Slashdot Mirror
Calculating God
The Scenario
In a nutshell, Calculating God is the story of paleontologist Thomas Jericho's encounter with two alien species which visit earth, and which reveal that the cataclysmic events that shaped Earth's evolution (meteor impact, mass extinctions, etc.) all happened simultaneously on their home planets as well. Both aliens have come to the conclusion that the universe is intelligently designed to support life, and that God the Creator is the direct cause of all these cataclysms. Those shattering events, they believe, led to the development of intelligence. Jericho, an atheist, is forced to come to grips with the aliens' undoubtedly superior scientific knowledge and their theistic conclusions at the same time he is diagnosed with cancer which the aliens are unable to cure despite their technology. Meanwhile, the imminent death of a nearby star threatens to wipe out all life on Earth and all the aliens' home-worlds in a supernova. Will it take a miracle to save them all, or is this a divinely ordered cataclysm?
What's Bad?Most of the touchy issues concerning evolution and intelligent design were handled very fairly. However, I still believe that the two extreme fundamentalists (from Arkansas, no less) are caricatures and stereotypes rather than genuine religious extremists. Being a somewhat liberal evangelical Christian, I personally know quite a few people who can be fairly characterized as religious extremists -- and they definitely would not take the actions that the book's characters take. So the subplot concerning them is weak.
I was also somewhat put off by the breezy, colloquial writing style, which included numerous pop-culture references. While this style made the book fun and easy to read, it will also date this book considerably in the years to come, and books with ideas of the high caliber presented here ought not to date themselves so quickly. Other religiously themed SF books, like Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle For Leibowitz will stand better through time than this novel, filled with Twilight Zone, South Park, and Star Trek references. That's a shame. Sawyer has a unique take on these issues, and this book ought to stand for a long time to come as a great contribution to both SF and the intelligent-design debate.
Neither of these flaws takes too much away from the enjoyment of the book, however.
What's Good?Plenty. First and foremost, this book is a novel of ideas, and the ideas are potentially explosive. Sawyer handles them fairly, though those committed to a naturalistic viewpoint may think he concedes too much to the intelligent design side, while young-earth creationists and others will not like his somewhat unorthodox views of what the Creator is like. He explains arguments on both sides very clearly and completely, usually through the debates that Thomas Jericho (the unbeliever) and Hollus (the alien believer) constantly have over the existence of God. Those of you who are interested in the arguments developed in the book would do well to check out not only Dawkins and Gould but also Michael Behe, whom I believe is the main source for the intelligent-design material; Sawyer even cites his book by name inside the novel.
This book would be boring, however, if it contained nothing more than debates between two characters about science and religion, which is why Sawyer adds a personal, tragic element to the story in the form of Thomas's terminal lung cancer, contracted from breathing in dust during his paleontological studies. The ideas he debates about God, the meaning of life, and morality thus take on a brutally personal dimension and are not merely abstract mind-games; one chapter that describes his anguish over his impending death is particularly convincing (though the mood does spill over into sheer melodrama at times). Thomas has a wife and a young adopted son, and to leave them behind in death is almost more than he can bear. What happens to his beliefs and his outlook in life by the novel's end is probably the most realistic outcome I've seen in books of this sort. (No, I'm not telling you what it is. It's a major spoiler ...)
So What's In It For Me?This book, though it is by one of Canada's foremost science fiction writers (Sawyer also wrote the Hugo-nominated novel Factoring Humanity) with impeccable hard SF credentials, is sure to cause some controversy here on Slashdot -- but you should read it as an example of how even explosive issues can be handled in a civil, fair and enlightening way. This book may not be destined to be a classic of the genre, but it still stands a chance to help Sawyer finally earn his well-deserved Hugo.
Purchase this book at Fatbrain.
The answer is... forty-two!
I wonder if this book (I haven't read it) will turn out to be one of those "closet" successes. I'll have to give it a try.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
This book sounds good. I like a work that explores philosophical issues in a story-telling setting. There are a lot of unknowns and great debates about all kinds of things and it is so much more pleasant to get into the issues in an entertaining manner, like with a novel, than to read dry philosophical texts. This brings these issues to people who might not normally think about them and forces thought.
There's a couple of problems with this:
I just read the same book. The jacket summary seemed really interesting and the book was very good--but the former didn't really describe the latter.
I also thought the "fundies" were a little overdone, especially since they didn't really contribute to the climax. On the other hand, the author is from Canada: if all you know of these whackos is what you read in the papers, the characters seem realistic.
I thought the biggest flaw in the book was the ending which was a little...overused. Personally I liked the pop-culture references, especially since they are VERY recent (some of them from late 1999).
Based on "Calculating God", I also read "Illegal Alien" by the same author. His previous work as a crime novelist (which I haven't read) really shows through: An alien is accused of murder. The book reads like Perry Mason meets E.T. Highly recommended although again, the ending is slightly weak.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I still believe that the two extreme fundamentalists (from Arkansas, no less) are
caricatures and stereotypes rather than genuine
religious extremists.
The really great thing about most of the fundies I've met is that they ARE charicatures of an Xtian fundamentalist.
Being a fundamentalist Xtian, in the cases I'm familiar with, involves adherance to doctrine - and the sterotype of a fundie is someone who blindly obeys said doctrines.
I haven't read the book, but I don't see any problems at all with that particular characterization.
Being a somewhat liberal evangelical Christian, I personally know quite a few people who can be fairly characterized as religious extremists -- and they definitely would not take the actions that the book's characters take. So the subplot concerning them is weak.
Heh.. this just makes me giggle.
--
blue, slashdotting for spirituality without religion.
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Why do people assume that unlikely events imply god? Certainly any species who had developed logic and science enough for space travel should be able to comprehend simple math. If 2 people got struck by lightning at the same time, in different parts of the world would that be god acting? 3, 4, 5? What number is sufficient? To believe in god isn't anything anyone can come to by reason, unless their reasoning is flawed. If they do, then their *faith* could be easily shattered by new 'reasons' to the contrary. Faith is faith.... leave science out of it!!!!!
That always struck me as a daft question. "Describe God" would be better.
What I mean is this: if God exists (and yes, I mean the "Christian" God of the Bible), then he is going to be quite different form any sufficiently advanced technology. OK - they may be able to perform signs and wonders that appear divine to us, but there is more to God than that. You'll find out one day - I hope for your sake you are happy with the outcome!
ac.uk.
So, the events which led to intelligence happened "simultaneously" (let's suspend our disbelief for a moment, ignoring that according to relativity there's no such thing as simultaneity across such long distances in space) on all homeworlds. I guess that means that we humans are cosmic underacheivers, since the aliens are so much farther advanced than we are?
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
One thing I love about SF, be it hard or soft, is that you can explore a lot of different themes - and I'm glad to see theological questions explored as well, and it sounds like the book is well written.
It's nice to see SF that DOESN'T play it safe. I'd like to see more hard-bitten, go-for-the-gut, what's-it-all-about SF, hard or light.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Buy your books from www.elgrande.com they're cheaper than almost any other place. Just find your book on amazon.com or something, then take the ISBN number and search for it in elgrande. Calculating God's ISBN number is 0312867131 so just do an advanced search for it on elgrande.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Doesn't it seem that these debates alwats center around "God or 'The Gods' is just an explanation of things not understood by a primative people that needed an answer to the question why".
I don't think the concepts of science and God need to be mutually exclusive. The Sentiment that God created everything does not have to mean that he waved his hand and POOF, we had life. All things need a way of working out and a way of developing. The concept of God setting the wheels in motion, defining the rules to it all (science), and guiding the progress is just as likely as life just spontaneously formulating out of a bunch of amino acids hanging out together on the lava rock.
Many things are difficult to explain. Try being a guy and explaining women, or vice versa. Personally, I think only God could do it!
I just picked up this book last week, and have not finished it yet, so It must not be that good. Ohh well all's well that ends well.
Get your own Red Swingline Stapler
While I like reading sci fi with intelectual charecters, I rarely get any philosophical insights out of them that aren't better enjoyed as raw philosophical discussion.
IMHO of course, and it could be a fun read just for the plot.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
...but it sounds really interesting. I'm not sure I understand the meaning behind the title though. The review sounds more like a story about two people (the alien and the palentologist) who seek to know more about God: one from the standpoint of a believer, and one from the standpoint of an un-believer. The title almost sounds like people who are trying to create or figure out how to be God.
Anyway the title aside, judging from this review I think the book has a good chance of being something that will last. "Religion" aside the existance of God (or lack there of) is something that all humans have dealt with through the ages. Stories that are well written and deal with "Meaning of life" types of questions have a good chance of success. Religion is something we do as a habit and typically differs at least somewhat for every individual. This books seems to address questions that everyone has to eventually deal with.
Who knows, I might actually go read this one :)
Never knock on Death's door:
The Anti-Blog
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
The good thing, I think about SF is that it gives a possiblity. All things considered a diety is not impossible - although I do like to say (it stirs discussion beautifully) I think contemplating a god in a sf environment is a good idea. I do miss the readability info in the review though. The more things change, the more they remain insane.
I don't think it is a matter of whether something is unlikely enough. I think it is just something you have to make up your mind about taking in all you know about the universe. "Does God fit into my reailty?" In my case the answer is: No. In someone elses it might be "Yes". I doubt a book will change my mind, but I think I'll read it because Hard SF is what I like, and religious discussions as well...
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
I heard a while ago the reason was that he wanted a regular, largish number, looked out the window, thought "Forty two" and that was that.
Here's a quote from Douglas Adams, On god, By the way:
"I don't beleive there is a God. I don't say 'I dont beleive in God' because that implies there is a God for me not to beleive in."
He said it on a TV interview on the canadian Space Channel, during a special called "Originals from Space"
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Maybe it is the literary equivalent of "Don't shoot me. I'm a Canadian."
There was discussion about it being a reference to Lewis Carroll, but apparently that connection is a coincidence. (or else they were both divinely inspired from the same source!)
First off, religion/spirituality/faith are things I'm working through myself, figuring out the right questions and the right answers. Secondly, I do believe that there is the possibility that our "God" is really some 12 year old 31337 H4>0R playing Sim Universe on their alien equivalent of a VIC-20. All that said, this book does seem to have some interesting possibilities in the debate of God v. Evolution, as far as them pesky aliens go. Unfortunately, until we have conclusive evidence one way or the other, all this is conjecture, supposition, and some irrationality.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
God, root, what's the difference?
We are near to become God. Except for one thing. God is good, or at least so it is said. And we are by no means good.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
My question requires a little explination first.
One hurdle that must be cleared when discussing these issues is the language barrier. While I cannot speak for everyone, my experiences involve this:
Logic places strict definitions and requirements on words in the English language, elements which may not be as stringent in everyday life. The concepts of knowledge, truth, reasoning are good examples.
I, as a person who views religion through the glasses of a scientist evaluating a theory, see no compelling evidence for any of the major religions. This is not the say there is no God; there very we may be. I just have no knowledge of his existence, and therefor do not assume it. I draw my fundimentals about the universe through logic and science, methods which have long proven histories of successfully uncovering mysteries of our universe. Because of this, when I speak I speak according to the rules of the system; mainly I talk under the stringent definition of logic.
When discussing (using the strict definitions) complex issues with individuals of a less logistic background, I make concessions required by logic such as "yes, we don't know everything about the universe and therefor cannot disprove your 'theory' when your 'theory' does not make any measurable claims about the universe." These "concessions," while valid in the extreme, are then canabilized and used to "explain" why science in whole should be scraped and we should all take a literal view of King James.
This lack of common definitions eventually boils down even the best discussions to a game of semantics, and is one reason why I am not as inclined as I used to be to talk about religion.
So my question is this:
How does the book deal with the issue of logic? Do both characters obey the strict definitions? Do they both avoid them? Does man A become annoyed at man B because he's not playing fair logic? Are the differences exploited by the author to advance his own viewpoint?
Are there any books that fairly deal with this issue?
What do you think?
http://kered.org
What he meant by implying that god was interchangable with magic in this quote is this: In a world with primitive technology, a person with sufficiently advanced technology will be godlike. Think about it! What would people in the stone-age say about you if you had a paraglider, a rifle (with ammo, to shoot animals with) and a box of matches? You would be godlike to them, because you can kill things at a distance by pointing at them with a stick and go 'boom' (Sounds a lot like Zeus striking people down with lightning, doesn't it?). You can fly (on a good day :) and you can light fires whenever you want.
Though he misquoted the original, the intent is similar enough to be relevant.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Label that being as "God."
QED
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
In a nutshell, Calculating God is the story of paleontologist Thomas Jericho's encounter with two alien species which visit earth, and which reveal that the cataclysmic events that shaped Earth's evolution (meteor impact, mass extinctions, etc.) all happened simultaneously on their home planets as well. Inasmuch as the aliens' home planets are pretty much by definition outside the light cone of the cataclysmic events on earth, it makes no sense to say they happened simultaneously (there will be reference frames in which they did, and reference frames in which they didn't), which appears to me to negate the mysticism on which the book's premise depends. I think...
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
No, no, no... The equation is 'pie are square'. Thus, clearly, God != pi. Pi is a subset of God. :)
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
If you do, check out Greg Egan's "Distress". It deals with the Theory Of Everything and the consequences of it's discovery. Extremely well written and thought provoking. He has a brilliant homepage with loads of downloadable stories and Java applets discribing some of the math and physics in his books in a fun way.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Paleontologists on Planet P1 determine that Event E1 occurred T1 time units "ago".
Said Paleos travel to Planet P2 and determine that even E2 occurred T1 times units "ago".
If travel time is an insignificant fraction of T1, then E1 and E2 happened "simultaneously" (for some common sense definition of that word).
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Greeks had also Gods (many of them in fact) and I'm not sure that they would agree with your definition..
In St. Thomas Aqunias' Summa Theologica, he outlines one of the "proofs" that god exists as a principle called "Order and Design".
He says that the order and design behind nature points to a sentient force creating it with a structure in mind.
This structure can be expressed in mathematics. (Mathematics is the language of nature... nature... 1.. 1.. 2... 3.... 5... 8...)
Viewed in this context, "unexplainable" things detract from the "proof" of existence of god. Unless of course you believe that the abnormalities are either
1) actually part of the pattern created, and we just cant see how yet.
2) Intervention by god (miracles)
However, if the chaotic events are just random, with no order or meaning, and you use this to dispell the notion of God, then you have fallen into Descarte's world, and cant prove anything outside of your own mind, because there is no certainty of anything.
... hi bingo
If you thought "Distress" was good, read "Permutation City" (a book) and "Axiomatic" (a collection of short stories.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
David Hume, a Scot philosopher who lived in the 18th century, basically said that "no matter what I see or what you tell me, I could never believe in a miracle, because it is totally contrary to my normal experience". This idea has been picked up by a lot of people who avow a pseudo-scientific "faith" that requires atheism. The best you can do with this is a kind of deism. (Deism is the belief in a "clockmaker God", who created the world and then left it to run its course.)
But what if you did see such complete evidence for the miraculous that you MUST suppose it actually happened? Would Hume or his successors suppose that they had lost their mind before they conceeded a miracle?
Anyway, it sounds like these are the topics that this book explores. I look forward to reading it.
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
I read "The Terminal Experiment" by Robert Sawyer. It was a very good book, but had an premise that I found annoying.
SPOILER WARNING:
If you don't want they "mystery" ruined, don't read on. But frankly, unless you have the same biases as the author, you'll never figure out whodunit. Skip to the last section of this review.
Here's the deal: The murderer is the construct without an idea of death. Why? Because without death, there's no hell, and without hell, there's no morality. EVEN THOUGH this person is an atheist. Hi, I'm a *real* atheist - I don't believe in hell, at all - I wasn't even raised Christian. I don't think murder is OK.
END SPOILER:
In short, as little as this guy understands fundamentalists, he understands atheists even less. Which makes me wonder why I should give a fuck about his opinions about religion/theology/etc.
Why not read some author who does know what s/he's talking about, like James Morrow or Mary Doria Russel.
-Dave Turner.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
DISCLAIMER: I do not believe in a God or in a First Cause whatsoever. Nevertheless, the comment that follows tried not to be much of a flamebait. I am not sure that it succeded
Albeit touchy, the question that comes to mind is if this book is worth discussing at all. From the review it is clear that the book is nothing much beyond a religious fairy tale with a thin layer of sci-fi (aliens).
So what? Is it novell? No. It is yet another attempt revitalize an old myth. Does it have any outstanding literary value? Even the reviewer does not think so.
What is it then? Probably nothing much more than another religious book, this time aimed at the more scientifically minded religious person.
Who created God ?
OK, I haven't read the book, but from the reviewer's mention of Behe, I'm assuming it appeals to his argument from irreducible complexity of biologicl systems. The gist of the argument is that a biological system that is sufficiently complex enough in Behe's sense cannot have evolved into its present state. Therefore, we have evidence for an intelligent designer. It is amazing that seemingly rational people can make a leap from something that science is (currently) unable to explain, to something that is unexplainable in principle, namely god, as the explanation. Positing god doesn't "explain" anything at all. It simply ends all discussion of how things happen by claiming that god did it. (And don't ask where god came from.) Reminds me of that old cartoon of the two mathematicians standing in front of a blackboard full of equations done by one of them. In the center of the board are the words "and then a miracle occured" and the mathematics continues on. The one mathematician is saying to the other, "I think you need to be a bit more explicit here."
A prof at my school(U of Waterloo) knew him so he invited him in for a talk one evening. It was pretty good, but if you ever meet him here's a tip: don't ask him if he thinks that science fiction writers who are scientists are better than those who aren't.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
Damn, this isn't exactly what I'm thinking but it is devilishly hard to put in words.
I just had a flash of inspiration. The theory of relativity deals with the fact that time as well as space, weight and so forth, is relative. So, if you have large distances, how do you measure if something occurred at the same time? What is your frame of reference? Since different parts of the galaxy travel at different speeds, I guess these speeds come into play as well (since high speeds slow down the passage of time).
I'm just guessing here. :)
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
The failure of the intelligent design argument is this: If something as complex as the universe requires a designer, then why doesn't something as complex as God require a designer? The creationist answer to this is that God's complexity always existed. Well, if God's complexity always existed, why can't the universe (and I mean the pre-Big Bang metaverse) have always existed? The most reasonable to our unlikely existence is that there are an infinite number of universes, and if you have an infinite number of universes some are bound to have the complex physics necessary for life.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
For a similar book that cannot be praised enough by me, check out Robert Heinlein's, "Job, A Comedy of Justice." To quote someone else who summarizes it pretty well, "Heinlein toys with the ideas of religion, life, death, love, human suffering, and alternate realities in an entertainingly blasphemous, fast-paced story."
You've got God and gods (Zeus et al) and Heaven and Hell, and lots of other swimmingly philosophical debates raging through the novel, that only Heinlein can explore in such a fashion.
Sorry about the meandering post, but trying to work too.
Sig-"Out beyond fields of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." Jelaluddin Rumi
I would like to know the universal definition of 'perfect'...
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I agree, especially with your second point, and it's really been pissing me off in fact, that amongst the general public there is this passive assumption about god.
I think there are too many people who probably wouldn't admit to being religeous, yet come up with this stuff whenever they have a problem. The sad part is that it's usually a deep and serious problem, like a death in the family, that brings back the god thing.
Gods are *not* the only solution to what you don't know! There is a whole world out there on the horizon that we don't know about, and yes, it is confusing, and it can look like magic, but even magic isn't everything, or to paraphrase as you have done: whatever it is you don't understand is not reason for a god. If I were a god I would probably be offended to be seen in such a limited way: the thing you don't understand is just one small part of all of this world.
To try and explain better, look at the example of a web page: you might have a designer, who might write the site in a certain way, and plan the site's ending for a certain date, but that designer also has a life, and a home to go to, and a host of other things, each of which *also* make that person unique.
Similarly, the designer might one day decide to shut down the web site, but the users will just go on and make another, if the content is good enough, so even the designer loses control over it all.
GOd based stuff is like microsoft.com: they decide what goes up & down and you can't change it. I'd rather be like slashdot.org: you can change anything you want about the site (or even more in themes.org!), and if they one day sadly close, you can make your own!
It's the same with all this. If you really believe in god then understand that gods need all the help they can get, so please go out and do your bit for the world: be strong and creative and believe in what you can contribute, but it's *not* about gods! They are just designers.
You, the observer are the person who is responsible for the things you see and can't explain, or for the problems and good things in your life: not someone else! I wish all these people who turn to god in hard moments could understand this. Even christianity teaches something like this: help to those who help themselves. Well, it's more than that. You won't get help from anyone BUT yourself. It's when you take responsibility for your world that you become like a god yourself!
With this responsibility comes a good side though: you decide where to go to from here.
Any serious comments on this, please write me directly: I feel very strongly about this, but there's not enough space to explain it all here.
The supernova thing is on the back of the jacket for the book. In fact, a chunk of the preview seems to be lifted from the back of the book.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Talking about religion and SF brings me to Stephen Baxter's "Timelike Inifinity" which deals with another religion (one that fascinated the hell out of me) The Friends of Shroedinger.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
I spent the better part of two years on a discussion list composed of 3 agnostics, 1 atheist, 1 Orthodox Christian, 1 Fundamentalist Baptist, and myself (a former Roman Catholic, currently Evangelical Protestant but heavily leaning towards Orthodoxy). After two years we still have not agreed on definitions of the words: supernatural, nature, miracle, and reason and discussion seems to be pretty much winding down.
A truly deep discussion of the roots of a religion needs to start with a discussion of axiology: what items can be accepted as axiological. There are very few people that are willing to take the discussion to that depth. Most people (on all sides of the debate) fall into the trap of assuming that empiricism is the battle ground where the debate should take place.
The problem with this assumption is that axiology can not be truly discussed through an empirical outlook. The discussion of axiology needs to precede the choice of methodology (such as an empirical scientific approach) to finding truth.
I fail to see why this was moderated as Flamebait.
God is never an explanation for anything. Its just a different unenlightened label on something not known. Its like the little old lady that told Feynman that the earth was held up by a giant turtle. When Feynman asked what the turtle was standing on she replied another turtle all the way to the bottom. God is just another turtle, best used for soup.
Help fight continental drift.
Shroedinger theorised about placing a cat in a box. Inside the box we have a radioactive sample and a machine that will kill the cat if there is a radioactive emission from the sample. Once the box is closed there is no way for us to know if there has been an emission and whether the cat is dead (if we are talking about alpha-radiation). So if we can't observe the cat in the box, the cat is not alive or dead. It exists in a state of both and neither, until we open the box and observe it. It will then appear in a state of dead or alive.
But what about the person observing the cat? Unless he is observed, he and the cat will also only exist in a state of probabilities until they are observed. The logical conclusion of this is that at the end of time and the universe, there has to be a being, looking back through time, observing everything into existence.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
For a start, if it's actually worse than The Sparrow I'm staying well away. That was a mawkish, niave and embarrasing book ("The Jesuits [went into space] for the reason they always went anywhere: the Greater Glory of God" Excuse me, but that's a pile of crap.) This sounds much the same. The central premise, that the alien races survived the precise environmental conditions to create intellegence is so farcical it must invalidate any conclusion. Literary and Sf authors have debating the existance of God since the dawn of both genres, with mixed reasults, some fantastic (Do Androids Dream.. is one) But, this sounds like a theoligical version of that awful philospohical turkey, Sophie's World.
--
It is amazing that seemingly rational people can make a leap from something that science is (currently) unable to explain, to something that is unexplainable in principle, namely god, as the explanation. Positing god doesn't "explain" anything at all. It simply ends all discussion of how things happen by claiming that god did it.
The argument from design does not have to make a leap in logic in quite such a manner.
I do agree with you that using God as the explanation for something whose explanation is unknown is flawed logic. I am reminded of alleged miracles that are determined to be miracles simply because there is no other explanation. This is simply an argument from ignorance and carries absolutely no weight.
I would contend that the only way a person could have knowledge that a given event was supernatural in nature is if he or she were given that knowledge supernaturally. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making it very difficult (if not impossible) to verify that a miracle has occurred through scientific investigation. If an actual miracle took place, empiracal evidence combined with logic could only conclude that there was no known explanation for what took place, not that a miracle had occurred.
I do think that two important pieces of the argument from design are being left out in your summary. The first is that objects that appear to be designed do imply some sort of designer. The second is whether that designer needs to be some sort of deity. The complexity of life does imply that there is some sort of design process at work. The next question is whether what we know of the design implies a design process of an intelligent being or not.
Can't you see the Firet Post is
:] nooo,
a dyslexic, he should be encouraged.
He got 11 of the 12 letters right.
Having seen an article, standing there,
in its pristine purity, denuded of its
tacky little, terse details, I have been moved
w/ tear of joy, in eye to fp.
The book sounds like it sux
I don't drink... wine.
People don't just get cancer, a number
of body safeguards must fail first, chief
amongst them in this case are the
stupidity of not wearing a moist kerchief
across one's breathing orifices & the mucous
linings of the nasal passages. He talks
studid, like a doctor. Cancer like Pritikin
suggests & others seem to prove, is nature's
way of saying, your eating too many of
your fellow creatures.
If an alien told me that they couldn't
cure cancer, I would tell him that even
*our* meager technology can cure it but
we aren'y allowed to because *Big C* is
the central boogey man that the power
industry uses to stop Nuclear Power. I'd
tell him to walk back to his planet.
If Jesus, the mortal were to
review this, it would be,
"ho hum,so he read the cabala,
new?"
Jesus the *Imortal* would say,
"He who would deny his Father,
cannot expect to be part of the family".
[He tells me these things.]
Personally I can't imagine a
red neck paleontologist, if they can't
eat it or wear it, they don't need it.
[You can lead a good life with that
philosophy, besr combined with...
Do unto others as....]
[ Some say he who increases knowledge,
increases suffering. The Pentateuch
says, "I shall raise up amonst you,
from time to time, a prophet...
woe unto him that heeds not his word..."
that includes Charles Darwin &
Ronald Reagon]
As for 'breezy contemporary' it
doesn't work for me, this rap stuff
seems pathological to me. I don't think
this Masonic attempt to rewrite the
Franca Lingua, english is disturbing.
Hemingway types, attempt to increase the
democratic aspects of the language in
making it more confluent with its own
principles... goin' wi' the flo instead
of inventing a new one.
If your hurtin. for articles, why not
have free for all articles several times
a week. One of the sorriest aspects of modern
culture is that body of literature that
was written for no other reason tthan to
meet a deadline.
^ ^ ^
A MICROWAVE LASER can put
a lump in a politically
active chest. Aluminum foil
can stop it.
I went to a Behe lecture at U of Delaware a while back. Very interesting.
For those of you interested Behe is a biochemist who examined basic cellular functions. His belief and book on intelligent design (called Darwin's Black Box) was derived from his research.
The basic idea is that while macroscopic evolution works, biochemical evolution is a lot sketchier. This is a problem since you need biochemical evolution before you can even get to the standard evolution we've all grow up with. I.e. for the eye to evolve you need a cell sensitive to light which is not an easy thing biochemically.
Basically his conclusion is that many biochemical functions require a lot of unique biochemical parts (lets say more than ten different complex molecules). If one part is removed (which is done in lab rats by playing with their genes) the process stops working completely. This means that these functions cannot gradually evolve from a less functional form (as Darwin postulated but did not prove) but have to simply appear at much higher improbability.
He then compares biology to a mouse trap. A mouse trap needs all its parts to work and was made not evolved. Likewise blood clotting needs all its biochemical parts to work, so it was most likely made not evolved.
Anyway thats the gist of his work. I hope this is on topic an not treated like flame bait.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Philosopho-religo-mumbo-jumbo from geeks make DonkPunch head hurt....
Going to drink beer and read old "Bloom County" collections until I feel better.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
No offense intended -- just wondering if you were another Slashdot burnout like me. :)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Wrong! According to the Bible God Himself defines pi to be exactly 3.0... a whole, positive integer. Don't believe me? Check out 2 Chr.4:2 and 1 Kg.7:23 and do the "math"
2 1337 4 u!
% rm God ar: God nonexistent
% ar t God ar: God does not exist
% ar r God ar: creating God
from a forward a while back...
-Spazimodo
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
This view should be seriously considered from another aspect as well. If you discount God, and religion, know that society will discount morality. Already we progress as a world towards the acclimation of society above the individual.
I would give my life to save two. Most of you reading this would as well. There is a HUGE difference between a person giving their life and society deciding to take it. Point being: the evolution of society is far more important to our immediate concerns than the evolution of species. Who cares where we came from when where we are going is of far more concern to those living now and our children.
The natural progression of humanitarianism (the term I loosely use to sum societal belief that there is no God and only humanity and evolution matter) is Borg, or at least the ideology portrayed by Paramount.
As morality fails (and let's face it: morality is maintained by spirituality) so does our society's resolve to protect that morality. Individual human rights are an aspect of morality. Look at the Roman civilization before the coming of Christ (son of god or not, it's fact that he was alive and that he did teach). Euthanasia, post-birth abortion (baby killing) and using minor criminals as live bate for wild animals in the coliseum were all socially accepted. A rich man could buy a poor mans life from his debtors (slavery). These things would never have been weeded from society without the morality imposed by Christianity. We are destroying that morality in America and across the globe. Partial-birth abortions are accepted. Are we so blind as to think that that will not go one step further to include full-birth terminations? A gasp of air in a baby's lungs is our only current distinction. What about unplugging someone on life support? Already we have included starving the brain-dead to death. This is only a tiny step away in practice from terminating the life of the insane, or God forbid: the disabled. Do we really think that our petty Bill-of-Rights will defend these people from a democratic society forced to pay for their upkeep? Remember: society has no morality. Society follows only law. And we all know the golden rule makes the law.
Remove religion from this equation and you damn humanity to another Third Reich. Only this time, it might be the only faction...
All together now: "Heil Unimatrix One!"
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
What actually constitutes valid evidence for a miracle? Most would probably say "something that I can't explain any other way". That's fine, except that way back in history there were plenty of natural events that could not be explained any other way, and therefore could be considered miracles. (See Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote about sufficiently advanced technology..., and while you're at it see any really good illusionist.)
Others might say "Something I can't conceive of ever being explained any other way", but that does little to change the argument.
Still others say "Something that's so highly improbable that I can't believe it happened by chance". This is a very popular argument, but poor understanding of probability. We have Lotto winners every week, but we don't attribute the winning to miraculous causes (although the winners themselves might ;-)
Scientists have a particular problem with the "miraculous", because they study essentially only what can be observed and reproduced. By definition, miraculous events are outside of that domain. Ergo, scientists have very little they can do within the scientific framework to convince themselves that something is miraculous.
So, given credible "evidence of a miracle", how would you determine whether it was something perfectly natural but way beyond current understanding, or something truly miraculous (outside the scope of scientific study because it doesn't follow scientific laws, and hence can't be tested for or independently reproduced)?
In the end, perhaps it comes down to faith - your axioms or assumptions that lead you to believe it's one or the other...
God is a programmer, if there is a difference.
HE made the greatest MUD of all time!
Now that God has other things to do, he just leaves the machine this MUD runs on hooked up. Occasionally, God will log in (invis, of course) make a few changes here or there behind the scenes or just hang out a bit and observe but that's about it for now.
>;)
-Vel
Yes, so perfect in absolutely every way that this being creates humans so they are imperfect.
I'm perfect in every way and I'm glad.
-Vel
P.S. Don't worship me.
The point I was trying to make is that naturalism IS an assumption. Ultimately, given enough evidence "God spoke and BANG it happened" is an adequate explanation. The problem people face is that they have not SEEN that mode of operation in a direct, tangible way.
The successors of David Hume would deny that such proof is ever possible. I think it is possible, and have even seen it on a small scale.
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
Those who are serious about "calculating god" might try starting with the work on the combinatorial heirarchy. A good discussion of the combinatorial heirarchy is given by the inventor of bit-string physics, Pierre Noyes, in this paper.
Seastead this.
...it's a symbol without a referent.
Nobody can talk about God because nobody can point to a thing and say "There! That's God, that's exactly what God is! That's what I'm talking about."
Instead you get a lot of self-contradictory and logically flawed babble.
To make it worse, terribly few people seem equipped to argue semantics.
Most people think questions like "Can God make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" are facetious, when they get to the heart of what "God" means.
For example, the above question is about the definition of omnipotent. Would a thing you call "God" have absolute power over himself, the power to abandon omnipotence by making a thing greater than himself, or just absolute power over the physical universe we observe, him not being in or of the "universe" proper.
If what you speak of as "God" is of the physical universe, could an extremely powerful alien with advanced technology be "God"? How about an extremely powerful alien who created the universe and holds it in a container on his "shelf", like we might keep an ant farm?
Is "God" the anthromorphisation of the effects of religion?
There are a whole pile of these questions, and if you can't answer them, even you don't know what you're referring to when you say "God". Devout believers of different religions, agnostics, and atheists arguing with each other might all hold the same view, but just be talking about completely different things.
You hit the nail when you point out that inherent "knowledge gap" in science is exploited by the religious to push their essentially politcal platforms. Regardless of how much human science can find out over whatever time we continue to exist, there will always be a vast amount "unknown." But science proceeds by reason and logic to discover more. Religions do not do this, and some discourage it. A tenet of Christainity is that "proof denies faith" and Pope JPII recently called apon young people to follow the Path of Faith, rather than the path of Reason, because it was deceptive. I do not dispute the personal intensity of anyone's faith but I often dispute what their faith requires them to believe. Many of the religious surender their personalities to the political and social programs fostered by churches and religions and cults. God alone knows ther answer. Communist anti-religious programmes? A government watchdog on religious teachings? Wow, I pity you Americans.
--
Given that they've been around for over thirty and forty years, respectively, I'm not sure that I see the force of the objection that references to them badly date the work for future readers....
Proof of the miraculous would presumably mean the scientific proof that something was miraculous, and therefore, so proved, it would be no longer miraculous, but scientific. QED. A caveman who somehow slept twenty-thousand years (now there's a miracle) and witnessed a modern miracle would see it as miraculous, until someone explained to him how it worked.Sceintific proof that there is a God may in fact someday be forthcoming, but it looks increasingly unlikely. BTW, for a good study on miracles check out the development of the Fatima myth as applied recently to the Pope. A miracle, or a cyncical PR move? you decide.
--
'God', as the Divine creative/destructive force of the universe that we know and see, is defined (IMO) as not being a force that shapes the universe outside of it, but rather THE force of the universe. Divinity exists in infinitely small and infinitely large space, as a part of everything. When we put human traits on our gods we partially remove ourselves from being able to understand divine presence. (Actually, putting human traits on gods and goddesses helps us to understand ourselves as humans more than anything.) I've studied lots of different religions, but this is what I've come away with.
Flame on!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
That was hilarious, and should be moderated UP! :-)
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
... but I kept getting this stupid 216-digit error that crashed my computer. 1:39 pm, restate my assumptions: ...
... gotta go.
1. Mathematics is the language of nature
2. Everything in nature can be understood through numbers.
3. If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge.
4. Therefore, there are patterns, everywhere in nature
Oh crap, I've got another headache coming on
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Nope. It just confirmed my opinions about ignorant bigots and religious crack-pots :-)
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Well, so far this Einstein kook has a lot going for him. :)
tags.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
You we're doing alright until your last paragraph. Your perception of what appears to be designed is based on an anthropic viewpoint; it's an explanation of complex things for which you don't yet have an other explanation.
--
Error:syntax error at (eval 9) line 2, at EOF
To me, that sounds like a definition of "God" that is nothing but another name for what is described by physics, or, in other words, the universe itself.
Or maybe you've just been watching too much Star Wars ("'God'...is defined...as...THE force..."). ^_^
Have you meta-moderated today?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
So be it, it's still on topic, and the heathens here who will still get it.
This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:
John: "Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."
Mary: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."
Me: "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss His ass?"
John: "If you kiss Hank's ass, He'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, He'll kick the shit out of you."
Me: "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"
John: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropists. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever he wants, and what He wants is to give you a million dollars, but He can't until you kiss his ass."
Me: "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."
Mary: "Who are you to question Hank's gift? Don't you want a million dollars? Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ass?"
Me: "Well maybe, if it's legit, but..."
John: "Then come kiss Hank's ass with us."
Me: "Do you kiss Hank's ass often?"
Mary: "Oh yes, all the time..."
Me: "And has He given you a million dollars?"
John: "Well no. You don't actually get the money until you leave town."
Me: "So why don't you just leave town now?"
Mary: "You can't leave until Hank tells you to, or you don't get the money, and He kicks the shit out of you."
Me: "Do you know anyone who kissed Hank's ass, left town, and got the million dollars?"
John: "My mother kissed Hank's ass for years. She left town last year, and I'm sure she got the money."
Me: "Haven't you talked to her since then?"
John: "Of course not, Hank doesn't allow it."
Me: "So what makes you think He'll actually give you the money if you've never talked to anyone who got the money?"
Mary: "Well, he gives you a little bit before you leave. Maybe you'll get a raise, maybe you'll win a small lotto, maybe you'll just find a twenty-dollar bill on the street."
Me: "What's that got to do with Hank?"
John: "Hank has certain 'connections.'"
Me: "I'm sorry, but this sounds like some sort of bizarre con game."
John: "But it's a million dollars, can you really take the chance? And remember, if you don't kiss Hank's ass He'll kick the shit of you."
Me: "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight from him..."
Mary: "No one sees Hank, no one talks to Hank."
Me: "Then how do you kiss His ass?"
John: "Sometimes we just blow Him a kiss, and think of His ass. Other times we kiss Karl's ass, and he passes it on."
Me: "Who's Karl?"
Mary: "A friend of ours. He's the one who taught us all about kissing Hank's ass. All we had to do was take him out to dinner a few times."
Me: "And you just took his word for it when he said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to kiss His ass, and that Hank would reward you?"
John: "Oh no! Karl has a letter he got from Hank years ago explaining the whole thing. Here's a copy; see for yourself."
Me: "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."
Mary: "Hank didn't have any paper."
Me: "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."
John: "Of course, Hank dictated it."
Me: "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"
Mary: "Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."
Me: "I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist kicks the shit out of people just because they're different?"
Mary: "It's what Hank wants, and Hank's always right."
Me: "How do you figure that?"
Mary: "Item 7 says 'Everything Hank says is right.' That's good enough for me!"
Me: "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."
John: "No way! Item 5 says 'Hank dictated this list himself.' Besides, item 2 says 'Use alcohol in moderation,' Item 4 says 'Eat right,' and item 8 says 'Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.' Everyone knows those things are right, so the rest must be true, too."
Me: "But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is made of green cheese,' which is just plain wrong."
John: "There's no contradiction between 9 and 2, 9 just clarifies 2. As far as 6 goes, you've never been to the moon, so you can't say for sure."
Me: "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon is made of rock..."
Mary: "But they don't know if the rock came from the Earth, or from out of space, so it could just as easily be green cheese."
Me: "I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory that the Moon was somehow 'captured' by the Earth has been discounted*. Besides, not knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese."
John: "Ha! You just admitted that scientists make mistakes, but we know Hank is always right!"
Me: "We do?"
Mary: "Of course we do, Item 5 says so."
Me: "You're saying Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"
John: "Now you're getting it! It's so rewarding to see someone come around to Hank's way of thinking."
Me: "But...oh, never mind. What's the deal with wieners?"
Mary: She blushes.
John: "Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It's Hank's way. Anything else is wrong."
Me: "What if I don't have a bun?"
John: "No bun, no wiener. A wiener without a bun is wrong."
Me: "No relish? No Mustard?"
Mary: She looks positively stricken.
John: He's shouting. "There's no need for such language! Condiments of any kind are wrong!"
Me: "So a big pile of sauerkraut with some wieners chopped up in it would be out of the question?"
Mary: Sticks her fingers in her ears."I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."
John: "That's disgusting. Only some sort of evil deviant would eat that..."
Me: "It's good! I eat it all the time."
Mary: She faints.
John: He catches Mary. "Well, if I'd known you where one of those I wouldn't have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the shit out of you I'll be there, counting my money and laughing. I'll kiss Hank's ass for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater."
With this, John dragged Mary to their waiting car, and sped off.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
This book sounds a bit like it was designed to catter to serious christians. I think most Atheists reactions to Aliens with convincing evidence which said there was a god would be "Ok, I'm curious lets figure this out." Also, Aliens with more advance technology whic could convince an Atheists her that there was a god, would probable not have made the leap of logic to assume that there was some kind of after life, i.e. planets getting hit with metiors simultaniously dose not imply after life period, it implies a big alien race which is wiping out the big stupid animals so that smaller intelegent animals will evolve.
A technical point of bad research on the authors part: I think some palentologists believe that extinction of the dinosaurs slowed the development of intelegent life since some of the small dinosaurs were well on their way to becomming intelegent.
Finally, the coolest lets thing about god books were the ons writen by Frank Herbert. There were several of these books where people created a god for some purpose or another. There was a god one about an AI becoming god and another good one about the psychological effects that a person when through as he became a god.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
5 billion years into our future (if we last that long). You might find our descendants creating life much in the same way we were created. They wouldn't be static creations and they would evolve to adapt to thier environment and wisdom. The creations would look up in the sky and wonder how they came to be. And the creator may respond with a small message, maybe one of hope or love. The message might be passed down from generation to generation. And the message itself might evolve too to fit the whims of the people or thier rulers. But it wouldn't matter if the message was used for bad or good, or the people did bad or good things. This is too be expected, because yin can't exist without yang. And maybe the creator would be wise enough to know this and let them live on with thier free agency, to choose thier own paths.
Logic is good. Science is good. I use and respect both. Both are very good at what they do. What neither do is answer (or even try to answer) all of the questions that need to be addressed in order to live "the good life".
For example, there is a whole field of study called "ethics": dealing with "right" and "wrong", what people should do, what choices they should make, etc. The answers to these questions are quite important in living our daily life and living it well. Science doesn't address these questions. It doesn't attempt to. I'm not saying it should. But that doesn't make them any less important. We shouldn't go through our lives saying "I don't know if what I'm doing is right or wrong and I don't care. I have no scientific method of answering the question, so I'll just ignore it." (At least I don't think we should - it's an ethical judgement I'm making. :->)
Similarly, there is more to a good life than logic (as Spock and Data remind us). We don't use logic to love or enjoy a beautiful sunset. That doesn't lessen the worth of love or of the enjoyment of a beautiful sunset.
Theology may be a study, like ethics, for which the scientific method is not the most appropriate tool. If so, to judge a theological book on how well it used the scientific method would not be logical. Similarly, for many people religion is (like love) something that they don't pursue logically. It doesn't make it any less valuable a part of their life.
Personally. I love getting into long philosophical debates about theology and ethics, debates where logic and empirical evidence play a large role. I know I won't end up with provable answers but the process is intellectually stimulating and helps me to understand and refine my position on some of life's most important questions. I'm glad Science isn't my only tool for answering questions because then I wouldn't even see some of the most important ones.
Or so it seems to me. YMMV, of course.
Respectfully, David Tallan
I still, however, do not believe in God. :) My reasons for not believing are intangible, as is probably most religious people's reasons for not believing.
If there is a God, why don't I believe in him? Can't he make me believe? He could very easily make me believe by making me observe some event that I could never explain in any other way (as giving me the power to fly, for five minutes or so). If he can't do this simple thing, what is the point of believing in this God that refuses to be proven? The simple solution to this problem is that there is no God (Occams Razor).
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
According to Douglas Adams it should read : "We are sorry for the inconvenience
Seriously, history shows that mixing theology and science is not a good idea ... as finally even Catholic Church is admitting (600 years later).
Ciao
----
FB
Thiesm == God interferes with the universe
Diesm == God created the universe but cannot/does not interfere with it
The correct statement is "this is more diestic than I would have exected from Sagan". Sagan did not preclude Diesm, he just felt that there was no proof of a Diestic god. That's why he was an agnostic.
But then, who ever said they weren't?
(If you luk clos at tha thred I spelt it rite befor, wen I tokked abowt tha eggnawsticks an the divowtli rilijus fokes, so dun wine at mi abowt spelig)
Haha, I am the athiest of them all!
God was too weak to drive out the mountain inhabitants because of their chariots of iron. So much for your omnipotent God. I know you're going to try and counter my point by playing the versions game.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Significant figures. Pi is defined, in that context, to be 3, not 3.0, or 3.00. And 3 it is, to one significant figure.
This isn't religion, this is basic engineering. A circle's circumference is three times its diameter.
Welcome to rough numbers. It's not expected to be precise. For crying out loud, it was in *cubits* last I checked.
I'm not saying everything there is literally true, but you have to be pretty wacky to ignore the decimal points.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
This is where Occams Razor comes in. Which is simpler, that there is a God who refuses to supply us with proof of his existance or that there in fact is no God?
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
But what you failed to see in your English translation of the bible was that that's not the whole story... in the original Hebrew version of the Old Testament the word line is spelled in a way which differs from it's traditional spelling. The traditional spelling of the word line has a gematria of 106, while the spelling in this particular passage has a gematria of 111 ("gematria" is the numerical value assigned to every Hebrew word). You are claiming that Pi = 30/10 = 3, biblically speaking... but if we also multiply by 111/106 we get 333/106, which is the third continued fraction approximate to Pi, where 3 is the first.
The NIV has a footnote on Leviticus 11:19: "The precise identification of some of the birds, insects and animals in this chapter is uncertain."
The passage in Deuteronomy is worded a bit differently: "You may eat any clean bird. But these you may not eat:
No idea about the rabbits.
As for four legs: "There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that you may eat..." The phrase "on all fours" (or "that goeth upon all four" in the KJV), I suspect, just means crawling as opposed to upright, and wasn't intended to be a leg count - at least that's what it sounds like to me. I can't imagine that there would have been any confusion about something this obvious.
A footnote in the New American Standard version says that by "melts" they meant "secretes slime".
No idea about the eating dirt thing.
As for the world being flat, just how spread out was the civilized world at that time? Weak argument, I know, but you could probably see a large portion of it if you were high enough.
Many Christians love to talk about the Bible, but few can be bothered to actually read it.
I don't claim to be great at this, but many atheists bash on the Bible without reading it either. Thanks for calling this to my attention.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
You're asuming that God exists in the same linear timeline that we do, and that He knew in the past what you will be doing in the future. God created our linear timeline, and therefore exists outside of it. For reference, check out the Deep Space Nine episodes where Sisko meets the aliens inside the wormhole.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Also, Aliens with more advance technology whic could convince an Atheists her that there was a god, would probable not have made the leap of logic to assume that there was some kind of after life, i.e. planets getting hit with metiors simultaniously dose not imply after life period, it implies a big alien race which is wiping out the big stupid animals so that smaller intelegent animals will evolve.
Pardon me, but how is this final conclusion implied at all? In the next paragraph, Weezul argues that paleontologists believe such events stunt growth in intelligence among species, so it is irrational to argue initially that "a big alien race" would have bombed a planet with asteroids as a means of speeding up growth in intelligence. I find it far fetched that a "big alien race" would channel its technical expertise into directing large asteroids into distant planets so that intelligent life might be spurned on more quickly, and I know someone will reply and say, "yeah, but how probable is it that a deity is going to direct asteroids for those same reasons," but thats not my point. I just don't understand why one would argue that such a point is the logical implication, period. It seems to me that a such simultaneous events could lead to a great many implications, and that it is in only studying the novel that we can understand why the aliens of this book chose as they did.
We cannot comment on an author's conclusions without fully considering the plot in which that author is working, and so I think such criticisms, without an actual analysis of the book itself, are neither fair nor just. Just because religious sensibilities, which people may or may not agree with, are the topic of such a work, does not change that in literary criticism, we ought to involve the actual book and plot within such criticism.
In another vein (responding to comments of Frank Herbert's work), I have very much cherished/enjoyed Herbert's Dune series, with special emphasis on books 1 and 6 (Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune). I reveled in the exciting political ways in which religion was utilized as a means of control, and I recognize how valid such criticisms (of religion) are. With that in mind, I am still very much a Christian. In fact, because I realize the tremendous power religion can give to someone willing to utilize it in a position of power, I have become much more dedicated in my studies of Christianity, lest I be duped. And no doubt, someone will reply and tell me that I have been duped, but I reply, in advance, that I have found great security in my studies, both biblical and historical.
I decided that I needed to study the faith of my childhood as much as possible, lest I be wrong. I would not want to sit back idly throughout my entire life accepting what my parents taught me and find out in the end that I had been wrong. (Or not find out anything, as the case may be). Nor did I want to reject my early faith simply because religion is not fashionable within a great deal of scientific society. We owe it to ourselves to be certain of our religious convictions, because they are deeply personal and carry with them a great weight into our lives and, depending on your beliefs, afterlifes. What we choose now may have considerable ramifications after we are dead. Or they may not. But I urge everyone to deeply consider why they believe whatever they do, because it is so very important.
Lets say that all life in the universe did appear at the same time (I guess at the end of the 20th century, the idea that god exists would need some kind of absurd handicap to be plausible). So some intelligent entity using very advanced techniques, but this doesn't mean God, so much as beings that to us are as gods. But in either case, I'd not be so much inclined to worship these things, as to try and pirate their knowledge.
...to the practical, for a moment.
For information about Robert Sawyer and his works, including samples (several short stories and selections from novels), visit his site.
I'd strongly recommend his work to anyone looking for intelligently written SF. He really seems to take the time to understand the science he writes about; a refreshing change from the usual treknology and handwaving.
Drinking will help us plan!
This thread is about how we can't meaningfully use the word "God". Listen to yourself, do you really think you've communicated anything at all to me? This is why religious wars happen.
I know what you mean, but strictly speaking it's not a valid statement.
You cannot be a scientist and a Christian at the same time. The "scientist" is not a scientist unless he applies the scientific method to his subject matter, which cannot be done to religious subjects, and the "Christian" deals in faith, which is not within the realm of discourse of science. The two cannot meet and apply validly at the same time.
When they do meet in one person (and you're definitely not on your own in that), then it is because both the scientist and the Christian have sacrificed strict consistency within their respective disciplines in order to be able to live together at the same address. It's a very common human compromise, but hopelessly invalid in any strong sense.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The idea of God just starting everything up and leaving it is the basis of Deism.
Voltaire was a deist. I might be too.
www.deism.com
No, relativity is very precise about this. It doesn't say that "two events cannot happen simultaneously, at locations very far apart in space". It says that the very concept of "the same time" has no meaning as the distances involved become very large. There's no such thing as "the same time"; it depends on where you are watching from, and how fast you're moving, and in what direction (relative to the events in question, of course). There is no such thing as an absolute time that is valid at all points in space. Go to the Science section of your local used bookstore and get an introductory book on relativity if you're interested in understanding this extremely interesting aspect of the universe we live in.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
>transcendentally powerful being exists
Which wouldn't proove the existance of God in any event.
It's a simple correlation of Clarke's Law, which states:
"Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
to apply it to read:
"Any being wielding sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a god"
We've all seen that episode where the crew of the Enterprise meets "Apollo". yes?
Or perhaps the episode of TNG where Picard foils "The Devil"?
But, okay, let's get away from science fiction. There *ARE* examples from "real life".
Wasn't it Columbus who claimed to some of the carribe islanders that he could talk to God? I read a story somewhere where Columbus was trying to bully the natives into giving up supplies for the trip home. They, of course, told him to get stuffed. Well, Chris just went back to his ship and found that there would just HAPPEN to be a solar eclipse the next day. So he went back to the natives and told him that if they didn't cough up the supplies, he'd have God take away the sun. They laughed. Along came the moon, blocking the sun, which convinced the locals to give in to Columbus' demands. And he promptly went back to the ship, told "God" to bring back the sun, and lo and behold.... here comes the sun, in it's full former glory.
Cortez, too, posed as a God. This time, when he contacted the Aztecs. Seems that they had a ledgend about an albino, four-legged god. Well, Cortez, by lucky coincidence, just HAPPENED to have horses (which were not native (and thus, unknown) to the americas) back on the ship... Couple that with European armour, and gunpowder "lightning sticks" and Cortez made a pretty good four legged albino god... long enough to concur the Aztecs anyway.
Or how about the south pacific "Cargo Cults" of post-WWII fame?
Those are just from the yop of my head. Anyone know more?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Science is based on the belief that the world can be understood by humanity.
You're totally wrong. Science doesn't make any attempt whatsoever to understand the world, because it does not have the tools to do so. All it does is to create models that yield testable predictions, and then to test the behaviour of reality by direct physical probing to see if the provoked response is anywhere close to the predicted one. If there is a good match then the model is said to be consistent with reality, but that does not mean that reality is anything like the model at all. We have no means of determining that, because we have no way of looking inside reality, but only of testing her behaviour from the outside.
And that's why the scientific method is so powerful. A model can look like X at one point in time and like Y at another, and no scientist cares a damn as long as the models yielded predictions that were usefully close to how reality responded to the test probes at each point in time. That's why progress is so rapid in Science: old dogma can be thrown away with impunity. We could never do that if we thought for an instant that the structure of a model truly depicts the actual structure of reality --- we couldn't throw away The Truth! Not a cat's chance in hell of that happening though, especially considering that a lot of Science's models are riddled with holes. But that doesn't matter --- as long as the predictions are close enough then we can make use of them and get reality to work for us in our TVs and microwave ovens. But that doesn't mean that we have any idea at all what reality really looks like inside.
Admittedly sometimes we talk about what goes on in models as if we're talking about reality herself, but that's just shorthand. No genuine scientist that is true to the scientific method would claim otherwise. Unfortunately there are a few quacks around, and a few that have forgotten the fundamental premises of their discipline, but that's true in any sphere of endeavour.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
So what system of faith closes the gap between religion and science? Islam does!
Some Interesting Links for those interested:
- Scientific Revelations in the Quran (Koran).
- Determining the Speed of Light.
- The Quran on Human Embryonic Development
- The Quran on Astronomy.
I wouldn't be surprised if an overanxious zealot downgraded my post, but then again, my post is competing with three hundred other messages, so consider yourself lucky if you see this message!Quarantine is the first of his "subjective cosmology" set and deals very well with issues of fate and probability. "Luminous", his latest collection of short stories, is very good too. When I first read Axiomatic it simply blew me away.
I think that the Universial Life Church still ordains just about anyone. For a donation of $1 at one time, they'd send you an official document. If you want to be a priest without the pesky theology, this is as good a way as any.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
here's a religious question to ponder: if god has existed forever, and god created the universe, where did god live for infinity before creating the universe? my answer: if god = Everything, then god includes the universe (and all of its contents, including Us) it's a simple equation, with far-ranging ramifications -- it makes simple work of statements like "god knows Everything," and "we are all children of god," and "god is all around us," etc. think about it love, peace, infinity...
i thought, therefore i was...
This is a classic logical fallacy. It says nothing about the subject but rather that the rules for logic used in this predicate are wrong.
Take for example Russel's Paradox:
"Most sets are not elements of themselves. For instance, the set of all integers is not an integer and the set of all horses is not a horse. However some sets are elements of themselves. For instance, the set of all abstract ideas is an abstract idea. Let S be the set of all sets that are not elements of themselves. Is S an element of itself? The answer is neither yes or no. For is S is an element of S, then S satisfies the defining property for S, and hence S is not an element within S. But if S is not an element within S, then S is a set such that S is not an element within S and so S satisfies the defining property for S, which implies that S is an element of S. Thus neither "S is an element of S" nor is "S is not an element within S" is true, which is a contradiction." (Discrete Math. with Applications by Susanna Epp)
An example of this contradiction is summarized by the following:
Say we have some barber in some town that shaves all people in the town that don't shave themselves. Does he shave himself? Think about this for a second and you'll see it's built upon the same logical principles as the omnipotent god statement.
There are several ways to avoid this contradiction. One such way requires that, except for the power set whose existence is guaranteed by an axiom, whenever a set is defined using a predicate as a defining property, the stipulation must also be made that the set is a subset of a known set. Thus by needed contraints of logic, the omnipotence statement used by many to either confuse religious people, contradict their beliefs, or reinforce your beliefs of a non-omnipotent God -- is not even a valid logical argument in any sort of way.
If anything you've proven that Man is not omnipotent...nothing about any God that may or may not exist.
Alright I'm going to shut up now or I'm gonna go way out there...hehehe
-= Robert Dowden =-
(aka Mandrias)
Use the Z-modem protocol between Information Superhighway routers to compress the plaintext. ~LordOfYourPants
Three and Four Fisted Tales of Bob
heh heh
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"Hey I don't know if the billions will survive,
but I'll believe in God when 1 + 1 = 5"
-Bad Religion
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Of course, where all that water came from and went is a whole 'nother story...
Religious people and anti-religious people are all too dead-set on the fact that they are right. No one likes to admit that they are wrong, but no one has to in the religion debate, because everyone just thinks the other is wrong, as they're so obviously right. Look at all the people that believe just the way they do! How could they be wrong?
The existance/nonexistance of God all depends on belief. A friend of mine one time read a statistic saying "85% of people are right handed, and the other 15% are left handed." He's ambidextrous. Where does he fit? "Well, he goes with the left-handed people." No, because he's also right-handed. So, we decided that he doesn't exist. Everything is relative and depends on perspective.
To the bad guys, the good guys are the bad guys.
Valdara- ----------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
I am not a hero. I am merely a fool who doesn't know any better way to do it. --Charles M. Roberts (my chemistry profess
Why should the climate be dramatcially different? If "God" caused the flood (which there is no record of anywhere except the bible[Hmmm. Coincidence?]) in 2000 B.C. just to get rid of all the bad people, why wouldn't be put the Earth back the way it was, so that all the animals and good people could go back to living the way they had been? Sure, it defies common sense and logic, but what does that matter in issues of religion?
Then you have Darwin's Finches. Did Noah have two of each type of Finch? And not only did he have two, but did he specifically find the Galapagos and put just those kind of Finches there? All of the pro arguments I have seen thus far are people stretching to make things fit what they've always been taught to believe. It seems a lot of people just don't have the capacity to question a popular dogma.- ----------------------------------------
Valdara
-------------------------------------------------
I am not a hero. I am merely a fool who doesn't know any better way to do it. --Charles M. Roberts (my chemistry profess
where the water came from and went...
For your information, if earth was to be levelled, the waters would cover it with depth of 7 km. The water stays on earth - before the flood there was less water and more surface, whereas now it's the opposite.
If you read the creation account carefully, you will note that there was a body of water in the heavens. The creation account clearly states that waters were separated.
Genesis 1:6-8 says: "And God went on to say: "Let an expanse come to be in between the waters and let a dividing occur between the waters and the waters." Then God proceeded to make the expanse and to make a division between the waters that should be beneath the expanse and the waters that should be above the expanse. And it came to be so. And God began to call the expanse Heaven."
From this it is clear that a body of water was divided into two parts, and they were separated by heaven. So, there was a body of water in some form above heaven. Just because we are not sure of how it was does not mean it did not happen. Then if you read the account of the flood, you will see that it says that "the floodgates of the heaven were opened up", thus letting the water above drain down to the earth.
First of all, one cannot assume that the earth is 6000 years old on Bible chronology. What one can calculate on Bible-based chronology is that the history of mankind is approximately 6000 years long.
The Bible speaks of 6 creative days, but it does not pointedly say that each day is 1000 years. In the Bible, a day can mean a period of time not necessarily 1000 years long. Earth being one billion years old, or 15 billions years old is not in disagreement with the Bible, but it certainly seems unlikely the creation period being 6,000 years.
And the reason why the climate changed after the flood is that according to the Bible's creation account, there were two bodies of water - one on earth, and one above heaven (read Genesis 1:6-8). This upper body of water had tremendous effect on the climate, being more like a greenhouse effect. After that layer was poured down in the flood, it disappeared, thus no longer protecting the earth in the same way, and thus making the climate change.
...and I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this very simple solution:
1) A novel like this is written from the "omniscient narrator" viewpoint.
2) Since we know god is omniscient then therefore whatever observations are provided by the author can be easily substituted for God's observations according to Behe's Mousetrap Analogy
3) Therefore, since the author describes these things as occcurrring simultaneously, ie simultaneous to the point of view of the author, these things occcurrred simultaneously to the viewpoint of God
4) This fact is self-verifying considering he's the one that made them happen and he probably wanted to get all that biotic-life-prodding over at the same time while he had the oven already preheated and before the Knicks game.
5) Since we now see that these events happened simultaneously in reference to God's point of view, all we have to do is either have God tell us when they happened or just go to his house and take our own measurments from there.
See, i told you it was simple.
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
If I come knocking at your door and no one answers, does that prove you're not home? "If he's home," I postulate, "he would prove it by answering the door." No one is answering. Since "no one's home" is the simpler answer, Occam's Razor forces me to conclude the house is unoccupied.
Of course, if you're in the shower, then Occam turns out to be a fraud.
Lee Kai Wen
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Yeah thats the story, but not before being forced to withdraw his opinion that the earth was not the center of the universe.
Sigs are awesome huh?
You mean it's not?!
dammit, you're right.... sorry i have taken so long to admit this, but I had to go all the way to the burbs whence my storage locker lies to retrieve my "box o' bible books". Nice chops.
2 1337 4 u!
The Bible doesn't say "bats are birds", it just includes bats in a list of creatures that fly. It doesn't say "grasshoppers have four legs" it says they "walk on four" -- an idiomatic expression for "crawl"
It's always easy to find "inaccuracies" in the Bible by
I have read serious statements like "I lost my faith because the Bible says is equal to 3". Some people have obviously never heard of round numbers.
Linux advocates are in a no Win situation
Although believing everything the Bible says about the original sin, ten commandments, resurrection, etc. is somewhat complicated, believing that we were created by a Creator is pretty simple. Also, if this universe was created, it doesn't really make sense that the Creator would reside within this universe, does it? Makes sense to me that He'd be outside of it, looking in....
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
A discussion of whether God exists or not is futile. You have no proof of his existance. I have no proof that he does not exist. All we can discuss is why I do not believe in your God and why you believe.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Is it simpler to believe that someone constructed the universe in a structured manner and thought up every little aspect of it or that it just happened to turn out that way, because it was all very chaotic at first but through billions of years those pieces that don't work well together destroyed themselves?
Evolution requires only a very simple rule: That which works well will continue to work well and that which does not will die out.
This requires no concious thought at all, and no clever planning. This is just logical.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
That which works well will continue to work well and that which does not will die out.
You're missing a very key part: that which works, randomly mutating into that which works better. Here's what doesn't make sense to me. Reptiles evolved into birds; scales evolved into feathers. In between, there were frayed or feathery scales, then scaly feathers. Something like that. Anyway, the problem is, how the hell is having feathery scales (without being able to fly) going to be useful to a reptile, thus making such a mutant creature more fit for survival? Sure, it would work if there were an outside force orchestrating the whole thing, but we're assuming that there isn't.
Similarly, where did bats come from? How is having flaps of skin between your fingers a useful trait (rather than a hinderance), before you can fly? Obviously you can't very well develop flight capabilities until you have wings.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Look at the flying squirrel today, it has such skinflaps. It can't fly, but it can jump very far between trees.
But you are right about the feathers, they are hard to explain. Maybe it happened similarly where the reptile had a few scales that extended from the arms, instead of skinflaps, that allowed it to jump longer (to sail on the air), which evolved into more scales and then feathers.
Some also believe that evolution isn't such a step by step process as I suggest here, but that there are critical points in evolution where giant leaps of progress have been taken at one time.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
I am not proud of the past of Christianity. Many of your postings are the idealism of the fallacies rampant in the bastardized world church. Let me explain myself and my views.
/. It points out that "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction." The Bible is a book written by men. Some (including me) believe that it was guided by God, but it was penned by men. The last words were written nearly two thousand years ago. No one, in all of history, has disproved a single word. Oh sure, some people can use differences in speech and failed interpretations to muddle the meaning of a passage or verse, but it has never been disproved. Even those poor translations disintegrate under observation and knowledgeable study.
First off, I hold no banner to any recognized church. I am not Protestant or Catholic. I don't Hail Mary or kiss the feet of the infant Prague. I have never followed blindly any man's teachings. I question everything.
Your questions are fair and your observations are accurate. The church, as the world sees it portrayed on a crucifix or by the dude with the pointy hat (the pope) is a hypocritical lie. How can a man claim to be a pontificate of a church who's very Christ says "And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven". (Matthew 23:9). And how can he forgive your sins in a confessional when the book, which they follow, says that only the blood of Christ can do this? No, your beliefs are founded if you look towards the established Catholic putrification of the word Christian.
And then, you turn to scrutinize the Protestants. The factionised bickering between sour old men who thump their chests and declare their interpretations to be the only true way to God is little better than the Catholic's open hypocrisy. Fat lazy Americans sit is gilded churches and hear sermons of sacrifice but have never tasted that bitter drink themselves. They shed tears for people they have never met nor care to for their heroic sacrifices in third world countries. They condemn the sinners at their work and in their neighborhood for drinking and smoking but don't see their own damnation for locking the gates of heaven to those people with their turned-up noses and disgusting hatred.
I see these things in the church and it wrenches my heart. This isn't Christianity. This isn't the gospel. Christ would never have lead a crusade. Christ forbade Christians from judging others: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone..." (John 8:7). And again on the Sermon on the Mount: "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven." Christ's message was one of forgiveness, of sacrifice, and of love. Not a message of hatred or dispute.
Some of you refer to the posting "Rejoice, I have found Hank!" Many of you read this posting and laugh, seeing the parallels between it and the message of salvation. Yet you know that no man in his right mind would agree to "kiss Hanks ass." So doesn't it make you wonder why so many thousands agree to follow a God that they cannot see in person? Doesn't it make you wonder why so many will give so much of themselves for a Christ they have never met? The message of "Hank" has no power to change lives. There is no mercy and no forgiveness. You're heart doesn't tell you it is the truth. That is why you laugh.
There is always an answer if you care to look: "Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets..." (Proverbs 1:20). That first book of proverbs is the guide to my personal life. In summary, it says that wisdom is to be found all around you. Yes, even in discussion groups on
Remember: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." (Psalms 14:1) Those of you who scoff at God and Christ are focusing on the things you have heard you will lose. You think you'll have to stop cursing, and drinking, and smoking, and having sex with whomever you please. Those things are unimportant. Salvation is about what you will gain, and you DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO GAIN IT. You don't have to be a missionary. You don't have to stop drinking. You don't have to stop having sex. You don't have to stand on a street corner with the bible and tell everyone that they are going to hell. All you have to do is believe. Less than that, all you have to do is accept the gift you know is there.
That's Christianity.
That's God.
That's Simple.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
The traditional theistic definitions avoid the turtles problem simply by defining God as that being which has always existed. "Always", of course, precludes the question of "who created God," since God was not created.
Of course, the natural reply is that the idea of an eternally existent being is nonsense, and that attempts to define God as such are merely a cop-out intended to avoid the problem.
And the reply to that is that it is only nonsense to intellects which insist on thinking in terms of linear time.
And the answer to that is... well, never mind. You get the idea.
It's not as easy as all that to declare a winner in the "who's 'simpler' is simpler" debate.
Lee Kai Wen
Scientists tend to group around the scientific interpretation of religion, much as marketers tend to focus on the parts of technology that fit current business models.
That is, science tends to emphasize the question of the existence of a deity. This requires formulating an exact definition of the Supreme Being - something contrary to most religions' interpretations of what the Deity means. The reason for this emphasis seems to be simply that science, ever since its divorce from philosophy around the time of Voltaire, has been obsessed with things that can be proven or disproven.
But proving or disproving the existence of the Deities of our religions isn't really what religions are about. In fact, when religions proclaim that their Deities are "the one and only" usually what they *really* mean is their ethical and spiritual interpretation of life.
In truth, Pseudo-scientific atheism has acquired more of the negative trappings of religions than most traditional religions have kept: it's a religion devoted to denying the existence of something that is only loosely defined, and can't readily be proven or disproven. But it misses the importance of ethics.
I think that science should worry less about proving the non-existence of the Supreme Being and more about reintegrating philosophy and ethics back into science. A science divorced from humans is largely irrelevant.
byroniverse
As to if larger webbed hands/feet would be a hindrance and not an advantage you'd have to know the exact circumstances. Imagine a creature has adapted well to the trees, who have hands and feet that can grab very well on branches and so forth and it has webbed hands feet (though small right now).
Along comes another species of predators that learns to climb trees and finds this other species to be great food. If there are a lot of these predators, surviving for the first species would largely rest on whether they can escape their predators and not so much if they are a bit less able to climb or grab things.
Just looking around the world you'll find a lot of species with a lot of characteristics which are really hard to understand the advantage of. Many features of animals also get exaggerated because of sexuality. If a feature is attractive to the opposite sex, it is going to be inhanced by natural selection. Paradise birds have huge tail feathers, the use of which at least I fail to see, apart from attracting mates.
This is complicated stuff, I always hated biology at school (mostly because I hated having to learn all the names of plants and stuff, behavioural science and ecology and those subjects really are fascinating) so I don't know enough about the background.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
No I don't, any more than you have to come up with a theory to explain what came before the Big Bang. Sure, the universe started with an explosion - but exactly what exploded? Where did that come from? Was there another universe like ours, a few hundred billion years old, that collapsed in on itself, then exploded? If so, is this a recurring cycle? How long has this been going on? Where did it all start? Matter can be neither created nor destroyed; how did it get here in the first place?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;