Pimping God

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Last point first:

No. The first self propagating organic molecules did not have a cell wall, no cillia no fancy mechanism for converting the energy of sunshine into chemical energy, no vacuoles, no nucleus, no means of propulsion, no means of defence or attack. They were simply strands of organic molecules that induced other organic chemicals in the organic soup to fuse and form a duplicate of themselves. There is nothing unlikely about this. In the oceans of the primitive Earth there were billions upon billions of different types of chemical reactions going on all the time between the different constituents of the organic soup. It seems inevitable and highly probable that at some point one of the billions of types of chemicals formed had the innate ability to duplicate itself in this way.

Once of course this precursor had formed it was only the beginning, variants of the chemical strands would be more successful at propagating than others and some would be able to convert other forms to their form, or for certain differences to mean they were less likely to be "eaten" by other molecule chains. The whole process evolved a step at a time. Cell walls, cillia and the myriad other bits of cell functionality all came much later. The simple process of feedback making the more successful clumps of organic matter dominant over time. Literally survival of the "fittest" arrangement of organic molecules.



The phrase organic soup is used to refer to the oceans having an increasingly large quantity of complex organic molecules over time. These organic molecules were produced by natural and environmental forces such as lightening and hydrothermal activity - basically anywhere there is a source of carbon such as CO2 or CH4 and a hot enough heat source these will react to form a random assortment of organic molecules.



DNA comes further down the time line. My memory is a bit hazy here but I think RNA came before DNA and RNA came from more crude arrangements of organic matter. The complex cells of today are not those found at the very beginning of the evolutionary process.

I started this thread partly on the basis that the God that is presented in Abrahamic religions is a distillation of centuries of obsolete understandings of the universe and persistence of moralities that are and through the centuries have been ignored because they either are ancient tribal traditions that no longer hold or are so out of synchronization with basic human behavior that they have no possibility if being maintained, and partly out of the hope that original minds might come up with something more plausible and perhaps generally acceptable to people with modern outlooks. I did not envision a series of confessions as to whether people did or did not swallow whole the ancient package of nonsense that now pervades most religions.

Well, um.... that is a matter that Christian theology usually solves and defines. The issue is that you cannot think of God as perfect and God as flawed, and you admitted to the latter.

The issue with "God as a logical answer" is that often God is seen as a space filler for the unknown, as noted with the idea of a God of the gaps.


Well, you are right, it is no more or less logical than that. The issue is that it proposes an additional entity, "God", and it does not fit the imperfections we observe in nature.(note, before imperfection is asked to be defined, we can define imperfection as a loss in efficiency in design without apparent reason)

Tallyman:

Ok, so random proteins are self-replicating. How would those proteins group together in such a way to create RNA/DNA? A complex system is weakest during construction, so as more proteins grouped together, the whole would become more fragile until construction was complete. I compare it to building a house, while framing it, a large number of braces are needed to keep everything together.

And even if a RNA/DNA strand was completed, without all the other mechanisms in a cell, it's worthless. RNA/DNA is an instruction manual, not a factory. So all the other bits would have to come together from complete random chance. It's possible, just unlikely.

The "organic soup" bit was joke.

Sand:

Well, if I generally accept the moralities as laid down in the Bible, should I not also accept some of the other stuff in there? Should I not consider the possibility that it may be correct as well?

AG:

I think God is perfect, but I do not understand perfect. Anthropomorphism, the application of human attributes to something non-human. So while I think of God as perfect, I have trouble seeing that.

So, we've agreed on the that the Creation, which requires God, is no more or less logical. Therefore we've agreed that God is a logical possibility. Your problem with God is that you think a divine creation should be perfect. I believe the Bible, which begins with the creation of a perfect world.

As for the physics of a perfect system, I don't know if that's possible. If God created a perfectly efficient system, simple human free will and random chance would erode the efficiency of that system. The only perfectly efficient system is one that is completely controlled, which negates the point of creating life.

Your definition of imperfection is nice, I concur.

Well, the issue is that if God's perfection is so distant from your ability to perceive perfection, then what distinguishes God from an omnipotent fiend? Just his word? After all, by making perfection inconceivable, you lose the ability to say that even a creature of the greatest malice couldn't call itself God.


Well, I define logical as a matter of logical possibility. I don't define logical as relating to probable or anything else. Ok, the Bible does, however, there are issues with how that goes about in displaying the world. For instance, there are issues with creations that are before a Biblical time, such as dinosaurs or trilobytes, if you take a literal genesis based upon the principle that the evening and morning in Genesis was an indicator of literalness.(Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31, appears 6 times for the 6 days) then there would be no time for either of those creatures to reasonably exist. Not only that, but the idea that the physiology of all creatures would massively change in response to eating an apple seems questionable.


The issue is that free will has little evidence for it. Neuroscience has shown that most decisions are made before people are even conscious of the choice, but free will is based upon the consciousness making that choice. Not only that, but there would be no place for free will to enter, given that the neurology of the brain follows the laws of Newtonian physics due to the size of neurons, so notions of the quantum brain are ill-founded. Finally, if you uphold that God perfectly foreknew the world, how does he get out of completely controlling it? Every minute thing he would do would create massive causal chains that he would be able to foreknow, and thus in the placement of every blade of grass, he would be completely controlling the world, just perhaps with a sloppy tool. This is a problem put forward by philosophy professor Dean Zimmerman of Rutgers University against the foreknowledge and free-will position known as Molinism. http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/zimme ... Jan-25.pdf And basically, his argument goes to show that the 2 positions are relatively incompatible due to the nature of knowledge given divine power. (just to show I am not making stuff up, I don't expect you to read a 60-70 page philosophy paper)

Semantics, I guess. What I know can't be explained, so you can say I'm a fool. Go ahead.

The book of Genesis mentions animals that would be best described as dinosaurs, the Leviathan for one. No, I don't have the verses, since I don't have a list of counter-argument verses I pulled of a website handy. I could find such a website to refute the Qu'ran, the Bible, and maybe one for that Hindu book I don't know how to spell.

If you don't have free will, then you have never made a counter-intuitive choice that took a lot of thought. I've made several of those, some of them requiring weeks of contemplation. Perhaps it was all an illusion, and I'd already made the choice.

And actually, I can't explain how or even if God has complete foreknowledge. If He did, it's paradoxical with other statements about God. I'm currently debating it with some of my friends from church.

Don't really care.


Leviathan is considered by some scholars to be part of other myths close to the same period of time. In any case, Leviathan is not in Genesis, but other parts of the Bible, such as Job. The issue is that for this to be valid, you have to posit that man and dinosaur co-existed, something I don't think any scholar supports, scholar in this case being something like a specialist in fossils, not the critical Biblical scholars.


Umm.... your argument establishes nothing. You are trying to say that a phenomenal truth exposes a necessary metaphysical truth, but if the phenomenology is wrong, then the metaphysical argument seems like it would be wrong as well.

Ok, I know, the debate between open theism, and classical theism including Calvinism.

Gotta love the "scholar" argument: Mine are acceptable, yours are not, since they believe what you believe, never mind the fact that the scholars I find acceptable agree with me. Why is biblical scholar who studies archeology less accurate than an atheist archeologist?

I should have put a question mark at the end of that. It was more of a question, really.

Well, umm.... honestly, I didn't argue the issue of Leviathan as a definitive proof "some scholars". However, the issue of the dinosaur scholar, well.... the issue isn't Christians, the issue is wackos who work for "answers in Genesis" and who spend their time distorting every bit of scientific evidence beyond it's breaking point. I don't care about the average archaeologist, because *nobody* believes that dinosaurs and people coexisted, or pretty close to nobody does. Only in a fringe group of biblicists do you find that idea.

So, the issue isn't that my scholars believe what I believe, but rather that my scholars are sane representatives of their fields, and yours would have to be insane, fringe wackos who nobody trusts or believes, except for those who believe as they do.

No. One has no validation for the other. They must be considered separately.