(November 3, 2014 at 4:37 pm)Heywood Wrote: The way it works is you make a claim and then the burden of proof is on you to support that claim. For some reason you think atheists are immune to having a burden of proof....but they are not. Stimbo made a claim and the argument above shows he did not satisfy the burden of proof of substantiating his claim.

Then you also have no idea how claims work, or the burden of proof. Stimbo's "claim," such as it was, was that the experiment registered no involvement from a deity. The absence of detectable god involvement is the support for that claim. Your response was to basically whine that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, apparently missing that in a situation in which no god was present, no evidence is what you would expect to find, and what was found in the results of the experiment.

If someone provides a lack of detectable evidence for a thing, which does resolve a burden of proof, you can't come back and say "oh yeah, well what if nobody can detect the evidence but it's totally still there, huh?!" as if that's a rebuttal that even makes sense, because how would you know?

That is, in a very literal sense, you making shit up to cover for your own complete failure to render a cogent point.

Absence of evidence might not be evidence of absence, but it sure as shit isn't evidence of presence, Woodster.

(November 3, 2014 at 1:16 pm)Surgenator Wrote:

(November 3, 2014 at 11:41 am)Heywood Wrote: In order for the Law of conservation of momentum to be conserved, something must exist which conserves it. That something could very well be God.

Thats a non-sequitur and wrong.

Conservation of momentum is a byproduct of translational invariance. No one has to inforce it. Look up Noether's theorem before you spout nonsense about physical laws.

You are right about many laws of nature being consequences of symmetries. I have mentioned Noether's theorem on this forum a long time ago and I am familiar with it.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-24945-po...#pid635067

Noether's theorem doesn't disprove the argument because one could say instead of a particular law of nature being conserved, what conserves this or that symmetry. I figured the argument would be more understandable if made in terms of conservation of laws of nature rather than in terms of conservation of symmetries. I dumbed down the argument for the audience is all.

---

(November 3, 2014 at 4:46 pm)abaris Wrote: That's only true for gnostic atheists, as has been said about a milion times. Agnostic atheists claim there's no evidence for god, but if he were to show up, we would change our stance.

You on the other hand make a positive claim. Yo say, there's a god, so from where I am standing, the burden of proof is on you. Convince me with evidence, but not from the bible. I've read that book too and it only confirmed my position.

Yes I believe in God....but I am not arguing that here. What I am arguing here is that Stimbo's claim lacks any foundation. You and others are trying to move the goal post here to bolster Stimbo's claim.

---

(November 3, 2014 at 4:46 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Then you also have no idea how claims work, or the burden of proof. Stimbo's "claim," such as it was, was that the experiment registered no involvement from a deity. The absence of detectable god involvement is the support for that claim. Your response was to basically whine that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, apparently missing that in a situation in which no god was present, no evidence is what you would expect to find, and what was found in the results of the experiment.

If someone provides a lack of detectable evidence for a thing, which does resolve a burden of proof, you can't come back and say "oh yeah, well what if nobody can detect the evidence but it's totally still there, huh?!" as if that's a rebuttal that even makes sense, because how would you know?

The problem with Stimbo's claim is he assumes God is absent in every element of the experiment and then concludes God is absent in every element of the experiment. I challenge his question begging by asking how it is he knows God is not involved with conserving the laws of nature(which is an element of the experiment).

---

(November 3, 2014 at 1:42 pm)Cato Wrote:

(November 3, 2014 at 1:12 pm)Heywood Wrote: The conserved laws of nature are a requirement for amino acids to polymerize under conditions thought to simulate those of primeval Earth. I submit that until you show there is no deific involvement required for the conservation of the laws of nature, it follows you cannot credibly claim the results of the experiment indicate no deific involvement.

If A is a requirement of B and B is a requirement of C, then A is a requirement of C.

A = Deific Involvement
B = Conserved Laws of nature
C = Results of the Experiment.

Until you show A is or is not a requirement of B, you can't say anything about whether C requires or does not require A. Your claim has no foundation.

Was this meant as a joke?

Negative....it is Deontic Logic.

Quote:Mally proposed five informal principles:

(i) If A requires B and if B requires C, then A requires C.
(ii) If A requires B and if A requires C, then A requires B and C.
(iii) A requires B if and only if it is obligatory that if A then B.
(iv) The unconditionally obligatory is obligatory.
(v) The unconditionally obligatory does not require its own negation.

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

(November 3, 2014 at 4:51 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(November 3, 2014 at 1:16 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Thats a non-sequitur and wrong.

Conservation of momentum is a byproduct of translational invariance. No one has to inforce it. Look up Noether's theorem before you spout nonsense about physical laws.

You are right about many laws of nature being consequences of symmetries. I have mentioned Noether's theorem on this forum a long time ago and I am familiar with it.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-24945-po...#pid635067

Noether's theorem doesn't disprove the argument because one could say instead of a particular law of nature being conserved, what conserves this or that symmetry. I figured the argument would be more understandable if made in terms of conservation of laws of nature rather than in terms of conservation of symmetries. I dumbed down the argument for the audience is all.

You are claiming that a symmetry would somehow break down if some magical being was keeping it in place. Where is your evidence for this?

(November 3, 2014 at 4:51 pm)Heywood Wrote: The problem with Stimbo's claim is he assumes God is absent in every element of the experiment and then concludes God is absent in every element of the experiment. I challenge his question begging by asking how it is he knows God is not involved with conserving the laws of nature(which is an element of the experiment).

Without any evidence that god is intervening, what reason would we ever have to think that he is?

This is the problem with you: you're still trying to pretend that a complete, total lack of evidence is not literally what would be the case if the variable in question was not present.

Minimalist, I have already admitted that I presented my case poorly and/or stated things poorly. So if you won't accept what I've already done then I must assume that you are referring to me responding to new discussions that have come up. We'll I apologize but I just don't have the capability to learn everything there is to know about complex topics in 24 hours. I'm trying to read up on some of it when I have time, but like I've stated before, I'm busy. And when I do get 5 minutes to myself to do some research I'll pop back on here and 10 new topics arise.
Meanwhile, you have added nothing to the conversation except to say things like:
"Why should we care about your opinion"
"I always love how these fuckheads who claim to know so much about "Darwin" don't seem to know that he was a creationist."
"Fuck off Woody"

So yea, real insightful...

(November 3, 2014 at 4:51 pm)Heywood Wrote: The problem with Stimbo's claim is he assumes God is absent in every element of the experiment and then concludes God is absent in every element of the experiment. I challenge his question begging by asking how it is he knows God is not involved with conserving the laws of nature(which is an element of the experiment).

Except no I didn't nor don't need to assume that and fuck you for telling me what I think. I took the M/U data as presented at face value and saw no reason to attribute any god to the conclusion where the system as simulated was perfectly capable of achieving the postulated results all by itself. What you're doing is the equivalent of showing me a piece of toast with an apparent face on it and telling me it's a miracle. All I am doing is taking the work of those who have actually examined this experimentally and observing that adding a god's hand to the picture not only isn't helpful, it's actually anathema to productive research and a scientific dead end, since assuming the god answer tells us nothing about how it happened.

I don't have to deny any physical laws nor eliminate all possible god options merely to point out that the things under experimental observation happened apparently all by themselves. You want to squeeze a god in there, be my guest.

(November 3, 2014 at 5:38 pm)Surgenator Wrote: You are claiming that a symmetry would somehow break down if some magical being was keeping it in place. Where is your evidence for this?

I'm not claiming that at all. I am claiming that Stimbo can't just say there is no indication of God in the experiment until he rules out indications of God in all elements of the experiment. Stimbo is just taking it as axiomatic that conserved symmetries are not an indication of God when he has no idea why symmetries are conserved in the first place. He then concludes that none of the elements of the experiment indicate the presence of God. His conclusion is one of his axioms.

The argument I am making isn't an argument for God. It is an argument that Stimbo has no justification for the claim he made and the logic by which he arrives at his conclusion is fatally flawed.

(November 3, 2014 at 11:41 am)Heywood Wrote:

(November 3, 2014 at 11:34 am)Stimbo Wrote: Of course not, but it does show that a god isn't a requirement for it to happen.

Negative.

For it to happen you have to have unchanging Laws of Nature. Laws of Nature are about something other than themselves. The law of conservation of momentum is about conserving momentum and not about conserving itself. In order for the Law of conservation of momentum to be conserved, something must exist which conserves it. That something could very well be God.

Haha, that is the silliest thing I've read in a while. Conservation of momentum, therefore God. Emmy Noether would be so proud. Oh, did you know that it is far from clear what the correct notion of conserved energy momentum is in curved space? Take a photon undergoing cosmological redshift - it loses momentum, but whereto?

(November 3, 2014 at 6:09 pm)Stimbo Wrote: I don't have to deny any physical laws nor eliminate all possible god options merely to point out that the things under experimental observation happened apparently all by themselves. You want to squeeze a god in there, be my guest.

Trying to turn an argument against your claim into an argument about God's existence(or lack thereof) is strawmanning.