Biblical Miracles

robindch

nagirrac wrote: »

Imperialist conquests of the Americas do not count as religious wars in my mind as they were undertaken by states, Spain, Portugal, etc. in a quest to gain economic power.

Jared Diamond's excellent book "Guns, Germs and Steel" includes, somewhere towards the start, a lengthy abd distinctly unpleasant screed written by a Conquistador about the reasons, principally religious, for invading, subjugating and then basically wiping out the peoples of Central and South America by murder and disease. What you refer to as a "quest to gain economic power" is more accurately described as "stealing every piece of gold they could find" while murdering anybody who tried to stop them.

The rest of your post contains so many erroneous conclusions that it would take half the morning to put them right.

Delirium

nagirrac wrote: »

We can see what he has created so he is knowable in that sense. However, we do not know the nature of his expanded universe which lies outside our space time nor the exact mechanism he uses. A bit like an early MS-DOS programmer trying to figure out web programming

How can you see what a deity created? You'd have to have proof of the creator for your stance to make sense. You've been criticizing posters here for not saying "I don't know" with regards to the origin of the universe and then you go and say a god made it.

You're working backwards from a conclusion that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You should be working from the evidence and see where it leads, which is what you've suggested to others, it's currently "I don't know".

pauldla

nagirrac wrote: »

Absolutely, although you will of course argue that it is not athesim that caused them to do bad things, it was coincidence that they were atheists. While of course also arguing that it is religion that caused all wars and evil doing in history.

Deists and theists believe in a creator that is greater than they are. They are humbled by this and it informs their worldview. Murder of your fellow man is the worst abomination humans undertake. There have been religious wars but these are actually rare enough in a history that is packed with war.
Imperialist conquests of the Americas do not count as religious wars in my mind as they were undertaken by states, Spain, Portugal, etc. in a quest to gain economic power.

Contrast the political systems that emerged after the enlightenment in the mid 18th century. The funding fathers in America were mainly deists and wrote a constitution that had no mention of God, separated church and state and allowed the population practice their beliefs freely. The country they essentially designed went on to become the most successful democracy in human history and after the civil war never spilt the blood of its own people. Contrast that with the systems inspied by Kark Marx, where God was outlawed. When God is outlawed there is appears to be no restraining power over evil. In the 20th century the death toll within their own borders in communist atheist regimes led by atheists is staggering, well over 100 million (and yes they all had some version of a red flag before you ask). You see nothing like this in countries led by deists or theists.

I am not saying atheists individually have no moral compass. I am saying when you outlaw God from society the result has been staggering in its barbarity. Perhaps we have evolved as a species and it would never happen again, but I am not yet convinced.

It still seems to me that you are confusing correlation with causation on those points. Yes, Mao and Stalin were atheist, but they did not act because they were atheist. They acted because they were power-hungry, or cruel, or despotic, or according to political agendas. Causation can be shown for all those points. The Great Purge happened because Stalin was a paranoid lunatic with near-unlimited resources at his disposal. The Cultural Revolution was a result of Mao wanting to show that he was still the Daddy in the CCP. The Ukrainian Famine happened because Stalin wanted to break the back of Ukrainian nationalism. And so on. Causes and connections can be demonstrated for all these events, and as far as I can see, none were done because they were atheist. If you can demonstrate a clear connection - not just innuendo or allusion - please do.


Incidentally, the communist dictatorships of the 20th Century have no monopoly on barbarity. Deism or theism has often been the direct cause of some of the worst slaughters in history, and that continues to this very day. From the Conquistadors to present-day Burma, it seems that deism or theism can also lack a moral compass. To suggest that it is religion that has stayed the hand of Western barbarity is at best innocent, and at worst willfully disingenuous. I would hazard that it is democracy that has balanced the behavior of developed countries –at least within their own borders - over the last fifty years, not religion.


I did not argue that religion has caused all wars and evil in history.

Improbable

nagirrac, you have not responded to my post: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81659599&postcount=95

Would you care to do so?

Dades

nagirrac wrote: »

In the 20th century the death toll within their own borders in communist atheist regimes led by atheists is staggering, well over 100 million (and yes they all had some version of a red flag before you ask). You see nothing like this in countries led by deists or theists.

Of course not. All those fellas tramping in jackboots all around Europe in the '40s with "God With Us" on their belt buckles were a figment of our imagination, so.

I'll keep this simple. Who are the two organisations that traditionally hold the most power in any 20th century society? The government and the church. So if you're hell bent on having total control, what do you do? You take control of government first and then eliminate the remaining threats to your power. How you remove the churches power? Enforce state atheism. Send them underground where they can't be bad mouthing your regime in public and persecute anyone that does.

So was state atheism brought in because the dictator in question thought everyone should be an atheist like him? No. It was introduced as a means to an end. Absolute power.

I hope that clears that up.

ironingbored

nagirrac wrote: »

"God" is simply a programmer from another external universe with a superintelligence that we currently cannot understand in terms of manipulating energy and matter...

...who really hates when one man sticks his tinkle into another man.

nagirrac

ironingbored wrote: »

...who really hates when one man sticks his tinkle into another man.

Like you I don't believe in any "revealed" God religions, they were all invented by man in his attempt to describe God. We should not be telling people or worse legislating on how to live their lives based on what sheep herders believed 4,000 years ago. Deists are as anti church influence in society as atheists.

Mark Hamill

nagirrac wrote: »

I get to decide how to use my time, its called free will.
Is there someone forcing you to respond to me?

But what can you or I or anyone else get out of this discussion then?

nagirrac

Improbable wrote: »

nagirrac, you have not responded to my post: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81659599&postcount=95

Would you care to do so?

Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked. I did respond in earlier posts on how the universe emerged. My position is that all speculative mathematical theories and in particular string theory are unfalsifiable and in crisis. The reality is our physics breaks down at the Planck time, so theories on what happened before then are all highly speculative. I have also made my feelings known on cosmology in above posts.

As for Biology, you have more education on the subject from an academic standpoint (my background is Chemistry) so I would expect you to understand evolutionary Biology far better than I do. However, there are two aspects that I would like to discuss, one of which involves evolutionary Biology and the other not.

The first issue is how a code based self replicating molecule like DNA was formed. There is nothing else like it in Biology. I can only see two possibilities, 1) that it spontaneously formed over many millions of years or 2) that the blueprint was already established somehow in nature and the emergence of life was following this blueprint. My issue with the former is that life emerged fairly early in earth's history and the statistics involved of getting even to a simple version of DNA are astronomical. I know there is controversy regarding evidence of bacteria from hundreds of millions of years ago, but if we accept it as accurate the DNA found was quite similar to what we see in nature today in terms of complexity.

The second issue is the debate over adaptive mutation versus random mutation. I am not as well versed in molecular biology as I would like to be but adaptive mutation makes a lot of sense to me i.e. genes mutate based on the environment they are in and not by random processes. More and more geneticists seem to think that mutation is highly regulated and not at all random. I have read the original papers by Cairns on E.Coli and have started to read Paul M. Carroll. Experiments on bacteria seem to suggest that "spontaneous" mutation in nature is very rare but mutation due to changes in the environment very common.

It also appears to me that DNA has not changed that much at all over time and gene kits in organisms were established hundreds of millions of years ago, possibly pre-Cambrian, are used today just as they were used then. The experiment Carroll desribes where a mouse gene for expressing an eye was spliced into a fruit fly's leg and a fruit fly's eye emerged seems to confirm that the environment is the key to how a gene is expressed in nature.

I am not arguing the second question as a proof of a creator necessarily but it does suggest that evolution is more environment based and not random based and also suggest DNA as we know it today dates back to very early in earth's history.

Interested in your thoughts and thanks for taking the time to respond.

nagirrac

Mark Hamill wrote: »

But what can you or I or anyone else get out of this discussion then?

Nothing I suppose when it comes to a the liklihood of a creator anyway.

May be a change of subject might help. What is your view of the current state of string theory? Are you not concerned about science that is purely based on mathematical models and has no verified observational evidence in cosmology? The few examples we have had suggesting string theory seem to have been refuted or in need of further study. We can apparently prove anything mathematically and the math just keeps getting more complex to describe something that may not be there or that we are totally wrong about.

I have been reading a lot of scientific opinion recently is openly qustioning whether black holes even exist (quite the heresy) and are actually much simpler dark energy stars. If that turns out to be true what a collossal waste of time spend theorizing on what happens inside black holes, a whole lifetime of Stephen Hawking's work for one.

nagirrac

Dades wrote: »

Of course not. All those fellas tramping in jackboots all around Europe in the '40s with "God With Us" on their belt buckles were a figment of our imagination, so.

I'll keep this simple. Who are the two organisations that traditionally hold the most power in any 20th century society? The government and the church. So if you're hell bent on having total control, what do you do? You take control of government first and then eliminate the remaining threats to your power. How you remove the churches power? Enforce state atheism. Send them underground where they can't be bad mouthing your regime in public and persecute anyone that does.

So was state atheism brought in because the dictator in question thought everyone should be an atheist like him? No. It was introduced as a means to an end. Absolute power.

I hope that clears that up.

The Nazi phenomenon is an interesting one. I am not talking about wars between states which are somewhat easier to unserstand, I am referring to wholesale slaughter of your own people (which admittedly the Nazis did plenty of too). There is a lot of discussion about Nazi ideology, some of the most interesting evidence same out in the Nuremburg trails which is very illuminating as far as what the leadership believed. My reading of it says that religion was to be replaced by a state religion which of course can be used to back up either argument.

I agree with your analysis on state power. However, it wasn't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot doing the killing personally. There clearly was a moral sickness on their behalf that traslated into a more widespread ethical sickness that created a hell of a lot of sociopaths. There were also a lot of countries that followed the model, something like 25 - 30, with the same result.

Improbable

nagirrac wrote: »

The first issue is how a code based self replicating molecule like DNA was formed. There is nothing else like it in Biology. I can only see two possibilities, 1) that it spontaneously formed over many millions of years or 2) that the blueprint was already established somehow in nature and the emergence of life was following this blueprint. My issue with the former is that life emerged fairly early in earth's history and the statistics involved of getting even to a simple version of DNA are astronomical. I know there is controversy regarding evidence of bacteria from hundreds of millions of years ago, but if we accept it as accurate the DNA found was quite similar to what we see in nature today in terms of complexity.

There is something which is VERY similiar to DNA. It's called RNA. Many believe that RNA came first and there is evidence that backs this up. There are several interesting facts about RNA. Firstly, it carries information. Secondly, folded up bits of RNA can have catalytic activity. In a primordial soup, natural chemical reactions can result in the formation of various nucleotide like molecules. These nucleotides can bind to each other. Some combinations are more stable than others. The stable ones will obviously last longer. Even these simple chains of nucleotides are affected by natural selection. The chains that are more stable have more time to collect other nucleotides. The longer they can get, the more variable their chemical function. Now imagine a chain which is long enough to hold some sort of information about itself and that is able to replicate itself. Once you have self-replication in some way, natural selection will really grab you by the tits and take you for a ride. Actually, you don't have to imagine it. I'll just show you:



As you can see, this simple collection of nucleotides which have aggregated together are completely capable of self-replication. Technically it's 2 enzymes which are capable of cross replication but there's no need to get into ultra-specifics. On top of that, there is no need for ANY other biological mechanisms. This does not take place in a cell or any other kind of biological shell. It can take place in a jar given the right materials and enough time. The reason that we can't replicate this is because the earth is a lot larger than a jar and has been around a lot longer than those experiments run. Even then, these types of self replicating molecules may have been around much longer than our current estimates of when "life" first arose on the planet because obviously, simple molecules like this don't fossilize.

You know how it get's even MORE amazing? This molecule formed spontaneously from a pool of random sequence RNA molecules. Which as we discussed earlier, can occur spontaneously in nature. Pretty mind-blowing stuff if you ask me.

nagirrac wrote: »

The second issue is the debate over adaptive mutation versus random mutation. I am not as well versed in molecular biology as I would like to be but adaptive mutation makes a lot of sense to me i.e. genes mutate based on the environment they are in and not by random processes. More and more geneticists seem to think that mutation is highly regulated and not at all random. I have read the original papers by Cairns on E.Coli and have started to read Paul M. Carroll. Experiments on bacteria seem to suggest that "spontaneous" mutation in nature is very rare but mutation due to changes in the environment very common.

If you can provide a link, I would be interested to see which papers you are referring to.

Let's just make sure we are on the same page. Nobody who knows anything about evolution will ever say that it's random. Mutations to DNA can be random, but the process of evolution is extremely non-random. When a mutation occurs in a DNA molecule, one of 3 things can happen.

The mutation may result in no change whatsoever. This is called a silent mutation. These can occur due to the fact that multiple codons (3 nucleotides next to each other) can code for the same protein. In these cases, the organism continues to happily replicate away and is none the wiser that anything has happened at all.

The mutation may result in a negative change. These will result in the organism being less fit and therefore cannot compete for resources and whatnot as well as the properly replicated organisms. This decreases it's chances of replicating and therefore, will eventually be eliminated because of natural selection.

The mutation may result in a positive change. These will result in the organism being more fit and therefore doing better than other organisms while competing for resources. This increases it's chance of replicating and therefore, will eventually be favoured over the other organisms.

Once you have a self replicating system that contains information about how to replicate itself, natural selection can work wonders. As to your point about mutations being very rare, this is simply not true. Mutations have many sources. In fact, mutation is such a problem, that organisms have evolved enzymes that proofread replicating strands of DNA to make sure that there are no mistakes. Obviously, they are not perfect and so mutations do still occur.

The statement about environment being a factor is true, but not in the mutations themselves as far as I'm aware (at least not in a very significant way). What is true is that different environments provide different selective pressures that natural selection will push organisms toward. For example, imagine you have bacteria in a medium with a low density of their regular food. But you have a much higher density of a different food. The only problem is, those bacteria can't eat that food. If they could, they would have a nice little advantage for themselves. Fast forward a little bit and some evolutionary process results in the bacteria being able to eat that food. Tada, they have a nice advantage for themselves over their brethren who can't eat that food. Actually, I lied. You don't have to imagine this one either. Say hello to the work of Lenski et al. who have showed exactly that in an experiment spanning over 20 years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430337/

nagirrac wrote: »

It also appears to me that DNA has not changed that much at all over time and gene kits in organisms were established hundreds of millions of years ago, possibly pre-Cambrian, are used today just as they were used then. The experiment Carroll desribes where a mouse gene for expressing an eye was spliced into a fruit fly's leg and a fruit fly's eye emerged seems to confirm that the environment is the key to how a gene is expressed in nature.

I'm not even sure what you mean by this. The fact that PAX6 is highly conserved has nothing to do with the 2nd part of your statement. Could you clarify?

nagirrac wrote: »

I am not arguing the second question as a proof of a creator necessarily but it does suggest that evolution is more environment based and not random based and also suggest DNA as we know it today dates back to very early in earth's history.

Interested in your thoughts and thanks for taking the time to respond.

Even if we were to assume that DNA randomly appeared on the planet one day, which I don't believe is the case, we cannot conclude from that that the only possible or even the most probable source for it was a supernatural entity. Maybe DNA does take 5 billion years to naturally evolve directly from abiotic sources in a process that we know nothing about. That initial material could much more reasonably have come from a space seeding, arriving from some wandering planet or other celestial object from outside of our solar system.

As I have said previously, There is no way to rationally conclude that any aspect of biology lends itself to the argument that a supernatural being must have created it, least of all because simply don't know exactly how it happened. I believe I have satisfactorily explained why.

Dades

nagirrac wrote: »

I agree with your analysis on state power. However, it wasn't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot doing the killing personally. There clearly was a moral sickness on their behalf that traslated into a more widespread ethical sickness that created a hell of a lot of sociopaths. There were also a lot of countries that followed the model, something like 25 - 30, with the same result.

But again, atheism has nothing to do with this "moral sickness". Paranoia, fear and corruption at the top filters down to all levels of society. It's not as if you can turn a population into atheists anyway, any more than you can force someone to believe in a god.

There's a lot of moral sickness in certain Middle Eastern and African countries today, and these are hugely religious. So you simply cannot generalise.

nagirrac

Dades wrote: »

But again, atheism has nothing to do with this "moral sickness". Paranoia, fear and corruption at the top filters down to all levels of society. It's not as if you can turn a population into atheists anyway, any more than you can force someone to believe in a god.

There's a lot of moral sickness in certain Middle Eastern and African countries today, and these are hugely religious. So you simply cannot generalise.

I disagree. The message from the top was "God is dead" which I think filters through. Agree on Middle East and African moral sickness but they are not slaughtering their own people in huge numbers. The only significant genocide was Rwanda and Burundi which was ethnic and not religious.

nagirrac

Improbable wrote: »

Maybe DNA does take 5 billion years to naturally evolve directly from abiotic sources in a process that we know nothing about. That initial material could much more reasonably have come from a space seeding, arriving from some wandering planet or other celestial object from outside of our solar system.

As I have said previously, There is no way to rationally conclude that any aspect of biology lends itself to the argument that a supernatural being must have created it, least of all because simply don't know exactly how it happened. I believe I have satisfactorily explained why.

Thanks, that has been extremely helpful. I did mean RNA as well, basically the nucleic acids.

Funnily enough I mentioned space seeding on here before and got shot down, you need tough skin around here. The problem is of course we did not have 5 billion years on earth, the age of the earth is thought to be 4.5 billion years and the first prokaryotes 3.5 billion years ago. I know a billion years is a long time but from a hot mess to a cell is quite the achievement spontaneously. We have no way of knowing of course at this point what the earliest precursers of living cells were. I think we have to put that one in the "we don't know" category for now until we can duplicate something significant in the lab.

On adaptive mutation the original paper I read was John Cairns and Patricia Foster looking at E. coli in a lactose medium defective in the lac gene (sorry I don't have it to hand but can dig it up if you can't find it, it was from 1988). The conclusions were later questioned and perhaps even disproven and then later work affirmed the work (science eh). Barry Hall seems to be one of the leaders in the research. I don't understand the mechanism well enough but it looks like the relevant mutation was provoked or regulated. I get that the general understanding of evolution is that mutations are random and natural selection is adaptive, but I believe what the adaptive mutation people are arguing is that the mutations themselves are mainly adaptive or at least adaptive in stressful environments. I have attached a few papers on the subject, the second one has a lot of references.

http://www.pnas.org/content/92/12/5669.full.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2269004/?tool=pubmed

Dades

nagirrac wrote: »

I disagree. The message from the top was "God is dead" which I think filters through.

Of course you disagree. No matter what I write you're going to believe that atheism is at fault. I could mention that the many of the most successful societies in the world today are the most irreligious but you wouldn't let that change your mind, either.

nagirrac wrote: »

Agree on Middle East and African moral sickness but they are not slaughtering their own people in huge numbers. The only significant genocide was Rwanda and Burundi which was ethnic and not religious.

There's wholesale slaughter going on in Africa. And ethnicity (and religiously) is at the heart of many genocides. Look at the Balkans - it wasn't the atheists taking out whole male populations and executing them.

So you can throw out some examples of state that were officially "atheist" and what occurred. I've explained why those states were atheist (not for ideological reasons - but for control) and given plenty of examples of atrocities past and present in countries gripped by religion. If you were actually interested in losing your preconceptions you would have by now.

Improbable

nagirrac wrote: »

Funnily enough I mentioned space seeding on here before and got shot down, you need tough skin around here. The problem is of course we did not have 5 billion years on earth, the age of the earth is thought to be 4.5 billion years and the first prokaryotes 3.5 billion years ago. I know a billion years is a long time but from a hot mess to a cell is quite the achievement spontaneously. We have no way of knowing of course at this point what the earliest precursers of living cells were. I think we have to put that one in the "we don't know" category for now until we can duplicate something significant in the lab.

The 5 billion year thing was something I was just throwing out as a precursor to the space seeding idea, i.e. it may have taken 5 billion years for DNA to form on some other celestial object and then be seeded to earth. The point being, exactly as you said, though we have ideas, we don't know exactly how it occured. But to posit that because we don't know that it must have been a supernatural entity is a logical fallacy.

nagirrac wrote: »

On adaptive mutation the original paper I read was John Cairns and Patricia Foster looking at E. coli in a lactose medium defective in the lac gene (sorry I don't have it to hand but can dig it up if you can't find it, it was from 1988). The conclusions were later questioned and perhaps even disproven and then later work affirmed the work (science eh). Barry Hall seems to be one of the leaders in the research. I don't understand the mechanism well enough but it looks like the relevant mutation was provoked or regulated. I get that the general understanding of evolution is that mutations are random and natural selection is adaptive, but I believe what the adaptive mutation people are arguing is that the mutations themselves are mainly adaptive or at least adaptive in stressful environments. I have attached a few papers on the subject, the second one has a lot of references.

There are a few models that explain why something might appear to be a case of directed mutagenesis when it isn't. For example, stress induces a genome-wide mutagenesis state facilitated by the error-prone DinB polymerase. If this is the case, in the context of Cairns' work, revertant colonies would also have unselected mutations that were not lethal in addition to the lac+ reversion which prevented them from dying of starvation in the first place. Which was found to be the case:

http://www.nature.com/emboj/journal/v16/n11/pdf/7590309a.pdf


In any case, even if adaptive mutations were shown to exist, how does it suggest that there is a supernatural entity?

nagirrac

Dades wrote: »

Of course you disagree. No matter what I write you're going to believe that atheism is at fault. I could mention that the many of the most successful societies in the world today are the most irreligious but you wouldn't let that change your mind, either.

I think all reasonable people believe that the best societies are ones where people are free to practice their religion or not without the state interfering or trying to impose a religion or religious beliefs. There is a huge difference between irreligious states and atheist states however. The Scandanavian states for example are wonderful countries where most people are passive about religious practice. The data I have seen for Sweden is that only about 10% practice a religion, 23% believe in God, 53 % describe thesselves as spiritual and 23% do not believe in God (akthough a lower number self describe as atheist). Of course you also have the data that says 70% of children are baptised and over 90% of people have a Christian funeral. As they say theres nothing as queer as folk:)

My main point is to refute the often quoted Dawkins line that you commonly hear from atheists about religion being responsible for all the horrors in human history. It is bull**** plain and simple and you know it. I don't understand the atheist desire to tell people what they should or should not believe. Especially when it is influenced by scientists who are so sure of their science that they present it as truth. Science is not truth, science is the pursuit of understanding of our physical universe. A particular scientific theory is current understanding until it is overturned by another theory, that is the history of science and will be the future of science.

It amazes me how many atheists have replaced one faith by another, belief in God replaced by blind faith in science. To further compound the lunacy, the two sides battle over texts that were written by sheep herders 4,000 years ago. The debates between theologians and atheist scientists over the singularity in physics is a classic example. Our human minds simply cannot comprehend the concepts "nothing" and "infinity" and our physics cannot describe anything earlier than Planck time yet we spend enormous amounts of time debating the issue as if some "truth" will emerge.

Math is a human invention (like time) and while it is wonderful for many applications, it has become a religion for theoretical physicists. String theory is very elaborate and detailed and imaginative and will explain everything we don't know about the universe except for the small technicality that it is absolute horse manure and cannot be either verified or falsified except in theorems that use infinity, anti-time, and other BS to describe multi-universes that explain why our universe is the one instance where everything works as long as you postulate enough universes in which it doesn't work.

Sorry for the rant. I still think banning God either by state mandate or using science as faith is dangerous to society.

nagirrac

Improbable wrote: »

In any case, even if adaptive mutations were shown to exist, how does it suggest that there is a supernatural entity?

I said in my earlier post that I wasn't using it as an argument for a creator. However, I think a lot of non-scientists point to the theory of evolution as a proof of there being no creator when it does nothing of the sort or even try. I often hear the term "its just random" as if everything is random. Evolutionary biology is still in its infancy and there are lots of exciting development to look forward to.

As far as the emergence of life as a logical argument for a creator, I would say there is a logical argument from reasonable people and not those on opposite ends of the belief spectrum based on at least 5 questions:

How did the universe emerge, how did it emerge with its natural laws, how did life emerge, what explains the intelligence in the universe, and how did the human mind emerge. At this point we have conjecture and speculation from science on all these questions and we also have the issue of belief (when these questions are combined) that a creator is the most likely source. There is considerable overlap in that many scientists and indeed many leading scientists are deists or theists. When science knocks off one of them I will be more convinced in a pointless random universe.

King Mob

nagirrac wrote: »

As far as the emergence of life as a logical argument for a creator, I would say there is a logical argument from reasonable people and not those on opposite ends of the belief spectrum based on at least 5 questions:

How did the universe emerge, how did it emerge with its natural laws, how did life emerge, what explains the intelligence in the universe, and how did the human mind emerge. At this point we have conjecture and speculation from science on all these questions and we also have the issue of belief (when these questions are combined) that a creator is the most likely source.

Except that God does not answer any of those five questions.

How specifically did god cause the universe to emerge?
How did he create the laws of the universe?
How did he create life?
How did he create intelligence?
How did he create the human mind?
And why? Why did he create them in those specific ways?

You've already said that you don't know any of these answers, so how can you say that god is the most likely explanation?
How can it be an explanation at all when you gain exactly zero knowledge and can make no predictions from assuming he is?

Why do you persist in using this argument when you can't defend it?

Zombrex

"God did it" is the ultimate non-answer. Less of an explanation more an admission of giving up attempting to learn and discover.

Zombrex

the_eman wrote: »

I think the week of creation may be a metaphorical week where one day to God could have been many many thousand days in our time, but I am only speculating. To God all things are possible, my faith is based mainly on Christ and think it is a shame you guys have to feel the science makes total sense before seeing the truth that is in Christ.

Jesus was most likely a con man, from the evidence available to us. I think it is a shame that 2,000 years later people are still falling for the con.

nagirrac

King Mob wrote: »

Except that God does not answer any of those five questions.

How specifically did god cause the universe to emerge?
How did he create the laws of the universe?
How did he create life?
How did he create intelligence?
How did he create the human mind?
And why? Why did he create them in those specific ways?

You've already said that you don't know any of these answers, so how can you say that god is the most likely explanation?
How can it be an explanation at all when you gain exactly zero knowledge and can make no predictions from assuming he is?

Why do you persist in using this argument when you can't defend it?

I really have no desire to engage in circular arguments with you again. Science has no answers to these questions and deists / theists have no answers to these questions. Everything relating to these set of questions is speculation at this point in time, including the speculation that I have given you repeatedly on the "how" and "why" from the creator perspective, which you continue to ignore and cannot comprehend as it does not fit your worldview. Saying that science will eventually figure it out is also speculation, we may never figure any of these questions out.

My position is shared by some of the leading thinkers and scientists and your position is shared by some of the leading thinkers and scientists. All of them have one thing in common, they are way smarter than you or I which is why we turn to them for knowledge and understanding. At the end of the day every individual has to decide what he or she chooses to believe or not believe, that is what is known as freedom of thought, a concept you appear to have problems understanding.

nagirrac

Zombrex wrote: »

"God did it" is the ultimate non-answer. Less of an explanation more an admission of giving up attempting to learn and discover.

The ones who have given up attempting to learn and discover are people, including many scientists, who are so sure of their beliefs / science that they regard it as truth. Open minded people / scientists continue to attempt to learn and discover. If belief in a creator as the most likely answer is as a result of "giving up" why would so many leading scientists be deists and theists?

Your argument makes no sense and is typical of those that do not even understand what science is and just as important is not.

Zombrex

nagirrac wrote: »

I really have no desire to engage in circular arguments with you again. Science has no answers to these questions and deists / theists have no answers to these questions. Everything relating to these set of questions is speculation at this point in time, including the speculation that I have given you repeatedly on the "how" and "why" from the creator perspective, which you continue to ignore and cannot comprehend as it does not fit your worldview. Saying that science will eventually figure it out is also speculation, we may never figure any of these questions out.

My position is shared by some of the leading thinkers and scientists and your position is shared by some of the leading thinkers and scientists. All of them have one thing in common, they are way smarter than you or I which is why we turn to them for knowledge and understanding. At the end of the day every individual has to decide what he or she chooses to believe or not believe, that is what is known as freedom of thought, a concept you appear to have problems understanding.

So basically you believe in a deity because it makes more sense to you that the universe was created by something intelligent, than any alternative, but you have no way to support this conclusion other than it makes sense to you, personally.

Have you ever looked into hyperactive agency detection?

nagirrac

Zombrex wrote: »

Jesus was most likely a con man, from the evidence available to us. I think it is a shame that 2,000 years later people are still falling for the con.

Just out of curiosity, and I should know better than entering a theological argument, where is the "evidence" that Jesus was a con man?

pauldla

nagirrac wrote: »

My main point is to refute the often quoted Dawkins line that you commonly hear from atheists about religion being responsible for all the horrors in human history. It is bull**** plain and simple and you know it.

It IS bullsh!t plain and simple, and I'm not aware of any atheist claiming that religion is responsible for all the horrors in human history. References, please?

King Mob

nagirrac wrote: »

I really have no desire to engage in circular arguments with you again. Science has no answers to these questions and deists / theists have no answers to these questions.

So why do you persist in pretending that you do have an answer to the questions?
If you are saying that god is the most likely answer, you must be able to address these questions.
You cannot.

nagirrac wrote: »

Everything relating to these set of questions is speculation at this point in time, including the speculation that I have given you repeatedly on the "how" and "why" from the creator perspective, which you continue to ignore and cannot comprehend as it does not fit your worldview.

Except the "speculation" I had to drag out of you was nonsense with no baring on reality and explained exactly nothing.
It was magic by every definition of the word, just dressed up in technobabble.

nagirrac wrote: »

Saying that science will eventually figure it out is also speculation, we may never figure any of these questions out.

Declaring that science cannot ever do this, or declaring that it is non-physical/magic, as you have repeatedly done is then also speculation.

You continually show that your position is self contradictory and hypocritical.

nagirrac wrote: »

My position is shared by some of the leading thinkers and scientists and your position is shared by some of the leading thinkers and scientists. All of them have one thing in common, they are way smarter than you or I which is why we turn to them for knowledge and understanding.

And then I'm sure that they under stand what an argument from authority is and why it's a dishonest argument.
You do not, and this failure to detect simple logical missteps is why your position is so laughable and why you are having trouble defending it.

Zombrex

nagirrac wrote: »

The ones who have given up attempting to learn and discover are people, including many scientists, who are so sure of their beliefs / science that they regard it as truth. Open minded people / scientists continue to attempt to learn and discover. If belief in a creator as the most likely answer is as a result of "giving up" why would so many leading scientists be deists and theists?

Your argument makes no sense and is typical of those that do not even understand what science is and just as important is not.

By your own admission appealing to a deity doesn't, and can't, explain anything. It is therefore the ultimate non answer.

The reason scientists believe in deities is because they are human, and humans possess minds that have evolved to imagine agents in nature even if they don't exits or cannot be rationally supported. Scientists believe in gods in the same way they believe in luck or that the have a shot with the attractive 18 year old intern or that their daughter isn't a crack addict despite being arrested 10 times by the cops in a crack den. Just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean they are not prone to all the normal human irrationalities and delusions when it comes to their own life and beliefs. In fact the scientific method not only recognises this, it attempts to compensate. There is a reason other scientists don't just accept the claims of a scientific result, the verify it independently. The do this because scientists can be mistaken, biased, deluded, mentally ill etc etc. It is irrelevant what the scientist believes, all that matters is what he can show to others that they can then verify.

Zombrex

nagirrac wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, and I should know better than entering a theological argument, where is the "evidence" that Jesus was a con man?

Ironically, in the Bible. And it's not a theological argument, it is a psychological one. Jesus, as described in the Bible, fits a common profile for a cult leader con man

One example was that Jesus was supported financially by his wealth supporters after he "cured" them of demons. That is a very common MO if the cult leader con man, for example the Jonestown cult.

Another is Jesus' preaching of people isolating themselves from friends and family, a tactic used by all sorts of cults from Scientology to Heavens Gate.

Jesus follows all the standard plays of a egotistical con man cult leader. The New Testament is practically a text book on how to run a cult.