JTaylor

Describe the God you believe is incompatible with evolution.

zip106

Oh blimey....

jonc

Hmmm...not sure about that, since the whole concept of God is that god is the first creator and therefore nothing before could have created God. Asimov's model cannot be applied to predict the evolution/devolution of God if such a thing was possible and if you bring in ignosticism, then surely the notion for the existence of god is nonsensical and meaningless. How can you predict something, if by definition something that is incoherent and undefined and therefore cannot be empirically tested? Evolution is the complete opposite in this sence.

JTaylor

Ok (and I'm firmly playing Devil's advocate, here), if we're discussing the Abrahamic, exoteric God of the Bible, Revelation 1:8 states "I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty." This is not incompatible with the cyclic, evolutionary creator presented by Asimov.

See above. Consider also that The Last Question was written in 1958, before the internet and a real understanding of AI and I think and feel he was exploring this, coupled with the notion of collective conciousness. Carl Sagan expressed the idea that human beings are a way for the Universe to know itself. You're right that Asimov's story cannot, with any degree of accuracy, predict an evolutionary God, it's closer to say that it speculates (as esoteric traditions do) on the nature of God and it may have come in to being. Asimov's idea works well with multiverse theory, deism, pandeism, pantheism and so forth.

On the contrary. If one accepts God as unknowable and conceptual and a metaphor for all that is, it's utterly meaningful. Ignosticism merely states that a notion of God needs to be presented before it can be discussed with any purpose. Ignosticism is useful in that it stops people attacking infantile, literal God notions.

Well, that's what God is, a placeholder for that which cannot be known - ineffable, if you'd prefer. We know about evolution, it's part of the whole. It's been revealed to humanity, or discovered, depending upon which hat one is wearing. Discovered or revealed, different ways of expressing the same thing.

I mentioned in the last discussion that it might be worth researching the supreme being of esotericism - the literal, exoteric God of antiquity was for the broadly illiterate masses. As sentient beings evolve, so does their understanding of God.

warrenm2

All of them, as they are figments of irrational thought

JTaylor

Lazy.

Carlh

Religion was invented to scare people, is there something else after death - Probably.

Go and see a recommended medium and you'll see that there could be something else after death.

One being that manages everything? Unlikely BUT we know nothing about our universe. Science is "best guess". Period.

If believing in something works for someone, theres no harm in it as you guidelines to live for.

Me. I believe in something after death. I would hope there's a heaven (but also there would have to be a hell, by the way the term "Hell" isnt the fire and brimstone that we've all be taught, but a village that "bad" people used to have to walk through (suphur pits i think) and if they lived by the time they got to the other side, they were "forgiven" - hence the term "go through hell", "go to hell" and so on. check it out, its all online.

I found an interesting read (coz I love reading about other people opinions on what they believe etc... after all, we're all going to die and any knowledge on the subject can only help in calming yourself down - its pretty scary to think we might end up being "nothing", reading opinions on it helps me anyway.


Check this out: http://www.cosmicchrist.net/Astral_P...roup_karma.htm

jonc

If what you say that Religion was invented to scare people, ie invention of man, and as heaven and hell is a product of religion, then surely you are contradicting yourself. The concept of an afterlife is based on the faith as promised by God to reward the good with heaven and the punish the bad with hell.

Carlh

I agree with you Jon, its all fooked up. I know nothing and will happily admit that.

The best I can do is read up on other people's opinions and gather a result from that. Luckily, most people's beliefs on life-after-death so follow the same pattern.

We have multiple religions, all with different ideas and beliefs. I think they're just interpretations of the same thing. If you read that link, it goes on about the astral planes and that once we "rise" through these planes we reach the "source", abeit 'God'.

The first plane sounds good, its there to satisfy all of our human needs until we realise we dont need them (scooby heaven is going to be fantastic ) and then we move onto the next plane.

I found the article really fascinating and would never, ever say to anyone with a religious belief that they are wrong, I just think that a long time ago when these religions were created that they were misinterpreted - still valuable however and although we have had many wars over religious beliefs I think it would have been a LOT worse if we didnt have religion. Technology might have been a few hundred years more advanced than we are now because we held ourselves back, scared of technolgy as "witchcraft" but without religious beliefs but we probably wouldnt have marriage, there would be more people unafraid of doing "bad" things as there would be no consequence in death and so on.



I hope - I believe, that we dont just disappear when we die and that we meet up with the people who we loved and lost throughout our lives. Whether or not there is a hierarchy, I guess I'll find out when I do pop my clogs.

Carlh

Good and Evil are opinions.

Evil - Killing someone - however, what if you are defending yourself or your family.

"Good" - killing someone because they threaten your way of life, your family.

EDIT - course there is killing for the sake of possessions or pure hatred, but im generalising the above, for say, a soldier

Both are the same.

I think we judge "ourselves" in the first plane "the hall of memories". Only we can judge whether we have been just or not.

Human law is man-made, created to satisfy the majority although it is often corrupted to satisfy the minority (usually in power).

Ten commandments are 10 simple rules, but they dont cover everything. Child abuse is not included I believe. We would consider that Evil yet it isnt a commandment so do people who commit this vile crime, not come into the area of being "evil".

Carlh

What I dont understand about the god versus evolution is that I cant believe that the world was only created 6,000 years ago, not when chinese/japanese/egyptian history goes back much much further (10,000 years).

Evolution stands well, as we have animals all around us that have evolved over the tens of thousands of years. Fossils show that the planet was here millions of years ago.

The best way to disprove Darwins theory would be to disprove carbon dating and that oil and coal are natural minerals of the planet and not created through millions of years of trees falling/degrading and turning into those products.

Anyone have any theories on this, religiously ?

Leslie

So are cars!

Les

Leslie

There is no reason why one cannot accept Darwin's teachings on evolution and also believe that there may well be an all powerful being who set it all off in the first place and designed the whole arrangement including natural laws and evolution.

Les

Leslie

I think that religious teachings were not so much to scare people but to encourage a society in which people could live together in a peaceable manner and to help each other when necessary.

Nothing wrong with that, but there is no accounting for the different ambitions and behaviour of the individual and the way he may act.

Les

JTaylor

The 6000 year thing pertains merely to written history, where human consciousness has been recorded using written language as a medium. There are cave paintings from around 50,000-60,000 BC but they don't record any real detail. You might enjoy reading-up on Mesopotamia.

tony de wonderful

Morality isn't the same as law BTW.

Good and evil don't carry any weight if you relativise it. You need something to make them absolute and that needs to come from God.

Neitzche tried to work his away around this and failed.

If you were a Marxist you might say that morality is created to serve the ruling elite....or at least it does accidentally.

Tidgy

Evolution has been prooved, as well as survival of the fitest. Fittest isn't always the strongest, is the most suited to the purpose.

So the question of can you have god and evolution? why not?

Science hasn't proved that life wasn't a created thing, religion hasn't proved it was created by a higher power.

All evolution is its development. so why can't higher being be driving it over time? or is it just random chance?

who knows, one thing is perfectly clear, we will never know the answer, you either believe and have faith or don't, anything else is just talk.

tony de wonderful

That's a strawman argument. You don't need to believe the Earth is 6,000 years old to believe in God.

Anyway you could say that the evolutionary evidence has been arranged in such as way to look like evolution. It would be a terrible theory though by Occam's razor.

JTaylor

I'm not sure I follow this. Literalism requires faith; acceptance of an ineffable oneness requires absolutely no faith at all. I know just two people who profess a faith in the literal, superficial God of the Old Testament - one's a Baptist minister and the other is his son-in-law. Even they, when challenged, wobble. You seem to be suggesting that one either believes in the infantile Bronze-age God of exoteric and dogmatic and organised religion or that you're an athiest. This is not the case.

Tidgy

Im not sure i agree, if you pray to something then surley that means you have faith in it or your trying a con. Isn;t faith in this context just a word for believing in god? Faith that god exists

tony de wonderful

Sure any belief requires faith.

Leslie

As I keep saying,in the end it is down to you and your conscience. If you want to be honest with yourself you have to follow what your conscience is telling you.

Les

stilover

Who's this God Fella?

Tidgy

doesn;t any faith require belief? lol

Carlh

Its all so interesting.

JTaylor

What do you think prayer is? An attempt to contact a supernatural entity or an individual communing with the 'I am'? What is the 'I am'? Is faith and wishthinking the same? I have no issue with the practice of prayer as a cathartic, meditative state, where one may focus one's thoughts and energy on a 'higher power'. You could describe that as faith if you wished, but it would seem that the human mind derives benefit from it and can produce physical results from it. Mind before matter. A modern interpretation may be visualisation or positive thinking, no different other than the setting and the language used to describe the same act.

JTaylor

No one knows, but it's almost certainly not anthropomorthic - although it may have an anthropomorthic mind in this universe.

bigsinky

why only 1 god? why cant we go back to the old ways and be polytheistic like the norse and greek legend. all adds to the variety.

i do believe everything in the universe is to perfect or coincidental to be put down to physics or science. something other than science has influenced this. as for the 6000 year old thing, does it not say in scripture somewhere that 1 day is as 1000s of years and 1000s of years as i one day?

bigsinky

i see you are calling Him an "it" and you subscribe to a multiverse theory. you say "almost cetainly". can you cite references or is this what you think.

windyboy

Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy
written by Douglas Adams

The Book: The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.
The argument goes like this:
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well, That about Wraps It Up for God."
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

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Sorted, now carry on with your normal buisness
windyboy