Originally posted by Suzianne
You know what I think about arguing over this. Both sides are right.
Originally posted by twhitehead
Can you expand on that? How can both sides be right?
Originally posted by Suzianne
You know, in all the hub-bub caused by the moon-barking of some in this forum, I didn't see this until just now. I have things to do but I'll return later today or tonight and answer this more coherently, but for now, I'll say it relates to the 'how' and the 'why' of creation itself.
Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah, "Both sides are right."
This is pretty simple, really, but both sides like to say their ideas are the only way it could happen, or that they have the only correct view. We can see with our own eyes what the state of the universe is today. We see the amount of red-shift and other signs that give us a pretty good idea of what happened, and we can extrapolate back to the beginning of the universe, and by just "running the tape" backward, we can get a good idea of how the universe began. Not much to debate here. The cosmologists are right, it all started with a singularity which expanded into our present universe, with all the predicted side trips (an initial plasma state, a delayed darkening of the universe, the battle of matter vs. anti-matter, quantum evolution of atoms and then molecules, clumping of matter into galaxies and local systems as the universe expanded, nebulae, the ignition of stars, the main sequence, rocky planets, gas giants). It's hard to argue what we can see just by looking. The actual nuts and bolts (the 'how' ) of universe creation is pretty much accepted by most (I only say most to avoid the superlative 'all' ) scientists. And the last third of the 13.7 billion years of creation is just as right as the first two-thirds: evolution as the primary mechanism for the rise of life on our planet, and probably most planets capable of supporting life. Occam's Razor applies, it's the simplest answer fitting all the data we have, including the fossil evidence.
So great, the "Evolutionists" are right. But not so fast. We've covered the How, now let's cover the Why. The Why is similarly easy. Because God. I am a Christian and therefore my belief informs my theory. Perhaps a Muslim can hook the Koran into the physical evolution of the universe and of man on earth. But I believe we're given the Bible to explain in simple terms (being written 3500 years ago [the earliest books anyway]) how it began to man of the age. In this case, yes, simpler IS better and so it was. Thus we have Genesis. I believe that if we had to make man of 3500 years ago understand nuclear physics, it would end up looking more like Genesis than a graduate-level textbook, and to do it perfectly, we'd need to make it pretty simple, and in keeping even with the mores of the era (we wouldn't want them calling us 'sorcerors' and burning us to death). So God lets early man in on the secret (using prophets, of course), in a way he can understand, describing the work as taking several 'days' (simply because, let's face it, 'billions of years' seems a wacky, unbelievable concept 3500 years ago), and, using the laws of man to enforce his 'preferred' style of government, we have Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, Again, it's 3500 years ago, and so God keeps it simple so we get it, but not so 'modern' that people think He's nuts. And so the story of man evolves from there.
In a nutshell, I believe that the universe was created. Created by God to fulfill His ultimate aim of supporting life, with Man at the pinnacle of that creation. But unlike the simpleton "creationists", I believe that God had every tool at His disposal, including the Big Bang, all the details of our early, early universe (quantum mechanics and the elimination of most of the anti-matter) to create the physics needed to support life, including stars, with planets, with the tenacity of life to gain foothold and evolve on our 3rd rock from our sun, culminating in the tool called "evolution" to raise man up from the literal "dust of the earth". Including billions of years to enable natural processes to do most of the "grunt" work. I also personally believe that true "evolution" seems a rather random process, and so God took the time to tweak the results to steer them towards His eventual goal, the eventual creation of Man.
So hey, the "Creationists" are right, too. But using the tools of cosmology and evolution to do it. And so, like I said to start this off, both sides are right. But both sides also want to "own" the "entire" truth, and they're not exactly willing to share in it, and so we have the seeming divide that exists today. And they are both SO "invested" into their own dogma that they cannot budge an inch towards the other side. The "politics" of the issue is such that neither side wants to lose adherents, and so the bickering and arguing never ends. And that's pathetic really, since both sides are right.
T Rex
27 Jul '16 21:571 edit
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