GunnerJ

I know I've taken official leave of Ed's insanity, but looking back, I noticed that the one thing he did provide a definition for, life, has some very interesting possibilities in its application. Let's take a look at Ed's criteria for life:

Now, despite the first one being vague and, I suspect, arbitrarily applicable, and nuber five's cop-out caveat about development not being the same as change (pure horseshit; something cannot develop unless it somehow changes) this seems a fairly adequete definition of life. There's just one problem for a theist using it:

By these criteria, God is not alive!

That is, by the criteria listed by Ed as those nessisary for life, the Christian God, which Ed believes in, must be dead or non-living. Let's look:

Living things are highly ordered.

-Depending on how "ordered" is defined, God could fit this criteria.

Living things take energy from their environment.

-God is supposedly omnipotent, he is the source and ground of all being. What would his "environment" be? Why would he need/want energy from it? Someone will have to either cut this trancendant god bit out, or show how energy flows outside the Universe.

Living things respond actively to their environment.

-In order for something to respond to something else, there must be a temporal sequence, thus, if God is to fit this criteria, he must be existant in time. In addition, he cannot be omniscient; it is impossible to "respond" to something if you knew eternally how, when, where, and why it happened, and, in fact, caused it to happen as the wellspring of all that exists.

Living things are adapted to their environment.

-Again, God makes his environment, he is the fround of all being, and is omnipotent; there would be no need for him to "adapt" to anything.

Living things develop.

-Unfortunately, development requires change. For god to be alive, he must develop, and nessisarily change. This may not be a problem if you don't believe god is immutable, but it is if you believe god is perfect. Development entials a change from an incomplete, immature or imperfect stage to a more complete, mature, or otherwise better condition. For god to be alive, therefore, he must be both mutable and imperfect.

Living things reproduce themselves.

-I'm not sure how literally the theists here interpret the term "Son of God," but unless Jesus was a seperate God from YHWH, the Xian God fails here.

The information that each organism needs to survive, develop, and reproduce is segregated within the organism and passed on to its offspring.

-I've heard about the properties of god being the way they are by nessesity, but unless god needs to adapt, develops, reproduces, and can be segregated into pieces so some of those pieces can hold his vital information, he fails.

Thus, in order for God to be counted as a living being by Ed's criteria, which are pretty good I should say, god would have to be...

• not omniscient
• not omnipotent
• not trancendent
• temporal
• mutable
• imperfect
• capable of making other gods besides himself

...in other words, in order for the Xian god to be alive, he must cease to be the Xian god!

This presents interesting possibilities for Ed's (and others) insistance that life can only come from other living things, and therefore, god made the Universe. Since god, by Ed's own admission, is not alive, he cannot be the cause of any living thing!

Any pagan Gods want to step up to the job of Universe-creator?

Oolon Colluphid

Nice work Rimstalker! However...

Unfortunately, Ed's premise is patently flawed. We know that life has very probably come from non-life at least once in the universe. So this strand of the argument fails, though through no fault of yours Rimstalker!

LOL! If they insist, theists can keep their creator-god for the universe, as far as I'm concerned. But if we're talking about life, creators are unnecessary and so superfluous.

Anyone who disagrees -- Ed? -- is more than welcome to come on over to the Evolution/Creation forum (where the matter belongs) and discuss it.

Cheers, Oolon

Boro Nut

As anyone will confirm, who has eaten at a Bangkok restaurant.

GunnerJ

Thanks for the up, Oolon. I'd say this just about wraps it up for God. (Ok, guys, I've exceded my allowence of HGTTG refs!) Just let me clarify something:

Oh, I know his premise is flawed. I just liked the irony of him trying to prove that God must have created life because life can only come from life, and then defining god as not alive.

theophilus

This points up, once again, the futility of the creature trying to define the creator.

theophilus

Unfortunately, you KNOW no such thing. What you know is that, in order for organic evolution to have any validity, it MUST have happened at least once.
Knowledge requires at least a modicum of evidence. Science does not consider a hypothesis as evidence.

elwoodblues

"Unfortunately, you KNOW no such thing."

If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, sounds like a duck, then for our purposes, it is a duck until proved otherwise.

Looking at the evidence (the full body of evidence, not a few nit-picky points extracted from the whole), evolution is an eminently reasonable and rational conclusion to make. We might not know FOR SURE, but it's close enough for me not to worry about the difference.

See, we don't need to know something ABSOLUTELY before we act on it. If you wait that long in the real world, the window of opportunity is often closed. Sure, prove it out as much and as thoroughly as possible. But the only way of proving evolution absolutely enough for you to believe (time travel) is just not feasible.

"This points up, once again, the futility of the creature trying to define the creator."

Go ahead and wail on about how futile it is. We're just gonna keep trying. Anyway, man created god. Maybe it's difficult for us to understand ourselves, but I don't think it's impossible

Thou art god, buddy. Deal with it.

MassAtheist

Curious. According to Ed, mules are not alive?

GunnerJ

Flight 348 to ground control... hijacking in progress...

Amos

The missing link is "reproduce themselves after their own image."