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Author Topic: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution  (Read 24311 times)

Ohaeri

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #15 on: July 12, 2009, 02:40:09 pm »

#1:  We have already proven a "God" (or Gods) exists.  Compared to lower life-forms on Earth, human beings are Gods.

So being a god is a comparative state? I don't know that I can agree with that. In order to define something, you have to give it some things that don't change depending on point of view. I'd very much appreciate it if you would set aside the notion of comparative power and give me some characteristics that are always found in a god. I think that would make this discussion a little more tenable.
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Cthulhu

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #16 on: July 12, 2009, 03:46:55 pm »



The mere concept of a omniscient, omnipresent and almighty god is incompatible with its supposed purpose presented by ALL religions stating god is perfect. If god is omniscient, it would be impossible to offend him in any way, for he would know every mistake and "sin" you'd commit through your whole existence. If god is almighty, then he'd be able to do everything in a perfect, unstoppable way, and yet in the bible god admits that he was wrong many times and attempt to fix this by dusting everything under his all encompassing carpet, and fails to do so completely a few times, religion (mainly christianity/cathlicism) just say that god works in mysterious ways, and pretend its all a-okay.

If the definition of god is of an all powerful, all knowing and perfect being, then said being either does not exist, or didn't create the universe as we know for, since according to everything tested and proved by science, our universe is far from perfect, and very possibly not even infinite.


I've sometimes wondered if maybe God(If He exists) is not actually omnipotent, but rather so powerful that compared to us He may as well be omnipotent.
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Aqizzar

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #17 on: July 12, 2009, 04:29:04 pm »

I've sometimes wondered if maybe God(If He exists) is not actually omnipotent, but rather so powerful that compared to us He may as well be omnipotent.

That's exactly what I was talking about.  The definitional requirement of Godhood is omnipotence/omniscience.  Anything less is finite, and ergo not God.  Wise and powerful beyond our particular ability to comprehend perhaps, but not utterly beyond comprehension like the Infinite is.

It sounds like semantics, but that's only because English doesn't have a handy term to separate them.  I would use "Diety" or maybe "Demigod" to describe beings greater than our understanding but not greater than understanding altogether.  I thinks it's a very important philosophical difference, because it determines whether you're actually worshiping the master of reality, or just placating a being you fear can kick your ass.
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Yanlin

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #18 on: July 12, 2009, 04:44:02 pm »

I am sorry, but I am sick to death of all the "THIS CAN'T HAPPEN UNLESS GOD DOES IT" arguments. I am also sick of those agnostic arguments that say "You can't use the scientific method to prove or disprove god"

No knowledge is unknowable until we've failed to learn it. We'll only fail to learn it once we no longer exist. I'm sure that given enough time, science WILL answer that question.

Now about the "It can't happen unless god did it", do you truly understand the process well enough to say that? Evolution is a hotchpotch of logic. It all makes sense. That's how we can determine god is not necessary. Evolution is a gradual process that happens over A LOT OF TIME. Here's how it works in the micro scale.

Two parents survived in the world long enough to have children. Their children will inherit their modified DNA that will allow the baby to survive better in the new environment than, say, his grandparents. From whom the parents took DNA.

This process repeats itself. The DNA is constantly changing. It changes throughout your lives. Slowly adapting.

On the macro scale, if this is repeated enough, you have evolution. Monkeys turning into humans and et cetera.

We've found transitional fossils. We've answered the chicken and the egg argument. (The egg came first. What was one evolutionary step away from a chicken laid an egg that then became the first chicken. It really depends at which point it starts being a chicken and not whatever it was before.) Usually the transitional fossils are VERY similar. They can be classed as the same thing. But eventually, the difference gets distinct enough.

Look at stone age human fossils. They have DIFFERENT BODIES! That's EVIDENCE of evolution. We KNOW they are humans. We must assume they are our ancestors.

Evolution doesn't happen overnight. It happens over MILLIONS OF YEARS. Scientists estimate that it took 5.5 million years for humans to evolve from single cell organisms. (I'm talking from memory here. Someone verify this.)

Now how do we know god didn't do it? Because it's not as "perfect" as you'd like to assume. It's not intelligent design. It was not designed. It was made on the fly. Small modifications every generation to what's relevant to the generation that gave birth.

Single celled organisms evolve even faster. We OBSERVED evolution in them in the sense that some bacteria grew immune to certain drugs. Those that developed resistance survived and multiplied. Those that didn't, died off. Survival of the fittest.

"It is not the strongest which survive, but those that are most adaptable to change." -Charles Darwin (At least I think he said that... Somebody else maybe.)

Take note. This is not evidence that says god doesn't exist. It just proves to some extent that evolution can happen without god. You could twist it to semantics and say that god created it this way, but that's semantics. That's a whole nother topic.



I firmly believe that if a god exists, he is not omnipotent. (Also not omniscient. Which makes him fallible.) He is probably not very benevolent either. But true to the day of me posting this, I do not believe that god, as defined by religion, exists.

In fact, by the definition of existence, almost all religions would agree that god/s doesn't/don't exist.

To exist, you must be made of SOMETHING. Energy or matter. Period. Souls do not exist, heaven does not exist, hell does not exist, darkness does not exist, et cetera.

Then we must not forget Occam's razor which many people get BLATANTLY wrong. It does not say go with the simplest hypothesis/theory! It says go with the one that requires the least assumptions! The one that requires the least research! The one that has more proven facts around it! That is why CERN are searching for the Higgs boson. Because the Standard Model is supported by Occam's razor in the sense that the Higgs boson is one of the last things left to iron out about it. Should it be proven false, we'll go to the next theory.

But I'm just ranting now.

It REALLY depends what we can call a god. God doesn't have to be omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent. Many religions don't have typical Abraham gods. (Omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, et cetera.)

Then you must take into account that even though science did not prove or disprove the possibility of god, neither has religion.

Stuff which you cannot explain, or science cannot explain, are not necessarily acts of a divine being.

One last thing. All religious books, including the Bible, Qur'an, New testament, et cetera, were written by HUMANS. Fallible, unintelligent, uneducated, primitive, unscientific, HUMANS. HUMANS! Not god, HUMANS!

We all know how humans see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, et cetera. Take the UFO argument. You know who doesn't see UFOs? Astronomers. People who KNOW WHAT THEY ARE SEEING! You know who doesn't see god? Men and women of science.

I'm feeling like I'm being really offensive here. I'd just like to say, I'm not trying to be offensive. I'm just sick and tired of people attributing things to gods because they lack other evidence. I am sick of people going all Aristotle on science. I am sick of Agnostics who constantly belittle science and claim that there's unknowable knowledge out there. Knowledge that is impossible to know.

You know what used to be unknowable knowledge 50 years ago? A WHOLE FUCKING LOT THAT WE DO KNOW NOW!

Don't forget that if you go back in time to ANY time period before the 20th century and show them a pocket calculator, they would burn you at the stake. Claiming you're a witch.

Yes. We used to think a lot of stuff is impossible. Notice how science fiction is quickly becoming science fact? Force fields, plasma, ions, quantum theory, laser weaponry, flying cars, cold fusion, regular fusion even, space travel,powered flight, education, industry, democracy, I can keep going with this. ALL of these were once considered unknowable AND impossible. I don't mean just "hard" impossible, I mean IMPOSSIBLE impossible.
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Onlyhestands

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #19 on: July 12, 2009, 04:54:53 pm »

Evolution doesn't happen overnight. It happens over MILLIONS OF YEARS. Scientists estimate that it took 5.5 million years for humans to evolve from single cell organisms. (I'm talking from memory here. Someone verify this.)

Your missing a few Zeros there. Single cell organism appeared about 3.8 billion years ago. I think that figure(5.5 million y.a) is about how long ago we diverged from our common ancestor with Gorillas and Chimps.
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Dakk

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #20 on: July 12, 2009, 04:58:11 pm »

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Smitehappy

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #21 on: July 12, 2009, 05:46:38 pm »

*GASP* I was cool before Yanlin ever was!!!

I think this quote is related.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
                                ~Epicurus

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Jreengus

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #22 on: July 12, 2009, 05:53:21 pm »

Why quote Yanlin quoting Epicurus? Why not change you're sig to:
Code: [Select]
[quote author=Epicurus link=topic=38681.msg650432#msg650432 date=1247435042]
« Last Edit: July 12, 2009, 06:07:05 pm by thatguyyaknow »
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lumin

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #23 on: July 12, 2009, 06:05:35 pm »

I came into this a little bitter, but there's no need for that.  However, I will say that those two "points" are the crux of your logical dissonance.  Namely, the personification of God.  God is not a person.  God does not play the same rules as people.  By true definition, God is hard to consider a being at all.

There is a world of difference between any species or people or being in the Universe, and the all-pervasive exterior consciousness and power that constitutes a God.  To put it simply, no matter how powerful we are or ever become in relation to any other thing in the universe, we are not "Gods" compared to it, because we are still finite and fallible.  God, existing or not, is by definition Infinite, and nothing like us mortals or anything we could ever be.

I think Evolution is powerful enough for us to become immortal.  I mean a Mayfly's life span is less than a single day, but human beings live around 80 years.  It would seem to me that evolution is striving to make us immortal beings just by looking at where evolution has taken us up to this point.

We are not that far off of being "infinite" and immortal.  Things like cloning and stem cell research is only in it's infancy.  In a few hundred years, we'll be capable of easily replicating any part of the human body.  I think death, like anything else is just another obstacle in Natural Selection's path and eventually it will overcome that as well.

I think some here are missing my point.  I believe God is subject to evolution, NOT the creator of it.  Can he manipulate it?  Yes, just as a human being can manipulate the behavior of genes.  But I believe God is subject to the same set of laws that everything else is restricted to in the universe, He just understands how to focus the laws much better than us.

I also think that God is not technically omniscient by the root of the meaning.  But I think he understands human "intentions" so well, he automatically knows our purpose.  In the same way a scientist knows exactly what an Ameoba will do, the moment it has been created in a petri dish.  So in this way, he would appear omniscient to us.

Quote
The definitional requirement of Godhood is omnipotence/omniscience.  Anything less is finite, and ergo not God.  Wise and powerful beyond our particular ability to comprehend perhaps, but not utterly beyond comprehension like the Infinite is.

It sounds like semantics, but that's only because English doesn't have a handy term to separate them.  I would use "Diety" or maybe "Demigod" to describe beings greater than our understanding but not greater than understanding altogether.  I thinks it's a very important philosophical difference, because it determines whether you're actually worshiping the master of reality, or just placating a being you fear can kick your ass.

I think you hit the nail on the head at what I'm getting at.  I think this is who God is: a being with possibly the greatest understanding in the universe, but not outside the bounds of logic and law.  This means that he can be comprehended and understood if we were given enough time (but our current state of intelligence would probably make it impossible).
« Last Edit: July 12, 2009, 06:11:53 pm by lumin »
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sonerohi

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #24 on: July 12, 2009, 06:22:51 pm »

Then why is he a god? If a god can be understood, it is simply intelligent life with advanced technology, i.e. our new alien overlords.
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Aqizzar

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #25 on: July 12, 2009, 06:33:27 pm »

I guess we've hit a wall then of what we're each willing to believe.

I repeated the words "definition" and "infinite" ad nauseum  because that's exactly what I mean.  There's a literally endless gulf of difference between the appearance of omniscience and actual omniscience.  The difference between finite and infinite.  Like you said, I believe God is completely outside the rules of logic and physical law, and has the unlimited power to remake them as he sees fit.

That to me is God.  Knowing the orbit of ever electron in the universe, every shade of meaning in every word and thought, and what you'll have for breakfast twenty years from now.  The ability to reset the gravitational constant, move stars or flip quarks, or just throw the whole thing in the trash and make a new universe if so inclined.  Anything short of that power and ability is a fantastically advanced organism, not a God.
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lumin

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #26 on: July 12, 2009, 06:39:30 pm »

Then why is he a god? If a god can be understood, it is simply intelligent life with advanced technology, i.e. our new alien overlords.


I guess I'm not quite sure why many believe that God can't be understood.  I have always believed that, fundamentally, as man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.

I think this trend that God cannot be understood (at least in Christianity) largely came from the Nicean Creed, which most Christian faiths, in large part, take as doctrine.  I completely reject this.

Or maybe I'm wrong, where does this idea come from?  If it comes from the Bible, I'd like to see it.  Didn't Jesus say, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven"?  I'm not sure how we could become "as God" if we didn't understand him.

Quote
Knowing the orbit of ever electron in the universe, every shade of meaning in every word and thought, and what you'll have for breakfast twenty years from now.  The ability to reset the gravitational constant, move stars or flip quarks, or just throw the whole thing in the trash and make a new universe if so inclined.  Anything short of that power and ability is a fantastically advanced organism, not a God.

And I believe evolution is perfectly able at creating a being capable of achieving all of the above.  There is nothing supernatural about it to me.
« Last Edit: July 12, 2009, 06:47:18 pm by lumin »
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qwertyuiopas

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #27 on: July 12, 2009, 06:46:10 pm »

Wasn't there that quote along the lines of any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?
Convert it to any sufficiently advanced being is indistinguishable from God.

In both cases, sufficiently advanced scales with the perspective of the viewer.

Don't forget that if you go back in time to ANY time period before the 20th century and show them a pocket calculator, they would burn you at the stake. Claiming you're a witch.
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Aqizzar

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #28 on: July 12, 2009, 06:46:30 pm »

For me at least, it doesn't come from the Bible or Christian tradition at all.  It comes from scientific logic.

Like I said, I am very demanding over the proper use of definitions and meaning.  Where you're missing our meaning is that you're just not drawing a line between what cannot be understood at any given time, and that which can never be understood.  And part of philosophical reasoning is coming up with concepts not immediately recognized to exist, and finding ways to fit them into our structure of the universe.

Anything that can be comprehended, anything whose limits can be defined, however great, how far outside of our current ability, is still just that, great but limited.  I consider God to be infinite not as the starting point of his definition, but the logical conclusion of being outside another category.  "God" is therefor any consciousness whose extent can never be drawn, and by extension, we as limited beings will never be able to equal or grasp.
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lumin

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Re: To deny the existence of God is to deny Evolution
« Reply #29 on: July 12, 2009, 06:52:31 pm »

I guess I'm not understanding how
"God" is therefor any consciousness whose extent can never be drawn, and by extension, we as limited beings will never be able to equal or grasp...that which can never be understood

Can equal your idea of:

scientific logic

That sounds anathema to scientific logic if you ask me.


 


« Last Edit: July 12, 2009, 06:55:50 pm by lumin »
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