Why does God leave no tracks?

[Xalith]

@Xalith and @Peter1000 , isn't the world today supposed to be the "fallen world"? Was this "fallen world" God's goal in creation? Can we admire this "fallen world" and use it as the benchmark of perfection? The bacteria with the wonderful microscopic engineering also cause diseases.

God's goal is to wipe out evil once and for all, as Revelation speaks of God re-making the "heavens" (which could be read as the skies and outer space) and the earth (in fact, scientists admit that the universe has a finite duration: the Law of Entropy says that the universe as we know it will one day be no more.

God created the universe and the earth, planted the Garden of Eden, and then Adam took the fruit. God's using the thousands of years that passed since Adam's fall to round evil up all in one place and destroy it forever.

Then He's going to remake the universe and the Earth and THEN it will be perfect.

 

[cloudyday2]

Speaking of cells... You guys know that body has up in the trillions of them.

I googled some numbers:
cells in human: 7 x 10^13
galaxies in universe: 10^11
grains of sand on Earth: 7.5 x 10^18

 

[rockytopva]

I googled some numbers:
cells in human: 7 x 10^13
galaxies in universe: 10^11
grains of sand on Earth: 7.5 x 10^18

I believe that would be 70 trillion cells!
70,000,000,000,000

 

[cloudyday2]

I believe that would be 70 trillion cells!
70,000,000,000,000

Another amazing thing to me is that some nerve cells in humans are a meter long and only 10^-4 meters thick. I suppose there must be millions or billions of those one meter long nerve cells in a human?

 

[rockytopva]

Another amazing thing to me is that some nerve cells in humans are a meter long and only 10^-7 meters thick. I suppose there must be millions or billions of those one meter long nerve cells in a human?

I wonder what kind of logic the senses passes to the mind. Boolean you think?

 

[cloudyday2]

@rockytopva , here is another interesting one - a single cell organism that is a one inch sphere - the size of a marble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valonia_ventricosa

 

[Xalith]

And somehow, all of this stuff just automagically happened over millions of years, rite?

...sigh.

It's pretty amazing what God has done, the wonders He created... but it is also so sad, that people will jump through hoops to try to attribute what He created to everything, but the biggest insult IMO, is to say that it "just happened on its own".

How would you like it, if you were... say... a master artist who created the most awesome piece of digital art ever seen, the most detailed, millions of colors perfectly blending together, and someone later came by and said "oh, you didn't make that. Some computer program did that on its own." or some-such.

How would that make you feel?

Or, perhaps a better analogy: You sculpt an awesome statue, let's say it's 20 feet tall and absolutely perfect and you did it all with a hammer and chisel and nothing else, and then somebody comes along and goes "bah, the winds just eroded the rock that way".

It's one thing to attribute what God did to false gods, because you're still realizing that there's some higher power at work that you don't understand.

It's another thing entirely to just assume all of it happened on its own, and that man is the pinnacle of existence. What is a man? A man is a collection of liquids, flesh and bone and infused with a spirit and intelligence, though atheists tend not to believe in anything spiritual, so basically to them, what, man's just liquids, flesh, and bone that just happened to have automagically got intelligence, where nothing else on the planet even comes close?

If this evolution stuff were actually real, why didn't anything else evolve intelligence? Shouldn't every creature have attempted to evolve intelligence and then we'd have a war until there was only one remaining intelligent species left?

But that didn't happen, did it? No, there's only ever been 1 intelligent species for the entirety of recorded history. Only one species "evolved" (in their term) the ability to develop a language, and read and write. I guess once that happened, all of the other animals went "huh, so I guess the primates won, we'll stop evolving now" or something.

lol.

But anyways... I think I rambled on enough about that for awhile.

 

[cloudyday2]

@Xalith , you seem to be assuming that the intelligence of man is so perfect that it must have been the goal of the universe. A person's mind is complicated. Look at all the psychological problems that people can have.

 

[Xalith]

@Xalith , you seem to be assuming that the intelligence of man is so perfect that it must have been the goal of the universe. A person's mind is complicated. Look at all the psychological problems that people can have.

God states in Genesis... "Let us make Man in Our own image".

So, God had the desire to make a perfect race of beings in His own image. He made the Earth, He made all of outer space, the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars.

He says in the Bible that the sun, moon and the stars are "for signs, and for seasons, for days, and years".

However, after Adam and Eve took the fruit... they were no longer the perfect beings that God created; they had degenerated into what we know men as today: mortal, flawed, etc.

That doesn't change the fact that God made the entirety of Creation for Man, though. He wanted an entire race of people to worship Him, and to give Him pleasure. He takes pleasure in our joys, our rejoicing, our entertainments, etc as long as we're not committing sin with said things (which we won't be doing once we're in Heaven obviously).

It's clear to see that He desired to make a clean and perfect Earth (which He said He would do once all of the evil has been wiped out at the very end) full of people that worship Him and give Him pleasure.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

God's goal is to wipe out evil once and for all, as Revelation speaks of God re-making the "heavens" (which could be read as the skies and outer space) and the earth (in fact, scientists admit that the universe has a finite duration: the Law of Entropy says that the universe as we know it will one day be no more.

God created the universe and the earth, planted the Garden of Eden, and then Adam took the fruit. God's using the thousands of years that passed since Adam's fall to round evil up all in one place and destroy it forever.

Then He's going to remake the universe and the Earth and THEN it will be perfect.

And when we have free will in that perfect universe we will eventually choose to sin again, and then we will be in a fallen state and round and round we go all over again.

It will be impossible for us to have free will and yet never choose sin because if we have the ability to choose it then it is possible, and any event that is possible has a nonzero chance to occur, and any event with a nonzero chance of occurring MUST eventually occur, given eternity. You cannot go citing math saying that the random assembly of a protein is virtually zero and then deny that very same math here.

If God defies logic and math, which I fully grant to you as possible or even probable if God actually exists (as a nihilist I reject the notion of our invented mathematical axioms as being absolutely true in all possible realities), then you can say that we will have free will and yet will never choose to sin. But then the obvious question is, "Why didn't God just make us that way to begin with?"

Every theology has severe problems when it comes to this issue.

 

[Peter1000]

If I explained abiogenesis and cleared up your misunderstanding of it, and did the same for evolution, would the debate end there or would you merely retreat to a liberal interpretation of Genesis?

You can certainly try to explain how living matter was naturally formed from nonliving matter (spontaneous generation) and I will listen. But somewhere in your scientific explanation, I need you to present a scientific experiment that confirms your explanation/belief.

The problem you face is this: as soon as you show me a scientific experiment that got some kind of result, I will automatically disqualify it because it was not natural. It would have been preformed in a labratory with scientific precision and intelligence. (does that sound familiar?)

The question is not where would I retreat to, my faith is solidly based on an Intelligent Superior Being who knows how to build complex simple cells into complex living creatures.

The question is, where do you retreat to?

 

[Peter1000]

I see you have set out to make one of us look like an idiot. Congratulations, you have succeeded. If you go look at post 74, you will see that I am clearly saying that the Old Testament is the one that does not mention demons.

Why do you think demons are not mentioned in the OT, but only in the NT?

 

[Peter1000]

QUOTE="cloudyday2, post: 69330216, member: 311563"]I don't pretend to be a philosopher or a physicist, but it seems to me that the flaw in this argument is to assume that what we have today is perfection. Why is a universe filled with life perfection? - the same reason children think their parents are the best. Is a universe that only lasts for a few milliseconds any less perfect than a universe like our own? We are assuming that God would want to create what we have around us. Why?[/QUOTE)
___________________________________________________________
I have said nothing of perfection, I have only described the remarkable precision of one important relationship in the universe.


It does not seem to me a good use of time and materials to go to the Herculean effort to create a universe that will last for only a few milliseconds. Have you discovered one yet?


It is really very difficult to assume what God would want. What we know is that God created this universe and in the universe He created this earth. The likelihood that this universe and this earth came into existence by natural chance is 0. Therefore the only other explanation is a Superior Intelligent Being (God). As time goes by it is beginning to be a real safe and solid answer.


I would tell you why I personally think God created what we have around us. It is for the immortality and eternal life of man. God created the universe and the earth for the progression of man, that man may experience joy and happiness more fully.

 

[Xalith]

And when we have free will in that perfect universe we will eventually choose to sin again, and then we will be in a fallen state and round and round we go all over again.

There will be no sin in the new heavens and new earth, because God would have rounded up all evil and destroyed it.

Let's not forget that what caused the Fall of Man in the first place was an evil serpent and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

If Adam and Eve had not eaten of that fruit, there would have been no Evil. Adam and Eve were incapable of doing evil (and thus, sinning) until they were infused with the knowledge of Good and Evil from eating that fruit. (and of course in so doing, they disobeyed God).

In fact, Satan had to trick Eve by making her believe that God didn't say what He said, and that God lied about them dying if they ate it. Otherwise, she wouldn't have eaten the fruit in the first place.

Now, in the New Heavens, and in the New Earth, there will be no Satan, there will be no Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, therefore there will be no evil. He rounds up all of the Evil, along with its source (Satan) and throws it all in the lake of fire where it will never escape.

It will be impossible for us to have free will and yet never choose sin because if we have the ability to choose it then it is possible, and any event that is possible has a nonzero chance to occur, and any event with a nonzero chance of occurring MUST eventually occur, given eternity. You cannot go citing math saying that the random assembly of a protein is virtually zero and then deny that very same math here.

You can't choose to do evil if you don't even know evil exists or is even possible.

If God defies logic and math, which I fully grant to you as possible or even probable if God actually exists (as a nihilist I reject the notion of our invented mathematical axioms as being absolutely true in all possible realities), then you can say that we will have free will and yet will never choose to sin. But then the obvious question is, "Why didn't God just make us that way to begin with?"

Like everything else, God created math. Since God created it, He knows exactly how it works, and I'm quite sure that if He ever needed to, He very well could defy it (or simply remove it from existence, or change it). Now obviously if He did that, there would be huge changes happening in the physical world, but eh. That's a whole 'nuther can of worms.

In fact, the very.. uh.. 'characteristic'... of God, "Infinity", is something math has trouble dealing with sometimes. It's an abstract concept that is alien to a finite world such as ours.

Every theology has severe problems when it comes to this issue.

No problems at all, to be honest.

 

[cloudyday2]

It is really very difficult to assume what God would want. What we know is that God created this universe and in the universe He created this earth. The likelihood that this universe and this earth came into existence by natural chance is 0. Therefore the only other explanation is a Superior Intelligent Being (God). As time goes by it is beginning to be a real safe and solid answer.

Part of the problem is difficultly defining "cause-and-effect", "randomness", "design", "intelligence", "life", etc. For example you say "the likelihood ... by natural chance is 0". What does that mean exactly? Are atheists claiming that there is a metaphysical random variable that creates the physical laws of universes? What does it mean for something to be random?

When I think about these problems, my thoughts go in circles.

Actually it is also tricky to define "universe". God can't be outside the universe if we define the universe to include everything that exists.

 

[Xalith]

Part of the problem is difficultly defining cause-and-effect, randomness, design, intelligence, life, etc. For example you say "the likelihood ... by natural chance is 0". What does that mean exactly? Are atheists claiming that there is a metaphysical random variable that creates the physical laws of universes? What does it mean for something to be random?

When I think about these problems, my thoughts go in circles.

Basically, the concept of "the chances are basically 0" is the probability of everything coming together in such a perfect union to produce what we see today (a livable planet, with intelligent life) is so astronomical, that you would be more likely to win the Powerball Jackpot (1 in 292,201,338 chance) twice a week every single day of your life, than it would be for the universe to come together in the way that it did that supports life on one planet, and not just any life, but intelligent life that is capable of industrializing the way we have.

So, yeah, "Basically" 0.

It is so astronomical that you might as well just say 0.

 

[cloudyday2]

Basically, the concept of "the chances are basically 0" is the probability of everything coming together in such a perfect union to produce what we see today (a livable planet, with intelligent life) is so astronomical, that you would be more likely to win the Powerball Jackpot (1 in 292,201,338 chance) twice a week every single day of your life, than it would be for the universe to come together in the way that it did that supports life on one planet, and not just any life, but intelligent life that is capable of industrializing the way we have.

So, yeah, "Basically" 0.

It is so astronomical that you might as well just say 0.

This universe exists (apparently), so it's too late to speak of probabilities and lotteries.

Are atheists arguing that a God set the laws of the universe by rolling dice? The metaphysical naturalists are arguing that there is no God and there is no divine dice either (otherwise the atheist cosmology would go outside of nature to explain nature which is against the rules of metaphysical naturalism).

Soft atheists are simply arguing that Genesis is not helpful for cosmology.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

You can certainly try to explain how living matter was naturally formed from nonliving matter (spontaneous generation) and I will listen. But somewhere in your scientific explanation, I need you to present a scientific experiment that confirms your explanation/belief.

The problem you face is this: as soon as you show me a scientific experiment that got some kind of result, I will automatically disqualify it because it was not natural. It would have been preformed in a labratory with scientific precision and intelligence. (does that sound familiar?)

The question is not where would I retreat to, my faith is solidly based on an Intelligent Superior Being who knows how to build complex simple cells into complex living creatures.

The question is, where do you retreat to?

If an explanation is worthless without a laboratory demonstration, and if a laboratory demonstration is worthless, then it seems that the only thing that would satisfy you is the discovery of extraterrestrial life (such as an alien equivalent of bacteria or even plant life). Is this correct?

Now, where do I retreat to? I'm perfectly OK with admitting that I don't know. In the atheist worldview, nothing is handed to us. We have to work for our answers. In the Christian worldview, everything is already given by divine revelation. Yet to this day no one has worked out a good way of explaining to me why I should care about the system of morality and subsequent method of atonement drafted by racist, sexist men who regularly engaged in rape, slavery, and genocide. I haven't been told why God willfully allows contradictions to exist in the Bible, and what's worse, why I should believe that scribes who dedicated their lives to preserving the Bible made numerous mistakes while at the same an ancient entity who is malicious to the gospel and is commended at every opportunity for being crafty is somehow unable to at least match the blunders of the scribes. Crippling issues for which you have no answers.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Why do you think demons are not mentioned in the OT, but only in the NT?

Because Judaism changes over time.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

There will be no sin in the new heavens and new earth, because God would have rounded up all evil and destroyed it.

Let's not forget that what caused the Fall of Man in the first place was an evil serpent and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

If Adam and Eve had not eaten of that fruit, there would have been no Evil. Adam and Eve were incapable of doing evil (and thus, sinning) until they were infused with the knowledge of Good and Evil from eating that fruit. (and of course in so doing, they disobeyed God).

In fact, Satan had to trick Eve by making her believe that God didn't say what He said, and that God lied about them dying if they ate it. Otherwise, she wouldn't have eaten the fruit in the first place.

Now, in the New Heavens, and in the New Earth, there will be no Satan, there will be no Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, therefore there will be no evil. He rounds up all of the Evil, along with its source (Satan) and throws it all in the lake of fire where it will never escape.



You can't choose to do evil if you don't even know evil exists or is even possible.



Like everything else, God created math. Since God created it, He knows exactly how it works, and I'm quite sure that if He ever needed to, He very well could defy it (or simply remove it from existence, or change it). Now obviously if He did that, there would be huge changes happening in the physical world, but eh. That's a whole 'nuther can of worms.

In fact, the very.. uh.. 'characteristic'... of God, "Infinity", is something math has trouble dealing with sometimes. It's an abstract concept that is alien to a finite world such as ours.



No problems at all, to be honest.

Firstly, infinity is not a problem for us. It is merely the logical conclusion of a function of a set onto itself being injective but not surjective.

Secondly, why did God deliberately create a malformed world? Why create perfection which somehow downgraded itself to imperfection, and then follow that up with perfection? Is God a tinkerer trying to get it right?