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so the logic implication is this implies we don't/didn't need a divine creator to create man right? Like the molecules were capable of it all by themselves?

hiddencost 3y ago
People trying to introduce logic into the study of religion & spirituality do not have your best interests at heart.
- schwoll 3y ago
  The church has been using logic in the study of religion for thousands of years. This is no different. One way or another asking questions and thinking about problems is OK.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  I always knew Thomas Aquinas was up to no good.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    This isn’t a great zinger. Aquinas, and Aristotles, point was that logic not being able to describe the origin of the universe is proof of God.
    - joh6nn 3y ago
      That feels a bit like arguing that the inability of mathematics to describe itself is proof of Gödel
  - nick-of-time 3y ago
    [dead]
- hobs 3y ago
  People who prefer you to avoid logic and reason usually do not have your best interests at heart.
- Guvante 3y ago
  Answering the scientific questions brought forward by religion is not the study of religion. The post you responded to didn't say "did" but "could". Science hasn't disproved "someone created stuff" only "humans came first" and "the Earth is a few thousand years old". Science has said that "someone didn't have to create stuff" which is an important distinction here.
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    What evidence has science presented to disprove those two claims? And with what evidence does science support the claim that things went from not existing to existing with no outside intervention?
    - Guvante 3y ago
      Geological evidence goes back a few billion years. The theory of evolution is pretty well documented and similarly human remains only go back so far. Science doesn't say it did. Science said it could. Science assumes it did because it is the most "likely" answer. In the absence of contrarian evidence you assume the only possible answer. Religion is not in and of itself contrarian evidence. Also I will note that an alternative is an asteroid dropped the building blocks onto Earth, it isn't the primary because our understanding of the maths involved says organic molecules surviving in outer space for billions of years (the average time expected to go from interesting place to earth via asteroid) is less likely than it randomly occuring in the early very active earth.
      - explaininjs 3y ago
        > Geological evidence goes back a few billion years. What "evidence" is this? Are you referring to the radioactive dating data that must first assume that radioactive decomposition happens at a fixed rate across all time (unverified and unverifiable), and that we even know what the "original" isotope breakdowns of various elements were (unknown and unknowable)? Or is there some geological evidence I am not aware of that does not require first assuming the desired conclusion. > Science doesn't say it did. Science said it could. Ok fine, with what evidence does science support the claim that things could go from not existing to existing with no outside intervention? > it is the most "likely" answer Only if you explicitly exclude the idea that a higher intelligence created the universe with life more or less as we know it (explaining the great holes in your "fossil records"/etc.). If you refrain from artificially excluding that explanation, you will see that no answer is any more likely than precisely it.
jmcqk6 3y ago
If you want to learn more about possible ways for life to have started, I recommend the books by Nick Lane, especially "The Vital Question" and "Transformer." We have several hypothesis about the origin of life, and none of them require a divine creator. It turns out non-equilibrium systems dissipating energy will create complexity, as complexity is more efficient at dissipating energy. There is a natural selection pressure for building complexity!
- bla3 3y ago
  Which one should I read first?
  - jononomo 3y ago
    I recommend that you read The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check by Tan and Stadler. https://a.co/d/aGlaDbI https://a.co/d/aGlaDbI
  - tim333 3y ago
    The Wikipedia articles are quite good also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world
zoogeny 3y ago
There is a very old joke which I will try to paraphrase. A scientist is having a debate with God and he says "I have discovered the recipe for how life is created, I no longer need you". God says "Oh, really, please explain it to me". The scientist says "Well, first you take hydrogen atoms ..." and God interrupts him asking "from where do you get those hydrogen atoms?" That is, there is some property of the material of the universe that makes complex life possible. It's a bit like saying "I know how to build a computer" because you can buy parts online and put them together. There is a sense in which what you are saying is true - but without TSMC you are not going to be able to build a computer.
- acyou 3y ago
  The scientist replies: "Well, I got those hydrogen atoms from the Big Bang. It's this explosion that created everything in the beginning". God replies: "No, I bought those hydrogen atoms from ASML."
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  Just like any story about God, this presents a circular argument. The only reason God exists to answer is that God is a character in the story.
  - jamilton 3y ago
    It's not a circular argument, the argument isn't "God exists because he gave that answer". It's not really presenting an argument at all, it's merely a framing device for something like "God created everything natural".
    - thomastjeffery 3y ago
      The argument is, "You can't prove to God that he doesn't exist." The argument wouldn't exist if you weren't already proving something to God. The presence of the God character in this story has no foundation other than the presence of the God character in this story. > it's merely a framing device for something like "God created everything natural". That is the very position that the God character in this story takes. In order to support this position, the God character points out that he exists in the story. The story itself does nothing to prove for or against the existence of God, but it clearly intends to leave the reader believing in the existence of God.
ASalazarMX 3y ago
> we don't/didn't need a divine creator to create man right? We never did. Of all the Gods of all religions that have had a creation story, not a single one of them is available right now, and for some reason, all chose to speak through a chosen elite. Religions are children stories used for political power.
RichardCA 3y ago
The reason ideas like Intelligent Design don't get any traction is because the people who promote those ideas never provide any details. If you make an assertion that a process can't work without divine intervention, the burden of proof is on you to explain at what specific point the intervention occurred, and what kind of event that was, and what did it do exactly. You would think that people who believe in the wonder and miracle of God's creation would be overflowing with ideas like that, but for some reason they always dry up when challenged. It's like when you watch a show like Ghost Hunters. I mean I'd be the first one to express delight if they ever come up with something that was genuinely novel and interesting after all the years they've been on TV. But even if they did, it wouldn't prove the existence of the afterlife, it would be something else. And it would need to be investigated by people who aren't invested in any particular outcome. So it ends up being a paradox. If you want to prove the truth of a religious assertion, you have to approach it from a neutral place and look for all the possible falsifications. And since religious people never want to do that, we find ourselves back at the place we started, saying that religion is a manifestation of human culture, which is different from a thing that defines a method for explaining novel phenomena.

hiddencost 3y ago

People trying to introduce logic into the study of religion & spirituality do not have your best interests at heart.

schwoll 3y ago
The church has been using logic in the study of religion for thousands of years. This is no different. One way or another asking questions and thinking about problems is OK.
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
I always knew Thomas Aquinas was up to no good.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  This isn’t a great zinger. Aquinas, and Aristotles, point was that logic not being able to describe the origin of the universe is proof of God.
  - joh6nn 3y ago
    That feels a bit like arguing that the inability of mathematics to describe itself is proof of Gödel
- nick-of-time 3y ago
  [dead]
hobs 3y ago
People who prefer you to avoid logic and reason usually do not have your best interests at heart.
Guvante 3y ago
Answering the scientific questions brought forward by religion is not the study of religion. The post you responded to didn't say "did" but "could". Science hasn't disproved "someone created stuff" only "humans came first" and "the Earth is a few thousand years old". Science has said that "someone didn't have to create stuff" which is an important distinction here.
- explaininjs 3y ago
  What evidence has science presented to disprove those two claims? And with what evidence does science support the claim that things went from not existing to existing with no outside intervention?
  - Guvante 3y ago
    Geological evidence goes back a few billion years. The theory of evolution is pretty well documented and similarly human remains only go back so far. Science doesn't say it did. Science said it could. Science assumes it did because it is the most "likely" answer. In the absence of contrarian evidence you assume the only possible answer. Religion is not in and of itself contrarian evidence. Also I will note that an alternative is an asteroid dropped the building blocks onto Earth, it isn't the primary because our understanding of the maths involved says organic molecules surviving in outer space for billions of years (the average time expected to go from interesting place to earth via asteroid) is less likely than it randomly occuring in the early very active earth.
    - explaininjs 3y ago
      > Geological evidence goes back a few billion years. What "evidence" is this? Are you referring to the radioactive dating data that must first assume that radioactive decomposition happens at a fixed rate across all time (unverified and unverifiable), and that we even know what the "original" isotope breakdowns of various elements were (unknown and unknowable)? Or is there some geological evidence I am not aware of that does not require first assuming the desired conclusion. > Science doesn't say it did. Science said it could. Ok fine, with what evidence does science support the claim that things could go from not existing to existing with no outside intervention? > it is the most "likely" answer Only if you explicitly exclude the idea that a higher intelligence created the universe with life more or less as we know it (explaining the great holes in your "fossil records"/etc.). If you refrain from artificially excluding that explanation, you will see that no answer is any more likely than precisely it.

jmcqk6 3y ago

If you want to learn more about possible ways for life to have started, I recommend the books by Nick Lane, especially "The Vital Question" and "Transformer." We have several hypothesis about the origin of life, and none of them require a divine creator. It turns out non-equilibrium systems dissipating energy will create complexity, as complexity is more efficient at dissipating energy. There is a natural selection pressure for building complexity!

bla3 3y ago
Which one should I read first?
- jononomo 3y ago
  I recommend that you read The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check by Tan and Stadler. https://a.co/d/aGlaDbI https://a.co/d/aGlaDbI
- tim333 3y ago
  The Wikipedia articles are quite good also. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world

zoogeny 3y ago

There is a very old joke which I will try to paraphrase. A scientist is having a debate with God and he says "I have discovered the recipe for how life is created, I no longer need you". God says "Oh, really, please explain it to me". The scientist says "Well, first you take hydrogen atoms ..." and God interrupts him asking "from where do you get those hydrogen atoms?" That is, there is some property of the material of the universe that makes complex life possible. It's a bit like saying "I know how to build a computer" because you can buy parts online and put them together. There is a sense in which what you are saying is true - but without TSMC you are not going to be able to build a computer.

acyou 3y ago
The scientist replies: "Well, I got those hydrogen atoms from the Big Bang. It's this explosion that created everything in the beginning". God replies: "No, I bought those hydrogen atoms from ASML."
thomastjeffery 3y ago
Just like any story about God, this presents a circular argument. The only reason God exists to answer is that God is a character in the story.
- jamilton 3y ago
  It's not a circular argument, the argument isn't "God exists because he gave that answer". It's not really presenting an argument at all, it's merely a framing device for something like "God created everything natural".
  - thomastjeffery 3y ago
    The argument is, "You can't prove to God that he doesn't exist." The argument wouldn't exist if you weren't already proving something to God. The presence of the God character in this story has no foundation other than the presence of the God character in this story. > it's merely a framing device for something like "God created everything natural". That is the very position that the God character in this story takes. In order to support this position, the God character points out that he exists in the story. The story itself does nothing to prove for or against the existence of God, but it clearly intends to leave the reader believing in the existence of God.

ASalazarMX 3y ago

> we don't/didn't need a divine creator to create man right? We never did. Of all the Gods of all religions that have had a creation story, not a single one of them is available right now, and for some reason, all chose to speak through a chosen elite. Religions are children stories used for political power.

RichardCA 3y ago

The reason ideas like Intelligent Design don't get any traction is because the people who promote those ideas never provide any details. If you make an assertion that a process can't work without divine intervention, the burden of proof is on you to explain at what specific point the intervention occurred, and what kind of event that was, and what did it do exactly. You would think that people who believe in the wonder and miracle of God's creation would be overflowing with ideas like that, but for some reason they always dry up when challenged. It's like when you watch a show like Ghost Hunters. I mean I'd be the first one to express delight if they ever come up with something that was genuinely novel and interesting after all the years they've been on TV. But even if they did, it wouldn't prove the existence of the afterlife, it would be something else. And it would need to be investigated by people who aren't invested in any particular outcome. So it ends up being a paradox. If you want to prove the truth of a religious assertion, you have to approach it from a neutral place and look for all the possible falsifications. And since religious people never want to do that, we find ourselves back at the place we started, saying that religion is a manifestation of human culture, which is different from a thing that defines a method for explaining novel phenomena.