Senior Expert
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
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The truth is, it takes more blind faith to believe in a world without God than in a world with Him. Why not follow Occam's Razor and go with the simpler possible explanation?
God isn't really an explanation, but more so a substitute for what people do not know. So yes, no wonder it seems like it would take less blind faith, but in reality I feel it's just blatantly lying to yourself to ease your mind about complicated things. Because let's face it, in reality we really substitute one unknown for another, but think of it as a solution because we made the switch. That's not right, let alone has anything to do with truth. People go crazy the moment they understand too much or when something is too complicated, that's why certain geniuses are or were so close to being totally insane. I think that when it comes to certain things in life it's a good thing to have simple solutions, but it's simply not always that simple.
It's also open to discussion whether or not a God really would be the 'simplest possible explanation'. Because, what about all the problems in the world? If he has created all, then why did he create problems? Also, if a God did create everything, then why doesn't he reveal himself to us? Why does it seem like there's no God at all? No indications of divine interference or anything alike.
I really think religions exist simply to 'have an answer' and in more recent history (last 2000years) also to control large crowds of people.
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And while you're at it, you get a God who loves you, wants to know you, has your back, and wants you to spend eternity with Him. Why not?
Sure, but those are assumptions stretching the 'if .. is true then .. is also true'. While the existence of God really could be a possibility the vast amount of claims saying things about God's nature and behavior is really equal as unknown as his existence. He might exist but be an real idiot and he might even hate mankind for all we know, his existence doesn't exclude those possibilities.
As long as he doesn't reveal himself (like reveal himself right now), these are all just assumptions with multiple possibilities as well.
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this article's purpose is not to entirely refute the theory of evolution. I believe that, guided by God's hand, there is no reason why it could not have happened
You believe so, but that doesn't make it anymore truthful than believing the exact opposite.  Anyways, I'm not out to bash you either and you don't need to refute the evolution theory, if God exists he might have set certain things in motion. There is however more than enough proof that discredits the 'creation' story, the Noah's Ark stories and the other stories described in the Bible in which God allegedly showed his direct influence. In fact, there's no evidence that supports any of the so called historical details in the bible.
Off course, the Bible in itself doesn't have to be an indicator of God's existence per say, so to some extent it's not really all that relevant if the Bible is 'wrong' in some way or another.
Quoted from your article;
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Even beings as intelligent as you or I would not know exactly how to assemble these chemicals without prior experience (which, at the beginning of life, there was none). How could the hypothetical "Mother Nature," a nonintellect, know how to organize them exactly right?
All the more reason to assume there has been a big influence of randomness and chance. Don't forget that the very first environment, whatever it looked like, already must have functioned as a constant trial-and-error experiment. It is goes wrong often enough, it might go right at some point given enough time or 'luck'. From zero 'life and universe' to the near-infinite or possibly infinite current state of all things, all creatures, planets, suns, universes and what more is a gigantic change. But there's no logical reason to assume it could not have happened by trial-and-error, because that in itself IS guidance.
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This shows that even if somehow, by chance, all the proteins and organic chemicals and DNA and RNA and enzymes needed for life were formed and then brought to a single location, an incredible level of organization is necessary for functioning.
No, you misunderstood in which way 'chance' would be involved. The very first life can not have been a complete cat or dog or koala or elephant, because that would indeed be too complex to get simply be chance. It started very small and evolved and evolved and it still evolving up to this day, every second counts. In fact, everything between the seconds count too.
There have been a lot of seconds from now all the way back to the origin of life. Even expressed in years it's rather hard to imagine how incredibly long it has been, but for me it's without doubt long enough to get life at the point where it is now.
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You can shock the smear of insect guts with lightning, do a dance, cry on it and hope your tears water it and bring it to life, but the fact is the misquito will not come back to life because (a) it is already dead, and the Law of Biogenesis says that life will never come from things that are not alive, and (b) it is now disorganized and will not organize itself on its own.
Death is simply a different definition for what you call 'disorganized'. If you would actually really repair it instead of doing a tribal dance, it may be possible for it to come to live again. Off course we do not currently posses such medical knowledge and some suggest that it's impossible, but people that do not breath for a couple of minutes and are black-outed can be revived in certain cases.
It doesn't work always, there are no guarantees, except that doing nothing mostly means the people will die. What I'm saying is, it's not that black and white when it comes to alive and death and how we could influence it. It's all about the possibility of using our influence to prevent a soon to be death from actually dying. Perhaps at some point it will be possible to raise the death from their graves. Don't ask me how we can ultimately use it to genuinely create life instead of just cloning, but to some extent the real information about building life lies right in front of us in the form of DNA.
Cheers
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