(October 30, 2011 at 7:42 pm)5thHorseman Wrote: How come only theistic retards who know very little about physics see it this way, why not experts, and don't give me that 'they're atheist' shit.

What about these experts? These scientists certainly became convinced by the evidence:

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." (2)

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." (3)

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". (4)

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose". (5)

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." (6)

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." (7)

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" (8)

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory." (9)

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." (10)

Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." (11)

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (12)

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." (13)

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (14)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." (16) Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): "We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."(17)

Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument." (18)

Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]." (19)

Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed." (20)

Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'." (21)

Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." (22)

Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." (23)

Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." (24)

Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." (25)

Antony Flew (Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater) "It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of Deoxyribonucleic acid: the chemical inside the nucleus of a cell that carries the genetic instructions for making living organisms.DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." (26)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science." (27)

According to a poll taken in 1997, 40 percent of physicists, biologists and mathematicians believe in God. Funny that you never hear about these people isn't it.

Science Resurrects God
(from the Wall Street Journal — December 24, 1997)

http://www.holycrossmonastery.org/index....&Itemid=20

(October 30, 2011 at 7:42 pm)5thHorseman Wrote: Not completely sure what you're getting at with myths, if it's evolution, you're wrong. It's got 150 years of evidence and nothing to counter it, and I'm sure your aware, many have tried. Even dem dirty Catholics believe it, CoE apologised posthumously to Darwin. There is no proof whatsoever for ID or God for that matter.

You seem blissfully unaware that there is no actual evidence for macro evolution. I hate to break it to you but the fossil record is not your friend. These are your best ones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tra...al_fossils

Note the disclaimer:

Ideally, this list would only recursively include 'true' transitionals, fossils representing ancestral species from which later groups evolved, but most if not all, of the fossils shown here represent extinct side branches, more or less closely related to the true ancestor

Notice what it says? No true ancestors. IE, nothing to show one form transitioning to another. If you want to talk about fairytales, this is it. I bet you thought there was a lot more evidence than this. I did too. When I first become a Christian I believed in evolution. It was only after investigating it did I find it was nothing but assumption heaped upon wild speculation.

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)

“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.” (Gee, Henry, "Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)

"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories." (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)

Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood (Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)

"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71.)

It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions." (Wills, C., Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

"Despite the bright promise - that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

"He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search....It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

"What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types." (Carroll, Robert L., "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

The truth is, species appear in the fossil record suddenly and fully formed, stay basically the same until they disappear again just as suddenly. The fossil record really hates the theory of evolution. Take the Cambrian Explosion for instance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DkbmuRhXRY

---

(October 30, 2011 at 8:51 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Hasn't everything you've just said been dealt with at length in this very thread? Ask a loon a question and the answer you get is going to be crazy. Referencing your myth to itself isn't going to end up providing a rational response or evidence at any point Lucent. You're an adult, presumably you're educated, you claim to have done research into this, I shouldn't have to explain why over and over again.

You'll find wodan, but loki is always looking to decieve. It's on you, and if you don't reach wodan thats your bad. There can be no evidence of wodan because that would eliminate your choice in searching, also it would erode free will. That being said, evidence for wodan is all around us. In fact, atheist scientists actively suppress the truth about this. I know all of this because I asked and he honored my request for knowledge. You just have to trust wodan. It could be invalidated if you could prove that he doesn't exist. There really isn't any way to see what he's doing or why. We can only go by what he promised to do.

Typical response from Rhythm:

I'm right about everything and you believe in myths. Checkmate!

If you used a little rationality you could easily narrow the list of potential Gods. If you take away the ones who don't make creation claims, you've gotten rid of 99 percent of them already.

Just because some schooled bible thumpers cannot find an answer does not mean that 'goddidit'. What that means is these folks are weak in their field, which explains why they are not headliners.

Evolution is true whether you or any other bible thumper believe it or not. Lack of evidence is proof of nothing. Either there are millions upon millions of fossils which would take thousands if not millions of years to categorize or there are very few fossils, which makes finding complete transitions randomly difficult at best. Not every animal that has ever lived has left fossil evidence, in fact most have left no evidence whatsoever of their existence.

There is no god. It cannot exist. There is no possible set of circumstances that can even remotely accommodate an infinitely regressive entity or an infinitely powerful being. You are only fooling yourself. How do I know? The easter bunny told me so.

It seems to be impossible for a Christian to understand that god can be searched for and not found. It's clear that they are set in their ways that atheists have never made an attempt nor do they know the proper way to seek. They state unequivocally that if you seek god correctly, you will find him, and I have yet to hear an adequate explanation from any of them how they know their experience is real and not a psychological illusion.

And on a final note, you Christians come off as extremely arrogant when proclaiming only you know the correct way to seek god. Perhaps you need to come to terms with the fact that conclusions different from yours can be reached properly, or would that shake your faith?

Lucent has now mastered the art of copying and pasting quotations, and displaying an embarrassing lack of understanding regarding evolution. Have a gold star, lucent, you silly little zombie.

(October 30, 2011 at 11:22 pm)IATIA Wrote: Just because some schooled bible thumpers cannot find an answer does not mean that 'goddidit'. What that means is these folks are weak in their field, which explains why they are not headliners.

Most of them were in fact at the top of their fields and had extremely noteworthy careers:

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM, FRS[1] (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was a British astrophysicist of the early 20th century. He was also a philosopher of science and a popularizer of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour.

He is famous for his work regarding the Theory of Relativity. Eddington wrote a number of articles which announced and explained Einstein's theory of general relativity to the English-speaking world. World War I severed many lines of scientific communication and new developments in German science were not well known in England. He also conducted an expedition to observe the Solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 that provided one of the earliest confirmations of relativity, and he became known for his popular expositions and interpretations of the theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington

George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, (born August 11, 1939) is the Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, published in 1973, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology.[1] He is an active Quaker and in 2004 he won the Templeton Prize.[2] From 1989 to 1992 he served as President of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. He is a past President of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is an A-rated researcher with the NRF.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fran...yner_Ellis

Allan Rex Sandage (June 18, 1926 - November 13, 2010)[1][2][3][4] was an American astronomer. He was Staff Member Emeritus with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California.[5] He is best known for determining the first reasonably accurate value for the Hubble constant and the age of the universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Sandage

Paul Charles William Davies, AM (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He has held previous academic appointments at the University of Cambridge, University of London, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Adelaide and Macquarie University. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He has proposed that a one-way trip to Mars could be a viable option.

In 2005, he took up the chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics. He is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies

I stopped here because I got tired of copying and pasting. Care to venture a new theory?

(October 30, 2011 at 11:22 pm)IATIA Wrote: Evolution is true whether you or any other bible thumper believe it or not.

God exists whether you atheists believe it or not.

(October 30, 2011 at 11:22 pm)IATIA Wrote: Lack of evidence is proof of nothing.

I agree, and I'll remind you of this next time you say that evidence is lacking for God.

(October 30, 2011 at 11:22 pm)IATIA Wrote: Either there are millions upon millions of fossils which would take thousands if not millions of years to categorize or there are very few fossils, which makes finding complete transitions randomly difficult at best.

You'd think they would have found at least one with a watertight case by now, right? Archaeopteryx was the best one you had and it got debunked last year:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21...-bird.html

(October 30, 2011 at 11:22 pm)IATIA Wrote: Not every animal that has ever lived has left fossil evidence, in fact most have left no evidence whatsoever of their existence.

Yeah, they must be all the ones that agree with your theory.

(October 30, 2011 at 11:22 pm)IATIA Wrote: There is no god. It cannot exist. There is no possible set of circumstances that can even remotely accommodate an infinitely regressive entity or an infinitely powerful being.

God is not infinitely anything. He is the beginning and the end. God is all powerful, not infinitely powerful. How do you, as a finite, limited, biased human being, judge what God can or can't be?

(October 30, 2011 at 6:03 pm)lucent Wrote: The Universe clearly has the appearance of design. The whole theory of evolution is based upon the idea that nature, in an undirected process, designed all the life we see today. The DNA is a code which can be seen as a plan, or blueprint for a creature. You can't debunk design; the Universe was either designed by an intelligent cause or it designed itself. The question is what is the better explanation.

Scary. Later you accuse me of arguing from ignorance and yet your 'evidence' is that "well of course the universe exhbits design, oh and DNA". Do you not see the irony? Please go read some science books rather than polluting the world with arguments such as these and perhaps just ask yourself one question: what would an undesigned universe look like to me?. You claim design and order is 'obvious' in a gigantic argument from ignorance, yet you will not be able to describe a universe where humans can observe a dis-ordered universe. Also answer which elements of the universe that you observe have order which possibly cannot come from natural events.

(October 30, 2011 at 6:03 pm)lucent Wrote: The idea that the Universe just created and designed itself out of nothing is a metaphysical idea, and one which violates the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. There is no explanation for origins, either cosmic or life origins. There is no naturalistic process which can account for DNA. These aren't gaps, they're grand canyons. You can't just waltz in and say you've replaced God when you have failed to answer *all* of the fundemental questions. "We're working on it" is not an answer.

Scientifically illiterate argument I'm afraid. There are natural explanations for origins of the universe try the hartle hawking conjecture and the wave function of the universe. Try abiogenesis for DNA. And you gave away your thinking by using the word gaps and filling it with a god of such gaps. Mankind will never be able to answer all fundamental questions we can only ever get close to it. The universe is expanding faster than the ability of light to travel. This fact in and of itself poses major problems for supernaturalism. You would have to eliminate all natural possibilities for phenomona you want to attribute to a god, but because mankind will never be omniscient your argumenst will never go through.

(October 30, 2011 at 6:03 pm)lucent Wrote: He is the logos and everything in this Universe was created by Him and through Him. You cannot know anything true without the logos. This was showing you why you think God is hidden, because without Him you are blind to truth.

Righto. More Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales for you. Ring any bells?:

"So the honest old minister went to the room where the two swindlers sat working away at their empty looms.

"Heaven help me," he thought as his eyes flew wide open, "I can't see anything at all". But he did not say so.

Both the swindlers begged him to be so kind as to come near to approve the excellent pattern, the beautiful colors. They pointed to the empty looms, and the poor old minister stared as hard as he dared. He couldn't see anything, because there was nothing to see..."

(October 30, 2011 at 6:03 pm)lucent Wrote: Pure supposition and conjecture. You're arguing from ignorance here. You've admitted you have never looked and so what exactly could you possibly know about the subject? This is something that amazes me about atheists who claim to have dominion on logic. You count all of the ways that Christ cannot be found against His existence, and never try the one way He can be found because you say there is no evidence. There is no way to get that evidence except from Christ directly, end of story. Personally, I think there are plenty of good reasons to believe in Jesus just from the evidence we do have, but as far as direct evidence of Gods existence, only God can give that to you. What you've failed to do is simply ask God for the truth. If you were to get on your knees and pray to Jesus "Jesus, if you're God, I want to know. Please show me the truth", He would reveal it to you.

Almost jawdropping irony to claim that I'm arguing from ignorance. I can back my beliefs up with a consistent worldview and evidence. Whereas you are arguing that that universe is designed, becuase you say it is and it has to be supernatural, because you say it is and you can't possibly think of a reason how nature can account for these so called phenomona. Go and think about it.

So if I drop to my knees and ask Jesus for forgiveness or whatever and he doesn't respond, the I either: 1) wont have tried hard enough or 2) honestly enough or 3) both or 4) its good becuase I'll be suffering like Christ (hope I've not missed any xtian response I could get back). But if I do get a response then I was doing it hard and honestly enough and you were right all along. Just a sneeking suspicion that you're not leaving any option that you might just be wrong are you? The other missing option is that there isn't anyone there. Have you considered that? Just how credulous do you think I am to accept an invitation as you are offering? Mother Theresa who was very motivated to believe never once got a response, wonder what she really thought?

(October 30, 2011 at 11:42 pm)Faith No More Wrote: It seems to be impossible for a Christian to understand that god can be searched for and not found. It's clear that they are set in their ways that atheists have never made an attempt nor do they know the proper way to seek. They state unequivocally that if you seek god correctly, you will find him, and I have yet to hear an adequate explanation from any of them how they know their experience is real and not a psychological illusion.

And on a final note, you Christians come off as extremely arrogant when proclaiming only you know the correct way to seek god. Perhaps you need to come to terms with the fact that conclusions different from yours can be reached properly, or would that shake your faith?

I think it's extremely arrogant for atheists to write off the spiritual experiences of billions of people as a delusion. I've yet to hear one atheist explain why they couldn't be possibly be deceived by Satan as the bible indicates they are.

I could tell you of all sorts of things, but it wouldn't be persausive. I will say that Material reality is a veil, concealing the spiritual reality. Your worldview and knowledge may to you seem completely sufficient yet the truth is that everything you know is wrong. The world isn't as it appears to be. I know, I grew up secular and believed all the same things you do. I thought that was the way things were, but much to my surprise I found out, not so much.

People can come to all sorts of conclusions, and have. It's a matter of what the truth is. Someone is right someone is wrong. The nature of truth is exclusivity.

Quote:God is not infinitely anything. He is the beginning and the end. God is all powerful, not infinitely powerful. How do you, as a finite, limited, biased human being, judge what God can or can't be?

You tell us, you do it all the time.

Yes, lucent, someone is right and someone is wrong. You assert that you are right. You assert that we atheists are wrong. You get pissy when we assert, but see nothing wrong with asserting your beliefs with wall after wall of text. Is it arrogant to think that billions of people are deluded? Fuck no, it isn't. Billions of people have been wrong before, genius.

I think it is arrogant of Christians to write off the spiritual experiences of thousands of Greeks as delusional.
I think it is arrogant of Muslims to write off the spiritual experiences of thousands of Hindus as delusional.
I think it is arrogant of Jews to write off the spiritual experiences of thousands of Scientologists as delusional.
I think it is arrogant of Vikings to write off the spiritual experiences of thousands of Sikhs as delusional.