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

In the interest of diverting the conversation on another track, I would like to put forward the following postulation on this topic:

Creation as we know it, has a purpose, albeit trivial. If this is the case (and feel free to humour me here), what would be the purpose of life, universe and everything?

I am so very astonished that almost nobody seems to grasp the logic about the creation:

IF there is a god, it must somehow have come into existence. How?

By itself! This is the only possible explanation, since there was nobody else there to create it.

And how do we call that? Evolution. And what is more probable: a god being created by Evolution or Humans being created by Evolution?

Wonko, banging his head to the wall.

Well, if there is a God then he wasn't created. He always has been and will awlays be. It might seem stupid but that is pretty much the same conclusions we will end up with on the universe. Either it has always been here or it was created out of nothing. Both doesn't seem very satisfying. The problem is when people apply false logic to show God exists. Like everything has a cause, so the universe must also have a cause, Which proves God exist. That is of course clearly wrong, but none the less something you can hear quite often.

I have good friend who is a creationist, and I have to say she sometimes have some pretty good arguments against evolution. I also read this book recently which seemed to me to show Evolution was wrong. It had a few flaws I could pick out, but if the other things in it are right, evolution doesn't seem all that likely.

As for peppered moths, taping one to a tree doesn't seem that strange. If you have an old-fashioned camera you won't have much luck trying to photograph something flapping around. But wether they rest on the trunks I don't know. But I do know that pollution turning things black is very common. Just walk around London for a few days, and you will see how your hair blackens.

I don't think we would be able to comprehend God, if there was one. Gnosis might be an experience of God, but is it an experience of all of God or just one aspect of him? People claim to have experienced God, just because they had some sort of blissful feeling. So it doesn't seem to require much. I personally have trouble comprehending simple things like million year time spans, so I doubt I could comprehend God.

I like the idea that the Universe is a living thing and that we are the Universe's attempt to understand itself.

Also, I read something last night that suggested we are nothing more than vehicles for memes.
A meme is an idea. There are countless memes floating around out there...check out the memecentral website for more details.

I like both ideas; memes are slightly disturbing but cool.

>Well, if there is a God then he wasn't created. He always has been and will awlays be. It might seem stupid but that is pretty much the same conclusions we will end up with on the universe.

As a matter of fact, there are theories which conclude that our universe is made out of nothing (all waves which constitue matter cancel themselves out if taken together). But we do not talk about matter, we talk about life.

Yes, it is stupid to explain something (our existence) with a statement like "He always has been and will awlays be", which is just like a children fairy tale, and at the same time talk about a theory (Evolution) and trying to be scientific.

To the moths: it not important whether moths rest on trees. What is important is that they have to blend in into their environment, be it trees they fly by or houses or ground. Everything was darkened by the buring of coal. It is so simple if you're not blinded by religious fanatics.

Well, if the moths don't rest on the trunks, but in places where they are not visible anyway, then it shouldn't have made a difference.

What makes me wonder is why the sod didn't turn the moths black as well.

Moths are eaten by birds, which eat them while they are flying. Where they rest is not important.

The sod does only turn things black which live long enough. Moths probably do not live very long.

BTW, these moths show a different kind of Evolution: it is not the development of a new gene (couldn't be in such a short time), but the switch on or off of an already existing gene. Of course this is also Evolution at work, since the switching is done with a gene too.

Well, what it showed was a small aspect of evolution. That a change in the enviroment can cause a change in the animals that have an advantage. Some minority in the group will suddenly flourish.

But even if the moths are caught in the air, it will probably be easier to see the white moths in a black forest.

X, are now sceptical of evolution or Darwinism? If you are sceptical of evolution what alternative do you believe fits the pattern of life as we see it today?

BTW, and this is in response to a much older post, nobody has referred to superbugs as observable evidence for evolution and positive genetic mutation. Microbes such as TB etc. were virtually eliminated due to antibiotics in the last 40 years, but now they are increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and there is a big concern that we are running out of alternatives. This fits evolutionary theory perfectly - living mechanisms with genetic advantages (in this case resistance to antibiotics) become the dominant species, while the other species dissappear.

I don't see any other theory that fits better, and scientifically it is still probaby best to go with this one. But it just seems evolution is a bit hard to use for predictions, and something like the Lucky Monsters theory just seems too far out.

I would have thought that many people would not use the evolutionary model as as a basis for prediction, (evolution is inherently based on random events), but more as a model for explanation, and it has been highly successful in doing this.

I am not sure what you mean by the Lucky Monsters theory, but evolution being "too far out" seems quite strong. Evolution can be modeled quite easily mathematically, it fits in with our understanding of genetics, and the allegory used much earlier in this thread (yes, I read it all over the last few days, lucky me ) about tinkering with technology in order to create better and more "adaptable" products seems to be a real life equivalent for what goes on in nature albeit over much different timescales and different conditions of selection.

The purpose of life is to live it, I think that there is more than one meaning to life cos what it means is something that we have to work out for ourselves. Purpose and meaning are different(but obviously inter-related) questions for me, purposeful is kind of biological and alot of the meaningful comes from being counsciousness and self aware and being able to ask that question, what does it mean?

I don't believe in a creationist god cos it justs feels wrong and my brain will not accept it as an explaination, I accept evolution as a working theory but don't need to believe in it, or feel that it is necessarilary an explaination for the meaning of life and if the evolutionary theory isn't right it doesn't make god the only option, so someone undermining it wouldn't covert me to creationism. It always seems to be an either/or question when it come to science and god, I don't know how far that gets us in any one conversation, science can't disprove god which is what they have to do to win this debate and the other side can't prove god. Science surprisingly has left me more open to the idea that there there might be a 'god' but not a creationist one as identified by us and symbolised in reliigous practices, god may well exsist and be trying to communicate to us but we find the concept of god so incomprehensible we make it comprehensiable through religion so religous theories of whom or what god is and what it is all about may be as much misinteruptation as much as evolution is because of the very fact that we are only human. When it comes to god dogmatic scientists and dogamatic religious folk have certain mind sets and that makes me think about their explainations and see them as such, their explainations. If I could prove that evolution was fact I would hope that it wouldn't necessarily undermine anyones belief in god they would have just lost the 'creationist debate' not god or even their religion it might even extend their concept of god and of what god means, furthering understanding rather than undermining it, or they could get ansty about it no odds to me, on the other hand if it could be proved to me that Jesus was the son of god I wouldn't start going to church on Sunday, I'd probably pray more and I'd work harder on understanding that specific truth and what it means in the light of what I know as a person exsisting in this century, god would still have not probably created the universe, god came with the big bang and Jesus came a long way after that and the thought that that could be true is awesome but thats just a thought, a meme even, probably an irreverant one but I like that idea some sort of evolving god rather than a constant one, trying to communicate in some way and we try to communicate back, god has a sense of us and we have a sense of god, and god might find us as incomprehensible as we find god, way off the beaten track now, need a moth to signpost the way home.

I enjoyed writing that, sorry its long but now I've done it I'm gonna post it, I did mean to stop at the first paragraph which was the reply to the original question of purpose and meaning, but it just spiraled

and for you on account of having to wade through that to get this far

Peanut xx

Woah, breathe!

I think the biological meaning of life has been established. The "other" meaning of life was best said in that Billy Crystal movie City Slickers.

Creationism, it should be noted does not nessecarily imply a god. Creationism merely states that civilizations, and cultures and life cycles and emotions and fractal and all the wonderful stuff on the Earth did not just happen. There was a purpose to it, even if it wasn't a very good purpose, such as glorifying a hippo in a tutu.

If there was / is a purpose to all the wonderful things around us, whose purpose is it? I would have thought that the answer was some sort of super-intelligence, or an all-powerful super-being, i.e. what we would call "God"? Thus, Creationism does imply that a god is involved somewhere.

There are 3 lines of thinking as far as I can see - 1) God created everything in 7 days just as the Bible says, 2) God created life initally and then "guided" his creation through the mechanism of careful evolution and careful selection, 3) it's all just chance - the creatures that mutate to best adapt to their surroundings will temporarily be successful until those surroundings change and creatures with other advantages come to the fore.

Many people who advocate option 3 use it to prove God does not exist. While I personally believe option 3 may be true, I still think it is not sufficient to deny completely the existence of God.

How's that for hedging?

Creationism is often called Intelligent Design today, so it won't appear as if God necessarily did it. But it doesn't seem any of the followers of Intelligent Design doubt it was God.

Just because you can easily argue Creationism down with simple logic, doesn't mean that you have just disproven God.

If you subscribe to the Big Band theory for instance, you would say that time and space started at that one point. People ask 'what came before the Big Bang?', missing the point entirely. There was *no before* as time started then. This leaves open a huge niche for anyone with whatever beliefs they have to come wondering in and stick whatever they want in there.

I think I'll choooossse a, er, let's see... a friendly but omnipotent pink dolphin with flying goggles on.

Peanut, there is interesting point you raised; Does a purpose necessarily imply meaning? So can someone (or something) have a purpose and yet have no meaning, and vice versa?

This may be getting a bit beyond the limits of my metaphysical imagination.

Why does everything have to have a purpose? Why can't it just be?

With thanks to Wonko for bringing up this point...

How, the theist reasons, did God come to be? Well, he created himself. But if God can come into being spontaneously, then you've decided that it is logically possible for other things doing the same... like life, the universe, and everything.

Now, if the universe comes into being by itself, well, the odds against that are just astronomical, right? How could all this come into being, with all its complexity, apparent harmony, order, structure, etc? No Vegas bookmaker would take that bet, because the odds are so high that he could never back that marker.

But if God comes into being, well, now we're talking about something even less likely. Anything that could create all of this would have to be *more* complex, *more* ordered, and *more* harmonious than that which he has created. The power, the absolute vastness... it's just absolutely mindboggling. The human mind cannot even conceive of the odds against something like this coming from nothing.

God doesn't disappear in a puff of logic... he's neatly excised with Occam's Razor. He is a far more ridiculous and improbable theory than that which he attempts to explain away, which is the spontaneous and unplanned act of self-creation described in evolution.

Evolution is based on the fact that species change. That is obvious. We see mutations in genetics everywhere. But what insures that those mutations are an improvement? If mutations are random mistakes in DNA, why do they nearly always result in improved offspring? Lets take a look at one little prokaryotic cell, the first ever. He divides, his children divide, he creates a culture. The cells become little civilizations populating their little mush pool. The cells diversify in their nature, perhaps some are changing quality of membrane or Mitochondria. How do these creatures make sure the genetic mutations that are happening to their membranes and Mitochondria are beneficial. Today, we have just as many genetic disorders as we do genetic improvements. If life evolved randomly, the perfection we see in nature today could not have come about.