© 2010 Carmelo Martínez, L. Coll, Antonio Moya, Santiago Rodríguez, Eduardo Altuzarra
© 2010 Urantia Association of Spain
Participants:
- Carmelo Martínez
- L. Coll
- Antonio Moya
- Santiago Rodríguez
- Eduardo Altuzarra
¶ Carmelo
I just read this news in the digital version of El Mundo: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/09/02/ciencia/1283415274.html
It will be necessary to read the book that is announced to know exactly the reasons for this change of opinion of the great modern physicist, but what is hinted at in the article (journalists must not be trusted) is that the fact that there are other planets, even other universes, would be incompatible with the idea that God’s intention was to create man (??). It seems to me a geocentrism that is not typical of Hawking; Has it ever occurred to you that God intended to create humans on ALL planets? This argument surprises me, which is why I suspect that it is not well interpreted by the journalist.
It is also said that Hawking thinks that the famous theory of everything will soon be completed, which will unite the (supposed) four basic forces of nature in a single theoretical body, and that when this is achieved, all the properties of nature will be explained. nature and all cosmic interactions, thus making the existence of God as creator and initial source of everything unnecessary.
Given this, there are two comments:
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It is not the first time that science believes that it has reached the end of its development, that it has theories to explain everything. It already happened in the 18th century, and it turns out that the great advances of modern science have occurred just after. (“… The more science you know, the less sure you can be” UB 102:1.3) (“Knowledge is an eternal quest; always are you learning, but never are you able to arrive at the full knowledge of absolute truth. In knowledge alone there can never be absolute certainty,…” UB 102:2.4)
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Science and religion are two disciplines that deal with totally different areas of human thought; and of course they are not incompatible. (“Science deals with facts; religion deals only with values” UB 101:5.2) Science may one day explain all physical facts, but it will (and cannot) say anything about it. the meaning of the universe and about the values behind those facts: the Father’s plan. It will never be possible to demonstrate, or even conclude or glimpse, that God does not exist (or that he exists) with reasoning from science or any other human discipline. For this only faith is worth, and faith is personal and non-transferable; It is a “paradox” that faith is the only possible demonstration of the existence of God and that such a demonstration is valid only for the person who has faith.
How little is known on Urantia about the true God, our Heavenly Father! The God of which Hawking and others speak is that of the institutional religions that have not yet been able to fully grasp the idea and assume the ideal of the real and true God, the only one who truly and totally satisfies the cravings of the human mind. (“The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love.” UB 102:6.1)
¶ Coll
Here I send you my opinion on the debate that Carmelo has opened and my opinion on Atheist Science.
Scientists are excellent people with heads full of data, so much data that, in the end, extremely complex data results in their own brains.
They should be more sincere about the existence of God and admit that they still do not know anything, and that they will never be able to discover God with their thousands and millions of theories, sterile discourses and endless arguments.
The most serious error of atheistic science is to measure the universe exclusively from the material point of view. They won’t get anywhere like this, and we’re going to have endless books, speeches and theories for a long time to come.
Atheistic science should come out of its lethargy and come clean and throw overboard all its egos and theories, and admit in the universe the existence of the Spirit, the universal Mind, the First Source, the First Cause of causes and the cosmic coordination that there is in all things, and thus they would glimpse a little to the existence and recognition of the Infinite God.
But this living and infinite God (not the dead god of religions) can never be put in the box of their egos and endless ignorance and theories to prove that God does not exist!
Forget all those campaigns with ads on buses and other places between the two positions of some believers to show that God exists! And others, the atheists, to show that God does not exist! Unfortunately, human beings always put God in human marketing, to see which opinion wins out of both.
The Father in heaven and the heavenly beings ignore these childish trivia. The Father in heaven loves the individual. If a person wants to recognize with all his heart and with all his soul the existence of God, there is not much more to say, the doors of heaven open and God and his heavenly world respond amply. “Seek first the kingdom of heaven and the rest will come to you in addition”
There is a mystery in the universe: Why life? Why Creation?
The intellects strive, search and do not find, and since they do not find they invent theories, but the ancient mystery only to love is revealed to the conscience illuminated by love. Privilege of simple and simple, like children. AMI-The child of the stars (Enrique Barrios)
¶ Santiago
In line with these arguments, have you stopped to think, in what philosophical situation would we find ourselves if we had not come across the UB?
Luis, what you want atheist scientists to do, they won’t just do it, they don’t need it (or so they think). I believe that the majority are atheists out of pure ignorance. They have not been able to forge a philosophical-theological framework on which to bet, they do not know the revelation; and the gods they have had access to do not measure up. In his/our hasty daily battle for life that we have mounted, we do not have time to look a little inside ourselves to begin to understand.
I repeat, it’s not a matter of bad faith, they don’t have to get rid of anything, they just have to look a little inside themselves with a naked ego… but they don’t know/we always know how to do that. And it is a work of mercy to teach the one who does not know (if he wants to learn)
¶ Eduardo
We all know what we think about the existence of God. I also believe that most scientists, deep down, believe in something that they may not call God, but end up believing. We must start from the fact that all human beings in this world are mired in ignorance of reality. Therefore, in a certain way and in this it is not necessary to be a scientist, some believe and others do not. Scientists try to prove it to us in their own way and argue a series of facts and circumstances, but the reality is that, as Carmelo rightly says, values and meanings are left out of context.
Hawking claims that if a complete theory of the Universe is ever confirmed, “then we would know the mind of God.” If we remember Russell and Copleston when they mention Leibniz about truths of reason and truths of fact, we will realize that the majority of scientists who do not believe argue that God does not exist because they do not want to believe in that idea or theory and there they apply in his reasoning all his knowledge about science, with a boldness and a coldness that makes the believer laugh.
Santi says that this is a matter of faith. He is right and I say that one day, when the majority of humanity has read The Urantia Book, there will be more believers, including scientists. The existence or non-existence of God is a matter of time. Revelation has to do its “job”
¶ Carmelo
Luis, I don’t think there is an atheist science and a believing science; rather there are atheist scientists and believing scientists.
Unfortunately the fields are confused; the problem is the people who do not know how to differentiate their fields of action. It is logical and acceptable for a scientist to say that, with the scientific information he has, he deduces that God does not exist. But when he makes such a statement he is not talking about science (of facts), he is not acting as a scientist, and this should be clear to whoever says it and to those of us who listen to it.
I don’t remember dealing with “Darwin’s errors” before, and I don’t remember any reference to them in the UB either. In any case, I will present my opinion on the matter.
It is clear that the UB is evolutionary; however, he is also a creationist. To put it more clearly: the Deity CREATES living (material) beings THROUGH evolution. Some time ago I wrote an article about it entitled Evolution or creation? and that was precisely my conclusion after reading the UB. Darwin destroyed the prevailing creationist beliefs in his time, which incidentally cost him a lot of trouble with society at the time. But today evolutionary theories are accepted by all scientists and practically by all people in general. The Christian churches, which initially fiercely opposed and even ridiculed Darwin personally, have long agreed to interpret Genesis as allegory and not literally. Despite everything, there are some irreducible creationists who interpret Genesis literally, and there is also its pseudo-scientific variant: Intelligent Design.
After this introduction (justified by what I will say at the end), let’s go to the differences. For me there are two essential differences between the evolutionism of Darwin and his more modern successors, and the evolutionism of the UB, and they are:
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Darwin stated that evolution was carried out through many small changes. Darwin did not have genetic theory at his disposal, so he could not explain, as evolutionists do today, the mechanism of these small changes. Today it is believed that alterations in genes are the basis of changes in species. Initially it was thought that these changes were random and that the environment and the struggle for life selected only the products of the best adapted changes to survive (natural selection). Today it is beginning to be believed that the environmental environment favors certain changes (those that will produce beings better adapted to that environment) are more likely to happen, rather than all changes being equally likely. In any case, science does not accept that evolution has a different orientation (a purpose) than that of producing beings better adapted to the environment in which they live.
The UB, for its part, speaks to us of sudden changes, of large, more or less abrupt leaps without “missing links”, a truly surprising revelation, and also tells us that evolution has a purpose: to produce human beings, that is, animals with ability to know and adore the Father. The planets are the nurseries and the cradles of certain spiritual beings that begin being material, then they are morontia and finally spiritual, to end up in the Corps of the Finality. Some beings (us) of whose transcendence and importance in the Father’s plan we still have no idea.
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Today’s scientific evolutionism accepts that life arose spontaneously as soon as marine chemistry produced the first complex cell capable of reproducing, interacting, and feeding itself (continuing to live and thus maintaining its chemical structure). Science ensures that life is the product of evolution itself.
The UB says clearly and categorically that life is planted on the planets and that it is bestowal of the Spirit. It ensures that life is something special and different from matter and that it cannot arise from it in any way. Only the Deity has life by itself and therefore, it is the only one that can transmit it.
(Allow me a parenthesis. An equivalent concept to this of life bestowal is mind bestowal. Mind, according to UB, cannot arise automatically and spontaneously in a mechanism or machine, it cannot arise, for example , in a robot no matter how highly evolved the program that directs it is. The mind is also a bestowal of the Infinite Spirit. I assure you that these two concepts are the most difficult for me to accept of all revelation.)
But the UB says even more about evolution. It says that the species of living things on a planet are carefully and intelligently designed. That life appears on a planet is the result of prior planning in the worlds of the Life Carriers, and that any change that is wanted to be made must be approved by the Creator Son himself, and that it is tested and retested in the laboratories of those worlds until that there is a guarantee that they are correct and useful for a new experiment in life. After the experiment, the results are exhaustively analyzed to draw conclusions for future life implantations.
Isn’t this creationism? Isn’t this clever design? I also have a hard time accepting this, but the answer is yes. The difference is that its implementation, its development on a planet, is not the consequence of a direct fiat from God, as described in Genesis, but of an evolutionary development promoted by some of his children. (We already know that the Father is a retired grandfather who, in his great love, has withdrawn from direct action and has handed it over to his children so that they may be/be co-creators, and only what cannot be delegated has been reserved: the granting of personality and Adjusters)
We should not identify beliefs in creationism or intelligent design with the creationists and defenders of Intelligent Design who assume such ideas as a consequence of a closed-mindedness that is not typical of intelligent beings. The current militants of such ideas defend them to justify religious positions typical of other times and other societies, and to oppose people opening their minds to the truth and using their abilities to search for it personally. Religion (true) is a PERSONAL search for the Father, and only that; any other “religion” is an attempt by some to impose their ideas on others and to justify their attitude in a supposed “law of God.” The UB is just the opposite.
Was Darwin wrong? Are evolutionists wrong? Well, according to the UB, yes and no. You see, the Father is an inveterate joker and sometimes he affectionately teases us with his physical laws. The ones who are wrong are undoubtedly the creationists and all those who interpret Genesis and the other sacred scriptures (Bible, Koran, etc.) literally and turn these scriptures into an object of worship supposedly given directly by God to humans.
¶ Antonio
Carmelo, you say:
(Allow me a parenthesis. An equivalent concept to this of life bestowal is that of mind bestowal. The mind, according to UB, cannot arise automatically and spontaneously in a mechanism or in a machine, it cannot arise, for example, in a robot no matter how evolved the program that directs it is. The mind is also a bestowal of the Infinite Spirit. I assure you that these two concepts are the most difficult for me to accept of all the revelation.)
I also think about these things, and the truth is that, in my case, I find it difficult to accept the explanations of science. Because… Out of nothing, how can something arise (if there is nothing)?
You cannot give (or transmit) what you do not have. If I don’t have a handkerchief, I can’t give it.
If the grouped atoms do NOT have life, they cannot give it (how can life arise from them?)
If monkeys do NOT have intelligence, they cannot give it (how can they give birth to an intelligent being?) In fact they only produce little monkeys.
A free will personality can only come from a previous free will personality.
I say to myself (scientifically): There are only two possibilities. And of the two things, one. Either the universe had a beginning, or the universe has always existed (it is eternal).
If it had a beginning, it is because Someone took it out of nothing. A Someone who has being for himself.
But if it exists forever, then it has being by itself, Nobody has done it. But Nobody is equal to Nothing. And nothing comes out of nowhere (or am I getting mixed up?)
Is it that this eternal universe works by cycles, cycles of construction and destruction, over and over again, eternally?
A question for everyone: Did the universe have a beginning, yes or no? What is the proof that it had a beginning?
Eduardo: It seems that the existence or non-existence of God can NEVER be demonstrated (especially if God is infinite and absolute). I have realized very recently that what I have been looking for for so many years is NOT a proof of the existence of God, but a proof that the universe is intentional (which is something else. And if it is intentional, the rest we can deduce it in addition.)
Another question for everyone: Do we have proof that the universe is intentional?
From the last two links that Carmelo has indicated to us, I extract the following:
“Since there is a law like gravity, the Universe can and does create itself out of nothing”, Hawking writes. “Spontaneous creation is the reason that there is something instead of nothing (…) It is not necessary to invoke God to turn on the light and start the Universe”. Actually, Hawking’s position is not new. In the foreword to the first edition of his best-selling work A Brief History of the Universe, published in 1988, astronomer Carl Sagan writes: "_Hawking is trying, as he claims, to understand the mind of God. And this makes the conclusion of this effort even more unexpected: a Universe without borders in space, without beginning or end in time, and in which a creator has nothing to do.
And now observe what the UB says:
But the divine mechanism of the universe of universes is altogether too perfect for the scientific methods of the finite mind of man to discern even a trace of the dominance of the infinite mind. (UB 42:11.2)
Extremely complex and highly automatic-appearing cosmic mechanisms always tend to conceal the presence of the originative or creative indwelling mind from any and all intelligences very far below the universe levels of the nature and capacity of the mechanism itself. Therefore is it inevitable that the higher universe mechanisms must appear to be mindless to the lower orders of creatures. (UB 42:11.6)
I also liked this other opinion:
Battaner sees God “as a kind of reasoning that can come out of science”. «_I have, of course, many doubts, but I seem to glimpse a rational need for God. Not a god who punishes the bad and rewards the good, but a god as a scientific necessity. I am convinced by the contingent argument: the Universe could not exist, I could not exist… that is, we are all contingent; there must be something that isn’t.
The argument from contingent beings is from Saint Thomas Aquinas:
“Finite things do not have being by themselves. If they exist, they have received their being from Another (I do not exist by myself, therefore, Another has given me being). If that Other did not exist, things that do not have being by themselves could NOT receive it from anything and, therefore, would not exist. Thus, the Being that exists by itself, exists.”
¶ Rafael
I have carefully read your emails related to Stephen Hawking’s supposed statement regarding the non-existence of God, as well as the contents of the links that Carmelo has sent. And I believe a priori, although without objective grounds to support it, that all this paraphernalia is part of a well-devised marketing plan by the promoters of your book, with the sole purpose of making its sale favorable. And I assure you that I will not spend a penny on said book, although I will be willing to invest part of my time, which is enough to invest, in reading it as objectively as possible, if I have the opportunity.
Regarding the question of whether or not there is a God, I have my own answer; an answer I have not read anywhere, including The Urantia Book. A few months ago I commented on it to our dear friend Antonio Moya and now, in light of this propaganda paraphernalia, I am telling all of you.
But before I tell you about it, I will tell you that I believe that God has arranged in each human being all the necessary potentiality so that they can, first of all, feel the need for God; secondly, to look for it and, lastly, to find it. Another very different thing is what each human being does with that potentiality, by virtue of their total and absolute freedom to decide on that aspect. Therefore, I believe that this potentiality is a gift, a free gift given without any condition.
This gift must not be confused with faith, because faith, from my point of view, is not a gift, but rather the result of our effort -and consequently proportional to it- to find God.
And having said the above, I do tell you that the God I believe in, whose best description I have found in the UB, will never impose his presence or existence on anyone. That is to say, I maintain that God will never be an objective reality indiscriminately for believers and non-believers, but a subjective reality available only to those who, making use of the aforementioned potentiality and by virtue of their faith, end up finding it. In other words, God will be an objective reality but only for those who wish to find him and make the effort to search for him.
Consequently, I believe that it is true that God exists and will always exist for those who seek him, and I also believe that it is true that God does not exist and will never exist for those who do not seek him. And, therefore, it will be absolutely impossible for believers to be able to prove the existence of God to non-believers, as well as for non-believers to prove the non-existence of God to those who do believe. In fact, the intention on the part of believers or non-believers to prove the existence or non-existence of God only reveals the human will to impose one’s own belief on others, but fortunately, God’s will is not to impose oneself on others. nobody. Finally, dear friends, although throughout almost every paragraph I have used the word “believe” over and over again, I want to emphasize once again that obviously everything I say here has no value other than to be my own belief, my own faith, because knowing, I know nothing; but neither is it less valuable than the ridiculous claims of some renowned scientists who claim to prove that God does not exist.
¶ Eduardo
Creationism, evolutionism? I sincerely believe that it is relative and in a way they can shake hands.
When you expose that you do not understand or accept certain things that the UB talks about, I have to welcome you to the “baby club”. We have always said that the information that this book provides us is very large and that it is beyond our time and our understanding. Even the UB does not say that as we progress in our career we will experience new values, new meanings and new facts and always in a relative way. Right now we are witnessing the birth of our existence and as much as we want to “crush” or “squeeze” our little brain, we will not, for the moment, find an explanation for concepts as “complex” as God, the beginning of all things, the mind, the universe and its intentionality, etc. etc Let us be patient and be glad that for now we are not going wrong.
Antonio, I wouldn’t know how to answer coherently where the universe originated and what intention it has for its existence. Since the idea that I have of what I have been able to interpret from UB is simple and simple.
For me the universe had its beginning at the moment that the Father, the Son and the Spirit there in Paradise decided to bring into manifestation the central universe Havona. The intention of that first universe was to bring into manifestation the seven superuniverses (current age). The next intention, to manifest the First Level of Outer Space, which is already happening. And so on in order to bring to manifestation all the personalities that God has in mind. Something like making rooms or buildings for inhabitants. I imagine that this explanation has not cleared your doubts but it has allowed me to tell you what the UB represents and interprets on these two issues.
¶ Carmelo
My problem of life and mind bestowal is a consequence of my training. I had believed, somewhat following scientific ideas, that life was simply the grouping of certain more or less complex molecules; that it was not something different and “added” in some way to matter, but rather proper to it; that it was not necessary to grant life because life was active matter and that this activity was inherent to those certain groupings of molecules.
The same with the mind. I had studied artificial intelligence; he had seen how it is possible for machines to “reason” if they have the appropriate “software.” (One of the readings that I remember most fondly and with which I enjoyed the most was I robot, by Isaac Asimov.) The physical brain is, after all, that: a biological machine with appropriate “software”. And it seemed to me that the mind was simply the activity of such machines.
They are logical and coherent ideas, and my intuition told me that they reflected reality. My intuition in this case was wrong. (I trust my intuition a lot because it doesn’t usually fail, but in this one its failure has been resounding.)
It has no more importance, although it has served me for an interesting purpose. Why do we believe in what the UB says? It is a question that I have asked myself sometime, and sometime recently that I have read Gardner’s book Urantia: The great cult mystery (which by the way has disappointed me because of its lack of scientific rigor; I expected something more from Gadner). Well, I believe in what the UB says, even though it is contrary to what my intuition tells me, because its authors speak of certain things, such as the personal relationship with the Father, and highlight certain details, which, as I have lived, I know that they can ONLY know them and describe them as they do if they have lived them too; and if they have lived those experiences they CANNOT fool me.
I turn now to Antonio’s questions. He asks us “Did the universe have a beginning, yes or no?”, and I answer: yes AND no. Grandpa’s (very serious) jokes again. The UB tells us that Havona is eternal and Havona is part of the universe, it is material and it is in space. Therefore the universe did NOT have a beginning. The UB also tells us that the great universe and outer space (and who knows what else) had a beginning, that there is zero time; therefore the universe DID have a beginning.
It is not contrary to (scientific) logic or reason to hypothesize spontaneous creation, which is the same as saying that the universe does not have a cause, that it is the cause without a cause. Scientifically it is not an aberration.
Antonio also asks for proof that the universe had a beginning, but there is none; perhaps one day there will be, or it seems that there are, but today, the most that there are are verifications of some deductions that can be made from the scientific theory of the Big Bang (such as the escape velocity of galaxies as a symptom of of the expansion of the universe). And the UB says that there was no generalized big bang (at best, local big bangs, that is, small bangs).
Antonio also asks if there is proof that the universe is intentional. In this case and in my opinion, there is neither evidence nor will there ever be (by “evidence” I understand scientific information that irrefutably demonstrates facts that indicate without a doubt intentionality, although I seem to remember that the intermediates had a list of “evidence” of the action of the mind in the cosmos).
I insist on what I said before: science DOES NOT NEED God at all. What’s more, you shouldn’t worry about whether it exists or not. Theories (such as that of spontaneous creation) consistent with scientific logic and the scientific method can be formulated, without making any reference to God. And indeed, this is how it should be, in my opinion. Scientists who affirm that according to science God does not exist (or does exist) ARE NOT saying that according to the scientific method they have demonstrated the non-existence (or yes existence) of God. What they say is that ACCORDING TO THEIR OPINION based on certain facts and theories of science, they believe that God does not exist (or does exist); and this should be as clear to the speaker as it is to the listener. The existence of God is unprovable (another of Grandpa’s jokes); God’s existence can only be LIVED.
The field of science is facts, that of philosophy is meanings, and that of religion is values. To Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.
I found the difference between faith and the gift of God that Rafa has commented very interesting; I will think a lot about her. And the fact that God respects personal will so much that it will never be an objective reality that is imposed indiscriminately, leaving no room for doubt and personal choice, seems simply brilliant to me. Thank God, the existence of God is unprovable. Thank you, Rafa, for helping me get to know our Father a little more.
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/