My Beliefs- GDR

Yeah, I can see how it looks impossible. Life has gotten incredibly complex. But when you "zoom in" and look really close to the interactions that are going on at the molecular level, it really is just chemistry. And chemistry is simply atoms and molecules obeying the laws of physics.Basically, there is only one option for the molecules in the reactions - you put a sodium next to a chloride and they make salt, end of story - so when you say things about the "odds" of life happening, or how much "chance" it took, you're really overlooking the fundamental aspects of it and being wowed by the emergent property that you see at face value. Au contraire, I did indeed develop from one single cell in my mother's womb Well you should know that there is iron in your blood. One part of the hemoglobin protein literally has a piece of metal sitting right in the middle of it that the rest of that part's structure is based on.That iron atom ultimately came from the ground, but now its a part of "you". Imagine the path that iron atom had to go throught to become a part of you. Shit, it formed inside of a star before it even got to Earth.We could talk about the chances of that happening and be amazed at how small they are, but when the hemoglobin is forming in your mitochondria, and that iron atom is sitting there wating to be incorporated, the reactions that take place are chemical ones and its not enitrely different from that salt crystal growing. In fact, those chemical reactions are the same tracing back to your stomach digesting the spinach that you ate that contained the iron, and the spinach growing in the earth and removing that iron from the ground.All those things happen spontaneouly, again like the salt crystal forming, so the real "chance" of them happening is nothing like what you get when you consider the whole path the atom has taken. Its not like its impossible, its like it is inevitable. Nah, not really. If you boil salt water on the stove to make some crystals, that doesn't show that it takes sentience to make salt crystals grow. Like I said, I'm not trying to challenge your belief in God. I'm just challenging your assertions that it took too much chance for life to emerge so therefore you need to invoke God at that point.

I'm not sure that I would describe God as a highly complex entity but I'll go with the fortuitous attributes if only because it resulted in me. I have a little different slant on the universe creation aspect. It is my highly speculative theory that our universe is just one aspect of a much more complex and eternal, (always was and always will be), reality and we have just been spun off from that greater reality. In that sense our universe would always have and always will exist but our perception, at least for the present, is that there is a T=0. That at least seems to fit from what I've read from both secular and theistic sources. I pretty much covered that in the previous paragraph. As I see that the physical laws of our universe are sub-section of a much larger set of natural laws in a greater reality. In a lot of ways I hate putting this down because I realize how speculative it is, and that I am looking for consistency with my strongly held Christian beliefs, but I am really interested in how things are and how it all fits together and this provides of a framework to be able to picture it in my own mind. I have no idea if it can help anyone else or not, and it is definitely open to revision. ....even if they are completely non-intuitive, and I question the comprehensible part. Who was that said that if you think you understand QM then don't really know about it, or words to that effect . I agree but that doesn't remove the possibility either. That isn't what I am doing though. On other grounds I have come to my Christian beliefs. That is my starting point. I see science as way to understand the God that I believe in. Science knowledge increases as we gain new insights and information. I see my understanding of God in that light as well. Over the last number of years all of my beliefs have evolved and things that I wrote when I first joined this forum I would now argue against in light of the things that I have learned since then. OK, but why is that? Why are we able to even think that way?Are we or are we not teleological beings? In a way your statements are contradictory. You suggest that intelligent life can exist in other universes and yet you reject the idea that that other universe intelligence could be capable of being responsible for existence in our universe. ...well, ultimately yes. Actually it's all true except for the eternal part. I believe God is eternal but in actual fact it wouldn't take an eternal God to be able to create us. Actually, even if there was nothing but natural causes I don't see our beginnings as being that simple. If we can create computers from limited intelligence then there is no reason us not to believe that we could be created, as more complex computers of a sort, by an even greater intelligence if we open our minds up to the idea.

We use our rationale to decide what it is that we believe in historical writings. We can't go back in time to re-create the battle of Hastings so we decide what it is that we believe by what has been written. As I've said before that if we are to read a history of the Viet Nam war in a library in the US it would likely read very differently than one in Hanoi. We would have to use our rationale to determine what it is that we would believe about that war, and we would find that different people would come to different conclusion, but the historical records are evidence and the one thing they would definitely agree on is that there was a war. Well it wasn't me that proposed it but I believe it to be the case. The existence or non-existence of God. Read the OP.

It took sentience to create the freezer. We don't make new cells. Did it take sentience to bring about the process that new cells are formed?

But nature does it without a freezer.No, it does not take sentience to bring about the process that new cells are formed and yes, we do make new cell, constantly.

Huh? Explain hair growth.None of the skin cells you have right now were a part of you 10 years ago. All of those cells have been replaced by new cells that you grew.

A wound healing is the creation of new cells too, right?

Thanks for all the information. my whole working life revolved around airplanes which leaves me eminently unqualified to speak on many of these issues. I have in the dozen or so years spent a lot of my spare time reading books on science and theology and have particularly enjoyed the books that combine the two of them. Francis Collins seems to believe that it is a process, (not to be confused with the ID movement) that involves randomness. I have enjoyed his books. Are your views consistent with his?

I meant that we don't consciously make them as a result of our intelligence. It all happens on its own.

Hold on a minute. In one corner we have a universe containing electrons, quarks et al and the predictable interactions between them.In the other corner we have an eternal hyper-intelligence able to create universes full of interacting particles, a being who is able to design intelligent entities (i.e. humans), a being that can interact on a personal level with billions of people simultaneously, a being who created morality, a being that planned all of this to occur in such a way that his involvement in this process was entirely hidden except for the occasional immaculate conception or resurrection channeled through the super-human he sent to live amongst us 2,000 years ago.And you consider the latter to be less complex and less elaborate than the former and thus more likely to be the 'something' that just happens to exist rather than nothing.... Really? If so I find that astonishing. But you have placed God in the parallel universes and other dimensions that are the unknown and seemingly imperceptible and unknowable mysteries of today. The equivalent of "heaven" above the sky that seemed so out of reach to our ancestors. So - With all due respect - This is exactly what you are doing. The scientific position regarding this (very roughly) is - Yes we are teleological beings. We are teleological beings because we are a socially evolved species. In a social environment there is considerable selection advantage in being able to discern the intents and motivations of the other entities which make up the social environment (i.e. primarily other people). Furthermore there is very arguably selection advantage in overplaying such thinking. One is more likely to survive if one mistakenly assumes conscious intent/purpose when it isn't there than if one fails to recognise it when it is there. This is turn leads to things like hyperactive agency detection which in turn contributes to the human inclination to erroneously invoke the conscious intent of imperceptible super-beings when confronted with things that seem awe-inspiring and mysterious.No doubt you will consider this all part of the non-complex plan of the non-complex hyper-intelligent super-being you are invoking to explain the things you find too complex, awe-inspiring and mysterious to have occurred without purpose....... No I don't. What I reject is this notion that the 'something' which just exists is a highly complex entity with a number of fortuitous attributes such as being eternal, moral, vastly intelligent, able to interact with billions of other lesser intelligences simultaneously, capable of universe creation etc. etc. as remotely likely.I would suggest that something less elaborate is more likely....

In one case he is talking about a mortal man. In the other he is talking about something more than that. Mind you in the case where it sounds like more than a man what he would be talking about is a man on the throne through whom God will rule all of Israel. Because he is writing about one small plot of land and not the world. He is talking again about a man through whom God will reign so that God’s reign is eternal no matter how many earthly kings there are. Yes, that is the point. Jesus was saying that they had gotten it all wrong. It was not to be about one piece of land but they had been given a mission for the world. The mission for the world, which included the Romans, was to take a God of love to it. He forecast the destruction of Jerusalem because they didn’t recognize the time of their visitation and that they were carrying on in their revolutionary ways. His message was that evil is not defeated by more evil. Evil is defeated by love using the weapons that Paul talks about and as Jesus did on the cross.The message was there in the prophets but there were false prophets and there were prophets who got some of it but not all of it. We do however have the one true prophet, although more than a prophet and certainly not less, in Jesus. So yes they got it wrong and that is what Jesus was trying to correct. But in doing that you have turned faith into works. The only way we are made right with God is by believing in His message of love, peace, truth, forgiveness, justice etc and having it in our hearts so that our hearts desire what His desires. Yes, if we have faith in Christ as Lord then we also have given permission to be guided by the Spirit and as it says in Psalm 37 I think it is, he will give us (His) desires for our heart. We would both agree that in Jesus we see a God who is just. We also see Jesus calling God Father. Let’s compare two hypothetical men both raised in Christian families. One has a father who is kind, supporting and loving. The other has a father who is cruel, abusive and cold. Do you really expect the latter to understand God the Father as a God of love. These two are gaining to very different images of God. The latter is very likely to reject the whole business and grow up with similar attitudes. But here is where grace comes in. Deep down in his heart of hearts this individual hates what it is that drives his coldness, and desperately seeks love but is unable to express it. I believe in a just God whose grace will ultimately strip this individual of his wounds and he will become the human God intends all of us to be, regardless of his beliefs.When you say that you have to believe that Jesus died for our sins, in order to be saved then you are saying that it isn’t by grace but by what you are able to believe, and as I said, you have made it about works. That is no different than saying that if you go to church every week, say all the right things and maybe even serve in a soup kitchen once in a while you have filled in all the boxes and you’re good to go.Honestly Faith it makes for a very small god. God is so much more than what you make Him out to be.

There is that argument from incredulity again. Life is a process and human history is a process. It seems to me that when I read books like the Robert Wright book we talked about that our understanding of the natural world and the theological or philosophical world continues to grow. I contend that if we limit ourself to scientific knowledge we miss out on a great deal of what we can know, not in the sense that we can prove it, but just in the sense of knowing something through our heart and not just in the mind.That of course raises the question of believing something because I want it to be true. Maybe I do, but there are a lot of things I would like to be true but I don't believe them. I think it was Hitchens who said that he really didn't want there to be a god and that he wanted this life to be all that there is. We are all like that to a degree.With the availability of so much information on the net as well as new information that we find in the "Dead Sea Scrolls" I contend that there is a huge increase in human knowledge that is accelerating our understanding in all fields. There a number of Christian scholars that are refining Christian belief based on wider and newer information.I don't believe that it should be discounted because it can't be proven scientifically. As I have said before things that I said when I joined this forum I would reject today.As as having to believe things in the way that you have put it doesn't seem complex to me. I also have no doubt that what I believe is only a foreshadowing of the ultimate truth and much of what I believe is likely just plain wrong. The only absolutes for me are the resurrection, the fact that God as we understand Him is a god of love and justice, the belief that He wants us to take that love into our hearts and the belief that we are teleological beings and that there is an ultimate plan. Yes I Believe more but that would be enough for me. Frankly so what if He didn't create the world, in the end would that matter if those other things are true. So what, if the God that we worship turns out to be a metaphor for a whole advanced civilization. I'm not saying that I think that is the case but so what if I have it wrong. As long as the my essentials are correct then I will worship God as I understand Him and have a desire to serve His purposes as best I can. Science has opened up a world of other universes and dimensions. Why is it wrong to say that possibly that is where we would find God? It does make more sense than having to find heaven by going to Saturn and turning left. Don't forget I am starting with the premise that God exists.I am not claiming it as an absolute. I am clear that it is highly speculative. Fine, but maybe all that is true because this hyperactive agency actually exists. It would be my belief that none of that would be true otherwise but that is JMHO. Yup. But that is only part of it. I don't say this much but there is something that is part of me that I can't put my finger on that just knows that I am not alone in this life in some way that isn't part of the physical world. I realize that is subjective and that it can be explained away by others but it is what it is. It's strange but I see my views as being far less elaborate than the idea that all that there is can exist without there being an external intelligence that is in some way involved in the fact that we have life and that He has a purpose for us.

So whats your point? Would you even want to consider the verses as addressed to you personally? If they were, would you consider following their advice or would you naturally rebel?? Does your concept of "universal human desire" have room in it for Jesus Christ?

My point was to show GDR that there's plenty of verses in the bible that strongly suggest that you need to be a believer in Jesus to be saved. They're not and can't be addressed to me personally. They're just words in a book written 2,000 years before I was born. See above There's nothing to rebel against. I really have no idea what this means, but it sounds like "no" would cover it.

Somehow believing Christ died for our sins is "works" according to your strange understanding, but "believing in His message of love, peace"...etc etc etc. isn't works? I have NO interest in how you rationalize such nonsense. You've stood the gospel and most of Christian history on its head. You prefer to believe a complicated lie over the truth. I leave you to it.==================================================================================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : to add signatureEdited by Faith, : No reason given.