Did God use evolution to create?

No one can deny this as a possibility, but to be an acceptable scientific theory one need to apply a little more rigor -- like by thinking through the logical implications of what we should see in the fossil record is 

God used natural processes such as those of evolution to do his creation.

First, though, let me point out that the idea that God used evolution removes the need for God, and makes him an unnecessary complication in evolutionary theory, and therefore a violation of the scientific rule of avoiding the addition of unnecessary complications.

How could we tell the difference between a fully "natural" process and one that happens under divine direction?  

One might be with the demonstration of something that happened in the history of life that could not possibly have happened naturally.  Many possible such events suggest themselves, but there is always the problem that simply because we don't know exactly what happened does not mean it did not happen naturally.   The evolution of flight or of the eye have been in the past mentioned as such events, but now the evolution of these things is well understood.  In other words, such an approach raises the danger of resort to the "God of the gaps," resorting to God when all that really can be said is, "We don't know." It is like those who resort to alien visits to "explain" UFOs.  

More important, there is the problem that the history of life looks for all the world like a sequence of chance events that after many slips and falls finally resulted in us.  (This is looking at it from the normal creationist anthro-chauvinist perspective.)  Life is a history of extinctions, mainly, with few species having living progeny.  Such imperfection does not fit well with God's perfection, although of  course the problem can be rationalized.

The biggest problem I have is that involving God achieves nothing to help the biologist, and is in fact merely a sop to traditional ideas that date from pre-scientific times.

Nausea.  That's the word, nausea.
Trump, Putin, Syria, nausea.

Contaminating Mars

Should we find traces of life on Mars of a significantly different sort from what we have here, that will be the really important thing, because two occurrences of independent life origination would indicate life is common everywhere.  The coincidence would otherwise be huge.

However, if what we find uses DNA or even the RNA code or is otherwise like us, then we will have issues to sort out  before reaching conclusions.

It is entirely possible that life evolved first on Mars, as Mars would have reached inhabitable status sooner than the earth, being smaller and cooler, and then got transported to the earth via meteors.

I think that unlikely and that it is more likely that there never was life on Mars and life originated on Earth.

Still, if we find traces of life on Mars, we want to be able to say which was the case.  If the life is very much like the life on Earth, does that tell us the first scenario (above) is true or that we managed to contaminate the traces or perhaps we can expect life everywhere to use the same chemistry?  I would think it extremely important that every precaution against contamination be taken.

Am I happy?  No.
Am I unhappy? No.
I just am, and that is enough.

How is it that mankind came to the idea of God?  I think I would like to speculate, with the understanding that whatever it was it happened in prehistory so there is no way we can really know.

I don't buy the "awe" theory nor the "seeking for explanations" theory.  I think these entered the story after the fact.

When we are in high school biology, the second or third chapter of our textbook tries to define what "life" is, and draws the distinction between life and non-life.  This is so ingrained into our culture that we take it for granted.  But it is a scientific observation, and prior to the eighteenth and nineteenth century the line was nowhere near so clear, so we had maggots appearing from non-life spontaneously, and so on.

Of course, we are also more than just "alive." We are also sentient (experience rather than just detect and measure) the outside world and our insides (sensations such as hunger), and, further, we experience feelings and desires (often driven by instincts, such as fear or anger).  Beyond being sentient, we are also conscious -- we "know" we exist and we know what we sense and we can infer all sorts of things.

We also assume pretty much automatically that everyone we know is similar to us, being alive, sentient, and conscious.  Why should we not draw a similar conclusion about the external world?  Why should we not just assume that other animals, and things like mountains and rivers and trees and forests and clouds and so on are like us?  To be sure they look different, and generally don't behave as humans do, but then each person is different too.

So, it would seem to me it behooves me, at a minimum, to try to get along with all these living, sentient, conscious things in our environment.  We have behaviors that indicate politeness, so be polite to the big tree and greet it properly, and when you kill an animal, ask its spirit for forgiveness.  Just as other humans we hurt can get revenge, the mountain may do so also (in it's mountain way) if we insult it or neglect it.  It may be slow witted, and may be very patient, but, regardless, it is in our interest to try to get along.

There is a passage in Cato's ancient book on agriculture about what to do if you have to remove a stand of trees -- it is important that the spirit or spirits of that stand be propitiated and taken care of.  For this he describes a set of rituals.

Now the Romans were not animists in the more "primitive" sort of way -- they had an organized pantheon of deities, but they also still had this assumption that there is consciousness out there other than just in ourselves.  A pantheon of deities with specialties would, with this frame of mind, arrive quite soon in human development -- things like the sky, the weather, the oceans, and so on, are universal and not local, and would naturally be seen to be far more important than the spirits of a stand of trees.

Then there would be speculation about where all this consciousness comes from, and inevitably the more introspective would consider a single "high god," not part of the world but its creator or sustainer.  In short, from the very first, human religion would be animist, "pagan," and monotheistic going in.  

My bedroom is cool, dark, and quiet
My bladder is well behaved
I do not snore or even breathe with any difficulty
I sleep well

Happiness from stupidity and delusion

Life is a prison.  Some of the bars are gravity, time (mainly aging), space, instincts, needs, sensations, past experiences, beliefs, the language we happen to be native to, our culture, our desires, brain chemicals, buzzing flies.

One does not escape most of these, and can only learn to handle and manage some of them, and even then happiness is not a reachable goal, only acceptance.  I think to be happy one must be both stupid and highly deluded.

Over a week and no rain
I can see the tops of the rocks at the bottom of the cistern
The crops are dying and the trees are stressed
Things are going to have to change

Blood and pork as food

I always kinda wondered what a herd of swine was doing in Nazareth.  I tend to see this as evidence the Gospel was written by a Greek who had only a fleeting knowledge of Palestine and its customs.  A herd of swine would have caused a riot.  Of course at that time "Nazareth" didn't exist anyway.

Religions have a tendency to make rules for the followers.  This serves a useful purpose in separating out the "true" believers from everyone else, and thereby gives the followers an excuse to feel superior to everyone else.  Food rules, what one wears, funerary customs, holidays, and on and on are of this sort.
Christians, for example, can eat pork, but cannot eat blood (two of the Jewish dietary restrictions, one of which got abandoned and the other maintained).  (Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think for some reason the Scots do consume blood products).  Of course it is impossible to avoid eating blood if one eats any meat, but this is justified by means of some pretty slaughtering rules (and cruel ones, at least in Muslim societies).

Neither pork nor blood is terribly good for adult males and women after menopause (but, then, again, neither is beef or whole milk), as they raise cholesterol and iron levels, but excellent food for children and anyone iron deficient.   Pork is about the best natural source of B-12 in our diet, and vegetarians should consider a supplement.

I think people migrating to new countries should, "Do as the Romans do," and not try to make themselves out as different in public ways.  It just generates bad feelings and mistrust all around, and is really quite arrogant and stupid.  What one does in private is of course different, and I don't think it a good idea for politicians to get involved, nor the law, if one pretends one has a free, secular, society.

There is drought in Cambodia where I am
Even though there has been rain, not enough
The rice is yellow
The reservoirs are almost empty

Turkey has unfortunately become an autocracy, with the coup attempt used as an excuse (makes one wonder how real the attempt was, as it was put down so easily).

I hope it will become a Mubarak type of autocracy, but it seems Atatürk's secular society is no more and an Islamist (although so far a moderate one, if such an expression is not a contradiction in terms). 

We forget what a similar government did to the Armenians, and Turkey has never faced the facts about it.  The Kurds may be next.  Of course there is now a de facto Kurdistan in northern Iraq and coming to be another in Eastern Syria.  The Kurdish sections of Turkey and Iran (which may be the reason the Iranians are also helping Russia with its attacks in Syria).  Of course the lunatic regime in central Iraq and part of Syria has to be removed first.

I see the Russians are helping with the human disaster in Syria.  The regime has already destroyed the country in its attempt to hold power, when plainly the vast majority of Syrians don't want them -- mainly with Russian help -- and now are carrying out more terrors (such as the bombing of a funeral today).

Some rambling thoughts from a very discouraged person, considering.

Burqas (Burkas) and monk robes

I find wearing special clothes or doing other special things to say "I am of this or that religion" somewhat distasteful and certainly arrogant and probably hypocritical.  If it is truly a free choice (not demanded by husbands and so on as a part of suppression of women) then it should just simply be ignored.  I treat the local monks that way, and have had some acrimony with a few about it, but at least in this case the special clothes and shaved heads are for the enforcement of poverty and humility, but I still find it not unlike praying loudly in public, and I know monks on whom it has this effect (making them think themselves superior to others).

There is an itch in the small of my back
A back scratcher is nearby
But I don't scratch it; I lay there in bliss concentrating on the amazing sensation as it ebbs and falls.

On or near a planet's surface, or in an accelerating box

Up and down oppose each other

In space there is no difference

Some monks came out and blessed my house today
So did a lot of the neighbors, I think maybe as a way to get a look-see
I didn't understand any of it, but I suppose my house now is blessed.

Religion as ideology

Religions all encourage fanciful and false ways of thinking and then reinforce it through fear and guilt and indoctrination, and, when they are in control, through law.  That doesn't automatically make them evil, since all ideologies do as much, and sometimes they do good things.  I think for the most part subjective reality is better than any belief system, though it is hard in a world so superstitious and ignorant to find one's way through the weeds.  

The Buddha identified one of the four sources of suffering as delusion, and he had it right.

It's almost lunchtime
and I'm not hungry
I guess I will again frustrate my cook