Did God Invent Us, Or Did We Invent Him

[Atrocities]

Have any of you ever read the book Sphere? Not the movie, as the movie was quite bad. The book is very interesting in that it makes you believe that what you think becomes your reality.

Don't ask me why, but it is one of the better books I have read in recent years, and for some odd ball reason, I honestly believe that in some small way what we think does effect events in our lives.

If you have faith and believe in God, then the belief itself has a reality for you. If you do not believe in God, then that to is a reality.

What if God is real and God gave us the power to make our own way in this demension / reality? What if we have all forgotten how to use that ability, or worse, have given it up?

One thing that cannot be denied about anything is that the universe is so vast, so incredable that anything is possible. All because we have not thought it up, or cannot expain it, does not mean that it does not exisit or that it defies comprehension. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that we thought the world was flat and cruicified those who said it was round. Keep an open mind and be willing to accept the facts as they are proven without killing the messinger.

[Azselendor]

The Movie Sphere was about that! Holy crap, that movie was really bad.

[Atrocities]

The book was much much much x 10 better than the movie. I guess it is like that with most movie adaptations of books though.

[tyrrian]

this topic brings up several questions and points i'd like to offer my own two cents on.

*first and foremost, i must offer an admonishment. the fallacies i notice most often can easily be used to misinterpret the following post. i will identify them so that hopefully, you won't.
Fallacy #1 - assuming that since word or phrase "XXXXX" means YYY to you, Joe used it also to mean YYY. especially when dealing with words or phrases such as God, Creator, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Big Bang, Science, Faith, and so on... even if Webster agrees with you, its still important to interpret based on context. so many theological scholars fail to do this, quite as often as scientists arguing counterpoint. lets be wiser than them.
Fallacy #2 - assuming that YYYism and YYYists universally believe/teach/admire/promote XXXXX. logically this can never be true. for as many people as are Christian, each one has learned/been taught/explored Christianity under a different set of circumstances and thus a unique perspective has arisen from it. we necessarily cannot be the same person as anyone else and therefore cannot hold the exact same perspective on anything.

That said, the following is what i believe. in a sense, they are the articles of my faith.

*to me, faith is the intense feeling of belonging to the Creator, of knowing God loves me, and of loving God.

*i believe in the Creator(God). not everyone does. i accept that. i'm sure my Creator accepts it to, as i know that they are as much Children of the Creator as i am.

*the Creator is a being beyond my comprehension, existing both as a distinct identity and throughout all that exists.

*i have free will, a gift of the Creator, to act, speak, and believe as i choose.

*the Creator is a good and loving God, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and full of compassion for all that is in existence

*the Creator is the spirit of love and compassion.

*we know evil and sin; they are actions, words, and thoughts which deny the spirit of love and compassion.

*we have all sinned, no one is perfect.

*the Creator loves all, thus all are welcome to forgiveness of their sins.

*heaven is the presence of God and the eternal co-existence with our Creator

*hell is not fire and sulpher, nor physical torment. these are our metaphors for the rejection and denial of God and an eternity without our Creator

*from my perspective, the complexities of our living universe provide further evidence of a Divine Creator, aside from what my instincts/intuition/heart/soul tell me. this serves as a great comfort in times of uncertainty and doubt.


you may poke holes in whatever you wish. the faith i hold today has grown from the Lutheran upbringing i was given. i used to think being a good Christian meant believing the Bible word for word. i don't think that's so important anymore. the Bible is a wonderful guide, and i prefer to accept it as a truth. but i also accept that the sum of God cannot possibly be found within its pages.


i remember a "logic test" from an earlier post. something like if two of the following are true the other can not be:
a) god is all powerful
b) god is all good
c) bad things happen
[/i]but i think it has left out the following point:[/i]
d) we all have the capacity to heal and overcome the bad

i present this analogy: as a child, i sometimes fell while trying to learn how to ride my bike. my parents knew that this could happen. they knew bikes can be painful to learn how to ride. they also knew that in time my scrapes and cuts would heal, that i had the ability to overcome them.

i believe the Creator does stand by us in bad times, after all i think we all have the ability to heal and overcome. and we've been given other human beings to share our lives with and support in the bad times.

[gbrutt]

Being new to the site I was looking for information about games, but was interested by this subject. It is good to see that other concepts and ideas are accepted. There are a few folk weighing in on the topic and I am working my way through them. As to the debate whether God invented us or we invented Him, I would have to say that as a Christian, neither of the proposed statements is proper. God did not invent, He created. We could not invent a concept such as God, for it is a universal one and dates back to the beginning of mankind. As to which of the opposing point of view is correct, you would first have to examine them. As far as I can tell from the posts I've read, the debate tends to center on evolution. Has anyone read, Darwin's Black Box? The subject, that of irriducible complexity, is one that I've never heard refuted. And the author, Behe, isn't even a Christian. He does make an interesting case for the conundrum of the complexity of systems in life forms and the inability of scientists to account for it, outside of special creation. There is also spontaneous generation, that life cannot come from non-life, but must always have a source. Francis Schaeffer is most eloquent on this subject. To believe in evolution, he states, you must go by this equation, Time + Chance + Nothing = That which exists. There is no way for this to have happened.

[Instar]

Well, I haven't read the book, so I can't debunk the claims specifically...
But the author sounds ignorant of systems and how relative complexity can arise from a very simple system. I've seen it happen, with software; I am a software developer, and a complex system can arise from basic, even simple elements. Evolutionary software has demonstrated this better than I could demonstrate in ten thousand lines of code. There are many examples of genetic and evolutionary algorithms, indeed, many creationists have tried to find flaws in such algorithms and systems, and have failed miserably.

No one knows what the first life form is (that is, in the evolutionary system), but speculation usually revolves around a proto-bacteria of sorts, perhaps a strand of proteins (which could have been created in the chemical soup of early earth) sourrounded by a simple member, if at all. As soon as it is able to reproduce and change (even slowly) over time, you have the beginning of life.
There is most certainly a way for it to have happened. The chemistry for the proteins has actually been reproduced (after a manner) in a test tube.

Frankly, creation myths (like the Christian "creationism") are rooted in the psychology and cultures of those that created them; useful for only anthropologists.

[Phoenix-D]

One more time for those that haven't caught the hint yet.

EVOLUTION IS NOT RANDOM.


The spontanious generation argument doesn't work either, unless you can prove that the early earth didn't have the conditions we think it did; all the experiments showing spontanious generation doesn't work assume current conditions.

And really, if you go with that argument you have the interesting and really thorny problem of explaning where God came from..and if you don't you get the only somewhat less thorny problem of explaining where the universe began.

[Instar]

What do you mean by "spontaneous generation"? Life of course, doesn't just randomly create itself from nothing, but given certain certain environmental factors, the precursors of life can be generated.

[Azselendor]

Evoltuion, actually, is totally random.

As I stated before, if you go to any place on the surface of earth, presumably devoid of life, and I assure you - you will find life. Even the most basic forms of it. There are sealed volcano tubes, that should be totally devoid of life for millions of years - yet they are teeming with simple lifeforms. Undersea volcanos.

Life finds a way, and I assure you that the chances of life happening isn't remote, but far more likely giving the sheer size of the universe, dynamics, and possibilities that exist.

By assuming there is some kind of "intelligence" or "controls" on the process of evolution, you make an assumption based totally in fallacy.

And I'll assure each and every one of you, the single greatest miracle in all of this universe and the next is that of random chance and the process of evolution, not an act of the divine or a creator.

[Instar]

I wouldn't categorize evolution as random. Evolution at the same time isn't a system with a finite number of states.
Random mutations can crop up in genetic information due to just pure chance, such as errors in copying DNA, but usually it occurs as DNA is mixed together in reproduction, or even when bacteria exchange bits of genetic material or absorb other bacteria's genetic material.
Strong genes will be generally selected for, at least in the wild, and those genes will perpetuate themselves until something changes. In some ways, it can be predicted, but it can surprise very quickly.