Re: [asa] proving god

This catch-line resurfaces with some regularity, doesn't it? Perhaps
the main sentiment isn't so much that God can now breathe a sigh of
relief since He has been "proven", but more that science has *finally*
arrived. It's science that is on trial, in this point of view, and
until science reaches that obvious conclusion that God is directly in
the processes somewhere, it remains unfulfilled.

While Christians should always give thanks to God for both the amazing
*and mundane* details of the universe, let the grandiloquent celebration
of anthropic coincidence be here repudiated before Iain develops a
full-fledged stomach ulcer. I think his description of painting the
bulls eye around the arrow after the fact continues to apply well to
many of these amazements.

While the author seems to have a disdain for "misguided environmental
evangelists", all the fine-tuning that is noted could be a step towards
acknowledging the fragility of ecosystems. But one set is determined
to treat these as immutable (because God did it, and we are arrogant to
think anything we do could upset it), and the other set chalks it up to
random selection and adaptation; and here, ironically, where we would
have greater reason to think in terms of hearty adaptation and change,
... here the would-be protectors of ecosystems find their refuge. It's
like two feuding boys in a predicament -- one has the means of solving
the problem, but doesn't want to or denies a problem even exists, and
the other wants to address the problem, but doesn't have the means.
And they go on bickering.

--Merv

j burg wrote:
> I'd like comments on an article written by a friend of mine, a chemist.
>
> I take issue with the idea of "proving," but are there other debatable
> points?
>
> burgy
>
> SCIENCE HAS FINALLY PROVED GOD!
>
> In the past several generations science has found that the
> DNA in every cell of the human body has a complete blueprint
> of the individual involved. It was recently announced that
> the DNA sequence in chromosome 22 has been 97% deciphered
> and that it contains over 34 million segments. What a
> complicated system - and chromosome 22 is one of the smaller
> of the 24 chromosomes that we all have! More recently
> science has also found that this same system of DNA also
> applies to other animals and even plants! The recent
> "cloning of the sheep - Dolly- was basically "proof' that
> the system works. DNA from an adult cell was transferred to
> an egg, which then developed, into an identical "Dolly".
> Subsequently, researchers have succeeded in cloning other
> mammals such as mice.
>
> Do we accept Science's theory that it all started with a
> "BIG BANG" about 15 billion years ago? Reading between the
> lines in Genesis, and granting that the "time line" of
> Genesis was different from our way of measuring time today,
> then the idea of having our "world" develop in six
> "days"(periods of time) brings the Biblical narrative and
> the Evolutionary theory into close agreement. When God
> inspired the writing of the Bible some 6000 or so years ago,
> man certainly was not intellectually developed enough to
> understand more than was presented in Genesis.
>
>
> If we look at the evolutionary idea where 15 billion years
> ago it all started with a Big Bang, everything was certainly
> "formless and empty" at that point in time. The scientific
> approach says that life slowly evolved. The Bible says that
> the first step was the separation of light from darkness.
> Science says that after the Big Bang, the matter that was
> going away from the place of the Bang, slowly coalesced into
> stars and planets. When the earth formed, it eventually
> started rotating
> once a day! When parts of the earth face the Sun - around
> which we are in orbit ~ it is Day. When
> we don't face the sun - it is night.
>
> On up the line, the biblical and scientific explanations go
> hand in hand. The forms of life started with plant life,
> then animal life, and finally- the most complicated - MAN -
> evolved!!!
>
> If we were given the job of designing an earth where human
> and other life could survive and flourish, man - even the
> best genius that could be put on the job - could scarcely
> have covered all of the bases that have been covered to make
> the earth a habitable place for life. To whit:
>
> I. Life forms need an environment of approximately 0-100F to
> survive. We have it. How does it happen??
> A. The 24 hour day allows warming during the day and cooling
> at night.
> B. Exposure to the sun on some of the other planets that we
> have observed has resulted in environments that reach
> several hundred degrees. We could never make it there!
> C. About 70 % of the earth's surface is water. Each day, the
> water is evaporated to absorb heat. Each night the
> evaporated water condenses to form clouds and release heat.
> Water is a unique substance. Nothing else on the earth has
> as great a capacity for heat transfer. Was this an
> accident???
> D. With 70% of the earth's surface in water; we have a
> tremendous heat reservoir which contributes to moderating
> the temperature of the earth.
> E. The earth's atmosphere contributes to making the earth
> habitable in many ways:
>
> 1. The universe is full of bits and pieces of the matter
> that were released by the Big Bang. Many of these come
> earthward each day. When they get to earth, we call them
> meteorites. There have been a few real big ones in
> geological history - like the one that hit some 65 million
> years ago and wiped out all of the dinosaurs - and probably
> most of the other life that was around at that time!!
> Fortunately for us, most of the meteorites are small enough
> to burn up in the atmosphere.
>
> 2. The atmosphere is about 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen with
> a fraction of a percent carbon dioxide tossed in for good
> measure. All animal life depends on oxygen for its
> existence. Plant life depends on carbon dioxide. Was it just
> by accident that animals take in oxygen and release carbon
> dioxide, while plants take in carbon dioxide and release
> oxygen??? What a neat arrangement! ! !! Accident??
>
> 3. The radiation from the sun is loaded with harmful
> ultraviolet radiation. The upper atmosphere has just enough
> ozone to absorb the ultraviolet radiation before it reaches
> us and does its dirty work.
>
> 4. Evaporated water is present in the atmosphere. Were it
> not for this water, animal skin would get hard and flake
> away. We all know how much more of a problem we have with
> dry skin in the arid west as compared with more humid areas.
>
> II. Our sun has been supplying heat to the solar system
> ever since it coalesced and became a "sun" some time after
> the Big Bang. There are billions of other "suns" out there
> in the universe. Every time we make a bigger telescope, the
> more universes we can see and the more stars there are! At
> this point science says the universe is still expanding at
> an ever-increasing rate and we estimate that the Big Bang
> was 15 billion years ago. That means that our sun and most
> of the other stars have been releasing heat for almost 15
> billion years! Why haven't they run out of fuel???? A few
> have. Every once and a while, we observe a Supernova - which
> is postulated to be a star that has run its course and
> finally burned out. How have the stars - and our sun -
> lasted so long?? In this past century a genius named
> Einstein figured out that it is possible for mass to be
> converted to energy at the rate of E=MC squared. This is a
> fantastic ratio. A piece of uranium the size of a pea can
> fission and produce as much heat as a ton of coal. That is
> what is happening in the suns of our universe. It might also
> be happening in the core of the earth - but we don't really
> know yet.
>
> III. Our civilization has developed and grown over the past
> several hundred years because of fossil fuel and minerals
> that man has been able to locate and mine for our use. One
> of these days these fossil fuels and minerals will run out
> and we will have to develop substitutes. Many of our mineral
> items have been replaced by new man-made materials. Our
> biggest shortfall in the next fifty years will be fossil
> fuel for heat and electricity. Nuclear power - invented in
> the USA and now in decline in the USA (because of some of
> our misguided environmental evangelists) is the only source
> of power that has been found so far that can take up the
> energy slack that will certainly develop when our fossil
> fuels run out. Wind power and water power are "Green" but
> quantity-wise will not make the grade.
>
> IV. So how did science prove GOD?????? Science believes in
> chance variation. If man developed by chance from
> rudimentary particles and molecules - which slowly evolved
> by chance - and man's individuality is governed by the DNA
> system which gives each individual 24 chromosomes - each of
> which contains MILLIONS of pieces of information in each
> cell that describe the individual - then there must have
> been a super-intelligence guiding the development of man -
> GOD!!!!!
>
> Then to ice the cake, we now find that there are millions of
> other species on earth - both plant and animal - which are
> controlled by the SAME DNA system. It might be that somehow
> in billions of years man developed under this system. Man
> has changed very little in the past few millenia that we
> have fossil evidence of, so man is not changing rapidly.
> BUT, if man did somehow evolve slowly in an evolutionary
> way, science would certainly agree that the same system
> could not have evolved in an identical way millions of other
> times! Only GOD could have done it - on his chosen EARTH.
> Man has been looking for extraterrestrial life for several
> generations - without success. I don't think there is any
> unless GOD decided to put another earth somewhere
> else!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> Francis Hutto, 2000

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Received on Sat Nov 24 18:56:56 2007