@shinyblurry

[me:] … invited … yadda yadda. [you:]I get your overall point.

That's all that matters. And I'll add that I too think you're a valuable member. I've even taken to defending you around the place, if you can believe that.

Now on to the other topics.

Apparently you haven't heard of Chiastic structure:

You're right, I hadn't heard of it. That's neat stuff. But it doesn't change the fact that Matthew's choice to use that structure created *an error in the text*.

No, they can't be scientifically measured. You would never know during your test whether God was simply feeding you a certain kind of result. Think about it. God knows the entire time that you're trying to test for His existence outside of what He ordained (faith in Jesus Christ). His choice is either to give you results that will prove His existence outside of Christ or results that will make it ambiguous. What do you think He is going to do?

As far as I can tell, either you don't understand science or my mind is incapable of understanding how all the things you're saying about God can be true at once. This is going nowhere. I'm dropping this prayer/science topic.

You're acting is if I have no evidence for my beliefs.

No. I'm acting as if you are not giving appropriate weight to the evidence on both sides. All evidence against your beliefs, you massage into being compatible with some very, very loose rules, to the point now where words in the Bible don't even count as words anymore. Yet any mote of evidence against my beliefs (even things that aren't evidence at all, such as lack of an answer --which is entirely consistent with a world without a God) you throw around like it's absolute proof not only that I'm wrong, but further that you're right. You even tell me that I'm suffering cognitive dissonance—not that you *think* I might be, but that I am. Basic statements of humility elude you, like, "Humans are far too complicated even for humans to understand, and therefore any argument from complexity/arrogance/hubris applies to belief in the existence of God just as much as it applies to belief that humans invented God." And even after you say something like that (I believe you did acknowledge in another thread that it's technically possible you're wrong), you continue to speak like you're right and I’m wrong. In a nutshell, I come to the table with my beliefs, I acknowledge they are my beliefs, and I act towards you as if they are only beliefs, not absolute fact. And that's the basic humility I'm asking for in return, and which frankly I require to have a real conversation about the existence of God.

My worldview is internally consistent, and it is also rational.

I disagree that it's rational, for the fact that you hold it to be absolutely true, bar nothing. From where I stand, it's irrational for a mere human to hold that they are absolutely correct about their interpretation of anything as complex, critical and subjective as the things you claim about God and the Bible.

you reject the evidence I have receive apriori.

As a rational actor, I must be sceptical of your subjective evidence. To accept it OR dismiss it would be irrational of me.

To you there must always be some other explanation … You've already come to the conclusion that … Rather than letting the evidence interpret the conclusion, you are interpreting the evidence through the conclusion.

Anybody willing to look can see that there are internally consistent plausible alternatives to your beliefs. I say again and again only that there are alternative possibilities. I have come to no "conclusions" about anything. As a scientific-minded person, I simply cannot think so rigidly, ever, especially not about something as important as the nature of the universe. I mostly see how the evidence could fit in your worldview. Sometimes I don't, and that's OK. I suggest that there are other possibilities with words like, "could", "maybe", "I think," "From where I stand," and so forth. And nearly every time you treat me like I'm claiming atheism is absolutely 100% correct, end of conversation. The only thing I believe I'm 100% correct about is *that I have proposed* internally consistent plausible alternatives to the existence of God. That's all I'm ever saying: other things could be possible. Read all my messages again; I'm pretty consistent. So I'll ask you again, please read my words literally, not with some defensive filter like every sentence of mine is a skewer.

It was only when I questioned that and investigated the evidence that I found [the Bible was right and science was wrong].

What evidence do you have that science is wrong? I'm not saying science is perfect (it's human), but you're no expert to claim that what you've read is scientifically valid. To be frank, you've got a reputation on the Sift for quotemining and have been caught at least once on the Steven Pinker quote. People with insignificant scientific backgrounds and/or clear non-scientific primary agendas don't count.

It's only a literal reading [of the Bible] that makes any sense.

A literal reading of the Bible gives two different accounts of the same genealogy. That doesn't make sense.

Even atheists know that:

You mean, "at least one atheist once thought that, maybe". A quick out of context copy-paste from christianforums.com of a vague quote from a 1978 periodical by a group that neither speaks for nor represents atheists. Why bother? You can do better.

I really don't understand why you bother. Shiny has proven time and time again that he's either incapable of understanding anything outside of his magic book, or he's nothing but a troll. I vote for the second, but the net effect is the same. You're wasting your time.>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^shinyblurry:
"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,
Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA., "How the Mind Works," [1997]
You love this quote, don't you? I searched for it on google and fuck me if the first page or two isn't almost all you regurgitating this at every opportunity.
Now, here's the thing. You haven't read this book. Because if you had, you would have seen the next line.
"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. Thankfully, the evidence is overwhelming. I don't just mean evidence that life evolved (which is way beyond reasonable doubt, creationists notwithstanding), but that it evolved by natural selection."
But hey, let's ignore that bit. Let's live in shinys fantasy delusional that there isn't an almost overwhelming preponderance of data backing up evolution. Pinker would still be right. Why? Because there are no valid competing scientific theories. Literally. That's it. It's the only game in town. No-one has come even remotely close to explaining the diversity of life on this planet without evolution.
Intelligent design is not a theory. It fails almost every criteria.
So seriously, enough with the bullshit.

>> ^shinyblurry:

"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,
Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA., "How the Mind Works," [1997]

You love this quote, don't you? I searched for it on google and fuck me if the first page or two isn't almost all you regurgitating this at every opportunity.

Now, here's the thing. You haven't read this book. Because if you had, you would have seen the next line.

"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. Thankfully, the evidence is overwhelming. I don't just mean evidence that life evolved (which is way beyond reasonable doubt, creationists notwithstanding), but that it evolved by natural selection."

But hey, let's ignore that bit. Let's live in shinys fantasy delusional that there isn't an almost overwhelming preponderance of data backing up evolution. Pinker would still be right. Why? Because there are no valid competing scientific theories. Literally. That's it. It's the only game in town. No-one has come even remotely close to explaining the diversity of life on this planet without evolution.

Intelligent design is not a theory. It fails almost every criteria.

So seriously, enough with the bullshit.

@ChaosEngine

Oh sweet irony, I'm being called wilfully ignorant by a young-earther.

I'm not going to refute you. I don't need to; @BicycleRepairMan has already done an excellent job of it.

An excellent refutation? He cherry picked one sentence out of my reply, a reply where I had demonstrated the fallacy of his argument from incredulity by proving his assumption of the constancy of radioactive decay rates was nothing more than the conventional wisdom of our times. Is this what passes for logical argumentation in your mind? He posited a fallacious argument. I exposed the fallacy. He ignored the refutation and cherry picked his reply. You seem to be showing that in your eagerness to agree with everything which is contrary to my position that you have a weak filter on information which supports your preconceived ideas. Why is it that a skeptic is always pathologically skeptical of everything except his own positions, I wonder?

@BicycleRepairMan

...and to see an exampe of such a racket, check the flood "geology" link.

Seriously, you cant see the blinding irony in your own words? So, things like radiometric dating, fossils, geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology are all just parts of a self-perpetuating racket confirming each others conclusions in a big old circlejerking conspiracy of astronomical proportions.. well, lets assume then that it is. So they are basically chasing the foregone conclusion that the universe is over 13 billion years old and that life on this planet emerged some 3,6 billion years ago and has evolved ever since. But where did these wild conclusions come from? Who established the dogma that scientists seems to mindlessly work to confirm, and why? And why 13,72 billion years then? Why not 100 billion years, or 345 million years?

The thing is, what you have here is an alleged "crime" with no incentives, no motivation.. Why on earth would all the worlds scientists, depentently and independently and over many generations converge to promote a falsehood of no significance to anyone? it might make some kind of sense if someones doctrine was threatened unless the world was exactly 13.72 billion years old. Or if someone believed they were going to hell unless they believed trilobites died out 250 million years ago.. The thing is, nobody believes that.

The truth is pretty much staring you in the face right here. The conclusions of science on things like the age of the earth emerged gradually; Darwin, and even earlier naturalists had no idea of the exact age of the earth, or even a good approximation, but they did figure this much: It must be very, very old. So old that it challenged their prior beliefs and assumptions about a god-created world as described in their holy book. And thats were nearly all scientists come from: They grew up and lived in societies that looked to holy books , scripture and religion for the answers, and everybody assumed they had proper answers until the science was done.If scientists were corrupt conspirators working to preserve dogma, they be like Kent Hovind or Ken Ham. Ignoring vast mountains of facts and evidence, and focus on a few distorted out-of-context quotations to confirm what they already "know".

Not only was your prior argument fallacious, but I refuted it. Now you're ignoring that and cherry picking your replies here. Seems pretty intellectually dishonest to me? In any case, I'll reply to what you've said here. I was going to get into the technical issues concerning why scientists believe the Universe is so old, and the history of the theory, but so far you have given me no reason to believe that any of it will be carefully considered.

Instead I'll answer with a portion of an article I found, which was printed in "The Ledger" on Feb 17th 2000. It's interview of a molecular biologist who wanted to remain anonymous

Caylor: "Do you believe that the information evolved?"

MB: "George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by genius beyond genius, and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."

Caylor: "Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?"

MB: "No, I just say it evolved. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold onto two insanities at all times:
One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself.
Two, it would be insane to say you don't believe evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures -- everything would stop. I'd be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn't earn a decent living.”

Caylor: “I hate to say it, but that sounds intellectually dishonest.”

MB: “The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind's worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the elephant in the living room.”

Caylor: “What elephant?”

MB: “Creation design. It's like an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn't there!”

Here are some selected quotes:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. 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, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin

"In China its O.K. to criticize Darwin but not the government, while in the United States its O.K. to criticize the government, but not Darwin."

Dr. J.Y. Chen,

Chinese Paleontologist

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."

S. C. Todd,
Correspondence to Nature 410(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999

"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,
Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA., "How the Mind Works," [1997]

"Biologists are simply naive when they talk about experiments designed to test the theory of evolution. It is not testable. They may happen to stumble across facts which would seem to conflict with its predictions. These facts will invariably be ignored and their discoverers will undoubtedly be deprived of continuing research grants."

Professor Whitten,
Professor of Genetics, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1980 Assembly Week address.

"Science is not so much concerned with truth as it is with consensus. What counts as truth is what scientists can agree to count as truth at any particular moment in time. [Scientists] are not really receptive or not really open-minded to any sorts of criticisms or any sorts of claims that actually are attacking some of the established parts of the research (traditional) paradigm, in this case neo-Darwinism. So it is very difficult for people who are pushing claims that contradict that paradigm to get a hearing. They find it hard to [get] research grants; they find it hard to get their research published; they find it very hard."

Prof. Evelleen Richards,
Historian of Science at the University of NSW, Australia

Speaks for itself, I think..

@ulysses1904

Steven Pinker showed global violence has plummeted to a fraction of the historical norm, but we think we live in violent times because of easy access media.

That's the same reason why we think police brutality today isn't merely a fraction of the historical norm.

That doesn't mean don't work to improve law enforcement, but it does mean be glad we live in such comparatively easy and peaceful times.

I'd say the hypothesis "it was all made up" has infinitely more merit than the hypothesis "god is real". The former has actual evidence you can use to prove it. The latter has none.>> ^gwiz665:

The hypothesis "it was all made up" has equal merit, because you can find just as many traces of this than you can of it actually being real.
>> ^shinyblurry:
It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it. To say you prefer uncertainty is to say you enjoy the freedom of imagining that the answer is something else, because you don't like it. We aren't uncertain about everything. We have to be certain of some things, like the fact that we exist. Do we say that those who believe they exist embrace this answer because they are afraid of not existing? Clearly, certainty is useful.
If you want say that theists embrace God because they don't want to die, you could also say that atheists reject God because they don't want Him to exist. Take these scientists, for example:
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
To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.
To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?

You make a good point. In our daily life we are certain about a lot of things, or rather we accept things for granted without any thoroughly investigated evidence. We assume that we exist, because that's needed for us to assume it. We assume we have free will, because it feels like we have free will.

I also live as if there is no God, because of the "path of least resistance" - it is easier to assume there is no god, than to assume there is, and since it has no difference to me, the easiest solution is fine. I think for many theists, it least resistance to assume that there is a god, and live as if he exists, be it because of social pressure, mindset or what have you - in any case, their path of least resistance is to assume he exists. If you think about all the shit an outed atheist go through in some states, I can't really blame them for that too much.

It is a different deal when you get into the science of it, because in science we deal with what is real and what is not. The good thing about science is that it doesn't care. It doesn't care about your feelings, it doesn't care that lots of people like a thing, it only exist to show the truth and to show nature for what it really is.

Materialism is absolute in that it's really there, like Feynman says so excellent in his video about the electro-magnetic spectrum. It may not have much of an effect in your everyday life how light moves in waves and how it's similar to how water makes waves, but that doesn't make it any less true. You can assume that they are unrelated if you want, and if that makes you sleep better at night, but it's just not how nature works.

If you take the issue of God under the microscope, you find that there's not much evidence backing it up when you really look. The social pressure is there, and the cultural ramifications are there, but there's no evidence backing up the actual existence. The hypothesis "it was all made up" has equal merit, because you can find just as many traces of this than you can of it actually being real.

>> ^shinyblurry:

It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it. To say you prefer uncertainty is to say you enjoy the freedom of imagining that the answer is something else, because you don't like it. We aren't uncertain about everything. We have to be certain of some things, like the fact that we exist. Do we say that those who believe they exist embrace this answer because they are afraid of not existing? Clearly, certainty is useful.
If you want say that theists embrace God because they don't want to die, you could also say that atheists reject God because they don't want Him to exist. Take these scientists, for example:
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
To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.
To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?

>> ^shinyblurry:

It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it. To say you prefer uncertainty is to say you enjoy the freedom of imagining that the answer is something else, because you don't like it. We aren't uncertain about everything. We have to be certain of some things, like the fact that we exist. Do we say that those who believe they exist embrace this answer because they are afraid of not existing? Clearly, certainty is useful.
If you want say that theists embrace God because they don't want to die, you could also say that atheists reject God because they don't want Him to exist. Take these scientists, for example:
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
To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.
To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?

We're both ignorant. Only one of us knows it.

It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it. To say you prefer uncertainty is to say you enjoy the freedom of imagining that the answer is something else, because you don't like it. We aren't uncertain about everything. We have to be certain of some things, like the fact that we exist. Do we say that those who believe they exist embrace this answer because they are afraid of not existing? Clearly, certainty is useful.

If you want say that theists embrace God because they don't want to die, you could also say that atheists reject God because they don't want Him to exist. Take these scientists, for example:

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

To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.

To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?

Interesting how her skin colour gets progressively pinker as the video progresses.

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:

The blunted point of this video: religion is about faithfully following and constraining curiosity, while science is about aggressively questioning and holding nothing sacred.

Science is also about atheistic materialism. The idea of the supernatural cause is rejected apriori:

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

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

Religion itself serves no purpose. Going to church, partaking in sacraments, putting on a public face of piety, these are the dead works of men. The heart of Christianity is to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, to know God intimately and experientially. It is not religion but relationship.

A point I would add is that in human societies there may be a time and a place for each, but they will still each question the value of the other.

At the outset, they were friends to one another. The idea of an orderly Universe based on universal laws is a Christian idea, and so is the idea that we can suss out those ideas by investigating secondary causes. Science really got its start in Christian europe. Though they are portrayed as rivals now, it is truly a false dichotomy. I think John Lennox explains this best:



What we should be talking about then is the individual common ground, in your own head, between these two things. You describe a more Unitarian God, responsible for creating/upholding the laws of a changing Universe, and nothing else. I might describe a God with far less impact or far greater impact on human lives here on Earth (...or hundreds of Gods along a God power-spectrum). I might also specify some particular stories about how I know my God to be the true God.

At their essence, I don't think there is any conflict. Religion tells us about who the Creator is while science tries to explain how He did it. The bible isn't a book about science, although it contains some scientific principles. It is a book that describes what God wants from us, why He created us. Science shows us His marvels, it tells us why the stars shine so brightly, it reveals their secret power.

The God I believe in is a personal God who created us for a purpose. His desire is for us to know Him personally and attain to eternal life through His Son Jesus Christ. I believe He is the true God because He transformed my life and being, made me whole by His love, and because I received the direct witness of the Holy Spirit. Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ will receive the witness of the Holy Spirit and then Gods existence will become undeniably true. God Himself provides the evidence if you approach Him in faith.

On the other side is Science, where neither bullshit nor treasured dogma are valued once proven wrong. Your world is composed of atoms, which we've taken pictures of, and we've landed robots on another planet... but where we wonder what the meaning of any of this is, and how long its going to be before we screw it up.

The idea that science is an objective enterprise is a myth. This isn't about the best evidence.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”

Max Planck

If you want to challenge the status quo, you need the support of the status quo. It's a closed system. You're not getting any grants or getting published unless you're towing the line on the conventional wisdom of the day. Check out some of the finds that modern science conveniently ignores..



Evidence starts around 10:00 or so

Also check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Exploding-Myth-Conventional-Wisdom-Scientific/dp/1904275303

>> ^bamdrew:

DFT,

I think Sam is prepared to make the distinction between moderate and radical Islam - and I believe he does. Still, it is true that he writes that religious moderation creates the foundation for religious extremism.

The problem is Hedges is greatly misrepresenting Sam's sentiment. He does not present the scenario in the detail or terms that Sam does in regard to the nuclear first strike or the use of torture. To generalize as he has done paints Sam's comments as advocating for a nuclear first strike against 'muslims'. That simply isn't true.


I think Sam would say if any group (religous, political, ideological) came to power somewhere in the world and had the means and will to deploy WMD we may be forced into a 'First Strike'.

I agree with you that the Middle East despises the US for its constant violence and meddling in their affairs. However, it seems that a perverted form of Islam is still used to motivate many of the 'foot soldiers.' It really isn't an either/or. You have blow back that expresses itself through the regional religion.

Chris Hedges, like David Eagleman, wants to represent the 'new atheists' as something that they are not - closed minded zealots with a blood-thirst. Having read of Sam and Hitchens' work do you really believe that represents them?


The smearing that Hedges is doing is similar to how atheist were dealt with near the turn of the 20th century when they were grouped with the unpopular fascist, socialist/communist, and darwinist. "Stalin was a socialist atheist, look what he did!"

Are Sam and Hitchens intolerant of people or of bad ideas? There is a big difference, and I reckon it is the latter.



Furthermore - Hedges here states that there is nothing in "human nature or human history to support that we are collectively morally moving forward as a species." (2:01 in the video) Really? Has Hedges bothered to read Sam's book Moral Landscape?

Steve Pinker on the Myth of Violence

Does Hedges posit then that we cannot progress morally? Slavery has been abolished, women were finally given the right to vote and equal rights, violence is on the decline globally... yet we are not collectively improving morally? Sorry Chris but the evidence is not in your favor.



I am pleased to see atheist coming back out. Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Thomas Huxley, Richard Ingersoll...Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins. Marching foward.

In closing - All opinions matter, but informed opinions matter more. That is why knowledge is good and ignorance is evil.

-Kevin

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">

>> ^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