To: Polycarp; fortheDeclaration; winstonchurchill; ShadowAce; P-Marlowe; Revelation 911; ...
I find the archeological and genetic data here significant in proving the factual bankruptcy of mormonism.
However, using those same criteria, the New Testament and Old Testament are firmly established day by day as new finds in the Middle East come to light.
I do not believe that the creation account of Adam and Eve is mythical. Nor do I believe that the intelligent design movement in any way parallel the problems that mormonism has is establishing it's validity.
Genetic studies have suggested that there was a SINGLE MOTHER from which all of us came. The fact of creation is substantially strengthened by MATHEMATICS saying this order and complexity we see in life could NOT have happened randomly in 10 to the 3.5 billion (million?) power.
Either way, That's the same as saying it couldn't have happened randomly. Don't buy a lottery ticket...you wont' win. Definitely don't buy one at those odds.....NO ONE will ever win.
16 posted on
12/18/2002 6:26:53 AM PST by
xzins
To: xzins
"For example, consider the calculation by astronomer Fred Hoyle, often referred to by creationists, that the odds against DNA assembling by chance are 1040,000 to one (Hoyle, 1981). This is true, but highly misleading. DNA did not assemble purely by chance. It assembled by a combination of chance and the laws of physics."
"In a calculation similar to Hoyle's, mathematician Roger Penrose has estimated that the probability of a universe with our particular set of physical properties is one part in 10^10^123 (Penrose 1989: 343). However, neither Penrose nor anyone else can say how many of the other possible universes formed with different properties could still have lead to some form of life. If it is half, then the probability for life is fifty percent."
Quote from: The Real Issue: Stephen Hawking, the Big Bang, and God Part II By Dr. Fritz Schaefer III Professor of Quantum Chemistry, University of Georgia
The Anthropic Principle
I must say something here about the anthropic principle: there are a number of scientific parameters or constants, any one of which, if changed just a little bit would make the earth uninhabitable by human beings. A book that I strongly recommend is by Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos. He has a substantial discussion of the anthropic principle and demonstrates why many physicists and astronomers have considered the possibility that the universe not only was divinely caused, but in fact divinely designed.
One such person is the pantheistic astronomer, George Greenstein, who makes this statement: "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency, or rather Agency, must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a supreme being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially created the cosmos for our benefit?"
I think Greenstein has gone a little too far in the other direction. I do not think we have proof of the existence of God but I think we do have, in the big bang understanding, some good evidence for the existence of God.
Others have commented on this evidence. A book I recommend is Dreams of a Final Theory by Steven Weinberg. He doesn't have God in the title, but God is discussed in the book. He tells the story about a poem by the Venerable Bede, a religious person of the Middle Ages. In the poem, Bede talks about the banqueting hall being our ordinary existence and Weinberg's comment on this is, "It is an almost irresistible temptation to believe with the Venerable Bede that there must be something for us outside the banqueting hall." There must be something beyond materialism.
Of course this view is echoed in the New Testament. For example, Paul the Apostle wrote, "Ever since the creation of the world, God's eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things He has made"(Romans 1:20). This is exactly what Weinberg is talking about-that almost irresistible temptation.
17 posted on
12/18/2002 7:15:02 AM PST by
WriteOn
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