Creationism Vs. Evolution & Big Bang

[NavajoEverclear]

I want to see what you think about reckoning the reason why people 'illogically' oppose modern scientific advancement (besides tradition and what their parents brought them up to believe). So lets ignore for here the matter of ignorance, because there are many non-ignorant people who support creationism. (though those who do so out of ignorace, admitedly outnumber them)

 

Here is the popular view: The big bang came, the universe worked itself out and on some planets extremely complex fine chemical reactions creat life and evolution. Why people do not want to believe this: first, it appears to mean there is no God involved in our creation, there is no after life (well not one thats been established yet, and most scientists would say no, because why would there be one if everything is just a big chemical reaction?). Second it means there isn't really any such thing as free will. Everything that happens is cause and effect of refined chemical reactions. This also means theres really no such thing as life---- life is just a word for complex chemical reactions. My reason for writing this and you reading this, and everything else that ever occured is just a movement of atoms that will eventually end when the universe either dissapates, or collapse again. Either way we are nothing special and when the universe is destroyed records of our existence will be destroyed---- if you think about it, its as well as we never existed.

I do have an argument for those would despair at the 'fact' that free will is an illusion. They probably despair because they are doomed to their destiny, but there is nothing to be afraid of. While it is not you that makes your decisions, you cannot tell the future, perhaps your chemical reactions will end your life in a happy state (though happiness really has no value), so be positive and have faith (though really its not you thats making the decision, its just a change in you brain chemistry that is an illusion of 'freedom'.

 

What makes this hard to talk about is that in a universe where we are just chemical reactions, freedom means nothing, and illusion means nothing. Those assume that we have an identity, when infact we are just a bunch of atoms.

 

 

And finally the major reason intelligent people choose creationism. Love and hope. Creation by God gives hope for the future, Love is the value that makes the future worth something. How do athiest feel about love? Love for you wife, love for you children? Do they say it doesn't matter that they haven't achieved mastery of this, its just a chemical reaction?

I say love is the only thing that matters. Every thing beside love, is just part of a fine structure to support love. Of coarse theres no way to argue this against someone set in believing we are just a chemical reaction.

 

On the subject of modern scientific 'advance' i resent fafalones comment i recently read somewhere, that he doesn't understand how anyone still believes in creationism. That is the foundation for oppression, in the opposite direction that religious zealots once rejected athiesm and similar rebellion. Anyway it is not a supporter of freedom. Kind of like the way that it is justified now for many black people to hate white people because we previously repressed (and currently continue to in mostly less obvious ways). Its not right, it does not aid progression for either party.

[Kaezon]

I try to keep my mind open but I strongly believe in a combonation of the two.

[fafalone]

I said I don't understand how anyone can believe in Biblical Creationism; that every species on Earth was created by God exactly as it now appears; i.e. no evolution. That's not what happened, period. I for one am undecided about God; "before" the Big Bang, we have no idea what might have happened. Also mechanisms of the transition from organic molecules to information containing, self-replicating molecules are currently not well explained by science.

[NavajoEverclear]

Thanks for clearing that up faf, sorry. In that case i would agree with you, we have artificially evolved dogs and such, and there are other evidences of adaptation within the human timeline. However i simply dont understand how bacteria evolved from chemical reactions (however fine it is), and me evolving from bacteria. Also i believe in God because i want to and it makes me feel like i have purpose and all that, and if God is human, surely he wouldn't have waited through a tedios evolution process to create his children.

[fafalone]

If believing in something makes your life better, then by all means go ahead and believe it. But for me, pursuing the truth of the nature of existence makes me feel like I have purpose; more purpose than blindly accepting something.

[Skye]

Just because predictable material processes result in thought doesn't make thought itself predictable.

 

Do they say it doesn't matter that they haven't achieved mastery of this, its just a chemical reaction?

 

Chemistry or whatever, it is a reaction, you don't love someone by force of will.

[fafalone]

And the effects of the uncertainty principle and the influence of quantum mechanics, which at this point suggests pure chance or another antecedant for interactions?

[NavajoEverclear]

I'm having a hard time seeing the point to this thread (not in your responses, in my starting post), i feel rather stupid having started it. You do not love someone by force of will---- well i think thats the big debate--- do we make choices, or is everything destiny by the precise and incomprehensibly complex unfolding of the big bang? Are you saying you can proove which it is? Remember all your 'proofs' are fabrications of someones mind, not indestructible absolute fact.

 

Blindly accepting something--- good point i guess, i don't want to be blind, at the same time there are things i feel that i cant deny, they are there for a reason. Perhaps i'll find a way to fit the two mentalities together--- it is very difficult to explain faith without sounding blind, perhaps impossible, but does that mean faith should be disregaurded? Perhaps it just needs to be thought about more somehow.

 

Jeez i'm wasting my time being pointless again. I need to stop replying to these things, at least this thread. This thread is pointless, i ground myself from it.

 

Keep talking without me if you want, BTW, wheres blike? Blike believes in God, but he's not a crackpot like me, he has credibility, i want to know blikes perspective on this.

[iglak]

i am 100% athiest. i in no way believe in god. i am not strictly athiest either. there are people who say they are athiest, but they go around trying to convince people to become athiest. these people are not athiest, they are just as religious as the hardcore christian. i am not one of them. i do not believe in god, that does not mean i believe that there is no god. i am open minded. one could call me an athiest buddah. (there, that should clear up any future misconceptions about me).

 

so on to my post: my idea is that everything is in fact chemical reactions, and that free will and emotions are all psuedo-illusions. atoms react in the tiniest ways, and the largest ways, all ways affect the chemical reactions that decide our free will, emotions and everything else. the uncertainty principle says that we cannot know with 100% certainty where a particle will be at any one time. it does not say particles are in random places, but that particles are constantly being knocked around by other particles, waves, forces and everything else. (this was the background to my idea).

 

my idea of free will and stuff is that, it is all chamical and electro-magnetic reactions and the like. all of these things are affecting everything else in many ways (if you do not understand the concepts of infinity and chaos theory, what follows will be extremely hard to understand). our brains are a clump of cells that are specifically designed to react to certain inputs and send electric signals to other cells in the body. every person's brain is different. the amount, density, and position of these cells and areas of the brain are very different from person to person. these differences are what make the differences in our personalities.

 

our brains are constantly taking in information about everything that is happening around you. our brains analize this information thouroughly by finding similarities, even the tiniest ones, in previous experiences. our brains form very highly educated guesses about what this information means, what could happen in the future, what is likely to happen in the future, what you should do to make yourself happy, what is likely happening outside of this information that could help or hinder your actions. your brain will try to do what it thinks is best, and will have the best oputcome. what determines what is best is what your emotions are at the time, which is determined by previous analisies, and analysing all previous experiences with previous analisies.

 

your emotions include and are not limited to: relationships with everyone you know (love, like, hate, lust, envy, annoyed), which is, in turn, affected by their relationships with everyone they know, and so on and so fourth; motivation (what you want to do, why you want to do it, how you want to do it, what happened the times you did it before, what happened when other people did it, what your relationships say about it, etc.); and your morals or beliefs (what you think is right, whether and how you focus on others or yourself, who affects you, things like that)

 

all of this is what determines what you do, and is free will (plus some more things undetermined by me). it is pointless to think you don't have free will because then you won't have any purpose in life. it is just that our free will is a set of infinite chemical reactions, but what we do is still based on our personalities and emotions. even though our personalities and emotions are the external evolution of a society (a.k.a. what your parents think, what your friends think, what your pets think, what your teachers think, what your other family members think, what the government/media thinks, what other countries and/or cities and/or towns and/or continents think. and what they think is based on what previous generations thought/think, and so on and so fourth).

 

so, i guess i believe is psuedo-free will

 

P.S. sorry for the long post, but it's a complicated thing :zzz:

[iglak]

NavajoEverclear, dont ban yourself from a thread just because you don't remember why you started it, or because you cant figure out why your subconscious started it. :nono:

[MishMish]

iglak said in post #9 :

it is pointless to think you don't have free will because then you won't have any purpose in life.

 

Expect you did fine until this point

 

Unless I am misreading you

 

Seems dangerously close to a purpose to life, and there is none. It just is

 

Thinking you have a "purpose" in life may make you feel better, but is hardly a requirement and I don't see much need to delude myself on it

 

An aside, I don't know many if any atheists who positively assert there is no god. Most seem to come down is just a matter that for practical purposes any god is either so unlikely or so trivial is not a matter worthy of consideration

[Skye]

Perhaps there's no objective purpose to life, but there are plenty of personal desires. Without free will our conscious decisions to reach these would be in vain.

[iglak]

MishMish said in post #11 :

Thinking you have a "purpose" in life may make you feel better, but is hardly a requirement and I don't see much need to delude myself on it

 

An aside, I don't know many if any atheists who positively assert there is no god. Most seem to come down is just a matter that for practical purposes any god is either so unlikely or so trivial is not a matter worthy of consideration

 

1)yes, well my unsaid point was that if people think they can't control their lives, then most of them would become depressed, and a few would comit suicide. and my view on free will isn't that we can't control our lives. it is that we have free will, but it is based on endless chemical reactions.

 

2)i don't know of any athiests that do that either, but it was a point against athiests a little while back, and is still commonly a misunderstanding about the average athiest. just like the common misunderstanding that the average christian disregards most science when trying to prove a point.

[MishMish]

Iglak (and Skye), okay

 

The two (purpose & atheism) are related to a certain extent in that some claim many would become too depressed or could not handle life without the crutch of religion or God

 

It is that basically that I was objecting to. People obviously do fine without religion, and I don't see why a "purpose" in (or to, still dangerously close to my mind) life should be any different.

 

I have no "faith" in people either, and sometimes do wonder if it would be too stark for others (and do not mean to say anything special or otherwise about myself in that, for me it is just the way it is, I have no more control over it than I do eye color.) But I don't think it's really the case they could not handle it, certainly not if it were the common view instead of a minority

 

As for free will & consciousness, don't know anyone who can explain that one yet. Certainly and at a minimum we have the appearance of free will, and am happy to run with that. For day to day purposes, acting as if we have control and free will serves the purpose, and serves the purpose better than assuming we have neither, so makes sense to me.

 

Perhaps am demonstrating an inconsistency in my position here, but I think the difference is one of level.

 

"Purpose" seems to imply a greater reach than I think appropriate, best I can think to phrase it at the moment

[iglak]

MishMish said in post #14 :

1) It is that basically that I was objecting to. People obviously do fine without religion, and I don't see why a "purpose" in (or to, still dangerously close to my mind) life should be any different.

 

2) As for free will & consciousness, don't know anyone who can explain that one yet. Certainly and at a minimum we have the appearance of free will, and am happy to run with that. For day to day purposes, acting as if we have control and free will serves the purpose, and serves the purpose better than assuming we have neither, so makes sense to me.

1) what i meant was not, "i will live and die for the god(s), and i will live and die to better others." unless i am misunderstanding you, it looks like you think this is what i meant.

what i meant was, "wait, if someone or something else is controlling my life, whats the point in living. if i can't do anything about who i will become, and if i am basically just a tool for whoever or whatever is controlling me, then why should i keep living, what's the point?"

 

2) i completely agree, except that i just partially explained it. for daily purposes there is no reason why we should think that we don't have free will. this is exactly what i have been saying.

[Dudde]

free will is a figment of our imaginations, we're all secretly being controlled by the gray matter inside our heads, these decisions being based upon past experiences (as iglak I believe has already said)

 

why is this in general science?

 

I think that people thinking there's a point to their lives makes them feel better, to not want to kill themselves off and the such like (as, once again, iglak has stated,) and therefore keeps the human race going. Personally, I believe that life has no real purpose, and that we're all just here. I'm not sure whether or not I believe in a "God" yet, but if there is, maybe we're just here? something to amuse him/her/them/it/me?

 

anyone around here read "The Swords Trilogy"? In that book, there were Gods who found the races of the world to be merely an object of amusement. They would start conflict, evolution, etc. purely for something to see. Maybe that's us? we're a GREAT BIG video game!

[MishMish]

iglak said in post #15 :

1) what i meant was not, "i will live and die for the god(s), and i will live and die to better others." unless i am misunderstanding you, it looks like you think this is what i meant.

what i meant was, "wait, if someone or something else is controlling my life, whats the point in living. if i can't do anything about who i will become, and if i am basically just a tool for whoever or whatever is controlling me, then why should i keep living, what's the point?"

 

2) i completely agree, except that i just partially explained it. for daily purposes there is no reason why we should think that we don't have free will. this is exactly what i have been saying.

 

No, sorry, that is not what I meant.

 

What I meant is some believers hold that without a purpose being provided by God or religion atheists must be left adrift, while I have seen some atheists counter that they provide meaning or purpose to their own life, or, in response to the Heaven question, that since this is the only life there is there is all the more incentive to find purpose in this one.

 

What I question is the need for a purpose of any sort.

 

And I might add, without a purpose you would be no more a tool than anyone else

 

And yes, agree with Skye we have various desires or what have you, and perhaps that is what you were you referring to.

 

My critters know they can get their needs and many of their desires met by acting in certain ways as opposed to others, and I am a soft touch so they are generally effective. But I doubt they ponder their purpose in life.

 

It is that distinction I was trying to address, and apologies if I misread you

[iglak]

ahh... hmm... i think i misread you more than you misread me MishMish. well... you're right, we seem to have been doing fine so far without knowing if we have a purpose or not. and we don't know, but you are probably right that other animals don't try to find the meaning of life.

 

if we don't contemplate it, then we are fine, there is always hope that there is a meaning, but it doesn't really matter if there is. my point is that if we find our purpose, and it is the opposite of what we wanted, what would people do? it's not that having no purpose would make us tools, it's that finding out that our purpose is being tools would make us depressed.

 

this has very little to do with your question: i also have an unsaid point (it was unsaid because i didn't really discover it until now, and it is hard to put into words). I don't want people to misunderstand my meaning and think that they can't control their lives. my meaning isn't that we can't control our lives, it is that how we control our lives is based on infinite chemical reactions, but we still control our lives. so, thinking that we don't have free will is taking my post out of context, and could result in depression... i think i said this right....

 

P.S. it is hard for me to understand your posts, i mean the way they are worded just doesn't work with my brain. are you having the same, or a similar problem with my posts? just curious.

[NavajoEverclear]

MishMish said in post #11 :

 

Most seem to come down is just a matter that for practical purposes any god is either so unlikely or so trivial is not a matter worthy of consideration

 

I don't know what the purpose is in me saying this, but---- God as far as is scientifically proovable is 50/50 chance, him being unlikely is not true as far as can be prooven. This is because proof cannot be prooven, i have redundantly said much too much on the subject so i will say no more here, if you care to see my nausiating elaborations, go ahead(find the older threads).

 

Everything is matter of choice, as far as i can proove it is just as possible that choice does not exist, as it does, so its really a pointless circle in the case that free will does not exist. I do not believe that, but i have no way to proove it. You have no way to proove what you believe.

 

I think you should reconsider whatever outlooks you've determined in life, and venture to calculate the possible combination of decisions that will make life meaningful. You say you don't want to do this because you don't want to delude yourself? You cant delude yourself, you are only a chemical reaction.---- think about this, if you freedom, identity and such are only illusions---- what you choose to do doesn't matter--- how about you choose to take the freedom you have, incase life does have a purpose. Scientifically you will never know, there is no good excuse ignorance.

 

Apologies, i doubt there was any purpose in that post, i doubt by it anyone will choose to change. If i want to change things, this is not the efficient way to come about it, but i am addicted to posting, so there you are. (i'm trying to quit------- i wonder if there is a patch i can get . . . .)

[MishMish]

Iglak, just came back because figured out where I may have misinterpreted your position. When you say "purpose," I interpret it as "value." And that is what I reject or think unecessary

 

And, not to be a nuisance, but again see no way beig tools can enter in as a factor

 

Navajo, is not so much a choice for me as just the way it is. But I expect I would be happy if I could "force" everyone else to see it as I do... As I see it, it is just another delusion, and having spent some time trying to see it as others do and doing myself no good in the process perhaps have become a bit militant on the subject

 

Iglak, am not sure what you mean by if the purpose is at odds with what we wanted.

 

As for your point about grounding it in neurobiology, I agree, though can not comment on how any of the specifics actually operate or give rise to that sense of control. But for day to day practical living that sense of control is as real as anything else

[greg1917]

There is strong evidence for design in looking at the universe as a whole - Robert Collins wrote some interesting stuff we use in our theology class.

 

Robert Collins' Homepage

 

Other theistic arguments that stil hold some weight are several simple analogies - Paley's watch is a good indication of the likelihood of design, although David Hume actually strongly criticised such thinking 25 years before Paley recorded his thoughts and musings.

 

Its unsurprising on a science website to see almost exclusive perennial naturalism. the majority of atheists dismiss humanist views as simple mumbo jumbo. people even try and quantify the exact mathematical probability of God's existence. To say this a useless exercise is a vast underexaggeration.Personally i love reading theists like stuff like Barth, Bonhoeffer, Aquinas and even as far back as Plato. it certainly makes a break from chemistry textbooks.

[JaKiri]

iglak said in post #9 :

i am 100% athiest. i in no way believe in god. i am not strictly athiest either. there are people who say they are athiest, but they go around trying to convince people to become athiest. these people are not athiest, they are just as religious as the hardcore christian.

 

Atheism means 'not believing in god'. If they don't believe in (a) god(s), then they can otherwise do what they like, they're still atheists.

 

NavajoEverclear said in post #19 :

I don't know what the purpose is in me saying this, but---- God as far as is scientifically proovable is 50/50 chance, him being unlikely is not true as far as can be prooven. This is because proof cannot be prooven, i have redundantly said much too much on the subject so i will say no more here, if you care to see my nausiating elaborations, go ahead(find the older threads).

 

Just because there are two possibilities does NOT MEAN THERE'S A 50/50 CHANCE INVOLVED. Example: to the question 'Is there a billion pounds in your bank account?' there are two answers, yes and no. However, no is much more likely than yes.

 

So far there is no evidence to suggest a god exists, and whilst he can never be proven not to exist, he does not empirically exist.

[iglak]

MrL_JaKiri said in post #22 :

Atheism means 'not believing in god'. If they don't believe in (a) god(s), then they can otherwise do what they like, they're still atheists.

you misunderstood me. you are correct in what you said, but what i said does not contridict that. i said true athiests don't believe in god, and i am sure we can all agree on that. the religious athiests are different they believe that there is no god (in other words, it is their belief that there is no god).

 

if you still don't get the difference, it is that one has beliefs and the other doesn't.

[Sayonara]

Unless you can specify a non-semantic, functional reason why this is not so, not believing in god is the same as believing there is no god.

[iglak]

ugh...

 

not believing in god:

willing to listen to other beliefs

able to understand other beliefs

willing to provide evidence for and against god(s) (if there was any)

 

believing that there is no god:

not willing to listen to beliefs of a god(s)

unable to understand why many people believe in god(s)

try to convert theists into athiests

will only provide evidence against god, including psuedoscience evidence

will not listen to evidence for god, no matter what.

 

still confused?

 

P.S. i don't no what non-semantic means, and i don't know what you man by functional reason

 

P.P.S. if you want a dictionary reason:

not believing = the absence of beliefs

believing = having beliefs