Posted on 04/07/2008 2:25:19 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
You said "DESIGNED"... so who/what the "DESIGNER" is seems very relevant.
“Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further.”
As soon as I read this paragraph and before I went on with the article, I knew he had read CS Lewis. Yes, this is in Mere Christianity but there’s a lovely presentation of it in the third of his science fiction trilogy, Perelandra. The Queen of that planet explains to Ransom why there were sentient beings other than human on Mars but not on Perelandra (Venus). It was because Perelandra received the gift of life after Our Dear Lord was on earth and after His coming that gift could only be given to humans.
The biggest indicator of an intelligence behind life is the
INFORMATION
that is encoded in the DNA of every living thing.
Don’t EVEN try to argue that it just happened at random. Random or self organized chemicals wouldn’t contain the information that DNA does.
It’s the “million monkeys with a million typewriters” argument.
No, they will NOT eventually produce the entire works of William Shakespeare.
But it is still breaking down the wall of the
“no intelligence allowed” crowd.
To cast my pearls before someone that will appreciate them :).
Read “Privileged Planet” and “Case for a Creator”.
You’ll love ‘em.
opps, its the second book.
In the origins of the Universe, scientists have postulated the amount of energy, and what existed at that instantaneous moment - a huge quantity of photons - ie, “let there be light”.
I think you may have a blind spot.
You may have a problem with the concept of a “prime mover”. Creating a theoretical construct of alien genetic engineers does not get around the concept of a “prime mover”, it just pushes it further away so that you do not have to deal with it on a personel level.
I believe that the designed by aliens is a straw man.
> Who designed the aliens is irrelevant to the original
> point.
It *IS* the original point.
Evidence of design is evidence of a designer.
Your hypothetical aliens would serve to present even more evidence of design and a transcendent Designer.
I submit that there is a lot more evidence for a Transcendent Designer than there is for aliens.
>>I submit that there is a lot more evidence for a Transcendent Designer than there is for aliens.<<
Anything that has a beginning has a cause, external and transcendent to itself.
The universe has a beginning.
Therefore, it has a creator that transcends the universe.
Who says that's the point? Your point may have been designed by aliens, whereas the point of the article may have been designed by God. Apples to oranges.
L-Ron Hubbard.
It certainly would. Whoever designed the aliens capable of designing us would have to be far greater than the aliens to create such incredible creatures that have the intelligence and ability to design us.
:))
“It’s a nice day to start again.” - Billy Idol
If DNA is the ‘language of God’ then his words are made up of amino acids.
Didn’t Frank Herbert write about a fictional society that worshiped DNA as the ‘Language of God’? Seems this guy needs to give credit where credit is due.
I agree. I'm a practicing Christian; but I believe God reveals Himself in His creation as well as the Bible. That is uncomfortable because some portions of the early new Testament are incompatible with what God has apparently revealed in his creation.
It would be comfortable to interpret the Bible literally. But I don't find that option available for much of Genesis. Our ancestors have been around for longer than 6,000 years. There was no worldwide flood and all living creatures do not descend from two of each type on the Ark. Where did the people Adam and Eve met after they were thrown out of Eden come from?
So I have to accept that The Pentateuch is mostly oral history committed to writing perhaps thousands of years after the oral history started and that some of the stuff was revelation tied to what stone age folks were able to understand. Some inaccuracies crept in over the centuries. So the story of Eden is, I believe, a true metaphor. That is, God created man to have one kind of relationship with him. We sinned and fell. The consequence was death. It probably didn't happen in precisely the way described in Genesis.
This, by the way is in stark contrast to the New Testament, which is either eyewitness testimony or "as-told-to" type testimony. The apologetics case for the Resurrection is overwhelming. As Jesus referred back to the sin of Adam and to old testament scripture, we must give them meaning that is consistent with what we know from God's revelation of Himself thru His creation. The simple literal interpretation does not always work to achieve that.
On the other hand, it doesn't make a lot of difference in my faith how that comes out. The FACT of the resurrection is the core of Christianity; and that stands without a serious challeged despite two centuries of attacks by humanists. Everything else is detail.
For many reasons, this article moved me deeply. Thank you for posting.
I recently watched a program on Stephen Hawking and the controversial quantum physic theories on whether or not matter is lost in the universe. I could not believe how many confirmations of the account of creation, and the character of the Creator, were obvious to any open-minded person in that debate.
The more I read science, the more I see God.
I also recommend “Mere Christianity.” Any person who wants to continue to become educated would do well to think through the points of that book.
So what criteria do you use to determine which things are inaccuracies or not?
Either it's all true, or you just might as well toss the whole thing out because you can never be sure what's correct or not.
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