>> ^artician:

<sigh>
If only they'd put as much work into the accuracy of the nighttime skies!


OOOOOHHH Astronomy burn!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'stars, amazing' to 'stars, amazing, cerro paranal, chile, telescope, astronomy, eso' - edited by eric3579

This fact blew my mind too when I first learned it in Astronomy 101 back during my freshman year at college. Now that I'm much older, I appreciate it on an even deeper and local level as this: we are one with our environment. If we pollute and destroy the world around us we will inevitably pollute and destroy ourselves. I think we're slowly learning as a species how decisions made half a world away can have consequences for everyone on the planet (for example, China's dust storms caused by overfarming drifting across the Pacific all the way to the Continental U.S.).

I agree with @garmachi. I think science needs more people like DeGrasse Tyson who take the time and can explain these things to a layman audience. Otherwise the knowledge (and wonder) becomes the exclusive domain of a privileged few while the masses continue to stampede onward blindly.

>> ^Fletch:

...but when he starts talking, it just sounds like he's talking to five year-olds to me.
F ck it, upvote.


It's because he knows that his audience is primarily Americans of average education. I'm not saying this to be insulting, but actually quite the opposite. Just because you and I can solve partial differential equations, does not mean that everyone can, or that everyone needs to in order to fully comprehend the mind-blowing awesomeness of science and astronomy. When I was 10, Carl Sagan had that affect on me, while at the same time being criticized by the "real" scientific community for dumbing down the subject.

Meanwhile, he inspired me and a generation to explore things which may seem frighteningly complex when presented any other way.

I think that the root of it is that you're right. He's not talking to you. He is talking to the five-year olds. And he's damn good at it too. Try listening like a five-year old. It might blow your mind.

You quote The Blind Watchmaker and The Origin of Species but I highly doubt that you’ve read them yourself. If you haven’t then you’re not better than someone who is contesting the bible without having read it. You quote a LOT of scientists that you say are hostile to your position but again, have you actually read the works that you’re quoting from in their entirety? I doubt it.

Well, I have read them and I think it's fairly obvious that I understand the subject matter.

Here are just two things that I read recently that I think are worth repeating:

...degree of thermodynamic disorder is measured by an entity called "entropy." There is a mathematical correlation between entropy increase and an increase in disorder. The overall entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. However, the entropy of some parts of the system can spontaneously decrease at the expense of an even greater increase of other parts of the system. When heat flows spontaneously from a hot part of a system to a colder part of the system, the entropy of the hot area spontaneously decreases! The ICR (Institute for Creation Research)...

....illustrate a fact, but they are not the fact itself. One thing is certain: metaphors are completely useless when it comes to the thermodynamics of calculating the efficiency of a heat engine, or the entropy change of free expansion of a gas, or the power required to operate a compressor. This can only be done with mathematics, not metaphors. Creationists have created a "voodoo" thermodynamics....

I never made the argument that entropy can never decrease in a system. I made the argument that even if you want to use the energy of the sun to explain why life is becoming more complex, you haven't explained the information that makes that possible. More energy does not equal more order. I also don't know why you keep bringing up articles from the institution of creation research and expect me to defend them. I am more than willing to admit that there are some terrible theories by creationists out there, just as there are terrible theories by secular scientists.

For myself, I am only a materialist because there isn’t any demonstrable, non-anecdotal, reproducible evidence for the existence of anything non-material. I hope you can understand that. There is the appearance of design and there is DNA, and we don’t know how everything got started but that’s not good enough for me to believe that it was designed, I need something more concrete because that is the criteria for which I will justify something as believable. I’d be very interested in some sort of evidence like that but it hasn’t happened yet and conjecture just doesn’t work for me so I’ll reserve judgment but maintain doubt and that’s all there is to it.

I can understand your position as a materialist, having formally been one. I did not see any evidence for God or spirit either, and it really rocked my world to discover that there was more, and that material reality is only a veil to a larger reality. It is mind blowing to discover that everything that you know is in some way, wrong.

I think there is some very good evidence pointing towards a Creator, but that isn't going to get you there necessarily. It seems to me though, after talking with you a bit, that if there is a God, you would want to know about it. Maybe you're not terribly interested in pursuing the subject at the moment but you now strike me as someone who is open to the truth. If He does exist, would you want to hear from Him? If He let you know, would you follow Him?

On the scope of evidence, I think the two of the most powerful arguments are the information in DNA and the fine-tuning of physical laws. There is no naturalistic process which can produce a code, and that is what DNA is. It is a digital code which stores information and is vastly superior to anything we have ever designed. It is a genetic language which has its own alphabet, grammar, syntax, and meaning. It has redudancy and error correction, and it is an encoding and decoding mechanism to transmit information about an organism. Biologists actually use linguistic analysis to decode its functions. You also have to realize that the message is not the medium. In that, like all information, you can copy the information in DNA to storage device like a hard drive, and then recode it later with no loss in information. This is a pretty good article on the information in DNA:

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/read-prove-god-exists/language-dna-intelligent-design/

The fine tuning evidence is also very powerfully because it is virtually impossible for the laws to have come about by chance. It's important to understand what fine tuning actually means. I'll quote Dr Craig:

"That the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is a pretty solidly established fact and ought not to be a subject of controversy. By “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” but simply that the fundamental constants and quantities of nature fall into an exquisitely narrow range of values which render our universe life-permitting. Were these constants and quantities to be altered by even a hair’s breadth, the delicate balance would be upset and life could not exist."

So it's not a question whether the Universe itself is finely tuned for life, it is a question of how it got that way. In actuality, the odds of it happening are far worse than winning the powerball lottery over 100 times in a row. Random chance simply cannot account for it because there are dozens of values that must be precisely calibrated, and the odds for some of these values happening by chance is greater than the number of particles in the Universe! For instance, the space-energy density must be fine tuned to one part in 10 to the 120th power, an inconceivably huge number. That's just one value out of dozens. Many scientists understand this.

Here are some quotes from some agnostic scientists, which a couple of Christians thrown in:

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming".

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."
Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Just because the universe and life might have the appearance of design doesn’t mean it was designed. After all, we might all be brains in vats being experimented on by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings and all of this is simply like the matrix. Maybe Déjà vu is evidence that it’s true but there simply isn’t any reason to believe it just like there isn’t any reason to believe in any gods.

But if that were true then the Universe is designed, and this is simply some kind of computer program. In any case, although we could imagine many scenerios I am talking about something very specific; That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead. Moreover, that you can know Him personally, today.

All of the concepts of god and gods have been moved back every time we discover naturalistic explanations where once those gods were accredited. What makes you think that it’s any different with these things? Just because we don’t know what’s behind the veil doesn’t mean that the idea of someone pulling the levers is a better explanation than a currently unknown natural, non-agency explanation. If we don’t know, then we don’t know and putting a god in the place of “we don’t know” isn't a good way of helping us learn more about our universe

The primary question is whether the Universe has an intelligent causation. You believe that Universes, especially precisely calibrated and well-ordered ones just happen by themselves. I happen to think that this is implausible to say the least. You're acting like it's not a valid question, and because we can describe some of the mechanisms we see that we can rule out an intelligent cause, which is simply untrue. You could describe every single mechanism there is in the Universe, but until you explain how it got here, you haven't explained anything. The real question is not how they work but why they work and that question can only be answered by answering why they exist in the first place.

It is also just a fallacy to say that because some peoples beliefs about God have been proven false, that means all beliefs about God are false. Scientists used to believe that there were only seven planets and that the Earth was flat. Does that mean that all ideas scientists have are false? No, and neither does it mean that all beliefs about God are false because people have had ridiculous beliefs about God.

The God I believe in is not ridiculous, and the belief in His existence has led to ideas that formed western civilization and propelled modern science itself. The idea that we can suss out Universal laws by investigating secondary causes is a Christian one, that came from the belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws.

It is also not a brake to doing science to believe that God created the Universe. Some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived believed in God. People like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Max Planck, Mendel and Einstein. It certainly didn't stop them from doing great science.

Also, as I have explained, it is not a God of the gaps argument when God is a better explanation for the evidence.

We know that the universe, space-time, matter had a finite beginning but we can’t say anything at all about that beginning with any certainty. We can’t even say that whatever was that caused the universe is spaceless, or timeless. We just don’t know. This is the god of the gaps argument that started this whole thing. You’re putting a god in as the explanation for what is effectively a gap in our knowledge without anything solid to go off of. It would not be a god of the gaps argument if we eventually could know with a high degree of certainty that there is a god there fiddling with the controls but we don’t. That is the crux of this whole debate. That is why “I don’t know” is a better answer than “A god did it” because it’s absolutely verifiably true where as a god is not.

The ultimate cause of the Universe must be timeless because it must be beginningless, according to logic. I'll explain. You cannot get something from nothing, I think we both agree on that. So if the Universe has a cause, it must be an eternal cause, since you cannot have an infinite regress of causes for the Universe. The buck has to stop somewhere. This points to an eternal first cause, which means that cause is timeless. If it is timeless it is also changeless because change is a property of time. If it is changeless it is also spaceless, because anything which exists in space must be temporal, since it is always finitely changing relation to the things around it. It's timelessness and spacelessness makes it immaterial, and this also makes it transcendent. I think it is obvious that whatever created the Universe must be unimaginably powerful. So we have something which already closely describes the God of the bible, and we can deduct these things by using logic alone.

We just don’t know if the universe is entirely regressable into some sort of endless loop which folds in on itself, or something else, or even if there is a god or not. Furthermore, I hope you look into what physicist mean by “out of nothing” because it doesn’t mean what I think you think it means. It took me a while to understand what it meant and to be honest, it is a bit of a deceptive word play but it’s only that way because there isn’t another way to describe it. I don't actually believe that the universe came from "nothing". I don't know how it all started, so therefore, I have no belief. I don't need an answer to the big questions. I can say "I don't know" just fine and leave it at that.

“A proponent of the Big Bang Theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” Anthony Kenny

British physicist P.C.W. Davies writes, “The coming-into-being of the universe as discussed in modern science…is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization or structure upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.”

Physicist Victor Stenger says “the universe exploded out of nothingness the observable universe could have evolved from an infinitesimal region. its then tempting to go one step further and speculate that the entire universe evolved from literally nothing.

In the realm of the universe, nothing really means nothing. Not only matter and energy would disappear, but also space and time. However, physicists theorize that from this state of nothingness, the universe began in a gigantic explosion about 16.5 billion years ago.

HBJ General Science 1983 Page 362

the universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything.

discover April 2002

I think we can both agree that it is better to know than not to know. That's been one of your primary arguments against the existence of God, that we simply cannot rest of the laurels of God being the Creator because that will lead to ignorance. I have already demonstrated that there is no actual conflict with belief in God and doing good science, so your argument is invalid, but I think it's ironic that on the other side of it, you are arguing that ignorance is a good thing and leads to better science. That you're even intellectually satisified with not knowing. I hope you can see the contradiction here.

The reason why I personally don’t find the whole god argument all that interesting, and the reason why I don’t actually care about it, is because it makes a heck of a lot of claims regarding the nature of god and it’s properties which just can’t be verified. There is nothing that we can concretely discover about god and no predictions that we can make which could eventually be verified meaningfully. How can we possibly know if creator is timeless, or spaceless, unimaginably powerful, transcendent, unembodied, etc? Is it rational to believe that; do you have an equal ratio of evidence to belief? What predictions can we actually make about this god(s). All we have are books and stories written and passed down throughout history. Everything else is just unjustified belief to me.

As I explained above, we can make several predictions about God based on the evidence. Belief in God is rational and can be justified. However, I understand that until you have a personal experience, it is probably going to be unconvincing to you, since this is way you see the world. You demand evidence, and lucky for you, God provides evidence. If you asked Him to come into your life, He would demonstrate it to you. He provided evidence to me, and I know you He will provide to you, especially if you take a leap of faith ask Him for it.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr:

I never knew there were so many naked chicks in space!

I'M SO FUCKING HAPPY I TOOK ASTRONOMY!!

I’m going to respond to your last comment in two parts. The first part regards the god argument in which you have mischaracterized me as being closed minded and of having a bias. I can easily show that I am neither and this is my view on the whole god thing so you can at least understand my view if for nothing else. The second part I will address my primary contention against your methods of argument.

I am willing to listen, however, on its face the statement "I don't care about the whole god argument" indicates both bias and closed-mindedness. It also shows an intellectual incuriousity.

I admit that I don’t believe in a god or gods, or even advanced aliens. I just don’t see any reason to believe any of it. This doesn’t mean that I am saying that god doesn’t exist; I’m saying “I don’t know, but I highly doubt it and I don’t buy it.” What do you find confusing about that?

We have no real reason to suppose from direct evidence that a god, or gods, exist. Do all effects have a cause? Do all causes have an effect? If yes, why do you suppose it’s a god who caused all of the effects that you attribute him to such as the “fine tuning” or “the appearance of design”, why can’t it be something else? By resting on a god hypothesis as the answer to mysterious phenomenon, you are precluding all other answers that are just as good as a god, that have the same amount of direct evidence.

Scientific evidence indicates that time, space, matter and energy all had a finite beginning, making the cause of the Universe timeless, spaceless, unimaginably powerful and transcendent. Those are all attributes of God, and fit an unembodied mind. The fine tuning, information in DNA and appearance of design all point to a creator. Logic itself tells us that the first cause of the Universe must be eternal because nothing comes from nothing and you can't have an infinite regress of causes. Frankly I think it is ridiculous to believe that Universes just happen by themselves, and especially, as the greatest minds of our time are suggesting, out of nothing. Can't you see that when someone says that, it means the emperor has no clothes?

Does the god that you believe in have a cause? If not, how so? By what mechanisms does your god exist but without having had a cause? How can your belief be proven and why should anyone believe it based on rational information? What evidence is there that compels you to believe that your god indeed doesn’t have a cause? These are the kinds of questions that I think you should be asking for yourself. If you resort to “just needing to have faith” as an answer then you are actively avoiding exercising critical thinking faculties.

God is eternal, and He has no beginning or end, so no He doesn't have a cause. A God that was caused by something else wouldn't be God. My evidence is from logic which demands an eternal first cause. Otherwise, you're left explaing how you get something from nothing, which is logically absurd.

Unlike you, I don’t see the appearance of design in the complexity of biological systems or in anything found in nature. I study evolutionary biology, astrophysics, and chemistry for myself because I find it the mechanisms fascinating, not because I’m trying to disprove god.

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.

Francis Crick Nobel Laureate
What Mad Pursuit p.138 1988

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker p.1

Even hardcore skeptics concede there is an appearance of design.

There is inherent beauty in all of it and it’s a shame that most people are ignorant of what we do actually know. While I’m open to the idea that a god designed the system then put it in motion, there just isn’t direct phenomenological evidence that suggest that’s what happened.

The information in DNA is direct evidence that a higher intelligence designed the system.

There is enough information that we do know about speciation to suggest that evolution through natural selection does happen, is happening, and will continue to happen. The genetic code is enough to suggest common ancestry between all living things in a tree like family lineage.

natural selection can weed out some of the complexity and so slow down the information decay that results in speciation. it may have a stabilizing effect, but it does not promote speciation. it is not a creative force as many people have suggested.

Roger Lewin Science magazine 1982

The genetic code also suggests a common designer. As far as your tree claim, you need to research the cambrian explosion. It is quite a let down for gradualists, unfortunately. All the major body types, including the phylum Chordata (thats our phylum), were there from the beginning. We actually have less diversity today, not more.

(on the cambrian explosion)
And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists.

Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker 1986 p.229

Certainly, we do not know yet exactly how the whole process of DNA or RNA reproduction started, but if we postulate that a god started the process without sufficient evidence, only on the basis that there is no better answer, then we can also postulate that it was an advanced inter-dimensional race of ancients who populate planets with the seed of genetic mechanisms. If we don’t have the answer to how the mechanism got the whole thing started, what’s the difference between those two different origin hypotheses?

I don't postulate that God 'started the process'. I postulate that God spontaneously created everything. You rule out God apriori and thus you accept this just-so story about how life got here. In your eyes, it must have happened. Interpreting the evidence to fit the conclusion isn't very scientific, is it?

Also unlike you, I don’t see what you call “fine tuning” and I also study all sorts of physics, my favorite being astrophysics personally. The term “fine tuning” implies that something above the system changed some dials to a perfect goldilocks range to support what we have right now. This is an interesting idea however I find it to be more prudent to see it the other way around; that what has formed, has only formed because the conditions allow for it, that the environment dictates what can exist. Wherever you look at an environment and find life, you find life that fits into that environment and we also see that when environments change, so to do species change to adapt to the new conditions. We never see an environment change to fit the species.

I don't think you're understanding the fine tuning argument. Many of those finely tuned values, if even moved an inch, would make life impossible in this Universe. Not just improbable, but impossible. The fine tuning is extremely fortuitous to an incomprehensible degree. The odds of these values randomly converging is virtually impossible. For instance, for physical life to exist, the mass density of the Universe must be fine tuned to better than one part in 10 to the 60th power. For space-energy density, it is 10 to the 120th power. That's just two out of dozens of values.

You claim that we haven’t seen macro-evolution taking place? Are you sure about that, how exactly do you know this is true, where did you read this? How do you know that what you are calling macro-evolution is the same thing as what evolutionary biologists call macro-evolution? The fact of the matter is that the fossil record has nothing to say about the most recent research on macro-evolution. It’s a fascinating material and I would suggest that you get out there and find it for yourself. Talk Origins has as list of the studies done on macro-evolution, you can start there if you like.

Yes, evolutionists are trying to dump the fossil record in favor of genetic evidence because the fossil record is actually evidence against their theories. As I've said, common genetics also indicate common designer.

Darwin made a great discovery, that creatures can adapt to environmental conditions. That's something that has hard scientific evidence. What didn't have any evidence was his extrapolation from that to the theory of all life having a common ancestor. He was counting on the fossil record to prove his case but it didn't, which is why he said this:

innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ..why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?

Geologoy assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory.

Charles Darwin
Origin of the Species

Here we are 150 years later with billions of fossils and there still isn't any evidence. If Darwin was right, we should have indisputable proof that one species changed into another, but we don't. All we have is a smattering of highly contested transitionals which are all "more or less" closely related, but no true ancestors. When the facts don't match the theory it is time to throw that theory away, but the theory of evolution is the cornerstone of the secular worldview, and it isn't going to die without a fight, no matter how loudly the facts cry out against it.

The question becomes, if there was/is a designer, what was designed first, the creature or the environment? To me, you are suggesting that humans were designed first in the mind of god, and then the environment was finely tuned in order to sustain the idea that god already had for us. Don’t you think this is a little bit too egotistical of a view? If that’s true, what makes everything else necessary? I don’t know if you study astrophysics or astronomy at all but there is a massive amount of stuff out there that has nothing to do with us and if we’re a part of god’s plan, he sure did create a lot of waste.

I'm saying He created all of it at the same time, in six days as Genesis describes. Why is the Universe so large? It could be for a number of reasons, such as that it gives us room to grow. If we were just hitting some sort of wall in space, it would also be a wall in knowledge that we could acquire. If it wasn't as large and complex as it is, we wouldn't be where we are today. Why are solid objects actually mostly composed of empty space? Isn't God wasting all of that space? Or is it integral to His design? Does the fact that almost everything is made up of empty space reduce the significance of solid objects? The size of the Universe doesn't say anything about our importance relative to it. The Heavens also declare the glory of God:

Psalm 19:1-2

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

To me, if the Christian beliefs are the most accurate representation of reality, god isn’t a very good designer. There millions of ways that he could have done a better job if he is all powerful. Of course, you can revert back to, “we can’t know the mind of god”, or “god works in mysterious ways”, but those aren’t answers, they are just ways of maintaining a pre-existing belief by silencing further inquisition.

Have you ever created a Universe? If not, how then would you know what a superior design would look like?

“Unless you can demonstrate a purely naturalistic origin of the Universe, you have no case against Agency.“

Agency needs to prove itself and so far it isn’t doing a very good job. Science as a whole isn’t making a case against agency and neither am I by suggesting that there are likely to be naturalistic causes. Agency simply isn’t necessary. That is what I think that you don’t understand. It’s that I don’t accept the case for agency until agency can be proven. A suspended judgment is better than an accepted unverifiable and untestable claim.

You can rule out the necessity of Agency when you can explain origins. To say that it is not necessary when you don't know what caused the Universe is not something you can determine.

If you are in any way the kind of person who culturally relates to Christianity then there is nothing that anyone can do for you. It is very difficult to have an intellectually honest conversation with someone whose basis for belief is deeply tied to a sense of culture or social belonging. Challenging your beliefs is synonymous to asking you to become someone else if your beliefs are tightly woven into your identity. The only thing I can ask of you is to ask yourself if what you believe determines how you will process new information that comes to you.

I'll give you a little background on me. I grew up without any religion, and until a few years ago, I was an agnostic materialist who didn't see any evidence for God or spirit. Growing up, I hoped to become an astronomer. I have studied all the things you have mentioned, and although I am just a layman, I know quite a bit about biology, astronomy, physics, etc. Like you, I assumed because of my indoctrination in school and society, that the theory of evolution and other metaphysical theories were well supported by hard evidence. When I became a Christian, I was willing to incorporate these theories into my worldview. It is only upon investigation of the actual facts that I was shocked to find there not only is there no real evidence, but that much of what I had been taught in school was either grossly inaccurate, intentionally misleading, or outright fradulent.

So, you're not dealing with someone who grew up outside of your worldview, who feels threatened by it and is trying to tear it down. You're talking with someone who was heavily invested in it, and even willing to compromise with it, and has turned away from it because of my research, not in spite of it. If it was true, I would want to know about it. Since it isn't, I don't believe in it.

At the very least, you can see now that I am not diametrically opposed to the idea of a creator or agency behind everything. The notion is interesting but I don’t believe that there is enough real credible information to suggest that it’s true.

You are more openminded than I originally gave you credit for, but you definitely have a huge evidence filter made out of your presuppositions.

There are enough logical arguments against the idea of a god or gods existing that the whole notion is worth dismissing.

The only logical argument of any value that the atheists have is the argument from evil, and that has been soundly debunked by plantigas free will defense. Feel free to bring one up though, because I have never seen an atheist offer any positive evidence for his position. "Worth dismissing" = close minded and biased, btw.

If there is as god or gods, they aren’t doing a very good job of making themselves known or knowable.

Do you think that is why 93 percent of the world believes that God exists?

The simple fact is that naturalistic explanations are more useful ideas than any god concept because they provide both predictions that we can verify and help us make decisions about where to study next. No god hypothesis has ever provided either, therefore, in the pursuit of knowledge; the idea of god is useless.

Did you know that the idea that we can suss out laws by investigating their secondary causes is a Christian idea, based on the premise that God created an orderly universe governed by laws? Did you know that modern science got its start in Christian europe? Doesn't seem so useless to me. Science now must assume a little thing called "uniformity in nature" to even do science without the belief that there is a Creator upholding these laws. How do you get absolute laws in an ever changing Universe? What is the evidence the future will be like the past? Can you explain it?

Now you see why naturalistic explanations are predominate in science as the default standard.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the unitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin, Harvard
New York Review of Books 1/9/97

No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.

Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182

I have faith and belief myself... I believe that nothing beyond those natural laws is needed. I have no evidence for this. It is simply what I have faith in and what I believe.

Isaac Asimov

I see why you say that, and now you know why you believe that, because those who teach you these ideas are doing exactly what I have been saying all along. Suppressing the truth.


>> ^IAmTheBlurr:

I’m going to respond to your last comment in two parts. The first part regards the god argument in which you have mischaracterized me as being closed minded and of having a bias. I can easily show that I am neither and this is my view on the whole god thing so you can at least understand my view if for nothing else. The second part I will address my primary contention against your methods of argument.

I admit that I don’t believe in a god or gods, or even advanced aliens. I just don’t see any reason to believe any of it. This doesn’t mean that I am saying that god doesn’t exist; I’m saying “I don’t know, but I highly doubt it and I don’t buy it.” What do you find confusing about that?

We have no real reason to suppose from direct evidence that a god, or gods, exist. Do all effects have a cause? Do all causes have an effect? If yes, why do you suppose it’s a god who caused all of the effects that you attribute him to such as the “fine tuning” or “the appearance of design”, why can’t it be something else? By resting on a god hypothesis as the answer to mysterious phenomenon, you are precluding all other answers that are just as good as a god, that have the same amount of direct evidence.

Does the god that you believe in have a cause? If not, how so? By what mechanisms does your god exist but without having had a cause? How can your belief be proven and why should anyone believe it based on rational information? What evidence is there that compels you to believe that your god indeed doesn’t have a cause? These are the kinds of questions that I think you should be asking for yourself. If you resort to “just needing to have faith” as an answer then you are actively avoiding exercising critical thinking faculties.

Unlike you, I don’t see the appearance of design in the complexity of biological systems or in anything found in nature. I study evolutionary biology, astrophysics, and chemistry for myself because I find it the mechanisms fascinating, not because I’m trying to disprove god. There is inherent beauty in all of it and it’s a shame that most people are ignorant of what we do actually know. While I’m open to the idea that a god designed the system then put it in motion, there just isn’t direct phenomenological evidence that suggest that’s what happened. There is enough information that we do know about speciation to suggest that evolution through natural selection does happen, is happening, and will continue to happen. The genetic code is enough to suggest common ancestry between all living things in a tree like family lineage. Certainly, we do not know yet exactly how the whole process of DNA or RNA reproduction started, but if we postulate that a god started the process without sufficient evidence, only on the basis that there is no better answer, then we can also postulate that it was an advanced inter-dimensional race of ancients who populate planets with the seed of genetic mechanisms. If we don’t have the answer to how the mechanism got the whole thing started, what’s the difference between those two different origin hypotheses?

Also unlike you, I don’t see what you call “fine tuning” and I also study all sorts of physics, my favorite being astrophysics personally. The term “fine tuning” implies that something above the system changed some dials to a perfect goldilocks range to support what we have right now. This is an interesting idea however I find it to be more prudent to see it the other way around; that what has formed, has only formed because the conditions allow for it, that the environment dictates what can exist. Wherever you look at an environment and find life, you find life that fits into that environment and we also see that when environments change, so to do species change to adapt to the new conditions. We never see an environment change to fit the species.

You claim that we haven’t seen macro-evolution taking place? Are you sure about that, how exactly do you know this is true, where did you read this? How do you know that what you are calling macro-evolution is the same thing as what evolutionary biologists call macro-evolution? The fact of the matter is that the fossil record has nothing to say about the most recent research on macro-evolution. It’s a fascinating material and I would suggest that you get out there and find it for yourself. Talk Origins has as list of the studies done on macro-evolution, you can start there if you like.

The question becomes, if there was/is a designer, what was designed first, the creature or the environment? To me, you are suggesting that humans were designed first in the mind of god, and then the environment was finely tuned in order to sustain the idea that god already had for us. Don’t you think this is a little bit too egotistical of a view? If that’s true, what makes everything else necessary? I don’t know if you study astrophysics or astronomy at all but there is a massive amount of stuff out there that has nothing to do with us and if we’re a part of god’s plan, he sure did create a lot of waste. To me, if the Christian beliefs are the most accurate representation of reality, god isn’t a very good designer. There millions of ways that he could have done a better job if he is all powerful. Of course, you can revert back to, “we can’t know the mind of god”, or “god works in mysterious ways”, but those aren’t answers, they are just ways of maintaining a pre-existing belief by silencing further inquisition.

“Unless you can demonstrate a purely naturalistic origin of the Universe, you have no case against Agency.“

Agency needs to prove itself and so far it isn’t doing a very good job. Science as a whole isn’t making a case against agency and neither am I by suggesting that there are likely to be naturalistic causes. Agency simply isn’t necessary. That is what I think that you don’t understand. It’s that I don’t accept the case for agency until agency can be proven. A suspended judgment is better than an accepted unverifiable and untestable claim.

If you are in any way the kind of person who culturally relates to Christianity then there is nothing that anyone can do for you. It is very difficult to have an intellectually honest conversation with someone whose basis for belief is deeply tied to a sense of culture or social belonging. Challenging your beliefs is synonymous to asking you to become someone else if your beliefs are tightly woven into your identity. The only thing I can ask of you is to ask yourself if what you believe determines how you will process new information that comes to you.

At the very least, you can see now that I am not diametrically opposed to the idea of a creator or agency behind everything. The notion is interesting but I don’t believe that there is enough real credible information to suggest that it’s true. There are enough logical arguments against the idea of a god or gods existing that the whole notion is worth dismissing. If there is as god or gods, they aren’t doing a very good job of making themselves known or knowable. The simple fact is that naturalistic explanations are more useful ideas than any god concept because they provide both predictions that we can verify and help us make decisions about where to study next. No god hypothesis has ever provided either, therefore, in the pursuit of knowledge; the idea of god is useless. Now you see why naturalistic explanations are predominate in science as the default standard.


>> ^shinyblurry:

Well, let's talk about rationality for a minute, since you seem to be a logical person. I just don't think there is any basis in a secular worldview for rationality. For instance, if you believe in evolution then you believe that life came from non-life, which means that your rationality came from irrational forces. How can you trust it? If you have inherited your reasoning capability from rocks and primates, how is it trustworthy?

Another question is, how do you have any free will in a secular worldview? If the way things are at this moment is due to the arrangement of atoms at the beginning of the Universe, then there is no such thing as free will. Those atoms have you locked in from birth to death and no one has any meaningful awareness. There is no way to get outside this box that materialism puts you in. How do you respond to this quote:

If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions… … Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else.

Douglas Wilson

Since you mentioned that you work with math, where do you find the laws of logic in nature? How do you presuppose something which is unchanging and immaterial in a Universe which is material and always changing? I can account for these things in a theistic worldview, so how do you account for them?

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I can relate to tyson, as I felt the same feelings when i was a kid..started reading cosmos at age 4, went to planetariums, got a telescope, devoured any and all information i could get my hands on about astronomy. I can relate to his sheer sense of wonderment about it. What I find interesting though is how he talks about having a personal relationship with the Universe, that it talks to him, that it was "calling" him, and how the Universe (as starstuff) is within him. That is unmistakably worship.

Indeed, this video talks much about the irrational kinds of religious orders secular people still hold to, like love or living forever. People, even those who claim to be rational, still deal with our monkey nature more oft then they would like to admit to themselves <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/teeth.gif">

Setec Astronomy.

>> ^shinyblurry:

I can relate to tyson, as I felt the same feelings when i was a kid..started reading cosmos at age 4, went to planetariums, got a telescope, devoured any and all information i could get my hands on about astronomy. I can relate to his sheer sense of wonderment about it. What I find interesting though is how he talks about having a personal relationship with the Universe, that it talks to him, that it was "calling" him, and how the Universe (as starstuff) is within him. That is unmistakably worship.


Indeed, this video talks much about the irrational kinds of religious orders secular people still hold to, like love or living forever. People, even those who claim to be rational, still deal with our monkey nature more oft then they would like to admit to themselves

I can relate to tyson, as I felt the same feelings when i was a kid..started reading cosmos at age 4, went to planetariums, got a telescope, devoured any and all information i could get my hands on about astronomy. I can relate to his sheer sense of wonderment about it. What I find interesting though is how he talks about having a personal relationship with the Universe, that it talks to him, that it was "calling" him, and how the Universe (as starstuff) is within him. That is unmistakably worship.

That is the double edge sword isn't it? They now rely on the force that stripped them of their rich culture to provide a decent living.>> ^deathcow:

they are starving for an influx of visitor $$$$ in hawaii...

I promise that would be the ONLY reason I'd go to Hawaii as the capitalist exploitation of a culture is of no interest to me at all.>> ^deathcow:

PROMISE me if you ever go to kona, hawaii... that you will go up Mauna Kea volcano on a moon-free night

Tags for this video have been changed from 'smallest planet, found, space, star, planet' to 'smallest planet, found, space, star, planet, astronomy' - edited by kulpims