Yakk

We are witnessing an even that could cause as large a change to the fabric of the universe as has happened since the universe was a few seconds old.

Intelligence is a virus in the physics system.

Use your brain and grasp what kinds of things Intelligence can do, even without technology much beyond what we have right now. And there is reason to think that technology isn't going to come to a complete stop in the next decade...

Look at the big bang, and see how many increadibly amazing things happened in a fraction of a fraction of a second. The power of exponential growth is scary.

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Ourcrazymodern?

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Yakk

No. The Invisible Pink Unicorn, in an opposing alliance with the Flying Spagetti Monster (may I be touched by his noodly appendage), created Evolution. This Evolution was guilded by The Colour We Cannot See to produce a being who created God.

God doesn't exist. God, as a concept, was created by IPU and FSM through the mechanism of Evolution and TCWCS.

I mean, if you are going to add in one uncaused cause that cannot be either detected or disproven, why not add in dozens! Why believe in only one arbitrary being -- believe in them all!

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mo42

The "Why not believe in Flying Spaghetti Monster instead of God" argument is flawed- I wish people would stop using it. You can make arguments like "what was the cause of the Big Bang?" and answer "God", and there's also a historical perspective of people believing in God as opposed to FSM.

The idea that a being existing outside of Nature, and thereby being capable of causing the First Cause without needing a cause of its own is something worth consideration, in my opinion.

Given God created the Universe, I would have to say that God would necessarily have also created Evolution, or an elaborate hoax to make it appear to exist, due to the preponderance of evidence in favor of it.

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Dilbert1234567

The "Why not believe in Flying Spaghetti Monster instead of God" statement is no more flawed then believing in a supernatural being. most religious people don't believe in 99.999% of all the gods out there, why this one? What is wrong with dismissing one more god. Isis, Ra, Vishnu, Ares, Zeus... why stop one god short?

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Yakk

What was the cause of God?

Well, then why did the big bang need a cause again?

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Ourcrazymodern?

I love that line "the color we cannot see"! Reference?

I thought the Big Bang happened because the forces within the original particle became insupportable and thus it exploded. All perfectly natural, if difficult to grasp, and 13.7 billion years later, here we are discussing what I consider a fantasy born of primitive fears and hopes. It's wild to think of.

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gregor

Sorry for all this math, but Roachboy asked some difficult questions, so i had to give some dificult answers.

If evolution - because it maximises both mean fitness and disorder - explains both good and evil things, a dilemma with God and evolution seems to be that God may have created the evil also?

Or is it that the creation is not finished yet and that the good things - in the long run - will dominate more and more due to the maximisation of mean fitness?

Ch'i

Along the lines of Dilbert's previous statement, I find the idea of evolution creating what we would call God/s very intriguing. Natural selection through millions of Big Bangs and Crunches.
Hypothetically speaking, it would make perfect sense since our environment tends to exists through the balance of polarity.
The following on the assumption that good and evil exist outside our perceptions:

In the case of "Good" and "evil", one is not necissarily more efficient than the other. Moreover, they, like intelligence, have not yet proved themselves to be a necissary tool for survival. If they were (which I doubt) it would make more sense for them to reach an eventual state of equilibrium.

Ourcrazymodern?

I happened upon an article in Discover today, and dated a " long time" in the past, that postulates our universe is the effect of our universe acting on another universe, situated so that we can't see it. Does anybody here ascribe to this theory, and would you try to explain it to me? With this idea there would be places we could go! Lebensraum is necessary. Um, sorry but thankyou......

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Ch'i

Sounds a bit like M Theory. The reason we supposedly cannot see the relationship between realities is because we are three dimensional beings and those interactions happen in higher dimensions; 1 dimensional beings can't see two dimensional beings; 2 dimensional beings can't see 3 dimensional beings, ect. (Supposedly)

//end thread-jack//

Ourcrazymodern?

//end thread-jack//? Supposedly the 10 dimensional (whatevers) know everything, or/and can do everything, and we're so lucky to be here existing in our entertaining little 3-dimensional place that we won't ever wonder?
Not to say something sacriligeous, but good luck to the powers that be! xx

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Ch'i

Yeah, this thread is about whether or not God created evolution (a strange question). Not about why and how the universe exists.

Ourcrazymodern?

Okay. I thought these philosophical threads could go anywhere. Doesn't the universe have something to do with both evolution and god?

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Ch'i

In the way soil has to do with an apple, I suppose. Its best to bring up lengthy connections only when its pertinent. If you have such a point to make then, by all means, go right ahead.

Ourcrazymodern?

For you are an apple, and I am the peel!

To the "strange question" I wonder at the pertinence of any points.
Given that the universe is the soil, God grew out of it along with evolution.
Given that the universe is God's soil, OMG!

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Ch'i

Or maybe the apple died, decomposed and gave nutrients to the soil which allowed it to become fertile.

Ourcrazymodern?

I'm going to have to stick to Dilbert's answer, I guess. How would the apple have grown? In any case, does that address whether God created evolution?
NOW I'm wondering what thread-jacking really is.
I'm also thanking you for all your input!

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Yakk

The Colour We Cannot See is a homage to Lovecraft's (I think) "The Colour From Out Of Space".

God could have created evolution if and only if "God" existed before evolution did. If God is a product of evolution, then God did not create evolution.

On the other hand, if God created the universe and everything in it, and evolution exists, then God created evolution.

So to determine if God created evolution, one must determine if God created the universe or not. Or you can determine if evolution exists. Or you can determine if God somehow came into being after the universe existed, but before evolution existed.

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Ourcrazymodern?

...or you cannot determine any such thing and it all tumbles back into the place where strange questions come from.

...gotta love Lovecraft, thanks yakk!

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gregor

Many interesting points of view have been contributed, but, sorry to say, I have not been able to answer all.

I have a somewhat different view of this.

Assuming that the evil is caused by the genetic or phenotypic disorder, caused by the entropy law, and that the “good” is caused by the mean fitness, you are right in the sense that one is not more efficient than the other. But they form a sort of duality, which follows from the theorem of Gaussian adaptation, which can be proved in two different ways.

Firstly, one may maximise the mean fitness keeping the disorder constant, leading to the condition of optimality that m* = m (m and m* defined as before) in a state of equilibrium.

Secondly, t is possible to maximize the disorder (proportional to the logarithm of the volume of the concentration ellipsoid of the Gaussian) keeping the mean fitness constant, leading to the same condition of optimality, m = m*, meaning that Gaussian adaptation (GA) effectuates a simultaneous maximization of mean fitness and disorder.

This may be understood from the simple figure below where a circular gene pool is placed in triangular region of acceptability. If the circle is slightly moved in some arbitrary direction mean fitness will decrease, but may be restored if the radius of the circle is decreased (disorder is decreased). Thus, in the optimal position – when the circle touches the three sides of the triangle – both the mean fitness and the disorder are maximal.



The advantage with the GA-theorem is that it is valid for all regions of acceptability – not only triangles – and all Gaussian distributions.

Thus, both “good” and “evil” seem to be necessary for survival, because without the random variation and selection (causing both maximal mean fitness and disorder) there will be no evolution. But I am still optimistic in the sense that “evil” will be alleviated as a cause of increased mean fitness, in the long run.

I also wish all debaters a Happy New Year 2007.

Ourcrazymodern?

God might have created evolution so that he could come to be believed in, is all I meant to say & there's always another hand!

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1010011010

I would've thought "The Color We Cannot See" is Invisible Pink.

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Ourcrazymodern?

Pink is said to be soothing.
"In the beginning" is an extravagant statement, even for religious fantasists.
"Evolution" has led to where we are, has it not?
Thankyou, Godornot! (unless it hurt).

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MechCow

My strong feeling is that these questions and more can be answered by a 30+mg dose of LSD (2 tabs should be sufficient). I have never had that much myself but then I have always been more interested in what we are able to learn about the universe rather than where it came from.

I'm only partly joking. The worst that can happen is that you will have a bad a trip and forever be haunted by the memories of what you saw and have to live with the realisation that your brain/some higher being conjured them leading to anxiety or paranoia. But that is extremely unlikely - its far more likely that you will find satisfactory answers to these questions because they are, after all, chemical reactions in your head.

pai mei

Where did the original particles came from ? Science tells of pairs of particles that constantly appear out of nothing then disappear - that is a theory about the Universe, that out of nothing something appeared and continued to exist. Thinking must not be done with the mind and rational thought only - , Einstein said "imagination is more important than knowledge", so first we must imagine something , or use our intuition and then try to check it out
All the creation myths all over the world begin with a big nothing, then a separation of "water" or "earth" or "light" from that nothingness. Why is that ?
http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/uranus.htm - here are some creation myths

Ourcrazymodern?

It is said that Einstein couldn't tie his shoes.

(Also it is said) the original particles came from pre-existing universes.

Why don't I "mind" my pre-boggled mind?

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