What would convince you?

[TheKeyAuthor]

1 Would he have to appear on Oprah or the like? Which means he has to be a celeb first. How would he become a celeb?
2 Would he have to do tricks like change water into wine? Which means the likes of David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy etc. are candidates?
3 Would you believe a "miracle" on TV anyway?
4 Are we too sceptical and information overloaded to believe anything any more?
5 Would anything possibly convince anyone in the 21st century anyhow?

Actually, it is entirely possible that someone may have created the universe and first living beings, and then let evolution take its course.

You seem somewhat confused about what the theory of evolution actually is. Here's a good primer. Nobody, other than a few confused theists, claim that evolution purports to be a theory of everything.

but does evolution explain how the universe began?

No. Nobody claims that it does. Evolution is about how life forms change gradually over the generations as a result of mutations, genetic drift and natural selection. What you want for origins of the universe is the science of cosmology.

does evolution explain how the stars were formed?

Nope. Nobody claims that it does. Cosmology's your favourite for this one. Seriously, read up on it - it's a fascinating subject. Did you know that the hiss you hear on a detuned radio is residual energy from the big bang? Isn't that amazing?

does evolution explain how chemistry was generated?

I'm not sure I understand the question. If you're asking where chemicals come from, that's cosmology and nuclear physics. If you're asking how chemical reactions occur and how certain chemicals can combine to form molecules, then that's chemistry. Either way, nobody claims that evolution explains all that.

does evolution explain how life began on earth?

Nope. Nobody claims that it does. You want abiogenesis for that.

Hope this helps!

Actually, it is entirely possible that someone may have created the universe and first living beings, and then let evolution take its course

Could be. It's equally likely that the universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.

But then you're left with the question of where the Great Green Arkleseizure came from.

If you want to know more about evolution Dawkins' books "The Greatest Show on Earth", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "The Blind Watchmaker" are all very, very informative. Or if you have a personal dislike against him there are thousands of other excellent books on evolution and the evidence that supports it.

" It's equally likely that the universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure"

Actually, there is no way on earth you can assign probabilities to whether or not the universe happened by accident or by intentions of a conscious creator.

Because in order to know which is likely and which isn't, we would have to know of many universes and know which are created by a God and which just happened by themselves. Then we could say "22% were created and 78% just happened by themselves, so it is more likely that the next one we see will have happened without the intervention of a God".

"im making a point at how deficient a belief in evolution is as the explanation for why and how we are here. "

You are right. Such a belief would be a bit silly. But I don't think anyone here is espousing it.

You can't talk about evolution before there is a living cell and that came a long time after the Big Bang. So how anyone can say Evolution happened so there is no God, I can't tell.

"im making a point at how deficient a belief in evolution is as the explanation for why and how we are here. "

You are right. Such a belief would be a bit silly. But I don't think anyone here is espousing it.

You can't talk about evolution before there is a living cell and that came a long time after the Big Bang. So how anyone can say Evolution happened so there is no God, I can't tell.

im making a point at how deficient a belief in evolution is as the explanation for why and how we are here.

Has anyone on this thread suggested for a moment that evolution explains everything? No? So why the straw-man argument?

Darwinism does not explain life. it assumes the existence of a mutating replicator it does not explain how that mutating replicator came to exist.

Correct. Well done. Have a biscuit. What's your point?

Actually, there is no way on earth you can assign probabilities to whether or not the universe happened by accident or by intentions of a conscious creator.

True. But I think you could make a convincing argument that if one accepts that the universe was created by a conscious creator, the likelihood of it being one particular conscious creator versus another arbitrary creator are pretty much equal.

The big intellectual leap is to say that the universe was made deliberately by some vastly powerful being. Whether that being has more in common with the descriptions of the Abrahamic god, or those of Brahma, or those of the Great Green Arkleseizure is merely a matter of personal belief.

Do you even ask the question?

"True. But I think you could make a convincing argument that if one accepts that the universe was created by a conscious creator, the likelihood of it being one particular conscious creator versus another arbitrary creator are pretty much equal. "

No you can't make any such argument, convincing or otherwise.

If you study a bit of probability, you will see that the only way you can assign livelihoods to different outcomes is if you know how the cards are stacked, how many faces the die has etc. You can't just see the one face of the die in a dark room "5" written on it and say that a "7" is just as likely, or that a "2" is very unlikely.

(What is an "arbitrary creator" anyway? A sleepwalking deity that creates a universe in his sleep?)

What you can say is "Your creation story sounds interesting but you have sweet FA as evidence, so I'm not buying it".

Likelihoods, obviously, and not "livelihoods"

CoteDAzur, what I mean by "arbitrary creator" in that context is this:

There are hundreds, arguably thousands of different faith-based creation stories. Zero or one of them could be correct, but no more than one.

Out of that pool of potentially true faith-based creation stories, pick one at random - say, the Hindu one - and pick another one at random - say, the Abrahamic one. It doesn't really matter which ones you pick. It's arbitrary.

Can we assign a probability that one is more likely to be true than the other? I don't think we can, and I think you are saying the same. They are equally as likely as there is no basis for saying that one is more likely to be true than the other.

That was the point I was making. I'm not claiming it was necessarily a good point :) but that was what I was driving at.

I can't say I've read much Dawkins but this statement is of course correct and has nothing to do with faith: "absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence".

Evolution is fact, proven many times over.

If your religion says "God created man as homo sapiens", that religion is wrong.

That doesn't mean there is no creator God. It might simply mean that God's message was distorted, or he lied to people back then who wouldn't handle the truth.

In any case, it means the religion that claims creation of all species as they are now is demonstrably wrong.

Snorbs - re "thousands of creation stories... all equally likely"

I see what you mean, but no, you can't assign equal probabilities to all of them just because they look equally crazy the same to you.

Dawkins preaches that the belief in God is defunct because of evolution and natural selection

No, he doesn't. He really doesn't.

What he says is that evolution and natural selection are part the reason why he does not believe in gods. They're the part he talks about the most but then be is an evolutionary biologist; that's his job.

Science as a whole makes up a much greater part of the reason. So not just evolution, but evolution plus cosmology plus physics plus psychology (eg, memes) plus everything else. And then there are the logical inconsistencies in the stories of gods, the disquieting nature of most/all descriptions of gods, the lack of evidence for gods and so on and so forth. His book "The God Delusion" covers all this. Have you read it?

Dawkins does not se evolution alone as evidence that there is no god. He uses it to prove that creationists are wrong.

The idea that American health care policy is formulated by social darwinists is just bizarre.

"Survival of the fittest" in evolutionary terms does not mean don't care for the weak and vulnerable in society. As has been explains sval rims on this thread already.

There are gaps in scientific theory. Thy are slowly being filled as knowledge advances. The difference between science and religion is that science changes as knowledge grows. Faith stays the same in the face of evidence.

some atheists even try to apply evolutionary biology onto sociology and politics... look at the USA polarised debates on healthcare,

Now you're being absurd. The debate in the US is about privately funded healthcare for everyone versus Government expanding is coverage of healthcare for those most in need.

The supporters of private funding, ie those who feel very strongly that if you can't afford healthcare then it's your own fault (ie, "social Darwinism") are predominantly Republicans. Those in favour of bigger state funding are predominantly Democrats - eg, Obama.

The Republican party is hugely and massively driven by the Christian right. There is no debate about that, it's a simple statement of fact. The Democrats are much less controlled by religious pressure groups.

So it's not the atheists pushing for social Darwinism in the US, it's the Christians.

It would be impossible to distiguish between the world shaped by evolution through natural selection and a world where god acted at each step or guided evolution to have the same outcome (including producing disadvantageous mutants), or even a god that invented the rules of evolution and set the ball rolling. But that goes into the realm of philosophy and how do we even know anything (how do we know we're not a dream in someone's head etc thought-experiments)

Dawkins just asks, if we have a theory that explains our existance without the intervention of a god, then why invoke the intervention of a god?

Sciencelover: I think the people who spend their days and hours looking for hidden codes/messages in the Bible are entirely missing the point. The aligning of patterns, dates, and stars might be significant, but I personally wouldn't rely on it unless I'd also prayed about it and felt it was meaningful, and not just coincidence.

I agree entirely with that. In my case, I didn't go looking for anything. I'd never heard of Chi Rho, didn't know about Annunciation specifics or symbols full stop.
The reason I put a monogram together is because while I was writing a book, the government passed legislation preventing me from using my name. The reason why I ended up (for the first time ever) browsing wikipedia's JC page was related to the quasi-religious experience. That happened a short while (days I think) after I put the monogram together. Then I came across Chi Rho, spotted my monogram in it, then my name and so on.