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[Get Real!]

... there’s a MASSIVE LIVING ENTITY we call the universe ...

How about a definition for "LIVING"?

Let's no delve into that shall we?

Fine. I can see you are coming round to accepting we are all just a bag of chemicals, auto-catalysed from the make-up of the Universe without the need for "external forces" directing our synthesis ....

What "external" force when we are part of that force?

[Oracle]

... there’s a MASSIVE LIVING ENTITY we call the universe ...

How about a definition for "LIVING"?

Let's no delve into that shall we?

Fine. I can see you are coming round to accepting we are all just a bag of chemicals, auto-catalysed from the make-up of the Universe without the need for "external forces" directing our synthesis ....

What "external" force when we are part of that force?

I'm not the one who asserted earlier:

... why man needs and had better have a God!

[T_C]

Well I'm still not convinced! I still think what some people suggest is no different to what I said about finding a watch and presuming that it just happened out of nowhere.

All scientist have done is explain how that watch functions and nothing more....it's like they're saying "this turns that and in turn that turns this and through thousand little steps it's now 8 o clock..."

Don't you guys think everything on earth is perfectly designed? From the human face to the hands....How the food we need grows out the earth! What about the trees that give us the oxygen we need to breathe, our senses, or the way we reproduce and how good it feels to "do it".....I'm sure you could explain why it feels so good and what chemicals are involved, but when you think outside the box it's just such a coincidence how everythings so perfectly "set up". What about the universe and how finely tuned it is!?!

It's too perfect for it to be chance, I'm sorry.....no amount of science is going to convince me all this wasn't supposed to happen. Look how far we've come with all the materials we found on earth!!!! It's like we're in a really futuristic version of a goldfish bowl!

PLUS, isn't the odds of all the elements required for life, being there at the same, the same as winning the lottery like 10+ times in a row? Were we really that lucky?

[Oracle]

T_C ... you are seeing it all from the end result.

We evolved to fit in according to what is available and possible. Not the other way around.

If you see how many species didn't make it (dinosaurs etc) because some environmental factor changed and they became extinct for another slightly different species to take over with slightly better suited properties, you will see that the universe/earth was not designed for us, but just happens to be the way it is because of physics and we only fit in because of billions of years of subtle changes, extinctions and selection for the best fit.

It's like seeing a beautiful outfit being worn by a model and you think ... "wow, that dress fits her like a glove, it must have been created perfectly and the model must be the exact fit to sustain the look of the created dress".

But, you know it started as a big, shapeless piece of cloth and someone cut out the shape and another sewed it together and then it may have been tried on and then adjusted a bit and so on and so forth ...

[Piratis]

What matters is that there’s a mysterious MASSIVE LIVING ORGANISM we call the “universe” which is so huge, so complex, so powerful, so breathtaking, that it is worthy of being called God!

This is obviously not how most people define "God". Most people think of "God" not only as something which is "living" (and it is debatable if the universe as a whole is "living") but also as something intelligent which designed our world. Most people even thing that a "God" is something that actually cares about us and about what we do.

IF the definition of "God" was just: "Something incredibly massive and complex" then I wouldn't have a problem to accept it.

[T_C]

Oracle I understand what you're getting at. Maybe it's because I don't know as much as you on science, physics etc....I just find it impossible to believe that all this happened by chance. It's mind boggling...

[Oracle]

Oracle I understand what you're getting at. Maybe it's because I don't know as much as you on science, physics etc....I just find it impossible to believe that all this happened by chance. It's mind boggling...

OK ... try this example:

Imagine a flask of bacteria. There would be billions of them in there, growing multiplying dying, using up the nutrients. Then add some Penicillin to their environment. Most would die off. But there would be one or two who by chance, having acquired a mutation during their DNA replication, can no longer take up molecules which look like Penicillin. So they are "immune". Those few bacteria then take over and multiply and pretty soon the whole flask contains just penicillin-resistant bacteria which are now perfectly suited to an environment (or universe) which "fits" them exactly ...

[Get Real!]

What matters is that there’s a mysterious MASSIVE LIVING ORGANISM we call the “universe” which is so huge, so complex, so powerful, so breathtaking, that it is worthy of being called God!

This is obviously not how most people define "God". Most people think of "God" not only as something which is "living" (and it is debatable if the universe as a whole is "living") but also as something intelligent which designed our world. Most people even thing that a "God" is something that actually cares about us and about what we do.

IF the definition of "God" was just: "Something incredibly massive and complex" then I wouldn't have a problem to accept it.

If the universe wasn’t a living entity it wouldn’t be constantly giving life to new galaxies, solar systems, planets, etc. So much activity in a dead universe wouldn’t be possible! The universe seemingly contains all the right ingredients and knows all the right procedures to reproduce offspring, or offshoots!

At the very least, both creationists and evolutionists should remember this as a common foundation… that it’s a complex, miraculous, living entity of no known bounds, instead of undermining the cosmos by associating God only with planet Earth, and with the image and mannerisms of simple Man!

We seem to lower God to something that we can understand, access, and control! Or so we think…

Well, I can understand why so many people would reject God if he looks and behaves like Man!

PS: The cosmos must be God, because I can’t imagine anything more deserving to liken a God with!

[Piratis]

Well I'm still not convinced! I still think what some people suggest is no different to what I said about finding a watch and presuming that it just happened out of nowhere.

All scientist have done is explain how that watch functions and nothing more....it's like they're saying "this turns that and in turn that turns this and through thousand little steps it's now 8 o clock..."

Don't you guys think everything on earth is perfectly designed? From the human face to the hands....How the food we need grows out the earth! What about the trees that give us the oxygen we need to breathe, our senses, or the way we reproduce and how good it feels to "do it".....I'm sure you could explain why it feels so good and what chemicals are involved, but when you think outside the box it's just such a coincidence how everythings so perfectly "set up". What about the universe and how finely tuned it is!?!

It's too perfect for it to be chance, I'm sorry.....no amount of science is going to convince me all this wasn't supposed to happen. Look how far we've come with all the materials we found on earth!!!! It's like we're in a really futuristic version of a goldfish bowl!

PLUS, isn't the odds of all the elements required for life, being there at the same, the same as winning the lottery like 10+ times in a row? Were we really that lucky?

Nobody assumes that a watch or humans or most things "happened out of nowhere". We can trace back to how most things happened and that is a process that started many billion years ago. Things started very simple and they gradually evolved to more complex ones. This process is something we already know about, and there is no much mystery to it.

Nothing is "perfect" or finely set up. If your face was in the middle of your body and you had wheels instead of feet, then you would think that was "perfect" because that is what you would have. If our earth had some other kind of gasses in its atmosphere then we could have evolved to use those other gases. The oxygen was not created so we could breath it. We evolved to use oxygen, because oxygen was available on this planet.

And yes, you should consider yourself extremely lucky that you are here today.

Lets forget for a moment those billions of years and talk just about you personally. If your mother and father had chosen any of the other 3 billion people of the opposite sex as a partner, or if they had not had sex that specific time, or if a different of those 100 million sperm of your father had penetrated that egg that time, then you wouldn't have existed. Maybe your parents would have made some different children. Maybe they wouldn't even meet and they wouldn't have made any children together.

Now take that one generation further. What is true for you, is also true for your parents. And even if one of your parents was not born (because your grandparents had sex in a different time, or because a different sperm had penetrated the egg etc) then you wouldn't have been born either. So basically in order to exist you have been "winning the lotto" constantly, and not just 10 times in a row. Even if a single of your ancestors going back many 1000s years ago had chosen a different partner, had sex in a different time, or a different sperm had penetrated the egg, then your ancestral tree would be completely different. In fact it wouldn't be your ancestral tree, because you wouldn't have an ancestral tree since you would have never been born.

But say you were never born, and somebody else did instead of you. Would that be bad for the universe in any way? Would it matter at all?

The same is true for humans and all other species. Evolution could have just as easily taken a different path and we could have ended up with different species than the ones we have now (and no humans). The same can be said for life on earth. Earth was very "lucky" to have life. But it wasn't something that was necessary to happen.

The universe is vast. Some estimates talk about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, but it could be a lot more than that. It is also very old, some estimates talk about 13 billion years, but it could be proven that it is even older than that. There is nothing "designed" about what happens in the universe. There is just physics, a lot of space and a lot of time.

If you could play the lotto every day for 13 billion years and play the lotto in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 places each time, then winning 10 times in a row is not impossible. And if you don't win, somebody else will. Just because we were lucky to exist, either as individuals or as a species, or even as life on this planet, it doesn't mean that we had to exist and somebody designed us to exist. Our existence is not something that necessarily had to happen and it doesn't make any difference on the universe as whole.

[Piratis]

What matters is that there’s a mysterious MASSIVE LIVING ORGANISM we call the “universe” which is so huge, so complex, so powerful, so breathtaking, that it is worthy of being called God!

This is obviously not how most people define "God". Most people think of "God" not only as something which is "living" (and it is debatable if the universe as a whole is "living") but also as something intelligent which designed our world. Most people even thing that a "God" is something that actually cares about us and about what we do.

IF the definition of "God" was just: "Something incredibly massive and complex" then I wouldn't have a problem to accept it.

If the universe wasn’t a living entity it wouldn’t be constantly giving life to new galaxies, solar systems, planets, etc. So much activity in a dead universe wouldn’t be possible! The universe seemingly contains all the right ingredients and knows all the right procedures to reproduce offspring, or offshoots!

At the very least, both creationists and evolutionists should remember this as a common foundation… that it’s a complex, miraculous, living entity of no known bounds, instead of undermining the cosmos by associating God only with planet Earth, and with the image and mannerisms of simple Man!

We seem to lower God to something that we can understand, access, and control! Or so we think…

Well, I can understand why so many people would reject God if he looks and behaves like Man!

PS: The cosmos must be God, because I can’t imagine anything more deserving to liken a God with!

Would you call an active volcano "alive"? Is something which has some movement and some chemical or nuclear reactions going within it "alive"?

If you equate universe with a "God", then why you feel the need to give it another name? Why not just call it universe?

Also, as I said earlier, what seems "miraculous" is something you do not understand. An eclipse 20.000 years ago seemed miraculous. Take a TV and go back 500 years ago and show it to people of that time and they would think of it as a miracle. Just because we can not fully understand something it doesn't mean there must be something magical to it.