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Talk:Extraterrestrial life (view source)
Revision as of 20:35, August 25, 2008
, 20:35, August 25, 2008→Salvation rules out extra-terrestrial life?
::""...''evolution is not incompatible with Christianity''...": Yes it is. Christianity is based on the Bible, and the Bible's account of creation as well as other passages is incompatible with evolution." Question, possibly a bit of a sidetrack, but I'm curious. People that follow the moral teachings of the Bible, but don't see it as word-for-word literal truth: are they Christians?--[[User:Frey|Frey]] 13:20, 25 August 2008 (EDT)
::""...''evolution is not incompatible with Christianity''...": Yes it is. Christianity is based on the Bible, and the Bible's account of creation as well as other passages is incompatible with evolution." Question, possibly a bit of a sidetrack, but I'm curious. People that follow the moral teachings of the Bible, but don't see it as word-for-word literal truth: are they Christians?--[[User:Frey|Frey]] 13:20, 25 August 2008 (EDT)
:::::If a person believes that Allah is God and that Mohammad is His prophet, would you consider that person to be a Muslim? What if that person also believed in evolution? After all, Islam has a creation story too. It seems as though you are saying that someone who believes in evolution is automatically not a true believer of whatever religion they happen to be.
:::::By the definition you both have apparently set forth as being Christian (that is, a literal belief in all of the Bible), than only three in ten Americans are truly "Christian." I do not see what following the moral teachings of Jesus Christ has anything to do with believing in ancient mythology. But I've also heard people say "why follow Christ if there was not a literal [[Original Sin|Fall]], etc.," as if we need to believe that [[Genesis]] actually happened in order to realize that people are inherently wicked. Earth needs a Savior even if we evolved from apes.
:::::And what if the Messiah was real but our conception of him is formed around the beliefs of His time? Maybe conservative Christians believe in Genesis because Jesus was born in a strongly Jewish community? If Jesus had been born in India would his message be tied to the Hindu creation myth? Had he been born in Africa would his message be tied to an African creation myth? I understand that Jesus was "prophesied" to be a paternal descendant of King David (but also not have a father...), I'm just saying perhaps all the mythology surrounding a messiah only has to do with the time and place He was born.
:::::Concerning Hubble, I have forgotten to note that you still seem to accept as true what Hubble observed: that is, that the redshift of distant galaxies seems to indicate that they are quickly moving away from a certain point. Whether or not Earth is at or near this point, the implication of these observations is still that ''all of the universe is quickly expanding outward from a certain point which at some time in the past exploded outward to form the cosmos''--evidence enough of the Big Bang.
:::::"Evolution provides a random, naturalistic explanation..." So what? People still believe God is behind any number of naturalistic things. People ''believe'' that God sent their child to them, yet they also ''understand'' that the conception of their child was (at least to human observers) a completely random sperm and egg that were fertilized in a completely naturalistic process.
:::::As for how you are somehow comforted or excited by the concept that "''God has tasks for you to do''" here on Earth; I do not see how being the wind-up toy of an infinitely higher being is pleasing to you. I have tasks for a ''stapler'' to do while it is in my possession, yet I can not even for a minute imagine that it would be pleasing to be a stapler. Should we envy robots because they have instructions that their designers have pre-programmed for them? Life has the potential to be so much more fulfilling if every individual dictates his or her own agenda. This is why free market capitalism works. The concept that God has a mission he expects me to fulfill is almost no different than the idea that the Communist welfare State has a mission for me to do. Speaking as a conservative, I believe in personal responsibility--theologically AND economically.
:::::God is complicated. Even some Christian theologians, including [[Alvin Plantinga]], have said that by portraying Him as simple you are watering down his "personal" aspect. However, our discussion on the matter seems to be a back-and-forth shouting match so I don't think we'll get anywhere here, either.
:::::Finally, since a mutation produces something new, whatever that new thing is, it is creating "new information" ''by definition''. You are saying it doesn't make something new since it draws from an already existing set of variation, but that is unavoidable. The genetic code that makes up life on Earth has been the same for approximately 4 billion years. It's been the same amino acids, proteins, etc. that have simply been rearranged in small successive steps to eventually produce increasingly evolved things.
:::::I do not think we're going to get anywhere with this discussion, though. Thank you all for your thought-out replies! :D
:::::--[[User:Stirlatez|Stirlatez]] 16:35, 25 August 2008 (EDT)