Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [RELIGION] creation myths

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Mike Miller wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Christian M. Cepel wrote:
>
> > > Earth by a supreme being 6,000 years ago.
> >
> >
> > This is a Mormon figure you're probably quoting: 
> > http://www.algonet.se/~daba/lds/endworld.htm (fun read)
> >
> > The figure I've more often heard was 10,000 years.
>
>
> This reminds me of Bertrand Russell's reply to the omphalos hypothesis:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis
>
>     There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world
>     sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a
>     population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no
>     logically necessary connection between events at different times;
>     therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future
>     can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.
>
> So your ideas are "not logically impossible."
>
>
> > This also doesn't account for those who believe the first 7 days were 
> > metaphorical and that they were macro-time, during which the fossil 
> > record and aged earth evidence you like to point to occurred.
>
> Why not just drop "God" out of the picture.  It adds nothing.  Nothing 
> but a warm feeling in a believer's heart, I suppose.  You believe it 
> because you like believing it.

You have hit the nail on the head.  Briefly, the reason most believers 
believe in a God is not because there is some mystery of "how" things 
came into place, but because they cannot answer the question of "why" 
things came into place.

The typical atheist answer to the "why" question is that this question 
is unimportant or even meaningless.  Nevertheless, most human beings 
have this deep rooted desire to know the answer to this question, and a 
sense that this question is of the utmost importance, even if they are 
unable to properly articulate what this question really means.

(This "why" question in most people boils down to "what is my purpose or 
where do I fit in the grand scheme of things" or "how can my life attain 
meaning?")

> In the early days of religion it was possible to get away with 
> suggesting that gods were doing many things: controlling the tides, the 
> seasons, pushing the Sun across the sky, creating animals and people and 
> rain and thunder, etc., etc., etc.  Now we have scientific explanations 
> for nearly everything and most of the gods have been forgotten.  But 
> most of us are down to one god or no gods and the one god has his 
> effects in all the little places were science has not completed its 
> mission, like in explaining the very origin of the universe.
>
> It's funny that people like "first mover" arguments.  How ridiculous 
> they are....
>
> Where did the universe come from?
>
> God created it -- he was the "first mover" that started it all and 
> created the laws of physics.
>
> OK.  But where did God come from?
>
> He was always there.
>
> Oh.  But why can't we just say that the universe was always there?
>
> Because something had to create it.
>
> Why? ... If nothing had to create God, then why did something have to 
> create the universe?
>
> Ummmmm....

Before I became a theist I also thought this way.  But when I became a 
Christian it came clear to me that while this issue had not been 
intellectually resolved, it had been completely emotionally resolved.


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