Why do scientists want to prove we are an accident?

[TheWatcher]

It seems to me that scientists wants to prove we came from the dust of the stars and we evolved through many forms and became human.In otherwords we are accidents not guided by anything but keep on evolving.Lets just assume this to be true.How would it change their lives or ours?

To be fair, the people who believe that humans came from stardust also believe that the Earth came from stardust as well. Nothing is not-stardust, essentially.

I think part of the disconnect you are experiencing from the other users is how the question is approached.

By your word choice, it appears as though you believe that scientists first make theories and then look at facts. Generally, studies start with the facts and then make theories.

For example, you can accept the Catholic Church is the Truth and then look for facts to support your position
or
you could look at the facts and be led to the Catholic Church.

If you first pick your theory and then look for support, it leaves you with some problems- what if you had picked a fundamental church and then looked for evidence? What if you picked a non-Christian church, such as Scientology? Your initial pick is rather random and is not based on anything except possible wishful thinking or fear (or even blind chance). It would encourage you to ignore any data that falsified your idea. Anything that is coincidentally true would be held up as an example of proof. Some ancient cultures got the movement of the sun and stars correct. Therefore, all of their religious beliefs are true. (Hey, look! The premise for the show Ancient Aliens!)

Looking at the facts first and then coming up with a theory doesn’t always mean you’ll have the full picture either. Lets say you were a seeker- you have no preference for religious beliefs. You might, after looking at evidence, become convinced that the Christian Faith is the right direction. It might not mean that you know enough to settle on the Catholic faith right away. You might even settle on a fundamental church as being “likely the most correct”- it doesn’t not mean you cannot change your mind as more evidence is added. “I don’t know” and “I lack enough information” are not inherently bad; the position is rather neutral. Just like many Catholics, when presented with something that makes them question their faith, don’t immediately jump to Scientology because it fills all gaps of knowledge with “its all an illusion.”

You asked how it would change the scientists’ lives, or our lives, to find out that we had evolved.

It wouldn’t shatter our world into pieces; it would be just one more piece of evidence. Some people- Catholics even- accept evolution and believe that God started it all. They feel that it does nothing to take away from the awesome power of God- that it may even demonstrate God’s abilities. Others believe in evolution but do not believe in God. They feel as evolution, by itself, is really neat and interesting. Both of these groups would like to see this knowledge reflected in labs when studying things like diseases and genetics. Enough people believe in some sort of evolution- even if they reject the macro evolution but accept micro evolution- that you probably wouldn’t notice a huge, sudden, shift. There will always be deniers as well- there are still geocentric flat-earthers around, after all.

I don’t believe that belief in evolution and the belief in God are diametrically opposed.

 

[tonyrey]

Can you explain how **all **suffering could be prevented? etc.

Please accept my apologies! I posted this reply to the wrong person…

 

[tonyrey]

                            It is related if those irrational events cause innocent humans to suffer. Natural disasters, for instance.

Can you explain how **all **suffering could be prevented?

So that we can choose what to believe and how to live.

Great! Now if only God didn’t expect me to either believe in him and love him or burn for eternity!

God expects you to believe exactly what you choose to believe! And accept the consequences. Lack of love for others leads to lack of love for you. The isolation and misery caused by selfishness is self-inflicted.

It implies that we have been given the power to distinguish and choose good or evil, i.e. to love or not to love. Without that power we are not persons.

So you’re saying that Adam and Eve were not truly human until they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Maybe we would be happier without any moral responsibility. I don’t know. But according to Catholicism that is false, which contradicts the implications of the Genesis story.

The myth of Adam and Eve reflects the indisputable fact that at one point in history our ancestors distinguished good from evil - and deliberately chose evil.

The lust for power is at the root of all evil.

But why did God give us that lust for power (or sexual lust, in the case of the example I gave)? God supposedly designed Adam and Eve. So he had no excuse whatsoever not to create the proverbial Pandora’s Box with such an attractive form. Why was it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why not the Disgusting Puddle of Sewage of Good and Evil? Satire aside, that would seriously be a more prudent choice if God did not want humans to sin.

1. Do you accept the reality of evil?
2. Do you deny that the lust for power is at the root of all evil?
3. Do you reject the fact that knowledge is a necessary condition of moral responsibility?

How could all sins be equally appealing?!

Why are all sins not unappealing? That was the question I was asking. Why didn’t God create me with as much a sense of disgust toward unchaste sexual activity as my sense of disgust toward slavery, murder, or rape? It’s not a complicated question.

You don’t represent the whole of humanity! Otherwise slavery, murder and rape would be extremely rare events. Is there any **reason **why you feel disgust?

There is suffering in heaven! All love entails suffering because love entails compassion. But in heaven it is insignificant in the context of the joy, glory and perfection of God.

You and I obviously have very different definitions of “love”. Certainly, self-sacrifice is a great display of love. But it is not the greatest, nor is it necessary for true love. By your logic, if Adam and Eve had never sinned, love would not exist. That is preposterous. If there is suffering in heaven, then I do not want to go to heaven.

If you don’t want to suffer you are incapable of sincere self-sacrifice and therefore of a great display of love - which throws doubt on your professed belief in love.

Without any religious beliefs I would look at this majestic cosmos full of myriad natural wonders and say “It does not make sense to attribute all this beauty, harmony and purpose to purposeless processes”!

But science tells us that it does make sense. We know how it is possible to get from a singularity point of pitiless indifference to Earth in its present state over 13.7 billion years.

We don’t know that at all!

The only reason we humans find beauty, harmony, and purpose in the universe is that we evolved to find the world beautiful, harmonious, and purposeful.

So beauty, harmony, and purpose exist only in our imagination?

The grass is not green because I find the color green to be beautiful; I find the color green to be beautiful because the grass is green.

That is not a reason. Do you find every colour or hue beautiful?

Another example is sex; the only reason we humans find sex pleasurable is that we had to evolve with an affinity for sex in order to pass on our genes.

What is the reason we or anything else evolved at all?

We want to enjoy our lives as much as possible, so we give meaning to our experiences.

What gives us the capacity for enjoyment and the power to give meaning?

That does not mean that the universe has objective purpose. Any purpose it does have is decided by its sentient inhabitants.

So purposes exist only in the mind?

Do you or do you not find all random coincidences ugly and meaningless simply because they are not a product of design?

Some random coincidences are not ugly but they are all meaningless in the context of Design. If you create a machine for a specific purpose and it happens to produce other effects they are meaningless in the context of your purpose.

Life is what you make of it because God has given us the power to choose what to make it.

If by “God”, you mean our brains, which give us consciousness, sure.

Did our brains choose to give us consciousness?

 

[valentino]

To be fair, the people who believe that humans came from stardust also believe that the Earth came from stardust as well. Nothing is not-stardust, essentially.

I think part of the disconnect you are experiencing from the other users is how the question is approached.

By your word choice, it appears as though you believe that scientists first make theories and then look at facts. Generally, studies start with the facts and then make theories.

For example, you can accept the Catholic Church is the Truth and then look for facts to support your position
or
you could look at the facts and be led to the Catholic Church.

If you first pick your theory and then look for support, it leaves you with some problems- what if you had picked a fundamental church and then looked for evidence? What if you picked a non-Christian church, such as Scientology? Your initial pick is rather random and is not based on anything except possible wishful thinking or fear (or even blind chance). It would encourage you to ignore any data that falsified your idea. Anything that is coincidentally true would be held up as an example of proof. Some ancient cultures got the movement of the sun and stars correct. Therefore, all of their religious beliefs are true. (Hey, look! The premise for the show Ancient Aliens!)

Looking at the facts first and then coming up with a theory doesn’t always mean you’ll have the full picture either. Lets say you were a seeker- you have no preference for religious beliefs. You might, after looking at evidence, become convinced that the Christian Faith is the right direction. It might not mean that you know enough to settle on the Catholic faith right away. You might even settle on a fundamental church as being “likely the most correct”- it doesn’t not mean you cannot change your mind as more evidence is added. “I don’t know” and “I lack enough information” are not inherently bad; the position is rather neutral. Just like many Catholics, when presented with something that makes them question their faith, don’t immediately jump to Scientology because it fills all gaps of knowledge with “its all an illusion.”

You asked how it would change the scientists’ lives, or our lives, to find out that we had evolved.

It wouldn’t shatter our world into pieces; it would be just one more piece of evidence. Some people- Catholics even- accept evolution and believe that God started it all. They feel that it does nothing to take away from the awesome power of God- that it may even demonstrate God’s abilities. Others believe in evolution but do not believe in God. They feel as evolution, by itself, is really neat and interesting. Both of these groups would like to see this knowledge reflected in labs when studying things like diseases and genetics. Enough people believe in some sort of evolution- even if they reject the macro evolution but accept micro evolution- that you probably wouldn’t notice a huge, sudden, shift. There will always be deniers as well- there are still geocentric flat-earthers around, after all.

I don’t believe that belief in evolution and the belief in God are diametrically opposed.

One more piece of evidence for what?

 

[James224]

It seems to me that scientists wants to prove we came from the dust of the stars and we evolved through many forms and became human.In otherwords we are accidents not guided by anything but keep on evolving.Lets just assume this to be true.How would it change their lives or ours?

There would be no right or wrong. If materialism/naturalism is all there is then what my physical brain tells me to do is not my fault. I could kill someone and, when someone didn’t like it, I would just say that all the cells in my brain told me to do it. There are many more of these kind of things. For example, you couldn’t use the term “Evil” to describe a bad act. It would be relative, ie, different from one person to another. In a natural world, there can only be material things that exist doing what they naturally do. If the survival of the fittest is true (evolution) then killing others would be normal and should be acceptable.

 

[TheWatcher]

One more piece of evidence for what?

I meant that it would be just another piece of data.

 

[Al_Moritz]

To be fair, the people who believe that humans came from stardust also believe that the Earth came from stardust as well. Nothing is not-stardust, essentially.

I think part of the disconnect you are experiencing from the other users is how the question is approached.

By your word choice, it appears as though you believe that scientists first make theories and then look at facts. Generally, studies start with the facts and then make theories.

For example, you can accept the Catholic Church is the Truth and then look for facts to support your position
or
you could look at the facts and be led to the Catholic Church.

If you first pick your theory and then look for support, it leaves you with some problems- what if you had picked a fundamental church and then looked for evidence? What if you picked a non-Christian church, such as Scientology? Your initial pick is rather random and is not based on anything except possible wishful thinking or fear (or even blind chance). It would encourage you to ignore any data that falsified your idea. Anything that is coincidentally true would be held up as an example of proof. Some ancient cultures got the movement of the sun and stars correct. Therefore, all of their religious beliefs are true. (Hey, look! The premise for the show Ancient Aliens!)

Looking at the facts first and then coming up with a theory doesn’t always mean you’ll have the full picture either. Lets say you were a seeker- you have no preference for religious beliefs. You might, after looking at evidence, become convinced that the Christian Faith is the right direction. It might not mean that you know enough to settle on the Catholic faith right away. You might even settle on a fundamental church as being “likely the most correct”- it doesn’t not mean you cannot change your mind as more evidence is added. “I don’t know” and “I lack enough information” are not inherently bad; the position is rather neutral. Just like many Catholics, when presented with something that makes them question their faith, don’t immediately jump to Scientology because it fills all gaps of knowledge with “its all an illusion.”

You asked how it would change the scientists’ lives, or our lives, to find out that we had evolved.

It wouldn’t shatter our world into pieces; it would be just one more piece of evidence. Some people- Catholics even- accept evolution and believe that God started it all. They feel that it does nothing to take away from the awesome power of God- that it may even demonstrate God’s abilities. Others believe in evolution but do not believe in God. They feel as evolution, by itself, is really neat and interesting. Both of these groups would like to see this knowledge reflected in labs when studying things like diseases and genetics. Enough people believe in some sort of evolution- even if they reject the macro evolution but accept micro evolution- that you probably wouldn’t notice a huge, sudden, shift. There will always be deniers as well- there are still geocentric flat-earthers around, after all.

I don’t believe that belief in evolution and the belief in God are diametrically opposed.

Excellent post.

 

[valentino]

There would be no right or wrong. If materialism/naturalism is all there is then what my physical brain tells me to do is not my fault. I could kill someone and, when someone didn’t like it, I would just say that all the cells in my brain told me to do it. There are many more of these kind of things. For example, you couldn’t use the term “Evil” to describe a bad act. It would be relative, ie, different from one person to another. In a natural world, there can only be material things that exist doing what they naturally do. If the survival of the fittest is true (evolution) then killing others would be normal and should be acceptable.

Sounds to me that you’rre saying by proving were an accident they are proving that there is no God or higher power.I agree.It seems obvious that there goal is to prove there is no God.

 

[valentino]

I meant that it would be just another piece of data.

One more piece of data to prove what?

 

[Planty_Business]

Can you explain how **all **suffering could be prevented?

No, but that doesn’t mean God couldn’t. I do think that one way to prevent a lot of unnecessary suffering (even if not all) would be to create the planet on which humans will live without any potential for natural disasters. Perhaps evolution of life on Earth as we know it would have been impossible, but one has to wonder why God even chose such a wasteful process like evolution to create his beloved sentient beings.

God expects you to believe exactly what you choose to believe! And accept the consequences. Lack of love for others leads to lack of love for you. The isolation and misery caused by selfishness is self-inflicted.

Are you implying that I am selfish and unloving for being an atheist? If not, why do I deserve hellfire? I agree that the consequences of selfishness are no one’s fault but the selfish person, but that does not relate to my (or any other non-Catholic’s) situation in any way.

The myth of Adam and Eve reflects the indisputable fact that at one point in history our ancestors distinguished good from evil - and deliberately chose evil.

Fair enough.

1. Do you accept the reality of evil?
2. Do you deny that the lust for power is at the root of all evil?
3. Do you reject the fact that knowledge is a necessary condition of moral responsibility?

1. Sure, if by evil you mean “actions resulting in the misfortune of a sentient being inflicted by another sentient being’s malice aforethought”.
2. I wouldn’t say all evil. Some people just commit evil acts because they do not want to accept responsibility for their actions. For example, a murderer who was caught in the act by someone would murder the witness in order to save his own skin. That’s selfishness, not a lust for power. But yes, power is a motivator for many weak-minded people to do evil.
3. No; that was the point I was trying to illustrate, in fact. If the mythical Adam and Eve did not have knowledge of good and evil prior to the “original sin”, they could not be held responsible for that sin. God blamed them for a crime that they couldn’t have known was a crime until after they had committed the crime!

You don’t represent the whole of humanity! Otherwise slavery, murder and rape would be extremely rare events. Is there any **reason **why you feel disgust?

Okay, perhaps those were bad examples. Some people do not feel disgust toward those actions; I do mainly because of an emotional aversion to them, but that does not mean my only reasons for thinking those actions are immoral are my reasons for finding them repulsive. If you’re willing to admit that an aversion to slavery, rape, and murder is not inherent in humanity, then that does not exactly help your case. It calls into question God’s moral integrity; if God wants humans not to do these things, wouldn’t it have been easier for him to instill in each of our minds a natural aversion to them, rather than giving us laws to follow for no reason other than “God says so”? I personally think that there are much better reasons not to rape, murder, and enslave than to appease God, but God never seems to provide a reason for this morality in the Bible, at least until Jesus comes along.

Basically, my point is that, if we humans have a natural aversion to something as amoral as our own waste (crude, but appropriate), why do we not have such aversions to things that really matter in a moral sense? This makes no sense in a theistic worldview.

If you don’t want to suffer you are incapable of sincere self-sacrifice and therefore of a great display of love - which throws doubt on your professed belief in love.

Whoa, let’s back up a bit here! The fact that I do not want to suffer says nothing about how incapable I am of self-sacrifice. It merely says that, in my ideal world (my heaven), there would be no suffering. Nothing about a lack of suffering precludes love of the greatest kind.

Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. In the real world, sometimes I must suffer for the good of others, and vice versa. In a theistic world at least, the existence of love does not imply suffering, since suffering implies a cause of suffering, which, in a theistic world, is God’s negligence and indifference to human well-being.

Can I conceive of a world in which I could love someone without requiring any suffering whatsoever? Absolutely - that is my heaven, and I see no reason why it could not exist if God willed it to be so.

Incidentally, you still haven’t addressed the absurdity of a pre-Fall world without love. Pre-Fall, surely there would be no suffering? The Garden of Eden was supposedly a paradise, something that God deemed “very good”. Unless suffering is “very good”, by your logic, there was no love before sin.

 

[Planty_Business]

We don’t know that at all!

Are you a young-earth creationist? If not, what reason do you have to think that the abundance of evidence for evolution and the Big Bang theory is not evidence that the universe could have ended up this way completely naturally? Most Catholics I know hold the view that God basically set the universe’s actions in motion so that they would occur without any supernatural (name removed by moderator)ut, but that God still does intervene supernaturally in some ways (through miracles, for example). If this is the case, then God was indeed unnecessary for the past 13.7 billion years of events in the universe. Whether God was necessary to “cause” the universe is a topic of much debate.

So beauty, harmony, and purpose exist only in our imagination?

Yes, as much as any properties we ascribe to the universe. A tree, for example, is not “brown” and “green”. Strictly speaking, it is a configuration of atoms, and nothing more. We humans, with our imaginations and our drive to find meaning in the universe, have complete freedom to describe that configuration of atoms as a “tree”, which is colored mostly “brown” and “green”. Ever heard of the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? That’s the principle of subjective beauty in life that I am referring to.

That is not a reason. Do you find every colour or hue beautiful?

No, but I have a natural attraction to certain colors on certain objects because my species evolved with such an attraction. We humans have a natural affinity for beautiful plants, for example, because those plants are what give us the oxygen to survive. This is why we humans have the sense of smell that we do; I am repulsed by the natural odors of objects that are harmful to my health, and I am attracted to such scents of objects that are beneficial to my health. There are a few outliers, but this generally holds true.

What is the reason we or anything else evolved at all?

Objectively speaking, there is none. We evolved simply because we could. Nature allowed it. There doesn’t have to be a reason for everything, at least not your definition of “reason”.

What gives us the capacity for enjoyment and the power to give meaning?

Our brains. Specific parts of them, at least.

So purposes exist only in the mind?

Right!

Some random coincidences are not ugly but they are all meaningless in the context of Design. If you create a machine for a specific purpose and it happens to produce other effects they are meaningless in the context of your purpose.

True, but I find no reason to think that anything “created” this “machine” that is the universe. So I do not find coincidences ugly in this context.

Did our brains choose to give us consciousness?

Of course not.

 

[inocente]

If the survival of the fittest is true (evolution) then killing others would be normal and should be acceptable.

Nope, the exact opposite. The genes of any who ate their five-year old children tended not to survive for obvious reasons, while kids who are well looked after tend to survive to have their own families. That’s what’s meant by survival of the fittest, the best adapted are more likely to survive. We survivors don’t need to be taught that eating our children is evil, it’s instinctively repellent to us.

In a similar way we evolved to experience things like empathy, peer pressure, a need to protect our territory and social traditions and so on. These sometimes conflict, sometimes we think it’s right to go to war but mainly we all instinctively believe it’s wrong to kill. Jesus of course taught us to give priority to empathy, love, mercy - you could say the major reason why Christian morality flourished and survives is it helps us to be fitter.

And none of this is scientifically accidental.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Sounds to me that you’rre saying by proving were an accident they are proving that there is no God or higher power.

When I read that I can’t help but think of theories that were considered heresy because they contradicted an interpretation of some part of the bible. Like Heliocentric theory and what happened to Galileo for supporting it.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

If the survival of the fittest is true (evolution) then killing others would be normal and should be acceptable.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that “survival of the fittest” is a phrase that is applied to a population within a certain environment (populations within the region of interest are also be part of the environment). So if I put a species of grizzly bear and polar bear in an arctic environment and make them compete for food then the species whose features are most fit for the environment will survive. If I put both species in another environment then the outcome could be different. .

The interaction between environment and the attributes of individuals that make it more or less successful in surviving isn’t evolution. It’s a selection pressure. Selection pressure is a component of evolution but not evolution itself. It also isn’t use as a guide for morality. At times there is human intervention on animal individuals and groups that are thought to be at a disadvantage.

Going from saying that if allele frequencies change within a population(evolution) than we should be killing each other is a huge jump.

 

[valentino]

When I read that I can’t help but think of theories that were considered heresy because they contradicted an interpretation of some part of the bible. Like Heliocentric theory and what happened to Galileo for supporting it.

The Church is not perfect never has been and won’t ever be until Christ comes back.The Church does learn from Her mistakes and it honest in pointing them out.

 

[valentino]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that “survival of the fittest” is a phrase that is applied to a population within a certain environment (populations within the region of interest are also be part of the environment). So if I put a species of grizzly bear and polar bear in an arctic environment and make them compete for food then the species whose features are most fit for the environment will survive. If I put both species in another environment then the outcome could be different. .

The interaction between environment and the attributes of individuals that make it more or less successful in surviving isn’t evolution. It’s a selection pressure. Selection pressure is a component of evolution but not evolution itself. It also isn’t use as a guide for morality. At times there is human intervention on animal individuals and groups that are thought to be at a disadvantage.

Going from saying that if allele frequencies change within a population(evolution) than we should be killing each other is a huge jump.

thats very true.thanks.

 

[Neildown]

When most people believe they will be taken off to heaven there is not alot of reason to keep it in good shape.

Actually, yes there is, for the fact that we know we are leaving other people in the world. Naturally, knowing that we have a chance at heaven it would make more sense to keep the planet in good shape for future generations.

 

[Neildown]

It seems to me that scientists wants to prove we came from the dust of the stars and we evolved through many forms and became human.In otherwords we are accidents not guided by anything but keep on evolving.Lets just assume this to be true.How would it change their lives or ours?

I really don’t see the point in it. Striving for no purpose to me is basically just striving for a reason [well actually “reason” would just be a fabrication if God didn’t exist anyway] to do anything one wants to - and that kind of attitude on a large scale would make me fear for the earth. What if some freak similar to the Roman Caligula made it to the top ruling office in Russia and decided to start Armageddon?

 

[lao_tzu]

It seems to me that scientists wants to prove we came from the dust of the stars and we evolved through many forms and became human.In otherwords we are accidents not guided by anything but keep on evolving.Lets just assume this to be true.How would it change their lives or ours?

It seems to me that many theists want to prove we were created out of the dust of the earth without any intermediary evolutionary antecedents. And, when they find others whose conclusions don’t align with their wishes, they choose to believe that opposition is founded on the same kind of wishful thinking.

That is a fairly glaring mistake.

What we want occasionally aligns with what is true, and can even influence truth when what we want is within the scope of consequences of our own actions. Consider, for example, what we call self-fulfilling prophecies. There are perceivable limits to this process. Our ability to influence events which occurred millions or billions of years prior to the emergence of our species is non-existent. However, those events and their causes, to some extent, can be discovered.

To extend the thought, and to address your question, how much can anything which occurred millions or billions of years before our births change our lives? Not much, I think. At most it can change the way we think about ourselves and our place in the universe. Knowing, or at least heavily suspecting, that the materials incorporated into our bodies were cooked up in a supernova explosion doesn’t affect the way I interact with my friends and colleagues. Well, unless they make a point of questioning this with me, which doesn’t happen in my circles. That sort of conflict seems restricted to the anonymity of the internet, in my experience.

As ever, Jesse

 

[valentino]

I really don’t see the point in it. Striving for no purpose to me is basically just striving for a reason [well actually “reason” would just be a fabrication if God didn’t exist anyway] to do anything one wants to - and that kind of attitude on a large scale would make me fear for the earth. What if some freak similar to the Roman Caligula made it to the top ruling office in Russia and decided to start Armageddon?

I don’t follow you.What do you mean striving for no purpose?Are you saying I said that?Please explain.