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Does God exist?


Jim Colyer

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Evolving takes a long time.

Evolving a new species takes at least a million years.

Evolving something as profound as "morals" would take at least 10,000 years.

 

That means that observations over a year or a decade are meaningless.

Even observations over a century would be questionable.

But it becomes obvious that over the last 1,000 years, morals have indeed improved.

Of course, you have to know something about history to have that be obvious.

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and is that moral?

if man evolved to have morals, we must still be evolving as it seems we are loosing our morals

 

There has never been a more moral time in human history than today goku, if you think differently it's because you are ignorant of the facts and history. I suggest you choose to be ignorant of these things, what kind of behavior is that goku?

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BAd God, BAD Boy!!!

 

The Old Testament God disqualifies himself as a diety of justice, that is certain. For instance, he extends professional courtesy to the Head of State God Ramses (?). Instead of giving Ramses a bad case of Jock Itch [to let my people go] he vists various plagues and murder upon Ramses subjects. So. If THAT God exists, it is an unfortunate thing indeed. If you need further evidence of malign intent, The Children of Israel are ordered to kill all the plants, animals and peoples in the area of Caanan. Or some such. If it is less then that it is simple technicality.

 

On the other hand, there clearly is a force or forces in the Universe that far exceed any power, or even understanding we may possess. And that goes double for things OUTSIDE our universe. The scientific approach to this matter is entirely inadequate. So what then remains?

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...The scientific approach to this matter is entirely inadequate. So what then remains?
Why?

Because it has revealed answers that you don't like?

Answers that aren't simple enough?

Answers that don't "explain" everything to your satisfaction?

Answers that we don't fully understand?

 

Gosh, it's a really tough Universe we live in. Too bad.

 

We have what we have always had.

We have the Universe around us in all its unrepentant, unyielding Reality.

We have our self-aware Minds and our Senses.

We have all of History behind us to learn from.

We have all of Time before us.

We have Reason.

 

And that is gonna hafta be good enough. :(

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Free,

 

I see no possibility of quenching my curiosity in this matter, short of death, and clearly THAT is speculation. However, I really really want to find ET, but so far its zip. Furthermore, I have been tracking the Drake Equation for decades. At the time the equation was postulated we had almost no data to include. At that time I believe the SWAG was 19 techonolgical civilizations in our galaxy.

 

However, data has accumulated over the last several decades. The number of zeros added to the probablity against the proposition has become, appropriately, astronomical in number. For instance, granting the existence of many planets like ours [itself atronomical in nature], even ours is against technological civilization by about 4 billion years divided by 100 years of observed technological advancement.

 

And even THAT simply accepts what is self evident. However, it is not self evident that 4 billion years on the perfect planet inevitably results in us. Lets hope SETI has some success. Otherwise, it seems to me we are orders of magnitude less then an aberation, even on the perfect but implausible planet. At that point, I am willing to discuss The Devine.

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Pyrotex - You wroted: "We have all of History behind us to learn from."

 

Human written history is about 5,000 years. This in a Universe roughly estimated to be 15,000,000,000,000 years old. Most of its mass and energy unaccounted more then 100 years after E=Mc2.

 

We don't know squat.....

 

 

Pyro, Free etc RE "mere chance".

 

Quantum mechanics is nothing if not mere chance. For instance, entangled paricles are mathematical certainty, but inexplicable. Radioactive decay has mathematical certainty, but no cause can be found for any single decay. Our civilization can not even find an appropriate elephant from which our blind wise men can describe trunk, ear, foot and tail.

 

My most reasonable hope is to find an ET several billion years our senior, and ask him.....

 

 

Free, Pyro

 

Whatever our understanding of the universe may be, we are clearly its creation. Personally, I have no arguement with those who use the term God to describe the force that led to creation of that universe in the first place. The only arguemnt I can see, is whether or not that creator is an agent of free will, and creates according to some sort of plan. Further, I believe this is not going to be discoverred any time soon. Accordingly, agnostic seems the logical scientific choice. Certainly 'athiest' seems an affectation.

 

But I have an affectation of my own. Specifically, every year we do not find a similar co-species in the universe, that is an increase in the chance we are the only ones. And if we are the only ones, that increases the odds we ARE a specific creation. On the other hand, as soon as we find just ONE additional species like ourselves, that, for me, pretty much eliminates us as a special case.

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Free, Pyro

 

Whatever our understanding of the universe may be, we are clearly its creation. Personally, I have no arguement with those who use the term God to describe the force that led to creation of that universe in the first place. The only arguemnt I can see, is whether or not that creator is an agent of free will, and creates according to some sort of plan. Further, I believe this is not going to be discoverred any time soon. Accordingly, agnostic seems the logical scientific choice. Certainly 'athiest' seems an affectation.

 

But I have an affectation of my own. Specifically, every year we do not find a similar co-species in the universe, that is an increase in the chance we are the only ones. And if we are the only ones, that increases the odds we ARE a specific creation. On the other hand, as soon as we find just ONE additional species like ourselves, that, for me, pretty much eliminates us as a special case.

Chimpanzees living today, and the there have been many hominids that are close enough too show me that we are not a special creation. Asking if there is a god controlling things is not the best question to ask. It comes from a religious stand that is not logical, but emotional. Rather we should be asking... Does what we know presently lead us to see the big picture of life and then evolve with this knowledge?

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Tbird - You wrote: "...Chimpanzees living today, and the there have been many hominids that are close enough too show me that we are not a special creation."

 

I believe you have it entirely backwards. As you point out, the earth has produced a large number of hominids and great apes in the last several million years. Yet only one has managed capable of namaging a stop light. And that one nearly became extinct in a recent ice age.

 

More then that. Other large and small critters were granted hundreds of millions of years evolution, yet not one of them seems to have risen to create a written language. Humans, with very little evolution time, did it separately in several places.

 

I will explain the obvious. This nearly perfect and implausible planet created millions of species over billions of years with lots of time available. None of them so much as left us 2+2=4. Yet in little less then an eyeblink one improbable species became capable of written lanquaege in less then a few million years. And IT was nearly wiped out by ice age not long ago.

 

I need at least one additional such species to conclude there are others. In addition, ever since the Drake Equation was proposed [with minimal data] every single variable in that equation, as far as I can determine, has accumulated additional negative data. One specific example its this:

 

Out of a dozen or so solar systems surveid, only one seems not to have gas giants close in to their stars. According to current understanding, that precludes a 'goldie locks' planet all together. In addition, nearly the entire center of every galazy seems entirely deadly to life as we know it.

 

And don't get me started on the moon. Just the right proportional size of target and impact object at just the right velocity and angle of impact to produce just the correct distance and equatorial orbit generally recognized as a neccesary to produce a climate stable enough for long periods of evolution to proceed.

 

And still, only ONE of the millions of species got smart. Chimpanzees do not prove anything at all about written lanquage on other planets. After all. Haven't all the great apes been around at least as long as us? Life on evn perfect planets clearly does not favor human levels of intelligence.

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You arbitrarily place some special significance on the ability to write. Why does that matter, if for no other reason than to support your preconceived notion that humans are special and different?

 

What are dolphins or cephelopods supposed to write on? Water is not the best medium for that, but these are incredibly brilliant animals. :shrug:

 

 

Also, I know that there are a great number of humans who aren't able to read/write. It would seem that this is another weak point in your position.

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IN - You wrote: "You arbitrarily place some special significance on the ability to write."

 

ANSWER: It seems hardly arbitrary. The ability to do this is unique. Please provide a scientific citation that argues written language is not 1) a significant development. 2) does not diferentiate humans from Chimpanzeesl

 

You also wrote: "Wat are dolphins or cephelopods supposed to write on? Water is not the best medium for that, but these are incredibly brilliant animals."

 

ANSWER: This animals do have spoken lanquage, but I have yet to read they have a larger vocbulary then lab trained chimps using American Sign Lanquage. And yet chimps can't manage stop lights.

 

You also wrote: "Also, I know that there are a great number of humans who aren't able to read/write. It would seem that this is another weak point in your position."

 

ANSWER: Almost none of the worlds Chimpanzees have been taught American Sign Lanquage, but no one I know believes that proves they are unable to do so.

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IN - Here are two actual examples of arbitrary thought.

 

1) Specifically, given the age of the Universe and our place in that sequence, I believe just about everything that could be done already has been done countless times over in other solar systems accros the universe.

 

2) Lets suppose this DOES include technological life within the previous cycles. That means technological civilization would have had hundreds of millions, if not billions of years to perfect that craft.

 

3) Given human nature, if WE had gone through such cycles, I believe we would have erected technological means to transmmit our exisstence to others. Some have even proposed such a technological civilization could actually encode messages in natural phenomena such as pulsars, variable ceplieds, and countless other repetitive astronomical events.

 

Further, I believe such civilizations would not be coy about their existsence, and would deploy both very easily discovered messages as well as more complex type.

 

So Far Zip

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Litespeed, lots of people believe lots of things,

 

I believe that BBT will eventually be superseded by Brane theory.

 

I believe in the Rare Earth Theory of which it is obvious you have been reading up on.

 

Everyone should believe in something.

 

I believe I'll have another beer! :shrug:

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Modest if I may, I think what he is alluding to is that if we are the only intelligence in the universe then it makes us special, the pinnacle of creation, this indicates there is a creator, a creator that has created everything so we will and can exist. I think it's known as the strong anthropomorphic principle. I could be wrong about that.

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