Science is big. Really big. Most of us who are trained in science are actually trained in a relatively narrow discipline — and as we progress through our training, our scope gets narrower and narrower. What that means is that there are a lot of questions about science that any one scientist doesn’t know the answer to, so the phrase “I don’t know” really ought to be a common part of our lexicon.
Lawrence Krauss, a physicist, got into a debate with Stephen Meyer, a creationist, as Larry Moran describes. Meyer cunningly got the debate unto the track of molecular biology and the human genome — a subject in which Krauss is far from familiar, and which Meyer doesn’t understand either (either that, or he maliciously misprepresents it). Krauss got stuff wrong and conceded some major points to Meyer.
I’ve been in these situations. I’ve mentioned before that when I get into arguments with creationists, when they discover that I’m a biologist, suddenly they switch gears and start confronting me with all this stuff about physics, or geology, or astronomy — the last thing they want to do is talk to me about stuff I know inside and out. And here’s what I do.
“I don’t know,” I’ll say. I might have some general knowledge and know a source, so if they’re asking me about, say, cosmology, I’ll add, “but I’ve read this book by Lawrence Krauss or Sean Carroll or Vic Stenger, maybe you should go read it, too.”
And then I’ll suggest that, since I know a fair bit about evolutionary biology or development or neurobiology, maybe we should focus on those areas…unless, of course, they’re conceding that they have no disagreement with the consensus in those fields.
I have my debate requirements, and I’ll refer you to point number 3:
The question to be debated must be specific: none of this “Does god exist?” crap. Come up with an addressable topic that can be adequately covered in an hour of back-and-forth.
And point number 4:
The question ought to be one I’m competent to answer: I’m a biologist, not a physicist, so don’t bother asking me to debate the implications of dark matter or the age of the earth (actually, that last one would be stupid no matter who you ask: it’s a settled issue.) Get someone else in the appropriate field.
Krauss apparently walked into a debate titled “What’s Behind It All: God, Science, and the Universe”*, which was stupid to begin with — and then he let Meyer steer it into subjects that Krauss knew little about, but which Meyer was an expert in pretending that he did.
Don’t do that.
Krauss is a good, enthusiastic speaker and I’ve found him informative and entertaining when he’s talking about his area of expertise — cosmology. He should stick to that. I have approximately zero interest in hearing him lecture about biology, or philosophy, or Russian literature, and I think any of those would be a painful experience. Unless he’s got some secret passion for Dostoevsky, maybe.
*Actually, I’d also like to know how Meyer got away with focusing on the human genome, which really isn’t exactly “the Universe”, and why he would be talking about an object, “God”, which the Discovery Institute claims to have no opinion on.
I guess I’m a bit odd, as if I speak with an astrophysicist, I would confine the discussion to the weather and gasp, astrophysics. The weather, out of simple common human experience, assuming that the weather’s doing something unusual and the rest, as conversation with a subject matter expert.
I’d likely insert my infamous flat earth joke, gravity twists it round, which would generate robust laughter (trust me, it works every time. Something about neutron star gravity being required).
If I’m speaking with a biologist, I might even make a creator joke and reference the platypus (honestly, I think that animal is remarkably cool, down to the DNA kind of cool).
I’d also ask our resident biologist, “Aren’t you amazed by how much can be built with a mere four letters?”, yeah, RNA also helps, but a bit differently. I’d not ask a biologist about physics, as whyinhell would I ask a subject matter expert in one field anything whatsoever about fields that they have little training and experience in? That’d be like asking my physician about contract law, where that conversation would be well addressed to an attorney.
To do otherwise is to waste a professional’s time and as I loathe my time being wasted, I’d not waste other people’s time.
People who are Scientists™ and are also PublicFigures® should master the art of debating.
What?
I was going to do a but I missed by that much.
Heh, married for 34 years and hence, have no personal life.
Hence, I was first.
Well, that’s my lie and I’m sticking to it. ;)
Maybe the crebots need to be asked what science they specialize in. What ever they answer, point out it is really in obfuscation, as they never back up their claims with solid scientific evidence, and just argue from handwaving, smoke, mirrors, and mental masturbation.
In casual conversations when god is mentioned, I ask the other person to first describe their god (otherwise we won’t know what we are talking about). They usually finish up talking about a baby’s smile and sunsets.
Many years ago I read a statement about the mathematician David Hilbert, suggesting that he was the last mathematician that understood everything there was to know about mathematics up to that time. I don’t know if that was true or not, but I suspect that the latter part of the 19th century was the latest date at which people had any hope of being so widely read in science and mathematics that they had some knowledge of every field, and knew something about developments in those fields. Krauss of course has no chance of this, nor does anyone else. I would think that anybody going into one of these debates would recognize the trap and refuse to participate.
I think that *this* post should have been named “Slimy balls” instead of the last one.
@williamgeorge, wouldn’t have been more accurate as “Slimy Bastards”?
Shifting the topic of conversation away from one of the debater’s knowledge is pretty damned slimy and deceitful.
If any advice should be given, the advice of requiring the opponent in a debate to stay on the subject of discussion, not letting the scope creep ever outward into fields not well understood by either debater.
Still, it is a sight to behold when two debaters are debating something that neither one has any knowledge of. A depressing sight.
grumpyoldfart #6
re: baby’s smile and sunsets
Babies smile when they are shitting.
Spectacular sunsets are often caused by something to the west of you burning.
Take that, God®!
I had the pleasure of watching Ian Plimer, author of “Telling Lies for God” debate creationisms chief snake-oil salesman, Duane Gish. He had a “brains trust’ of people familiar with Gish’s tactics and was prepared for every sneaky trick. At one point when Gish made the claim that Evolution was “only a theory” Plimer donned rubber gloves and approached Gish with live electrical cables inviting him to test the theory of electricity. The debate was recorded for a science program but Gish was so mortified at being shown up that he sued to stop the tape being broadcast.
See, from what I’ve seen recently, the “I’m going to throw 40 PRATT pseudoscience facts” method of debating has largely started to recede.
Most of the debates I’ve seen recently are more of the “fuck arguing facts or any specific god, I’m arguing deism and pre-sup” method.
Vivec, I’ll argue deism, from a deist’s perspective. *Something* triggered the big bang, I postulate someone triggered it.
That said, it could have just been a major galactic teracollider, which spun up black holes to collide, triggering a vacuum metastability event, which created our universe.
Not a micromanaging deity that smites randomly, ignores major problems and overall, is a prick.
Absence of evidence merely means that we’ve not yet found a test. ;)
I was more referring to the whole “christian apologist ostensibly attempting to defend christianity but switching to a deistic argument when debating” thing.
To point to one of the golden oldies, people like Ray Comfort will spend most of his time citing scripture, but when he debates he’ll suddenly become a “well there might be some kind of creator” deist.
Vivec, I’ve loved many a scripture of faith on how to get along with other humans, I’ve loathed the excuses to not actually abide by such scriptures.
Or, as a wonderfully wise man once said, “I like your Christ, I don’t like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”.
I have two yearnings that could never be fulfilled, meeting Einstein and meeting Gandhi. Both, far more tolerant than I am, both, far more patient and I’m infamous for patience.
I’m rather certain, that we’d both benefit from one another’s experiences and knowledge.
But then, I’m a lapsed pacifist. I’ve even suffered a significant gravitis shortfall. ;)
I’m not particularly big on Christ either – he supposedly did a fair amount of bad things and handed out some really poor advice for every good thing he supposedly said.
That being said, I’m pretty specifically referring to the phenomenon of hardline fundies abandoning all of that and becoming wishy-washy deists the second they hit the debate stage.
And where was the moderator in all of this?
Debates are really good for finding out who’s the better debater.
They are shitty methods for finding out who’s right and has the better arguments.
It’S like in education:
There’s a good test format for most things:
-Multiple choice are good for testing factual knowledge
-Essays are good for testing writing and reasoning skills
-Oral exams are good for testing speaking skills. They are not good for testing any of the above the same debates are not good at testing those.
I’d love to get into a debate about Russian literature! Who’s up for a conversation about socialist realism?
Carl Sagan once noted
(“Venus and Dr. Velikovsky” in “Broca’s Brain”)
Which goes to show that some pseudoscientists can seem very impressive in subjects that one is not familiar with.
wzrd1:
You don’t need to assume there was “something” which “triggered” the existence of the universe. It’s not a gun, there’s no trigger, and nothing needs to pull a nonexistent trigger. I realize the handwaving was just bullshit and wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. But you would have to take it seriously, if you were sincerely offering an actual naturalistic explanation that stands any chance of being correct. What would it even look like, if you were putting a coherent (much less believable) option on the table? Definitely not like that.
Anything like that, whether or not it has anything to do with a supernatural being, will run into a bunch of fundamental problems. How is it that a “galactic teracollider” exists? How about “black holes” or the “vacuum” or a perturbation of that vacuum, or whatever it may be that’s acting as a “trigger”? Those kinds of questions can’t be answered by appealing to some other thing that already exists, giving you a story to tell about this thing over here causing that thing over there. That kind of story simply isn’t the kind of thing we need, to have an explanation of the existence of all of the physical stuff. If you want me to spot you a black hole or the quantum vacuum or alien civilizations or whatever, then I may as well spot you the existence of the whole universe (in any arbitrary state you like), in which case we’ve gotten precisely nowhere in coming up with an answer.
Sorry for the derail, but it is somewhat relevant, since it’s also something Krauss doesn’t seem to get, despite his expertise in cosmology.
@consciousness razor, work with the contents of the joke. :)
“Gasp! Why, you’ve – you’ve destroyed the universe!”
“Maybe we should casually wander off, maybe nobody will notice.”
“But, the universe, you’ve broken it and everything will cease to exist!”
“Yeah, but it’s 26000 light years away and is propagating at the velocity of light, I won’t even be dust by the time it gets here, so that means it’s another generation’s problem.”
And so, every generation after passed the problem forward to a new generation and soon, nobody cared about anything, as they ceased to exist.
consciousness razor @21: Krauss is Costello to Dawkins’ Abbott. Unfortunately, their comedy is unintentional.
I read the comments on Moran’s take on the debate.
frankly, I was quite disappointed with his responses in the comments there.
he seems to think that:
-most of the objections to teaching intelligent design in the US have to do with the consitution
-there actually IS extant, published, science establishing a basis for ID.
what happened to Larry?
there IS NO SCIENCE behind ID, there actually simply CANNOT BE, since by definition, they cannot even form a testable hypothesis to begin with!
can someone who knows Larry better comment?
say you have a glass filled with baking soda, and you pour vinegar into it.
there’s obviously a reaction.
what triggered it?
a radioactive atom decays.
what triggered it?
it’s not that it isn’t an interesting question, per se, but is it relevant to the better question:
why did the reaction happen?
why did the atom decay?
lol. If there was a proper moderator… the Discotute would not have volunteered to participate.
hell, frankly, that ALSO should be a requirement of any debate anyone is ever considering, aside from all other issues….
got to have an impartial, properly trained, moderator.
and that, is a very very rare thing to see indeed.
there IS NO SCIENCE behind ID, there actually simply CANNOT BE, since by definition, they cannot even form a testable hypothesis to begin with!
yawn…..
Confirmation of intelligent design predictions
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1659-confirmation-of-intelligent-design-predictions
and this is particularly fun:
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1795-the-dover-case-a-good-argument-against-id?highlight=dover
Q. Do you know employ principles and concepts from intelligent design in your work?
A. I do.
Q. And I’d like for you to explain that further. I know you’re prepared several slides to do that.
[…]
A. Sure. All right. I work on the bacterial flagellum, understanding the function of the bacterial flagellum for example by exposing cells to mutagenic compounds or agents, and then scoring for cells that have attenuated or lost motility. This is our phenotype. The cells can swim or they can’t. We mutagenize the cells, if we hit a gene that’s involved in function of the flagellum, they can’t swim, which is a scorable phenotype that we use. Reverse engineering is then employed to identify all these genes. We couple this with biochemistry to essentially rebuild the structure and understand what the function of each individual part is. Summary, it is the process more akin to design that propelled biology from a mere descriptive science to an experimental science in terms of employing these techniques.
[…]
So it was inoculated right here, and over about twelve hours it’s radiated out from that point of inoculant. Here is this same derived from that same parental clone, but we have a transposon, a jumping gene inserted into a rod protein, part of the drive shaft for the flagellum. It can’t swim. It’s stuck, all right? This one is a mutation in the U joint. Same phenotype. So we collect cells that have been mutagenized, we stick them in soft auger, we can screen a couple of thousand very easily with a few undergraduates, you know, in a day and look for whether or not they can swim.
[…]
We have a mutation in a drive shaft protein or the U joint, and they can’t swim. Now, to confirm that that’s the only part that we’ve affected, you know, is that we can identify this mutation, clone the gene from the wild type and reintroduce it by mechanism of genetic complementation. So this is, these cells up here are derived from this mutant where we have complemented with a good copy of the gene. One mutation, one part knock out, it can’t swim. Put that single gene back in we restore motility. Same thing over here. We put, knock out one part, put a good copy of the gene back in, and they can swim. By definition the system is irreducibly complex. We’ve done that with all 35 components of the flagellum, and we get the same effect.
(Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added)
Oh hey, and actual IDer. Didn’t you all evolve into presuppositionalists once biologists stopped humoring you?
PZ Myers :
or the age of the earth (actually, that last one would be stupid no matter who you ask: it’s a settled issue.)
Wow. Is it ? How so. Please explain.
Literally every argument for a young earth is a PRATT.
Didn’t you all evolve into presuppositionalists once biologists stopped humoring you?
well, lets see what reason you’ll have to humour me here…. shall we ?
Nah. I’ll humor IDers when your field actually manages to shift the scientific consensus.
No, you explain your ideas with the scientific evidence, not from ID sites, which are religious sites. Dover v. Kitzmiller.
ID is child of creationism, and your designer is your imaginary deity.
Otangelo Grasso
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
followed by a list of lies he thinks are actually science.
yay you?
go ahead moron… in your own words, without using a copypaste from the Discotute… tell me what the testable hypothesis of intelligent design is.
go on.
tell me.
you know, there is a reason the Discovery institute’s own journal hasn’t published any actual science in it, and hasn’t actually even published any articles in years.
if it was so easy… Elsevier would already have bought the rights and created a spate of journals on “Intelligent design”.
but go figure… that never happened… because they would all be blank pages.
… Hell, I will be any amount of money you can’t even figure out what ” IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX” (interesting those morons chose to all caps that, btw) even means.
Behe has a diff definition than Johnson, who has a diff definition of it from Dembski, who has a diff definition than Wells…
etc.
BECAUSE THEY ARE MAKING THIS SHIT UP.
hint?
made up shit is not testable.
… quotes from a discussion about a court case, instead of from a scientific journal.
fun for whom?
you enjoy painting yourself as a complete idiot?
..but hey, since you brought up Dover as if it was something important to you…
tell me, what was the Judges conclusion about whether ID was science or religion again?
LOL
man, you must be fun at parties. everybody likes a clown.
Which horse is more dead? The bacteria flagellum or the eye?
Which horse is more dead? The bacteria flagellum or the eye?
none of these arguments have been refuted by proponents of naturalism. Or you might explain how the signal transduction pathway in the eye evolved ?
Otangelo Grasso #40:
You might want to explain how the statement “I don’t know how [X] occurred” naturally leads to the statement “God did it.”
Also, when quoting from someone else’s comment:
<blockquote>Paste quoted text here</blockquote>produces:
Otangelo, #40
I have a high school level knowledge of biology. I also have very limited understanding of chemistry, physics, geology and cosmology. My shortcomings in those areas do not even begin to imply that an arbitrary* deity some ancient people invented is involved in making the eye and flagella. When you have evidence that such a creature exists, present it. That’s how things work. All of scientific knowledge could be shown to be wrong and you creationists would still be standing exactly where you are: with no contribution to our understanding of life.
What I do have a good grasp of is how to reason, and that is sufficient to keep me from being tricked by old fairy tales. Try it sometime.
* I suppose it’s not truly arbitrary. The believers of the popular deities conquered, raped, killed and tortured more widely than others.
Shorter Otangelo: Magic Man done it!!!
Saad, are you sure it was Magic Man? I thought it was the Lord Silent Bob.
When you have evidence that such a creature exists, present it.
plenty of it :
125 Arguments for God’s Existence
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1276-125-arguments-for-god-s-existence
and, no. The argument of irreducible complexity is not based on ignorance.
Is intelligent design and irreducible complexity merely an “argument from ignorance?
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1720-is-intelligent-design-merely-an-argument-from-ignorance#3320
If you were asked how much change do you have in your pockets. You can put your hand in your pocket, look to see how many coins are there. If there is no loose change, it is NOT an argument from ignorance to state, “Sorry, I don’t have any spare change.” You didn’t guess. You stuck your hands in your pockets and looked, and scientifically deduced the quantity to be zero. The same is true with inferences in regard of biology or biochemistry. After the search has taken place, the prediction that biochemical systems are unable to emerge by natural means is confirmed. Hence, there is no argument from ignorance.
Shorter Otangelo: Magic Man done it!!!
And your alternative is ? ” We don’t know ” ? LOL….
There are no non-presuppositional arguments for the existence of your imaginary deity. Philosophy and theology are bullshit.
You need solid and conclusive PHYSICAL evidence, evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. We are waiting for your EVIDENCE. You lose, as always,, when you back phantasms….
Nerd
you need PHYSICAL evidence in order for me to believe that your thoughts exist. Have any ?
Still waiting for your SCIENTIFIC evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature that refutes evolution…You lose, as always.
kkkk….
Macroevolution. Fact, or fantasy ?
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1390-macroevolution#1982
Micro evolution and speciation is a fact. Macro change from one kind to the other in long periods of time, the change of body plans and evolutionary novelties over a long period of time, is not a fact, not even a theory, or even a hypothesis. Its just fantasy without a shred of evidence. Show me some examples of observed facts; please provide and give me empirical data of a unorganized undirected unguided Neo-Darwinian accidental random macro-evolutionary event of a change/transition, where one “kind” can evolve into another beyond the species level (i.e. speciation) , like a organism randomly changing/transition into a whole entire different, new fully functioning biological features in an organism, the emergence of new complex functions, a new genus or higher rank in taxonomy, with the arise of new body plans, What is an evolutionary novelty? A list of most-often cited examples include the shell of turtles (Cebra-Thomas et al. 2005), flight (Prum 2005), flowers (Albert, Oppenheimer, and Lindqvist 2002), the ability of great tits to open bottles of milk (Kothbauerhellmann 1990), the transition from the jaw to the ear of some bones during the evolution of mammals from reptiles (Brazeau and Ahlberg 2006), eyes (Fernald 2006), hearts (Olson 2006), bipedalism (Richmond and Strait 2000), and the origin of Hox genes (Wagner, Amemiya, and Ruddle 2003); Ernst Mayr, a major figure of the MS, defined novelties as “any newly acquired structure or property that permits the performance of a new function, which, in turn, will open a new adaptive zone” (Mayr 1963, 602)something that we merely don’t have to just put blind faith in?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15612191
In the last 25 years, criticism of most theories advanced by Darwin and the neo-Darwinians has increased considerably, and so did their defense. Darwinism has become an ideology, while the most significant theories of Darwin were proven unsupportable.
biology is opening the black box, and demonstrating how organisms develop. We are slowly getting out of a state of ignorance in regard of what mechanisms determines cell shape, assignment of their planes of division, tendencies to move, directions and rates of movement, modes of differentiation into particular cell types, and cell death (apoptosis).
Where Do Complex Organisms Come From?
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2316-where-do-complex-organisms-come-from#4782
(a) membrane targets and patterns
(b) cytoskeletal arrays,
(c) ion channels, and
(d) sugar molecules on the exterior of cells (the sugar code)
(e) Gene regulatory networks
EVOLUTIONARY BIOSCIENCE AS REGULATORY SYSTEMS BIOLOGY 1
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2318-gene-regulatory-networks-controlling-body-plan-development#4804
Never in the modern history of evolutionary bioscience have such essentially different ideas about how to understand evolution of the animal body plan been simultaneously current. The first is the classic neo-Darwinian concept that evolution of animal morphology occurs by means of small continuous changes in primary protein sequence which in general require homozygosity to effect phenotype. The second paradigm holds that evolution at all levels can be illuminated by detailed analysis of cis-regulatory changes in genes that are direct targets of sequence level selection, in that they control variation of immediate adaptive significance. An entirely different way of thinking is that the evolution of animal body plans is a system level property of the developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) which control ontogeny of the body plan.
Irrelevant bullshit. My thoughts exist through physical processes in the wetware called the brain. Don’t need for imaginary deity to explain them. Your imaginary deity is irrelevant to science and reality. You must win with evidence.
Trying to use evidenceless philosophy and theology means you have nothing to show. You lost before you started and you are to stupid to admit the truth.
Definitely a copy-pasta artist, more sign of a liar and bullshitter….
Otangelo Grasso #45:
Is this what passes for logic in your neck of the woods?
“Sorry, I don’t have any spare change” is not the conclusion to be drawn from “There is no change in my pocket,” but is merely a restatement of it. Your supposed analogy is not analogous. “I don’t know how [X] occurred naturally” does not lead to the conclusion “therefore [X] cannot have occurred naturally.” The only conclusion to be drawn from a lack of knowledge (and the fact of an empty pocket is information, so knowledge is not lacking in your “analogy”) is “I lack knowledge.”
Otangelo, #46
Um, yes.
Well, technically, that would be I don’t know. We (humans) know quite a lot, and evolution is one of the many things we know.
But the fact that you consider “I don’t know” to be an unacceptable answer when one really does not know is classic skydaddy creationism.
Wow. All that word salad. To think that somebody put in all the time to toss it together…. it’s kind of pathetic, really.
Otangelo Grasso
Come to think of it, since, to you, “I don’t know” is a laughable answer, please explain to us, in detail, the exact mechanism(s) which your intelligent designer employed when zapping the world into existence. How, for instance, did mere the utterance of the words “Let there be light” bring photons into existence?
Otangelo, #45
I love how the last point in those concludes “God exists” without having anything to do with the previous (n-1) points.
I can grant you 1 through 10 with my eyes closed and number 11 still simply does not follow.
Geez. This is what passes for reason and proof in creationist circles?
“I don’t know how [X] occurred naturally” does not lead to the conclusion “therefore [X] cannot have occurred naturally.”
moral of the story is, we have checked, and naturalistic explanations are demanding in the extreme. Only biased and blinded people that base their epistemology on wishful thinking and bad will stick to naturalism. Its a proposition not based on scientific evidence, but on emotion and pressupositional positions.
Saad : 10. Only minds are capable to conceptualise and implement instructional information control systems transformed into molecular dynamics
11. Therefore , God exists.
Thats a perfectly logical and sound inference, if we describe God as a intelligent mind.
Daz wrote : please explain to us, in detail, the exact mechanism(s) which your intelligent designer employed when zapping the world into existence.
What’s the Mechanism of Intelligent Design?
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1794-how-exactly-did-god-create-the-universe-and-the-world-what-process-was-involved
It’s still worth considering how a mind might act in the world to cause change. The answer is we don’t know. I sit here typing. My mind, mediated by my brain, is putting words into a computer program (designed by other minds, by the way), using my fingers to type. But how does it happen, really? Where does the impulse to press one key instead of another come from? And how do these words, products of my mind, communicate to others through their computer screens? We can’t really say how our own minds work to interact with the world, yet we know they do. It is our universal, repeated, personal experience that shows us that our consciousness interacts with our bodies to produce information, but exactly how it works is not known. So why should we expect to know how the agent(s) responsible for the design of life or the universe may have worked? The theory of intelligent design does not propose a mechanism (a strictly or necessarily materialistic cause) for the origin of biological information. Rather, it proposes an intelligent or mental cause. In so doing, it does exactly what we want a good historical scientific theory to do. It proposes a cause that is known from our uniform and repeated experience (to borrow a phrase) to have the power to produce the effect in question, which in this case, is functional information in living systems.
Yep, presuppose a deity, engage in handwaving, smoke, and mirrors, and then say “god, QED”.
I’m waiting for our IDiot to run a scientific argument, starting with definitions, how to calculate irreducible complexity that scientists agree is correct and gives the right numbers. Then how this can’t come from evolution by showing the pooferies (the 3-D printers that build the life forms for new species). I suspect I’ll be waiting a long time. The bullshit seems strong in this one.
Saad : But the fact that you consider “I don’t know” to be an unacceptable answer when one really does not know is classic skydaddy creationism.
Limited causal alternatives do not permit to claim of ” not knowing ”
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1810-limited-causal-alternatives-for-origins
Paul Davies, the fifth miracle : At that time, the very notion that life might spring into being spontaneously from a nonliving chemical mixture was greeted with fierce criticism from theologians, and even from some scientists. The eminent British physicist Lord Kelvin dismissed the whole idea as “a very ancient speculation,” opining that “science brings a vast mass of inductive evidence against this hypothesis.” He stated unequivocally, “Dead matter cannot become living without coming under the influence of matter previously alive.” This left only two alternatives: either life has always existed or its origin was a miracle.
Its not justified to claim ” we don’t know “, when a limited range of alternatives and options are available. In regard our our existence, there are basically two, which can be divided in
1. A intelligent causal agent
2. Natural, blind , random forces
The second option can be based on physical necessity, or random chance.
So we can resume the possible causes just and exactly to 3, namely:
chance
design
physical necessity.
since chance, and physical necessity won’t cut the cake, the best explanation for our existence is design.
Pretend you wake up in the morning and there’s a birthday cake sitting on your kitchen table, and it just happens to be your birthday. What do you think? You ask yourself, “Where did this cake come from?” There are only a couple of possibilities, theoretically. It could have just materialized out of nowhere on your kitchen table coincidentally on your birthday. It could have just “poofed” into existence. I guess that would be in the realm of theoretic possibilities. Or maybe a great, hot, wet wind blew through your neighbor’s kitchen gathering up a bunch of ingredients and kind of accidentally baked a cake that landed on your table. The fact that it happened on your birthday is a coincidence. I guess that would be “possible” too. The cake could have come out of nowhere, or could have just assembled itself by chance. Or the other alternative would be that a person baked the cake for you and dropped it off in the middle of the night.
Now here’s the trick. When faced with limited options you don’t have the liberty not to believe something. If you reject the idea that somebody baked the cake for you, you must assert in its place that the cake either materialized out of nothing or formed itself by accident. When you reject one option you are asserting an alternate option when all the options are clear.
Do you see that? When you are faced with just a limited number of choices, if you reject one choice you’ve got to opt for one of those that remains. So the question is, which option makes most sense?
IDiot, still waiting for YOU to prove your idea. Forget trashing evolution. So far, you have presented to
EVIDENCE. Ergo, you have nothing but religion to peddle. Fuck off.
Nerd: Definitely a copy-pasta artist, more sign of a liar and bullshitter….
Basic rule of thumb in debates with atheists is: When they start calling you names, it means they have nothing left to debate against your argument. It also means: The creationist just won the debate. Say hello to papa Krauss.
Nerd : So far, you have presented to EVIDENCE.
” There is no evidence for God ” Really ??!!
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1440-there-is-no-evidence-for-god
http://www.shenvi.org/Essays/RightQuestions.htm
In our search for God, where we start will often determine where we end. If you search for God only to show yourself that He is not there, then you will not find Him. But if you seek him like a starving man seeks for bread or a thirsting man seeks for water, then the Bible is filled to the brim with promises that you will find Him. Or more correctly, that He will find you.
“For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” – Luke 11:10
Why does the universe exhibit the ‘appearance’ of ‘fine tuning’? How did life originate? Why does biology exhibit the ‘appearance’ of ‘design’? How did human consciousness come into being? Where does ‘free will’ come from? Why are humans so contradictory in nature? Why do transcendent moral truths exist? Why do we believe human life to be precious? Why do pain, evil and injustice exist in our world?these questions ARE in my view best explained through creations, and ARE therefore evidence for for creationism , and intelligent design. There are just personal preferences of explanations and world views for all that exists. So rather than say, there is no evidence for God, you should say : Intelligent design and creationism and theism are not my peferred explanations, for whatever reasons.
Rool number one, when it gets to God : don’t ask for proofs
Rool number two : when it gets to God : don’t ask for proofs
Rool number three : when it gets to God : don’t ask for proofs
the right philosophical question is : what is the best explanation for our existence.
there are not proofs, wheter God exists, or not. To proof , God does not exist, you would btw. need to be all knowing. You are not, therefore, you cannot proof either Gods inexistence.
Yawn.
Even if “irreducibly complex” was a useful and consistently defined term, the fact that it’d be unlikely for such structures to arise without conscious input doesn’t mean that only a conscious entity could produce them. In addition, you have to actually establish the existence of said conscious entity before you can posit it as the more likely cause.
Otangelo Grasso #60:
To quote you #46:
“LOL” indeed.
(Could you please use blockquotes when quoting people, or if that’s too much of a strain for your mind, at least put quotes in “quotation marks”?)
It doesn’t. The universe is much more amenable to the production of black holes than it is for life.
Good question. The fact that we don’t have an answer doesn’t presuppose a god.
Because we’re really good at recognizing patterns where there aren’t any. Purely natural processes could lead to our current biology.
Good question. Not knowing the answer doesn’t presuppose a god.
I’m not convinced free will actually exists in any ultimate sense.
Because we’re evolved apes in a complex universe.
They don’t.
Because we’re human beings and don’t like dying.
Pain responses are an evolutionary adaptation. Evil and injustice are abstract definitions put on purely natural phenomena.
Otangelo Grasso
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
.
Some people prefer
<b>bold</b>
bold
or
<i>italic</i>
italic
.
In any case, these help separate your own writing from quoted material.
Please do not continue to refuse to use these simple conventions.
Otangelo Grasso
FYI
Quoting Christian scripture as evidence is a really bad idea, here.
Otangelo Grasso #65:
And, I assume, you are expert enough in all these subjects to make an informed judgement? I salute you. You would seem to have doctorates in cosmology, quantum physics, geology, virtually all branches of biology and several branches of philosophy. You’re a super-polymath! Bravo!
“The true sword is able to cut chains of generations, which is to say, the creation myths of your enemies. Look on me as the exiled garden. All else is uncut weed.” – Vivec, Sermon 23
My scripture is cooler.
Otangelo Grasso @65:
No idea, and we might never know.
Quite so. The right philosophical question in this God-soaked culture is “is it helpful to our understanding of the universe to even consider such an entity?”. I see nothing helpful or necessary, and the clinging to such a notion seems more an outcome of brainwashing from birth than a coherent hypothesis.
Otangelo Grasso:
We can do better than that. Here are over six hundred of them.
But wait, we only needed a single good argument. So that doesn’t help. Hmmm….
Only minds can [blah, blah, blah, etc.], therefore Bugs Bunny exists. Because we describe Bugs Bunny as an intelligent mind.
Not valid. Next?
Oh, but we describe Bugs Bunny as having a special kind of mind. We assert that there are things that only the Bugs Bunny type of mind can do, which would not be possible for a mere human mind. Therefore, our assertions are true (and Bugs Bunny exists).
Also not valid.
Why do people make these stupid mistakes? You can give us a statement that your argument is valid, after you’ve provided a valid argument which doesn’t rely on the truth of that statement. It’s not really an important thing to advertise, because people are (generally) smart enough to figure it out just by looking.
What you don’t get to do, without arguing circularly, is put in something to the effect of “my conclusion is true” as one of the fucking premises of your dumbass content-free argument.
Vivec:
That is saying it appears fine tuned, for black holes instead of for life (or for anything else). But I don’t see how a serious argument for that would work either.
@74
My bad, there’s a clause omitted there. I meant to put “Even if fine-tuning was a valid inference”
Vivec @68:
Oh, it certainly exhibits the appearance of fine-tuning, depending on how you define ‘fine’. The amount of importance ascribed to that appearance varies a lot, depending on taste, agenda, etc.
While we’re at it, I recommend Steven Weinberg’s A Designer Universe?, which addresses some (not so) fine-tuning arguments. Take away about the cosmological constant, e.g.;
@76
Well, at the very least, it’s up to interpretation. I find nothing particularly “fine tuned” about the universe.
I’d agree with the statement that black holes are evidence for the existence of a god (or anybody else) who wanted to create black holes. It’s not compelling evidence, and it doesn’t get us far at all. Anyway, that’s different from saying the universe is fine-tuned. You might say we can observe black holes (indirectly) or that there’s plenty of evidence for them, but not that that you’ve gotten any evidence that specific physical conditions or laws were set up to produce black holes.
John Hawthorne addresses points like that in this pair of talks: part 1 and part 2 (about 45 min each, and there are short Q&A videos for both in the PhilosophyCosmology channel).
Vivec, the universe isn’t tweaked for us, but we’re naturally tweaked to operate in the universe. It’s the lowest energy path to continue living.
So, it’s the universe that tweaked us, not the universe being modified for us. The latter is laughable.
Otangelo, #65
You think angels are real.
I can’t take your opinions on any of this seriously.
By the way, here’s another good video of Hawthorne talking about fine-tuning. He makes similar points a little more directly and concisely, without going through lots of more elementary stuff.
Inane question. We’ve been over this many times the years I’ve been hear. You if don’t presuppose a deity, you can’t get to the need for a deity. Everything can be explained as natural processes, including “fine tuning” and evolution.
The bible is falsified as a scientific document when the early geologists went looking for evidence of the one-time-all-world-kill-everything-but-what-is-on-one-ark, and they never found that evidence. So the bible is nothing but mythology/fiction, designed to hold the tribe of Israel together.
Quoting the babble is prima facie evidence that your arguments are religious, not scientific. And you must use science to provide evidence for your imaginary, like an eternally burning bush that can be examine.
Everything can be explained as natural processes, including “fine tuning” and evolution.
Haha. Blind faith at work much ??!!
You forgot to mention the origin of life. Also a easy go through naturalism ? LOL
If i were PZMyers, i would be ashamed about the educational level of his followers and audience.
What a mess here.
sorry. forgot to quote.
Regarding “fine tuning”, I’d be much more open to the possibility of a god if you could show that life as we know it is impossible in our universe. The fact that life exists in a universe where the conditions exist for life (even if in just one minuscule corner) is not at all impressive. Any omniomni god worth its salt would surely create life in impossible conditions.
Only in fuckwits like yourself who believes in phantasms….You believe without evidence. And that will always be the case. Your deity exists only as a delusion in your mind. Scientific evidence says that….
Oh, and Otangelo Grasso, does your designer have a complaint department, or at least a suggestion box? There are really an amazing number of flaws in its design, even if we limit it to humans. I really hope this is just a beta version we’re working with.
Otangelo Grasso, since you have included religious thinking (like your whole presuppositional argument from your own incredulity), you lost the argument before you even started. You had to keep the whole argument purely scientific (from the scientific standpoint, which means no imaginary deities until existence thereof is established by scientific evidence, in order to even have your inane ideas considered. It also means you must cite the primary peer reviewed scientific literature as your sole source of evidence. You failed, and fell into the religion vs. science trap, and essentially admitted that is YOUR problem.
Thanks for attempting to play, but you need to learn not to embarrass yourself with a category problem, religion versus science. Science wins every time here at Pharyngula.
Otangelo Grasso
tsk
lying is a sin
The problem in debating with atheists is that, like the very people they ridicule, they hold a worldview that will not change no matter what evidence is presented.
The trick they use is simple. Anything presented that isn’t aligned with their worldview is discarded as not qualifying for “evidence”. This ensures their worldview is intact.
There are plenty of reasonable arguments for what could be considered evidence for God. Whether or not you agree with it, you still have to agree that it is a reasonable argument.
1. Morality. Ravi Zacharias formulated this argument the best, but to sum it up, if there is such a thing as objective morality, there is a moral lawgiver. If not, then morals are simply subjective. Someone could kill your child and steal your house, and it wouldn’t be wrong or evil. It would only be wrong to you. But if morals are subjective, your opinion is no more valid that the killer. But that’s not what we observe in life. Certain morals are held consistently through humans.
2. Origin of life. Science has no explanation or test to show how life began. That doesn’t necessary mean “God”, but it does mean that if natural processes cannot be used to prove how life started by chance, then supernatural processes is a possibility.
3. Origin of the universe. See #2. Whatever was the first cause of our natural universe must by definition be supernatural.
4. Jesus Christ. The historical record of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is overwhelming. But fear not, you are in good company. Even in the face of Jesus’ miracles recorded through 4 gospels, people still chose not to believe. The power of denial is a powerful thing.
5. Prophesies of the Bible. This falls into the category of evidence that atheists dismiss. The fact remains, hundreds of prophesies made in the Old Testament later came true. Many have to do with Jesus, many have to do with historical events, places, cities, kings. If the proof is overwhelming that a prediction was written in XX BC and it came true 40 or 100 or 200 years later, that evidence has to be taken seriously. In fact, many of the prophesies in the Bible were ridiculed until archaeology proved them true. The names of peoples, kings, cultures recorded in the Bible were later proven entirely correct by archaeology.
6. Our DNA. DNA is information. Nothing that has valuable information comes about randomly. There is always a creator. Ironic that atheists spend their time sending out signals via SETI, in the belief that the signal they send out is proof that humans are intelligent. At the same time, they deny that the signal encoded in our DNA is due to intelligence, but all from random process. DNA is exceptionally dense and complex computer code.
The preponderance of the above evidence tips the scales in the balance of the existence of God. Does it prove God exists? No. But if you were playing poker and got dealt AA 24 hands in a row, would you assume the game is rigged, or it was just random chance? The evidence would be overwhelming that it was rigged. If not, I have a house game I’d like you to join ;)
Edward M. Yang
Which version of the bible do you use?
What language is it in?
Edward M. Yang, so Buddhists have no morality? Much of the PRC’s billion and change people have no morality, just whatever each individual accepts as morality? The United States of America, being a secular nation, has no morality beyond the individual subjective?
How fascinating! Ignoring the majority of the population on the planet having their own morality codes and not using a holly bauble.
So, if life is found, be it extant or extinct on Mars, the almighty Bob whammyed life, then became incompetent and let that precious life go extinct. I am uncertain I’d be interested in meeting such a callous asshole.
As the origin of the universe is magical in your view, static electricity causing lightning must come from Thor? What if the universe was created by a lab accident, is that clumsy lab worker, despite being extinct, now god?
The bible cannot be used as a definitive history source, it was thrice mistransliterated, edited for content twice and selected for version thrice. Meanwhile, the Roman Empire, a documentation heavy empire, lacked any record of life, birth (during a census, no less!) and execution of anyone resembling Jesus in the time in question. How amazing ineptness that his record disappeared, but no other record disappeared. Of course, during that time period, Essenes were crawling out of the woodwork and their teachings were astoundingly like what is in the bible, a non-historic document for the reasons mentioned above.
Prophecies coming true, spoken in code speak and reconned into fitting. Did you know that the book of Revelation was an obscure book that no bishop wanted to include in the bible? Emperor Constantine wanted it included and what the emperor wants, the emperor gets. It’s good to be the king!
Oh, interestingly, in Hebrew numerology (no other may apply), Nero’s “number” was 666.
DNA is information for encoding proteins. That encoding changes fairly frequently, it’s how microorganisms can sicken us, despite an adaptive and innate immune system. Indeed, if we’re so special, why is so fucking much of this planet incessantly trying to kill us? Speaks of unintelligent design!
Don’t get me started on the reproductive/entertainment center being next to the sewage disposal plant or babies plopping out on mom’s turds, that’s a very unintelligent design!
Want to know only one thing that could be construed as grounds for claiming that there’s not only a creator, but one with a sense of humor? Monotremes. That said, one can far better match the fact of their existence with their being in a remote location for well over 60 million years.
Whereas your version requires the laws of physics to be astonishingly variable, where all measurements have shown them invariable.
Edward M. Yang,
Re morality:
God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
You’re familiar with that story, right? Of course in the end God gave in, but its message was clear: Do what I say or else. That is the basis of morality in the Abrahamic religions. That is not, cannot be objective, and it isn’t even moral.
And later in the Bible the selfsame god committed or ordered its followers to commit rape, slavery, murder, torture, war, infanticide, genocide, and if its followers refused, they faced its wrath.
And the followers of that god continue to this very day to commit those crimes in the name of that god.
If your god really existed, it would be the most immoral monster in the known universe.
What non-religious evidence?
Evidence, not opinion, refuted that. The babble is mythology/fiction, and pretending otherwise is delusional (un)thinking.
Why, unless you delusionally presuppose an imaginary deity? If you don’t do that, natural causes work….
Non-existent. Quit lying. It makes you look dumb.
Written mostly after the fact to make it look good. You have no idea of the problems your babble has….
Except life and evolution of life. Pay attention. You seem educationally deficient, and prone to belief in phantansms. Get rid of problems and embrace millions of papers of scientific evidence….
Edward M. Yang #91:
If a god presents itself, I’m pretty damn sure that I will follow the evidence, and will come to believe a god exists. No god has so far presented itself.
I’ve never been presented with anything but rhetoric. Rhetoric is not evidence.
Nope. Argument—a synonym for “rhetoric”—is not evidence.
Which merely shows that although all morals are subjective to the surrounding culture, there are some behaviours and views which are so much a part of the human psyche that they are common to all cultures. Furthermore, if morals were inculcated into all humans by a single being, then there would be no differences between the morals of different cultures.
So what you’re presenting is a tentative hypothesis based on “maybe.” And as I said to the other godbot, the only conclusion one can draw from “I don’t know” is that one lacks knowledge.
If something exists, it is natural. If a god exists, then that god is natural. “Supernatural” is a nonsensical term.
There is no such evidence.
1: None of the gospels contain first-hand accounts.
2: A miracle is an extraordinary thing. It therefore requires extraordinary evidence. I’ve seen none.
If prophecies are possible, then the future must be fixed. If the future is fixed, we have no free will. If we have no free will, then we cannot choose to sin or not to sin. Discuss.
Several Old Testament passages were later twisted into so-called prophecies and given meanings by Christians which are completely at odds with their authors’ intended meaning. Also, I have no problem with people and cultures mentioned in the Bible proving to have been real people and cultures. None of this provides a single jot of evidence in support of the existence of the gods worshipped by any of those people and cultures, including the Judeans and the Israelites.
Your assertion does not make it so.
The fact that some information is artificially created does not mean that all information is necessarily artificially created.
Okay, please show me the odds on life occurring in a universe. In fact, show me the odds on a universe existing. Then show your working, and how you arrived at whatever numerical values you assign.
I just got ninjad by What a Maroon @94, but yeah, logged in to mention there is significant scripture to show god often considers killing a child and stealing property okie-dokie by him when he feels like it. The christian handbook lays out orders ‘directly’ from god to kill entire populations, including children, and taking what is theirs. I’m betting much of that collateral damage would have felt it was wrong to them even though their killers felt sanctified by their imaginary friend.
Edward M Yang, are you conceding your moral lawgiver is actually subjective?
Wring the believers in most popular deities didn’t rape, pillage and kill more than others. They just said God told them to. They were only following orders.
One more point about morality: to the extent that certain moral values are widespread, even universal, that’s an argument against your (or anyone’s) god(s). Most human societies that have existed have never heard of Yahweh or Jesus or Mohammed (in fact most existed before those myths were created, or in places too far away to hear about those myths), yet somehow they have stumbled on similar moral values. It’s almost as if they didn’t need your god to figure things out.
What is that I spy upon the horizon? Why, ’tis a Gish Gallop! An infant one to be sure, but all the more precious for it’s diminutive stature.
Not sure if that actually follows, but also not interested in arguing it. The point is that you need to provide evidence that there is objective morality. I’ve never seen any.
Sure.
Nope. In a subjective moral system it would still be wrong and evil because it has harmed my child, and harmed me.
Nope. It would also be wrong to anyone with a functioning sense of compassion.
I don’t think you know what subjective means. The statement: “Killing my child has harmed my child, and harmed me.” is not an opinion, it’s a statement of objective fact.
Bad grammar aside, Sure. I assume that this is your evidence that there is an objective morality. I’m not sure that it is evidence of such a thing. You need to provide a definition of what you mean by objective morality. And assuming you can do that, and that it does indeed match what we observe universally in human behaviour, you’re still going to need to provide evidence for your assertion that that consistency come from some divine source.
One thing is clear: your assertion that these arguments are conclusive is easily demonstrated to be false.
I’m not sure why you (all the yous concerned) concede that there are morals “held consistently through humans”. That’s pure BS. It is routine for many cultures to tolerate people killing their own children for crimes as serious as, say, being born a girl, or being born at a bad time in the opinion of the dad, for no-god’s sake. Rape, pillage, torture, death has long been deemed the right of the victorious, of the powerful, of the wealthy. There are no morals “held consistently through humans”. It is true morals of most societies tend to protect “us” against “them”, so many acts are acceptable when perpetrated against “others” but unacceptable when perpetrated against “one of us”, but that’s about as far as I’d go in granting any consistency to human values through the myriad of societies that have formed, evolved and often died.
One more point…
Stipulating a compelling reason to believe that a god exists, why should that god automatically be the god of the Bible?
I don’t see anyone conceding that point.
If the conditions were impossible, life would be impossible. ( sic ) ……..
Ah, so you concede that your designer is constrained by the laws of nature. Which means that it cannot exist in all places at all times (that is, be omnipresent) nor can it have perfect knowledge (that is, be omniscient). It cannot move faster than light, it cannot overcome the laws of motions or gravity (oops, sorry Joshua). It consists of some combination of matter and energy. It cannot exist outside of time. It is, in short, subject to the same laws of physics as the rest of the universe.
And so, if it exists, it is part of the natural world, and so is subject to scientific investigation.
So, to paraphrase Nerd, show us the evidence that this natural designer exists, or shut the fuck up.
I’ll say one thing about life under impossible conditions.
It wasn’t so long ago that our first of now many extremophiles were discovered, thriving under “impossible” conditions.
Now, we’ve found them under high pressure and temperature, through the high radiation environment of the melted Chernobyl reactor and everywhere in between.
From 600 feet in the ocean being the deepest possible depth for live to survive to our deepest trenches supporting life.
Our problem was assuming life was impossible, even while we realized that we didn’t know how the four “letters” of DNA could assemble stable proteins under such extreme conditions.
As a famous actor once said in a film, “Life finds a way”.
Well, save perhaps, in the corona of the sun. ;)
What a stupid fuckwitted show of nothing. Evidence life occurred, probability =1. Evidence your imaginary deity occurred, ZERO.
You will never win, as you lost when you believed in phantasms, not evidence….
Nerd, I’ve seen what could be described as phantasms out of the corner of my eye. Shadowy appearing things that my brain interprets as human shaped.
Given my age, conditions in the building at the time and overall health, I figure it may have been vitreous humor detachment and liquefaction.
It was the most probable thing to give a shadowy blob out on the periphery of my vision at that age. The event also corresponded with mild flashes and additional floaters, supporting that theory.
There is one thing that stinks more than getting older, not living to get older. :)
Sigh. My 109 is referencing Maroon’s 103.
Yeah, because humans can recognize that certain things are detrimental to them and their loved ones. If you hold certain things – maintaining the quality and longevity of human life among them – constant, certain moral norms are sure to follow. Sure, those aren’t “objective” in any ultimate sense, but so what? Humans are a communal species and have developed certain conscientious feelings to maintain the community. No god required.
“Supernatural” is a poorly defined term. Anything that manifests and affects the world qualifies as natural under any normal definition.
See above
The bible alone cannot prove supernatural claims any more than spiderman comics prove superhero claims. That certain elements in the bible are historically accurate does not prove any more than the fact that certain elements in spiderman comics are accurate.
The writers of the new testament were aware of old testament prophesies. The NT tries its hardest to shoehorn every prophecy possible to add credence to the jesus claim, and if you think there’s no way someone would lie to aggrandize their supernatural claim, you’re painfully naive or lying.
PRATT. That and the whole “information theory” nonsense is a shitty argument by analogy. Not a whole lot more to say about it.
Only if you interpret even the most tenuous observation as being evidence of god.
wzrd1#108
Yep, I know. I’m no spring chicken myself. Truman was president I when I was born.
Jesus fulfilled one ‘prophesy’ by sending his boys out to steal a donkey.
Jesus fufilled another prophecy by saying something during the crucifixion – the Gospel states clearly, right then, that he said it in order to fulfill a prophecy.
There was a prophecy that he would be called Emmanuel – he wasn’t.
There was a prophecy that he would be dead for three days and three nights. It worked out to a night, a day and another night, but everbody counts that as a fulfilled prophecy.
Jesus himself prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem to leave no stone on another. The Western Wall still stands.
Many places in the Old Testament, the word “prophesy” could be replaced with “singing”, and make more sense. King David was criticized for prophesying poorly, seconds after singing. And other places, it could be replaced with “preaching”.
The need for prophesies is psychological, and is not really in the bible as much as some folks want. Don’t forget that God his ownself prophesied that Adam and Eve would die in the day of the deed, if they ate the apple. The serpent prophesied they would not die then. They ate the apple, and lived many years.
The argument below about the fine tuning of the universe counts as well for the origin of life.
There are dozens of these very precisely balanced constants in the universe necessary to support life. While some can be significantly changed if balanced by equivalent changes in other constants to compensate, it is quite clear that the ratio of those parameters that would work vs. those that would not work is an extremely tiny fraction of all the possible ways which these constants could have been set up – which would not have allowed for the support of complex life.
Of course the classic argument is given in response to such anthropic arguments that one shouldn’t be surprised to find these fine-tuned features in the universe because if these features weren’t fine tuned, we wouldn’t exist. Therefore, the fact that we exist means that such fine tuning should only be expected by the mere fact of our own existence – not at all surprising.
However, this argument is like a situation where a man is standing before a firing squad of 1000 men with rifles who take aim and fire – – but they all miss him. According the the above logic, this man should not be at all surprised to still be alive because, if they hadn’t missed him, he wouldn’t be alive.
The nonsense of this line of reasoning is obvious. Surprise at the extreme fine tuning of the universe, given the hypothesis of a mindless origin, is only to be expected – in the extreme.
Abiogenesis is impossible
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1279-abiogenesis-is-impossible
We know that intelligence is able to create high-information containing codes, like books, computer codes, and complex machines and factories. We observe in the natural world organisms made by the same principles, namely codified specified information, and irreducible and interdependent molecular machines and cell factories, while the only possible natural mechanisms, namely chance or random chemical reactions, do not have this broad range of intelligence-like capabilities. Its safe therefore to conclude, that the origin of life is best explained through a intelligent creator, and not well explained through natural mechanisms. This is not a inference based on what we do not know, commonly called ” argument from ignorance”, as proponents of naturalism frequently like to argue, but it is a conclusion based on what science has discovered in the last few decades about how cells work, and how they are build up. The only rational explanation for the origin of cells, and life, is creation through a intelligent designer.
According to Dembski and Borel (Dembski, 1998, pp. 5, 62, 209, 210).
specified events of small probability do not occur. Dembski estimated 10^80 elementary particles in the universe and asked how many times per second an event could occur. He used the Planck value of 10^45. He then calculated the number of seconds from the beginning of the universe to the present and for good measure multiplied by ten million for 10^25 seconds in all. He thereby obtained 10^80 x 10^45 x 10^25 = 10^150, or more exactly 0.5 x 10^150, for his Law of Small Probability to eliminate chance
Otangelo Grasso is banned. The reason is simple: he is the most godawful boring creationist I’ve ever encountered. All he does is copy and paste, regurgitating the same crap over and over again. If you try to engage him, all you’ll get is glop copied from his “reason and science” page.
He doesn’t think. He dispenses his holy writ.
Otangelo Grasso #115:
All this argument says is that the existence of life is (possibly) surprising. I’d be surprised if I won the national lottery on Saturday (especially since I don’t even buy tickets for it), but it would be silly in the extreme to note the fact of me winning it and then claim that the concept “Daz winning the national lottery” is a nonsense. In short “surprising” and “nonsense” are not synonyms.
Abiogenesis is impossible
And neither are “impossible” and “improbable.”
In other words “We don’t understand how this occurred, therefore god.” Which, as has been pointed out many times on this thread, is not a valid argument. You don’t get to invent an explanation from whole cloth, merely because you don’t understand something.
Uh. Yes, an argument from ignorance is exactly what it is.
And once again with feeling: The only conclusion we should draw from “We don’t know” is that we lack knowledge.
That word “improbability.” I do not think it means what you, Dembski and Borel think it means.
And as for “specified,” they’re being disingenuous. Sure, if we specify that “Daz will win the lottery,” the odds are very much against us. How about if we specify that “someone will win the lottery”? Changes the odds somewhat, don’t it. No one is pointing to a single molecule in the ancient ocean and specifying that that particular molecule is about to take part in a reaction which will lead to self-replication.
Since we don’t know how common universes are, we have no way to assign odds for or against a randomly chosen universe have this set of properties or that; and this includes the formation of a self-replicating organic molecule.
Oh bugger. f5 is your friend, Daz. Remember this.
No one uses ‘surprise’ or the lack thereof as evidence that the universe wasn’t fine tuned by some deity. You are misrepresenting the argument. Should anyone be surprised at a creationist straw-manning?
[Spoiler alert!]
No. No you shouldn’t.
Even if Demski’s numbers are accurate, and I’m not conceding that they are, you can’t get from that elucidation of probabilities to “My god did it.” That is an unjustified conclusion. It’s an argument from ignorance. You still have to provide evidence that that god did it.
Mind you, I know there’s no point in arguing with you about this. Your religion, with its instance that
faithcredulity is a valid means to determine truth, has crippled your ability to recognise good epistemology.Ninja’d by Daz…twice. (shoulda refreshed)
Edward M. Yang @ 91
Would you care to elaborate on this? Because as stated, it makes no sense whatsoever. Objective means something like “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions”, but if these laws are solely the creation of a mind, how can they be anything but subjective? They are opinions!
Or are you using some other definition of objective, like, say, “universally applicable”? If so, show your work, please.
Snoof, #121
You just asked a creationist to show their work.
Please continue to breathe.
Saad @122
Hope springs eternal. There’s enough ex-creationists out there that at least some of them must be willing to engage intellectually, instead of just copy-and-pasting blocks of text.
FossilFishy@ 109,
Sorry, I didn’t read your comment carefully enough.
And sorry to oualawouzou @101.
Condominio El Shamah, if by saying wombats, you’re speaking of evidence based science, with all of that measurement, peer review and more measurement, rather than reading a thrice mistranslated bronze age book, stolen liberally from several surrounding cultures, I’ll stick with evidence based science.
The book gave me nothing that has served to keep me alive, whereas I’m currently alive courtesy of evidence based science.
Prayer won’t fix aortic dilation, surgery will if it advances to an aneurysm. My blood pressure won’t be controlled by a mass, it’s controlled by a calcium channel blocker and a hell of a lot of beta blockers. My blood pressure, tachycardia and aortic issue are caused by autoimmune hyperthyroidism, which all of the prayers in the universe won’t fix, antithyroid drugs control it.
As the majority of faith healing today for major illness has not only resulted in death, but with children dying, resulted in successful prosecution, I’ll stick with evidence based science and not a thrice mistransliterated, stolen set of faiths consolidated incorrectly into a bible.
Besides, Noah had nowhere near the drama that Gilgamesh had.
Tomorrow (Pharyngula time) is Good Friday.
Is that why the woodwork is crawling?
I’m just stunned by the number of PRATTs that got thrown out. Like, at least get with the times and jump on the Presup bandwagon rather than pushing creationist lines from the 80’s
How typical for you atheists to ban / suppress / silence any argument which presents strong evidence against your dogmas. I suppose you’d ban Dr. Stephen Meyer too if you had the chance, just like Stalin did in his genocidal purges of any biologist who dared teach Mendelyev’s genomics in the former USSR.
You’ve just discredited yourself as a biological “impartial scientist”. You should have your funding rescinded for malpractice.
Meyer, like all other IDiots, would have to put up, or shut the fuck up, with evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature. NO CREOBOT/IDIOT has done this to date. His philosophical/theological musings are not, and never will be, scientific evidence.
Wow, way to be like over a month late to the party.
To be published in a peer reviewed journal, one has to have evidence that can stand up to peer review, creationists and intelligent design types have no such evidence to present.
Nope, not evidence for your claim. You have nothing. You know you have nothing. Honesty and integrity, which science, but not religion, has, requires you to either provide solid and conclusive SCIENTIFIC evidence for all your claims, including the existence of your imaginary designer, or to shut up about your claims. Anything other than the required evidence or not shutting up, means you aren’t doing science….
Oh, and your website isn’t, and never will be scientific. It is theological/philosophical, and is dismissed as nothing but your irrational musings.
Haha, nice.
jeez
What has happened to the quality of chew-toys here?
And why can they never do HTML?
He’ll be back.