Quote:What I've always kept an eye on is that if you leave a pile of bricks on the floor, if you come back in a million years you don't expect to find a house do you? it takes intelligence to make things happen.

How is this analogy useful? We know that bricks and houses do not contain the necessary chemicals to initiate a reaction in which they can form self replicating molecules let alone cell walls. On the other hand we know the necessary chemicals were around during early earth conditions given the chemical compositions of the rocks laid down at that time. These chemicals are the precursors to life, but we only have hypothesis around what happened next. To assume there was a spark however may miss the point, there's no point in looking for the instant at which not-alive becomes alive. It's like tearing apart that house looking for the architects inspiration (to use you analogy for a second). We recognize the state when it's clear, but you won't be able to reduce it to find the boundaries, because there aren't any and indeed those boundary conditions may fluctuate wildly. I can give more detail on this if you wish.

Quote:This whole world is coincidence after coincidence with life fighting for it's existence, it had a will, will does not come from inanimate objects .... think about that.

Really? Does a bull have a will, do bacteria, do lizards, chickens, etc. You are trying to anthropomorphize all life. Most life is not conscious nor self aware, only higher forms through a product of higher brain function. Other than that life pretty much survives on instinct only, but equally not everything with an instinct is life. For example you could assign an instinct to a virus or a prion in that they search out specific weaknesses, bind to specific cell components and start doing their stuff. But a virus or prion is non life. Again you are searching for a black and white world and in reality it does not exist.

As for coincidences it appears to me that all possible outcomes for the universe, galaxy, solar system, earth, us are vastly improbable but given the universe is so big improbable things happen all the time. The sun for example is powered by quantum tunneling events of individual hydrogen atoms to enable fusion. It is a near impossible event for any 2 hydrogen atoms but given there is so much hydrogen in the sun, it happens all the time.

Elegantly put.

There's been quite a few reply's and I can't answer all so i will have to cherry pick so to speak.

(September 2, 2011 at 9:43 pm)SleepingDemon Wrote: Cells don't decide anything. Life is based upon the success of its own survival. Cells multiply so that their species survives. If life did not happen here, it would have happened somewhere else.

But "life" initially is nothing no brain, no thoughts, no decisions ..... it is how i best described it a will of force.

How can cells as a species survive with none of the above, for something to take action for it's survival takes self awareness, how can something be self aware when it visibly does not have the tools to do so .... once again it wills itself into action.

The ingredients of this universe seem to be pre programmed, as you said if life didn't happen here it would have happened somewhere else.
Something like that cannot be programmed without a complexity that is way beyond anything humans are capable of or can understand ...... where in the universe is there something capable of designing matter/atoms/elements that will inevitably behave in such a manner?

We know matter is aborted from stars and nebula but that only reinforces that factory esque design of the universe ....... hence the ID theory.

Now intelligent designer may not be some wizard of oz character pushing buttons but until you can understand the nature of God in relation to the universe it is a bit ignorant to dismiss it with such ease considering how much we don't know in of in the universe, maybe God is the Universe, maybe God is that will I keep referring to?

Diamond Diest you have already had responses to these quetsions. You need to read the reposnes. You are just repeating the same points.

(August 31, 2011 at 9:26 pm)nicholas5000 Wrote: Atheism:''The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.'' Something can't come from nothing. Look at the complexity and design of the vast universe we live in, do you think this all happened by chance?

"Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance."- Sir Isaac Newton

I'm not proselytizing, I'm sharing my opinion. I don't know for sure that a creator exists, but I think it is likely, over 50 percent at least.

Quoting Newton is pointless, he lived 450 years ago, things have moved on and much of his wonderful work has been bettered/disproven, by Einstein. He was a genius of his age, not this one.

Also.

Just because you don't understand physics, doesn't mean god exists, it's a cop out, a weak one at that. Something like 98% of royal society fellows do not believe in a god. They are smarter than you or I or Sir Isaac Newton.

(September 3, 2011 at 2:32 pm)Captain Scarlet Wrote: Diamond Diest you have already had responses to these quetsions. You need to read the reposnes. You are just repeating the same points.

I don't think I've seen a bottled answer to that here or a satisfactory one.

A response yes an answer no.

Don't worry we'll leave it there, lets be honest the real answer is you just don't know, neither do I, neither do we as a human race.

So I don't think we can dismiss or brush off theists so easy when no one has an answer to the alternative.

Bible is crap, Torah is crap, Quran is all made up crap ..... but the God theory or some sort of force in the universe, not so crap and if it is you would first have to define what God is and what it means to the person suggesting it ..... good luck with that lol.

(September 3, 2011 at 1:50 pm)Diamond-Deist Wrote: There's been quite a few reply's and I can't answer all so i will have to cherry pick so to speak.


But "life" initially is nothing no brain, no thoughts, no decisions ..... it is how i best described it a will of force.

How can cells as a species survive with none of the above, for something to take action for it's survival takes self awareness, how can something be self aware when it visibly does not have the tools to do so .... once again it wills itself into action.

The ingredients of this universe seem to be pre programmed, as you said if life didn't happen here it would have happened somewhere else.
Something like that cannot be programmed without a complexity that is way beyond anything humans are capable of or can understand ...... where in the universe is there something capable of designing matter/atoms/elements that will inevitably behave in such a manner?

We know matter is aborted from stars and nebula but that only reinforces that factory esque design of the universe ....... hence the ID theory.

Now intelligent designer may not be some wizard of oz character pushing buttons but until you can understand the nature of God in relation to the universe it is a bit ignorant to dimiss it with such ease considering how much we don't know in of in the universe, maybe God is the Universe, maybe God is that will I keep referring to?[

Nothing is capable of designing it. That is the point, the cells in your body break down into molecules, those break down into atoms, atoms into protons, neutrons and electrons. The very same subatomic particles that make up the air you breathe, the chair you are sitting in. There is nothing magical or designed about it. It is easy to see design when you don't grasp the fundamentals of how things work. But the reality is that if this universe is indeed designed then the creator is pisspoor at it because he failed more than he succeeded.

And how does the fact that everything is made of stardust indicate creation? Why would a being capable of creating something from nothing have to recycle? Show me anywhere in the universe where things just puff into existence, then your theory of intelligent design will have some credibility. Until then I am going to defer to the experts.

(September 3, 2011 at 4:16 pm)Diamond-Deist Wrote: I don't think I've seen a bottled answer to that here or a satisfactory one.
A response yes an answer no.
Don't worry we'll leave it there, lets be honest the real answer is you just don't know, neither do I, neither do we as a human race.
So I don't think we can dismiss or brush off theists so easy when no one has an answer to the alternative.
Bible is crap, Torah is crap, Quran is all made up crap ..... but the God theory or some sort of force in the universe, not so crap and if it is you would first have to define what God is and what it means to the person suggesting it ..... good luck with that lol.

No DD. The points you raise are probably wrong way, ie that your arguments are not equally sound (to which you have the responses refuting your views/points made). It remains undisputed that the origin of life is something between a conjecture and hypothesis at this stage and has not graduated to the status of a theory. This however is something different to claiming all life has a will or incredulously claiming that it is unlikely that the universe was a coincidence etc.

I cannot stand appeals to solipsism. If you can't really know, then stop telling us what you know. You cant really know anything about the probability of gods.

Does seem that DD has 'confused' (??) a great many theories/ hypotheses and actual evidence that we currently have.

Why are we looking?, and why is it so important to "pin-down-once-and -for-all-time-the-origin-of-everything"?