I absolutely agree. A faith-based belief in an intrinsic meaning to life works just fine for many, many people. We don’t need overt evidence of supernatural guidance in life in order for people to believe in a God designed meaning and purpose in life.
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Aye, the fallacy of incredulity is all we need.
PS Or the leap of faith.
We do need an undisguised and solidly based belief to be able to trust God for our well-being in this dangerous world.
I do not agree.
Which is the more meaningful?
- We are made as a means to an end like tools with purpose in mind like a hammer or a computer.
- We are made as an end in ourselves, children rather tools, and our purpose is something we decide for ourselves as we choose what to do with the lives we have been given.
The second of these 2 seems far more meaningful to me.
But I suppose that is one of the differences between people raised Christian (and from this is where they get their first principles) and myself who started with science and existentialism was my stepping stone to Christianity. Number 1 would have been an impassible obstacle for me to accept Christianity.
But I suppose one of the rational stepping stones was that even though we give our lives meaning with our own choice of purpose for our lives, it does not mean all choices are equal. It is like the difference between having a relationship with a pet rock, a plant, a cat, or a child. It does matter what capabilities they have for responding to what you invest in your relationship with them. So while it is we who find meaning in our lives with our own choice, this cannot change the fact that the greatest meaning is found in one with the greatest capabilities for responding to everything we choose to give.
Of course this doesn’t resolve the question which lies between theist and atheist, for God cannot be the one with the greatest capabilities for responding to us if He does not exist. But I wonder if perhaps there is a reformulation of Pascal’s wager in this – the payoff of seeking a relationship with one who can respond infinitely more to what we give?
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Little children (which we are to be like) do not ask themselves if their lives have meaning, nor do they need to create any. (But they do make the best philosophers. ; - )
The problem with that is you maybe have to believe in him first to find him:
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.
Hebrews 11:6
On the other hand, faith is a gift, and we have a couple of instances were the believer appears to be the one found (and that also concords with the scriptural Shepherd finding the lost sheep): Maggie of course, and Tim Keller’s parishioner –
During a dark time in her life, a woman in my congregation complained that she had prayed over and over, “God, help me find you,” but had gotten nowhere. A Christian friend suggested to her that she might change her prayer to, “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep.” She concluded when she was recounting this to me, “The only reason I can tell you this story is – he did.”
Tim Keller, The Reason for God, p.240
I am just getting back to this. Sorry. Many pulls on my attention and energy here.
I remember sitting in Mrs. Connor’s chemistry lecture in 11th grade, when I was 16 or 17, and experiencing a powerful emotional reaction, when she introduced the 2LoT. I proved that it didn’t take a genius to figure out the implications. In some ways, I rejoice at the idea of the the endless shots on goal (hockey term) that a multiverse model would provide.
Your connection though seems different from mine, which was dispairing. How does the 2LoT provide for the development of life as well as its anihilation?
Since I haven’t been following this thread really, hou may already nave answered my question elsewhere. Please just direct to that, if you have.
What applies to living organisms applies to pre-genetic then pre-macromolecular open cyclic systems. Downhill flow drives wheels.
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Thank you.
Yep. I read this section on living organisms. Most of that is familiar, except ¶ 3. That’s probably what I need, and I wasn’t clear on it.
This is the part I’m missing. ¶ 3 the key? I’ll try again.
The emergence of life and increased complexity does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics, which states that overall entropy never decreases, since a living organism creates order in some places (e.g. its living body) at the expense of an increase of entropy elsewhere (e.g. heat and waste production).
Complexity (of information) begets complexity (~), which increases entropy. The 2LoT is always conserved.
The spectrum of prebiotic to biotic will be a lot broader than we find now. It all started in warm alkaline vents in Hadean olivine. Look Ma! No enzymes:
Leaky membrane cell powered by external proton gradient - Abiogenesis - Wikipedia
Nick Lane’s The Vital Question is essential C.P. Snow required reading. It will be hard work.
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I think everything is becoming so. This is why kids grow up, so parents can have their now devistated attention back to try to resume some level of intellectual life before there’s nothing left.
Thanks for the help here, thought.
I am never bored.
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The lesson I get from that is that we can rely on God finding us because God exists and NOT that God only finds us if we believe in Him first.
The problem with that is it basically says God doesn’t exist independently but only in our minds if we believe in Him.
But yes it is a general problem with all rational approaches to God that we are relying on ourselves to get to God, which I generally agree is ultimately unworkable. So I am generally opposed to arguments for the existence of God and that includes Pascal’s wager. But the principle flaw I have seen in Pascal’s wager is the assumption of the Gnostic gospel of salvation by knowledge – in this case knowing that God exists. But even if we are generally opposed to all such arguments for the existence of God, it doesn’t mean we cannot see possible improvements in the arguments we take a look at – in this case a version of Pascal’s wager that replaces this assumption that you are saved by believing God exists with just the realization God is best relationship we can hope for, if He exists.
I said maybe, and I also said that faith is a gift. That would apply in what I cited that you quoted. No, I don’t believe that we have to autonomously and independently build up faith first. Maggie, for instance (sorry, @Terry_Sampson, but not very), did not. We can certainly do things to strengthen or tear down our faith though, by what we choose to read or the company we keep, good or bad, what we pay attention to and what we practice telling ourselves in our self-talk, truth or lies.
Some creationists have a really strange view of the 2LoT, and it is sometimes interesting to see what their beliefs would look like in the real world. For example, some have claimed that entropy simply didn’t exist in the Garden of Eden, which has some rather terrible effects. First, if the 2LoT didn’t exist then none of your biochemistry would work. There would be no direction to any chemical reactions, so you couldn’t digest food, flex muscles, or anything really. If you stood next to a fire it wouldn’t heat you because energy wouldn’t spread out. Random parts of the atmosphere would turn fiery hot or deathly cold for no apparent reason. Life just can’t exist without the 2LoT.
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I’ve heard some of the most fanciful speculation in the church narthex, treated as indisputable. I’m grateful to have been ruined early for YEC by my naturalistic science education. It’s old; it’s rudimentary; I’ve forgotten most of it. But it was done seriously and honestly. Still, I know plenty of people (even a few relatives), who had similar upbringings, education, etc and have followed YEC. There are clearly some different influences in our lives, although I’m not sure what.
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And yet unlike most other laws of physics, 2LoT is a consequences of math and logic rather than some condition of the physical universe. In other words, I don’t see how it is possible to even imagine a material universe where 2LoT does not hold.
But the real problem I am having is trying to understand what they think that would even solve? I mean beside just a signpost in their rather general rejection of all science and rationality. The only thing I can think of is to suppose that nothing in the Garden of Eden was even material but instead totally spiritual. But this is beginning to sound very very much like Gnosticism – even more than their sort of Christianity does already.
I think the “problem” they’re trying to solve is based in the interpretation of the creation stories in Genesis that allows for absolutely nothing related to death, such as decay or “decay”, of any kind. This one-way, irreversable loss of energy and increase of entropy is seen by them as decay, that is death. And the way to get around that is to assume fundamental changes the laws of physics. It’s easy!
It’s hard to insist that all the areas of one’s thinking are perfectly integrated (beyond deconstruction), while trying to integrate an anachronicstic interpretation of an ancient philosophical world view with contemporary grasp of physics, chemistry, biology and whatever else I’m missing, that are based on observation, testing, to-this-point reliable modeling, mathematics and the like.
I think far more rudimentary things are at play here than gnosticism, although that may be a symptom. I propose fear.
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Maxwell’s Demon was an interesting attempt at getting around the 2LoT.
Which reminds me of Morton’s Demon:
I think it gets tied up in their misapplication of the 2LoT to genetics. They claim that species must get worse (i.e. less fit) over time because the 2LoT demands it. In order to shield A&E from this problem they try to keep entropy out of the garden.
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Fits well with my suggestion in another thread that “demons” and “delusions” are two different names for the same thing.
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