Re: Evolution and faith in God: is there any contradiction?


Mike Dworetsky wrote:
"John McKendry" <jlastname@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5mj282Fd34bvU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:34:49 -0700, snex wrote:

On Oct 3, 6:06 pm, MockedUnicorn <mockedunic...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 3, 5:43 pm, snex <s...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Oct 3, 5:37 pm, MockedUnicorn <mockedunic...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 3, 5:06 pm, Inez <savagemouse...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 3, 2:17 pm, myquests.m...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I believe in Darwinian evolution, DO NOT believe in creationism,
DO
NOT believe in the neo-creationist "intelligent design"
movement, BUT
believe in God. I don't see any contradiction. Where is the
problem
with evolution and the faith in God?

Darwinism did not show that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. It
only
showed that species evolve and that natural selection plays some
role,
and that SOME things can happen by chance (and there are a lot
of
things which happened by "chance" in my own life and
nevertheless I
believe they were pre-determined). But this is far from any
proof of
lack of Divine control and intervention. It would be
unscientific to
claim this.

I would agree if you reworded your first sentence a bit. God is
not a
necessary hypothesis. God is not a disproven hypothesis, but as
near
as I can tell the universe can be explained without one.

Darwinism is light years away from proving that "after the first
cell
the system played out for the next several billion years". To
tell
people Darwinism has shown such things is not science. Put in
these
terms it is a "religious" belief too.

I'm afraid I disagree. It is fairly clear that things have been
evolving right along after the occurance of the first cell. You
are
correct that no one has shown that God wasn't involved, but it
really
does look like that's what happened one way or another.

Can someone help?

Jesus? Ahura Mazda? Underdog?

I think that you are bit on the wrong track. Religion is not a
good
institution for explaining how the world works, and most religions
don't emphasize this role.
My view is that whatever divine influences (if any) are at work in
the
universe, it's clear that we don't have the merest hint of a clue
about them, and going about making definite claims about what God
wants or is doing is just absurd. Use religion as a motivation to
be
a good person if that works for you, but I would urge you not to
get
all wadded up about the state of divine reality. If God wanted
you to
know that stuff, you would surely know it.

I dont think there is any reason to abandon your belief, you seem
like
a person who (from what i can gather) is open minded enough to know
the difference between mythology and testable science. If God wanted
us to be mindless drones, he wouldnt have given everyone free will.

Personally, i believe that the matter and energy in the universe had
to come from SOMEWHERE. whether that was in the form of the
Christian
god, i dont know, but what i DO know is that matter and energy
cannot
be created or destroyed. That is proof enough(for me at least) that
there was SOME force that came into play to start the Universe in
its
cosmic dance.

(I think that the Hindu religion probably comes the closest as a
religion can to explain the way the universe works. I am not saying
i
believe in a giant floating elephant, i am simply pointing out their
beliefs about human conciousness.)

so your argument is... "energy cannot be created or destroyed,
therefore it was created?"- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

NO. My argument is that since energy cannot be created, SOME external
force had to act upon the "universal nucleus" to start what created
the universe as we know it. Whether that is God or a tunafish
sandwich, SOMEHITNG did it.

so its a non-sequitur then.

It's a dilemma. Either the universe came into being, or it
has existed forever. If it came into being, that coming into
being is contrary to an accepted law of physics, the law of
conservation of mass-energy. If it has existed forever, its
eternal duration is contrary to another known law of physics,
the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

John


Laws of physics are based on observations of what happens within our own
Universe. We know the Universe began expanding from a very small volume
about 13.3 BYA. We have no firm idea how it came into being, but "whatever"
caused it may well have violated current conservation laws from our point of
view, but perhaps not when viewed from the "multiverse" POV.

Dark Energy may well be a violation of the laws of conservation of
mass-energy. Or not. We don't know enough about this yet to say exactly
what it is.

I don't regard this state of ignorance as some sort of proof of the
existence of God. Or of the primal tunafish sandwich.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

Mike,

I hope you realize that all this is metaphysical speculation, not
scientific speculation. Science is based on observation and
experiment, and what happened "before" our universe may be in
principle unobservable. Also, the speculative multiverse (multiple
universe) is very likely unobservable in principle, since it is in
another space-time domain than ours.

If it is unobservable, it is non-scientific. That something is a
naturalistic explanation does not automatically imply that it is a
scientific explanation.

It is ironic that atheists who in discussions with theists always
demand "Show me the evidence!" are so quick to embrace unobservable
entities, and in the case of the multiverse, an infinite multitude of
unobservable entities - entities for which there never may be any true
scientific evidence. That some mathematical models predict, or are
compatible with, a multiverse, does not count as scientific evidence.
The Ptolemaean epicycles were very well able to mathematically explain
the motion of the planets with the earth at the center of the universe
- and by observational evidence they were proven flatout wrong.

If anyone wants to believe in the multiverse and in different physical
laws "before" the Big Bang, fine, be my guest. But don't pretend that
this any more scientific and any less a "creation myth" than the
"Goddidit" variety. Again, that it is a naturalistic explanation does
not make it a scientific explanation, for the reasons just stated. It
is pure metaphysics. And I find a creation and design by God, a single
unobserved entity, metaphysically more plausible - the assumption of
an infinity of unobserved entities (the multiverse, posited in order
to "explain away" the fine-tuning of universe) is something that might
be called "metaphysically extravagant".

Al Moritz,
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

.

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