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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Your right about that John,
Why is it such a black or white issue to so may people..
the whole Genesis/7 days of creation thing?
As far as being predisposed to one shcool of thought or another,
it works both ways.
Some start off believing in creation and set out to prove it,
while others believe there is no god and set out to prove science has all the answers.
Who can be totally impartial?
I'm sure that once someone comes to even preliminary conclusions about life, one way or the other, they are no longer
impartial or untainted.
Does not your Zen background make you partial or at least
influenced in your beliefs?
I try my best to not take anything for granted.
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AndyG
climber
San Diego, CA
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DNA itself is irreducibly complex. Requiring RNA and many other
complex molecules to replicate. Even if a DNA molecule assembled itself, how would it replicate?
All these processes just happened at the same time?
See, you are just missing the point. Just because you (or Behe) say something is irreducibly complex does not make it so. No one ever said that the whole replication process was just created at the same time. That is just absurd. In fact, just the fact that you would bring that up shows that your understanding of the evolution of these processes is virtually nil. So I am not even sure really where to begin. When I was doing research in this field (which was some years ago) a popular theory was that there was an "RNA world" that preceded the current "DNA world". RNA can serve as both information storage and as enzyme. Thus it is possible that RNA could replicate itself independently of any other complex molecule. As Fingerlock pointed out, there are other, even simpler molecules that are capable of self-replicating. I'm not really up to date on the current research in the field. And it would take me a few weeks to get up to date, because, it would take more than just reading a book of theories. I would have to read the original research in order to feel that I was up to date. I'm not going to do it. I don't have time.
Also not true. He argues that they would never exist, that
by random chance there is no way that the flagella could
assemble itself even if all the required parts already existed.
Have you read Behe? I must admit I haven't. But if this is the type of argument he uses I don't see much point. No one proposed that all the required parts existed and then just randomly assembled in toto into a flagellum all at once. This is as bad as your lawnmower analogy.
Andy
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Finger...
Whatever you imagine in your brain does not change reality.
I can think of 100 different "Fingerlocks" does that make you any less unique or real?
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Sorry Andy maybe you can explain how the first cell came into being.
"Thus it is possible that RNA could replicate itself independently of any other complex molecule. As Fingerlock pointed out, there are other, even simpler molecules that are capable of self-replicating."
Really? Name one.
How does a complex object like the flagella come into existance without all the parts existing? whether they were assembled by accident or design? (according to evolutionists?)
Now your claiming self replicating RNA?
Where is this shown in science?
So where did the RNA come from?
Unless you have a basic grasp of the inner workings of cell
structure and mitosis it's very easy to discount the complexities.
Andy, maybe if you read about how the flagella is constructed, you would see that it can only be assembled in a certain order.
Just like a lawnmower. Just having all the parts isn't enough.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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"Does not your Zen background make you partial or at least
influenced in your beliefs?"
Shuchs, dude, how many times do I have to say it. No esoeric path is based on beliefs, but on direct experience. A belief is only a stopgap mental device, and as Karl Baba wrote some time back, beliefs only exist "while you're thinking about them." The shame here is that many, many people don't understand their life unless they are thinking about it, and in time they come to confuse their thoughts about life with life itself. That's like confusiong Vin Scully's comentary of a Dodger game for the actual game taking place on the diamond. The rational mind is indespensible for evaluation things and it gives us valuable maps for living, but the map is not the teritory. In it's extreme, you have people thinking that spiritual matters are no more than thoughts or ideas, when in fact it works in just the reverse. Whatever you're thinking is not it. But people who have no expperience with anything but mentalizing will only know and only value mental constructs--the poor sap who tries to think or reason himself to heaven.
JL
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 04:50pm PT
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Hmmm, I never enjoy when people make me less real. Unless you can make me so less real that I could walk through walls or climb 5.14. That would be cool.
But how about this, I could come over and buy you a beer. Or I could sleep on your couch for so many weeks that you would wish I wasn't real.
The higher power thing seems like it might be probable if it is just an either yes-there-is, or no-there-isn't question. But when you start wondering WHICH higher power, or why this one and not that one, then it becomes quite a muddle. How do we know if we are even making sense if we cannot sort out all the different kinds of higher powers?
I saw a bumber sticker: MY GOD CAN BEAT UP YOUR GOD. Kind of funny, but what does it mean? Could it even be true? I wouldn't want the wimpy god.
*
Ahh, the edit button makes it return.
Shack, remember when the eye was used as an example of "irreducible complexity". That was a few years back. You don't hear about it any more since there have been several demonstrations of "semi-eyes" that show that they would be useful to creatures. And, in fact, some creature do have such semi-eyes. It's that old god-of-the-gaps problem.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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True John,
But through experience, I believe that this chair I'm sitting
on will hold my weight when I sit down on it.
I don't check every chair I sit on to make sure it will hold,
it's just something I know from experience has turned from
something that I've seen to be true, into something I
don't think about anymore. I just sit.
But just the fact that I believe the chair will hold,
doesn't make it true.
Does that make sense to you?
Honestly John, some of the Zen stuff is just a little over my head, so maybe I'm not getting the gist of it.
I'm trying.
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
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"The question is, how did you rule out God as a possibility?"
How do you rule God in? And why not buy into the Vedas instead? After all, they have been around quite a bit longer than the Judeo-Christian teachings, and a whole boot-load of humans take them as gospel.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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I think I've spouted plenty on how I have ruled in God as the most likely answer.
sorry I'm not familiar enough with the Vedas
to really say but, I'm not trying to catagorize God.
Religion and how man tries to relate to God are another subject altogether.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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"The higher power thing seems like it might be probable if it is just an either yes-there-is, or no-there-isn't question."
Is it not that simple?
Of course the follow up questions become exponentially harder.
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
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"I think I've spouted plenty on how I have ruled in God as the most likely answer."
That's cool. I don't question people's faiths. I just object to the use of a deus ex machina to conveniently fill the unanswered questions in evolutionary theory (or any scientific theory).
I seek the answers in the empyrical realm; you seem to have found them in the spiritual realm.
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WBraun
climber
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There is only one God
There are so many groups trying to establish their idea of God. But God is one. Vedas, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism all one and same God.
Three schools Personalists, impersonalists, and mayavadis.
Impersonalist philosophers (Mayavadis) maintain that both the living entity and God Himself are under the control of maya when they come into this material world. This is the fallacy of their philosophy.
The Supreme Lord is not subject to fall down into illusion (maya) any more than the sun is subject to fall beneath the clouds.
Although this is true in that both God and ourselves are immortal, there is a difference. As living entities, we perform many activities, but we have a tendency to fall down into material nature. God has no such tendency. Being all-powerful, He never comes under the control of material nature. Indeed, material nature is but one display of His inconceivable energies.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 05:59pm PT
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Sally might have had the good sense to drop out of this one, or perhaps she just decided to go do some real work. Anyway, I'm changing what I said about GW Bush. In a round table talk with reporters down in Texas he told them that he thought "intelligent design" should be taught in schools.
Whether he will actually get involved remains to be seen. But it is one more example of his failure to take science seriously.
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Ouch!
climber
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Why is the Bible replete with mentions of gold.? As riches, rewards, etc.
Wonder why God made gold and diamonds. Surely he knew the greedy nature of man. He gave it to him.
John saw a city of pure gold descending from heaven. I wonder if he mistook Heaven for Vegas.
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Fingerlocks, trying to figure out the higher power (i.e. God) like that would be what the bible calls idolatry. You can do it sure, but it’s one of the early roads in spirituality that reappears quite often in a pursuit of God but always leads to a dead end. It’s one of the most important lessons that the Israelites had to learn, over and over again, getting severely burned in the process. Eventually they more or less learned it and to our immeasurable benefit. Oh and your blablablab probably doesn’t have a bona-fide spiritual experience associated with it to make it anywhere near as credible as the God you compare it to.
How’s that for proselytizing?
Largo in all respect I utterly disagree with your statements on belief; if Karl said it first then him too. Thoughts are in your head, beliefs (especially ones that you hold on to so tightly that you actually live them out) are in your heart. In other words they are in your spirit. There are deep rooted beliefs that you (all of us) live by and don’t even know what they are half the time. Sure some of them we do conceptualize, or at least try to, but that doesn’t invalidate them because they are in the cerebral realm as well. I thought you knew the bible man? You say the bible is an immeasurable source of wisdom but when it comes to basic biblical concepts about belief and faith you turn your back on it (see Parable of the Sower).
Also there is such a thing as absolute logic. It’s a very constructive tool. Ever study symbolic logic in your grad school days? What you are referring to as “your logic” is something that you should probably be calling your thought process. Logic, like truth and reality is not something we make up. Rather it is discovered.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 06:22pm PT
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Well Jay, I know the Church spent a thousand years or so killing people off trying to enforce a single religious view that they liked. But despite all the killing, people kept going off and coming up with new religious ideas that the Church didn't like and tried to stamp out with more killing. Finally, after a few really bloody wars, they decided that maybe they couldn't get everybody to tow their line. That new invention, the printing press, also made religious tyranny harder to do.
Now there are other religious groups that haven't got that far yet. But we can hope.
BTW, I read an odd article a while back about people who study new religions. The new religion game is going blockbusters. Besides all different kinds of New Age concoctions, people are spinning off endless variations of all the old religions. Mix and match, you name, they do it. There's more every day.
My Blablablob is just a babe. Give it some time to grow up, get some followers, and start throwing its weight around. I mean how much do you exect in the first week? (OK, well maybe it didn't do the whole create a universe in a week thing, but it likes the existing universe just fine and is going to leave it alone for now. Watch out! It might make you sad!)
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Jay wrote: "Largo in all respect I utterly disagree with your statements on belief; if Karl said it first then him too. Thoughts are in your head, beliefs (especially ones that you hold on to so tightly that you actually live them out) are in your heart. In other words they are in your spirit. There are deep rooted beliefs that you (all of us) live by and don’t even know what they are half the time. Sure some of them we do conceptualize, or at least try to, but that doesn’t invalidate them because they are in the cerebral realm as well. I thought you knew the bible man? You say the bible is an immeasurable source of wisdom but when it comes to basic biblical concepts about belief and faith you turn your back on it (see Parable of the Sower)."
Jay, let's just look at this a little closer. I agree with you that many beliefs are emotionally charged and are largely unconscious. This is a well-known fact in psychology. For instance, if a child is raised in a shame-based, blame oriented family, he will at the core of his being believe he is a shamful person, even if that belief rarely makes its way into consciousness. Conversely, if a person is raised in a holding environmen that is "good nough," to use Winnicott's language, he has a deep seated belief that the universe is basically supportive, and this belief doesn't have to be trhought about, it's existentially lived and felt as being true.
The problem here is that in terms of this discussion we are not talking about this specie of beliefs--experienial beliefs, if you will--rather, we are dealing with a factual and literal interpretation of Geneses as being a definitive factual explanation of how we came to be. As I said earlier, there is nothing in the scope of anyone's lived experience that would supply them with a time line for creation in terms of days and so on. That's something someone read out of the bible and acceped not as the metaphor it is, but as historical fact.
Believing this as historical fact can really and truly move into an emotional realm, but never, ever a spiritual realm because spitritual realms are all about truth, not ideas or beliefs. And the quest for truth is not a quest to feel good, but to be real.
JL
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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John,
let's get over the literal Biblical timeline thing.
Not really central to the issue.
Maybe it affects how you or I feel about people who believe that, but basically irrelevant.
ie. God exists (or not) whether there is a bible or not.
Whether it said 7 days or 1000 years doesn't affect the core point.
Can I stipulate that the ongoing evolution of the species is a fact and anyone who tries to argue that, IS truly blinded by
their preconceptions of religion.
As though it is either God or evolution.
Can it not be both?
ie: God created the very beginnings of life and the universe
perhaps trillions of years ago, and set us on this evolutionary path. You know, set the whole Big Bang into action!
Or some other combination of events.
Is this not possible?
God vs. Evolution
I don't believe they are mutually exclusive.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Hey, I don't think God and evolution are mutualy exclusive at all. But my understanding of "creation" does not have a beginning or an efficient cause--it's an on-going process with no beginning featuring an inherant intelligence which plays out infinately. Mark my word, evolutionary science--of which i am a fan--will never provide a purely mechanistic model to explain life, only how life expands and changes and evolves.
So now the conversation shifts to "origins," the fundamental stance on that being that some force (God) set the whole thing in motion, creating the primortial something out of nothing.
I say anyone who believes this is doing so for emotional and existential reasons, not because current science cannot provide the answer. I would also say the question is a trick question, because it implies that there was a "start" to this whole shebang, whereas i say it's all everlasting, with no begining and no end.
JL
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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shack >>:
"ie: God created the very beginnings of life and the universe
perhaps trillions of years ago, and set us on this evolutionary path. You know, set the whole Big Bang into action!
God vs. Evolution
I don't believe they are mutually exclusive"
I don't think most believers will accept that explanation.
It seems to say that God only needed to exist for one moment long ago. If God no longer has a role & has a continuing effect, than does God exist? A God who only existed during the creation does not help those who want a continued presence.
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