If not God, then what?

jegs2 · Post by **jegs2** » 2003-04-09 02:25pm

Many believe in the "intelligent design" theory -- that God gave life a jump-start, and then evolution took over. Others believe in Biblical creation. Still others believe that life began in other ways, devoid of "intelligent design" or an omipotent being. Describe what you believe. Discuss...

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2003-04-09 02:35pm

I believe that there is a God and that he set up the rules and framework of science. He created the evoltuionary drive and rational universe and if that makes me an "Intelligent Design" person, which I previously thought meant that you could reconcile Creationism with science which I do not. I DO NOT beleive that the Bible is any kind of historical record. I do believe that many of these stories are mths and allegories not be taken literally. I gues sin short, I do not beleive in the biblical god as shown to us by the OT. But I do beleive in A God. A supreme being thats out there looking out.

When one looks at the vastness of it. To imagine that our galaxy is massive, hundreds of thousands of lightyears wide and containing millions of stars....and that our galaxy is merely one of a cluster of galaxies together and that cluster is merely one in an endless stream you MIGHT comprehend how truly vast the universe is and that such a thing MUST have been made, such awesome wonders are not the result of random chance. I feel that in my bones. Others of course will not.

These are fundamental questions and some people will look at that vastness and see how truly awesome and random the universe is and others like myself will say how truly awesome this creation must be. I guess it all depends on your point of view.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-04-09 02:42pm

jegs2 wrote:Many believe in the "intelligent design" theory -- that God gave life a jump-start, and then evolution took over. Others believe in Biblical creation. Still others believe that life began in other ways, devoid of "intelligent design" or an omipotent being. Describe what you believe. Discuss...

I believe that life came about as a result of natural, probabalistic (meaning: coming about by chance) chemical reactions. One does not need to invoke the usage of any manner of celestial designer to explain life in the universe. For that matter, one need not invoke an intelligent designer to explain anything about the universe.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-04-09 02:46pm

Life began from abiogenesis and eventually evolved via evolutionary self-correction to what it is today (it's not "random," evolution saves good mutations and discards bad ones). There's no reason to throw the metaphysical anomaly that is God into the equation.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-04-09 03:22pm

jegs2 wrote:Many believe in the "intelligent design" theory -- that God gave life a jump-start, and then evolution took over. Others believe in Biblical creation. Still others believe that life began in other ways, devoid of "intelligent design" or an omipotent being. Describe what you believe. Discuss...

And some have aliens as their "intelligent designers."
I don't see what's so hard to grasp about abiogenesis and evolution. Chemicals that were common on primordial Earth collected and were energized by a lightning bolt (or energized in some other manner) that struck by pure chance. If it didn't happen when it did, it probably would have happened eventually. Evolution began, and over billions of years, we came about.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-04-09 03:53pm

Life began when a lightning bolt hit the right patch of munck. Hey, we did it in a lab, nature can do it with a whole fuggin' planet to work with.

I admit there is a vague, small possibility reality itself(As in, our universe) was kick-started by an outside force, but.. Eh. Who knows?

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2003-04-09 03:53pm

Now all we need to do is convince the fundies of that...

Zoink · Post by **Zoink** » 2003-04-09 04:18pm

Random combination of organic molecules eventually led to a self-replicating system. The “complexity” you see in our present world is simply the inescapable result of the fact that uncomplex "chaotic" systems can't make copies of themselves, complex replicating ones do.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-04-09 04:45pm

Well, i personally am a pantheist, i believe what others have termed god is just nature interpreted badly.
I think ideas like design and accidental are far to primitive concepts for something that is all time and energy and matter.
Anything else beyond that is a bit moot, as we exist to be a part of the whole, just like everything else, it's not up to us to understand how the universe does it's version of thinking apart from possibly through the extinction of the self through death.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-04-09 04:57pm

Stravo wrote:I believe that there is a God and that he set up the rules and framework of science. He created the evoltuionary drive and rational universe and if that makes me an "Intelligent Design" person, which I previously thought meant that you could reconcile Creationism with science which I do not.

Actually, that makes you a deist, not an "intelligent design" person. You would fall in the company of Einstein and Thomas Jefferson.

"Intelligent design" people believe that the laws of the universe are inadequate to produce life, so those laws had to be consciously violated by an outside interventionary force in order to produce life. Moreover, they believe that this intervention continued beyond mere abiogenesis, so that various specific features of individual life forms were all "designed" rather than evolving. In short, it is really nothing more than Biblical creationism but with all of the details purposefully left vague so they can't be disproven.

I DO NOT beleive that the Bible is any kind of historical record. I do believe that many of these stories are mths and allegories not be taken literally. I gues sin short, I do not beleive in the biblical god as shown to us by the OT. But I do beleive in A God. A supreme being thats out there looking out.

Everyone knows what I think about the origins of life and the universe, so I won't bother to repeat myself here. However, I will say that your style of belief is one that, while I disagree with it, nevertheless strikes me as basically harmless, unlike fundie beliefs.

When one looks at the vastness of it. To imagine that our galaxy is massive, hundreds of thousands of lightyears wide and containing millions of stars....and that our galaxy is merely one of a cluster of galaxies together and that cluster is merely one in an endless stream you MIGHT comprehend how truly vast the universe is and that such a thing MUST have been made, such awesome wonders are not the result of random chance. I feel that in my bones. Others of course will not.

That would be a leap in logic.

These are fundamental questions and some people will look at that vastness and see how truly awesome and random the universe is and others like myself will say how truly awesome this creation must be. I guess it all depends on your point of view.

It depends on whether you recognize the logical principle of parsimony, actually. If you choose to go with emotion and intuition rather than logic, that basically decides which side of this fence you will land on.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-04-09 05:08pm

Intelligent Design pundits look at the vastness and complexity of the universe and say that very complexity is the best argument for a designer.

I say the opposite.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2003-04-09 05:17pm

Is there a Supreme Being? Sure, I guess there could be.

Would he/she/it give a damn about us, as individuals, or even as a whole? Hell no.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-04-09 05:34pm

If god exists, he fucked up big time with humans.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-04-09 05:37pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Is there a Supreme Being? Sure, I guess there could be.

Would he/she/it give a damn about us, as individuals, or even as a whole? Hell no.

Well, nature does SORT OF care about each and everything, i mean consider what a disadvantage you'd be at if your DNA didn't self replicate. Also it wants everything else to survive too, and it can't really show favouritism, some of it's "children" are just better.

Kuroneko · Post by **Kuroneko** » 2003-04-09 05:47pm

Rye wrote:Well, nature does SORT OF care about each and everything, i mean consider what a disadvantage you'd be at if your DNA didn't self replicate. Also it wants everything else to survive too, and it can't really show favouritism, some of it's "children" are just better.

That's like saying a clock "cares" about keeping time, rather than merely being a byproduct of the way it operates. It stretches the meaning of the word too much.

Trytostaydead · Post by **Trytostaydead** » 2003-04-09 06:08pm

There is one thing that's never been explained to me..

If life and the universe is by chance, where did the building blocks come from? The chemicals, the subatomic particles, the quarks and we keep further going down the line as technology gets better..

Where did the energy come from?

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-04-09 06:17pm

Trytostaydead wrote:There is one thing that's never been explained to me..

If life and the universe is by chance, where did the building blocks come from? The chemicals, the subatomic particles, the quarks and we keep further going down the line as technology gets better..

Where did the energy come from?

No one knows. But saying that it must have come from a supreme being only prompts the question of where that being came from. It's just passing the buck onto an untestable proposition, which is hardly useful.

Kuroneko · Post by **Kuroneko** » 2003-04-09 06:46pm

Durandal wrote:No one knows. But saying that it must have come from a supreme being only prompts the question of where that being came from. It's just passing the buck onto an untestable proposition, which is hardly useful.

It might be that the universe is not contingent, i.e. it's literally 'incapable' of not existing. When I voiced this possibility, I've had some people tell me that they can easily imagine there not being a universe, though that's absurd--thinking or imagining a true 'nothing' is a contradiciton in terms.

Hobot · Post by **Hobot** » 2003-04-09 06:47pm

Why does the universe exist? Well if it didn't, we wouldn't be here to ask the question.

Queeb Salaron · Post by **Queeb Salaron** » 2003-04-09 07:24pm

jegs2 wrote:Many believe in the "intelligent design" theory -- that God gave life a jump-start, and then evolution took over. Others believe in Biblical creation. Still others believe that life began in other ways, devoid of "intelligent design" or an omipotent being. Describe what you believe. Discuss...

This was called the Watchmaker's Theory by Benjamin Franklin. Essentially, he said that God created the world like the watchmaker creates the watch. He makes it, winds it, and lets it run. That's it. I like that theory. It explains why God stopped performing miracles, and why nearly everything can now be explained by science and logic. And those things that can't be explained by science and logic are so abstract that they hardly merit discussion. I'd rather believe in something as tangible as science than put my faith into a deity that even his most avid fans admit will never be scientifically proven to exist. Science is real. If God were real, he'd be able to be described by science. Such is not the case. Therefore, I do not believe in God. Plain and simple.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2003-04-09 07:59pm

<shrugs> [HomerSimpson]idonknow[/HomerSimpson]

Anymore, I'm not really sure I care. I don't buy into any of the established religions anymore for lots of reasons. I'm here, the Earth's here. I don't know why and don't see any likely hood that I'm going to find out why anytime soon. Without any other evidence otherwise I'm going with what I have available from the scientific community.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-04-09 08:16pm

Kuroneko wrote:It might be that the universe is not contingent, i.e. it's literally 'incapable' of not existing. When I voiced this possibility, I've had some people tell me that they can easily imagine there not being a universe, though that's absurd--thinking or imagining a true 'nothing' is a contradiciton in terms.

Of course, trying to ponder how God existed before nothing existed is even worse.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-04-09 09:15pm

Queeb Salaron wrote:This was called the Watchmaker's Theory by Benjamin Franklin. Essentially, he said that God created the world like the watchmaker creates the watch. He makes it, winds it, and lets it run. That's it. I like that theory. It explains why God stopped performing miracles, and why nearly everything can now be explained by science and logic.

Why God "Stopped" performing miracles? I think the phrase you're looking for is "why there are no miracles".

And those things that can't be explained by science and logic are so abstract that they hardly merit discussion. I'd rather believe in something as tangible as science than put my faith into a deity that even his most avid fans admit will never be scientifically proven to exist. Science is real. If God were real, he'd be able to be described by science. Such is not the case. Therefore, I do not believe in God. Plain and simple.

Even if there were a huge volume of information not presently explainable by science and logic, there would be no reason to leap to the conclusion that some sentient being is responsible for it.

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-04-10 12:30am

I think aliens did it.

Nah just kidding. Pretty much what Wong says.

Alex Moon · Post by **Alex Moon** » 2003-04-10 12:39am

God did create the universe. However, he's a real bastard, and so set up the entire universe to run as one giant practical joke that only he gets. Suprisingly, if you look at the world as if it's for the most part one long sick joke, it tends to make more sense.

As to the origin of life and all that, I tend to believe in evolution and all that.

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