Dan,

Thanks for your response. I apologise for calling you Sam.
I recognise that "one person's logic etc"; the idea of discussions such as these is to try to understand other people's logic, and maybe, therefore, change our own, or learn "facts" hitherto unknown.
A doctor wife of a friend of mine in England believes the pyramids were either launching or landing pads for space ships. She comes from a family which gets the source of its information from The Daily Mail, so I think her mindset comes from that environment. Similarly, I think others' mindsets' mostly comes from their environment, which is why I am pleased to see lapsed catholics develop from Catholic schools - people CAN think beyond their environment when exposed to other influences, but many "intelligent" people don't seem to try.

My question was concerning mental gymnastics as you say.

You do suggest that it comes down an "opinion as to which are the nonsensical conclusions", and to a degree you are right. It is only a matter of opinion, but surely as we develop, what is right and what is wrong will finally come clear. It was once a matter of opinion as to whether the earth was flat or not. Someone might still think the earth is flat, but I declare that that opinion is nonsensical. We have reached a point of no return on that issue. Only a theoretical philosopher could argue that point.

There are certainly other things beyond our knowledge, and let us continue debating them. That way, the creationists will eventually be forced to cede.

As far as evolution goes .... ctd

As far as evolution is concerned, I am at the stage in my belief where I believe that that truth is self-evident, even if all the i's are not dotted and the t's not crossed. The only people questioning evolution are people who believe a god made the world, and they rationalise their arguments as best they can. (If someone wants to be a deist and assume a god made the world and plays no further part in its organisation or its people, I can let them live with that. It is people who insist on worshipping that god, and obeying his writings that I look askance at). Christian faith is in conflict with evolution, unless you perform some level of mental gymnastics. People looking for a second miracle from Mary MacKillop will have no trouble.

I do not believe there is life on other planets, but I would not rule out the possibility. As you say "chances are, intelligent life must abundantly exist out there as well". This is similar to the proposition that a group of typing monkeys, if they typed long enough, would eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. This is logically true whether you are an evolutionist or a creationist. But the chances are so remote, for all practical purposes they can be regarded as 0. But I would expect there to be some form of living organisms elsewhere in this every expanding universe.

Are these people intelligent? Who knows? Who cares? More money is spent on elite athletes than on Catholic World Youth (and older) Week.

What was your point, Dan?

The way I see it, the monkeys started typing 2000 years ago, and the Shakespeare has not improved.

Religions will come and go,( like they have done so thought-out recorded history) and mankind has only just taken its first steps into finding out what is really going on and I want you to think about this. We have the perfect model when we view our own solar-system.
Randomality is a constant! Just think of the universe as a large cake mix, filled with all sorts of elements, just waiting for the right cooking temperature and conditions.

Out of the billions of stars, the odds are quite in the favour of earth-like planets like our own, some advanced some are not so, and if god did just pick this one little planet just to put us on, its fair to say that the rest of the universe is there for what? It wouldn't be a very wise god to put all of ones eggs in one basket, would it!

We, the third rock from the sun, just happens to be the right distance from the big orange thing, and with that, life seems to just pop up, so given that's all well and true( which it is), its pretty fair to say that this event must also be happening elsewhere, at different degrees
of development.

OH and runner! All the best to you. I hope you find what your looking for.

Religions will just fade away the closer we get in getting off this dam rock!

The answers are not here!

EVO

HarryG,
I was suggesting that lots of money often gets spent on silly things. Yet I suppose, if it’s been given to you to spend, well, all your luck! I too quite like many of these sporting and cultural events. Yet I’ll tell you for free what they’ll hear as they strain their ears listening for communications from Andromeda or wherever.

Overall my assertion is that there is nothing in science that poses a threat to Christian faith. I disagree with Brian’s assertion that some kind of confirmation of evolution will soon lead to the church’s final deathblow.

There is much on which we do agree: That there are some things that go beyond ‘matters of opinion’. The ancient philosophers gave more than sufficient argument for a spherical earth, and this is confirmed daily. I would also agree that Christian faith is in conflict with evolution, but I disagree that the truth of evolution is self evident.

You say that the only people questioning evolution are believers in a creator god. Logically, this is the equivalent of saying that non-believers (atheists) don’t question evolution. While kind of tautological, in many respects, I agree. Atheists don’t do enough questioning of their theory. Nor does this come as a surprise. Naturalistic evolution is necessary and foundational for them.

I’m also fully in agreement that the chance of monkeys typing Shakespeare is for all practical purposes zero. The chances of randomly typing a few coherent sentences are astronomical. Yet within all living things is a complex code which uses DNA lettering to describe their genetic make up. The DNA of the simplest living thing is more complex than Shakespeare.

While not a complete proof, I think the evidence points towards an intelligent typist of those letters. Or at least I would suggest that it is not the creationists who are doing the mental contortions to try and escape the evidence.

Dan

YouSaid
I think the evidence points towards an intelligent typist of those letters.Or at least Iwould suggest that itis not the creationists who are doingthe mental contortions to try and escape the evidence.

The argument for intelligent design onthe basis of the'improbability'of the observed outcome of DNA-base life isnot valid.Probability is primarily a measure of ignorance.The less we knowabout a process the less certain we are ofits outcome ie we say thatthe probability of a certain outcome is low because,in our ignorance,weare unable to determine which of many possible outcomes will actually occur.

The problem with the'intelligent design'argument is that itis predicated on our 100%ignorance. We say that there were a vast number of possible outcomes of the'universe experiment'and thatthe very low probability of this particular outcome constitutes some sort of miracle prompting the completely irrational assertion that'someone made it happen'.

Imagine this experiment.A box,avery big box,contains ten to the ten trillion tokens numbered from 1 to ten to the ten trillion.You pick one token fromthe box.Given that the token you chose was labelled 12853917086 do you deduce from the very low prior probability of this outcome that God made it happen?Of course not.

There is,however,a valid argument that ALL those possible outcomes which we imagine might have happened, could not have happened at all (After all.... they didnt!)and itis only in ignorance thatwe believe that they could have happened.Perhaps the formation of organic matter and its subsequent'evolution'into intelligent life was inevitable from the'beginning'.Our very existence provides at least some sort of evidence that this is what was always going to happen.(And it DID).

Creation theology isnot about the physical genesis of the cosmos but a statement,in mythic form,of the nature and purpose of being human.It deals with human relationships,sexuality,family and diversity.It observes the particular relationship we have to nature and recognises the opportunities and dangers ofthe'power'we have to manipulate our environment.It asserts our freedom,our need for community and our interconnectedness with the whole of nature.

It is a travesty that,in ignorance,well-meaning and devout Christians have sought to reduce itto nothing more than a weak and discredited'scientific hypothesis'.

Dan

You think the world was created by a god (presumably the one you believe in), and I am confident, very confident, that it was not made by a god. Questions like "who made god?" and "what was god doing before time began and before he created the world?" and "can the omnipotent god make a stone so big that even he cannot roll it?" are questions that are worth asking, but won't prove much.

I don't insist on people believing in the big bang theory or whatever. All the hypotheses in the world won't prove exactly what happened and why. If people want to be deists, and believe that a god or something made the world (call it the big bang god if you like) then let them. It is a personal belief that one can hold as a consenting adult in the narrowness of one's mind.

The objection is the insistence of god worshippers that their god is the one true god (what arrogance!), that their god made their wishes known through a book or tablets or whatever, that he loves us so much but if we don't believe in him he will send us to hell and eternal torment, and through the sheer volume of the number of people who carry this superstition, the lives of the rest of us are detrimentally affected.

How can you, Dan, and your allies, believe in that sort of god? And if you do believe in one such, why worship and praise him? Is it only through the fear of an afterlife? Cast the yoke aside. You seem like a decent fellow; you'll feel better for it.