Is it Logical To Beleive In A Creator - GOD ? In This Scientific Age ?

by smiddy3 40 Replies latest jw friends

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  TonusOH

  I don't think we have an in-built moral compass. We learn from those around us how we are supposed to behave. I think we have an in-built desire to belong to a social group and to a community, and this influences us towards moral behavior, even for those who chafe at the limits society places on them.

  I think it's also is why people who are misbehaving try to cover up or rationalize their actions. They seek to avoid the condemnation of their community and their social group. After all, if they were concerned about god, they would not misbehave at all-- they cannot hide their actions from god's eyes, according to most religious belief.
  
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  slimboyfat

  The more science discovers about the functioning of the brain, the more mysterious consciousness seems and the more it calls for an explanation. How does consciousness arise? As neuroscience advances the clearer it becomes that a purely materialist conception of reality doesn’t offer a satisfying solution. Another discovery that points to the existence of reality beyond matter is the discovery of physicists that subjectivity plays a part in the constitution of reality itself. In terms of evolutionary theory, philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that our ability to understand the world around us accurately implies intention behind the process that has given us life. In these and other ways, I think science has tended to support the view of the majority of humans that a superior intelligence, outside of the material universe and time, is responsible for the world and for humans who are able to observe and make sense of it.
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  Disillusioned JW

  We are all subject to the laws and forces of nature. For example if a person jumps off the top of a very tall building that person will very quickly experience their subjection to the force of gravity. Unless the person is using a parachute, or a jet pack (or some other device for providing levitation in harmony with the laws of nature), or unless there a net (or something similar) below them, the person will soon pay the price for trying to ignore his/her subjection to the force of gravity.

  The reason given by some about us being social beings/animals (I prefer to not say "creatures" since that term calls to mind the idea of a creator god) and how that regulates our actions is also relevant. Non-human apes are also social animals and they also have a sense of morals as a result, and sometimes they break one of their communitiy's social rules (especially if they think the others in their group won't observe their intended action). Anthropologists have discovered that about them, yet the Bible does not say the nonhuman apes were made in God's image and the Bible does not say they inherited sin, and the Bible does not say they are sinners, and the Bible does not say they need to believe in Yahweh and Jesus.

  The idea that "There are a lot of things we don't know and have not figured out, and as long as those gaps exist, our need to be certain will guide us towards religious belief" is unsettling to me. I hope that idea is incorrect. Though I am uncomfortable about being uncertain about certain matters, I don't want to jump to the idea that a god or something else supernatural exists. I prefer to tell myself "I don't know" rather than try to fill in a gap of my knowledge by telling myself "a god exists" and I wish that most other people adopted that same attitude.

  If I had never been raised to believe in the god concept I would never have believed in it, despite living in a culture which is permeated with belief in the god concept. I was born with the natural tendency to not believe in god, nor in any other concepts of spirits. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga is a Christian and despite what he believes, I do NOT believe at all "... that our ability to understand the world around us accurately implies intention behind the process that has given us life."

  I notice that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Plantinga says Plantinga has the following ideas. 'Plantinga has also argued that there is no logical inconsistency between the existence of evil and the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, wholly good God. ... Plantinga's argument (in a truncated form) states that "It is possible that God, even being omnipotent, could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil. Furthermore, it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures." ' I think that each of those ideas of Plantinga are incorrect! I notice that the Wikipedia article says the following which agrees with my view regarding the above stated ideas of Plantinga.

  'However, the argument's handling of natural evil has been disputed. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the argument also "conflicts with important theistic doctrines" such as the notion of a heaven where free saved souls reside without doing evil, and the idea that God has free will yet is wholly good. Critics thus maintain that, if we take such doctrines to be (as Christians usually have), God could have created free creatures that always do right, contra Plantinga's claim.[41] J. L. Mackie saw Plantinga's free-will defense as incoherent.'

  Regarding the number of tenths of astronomical units between planets in our solar system, I don't see that as implying the existence of an creator being, since I suspect that the measurements given are simply rounded to the nearest tenth of an astronomical unit.
  
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  Ding

  Advancing scientific knowledge regarding the complexity of everything from the universe itself to the components and working of the cell provide evidence for intelligent design.

  Did all of this complexity and fine tuning really come into existence from nothing?

  In fact, on an atheistic model, why does anything exist rather than nothing at all?
  
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  Disillusioned JW

  Ding, please read the book by physicist Lawrence M. Krauss (an atheist) called A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, or some other scientific source promoting the same main idea. Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (an atheist who is now dead) and particle physicist Victor J. Stenger (an atheist who is now dead) also promoted the idea that our universe came from (or at least could have come from) that which commonly is thought of as nothing. If you read what they say you will learn their explanations of how such is completely in harmony with the laws of nature, including all of the conservation laws of nature. See also my topic threads about scientific naturalism, since I discuss the evidence and reasoning there. Learning those ideas of theirs (I first learned it from Hawking) is what caused me to cease wondering if a deistic type of god exists; as a result I become a positive/strong atheist scientific naturalist (namely someone convinced well beyond a reasonable doubt that no god at all exists pertaining to our universe).

  In light of modern scientific knowledge the God (or intelligent creator-designer) concept no longer has any explanatory power for the existence of us, or of other life on Earth, or even of our universe. As a result the God (or intelligent creator-designer) concept is no longer needed.
  
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  Diogenesister

  Blues bro When I look at the natural world in all its wonder , I find it entirely logical to conclude that it was formed by an intelligent creator. I know that many others also look at the same things and conclude differently.

  That's so interesting Blues bro, because for me that's the very thing that convinces me there cannot possibly be a benevolent god who takes interest in the welfare of its creations.
  As LUHE stated, science cannot comment with certainty one way or another as to a creator god. What we can be sure of is the Genesis account is not possible, since we evolved from an ape like creature some 100 - 200, 000 years ago.

  Although the natural world is certainly awe inspiring, as Thomas Hobbes rightly said Life (for the majority of creatures) is nasty, brutish and short. Also the more we learn about other species we share this planet with, the more arrogant it is to think our creator is mainly concerned with us, as his pet project. I learnt the other day that the number of animals who dream is surprising - mammals of course but birds do, lizards and bumble bees. They also have desires....not just needs or wants to sustain life, but they dream about their wishes and desires as do we. Yet so many creatures suffer the most appalling death after a life where every waking our is filled with terror, for the most part.

  I mean what God could come up with the idea of a wasp that lays it's eggs inside you so it's larvae will eat you alive from the inside. That's the sort of "natural world" I think of when I question how God could have thought the concept of a predator and prey arms race was a good idea as the driver for the varieties of life.
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  Disillusioned JW

  Diogenesister I noticed you said that ".... we evolved from an ape like creature some 100 - 200, 000 years ago" but wasn't that species a species of human (though not our species, Homo sapiens) of the genus Homo? Granted it might have also been an ape since a number of scientists now say we modern day humans are also apes, since those scientists have adopted a new definition of the word "ape". However far before 200,000 years ago there existed a nonhuman species of ape which was one of our ancestral species (that is, a species which is a distant ancestor of our species).
  
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  titch

  Well, Smiddy3, we should remember that that word---"GOD"---is just that. A word. And, it is a word---in the English language---that stands for, or represents, a concept, an idea, in the minds of human beings. And, that's what I believe---that "God" is merely a concept, an idea, in the minds of human beings. Nothing more, nothing less. "God" is whatever YOU, or other humans think that he, or she, or it, is. Best Regards, Everyone---Titch.
  
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  waton

  reading Lawrence M. Krauss (an atheist) called A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing,

  Highly recommended reading, for the final analysis, resume' is:

  There is no such thing as nothing. never was.
  
  
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  slimboyfat

  Lawrence Krauss’s version of “nothing” is not very nothingy, because it still assumes physical properties and laws at the beginning. Why is there anything at all? He doesn’t really address the philosophical question. Any way that you look at it, existence is miraculous. Either everything that exists arose by itself without any external cause, or a being outside of time and space brought the universe into existence. Either option is miraculous, in the sense that it is outside physical cause and effect. As somebody said, materialists are in effect asking for “just one miracle”, to start us off, and inorder to explain the rest in natural terms. Which points to the fact that, even if we can account for every event in the universe in terms of natural processes, the very fact that the universe (or anything, if the universe is a subset of a larger physical reality) exists at all is not amenable to an explanation within that same framework. To me it makes most sense to think that existence, and human consciousness, are the result of the intention of a supreme being who is outside of time and space.