What if it was created by God to evolve?

[It Aint Necessarily So]

What if it was created by God to evolve? Does this mean we are all correct?

You capitalized "God." Does that mean you're referring to the god of Abraham. If so, then no. That god created reality over six days including the first two humans. That never happened.

What does the fossil record show? It shows, especially in the Cambrian, many species appearing at once, with no obvious link to previous ones.

The Cambrian "explosion" is consistent with the theory. Prokaryotic cells became eucaryotic, and some began "exhaling" molecular oxygen, making multicellular life possible including such things as swimming rather than floating through currents (plankton evolved into nekton). Suddenly, all kinds of new niches were created and filled. And some of these creatures developed features that made fossilization possible. "Suddenly," there were fossils of a wide variety of animal morphologies.

I find it remarkable that, while scientists declare there is a "Common Ancestor" among the "apes," of course in which they include the human race, they have not found that "common ancestor."

You find that remarkable? Where's the ark?

Chaos is required for a material world to exist. Cancer and genetic defects are a consequence of that.

Yes, in a godless universe, but not if a tri-omni god exists.

Skeptics make up many things about God to make God look bad

Skeptics make up nothing about gods. That's what theists do, and skeptics field their claims.

And how hard does one need to work to make the god of the flood look bad? The story depicts moral and intellectual failure on the part of the deity. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't drown all terrestrial life over my mistake with one species that I could magically fix without torturing the planet, and I bet I could figure out to not use the same breeding stock that I just about exterminated to repopulate the earth.

Skeptics didn't make that story up. Ancient theists did, and yes, the god looks very bad in that story. It seems to be mentally sluggish, quick to anger and partial to smiting.

God is responsible for all that exists, but God is not responsible for how angels and humans have behaved

That's in incoherent comment. It contradicts itself. A tri-omni god is also omni-responsible. Take that argument to a court of law. "Yes, I left the keys in a running car full of beer, and yes, this outcome was foreseeable, but I'm not responsible for what others do." "Yes, you are. Judgement is for the woman your son crippled drunk driving your car."

Trusting God means just that, trusting Him even if there are things in life we don't like and which we cannot explain.

Bad idea. What you are calling God is just words people wrote. You're trusting THEM.

Gotta blame someone and so blame God,,,,,,,,,,,,, not for killing little children with cancer but for allowing little children to die from cancer.

Yes. Those are humanist values as I just described.

The best thing to do is to open our eyes to the truth and to the errors in the arguments of the skeptics.

Truth is not whatever a person has chosen to believe by faith, least of all unfalsifiable claims. And theists have found no error in critical judgment, just a nuisance to claiming whatever they like and going unchallenged like the good old days when skeptics like Brahe and Scopes were simply punished or killed with almost no blowback. If you disagree, is it for a reason other than faith? Do you have an actual error of skepticism to report?

Faithless thinking does not see the bigger picture which God has presented to us

If it takes faith to believe something, it should not be believed.

The universe exists and needed a creator and designer. Life exists and needed a life giver.

Two more unfalsifiable religious claims. The universe wasn't designed as best we can tell. It evolved naturalistically from a hot, dense, initial state. And life appears to need no intelligent designer, either.

Plenty of people have experienced the supernatural and miracles from God.

I don't believe that anybody has.

Ignoring witness reports of the supernatural is an error.

No, believing them is the error. All unfalsifiable claims can be ignored. No credible witness ever reported a resurrection.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Not just "part of" creation, but are in fact the mechanisms of creation. (Or the ones we can recognize so far, anyway.)

Evolution is not a mechanism of the creation of life.

I still contend that this is a form of artifice idolatry. They are confusing the representational images with the ideals those images were meant to represent. A lot of people are sadly ignorant of the function and purpose of artifice in human culture.

I think you are spot on correct about the deification of religious texts.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Would you prefer they lie and claim they have proof but you can only see it if you believe? Then they went knocking on your door at an inconvenient time and threatened you with missing out on paradise earth v 2.0 if you don't agree with them? Maybe they could stand on street corners harassing passers by? Would that be a better use of human time and resources?

That's an interesting idea. I've proposed something similar about letting me teach science at church.

Turn about is fair play, though I wouldn't recommend using that methodology. Fortunately, I couldn't see scientists adopting such a protocol for communication of scientific findings. It seems presumptuous, arrogant and intrusive to me. I think it would probably create a lot of ethical issues as well.

 

[YoursTrue]

Would you prefer they lie and claim they have proof but you can only see it if you believe? Then they went knocking on your door at an inconvenient time and threatened you with missing out on paradise earth v 2.0 if you don't agree with them? Maybe they could stand on street corners harassing passers by? Would that be a better use of human time and resources?

John, if you don't mind (or even if you do), just like [someone] avoids me, and while I think I have valid questions, I am going to avoid answering you right now. Have a good evening.

 

[YoursTrue]

Evolution is not a mechanism of the creation of life.

I think you are spot on correct about the deification of religious texts.

It's kind of hard though to say knowledgeably how life began on this earth.

 

[John53]

John, if you don't mind (or even if you do), just like [someone] avoids me, and while I think I have valid questions, I am going to avoid answering you right now. Have a good evening.

You answered me while avoiding answering me. Well done.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You answered me while avoiding answering me. Well done.

Is that the new austerity?

 

[John53]

Is that the new austerity?

I had to google austerity. Even though I heard it a zillion times during the GFC.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I had to google austerity. Even though I heard it a zillion times during the GFC.

Oh, Global Financial Crisis. I thought it was something else.

 

[F1fan]

If there is a God and if God is omnipotent and omniscient then to me a good analogy is a dog asking why he's being subject to feeling fear, pain and suffering (a vet visit). Before someone jumps on it, of course like all analogies it's imperfect, but the basic idea that non-human animals can't understand what it means to be human and why humans act in ways that they don't like is accurate.

A corollary is that suffering has a purpose. If someone is training to compete in the olympics they will put up with all sorts of pain and setbacks because the goal is motivating. When the competitor wins and stands on the platform to receive a metal, they will think that all the effort was worth it. And further if someone is put on the winner's platform as a gift the sense of joy at overcoming all the handicaps will be missing and the award meaningless. If there is a God and if the reward is bliss then such people will think that the effort is worth it.

As a competitive cyclist who has had my fair share of wins I understand this. But deliberateoy deciding to suffer to accomplish goals is vastly different than suffering though chemotherapy. That's where the omnipresent and onmipotent God comes into play, and as creator that knows what it is doing 100% (assuming it exists) caused your cancer. If people believe in this God and get cancer they should take it personally. I would be asking "Why me?"

 

[Valjean]

It's kind of hard though to say knowledgeably how life began on this earth.

Why is that?

 

[shunyadragon]

What was the point of the post?

Valjean said:
Before reïterating, explaining or interpreting a mythology, shouldn't the reality of the myth be established?
That would seem reasonable. Otherwise Christian mythology would be epistemically no different from Norse, Aztec, or Greek mythology.

 

[shunyadragon]

That scientifically designated "common ancestor" among the apes (of which they include humans, of course) has not been found and therefore it's notated as the "UNKNOWN COMMON ANCESTOR." (UCA) Yet they 'know' that gorillas, chimpanzees, and others have "evolved" from this "UCA." Which they have not found as of yet.

In present-day sciences of evolution, there is no such thing as UCA in scientific literature.

 

[Brian2]

Of course we don't have to assume that God "like a human" in terms of being "good" in human terms, or even being aware of us to the point of caring what happens to us. Say it created the universe (or started it off) for some purpose of its own and humanity (all life really) was just an unimportant side effect? When we build a house we don't care how many ants we destroy in the process. But the ants might make up all kinds of reasons to explain what is happening to them.

I believe God loves us and wants our long term good. You seem to believe that my belief is made up as one of the many ways humans have made up to explain the creation and life and suffering etc etc.
God's promises are in the Bible and the promised Messiah came and did what was promised (or half of it at this stage) and is working on the rest.
It could be said to be part of history, or if you don't want to believe it, it is all no more than lies.

 

[Brian2]

Why? That doesn't follow. Explain this need.

Chaos needs to be organised by someone otherwise it is chaos organising itself.

Why? That doesn't follow either.

Kalam cosmological argument - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Life is beyond what we can see about matter and energy. iow it did not spring from matter and energy. It came from elsewhere.

But are their experiences consistent? Are they reproducible? Are they verifiable, or even measurable?Are they consistent with known, physical realities?

I can walk into a mental hospital and find half a dozen people claiming supernatural experiences and divine insight, but without inter-claim consistency or congruence with objective reality, would it be rational to believe them?

In re: descriptions of God in the Bible: The description is of a seriously disturbed monster.

A seriously disturbed monster could do the things in the OT but not with a long term goal in mind, one that we can see having been at least partly fulfilled.
And no, not all the experiences of people who claim supernatural experiences, are consistent. The Bible ones are consistent however and inconsistency can be explained
It is not rational to say that none of them are true because some of them are contradictory.
You can demand more evidence for belief if you want to but it is not rational to say that it is irrational to believe something until it is 100% proven.

What makes these many times removed, many times retold and recopied accounts reliable, especially when the claims are fantastical, word of mouth and many times recopied -- usually by scribes with an agenda.
Any forensic investigator will tell you that even first person accounts by eyewitnesses are notoriously inconsistent and often at odds with the actual facts


After thousands of repetitions, cherry-picking of preferred narratives, and editing, these accounts are not reliable evidence for anything. Basing a belief system on such accounts is not rational, it is faith.

Consistency over time, fulfilled prophecy over long periods of time, a religion based on historical events and prophecy that is fulfilled instead of religions based solely on philosophy and revelation to one person.
All these make the Bible worth believing and show it's reliability.
The claims are fantastical but the evidence is exceptional.
Basing belief on the Biblical record is rational and is faith.

Unevidenced belief: "faith," is not rational, and a reasonable person would defer belief, pending actual evidence.
I also take exception to your claim of long term good. History and current events seem to contradict this.

History and current events confirm the long term accuracy of the Biblical prophecies.
If people want more evidence that is up to them, but usually they want a different type of evidence, more of a proof, so that they don't have to have faith. People have kidded themselves into thinking that they don't have faith and kidded themselves into thinking that faith is what you have when you don't have any evidence.

I don't see this God at all, but by His description, He's certainly not on a level with any ordinary human.
Perhaps a Genghis Kahn, Pol Pot or Ivan the Terrible....

That's exactly what I said. You see God as an evil person.

 

[Brian2]

"Faith," per se, is not rational. Deferred belief, pending real evidence, is rational.

You make fantastical claims. The burden of proof is on you. Disbelief is the logical, epistemic default.

As I said, you have kidded youself that faith is what you have when there is no evidence and have kidded yourself into thinking that you have no faith in your life.
The evidence is there but your demand for actual proof, as in what science might claim as proof (not that science proves anything, I am told).
Seek and you will find.

 

[Brian2]

While that is my belief, there is a little problem of evidence. There is none for a creator/designer and no indication one was needed.

Again, I share that belief, but we run into the same problem as above.

I suppose if people want God to be verifiable then nothing will satisfy for the purpose of faith. There is plenty of evidence for a creator/designer imo however and there is indication that one was needed imo.
But this is imo only and is good enough for me and I start off with faith. If what I see is not good enough for some people then that is their problem and they probably aren't going to just believe if they think that all the evidence points away from the need for a God. And all they see as evidence is what science says about life origins and possible naturalistic explanations for the universe.

So they claim. Plenty of people claim to have seen Bigfoot, Nessie and aliens too. Is it only a matter that someone claim something and it is true?

I'm the King of the World. And ladies, I'm eligible.

I see the Bible claims as more than your everyday insane claims. The Bible has backup evidence in the form of fulfilled prophecies for it's God and supernatural.

Out of curiosity, what descriptions do you mean? Father? A burning bush? The God of creation?

The all knowing, omnipresent, all powerful creator who loves us and hates evil.

Believing in something without valid evidence can be considered irrational. I have to accept that. Why can't anyone?

Valid evidence varies from person to person it seems. Skeptics seem to have been taught what valid evidence is from skeptic apologist school.

I'm not sure how that addresses the point of addressing contradiction in scripture or confronting edicts in the Bible like stoning to death of children by parents or support for institutions like slavery.

I try to avoid wasting my time trying to justify God and His edicts to people who see God as just a bad person.
I find that having faith in the goodness of God can help in seeing what God was doing and why in the Bible.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I suppose if people want God to be verifiable then nothing will satisfy for the purpose of faith. There is plenty of evidence for a creator/designer imo however and there is indication that one was needed imo.
But this is imo only and is good enough for me and I start off with faith. If what I see is not good enough for some people then that is their problem and they probably aren't going to just believe if they think that all the evidence points away from the need for a God. And all they see as evidence is what science says about life origins and possible naturalistic explanations for the universe.

Christians are always making these claims but they never produce any reliable evidence. If anything the provide evidence against their claims.

I see the Bible claims as more than your everyday insane claims. The Bible has backup evidence in the form of fulfilled prophecies for it's God and supernatural.

No, it seriously does not. The Bible has failed prophecies. Perhaps we should discuss the failed prophecies of the Bible.

The all knowing, omnipresent, all powerful creator who loves us and hates evil.

Son not the "God: of the Bible then.

Valid evidence varies from person to person it seems. Skeptics seem to have been taught what valid evidence is from skeptic apologist school.

Now now, don't accuse others of your sins. If you do not like the definitions of various kinds of evidence you would need to justify why you oppose those definitions.

I try to avoid wasting my time trying to justify God and His edicts to people who see God as just a bad person.
I find that having faith in the goodness of God can help in seeing what God was doing and why in the Bible.

Many believers will point out that the God of the Bible is evil. If one reads it at all literally. If the God of the Bible wasn't evil there would be no need for apologetics.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

@Brian2 said:
“The universe exists and needed a creator and designer.”
The response…

While that is my belief, there is a little problem of evidence. There is none for a creator/designer and no indication one was needed.

So, why do you believe it, then?

@Brian2 further stated:
“Life exists and needed a life giver.”

The reply is….
Again, I share that belief, but we run into the same problem as above.

Then Why do you share that belief? Because you want to? I doubt it…

Because integrated design is evident everywhere; it is evidence.

And that was evidence enough for former atheist Antony Flew.

And it is for Meyer, Axe, Denton, etc.


If there’s another reason you believe life was created, then please tell us.
Otherwise, some atheists here might think you’re irrational. Or “ignorant”, as I’ve been accused of.

 

[Subduction Zone]

@Brian2 said:
“The universe exists and needed a creator and designer.”
The response…

So, why do you believe it, then?

@Brian2 further stated:
“Life exists and needed a life giver.”

The reply is….
Again, I share that belief, but we run into the same problem as above.

Then Why do you share that belief? Because you want to? I doubt it…

Because integrated design is evident everywhere; it is evidence.

No, sorry "integrated design" is just an undefined claim. You would really benefit from learning what is and what is not evidence. You keep yourself ignorant of what evidence is and that is why almost all of your arguments could be refuted by a 5th grader. Why are you so afraid to learn?

And that was evidence enough for former atheist Antony Flew.

And it is for Meyer, Axe, Denton, etc.


If there’s another reason you believe life was created, then please tell us.
Otherwise, some atheists here might think you’re irrational. Or “ignorant”, as I’ve been accused of.

No, Anthony Flew did not become a deist until very late in his life when he was suffering from Alzheimer's. Meyer is a liar, that has been shown to be the case again and again. So is Denton. Axe I cannot remember, but I bet he is demonstrably dishonest as well.