyone reading this thread, including myself, can fall prey to wish thinking, confirmation bias, and all flavors of fallacy. Fortunately, science is a method that takes some measures to account for these problems in advance––testability, falsifiability, independent verification, etc. And beneath the method itself is a basic orientation towards doubt and suspicion: the need for evidence and clarity, applicable predictive capability (which evolution provides in droves, btw).

 

And before I forget, how could we possibly know that a teleologic creation by an unseen hand would make an intelligence capable of trusting its own convictions? A spirit-thing sticking its fingers in my brain doesn’t necessarily provide me with any more certainty about the reality I perceive than a gradually evolved organ which causes an experience I call consciousness, and the things like beliefs and convictions that arise within it.

 

The thing here is, with every possible outcome of belief that unguided evolution can produce,they have no correlation or necessity to the belief being true.

 

Something I have to ask you is what your view is on the relationship between evolution and beliefs? When you introduce human beings and their cognitive processes into the equation, you start to stray from evolution and natural selection in any sense that I understand them. I’m thinking allele frequencies, adaptations beneficial to specific environments, survivability at the level of populations, not the individual caveman. There are certain parts of the brain that correspond to instinctive behaviors independent of your beliefs or the veracity of those beliefs, like your physiological reaction when you see a frothy-mouthed bear charging towards you. The concept of phobia assumes the existence of strong convictions that are irrational. As beliefs go, they’re typically neutral. Although in my case I probably would set fire to my apartment building if I thought there was a big enough spider in it.

 

The point, then, is simply to say that our belief in evolution without any guiding force, any intelligence, any impartiality, or any method, could itself be any of the four types of belief listed above. I don't know what the likelihood is that it would produce cognitive functions that we can rely on to form true beliefs, but I imagine it would be quite low, and even then, we can't ever really know if our belief in it is inherently true, or if it is simply advantageous to us.

 

Basically, it seems to me, that if we are going to accept a naturalistic view of evolutionary theory, that we need to be agnostic about it's reliability, and that all we really know is that it works for evolutionary purposes, not for the purposes of discerning truth from falsehood. This seems self-defeating to me.

 

The cognitive functions that determine truth from falsehood have reliably helped me navigate this thing I call Reality every day since the day I was born. I know because the sacrosanct beliefs I hold to be absolutely True—like that the toaster will make toast—keep my ape brain active. That’s not to say I’m not capable of holding false beliefs as well, or that the picture will ever be anything less than fuzzy in places. But I also seem capable from time to time of recognizing false beliefs and correcting them.

 

One other thing I continue to notice here is the wording. The ‘naturalist position’ as I hold it is not that evolution happened without the guiding hand of something beyond the universe. What happened was most of us took a look at the natural world, picked up a science book, and concluded with as much certainty human beings are even fundamentally capable of that evolution happened. As mysterious as life and the universe and everything is, we do at least appear to understand some things about it. And we still have neuron-bending, awe-inspiring questions about life, the Beginning, or what the Universe itself even is.

 

But then a deist shows up at the door with a surplus idea about an invisible I-can’t-fathom-in-the-aneurysm-inducing-sense-of-the-word thing he calls GOD. He says there is no evidence for it in the empirical sense––the part that sorta matters––not a scrap, and probably no hope of ever finding any. He can’t tell me anything about it, what its properties are, how or why it functions, its role in an already mind-bogglingly vast, bizarre and complex universe is, except to start it (mechanism unknown)––and in order to know even that much there is a series of mind puzzles I must first conduct that will sorta farmer blow it into definitional existence inside my ape brain. But if I do enough of them I will know, in something like the conventional sense of the word, that IT’s out there (and no don’t ask because I’m not sure what there means, either). Basically, he admits, this GOD is just a word I can use as a kind of linguistic Band-AID for other, more tangible mysteries.

 

And I apply Occam's Razor.

 

To put a point on this, even if I concede up front that human beings are wholly incapable of knowing truth from falsehood in any sense, you would still have to add GOD to a now-exponentially growing list of things I can’t really know anything about. I repeat, even if GOD did have some hand in the development of our species, I don’t think it changes this solipsistic-flavored paradox you speak of. How do I know IT’s any better at building squishy pink truth detectors than evolution? How do I know if IT speaks, IT’s not lying?

[Junior]

 

I don't know. For me, it's easier to believe a force or higher power has always existed than a bunch of meaningless stuff floating around in nothing. But....that's just me.

 

Genuine question... why is that easier to believe?

[tschu]

Where did God come from?

 

 

Whether it's "of the gaps" or not, the idea of an eternally-existing deity is much easier to reconcile than the idea of eternally-existing "stuff", as the former is outside of the plains of time and space and thus needs no origin.

lol wat

[JJ Husker]

Well, if nothing else, some of the comments in this thread point towards the very real possibility that some people, either by choice or by capability or both, are incapable of beginning to grasp the concept of a creator or God. I may be hallucinagetically crazy but I am able to fathom the possibility. I'm pretty sure some people just plain can't. A couple of us think and feel it more likely a creator caused it to all happen and science simply helps explain how. While others are limited to comprehending only what can be exhibited by scientific discovery and therefore think that's all there is to it. And each group feels the other must be missing pieces of the puzzle.