I'll just comment on this small bit, I'm not going to waste my time reading a lot of copy/pasted 'big-up-god' text. Now, you sound like a smart guy so you probably know this yourself. In a very dumbed down explanation, the reason it creates roses, apple trees, fish etc. is purely because there was a certain %age probability that your examples would be created. Big bang -> energy/matter -> sub-atomic particles -> elements. From there, your different elements react in certain ways with each other, primarily due to the actions of electrons. With the right conditions essentially the apple is produced due to the interactions between every single element atom within it. The different properties of shape, and texture etc.
You do realize that electrons, protons and neutrons are all based on theory right? The particles move so fast that no instrument in the world can accurately tell if matter is truly made up of such particles. So all that is a theory.
Evolution requires that non-living chemicals organize themselves into a self-reproducing organism. All types of life are alleged to have descended, by natural, ongoing processes, from this ‘simple’ life form. For this to have worked, there must be some process which can generate the genetic information in living things today.
So how do evolutionists propose that this information arose? The first self-reproducing organism would have made copies of itself. Evolution also requires that the copying is not always completely accurate—errors (mutations) occur. Any mutations which enable an organism to leave more self-reproducing offspring will be passed on through the generations. This ‘differential reproduction’ is called natural selection.
In contrast, creationists, starting from the Bible, believe that God created different kinds of organisms, which reproduced ‘after their kinds’ (Gen. 1:11–12, 21, 24–25). Each of these kinds was created with a vast amount of information. There was enough variety in the information in the original creatures so their descendants could adapt to a wide variety of environments.
All (sexually reproducing) organisms contain their genetic information in paired form. Each offspring inherits half its genetic information from its mother, and half from its father. So there are two genes at a given position (locus, plural loci) coding for a particular characteristic. An organism can be heterozygous at a given locus, meaning it carries different forms (alleles) of this gene. For example, one allele can code for blue eyes, while the other one can code for brown eyes; or one can code for the A blood type and the other for the B type. Sometimes two alleles have a combined effect, while at other times only one allele (called dominant) has any effect on the organism, while the other does not (recessive). With humans, both the mother’s and father’s halves have 100,000 genes, the information equivalent to a thousand 500-page books (3 billion base pairs, as Teaching about Evolution correctly states on page 42). The ardent neo-Darwinist Francisco Ayala points out that humans today have an ‘average heterozygosity of 6.7 percent.’1 This means that for every thousand gene pairs coding for any trait, 67 of the pairs have different alleles, meaning 6,700 heterozygous loci overall. T
hus, any single human could produce a vast number of different possible sperm or egg cells 2^6700 or 10^2017. The number of atoms in the whole known universe is ‘only’ 10^80, extremely tiny by comparison. So there is no problem for creationists explaining that the original created kinds could each give rise to many different varieties. In fact, the original created kinds would have had much more heterozygosity than their modern, more specialized descendants. No wonder Ayala pointed out that most of the variation in populations arises from reshuffling of previously existing genes, not from mutations. Many varieties can arise simply by two previously hidden recessive alleles coming together. However, Ayala believes the genetic information came ultimately from mutations, not creation. His belief is contrary to information theory.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Some people think that life is only a matter of the raw materials—the right ingredients, so to speak. People often get the impression that life could have arisen by itself a long time ago, as long as there was the right mix of chemicals and a bit of energy.
So let’s do a thought experiment. What if someone had put a frog in a blender? Here we would have the ideal example from which to run an origin-of-life experiment. It doesn't contain only a few simple building blocks—it contains all sorts of complicated chemicals, like DNA, proteins, and more.
Now imagine that this ‘soup’ is zapped with any type of energy you like—shake it, heat it, pass sparks through it, put it in the sun—anything at all. Not only will it never reassemble itself into anything like the frog it once was, but you can be absolutely, totally, positive that no living, reproducing organism, not even the tiniest, will ever assemble itself from these ingredients.
The reason is obvious—life is more than having all the right ingredients in the ‘soup’.
The ingredients have to be assembled in the right order according to an intelligent plan. When that frog was conceived, born and grew up, its ‘ingredients’ were assembled according to the intelligent plan already programmed in its parents’ genes (DNA)—which in turn came from their parents, and so on. But that plan, that programming, is not there in the raw ingredients which make up a frog— that’s why it will not spontaneously re-form after being ‘blended’.
The most scientific conclusion one could come to is that the first living creatures required an outside intelligence to put them together and to write the programs to pass on to their descendants. The (hypothetical) frog in the blender shows that even given the most suitable possible raw materials, without an intelligent plan there is no hope that the machinery of life will arise. No matter how much or how long it is ‘zapped’.
I said logical reasons persuades me a lot more than a simple and plain explanation like "God did it". I'm really open minded however I don't have blind faith don't blame me for that and if that's being hypocrite then I am.
This made me lol. You don't just wake up one morning and go "oh kool, nice sunrise! God must have made it!". It is not like that at all. You are not born believing in God, and it is impossible to have true faith if you just say to something unexplained "God did it". You have to understand the true facts, then you will realise that God made everything.
Big Bang was chaos and so it couldn't create apples etc?! :lol:
X phenomenon occurs. The Church says it was God. Then someone says X phenomenon created Y event and they explain why X phenomenon happened. The Church still says that it was God. Most of the world gets proof and a Z RATIONAL reason on why X phenomenon happened. Well the Church changes it's view and says that the Z rational phenomenon was God.
.
Actually, it is believed that EVERYTHING is and will be done because of God. Everything in the past, present and future will happen because God has a purpose for it.
Scientific thought took a new turn when Newton discovered that the laws which account for a falling apple and those that describe the moon’s orbiting the earth were one and the same. Ever since he discovered and formulated the laws that govern motion in our universe, scientists have assumed that the universe runs like a clock, explained by a few simple laws. Scientists described what seemed like complicated systems in terms of comparatively simple equations. They thought that they could look at the world, figure out how it works, write an equation to describe it, then plug in any numbers and be able to predict any outcome. Some scientists have thought that they would eventually discover how to describe everything in the universe in simple, mathematical terms. Some have even thought they would find one set of equations that describes how the entire universe formed and operates—a ‘theory of everything.’
But even as scientists figure out equations for more and more of the universe’s systems, they are continually baffled by unexplained phenomena and systems that seem to act against the laws they have set forth to explain these actions. Wobbles in the orbits of planets, turbulence in the airflow patterns of a plane’s wing, the changing size of animal populations—every once in a while these systems and others fail to conform to the simple equations scientists have worked out for them.
These unexplained phenomena have aroused the curiosity of the scientific community. Scientists are finding chaos where they thought they would find order. But then, looking more closely, they are finding unexplained order in what looked like chaos. With the development of faster, more powerful computers, they have been able to test equations they have been relying on for years. They have found that, under certain conditions, some of these equations produce ‘chaotic’ results. Then they realized that these systems that seemed to be so disordered were actually following strange and intricate patterns.
When Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist, programmed a model of the weather into a computer, he got strange results. Lorenz found that minute differences in initial weather conditions produced drastic changes in the outcome. Meteorologists had long suspected this was so. In fact, they had given the idea a name—‘the butterfly effect.’ The name was based on ‘the half-whimsical belief that a butterfly flapping its wings in Asia could affect the weather in New York a few days or weeks later.
When Lorenz created equations to describe these differences and fed these equations into a computer which graphed the results, he found that these ‘chaotic’ equations produced evidence of an unusual kind of predictability. The line of the graph produced a twisted figure-eight—a multi-dimensional butterfly shape. But the strange part is that although the line always described essentially the same shape over and over again, it never described exactly the same shape and no point on the graph ever intersected any other point. Since Lorenz’s discovery, scientists have found many other of these ‘strange attractors’, as the phenomena are now called.
Put simply, the equations repeatedly describe the same general shape but never repeat themselves precisely. Other chaotic equations form complex branching patterns that duplicate themselves repeatedly, but on a diminishing scale—each branching pattern a replica of the last but much smaller, just as we see in the structure of many plants (see photo, right).
All chaotic systems seem to have an unusual sensitivity to initial conditions. They are systems in which seemingly inconsequential changes turn into major differences in outcome. Scientists have found evidence of ‘chaos’ in astronomy, epidemiology, meteorology, air turbulence, the stock market, and the human body. It is in the study of the human body that some scientists are beginning to realize just how important chaos is. Ary Goldberger of Harvard Medical School believes he has discovered not only that the rhythm of the human heart is chaotic, but that chaos in the heart is necessary. When he compared the variations in the heartbeats of a healthy person to those of one suffering from heart disease, the healthy heartbeat was actually the more chaotic.
This has opened some scientists’ eyes to the possibility that chaotic behaviour may not be an abnormality, but a characteristic essential to the design of some systems.
When we consider the exquisitely complicated patterns found in chaotic systems, it appears the theory was misnamed. ‘Chaos’ ordinarily describes any kind of disorder or confusion. In this case, what appeared to be chaos, on closer examination is another layer of more complex order in this universe God created. Scientists use the word ‘chaos’ to indicate simple things that behave in complicated and unexpected ways—things that surprise us and confound our ability to predict how they will behave in the future. Some are coming up with different names for this phenomenon as they learn more about it: ‘complexification’ and ‘the science of surprise.'
‘Traditionally, experts have blamed these surprises on outside influences or imperfect data … . But now scientists, studying the world around us with the aid of powerful computers, are beginning to realize that surprise is inevitable. Systems such as the weather … have surprise built into them. They will always behave in unexpected ways, no matter how well we understand them. It is in their nature to do things we can’t predict.’
Still, scientists are hoping these new equations could provide a method of predicting future behaviour of systems more accurately than at present. And many years from now, when we think we have these new laws of our complex world all worked out, no doubt we’ll discover another set of phenomena that defy our statements of natural law.
The wise scientist realizes that the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator would create a universe that will take the lifetime of humanity and longer to understand fully. In that way the creation reveals the nature of the Creator (Romans 1:20).
‘It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter’ (Proverbs 25:2).
Chaos theory: no help for evolution
Occasionally it is claimed that the discovery of patterns of order in seeming chaos is a bright star of hope for evolutionists. They feel it holds promise for their struggle to explain how disordered chemicals could have assembled themselves into the first self-reproducing machine, in opposition to the relentless tendency to universal disorder.
However, present indications point to this being an illusory hope. One of the classic examples of such ‘order out of chaos’ is the appearance of hexagonal patterns on the surface of certain oils as they are being heated. The minute the heating stops, this pattern vanishes once again into a sea of molecular disorder.
These patterns, like the swirls of a hurricane, are not only fleetingly short-lived, but are simple, repetitive structures which require negligible information to describe them. The information they do contain is intrinsic to the physics and chemistry of the matter involved, not requiring any extra ‘programming.’
Living things, on the other hand, are characterized by truly complex, information-bearing structures, whose properties are not intrinsic to the physics and chemistry of the substances of which they are constructed; they require the pre-programmed machinery of the cell.
This programming has been passed on from the parent organisms, but had to arise from an intelligent mind originally, since natural processes do not write programs.
Any suggestion that the two issues are truly analogous denies reality.
I find it a little funny that a religion is based on the life of a supposed Jew. (No offense intended)
Christianity is not a religion
My view on stuff like position of the sun and such is this:
That, stuff so perfect can't be based on chance. How can the sun be at such a perfect distance so that we don't freeze, yet we don't burn? How come Earth is the only liveable planet?
How can I have come from pure chance. That is why every generation tries to find out why they're here. How did they come here. That kinda thing. Most just can't grasp the fact that they came by chance. I mean for everything to happen just right has to be like a 1 in 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 chance kinda thing if you know what I mean. I can't base the fact I'm here on chance
Disclaimer:
These are my views. I believe they are right but you have the right to your own opinion
Completely agree. And actually sparky, the number is much, much bigger than that. If you study biology, you will know that the number is so big (1 in xxxx), that it would probably fit halfway around the world!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
MOST IMPORTANT PART TO READ BELOW
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A number of sceptics ask this question. But God by definition is the uncreated creator of the universe, so the question ‘Who created God?’ is illogical, just like ‘To whom is the bachelor married?’
So a more sophisticated question might be: ‘If the universe needs a cause, then why doesn’t God need a cause? And if God doesn’t need a cause, why should the universe need a cause?’
1. Everything
which has a beginning has a cause.
2. The universe has a beginning.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause.
The universe requires a cause because it had a beginning, as will be shown below. God, unlike the universe, had no beginning, so doesn’t need a cause. In addition, Einstein’s general relativity, which has much experimental support, shows that time is linked to matter and space. So time itself would have begun along with matter and space. Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time—God is ‘the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity’ (Is. 57:15). Therefore He doesn’t have a cause.
In contrast, there is good evidence that the universe had a beginning. This can be shown from the Laws of Thermodynamics, the most fundamental laws of the physical sciences.
1st Law: The total amount of mass-energy in the universe is constant.
2nd Law: The amount of energy available for work is running out, or entropy is increasing to a maximum.
If the total amount of mass-energy is limited, and the amount of usable energy is decreasing, then the universe cannot have existed forever, otherwise it would already have exhausted all usable energy—the ‘heat death’ of the universe. For example, all radioactive atoms would have decayed, every part of the universe would be the same temperature, and no further work would be possible. So the obvious corollary is that the universe began a finite time ago with a lot of usable energy, and is now running down.
Now, what if the questioner accepts that the universe had a beginning, but not that it needs a cause? But it is self-evident that things that begin have a cause—no-one really denies it in his heart. All science and history would collapse if this law of cause and effect were denied. So would all law enforcement, if the police didn’t think they needed to find a cause for a stabbed body or a burgled house. Also, the universe cannot be self-caused—nothing can create itself, because that would mean that it existed before it came into existence, which is a logical absurdity.
In Summary
The universe (including time itself) can be shown to have had a beginning.
It is unreasonable to believe something could begin to exist without a cause.
The universe therefore requires a cause, just as Genesis 1:1 and Romans 1:20 teach.
God, as creator of time, is outside of time. Since therefore He has no beginning in time, He has always existed, so doesn’t need a cause.
