Something I can never understand - can anyone help?

[Soyeong]

Yes. But that does not mean our idea is necessarily right; God would still need to reveal something of himself to us.

Indeed, whether there us a God who created the universe and whether this God has the same identity as the Christian God are two related, but separate issues.

 

[Catherineanne]

First, I would just like to point out that evolution is not just improbable, its literally impossible.

This is not a belief shared by all Christians; it is a minority view and by no means backed up by actual evidence. Taken to its logical conclusion it calls for a god who practices deception, which is not the God revealed in Scripture.

 

[Catherineanne]

Indeed, whether there us a God who created the universe and whether this God has the same identity as the Christian God are two related, but separate issues.

It would be totally astonishing if they are the same.

Our concept of God must necessarily be constrained by the capacity of our own minds, which means we are certain to have an incomplete and insufficient concept of God. We can know the direction to go because of Christ, but we will never be able to grasp anything of what and who God really is.

 

[Catherineanne]

To clarify, would you call that something "God" even if that something scarcely resembles any recognisable concept of God?

Recognisable concepts of God will all be insufficient.

 

[Catherineanne]

Absent a definition of "nothing," I don't think we can be certain of this. We don't know what came before the Big Bang, if "before" even makes sense.

Except people don't pray to an incomprehensible nothing. They don't claim to know the nature, identity, and will of an incomprehensible nothing. In fact, many don't even claim that an incomprehensible nothing was ever a real state of affairs. They say "I don't know" because they genuinely do not know.

In what way does "Someone" advance our understanding of the origins of the universe any further than "I don't know"?

You would have to ask the OP. My own beliefs are not founded on what happened at the origin of the universe.

We are very adept at finding patterns, but many patterns are spurious. Science helps us differentiate meaningful patterns from spurious ones.

Science has nothing to say about God. To use your words, it genuinely does not know.

 

[Soyeong]

It would be totally astonishing if they are the same.

Our concept of God must necessarily be constrained by the capacity of our own minds, which means we are certain to have an incomplete and insufficient concept of God. We can know the direction to go because of Christ, but we will never be able to grasp anything of what and who God really is.

I was meaning that these arguments for the creator of the universe only argue for the God of classical theism. It's possible that classical theism is true in that there is a God who created the universe, but that Christianity is false, thus this God would not have the identity of the Christian God. This is why William Lane Craig always includes an argument for the resurrection of Jesus in his debates, which is essentially an argument for the identity of the being that his previous arguments tried to establish. Up until that point, a Muslim or Jew could use the same arguments to support their position.

 

[Catherineanne]

I was meaning that these arguments for the creator of the universe only argue for the God of classical theism. It's possible that classical theism is true in that there is a God who created the universe, but that Christianity is false, thus this God would not have the identity of the Christian God. This is why William Lane Craig always includes an argument for the resurrection of Jesus in his debates.

Yes, it is possible that Christians have it completely wrong.

Our faith is not just in God, but also in God as revealed in Christ and the Holy Spirit. But even if all of them turn out to be mistaken or worse, I will still have lived my life the best way I can find to live it, following the best example I can find, so I don't really care.

If it is really all just a dream within a dream, it will still have been a beautiful dream. And I won't know any different by then, so what does it all matter?

 

[TaylorDonBarrett]

This is not a belief shared by all Christians; it is a minority view and by no means backed up by actual evidence. Taken to its logical conclusion it calls for a god who practices deception, which is not the God revealed in Scripture.

Hello Catherineanne.

How are you?

You said that Creation is a minority view among Christians. That may be true in today's world, but Creation has always been the majority view up until recent times!

Still, I would like to point out some facts concerning what God says about history in the bible=
1) the universe was made in 6 days
2) the earth was created and it had plants on it before the sun and the stars were created
3) adam and eve were the first human beings and all other humans beings descend from them
4) death entered the world when adam sinned, roughly 6,000 years ago. before that there was no death.
5) genetic entropy= human life span began with adam at ~1,000 years, rapidly declined to ~500 years, then plummeted down to ~70-80 years.
6) global flood covered all the highest mountains, killing dinosaurs and all land and air animals, reshaping the earths terrain.
7) Jesus Christ walked on water, raised the dead, predicted His own death and resurrection, and rules in Heaven

These things may seem miraculous, and unscientific, and supernatural. And they are.



Now, if you would like to talk about science, I would refer you to www.creation.com where they have pHD's who have labored greatly to refute evolutionary dogma.

Regards,
-Taylor

 

[Catherineanne]

Hello Catherineanne.

How are you?

You said that Creation is a minority view among Christians. That may be true in today's world, but Creation has always been the majority view up until recent times!

Jolly good. I live now, not three hundred years ago. I drive a car, I have a microwave, I watch telly. All of these are the products of science, and God doesn't have a problem with any of them, or with evolution.

I trust you live in a shack, drink from a stream and wear clothes you weave yourself, using wool from your own sheep?

But what are you doing online?

: )

 

[Moral Orel]

I'm just going to talk about Stephen Hawking's singularity explanation for the origins of the universe because I think it answers most of the questions in this thread. I don't know if he's right, or any other theory (theistic or not) I just want to point out that there are logical explanations.

The universe can't "just exist" because physics indicates it doesn't.

The universe in it's current form can't "just exist". That doesn't mean that all the stuff that the universe is made out of and filled with hasn't always existed. The Big Bang is theorized to have caused all the stuff to change to a new form, but doesn't necessarily posit that matter and energy came into existence as a result of the Big Bang.

If you push the question and say, but what came the day before; where did all that matter which exploded just suddenly appear from, there can be no answer. Nothing measurable, nothing that can be seen or inferred. Just nothing.

Seen? No. Inferred though, yes. Stephen Hawking's explanation involves a singularity that contained all the stuff of the universe and it was contained in a 4-dimensional space. That gets a bit weird to think about, but keep reading and I'll get to it.

If you ask a scientist about before the Big Bang they will tell you something to the effect that the question has no meaning; time began at the Big Bang, and everything we can see or measure or evaluate dates from that point.

Space and time are a thing: spacetime. And a lot of scientists talk about it like it's a "fabric". It has to be something unto itself since it is expanding. The space between galaxy clusters is expanding, it isn't that the galaxy clusters are moving away from each other. So when you compact time into a tiny space, and it forms a dome shape, it becomes impossible to talk about "before". It is like trying to go further north once you've reached the north pole.

Something can not come from nothing. "Nothing" has no properties that would allow something to come from it.

True. That's why people don't claim that the stuff the universe is made out of simply came into existence. All the stuff was in a singularity and it changed form.

Science indicates that the universe came into existence and is proceeding towards heat death, so that doesn't fit with something that is impossible to not exist.

Science doesn't say it "came into existence" it says that it changed form. From a singularity to the universe we see now and will keep progressing to something else. No one ever said matter spontaneously came into existence.

You can't squeeze infinity into a finite space.

Here comes the 4-dimensional explanation I promised. String theory states that everything is made of little strings that vibrate in different ways to produce different types of matter. Trouble is that these strings need to vibrate in at least 11 different dimensions. We have vertical, horizontal, and depth, but the strings need to vibrate in seven other directions than these, which is difficult for us to think about.

The best way to understand it is to think about a 2-dimensional object in our 3 dimensional world. If it truly has only two dimensions, then we can fit an infinite number of them in any space we choose. Imagine if you had a bookshelf and a collection of records that were so thin they were truly 2-dimensional. If they have no width, you could continue putting them on the shelves forever without ever filling it up.

So the universe could have contained all of our 3-dimensional things in a 4-dimensional space and not have occupied any space at all.

Now this may seem absurd to think about, but try to imagine explaining atoms to someone a few hundred years ago. Who could have fathomed that we are mostly empty space?

I would like to hear more about the benefits of choosing nothing, as this choice is typically demonized.

The idea isn't that people choose nothing, it is that they choose to only believe in something proven, and until something is proven they assume nothing. They don't settle on nothing. The benefit in not assuming anything more than what is necessary is that it helps to reduce bias. If you make an assumption, and choose to believe it, then that assumption will affect any evidence that you do find. A lot of people will find ways to make evidence support their assumption when it would have been better to assume nothing at all and then just judged the evidence on its own merits.

 

[TaylorDonBarrett]

Jolly good. I live now, not three hundred years ago. I drive a car, I have a microwave, I watch telly. All of these are the products of science, and God doesn't have a problem with any of them, or with evolution.

I trust you live in a shack, drink from a stream and wear clothes you weave yourself, using wool from your own sheep?

But what are you doing online?

: )

Well that is good to hear.

Do me a favor and watch this video.

.

 

[Catherineanne]

Well that is good to hear.

Do me a favor and watch this video.

Thank you most kindly, but any chance of a 3 minute one? I haven't got 28 minutes of my life to waste.

 

[Catherineanne]

Space and time are a thing: spacetime. And a lot of scientists talk about it like it's a "fabric". It has to be something unto itself since it is expanding. The space between galaxy clusters is expanding, it isn't that the galaxy clusters are moving away from each other. So when you compact time into a tiny space, and it forms a dome shape, it becomes impossible to talk about "before". It is like trying to go further north once you've reached the north pole.

Good. You use the scientific terminology, I use layman's version. We both say the same thing.

Nothing can be said about 'before'.

 

[TaylorDonBarrett]

Thank you most kindly, but any chance of a 3 minute one? I haven't got 28 minutes of my life to waste.

It's 28 minutes.
And it won't be wasted.

 

[Moral Orel]

Nothing can be said about 'before'.

What I was attempting to explain, and probably not doing such a good job at, was that there is no such thing as "before". Just like there is no such thing as "further north" when you're at the north pole.

Time is like a line, but that line can be bent and curved by gravity, and you can move differently along that line depending on how fast you travel, so it isn't an inherent property of the universe that is constant. So when it gets sufficiently bent out of shape, things like "before" just don't exist anymore. And while it is bent all out of shape, things like the future can't really be thought of either as traveling along that line moves in a circle.

So it isn't an explanation for everything, and other theories could still be valid such as a theistic explanation or a multiverse, but there is something that can be said about "before" in that it didn't exist. The idea behind an eternal God, as I understand it, is that he stretches infinitely back in time, as if it were a straight line all of the time. My understanding of that may be wrong too.

 

[Catherineanne]

What I was attempting to explain, and probably not doing such a good job at, was that there is no such thing as "before". Just like there is no such thing as "further north" when you're at the north pole.

Time is like a line, but that line can be bent and curved by gravity, and you can move differently along that line depending on how fast you travel, so it isn't an inherent property of the universe that is constant. So when it gets sufficiently bent out of shape, things like "before" just don't exist anymore. And while it is bent all out of shape, things like the future can't really be thought of either as traveling along that line moves in a circle.

So it isn't an explanation for everything, and other theories could still be valid such as a theistic explanation or a multiverse, but there is something that can be said about "before" in that it didn't exist. The idea behind an eternal God, as I understand it, is that he stretches infinitely back in time, as if it were a straight line all of the time. That may be wrong too.

I appreciate that finding a way to explain this is not easy. : )

No, God does not stretch back infinitely in time; that would make God part of creation. The ancient Greek and Roman gods were like this; the father of Zeus was Kronos; Time. But the Judeo-Christian God is not like the pagan gods. He is also outside, and his existence cannot be spoken of. He is outside time; he created time when he created everything else.

Eternity is outside time, not part of it. It is not endless today and the next day and the next. It is an endless now with no beginning and no end. In eternity concepts such as before, after, now and then no longer exist.

 

[Catherineanne]

It's 28 minutes.
And it won't be wasted.

It will, because it won't change my mind. I do not live in a shack and drink from a stream. I accept not just the products of modern science but the knowledge that goes along with it.

 

[TaylorDonBarrett]

It will, because it won't change my mind. I do not live in a shack and drink from a stream. I accept not just the products of modern science but the knowledge that goes along with it.

Evolution is not a product of modern science, it is a product of modern philosophy. Evolution is a religious worldview that interprets data according to preconceived philosophical positions concerning Creation.

Here are a couple facts for you=

abiogenesis is impossible, and evolution is completely dependent upon it. abiogenesis requires non-living materials to spontaneously come awake, come alive, for no reason at all, randomly, and then look around, decide to replicate itself. and then build the machinery and blueprints for doing so. this is complete absurdity. abiogenesis is impossible and therefore evolution is literally 'dead in the water'.

mutations, which supposedly drive evolution, are actually copying mistakes which can only degrade preexisting information. the idea that mutations can take a single celled organism and transform it into the human brain is total foolishness. if you copy a manuscript and you misspell a word, you do not end up with a better manuscript. And even if you could end up with a better manuscript by making a mistake when copying it... you would still need a manuscript to copy to begin with: you would need preexisting information. A manuscript does not happen by chance - it has to be created before copying can be done. And, again, making mistakes while copying is not going to produce a better, more sophisticated manuscript. And this is a terrible analogy anyway, because in order to go from a single celled organism to a human brain is like going from a post-it note to the library of congress (times infinity). it simply is not going to happen. mutations only degrade preexisting information.

the similarity of dna between humans and animals and plants is often used as evidence of "common ancestor"; but this is a fallacious argument. we live in the same universe, on the same planet, and we are made up of the same elements: of course our dna is going to be the same. we have the same designer, not the same ancestor.

the supposed "geologic column" and "fossil record" are often used as evidence as well.. but guess what? the fact that fossils exist is proof that those layers of rock formed extremely rapidly, and not over long period of time! if it took thousands of years for a rock layer to form, then any animal laying on it would have decomposed before it ever became a fossil! and guess what else? fossils are found in the "wrong" place all the time! modern animals are found below "prehistoric" animals!

dinosaurs: nearly all of the fossils we find are in the same position: they drowned! and guess what? we have found red blood cells and soft muscle tissue in dinosar bones! that cant be more than a few thousand years old?

big bang= relativity, relativity, relativity! time is relative! God creates the sun and the stars on the 4th day - stretches them out into the universe - time stays the same on earth, but out there in distant space it speeds way way way up! (you can learn more about this here= http://creation.com/new-time-dilation-helps-creation-cosmology )





now, i have given you just a tiny little insy winsy bit of info on this subject.

but it is more important for you to know that Satan is more powerful, more smart, more cunning, and more capable than any human being who has ever lived. and when an atheist wants to open up their ears and listen for theories to explain the universe without reference to God, guess who starts talking? Thats right, the deceiver. And for Satan to craft false theories that look real factual and concrete to mere humans is like stealing candy from a baby.

But praise God we have the victory in the atoning blood of Jesus.

 

[Catherineanne]

Evolution is not a product of modern science, it is a product of modern philosophy. Evolution is a religious worldview that interprets data according to preconceived philosophical positions concerning Creation.

Here are a couple facts for you=

abiogenesis is impossible, and evolution is completely dependent upon it. abiogenesis requires non-living materials to spontaneously come awake, come alive, for no reason at all, randomly, and then look around, decide to replicate itself. and then build the machinery and blueprints for doing so. this is complete absurdity. abiogenesis is impossible and therefore evolution is literally 'dead in the water'.

mutations, which supposedly drive evolution, are actually copying mistakes which can only degrade preexisting information. the idea that mutations can take a single celled organism and transform it into the human brain is total foolishness. if you copy a manuscript and you misspell a word, you do not end up with a better manuscript. And even if you could end up with a better manuscript by making a mistake when copying it... you would still need a manuscript to copy to begin with: you would need preexisting information. A manuscript does not happen by chance - it has to be created before copying can be done. And, again, making mistakes while copying is not going to produce a better, more sophisticated manuscript. And this is a terrible analogy anyway, because in order to go from a single celled organism to a human brain is like going from a post-it note to the library of congress (times infinity). it simply is not going to happen. mutations only degrade preexisting information.

the similarity of dna between humans and animals and plants is often used as evidence of "common ancestor"; but this is a fallacious argument. we live in the same universe, on the same planet, and we are made up of the same elements: of course our dna is going to be the same. we have the same designer, not the same ancestor.

the supposed "geologic column" and "fossil record" are often used as evidence as well.. but guess what? the fact that fossils exist is proof that those layers of rock formed extremely rapidly, and not over long period of time! if it took thousands of years for a rock layer to form, then any animal laying on it would have decomposed before it ever became a fossil! and guess what else? fossils are found in the "wrong" place all the time! modern animals are found below "prehistoric" animals!

dinosaurs: nearly all of the fossils we find are in the same position: they drowned! and guess what? we have found red blood cells and soft muscle tissue in dinosar bones! that cant be more than a few thousand years old?

big bang= relativity, relativity, relativity! time is relative! God creates the sun and the stars on the 4th day - stretches them out into the universe - time stays the same on earth, but out there in distant space it speeds way way way up! (you can learn more about this here= http://creation.com/new-time-dilation-helps-creation-cosmology )





now, i have given you just a tiny little insy winsy bit of info on this subject.

but it is more important for you to know that Satan is more powerful, more smart, more cunning, and more capable than any human being who has ever lived. and when an atheist wants to open up their ears and listen for theories to explain the universe without reference to God, guess who starts talking? Thats right, the deceiver. And for Satan to craft false theories that look real factual and concrete to mere humans is like stealing candy from a baby.

But praise God we have the victory in the atoning blood of Jesus.

Humbug.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I was reading srimad bhagavatam last night. God it the uncreated, the causeless cause, the summum bonum (para sattva). The atheists are i maya (state of illusion) because they believe only the material world exists. Thats the way they are freely heading, to the material plane rather than the spiritual skies. All atheistic "explanations" are materialistic, but as for the ultimate the scientists etc (due to a poor fund of knowledge) cannot reach it. So they will be born again as scientists and philosophers, rather than in a transcendent, up-lifiting mode - i.e, operating on the spiritual platform.

I like this, its quite frank, ratiolalistic and straightforward as far as religion goes. A bit like were at a metaphysical junction, and can choose our path and future freely. As for medicine and tv, who needs it when youre in heaven?