(April 18, 2014 at 2:46 am)Freedom of thought Wrote: A common answer to this question would probably be: "God is omnipotent, he can do anything, he willed it into existence". So what if he's omnipotent, and so what if he willed it into existence? How could he 'will' it into existence?God is a supernatural being, and therefore we can let our imaginations run wild. Notice that theistic explanations of stuff like the worldwide flood and Noah's ark tend to run aground (cough) when they try to minimize the supernatural aspects of it. Applying magic without restraint is awesome; trying to fit it into the world we actually live in gets tricky if we start to ask questions.
Example: the Incredible Hulk is an awesome concept as long as we don't ask why Bruce Banner didn't die from radiation poisoning, or why he doesn't wear shirts made from the same stretch fabric as his pants, or why he doesn't just burn up from the energy expenditure of suddenly gaining or losing 1,700 pounds of mass in a matter of seconds.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould