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WBraun
climber
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""There are things I don't know and will never know."
Yes! Excellent John, and that's what makes it Perfect!
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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John,
My arguments are driven by logic.
I wish I had inside info on all of this.
I just have put alot of thought into these things in my own
quest for an explanation of things that makes logical sense.
Maybe it's my tone, that I'll admit probably comes off as though I think I'm %100 right.
I wish I could say I knew for a fact, some of these things I
believe. But it's not that simple.
If there was physical proof, it wouldn't be called faith.
I don't subscribe to the 7 literal days of creation.
But if we're talking about God and assuming he made everything,
then it's not such a stretch.
Why do so many people have no problem with all the improbabilities associated with a random/accidental creation of life, which science is still trying to duplicate and can't even create any life in a petri dish, but all kinds of issues with
a higher power?
Do they simply refuse to even consider it?
They just believe there isn't a god and that's that?
Ok....
I don't off hand rule out other possibilities, but if they don't hold up to scrutiny and logic, then I will discount
them.
I guess if someone could actually explain logically how life could have started on accident from some pool of amino acids,
I would have to admit, that is how it could have/probably did happen.
The simplest explanation is usually the best.
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WBraun
climber
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"Why do so many people have no problem with all the improbabilities associated with a random/accidental creation of life, which science is still trying to duplicate and can't even create any life in a petri dish, but all kinds of issues with a higher power?"
100% with you on that Shack
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 03:07pm PT
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Shack, that is rather a change of tone.
All the details about the story of evolution are not in. Largo is not going out on a limb saying that we will never have it all. In the evolution case, a lot of the important evidence got eaten hundreds of millions of years ago. I bet we never get those details. But the theory overall is very broad, very powerful, and has all sorts of different evidence to support it. More evidence than either of us could ever read in our lifetime.
For the very early history of life, the best we can probably do is show the KINDS of things that might have happened. Even that is a BIG project, but there is no reason to assume yet that it won't happen. The time is still early, keep watching the show.
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WBraun
climber
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"that might have happened"
More of the same ...... speculations, that's all you can come up with.
And there is "summon bonoum"
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malabarista
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Why does it seem comforting that things were made by a God to some? I think that concept is potentially just as depressing as any alternative. Some would say it gives purpose. I would say it takes it away and replaces it with God's supposed spokesperson's purpose. I like the idea of Rilke's from letters to a young poet #6:
(God does not yet exist)
"...if you suspect that Christ was deluded by his yearning and Muhammad deceived by his pride - and if you are terrified to feel that even now he does not exist, even at this moment when we are talking about him - what justifies you then, if he never existed, in missing him like someone who has passed away and in searching for him as though he were lost?
Why don't you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity, the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are? What keeps you from projecting his birth into the ages that are coming into existence, and living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy? Don't you see how everything that happens is again and again a beginning, and couldn't it be His beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful? If he is the most perfect one, must not what is less perfect precede him, so that he can choose himself out of fullness and superabundance? - Must not he be the last one, so that he can include everything in himself, and what meaning would we have if he whom we are longing for has already existed? "
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 03:10pm PT
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You don't want to be stuck with a "god-of-the-gaps" do you? You know, "god is responsible for all the bits that science hasn't filled in yet". That is an ever shrinking god. But I will grant you that it won't quite shrink to zilch.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Finger,
Tell me,
Why are you so convinced that a higher power was not involved?
Any proof?
I'm not being facetious, I'm really curious, by what criteria did you rule out God?
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WBraun
climber
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"That is an ever shrinking god"
Yes, this is true, the gap is becoming smaller and smaller as science comes to realize that God does exist.
”But I will grant you that it won't quite shrink to zilch”
Yes the last of the holdouts will remain here ……eternally?
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 03:31pm PT
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Way back near the top of this thread, Rectorsquid tossed in the expression “survival of the fittest”. I objected to this, but couldn’t think of a real good example of something that was not adapted “best”, but merely “good enough”. I just read an article about a good example.
There is a family of three parasites (one causes sleeping sickness) that are very wasteful in how they make proteins. Most cells careful make just those proteins that they need at the moment, but the “trypanosome” parasites have a single switch that turns on the production of more than 300 different proteins. The cell makes all those different proteins at once even if it needs just a few of them. This is very wasteful, but the parasites have probably never faced any selective pressure to clean up their act since they live in a host from which they can steal all the nutrients they need. So being wasteful is good enough. Or at least it used to be. The researchers think that this switch might be a good target for a drug to cure the disease. The trypanosomes might be poorly adapted for the future they will face. I hope so anyway since these are bad diseases.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Shack--
I wonder if there really is such a thing as absolute logic. In my life I know that my logic is often a surface layer of rational investigation for things that are, at bottom, emotionally driven. For instance, if I really and truly want something to be true, something I really believe in, I can hyperfocus my left brain on the subject to find "logical" proof for what I am emotionally invested in WANTING to be true.
Another way of looking at this is to ask the question: If I had no emotional or exisential investmnt in this subject whatsoever, and was not partial to one perspective or another, how would I go about my enquiry?
My point is in the study of evolution, it is most often the case that critics are almost always emotionally and existentially driven, but masquerade behind the guise of science and logic, though they swear they are not. This is not only dishonest but muddies the waters by tending to popsit the whole business in all or nothing terms--meaning if evolution is currently incomplete, which it is, disengenious folk can blast the whole study as wrong and misguided.
IMO, the real culprit here, and in the eitire creationism vrs. evolution fandango (mainstream science considers creationism a howler), is that most every creationism proponent(and some intelligent design folks) take as their starting point a literal interpretation of the Geneses creation metaphor. Their belief in the absolute and inviolate truth of this metaphor as a historical fact is entirely unasailable--their entire exisence is hooked up to this being fact--and from this starting point some embarb on a mission to find anythig that will substantiate the Old testiment metaphor, while shamelessly atacking any view that runs counter to the mataphor.
The real question is why folks believe that their religious identity and well-being and spiritual life depends on the Geneses creation metaphor being a historical fact.
JL
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Ouch!
climber
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"Yes the last of the holdouts will remain here ……eternally?"
Would that mean the 14 day limit is Off?
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 03:47pm PT
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Now Shack that is a good question.
No I certainly don't have any proof that a higher isn't involved. But the problem is that I cannot even imagine what would be such proof. This is why I invented the Blablablob. I am sure that you think the Blablablob is silly and certainly doesn't exist. But if I ask you why are you so sure? And can you prove it? No, you cannot. Nor can I.
I can think of all sorts of different "higher powers", some you would be symathetic with, some you might laugh at. But you won't prove that any of them don't exist.
I find it a very weak defense of a "higher power" to say nothing more on its behalf than you can't prove it doesn't exist.
If it is something real, if it has real properties, if it has real effects on our universe that we can notice, then we can study it. I would go so far to say that something real like this is IN the universe and is not supernatural or "higher" at all.
But in any case, what properties of your "higher power" can we study?
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WBraun
climber
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This age is called Kali-yuga, or the dark iron age of quarrel and hypocrisy. It is considered a very unfortunate age as spiritual knowledge is covered and almost the entire population of the planet is performing in unlimited sinful activities.
This age will ensue for 432,000 years of which approximately 5000 years has passed.
They will not like to hear this, it’s not in FingerLocks manual.
:-(
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WBraun
climber
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The Soul:
A spiritual particle present within any living entity whose presence causes the entire body to be pervaded by consciousness, the symptom of the soul. The soul is eternal, it has no birth and it never dies. The soul is the "person within the body", or "the ghost in the machine". At the time of "death" the soul leaves the body and is transferred to the womb of it's next mother's womb according to it's accumulated "karma".
Any material body inhabited by a soul will undergo changes. It will be created, it will grow, it will produce by-products [offspring], it will dwindle and ultimately it will die.
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Ouch!
climber
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Seems odd that an all powerful God who would work so hard at creating something in six days that it tuckered him out so he had to take a day off, would let it get so screwed up.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Fingerlock,
You didn't even attempt to answer the question.
"I find it a very weak defense of a "higher power" to say nothing more on its behalf than you can't prove it doesn't exist."
I have said way more than that, and never suggested that was all there was to it. I don't have a defense, I have reasons that I believe certain thing are true or not.
The question is, how did you rule out God as a possibility?
Why are you so sure God does not exist?
I point to the ultra complexities of nature and life and
and say it is a convincing argument for ID.
You offer nothing to suggest otherwise.
Other than the study of Evolution is incomplete.
Please try and answer the question.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 04:00pm PT
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Well, I'd like to hang around and see what happens at the end of age WB. But it is my luck to get stuck in the middle of things as usual. Doubt I got that many thousands of years left in me.
So tell me, how are you so sure of that number? And can you give us a hint of what happens afterwards?
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 04:08pm PT
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Maybe this would help Shack:
I've thought up ten different gods including yours. The chance of yours: 1 in 10
Now I've thought up 100 different gods including yours. The chance of yours: 1 in 100
Now I've thought up 1000 different gods including yours. The chance of yours: 1 in 1000
We will both get tired of this, but I can drive the number as close to zero as you like.
Ok, then if you are saying that your higher power put together the first bits of DNA, how did it do it? Lets have some details.
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WBraun
climber
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You will see what happens, I guarantee it. The Satya yuga will ensue after the Kali yuga. It will last 1,728,000 years.
It's all in the Vedas. Even the German scientists used the vedas to learn and understand how to split the atom.
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