@Comfy_Arms If God is all powerful, there was no need for Her ( let's be controversial ) to start with the Big Bang. She could have created dinosaur fossils without making millions of dinosaurs, and given us all "Blade Runner" type memory implants.
That could mean the entire universe was created just a few seconds ago, with the galaxies formed, and with this post partly written and the rest in my implanted intention to write. Or with this post partly read.
As with The Matrix, there is no way for us to know otherwise.
@Comfy_Arms: If there is such a thing as sin, then it exists no matter what anyone believes. That's how reality works. But if sin doesn't exist, then it doesn't exist no matter what anyone believes. That's also how reality works: it doesn't care what people believe.
Sin, incidentally, is an act considered to be a transgression against divine law. So in order for sin to exist, divine law has to exist... and in order for divine law to exist, there has to be at least one divinity.
I don't see evidence of the Biblical god in reality, and I hold that absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence. For instance, remember the internment of Japanese-Americans at the beginning of the Second World War? There hadn't been any sabotage by them, nor even any other type of espionage. Now, you could argue that a Fifth Column might delay its sabotage. But the likilihood is still higher that the absence of a Fifth Column would perform an absence of sabotage.
If you're interested in the kind of god we do see evidence for in the world, I suggest this article: An Alien God.
If you're not interested enough to read 44 paragraphs, there's a brief excerpt here:
"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution," said Jacques Monod, "is that everybody thinks he understands it."
A human being, looking at the natural world, sees a thousand times purpose. A rabbit's legs, built and articulated for running; a fox's jaws, built and articulated for tearing. But what you see is not exactly what is there...
In the days before Darwin, the cause of all this apparent purposefulness was a very great puzzle unto science. The Goddists said "God did it", because you get 50 bonus points each time you use the word "God" in a sentence. Yet perhaps I'm being unfair. In the days before Darwin, it seemed like a much more reasonable hypothesis. Find a watch in the desert, said William Paley, and you can infer the existence of a watchmaker.
But when you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don't fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?
... Similarly, the Judeo-Christian God is alleged to be benevolent—well, sort of. And yet much of nature's purposefulness seems downright cruel. Darwin suspected a non-standard Creator for studying Ichneumon wasps, whose paralyzing stings preserve its prey to be eaten alive by its larvae: "I cannot persuade myself," wrote Darwin, "that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."
... By now we all know the punchline: You just say "evolution". I worry that's how some people are absorbing the "scientific" explanation, as a magical purposefulness factory in Nature.
...evolution doesn't allow just any kind of purposefulness to leak into Nature. That's what makes evolution a success as an empirical hypothesis. If evolutionary biology could explain a toaster oven, not just a tree, it would be worthless. There's a lot more to evolutionary theory than pointing at Nature and saying, "Now purpose is allowed," or "Evolution did it!" The strength of a theory is not what it allows, but what it prohibits; if you can invent an equally persuasive explanation for any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
"Many non-biologists," observed George Williams, "think that it is for their benefit that rattles grow on rattlesnake tails." Bzzzt! This kind of purposefulness is not allowed. Evolution doesn't work by letting flashes of purposefulness creep in at random—reshaping one species for the benefit of a random recipient.
... There isn't an Evolution Fairy that looks over the current state of Nature, decides what would be a "good idea", and chooses to increase the frequency of rattle-constructing genes.
I suspect this is where a lot of people get stuck, in evolutionary biology. They understand that "helpful" genes become more common, but "helpful" lets any sort of purpose leak in. They don't think there's an Evolution Fairy, yet they ask which genes will be "helpful" as if a rattlesnake gene could "help" non-rattlesnakes.
The key realization is that there is no Evolution Fairy. There's no outside force deciding which genes ought to be promoted. Whatever happens, happens because of the genes themselves. ...the gene's effect must cause copies of that gene to become more frequent in the next generation. There's no Evolution Fairy that reaches in from outside. There's nothing which decides that some genes are "helpful" and should, therefore, increase in frequency. It's just cause and effect, starting from the genes themselves.
@DarrenWalker The snake's rattle is like a police officer's uniform, it warns that the owner is armed, so the owner doesn't have to waste effort using that weapon all the time. Beneficial to both parties.
I think one good piece of evidence for evolution is the dead end. Feathers are more efficient than skin wings, but a bat can never evolve to a bird. A propeller-driven plane however, "evolved" to a jet plane when the "creator" Frank Whittle came up with the revolutionary idea.
Evolution can only work by tiny steps that are better than what came before.
A brief aside on theological matters:
If there is a god, it would have been neat if they’d figured out some more basic stuff before endowing us with free will. I mean, we have mouths that can’t properly hold all of our teeth—and that’s a minor problem (at least at this point of history).
@geoff1000: Ah. You didn't read the article.
For rattles to grow on rattlesnake tails, rattle-growing genes must become more and more frequent in each successive generation. (Actually genes for incrementally more complex rattles, but if I start describing all the fillips and caveats to evolutionary biology, we really will be here all day.)
There isn't an Evolution Fairy that looks over the current state of Nature, decides what would be a "good idea", and chooses to increase the frequency of rattle-constructing genes.
The key realization is that there is no Evolution Fairy. There's no outside force deciding which genes ought to be promoted. Whatever happens, happens because of the genes themselves.
Genes for constructing (incrementally better) rattles, must have somehow ended up more frequent in the rattlesnake gene pool, because of the rattle. In this case it's probably because rattlesnakes with better rattles survive more often—rather than mating more successfully, or having brothers that reproduce more successfully, etc.
Maybe predators are wary of rattles and don't step on the snake. Or maybe the rattle diverts attention from the snake's head. (As George Williams suggests, "The outcome of a fight between a dog and a viper would depend very much on whether the dog initially seized the reptile by the head or by the tail.")
... The main point is that the gene's effect must cause copies of that gene to become more frequent in the next generation. There's no Evolution Fairy that reaches in from outside. There's nothing which decides that some genes are "helpful" and should, therefore, increase in frequency. It's just cause and effect, starting from the genes themselves.
It doesn't matter that a rattlesnake's rattle is "useful" to a non-rattlesnake. That's not what makes rattlesnakes have rattles. If a snake's rattle didn't help non-rattlesnakes (but snakes with rattles still did better than those without), snakes would have rattles. If a snake's rattle helped non-rattlesnakes (but snakes with rattles did worse than those without), snakes wouldn't have rattles.
It's not about mutual benefit. That doesn't matter to the genes of any given species. It's about which genes in a species help that species survive (and continue passing on those genes). Cause and effect.
@exsanguinate Do you think I care about your dental conundrum? Be thankful I gave you a food receptacle. I put the mouth in as a ventilator and cooling mechanism in the afterlife. It will get hot.
@DarrenWalker I was pointing out that although the rattle is beneficial to the listener, it is beneficial to the snake, and hence promoted by evolution. It relies on the snake's enemies having ears and a brain, in the same way that a skunk relies on its enemies having a sense of smell. Fruit, by contrast, has evolved to be eaten.
@geoff1000: So by saying "The snake's rattle is beneficial to both snakes and non-snakes," what you were really saying was "Snakes have rattles because they're beneficial to snakes."
And then, as an aside, you note that rattles are beneficial to snakes because non-snakes have ears and brains.
...Well, yes. This is true. And if snakes lived in an environment bereft of enemies who're put off by rattles, types of genes other than rattle-creating ones would proliferate, because cause and effect. Snakey genes are really and truly unaffected by anything other than the survival of snakes.
It doesn't matter to snake genes what non-snakes have or don't have; snake genes respond blindly to cause and effect, neither knowing nor caring whether non-snakes have ears or brains.
The snake's rattle doesn't "rely on" the snake's enemies having ears and brains—it exists because the snake's enemies have ears and brains. It isn't as though the rattle sat down and thought to itself, "Boy, I sure am reliant on the ears and brains of all those non-snakes! How lucky for me that they have those!" It just so happens that non-snakes have ears and brains, and therefore, snakes with rattle-creating genes survived to pass on those genes more often.
Don't come at it backward. Rattles don't exist because some Evolution Fairy somewhere looked at non-snakes and thought "Ooh, they have ears and a brain—I bet a rattle would scare them off and help snakes!"
Also... if a gene came along that allowed snakes to produce and deliver more powerful venom at a lower 'cost' than shaking a rattle, those genes would naturally proliferate. Why? Because the snakes carrying them would live longer, mate more often, and pass on more of those genes. It's simple cause and effect—and it wouldn't matter in the slightest that this particular adaptation was so incredibly harmful to non-snakes.
Evolution, you see, doesn't care about any of that.
@DarrenWalker I really am on the same page as you. I'm using what sounds like "creationist" wording "rely on", but meaning that the evolutionary selection process "relies on", certain facts. A clock "relies" on principles of science, as does a volcano.
The only difficulty with the scientific approach, is that the universe as we know it "relies" on fundamental principles such as gravity, and it has no idea what came before the Big Bang. Maybe there are an infinite number of parallel universes, and only some have conscious beings.
I think creationists really want an interventionist God, who will tweak the behaviour of the universe, perhaps within Heisenberg's Uncertainty to avoid detection, for their benefit, when they pray for it. If He / She won't do that, then God may as well have set up the Laws of Physics, triggered the Big Bang, and gone on vacation for the last 20 Billion years.
@geoff1000: I actually don't mind your use of misleading and commonly misunderstood terms, since it gives me a chance to clear up the misunderstandings. If you're not misled by them, well! So much the better.
Note: Yes... I am still considering the smiley thing.
@DarrenWalker We personify inanimate objects all the time, and it can get confusing.
We say that Teflon is hydrophobic, with the same word construction as we say a person is homophobic. We say that a clock "tells" the time, as if it speaks to us. We say that magnetic poles repel and attract, as if they were people, and then say that some people have a "magnetic personality".
It is explained that a rocket moves by throwing gas out of the back, but it actually responds to the unbalanced pressure on its tail. Radioactive isotopes have a half-life but they don't decide among themselves which nucleus will decay next, each one simply has a random chance at any time.
Photocopiers are the exception, they really do break more when you are in a hurry. 😀
@geoff1000: Ha! Ain't it the truth? Those dern photocopiers.... (I worked in an office for a while.)