by nicolaou 122 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I believe in God and I agree with the Theory of evolution.
I do see a certain "Design" in the Universe, a certain order in the way things are but I don't think that is answered by the ID movement, at least not what I have read about it.
I don't think that it is a case of either/or, but of both working together.
As I believe in a Creator I don't have any issues with that Creator designing the process we decided to name "evolution".
Ah, a Mac. Different setup, Tammy, obviously. PC's use ascii codes, Mac doesn't. There will be a way to do it, I just don't know how. Sorry.
On topic, back to Dawkins (who always expresses the matter far better than I can).
"I am continually astonished by those theists who, far from having their consciousness raised in the way that I propose, seem to rejoice in natural selection as 'God's way of achieving his creation'. They note that evolution by natural selection would be a very easy and neat way to achieve a world full of life. God wouldn't need to do anything at all! Peter Atkins, in the book just mentioned*, takes this line of thought to a sensibly godless conclusion when he postulates a hypothetically lazy God who tries to get away with as little as possible in order to make a universe containing life. Atkins's lazy God is even lazier than the deist God of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: deus otiosus - literally God at leisure, unoccupied, unemployed, superfluous, useless. Step by step, Atkins succeeds in reducing the amount of work the lazy God has to do until he finally ends up doing nothing at all: he might as well not bother to exist. My memory vividly hears Woody Allen's perceptive whine: 'If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.' "
* Creation Revisited
That hits the spot Nick . . .
Searching for evidence of design seems to keep pushing the existence of a designer further and further away from the physical results of his design. It's almost impossible to prove his total absence . . . but the ever-growing remoteness eventually renders the concept inert.
The lazy God... That is a cool idea. I like that one. It's funny
Unfortunately it does not answer any questions. I am aware that many theist have a similar viewpoint, Psacramento being one. Makes it very easy to go by. But that is a lazy way of going about one of the most important questions. It does not stimulate research. And therefore it does not appeal to me. By the way I have read the God delusion many years ago, when I was still a good believing dub. It did not convince me back then. It felt a little bit like the Da Vinci Code. If you repeat something often enough, people will start accepting it. It was a good read though, and I still have it somewhere.
Let us all have a beer and toast on the lazy God (no, not you Djeggnog, you are not allowed to toast because of your religion). Cheers
"I am continually astonished by those theists who, far from having their consciousness raised in the way that I propose, seem to rejoice in natural selection as 'God's way of achieving his creation'. They note that evolution by natural selection would be a very easy and neat way to achieve a world full of life. God wouldn't need to do anything at all! Peter Atkins, in the book just mentioned*, takes this line of thought to a sensibly godless conclusion when he postulates a hypothetically lazy God who tries to get away with as little as possible in order to make a universe containing life. Atkins's lazy God is even lazier than the deist God of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: deus otiosus - literally God at leisure, unoccupied, unemployed, superfluous, useless. Step by step, Atkins succeeds in reducing the amount of work the lazy God has to do until he finally ends up doing nothing at all: he might as well not bother to exist. My memory vividly hears Woody Allen's perceptive whine: 'If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.' "
* Creation Revisited
Rico should stick with evolutionary biology and leave theology to those that actually have a grasp of it.
Sunday school does NOT a theologian make.
Makes it very easy to go by. But that is a lazy way of going about one of the most important questions.
Hardly easy and since the important questions are still asked and debated, I am not sure what you mean.
Far easier is to be the "fundamentalist" on either side and IGNORE the fact that neither saide answers the questions.
Evolution doesn't answer the question of Why or How it all began, and design doens't answer WHY evolution is.
Instead of sticking to the either/or notion that both sides seem crazy-glued to, perhaps it is time for them to realise that both must be reconciled and not "ignored and hope it goes away".
The problem with your lis on what designed life would look like, hoffnung is that it's merely assertions without evidence or solid reason. Why would a designer leave behind a bunch of traces of trial and error, opposed to leaving only the successful attempts? Why would there be hard boundries as to what life can do rather than a broad range of synthesis, and why are those specific boundries (such as no animals can breathe carbon dioxide) the lines that can't be crossed?
The problem with coming up with a list of what designed life would look like is that it infers an understanding of what the designer would do. Which in essence means you can make the theory fit the facts. All you have to do is explain why the designer did it this way instead of that way. Are there traces of trial an error? Yes? That's because the designer was working out solutions, he didn't get it right on the first try. No? That's because he's an intelligent designer and didn't leave behind lots of mistakes. Either outcome is explainable by design just by changing the designer. A vague designer is a theory that will fit any fact. Which is why there hasn't been any kind of ID movement with a solid methodology for demonstrating something is designed rather than of natural occurence. Because to come up with a solid methodology for prediction, you would first have to make solid predictions about the designer involved. And no ID movement wants to do that.
But even with the list you made, it doesn't conform to our planet. Ecosystems for instance, are not spontaneous and stable. The planet is in constant flux, the continents are drifting around the planet, it shifts from ice age to thawed age, and back again, and there have been multiple mass extinctions on the planet, as well as a constant background extinction rate. You would have to infer, not a designer that made it and then watched it go, but a designer that is constantly at work, shaping and reshaping the world's ecosystems. But there again is the rub, either way all you have to do is change the designer to fit the facts. As long as you assume a priori that it was designed then it's easy to explain anything by design. You just have to say that's how the designer wanted and then make up a reason why. Which is really a reverse process. It would be more logical to try and understand the nature of said designer by examing the available data, rather than the other way around. But that is still assuming a priori that there was a designer to begin with.
And then the parts that do conform to the planet, such as having mechanisms such as disease, famine, and predation keep populations in check are explained easily by evolution by natural selection and don't require a designer. In these instances a designer is superflous. The entire concept as it stands is a bust. Before any kind of work could be done, somebody would have to say who the designer is, and give some kind of evidence that said designer even exists, otherwise you're just designing a designer to fit the available data.
And PSsacramento, the problem with the comment
"Evolution doesn't answer the question of Why or How it all began, and design doens't answer WHY evolution is.
Instead of sticking to the either/or notion that both sides seem crazy-glued to, perhaps it is time for them to realise that both must be reconciled and not "ignored and hope it goes away"."
This is to assume that theology has any means of answering the questions you posit. It doesn't. After thousands of years of theological thinking and pondering theologians are no closer to understanding why the universe exists or how it came to be than their ancient breathren. Theology's big weakness is that it possesses no method of falsifiability. If six theologians come to different conclusions as to "why" evolution occurs, or different conclusions as to "why" god does the things he does, what method exists to see who is right and who is wrong? Why is John Haught's idea that evolution is just god's drama, any more right or wrong than any other idea about why things evolve? Why is Alan Lurie more right or wrong about whether or not the existence of god can ever be proven? Here is an excerpt from Roger Badham's book introduction to theology
A central question that haunts both Jewish and Christian post-Holocaust theology is that of theodicy. Why, if God acts in history, was the Holocaust permitted to happen? A God who has the power to intervene, but who does not, surely stands indictable of injustice. There are many attempted solutions: The classical Greek model of God is of a Being beyond time, an unrelated Absolute, immutable and static. Immutability and omnipotence remain at the heart of Augustine’s doctrine of God, but he stresses that God is in all parts of creation, and is by no means removed from it. Schubert Ogden claims that God’s “body is the whole universe of nondivine beings”: therefore, all creatures are effected by God and effect God, and experience levels of freedom. Paul van Buren, adopting this process model, argues for the self-limiting character of God through the creation of self-determining agents, after which even power is social—shared between God and humanity in covenant together. God’s power is not absolute, but is relational and persuasive, and can therefore be profoundly frustrated. Because God is relational, God is affected by, and suffers with, creation. Tillich’s Kierkegaardian approach is compatible: If moral freedom is an inseparable trait of being human, for God to restrain evil would be synonymous with taking away our humanness. God has provided us already with every gift possible by which the Holocaust was to be prevented. Tillich moves away from personalist or supernaturalist assertions about God as a superbeing or agent, and speaks instead of God as the ground of Being and as Being itself. God is therefore perceived as the ground of agency rather than as an agent, which profoundly changes one’s theological view of God. Put differently, H. Richard Niebuhr insists that “responsibility affirms—God is acting in all actions upon you. So respond to all actions upon you as to respond to [God's] action.”
All of that is just assertions, and there is no means of demonstrating that any one of those attempts at explaining theodicy is more or less valid than any of the others. How is theology going to answer anything if all it is is a series of assertions that cannot ever be either proven or disproven, and in fact relish in the fact that they cannot be proven or disproven? Science and theology don't need to be reconciled, because only one of them is making any legitimate attempt at learning anything about the universe and our place in it. The other is just stroking it's chin and and guessing what an invisible non descript entity wants and is, and then claiming that it's critics just aren't sophisticated enough to understand it's importance.
And all of it is based on one major assumption. That there has to be a "why". There MUST be a reason that all of this is happening, and no, not some mathematical equation that just points to the universe existing, but one of deeper, poetic, meaning. It's impossible that we are just a brief chemical reaction that even as a species will be gone in the blink of the cosmic eye, organic chemistry being digested by a cold ammoral universe. No, that can't be. We must have some overarching purpose, we just have to. But maybe we don't, and there is no grand "why" to be asked. And if that's the case, then what is theology going to contribute to the world? Why does science need to reconcile itself to it when it hasn't even demonstrated that there is any validity to it's initial premise? Should chemistry also reconcile itself to alchemy since all it does is explain how chemicals work, but does nothing to explain the spiritual natures of the elements?
Not to put down any comments that have been made but I think it's a shame that the author of a thread can't click a button to close the discussion. This was an enjoyable one, thank you all.
@tec:
on a mac you could enter "system preferences" then "keyboard" and select "show keyboard & character viewer in menu bar". then you'll get a new icon in the menu bar right where the clock is. there you can open a virtual keyboard and enter any keys you want with your mouse... but you'd probably be better off getting a new keyboard... ;)
