God vs Evolution

[alextemplet]

It is actually possible to form an intelligent argument against intelligent design, but doing so raises numerous other questions and, in my opinion, is at least as great of a leap of faith as a belief in God.

[want2know]

It is actually possible to form an intelligent argument against intelligent design, but doing so raises numerous other questions and, in my opinion, is at least as great of a leap of faith as a belief in God.

But that is the very thing I am trying to lay it out here, evidently very poorly, that the most logical next step is to investigate intelligent design after what we have been discovering about this universe. The alternative is to simply avoid the very question of our existence and try to explain it away through progress of evolution or whatever it is, which does not cut it. We shouldn't neglect that the author of this universe, whom I suggest is science (strictly speaking in the worldly sense), from its beginning had all the recipes required to make this universe as we see it. If that's not intelligent design I don't know what it is.

[Darby]

want2know, if we were intelligent beings in a universe with different rules, "you" might certainly make the same assertion about that set of conditions.

[narrowstaircase]

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So,... am I talking about God? NO, not specifically. I am talking about a creative universe - I do not call this "God".

Am I talking about evolution? NO, not specifically. I am talking about a creative universe,... part of which we might call "evolution".

"God" and "evolution" are subordinate to something even more infinitely complex, in my way of thinking. I cannot simplify it with either label.

"God" is a vague personified reference to the awe of it. "Evolution" is a specific description of a local instant of it. "IT" is the creative universe.

Robert Kernodle

i understand what you are saying and i agree with you.

though i will add, God and religion used to represent something more than a vague metaphysical personification of ideals.

using the greeks as an egsample. the greek gods used to live on earth which is quite significant because it meant that their gods were subject to the very laws they created. it is also significant because the fact that their gods were on earth meant that their lives were enriched daily by their 'presence'. they experienced religion more so than following its rules. god in religion today seems to be wholey detached from humans. this has resulted in a lack of religious experience.

religion has lost its substance for alot of people including myself. we reject the term god as insufficient and instead you introduce this term 'creative universe' which seems to me to be just as vague and detached an explanation (though i see what you are saying). i think a task of science is to unravel and explain away the metaphysical analogies proposed by religion. not to reject them. but to make them understandable and significant for our time as it once was for people in the past. for me creative universe = god. the modern sense of religion relies heavily on an outside influence, a metaphysical being that our intellect can recognise. but the 'religious experience' is just that, an experience. an inside influence (or god within) that is recognised and felt through experience and whose meaning can be acknowledged through our eventfull lives. i would even define your creative intuition as a 'religious' experience. the sensitiveness and feeling involved in that is very 'religious' imo.

[want2know]

This universe is NOT creative. Since everything and everyone in it is guided by the law of nature, science. When one event leads to another and that first event has no choice but to lead to the next even the first event is not creating the next event, it is simply following the law of nature, which nothing can possibly escape. When we look at a dying star we could say it's beautiful but the chemical and atomic reactions and gravity that are taking place have no intention of being creative, they are simply taking "order" from the law of nature. They can't neither be more passionate or less passionate about what they are doing. They have no intelligence on their own. There is nothing creative about this.

[want2know]

want2know, if we were intelligent beings in a universe with different rules, "you" might certainly make the same assertion about that set of conditions.

Until I know what that sent of conditions is I really couldn't say.

[Darby]

But you're assuming there aren't a wide range of possible conditions that could combine in such a way as to allow life (and potentially intelligent life) to exist.

You're not alone, though; even many physicists seem to think that if they can't imagine another universe with the "right" rules, then it must be unlikely that such a universe exists, and our universe must be truly special. But what they're really doing is imagining OUR universe with the parameters tweaked a little, not at all the same thing.

It's the same logic that supports Intelligent Design: if I can't understand how something could happen following perfectly natural rules, then of course supernatural forces must have been at work.

[Sillitovet]

The alternative is to simply avoid the very question of our existence and try to explain it away through progress of evolution or whatever it is, which does not cut it.

How on earth does it not cut it? In my view evolution explains entirely how we came about, it explains perfectly our presence and to me the existence of a "creator" is far less probable. Wheredo you find flaws in the theory?

I also don't believe that science and religion can get along, giving religion an affiliation with science - intelligent design for example - gives it a credibility that it does not deserve. Any real theory has to be backed up with facts, and there are none which support religion or a god.

Apologies if I have got the gist of this argument wrong, I only found this froum looking for a definition for the Straub tail reaction, but got sucked in!

[alextemplet]

I also don't believe that science and religion can get along, giving religion an affiliation with science - intelligent design for example - gives it a credibility that it does not deserve. Any real theory has to be backed up with facts, and there are none which support religion or a god.

I could think of a fact or two . . .

[robertkernodle]

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By saying that science is a creator, we are personifying science as another form of God. By saying that the laws of science are somehow "written" with no varyation, we are saying that the universe is absolutely determinate. By saying that the universe is absolutely determinate, we MUST accept that the universe also is finite. By saying that the universe is finite, ... we are in the dilemma of first principle again (i.e., in what does the beginnning arise?) If we speculate that the universe is infinite AND determinate, we only say that the universe is indeterminate in a self-contradiction, because INFINITE DETERMINISM equals INDETERMINISM.

I would ask: Where and how are these laws of science written?

The laws of science are written by humankind. These laws are interpretations through the substantial form assemblege of the human body. They are body expressions, thus they are creative,... albeit a rather terse form of creativity is at play here. These laws merely confirm the substantial nature of creative form and creative process.

To emphasize,... an infinite, eternal universe must have unknowns perpetually, or else we could find an end/limit/final solution. This is the hallmark of creativity - continual emergence on some scale beyond KNOWN (created) LAWS.

Robert K.

[want2know]

I think the law of science is what exists, it is not subjective but very objective, and some people had the keen ability to see the law of science in action and tried to express it in human language, i.e. Newton, Einstein, Darwin and Freud.

[want2know]

How on earth does it not cut it? In my view evolution explains entirely how we came about, it explains perfectly our presence and to me the existence of a "creator" is far less probable.

I am not sure how you are linking evolution and creation? Evolution didn't create anything. It's just an expression of a scientific progress prewritten into the fabric of our universe to guide the existance. It's like say it's a rock music after listening to a song. But it doesn't say anything about the song writer and how the song came to be.