Posted on 02/22/2012 10:03:14 PM PST by Salvation
Essays for Lent Ping.
In that case, for God to be able to do all the wondrous things God does, God must be complex and intelligent. Who designed God? How can God's complexity arise from nothing?
If God is eternal, how does God choose a moment to begin Creation? The Infinite Regress becomes a problem, if it truly is a problem.
If God is outside Time, then how could God produce a change in the circumstances, given that change requires Time to pre-exist and elapse, in order to allow the change in the circumstances? If Time were a "created" thing, then the situation changes from one without Time to one with Time operating it. How can a demarcation exist to separate the two situations, if Time were yet to be "created"? In other words, without Time, the situation without Time and the situation with Time running in it would be super-imposed, in other words, the two situations would be simultaneous, which is a self-contradiction. You cannot do something and not do the same thing, simultaneously. Likewise.
Points to ponder, no doubt.
Creation idiots. Radios are sensing radio waves. The theory for electromagnetism is understood and intact, and it allows engineers to arrange and size components to SENSE the f'n radio waves. Why this crap again. If the creationists think sensing God is equivalent, what is the theory that permits Muslims? How do you calculate it?
Perhaps time is more of an illusion than anything else just as time and space are. All is digital information. All things are made by the Word of God, or in other words the Information of God.
Benedict XVI also says humans must listen to ‘the voice of the Earth’
-snip-
“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19956961/ns/world_news-europe/t/pope-creation-vs-evolution-clash-absurdity/
The argument about transitional forms is not an argument against evolution per se, it is an argument against gradualism. If evolution proceeded (as Gould and Lewonton argued) by long periods of stasis and short bursts of rapid change--punctuated equilibria--then it stands to reason we'd see very little in the way of transitional fossils.
Microvilli, which line the intestines, are microscopic bristles that somewhat resemble the bristles of a hairbrush. The spaces between the bristles are wide enough to allow nutrients to pass through to be absorbed and digested. However, the spaces are narrow enough to block the passage of bacteria, bacteria that would kill you if they were allowed to pass. This in itself refutes the theory of evolution, which contends that when a need presents itself, the body adapts by gradually changing (evolving) over millions of years. In this case millions of years would be too long. As soon as the deadly bacteria appeared, the body would have minutes to hours to design and evolve a system to block them. Failure to do so would result in immediate extinction. Our continued existence rules out the evolutionary premise.
Not at all. Any sexually reproducing species has a measure of genetic variability in the population to begin with. That's the point of sexual reproduction. So, in this model, when this bacteria struck, it would wipe out a large proportion of the population except those individuals who had the correct distance between microvilli.
Some propose the idea of theistic evolution. The idea that God created everything in a primitive state and then evolution took over.
Look, here's what we know. We know that the geologic strata contain what looks to be a succession of living things deposited at different times. Living things, I might add, which are different from the ones alive today. Now if our author here rejects evolution, then he must be willing to posit a *miraculous* special creation for every single one of those organisms. That's of course possible. But responsible theologians remind us that if we start positing miracles as an explanation for anomalous data we have just destroyed the scientific method. Miracles can occur, but they are not the ordinary means of God's operation. The ordinary means of God's operation is nature.
People need to stop thinking about it in terms of "creation OR evolution", and need to consider whether this is a case of "creation BY evolution". We know God created. That is a fact. What no one has really been able to explain is exactly how. In my opinion, evolutionary theory offers us, for the first time, a glimpse into *how* God actually put together different organisms from the slime of the earth.
Yep, that was a very bad analogy.
You are assuming that 'time' has always existed. Ever hear of the "big bang". That is when God created 'time'. God indeed is eternal but eternity is a concept that man can not imagine since we exist in time and not outside of it.
Read on ahead of that part of my previous comment: If the Big Bang is when God “created” Time, then how is it possible for God to cause the change in the circumstances where it transitions from one without Time into one with it? If God’s realm is “timeless” then both these phases of reality are simultaneous because Time is the only demarcating entity of change and Time “doesn’t exist” until it is created.
By the way, recent discoveries in astronomy point to what is known as the Flat Universe, and this is one that allows a Cyclic Model to be feasible. Dark Matter and Dark Energy are other phenomena supporting such a model. So, there is no substantiating proof that Time “began” with the Big Bang - as if a prior Universe didn’t exist before it.
For my part, I don’t need to know whether the universe just happened or was created. I know that there is an objective reality independent of me. I base my morals and ethics on reason based on that reality. Yes I believe in a creator, but it would not change anything morally or ethnically either way. There are natural laws governing man according to his nature and they are not difficult to reason out.
I don’t need to know if there is life after death either. I just want to live every minute of my life as a gift and I know that some day I will find out as we all will what happens next.
Ethnically was supposed to be ethically.
So the fact that a meaningless, random, utterly coincidental universe just happens to objectively exist leads inevitably to morals and ethics?
Who'da thunk it?
Since the position of the author of the essay is permitted by the Catholic Church, what are you complaining about? If both positions are permitted, the author has every right to hold and defend that position.
This website is misleadingly called 'staycatholic' while the essay is NOT consistent with Catholic teaching on the subject of creation and evolution.. it is more in line with young earth creationists who still insist the earth is 6,000 years old.
You mean this belief isn't permitted? But I thought you just quoted an "authentic" Catholic source that said it is? Since when does "both positions are permitted" mean "one position is forbidden?"
Just how long do you think it's been since the Catholic Church itself was "young earth creationist?" If a religion is "unchanging" as Catholicism claims to be, then nothing should change . . . should it?
No. Morals and ethics are a choice whether based on objective or subjective reality. Did you not see that I used the word “reason” in there. Of course if you reject reason then we have nothing more to say to one another.
Oh, excuse me. I was not aware this was still the eighteenth century. Where's my powdered wig?
The problem is, "reason" is 100% amoral. It can be used for any purpose, moral or immoral. A mass murderer can use "reason" every bit as well as you do, sir (or madam).
The only "natural laws" are those that say things like "if you jump off a cliff you will fall." There is no "natural law" promoting morality or ethics.
I thought they looked good too. So that’s why I posted the first one. This is not my area of expertise, so I’ll let everyone else discuss it.
Personally, I’m a creation person.
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