Did a God or Gods create the universe? EDITED
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@utiler said:
Gee, 3 pages already!!!! God know how long this thread is going to end up....
I slay me...
Ouch
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mmm..... my profile seems to still be active...
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@solo said:
@unknownuser said:
Please do not take this as an offense if you are not a believer ,this is just my point of view and was not intended to harm anyone in any way.
No offense at all.
I guess life is easier to just believe in a higher power, pretty much go through life without asking, thinking, questioning.
Only if you do it wrong. If you do it right, you spend a lot of time asking, thinking and questioning.
I would agree though, that 80% of the people in the pew on a Sunday morning are the type you describe. They give the other 20% a bad name.
The primary message of the Bible is generally misunderstood by most "Christians" and just about everyone else.
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@unknownuser said:
I would agree though, that 80% of the people in the pew on a Sunday morning are the type you describe. They give the other 20% a bad name.
The primary message of the Bible is generally misunderstood by most "Christians" and just about everyone else.
Yet only the 1% militant fundementalist give Islam a bad name.True.
One should fallow ideal, not ideology. For Christians ideal man is Christ, one and only...not pope, or any other man
If one critics Christianity, he should talk only about Christ himself, everything else is dogma.
Even if you think people made him out, what's wrong with that? Than I'd say that God made him trough us...like He made Muhammad...He again exists (or we wouldn't talk about him so much) and is ideal to follow. Don't you think he is perfect? Is there someone better? -
The thread seems to be drifting off-topic to a more general contest between atheism vs theism.
The original question was "Did God create the universe?" The answer is that we'll never know...whether you happen to believe in Him or not.That question also begs the further question of whether science can explain how the universe can come into being without the need for a deity to create it? The answer to that question is "Yes, it can." It doesn't need to stretch any points or indulge in extrapolation. It can answer the question directly with mathematical precision (including high-school level trigonometry) and can be backed up by direct observation and other empirical evidence. This is outlined perfectly about 30 minutes into the lecture by Lawrence Krauss that Paul Miller linked to. (if you prefer not to watch the whole thing....which you ought to if your opinion on this thread is to carry any real weight.)
I guess which version you prefer is entirely up to the individual; but Occam's Razor would strongly favour the scientific explanation.
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@unknownuser said:
@krisidious said:
... until there is more proof, the only honest religion is the agnostic one.
The Dyslexic Agnostic Insomniac sits up all night wondering if there really is a DOG.
I thought it was "The Schizophrenic Dyslexic Agnostic Insomniac sits up all night wondering if there really is a DOG"?
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@alan fraser said:
Personally, I'm with Descartes; it's all a dream...however real it might appear to be.
The Rebbe would have some interesting thoughts about that!
@unknownuser said:
*It is liberating, this knack we have to discover what works before
understanding how.Certainly, it is nice to know the “how.” When you know and understand,
you can immerse your entire mind and heart into the matter.But when you experience that which you do not yet understand, there is
surprise and there is wonder. For that moment, you are swept away and
lifted out of your little world. You taste firsthand that, yes, there
is truly a reality that exists beyond my own mind and heart.*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebbe -
@unknownuser said:
This graphic on the front page of the book... it looks like... shadowbox-zbrush?
@Michalis
It's more this one
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@alan fraser said:
The thread seems to be drifting off-topic to a more general contest between atheism vs theism.
The original question was "Did God create the universe?" The answer is that we'll never know...whether you happen to believe in Him or not.That question also begs the further question of whether science can explain how the universe can come into being without the need for a deity to create it? The answer to that question is "Yes, it can." It doesn't need to stretch any points or indulge in extrapolation. It can answer the question directly with mathematical precision (including high-school level trigonometry) and can be backed up by direct observation and other empirical evidence. This is outlined perfectly about 30 minutes into the lecture by Lawrence Krauss that Paul Miller linked to. (if you prefer not to watch the whole thing....which you ought to if your opinion on this thread is to carry any real weight.)
I guess which version you prefer is entirely up to the individual; but Occam's Razor would strongly favour the scientific explanation.
I think you said it in your last statement, for, as you know, your first statement is refuted by millions who know that God told them so. What is harder, is them proving that to you.
The Krauss (spelling?) lecture is great. Thanks for introducing me to him. I'd like to try his book on Feynman. I think the lecture, like science, is not conclusive though. It points to the possibility of the proof you mention, but he also points to what is still unresolved.
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This is great talk given by a man named ELDER DOUGLAS L. CALLISTER who I believe tells what is the truth regarding some of these issues. This is the latter portion of the talk and through his words are my 2 cents. I highly recommend reading and as in the talk you have the free agency to think and believe what you may.
%(#0000BF)[Recognizing the Lord’s Hand
Naturalism’s explanations of the origins of life and the miracle of our bodies often appear convoluted when placed side by side with the simple truths of the revealed word and divine scripture.With its 107 million cells, connected to the brain by over 1 million neurons, the eye is more perfect than any camera ever invented. It caused Charles Darwin to humbly admit, “That the eye with all its inimitable contrivances … could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest sense.” 1
The Psalmist wrote, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 53:1). Such a foolish disbeliever ought to look at his hands. Seventy muscles contribute to hand movements. Much of the rest of the body is devoted to optimizing the complex function of the hand. There are no muscles in the fingers. The sole purpose of the forearm, its muscles and bones, is to move and position the hand.
To observe a miracle, look at a baby’s creased hand. Its initial movements are uncontrolled. Shortly after the child’s birth, the hand will be able to grasp, curl, push, lift, sense hot and cold, respond to pain by withdrawing, heal itself, and display great strength and extraordinary sensitivity. These hands will be used thousands of times each day without forethought.
Your miraculous thumb is controlled by nine individual muscles and three major hand nerves. Sir Isaac Newton is reported to have said: “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.” 2
Paul Brand, renowned orthopedic hand surgeon, wrote: “We use our hands for the most wonderful activities: art, music, writing, healing, touching. Some people go to concerts and athletic events to watch the performance; I go to watch hands. For me, a piano performance is a ballet of fingers—a glorious flourish of ligaments and joints, tendons, nerves, and muscles.” 3
The infant Son of Man once possessed tiny hands. His hands, too, grew to accomplish their intended purposes. He used them to touch and heal the blind and infirm. His hands threw the money changers out of the temple. His hands reached upward in prayer, outward in blessing, and downward from the cross.
The fool proclaims in his heart that there is no God, but our eyes, hands, hearts, and souls unhesitatingly testify to the contrary.
One of my brothers is a physician. During medical school he was assigned to study anatomy in companionship with an agnostic. Their education eventually required that the two of them carefully examine and dissect a cadaver. They studied the incredibly complex yet harmonious systems of the body. They noted the body’s power to correct its own deficiencies and to send healing antibodies to the place of injury or infection. They learned of over 150 trillion cells within the body. If set end-to-end, these cells would encircle the earth more than 200 times. Today medical students learn of more than 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) of DNA in one human body. My brother and his fellow student learned of a brain that continually receives signals from 130 million light receptors in the eyes, 24,000 hearing receptors in the ears, 10,000 taste buds, and hundreds of thousands of receptors in the skin, with specialized commissions to recognize touch, vibration, cold, heat, and pain. My brother and his friend became silent as they contemplated the miracle they were examining. Sensing the moment was right, my brother challenged: “Coincidence is a marvelous thing, isn’t it?” His agnostic classmate responded, “You win.”
This earth departs from its orbit of the sun by only one-ninth of an inch (2.82 mm) every 18 miles (29 km). If, instead, it changed by one-tenth of an inch (2.54 mm) every 18 miles, we would all freeze to death. If it changed by one-eighth of an inch (3.18 mm), we would all be incinerated. 4 Did this all happen by accident?
Alma spoke to us, as well as to Korihor, testifying, “Yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator” (Alma 30:44).
The doubter requires too much of us when he asks us to believe that the miracles of eyes and hands and DNA and order in the universe all happened by chance. The passage of time, even long intervals of time, is not a “cause” and provides no answers without an intelligent designer.
The evidence of Heavenly Father’s existence is everywhere: in every newborn babe and in every system, part, and parcel of the unending and orderly universe, including our own bodies. He is evidenced in every sunset, work of art, and passage of music, all of which He has provided to gladden the heart and bring beauty to our lives. Richard Swinburne said: “God paints with a big brush from a large paintbox and he has no need to be stingy with the paint he uses to paint a beautiful universe.” 5
It is not possible to contemplate the immeasurable vacuum and purposelessness that would exist in our lives if He were not there. We would regret the passing of every day and the passing of every loved one, knowing that neither time nor relationships could be extended. We would approach the autumn and then the winter years of life with crescendoing fear. Every day of our lives we should thank Him that He is there and that this life is not all there is.
Valuing the Agency of Man
Some ask where God is because there is pain on this earth, and He does not usually hasten to intervene. One flippantly approached this issue by suggesting that God ought to have made good health contagious rather than disease. 6 However, such thinking misses the whole point of our mortal existence, which is probationary rather than paradisaical in nature.If babies could talk and could remember their pre-earthly estate, their first utterances might express: “You came here to be tested. You agreed to that. The tests will be hard, in part because they are seldom the tests you anticipated. This is a closed-book test in that you will not remember your premortal estate. God will not intervene and remove the tests until the close of the examination or probationary period.” That Heavenly Father does not hasten to intervene does not mean He is not there or does not love us. He has infinite respect for our agency and the purposes of earth life.
Agency is not just the right to select among good alternatives. When God granted agency, He necessarily contemplated the possibility of wrong choices. Because He knows best and esteems so highly our precious agency, He does not answer every prayer just as it is uttered. Nor does He always punish transgressors before there has been an opportunity or a space for repentance. This Divine hesitancy is to our advantage.
Understanding Our Divine Potential
The same God who brings such order to the universe and inspires the prophets designed the time, place, and circumstances of your birth. Said the Lord to the Prophet Joseph, “Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less” (D&C 122:9). God’s love for you and awareness of your circumstances are of equal measure. Our relationship with Him is not that of Creator and created thing. It is of personal Father and child.I had the privilege of being present when President Gordon B. Hinckley was interviewed by editors of the Los Angeles Times. An editor inquired about the rapid growth of the Church. President Hinckley chose to respond by emphasizing the miraculous transformation in the life of each individual who joins the Church. He spoke of a girl in Australia who was employed serving ice cream. She seemed inattentive to the message of the missionaries until one of them said, “Do you know that you are a child of God?” She replied, “Nobody has ever said that to me before. I had no idea that I might be a child of God.” Thereafter she went to her room, got down on her knees, and inquired: “Are you there? Am I your child? Please let me know.” Then she said, “There came into me a surge of feeling that brought me the conviction that was the case.” She joined the Church.
Two weeks later she was asked to give a talk in a Church meeting. Her first impulse was to run from it. Then she thought, “If I am a child of God, I can do anything.” With this enlarged vision of who she was, she became a stalwart member of the Church.
Our entire perspective of ourselves, our worth, and what we can make of our lives is altered for good when we come to understand that we are God’s children and that we can become like Him.
Exercising Faith in the Living God
The book of Daniel includes the remarkable story of the three princes of Judah: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. They were cast into the midst of a burning, fiery furnace, heated seven times more than it was necessary to be heated, because they would worship only the true and living God. When the king, Nebuchadnezzar, saw that they were not consumed in the fire, he said to his counselors:“Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. … There is no other God that can deliver after this sort” (Daniel 3:28–29).
Thereby all learned that our God is God.
This is the true answer to the query of the lad in Moscow who asked, “Where is God?”
I know that our God is God and that He lives. I know He is our personal Father with an appointed mission for each of us to perform. I pray that we will never lose our faith, testimonies, or virtue, that we may be worthy to receive the blessings of immortality and eternal life.]
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@spence said:
This is great talk given by a man named ELDER DOUGLAS L. CALLISTER who I believe tells what is the truth regarding some of these issues.
I had to give up reading that text after a few paragraphs. He doesn't say anything new or convincing.
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@marian said:
@spence said:
This is great talk given by a man named ELDER DOUGLAS L. CALLISTER who I believe tells what is the truth regarding some of these issues.
I had to give up reading that text after a few paragraphs. He doesn't say anything new or convincing.
Only a few paragraphs hu. I don't mind one bit hearing your response, I appreciate it, however, read all of it. Not that it will change your opinion, which is more than fine. At least you can say you read all of it then denounce it. It's all good.
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Sorry for be a little unkindly
And how many people were killed for clamp one(s) of this wonderful creator(s) ?
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@spence said:
Only a few paragraphs hu. I don't mind one bit hearing your response, I appreciate it, however, read all of it. Not that it will change your opinion, which is more than fine. At least you can say you read all of it then denounce it. It's all good.
Well I did read till this one.
@unknownuser said:
The doubter requires too much of us when he asks us to believe that the miracles of eyes and hands and DNA and order in the universe all happened by chance. The passage of time, even long intervals of time, is not a “cause” and provides no answers without an intelligent designer.
Like I said it's nothing new. I heard most of these a thousand times and they were dismantled a thousand times by more articulate and itelligent people than me, like Richard Dawkins, Cristopher Hitchens and many others.
Reading all of it would be useless if it's more of the same. -
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@marian said:
@spence said:
Only a few paragraphs hu. I don't mind one bit hearing your response, I appreciate it, however, read all of it. Not that it will change your opinion, which is more than fine. At least you can say you read all of it then denounce it. It's all good.
Well I did read till this one.
@unknownuser said:
The doubter requires too much of us when he asks us to believe that the miracles of eyes and hands and DNA and order in the universe all happened by chance. The passage of time, even long intervals of time, is not a “cause” and provides no answers without an intelligent designer.
Like I said it's nothing new. I heard most of these a thousand times and they were dismantled a thousand times by more articulate and itelligent people than me, like Richard Dawkins, Cristopher Hitchens and many others.
Reading all of it would be useless if it's more of the same.I can respect that
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interesting subject and conversation.
still can't understand or follow most of them though.
what do you think of these short lines below:Say, "He is Allah, [who is] One, (1)
Allah, the Eternal Refuge. (2)
He neither begets nor is born, (3)
Nor is there to Him any equivalent." (4)since there is no equivalent,
we may not be able to think about him using all that we have around as comparison.
anything that we could possibly see, hear or feel. with our senses and thought.
or, let alone draw a picture. even to get raw ideas about him.
i guess though. -
Hmm! We're back to "Is there a God?" rather than "Did God create the universe?" I guess they are inseparable in many people's eyes.
I see that Mr. Callister is yet another that chooses to deceitfully misquote Charles Darwin (by omission).
Yes, Darwin did say “That the eye with all its inimitable contrivances … could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest sense.” ...or words to that effect
However, what Mr Callister neglects to mention is that Darwin went on to say "Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real."
In other words, to paraphrase; "You might think that the human eye is so complex it could only be created by some intelligent designer...but you'd be wrong."....exactly the opposite of what Mr Callister would have you believe Darwin said.
The Origin Of Species: Chapter 6. Difficulties on Theory. Check for yourselves; it's online.
Furthermore, Darwin was 150 years ago. We've taken giant strides since then; we've since discovered all those variations that Darwin hinted at...everything from a basic light-sensitive pit to the eye of the octopus...which is actually more 'perfect' than ours in that it doesn't have any blind spot where the retina is interrupted by the optic nerve. Does that indicate some special place in creation for the octopus? After all...if man is made in the image of God...all cephalopods therefore have better eyes than God himself, as our eyes are built upside down and inside out (in terms of layering of blood vessels, nerves and photo receptors) whereas an octopus' is the right way round.
There's also ample evidence that the octopus eye developed entirely separately from that of vertebrates...yet still managed to end up looking fairly similar, suggesting that not only is the natural development of something as complicated as the human eye entirely possible, it's actually fairly routine, if not inevitable.
As Marian said, we've seen and heard it all before. Like all this kind of stuff, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny by anyone who isn't prepared to accept it unquestioningly. In essence, he's preaching to those who are already of a like mind.
Take for instance the (misleading) nonsense about the earth's orbit around the sun. If it was any different from that which it is, we wouldn't freeze to death...we just wouldn't be here at all. There's no life on Venus or Mars, our nearest neighbours.
This reverse-engineering of reality is immensely fraudulent. It makes it sound like God just said "Poof!" and got it right first time. It completely ignores the fact that entire generations of stars had to be born, live out their lives, then die in spectacular super-novae in order to produce all the heavier elements like iron and calcium that are found in our solar system and are needed to make us what we are.
Nine billion years when there was no blue dot circling a star at exactly the right distance. Nine billion years to produce just the right combination of stardust that eventually led to us.Like another saying goes; "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." On that basis, I'd be disinclined to take anything in that tract seriously. Sorry.
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"Is there a God?" rather than "Did God create the universe?"
Well if the answer to the first question is 'No' then the second question can't be asked.
As I said earlier we need to define 'God', 'create' and 'universe', before the second question can be asked at all.So - what is 'God'?
Most religions have God down as being an all-powerful, eternal, supernatural entity.
If so then it's logical to assume that if they are correct in that simple set of assumptions, then they are almost certainly incorrect in their assumed details of it - for they can't all be right.
I know that if priests tell you that your God is the one true one and that everyone else is wrong, it's comforting... but let's get serious here, logically how can your ideas of God be 'better' than someone else's ? I know that for millennia different religious groups have killed each other because of that single thing, but surely by now we should have realized that it's a futile position to take.
Many religions also have God down as interceding/interfering/rewarding/punishing us in day to day life, egged on by devotions/good/bad-deeds/etc, but again if you happen to have picked the correct 'real' God who is this type of deity, then why is 'he' making such a hash of things, and letting us run riot and mess up big time: God is all-powerful after all and simply doesn't have to allow famine, war or disease etc.
OK... I know that God supposedly 'gave' us free-will and it's our misuse of it that then supposedly causes these issues; but then again... being all-powerful and knowing of everything when God decided to dole out free-will, he did it in the certain knowledge of the outcome - he knows everything after all; so God knew we would misuse it, that's built into its very specification - so for God to dare to punish us when we do exactly what he knows we will do with his 'gift', is frankly unacceptable double-think.The idea that the universe [everything we 'see'] was 'created', presupposes a 'creator'.
If you call that creator 'God', job done.
Traditionally God made the universe from 'nothing'.
Now when scientists [in my opinion] successfully demonstrate that the universe could have spontaneous popped into existence out of 'nothing', without a creator being needed, the God-gang say "...but how can you make something out of nothing?", ignoring their own belief that God did just that. It appears that it's a basic property of 'existence' that 'stuff' - ranging from the tiniest subatomic particle to a whole universe, can spontaneously pop into existence and then disappear again; however, sometimes this 'stuff' stays around and doesn't disappear, that's how things happen...Perhaps if there is a God the most 'he' did was set up the basic weird laws of quantum physics that allow this spontaneous bubbling up of 'stuff' out of complete 'nothingness'... with that the entire universe becomes self-generating... but 'we' certainly don't need a day-to-day God who's poking around in how things work/work-out now - surely we've left the 'supernatural' behind - there's enough 'awe' in the way the 'real' world behaves, without inventing extra layers of complexity that are no longer needed to explain things adequately.
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