hairy legs, dinosaurs, and evolution
what a weekend, so many things to think about. really should’ve been reading some papers and working on my thesis, but still productive thinking on other topics…
friday afternoon as i was waiting in line for the minibus, to my dismay i noticed the girl in front of me had hairy legs. as much as my legs have, which isnt very much but on a girl that’s slightly frightening. and then revelation hit me: probably most girls are that hairy if they don’t shave. on the rest of the journey home, i had a new found respect for razors…
still suffering from jetlag, or more precisely ‘exam-lag’. i define as when u cant sleep at night, and u nap after lunch til dinner time. so anyways, spent the night debating with my friend about God. he had been digging into richard dawkin’s book ‘the God delusion’ and was ready to attack me with full force. of course i didnt back down, for what christian shouldn’t stand up for what he believes in.
major topics on friday afternoon were age of the earth, morality, and evolution vs creationism. evolution is a topic that scientifically favors the athiest. he was a guy who wanted facts, and adopted dawkin’s view because it was more evidential so far. after much discussion, i played my big bang card. don’t even talk about evolution when you can’t even prove the origin of life yet. how can nothing become something unless there’s a creater involved. evolution can’t explain that. chance? mutations? just like in a chemical reaction, how can you talk about the reaction when you don’t even know where to get the reactants? as we continued debating on issues, his accusations were becoming logically flawed. by the end of our conversation, i had figured that he wasn’t seeking the truth at all, he was trying to disprove God.
round 2 was sunday morning. he talked about genocide in the old testament. by now i was already tired of his continuous bashing on christianity, so i just sent him a website that explains things. he responds by saying ‘well thats just an interpretation of the book’. i was shocked he said that. what literature isnt interpreted? at that point, i see no reason to further discuss with him. he had already sided against God, and was just out trying to disprove Him or bash on christianity. after all, Jesus did tell me not to cast pearls before swine. before he logged off, he linked me to richard dawkin’s documentary called ‘the root of all evil’ on youtube. i watched it and there was one part where he criticized the genocide that took place in the old testament. so thats where he got his argument from…but it’s funny how his arguments breakdown: isn’t this richard dawkin’s ‘interpretation of the book’ too?
it was obvious he had already sided with athiesm. there’s no point talking to him about God. he had already decided that he was against Him, so what point is there talking to somebody who’s closed-minded?
Why shouldn’t we talk about evolution if we can’t explain the origin of life? Evolution doesn’t even *involve* the origin of life, that’s a completely different topic. That’s abiogenesis. Evolution is an explanation for the *diversity* of life. It begins after we already have life.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/
Similarly, the big bang doesn’t involve the origin of the universe, only the structure. However, we do have real, experimentally verified ways that something can come from ‘nothing’ in modern physics. Look up quantum fluctuations. There is a proposal that, since the total energy content of the universe is pretty small (negative gravitational potential energy offsets Other positive energies) that it would only take a small amount of energy to set the whole thing off, such as that provided by a certain quantum fluctuation scenario.
At any rate, god as an explanation for the origin is just replacing an unknown with another unknown. Okay, so where did god come from? I know what you’re going to say, he has always been there. But that’s an assertion based on your personal idea of the characteristics of god, and has no logical basis. How did you measure god? What instrument did you use? If you didn’t measure him, then you have no empirical evidence to suggest he is eternal. Likewise, you have not measured the universe at time = zero so you have no empirical evidence that it *isn’t* eternal. You have no logical basis for stating the characteristics of god are different than the characteristics of the universe at time = zero. All you’re making is a personal assertion of your opinion that you think god should be eternal and the universe shouldn’t. Like I said in the beginning, you’re replacing one thing that you don’t understand with another. You can do that if you want, but I would rather search for an answer that actually explains something (be it involving god or not) rather than just saying ‘oh, it was a miracle’ and leave it at that.
Don’t be to hard on your friend. Just as you love to share your truth with the world, he wants to share his as well. And remember that he probably thinks your close-minded as well!
Peace.
Jonathan