Do you accept the theory of evolution? - Part 1

[Thundercrack85]

No one here is saying give up and just accept God did it. Until they fill that gap and we have a name for the catalyst call it whatever you want. If I want to say gogogambushu caused the big bang there is nothing wqrong with that. What harm does it do.

Right now we have an equation.

X=Big Bang Dark Sentinel is just giving X a name.

Because it's not true?

Also the people who claim there is a divine hand behind it don't do so based on any evidence. It's just poorly disguised religion.

As an atheist when there is something I don't understand, I don't throw up my hands and say it must be magic (or even that it could be magic). I admit I do not know. I don't start wildly speculating.

 

[Dr.]

...the way I see it, there's so much beauty in the universe that it's impossible for me to not believe that someone is responsible for it.

There’s a colossal amount of ugliness and cruelty in the natural world too. Who’s responsible for that?

 

[Marvolo]

Because it's not true?

Also the people who claim there is a divine hand behind it don't do so based on any evidence. It's just poorly disguised religion.

As an atheist when there is something I don't understand, I don't throw up my hands and say it must be magic (or even that it could be magic). I admit I do not know. I don't start wildly speculating.

You are missing the point of a metaphore. The ancients used gods as metaphors. I mean, is two universe colliding and spawning a third universe any different from the primordials waring it out and creating the heavens? Nope. Two astronomically powerful things collided and spawned something else. The names and words don't matter. Its the intent and way people use these ideas. Calling the catalyst a god or a god like force isn't wrong. What would be wrong is giving up and just accepting it was god forver. Until scientists give us an answer they can call X whatever they want. For instance I can call the catalyst the great and mighty gogogambushu. Who cares what it is called?

People rationalize and visualize things in different ways.

And let me ask this, why does everyone assume everyone believes in a meddling perfect god? If someone wants to believe some higher natural force manipulated the universe on a sub atomic level that doesn't mean that they think he meddles in it or is responsible for what takes place after that or that the force is some magical perfect being.

 

[Thundercrack85]

It's not a metaphor. They literally believed there were beings causing these things. That's why it's childish (they had a very limited understanding of the world). And why its still childish to attribute things to gods. We should know better now.

You can dress it up all you want, call it a higher being, a higher power, an evolved being, but at the end of the day saying god created the big bang is about as intellectually respectful as someone in a grass skirt thousands of years ago saying that an angry volcano god caused a volcano to erupt.

Only difference is, we should know better.

 

[KalMart]

So let me get this straight.

Kal, you are saying that there is no way whatsoever that a higher being/possibly a highly evolved being could not have been responsible for the Big Bang? I'm not talking God or gods. I am talking about a highly evolved or natural force.

If someone wants to call that force a god or belive it was a god that did it how can you say they are wrong? We have only specualtion as to what caused the Big Bang. Sentinel, is simply filling in the X in the equation. An X that cosmologist still don't have an answer for. He isn't saying that evolution didn't happen or is negated by the presence of a god. Evolution works just fine whether it was began by a god or a completely natural force. It still functions under the same laws of the universe that were put in place by either a natural force or a supernatural force.

There is no rationale for attributing the big bang to a force of anyone. And nothing that's been written or professed about god or the concept of one leaves any door open to the possibility of even conceptualizing that far back in time or deep into the understandings of space.

A cosmologist may not have a specific answer for it yet, but it does have rational hypotheses based on much that adds up scientifically and provably, so it only stands to reason that whatever answers are to come are of a natural and scientific nature, since it is a natural and scientific question. God or anything like it has no place in that, nor has it earned being any sort of default assumption in lieu of a scientific one.

Me personally I accept evolution, but I'm not going to attempt to say what caused the big bang. We just don't know and our species will most likely be extinct before we have the pleasure of finding that ouyt. If someone wants to attribute it to a higher power that is perfectly fine. It doesn't take anything away from evolution.

See, that is not the issue. Evolution is scientifically factual, as real as other sciences that don't even cause a stir. The problem is that some people find that it takes away from religion. Religion should have just as many problems with chemistry, geology, and a bunch of other sciences because they contradict scripture as well, but for some reason the idea of man as a special design if a particularly sore spot....so evolution is myopically singled out. It turns a deaf ear to what threatens it symbolically, not logically or sensibly.

 

[Marvolo]

It's not a metaphor. They literally believed there were beings causing these things. That's why it's childish (they had a very limited understanding of the world). And why its still childish to attribute things to gods. We should know better now.

You can dress it up all you want, call it a higher being, a higher power, an evolved being, but at the end of the day saying god created the big bang is about as intellectually respectful as someone in a grass skirt thousands of years ago saying that an angry volcano god caused a volcano to erupt.

Only difference is, we should know better.

You are fightiong a losing battle. Gods and higher beings and belief is too tied into the evolution of the human psyche. Doing away with it, no matter how childish a notion it may be, is no easy task. It won't happen in our lifetime.

 

[KalMart]

You are fightiong a losing battle. Gods and higher beings and belief is too tied into the evolution of the human psyche. Doing away with it, no matter how childish a notion it may be, is no easy task. It won't happen in our lifetime.

I also don't feel that 'doing away with it' is an answer...but it has a ways to go and evolve still. We have yet to understand religion as a human construct more. Hopefully and I believe likely, more people will understand that there is no actual God, but that there's something valuable and important to take from what was the belief in one, and may eventually be the appreciation for the metaphor. We'll know deep down inside that when one talks of God, they are really talking about themselves and humanity, but framed in a way that we may find more useful in given circumstances. The idea of spirit, and the need for that belief, doesn't have to be based on something real for it to be important. We need to give more credit to ourselves and accept full responsibility for it, too...good and bad.

 

[Marvolo]

There is no rationale for attributing the big bang to a force of anyone. And nothing that's been written or professed about god or the concept of one leaves any door open to the possibility of even conceptualizing that far back in time or deep into the understandings of space.

A cosmologist may not have a specific answer for it yet, but it does have rational hypotheses based on much that adds up scientifically and provably, so it only stands to reason that whatever answers are to come are of a natural and scientific nature, since it is a natural and scientific question. God or anything like it has no place in that, nor has it earned being any sort of default assumption in lieu of a scientific one.


See, that is not the issue. Evolution is scientifically factual, as real as other sciences that don't even cause a stir. The problem is that some people find that it takes away from religion. Religion should have just as many problems with chemistry, geology, and a bunch of other sciences because they contradict scripture as well, but for some reason the idea of man as a special design if a particularly sore spot....so evolution is myopically singled out. It turns a deaf ear to what threatens it symbolically, not logically or sensibly.

I agree and have spoken about the hypocrisy of accepting modern physics but not accepting modern evolutionary theory. I'm right there with you.

I guess I just don't let it ruffle my feathers if someone wants to believe a god caused the big bang. If they are a rational person then when we prove what happened before the big bang they will accept the science. Until we have a definitive answer the scientists can do their thing and the spiritualists can do what they want. As long as the spitualists don't hinder discovery and scientists I'm cool with it.

 

[redhawk23]

No one here is saying give up and just accept God did it. Until they fill that gap and we have a name for the catalyst call it whatever you want. If I want to say gogogambushu caused the big bang there is nothing wqrong with that. What harm does it do.

Right now we have an equation.

X=Big Bang Dark Sentinel is just giving X a name.

And like I said, you nor any scientist has a clue what lies outside our universe nor what was pre-big bang. Saying that some beings or natural force existed or played a part in all that stuff is not saying it was a magical god. I don't really like god of the gaps but I equally dislike the way some sieze up at the mention of anything resembling a god.

Contributes to a general approach to observing the world that while often useful is ultimately limiting and has contributed to a great many other problems.


Scientists don't know what came before the big bang, and they are quite plain and open about that. Could they come up with a few ideas? They come up with many but aren't in the habit of stating those ideas are true nor of basing their whole lives and worldview and interaction with other people around them.

 

[Thundercrack85]

You are fightiong a losing battle. Gods and higher beings and belief is too tied into the evolution of the human psyche. Doing away with it, no matter how childish a notion it may be, is no easy task. It won't happen in our lifetime.

I've already won. Some people just haven't realized it yet.

 

[KalMart]

Y'know....and this might belong more in the religion/atheism thread....

One thing that they changed in the remake of War Of The Worlds, and which I felt they really whiffed on, was in the original at the very end when all looked lost, it's a group of people huddled in a church, praying. Be it for salvation or for safe passage, they sought some sort of comfort as the world was coming to an end.

I thought this was essential to the story...not because I believed in god, or that the story should condone a belief in god. But because it entailed 'man's last moment', and what it had to say for itself...to show what made humanity worth it. To me...prayer, the ability for humans to seek comfort together, the need and desire for goodness, the capacity to love, that HUMAN condition was a poignant expression in the face of extermination. What we were watching was humanity reflecting on what the best that it was capable of was, and even though it was in the form of religion, it represented humanity itself....whether one believed in god or not. That was the moment when humanity earned the right to survive...not in god's eye or the martian's eyes, but in what the story had to say.

They really missed that opportunity with the newer Spielberg/Cruise version...amongst other things. But that also sort of goes along with when I say we can still appreciate and assess religion without necessarily believing or endorsing it.

Contributes to a general approach to observing the world that while often useful is ultimately limiting and has contributed to a great many other problems.

Pretty much how I feel too, in that there is a level of ignorance that's being perpetuated which is rather sad, and in an ever-increasing world of modernization, it could be very dangerous as well...it already is.

 

[Marvolo]

Contributes to a general approach to observing the world that while often useful is ultimately limiting and has contributed to a great many other problems.


Scientists don't know what came before the big bang, and they are quite plain and open about that. Could they come up with a few ideas? They come up with many but aren't in the habit of stating those ideas are true nor of basing their whole lives and worldview and interaction with other people around them.

This habit you speak of is more of a collective cultural thing than an individual thing. I was indoctrinated in the church for 18+ years. It was just the norm in the culture I grew up in. Even today knowing all the science I know and being a scientifically minded person I still fall back on my religion from time to time. Its ingrained in my upbringing. Totally separating myself from it is like removing a limb. Its drilled in my head. It is easier for me to just say God did it. I don't, but I have to catch myself. Then there is the problem of me being an outcast in my area of bible believers. Socially, it isn't easy being a non religious person. Sometimes I just want to go with the crowd, and make it easier on myself.

Until we as a species stop indoctrinating our young with religion this won't change.

 

[Marvolo]

I want to quote Richard Dawkins to explain how I use the term "God".

The God Delusion Pages 18-19

Let's remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his intial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by perfdorming miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too believes in the supernatiral intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes therafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that giverns its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read out thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like 'God is subtle but he is not malicious' or 'He does not play dice' or Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?' are pantheistic, not deistic, and certainly not theistic. 'God does not play dice' should be translated as 'Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.' Einstein was using God in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. So is Stephen Hawking, and so are most of those physicists who occassionally slip into the language of religious metaphor.

Let me sum up Einsteinian religion in one more quotation from Einstein himself: 'To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reached us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious' In this sense I too am religious, with the reservation that 'cannot grasp' does not have to mean 'forever ungraspable'. But I prefer not to call myself religious because it is misleading. It is destructively misleading because, for the vast majority of people, 'religion' implies 'supernatural'. Carl Sagan put it well:'...if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying...it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

The metaphorical or pantheistic God of physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-pushing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs, and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.

I guess you could say I am a pantheist. I am guilty of using God in a metaphorical sense, and prefer the poetical synonyms to outright scrubbing the words religion and god from my vocabulary. So if I say God I am not speaking literally nor of the Bible God.

 

[KalMart]

I don't believe in a god, but I appreciate the need for one, and admire the aesthetic.

 

[Dark Sentinel]

There’s a colossal amount of ugliness and cruelty in the natural world too. Who’s responsible for that?

Easy. Stephanie Meyer

 

[Dark Sentinel]

And really when it coms down to it, I don't want to tell you that you're wrong to find beauty or personal joy in something. And not that there's anything I find particularly harmful in your outlook, I just think it's not accurate and shouldn't be taught to children as fact. I think it could be known not to be real or actual, but still hold value as a way of thinking....as if through an artist's eye. But still important to distinguish it as art or representation, not actual.

Someone said that religious beliefs/philosophies are instilled in us as children. And to a certain extent that's true. But there comes a time when you have to stop and make up your own damn mind (point of clarification, I say that a lot). Some choose to continue to believe in a God, some don't. And that's fine, I'm not trying to biblethump anyone here, because it's wrong of me to impose my own personal beliefs on anyone else.

I choose to look at the world from a spiritual perspective, but I value the scientific perspective as well. Yes I was raised in a Christian home with Christian beliefs, but I chose to continue with those beliefs as my own. I do believe there is a God at work, even when I can't see it. Say all you want about "2012 was bogus!" and whatnot, but I felt a genuine energy shift, and that's something science can't explain. Some things aren't meant to be explained because they just are.

 

[jmc]

If a 'creator' exists it's scientific in nature. Simple as that really. No hocus pocus magic, no pearly gates, just a pure natural phenomenon.

 

[KalMart]

Someone said that religious beliefs/philosophies are instilled in us as children. And to a certain extent that's true. But there comes a time when you have to stop and make up your own damn mind (point of clarification, I say that a lot). Some choose to continue to believe in a God, some don't. And that's fine, I'm not trying to biblethump anyone here, because it's wrong of me to impose my own personal beliefs on anyone else.

I choose to look at the world from a spiritual perspective, but I value the scientific perspective as well. Yes I was raised in a Christian home with Christian beliefs, but I chose to continue with those beliefs as my own. I do believe there is a God at work, even when I can't see it. Say all you want about "2012 was bogus!" and whatnot, but I felt a genuine energy shift, and that's something science can't explain. Some things aren't meant to be explained because they just are.

The problem is in thinking that which can't (yet) be 'explained' defaults to a god. That right there is the greatest essential error in religion, and we as humans should be better than having to fall back on that. I do think there is, for lack of a better term, spirituality in us...but it is a purely human condition that we primitively associated with a 'being' because that was the envelope of our imagination and knowledge. But we know more now.

But anyway, that's more of a specific religious discussion. Everything we know and continue to discover in evolution reveals purely natural causes and effects. There is a beauty and wonder in that which is innate and doesn't need a designer or overseer to have meaning and beauty to us. We, and only we, have naturally developed the capacity to notice and seek that.

 

[KalMart]

If a 'creator' exists it's scientific in nature. Simple as that really. No hocus pocus magic, no pearly gates, just a pure natural phenomenon.

Again, the concept of a 'creator' is more about symbolic and mythological value, than a rational idea of origins.

 

[jmc]

Again, the concept of a 'creator' is more about symbolic and mythological value, than a rational idea of origins.

Oh, I'm aware, hence the quotation marks around the word creator. What I'm saying however is in the extremely unlikely chance that our very existence came about due to some form of 'creator' then whatever that thing is a natural phenomenon and scientific in nature. I don't think for a second a higher power exists, none of this dude with white beard and toga stuff (an image of God which was stolen from Zeus people). Creator is an abstract concept, to me if it exists it's something that isn't aware of its own existence much less ours. There is one theory that our universe is 'floating' on something that is akin to a giant membrane.

 

[Dr.]

Again, the concept of a 'creator' is more about symbolic and mythological value, than a rational idea of origins.

Well, in the sense of a purely philosophical deism/cosmological argument, a “creator” can be a “rational” conclusion. That is, the conclusion (whether right or wrong) is arrived at by deductive means (e.g., “an effect requires a cause, ergo…”) - as opposed to faith or revelation establishing the “creator’s” existence.

Needless to say, the vast majority of those who espouse the cosmological argument are not deistic philosophers. They’re full-on theistic believers. So at some point, there’s a category or epistemological shift in their thought process. Along the lines of: the Universe requires a cause, therefore Jesus walked on water.

 

[KalMart]

Well, in the sense of a purely philosophical deism/cosmological argument, a “creator” can be a “rational” conclusion. That is, the conclusion (whether right or wrong) is arrived at by deductive means (e.g., “an effect requires a cause, ergo…&#8221 - as opposed to faith or revelation establishing the “creator’s” existence.

Needless to say, the vast majority of those who espouse the cosmological argument are not deistic philosophers. They’re full-on theistic believers. So at some point, there’s a category or epistemological shift in their thought process. Along the lines of: the Universe requires a cause, therefore Jesus walked on water.

I don't think it is rational as a concept or conclusion...but it is doggedly rationalized, as humans are commonly wont to do but don't always recognize. If reached through deductive means, then there's still a major flaw assuming it as a possibility...a vital part of deductive reasoning is knowing what something isn't or cannot be.

 

[KalMart]

Oh, I'm aware, hence the quotation marks around the word creator. What I'm saying however is in the extremely unlikely chance that our very existence came about due to some form of 'creator' then whatever that thing is a natural phenomenon and scientific in nature. I don't think for a second a higher power exists, none of this dude with white beard and toga stuff (an image of God which was stolen from Zeus people). Creator is an abstract concept, to me if it exists it's something that isn't aware of its own existence much less ours. There is one theory that our universe is 'floating' on something that is akin to a giant membrane.

If there was some sort of sentient design behind the universe, it's obscenely naive to think that we, in the miniscule fraction of a parsec that we occupy along the timeline of the universe, would be able to identify or accredit it as such. If it is somehow beyond natural, then it is way, way beyond anything that we could even begin to grasp conceptually. Calling it a God, or attributing it to something that we would call 'supernatural' is laughable it's so unimaginative. We need to acknowledge just how myopic and limited our abstract is, instead of grasping for some imaginary friend.

 

[Dr.]

I don't think it is rational as a concept or conclusion...but it is doggedly rationalized, as humans are commonly wont to do but don't always recognize. If reached through deductive means, then there's still a major flaw assuming it as a possibility...a vital part of deductive reasoning is knowing what something isn't or cannot be.

Of course, one side thinks that the other is guilty of flawed reasoning. But both sides are engaged in a rational debate inasmuch as they’re using logic and reason (and not appeals to faith, revelation or scriptural authority) as their tools of persuasion. Philosophy is not theology.

 

[Doctor Evo]

If there was some sort of sentient design behind the universe, it's obscenely naive to think that we, in the miniscule fraction of a parsec that we occupy along the timeline of the universe, would be able to identify or accredit it as such. If it is somehow beyond natural, then it is way, way beyond anything that we could even begin to grasp conceptually. Calling it a God, or attributing it to something that we would call 'supernatural' is laughable it's so unimaginative. We need to acknowledge just how myopic and limited our abstract is, instead of grasping for some imaginary friend.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that you and jmc are agreeing with one another.