How could the universe and life come into existence without God? How could life evolve without God?

[stoplooklisten]

There is more scientific evidence for abiogenesis than there is for Jesus.

The scientific method doesn’t apply to history. History happened once and is not reproducible.

Evidences for Jesus include the history of the Early Church Fathers, the early church martyrs, the early Popes, secular historians such as Josephus. In those early centuries, people lived and died in distinctive ways because of their faith and testimony for Jesus Christ.

 

[stoplooklisten]

There is no proof in science.

Interesting. There is evidence. Skeptics seem to have a problem with epistemology and establishing that anything is true.

The multiverse is a proposal. It doesn’t discount God. So on a purely religous perspective there is no requirement to deny it. God could have made the universe in any way He would have chosen.

The multiverse seems to be an “imaginary friend” and convenient diversion for skeptics and doubters. There is no evidence for a multiverse.

God could have made the universe in any way He would have chosen.

God created the universe in accordance with wisdom.

 

[rossum]

You should not ignore evidences. NS cannot “see” RM until they are supposedly expressed in new morphological features but RM producing new designs is unproven.

Random mutations do not produce “design”, nobody claims that they do. Random mutation and natural selection can produce the appearance of design. That is the basic error of ID, it mistakes the appearance of design for actual design.

Why does the body have symmetry?

Hox genes. Read Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish” for details.

How did male and female develop at the same time?

Slowly and in parallel. Start by learning about horizontal gene transfer in bacteria.

How did the human body develop intricate, interdependent systems?

All systems in the human body also appear in chimpanzees’ bodies. Those systems developed over a long time over many generations of ancestors. Read Thornhill and Ussery (2000) for the routes taken.

Why do plants and animals co-exist in an interdependent ecological system?

Because any plants or animals that did not fit into an ecosystem went extinct in that system. How many palm trees are there in the Antarctic?

A Designer provides simple, elegant answers to these questions.

No it does not, especially not “simple”. An intelligent designer is a very complex entity with life, intelligence and the ability to manipulate both RNA and DNA. Such a complex entity is a lot more complex than the initial primitive life you say it made. You look at the complexity of life and explain it by positing an even more complex entity. That is ridiculous. What meta-designer designed your proposed designer? After all, something as complex as an intelligent designer is complex enough to need a meta-designer to design it.

“Overthrusts” and faults are separate topics for perhaps another time.

Then why did you raise the topic of geology above?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

There is no proof in science.

Interesting. There is evidence. Skeptics seem to have a problem with epistemology and establishing that anything is true.

The multiverse is a proposal. It doesn’t discount God. So on a purely religous perspective there is no requirement to deny it. God could have made the universe in any way He would have chosen.

The multiverse seems to be an “imaginary friend” and convenient diversion for skeptics and doubters. There is no evidence for a multiverse.

God could have made the universe in any way He would have chosen.

God created the universe in accordance with wisdom.

Your implication that God is restricted in what He can do is duly noted.

 

[stoplooklisten]

Your implication that God is restricted in what He can do is duly noted.

Almighty God created wisdom before the foundation of the world (Proverbs 8, other references)

Almighty God gives His word and keeps it.

Almighty God will act in accordance with His character, His integrity, His word.

 

[Noose001]

There is more scientific evidence for abiogenesis than there is for Jesus.

There’s more to life than scientific evidences, there’s more historic evidence for Jesus than there is for abiogenesis and evolution. How did that sound?

Five billion years ago there was no life on earth. Today there is life on earth.

A general ‘understanding’ which is wrong. You need to qualify such by properly defining time. There’s no 5 billion years.

 

[rossum]

Almighty God created wisdom before the foundation of the world

You need to think about that very wisely.

If God “created” wisdom, then there was a time before that creation of wisdom when wisdom did not exist. Since God is eternal, and uncreated that means that God existed before the creation of wisdom. Hence, before that event God could not have been wise, because He had not yet created wisdom.

The creator of wisdom must exist before the creation of wisdom. Hence the creator of wisdom cannot have been wise before that creation.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Science does not do “proof”

Just using your words.

You are assuming design. Do not assume what you should prove.

Currently the multiverse is a hypothesis; one among many.

You keep quoting the multiverse, but if it is only one of many hypothesis, forgive me if I then choose to ignore it…

where is this scientific evidence for abiogenesis.

Sorry, I should have said, where is the evidence for abiogenesis purely from natural causes.

Your assertion is that there has always been life on earth: an omnipresent eternal living God requires that. Where is your evidence?

Our evidence is the same as your evidence, that the universe and life came about by natural causes. There is little conclusive evidence for either.

We both need a certain amount of belief and faith.

 

[rossum]

Sorry, I should have said, where is the evidence for abiogenesis purely from natural causes.

In this case it is the absence of any evidence for non-natural causes. With purely natural causes, mostly chemistry, science has made progress on assembling the chemical ingredients of life: amino acids etc. So far there is no evidence of any non-natural causes for amino acids and the rest.

Given the complete lack of evidence for alternative causes I will go with natural causes for material life. As always in science, if the evidence changes then ideas change to follow. If Vishnu can miraculously create purines, then that will have to be incorporated into the abiogenesis hypotheses.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Your implication that God is restricted in what He can do is duly noted.

Almighty God created wisdom before the foundation of the world (Proverbs 8, other references)

Almighty God gives His word and keeps it.

Almighty God will act in accordance with His character, His integrity, His word.

But why do you say that He couldn’t have arranged for many universes?

 

[stoplooklisten]

Hox genes. Read Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish” for details.

All systems in the human body also appear in chimpanzees’ bodies. Those systems developed over a long time over many generations of ancestors. Read Thornhill and Ussery (2000) for the routes taken.

@rossum, I don’t doubt that you are well-read and informed. I respect that in you.

An intelligent designer is a very complex entity with life, intelligence and the ability to manipulate both RNA and DNA.

I like it when we can find some common ground and agreement.

Then why did you raise the topic of geology above?

Decades ago, I read some explanations involving “overthrusts” that seemed unreasonable to me. The Lewis overthrust in the Montana-Alberta is a large and well-known overthrust and I don’t dispute it right now. Plate tectonics is a large and powerful force and may have been at work there (even though it’s far from the oceanic coast).

 

[stoplooklisten]

But why do you say that He couldn’t have arranged for many universes?

Possibly there could be other universes. I do believe in spiritual (non-physical) creatures called angels and demons. Other universes seem like unwarranted speculation and I don’t expect there to be other universes.

Why might you say that there must be physical life on other planets? Isn’t Almighty God mighty enough to create a large universe with no life outside of earth to be viewed from Planet Earth where he created human souls in the image of their Creator?

Why do you assume that the physical universe contains the clues for how it was created? Couldn’t Almighty God use invisible things (like His Word) to create the visible things (like the universe)?

By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible. (Hebrews 11:3)

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

But why do you say that He couldn’t have arranged for many universes?

Possibly there could be other universes. I do believe in spiritual (non-physical) creatures called angels and demons. Other universes seem like unwarranted speculation and I don’t expect there to be other universes.

Why might you say that there must be physical life on other planets? Isn’t Almighty God mighty enough to create a large universe with no life outside of earth to be viewed from Planet Earth where he created human souls in the image of their Creator?

Why do you assume that the physical universe contains the clues for how it was created? Couldn’t Almighty God use invisible things (like His Word) to create the visible things (like the universe)?

By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible. (Hebrews 11:3)

I haven’t said anything about life on other planets. And I don’t assume anything. What I have suggested is only that. A reasonable suggestion. What basis do you have for rejecting that God has arranged things in a way that is different to that which you hold?

 

[stoplooklisten]

I haven’t said anything about life on other planets.

That’s true.

Jesus Christ is the Incarnate God-Man who suffered and died in an atoning, redemptive work for the human race. Jesus didn’t redeem fallen demons. Jesus redeemed humanity only.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

I haven’t said anything about life on other planets.

That’s true.

Then I’m not sure why you said I did.

And God didn’t intentionally ‘leave clues’ as to how the cosmos was created. Any physical system will have evidence as to it’s formation. Using that evidence won’t tell us why it was created. But it will tell us how.

 

[stoplooklisten]

Then I’m not sure why you said I did.

And God didn’t intentionally ‘leave clues’ as to how the cosmos was created. Any physical system will have evidence as to it’s formation. Using that evidence won’t tell us why it was created. But it will tell us how.

You can examine a motor vehicle or a jet plane but it will only tell you so much about how it was designed and how it was built. You won’t get to know the people who were the designers and builders except by encountering them directly.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Then I’m not sure why you said I did.

And God didn’t intentionally ‘leave clues’ as to how the cosmos was created. Any physical system will have evidence as to it’s formation. Using that evidence won’t tell us why it was created. But it will tell us how.

You can examine a motor vehicle or a jet plane but it will only tell you so much about how it was designed and how it was built. You won’t get to know the people who were the designers and builders except by encountering them directly.

That’s quite correct. We can examine the cosmos and see how it came to be. That’s science. But if it was designed then we can’t tell who designed it just from examining physical reality. That requires theology.

 

[o_mlly]

I dropped out of this thread a couple hundred posts ago. Seeing today that the thread still lives, I thought I would audit the thread rather than read all the subsequent posts.

What do the sides agree on?

Time requires a cause. That cause may be a transcendent being (God) or it may not be a transcendent being (the Multiverse).

Search the thread for “multiverse” and then search the thread for the word “God”. Lots of hits for both. Why? It appears both science and faith agree that the ultimate cause for the universe and life must be eternal in its existence.

I admit that I have no direct evidence that God caused the existence of the universe and the life within it. And, as this thread shows, science doesn’t have a clue either as to how things came to be. (Yeah, yeah, I know; you just need more time to explain how time began.)

An eternal multiverse explanation is as much a product of faith as is a Creator explanation. So both agree that the source of knowledge on the “how” question is faith, not science.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

So both agree that the source of knowledge on the “how” question is faith, not science .

I think you have summed it up well. But we seem to argue about things that cannot be proved.

 

[o_mlly]

But we seem to argue about things that cannot be proved.

Aren’t those the only things we argue about?