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I suppose that the issue you have identified here is the heart of what I was trying to say. I believe that matter, and thus everything, acts according to law. I think that law is the nature of God. I also think, no, I know, that physical, universal law (i.e., according to my suppositions, God) dictates the interactions of matter, making none of it truly random. I also don't think that anyone, scientists in particular, disagree with this notion; that is, that nothing is truly random. Where I am departing, and perhaps where you are departing also, from science, is to identify the organizing principle.

More specifically, "random" is in the eye of the beholder. The more discerning the eye, the less random the action.

Thank you for reading and responding Ms. Boop. I do appreciate it.

Two things that I would like to clear up though. As usual, I left out too many details of my 'theory' :)

First, I do not know that I would define myself as Christian. My 'revelation' so to speak, came at a point where I had considered myself an atheist for well over a decade. I think that the idea I have of God is, at least in part, my way of reconciling my sense of things greater than myself with my disagreements (to put it mildly) with Biblical Christianity.

Second, to extend your analogy of the painting, if we visualize the painting as a thing that is never fixed, and if we visualize the painter as being not separate from the painting, but woven into it, this is more what I see as God.

For instance, when I describe God as being order itself, what I mean more specifically is that I see God as law, meaning ALL law. That is, God is in a very literal sense "the tie that binds" everything together. What I suppose is that every time we discover something new about the way the universe works, we are discovering little pieces of God. When we discover new things about the organizing principles of matter, we are discovering little pieces of God. I suppose that I think of God as the ultimate organizing principle. Not separate from the ultimate organizing principle, but the thing itself, which is why I don't think that God can violate or supercede his own laws. It would be tantamount to God denying himself.

I don't know if that's any clearer than what I wrote earlier, but I'm a little tired after a long day.

Thanks :)

I hope you don't mind me jumping in on your conversation, but I wanted to comment on the above.

I concur with your assertion that God isn't vengeful, but probably for much different reasons. One of those reasons is that I disagree that God is not subject to order, and I also disagree that God is beyond space-time. My personal feeling is that God is subject to order because God IS order, and God is not beyond space-time, but rather underlies it. I sometimes think that both religious philosophers seeking to determine the nature of God and scientists seeking a "Theory of Everything" are stumbling towards the same goals. I believe that the reason things work the way they do is because we have a fundamental order to the universe, perhaps someday identifiable as God.

I think I came to this conclusion after a summer intensive course in Dante. I was reading Sagan's "Contact" concurrently with studying the Divine Comedy. We were discussing the means by which souls arrive in hell, according to Dante, and had come to the conclusion that the Inferno suggests not vengeance, but a certain degree of determinism. That is, similar perhaps to binary code, if you are at 0 when you die, you go to heaven, or if you are at 1, you go to hell. Your own actions determine your setting. Of course, it's more complicated than that, but that's the gist.

Between that and Sagan's idea that messages have been embedded in numbers like Pi got me thinking that maybe the numbers aren't the signifier, but the actual signified. The reason that things like evolution of species (to segue briefly back to the topic of this thread) work so beautifully is due to the fundamental order of things that holds the universe together. An order that I do not believe was created by God, but that actually is God.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

Preaching to the choir :)

I dunno, I'd prefer Tullamore or Bushmills.

I bet if you could, it would sure make it a heck of a lot more acceptable to breastfeed in public :)

Microsoft Excel sometimes makes my brain hurt, so I may be at a slight disadvantage....

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

I love Lewis Carroll :)

I don't suppose that any of you could recommend a good layman's guide to physics. I took a look at 'physics for dummies' (no, I'm not kidding), but I'm not certain that I really trust that series to be accurate.

If that was true, I don't think my husband would have ever let me wean our kids...

No, I had no idea. You would think that women in an economically depressed country would be more likely to breastfeed just for the savings. Guess not.

And how does this relate at all to whether biological evolution happens? Oh that's right, it doesn't.

Languages don't evolve? What a silly thing to say. This, for instance, is English, specifically West Saxon, although there is also a Northumbrian version:

Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard,
meotodes meahte and his modgeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend;
þa middangeard moncynnes weard,
ece drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, frea ælmihtig.

And, this is also English. As a matter of fact, it's the same poem:

Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven's kingdom,
the might of the Creator, and his thought,
the work of the Father of glory, how each of wonders
the Eternal Lord established in the beginning.
He first created for the sons of men
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator,
then Middle-earth the keeper of mankind,
the Eternal Lord, afterwards made,
the earth for men, the Almighty Lord.

I would have used a selection from Beowulf, but I thought you might enjoy Caedmon's Hymn more. Now, what were you saying about how languages don't evolve?

Ahhh, that is a problem. I suppose he would have to requisition it back from whatever lab he kindly donated it to for study.

I really don't know whether to laugh or cry. I suppose this is way too long for "this is your brain on creationism"....

So in other words, all of history is wrong where it indicates that other cultures developed codes of law without the assistance of the Bible. Uh huh. It's a world-wide conspiracy to fake up cultural history. Sure.

Here's another poser - how did language originate? Did it start with 1 language or many? Possibly you've heard that Hebrew is/was the most highly-evolved of all known languages? Science used to laugh at the Biblical idea that man is composed of dust until recently.

That isn't so much a "poser" as....well, to put it kindly, there really is such a thing as a stupid question. How you got from sentence one to sentence four in that paragraph is a mind-boggling trip through crazy non-sequitur land.

Also which is more amazing - the dates on your research items or the dates ascribed to evolution? Just as we do today, mankind has always done, leave behind some trace of their existence. So please show me anything mankind recorded that is over 10,000 years old. I won't consider anything using dating theories that contain assumptions (i.e. cave painting on a '65 million year old rock').

So in other words, you won't consider any actual evidence that doesn't agree with your preconceived ideas. That's fine. Now, how 'bout you pull your tinfoil hat down a little more firmly around your ears and have a nice day.

Maybe your time would be better spent reviewing the holes in the evolution theory or even better disproving the Bible. Two very simple questions from John MacArthur. 1.) How did the rule of law evolve w/o the Bible? 2.) How did the 7-day week evolve w/o the Bible?

My question:

Could you please clarify if you are saying that the rule of law would not exist without the Bible?

Your response:

yes

Ok then. You're wrong of course, but let me point out some resources for you that will adequately show you why. I'll let you google them yourself:

Ancient Codes of Law:

The Inscriptions of Umma and Lagash - Ancient Sumeria, approx. 2500 BCE

The Code of Hammurabi - Ancient Babylonia, approx. 1780 BCE (Babylon has earlier extant laws, but they aren't presented as a compiled code)

The Instruction of Ptah Hotep - Ancient Egypt, approx. 2300 BCE

The Athenian Constitution - Ancient Greece, approx. 350 BCE

The Law Code of Gortyn - Ancient Crete, approx. 450 BCe

The Laws of Manu - Ancient India, approx. 1500 BCE

Legalist Views on Good Government, Han Fei Tzu - Ancient China, approx. 233 BCE

Isn't it amazing how it appears that all cultures developed codes of law without the assistance of the Bible?

Could you please clarify if you are saying that the rule of law would not exist without the Bible?