Posted on 05/17/2022 7:53:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
By your logic, you're mindless. Yeah, I can believe it.
"The fool hath said, etc."
“I,personally,don’t have a huge problem with genuine agnostics...those who,after serious thought and reflection, are uncertain if God exists or not.”
To me being an agnostic is the most rational and intellectually honest position to hold.
We don’t know the answers to these questions so saying “I don’t know” is the best we can do, while we continue searching for the answers.
The left tries to excuse these problems as “the God of the gaps”. The trouble is, every new scientific just increases the gaps, not resolve them.
Listen to this guy on YouTube. He is a brilliant biochemist who designs molecules for a living. He points out the incredible complexity of the simplest life forms and shows how they could not be formed randomly.
“if there is ‘intelligent design’, why do we have liberals?”
Good question.
Well, intelligent doesn’t mean perfect.
It’s intelligence similar to the human type, where something is designed with a well intended purpose in mind and turns out to be a dud, a Yugo.
So liberals are “god’s” Yugos.
If, as the story goes, we are made in God’s image, it follows that “God” must have the same imperfections we have, which debunks the idea of a “perfect God”.
“For those who don’t know, there is a non-religious version of Intelligent Design.”
Another God?
The simulation theory folks are not claiming there is “another God”.
There are many variations of the theory—you can research them yourself.
We humans are way out of their depth on this stuff—we could be talking forces of nature that are truly bizarre—self-replicating fractals whatevers....
Humans make “rules” that nature is supposed to follow—but nature is an outlaw.
Evolution is true.......
BUT we don’t understand how it works!!!!
The difference between a process guided by an intelligent agent and one that is not seems more than semantic to me.
Not exactly
I’m not claiming exactitude in that parable
“Strangely enough, the scientific establishment is more tolerant of people who believe that extraterrestrial beings guided the course of evolution on this planet.”
Well that too is a form of intelligent design.
Some other beings much more intelligent, powerful and advanced than us able to design and create life.
I often use the analogy of us vs an amoeba.
An amoeba has no awareness of our existence or our powers, yet we exist. What if there are beings out there who, when compared to them, we are what an amoeba is to us?
We like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, maybe an amoeba in its own way does, too.
“There are over 6,000 genetic diseases known so far to medicine. These result in shortened lifespans, immense pain and suffering, and countless ruined lives both for the patients and their caregivers. How can this be explained by any kind of compassionate intelligent design?”
Choice is real. Sin and evil are real. Consequences of sin and evil are real. We live in a world where sin has created a state of disorder resulting in pain, suffering, injustice, and more sin.
I’m not arguing against the germ theory of disease. I don’t know how or why these many specific diseases exists particularly. I just think it is reasonable to believe that the way things are is not as the Creator intended them to be.
Now, how can the existence of love, compassion, mercy, tolerance, kindness, charity, and selfless sacrifice be explained by natural selection of species competing for extremely limited resources in an environment essentially hostile to the existence of life in the first place?
“Humans make “rules” that nature is supposed to follow—but nature is an outlaw.”
Holiday Inn?
Good post—also note that humans get to define what “intelligent” is.
Homo Sapiens has rigged the rulebook.
Nature does not care about our rigged rulebook.
Math is to both communists and Darwinists like garlic to a vampire.
“First, what is meant by “intelligent” or “intelligence”.
What is meant by that is doing something with a purpose in mind, such as for example conceptualizing, designing and building a car for the purpose of more efficiently getting from here to there.
It is an intentional act instead of just random or accidental, very much analogous to the way humans design things.
“is the universe itself a conscious intelligence?”
Could be. We don’t know what that entity might be, and we may never know. Just as an amoeba is not aware of our existence and capabilities, we are just as unaware as to what that “bigger” thing is like.
I think it depends on what you mean by intelligence and where you believe that intelligence resides. And, BTW, personally, I believe that intelligence at the level we are discussing and self-consciousness are not separable. Although he is seldom read these days, Henri Bergson explored the issue we are pondering.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Bergson
“Scientists can sometimes be quite dense. You don’t have to be a scientist to know that the universe as it exists now could not just create itself out of nothing.”
Well, you have the same problem with God. Who created God?
“And you can’t claim that it has always been there without facing the logical nightmare of going infinitely backwards in time.”
They can’t claim it has always been here at all. Einstein confirmed the “solid state” model as incompatible with the observed universe some hundred-odd years ago.
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