Does Science Prove The Existence of God?

by AngelofMuZiC 17 Replies latest jw friends

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  Abaddon

  Hi ya Jo...

  Slightly less embaressing topic than the last one... !

  Created evolution reminds of that stupid song that Kermit's cousin used to sing.

  "Halfway up the stairs is the stair where I sit, there isn't any other stair quite like it. It's not at the bottom, it's not at the top, but this is the stair where I always stop."

  Now I am not saying it MUST be black or white, that it must either be Creation OR Evolution.

  But what you seem to be attracted to is exactly what I was attracted to as a reasonably intelligent young person growing up in the Borg.

  I had a lot invested. My entire f~cking life, family, friends, hopes for the future, etc..

  Because of this every little piece of evidence that I could find that meant the WTS wasn't totally wrong and that the next issue of the Evolution/Creation/Creator book might give a good explaination of the scientific evidence that existed when compared to the Biblical account was seized upon with great avidness on my part.

  It shored up my crumbling beliefs and let me continue on more or less as I was, without having to stop and say, "No, this is wrong", with all the knock on concequences of basically having to start over again with my view of the world.

  Now, I have had to redifine my paradigms from the ground up. I can see that the half-way point, of 'created evolution' is more seized upon by people because of philosophical and theological considerations than scientific ones.

  Some people have so much tied up in their belief in god they cannot let go. The idea there is no grand plan, that we are a cosmic coincidence, that when we die, we die, is all too much.

  Now I cannot say what is right for you as an individual to believe in.

  All I'm trying to do is share my experience; I wish in a lot of ways I had had the courage to peel of the hopefully scientific speculations of people who want to believe in god no matter what when I was younger, in my teens. I let the comforting glow of these whistful speculations coddle me.

  Because of that, I got involved in a disasterous marriage, disasterous as I got married too early with no experience of the world let alone the opposite sex due to the beliefs I held to. I didn't pusue an advanced education until my late twenties, due to the beliefs I held. When I decided that it wasn't the truth and stopped going (I'm not DA'd or DF'd, I just walked away) I lost contact with, basically everyone I ever knew, apart from my immediate family and some 'wordly' friends I had, due to the beliefs they held.

  If I had cut to the core of the arguement I would have saved myself an awful lot of pain and turmoil. Being a teenager when you are a teenager is bad enough; being a teenager when you are twenty-nine (as the emotional and developmental retardation means you are clueless in many ways) is terrible (okay, it was quite good fun too, as freedom is fun, but, boy, there were some pretty grim times too).

  My advice to you is do the reading, get the education, get to a point where you can review the evidence and decide whether we are twisted apostates trying to pull you away from Jah's holy organisation (bwa-ha-ha-ha), or whether JW's are rather misguided people. Do it now, not later, as otherwise you will kick yourself later on, for wasting all that time.

  Without a good level of scientific knowledge the 'well, mercy me, look at all the pretty birds, we must have a god here somewhere to explain all this' arguements which you initially quoted, are quite convincing. With a good level of scientific knowledge and an open mind they are rather quaint.

  And remember, go back to basics. If it's impossible for this Universe to evolve out of nothing (which is the basic god peoples' arguement), then how is it possible for god to 'just be there' to create the Universe when that means he 'evolved' out of nothing.

  Best wishes
• 

  julien

  Two icicles on a roof in Vermont were talking about a similar topic. One reasoned that since they found themselves in such an ideal place for icicles, that if the temp or moisture in the air was different and such and such they would have a hard time surviving; he thought this might be proof that they were created by an intelligent designer. After all look at all the horrible hot dry places in the world! What were the chances that they would form in such a perfect spot?
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  voltaire

  A point to ponder: What are all of the possible forms that complex life can take? You say that if conditions were different, then life as we know it could not exist. True enough. Isn't it likely that if conditions were different then life as we know it would also be different? Imagine a die with a million sides. If I tell you that I'll give you a hundred dollars if you roll a one, and you roll a one, that's impressive. I might be inclined to think that you cheated, that the die was loaded. If I offer you a prize for any odd number and you win the prize, that's not so amazing. How unlikely an event is in this case depends on two factors. How many possibile outcomes are there(in this case one million) and how many are favorable? (that depends on what numbers we agree to consider winners). In the case of life on our planet, we can't really say how many possible outcomes there might reasonably have been, but I think it's obvious that there must have been an extraordinarily large number of possibilities. Some scientists feel that the chances of life evolving here were 1 in 1. That is, some kind of life was going to form. We could rewind the "tape" so to speak and most likely get something different, but we would get something every time. Sort of like giving you a different amount of money for every number on our one million sided die. You know you'll win, but the prize will be different every time. This still leaves room for a god, if you wish. The argument that someone must have set up the parameters that led to the evolution of life will probably always be around. In our example, where did the die come from anyway? Maybe god made it. But there's absolutely no proof that there's someone divine determining which number comes up.
  Likewise we can postulate or intuit the existence of a divine being that got the ball rolling in the universe. And we can probably never absolutely rule out his existence, but so far there's reason to believe that anything other than explainable forces of nature underly what we see around us.
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  bboyneko 2

  The Sun is the basis of our entire ecological system. Due to the radiation given off by our local Sun we find that the chemical chlorophyll is most efficeint at aborbing eneryg from it. Chlorophyll abosrbs all visible light except green, which it reflects. (which is why we see most plants as green, we are seeing their 'poop')
  
  Now, if a sun gives off different levels of radiation, chlorophyll could be useless. Plants and such may not even use what we call the "visible spectrum" at all. If the basis of the ecosystem does not use visible light, ie, it used IR radiation, Gamma Radiation, Radio-Waves, whatever, then this would affect the entire planets life profile.

  I bet then plants would marvel at how their sun is perfect for their converting its energy into simple sugars and that if it didnt give off radio waves they could not survive :)

  Life dosent even have to be carbon-based, carbon is an ideal material for life on earth because the average temperature does not boil away all liquids. Another viable basis of life is silicon, if we ever find aliens they could be silicon based and not carbon based like us.

  -Dan
• 

  Mindchild

  Hi Joanne,

  Sometimes when I come across a thread that discusses using science to prove or disprove the idea of God existing, I think back on a quote Einstein made once which says, We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." Why this comes to mind is that we often want to prove a hypothesis or theory using whatever tools we have on hand, limited as they may be for the task and end up with incorrect or inaccurate results. I also find that the more emotional an issue is, the more likely we are to ignore evidence that runs against our conceptualizations. Of course, the issue of God existing is certainly one issue that has enormous emotional overtones.

  It took me a couple of years of personal research to come to my own conclusion that I couldn’t find any satisfactory scientific evidence that showed the existence of a creator through the alleged “creation.” The points you mentioned in your post are interesting and are frequently used to indicate grand design but there is plenty of evidence that suggests just the opposite on the macro scale. In my own professional research field in the genre of geophysics and astrobiology I see redundant evidence of causative processes that are grossly anti-life (at least in terms of human populations) with solid historical and scientific evidence for catastrophic extinction events that range from super volcanoes to killer asteroids and ice ages. Not all of these events are in the Earth’s distant past either and literally the odds of you personally getting killed say by an extinction event (such as a planetary impact from an asteroid) are higher than you getting killed in an airplane accident.

  Other posters have mentioned the evidence that life changes the biosphere, making it possible for humans to exist today but few people understand the extraordinary range in which living organisms can exist. In fact, most of the biomass of our planet lives in the crust of the Earth, up to depths of 8 miles deep, in the form of rock eating bacteria. It doesn’t even need an atmosphere to exist. I would fully expect to find such evolutionary developments on other worlds, perhaps even in our own solar system on Mars and more likely in Europa and perhaps in a decade or so we will find out if this is correct.

  The universe is truly awe inspiring and mysterious but what you see when you study it is natural evolutionary and causative processes. You see the natural life and death of stars and of entire galaxies. Take a good look while you can because in some billions of years none of them will ever be visible from our galaxy again as all galaxies are rushing apart and will eventually leave us with only our own galaxy and no others around us. This doesn't sound like designed evolution to me, just natural causative processes.

  "The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism...."…Albert Einstein

  Skipper
• 

  SixofNine

  Gee Skipper, you sound much more like the professor today. About this:

  ...causative processes that are grossly anti-life (at least in terms of human populations) with solid historical and scientific evidence for catastrophic extinction events that range from super volcanoes to killer asteroids and ice ages. Not all of these events are in the Earth’s distant past either and literally the odds of you personally getting killed say by an extinction event (such as a planetary impact from an asteroid) are higher than you getting killed in an airplane accident.

  I did NOT need to hear that!

  And this:

  I would fully expect to find such evolutionary developments on other worlds, perhaps even in our own solar system on Mars and more likely in Europa....

  Man, the Norwegians on this forum just can't buy a break. That was harsh.
• 

  bboyneko 2

  As i've posted before, life becomes extinct on earth every 26 millions years or so, and it is uaully a catastrophic event, something like 90% of all life dies. It's gonna happen again, and we're not even sure why it keeps happening :)
• 

  AngelofMuZiC

  Thank you all for your responses, especially Abaddon, who has been most kind.

  Anyone else care to share their viewpoints????

  Joanne

  PS...Abaddon...i like racey subjects...and I've been exploring...if you know what I mean