Hacker News Reader

Comment by hi41 | Hacker News Reader

Nice work by op. When I see the world and space, I cannot stop being awestruck by how everything is so beautiful. I am not able to explain all of this just based on randomness and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. I think there is God. Does anyone else get the same feeling? I also admit that I don’t know who the real God is. I also feel terrible sadness that the real God does not reveal himself to each individual when the expectation is that being the father he has responsibility to lead each individual.

View on HN

"I don't understand" - "then call it god" is a false premise that was uttered many times in history:

https://evolutionspace.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/then-call-it...

Since you've identified what you don't understand, evolution, there is some hope.

Try a basic programming exercise: evolutionary growing 2d or 3d "walkers" on a simulation on a PC, or alternatively running core wars.

It's enlightening to see order, logic and machines arise from total randomness.

>It's enlightening to see order, logic and machines arise from total randomness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

Funny, I lean towards the opposite conclusion: That system based entirely on random coincidental collision of matter is more likely to have sprung forth from pure random chance rather than the mind of some individual omniscient being. No matter how all-powerful she might be.

There are multiple definitions of god. The crude one that is commonly used doesn't have to be only one. Its within the realm of possibility that there are entities that exist in a completely different substrate of existence. For us, time is experienced in a particular way because we also exist inside the same space-time. Maybe the 13 billion years of the universe, is like 13 billion cycles of a CPU which are tiny in our time-scale.

"Maybe the 13 billion years of the universe, is like 13 billion cycles of a CPU which are tiny in our time-scale."

That would be some hell of IPCs.

I've always felt that putting our universe inside some larger context is a punt (American Football reference). Weather that's saying we are a thing within some creators context, or that it's a simulation, all that does is push the questions of "what is all this" and "where did it come from" to a next level up that we can't see and have no hope of answering those questions.

If you think we live in the Matrix then all fundamental questions of existence can be asked about the "outer" world instead. It can't be turtles all the way down.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that we should simply accept it as fact. I'm merely saying that we can have multiple theories. Certainly, we should only go where the evidence leads us.

Can we ever answer those most fundamental of questions? What pushing it one level up does do is show that we do not have enough information to answer it at our current level —- and if we ever create simulated universes of our own, it shows that perhaps you could never know the answer at any level.

If this system is all made from random mutation than I should expect my body could possiblely go brick every second. But it still works perfectly util now.

I think you have the right approach. We all have to be humble and accept wherever science leads us. If god is part of the natural order, and we find evidence for this phenomenon, then it should be accepted.

Agree. The difficulty is that as we learn more, we often (not always) tend to believe that we have most of the answers and become less open to other possibilities with respect to God or simply more understanding. We have to keep in mind how much of our current knowledge has been acquired in perhaps the last one or two hundred years. In other words, we are probably complete neophytes with respect to our understanding of the universe as a whole. As a result we have to resist our more arrogant tendencies and try to keep an open mind to things that we may not yet be able to sense or measure. As scientists, I think we have to recognize that God may not exist, but we must also recognize that it may exist, keeping in mind that our definition of "God" is probably way off base from what we might eventually come to recognize.

Yes, and we have to guard against knowledge regressions (dark ages) too. It is critical that we preserve our human tradition of passing inter-generational knowledge to the next generation. As an example, I see several older nerds complain that the new generation keeps re-inventing the same-old same-old tech, and I do see a small grain of truth there, but by and large I think we have successfully managed to transfer our knowledge and experience to the new generation so that they can push the boundaries even further.

I remember reading (think it was Neil Tyson) that at some point in the future, if the universe continues at its current rate of expansion, we (earth) might arrive at a future state where we cannot detect the cosmic b/g radiation and other markers which confirm certain physical characteristics of the universe. I wonder if the future humans will accept that the humans who came before them really observed this phenomenon and that they can rely on that data :)

Studying this stuff puts me in a spiritual mood though for a different reason. At the sub-cellular level it’s just a bunch of chemistry. Molecules randomly bump into each other and stuff happens. It’s all “push”, not “pull”. Yet we talk of the whole cell as if it has agency (e.g. an amoeba is “attacking” other organisms; a bacterium is “moving” and “eating”); we definitely think that about still larger animals. The more time I spend thinking about this duality the weirder it gets.

Please explain how the complexity of God arose independently of natural cumulative selection processes like evolution. The Blind Watchmaker might be an interesting read for you.

Not trying to pick a fight, just asking a question-- if you think the natural world as we see it could not have arisen "on its own" through the laws of nature, how did something even more amazing come to be?

The same way as everything else: On its own through the laws of nature.

To be frank, I have no idea. It would be folly for me to guess. Still, the notion of intelligent design explaining the awesome complexity of life by waiving it away with an additional, spontaneous and inexplicable divine entity of essentially infinite complexity just occurring out of nowhere makes even less sense to me personally than the spontaneous existence of a "basic" "unguided" universe with the potential for cumulative selection to cause complex life independently of a guiding hand. Intelligent design postulates that a divine entity spontaneously existed and all complexity is the result of that entity, whereas evolution explains complexity via long term cumulative selection. I struggle to rationalize the spontaneous complexity that intelligent design must justify.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com