Discussion for AronRa and OFNF exclusive thread

[Darkprophet232]

Some of these people would never even started looking if it weren't for their desire to understand the mind of God.

I’m going to have to ask you not to assume the motivations of individuals who are long dead and are incapable of agreeing or disagreeing with your assertions.

Rumraket gave you a list of things that should dissuade anyone from thinking, “well it just makes sense to me, so it’s gotta be right.” And yet, you didn’t actually reply to anything he said. Oh, you quoted it, and censored what Rumraket had said, but you didn’t actually engage what with what he said. Their motivations are irrelevant to their discoveries.

Surprisingly though all of this can be understood and figured out with a mere human mind. Laws governing everything. It seems like the way another mind would set it up. By making rules and constants.

Natural laws don’t work the way you think they do. There isn’t a set of rules and regulations that universe has to follow. These laws are how we describe, with our mere human minds, what we see the universe doing. Problematically, these laws tend to not apply to the quantum level.

It definitely appears governed like that. Comprehensible. Why isn't it just all kinds of random things happening for no reason and with no cause? Why is it that we can understand it at all.

To me it seems like the work of an ordered mind.
I don't know if that makes sense.

And it would appear that the Earth is flat, the stars rotate around us, and human history only goes back 6,000 years. At least it appears that way to those who don’t look at all the evidence and start from the position that, “My God is real and He did all of this.” Instead of starting from a position that your god must exist, because you think everything looks ordered, why not start with an open mind?

In addition, if everything were created by an intelligent creature with a purpose, then that creature is utterly disgusting and is beneath contempt.



This wasp species is only able to propagate by injecting its larvae into a host, which is then eaten alive from the inside out in what can only be seen as intense, seemingly unceasing pain until it finally dies.

This article has 11 more examples of creatures that breed through violence.

If these were the product of design, then the designer is a sadist.

 

[abelcainsbrother]

As I read through one thing that sticks out to me is evolutionists keep referring back to evidence that does not prove or demonstrate scientifically what they believe.You want us to look at the evidence like you do from a biased evolution point of view and assume like you do,but we don't assume like you do.We look at the evidence and know it does not back up what you assume happens.Then when we point it out you insist that we must have an education like you do in evolution to understand the evidence,like it is above our unerstanding because of a lack of evolution education.What you fail to understand is we understand it fine and know that it does not back-up your beliefs about evolution.You assume much yet overlook it,overlook your faith,yet criticize our faith and our evidence for what we believe.

 

[abelcainsbrother]

Twins have identical DNA and yet develop differently,while the suggestion is that there is another genome above or over the known genome and in control of it evolutionists.But the fact is the old fashioned notion as diet and exercise are critically important.This is why the twins do not remain identical.Things seem to have gone full circle after 150 years of evolution so that common sense things that we do or do not do have an effect on our bodies,diet and chemicals do not change the genes,they effect the way those genes are expressed.So that diet and the way we take care of ourselves can effect three or four generations just as we are told in Exodus 20.

 

[Darkprophet232]

So that diet and the way we take care of ourselves can effect three or four generations just as we are told in Exodus 20

Zombie Jesus on a consecrated cracker, abelcainsbrother, how in the hell are you getting diet and exercise from:

Exodus 20:5[/url]"]
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

The verse is extremely clear that God will enact vengeance on a person's great, great grandchildren if one should worship a god other than Yahweh. Just how desperate are you to force the Bible to say things it obviously doesn't say?

 

[abelcainsbrother]

So that diet and the way we take care of ourselves can effect three or four generations just as we are told in Exodus 20

Zombie Jesus on a consecrated cracker, abelcainsbrother, how in the hell are you getting diet and exercise from:

Exodus 20:5[/url]"]
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

The verse is extremely clear that God will enact vengeance on a person's great, great grandchildren if one should worship a god other than Yahweh. Just how desperate are you to force the Bible to say things it obviously doesn't say?

Wrong!Jesus is at the right hand of God the father until he returns.I look into science I tell you and you don't believe me but I've been looking into Epigenics.

God is not required to bless those who serve other god's or not him,he is concerned with his children and knows what is best for them if they would just believe him.

 

[Darkprophet232]

You didn't even address your misappropriation of scripture that I pointed out. What does Jesus' sitting location have to do with you not understanding the context of Exodus 20:5? But you did say something else that was amusingly stupid, so let's address that.

Just what does the bible says about epigenetics (because it is quite clear you only use that for your "research"), shall we?

Genesis 30:37-39[/url]"]And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

Looking at sticks while drinking water and mating affects a kid's coat. [sarcasm]Ah, the bible is filled with brilliant scientific breakthroughs indeed! If only scientists would drop all this unnecessary studying of the genome and just crack open a bible, I'm sure we'd all be cured of all genetic diseases because of their stick-based research.[/sarcasm]

 

[abelcainsbrother]

You didn't even address your misappropriation of scripture that I pointed out. What does Jesus' sitting location have to do with you not understanding the context of Exodus 20:5? But you did say something else that was amusingly stupid, so let's address that.

Just what does the bible says about epigenetics (because it is quite clear you only use that for your "research"), shall we?

Why argue?You're not going to believe my explanation.It does not say how God will visit their inquities,you assume,but the point is God does and so what I said applies according to the genes.Like I've said before as science makes discoveries over time more is revealed that we may have overlooked in the bible and yet science is secular and not trying to prove the bible true so you cannot say I have biased evidence when it is secular science.It is not from Answers in Genesis.It is real science.

Genesis 30:37-39[/url]"]And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

Looking at sticks while drinking water and mating affects a kid's coat. [sarcasm]Ah, the bible is filled with brilliant scientific breakthroughs indeed! If only scientists would drop all this unnecessary studying of the genome and just crack open a bible, I'm sure we'd all be cured of all genetic diseases because of their stick-based research.

No science is important as a matter of fact God wants us to be scientists and to explore his creation,the very first work he gave Adam was scientific,inwhich he named animals,like science has.That is an interesting verse but if the genes are expressed by diet,etc it might be possible this could happen but I'm not quite sure yet to say so or how this could happen.Not yet I am very slow to accept things,I usually wait until I have more info.But a person will be healthier if they follow the about 300 biblical laws on cleanliness and sanitation.The plague of Europe was started because of very poor sanitation,had the people followed the biblical laws before science knew about germs that plague could have been avoided.God may not have told us about germs but he told us we'd be blessed if we obeyed him.

 

[abelcainsbrother]

Genesis 30:37-39 wrote:
And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

You've got me interested so let's see if we might have something here. OK Jacob is mixing stuff and putting it into the water for them to drink.OK a Bee hive. The vast majority are females,and do all of the work.Despite sharing the same set of genes of the group in the colony,the queens grow twice as big-as well as failing to develop sting barbs,wax glands or pollen baskets,yet the queens lifespan is about 20 times longer.The differences are put down due to diet,which effects the way the genes are expressed.It is becoming quite clear that genes are not a script or a blue print.Regarding the diet,for the first 3 days of life all the new bee larvae are fed "royal jelly" that has been manufactured by a special group of nurse bees who exude it from their glands in their head- a mix of amino acids,vitamins,fats. After 3 days the diet of the majority is changed over to pollen and nectar and these will develop into worker bees,based on their diet.,meanwhile a select few are kept on the "royal jelly" and they become queens again based on their diet,with identical genes. Nobel prize? Perhaps

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

What I wanted to say was that design seems pretty intuitive to me. Like common sense really.

It seems pretty intuitive to you because you are a christian, and don't know any better. And you view the world as if everything in the bible is literally true, that there is God and Jesus and he has a plan, but there is also the devil, the world is a test of faith, miracles happen, you use phrases like God is truth without being aware what the word truth means. Your idea of the real world is so warped that you are blind glaring contradictions in your own perspective of the world. In your mind, design makes perfectly intuitive sense.
But once you start doing science, you find out that common sense is more often than not, wrong. And we have no use for common sense if it is wrong. Common sense isn't a measure of how right something is, it just means that is the answer you personally default to.

Isn't the simplest explanation usually the right one? All of these evolutionary mechanisms seems so complex, like they are trying everything they can for a naturalistic explanation. I think with enough work you can explain how it will be possible for an elephant to hang off a cliff by holding onto a daisy.

It doesn't matter if an explanation is simple, or if it is elegant. If it's wrong it's wrong. Scientists don't construct all this complex mechanisms just because its complicated and makes them look smart, or because they want to make you believe in impossible things, or because they want to explain everything naturalisticaly, or because they want to rebel against God. Its because they looked really carefully at how things work, and that is the way it looks like. As the great Richard Feynman would put it.


People tried God before, it didn't work, it didn't tell them anything, it was useless, it was wrong. And then they tried something simple, "maybe God doesn't have anything do with it", and in that case it worked.

If we don't know, why not go with the simplest explanation?

If you don't know, then you don't know, you don't have an explanation. And to say that you have an explanation when you don't its dishonest.

Especially when the answer can also link us to objective moral truths we all understand and our search for purpose.

1. Science isn't about having answers, it's about having right answers to the best of our abilities. It is not like scientist have multiple answers and then they just pick one that they like best.
When you approach science, your main concern isn't if it improves morality or gives you a sense of purpose, your main concern should be is it right and what have you learned. Of course with what you have learned, you might be able to do things with that knowledge, and do it more correctly than what you otherwise could. And what could help us make better moral decisions than to be aware of the consequences of our actions?
And if it turns out that you find that ultimately there is no purpose to life, so what? You didn't had it before when you taught you did, and you still don't have it now that you know that you don't. Would this make suffering less real? Or charity less effective? Would you stop appreciating kindness or love?

2. I disagree that believing in God makes you moral, or that being christian makes you moral. It doesn't.

Surprisingly though all of this can be understood and figured out with a mere human mind. Laws governing everything. It seems like the way another mind would set it up. By making rules and constants.
It definitely appears governed like that. Comprehensible. Why isn't it just all kinds of random things happening for no reason and with no cause? Why is it that we can understand it at all.

You are right, altough the answer to that is rather less divine. The mind responsible for things making sense is ours, the universe just is, it just does what it does. When earth goes around the sun it doesn't go "hey the Sun has X mass, I have Y mass, we are at Z distance and I take the square of that, I have velocity W velocity, so in time T+1 I should go here", no we see the motion of the stars and the planets, when can describe things in terms of numbers and we can use mathematics to describe how they change. This isn't an indication of a divine rule maker that makes thing sensible, it is just an indication that math is unbelievably plastic that it can describe almost anything and how good descriptive reasoning can be and modeling things that are real.

That's all I wanted to ask.
sorry if I'm out of my element.
Thanks for letting me join.

You are welcome to ask, and you are welcome to join.

 

[Rumraket]

Genesis 30:37-39 wrote:
And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

You've got me interested so let's see if we might have something here. OK Jacob is mixing stuff and putting it into the water for them to drink.OK a Bee hive. The vast majority are females,and do all of the work.Despite sharing the same set of genes of the group in the colony,the queens grow twice as big-as well as failing to develop sting barbs,wax glands or pollen baskets,yet the queens lifespan is about 20 times longer.The differences are put down due to diet,which effects the way the genes are expressed.It is becoming quite clear that genes are not a script or a blue print.Regarding the diet,for the first 3 days of life all the new bee larvae are fed "royal jelly" that has been manufactured by a special group of nurse bees who exude it from their glands in their head- a mix of amino acids,vitamins,fats. After 3 days the diet of the majority is changed over to pollen and nectar and these will develop into worker bees,based on their diet.,meanwhile a select few are kept on the "royal jelly" and they become queens again based on their diet,with identical genes. Nobel prize? Perhaps

What the heck does this gibberish about bees have to do with magical striped sticks affecting the fur coloration patterns of livestock?

It plainly says he makes dots and stripes on the sticks, then forces the animals to breed in close proximity to the sticks, the purported result of which is that the offspring are born with stripes and dots. MAGIC!

This is what you get when you take the goat-herder rapists anthology of campfire tales for boys as a science textbook. :lol:

 

[Vivre]

Thanks Vivre.
I was thinking of the intuition that we all have- even Richard Dawkins says that organisms appear designed. He just uses complex evolutionary mechanisms to explain how it could have been made to look designed without actually being designed.

I don't know if what you say about Dawkins is correct and valid without further context. But using 'appear as if' already shows it was only a pondering. I heavily doubt that he searched for an excuse explanation to force a deliberate non-designing as source and moreover have the impression that you are mixing explanation and mechanism. It's the mechanism what is observed first and the explanation that follows as theorie thereafter.

I realize that you guys have studied evolution much more than I have. I figured I would just put in what it looks like from my layperson perspective.

Indeed there are numberous scientist on board who dedicate their time to help figuring out at what points ones given perspectives are unreasonable and offer supported conclusions (evidents) to enhance your knowledge to fill the gabs - if you give it a chance.

I find myself coming to some conclusions automatically though. I'm not sure if I can help that.

Being aware of the automatism is already the most important realization to free oneself from this trap. If it happens, stopp and try to figure out the various motivations that pushed the conclusion. It takes courage to train this reconsidering habit.

The moral thing is very offtopic and I don't mean to derail the conversation. Here is my response to what you said there though- If morals are relative and depend on culture then wouldn't it be impossible for there to be moral trend setters like Martin Luther king, Jesus or Gandhi? They were all working out side of their culture, yet people came to them instead and helped us to get closer to a more perfect moral paradigm.

Because morals are relative they can be easily affected by 'trend setters'. I don't think that ML King or Gandhi had cast off their cultural upbringing/imprint, just because they might be regarded as charismatic outsiders. Yes it can be of great benefit to consider various reasonable moral stands to check back and enhance ones owns.

A 'perfect paradigm' is a fictional static dead end. It's of no useful value to say if something has a good development status.

Note: I'm aware you're slipping Jesus into your recital of historical figures. This invalidates your argument and I counted him out.


I don't think this thread can be detrailed much more, but a separat thread would surely ease a close communication. You can open a new one any time you like. ~ greets

 

[Miracles4Real]

Some of these people would never even started looking if it weren't for their desire to understand the mind of God.

I’m going to have to ask you not to assume the motivations of individuals who are long dead and are incapable of agreeing or disagreeing with your assertions.

Rumraket gave you a list of things that should dissuade anyone from thinking, “well it just makes sense to me, so it’s gotta be right.” And yet, you didn’t actually reply to anything he said. Oh, you quoted it, and censored what Rumraket had said, but you didn’t actually engage what with what he said. Their motivations are irrelevant to their discoveries.

Darkprophet, I did not need to assume the motivations of long dead people. the things they said about a designer and a persuit for the mind of God, are immortal because of their words.

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

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

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

"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."-Vera Kistiakowsky

"Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed."-Barry Parker

"It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design." - Antony Flew

"The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." -Henry "Fritz" Schaefer

I realize that their motivations are irrelivant to their discoveries. But I think some of them may actually be correct in their feeling that all the laws governing the clockwork of the universe implies a mind behind it.

Surprisingly though all of this can be understood and figured out with a mere human mind. Laws governing everything. It seems like the way another mind would set it up. By making rules and constants.

Natural laws don’t work the way you think they do. There isn’t a set of rules and regulations that universe has to follow. These laws are how we describe, with our mere human minds, what we see the universe doing. Problematically, these laws tend to not apply to the quantum level.

I'm really out of my depth when talking about quantum theory but my understanding is that there is a different set of laws and constants that govern that realm. One which can relyably make predictions about what it will do. We are figuring out the laws that govern the universe.

It definitely appears governed like that. Comprehensible. Why isn't it just all kinds of random things happening for no reason and with no cause? Why is it that we can understand it at all.

To me it seems like the work of an ordered mind.
I don't know if that makes sense.

And it would appear that the Earth is flat, the stars rotate around us, and human history only goes back 6,000 years. At least it appears that way to those who don’t look at all the evidence and start from the position that, “My God is real and He did all of this.” Instead of starting from a position that your god must exist, because you think everything looks ordered, why not start with an open mind?

I don't think i could exactly fault the people for thinking that the earth is flat. If I (and dare I say -you) lived at that time, what else would there be to think?

I think it's good advice to have an open mind. I'll try to learn more and if it seems like there isn't a designer then I'll go with that. It sure seems like there is one though. Many people smarter than me, who have studied all of this stuff, have come to that conclusion too.

I don't think my mind can settle for agnosticism. Being forever in an "I don't know" haze i simply cannot do. My brain automatically settles on an answer. From here it sure looks designed. Telling me that some future generation may find what I think unsupported, doesn't really help me.

In addition, if everything were created by an intelligent creature with a purpose, then that creature is utterly disgusting and is beneath contempt.

I could rattle off some theodicy but I think this is really besides the point. I'll give you this one, maybe this designer is beneath contempt and disgusting. Forgive me but I think this is an entirely emotional argument.

(youtube link)
This wasp species is only able to propagate by injecting its larvae into a host, which is then eaten alive from the inside out in what can only be seen as intense, seemingly unceasing pain until it finally dies.

This article has 11 more examples of creatures that breed through violence.

If these were the product of design, then the designer is a sadist.

Eeesh graphic! Is this the atheist version of showing aborted fetuses? yeah, sorry again, it's an emotional argument.

 

[Miracles4Real]

What I wanted to say was that design seems pretty intuitive to me. Like common sense really.

It seems pretty intuitive to you because you are a christian, and don't know any better. And you view the world as if everything in the bible is literally true, that there is God and Jesus and he has a plan, but there is also the devil, the world is a test of faith, miracles happen, you use phrases like God is truth without being aware what the word truth means. Your idea of the real world is so warped that you are blind glaring contradictions in your own perspective of the world. In your mind, design makes perfectly intuitive sense.
But once you start doing science, you find out that common sense is more often than not, wrong. And we have no use for common sense if it is wrong. Common sense isn't a measure of how right something is, it just means that is the answer you personally default to.

I think you are assuming a great deal about me here but that's, I think everyone needs labels to function with others to some extent.
Let me say that
I don't think everything in the bible is literally true but I think both of us would agree that some of it is and I don't know very much about God but to me he seems to be real.
also I believe the word "truth" is something philosophy is still struggling with. even whether or not it is attainable or if we can only construct practical models that seem to work. Do you know the truth? Can a terrestrially evolved brain designed merely to survive and not understand- know the truth?

Isn't the simplest explanation usually the right one? All of these evolutionary mechanisms seems so complex, like they are trying everything they can for a naturalistic explanation. I think with enough work you can explain how it will be possible for an elephant to hang off a cliff by holding onto a daisy.

It doesn't matter if an explanation is simple, or if it is elegant. If it's wrong it's wrong. Scientists don't construct all this complex mechanisms just because its complicated and makes them look smart, or because they want to make you believe in impossible things, or because they want to explain everything naturalisticaly, or because they want to rebel against God. Its because they looked really carefully at how things work, and that is the way it looks like. As the great Richard Feynman would put it...

I think that was a beautiful bit from Richard Feynman. We could all be wrong maybe it isn't elegant, maybe we'll find that it doesnt match the kind of things a mind would do. To me though, it does seem elegant, functional and designed. Don't worry though, I'll try and be willing to change my mind if it turns out I'm wrong.

People tried God before, it didn't work, it didn't tell them anything, it was useless, it was wrong. And then they tried something simple, "maybe God doesn't have anything do with it", and in that case it worked.

You're summary of mans assent from religion to a world wide acceptance of atheism is a history lession I don't think I could get anywhere else.
Some people were driven to study the natural world in order to understand God. in that, their belief wasn't useless. They learned many useful and amazing "truths" and maybe they are wrong about God but it doesn't seem like it to me, it sure didn't seem like it to them.

If we don't know, why not go with the simplest explanation?

If you don't know, then you don't know, you don't have an explanation. And to say that you have an explanation when you don't its dishonest.

I'm not saying I have an explanation when I don't. I'm saying that to me the universe appears designed by an intelligence. I'm not sure I could live my life if I said "I don't know" to absolutely everything simply because I am not omniscient?

Especially when the answer can also link us to objective moral truths we all understand and our search for purpose.

1. Science isn't about having answers, it's about having right answers to the best of our abilities. It is not like scientist have multiple answers and then they just pick one that they like best.
When you approach science, your main concern isn't if it improves morality or gives you a sense of purpose, your main concern should be is it right and what have you learned. Of course with what you have learned, you might be able to do things with that knowledge, and do it more correctly than what you otherwise could. And what could help us make better moral decisions than to be aware of the consequences of our actions?
And if it turns out that you find that ultimately there is no purpose to life, so what? You didn't had it before when you taught you did, and you still don't have it now that you know that you don't. Would this make suffering less real? Or charity less effective? Would you stop appreciating kindness or love?

2. I disagree that believing in God makes you moral, or that being christian makes you moral. It doesn't.

1 I'm not a scientist droid. I don't think anyone really lives their life as scientist droids. Pretending that the only useful questions are scientific questions doesn't really work for me. Science is extremely limited in what it can give us in this regard. There are useful, even necessary questions that are not falsifiable or testable or within the realm of science. There are other ways for us to learn things. intuition is a good tool when you're lost like we all are. mine points to some cosmic presence. I don't see how you can tie your shoes or drive a car thinking only about facts and chemical processes.

2 I agree that believing in God clearly and demonstrably doesn't make you moral. Everyone on this forum has been extremely pleasant beyond my expectations. I must admit that I was wrong when I thought about the kind of responses I would get. I think the human ability to be intuitively moral like this is also something that comes from God.

Surprisingly though all of this can be understood and figured out with a mere human mind. Laws governing everything. It seems like the way another mind would set it up. By making rules and constants.
It definitely appears governed like that. Comprehensible. Why isn't it just all kinds of random things happening for no reason and with no cause? Why is it that we can understand it at all.

You are right, although the answer to that is rather less divine. The mind responsible for things making sense is ours, the universe just is, it just does what it does. When earth goes around the sun it doesn't go "hey the Sun has X mass, I have Y mass, we are at Z distance and I take the square of that, I have velocity W velocity, so in time T+1 I should go here", no we see the motion of the stars and the planets, when can describe things in terms of numbers and we can use mathematics to describe how they change. This isn't an indication of a divine rule maker that makes thing sensible, it is just an indication that math is unbelievably plastic that it can describe almost anything and how good descriptive reasoning can be and modeling things that are real.

It seems to me like the universe is teaching us something in a more literal sense than you think but not quite as literally as the sun saying "Yo Sun, follow the cosmological constants"
I do feel like a pupil learning from a super brilliant teacher when I learn about the universe and the laws that govern it. I feel this so strongly that I am actually convinced of it. I think some of you think that this is wrong somehow, but I'm not sure I can help it. I'm open to being convinced.

Did we teach the universe mathematics or did it teach us? I think we get it from what we're learning about reality. God explains to us that a thing is a thing and isn't another thing. We didn't make this up, He did.
To me it seems like you are putting the cart before the horse.

You are welcome to ask, and you are welcome to join.

Everyone has been very cool. I'm so glad that it feels less like everyone is fighting each other and more like everyone is struggling with new ideas and working together to understand. A good learning environment.

 

[Miracles4Real]

Thanks Vivre.
I was thinking of the intuition that we all have- even Richard Dawkins says that organisms appear designed. He just uses complex evolutionary mechanisms to explain how it could have been made to look designed without actually being designed.

I don't know if what you say about Dawkins is correct and valid without further context. But using 'appear as if' already shows it was only a pondering. I heavily doubt that he searched for an excuse explanation to force a deliberate non-designing as source and moreover have the impression that you are mixing explanation and mechanism. It's the mechanism what is observed first and the explanation that follows as theorie thereafter.

I've seen and read him say it many times in different contexts. If you get out your bedside copy of The God Delusion and open page 157 and follow along with me
"...One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises."
I think most people at least agree that organisms look designed.

I realize that you guys have studied evolution much more than I have. I figured I would just put in what it looks like from my layperson perspective.

Indeed there are numberous scientist on board who dedicate their time to help figuring out at what points ones given perspectives are unreasonable and offer supported conclusions (evidents) to enhance your knowledge to fill the gabs - if you give it a chance.

That's why I'm here. Giving it a chance.

I find myself coming to some conclusions automatically though. I'm not sure if I can help that.

Being aware of the automatism is already the most important realization to free oneself from this trap. If it happens, stopp and try to figure out the various motivations that pushed the conclusion. It takes courage to train this reconsidering habit.

Being aware of it may also be a means of learning if it is or isn't a trap or if someone really is trying to tell you something.

The moral thing is very offtopic and I don't mean to derail the conversation. Here is my response to what you said there though- If morals are relative and depend on culture then wouldn't it be impossible for there to be moral trend setters like Martin Luther king, Jesus or Gandhi? They were all working out side of their culture, yet people came to them instead and helped us to get closer to a more perfect moral paradigm.

Because morals are relative they can be easily affected by 'trend setters'. I don't think that ML King or Gandhi had cast off their cultural upbringing/imprint, just because they might be regarded as charismatic outsiders. Yes it can be of great benefit to consider various reasonable moral stands to check back and enhance ones owns.

A 'perfect paradigm' is a fictional static dead end. It's of no useful value to say if something has a good development status.

Note: I'm aware you're slipping Jesus into your recital of historical figures. This invalidates your argument and I counted him out.


I don't think this thread can be detrailed much more, but a separate thread would surely ease a close communication. You can open a new one any time you like. ~ greets

I am interested in the origins discussion. Maybe another time I'll make another thread.
I do want to clarify that I don't think morality can be said to come from culture when there are cultures which advocate immoral things like slavery for example. I agree that we can, as you said, "enhance" our moral stand. We can make it better than it was. But in relation to what? our culture? no. This intuition for what is right helps us to get closer to God's moral stand. I think these people were more than just charismatic to manage this. I don't believe that morals are whatever can be achieved by charming someone.

 

[Darkprophet232]

Darkprophet, I did not need to assume the motivations of long dead people. the things they said about a designer and a persuit for the mind of God, are immortal because of their words.

Funny thing, none of those quotes support your assertion. You’re not claiming that they’re Christians or theists. You’re claiming you know exactly why they studied science, and unless you have a quote from one of these individuals that says, “I study science because of my desire to understand the mind of God,” you can’t know. There are numerous reasons theists can begin studying science. They can range from curiosity, to monetary, to nearly anything else, including yes, wishing to understand the mind of their god. But neither of us know why, and you’re quotes don’t tell us why either. Your asserting motivation without evidence.

I realize that their motivations are irrelivant to their discoveries. But I think some of them may actually be correct in their feeling that all the laws governing the clockwork of the universe implies a mind behind it.

And what qualifies you to make that assertion? That you feel like there should be a designer? That’s not good enough.

I don't think i could exactly fault the people for thinking that the earth is flat. If I (and dare I say -you) lived at that time, what else would there be to think?

Regardless of why they thought it, they were wrong. That’s the point. We’re looking for truth, not what makes sense to us.

I could rattle off some theodicy but I think this is really besides the point. I'll give you this one, maybe this designer is beneath contempt and disgusting. Forgive me but I think this is an entirely emotional argument.

An emotional argument would be, “Eeesh graphic! Is this the atheist version of showing aborted fetuses?” The idea that the designer is sadist comes from an evaluation of his supposed works. It’s analysis and a justified conclusion. If you believe that a designer designed numerous insects and animals to die during matting and birth, often not of their own young, you need to then consider if such a designer is worthy of worship.

And I’m curious, what picture from that article was equivalent to aborted fetuses? Was it the one with the two snails on the edge of a jar? Or maybe it's the one with the two quoll, where all you can see are their heads and paws. If these offend your delicate sensibilities, may I ask you get off the internet and shut yourself out from the world lest you see something much more disgusting, like a scratched knee.

 

[Mugnuts]

I've seen and read him say it many times in different contexts. If you get out your bedside copy of The God Delusion and open page 157 and follow along with me
"...One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises."
I think most people at least agree that organisms look designed.

I'm not sure if you are aware of how a single quote of a select sentence when in context to the entirety of the rest of the paragraph is called "Quote Mining"? Using someone who is an credible to promote sway to your personal premise is fine, as long as they are actually saying that entirely. I can agree that the statement says that there is the appearance of design, but it goes on..

"The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane," not a "skyhook;" for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity." -Dawkins

I am interested in the origins discussion. Maybe another time I'll make another thread.
I do want to clarify that I don't think morality can be said to come from culture when there are cultures which advocate immoral things like slavery for example. I agree that we can, as you said, "enhance" our moral stand. We can make it better than it was. But in relation to what? our culture? no. This intuition for what is right helps us to get closer to God's moral stand. I think these people were more than just charismatic to manage this. I don't believe that morals are whatever can be achieved by charming someone.

I am totally up for the morality discussion. Just pick the appropriate thread and start a topic and pick a snazzy title.

On another note, thank you for joining, welcome.

 

[abelcainsbrother]

Genesis 30:37-39 wrote:
And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.

You've got me interested so let's see if we might have something here. OK Jacob is mixing stuff and putting it into the water for them to drink.OK a Bee hive. The vast majority are females,and do all of the work.Despite sharing the same set of genes of the group in the colony,the queens grow twice as big-as well as failing to develop sting barbs,wax glands or pollen baskets,yet the queens lifespan is about 20 times longer.The differences are put down due to diet,which effects the way the genes are expressed.It is becoming quite clear that genes are not a script or a blue print.Regarding the diet,for the first 3 days of life all the new bee larvae are fed "royal jelly" that has been manufactured by a special group of nurse bees who exude it from their glands in their head- a mix of amino acids,vitamins,fats. After 3 days the diet of the majority is changed over to pollen and nectar and these will develop into worker bees,based on their diet.,meanwhile a select few are kept on the "royal jelly" and they become queens again based on their diet,with identical genes. Nobel prize? Perhaps

What the heck does this gibberish about bees have to do with magical striped sticks affecting the fur coloration patterns of livestock?

It plainly says he makes dots and stripes on the sticks, then forces the animals to breed in close proximity to the sticks, the purported result of which is that the offspring are born with stripes and dots. MAGIC!

This is what you get when you take the goat-herder rapists anthology of campfire tales for boys as a science textbook. :lol:

I don't think you can read the bible without twisting what it clearly tells he mixed green poplar,hazel,chesnut tree and pilled white strakes in them and he set the rods in the water trough when the flocks came to drink,so he put it in the water for them to drink then when they bred they produced ringstraked,speckled and spotted,the diet effect the genes which is the same thing with the worker bees that mix stuff together to make royal jelly to produce queens. You know there could be some super diet for us that science has overlooked all of this time while putting chemicals in our food that are bad for us? And we've missed out on it so our genes could be expressed better.

 

[Isotelus]

Having read over both this page ttp://www.macromol.uni-osnabrueck.de/ATP_synthase.php that Aron provided and the paper he linked, OFNF's accusations are not warranted. The paper is simply a more in-depth study of the overview Aron linked in the first place. They both explain in great detail a viable model for the evolutionary pathways of ion-translocating ATPases through changes involving processes such as mutation and/or horizontal gene transfer, as well as performed phylogenetic and structural analyses to confirm their conclusions. It also shows that the components of this rotary system are in fact reducible. Granted, neither state outright that natural selection and mutation are responsible for creating the ATP motor, but that actually is the gist of it. I believe Aron was hoping that OFNF would have the comprehensive ability necessary to extract and apply the information provided from both of these sources, because they do support Aron's point.

 

[Miracles4Real]

Darkprophet, I did not need to assume the motivations of long dead people. the things they said about a designer and a persuit for the mind of God, are immortal because of their words.

Funny thing, none of those quotes support your assertion. You’re not claiming that they’re Christians or theists. You’re claiming you know exactly why they studied science, and unless you have a quote from one of these individuals that says, “I study science because of my desire to understand the mind of God,” you can’t know. There are numerous reasons theists can begin studying science. They can range from curiosity, to monetary, to nearly anything else, including yes, wishing to understand the mind of their god. But neither of us know why, and you’re quotes don’t tell us why either. Your asserting motivation without evidence.

They need to say exactly the quote you mentioned? Well I guess you got me beat there. If you are a little more charitable though, maybe you could see that these quotes do show that many scientests do indeed believe they are learning about the mind of God. I know I've seen quotes from scientests saying more precisely that they are indeed motivated by that desire. One from Kepler and one from Newton I think- I'll keep looking.
I hope you can take what I gave you though without dismissing it so. They were great scientests and they believed they were literally justified in calling the order in the universe God.

I realize that their motivations are irrelivant to their discoveries. But I think some of them may actually be correct in their feeling that all the laws governing the clockwork of the universe implies a mind behind it.

And what qualifies you to make that assertion? That you feel like there should be a designer? That’s not good enough.

Gosh. I didn't realize I was at the peer review board. Yes I feel like there is a designer. The order in the universe seems to me like good enough evidence for this. Many very smart scientists have also come to the same conclusion after studying the universe in more depth than I have. How is this feeling wrong?

I don't think i could exactly fault the people for thinking that the earth is flat. If I (and dare I say -you) lived at that time, what else would there be to think?

Regardless of why they thought it, they were wrong. That’s the point. We’re looking for truth, not what makes sense to us.

Well maybe I'm wrong too. Maybe you are. I'm going with what it seems like from my perspective as best as I can. What else can anyone be expected to do? Do you just wander around saying you don't know anything until you fully understand the under-workings of every particle?

I could rattle off some theodicy but I think this is really besides the point. I'll give you this one, maybe this designer is beneath contempt and disgusting. Forgive me but I think this is an entirely emotional argument.

An emotional argument would be, “Eeesh graphic! Is this the atheist version of showing aborted fetuses?” The idea that the designer is sadist comes from an evaluation of his supposed works. It’s analysis and a justified conclusion. If you believe that a designer designed numerous insects and animals to die during matting and birth, often not of their own young, you need to then consider if such a designer is worthy of worship.

Let me again, give you this one. I don't want to get into a whole theodicy thing. I don't know Gods motives or his mind. For now lets say maybe God isnt worthy of worship. Maybe God is a sadistic bastard. It sure seems like an ordered universe though. Something a mind would do.

And I’m curious, what picture from that article was equivalent to aborted fetuses? Was it the one with the two snails on the edge of a jar? Or maybe it's the one with the two quoll, where all you can see are their heads and paws. If these offend your delicate sensibilities, may I ask you get off the internet and shut yourself out from the world lest you see something much more disgusting, like a scratched knee.

It was tongue n cheek Darkprophet. I wasn't actually getting the vapors from the images of snails and beetles in the article. I was saying that the implication of "God is a sadistic bastard so you shouldn't believe in him" is an entirely emotional argument, a fallacy akin to the tactic used by pro-life protesters.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Onceforgivennowfree[/url]"]Ok so wait, that paper you first cited doesn't show a possible biochemical pathway by which the first ATP could have evolved? I hope you understand my frustration. You cite a scientific paper where I need to PURCHASE the paper or get a SUBSCRIPTION in order to read it. All people can see when they click on the link is the title and abstract.

:?

What are you talking about? You did not have to pay for anything. ATP synthase is free and how could you miss it? AronRa quoted it in a different color and posted the link to the website right under the quoted section. I think I will chalk this one up to incompetence on your part. Everyone else that is following this discussion (even dandan) was able to find that link. Why could you not? The rest of your post is pure hilarity following from your incompetence. And creationists wonder why they get laughed at.