Is nature's beauty proof of God

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WhatTheHey
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19 Jun 2021, 11:20 pm

The Christian New Testament writes (as just one example):

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse (Romans 1:19-20)

The beauty of nature - as well as it's unimaginable complexity, when you look into the physics of the natural world - speaks of God's original design.

The ugliness of nature speaks of the breaking of that design. The New Testament also says (for example):

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:19-20)

[edit: typo]

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Cornflake
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20 Jun 2021, 7:05 am

No. Nature's beauty is proof of our ability to find joy and aesthetic comfort in the natural world and the incredible interlinked mechanisms of life and change - and is no more valid than the ugly, cruel aspects which somehow get glossed over. Two sides of the same coin.

Also, this:

David Attenborough wrote:

I don’t know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate…

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aghogday
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20 Jun 2021, 8:27 am

SMiles, Accepting That There is No Greater

God Than 'ALL Nature', The Little Boy's

Eye is No More Important

Than The Little

Worm

Consuming

'The Snake (GoD)' When

Nature is God, Let's Face it

Nature (GoD) Consumes Nature;

Back to the Old James Earl Jones

'Lion King' Monologue; The Lion Eats The

Antelope; the Lion Falls to the Grasses of the

Savannah Dead Feeding The Grasses Then And

Indeed the Worm; And In Turn the Antelope's Offspring

Feed On the Grass the Death of the Lion Feeds; We Breathe;

We Don't Breathe; We Live; We Die; And Truly Some Thrive And Suffer

Don't expect

The Lion

To Give

Ya A Break

When He His Hungry;

God Yes; Move to Greener

Pastures, if Ya can And Will

Where Worms Don't Feast off of Children's Eyes;

Is it Fair; Is it Really Fair That Humans Are Described

As A Species Living Out of Balance Now That And Who Will Erase

1 Out of 8 Living Animal And Plant Species From this Earth in Coming Decades

From their Selfish Taking And Hoarding, Even Their Dead From Feeding the Worms;

True There is

More to Cry

Over than

The

Suffering

of A Human Child;

And There is A Human

Child to Cry over As Grief

Soothes Misery And Suffering too...

Make the Best of it; Meh, The Rest of the

UniVerse is Comprised of Mostly too Hot and

Cold Rocks For Life to Even Survive; Just the Fact

That Some Do LiVE iN A Small Sliver of Heaven on Earth....

Just the Fact

That Water

Soothes

Thirst Is More

Miracle Than A Hot or

Cold Rock Where Amazingly

'Real Fools' Wanna Move to too Where

There Are No Fragrances of Flowers at all to smell...

Meanwhile, Some Folks Only Look Forward to Death

And True At Least They Are Looking Forward to Something Anything now...

Life Ain't

Fair;

Yet at Least it's Real...

And The Experience of

Beauty Lasts Forevernow in the Moment

Indeed Relatively SPeaKinG in this Way, This is Heaven Now...

Is The Alternative For Some At This Moment Never Living At

All Greater; Yes Indeed That's True too; It's ALL A Bit Messy And Never

'Black and White'...

Yet on the

Other

Hand

There are

Flowers in

my Backyard

to Smell This Morning

As Why do i Wanna Go Visit

The Stars When the Iron that Flows

Through my Blood and At Core of

Earth is Born of Super Nova

Explosions as

i Come

From

Crucible Fire

Star Death Explosions

Resurrected Now Real

From Star Dust Like

The Rest of the Earth;

Is it Not Great Enough

to be Resurrected Seeing

Being Life Star Seeds And Flowers US Now

Same Dancing Singing On And As Earth Now...

True

i am

Proof

'God

Nature'

Exists.... Now....

Perhaps it is not the

Same for Others; Yet

Never the Less in this

UniVerse of mine it is...

It's All Relative, Mileage Varies

Depending on Make and Model of

Vessel And Vehicle of Nature Now...

My God This is Awesome And Horrifying too...

How Much Fun is A Roller Coaster, if Just a One way Ticket Up....

In Short

Make

The Best

oF iT Now....

Meanwhile Some

Folks Talk Themselves

Into Oblivion; Done that too...

Yes Every Human Is Living in Another World now...

For Me at Least, i've Created A World of Heaven Now...

Not All

Do

And

That's Life

And Nature True...

Some Folks Can't Handle

The Truth And Create A Different

Reality too; Hmm.. Whatever Works Baby

one life to live now...

This Is

Real

This

Is Real...

Some Folks

SEE A Miracle of Existence;

Other Folks, CR8P Pie; i've

Tasted Both Kinds of Pie;

i Do Believe i'll Staycation WHere i Am Now;

Hehe, Like There is Any Other Choice

Yet Heaven Pie for ME AT least now....

Meanwhile, Somewhere A

Human Child is Dying

Suffering in Horrible

Agony

And

A Worm

Is Living; Humans

Who Don't Understand

That Worm Will Be Here

Long After We Are gone aren't too smart...

The Meek Who LiVE iN Balance Do Inherit The EartH...

Yet i Don't

Care;

Being

Human Is

Still More Fun

to Me than Being

A Worm, So Much

That i Wish Others

Would LiVE iN Balance

So Others Will Enjoy

This Great Adventure

Of Life in Heaven and HeLL ON EartH...

And i Still Accept the Fact My Life is

No More Integral to the Whole than the Worm...

As After All Is Said And Done, The Worm Aerates

The Soils For The Grass to Feed The Antelope to Feed the Lion Again...

It's Not

Fair

Yet
It Surely

Is Elegant

When One Understands

That 'The Dead Leaf' is 'The Living Tree'..

As Dead Leaves Surely Feed 'Souls Born of Soils' Too...

It's All

A Matter

Of Perspective;

Some Shorter

Sighted;

Some

Farther

Sighted;

Some Seeing

Both, Dead Leaf As Living Tree (GoD)...

HeHE At Least No One is Able to Tell my God (Nature) What to Do...

Just Try It 'Human Fools' And See What Happens Next As Nature

Replies

Always

Freely Dead or Alive

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Shadow1888
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22 Jun 2021, 8:13 am

I am just curious is to why you would think nature's beauty is proof of god?
It could be something else could it not? I mean the bible is hardly a great place to find an explanation.

salad
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22 Jun 2021, 3:51 pm

Shadow1888 wrote:

I am just curious is to why you would think nature's beauty is proof of god?
It could be something else could it not? I mean the bible is hardly a great place to find an explanation.

I never said that my religious sister did

Also my family isnt Christian

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blazingstar
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22 Jun 2021, 5:11 pm

I don't think nature proves or disproves the existence of god. It seems unlikely that anything could prove or disprove same. For me, there is only the experience of the Divine. Some may find it in nature and others may find it somewhere else. There is no god I could "believe in" that could be so little as to be understood by human minds.

I agree with aghogday. He writes it more beautifully that I could.

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funeralxempire
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22 Jun 2021, 5:17 pm

blazingstar wrote:

I agree with aghogday. He writes it more beautifully that I could.

There's a beauty in concise and clear writing even if it's different from more poetic writing.

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aghogday
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22 Jun 2021, 11:14 pm

SMiLes From Childhood on So Easy
To Walk Pristine Beaches Losing Time, Distance,

Space And Matter Then Moving Out of 'Deadline Life'

of School And Work More Away from A Life in Prison

of the Neo-Cortex Achieving An Autotelic Meditative

Flow of Ascending Transient Hypo-Frontality With

Ample Amounts of Frission In Awe of Aesthetically

Pleasing Existence Indeed A Science of the Divine

As Well; Forest Bathing Is Another Secular Term

Of How Folks Experience Divine In Nature And

Even though i Agree with Almost Nothing in the

Brick And Mortar Instructions of Southern Baptist

And Catholic Churches i Experience The Same Essence

of Divine Meditating Autotelic Flow From a Communion of

Other Humans in Emotional Sensory Empathic Energy Singing That Is

Real As Science Shows too 'My God' Even Sam Harris Agrees Famous

Atheist In His Science of Human Spirituality too As True i Get The Experience

Just Being Part of a 'Rush Concert' too; Yet it's Been Since the Early 1990's Since

i've Been to A Concert As Such; True, in My Later Years of Work On Call Constantly

Managing and Supervising Other Folks And A 'Zillion Other Duties' Didn't Go the Beach

For Almost 20 Years; Or Any Churches Either; The Closest Experience to that Divine Meditative

Autotelic Flow Came From Frigging Mowing the Grass; the Best Part of my Life For the Last 11 Years of Work

And Now Through Free Dance in Steps And Free Song in Poetry of Words; These Words Are Only Fuel Left-Over

From the Bliss and Nirvana Divine of Meditating Writing in Autotelic Flow; What's Really Sad is Science Shows

That 'Closed Minded More Conservative Folks' Have a much more Difficult Time Experiencing This 'Divine'

Science Assessed Experience; Yet of Course That's What Closed Mindedness Means in the First

Place; An Inability to Achieve Transient Hypo-Frontality, At Least Literally As Such; Truly

Limiting As Meditative Flow As Science Shows Increases Creativity 500 Percent

When Only Achieved 30 Minutes Several Times a Week; Other than

That Science Shows Meditative Flow actually Regenerates Grey

Matter in the Brain And Obviously Regenerates the

Body From Head to toe as it is a Method

To Reduce Stress That Does Wear

All Our Bodily Systems

Down Chronically

And Acutely as Such...

Experiencing All the Illness From

Generally Speaking Autism Burn-out

the Last 11 Years of Work of Chronic to

Acute Stress; i Learned Methods Not to do that

Again that Truly Do Work Without Fail; The Experience

of the Divine For Real; Cross Culturally Defined With Terms

Like Samadhi, Satori, Tao, Chi, Ka, Ki, Prana, Kundalini Rising,

Great Spirit, Holy Spirit, Holy Creative Spirit; The Human Metaphors

That Describe it are Limitless By Form; The Essence of This Divine Experience

Is Unmistakable For Those Who Experience Truly Enough Whole Complete Yes Ocean

Water Wave Whole WHere Any Noun to Describe it is practically Non-Sense As Without

The Experience

Any Words

to Describe

The Divine is Just

Empty Shells With No Essence;

As Far As the Muslim World Goes,

Sufi-Mystics Doing Their Communion

of Spiraling Dervish Free Dancing Achieves the

Same; As Surely A Spiral Dance Brings Moving Meditation

of Divine to me; And the Experience of Frission Related And

Described As A Skin Orgasm From Head to Toe; Sadly too, is assessed

More Difficult for Closed Minded Folks to Achieve as Well; It's too bad really

As My Experience of Frission Is 10,000 Times Greater Than Just a 'Standard Orgasm'

For Reproduction;

In Every Cell

And 'Point

oF LiGHT

in My

Body

As This

Other

Spiritual

Orgasm is

Peaks and

Plateaus that Stay

of the Divine in Meditative

Autotelic Flow Practiced As

A Great Work of Art In Life;

Again these Words are

Just Fumes of the

Experience

of Real Heaven

Within Now; Sadly

The New Testament Talked

About it; Yet never really Provided

Many Poetic Details of the Experience

i Do my Best to Describe it Objectively

Just to Prove to those Who Don't Experience

it that it exists according to Scientific Measure;

However, Again, Without The Experience Life Remains

Separated And Disconnected From Ocean Whole Water Wave Complete

For True There is No Pre-Planning to the Practice of Heaven Within this Divine

Just the

Do of

The Divine

Now That comes

Freely Often Innately

Instinctually By Methods

Within that Work as i surely

Wasn't Given Any Instructions to

Write Free Verse Poetry or Spiral Dance

i Just let the River Come to Life Within

And Become Water, Wave Ocean Whole

Or in Quantum Physics, Particle, Wave, Field Whole too...

Again, Without the Experience of the Divine These Are all Just Empty Shells...

Yet it's Interesting Once one Experiences it Enough There are So Many Aha

Moments Studying Other Cultures Where one Understand Yes the Folks Who

Wrote That Free Verse Poetry Went to the Similar Place i Most always exist now

The Divine

Experience

of LiFE Now

The Enough

The Whole

Complete

Eternally Now;

And Again, Science Shows

This is Real; Which is Basically

Taking a Horse to the Water;

Yet Not Being Able to

Make the

Horse

Drink

of the Divine

Water, Wave, Ocean
Whole Enough Complete
Experience of Forevermore Now...

Experiencing the Before And After

Of this; ya Kinda Wish More People

Will Visit Sooner than Soon So Many
Paths to Arrive; Just Seeking Finding
one that Works And Never Stop Practicing

A Medicine of Heaven Within now; Hehe,

So Many Religions Try to 'Copy Right' And

'Trade Mark' The Essence of Divine with Forms;

And Sadly Forms Become Worshipped And Essence of Divine is Lost...

That's

Ironic;

And That's Life too

More Closed Minded As Such...

And Generally Speaking Humans

Who Do Not Actually Treat Other Humans

With Empathy And Compassion Are the Farthest

Ones Away As That is the Part of the Mind That

Comes to Play in Heaven Within Now It's Not A Cold Place; Very

Warm Indeed; And to Be Clear More Empty Meditative Flow comes without Love too...

i Always Incorporate Moving, Connecting, Co-Creating To Keep Heaven Within Warm True..

And True i come
Here as Yang

Keeps

Yin More

Colorful Overall too..

Basically Minds More

Systemizing Reasoning

That Social Empathic Artistic Spiritual...

And to Be Clear this is Just Art of Opinion Mine...

It Works for me; That Much of my Opinion is Irrefutable

As I Do Show Quite a Few Forms of What Empirically Comes As Essence too...

As 'They' Say; It's A Same Old Story; Some Folks Have Divine Eyes and Ears Beyond Organs to See And Hear...

Anyway It's True Put Two Folks In Nature, A Southern Baptist Singing, A Rush Concert, Writing Poetry

By Instruction of Schooling, And Dancing By Someone Else's Rigid Instruction too; And One Human

May Experience

Divine Flow

In Meditating

Way And the

Other May Feel

Very Little of the Divine at all...

It's not Fair really; Yet Change is Possible too..

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SabbraCadabra
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23 Jun 2021, 11:56 pm

What blows my mind is how perfectly everything in nature combines to perpetuate itself.
They say it's all just evolution and natural selection, but is that really it?
Is that why some plants know they need thorns to keep nuisances away? Why some plants know they need poisons to protect themselves? Why some plants use colors, shapes, and smells to attract or repel animals and insects? Why some plants know that if they make their fruit delicious, animals will eat it and spread the seed further away? Why plants have pollen so that insects will spread it to other plants to help them reproduce? Is that why maple trees "evolved" to have propeller shaped seeds so that they would fly further?
Look at the eucalyptus, it practically sets itself on fire to reproduce.

Idunno, I could go on, but to me, it all seems too coincidental to be an accident.

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IsabellaLinton
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23 Jun 2021, 11:57 pm

Nothing is proof of God. That's what makes everything, including the concept of God, so fascinating.

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techstepgenr8tion
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24 Jun 2021, 7:34 am

SabbraCadabra wrote:

I think the whole idea that it's strictly reductive materialist processes, ie. matter on matter (and particularly gene mutations by cleavage or radiation) likely can't be the whole story.

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24 Jun 2021, 8:03 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

SabbraCadabra wrote:

I think the whole idea that it's strictly reductive materialist processes, ie. matter on matter (and particularly gene mutations by cleavage or radiation) likely can't be the whole story.

It's a beauty of world that at different levels, new realities emerge.
A cell is something more than just a sum of its atoms and molecules. An animal is something more than just sum of its cells. Your friend is something more than just a sum of their organs.
Nature is something more than just sum of organisms and things.

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kraftiekortie
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24 Jun 2021, 8:12 am

Usually, the only "proof of God" lies in one's belief in God.

There is certainly an uncanny symmetry and consistency to that which is seemingly random in Nature.

techstepgenr8tion
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24 Jun 2021, 8:22 am

I remember Bret Weinstein saying a little bit about 'search spaces' and that there is a kind of sorting logic to it, found this wiki on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_space_(evolution)

I had this same impression from what's called the 'RNA world hypothesis' which assumes that cell walls were a technology of RNA rather than necessarily being the first agentic thing.

With the above there's some sense of bottom-up and top-down cascading information, some reference to what's more or less useful, ie. some kind of self-referencing feedback loop in disequilibrium systems at very small scales.

That leads into something like Karl Friston's recent lectures on anything from cell walls to the surface layer of animals (separating agent from environment) being a part of how organisms are able to calculate fitness and fitness payouts, he also draws this parallel with machine learning.

This is where a lot of people find it easy to go either panpsychist or absolute idealist, ie. agency, a sort of 'I' forming around something which would cause it to move toward fitness goals and away from things that would destroy it. It's one thing to see complex behavior of this sort in higher primates or even octopi, corvids, etc., but it's a trip to see it in microorganisms.

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24 Jun 2021, 6:49 pm

SabbraCadabra wrote:

All of your questions have been answered by biology.

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ToughDiamond
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02 Jul 2021, 3:46 pm

OK, so some visual aspects of nature are attractive to me and to a lot of people. Now, let's hear how you get from that to "so a deity must exist." Right now I see little or no connection between those two ideas at all, but I'm happy to sit back and see if anybody can show me what I'm supposed to be missing.

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