I put 'both'. But the question in my view is faulty.
The world can't be created by 'science'. Science can't create, as if 'science' were a kind of super-human sentient being (not even humans can create, by the way - at best, they can engineer, or generate). Nor did 'science' pre-exist the world. Science is an entirely human development. Rather than creating, science chiefly translates what is already there into a form and language that enables human beings to make judgments about it and manipulate it. It is a tool developed by humans for humans. And science cannot 'describe' on its own, again as if science were some kind of living thing. Everything from the equipment used to the design of the test, to the assessment procedures, to the parameters on which the thing is to be judged, to the methods of recording used, and even the forms of evidence and kinds of judgments that are 'acceptable' and which are filtered out as 'irrelevant', is a human fabrication. The only thing that isn't, is the object of study - and when you consider how huge a research project is, the object of study is only a small part of it. All evidence is just a 'nudge' towards a human judgment and it cannot 'tell' anyone anything without judgments being extrapolated from it. Often the things scientists apply their science to are things that they already believe to exist - science usually serves to confirm, develop or overturn things that have already been accepted. Scientists are occasionally surprised by what they find, but it is a very, very long process before they can ever undisputedly say they have 'found' something.
My main point is that neither scientists nor their tool have 'created' anything. At best, they either found it was already there, confirmed or overturned their belief/disbelief in it to a degree of plausibility that they or others found satisfying, or engineered it.
So yes, I believe that God created the world. And hints to human judgments about how he created it can be generated by science.
"God created the world"
By speaking it into existence. LMAO, you can't get something from nothing, and for true creation to take place, not even a "creator"
Can be present.
The whole idea of god is a contradiction.
You would be right... If God is a type of human, and the words of a God are made of the same stuff and have the same qualities as the words of a human. But he isn't, and they aren't and they don't (unless he chooses to make their form understandable to humans,which he has sometimes done in his dealings with us). Whatever kind of entity God is, and whatever God's words are, I can't see why they shouldn't have power to influence the material world that he is the creator of, the same as human words have the power to influence culture that humans are the creators of. We are creators of our culture (even if many creatures of lower intelligence than us could not imitate us or ever conceive of how we did it), and whatever God is, it doesn't seem implausibe that he should have the qualities required to create a material world, if creating the material world is what he is reputed to have done. In biology, if we see strange animal tracks but can't imagine what animal could have made them, we don't say that the animal never existed just because we can't appreciate what it must be like. Instead, we say, 'whatever this animal is like, its feet are adapted in such a way as to enable it to make tracks like that.'. We can't imagine how God is a god, but in intelligence as a species, we are to God as a slug is to us, so it should be more worrying if we *could* understand. What we can conclude is that if God made the universe, God has the qualities and attributes required for making universes, which of course no known animal has, because God is not an animal, and animals do not make universes.
It therefore isn't implausible that the attributes of God should be significantly unlike ours. In the animal kingdom, birds fly without an engine, fish live underwater without an oxygen tank, some fish even produce their own electricity, and they did so probably.millions of years before humans 'discovered' it. But short of DNA modification any human-like being doing those things lwould be absurd. Well, since God is a higher intelligence than us (and I'm talking by a lot, not a little), I could well believe that enough of God's attributes are not shared by humans, to make him capable of myriad other things that would be absurd for a human to be able to do. And yet, he is like enough to humans that he communicates, and that these communications can cause things to be engendered.
To talk about the attributes of something, you first need to entertain the premise that it exists. Otherwise it is like saying 'There is no such thing as a hoggleswaggle. It does not and has not ever existed. The cry of a hoggleswaggle does not have the power to cause an earthquake.'. But if there is no such thing as a hoggleswaggle it doesn't even have a cry - and more than that, there is no 'it' to have or not have a cry in the first place. All I know about the power of the words of God is that I have heard seen it working, but if you have not seen them,and do not know or will not permit yourself to entertain the notion that God is even an entity, how can you describe his characteristics, and draw up limits of what he can and can't do? A non-thing can't have any attributes at all. Now because I have had experience of a real God in my life I can say the little I know about him. But far less than tell me what God's words can and can't do, you couldn't even tell me what colour my neighbour's cat is! And yet despute never having seen or known my neighbour's cat you could believe well enough that my neighbour has a cat.
Essentially, yes. The laws of the universe that science has discovered pre-existed the science, all science did was make them visible to humans. We 'see' the laws often by codifying them into mathematics. Sometimes we get the science wrong. But no matter how bad the science is, the laws themselves don't change. They are not dependent on 'science' to exist, and they stay the same until someone does a better job at describing them! Newton's apple would have fallen whether Newton had called it 'gravity' or not!
Yes, but is the evolution of life into the species that we see today, not due to random processes of which the non-adaptive ones die out without intervention nor guiding care from a Deity?
Why are the two mutually exclusive? As I see it, God created matter and its laws, and sustains it in spirit. Spirit and matter are two completely different things. Science in its present form largely only considers matter. There are points of convergence, but empiricists are generally only concerned with matter. So, however God may be sustaining his processed, they don't know, and largely, they don't want to know l, except to try to 'disprove' God. Would an almighty God condescend to let mockers and haters tie him down and prod and judge him like an animal specimen? We ask if dolphins, elephants and primates ought to be treated with more dignity than to be put in zoos because of their high IQ. ASSUMING God is real, then he is a God, not some kind of monkey. He would not be less sentient than a human being, but more, and have a more developed sense of self, and a more powerful intelligence than a human. Assuming God is real, we could not expect him to be happy to be treated as a lab specimen and dominated by those who consider him an enemy. Why should he not conceal himself from them? His existence doesn't depend on their believing in him. If scientists set out with the foregone conclusion that God doesn't exist and set up their parameters and scope of enquiry accordingly, then of course they will not 'find' him. Moreover, how can they expect to develop a methodology to detect him, if they already don't believe he is there? They do not have any idea what sort of being he is, and they do not care. So they cannot.
It is true that a lot of Christians are narrow-minded. It is also true that a lot of naturalists (convinced atheists) are narrow-minded, too. But tell me now, is it narrower to admit the possibility of both God and science, or to shut one's eyes completely to the possibility of God? People sometimes throw clichés around without really thinking about what they're saying.
Nobody is trying to banish your warm fuzzy spiritual teddy bear into non-existence. Either he created the universe, or he didn't. Despite your best efforts to avoid answering my question, you have answered it. I wish you, God, and your ancient scriptures all the best. As an Agnostic, his existence matters not to me.
Well, thanks for your warm wishes and your respectful answer, considering we don't share points of view! Just to clarify though, it is the God of the Bible whom I'm convinced is there (the one who commanded circumcision, required animal blood sacrifice, and sealed a peace pact with mankind on the bloody death of his own incarnate self). Did your idea of my God include those things? On balance and from experience of upholding the pact and knowing peace with him, I'd say God is warm and fuzzy to those who are warm to him, but he is warm and fuzzy like a lion, not like a teddy bear.
God cannot exist no matter how many word salads you throw at it.
God was a concept create by man to explain why we are here ect. because they had almost no understanding of how the world worked.
Creation is impossible because nothing is just that nothing, and nothing is, nothing no matter what.
And in order for true creation to happen not even a "creator" can be present, because then who or what created them on into infinity.
Where did the universe come from honestly we don't know.
And the thought of some altimate being speaking everything into existence is laughable.
Arguably everything anyone has written on this page is word salad, but verbiage doesn't make any difference to wheher God exists or not. He does or he doesn't. All it can make a difference to is whether people think he does. It is either God or the void that will have the last laugh when we're dead.
You would try to make a God exist or not exist via logic, which is essentially a thought experiment. Could God not equally make you exist via thought experiment? Is all matter essentially the fabric of an extra-material being's thoughts, or speech? Is there an infinite number of 'yous', which would be required to make an infinite God cease infinitelty to exist? Perhaps I am being facetious. Pick holes if you will, you will always have a retort. Christians hold that God can speak matter into being - and the human urge to speak God into nothing could be seen perhaps as a twisted vestige of having been created in his image.
Were you there when man supposedly invented God? If you like evidence so much, can you show me some?
I don't see why God needs an infinite chain of creators to exist. I don't see the conflict. The point of a creator is that it brings things into existence that were not before. Nothing can be created out of nothing - but this very rule is based on a naturalist account of the universe that excludes God from consideration and only considers mortal things as possibly existing from the outset. God is not the same as a mortal thing. He is an eternal thing. Eternal things don't rely on mortal things to exist. They aren't bound by the same limitations either. God doesn't need to be created... because eternal things, by their very nature, aren't created.
We use logic to try to prove such-and-such a thing can or can't be - but there is actually no reason why he universe *should* obey 'hard logic' as it is understood by humans. By naturalist accounts at least, we aren't at the centre of the universe. The universe does not exist just because it is logical to us, or cease to exist just because we find bits of it hard to make logical sense of. Are you and I even well read enough in hard, mathematical-philosophical logic to be able to make authoritative statements about wheher God is logical and discredit opponents? Should we require God to make more innate logical sense than the physical world around us before we will admit that his existence is even 'possible'? The physical world too has many mysteries. How much more the one who created it! And how could we even permit God to make logical sense at all if we are so certain that he doesn't exist? If you study a thing because you're only interested in proving that it isn't in fact there, are you really studying it? How can you analyse a thing with your eyes shut?
Just because you don't want us to be able to know something doesn't mean we don't know. Just because something is laughable doesn't mean it isn't so.
If god can be eternal as you say, then why couldn't the universe be eternal.
Really it's a question of what meaning you choose to give a god.
I don't give any thought of a dirty any meaning there for it has none and doesn't exist.
But you can't deny the universe or science, because there it is.
The universe could be eternal. In theory. Why does God being eternal mean that the universe couldn't be eternal? And if the universe wasn't eternal, God could still be eternal. He is not subject to what he created unless he subjects himself to it...
If he exists he is subject, because where did he come from and why?
And if god knows everything past present and future, why even bother with us in the first place?
How could a perfect god create something so imperfect?
Sorry about the time gaps, I only check back here once or twice a month, because it's not as busy here, lol.
Do you believe in God, science or both?
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I put 'both'. But the question in my view is faulty.
The world can't be created by 'science'. Science can't create, as if 'science' were a kind of super-human sentient being (not even humans can create, by the way - at best, they can engineer, or generate). Nor did 'science' pre-exist the world. Science is an entirely human development. Rather than creating, science chiefly translates what is already there into a form and language that enables human beings to make judgments about it and manipulate it. It is a tool developed by humans for humans. And science cannot 'describe' on its own, again as if science were some kind of living thing. Everything from the equipment used to the design of the test, to the assessment procedures, to the parameters on which the thing is to be judged, to the methods of recording used, and even the forms of evidence and kinds of judgments that are 'acceptable' and which are filtered out as 'irrelevant', is a human fabrication. The only thing that isn't, is the object of study - and when you consider how huge a research project is, the object of study is only a small part of it. All evidence is just a 'nudge' towards a human judgment and it cannot 'tell' anyone anything without judgments being extrapolated from it. Often the things scientists apply their science to are things that they already believe to exist - science usually serves to confirm, develop or overturn things that have already been accepted. Scientists are occasionally surprised by what they find, but it is a very, very long process before they can ever undisputedly say they have 'found' something.
My main point is that neither scientists nor their tool have 'created' anything. At best, they either found it was already there, confirmed or overturned their belief/disbelief in it to a degree of plausibility that they or others found satisfying, or engineered it.
So yes, I believe that God created the world. And hints to human judgments about how he created it can be generated by science.
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Acton98
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"God created the world"
By speaking it into existence. LMAO, you can't get something from nothing, and for true creation to take place, not even a "creator"
Can be present.
The whole idea of god is a contradiction.
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Grunewald
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You would be right... If God is a type of human, and the words of a God are made of the same stuff and have the same qualities as the words of a human. But he isn't, and they aren't and they don't (unless he chooses to make their form understandable to humans,which he has sometimes done in his dealings with us). Whatever kind of entity God is, and whatever God's words are, I can't see why they shouldn't have power to influence the material world that he is the creator of, the same as human words have the power to influence culture that humans are the creators of. We are creators of our culture (even if many creatures of lower intelligence than us could not imitate us or ever conceive of how we did it), and whatever God is, it doesn't seem implausibe that he should have the qualities required to create a material world, if creating the material world is what he is reputed to have done. In biology, if we see strange animal tracks but can't imagine what animal could have made them, we don't say that the animal never existed just because we can't appreciate what it must be like. Instead, we say, 'whatever this animal is like, its feet are adapted in such a way as to enable it to make tracks like that.'. We can't imagine how God is a god, but in intelligence as a species, we are to God as a slug is to us, so it should be more worrying if we *could* understand. What we can conclude is that if God made the universe, God has the qualities and attributes required for making universes, which of course no known animal has, because God is not an animal, and animals do not make universes.
It therefore isn't implausible that the attributes of God should be significantly unlike ours. In the animal kingdom, birds fly without an engine, fish live underwater without an oxygen tank, some fish even produce their own electricity, and they did so probably.millions of years before humans 'discovered' it. But short of DNA modification any human-like being doing those things lwould be absurd. Well, since God is a higher intelligence than us (and I'm talking by a lot, not a little), I could well believe that enough of God's attributes are not shared by humans, to make him capable of myriad other things that would be absurd for a human to be able to do. And yet, he is like enough to humans that he communicates, and that these communications can cause things to be engendered.
To talk about the attributes of something, you first need to entertain the premise that it exists. Otherwise it is like saying 'There is no such thing as a hoggleswaggle. It does not and has not ever existed. The cry of a hoggleswaggle does not have the power to cause an earthquake.'. But if there is no such thing as a hoggleswaggle it doesn't even have a cry - and more than that, there is no 'it' to have or not have a cry in the first place. All I know about the power of the words of God is that I have heard seen it working, but if you have not seen them,and do not know or will not permit yourself to entertain the notion that God is even an entity, how can you describe his characteristics, and draw up limits of what he can and can't do? A non-thing can't have any attributes at all. Now because I have had experience of a real God in my life I can say the little I know about him. But far less than tell me what God's words can and can't do, you couldn't even tell me what colour my neighbour's cat is! And yet despute never having seen or known my neighbour's cat you could believe well enough that my neighbour has a cat.
I could go on...
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McBean
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Please do go on. Tell me why Agnosticism is a false concept.
So you're saying God created the world through his power (not science). And science was just a "tool" of humans to discover what God created?
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Essentially, yes. The laws of the universe that science has discovered pre-existed the science, all science did was make them visible to humans. We 'see' the laws often by codifying them into mathematics. Sometimes we get the science wrong. But no matter how bad the science is, the laws themselves don't change. They are not dependent on 'science' to exist, and they stay the same until someone does a better job at describing them! Newton's apple would have fallen whether Newton had called it 'gravity' or not!
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McBean
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Yes, but is the evolution of life into the species that we see today, not due to random processes of which the non-adaptive ones die out without intervention nor guiding care from a Deity?
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Why are the two mutually exclusive? As I see it, God created matter and its laws, and sustains it in spirit. Spirit and matter are two completely different things. Science in its present form largely only considers matter. There are points of convergence, but empiricists are generally only concerned with matter. So, however God may be sustaining his processed, they don't know, and largely, they don't want to know l, except to try to 'disprove' God. Would an almighty God condescend to let mockers and haters tie him down and prod and judge him like an animal specimen? We ask if dolphins, elephants and primates ought to be treated with more dignity than to be put in zoos because of their high IQ. ASSUMING God is real, then he is a God, not some kind of monkey. He would not be less sentient than a human being, but more, and have a more developed sense of self, and a more powerful intelligence than a human. Assuming God is real, we could not expect him to be happy to be treated as a lab specimen and dominated by those who consider him an enemy. Why should he not conceal himself from them? His existence doesn't depend on their believing in him. If scientists set out with the foregone conclusion that God doesn't exist and set up their parameters and scope of enquiry accordingly, then of course they will not 'find' him. Moreover, how can they expect to develop a methodology to detect him, if they already don't believe he is there? They do not have any idea what sort of being he is, and they do not care. So they cannot.
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Looks like your a huge Jesus freak that has a very narrow mind of how things work in the universe
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Grunewald
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It is true that a lot of Christians are narrow-minded. It is also true that a lot of naturalists (convinced atheists) are narrow-minded, too. But tell me now, is it narrower to admit the possibility of both God and science, or to shut one's eyes completely to the possibility of God? People sometimes throw clichés around without really thinking about what they're saying.
Nobody is trying to banish your warm fuzzy spiritual teddy bear into non-existence. Either he created the universe, or he didn't. Despite your best efforts to avoid answering my question, you have answered it. I wish you, God, and your ancient scriptures all the best. As an Agnostic, his existence matters not to me.
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Well, thanks for your warm wishes and your respectful answer, considering we don't share points of view! Just to clarify though, it is the God of the Bible whom I'm convinced is there (the one who commanded circumcision, required animal blood sacrifice, and sealed a peace pact with mankind on the bloody death of his own incarnate self). Did your idea of my God include those things? On balance and from experience of upholding the pact and knowing peace with him, I'd say God is warm and fuzzy to those who are warm to him, but he is warm and fuzzy like a lion, not like a teddy bear.
God isn't a he. It's not got sex or gender.
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JustAHuman
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Then why does the bible refer to God as "he."
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[Old Memory]
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Probably because it was written by men in a patriarchal society.
What does the Bible have to do with god?
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#edgy
God cannot exist no matter how many word salads you throw at it.
God was a concept create by man to explain why we are here ect. because they had almost no understanding of how the world worked.
Creation is impossible because nothing is just that nothing, and nothing is, nothing no matter what.
And in order for true creation to happen not even a "creator" can be present, because then who or what created them on into infinity.
Where did the universe come from honestly we don't know.
And the thought of some altimate being speaking everything into existence is laughable.
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Grunewald
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Arguably everything anyone has written on this page is word salad, but verbiage doesn't make any difference to wheher God exists or not. He does or he doesn't. All it can make a difference to is whether people think he does. It is either God or the void that will have the last laugh when we're dead.
You would try to make a God exist or not exist via logic, which is essentially a thought experiment. Could God not equally make you exist via thought experiment? Is all matter essentially the fabric of an extra-material being's thoughts, or speech? Is there an infinite number of 'yous', which would be required to make an infinite God cease infinitelty to exist? Perhaps I am being facetious. Pick holes if you will, you will always have a retort. Christians hold that God can speak matter into being - and the human urge to speak God into nothing could be seen perhaps as a twisted vestige of having been created in his image.
Were you there when man supposedly invented God? If you like evidence so much, can you show me some?
I don't see why God needs an infinite chain of creators to exist. I don't see the conflict. The point of a creator is that it brings things into existence that were not before. Nothing can be created out of nothing - but this very rule is based on a naturalist account of the universe that excludes God from consideration and only considers mortal things as possibly existing from the outset. God is not the same as a mortal thing. He is an eternal thing. Eternal things don't rely on mortal things to exist. They aren't bound by the same limitations either. God doesn't need to be created... because eternal things, by their very nature, aren't created.
We use logic to try to prove such-and-such a thing can or can't be - but there is actually no reason why he universe *should* obey 'hard logic' as it is understood by humans. By naturalist accounts at least, we aren't at the centre of the universe. The universe does not exist just because it is logical to us, or cease to exist just because we find bits of it hard to make logical sense of. Are you and I even well read enough in hard, mathematical-philosophical logic to be able to make authoritative statements about wheher God is logical and discredit opponents? Should we require God to make more innate logical sense than the physical world around us before we will admit that his existence is even 'possible'? The physical world too has many mysteries. How much more the one who created it! And how could we even permit God to make logical sense at all if we are so certain that he doesn't exist? If you study a thing because you're only interested in proving that it isn't in fact there, are you really studying it? How can you analyse a thing with your eyes shut?
Just because you don't want us to be able to know something doesn't mean we don't know. Just because something is laughable doesn't mean it isn't so.
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Acton98
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If god can be eternal as you say, then why couldn't the universe be eternal.
Really it's a question of what meaning you choose to give a god.
I don't give any thought of a dirty any meaning there for it has none and doesn't exist.
But you can't deny the universe or science, because there it is.
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Grunewald
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The universe could be eternal. In theory. Why does God being eternal mean that the universe couldn't be eternal? And if the universe wasn't eternal, God could still be eternal. He is not subject to what he created unless he subjects himself to it...
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Acton98
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If he exists he is subject, because where did he come from and why?
And if god knows everything past present and future, why even bother with us in the first place?
How could a perfect god create something so imperfect?
Sorry about the time gaps, I only check back here once or twice a month, because it's not as busy here, lol.
If god created the universe he would still be creating it and he won't have a end of that because the universe is expanding
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Grunewald
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Who's to say God stopped being an intrinsically creative God once the universe reached a state similar to the one we see today...?