Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 9:17 pm
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 8:53 pm
You know that there are problems in evolutionary theory. But that is not a sufficient base on which to rebuild a Christian creationist mythology that matches your Genesis picture.
I wasn't doing that.
If you are not doing that -- what are you doing?
Immanuel, there certainly was a 'creation' but I think the entire question is
how it is explained. You know enough of science to know how physicists describe it. There was some sort of event and everything that we see around us took form. From what? What is the *stuff* from which it is all made? Does anyone have an idea? I am not convinced they do. So their explanation (let's say through mathematical terms and formulas and hypotheses) are 'descriptions' of something that in my own view is unfathomable. How can existence exist? Is it even possible to refer to a time before?
I believe that what you wish to assert, and I cannot but agree with you, is that this cannot be a random event and it presupposes something that brought all things into existence. You are attracted to or comfortable with the view that the Hebrew god shazammed it in some way similar to the creation story. But here is the thing: you never do offer any sort of picture of how the creation took place. Where it gets strange is that you make a reference to extremely complex ecological-symbiotic relationships that are hard to explain in evolutionary lingo, and you know that I cannot fathom how the archerfish became such a wonderful spitter without there being some intermediate half-spitting form. We see extreme adaptability and forms of it so worked out that it is impossible to imagine how they could have evolved through random trial and error. You point out that there are gaps --but you do not ever offer a coherent image of how god created all of this. You seem to imply that god created it and made it in such a way that it looks like everything evolved from primitive forms to complex forms. But why? Why would god do this?
I think that the real miracle is not seen because language and story obscures it. The real unbelievable fact is that all of this
does exist. And there is no alternative to that existence. And even in the Christian picture the afterworld of Heaven cannot ever cease to exist unless the crator-god decides to bring even that to an end through annihilation. And then what comes next?
AJ: The ‘purpose’ of life, moral and spiritual questions, these can be discerned as instilled within the creation itself (in conscious beings) without resorting to mythical fabulations.
Immanuel "Instilled"? By what?
What you
hope to achieve is that people here will agree and say *by a god* *by a creator* *by a divine intelligence* who also rules and watches over the creation in a way similar to the Christian story.
But there is a point where explanation simply fails. I am not a classic atheist but I can see no way that it is possible to *explain creation*.
I'd like to hear your version.
