My Beliefs- GDR

This is exactly what I warned you about doing. From the initial Miller Urey experiment many of this work attempts to suss out and reproduce reasonable conditions on Earth before life began. This is physics and chemistry and has nothing to do with evolutionary processes. Then the experiment is left to run to see what happens under those conditions.There is then no intelligence involved in finding just the right combinations or processes to create evolving chemistry. Today individual steps are worked on. Until they are sown together under conditions that are a good bet for the early earth and can make the transition from chemistry to biology by themselves I won't be convinced we've cracked the problem.But over and over again steps that were thought to be a problem turn out to happen by themselves under a variety of conditions. All this is evidence, however preliminary, that there are almost inevitable steps that can occur under natural early earth conditions that give rise to evolving chemistry.As for your "just right". That is a pretty far out assumption you are making with so little known right now. It is not impossible, I'd hazard a guess that it is even very probable, that there are many initial conditions and steps that can get to an evolving chemicals. To the degree that is true then the assumption of it requiring "just right" conditions or that it is improbable is unwarranted.Edited by NosyNed, : No reason given.

I don’t know. I merely say that I believe that Tom is responsible for the fact that we exist. I speculatively see it this way. We have 5 senses and we perceive the world in a specific way. Yes we have telescopes etc that that is just an enhancement of our vision. We also live in a universe with only one time dimension. Science tells us that other time dimensions are possible and some theories depend on them. From what I read it is conceivable that we are part of something more than what we directly perceive.If we only had 4 senses with no vision we would perceive our universe very differently than we do. I wonder how we might perceive the universe if we had a different set of senses or an additional sense. I also wonder what a universe with say 3 time dimensions might look like. Presumable we could then move around infinitely in time just as we presently move around infinitely in space. I know that is highly speculative but it is one possible way that Tom might exist invisibly and at the same time have his existence somehow interlocked with our own. If this just happened to be accurate it would mean that our world is actually part of an eternal universe which we only partially perceive, which would answer the question of why there is something instead of nothing.I think I see ridicule in my future. Well I did somewhat reluctantly start a thread on what I believe. Do you believe there is no truth beyond what can be known empirically? Presumably you think that lying is wrong. Even if it is an innocuous fib that doesn’t hurt anyone, (such as if I told people that I had a PHD in Physics), I think that all of us know we shouldn’t and when we do we feel a twinge of guilt, or a feeling of being uncomfortable. That is a thing that presumably you believe in. As you believe it then there must be a universal standard of truthfulness that you believe in. How do you objectively know that?

But that experiment just makes my point. This is from the wiki site on the experiment.

quote:

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The Miller—Urey experiment[1] (or Urey—Miller experiment)[2] was an experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested for the occurrence of chemical origins of life. Specifically, the experiment tested Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that conditions on the primitive Earth favored chemical reactions that synthesized organic compounds from inorganic precursors. Considered to be the classic experiment concerning the experimental abiogenesis, it was conducted in 1953[3] by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago and later the University of California, San Diego and published the following year.[4][5][6]
After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the original experiments were able to show that there were actually well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That is considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in life.[7] Moreover, some evidence suggests that Earth's original atmosphere might have had a different composition from the gas used in the Miller—Urey experiment. There is abundant evidence of major volcanic eruptions 4 billion years ago, which would have released carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere. Experiments using these gases in addition to the ones in the original Miller—Urey experiment have produced more diverse molecules.

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Miller Urey ExperimentThere were very precise conditions required for those amino acids to form. This in itself required the right processes to have these conditions present. Then we need just the right process to have these amino acids combine in such a way as cellular life emerges with all of the complexity of just one single cell. From there we need the whole evolutionary process for physical life and then somehow a process evolved from that for sentient life capable of morality and capable of even comprehending all of this.As I said it is one complicated process after another and it is still turtles all the way down. All of these mindless processes then had to happen by some incredible stroke of good fortune to bring about the world we experience today.IMHO Ockham's Razor tells us that the simplest answer is that there was an intelligent plan.

Didn't you read what I wrote. You say "incredible stroke of good luck" when in actual fact the result may have been nearly inevitable and had a very high probability. But what is attempted in this experiment (and may have failed in the M-U experiment) is just to produce the conditions on a early Earth. Not something that requires any hint of a guiding hand once the universe we know is in place.As I think I said before, you are backing up to the initial conditions of the universe and making no statements that apply to the rise and evolution of living things. That is, you've moved your gap waaaay back. This is exactly the astonishment that we should feel that a particular calcium atom ended up precisely 3.45687 cm from the top of your ulna. The world we experience today is one of a REALLY big number of possibilities. One happened. So what?

People seldom eat other people. We have cases of genocide where people are killed out of hatred, greed and the need to feel powerful. The Nazis had nothing to fear from the Jews but look what they did anyway. I know it often seems that way and I sympathize with that position. Tom is the name I have chosen for a generic god but I do believe specific things about him. I believe that Jesus was the incarnation of the Word of God and that through Jesus we can see God's true nature. My understanding of God is that He is loving, kind and just. I follow him on that basis. If I am wrong and Tom is fine with the horrors that occur in this world and did have a choice about it then I would have to agree with your position. I don't follow God just because He is God. I follow Him because He is loving and just.If I am right then God suffers with our suffering and finds joy in our joy. Again if I am right the suffering that people go through now will finally result in an existence where suffering is no more and justice will be done.

I'm going to assume that you're not deliberately misunderstanding me.The fact that we evolved from other animal species means that we have most of their traits and instincts. The reason we are violent is because the world we evolved in is violent, it depends on creatures eating weaker creatures in order to survive.That is the explanation of evil. Nothing mystical, nothing religious, just biology.There was no reason at all for your Tom to create a world where in order to survive we had to hunt, kill and eat his other creations. He could, for example, have given us all solar panels. But no he devised a system of kill or be killed.Kind and loving? Don't be rediculous.

There are still numerous processes whether inevitable or not. (Of course you're making assumptions about what science is going to discover which is a "science of the gaps" argument.) So let's assume that the result was nearly inevitable and very probable.The fact that one process or step after another flows relatively seamlessly and naturally into the next one is actually something that smells of a well oiled plan. Maybe it is necessary to go back to the BB although my opinion the formation of life is a separate process from the evolution of the universe.Regardless of whether the processes that brought us here occurred naturally or not we are here by an incredible stroke of good fortune or by an intelligent plan that are is the reasons that those processes existed in the first place. This is the only world we know and yet you are suggesting that there are many other possible worlds as a reason that we should just except that we are recipients of all that good fortune. In the first place we are back to "science of the gaps" again, but do you really think that out of billions of possibilities one happened to work out for us is a simpler solution that the idea that we are the result of an intelligent agent, as per Occam's Razor?

Everything else in your post is covered by numerous other posts in this thread.However you said: I won't deny that I have a great deal of sympathy with that POV.
I don't have a good answer but I'll go back to roughly what I said in my last response to you.When I became a Christian my outlook and my dealings with people underwent a reasonably substantive change. I became more aware of changes that I should make in my life and to a large extent those changes were made without a great deal of effort on my part. Certainly you can come up with psychological explanations but on the other hand no one knows me as well as I know myself.I believe that God calls all of us to live out the life that can be seen in my signature. Another way to put it is that we are called to live by the "Golden Rule". Incidentally of course, this is also the message of Jesus in the Gospels.I agree that it isn't easy to square that with the world as you described it, although it isn't as bleak as you picture as you pint it, as there is considerable joy in the world as well. Still it is a problem for me.If I then am called to be loving and just for its own sake then I can only assume that God is like that as well. If that is the case then I have to believe, or have faith if you like, that for whatever reason things are the way they are because it was the way they had to be. I also have faith that ultimately the suffering will be gone and there will be justice. I still maintain that over the course of recorded history mankind has made progress in that direction but still there is a long way to go.Yes, I think that the world screams out design to us and yes I believe that the NT writers got it right about the resurrection, and that that position makes more sense of history than the idea that they got it wrong. (No doubt you disagree but there we are.) However, it still boils down to faith that God is loving, kind and just. If God does exist and I got Him all wrong and He isn't kind and loving, then so be it.

Who says this? The whole process almost certainly bumbled along over something on the order of a 100 million years. Why do you think it flowed so seamlessly? I don't remember you agreeing that you have been practicing theology of the gaps. I'm waiting for that.What science says where there is a gap in knowledge is "We don't know." That is where we are now with the origin of life. A century ago it was a totally dark hole in knowledge. We now know a lot of things that give us evidence to suggest more about what may have happened but we still don't know. What we do know is that each bit of evidence points away from the need for a guiding hand. Whether there is enough evidence to come to a firm but tentative conclusion about that is going to vary with individual opinions. Mine and yours may differ.The GotG argument is when a gap in knowledge is seen and it is suggested that God did it. I'd like to know how any of this is what you call "science of the gaps". At no time is anyone pointing to a gap in knowledge and stuffing an unevidenced thing in there. When there is a gap first there is just a "we don't know". Then there are more or less flaky speculations. Then there is a freakin' load of work to weed out the truly flaky from the highly speculative. Anything used to suggest a plug in the gap is suggested based on something that is known. I know there are billions and billions of possibilities. In one the dinosaurs didn't die and we didn't arise. In another we arose in South America 5 million years later than we did in Africa. On and on go the possibilities.To look at what we have know is to look down at the bridge hand I have been dealt and gasp in astonishment because the hand is so improbable that I could play a game a minute for lifetimes and not get it. Then the next hand dealt is just as improbable.Occam's razor says that the simplest hypothesis may be a good one to spend extra effort on. The simplest hypothesis does not add extra unevidenced, astonishing entities. The razor doesn't say that hypothesis will turn out to be correct it just guides us in expending effort. As said before; every time something is learned we see reasonable natural processes at work. Why would we suggest that won't continue?

The 'good' answer, is that we're animals like all others and that explains pretty much everything about our behaviours. It also shows that Tom, if he exists, is a bit of a git.But you can't square that within your beliefs, so you just ignore it.Now my personal belief is that all religious belief is founded on personal revelation - just as you describe. Once an individual has experienced that, s/he makes the reality of his or her life fit the belief. You've seen that Faith's revelation needs her to throw away practically all science and sense in order to maintain it. Yours requires you to throw away most of the biblical requirements of your religion in order to continue to believe.Everything that you learn about our natural world will confirm your beliefs in the Tom that you'd like to believe and everything that challenges it will be set aside. There is no argument, factual, scientific or philosophical that can make a difference to you, because you believe that you know the nature of God and have put him in a place where he can't be touched.It must be very comforting.

Sure, but that's very vague. Responsible how? Started the Big Bang then left it alone to evolve naturally? Or is Tom there every step of the way from forming a sun to galaxies to solar systems to planets to biological life?What role does Tom play?Because it seems as though any time you (and others who believe as you do) see a gap in science you see fit to put Tom in that place. But that wouldn't be necessary if you were one of those believers who believe Tom started the Big Bang then let it function on it's own.So when you say Tom was the cause for life to emerge on Earth, but not for the formation of Earth itself because we have a perfectly good workable theory of planetary formation, you A) commit the god of the gaps fallacy and B) run into a logical problem of having to explain why Tom didn't see fit to include himself since the Big Bang, and then only just to build a single cell organism then leave the project alone again.It's very inconsistent at best and logically abhorrent at worse. No ridicule. I just don't know what you were trying to address with all that. Belief doesn't enter my conclusion.I'm sure there are things about the universe we haven't yet discovered, if that answers your question. Of course not. What? I'm not 10 years old, I understand that sometimes lying is the right thing to do. That is an example of a selfish lie, that makes you look good even though you haven't earned it. So it's natural that you would feel guilt.But when my kids were young and they showed me a terrible drawing of something they said was a dog, I didn't tell them the truth. I said it was the best dog I've ever seen. I felt good about that lie because it encouraged them to keep drawing. I don't believe any of that. I don't believe in a universal standard for truthfulness or anything else you care to make up.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

I've been trying to figure out why you use this phrase other than to pretend that others are doing the same kind of reasoning you are. What you say implies you know you are using a god of the gaps (or is that Tom of the gaps) argument but you never say so.I think I have a good example of that you might want to use in support of SotG. About 15 years ago the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe was uncovered. To explain this dark energy was invoked. At first glance this is conjuring up an ad hoc explanation to fill the gap and fits what I think you mean by SotG. I'll ignore any theoretical reasons for the existence of this so that it more closely matches a GotG argument. The theoretical work produces poor agreement with observations anyway.So we have a gap in knowledge (what does cause the universe to accelerate?) and toss our explanation in to fill it (dark energy). Sounds a lot like using Tom to explain the nature of our universe that allows for the opportunity for life to arise to me. At the same time I do not agree with you that there is any SotG involved in the origin of life since nothing analogous to dark energy is postulated there. No new entity is required and at the same time we have lots of bits of evidence all pointing to not needing one.So we do have SotG? I guess that is arguable but there is, to me anyway being a bit ignorant of any details, a case to be made for one.However, what happens next is interesting. The cosmologists and physicists don't pretend that they have really answered the question by simply saying DE did it which is what the theists do with their gaps. It is answered but Tom did it and his ways are mysterious.Instead work is done to find ways to detect this DE much theoretical work is done to fine ways to test and break the idea.In addition, other ways to produce the observations are worked out-- very large voids in the universe for us to be sitting in for example. Then work is done to determine how to find a difference between on hypothesis and the other.In reality, the DE did it explanation is treated exactly like an "I dunno" but since what ever it is(if the expansion is actually accelerating) acts like an energy the "I dunno" is given a handy name of DE instead of Tom. But at the moment (ignoring some details) the DE name and the Tom name are both exactly an "I dunno" answer.The difference is that the Tom version of the "I dunno" seems to disallow any further work. We have no other examples of a Tom-like thing to study, no math to describe it's behavior, no clue as to what to do next. The DE version of the "I dunno" allows for and requires a mathematical description of what the DE entity has to behave like and lots of clues as to what to try next.Unlike theists scientists take their DE god and try to banish it or dissect it or both as soon as he pokes his head in the room. And the methods of science have been shown to be very powerful in doing this. The methods revolving around Tom have been shown to be utterly useless to date.

Hi Ned,I think that the phrase "Science of the Gaps" is a poor one. Science is not an answer to anything, only a means to an answer. Say rather "Materialism of the Gaps".It's still a flawed analogy though. The whole point about GotG is that God is only supposed to take a role where there is a gap in our understanding, i.e. a material explanation cannot be found. As more and more materialist explanations are foud for phenomena previously ascribed to deities, the Gap God is gradually forced to retreat into fewer and fewer gaps.This is not the case for materialism. For materialism there is no need to retreat, simply because every time that we've found an explanation for a phenomenon we've found it to be... not magic.Every single thing that humanity has ever successfully explained about the universe has turned out to explicable in purely materialist terms. No need for retreat. No need to hide. And where there are gaps in our understanding it seems reasonable to look for materialist explanations first, because that's exactly what worked every other time.If even a single phenomenon had ever been successfully explained by non-materialist forces, then GDR might have a point. Until that happens though, there is no scientific/materialist argument that could be considered equivalent to the God of the Gaps.Mutate and Survive

There have been hiccups along the way but considering that we have gone from some sort of primordial soup to sentient life not to mention whatever processes led up to the soup in the first place I don’ think that we should quibble over the hiccups. You continue to claim that science is on the cusp of discovering the process for to origins of life. It hasn’t been discovered yet but you claim that it will and essentially say that this does away with any thoughts of Tom.That is science of the gaps, or as Granny quite rightly suggested it is more like materialism of the gaps. I am not saying that Tom is in that gap. I’ve even agreed that science may make that discovery but I don’t agree that it would do away with any thoughts of Tom.Regardless of how many processes such as evolution or abiogenesis that science can uncover, none of it will preclude the need, or possibility if you like, of Tom as the designer of the natural process. For that matter it doesn’t even eliminate the possibility that the process was tweaked along the way. I agree that there isn’t any scientific evidence for it but frankly it isn’t a question of science anyway. Certainly though, as science makes new discoveries that are in conflict with some aspect of our belief in Tom then we should go with the science. Because each natural process requires another process requires another process. At some point it is easier to say that there actually was a plan. Each process required some improbable chance that the next process would take hold. The simplest explanation is that the accumulation of all the processes was part of a plan.

I don't ignore it. I just answered in the previous post how I deal with it. In the first place whatever personal experiences that I had came after the belief. I also don't agree that I reject the Biblical requirements of my faith. I contend that my faith is very Biblical and in line with the likes of C S Lewis and mainstream Anglicanism. (CofE I guess. ) Actually, as I've said before the Christian scholars that have had the greatest effect on my thinking have been from the UK. Actually you're wrong. I've already talked in this thread about where as I have gained greater understanding of the Bible from the cultural context of the Bible and from science. It actually all makes very good sense when you don't understand it as being inerrant. I have made numerous changes to what it is that I believe, and no doubt will adjust what I believe in the future.I have virtually no doubt about Tom's existence. That aside though I have to come to my own conclusions about His nature from my own life experience, from what I read and from the experience of others.So yes I have an opinion about the nature of God. Yes, there is ambiguity. Certainly I am bothered by many aspects of this world that don't appear to be consistent with the way that Tom as I understand him would want them to be. So yes, I rationalize it and come to the conclusion that that is the way things have to be in order to bring about life in a new creation where the sorrows of this world will no longer be part of our existence. I assume that is meant to be a bit patronizing, (if it isn't I apologise), but that isn't the point. My life before I became a Christian was pretty darn good. I had a wife, 3 great kids and a job I would have done for nothing, that provided me with a good quality of life. I was active in sports and had my music as a hobby. I had no addictions and wasn't in any danger of winding up in the slammer. Life was really good. I wasn't looking to be comforted.I was given a copy of "Mere Christianity" by C S Lewis and as a result starting going to a little Anglican church in the Montreal suburbs. A number of years later I decided to research my faith more deeply and I have read numerous books from numerous points of view on Christianity, other religions and popular science. All of that resulted in quite a different understanding of my Christian faith but on the other hand it was strengthened.So no, I didn't become a Christian to be comforted. I am a Christian because I am convinced that it represents the truth.