Evolution & God

[cochise]

Logic is overrated. Ask Godel.

[Lurker]

For a purist like me, evolution is a very 'leaky' boat - the only reason i lean towards it is because mass religion's idea of God is a freaking floating piece of wood compared to the 'leaky boat' of evolution...ie, lesser of the two in terms of retardation.

I suppose it is quite similar to my ideology. I am the first person to say religion seems to be more fool-proof than evolution theory at this point in time. However the difference between the two is that evolution(or those who propound it) never claim they have all the answers. In fact they will encourage people to question the theory in order to better it. On the other hand every religion offers its followers - You are the chosen one, and your God is supreme - kind of retardation. They have to. Or else why would a Hindu follow Hinduism if his religion teaches that there may be other Supreme Power out there that are part of different religion? Can you imagine Islam suggesting a Hindu God is bigger than Allah??? Or Christianity encouraging questioning of Christ?? This is where Evolution scores. Having said that I would also say that many evolution supporter are also very jingoistic.

[Lurker]

true but people like me who are skeptical get confused. People like me want to find proof

Proof, like truth, is like beauty...it lies in the eyes of the beholder. Every religion offers philosphy on existence of "God". In Sanatan Hindu dharam there is the concept of Atman(or Atma) where God essentially resides within the soul of every man. You dont have to chase him to find him, just reach within yourself and you will find him. In Budhism there is the concept of the wise/knowledgable person becoming Buddha(the enlightened one). Again no need to chase/find God. CC can throw more light on this, specially Buddhism, personally I am not much of a theologist. On the other hand Abrahaminical religion give different kind of proof. If you are a Muslim you can do hajj and see the Kabba(Black cube) that is a cornerstone of Islam. Again I wouldnt want to go deep into the subject as I wont pretend to be qualified for it. Just saying that every religion offers some "proof" about their God's existence. But of course it is a dead wall in most cases. Its not like you can question Kabba in Islam or Atman in Hinduism. xxxx

[THX_1138]

A very very good point' date=' Lurker. [b']The theory of evolution is probably correct but it still has a LOT of holes in it and there are very very good questions that the theory of evolution does not answer. For example, what really is conciousness ?? How does conciousness evolve, etc. are not answered by evolution and neither is the 'death of the body' aspect and what the implications are for the conciousness. For a purist like me, evolution is a very 'leaky' boat - the only reason i lean towards it is because mass religion's idea of God is a freaking floating piece of wood compared to the 'leaky boat' of evolution...ie, lesser of the two in terms of retardation.

Name one...

[THX_1138]

Logic is overrated. Ask Godel.

lol good one... i bet einstein at some point said to himself... whats will all this quantum physics crap! i wish i had just majored in engineering!

[THX_1138]

If we say that life was planned and there was/is an intelligent being behind the plan, then why is the plan so im-perfect? How is the world perfect (from a human point of view)? What significance does the whole universe, billions of stars, solar systems, black holes, etc have from a human point? A fragile life on a tiny, insignificant planet, revolving around an equally insignificant star in an obscure part of the galaxy is perfect? What about the rest of the universe? Complete waste of space (pun intended)?

thats is one of the more poignant criticisms of the william paley intelligent design theory on a cosmological level. at a cellular level, the sheer improbability of designing a complex organ/system from scratch is an incredibly improbable exercise. richard dawkins presented an unscientific experiment that serves more as an anecdote rather than a concrete proof in this matter: consider a sentence... his particular example was "Me Thinks That It Is a Weasel" from Hamlet, Shakespeare when the protagonist examines the shape of a cloud, imagining his father's face form in the cloud, his friend, the skeptic points out that the cloud could be anything his imagination wants it to be... now, dawkins ran a computer program that generates random alphabets in the 23 spaces that the sentence occupies. however, he ran two seperate versions. one which was memoryless, or as one would call, non causal. here the alphabets were generated at random, independently and at each generation tested against the final target sentence... if incorrect, the sequence of 23 alphabets is discarded and a new one generated. opposing that was similar program however one with a correlation matrix attached that would compute the correlation of the alphabet sequence to the target sentence and use that data to generate the next sequence. while running the programs simultaneously, he showed that while the first, uncorrelated sequence's expected value for the number of attempts before a correct match is achieved is 26^23 attempts, the second algorithm matches the target sequence in a mere fraction of that number. applying this result to say the improbability of an intelligent designer creating the human eye (a much beloved organ that intelligent design proponents speak of), is considerably high as compared to arriving at the end design of the human eye from small changes over millions of years (fantastic example was presented in a national geographic published over 4 years ago where the development of the eye from basic rod cells on a surface to seek light, to a more organized arrangement to trap more light, to a closed organ with the first rudimentary lens to form images, to the final spealized eye capable of focus and independent movement). hence, if there is considerable complexity in this ecosystem, which seems to suggest an intelligent designer, than this intelligent designer seems to have an even higher level of complexity and improbability, thus leading to a contradiction.

[CSK Fan]

thats is one of the more poignant criticisms of the william paley intelligent design theory on a cosmological level. at a cellular level, the sheer improbability of designing a complex organ/system from scratch is an incredibly improbable exercise. richard dawkins presented an unscientific experiment that serves more as an anecdote rather than a concrete proof in this matter: consider a sentence... his particular example was "Me Thinks That It Is a Weasel" from Hamlet, Shakespeare when the protagonist examines the shape of a cloud, imagining his father's face form in the cloud, his friend, the skeptic points out that the cloud could be anything his imagination wants it to be... now, dawkins ran a computer program that generates random alphabets in the 23 spaces that the sentence occupies. however, he ran two seperate versions. one which was memoryless, or as one would call, non causal. here the alphabets were generated at random, independently and at each generation tested against the final target sentence... if incorrect, the sequence of 23 alphabets is discarded and a new one generated. opposing that was similar program however one with a correlation matrix attached that would compute the correlation of the alphabet sequence to the target sentence and use that data to generate the next sequence. while running the programs simultaneously, he showed that while the first, uncorrelated sequence's expected value for the number of attempts before a correct match is achieved is 26^23 attempts, the second algorithm matches the target sequence in a mere fraction of that number. applying this result to say the improbability of an intelligent designer creating the human eye (a much beloved organ that intelligent design proponents speak of), is considerably high as compared to arriving at the end design of the human eye from small changes over millions of years (fantastic example was presented in a national geographic published over 4 years ago where the development of the eye from basic rod cells on a surface to seek light, to a more organized arrangement to trap more light, to a closed organ with the first rudimentary lens to form images, to the final spealized eye capable of focus and independent movement). hence, if there is considerable complexity in this ecosystem, which seems to suggest an intelligent designer, than this intelligent designer seems to have an even higher level of complexity and improbability, thus leading to a contradiction.

Yes, that is a very good way of reasoning. Mankind is too wrapped up in their own to look at the bigger picture. We talk about destinies and fate, we talk about being chosen ones and achievements. We talk about changing and destroying the world! How much difference did the greatest emperor ever make in earth's history? So he was appointed by God to rule the earth right? So what difference did a mere 40-50 yrs of his rule make to our billion year old earth or even 3 generations from his time? Why would any immortal God take any interest in people who are a mere speck in time? Why would he change destines and cause miracles for them? If a house fly having a life span of few days started talking about destines and fate, we would laugh at it. So what if he conquered the whole fly land, next day he would be dead and gone! think how much small our life span is compared to the universe. We talk of destroying this planet by nuclear wars and global changes. all we can do is destroy ourselves. We are so egoistic a race, that we talk of saving the earth! the earth has been here for a billion years and will be there for a billion after we are gone. For all we know, human kind wont survive as long as the dumb dinosaurs did! And we have the gall to talk about destinies and doing good, and living piously. As if any of that is gonna make an iota of difference to the universe anywhere! Way off topic, I know but was in the mood to rant a bit!

[CSK Fan]

Logic is overrated. Ask Godel.

Religion is the logic used by people living 100s of years ago to describe the reason for our exsistence!

[Desi Cartman]

Yes, that is a very good way of reasoning. Mankind is too wrapped up in their own to look at the bigger picture. We talk about destinies and fate, we talk about being chosen ones and achievements. We talk about changing and destroying the world! How much difference did the greatest emperor ever make in earth's history? So he was appointed by God to rule the earth right? So what difference did a mere 40-50 yrs of his rule make to our billion year old earth or even 3 generations from his time? Why would any immortal God take any interest in people who are a mere speck in time? Why would he change destines and cause miracles for them? If a house fly having a life span of few days started talking about destines and fate, we would laugh at it. So what if he conquered the whole fly land, next day he would be dead and gone! think how much small our life span is compared to the universe. We talk of destroying this planet by nuclear wars and global changes. all we can do is destroy ourselves. We are so egoistic a race, that we talk of saving the earth! the earth has been here for a billion years and will be there for a billion after we are gone. For all we know, human kind wont survive as long as the dumb dinosaurs did! And we have the gall to talk about destinies and doing good, and living piously. As if any of that is gonna make an iota of difference to the universe anywhere! Way off topic, I know but was in the mood to rant a bit!

So true and thats why many gurus say "live in present .. dont worry about the past or future ... its just NOW that matters ":hatsoff:

[CSK Fan]

May be the creator knows better than some of us, now if I say i studied engineering and the day i passed my exam , I died . So may be others can say what an utter waste of his studies. We have been sent to this world for some purpose and things have been created around for certain reason. Scientist are known to be intelligent but they can't figure out why a person sleeps in the night.They cant solve the mystery of Death , why does a person die after a certain period of time. And believe me a person is born to die As a very famous quote which says " Life is uncertain but death is certain"

All the questions which you raised have been answered already by scientists. In fact death is one of the simplest mystery to solve if not complicated by religion and theories of after life! Also, about the creator knowing everything, if I see a person create a nuclear reactor the size of United states to power ONE bulb in one small house in a remote village, I dont care how intelligent that person is, it is still an inefficient way of doing things.

[THX_1138]

Yes, that is a very good way of reasoning. Mankind is too wrapped up in their own to look at the bigger picture. We talk about destinies and fate, we talk about being chosen ones and achievements. We talk about changing and destroying the world! How much difference did the greatest emperor ever make in earth's history? So he was appointed by God to rule the earth right? So what difference did a mere 40-50 yrs of his rule make to our billion year old earth or even 3 generations from his time? Why would any immortal God take any interest in people who are a mere speck in time? Why would he change destines and cause miracles for them? If a house fly having a life span of few days started talking about destines and fate, we would laugh at it. So what if he conquered the whole fly land, next day he would be dead and gone! think how much small our life span is compared to the universe. We talk of destroying this planet by nuclear wars and global changes. all we can do is destroy ourselves. We are so egoistic a race, that we talk of saving the earth! the earth has been here for a billion years and will be there for a billion after we are gone. For all we know, human kind wont survive as long as the dumb dinosaurs did! And we have the gall to talk about destinies and doing good, and living piously. As if any of that is gonna make an iota of difference to the universe anywhere! Way off topic, I know but was in the mood to rant a bit!

Very good point indeed... actually it is something Carl Sagan discussed rather elloquently in his book: "Pale Blue Dot" (chapter 1, we are here). He begins with this story about how Voyager was sent a 11th mission update to photograph the earth from beyond the Jupiter orbit. While there were some deliberations over the scientific voracity of such an endeavor, eventually just before the spacecraft maintenance crew was reasigned due to paucity of funds, they turned the camera of the spacecraft afround and photographed earth from just past the orbit of Uranus some 50 odd times. When those pictures were eventually beamed back (each pixel was about 6000 pixels and each pixel took 5.5 hours to reach the earth!), the image of the Earth was a pale blue dot in the picture frame. There were no disernable features, no evidence of life, no evidence of monuments, or war, or generals, or religion... He remarked that human beings are so inconsequential that our presense is invisible from a distance that is a mere stone throw's away from our abode when it comes to galactic standards. Heck, even the pictures taken from geo stationary orbits have features that can be recognized as deserts, grasslands, rainforests, oceans... but you cant make out cities. You cant tell where we have built skyscrapers, or where we have mined this planet to the deepest recesses our technology would permit us... "our statecraft is just not good enough to leave a recognizable feature"... and yet, consider the blood shed by the generals to gain control of a fraction of the surface are of the "pale blue dot"... the atrocities committed in achieving recognition on that pale blue dot. on the scheme of things... we are inconsequential... mere itenerants on this planet. our home has existed for over 5 billion years and we have been present to witness only the last 10000 of those. and our home will continue to exist for another 5 billion years... eons after we have come and gone... i think any talk of us being here for a purpose is way too presumptuous. our greatest impact on this planet in the past 1000 years of mechanization has been to raise the global temperature by 1.5 degree celsius and that alone is causing havoc for our existence. purpose? heck we are akin to that moth that lives its entire day long life in the confines of some bloke's terrace garden...

[THX_1138]

May be the creator knows better than some of us, now if I say i studied engineering and the day i passed my exam , I died . So may be others can say what an utter waste of his studies. We have been sent to this world for some purpose and things have been created around for certain reason. Scientist are known to be intelligent but they can't figure out why a person sleeps in the night.They cant solve the mystery of Death , why does a person die after a certain period of time. And believe me a person is born to die As a very famous quote which says " Life is uncertain but death is certain"

Those questions have been answered for quite some time mate... Our bodies need rest. At night they recover the lost revenue... muscle cells are rebuilt, bone tissue is repaired, pancreas replaces the stomach lining, the liver cleanses our blood, nutrients are distributed and our brain gets an opportunity to commit the neural pathways to long term memory. and we die because our body is incapable of complete regeneration. Our pancreas replaces our stomach lining every day, the lining of our intestines every week, the entire body every 7 years... but the system is imperfect. waste accumulates. some cells are not properly replaced, and the collective effect of contaminants causes our eventual mortality. our bodies are otherwise capable of surviving some 160 odd years if the metabolic rate is maintained and a toxic free environment available. we pretty much die of slow poisoning.

[mhr123]

Those questions have been answered for quite some time mate... Our bodies need rest. At night they recover the lost revenue... muscle cells are rebuilt' date=' bone tissue is repaired, pancreas replaces the stomach lining, the liver cleanses our blood, nutrients are distributed and our brain gets an opportunity to commit the neural pathways to long term memory. [/quote'] Even though i am shifting my house today still i love to discuss on these kind of topics Brother the Question is why do we tend to sleep, imagine if we r sitting completely idle on our sofa set virtually doing nothing everything is served to us by the servant , after a while u would start Dozing and virtually go to sleep. Still is unanswered by any scientist few have tried but still they are also unsure ''It may be the biggest open question in biology,'' said Dr. Allan Rechtschaffen, a sleep expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. Scientists' ignorance about one of life's most basic activities is not for lack of trying. Fifty years of sleep research have ruled out some possibilities and yielded a variety of intriguing leads. But the researchers who bragged, at a conference in the early 1970's, that the secret of sleep would be theirs by the millennium have had to revise their estimates. ''We were too optimistic,'' said Dr. Michel Jouvet, a professor emeritus at Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences who attended that long-ago meeting. ''The brain is more complicated than we though What is it about sleep that makes it essential to life? Experts say that, despite widespread belief, it is not simply the fact that humans and other animals need rest. ''You can rest all you like and you still need sleep,'' Dr. Rechtschaffen said. ''It's clear,'' said Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a Harvard sleep researcher, that sleep is ''not just to get you off the street and save you a few calories.'' Dr. Hobson; Dr. Robert Stickgold, also of Harvard; and other experts have argued that REM sleep helps consolidate memory and advance learning, and a number of studies have examined this premise, including two reports published in the journal Nature last month. In the meantime, the search continues. The answer, experts say, may turn out to be something obvious or something not yet dreamed of. ''There is something tremendous out there,'' Dr. Rechtschaffen said, ''and we just haven't found it.''

and we die because our body is incapable of complete regeneration. Our pancreas replaces our stomach lining every day' date=' the lining of our intestines every week, the entire body every 7 years... but the system is imperfect. waste accumulates. some cells are not properly replaced, and the collective effect of contaminants causes our eventual mortality. our bodies are otherwise capable of surviving some 160 odd years if the metabolic rate is maintained and a toxic free environment available. we pretty much die of slow poisoning.[/quote'] Phil Mixter here at WSU he studies the immune system. He says there are two kinds of cell death. The kind he studies is called "necrosis." Necrosis comes from the Greek word for death, or actually "causing to die." Necrosis happens when something goes wrong with the cell, such as through disease or injury. But there's another kind of cell death, called "apoptosis." In Greek, apoptosis means "falling off," as leaves do in autumn. We use the word to describe "programmed cell death." Every cell seems to have a lifespan, says Professor Mixter. Each cell's lifespan is programmed a little differently according to its purpose. Some cells in your immune system last only two or three days. Your body is constantly making more of them. Not only are cells programmed to die, but their death is sometimes necessary for plants and animals to grow and develop. For example, the cells at the base of leaves on deciduous trees are programmed to die each fall. The cells die, the leaves fall, and the tree grows new leaves the next spring. http://www.wsu.edu/DrUniverse/death1.html There is obviously someone who has programmed our cells to die... he is our creator and best programmer.

[cochise]

lol good one... i bet einstein at some point said to himself... whats will all this quantum physics crap! i wish i had just majored in engineering!

He did in fact. He never liked it.... Pity. So you didn't just do engineering... Are you a Physicist? What branch, if so and if I may ask?

[THX_1138]

He did in fact. He never liked it.... Pity. So you didn't just do engineering... Are you a Physicist? What branch, if so and if I may ask?

actually i am an engineer and a mathematician... but i took a couple of classes in quantum physics because it was either than or freshman biology and chemistry. nothing too advance though... modern physics (2 semester), two labs where we reinvented the wheel (milikan's oil drop experiment, rutherford's gold foil scattering etc etc), and then two classes in applying this knowledge to other disciplines. one in astro physics (pretty much did all of Modern Astrophysics by Carrol and Ostlie, and luckily just the year after they published the updated version the one with dark matter and dark energy discussions), and a class in Wave mechanics.

[cochise]

I see...so you are in your undergraduate years? Very good. Keep the inquisitive mind. Did you check out Godel? Have a read of his work...it's fascinating. What maths are you doing? I recommend topology, if you are interested. Should you be further interested physics...I can share with you the benefit of my experience maybe, to point you in the direction you may be interested in. Whoops! I may have misread that...you wrote in past tense and may be long past your undergrad years. Apologies if so.

[THX_1138]

I see...so you are in your undergraduate years? Very good. Keep the inquisitive mind. Did you check out Godel? Have a read of his work...it's fascinating. What maths are you doing? I recommend topology, if you are interested. Should you be further interested physics...I can share with you the benefit of my experience maybe, to point you in the direction you may be interested in. Whoops! I may have misread that...you wrote in past tense and may be long past your undergrad years. Apologies if so.

nah i graduated a year ago... i m doing my masters in mathematics.

[THX_1138]

I see...so you are in your undergraduate years? Very good. Keep the inquisitive mind. Did you check out Godel? Have a read of his work...it's fascinating. What maths are you doing? I recommend topology, if you are interested. Should you be further interested physics...I can share with you the benefit of my experience maybe, to point you in the direction you may be interested in. Whoops! I may have misread that...you wrote in past tense and may be long past your undergrad years. Apologies if so.

actually i was trying to avoid topology. in fact i was apprehensive of analysis and algebra as i had not had a sound rooting in those fields and postponed those classes till the very last year when it was absolute compulsory that i take them or not graduate! i specialized in a considerably easier field: probability and random processes.

[cochise]

Done any statistical mechanics? It could be interesting to you since you're into that side more. Anyhow, better not get off topic too much. Do give Godel a read though...his work and those that built upon it puts the overall effort of formally encapsulating all of physical reality by logic into perspective.

[CC1981]

Name one...

1. Nothing in evolution states about how exactly conciousness develops. 2. How do you judge the intelligence of a dead creature ?? Evolution tries a lot of absurdity like measuring its cranial size, etc. but its already well known in TODAY's world that brain-mass does not correlate to intelligence. 3. Evolution relies a lot on taxonomy...which in itself is a vague categorization of species, with taxonomies changing all the time and not having anything concrete to go by.