Religious People - Where do you stand on the creationist/evolutionist scale?

[muon2]

I think the question is perhaps backwards. I believe that it is our role to discern the nature of the universe, its creation, and through that God's relationship to humans. Discernment is a neverending process and continually reveals new facts. So today we can speak of a universe that dates to 13.8 Gya, and Earth to 4.5 Gya. We can speak of an evolutionary process at the molecular level involving changes to DNA. I believe we will continue to discern new facts about the universe and life on Earth, some of which will supplant facts we currently accept.

[muon2]

I think the question is perhaps backwards. I believe that it is our role to discern the nature of the universe, its creation, and through that God's relationship to humans. Discernment is a neverending process and continually reveals new facts. So today we can speak of a universe that dates to 13.8 Gya, and Earth to 4.5 Gya. We can speak of an evolutionary process at the molecular level involving changes to DNA. I believe we will continue to discern new facts about the universe and life on Earth, some of which will supplant facts we currently accept.

How can we have a relationship to an absentee God who does not even speak to us long enough to tell us which of the myriad of Gods on our menu is the real one?

Regards
DL

Your question implies that God speaks in ways like you and I might speak to each other. I wouldn't accept that assumption, and I claim no great knowledge as to what is and isn't God speaking. Who am I to say that God isn't speaking to us over many lifetimes, revealing more as time goes on. That's why I stressed discernment, since I do believe that discernment involves trying to understand the way in which God speaks to us.

[muon2]

I think the question is perhaps backwards. I believe that it is our role to discern the nature of the universe, its creation, and through that God's relationship to humans. Discernment is a neverending process and continually reveals new facts. So today we can speak of a universe that dates to 13.8 Gya, and Earth to 4.5 Gya. We can speak of an evolutionary process at the molecular level involving changes to DNA. I believe we will continue to discern new facts about the universe and life on Earth, some of which will supplant facts we currently accept.

How can we have a relationship to an absentee God who does not even speak to us long enough to tell us which of the myriad of Gods on our menu is the real one?

Regards
DL

Your question implies that God speaks in ways like you and I might speak to each other. I wouldn't accept that assumption, and I claim no great knowledge as to what is and isn't God speaking. Who am I to say that God isn't speaking to us over many lifetimes, revealing more as time goes on. That's why I stressed discernment, since I do believe that discernment involves trying to understand the way in which God speaks to us.

Seems you are seeking Gnosis.

Look within, as Jesus preached and you might find.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Think of it as seeking your Father, as in Father Complex.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9QI3nlinYQ

Regards
DL

I believe knowledge is found in the universe around us as well as within.

Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.

And Paul writes on this as well.
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

[muon2]

As you can see from that quote, if we see God's kingdom all around us and inside of us, we cannot think that the world is anything but evolving perfection. Most just don't see it and live in poverty. Let me try to make you see the world the way I do.

Here is a mind exercise. Tell me what you see when you look around. The best that can possibly be or an ugly and imperfect world?

I see neither. Your exercise is to me a false dichotomy. I see a universe governed by laws, some of which we know and some of which we do not. That doesn't make it evolve towards perfection, since the laws known and unknown are already in place. The universe evolves according to those laws, but that makes it beautiful and yet imperfect.

[muon2]

As you can see from that quote, if we see God's kingdom all around us and inside of us, we cannot think that the world is anything but evolving perfection. Most just don't see it and live in poverty. Let me try to make you see the world the way I do.

Here is a mind exercise. Tell me what you see when you look around. The best that can possibly be or an ugly and imperfect world?

I see neither. Your exercise is to me a false dichotomy. I see a universe governed by laws, some of which we know and some of which we do not. That doesn't make it evolve towards perfection, since the laws known and unknown are already in place. The universe evolves according to those laws, but that makes it beautiful and yet imperfect.

So to you, the universe following it's laws is somehow short of evolving perfection. Ok.

Which universal law should we not follow to improve what is?

Regards
DL

It's not a question of not following universal laws.

As we currently understand the laws of the universe we know that there are laws that are inherently chaotic. I don't mean chaotic in a totally random sense, but in a mathematical sense that microscopic perturbations that we cannot control may lead to macroscopic fluctuations that may be perceived by us as diminishments rather than improvements. That doesn't mean we should strive less to improve what we can, but it does mean that we should understand that those improvements we make intrinsically lack permanence.

We also understand the laws of the universe as putting constraints on what we can know about the universe. These constraints include the lack of the very information that would otherwise imply that we could control those microscopic fluctuations. The constraints are not hypothetical, but can be measured as we can measure the electrical charges moving in a transistor or the energy from a distant star.

Given this understanding of the laws of the universe I do not see a universe of evolving perfection. I see a beautiful evolving universe that must be imperfect.