What would be proof of a God or gods running the universe?

[iNow]

Feel free to join in. The other site is warm and welcoming, too.

[Patricia]

I have often been asked what would it take to make me believe in a God, Gods, or Goddesses and i usually use the flippant answer of make the sun stand still in the sky or move planets around but if you really think about it advanced technology could conceivably do that.

 

Another idea is that if the universe really turns out to be not only life friendly but actually allows for FTL space travel but being life friendly and allowing for FTL space travel is also not proof of the divine.

 

But what if we find out that space travel is easy, FTL is easy, say some unknown zero point type energy allows for it and we find that not only are Earth like planets common but that they are truly Earth like down to the species of plants and animals we see on the Earth or have fossils of on the Earth and humanoid beings most of which are as human as we are dominate all those planets, much like the Star Trek Universe!

 

Now that to me would be, if not proof, then suggestive enough for me to believe there is a divine hand guiding the universe. The Star Trek Universe is a creationist universe!!!

 

What say you?

 

 

 

The one thing I would say to someone in regards to this is just look at a baby. As a Christian, I believe that God wove that baby into being in the womb and when it is finally born, just look at that beautiful miracle. What else could create such an intricate, unique thing as a human body? Look at nature. What else could create huge but beautiful mountains? Or the smallest of flowers? Only a powerful being such as God could do that. I can give you more examples if you want me to. Just PM me if you're interested.

[iNow]

What else could create such an intricate, unique thing as a human body?

Vast epochs of time and the fact that cuter babies received better care and attention than ugly ones.

 

Look at nature. What else could create huge but beautiful mountains?

Gravitation, and tectonic plates.

 

Or the smallest of flowers?

Even smaller bugs that carry their pollen.

 

Only a powerful being such as God could do that.

Arguments from ignorance are both ignorant and fallacious.

 

I can give you more examples if you want me to. Just PM me if you're interested.

Thanks, but I'm really not. You don't seem to understand the universe and seem content to stop searching for genuine understanding of it by saying goddidit to everything. I'd rather stick with reality, not fantasy and childish conclusions.

[ACG52]

While not 'proof', evidence would be something physical and measurable which occurs in contradiction to the laws of physics and causality.

[Villain]

While not 'proof', evidence would be something physical and measurable which occurs in contradiction to the laws of physics and causality.

 

The 'laws' which we know exist and can never not be so?

[Moontanman]

The one thing I would say to someone in regards to this is just look at a baby. As a Christian, I believe that God wove that baby into being in the womb and when it is finally born, just look at that beautiful miracle. What else could create such an intricate, unique thing as a human body? Look at nature. What else could create huge but beautiful mountains? Or the smallest of flowers? Only a powerful being such as God could do that. I can give you more examples if you want me to. Just PM me if you're interested.

 

 

If all babies were indeed perfect or in some way made any different than alley cat kittens or baby rats you might have a point but human biology is no different than any other animal and natural processes account for all of nature and the variation with in. God really doesn't figure into it much less be the only way such things could come into being.

[iNow]

While not 'proof', evidence would be something physical and measurable which occurs in contradiction to the laws of physics and causality.

If it's physical and measurable then it adheres to the laws of physics. Your assertion above contradicts and rebuts itself.

[lpzho]

Life is terribly ironic. If you wish a mighty miracle like the stopping or exploding of a star, well God gave you something very much akin when he made the sun dance at fatima in what is perhaps the greatest miracle ever. And in doing so he also anticipated the thoughts on just this subject from one of our leading atheists.

 

Science and the Miracle of the Sun or Mr. Harris' DNA

[Moontanman]

Life is terribly ironic. If you wish a mighty miracle like the stopping or exploding of a star, well God gave you something very much akin when he made the sun dance at fatima in what is perhaps the greatest miracle ever. And in doing so he also anticipated the thoughts on just this subject from one of our leading atheists.

 

Science and the Miracle of the Sun or Mr. Harris' DNA

 

 

Quite the contrary, the sun did not dance at Fatama, the sun cannot dance, if it did the entire planet would have been able to see it not just one small place...

 

Take the time to think it through, if god made the sun stand still or dance or what ever everyone would have seen it, it would have been recorded be every astronomer on the planet...

 

major failure

 

your link is just more hogwash backed up by horse feathers... it's called apologetics, twisting the truth to make it appear to mean what you want it to mean so you can support something unsupportable... if god can't be any less obtuse than that then he is sorely lacking in communication skills...

[lpzho]

The world didn't see it because God was addressing a specific group of people. Portuguese Catholics were under duress from an anti-clerical government and anti-religious groups at the time. Thousands of them had been praying in a 'crusade of the rosary' for help. That only they saw it might be considered part of the miracle.

 

Pardon if the tone of my first post was rude, didn't mean to be.

 

 

 

 

[Moontanman]

The world didn't see it because God was addressing a specific group of people. Portuguese Catholics were under duress from an anti-clerical government and anti-religious groups at the time. Thousands of them had been praying in a 'crusade of the rosary' for help. That only they saw it might be considered part of the miracle.

 

I understand your point, but if God was just messing with minds here then the miracle didn't actually involve anything but illusion then did it? Sounds a bit closer to Satanic than God.

 

But that is irrelevant, this is a science site and even in the religion section you have to back up assertions with evidence and that was just someones opinion of what happened.

 

A more reasonable assessment is that a large groups of people observed a sun dog or some similar atmospheric phenomena (I've seen Venus dance in the sky due to inversion layers) and mistook it for a sign from god during a very traumatic time in their lives. I have looked into the Fatama thing many years ago ( I used to be a UFO buff... still am I guess) and there is no empirical evidence anything happened there that was super natural but that a natural event was mistaken for the supernatural. (no UFOs either... ) still just an opinion of course...

 

Pardon if the tone of my first post was rude, didn't mean to be.

 

You were not rude, but if you read the rules you would see why you needed to at least admit it was your belief that Fatama represented a supernatural event, not that it was, but you would need more evidence to sway most here that direction.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Moontanman

[Semjase]

This constitutes proof that their is a prime creator, proven concepts are the key to existence.

It is proven that you can have something or nothing, if there's always been structure here

then existence becomes an unsolvable riddle with no solution, if you believe in science

then there has to be a scientific solution to existence. Since nothing is theoretically possible

and therefore is something and has properties makes this reality possible. Essentially

everthing in this reality has evolved out of the properties of nothing including a prime

creator who evolved first and proof of the prime creator is any structure in this reality

that could not evolve through natural scientific means including life itself,means there

has to be an overseeing intelligence responsible for scientifically unexplainable

complex structures in our reality.

[Moontanman]

This constitutes proof that their is a prime creator, proven concepts are the key to existence.

It is proven that you can have something or nothing, if there's always been structure here

then existence becomes an unsolvable riddle with no solution, if you believe in science

then there has to be a scientific solution to existence. Since nothing is theoretically possible

and therefore is something and has properties makes this reality possible. Essentially

everthing in this reality has evolved out of the properties of nothing including a prime

creator who evolved first and proof of the prime creator is any structure in this reality

that could not evolve through natural scientific means including life itself,means there

has to be an overseeing intelligence responsible for scientifically unexplainable

complex structures in our reality.

 

 

Why does the prime creator have to be a sentient being?

 

You are also making the assumption that somethings will forever be inexplicable and therefore need a creator, if we had gone with that assumption we would still be dodging lightning strikes and assuming that god was angry with tall buildings and trees...

 

Not assuming a god did it allowed us to find out not only what causes lightning but how to defend against it. We can prevent lightning from doing damage to buildings now with lightning rods, at first some theists claimed it was wrong to thwart the "righteous anger of god" and that using a lightning rod was a sin, then of course it became a bit embarrassing when they realized that churches were being hit by lightning more often than anything else and buildings equipped with lightning rods were being spared.

[Semjase]

Everything wil eventually have a scientific explanation including

the prime creator. The point I'm making is that if a structure is

proven that it could not have evolved naturally from it's

environment considering you knew all the properties of

reality then you would have to look elsewhere for an independent

intelligence with knowledge and understanding of reality

that put it here, just as functioning structures left by man

discovered by something else would have to draw the same

conclusion.

[iNow]

Science already has explained the prime creator. It's called psychology.

[Moontanman]

Everything wil eventually have a scientific explanation including

the prime creator. The point I'm making is that if a structure is

proven that it could not have evolved naturally from it's

environment considering you knew all the properties of

reality then you would have to look elsewhere for an independent

intelligence with knowledge and understanding of reality

that put it here, just as functioning structures left by man

discovered by something else would have to draw the same

conclusion.

 

 

Well as soon as you find a structure that could not have been evolved naturally please feel free to point it out.... The analogy you make between man made and natural is false. man made things do not evolve into existence, they cannot reproduce, how ever life has evolved from simpler organisms and quite a bit of work points to a natural origin for life in general as well.

 

 

 

The universe may have indeed had a first cause but if so I see no reason to propose that cause is a sentient being. Universes may be as natural as atomic decay...

[Semjase]

Here's the shape of a virus, this device could not have evolved into being

it's sharp geometric shape show all the hallmarks of a designer. To prove

that viruses evolved into being from from a celled organism may not

be possible.

 

I'll take another example form Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker where he

mentioned that a primitive amoeba was found to have more DNA than a

human being he never explained how that was possible would you like to

try?

[iNow]

Here's the shape of a virus, this device could not have evolved into being

it's sharp geometric shape show all the hallmarks of a designer.

 

Just because you are ignorant of how such shapes can evolve does not mean their evolution is impossible.

[Semjase]

According to the evolutionary principle cells had to evolve from

basic building blocks, lets go back to the first precell with no

DNA at the last step of the cell's evolution before DNA, you have

a structure that is non replicating maybe growing and breaking into

smaller parts, how could this cell then evolve and DNA replicating

system necessary for cell division specifically targeted for DNA that

is yet to exist.Maybe if cell biologist looked a little closer at this

evolutionary step they would see the impossiblity of this occurring.

[iNow]

I recommend you educate yourself on the subject a bit more before making further comment, and will just say again that merely because you do not personally understand how this may have occurred does not mean it is impossible... And it especially does not mean that there is some deity or creator.

Edited December 8, 2012 by iNow

[Semjase]

How true but this is impossible, chemistry is chemistry nothing more

it does not give the experience of real that we percieve in our reality

at some point in evolution life forms experience real, the technolgy

of real that must have a scientific explanation it just didn't evolve uniquely

and independently for each life form there has to be an overlaying

high technology behind our experience of real whether you like it

or not, which proves that a higher intelligence is behind this reality.

[Moontanman]

According to the evolutionary principle cells had to evolve from

basic building blocks, lets go back to the first precell with no

DNA at the last step of the cell's evolution before DNA, you have

a structure that is non replicating maybe growing and breaking into

smaller parts, how could this cell then evolve and DNA replicating

system necessary for cell division specifically targeted for DNA that

is yet to exist.Maybe if cell biologist looked a little closer at this

evolutionary step they would see the impossiblity of this occurring.

 

 

I'm gonna give you links to a couple of videos that cover this quite well. I'm not sure if that will do it for you if not I suggest a few other sites as well.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

 

That should give you a starting point for your own investigation but these videos do a pretty good job of explaining the possible processes in a reasonably easy to understand fashion...

 

 

 

 

[iNow]

How true but this is impossible, chemistry is chemistry nothing more

it does not give the experience of real that we percieve in our reality

at some point in evolution life forms experience real

 

Actually, I would counter that chemistry is PRECISELY what gives us "the experience of real that we perceive in our reality." Are you familiar with how the nervous system functions, and the idea of neurotransmitters?

[Moontanman]

Here's the shape of a virus, this device could not have evolved into being

it's sharp geometric shape show all the hallmarks of a designer. To prove

that viruses evolved into being from from a celled organism may not

be possible.

 

bacteriophage.jpg

 

I'll take another example form Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker where he

mentioned that a primitive amoeba was found to have more DNA than a

human being he never explained how that was possible would you like to

try?

 

 

many plants and animals have more DNA than a human, this has little or nothing to do with the comparable complexity of an organism. Viruses are chemical machines, each part has a function, not all virus particles have that machine look and the look in that illustration is a bit idealized for sure...

 

How true but this is impossible, chemistry is chemistry nothing more

it does not give the experience of real that we percieve in our reality

at some point in evolution life forms experience real, the technolgy

of real that must have a scientific explanation it just didn't evolve uniquely

and independently for each life form there has to be an overlaying

high technology behind our experience of real whether you like it

or not, which proves that a higher intelligence is behind this reality.

 

 

you keep making these assertions. can you back them up with anything other than your inability believe or to understand them?

[Semjase]

Lets say that that the universe was found to be full of life forms and most of

evolved independantly from each other yet the all have one thing in common

DNA, the odds of this happenning dissapear to about zero would you still

cling to these odds or would you accept that there is a creational force behind life.