@wildgrass saidAnd many questions a child can ask are as important as they get, where did we come from and so. To pigeonhole them to a select group hides their importance!
The types of questions asked are always tailored to your academic discipline.
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote, “Into each life some rain must fall.”
Beautiful words. But I would not ask him to design an experiment to test that.
Some things are better left to non-scientists.
@wildgrass saidScience doesn’t talk it will never say anything it is not a living being. If someone looking at the evidence and they determine what they are looking at could only conclude it was done with intent, the why and how questions remain.
Ugh. If science says God did it then we move on? Find a new question?
Why was this done instead of that, how does this work? The brain is not turned off, many of the fathers of science were believers!
@KellyJay
I assume it would not make a bit of difference if we find life on Mars or Europa would it? That would be saying most likely there would be life almost anywhere in the universe where conditions allow like a nice Earth like planet for our particular kind of life or maybe even on Titan which has liquid methane oceans and an atmosphere with clouds and maybe the conditions for life of some kind.
Finding life anywhere else in the solar system would say 100% sure Earth is not unique in the realm of life.
@sonhouse saidCan you explain why that would matter? Has there been someone who has said life is only here, or is it written anywhere we should only find life here? You can look for life elsewhere as some excuse for life here, but that only moves the question of where and how first life started off the planet into some place we cannot go at this time. That would be much like the universe-generating machine it pushes off how this universe started by looking at this one, but it doesn't answer the question of how it started because there would still need to be the reason for a universe-generating machine beginning.
@KellyJay
I assume it would not make a bit of difference if we find life on Mars or Europa would it? That would be saying most likely there would be life almost anywhere in the universe where conditions allow like a nice Earth like planet for our particular kind of life or maybe even on Titan which has liquid methane oceans and an atmosphere with clouds and maybe the condit ...[text shortened]... life anywhere else in the solar system would say 100% sure Earth is not unique in the realm of life.
@KellyJay
The bible is written as if Earth was the only place life was TO exist, that seemed pretty clear.
But if you can accept the POSSIBILITY there is life elsewhere even in our own solar system then you are a step up with a lot of the evangelicals and such who are so far out in left field it is hard to even talk to them. And you know I am not an atheist.
Atheism assumes an arrogant attitude where we have a universe that might be a hundred billion lightyears across and maybe half of that we can actually see with telescopes, not because they are too week but because the universe is still expanding faster than the speed of light and telescopes just can't see further than about 14 or so billion light years in any direction because the stuff we COULD see has gone out faster than light can reach us so NO telescope can see further than that even if it is a mirror a million miles in diameter.
The James Webb scope COULD see way past 14 billion LY if the light was available to see. Sorry for the digress, it is just such a huge universe and there are indications now maybe ours is just one of many. Atheists would have an arrogance that would ignore the entire universe and maybe more beyond that so anything is possible. I just don't think human religions are coming from a god.
Too many religions, each one saying it is ok to kill other religions, like Muslims hate anyone not of their religion and even splits in their own religion means they feel justified killing their own kind but a different sect of Islam. And Christians had no problem killing Muslims in the crusades, wars fought over these religions and citing Koran or bible verse to justify all that death.
Don't think a real god would EVER set up a situation like that. An all powerful god could just say to each and every human on the planet, ok kids, this is how it is, stop your infighting and I am BTW removing all your stupid nuclear bombs so you don't destroy half the life on Earth besides yourselves.
That is the kind of talk that would convince folks there is ONE god. Now it is just the word of that written in ancient books of one kind or the other from Buddhist to Janes, to Rastas to Christians to Muslims, Hindu's, and the rest. ALL man made.
@sonhouse saidDon't read something into scripture that isn't there simply because you want to take some verses and build some logic into the Word. Adding to the Word is not something man is supposed to do, and you are doing that now.
@KellyJay
The bible is written as if Earth was the only place life was TO exist, that seemed pretty clear.
But if you can accept the POSSIBILITY there is life elsewhere even in our own solar system then you are a step up with a lot of the evangelicals and such who are so far out in left field it is hard to even talk to them. And you know I am not an atheist.
Atheism assum ...[text shortened]... gress, it is just such a huge universe and there are indications now maybe ours is just one of many.
I call myself evangelical, but that doesn't mean I agree with every one of them, nor does it mean I speak for all evangelicals either. If you want to disagree with what some of them say, fine by me, but that doesn't mean I will disagree with you, or agree simply because they are religious.
Atheism is a disbelief in God, that has nothing at all to do with the age of the universe. I've said this over and over, I don't argue age, I'll argue timing, but having 15 billion years ago doesn't automatically mean any possible reason for its beginning could not be true if it started at 10 billion instead, or any other time frame. We don't know how it started, we don't know what it looked like when it started, we just know there was a beginning, it could have started looking fully mature which would throw off all attempts of measuring age by what we see.
@KellyJay
Atheism is the non belief in a god, not just a Christian one, but saying there is no possibility of ANY god. Kind of like a genius termite saying THERE ARE NO HUMANS.
Atheists are not talking about just YOUR version of a god. They deny Islam, god, Buddha god or any other of the man made religions.
All I say is there might be some kind of god out there, it is a huge universe and maybe more just like it but I feel justified in the idea Christian god or any other human made deity is simply that, man made.
And there is no way you can prove me wrong. And conversely no way I can prove you are right, no experiment we can do that would say there is or there isn't a god especially human made ones.
@sonhouse saidAnd?
@KellyJay
Atheism is the non belief in a god, not just a Christian one, but saying there is no possibility of ANY god. Kind of like a genius termite saying THERE ARE NO HUMANS.
Atheists are not talking about just YOUR version of a god. They deny Islam, god, Buddha god or any other of the man made religions.
All I say is there might be some kind of god out there, it is a h ...[text shortened]... ht, no experiment we can do that would say there is or there isn't a god especially human made ones.
@KellyJay
Just saying why I am hopefully not so arrogant I can with full sincerity say
'There is no god'. I just don't think there are any that gives a rats as about humans and in fact if they are there, it looks more like we are being prepared for extinction because maybe this REAL god has something much better in mind rather than humans who think its just fine to kill other humans because they worship what they think is a real god and they all do that only to THEIR god which is invariably THE ONE TRUE god.
Right.
@sonhouse saidThere are things in the universe that to me show us that God is real, outside of my personal experiences but things that simply have no other explanation for. Why is there something rather than nothing, the composition of the material, so that its fine-tuning keeps it together and running like clockwork? The universe's fine-tuning when comes to gravity and the expansion of the universe so that it doesn't fly apart or collapse upon itself among other universal features. Within life's structure how it is coded so that forms and features work in an integrated manner allowing for life to exist and reproduce, all the way down the cellular level in its extremely sophisticated integrated pieces built from molecules up.
@KellyJay
Just saying why I am hopefully not so arrogant I can with full sincerity say
'There is no god'. I just don't think there are any that gives a rats as about humans and in fact if they are there, it looks more like we are being prepared for extinction because maybe this REAL god has something much better in mind rather than humans who think its just fine to kill o ...[text shortened]... k is a real god and they all do that only to THEIR god which is invariably THE ONE TRUE god.
Right.
I admit I don't have all of the answers, but I also admit my limitations are that I live in the here and now and that limited to a single moment whose leading edge and trailing edges occupy the same space in time. I don't have perfect knowledge of anything that stretches deep into the past or future. I also admit I'm as flawed as the next guy and quite capable of misbehaving badly, but I do that while I admit there is a proper way to behave, and I come up short.
The actions of others can be ugly, hateful, meanspirited, and full of strife, instead of being compassionate, kind, loving, being full of grace and mercy. This only shows me that there is a proper way to behave and we don't set those standards if we did then everything we did would always be acceptable because we did them and that would eliminate the distinction between what is called good and bad behavior.
I believe God is personal because we are, even Richard Dawkins said that something that is a product of the universe if we study it would show us what type of universe it came from. Examine a bird, you could learn about light due to its eyes, and understand the gravity it lived in due to the formation of bones and body parts structures, our subject if it was a fish we would see its need to live in water. With us, we have relationships, understanding, and notions of right and wrong, we grasp symbolism, and we have highly complex language, and emotions. So much about us is immaterial, while our bodies are made of material shows us we are more than the material parts that make up our bodies. Who created us would be no stranger to any of our immaterial attributes as well, the luck of the draw has nothing on those things.
@sonhouse saidThat is the thing isn't it, reality isn't determined by what works for me or you. To be able to reason it out is the foundation of science isn't it? We look at what we see and try to identify it as properly as possible so we give everything its due and come up with the best explanations.
@KellyJay
Hey that works for you, just doesn't work for me.