Does God exist?

[IdleBoast]

Ah, you mean complex, not complicated.

It's still random, though.  The complexity (selection*) comes in after the randomness (mutation/variation).



_{*Selection, to be clear, in no way implies guidance, direction or a goal.}

[MissBarbara]

Maybe that's why we have relatively little problem with creationists over here, because we educate them before they get indoctrinated?

Your condescension -- another thing for which you Brits are famous -- is rather unbecoming.

[IdleBoast]

Ah, you mean complex, not complicated.

It's still random, though.  The complexity (selection*) comes in after the randomness (mutation/variation).



_{*Selection, to be clear, in no way implies guidance, direction or a goal.}

Yes. They mean the same thing.

You say random, I say we just do not have sufficient knowledge yet to accurately build a model and make predictions. Regardless, the point I was originally making was that saying evolution is "random" is over-simplifying. If you recognise that the process of natural selection is merely complicated (or complex, if you prefer) and not random then surely you must see how misleading describing evolution as random or comparing it to a coin toss is, roll of a dice, etc is.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?  We have been studying heredity for 200 years, DNA for nearly as long.  When you say "we just do not have sufficient knowledge yet to accurately build a model and make predictions" you are just holding out the vain hope that maybe, if we find a pattern in the genetic shuffling of meiosis, we can pretend that, somehow, that pattern is the hand of god, and then using circular logic to convince yourself that the pattern exists.

(If a pattern exists, that would be evidence of god, and since I believe god exists, then that pattern will eventually be found, which means that we'll have evidence that god exists, therefore god exists...)

There is no pattern in meiosis.  Ask any geneticist.

Meiosis shuffles the genes between the two chromosomes in each pair (one received from each parent), producing chromosomes with new genetic combinations in every gamete generated, and produces four genetically unique cells, each with half the number of chromosomes as in the parent. That's two sets of random shuffling (to produce male and female gametes), combined in the coitus of a random pair-bonding.

[IdleBoast]

Maybe that's why we have relatively little problem with creationists over here, because we educate them before they get indoctrinated?

Your condescension -- another thing for which you Brits are famous -- is rather unbecoming.

Sorry, I did not mean to condescend, merely observe. A survey released just a few days ago shows that 80% of Brits reject any form of creationism or "intelligent design".  Over here, schools are classed as failing, and teachers lose their jobs, if evolution and a deep-time origin for the Universe are not taught as facts supported by evidence, or if any particular religious world-view is taught as fact.

On the other hand, we keep hearing about American teachers being sacked for teaching evolution as fact, or for refusing to teach creationism in science lessons, and (as we have seen) 78% of Americans think god has an active role in the existence of life.

 

[IdleBoast]

Ah, sorry, I just assumed you were American purely because you were posting at the time of day that American internet traffic picks up, my bad.  I tend not to check people's profiles very much.

I apologise for working as if you were a Believer, but you post using the same arguments that I repeatedly encounter US-based creationists using when they try and sneak creationism in under the guise of intelligent design, via the "Wedge Strategy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy).

For instance, you claim that there is nothing that science cannot eventually explain, yet at the same time you insist on an infinity of possible forms of god, and complain that my scientific approach is hampered by a lack of imagination - these semantically identical to the "god of the gaps" and "dogmatic mind of science" "arguments".

[MissBarbara]

Maybe that's why we have relatively little problem with creationists over here, because we educate them before they get indoctrinated?

Your condescension -- another thing for which you Brits are famous -- is rather unbecoming.

Sorry, I did not mean to condescend, merely observe. A survey released just a few days ago shows that 80% of Brits reject any form of creationism or "intelligent design".  Over here, schools are classed as failing, and teachers lose their jobs, if evolution and a deep-time origin for the Universe are not taught as facts supported by evidence, or if any particular religious world-view is taught as fact.

On the other hand, we keep hearing about American teachers being sacked for teaching evolution as fact, or for refusing to teach creationism in science lessons, and (as we have seen) 78% of Americans think god has an active role in the existence of life.

I strongly suspect, if you worded the survey properly, 80% of Americans would also reject creationism/intelligent design.

Don't take on faith what you "hear" about American schools. What you hear are the exceptions to the rule. Yes, "intelligent design" was an attempt to get creationism in the back door of schools after it failed to get in the front door. But that was widely rejected, and is by no means the norm. Except in certain parts of the country, the basics of evolution are taught of a matter of course in U.S. schools. That's what I was taught back in the 1990s, and it was taught as fact, not "opinion" or "one point of view." Nor, for that matter, with the exceptions I noted, is "any particular religious world-view is taught as fact" in American public schools.

I've never heard of "American teachers being sacked for teaching evolution as fact, or for refusing to teach creationism in science lessons." Well, at least not in this century. Again, don't believe everything you "hear," and realize that the exceptions you hear about are simply that.

Finally, we have not seen that "78% of Americans think god has an active role in the existence of life." That's your skewing of the survey data. As Farmer Miles has exhaustively pointed out, belief in God and accepting the reality of evolution are by no means incompatible. Even believing in God as a Creator and realizing the reality of evolution are not incompatible.

The incompatibility -- between Science and Religion, between Reason and Faith -- is wholly created (pun intended) by people with your mindset. Science and Religion define two entirely separate spheres of knowledge, two utterly different ways of knowing. Thus, comparisons between the two -- especially comparisons finding the former triumphing over the latter, thus leading to condescending assertions of ignorance and stupidity -- are utterly beside the point. 

[anvil]

woo to you, MissB,  well said

[Katiebee]

Maybe that's why we have relatively little problem with creationists over here, because we educate them before they get indoctrinated?

Your condescension -- another thing for which you Brits are famous -- is rather unbecoming.

Sorry, I did not mean to condescend, merely observe. A survey released just a few days ago shows that 80% of Brits reject any form of creationism or "intelligent design".  Over here, schools are classed as failing, and teachers lose their jobs, if evolution and a deep-time origin for the Universe are not taught as facts supported by evidence, or if any particular religious world-view is taught as fact.

On the other hand, we keep hearing about American teachers being sacked for teaching evolution as fact, or for refusing to teach creationism in science lessons, and (as we have seen) 78% of Americans think god has an active role in the existence of life.

I strongly suspect, if you worded the survey properly, 80% of Americans would also reject creationism/intelligent design.

Don't take on faith what you "hear" about American schools. What you hear are the exceptions to the rule. Yes, "intelligent design" was an attempt to get creationism in the back door of schools after it failed to get in the front door. But that was widely rejected, and is by no means the norm. Except in certain parts of the country, the basics of evolution are taught of a matter of course in U.S. schools. That's what I was taught back in the 1990s, and it was taught as fact, not "opinion" or "one point of view." Nor, for that matter, with the exceptions I noted, is "any particular religious world-view is taught as fact" in American public schools.

I've never heard of "American teachers being sacked for teaching evolution as fact, or for refusing to teach creationism in science lessons." Well, at least not in this century. Again, don't believe everything you "hear," and realize that the exceptions you hear about are simply that.

The Scopes Monkey Trial was the most publicized. And that pretty much closed the door on Creationism for some time.

[MissBarbara]

Maybe that's why we have relatively little problem with creationists over here, because we educate them before they get indoctrinated?

Your condescension -- another thing for which you Brits are famous -- is rather unbecoming.

Sorry, I did not mean to condescend, merely observe. A survey released just a few days ago shows that 80% of Brits reject any form of creationism or "intelligent design".  Over here, schools are classed as failing, and teachers lose their jobs, if evolution and a deep-time origin for the Universe are not taught as facts supported by evidence, or if any particular religious world-view is taught as fact.

On the other hand, we keep hearing about American teachers being sacked for teaching evolution as fact, or for refusing to teach creationism in science lessons, and (as we have seen) 78% of Americans think god has an active role in the existence of life.

I strongly suspect, if you worded the survey properly, 80% of Americans would also reject creationism/intelligent design.

Don't take on faith what you "hear" about American schools. What you hear are the exceptions to the rule. Yes, "intelligent design" was an attempt to get creationism in the back door of schools after it failed to get in the front door. But that was widely rejected, and is by no means the norm. Except in certain parts of the country, the basics of evolution are taught of a matter of course in U.S. schools. That's what I was taught back in the 1990s, and it was taught as fact, not "opinion" or "one point of view." Nor, for that matter, with the exceptions I noted, is "any particular religious world-view is taught as fact" in American public schools.

I've never heard of "American teachers being sacked for teaching evolution as fact, or for refusing to teach creationism in science lessons." Well, at least not in this century. Again, don't believe everything you "hear," and realize that the exceptions you hear about are simply that.

The Scopes Monkey Trial was the most publicized. And that pretty much closed the door on Creationism for some time.

Yes, and that was 90 years ago...

[IdleBoast]

"Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America's classrooms," write Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, professors of political science at Penn State, in today's (Jan. 28) issue of Science.

The researchers examined data from the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers, a representative sample of 926 public high school biology instructors. They found only about 28 percent of those teachers consistently implement National Research Council recommendations calling for introduction of evidence that evolution occurred, and craft lesson plans with evolution as a unifying theme linking disparate topics in biology.

http://phys.org/news/2011-01-high-school-biology-teachers-reluctant.html

[anvil]

An now from the " other side"

I chose a Brit site 'cause obviously it balances out the US schools wholehearted acceptance of creationism. 

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/human-beings-came-from-another-planet--not-earth--new-book-claims-134335110.html

But a new book by American ecologist Dr Ellis Silver
argues that humans may well not be from Earth - and
may have arrived separately. Silver offers arguments,
based on human physiology, that suggest we may not
have evolved alongside other life on Earth - but arrived
from elsewhere, brought here by aliens as recently as
a few tens of thousands of years ago.
Silver, an environmentalist who is current

[2-cents]

No... Bigger question... Why did we invent gods, using such horrible science?

God holds the patent for "Pearly gates"... (Invented after gates, by sheep-herders, who are the only people who invented and used gates.)

God (Not his name... no-one knows his name... "Do not use the lords name in vein"... Can't, never told it to us!)

"Word of God" is "The words from Ghaud" a town, where they were babbling about living as slaves...

"Eternal servitude", Serve him here all your life, and you MAY be able to serve him up there too... (Servitude = slavery. Serve him here... ok... Why up there? Everyone in heaven believes in god... Oh, you will be oiling and painting that pearly gate white all your life, forever, surrounded by priests and nuns, and NO-ONE who went to hell.. All your friends who didn't serve him down here.)

Light before the sun... Impossible, bad science... The horrible story writer should have taken a science class and studied sheep less...

"Virgin mary"... Sheep-herders artificially inseminate sheep... I am sure they could do it to a woman... No trick there...

Jesus isn't human... No human can perform miracles...

Knowing he is gods son, and can't "Die", is not a sacrifice...

Turning into a zombie, "Raised from the dead", and only the 12 people who invented you, who swear you were the one, saw you... That's called keeping the lie alive...

We are all descendants of incest... Adam and Eve... Then after god killed everyone, Noah and his wife and kids... (Amazingly, everyone of them knew god, yet created new gods... and races... without evolution.)

Angels existed before god, and are more powerful than god... He can't get rid of them... Including satan... or he can, but thought it would be more entertaining to leave him here on this earth, then later add us...

Genetically, everyone is a female, until nature turns some of us into males... So that argument and poor science is proof enough that it's all a lie. (Evolutionary wise, men were the last thing created, when nature separated things into "sexes". Prior to that, and still, only females have the ability to reproduce. Odd fact... An egg can be used to fertilize another egg, a sperm can never fertilize another sperm... and we wouldn't have any way to carry it to any term... More proof that "Woman came first".)

Stars and the sun are the same thing...

"Heavens" (Galaxies), are just a bunch of stars... More bad science... "Light, then Heavens, then the Sun, then the earth... No other planets"... All horrible science, but that is "What god told us he did".. He wouldn't lie... Apparently god doesn't know how reality works... No surprise there!

10,000,000 believers... in "a god", just not yours... Yet they always say... "We have millions of followers"... no... 0.01% follows your god, the other 99.99% follow some other god that directly conflicts with yours... Of all those, they truly only honestly believe in their own personal variation of any proposed god... not any actual proposed gods.

Ask 10,000,000 believers what "god is", you get 30,000,000 excuses and no actual answers.

It's called a "Belief" because if it were real, it would be called "Facts"... All beliefs are just that... "beliefs", in things that are not "Real", not "Unknown"... Obviously, the bibles tell you what is known... "Nothing".

Turn water into wine! (Yea, get them drunk, they'll never believe you otherwise... Good, dehydrate them!)

Fill barrels full of fish! (WTF does that have to do with anything? You poison them with mercury, oh, to make them retarded! Which is what mercury does if you consume it.)

Healed the blind! (Yea, cured their runny nose... Anyone can pretend to be blind, cheap parlor tricks.)

Healed the Lepers! (No, they all died... Those walking around "healed" never had it.)

God killed more innocent "children of his" than satan... God, killed over a million... satan.. 3

God killed innocent first-born kids because their parents didn't believe... Hey kids, lets follow god... and hope he doesn't kill you too, for spite...

If there truly was a god, and only one... we would all, "know", not need to be told, by man... (But he is an invention of man, thus, the need to be told.)

If our possessions are of no importance, than why a commandment to protect our worthless possessions? (Shall not covet thy neighbors things... Coveting is how they got them, they didn't materialize this shit from thin air... They took it... You said this planet is ours, so it isn't coveting if I take it from him, it's mine too... "Another catch-22 of poor writing".)

Bibles were to control the poor, diseased, dirty and stupid slaves... to keep them from wanting the "Kings" (King James, in particular), wife, property, food, and yet still breed and live long enough to pay taxes and "not desire money"... or any other gods, who offered rewards...

No-one (few) wanted to follow a god who didn't let you into heaven... That is why they had to invent "Jesus"... Because before then, god was "Vengeful"... They had to make him more marketable, but still unobtainable, making him "Merciful"... But it is still unobtainable...

Gives you "Free will", but the only way to get into heaven is to not use it... "Follow my rules" = "Not free will", if you are following you are not free-willed, you are just another slave, following your master.

You claim all goodness is "your doing", but blame all bad things on satan... Can't do that.. the bible says YOU are doing nothing good, that is god, and all bad you do is you, not satan... then it says it is satan... if it is satan, then YOU are never doing anything bad, and it isn't free-will... Another catch-22... Oh, that you did... we changed our mind again... (Where are our editors! Oh yea, they died after they re-wrote all bibles to your twisted insecurities, writing about times that no longer existed by the time they were written, in a time that no longer exists for us, and never actually existed at all.)

To add insult to injury... They take your "money", which is "taxed", which taxes pay for war, which makes them and you "paying hitmen" to kill... in wars... Killing people without "due process", "Judging them without rights", and everyone is happy, because they "got a golden ticket to an imaginary place"...

Instead of just being happy with what you have here, and being good because you want to be good, not because you were promised some holy lands... (Which makes following any religion actually a sin in of itself, as it is for selfish personal obtainment, which they all tell you NOT to want... The final poor writing catch-22. I could write a better bible at 12, in my sleep, and it would actually be followed, honestly followed, because it could actually be followed. None of the existing bibles can be followed, like many laws.)

Which came first, the chicken or the egg... (Neither, and it wasn't the rooster, it was nothing... Nothing came first, then something came second. Logic, howz it work?)

[sheriff andy]

I thought this rather on point:  From this months National Geographic magazine.

Why I’m a Man of Science—and Faith



Francis S. Collins, a physician and the geneticist behind the Human Genome Project, is the director of the National Institutes of Health. He is also founder of the BioLogos Foundation (biologos.org), a group that fosters discussions about the intersection of Christianity and science.

Are science and religion compatible?

I am privileged to be somebody who tries to understand nature using the tools of science. But it is also clear that there are some really important questions that science cannot really answer, such as: Why is there something instead of nothing? Why are we here? In those domains I have found that faith provides a better path to answers. I find it oddly anachronistic that in today’s culture there seems to be a widespread presumption that scientific and spiritual views are incompatible.

When people think of those views as incompatible, what is lost?

Science and faith can actually be mutually enriching and complementary once their proper domains are understood and respected. Extreme cartoons representing antagonistic perspectives on either end of the spectrum are often the ones that get attention, but most people live somewhere in the middle.

You’ve said that a blooming flower is not a miracle since we know how that happens. As a geneticist, you’ve studied human life at a fundamental level. Is there a miracle woven in there somewhere?

Oh, yes. At the most fundamental level, it’s a miracle that there’s a universe at all. It’s a miracle that it has order, fine-tuning that allows the possibility of complexity, and laws that follow precise mathematical formulas. Contemplating this, an open-minded observer is almost forced to conclude that there must be a “mind” behind all this. To me, that qualifies as a miracle, a profound truth that lies outside of scientific explanation.

Francis Collins feels that science and faith can be complementary. What do you think about the relationship between science and religion? Let us know—and also tell us who you'd like to see in 3 Questions—in the comments.

[IdleBoast]

Oh, the arrogance of the athropic principal!

The Universe is tuned just and so to allow the complexity of [human] life, so "somebody" must have tuned it, especially for us to exist!

ie: this Universe was created especially for me to live in!

That's an utter reversal of cause and effect - the Universe is not tuned to allow complex Life.  Instead, the Life we acknowledge evolved to fit the fine constants.

True, if some of the fine constants varied by a great enough degree, it is probable that Life as we know it would not exist in the Universe, but that does not mean that some other form of Life would be impossible.

Consider;

If it is true that the Universe was "tuned" specifically for humanity to exist, then why is the entire Universe almost utterly devoid of any sign of Life?  Even within our own Solar system, 99.8% of the planetary masses are (as far as we know) lifeless.

When it comes to the rest of the Universe, you can't fit enough decimal places on the screen to show how small "Life" is compared to the rest of the Universe.

That is an astonishingly inefficient construct just to give Life a home.  It makes building a planet to store your favourite grain of sand look like a cost-effective idea.

[Scotty]

Fucking egotistical idiots to imagine that if there was a god you could understand it or that it would want anyone to worship it > even care what you think about it or that you are so important it would care one iota about you ......

[IdleBoast]

I'd like you to identify a "prominent atheist" who identifies as agnostic - it is rare indeed to become prominent as an atheist whilst also maintaining a position of careful ignorance.

To me, agnostics are fence-sitters.  They'd like to be seen as grown up enough to take part in the conversations of atheists, but they're afraid they might be wrong, so they do their best to keep a foot in both camps.

They're the philosophical equivalent of a teenager's first beard.

[Frank Taillefer]

I am "nothing".

Raised as a catholic, but abandoned that even before I left elementary school.
I'm not an atheist, heathen, pagan or agnostic.

I don't do religion at all, simply because it doesn't change anything for me personally.
I am who I am, religion or no religion.

To say it very simple; I don't care if there is a "God" or not.

Even if there would be a "God", why would I have to change my way of living?
Personally I think it's a bit hypocritical to act differently simply because you "believe" in "something"

[IdleBoast]

I'd like you to identify a "prominent atheist" who identifies as agnostic - it is rare indeed to become prominent as an atheist whilst also maintaining a position of careful ignorance.

To me, agnostics are fence-sitters.  They'd like to be seen as grown up enough to take part in the conversations of atheists, but they're afraid they might be wrong, so they do their best to keep a foot in both camps.

They're the philosophical equivalent of a teenager's first beard.

Haha Google is your friend but Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan and Christopher Hitchens are all commonly cited as "atheists" when in fact they all identify as agnostic (or did, in the case of Hitchens). Stephen Hawking apparently is atheist.

Read God Delusion, and you'll see how strong Dawkin's atheism is.

[MissBarbara]

I am "nothing".

Raised as a catholic, but abandoned that even before I left elementary school.
I'm not an atheist, heathen, pagan or agnostic.

I don't do religion at all, simply because it doesn't change anything for me personally.
I am who I am, religion or no religion.

To say it very simple; I don't care if there is a "God" or not.

Even if there would be a "God", why would I have to change my way of living?
Personally I think it's a bit hypocritical to act differently simply because you "believe" in "something"

Great post!

My personal beliefs are very different from yours, but I can't but applaud a thoughtful post like this.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by, "I think it's a bit hypocritical to act differently simply because you "believe" in "something." A great many people act, or at least try to act, for the betterment of others, and society at large, inspired by their religious beliefs. They're "acting differently" by volunteering, working at soup kitchens, fighting for social justice, and on and on.

Then again, I probably misunderstood what you meant...

[Frank Taillefer]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by, "I think it's a bit hypocritical to act differently simply because you "believe" in "something." A great many people act, or at least try to act, for the betterment of others, and society at large, inspired by their religious beliefs. They're "acting differently" by volunteering, working at soup kitchens, fighting for social justice, and on and on.

Then again, I probably misunderstood what you meant...

I do support the people that you are talking about.
The ones that are inspired by their believes.

I am not a complete jerk, I try to do good things in life,
but not because some book tells me that I am going to heaven if I do so.

On a funny note; I prefer Hell anyway...
I mean...
c'mon....
check out the citizen's list of hell....

Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Cliff Burton, Elvis, etc
a bunch of strippers, some crazy drunks, couple porn actors....

To say it with AC/DC ; Hell ain't a bad place to be.

I was referring to people who wouldn't do "good" things if they would find out that there is no God at all.

The people that need a "God" to do something for others.

I know it's a fine line that I am trying to walk.
But I think that most religious people wouldn't need their religion to lend a helping hand, they simply do it because they are good people.