'Seeking' God

[thesummerqueen]

He smacks of a being afraid of uncertainty. I'm done with this thread. Let me know if anything particularly brilliant gets jotted down.

[Ace Otana]

Some people really aren't worth the attention, Summer. It's like arguing with a flat-earther.

[Captain Scarlet]

Who designs anything without resiliency built into it? Well someone who knows the outcome of course!

You walked into that CS.
Anyways I can't even keep track of the OP in all this.

I would also go so far to say as for the universe has the ‘appearance’ of design; scientists don’t generally say that the universe ‘is’ designed, mostly because it would be unprovable as it would exist prior to the creation of the Universe. The religious are far more openminded about the unexplainable and can postulate that God could have indeed done it. Do you have any subjective personal evidence for anything that is commonly accepted as a potential candidate for something that could have created the Universe or is it just dismissed out of lack of empirical testability?

Hey Tacky, long time no speak; hope you are well etc

If you are going to invoke that to validate the 'is' designed hypothesis. I will respectfully concede that it is logically possible. However I would also respectfully point out that the hypothesis should be that god designed the universe for black holes, not us. The universe is the best possible deisgn for black holes and black holes are where the vast majority of mass and energy resides that god painstainkingly created. Obviously it must be designed right! And because all but out poky corner is cut out for human life it definately proves it was designed and an omnisceint god would know that it would convince all of us, wouldn't he?

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When you shave away all other considerations, the question remains: was the universe deliberately created? The probability of yes is at least 50/50. When you consider that anything other than an eternal first cause brings you to an infinite regress, that percentage climbs higher. when you take into account the appearance of design it climbs higher. and so on..there are many good arguments to go to from here.

Offering odds of 50/50 you should not go into running betting rings. You have just plucked that right out of thin air haven’t you. Wheras the mathematical models of the wave function of the universe suggest there is over 95% chance of the universe coming into existence in its current state uncaused from nothing. So you have something which is not even a conjecture which you assert is a better explanation than a genuine conjecture with mathematical proof. Not saying either are right, because no one knows. But the arguments you present aren’t good they are terrible…I admit they seem to convince you. By the way who mentioned an infinite regress?, there is no natural explanation that explores this possibility.

Mechanisms are fine, I don't need to invoke God with mechanisms. I invoke God for Agency. A better question is how do you get a star in the first place..hint Star formation is a notorious weakness of big bang cosmology.

Hint…gravity

Everything is equally unlikely when you shave away all other considerations. [snip]

Stick to the point. Don’t speak about probabilities if you don’t understand them

I understand enough to know the evidence isn't there. I started out believing in evolution and was shocked to find out that the entire thing was a shell game. It is also a true fact that anyone who even breathes intelligent design would be ostracized from the scientific community

I think the best one can do with an argument like the one above is underline it.

Oh and can you please stop copying in youtube clips. I do not need as much education as you seem to think I do.

Glad you can admit it. Evolution doesn't meet that rigor either. There is plenty of reason to suspect a higher intelligence, especially in regards to DNA. First, there is no naturalistic process for the information in DNA. Second, information only comes from minds.

Its called intellectual honesty Lucent. Maybe you would like to try it in your arguments.

Define information before you take one step further. You boys really like to harp on about it, but I can name you at least 5 recent (as in the last few hundred years) mutations on the human genome that have taken hold in their populations and have led to improved human characteristics for certain environments and features. These have encoded new ’information’ into that DNA. You will deny this of course opting for the line “well that isn’t new information”, but refusing to define what you mean by information.

My argument is…

Very poor

..the theories that science proposes don't work and don't answer any fundemental question about life, there is an appearance of design in the Universe, the Universe is finely tuned for life, and logic suggests a creator. I am saying a mind is the only plausible explanation for DNA and has more explanatory power.

We did this already Lucent. Repeating an argument from ignorance does not mean it is a good argument.

Even if you could know all there was to know in material reality, you still couldn't rule out a Creator.

Thank you for the clarification, I’ll answer.

Oh but I could. I can point to 3 atheistic arguments just to start with:

1) The god concept and supernaturalism are meaningless. I have given you that argument already (maybe in another thread?). But you cannot invoke a god concept if it is meaningless and has no explanatory power. Supernaturalism can never be true. If we validated supernaturalism (eg ghosts etc), then they would just be a hitherto unknown extension of the natural world. A new branch of physics if you prefer. Supernaturalism is just a fairy tale for adults I’m afraid.

2) The necessity of naturalism. Human knowledge is limited. The necessity of a transcendent knowledge base is a Category 1 presupposition. And we need a transcendent knowledge base precisely because our knowledge is limited to begin with. And since supernatural effects can only be deduced if one has no limits of knowledge, then naturalism is absolute. We can express both lines of evidence in this way:
1. Supernaturalism is only meaningful in that it is a negation of material causes.
2. Negation of material causes would only be possible if humans had no limit of knowledge.
3. A transcendent knowledge base is necessary because we have limits of knowledge.
4. Supernaturalism is impossible. (from 1, 2 and 3)
5. Naturalism is an absolute. (from 4)

The impossibility of divine creation.

1. Divine creation implies an ex ante facto empty state of the universe.
2. Empty states are atemporal and without potentiality.
3. As an action, divine creation requires time and potentiality. (from 1)
4. Divine creation is impossible. (from 2 and 3)

[Cinjin]

The void is just a little white speck. There is no such thing as no-thing..God always was and always will be.

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A ridiculous statement to make followed up by your own personal unprovable beliefs stated as fact.


Absolute arrogance combined with scientific ignorance.

[The Grand Nudger]

You have stated that one can whittle down the list of gods if one uses a little reason, why are you unable to provide that reason when asked? Why must we whittle the list down to creator gods only (a subset of god contained within every pantheon btw, you eliminate no competing faith by eliminating the non creator god subset). Perhaps god simply stumbled upon this show already in motion. How can you know that this is not the case? More claims to knowledge made from a position of ignorance. Your claims become yet more complicated. I notice you believe that wodan is mythical, but why is your own argument fed back to you insufficient when dealing with wodan, but right on the mark for your own god? Special rules for your pet fairy right?

I can whittle down gods that are plainly false by referencing what we do know about ourselves and the cosmos Lucent. That leaves yours out of the party. The origins story is myth, the histories are myth, and the very notion of prophecy or any narrative built upon the other two as a part of the prophetic cycle are myth as well. Perhaps some god, definitively not the god you describe. How about that for whittling down gods with a little reason?
(see, that's how that's done. simple explanations for your stance on an issue that can stand up to scrutiny)

[Mister Agenda]

The intelligent design argument is very persausive when it comes to DNA. There just isn't any naturalistic explanation to account for it. The information contained in DNA is better explained by a mind than by an undirected process. Why? Because it is not just like a language, it *is* a language.

It has an alphabet, grammar, meaning and intent. It has error correction and redundancy. It is a digital information storage and retrieval system. It also transcends its medium. You can take the information in DNA and transfer it to computer disk with no loss of information. Information simply only comes from minds.

Unlike language, you cannot substitute the 'letters' of DNA with other molecules and get the same result. In language, the symbols are arbitrary, not so in chemistry. You can analogize DNA to a language, but it isn't actually a language. There is no alternate way to specify the same organism by 'translating' DNA onto a disk: the information will never give you a living organism unless you 'translate' the disk back into DNA. And 'Information simply only comes from minds' is affirming the consequent, and therefore fallacious. It's like saying 'design simply only comes from humans'. It assumes what you're trying to prove. Someone saying that 'information only comes from minds', observing information that can't be traced back to a mind, and concluding that it must be produced by a mind anyway, is doing neither science nor logic.

Your hope that science can account for this by naturalistic processes is misplaced. There is nothing like the world of the cell in nature. It's not just the same old same old on a smaller scale. This is something entirely new, and far more complex than darwin even imagined.

Darwin didn't even know cells, or genes, existed. He knew there must be a mechanism of heredity with the properties of high (but not perfect) fidelity for his theory to be correct, and it turned out to be so. As for the complexity of cells, that explains why it took longer for cells to appear after the earth cooled than it took for all life since to evolve. In regards to your explanation, why did God wait so long to 'poof' the first cell into existence?

Here are a couple of quotes:

Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of the cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gap. We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive....

If only there were a theory that explained how that gap could be bridged....

Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells. The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells.

Excellent evidence of common descent.

In terms of the basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth. For those who hoped that molecular biology might bridge the gulf between chemistry and biochemistry, the revelation was profoundly disappointing."

Dr. Denton, Ph.D (Molecular Biology),
An evolutionist currently doing biological research in Sydney, Australia

Now we know that the cell itself is far more complex than we had imagined. It includes thousands of functioning enzymes, each one of them a complex machine in itself. Furthermore, each enzyme comes into being in response to a gene, a strand of DNA. The information content of the gene (it's complexity) must be as great as that of the enzyme it controls.

A medium protein might include about 300 amino acids. The DNA gene controlling this would have about 1,000 nucleotides in its chain, one consisting of a 1,000 links could exist in 41000 different forms. Using a little algebra (logarithms) we can see that 41000 = 10600. Ten multiplied by itself 600 times gives us the figure '1' followed by 600 zeros! This number is completely beyond our comprehension."

Frank Salisbury,
Evolutionary biologist

Intelligent design is the only coherent explanation for DNA which is available. So your utter dismissal of it, when you in fact have nothing to replace it with, is ridiculous. Another informative video:

It is true that single-celled organisms never stopped evolving (why should they?), so current single-celled organisms are not 'primitive' in any sense. After sixty or seventy years of studying abiogenesis with purpose we are able to synthesize an entire bacterial genome, insert it into a denucleated cell, and have it live and reproduce. Nature ran the same experiment without purpose in 'labs' around the planet over half-a-billion years. Early cells would have a tough time in today's environment, but, to be fair, most modern life would perish in the world they arose in.

[ElDinero]

I know because I've researched them all and the bible is the only one to match reality, and my personal experience of God.

I thought I was clear on the fact that you can't use your personal experience, because somebody else could provide the same. Once again, you show how incapable you are of grasping even the simplest logical process.

Then you claim to have researched ALL religions. Goodness me lucent, you are a fucking liar. Why would you even tell such a stupid, stupid lie?

[Cyberman]

Clearly his personal experience of his pet god trumps my personal experience with it, because he's the one making the claim about it and the Universe revolves around him alone, therefore everyone else's personal experiences are satanic unless they happen to agree with his. I've just read that sentence back and it appears to make grammatical sense.

[Minimalist]

I know because I've researched them all and the bible is the only one to match reality, and my personal experience of God.

Ah...a xtian who thinks his god and his bullshit holy book matches "reality." What a concept, Lucy.

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

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.

I'll bet I could a muslim who thinks his book is reality in no time at all!

[fr0d0]

I'd settle with understanding claims to the material with science, since that can be handled quite nicely. Including any claims where the "supernatural" is said to have interfered or otherwise come into contact with the "regular nature?". Too much to ask?

Too Illogical to ask.

(such as would be the case with miracles, including the miracle of heaven, souls etc)

Those are not miracles, but you knew that.

I'd settle with understanding claims to the supernatural referenced by what we can demonstrate.

You would settle for a square circle, in other words.

Are you going to sit here and make the argument that faith in a christian god and the scientific method have anything in common,

Never ever.

anything at all beyond the superficial?

Not scientifically provable does not equal superficial.

How about you tell me about seeking god, and the reasons you feel your description of this search (how it should be done, where one should look, what criteria one should apply in the search) is accurate?

Using intellectual rigour.

Did you employ these methods to reach your own conclusion? Can the same methods be used to reach any other conclusion, perhaps a competing one? Can this line of reasoning be used for anything else? Can we get a false positive in using it? What would invalidate this line of reasoning?

Yes I reached my own conclusions.
Yes the same method can be used to reach other & also competing conclusions. It it the information which produces the conclusion.
Lots of other subjects, from mathematics to science.
We can introduce false positives to test it, yes.
Evidence to the contrary would invalidate it.