h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This whole God made everything theory is all a load of old bollocks.
The dinosaurs prove that, God never said "I made Adam & Eve, but I rustled up a few dinosaurs first"
Do you agree, if not WHY

A provocative proposition. I am surprised you have got no replies yet. Obviously there are no christians on h2g2 or perhaps they want to keep out of this one. I am totally with you. If Adam and Eve was true then why does all the evidence suggest otherwise? Is God trying to trick us - if so then maybe he's not as nice as he is cracked up to be. And considering Adam and Eve only had sons how did the line continue? All bollocks, every word of it.

I think they had a few daughters too, but still that's pretty sick.( Incest ,I mean, not the fact that they had the ability to have female offspring)

Im not a christian, but -

According to the King James bible, 'god created man, and called THEM Adam' - while obviously not a direct quote, I believe that this shows that they were talking about the tribe Adam, rather than a single being. If you take the view that any translation from an original language will contain errors, then consider the fact that the language of the time would have been recorded in a completely different style than the one we use now, you can probably see why the bible as is would lead to a lot of confusion.

Personally, I reckon that the bible is simply the collation of different sects of mankind, recording their beliefs, traditions, etc at the time. and has oft been misquoted. Take faith, for example, I believe that faith was simply the word used for imagination, and as anyone who thinks about it will realise, imagination is a very powerfull force.

Then look at 'The Virgin Birth' concept. who's to say that in the time of writing 'Virgin' was not simply a term for Young Woman? Then look at all the trouble the modern interpretation has caused?

Ok, scientifically, the argument for god may not stand up, but if so, what caused the initial spark of life? What came before 'The Big Bang'

Also consider - aside from the wars, persecution, et al. the good works that have been carried out by people who do believe in the works, and give them a break.

I have argued the point in the past with many christians, and have to concede that if everyone did live their lives by the tenets then the world could be a better place, but do not believe that mankind is designed that way.

Well, I don't stand on either side of the debate of evolution vs. creation, but let's see what I can remember of Genesis. God called the creatures of the sea from the sea, the creatures of the air from the air, and the creatures of the land from the land. They don't really specify exactly which creatures were called, so the dinos could have been on the list.

Regarding the incest thing, though they don't make a big issue of it, Adam's family weren't the only humans on the earth. When Cain was cast out of Eden, he went "into the land of Nod, and took a wife". So it is quite probable that Adam's other son's found their wives outside of the family, but they don't actually say this.

Adam had 800 years starting with the birth of Seth to have children. It doesn't give an exact amount, but does say that he had sons and daughters.

On the other hand, for the evolution side, it is possible that during the Big Bang, small particles of living matter were included. It is never actually said, but in order for evolution to to be plausible, organic matter would have had to be included, since you can't make something out of nothing

Now, if you want to consider something quite interesting, then grab a bible and have a look at Genesis.
If you read closely you'll notice how you have a full, complete story of creation.
And then you have ANOTHER full story of creation after the first one is finished.
Now, since I don't have a bible nearby I'll try to do this by memory; I might mess up.
In one story everything is first water, and then god creates land in the water - In the other story everything is desert, and then god brings rain.
In one story god first creates all the plants and animals, and then almost as an afterthought creates man, while the other story tells us that man is the first living thing created.
The reason for this is simply that Genesis is the merger of two myths of creation, one from a tribe living in the Eufrates valley where floods are very common; hence the story of everything being water and then land rising up, and the other from a desert tribe where water is the life-bringer;hence the story about rain in the sand.

Oh yeah, since the bible only deals with the forefathers of the jewish tribes, it doesn't say anything about other tribes, since judaism originally was a tribal religion, ie only concerned with their own ancestry. You have to keep in mind that originally judaism was not a strict monotheistic religion, rather they acnowledged the existence of other gods, yet they claimed that YHVH was the only god for THEM. Just look at the commandments etc, it always says not to have any other gods, it doesn't say there are no other gods. In tribal religion this is very common, the idea that there are several gods, but only one being 'our' god.

I am a Christian and have recently looked into the arguments between creation and evolution. I was taught at school that evolution was a scientific fact, and never questioned it. Recently I was at a Christian youth group where it was suggested that God created the world. As a believing Christian I had to look into it and look at the arguments to make up my own mind.

I read a book by Gerald Schroeder, a physicist and a Christian, called "The Science of God", and in this he tries to show both sides, but obviously, as he is a Christian himself, it is biased towards Christianity and
However, he does put forward some interesting statistics that led me to agree with his argument that the Bible is true and that science merely increases our knowledge of exactly how things happened.
For example, the fact that Genesis describes the creation in six days, when it took about 15 billion years is explained by the fact that time is relative and slows down as gravity increases. At the big bang there was a huge gravitational force, because all the mass of the universe was concentrated into a very small space. Time therefore ran very very slowly. Gerald Schroeder has done the maths and worked out that allowing for the expansion of the universe over time, the 15 billion years in "earth time", shrinks to 6 days, when viewed as "universe time". It makes sense for the Bible to use "universe time" for the creation, because there was no earth to have earth time.
Once the creation is finished, the Bible becomes a story of mankind, and it makes sense to switch to "earth time".

The question of creation vs evoltion is also covered in the book. The chances of evolution actually happening and producing life as we know it are miniscule. However, evolution within a species to allow adaption to suit the environment can easily happen however.

I would continue, but this post is becoming ridiculously long.

Wow, what an interesting merger of ideology we have here. I don't even know where to begin. I suppose we should start with Adam and Eve, and work our way backwards. First of all, remember that Genesis was written by a prophet, who claimed God told him so. Also remember that in the earliest days of mankind, science and wizardry, aka satanic thinking, went hand in hand, according to those devout believers in the "I don't understand it, so it must have been done by a greater power than mankind" principle of ideology. Adam and Eve is more of a parable, a quick and easy way to set up the theory of "The One True God". If you begin with God made man, you don't have too much to worry about from those heretical Man made god folks. The fact is that at that point in time, no one even knew dinosaurs had existed. Any bones that might have been found were considered that of demons, or later, dragons. The popular opinion was that the Earth was made for man, it was flat, it was the center of the Universe, and the Universe revolved around it. With no science to dispute any of these facts, they needed something to prove it. Thus God came along. How else could it be explained?
What amazes me most is that science is to this day and age forging ahead, testing and examining every aspect of our world, trying to come up with plausible answers (and yes, some of the answers are still a bit of Phase 1, Phase 2, Something Miraculous Happens, Phase 4...) and from every plausible answer those of a religious bent take what they can fit in the mold of the Bible (an antiquated book of mythology) and discard the rest. There still isn't a great difference between science and religion, but I think that at least science is trying to expand the possibilities, while religion is trying to keep it contained within a framework established over a thousand years ago.
And this has gotten really long, so I'll just be quiet now.

Rather than 'God made Man', I tend to subscribe to the philosophy that 'Man made God'. This is just my own personal belief system, and I'm not knocking anyone elses.

A perfectly sound philosophy, in my mind. It's my belief, as well. The Bible is a beautiful work of art. Don't get me wrong, it has many lovely stories and cautionary tales. But has anyone even read the book of Leviticus? Some of those rules Moses brought down are , IMHO, somewhat silly. (Sorry, that's just how it strikes me)

But the explaination that I would like is how so many different religions have the same precepts. Oh, most religions differ a bit here and there, but most have the same ideas of creation, and general rules of conduct. How did this happen?

Oh, that one's easy. Many laws were based on those religious precepts, simply because it goes with what feels like proper conduct. Do unto others sums it up perfectly. But even more importantly is the way smaller religions were consumed and assimilated by the larger ones. Many great and bloody battles were fought in the name of Christianity, and with each new conquest, Christianity was further spread, but more inportantly, in order to form a more perfect union they would take the major religious days of each minor religion and call it a Christian holiday. That way people were still going to church on the same days, but for different reasons. They would even tell their conquests how similar the Christian God was to theirs, and that they might as well just worship Him and save all that trouble of getting tortured and whatnot. It was marvelously ingenious, but showed just how mutable religion was. They would do whatever it took to gain more believers, even if it meant killing them first, but if they could keep them alive simply by slightly altering the interpretation. And there you have it. One religion just like the next, only bigger and more improved. It was nothing more or less than a corporate takeover. Ah, religion...

Incest- a game for all the family!!

Keep in mind it isn't just Christians who believe in Adam and Eve, and not all of them do either. Just a thought.

In fact, the Hebrew word used in the Bible _does_ mean "young woman" and not "virgin."

>>in order for evolution to to be plausible, organic matter would have had to be included, since you can't make something out of nothing <<

Actually, organic compunds can be derived from inorganic ones, given the right conditions. It's been done in labs quite a few times.

Or we just haven't figured out how, yet. I mean.. after all.. We don't even know how the brain works, and that's pretty simple compared to creating life from some gases¹.

¹"Where'd the gases come from?" I hear you ask²... Wait and ask me again in about 12,000 years.

²For all we know, we may at some point discover that the gases themselves are a form of life we as yet know nothing about.

How did I find myself here...

The Big Bang: There was no organic matter. There weren't even atoms. There was just a soup of sub-atomic particles and lots and lots of energy floating around so that particles were created and destroyed in great numbers (always in particle-antiparticle pairs). Eventually things cooled down and electrons amd protons teamed up to create the simplest of atoms, Hydrogen. Stars formed, which 'burn' Hydrogen and heavier elements were created, etc. etc. etc...What happened to all the anti-matter we do not know...it might still be out there somewhere, lurking in another galaxy for some poor matter based explorer to stumble into, never to be heard of again, or there may have been a tiny imbalance in the production.

If this makes no sense to you, don't worry...just remember that there certainly wasn't any organic matter (which is Carbon based) in the Big Bang.

Perhaps evidence of this is found in the names Adam & Eve's first offspring: Cain being a derivation of Canaanite (or vice versa), the ancestors of the Phoenicians and Palestinians, and Abel, a derivation of Hebrew. The story recounts how Cain, a livestock owner, kills Abel, a veggie farmer. Interpreted another way, a tribe of nomadic herders attacks a tribe of sedentary pastoralists. The tribes speak a similar language and are somewhat related genetically speaking. The pastoralists somehow drive off their attackers, thus proving who God finds favour with.

As for various versions of creation, there's also the bit at the beginning that says God created Man AND Woman (simultaneously), but then later goes into the Spare Rib bit creating Eve. Jewish mystics and gnostics explain this by saying the first woman was called Lilith but she was evil and became a mother to monsters.

Whatever existed at the time of the Big Bang wouldn't have been in the form of atoms or even sub-atomic particles. I have been told that all the matter existed in the space of about three atoms.

I have also heard that the matter and antimatter was created in equal quantities but has since formed into separate galaxies.

The Universe prior to the big bang was in fact infintesimally small (i.e smaller than you can imagine and then some). Before this there was no time or space as these were created in the big bang itself so basically its of no use contemplating what happenend prior to it.
My physics background can explain how all the particles evened out (but its terribly long winded and boring) and biology can basically explain evolution in full. The only thing that bothers me is what makes us so different from the animals, what dramatically changed in our evolution?

Just for the record I'm an optimistic astheist, I dont believe in a God but if I die I and am proved to be wrong I hope St Peter lets me in.

By the way it takes a lot of balls to start up this kind of forum. Well done.