In this thread I wish to provide the platform for anyone who so desires to provide the details (Finally) as to their understanding and belief of a "Creation" event versus the documented and well established concept and data provided for the theory of Evolution and the likely if yet unproven possibility of Abiogenesis. Hopefully we can avoid mythical arguments and the terribly unlikely or impossible and focus on things that can be proven as real to at least a minimal extent without relying on opinion or personal experience as these cannot be taken as serious data by the population at large. That said people...Have at it.
Apparently (as expected) no one has any verifiable and non opinionated data to provide to show creation as a viable alternative to evolution or abiogenesis. Interesting in that there are many threads created to do so which do not ask for acceptable (reality based) information....I must take this silence as an admission of abject failure of hypothesis.
The problem with trying to refute creationism through logic is that it's very difficult to reason someone out of an opinion that didn't require reason to get into in the first place. Depending on how circular the reasoning that got a person into believing creationism, and young Earth creationism in particular, it may be impossible to construct an argument against it. If your starting point is that the Earth is 6,000 years old and it was created by an omnipotent supreme being then any evidence which seems to counter that view can simply be dismissed as God testing you and as God is mysterious then His motives and methods should not be questioned so: Radioactive dating evidence that things are far older than 6,000 years - God has put that there to test you Written evidence from China from the time the flood was supposed to have inundated the whole world - a trial of faith DNA analysis showing an ancient common ancestor - Satan working to tempt you to the dark side With someone like that, arguing is like trying to punch fog....
Of course there are large numbers of these "fixes" that would have had to be created for such a purpose. One I'd note is that a supernatural entity would have had to create a whole range of particles and electromagnetic radiation coming at us in precisely the proper arrangement to make us think there are distant stars!
Evolution doesn't explain the creation of life. It only explains what happened after creation. Since science shows that its impossible for something to be created from nothing then we have to assume that there was another factor. Science itself has proven the existence of a creator. To put this more simply for you, suppose you have a glass jar and you set it on the table. How long would you have to look at that jar before materials form within it and life magically pops into existence? The answer is a infinity because it would never happen.
lol, no. There doesn't have to be "something from nothing" to have life begin. Well, that would be an indication that the conditions and material inside the jar weren't successful at starting life. It wouldn't show anything else.
Ok, here's the deal: When science doesn't know something, science says, "I don't know". Religious logic allows someone to say something happened in a certain way even though there is no evidence. Science can't do that. If you see that happen, you know it isn't science. Figuring out where the big bang came from is a very hard problem, but there has been some progress. But, certainly not enough to form a claim to an answer.
There are stupendous numbers of things that each of us doesn't know. It's evidence of humans being human.
I'm not dodging. I'm stating outright that the amount we don't know is not evidence of there being a god.
I didn't ask you if there was evidence of God, I asked you that since we don't know what happened if its a possibility. Is it?
I recognize others hold our ignorance as evidence of god. But, our ignorance isn't evidence of god. It's evidence of human ignorance.
I didn't say it was evidence, I asked you if its a possibility and you still won't answer that simple question. What are you afraid of?
"GOD" the concept is possibility. Human created myths about it are at a minimum inaccurate descriptions and more likely created societal manipulation tools. All we need to do is ask YOU if one of the ones you do not follow is real.
There is a possibility that there is only one God but He appeals to different cultures and people in different ways. It may not be what name you call Him but how devoted you are to Him. But thank you for doing what Will could not, admit that it is at least possible for Creation to have taken place.
My major concern is that we learn to identify science and incorporate it in our public policy decisions. This thread is about science.
I will discuss religion with you in the religion section. You know that, because it's happened in the past on a number of occasions.
Actually, virtual particles can appear out of the vacuum of space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle). This is the basis of Hawking's Radiation (what Stephen Hawking is famous for). Also, if it's impossible for something to be created from nothing, then that brings us to where did God come from? The standard answer of course is that God has always existed, but in a closed universe scenario, the universe could have always existed and it goes through an infinite loop of expansion, collapse and expansion again.
Well, there is actually a scientific paper written about just that: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.1207.pdf. It is quite an interesting paper and very well thought out.
Of course God is a possibility, and so is the idea that we are all living in a computer simulation, which actually makes more sense in an Intelligently Designed universe than an omnipotent, omniscient God who is so insecure, He will torture forever, anyone who doesn't worship Him.
Fair enough. I know in my heart that God is real but I accept the possibility that I may be wrong. Being a Christian has made me a better person though so even if I have been misled my life has still been improved. I lose nothing in the deal. However, if you guys are wrong, well...….I don't envy for what you are going to have to face. My worst case scenario is that I end up where everyone else does, in nothingness. Your worst case is pretty bad. I hope you are a gambling man.
The Wheeler-DeWitt equation is based on string theory, as yet, completely unproven. And also, if this theory ever were to be proven it would solve the problem of mass and time meaning that faster then the speed of light is possible, which totally contradicts the theory of relativity. I scanned the paper and its basically written by people that are thinking way outside of the box with absolutely no verifiable proof. Its actually not even a theoretical paper, its a lead off explaining possible ways to research. Basically its explaining areas that are intended for research and they throw in a couple of things to keep the audience interested. I agree though, it is very interesting.
Possible but you are applying science to God. He doesn't exist in the realm of science as we know it. Time and space would be irrelevant to Him so saying He has always existed is only a concept for humans. What we know of God and our universe is completely different then the space he occupies. Once you accept that then all of our theories no longer apply and it makes sense. God, according to the Bible, does things that are scientifically impossible which means the laws of physics do not apply to Him. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that what we know of physics and science is so miniscule that its almost embarrassing. I don't think we even have an inkling of what's really going on. We live in a very small box and have found a few things to explain life inside this box but this box is contained in a larger box that sits on an island on an entirely new planet....that is the extent of knowledge out there that is so complex we can't even theorize about it yet. This is the realm that God would exist in but probably even higher than that. This little planet that contains a box which holds our tiny little box is probably in a galaxy contained in a universe which is Gods realm. That is how complex it probably is. Humans, in my opinion, are ignorant because they think we actually have learned something or explained something.
