Atheism vs. God's Existence

[Gemini]

Let's talk about the evidence then and evaluate it. 

A few days ago I read about the cooperative binding of hemoglobin molecules in our red blood cells ... Now why can't I evaluate this evidence and say that it might have been designed by an intelligence?

Because we are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know? (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

[Foxaèr]

PLEASE READ THIS. I have said many times that I know the DON"T think it was intelligently designed. They think it was designed by natural selection. 

please read it again. Please read it a third time. One more time. If you tell me again that I think they believe in ID then you will have convinced me you can't read.

To be honest, I am very unclear from whence your response came.

I was merely directly responding to what I quoted, not some misconceived notion of your insecurities.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

And yet, you keep saying that "it contains information" (true, in the broadest sense of the term), which you then conflate with some deliberately-encoded message to produce a desire end-result (the "Intelligent" part of your design hypothesis).

What you are leaving out is that life has had four billion years and literally trillions of generations to get this right. It did not start out with the complex modern systems you now say cannot have come about any other way, because, gosh, they're just SO COMPLICATED!!! (!!!)

Once any basic, replicating molecule formed on this planet, by whatever chemical means, that replicating molecule would, like a Polymerase Chain Reaction, continue to replicate itself endlessly, within the physical constraints of the environment which contained it. Some of them would be slightly different--most nonfunctional, but others still working in their new forms--and over time they would increase in complexity (they must, because if the original unit represents the base degree of complexity required for replication, then literally the only directions they can change are "equally complex" and "more complex") until new functions were added. When you leave out the "scaffolding" that led to the complex systems today, and posit that evolution is unfalsifiable, we must start to question whether you are being dishonest or willfully ignorant. I'm sorry that this offends you, when you think you're trying to be serious... but man, if you can't grasp why we can't take you seriously on these points, I don't know what to tell you.

You claim that the mechanisms have not been shown to be adequate for this. Yet, as we have shown you several times, ID proponents like Behe have tried to say they have a "mousetrap", in which any removed part would render the complex, multi-step whole inoperable... which is true, except it leaves out that by modern times, the DNA code is long enough that there are many interacting genes which can be modified, duplicated, and/or co-opted to perform new functions through nothing but chemistry and random alterations. Other scientists (largely graduate students) showed exactly the processes that Behe claimed as irreducibly complex were nothing of the sort... they "filled in the gap" to show why his proposition was wrong, not just unnecessary. What does he do? He moves on to the next one, because hey, he sold a LOT of copies of his "Darwin's Black Box" and follow-up books to the gullible, who will shell out their $$ to protect themselves from the crazy idea that we might have gotten here without the need for outside intervention.

"Humans can change DNA, therefore it is a mechanism for change" is nothing even close to an answer. Humans can wear down rocks into cool shapes, just like erosion, but it doesn't mean that when we find a cool-shaped rock, it's anything other than erosion. What would indicate design (as you put it) would be to find a section that could only come from non-natural processes. We see nothing of the sort in DNA's complexity, nothing that defies the basic laws of chemistry and atomic physics, or of the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection.

Instead, what we find are lots of leftover errors and scars/marks from past viral infections, chromosomal fusions, and a lot of other natural processes that demonstrate we all inherit our DNA from our ancestors, with modification, and that we share a relationship in our DNA patterns with our cousins (some more distant than others) because we share common ancestry. We have enough information about evolution via genetics, now, that we can actually trace the rise of various genes that added to the complexity and permitted us to have a lineage that contained that gene--such as the ones for a spine, or kidneys, etc.

And while you scoff and deride our counter-examples as too trivial, too simple, to represent the idea you're trying to present, I propose to you that they're really not different, for their time and place. In 1580, it would have been perfectly reasonable to think that the order you describe must have been from an intelligence, instead of the physics of chemistry, because they didn't know enough about the physics of chemistry to make such a call. They didn't really know anything about it. Today, you're making the same sorts of comments as those they would've made about the snowflakes-- even though we have good information on how it happens. Stop it!

[Whateverist]

Ok, at least the authors of my textbook do. Not to mention the hundreds of times my professors (not ID advocates by any means) use the term design simply because biology clearly reflects intention and precise functioning at every step.

You fucking retarded motherfucking idiot.

Something can be referred to as a design without the obviously obtuse definition of intelligent being carelessly thrown behind it.  

Grow the fuck up already.

Yeah.  Bees do it.  Beavers do it.  Sometimes even you and me do it.  Lets do it.  Lets design something .. no gods required.

[veoli]

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?

I have no idea how intelligent I am, but I know that it is a supported theory - that is why I accept it.

[LadyForCamus]

Straw man much? Who (other than you) has argued DNA damage as evidence of bad design. How about your breathing tube and your eating tube sharing the same plumbing resulting in thousands of deaths every year? How about reproductive organs and wast elimination organs being right next to each other (women) or sharing the same pipe (men). The "design" sucks and the "designer" should be held accountable. All you'll ever do is make excuses.

There's so much going on in the cell that you don't even want to acknowledge. There are control mechanisms that make our electronic circuits rediculously childish. There are layers upon layers of information that are being continuously unpacked, read, and repacked. But you complain that your esophagus is too close to your trachea? You better be thankful that someone just happened to have an epiglottis in order for our species to survive the evolution of that setup.

You didn't acknowledge GB's the point; that an all powerful, all intelligent being should have used a little foresight in his planning. All you gave in this response is more red herrings. I wonder why they is?

[LadyForCamus]

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?

Omg, please for the love of Christ don't start down the " no evidence for evolution" road. Esquilax and Poc spent WEEKS of their lives patiently explaining the fundamental concepts of evolution to you; correcting your misconceptions, and practically handed evidence to you on a silver platter. If you are going to honestly sit here and claim that you learned nothing from that discussion, them you are either lying or willfully ignorant.

[Jenny A]

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

You don't need to start your own subforum (in fact you can't ), but there are subforums in the science section of this website. Start a new thread in an appropriate one.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Funny thing about the ID crowd:  They almost universally posit a Designer that is perfect, then credit it with a sub-optimal creation.  Doesn't really help explain things like AIDS, tooth decay and Harlequin Foetus Syndrome.

On the other hand, if life-as-it-exists is the result of natural selection acting on situationally favourable mutations, we'd expect exactly what we see - organisms that aren't perfect, but suited to their particular environments.  In other words, just good enough to get by.

Boru

NO, those problems that you mentioned are the result of the mutations that are supposed to be your hero. When DNA gets damaged, enzymes may not function properly, and they can lead to the phenotypic problems that you complain about. It's not that it was designed to be that way, it's that it got damaged.

Then you've got to explain why an intelligent Designer, one who - by definition - has to be of a higher order of complexity than the universe itself, would design DNA that could be damaged in the first place, why teeth can decay - with or without proper care - and why the AIDS virus exists in the first place. The bald fact that these things are even possible is damning evidence against design.

Your comment to another poster that you doubt mutation/natural selection cannot account for complex living systems indicates that you don't understand either one.

Boru

[LadyForCamus]

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

I love that you used "rise from the dead," and "only serious explanation" in the same sentence. Thanks for the laugh. clap ::