Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[Phil]

the Big Bang, which is just as (or even less than) evidenced than God.

Are you for real? I guess you never heard of the CMBR? Why is it christoholics are just total morons with a thick bozone layer when it comes to science?

[Whateverist]

We have a remarkably accurate and complex Bible, morality, experience and more in favor of God, but absolutely nothing for the Big Bang other than the requirement that matter came to exist. Clearly, you can't dismiss something just because you can't see it. We can't see gravity but we can see its effects.

Kind of funny. I'll bet there are places where you can say stuff like this and people will agree with you. Did you actually think this would be one?

[Abracadabra]

Apply that logic to the Big Bang. Where would you get the idea the universe created itself spontaneously? You’re essentially saying, “I don’t think God exists, so therefore life arose by itself.” You’re defaulting to the Big Bang, which is just as (or even less than) evidenced than God.

Actually the evidence that the universe actually had a beginning started via observations made by astronomers (particular those of Edwin Hubble) in the 1930's. Prior to that it was believed that the universe was infinity old and was basically eternal.

So the Big Bang has been forced onto us by facts. Yet here you are acting like it's just a guess? And since the 1930's the evidence for it has increased until today it cannot be denied. I mean, you might still argue about the earliest seconds, but we understand the history of the universe very well over its 13.7 billion year lifespan. So it's not only known information, but it's very well-known information.

We have a remarkably accurate and complex Bible, morality, experience and more in favor of God, but absolutely nothing for the Big Bang other than the requirement that matter came to exist.

All you are doing there is displaying extreme ignorance. To claim that we have absolutely nothing for the Big Bang other than the requirement that matter came to exists is totally false. Who taught you such nonsense?

Also, there is nothing "remarkably accurate" about the Bible. That again is another false information. Evidently people are teaching you these things and you're just accepting them without bothering to look into them for yourself. Of if you do look into it you probably do so through highly biased religious sites who are naturally going to support those lies.

Clearly, you can't dismiss something just because you can't see it. We can't see gravity but we can see its effects. There are dozens of scientific laws you can't put your finger on, but they still must be considered. God must also be considered.

That's not why I dismiss the Hebrew fables of God.

In fact, I actually consider the possibility that reality is spiritual. I argue with the atheists about this all the time.

But that doesn't send me running off to worship Zeus. And neither should it send me running off to worship the God of the Hebrews.

I personally reject the Bible because it's supposed to be a story about an all-wise all-benevolent God, yet the stories have this God going utterly stupid and non-benevolent things. In short, the stories can't be true for that very reason.

I don't reject the biblical God just because he supposedly plays hide and seek and is invisible. However, IMHO the very idea of a personified God who plays hide and seek with humans he expect so obey him is an oxymoron in and of itself.

The idea of a supposedly all-benevolent God who plays hide and seek and will be horrifically cruel to you potentially for eternity if you don't find him is utterly ludicrous. It flies in the face of the very meaning of benevolent.

Thus the stories must necessarily be dismissed based solely on their absurdity. And on the blatant contradiction that a supposedly all-benevolent God would need to be a horrifically evil demon in order for these stories to be true.

They necessarily have to be false. There's just no other possible conclusion.

It has long been apparent to people that the world was designed--it's only recently we have challenged this in their minds.

The reason this has only been challenged recently is because new information has become available.

The burden of proof is on evolutionists to prove their alternative to the most obvious and simplest solution (see Ockham's razor).

Evolution has been proven.

Moreover, Occam's Razor doesn't even apply here. Before you can apply Occam's Razon to theories you must have at least two theories to apply it two. Then you ask which of these is the simplest.

Evolution is the only "theory" for how life came to be on earth.

Creation by a personified God is not a "theory" is a superstitious myth.

However, even if these were both valid "theories" Occam's Razor would favor evolution because evolution stands alone as a very simple theory.

A theory that some more highly evolved lifeform (i.e. a God) would be required to get life started is a far more complex theory. That theory requires that life requires life to get it started (i.e. God a supposedly living entity is required to get life started).

Such a theory would be circular anyway.

Evolution stands on it's own just as it is without the need for anything more.

[Bgood]

GOD (ZEUS) blew a cosmic load into a beautiful young woman named Osiris. This created enchantment and pro-creativity.

[Phil]

Evolution is the only "theory" for how life came to be on earth.

Bzzt. Wrong answer. Evolution has nothing to say as far as the origin of life be it by abiogenesis here on Earth or abiogenesis and panspermia from elsewhere in the universe or a combination of the two.

[brotherlylove]

Because they're trying to explain a subject to an audience that understands little to nothing about the subject in a language that is understandable to the audience. When an apologist says "The information in DNA" he is talking about an entirely different thing in an entirely different context than a scientist who says "the information in DNA". Because apologetics is a con game, and science is not. I'm criticizing your apologetic bullshit, not their honest inquiry. Next.

It's disheartening to see you so confidently assert your misguided proposition as absolute fact, even using it as a club to ridicule and declare victory. I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. I think I am seeing that the mode of your personality is to barrel into everything full steam as long as you perceive there are some tracks in front of you, not checking to see if they are made out of steel or rice paper.

http://bioinfo2.ugr.es/Publicaciones/pat_rec96.pdf

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I would suppose not, but I was wondering what you thought about it.

It is a thinly disguised argument from personal incredulity. Your assertion that something is impossible is effectively worthless and may mean only that you lack the imagination needed.

I agree that if any one of a billion variables in evolution had not happened or had happened in a different way that we would not be sitting here having this discussion....for the umpteenth time in my case.

DNA is a massively complex coding for 4 basic chemicals. That it could attain such complexity in a billion years surprises me not at all. In short, I do not need your 'god' as an explanation. Frankly, what you wrote sounds like little more than creationist drivel.

What do you make of this comment from ex-atheist Anthony Flew (one of the most influential atheists of the 20th century)

"Yes, I now think it does... almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinary diverse elements to work together. It's the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence."

I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder's point-by-point refutation of what's called 'monkey theorem.' This idea, which has been presented in a number of forms and variations, defends the possibility of life arising by chance using the analogy of a multitude of monkeys banging away on computer keyboards and eventually ending up writing a Shakespearean sonnet.

Schroeder first referred to an experiment conducted by the British National Council of Arts. A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After one month of hammering away at it, as well as using it as a bathroom, the monkeys produce fifty typed pages, but not a single word.

Schroeder noted that this was the case even though the shortest word in the English language is one letter. "A" is a word only if there is a space on either side of it. If we take it that the keyboard has thirty characters, the twenty-six letters and other symbols, then the likelihood of getting a one-letter word is thirty times thirty times thirty, which is 27,000. The likelihood of getting a one-letter word is one chance out of 27,000.

Schroeder then applied the probabilities to the sonnet analogy. "What's the chance of getting a Shakespearean sonnet?" he asked. He continued:

"All the sonnets are the same length. They're by definition fourteen lines long. I picked the one I knew the opening line for, 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' I counted the number of letters; there are 488 letters in that sonnet. What's the likelihood of hammering away and getting 488 letters in the exact sequence as in 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?'? What you end up with is twenty-six multiplied by itself 488 times, or twenty-six to the 488th power. Or, in other words, in base ten, ten to the 690th."

"[Now] the number of particles in the universe, not grains of sand, I'm talking about protons, electrons, and neutrons, is ten to the eightieth power. Ten to the eightieth is one with eighty zeros after it. Ten to 690th is one with 690 zeros after it. There are not enough particles in the universe to write down the trials; you'd be off by a factor of ten to the six-hundredth power."

"If you took the entire universe and converted it into computer chips, forget the monkeys, each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second [producing] random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be ten to the ninetieth trials. It would be off again by a factor of ten to the six-hundredth power. You will never get a sonnet by chance. The universe would have to be ten to the six-hundredth times larger. Yet the world thinks the monkeys con do it every time."

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This is a good example of contradictory beliefs you Christians hold. On one hand you believe that life without specific material structure provided by the current universe is impossible. On the other hand, you believe that your life is independent of the material world (eternal life in heaven or hell). If you truly believe the latter, you simply cannot argue that no life would or could be possible without this specific set of universal constants

I never said all life anywhere, I said life here. Yes, there is a spiritual life, and physical life is empowered by spiritual life, otherwise you're just dealing with empty shells. You think the surface is the depth, staring dead into the veil. So, when I say life isn't possible otherwise, I will ammend it to mean, life as you generally understand it.

I don't believe that "nothing created everything". That's because the concept of "being created" simply cannot apply to the universe.

But, since you don't think that these constants are tunable, then you cannot say that they were fine-tuned.

You have faith in a self-creating Universe. I don't believe Universes happen by themselves. So, you actually do believe that nothing created everything, regardless of how you play with definitions.

God could have created it in any given configuration, so therefore they are finely tuned.

There is a timeless efficient cause. And that cause is the universe itself.

How is the Universe timeless? How did the Universe cause itself?

First of all, nothing can exist outside time. The very concept of existence is time-bound.

Something eternal by definition exists outside of time.

Secondly, that is an evasion, not an answer. If god is infinite and actual infinity cannot exist, then god cannot exist. If god exists then he is finite, i.e. limited and therefore not truly god but simply a superior being.

If you want to rehash this point, fine; Gods infinity is qualitative, not quantitative. It is referring to His superlative attributes, such as moral perfection, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc

You do realize that Aristotle is talking about concepts regarding actual infinite, don't you?

Any concept regarding an actual infinite would be complete and therefore not be infinite. Therefore, any concepts regarding actual infinites can only exist as potential infinites.

In that particular instance he was talking about potential infinities. Obviously you can't add anything to an actual infinity, can you?

Yes they are. Just because humans would never be able to count them all does not mean they are limited.

If you don't have an actually infinite amount of things, you are dealing with a finite number. A potential infinite is *potentially infinite* not *actually infinite*

[genkaus]

I never said all life anywhere, I said life here. Yes, there is a spiritual life, and physical life is empowered by spiritual life, otherwise you're just dealing with empty shells. You think the surface is the depth, staring dead into the veil. So, when I say life isn't possible otherwise, I will ammend it to mean, life as you generally understand it.

Then I would say - so fucking what? If the constants had been different, the life as we know it wouldn't have existed and maybe some other form of life would have. That is not evidence of fine-tuning. We are simply one of the possible consequences. Its arrogant to think that we were the objective all along.

You have faith in a self-creating Universe.

No I don't.

I don't believe Universes happen by themselves.

Me neither.

So, you actually do believe that nothing created everything, regardless of how you play with definitions.

Nope.

God could have created it in any given configuration, so therefore they are finely tuned.

If any configuration would have sufficeed and it just landed on this one, then it is arbitrarily tuned, not fine tuned.

How is the Universe timeless?

Because there cannot be any time outside the universe.

How did the Universe cause itself?

The universe did not cause itself - it is the efficient cause. Which means, it itself is causeless.

Something eternal by definition exists outside of time.

No. By definition, something eternal exists for all time, not outside time.

If you want to rehash this point, fine; Gods infinity is qualitative, not quantitative. It is referring to His superlative attributes, such as moral perfection, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc

Then why simply consider his lifespan to be exempt from this distinction? Special pleading?

In that particular instance he was talking about potential infinities. Obviously you can't add anything to an actual infinity, can you?

Ofcourse you can. Potential infinites of mind are actual infinites of physical reality.

If you don't have an actually infinite amount of things, you are dealing with a finite number. A potential infinite is *potentially infinite* not *actually infinite*

Duh. We do have infinite amount of things. They are referred to as potential infinites because we haven't finished counting them - obviously.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's disheartening to see you so confidently assert your misguided proposition as absolute fact, even using it as a club to ridicule and declare victory. I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. I think I am seeing that the mode of your personality is to barrel into everything full steam as long as you perceive there are some tracks in front of you, not checking to see if they are made out of steel or rice paper.

http://bioinfo2.ugr.es/Publicaciones/pat_rec96.pdf

You can link publications until you're blue in the face and it's still bullshit BL. "The information in DNA" is common ID drivel, it has nothing to do with science other than attempting to use words and concepts contained in science to scam the gullible (such as yourself). Again, there is no such information, every point in the line of argument is garbage, it has been debunked over and over and over, and yet you and yours continue to repeat it.

[Minimalist]

the Big Bang, which is just as (or even less than) evidenced than God.

Are you for real? I guess you never heard of the CMBR? Why is it christoholics are just total morons with a thick bozone layer when it comes to science?

Because any other stance would leave their precious god standing there with his dick hanging out?

Just a guess, man.

[Whateverist]

the Big Bang, which is just as (or even less than) evidenced than God.

Are you for real? I guess you never heard of the CMBR? Why is it christoholics are just total morons with a thick bozone layer when it comes to science?

Because any other stance would leave their precious god standing there with his dick hanging out?

Just a guess, man.

Naw, they'd take God's dick like a man before they'd see Him standing there with it hanging out.