Why does it have to be other than some sort of being appearing before me? He used to do that all the time, why not now. Would solve a lot of problems if he did.
But if he can't manage that I'll settle for....how about the universe we live in giving the impression that it was designed in some way? Not unreasonable given this guy is the creator in whatever form he's supposed to take. The universe gives us no reason to suspect it isn't a completely random happenstance and we have come a long way to get that knowledge. Great minds have toiled to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos from the first second when it was all hydrogen to it's current state of vast complexity and variety and it's all so much more amazing that it seems to have got here without any outside (or inside) help. Understanding the simple laws that underpin physics and therefore everything else, are surely mankind's masterstroke. Isn't quite finished yet of course because whenever someone builds a new measuring device they realise there is plenty still to learn, but don't go sliding any gods into those gaps, it's most unbecoming for him to be reduced to the level of quarks. Or maybe life could give the old fella away, but even here we have seen that complexity can arise quite easily out of chemical components that form naturally inside stars and then into dust clouds in space where they settle somewhere nice and warm like Earth and spend the next few billion years living blameless lives as bacteria, until one of them goes and gets mixed up with another type and we have the cell that all living things are descended from. We know this to be true - no god required - all life carries a descendent of the same DNA. We, as in all life on Earth, are interrelated. Aint that better than any bible story? No it isn't fully understood but neither is there any reason to suspect life needed help to get going, it is firmly in the category of a chemistry experiment we are trying to work out but don't know what chemicals were used or in what amount or what temperature to conduct the experiment. But the Earth took a few million years to work it out so don't write us off yet. I guess all that's left is consciousness. How did we come by it? is it common to all living things and does it need god as an explanation? I would say, yes it's common to all things with any type of sense apparatus, it's not hard to see how it would evolve because of the advantages of being able to react to dangers or food in your environment. From tiny seeds do mighty acorns grow...just keep scaling it up until you get to us. I put us at the top because our abstract language and technology is so incredibly much more advanced than our nearest relatives, but it's a continuum. We think we are a big screaming deal for a reason but how much better could we be? We are still evolving. One thing is for sure the idea of us being made in gods image whether it's biblical or TM Nader is wrong. All over our bodies are the scars of evolution. How our consciousness works is a mystery but it seems obvious that it's going on solely in our heads, all those billions of neurons buzzing away non-stop. Great work has been done in finding out which parts of the brain do what, down to the seat of emotions and the where we dream. The "hard problem" is a goody though, I often think that we'll get all the way through the brain and explain everything except how know that I feel like myself. But we'll know where those bits are and when they are working they'll give themselves away. It's an interesting time to be interested in brain science because it's in it's infancy and new and better measuring devices are being built all the time. The final frontier. So is there need of a god there? No, consciousness is also a continuum that didn't have to end up with us so let's not get all spacey like some people do about the fact a part of the universe can understand the rest of it and conclude it's part of some latent purpose of god. It's a mistake because our type of consciousness needn't have happened here. And something better might have come along instead or we might have stayed like the rest of the apes, clever but not philosophical or building particle accelerators. There are plenty of good ideas about how we got here but nothing definite yet. So all we are really left with is a god that makes a universe to give the impression that it got here by chance and that any life forms in it are also self propelled from simpler forms. Why would we want to believe in such a thing? Surely that means that, if real, the concept is unknowable and therefore pointless. And where would god be if he wasn't in thee universe? It has no outside and if he;s inside he has to be made out of the same stuff because there isn't anything else. The dude would stick out like a sore thumb, but i suppose you could say that evading that sort of probing is the preserve of the supreme being so we just go back to square one. One more thing, if someone could break the laws of physics by levitating or telekinesis that might give me pause for thought about everything, in fact most of what we know about physics would have to go or at least have something seriously unexpected added to it. That's be fun but not proof of god either. I guess I could have just said something measurable but I had a few minutes to kill before The Simpsons.... Just time for a quote: Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/douglasada107514.html Douglas Adams http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/douglasada107514.html ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelflebater@...> wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote: It's hardly an error to ask people to prove things if they are making such big claims - if you are in the business of providing explanations that is. If the ambition of theology really is to provide arguments for the existence of god without ever resorting to science then it's even more pointless than I thought. For a start they should lop the suffix "ology" off the end. It must be like painting yourself into a corner "No we can't claim that, it could be tested, be more oblique" Doesn't sound very satisfying to me, give me a decent particle accelerator any day.... I am wondering what examples of "evidence" you would consider proof of God. Certainly not an MRI showing how someone's brain is working. And certainly not anyone's vocalization of an experience of God. So how do you envision irrefutable evidence of God, other than some Being actually appearing before you? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote: "No sympathy for theology" is perhaps not the best phrase here. More to the point would be "lack of curiosity as to what theologians are actually saying." Classical theists do not claim there is any scientific evidence for God--could not be, by definition. The demand for such by the New Atheists is a function of the category error that pervades their arguments. stand the language that theologians use.
