Faith Required in Both Creation and Evolution.

[Aslan]

Is it not true that belief in either creation or evolution envolves using faith?

Creationists have faith in the existance of an eternal all powerful God.

Evolutionist have faith in the existance of eternal matter.

[micatala]

Interesting!

One might believe in an eternal God who had nothing to do with the creation of matter. In this case, one might believe that matter has existed for eternity, or that it has existed only for a finite amount of time.

So for this track of thinking the person would believe in a God that has nothing to do with creation?

If so then it where would that person get any proof of that God?

A person might come to believe in God in a variety of ways. For example, instead of thinking of God as the primal cause of the material universe, one might think of God as the primal foundation for morality.

One might think of God as a 'larger intelligence' which one is connected to mentally.

Many religions include the notion of spirituality in different forms. How this notion arose historically I cannot speak to, but it is quite widespread. Native Americans of various sorts, for example, think of each physical object as also having a 'spiritual aspect'. However one came to this idea, one might posit that a spiritual world exists which is independent of the material.

One might believe that there is no God, but that matter has only existed for a finite amount of time.

So in essence this person would believe that matter came out of nothing...ex-nihilo...and without anything giving it cause?

As QED has posited, we can at least conceive of explanations other than a 'creator God' for the first cause of our universe. Of course, under the multiverse scenario, this begs the question 'who created the multiverse'?

One might believe in an eternal God who has coexisted with matter for an eternity.

This belief does not in any way fly in the face of the Bible....I have never thought of it, but Christianity could still be true using this line of thought.

I think Christianity could still lay claim to being true, or at least a valid religious belief system, under most scenarios of the origin of the universe. If one posits that the revelation we have is not to be taken overly literally, and that the spiritual and moral aspects are the central message, then how matter came to be and how life came to be are not really relevant to that central message.

[QED]

As QED has posited, we can at least conceive of explanations other than a 'creator God' for the first cause of our universe. Of course, under the multiverse scenario, this begs the question 'who created the multiverse'?

Sure, but this question is conditional upon the multiverse having "a beginning".

[micatala]

As QED has posited, we can at least conceive of explanations other than a 'creator God' for the first cause of our universe. Of course, under the multiverse scenario, this begs the question 'who created the multiverse'?

Sure, but this question is conditional upon the multiverse having "a beginning".

True enough. This puts us in a somewhat similar to position with respect to multiverses (only probably much worse) as our predecessors of several hundred years ago with respect to our universe. At that time, we really had no way of even approaching the 'eternal versus finite' issue in a scientific way. We had no relevant data.

If I understand correctly, we also have no data concerning multiverses except evidence in our universe that is consistent with multiverse theories. We may or may not ever be able to 'get outside' of our universe to test these theories.

[Goat]

As QED has posited, we can at least conceive of explanations other than a 'creator God' for the first cause of our universe. Of course, under the multiverse scenario, this begs the question 'who created the multiverse'?

Sure, but this question is conditional upon the multiverse having "a beginning".

True enough. This puts us in a somewhat similar to position with respect to multiverses (only probably much worse) as our predecessors of several hundred years ago with respect to our universe. At that time, we really had no way of even approaching the 'eternal versus finite' issue in a scientific way. We had no relevant data.

If I understand correctly, we also have no data concerning multiverses except evidence in our universe that is consistent with multiverse theories. We may or may not ever be able to 'get outside' of our universe to test these theories.

I believe someone has come up with a method of testing at least some parts of the 'muliuniverse' hypothosis.

[QED]

If I understand correctly, we also have no data concerning multiverses except evidence in our universe that is consistent with multiverse theories. We may or may not ever be able to 'get outside' of our universe to test these theories.

Well, if we are pessimistic about this then yes, we can directly equate the notion of a Designer-God with an eternal multiverse. As formulated, there's nothing to tell the two apart and until we get evidence of one or the other, we are stuck with the ambiguity.

Being optimistic however, there are theories (such as Lee Smolin's cosmic natural selection that goat might have been thinking of) that come with testable predictions that at least permit the falsification of the theory. However, the existence of the equivalent of a multiverse is a consequence of M-theory which is itself testable (and will be tested soon by the Large Hadron Collider and Gravity Wave experiments). It's even possible for physicists to detect the presence of other universes through their effects on the energy levels required to achieve particular symmetries in atom-smashers. I would like to recommend A recent book by Michio Kaku that covers most of this science if anyone's interested in following it up.

I'm not quite so optimistic about anyone coming up with an unambiguous test that would reveal the existence of the popular designer-God though. Of course the multiverse could be this God, but then we're back to the Evolution/Creation problem that I see for Christians -- unable to interpret our status as an accidental occurrence in a vast sea of random outcomes.

[honegod]

Is it not true that belief in either creation or evolution envolves using faith?

Creationists have faith in the existance of an eternal all powerful God.

Evolutionist have faith in the existance of eternal matter.

Howdy !

it looks like there are two different meanings for "belief" in use here, which throws the use of faith in two different directions.

creationists Believe their description of reality to be Absolutely True, and so have Faith that anything that disagrees with the description of reality they use must absolutely be wrong.

"evolutionists" believe that their description of reality is pretty close to describing reality, and have faith that further investigation will result in a BETTER description than the one they currently use, probably, eventually.