Is there a God?

[HAL9000]

I think - therefore I am - a biological computing thingamabob.

As for an Everett-Wheeler-type multiverse - hmmm, where do I begin? It's a Metatheory of Quantum Mechanics that argues against the collapse of the wave-function posited by the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It has steadily gained support amongst the world's theoretical physicists over the last twenty years or so, although most scientists are quite embarrassed about admitting their support because it describes quite a bizarre universe.

Basically, it states that every possible outcome of a quantum-scale interaction actually occurs within a series of continually bifurcating alternate or parallel realities or universes; hence the Multiverse or Many World's Interpretation.

With some hesitation I provide a wiki link to the Many Worlds Interpretation knowing that it probably won't make much sense unless one is well-versed in Quantum Mechanics (and, in this case, Quantum Consciousness) to start with. Good luck with it and feel free to ask any questions that may arise.

[PeckhamRose]

Just seen Pat Condell's latest video.

I may have posted him on here before.

But he has thought it through and he is very funny too.

http://www.patcondell.net/index.html

[huncamunca]

of course there isnt. how absurd

/ end of thread

[BB100]

Has anyone considered how there must have been a God to start speech and language?

Evidence suggests that in order for children to learn to speak and develop cognitively they must have interaction with those that can speak a language. Children who don't have that interaction with speech grow up mentally retarded. How can that work with the theory of evolution?

[Moos]

Language in a less sophisticated form is expressed by almost every animal. Learning from your parents and adapting to a changing climate around you is evolution defined.

Language is positively a clich? of evolution - we even refer to language evolving in a non-scientific sense, and remaining alive as it changes.

[HAL9000]

BB100 Wrote:

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> Has anyone considered how there must have been a

> God to start speech and language?

Are you referring to the Christian Logos - the Word - that is said to have pre-existed Creation and is the medium through which it was initiated?

Judaism holds similar views regarding the Hebrew alphabet. Kabbalists believe that the written Torah (i.e. the Pentateuch), which Judaism recognises as the Word of God, mystically and cryptically embodies the entire Creation or Universe. See Number-Word mysticism.

[mockney piers]

Gosh good point BB, language and evolution are incompatible, right off to the baptismal font with me.

But seriously language isn't all that amazing, a baby's various cries are language.

There are greater wonders in nature like photosynthesis or termites building perfectly climate controlled environments while being dumb and blind. Not convinced language is going to be an argument winner.

[Brendan]

Photosynthesising termites. Now that would be some godly believing shit man.

[BB100]

No, it was just a speech and language therapist told me you can't develop speech or develop cognitively without being exposed to sophisticated forms of language and engage in interaction. Of course there are more amazing things like things termites so I do wonder how you can begin to think it all just happened by chance.

[HAL9000]

BB100 Wrote:

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> there are more amazing things like termites

> so I do wonder how you can begin to think

> it all just happened by chance.

Chance is supported by Evolutionary Theory, which provides a reasonably good explanation for speciation, although it does not explain how life arose "out of nothing" thus allowing religion a little wriggle room.

[Huguenot]

I'm converted.

A trouser press therapist told me you can't develop trousers or presses without being exposed to sophisticated forms of trouser press.

I tend to do it with most things I don't understand. Ice Cream, Internal Combustion.

It's convenient.

[Brendan]

But evolution is not just chance though. Life by its nature wants to develop, change and adapt. The ability to evolve is an evolutionary trait in itself.

That?s not to say that it is driven by some external influence it is just what it does by definition. In the same way that my leg wants to kick slow walking people in the arse life wants to find the gaps in the world and fill them using whatever adaptations it can.

[PeckhamRose]

Slightly related subject.

Radio play at 2.30 Saturday 21st November 2009 on Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nwz36

[HAL9000]

Brendan Wrote:

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> But evolution is not just chance though. Life by

> its nature wants to develop, change and adapt. The

> ability to evolve is an evolutionary trait in

> itself.

The mechanism that drives evolution is random genetic mutation - chance. The chemistry of life happens to be mutable. The universe happens to be mutagenic.

Whether that is just a coincidence or evidence of intelligent design I leave to you.

> That?s not to say that it is driven by some

> external influence it is just what it does by

> definition.

The 'external influence' is a dynamic environment, within which only the fittest survive.

[BB100]

Why is it that in order to promote your beliefs you do it by trying to belittle others? Mocking someone's point of view doesn't make yours right you know.

[Huguenot]

Mockery is far too strong - it was parody, a little poking fun.

It is an example of how seriously religion takes itself that it can't take a bit of ribbing. It overreacts, seeing every deviation from the core belief system as catastrophic, heretical, and the penalties it lays down are severe.

Religion is imperialist, totalitarian and so, so very angry.

[BB100]

I just thought it was an interesting topic to explore here but some are just so quick to dismiss without any real desire to look in it. I agree that religion gives itself a bad name but I am a little taken aback by how those who have even a small suggestion that God could exist is dismissed as a fool. Where's the open minds on here?

[matthew123]

I wanna know does the god of speech work closely with the god of thought? ;-)

But seriously is there any evidence that God exists, and if he does exist what evidence is there that He is not one amongst many other gods?

I think Voltaire summed it up when he said, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

[Brendan]

HAL9000 Wrote:

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> The mechanism that drives evolution is random

> genetic mutation - chance. The chemistry of life

> happens to be mutable. The universe happens to be

> mutagenic.

Yes but not entirely depending on how you look at it. The understanding of evolution has moved on somewhat since Darwin.

I'm a bit too lazy to propperly support this statement right now but I'll get to it at some stage.

[Huguenot]

I hardly think 11 pages is people failing to look into it.

However, I also feel reasonably strongly that not being able to see an 'immediate' rational explanation is much grounds for the existence of God. Otherwise, we'd see God in every swinging door, or as I think Declan put it, the 'eyes of a baby'.

Why would God speak 'human'? It's a quaintly ego-centric notion.

As is oft pointed out, a remote control would be seen as magical by an earlier generation: but in hindsight it didn't need an omnipotent, omnipresent, stern moraliser for it to be created - merely a mechanism our ancestors had yet to work out.

We've been around 20,000 years on a planet 4 billion years old, in a universe 14 billion years old. The law of averages would suggest that there's a lot we've yet to discover that won't need a anthropogenic God to have fashioned it.

In fact I would argue that attributing it to God requires some considerable cop-out.

[silverfox]

Equally though Huguenot, there is something very unsatisfying to the rational mind to say everything that is sprang from an unimaginably small singularity (Big Bang) and leave it there. That would be a cop-out.

The Big Bang must have had a cause and if Membrane (M-Theory/String Theory) seeks to explain that universes pop in and out of existence all the time that still begs the question of an ultimate cause. To seek help in attributing this to (a) God, is not unreasonale to my mind in trying to make sense of what is probably unknowable.

[mockney piers]

Ok, but who's to say the creator didn't blow itself in the garden shed on the first attempt and there has been explosion and implosion since then in a series of universes devoid of the love of their creator, leaving only an uncaring and spiritually empty vastness conforming to the parameters of the original recipe.

Bottom line we can't know, and the search for an answer will always be fruitless in a concrete sense; those of us agnostics happy with that state of affairs are practical atheists, we have nothing to gain from acknowledgement or denial, for everything else comes from within us not from the creator. So no, it's not unsatisfying at all, it's actually very liberating.

That's not to say that wisdom and inner enlightenment can't be gained in the search for meaning, and many of those who have sought meaning within the bounds of supernatural religions have come up with wise thoughts indeed. But isnt that best as a personal and inner journey.

So really we should just lock this and ditch it, because never the twain shall meet.

[Huguenot]

Quite Silverfox, and most scientists would agree that a 'creator' could be one of the seven likely instigators behind the big bang.

However, there is an unmeasurable distance between this 'creator', and the anthropogenic, omnipresent, omniscient God to which most on this thread are referring when they talk about language creation or the eyes of babies. The latter God takes an interest in human affairs, has moral standing, and employs a squad of autocrats on earth to organise his worship.

This to me seems as absurd as the universe rotating around the earth. In that sense my outrage is only that hyper-aggressive clowns with a history of genocide think they have a right to dictate the social and moral context of my life.

[mockney piers]

" but some are just so quick to dismiss without any real desire to look in it."

Just to pick you up on this.

Agnostic/atheist isn't the absence of a position or consideration. Ill warrant many have put more thought into it than many who do believe.

I, probably typically, was brought up/indoctrinated as a Christian with cubs/scouts, hymns at school, religious lessons, church and Sunday school. But noone from a very young age ever had decent answers to any of my questions.

I stopped believing when my older brother announced his apostasy which shocked me greatly, but nothing zapped him, no biblical punishments were met upon him (indeed he's still the luckiest sod I know) and that was all the proof I needed to make the same leap of faith.

Then I revisited my decision during some pretty tough times at uni, away from home, grieving for friends who died too young in quick succession, but any thought of gaining succour or strength from religion or faith was immediately quashed by a sense of great hypocrisy I would have felt as I knew intellectually I could never believe.

So here I still am, unzapped, happy and content in my beliefs.

Try not to insinuate the religious have some monopoly on spirituality, they don't it's just some feel they have it on telling others what it's all about.

[BB100]

If religion is angry what's your excuse?

I could pick through all your comments but you're not looking for an answer to the question. This is just a forum to promote your own ideas. Bon chance!