RE: When Atheists Can't Think Episode 1: No Evidence for God?
December 23, 2015 at 4:45 pm
(This post was last modified: December 23, 2015 at 4:59 pm by AAA.)
(December 23, 2015 at 1:33 pm)God of Mr. Hanky Wrote:(December 23, 2015 at 1:21 pm)AAA Wrote: There is plenty of evidence that points to a designer. Information rich cells and the fine tuned universe are old but good arguments that give the appearance of design. When you first see it, the conclusion should be intelligent cause. Materialistic explanations fall short continuously, which ironically inadvertently ends up making it more likely that the design conclusion is correct. I think there is plenty of evidence from biology that supports a designer.
So you say, and because you say - facts need not apply!
Facts do apply. How about we just pick one fact and look at it. All organisms have some ability to organize their DNA. They have proteins that twist and tighten the DNA, which allows very long strands to fit into the cell neatly. This is necessary because long strands of DNA can impair cell functions if they get in the way. The ability to store DNA efficiently would only evolve if the DNA was getting too long for the cell to function. Unfortunately the only way to gain the ability to store DNA is to gain many proteins. These would all require hundreds of additional nucleotides to the genome. Adding new nucleotides would make the problem worse. This would get selected against immediately. You cannot evolve it, because it would make the problem worse unless it appeared in fully functional form. It fits perfectly with the the design theory.
(December 23, 2015 at 1:54 pm)robvalue Wrote: If we were designed, the designer is an incompetent fool.
If we were designed, the designer was unmatched in intelligence by all mankind from all time put together.
(December 23, 2015 at 1:51 pm)Cecelia Wrote:(December 23, 2015 at 1:21 pm)AAA Wrote: There is plenty of evidence that points to a designer. Information rich cells and the fine tuned universe are old but good arguments that give the appearance of design. When you first see it, the conclusion should be intelligent cause. Materialistic explanations fall short continuously, which ironically inadvertently ends up making it more likely that the design conclusion is correct. I think there is plenty of evidence from biology that supports a designer.
Plenty of evidence points to no designer.
The human body has many flaws. For example the Appendix serves absolutely no purpose (and when inflamed is incredibly dangerous). Women are the only ones capable of producing breastmilk. Our retina is backwards. We are vulnerable to many diseases and injuries. Other species have regenerative limbs, and yet we don't. Men have private parts in a very vulnerable spot. If we go by the story of Adam and Eve, animals were vegetarians and designed with teeth sharper than would be necessary for vegetation.
And certainly if humans were specially designed, why is the universe so enormous--and for the most part, unlivable.
We also share much of our DNA with Chimpanzees. So this intelligent designer would have had to be incredibly lazy.
The human body is remarkable, and the Appendix does serve a purpose, which I think that pretty much all doctors would acknowledge. It serves immune functions, and cultivates bacteria that help digest our food. There are books about why the eye has an optimal structure for its function. We are not that vulnerable to many diseases if we take proper care of our body with natural nutrition and exercise. Plenty of herbivores have sharp teeth (panda), yet they eat plants. The universe is mostly unlivable, which shows just how privileged and rare our planet is. We share about as much DNA with mice as we do with chimpanzees, but nobody is saying that we share the most common ancestor with them.
(December 23, 2015 at 1:46 pm)robvalue Wrote: Scenario 1:1. There is no reason to think that they had to be the way they are
God set up a system where there had to be certain universal constants, which would cause his plan to fail if he didn't then set them to extremely precise amounts; and even then, he set it up so that life only barely managed to be created, and almost the entire universe would kill the life instantly.
Scenario 2:
The system was already set up, and god had to do the best he could with it and fine tune the constants already in place, so that he could salvage a really bad design.
Unfounded assumption 1: the constants could have been anything other than what they are.
Unfounded assumption 2: that life wouldn't have still developed, in some form we can't imagine, under different constants.
Unfounded assumption 3: that all the possible values for the constants aren't already in place in multiverses, ultimately meaning that the correct one had to be somewhere.
Unfounded assumption 4: that this particular creator, if there is one, is anything other than a nameless, faceless programmer with no interest in us, especially considering the relatively minuscule amount of time we will have been alive on this planet.
Unfounded assumption 5: that the creator is very concerned about where we stick our nobs.
That's Numberwang!
2. Life does not have the plasticity that you seem to think that it has. It needs planets and stars. They can only form under highly specific conditions according to the materialists models. Without planets or stars, no fusion would occur, and the elements needed for life could not form.
3. Multiverse theory has the least evidence supporting it out of any theory I know of. The only thing we can observe, test, or examine is this universe, and assuming there are others is possible, but mostly just wishful thinking.
4. Maybe the creator doesn't care about us, but it seems like there was one.
