Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Angelo on January 5, 2012 at 8:44pm

What does that have to do with you claiming to KNOW that a god does in fact exist, and one specific god to boot? 

when the personal experience and knowledge points strong enough to a determined direction, faith and belief becomes knowledge and certainty. I know , God exists, even if i cannot prove it. 

And no, I don't have to take it on faith that the sun will come up the next morning. I can trust that the sun will most likely come up though.

that trust is faith. But the end of the world could be today night. You don't know......

 This is because we can observe the cycle of day/night and have seen that it is a steady pattern.

In the same way we can see Gods fingerprint in nature.

But what we do know, and from the observations we can make, we can trust that the sun will most likely rise as it did all the days before.

And so, in the same way, i see codified information in DNA, and can trust, based on empirical experience, that such code comes always from a intelligent mind, that DNA has a superior intelligent mind as origin. God has put his signature in each living cell.

Faith is belief without (and even in contrast with) evidence.

Faith has different significances.

 If you have an agreement that proves me wrong, I'll be embarrassed as hell, but I'll admit it and revise my stance.

So show me what convinces you more than a creator as origin of everything that exists, and we'll have a closer look at it. 

Permalink Reply by James on January 5, 2012 at 10:47pm

when the personal experience and knowledge points strong enough to a determined direction, faith and belief becomes knowledge and certainty. I know , God exists, even if i cannot prove it.

The problem with personal experience is that it can't be verified and it can be deceptive. When my cat died, I could have sworn that I saw him out of the corner of my eye or jump on the bed at night. I've also had times where I would see a shadow and my mind would play a momentary trick on me. Confirmation bias can be a huge factor too. If you believe X and are looking for a sign of X, your confirmation bias can rationalize any false positive into being convincing. Now with that said, I have no idea what your experiences were. I've heard some pretty unconvincing 'experience' stories in my day though (like the beauty of a sunset, etc). Mind if I ask what your experiences were?

that trust is faith. But the end of the world could be today night. You don't know......

No, it's not quite the same. As I said, trust is based off of something that has been found reliable, whereas faith is based off nothing or even against typically reliable info. True, neither KNOW what is coming around the bend, but trust is an educated guess when faith is a random shot in the dark.

In the same way we can see Gods fingerprint in nature.

People claim it's their god. But how do we know? Which god? Why a god at all? Why can't it just be the laws of nature/physics doing their thing? To me, that seems far more likely, and thus far the evidence agrees.

And so, in the same way, i see codified information in DNA, and can trust, based on empirical experience, that such code comes always from a intelligent mind, that DNA has a superior intelligent mind as origin. God has put his signature in each living cell.

Similar response to the 'god's fingerprint' statement... Again, why your god? Why any god? Where's the evidence? DNA is pretty amazing, but it's not divine, or even perfect. Odd to see DNA as a defense of god when it serves so well to show the story of evolution... something many theists contest ever happened.

Faith has different significances.

Sorry, I was referring to religious faith.

So show me what convinces you more than a creator as origin of everything that exists, and we'll have a closer look at it.

...sigh... I and others have said again, again, and again, that the simplest reason to reject the god hypothesis is to find the arguments and claims lacking. If the claims can't be backed up, or simply aren't convincing/make sense, that that can be enough to cross a creator off the list of plausible possibilities. I and others have also proposed possible alternatives to your god hypothesis, even though and alternative isn't necessarily needed to see another isn't so. 'I don't know' is a perfectly acceptable answer when we don't know for sure. But there are possibilities being researched and science marches closer and closer to an answer. Science has good ideas on some parts, and already knows others, but not knowing 100% yet isn't reason to ignore all this and toss it aside. But at the root of it, if the initial claim fails to meet it's burden of proof, it fails. To date, religion is in that category. Some of the stories are nice, but if a religious claim isn't up to muster, it's reasonable to set it aside. Stack myriads of discounted claims together and your left with a track record that shows the religion in question to be exceedingly unlikely.

Cheers!

Permalink Reply by Angelo on January 5, 2012 at 11:01pm

Similar response to the 'god's fingerprint' statement... Again, why your god? Why any god? Where's the evidence? DNA is pretty amazing, but it's not divine, or even perfect.

First you need to aknowledge that a creator is the best explanation, before go further and ask, which God that might be. If its not divine, present codified, specified and complex information, that does not come from a mind, and i will retract from this argument as evidence of Gods existence. I can advance your answer : you will NOT find a example. Nobody has. That is a FACT. Now. Did you not say you were open to change your mind based on scientific evidence ? Here you have one. If you were consequent and honest, that should be your turning point.... I doubt however, you were sincere.....

Permalink Reply by James on January 6, 2012 at 12:25am

First you need to aknowledge that a creator is the best explanation, before go further and ask, which God that might be.

The problem is that I don't see a creator as a better option. There's always the lack of evidence and the additional problems that explanation introduces. But the thing with lacking evidence and the additional questions is that if a god of some sort is the answer, then there should be answers to those questions now or in the future. But in the mean-time it seems rational to stay on the side that has a more plausible/evidenced explanation. If that tides were to shift in the other direction, I'd have to examine and possibly change my views.

If its not divine, present codified, specified and complex information, that does not come from a mind, and i will retract from this argument as evidence of Gods existence. I can advance your answer : you will NOT find a example. Nobody has. That is a FACT. Now.

As I've said about other subjects, I don't think it's divine because it hasn't been proven to be so. There are scientific ideas of how it might have arisen, but if we don't know, we don't know. If gods in general are evidenced, then in turn I'm skeptical to claims that that (or whatever god) did. DNA is amazing, no doubt! But the fact that it's amazing and sciences yet incomplete knowledge does not point necessarily toward a supernatural cause. With our knowledge of DNA we don't KNOW for a fact how it formed naturally, but we also don't KNOW it's a supernatural cause. Science does have ideas though. Theological explanation... there's nothing about DNA that says it had to be a god. Again, if something about DNA says it had to be the work of a deity, I'll change my mind on the natural explanation being more compelling. We agree that DNA is amazing at least. 

Did you not say you were open to change your mind based on scientific evidence ? Here you have one. If you were consequent and honest, that should be your turning point.... I doubt however, you were sincere.....

Yes I did, and I stand by the statement that I am open to the opposing view. I say that honestly and sincerely. However it's not a lack of a concrete natural explanation that is going to change my mind. I'm perfectly at peace with admitting that I don't know how X happened if the evidence is weak, conceptual, or non-existent. You see, what I need is a positive proof of god (any god) to abandon my current Atheism. All I ask is a positive, verifiable proof of a god. A god claim vs a lack of scientific claim isn't a proof of deity. But a proven god claim would be a very different story, and in fact, the proven god claim would then actually BECOME the scientific explanation. It would probably turn science on it's head, but so be it. If it's true, it's true and can be shown to be true. And in the end, isn't getting as close to the truth as we can what science is all about? So I'm sorry to disappoint you to inform that you haven't changed my mind. But it's not due to being tied to my stance, as you have stated you are tied to yours.

Cheers!

Permalink Reply by Angelo on January 6, 2012 at 5:09am

As I've said about other subjects, I don't think it's divine because it hasn't been proven to be so.

It is more than proven that it can come ONLY from a mind. The only alternative to conscious intelligent beings being able to produce codified information is the human brains......If that is not a proof, i don' t know what  a proof would be. You are dishonest with you claim, that evidence would lead you wherever it is. 

There are scientific ideas of how it might have arisen, but if we don't know, we don't know. If gods in general are evidenced, then in turn I'm skeptical to claims that that (or whatever god) did. DNA is amazing, no doubt! But the fact that it's amazing and sciences yet incomplete knowledge does not point necessarily toward a supernatural cause.

Our knowlege is complete. We know codified information can come only from a mind. That is empirically proven. That is a fact. 

. However it's not a lack of a concrete natural explanation that is going to change my mind. 

How about POSITIVE scientific evidence that points clearly to God ? As said, i did not believe in your sincerity, and you are proving you are not sincere. 

Permalink Reply by James on January 6, 2012 at 11:07pm

It is more than proven that it can come ONLY from a mind. The only alternative to conscious intelligent beings being able to produce codified information is the human brains......If that is not a proof, i don' t know what a proof would be. You are dishonest with you claim, that evidence would lead you wherever it is.

Some might say that it depends on how you define 'information', others may say that the information in question is a property of DNA, but none of that matters in this discussion. If we use information in the broadest sense, we call everything our brain and senses take in information. But information of the DNA type only seems to be found in relation with life. But still, how is it PROVEN that information requires a mind in order to exist? Abiogenesis explains the emergence of nucleotides (which when joined together make the structural portion of RNA and DNA). Early genomes were completely random, so they didn't have information. However, they could replicate irrespective of sequence, and a mutation that increased the rate of polymer replication (or any beneficial mutations) would be selected for, and negative mutations would be selected against. Mutation and natural selection would lead to increased information. Early nucleotides had the ability to store information and act as an enzyme. All this by chemical, thermodynamic, mechanical and electrical forces. So we already see a way that information can occur and form naturally, and that's just a start. So with that in mind, I don't see how anything says that information has been proven to require a mind.
(I simplified this section quite a bit, but more detailed info can be had online)

Our knowlege is complete.

You can't seriously be claiming that our knowledge is complete. Far from it. Personally, we learn something new every day. Collectively, there are constantly new discoveries, new inventions, and our knowledge will continue to grow.

As said, i did not believe in your sincerity, and you are proving you are not sincere.

How in the world do you take that and claim that it shows me not to be sincere? Seriously, I'd like to know. As I've repeated before, you don't need an alternative to discount a failed claim. But I also don't want to repeat history. You are saying that we should take your religious explanation as gospel if a natural explanation has not been definitively proven. Man has long used gods to explain things. When it was declared that lightening was the work of Zeus, should we have just said okay and never looked into it again? When it was said that sickness was the work of demons, should we have agreed and simply taken everyone that was sick and sit them in a pew? Wasn't it good that we looked into it further and found out the real reasons people get sick so that we could effectively treat them? Should we just have accepted that Pi = 3 and that bats are birds? Was it wrong to find out what the stars really are and where they really are? The list goes on... That's where I'm coming from. Just because you claim that X is the work of god now, doesn't mean that it's any more responsible to just agree and move on than it was then. Fact is, it's always been irresponsible to take a claim as gospel and never examine it just in case. So science doesn't have the answer to everything yet. Religions once thought they did have the answers to everything, but as time has gone on, claims and explanations have eroded away. True, there are some things where religions claim and answer, where science may only have an idea, or don't even have that much (at least yet). But science was once ignorant of many things that we now have a well established knowledge of. But if science doesn't know now, it doesn't mean we should take the religious explanation (How do we know which religion to go by?) as fact and never broach the subject again. Just as it was good that we still looked into the question of sickness; it's also good that we continue looking at other questions. Personally, this history of supernatural explanations being held false makes me skeptical to supernatural claims. But if it's true, then it should be provable. If the theist is so confident in his/her god, they shouldn't be against science, but rather for it. As I said prior, if the god hypothesis is true and provable, it would BECOME the scientific explanation. You say you know god to be fact due to your experience. I doubt gods due to not seeing evidence, contradictions, what I've learned, etc. But for some reason you assert that I'm not open to alternative views or a change of mind. I find that odd since I already changed my mind once. If I was that stuck on personal pride or whatever reason you're assuming shouldn't I still be a Catholic, or at the very least some other form of Christian? Yes, I'm an Atheist and we don't agree. That's not all that surprising since we seem to look at the world through different lenses. But I can most assuredly tell you that I am very open to the possibility of being wrong. In fact, I would love to be wrong about reincarnation. But the simple fact remains that I've seen no good reason to believe that represents an accurate portrait of reality. But you know what, that could all change in a second. My deconversion was very gradual, but I surmise that any real proof of a deity would much faster acting. I'd surely be embarrassed (especially if the proven deity was the one of my youth), but I'd accept that I was in error and face the world in light of this new (to me) knowledge. I've said that I'm open to change, all I need to do so is real proof.

Cheers!

Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 7, 2012 at 8:23pm

Hey Angelo,

 

You cannot PROVE gravity will always be consistent at all times. You can only observe that it’s consistently true every time. Nearly all scientific laws are based on inductive reasoning. All of science rests on an assumption that the universe is orderly, logical and mathematical based on fixed discoverable laws. You cannot PROVE this. (You can’t prove that the sun will come up tomorrow morning either.) You literally have to take it on faith. In fact most people don’t know that outside the science circle is a philosophy circle. Science is based on philosophical assumptions that you cannot scientifically prove. Actually, the scientific method cannot prove, it can only infer.(Science originally came from the idea that God made an orderly universe which obeys fixed, discoverable laws - and because of those laws, He would not have to constantly tinker with it in order for it to operate.)

 

Do you stay at home and never go outside because of a fear of being struck by lightening? It is possible. Why don't you stay home? Because the probability is exiguous. Everything you are talking about above inolves exiguous probability. Notice that it did mention the fact that the sun might not "rise" tomorrow (actually, it won't because the Earth rotates). Therefore, it is meaningless.

 

Now, juxtapose these odds with the odds of the existence of a being you cannot even define. There is no comparison.

 

- kk

Permalink Reply by Angelo on January 4, 2012 at 5:57am

You still miss the point. The fact that there are low odds doesn't prove something false, or require a supernatural cause.The thing is, you also have just as amazing odds for creating any specific planet that you want. What are the odds that a planets exactly like Venus form as such?

first of all. Venus does not be able to host life. Our earth does. 

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_hurben/univ.html

"Suppose you are dragged before a firing squad consisting of 100 marksmen. You hear the command to fire and the crashing roar of the rifles. You then realize you are still alive, and that not a single bullet found its mark. How are you to react to this rather unlikely event?"

'Of course you do not observe that you are dead, because if you were dead, you would not be able to observe that fact!' However, this does not stop you from being amazed and surprised by the fact that you did survive against overwhelming odds. Moreover, you would try to deduce the reason for this unlikely event, which was too improbable to happen by chance. Surely, the best explanation is that there was some plan among the marksmen to miss you on purpose. In other words, you are probably alive for a very definite reason, not because of some random, unlikely, freak accident."

"So we should conclude the same with the cosmos. It is natural for us to ask why we escaped the firing squad. Because it is so unlikely that this amazing universe with its precariously balanced constants could have come about by sheer accident, it is likely that there was some purpose in mind, before or during its creation. And the mind in question belongs to God."

But if you want to play the odds game, isn't you (or any god) also exceedingly improbable. At least for life on planets, we have date and at least one example. With gods, we have no evidence and no examples.

Permalink Reply by Jacob LeMaster on January 4, 2012 at 6:36am

Another bullshit argument that does not follow.. you need to imagine more along the lines of several million people walking around a large field with a bunch of piles of cow crap.. Sooner or later someone steps in it just like you just did with your horrible argument.. You apparently do not understand goldilocks zones..

Permalink Reply by James on January 4, 2012 at 9:41pm

That analogy fails when you consider that on the vast multitude of other planets that we know of, the shooters hit their mark, so to speak. Yet here on Earth (and possibly other worlds), the shooters perfect record has been broken. Every planet seems to have a different recipe, each unique to itself. If you were to enter a celestial pantry of sorts and randomly throw ingredients together, somewhere along the line you will eventually land on the right mix to make a great cake. Most will be wrong. Some very wrong, and some might be not quite as bad. But the odds of us ending up with our cake (Earth) is further magnified and exaggerated when we assume that the cake was the universe' intention. But from a naturalistic point of view, there is no intention. The odds of Earth being as it is are the same as Venus being exactly as it is, or Mars being exactly as it is. When you understand that us and our world aren't the express intention  of the universe, and that each planet is equally unique in it's own way, is it really any surprise that one out of the multitude has Earth's recipe?

Permalink Reply by Kir Komrik on January 7, 2012 at 8:26pm

Hey Angelo,

 

This entire post is now off topic and from here on every post you make is disingenuous if you do not address the proofs I've offered. This post relates once again to the third axiom. Please address that axiom so that we can advance this conversation.

 

- kk

Permalink Reply by Michael on January 3, 2012 at 11:23pm

Vast expanse of time is not a strong argument. This argument contents, if given enough time anything can happen, but in fact the paleo-geological  record is considerably punctuated with no signs of the trillions dead ends necessary for random mutation to give rise to the millions of species upon the earth even in a course of a billion years. In fact scores of living fossils exist unchanged from their inception upon planet earth:

Living Fossils - Organisms Unchanged After Millions of Years?

Alligators and Crocodiles - The crocodile family is thought to have lived 230 million years ago and remains virtually unchanged since that time.
Miocene Alligator Fossils
NOVA Online Crocodiles
Army Ants - date back 100 million years to the time of the dinosaur
Army ants defy evolution Cornell News 5/5/03 "army ants in essence have not changed a bit."
Cockroaches - dates back 350 million years
Mega cockroach News in Science - 08-11-2001
Coelacanth - Dates back 400 million years. The Coelacanth fossil pictured at right pre-dates the dinosaurs by millions of years, and was once thought to have gone extinct with them 65 million years ago until it was discovered alive and well in 1938.
Secular References
New 'living fossil' identified BBC News Sci-Tech 3/25/99
DINOFISH.com - coelacanth: The Fish Out of Time
'Living fossils' discovered off South Africa coast - December 1, 2000 CNN.com
Sulawesi Coelacanth - The Discovery
Creationist References
Living fossils like the Coelacanth by Don Lindsay
Crinoid or Sea Lilly have been found in sedminents dating back 150 million years and yet the modern living variety is virtually identical.
Living fossils by Joachim Scheven. Creation 17(3):52 June 1995
Undersea mountains yield living 'fossils' - June 26, 2000 CNN.com
Cycads date back 240 million years ago
Cycads Living Fossils
The Cycads Fossils of the Past Palm and Cycad Society of Florida
Dragonfly dates back 230 million years, but is unchanged in almost every detail
Emperor Dragonfly
The Energizer Bunnies of Evolution - Science Musings 1993-7-26
Ginkgo tree belongs to the family Ginkgoaceae which dates back to 270 million years. They were thought to be extinct until they were discovered in 1691 in the Japan.
Ginkgo is living fossil Ancient plants mirror modern trees. Nature June 2003
GINKGO BILOBA -The Ginkgo Pages -Index
Horseshoe Crab - Believed to have lived 300 million years ago, but remain almost identical today.
Horseshoe Crabs - A Living Fossil by Maryland Dept of Natural Resources
Nautilus - believed to have lived 500 million years ago, but remains almost completely unchanged
Ammonite Fossils & Ammonites Evolution by Discovering Fossils
Chambered Nautilus
The Chambered Nautilus the John Templeton Foundation
Laotian rock rat - New species from an ancient group of rodents thought to have died out 11 million years ago
New Pictures of 'Living Fossil' BBC News. 6 April 2006
Neopilina molluscs - Discovered living in the early 1950s these mollusks share a close relationship with fossils that existed about 400 to 500 million years ago.
Neopilina A Living Fossil by Clausen, C. D. Origins 3(1):56-59 (1976).
Salamanders
Salamander Origins Pegged To Asia National Geographic News 3/28/2001. A recent fossil find in China was dated to 150 mya, and is virtually unchanged from what we find living today in the neighborhood swamp.
Sturgeon is claimed to be 250 million years old, and living since the time of the dinosaurs.
Seven-foot living 'dinosaur' lurks in Oregon Eurek Alert 12/19/02
Tuatara is a lizard pictured at right which is thought to have been around longer than any other living reptile, and unchanged in over 200 million years.
Tuatara Reptile, New Zealand
Velvet Worm dates back 500 million years
Velvetworm a Living Fossil USDA ARS
Wollemi Pine - "Dinosaur Tree" - Not discovered living until 1994, this genus of trees dates back to about 150 million years ago and coexisted with the dinosaurs.
Jurassic pot plants on sale soon - BBC NEWS Science-Nature 9/25/2003

 

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