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rossum
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God is a living God, He says so Himself. Now ask yourself, is a god a thing or a non-thing? Do you want your God to be a non-thing; a nothing?
No, I didn’t think so.
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How could the universe and life come into existence without God? How could life evolve without God?
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No, I didn’t think so.
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o_mlly
Guest
Do you have a logical argument to support that conclusion?
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rossum
Guest
You said that God was not first. If He was not first, then some other living thing was first. I just used Adam as an example of a living thing that was not God.
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rossum
Guest
There is enough mythology in the Bible for anyone. A talking serpent, a talking donkey etc. Generally, if a story includes a talking animal, that story is a myth (unless perhaps the animal is a parrot).
And if you want a foundation in history, then the Jewish religion has a lot more of a foundation than Christianity.
Reason does not get us to a creator, it only gets us as far as a cause. The multiverse is one hypothesis for the cause, but the multiverse is not a creator – it lacks many of the properties of a creator. You need more logic to get from a cause to a creator.
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o_mlly
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? Even for beings in time, the first child cannot have existed the same length of time as its parent.
For the being that exists in eternity, the adjective “first” has no meaning. Relative to beings in time, the eternal being is now, always will, and forever has been.
Gloria Patri,
et Filio,
et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio,
et nunc, et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum
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Peter_Jericho
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I think we’ve gotten pretty far off-topic, but I’ll respond because I find the story of Richard and Mildred Loving to be incredibly touching. See
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EndTimes
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God Created the living organisms of Earth…
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John_Martin
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No.
It is the result of God knowing and your parents knowing, them temporally and him eternally. It is called Co-Operation by Co-Knowing of God and the contingent intellect in common knowing at the moment of the temporal knowing when they are equal. Thanks St. Augustine and Moses for this answer.
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Eric_Hyom
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Thanks for the link, I have read it but prefer the Nilsson Pelger account.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ate_of_the_Time_Required_for_an_Eye_to_Evolve
They show 1829 incremental steps for the eye lens to develop in under half a million years.
Random mutation and natural selection have no goals. However, there seems to be seven separate goals in the Nilsson model. 176 steps towards one goal, then it stops going in that direction, and there are 362 steps towards another goal, then repeat for five more goals.
Because they list 1829 steps, each increment must show an improvement of less than 0.1 percent. I question the ability of natural selection to select one member of a population with an eye that is 0.1% better than all its brothers and sisters.
If the eye lens is 0.1% more efficient, it becomes useless if the optic nerves and the neural processing do not also improve by 0.1%
All this seems very goal driven. I struggle to understand how all this could happen without guidance.
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rossum
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Your “seems” is the operative word there. Science may use “seems” to develop a hypothesis, but it needs actual evidence to accept, or reject, the hypothesis.
If you want to show guidance, then set up an experiment, making sure to measure all external forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong that may be used to impart guidance to the organisms (bacteria possibly) in your experiment. If your hypothesis involves a fifth force, then you will have a lot more preliminary work to do to show the existence of this fifth force and how to reliably detect it to the accuracy required by your experiment.
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Eric_Hyom
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Five billion years ago, there was no life and no HOX genes. Once you have the first light sensitive cells, the HOX gene will know how to replicate it. Once you have the first vertebrae the HOX gene will know what to do.
Or did the HOX gene know what to do in advance?
HOX genes seem to have the abilities of a 3D printer, imagine what it must take to programme a 3D printer. Imagine the amount of detail you would have to put into the printer to make a skeleton. imagine the amount of detail it would then take for a 3D printer to replicate a skeleton.
We should not have to mention God in this this thread. How do all these things happen naturally and without God?
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rossum
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Genes do not “know” anything. Variant genes result in variant organisms. Those organisms whose variants make them more successful at reproducing pass more copies of their genes into future generations. Those organisms whose variants make them less successful at reproducing pass fewer copies of their genes into future generations. Those successful genes increase in the population until they become the norm. Then another successful mutation appears and starts spreading.
There is no “know”, there is just more success or less success at reproducing.
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JimG
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Maybe teleology is built in to the structure of the universe.
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Eric_Hyom
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Gab123
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Again, God is not a “thing”, being that a thing has parts and occupies space. God is pure Spirit, not a thing. He is the Eternal Spirit. One has to understand what is meant by Spirit. The problem is that people do not understand basic theology. I recommend the book Theology for Beginners by Frank Sheed.
God is the author of life because God Life itself, thus The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life.
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Wesrock
Guest
The scientific method excludes the non-quantifiable. Your statement is as absurd as giving someone a measuring cup and telling them to use it to measure temperature. Or telling a person that the only place to find their keys at night is under a streetlamp because it is the only place that’s lit.Eric_Hyom:
Your “seems” is the operative word there. Science may use “seems” to develop a hypothesis, but it needs actual evidence to accept, or reject, the hypothesis.
If you want to show guidance, then set up an experiment, making sure to measure all external forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak and strong that may be used to impart guidance to the organisms (bacteria possibly) in your experiment. If your hypothesis involves a fifth force, then you will have a lot more preliminary work to do to show the existence of this fifth force and how to reliably detect it to the accuracy required by your experiment.
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Wesrock
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rossum, as intelligent of a poster that I know you are, you continue to persist in some of the most basic errors in objecting to classical theism. The Uncaused Cause’s act is not done from any point in time, but is an eternal act that occurs at no point in time but reaches to all points in time. And that is only one example. You should take these errors up with the personalist theism school, and expand your thinking to more than that.
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Gab123
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The Bible is composed of literary genres which often uses figurative language, yet miracles are supernatural realities, being that God is above nature. Thus raising dead people to life, giving sight to the blind, popping you into existence and even making donkeys talk is within God’s power. As for Judaism, understand that Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. The entire Old Testament is a preparation for the coming of the messiah, as described in Genesis 3:15 and fulfilled by Jesus Christ, who performed miracles witnessed by thousands.
As for beliefs such as reincarnating as a cockroach, a rat or a gnat, that is not built on a historical logical structure, but rather upon mythology imagination and superstition.
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rossum
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God is the author of Himself? Your God is a created God? A self-made God? Strange…
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rossum
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I am approaching the usual assumptions of classical theism from a Prasangika-Madhyamika point of view. That approach will probably seem unusual to someone who has not yet encountered Nagarjuna.
Buddhism does not share the underlying assumptions of the Abrahamic religions.
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