Evolution is simply more magnificent than your religion

Romans 1 has words for this kind of idolatry (unconscious though it might be)

quote:

---

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

​

24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised. Amen.

---

Whilst agreeing that your musings should cause humilty and wonder to arise in you (I found the opening sequence of the Carl Sagan inspired Contact particularily profound, even as a believer) I find it hard to imagine quite why you suppose the potential for wonder to halt there.Imagine meeting a being who created all that and you have the potential for wonder, orders of magnitude apart from where you are. Especially when you suspect that the purpose of his creation is to cause wonder and humilty to arise in his created beings.

"Even as a believer" was intended to convey the perspective of one whose transcended the mystery of the Universe (by arrival at the Creator of it). The interest switchs from a 'thing' (and the 'things' which brought about subsequent 'things') to the personhood who'da thunk up. The interest shifts from process to person - in other words- Supposing yourself but "stardust" - strikes me as the kind of invention you suppose me guilty of. It's a reach from what you currently know to what you don't.Let's agree that the wonder involving my supposition (God exists) trumps the wonder involving your supposition (you're but Stardust) perhaps?- That's the very idea the passage intends to convey: wonderment in the thing (the phenomena/the laws/what they have contributed to) - not the creator of the thing.The Bible quotes, if Gods quotes, could be expected to be more relevant that mere things: again personhood trumps processhood (or it should). My perspective is a congruent one for a believer to hold so you shouldn't be disappointed.- ..as the man said, when people don't believe in God they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. That said, unbelievers do believe in God all the time. I mean, everytime an atheist believes in his heart that murder is wrong and is appalled when he hears of the murder of another, he believes God and the foolishness that comes from not believing God isn't his. Remember, unbelief is a progressive thing - as the passage indicates through the use of the word 'become'.Plenty of people don't believe in God. But that's different from believing in your heart there is no God. Such people are indeed fools - they've completely turned away from that knowledge of God installed in them by God.- You'd agree then with Paul when he tells Christians (ie: those with the Spirit)..

quote:

---

14The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

---

- The point of worshipping an idol is that it alleviates a God-installed demand for answers. "Where do I come from" should lead a man to his creator. To avoid this, an idol is installed - the idol not making anything like the demands that God does. In this instance, supposing yourself stardust kicks the above question into the dusts of unimaginable time/distance. And permits you the freedom, for example, to arrive at whatever moral code you yourself decide suits you (with due regard for negative consequences attaching to places where your moral code might deviate somewhat from that held by stardust-society at large )- Not at all. As I said earlier, supposing our respective positions but assumed ones: God exists vs. I'm but stardust, you'd be hard pressed to call the former least interesting. Accident more grand than design? When, ever ?Beware of worshipping the created instead of the creator.- Your OP's position isn't strengthened by revealing it built on the assumption that God existance is a myth. Nor am I impressed by a position that demands it forever exist on a journey yet never arrive at a final destination. Wouldn't it be but a snobbery that supposes those who arrive at a destination are somehow inferior? (not that arrival at God is the end of the story I might add - whoever got to a destination but didn't step out to check out the lay of that land)

The reason you don't believe in God is that evidence permitting you to conclude God exists isn't available to you. That evidence, I'd suggest, needs to take the form of God turning up personally at your 'door' and rendering you certain of his existance. Nothing less will do. And so, the reason stated for your not believing in God isn't actually the reason why you don't believe in God.But this isn't about believing in God. This is about believing God. IF God exists AND your finding murder wrong derives from a God given conscience THEN you believe God on the matter in question. Even though you don't believe in God.There is nothing silly about the statement once the IF is considered true. And true it can very well be.- As ever, this "one bottle short of a six-pack" dilemma is easily countered by the suggestion that God finds it good (in the sense of a primary positioned good) that man be given the option to express his will. For without that option there is no man. And no man means no morality and not even this supposed dilemma.The fact of your objection demands the ability to express your will in objection. But you're supposing a good God shouldn't give man that ability.- As mentioned, the point was that your being appalled can be considered to derive from a God-given conscience - in which case you'd be believing God on the matter about which you are appalled - if not believing IN God.Believing and believing in are two quite separate things. It was the former I was referring to.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Perhaps you could explain how God can murder. He does kill people, granted (indeed, not a person dies by any means without his say so). But killing isn't always murder. Could you bridge the gap?- A belief that is but a subset of the overarching area in which you believe God, I'm afraid. The result of an installed sense of "do unto others..." to which you respond positively (at times)- Presumably you'd be equally awe-struck as Drosophilla..

quote:

---

I think one of the most awe-inspiring facts is that our bodies (just stardust from maybe an earlier supernova)can evolve materialistically to the point where it becomes sentient - to then think about its own origins....that is awesome indeed!

---

..in which case you're supposing that a mechanism (your brain) which has arisen in the manner above is able to accurately determine that it has arisen in the manner above.Doesn't this cause alarm bells to sound off somewhere?Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Well, I consider it a remarkable occurance that a completely undirected process (undirected other than by blind, goal-less forces of nature) should conspire to produce something (a brain) that decides itself to be in a position to accurately determine that such a process is capable of producing something capable of concluding that such a process has produced something capable of deciding that such a process has produced something...There's something iffy about the 'product' pronouncing on the capability of the process which produced it as rendering it (the product) accurately and reliably capable of so pronouncing.Something decidedly iffy.- I think you're conflating things here. The alarms bells I referred to had to do with what should be going of in your head about your own position - not what should be going off in your head about mine. I agree that you shouldn't take anything I say with more than salt than suits your taste. And I don't mind if you don'tAs for me? I've all the evidence of God I need to convince me. I don't at all suppose that evidence available to you. And so, I don't expect you to be convinced by me. The only one capable of proving God exists to you would be, I think you'd agree, God himself.In these things he is nothing if not reasonable.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I'm not in anyway saying they believe in God by believing God. I thought I was making it fairly clear that a person could believe God whilst clearly not believing in God. The two things (believe/believe in) are completely different things.But I'm sorry if I gave that impression.- This shows that what man finds good can conflict with what God finds good. That man calls it moral at one point, then changes his mind at another, is neither here nor there. What matters is what God calls it. And that we're measured against that standard.If God finds cannabilism immoral then men finding otherwise at some point or other merely means they are in conflict with God. Whatever they call their behaviour.- Where does God condone rape?What's wrong with God killing his enemies? Or anyone else for that matter?What's wrong with God punishing sinners at any time - whatever generation they happen to be?What do you mean by "vilely cruel to lepers"?What difference that God's actions measure as "excessive" according to your standard - it's not according to your standard he's measuring the crimes seriousness afterall.As to our "behaviour" today: after a century dominated by two world wars, topped off with a cold war which threatened the very existance of mankind + an endless series of less total wars (in which the depravity relented not). Add to that a world in which a billion or so live in the lap of relative luxury whilst millions upon millions live in squalour and starvation...Our behaviour indeed..- And some believers believe they'll have 70 odd virgins tend to their every desire if they fly a plane into a building. Since when did any number of forgeries (assuming for a momet they are) detract from the original?This isn't evidence for anything.- We know from the Bible that narrow is the way of salvation and few find it. We also know from the Bible that there will be many people who suppose themselves believers who aren't actually. It's not surprising therefore, that there are a lot of believers (in gods) who do as you say.It must be said too that a believer (as defined by God) isn't saved by his view on God's morality. So deviance there isn't all that relevant either.The best we can agree, I think, is that this "evidence" is actually observation that can be woven into your/my worldview.- Interesting. How do we conclude an animal has a sense of right and wrong (experienced in the way we experience a sense of right and wrong: guilt and shame/clear conscience etc). That God installs a controlling instinct in an animal is not the same thing as a knowledge of good and evil.- I'd agree with you that this occurs. Whether the god is religious in nature, or whether it's something else that attracts our worship/love/awe..life. Edited by iano, : No reason given.

That subset was installed in man at the point of his falling: a knowledge of good and evil (a.k.a. conscience). That's pretty far back..

We might have to move from trumping towards SNAP! My supposition see's God turning man into children of God (thus we become like order with God - albeit children of God). Our differences appear to centre on how God achieves this (by a mans work or by His grace - of which by grace is, by a long mile, more wonderful)I doubt that your God can turn man into supreme beings just like him? If so then I'll admit your supposition evokes more wonder (as in: how on earth can their be multiple supreme beings )- Unfortunately, this wonder kind of runs straight into a short circuit. The flash of light involved is wonderful - but short circuits also bring a horrible burning smell and lots of acrid smoke.Or at least they should. Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Not look good in front of his creation. To cause, as I said, wonder and humility to arise in his created beings. With a view to those things playing a part in God's mechanism of salvation w.r.t. mankind.I remember RobinRohan describing how it was that the sight of vast rolling seas caused an almost overwhelming ache of loneliness to arise in him (which is an applied version of the sense of the wonder & awe I'm referring to here). That ache - that dis-ease - fits snugly into an overall mechanism of (attempted) salvation which utilises pain in a specific fashion associated with pains general purpose, to whit: - informing us that something is wrong.Augustines had the same in mind when he said:

quote:

---

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

---

One task of creation, as I say, is to ensure that restlessness in us. RobinRohan, for one, felt it...

The trouble for your position is that it is a clearly partisan skewing of things - any number of threads could be opened to deal with these supposed inconsistancies and the trail would spiral away to infinity as it always does. The iffy-ness of my opponants position however, is pretty clear cut. That science has delivered him onto this dilemma horns isn't really the issue - indeed, I'm glad it has; it might cause him to stop and think about it for a while.Far be it for me to knock the pursuits of science. The world we live in is the result of mans manipulation of stuff which has nothing to do with man. That stuff is far more wonderful to behold than anything man has managed to do with it (I'm a mechanical engineer and can't avoid but seeing all the ugly inefficiency in so much of what we do)Not that I think man will be doing much with it for all that long more. At least not in anything like the guise of todays mankind. And that isn't the stuff's fault I might add.Not that I was attacking science by the way. I was pointing out the curious circularity of view that science seems to demand you arrive at: stardust concluding it's made of stardust is one thing. Supposing itself able to pronounce that conclusion reliable is quite anotherEdited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.