Stupid Design - Dr. Tyson makes some good points...

The principle of chaos is inherent in the universe. It leads to things like super novae that can strip the Earth of atmosphere, tsunamis that kill thousands. It also leads to beauty and creativity, from a Monet to Simon and Garfunkel, to Jackson Pollock and Coolio. Creative brains are just better at capturing the randomness of their brains and expressing it. God designed the universe like this.

He also created beings to manage the dark effects of this chaos such as tsunamis and weeds growing in your crop. Genesis 1:28 explains that man is a king, as a king he uses his force to impose his will, such as pulling out weeds, sweeping up dirt from a path, countering evil actions.

Gen 1:28 God gave them his blessing and said: Have a lot of children! Fill the earth with people and bring it under your control. Rule over the fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky, and every animal on the earth.

There are some things too big for us to control with our force (tsunamis, super novae) so God also made us priests, where we intercede on behalf of the universe. You wont notice it and I wont go it to it here, but in Genesis 2:15 God makes us priests, the language in this verse is loaded and always refers to priestly service.* The ANE religions and many animist religions are based on this premise, that we need to do certain things to maintain the natural order.

Genesis 2:15 The LORD God put the man in the Garden of Eden to take care of it and to look after it.

Now here is the interesting thing, God made us in his image so that we don't just have to accept whatever happens and act instinctively like the animals, but can make a qualitative judgement call on whether something is good or bad and whether we need to step in to do something about it.

So what you are calling bad design is an inherent part of the universe that makes life worth living, it is up to us to manage it. Of course if it was all working properly you wouldn't be on this site.

*This also explains why some people have wondered why there are two stories of creation in chapter 1 and 2, they are actually two stories about who and what we are and our purpose here.

a reply to: Cinrad

O boy, don't know even where to start. Can't those 2 stories telling bit different things actually be product of 2 different authors and later revision of original stories?

But further in your post you mentioned that God created humans in his image, witch brings following questions to the table:

* Who created creator - God?
* God is then also poorly designed, as from this post you can read some very poorly design concept of human body
* God has reproductive capabilities, just like humans
* God's vision is bad, but let's not go into his digestive organs...


At times it is very hard for me to argue with someone who can take Genesis literary and I will try to point the reason for this. We know many parts of it being just fairy tales and not to have base in evidence from us observing universe, here are few: universe is not as young as you could conclude from it, we know how planets form, earth seems not to be different at all from rest of universe, God did not create 2 lights, but billions of billions of lights, but one of lights claimed by Genesis happens to be actually reflection, not light at all... (I could go for a long time if I start responding to every verse in Genesis)

It is sound to conclude that due to many mistakes and statements that show Genesis actually is just form of fiction, product of human lack of better explanation at the time.

If you go further, you will find out that actually this same technique can be used for rest of bible, and in NO WAY bible can be source of our moral - we outgrow its moral standards day our ancestors decided that slavery is not good, that women should be (AGAIN) treated the same as man. (Actually, some of first religions treated women as goddess, source of fertility)

So sorry, but your try to bend stories form what they are into something completely different and explain how well we are designed, even everything points on contrary... no, just does not work...

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: SuperFrog

With those miracle stories, Bible itself gets in level with rest of fairy tales, in product of human imagination and with simple effect to scare kids not to do certain things..

This is pretty weak. Bad frog.

Yet you ignore the early part of his response, that shows how you wrongly pigeonholed his, and many other atheist type beliefs. People don't just make the decision that god doesn't exist. They go by evidence and logic and most would update their views if evidence were found of god. What makes you think that Frog or the rest of us scientific heathens have never looked for god? You wouldn't dare think that maybe we didn't find him? You have very strong faith so you just assume we deny god because we hate god, but that's not the case. You say miracle, I say confirmation bias. You believe there has to be a miracle worker because every now and then things happen that can't be explained. Perhaps it is just lack of understanding about what actually happened. You don't ever look at things objectively, however, you have a pre-determined conclusion and think all evidence against this view is wrong and anything that supports it is 100% correct.

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: TzarChasm

I myself tend to see it both Vincents and Jules way.
There are miracles when God steps in with good reason.
Not so in this case.

Everything in this plane of existence, this conscious, sentient earthly
experience. Tells me flat out there must be a miracle worker. Because
life is a miracle. My attempt to find him led me to Christ and the Bible.
I think you and WUB exaggerate what you call it's fallicies. Contradictions?
The ones I have found would blow away all those mentioned ever here
on ATS. But even if I'm wrong about the Bible, at least I've looked and
cited something as the best I could find. And that's so far and away from
just making my own decision that there is no God. I will never understand
how someone can make that leap. When humanities past is screaming in
your face, about how wrong you are.

i never said there is no god. what i did do was question your basis for attributing phenomena to a supernatural force. vigilance in investigation.

a reply to: Barcs

Yet you ignore the early part of his response, that shows how you wrongly pigeonholed his, and many other atheist type beliefs.

You mean the part I couldn't make any sense of and you
assume I pigeonholed? W/E that means.

Tzar

i never said there is no god.

I never said you did. I know it's addressed to you but I was going
off in a more genereal sense. Sorry

originally posted by: randyvs
I think you and WUB exaggerate what you call it's fallicies.

Just thought you may find this interesting. Take a look at Skeptic's Annotated Bible, if you're curious. It looks at the Bible from multiple standpoints to point out contradictions, errors of history and science, prophecy, etc. The site also provides Christian responses in many cases.

a reply to: WakeUpBeer

I'd love to have a look at that.
Thanks

Being skeptical isn't problem, but lying to be skeptical is juvenile.

Adam finally dies -- 930 years after eating from the tree of knowledge, contrary to God's false prophecy that Adam would die the day that he ate the forbidden fruit (2:17). 5:5

So why should I continue to look at a site that's really really stupid?

a reply to: randyvs

I'm not sure what's stupid about that, it's true isn't it?

Anyway, you're bound to find some things you think petty, or that you feel can be explained from a theological standpoint. And while I will agree there are some of those things, there are still plenty of issues to be found.

a reply to: WakeUpBeer

I'll meet ya half way. I could never claim to understand it all.

a reply to: SuperFrog

But further in your post you mentioned that God created humans in his image, witch brings following questions to the table:

* Who created creator - God?

We created the name God.

But nothing can create something that takes up all Space there is. God is the infinite, God always was and always is.

If God always was and always is, God was never created. Because he always existed.

We on the other hand are formed out of the expanding singularity as science like to Call it.

originally posted by: spy66
We created the name God.

But nothing can create something that takes up all Space there is. God is the infinite, God always was and always is.

If God always was and always is, God was never created. Because he always existed.

We on the other hand are formed out of the expanding singularity as science like to Call it.

Care to provide source for this hypothesis??

That need to attribute creation to something you said its everywhere, yet you don't have single piece of evidence is just mind-blowing. Of course, I do understand that if you can't have a good explanation for God, then everything else you believe in falls inward... but that is not and should not be my (our) problem. From beginning it was just belief, never involved any science or facts validation to either the story or all involved characters.

originally posted by: SuperFrog

originally posted by: spy66
We created the name God.

But nothing can create something that takes up all Space there is. God is the infinite, God always was and always is.

If God always was and always is, God was never created. Because he always existed.

We on the other hand are formed out of the expanding singularity as science like to Call it.

Care to provide source for this hypothesis??

That need to attribute creation to something you said its everywhere, yet you don't have single piece of evidence is just mind-blowing. Of course, I do understand that if you can't have a good explanation for God, then everything else you believe in falls inward... but that is not and should not be my (our) problem. From beginning it was just belief, never involved any science or facts validation to either the story or all involved characters.

You speak for this topic. Havent you done any research on Your own to figure this out?

- You dont believe the infinite exists?
- Does science reject that the infinite exist?

originally posted by: spy66
You speak for this topic. Havent you done any research on Your own to figure this out?

- You dont believe the infinite exists?
- Does science reject that the infinite exist?

Topic is not finite/infinite, but stupid design, acording to Dr. Tyson, who gave good examples about it in video.

As for your question, here is answer from Dr. Einstein:

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

originally posted by: randyvs
You mean the part I couldn't make any sense of and you assume I pigeonholed? W/E that means.

Pigeonholing is attributing a standpoint to somebody and using it to generalize what they believe.

Your quote:

And that's so far and away from
just making my own decision that there is no God. I will never understand
how someone can make that leap. When humanities past is screaming in
your face, about how wrong you are.

You are assuming that no knowledge or study was involved for rejecting your beliefs about god, and also assume that this is his viewpoint. Humanities past shows evolution, unless you're going for maximum fallacy potential and appealing to popularity as well. It's like arguing that Whitney Houston's Bodyguard soundtrack is better than any Beatles album because it sold more copies than any of their albums. Popular view does not make something true.