Atheism vs. God's Existence

[wiploc]

No, he is inviting you, once again, to actually produce your argument. 

A question is not an argument.   If you can articulate an actual argument, we want to read it.

Ok, well to put it simply: information is processed in the cell. The only other information processing system we have ever observed in the whole universe is something designed by intelligence. Because it is the only known cause, it is the best explanation. There may be a better explanation, but don't tell me it is circular reasoning to say that the only known adequate cause may be correct.

But that's metaphor, right?  Without the metaphor, we'd say something like, "Chemicals in the cell react to other chemicals." 

If you don't mean it as a metaphor, if you think the chemicals are literal information, then you have a circular argument:  In order for chemicals to be information, you must think that they carry a message from one intelligence to another.  Something like that.  You are building your conclusion into your premises, begging the question of whether chemistry is really information.

[wiploc]

Interesting.  I recommend reading it as metaphor.  Life is designed in the same sense that love is an art, in the same sense as an army marches on its stomach.   

In any case, you haven't shown that biochemists generally agree with your assertion.

I don't really think they would use such strong metaphors in a college biochemistry textbook, but I guess it's possible. I still think they just think that it was designed by natural selection.

And I'm not going to go interview every biochemist

So your point is not that biochemists generally believe life is designed.  Rather, your point is that three biochemists believe in design (and by "design" you mean something like "order, or things that cause order").

[robvalue]

Straw: meet grasp.

For any scientific claim to be meaningful, it must be falsifiable.

What is the failure criteria here? What would indicate that some life form was not intelligently designed, and how do you know this? If you have no failure criteria, you are simply making an unecessary assumption.

If the claim is nothing more than a resemblance, then it's of absolutely no significance. I don't know who is supposed to be convinced, or of what. I imagine it's the self being convinced that such beliefs are rational by an equivocation of language.

How is evolution a falsifiable explanation for life's systems?

You're serious?

You're serious, aren't you.

You have to be winding us up.

[AAA]

Well that's the story, but is it true?

That is what the evidence leads us to conclude, yeah.

Are you just saying that because that's what everyone else says and you think that agreeing with them makes you appear to be more intelligent?

[Silver]

Are you just saying that because that's what everyone else says and you think that agreeing with them makes you appear to be more intelligent?

Oh, the irony, especially from one who believes only because others believe the same thing.

[AAA]

I don't really think they would use such strong metaphors in a college biochemistry textbook, but I guess it's possible. I still think they just think that it was designed by natural selection.

And I'm not going to go interview every biochemist

So your point is not that biochemists generally believe life is designed.  Rather, your point is that three biochemists believe in design (and by "design" you mean something like "order, or things that cause order").

I'm saying that life contains features of design. Order is one quality, yes.

[AAA]

Ok, well to put it simply: information is processed in the cell. The only other information processing system we have ever observed in the whole universe is something designed by intelligence. Because it is the only known cause, it is the best explanation. There may be a better explanation, but don't tell me it is circular reasoning to say that the only known adequate cause may be correct.

But that's metaphor, right?  Without the metaphor, we'd say something like, "Chemicals in the cell react to other chemicals." 

If you don't mean it as a metaphor, if you think the chemicals are literal information, then you have a circular argument:  In order for chemicals to be information, you must think that they carry a message from one intelligence to another.  Something like that.  You are building your conclusion into your premises, begging the question of whether chemistry is really information.

Well they do contain information. They aren't information. A book isn't information, but it can contain it. 

Why must I think they carry a message from one intelligence to another? That doesn't follow. But there are enzymes that read the code and use it to build other enzymes. It definitely contains information, I hope you aren't going to argue that it doesn't. Yeah it's all based on chemistry and physics, but that doesn't change the fact that it possesses information.

[wiploc]

So your point is not that biochemists generally believe life is designed.  Rather, your point is that three biochemists believe in design (and by "design" you mean something like "order, or things that cause order").

I'm saying that life contains features of design. Order is one quality, yes.

You can say that, and that's fine.  When you say that biochemists believe it, that's a different matter.

[Silver]

I'm saying that life contains features of design. Order is one quality, yes.

Except that there is no true order in life. It is all chaos. It's why you can be hit by a bus you did not expect. Order is a man-made construct; i.e. design. Everything is chaos, for no matter how much you imagine your life going well, reality/chaos steps in and throws you down.

Theism has this delusion whereby good in their life automatically equates to god while anything bad that occurs must be the direct result of something evil.

There is no good or evil. There is just chaos.

When good things happen, that is as much chaos as bad things happening. If there was true order, there would be no chaos.

Religion is merely a man-made construct to eliminate what one does not wish to accept in reality. Chaos is reality, and humans have this strive to place order where there is none, thus the creation of religion.

[AAA]

So, AAA, assuming there is this "unbelievably intelligent" designer behind the cellular processes you mentioned, how does it follow that this designer happens to be the Biblical god you worship -- you know, the deity whose "designs" were scuttled by a single act of human will and who couldn't conceive of a more intelligent and believable means of extending redemption than the barbarism of a blood sacrifice? I call bullshit and special pleading.

Ordinarily, this would be a derail, but you aren't making your case in the biological sciences sub-forum; you're making in the Christianity sub-forum. Does old "iron chariot" Yahweh really strike you, as a character, as the sort of deity you're trying to push here? Be honest.

Yeah, I know I'm in the wrong sub-forum but I don't know how to start my own forum. 

If you must know, one of the main reasons that I reach the Biblical God is because the likelihood that Jesus really did rise from the dead. It is the only serious explanation for the explosion of the church right around that time with hundreds claiming to have seen him. Mass hallucinations and other explanations are consistently ruled out