"John W. Rea" <matziq@airmail.net> writes:
> I have a good knowledge of DNA, physics, psychology, biology, human
> anatomy and physiology so don't judge people when you don't know
> their educational backgrounds.
Really? You don't show it. You seem to have totally missed out on
evolution and cosmology, at the very least (and those are certainly large
fields inside of biology and physics)
> I never pretended to have investigated all other religions
> or even a fraction of them.
You should. It's amazing how useful a through understanding of world
religions is -- not only is it useful for your understand of *them*, it's
useful for your understanding for *yourself*, and your religion.
> This always goes back to the age-old question: Which came first
> the chicken or the egg?
As Sodom said, the egg. Or, more accurately, the first substance which was
able to create more of itself.
See _Darwins Dangerous Idea_ by Dennett, or any number of books by
Dawkins. (somebody once referred me to a book which is actually dedicated
to the chicken and egg problem in particular. Anybody know which that is?)
> Try explaining how a little bit of organic matter evolves into an
> intelligent race of human beings.
Inexact replication and cumulative natural selection (+ other "cranes" like
sexual selection) operating over 3+ BILLION years. I thought you said you
had studied biology?
> Where did the matter in the universe come from? Did all matter just
> instantaneously appear in the big bang? If so, who or what caused the
> big bang? Don't pretend to know these answers.... Nobody does but
> God.
Stephen Hawking attempted answers to these question in his book _A Brief
History of Time_. I'll quote a small section for you:
"Throughout the 1970s I had been mainly studying black holes, but
in 1981 my interest in questions about the origin and fate of the
universe was reawakened when I attended a conference on cosmology
organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican. The Catholic church had
made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to law down the law
on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth.
Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts
to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the
participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that
it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big
bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because
that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was
glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given
at the conference -- the possibility that space-time was finite, but
had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of
Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom
I felt a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of
having been born exactly 300 years after his death!"
-- Stephen Hawking, _A Brief History of Time_, pg 115-6
He goes on, in the following chapter, to explain the contents of the talk
referred to. Also, Dennett makes a one chapter stab at explaining the
"Ultimate Origins" in his Massive Tomb _Darwins Dangerous Idea_, which I
highly recommend.
Now, if you'll stop asking ignorant questions and DO THE RESEARCH, we might
be able to have a good conversation!
ERiC