how bout that music at the end!
could have been done now!
cool
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion.
good post - exactly the sort of response I was hoping for - partly because my understanding of most scientific theory is limited, hence the reason this book is having such a profound effectedge100 wrote:As I've discussed at length earlier in this thread, you only THINK this is mind-bogglingly miraculous because WE were the result. But think about it like this: in any system in which random forces are at play, there has to be some result, each of which is equally likely. I've likened it to winning the lottery; the odss that you will win are low, but given enough players, someone WILL win, despite the odds against it. Similarly, if we flip a coin 10 times, the odds of getting all heads is 1/1024, but the odds of getting HTTHTHHTTH is exactly the same. We would be amazed by the former, by not by the latter. Why? This tell us that the occurence of preconceived patterns, rather than chance, are what we're really amazed at; but remember, if we accept that WE are NOT preconceived, then our existence is more like the HTTHTHHTTH than the 10 straight heads. The fact is, though, that if we weren't here, something else WOULD be, and it would be asking the same questions as we are right now.forge wrote:how mind bogglingly miraculous it is that we are here at all, or the earth, or life or any of it has really got me thinking hard
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but the thing that was actually making me think about it more was not so much what you have just outlined, more the fact that there are SO MANY obstacles and major, major things in the way that could, or in fact SHOULD have prevented us from not so much being here in the first place, but STAYING here long enough to get to this point
when you look at the hazards - like asteroids - in all actuality we should have collided with an asteroid by now, but we havent - apparently asteroids big enough to cause enoumous damage cross our path several times a week
it's not just the evolutionary step of being here that is amazing, it's STAYING
in EVERY POSSIBLE AREA of life when you look there is an absolute miracle that it is the way it is - so the winning the lottery side to it is true if you are just talking about the simple fact of evolving to this point at all, but our existence is probably more like winning the lottery 400 times a day for a sustained period of 140 000 years
the odds are simply beyond comprehension
Let me ask you this:forge wrote:good post - exactly the sort of response I was hoping for - partly because my understanding of most scientific theory is limited, hence the reason this book is having such a profound effectedge100 wrote:As I've discussed at length earlier in this thread, you only THINK this is mind-bogglingly miraculous because WE were the result. But think about it like this: in any system in which random forces are at play, there has to be some result, each of which is equally likely. I've likened it to winning the lottery; the odss that you will win are low, but given enough players, someone WILL win, despite the odds against it. Similarly, if we flip a coin 10 times, the odds of getting all heads is 1/1024, but the odds of getting HTTHTHHTTH is exactly the same. We would be amazed by the former, by not by the latter. Why? This tell us that the occurence of preconceived patterns, rather than chance, are what we're really amazed at; but remember, if we accept that WE are NOT preconceived, then our existence is more like the HTTHTHHTTH than the 10 straight heads. The fact is, though, that if we weren't here, something else WOULD be, and it would be asking the same questions as we are right now.forge wrote:how mind bogglingly miraculous it is that we are here at all, or the earth, or life or any of it has really got me thinking hard
.
but the thing that was actually making me think about it more was not so much what you have just outlined, more the fact that there are SO MANY obstacles and major, major things in the way that could, or in fact SHOULD have prevented us from not so much being here in the first place, but STAYING here long enough to get to this point
when you look at the hazards - like asteroids - in all actuality we should have collided with an asteroid by now, but we havent - apparently asteroids big enough to cause enoumous damage cross our path several times a week
it's not just the evolutionary step of being here that is amazing, it's STAYING
in EVERY POSSIBLE AREA of life when you look there is an absolute miracle that it is the way it is - so the winning the lottery side to it is true if you are just talking about the simple fact of evolving to this point at all, but our existence is probably more like winning the lottery 400 times a day for a sustained period of 140 000 years
the odds are simply beyond comprehension
at what point do the odds of something happening get so large that 'intelligence' MUST have played a role?
I put it to you that the whole idea of something requiring 'intelligence' is simply an artifact of the way we see ourselves in the universe.
I agree with you that the lottery analogy is poor because the 'odds' are much greater against our existence. But that's missing the point, I think. The fact is, whether it is flipping a coin, or playing the lottery, or making the universe, every system that is regulated by random forces MUST have SOME outcome. If you started flipping a coin now, and repeated every second until the day you die, you would not be amazed by the seemingly random arrangement of heads and tails that you would have observed. But remember, the actual chance of getting that EXACT pattern of heads and tails in possibly tens of millions of flips is EXACTLY (not close, but EXACTLY) the same as the possibility, determined before you started flipping, of getting ALL heads. It just SEEMS different because you were looking for all heads. But in reality, the odds are the same.
We humans, as I've stated, are spectacularly good at recognizing patterns; we do this probably better than we do anything else. But, unfortunately, we are also spectacularly bad at interpreting patterns with respect to 'chance'. Casino owners are perhaps the only people on earth who really understand how bad we are at assessing "chance".
Consider this seemingly simple problem (which is, notwithstanding outward appearance, related to the issue at hand):
How many people have to be in a room to ensure that the probability of having two people with the same birthday (day and month, not year) is greater than 50%? That is, any two people born on the same day and month. Ignore leap years and variations in birth patterns throughout the year (which slightly change the results, but only very slightly).
I posed this question earlier, with no takers. It has been my experience (and perhaps this is giving away too much), that most people DRASTICALLY misinterpret the "chance" and "randomness" associated with this question, and this is a good way of showing how bad we are at this type of a problem.
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knotkranky
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Yes, that struck me too. That was 30 years ago!!forge wrote:how bout that music at the end!
could have been done now!
cool
I agree with you guys on the fantastic probability factor. We know too little to understand the odds. As a matter of fact odds don't belong in this at all. Thats a creationist godless tool. Funny too, it's mathematical and scientific in some regard, and funnier yet, scientists don't use odds.
Either we stand in awe with how little we know or we stand in awe in how much we do know. We know very little and science agrees with that. Creationists know too much simply because they believe their ancestors are inerrant, and that I can't be with.
If astronomical odds is their chief argument, then they have never been farther from god themselves. They cheapen the god argument with that stance.
Precisely put, and far more succinctly than I could. The 'odds' argument is no argument at all, for a number of reasons.knotkranky wrote: I agree with you guys on the fantastic probability factor. We know too little to understand the odds. As a matter of fact odds don't belong in this at all. Thats a creationist godless tool. Funny too, it's mathematical and scientific in some regard, and funnier yet, scientists don't use odds.
Either we stand in awe with how little we know or we stand in awe in how much we do know. We know very little and science agrees with that. Creationists know too much simply because they believe their ancestors are inerrant, and that I can't be with.
If astronomical odds is their chief argument, then they have never been farther from god themselves. They cheapen the god argument with that stance.
Creationism is really the height of arrogance; that is not to say that all creationists are arrogant people (since they may be uniquely humble in all other aspects of their lives), but that creationism truly scoffs at the absolute wonder of this universe and everything in it, and reduces it to Bronze Age simplicity. "This is the way it is, and that's that." If the last 2000 years of history have taught us nothing else, it's that the universe is (nearly) infinitely more complex than we ever imagined. We have abandoned every other notion of the nature of our physical existence, except one.
A scientific perspective on things can be, I think, uniquely humbling.
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Machinesworking
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Just another thought on the chance thing....
I remember talking with people for years and having most theological thinkers claim that the chances of electrical charge, the right combination of chemicals to create life etc. happening 4 billion years ago were almost impossible etc.
About 14 years ago in a normal science book, and I wish I could remember the title, I read a really interesting new discovery about this. Basically it was saying that the chemical makeup of the seas then was miscalculated and that the soup was comprised almost exclusively of the components of life, that most scientists studying the molecule under a microscope couldn't tell the difference between the molecule and the smallest of living things. The form was there in every ocean. It confirmed my personal concept of the universe, that life is inevitable, not entirely rare, but a distinct product of the universe. All you have to do is look around this world and see that once it starts, it just takes off!
Not meaning to offend anyone, but why is it that human beings consider themselves to be so amazing that it simply proves the existence of god? Personally the fact that black holes exist blows my mind a lot more than hairless apes.
As far as meteors go, there are other forces at play here, Gravitational pulls etc. Saying that we should be hit by meteors every day or year etc. well we are, but only the small ones that are numerous, and puled into our direction etc.
I remember talking with people for years and having most theological thinkers claim that the chances of electrical charge, the right combination of chemicals to create life etc. happening 4 billion years ago were almost impossible etc.
About 14 years ago in a normal science book, and I wish I could remember the title, I read a really interesting new discovery about this. Basically it was saying that the chemical makeup of the seas then was miscalculated and that the soup was comprised almost exclusively of the components of life, that most scientists studying the molecule under a microscope couldn't tell the difference between the molecule and the smallest of living things. The form was there in every ocean. It confirmed my personal concept of the universe, that life is inevitable, not entirely rare, but a distinct product of the universe. All you have to do is look around this world and see that once it starts, it just takes off!
Not meaning to offend anyone, but why is it that human beings consider themselves to be so amazing that it simply proves the existence of god? Personally the fact that black holes exist blows my mind a lot more than hairless apes.
As far as meteors go, there are other forces at play here, Gravitational pulls etc. Saying that we should be hit by meteors every day or year etc. well we are, but only the small ones that are numerous, and puled into our direction etc.
Yes, yes, and again yes!Machinesworking wrote:Not meaning to offend anyone, but why is it that human beings consider themselves to be so amazing that it simply proves the existence of god?
How do we know we are complex beings? We ARE complex, relative to other Earthly beings, but in absolute terms, how do we know?
If we detected life on a distant planet tomorrow, we would have to consider that this information could have arrived here no faster than the speed of light; 186 000 miles per second. The Milky Way is 80-100,000 light years across, and we are located at about the centre (roughly), which means that it is about (at minimum) 40,000 light years to the outer rim.
This suggests that if life were found on a planet at the outer rim of the Milky Way, the "light" that carried the information from that planet would have been travelling for 40,000 years. That is, Earth only enters the light-cone of that planet 40,000 years after the message was sent. Which implies that the civilization that sent the message is now 40,000 years MORE advanced than when they sent it (and 40,000 years more advanced than us; consider what WE were doing 40,000 years ago!).
The point is we have no idea about whether or not we are complex. We have no point of reference, and I'll say it again: it is the height of arrogance to assume that we ARE complex, let alone the centre of this massive universe (as the apple of god's eye), which is FAR more complex than we imagined even 150 years ago.
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I agree with you completely here, but I also want to point out that this goes for non-religious people too. edge100, you are one of the few non-religious people I've encountered who seem able to think about religion from a more objective viewpoint, without the heightened emotions, grade-school attacks, and straw flying everywhere. Most people are too bigoted and ignorant about it to acknowledge that there could actually be some reason behind a belief in a creator, and then approach their criticisim from that angle. To me its just like the article that was posted here about religious people not understanding evolution correctly, and attacking their own misunderstanding - non-religious people that do non understand religion attack their own misunderstanding. If you want to effectively critique anything, you will get a lot further the more you understand its internal logic.edge100 wrote: Religious beliefs are not generally openly criticized, the way belief in ANYTHING else is; every other aspect of our lives is subject to critical analysis. By protecting religion from any serious critical scrutiny, religious moderates protect religious extremists. If, on the other hand, religion was subject to the same critical analysis as everything else, we might make REAL progress towards eliminating the religious beliefs that REALLY do us harm.
Also, my use of the word "religion" here is not very accurate. I don't mean the human institution of churches, temples, priests, gurus, mullahs, etc....I mean each person's direct relationship with God.
Agree 100%, especially surrounding the difference between one's personal relationship with whatever it is they call 'god' (with which I have no issue) and the institution of organized religion.ethios4 wrote: I agree with you completely here, but I also want to point out that this goes for non-religious people too. edge100, you are one of the few non-religious people I've encountered who seem able to think about religion from a more objective viewpoint, without the heightened emotions, grade-school attacks, and straw flying everywhere. Most people are too bigoted and ignorant about it to acknowledge that there could actually be some reason behind a belief in a creator, and then approach their criticisim from that angle. To me its just like the article that was posted here about religious people not understanding evolution correctly, and attacking their own misunderstanding - non-religious people that do non understand religion attack their own misunderstanding. If you want to effectively critique anything, you will get a lot further the more you understand its internal logic.
Also, my use of the word "religion" here is not very accurate. I don't mean the human institution of churches, temples, priests, gurus, mullahs, etc....I mean each person's direct relationship with God.
This is why I asked everyone to define 'god' for themselves right up front, lest we discuss entirely different things. It also behooves us as believers in evolution to accurately portray our beliefs as well, and to properly characterize the evidence surrounding those beliefs.
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For me, everything I have learned through science has maximized my appreciation for this world, for my own existence, and for the One that created it all. The insane religious experiences I've had were not in conflict at all with my scientific, rational understanding of the world....in fact, that understanding is the ground of my beliefs, and I feel much mre complete for it.
The religious experience is primarily one of unity of opposites in a super-rational way - there is no conflict between science/religion, black/white. To communicate that experience of unity should be the goal of anyone who has had it.
The religious experience is primarily one of unity of opposites in a super-rational way - there is no conflict between science/religion, black/white. To communicate that experience of unity should be the goal of anyone who has had it.
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Machinesworking
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ethios4 wrote: Most people are too bigoted and ignorant about it to acknowledge that there could actually be some reason behind a belief in a creator, and then approach their criticisim from that angle. To me its just like the article that was posted here about religious people not understanding evolution correctly, and attacking their own misunderstanding - non-religious people that do non understand religion attack their own misunderstanding.
If you want to effectively critique anything, you will get a lot further the more you understand its internal logic.
OK I separated your two thoughts here because you seem like a decent person, civivl etc. and all, but arguing or debating you about religion is a little rough. You ask that people understand the views of religious people, in order to debate them etc. fine. Then you proceed to define your own version of religion as being distinctly personal, and not held up to the publicly accepted ethics of modern religion etc.Also, my use of the word "religion" here is not very accurate. I don't mean the human institution of churches, temples, priests, gurus, mullahs, etc....I mean each person's direct relationship with God.
Basically you are arguing that we cannot debate religion unless we have your personal take on it, or at least one you approve of. I'm sorry if this is seeming harsh, but every time somebody brings up a universally accepted tenet of modern religion, like homosexuality, which the bible explicitly condemns, you have claimed a different take than the bible. If you think a person isn't as well read in the bible as you, you say they don't understand what they are debating against etc. Yet you aren't even using the bible as a measuring stick for your own beliefs.
There's no consistency here, your debating for your own personal belief system, which is fine, but you are cloaking it in traditional garb, and acting offended about what you see as misunderstanding etc. Seriously, if you have a personal belief in a god that helps you along great! most of my friends fall into that category, but the simple fact is without a defined platform for your beliefs, how is one to talk with you about it?
OK OK I'm just shooting for 50+ pages out of this thread!
I think the issue here is the difference between what religion SHOULD be and what it IS. What it SHOULD be is a personal experience that helps to guide you to live as best you can. The problem is, human beings like to form communities based on their beliefs; communities which grow intolerant of other communities. This is what religion often IS.Machinesworking wrote:ethios4 wrote: Most people are too bigoted and ignorant about it to acknowledge that there could actually be some reason behind a belief in a creator, and then approach their criticisim from that angle. To me its just like the article that was posted here about religious people not understanding evolution correctly, and attacking their own misunderstanding - non-religious people that do non understand religion attack their own misunderstanding.
If you want to effectively critique anything, you will get a lot further the more you understand its internal logic.OK I separated your two thoughts here because you seem like a decent person, civivl etc. and all, but arguing or debating you about religion is a little rough. You ask that people understand the views of religious people, in order to debate them etc. fine. Then you proceed to define your own version of religion as being distinctly personal, and not held up to the publicly accepted ethics of modern religion etc.Also, my use of the word "religion" here is not very accurate. I don't mean the human institution of churches, temples, priests, gurus, mullahs, etc....I mean each person's direct relationship with God.
Basically you are arguing that we cannot debate religion unless we have your personal take on it, or at least one you approve of. I'm sorry if this is seeming harsh, but every time somebody brings up a universally accepted tenet of modern religion, like homosexuality, which the bible explicitly condemns, you have claimed a different take than the bible. If you think a person isn't as well read in the bible as you, you say they don't understand what they are debating against etc. Yet you aren't even using the bible as a measuring stick for your own beliefs.
There's no consistency here, your debating for your own personal belief system, which is fine, but you are cloaking it in traditional garb, and acting offended about what you see as misunderstanding etc. Seriously, if you have a personal belief in a god that helps you along great! most of my friends fall into that category, but the simple fact is without a defined platform for your beliefs, how is one to talk with you about it?
OK OK I'm just shooting for 50+ pages out of this thread!
I have no issue with someone believing in the literal existence of Yahweh, if they'd like to. But it's quite another matter when those beliefs become actions. If one wants to believe that homosexuality is an abomination that will earn you eternal hellfire, so be it. But we cannot allow that to turn into the systematic discrimination against homosexuals (for instance) that we see today all around the religious world (which is to say, almost all of it). Likewise, the belief that killing non-believers and apostates is god's fondest wish, when turned into action, is incompatible with civilized society.
Beliefs are great, but in the real, literal world, the only tool we have to rely upon is real, literal information. Whether or not entrance into the next world depends on faith (in the religious sense), THIS world depends on empirical evidence.
It is naive to think that beliefs can remain separate from actions for very long. If belief remains in the personal domain of the believer, I'm all for it. If it encroaches upon the real, literal world, and cannot be substantiated by evidence FROM that world, then it must be discarded as a source on which to base decisions.
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I lost myself
Sorry for being confusing...I was trying to clear things up by stating what I mean by "religion"! People usually mean one of at least two things when they say "religion"...either they are talking about a set of beliefs about the world, or they are talking about the system of buildings, people, and rituals that can arise as a result of certain beliefs. Both are widely accepted interpretations of the word "religion". In this thread I have not been talking about the buildings, people, and rituals and finer points of any specific religion. I have been talking about fundamental ideas that define belief systems, such as the belief in a creator, which had previously been dismissed in this thread as a ridiculous idea. When I said " I don't mean the human institution of churches, temples, priests, gurus, mullahs, etc....I mean each person's direct relationship with God" I was drawing the distinction between the human organization of religion, and the belief/experience that is supposed to lie at the heart of such an organization, but which seldom seems to.
My beliefs are not out of line with traditional Christianity at all. I don't deny that the old testament condemns homesexuality, and countless other things, including hypocrisy. The new testament is pretty explicit that salvation lies in belief in the work that Jesus Christ accomplished, whose effect was the pardoning of sin. The problem is that many people within the church have not realized that truth for whatever reasons, and so they attack homosexuality because they are living an incomplete faith....they believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing creator of everything, but do not really believe that he is pure love and so they go about attacking their brothers and sisters for their sin, and never see the glaring hypocrisy and arrogance that is far blacker than 2 guys falling in love and choosing to take it to the physical level. The church is a dynamic thing, and seems to fail miserably at what its supposed to do most of the time, I agree. Even though I take issue with much of what is/has been going on in Christianity, that does not mean I am out of line with orthodox Christian belief....to me it means that the church has strayed from where it should be, and this deviation is what most people see and hate in Christianity.
So I'm not saying you have to believe in Christ to attack Christianity, I'm saying that attacking the virgin birth as a ridiculous idea makes about as much sense as attacking the idea that humans evolved by random chance...they're both based in misunderstanding.
My beliefs are not out of line with traditional Christianity at all. I don't deny that the old testament condemns homesexuality, and countless other things, including hypocrisy. The new testament is pretty explicit that salvation lies in belief in the work that Jesus Christ accomplished, whose effect was the pardoning of sin. The problem is that many people within the church have not realized that truth for whatever reasons, and so they attack homosexuality because they are living an incomplete faith....they believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing creator of everything, but do not really believe that he is pure love and so they go about attacking their brothers and sisters for their sin, and never see the glaring hypocrisy and arrogance that is far blacker than 2 guys falling in love and choosing to take it to the physical level. The church is a dynamic thing, and seems to fail miserably at what its supposed to do most of the time, I agree. Even though I take issue with much of what is/has been going on in Christianity, that does not mean I am out of line with orthodox Christian belief....to me it means that the church has strayed from where it should be, and this deviation is what most people see and hate in Christianity.
So I'm not saying you have to believe in Christ to attack Christianity, I'm saying that attacking the virgin birth as a ridiculous idea makes about as much sense as attacking the idea that humans evolved by random chance...they're both based in misunderstanding.
Let's follow up on this. I agree with the latter point regarding 'random chance' being a misinterpretation (or deliberate misrepresentation) of evolutionary theory.ethios4 wrote:So I'm not saying you have to believe in Christ to attack Christianity, I'm saying that attacking the virgin birth as a ridiculous idea makes about as much sense as attacking the idea that humans evolved by random chance...they're both based in misunderstanding.
However, I'm curious as to your interpretation of the virgin birth, and how it can be reconciled with physical reality. Specifically, what is the parallel misunderstanding here? I'm honestly asking to be educated (one has to be careful, since sarcasm is often implied in these discussion). To me it has always been rather straightforward: Jesus did not have a human father (in which case the reports of his paternal lineage found in the NT are not only incompatible, but irrelevant). Am I missing the point (again, no sarcasm implied)?
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For a person who thinks the virgin birth is impossible, they are only thinking of half of the equation - the miracle of the virgin birth, not the nature of God. If you understand the universe was created by a personal god who can interact with this world directly, such a miracle is not necessarily a stretch.
For a person who thinks evolution is just random chance, they are only thinking of half of the equation - random mutation, not natural selection. If you understand that an organism's genetics directly influence it's chances of reproducing its genetic code, and that this, coupled with genetic mutation, produces a tendency for organisms to become more complex and better suited to their environment, then you can imagine that such evolution could lead to the development of humans, who have developed an entirely new sets of tools for ensuring our own evolutionary goals.
Back to the virgin birth, Jesus's lineage traces back to David by his mother genetically, and by his father by virtue of the fact that Joseph adopted Jesus, which makes Jesus his heir according to the legal customs of the day.
As for how the virgin conception jives with what we know about how humans become pregnant, I can't say. Based on what we know about genetics, Jesus must have had X and Y chromosomes, so he was not a genetic replica of Mary. Where the other DNA came from, no one can say, other than that the one who created DNA put it there. The virgin birth has never been a big issue with me, so I haven't put a lot of thought into how it might have happened....I accept that it happened and it was miraculous and mysterious, but its a peripheral issue to me.
For a person who thinks evolution is just random chance, they are only thinking of half of the equation - random mutation, not natural selection. If you understand that an organism's genetics directly influence it's chances of reproducing its genetic code, and that this, coupled with genetic mutation, produces a tendency for organisms to become more complex and better suited to their environment, then you can imagine that such evolution could lead to the development of humans, who have developed an entirely new sets of tools for ensuring our own evolutionary goals.
Back to the virgin birth, Jesus's lineage traces back to David by his mother genetically, and by his father by virtue of the fact that Joseph adopted Jesus, which makes Jesus his heir according to the legal customs of the day.
As for how the virgin conception jives with what we know about how humans become pregnant, I can't say. Based on what we know about genetics, Jesus must have had X and Y chromosomes, so he was not a genetic replica of Mary. Where the other DNA came from, no one can say, other than that the one who created DNA put it there. The virgin birth has never been a big issue with me, so I haven't put a lot of thought into how it might have happened....I accept that it happened and it was miraculous and mysterious, but its a peripheral issue to me.