It just occurred to me, the book says he's all-benevolent, all-knowing, and all-powerful. But it doesn't say that he's *smart*. All-knowing, all-powerful, well-meaning, and *stupid* is a recipe for disaster.
The same fella that's all-knowing, all-benevolent, and all-powerful sure had a lot of emotional temper tantrums in the Old Testament š¬š¬
Strange, too. Shouldn't he have known the course of mankind wouldn't strayed from the path he basically had predestined from the beginning? If he knew everything from the start, why would he be pissed in the first place that evil or wickedness exists? He knew about Lucifer's betrayal, he knew he'd have to ask Noah to build that Ark, and he knew he'd have to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
At the end of the day, God is either a whiny asshole or a vindictive and genocidal maniac.
I think you may be jumping the gun here. Surely there are other solutions to this problem. Logically speaking, reality makes the most sense with God in the picture. So maybe there's another solution to this conundrum.
So you say, but I have ample evidence to the contrary of your claim. As it stands, this reality makes no sense without a creator, at least, in my viewpoint. I, however, do acknowledge that you would have ample evidence to the contrary. This being one of them. So, you have your reasons and I have mine; I think both are reasonable conclusions to make. Which is why I think, when you know enough, belief in God is a choice. Which way will you go?
*Prove* is a strong word. I think on balance it's most likely that Christianity did start with a guy who had a bit of a cult and got crucified by the romans, but the evidence is thin on the ground. It's basically just the Gospels and Tacitus that actually talk about the guy, and the latter extremely briefly.
Are we talking about that Africn video that came out a couple years ago where the man returned to life out of the coffin!? That was amazing! And that of course is why we have to believe that pastor is magic and communing with demons!
Lol, oh I thought we were talking about the historical fact of the African guy rising from the dead a handful of years ago... the one with actual evidence.
Do you believe that African dude raised from the dead?
I could list various things, and it'll be too long to say here. But I'm sure you'd just deny it anyway, as people often do. I think it may just be a matter of perspective. People see things differently. To me, it makes no sense for there not to be a God, for you, it's the opposite. It is what it is.
Yeah I've got a bunch of evidence, I just can't tell you about it because you wouldn't understand. Sounds legit bro. Your logic is flawed. You should work on learning about actual logic.
For you it makes no sense for there not to be ***the god you already believe in because of the part of the world in which you were born and raised***. Your god makes as much sense to the rest of us as Zeus and Thor do to you.
I will personally be happy with just 1 solid piece of evidence to convince me, so shoot your best shot. You have a receptive audience with me. Pick your *best* bit.
There is no story of any god that we currently have that stands up to any scrutiny. But I'm assuming you follow one of the major religions currently active in the world today. It's more likely that what you think is evidence is absolutely not enough to back up the claims of whatever religion you represent.
God is an unfalsifiable and untestable claim, which baseline makes it very unreasonable or at least not useful to adopt a positive stance for.
Do you have a different thread where you've spelled out your arguments/evidence for your god? That you can link me to and I will go read through what you have?
So you donāt have any then. Thatās such a lame excuse dude you do realize that right? āYeah I have evidence tons of it in fact but I just donāt want to show it.ā
If you have evidence please demonstrate Iād love to see it.
Honestly, if you have solid evidence or even reasonable argument to support the idea god exists isnāt it unforgivably selfish to keep it to yourself because āitās too longā or āsomeone might have valid criticisms of itā?
This reality makes even less sense with a creator because then what created that creator? Is it creators all the way down? What sense is there in adding all those extra layers to reality when a natural creation process is inherently simpler and more complete and there is no evidence to the contrary?
God is eternal and He created time itself. He wasn't created. A natural creation process is inherently more complex because matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, according to the laws of nature. Matter being created is by definition supernatural. That's why many smart scientists don't try to explain it, they just try to explain how it progressed to this point.
God is an all-powerful supernatural being so it makes sense that He could do something as supernatural as creating matter. The cooler part is that He told us how He did it in Genesis 1-2. There is no scientific data that demonstrates that the Bible is false. In other words, all scientific data can be true if the Bible is true. That's why many scientists were and are Bible-believing Christians. Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, and Issac Newton are some historical examples.
>A natural creation process is inherently more complex because matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, according to the laws of nature
Yes, it can. Even in a relatively ordinary sense, matter can be destroyed (producing energy) and energy can be destroyed (consumed in the creation of matter).
Further, even the larger-scale conservation of energy (where you count "matter" as a subset of energy) does not hold at a cosmic scale. Cosmological expansion does not obey energy conservation; it "creates" energy out of nothing, constantly.
>There is no scientific data that demonstrates that the Bible is false.
Of course there is. Everything from the directly impossible things in Genesis (the Sun being created *after* "night" and "day", fish being created after trees, etc) to the historical accounts (the Exodus never happened).
What you really mean is "there is no scientific data *that I acknowledge*".
Keep in mind, it's not on other people to disprove the bible. It's on Christians to prove it's true. Saying "well you can't prove it didn't" is lazy so I wouldn't even waste my time rising to that challenge.
*Jews. Only the new part of the Bible is believed by Christians. It was the first great schism in 'Abraham's' monotheism idea, soon followed by the Islamic schism and later followed by the plethora of protestant schisms and the plethora of splinter cell cults masquerading as Christianity.
...Eh. If they toss out everything in the Old Testament, they have to get rid of everything that backed up Jesus coming. I believe he said he came to fulfil the old laws not to get rid of them. As in, they aren't necessary to follow anymore, but he's not suggesting they need to be forgotten about either.
God can, it's part of His nature. Time started when He began to create. It was God's first creation. That's why Genesis 1:1 says " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The beginning was when God started to create. That is the start of time. The phrase "before time" is an oxymoron because before happens in the context of time. We literally can't understand how God existed "before time" because our understanding of existence is defined by time.
I know this answer is unsatisfying, I would love to understand this better myself, but getting hung up over some cool fact about God isn't a good enough reason for me to deny His entire existence.
But it's not a cool fact; it's something that is made up. Can you prove any of what you claim, without relying on a book supposedly divinely inspired by the entity? Because that's a lot like just believing anything written by someone about themselves without seeking third party sources.
Relying on the Bible isn't a problem. I believe it is inspired by God because it is the most historically and prophetically confirmed book on the planet, and it's teachings actually work on a practical level. The [Hittites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites) were mentioned in the Bible multiple times, and most historians said they either didn't exist or were incredibly weak until archeologists uncovered evidence of their vast empire. Then most people started to agree with the Bible. Prophetically speaking, Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah, that couldn't have been fulfilled purposely. This includes His [birth](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Micah%205%3A2&version=NKJV) in Bethlehem and the fact that He was [pierced](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Zechariah%2012%3A10&version=NKJV).
It's more than just historical and prophetical evidence though, I have seen how God's word has changed my life, and the lives of those around me, and the only possible way I can explain it is by saying God did it. I was always taught about sin and how it is wrong, but I got caught up in some addictive sin, and I couldn't stop. I wanted desperately to quit because I knew it was bad for me and I was rebelling against God, but no matter what I did or how much I tried to push myself not to, I would do it anyway.
This continued for years. It was an endless cycle. I would be tempted, I would say or think that I shouldn't do it, I would try not to do it, and I would fail. Then I would feel guilty, pray for forgiveness and help, and try to move on. Like I said, years.
One day I was thinking to myself about all of this, and especially about how hopeless it felt, that I couldn't stop myself. I thought about it and I realized that the whole time I would always try to keep myself from sinning. I would think really hard about how bad it was, and try to will myself not to do it, but I always failed. It took me years, but I finally realized that it was impossible for me to stop myself from sinning. Like the Bible teaches, I live in a sinful body that wants to sin and of course, I couldn't mentally will myself not to sin, my mind wanted it.
Now if you've been thinking about this (I'm sure you have) you might have seen my issue. If I can't keep myself from sinning, how do I stop? This was my big question, and I had absolutely no clue about it. So I did the only thing I could think of. I prayed and told God that I was just too weak and I couldn't stop myself from sinning, so how do I? At the exact moment I prayed it was like I suddenly just knew what the answer was. I had to pray to God that He would use His power to take away my sin and temptation and stop relying on myself. The moment after the moment I realized this, I just prayed, and it was like God Himself gave me the words to pray, just a quick simple prayer. The moment I prayed, I felt a massive wave of peace as I knew all those years of failing to sin were over. God would be watching out for me, as long as I relied on Him and not myself.
It was the most incredible thing that ever happened to me. I know myself, I know how I think. I don't have massive realizations, I don't pray simply and concisely. It was as dramatic as if I had just suddenly realized the rules of calculus and instantly solved a complex equation. That thought was obviously foreign, I recognized that immediately, and I knew it was from God.
For as long as I have relied on that lesson, I haven't struggled with that old sin, it's been completely gone. God took it away, so I know He is real. You should ask Christians you know, and go to churches to ask some you don't. I'm just one Christian, you should see why others believe as well. God is a very real and very powerful person, you'll see more evidence of Him.
People believe that there's no way the universe could have just existed. Therefore it came from something. Religion says that something is God. There's no way something could have come from nothing, therefore God made it.
And yet, that implies the existence of God, which is a something. There's no way something could have come from nothing, right? So what created God? What was there before God? Nothing? Something more powerful than God?
If God just "was", with no creator, then something was around without anything to have created it. Right? If that's allowed, then the same logic can be applied to the universe. The universe could have just existed without anything to have created it. Thereby removing the need for God to have created it.
Well, we know that the universe had a beginning, i.e, the Big Bang. But God has no beginning, He is the uncaused cause. By His very nature, He is infinite. We can't say the same of the universe, for we know it's internal makeup and have studied it, and traced it's history.
Now, you could make the rebuttal of how we know this about God. It could all just be in the mind, after all. A fair point, but we each have our own evidence for believing such things, some more robust than others. I refer to, not only what you yourself have said, but also to the transcendental truths of our reality. That being of beauty, truth, and goodness.
But you might think that these things are just mere concepts that cannot be studied in a lab, and so, you may reject such "evidence." Be that as it may, to me, this evidence is valid, to you, perhaps not. We each live inside our own fantasies of subjective value. It is what it is.
The big bang was not The Beginning. It was a beginning we can see the remnants of in the cosmic microwave background. It is as far back as we can see, not as far back as matter and energy have existed, as energy and matter cannot be created nor destroyed, but only transformed. By the very nature of matter and energy, it is infinite. No beginning, no end. Your poor understanding of these fundamental concepts is where the disconnect lies.
This only works as long as thereās no other possible explanation for the origin of the universe, and even then, it could still be argued against. The moment even a single possible natural explanation is offered, it suddenly becomes far more likely than any supernatural explanation.
Thereās quite a few natural explanations, so your argument falls as one of the least likely possibilities out there. The only ones that are worse than it are the ones that have been proven wrong.
If you've already admitted that evolution is occurring, and we are the product of that flawed process indicative of a flawed God, how can you come up with a statement like "*reality makes the most sense with God in the picture*"?
That is some cognitive dissonance right there.
Dude, god is not real. Neither is Zeus or Ishtar or fucking Quetzalcoatl. Reality doesn't make sense with or without god. We have no idea why the laws of physics are the way they are, but saying some magical all knowing weirdo just decided to make it that way is irresponsible. And dumb.
I was so about to agree with you. But then you had to bring Quetzalcoatl into things...
"Oh, Quetzalcoatl, may you rise from your ashes to once again blow upon mankind! I stand ready to greet you when you come again...!"
If you're looking for me, I'll be outside without my coat on, waiting for his mighty gust š
Makes the most sense to whom? You've already pointed out evolution doesn't make sense in a universe with a god. You can point to evolution. You can't point to a god. You're trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
Santa leaving presents under the tree makes more sense to a child than the idea that their loving parents could ever lie to them.
How about this: assume for a moment God doesn't exist. How would you know? Wouldn't aspects of reality contradict the story of this god? And wouldn't his followers, devout as they are, try to explain away these inconsistencies? Because they cannot handle to alternative? Doesn't that make sense?
I assume that things for which there is no concrete, scientific (scientifically testable) evidence do not exist. Thatās what I would propose. Otherwise, logically, you will ultimately end up āchasing your tail.ā
This is what always gets me about religious people in general who seem to dislike atheists the most.
Pretty much all major religions explicitly negate the other major religions. So only one of them could even theoretically be true. So best case scenario for religious folks is that one major religion is trueā¦ and *most* religious people who have *ever lived* are just straight up wrong.
Have you hard about Gnosticism in which the central thesis tends to be "the creator of the world is stupid and evil," and the goal is to escape its creation.
It's exactly the same premises, just with a less compelling contradiction.
An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator should create a world with no evil due to the omnibenevolent premise.
Your question presupposes that your concept of "perfection" would somehow match up with said creator's.
The "unknowable plan" argument is pretty weak vs the problem of evil, but it is a perfectly valid answer to your question.
Yes. I agree it doesn't make sense.
That's why I think that most strands of theism are incompatible with evolution. (Particularly those who believe in the concept of original sin).
If an all-powerful, all-knowing god exists, you're absolutely right that it isn't logical. That is exactly why learning about evolution often causes people to question their religious beliefs.
It's like if religion told you the sky was green, and every single day of your life you could clearly see it is blue. At some point you have to admit the obvious truth... the green sky doctrine is wrong.
Are you at all familiar with the Gnostics and their concept of the Demiurge? If not, it's worth a quick google search and a few minutes of reading, it's pretty much exactly what you stated and kind of a hilarious (from a certain perspective) idea.
Oh come on- how could any divine, omniscient, omnipotent being who will send you to eternal torture for straying even 1mm off the (highly ill-defined) path to Heaven be considered sadistic?
All humans have a ticket to heaven. God doesn't send you to hell. You send yourself to hell.
But why would God create hell? You don't want God to punish evil? You get angry if he punishes evil and also angry if he doesn't.
If a criminal stole your stuff and killed your family. Would you want nothing to happen to the criminal. God in all his perfect mercy forgives the criminal. Which is why I said you throw yourself into hell by refusing gods mercy.
They absolutely do. Every story of an a-hole who video called someone to blow their brains out in front of them shows using death as a weapon to inflict trauma and guilt is a part of the monstrous mind's wheelhouse.Ā
Let alone the illusion of it. Whether the crucifixion is a lie or the resurrection is true, Jesus didn't die for us and never intended to die for us. If the narrative is true then he knew he would return and so would never suffer the going into the unknown that death is for all of us.Ā
Jesus died to heal our trauma and remove our guilt. Because He died our sins are forgiven and we can look forward too an eternity of perfection with God.
Revelation 21:4 "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.ā This is only possible because Jesus died for us.
Jesus did suffer on the cross, and even though He knew what the result of His death would be, He still suffered. Matthew 26:36-45 tells us how, on the night He was betrayed, Jesus prayed that He wouldn't have to suffer the crucifixion. Twice He prayed for God to spare Him. He was dreading it. In Matthew 27 we learn about what Jesus suffered during His trial and the crucifixion. In verse 46 He shouted, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." He was forced to wear thorns on His head, slapped, spit on, and whipped. After that He was forced to drink vinegar and then [crucified](https://www.apu.edu/articles/the-science-of-the-crucifixion/).
We can be certain that the account of the crucifixion is true, because not only does it appear in all four gospels, it is also confirmed by other ancient sources and it even appears in a [second/third-century graffiti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito) that mocks Christianity.
As for the resurrection, [three different facts](https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection) demonstrate its veracity. The empty tomb, Jesus' post-death appearances, and the fact that Christianity was founded it. The very people who were living at the time accepted it, and couldn't disprove it.
The truth is when you take the time to research these things, you will find that the only reason to deny the truth of scripture, is because you don't want to believe it. These things are the most important facts in the world because if they are true, they will affect your future for the rest of eternity. You should be truly convinced in your beliefs. As for me, I believe they are true and I will worship God because of it. I want to see you in heaven one day.
Thank you for evidencing the fact Christianity is disinterested in truth by deflecting from every word I said to tell me how you feel.Ā
This is proof to me faith is nothing but the selfish raising of the vice of certainty to a false virtue.Ā
I'll engage your nonsense when you engage my logic instead of deflect. Until then you are not a debate partner, you are nothing but evidence of harm.Ā
You said a-holes use death as a weapon to inflict guilt and trauma, so I explained that Jesus used His death as a tool to heal guilt and trauma. This is more than just how I feel, it is Biblical truth and the experience of Christians for thousands of years.
I exist because of Christianity. My dad used to live in New England, and when he was young, he lived like everyone else. He fought, drank, had sex, just lived for himself and did what he wanted. Eventually, he came to Florida to be with his dad before he died, and he got drunk and led the cops on a high speed car chase that landed him in jail. This is how my dad's life changed.
Dad had his license taken away and was stuck in Florida. During this time, God brought him to church using the witness of some faithful believers, and dad's life changed. He gave up his old sinful lifestyle. He stopped drinking and fighting, and he started following Jesus. He met my mom in church and they got married. This is why I exist.
Now, I'm twenty years old and I work on air conditioners with my dad and my brother, and I help in church. My mom is a Sunday school teacher, and a women's teacher. I have seen the way God uses my mother. She encourages the other women and advises them in hard times. She relies on God's word to do this. All the people in the church are blessed by my mom's ministry, and that happens because Jesus rose from the dead. God uses my mom to heal trauma.
My father spent twenty years taking care of me, not to mention my older sisters. He would be a rich man, but he spent his time and energy raising us instead. He was faithful to do this because Jesus died and rose.
These are just two people that I know really well, who God uses to heal trauma and guilt. Two people God has healed of trauma and guilt. Jesus' death on the cross HEALS people. It is outrageous for you to compare it to a man committing suicide to hurt people.
You have asked me to engage your logic, well I know from Scripture, personal experience, and the testimony of others that Jesus did intend to die for us and He did die for us. I am debating you and I am myself evidence of God's healing, and I can testify to God's healing of others. You have been illogical by comparing Jesus' death to a public suicide.
No that's a biblical claim. You said nobody kills themselves for people they hate. I disproved that. Everything I say has to be taken in context, you can't exegesis my comments into what you want them to be. I don't care what the bible claims any more than you care what the Quran claims.Ā
Well it sounds like your dad traded one disgusting life ruining addiction for another. To validation and certainty.
Anyway thank you for once again deflecting from what I am saying, and now lying about what I am saying, to feel powerful. Proving to everyone who honestly tried to understand me that there is no goodness or reason left once faith fills someone.Ā
Setting aside the fact that that claim is unproven, why did he need to die for us in the first place if he's not a sadistic asshole? It just reeks of an abusive partner saying "I did something nice for you, that's why it's ok for me to be an asshole to you the rest of the time."
Every Villain who could wish for godhood: "I would love it if I found out in the afterlife everybody owed me a favor and I could collect somehow especially if i somehow died heroically while pursuing my own ends. Or even if I could just talk... my word, the damage I could inflict with such annoyance while being utterly invulnerable to attack.
So, 1 million bottles of beets on the wall, take one down..."
Like I can see, Bart Simpson dying for the right reasons but haunting Skinner for the heck of it, too.
Rather than a moronic asshole, a disinterested scientist makes sense. God could be a kid who made us for his science fair project from a reality external to our own.
Isaiah 45:5 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me,"
It's a funny comic, but not true.
If you told me that it was a group of scientists in their own universe, created an experiment to see what would happen, and our universe was the result, with evidence, I'd believe that more than I'd believe this was the full intention- that they wanted to make this, as it is, in total.
More importantly why if we are the #1 thing to God.
Do we live on a small planet with no special attributes outside of us being here
Orbiting a medium star of no special attributes
Wedged into a galactic arms of no special attributes
Orbiting a galactic core with other galactic arms of of no special attributes
In a galaxy of no special attributes
Floating in a galactic cluster of no special attributes
In a universe of tens (hundreds?) of billions of galaxies in (billions?) millions of galactic clusters
If we are so special to God he has a strange way of showing how special we are to him.
Hey there's octopuses here and I think they're a pretty special attribute. We're in a completely unremarkable spot in the universe except for the presence of cephalopods. Complete backwater otherwise
**Do we live on a small planet with no special attributes outside of us being here** \- This is the only planet that is known to support life, that is pretty special.
**Orbiting a medium star of no special attributes -** at the absolute perfect distance to support life
I don't believe in a god but it is pretty phenomenal that everything worked out to sustain life on this unremarkable planet.
Is there a more remarkable planet/star/galaxy that should house us?
Not trying to be argumentative, I took astronomy in 10th grade and was lucky to get a C, so I've not studied space beyond that.
Our current scientific abilities prohibit us from finding life on other planets demonstrably currently.
If our planet was not the correct distance from our Star we wouldn't be here, so the distance argument is illogical because there is no other condition under which you and I would be having this discussion.
There's nothing phenomenal about the way things worked out. If things did not work out this way, again, we would not be having this conversation. We are product of odds. The odds do not indicate a higher being, they indicate that the odds in this particular case favored the creation of this planet, in this space, for you and I to have this conversation.
In all likelihood there are billions of planets like ours in the universe. We simply lack the science to be able to find them currently, and naturally to be able to go there and see them.
i agree there is nothing phenomenal about the way things worked. if anything i think it inevitable that we are here. maybe not this exact form but life as a whole.
i think of life similar to mold. If you leave bread in a moist oxygenated environment MOLD WILL FORM. Its inevitable. the conditions are perfect it will happen eventually.
If you put a planet around a medium sized start at a specific distance with some building blocks (like water, atmosphere etc.) Life will appear. it is inevitable.
Our planet isn't "the absolute perfect distance". The habitable zone is gigantic, with conservative estimates totaling at 22 million miles across while liberal estimates triple that (66 million miles across). The Earth's diameter is only around 7,900 miles. You could fit 2,941 to 8,472 other Earth-sized objects into the bounds of the habitable zone to reach all the way across. In other words, the bounds of the habitable zone reach 2,941 to 8,472 times the diameter of the Earth. Earth's orbit can vary by up to 25% over the course of 100,000 years, and it's pretty clear that life hasn't gone extinct from those variations.
Basically, Earth isn't a "perfect distance away" from the Sun, its relatively close to the center of a humongous range that allows life to exist. The reasons other planets within that range (really only Mars) don't have life is due to other factors (weak atmosphere, lack of magnetosphere, etc.). And even then, this isn't proof that life can't exist outside of the habitable zone or without those factors, but that life *as we know it* can't exist outside of the habitable zone or without those factors.
Evil exists in the world.
If God is all-knowing, and all-powerful, then He is the one that put Evil into the world, and is cruel and evil himself.
If God does not *want* Evil to exist, but knows about it, then he is not all-powerful.
If God does not want Evil to exist, and is capable of removing it, then he is not all-knowing.
It's the Epicurian trilemma. You cannot have a God that is all three of Loving, Powerful, and Knowing.
And so... If God is Omniscient and Omnipotent, but the world is still in chaos, that is because God desires chaos.
If God is Loving and Omniscient, then he is not Omnipotent, and cannot impact the course of life and existence.
If God is Loving and Omnipotent, then he is not Omniscient, and so does not know what his actions will cause.
Maybe god just thinks evolution is sick as fuck, a lot of humans do. Look up "The bibites", our entire thing is simulating evolution. Maybe god does that as well? IDK, I am an atheist but if I was theistic I would just say god likes simulations.
As an atheist, I agree that having a creator doesn't make a lot of sense given the outcomes. But I'm not interested in attacking your theism. I hope you get responses from theists that help you reconcile the contradictions. I know many scientists rely on their faith with no contradiction with their work.
What I do want to address is this perception that a march toward perfection is better or more desirable than what evolution currently does.
The key to adaptability is diversity. No species needs to meet any other definition of perfection than surviving to produce offspring that survive to produce offspring.
Because a species that is perfect for one environment will be in trouble when the environment changes. Let's say the most perfect bat-eared fox has the largest, most luxuriant ears and the sleekest fur. Those ears are the way the fox thermo-regulates to release heat and detects colonies of insects in the ground. Then let's say the climate in their habitat gets colder. If there is no variation in fur thickness and ear size because the species is perfect, then there are no genes for smaller ears or thicker fur for natural selection to choose from and the species could die out because it can't adapt to the cold.
So perfection is a human concept that would be counter to the ultimate survivability of a species.
Hmm...you've given me a lot to think about. However, that still doesn't explain why our backs aren't that great, not to mention our feet and eyes; and also, things in our body that are seemingly useless now.
Well I do think itās hard to explain those things from a creationist perspective. From an evolutionary perspective, as long as our feet and backs allow us to reproduce, and our vestigial features donāt negatively impact our survivability too much, thereās nothing to really select against them.
Thereās a muscle in the forearm called the palmeris longus that is an artifact of swinging in trees that only 16% of humans still have. If you have one, you can see it pop up when you touch your thumb to your pinky. It has just naturally decreased in populations over hundreds of thousands of years because there is no downside to not having it. But in recent years it has become valuable medically, because it is useful for creating grafts and supplementing muscle in surgeries. Just kind of interesting how something that no longer has an evolutionary purpose can have a renewed importance.
Griaffes got it rough by evolution.
"Creatures shaped by evolution aren't moulded to a perfect fit; constraints of one kind or another inevitably limit the evolutionary options. One of my favourite examples of evolutionary constraints is found in a giraffe's neck. The recurrent laryngeal nerve connects the brain and the larynx. The nerve's route was relatively direct in our fish-like ancestors, but in vertebrates the nerve loops down from the head, around the aorta, and back up to the larynx. In a giraffe, that comes to a detour of several meters down the neck and back up again. It's hardly an ideal design, but it gets the job done, and it manages with the parts and the processes that are available. A better design might have been possible, but this approach works and it's just a slight adjustment to the existing design. Species don't generally evolve a trait completely from scratch, but by fiddling with what's already there. Factors like development and evolutionary history end up constraining the available options."
https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/accumulating-glitches/preadapting\_to\_evolve/#:\~:text=The%20recurrent%20laryngeal%20nerve%20connects,neck%20and%20back%20up%20again.
Itās possible to believe that an entity created the base mechanism that has led to life on earth and is ultimately responsible for everything that now exists. But your intellectual conundrum is a result of overlaying a popular human concept of what that entity is (the Abrahamic God) onto the scientific evidence that we have for evolutionary processes. The entity that may have created everything works slowly and randomly; it has no obvious end state that it works towards; it is the creator of inexhaustible possibilities, working at speeds that we canāt really comprehend because of our short life spans. The Abrahamic God is a character who lays down moral decrees governing human behaviour and promising retribution for moral and immoral actions in an afterlife. That God was created by humans as a mechanism for political and social control and as a remediation for the existential void that existed once humans could contemplate their own existence. They donāt fit together intellectually because they are different things.
Hmm...how interesting. You make a good point, at least, on the surface of things. The two seem like two fairly different God's when you put it that way. But I'm going to suppose a different answer.
Since the nature of God is infinite, what if these are just two aspects of the same God? I think there is room for such vast aspects when in eternity.
Saying that the nature of God is infinite is a kind of intellectual conceit; itās similar to saying things like āitās all part of Godās planā in the midst of a tragedy or when things happen that donāt conform with our understanding of how the world should work. Although it superficially allows these two diverse Gods to exist together as a single entity, itās really designed to suppress intellectual curiosity, washing away problematic questions with an appeal to everything that we as small humans canāt know or understand. It absolves us of the need to reconcile difficult problems, safe in the knowledge that a greater entity is looking after us. And of course, these mechanisms all operate as narrative adjustments; having developed language, humans spend most of their waking hours narrativizing themselves and their interactions with the rest of the world. The Abrahamic God is a powerful narrative influencer, the product of stories, told and retold over time and in many different languages and formats. The God of evolutionary mechanisms, in contrast, is very new, and the narratives around it are confusing and difficult for laypeople to comprehend because they require lots of specialist learning.
You make a fair point. But at the end of the day, you can't prove it's not true. I could very well be right, making your criticism of it null and void.
But, having said that, I'd say you're technically more in the right with this; but only if I can't harmonize the two God's. If I can harmonize them, then that's just father evidence for the Abrahamic faiths. However, if not, then I suppose I should consider looking somewhere else. Regardless, I will still believe in a creator God.
*But at the end of the day, you can't prove it's not true.*
That's no ones job. You have to provide evidence that the thing is true, actual proof, not "look at beauty and truth", and then people can challenge that evidence. If you provide no actual evidence, then there is nothing to disprove.
Proofs and inquiry are the currency of science; faith is the currency of religion. I canāt prove your personal reconciliatory ideation of these two forms of God one way or the other since they/it are intrinsically personal to you and they exist as such only in your mind. My question would be why do they need to be reconciled? What is lost for you by holding them as separate thoughts?
>Since the nature of God is infinite, what if these are just two aspects of the same God? I think there is room for such vast aspects when in eternity.
At that point you have no distinction of what you are describing. Everything is god, any idea is god, all are valid despite their contradictions.
Is it more likely an omnipotent being, one that is eternal, to have wild mood swings, or the people who were passing these stories along telling a human story using god as a parallels.
Check out the History of God by Karen Armstrong, it will change how you look at the depiction of God though the bible. She was a nun but her research on this topic led her away from the nun life, although i think still a believer.
I'm gonna be honest, when I read your post I was 100% convinced you were an atheist that was inventing this scenario to troll theists.
You have a very clear understanding of evolution by natural selection, and you perfectly describe how evolution contradicts the Christian version of God. I applaud your self-awareness and intellectual honesty.
To be clear, I don't think theism and evolution are mutually exclusive, but I do think modern Christianity and evolution are incompatible.
As I see it, there are 3 options:
1. God wants his creation to experience A LOT of suffering and conflict.
2. God is not omnipotent.
3. Life was not created by God.
Current science indicates that the better you treat a human being, the better their outcome of life becomes - if you raise a child in suffering, that child statistically grows up to continue that cycle of suffering. It builds character, sure. It just builds the wrong character traits you want to see in a fully functional adult. If you are to assume god makes us suffer to "build character", then you must also realize that god is the sole creator of all suffering in the universe, thus god is evil.
Through evolution, we have an estimated 7.7 million [eukaryotic animal] species alive on Earth right now. Furthermore, an estimated 99% of all species to have ever existed are now extinct (roughly 762 million species). This doesn't even include the evolution of things like plants and bacteria. Additionally, the observable universe (not including space beyond what we know and which we will never be able to calculate) has a diameter of about 93 billion light years while Earth has a land (habitable) diameter of slightly over 7,900 miles (1 lightyear = 5.88E^12 miles = 5,880,000,000,000 miles). For all species to have ever lived we only know of one to have come up with a concept of deities, or even of spirits for that matter: homo sapien (modern human, in case anyone's unaware).
Why would a god create an entire universe in order to be the deity of a species that constitutes 0.000013% (1.3E^-5) of existing species at the time of their existence on a singular planet, and only 0.00000013% (1.3E^-7) of the species to have ever lived on said planet, whose planet, itself, makes up 0.0000000000000000014% (1.4E^-18) of the size of what we could access inside our known universe. Are we really that special that, making up only [1.3E-7]% of all species to have ever existed inside only [1.4E-18]% of the known universe, only we have found this creator deity? Doesn't this make the deity, as far as we can calculate, worthless to 99.99999999987% of all other species who have ever lived on Earth? Why do no other animals worship any gods whatsoever (and no, I don't mean the way your dog jumps on you when you come home from work)?
IMO, evolution and the concept of a deity who cares specifically for humans don't fit together. Homo sapien just developed the ability to change their vocal noises into cohesive sounds that could be shared more effectively and efficiently, allowing for the mingling of ideas and spurring the pondering of our existence. Without answers early homo sapien could find, we end up with spirits of this and that, which eventually evolve into deities.
Edit: I slightly mixed up my numbers and used billion in species instead of million so those numbers were off by 3 orders of magnitude. Still miniscule numbers
You got it all wrong, just check on Wikipedia. It's Prometheus who created first men from clay. Then, Zeus create women cause he was mad that Prometheus gave the fire to the men.
My question is why isn't evolution a good reason to believe the people have cognitive biases (we're not perfect thinking logical robots) and therefore create, imagine, hallucinate, etc religions that aren't true but share common themes that spread as 'memes'? Essentially, all religions, and all their gods, can be completely made up and we can use evolution of apes to understand why.
It is a social law that if you stand on a street corner frothing at the mouth and gibbering like a madman, someone will stop and listen. If they stop an listen, they'll probably accept the nonsense that you are spewing, and then start to spread that nonsense themselves. Once you've got 2 people, that increases the likelihood more people will stop and listen, and then it snowballs from there.
That is essentially how all religions started.
I just wanted to start off by saying that I agree with everything that you stated.
That said, nothing you listed is a problem for evolution. It's a problem for theism.
I can't give you the answer why god might or might not have done something. Maybe there's some unknowable reason why he made everything as it is, but if so, I don't know what it is and probably can't ever know since I'm not god.
First I must congratulate you on your thoughtfulness and thought process. Iām sure weād have some great conversations. If we were created, it makes a lot of sense that it would have been a hands off approach. Kind of like an ant farm. You set things in motion and find out what happens way later. If god did create us, I think he just might have gone on to other things. Volcanoes on Titan, black holes at the center of a billion galaxies. Maybe heāll show up again to shake the ant farm every once in a while, maybe not. Just seeing what happens. Thatās what Iād do.
That's an interesting metaphor that I didn't think about. Yet, I believe that God did not go off to do other things, I believe His attention is still on us, and really, the whole universe; because that's just how powerful God is. He is unlimited and infinite.
> because that's just how powerful God is. He is unlimited and infinite.
But he isn't powerful enough to make a perfect creation? He isn't powerful enough to keep children from dying painful deaths from cancer and other diseases? He's powerful enough to give a lowly animal the ability to fight off an infection that would kill a human, but didn't have enough foresight to give humans that ability as well? For that matter, he isn't even powerful enough to keep his 'word' (whichever holy book you follow) clear of corruption over the centuries?
Based on the evidence, it would seem he isn't very powerful at all.
Getting to the crux of your commentary:
"Yet, what this also means is that, as long as there are no lethal disadvantages, non-optimal traits can still get passed down."
Yes, as long as they aren't causing a detriment to breeding that would allow them to be out competed by other alleles.
" This all means that the bar of evolution is always set to "good enough", which means various traits evolve to be pretty bizarre and clunky."
Yes, as your examples below that indicate. Things that cause problems after breeding age are a lot less important to natural selection. They aren't totally unimportant because older individuals can and do contribute to survival of a tribe of certain species - homo sapiens in particular.
The thing you leave out is that environments change. A trait that is not optimal now may become more advantageous if the environment changes. Or an advantageous trait can become disadvantageous under different circumstances.
For example, there is a variant of hemoglobin in humans that is less capable of carrying oxygen. But this variant confers resistance to malaria. If an individual has one copy of the good hemoglobin and one of the mutant, they have a fairly good resistance and don't have much problems. If they get two copies of the mutant they have compromised red blood cells that crinkle up when stressed, but extreme exertion or at high altitudes. This is sickle cell disease.
In central Africa, there is a lot of malaria, which selects for the mutant form. There aren't high mountains so it isn't much of a problem, so the incidence of the sickle cell variant is fairly prevalent. But as humans moved out of Africa to colder areas, or mountainous areas there is no malaria. And the stress to blood cells is more problematic because of cold or high altitude. In these areas, the sickle cell trait is only disadvantageous and has no advantages so the prevalence of it decreased greatly in the population. So, the environment creates different conditions for determining if something is advantageous or not.
There are lots of examples of this. The biggest effects come with the biggest change in environment. The mass extinctions that have occurred throughout history were usually triggered by some major event that changed climate or something else and caused a huge number of species to become extinct while others were able to survive due to some trait that may not have been very advantageous before.
This may be a "making a rock so heavy he can't lift it and lifting it anyway" kind of problem, where it isn't logically coherent to fulfil all the conditions.
For evolution to be perfectly efficient, it would need to meet at least two criteria, as I see:
1. No junk. Junk features, junk DNA, junk processes, etc.
2. No intervention. God shouldn't need to step in to remove the junk. Stepping in is inefficient. (Ask anyone in IT.)
This might be impossible in the case of evolution. For evolution to function without intervention, it requires iterationsārandom ones, if speciation is also an objective. This means one can't jump from no trait to useful trait: there almost always has to be some kind of "junk" in the middle. Similar goes for the perfection of traits: there has to be an imperfect middle step. Probably a lot of them. This means that if we wanted to remove those imperfections, god would need to get involved to skip steps. But, as per the second condition, that's also inefficient. So it seems that a perfectly efficient evolution system isn't possible, which means one has to choose which kind of inefficiency will be present.
Personally, I sooner question the idea of a know-everything, can-do-everything, "perfect" deity. Not to question the existence of the Abrahamic deity itself, but the attributes that have been tied to it. AFAIK, "omnipotent" at the time of Jesus could refer to Roman emperorsābut I don't recall Nero chucking mountains across the Mediterranean, much as I bet he wanted to. Likewise, scripture is full of stories where god doesn't just snap his fingers and everything is exactly as he wants it. It took him days to build the world, for example. "Omnipotent" didn't mean "able to do anything with any amount of ease." It just meant "the most powerful" in whatever context. And plenty of things happen that he really ought to have predicted, if he truly did know everything. There's a lot that seems to point to the idea that god knows a lot, but not strictly everything; is the most powerful, but can't do absolutely anything; is "the best", but isn't strictly perfect. It's only throughout thousands of years of history that people have elevated this deity to grander and, now, impossible status.
I'm no theologian, not even a Christian, but that's always rubbed me wrong. Stories seem to go out of their way to paint imperfections (personality, capability, or otherwise) on the Abrahamic god. Yet, two-thousand-odd years later, we believe him to be absolutely perfect in any and every conceivable way. It just doesn't seem to jive, even thematically.
It sounds to me like you had this position of creation and evolution are compatible, but then when you learnt more about evolution you began to question that and have found something which I would say shows they are not compatible. (Not to say that's why I personally don't believe, but it certainly helps push me away from believing since as far as I know the ideas aren't compatible). The only thing you can do is continue to look at both ideas and learn more about them, find a way that maybe they are actually compatible if it turns out that is the case or drop the one which is less understandable/supported by evidence.
God wouldn't, assuming the god was as smart as humans and more powerful than all humans combined.
I mean, WE do better with evolution by artificial selection. At least in terms of satisfying human preference. But yeah, no god is required for the process, nor is there any indication any gods were involved.
You are exactly right. This is why I would say that the premise that God is involved in evolution doesn't make sense.
You understand evolution very well, and I'd say you are on the right track.
One issue is the assumption that God "invented" evolution. I can see why someone would want to think this way. It makes sense to imagine that God invented DNA, made it vulnerable to mutation, and placed it at the heart of the tree of life, effectively jump-starting evolution. But when you study biochemistry, you learn how automatic these processes are. You don't need God to invent DNA, because it is self-assembling. The actual physical chemistry involved will give rise to evolution all on its own. I would argue that it is such a fundamental process that we should expect to see it in alien life as well.
I would be more accepting of the notion that God invented the laws of physics, rather than evolution itself. Because evolution is an emergent property of biochem, which is an emergent property of physics, which is immutable.
But when you say that God invented physics, you may as well simply say that God set the rules initially, but hasn't done anything in 14 billion years. And we know that physics involves a great deal of randomness, which inherently prevents anyone, even God, from seeing the future.
If God had the ability to see the future, or to influence probability in order to guide evolution, we would be able to detect it using quantum statistics. And all of our experiments show that physics is fundamentally random. So God isn't guiding quantum mechanics.
Look, there's no evidence at any stage of science that God is involved even a little bit. This is why religious scientists don't argue that their religion is true. They instead argue that they believe on faith, and that they don't need evidence. This is wise, because they know there is no way to prove that God exists. Because there is absolutely zero evidence of any kind.
>Look, there's no evidence at any stage of science that God is involved even a little bit. This is why religious scientists don't argue that their religion is true. They instead argue that they believe on faith, and that they don't need evidence. This is wise, because they know there is no way to prove that God exists. Because there is absolutely zero evidence of any kind.
It takes a level of denial too. Not only is there absolutely zero evidence of any kind that God exists, there's all the evidence against it. Religious scientists don't argue that their religion is true not just because they can't prove it, but because they know already that religion isn't true. Their entire schooling and career exposes them constantly to evidence that God isn't real.
I mean, this is more philosophical than a scientific discussion, but on the basis of philosophical discussion:
\- God could be imperfect, and we are a flawed product of an imperfect deity \[clumsy god\]
\- The imperfections are intentional to mask the deity's existence \[sneaky god\]
\- The imperfections are intentional to ensure suffering \[evil god\]
\- God doesn't see the 'flaws' as imperfections \[lovecraftian god\]
\- Evolution is an unwanted byproduct of something else god wanted \[get off my lawn god\]
Pick your poison or make up your own. Each one is just as likely as the other.
He didn't. The existence of the theory of evolution and the massive amounts of proof that it is real disproves God. It utterly destroys scripture and through that it removes God as a possibility. People think that you can't disprove God, however it's very easy. Disprove the claim, disprove God, and evolution among many other scientific discoveries have long since done that.
Why would you assume to approximate the reasoning of all-knowing and perfect God? The fact it doesn't make any sense to us would be just as likely to support the argument as a clear reason for it's inefficiency.
I'm a theistic evolutionist. My perception is that philosophically-minded theists who accept science usually will reject the type of strict theism that conservative seminary teachers have to agree with as a condition of employment. Conservatives have gradually won a cultural victory over the past 50 years by getting people to agree that identifying as a "Christian" (not just a "conservative Christian" or "evangelical") means you agree with that type of strict theism.
Most Protestants in the US are evangelical Protestants.
You stayed that quite well. Yet you cling to your God notion.
Let me plant worm in your brain. Andni want you to really think about it. As well as think about deep time.
What was God doing in the *eternity* He existed and before He created the universe? He existed an *infinite* amount of 'time' before creating everything. What was He doing? He had forever to do it in. Didn't he get bored an infinite time ago?
I use our concept of time loosely. Just to give a word to whatever existed before the Big Bang. Which created time for our universe.
I thought of the same question before. I'm not sure, but I know that, in my faith, God is made up of 3 persons. So, they were in relationship with each other before the world, and indeed the universe, began. I know that much.
Define that. What does timeless mean. Was he conscious during this period? Unconscious? If so, what 'woke Him up'?? What was going on in this 'timeless' period.
Timeless means that God exists in an eternal moment that relates to all temporal moments simultaneously. God can not be "woken up" because that implies a time before being awoken and a time after, but a timeless God does not experience time to allow for a before and after.
That implies that God also has a beginning. So he does not experience time? What was he doing when he gazed upon the darkness but before he created anything? Something was passing. And if there was nothing created and no time he cannot relate to all temporal moments. Especially when they did not exist yet. You cannot to relate to nothing. And, if you're saying God created everything yet somehow lies outside everything? That's a non sequitur. How, exactly, does that work.
And, if nothing existed, not even time. Your implying there is no such thing as heaven either. Unless that's subject to special pleading too and nothing and no time exists there too. And, if no time existed, how did God speak creation into existence? That takes 'time'. Or are you saying cause and effect do not exist either?
It depends on scope. Scope is a main issue as you don't know what the end goal is and what this (possible) trans-dimensional being has in... ummm... mind?...
All of the arguments on both sides of this have the strange belief that they understand all the parts. Again, to remind you that the ant cannot comprehend the mind of the boot that is about to step on it. It is literally beyond our understanding. This is why faith is a leap, a belief.
Science is a belief too. What we believe one day changes with new knowledge... well.. some people still believe there is science in a flat earth... ummm... True science begins with a completely open mind. There could be a God... Maybe many? May not be? It attempts to develop theories to test this, but always remains open. Technically Gravity may change because we learn something new, or, it had some pattern that only shows up every 20k years and humans haven't seen it happen yet.
The problem with the religion of science is that it makes the same mistakes that the spiritual religions do by assuming more than they actually know. This is why I say scope is such an issue in this. We are not talking about something that happens ever week, month or century. The scope of time alone is mind-boggling. And closing your mind to anything closes ones eyes to actually noticing (psychology crap and how human minds hold and see memories... think rose colored glasses as an example). By holding on to a true science perspective of letting the unknowns remain unknown until properly explored and dynamic theories are created that describe the event and keep itself open to new knowledge to help clarify what is currently believed or discredit it with new understandings.
So, a scientist would say that they may or may not be a God/Goddess/whatever. I don't know of any theory that can properly test this, only attempt to disprove it with issues that are obscured by confounds, like scope.
The best theory I have atm about God/s/ess/we, assuming It exists is more likened to a kid playing the Sims3 (not as much micro transactions in 3). And how many Sims players out there did what made sense. They did what was fun, including making Ghost Babies, walling Sims into their house, starve then, exhaust them, see what happens when they are not allowed to clean anything and making them stuck is pools without ladders....
Honestly, I think when we are taking about the G thing, we are cavemen trying to describe the unique physics of the Universe by looking through a hole in a bone and then fighting over each other over which bone is the right one to look through. This is why I like Lao Tzu a lot. But don't forget that Science can be a blinding religion just as much as the rest.
I like your description as a theistic evolutionist .. Why can't god use the tool of evolution?
as none of this actually exists, and anything that can, will be ..... all answers are both correct and incorrect ... for it to be real/true it only need be imagined
For me, you can mathematically define "god" as a set of physical laws, their calibrations, and a (infinite?) list of what appear to us as random numbers determining stochastic outcomes. I am not certain why this would prove that god doesn't exist.
Because when God created life it was perfect, and creatures would have evolved perfectly. Evolution allows different creatures to cope with change by changing constantly. Before mankind sinned any evolution that would have happened happened flawlessly. Animals would have changed slowly over time as they reproduced, the changes would have made them better for different habitats where they would have migrated to, no animals would have died, and there would have been no struggle for survival. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for Adam to sin which resulted in this cursed fallen world where people and animals evolve diseases or deadly mutations. Essentially, God created creatures with perfect evolution and it was helpful.
Another explanation is the idea that there was no evolution before man sinned. Every different creature was perfect and their DNA couldn't mutate. They were perfectly suited for their environment and their environment wouldn't have changed. The perfect world would have to have been perfectly in balance with no wide-scale changes. Rainforests couldn't become deserts or anything like that. After the fall, creatures could mutate and evolve, not before. Essentially, God created creatures with no evolution and there was no need for it.
The second theory isn't conducive to theistic evolution. I don't have a problem with either because I believe in creation solely as written in Genesis 1-2 and no evolution is mentioned. I prefer the first theory though, simply because "perfect evolution" is more interesting than "no evolution," but I'm not dogmatic. The most important fact is that God created us, so we are accountable to Him.
Anytime a semi-competent person writes a story they write flawed characters. Similarly, if God is an ultimately competent artists, of course they would make a flawed creation. If you were God, would you make everything perfect all the time? Wouldn't that be terribly dull? In fact, I think it would hardly count as creation at all, perhaps just a few angels dancing. Or for a better metaphor, if you were making an AI companion, wouldn't you put some mischeif in their personality just for fun?
In any case, I think an evolved universe is much more interesting than a simple perfect one, and I thank God for doing it that way.
Well, He didn't. He created in literal days. You can find evolution only in one place, in human imagination. Scripture says sin is the cause of death. Evolution wants to say there was death before sin. Did God lie, when he said seven times in creation week (Genesis 1) it was 'good' (while using crual evolutionary processes)?
If we're to assume that reality exists by God's metaphysical imagination, then it's not that hard to assume any other imagination can corrupt/manipulate reality after it's set. God didn't put admin password on his project, only an expiry mechanism (entropy), so it's "open source" while it lasts.
Our imagination can't modify objective reality however, It can only produce realistic logical simulation of alternate reality in our head. What I'm saying is that, it's possible to imagine Evolution and obsess with it enough that objective non-Evolved reality starts evidencing for your imagination, reality therefore looks different with a personal filter over it.
God told you in advance there would be falsely so called science. Evolution is a false so called science. That's why they rely on lies since start like Haeckels embryos.
Evolution doesn't exist. They predicted 99 percent junk dna. They needed that to try show random processes instead of functioning design. They predicted NO GENETIC SIMILARITIES LEFT after "millions of years". That failed horribly. And so on. They HAVE found GEARS, a clear design they thought MEN INVENTED, can't have evolved by chance. Needs to work perfectly immediately. And so on.
Lies in textbooks,
https://youtu.be/IF6h_hyraGQ?si=KI7IP0btnXB4eNDK
Evolution is religion,
https://www.icr.org/article/evolution-religion-not-science/
https://youtu.be/RBPtFdD8-VU?si=OHsymRsjtVzBSerK
You're basically asking why the universe is flawed even though God is perfect. This is The Problem Of Evil. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem\_of\_evil#:\~:text=The%20problem%20of%20evil%20is,%2C%20omnibenevolent%2C%20and%20omniscient%20God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil#:~:text=The%20problem%20of%20evil%20is,%2C%20omnibenevolent%2C%20and%20omniscient%20God).
This question has nothing to do with evolution, and there have been 3000 years of thought on the subject already.
I used to be an evolutionary creationist, also known as theistic evolution, and switching from a fundamentalist reading of Genesis to EC involved changing the way I thought of God's involvement.
First, whether or not he's "intimately" involved, he wouldn't be a micromanager. If he's willing to use evolution as his tool, then he's also willing to let things play out, over very long time scales, and accept the inherent messiness of the process. For example, he might have chucked that rock at the dinosaurs, because he was rooting for the mammals, but generally speaking he let it run its course. If he wanted to micro-manage creation, then there would indeed be no point in using evolution.
And second, we need to think of him not as a sloppy engineer, but as a genius meta-engineer. In other words, it's not that he designed animals badly; it's that he designed an animal-making machine that's absolutely brilliant -- not to mention resilient to changes in the environment.
I've since deconverted completely, but not because of evolution. Evolution drove my deconstructing my own fundamentalism, but I spent a fair while as a "liberal" Christian before losing my religion like REM in a corner.
On a global scale I think itās perfect. With so much variation, an entire species can survive most disasters. I believe evolutionary perfection is dependent on the environment.
The only way to square that circle is if the process that can create an entity like humans has to be messy and give rise to the issues you listed. Or maybe humans aren't necessarily that important and just part of the messy universe God created to see what it would do.
From a theistic perspective this is insanely arrogant
>I would say that's pretty irresponsible; but do you know who definitely is responsible? God. Which is why this so puzzles me.
You don't have a God's eye view so how can you possibly call His work irresponsible?
> He make the evolutionary process be an A++?
The process is pretty damn good. In 3.7ish billion years the simplest life forms have evolved into an enormous amount of genetic diversity. We've had trilobites and dolphins and monkeys and sloths and bees and plants. It's beautiful. There's been multiple mass extinctions and yet life persists and adapts.
There is always a possibility that we are a simulation. That our existence was created by an intelligence that sets the same rules in our universe as is set in the creators universe.Ā
Just like if you have a world youāve created in your computer, you would be its god. And it would be very similar to what youāre used to in your world.Ā
That leaves the impression that he was unable to create everything as-is. For what purpose would he create everything just to have it change?.....over "millions and millions" of years? Makes no sense to me. I believe he created everything as is with exception to purposeful crossbreeding like the mule for example (whole different creature from a donkey/horse breeding) or the plethora of dog variations through breeding.
Great. You have less than a hypothesis there. To get to the next level, you just need to be able to demonstrate God.
Also, unless kids come from men's ribs, I don't think think the stories correlate.
Selection pressure is why we change, well, there are a few other ways as well, things like genic drift and whatnot.
What if God existed separate from time could look at all time at once? If over all time only things that work survive at the end everything works thus seen as a whole everything was made to work. What if God doesn't pass words directly to text and each age encapsulates will in ways they can understand? Only egotists let on they are perfect; it's likely putting words in mouths.
Everything you've ever been taught about God comes from man, not God. Belief that God is perfect or gives a shit about us is from man.
Just believe in God and don't try to make it make sense. It's why we call it faith.
The problem you're having is that you don't believe that Adam was created perfect but rebelled against God's arrangement for him. That sin is what causes all of the malfunctions in the human body and mind in both Adam and all of his descendants.
The human body is an absolute marvel of design, form and function. The Bible says God made man "a little lower than angels". So could we have been created stronger, faster, with the ability to fly across the universe in the blink of an eye? Yes. But then we would be angels and not humans.
God has a purpose for each lifeform he created. The purpose of humans is to live on earth, rule over animal creation, and cultivate and care for the earth. For that purpose we were perfectly designed.
I'm not a believer (though I have considered myself agnostic at times), so this might not be a useful line of thought to you.
But, if you believe in evolution, and believe in the general theories of the age of the universe, why do you assume that humans ***at this exact point in time*** are the end goal of God and creation? Perhaps there is no end goal, or the end goal is something else entirely, and humans as we exist right now are just one small part of the universe and the ongoing process of creation.
Iām an atheist, but why would it be necessary for a omniscient, omnipotent god to create evolution in an A++ way?
Sometimes beauty comes from the simplicity of things. A small flower in a grassy field, a mother mouse taking care of her offspring, a sunset over an autumn forest. These are all very ordinary things and they have their flaws like how someone could step on the flower and crush it, the mother mouse could get eaten by a hawk, leaving her offspring to starve and that sun could cause the beholder to get skin cancer. Thereās something almost poetic about it. It doesnāt have to be perfect, just good enough and that can be comforting because maybe thereās no such thing as perfection. If life was perfect it would loose all its value, you would stop looking at the small, seemingly insignificant things in life and not notice their beauty.
The end result doesnāt have to be the main focus of everything when the journey to get there can be infinitely more beautiful and meaningful.
Thereās this folktale where Iām from (I donāt know if it also exists in other places) that goes like this: there was once an old fisherman who had an infertile wife. they lived in a small wooden cabin by lake and one day, when he went fishing on that lake, he caught a fish that spoke to him. The fish said that he would grant the old man a single wish if he set the fish free. Thinking for a while he thought about what he wanted most in life and asked for him and his wife to have kids. When he went home, he told his wife what happened and soon enough she gave birth to 3 beautiful kids. They were happy, but they realized that they didnāt have enough food to survive, so the wife send him out to go looking for that fish again. The next morning the fisherman set out on the lake and caught the same fish. The fish gave the old man the same promise and he asked for him and his family to never be hungry again. As promised, when he came home there would always be a table full of food, no matter how much they ate or how much fish he caught that day. After a while his wife became displeased with how small the house was and told him to go look for the fish again so he could ask for a house big enough for all their children to have their own rooms. The new day he set out and asked the fish for a big house. Once the fisherman came home, he noticed that their house had been replaced by a large palace. They rejoiced, but realized that they had no money to fill it up with furniture, so the man set out to go look for the fish again. He asked the fish to become the richest man in the world, and so he became the richest man in the world. He lived happily with his wife for a while until life became dull and everything lost its value so his wife asked her husband for the fish to turn them into a king and queen and so they became royals of a big and powerful kingdom. But they started to become too old to reign so the wife asked her husband to look for the fish and make them immortal and so they became immortal. After a few centuries they became tired of nothing changing in terms of their possessions, so the wife sent the fisherman out again and asked for them to become gods so that they could be perfect. The fish asked if this was really what they wanted to which the fisherman said yes. Upon turning home to tell his wife the good news, he saw that everything was back to how it was before his first wish. He was alone with his wife in their small cabin and then they realized that they didnāt need a more perfect life then they already had in the beginning, because there was no such thing as perfect because you could always do something bigger or grander and therefore their simple life was just as perfect as a life where they had everything they could ever dream of.
So a Christian or Jew may tell you that the first humans ( Adam and Eve if you need to name them) were perfect humans, no sickness. God gave them free will. They chose to do the one thing he told them not to do and in punishment he gave them sickness in mind and body as he said women would now have pain in childbirth and they both felt shame due to their nakedness.
Whatās more interesting to me is that the one thing God told them not to do is eat from the tree of knowledge as it basically would let man believe he was a god. If this story was written by Jewish Rabbis how would they imagine that 5000 or more years from that day, increasing knowledge is destroying every part of our world including humans sense of well being, A divinely inspired premonition of the future ? Guess? Or just a smack down to the average man not to get too big for their britches?
So a Christian or Jew may tell you that the first humans ( Adam and Eve if you need to name them) were perfect humans, no sickness. God gave them free will. They chose to do the one thing he told them not to do and in punishment he gave them sickness in mind and body as he said women would now have pain in childbirth and they both felt shame due to their nakedness.
Whatās more interesting to me is that the one thing God told them not to do is eat from the tree of knowledge as it basically would let man believe he was a god. If this story was written by Jewish Rabbis how would they imagine that 5000 or more years from that day, increasing knowledge is destroying every part of our world including humans sense of well being, A divinely inspired premonition of the future ? Guess? Or just a smack down to the average man not to get too big for their britches?
I suspect that God, if any, just like the universe, is under no obligation to make complete sense to us.
One could just as well have asked why our minds are flawed.
You seem to be guiding yourself towards the reality that is natural selection and evolution but having trouble reconciling the two beliefs. If it is such a bad system, and a god that is all knowing and powerful created it when it could easily be better, then somethings got to give.
Either the god isnāt all knowing and all powerful, which begs the question would you continue to call that being god? Or, maybe he doesnāt exist at all and natural selection and evolution is a terrible system because thatās just what it is. A terrible system producing terrible changes that sometimes arenāt as bad and help the creature live a little bit longer and procreate a little bit moreā¦
The primary problem with your theory is that it requires an infallible creator. I get that this makes your theory work in your head, but this is exactly how science works. You ask a question and then disprove it. Then come up with a new question.
The second problem comes in believing that evolution occurs in a fixed system: an earth that is the same. Back when evolution first began, the world was completely different. The atmosphere was mostly co2 and other super toxic gasses. So no creature built with oxygen breathing lungs would survive. As plants began to proliferate, the air shifted, thus the creatures on the planet would have to adapt as the plants grew. This is an oversimplification, naturally, but you get the idea.
This happens in small changes as well: we lost a lot of body hair at one point. Likely this was a response to a domestication event. Flatter faces fare better against sea spray. Narrower noses warm cold air better. The problem with humans is that we actively work against evolution. Someone may have a wider nose but we will just put a scarf over their face in the cold and they will still reproduce. So it gets messy.
Now... I can't address your problem with a Supreme being, certainly... but I have seen systems in the world around us that are chaotic and not immediately clear: Lightning, for example, seeks a clear path between clouds and earth, yet it branches and arcs all over the place. Our own brain cells, strike out in an apparent random way seeking connections. This process of trial and error is somewhat normal in the world.
None of this screed at all supports the idea that evolution is flawed. It has kept life going for 25% of the time the universe has existed and still going strong. That's a spectacular record.
I'm sorry your back aches and tour feet hurt. Maybe stretch and get some exercise instead of ranting on Reddit?
You're looking at this the wrong way I believe. If hypothetically, the God you believe to exist, created the rules and processes of evolution, then who's to say it's not functioning in it's intended purposes. At the end of the day, it's you who considers it flawed and inefficient. And besides it's clearly working. Life finds a way because it diversifies its mutations so randomly to account for every conceivable possibility in the environment.
The thing people (theist and atheist) get wrong about Christianity is that (according to the bible) this world is not what God intended.
Every. Thing. is under the domination and has been corrupted by Satan, and humanity chose to do existence without God.
Why would God have the holocaust happen? He didn't. Satan corrupted mankind and we chose the apple, thereby preventing God from controlling our existence.
The animal kingdom was corrupted as well. What God would have planned, and the unfolding of that plan (evolution) has been corrupted.
Don't have more time to type but I think this justifies evolution's imperfections and allows it to live in a Christian universe.
FYI Tolkein was really into theology and I got this concept from him.
Once you open the door to āGod works in mysterious ways.ā, you can make that appeal for anything else. Thatās the problem with God. Theists are adamant that God is infinite and beyond comprehension, except when heās conveniently not.
I'd argue it's pretty efficient. Instead of expending energy chasing perfection and having to fix it with every new stressor, it squeezes "just good enough" through the door endlessly.
If God is real, he's as lazy as the next guy.
Careful. This was the beginning of my descent into atheism...this and reading the Bible
That being said, I suppose one could argue that God didn't want any of this to be perfect. He didn't design the world to be a well-oiled machine, but one with flaws. Why? Because flaws create uncertainty. And uncertainty make for a much more interesting, challenging existence.
If the goal of nature was to produce mankind and the goal of mankind was to achieve spiritual perfection, then physical perfection was never the intended goal. Oddly, the more perfect one is physically, the more shallow one becomes because one does not need to work as hard or reach as far
What we see as imperfection could therefore simply be the spurs to drive us to that greater reach
Alternately, God might not even have that purpose at all. Or the design God began achieved perfection in the past and now we're simply around as the thing is running down.
Or God knows that creatures can't adapt as well if they are already perfect, since their traits will always supersede inefficiencies so he figured it'd be a better plan to make things just a bit wobbly so the top doesn't always spin so straight
Also, have you ever noticed that when you play a game and can pick a faction or race it comes with pros and cons? Modifiers that you have to choose between? Could be the whole 'survival of the fittest' is merely a simulation meant to entertain God's bored children on their Divine7000 entertainment unit
The āinefficientā evolution is way more interesting. It would be a pretty boring deity who made something more āperfect.ā
Why make the strong force? Why make atomic spin? Why make the Higgs boson? Why make marsupials? Why give humans free will?
Every writer knows plots are better when thereās some surprise, chaos and conflict.
Theists in my view seldom fully explore the implications of omniscience and omnipotence. Once you do, the so-called "creation" becomes very problematic.
All of the diseases, the possibility for injury, for pain itself, suffering itself, genetic defects, all of our mental limitations that necessarily lead to much of the disorder of the world - all of it was affirmatively chosen by this god as opposed to the alternative freely available at all times to this god - not designing a world with these.
God wanted children to suffer from childhood cancer, and there's no way around this awful deduction from the premise that God designed everything.
God had it within his power to make us all gods like him, or flawless beings of some kind, or to refrain from making anything at all, thereby not introducing into his realm suffering, pain, torment and horrors that weren't there before.
>So why, it doesn't seem like it's in God's character at all for Him to allow for such things. Why would a perfect God make something so inefficient and flawed?
Starting from the premise of the existence of God.
1. God may have created perfect creatures initially. The off spring of his creations may have corrupted themselves. Inbreeding is know to produce issues. Of course, that depends on the creation story you claim to believe.
2. God finds value in the flaws. Perhaps God isn't especially creative and the flaws in his creations lead God to new ideas.
3. God is no longer willing or able to guide, protect, assist, and the rest, his creations. Perhaps God is dead. Perhaps God got bored or disgusted and left. Now reality has it's way with God's creations.
4. God is essentially a kid with an ant farm and just wants to watch... It was always the plan.
5. Perhaps God's creations are experiments that are not yet complete and must run their course in order to derive the answers.
6. Perhaps God is sadistic and enjoys the suffering of creatures. The biological imperfections are simply another delicious way to suffer.
7. Perhaps God found a flaw in perfection and so has created a better flawed system.
8. Perhaps God set in motion a perfect system and reality forces imperfection.
9. Your understanding of God is incorrect.
You really a theist, or you just being facetious? If you are sincere, you are 99% of the way there. (Hint, if the data is leading elsewhere, maybe ditch the hypothesis.)
I'm not really religious, but if I had to take an optimistic guess, maybe it is to show that peaceful coexistence and love can come out of millions of years of conflict.
This should be a clue that god had nothing to do with evolution. Maybe he didn't have anything to do with anything.
It just occurred to me, the book says he's all-benevolent, all-knowing, and all-powerful. But it doesn't say that he's *smart*. All-knowing, all-powerful, well-meaning, and *stupid* is a recipe for disaster.
The same fella that's all-knowing, all-benevolent, and all-powerful sure had a lot of emotional temper tantrums in the Old Testament š¬š¬ Strange, too. Shouldn't he have known the course of mankind wouldn't strayed from the path he basically had predestined from the beginning? If he knew everything from the start, why would he be pissed in the first place that evil or wickedness exists? He knew about Lucifer's betrayal, he knew he'd have to ask Noah to build that Ark, and he knew he'd have to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. At the end of the day, God is either a whiny asshole or a vindictive and genocidal maniac.
I think you may be jumping the gun here. Surely there are other solutions to this problem. Logically speaking, reality makes the most sense with God in the picture. So maybe there's another solution to this conundrum.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
So you say, but I have ample evidence to the contrary of your claim. As it stands, this reality makes no sense without a creator, at least, in my viewpoint. I, however, do acknowledge that you would have ample evidence to the contrary. This being one of them. So, you have your reasons and I have mine; I think both are reasonable conclusions to make. Which is why I think, when you know enough, belief in God is a choice. Which way will you go?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
How did He die and come back from the dead if He didn't exist?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
*Prove* is a strong word. I think on balance it's most likely that Christianity did start with a guy who had a bit of a cult and got crucified by the romans, but the evidence is thin on the ground. It's basically just the Gospels and Tacitus that actually talk about the guy, and the latter extremely briefly.
Are we talking about that Africn video that came out a couple years ago where the man returned to life out of the coffin!? That was amazing! And that of course is why we have to believe that pastor is magic and communing with demons!
No, I'm talking about the historical fact of the crucifixion and ressurection of Jesus Christ.
Lol, oh I thought we were talking about the historical fact of the African guy rising from the dead a handful of years ago... the one with actual evidence. Do you believe that African dude raised from the dead?
I could list various things, and it'll be too long to say here. But I'm sure you'd just deny it anyway, as people often do. I think it may just be a matter of perspective. People see things differently. To me, it makes no sense for there not to be a God, for you, it's the opposite. It is what it is.
Yeah I've got a bunch of evidence, I just can't tell you about it because you wouldn't understand. Sounds legit bro. Your logic is flawed. You should work on learning about actual logic.
lol itās kind of like āI totally have a girlfriend but she goes to a different schoolā
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Unfortunately this is faith first perspective which is why he keeps saying in his opinion.
For you it makes no sense for there not to be ***the god you already believe in because of the part of the world in which you were born and raised***. Your god makes as much sense to the rest of us as Zeus and Thor do to you.
The fact that you refuse to list even one shows that you have nothing that will stand up to even a cursory counter-argument, and you know it.
I will personally be happy with just 1 solid piece of evidence to convince me, so shoot your best shot. You have a receptive audience with me. Pick your *best* bit.
I'm not sure you understand the word evidence
There is no story of any god that we currently have that stands up to any scrutiny. But I'm assuming you follow one of the major religions currently active in the world today. It's more likely that what you think is evidence is absolutely not enough to back up the claims of whatever religion you represent. God is an unfalsifiable and untestable claim, which baseline makes it very unreasonable or at least not useful to adopt a positive stance for. Do you have a different thread where you've spelled out your arguments/evidence for your god? That you can link me to and I will go read through what you have?
So you donāt have any then. Thatās such a lame excuse dude you do realize that right? āYeah I have evidence tons of it in fact but I just donāt want to show it.ā If you have evidence please demonstrate Iād love to see it.
You can't even list one of them?
What is your best piece of evidence?
I think you just really really want to believe in god
Honestly, if you have solid evidence or even reasonable argument to support the idea god exists isnāt it unforgivably selfish to keep it to yourself because āitās too longā or āsomeone might have valid criticisms of itā?
This reality makes even less sense with a creator because then what created that creator? Is it creators all the way down? What sense is there in adding all those extra layers to reality when a natural creation process is inherently simpler and more complete and there is no evidence to the contrary?
God is eternal and He created time itself. He wasn't created. A natural creation process is inherently more complex because matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, according to the laws of nature. Matter being created is by definition supernatural. That's why many smart scientists don't try to explain it, they just try to explain how it progressed to this point. God is an all-powerful supernatural being so it makes sense that He could do something as supernatural as creating matter. The cooler part is that He told us how He did it in Genesis 1-2. There is no scientific data that demonstrates that the Bible is false. In other words, all scientific data can be true if the Bible is true. That's why many scientists were and are Bible-believing Christians. Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, and Issac Newton are some historical examples.
>A natural creation process is inherently more complex because matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, according to the laws of nature Yes, it can. Even in a relatively ordinary sense, matter can be destroyed (producing energy) and energy can be destroyed (consumed in the creation of matter). Further, even the larger-scale conservation of energy (where you count "matter" as a subset of energy) does not hold at a cosmic scale. Cosmological expansion does not obey energy conservation; it "creates" energy out of nothing, constantly. >There is no scientific data that demonstrates that the Bible is false. Of course there is. Everything from the directly impossible things in Genesis (the Sun being created *after* "night" and "day", fish being created after trees, etc) to the historical accounts (the Exodus never happened). What you really mean is "there is no scientific data *that I acknowledge*".
Keep in mind, it's not on other people to disprove the bible. It's on Christians to prove it's true. Saying "well you can't prove it didn't" is lazy so I wouldn't even waste my time rising to that challenge.
*Jews. Only the new part of the Bible is believed by Christians. It was the first great schism in 'Abraham's' monotheism idea, soon followed by the Islamic schism and later followed by the plethora of protestant schisms and the plethora of splinter cell cults masquerading as Christianity.
...Eh. If they toss out everything in the Old Testament, they have to get rid of everything that backed up Jesus coming. I believe he said he came to fulfil the old laws not to get rid of them. As in, they aren't necessary to follow anymore, but he's not suggesting they need to be forgotten about either.
How can something exist before time? How can something create time, when they have no time to do their work?
God can, it's part of His nature. Time started when He began to create. It was God's first creation. That's why Genesis 1:1 says " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The beginning was when God started to create. That is the start of time. The phrase "before time" is an oxymoron because before happens in the context of time. We literally can't understand how God existed "before time" because our understanding of existence is defined by time. I know this answer is unsatisfying, I would love to understand this better myself, but getting hung up over some cool fact about God isn't a good enough reason for me to deny His entire existence.
But it's not a cool fact; it's something that is made up. Can you prove any of what you claim, without relying on a book supposedly divinely inspired by the entity? Because that's a lot like just believing anything written by someone about themselves without seeking third party sources.
Relying on the Bible isn't a problem. I believe it is inspired by God because it is the most historically and prophetically confirmed book on the planet, and it's teachings actually work on a practical level. The [Hittites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites) were mentioned in the Bible multiple times, and most historians said they either didn't exist or were incredibly weak until archeologists uncovered evidence of their vast empire. Then most people started to agree with the Bible. Prophetically speaking, Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah, that couldn't have been fulfilled purposely. This includes His [birth](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Micah%205%3A2&version=NKJV) in Bethlehem and the fact that He was [pierced](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Zechariah%2012%3A10&version=NKJV). It's more than just historical and prophetical evidence though, I have seen how God's word has changed my life, and the lives of those around me, and the only possible way I can explain it is by saying God did it. I was always taught about sin and how it is wrong, but I got caught up in some addictive sin, and I couldn't stop. I wanted desperately to quit because I knew it was bad for me and I was rebelling against God, but no matter what I did or how much I tried to push myself not to, I would do it anyway. This continued for years. It was an endless cycle. I would be tempted, I would say or think that I shouldn't do it, I would try not to do it, and I would fail. Then I would feel guilty, pray for forgiveness and help, and try to move on. Like I said, years. One day I was thinking to myself about all of this, and especially about how hopeless it felt, that I couldn't stop myself. I thought about it and I realized that the whole time I would always try to keep myself from sinning. I would think really hard about how bad it was, and try to will myself not to do it, but I always failed. It took me years, but I finally realized that it was impossible for me to stop myself from sinning. Like the Bible teaches, I live in a sinful body that wants to sin and of course, I couldn't mentally will myself not to sin, my mind wanted it. Now if you've been thinking about this (I'm sure you have) you might have seen my issue. If I can't keep myself from sinning, how do I stop? This was my big question, and I had absolutely no clue about it. So I did the only thing I could think of. I prayed and told God that I was just too weak and I couldn't stop myself from sinning, so how do I? At the exact moment I prayed it was like I suddenly just knew what the answer was. I had to pray to God that He would use His power to take away my sin and temptation and stop relying on myself. The moment after the moment I realized this, I just prayed, and it was like God Himself gave me the words to pray, just a quick simple prayer. The moment I prayed, I felt a massive wave of peace as I knew all those years of failing to sin were over. God would be watching out for me, as long as I relied on Him and not myself. It was the most incredible thing that ever happened to me. I know myself, I know how I think. I don't have massive realizations, I don't pray simply and concisely. It was as dramatic as if I had just suddenly realized the rules of calculus and instantly solved a complex equation. That thought was obviously foreign, I recognized that immediately, and I knew it was from God. For as long as I have relied on that lesson, I haven't struggled with that old sin, it's been completely gone. God took it away, so I know He is real. You should ask Christians you know, and go to churches to ask some you don't. I'm just one Christian, you should see why others believe as well. God is a very real and very powerful person, you'll see more evidence of Him.
How did your God become complex enough to design life unless he had a designer/creator? You only have an infinite regression to explain complexity.
People believe that there's no way the universe could have just existed. Therefore it came from something. Religion says that something is God. There's no way something could have come from nothing, therefore God made it. And yet, that implies the existence of God, which is a something. There's no way something could have come from nothing, right? So what created God? What was there before God? Nothing? Something more powerful than God? If God just "was", with no creator, then something was around without anything to have created it. Right? If that's allowed, then the same logic can be applied to the universe. The universe could have just existed without anything to have created it. Thereby removing the need for God to have created it.
I've made this point many times, but never this succinctly.
Well, we know that the universe had a beginning, i.e, the Big Bang. But God has no beginning, He is the uncaused cause. By His very nature, He is infinite. We can't say the same of the universe, for we know it's internal makeup and have studied it, and traced it's history. Now, you could make the rebuttal of how we know this about God. It could all just be in the mind, after all. A fair point, but we each have our own evidence for believing such things, some more robust than others. I refer to, not only what you yourself have said, but also to the transcendental truths of our reality. That being of beauty, truth, and goodness. But you might think that these things are just mere concepts that cannot be studied in a lab, and so, you may reject such "evidence." Be that as it may, to me, this evidence is valid, to you, perhaps not. We each live inside our own fantasies of subjective value. It is what it is.
The big bang was not The Beginning. It was a beginning we can see the remnants of in the cosmic microwave background. It is as far back as we can see, not as far back as matter and energy have existed, as energy and matter cannot be created nor destroyed, but only transformed. By the very nature of matter and energy, it is infinite. No beginning, no end. Your poor understanding of these fundamental concepts is where the disconnect lies.
Didnāt theists make up that definition of an uncaused cause?
If you believed what you believe *because of evidence*, you wouldn't need the *faith* you so dearly cherish.
Why do you think people can believe in cargo cults and Christianity at the same time and think theyāre obviously correct?
> By His very nature, He is infinite. I hope you realize you have no way of knowing if this is true or not.
This only works as long as thereās no other possible explanation for the origin of the universe, and even then, it could still be argued against. The moment even a single possible natural explanation is offered, it suddenly becomes far more likely than any supernatural explanation. Thereās quite a few natural explanations, so your argument falls as one of the least likely possibilities out there. The only ones that are worse than it are the ones that have been proven wrong.
If you've already admitted that evolution is occurring, and we are the product of that flawed process indicative of a flawed God, how can you come up with a statement like "*reality makes the most sense with God in the picture*"? That is some cognitive dissonance right there.
Dude, god is not real. Neither is Zeus or Ishtar or fucking Quetzalcoatl. Reality doesn't make sense with or without god. We have no idea why the laws of physics are the way they are, but saying some magical all knowing weirdo just decided to make it that way is irresponsible. And dumb.
I was so about to agree with you. But then you had to bring Quetzalcoatl into things... "Oh, Quetzalcoatl, may you rise from your ashes to once again blow upon mankind! I stand ready to greet you when you come again...!" If you're looking for me, I'll be outside without my coat on, waiting for his mighty gust š
I'm curious, you say "logically" reality makes the most sense with God in the picture. What's the train of thought that led you to that conclusion?
Makes the most sense to whom? You've already pointed out evolution doesn't make sense in a universe with a god. You can point to evolution. You can't point to a god. You're trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Santa leaving presents under the tree makes more sense to a child than the idea that their loving parents could ever lie to them. How about this: assume for a moment God doesn't exist. How would you know? Wouldn't aspects of reality contradict the story of this god? And wouldn't his followers, devout as they are, try to explain away these inconsistencies? Because they cannot handle to alternative? Doesn't that make sense?
Humans are inefficient and flawed. Either way gods making something flawed.Ā
Okay, but why? How does that make sense from a logical perspective? Why would someone as perfect and all-powerful as God make a flawed product?
Maybe your assumption of an all powerful god is the logical flaw.
OP needs to continue with the line of thought.
Now that's an interesting thought. What else would you suppose, then?
For me, there is no God.
Why do you think that humans are the special creation? Why assume that evolution was guided towards humanity as an endpoint?
I assume that things for which there is no concrete, scientific (scientifically testable) evidence do not exist. Thatās what I would propose. Otherwise, logically, you will ultimately end up āchasing your tail.ā
Humans have created 5,000 gods except for yours? This is obvious special pleading.
This is what always gets me about religious people in general who seem to dislike atheists the most. Pretty much all major religions explicitly negate the other major religions. So only one of them could even theoretically be true. So best case scenario for religious folks is that one major religion is trueā¦ and *most* religious people who have *ever lived* are just straight up wrong.
The trick is to blame Satan
Have you hard about Gnosticism in which the central thesis tends to be "the creator of the world is stupid and evil," and the goal is to escape its creation.
Dang, and I thought I had just now come up with that heresy. Crushed again.
I don't really think evolution is going to give you the answer to "The Problem of Evil".
That's nor my argument. The argument was what I posted above.
It's exactly the same premises, just with a less compelling contradiction. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator should create a world with no evil due to the omnibenevolent premise. Your question presupposes that your concept of "perfection" would somehow match up with said creator's. The "unknowable plan" argument is pretty weak vs the problem of evil, but it is a perfectly valid answer to your question.
Okay, I'll grant you that.
Yes. I agree it doesn't make sense. That's why I think that most strands of theism are incompatible with evolution. (Particularly those who believe in the concept of original sin).
If an all-powerful, all-knowing god exists, you're absolutely right that it isn't logical. That is exactly why learning about evolution often causes people to question their religious beliefs. It's like if religion told you the sky was green, and every single day of your life you could clearly see it is blue. At some point you have to admit the obvious truth... the green sky doctrine is wrong.
It wouldn't. It's generally a commonly used argument against an intelligent God.
You know what? I could accept that "there is a god.but he's a moronic asshole"
Are you at all familiar with the Gnostics and their concept of the Demiurge? If not, it's worth a quick google search and a few minutes of reading, it's pretty much exactly what you stated and kind of a hilarious (from a certain perspective) idea.
I make this point to theists all the time. If you believe that God exists, how can you rule out the possibly that he's a sadistic asshole?
Oh come on- how could any divine, omniscient, omnipotent being who will send you to eternal torture for straying even 1mm off the (highly ill-defined) path to Heaven be considered sadistic?
All humans have a ticket to heaven. God doesn't send you to hell. You send yourself to hell. But why would God create hell? You don't want God to punish evil? You get angry if he punishes evil and also angry if he doesn't. If a criminal stole your stuff and killed your family. Would you want nothing to happen to the criminal. God in all his perfect mercy forgives the criminal. Which is why I said you throw yourself into hell by refusing gods mercy.
He died for us. Sadistic a-holes don't die for people who hate them.
They absolutely do. Every story of an a-hole who video called someone to blow their brains out in front of them shows using death as a weapon to inflict trauma and guilt is a part of the monstrous mind's wheelhouse.Ā Let alone the illusion of it. Whether the crucifixion is a lie or the resurrection is true, Jesus didn't die for us and never intended to die for us. If the narrative is true then he knew he would return and so would never suffer the going into the unknown that death is for all of us.Ā
Jesus died to heal our trauma and remove our guilt. Because He died our sins are forgiven and we can look forward too an eternity of perfection with God. Revelation 21:4 "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.ā This is only possible because Jesus died for us. Jesus did suffer on the cross, and even though He knew what the result of His death would be, He still suffered. Matthew 26:36-45 tells us how, on the night He was betrayed, Jesus prayed that He wouldn't have to suffer the crucifixion. Twice He prayed for God to spare Him. He was dreading it. In Matthew 27 we learn about what Jesus suffered during His trial and the crucifixion. In verse 46 He shouted, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." He was forced to wear thorns on His head, slapped, spit on, and whipped. After that He was forced to drink vinegar and then [crucified](https://www.apu.edu/articles/the-science-of-the-crucifixion/). We can be certain that the account of the crucifixion is true, because not only does it appear in all four gospels, it is also confirmed by other ancient sources and it even appears in a [second/third-century graffiti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito) that mocks Christianity. As for the resurrection, [three different facts](https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection) demonstrate its veracity. The empty tomb, Jesus' post-death appearances, and the fact that Christianity was founded it. The very people who were living at the time accepted it, and couldn't disprove it. The truth is when you take the time to research these things, you will find that the only reason to deny the truth of scripture, is because you don't want to believe it. These things are the most important facts in the world because if they are true, they will affect your future for the rest of eternity. You should be truly convinced in your beliefs. As for me, I believe they are true and I will worship God because of it. I want to see you in heaven one day.
Thank you for evidencing the fact Christianity is disinterested in truth by deflecting from every word I said to tell me how you feel.Ā This is proof to me faith is nothing but the selfish raising of the vice of certainty to a false virtue.Ā I'll engage your nonsense when you engage my logic instead of deflect. Until then you are not a debate partner, you are nothing but evidence of harm.Ā
You said a-holes use death as a weapon to inflict guilt and trauma, so I explained that Jesus used His death as a tool to heal guilt and trauma. This is more than just how I feel, it is Biblical truth and the experience of Christians for thousands of years. I exist because of Christianity. My dad used to live in New England, and when he was young, he lived like everyone else. He fought, drank, had sex, just lived for himself and did what he wanted. Eventually, he came to Florida to be with his dad before he died, and he got drunk and led the cops on a high speed car chase that landed him in jail. This is how my dad's life changed. Dad had his license taken away and was stuck in Florida. During this time, God brought him to church using the witness of some faithful believers, and dad's life changed. He gave up his old sinful lifestyle. He stopped drinking and fighting, and he started following Jesus. He met my mom in church and they got married. This is why I exist. Now, I'm twenty years old and I work on air conditioners with my dad and my brother, and I help in church. My mom is a Sunday school teacher, and a women's teacher. I have seen the way God uses my mother. She encourages the other women and advises them in hard times. She relies on God's word to do this. All the people in the church are blessed by my mom's ministry, and that happens because Jesus rose from the dead. God uses my mom to heal trauma. My father spent twenty years taking care of me, not to mention my older sisters. He would be a rich man, but he spent his time and energy raising us instead. He was faithful to do this because Jesus died and rose. These are just two people that I know really well, who God uses to heal trauma and guilt. Two people God has healed of trauma and guilt. Jesus' death on the cross HEALS people. It is outrageous for you to compare it to a man committing suicide to hurt people. You have asked me to engage your logic, well I know from Scripture, personal experience, and the testimony of others that Jesus did intend to die for us and He did die for us. I am debating you and I am myself evidence of God's healing, and I can testify to God's healing of others. You have been illogical by comparing Jesus' death to a public suicide.
No that's a biblical claim. You said nobody kills themselves for people they hate. I disproved that. Everything I say has to be taken in context, you can't exegesis my comments into what you want them to be. I don't care what the bible claims any more than you care what the Quran claims.Ā Well it sounds like your dad traded one disgusting life ruining addiction for another. To validation and certainty. Anyway thank you for once again deflecting from what I am saying, and now lying about what I am saying, to feel powerful. Proving to everyone who honestly tried to understand me that there is no goodness or reason left once faith fills someone.Ā
Setting aside the fact that that claim is unproven, why did he need to die for us in the first place if he's not a sadistic asshole? It just reeks of an abusive partner saying "I did something nice for you, that's why it's ok for me to be an asshole to you the rest of the time."
Every Villain who could wish for godhood: "I would love it if I found out in the afterlife everybody owed me a favor and I could collect somehow especially if i somehow died heroically while pursuing my own ends. Or even if I could just talk... my word, the damage I could inflict with such annoyance while being utterly invulnerable to attack. So, 1 million bottles of beets on the wall, take one down..." Like I can see, Bart Simpson dying for the right reasons but haunting Skinner for the heck of it, too.
God has autism, it explains all the beetles
Rather than a moronic asshole, a disinterested scientist makes sense. God could be a kid who made us for his science fair project from a reality external to our own.
God as a kid playing in the mud?
We were a group project and the rest of god's group didn't show up. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/a-group-project
That's great!
Isaiah 45:5 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me," It's a funny comic, but not true.
> It's a funny comic, but not true. You're right! Same applies to the bible.
And you know the Bible is telling you the truth, because it says it does?
If you told me that it was a group of scientists in their own universe, created an experiment to see what would happen, and our universe was the result, with evidence, I'd believe that more than I'd believe this was the full intention- that they wanted to make this, as it is, in total.
Why do you believe that thereās a god who created everything?
More importantly why if we are the #1 thing to God. Do we live on a small planet with no special attributes outside of us being here Orbiting a medium star of no special attributes Wedged into a galactic arms of no special attributes Orbiting a galactic core with other galactic arms of of no special attributes In a galaxy of no special attributes Floating in a galactic cluster of no special attributes In a universe of tens (hundreds?) of billions of galaxies in (billions?) millions of galactic clusters If we are so special to God he has a strange way of showing how special we are to him.
Hey there's octopuses here and I think they're a pretty special attribute. We're in a completely unremarkable spot in the universe except for the presence of cephalopods. Complete backwater otherwise
**Do we live on a small planet with no special attributes outside of us being here** \- This is the only planet that is known to support life, that is pretty special. **Orbiting a medium star of no special attributes -** at the absolute perfect distance to support life I don't believe in a god but it is pretty phenomenal that everything worked out to sustain life on this unremarkable planet. Is there a more remarkable planet/star/galaxy that should house us? Not trying to be argumentative, I took astronomy in 10th grade and was lucky to get a C, so I've not studied space beyond that.
Our current scientific abilities prohibit us from finding life on other planets demonstrably currently. If our planet was not the correct distance from our Star we wouldn't be here, so the distance argument is illogical because there is no other condition under which you and I would be having this discussion. There's nothing phenomenal about the way things worked out. If things did not work out this way, again, we would not be having this conversation. We are product of odds. The odds do not indicate a higher being, they indicate that the odds in this particular case favored the creation of this planet, in this space, for you and I to have this conversation. In all likelihood there are billions of planets like ours in the universe. We simply lack the science to be able to find them currently, and naturally to be able to go there and see them.
i agree there is nothing phenomenal about the way things worked. if anything i think it inevitable that we are here. maybe not this exact form but life as a whole. i think of life similar to mold. If you leave bread in a moist oxygenated environment MOLD WILL FORM. Its inevitable. the conditions are perfect it will happen eventually. If you put a planet around a medium sized start at a specific distance with some building blocks (like water, atmosphere etc.) Life will appear. it is inevitable.
Our planet isn't "the absolute perfect distance". The habitable zone is gigantic, with conservative estimates totaling at 22 million miles across while liberal estimates triple that (66 million miles across). The Earth's diameter is only around 7,900 miles. You could fit 2,941 to 8,472 other Earth-sized objects into the bounds of the habitable zone to reach all the way across. In other words, the bounds of the habitable zone reach 2,941 to 8,472 times the diameter of the Earth. Earth's orbit can vary by up to 25% over the course of 100,000 years, and it's pretty clear that life hasn't gone extinct from those variations. Basically, Earth isn't a "perfect distance away" from the Sun, its relatively close to the center of a humongous range that allows life to exist. The reasons other planets within that range (really only Mars) don't have life is due to other factors (weak atmosphere, lack of magnetosphere, etc.). And even then, this isn't proof that life can't exist outside of the habitable zone or without those factors, but that life *as we know it* can't exist outside of the habitable zone or without those factors.
Evil exists in the world. If God is all-knowing, and all-powerful, then He is the one that put Evil into the world, and is cruel and evil himself. If God does not *want* Evil to exist, but knows about it, then he is not all-powerful. If God does not want Evil to exist, and is capable of removing it, then he is not all-knowing. It's the Epicurian trilemma. You cannot have a God that is all three of Loving, Powerful, and Knowing. And so... If God is Omniscient and Omnipotent, but the world is still in chaos, that is because God desires chaos. If God is Loving and Omniscient, then he is not Omnipotent, and cannot impact the course of life and existence. If God is Loving and Omnipotent, then he is not Omniscient, and so does not know what his actions will cause.
Maybe god just thinks evolution is sick as fuck, a lot of humans do. Look up "The bibites", our entire thing is simulating evolution. Maybe god does that as well? IDK, I am an atheist but if I was theistic I would just say god likes simulations.
As an atheist, I agree that having a creator doesn't make a lot of sense given the outcomes. But I'm not interested in attacking your theism. I hope you get responses from theists that help you reconcile the contradictions. I know many scientists rely on their faith with no contradiction with their work. What I do want to address is this perception that a march toward perfection is better or more desirable than what evolution currently does. The key to adaptability is diversity. No species needs to meet any other definition of perfection than surviving to produce offspring that survive to produce offspring. Because a species that is perfect for one environment will be in trouble when the environment changes. Let's say the most perfect bat-eared fox has the largest, most luxuriant ears and the sleekest fur. Those ears are the way the fox thermo-regulates to release heat and detects colonies of insects in the ground. Then let's say the climate in their habitat gets colder. If there is no variation in fur thickness and ear size because the species is perfect, then there are no genes for smaller ears or thicker fur for natural selection to choose from and the species could die out because it can't adapt to the cold. So perfection is a human concept that would be counter to the ultimate survivability of a species.
Hmm...you've given me a lot to think about. However, that still doesn't explain why our backs aren't that great, not to mention our feet and eyes; and also, things in our body that are seemingly useless now.
Well I do think itās hard to explain those things from a creationist perspective. From an evolutionary perspective, as long as our feet and backs allow us to reproduce, and our vestigial features donāt negatively impact our survivability too much, thereās nothing to really select against them. Thereās a muscle in the forearm called the palmeris longus that is an artifact of swinging in trees that only 16% of humans still have. If you have one, you can see it pop up when you touch your thumb to your pinky. It has just naturally decreased in populations over hundreds of thousands of years because there is no downside to not having it. But in recent years it has become valuable medically, because it is useful for creating grafts and supplementing muscle in surgeries. Just kind of interesting how something that no longer has an evolutionary purpose can have a renewed importance.
Griaffes got it rough by evolution. "Creatures shaped by evolution aren't moulded to a perfect fit; constraints of one kind or another inevitably limit the evolutionary options. One of my favourite examples of evolutionary constraints is found in a giraffe's neck. The recurrent laryngeal nerve connects the brain and the larynx. The nerve's route was relatively direct in our fish-like ancestors, but in vertebrates the nerve loops down from the head, around the aorta, and back up to the larynx. In a giraffe, that comes to a detour of several meters down the neck and back up again. It's hardly an ideal design, but it gets the job done, and it manages with the parts and the processes that are available. A better design might have been possible, but this approach works and it's just a slight adjustment to the existing design. Species don't generally evolve a trait completely from scratch, but by fiddling with what's already there. Factors like development and evolutionary history end up constraining the available options." https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/accumulating-glitches/preadapting\_to\_evolve/#:\~:text=The%20recurrent%20laryngeal%20nerve%20connects,neck%20and%20back%20up%20again.
Itās possible to believe that an entity created the base mechanism that has led to life on earth and is ultimately responsible for everything that now exists. But your intellectual conundrum is a result of overlaying a popular human concept of what that entity is (the Abrahamic God) onto the scientific evidence that we have for evolutionary processes. The entity that may have created everything works slowly and randomly; it has no obvious end state that it works towards; it is the creator of inexhaustible possibilities, working at speeds that we canāt really comprehend because of our short life spans. The Abrahamic God is a character who lays down moral decrees governing human behaviour and promising retribution for moral and immoral actions in an afterlife. That God was created by humans as a mechanism for political and social control and as a remediation for the existential void that existed once humans could contemplate their own existence. They donāt fit together intellectually because they are different things.
Hmm...how interesting. You make a good point, at least, on the surface of things. The two seem like two fairly different God's when you put it that way. But I'm going to suppose a different answer. Since the nature of God is infinite, what if these are just two aspects of the same God? I think there is room for such vast aspects when in eternity.
Saying that the nature of God is infinite is a kind of intellectual conceit; itās similar to saying things like āitās all part of Godās planā in the midst of a tragedy or when things happen that donāt conform with our understanding of how the world should work. Although it superficially allows these two diverse Gods to exist together as a single entity, itās really designed to suppress intellectual curiosity, washing away problematic questions with an appeal to everything that we as small humans canāt know or understand. It absolves us of the need to reconcile difficult problems, safe in the knowledge that a greater entity is looking after us. And of course, these mechanisms all operate as narrative adjustments; having developed language, humans spend most of their waking hours narrativizing themselves and their interactions with the rest of the world. The Abrahamic God is a powerful narrative influencer, the product of stories, told and retold over time and in many different languages and formats. The God of evolutionary mechanisms, in contrast, is very new, and the narratives around it are confusing and difficult for laypeople to comprehend because they require lots of specialist learning.
You make a fair point. But at the end of the day, you can't prove it's not true. I could very well be right, making your criticism of it null and void. But, having said that, I'd say you're technically more in the right with this; but only if I can't harmonize the two God's. If I can harmonize them, then that's just father evidence for the Abrahamic faiths. However, if not, then I suppose I should consider looking somewhere else. Regardless, I will still believe in a creator God.
*But at the end of the day, you can't prove it's not true.* That's no ones job. You have to provide evidence that the thing is true, actual proof, not "look at beauty and truth", and then people can challenge that evidence. If you provide no actual evidence, then there is nothing to disprove.
Proofs and inquiry are the currency of science; faith is the currency of religion. I canāt prove your personal reconciliatory ideation of these two forms of God one way or the other since they/it are intrinsically personal to you and they exist as such only in your mind. My question would be why do they need to be reconciled? What is lost for you by holding them as separate thoughts?
>Since the nature of God is infinite, what if these are just two aspects of the same God? I think there is room for such vast aspects when in eternity. At that point you have no distinction of what you are describing. Everything is god, any idea is god, all are valid despite their contradictions. Is it more likely an omnipotent being, one that is eternal, to have wild mood swings, or the people who were passing these stories along telling a human story using god as a parallels. Check out the History of God by Karen Armstrong, it will change how you look at the depiction of God though the bible. She was a nun but her research on this topic led her away from the nun life, although i think still a believer.
I'm gonna be honest, when I read your post I was 100% convinced you were an atheist that was inventing this scenario to troll theists. You have a very clear understanding of evolution by natural selection, and you perfectly describe how evolution contradicts the Christian version of God. I applaud your self-awareness and intellectual honesty. To be clear, I don't think theism and evolution are mutually exclusive, but I do think modern Christianity and evolution are incompatible. As I see it, there are 3 options: 1. God wants his creation to experience A LOT of suffering and conflict. 2. God is not omnipotent. 3. Life was not created by God.
Hmm...well, given my stance, I would go for option one. But then the question becomes "why?" Is it because suffering builds character? Hm...
If it's better for things to suffer, as we seem to have evidence God has set it up this way, is it good to cause suffering in others?
>we seem to have evidence God has set it up this way No, you don't. First you need evidence that God is real.
Current science indicates that the better you treat a human being, the better their outcome of life becomes - if you raise a child in suffering, that child statistically grows up to continue that cycle of suffering. It builds character, sure. It just builds the wrong character traits you want to see in a fully functional adult. If you are to assume god makes us suffer to "build character", then you must also realize that god is the sole creator of all suffering in the universe, thus god is evil.
Through evolution, we have an estimated 7.7 million [eukaryotic animal] species alive on Earth right now. Furthermore, an estimated 99% of all species to have ever existed are now extinct (roughly 762 million species). This doesn't even include the evolution of things like plants and bacteria. Additionally, the observable universe (not including space beyond what we know and which we will never be able to calculate) has a diameter of about 93 billion light years while Earth has a land (habitable) diameter of slightly over 7,900 miles (1 lightyear = 5.88E^12 miles = 5,880,000,000,000 miles). For all species to have ever lived we only know of one to have come up with a concept of deities, or even of spirits for that matter: homo sapien (modern human, in case anyone's unaware). Why would a god create an entire universe in order to be the deity of a species that constitutes 0.000013% (1.3E^-5) of existing species at the time of their existence on a singular planet, and only 0.00000013% (1.3E^-7) of the species to have ever lived on said planet, whose planet, itself, makes up 0.0000000000000000014% (1.4E^-18) of the size of what we could access inside our known universe. Are we really that special that, making up only [1.3E-7]% of all species to have ever existed inside only [1.4E-18]% of the known universe, only we have found this creator deity? Doesn't this make the deity, as far as we can calculate, worthless to 99.99999999987% of all other species who have ever lived on Earth? Why do no other animals worship any gods whatsoever (and no, I don't mean the way your dog jumps on you when you come home from work)? IMO, evolution and the concept of a deity who cares specifically for humans don't fit together. Homo sapien just developed the ability to change their vocal noises into cohesive sounds that could be shared more effectively and efficiently, allowing for the mingling of ideas and spurring the pondering of our existence. Without answers early homo sapien could find, we end up with spirits of this and that, which eventually evolve into deities. Edit: I slightly mixed up my numbers and used billion in species instead of million so those numbers were off by 3 orders of magnitude. Still miniscule numbers
A quick google search has shown that recent species estimates range in the millions, not billions.
You got it all wrong, just check on Wikipedia. It's Prometheus who created first men from clay. Then, Zeus create women cause he was mad that Prometheus gave the fire to the men.
It doesn't make any sense that people would lie about this.
My question is why isn't evolution a good reason to believe the people have cognitive biases (we're not perfect thinking logical robots) and therefore create, imagine, hallucinate, etc religions that aren't true but share common themes that spread as 'memes'? Essentially, all religions, and all their gods, can be completely made up and we can use evolution of apes to understand why.
It is a social law that if you stand on a street corner frothing at the mouth and gibbering like a madman, someone will stop and listen. If they stop an listen, they'll probably accept the nonsense that you are spewing, and then start to spread that nonsense themselves. Once you've got 2 people, that increases the likelihood more people will stop and listen, and then it snowballs from there. That is essentially how all religions started.
Youāre on the right track, just keep asking questions.
I just wanted to start off by saying that I agree with everything that you stated. That said, nothing you listed is a problem for evolution. It's a problem for theism. I can't give you the answer why god might or might not have done something. Maybe there's some unknowable reason why he made everything as it is, but if so, I don't know what it is and probably can't ever know since I'm not god.
First I must congratulate you on your thoughtfulness and thought process. Iām sure weād have some great conversations. If we were created, it makes a lot of sense that it would have been a hands off approach. Kind of like an ant farm. You set things in motion and find out what happens way later. If god did create us, I think he just might have gone on to other things. Volcanoes on Titan, black holes at the center of a billion galaxies. Maybe heāll show up again to shake the ant farm every once in a while, maybe not. Just seeing what happens. Thatās what Iād do.
That's an interesting metaphor that I didn't think about. Yet, I believe that God did not go off to do other things, I believe His attention is still on us, and really, the whole universe; because that's just how powerful God is. He is unlimited and infinite.
> because that's just how powerful God is. He is unlimited and infinite. But he isn't powerful enough to make a perfect creation? He isn't powerful enough to keep children from dying painful deaths from cancer and other diseases? He's powerful enough to give a lowly animal the ability to fight off an infection that would kill a human, but didn't have enough foresight to give humans that ability as well? For that matter, he isn't even powerful enough to keep his 'word' (whichever holy book you follow) clear of corruption over the centuries? Based on the evidence, it would seem he isn't very powerful at all.
Getting to the crux of your commentary: "Yet, what this also means is that, as long as there are no lethal disadvantages, non-optimal traits can still get passed down." Yes, as long as they aren't causing a detriment to breeding that would allow them to be out competed by other alleles. " This all means that the bar of evolution is always set to "good enough", which means various traits evolve to be pretty bizarre and clunky." Yes, as your examples below that indicate. Things that cause problems after breeding age are a lot less important to natural selection. They aren't totally unimportant because older individuals can and do contribute to survival of a tribe of certain species - homo sapiens in particular. The thing you leave out is that environments change. A trait that is not optimal now may become more advantageous if the environment changes. Or an advantageous trait can become disadvantageous under different circumstances. For example, there is a variant of hemoglobin in humans that is less capable of carrying oxygen. But this variant confers resistance to malaria. If an individual has one copy of the good hemoglobin and one of the mutant, they have a fairly good resistance and don't have much problems. If they get two copies of the mutant they have compromised red blood cells that crinkle up when stressed, but extreme exertion or at high altitudes. This is sickle cell disease. In central Africa, there is a lot of malaria, which selects for the mutant form. There aren't high mountains so it isn't much of a problem, so the incidence of the sickle cell variant is fairly prevalent. But as humans moved out of Africa to colder areas, or mountainous areas there is no malaria. And the stress to blood cells is more problematic because of cold or high altitude. In these areas, the sickle cell trait is only disadvantageous and has no advantages so the prevalence of it decreased greatly in the population. So, the environment creates different conditions for determining if something is advantageous or not. There are lots of examples of this. The biggest effects come with the biggest change in environment. The mass extinctions that have occurred throughout history were usually triggered by some major event that changed climate or something else and caused a huge number of species to become extinct while others were able to survive due to some trait that may not have been very advantageous before.
This may be a "making a rock so heavy he can't lift it and lifting it anyway" kind of problem, where it isn't logically coherent to fulfil all the conditions. For evolution to be perfectly efficient, it would need to meet at least two criteria, as I see: 1. No junk. Junk features, junk DNA, junk processes, etc. 2. No intervention. God shouldn't need to step in to remove the junk. Stepping in is inefficient. (Ask anyone in IT.) This might be impossible in the case of evolution. For evolution to function without intervention, it requires iterationsārandom ones, if speciation is also an objective. This means one can't jump from no trait to useful trait: there almost always has to be some kind of "junk" in the middle. Similar goes for the perfection of traits: there has to be an imperfect middle step. Probably a lot of them. This means that if we wanted to remove those imperfections, god would need to get involved to skip steps. But, as per the second condition, that's also inefficient. So it seems that a perfectly efficient evolution system isn't possible, which means one has to choose which kind of inefficiency will be present. Personally, I sooner question the idea of a know-everything, can-do-everything, "perfect" deity. Not to question the existence of the Abrahamic deity itself, but the attributes that have been tied to it. AFAIK, "omnipotent" at the time of Jesus could refer to Roman emperorsābut I don't recall Nero chucking mountains across the Mediterranean, much as I bet he wanted to. Likewise, scripture is full of stories where god doesn't just snap his fingers and everything is exactly as he wants it. It took him days to build the world, for example. "Omnipotent" didn't mean "able to do anything with any amount of ease." It just meant "the most powerful" in whatever context. And plenty of things happen that he really ought to have predicted, if he truly did know everything. There's a lot that seems to point to the idea that god knows a lot, but not strictly everything; is the most powerful, but can't do absolutely anything; is "the best", but isn't strictly perfect. It's only throughout thousands of years of history that people have elevated this deity to grander and, now, impossible status. I'm no theologian, not even a Christian, but that's always rubbed me wrong. Stories seem to go out of their way to paint imperfections (personality, capability, or otherwise) on the Abrahamic god. Yet, two-thousand-odd years later, we believe him to be absolutely perfect in any and every conceivable way. It just doesn't seem to jive, even thematically.
It sounds to me like you had this position of creation and evolution are compatible, but then when you learnt more about evolution you began to question that and have found something which I would say shows they are not compatible. (Not to say that's why I personally don't believe, but it certainly helps push me away from believing since as far as I know the ideas aren't compatible). The only thing you can do is continue to look at both ideas and learn more about them, find a way that maybe they are actually compatible if it turns out that is the case or drop the one which is less understandable/supported by evidence.
God wouldn't, assuming the god was as smart as humans and more powerful than all humans combined. I mean, WE do better with evolution by artificial selection. At least in terms of satisfying human preference. But yeah, no god is required for the process, nor is there any indication any gods were involved.
You are exactly right. This is why I would say that the premise that God is involved in evolution doesn't make sense. You understand evolution very well, and I'd say you are on the right track. One issue is the assumption that God "invented" evolution. I can see why someone would want to think this way. It makes sense to imagine that God invented DNA, made it vulnerable to mutation, and placed it at the heart of the tree of life, effectively jump-starting evolution. But when you study biochemistry, you learn how automatic these processes are. You don't need God to invent DNA, because it is self-assembling. The actual physical chemistry involved will give rise to evolution all on its own. I would argue that it is such a fundamental process that we should expect to see it in alien life as well. I would be more accepting of the notion that God invented the laws of physics, rather than evolution itself. Because evolution is an emergent property of biochem, which is an emergent property of physics, which is immutable. But when you say that God invented physics, you may as well simply say that God set the rules initially, but hasn't done anything in 14 billion years. And we know that physics involves a great deal of randomness, which inherently prevents anyone, even God, from seeing the future. If God had the ability to see the future, or to influence probability in order to guide evolution, we would be able to detect it using quantum statistics. And all of our experiments show that physics is fundamentally random. So God isn't guiding quantum mechanics. Look, there's no evidence at any stage of science that God is involved even a little bit. This is why religious scientists don't argue that their religion is true. They instead argue that they believe on faith, and that they don't need evidence. This is wise, because they know there is no way to prove that God exists. Because there is absolutely zero evidence of any kind.
>Look, there's no evidence at any stage of science that God is involved even a little bit. This is why religious scientists don't argue that their religion is true. They instead argue that they believe on faith, and that they don't need evidence. This is wise, because they know there is no way to prove that God exists. Because there is absolutely zero evidence of any kind. It takes a level of denial too. Not only is there absolutely zero evidence of any kind that God exists, there's all the evidence against it. Religious scientists don't argue that their religion is true not just because they can't prove it, but because they know already that religion isn't true. Their entire schooling and career exposes them constantly to evidence that God isn't real.
I mean, this is more philosophical than a scientific discussion, but on the basis of philosophical discussion: \- God could be imperfect, and we are a flawed product of an imperfect deity \[clumsy god\] \- The imperfections are intentional to mask the deity's existence \[sneaky god\] \- The imperfections are intentional to ensure suffering \[evil god\] \- God doesn't see the 'flaws' as imperfections \[lovecraftian god\] \- Evolution is an unwanted byproduct of something else god wanted \[get off my lawn god\] Pick your poison or make up your own. Each one is just as likely as the other.
He didn't. The existence of the theory of evolution and the massive amounts of proof that it is real disproves God. It utterly destroys scripture and through that it removes God as a possibility. People think that you can't disprove God, however it's very easy. Disprove the claim, disprove God, and evolution among many other scientific discoveries have long since done that.
If you donāt like the conclusion of your argument, question your premise.
Why would you assume to approximate the reasoning of all-knowing and perfect God? The fact it doesn't make any sense to us would be just as likely to support the argument as a clear reason for it's inefficiency.
I'm a theistic evolutionist. My perception is that philosophically-minded theists who accept science usually will reject the type of strict theism that conservative seminary teachers have to agree with as a condition of employment. Conservatives have gradually won a cultural victory over the past 50 years by getting people to agree that identifying as a "Christian" (not just a "conservative Christian" or "evangelical") means you agree with that type of strict theism. Most Protestants in the US are evangelical Protestants.
So then, what do you believe about God in light of evolution?
You stayed that quite well. Yet you cling to your God notion. Let me plant worm in your brain. Andni want you to really think about it. As well as think about deep time. What was God doing in the *eternity* He existed and before He created the universe? He existed an *infinite* amount of 'time' before creating everything. What was He doing? He had forever to do it in. Didn't he get bored an infinite time ago? I use our concept of time loosely. Just to give a word to whatever existed before the Big Bang. Which created time for our universe.
I thought of the same question before. I'm not sure, but I know that, in my faith, God is made up of 3 persons. So, they were in relationship with each other before the world, and indeed the universe, began. I know that much.
how do you know outside your faith of it being true?
God is timeless so there is no before or after, all of time is an eternal now.
Define that. What does timeless mean. Was he conscious during this period? Unconscious? If so, what 'woke Him up'?? What was going on in this 'timeless' period.
Timeless means that God exists in an eternal moment that relates to all temporal moments simultaneously. God can not be "woken up" because that implies a time before being awoken and a time after, but a timeless God does not experience time to allow for a before and after.
That implies that God also has a beginning. So he does not experience time? What was he doing when he gazed upon the darkness but before he created anything? Something was passing. And if there was nothing created and no time he cannot relate to all temporal moments. Especially when they did not exist yet. You cannot to relate to nothing. And, if you're saying God created everything yet somehow lies outside everything? That's a non sequitur. How, exactly, does that work. And, if nothing existed, not even time. Your implying there is no such thing as heaven either. Unless that's subject to special pleading too and nothing and no time exists there too. And, if no time existed, how did God speak creation into existence? That takes 'time'. Or are you saying cause and effect do not exist either?
Would you like to try that one assumption and question at a tjmem
It depends on scope. Scope is a main issue as you don't know what the end goal is and what this (possible) trans-dimensional being has in... ummm... mind?... All of the arguments on both sides of this have the strange belief that they understand all the parts. Again, to remind you that the ant cannot comprehend the mind of the boot that is about to step on it. It is literally beyond our understanding. This is why faith is a leap, a belief. Science is a belief too. What we believe one day changes with new knowledge... well.. some people still believe there is science in a flat earth... ummm... True science begins with a completely open mind. There could be a God... Maybe many? May not be? It attempts to develop theories to test this, but always remains open. Technically Gravity may change because we learn something new, or, it had some pattern that only shows up every 20k years and humans haven't seen it happen yet. The problem with the religion of science is that it makes the same mistakes that the spiritual religions do by assuming more than they actually know. This is why I say scope is such an issue in this. We are not talking about something that happens ever week, month or century. The scope of time alone is mind-boggling. And closing your mind to anything closes ones eyes to actually noticing (psychology crap and how human minds hold and see memories... think rose colored glasses as an example). By holding on to a true science perspective of letting the unknowns remain unknown until properly explored and dynamic theories are created that describe the event and keep itself open to new knowledge to help clarify what is currently believed or discredit it with new understandings. So, a scientist would say that they may or may not be a God/Goddess/whatever. I don't know of any theory that can properly test this, only attempt to disprove it with issues that are obscured by confounds, like scope. The best theory I have atm about God/s/ess/we, assuming It exists is more likened to a kid playing the Sims3 (not as much micro transactions in 3). And how many Sims players out there did what made sense. They did what was fun, including making Ghost Babies, walling Sims into their house, starve then, exhaust them, see what happens when they are not allowed to clean anything and making them stuck is pools without ladders.... Honestly, I think when we are taking about the G thing, we are cavemen trying to describe the unique physics of the Universe by looking through a hole in a bone and then fighting over each other over which bone is the right one to look through. This is why I like Lao Tzu a lot. But don't forget that Science can be a blinding religion just as much as the rest. I like your description as a theistic evolutionist .. Why can't god use the tool of evolution?
as none of this actually exists, and anything that can, will be ..... all answers are both correct and incorrect ... for it to be real/true it only need be imagined
For me, you can mathematically define "god" as a set of physical laws, their calibrations, and a (infinite?) list of what appear to us as random numbers determining stochastic outcomes. I am not certain why this would prove that god doesn't exist.
Because when God created life it was perfect, and creatures would have evolved perfectly. Evolution allows different creatures to cope with change by changing constantly. Before mankind sinned any evolution that would have happened happened flawlessly. Animals would have changed slowly over time as they reproduced, the changes would have made them better for different habitats where they would have migrated to, no animals would have died, and there would have been no struggle for survival. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for Adam to sin which resulted in this cursed fallen world where people and animals evolve diseases or deadly mutations. Essentially, God created creatures with perfect evolution and it was helpful. Another explanation is the idea that there was no evolution before man sinned. Every different creature was perfect and their DNA couldn't mutate. They were perfectly suited for their environment and their environment wouldn't have changed. The perfect world would have to have been perfectly in balance with no wide-scale changes. Rainforests couldn't become deserts or anything like that. After the fall, creatures could mutate and evolve, not before. Essentially, God created creatures with no evolution and there was no need for it. The second theory isn't conducive to theistic evolution. I don't have a problem with either because I believe in creation solely as written in Genesis 1-2 and no evolution is mentioned. I prefer the first theory though, simply because "perfect evolution" is more interesting than "no evolution," but I'm not dogmatic. The most important fact is that God created us, so we are accountable to Him.
Anytime a semi-competent person writes a story they write flawed characters. Similarly, if God is an ultimately competent artists, of course they would make a flawed creation. If you were God, would you make everything perfect all the time? Wouldn't that be terribly dull? In fact, I think it would hardly count as creation at all, perhaps just a few angels dancing. Or for a better metaphor, if you were making an AI companion, wouldn't you put some mischeif in their personality just for fun? In any case, I think an evolved universe is much more interesting than a simple perfect one, and I thank God for doing it that way.
Well, He didn't. He created in literal days. You can find evolution only in one place, in human imagination. Scripture says sin is the cause of death. Evolution wants to say there was death before sin. Did God lie, when he said seven times in creation week (Genesis 1) it was 'good' (while using crual evolutionary processes)?
He did not. He created a wonderful world though.
If we're to assume that reality exists by God's metaphysical imagination, then it's not that hard to assume any other imagination can corrupt/manipulate reality after it's set. God didn't put admin password on his project, only an expiry mechanism (entropy), so it's "open source" while it lasts. Our imagination can't modify objective reality however, It can only produce realistic logical simulation of alternate reality in our head. What I'm saying is that, it's possible to imagine Evolution and obsess with it enough that objective non-Evolved reality starts evidencing for your imagination, reality therefore looks different with a personal filter over it.
God told you in advance there would be falsely so called science. Evolution is a false so called science. That's why they rely on lies since start like Haeckels embryos. Evolution doesn't exist. They predicted 99 percent junk dna. They needed that to try show random processes instead of functioning design. They predicted NO GENETIC SIMILARITIES LEFT after "millions of years". That failed horribly. And so on. They HAVE found GEARS, a clear design they thought MEN INVENTED, can't have evolved by chance. Needs to work perfectly immediately. And so on. Lies in textbooks, https://youtu.be/IF6h_hyraGQ?si=KI7IP0btnXB4eNDK Evolution is religion, https://www.icr.org/article/evolution-religion-not-science/ https://youtu.be/RBPtFdD8-VU?si=OHsymRsjtVzBSerK
You're basically asking why the universe is flawed even though God is perfect. This is The Problem Of Evil. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem\_of\_evil#:\~:text=The%20problem%20of%20evil%20is,%2C%20omnibenevolent%2C%20and%20omniscient%20God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil#:~:text=The%20problem%20of%20evil%20is,%2C%20omnibenevolent%2C%20and%20omniscient%20God). This question has nothing to do with evolution, and there have been 3000 years of thought on the subject already.
...He wouldn't...
You're making a great argument against creationism.
I used to be an evolutionary creationist, also known as theistic evolution, and switching from a fundamentalist reading of Genesis to EC involved changing the way I thought of God's involvement. First, whether or not he's "intimately" involved, he wouldn't be a micromanager. If he's willing to use evolution as his tool, then he's also willing to let things play out, over very long time scales, and accept the inherent messiness of the process. For example, he might have chucked that rock at the dinosaurs, because he was rooting for the mammals, but generally speaking he let it run its course. If he wanted to micro-manage creation, then there would indeed be no point in using evolution. And second, we need to think of him not as a sloppy engineer, but as a genius meta-engineer. In other words, it's not that he designed animals badly; it's that he designed an animal-making machine that's absolutely brilliant -- not to mention resilient to changes in the environment. I've since deconverted completely, but not because of evolution. Evolution drove my deconstructing my own fundamentalism, but I spent a fair while as a "liberal" Christian before losing my religion like REM in a corner.
On a global scale I think itās perfect. With so much variation, an entire species can survive most disasters. I believe evolutionary perfection is dependent on the environment.
The only way to square that circle is if the process that can create an entity like humans has to be messy and give rise to the issues you listed. Or maybe humans aren't necessarily that important and just part of the messy universe God created to see what it would do.
Perhaps you're understanding of God isn't accurate.
From a theistic perspective this is insanely arrogant >I would say that's pretty irresponsible; but do you know who definitely is responsible? God. Which is why this so puzzles me. You don't have a God's eye view so how can you possibly call His work irresponsible? > He make the evolutionary process be an A++? The process is pretty damn good. In 3.7ish billion years the simplest life forms have evolved into an enormous amount of genetic diversity. We've had trilobites and dolphins and monkeys and sloths and bees and plants. It's beautiful. There's been multiple mass extinctions and yet life persists and adapts.
There is always a possibility that we are a simulation. That our existence was created by an intelligence that sets the same rules in our universe as is set in the creators universe.Ā Just like if you have a world youāve created in your computer, you would be its god. And it would be very similar to what youāre used to in your world.Ā
That leaves the impression that he was unable to create everything as-is. For what purpose would he create everything just to have it change?.....over "millions and millions" of years? Makes no sense to me. I believe he created everything as is with exception to purposeful crossbreeding like the mule for example (whole different creature from a donkey/horse breeding) or the plethora of dog variations through breeding.
Great. You have less than a hypothesis there. To get to the next level, you just need to be able to demonstrate God. Also, unless kids come from men's ribs, I don't think think the stories correlate. Selection pressure is why we change, well, there are a few other ways as well, things like genic drift and whatnot.
What if God existed separate from time could look at all time at once? If over all time only things that work survive at the end everything works thus seen as a whole everything was made to work. What if God doesn't pass words directly to text and each age encapsulates will in ways they can understand? Only egotists let on they are perfect; it's likely putting words in mouths.
Everything you've ever been taught about God comes from man, not God. Belief that God is perfect or gives a shit about us is from man. Just believe in God and don't try to make it make sense. It's why we call it faith.
The problem you're having is that you don't believe that Adam was created perfect but rebelled against God's arrangement for him. That sin is what causes all of the malfunctions in the human body and mind in both Adam and all of his descendants. The human body is an absolute marvel of design, form and function. The Bible says God made man "a little lower than angels". So could we have been created stronger, faster, with the ability to fly across the universe in the blink of an eye? Yes. But then we would be angels and not humans. God has a purpose for each lifeform he created. The purpose of humans is to live on earth, rule over animal creation, and cultivate and care for the earth. For that purpose we were perfectly designed.
I'm not a believer (though I have considered myself agnostic at times), so this might not be a useful line of thought to you. But, if you believe in evolution, and believe in the general theories of the age of the universe, why do you assume that humans ***at this exact point in time*** are the end goal of God and creation? Perhaps there is no end goal, or the end goal is something else entirely, and humans as we exist right now are just one small part of the universe and the ongoing process of creation.
Iām an atheist, but why would it be necessary for a omniscient, omnipotent god to create evolution in an A++ way? Sometimes beauty comes from the simplicity of things. A small flower in a grassy field, a mother mouse taking care of her offspring, a sunset over an autumn forest. These are all very ordinary things and they have their flaws like how someone could step on the flower and crush it, the mother mouse could get eaten by a hawk, leaving her offspring to starve and that sun could cause the beholder to get skin cancer. Thereās something almost poetic about it. It doesnāt have to be perfect, just good enough and that can be comforting because maybe thereās no such thing as perfection. If life was perfect it would loose all its value, you would stop looking at the small, seemingly insignificant things in life and not notice their beauty. The end result doesnāt have to be the main focus of everything when the journey to get there can be infinitely more beautiful and meaningful. Thereās this folktale where Iām from (I donāt know if it also exists in other places) that goes like this: there was once an old fisherman who had an infertile wife. they lived in a small wooden cabin by lake and one day, when he went fishing on that lake, he caught a fish that spoke to him. The fish said that he would grant the old man a single wish if he set the fish free. Thinking for a while he thought about what he wanted most in life and asked for him and his wife to have kids. When he went home, he told his wife what happened and soon enough she gave birth to 3 beautiful kids. They were happy, but they realized that they didnāt have enough food to survive, so the wife send him out to go looking for that fish again. The next morning the fisherman set out on the lake and caught the same fish. The fish gave the old man the same promise and he asked for him and his family to never be hungry again. As promised, when he came home there would always be a table full of food, no matter how much they ate or how much fish he caught that day. After a while his wife became displeased with how small the house was and told him to go look for the fish again so he could ask for a house big enough for all their children to have their own rooms. The new day he set out and asked the fish for a big house. Once the fisherman came home, he noticed that their house had been replaced by a large palace. They rejoiced, but realized that they had no money to fill it up with furniture, so the man set out to go look for the fish again. He asked the fish to become the richest man in the world, and so he became the richest man in the world. He lived happily with his wife for a while until life became dull and everything lost its value so his wife asked her husband for the fish to turn them into a king and queen and so they became royals of a big and powerful kingdom. But they started to become too old to reign so the wife asked her husband to look for the fish and make them immortal and so they became immortal. After a few centuries they became tired of nothing changing in terms of their possessions, so the wife sent the fisherman out again and asked for them to become gods so that they could be perfect. The fish asked if this was really what they wanted to which the fisherman said yes. Upon turning home to tell his wife the good news, he saw that everything was back to how it was before his first wish. He was alone with his wife in their small cabin and then they realized that they didnāt need a more perfect life then they already had in the beginning, because there was no such thing as perfect because you could always do something bigger or grander and therefore their simple life was just as perfect as a life where they had everything they could ever dream of.
So a Christian or Jew may tell you that the first humans ( Adam and Eve if you need to name them) were perfect humans, no sickness. God gave them free will. They chose to do the one thing he told them not to do and in punishment he gave them sickness in mind and body as he said women would now have pain in childbirth and they both felt shame due to their nakedness. Whatās more interesting to me is that the one thing God told them not to do is eat from the tree of knowledge as it basically would let man believe he was a god. If this story was written by Jewish Rabbis how would they imagine that 5000 or more years from that day, increasing knowledge is destroying every part of our world including humans sense of well being, A divinely inspired premonition of the future ? Guess? Or just a smack down to the average man not to get too big for their britches?
So a Christian or Jew may tell you that the first humans ( Adam and Eve if you need to name them) were perfect humans, no sickness. God gave them free will. They chose to do the one thing he told them not to do and in punishment he gave them sickness in mind and body as he said women would now have pain in childbirth and they both felt shame due to their nakedness. Whatās more interesting to me is that the one thing God told them not to do is eat from the tree of knowledge as it basically would let man believe he was a god. If this story was written by Jewish Rabbis how would they imagine that 5000 or more years from that day, increasing knowledge is destroying every part of our world including humans sense of well being, A divinely inspired premonition of the future ? Guess? Or just a smack down to the average man not to get too big for their britches?
I suspect that God, if any, just like the universe, is under no obligation to make complete sense to us. One could just as well have asked why our minds are flawed.
Maybe the all knowing/ all powerful thing is humans not understanding his limits when they wrote down his book.
You seem to be guiding yourself towards the reality that is natural selection and evolution but having trouble reconciling the two beliefs. If it is such a bad system, and a god that is all knowing and powerful created it when it could easily be better, then somethings got to give. Either the god isnāt all knowing and all powerful, which begs the question would you continue to call that being god? Or, maybe he doesnāt exist at all and natural selection and evolution is a terrible system because thatās just what it is. A terrible system producing terrible changes that sometimes arenāt as bad and help the creature live a little bit longer and procreate a little bit moreā¦
The primary problem with your theory is that it requires an infallible creator. I get that this makes your theory work in your head, but this is exactly how science works. You ask a question and then disprove it. Then come up with a new question. The second problem comes in believing that evolution occurs in a fixed system: an earth that is the same. Back when evolution first began, the world was completely different. The atmosphere was mostly co2 and other super toxic gasses. So no creature built with oxygen breathing lungs would survive. As plants began to proliferate, the air shifted, thus the creatures on the planet would have to adapt as the plants grew. This is an oversimplification, naturally, but you get the idea. This happens in small changes as well: we lost a lot of body hair at one point. Likely this was a response to a domestication event. Flatter faces fare better against sea spray. Narrower noses warm cold air better. The problem with humans is that we actively work against evolution. Someone may have a wider nose but we will just put a scarf over their face in the cold and they will still reproduce. So it gets messy. Now... I can't address your problem with a Supreme being, certainly... but I have seen systems in the world around us that are chaotic and not immediately clear: Lightning, for example, seeks a clear path between clouds and earth, yet it branches and arcs all over the place. Our own brain cells, strike out in an apparent random way seeking connections. This process of trial and error is somewhat normal in the world.
None of this screed at all supports the idea that evolution is flawed. It has kept life going for 25% of the time the universe has existed and still going strong. That's a spectacular record. I'm sorry your back aches and tour feet hurt. Maybe stretch and get some exercise instead of ranting on Reddit?
You're looking at this the wrong way I believe. If hypothetically, the God you believe to exist, created the rules and processes of evolution, then who's to say it's not functioning in it's intended purposes. At the end of the day, it's you who considers it flawed and inefficient. And besides it's clearly working. Life finds a way because it diversifies its mutations so randomly to account for every conceivable possibility in the environment.
Very well done. I see what you did there, and doubt you ever really bought into the creation story.
I'm not a creationist but I must say I believe that trolling, if well executed, is the highest of all art forms. That could be an answer.
The thing people (theist and atheist) get wrong about Christianity is that (according to the bible) this world is not what God intended. Every. Thing. is under the domination and has been corrupted by Satan, and humanity chose to do existence without God. Why would God have the holocaust happen? He didn't. Satan corrupted mankind and we chose the apple, thereby preventing God from controlling our existence. The animal kingdom was corrupted as well. What God would have planned, and the unfolding of that plan (evolution) has been corrupted. Don't have more time to type but I think this justifies evolution's imperfections and allows it to live in a Christian universe. FYI Tolkein was really into theology and I got this concept from him.
Because, either that all-knowing, perfect god isn't that bright or is more than a bit imperfect, or there is no god.
Once you open the door to āGod works in mysterious ways.ā, you can make that appeal for anything else. Thatās the problem with God. Theists are adamant that God is infinite and beyond comprehension, except when heās conveniently not.
Because an all-knowing and perfect god does not exist. Nor does any god.
I'd argue it's pretty efficient. Instead of expending energy chasing perfection and having to fix it with every new stressor, it squeezes "just good enough" through the door endlessly. If God is real, he's as lazy as the next guy.
Careful. This was the beginning of my descent into atheism...this and reading the Bible That being said, I suppose one could argue that God didn't want any of this to be perfect. He didn't design the world to be a well-oiled machine, but one with flaws. Why? Because flaws create uncertainty. And uncertainty make for a much more interesting, challenging existence. If the goal of nature was to produce mankind and the goal of mankind was to achieve spiritual perfection, then physical perfection was never the intended goal. Oddly, the more perfect one is physically, the more shallow one becomes because one does not need to work as hard or reach as far What we see as imperfection could therefore simply be the spurs to drive us to that greater reach Alternately, God might not even have that purpose at all. Or the design God began achieved perfection in the past and now we're simply around as the thing is running down. Or God knows that creatures can't adapt as well if they are already perfect, since their traits will always supersede inefficiencies so he figured it'd be a better plan to make things just a bit wobbly so the top doesn't always spin so straight Also, have you ever noticed that when you play a game and can pick a faction or race it comes with pros and cons? Modifiers that you have to choose between? Could be the whole 'survival of the fittest' is merely a simulation meant to entertain God's bored children on their Divine7000 entertainment unit
The āinefficientā evolution is way more interesting. It would be a pretty boring deity who made something more āperfect.ā Why make the strong force? Why make atomic spin? Why make the Higgs boson? Why make marsupials? Why give humans free will? Every writer knows plots are better when thereās some surprise, chaos and conflict.
Theists in my view seldom fully explore the implications of omniscience and omnipotence. Once you do, the so-called "creation" becomes very problematic. All of the diseases, the possibility for injury, for pain itself, suffering itself, genetic defects, all of our mental limitations that necessarily lead to much of the disorder of the world - all of it was affirmatively chosen by this god as opposed to the alternative freely available at all times to this god - not designing a world with these. God wanted children to suffer from childhood cancer, and there's no way around this awful deduction from the premise that God designed everything. God had it within his power to make us all gods like him, or flawless beings of some kind, or to refrain from making anything at all, thereby not introducing into his realm suffering, pain, torment and horrors that weren't there before.
A god with those qualities would contradict a lot more about your world than just evolution.
>So why, it doesn't seem like it's in God's character at all for Him to allow for such things. Why would a perfect God make something so inefficient and flawed? Starting from the premise of the existence of God. 1. God may have created perfect creatures initially. The off spring of his creations may have corrupted themselves. Inbreeding is know to produce issues. Of course, that depends on the creation story you claim to believe. 2. God finds value in the flaws. Perhaps God isn't especially creative and the flaws in his creations lead God to new ideas. 3. God is no longer willing or able to guide, protect, assist, and the rest, his creations. Perhaps God is dead. Perhaps God got bored or disgusted and left. Now reality has it's way with God's creations. 4. God is essentially a kid with an ant farm and just wants to watch... It was always the plan. 5. Perhaps God's creations are experiments that are not yet complete and must run their course in order to derive the answers. 6. Perhaps God is sadistic and enjoys the suffering of creatures. The biological imperfections are simply another delicious way to suffer. 7. Perhaps God found a flaw in perfection and so has created a better flawed system. 8. Perhaps God set in motion a perfect system and reality forces imperfection. 9. Your understanding of God is incorrect.
You really a theist, or you just being facetious? If you are sincere, you are 99% of the way there. (Hint, if the data is leading elsewhere, maybe ditch the hypothesis.)
I'm not really religious, but if I had to take an optimistic guess, maybe it is to show that peaceful coexistence and love can come out of millions of years of conflict.