Intelligent? Design

Originally posted by apathist
We can't understand the infinities. So, ... goddidit. whew, problem solved.

You have the issue with the finite not infinities, this universe has been dated therefore it
had a beginning so infinities isn't the topic. Where you are stumped is that you got nothing
but something beyond this place to explain this place's beginnings.

Originally posted by KellyJay
You have the issue with the finite not infinities, this universe has been dated therefore it
had a beginning so infinities isn't the topic. Where you are stumped is that you got nothing
but something beyond this place to explain this place's beginnings.

Again it all boils down to faith in an ancient book. Thing is, there are thousands of ancient book and they all have their own versions of how things got here, I'm sure you have heard of some of them. Their people think THEY have the real deal explaining how it got here and so do you, you KNOW that is THE true story just like all the rest KNOW their story is the true one.

So I won't even ask the obvious question, I will just get another rote answer.

You just believe Goddidit. Hey, whatever floats your boat, science at this kindergarten stage cannot answer it so you are morally and philosophically perfectly ok with your belief.
Other people who try to posit a 6000 year old Earth are on extremely shaky grounds, the science of Earth has advanced way beyond their ability to actually prove anything scientifically in that regard so they have to be content with scoff, deny, deny, deny,

Which of course does nothing for the real truth, which is Earth is billions of years old and there is ZERO getting around that fact. Hell, even if Earth was a MILLION years old total it would go against the young Earthers.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Again it all boils down to faith in an ancient book. Thing is, there are thousands of ancient book and they all have their own versions of how things got here, I'm sure you have heard of some of them. Their people think THEY have the real deal explaining how it got here and so do you, you KNOW that is THE true story just like all the rest KNOW their story i ...[text shortened]... fact. Hell, even if Earth was a MILLION years old total it would go against the young Earthers.

Do you know that someone's theories are any closer to the truth? As I pointed out to you the existence of the universe is evidence that doesn't lend itself to our ability to even come up with an explanation without pushing the answer out even further away. God being real and reaching to mankind would have been done in the simplest means possible, so I don't have issue one with ancient texts that would allow more us to be exposed to Him.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Do you know that someone's theories are any closer to the truth? As I pointed out to you the existence of the universe is evidence that doesn't lend itself to our ability to even come up with an explanation without pushing the answer out even further away. God being real and reaching to mankind would have been done in the simplest means possible, so I don't have issue one with ancient texts that would allow more us to be exposed to Him.

Well it is certainly an issue with me. You are too involved in religion to ever question authority as if the bible is THE true book on the subject. It is ONE book on the subject and as such no more valuable than the Upanishads or the book of Mormon or the JW works.

You yourself HAVE to believe the bible is THE true book otherwise you would flounder in angst ridden misery.

It helps you, no doubt, to have something you feel is solid is what you need and so be it.

I would never take that away from anyone. Unless of course, I was given a time machine.....🙂

Originally posted by sonhouse
Well it is certainly an issue with me. You are too involved in religion to ever question authority as if the bible is THE true book on the subject. It is ONE book on the subject and as such no more valuable than the Upanishads or the book of Mormon or the JW works.

You yourself HAVE to believe the bible is THE true book otherwise you would flounder in an ...[text shortened]...

I would never take that away from anyone. Unless of course, I was given a time machine.....🙂

My pointing out to you that this dated universe doesn't have a real theory about its
beginning is really the only thing I've been pushing here. Even with just your imagination
you've no reason for it without creating another layer of this than that, this than that, ad
nauseam.

So any statement about there not being evidence for God I believe is dispelled. We can
go round and round about what God or gods, but that is a different story. Science or man
has nothing about how this all got here that addresses a real beginning, all I've ever seen
are just an endless evolving doors of possible energy and matter transfers.

Once you've accepted that then if you look how the whole universe is setup for life, you
would have to acknowledge intelligent design isn't so far out there. Of course who could
setup the whole universe would be quite the designer.

Originally posted by KellyJay
My pointing out to you that this dated universe doesn't have a real theory about its
beginning is really the only thing I've been pushing here. Even with just your imagination
you've no reason for it without creating another layer of this than that, this than that, ad
nauseam.

So any statement about there not being evidence for God I believe is dispel ...[text shortened]... n't so far out there. Of course who could
setup the whole universe would be quite the designer.

The thing is, you as a religious person cannot think of any other way EXCEPT for there to be some kind of god starting it all.

I get light headed when I think about the grandious universe, how large it is and the possibility our universe is only one tiny fraction of the real thing.

I think there are realities within realities although I have zero proof and nobody on Earth does either.

But doesn't the fact you think the universe is designed to be amenable to life which implies there will be life anywhere in the universe on a planet or asteroid or moon with any kind of halfway decent supply of water and minerals and energy to start the little chemical experiments by the trillions of trillions a second scientists thinks ended up with life.

Life from mud if you will. But anywhere in the universe.

Suppose say, 1000 years from now we crack the problem of going much faster than the speed of light, say a million times faster. Then we proceed to have scouts go to every planet around all the closest stars (about 100 of them in 20 light years distance) and we find advanced life on some of them, even that close to Earth.

One would have to come to the conclusion Earth humans are not on the top of the totem pole of creation, just one of a crowd.

That would seem to me require a re-writing of all religious texts that would make us just one of a large group of beings from a lot of planets around the galaxy.

Suppose our scouts found, say 1000 civilizations within 10,000 light years (about 1/20th the size of the galaxy) so they would expect to find maybe a million such in the whole galaxy and then you have to think about other galaxies, which actually outnumber stars in our OWN galaxy, so in that case there may be literally trillions of species in all the galaxies in our universe which would put humans not even close to the top of the list as to what a god would value in a species.

What then for Christianity?

Personally, I fully expect you are completely right, our universe is compatible with life anywhere in the universe on a planet with water, sunlight and minerals which I think means there will be life found on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn or even Pluto which they think has some kind of icy slush ocean under the surface like Europa, but that moon they think has a fully liquid water ocean, albeit with salts of some sort.

You have no doubt seen the images showing water vapor squirting out of the surface of Europa which means we probably don't even have to land there to find microbes, they probably just get squirted out into space when the pressure builds up kind of like a cold version of the Yellowstone geysers, it would carry automatically, any microbes near the under sea ice layer above the water. I think all they will have to do is do a drive by from a space probe with a net to capture some of that water vapor and I think they will find microbes in it.

That would be one of the most spectacular announcements of all times, proof that life exists elsewhere than on Earth.

Or maybe finding microbes around the ice deposits on Mars. Mars used to be like Earth, good atmosphere, liquid water seas and so forth and probably life.

My guess is say 100 years from now when humans are there permenantly they will start digging up actual physical fossils a billion years old of older advanced life forms.

Then the question would be, can they extract the stuff that makes up the cells, would it look like our DNA or would it be some other shape, like how it is now, a kind of twisted ladder, maybe instead, a twisted trifold like those big three leg antenna towers with cross members if you can visualize that shape, perhaps alien DNA could look like that or even a twisted cube shape like a long tall building but twisted around. Just my conjecture as to what shape the information of life could be stored in. Those other shapes may contain more information per cubic millimeter than any of our DNA.

And of course this is all conjecture but it would be real hoot if that were found to be the case.

I think it was just the luck of the draw that DNA ended up with the twisted ladder shape we all have come to love and adore.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The thing is, you as a religious person cannot think of any other way EXCEPT for there to be some kind of god starting it all.

I get light headed when I think about the grandious universe, how large it is and the possibility our universe is only one tiny fraction of the real thing.

I think there are realities within realities although I have zero pr ...[text shortened]... of the draw that DNA ended up with the twisted ladder shape we all have come to love and adore.

You know as much about me as you do God, who you tell us about all the time. You have
gone on and on about if God were real He would behave this way or that...you don't
know. Now you pigeon hole me again as “a religious person”...what you mean by that is
what, I'm not a real person as you, that I cannot question or cannot think for myself?
You dehumanize me and humanize God all the time, it is insulting.

You get light headed about the universe and so do I except yes I believe God created it,
and it doesn't lessen the value, worth, or splendors of it. For me it is the handy work of
a God far beyond the grandness of the universe, a God who holds it all together by the
power of His Word. It does not mean I think anything less about the universe I’m awed by
the complexity and wonder of it.

I'm not overly concern about what we may find in a 100 or 1000 years if we live that long,
just as I'm not overly concern about a lot of things. For me living day by day is hard
enough, and I know I'm not promised tomorrow, neither is anyone I know I love.

I think it difficult to see what is important if we don't grasp reality for what it is, and I do
believe there is nothing that I've seen that addresses how we got here outside of God.
For we live in a grand universe with universal constants, placement of stars, and any
number of other heavenly objects, then we look at the material on this world from
precious metals, minerals, to the laws of chemistry, then the subatomic particles and
all the laws revolving around them. With all of these, each part so important that if the
rules or laws were different it would work not as we see it. They whole universe was knitted
together and here we are, I find the complexity and functionality of all of that belittled
by those that think it is all a happy accident that life is here without a plan, purpose, and
design.

Originally posted by KellyJay
You know as much about me as you do God, who you tell us about all the time. You have
gone on and on about if God were real He would behave this way or that...you don't
know. Now you pigeon hole me again as “a religious person”...what you mean by that is
what, I'm not a real person as you, that I cannot question or cannot think for myself?
You dehumaniz ...[text shortened]... se that think it is all a happy accident that life is here without a plan, purpose, and
design.

So you don't believe the stories of the bible. like the WW flood and such? You are not a literalist concerning the bible?

I knew you would pull the 'so now you know the mind of god' card, but that is just using my own reasoning power which says a god would be above any human attribute like jealousy. When the bible says 'I am a jealous god' do you seriously think there is ANYTHING a human or any human could do to make a GOD jealous? That would be putting the morals of a god to the same level as humans, which makes sense to me because it was written by humans.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So you don't believe the stories of the bible. like the WW flood and such? You are not a literalist concerning the bible?

I knew you would pull the 'so now you know the mind of god' card, but that is just using my own reasoning power which says a god would be above any human attribute like jealousy. When the bible says 'I am a jealous god' do you seriou ...[text shortened]... of a god to the same level as humans, which makes sense to me because it was written by humans.

What topic do you want to discuss, can we settle on one?
Intelligent Design with respect to the universe or my views on OT and NT scripture?

Originally posted by KellyJay
What topic do you want to discuss, can we settle on one?
Intelligent Design with respect to the universe or my views on OT and NT scripture?

I would be curious to know if you are a biblical literalist. Do you think the ww flood actually happened in spite of overwhelming evidence against it?

Originally posted by sonhouse
I would be curious to know if you are a biblical literalist. Do you think the ww flood actually happened in spite of overwhelming evidence against it?

Start another topic this one is about ID.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Start another topic this one is about ID.

It seems to me the whole bit with christians and Jews coming up with the creation myth, BTW, it was plagiarized from an even earlier Egyptian myth, that they want humans to be so far up the evolutionary totem pole as to be WORTH the attention of a god.

From what I see of the history of the past 5000 years, we are anything BUT worthy of such a lofty position.

Just further evidence the whole thing was just made up with no god needed to write ANY of the books of the bible or Quran.

Originally posted by sonhouse
It seems to me the whole bit with christians and Jews coming up with the creation myth, BTW, it was plagiarized from an even earlier Egyptian myth, that they want humans to be so far up the evolutionary totem pole as to be WORTH the attention of a god.

From what I see of the history of the past 5000 years, we are anything BUT worthy of such a lofty posit ...[text shortened]... whole thing was just made up with no god needed to write ANY of the books of the bible or Quran.

Worth the attention of God? This again is you telling me what God feels is important to God. It has nothing to do with the universe being knitted together to produce life with or without God. How would you know what is important to an eternal God?

Originally posted by KellyJay
Worth the attention of God? This again is you telling me what God feels is important to God. It has nothing to do with the universe being knitted together to produce life with or without God. How would you know what is important to an eternal God?

I don't know what is important to some god or other, all I see is the absence of such a god.
It seems to me morel like rather than humans thinking themselves worthy of the attention of a god, we are quarantined, keep real civilized beings away from us, since it seems we will soon drive ourselves extinct in the next 1000 years or so the way we are behaving today.

I wouldn't be surprised if an asteroid ten times bigger than Chicxulub was aimed at us to keep out the smell.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I don't know what is important to some god or other, all I see is the absence of such a god.
It seems to me morel like rather than humans thinking themselves worthy of the attention of a god, we are quarantined, keep real civilized beings away from us, since it seems we will soon drive ourselves extinct in the next 1000 years or so the way we are behaving ...[text shortened]... surprised if an asteroid ten times bigger than Chicxulub was aimed at us to keep out the smell.

Seeing the absence is equal to being blind to it if He is there don't you think?
How do you know what God sees as important? You are in this sliver of time called now,
and God isn't, you are in a single point in the universe God isn't, you have interactions
with a limited number of things/people God is aware of it all everywhere all at once. You
have limitations, God doesn't, you are very limited, God isn't yet you over and over telling
me what is important to God, or how God should act if God were real, and none of that
addresses how the whole universe is knitted together to form life.