Creation

[betsy]

I remember on one occasion being in a high school in England. And I was talking to a class of kids when a girl put her hand up and she said to me, “Do you believe in creation?”

So I said, “Yes, I do.”

And she said, “Eww, nobody believes that these days.”

I said, “You’re wrong. I do.”

She said, “Eww, I don’t.”

I said, “So what do you believe?”

She said, “I believe we just happened.”

“What do you mean we just happened?”

“Well, there was a piece of matter that exploded.”

“Where did that matter come from?”

“It just happened.”

And I am not doing justice to her now – I am going to just shorthand what she

said, but basically a piece of matter exploded and was blasted across the universe

in little pieces. Some pieces were hot; some pieces were cold. The hot pieces

created a gravitational pull that caused the cold pieces to revolve around the hot

pieces. One hot piece was the sun; one cold piece was the earth.

On the earth there was land and there was sea and there was algae that formed in

the sea and the algae began to swim and develop some fins. And one day the

algae fell out of the pond, began to walk, climbed a tree, ate a banana, scratched

itself, came down the tree and became a human being.

Now I’m speeding up the process, but that’s basically what she said.

I said, “Do you believe that?”

She said, “Yes.”

I said, “Eww.”

I said, “Let me tell you something.” I said, “I have got a watch here. But let me

tell you where I got my watch from.” I said, “You may find this hard to believe

but I’ll tell you where I got this from.”

“In the town where I live” I said, “there is a main street and on the main street

there are several shops. There is a jewellers, there is a leather shop, there is a

paint shop, there is a glass shop, there is an ironmonger and there is a gas mains

that runs down that street.”

“And one day that gas mains exploded and these shops just blew up into

smithereens and pieces of metal were flying around and pieces of glass were

flying around. And some of these pieces of metal came together, a few jewels

came and landed on them, another piece of metal came and landed on the top and

then a paint pot flew by; the lid happened to come off, a paintbrush happened to

dip inside and go “boop, boop, boop, boop twelve times and then another little

paintbrush went doodldoodlo 60 times and then two little skinny little bits of

metal landed, and another like that.”

“And then a piece of glass flew by, landed on the top, a screwdriver flew by,

stopped, screwed in four places. And then a piece of leather smashed into the

side, another piece of leather smacked into the other side. And the whole thing

landed in the rubble and I went through the rubble, picked it up and found it and

it’s kept perfect time ever since.”

Do you know what she said? “Eww.”

She said, “You didn’t get your watch that way.”

I said, “You have never seen my watch before. You have no idea where my

watch came from.”

She said, “You didn’t get your watch that way. You are lying to me.”

I said, “How do you know that?”

She said, “It is obvious.”

I said, “You are dead right. Of course it is obvious.”

“Do you think this watch is smart? You are smarter than this watch. What did

you have for breakfast this morning? Corn Flakes – you shovelled it in? What is

going to happen to that Corn Flakes during today? It is going to somehow inside

get broken down and going to become flesh and bone and blood.”

“I mean you tell me a machine you can just shove corn flakes into and it kind of

transforms it into itself. You are a million times smarter than this watch and you

know it’s obvious this watch is not a fluke.”

Now you say, well that’s naïve. That’s not naïve at all – that’s not naïve at all.

Effects have causes.

From: Ecclesiastes: Life Under The Sun (Part 5)

Pastor Charles Price

http://www.livingtruth.ca/pdf/transcriptions/ELS/ELS_5.pdf

As the title declares, this topic refuses to go away.

[Shakeyhands]

.....

Edited January 30, 2011 by Shakeyhands

[Wild Bill]

As the title declares, this topic refuses to go away.

Betsy, that is the most illogical parable I have read since I picked up a WatchTower magazine about 20 years ago!

It paints the Big Bang theory of Creation in a childish, simplistic, totally unscientific light, completely different from how the scientific community describes it, and then having made it into something silly proceeds to label it so!

Talk about your straw men! These guys wrote the book!

Just because their understanding of science stopped in Grade 5 when their bean sprouts up and died, trying to grow out of that jar full of wet tissue paper, doesn't make them competent to comment!

[BubberMiley]

I agree with Betsy that it's ridiculous to think that a god created itself. If it exists, where did it come from?

[kimmy]

Betsy is the internet's answer to that wild-eyed dude who stands on the street corner and hands out Jack Chick tracts.

The easiest way to be left alone is to just take one, nod and smile, and move along quickly.

-k

[eyeball]

I agree with Betsy that it's ridiculous to think that a god created itself. If it exists, where did it come from?

How about the collapse of an observer's perspective?

Every observer views a universe from it's center and when observers die and collapse around this perspective the light may just go out with wink here and in with a bang somewhere else. Eventually new generations of observers protrude their eye-stalks and what have you to renew the process of reflecting on their own perspectives.

Of course this could all just be the 'religion' that goes on in the privacy and utter isolation of my own mind - an egoistic manifesto of individualism. Oh well it is my universe I'm talking about after all. How can I help but position myself at the very center of the story when reality has placed me so squarely there?

I'm still trying to work out the physics of it all but Stephan Hawking's observation that awareness gives the universe a capacity to appreciate itself has left me wondering if there is more to that capacity than meets the eye. Creation like genesis is probably fractal in nature and maybe in or through our case it's also biological.

[Michael Hardner]

I agree with Betsy that it's ridiculous to think that a god created itself. If it exists, where did it come from?

That's not what the story says. It encapsulates anti-creation theory as being "the big bang just happened". It doesn't attribute any gods to that theory.

[Michael Hardner]

The topic refuses to go away because science will never have 100% of the answer.

[bush_cheney2004]

I agree with Betsy that it's ridiculous to think that a god created itself. If it exists, where did it come from?

This has already been discussed in the form of logic and limit theory. If one assumes that something cannot come from nothing, then clearly some initial state must have existed.

Definition of Nothing

[betsy]

Betsy, that is the most illogical parable I have read since I picked up a WatchTower magazine about 20 years ago!

It paints the Big Bang theory of Creation in a childish, simplistic, totally unscientific light, completely different from how the scientific community describes it, and then having made it into something silly proceeds to label it so!

Talk about your straw men! These guys wrote the book!

Just because their understanding of science stopped in Grade 5 when their bean sprouts up and died, trying to grow out of that jar full of wet tissue paper, doesn't make them competent to comment!

What's illogical about the analogy?

[kimmy]

This has already been discussed in the form of logic and limit theory. If one assumes that something cannot come from nothing, then clearly some initial state must have existed.

Definition of Nothing

Something positive can be created from nothing, provided a corresponding negative be created simultaneously.

Reed Richards explained it in an episode of The Fantastic Four. That's why they always had to travel to the Negative Zone to fight menaces.

-k

[Michael Hardner]

What's illogical about the analogy?

It's a strawman. You set up a badly worded summation of your opponent's argument (in this case, a dumb high school student articulates it) and then you tear that apart instead of the real argument.

The real answer to the big bang origin is "we don't know". You can attack that if you like.

[betsy]

Betsy is the internet's answer to that wild-eyed dude who stands on the street corner and hands out Jack Chick tracts.

The wild-eyed dude also screams "REPENT! THE END IS NEAR!"

One day, I might try posting along that line perhaps....

The easiest way to be left alone is to just take one, nod and smile, and move along quickly.

-k

I know...

And yet somehow those that you'd think would do as you suggest seem to get pulled somehow and can't resist clicking on the thread even if they totally claim to disagree. Don't get me wrong, I welcome that...whether they just came on to make their statement.

[betsy]

It's a strawman. You set up a badly worded summation of your opponent's argument (in this case, a dumb high school student articulates it) and then you tear that apart instead of the real argument.

The real answer to the big bang origin is "we don't know". You can attack that if you like.

Isn't that the whole point? Of course it's illogical. It's totally absurd that the universe would start that way!

That's what evolution and BIg Bang is trying to tell us. In fact the odds are better that Charles' watch would be put together that way than that of the universe.

[WIP]

As the title declares, this topic refuses to go away.

This topic won't go away because there's always purveyors of the latest version of the Watchmaker Argument, and a crowd of believers who believe it actually explains something! The people who believe it stay in the churches that claim they've got the answers to everything; and those of us who realized early in life that they are full of it, quietly walked out the back door and either left religion entirely, or may have ended up in one that wasn't such an insult to the intelligence of anyone seeking answers that didn't demand going to war with scientific evidence all the time.

[Michael Hardner]

Isn't that the whole point? Of course it's illogical. It's totally absurd that the universe would start that way!

That's what evolution and BIg Bang is trying to tell us. In fact the odds are better that Charles' watch would be put together that way than that of the universe.

It's illogical to say we don't know ? I think it's more illogical to say that an unproven factor absolutely did create all of this.

[betsy]

It's illogical to say we don't know ? I think it's more illogical to say that an unproven factor absolutely did create all of this.

You're right that we don't know....meaning you and I. But cosmologists have shown that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe had a beginning. The popular theory for so long was the universe has always been there, but they abandoned that notion in the face of the overwhelming evidence against it.

As to the watch analogy is meant to show the absurdity of life beginning from nothing on its own. My mistake. It of course applies to the beginning to life, not the beginning of the universe. That is not to say that the universe and life didn't begin together relatively speaking.

[Michael Hardner]

You're right that we don't know....meaning you and I. But cosmologists have shown that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe had a beginning. The popular theory for so long was the universe has always been there, but they abandoned that notion in the face of the overwhelming evidence against it.

I think you're talking about the big bang.

As to the watch analogy is meant to show the absurdity of life beginning from nothing on its own. My mistake. It of course applies to the beginning to life, not the beginning of the universe. That is not to say that the universe and life didn't begin together relatively speaking.

There's no "from nothing". They don't know what happened to cause the big bang, but that's not to say there was nothing before the big bang.

Again - we don't know. Some believe ancient tales of a omnipresent God who set it all up. They have no evidence, only faith. Others prefer to believe evidence.

[Jack Weber]

Betsy is the internet's answer to that wild-eyed dude who stands on the street corner and hands out Jack Chick tracts.

The easiest way to be left alone is to just take one, nod and smile, and move along quickly.

-k

What are "Jack Chick" tracts??

Are they tracts of land?

[dre]

As the title declares, this topic refuses to go away.

We really need a facepalm icon...

[Wild Bill]

What's illogical about the analogy?

Well, for a start, that watch did NOT come to happen in a quick explosion. We had the explosion and it took about 11 BILLION YEARS of things coming together to make that watch happen!

Moreoever, while the creation of life took the larger first part of those 11 billion years, once it happened things were no longer entirely random. Some things work better than others once the groundwork has been prepared. Once mankind came on the picture, things started to develop at a HUGELY faster rate! We went from sundials to inventing that watch within a couple of hundred years, because there were all sorts of people all over the place busy inventing and developing all the pieces necessary to make that watch.

This is MUCH different than your analogy paints!

There are other points to argue as well but those aren't the real issue anyway. It's been my experience over the years that those who favour Intelligent Design are guilty of trying to have things both ways, eating their cake and having it too. That's just illogical.

Why do I say that? First of all, virtually all of them are not just trying to prove the existence of God. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant to how the Universe came to be and how it works. It is what it is and we may never be capable of understanding all of it. The existence of God is not necessary to explain it. He may have started it all off or it may have been random chance. The result is the same.

No, what the proponents of Intelligent Design seem always to be pushing, once you scratch the surface of their arguments, is a literal acceptance not just of their Faith but of their interpretation of their Bible. They don't just want God to be accepted as real and the Creator of the Universe. They want it accepted that he did it the way THEY say He did! No evolution, no dinosaurs, just Adam and Eve chomping apples in some mythical garden.

This idea of telling God how he did his works has always struck me as incredibly arrogant and presumptuous! A bunch of people barely out of the caves, wearing skins and scratching their asses come up with some stories to explain how the universe came to be and a few thousand years later their descendants are still taking it as truth and gospel!

If someone wants a discussion solely and only about the possibility of a Prime Mover I could enjoy it. What I can't abide is someone who really just wants to use that idea to get his foot in the door to justify his collection of tribal myths and fantasies that outright contradict the evidence that Science keeps discovering every day!

Science does not contradict ANYTHING on how a God may have created the Universe and set up its Laws of Operation! The only contradictions are with what some people chose to believe in ADVANCE of those discoveries!

To put my own views more succinctly Betsy, although I personally am a 'devout agnostic' I can get along with someone who believes in a God just fine!

What I can't abide is someone who rejects the continuing unfolding of evidence as to how the Universe began and endures because he feels that his simplistic little book of myths has given him all the answers, somehow making it unnecessary for him to actually learn any Science, Math or Physics!

It's no shame to be ignorant or math challenged, but it is a shame to use some prop to be arrogant!

[dre]

That whole big bang thing is just so far fetched!

We need a reasonable expanation! Like...

A cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

Say WHAT?

Edited January 30, 2011 by dre

[BubberMiley]

What are "Jack Chick" tracts??

Are they tracts of land?

They're very entertaining little comic books that are conveniently left lying around on buses and in restaurants or handed out by true-believers.

I used to collect them in my youth. My favourite was the Dungeons and Dragons one.

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

[Mr.Canada]

Perhaps God created the big bang theory for us to better understand Him and His work.

Serving God is the reason for our existence, everything else is sin.

Edited January 30, 2011 by Mr.Canada

[Wild Bill]

Perhaps God created the big bang theory for us to better understand Him and His work.

Serving God is the reason for our existence, everything else is sin.

Did you read my post? Maybe He did, maybe he didn't. We don't know.

Doesn't matter, 'cuz that's not the real argument the Intelligent Designers are pushing anyway. They reject the idea of a Big Bang for one reason only - it contradicts the stories from Genesis that they've already chosen to believe.

The "Church of the Presumptuous Assumption", if you like.