I'd agree with that even without regard to the Bible, once people know right from wrong they certainly do start racking up sins. I know I have, as few as possible, but still too many to count.
Origins of life
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Design for Living
Some would suggest that the Jews (as well as many other faith traditions) initiated what might be called a Silver Rule: don't do as you wouldn't be done by (ie don't lie-"bear false witness"- don't kill, etc).
Jesus took this concept a step further with the Good Samaritan parable, initiating what might be called a Golden Rule: do as you would be done by.
One Buddhist thinker I know suggests that the concept might be taken one step further, a Platinum Rule: do unto the other as that particular other would be done by.
Some would suggest that the Jews (as well as many other faith traditions) initiated what might be called a Silver Rule: don't do as you wouldn't be done by (ie don't lie-"bear false witness"- don't kill, etc).
Jesus took this concept a step further with the Good Samaritan parable, initiating what might be called a Golden Rule: do as you would be done by.
One Buddhist thinker I know suggests that the concept might be taken one step further, a Platinum Rule: do unto the other as that particular other would be done by.
Although faith is as effortless for me as atheism is for you, I can say that my own faith has evolved over the years to the point that if my own youthful "evangelical" self met me now she might think (as CS Lewis might put it) "TheAlchemist is no longer a friend of Narnia..." Yet I've come to stretch so much that I consider myself more of a "friend of Narnia" than ever...
I know a couple of Orthodox Jewish young earth believers...both scientists of a sort, professionally. When I learned they were young earth believers I was so stunned I just didn't know what to say...don't know how you can take your kids to the Grand Canyon. You'd have to call the Park Ranger a liar?
Just what I was starting to think...
OH! And Many Thanks to the Mods who figured out how to move this thread to The Hive, where it seems to be more happily suited...
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I think we're doing pretty good wrt "the line". Obviously we've got some very different viewpoints, but no one is flaming. As always, I'm super impressed with the folks here.
Thanks for the clarifications mesquite. I was raised Catholic with the "original sin" concept. That one always got me. I'd have to agree that you can't do "wrong" without first having the concept of what is right and what is wrong. Young kids certainly don't have that yet, and you can't fault them for doing silly things.
I'd be curious to know how many folks here consider themselves to be currently following the religion they were brought up in, and how many have either come to a totally different place or even just reinterpreted what their parents instilled in them.
I know for me, I started drawing outside the lines in high school. By college, I was reading a different book. The parents were not so pleased.
Is that common?
Thanks for the clarifications mesquite. I was raised Catholic with the "original sin" concept. That one always got me. I'd have to agree that you can't do "wrong" without first having the concept of what is right and what is wrong. Young kids certainly don't have that yet, and you can't fault them for doing silly things.
I'd be curious to know how many folks here consider themselves to be currently following the religion they were brought up in, and how many have either come to a totally different place or even just reinterpreted what their parents instilled in them.
I know for me, I started drawing outside the lines in high school. By college, I was reading a different book. The parents were not so pleased.
Is that common?
On the Subject of Afterlife...
The phenomena of NDE has been rather well studied by Dr Raymond Moody ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Moody ) and certain archetypal themes do tend to come up for individuals who have had asystole for a long enough duration to begin to go on such a journey.
One recurrent theme seems to be that in Life Review we find that anything we have done that we thought was "unforgivable" turns out to have been forgivable, and whatever was done to us that we thought was "unforgivable" is likewise forgivable. There is universally a huge presence of Grace.
The experiences tend to be similar regardless of the person's previous life experience, personal psychology or faith orientation. They also suggest a sort of timelessness. People who are meeting pre-deceased loved ones find them to be very recognizable, but not necessarily of the age they were when last seen here.
The one exception seems to be with people who had a NDE as a consequence of a suicide attempt. These people relate that the experience convinced them that no matter how depressed they are, they will not attempt to end their own lives again.
Food for thought.
The phenomena of NDE has been rather well studied by Dr Raymond Moody ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Moody ) and certain archetypal themes do tend to come up for individuals who have had asystole for a long enough duration to begin to go on such a journey.
One recurrent theme seems to be that in Life Review we find that anything we have done that we thought was "unforgivable" turns out to have been forgivable, and whatever was done to us that we thought was "unforgivable" is likewise forgivable. There is universally a huge presence of Grace.
The experiences tend to be similar regardless of the person's previous life experience, personal psychology or faith orientation. They also suggest a sort of timelessness. People who are meeting pre-deceased loved ones find them to be very recognizable, but not necessarily of the age they were when last seen here.
The one exception seems to be with people who had a NDE as a consequence of a suicide attempt. These people relate that the experience convinced them that no matter how depressed they are, they will not attempt to end their own lives again.
Food for thought.
I'm not sure the Baptists and the Catholics see eye-to-eye on this question, but the more theologically well-versed on this site may be able to answer.
I think we're doing pretty good wrt "the line". Obviously we've got some very different viewpoints, but no one is flaming. As always, I'm super impressed with the folks here.
Thanks for the clarifications mesquite. I was raised Catholic with the "original sin" concept. That one always got me. I'd have to agree that you can't do "wrong" without first having the concept of what is right and what is wrong. Young kids certainly don't have that yet, and you can't fault them for doing silly things.
I'd be curious to know how many folks here consider themselves to be currently following the religion they were brought up in, and how many have either come to a totally different place or even just reinterpreted what their parents instilled in them.
I know for me, I started drawing outside the lines in high school. By college, I was reading a different book. The parents were not so pleased.
Indeed a really great bunch,
I was raised a Methodist by a family that encouraged independant thinking (that whole, free will thing) and ditto on winding up quite a ways "out of the box"
Neither of my minister uncles seem concerned with my soul however, supprising considering how far out of the box I am.
Notes on semantics and creation:
On Semantics:
I have said before on this thread that the way we use language has a powerful impact on the way we think. Imagine, for example, that all journalists world wide suddenly agreed to refer to anyone who has survived, who is surviving a tsunami, an earthquake, torture, an assault as a “survivor” rather than a “victim.” What difference would that make in the lives and spirits of those people who are surviving? What difference would it make in the lives of those of us that bear witness to the tragedy they are surviving?
For myself, I can say that I did not really begin to recognize my own calling, a calling which I would always theretofore have considered to be the exclusive realm of men, until 2 synchronous occurrences:
1.) I ceased to attend a church where a choir of little girls might be found singing at the top of their hearts and lungs “We are sons of God” (ahem…where I come from, little girls are not sons of anybody…little girls are daughters) and began attending a church that uses language that acknowledges, with the language used, that worshipers come in 2 genders, and that God is simply God (perhaps sometimes referred to as Father/Mother God, perhaps with both masculine and feminine attributes, but not as uniquely He/Him)
2.) I entered Jungian analysis (with an Episcopal Priest, himself conversant with inclusive language, the husband of an accomplished doctor, the father of daughters whom he wished to be unencumbered by perceived limitations secondary to their gender) and began to have a relationship with my dreams.
On Creation:
We know from animal life and from much of plant life that the act of creating, of sparking new life, requires both masculine and feminine energy. In fact, guys, let’s face it squarely. In the case of mammals, the male needs to contribute enough sperm to provide the acrosomal reactions that will erode the corona radiata, plus one that breaks through the cell membrane and contributes its DNA. Virtually all the rest of the molecular building blocks that make up a new life come from and through the female. So, which gender is, biologically, more “creator?”
Ironically, I expect that those who identify themselves as unbelievers here will be more receptive to the concept of God having feminine as well as masculine attributes than those who identify themselves as believers…
We shall see...
On Semantics:
I have said before on this thread that the way we use language has a powerful impact on the way we think. Imagine, for example, that all journalists world wide suddenly agreed to refer to anyone who has survived, who is surviving a tsunami, an earthquake, torture, an assault as a “survivor” rather than a “victim.” What difference would that make in the lives and spirits of those people who are surviving? What difference would it make in the lives of those of us that bear witness to the tragedy they are surviving?
For myself, I can say that I did not really begin to recognize my own calling, a calling which I would always theretofore have considered to be the exclusive realm of men, until 2 synchronous occurrences:
1.) I ceased to attend a church where a choir of little girls might be found singing at the top of their hearts and lungs “We are sons of God” (ahem…where I come from, little girls are not sons of anybody…little girls are daughters) and began attending a church that uses language that acknowledges, with the language used, that worshipers come in 2 genders, and that God is simply God (perhaps sometimes referred to as Father/Mother God, perhaps with both masculine and feminine attributes, but not as uniquely He/Him)
2.) I entered Jungian analysis (with an Episcopal Priest, himself conversant with inclusive language, the husband of an accomplished doctor, the father of daughters whom he wished to be unencumbered by perceived limitations secondary to their gender) and began to have a relationship with my dreams.
On Creation:
We know from animal life and from much of plant life that the act of creating, of sparking new life, requires both masculine and feminine energy. In fact, guys, let’s face it squarely. In the case of mammals, the male needs to contribute enough sperm to provide the acrosomal reactions that will erode the corona radiata, plus one that breaks through the cell membrane and contributes its DNA. Virtually all the rest of the molecular building blocks that make up a new life come from and through the female. So, which gender is, biologically, more “creator?”
Ironically, I expect that those who identify themselves as unbelievers here will be more receptive to the concept of God having feminine as well as masculine attributes than those who identify themselves as believers…
We shall see...
I agree language is such a huge problem. In English we really need gender neutral pronouns, would make life SO MUCH easier! (Sometimes we can use "they" and such, but those are really plural and don't technically work... though people understand what you mean, and people understanding what you mean is the whole point of language! And we can say "it" but that doesn't refer to sentient beings very well. I want gender neutral pronouns darnit!).
The God as masculine thing is pretty offensive, not because people assume God is male (ok, also because of that) but also because it sets male as the default sex when sex isn't known. That's pretty depressing! (The male dominated roots of the Abrahamic religions definitely shows through in such a simple linguistic example)
Also, everyone reading the Bible in English really does have to acknowledge that not everything can be translated perfectly. If you want to know what those passages really said you truely do have to go learn Aramaic for the most important parts of the NT, and better go learn ancient Hebrew for the OT (and not just learn, I mean REALLY learn and spend years speaking and thinking in that tongue). I'm not saying you can't get the jist/message of the passages 95% of the time, but you have to always accept that you won't know which passages are that other 5% that you have all wrong.
I have talked with Hebrew speakers many times about passages in the English Bible which simply came out meaning something different than the original text (which is being corrected with newer translations, but because a lot of words have no exact English counterpart people start getting into arguments about which interpretation is the best... oh it's a mess).
I think that was a stroke of brilliance on Islam's behalf - very careful with translations. I mean, you can get translated versions of the Koran but they come with big disclaimers saying very clearly not to take anything in there literally without guidance from someone who speaks both Arabic and your language perfectly and is also schooled in Islam. I like that they do both, you can have your translation but you're taught that the translation is just that, a translation.
Especially with a language as clear, concise and methodical as Arabic, translating into our largely slang languages must mess it up pretty bad! (According to Islam the language is actually part of why Mohammed was chosen as the final prophet, God looked for the people with the clearest language that would express what he wanted and then told them they'd better keep the language straight and stop messing up his message over the centuries!)
EDIT: And @ TheAlchemist - you're right, I'm one non-believer that totally agrees with the feminine aspect of God thing. IF God had to be more one sex than the other, "She" would be the default for me, because I agree, while half the genetic material comes form the male, the female is much more the creator than the male is (while it's unborn anyways, then it goes all over the place from family to family!).
The God as masculine thing is pretty offensive, not because people assume God is male (ok, also because of that) but also because it sets male as the default sex when sex isn't known. That's pretty depressing! (The male dominated roots of the Abrahamic religions definitely shows through in such a simple linguistic example)
Also, everyone reading the Bible in English really does have to acknowledge that not everything can be translated perfectly. If you want to know what those passages really said you truely do have to go learn Aramaic for the most important parts of the NT, and better go learn ancient Hebrew for the OT (and not just learn, I mean REALLY learn and spend years speaking and thinking in that tongue). I'm not saying you can't get the jist/message of the passages 95% of the time, but you have to always accept that you won't know which passages are that other 5% that you have all wrong.
I have talked with Hebrew speakers many times about passages in the English Bible which simply came out meaning something different than the original text (which is being corrected with newer translations, but because a lot of words have no exact English counterpart people start getting into arguments about which interpretation is the best... oh it's a mess).
I think that was a stroke of brilliance on Islam's behalf - very careful with translations. I mean, you can get translated versions of the Koran but they come with big disclaimers saying very clearly not to take anything in there literally without guidance from someone who speaks both Arabic and your language perfectly and is also schooled in Islam. I like that they do both, you can have your translation but you're taught that the translation is just that, a translation.
Especially with a language as clear, concise and methodical as Arabic, translating into our largely slang languages must mess it up pretty bad! (According to Islam the language is actually part of why Mohammed was chosen as the final prophet, God looked for the people with the clearest language that would express what he wanted and then told them they'd better keep the language straight and stop messing up his message over the centuries!)
EDIT: And @ TheAlchemist - you're right, I'm one non-believer that totally agrees with the feminine aspect of God thing. IF God had to be more one sex than the other, "She" would be the default for me, because I agree, while half the genetic material comes form the male, the female is much more the creator than the male is (while it's unborn anyways, then it goes all over the place from family to family!).
...gender inequalities were another thing that really, really bothered me about the Catholic upbringing, I was truly upset when I found out women can't be priests...
I remember something about my philosophy elective in university, defining things like truth and knowledge, it had me thinking about a lot of this stuff back then when I was going through some other crap in my life... now I'm wondering exactly what I thought then, I should go back and read my journal, if I can find it... But I agree, the language we use is important and it really helps if you think the words I use mean the same thing to you as they do to me!
Well, from what I've seen in my local Pagan/Wiccan community (yeah, they ARE different but Ottawa's small enough that a lot of them hang around together anyways and also include some atheists just because we can have discussions from different viewpoints like we've been having here, which is why I liked hanging around with them), that does seem to hold true for alternate believers too. Just Friday I was mentioning this thread to a friend and he found that what I was saying about my beliefs didn't jive with what he thought I was into just because I used to hang around with and know a fair bit about that crowd, he was a little taken aback that I'm not a goddess worshipper... but as another friend who's explored the goddess-centric side of things found, sometimes it goes too far and the male is portrayed as, oh, what did she call it... "hot beef injection" I think it was... and focused way too much on mothers and not enough on fathers and parenting in general. And after an initial giddiness of "oh, aren't we so bad, flaunting our former ways!", Christian bashing gets old fast and some of the members were just plain rude to some nice people of faith, which is a lot of why I haven't made much effort to continue with that group when I grew up and got a job and a life and responsibilities... <shrug>
...actually I have been told on at least two occasions that it IS perfect because it's the Word of God and He wouldn't allow it be mistranslated... but everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.
... and I totally agree, I wish we did have neutral pronouns in English...
I've heard that too, but that's a really tough position to defend, because some of it (especially in older translations) really actually is just incorrect. Of course, you could say that while technically the meaning is different, the whole of the Bible still manages to convey all the concepts perfectly? I'm not sure, this is a tough one to really argue without knowing all the languages involved and being something of a linguist.
I was baptized Catholic, my dad converted to Mormonism after my parents divorced when I was young. My Mom realized my brother and I were getting horribly confused by the completely differing theology and quit taking us to Catholic church, instead telling us, "Listen to what your heart tells you is right and follow that, that's all most religions really are about." My dad however took that as a sign that he should take my mom to court so that he could take us to the LDS church every Sunday instead of just during his visitation time
I'm not really Catholic or Mormon
I feel very much so the same way. Since I went "off the reservation" so to speak, my beliefs are really heretical, but I finally feel closer to God and am able to reconcile my faith (in something unprovable) with what my head tells me about religion.
I know a guy, that got a full ride scholarship to get his PhD in astrophysics from a prominent university on Russia. He had articles that had his name and not his professor's before he even completed his master's thesis. A couple months away from getting his Doctorate he changed to an entirely new course of study, linguistics. He was thought to have been someone that could have brought about a dawn of new understanding about the nature of the universe.
The problem is that he was raised in a very conservative faith based family that held strong "new earth" beliefs. In his studies of the Universe he learned how it can be proven the earth and the universe are much old than a few thousand years. He couldn't find a way to refute it no matter how he tried. He left his study course abandoning his scholarship because his religion told him that anything that contradicted a literal interpretation of the bible was heretical work of Satan. So he left his course work.
He's still the smartest person I have ever met. He's fluent in Russian, English, French, Three dialects of Chinese including Mandarin and two locals, Japanese, Navajo, and a dead native American language not spoken since shortly after the birth of Jesus. The man is -BRILLIANT-. It's a shame that such brilliance....was stifled... by his beliefs.
Oh... I also contributed money to a fund that got him into China as a Christian missionary. Just saying I think it's a shame, but I support his choice to go that way too.
I'm pretty happy this isn't in my brewlog, yes :-D
Your mom was a wise woman
Too bad your dad tried to exploit it.My husband and I were both raised Catholic as well and neither of us sets foot in a church except for weddings and funerals these days. It's funny though, he still has his faith, it helped him through some nasty times. My worst nightmare happened (when my dad died suddenly) and it was rough but I got through it with probably the least damage of my immediate family... but I didn't find faith in it. To placate my Born-Again brother who couldn't understand how I could get through something like that without God/Jesus's help and to let him into my heart, I told him, "Jesus is busy, let him go deal with the people who actually need him. I'm good. If I need him, he'll find me."
My husband, though still faithful to a lot of RC doctrine and faithful that God exists, actively disbelieves in some RC church policies, his whole family stopped going to church in protest when his very good priest was excommunicated for wanting to get married and have a family. We have joked for a long time that he's a heretic and I'm a heathen, it got pretty funny when we were making wedding plans... I suspect he feels much the same as you, Loadnabox, I think a lot of things gelled for him AFTER he'd left the church.
Interesting that we have found a subject that we are all as passionate about as we are about making mead...
In terms of whether atheists or religious people are the ones making leaps of faith, the real question should not read:
Is there a God?
a) Yes
b) No
It should instead read:
Is there a God?
a) Yes
b) No
c) I don't know.
I believe that "c" is the default answer, not "a" or "b". The "not stamp collecting" analogy is not valid since the fact that I do not collect stamps would be a known, proveable fact. A better analogy would be another question with two sides, neither of which can be proven, like:
Is there life elsewhere in the universe?
a) Yes
b) No
c) I don't know.
For the "life in the universe" answer, at least at this point, we have no "scientific proof" that it does or does not exist. The same can be said about "scientific proof" to prove or disprove the existence of God. So in opting to choose any answer but "c" to either question, we are making a selection we cannot "prove" to be correct. If we refer to answer "a" as being a "leap of faith" we must also do the same for answer "b". IMHO
In terms of whether atheists or religious people are the ones making leaps of faith, the real question should not read:
Is there a God?
a) Yes
b) No
It should instead read:
Is there a God?
a) Yes
b) No
c) I don't know.
I believe that "c" is the default answer, not "a" or "b". The "not stamp collecting" analogy is not valid since the fact that I do not collect stamps would be a known, proveable fact. A better analogy would be another question with two sides, neither of which can be proven, like:
Is there life elsewhere in the universe?
a) Yes
b) No
c) I don't know.
For the "life in the universe" answer, at least at this point, we have no "scientific proof" that it does or does not exist. The same can be said about "scientific proof" to prove or disprove the existence of God. So in opting to choose any answer but "c" to either question, we are making a selection we cannot "prove" to be correct. If we refer to answer "a" as being a "leap of faith" we must also do the same for answer "b". IMHO
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Holy smokes, that is one of the saddest things I've ever heard on the subject (and I've heard some gooooood stories about religion wrecking someone's life. NOTE: I'm not trying to argue that religion is bad, just that it is dangerous (which is ok, me calling it dangerous isn't an insult. Atheism is dangerous too, so are guns, but they can be used for good. Pretty much any instrument of good can very easily be used for evil as well).
Here's something that's always confused me. Young Earth believers typically try to argue against mainstream science with their own psuedo science that is usually so weak it's scary that anyone falls for it. BUT what I've always wondered, why don't they take the path of least resistance, how's about this aproach to arguing Young Earth: The Earth is ___thousand years old, but the science says it is 4 billion, and that the universe is much older than that. The reason for this is that God created the Earth in such a way that it apears to be older, we're not sure why, perhaps to test our faith.
Am I missing something here? Doesn't that seem like a far easier position to defend (can't disprove it just like we can't disprove God's existance), compared to all the fake science that is so extremely easy to prove incorrect? After all this is an All Powerful God here, if he wants to take 15 billion years worth of aging in the universe and cram it into 6 days I see absolutely no reason he couldn't do this.
--
I'll give you an example of the bad science I'm talking about. Apparently some Young Earth people have an idea that the earth used to be surrounded by a globe of ice, up where the ozone layer is. What this globe accomplished is to create a greenhouse effect which warmed the planet enough for things the size of the dinosaurs and their plant food to live - and also it filtered out some of the UV rays, which is what allowed Methuselah and others to live so very long.
Now they're right, UV kills us (doesn't knock hundreds of years off our lives, but whatever, I'll let that slide) and the dinosaurs did in fact need a much hotter planet than the one we have today.
BUT a sphere cannot remain in place around a planet like that (without magical assistance anyways) because when you completely encircle/englobe an object, that inner object's gravity essentially loses it's hold on the sphere (because it's pulling in all directions at once, so it all gets cancelled out). So within minutes airpressure differences would cause the sphere to drift, then bam, gravity kicks back in and brings the thing crashing down!
So you could say God held it in place - but am I missing something here or is this way way way too complicated and based on nothing? If God wanted it hotter for the dinosaurs he could just nudge the Earth towards the Sun, or simply turn the Sun up a few notches. If he wanted people to live longer, he doesn't need a giant globe of ice, he can just make them live longer, he's freaking GOD after all isn't he?
Now that's one of the fringe group's more fringe ideas, but you get my point. Why use all this fake and easily disprovable science when you can just say "God did it" and bam, argument is probably over? Confuses the HECK out of me!
EDIT: I'm sorry about all the male references to God here, it was completely accidental and it depresses me that even for someone like me who totally views women as equals, male is STILL the default... it's hard to get past our programming sometimes.
Am I missing something here? Doesn't that seem like a far easier position to defend (can't disprove it just like we can't disprove God's existance), compared to all the fake science that is so extremely easy to prove incorrect? After all this is an All Powerful God here, if he wants to take 15 billion years worth of aging in the universe and cram it into 6 days I see absolutely no reason he couldn't do this.
--
I'll give you an example of the bad science I'm talking about. Apparently some Young Earth people have an idea that the earth used to be surrounded by a globe of ice, up where the ozone layer is. What this globe accomplished is to create a greenhouse effect which warmed the planet enough for things the size of the dinosaurs and their plant food to live - and also it filtered out some of the UV rays, which is what allowed Methuselah and others to live so very long.
Now they're right, UV kills us (doesn't knock hundreds of years off our lives, but whatever, I'll let that slide) and the dinosaurs did in fact need a much hotter planet than the one we have today.
BUT a sphere cannot remain in place around a planet like that (without magical assistance anyways) because when you completely encircle/englobe an object, that inner object's gravity essentially loses it's hold on the sphere (because it's pulling in all directions at once, so it all gets cancelled out). So within minutes airpressure differences would cause the sphere to drift, then bam, gravity kicks back in and brings the thing crashing down!
So you could say God held it in place - but am I missing something here or is this way way way too complicated and based on nothing? If God wanted it hotter for the dinosaurs he could just nudge the Earth towards the Sun, or simply turn the Sun up a few notches. If he wanted people to live longer, he doesn't need a giant globe of ice, he can just make them live longer, he's freaking GOD after all isn't he?
Now that's one of the fringe group's more fringe ideas, but you get my point. Why use all this fake and easily disprovable science when you can just say "God did it" and bam, argument is probably over? Confuses the HECK out of me!
EDIT: I'm sorry about all the male references to God here, it was completely accidental and it depresses me that even for someone like me who totally views women as equals, male is STILL the default... it's hard to get past our programming sometimes.
That first living organism...
I, as an engineer/scientist, really do struggle with the concept of how life might have come into being without some sort of Creator. Especially that first cell...
The way I see it, if we believe that a random, natural process could overcome the scientific phenomena, some which have already been mentioned, like entropy, to finally create the "first living cell", we are already out in the area where the mathmatical probabilities of such an event would be considered "impossible" by statisticians.
But it is not just one cell that had to come into being and so here is where I begin to struggle. That first cell either had to be duplicated "billions of times" (billions of individual living cells come into being via random acts) or that first cell had to have the ability to feed itself, reproduce, survive the surrounding environment, and so on. So did billions of living cells that were incapable of sustaining themselves occur through the random process until one was finally viable or did the random process produce a supercell that had everything the first time?
If it took billions of times to produce a viable cell, then natural processes like diffusion and entropy had to be overcome by the application of lightning or heat or whatever method, which then had to occur that same particular way billions of times in just the right manner to produce the same result as the first time. These occurrances had to happen when the earth had cooled enough to allow life to exist (hard for anything to live in magma) so that puts some sort of limit on how many billions of years the whole thing had to happen.
Recently, I went through the discussion of how natural selection could even occur at the chemical level where certain "processes" necessary to the evolution of the first living cell "feeding", "reproduction" etc. could occur despite the absence of "life" per se. I have to admit that I find myself thinking that it is merely a method to explain away some of the concerns I just listed.
If we use the 747 example (which I know it isn't perfect), the chemical level discussion allows us to have the windshield occur separately where sand and heat could be alone for a while to create glass while iron and heat were alone somewhere else to create the steel beams. But I still find myself, looking at scientific evidence, thinking that it is impossible for it all to have occurred by pure chance.
How do the rest of you handle this concern?
I, as an engineer/scientist, really do struggle with the concept of how life might have come into being without some sort of Creator. Especially that first cell...
The way I see it, if we believe that a random, natural process could overcome the scientific phenomena, some which have already been mentioned, like entropy, to finally create the "first living cell", we are already out in the area where the mathmatical probabilities of such an event would be considered "impossible" by statisticians.
But it is not just one cell that had to come into being and so here is where I begin to struggle. That first cell either had to be duplicated "billions of times" (billions of individual living cells come into being via random acts) or that first cell had to have the ability to feed itself, reproduce, survive the surrounding environment, and so on. So did billions of living cells that were incapable of sustaining themselves occur through the random process until one was finally viable or did the random process produce a supercell that had everything the first time?
If it took billions of times to produce a viable cell, then natural processes like diffusion and entropy had to be overcome by the application of lightning or heat or whatever method, which then had to occur that same particular way billions of times in just the right manner to produce the same result as the first time. These occurrances had to happen when the earth had cooled enough to allow life to exist (hard for anything to live in magma) so that puts some sort of limit on how many billions of years the whole thing had to happen.
Recently, I went through the discussion of how natural selection could even occur at the chemical level where certain "processes" necessary to the evolution of the first living cell "feeding", "reproduction" etc. could occur despite the absence of "life" per se. I have to admit that I find myself thinking that it is merely a method to explain away some of the concerns I just listed.
If we use the 747 example (which I know it isn't perfect), the chemical level discussion allows us to have the windshield occur separately where sand and heat could be alone for a while to create glass while iron and heat were alone somewhere else to create the steel beams. But I still find myself, looking at scientific evidence, thinking that it is impossible for it all to have occurred by pure chance.
How do the rest of you handle this concern?
Well the entropy thing we already covered, the cells forming did not in fact have to overcome entropy because entropy only applies to closed systems.
There is certainly a lot we haven't figured out yet, there are some great hypothesis on the first cells coming together out of the organic molecules that we already know can be formed naturally, but many different ones, lots of questions. Replication first or metabolism first is a big one, most people used to believe metabolism first, but now as I understand it people are leaning towards replication. (So the idea that the first cell had to feed itself is actually not one that's necessary as far as we know currently, that could have come later)
I've gone over the math with a few people who really know the science a lot better than myself, and they were satisfied that there was plenty of time for the first cells to come together, even if the vast majority of them were failures. As far as I know (take with salt!) most scientists today are satisfied that life could have arisen on it's own in the timeframe we're talking about, regardless of the religious beliefs of those scientists - that we haven't figured it out yet is certainly a fact though.
As I am not a biologist I do have to at a certain point start taking their word for it. I'll learn as much as I can myself so I'm not just blindly following, but everything they say seems to work for me so far.
Deciding what the odds are that life arising on it's own is the job of biologists and other scientists dedicating their life to figuring that out. I'll try to keep up, but in the end I'm not the guy doing that math (yet anyways).
So my stance becomes this - I've got a lot of respected scientists saying that this is nowhere near as unlikely as people seem to think (most believe that life is downright likely to come into being in the right circumstances, and that the stars probably are host to billions of other living worlds), and they're making no claim for or against a creator.
Then we're got the creator argument, which to me is backwards. If the argument is that life is too complicated to have arisen on it's own, had too much to overcome, then how on Earth does putting the most complex thing possible (God) as the first step make any sense?
I guess what I'm saying is this - while we haven't proven without a doubt that life can arise on it's own, we are pretty sure we're getting there. As unlikely as it seems, to me it is still orders of magnitude more likely than a creator God coming together first (if we're going too compare a cell to a 747 coming together on it's own, then God by comparison is all the machines/electronics humanity has ever created coming together on their own, and then all joining together to form consciousness on their own in my opinion!).
Take with salt of course. ;D
There is certainly a lot we haven't figured out yet, there are some great hypothesis on the first cells coming together out of the organic molecules that we already know can be formed naturally, but many different ones, lots of questions. Replication first or metabolism first is a big one, most people used to believe metabolism first, but now as I understand it people are leaning towards replication. (So the idea that the first cell had to feed itself is actually not one that's necessary as far as we know currently, that could have come later)
I've gone over the math with a few people who really know the science a lot better than myself, and they were satisfied that there was plenty of time for the first cells to come together, even if the vast majority of them were failures. As far as I know (take with salt!) most scientists today are satisfied that life could have arisen on it's own in the timeframe we're talking about, regardless of the religious beliefs of those scientists - that we haven't figured it out yet is certainly a fact though.
As I am not a biologist I do have to at a certain point start taking their word for it. I'll learn as much as I can myself so I'm not just blindly following, but everything they say seems to work for me so far.
Deciding what the odds are that life arising on it's own is the job of biologists and other scientists dedicating their life to figuring that out. I'll try to keep up, but in the end I'm not the guy doing that math (yet anyways).
So my stance becomes this - I've got a lot of respected scientists saying that this is nowhere near as unlikely as people seem to think (most believe that life is downright likely to come into being in the right circumstances, and that the stars probably are host to billions of other living worlds), and they're making no claim for or against a creator.
Then we're got the creator argument, which to me is backwards. If the argument is that life is too complicated to have arisen on it's own, had too much to overcome, then how on Earth does putting the most complex thing possible (God) as the first step make any sense?
I guess what I'm saying is this - while we haven't proven without a doubt that life can arise on it's own, we are pretty sure we're getting there. As unlikely as it seems, to me it is still orders of magnitude more likely than a creator God coming together first (if we're going too compare a cell to a 747 coming together on it's own, then God by comparison is all the machines/electronics humanity has ever created coming together on their own, and then all joining together to form consciousness on their own in my opinion!).
Take with salt of course. ;D
