Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[brotherlylove]

Surely you don't think you are the first to present the teleological argument?

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

Many philosophers and theologians have expounded and criticized different versions of the teleological argument. Commonly, they argue that any implied designer need not have the qualities commonly attributed to the God of classical theism. Scientists have shown alternative explanations for biological complexity, notably natural selection, with no requirement for supernatural design.

From the 1990s, creation science was rebranded as intelligent design, presenting the teleological argument while avoiding naming the designer with the aim of presenting this as science and getting it taught in public school science classes. In 2005, a U.S. Federal Court ruled that intelligent design is a religious argument and is not science, and was being used to give pseudoscientific support for creationism, the religious belief in a god-like designer.

I would suppose not, but I was wondering what you thought about it. Specifically, the information in DNA. Does it not intrigue that we find a digital code with an alphabet, grammer, syntax, and semantics, as well as error correction and storage, far more sophisticated than any code we have ever developed, engineering all life as we know it?

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You may be more comfortable than I am in accepting arguments from authority. But not every cosmologist agrees that we inhabit a universe as opposed to a multiverse, this layman included. Think about it. How conclusive could any evidence be as to the origins of the uni- or multi- verse we inhabit. The vastness of space and time make certainty suspect. Remember, science isn't about verifying facts. Its about disproving assumptions. Even if a finite universe is currently most popular, only a theist would use that to argue the fact of the matter. The best theory is always provisional. I'm willing to leave it as an unsettled question. Your disposition toward certainty may make that less comfortable for you.

Well, a multiverse only makes everything more complicated, and violates occams razor, which says we should not multiply entities unnecessarily. The mechanism that generated the multiple universes would also need a level of fine tuning which would make its existence virtually impossible.

It doesn't appear that you have let the question remain unsettled; you are quite content to rule out an intelligent cause and assume that it must have some kind of naturalistic explanation. Again, it's anything but God, but I haven't seen you make any arguments that would rule God out.

Well does that surprise you? Whether the whatever-verse and what gave rise to it and what gave rise to that and so on is infinitely old as I maintain or merely billions of years old, we both agree agree that the inorganic can be at least eons old. Now show me any creature/being of any kind that science has discovered which is any where near so old. I know about what is claimed about your favorite genie but that and other magical creatures are not widely accepted. So really old stuff is uncontroversially accepted but really old beings are not. I guess that is pretty much my problem with it.

With a sufficient amount of time we may be able to alter our DNA to make us immortal, and enhance ourselves with technology to give us near-unlimited knowledge and power. If this is possible, why not an eternal being?

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Since more that 99% if the universe does not permit life as we know it, the tuning is not fine at all. Further, you have any evidence that some other form of life would not be possible with different tuning?

The tuning is finer than is easily comprehensible, but maybe you're capable of imagining numbers larger than the number of particles in the Universe. When I say a life-permitting Universe, that means it can support some kind of life vs no life. The percentage of the Universe that can support life is irrelevent to the question. Instead of copying and pasting, I'll direct you to this website which shows the fine tuning parameters and the impossibility of life if they were slightly altered:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html

Lots of errors in the argument.
1. While the author realizes that "before" and "prior" are spatio-temporal concepts, he fails to realize that so is "beginning". The universe cannot have a beginning for the same reason it has no "prior".

Wrong. Causation too is a spatio-temporal contextual attribute. It is not applicable prior to the big-bang and therefore the universe cannot have a cause.

Wrong. "Beginning" is a spatio-temporal contextual event. Therefore, space and time cannot have a beginning and therefore neither can the universe.

2. Common mistake while presenting Kalam's argument: proof of applicability of causality in absence of spatio-temporal context.

It can if we formulate the argument like this:

begins to exist = comes into being

x begins to exist if and only if x exists at some time t and there is no time t* prior to t at which x exists

God creating x as the timeless, efficient cause of x

3. Special pleading w.r.t. god. If actual infinite cannot exist, neither can god

When God is referred to as an infinite being, this is a qualitative conception, not a quantitative one. It is referring to His superlative attributes, like omnipotence, moral perfection, etc..

4. Complete misunderstanding of Aristotle's argument against actual infinite. According to Aristotle, actual infinite means that it is a known set with infinite items. That is self-contradictory and therefore cannot exist. If the set is unknown, it is potential infinite and that can exist. Further, Aristotle held that time was infinite.

For the past to be potentially infinite, it would be finite at any point but growing towards infinity the other direction, which contradicts temporal becoming. Also, if the number of events from the past to the present is finite, then that means the past had a beginning.

Only if you are on earth.

Since this was the center of activity, I think it is the relevent perspective.

You cannot be more wrong. The flood was actually in Satyuga, which was much more than 10,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago, the Kaliyuga began which led to the corruption and misinterpretation of truth. The ancient flood legend was imprinted into the collective consiousness, but other religions got its timing wrong. Every religion is a post-flood religion, obviously, but according to the True Religion of Hinduism, others are false.

Odd then that we only have around 4500 years of written history, which is around the time scripture says the flood came.

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A better creativity would be to create humans with no deformity at birth.

That's the way creation was before sin and death entered into the world. It is because we live in a fallen world that these things happen today.

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Why isn't He allowed to have any creative freedom?

Because you won't let HIM..you desperately want this "Almighty Cod" to be perfect.

It's been my experience that He is perfect and always far exceeds even my grandest expectations. It's that which I try to communicate.

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Or without the optic chiasm, too many teeth for our mouth, useless muscles (for ear wiggling), aorta and inferior vena cava cross on the left leg not to mention the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Shall I go on? If our current christoholic bl's god is the designer, he is an incompetent piece of shit that should be fired immediately.

http://www.icr.org/article/recurrent-lar...-evidence/
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles...na-design/
http://creation.com/oh-my-aching-wisdom-teeth

You should also note that we live in a fallen creation which means we are in a degenerative state