Goddidit
I think in everyone there’s some sense of wonder. It manifests itself in stupid things (”what happens if I light my hand on fire?”) to funny things (”what happens if I put the cat in the crib with the baby?”) to awesome things (”why is light getting bent around some invisible spot in the universe?”)
As wonder increases, we’re required to shed some preconceptions. Maybe electricity isn’t magic, and follows a set of rules. Maybe bacteria doesn’t spontaneously appear (this was a valid theory for the origin of life for a long time), but comes from other bacteria and changes over time. Maybe there’s something to calculus, and not just a platform on which the professor can look down at you.
The stronger that someone holds onto these misguided notions, the harder it is to wonder and be amazed with the rest of the universe. Most of the assumptions are harmless and allow us to write off certain aspects of our world that we don’t care about (”computers are crazy”), but when the assumptions become all encompassing - a god - the whole sense of wonder thing goes out the window.
I’ve met people who are content with the idea that a god put everything here exactly as it is, and we’re just several thousand generations later. That’s absurd. I have family who deny that animals evolve. Ridiculous. That the LHC is pointless. What?
My guess is that it’s because the LHC is meant to recreate conditions at the beginning of the universe. This probably offends overly religious people, because it’s starting to hit closer to the crux of the religion.
On the flip side, though, I’ve got a pretty damn smart wife and a few friends who work hard to reconcile their religion with science. It’s much better that way. It allows for new antibiotics (because older ones don’t work as well against adapted bacteria). My best man majored in biology and can explain a lot more about the mechanics of evolution than I can, but he remains a Christian. My wife accepts lots of the things we talk about, and just says that it’s not a direct insult to God if we understand how the world works.
This is a step in the right direction. Not wondering about how the world works and how we can make it better isn’t. I’m fine with people who want to believe in a god (I see no reason for it, but I understand that it’s hard to dismiss myths that have been ingrained since childhood), as long as they’re for advancing humanity.
Fully embracing religion denies us that progress.
noah said:
Sep 16, 08 at 5:47 amIf most people actually looked at the foundations of their religion, they would have very little problem with evolution. Heck, they’d be nicer, consume less, and might actually consider science a form of religious worship. But most people consider their religion to be “what people have told me my religion is”. I think that is the problem, and it transcends religion.
I’m sure there are some atheists who also think the LHC could destroy the world because they’ve been told it could. The problem is that everyone’s introduction to their belief system starts with the conclusions, and then material is added to back it up. e.g., God is Love (look at the bible, it says so right here), or there is no God (look at the pain in the world, how could there be?)
Brian Jones said:
Sep 18, 08 at 1:34 pmFor over a year I decided there was no God and started looking at ideas such as evolution.
The funny thing about evolution is that it doesn’t contradict the bible for the most part. If God is God then couldn’t he create us however he wanted? Another funny thing about evolution is that it is still pure theory. While we have seen evolution on the micro level (such as the birds Darwin studied), we have yet to see an actual organism change the number of chromosomes it was born with. Now I know evolution takes millions of years to occur so we will probably never know.
Christians also are quick to reject evolution b/c of this theory that it takes millions of years for it to occur and they believe the Earth is only 10000 years old or so. In Genesis it talks about creation and the 7 days. I don’t believe the Sun was created until the 3rd day but I could easily be wrong on that. Either way, b/c an Earth day couldn’t have been created until the 3rd day b/c the sun wasn’t there, I believe those 7 days could be any length of time. I also believe it could have been 7 literal days as well b/c God is God and again… since he created time, in theory, he could fast forward 40 million years into 7 days…. but unlikely and again we will never know.
I think science and religion go great together and if Christians choose to ignore it, they will just lose credibility. It’s funny though, science actually was what convinced me that there had to be a God. When I took psychology and learned about how complex the human brain was, it just didn’t make sense to me that a single celled organism could evolve into the hugely complex beings we are today. To me it is much more logical to believe there is a God then leave it up to chance that we ended up here.
Christians a lot of the time think they’ve got this world figured out and are quick to criticize for whatever the reason. Whenever I run into one like that, I find it’s best to ignore them b/c, in reality, they haven’t figured anything out if they haven’t figured out they don’t have all the answers. Like why are we here?
I have plenty of non Christian friends and for the most part I actually enjoy hanging out with them more b/c of their ability to be more open minded and to not immediately discount ideas just b/c it doesn’t agree with what they believe.
As for the LHC thing sounds pretty cool. Although I have no idea what the experiment will tell us, I just think it is cool that we have found a way to send an atom traveling at .999 the speed of light.
terry said:
Sep 18, 08 at 1:59 pmThat’s a pretty well thought out reply.
The idea that a god could fiat us how we are is dependent on how the god is defined, though in almost all cases the hypothesis isn’t testable. That we have another explanation for how humans came about that provides testable hypotheses that have been validated lends a lot of credibility to evolution.
The whole idea that we’ve seen micro evolution but not macro evolution is an argument promoted by creationists as a way to deny evolution, but it’s got two things wrong with it. The first is that, since evolution takes a long time, we’re not likely to see fish transform into lizards over the time we’ve been studying animals. The second is that if you’re granting that species can change features of themselves through evolutionary forces, then it’s only a matter of time before enough changes happen that it’s a new species.
Animals wouldn’t change the number of chromosomes they’re born with, though they could have offspring with a different number of chromosomes. A quick google shows cells that change the number of chromosomes and where they’re placed fairly frequently: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TCY-4HC6KM9-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=43e4696c74357e292ae4f6e74a324cc4
Obviously the Genesis account for life has several claims opposing empirical evidence. The simplest explanation, though, is that the material is actually that old. It’s orders of magnitude more complex to assume that a god went and created things and then decided to reduce the decaying atoms in them to trick us into concluding a different age.
The complexity argument for a god is pretty effective for lots of people, but there’s a pretty cool counter to it, I think. It’s from Dawkins, and goes something like this: if you’re assuming that the human brain implies a designer because of its complexity that couldn’t have come about by itself, how much more improbably is a god that could design something like that, to come about by itself?
Also, it’s a misnomer to say that we’re here by chance. While there was some singularity that started life, chance isn’t how we arrived where we are today. Selection is, by definition, not random. The different forces pushing evolution are rarely random (genetic drift being the exception).
I don’t mind religious people. We hang out, so you know this. I just get annoyed with the ones who try to distort reality to rationalize their beliefs, rather than rely on evidence and reconcile their belief system with the things we’re learning (as people).
Brian Jones said:
Sep 18, 08 at 3:40 pmI get just as annoyed with Christians who distort reality to rationalize their beliefs. It seems like the only ones who get the spot light are the Christians who are truly crazy which makes Christianity look ridiculous.
When I say we are here by chance, I’m not just referring to evolution and natural selection. I’m referring to Earth and its location, its tilt, all the elements needed for life to survive, and then finally life on Earth. The odds of all these things falling into place aren’t good although some will point out the universe is infinite so maybe we are that 1 in a billion chance. Either way 1 in a billion isn’t a bet I normally take. Unrelated but do you think it’s kind of crazy that the universe is infinite?
I’ve never heard the God is trying to trick us but I have heard the Devil trying to trick us part. Either way I laugh! The Dawkins quote is good but when I try to compare the 2 (my thought and what God could be thinking about his complex mind), it’s hard to compare b/c there is so much I don’t understand about God and the world he lives in.
I couldn’t find where it said cells changed the number of chromosomes it has in that article. Maybe I’m not looking in the right spot. All it talked about was changing locations of chromosomes. When species evolve enough times to create a new species, (such as the Darwin Finch) I think they still have the same amount of Chromosomes as the species they evolved from. Through natural selection, their previous less dominant traits have turned into the dominant trait b/c of the environment around. I’m no expert on that though I only took Bio 1 and Zoology in college…. and oceanography!
Creationists and Evolutions could probably argue all day. Evolution lacks the hard evidence and Christianity’s entire basis is on the idea of faith which doesn’t require evidence. And if you actually find hard evidence, it would actually contradict Christianity and the faith doctrine so wtf!
I like war2 b/c I am God and they don’t question me.
terry said:
Sep 23, 08 at 3:32 pmSo, definitely agree on the Christians who make the rest of you seem crazy. I’m not a fan of them at all.
Also, before I say anything, your mom is a war2 god. How do you like that?
The argument that we’re here and so lucky is one I’ve read about but haven’t heard anyone make. I don’t buy it, though, because one in a billion (as you put it) are great odds given infinite chances. You’ll probably hit it several times. I think it means that we’re not special, and also that where life conditions come up and some crazy singularity to spark life is available, life will develop. At least until a comet wipes us out.
I think it’s more satisfying to just say that there’s so much about the world that we live in that we don’t understand (which seems pretty well founded). There’s lots of stuff we’re still discovering, and it’s arguably a matter of time before we find the equivalent to natural selection in physics.
For the longest time, we had no way of understanding how life developed into what it is today. So we introduced an external entity, named it God, and that answered the question. Then Darwin discovered natural selection and how it could power evolution, and boom, we didn’t need an external force to explain that anymore.
I think some time (hopefully, before we die, because it’ll be a pretty cool discovery) in the future, we’ll find the same answer in physics as to how the universe could have started. Who knows, maybe the LHC just made its own universe. Well, when they actually collide something.
So I just glanced over the link that I sent, but it talked about how genes can duplicate, which adds more genes to the string, and then they can mutate, which gives you more info. Here’s another explanation: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/03/rosenhouse_on_id_and_informati.php
What I don’t like about the argument that X hasn’t been witnessed, therefore it isn’t true is that it’s an infinite argument. You can always make the gaps smaller. You can do it with anything, really. It sounds crazy, but I could argue that light doesn’t come from the sun, because nobody’s traced a photon all the way from the sun to the Earth. And each time they found a way to measure it, I could just say that it’s a different photon and needs to be proven on an even smaller scale.
People will make the same argument against evolutionary forces just because they haven’t seen, in their lifetime, a fish turn into a person. The only reason, I’d argue, that they don’t make the same argument about photons from the sun is that there’s no book that claims otherwise.
Also, remember that time I beat you at Starcraft? Me neither