A Newtonian God
I wouldn't mind being the Vatican's Chief Astronomer... it makes you wonder what he actually does, though.
Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design
I agree with a lot of what the Reverend George Coyne has to say, especially that Intelligent Design is not science and has no place being taught along side evolution or in any science class. If it is to be taught, it should be taught in religion classes; even then I don't think it should be "taught" so much as suggested since it is, after all, a matter of faith.
It can be hard to resolve scientific evidence with matters of faith, but it can be done. Having faith in "intelligent design" or a "Newtonian God" does not mean that you don't believe in science; faith is inherently unscientific (or better anti-scientific) in that you believe things without evidence. It's kind of like being a skeptic; saying "Yeah, I see your evidence and I don't dispute it. However, I can draw other conclusions."
In some sense, I distrust the rapid "pushers" of Evolution because I feel a sort of anti faith, wherein they intend to "disprove God" rather than to prove some science.
Tell me, reader: do you understand what I'm saying, or am I rambling? Or both? Do you agree, or have another viewpoint? I'm sure you do.
posted by GFreak @ 12:10 PM
4 Comments:
I do agree. And furthermore... when you really get down to it, what is the point. It all boils down to a matter of faith. Either faith in science or faith in God/higher power. Even though you can trace evolution to a certain point, going beyond that point is hypothetical. People who choose to believe only in Evolution must reach a point in which they say "Well, this is what I BELIEVE happened based upon scientific evidence. No one will ever know what truly happened at that magic moment. So we are each to decide for ourselves... faith in God or faith in science.
There's a guy here at work who will dispute anything to do with any kind of superior being (by the way, he hates his dad... hmmm....) anyway, he has "proved" evolution via simulation. He has his Doctorate in Mechanical Controls Engineering by doing a thesis in "Genetic Algorithms". GAs are very cool and do work -- so long as you give them the proper initial conditions AND provide the rules for "mating".... long topic, I won't give more details.
The bottom line is that while he claims that his simulations prove the LACK of a superior being, I claim that he has proved that there MUST be one! I even tried to stroke his ego by pointing out that for his simulation, HE was the supreme being... and I almost got him on that.
The problem with Evolution is that, with current theory, it has to happen continuously, that is, tiny changes that build up over time. But the problem is that there MUST be discrete steps along the way (just as you can't be "a little bit pregnant", you also can't have "mostly gills but a little bit of lungs"). And when a discrete, major change happens (i.e. fish suddenly developing lungs AND gills i.e. becoming amphibians), there must be AT LEAST TWO of these creatures, one male and one female, or else the mutation is lost!
I do believe in evolution (note the lack of capitalization) in terms of the adaptation or specialization to one's environment. That just makes sense. It's the major changes that I have a problem with. Another of these examples is to me one of the obvious holes in current Evolutionism: from a viewpoint of entropy, shouldn't we be moving FROM multi-cellular, massively ordered beings TO single-celled, individually surviving cells, instead of the other way around?
Hmmm very interesting. My comment for everyone who followes the evolutionary and big bang track is "How did it start?" If it was dust, who created the dust? If it happened in space... who created space? No matter where they want to begin at, I can always go one further step back and say "But who made that or where did that come from?" Something came from absolute nothingness, that we can agree on... the thing is... who created that first thing that first element... seems to me you can't argue against a Supreme Being.
Come on Greg, it was just "there".
There are some who have attempted to answer this paradox by saying that "the universe undergoes "cycles"; currently, and for the last 13.8 billion years, the universe is expanding. However, because Gravity is the One True Law, the universe will eventually collapse in on itself, all of the mass in the universe will collapse into a mass the size of a thimble, producing yet another Big Bang.
And that's that.
GFreak: right, but where did the first thimble come from?
Them: It doesn't matter! Don't you see? We could be talking about trillions of years here, and infinite number of cycles! And every time the universe goes through this cycle, life has the chance to evolve; sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't!
GFreak: Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!
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