What do you believe?

I am puzzled by the poll. That we are composed of molecules does not exclude our having a creator.

Your poll doesn't allow us enough choices. It's not either or. I believe in evolution; we are the product of some primate form from millions of years of development. According to anthropologists, everybody's ancestors came from Africa. I have notning to refute this conclusion.

I guess I'm not good with making polls. I'll have to think a bit harder on my next one. :wink:

We are more than just molecules, but there is no evidence that we were created by a power "higher" than the mindless processes of evolution. The idea of a Creator makes no sense to me. Where did it get the knowledge to create us, what did it make us out of (poof! and matter existed by magic?), why did it do such a lousy job of engineering, and what does it want from us? The probability of an uncreated Creator just happening to exist with the desire and ability to generate sentient life on this one small planet, in one obscure galaxy out of the billions and billions of similar ones, is incredibly small. It is far more likely that we evolved than that life on earth was created with so many obvious flaws.

i believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows

we are molecules with some sort of prime mover, a creator, if you will...

Poor Mike Molecule. After all these years of believing he was created by some character named God, (Mike Molecule is a firm believer in a higher power as is his sister Aurelia Atom), he has you negating his beliefs.

I actually believe in both sides of the creation/molecule thing.

The alternative presented here is the product of presuppositions that are (1) unexamined and (2) in my opinion false.
I do not believe in a "me" who is EITHER just molecules OR a creation of some Creator.
I (and I use the first person singular because it is built into our linguistic map of the world) AM the molecules and every thing/process that exists, not some llittle "subject" which they constitute or upon which they act.
I've become such bore, I know.

following on from JLN....

Perhaps those who believe in a coherent "self" might consider where it was last night during the non-dreaming part of sleep ! (Mind you, the dreams are bad enough from a "coherence" point of view).

Such "me's" in conjuction with other "me's" are totally responsible for all concepts from "molecules" to "God". They have conceptualized "a prime mover" and also its recent "demise" through the deconstruction of the concept of "causality".

These ideas are not a matter of "belief"....they can be observed by anyone who examines his/her own thought processes. Try it !

So, who doesn't believe in molecules?

Fresco, the radical empiricism you prescribe, i.e., SEE for yourself, is what the Buddha also recommended, i.e., Be a lantern unto yourself.
Instead of looking, however, we THINK. And that thinking is usually of a very inadequate kind, consisting mainly of the thoughts of religionists and ideologues, of people who would own our souls our cash and our votes.

I'll drink to that, JL. Rational thought and linguistic articulation of one's "best" thinking are the enemies of truth and render any discovery of ultimate reality virtually impossible.

Huh? Rational thinking and language basically account for all the knowledge of mankind. Some of that knowledge is debatable, but there is also a robust system of checks and balances. Sure, there is a horizontal asymptote on the amount of true knowledge that is attainable...but that does not prevent us from climbing ever closer to that attainable truth!

this is a stupid question to me. in other words, whoever asked this question assumes that having a creator and being molecules are mutually excvlusive. But is this true? Not necessarily. It's also possible - nay, it is obvious that we are molecules, but it is likely that those atoms and molecules were created by God.

In appreciation of Merry Andrew's last post, I'm going to give our dead horse one last kick.
Any discussion of ultimate reality--or at least an experience of that which we are most fundamentally--as implied by "Creator" and our basic molecular nature in terms of ideas, symbols, etc. must miss the point absolutely. Our ultimate reality must be experienced directly and never suffer the distortions of verbal or quantitative description. And as Lao Tzu and Wittgenstein advises regarding such unspeakables we should keep our silence (something I cannot do). This is not to depreciate language and mathematics, to do so would show a lack of the proper appreciation due philosophy and science. But their subject matter can never be the direct experience of our ultimate reality. They are always ABOUT something else.

I believe at the beginning there were rocks and they gathered together and formed giant rock groups.

Then there are those trees and bugs that turned into rocks.