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Reasons A Scientist Believes in God

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 6:10 am
by NewApp
Not saying I buy into all of this, but it's food for thought on a beautiful Sunday morning.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlDUKhQnp5A

Re: Reasons A Scientist Believes in God

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 11:31 am
by appstfan
Thanks for sharing.

Re: Reasons A Scientist Believes in God

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 11:58 am
by McLeansvilleAppFan
NewApp wrote:Not saying I buy into all of this, but it's food for thought on a beautiful Sunday morning.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlDUKhQnp5A
As much as I have railed against Liberty University I expect many may think I will come out strong against this, but not really. I do have one thought that could refute his last statement without much effort. I will get to that later.

I tend to agree with what this person is going after. There is a huge difference between some creator that started this whole thing and then has been hands-off versus a God that is intimately involved in everyday life. I tend towards the former. Neither option would preclude a creator setting in motion the laws of science and letting them play out, though it would seem to me a bit illogical for a supreme being to set up the universe and have the ability to make changes and then let folks die from slow horrible deaths. So I tend towards the "hands-off" Supreme Being. I do have a hard time and it seems both a bit reaching from humans and a bit of being a jerk for a supreme being to have the ability to be all powerful and let some of the crap that happens to decent people happen. If a supreme being can intervene to do good things then why not intervene to help with overcoming the bad? Too much of the bad is caused by humans (pollution, wars, environmental problems, economic exploitation, and I could go on) that I am not sure a supreme being deserves the blame, but I am not sure how much a supreme being deserves credit for medical advances, as one example.

In a way the narrator of the video is using Drake's Equation to prove a creator. I try to stay away from religion and politics in my class, but I have found myself saying essentially the same thing to students before. There are a lot of things that if they were even slightly different the way things work would not work as far a life is concerned, as least in any way we can imagine life existing. The flip side of this and one way to refute the last statement, I think it was 1 in a billion, is actually pretty good odds for life SOMEWHERE. When one looks at the number of galaxies in the universe, and the number of stars in each galaxy and the percentage of these stars with planets that orbit the star(s), and of planets in the goldilocks distance from the star, and I could go on. The reality is that life may not be so special in the universe if looking at the odds. There are a lot of planets out there to make 1 in a billion not seem so crazy impossible. Life does seem to be rare enough that there is no evidence of anything in our neck of the woods as far out as we can detect. Personally I think it is so rare we need to treat life and what is needed to support life (our environment) with much more respect.