Zillions of Universes? Or Did Ours Get Lucky? [Scientists Won't Entertain Theories that Support God]

The New York Times ^ | October 28, 2003 | DENNIS OVERBYE

[hosepipe]

I would be an atheist but alas I don't have that much faith

[AntiGuv]

Good. Since you didn't bother to answer the question, I need not waste my time any further.

[Salgak]

The Universe DOES have unique events.

But like I said, Science doesn't provide Truth. It provides a highly-accurate model of reality, BUT NOT A PERFECT ONE. Science is really just adding some more 9's to the far side of the decimal place: accurate to as far as we can RELIABLY make it. . . beyond that, well, an old phrase comes to mind:

"There, there be dragons. . . " (smile)

[Celtjew Libertarian]

The fingerprints of God are all over the Cosmos, they cover the Big Bang, they formulated and directed Evolution, and those scientists who are atheists and their Creationist counterparts on the opposite side of spectrum are simply blind to them.

Bravo and amen.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

And I think that scares a lot of people. What used to be called "miracles" becomes nothing more than natural phenomena.

Thing is, a lot of those natural phenomena look just as miraculous when explained.

[xp38]

In the book of Job God states from the whirlwind in ch 38 behold his creation and the laws established to maintain it. God uses the cosmological argument for God's existence and to illustrate the gulf between God and humanity since none of our creations or knowledge can be compared to what God has created. Placeholder or not it is what I prefer to have faith in and worship. Butterflies and galaxies are just hints of the beauty of the creator.

[DannyTN]

"If God exists in reality, and God created reality; then God must have created his own self. "

Unless God created our reality but not His.

[Blood of Tyrants]

I didn't? How do you know? Simply because you haven't seen it done proves nothing. I find rocks with strange designs in them a lot. Surely this is just a step up from that.

Is it TOO COMPLICATED TO BE PRODUCED BY CHANCE? What if I found a simple stainless steel fork, would THAT be simple enough to have been produced naturally given enough time.

So why is the human body, infinitely more complicated than a watch or a spoon, simply a chance product of combinations of protoplasmic goo and an almost infinite number of chance combinations that somehow bettered the being?

The eveloutionists biggest argument is Emmense Time + Chance = Mankind. Why MUST a watch found on the beach be designed. After all, hasn't the earth had 4.5 billion (or whatever) years to produce one by chance?

The bottom dollar is that evolution has NEVER been observed. Not even the bacteria that have become drug resistant are genetically different from the previous 10,000,000 generations that spawned them.

[ZULU]

Job is thought to be one of the oldest books in the Bible by Biblical scholars.

[Brilliant]

I would agree, as to the scientifically measurable, although obviously if God exists, then that is quite different from a world governed entirely by immutable scientific laws. However, the point here is that even if you agree with the scientists, we might very well live in a universe which logically allows for the possibility of God, even if he does not really exist. The scientists are trying to find a theory that does not allow for that, and are disgarding those theories that do, even though they may have scientific evidence to support them. Why are they doing that? Because they don't want to give ammunition to the fundamentalists.

I'm not a scientist, but if I were, I would follow the scientific evidence, and seek the truth, even if it left an opening for the fundamentalists to make their argument. Let's face it--they are never going to DISPROVE God. So why bother to let their abhorance of religion dictate or limit the theories which they will consider and research?

They are doing it purely for political reasons. They don't want religion to infect the subject matter that is taught in our schools. Personally, I don't think it's good to teach creationism in grade schools, but since there are so many who do believe that, or who do not want their kids to be taught evolution, I ask myself the question: Is this division really necessary? Why is teaching evolution so important? I read not too long ago that our grade schools have pretty much cut physics out of the ciricullum. Why are we teadching evolution, but not physics? Physics is far more important than evolution. Not too many of our children are going to go into fields that require more than a basic knowledge that evolution exists as a theory. Why create civil disorder over that?

[PatrickHenry]

Finally read through up to this point. Placemarker.

[ThinkPlease]

The bottom dollar is that evolution has NEVER been observed. Not even the bacteria that have become drug resistant are genetically different from the previous 10,000,000 generations that spawned them.

Not true. Read the Botanical Society of America's Evolution Statement for just one example of evolution in action. I'm sure you've seen this, as well.

[Ogmios]

They come out of the woodwork, Placemarker

[Lexinom]

I agree that science leads one to learn about God.

The postulate that "scientists believe in a random universe" is arrived at by asking "why?" until we get to the root of the matter. No scientist, of course, will come out and say "I believe in a random universe", at least, in so many words (although some have called the universe a cosmic "accident"). Nor do I place all scientists into this group, just the ones that begin with nontheistic or pantheistic premise and set out to use knowledge from God to disprove his existence - the same knowledge that you say leads you to God. To state that such knowledge leads one away from God cannot be done without conscious, deliberate effort, since the natural response is to open one's eyes and see that everything around us, fitting together so beautifully into a whole, came from an intelligent Designer, not brutal, random, processes.

I would ask you: Is not the proposition absurd that life sprang from non-life without any guiding purpose, intelligence sprang from nonintelligence, culture from non-culture? This (to me) seems to require a great deal more faith than belief in the biblical account, with a sovereign God who created all things.

[RightWhale]

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

Here is the point:

The universe is headed to either heat death or the Big Rip. Our mission, should we choose to accept, is to prevent either or both.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Blah, blah, blah. No matter how many words they print and fancy terms they use, I still see terms like "somehow x gave rise to y" (magic probably). It has been PROVEN that drug resistant bacteria didn't "evolve" but were a tiny number of the normal culture of bacteria that always existed and the drugs simply killed the weaker bacteria.

I try to stay out of these threads because of the people who are so arrogant that they are absolutely convinced that the all the knowledge in the universe is locked between their ears but sometimes I get sucked in anyway. Don't bother to respond, I won't answer. You won't be changed and neither will I. The only difference is that I believe that I am more than a random product of billions of years of chance whose only purpose is to reproduce and you don't.

[Lexinom]

No because you are subjecting God to human limitations. You've done this throughout this discussion, and have unwittingly revealed your own humanistic worldview in which you believe almighty Man is God. Since Man is God, all things must bow to him.

As to your earlier statement about believing if there was proof, you are living and breathing in the overwhelming proof this very instant - and every instant.

Halibut: "If you can show me some empircal evidence that water exists, I will believe it." Tuna: "The evidence is pervasive all around you. You cannot escape the evidence."

What you are asking us to believe - that reality as we know it is the product of an epic cosmic accident - requires a great deal more faith than belief in the biblical account. It requires mathematical miracles. In short, your position, and that of all atheists, is one of absurdity. You cannot even participate in this debate without borrowing from the notion of truth and falsehood, the very ideas of which make no sense in a senseless, meaningless, accidental universe.

[Lexinom]

I've lived in California on and off for seven years of my life. Most recently, I have seen exactly this kind of thing and cannot help but wonder how deeply people's rudeness, refusal to make eyecontact, and overall selfishness can be traced to their understanding of human beings as animals as understood in a Darwinian framework. Go to other parts of the country - like St. Louis, where we currently live - and you will find people behave very differently. I believe this is due to a larger percentage of the population believing in moral absolutes that fall out naturally from a biblical worldview.

So, if we want everyplace to be like god-hating Berkeley, let's keep pushing the evolutionistic agenda.

[Right Wing Professor]

Not even the bacteria that have become drug resistant are genetically different from the previous 10,000,000 generations that spawned them.

That's just flat out false. Here's one of 100 examples:

Experimental Prediction of the Natural Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance

Miriam Barlow and Barry G. Hall
Biology Department, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627-0211
Manuscript received July 22, 2002
Accepted for publication December 20, 2002
Genetics 163:1237-1241 (2003).

ABSTRACT The TEM family of
beta-lactamases has evolved to confer resistance to most of the
beta-lactam antibiotics, but not to cefepime. To determine whether the TEM
beta-lactamases have the potential to evolve cefepime resistance, we evolved the ancestral TEM allele, TEM-1, in vitro and selected for cefepime resistance. After four rounds of mutagenesis and selection for increased cefepime resistance each of eight independent populations reached a level equivalent to clinical resistance. All eight evolved alleles increased the level of cefepime resistance by a factor of at least 32, and the best allele improved by a factor of 512. Sequencing showed that alleles contained from two to six amino acid substitutions, many of which were shared among alleles, and that the best allele contained only three substitutions.

[Right Wing Professor]

Most recently, I have seen exactly this kind of thing and cannot help but wonder how deeply people's rudeness, refusal to make eyecontact, and overall selfishness can be traced to their understanding of human beings as animals as understood in a Darwinian framework. Go to other parts of the country - like St. Louis, where we currently live - and you will find people behave very differently. I believe this is due to a larger percentage of the population believing in moral absolutes that fall out naturally from a biblical worldview.

On the other hand, on FR, I have been struck by the rudeness, ignorance, untruthfulness, and sometimes bizarre behavior of some of those professing fundamentalist Christian beliefs, while contrarily I find the evolutionists almost uniformly a congenial, intelligent lot.

Am I justified in drawing conclusions from this?