Evolution or God

danlightbulb said:
Don't believe in God.

Also don't think the big bang is correct either.

Most of physics is also models of how the universe behaves, not how it actually works.

We simply don't know anything.
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the beauty of science is it is prepared to change based on the data we have to hand.... as we get more data (and by we i mean people more intelligent than myself :D ) then current theories will evolve.

the big bang i personally am comfortable accepting... we have telescopes that can see so far back that support the theory, and that theory was made before we could see that far back, so it would appear to substantiate.

however....... as to what happened before then, i have absolutely no idea. (I quite liked how Red Dwarf explained it in the episode Backwards, but that may not have had the most scientific research done on it :D )

that said..... what is God? because to contradict everything i said........ if god is some higher being with powers so incredible that we cant fathom, much like if you give me a lighter or some matches i may be a god as far as a stone age Neanderthal was concerned.

well....... i guess it isnt beyond the realms of possiblity that billions of years ago some incredibly powerful being which to all intents and purpose would be a God in most definitions of one, saw our planet and decided it had the potential to support life, and so seeded it with some single cellular organisms to see what would happen.

at that high a level then god and science can happily coexist. (ie our universe is some sort of cosmic petri dish)
 
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danlightbulb said:
I think I'm correct in saying some recent telescope discoveries of the universe expansion rate have cast doubt on it. I'd have to go and find links.
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No, they don’t cast doubt on the Big Bang being a thing. They cast doubt on some of the post big bang calculations. You do understand the difference?
 
Penfold101 said:
The Big Bang theory doesn’t say anything about what was there before because we can’t possibly know it - all it describes is how the universe went from a highly dense state to what we see now. The expansion has been known about for over 100 years - it has so much evidence for it that it would take something world-altering massive in scope to change that. The details of it all will always be subject to change as we learn more and our experiments become more sensitive, and that’s the beauty of science.

I just have an interest in science, astronomy especially, but no formal qualifications beyond high school physics, so I’m not an authority on anything, but it’s strikes me that you struggle to believe the science because you don’t understand it? The world of quarks is well understood by science because it’s what the experiments have shown in particle colliders - that there are many types of sub-atomic particles that make up the universe and cause the various building blocks is no surprise, and neither is it a surprise that our primitive monkey brains that evolved on the African plains are pretty ill-equipped to deal with this information. Luckily those who study this stuff as their role in life can do it for us, and in general science is self-correcting - it’s goal is to learn more and nothing gets a scientist more notoriety than proving another one wrong…

I can recommend a few YouTube channels I follow that deal with this stuff in a dumb enough way that I can (usually) understand if you’d like mate?
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I watch loads of science channels and did a year of physics at university (a long time ago now).

The big bang theory was always a backwards extrapolation from current expansion observations. What was there before to trigger this is absolutely important and yet we have no idea. The theory always sounded bonkers to me, it's just another version of creationism.
 
danlightbulb said:
I watch loads of science channels and did a year of physics at university (a long time ago now).

The big bang theory was always a backwards extrapolation from current expansion observations. What was there before to trigger this is absolutely important and yet we have no idea. The theory always sounded bonkers to me, it's just another version of creationism.
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if you (not the literal you) want to believe in God that is fine, to each their own.... however not having all of the answers does not in anyway prove that god exists. (it doesnt disprove that (s)he does either but at the same time such a radical hypothesis needs support imo).

I believe in nature, evolution and science, and part of the reason why i like them is because they adapt (evolve) as we learn more..... Again none of them specifically disprove God (my Chemistry teacher was also an RE teacher and was a very religious man)...... I can even accept that there could be something that we could big picture call god if that is the word you want to use...

but God as defined in the Bible or (insert most other religious texts here).......... I just have not seen anything to support that......

Religion however........ that is a hot potato... because whilst religion does bring comfort and hope to a lot of people and that is great, it has also created more wars, more deaths and has been used as a tool to control and create hate and division...

imo Religion is a bit like social media...... yes it can be a tool for good but over all imo the negatives outweigh the positives·... (and most of those positives could equally be done with a decent pub with a good selection of beers and a pool table ;) )

IMO the notion of God is pretty easy to see why it came about.... for instance things like thunder and lighting would have seemed biblical in nature....... but now we know it is just caused by air currents and water (the accuracy of this statement may be a little off ;) )
 
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I did used think its all about black holes.... But then over the millennia (cant think of of bigger word to come time on that scale) even black holes just fade out and disperse being due to hawking radiation.

So going with higher dimensions which helps my monkey brain understand why entanglement works. So still no Gods just physics and math which I will never be able to understand :( Quite infuriating.
 
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danlightbulb said:
Don't believe in God.

Also don't think the big bang is correct either.

Most of physics is also models of how the universe behaves, not how it actually works.

We simply don't know anything.
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I think it's normal to find the big bang to not be a wholly convincing explanation, precisely because it doesn't explain what came before it. That is a limitation of the theory in that it doesn't cover that bit, but the fact that it doesn't, shouldn't undermine the fact that it's the best possible explanation we have for what's happened since.

This is in the absence of a different theory which can incorporate the time before that better. Once that comes along, then that may be more compelling.

And I definitely agree on there being a difference between models which explain and predict behaviour, and how the universe really works, but that's sort of branching into metaphysics.
 
To be honest I do think there could be a god. Not some stupid Christian or other old school religion type of god.

More an Elon musk type of narcissist and we are in a complex simulation.

The god doesn't care about us. We are nothing to them. Hence bad things happen. We could be an experiment, we could be a game. Anything.

The rate of technology growth for me does put this on the table.

I do not believe in an afterlife.
I do not believe a God is good. How could it be.. They would be the ultimate sadist with what goes on in our lives.

But I do believe there could be one.

Just like we would look like gods if we went back 5000 years with our tech.



Obviously you have the "who created them" question and this just passes the buck. But yeah I think that's definitely viable. Just due to our current and progressing tech.

I could wake up after I die and I've been playing a damn game for 10 minutes (in the next level up) lol.
Boring game though. So probably not! :D
 
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The ultimate reason I don't hold any merely deistic belief, let alone theistic one, is that the god(s) hypothesis doesn't actually explain anything.

If you're looking for the answers to the 'big' questions... i.e "why are we here", "what started it all" etc and your answer is 'god(s)' you haven't actually advanced anyone's knowledge. You might as well just say 'magic' or 'the fairies in my shoe drawer'.

Asserting a supernatural cause as the reason for an unexplained phenomona just replaces one mystery with another. You've still got to explain that supernatural thing.

And it's at this point the religious just start asserting even more nonsence to fill the gap about their god(s) being eternal/ operate separately from time space etc based not on any evidence but merely the need that they be so that they fit the claims being made!
 
Mr Badger said:
Just because you cannot see the path taken by the climber on the other side of the mountain, does not mean that they will not also reach the summit.
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This also presumes there is a summit in the first place, and that there’s anything there even worth walking up the mountain for. I haven’t even seen any evidence that there’s a mountain in the first place.
 
Steven Rimmington said:

Evolution or God​

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They're not mutually exclusive. Evolution doesn't address origins of life, only origin of species.
 
Sankari said:
They're not mutually exclusive. Evolution doesn't address origins of life, only origin of species.
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Maybe..... but the thing is you have to start cherry picking which bits of different religious stories you have to ignore as science learns more and more, also as attitudes have changed certain parts are conveniently ignored.

And once you go down that road, and once you decide that 1 part of a religious text is wrong then it kind of puts in to question all of the rest (imo of course).

I mean I am all for equality...... and I absolutely believe in live and let live when it comes to who you choose to marry or share a bed with. I also think it is fine for a woman to be a priest

but if you take the bible at face value .... unless my memory is failing me (I have read it front to back albeit it was a long time ago)........ in the Bible its fair to say those things were "frowned" upon.....

then there is the whole contradiction in there as well...

or am i mistaken?

and where do we stand on Leviticus 24:17-22 *** (an eye for an eye and all that)


*** I said i read the bible........ but i used google to get the exact passage, i am not that versed ;)

Actually on reflection, I suppose all of the above is putting into question religion............. but isnt necessarily questioning the existence God.
 
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