Lekatt wrote:This is a world of order and was such as far back as we can see. There is no reason to believe randomness every existed in the universe.
What that points to is an intelligence far greater than man.
Love
No, what that points to is order.
Where does intelligence come into it?
Ash has sidestepped nothing. You continue to assert your position based soley upon an appeal to authority. You provide neither evidence of nor arguments for this cosmic order apart from your assertion that one can see it by simply looking around. It apparently escapes your comprehension that all of those here who dissent from your position have looked around and have not seen the order of which you speak.
You write: "In fact it has everything to do with evolution which could have never taken place in a state of chaos." This is complete nonsense. Precisely because of random factors such as cosmic radiation or environmental chemical change, mutations occur in species, which mutations become the effective agents in natural selection at any time at which those mutations produce a reproductive advantage for the affected individuals. You obviously have not grasped how natural selection occurs.
Further, you write: "How this world came about, whether evolution and/or creation doesn't negate the order and intelligence we see in the universe today." We don't see order and intelligence in the universe--you do. You adamantly refuse to see anything else, because to do so would be to abandon the underpinning of your theism.
And you write: "Things don't just happen for no reason at all." Certainly they do, to the extent that you use reason as equated to intent. There are reasons to explain the effects of random events as they impinge upon one another. That does not in any way authorize a contention that these events occur as the result of intent. Once again, your remarks simply arise out of a preconception of the nature of the cosmos based upon a resolute theism, which sees the "reason" for any thing or any event in the intent of the deity.
Then you write: "Gee, if this really were a random world why do lawyers keep filing law suits all over the place, don't they know that things just happen randomly." This is yet another example of you pointedly ignoring what has been pointed out to you, to the effect that people attempt to impose order on their environments. People are purposive--when we discuss random events and chaos here, we refer to the inanimate, from which the animate eventually arises as a result of random events in a chaotic milieu. I will tediously point out yet again that an analogy to human society is invalid, precisely because humans attempt to impose order on their surroundings, which has nothing at all to say about the nature, the origins and the future of the cosmos.
You end your rather feeble reply to Ash with a series of statements form authority. It is an authority which no one here has any reason to believe you are entitled to assume.
Lekatt,
It's raining here today. Do you think it's cause I killed a spider yesterday?
You what ? ! ? ! ?
Oh my god . . . somebody call Homeland Security . . .
Lekatt wrote: There is no reason to believe randomness every existed in the universe.
There is randomness in every moment of every day.
Jer wrote:Lekatt,
It's raining here today. Do you think it's cause I killed a spider yesterday?
How big was the spider? How big is the rain? Inquiring minds that believe in an intelligent god-figure that runs our lives need to know. Yes, call Homeland Security indeed, but not for the spider.
Let's make this really, really easy.
Which is more likely:
A. The world was a sterile place one day, and the next it was fully populated by countless species of plants, animals, and humans. In that world, species do not evolve, but remain static for all time. Though some species may cease to exist, no new species have ever come into being since that first day. In this scenario, humans of the modern type must have co-existed with dinosaurs. Cross-breeding is a violation of the natural order, and hence is an offense against God. If God had wanted cows to give more milk he would have made them thus at the beginning of life on earth.
B. Life has progressed from single one-cell forms through a process of natural selection. Small changes in an organism's characteristics may make it more, or less successful in the competition to survive. Successful mutations, or cross-breeding, results in larger populations and unsuccessful characteristics tend to disappear. All life on earth is linked together, though the different branches of life have proliferated and grown apart over millions of years. There are wide variations within species as branches of the species adapts to local conditions. When the variations become very wide, even a small mutation can give birth to a new species. Hence, species are being born and going extinct all the time, though we seldom note them.
Now, LeKatt, you want to believe A is the more likly, but most educated folks disagree and would choose B. Your choice of A is founded upon your faith in spite of all the evidence available (and it is considerable). Those who choose B have reason and a host of facts and experiment demonstrating the basic correctness of that point of view. You have said that it is "easy to disprove" the evolution of species. To disprove is not to argue from faith, but from demonstrable fact or reason. Whether the universe is orderly, or chaotic, has nothing to do with proof.
However, is the universe really orderly, or is that just your perception? Let us accept, at least for the moment, that the universe appears orderly. We may be deluding ourselves. The underlying nature of things may be very chaotic down on the Planck level where N-dimensions reign and give rise to what we perceive. As the scale increases that chaos appears to become more orderly, and at cosmic scales almost rigidly orderly. The universe is a dynamic "thing" it appears to have been evolving since the singularity we call the Big Bang. Time and space came into being with the appearance of elemental forces smaller and of less substance than an electron. The interrelationships of time and space give rise to mass and energy. Those elements that interrelate with one another to form stars and an heavy elements.
You, on the other hand, probably would argue that once there was nothingness, but that God in a day created everything in the cosmos, and ultimately will bring the whole to an end. You probably argue for a finite universe that runs rather like a fine watch, with that little old watchmaker standing outside of time and space watching and occasionaly tinkering with the mechanism. This sort of disagreement does nothing to prove your assertion that the evolution of species is easily disproven. You've only shifted your argument to a grander, and more abstract scale. Deal with the facts as we reasonably know them, not your suppositions ... which are also not likely to be persuasive to anyone except other Followers of Abraham.
creationism, a construct of the holy rollers, is a convenient way to paint the world in black and white. the notion "that things happen for a reason" is simplistic, an easy ticket to take the high moral ground, to judge people, to keep them orderly. yes, it's comforting to believe there is an almighty, omniscient creator looming over us to keep us in line, but this deadens the human spirit, which thrives on randomness.
If I were a believer I might proffer that god created a miasmatic wonder from which chaos effervesced the phantasm of order to observers, perceived by those observers in the recent squidges of so-called time.
But I'm not.
As you may know the Southwestern part of the U.S. has been experiencing drought for the last several years. In one small community things were becoming quite desperate as water resources fell to dangerously low levels. The City Council met and discussed the situation. One council person suggested that they might call on a famous medicine man, Shawani-tanta, living with on the adjacent reservation. Not having any better suggestion, the Mayor drove out and spoke with the medicine man about the possibility of conducting some sort of rain dance, or ceremony to break the dry spell and bring rain.
Shawani-tanta agreed and the two men went over to the Chapter House and had an indian lawyer (trained at Harvard) draw up a contract. The Town was to pay the tribe $50,000 dollars if the rain ceremony was successful in producing the significant rainfall. In addition the town obligated itself to strictly follow every direction given by the medicine man in setting up the ceremony.
On the appointed day the medicine man had every automobile in the town lined up around the town plaza. Buckets of soapy water wree drawn and placed in between the parked cars. The skies were clear and cloudless, as they had been every day for the past 36 months. The medicine man gathered his drummers, who began a slow rhythmic beat. The medicine man raised his arms to the heavens and began to sing. On cue, long lines of young Indian men danced their way onto the plaza. Each waved a bit of torn blanket over their heads as they wound their way around the parked vehicles. Then the drums stopped. The Indians dipped their towels into the soapy water and began to wash the cars closest to them.
The townspeople were amazed, for they expected the Indians to chew on rattlesnakes and wave feathers in the air. For twenty minutes the cars were soaped and rinsed and finally buffed to a sparkling sheen. Then as the line of dancers began to dance their way out of the plaza, a great line of dark thunderheads appeared. The medicine man smiled as the first fat drops fell. By the time the medicine man arrived at the Mayor's reviewing stand to collect the tribes $50,000 the whole town was under a foot of water.
"How did you do that Shawani-tanta", the Mayor asked. "Just applying appropriate modern methods", the medicine man replied.
This thread heartens me. I expected the few free-thinking atheists to be overrun by a horde of howling fanatics.
Gala wrote:creationism, a construct of the holy rollers, is a convenient way to paint the world in black and white. the notion "that things happen for a reason" is simplistic, an easy ticket to take the high moral ground, to judge people, to keep them orderly. yes, it's comforting to believe there is an almighty, omniscient creator looming over us to keep us in line, but this deadens the human spirit, which thrives on randomness.
I believe your understanding of spiritual things is simplistic. Please do some reading on the subject.
Love
kickycan wrote:Lekatt wrote:This is a world of order and was such as far back as we can see. There is no reason to believe randomness every existed in the universe.
What that points to is an intelligence far greater than man.
Love
No, what that points to is order.
Where does intelligence come into it?
Order, or organization, or some discernable direction can only come from intelligence. Someone must decide how things will develop. Without intelligence one "chain" of DNA is the same as any other. Randomness is where things happen for no reason. In a state of randomness there could be no physical "laws" or any discernable direction. We do not live in a random world, to say we do is illogical.
Love
Lekatt wrote:Gala wrote:creationism, a construct of the holy rollers, is a convenient way to paint the world in black and white. the notion "that things happen for a reason" is simplistic, an easy ticket to take the high moral ground, to judge people, to keep them orderly. yes, it's comforting to believe there is an almighty, omniscient creator looming over us to keep us in line, but this deadens the human spirit, which thrives on randomness.
I believe your understanding of spiritual things is simplistic. Please do some reading on the subject.
Love
I believe both of you are simplistic when is comes to spiritual things. That's not meant as an insult to either of you, just an observation that the truth lies in the middle of your conflicting opinions somewhere. :wink: Example: almighty, omniscent creator comment, yeah, homey don't play that. The universe being 'ordered', as I've said before, constant flux that maintains a certain balance. Do we know how this happens? No, we do not. So....we can continue to make up fairy tales about why these things happen, but it's probably best just to accept that it exists, and serves us well for the most part. Then we can all start living.
Setanta wrote:Ash has sidestepped nothing. You continue to assert your position based soley upon an appeal to authority. You provide neither evidence of nor arguments for this cosmic order apart from your assertion that one can see it by simply looking around. It apparently escapes your comprehension that all of those here who dissent from your position have looked around and have not seen the order of which you speak.
You write: "In fact it has everything to do with evolution which could have never taken place in a state of chaos." This is complete nonsense. Precisely because of random factors such as cosmic radiation or environmental chemical change, mutations occur in species, which mutations become the effective agents in natural selection at any time at which those mutations produce a reproductive advantage for the affected individuals. You obviously have not grasped how natural selection occurs.
Further, you write: "How this world came about, whether evolution and/or creation doesn't negate the order and intelligence we see in the universe today." We don't see order and intelligence in the universe--you do. You adamantly refuse to see anything else, because to do so would be to abandon the underpinning of your theism.
And you write: "Things don't just happen for no reason at all." Certainly they do, to the extent that you use reason as equated to intent. There are reasons to explain the effects of random events as they impinge upon one another. That does not in any way authorize a contention that these events occur as the result of intent. Once again, your remarks simply arise out of a preconception of the nature of the cosmos based upon a resolute theism, which sees the "reason" for any thing or any event in the intent of the deity.
Then you write: "Gee, if this really were a random world why do lawyers keep filing law suits all over the place, don't they know that things just happen randomly." This is yet another example of you pointedly ignoring what has been pointed out to you, to the effect that people attempt to impose order on their environments. People are purposive--when we discuss random events and chaos here, we refer to the inanimate, from which the animate eventually arises as a result of random events in a chaotic milieu. I will tediously point out yet again that an analogy to human society is invalid, precisely because humans attempt to impose order on their surroundings, which has nothing at all to say about the nature, the origins and the future of the cosmos.
You end your rather feeble reply to Ash with a series of statements form authority. It is an authority which no one here has any reason to believe you are entitled to assume.
I do not wish to convert your beliefs, only to remind you they are theories, or guesses. I can't believe you think this world you live in is randomness. It is true we can't always know why things happen, but the whole of science is directed toward the goal of trying to understand that very thing. So if the world is randomness why do we have science at all, we already know why everything happens. It happens for no reason at all in randomness. No matter how you try to argue for randomness, that argument will fail. Carbon dating depends on order, physical laws depends on order, science depends on order, even evolution depends on order.
As for proof we have personal observation and experience, if fact, the only proof we have of anything is personal observation and experience.
The most important thing in this world is truth, it is not theories, or assumptions. What we don't know, and that is most everything, should be expressed as such. Truth is the only worthy path.
I will leave this thread now, all has been said that is important. I am noticing that frivolous posts are appearing denoting frustration. I don't want to add to it.
Love
simplistic view of spirit? thought the debate was about creationism vs. evolution? you may see my view as simple, but my actions are not dictated by thoughts that an almighty god created the universe and therefore what happens to me "happens for a reason". i see my view as having options to not be passive in the face of circumstances that require me to think for myself, to speak out, to choose to keep quiet, to empathise, etc.
Gala wrote:simplistic view of spirit? thought the debate was about creationism vs. evolution? you may see my view as simple, but my actions are not dictated by thoughts that an almighty god created the universe and therefore what happens to me "happens for a reason". i see my view as having options to not be passive in the face of circumstances that require me to think for myself, to speak out, to choose to keep quiet, to empathise, etc.
Yes, I digressed a little, my apologies. I'm with you on evolution and and not being a weird slave to some creepy almighty god. I was getting into an area of spiritualism that wasn't related to the specific question regarding creationsim vs. evolution.
I thought the debate was about whether or not we live in a universe governed by chaos or by the order of an omnipotent intelligent being....I'm confused on that point, but I believe it's neither, hence my original post.
lekatt, by dismissing the cogent remarks of the others by saying they are frivilous leads me to believe what you are really saying is "My truth is the only worthy path."
