I'll never understand how someone otherwise so apparently intelligent can be so religious. Weird, the systems that we spent massive amounts of energy designing to precisely describe reality do that better than all the ones that we threw out along the way!
> I'll never understand how someone otherwise so apparently intelligent can be so religious.
Why not? Religious people believe that God is the Most Wise. Mathematics in nature attest to that attribute of God (as well as to other attributes of Him). An intelligent and religious person would recognize that, knowing it is God who came up with all the rules that keep the universe in balance.
I'll never understand why some people believe science and creationism can't go hand in hand.
Careful with your use of the word creationism. I guess you mean it in the sense of the very vague and general claim that “god created the universe”, but in my experience it is used to refer to a much more specific set of claims, such as “the Earth is about 6000 years old”, which is absolutely not compatible with science.
According to Wikipedia: 'Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation.'.
I choose my words carefully. I get what you're saying though, but I think that's more of a subjective matter.
And who/what created God -- e.g. who is God's God? And so on? It seems like humans trying to understand a hypothetical God are not unlike ants trying to understand quantum physics.
Why is there a need to insult anyone when it is you yourself that lacks understanding of the matter. We believers believe that God was uncreated, He is unlike His creation. Only created things have a creator. And God created time itself, so there is no before or after Him. He was always there. So there's no other answer than "that's impossible" to your question.
Of course this is hard to understand, but what would you expect? We can't even comprehend the tiny amount of His wisdom He has given us, let alone comprehend all of it.
If you're in the sahara desert you basically have all materials you need to create an iPhone. Not in a million billion years will there ever come an iPhone into existence by mere accident of natural forces in that desert, would there? Yet you believe that living things, which are not even comparable in complexity to an iPhone, were formed by a chain of coincidental events in the universe?
You can see God if you are willing to, unfortunately most atheists keep their hearts closed...
> If you're in the sahara desert you basically have all materials you need to create an iPhone. Not in a million billion years will there ever come an iPhone into existence by mere accident of natural forces in that desert, would there?
The evidence says that actually did happen. Abiogenesis and the evolution of human beings were just part of the process of producing an iPhone through a "mere accident" of natural forces over the course of the last 4.5 billion years or so. Producing an iPhone was never the goal, of course–natural processes don't have goals. But it was one of the consequences.
If God can exist without being created, so can what you refer to as "His creation". This idea that the visible universe requires a Creator, who in turn does not require a Creator, is arbitrary and capricious.
You ascribe beliefs to me via stereotype. I don't "believe" in the Big Bang Theory. I'm content knowing that I don't know. It doesn't strike me as rational to speak in such absolutes about subjects which are beyond human comprehension. To each their own.
> It seems like humans trying to understand a hypothetical God are not unlike ants trying to understand quantum physics.
> You ascribe beliefs to me via stereotype.
Not that I feel offended by the first quote, since I don't believe in a hypothetical god, but how am I the one stereotyping you? If you don't believe in God, which you made clear in your first comment, then you disbelieve in Him. So that means you're an atheist, right?
Or am I misunderstanding the concept of being an atheist? To each their own of course.
If you want to understand why some people believe that science and creationism don't go hand in hand, then studying epistemology would help you do that. Most introductory texts will cover what you need.
Sounds like I got something new to learn during this lockdown, thank you. After a quick look at the wikipedia page on epistemology (very interesting), I'm not sure how this explains why some people believe that science and creationism don't go hand in hand.
A super super short version is about the question "how do you know X?" Its generally (although not universally) agreed that there are two types of knowledge, a priori and a posteriori. Roughly, in the first case, all you can deduce is implications from assumptions. For example, "if X and Y are true then Z is true." Such things don't require experience. The second case requires evidence gained from experience. Mathematical knowledge is of the first type, scientific knowledge is of the second type. The school of rationalism prioritizes the first type and the school of empericism emphasizes the second. That the universe was created by an omnipotent omniscient and benevolent god is not an emperical fact but requires some kind of a priori supports. Thats why you see so called proofs of god rather than scientific theories of god. There are other options of couree like mysticism, the claim that knowledge can be gained outside of these methods, or an emphasis on faith, that we don't take these things to be justifiable.
I probably butchered this but it gives you some starting points to research and hopefully shows a model of the debate. Huge topic. Check out https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ as a hardcore crashcourse or check "crash course philosophy" on youtube for the relavent sections at a more HS level. SEP has entries on god, faith and mysticism as well as rationalism and empericism too.
