Sunday, November 26, 2006
Green v. AG - Round III: Getting into it
To: American Guy
From: Green
Sent: Saturday, May 3, 2003
Subject: The debate continues
AG
Glad to hear you all are bearing up well since your mom's passing. It's good that your dad was able to come down there for an enjoyable visit. Hope his flight home was safe and sound.
---
Who do you say Jesus is?
While you think about that, let me ask you a few follow up questions to yourlast email: (please use #2 pencils only)
You say you die and your dead -- that's it. Sounds pretty definitive, to me. Then you say you don't really understand death and that as a species we're not evolved enough to. So I ask you, if you don't fully understand death, how can you be so sure that death is the ultimate end of the human existence and that we have no soul?
If we, like cows in your example, have no other purpose for existence than to propagate the species, then why do humans have societies with laws that govern our behavior? How can we know what is right and what is wrong? Why then, for example, was our going to war with Iraq wrong? Why then, since we both have "propagated the species," just go out and kill ourselves because we've accomplished all we've "evolved" for (unless you plan to have more children?). For that matter, why don't we purchase some guns and start shooting people at random, because everyone else's existence threatens our own and that of our brood, since once we die we're dead without any "god" or"higher power" to hold us accountable?
I'll agree that all religions (with the exceptions of Judaism and Christianity) in existence were made by man to explain and make sense of the world. Ancient history is full of cultures that had a god for everything, Egypt, Greece and Rome to name a few.
Tell me, how many different answers there are to this mathematical equation: 2+2?
It's interesting that you used the phrase "willful blindness" to describe me if I'm the kind of person who will discount science if I denounce evolutionin favor of creationism. For the record, I do wholeheartedly denounce evolution in favor of creationism but I do not discount science because of it. Science is wonderful and the evidence of what we as a species have discovered through it is too large and obvious to ignore. To me, science helps to confirm the existence and majesty of God who created everything out of nothing with infinite attention to detail.
For example consider these:
At any given time it is estimated that there are 1,800 storms operating in the world at any one time. The energy needed to generate these storms has been estimated at 1,300,000,000 horsepower. By comparison, a large earth moving machine has 420 horsepower and requires 100 gallons of fuel a day to operate. Just one of these storms, producing a rain of four inches over an area of 10,000 square miles, would require energy equivalent to the burning of 640,000,000 tons of coal to evaporate enough water for such a rain. To cool those vapors and collect them in clouds would take another 800,000,000 horsepower of refrigeration working day and night for 100 days.
AND...
Agricultural studies have determined that the average farmer in Minnesota gets 407,510 gallons of water per acre per year, free of charge. Missouri is about 70,000 square miles in size and gets an average of 38 inches of precipitation a year. That amount of water is equal to a lake 250 miles long, 60 miles wide and 22 feet deep.
IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH...
The earth is 25,000 miles in circumference, weighs 6 septillion, 588 sextillion tons, and hangs unsupported in space. It spins at 1,000 miles per hour with absolute precision and careens through space around the sun at the speed of 1,000 miles per minute in an orbit 580 million miles long, while maintaining an average distance from the sun of 93,000,000 miles.
To deny the existence of God, is "willful blindness", as you say. It is inconceivable that such power, intricacy and harmony could have developed by any means without a Master Designer who rules the universe. It would be infinitely more reasonable to think that you could take a bunch of springs and gears, put them in a bag and shake them all up and eventually come out with a dependable timepiece than to think that the universe could have evolved by mere chance.
Without a doubt, life on this planet is too diverse and the universe in general is too awesome be credited to random chance. Look at all the wonders and intricacies of nature, both animal and non-animal. Like that huge waterfall in Africa that you visited, or the Grand Canyon in Arizona, or that there are 10 million species of insects living on the planet, including about 2,500 varieties of ants to name a few.
Looking forward to your comments.
Respectfully,
G
Within a day, the response came:
From: American Guy
To: Green
Sent: Sunday, May 4, 2003
Subject: The debate continues
Hi Green:
And so the debate continues (though I note that we never did complete the last topic...)
"Who do you say Jesus is?"
I say he was most likely a historical figure (there is far too much evidence that there was a historical Jesus to argue otherwise), around whom later myths coalesced. He was a religious man no doubt, a prophet in the usual sense of the word, but was he supernatural, the Son of God and all that? Not on your life. Was he born in a stable because there was no room at the inn? Possibly. Was it a miraculous virgin birth? No chance.
"You say you die and your dead -- that's it. Sounds pretty definitive, to me."
It is.
"Then you say you don't really understand death and that as a species we're not evolved enough to. So I ask you, if you don't fully understand death, how can you be so sure that death is the ultimate end of the human existence and that we have no soul?"
What I mean is that the finality of it is beyond my (and humanity's) understanding. I, and most people understand that it is inescapable - that we all go sometime, but it's a difficult concept to grasp that there is no 'what comes next'. This is why we have created the concept of an afterlife(whether the christian concept or any of the myriad other models out there.)
Let me ask you a question - How can you be so sure (beyond simply your faith) that there IS an afterlife and that the soul continues to exist? Personally I find the concept of 'everlasting life' - of eternity to be equally as unfathomable as death.
"If we, like cows in your example, have no other purpose for existence than to propagate the species, then why do humans have societies with laws that govern our behavior?"
We are not alone in this trait. Ants (all 2,500 species of them as you point out) have highly complex societal rules that govern their behaviour. It's a survival trait. Any animal that lives within a social structure must develop rules for how they interact with others of the species. Interestingly, most other animals are much better at following these rules than people are. Murder is extremely rare in the rest of the animal kingdom.
"How can we know what is right and what is wrong?"
This is due to our being highly evolved (more on evolution later). Our set of morals is simply a refined system of making sure that we don't do anything that harms our survivability. The problem arises when we don't follow our conscience and do things that are immoral. Most of us know that killing another is the wrong thing to do, but some will do so anyway (aside - I know it's all the thing to say that we all support the soldiers in Iraq, but for the record every one of them who pulled a trigger in the streets of Baghdad and killed an Iraqi is as guilty of murder as anyone who does so in the streets of Los Angeles.)
This has been another role of religion through the ages - to enforce our moral code. It's much easier to tell people "thou shalt not kill" because God will condemn you to eternal suffering (the classic 'putting the fear of God' into someone), then it is to tell them that killing disrupts the social cohesion of a society, thereby reducing our overall ability to survive as a species.
"For that matter, why don't we purchase some guns and start shooting people at random, because everyone else's existence threatens our own and that of our brood, since once we die we're dead without any "god" or "higher power" to hold us accountable?"
Some people do - we call them sociopaths. And sociopaths are found in every sector of society, among both the religious and non-religious. And all this is not forgetting of course how many people have died throughout the ages 'in the name of god'.
"Tell me, how many different answers there are to this mathematical equation: 2+2?"
One. Although to mathematically prove it takes approximately 400 pages. (I'll spare you).
"It's interesting that you used the phrase "willful blindness" to describe me if I'm the kind of person who will discount science if I denounce evolution in favor of creationism. For the record, I do wholeheartedly denounce evolution in favor of creationism but I do not discount science because of it."
For the record - are you saying that that the fossil history that incontrovertibly proves that humans evolved from other, lower order species is false? Or are you among the 'intelligent design' camp - believing that evolution happened but it was guided by God? Your later comments make me think you're more in the second group, but I'd be interested to hear your definitive answer. If however, you feel that all we were created by this God (were we created by the Christian God even though he didn't come on the scene in our religious life for millennia after humans were around?) and created as we currently are (that is as homo sapiens) is this true for other animals and plants? Were they created, or did they evolve? Before you answer, remember that scientists have watched (and in some cases guided) the evolution of some species in labs. And what about viruses? Viruses can evolve quite literally before our eyes. Or do you believe that God woke up a month and a half ago and said - 'ok folks - here's SARS, good luck!'?
"For example consider these: At any given time it is estimated that there are 1,800 stormsoperating in the world at any one time..."
Nature is a truly amazing thing isn't it? You site quite an array of facts and figures. I'm hoping you looked these up - if you have that kind of data at your fingertips, I'm suitably impressed! What you have to remember is that the planet (and to an even greater degree the universe) is a massive system. It is precisely BECAUSE "the earth is 25,000 miles in circumference, [and] weighs 6 septillion, 588 sextillion tons" that it can produce storms that generate 1,300,000,000 horsepower. If we could build a machine the size of the earth (I know, I know, where would we keep it?) we could generate that kind of power. Unfortunately, it would take the birth of a star and billions of years to do so. Don't forget - this is what I spent 4 years at university studying. Oh, and as a sidelight - your assertion that earth "hangs unsupported in space" is factually wrong - it's supported by the forces of being in orbit around the sun (that is gravity and centripetal motion. Tie a ball to the end of a string and swing it around your head to see the same effect - the string simulates gravity - keeping the ball from flying away, and the centripetal motion keeps it in orbit -balancing out the gravity so it doesn't crash in on you (until you stop swinging)). That's the end of today's physics lesson.
"To deny the existence of God, is 'willful blindness', as you say. It is inconceivable that such power, intricacy and harmony could have developed by any means without a Master Designer who rules the universe."
Hogwash. Science explains this all quite nicely, and without introducing a fudge factor. "hmm, we don't know why this happens - must be god's work."
"It would be infinitely more reasonable to think that you could take a bunch of springs and gears and put them in a bag and shake them all up and eventually come out with a dependable timepiece than to think that the universe could have evolved by mere chance."
You're forgetting about time and the law of truly large systems. Given enough time, the most extraordinary of events can and do happen. And given the size of the universe, there's plenty of raw material from which just such an extraordinary random occurrence could occur. As an example, think of the old expression of something being a 'million to one' chance. Let's say that on any given day, the odds of a person being hit by lightning are a million to one (I don't know the real odds off hand, but you get my drift). With 6 billion people on the planet, on any day, some 6,000 of them will be hit by lightning. Now, consider that over a year, this would mean 2,190,000 hits. In my 33 years on the planet, there would have been 72,270,000 occurrences of this supposedly 'highly unlikely' event. Now realize that the universe is approximately 15 billion years old and is immensely huge. Even if the odds of life occurring by chance were much longer, say 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000:1 or some other inconceivably large number, given enough time and enough space, chances are ripe that it could happen.
We obviously hold very different views on all this, and we're not likely to convince one another, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from.
Stay well.
AG
Patience please....
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