Another Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Ben_Fox]

Originally Posted by Serenity

Theistic evolution (less dumb, but still kinda dumb) is the premise that evolution was caused by God. Of course, there are many flaws with this theory. Just to name the three most obvious:
• the human eye is built in a moronic way. The squid's eye, on the other hand, is built quite well, without inadvertantly flipping the image and some other crap.
• 99% of all species that have ever existed on earth are currently extinct. Imagine if an engineer had that failure rate! Remember, God is supposed to be omnipotent, so the failed species being prototypes is stupid.

I'm not sure I follow what you mean by "cause evolution." Do you mean separately design each critter and plunk it down on earth? That doesn't really qualify as 'evolution.' Do you mean that God 'caused evolution' by setting the process of life and, therefore, evolution, into motion? That seems to meet the term better, but it nullifies your flaws, since God simply originates life and "lets nature take its course," as it were.

• It's just adding a "God" term in where it isn't necessary. Occam's razor, anyone? If two equations both yield the same results, the smaller one is probably more accurate.

Question: How did life begin here on Earth?

Science: Conditions that were favorable for the formation of the basic hydrocarbons of life just happened to exist on Earth, with its fortunate position in the "Goldilocks Zone". Earth was potentially 'seeded' by impacts of comets that just happened to be a byproduct of the happily accidental way our solar system was formed. Earth also luckily has a huge moon in relation to its size, a moon that just happens to help stabilize the planet's axis and climate, not to mention protection from a massive gas giant that just happens to help keep the inner solar system relatively impact free for the last couple billion years, making for optimal conditions for the development of life. All of this is possible because, out of the infinite possibilities to choose from, we got a universe where the strong and weak forces just happened to be the right strength to allow nuclear reactions to take place and the force of gravity is luckily not so weak that gas can't coalesce into stars and not so strong that stable, main sequence stars can't form, if any could form at all, and all the members of the particle families just happened to turn out to have the properties that they do. This may be because the hyperdimensional shape formed by up to 7 extra dimensions that are too small for us to detect by any current means coincidentally happens, out of infinite valid selections, to have a shape that gives rise to a universe with the laws of physics as we know them.

Religion: God created the universe, set up the laws it runs by and brought forth life on Earth, ultimately culminating in humankind.

So if I'm going by Ockham's Razor, which should I pick? The one where everything depends on a huge chain of coincidental occurrences that have about the same chance of happening as me hitting every lottery in the world every day for the rest of my life? Or the one where everything happens because a universe designed to produce sentient life is working as intended?

[42PETUNIAS]

Well, if we're using occam's razor, we should be looking at whether life came about scientifically anywhere, because life coming about on earth is misleading. Yes, that life would evolve on a specific planet has a very small chance of happening, but whether life would evolve somewhere in the vast universe is much more probable. Meanwhile, looking at the entire universe, the question of whether there is a god doesn't become any more probable.

[ZAKtheGeek]

All of this is possible because, out of the infinite possibilities to choose from, we got a universe where the strong and weak forces just happened to be the right strength to allow nuclear reactions to take place and the force of gravity is luckily not so weak that gas can't coalesce into stars and not so strong that stable, main sequence stars can't form, if any could form at all, and all the members of the particle families just happened to turn out to have the properties that they do. This may be because the hyperdimensional shape formed by up to 7 extra dimensions that are too small for us to detect by any current means coincidentally happens, out of infinite valid selections, to have a shape that gives rise to a universe with the laws of physics as we know them.

This is really a separate topic, but anyway... The only point you can make here is that what we're observing is very likely not the one and only universe, whose laws are randomly determined. But, to put this next to "God did it" is to create a false dichotomy, in implying that it either had to be one random shot or an intelligent act.

Religion: God created the universe, set up the laws it runs by and brought forth life on Earth, ultimately culminating in humankind.

And isn't this just saying, let's explain away one complicated thing that we know exists with another one that we don't know exists? It really just seems like the problem is being shifted to a new entity, one we conveniently don't have to explain.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Ben_Fox

Question: How did life begin here on Earth?

Science: Conditions that were favorable for the formation of the basic hydrocarbons of life just happened to exist on Earth, with its fortunate position in the "Goldilocks Zone". Earth was potentially 'seeded' by impacts of comets that just happened to be a byproduct of the happily accidental way our solar system was formed. Earth also luckily has a huge moon in relation to its size, a moon that just happens to help stabilize the planet's axis and climate, not to mention protection from a massive gas giant that just happens to help keep the inner solar system relatively impact free for the last couple billion years, making for optimal conditions for the development of life. All of this is possible because, out of the infinite possibilities to choose from, we got a universe where the strong and weak forces just happened to be the right strength to allow nuclear reactions to take place and the force of gravity is luckily not so weak that gas can't coalesce into stars and not so strong that stable, main sequence stars can't form, if any could form at all, and all the members of the particle families just happened to turn out to have the properties that they do. This may be because the hyperdimensional shape formed by up to 7 extra dimensions that are too small for us to detect by any current means coincidentally happens, out of infinite valid selections, to have a shape that gives rise to a universe with the laws of physics as we know them.

Religion: God created the universe, set up the laws it runs by and brought forth life on Earth, ultimately culminating in humankind.

So if I'm going by Ockham's Razor, which should I pick? The one where everything depends on a huge chain of coincidental occurrences that have about the same chance of happening as me hitting every lottery in the world every day for the rest of my life? Or the one where everything happens because a universe designed to produce sentient life is working as intended?

If you're going to go with Occam's Razor, you're going to want to care about more things than just simplicity, otherwise you could answer every question with:

"God."
"Fuck it."
or perhaps
"."
and
" "

I'm not necessarily throwing my support behind your blurb of the science section either (since it is written with a negative connotation...Surprise!). Overall, I do support science, but even it is having its difficulties answering the "fundamental" questions.

Point I'm getting at is, given the amount of empirical evidence towards a "God" creating life (zero), or setting forth evolution (zero), or (insert anything at all) (zero), they're hardly candidates to be supposed on Occam's Razor.

[Serenity]

Originally Posted by Ben_Fox

I'm not sure I follow what you mean by "cause evolution." Do you mean separately design each critter and plunk it down on earth? That doesn't really qualify as 'evolution.' Do you mean that God 'caused evolution' by setting the process of life and, therefore, evolution, into motion? That seems to meet the term better, but it nullifies your flaws, since God simply originates life and "lets nature take its course," as it were.

As far as I know, theistic evolution is basically God started the universe and evolution and then influenced the evolutionary procession in order to construct humans for his specific purpose.

Originally Posted by Ben_Fox

So if I'm going by Ockham's Razor, which should I pick? The one where everything depends on a huge chain of coincidental occurrences that have about the same chance of happening as me hitting every lottery in the world every day for the rest of my life? Or the one where everything happens because a universe designed to produce sentient life is working as intended?

Simpler doesn't mean that it can be easily explained to a child. I could also explain it to a child like this:

Science: The laws the universe run by allows Earth to support life, and this life eventually culminated in humankind.

Let's compare the things we needed in each (simplified) explanation:
Religion: God, universe, laws, life, Earth, evolution and humankind
Science: Universe, laws, life, Earth, evolution and humankind.

See the key here? One of them has an extra requirement - God.

The religion one is actually the first one with God tacked on the end. I could retype it out, only change all the "lucky"s with "thanks to God".

Let me give you an example. Suppose there is a natural phenomenon - I don't know what, but it produces things that can be counted in integers and those integers produce results which can also be counted in integers. This natural function can only be currently observed in the integers 0-3. f(0)=0, f(1)=1, f(2)=4, and f(3)=9
Which of the following is the more reasonable equation for guessing what it will look like when we see f(4) or f(-1)?
f(x) = ||||5x-2|-2|-1|-1|
or
f(x) = x*x

They both yield the same results within that particular area (0-3). But obviously x squared is probably going to be more accurate.

[Sithdarth]

Science: Conditions that were favorable for the formation of the basic hydrocarbons of life just happened to exist on Earth, with its fortunate position in the "Goldilocks Zone". Earth was potentially 'seeded' by impacts of comets that just happened to be a byproduct of the happily accidental way our solar system was formed. Earth also luckily has a huge moon in relation to its size, a moon that just happens to help stabilize the planet's axis and climate, not to mention protection from a massive gas giant that just happens to help keep the inner solar system relatively impact free for the last couple billion years, making for optimal conditions for the development of life. All of this is possible because, out of the infinite possibilities to choose from, we got a universe where the strong and weak forces just happened to be the right strength to allow nuclear reactions to take place and the force of gravity is luckily not so weak that gas can't coalesce into stars and not so strong that stable, main sequence stars can't form, if any could form at all, and all the members of the particle families just happened to turn out to have the properties that they do. This may be because the hyperdimensional shape formed by up to 7 extra dimensions that are too small for us to detect by any current means coincidentally happens, out of infinite valid selections, to have a shape that gives rise to a universe with the laws of physics as we know them.

This is a classic mistake often made by people who haven't thought deeply, or perhaps thought to deeply, on the subject. Simply put you are placing the cause before the effect. You are looking at the universe as it is now and saying "Gee aren't we lucky" instead of saying "Well duh of course the life forms that exist in any universe would be nearly perfectly adapted for it." Without actually being able to observe the conditions which might exists in universes that have different constants we cannot say the conscious life is impossible there.

Once you break it down to its most basic form consciousness and the life supporting only needs an energy source. Such energy sources would exist in most theoretical universes with different constants. There are a few in which there would be no energy sources but this number is significantly smaller than the number of universes that couldn't support our type of life.

Treating it as a coincidence that our universe just happened to have the right conditions for our type of life ignores the fact that those conditions directly caused our type of life. Something is not up to luck or chance if there is a direct causal relationship between them.

That all being said Quantum Mechanics tells us that the future and the past are equally uncertain. Which means any measurement of a particle effects every other measurement that has or will be taken of that particle. Some physicists have interpreted that to mean that our very existence now is what set the universal constants just right for our eventual evolution. This is certainly a very simple explanation and maybe one day we will be able to test it.

[Ben_Fox]

You are all missing the point, which is that when you reach questions like that and try to invoke Ockham's Razor (that the shorter formula is more likely to be the more accurate one), the religious explanation will always be the one favored by that type of reasoning.

[42PETUNIAS]

Isn't that different from what Occam's Razor is? I had thought it would be the simpler formula, not the shorter one.

[greed]

Not really, it's not the length of the answer itself but distance of the logical leaps from observations and measurements we have. It is a much bigger leap to an omnipotent super being than it is to a series of improbable(though as Sithdarth's last post explains not as much as first seems) but possible events occuring.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by Ben_Fox

You are all missing the point, which is that when you reach questions like that and try to invoke Ockham's Razor (that the shorter formula is more likely to be the more accurate one), the religious explanation will always be the one favored by that type of reasoning.

It is in fact you that are missing the point, because you can't invoke Occam's Razor and use a religious explanation. I mean, you could, it's just that anyone who actually understands what Occam's Razor is couldn't take you seriously.