Did God Invent Us, Or Did We Invent Him

[gbrutt]

Being new to the site I was looking for information about games, but was interested by this subject. It is good to see that other concepts and ideas are accepted. There are a few folk weighing in on the topic and I am working my way through them. As to the debate whether God invented us or we invented Him, I would have to say that as a Christian, neither of the proposed statements is proper. God did not invent, He created. We could not invent a concept such as God, for it is a universal one and dates back to the beginning of mankind. As to which of the opposing point of view is correct, you would first have to examine them. As far as I can tell from the posts I've read, the debate tends to center on evolution. Has anyone read, Darwin's Black Box? The subject, that of irriducible complexity, is one that I've never heard refuted. And the author, Behe, isn't even a Christian. He does make an interesting case for the conundrum of the complexity of systems in life forms and the inability of scientists to account for it, outside of special creation. There is also spontaneous generation, that life cannot come from non-life, but must always have a source. Francis Schaeffer is most eloquent on this subject. To believe in evolution, he states, you must go by this equation, Time + Chance + Nothing = That which exists. There is no way for this to have happened.

[Instar]

Well, I haven't read the book, so I can't debunk the claims specifically...
But the author sounds ignorant of systems and how relative complexity can arise from a very simple system. I've seen it happen, with software; I am a software developer, and a complex system can arise from basic, even simple elements. Evolutionary software has demonstrated this better than I could demonstrate in ten thousand lines of code. There are many examples of genetic and evolutionary algorithms, indeed, many creationists have tried to find flaws in such algorithms and systems, and have failed miserably.

No one knows what the first life form is (that is, in the evolutionary system), but speculation usually revolves around a proto-bacteria of sorts, perhaps a strand of proteins (which could have been created in the chemical soup of early earth) sourrounded by a simple member, if at all. As soon as it is able to reproduce and change (even slowly) over time, you have the beginning of life.
There is most certainly a way for it to have happened. The chemistry for the proteins has actually been reproduced (after a manner) in a test tube.

Frankly, creation myths (like the Christian "creationism") are rooted in the psychology and cultures of those that created them; useful for only anthropologists.

[Phoenix-D]

One more time for those that haven't caught the hint yet.

EVOLUTION IS NOT RANDOM.


The spontanious generation argument doesn't work either, unless you can prove that the early earth didn't have the conditions we think it did; all the experiments showing spontanious generation doesn't work assume current conditions.

And really, if you go with that argument you have the interesting and really thorny problem of explaning where God came from..and if you don't you get the only somewhat less thorny problem of explaining where the universe began.

[Instar]

What do you mean by "spontaneous generation"? Life of course, doesn't just randomly create itself from nothing, but given certain certain environmental factors, the precursors of life can be generated.

[Azselendor]

Evoltuion, actually, is totally random.

As I stated before, if you go to any place on the surface of earth, presumably devoid of life, and I assure you - you will find life. Even the most basic forms of it. There are sealed volcano tubes, that should be totally devoid of life for millions of years - yet they are teeming with simple lifeforms. Undersea volcanos.

Life finds a way, and I assure you that the chances of life happening isn't remote, but far more likely giving the sheer size of the universe, dynamics, and possibilities that exist.

By assuming there is some kind of "intelligence" or "controls" on the process of evolution, you make an assumption based totally in fallacy.

And I'll assure each and every one of you, the single greatest miracle in all of this universe and the next is that of random chance and the process of evolution, not an act of the divine or a creator.

[Instar]

I wouldn't categorize evolution as random. Evolution at the same time isn't a system with a finite number of states.
Random mutations can crop up in genetic information due to just pure chance, such as errors in copying DNA, but usually it occurs as DNA is mixed together in reproduction, or even when bacteria exchange bits of genetic material or absorb other bacteria's genetic material.
Strong genes will be generally selected for, at least in the wild, and those genes will perpetuate themselves until something changes. In some ways, it can be predicted, but it can surprise very quickly.

[Suicide Junkie]

Evolution is most definitely nonrandom.

Lots of random and semirandom changes are introduced via mutation and gene swapping.
The individuals with positive changes get copied because they survive to breed.
The individuals with detrimental changes get killed off.

If you take a random distribution of new individuals similar to your current population and then kill off the lowest 90%, the average goes up.

We are the top 0.0000...001% of our class, because we passed the survival exam and its brutal, bell curved marking scheme.

[gbrutt]

Too many posts to reply to them all at once. I will try to deal with some of the material. First of all, the author of Darwin's Black Box is Michael Behe. He is a Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University. Before you "debunk" his book, try reading it. He is far from ignorant. Instar, your example of coding is a good one. No matter what you say about complexity, there is a mind behind it, writing, entering, debugging the code. It did not arise of its own will. Your second paragraph also contains speculation, not facts. It takes far more faith for you to adhere to this than for a man to believe that God exists. The chemical reproduction also shows that under controlled conditions, man can manipulate materials to make responses. This is hardly creation.
Phoenix D, could you please explain your statement, "Evolution is not random." It isn't clear, unless you provide an example. Spontaneous generation, that is, starting with nothing, or non-life, and coming up with order, and life, does not work. You still need to start with something. Those who have tried to "recreate" a proto-earth, are using controlled conditions to simulate random patterns. That is hardly scientific, and it never has produced life, even when all of the materials were present and properly manipulated. You still need to begin with something being there or you will never get anything. Instar admits as much when he says, "given certain certain environmental factors, the precursors of life can be generated." Someone is doing the generating, for without manipulating these precursors, the experiment fails. Unfortunately, precursors of life and life are not the same. Klvino, makes an interesting comment when he says that, "the single greatest miracle in all of this universe and the next is that of random chance and the process of evolution." It is impossible to wholly rid ourselves of theological terms like miracle, even when we are trying in vain to be atheists. That's the way that we were made. Man is made in the image and likeness of God. It's the only thing which lends meaning and purpose to this life. If you really believe in microevolution, that all that exists arose from non-life and fell by random chance into the intricate order which we find on planet earth, that you and I are nothing more than a glorified ape, what ultimately, is the purpose of life as we know it? Even your debating this issue is meaningless, for you are nothing more than a random arrangement of molecules destined to rot in the grave. The Bible tells us that, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." All that is is created by Him and owes its very being to Him. That's the real reason most men find the subject troubling to them. They don't like the fact that there is something greater than themselves and to which they are endebted for all that they have.
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."
Psalm 14:1

[Azselendor]

SJ, your example of evolution being non random is an example of forced evolution where if artificially eliminating a large majority of the population, you improve the gene pool. However, there is a flaw in this. Bananas, believe it or not, will more than likely be extinct in all of our life times because humans have pretty much bred all genetic diveristy out of the modern banana. As a result, it can easily be wiped out if a banana-born disease manages to get free.

GBrutt, As for michael behe, his ideas about 'intelligent design' are with the rest, as the overwhelming majority in the scientific community reject it as baseless creationist pseudoscience trying to pass itself as hard science. His Book, Darwin's Black Box, reads like it's based on personal incredulity instead of an actual explanation for his examples. Indeed, a couple of them been used to actually disprove his ideas by his critics. lol

As for the designing of software, keep in mind that software evolution, while done by man, actually evolves not because of the efforts of the programmer, but that of the industry, the community, users, testers, need, and improvements. These are natural influences that influence the direction the programmer (IE force of program evolution) to improve and make new versions of a program, which may spin off into seperate programs that may or may not survive and then further evolve at the hands of yet more programmers and influences around it.

Take Any program, remove the users' and customers' needs. What do you have? A program without enough influenece for dramatic change that will, pretty much, not advance more than what it is. Why? Because the programmer, being the force of program evolution, does not have anyone buy and using his program, thus he is unable to continue to develop it.

Moving on, You are right, life didn't start from nothing. I more than likely started about 8 billion years ago when a red giant went supernova and left enough stellar material behind to create our star system 3.5 to 4 billion years later. Those materials, by random chance and good energy managed to come together and create the right conditions on earth for life and create the building blocks for life which took form in earth's primitive oceans billions of years ago. Computer driven recreations of protoearth enviroments will never yeild the correct responses, mainly because they are best-guess simulations.

Ask yourself what DNA is and then ask yourself what it is made of. Sugars, Amino Acids, etc. What are they made of? basic elements and all of these things exist, already in nature and can form on their own. Often, creationist argue that life had to start at one point. How can we be sure of that? For all we know, CNN might report evidence that many kinds of microbacterial life formed on earth, at different places, all around the same period. Simply, no one knows and no one will know until a proto-earth enviroment can be found.

Now you are assuming that someone is behind everything, someone pulling all the strings, not so. Does lightening have direction? No. It lands on chance and probilities. Then factors increase that chance or decrease it. And remember, Lightening can strike twice.

Now as for you twisting my words, don't. My statement was never about god or religion and the word 'miracle' is used for the purpose of stating the extreme possibility of life, not the fact someone did it. The way you twisted it around would be me saying you endorse free thinking because you uttered "Athiests" The fact is that creationism mythology
is not science and cannot ever compete with it.

Now if "god" did make us in his image, then I think his Xerox needed a serious toner replacement. He got a lot of stuff wrong. The human knees are not load bearing structures. Try standing at attention all day with your knees locked. Humans have some 3000 genetic diseases and faults bred into us alone!

The fact is the complexity of evolution is not complex at all. It only appears complex because it has aeons upon aeons of history behind it that we are yet to uncover.

The bible says the world was created one way, but every religion has different ways. Who's to say who is right and wrong. Hell, the egyptians claimed the unvierse sprung up from godly intercourse and endured because they kept up at it! Can you disprove the egyptian creationism? Greek? Hindu? Zulu? Native Americans? and so on.

You seem to think athiests and free thinkers have an issue with god, in reality most of us don't. As we don't believe in a god-figure or divine-lifeform, we cannot have an issue with it. We won't go to hell, because we don't believe in it thus we cannot go. We don't believe in satan or the devil, so clearly they can't influence us.

So really, how can a free thinker be endebted for all eternity to someone they don't believe even exists? At the risk of insulting all the religious folk and bring down their wrath on me with my next example, but "How many of us owe the toothfairy money for our babyteeth?"

Athiesm has been around since 300bce, if not earlier. I don't think we are going anywhere.

A man called Löffler who was burned in Bern in 1375 for confessing adherence to athiesm is reported to have taunted his executioners that they would not have enough wood to burn "Chance, which rules the world".