KingGheedora
Diamond Member
- Jun 24, 2006
- 3,248
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I know belief in God is majorly unpopular on this forum but even still I can't help but to ask the question why is it so hard to believe that it's possible that God could have created life?
No one ever questions that someone invented computers, the internet, the wheel, power tools, automobiles, etc.. All of those things pale in comparison to the complexity of even the most basic cellular life form. Scientists have known for years that the Earth and the universe are governed by the laws of physics. That suggests planning and deliberate intention. The law of gravity, the water cycle, procreation and the DNA strand are all examples of regulated structure. It's hard to believe that examples such as these could have *all* happened by pure circumstance.
How does it suggest planning? If a being so amazing and intelligent and power enough that they could create the universe existed, wouldn't that being be at least as amazing and complex as the universe (if not more), and therefore wouldn't that just create an even more complicated and unanswerable question: Who created "God"?
We accept that people invented cars, internet, etc, because we know the men and women who invented those things.
If that were the case we would be witnessing such miracles as these on a constant basis, we would see new and radical forms of life evolving around us at an unprecedented rate.
This conclusion also doesn't make sense.
We don't have evidence to disprove the existence of God, but at the same time there is no evidence to justify belief in a God. Any other magical explanation for the existence of the Universe is just as valid as "God". God was an idea thought up by men thousands of years ago.
God in the sense of an intelligent creator is more believable than God in the Christian/Judaic/Islamic sense (anthropomorphic deity who communicates with men).
To get a better perspective on religion one has to understand that information that begets itself lasts longer than information that doesn't. This is how culture arose. In that sense it is similar to life, because once an idea, like a religion, exists and has within it the constructs to spread and perpetuate itself, it is "alive". It can battle against other ideas for dominance. Life is just a complex phenomena that happens on top of the Universe, dependent upon the rules that govern things at the molecular level. Lower than that, the quantum rules work together to give us the atomic/molecular world. Higher than human life, ideas and culture lives overlayed onto the collective human minds.
The Universe is just information that behaves according to rules. Atoms aren't really any more real than Christianity. We experience matter as "real", but it's not really any more real than energy or gravity. Our minds are built to experience matter as real/substantial, because that is the primary dimension we experience. Religion is the same -- it is just as real as a basketball or a cat. I sometimes like to think that all that really exists is logic. Logic is the purest and most real aspect of the universe. But that could be totally wrong.
The only reason religion exists is because it is one of the ideas that was the fittest at surviving. The interesting thing about this is those in the thrall of religion are subjugated by it, and usually conditioned to believe the religion as dogma. Christianity exists due to a combination of its "fitness" and circumstance -- but most Christians would assume it is because it is "right". But take any other religion on the planet.
There are a billion of other humans across the planet born into Islam. It's just luck of the draw that determines which one you're born into. Are they any more wrong than Christians, or Jews? Those religions don't really get a long with one another and to those within, the others are as different as night and day. But they are really just branches and offshoots of a single monotheistic ideas.
Just like species diverge when they are separated, ideas (like religions) branch and diverge from one another. Sometimes they meet up again after hundreds or thousands of years and meld back again (the same way species do).
Looking at the world through the lens of religion will (hopefully) one or two thousand years from now be a thing of the past. Your question is representative of the battle happening right now between the new Idea on the block (scientific method) vs Religion. One may win over the other. It really just depends on the fitness of each idea, or they may eventually both reach an equilibrium of coexistence, where they occupy different niches rather than competing with each other. Just like some animals occupy different environments, or become diurnal to avoid competing with the nocturnal species that would otherwise be their adversaries. Right now science and religion are fighting or negotiating to see who will be in charge of determining how humans interpret the ontological aspects of the universe. In the medieval and renaissance periods Science fought religion for control of explaining the physical world and the solar system, and won that battle. At least for the most part.
So to ask the questions you have asked is to boil down the true beauty of everything I have written here (my articulation of these ideas doesn't do the subject justice) to an overly simplistic and misleading dichotomy. Open your eyes and look at things for what they really are.