do you believe in god?

[Miles]

You can proclaim your vitalist belief all you want, Canis. That's all it is...
I'm sitting on the fence......

 

[Canis Lupus]

You can proclaim your vitalist belief all you want, Canis. That's all it is...
I'm sitting on the fence......

For a fence sitter, you seem to have made quite a proclamation there, Miles.

 

[Miles]

You can proclaim your vitalist belief all you want, Canis. That's all it is...
I'm sitting on the fence......

For a fence sitter, you seem to have made quite a proclamation there, Miles.

So, if it's not just a belief, what's your proof?

 

[EMF]

Does anyone here that believes in God, also believe the purpose of the universe in all its entirety, was created by a Supreme Being simply to support humans on one planet? I have not seen any literature that claims that God created any other creatures elsewhere in the universe. I have been wondering lately, if maybe we do not even know the true reason for this reality and maybe it is a clue to our own existence.

Maybe the universe does not revolve around man, but has some higher/different purpose and we are merely a necessary evil of this existence. Like an insect or even a bacteria seems to us on this Earth. Something that just happens when universes are formed.

 

[liveforphysics]

So, if it's not just a belief, what's your proof?

I get the double-meaning joke you made Miles, but none the less I want to share my proof.


My proof still works fine even if you throw everything out the window that man has ever written or proclaimed or any religion or whatever.


Pick your most simple form of life.

Go ahead, choose something. Maybe a sulfur feeding bacteria? Maybe a virus? Maybe an amoeba? Some algae cell? It really doesn't matter what you pick, but just for fun, pick whatever you think is most simple.

Now, consider that to exist, it has some method to harvest energy. To have existed as more than a 1st edition prototype never to be seen again, it must have a method to replicate. There are a handful of other equally difficult objectives it must meet or it's also not going to be functional, but it really only takes one, and two is more than enough for this proof.

Consider the life-form you picked. It's likely microscopic. It's also indefinably more complex than any machine man has ever created, or even comprehended. Now think of how complex it would be to make a machine that fuels itself, and from energy and materials refined from it's fuel source, it's able to fully replicate itself. Go ahead, think about what a machine like that would require to build at any scale. Like a factory made out of a fuel/food, and the factory can build other factories, and the factories it builds each also have the ability to replicate factories from the materials they consume/absorb as fuel/food/energy. Can you even comprehend of such a complex machine? Now add-in at least 6 other equally complex and baffling requirements for the factory to do. Thing's get pretty stupidly complex in a hurry. We dismiss it's complexity because our eyes are large, so even with the best microscopes we have poor resolution seeing things that can exist in quantities of billions on a pin-head It doesn't make them any less complex or amazing of factories though.

Do factories randomly occur? Yeah, I would say any factory made by man has a chance of randomly occurring. If you have all the required aluminum and steel and components of concrete laying around, if you stir'd that pot long enough you might happen across making the whole Honda assembly plant complete with all the equipment etc. It's one of those odd's situations with thick book printed in very small print filled with pages of zero to express the odds of it happening, but it's entirely in the realm of possibility given enough time.

However, this just gives you the Honda factory. A factory without the knowledge and order of operations and functions to run it is something that just sits and looks pretty until the pot is stirred further and it disappears into which it came.

To make life, even that most simple type you picked, it requires not only a factory vastly more complex than a Honda assembly plant, but it requires something that will NOT be created by accident, no matter how many zero's you want to stick in your book to represent the odds. It comes with the knowledge/instinct/skills/training/order-of-operations, or whatever the hell you want to call it to RUN this incredibly complex factory. If it reproduces by division, it comes with the incredible skill of how to first make an un-needed copy of the critical needed organelles, then shuffle them off to one side of the cell as it brings them online, then erects a wall between the new nuclei, make that wall a double wall, and prepare to detach itself. Same thing happens with energy harvest. Photosynthesis is of course monstrously complex, but even the sulfur/temp-difference energy harvesting extremophile bacteria process is extremely complex with something like 30 steps that each need to done in the correct sequence, and performed by the correct parts of the cell before the cell extracts useful energy to itself. So, you not only have to build your Honda factory correctly, but your Honda factory doesn't become anything unless it also has all the perfect programming and knowledge to function, and it's gotta have that on the first shot, or you've just gotta wait for the next time a Honda factory happens to sprout up just by chance stirring of the pot and hope it happens to be better trained.

Also, you've got to build your Honda factory by chance stirring of the pot under conditions where not a single ingredient needed to build that Honda factory happens to be existing . Even the guy who performed the still-never-replicated experiments of passing electrical arcs through methane and other atmospheric gases to create the ingredients needed to form amino acid chains to make proteins possible later admitted that he outright faked his experiments. This is why nobody has ever repeated his data, and after spending the rest of his life trying to prove it's possible to create the building blocks of amino-acids, he finally declared that life MUST intentionally created. And yet, his early and never replicated experiment that he declared to have been faked is the entire basis of the justification for the people who think life started by randomly stirring the pot long enough.

Use your own common sense.

If life didn't create itself...

Best Wishes,
-Luke

 

[El_Steak]

If life didn't create itself...

Nice example of circular reasoning.

Your argument is that life is so incredibly complex that it couldn't have been created without a designer?

Now to be able to create life that designer must be incredibly complex himself.

So who created the designer? .... and off we go in circle...

You can't explain an unknown with a greater unknown.

Here's a great video on the parallel between our understanding of science and our belief in god. Its by the renowned astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vrpPPV_yPY

Don't be put off by the lenght of it, Tyson is a very good speaker and its quite entertaining.

 

[bigmoose]

In the spirit of the last few posts, I was having a good discussion with a treasured colleague a few years back. He opined that his bio-engineering community could, with some years of research, create the beginnings of life from raw materials traceable to dirt and an electric discharge.

I couldn't resist and replied with, why are you starting with the dirt? Why don't you create the dirt too? ... and while your at it, create it from nothing. :wink:

For EMF, I too have pondered the reason for the universe. It seems God could have gotten by with just the sun and a few planets. Why did He create so much? One possibility alluded to in the Scriptures, and one I tend to hold, is simply to have man be in awe and wonder at His majesty, power and capability. God is first and foremost, Holy, Just, Pure, True and Fair... but with that said, wouldn't it be just like a Dad, if His child asked for a rainbow to cheer them up, provided not just the rainbow, but a Solar System or two, enough for a milky way galaxy or two, that composed a universe... and even with that the Dad was "just getting started!"

I tend to like 1 Cor 2:9 for it's perspective on the above: 9However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.... This implies that likely "We aint' seen nottin' yet!"

 

[El_Steak]

Can't resist...

God is first and foremost, Holy, Just, Pure, True and Fair... but with that said, wouldn't it be just like a Dad, if His child asked for a rainbow to cheer them up, provided not just the rainbow, but a Solar System or two, enough for a milky way galaxy or two, that composed a universe... and even with that the Dad was "just getting started!"

... Yea daddy was just getting started... he then decided to amuse himself and created hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamies, drought, parasites, viruses, malaria, cancer, birth defects...

If he truly exists, he's quite a douche...

 

[Canis Lupus]

You can proclaim your vitalist belief all you want, Canis. That's all it is...
I'm sitting on the fence......

For a fence sitter, you seem to have made quite a proclamation there, Miles.

So, if it's not just a belief, what's your proof?

I'm not sure why I am being saddled with the burden of proof. You have proclaimed my statement a belief and given it a label, "vitalism" - one I had to read up on to see whether there was any match with what I have experienced. It accords to some degree, although the term "vitalism" has a variety of meanings it seems. I don't mind wearing it if it is helpful to you, but I've never had any need of the term.

Your assertion that what I "proclaim" is merely belief cannot be anything other than a belief, which is why you are asking for proof, I am guessing - and why you aren't really sitting on any fence. True knowledge is experience, everything else must be opinion or belief, some better reasoned than others certainly, but without experience they are at best well thought out theoretical models or systems of thought. Religion can be nothing better than this ie. belief and opinion, and is often worse by being ill-thought out belief and opinion. Experience being a hallmark of knowledge, it is impossible for me, or anyone else, to provide you with a proof, except in the mathetical sense of the word, which is nothing more than theoretical. There rests a barrier and why symbols, which are often expressed in art and religion (a form of communication beyond everyday language) become necessary to suggest rather than indoctrinate, although, sadly, they are quite often misused for that purpose. The onus falls upon yourself to prove matters one way or the other. At some stage, the fence you say you are sitting on must be left.

To digress a little and risk the accusation of being a "thumper", the Socratic method is an often misrepresented process taught as merely question and answer exposing contradictory opinions and beliefs. That's one of the reasons it is confused with sophistry. The real intent is to dispel false opinion, leaving exposed innate knowledge - get rid of the shit and what you are left with is Truth. This is why a slave boy in ancient Athens was said by Socrates to be just as capable of true knowledge as the best educated aristocrat. In fact, because the tendency of human nature is to become puffed up with its own learning and titles, such as modern scientists often are, the slave boy might be in the better position to realise innate knowledge rather than the worldly educated aristocrat full of his own importance and titles. It also explains the "Socratic contradiction" that, Socrates knew more because he understood he knew less.

Here I might be able to suggest a method of proof by referring once again, as I did in another thread, to Euclid. Without innate knowledge, no man can understand geometry and Euclid. When you reflect upon a Euclidean construction and principles, you are experiencing knowledge because of its relationship with reality (true forms), something different to opinion and belief, beyond anything which is changeable. Those principles are immortal and in experiencing them yourself, you become, to some degree, what you experience. In that simple act, you will have provided yourself with the proof you have asked of me, but until you do that act, there can be no proof from me, only a suggestion which is up to you to verify by your own experience. I'd hazard a guess, with no disrespect meant, that you have already experienced it in one form or other. It's just that all the ideas acquired in this world, tend to cover up our understanding of such experiences. Often we look things right in the face without acknowledging the fundamental nature of what we are looking at. The simplicity of it defies the complexity which we have been indoctrinated to believe is intelligence.

I've strayed around a bit with the above because you seemed to be asking for a proof of a Will, which is what I mentioned previously as being an essential ingredient of life. It was misleading of me to state it in such a way. Rather, to be more accurate, is to state that Will is more obvious in life than inanimate objects. I'll approach it this way for the time being: if life can emerge spontaneously from "chemical soups" cooked in the right pot, why does all life on earth appear to evolve from a common source rather than a variety of such events? It may yet be shown that life on earth arose from several instances of this chemical soup like creation which many scientists favour, but biological science suggests strongly otherwise, favouring a single point which it all can be traced back to, rather than diverse events. Like the universe on a greater scale, we see again this underlying phenomenon of a single point of origin which broadens out. It suggests strongly a singularity with all that a singularity implies. Does that singularity have a Will? How can anything happen without a Will? Sex is will, one form of it, and there seems no reason to suppose that even those life forms which replicate without sex, don't also have Will, one not of their own.

Sorry for the length but your request was not an easy one as is obvious by the inadequacy of my reply.

 

[Miles]

I'll approach it this way for the time being: if life can emerge spontaneously from "chemical soups" cooked in the right pot, why does all life on earth appear to evolve from a common source rather than a variety of such events. It may yet be shown that life on earth arose from several instances of this chemical soup like creation which many scientists favour, but biological science suggests strongly otherwise - a single point which it can be traced back to, rather diverse events. Like the universe on a greater scale, we see again this underlying principle of a one single point of origin which broadens out. It suggests strongly a singularity with all that a singularity implies.

Thanks for taking so much trouble over this.

I'm not sure I understand why you consider a possible singular genesis so significant. If it is the case, couldn't it simply be an extremely rare combination of circumstances rather than evidence of anything teleological?

 

[Canis Lupus]

So, if it's not just a belief, what's your proof?

I get the double-meaning joke you made Miles, but none the less I want to share my proof.


My proof still works fine even if you throw everything out the window that man has ever written or proclaimed or any religion or whatever.


Pick your most simple form of life.

Go ahead, choose something. Maybe a sulfur feeding bacteria? Maybe a virus? Maybe an amoeba? Some algae cell? It really doesn't matter what you pick, but just for fun, pick whatever you think is most simple.

Now, consider that to exist, it has some method to harvest energy. To have existed as more than a 1st edition prototype never to be seen again, it must have a method to replicate. There are a handful of other equally difficult objectives it must meet or it's also not going to be functional, but it really only takes one, and two is more than enough for this proof.

Consider the life-form you picked. It's likely microscopic. It's also indefinably more complex than any machine man has ever created, or even comprehended. Now think of how complex it would be to make a machine that fuels itself, and from energy and materials refined from it's fuel source, it's able to fully replicate itself. Go ahead, think about what a machine like that would require to build at any scale. Like a factory made out of a fuel/food, and the factory can build other factories, and the factories it builds each also have the ability to replicate factories from the materials they consume/absorb as fuel/food/energy. Can you even comprehend of such a complex machine? Now add-in at least 6 other equally complex and baffling requirements for the factory to do. Thing's get pretty stupidly complex in a hurry. We dismiss it's complexity because our eyes are large, so even with the best microscopes we have poor resolution seeing things that can exist in quantities of billions on a pin-head It doesn't make them any less complex or amazing of factories though.

Do factories randomly occur? Yeah, I would say any factory made by man has a chance of randomly occurring. If you have all the required aluminum and steel and components of concrete laying around, if you stir'd that pot long enough you might happen across making the whole Honda assembly plant complete with all the equipment etc. It's one of those odd's situations with thick book printed in very small print filled with pages of zero to express the odds of it happening, but it's entirely in the realm of possibility given enough time.

However, this just gives you the Honda factory. A factory without the knowledge and order of operations and functions to run it is something that just sits and looks pretty until the pot is stirred further and it disappears into which it came.

To make life, even that most simple type you picked, it requires not only a factory vastly more complex than a Honda assembly plant, but it requires something that will NOT be created by accident, no matter how many zero's you want to stick in your book to represent the odds. It comes with the knowledge/instinct/skills/training/order-of-operations, or whatever the hell you want to call it to RUN this incredibly complex factory. If it reproduces by division, it comes with the incredible skill of how to first make an un-needed copy of the critical needed organelles, then shuffle them off to one side of the cell as it brings them online, then erects a wall between the new nuclei, make that wall a double wall, and prepare to detach itself. Same thing happens with energy harvest. Photosynthesis is of course monstrously complex, but even the sulfur/temp-difference energy harvesting extremophile bacteria process is extremely complex with something like 30 steps that each need to done in the correct sequence, and performed by the correct parts of the cell before the cell extracts useful energy to itself. So, you not only have to build your Honda factory correctly, but your Honda factory doesn't become anything unless it also has all the perfect programming and knowledge to function, and it's gotta have that on the first shot, or you've just gotta wait for the next time a Honda factory happens to sprout up just by chance stirring of the pot and hope it happens to be better trained.

Also, you've got to build your Honda factory by chance stirring of the pot under conditions where not a single ingredient needed to build that Honda factory happens to be existing . Even the guy who performed the still-never-replicated experiments of passing electrical arcs through methane and other atmospheric gases to create the ingredients needed to form amino acid chains to make proteins possible later admitted that he outright faked his experiments. This is why nobody has ever repeated his data, and after spending the rest of his life trying to prove it's possible to create the building blocks of amino-acids, he finally declared that life MUST intentionally created. And yet, his early and never replicated experiment that he declared to have been faked is the entire basis of the justification for the people who think life started by randomly stirring the pot long enough.

Use your own common sense.

If life didn't create itself...

Best Wishes,
-Luke

Thanks for that Luke, it was a good read. You answered the question far better than I did and appreciate the time you took in doing so.

 

[El_Steak]

When looking into the origins of life, why is it so difficult to say "We don't know... yet". Why is "god" the default explanation?

Why is it necessary to revert to a supernatural explanation when we don't understand something?

If the great minds of this world had choked and said "magic man did it" instead of working hard at understanding the world around us, we'd still be living in trees and eating the lice living in our friends hairy backs. Thanks to their critical thinking, we are instead able to ride e-bikes and argue on the internet.

 

[Canis Lupus]

I'll approach it this way for the time being: if life can emerge spontaneously from "chemical soups" cooked in the right pot, why does all life on earth appear to evolve from a common source rather than a variety of such events. It may yet be shown that life on earth arose from several instances of this chemical soup like creation which many scientists favour, but biological science suggests strongly otherwise - a single point which it can be traced back to, rather diverse events. Like the universe on a greater scale, we see again this underlying principle of a one single point of origin which broadens out. It suggests strongly a singularity with all that a singularity implies.

Thanks for taking so much trouble over this.

I'm not sure I understand why you consider a possible singular genesis so significant. If it is the case, couldn't it simply be an extremely rare combination of circumstances rather than evidence of anything teleological?

On the universal level, how could circumstances pre-exist the singularity? But you are asking on a planetary level, either on earth or somewhere else, I am assuming. On that level, the pre-existing circumstances are not distinct, but dependent on everything before leading back to the singularity, which had no circumstances to arise from.

Recent discoveries have found that life on earth started long before than was previously supposed by scientists, suppositions which arose from the chemical soup theory. Life arose so quickly here on earth that there wasn't time for the random "soup creation". By reference to the present state of earth, earth then, at the time life began, was hostile to life as we know most of it to exist today. Life has been found to be approximately 4.7 billion years old here on earth, when the earth itself had little similarity to the state it is now. For it to be the way it is now, required life to act upon earth to bring change in the environment more favourable to its own diversification and evolution.

This tips the accepted theory of evolution on its head, since orthodox evolution regards nature as adapting to its environment, whereas the more factual way of looking at it is that life adapted the earth (its direct environment) to itself, not in its existing state, but a future state - by implication. It was thinking ahead all the time and no doubt still is.

If you consider the fact that life acted upon the earth bringing about change in its environment, which it later adapted to, you can consider that to be random, but again you keep coming up with impossibly unlikely odds. Once you accept the idea that life was altering its own environment, then it flows quite naturally there was an intent already to evolve or adapt to the change it was effecting. If no such intent existed, it would not need to change anything because it already existed as is, quite happily already adapted. There would be no need for change, but rather stabilization of its then present environment. Changing its environment actually threatens life's own existence unless one considers an intent at work with an aim. Otherwise it is just setting up impossible odds to beat in order to survive time and time again, which seems an extremely anti-evolutionary thing to do. Given that the earth is far more welcoming of different forms of life now than it was 4.7 billion years ago, and that process has been achieved by gradual steps, one dependent upon the other, then the odds of it being random are just multiplying impossible odds by impossible odds to the point of infinity and absurdity.

In discerning an intelligence at work, take one step, and the next step and so on, and it is there to see with all its implications.

 

[Canis Lupus]

When looking into the origins of life, why is it so difficult to say "We don't know... yet". Why is "god" the default explanation?

Why is it necessary to revert to a supernatural explanation when we don't understand something?

If the great minds of this world had choked and said "magic man did it" instead of working hard at understanding the world around us, we'd still be living in trees and eating the lice living in our friends hairy backs. Thanks to their critical thinking, we are instead able to ride e-bikes and argue on the internet.

Newton had his idea of God, as did Einstein. It stopped neither man from seeking to explain the mechanics of the universe. Your post also implies a will to evolve effecting the physical. I suspect that is inconsistent with any idea of randomness you may have as being a sufficient explanation for life and evolution. Sorry, just thought I would point it out. I can see you weren't being entirely serious and word perfect.

 

[EMF]

When looking into the origins of life, why is it so difficult to say "We don't know... yet". Why is "god" the default explanation?

Why is it necessary to revert to a supernatural explanation when we don't understand something?

If the great minds of this world had choked and said "magic man did it" instead of working hard at understanding the world around us, we'd still be living in trees and eating the lice living in our friends hairy backs. Thanks to their critical thinking, we are instead able to ride e-bikes and argue on the internet.

Newton had his idea of God, as did Einstein. It stopped neither man from seeking to explain the mechanics of the universe. Your post also implies a will to evolve effecting the physical. I suspect that is inconsistent with any idea of randomness you may have as being a sufficient explanation for life and evolution. Sorry, just thought I would point it out. I can see you weren't being entirely serious and word perfect.

Well, even Steven hawking admits in the last paragraphs of a Brief History of Time, that there might be a Supreme Being or some sort of God. Of course, this was many years ago, and maybe he changed his mind, but, once he got done explaining what he could with quarks and such, and when he backed up as far as he could into the Big Bang, he kind of gets stuck like everyone else and admits there is something we don't know yet.

"the actual point of creation lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics,"

I think if if it turns out to be indeed necessary, that there really is a God, we would be way ahead. But, if not, then there is something else that we know nothing about. We could be in the stream of an ongoing process that we have no clue about or be of no consequence to.

Like leaves in the wind.

 

[alan]

Do you know there are like 300 prophecies about Christ that were fulfilled? Do you know what the probability that they were fulfilled by chance? No? ... so let me fill you in on just one data point (I did others in my paper)

I keep hearing that Jesus fulfilled all these prophesies, but I can not find the actual prophesies in the OT for more than a few. Could you please post any 10 of the 300 prophesies that Jesus fulfilled? I would like to see chapter and verse from the OT containing the prophesy, and the corresponding NT verse describing the fulfillment of that OT verse. I hope you can just pull these right out of your paper.

Dave was very kind to PM me with his presentation, which contained eight OT prophesies by chapter and verse. He also said it was fine for me to reply here.

The eight (of ten requested!) verses are, Micah 5:2, ZECHARIAH 9:9, 11:12 & 13, and 13:6, ISAIAH 53:7 & 9, Psalms 22:16. These prophesies are familiar enough to most, that it is alright that the corresponding NT verses are not provided. I do not find a most of these eight to be an interesting foretelling of Jesus, as claimed. I will address six of them below. All but the first and last, the only two which I have no argument with.

ZECHARIAH 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

First, Jesus was raised a Jew, and can be presumed familiar with the Old Testament, as biblical education has always been a priority in raising Jewish sons. To fulfill this prophesy requires riding on an ass and a colt. What would have been an astonishing prophesy to have fulfilled was one that said the king never rode on either an ass or a colt, since such an activity was so common then. This prophesy is as interesting as saying the Messiah would eat carrots. By the way, a colt in the prophesy? Was that ever claimed in the NT?

ZECHARIAH 11:12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.
11:13 And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

There is no reference to the Messiah here! This is “the word of the Lord.” There are similar prophesies in adjacent verses with the same reference to the person that will do these thing, but these other prophesies are not prophesies that were said to have been fulfilled. For example:
11:15 And the Lord said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd.
11:16 For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.
11:17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.
So, if 11:12 & 13 is about Jesus, then 11:16 says Jesus will not heal, and 11:17 says he will be blind in his right eye, etc.

ZECHARIAH 13:6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

This verse is immediately preceded by:
13:5 But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.
And, 13:5 is obviously not about Jesus, yet is the same person referenced in 13:6 immediately following it. That is, how can the wounded hands of a cattle keeper and husband have anything to do with being Jesus?

ISAIAH 53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
53:9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Interesting that the in between verse is ignored:
53:8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
I don’t recall Jesus being taken from prison.

I have not studied all 300 or so OT prophesies claimed to have been fulfilled by Jesus, but of the few dozens I have looked at, most appear to be anything but. When I ask believers to explain, most will simply start gross rationalization, or redefining words to fit the goal of making the prophesy claimed in the NT fit something in the OT. It defies reason so far as I am capable of understanding what is claimed. When I ask for the best examples of such prophesy matching OT to NT, I rarely get even one in ten, much less the two in ten that Dave was able to provide (Thank you, Dave! I mean that sincerely.). I expect the believers will dismiss every one of my arguments above, as most usually do. It usually goes something like this:

Believer: The OT said the Messiah will come and he will be named Immanuel.
Me: But Jesus was named Jesus, not Immanuel.
Believer: Immanuel means Messiah.
Me: But the prophesy says he will be NAMED Immanuel; it does not say the Messiah will come and he will be the Messiah!
Believer: Immanuel means Messiah, Jesus was the Messiah, therefore the name Jesus, meaning Messiah is synonymous with the name Immanuel, and therefore Jesus was named Immanuel.
Me: Does it matter that Immanuel first took on the meaning Messiah after Jesus died? Or that the term Christ means Messiah, not the name Jesus?
Believer: No.

To the non-believer, this kind of reasoning is evidence of an irrational belief. To the believer, this kind of reasoning is perfectly logical. How are the two sides supposed to communicate?

-- Alan

 

[El_Steak]

. I can see you weren't being entirely serious and word perfect.

Einstein's believe or non-believe in god is very debatable.

As for Newton, he lived in the 1600. He's probably the greatest mind ever to live on earth. He did believe in god, but so did everybody else in his days. Just like the overwhelming majority of white americans believed in racial segregation in the first part of the century or in enslaving in the last century. Did he need god to explain gravity? no. Did he need him to come up with the laws of motion ? no. Did he need god to invent calculus? no

Newton fell into the god trap though. He wasn't able to explain with his knowledge of math at the time how the solar system could have remained stable through all those years. Instead of pursuing his research, he gave up and said it was because of God. Yet, a hundred years later Laplace came up with the math to fully and elegantly explain celestial mechanics. When asked by Napoleon what role did god play in the construction and regulation of the Heavens? Laplace answer: Sir, I had no need for that hypothesis.

"God Did It" is the easy answer. Its the lazy answer.

Worse of all, it doesn't answer anything, it just masks reality.

Again, just answer this:

If god created us and the universe, who created god ?

 

[liveforphysics]

Again, just answer this:

If god created us and the universe, who created god ?

Just as easily as things currently can be, some things can always have been.

A childhood and lifelong best friend of mine who now has his astro-physics PhD specializes in tracking movement of celestial bodies. He is pretty puzzled at the moment because the assumptions of early movement observations that lead to the concept of the big-bang is so badly flawed it can't remotely hold any reality to the idea. I forget how many separate points of origin motion originated from if you look at the current data, but it's fairly mind blowing. Some objects currently increasing speed, some decreasing speed, so many moving in conflicting directions etc. Big-bang is something professors like to teach along with the pot-stir explanation of life. Both are equally as silly to an unblinded mind as the concept of the sun being carried across the sky on the back of a giant turtle, which at some point seemed like a reasonable explanation to the educated minds of earlier generations.

It takes an incredible level and combo of blindness, arrogance, ignorance, etc to fall for the easy path, of big-bang, pot-gets-stirred, life forms and develops. This level of ignorance can generally only be created through being lead down the "rose path" through the illusion of understanding created by university education systems, professors, etc.

It takes either an un-blinded, or a much higher state of mind to acknowledge that there are things we don't understand rather than to be so foolish as to pretend we have it figured out, and deny credit to a creator.


Likewise, any argument about what comes first is a mute point. Inherently we know that we are here and currently experiencing some form of reality. This means something existed at some point. The significance of the timing of the chain of events isn't consequential, as we aren't debating the inherent condition that some reality exists.

 

[bigmoose]

Alan, thanks for sharing your personal "search for the truth", you have put great thought into it. Also thanks for reading part of mine, both in the paper and my accompanying PM note. I don't know your age, so I will conservatively guess and say; within 80 or so years we will both know the answer, for me it will be shorter, likely 30 years or less. My hope would be that we both keep "searching for the truth," with the vigor of our youth, for one day, we may, without knowing it, converge upon it.

All the best, Dave

 

[El_Steak]

Geez, am I the only atheist here? from the poll results I would think not !

To the non-believer, this kind of reasoning is evidence of an irrational belief. To the believer, this kind of reasoning is perfectly logical. How are the two sides supposed to communicate?

You are right Alan, any reasoning or evidence based on bible quotes appears as totally irrational to any atheist. It is probably as difficult for me to follow your reasoning as it is for you to follow mine. Lets agree to disagree.

Just as easily as things currently can be, some things can always have been.

:? are we switching to phylosophy?

It takes either an un-blinded, or a much higher state of mind to acknowledge that there are things we don't understand rather than to be so foolish as to pretend we have it figured out, and deny credit to a creator.

We are so close... yet so far away I'm in complete agreement with this assertion, except for the word "deny" that I would change for "give".

It takes either an un-blinded, or a much higher state of mind to acknowledge that there are things we don't understand rather than to be so foolish as to pretend we have it figured out, and give credit to a creator.

 

[julesa]

Bears repeating.

There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility.
-- Jacob Bronowski

A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin what would happen to him after he died.
Hakuin answered 'How am I supposed to know?'
'How do you not know? You're a Zen master!' exclaimed the samurai.
'Yes, but not a dead one,' Hakuin answered.

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.
-- George Santayana

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.
-- Albert Einstein

 

[Canis Lupus]

. I can see you weren't being entirely serious and word perfect.

Einstein's believe or non-believe in god is very debatable.

As for Newton, he lived in the 1600. He's probably the greatest mind ever to live on earth. He did believe in god, but so did everybody else in his days. Just like the overwhelming majority of white americans believed in racial segregation in the first part of the century or in enslaving in the last century. Did he need god to explain gravity? no. Did he need him to come up with the laws of motion ? no. Did he need god to invent calculus? no

Newton fell into the god trap though. He wasn't able to explain with his knowledge of math at the time how the solar system could have remained stable through all those years. Instead of pursuing his research, he gave up and said it was because of God....

Einstein is a hottie, the stunning beach babe of intellectuals. Everyone wants a piece of him, naked or clothed.

The debate about Einstein's theism tends to arise when those who have a quite different idea of God to Einstein's seek to claim him as their own. Which denomination wouldn't want the imprimatur of someone who is generally regarded as the 20th centuries greatest mind? Einstein's idea of God was very different to your average Christian, who thinks of a personal savior, someone who is taking an interest in everything they do, intervening to achieve salvation, over riding his own laws of creation to help. When Christians cite Einstein, who held a vastly different belief in God, atheists and agnostics tend to get worked up a little, crying "not fair", and in a way they are correct, but the fact remains he was a theist, albeit a self-styled one.

With the greatest respect to the religious and non-religious, I'd suggest Einstein's approach is the only type of theist there ought to be. You all have reason, and like your muscles, it is there to use, not abuse or neglect. Think things out for yourself, you are your own ultimate judge and final authority on all things. Scripture of any type is a rough guide, not an end itself, or as Emerson wrote, "Trust thyself: all hearts vibrate to that iron string."

Then there is Newton.

Newton was a mystic, a gnostic, an occultist, an alchemist as well as one of the greatest scientists that ever lived. He was far more interested in metaphysics than physics, although it is his physics which he is remembered for. There was nothing typical of his day about Newton's idea of God or his approach to understanding the universe with God in mind. Placing him as a victim of his time's false beliefs seems more than a little of an underestimation of the man. As does blithely dismissing his intense interest in Divinity as a lazy man's trap.

In his own lifetime, Newton wrote more on religion than he did on natural science. He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Thus, the ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

There is nothing lazy about "active reason", especially in its use in trying to understand metaphysics. Newton does present quite a puzzle, but any man thinking things out for himself, as is necessary to do, must of necessity defy easy categorisation, often leading to some new box which others seem quite happy later on to be pigeon-hold in.

"John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason: he was the last of the magicians."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

Or as Shakespeare wrote, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

Not so long ago on another forum, a chappy going by the alias of "Bkeela" made a post which captured many of my own general thoughts about Divinity better than I could express. He wasn't Matthew, Luke, John or Paul; Einstein, Newton or a scientist on the ICC, but my Reason gave his words the all clear...

"I've done the research and appreciate the materialistic view of reality. But there is more than one facet to the jewel of existence. Maybe an analogy will help you to understand spiritual things in a deeper way?

In trying to describe sex and reproduction to curious children, people employ various methods. Sometimes they make up cute stories about birds and bees, baby delivering storks, or mysterious cabbage patches. Eventually the illusion is broken, usually by some smart aleck kid, and the innocent is left to grapple with an idea that seems crazy and beyond comprehension. Another way is to explain the dry biological facts, which doesn't make much sense either, but the pictures sure are intriguing.

Then there is the experience itself. One realises that none of the old fables or biology lessons can even come close to communicating the power, wonder, and absurdity of the truth.

Now imagine an entirely different experience that is quite rare, but so mind-blowingly profound that it changes your entire life. You want to tell others, maybe help them to experience what you have. It is a glimpse of the divine; the perennial philosophy; the mystical encounter behind all religion. A signature event that conforms to a pattern regardless of era or culture.

The great mystics explain and teach their vision, but their followers soon confuse symbol with reality. People are more interested in earthly games anyway, so the teachings become dogma, and just another tool to subjugate the flock.

The fairy tales [religious beliefs] you despise are only meant to point the way. They are a catalyst for the sincere seeker, but not to be mistaken for the true thing. The True One waits ever patient, eternally hopeful, radiating the purest love like living light. All will experience God, but the way is open now, so perhaps you might be interested in performing some research of your own. Sadly, one must be tired of earthly games to be bothered."

 

[Canis Lupus]

Just a follow up to the age of the earth and how long life took to appear. I've been looking around for some reference to what I mentioned above about the relatively quick appearance of life on earth, how evidence of microbes exist in the oldest rocks on earth by virtue of chemicals trapped in them which indicate life. This by no means fixes the time of earliest life on earth. It is possible that life existed previously to that, just the rocks and chemical evidence of life, don't exist prior to that period. Life may have appeared even earlier. I still haven't found a reference to the discovery I was vaguely referring to in a previous post ie. oldest rocks known to science containing evidence of life, but this time-line posted on Wiki contradicts the time I posted of 4.7 billion years. So, I will check around a bit and try to get the dates right, even though they are only approximate.

The basic timeline is a 4.5 billion year old Earth, with (very approximate) dates:

* 3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes),
* 3 billion years of photosynthesis,
* 2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),
* 1 billion years of multicellular life,
* 600 million years of simple animals,
* 570 million years of arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans),
* 550 million years of complex animals,
* 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,
* 475 million years of land plants,
* 400 million years of insects and seeds,
* 360 million years of amphibians,

* 300 million years of reptiles,
* 200 million years of mammals,
* 150 million years of birds,
* 130 million years of flowers,
* 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out,
* 2.5 million years since the appearance of the genus Homo,
* 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today,
* 25,000 years since Neanderthals died out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

From the same page:

Between 4500 and 3500 Ma - The earliest life appears, possibly derived from self-reproducing RNA molecules. The replication of these organisms requires resources like energy, space, and smaller building blocks, which soon become limited, resulting in competition, with natural selection favouring those molecules which are more efficient at replication. DNA molecules then take over as the main replicators and these archaic genomes soon develop inside enclosing membranes which provide a stable physical and chemical environment conducive to their replication: proto-cells.

PS. I must remember to make a donation to Wiki. As a kid living in a house which barely had a book in it, I always wanted an Encyclopedia set. I never dreamed something like Wiki would ever come along, especially for free, which despite its obvious shortcomings, is an extremely useful tool, more flexible and useful than your traditional Encyclopedia.

Edit: This is the discovery I was referring to.

Evidence of the early appearance of life comes from the Isua supercrustal belt in Western Greenland and from similar formations in the nearby Akilia Islands. Carbon entering into rock formations has a ratio of Carbon-13 (13C) to Carbon-12 (12C) of about −5.5 (in units of δ13C), where because of a preferential biotic uptake of 12C, biomass has a δ13C of between −20 and −30. These isotopic fingerprints are preserved in the sediments, and Mojzis has used this technique to suggest that life existed on the planet already by 3.85 billion years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#.22Primordial_soup.22_theory

 

[liveforphysics]

Geological timelines always make me chuckle.


These tools think things like the grand canyon was caused by erosion... It's clearly a fractal pattern of silt being rapidly drained, NOT an erosion pattern. You can even duplicate the pattern yourself by dropping a scoop of wet sand at the beach. Make your own mathematically identical twist/turn distribution fractal pattern.

They date the petrified forest in Yosemite national park over a timeline of 10's of millions of years of seperation due to the layers, and yet you can core-sample the petrified trees and the core sample spacing overlaps like a finger print for trees they should be 10's of millions of years older than trees in higher layers.

They date layers in the grand canyon by millions of years, and yet there are fossils of jelly fish, of all the most delicate lifeforms to have apparently managed to appearently stay solid for 10's of millions of years as the same jellyfish fossil protrudes up through 5ft of layers in the wall... lol Thousands and thousands of similar artifacts with things like a fossilized tree going up through huge depths of fossilized layers which geologists date back to dinosaur times, etc etc...

They have fossils of muscles and other modern marine lifeforms on the top of the Himalaya mountain range, and yet by the dating process...

They like to date things like coal as taking x-many thousands of years to form, and yet not only have modern human artifacts been found in coal, but the first stage of coal has all ready been created in certain areas around spirit lake after the Mt St. Helens eruption in 1980's...

Speaking of Mt St. Helens (since it's in my back yard after all ) Areas that had no land mass existing before the eruption, but were formed in a matter of hours by massive mud slides and landslides took on a beautiful natural layered look. Some areas a hundred feet deep with thousands of layers. Photo's of core samples have been taken and submitted to various geology labs and universities for dating by layers, and hey! They were even consistent with each other! They dated things back from reading the layers right into dinosaur time. Oops! It was actually just a few hours of time that passed, not a span of years in the 8-9 digit range...

Then you can take a look from an astronomy perspective... You gotta play the choose and pick selective data method used by the few stragglers that still hang on to the big-bang joke to arrive at the dates for the earth they love to use in geology. I'm no expert on such matters, but if you guys would like, I could have my astro-physics PhD buddy make an account and explain things better from someone who is directly taking empirical data on a daily basis and lives and breathes this stuff.

Don't get me started on carbon dating... lol Don't tell them it's an Allosaurus leg bone they are dating, they come back telling you it's 16,000 years old... Submit the same sample, tell them it's an Allosaurus bone, they date it to 140,000,000 years back... lol Carbon dating is pretty effective for organic material inside about a 3,000year old window, and if that material hasn't had exposure to variables like other carbon sources etc during the 3,000 year period.


Confidence in earth timeline dating... it's umm... right up with the stir-the-pot and life pops out like a jack-in-the-box idea.

 

[Canis Lupus]

Geological timelines always make me chuckle.


These tools think things like the grand canyon was caused by erosion... It's clearly a fractal pattern of silt being rapidly drained, NOT an erosion pattern. You can even duplicate the pattern yourself by dropping a scoop of wet sand at the beach. Make your own mathematically identical twist/turn distribution fractal pattern.

Interesting you should mention the grand canyon and fractal patterns. The expanding earth theory would have it the canyon was not created through erosion as is the present orthodox, but rather a stress line where the earth's surface has expanded and pulled apart. Squeeze the canyon back together and the sides match up like a jig-saw, which is not consistent with erosion. The same type of canyons with fractal matching patterns on either side exist on Mars, the Moon and Europa, suggesting expansion is normal for a planetary body.

The theory was first suggested by an Australian geologist, Samuel Warren Carey. It hasn't been accepted by the scientific community although there are some dissenters. Neil Adams with his video demonstrations has helped popularise the idea, but undoubtedly, because he is not a scientist, discredited the theory beyond repair for the time being to those who only pay attention to peer reviewed opinions. He does like sticking his finger up at the scientific community. I can't blame him for that.

The idea of irregular spurts of growth helps to explain away one criticism of the theory, which is why science can't detect any very recent expansion with contemporary tools of science.

[youtube]JeUEzM7hsmY[/youtube]

Forgive the diversion. It's a pet interest.