Hi Bex

We do indeed come to very different conclusions on the question of where it all came from. I don’t know how life came into existence, you seem to accept the biblical version despite it’s contradictions to the evidence. Is not my admission of ignorance the more rational position than accepting a known falsehood?

Genesis 1 lists the order of creation as
Heaven (I guess the universe at large) and earth.
Light
Firmament in the waters to divide the waters above and the waters below.
Dry land
Grass, herb and fruit trees
Sun Moon and Stars
Sea creatures and birds
Cattle, creeping things, beasts of the earth
Man

I assume that you understand just how wrong that list is. That we have very clear evidence that the stars came into existence many billons of years before the earth, that sea creatures predate land organisms by many thousands of millions of years etc.

Given that the bible is clearly wrong while the scientific explanation is incomplete yet to date not contradicted by the evidence why would you reject the scientific view in favour of a falsehood?

The firmament idea is also very telling, it shows the ancient idea that the earth was land suspended in water with water above the sky separated from us by a dome. This makes perfect sense given when and where the bible was written but it’s hardly a rational accounting of the world around us given what we know today.

Much has been presented on this forum by the way in favour of biblical history, perhaps you have failed to read the older posts? So by saying it doesn't exist, probably won't change much.
I’ve read all sorts of historical posts here but I’m yet to see any that actually support the idea that the bible is accurate on this question. It is a product of it’s time so it’s hardly surprising that it accurately portrays events and places of that time but once it steps outside it’s time it becomes almost complete fantasy with virtually no truth to it at all I would suggest. If you have any evidence to the contrary please present it.

I’ve never heard of a ‘miraculous big bang’, you’ll have to explain that theory to me. I go with the scientific theory of the big bang which is neither miraculous nor a bang. The term big bang was invented by an author trying to describe this theory in a couple of words but it is a very misleading term. The actual event had no resemblance to an explosion. As for suggesting that the idea has not been tested that is where you are wrong. Many predictions spring from the maths of ‘Big Bang’ theory, predictions that have been tested by later observations such as the cosmic microwave background which was predicted many years before it was first observed. You don’t have to be able to reproduce an event to test it you just have to be able to make testable predictions about its consequences which later turn out to be true. Such is the case with Big Bang theory. Can you think of any tests that would support the god did it hypothesis?

But you are correct that my post did not disprove creation, it’s not actually possible to disprove creation as an all powerful and all knowing being could have created the universe five minutes ago with all the appearance of age we see around us, with this post already out there on the web despite that fact that the being who created it did not even exist at the time it was apparently created. Disproving creation is impossible. As for proving evolution that post did not touch on the question, I have given many details before on why the vast majority of scientifically literate people alive today accept ToE including the majority of christians. If you are interested in that we can go further down that path again just say the word?

We don’t actually know how ‘mathematically perfect’ the universe is. We don’t have enough information. If you take away the unstated egocentric bias and accept that life does not have to look very much like us at all you will find that many of the possible combinations of factors would produce life friendly universes just not universes friendly to life like us and of those that could not there would be no life to notice so life must exist in a life friendly universe and it shouldn’t be surprised that this is so. In fact it would be far more telling if we did find ourselves in a universe that was not life friendly, that would require a miracle and would indeed be strong evidence for god.

How do you explain good and evil in regards to just "nature"? Why is there any moral code and conscience? How can a human being have conception of morality if we arose from an explosion, rather than purposeful intent? If we arose from a random event with no intent/purpose/intelligence, how is it even possible for an idea to arise, if the existence of "ideas" did not exist in the first place?
The short answer is missing so many details as to be problematic but I’ll give you the briefest of explanations and I’ll flesh it out if you have trouble grasping what I’m getting at. From the fossil record we know that the earliest life forms were very simple single celled organisms. They did not possess the complexity required to create a brain capable of forming ideas. As we look from there to the present we see increasing complexity to the point where large brained creatures have arisen but how does evolution take us from the one to the other?

Evolution is very good at fine tuning organisms to their niche so that they can make the best living possible and so survive and reproduce. Those which can’t died out long ago, only the success stories survive into the present. Making a living requires gathering food and avoiding becoming food yourself. It’s possible to find apples by tasting everything you crawl across much as a snail might. This is time consuming but it could work. Being able to predict where to find apples is more efficient so there is an evolutionary pressure for this ability. Looking for the red colour of ripe apples for example might lead you to them with less effort than just tasting everything around you. Simple brains can be attracted to the colour red just as moths are attracted to light at night, it doesn’t require ideas just instincts. But the world is a complex place and apples don’t just hang around forever and everywhere waiting to be found. Being able to predict the seasons for apples and the locations where they might be found is an obvious advantage. That advantage gives us the driver to push evolution to invent a mind capable of understanding on the most basic level, the world around us. And they don’t have to be perfect at modelling the world around us, the aim remember is simply to find food. Maybe they believed a god with a particular liking to moist sunny spots in summer creates apples so that’s where you should look. It works even if it’s wrong and that utility is all that evolution works on. Obviously however the more accurate the model the more useful it will be so models that rely on real factors, seasonal variations and ideal growing conditions and minds capable of perceiving those factors will be favoured by evolution. There’s no great magic to that, we have built computers which can learn to recognize patterns and to accurately do all sorts of tasks without being programmed to do so using evolutionary algorithms so we know that this works without intelligent or divine input. It’s a gentle slope from there to the amazingly powerful minds that we poses capable of understanding complex patterns and forming complex ideas. The evidence we have from animal studies suggests that there is no fundamental difference in kind between our minds and those of animals just a difference in complexity. We have probably the most complex example of a reasonably common organ on this planet. We are probably not the only creatures to form ideas, we are not the only creatures to be self aware, we are not the only creatures to understand fairness and morality to some extent and we are far from perfect at any of these things.

The corruption of the world and deterioration of original genetic perfection, according to the bible, began after the fall, but the deterioration was more marked over time through each generation if the biblical time scale and age rate is correct (I believe it is).
Again we see the problem of evidence, genetic perfection, whatever that is, is not degrading over time according to the best evidence we have at hand.


If all things come originally from God, they rely upon God and if we have sinned against God, we have in a sense, against nature and ourselves.
So you are suggesting that god dropped his bundle when Adam and Eve disobeyed him and stoped looking after our genetic perfection, is that about it?

LOL finding god to be a monster is something that I can’t really, seriously, do. I have nothing against Apollo, Zeus, the Easter bunny or Santa Claus either and for exactly the same reason.

I’m not a geneticist but I have researched genetics and have some understanding of our genetic code and how DNA works. The idea of the fall affecting all creatures’ genetics does not fit at all with what we know of genetics at this time. There is nothing within genetics anywhere that suggests such an event ever happened or that such an event is even possible. Obviously, as for the creation of the universe just a few days ago, an all powerful all knowing god could have created genetic codes with that appearance but when I was a christian I didn’t believe in a deceiver god and I doubt that many people here would.

Perhaps you could provide a clear cut scientific explanation for it via evolution...
I’m not sure here what you want me to explain?

Science can never wipe god off the map by definition. ToE has a vast array of supporting evidence from disparate fields all converging on one single, repeatable, solidly tested theory. A theory that is accepted by the vast majority of those who actually understand it and rejected, I would suggest, only by those with an emotional or religious agenda for doing so, or too little understanding of it to really understand what it says. There is more evidence by far for ToE than there is for Newtons theory of universal gravitation for example, are you suggesting that we should reject gravity as just a foolish notion designed to undermine belief in god as some in Newton’s day did?

However, since you have produced a scientific experiment proving to us that the mind can be meddled with (something testable), to produce spiritual type experiences. Would you please provide the same to prove evolution? Something observable and testable/repeatable....your enthusiasm regarding the meddling of the mind as an attempt to disprove authentic spiritual experiences is a nice try, but hardly practical and does nothing to disprove them all.

Sure, there are some really fascinating experiments that can show evolution in action which are repeatable and very telling. I’ve explained this one before so I apologize for repeating myself for those who’ve read this already. The idea is to start from one bacterium, place it in a sterile growing media and let it reproduce. Break the colony produced into multiple colonies and grow each in a separate media. Now the fun begins. Challenge the colonies to something that will stress them, say a change of diet to something they can’t digest well or add a poison to their growth media and watch the results. ToE predicts that they will adapt to these challenges. The telling point of this experiment is that you can watch the exact genetic changes that occur in each line to meet the challenges, you can freeze samples from any generation and revive them later to compare them to later generations. The final and most telling outcome of this experiment, which has been run for around 40 years continuously in one case, is that the experiment started with just one single bacterium so there is no genetic diversity for selection to work on at the start of the experiment. All the adaptation observed, all the genetic changes seen are the result of evolutionary invention, Mutation and Selection. It is not explained by special creation unless god is inside the reaction vessels tinkering with the experimental organisms in real time.

All the best Bex

In Reason

Russell