Silent Acorns

This is a serious misunderstanding of evolutionary theory with respect to the second law of thermodynamics. The second law relates to closed systems and the Earth is NOT a closed system (not even close - by any standard).

There is nothing contradictory about a localized increase in complexity when the complexity of the entire system (Sun plus Earth at a minimum) is clearly DECREASING.

Silent Acorns

With respect to the G-d issue. From my understanding it is the result of an the ancient belief that names held power, and that by uttering one's name you could control their power. This was believed to apply to gods and men equally. As a result, the gods had "names of power" that were kept secret by the high priests and even people had their "secret names" that they dared not let their enemies discover. This is most evident in the story of how the Egyptian goddess Osiris got her power: she tricked Ra into telling her his secret name. This belief was rampant in the ancient world.

The Hebrew god also had a name of power, and this is the origin of the "thou shall not use my name in vain" commandment. While only his "true name" could call upon all his power, his "lesser names" still made people nervous. As diana said, they also believed that damaging his name (in any form) would damage him.

Today the power names of the gods have been lost and we only know them by their lesser names (Zeus, Osiris, Ra, JHVH, etc.) but the respect and fear issue stuck to the lesser names and as their titles (like Christ and God) became their "names" these too were granted protection.

So it's an issue of respect and fear, as well as a matter of fogetting why it all started in the first place.

the_cave

It is precisely this part of humanity that I'm talking about when I talk about god (among other things included in the term).

Farren

So God, to you, is a component of the human psyche? I'm not sure I follow.

the_cave

Sure, at least in part, if you want to look at it that way. I think there are certain experiences we have for which the label "God" doesn't seem inappropriate. You can call them a "component of the human psyche" if you want, but why couldn't they be an object independent of us? It appears that when we have sentient experiences, we're experiencing some fundamental aspect of reality--perhaps some feature of matter, or energy, or spacetime itself--who knows? We haven't even begun to really figure it out yet. Even if and when we do, some experiences, or intellectual understandings, are simply sublime and profound enough for me to call them "god". I feel I lose a great deal of their meaning by simply calling them "some good feeling or other."