Natural selection v Intelligent design

[paulm50]

Genesis is mans description of Gods creation. It doesn't mean this is exactly how it happened. It's is not meant to be a science explanation. We have to understand the stories in the context of how people saw things some 3 or 4 thousand years ago. They couldn't have known what we know today so there is a totally different way of thinking here. So why should we be trying to put 21st century meanings into these texts.

So man made stories, like Noah, Moses, and embellished stories of David, Solomon, etc.

But one thing that does ring true in the genesis story is that there has to be a supreme being who must have been responsible for bringing something from nothing and life from non life. Because not even the greatest minds with all the accumulated knowledge of thousands of years can work that one out and never will. Even the scientists agree that the universe must have had a beginning. So something greater than the universe and life must have been responsible for that beginning.

So the story is wrong and you say they're right. Because you made a scientific assumption that's wrong. Because you haven't studied the evidence.

So your saying there is an explanation for how something comes from nothing and how life comes from non life. Its not an argument from ignorance because we can use the very reasoning and logic that science uses to see that its impossible.

No we are saying you haven't done the research. And even if you are right, it brings into question the whole bible as a work of men.

The power comes from the sun.

Don't confuse him with science.

The Earth was never a dead planet, it was and still is a ball with a hard core on the outer shell and a molten lava inner core. We have life living at extreme depths, without sunlight, oxygen and only feeding on the gasses coming out of that inner shell. So life didn't have to come from dead matter, it wasn't required, the Earth had masses of living matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis a very simplified description. And all backed up by research, testing and actual proof. Volcanic ash makes fertile soil. And the Earth in the early days was thick with it.

 

[stevevw]

Argument from ignorance.

Umm this is going in circles. What is the ignorance then.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Umm this is going in circles. What is the ignorance then.

Here:

Because not even the greatest minds with all the accumulated knowledge of thousands of years can work that one out and never will. Even the scientists agree that the universe must have had a beginning. So something greater than the universe and life must have been responsible for that beginning.

 

[stevevw]

double post

 

[stevevw]

Here:

Like I said its not total ignorance. We know enough to acknowledge that the universe has a beginning. Logic must then say something had to begin it.

 

[bhsmte]

Like I said its not total ignorance. We know enough to acknowledge that the universe has a beginning. Logic must then say something had to begin it.

We know there was a dramatic change at one point, which started the process of our current and expanding universe, but we don't know what was there beforehand.

Do you have any evidence as to what caused this dramatic change (the big bang)?

 

[stevevw]

So man made stories, like Noah, Moses, and embellished stories of David, Solomon, etc.

These are mans perspective of what God is showing him.

So the story is wrong and you say they're right. Because you made a scientific assumption that's wrong. Because you haven't studied the evidence.

The story doesn't have a right or wrong as far as what you want to interpret it as. It has a divine message more than anything else. All I know is the story is true in the sense that God created life and existence. How that happened is something man tries to understand. What he writes in his attempt to relay Gods divine message isn't always literal. There are many layers to understanding what is written in the bible. One of those layers is that it has divine meaning. Another is that it is written in another time where people seen things differently to now so we cant judge things with today's thinking as far as knowledge is concerned. Put those two things together and you cant just read the bible on face value.

No we are saying you haven't done the research.

But based on the research so far and the attempts at an explanation for how existence and life began we can see that any explanation is going to be along the lines of appealing to something beyond our reality, logic, cause and effect. We can already see this from what has been put forward so far. Some of these explanation make God look like a pretty good option.

And even if you are right, it brings into question the whole bible as a work of men.

No it just means we are acknowledging humans being a part of the explanations. They are the vessel which is being used by God. So they will have their own perspectives about how to express things. This is influenced by the time and place they live in, the type of language they speak and the knowledge level they have.

 

[stevevw]

We know there was a dramatic change at one point, which started the process of our current and expanding universe, but we don't know what was there beforehand.

Do you have any evidence as to what caused this dramatic change (the big bang)?

The big bang, the beginning you have when your not having a beginning. If you say we dont know what was before the big bang then how can you say we had a big bang. Saying we had a big bang would mean we know there were certain things in place to have the big bang. This is what I mean by how scientists hedge their bets. Its like them saying nothing is really something which equates to really nothing.

 

[bhsmte]

The big bang, the beginning you have when your not having a beginning.

Who said there was a beginning?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

The big bang, the beginning you have when your not having a beginning. If you say we dont know what was before the big bang then how can you say we had a big bang. Saying we had a big bang would mean we know there were certain things in place to have the big bang. This is what I mean by how scientists hedge their bets. Its like them saying nothing is really something which equates to really nothing.

Perhaps Alan Guth can offer some clarification. From The Inflationary Universe (p. 2):

While there are many questions about the universe that cosmologists would like to answer, probably the most fascinating is the most fundamental question of all: Where did all this come from? Almost every human civilization in history has offered an answer to this question in the context of mythology or religion, but until recently the question had been thought to be outside the scope of science. Although the generally accepted big bang theory holds that the observable universe emerged from an explosion some ten to twenty billion years ago, the theory nonetheless assumes that all the matter in the universe was present from the start. The form of the matter may have been different, but it was all there. The classic big bang theory describes the aftermath of the bang, but makes no attempt to describe what "banged," how it "banged," or what caused it to "bang."

 

[stevevw]

Who said there was a beginning?

So our universe never had a beginning.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

So our universe never had a beginning.

Define "beginning."

 

[bhsmte]

Define "beginning."

Beat me to it.

 

[paulm50]

Umm this is going in circles. What is the ignorance then.

That you think the Earth was dead matter.

So our universe never had a beginning.

No one knows yet. So you can keep saying it was god, until the scientist prove it wasn't.

Which has been the fail safe for fundamentalists from the days they told the story around the campfire.

You can read what scientist think may have caused it, you won't find any supporting the god theory.

 

[quatona]

So our universe never had a beginning.

Well, yes, maybe in the way the 21st century had a beginning or this day had a beginning, or my relationship with my best friend had a beginning.
You know, "beginning" is a pretty unprecise term used in different meanings.
Strictly speaking, we don´t observe any beginnings at all. All we observe are changes of that which is.
So "beginning" as in "starting to exist where nothing was before" is not exactly something we can talk about from experience or by comparison.

 

[stevevw]

Define "beginning."

I guess the beginning of existence as we know it, time and space. What else could there be. Before that there was nothing and when I mean nothing I mean absolutely nothing otherwise there would have been something. But even for all that to start there had to be something great.

 

[stevevw]

Well, yes, maybe in the way the 21st century had a beginning or this day had a beginning, or my relationship with my best friend had a beginning.
You know, "beginning" is a pretty unprecise term used in different meanings.
Strictly speaking, we don´t observe any beginnings at all. All we observe are changes of that which is.
So "beginning" as in "starting to exist where nothing was before" is not exactly something we can talk about from experience or by comparison.

But surely there had to be a beginning to time and space. This is where the big bang theory comes in. This is where we begin to measure everything and understand everything with the same science that is trying to explain these things. A universe without a beginning brings up many problems which are explained here.
http://www.technologyreview.com/vie...prove-the-universe-must-have-had-a-beginning/
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe

 

[stevevw]

That you think the Earth was dead matter.

What do you mean I think the earth is dead matter.

No one knows yet. So you can keep saying it was god, until the scientist prove it wasn't.
Which has been the fail safe for fundamentalists from the days they told the story around the campfire.

You can read what scientist think may have caused it, you won't find any supporting the god theory.

The problem is when you read what scientists think caused it or more specifically what they think happened before the big bang it seems to be similar to what they claim God as an explanation is. So its not that they haven't found an answer yet but that the type of answers they are already trying to come up with show that they have to appeal to things beyond the boundaries of the logic and science they use to explain everything else. So this shows that whatever the answer is going to be its going to be outside the normal parameters of our reality and existence.

For example from your links.

In this realm, the solution, whatever it is, will seem very strange to us, and it will almost certainly make no sense to our brains because here, it is possible to have an event with no cause.
http://www.deepastronomy.com/what-caused-the-big-bang.html

Fortunately, the thinky types have come up with some ideas, and they’re all one part crazy, one part mind bendy, and 100% bananas.
http://www.universetoday.com/116835/what-came-before-the-big-bang/

So as you can see even the scientists will have to appeal to crazy and far fetched ideas that step outside the ways in which we explain things to be able to come up with an answer. So no matter how you look at it scientists will have to do the very thing they claim believers in Gods creation do which is to appeal to a force or occurrence beyond our reality.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I guess the beginning of existence as we know it, time and space. What else could there be. Before that there was nothing and when I mean nothing I mean absolutely nothing otherwise there would have been something. But even for all that to start there had to be something great.

See the quote from Guth's book I provided earlier.

 

[bhsmte]

I guess the beginning of existence as we know it, time and space. What else could there be. Before that there was nothing and when I mean nothing I mean absolutely nothing otherwise there would have been something. But even for all that to start there had to be something great.

How do you know there wasn't "something".

And define existence.