"Science is Magic"
Recently I have seen many people debating Christianity against Evolution. I find that funny. Consider with me, one is a belief system, the other is a scientific theory. Similarly was in the Cold War when we said that it was Democracy vs. the evil Communists. Democracy is a legal system, communism is a economic system. (And to note: it was called the United Soviet Socialist Republic.)
Can it be that science and religion are too totally separate things? Can someone possibly believe in both evolution and God? At one time I thought this was absurd. Not too long ago I read a great article in a Christian magazine about the religious implications behind science. The author explained that science does not override God's creative power, but instead explains it. Is it possible to study science and find the hand of God? Of course, most reglious enthusiasts (and I don't say that negatively because I am a religious enthusiast) would reject the idea that evolution is the "hand of God."
Still this is a different light with which we can perceive the world. Atheists need not subscribe to evolution to believe there is no god. Similarly Christians need not reject science to believe in God. God makes rocks fall even if we know how He does it. God made rainbows even though we know they are but sunlight refracted in suspended water droplets.
Can we separate what has unfortunately become intermixed?
-mersayochan
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I think this whole creation/evolution debate is kind of ridiculous. You can believe what you want, and it's really not worth complaining about others opinions.
" Can someone possibly believe in both evolution and God? "
YES! Because Scientist want to find the answer to EVERY LITTLE THING. Fine prove the evoltion thing wrong. So what animal came first, were did it come from? More questions arise. I believe in Adam and Eve, and all of that. One could say that god put sciene infront of us to help us, and perhaps put stuff along the way to test our faith
You can definately believe in God and the Universe as it exists. You just can't believe in the fairy tale portion of religion such as the creation stories, etc. because they were proven wrong. i.e. dinosaurs were not around by day 6 living along side humans. Also, to believe in a god that has an active hand in all the workings of the universe would require a god with a twisted and sick sense of humor. Why would god make painful worms infest the eyes of children if god played an active role in every day matters. So, if God exists and one believes in imperical reality of the universe, he must be a god that is absentee and just set the whole thing in motion, then went on to other things. And if there were a god, this would make sense, since you could move on to other things besides this or that universe. Like doing some gardening, maybe god wants to work on a universe where sub atomic particles Repel eachother instead of attract eachother and see what that comes up with. So to answer your question, someone can definately believe in God and evolution and reality. Just not the God of the Bible, because that one is just an invention of man.
You make an excellent point. After all, the scientists may be able to trace our "evolution", if you want to call it that, back to primordal ooze, but without God they can't explain where the ooze came from in the first place. (Or, to go farther back, so there may have been a Big Bang; without God, they can't explain where the first force that caused the bang, or where what went bang, came from.) I heard this quote somewhere, and I love it, especially as it applies to this situation: "God created the universe; science just tries to explain how He did it."
Well, just becaue an explanation isn't known yet, doesn't mean god had anything to do with it. For instance, before we knew about rabies, people thought animals were all foaming at the mouth and crazy because of "God". But now we know that the rabies virus attacks the animals nervous system and creates damage that causes these symptoms. So, when we find out how the premordal ooze came about, we will know that it wasn't "god" but this or that chain of events. Just like how we know Canyons weren't formed by Paul Bunyon's Axe, but formed by a river carving away the many layers of sediment over time.
I'm glad you listened to the moral of my blog (sarcasm). Just because science explains how something happened doesn't mean that God didn't do it. And no I don't think that God meddles in every little thing. God set up the world so that He would have to do as little useless meddling as possible. Maybe God made the universe work so incredibly well so that after He created it He could stop focusing on making sub-atomic particles stick together and focus on more important things, like loving us through our failures, cause i'm sure that takes a lot of energy from God (I'm pointing to myself on that one). The point is that its not God vs. Science but instead its Belief vs. Unbelief. And that takes many forms.
-mersayochan
Belief in what? God? Why believe in something that you have no evidence of? So you are just Believing for the sake of believing? That just has no point at all, and makes no sense. Give me a reason that someone should Believe in something that has given no reason to believe in it.
Even the question of it is absurd to think about.
Religion started because people had no other explanation for the world, back in the dawn of humanity in Mesopotamia. Explanation of the natural world was the first reason to believe in gods, and the second was to make sense out of death and the troubles of life. Early gods were often seen as antagonists, because people couldn't understand how natural disasters and bad things could happen to them. Now people believe because although we know about weather patterns and what, as the example was, causes rabies, we have only answered the "how," not the "who" or the "why". How did it all begin? God is many people's answer. For those who don't believe in UFOs (or, I suppose, even those who do), for those who know a man named Jesus lived a long time ago and died on a cross, for those who need to feel that there is some order, purpose, and inherent good to the universe, there is religion. To say there is no evidence is ridiculous. There is evidence, or "clues", some more conclusive than others, and some choose not to believe in it. Well they say the Holocaust never happened either, so "evidence" has nothing to do with it. Religion is a necessary and inherent part of the human psyche. Without it, humanity could not exist as we know it, and that kind of alien society would most likley be even be a bit too much for the die-hard athiests.
I would like to point out this quote, to help prove my point: "The truth is that there are no atheists, since who would be so witless as to assert what he cannot prove? Simply and in all candour we must shrug and say we know nothing." --Anthony Burgess
Belief has nothing to do with proof. I guess I need to clarify that word. Belief means that you are devoted to an idea or a person. Belief means that you 'know' that no matter what, that thing holds the answer to everything. Belief is devotion. You, truthinlogic, believe in evolution because you 'know' that it holds all the answers (that is my hypothesis). Some people believe in love. Is there ANY scientific data to explain love or map it on a graph? No. Love is something unexplainable that moves people. I am not talking about mutual attraction here, I'm talking about the love that lets two uncompatible human beings tolerate and even adore each other for the remainder of their lifetimes. Believing in the power of love is like believing in the power of God is like believing in the power of science. For each person it hasn't let them down yet and they don't believe it ever will. The same person can believe in love, God, and science at once. It's not a contradiction.
-mersayochan
Also having belief in God, does not mean that you are failing to give an explanation fo rthe occurances around us. You say if there is a God why would he let "painful worms infest the eyes of children?" Suffering does not equate to the absence of a good God. Rather suffering implicates our need for a good God. In evolution suffering has no meaning or purpose. You can explain it by saying that a certain number of reations occured untill chemicals were released in your brain telling you that you're suffering, but that is pointless. Suffering just because i'm a pool of chemicals reacting. If i'm going to die and forget everything, why not just kill myself in the midst of suffering. If there is nothing to be gained out of life, then why live? If all this is is chemicals reacting, it has no purpose. Although science can indeed be beautiful, science is a how, not a why. and thus is science is all there is, all man can have is a how, and never a why. it is fatalistic and nihilistic at the core. unless you prefer the hedonist approach and decide to go and screw your life up, but have fun in the process.
A good God would let people suffer. If we didn't suffer there would be no need for a God. But rather God would have us suffer so that we could Acknowledge him, and he could bestow his grace upon us.
From a religious standpoint I think your last comment is interesting. You say that "a good God would let people suffer...God would have us suffer so that we could Acknowledge him, and he could bestow his grace upon us." Do angels experience suffering? (Not including fallen angels) Do angels experience grace? I do not think that suffering is necessary to know or acknoweledge God. What do you think?
-mersayochan
In my opinion, suffering isn't always necessary. We can acknowledge the grace and goodness of God just because we recognize that He is good, or perhaps for knowing how good things are for us because of Him. But sometimes, for some people, the juxtaposition of suffering and goodness is needed so they can appreciate the goodness more, or maybe so they'll choose it instead of wrong. There's a poem about that, and the last line goes something like, "But no one sees God as clearly or (something, something), as those who have met Him on the Pathway of Pain."
I don't think, howeer, that God wants us to suffer, or would just 'let' us; all I'm saying is that sometimes pain and suffering can be necessary, or is a testing of faith, or can function as a wake up call.
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~I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.~
I always think science, religion, and magic are related. I don't believe in Creationism all that much, but Big Bang and the Evolution also have their holes. Sometimes people overlook that.
Someone once said that it takes faith to believe in science. It shouldn't take science to believe in faith. The two things, science and faith, can influence each other heavily but they should not be required to. I should not limit my faith by science, and I should not limit my science with faith.
-mersayochan
For those of you up top discussing premordal ooze, you should read the latest Scientific American.
To everyone else, I say thus:
I must confess that I cannot make myself believe in the god of the bible, for reasons too lengthy and off-topic to list here. However, I cannot say that I don't believe in a creator, perse. As far as science has traced it backwards, I can see the logic. But their theories as to the beginning of the universe are quite far-fetched; at least no more "ludicrous" than the idea of a god to atheists. As a human, I understand that I have limitations, and therefore cannot be omniscient or anything closely related to it. How pompous would I be to claim my ideas as truth, with no evidence to support me? We likely may not be able to even comprehend the origins of ourselves and this world. The deeper we go, the harder it is to understand. Quantum physics, anyone?
And a little closer to the point of mersayochan's blog:
I do believe the two can be mixed, but they are separated because the issue is mostly between Christians and atheistic Darwinists. There are religions out there that support both.
Candide (by Voltaire) is an interesting satire you guys might like. And Clifford A. Pickover writes much on science and religion. I believe there's a fictional book he wrote called The Lobotomy Club that has to do with intelligent design.
Believe in God? For the life of me I am confounded by the number of people who believe in the concept of a god. The whole thought seems ridiculous to me. The concept of a god or gods has for centuries been sold to the masses, so they can have "answers" to their unanswerable questions, and so they can be manipulated and controlled. That's not all bad from a sociological perspective. It's just beyond belief, except by True Believers who MUST HAVE THOSE ANSWERS and that form of moral guidance. Unfortunately, it seems to matter little whether or not the ANSWER is logical or ridiculous. Most people just demand answers and explanations... of any sort. And we call ourselves civilized and intellectual? Hogwash.