Evolution vs Intelligent Design

[Ritz]

I can tell this conversation is way over my head now just by reading the last page (over my head because I can't even really tell who is arguing for which side), but here's my two cents on it.

I went to Catholic school for 9 years and was spoon-fed the usual weird religious stories over and over before I just thought about it too much and decided I didn't believe any of it. HOWEVER, any of the students in my classes who would ask a teacher/preacher/etc about any of the stories that sounded ridiculous would get the answer that the story is just metaphorical, ie. Adam and Eve.

That being said, most modern Christians that I've spoken to (including my Biology professor, which I thought was really interesting) have more lenient views on the stories. For example, they don't believe god made humans out of dirt like play dough and voila, there we were, but rather that through "intelligent design" helped play a part in the evolution process. If you really look at some of the things living creatures have evolved, they're pretty damn convenient, and a lot of our planet forming and evolving was blind luck after blind luck after blind luck that allowed life at all.

I don't believe in the typical "god" that watches us but doesn't show himself or do anything like santa clause but we're supposed to believe or we don't get presents. Another thing that always bugged me that my Bio prof brought up is the big bang theory, which is usually people's argument against the creation story. We all know before the big bang, there was nothing. No space, no empty universe, just absolutely nothing. Then there was an explosion of some sort, and the universe was created and expanded from there.
What exploded? At what point in the nothing and nothing and nothing backwards into infinity was there that one tiny particle with enough energy to explode?

I'm not saying that any "god" snapped and voila, there it was, but I do know that there's some kind of things going on that we don't and prob never will understand, excuse the cliche phrase. I'm more inclined to call it "fate" than "god", since I find it hard to believe something omnipotent that supposedly cares about life just simply won't show itself or give any signs that it exists. Why test our "faith"? Why screw us over when we don't believe blindly? Just to be petty or childish? Seems like a silly concept for a deity, so it's easier for me to believe it's nothing particularly sentient.

Anyway like I said sorry this wasn't quite as intelligent as the current convo is but I just have to get my thoughts out of my head when things like this come up even when I'm way too late, lol.

 

[Brain]

I can tell this conversation is way over my head now just by reading the last page (over my head because I can't even really tell who is arguing for which side), but here's my two cents on it.

The majority of people (perhaps even everybody who posted in the last page) are on the same side. Arguments for ID are so terrible and the few people who would make them are so completely ignorant that they get swiftly demolished. In the end we just argue about random stuff.

I went to Catholic school for 9 years and was spoon-fed the usual weird religious stories over and over before I just thought about it too much and decided I didn't believe any of it. HOWEVER, any of the students in my classes who would ask a teacher/preacher/etc about any of the stories that sounded ridiculous would get the answer that the story is just metaphorical, ie. Adam and Eve.

How convenient.

That being said, most modern Christians that I've spoken to (including my Biology professor, which I thought was really interesting) have more lenient views on the stories. For example, they don't believe god made humans out of dirt like play dough and voila, there we were, but rather that through "intelligent design" helped play a part in the evolution process. If you really look at some of the things living creatures have evolved, they're pretty damn convenient, and a lot of our planet forming and evolving was blind luck after blind luck after blind luck that allowed life at all.

Little about evolution (or, I would wager, abiogenesis) is blind luck. Ill-adapted organisms die out, so evolutionary steps are made upon adapted organisms, so this is not at all a blind process - we expect nature to produce life that's adapted to it. In fact, nothing in the world significantly deviates from reasonable expectation.

I don't believe in the typical "god" that watches us but doesn't show himself or do anything like santa clause but we're supposed to believe or we don't get presents. Another thing that always bugged me that my Bio prof brought up is the big bang theory, which is usually people's argument against the creation story. We all know before the big bang, there was nothing. No space, no empty universe, just absolutely nothing. Then there was an explosion of some sort, and the universe was created and expanded from there.

What exploded? At what point in the nothing and nothing and nothing backwards into infinity was there that one tiny particle with enough energy to explode?

I know it's difficult to wrap one's mind around it (seriously, it really is), but through no logic can you infer that an era of "nothing" extended infinitely in the past, or ever existed. To put it in another way, perhaps there was no "before". Perhaps time itself started at that point. Furthermore, if there was indeed a "before", there is no reason to assume that there was "nothing" before the big bang and there is no reason to assume that whatever physical rules work now worked the same way back then, if at all.

And of course no conception of God can solve this problem, as God does not have a greater standing, metaphysically speaking, than a universe. And for the record, neither does "fate" (whatever that means) :)

 

[Obsessed]

Then there was an explosion of some sort, and the universe was created and expanded from there.

I really think they need to rename the theory. The Big Bang was not an explosion of any kind. The Big Bang is simply an expansion of space.

http://astrophysics.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_universe_and_the_big_bang

 

[Ritz]

Ah, okay, my mistake. Still the same line though... that speck started out in the middle of nothing and "expanded". From what energy, and what was the speck? Just compressed space that always existed for no particular reason?

It seems like that article is more talking about how the planets and etc are moving/drifting in the expanding space, though, and not whether or not there was a big 'boom' of energy that made it expand in the first place?

Again I'm not really trying to argue anything since I don't know anything; I'm more just pointing out what I don't understand cause it still like fascinates me when I think about it ahha.

 

[MrIndigo]

Ah, okay, my mistake. Still the same line though... that speck started out in the middle of nothing and "expanded". From what energy, and what was the speck? Just compressed space that always existed for no particular reason?

It seems like that article is more talking about how the planets and etc are moving/drifting in the expanding space, though, and not whether or not there was a big 'boom' of energy that made it expand in the first place?

Again I'm not really trying to argue anything since I don't know anything; I'm more just pointing out what I don't understand cause it still like fascinates me when I think about it ahha.

One possible explanation is that at t=0, the absolute initial point of time, you had a spatial singularity packed full of matter and energy, in an unstable equilibrium. To start it's rapid expansion, it needed to be moved the tiniest amount from this equilibrium, so where could that first catalyst come from?

It's been shown that positrons (particles the same mass and spin as an electron, but with a positive charge) behave exactly the same as an electron would if it was moving backwards in time, so it's potentially possible that all positrons are electrons moving backwards in time. If that is the case, then it's possible that an electron could travel backwards in time to t=0, and start the expansion that created the universe (and it) for it to travel backwards in time and start the expansion...


@thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=3

 

[cantab]

I really think they need to rename the theory. The Big Bang was not an explosion of any kind. The Big Bang is simply an expansion of space.

http://astrophysics.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_universe_and_the_big_bang

The name itself was originally pejorative. But it stuck.

And actually, it's not too dissimilar to an ordinary explosion. The universe started out small, dense, and hot, and expanded, thinned, and cooled. Just like the fireball created by many explosions.

The key difference, however, is that ordinary explosions expand INTO space, whereas the Big Bang was an expansion OF space.

One corollary of that is that the Big Bang happened right where you are. It happened everywhere, because at the start of the Universe, every location was one location. This isn't of any great scientific importance, but it's interesting conceptually.

 

[sonickid01]

This is wrong. All theories are not all equally valid, and some can be proven wrong. The idea of a god in general probably cannot be proven either way, but that's partly because of how poorly defined the general term is. The Christian God, on the other hand, has specific attributes with specific effects on the world. Just as we can easily disprove the Greek Gods by going on top of Mt. Olympus and showing that they aren't there and, in fact, never were, we can disprove specific claims made by specific religions.You can say "Sure, you can find all this evidence that the Christian God doesn't exist, but what if he's just covering it up!?". That's all well and good, except most people's view of God is that he is honest and doesn't cover it up, so you're trying to define a contradictory God.

A very valid point. The only argument for the Christian God then while still taking into account its contradictions with itself and science is that the Christian God has the power to never contradict itself despite any circumstances on some theorized "higher logic," or something to that effect. Which is out of the scope of normal logic and then is mental masturbation and pointless.

Also, that's misunderstanding the meaning of Russel's Teapot. Russel's Teapot says that the person who makes the less-falsifiable or less-substantiated claim has the burden of proof. Since the nonexistance of God has supporting (though nonconclusive) evidence based on the observations of things that contradict religious teaching; it is those who assert the existence of a Creator need to prove it, and not the other way around.

My mistake. I'd known that it meant that the burden of proof is on the argument-maker, but I'd taken it without realizing it to mean that "in the realm of non-provable phenomena, every argument is equally valid." Like you and Obi said, though, the Christian God, and very likely others, can be disproven through its contradictions.

That being said, most modern Christians that I've spoken to (including my Biology professor, which I thought was really interesting) have more lenient views on the stories. For example, they don't believe god made humans out of dirt like play dough and voila, there we were, but rather that through "intelligent design" helped play a part in the evolution process. If you really look at some of the things living creatures have evolved, they're pretty damn convenient, and a lot of our planet forming and evolving was blind luck after blind luck after blind luck that allowed life at all.

I think someone mentioned earlier that because something fits does not mean that it was intelligently designed to fit. Basically I'm trying to say that things are there because they work through natural selection, not despite it, which is quite opposite of blind luck as Brain said. Example is the metagame of Pokemon- when a threat X gains popularity, a counter Y is introduced with a very good mold in countering X (I think Weavile countering Cresselia is an example. I never played OU so I'm going off of memory). The environment is such that teams with quality, or adaptation, Y is preferable in order to not get 6-0ed, or eaten, by X. It is this kind of natural selection that is one driving force in the change of a metagame. Things that favor well in adapting will naturally survive better, so it seems "convenient" for there to be Latias counters all over the place right now (if it's still OU?).

I went to Catholic school for 9 years and was spoon-fed the usual weird religious stories over and over before I just thought about it too much and decided I didn't believe any of it. HOWEVER, any of the students in my classes who would ask a teacher/preacher/etc about any of the stories that sounded ridiculous would get the answer that the story is just metaphorical, ie. Adam and Eve.

Actually, I'm reminded of when I was a child in kindergarten-3rd grade. I had to take a religion class, being at a private school, and thought nothing of it. Hinduism taught me that all religions were equally valid so I equated it and Christianity in truthfulness (an idea which I now personally reject). One day the teacher discussed Genesis, and I asked where God came from. I remember her being a little flushed but she told me that nothing created God- he always "was." At this point a strange physical feeling came over me which I can't really describe, but it was when I thought about this concept. An infinity and God never required cause. I dunno how else to describe it, but it was kind of like looking into an infinitely long lit tunnel and not seeing the end but knowing that there has to be one on the other side. I think that was the first seed of atheism in me but meh. I don't get a strong feeling anymore when I imagine this concept, maybe because I just sort of dulled down but if anyone else has that I'd like to hear about it.I was fed a lot of "if it doesn't make sense it must be metaphorical" nonsense when I was younger as well. Both the Hindu and Christian preachers, if I remember right, told me that if it doesn't make sense, then I'm on too low a level of thinking which means that I should be more devout in order for God to make sense.And as a side note, HAPPY DARWIN DAY EVERYONE.

 

[J-man]

The Problem dealing with God is that He is infinite, while we are finite beings. We are restricted to time and space and can not begin to comprehend how being outside this power works. Therefore we get into the problem of defining God ourselves, which in this case "How can he not have a beginning? That's stupid, there can't be something without a beginning, therefore there is no God". I hope i covered that and not left anything out, if you haven't figured it out yet i'm terrible when it comes to these kind of debates. I have no idea why i let myself get drawn into these kinds of things.

 

[MrIndigo]

The Problem dealing with God is that He is infinite, while we are finite beings. We are restricted to time and space and can not begin to comprehend how being outside this power works. Therefore we get into the problem of defining God ourselves, which in this case "How can he not have a beginning? That's stupid, there can't be something without a beginning, therefore there is no God". I hope i covered that and not left anything out, if you haven't figured it out yet i'm terrible when it comes to these kind of debates. I have no idea why i let myself get drawn into these kinds of things.

Russell's Teapot.

You are shifting the goalposts and defining God to be something that can't be explained by evidence so that people can't disprove His existence. However, by doing this, you are adopting an impossible position.

1) Russel's Teapot dictates that you have the burden of proof because you have the less-falsifiable claim. But by making this particular claim, you're intentionally defining it to be impossible to prove. Thus you can't actually provide evidence of your position. You are intentionally making your argument unwinnable.

2) Any of the properties you ascribe to God to make Him unverifiable (e.g. "He doesn't have a "beginning") can also be applied to the universe's origin equally.

 

[J-man]

Russell's Teapot.

You are shifting the goalposts and defining God to be something that can't be explained by evidence so that people can't disprove His existence. However, by doing this, you are adopting an impossible position.

1) Russel's Teapot dictates that you have the burden of proof because you have the less-falsifiable claim. But by making this particular claim, you're intentionally defining it to be impossible to prove. Thus you can't actually provide evidence of your position. You are intentionally making your argument unwinnable.

2) Any of the properties you ascribe to God to make Him unverifiable (e.g. "He doesn't have a "beginning") can also be applied to the universe's origin equally.

5For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

You only prove my point, since Infinite is something mankind can not grasp, it discards it as poor logic. This isn't my definition, it's one that God has had since the beginning of time. I don't consider finding the reason as to why this is something to be grasped. It is unnecessary. Care to explain in detail where i went wrong? i don't follow.

 

[MrIndigo]

5For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

You only prove my point, since Infinite is something mankind can not grasp, it discards it as poor logic. This isn't my definition, it's one that God has had since the beginning of time. I don't consider finding the reason as to why this is something to be grasped. It is unnecessary. Care to explain in detail where i went wrong? i don't follow.

I can grasp infinite. I use them all the time in my mathematics; it's not a problematic concept. We even have "larger" and "smaller" infinities.

Your claim that God has always had the same definition is ludicrous, since we've seen evidence in this thread that a huge number of variances of the definition exist.

Furthermore, the "God can't be grasped because it's infinity" thing still infers the existence of a God with no reason. Occam's Razor says that using the same logic on the universe itself is the better theory, because it makes one less assumption. ANY argument you can apply to God without evidence can be used to justify a non-God universe equally.

 

[J-man]

I can grasp infinite. I use them all the time in my mathematics; it's not a problematic concept. We even have "larger" and "smaller" infinities.

I will say that i am wrong, and that Infinite can be used, maybe it is that i used the wrong word. But can you imagine infinite? Can you logically assume that it is possible for something not to have a beginning. That's what i was pointing out in my earlier post. That's where it is easy to begin defining God and then using man's logic to eliminate from him because he doesn't fit into our logic.

Your claim that God has always had the same definition is ludicrous, since we've seen evidence in this thread that a huge number of variances of the definition exist.

I never said that. You are taking my words out of context. The basic definition of God is the one coming out of The Bible. Of course, many people have there own definition of God, which is dangerous.

Furthermore, the "God can't be grasped because it's infinity" thing still infers the existence of a God with no reason. Occam's Razor says that using the same logic on the universe itself is the better theory, because it makes one less assumption. ANY argument you can apply to God without evidence can be used to justify a non-God universe equally.

Once again, you're using man's logic to figure out the God of the Bible. When man uses his Logic, he can justify no God with his limited knowledge and reasoning. EX: God has no reason.
if i screwed this argument up, please point out my flaws.

 

[mf]

You're discarding logic as something that isn't necessarily always correct. There's a flaw.

 

[Brain]

A very valid point. The only argument for the Christian God then while still taking into account its contradictions with itself and science is that the Christian God has the power to never contradict itself despite any circumstances on some theorized "higher logic," or something to that effect. Which is out of the scope of normal logic and then is mental masturbation and pointless.

Existence itself is a concept that is contingent on normal logic. Normal logic is the very framework by which we understand and define truth and existence, if you go outside of it, you're not talking about things that can exist.

I will say that i am wrong, and that Infinite can be used, maybe it is that i used the wrong word. But can you imagine infinite? Can you logically assume that it is possible for something not to have a beginning. That's what i was pointing out in my earlier post. That's where it is easy to begin defining God and then using man's logic to eliminate from him because he doesn't fit into our logic.

If you can imagine God not having a beginning, then I can imagine the universe not having a beginning. Regardless of what you think, the concept of God doesn't have a special metaphysical standing. Whatever properties you ascribe to God, I can ascribe to anything else. For instance, I could say that a true source of randomness would have to be infinite. Then what?

I never said that. You are taking my words out of context. The basic definition of God is the one coming out of The Bible. Of course, many people have there own definition of God, which is dangerous.

Once again, you're using man's logic to figure out the God of the Bible. When man uses his Logic, he can justify no God with his limited knowledge and reasoning. EX: God has no reason.
if i screwed this argument up, please point out my flaws.

I don't know if you realize this, but all of human language is a framework of logic. All of it. "Existence" is a logical predicate. "Benevolence" is a logical predicate. So when you read the Bible and then assign properties to God based on what the Bible says, what do you think you're doing, genius? You're using man's logic, that's what you are doing. That's what we are all doing all the fucking time. "God is as defined in the Bible" is a proposition made within a framework of human logic, it's not some sort of magical fairy of a proposition that can just be true regardless of the logical constraints imposed by semantics.

If one cannot use man's logic to figure out the Christian God, how do you even fucking figure he's infinite? Infinity is a human concept! Whatever reasoning through which you conclude that God is infinite would have to be logical! If God cannot be understood, then you can't say he's good, you can't say he's infinite, you can't say he's all powerful, you can't say he still exists, you can't say he had no beginning and you certainly cannot say he's just like the Bible defines him.

If I can't use logic, then you can't either, and thus you should not ascribe a single property to God. Your current position is a double standard.

 

[Anachronism]

Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like everything RELEVANT that can be said in this thread has been said already. Please prove me wrong.

-Charles "Anachronism" H. Duell

EDIT: My name is not Charles. Charles H. Duell is the guy that said "Everything that can be invented has been invented" more than 100 years ago.

 

[cantab]

The Problem dealing with God is that He is infinite

Infinite in what, and which infinity? (Cantor showed there are indeed a potential infinity of actual infinities, each in a definable way bigger than the last.)

You only prove my point, since Infinite is something mankind can not grasp, it discards it as poor logic.

See above. We are perfectly capable of grasping infinity in a logical and mathematical manner.

Therefore we get into the problem of defining God ourselves,

But Christianity claims to define certain attributes of God. As do all religions. Belief in one or more deities with defined attributes as a central tenet of virtually all religions, to the point that if you do not hold those beliefs, you are not following that religion.

To be specific: if you believe Jesus Christ was and is the "Son of God", you are defining an aspect of God. If you do not believe that, you are not a Christian.

Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like everything that can be said in this thread has been said already. Please prove me wrong.

Zobeenoofarghliketarrygoo.

You never specified that you meant everything relevant :-P

 

[E-boy]

I will say that i am wrong, and that Infinite can be used, maybe it is that i used the wrong word. But can you imagine infinite? Can you logically assume that it is possible for something not to have a beginning. That's what i was pointing out in my earlier post. That's where it is easy to begin defining God and then using man's logic to eliminate from him because he doesn't fit into our logic.

He doesn't fit in our logic, thus he doesn't fit in the logic that was created by God himself?
If God, omnipotent as he is, wanted us to be able to grasp infinity, he would've included this in our logic (for he created the logic we use).
In the same manner, God could easily proof his own existence via ways we can all understand.
But he hasn't, and if God is a rational being, he doesn't do it for a reason. And this is where the whole idea of a God loses its credibility (to me).