God's single greatest creation (Pornstars aside)
 

Women................(Do I really have to explain?)
That or either video games. :crazy:

i think you are right

God's greatest creation (actually more like magic trick) was making half the world actually believe that he exists with no credible evidance.

from a romantics point of veiw, sunsets and the evening sky. other than that, yea women and video games. and cartoons of all kinds.

Isn't the fact that most of the world believes in a higher power a miracle? I say that's proof He exists!:D

HA HA HA HA....

I think that his greatest creation was giving mankind the right to choose and think for himself.

Which is certainly manifested in people who look at a universe of which they collectively understand only about 4% of, inhabiting bodies which they probably understand even less of, yet show an amazing robustness that we can't even come close to engineering, believing that this all came out of nothing, for no reason, all the while ignoring the steady stream of miracles performed in every age, and then claim a lack of EVIDENCE. Simultaneously criticizing other people for their emotions and lack of rationality.

Irony. Now that is a great creation. : )

Hmmm... I'd like to hear more about this steady stream of miracles. A miracle being, in my opinion, something that cannot adequately be proved by scientific fact (or logic)

they are just like us, but different.

Would that be miracles or women?

Personally, since the question assumes the existence of God, free will. For a being to be powerful enough to create other beings who could disagree with him...that's pretty damn good.

How existence came about can't be proven by scientifiic fact, it's the whole question of which came first-- Chicken or Egg? Something had to eventually just BE.
But I digress.
Great creation...
Dude, chocolate chip cookies. Ain't nothin better.

Actually, the chicken simply evolved from a previous being...

women. hot women.

Chicken or egg?

The egg came first. It was laid by something, which lies just one generation outside of the definition of "chicken"

Hrmmm.... I too would LOVE to hear about this steady stream of miracles. Please enlighten us Count.

Flinn...I said the same thing about the miracles...no replies yet though :(

I hate to sound cliche, but isnt living a miracle. All the processes of life, from birth to maturing are quite spectacular. At some point theres just to many examples of evolutionary perfection to be coincidental.

^ Thank you!!! Somebody finally had to say it.

love is the greatest creation

Life is no miracle. But I believe that there are other threads for that particularly thorny discussion :hmm:

Please, not that evolution theory again.

self, think free will is the greatest creation. allows opportunity for discussion - and from that, disagreement, which is why many people are here (or so it seems)...

heheheh...hate to be the argumentative bastard, but...

Can you prove that you have free will? Is there any way to discredit a purely deterministic universe?

If God actually exists, then I guess the circulatory system is his/her/its greatest creation. That and smores.

the atmosphere...if (s)he made it.

The Rooster.

As Al Pacino said "Women. What could you say? Who made 'em? God must've been a fucking genius"

heh. CSFilm - I dunno, offhand. no doubt there's arguments for and against, ad nauseam, but I don't know the finer points of them offhand.

"If God made anything better than pussy, he kept it for himself"
- anon
are you happy oldtimer?
:)

:DOh yeah!:thumbsup:

women, have to agree with that.

Chemicals... they can do all kindsa stuff: make you feel good, make u float, fight diseases, chemicals do all kindsa things!

The steady strem of miracles.

Read about Hinduism.
Read Autobiography of a Yogi.
Read the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
Read about Ammanchi.
Read about Ghandi.
Pick up the Idiot's Guide to Hinduism.
Read the story of Shanti Devi.
Read the New Testament.

The funny thing about Miracles is God don't want you to believe in him cuz she can play little tricks with you. So you can always play skeptic games if you want to.

Evolution is a great theory. But what can come out of nothing?
Where in this entire universe does something come out of nothing?? Is there a perpetual motion machine? No. The universe is hell bent on increasing entropy, disorder. Yet find the most organized things on this planet.


Where did the chicken-like chicken egg layer come from?
And where is the Chicken going?

The same place.
The universe operates in cycles.
Call it what you will.

Sorry for the late response.
Later.

Actually, something comes out of nothing surprisingly often in the universe. Read up on particle physics and quantum mechanics. Thats where the entire notion of "Zero-Point Energy" came from.

I belive you have misread your thermodynamics textbook, if you are implying that life defies the second law. Notice the bit about "a closed system".

Could you please give me an example of a specific miracle? Preferably with real evidence, rather than legend and myth.

The Egg. The thing that laid the egg wasn't quite a chicken.

complicated, true but quite far from perfect too. in fact, many parts of body appear to badly done modifications of previously existing parts. i.e. backwards wired eyes, the shared entry way of air and food creates a choking hazard, etc. the "miracle of life" was a poorly thought out endeavour taken by your "intelligent designer".

What's even more interesting is that this "came out of nothing" notion is actually what creationism espouses- God created something out of nothing.

Evolution doesn't try to address where life came from. Thats where the theory of relativity and abiogenesis come in.

The theory of relatively states that time begins when the big bang occured so the phyiscal universe, with everything in it, existed at the beginning of time. Abiogenesis describes how non-organic molecules formed into organic molecules(which later formed into DNA, cells, etc.).

Snowflakes are a perfect example of order from chaos. You don't understand how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics works.


From an even less chicken-like egg layer. Where is it going? Who knows?

Which brings us to back to another question, "Who created God?" or how did the starter of our life (Earth) as well as possibly others come to be? One thing that I have a problem with your "something out of nothing" theory is we were given useless parts to our bodies and some are still unexplainable. Nipples. Of course for women to do their duties but why for men? I'm sure if there's an answer it's gene related. What about the construction of our bodies period? Did we have to have two eyes? Did we have to have 5 fingers? Why do we have fingernails (for a greater purpose than to pick and scratch our body)? Why is my nose in the center of my face instead of on my forehead? Ridiculous you say! What's <b>normal</b> until you see the first human being? So if we saw a human with the characteristics I described you could not deem that impossible soley because if you believe that is impossible then you must believe that "someone" designed you with a picture in mind? Still waiting on the gene/DNA answer though.......

Hey CSfilm:
check this out:
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6674628^13762,00.html

And also go read about Western Medical Doctors and Swami Rama. He did things that Medical science said were impossible.

To Retort:
God didn't create creation out of nothing.
She created it out of herself. And in the end it all goes back to God. Like I said a cycle.

As far as particle phsycis goes, where do these quantum fluctuations, (particles appearing out of nothing) come from?
Energy. And where do they go back to? Energy.

Who created God?
Nothing. You can't create God.
God doesn't exist.
God is beyond existence.

And yo, I ain't a creationist.
Evolution is fine, DNA and genes are the way things work.
But that picture isn't entirely clear or finished yet.
All I'm saying is that you guys don't have the full picture.
Why in the hell would random molecules start copying themselves?

You guys have your theories and hypotheses, and they form your religion. You call it the modern scientific viewpoint. But you're no less biased or ignorant as me or anyone else. There are questions that you can't answer, and there are some questions that I can't answer.

And snowflakes are Chaos, aren't they?
Fractals anyone?

I'm having fun though guys. Let's keep this up.

BTW oldtimer, nipples are useful for men in bed. : P

Broken link count.


So God created everything out of himself. God = all matter and all energy that exists? But you say he's beyond existance so he's not actually creating something out of pre-existing material. So god = creating something from nothing(creating something from something that doesn't exist). Concession accepted.

Biochmeists have a good idea how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids, etc. formed and organized themselves in such a matter that they can form self-sustaining, self-replicating units.

But even if we don't know how it came to be exactly, it still doesn't affirm God's existance. You've yet to show any proof of God besides your flawed logic, "The universe is complicated = God must exist."

False. Science deals with neither the supernatural or spiritual so it cannot be a religion. Science is the observation, study, and experimentation carried out in a order to determine the nature or principles of the thing being studied. Religion is a system of belief and worship of supernatural and proclaimed truths.

Science is the search for truth while religion claims to already know it.
"Religion - This is how the universe works believe what you are told.
Science - This is how the universe works, see our working, if you have questions we'll be happy to show you the evidence.
"

No, they aren't- at least not compared to the cloud of water they came from.

It's true I don't always look at things from a scientific approach but my "design" rant was trying to establish that an evolution theory (creation from a single celled ameba to what we have today) is unlikely rather than impossible. I stated in that rant things, not too complex, but things that weren't complex enough in the first place to be considered "complex". I'm sure skin, hair, bone, and "nipples" couldn't have all "evolved" from an ameba. Some refer to this as ignorance but this truly could be beyond comprehension.

Like the appendix? Surely the fact that we have useless parts of our body would go more aginst an "intelligent" designer? Why would a designer waste time giving us useless features? The appendix is more than likely an evolutionary relic. i.e. it once served a purpose, but no longer does, but it still remains in our genetic code, as it does not harm to us.

Again, why would an intelligent designer give men nipples? It is actually relitively late on in our embryonic development that our bodies "decide" to be built as male or female. By this stage, the "seed would already have been sewn" for male nipples. It is more effiecient for males and females to be as physically alike as possible in this sense.


Yes what about it?

Two eyes always us to percieve depth. With only a single eye we would only see things in two dimensions. We would not be able to tell how far away that hunting tiger is. Surely this is advantageous?

Why this exact number? Who knows? If we had four would you ask the same question? How about six? Presumably this number is due to an equilibrium found by evolution. Too few, and we would not be dexteretous enough to properly weild tools. Too many, and they would just get in the way.

I presume you mean that "picking and scratching our body" is a worthless edeveaur, picturing a lazy fat ass in his underwear in front of the tv. Yet, to primitive man, picking and scratching his body was a very benificial thing. It got rid of ticks and various parasites, and was also a source of food. I would imagine that fingernails are also the remnants of claws, which of course have their obvious advantages. And besides, even to this day fingernails are usefull. They give our finger hard tips.

I fail to see where you are going with this argument. Obviously, what we percieve is normal, is what we see everyday! Surely that is the very definition of normal? Again this is like the five fingers question...even if we did have noses on our foreheads, you could equally likely have asked, why not in the middle of our face? It has to go somewhere. But bear in mind, that we didn't always have "foreheads" as such. The forehead is the result of a larger skull to accomodate a larger brain. there is no advantage to MOVING the nose, to this newly created patch of skin. Where it currently is, is far more useful. It is easier to sniff the ground/anything else, and it is right above our mouths, allowing us to smell things before we decide to eat them (could be very advantageous) plus it is close to the mouth so that it is easier for the two to be connected.


Again, lost in your argument. I don't believe anyone designed me with a picture in mind.

Free Will for sure. At least the illusion of it. :D

"I'm sure skin, hair, bone, and "nipples" couldn't have all "evolved" from an ameba."
How are you so sure of this? The real thing you should say is that you find it difficult to comprend. Me too buddy! But you have to remember the time scale we are dealing with...BILLIONS of years.

To give you an idea, I'll describe a demonstration by Richard Dawkins:

He reaches his arm outstretched to one side.
"From the tip of my nose, down along my arm up my forefinger, to the very tip of my fingernail, represents the life time of our planet"
He then takes a nail file, an flakes a minute dust-like piece off his nail.
"I have now erased all of human history. The great empires of Rome and Greece. The egyptians and their pharoahs. Destroyed all existence of early man"

That is the sort of mind boggling time scale we have to deal with. Which, in my mind, is a lot of the reason why people have such objections to evolution.

Anyway, to address your original question oldtimer, I would point you to the seminal book by Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker. Its an incredibly well written book. It conveys evolution with amazing clarity (the reason why I have been shameless whoring it on this board), and after reading it, whatever your views are, they certaintly won't be down to ignorance of the facts.

I didn't claim that I had a full picture. I will be the first to admit that science doesn't know everything. Hell, there is a hell of a lot that science doesn't know. My point is, that just because we don't know it, doesn't mean its unknowable. And just because something is unknowable, does not mean that there is no explanation exists.

To elaborate: We know that life has evolved over billions of years, from a single celled organism. But where did this single celled organism come from? This is an example of something that we do not know. That's not to say we will never know. There are numerous hypotheses around trying to explain it. I already posted one. (Quantum Evolution)
We also know, that the universe came into existence from the Big Bang. But where did this incredibly dense particle, this singularity, come from? Well, we don't know. There are many hypothesis, many involved with higher dimensional physics, but ultimately we don't really have any idea. But, just because we don't know does not mean that an explanation does not exist.


Check out my above link.

Wrong! Science is not a religion. Science is built on the concept of fallibility. Religion is based on infallibility. The most important thing about science, is that when it makes a claim, it has proof. I consists of experiments which are repeatable. Scepticism is one of the most important virtues in science. In Christianity it is a damnable offence (literally). When science says something, it is not expecting you to take it on faith. You can go and recreate the evidence for yourself. You can see the proof with your very own eyes.
A two thousand year old book, full of inconsistent ramblings is not my idea of proof. A nut job running around, ranting on about "visions" is not my idea of proof.

Yes, snowflakes, are an example used to explain chaos theory. Under magnification, you can see intricate patterns, made out of the ice particles that make up a snowflake. It is "obvious" that the random jostling of water particles around in a cloud, could not possibly have resulted in such beautiful patterns. It is obvious that snowflakes, were in fact, created.

Earlier, when I stated that some body parts were useless. I meant to phrase that another way but could not formulate one in my mind. But it surely wasn't my intention to go against an "intelligent" designer, who in my eyes is not necessarily of flesh and bone. What I did mean to say rather than useless was unique. (But by this age's standards still remain useless) Given, these body parts had a function at one time, or as you said were apart of the genetic code and could not be shaken. Onto the smaller things, fingernails, who could say they were <b>supposed</b> to be used for removing ticks and parasites? Surely someone would have to create <b>them</b> for fingernails to be of use. Also when I was talking about noses, I could've used anything as an example but it seemed easier to me. I was trying to point out that in our construction, Why were we not shaped differently? These parts could have been put in numerous places and still worked just as fine. Your not looking at what I say hard enough. Two eyes, ok for the obvious reason of 2-D, yes, but, have you taken spiders into account? Trying to stay with my topic, they have numerous eyes, 8, if memory serves me right. So does this not grant the spider with better vision? Wouldn't two eyes in the front of our head and two in the back be more "advantageous"? You see you can't rule out what I say simply because it has never been experienced before, so there is room to say that it could be beneficial. Pretty much every creature on this planet was some kind of "experiment" until perfection was acheived with humans. Yet each still have their special ability to fly (Birds), swim (Fish), burrow (Moles)... it goes on. But then again someone would just say that is a creature adapting to its environment over enough time. Not in all cases...but some.

I mean no offense to you when I say this, but I don't believe that you have a fundamental understanding of the theory of natural selection. Take my advice, and read The Blind Watchmaker.

Your point is, as far as I can tell, basically that we could be built differently. I fully agree with you on that one. But, my question, is how does this prove or disprove evolution?

Man could be improved upon. Yes thats true. Stick a man into a room alongside a tiger, and see who comes out "top of the food chain".

"Pretty much every creature on this planet was some kind of "experiment" until perfection was acheived with humans." - I would really take you up on that statement! Nobody is claiming humans to have reached perfection! In evolutionary terms, no creature that is alive today is "better" than another. I would admit, that humans, are probably the most sucessful creatures at altering the environment to their will.

Exactly! Though I forgot to mention that as humans are deemed the "perfection" of all species, this in my eyes is not true, there are other species far more "intelligent", even if all they do is "sleep, lick their face and shit", often said by others who won't accept a smarter species. Thanks, for following me up on that, and yes, unluckily I do not know everything you do and I will take you up on reading "The Blind Watchmaker". Just trying to make sure you aren't throwing everything out just because it isn't scientifically correct.

To say how a different body structure could disprove evolution (for me) is that the traits I described in my posts say that this could not be done by a single celled organism, alone. Though I have limited understanding of the concept of evolution, I don't see even over billions or millions of years how you can create something as sophistically complex as us, even through all that time arranging and rearranging itself to form a "human".

I take no offense. I can admit I do not know all the answers. But when I propose ideas like these I feel I can stir up good answers if even but for a second.

I was thinking cheese when I came in here but women are good too. Then there is sliced cheese. HMMM

So if there's no easy explanation for how all this formed, there must be no explanation at ALL? That's entirely the product of your ego- because you can't comprehend or explain it, you think no one else can.

It would be impossible for skin, hair, bone, and nipples to evolve from amoeba. However the things that they did evolve from were far from amoebas after millions of years of evolution.

These one cell organisms randomly developed parts that proved to be very useful. These modified one cell oraganisms survived pretty well so the trait was passed onto future generations. These one cell organisms randomly developed into a multi-cell organism. These modifed one cell organisms survived because they were well equiped. The multi-cell trait was passed on.
continue on and on and then you eventually get us. Existing traits mutated but were useful and remained. These new, jury rigged traits were passed onto future generations:

Good. But I'm going to stick with trial and error. We were the experiments that made it the farthest. Who knows maybe we couldn't accept the "improvements" we were supposed to have and had to settle for less. Ex: They could've used too much energy and in the long run were not beneficial to our life.

I wasn't trying to give an easy explanation. I was trying to throw everything out there but instead I seemed to jam too many emotions and ideas into one post. I am a little confused when I go back and read it. But I did state, this <b>COULD</b> be beyond our comprehension. Make no doubt about it I didn't say we were incapable of finding the answer indefinently.

Of course the amoebas evolved (described in your stages to a multi-celled organism) but how into something as complex as hair, bone and skin and why so specifically? Did it sample something? How come we didn't end up with a dead cell structure for a body? Could we not have been covered in wood? Maybe this is ignorance speaking again, and if it sounds like a sermon, I didn't mean for it to be. But I have to consider the other possibilities for why this <b>didn't</b> happen and why this <b>did</b> happen.

so god, the not-so-intelligent designer, fucked up?

It's inapropriate to attribute the unexplainable phenonema to the supernatural. You get things like astrology and bleeding in medical practice, the salem witch trials, faith healing, etc. etc. when you do that.

The multi-celled organisms began to develop into a larger and larger species. Some cells began to specialize. Soon you had many multi-celled organisms with cells specializing in different areas. Changes are small but cumalative. After millions and millions of years, you get multi-cell organisms that have a great deal of cell specialization. Some of the cells specialize in being bones, in being skin, and in being hair.

You're operating under the false assumption that we had to turn out the way we did. We came out the way we did because of chance mutations which passed the trial of surviving in the wild and later allowed future generations of that new species to flourish.

Your outter layer of skin is composed of dead skin cells.

Because our ancestors(way way way way back when they weren't much more than amoebas) didn't develop any traits that would later be built upon through evolution resulting in an outter layers of wood.

No, but necessarily having all superior qualities in a human should have some sort of drawback. If we could fly, be able to breathe underwater, see with the sharpest of eyesight, and have the strength of the most destructive creature, could we survive better/longer? We'd kill off all prey and consume too many resources to live any longer. So I say, it was purposeful for the way we are, not just a "fuck up". I leave it at that.

Not if he similiary improved upon our prey.


And more so, if we weren't capable of accepting the intended improvements, God still fucked up.

Hey. Can't change your mind here and you certainly aren't going to change mine.

My opinion stands: We were created with intelligence, who, must have been another being.

Yours: We were just creatures with no creator who over billions of years evolved into humans.

I really do appreciate your thoughts, CSFilm's even more so, but I have grown tired of defending my position. You have science and I have sheer belief. Go figure.

I can respect that. I additionally appreciate that you acknowledge that your position is based on faith. There are quite a few people who would try to suggest that their religion has some sort of scientific basis. It's good to see a sensible, honest person. :)

In addition, I would like to say, how much I like how this thread has evolved, much less debated half of the sense behind the mystery of our existence. :thumbsup:

Wow, This thread sure got a little more serious than I think the thread starter intended.

himself

You can say that again. Watch what you post in Tilted Philosophy, they'll debate and debate and debate and debate.........Well, you get the idea.

I still stand by the women answer. God, yes! And let's not forget my video games.

hehe I looove to debate.. :)

I can't help myself :P

Of the many miracles of life, I would not call love one of them. I'll just happily refer you to my post on the Love portion of the Tilted Philosophy Board: Love is a joke with no punch line.

By the way, I consider God's greatest creation: Jesus. 'Cause he's the man, lol.

Also, CSflim, that was a most excellent job of answering peoples' questions. But I personally believe that Christ built me piece by piece in the womb of my mother, with a picture and plan in mind.

Christ = DNA?

Christ= Jesus, my lord and brother, savior and servant, father and son, my friend and follower, my God, Jesus Christ.

CountChocula7, how do you know if God is a woman? You seem to use the pronoun "she" when referring to him, her, it, or them.

True enough, the human body is far from the most effecient engine for life that could exist on this planet. If you look closely at it you'll find it's much more aesthetic than practical which makes me think that the whole thing was designed intentionally.

since we are creatures of schema it's difficult for us to know or define without an opposite. rather than one greatest creation i throw out the following.

1. death (without death life has no meaning and would turn into one long procrastination of doing anything)
2. self-awareness (otherwise this conversation is mute)
3. pussy (might be #1 depends on how long it's been since the last... my friends and i number one saying in college was "pussy is god." so maybe the question should be "what is pussy's greatest creation?" which would be answered: bliss :)