Biblical Miracles

the_eman

Take a look, it takes about 4 minutes to get to some science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCeSJw3Qzls

I am interested in knowing your opinions, which I respect. It is 58 minutes in total I hope some of you can make it to the end. Those who do watch it all, I am especially interested in your opinions.

To synopsize, this video tries to prove, creation, the great flood, the shroud of turin, and other interesting miracles, with some very good evidence, really worth a watch.

Regards.

lazygal

Em no thanks. The real miracle is how people still fall for this book's claims.

the_eman

the_eman wrote: »

Take a look, it takes about 4 minutes to get to some science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCeSJw3Qzls

I am interested in knowing your opinions, which I respect. It is 58 minutes in total I hope some of you can make it to the end. Those who do watch it all, I am especially interested in your opinions.

To synopsize, this video tries to prove, creation, the great flood, the shroud of turin, and other interesting miracles, with some very good evidence, really worth a watch.

Regards.

There is no science at the 4 minute mark.
And at the 5 minute mark it starts lying that evolution leads to communism and that evolution is essential to atheism.
I don't think anyone would be arsed trying to make it to the end if they are going to be that wrong and that dishonest so early.

What good evidence do they present that would be worth putting up with listening to sure tripe for any length of time?

Delirium

I'd love to know how the great flood, which is essentially an act of genocide by a deity, could ever be considered a miracle?

And I won't be wasting an hour watching a creationist video.

im invisible

does it do the loaves and the fishes? could come in handy in these recessionary times

krudler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsZPWsVNTqo

Gbear

Drive-by bull****?

Bit tricky first fitting the bull in the car and then shoving it's arse out a window while driving.

Gordon

And here comes the science bit:

Teenage kid in black clothes and dog collar @4:39 - "There's no scientific proof for [evolution] whatsoever."

The day a throwaway superlative from a spotty teenage kid endears me to empathise and take on board that spotty kid's argument is the day I *am* that spotty teenage superlativing kid.

Michael Nugent

Skip to the sequence from 8:25 to 8:45.

Seriously, it's the funniest argument I have ever seen.

pauldla

I can't get youtube here so I'll have to ask for a synopsis. Is it like Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed? I love that show.

Gordon

@9:07 "People ask why the stars are so far away. Very simple, god put the stars far away, that doesn't prove evolution whatsoever!"

/clap

nagirrac

In fairness to the guy he did say that at the beginning his presentation was not about science and went on to prove himself right:)

Fundamentalist religions like RC will eventually die off. The purpose of religion is supposedly to draw people closer to the concept of God and they just seem to do the opposite and make God (their God at least) seem silly.

To a person who seeks God there is one very reasonable position to take. It is that if nothing once existed (before the big bang) then nothing would still exist as something cannot come from nothing. The fact that anything at all exists means that something had to always exist and until we have a better understanding of it, we may as well call it God.

In many ways atheists believe in the biggest miracle of all which is that something as splendid as our universe with its wonderful set of natural laws and order resulting in something as incredible as the human mind came from nothing.

Dave!

Typical theist argument goes in, standard atheist rebuttal comes out

Didn't God "come from nothing"? So why can't the universe?

Obliq

pauldla wrote: »

I can't get youtube here so I'll have to ask for a synopsis. Is it like Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed? I love that show.

Well, that particular bit that Michael Nugent recommended was of a fella looking at the skeleton of a certain fish, and when you turn it over - hey presto! the other side looks like jesus on the cross. And obviously, evolution couldn't have done that.....:pac::pac::pac:

Sycopat

There is no science at all in that video from what I've seen. There is a teenager reading off an argument which makes baseless assertions then moves directly on to the next baseless assertion. He presents no data to support his arguments in anything I've seen, and mostly seems to completely lack understanding of what he's talking about. He makes assumptions than extrapolates corollary assumptions to reach his conclusions.

It is complete drivel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpmIBJ_MKas

Delirium

Obliq wrote: »

Well, that particular bit that Michael Nugent recommended was of a fella looking at the skeleton of a certain fish, and when you turn it over - hey presto! the other side looks like jesus on the cross. And obviously, evolution couldn't have done that.....:pac::pac::pac:

It raises quite a big problem for the creationist as it suggests that God knew Jesus would be crucified before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. So much for free will. :rolleyes:

kylith

I can't believe that people are still trying to peddle this nonsense.

Da Vinci disproved the flood back in the 15th century, but people are still banging on about it. It didn't happen. There is no way it could have happened. Where did all the water come from? Where did it go? Why weren't all the salt water animals killed by the dilution of the oceans? It's almost like someone exaggerated a local flood, isn't it?

Also, Creation is bunk and the shroud of Turin is a fraud.

Dades

nagirrac wrote: »

In many ways atheists believe in the biggest miracle of all which is that something as splendid as our universe with its wonderful set of natural laws and order resulting in something as incredible as the human mind came from nothing.

Please don't misrepresent people like this.

I'm atheist in relation to any deity anyone cares to name. I have no idea how the universe came to be, and certainly wouldn't embarrass myself by saying something so trite as "it came from nothing".

yeppydeppy

Didn't the finding of the Higgs Boson have something to do with showing that matther could come from nothing?

Genghiz Cohen

yeppydeppy wrote: »

Didn't the finding of the Higgs Boson have something to do with showing that matther could come from nothing?

Pretty sure we knew that could happen at the Planck scale anyway.

Doctor DooM

yeppydeppy wrote: »

Didn't the finding of the Higgs Boson have something to do with showing that matther could come from nothing?

As far as I understand, it's been known for quite some time it's technically possible for something to come from nothing, but this doesn't mean much for the A+A forum as there's not a standard position on the origin of the universe

It's always a theist who starts off that debate with the Kalam cosmological argument. Which is a silly argument anyway for A god, not THE god, and could be the FSM or a particle or Optimus Prime or the one true pizza anyway.

Michael Nugent

nagirrac wrote: »

To a person who seeks God there is one very reasonable position to take. It is that if nothing once existed (before the big bang) then nothing would still exist as something cannot come from nothing. The fact that anything at all exists means that something had to always exist and until we have a better understanding of it, we may as well call it God.

I would suggest that the opposite is true.

Until we have a better understanding of it, it is important to avoid calling it God, because that word has so many built-in connotations about supernaturalism and personal agency that it cannot be used as a neutral label.

nagirrac wrote: »

In many ways atheists believe in the biggest miracle of all which is that something as splendid as our universe with its wonderful set of natural laws and order resulting in something as incredible as the human mind came from nothing.

Actually, it is religious people who believe that.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely "out of nothing"."

But it is more likely that there was (or, more accurately, is) always something, possibly in the form of energy, and there is no need to posit a god to explain how that something evolved into what is today.

Michael Nugent

yeppydeppy wrote: »

Didn't the finding of the Higgs Boson have something to do with showing that matter could come from nothing?

At risk of opening a whole new debate, it depends on how you define nothing.

robindch

Doctor DooM wrote: »

It's always a theist who starts off that debate with the Kalam cosmological argument.

The Arabic word Kalam means religious disputation, so using the word "argument" together with "kalam" is tautologous.

Referring to it as the "Kaboom Cosmological Argument" isn't.

MagicMarker

OP, stop watching youtube are start reading actual science books.

Here's a clue, the Bible isn't one of them.

yeppydeppy

Michael Nugent wrote: »

At risk of opening a whole new debate, it depends on how you define nothing.

...and we've gone past my limited knowledge of physcis.

Sarky

robindch wrote: »

The Arabic word Kalam means religious disputation, so using the word "argument" together with "kalam" is tautologous.

Referring to it as the "Kaboom Cosmological Argument" isn't.

Couldn't we just shorten it to "bollocks"? We're a busy lot and the fewer syllables we have to use the better.

robindch

Sarky wrote: »

Couldn't we just shorten it to "bollocks"?

Not a bad idea, but that would make it hard to distinguish the Kaboom Cosmological Argument from other creationist bollocks.

The word "bollocks", btw, is quite interesting, as it's one of the few words in English which exists, natively, in the dual number, notwithstanding the improper back-formation 'bollock' to mean a single testicle, and the suspicious plural 'bollockses' which refers to a countable group of arseholes.

yeppydeppy

robindch wrote: »

Not a bad idea, but that would make it hard to distinguish the Kaboom Cosmological Argument from other creationist bollocks.

The word "bollocks", btw, is quite interesting, as it's one of the few words in English which exists, natively, in the dual number, notwithstanding the improper back-formation 'bollock' to mean a single testicle, and the suspicious plural 'bollockses' which refers to a countable group of arseholes.

Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Doctor DooM

robindch wrote: »

Not a bad idea, but that would make it hard to distinguish the Kaboom Cosmological Argument from other creationist bollocks.

The word "bollocks", btw, is quite interesting, as it's one of the few words in English which exists, natively, in the dual number, notwithstanding the improper back-formation 'bollock' to mean a single testicle, and the suspicious plural 'bollockses' which refers to a countable group of arseholes.

I heard an old wives tail that a footballer got off being fined for shouting "Bollocks!" at a referees decision because the word apparently has a legit use as a way to register ones suprise, much like they way Irish go "Jaysis Christ", only in the dictionary (I have no idea if Jesus is in the dictionary).

I must look that up and see if it's true or not.

Doctor DooM

Oh, the truth is actually far funnier:

Perhaps the best-known use of the term is in the title of the 1977 punk rock album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Testimony in a resulting prosecution over the term demonstrated that in Old English, the word referred to a priest, and could also be used to mean "nonsense". Defence barrister John Mortimer QC and Virgin Records won the case: the court ruled that the word was not obscene

It turns out priests are bollockses!

Michael Nugent

When the Sex Pistols released Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, a Virgin record store in Nottingham was taken to court for obscenity for displaying the album cover.

The record store was acquitted, after they successfully argued that the word "bollocks" was an Old English term for a priest, and that it meant "nonsense" in the context of the album title.

Edit: Note to self: Read page 3 comments before replying to page 2 comments.

.

legspin

robindch wrote: »

Not a bad idea, but that would make it hard to distinguish the Kaboom Cosmological Argument from other creationist bollocks.

The word "bollocks", btw, is quite interesting, as it's one of the few words in English which exists, natively, in the dual number, notwithstanding the improper back-formation 'bollock' to mean a single testicle, and the suspicious plural 'bollockses' which refers to a countable group of arseholes.

I genuinly used to think it was spelt bollix and it was a general term for the scrotum. Until I read Spike Milligan's first war memoir.

pauldla

Obliq wrote: »

Well, that particular bit that Michael Nugent recommended was of a fella looking at the skeleton of a certain fish, and when you turn it over - hey presto! the other side looks like jesus on the cross. And obviously, evolution couldn't have done that.....:pac::pac::pac:

Brilliant! I love those tricks. So did he tell how he did it, was it up his sleeve?

General Relativity

My favourite miracle was when Jesus changes water molecules into carbon rings, without causing a nuclear explosion.

nagirrac

yeppydeppy wrote: »

Didn't the finding of the Higgs Boson have something to do with showing that matther could come from nothing?

All matter comes from energy. The Higgs particle comes from the Higgs field, speculated to be a field that permeates the universe. At the subatomic level everything exists as a field of potential with the liklihood of matter emerging based on probabilities. At the instant of the big bang there was no matter, only energy.

For anyone interested in a laymans explanation for quantum mechanics, cosmology and all things relating to consciousness there is a wonderful website www.closertotruth.com where Robert Huhn interviews some of the greatest minds in physics and philosophy, people like Paul Davies, Lee Smolin, David Chalmers, Henry Stapp, and Michio Kaku. Fascinating stuff.

nagirrac

Michael Nugent wrote: »

Actually, it is religious people who believe that.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely "out of nothing"."
But it is more likely that there was (or, more accurately, is) always something, possibly in the form of energy, and there is no need to posit a god to explain how that something evolved into what is today.

Leading Hebrew scholars insist that the correct interpretation of Genesis 1.1 is that a creator entity formed the observable universe out of existing material. I have always found it interesting that neither orthodox nor conservative Jews seem to have a problem with the theory of evolution but fundamentalist Christians who read from a translated Old Testament don't believe in Evolution.

Most astrophysicists believe beyond reasonable doubt that our observed universe had a beginning.

There are all kinds of philosophical questions that justify believing in a creative entity outside our observed universe. Maybe the creative entity was a high school student and we are his project, if so it sounds like he lost his ipad

Michael Nugent

nagirrac wrote: »

Leading Hebrew scholars insist that the correct interpretation of Genesis 1.1 is that a creator entity formed the observable universe out of existing material. I have always found it interesting that neither orthodox nor conservative Jews seem to have a problem with the theory of evolution but fundamentalist Christians who read from a translated Old Testament don't believe in Evolution.

Genesis is a fictional story. It was made up by humans. It is not made any more credible by language scholars trying to attribute a marginally less silly behaviour to one of its fictional characters, by retrospectively suggesting a “correct interpretation” of something written thousands of years ago, after generations of oral communication.

You may as well argue that future generations of leading English scholars will insist that the correct interpretation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is that the wizards access Platform Nine and Three Quarters at King’s Cross Station through the application of quantum mechanics rather than magic.

You are correct that many Jews accept that evolution happens. Also, many Jews do not believe in God. Many people of various religions will find ways to reinterpret their religious beliefs to make them consistent with what science gradually tells us about reality, and with what our evolving sense of morality tells us about how to live together justly.

Such people are becoming more reasonable to the extent that they are moving away from their particular brand of theology, rather than making the theology any more credible.

nagirrac wrote: »

Most astrophysicists believe beyond reasonable doubt that our observed universe had a beginning.

Can I clarify something here?

Your original assertion was that atheists believe that our universe came from nothing.

I pointed out that it is religious people who believe this, and you have replied that most astrophysicists believe that the universe had a beginning.

This is of course correct, but having a beginning is not the same thing as coming from nothing.

Do you still assert that atheists believe that our universe came from nothing?

nagirrac wrote: »

There are all kinds of philosophical questions that justify believing in a creative entity outside our observed universe. Maybe the creative entity was a high school student and we are his project, if so it sounds like he lost his ipad

That’s the sort of soft statement that sounds as if it is making a stronger assertion than it actually is, particularly when it follows a sentence about what astrophysicists believe and thus seems to conflate belief based on applying reason to evidence with belief based on making things up.

But, rather than prejudge what you are thinking of, can you give us some examples of these philosophical questions and what type of creative entities they justify believing in?

nagirrac

Michael Nugent wrote: »

Do you still assert that atheists believe that our universe came from nothing?

But, rather than prejudge what you are thinking of, can you give us some examples of these philosophical questions and what type of creative entities they justify believing in?

Atheists have no explanation for the following philosophical questions. Utilizing Occam's razor, I would argue that a belief in a creative entity is a more reasonable position than coming up with ever increasing in complexity hypotheses. In all cases I am referring to our observed universe.

If our universe had a beginning then something had to cause that beginning, it cannot have come from nothing. It could be another universe that gave rise to ours but then you are back to square 1. The simplest explanation is that a creative entity started it.

Our universe is ordered by natural laws. Where did the laws come from and what purpose do they serve? The simplest explanation is that a creative entity established the laws.

Biochemists and mathematicians have calculated the odds of life emerging via natural unintelligent processes, the odds are astronomical. In fact many scientists believe that life could not have emerged at all by unintelligent processes. The simplest explanation is that life is part of the evolution of the universe through processes established by a creative entity.

What is consciousness, why did it emerge and what possible purpose could it serve? The concept that it is an epiphenomenon of the brain does not hold up to critical analysis. I would recommend listening to what Henry Stapp has to say on the "closertotruth" website where he argues very convincingly that all of science with the exception of theoretical physics is still looking at reality from a classical mechanics standpoint and should be looking at it from a quantum meechanics standpoint. The simplest understanding of consciousness is that it is a fundamental aspect of our reality (the choicemaker in quantum choices) and came from a creative entity.

The universe is based on information. In Molecular Biology for example as we study more and more deeply we find vast amounts of information coded in every cell. Information implies intelligence. The simplest explanation is that a creative entity is behind the information. There are very solid reasons for believing we live in a digital universe (everything can be reduced to an on/off choice) and the concept of quantum evolution is starting to gain ground.

The latter is the most interesting to me as it relates to evolution. Almost every atheist I have ever spoken to or read refers to evolution as if it answers questions it does not even ask. This is particularly true of atheists who have no scientific background or regard evolution as largely complete (it is only beginning as the work of Paul Carroll and other leading evolutionary biologists show). Evolution does not answer the above questions nor does it even attempt to answer them. Although most modern day scientists are agnostics and many are atheists there are also many who are spiritual or even theists, Francis Collins for example the director of the Human Genome Institute at NIH.

The problem with suggesting anything other than random mutation being behind all evolutionary biology is that it gets associated with the fundamentalist "creationist" worldview that the earth came about 4,000 years ago which is patently nonsense. I am convinced as we learm more about evolution we will have to take quantum mechanics into account which opens up quite another can of worms that most scientists currently do not want to consider.

MagicMarker

Where does your "creative entity" that created the universe come from?

General Relativity

nagirrac wrote: »

.

How did your creative entity create the Universe? Sing it into existence, fart it, wish it, hope it, build it with clay, how?

nagirrac

nagirrac wrote: »

The simplest explanation is that a creative entity ....

Except that it's not simple and it's not an explanation....

Michael Nugent

You suggest that you are utilizing Occam's razor.

nagirrac wrote: »

If our universe had a beginning then something had to cause that beginning, it cannot have come from nothing. It could be another universe that gave rise to ours but then you are back to square 1. The simplest explanation is that a creative entity started it.

The simplest explanation is that energy always exists, it can be translated into matter, and that this happens naturally.

Adding an unnecessary and unexplained creative entity makes the explanation more complex and less simple.

nagirrac wrote: »

Our universe is ordered by natural laws. Where did the laws come from and what purpose do they serve? The simplest explanation is that a creative entity established the laws.

The simplest explanation is that they were not established, in that they are descriptive not prescriptive, and they serve no inherent purpose.

Adding an unnecessary and unexplained creative entity makes the explanation more complex and less simple.

nagirrac wrote: »

Biochemists and mathematicians have calculated the odds of life emerging via natural unintelligent processes, the odds are astronomical. In fact many scientists believe that life could not have emerged at all by unintelligent processes. The simplest explanation is that life is part of the evolution of the universe through processes established by a creative entity.

The simplest explanation is that life is part of the evolution of the universe through the natural interaction of energy and matter.

Adding an unnecessary and unexplained creative entity makes the explanation more complex and less simple.

Your other points are essentially developments from these points, and the principle remains the same: you are not utilizing Occam’s razor; you are adding an unnecessary and unexplained creative entity to what are actually the simplest explanations.

the_eman

Gordon wrote: »

@9:07 "People ask why the stars are so far away. Very simple, god put the stars far away, that doesn't prove evolution whatsoever!"

/clap

Well why not quote his data gathered on so called missing link's then.

the_eman

Dave! wrote: »

Typical theist argument goes in, standard atheist rebuttal comes out

Didn't God "come from nothing"? So why can't the universe?

God, as creator of time, is outside of time. Since therefore He has no beginning in time, He has always existed. Who said God came from Nothing?

Gordon

the_eman wrote: »

Well why not quote his data gathered on so called missing link's then.

Oh, do you think I sat through the whole hour of that rubbish?! Feel free to quote it here if you like.

the_eman

King Mob wrote: »

There is no science at the 4 minute mark.
And at the 5 minute mark it starts lying that evolution leads to communism and that evolution is essential to atheism.
I don't think anyone would be arsed trying to make it to the end if they are going to be that wrong and that dishonest so early.

What good evidence do they present that would be worth putting up with listening to sure tripe for any length of time?

You didn't even make it to the bit where he mentions the law of conservation of angular momentum?

the_eman

Obliq wrote: »

Well, that particular bit that Michael Nugent recommended was of a fella looking at the skeleton of a certain fish, and when you turn it over - hey presto! the other side looks like jesus on the cross. And obviously, evolution couldn't have done that.....:pac::pac::pac:

Nope, well worth getting a look at this video, there are many many counter arguments given to popular secular beliefs that most people currently subscribe to nowadays. This video is getting well slated here as I expected but no one is mentioning any of the strong arguments he does present. I would well advise you make your own mind up on this one.

Doctor DooM

the_eman wrote: »

You didn't even make it to the bit where he mentions the law of conservation of angular momentum?

Ooooooh is that the one that creationists delibrately forget the sun exists for?

I love that one.

the_eman

Sycopat wrote: »

There is no science at all in that video from what I've seen. There is a teenager reading off an argument which makes baseless assertions then moves directly on to the next baseless assertion. He presents no data to support his arguments in anything I've seen, and mostly seems to completely lack understanding of what he's talking about. He makes assumptions than extrapolates corollary assumptions to reach his conclusions.

It is complete drivel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpmIBJ_MKas

Well he does talk about the Inverse-square law, why dont you research that and get back to us with results. Why not compare it based over two periods, <10,000 years vs > 100,000 years for example.

the_eman

koth wrote: »

It raises quite a big problem for the creationist as it suggests that God knew Jesus would be crucified before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. So much for free will. :rolleyes:

True you have free will, doesn't mean God doesn't know what you are going to do with it.