(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 8:38 pm)possibletarian Wrote: Now here is the problem we have Neo, Christians love to quote scripture, but when it's quoted back at them use this typical type of vague excuse, that the early church thought Jesus would return in their lifetime is not in question to most scholars .

God is under no compulsion to act according to the beliefs of humans, even his followers or chosen apostles. Jesus said no one knows the time of his return except the Father.

The hell he isn't. He'd better pick up his game or I'll sack the blighter.

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 10:13 am)Mathilda Wrote: Citation required. Also a definition of what you mean by inanimate matter vs animate matter. And define life while you're at it.

I see you ignored my example of a car being made up of inanimate matter, yet no one would argue that a car can't be animated. What you are doing is performing a fallacy of composition. It is energy that animates the car. The only difference between inanimate and animated matter is whether there is a flow of energy through it that can perform work. I could have instead used the example of an ice crystal growing, or snow recrystalising over time while the temperature (energy) changes but stays below freezing.

@emjay: I get that some theists appear to be playing word games in order to cling to their belief.

Can you understand that I see the same thing in some atheists?

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(November 12, 2017 at 11:09 am)emjay Wrote: I'm glad you're not hurt by it... this is already one of those threads I wish I hadn't partaken in for all the division it's creating. My point about delusion was not that belief in God itself was delusional, but that to the extent that I see (any) belief as emotionally/irrationally driven I find it less credible. But I daresay you're the same;

Yep. See above. The difference is that I see emotionally/irrationally driven beliefs among atheists as well as theists.

As I've already said, so do I, and I assign them no more credibility and have no more desire to talk to them about certain issues than I do theists showing the same signs.

Quote:Dawkins said that evolution allowed the atheist to be intellectually fulfilled. That's a powerful emotional driver.

Quote:I don't know what came before the big bang, and it may be impossible to know. But I'm comfortable with that.

Copout. When you need to appeal to personal credulity/incredulity and then ignorance and apathy in order to maintain your position, don't you get that I see that the same way you see certain theist arguments?

Maybe it is but it is nonetheless how I feel. I do not have a burning desire to fill every gap, and do not lose any sleep over not knowing the answer to certain questions, only the questions that are important to me.

Quote:

Quote:Maybe not, but at least it's trying to find them and looking to this universe, rather than speculating about the unknown and unknowable, to do so.

Only materialist bias has you congratulating them for sticking to this universe (which they really don't).

Quote:Fair enough, but it remains the case that magic is not the simplest explanation for... anything.

Do you even know what Occam's razor says? It says that you shouldn't multiply entities needlessly. In the case of a universe with a beginning, as science says ours has, it's not needless to infer an additional entity, i.e. a creator.

Quote:What I'm saying is whether you see me as biased... and clearly you do... any even if you're right... doesn't make any practical difference to how I perceive others; I'm still no more likely see what I personally consider irrational/emotionally driven belief as credible.

You find irrational/emotionally driven arguments that agree with your existing biases as credible. It's only those that go against your biases that you have a problem with.

I disagree. I have seen some atheist arguments that despite agreeing in parts with my own positions, have lost all credibility to me due to the amount of confirmation bias they show.

But yes, I can admit I have a materialist bias. But so does science... by necessity... because it can only study, test, and measure the material world.

As to Occam's Razor... yeah, but then it's just turtles all the way down isn't it? If there was always something rather than nothing, which I believe is possible, then there is no need to 'multiply entities needlessly' by adding a God, and if there was not always something rather than nothing, then adding a creator only defers the question to them; if the creator always existed, why couldn't the universe without that extra assumption have always existed, and if didn't always exist, then it needs another creator to prop it up, and on recursively down the line.

Quote:

(November 12, 2017 at 12:13 pm)emjay Wrote: Yeah, I wondered what that was about but at the same time, tbh I'm not hugely interested; the idea still remains perfectly plausible to me in principle based on the nature of chemistry and physics, so if that's referring to human experiments, no amount of them can compare to the billions of years worth of 'trials' nature itself had the chance to perform.

Bingo - billions of years worth of opportunity for abiogenesis, but it supposedly only happened once.

I'd find abiogenesis and evolution more believable if there were multiple instances and trees rather than just one.

Once in a million, billion, or gazillion still shows possibility; statistically rare but materialistically possible will always trump magic for me. And from that perspective, we're only here to talk about this because of that one in billion or whatever possibility.

Anyway you clearly know more about this than I do, so I at least read a bit of the wiki on abiogenesis; it's more than I knew (specifically at least... maybe I knew it in the back of my mind from long ago) that amino acids had already produced in experiments designed to replicate the supposed early conditions of earth. So here's me been waiting for something like that to happen... and it already has... sixty odd years ago but then I've always been a bit behind the times So the current state of research is presumably what you're talking about? ie the move from organic molecules to living cells? From what I gather, there are many competing theories, so despite your millions of negative results, if that's what you were referring to, it looks like a hot field with a lot of potential... and as far as I'm concerned... if amino acids have already been produced that way, there's every reason to be confident that the rest is just a matter of time. So thank you... you may have actually sparked an interest for me here. But really I shouldn't comment on it further until I have researched it further.

(November 12, 2017 at 11:58 pm)emjay Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 10:13 am)Mathilda Wrote: Citation required. Also a definition of what you mean by inanimate matter vs animate matter. And define life while you're at it.

I see you ignored my example of a car being made up of inanimate matter, yet no one would argue that a car can't be animated. What you are doing is performing a fallacy of composition. It is energy that animates the car. The only difference between inanimate and animated matter is whether there is a flow of energy through it that can perform work. I could have instead used the example of an ice crystal growing, or snow recrystalising over time while the temperature (energy) changes but stays below freezing.

@emjay: I get that some theists appear to be playing word games in order to cling to their belief.

Can you understand that I see the same thing in some atheists?

Right, so you didn't bother responding to my argument about why you are wrong, you just quote it and refer to it as word games rather than try to improve your knowledge or better your understanding about reality. But then this is exactly what I am talking about. If you have been raised to believe that the world is made up of fairy tales and only one of them is correct, then why would you bother learning about any other world view if you have no way to figure out which is correct? I have no interest in learning about the christian mythos any more than say that of Quetzalcoatl. This would explain why theists typically do not try to explain their fairy tale but to portray science as being on an equal footing by fixating on the gaps in our knowledge.

Look at what you are doing on this thread. You're not even trying to point out how praying to a god could be in any way plausible. All you are doing is pointing at a small gap in our knowledge and making unfounded assertions.

(November 12, 2017 at 11:58 pm)emjay Wrote: Anyway you clearly know more about this than I do, so I at least read a bit of the wiki on abiogenesis;

No, he really does not know anything about abiogenesis except how to make unfounded assertions in a way that one assumes that he must have a reason for stating. This is someone who thinks that at the point of the Big Bang it was all just inanimate matter.

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm)alpha male Wrote: Bingo - billions of years worth of opportunity for abiogenesis, but it supposedly only happened once.

I'd find abiogenesis and evolution more believable if there were multiple instances and trees rather than just one.

Wrong. All we know is that there is one common ancestor on Earth. This does not tell us whether there were other instances that have died out, or whether abiogenesis has occurred independently elsewhere in the solar system or galaxy.

Your assertion also misses the point that once life does take hold then it changes the environment. It spreads everywhere, expands to fill a niche, evolves and will therefore out compete any other form of new life that occurs since.

We know that with Darwinian evolution that if two species try occupying the same evolutionary niche that eventually only one of them will survive. There is no reason to suspect that this doesn't also apply to abiogenesis.

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm)alpha male Wrote: Do you even know what Occam's razor says? It says that you shouldn't multiply entities needlessly. In the case of a universe with a beginning, as science says ours has, it's not needless to infer an additional entity, i.e. a creator.

What???

That is entirely the opposite of Occam's razor.

Your argument can be paraphrased as:

'Occam's razor tells us that the explanation with the fewest assumptions should be selected so we should add an assumption.'

(November 12, 2017 at 9:56 pm)possibletarian Wrote: In Pauls letters even Revelation and the bible (supposedly the word of god) thinks that too.. you see our problem ?

The problem is arguing over scripture with people who will accept any interpretation so long as it's wrong. But ill get back to this later.

(November 12, 2017 at 11:58 pm)emjay Wrote: Maybe it is but it is nonetheless how I feel. I do not have a burning desire to fill every gap, and do not lose any sleep over not knowing the answer to certain questions, only the questions that are important to me.

The issue is that, regarding a theist with a similar position, you say they have all the hallmarks of delusion.

Quote:As to Occam's Razor... yeah, but then it's just turtles all the way down isn't it? If there was always something rather than nothing, which I believe is possible, then there is no need to 'multiply entities needlessly' by adding a God,

On what evidence do you believe that an eternally existing universe is possible?

Quote:Once in a million, billion, or gazillion still shows possibility; statistically rare but materialistically possible will always trump magic for me.

You have no evidence that it's materially possible. Just the opposite.

Quote:Anyway you clearly know more about this than I do, so I at least read a bit of the wiki on abiogenesis; it's more than I knew (specifically at least... maybe I knew it in the back of my mind from long ago) that amino acids had already produced in experiments designed to replicate the supposed early conditions of earth. So here's me been waiting for something like that to happen... and it already has... sixty odd years ago but then I've always been a bit behind the times

You're still behind. Science no longer thinks that the Urey-Miller experiment replicated early conditions on earth.

But even if it had, it produced a few amino acids. Every day, millions of creatures die. They don't have a few amino acids, they have all the materials necessary for life. But, abiogenesis has never been observed on any of these. You could say that's because they get eaten. But, isolate them, and still - no life. Put them in a pool of water with whatever chemicals you lie and add heat to simulate the sun - still no life. Add electricity to simulate lightning - still, no life.

For you, time appears to be magic.

Quote:So the current state of research is presumably what you're talking about? ie the move from organic molecules to living cells? From what I gather, there are many competing theories, so despite your millions of negative results, if that's what you were referring to, it looks like a hot field with a lot of potential...

May competing theories means that not one of them has solid evidence. Why do you assign potential to such a situation?

Quote:and as far as I'm concerned... if amino acids have already been produced that way, there's every reason to be confident that the rest is just a matter of time.

Oh wow, you even confirmed the point. Time = magic.

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(November 13, 2017 at 6:11 am)Mathilda Wrote: What???

That is entirely the opposite of Occam's razor.

Your argument can be paraphrased as:

'Occam's razor tells us that the explanation with the fewest assumptions should be selected so we should add an assumption.'

No, that's Occam's razor. Occam himself would have agreed with you. He thought that God couldn't be deduced by reason alone. And as noted above, that was a fair point as long as a steady-state or other eternal universe was still on the table. But now, with most of science agreeing that the universe had a beginning, you don't have an eternal universe, and an additional entity becomes necessary.

(November 13, 2017 at 9:11 am)alpha male Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 11:58 pm)emjay Wrote: Maybe it is but it is nonetheless how I feel. I do not have a burning desire to fill every gap, and do not lose any sleep over not knowing the answer to certain questions, only the questions that are important to me.

The issue is that, regarding a theist with a similar position, you say they have all the hallmarks of delusion.

Quote:As to Occam's Razor... yeah, but then it's just turtles all the way down isn't it? If there was always something rather than nothing, which I believe is possible, then there is no need to 'multiply entities needlessly' by adding a God,

On what evidence do you believe that an eternally existing universe is possible?

Quote:Once in a million, billion, or gazillion still shows possibility; statistically rare but materialistically possible will always trump magic for me.

You have no evidence that it's materially possible. Just the opposite.

Quote:Anyway you clearly know more about this than I do, so I at least read a bit of the wiki on abiogenesis; it's more than I knew (specifically at least... maybe I knew it in the back of my mind from long ago) that amino acids had already produced in experiments designed to replicate the supposed early conditions of earth. So here's me been waiting for something like that to happen... and it already has... sixty odd years ago but then I've always been a bit behind the times

You're still behind. Science no longer thinks that the Urey-Miller experiment replicated early conditions on earth.

But even if it had, it produced a few amino acids. Every day, millions of creatures die. They don't have a few amino acids, they have all the materials necessary for life. But, abiogenesis has never been observed on any of these. You could say that's because they get eaten. But, isolate them, and still - no life. Put them in a pool of water with whatever chemicals you lie and add heat to simulate the sun - still no life. Add electricity to simulate lightning - still, no life.

For you, time appears to be magic.

Quote:So the current state of research is presumably what you're talking about? ie the move from organic molecules to living cells? From what I gather, there are many competing theories, so despite your millions of negative results, if that's what you were referring to, it looks like a hot field with a lot of potential...

May competing theories means that not one of them has solid evidence. Why do you assign potential to such a situation?

Quote:and as far as I'm concerned... if amino acids have already been produced that way, there's every reason to be confident that the rest is just a matter of time.

Oh wow, you even confirmed the point. Time = magic.

Magic, is what your comic book contains. You don't get to blame us for the ignorance of the writers of that time back then.

Otherwise the far older Hindu Creator God Brahama exists. What's that you say, nonsense? GREAT, now try understanding that we simply reject one more sky wizard than you do.

Back when your comic book was written, the writers and buyers literally believed men MAGICALLY popped out of dirt. Back then they stupidly believed the earth was made in 6 literal days. Back then they had no damned clue that females contributed half the DNA. Back then they had no clue what rigor mortis was. 

Now do yourself a favor, go read and LEARN about the polytheistic mythology surrounding Mesopotamia and Eygpt. Study the mythology of Buddhism and Hinduism. THEN come back and tell my Christianity isn't full of magical claims.

Here is a list of human history of the world's claims of "Creator Gods"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_deity

I am sorry it bothers you that we are not buying your claim for your specific deity, but we don't treat you any differently than anyone of any other religion. Try understanding why you reject all other claims besides your own, then maybe you can understand why we reject your claim as well.

(November 12, 2017 at 10:13 am)Mathilda Wrote: See this is an example of how religious indoctrination conditions children to be unable to tell reality from fiction. Because how can you teach a child the concept of plausibility if you are expecting them to accept that one fairy tale is true while all the others are false?

OK, what's this concept of plausibility that I missed out on?

Quote:There are very plausible hypotheses about how life first developed

If there are multiple hypotheses, that means that none of them has enough evidence to be proven.

So, what makes them very plausible? How does very plausible differ from plain old plausible? How do we measure plausibility?

Quote:and we have no reason to suspect that we will ever need to resort to the non-explanation of magic. What you are trying to do is convince people that just because there are gaps in our knowledge that all your fairy tale explanation is equally valid. But this ignores the concept of plausibility.

OK, teach me this concept of plausibility. Honestly it just sounds like bullshit at this point.

(November 12, 2017 at 8:46 am)alpha male Wrote: Citation required.

OK:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/inanimate

1. not animate; lifeless

Quote:Also a definition of what you mean by inanimate matter vs animate matter.

See above.

Quote:I see you ignored my example of a car being made up of inanimate matter, yet no one would argue that a car can't be animated.

I ignored it because it's stupid. First, in this context, I'm obviously using animate/inanimate regarding life, not in the sense of motion as with the car. Second, yes, in the weaker definition the car can be built and animated - by intelligent designers. We've never seen a car arise spontaneously, and life is much more complex than a car.

Quote:What you are doing is performing a fallacy of composition. It is energy that animates the car. The only difference between inanimate and animated matter is whether there is a flow of energy through it that can perform work. I could have instead used the example of an ice crystal growing, or snow recrystalising over time while the temperature (energy) changes but stays below freezing.

I'm talking about life, not snowflakes. If you need to define life broadly enough to include such in order to make your point, you're a perfect example of what I'm saying to emjay.

Quote:Returning to the concept of plausibility, we can see examples of how matter is animated by energy with crystalisation. We can make use of the flow of free energy it by creating engines. Therefore it is plausible to think of life as working in a similar way but on a much smaller level. Cells are essentially molecular engines. This is why we eat. To provide the energy. If we don't get that energy then we die and our life ceases. We know the exact mechanisms of how energy powers cells to perform work. We know how energy continually animates matter into complex patterns of order and also why. Abiogenesis as a form of self organisation is plausible.

We've seen snowflakes. We've seen man-made (i.e. intelligently designed) engines. Therefore...abiogenesis is plausible. Sorry, that logic doesn't work for me.

Quote:What is not plausible is that some non-corporeal intelligence made up of only energy and not matter is able to continually scan your brain, understand how it functions and know when you are praying and when you are not, and then interact with the world to answer those prayers. Not only that but do it for everyone else in the world at the same time.

Why isn't that plausible? You need to give specific ways for us to measure plausibility. Otherwise, you're just dressing up things that you fancy and trying to make them sound better supported than they really are.

Quote:For this to even start becoming plausible, you would have to show that telepathy exists, that energy can persist as a complex ordered pattern without the use of matter and that there is some physical mechanism that could allow a brain to be scanned and the information transmitted back to a non-corporeal being.

So, for my view to even start becoming plausible, we have to show all that. But for you, car + snowflake = abiogenesis plausible. Complete bullshit.

(November 12, 2017 at 8:46 am)alpha male Wrote: No. At the point of the Big Bang there was only energy. Matter came afterwards. Nor would I ever say that there was ever a point in the universe's history where all matter was inanimate. Although that's not to say that we won't reach that point at the heat death of the universe.

And again you're playing word games with "inanimate."

(November 13, 2017 at 9:11 am)alpha male Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 11:58 pm)emjay Wrote: As to Occam's Razor... yeah, but then it's just turtles all the way down isn't it? If there was always something rather than nothing, which I believe is possible, then there is no need to 'multiply entities needlessly' by adding a God,

On what evidence do you believe that an eternally existing universe is possible?

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

On what evidence do you believe that an eternally existing god is possible?

(November 13, 2017 at 9:11 am)alpha male Wrote: You're still behind. Science no longer thinks that the Urey-Miller experiment replicated early conditions on earth.

Yet it still shows us that the process is likely similar even if the conditions were not exactly the same.

(November 13, 2017 at 9:11 am)alpha male Wrote: Oh wow, you even confirmed the point. Time = magic.

Define magic. How about some effect where the cause is not only unknown but can't ever be known? Think of the idea of wizards and you'll see that the definition fits. That is also the very hallmark of christian belief. No christian ever tries defining what a soul is, or a holy spirit, or what a god is or how it or prayer could possibly work. Because to do so means that you then have something that is falsifiable and can be shown to be false. You are the perfect example of this by not even trying to explain how your beliefs could in any way be plausible.

Yet waiting for a statistically rare event has been shown to take time in practice on average. If I gave you a bucket load of 6 sided dice and you tipped them all on the ground, the probability of them coming up all 6's is a statistically rare event. If I gave you a task of doing just that, how long would you ask for to complete that task in the knowledge that you were likely to manage just that? This isn't magic, it's just a lower probability requires more time to happen on average. Now if we tasked every person on the planet to do the same thing, then we can calculate a much higher chance of success happening within the near future.

That said, I don't even assume that life is a statistically rare event. Again it's the theists making the assumption to make it sound less likely. It assumes that in the few million years since the Earth formed that a chemical soup was stable and doing the equivalent of rolling dice. But in reality the Earth wasn't even habitable for life when it first started to form and took a long time to cool down. We just don't know how long it took once the Earth became habitable for life to appear. Evidence is, not long.

(November 13, 2017 at 9:11 am)alpha male Wrote: But now, with most of science agreeing that the universe had a beginning, you don't have an eternal universe, and an additional entity becomes necessary.

We don't know that the universe had a beginning. All we know is that at some point which we call the Big Bang, all energy and space-time was condensed into one small point. We don't know what happened before that. What we do know though is that since the Big Bang, energy cannot be created nor destroyed so is essentially eternal. All All matter in the universe has come from energy, so yes, the universe does seem to be eternal.

Adding an additional entity to explain what we observe is not in keeping with the principle of Occam's razor if it ends up relying on more assumptions as a result. Your god character does exactly that and does not even help solve the initial question, it just pushes the solution further away like a homunculus fallacy. This is because the same questions that we can ask of how an eternal universe came into being can now be asked of how an eternal god came into being. All you have achieved is to add an unnecessary component. And to think that you did this by evoking Occam's razor!

Alpha, we know you really like what you claim, but so what.

You, "God did it."

Muslim, "Allah did it"

Jew, "Yahweh did it"

Hindu, "Brahama did it"

Buddhist, "Karma and reincarnation did it."

What the skeptic hears when anyone opens their mouth is Charlie Brown's teacher.

"Wwaaaa waaa waaa waaa waaa Jesus"
"Wwaaaa waaa waaa waaa waaa Allah"
"Wwaaa waaaa waaa waaa waa Yahweh"
"Wwaa waaa waaa waaa waaa Brahma"
"Wwaa waaa waaa waa waaa Buddha"

(November 13, 2017 at 6:11 am)Mathilda Wrote:

(November 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm)alpha male Wrote: Do you even know what Occam's razor says? It says that you shouldn't multiply entities needlessly. In the case of a universe with a beginning, as science says ours has, it's not needless to infer an additional entity, i.e. a creator.

That is entirely the opposite of Occam's razor.

Writing as someone who has actually read Occam, his position was that people should prefer the explanation that requires the least number of causal factors needed to sufficiently account for all the relevant phenomena. At least for now, abiogenesis cannot be sufficiently explained by any known combination of physical necessity and chance over time. That does not automatically make Divine intervention the prefered hypothesis but neither can it yet be ruled out. Simply having a bias for ontological naturalism doesn't ensure a natural explanation will be found. And if I remember the point of RR's example was not to claim abiogensis was true; but rather, to provide an example of something most atheists believe is true despite any supporting evidence. And since some here are defining belief in something without evidence as delusional that would mean that, at least on this one point, those atheists are delusional. Personally, I find that a sound comparison.