"Doesn't the idea of coming from useless dust through simple bacteria to complex humans seem too far-fetched?Maybe as far-fetched as the idea of an existing God?"
This question shut me up.Any ideas...anybody?
(mood:desperate)
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Science is not far fetched and doesn't sound it. Science explains much, religion explains nothing. But you're right about one thing, you certainly sound desperate. Frankly, I suspect you're trolling.
Well,currently am an agnostic (sort of) looking for reasons to believe or to not believe.17yrs of age,raised by Christian grandparents ;and started doubting two months ago.Then I stumbled on the facebook page (Atheist Republic) and linked to this website thinking I might get answers to......everything really.So I kinda find it offensive when you say am trolling while all the time I'm trying to find my footing.
Jeet Balraj : Why do you think we evolved from simple dust ?
Since the earth was formed from nebula (solar nebula hypothesis) and humans were not created.Isn't it obvious to jump to the conclusion that we came from similar stuff?That's why am asking for more clever reasoning than mine.Because am having a hard time buying it (the nebula thingy) ?
I think the concept of abiogenesis - life originating from inanimate matter - and then undergoing random mutation and selection by nature is awe inspiring. We should be grateful to be alive today and able to understand that. This is a far more satisfying story than any that a priest or mullah or guru ever proposed with their little spiritual pea brains.
Lay aside the 'US vs Them'thing and respond from a neutral perspective.What is more believable between an al powerful God creating humans;and humans coming from dust?God might have been a dick in the past,but which powerful guy doesn't bully people?Just look at Obama and a tonne of other presidents.If you had a robot and wanted to dismantle it,who is going to stop you,its yours after all.Am in no way advocating for theism(am not trolling either),just a kid with many questions and less answers.Let's start at this point.Couldn't God have just said,"Let there be a big bang and evolution?"Because during the big bang a lot of heat and light was released which tallies with God's "Let there be light." Please please don't roast me.
I am not neutral on this matter so please do not expect me to be. You must explain to me why the default explanation for the origin of life and matter must be God. There is no good reason for me to believe a deity must have caused it to spring into being. If a deity is necessary why a monotheistic one? Why not a pantheon of Gods? Why not the creation myths of the Aztecs or the Norse? I look to scientists for the natural explanation of the universe and life. I never listen to priests , mullahs , or gurus. When I became a man I put away childish things. I do not believe in Santa Claus either but no one tries to make me prove Santa does not exist.
I didn't intend offence and I didn't say you were trolling, Jeet. You inferred it (not unreasonably, but incorrectly). I said I cannot know if you're sincere or not. This is frequently the case on anonymous forums like this.
(I could have such suspicion and not mention it? :-)
You have to expect healthy skepticism on an atheist site, especially if you seem to think that some (Abrahamic?) god is as plausible an explanation for development of life on Earth as well supported scientific theory...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160518152910.htm
Never mind finding your footing, you have a lot of reading to do - it seems to me.
Children are taught to take god seriously. It's a good job its not witchcraft and voodoo too.
Dust is kind of a over simplification. I'm not sure exactly what part you find a stumbling block though. Perhaps this might be a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis
Jeet, one word makes all the difference...evidence.
Yes mankind came from star dust. Excited amino acids evolved into all living things. Since energy cannot be destroyed, only changed, the live from energy is dissipated when we die. Stephen Hawkings explains in 'Something from Nothing' how everything came into existence in the first place. Maybe you should READ books and other material instead of just relying on stuff you find on the internet. You'll find that many here are well read, and experienced. The common thread among people here is that they read and are educated, not just simple skeptics. Yes you are 17 and have a limited exposure to the real world. You cannot have experienced very much given your age. You can change that by exploring REAL information. Don't delve into social media or propaganda for that data. Seek out tried and true facts that have come to conclusions based on facts and science. Try any major library. Here are a few:
The Origin of Life (Penguin Science) Paperback – February 6, 2003
by Paul C. W. Davies (Author)
Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off Hardcover – April 1, 2004
by Fazale Rana (Author), Hugh Ross (Author)
http://www.nap.edu/read/6024/chapter/3
http://www.hawking.org.uk/life-in-the-universe.html
http://www.space.com/20710-stephen-hawking-god-big-bang.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1R8-E71wAc
http://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-makes-it-clear-there-is-no-god/
Read this eulogy. It addresses the usual dust to dust, ashes to ashes angle and adds a dash of "spirit" to up the otherwise finality of life to the immortal level. Poetic, but false, its only purpose is to instill hope.
https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/
Hope. That's another word for god. Substitute it every time you would otherwise use the word god and the reality of the exasperation of life will send you crying into the night a broken believer.
The god of the Nazarene, promoted by Paul (nee Saul) from his exposure to the Notzrim (Nazarene cult) of the period, is how the currently worshiped god came to be.How can that be?
In the ensuing struggle to create the Jesus myth from its seeds in the story of Yeishuah ha-Notzri, which preceded Paul by some 1-1/2 centuries, the one god was Paul's intent to promote for his own personal reasons. He claims to be a sinner and condemned as such in his own writings, which are accepted by the current secular and apologetic scholarship at large as being genuine historicity of the man. He considers himself condemned, makes much mention of it, but never states why. He does give much of his time to mentioning that his "member" will not cooperate, and was an outspoken misogynist. As homosexuality was a condemnable trait under Yahweh, which came to be the god of gods replacing the other known benevolent pagan god of the Israelites (Elohim), we might suppose that this was his inner struggle and reason for self-hatred. The choice of the benevolent god he learned of from the Yeishua' ha-Notzri story was his only hope for personal salvation of his soul. He chose to promote this god for his own salvation.
From his initial writings and meetings with others of biblical mention, the god of the Nazarene was piggy-backed onto the story of the Jesus myth they concocted to give both the god and the son substance. Hence, both were originated and the myth-making commenced in earnest. Miracles, people, places, and greatness rode into the story via the hands of a multitude of writers of the story Paul originated, and the rest is as we know it now.
So, the question you ask isn't quite proper without putting into context the historicity of the god you are bringing to this discussion. Now that you know the secular beginnings of that god, how does you argument hold up?
@ Jeet Balraj : Richard Dawkins book "The Selfish gene" is really good at understanding the link between evolution and abiogenesis. its an old book but a classic.
its also a really good read for anyone interested in learning about evolution and proposes a hypothesis for the origin of life which I found quite agreeable.
There is a place here on Earth that we humans know very little about: the bottom of the ocean. The concept of life beginning in a pool of amino acids may be entirely wrong and the creation of life may be happening right now at the bottom of the ocean under great pressure and conditions we know nothing about.
If you break your arm and it becomes entirely useless you go to an orthopedic surgeon and he puts a cast on it. Six weeks later the bones heal stronger than they were to begin with. Doesn't that seem far-fetched? Yet it happens all the time.
@ kataclismic : I don't mean to be rude but after a traumatic fracture of the bone it is put in a cast so as not to disrupt the natural healing process (which is by scar formation). The healed bone is not stronger than it was before it was fractured. It is scar tissue and so will never be as strong as the original, however with bones they do improve over time (about 1 to 2 years). they may be 90% as strong as the original but do not ever become stronger than the original. (The bone is not completely healed after 6 weeks, the six week cast is needed to immobilise the bone long enough for the framework to become strong enough so as to not require external intervention. Complete healing takes much longer)
@jeet balraj : I think you are conflating two issues
1 - Abiogenesis
2 - formation of our solar system.
1 - as I recommended earlier, Richard Dawkins book "A Selfish gene," attempts to address the topic abiogenesis and though this is a topic that very little is known about, he does it very well.
2 - Formation of our solar system - guess your reference to the fact that we are made from dust is based on misunderstanding from this. we are not made from dust. no life is made from dust. Its just that after the big bang and initial inflation only lighter elements of hydrogen with a little helium I believe existed which formed dense clouds and stars which eventually exploded. However in the course of the fusion reactions that comprise their modus operandi they formed heavier elements and once they exploded those heavier elements were released forming clouds, nebulas, galaxies and solar systems.
Thus planetary evolution came about from star dust. I apologise as I am not more well versed in this subject and a good book on astrophysics may be more detailed regarding this, but I do not know of one. I have read "A brief History of time" by stephen hawking and I think he may have mentioned it.
Basically what I mean to say is that they are 2 different subjects. No scientific theory states that life originated from dust.
If you'd like I could attempt to summarise on the theory of abiogenesis with whatever I did understand from it however I feel you may benefit more by reading the book.
On a side note however I think the bible alludes to the fact that god made humans or for that matter all living creatures from dust.
The course of events leading to the creation of man (heaven and earth was made before the sun, even light seems to be made before the sun) seems absurd.
The bible, quran, hindu text creation stories are not any less ridiculous than the greek or aztec creation myths. And if we had to take it at faith why stop only at believing that jehovah created heaven and earth in the dark and then had the bright idea (pun intended) of turning on the light. We could just as easily believe that time (chronos) castrated his father the sky (Uranus) to create the living (greek mythology). They are all equally implausible.
As to whether god could have orchestrated the big bang, there is no proof of that. no religious text states that explicitly. no religious text even mentions the big bang. People could claim as some deists do that god could have set the natural order going by being the catalyst that set the universe into motion, but there is no evidence to that. It is purely a matter of peoples belief. none of the scriptures reference that.
As for the Bible where god said let there be light. He said that after he made heaven and earth. So the earth and the heaven (the word heaven is used in the bible interchangeably with the sky) before the big bang. NOT POSSIBLE. I guess he made the stars on the 4th day if I am not mistaken. so he made the stars far too late and the sun far later than light. Kind of absurd, don't you think so!
Here is clear proof that we all came from dust. In 1952 Miller-Urey conducted an experiment that created live amino acids from inorganic compounds.
Miller–Urey experiment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The experiment
The Miller–Urey experiment[1] (or Miller experiment)[2] was a chemical experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment confirmed Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that putative conditions on the primitive Earth favoured chemical reactions that synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler inorganic precursors. Considered to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis, it was conducted in 1952[3] by Stanley Miller, with assistance from Harold Urey, at the University of Chicago and later the University of California, San Diego and published the following year.[4][5][6]
After Miller's death in 2007, scientists examining sealed vials preserved from the original experiments were able to show that there were actually well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller's original experiments. That is considerably more than what Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in life.[7] More-recent evidence suggests that Earth's original atmosphere might have had a different composition from the gas used in the Miller experiment. But prebiotic experiments continue to produce racemic mixtures of simple to complex compounds under varying conditions.[8]
Since then, this experiment it has been exhaustively duplicated by independent means and they same results have been obtained 100% of the time.
My apologies for over-simplifying.