I would not pray what you have suggested. For one, I do not need a lord or savior. Two, the god that you believe in should know exactly what it would take to prove its existence and unless those rigorous conditions are met, I will maintain my doubt.

Personal revelation, whether singular or continuous, is not, for me, a good measure of whether or not I should believe something. Demonstrable, reproducible, externally verifiable, logically sound, and consistency with what we can/do know about reality are, among others, the basis of what it takes for me to believe something. The god of the bible, as well as all supernatural claims, are none of those so therefore I cannot believe in its existence.

That kind of prayer is not meaningful investigation and my view is that of doubt and skepticism. “I don’t know” is a null position, a “0” in binary, and because it makes no claims to knowledge, my position does not require falsification. “I do not believe” and “I don’t know” is not a claim to knowledge. Claims to knowledge are what require a path to falsification.

If you were truly agnostic, you couldn’t have had a claim that would have been falsified since, as an agnostic, you would admitted that you do not know.

>> ^shinyblurry:

As a former agnostic, I was perfectly fine with the answer "I don't know". That was never a scary thing to me. At the time, I simply did not have enough information to say either way. I wasn't going to go beyond what I felt was possible to understand given our subjective bias. I only changed my mind when I received revelation of Gods existence. Neither was it a single revelation that I base my belief on, rather it is actually a daily revelation. I could no more deny Gods existence than my own reflection in the mirror. To know God is to know Him personally, and to know Him personally means that He is personally involved in the intimate details of your life.
My question to you is, are you willing to falsify your viewpoint? I already had mine falsified, which is why I became a Christian. I don't expect you to accept my personal testimony as absolute proof of anything. You can investigate the claim for yourself, by asking Jesus to come into your life as Lord and Savior. You can falsify your view this way:
Pray something like..Jesus, I don't know if you're there or not, but if you are there, I want to know you. If you let me know you are there, I will give my life to you. Please come into my life as Lord and Savior. Thank you God. Amen.
Are you willing to do that?
>> ^IAmTheBlurr:

Why hello there @shinnyblurry, we meet again (sort of). You know, it's kind of funny that while I was watching this video I was suddenly struck by the memory of our last encounter and expected that I'd see your responses to this video (and other people). Either way, no hard feelings about our previous encounters or anything.

If you can believe it, you've inspired me in a way. Not in the way that I imagine you might hope though. I don't really get into debates/arguments with died-in-the-wool believers anymore. Especially those who claim person divine revelation. There isn't a whole lot to be said at that point because most people aren't interested in attempting to falsify their own experiences. They especially aren't interested in attempting to falsify experiences that they deems profoundly meaningful to them personally, giving them new meaning to their life which I can understand. That kind of debate/argument cannot bear fruit unless something like education standards or public policies are at stake.

I'm sure you remember my whole standpoint on the god(s) thing, so I wont repeat myself, I mostly wanted to say Hi

I will say this though; personal revelations aside, "I don't know" followed up by skeptical inquiry is a far better answer and process to interacting with questions that we simply cannot, or haven't yet, verify objectively. I just can't accept that personal revelation is good enough to determine whether or not something is true. The probability of being incorrect about an experience is astounding. Humans are pattern seeking and creating machines. The answer "I don't know" is extremely hard to rest on for most humans because there is a biological need to fill in the blanks of our knowledge, and we do that by looking for patterns which may or may not be there. It was far better to believe that a predator is in the bushes when they rustle than to employ investigative powers thus taking the risk of being eaten. The studies on these phenomenon are amazing and it's amazing to see how easily humans will accept an an answer that doesn't make logical or empirical sense in order to avoid being in the position of "I don't know". It requires a lot of mental rigor to maintain "I don't know" as a placeholder. It goes against human biology. There is also less cognitive dissonance felt if investigation can be halted. When a belief is strongly held, it's fascinating how many self justification techniques are used to maintain that belief. There is a lot of literature and research that strongly suggest that superstitions follow from the urge to provide an answer rather than resting at "I don't know".

Anyone can say that they "know" because of some personal revelation, but does that mean that what they believe is actually true? Is personal revelation actually good enough?

Either way, it's all very fascinating stuff and there are a lot of books out there which cover all of the techniques that humans use in fooling themselves, to self justify beliefs, and in preventing cognitive dissonance.
>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^A10anis:
It is NOT a choice between "god and nothingness," It is a choice between childish myth, wishful thinking, and divine slavery based upon brain washing and fear, or the choice of reality, based upon logic, free thought, education and common sense. Faith is simply faith. After all, if god existed, faith would not be necessary, he would be fact.

That's a very unsophisticated analysis, A10anis, and very biased as well. It's really a big surprise that you've attributed rationality solely to your viewpoint. Based on what? You've made all sorts of claims here, but nothing to substantiate them.
It is a clear choice between a Universe that was created intentionally, with meaning and purpose, and a Universe that is a product of chance, without meaning and purpose. What other choices are there?
Another question is, how would you know which one you were in?
Faith is simply faith. After all, if god existed, faith would not be necessary, he would be fact.
That's a false dilemma, A10anis. A couple of them, actually. Clearly God can exist and require our faith at the same time.

>> ^Grimm:

I agree....if it had been something a little more rare like an 8-Track it would have been more believable. Even though LP's aren't around like they used to be they are not extinct...I would assume most teens these days are familiar with "DJ's" that still mix and scratch using records.>> ^Trout:
Hmmm... BS meter blinkin' a bit. Methinks looks kinda staged?



Rarely are DJ's using LP's do mix with now. It's kind of sad but to be honest, you can do a lot more with MP3 mixers than with turn tables. At the very least, LP's are dying out as a medium for DJ's. It's not entirely dead yet but it's becoming more rare rapidly. Anyone who is coming into it now probably wont see records used by a DJ very often.

I’m glad that I learned that you’re not only a creationist; you’re a biblical literalist (at least as far as the creation story).

Do you honestly expect me to believe you understand these principles yourself and that you aren’t simply parroting what you’ve read on creationist websites?

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.

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

“The 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) chapter states flatly that entropy can never decrease; this is in direct conflict with the most fundamental law of thermodynamics that entropy equals heat flow divided by absolute temperature.”

-and-

“Creationism would replace mathematics with metaphors. Metaphors may or may not serve to 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 based solely on metaphors. This in order to convince those not familiar with real thermodynamics that their sectarian religious views have scientific validity.”

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.

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.

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.

You: “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?”

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.

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.

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.

>> ^shinyblurry:

(This is part two as mentioned in my previous comment)

I’ve read and re-read your arguments over the weekend and for a portion of today. I’ve done a lot of research into what you’ve said and I found something particularly interesting which lead me to a significant question. “Where is all of this guy’s information coming from?”

So I did a little experiment. I did a Google search for all of the quotes that you’ve replied with and can you guess what I found? All of your arguments can be taken nearly verbatim or just reworded from creationist websites. Can you honestly expect anyone to believe that you’ve done your own research or read any real books on the subject of thermodynamics or biological evolution? How can you even take yourself seriously if you haven’t spent the time putting in the work to understand what the source material says for yourself?

If someone has objections about the bible, would you take them seriously if you discovered that they hadn’t actually read it? No, of course not, so how can you expect to be taken seriously if you haven’t read the source material yourself? It’s just an attempt to try to discredit something that you haven’t actually studied yourself which I find to be a bit on the disingenuous side of things.

I know that you’re expecting this because every creationist website prepares creationists for this criticism but you’re idea of how thermodynamics works is entirely misinformed and you won’t know by how much until you do yourself a favor and listen to a course in thermodynamics or read a book on it. If you have iTunes, go to iTunes U and search for thermodynamics, spend 12 hours learning and then you’ll see that classical thermodynamics has nothing to say about biological systems. I suspect that you probably read a lot of articles from the Institute for Creation Research website.

If that is the case and you do frequent ICR then here is something to think about: (Taken directly from the conclusion to their article “Does Entropy Contradict Evolution”)

“If science is to be based on fact and evidence, rather than metaphysical speculations, then entropy does not explain or support evolution at all. In fact, at least until someone can demonstrate some kind of naturalistic comprehensive biochemical predestinating code and a pre-existing array of energy storage-and-conversion mechanisms controlled by that code to generate increased organized complexity in nature, the entropy law seems to preclude evolution altogether. The marvelously complex universe is not left unexplained and enigmatically mysterious by this conclusion, however. It was created by the omnipotent and omniscient King of Creation! If evolutionists prefer not to believe this truth, they can make that choice, but all the real facts of science - especially the fundamental and universal law of entropy - support it.”

Let’s suppose for a moment that the majority of this article is correct and that the 2nd law does indeed contradict evolution. This final conclusion from the article does something very interesting. It jumps from saying that evolution cannot have happened because it violates the 2nd law to it was created by a god. How the heck are they coming up with that conclusion!? By what evidence can they make that leap let alone make the claim that the creator is both omnipotent AND omniscient? This is my problem with how you are arguing; you are doing the same thing. You are suggesting that the math doesn’t add up and that your answer is better but you aren’t providing the math to suggest why your answer is better; you’re just telling us that it’s the answer.

Whether or not you resonate with that that snippet from their article or not, it illustrates how egger some people are to praise some scientific findings when those findings don’t contradict their beliefs and in the same breath, criticizes other scientific findings which do contradict their beliefs. If you encounter something that seems to contradict what you already believe to be true, it is wise to question whether what you believe to be true is actually true rather than searching for information that confirms what you believe.

The thing is that I know that you’re going to say that “science” has an agenda, and it does, but not like you think it does and you’ll never understand that agenda until you actually study it for yourself. You believe that it’s all about disproving god, or maintaining naturalism but it’s not.

You are arguing against a set of misunderstandings that you hold about what you believe the science is saying. Everything that you think you know about these matters is either a straw man, a red-haring or blatant misinformation. It would be very hard to impress on you how exactly that is true without you being educated on the source material. This is why we cannot have a conversation regarding these issues. You will just need to start reading the source material instead of going to interpretive websites; its far more interesting that way anyway.

I am sorry to say that I find a degree of intellectual dishonesty in your method of arguing against these ideas by primarily pulling information and quotes from these sources without having done the work yourself. You are representing yourself as personally knowledgeable about the subject when you are doing nothing more than copy and pasting in quotes to support you. Besides this being a type of an argument from authority, it shows to me that you have no regard for the context in which the original quote was written. That is the definition of cherry picking and to me; it makes me think that you are more interested in maintaining your beliefs than being honestly interested in expanding your knowledge.

I don’t expect to change your mind. You seem deeply rooted in creationism and as you’ve said, you believe in the biblical god and that you feel that your life was transformed by him. That is a very powerful feeling, one that is very hard to overcome because it is something personal that you probably relate to. Perhaps you feel that your stability rests on the idea that a god exists and that your view of that god must be the correct one based on your personal experiences; I don’t know. I have nothing more to say other than to suggest that you read the source material so that way you can at least honestly say that you know what you’re talking about.

>> ^shinyblurry:

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:

You're right, I am making an argument about you. This has always been about you. I don't care about the whole god argument, I care about why you believe what you believe and that is what I'm talking about. I could care less about what you believe, the 'why' is far more significant.

It took you an hour to throw all of those quotes together to make a case. Based on that, do you really expect me to believe that you're not just quote mining from some general creationist website somewhere? Do you really expect me to believe that you've actually studied the subjects that you're presenting as evidence for your claims? You are by definition, cherry picking. You are not taking into account the whole of scientific findings, you are ignoring the information which dis-confirms your existing views, and you are unknowingly misrepresenting the facts. If you were well read on any of the subjects of physics or evolutionary biology then you'd completely understand where I'm coming from.

You are trying to make a case for the existence of a god but the only thing that you can say about this god that you believe in is that it basically follows the christian mythos.

"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."

That's you, you said that. Why do you believe those things? Are you willing to attempt to prove yourself wrong? Are you willing to work to subdue cognitive biases in order to be as certain as you can be that you aren't mistaken? How can you say that your god is the correct one and all of the rest are incorrect? How can you justify a jump from the idea that we don't understand entirely how a system works to, there must be agency behind it? That is exactly what you are asking everyone to do. That is a huge leap and it does not directly follow. Extraordinary claims such as a personal god, require extraordinary evidence. You can't simply suggest that because we don't understand something that there must be agency there, that is not how logic works nor science. You can say nothing about the true nature of something if it requires faith in order to have evidence.

The thing is, I am in doubt about you. I am in doubt about your sincerity for meaningful investigations into reality. I am in doubt that you have actually read any scientific material in their entirety. I am in doubt that you value critical thinking. I am in doubt that you understand what a logical fallacy is or how they work. I am in doubt that you are doing anything more than attempting to justify a belief that you already hold by attempting to give legitimacy in the face of dissonance.

This was always about you. Your belief is based on quotes taken out of context and stitched together to weave a picture that conforms to what you already believe in while ignoring all of the information that doesn't agree with you. This is called a confirmation bias. You wont know how unconvincing your statements and claims are until you get past that kind of bias and seek to prove what you believe wrong to see if it actually holds water.

Seek to prove your beliefs wrong before convince yourself that you are correct.

>> ^shinyblurry:

I said that God doesn’t exist? Oh yeah? Where exactly did I say that? The last time I checked, saying that I reject an idea isn’t the same as saying that the idea isn’t true. Get your facts straight.
You obviously don't think it is true if you reject it. I don't reject ideas I think are correct. What exactly is your position?
Saying “god did it” doesn’t answer anything. It doesn’t answer any question about mechanism and until someone can come up with a testable model of how god interacts with the universe which we can then make accurate predictions with, it’s a useless and meaningless statement. It doesn’t help us expand the frontiers of our understanding of reality.
The fact of the matter is that it is you who is fundamentally uneducated in everything that you mentioned and that is made obvious by your inability to form your own arguments; you’re just cherry picking quotes that support you’re cognitive bias.
You realize that your entire reply could be summed up thusly "nu uh". Just stating that you're right and I am wrong doesn't advance your argument. You don't even have an argument. Everything you've said here is logically fallacious. If you think what I've said is wrong, or cherry picked, address it directly and demonstrate why. I don't think you really understand the subject matter which is why you're trying to make the argument about me instead.
I love it when people like you pull out the second law of thermodynamics card because I know that you can’t name or explain the rest of the laws of thermodynamics without copy and pasting them from Google search. Life isn’t a closed system and the second law of thermodynamics only deals with closed systems. The 2nd law has nothing to do with anything biology or the existence of complex organisms, get your facts straight. If you had any respect for truth, you wouldn’t be making so many entirely misinformed and uneducated statements.
And this is why I don't think you understand the subject matter, because your statement that the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not apply to biological systems shows a total lack of research.
John Ross, Harvard University, Chemical And Engineering News, p.40 July 7, 1980, "Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems."
Arnold Sommerfel, "...the quantity of entropy generated locally cannot be negative irrespective of whether the system is isolated or not." Thermodynamics And Statistical Mechanics, p.155
There is no such thing as negative entropy. Everything is always trending towards disorder.
The 2nd law equally applies to living systems:
Harold Blum, Prinston Univ., "No matter how carefully we examine the energetics of living systems we find no evidence of defeat of thermodynamic principles, but we do encounter a degree of complexity not witnessed in the non-living world." Time's Arrow and Evolution, p.14
Everything is technically an open system in nature.
Richard Morris, "An isolated system is one that does not interact with its surroundings. Naturally there are no completely isolated systems in nature. Everything interacts with its environment to some extent. Nevertheless, the concept, like many other abstractions that are used in physics, is extremely useful. If we are able to understand the behavior in ideal cases, we can gain a great deal of understanding about processes that take place in the real world In fact treating a real system as an isolated one is often an excellent approximation.", Time's Arrows, p.113
The argument is that the energy of the sun is what is overcoming the entropy, but that doesn't explain information. Just putting power into something does not magically create organization:
George Gaylord Simpson & W.S. Beck, "But the simple expenditure of energy is not sufficient to develop and maintain order. A bull in a china shop performs work, but he neither creates nor maintains organization. The work needed is particular work; it must follow specifications; it requires information on how to proceed.", An Introduction To Biology, p. 466
But there is no mechanism for information to spontaneously arise by itself, overcoming entropy in the system, and we know information comes from minds.
Charles J. Smith, "Biological systems are open and exchange both energy and matter. This explanation, however, is not completely satisfying, because it still leaves open the problem of how or why the ordering process has arisen (an apparent lowering of the entropy), and a number of scientists have wrestled with this issue. Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology." Biosystems, Vol.1, p259.
This is why a Creator agrees with the evidence more so than evolution. Was this quote cherry picked?:
G.J. Van Wylen, Richard Sonntag, "...we see the second law of thermodynamics as a description of the prior and continuing work of a creator, who also holds the answer to our future destiny and that of the universe." Fundamentals Of Classical Thermodynamics, 1985, p.232.
Because I know that none of this is actually going to matter to you, go ahead and enlighten us with more of your church-pamphlet science.
I'm looking forward to your point by point refutation of my argument, with sources. Thanks.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr

I said that God doesn’t exist? Oh yeah? Where exactly did I say that? The last time I checked, saying that I reject an idea isn’t the same as saying that the idea isn’t true. Get your facts straight.

Saying “god did it” doesn’t answer anything. It doesn’t answer any question about mechanism and until someone can come up with a testable model of how god interacts with the universe which we can then make accurate predictions with, it’s a useless and meaningless statement. It doesn’t help us expand the frontiers of our understanding of reality.

The fact of the matter is that it is you who is fundamentally uneducated in everything that you mentioned and that is made obvious by your inability to form your own arguments; you’re just cherry picking quotes that support you’re cognitive bias.

I love it when people like you pull out the second law of thermodynamics card because I know that you can’t name or explain the rest of the laws of thermodynamics without copy and pasting them from Google search. Life isn’t a closed system and the second law of thermodynamics only deals with closed systems. The 2nd law has nothing to do with anything biology or the existence of complex organisms, get your facts straight. If you had any respect for truth, you wouldn’t be making so many entirely misinformed and uneducated statements.

Because I know that none of this is actually going to matter to you, go ahead and enlighten us with more of your church-pamphlet science.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Do you know what "the burden of proof" means?
Yes, and you said that God doesn't exist. You have your own burden of proof.
I realize that you're a christian so I've decided to keep this a bit short for the sake of simply providing you with a potentially new view that isn't your own. You may reject it but hopefully you will at least understand how someone else might think about this topic.
I grew up without any religion and was previously agnostic, so I understand both sides of the argument. I used to have many of the same objections that you and others have raised against the existence of God.
One reason that I reject the notion of designer deities is because the question becomes infinitely regress-able; it explains nothing, it helps clarify nothing, and it opens up more questions than it answers. The notion of a designer god begs the question, who or what designed the designer, then that designers designer, and most importantly, how do these gods operate, by what laws?
The answer is that no one designed God. He is an eternal being and has always existed. A created god isn't really a God. God is the one whom no one else created.
This is actually a problem for your side of the fence, unless you believe that something came from nothing, which would be worse than magic. Since the Universe has a beginning there must either be an eternal first cause or else you are left with an infinite regress of causes.
Suggesting that a creator exists because something doesn't make sense to you isn't a valid way of forming believes if your goal is truth.
I don't believe in God because the world doesn't make sense to me. I believe in God because the evidence points to His existence.
The notion of design is for people who cannot understand what it means for systems to assemble from the bottom-up because, to them, it makes more intuitive sense that things are designed from the top down. This is not critical thinking and it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the findings of science.
Actually, to believe that systems become more ordered over time is a fundemental misunderstanding of scientific laws, specifically the second law of thermodynamics. Sir Arthur Eddington says
"...if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.", p.74 Nature of the Physical World.
The second law states that systems become more disordered over time and there is no known exception to this rule. Everything is breaking down and becoming more disorganized. Evolutionary theory claims the opposite, that systems are getting more complex and highly organized over time. This clearly violates the 2nd law, which is why Ilya Prigogin said this:
LIFE WON'T "FORM" Ilya Prigogin (Nobel Laureate) "Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred." Physics Today, Vol.25, p.28.
True, we do have gaps in our knowledge about systems and mechanism but those gaps should remain gaps instead of prematurely filling them with god fluff. But, you are a believer, and believers do not make critical thinkers.
Again, God is a better explanation according to the evidence, such as the information in DNA, the fine tuning in the universe, and the appearance of design in biological systems. It is not a gap theory, it is a better theory.
I just hope that you come to understand that the answer "A creator did it" isn't an intellectually honest way of thinking.
There is nothing intellectually dishonest in believe that God created the Universe. Did you know that nearly half of biologists, mathematicians and physicists believe in a personal God? To dismiss the possibility is what is intellectually dishonest.
>> ^IAmTheBlurr

It's interesting to read a response like yours.

Do you know what "the burden of proof" means?

I realize that you're a christian so I've decided to keep this a bit short for the sake of simply providing you with a potentially new view that isn't your own. You may reject it but hopefully you will at least understand how someone else might think about this topic.

One reason that I reject the notion of designer deities is because the question becomes infinitely regress-able; it explains nothing, it helps clarify nothing, and it opens up more questions than it answers. The notion of a designer god begs the question, who or what designed the designer, then that designers designer, and most importantly, how do these gods operate, by what laws? Suggesting that a creator exists because something doesn't make sense to you isn't a valid way of forming believes if your goal is truth. The notion of design is for people who cannot understand what it means for systems to assemble from the bottom-up because, to them, it makes more intuitive sense that things are designed from the top down. This is not critical thinking and it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the findings of science.

True, we do have gaps in our knowledge about systems and mechanism but those gaps should remain gaps instead of prematurely filling them with god fluff. But, you are a believer, and believers do not make critical thinkers.

I just hope that you come to understand that the answer "A creator did it" isn't an intellectually honest way of thinking.

>> ^shinyblurry:

I have a hard time believing that you understand the function of the the answer "I don't know" (or "We don't know") or how beneficial it really is.
That you don't know what the truth is, or that you believe it isn't knowable, does not preclude me from knowing what it is. It is not beneficial to be ignorant of the truth.
The human race would have been far better off if we'd spent less time making up bullshit stories about gods and spirits to explain natural phenomenon that we couldn't fathom the mechanisms of.
How do you go from "I don't know" to rejecting the existence of God? How does explaining a mechanism rule out agency? Do you understand what I meant earlier about the uniformity of nature?
"We don't know" is a far better answer to a question when we really don't know then the answer "a creator did it".
Not if it's true.
It should be highly discouraged to make up an answer when we don't know something. Teachers in American schools do this, they encourage their students to "give it their best guess" when they don't know the answer. That just perpetuates the issue. Saying "I don't know" doesn't prove or disprove anything but it does function as a stopping point in a dialog so we can know where we should investigate next. Answering with anything but "I don't know" when we don't actually know, takes investigation off course into insanity. Sticking a creator in the gaps prevents further exploration of the question, it's an abominable act which stifles critical thinking.
It's not a God of the gaps when a Creator is a better explanation for the phenomena, such as the fine tuning of the physical laws, the appearance of design in biological systems and the information in DNA. It is an abominable act to dismiss the idea of Gods existence out of hand.
I'm sorry but I don't have faith in a self creating universe just because I don't have the answer as to how it happened and suggesting that I must have faith in that if I don't accept a creator hypothesis is an exercise in a false dilemma.
You certainly have faith in a naturalistic explanation if you reject a creator. Although a purely naturalistic origin is something you cannot prove and have zero evidence for, you believe it anyway, and reject a creator outright, by your own words. That is blind faith.
>> ^IAmTheBlurr

I have a hard time believing that you understand the function of the the answer "I don't know" (or "We don't know") or how beneficial it really is.

The human race would have been far better off if we'd spent less time making up bullshit stories about gods and spirits to explain natural phenomenon that we couldn't fathom the mechanisms of. "We don't know" is a far better answer to a question when we really don't know then the answer "a creator did it". It should be highly discouraged to make up an answer when we don't know something. Teachers in American schools do this, they encourage their students to "give it their best guess" when they don't know the answer. That just perpetuates the issue. Saying "I don't know" doesn't prove or disprove anything but it does function as a stopping point in a dialog so we can know where we should investigate next. Answering with anything but "I don't know" when we don't actually know, takes investigation off course into insanity. Sticking a creator in the gaps prevents further exploration of the question, it's an abominable act which stifles critical thinking.

I'm sorry but I don't have faith in a self creating universe just because I don't have the answer as to how it happened and suggesting that I must have faith in that if I don't accept a creator hypothesis is an exercise in a false dilemma.

>> ^shinyblurry:

You can describe all the mechanisms of reality, but in the end, you still have faith in a self-creating Universe. You haven't explained why there is uniformity in nature, but funnily enough, it was the Christian belief of Christian scientists that God created a orderly Universe based on laws that science had the idea that it could suss out those laws by investigating secondary causes. This is why Kepler said he felt like he was thinking Gods thoughts after him. But to explain anything you must explain the first thought. "I don't know" is not an argument against a Creator, nor is explaining the tides physical operation evidence that His hand isn't pulling all the strings.

Because I feel the rest of the passage from the book is pertinent to the topic of politicians, here it is.

"What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is to his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends on deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off; he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

>> ^shagen454:

The important point is still relevant: Mitt Romney is a semantic liar. But, what - do we expect American politicians to not actually lie to our face and not get angry / and put on a huge dramatic show when it is pointed out?


Semantic liar or fundamental bullshitter? I find him to be worse than a liar and I have something that you might be interested in reading. It's from Harry G. Frankfurt from his essay "On Bullshit".

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off; he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

And also a method for lobsters.

Haha, they're using the song "Unstoppable" by E.S. Posthumus

WTH! @ :40 seconds, Megan Fox? Nothing in the news about her being there...

Either way, whats with all the hippies?