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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
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I swear this is a completely honest question:  do you really believe that?  If so, which authority's judgment do you trust enough to believe that?

[/quote]

Absolutely, positively, yes.  A few basic forces tell the story of the big bang from the tiniest fraction of the first second, until this time.  It is remarkable how well a few fundamental equations explain pretty much every observation that we can make about the universe at the material level.  I don't have to trust any authority.  I don't have to decide whether to believe my minister or Stephen Hawking or whoever.  I can read for myself.  If you read and study physics, it is phenomenal.  Everything from black holes to light bending around large masses to quantum entanglement to elementary particles.  The theory is making predictions about these things that often take decades, even half a century, to prove.  But one day we construct an experiment and there it is.  You may not choose to believe in these things, but your computer does.  It utilizes quantum mechanics.  Your GPS utilizes general and special relativity.  We still have gaps in knowledge, but the most amazing things at a cosmological level, the things that people once pointed at and said "proof of God" are now explained by a few equations.

This does not mean that God does not exist.  It means that if he created it, he did not have a five hundred page design document.  He unleashed a few simple forces from which everything else unfolds.[/quote].

I find all of this very fascinating--thank you.

What about life?  Consciousness?  It is my understanding we do not yet know how life arose from nonliving matter?  And that the simplest single cell organism actually contains vast complexity?  [/quote]

We don't know the exact origin of life.   But we can see how complex organisms are related to the very simplest ones.  And we can go farther than that.  We can show that a single protein can self-replicate and can exchange attributes with other, similar proteins.  The fact that a simple protein can spontaneously create "offspring" coupled with the knowledge that RNA/DNA is the stuff of complex organisms points to a simple origin as opposed to a very complex one.  Even if you believe in God, it seems unlikely that he would choose a complicated, engineered path when we see available paths that are simple ones.

Consciousness is a long discussion.  But the question as it applies to religion is whether consciousness is separate from the body or whether consciousness arises out of the physical structure of the brain.  I tried to get people interested in a mind-body experiment to explore this, but it didn't get off the ground.  Maybe tomorrow if anyone is interested.  It starts from a thought experiment where you replace one neuron in your brain with an electrical component that performs the same function.  You do this again and again.  Now when does the person stop being a person?  Most people say Bob is still Bob all the way through the process.  And that's where things start getting interesting.[/quote]

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