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What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
The null hypothesis is that we don't know the answer. Any claim may be true, or it may be false. We don't know. We simply don't accept the claim as true until such time as it is established to be true. How do we tell the useful claims from the useless? Evidence.

Any other default position should already be established by evidence, or be an axiom we cannot function without.

Anything else is the argument from ignorance. Again, logic is very important. It's just one more factor you can't ignore if you wish to do science of any value. What practical use is, "I think this is designed", anyway? It works as a system, yes. That much is blatantly obvious. Only an idiot would focus entirely on one aspect of it and pay no regard to how the whole might be affected.
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
(February 21, 2016 at 1:52 pm)AAA Wrote:
(February 21, 2016 at 1:36 pm)abaris Wrote: First, the asteroid hasn't hit yet. Alert me, if it does.

Secondly, we don't know - as of yet - that's filling the gaps. You don't know something, so it has to be god. You look for confirmation at your favorite apologist websites and that's about it. That's why I called you a caveman at heart. You simply can't live without having an explanation for something you or anyone else doesn't understand as of yet. And you also are looking rather desperately for your god evidence. You want him to exist, so you bend and shape, till it fits your desired narrative.

A hundred years ago, we understood a lot less than we do today. And in another hundred years, we will understand even more. I'm pretty comfortable with that and don't need a supernatural explanation for something we don't have explained so far.

The cell is more complex than the circuit board on the asteroid. It was an analogy. We don't know how it could have gotten there. There is only ONE cause that is so far sufficient to lead to the phenomena that are observed in the cell. That is intelligence. But this answer is unacceptable, and according to you anyone who reasons this way is a caveman. 

And you called me a caveman because it makes you feel better about yourself. After all, you are truly one of the great thinkers of our time. And I don't necessarily want God to exist. The thought of it is frightening, but what we want to be true doesn't impact what actually is true. You are bending the evidence so you don't see God; so it fits your desired narrative.

You're not really a biology student, you're an artist who uses biology, combining it with far less dignified material to construct what suits his fancy.

On engineering, you know less than a first-year student. He would know the difference between the top-down approach which is true design, and can only be produced by a thinking mind, and the bottom-up approach which is practiced when necessary in programming to build greater systems from those which already function on their own by altering them so that they will work together. For example, an eye cell program would have started out as something different, maybe even something self-contained. Or you may begin this approach with a single existing program, adding a few lines here and there to improve its functionality.

Natural selection isn't the top-down design which you wish it was, it's bottom-up. Even this requires a programmer with a mind to get the desired results with any degree of efficiency, but 4.8 billion years to produce us is no example of that. Suppose you could make it someone's job to take a program which you want to improve, by repeating its code lines all day, every day for 4.8 billion years. In that much time he would make lots of repetitions, and probably make a few errors, maybe? Maybe more than a few, maybe a million times more errors than there are stars in this universe? He may even add a few lines without thinking about it, got tired and duplicated some lines (but again in error, resulting in different code) which he didn't know he had already done! The first time an error proves to be useful is when the task to be repeated will change - from this point on, the original task is of no use, now you pay him to repeat and run-test the modified code indefinitely, which he had produced without putting one single thought into it! The millionth time this happens, our repeated task will have a million changes in it. This would of course grossly oversimplify the workings of natural selection, but it basically represents the extremely unintelligent, actually the trow level of the bottom-up approach which it takes. It really isn't design at all, it just barely even works - which is why it is so grossly imperfect and in many ways utterly nasty.
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
We are Windows, not Linux Tongue
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
AAA is an artist, but as Abaris pointed out his canvas is the walls of a cave!
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
Wait, bottom-up is still a design approach.. I think the point 3A is trying to make is that it wouldn't be possible for a system such as ours to have bottom-up designed itself into what it is today, if you look at it purely mathematically, as in probabilistically it would make sense because of the sheer amount of different scenarios and combinations that would have to take place and the time consumed before something even as simple as a cell had to be formed.
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
Of course another explanation wouid be that life couldve formed(achieved its stable state) elsewhere,ie,other than earth and then somehow reached earth.. And after reaching earth was then subject to evolution ..and got to what it is today..
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What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
(February 20, 2016 at 12:48 pm)AAA Wrote:
(February 20, 2016 at 3:11 am)robvalue Wrote: I tried debating you before AAA and I found it to be a waste of time. I gave you a fair shot like I give everyone. You don't know how science works.

At least be honest enough to admit that your Christian beliefs are not scientific. Once you've done that, ask yourself if the required presupposition that not just a creator but a magical creator was involved is clouding your scientific judgement. Of course you think there is a creator; you have to.

If you can't produce something that can actually be tested and is falsifiable, it's not science. It's speculation. At best your methods here are more akin to a soft science like the study of history. It is not biological or physical science.

What would life that wasn't designed be like, and how do you know this? If you can't answer that, all you have is an unfalsifiable assumption that life is designed just because it's life.

If you really are a science student, have you discussed any of this with your tutors?

I don't expect an answer, I'm writing this for the benefit of other readers.
No you haven't. I know how science works more than you. I know how cells work more than you. I know how the body works more than you. I have the privilege to actually be studying biology at a university. You never respond to any scientific topic a response. Also I don't think that my christian beliefs are unscientific, I just meant that we cannot test God. We can certainly compile the evidence and conclude His existence. 

We don't assume life is designed then try to prove it. We look at life. It operates like and infinitely superior computer system that dwarfs anything and everything humans have done. Life that wasn't designed would look something like this: The genetic code must be only a few characters long in order for chance to be sufficient to produce it. There are not initiator proteins that attract acetyltransferases that modify proteins that attract transcription factors that attract mediator proteins and RNA polymerase proteins. All this just to start the process of making one protein. You wouldn't have that. There would be no kinetically perfect enzymes. In fact there would be no enzymes at all. 

And I know you don't want an answer. You would prefer to slap and run.

STFU, triple A. You don't need a science degree to understand that the idea of a supernatural, intelligent designer is positively retarded. All it takes is a bit of common fucking sense. No one here is impressed or intimidated by your terminology-dropping. Terminology droppings. I can't wait for scientists prove you unquestionably wrong in about a decade or so. Please, come back so we can all do an "I told you so" dance all over your stupid face.

With love,
L'Camus
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”

Wiser words were never spoken. 
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
Btw the possibility of a christian god and bible to be real is so far fetched its laughable anyone with more than a single brain cell would even consider it
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
(February 22, 2016 at 10:13 am)pool the great Wrote: Wait, bottom-up is still a design approach.. I think the point 3A is trying to make is that it wouldn't be possible for a system such as ours to have bottom-up designed itself into what it is today, if you look at it purely mathematically, as in probabilistically it would make sense because of the sheer amount of different scenarios and combinations that would have to take place and the time consumed before something even as simple as a cell had to be formed.

No, the trough of the bottom-up approach to making something is where no design is required at all, and AAA's sense of mathematical probability is in his ass.
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RE: What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?
(February 22, 2016 at 10:17 am)pool the great Wrote: Of course another explanation wouid be that life couldve formed(achieved its stable state) elsewhere,ie,other than earth and then somehow reached earth.. And after reaching earth was then subject to evolution ..and got to what it is today..

It's possible, but not worth considering without any evidence, because it doesn't answer the infinite regression problem. Anyway, early Earth conditions were no less ideal for the beginning of life than anywhere else in this universe which is known.
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