What's in a creation story -- disturbance, secretion, building, poofing

[Keith&Co.]

Its not about someone just inserting God willy nilly.

At this point, yes.
The gods grew out of attempts to explain the world around us. Humans look for agency. That's why we try to intimidate our cars when they won't start or punish nails for bending when we hammer them. Or talk about how 'vending machines hate me.'
In the Before Time, knowing nothing about electrical charges, the idea of a god being the reason lightning happened seemed reasonable. And thunder was connected to lightning, but there was a delay, so it made sense in many circles to add a second god in charge of the thunder.

These days, though, they can pretty well explain the process without once having to appeal to a divine being to explain where the light comes from, or why thunder travels at a different speed than visible light.

Sounding like an old argument ...prove theres no God

Or provide the slightest reason to think there is one...

-But science has been observing laws for quite some time now is there no implication from study to provide explanatory power God can not exist?

Gods are supernatural in nature. That puts them beyond the scope of science which studies natural processes and events. So, no, science cannot prove or disprove the existence of the gods.
And people attributing things to gods do not provide a falsifiable theory, thus they're not even pretending to be scientific about it.

Simplistic terms to my level : Intelligence exist (level increases), creation and design "is real" - exampled by our own hand in making.

Yes. as far as that goes.

Universal laws "never evolving" still maintains life that is seemingly fragile ,even by evolution (small e) and natural selection (life forms surving and adapting).. so many laws on many levels witout conflictions.

The universe works, yes.
You're overimpressed by that fact and incredulous that it could just 'happen.'
Your incredulity is not a good argument that we need to add one or more deities to the mix in order to have a satisfactory explanation for the universe as we find it.

'Because god/gods' is exactly the same as 'it's magic.' An attempt to end the actual conversation with a show-stopper that cannot be challenged.

I thought science could make those challenges. You could challenge magic with science fiction not that I say God is magic.

The challenge to magic is the same as the challenge to gods. And Bigfoot. And UFO's. And design.
"Give me a reason to believe."

Been waiting...



...and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

 

[Random Person]

Except, the whole point of #2 is that humans are created with a spark of the divine, that's what sets us apart from the rest of the animals, and the unliving matter of the universe.
From science's POV, we're not different from the other animals, and not that much different from the matter that makes us up, anyway.

Secretion by a deity, maybe. But evolution involves creation by secretion by ordinary living things: reproduction.

Reproduction is reproducing what has been created, it's not creation. Science has no explanation for how life began.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Reproduction is reproducing what has been created, it's not creation. Science has no explanation for how life began.

Well, not NO explanation.
Several explanations have been suggested.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Let's see how well.

Doesn't matter. It's just something Lion keeps insisting on, mostly because he believes the creation model, so he accepts those parts of science he can pretend dovetail with his myth. Then he pretends they're evidence FOR his myth.

The word is dualism. The earliest creation myths and religious inclinations likely didn't possess this characteristic of separate worlds. People invented based upon what they saw. Magic creatures came later.

Modern science illustrates this nicely in that it marches away from dualism. Those like Lion try to maintain the connection as it inevitably drifts away.

In a very real way science is taking us back to an earlier time, away from intervening millenia of institutionalized, superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

 

[Learner]

At this point, yes.
The gods grew out of attempts to explain the world around us. Humans look for agency. That's why we try to intimidate our cars when they won't start or punish nails for bending when we hammer them. Or talk about how 'vending machines hate me.'
In the Before Time, knowing nothing about electrical charges, the idea of a god being the reason lightning happened seemed reasonable. And thunder was connected to lightning, but there was a delay, so it made sense in many circles to add a second god in charge of the thunder.

Indeed gods have always been there since man was able to express such a thing and having the "concept" of a god very early from way back then. Around about the middle ages and onward no doubt many superstitions came about and used for debateble discussions against religion today. Man has been on the earth for quite a few thousand years accepting creation.

These days, though, they can pretty well explain the process without once having to appeal to a divine being to explain where the light comes from, or why thunder travels at a different speed than visible light.

True but the reason for laws that make the processes is still a mysterious thing.

Or provide the slightest reason to think there is one... - Gods are supernatural in nature. That puts them beyond the scope of science which studies natural processes and events. So, no, science cannot prove or disprove the existence of the gods.

And people attributing things to gods do not provide a falsifiable theory, thus they're not even pretending to be scientific about it.

Well yes. At the moment science is insufficient. So we can still make use of what we currently know. Deduce from whats available without pretending to be scientific.

The universe works, yes.
You're overimpressed by that fact and incredulous that it could just 'happen.'
Your incredulity is not a good argument that we need to add one or more deities to the mix in order to have a satisfactory explanation for the universe as we find it.
"Give me a reason to believe."

Been waiting...

...and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

There are reasons to " think about it " in my previous post but there are people who could explain better. By science methods you'll have a long wait being that its not sufficient enough for anyone to have such explanations especially to an atheist.

So, no, science cannot prove or disprove the existence of the gods.

 

[Keith&Co.]

True but the reason for laws that make the processes is still a mysterious thing.

What makes you sure there must be a reason?

Well yes. At the moment science is insufficient.

he said over the internet, to the diabetic, who works to train people to program intercontinental missiles launched from nuclear submarines.

Science is sufficient for what science actually does. If it doesn't meet your demands, that may or may not any fault of science...

So we can still make use of what we currently know. Deduce from whats available without pretending to be scientific.

Except, adding God is not a deduction. It's your starting premise.

There are reasons to " think about it " in my previous post but there are people who could explain better. By science methods you'll have a long wait being that its not sufficient enough for anyone to have such explanations especially to an atheist.

Ah. That's such a strange thing for an apologist to do. Blame the atheist for the lack of convincing evidence. It's not that there's no evidence, it's my fault for not accepting your incredulity as compelling, or your anonymous tales from antiquity as authoritative.
No one's every done that cheesy cop-out before. I mean, except that it's Lion's favorite Argument, of course...

 

[bilby]

Science has disproven the existence of any God that currently intervenes in the world.

The Standard Model is known not to contain any mid-scale forces by which such a God could interact with reality; and a God that can only intervene at scales smaller than atoms, or scales larger than solar systems, or which started the universe and then vanished, is not a God described by any major religion.

I am sure that there are people who believe that a God compatible with modern physics existed, and created the universe; But none of those people subscribe to the doctrines of any branch of Christianity or Islam; And I am not aware of any Jewish sect whose doctrine is compatible with the SM either. Most non-Abrahamic religions are also incompatible with the SM.

Of course, the SM could be wrong; But it is the best tested theory ever, so it probably isn't.

Nothing in science rules out a creator God that set the starting conditions of the universe, and never interacted with it again in any way. That Christians treat this fact as though it somehow supports their faith is utterly pathetic. It is support for Christianity in EXACTLY the same way that the existence of lottery winners supports my belief that I won last week's Powerball, despite not having bought a ticket.

The central feature of Christianity is that a God interacted directly with reality at a human scale. This is not compatible with science; That many people continue to believe that it might be is merely an indictment of the parlous state of scientific education.

 

[Learner]

What makes you sure there must be a reason?

Existence of the universe obviously.

he said over the internet, to the diabetic, who works to train people to program intercontinental missiles launched from nuclear submarines.

Programming sets of instructions so that the missiles do what they were designed to do. I would have thought you would have pondered on the idea that matter behaves the same way with the universe laws , hence why we have charts and periodic tables with fixed properties to make calculations.

Except, adding God is not a deduction. It's your starting premise.

After the deduction is where I would make God although I'm sure there are some that start use the starting premise.Theists are catching up with the IDers.

Ah. That's such a strange thing for an apologist to do. Blame the atheist for the lack of convincing evidence. It's not that there's no evidence, it's my fault for not accepting your incredulity as compelling, or your anonymous tales from antiquity as authoritative.
No one's every done that cheesy cop-out before. I mean, except that it's Lion's favorite Argument, of course...

I wasn't blaming atheists if thats what it seemed. There are only two positions regarding the existence of God and I now realize that the positions were wrong all along. Its not the case of whether there is or there isn't a God at all, but rather :

"God exists" versus "don't know" because these are the only answers that ever come up from two sides of the debates.

 

[lpetrich]

Science has disproven the existence of any God that currently intervenes in the world.

I wouldn't want to claim that, because that is an awfully hard claim to falsify. Especially if such intervention is hard to distinguish from the workings of impersonal natural laws.

But being made an unnecessary hypothesis is a more plausible claim, and a more supportable one.

 

[bilby]

Science has disproven the existence of any God that currently intervenes in the world.

I wouldn't want to claim that, because that is an awfully hard claim to falsify. Especially if such intervention is hard to distinguish from the workings of impersonal natural laws.

But being made an unnecessary hypothesis is a more plausible claim, and a more supportable one.

I would argue that these are simply different ways of saying the same thing. A God whose actions are indistinguishable from the workings of natural law is synonymous with a God that is non-existent.

But even if I accept, for the sake of argument, that there is an important difference, it remains true that both a non-existent God and an existing God whose actions are indistinguishable from the workings of natural law, are very different things from the Gods described by the vast majority of religions. Christianity describes a God that manifests as human, and performs miracles; Islam describes a God that communicates directly with human prophets, and performs miracles.

The possibility of a God that falls so far short of the Gods described by Christianity or Islam is in no way support for these religion's concepts of God, any more than the possibility of my getting a pilot's license supports my claim to be able to levitate under my own power.

Christian apologists, on these fora and elsewhere, love to define a 'barely there' God; To claim that science does not falsify that weak concept of God; And to then conclude that, as science cannot falsify the weak God concept, that their strong God concept is supported by (or at least not ruled out by) science. But that's false - the God described by the major Christian and Islamic sects IS ruled out by science. And I maintain that any God that intervenes in the world is incompatible with the Standard Model - Which is not falsification of that God hypothesis, but is as close as we need to get.

When your beliefs have, as their sole shred of scientific support, the possibility that our best tested scientific theory might be very significantly wrong, it is time to discard those beliefs. As Sean Carroll points out, it is literally less stupid to claim that the Moon is made of cheese, than it is to claim that there is an afterlife; The science that indicates that the moon is not made from cheese, is less well tested and less fundamental to the framework of human knowledge, than the science that indicates that no undetected and unknown force exists that could allow our consciousness to survive the destruction of our brains.

Oddly, if I assert that the moon has little or no dairy produce in its makeup, nobody points out that this hypothesis is not provable, and might be false if our scientific consensus is in error; But when i point out that interventionist Gods do not exist, people always want to point out that there is also the un-tested possibility that all of science is deeply wrong.

Sure, science could all be an elaborate hoax. But given its established effectiveness and utility, we are allowed to laugh at any fool who seriously suggests that it is.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Existence of the universe obviously.

The universe exists. You're fixating on the fact that parts of it work in predictable ways and feel there must be a plan. But that's just the same as deciding two gods are necessary to explain lightning and thunder, really.

he said over the internet, to the diabetic, who works to train people to program intercontinental missiles launched from nuclear submarines.

Programming sets of instructions so that the missiles do what they were designed to do. I would have thought you would have pondered on the idea that matter behaves the same way with the universe laws , hence why we have charts and periodic tables with fixed properties to make calculations.

You're putting a lot of weight on the order you see in the universe, and ignoring the chaos. I don't see any reason to look at the whole of the universe and see that it compares positivvely to something designed, like, say, a pencil.

Except, adding God is not a deduction. It's your starting premise.

After the deduction is where I would make God although I'm sure there are some that start use the starting premise.Theists are catching up with the IDers.

Thing is, adding God is not a deduction, Learner. That's induction. Putting more things into the equation to make it work the way you want it to.
You're not deducing gods.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I wouldn't want to claim that, because that is an awfully hard claim to falsify. Especially if such intervention is hard to distinguish from the workings of impersonal natural laws.

But being made an unnecessary hypothesis is a more plausible claim, and a more supportable one.

I would argue that these are simply different ways of saying the same thing. A God whose actions are indistinguishable from the workings of natural law is synonymous with a God that is non-existent.

But even if I accept, for the sake of argument, that there is an important difference, it remains true that both a non-existent God and an existing God whose actions are indistinguishable from the workings of natural law, are very different things from the Gods described by the vast majority of religions. Christianity describes a God that manifests as human, and performs miracles; Islam describes a God that communicates directly with human prophets, and performs miracles.

The possibility of a God that falls so far short of the Gods described by Christianity or Islam is in no way support for these religion's concepts of God, any more than the possibility of my getting a pilot's license supports my claim to be able to levitate under my own power.

Christian apologists, on these fora and elsewhere, love to define a 'barely there' God; To claim that science does not falsify that weak concept of God; And to then conclude that, as science cannot falsify the weak God concept, that their strong God concept is supported by (or at least not ruled out by) science. But that's false - the God described by the major Christian and Islamic sects IS ruled out by science. And I maintain that any God that intervenes in the world is incompatible with the Standard Model - Which is not falsification of that God hypothesis, but is as close as we need to get.

When your beliefs have, as their sole shred of scientific support, the possibility that our best tested scientific theory might be very significantly wrong, it is time to discard those beliefs. As Sean Carroll points out, it is literally less stupid to claim that the Moon is made of cheese, than it is to claim that there is an afterlife; The science that indicates that the moon is not made from cheese, is less well tested and less fundamental to the framework of human knowledge, than the science that indicates that no undetected and unknown force exists that could allow our consciousness to survive the destruction of our brains.

Oddly, if I assert that the moon has little or no dairy produce in its makeup, nobody points out that this hypothesis is not provable, and might be false if our scientific consensus is in error; But when i point out that interventionist Gods do not exist, people always want to point out that there is also the un-tested possibility that all of science is deeply wrong.

Sure, science could all be an elaborate hoax. But given its established effectiveness and utility, we are allowed to laugh at any fool who seriously suggests that it is.

To me it's like my producing a twenty dollar bill to prove that I own a money tree. Someone wants more proof so I show them another twenty dollars that I picked. Eventually I show them a hundred dollars, then thousands. But none of this comes close to my proving to anyone that I possess a money tree. I can return everyday and throw more nickles onto the sidewalk and say, "Look! You want more proof?" But it changes nothing.

I can claim that all that money comes from the money tree I possess, no different than claiming everything seen comes from the god someone says they have.

When theistic people say they have a god they're making a false claim. Period. If a god is a mountain, that's a bit different, just semantics in action.