Well I might be a litle bit off topic with this thread here...
I'm puzzled about one thing with the creationism, intelligent design or panspermia. How can so much people reject evolution and come with such elaborate theories about the origins of life here on Earth and miss the fundamental problem. OK, maybe life didn't apear on Earth...but if there is a superior being or life elsewhere...duhhh...How did that came to be? How did that appeared?
All these theories fail to answer this simple yet fundamental question. All they do is to shift the problem in another place.
It's just me, or what?

You seem to be thoroughly confused.

Evolution does not deal with the origins of life, only the idea that all living things share comment descent and that organisms adapt to survive.

Creation and the ID movement attempt to explain the origins of life as the creation of a supreme being. Panspermia, however, I don't believe is an adequate explanation for anything. If true, it would just move the problem of the origins of life elsewhere.

If there is a supreme being responsible for this universe, than it is a logical fallacy to apply physical limitations to his infinite, metaphysical attributes. If God existed before the formation of the physical, than creation and destruction, time and age, do not even apply to him. He woudl be infinite.

But since God created the whole world in "seven days" it means that you can also apply a time scale to God. How come it's OK to say God is infinite and you can't apply common reasoning to him when it comes to question his existance and yet there is no problem if it's in the Bible (applying a time scale to God is applying common reasoning to him)

What the genisis account does is tell how long the creation of the earth to a percieving human, it doens't apply anything to God.

The very definition of God is that he is above nature, perfect and infinite.

At the time the book of Genesis was written the world was small and uneducated. Very few hebrews knew how to read or write and knowledge of science was completely absent from their originally nomadic culture. If the book of Genesis had a divine origin, it would be obvious that God could not describe to his people 20th century scientific concepts. The creation account was very easy to pass down orally into Jewish tradition.

If the book of Genesis had a divine origin, it would be obvious that God could not describe to his people 20th century scientific concepts

May I remind you that wright now you are applying common reasoning to God?

That's the kind of problem you come with when you say God is infinite. You say you can't apply common reasoning to him but yet you still have to
If God is infinite why wouldn't he implanted the israelites with all the knowledge? Why would he create a naive human with no knowledge at all? Why couldn't he have said that I created the whole world in less than a blink of an eye, or It's beyond your understanding how I created the world because I'm infinite. It would have been much easier but, hey, then story of genesis would have been boring...If he's infinite, why did he needed a rest?
And we can carry on and on with this ranting.
The point is that saying that God is infinite it's not an answer to how come life exists.

edit for spelling

[edit on 27-8-2006 by Apass]

Originally posted by CaptainKirk
So are you suggesting God just should have implanting the israelites with millenia of scientific knowledge with his ray beams?

The problem lies with the human's inability to comprehend, not God's inability to grant knowledge.

The problem with this argument is that even young children these days are being granted highly advanced knowledge just by turning the TV on. Humans have a massive, developed ability to comprehend, we just need to be given the knowledge. If humans could not comprehend what they were told, how have we made it this far?

No need for ray beams. Just a good long sit down and talk would suffice.

Except these kids are growing up in a civilized and commmerical world. Try going out into a tribal area in the amazon and teaching science. They'll probably have trouble with some of the most basic concepts, let alone complex scientific thought that is thousands of years ahead of them.

Originally posted by CaptainKirk
Except these kids are growing up in a civilized and commmerical world. Try going out into a tribal area in the amazon and teaching science. They'll probably have trouble with some of the most basic concepts, let alone complex scientific thought that is thousands of years ahead of them.

Where a person is from has no bearing on their ability to learn. As long as you start teaching early enough, they can live in the bush and hunt boar all they want - they could still pick up 3 languages and learn astrophysics if they wanted to, as long as they have an adequate teacher. The only reason an amazonian tribesman wouldn't understand thermodynamics is because he's spent most of his life in the jungle, feeding his family by hand, an activity which doesnt quite require a PhD.

Originally posted by CaptainKirk
Except these kids are growing up in a civilized and commmerical world. Try going out into a tribal area in the amazon and teaching science

The genesis as described in the Bible has nothing to do with science so I quess it doesn't metter if you try to tell someone in a tribal world how God created the world or you try to tell me the same thing. If you say that God is infinite then he could have said that "it's beyond your apprehension how I created the world" and for this you don't need to have all the knowledge you have now.
The fact that the Bible says God created the world in seven day is because God is an abstract concept created as an explanation for the purpose of humanity by the israelites themselves. An because God is an abstract concept, its creators gave him human like properties (ie a time scale or feelings)