I apologize about this OT again but....

[Kurt B]

Superman, you must have toiled away from logic for a while because you don't understand what was done there. This is just a refresher, do not take offense.

For a given conditional statement
If (A) then (B), the contrapositive is
Not(B) implies Not(A)
The contrapositive is logically equivalent to the original statement.

Now A2:
A = The being I am thinking of does not exist
B = I am not thinking of a being
than which there can be no greater

Now, the contrapositive is Not (B) implies Not (A) which equals

I am thinking of a being than which there can be no greater implies The being I am thinking of exists.

Notice of course Not(Not(A)) = A and Not(Not(B)) = B

A2 is the crux of the argument.
However, it tries to mask the A implies B relationship (which really says if I think A then A exists) by convoluting it with negations so as to make it hard to read. Constructing the equivalent contrapositive makes it easier to read and therefore makes its true nature clear.

A2: "If The being I am thinking of does not exist, then I am not thinking of a being
than which there can be no greater"

Once again, state the logically equivalent contrapositive of A2 as you see it.

If you doubt what I'm saying, email your statement to any logic graduate student and ask them if my statement is or is not the contrapositive.

The other stuff I'll cite later. If we can't get the contrapositive situation squared away, then the discussion can't really continue because we're in two different places in our understanding of, in this case, conditional statements and their forms.




------------------
1984 Rockin' Cab
www.geocities.com/carrera_cabriolet

[Kurt B]

Adam:
Look, no offense taken. Faith is faith, you either believe or you don't. I'm not in the business of shaking people's faith. When I said "There is no God," think of that as shouting "There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
There isn't a shred of evidence for God. Much of what we see can be explained in other ways.
Some things defy explantion.
On things that defy explanation, you have two choices:
1) They defy explanation because they cannot be understood
2) They can be understood if the appropriate model is found, but that model may not be known at present.
Lastly, that I say "God does not exist" should not bother you.

According to your model of the multiverse, I will suffer an eternity of damnation for that stance: an infinitude of unrelenting torture for rejecting faith in lieu of proof.

Remember, "The LORD laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming." (Psalms 37:12)

Now let's forget about all of this religious stuff--although I'm eagerly waiting for Superman to submit his contrapositive.

[Jim T]

Originally posted by Kurt B:
Adam:
There isn't a shred of evidence for God. Much of what we see can be explained in other ways.

I studied, on and off, for a couple of years to see if there is any real evidence of a God. Starting from the classics (St Anselm, Aquinas, etc.) up to more modern thinkers, like CS Lewis (who's writing is supposedly so compelling that it has converted thousands of non-believers). I was not compelled by any of them. The old "logic" philosophers for the reasons you cite (their logic has all been shown to be invalid). CS Lewis was just plain ridiculous, IMO, and would actually tend to make one question one's belief.

Here are the two things that struck me the most. I'd like your (and anyone else's) thoughs on these:

1) Man (and the universe) got here some how. Well, how? To answer that, I looked to science. I must confess, that was tough. I didn't really fully even understand Steven Hawkins' book, which is supposedly easy for the non-scientist. Einstein's and others were even harder. I came to the conclusion that I will never understand the universe and how it came to be. But, what struck me was that those scientists, who are much smarter than me on this issue, ALL believe in a God (Hawkins, Einstein, etc.). These are scientists, who are brilliant and who understand logic and objectivity, and the history of the universe. Yet they believe in God, who created the universe. Why?

(On a similar note, I read a quote from a university president, something like "When we have debates, and we need an atheist, we can't find one in the Science dept, we need to go to the Philosophy dept for that!).

2) How did Man get here, if not by God (or aliens, or something like that?) I suppose the answer is evolution. But, how long has man been evolving? Something like 5 million years? Less? (The dinos were 40 million years ago, right?). Anyways, in the context of the history of the universe, man has only been around a short time.

Query: Now, evolution is but a series of "mistakes" that allow for positive mutations and the evolution of the species. Could man have evolved from dirt or a lizard or whatever in such a short amount of time? I think it was Hawkings who said no. The quote was something like: "The odds of man evolving in that amount of time, to the stage man is at, would be like a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and accidentially assembling a 747!"

The other thing: Why is it only humans that evolved so fast? All of the other animal kingdom seems to evolve at roughly the same rate. Yet, we all started from the same evolutionary material. Yet, the animal world is divided into 2 categories: Human and everything else. Why such a huge gap, if we all came from the same thing? That is not really explained by pure evolution theory.

Neither of those 2 things above *prove* the existence of God, much less the God worshipped by Christianity. But those things do give me pause and make me hesitate to say there is no god (at least if the term "God" is used to describe some kind of force guiding or controlling the universe, that is totally beyond our comprehension).

(I also have some other issues, but I don't have the time right at this moment, but I'll get back to them. I love this subject).


[This message has been edited by Jim T (edited 10-10-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Jim T (edited 10-10-2001).]

[Kurt B]

Interesting. I wonder how many people really think humans aren't the product of breeding and random mutation?

Why are scientists digging up bones and searching for our father's father's father...who might have been a different species, ultimately to decide how humans and other life evolved.

You should stop that funding because it only answers the question of HOW we evolved. It does not in any way attempt to reconcile how God created everything in 7 days!

Also bring down Hubble. We don't need it if we aren't trying to answer the question of how the Universe began some 21? billion years ago. God created it. We have the answer. Spend the money somewhere else.

Same with high speed accelerators that attempt to unlock the states of matter and energy at very high speeds and very high temperatures. These are not to make weapons or cure disease or even get to other planets. They do no make cars safer and cleaner, and they do not feed people. They attempt to solve the mystery of how the universe began from a singularity. That is all. We don't need them if God created everything, we have the answer. Cut the funding.

That's up to you. There are more of you than there are of me. You ought to stop this kind of secular, wasteful research then since the answers already exist in the translated English of once Arabic and Hebrew texts.

[Z-man]

Kurtb:
If I may address some of your points. My intention is not to offend, just to 'debate'. I hope I do not step over my boundaries....

Just because I believe God created the universe, that doesn't mean that I don't long to know more about it, and possibly how it was made. That doesn't make me deny my God, just makes me wonder how it all comes into place.

As far as achaeology goes: digging in the dirt in search of mysteries goes far beyond just looking for that missing link. I love to find out about ancient peoples and how they existed.

I do not think that this "secular" research is wasteful. Just because something is trying to prove something (like evolution...etc), doesn't mean it's bad. Who knows, maybe the Hubble will one day capture images of the throne of the Almighty...

Just my $0.42. (BTW: 42 is the answer to life the universe and everything :smile: )
-Z.

[Kurt B]

Anyway, for my part, I have a battle on too many fronts at the moment. I could discuss most of them verbally, but everytime I turn around, there's another 5 paragraphs of comments I wish I had time to deal with. I wrote the original spew to Cabman as a JOKE not wanting in any way to incite a riot.

It was all a preface for the 'Sincerely God AKA programmer Bob' punchline--you know, we could objects in a programmatic simulation and would not be able to prove it one way or another.

Then it turned into this. I'm for formal logic and math. Everett's many minds/worlds theory, probability and wave collapse; nanotechnology, science. I have no interest in making enemies with every Christian or pissing people off.

P.S. Z-man hahah on the throne comment, Good luck. And 42 = the hitchiker's guide allusion




[This message has been edited by Kurt B (edited 10-10-2001).]

[Kurt B]

Jim T
"The odds of man evolving in that amount of time, to the stage man is at, would be like a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and accidentially assembling a 747!"

No one has a theory of evolution so precise as to assign a probability to it. I seriously question statements like this. People can't assign a good estimate as to when the next earthquake will happen, but some guy knows the probability of humans evolving on earth?!
I doubt that.

We only know evolution as a theory based upon the fact that animals breed, DNA is mutated, changes are passed on, and there are animals in the ground that weren't there before and aren't there afterward.

There are two ways of attacking the finding of animals living on the planet for X years, but not before and not afterward
1) They 'appeared' out of nowhere via God or something
2) They were the descendants of another species that gradually changed one generation after another into what they are in the rock, then for some reason they died out.

We also know that animals tended to become more complex over time. Now, which of these 1) or 2) is chosen is entirely up to the reader.
Obviously, I'm partial to 2). I can explain 2) roughly. Someone might even assign a probability to it and maybe even demonstrate it in many years to come. When you choose 1) there no explantion, no reproducibility, no method; it's like magic



[This message has been edited by Kurt B (edited 10-10-2001).]

[Z-man]

KurtB:
Don't worry about pissing people off.
I quite enjoy such discussions. As long people understand that this is an exchange of ideas, a presentation of views, and not an all out religious/philosophical fist-fight, I think everything will be fine.

Really, I think this is fun! As long as we stay level-headed like so far.

Thanks for your input.
-Zoltan.

[stray15]

Thanks for the good reading folks!

[Kurt B]

Now I realized, I really have problems with a 747 being constructed by a hurricane. I'd really like to see how this number was arrived at.

Keep in mind, this number is significantly easier to get than that of evolution creating man because, after all, we KNOW how to build a 747.

Some key points:
At what point during a hurricane are temperatures reached that will allow wires to be soldered in place? Is there some kind of mini-fusion that occurs in these winds that I'm not aware of? What about welds? Clearly, very high temperatures will have to be reached to apply welds. I'd like to know what physical process allows for this at any time during a hurricane, nevermind that the right parts get welded together the right way.

Soldering: is there solder, and a plugged in soldering gun also in the mix? The temperatures most likely could not be reached on a fine enough scale to just solder the wires to their components and not damage the equipment, so I conclude there's a gun and solder also in the maelstrom.

Now, does the hurricane also have to generate some A/C current that acts on the gun as it randomly floats into each soldered position, or is the gun plugged in, and if so, how long is the cord?

I'd like to see how these computations were determined.

Then the issue of rivets and bolts. Once I get the details on how the wire soldering numbers were computed ( and I'd like the physical process that allows for it), I'd like to know how any nuts are applied to bolts.

What aspect of the hurricane torques these nuts? I'd like to know Any wind that can torque a 13mm nut into place. If not, then the wrenches are there, and they fly about with the appropriate angular velocity?

Same number for the Shuttle, or not? To what degree (proportion) is the shuttle more difficult to build with a hurricane than a 747? Maybe evolution is more like building the Shuttle than a 747. I'd like to know why a 747 and not a commuter plane or the shuttle.

I finally came to the conclusion that the author of that statement pulled it out of his arse.

[adamnitti]

kurt b:

i personally don't believe you are damned to hell or torture or suffering or anything like that, but right now you and i are just in 2 different places with all this. however, i really and truly believe that if you accepted the possibility, you would find the evidence you were looking for. it would probably be evidence i wouldn't even understand.

anyways, i'm so glad i didn't offend you. i find this debating stuff kind of fun, actually, and i always learn something from it. i'm especially fascinated by all of your knowledge. man, i wish i could remember the name of the website, but you've got to see it. it is a website dedicated to scientific evidence of god stuff, etc... i think it's run by some heavy duty scientists who have become 'convinced' through their research. the website is updated with significant developments and proof almost on a daily basis. there are a lot of scientists involved with this. they're speaking in all sorts of jargon that i'm sure you could understand. i promise i'll look it up again and forward you the url, if you are at all interested. for now, i've become exhausted trying to keep up with the detail of these posts, so i'm going to temporarily back out of the god debate until i have some more energy... thanks for the dialog, my friend!!!

sincerely,
adam


------------------
Adam Nitti
ajnitti@mindspring.com
www.adamnitti.com
'85 911 Carrera Coupe
'72 BMW 2002tii
'97 Grand Cherokee Limited
Peachstate PCA member

[This message has been edited by adamnitti (edited 10-10-2001).]

[Jim T]

Kurt, I think the 747 thing was not meant to be literal. But, in any event, you are focusing on the wrong thing.

The evolution question is one that I am curious on. It should also be an easy answer. I think we know very roughly how long it takes things to get from one stage to another in basic natural evolution. Sure, we may be off a million years here and there, but we have an idea.

We know the dinos were 40 million years ago, and there was no man around at that time. We know this from digging up and carbon dating fossils and bones, etc.

We also know the dinos and just about all other life forms were wiped out in the last 40 million years. So, that sets an outer parameter.

So, the specific questions, which no one has addressed yet:

1. Is it possible that a creature as complex as man could have evolved by standard, "accidental" evolution and mutations in the relatively short amount of time that it apparently happened over?

2. If so, why is it only man that evolved so far? I assume at some point all living creatures came from the same primordial soup. Yet, why is only man so far ahead of its next evolutionry creature? That does not seem to make scientific sense. I mean, there is not really that much difference between a monkey, dog, lizard or snake. What is the scientific explantation for man being so far ahead of all other evolutionary creatures? I mean, think about it. A monkey is our closest genetic cousin. A monkey can do very little, has no control over its environment, and is at the mercy of nature. Humans have developed the world, the internet, harnessed nature and gone to the moon.

Those are not rhetorical questions. I'd really like the answer. And, there may be an easy scientific answer. For example, science may think that 5 million years is plenty of time for a monkey to evolve, by accidential and fortuitous mutations, into a human. That is information I have not seen, but would like to know.

Finally, I am all for the research into our evolutionary history and the history of our universe. So was Einstein, Hawkings, and every other great physisist throughout history. Obviously, since they devoted their entire, almost unimaginatively brilliant lives to science. Yet, for all they knew about the science of the universe and the history of man, they ALL believed in a god. These are people whose very essence was grounded in reason and logic, not faith, yet they believed in God. What do you attribute that to?

All of these questions are legitimate questions, and I don't have the answer, and don't even purport to take a position one way or another on. But, I would be very interested to hear answers or even theories as to those questions.

[This message has been edited by Jim T (edited 10-10-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Jim T (edited 10-10-2001).]

[Kurt B]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jim T:
Kurt, I think the 747 thing was not meant to be literal. But, in any event, you are focusing on the wrong thing

Okay. I agree. But there are lots of people spouting things like that that aren't true. We can't evaluate any evolutionary probability directly when we don't understand the process. We have an idea as to how it works, or indicators to the process (fossil record) but the exact process can't be replicated in advanced vertabrates because evolution is very, very slow.

This is how I'd tackle these questions in a bathroom discussion of Kurt versus Kurt.



1. Is it possible that a creature as complex as man could have evolved by standard, "accidental" evolution and mutations in the relatively short amount of time that it apparently happened over?


This isn't a short time from my understanding because once you get dogs and other mammals with centralized intelligence, all the right senses, you're almost to humans--I mean the basic structure and engine is in place.

The biggest leaps are from prokaryotes (bacteria) to complex single organism collections of(eukaryotic) cells, and then to simple creatures. This took billions of years. Once you get animals breeding, evolution is going to move faster since they exchange DNA.

Let's note that the nearest primates share 97% of our DNA. These are primates that we did NOT evolve from. They simply came from common ancestors back down the road. Homo Sapiens Sapiens have been around for 70,000? years. Now, we know that our ancestors ran into Neanderthals in Europe. Neanderthals are not homo sapiens(2) either, they're a different species. We ran into them, and they disappeared. So we know there were humanoid variants that intersected with our ancestors.



2. If so, why is it only man that evolved so far? I assume at some point all living creatures came from the same primordial soup. Yet, why is only man so far ahead of its next evolutionry creature?

It depends on what your gimmick is. Of all other animals, we had the intelligence gimmick.
Intelligence was our key to victory over everything else. Dolphins are smart, but they don't need to be really smart to survive (look at seals, not brilliant). They just need to be smarter than the one chasing them, and smarter than fish. Humans only have smarts. In any conflict we die fast. We cannot survive in our environment (the cold) without modifying the environment.

It also happens that if intelligence is the key, then it's easy to wipe out any competition. Neanderthals might have bred with humans as some think, but mostly they were driven off and starved to extinction by humans who had stark social advantages.


I mean, there is not really that much difference between a monkey, dog, lizard or snake. What is the scientific explantation for man being so far ahead of all other evolutionary creatures?


Again, any nub of competition from other really smart mammals that tried to compete directly, would have been killed off like Neanderthal. Monkeys, remaining in trees, faster and out of the way, were okay. If they had started building huts and taking food, they'd have been hunted down and killed.

If they don't interfere with humans by directly competing and not being a major food source, they live. Mammoths were likely finished off in North America by the natives who lived here. It took thousands of years, but this is the likely scenario.

Suppose smart reptiles lived near humans. Smart enough to compete. Now one of two things would happen: they'd have killed all of us, or we'd have killed all of them.

There is no other resolution for groups competing for the same resources in the same places if they cannot mingle and breed.
Keep in mind, a lot of very smart people think that if dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out and given small mammals that opening they needed, the smartest animals would be some genius reptilian creatures, and mammals would be represented only by small rodents and things like that.


Scientiests believing in God....Hawkings, Einstein etc.
What do you attribute that to?


Only scientiets of the last 1 or 2 centuries count in this matter. Way Back, when Newton ran from Plague, there really wasn't much outside of God to solve problems. I mean, in the absence of science, I'd be in church too, bleeding myself and burning witches to avoid plague. But science tells me to avoid rats or take antibiotics. So keep this in mind when dealing with ancients.

As far as Hawking. This is not Hawking's stance. He answers the question "As to why the Universe bothered to exist at all, that's something for theologians" I'm paraphrasing here.
There is a difference between sort of believing in God, being a born again Christian, and being an Atheist.

The fact is, these men do NOT believe that God created the universe in 7 days. They, by the very nature of their studies, are looking for a rational solution.

Hawking and Einstein are still secular scientists. They were not trying to prove the Earth is 5,000 years old (like creationists), they did not dispute evolution, they did not suggest the universe was created by God in a process that cannot be explained.

Einstein never explained results by saying "God did it." He said "God does not play dice," but what he meant was, "I Really don't think quantum effects can go no further than a probability model." We know, he was wrong. It turns out, God does play dice.

To me, there is a world just as great ahead. Evolution is over as the primary means by which animals advance. They'll still change as long as they breed, but technological evolution will replace evolution as a means for posterity to improve--engineering replaces random changes.

Humans are not the last step here. They're just the last naturally occuring lifeform in a long chain. The future descendants of earth will probably be those engineered by humans. And very far down the road, they will be those engineered by those who were engineered by those who were engineered....back to the first synthetic life we created.

I'm sure humans will still be here too. Wanting for nothing. All their needs met, just living, but not as players on the frontier--really incapable of even understanding the problems those creatures will face.

That, to me, is much more tangible and exciting than God.

[schnell]

I have never seen such well-worded, and thought out, level-headed rational discussions on a car realted discussion board, in the off-topic forum. Thanks for the great read!

[adrian jaye]

Hmm, what is it that's said, don't argue politics or religion with people ???

Problem with this discussion about the existance of God. Is that "we" are trying to discuss something that is beyond understanding.

'cos if we could understand God, Then in effect we would be God.

Lewis Carol did have a great quote, which i'll try and find.

But a good analogy would be..that do fish in a fishbowl know or understand what is outside there envoirnment. Do they know of cable TV, internet and space travel. To a fish would we not be "god like" ??

Well my friend guess what we are all "fish" when we can view our perspective from outside of our paradigm then we will know the answer.

And as man can not stand outside the universe and time we can't. In the grand scale of thing's you could say that..

It's more important wether God believed in you as opposed to wether you believe in God.

There are way too many thing's that have happened in this world and to myself that negates God.

peace out !

Jeremiah 23 16
This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.



[This message has been edited by adrian jaye (edited 10-11-2001).]

[Z-man]

Originally posted by Kurt B:

The fact is, these men do NOT believe that God created the universe in 7 days. They, by the very nature of their studies, are looking for a rational solution.

The fact that the Biblical account of creation states that 7 days it took for God to create the universe is an interesting issue. May I offer a couple of explanations:

1. The concept of 'yom' The Hebrew word used in these accounts is 'yom' which can be translated as 'period of time.' In certain cases in the Bible (and I believe ancient Hebrew texts) 'yom' did mean a day: 24 hours. Other passages use 'yom' to designate a longer period of time. There is a passage about a Jewish king who ruled for a day (ie 'yom') and the passages goes on to describe how many battles he fought in, how many kingdoms he conquered...etc. (I apologize for not having the exact quote or king, but I have read it.) So in a sense, it can be said that "God created the universe in 7 'yoms' or a period of seven units of time.

2. Often numbers are used figuratively in the Bible. The numbers 3 and 7 often are used to signify a concept of completeness, of wholeness. The number 6 often represents man. The numbers 12 and 40 also occur often. So when we read that God created the world in 7 days, the significance is this: God's work was complete. Perfect. This is a more figurative interpretation of the passage.

3. God is outside time: "A day is as a thousand in the eyes of the Lord" (my paraphrase). So if God is outside time, to Him, time doesn't matter. If He wanted to, He could have created the earth in 7 seconds! The interesting thing here is that some of Einstein's work can actually shed 'light' on this: the whole special relativity and how time/space/light interact, and how time is not a constant. (Sorry: getting a little off topic here!)

-----------------------------------------
Now, regarding the whole 'evolved' 747 argument: let's make it simpler:
Take a watch apart, and put it into a paper bag. Start shaking. How long before the watch is put back together? Mind you, there are no rivets, no electricity required in this 'evolution model.' But note that in order for the watch to get back together, not only does piece A and piece B have to come together, they have to stay together until piece C and piece D join them, and so on.
Isn't that what evolution is saying happened?
-------------------------------------------

I agree with what Adrian is saying: we are like fish in a fishbowl. Often the mysteries of God and this universe will remain a mystery to us. But that shouldn't keep us from searching: it's part of our nature.

Your comments are welcome.
-Zoltan.

[adrian jaye]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Z-man:
God is outside time: "A day is as a thousand in the eyes of the Lord" (my paraphrase). So if God is outside time, to Him, time doesn't matter. If He wanted to, He could have created the earth in 7 seconds! The interesting thing here is that some of Einstein's work can actually shed 'light' on this: the whole special relativity and how time/space/light interact, and how time is not a constant. (Sorry: getting a little off topic here!)


Yep, this is a good point. Time is relevant depending on your frame of reference. The closer you get to the speed of light, time slows down. So who's to say that God's "day" is 24 hours ? IT's only 24 hour's to us 'cos thats how we measure time.

Check the creation in Genesis, if you were to make "a world (or universe)" that is how you would go about it. Though not in "our" time scales. OK there are a lot of metaphor's and stuff. But the more you try and disprove theses thing's the more likly you end up proving them. Science is doing this all the time.

There are more thing's in heaven and earth than we as mere mortals can explain.

[Jim T]

Kurt, thanks. I think we are getting to the crux of my pondering. Unfortunately, I still can't really put those questions to rest:

1. "This isn't a short time from my understanding because once you get dogs and other mammals with centralized intelligence, all the right senses, you're almost to humans--I mean the basic structure and engine is in place."

I agree with that, but that sort of raises more questions than answers. In many ways we are structually the same as other mammels. Yet, humans, one single species of thousands, is infinetely more intelligent than the next smartest species. Why? Isn't that unexpected and unexplained by pure evolutionary theory, why one of thousands of species would for some reason "break from the pack" and become infinitely more evolved?

2. "It depends on what your gimmick is. Of all other animals, we had the intelligence gimmick."

I can buy this, to some extent. But the extent of human intelligence over all other creatures is a hell of a gimmick! Kind of overkill, from a strict scientific/survival perspective, don't you think? (Kind of like if a moose had nuclear antlers!). The ability to create amazing art, go to the moon, build monuments, etc. are way beyond survival. You are right, all animals have survival gimmicks, and evolve and improve those gimmicks over time. Is it scientifically defensible that while the moose species grew bigger horns and lizards lost their legs and became snakes, humans somehow went from huddling in a cave hitting rocks together, to creating the computer, Internet, aircraft, spaceships, nuclear bombs, etc? All based on a series of genetic accidents over a relatively short amount of time?

3. "Again, any nub of competition from other really smart mammals that tried to compete directly, would have been killed off like Neanderthal. Monkeys, remaining in trees, faster and out of the way, were okay. If they had started building huts and taking food, they'd have been hunted down and killed."

This is an interesting theory. That at some point humans got a little ahead of all other species, and used that small advantage to supress the others, and stunted the evolution of all the others. Except I suppose that during the vast majority of time that humans were evolving (probably something like 99.9999% of the timeline of human evolution) humans had no way to travel, other than by foot, there were probably not a lot of humans on the earth, and there were lots of spaces where other species probably never even came in contact with a human. Yet, these species, untouched by man, never evolved like man.

4. "The fact is, these men do NOT believe that God created the universe in 7 days. They, by the very nature of their studies, are looking for a rational solution.

Hawking and Einstein are still secular scientists. They were not trying to prove the Earth is 5,000 years old (like creationists), they did not dispute evolution, they did not suggest the universe was created by God in a process that cannot be explained.

Einstein never explained results by saying "God did it." etc."

All that is 100% true. Yet it is also true that Hawkings and Einstein, brilliant men of science, reason and logic, with the highest levels of human understanding about the creation of the universe, believed in the existence of God.

[adrian jaye]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jim T:
1. "This isn't a short time from my understanding because once you get dogs and other mammals with centralized intelligence, all the right senses, you're almost to humans--I mean the basic structure and engine is in place."

All that is 100% true. Yet it is also true that Hawkings and Einstein, brilliant men of science, reason and logic, with the highest levels of human understanding about the creation of the universe, believed in the existence of God.


There is only 1% difference in the DNA between human beings an Apes. But "we" are widely different from them !


Just to throw this in.

Humans are the only animal's on earth that

1) Cry
2) Laugh
3) Kiss
4) Copulate for the "joy" of it, as opposed for reproduction
5) Kill each other for no good reason
6) Kill animals for sport as opposed to eat
7) Can change his envoirment
8) Has the capacity for great compassion
9) Has the capability for great horror
10) freewill

Emotions.....

The ability to love one another and his creator.

Word up
and it has been spoken

Adrian



[This message has been edited by adrian jaye (edited 10-11-2001).]

[Superman]

Okay, Kurt.

"If the being I am thinking of does not exist, then I am not thinking of a being than which there can be no greater." The contrapositive is "If I am thinking of a being than which there can be no greater, then the being must exist." This is a true statement, if you accept that a being which does not exist is not a being than which there can be no greater.

This returns us to the observation that spin these statements around as much as you like, but in order to refute the argument you must demonstrate falseness in one or more axioms, or or go straight for the horns and show how the conclusion does not logically flow from them.

I will admit that it has been more than twenty years since my last Logic class. On the other hand, logic is logic. And either the conclusion does not follow the premises by deduction, or at least one premise is false. Which one is it?

I suspect you are using the Kantian refute, though you have not simplified to the point where I can see it. Kant said that "existence" is a unique term in that you cannot just toss it around in this way. You cannot (he posed) say "If this does exist" or "If this does not exist." He knew this was weak, and so do I.

As far as evolution is concerned, or natural selection, certainly this is a mechanism that seems to be at work in nature. Useful characteristics improve survival and reproduction rates. Sure. But one of the really striking characteristics of scientific induction is that it is regularly found to be wrong. Science learns to predict stuff, but almost every time new data is collected, those theories are found to be off target and theories are re-adjusted. Nature, it seems, constantly surprizes scientists. So, while I notice that some folks are convinced that the presence of life and human life can be wholly explained through chemistry, I also notice that if they are eventually proved to have been correct about that conclusion, it will be the first time in scientific history that a theory has transitioned into knowdedge and truth so smoothly. I suspect that there are surprizes out there waiting to be found, and that this chemistry theory of life will have its speed bumps, as has every other scientific theory. Bear in mind that we now know that Newton was wrong. His calculations are reliable if "close" is "good enough." But Einstein and the quantum physics has discovered that what we once considered to be laws, we now find are "habits."

I think the question of how did the universe come to exist without being created is pretty alive, or should be, in the minds of men. I also notice Berkeley's 'gambler's proof' is probably sufficient (the penalty for rejecting God if He exists is more severe than the penalty for accepting Him if he does not).

Someone here may find it interesting that the term "formless and void" or "void and without form" in the second sentence of the Bible comes from a unique Hebrew term (tohu wabohu) that is used only one other place in The Book. Its specific meaning refers to something that was once rich and beautiful, but was laid waste, or annihilated. This is the essence of the "Gap Theory."

And finally, while those scientists did not overtly accept such difficulties as the universe being created in seven days, neither did they reject them. The universe may have been created in seven days. They are seeking answers. So, let's just leave the Hubble up there for a while longer. I enjoy the beautiful picture and I am not afraid of information.

Again Kurt, respectfully, some of us are saying that certain things have to be believed to be seen. This is not just a brainwashing thing. After making a decision to believe, you would be able to make greater sense of the world. Some contradictions will be impossible to overcome unless you do. The view inside the tent is very different from the view from outside the tent. And you cannot see the view inside the tent, from the outside. It's WAY mor elegant than you think, this view inside the faith 'tent.'

It is a good discussion and I am glad for it. Thanks, dudes. I respect you all.