51% of Americans have yet to evolve.

[FearlessFreep]

We can not say God created the world or universe. Because that naturally leads to the question of who created God then

Very briefly, there is an argument with philosophy dealing with the existance of God called the "Cosmological Argument" that roughly breaks down to the observation that everything in existance is contigent on something else, in a long chain of contigency..where does it end? The argument says that therefore there must exist something which is *not* contigent, a 'neccessary being' whose existance is not contigent on anything else but from which contigency starts for everything else in the universe. Note that this does not really imply "God" as such, but God would fit the definition of such a such a 'neccessary being'.

The thing is, if you reject the need for a neccessary being then you are still left to explain how contigency works and how it all got started anyway. Or an endless cycle of contigency with no beginning and no cause, but that sorta just replaces one metaphycial explanation ("God") with another, which may not really be any more intellectually satisfying if you pursue it. You can say "well God created the basic material for the big-bang and God is a neccessary being for which no explanation is really needed or available because he exists outside of what we understand time and space to be" Or you can reject that as being an insufficient explanation in which case your have to answer the question of "well, how/why did the material in the big bang exists at *all*, why does reality exist?" and if you want you can keep pushing the question back further and surmise, or perhaps with science you can hypothesize and discover, what there was before the big bang, but then..why that, and how that? Eventually you run out of ability to push back and you have to decide whether you think there was a neccessary being that kicked it all of whos existance is a brute fact with no real explanation, or you think that contigency goes on forever and has no beginning and no root cause, but that's just an obervation, not anexplanation.

To say that the universe "just is" it to pretend contigency doesn't exist, and at the heart of it, to say that the universe 'just is' is ultimately not any better an explanation than to say that 'God started it all'. It's not any more satisfying an answer.

Not to say that the cosmological argument dealing with contigency proves the existance of God, but it does propose the idea that something with characteristics often descibed of God has to exist, or conversely if it doesn't then, you still need an explanation for contingency and that line of thinking may not lead you any place any better

 

[hardheadjarhead]

While ya'll debate the existence of God, here's an follow up piece on the one I originally posted:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051028/sc_nm/science_usa_dc


"When we ask people what they know about science, just under 20 percent turn out to be scientifically literate," said Jon Miller, director of the center for biomedical communication at Northwestern University.

He said science and especially mathematics were poorly taught in most U.S. schools, leading both to a shortage of good scientists and general scientific ignorance.

U.S. school students perform relatively poorly in international tests of mathematics and science. For example, in 2003 U.S. students placed 24th in an international test that measured the mathematical literacy of 15-year-olds, below many European and Asian countries.

Scientists bemoan the lack of qualified U.S. candidates for postgraduate and doctoral studies at American universities and currently fill around a third of available science and engineering slots with foreign students.

Asian countries have overtaken us in the sciences. We have to come to grips with this. Our economic edge won't hold forever...not unless we continue to import Asian techs, engineers and scientists to do the work for us.


Regards,


Steve

 

[Loki]

This is highly illogical, Captain.

How come, Admiral?

Another related example I'm not sure is listed is that about half of newly formed zygotes die soon after their creation. Why?

 

[FearlessFreep]

My dad once said we have a service enocomy, and he semi-joking/semi-seriously said that s servive economy means that we are all flipping each others burgers.

The ability to manipulate abstractions and money and 'services' has been seen to be more valuable than the ability to build (farmers, real industry) or create (scientists, mathemeticians) so as a result a lot of people want to be lawyers and MBAs and few want to be scientists and inventors, because they pay better. So we end up with a economy of abstract numbers changing hands and chasing each other around and a lot of people playing games with those numbers and no one really actually producing anything of concrete substance.

Meanwhile, in Asia, they have a lot of raw resources, both as producers and consumers, and due to outsourcing, they now have the intellectual capacity and expertise to take advantage of those resources

People don't know science because science isn't cool and science doesn't pay, until our service economy turns from flipping burgers to stirring chow-mein.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Of course, "The Onion" weighs in on this issue, as well.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512


Oh...and 50% of zygotes die before coming to term because they did evil in the sight of the Lord. Or its the mystery of God. Or something. Perhaps the latter, but I'm not sure.




Regards,


Steve

 

[FearlessFreep]

How come, Admiral?

Well if you were trying to make a statement about the fact that a lot of reproductive material goes unused based on the story of Judah and Unan, than tha's an illogical connection. In Jewish law/custom, when a married man died without children, his brother was supposed to marry his wife and raise children through her. Onan's sin was not spilling his seed on the ground in wasting the sperm, his sin was that he knew he was supposed to impregnate his bother's wife, but refused to

 

[arnisador]

Another related example I'm not sure is listed is that about half of newly formed zygotes die soon after their creation. Why?

More like 70%, isn't it? One theory is that those with genetic defects are automatically rejected by the process.

I love the "flipping each others' burgers" line!

 

[arnisador]

Yeah, Onan got a bum rap on the masturbation thing. He was just practicing the withdrawal method.

 

[FearlessFreep]

Onan got a bum rap...

Well, most of the bum rap seems to be about what he did; but what really got him in trouble was *why* he did it.


I love the "flipping each others' burgers" line!

SometimesI catch myself thinking if my music career is really a backup...or an eventuality, if and when my software development career disappears in this country

 

[Loki]

Well if you were trying to make a statement about the fact that a lot of reproductive material goes unused based on the story of Judah and Unan, than tha's an illogical connection. In Jewish law/custom, when a married man died without children, his brother was supposed to marry his wife and raise children through her. Onan's sin was not spilling his seed on the ground in wasting the sperm, his sin was that he knew he was supposed to impregnate his bother's wife, but refused to

I wasn't basing myself on Onan's story. I posted a link to a lot of factoids and one of them was quoted.

Even then, the connection can't be called illogical. The bible isn't clear about whether God was angry with Onan for spilling his seed or for not impregnating his brother's wife. It can be taken either way, and since Onan is remembered for spilling his seed (hence his name serving as a root for the Hebrew word for masturbation) and Abrahamic religions used to (or still) consider masturbation a sin, it seems more likely the former. Even if the likeliness is equal, that doesn't make the connection illogical.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Okay...then if you've had a vasectomy, it isn't a sin?

Just checking...for a friend...er, yeah. A friend I know had a vasectomy and is wondering and all.


Regards,



Steve

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Here's an interesting link. Farkers ask what would have happened had evolution taken a slightly different turn....

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1718576


Some of them are pretty good. Others not so much.


Regards,


Steve

 

[FearlessFreep]

I'm a Christian, I'm going to get a vasectomy, I don't consider it a sin, just wise stewardship

 

[Marginal]

I've been thinking lately...if you have a line segment then it is finite from any way you look at it.

A geometric "line" goes to infinity in either direction and looks like infinity any way you look at it.

If you have a geometric "ray" (or a "line" that starts at one point and goes infinitely at the other end then) it looks finite at the starting point. If you are at the middle of the ray (or at the infinite end), then it looks infinite in either direction.

So who says the infinite can't have a starting point?

So, if it looks infinite, that's enough?

 

[Ray]

So, if it looks infinite, that's enough?

Not only does it look infinite, it is infinite.

 

[heretic888]

I sorta remember recalling that many of the early scientists in the the middle ages, the ones responsible for the Enlightenment, took it as a given that because of the nature of God, the science was actually possible. By that, they viewed that since God was rational and intelligent, that He had set up the universe to work in an ordered and consistant way without interference. Unlike say, Greek gods who were capricious and got involved in the day to day running of reality, God's omnicience and omnipotence and rationality allowed Him to set up a universe that worked in a predictable and measureable way, which made scientifc discovery possible because you could explore and measure and describe the universe in preditable and repeatable ways. Scientifc investigation is/was possible *because* of God, in a sense, not as a challenge to faith or religion.

Which is why, as someone who would be called a 'born-again Christian' by most, I don't quite understand why many Christians today look for the 'breaking point' at which the universe doesn't work without interference from God because I think in a lot of ways that undermines the capabilities of God.

I once knew another Christian who explained that the six-day creation account in Genesis was not meant to be taken seriously as a true even that had happened and that all cultures had stories that they would use to explain themselves to other cultures and that much of Genesis was the Jews' stories that they used to explain their relationship of God to themselves, not to be taken as a literal account. I find that plausible.

[...]

But, anyway, I think it's sorta a dis-service to God to assume that he could manage to engineer gravity and quantum mechanics and who knows what else but couldn't quite manage to get life working sufficiently in a way that doesn't require his intervention. I don't know all the answers, but I kinda go back to the original point; the universe works, science seeks to explain how it works and in my mind, God set up the universe to work properly in a way that is predictable so that science is even possible, so explanations that say 'well this just doesn't work without God' I think to me are not only unscientific, but also unfaithful

Wow, another reference to deism. Interesting. :ultracool

There are things in in 'evolution' that don't always make sense to me.

Quite possibly, because a lot of evolutionary mechanisms don't make sense from the dominant paradigm of genetic determinism and random gradualism.

Laterz.

 

[heretic888]

To say that the universe "just is" it to pretend contigency doesn't exist, and at the heart of it, to say that the universe 'just is' is ultimately not any better an explanation than to say that 'God started it all'. It's not any more satisfying an answer.

Perhaps not, but it is the more parsimonious of the two solutions.

Laterz.

 

[FearlessFreep]

Wow, another reference to deism. Interesting.

Sorta. I'm a theist myself, not a deist. I think God does get involved with what happens in the universe, but I think it's the case of special intervention for particular goals (miracles and other forms of divine intervention, if you will), not as part of the mechanics that keeps it all running

 

[FearlessFreep]

Perhaps not, but it is the more parsimonious of the two solutions.

I wouldn't think so. As someone who always wonders what's over the next hill, I don't find the idea that the user 'just is' to be satisfying at all; neither the idea of an infinite line. An infinite line is just a concept, used for exploring ideas. A true infinite line...well nobody of any really inquisitiveness I think will accept that the line is truly infinite and where the scientist meets the explorer is somone who will start the journey to find the end. And if the line is truly infinite then the questions that must be answered are 'why?' and 'how?' To say that the question can't be answered is a cop out as well.

To say that there must be a neccessary being is a cop-out in a sense, it's an admission that there is something 'special' that exists outside of all observable evidence that nonetheless attempts to explain why there is observable evidence in the first place. However, to say that no neccessary being exists is to merely push contigency off to some unknown, and possibly unknowable, distant past. It's not really a scientific answer, it's a cop-out in it's own of saying the questions of 'how' and 'why' of the universe cannot be answered within the universe.

Or you can say that the stuff of the universe that was all contained in the big-bang simple 'just is' and that was the beginning of all, but anyone of curiousity is going to say "how did it exist, why did it exist, why did it go 'bang'". I suspect that is more of a metaphysical answer than a scientific one.

At the core, everyone chooses their cop-out, in a way, whether they know it or not, based on whichever aswer they wish to be happy with.

 

[Flatlander]

Fascinating.