Did a God or Gods create the universe? EDITED
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@mike lucey said:
What I have always found strange about this bible story [Adam and Eve and the Tree] is that God created Adam and Eve with inquiring minds but it would seem that he wanted them to remain ignorant pets, all be it immortal ignorant pets. For me living in a World however wonderful and not being allowed to explore and learn would be akin to living in a dark gloomy prison cell. Am I missing something in this story?
Mike
I don't mean this derogatorily, but you do understand that it was only one tree, yes? You're currently not allowed to shoot heroin. Does that make you feel like a prisoner in a gloomy prison cell? There are thousands of things you're not allowed to do (drugs, speed, marry an underage child, own or sell slaves, jab someone with a hot poker) and there are hundreds of thousands of places you're not allowed to go into. And yet we lose very little sleep over it and still call ourselves free people.
There are at least dozens of interpretations of the story and many would say that the fruit, unlike heroin, wasn't inherently bad. But the jist of it is that there was only one thing they couldn't do in all of their world which was eat the fruit from that tree. God often calls his people to hold something back quite intentionally. Israel had the tithe where 10% of what they earned was to be given directly back to God. It's not least a symbol of our relationship with and to Him that shows we understand He is God and we are not.
Whatever the tree was or symbolized, it was for their own good that they didn't eat the fruit. God wasn't withholding the tastiest stuff for himself like a parent might by a Godiva bar and tell their child not to eat it because they want it for themselves. It's more akin to telling your child not to drink anything they find under the sink - it's for their own good.
But then why did he put it there at all? More speculation but perhaps it was indeed to teach them something about their relationship with God as I hinted at before. Maybe it was because there's no freewill if we don't have a choice. Maybe it was to teach them good qualities like self control or responsibility. Who knows.
-Brodie
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@gaieus said:
To me, the story of Adam and Eve with the tree is a nice myth about mankind gaining cosciousness (i.e. evolving from the animal World). The snake (or Evil or Devil or Lucifer) is a similar mythological figure as Prometheus in the Greek mythology. In fact, "Lucifer" means "The one who brings life" - just like Prometheus.
Now obviously the two figures are valued differently in the two "religions" since Prometheus is a positive hero. I think if you guys want to stick to the original, more abstract topic, these details should be sorted out. As well as different Ancient debates about the Holy Trinity and things like that. Everybody is somewhat looking at this topic from a certain religion's point of view.
Lucifer is latin and doesn't refer to 'life' but 'light' as in 'light bearer.' The Bible never uses the word to refer to the devil. That came about a couple hundred years later at least.
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
I mostly take issue with 'macro' evolution, if you'll forgive the term, from a scientific point of view rather than a theological one.
Then you've got nothing to worry about...because there are ample instances of 'macro' evolution (which seems to be a term used mostly by Creationists; scientists only recognise Evolution...although they may occasionally use macro or micro to denote a difference of scale...but never, ever, a difference of type.)
There are quite a number of observed instances of speciation (I suggest googling the entire term)
Quite apart from Darwin's own Galapagos Finches, there are examples such as the Faroe Island mouse which has split into a number of different species in only the 250 years since introduced to the islands (where there are no other mice)
Stanley, S., 1979. Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Company. p. 41Then there's the example of the widflower goatsbeard which has produced two new species since escaping into the wild after having been introduced to N. America in only 1900.
Nothing earth-shattering, but you'd hardly expect a frog to evolve into a cat in so short a period. Nevertheless point proven...new species, producing fertile offspring that no longer breed with the parent stock...that's the definition of a new species, without diving into the scientific explanation describing changes to the allele. If you want something more dramatic, you're going to have to go with the fossil record....something like this.
Regarding the number of stars...and my sources; if anything, I've been rather conservative. I stated that the average galaxy (of which ours is one) contains about 200 billion stars. In fact, our own galaxy may well contain perhaps double that number. We'll never get an exact figure. Quite apart from the difficulties of actually counting to 200 billion whilst ensuring that you don't count the same star twice, a great deal of our (and every other) galaxy is hidden by clouds of dust and dark matter...and we're in no position to scoot around the side and get another perspective.
The number of galaxies was estimated at around 125 billion several years ago, but that was before Hubble Deep Field which revealed countless distant galaxies residing in what was previously thought to be the empty space between the visible ones. Again, there is a problem of actually counting to that number...but a recent German computer simulation put the revised estimate at around 400 billion. This is the figure that appeared in Physics World (which I still get, as my astrophysicist son still hasn't got around to changing his mailing address) and is the figure commonly quoted by the world's leading cosmologists like Brian Cox and Lawrence Krauss.
Sorry but the rest of your long answer seems to have gone through the spin dryer. It's become so convoluted that I can no longer follow the reasoning. You're again telling me that planetary distance from the sun is not the only factor in considering a planet conducive to life when I've already said that I'm more than acquainted with that fact.
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@unknownuser said:
Then you've got nothing to worry about...
Thanks for the examples. I'll certainly look into them.
@unknownuser said:
Regarding the number of stars
I misunderstood the statistics you were referring to by reading to quickly...
@alan fraser said:
The estimated number of galaxies in the universe just increased by 300% after the Hubble Deep Space investigations. It's now estimated that there are around 400 billion galaxies each containing on average maybe 200 billion stars. That makes 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars...orders of magnitude more than all the grains of sand on every beach on earth. Even if you make astronomically huge conservative calculations about the number of suitable stars having suitable planets for intelligent life to develop on, that still leaves millions of possible contenders.
@unknownuser said:
I've seen statistics that would disagree. Even given the staggering size of the universe, the statistical probability of life is equally staggering. Regardless, the point is that there's life at all, which there is. If there's also life on 3 or 3 million other planets it's irrelevant to the discussion.
I thought you were saying that according to statistics there should be millions of planets with life. I see now you were simply saying there are at least millions of planets that could contain life. M-class planets for the trekies out there.
Do you have any statistics that relate to abiogenesis?
-Brodie
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I'm not aware of any specific statistics relating to abiogenesis. Ultimately, either it's possible or it's not.
As I said, organic compounds...amino acids such as glycine...have been positively detected on comets, but that's only one side of the coin. For life (at least as it's presently recognised on this speck of dust) you also need nucleic acid; and that hasn't been detected 'in the wild' yet.
Obviously this wouldn't need to be anything like as complex as current DNA, which has been evolving and adding to its complexity for billions of years, it could be something far simpler.I guess the big question currently is exactly how simple a functioning nucleic acid needs to be; and how likely is it that it might form via the same chance reactions that formed the amino acids.
New life has been synthesised in the lab by Craig Ventor...a genome biologist, but I believe that was achieved by injecting the necessary synthetic compounds (including synthesised nucleic acid) into an existing but completely sterile cell...more of a re-animation than a pure abiogenesis, some might argue.
I suppose most people will not be satisfied until life is created completely from scratch, starting with nothing but chemical compounds. The problem with that is that, even taking some laboratory shortcuts, it might prove very difficult to short-circuit a billion years of random mixing in some primordial soup.
It can be done via computer simulation, of course, which can compress the timeline to an acceptably short period; but that's not going to be remotely acceptable to the sceptics.All that being said, I strongly suspect that it's simply a matter of time. This area of research is developing at breakneck speed. Not that that is likely to quell the argument, as all it proves is that it is possible for life to self-assemble itself. Hard line fundamentalists will continue to argue that that is no proof that it actually did.
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The universe was conceived in SketchUp, but due to the high poly nature of the project there was a crash resulting in the "Big Bang."
This is a fact I learned from 2,000 year old scrolls buried in my back yard.
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@roger said:
The universe was conceived in SketchUp, but due to the high poly nature of the project there was a crash resulting in the "Big Bang."
This is a fact I learned from 2,000 year old scrolls buried in my back yard.
LOL
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@roger said:
The universe was conceived in SketchUp, but due to the high poly nature of the project there was a crash resulting in the "Big Bang."
This is a fact I learned from 2,000 year old scrolls buried in my back yard.
What is this religion called again? I'd like to sign up...
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@roger said:
The universe was conceived in SketchUp, but due to the high poly nature of the project there was a crash resulting in the "Big Bang."
This is a fact I learned from 2,000 year old scrolls buried in my back yard.
I can understand that...but these early scrolls...do they give any details of the Big Bang and the following expansion....was the mesh being Push/Pulled at the time, or was it the Scale tool wot dunnit?
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Sketch UP ^ - it is clearly the instrument of God...
and this is what happens when humans mess around with it:
Youtube Video -
Maybe a far from origin problem due to a Autocad import?
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Back on topic.
About abiogenisis, until I see a Ferrari or computer assemble itself out of an explosion in a junk yard, I see no evidence supporting it. As for mutation into new species, was information added or removed? If information was added (highly unlikely) then macro evolution might have some credibility. If not... well then, there goes that evidence. Micro evolution (change in species) was regected in error by the Roman Church (think of the size of the ark then ), Darwin was right on that, good scientific progress. However, extrapolating the beak size of finches to humans coming from apes, that is a stretch.That's all for now.
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@dantheman said:
Back on topic.
About abiogenisis, until I see a Ferrari or computer assemble itself out of an explosion in a junk yard, I see no evidence supporting it. As for mutation into new species, was information added or removed? If information was added (highly unlikely) then macro evolution might have some credibility. If not... well then, there goes that evidence. Micro evolution (change in species) was regected in error by the Roman Church (think of the size of the ark then ), Darwin was right on that, good scientific progress. However, extrapolating the beak size of finches to humans coming from apes, that is a stretch.That's all for now.
Well, sort of back on topic. Humor was something that we humans thought was totally unique to us but it would appear to be our vanity or stupidity getting in the way of the obvious ...... again!
Have a look at Jane Goodall on what separates us from the apes
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_goodall_on_what_separates_us_from_the_apes.html -
@dantheman said:
Back on topic.
About abiogenisis, until I see a Ferrari or computer assemble itself out of an explosion in a junk yard, I see no evidence supporting it... However, extrapolating the beak size of finches to humans coming from apes, that is a stretch.
That's all for now. LOL. i like that. -
If we are the product of a creator, we should get together and formulate a class action lawsuit for incompetent design.
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@dantheman said:
About abiogenisis, until I see a Ferrari or computer assemble itself out of an explosion in a junk yard,
See Wikipedia article on Hoyle's Fallacy. That's not the way evolutionary synthesis works. In any case, it would be a quadrillion junkyards exploding simultaneously and perpetually for a billion years...and assembling something more like the complexity of a mousetrap.
The analogy is so over the top that an agnostic would be equally justified in saying that it would take God himself coming down to earth in a blaze of glory, getting into the Ferrari and driving it away before he would believe.@dantheman said:
As for mutation into new species, was information added or removed?
Yes it was. The amount of genetic information in the goatsbeard chromosome more than doubled. Apologies if that confounds the creationist redefinition of what constitutes speciation.
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@unknownuser said:
Did God create the universe?
It may have been his wife.
http://news.discovery.com/history/god-wife-yahweh-asherah-110318.html
That would explain a lot actually.
@unknownuser said:
About abiogenisis, until I see a Ferrari or computer assemble itself out of an explosion in a junk yard, I see no evidence supporting it.
That's such a bad analogy for abiogenesis that if God and his lovely wife exist they may have laughed out loud when reading it, thus creating a new universe.
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Hi,
If there is a Creator who created this universe, then it was probably an experiment. The Creator now observed how the experiment evolved. Perhaps he sees the universe with a scientific view. By chance, he has discovered countless planets on which performed very small organisms. After a few million years, he looks again through his microscope and sees these organisms have proliferated on some planets. On other planets, the organisms are dead again or the planets disappeared. Now he's trying to figure out what is the cause. That will still take a another few billion years. The Creator has indeed not a time problem.
Charly
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In one of the books from the Rama series written by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee, it is explained that god is a scientist running an experiment making many universes in order to find one that reaches equlibrium. This includes studying the way spacefaring species interact with eachother. He sends out ships and robots into the new universes so he can better observe the conditions and the life that forms inside some.
In this view god is only a scientist that obersves, studies but does not or cannot intervene.
I find this to be one of the most interesting views on god.This would also answer why god created the universe. He was curious.
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@alan fraser said:
@dantheman said:
About abiogenisis, until I see a Ferrari or computer assemble itself out of an explosion in a junk yard,
See Wikipedia article on Hoyle's Fallacy. That's not the way evolutionary synthesis works. In any case, it would be a quadrillion junkyards exploding simultaneously and perpetually for a billion years...and assembling something more like the complexity of a mousetrap.
Even if all the processes happened (I have seen explosions bend, twist and ram metal through wood) they would still have to happen in exactly the right order, and in perfect alignment. this is highly unlikely. At the same time as the millions of junkyards are exploding to form a mousetrap, millions more must explode to form the rattraps, bear traps, and other things needed to form our "trap cell." Then once all the necessary parts are assembled millions of these must explode to assemble the wall we need to keep out the baddys who want to get in (poisons in the early atmosphere). THEN we can start on the things that run the "trap cell" (DNA for example).
@unknownuser said:
@dantheman said:
As for mutation into new species, was information added or removed?
Yes it was. The amount of genetic information in the goatsbeard chromosome more than doubled. Apologies if that confounds the creationist redefinition of what constitutes speciation.
All this is is a failed meiosis, the genetic information is the same, there is just two copy's instead of one, there is no "new" information (information that didn't exist before). This causes any cross fertilization with a "normal" plant to not work. This is also found in crops, however these are not considered new species
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