Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[Kfox]

It seems contradictory, but if you see it from this perspective you will understand:

A believer considers miracles to be the result of a display of knowledge and power on the part of a conscious person.
An atheist believes that things that exist came out of nothing in a miraculous way, obeying some natural laws that emerged out of nowhere, by themselves.

So who is the one who believes in miracles?

No, an atheist is a person who does not believe in God. As far as how things that exist came to be, atheism does not address that question, so what an atheist might actually believe concerning this issue will likely vary from person to person because there are countless other alternatives than believing things that exist came out of nothing.

 

[YoursTrue]

No, an atheist is a person who does not believe in God. As far as how things that exist came to be, atheism does not address that question, so what an atheist might actually believe concerning this issue will likely vary from person to person because there are countless other alternatives than believing things that exist came out of nothing.

Atheism may not address that question, but the question is since atheists do not believe in a higher intelligent power, then there obviously could not be an unseen intelligence with power that caused life to begin.

 

[Valjean]

Just recapping. By the way, the more I learn, the more abstruse (yup) the concept of natural selection becomes.

What's abstruse about natural selection? It seems a pretty simple concept to me.

 

[Valjean]

What's the dichotomy? Either life started by chance or it did not start by chance. Now you're saying maybe it did, maybe it didn't?

Of the two, one involves known, familiar processes, the other's an unevidenced claim of magic.
Which would you judge more likely?

 

[John53]

I see. Have you figured if life didn't come about by chance what the alternatives might be?

I don't know. Not sure how much plainer I can express it.

I can only figure philosophically that if life did not come about by chance then the opposite would be true. That is-- it did not come about by chance. So I'll leave it there for now. Because -- if it didn't come about by chance, then what? (OK, I'll leave it there for now...)

I don't do philosophy. Evidence is my thing.

 

[YoursTrue]

I don't know. Not sure how much plainer I can express it.

OK.

I don't do philosophy. Evidence is my thing.

Reasoning might have been a better word for me to use than philosophy.

 

[YoursTrue]

Of the two, one involves known, familiar processes, the other's an unevidenced claim of magic.
Which would you judge more likely?

I don't believe it's an evidenced claim of magic. Because I don't believe it's magic.

 

[YoursTrue]

What's abstruse about natural selection? It seems a pretty simple concept to me.

Because the more I research what science says about these things it becomes very odd. Even the description 'natural selection' implies a choice.

 

[blü 2]

What's the dichotomy? Either life started by chance or it did not start by chance. Now you're saying maybe it did, maybe it didn't?

Apologies for coming late to this discussion.

Life started by chance, is the only credible hypothesis we have.

Otherwise, which god do you say was around three or four billion years ago and added some biochemistry? After all, the god of the bible doesn't appear in history till around 1500 BCE, some billions of years after the relevant event.

The gods of Sumer and of Egypt can be shown to have been around in about 4000 BCE and probably earlier, so was it one of them? Was it one of the gods we suspect were worshiped by the inhabitants of Çatulhöyük 9000 and more years ago?

Was it one of the gods or at least divinities that might (or might not) be inferred from red ochre burials many tens of thousands of years earlier than that?

In other words, what do you have by way of a coherent hypothesis that is at least as credible as the occurrence of life by chance?

 

[YoursTrue]

Of the two, one involves known, familiar processes, the other's an unevidenced claim of magic.
Which would you judge more likely?

If I believed in magic producing life, I might agree with you. But because I believe in God and His power does not mean that I believe in magic. The evidence I see now of a higher intelligent power (because I did not always believe this way) is that of life itself.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Even "natural selection" or "selection of the fittest" is primarily by chance

No, it's not.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

OK, so you think that life may not have come about by chance.

That's not what he said.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

eh -- sure -- (lol) about "not chance..." like basic chemistry not chance --

Basic chemistry is not "by chance".

Put a bunch of O and H atoms together in certain circumstances and it is a certainty it will bond into H2O.
Not "chance" / "random" at all

 

[Valjean]

I don't believe it's an evidenced claim of magic. Because I don't believe it's magic.

So by what physical mechanism does God create and manipulate things?

Because the more I research what science says about these things it becomes very odd. Even the description 'natural selection' implies a choice.

What choice? Who's choosing what?

 

[cladking]

However, since you're proposing it as a generality, what's an example of it being significantly relevant as a generality?

Seriously? You're asking for an example of why our fixation on seeing what we believe and not being able to see anomalies is relevant?

I'm sure I've mentioned that as surely as experiment drives theory, hypothesis drives experiment and the observation of anomalies drives hypothesis. Most human progress and our ability to make predictions and invent new technology springs from some having seen an anomaly in an event sometimes called serendipity. All of reality and human progress is events and the events that trigger progress are often called things like ideas or funerals.

I'm surprised you'd ask such a question.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I admit that trying to understand that can be fascinating. But it can be frustrating when you really want to discuss science and the evidence and others are fixated on Egyptologists and herbivorous beavers that farm fish or belief that they fully understand science when clearly the do not.

But you just can't have that discussion with many here. As we've agreed, when interacting with such people, there has to be another purpose, or why bother?

If I understand you correctly, you are not sure there is no God, is that right?

Yes, I am agnostic regarding gods, but not the one you call God.

The big difference is I believe consciousness drives change in species and you believe intelligence has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it except in higher species where it could play a small role in an individual's ability to adapt or be naturally selected.

I told you I was done with this discussion. It's not interesting to me any longer since you won't cooperate. I wasn't going to respond to your post until I found two others addressed to me.

Hint: if you enjoy discussions with others, you'll need to consider what's in it for them. It can't be only what you want to write. Some of it needs to be what they want you to address - to discuss what interests them, too. You steadfastly refused to do that.

 

[cladking]

Some of it needs to be what they want you to address - to discuss what interests them, too.

Pretty much what others wish to discuss IS what they believe and why they believe it. I understand this but you need to understand that I don't share their beliefs or their premises. In many cases I even dispute that their definitions are the best possible to understand the reality of nature or life as well as change in species. They don't even see they believe in magic because they apply terms consistent with reductionistic science and theory which is taken as gospel.

What people believe is the very basis of the "Theory of Evolution". I am attempting to lay bare where things went wrong in science and history. To correct some of these wrongs will require new definitions, new thinking, and experiment. It will require real theory based in real experiment and not the thinking of scientists straight out of the 1840's. It will almost certainly require hypothesis based on all existing experiment rather than the picking and choosing that goes on today.

I believe real experiment will show that ancient ideas and modern ideas that spring from them are more accurate than Darwin or any other modern hypotheses. I believe that the idea that nature obeys laws and that we know these laws will eventually be seen as magical thinking. The idea that reality is deterministic and the cosmos is like a clockwork is already shown to be false. The idea that reality can necessarily be reflected in any existing math is a superstition derived from the nature of both reality and mathematics to be logical. The concept that change in species can be understood by pondering the fossil record and ignoring the individual consciousness once associated with those fossils is superstition.

Homo omniscience is an embodiment of superstition.


That your results vary is hardly evidence that I am wrong.

 

[cladking]

To correct some of these wrongs will require new definitions, new thinking, and experiment. It will require real theory based in real experiment and not the thinking of scientists straight out of the 1840's.

Real experiment is easy enough. Select individuals based on behavior and attempt to breed a new species on that and try breeding the "same" new species using "survival of the fittest" as a control. For instance you can select flies that hide from a flyswatter by landing on the underside of surfaces to get a new species that almost always does this. My hypothesis is that in only a few generations you'll have upside down flies while other methods will be highly ineffective.

Or maybe contact your favorite Egyptologist and ask him how he knows ancient superstition made pyramid builders strong and wise and what experiments he performed to support it.

Ask an anthropologist what the effects would be on theory if it were shown that ancient people were not just like anthropologists. Ask him how they derived the "theory" that ancient people were just like anthropologists.

 

[blü 2]

Seriously? You're asking for an example of why our fixation on seeing what we believe and not being able to see anomalies is relevant?

No. I'm asking you to provide a contemporary example by a reputable scientist that was of any particular significance.

I asked you for this because I think the point you're making is trivial, and I'm inviting you to correct me by showing a real and substantial example within modern science.

 

[cladking]

No. I'm asking you to provide a contemporary example by a reputable scientist that was of any particular significance.

I asked you for this because I think the point you're making is trivial, and I'm inviting you to correct me by showing a real and substantial example within modern science.

I think you're asking me to show progress can't occur in science because even Peers always disagree.

I DO believe there is continuing progress in science DESPITE the fact that peers never agree and their models each differ. I believe progress comes DESPITE the fact every scientist has yet to have his own funeral. I believe progress comes whether or not ANY scientist can correctly predict the effect of a given event.

The effect of any individual being wrong is insignificant to human progress except to the degree he causes death, destruction, and mayhem. Every error is self correcting in the long run. Even massive errors like a belief in survival of the fittest will eventually fall by the wayside and our species will heal and move on.

The inability to see anomalies is universal. Seeing one is the exception for everyone. Even homo sapiens missed most of them because they could only see what they knew so anomalies appeared to them as a hole in their perception rather than a hole in their belief system.

For my next trick I'll prove the sky is blue. Then every time I refer to the sky I'll type out a couple paragraph explanation for why it's blue. Each of my posts will contain an infinite number of words that answer every question and leaves nothing to misunderstanding.

Why do so many believing I am damning science? Over and over i say it's the only game in town but apparently if you disagree with doctrine, any bit of what is perceived as doctrine, you become a confused and superstitious religious zealot who doesn't need argument or logic but rather exorcism.