Out of body religious experiences

[TomOfSweden]

I often point to quantum physics as evidence that the universe has a sense of humor, and that it is playing a joke on everybody in it. Proof of God's existence is a bit hard to pin down, but evidence is another matter. Your idol Dawkins makes a convincing argument for the possibility of miracles, though he seems to think that understanding the universe is beyond our evolutionary ability. His arguments also lacked a fundamental understanding of the nature of the interaction between matter and energy on a quantum level. That is a fundamental problem with specialization of knowledge, and although I do not understand all the math and physics, I at least know enough to find some of his speculation a bit far fetched.

But your idol Jesus has poopy ..... just kidding.

Dawkins arguments for a lack an understanding of quantum mechanics is that we all do. None of us have a clue. Just because you say that there is a creator and it knows, doesn't really add to your case does it? You have no way of verifying it with the diety, do you?

Maybe the reason they all are the same is because they are all holdovers from our original ancestors after creation. If the story started as truth, then all the variations could easily be attributed to human differences. Did you ever play that game where on person whispers something to another, and then to another? the more people in that chain, the more different the final outcome is, and this is with something simple.

On to your question, I would have to say that the reason I chose the Bible is mostly cultural. The Bible is where I first looked for God, and when I started to get serious about Him it is where I searched deeper. One of the things that separates the Bible from other holy books is the internal consistency and claims. Does the Bhagavad Ghita make the claim to divine inspiration? Is there a god in it that actually claims to have created everything? If these are there, I must have missed them.

To me at least, you're now starting to make sense. But you at a stroke insert a massive dose of uncertainty into the Bible. How can we use religious texts to understand god better? If the Bible is later in the whispering chain, how does that increase the case for the Bible.

I don't think anybody knows the origins of the Bhagavad Ghita. It references wars about 3000 BC around Hampi. I think it's in Karnataka, India.That's about it. I think it's really cool that some of the buildings referenced are still standing and can still be visited today. They are very old. Since it explains the supernatural and dieties, I'd say it can be assumed that who ever wrote it, thought they did it on divine inspiration. I can't think of any religious text that wouldn't be considered as such. Don't forget that at the time all kings and anybody very famous for anything was considered a god of sorts. That goes for Europe to. So it needs plenty of critical reading.

A central theme in Hinduism is that everything is part of and a reincarnation of Brahman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

So Brahman isn't just the creator of the universe, but also the universe itself and we are part of it. We are god. Brahman created itself BTW. Take that Escher. I personally find that their model that makes a whole lot more sense, than god being an external entity, but hey, that's me.

I am aware enough about math to understand the arguments that some scientists use to support that molecular biology is not as improbable as some suggest. I agree that certain chemicals can only combine in certain ways, but they ignore the fact that long chains of improbable events have to occur to make all of this work. Inside the cell we have chemical interactions that cannot proceed independent of each other that are individually improbable, and these scientists want me to accept that they occur by chance. The odds are against it. Sure, it is possible if we postulate certain improbable conditions, and make the argument that conditions were different then. Not impossible, but then they turn around and argue for the consistency of conditions to prove other portions of their theories, a bit confusing to me.

As for your argument that life is something that was all but inevitable no matter what random events occur, where is the proof of that? That is asking me to totally through out the Laws of Thermodynamics and believe that entropy will always reverse to create life. You want me to believe that the laws of physics can be suspended, but not in a God that actually suspends them. Which of us is taking the larger leap of faith?

Tell your microbiologist friend to stop being so arrogant and take a look at the real world. there is a guy with no formal training that the United States Navy, as well as most other ocean going powers, to track and predict waves at sea. Most astronomical discoveries are made by amateurs without the training of the professionals. Mathematical advances are made everyday by people who do not have degrees. An education does not give him a better understanding of the way the universe works, despite what he was taught by his close minded professors who want to throw out other possibilities simply because the person advancing them does not have a degree in microbiology.

Soprry, sort of a soap box ther. I can actually walk into JPL in Pasadena and discuss the advances of quantum physics and astrophysics with PhD's that do not look down on me because I do not have a degree because they are smart enough to know that degrees are do not indicate intelligence, but a microbiologists wants to try and tell me that I cannot possibly understand simple statistics because I do not have a degree. I just tend to get my fur up when I run into that attitude, and it is not you I am upset about. I do not know what you know about math, but statistics are pretty straightforward and simple. You take all the variables, and all the possibilities, and you chrunch a few numbers, and the results come out.

The truth is that we don't know how unlikely it is that life occurs. Our statistical population is one and it gives us a positive for life at every reading. Statistically we can't say much. And in none of the models except the creationist model is the laws of thermodynamics broken. As far as I know, nobody has said that life is inevitable, as Mars and the Moon has proven.

"Inside the cell we have chemical interactions that cannot proceed independent of each other that are individually improbable, and these scientists want me to accept that they occur by chance. The odds are against it."

This is just wrong. It's just creationist propaganda. I'm no molecular biologist but pretty much the whole scientific community doesn't seem to feel the need to insert god anywhere here. The problem is that the people who have the training to understand this can't explain it to us without the training, because it's far too counter intuitive.

To me it made no sense at all. I saw some research on some muscle in mouse lungs in it might as well have been in Greek. it it was pretty electron microscope pictures. The thing is that I have taken the leap of faith that scientists aren't wilfully trying to trick me and when they make statements that go completely unchallenged by a world of lab coats, that it's as close to truth as I believe I'll personally get. The leap of faith required to believe in scientific theories isn't particularly great is it?

I find it strange that an enlightened person like you feel the need to question them. You don't even believe in a literal reading of the Bible, so I don't get the conflict? What's wrong with believing that God created the conditions for life to assemble through random occurrences? Alistar mcGrath, Dawkins biggest critic, a Christian and a molecular biologist sees no conflict between evolution and the Bible. Why do you?

Always when private people discover stuff their academic background researching the stuff in question always pops up. Like Einstein for example. But recently it's completely unheard of. Beside that pastor in the Australian outback who's discovered a shit load of stars, who is there? And his discoveries dropped off to near zero after Hubble was launched.