Is nature's beauty proof of God
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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Diagnosed ASD 2011
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:
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Giraffe: a ruminant with a view.
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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KATiE MiA FredericK!iI
Gravatar is one of the coolest things ever!! !
http://en.gravatar.com/katiemiafrederick
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
_________________
"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."
Master Oogway
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.
_________________
The river is the melody
And sky is the refrain - Gordon Lightfoot
funeralxempire
Veteran
Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Age: 39
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 25,466
Location: Right over your left shoulder
There's a beauty in concise and clear writing even if it's different from more poetic writing.
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Watching liberals try to solve societal problems without a systemic critique/class consciousness is like watching someone in the dark try to flip on the light switch, but they keep turning on the garbage disposal instead.
戦争ではなく戦争と戦う
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..
_________________
KATiE MiA FredericK!iI
Gravatar is one of the coolest things ever!! !
http://en.gravatar.com/katiemiafrederick
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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I'm looking for Someone to change my life. I'm looking for a Miracle in my life.
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,184
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
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.
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.
_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
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.
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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techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,184
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
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.
_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
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.
All of your questions have been answered by biology.
_________________
The river is the melody
And sky is the refrain - Gordon Lightfoot
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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