Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[Pogo]

I don't know what the author meant yet. I'm assuming he meant capitalism but I could be wrong. I'll let you know if I continue reading or researching. I don't think I have attention deficit disorder but maybe I do. But I don't think so... but I'll let you know.

links would be polite and informative. just saying.

 

[Pogo]

I don't know what the author meant yet. I'm assuming he meant capitalism but I could be wrong. I'll let you know if I continue reading or researching. I don't think I have attention deficit disorder but maybe I do. But I don't think so... but I'll let you know.

And re the throwaway about ADHD, there is a lot more to learning disabilities than just attention deficit.
Some of them are not even considered disabilities but cultural limitations.

 

[YoursTrue]

Your last three posts are all relevant to the recent side trip on this thread about one of the major problems in discussing the OP.
We have discovered (no surprise) that we often have problems agreeing on even basically relevant words.
You used the word materialism, and more recently equated it with capitalism, I and others had two other understandings of the word in the evolution and science context and questioned ourselves which one you might have meant. Then you mentioned capitalism which I and I think others see as yet another variation on the basic understanding of the word.

The point of @Dan From Smithville's point and mine is there are a lot of ways we can go, but without mutually agreeing on the subject is that we don't wish to waste our time emulating Elmer Fudd to introduce yet another concept.

And you did bring up a point that was relevant.

I agree about agreeing on a subject. But sometimes questions varying seemingly from the subject or objecting to the way a theme may be discussed is not irrelevant.

 

[Pogo]

I agree about agreeing on a subject. But sometimes questions varying seemingly from the subject or objecting to the way a theme may be discussed is not irrelevant.

Another example of the problem, I did not use the word irrelevant, only the word relevant and irrelevant has multiple meanings including not part of the current discussion, your response indicates you are using the definition that indicates totally unrelated as opposed to my intention as not important to the current main discussion.

 

[YoursTrue]

links would be polite and informative. just saying.

Links are ok IF the person providing the link can explain what's in them.

 

[YoursTrue]

Another example of the problem, I did not use the word irrelevant, only the word relevant and irrelevant has multiple meanings including not part of the current discussion, your response indicates you are using the definition that indicates totally unrelated as opposed to my intention as not important to the current main discussion.

I did not say you used the word irrelevant. In a good discussion, imo, basic words don't need to be picked apart. I'm smiling because I'm thinking maybe you'll pick apart the phrase I used that "basic words don't need to be picked apart," that in order to really understand one another. OK, I figure that will be ok. (whatever...)

 

[Pogo]

Links are ok IF the person providing the link can explain what's in them.

That isn't the point, even if the link is something you don't completely understand it makes it possible for others to read it and then discuss it which may well help you with your understanding.

New understanding comes from new perspectives. Please play with us.

 

[Pogo]

I did not say you used the word irrelevant. In a good discussion, imo, basic words don't need to be picked apart. I'm smiling because I'm thinking maybe you'll pick apart the phrase I used that "basic words don't need to be picked apart," that in order to really understand one another. OK, I figure that will be ok. (whatever...)

Yes your smile is appropriate because you recognize the limits of your statement. Basic words should not be subject to misunderstandings, but as we are seeing they are. Not anyone's fault whether we ascribe it to the evolution of words or your might ascribe it to the tower of Babel. Either way it is not a situation that should be ignored and resolution will help us all attain whatever goals we have.

I am here to understand your personal position beyond the common platitudes of the large cultural group and hope you are really here to understand
my position as it differs from others as you should be able to see from recent interactions with @mikkel_the_dane and @ratiocinator.
I would like to assume that you are no more in agreement than I with everyone you consider a theist than I am with all atheists.

 

[Pogo]

It is the hope of some of us that He will make himself indubitably known.

Is indubitably your new substitute for a winking smilie? LOL

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

All I am saying is that at this point, we don’t know yet…which of these mechanisms were responsible and played an important role for the evolution of the eye…………. this is not supposed to be controversial ………. quite frankly it feels like people are just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing

But I just told you the mechanisms. You didn't disagree. Or agree.

No, people are not disagreeing just to disagree. They're correct. I was correct when I corrected you about not knowing the mechanism for biological evolution and pyramid building.

Your comment had been, "No we don’t know the mechanisms, we have some candidate mechanisms, but we don’t know which (if any) would work……this is true both for the eye and the pyramids. Nobody is talking about absolute detail."

You asked for the evidence and didn't require detail. Now you want more detail. You're a moving target, Leroy.

Yes but there are many known mechanisms that can produce “genetic variation.” maybe many other mechanisms that are yet to be discovered.

Now you're moving the goal post. Apparently, you do require details. Being vague like this and then objecting when the replies you wanted aren't the ones you were looking for because you asked your question imprecisely, and then blaming others for being deliberately argumentative isn't a good look for anybody.

the point that I am making is that there are no papers, because scientists don’t know yet, how the eye evolved.

But that's not what you wrote, which was, "refute me with a paper, not with your endless semantic tricks." You didn't come close to implying that you believed that there was no such paper. Maybe if you had, somebody would have refuted your actual point.

This writing style hurts you. In academic settings, language is generally precise and direct. Say what you mean in plain language, not sideways innuendo and implication. Nobody should have to be a mind reader to understand what you are actually saying or requesting. Tell them the first time.

The reason I gave is that unlike the universe, God didn’t begin to exist, this is why I am treating God differently. Hence no special pleading

And that argument has been refuted.

Where's your response to my refutation? Nowhere. I see all of the above words from you in response to my post, but not a single mention of that refutation, and now you're repeating the refuted claim. Where's the multiverse in your response above? Nowhere. Just waved away out of hand.

Where's your counterargument to the claim that the beginning of universal expansion does not mean that the universe began then or ever. Nowhere. Just waved away as well.

You're going in circles. You (we) can't make progress like this. To do that, you have to address refutations and either say that you see that now and agree or make the counterargument that you think falsifies the rebuttal. You require that of others - some variation of 'just quote the words you disagree with and say why.' Why don't you do that for others?

A neurologist told me regarding the eye that everything is connected to the brain.

You should have been able to decide that for yourself. What if the optic nerve delivered its message to the heart or spleen instead. How much do you think you would be seeing with those eyes?

I was reading about materialism developing as a perceived fundamental effect of evolution. I don't know what the author meant yet.

Then why mention it? And why can't you decide what materialism means in the context of your source? Is the subject more about the desire for things or about the relationship of matter to mind?

Links are ok IF the person providing the link can explain what's in them.

Or, it's OK if you're asking somebody to explain its meaning to you. Bring it here and I'll tell you which it is. My comment about rejecting orphan links related to using links in lieu of arguments as opposed to being used to support one's own argument, not to discussing questions one might have about its content.

 

[leroy]

How do you know that God didn't begin to exist?

Irrelevant, even if I am wrong it is still not special pleading

 

[leroy]

But I just told you the mechanisms. You didn't disagree. Or agree.

This is the type of semantics games that make conversations long , tedious and boring……. We simply mean different things when we say mechanism

1 Yes, organism evolve by genetic variation + natural selection (what you label as mechanisms)

2 There are many mechanisms that can produce genetic variation , perhaps including mechanisms that are yet to be discovered ………. We have random mutations, epigenetics, natural genetic engineering, transposons etc. (these are all mechanisms that produce genetic variation)

3 we don’t know which of these mechanism (related to point 2) are responsible for the evolution of the eye nor the role that each mechanism had

None of these 3 points is controversial…………..If you don’t explicitly disagree with any of these 3 points I will assume that you agree

IF you think that my usage of the term mechanism is incorrect, feel free to change the term for any other term that you find more convenient

 

[leroy]

Where's your response to my refutation? Nowhere. I see all of the above words from you in response to my post, but not a single mention of that refutation, and now you're repeating the refuted claim. Where's the multiverse in your response above? Nowhere. Just waved away out of hand.

Where's your counterargument to the claim that the beginning of universal expansion does not mean that the universe began then or ever. Nowhere. Just waved away as well.

You're going in circles. You (we) can't make progress like this. To do that, you have to address refutations and either say that you see that now and agree or make the counterargument that you think falsifies the rebuttal. You require that of others - some variation of 'just quote the words you disagree with and say why.' Why don't you do that for others?

Because the original objection was that I am making a special pleading fallacy………………..you then move to different objections without granting that I am not doing special pleading

It is not SP because I am arguing that the universe/multiverse, has properties that God doesn’t have ………… If I wrong then I am wrong, but it woudnt be SP

 

[Pogo]

Irrelevant, even if I am wrong it is still not special pleading

No it gets back to the other questionable premise that everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Special Pleading is your resolution to that which you cannot demonstrate.

 

[Pogo]

This is the type of semantics games that make conversations long , tedious and boring……. We simply mean different things when we say mechanism

1 Yes, organism evolve by genetic variation + natural selection (what you label as mechanisms)

2 There are many mechanisms that can produce genetic variation , perhaps including mechanisms that are yet to be discovered ………. We have random mutations, epigenetics, natural genetic engineering, transposons etc. (these are all mechanisms that produce genetic variation)

3 we don’t know which of these mechanism (related to point 2) are responsible for the evolution of the eye nor the role that each mechanism had

None of these 3 points is controversial…………..If you don’t explicitly disagree with any of these 3 points I will assume that you agree

IF you think that my usage of the term mechanism is incorrect, feel free to change the term for any other term that you find more convenient

How does lack of absolute knowledge negate your admission that we know that eyes are the result of evolution acting on organisms?
As you seem to know what is lacking in our knowledge, maybe you could deign to tell us so that we know better where to look.

 

[leroy]

What justification?

My justification is That unlike the universe God didn’t begin to exist………..even if my justification is wrong it is still not special pleading

 

[Pogo]

Because the original objection was that I am making a special pleading fallacy………………..you then move to different objections without granting that I am not doing special pleading

It is not SP because I am arguing that the universe/multiverse, has properties that God doesn’t have ………… If I wrong then I am wrong, but it woudnt be SP

It is your arguing that you know the properties of God versus whatever alternative without being able to demonstrate these properties that is literally special pleading.

If you are so sure, explain to us what special pleading is and why your position does not qualify?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

See that is my evidence

Good for you. I don't care.

………………your unwillingness to explain why it seems to you that I don’t accept mistakes

I've explained it. The post I'm responding to is indicative of why I think it seems you aren't able to admit errors. The fact that you are hanging onto this like a dog with a bone is evidence for that observation also.

…………………….is evidence supporting my claim that you are just making things up.

Be careful. Seriously.

 

[Pogo]

Irrelevant, even if I am wrong it is still not special pleading

Explain how it is not.

 

[gnostic]

So we have observed eternalism or is it just if we assume it...?

I am not sure you are aware of this or not.

The Big Bang models, of which there are currently 4 models, so far:

• from the original model of the 1920s (which would include the Friedmann Equations & the FLRW Metric, Redshift & the Cosmological Principle),
• to the 1948 model (which included the Primordial Nucleosynthesis, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation & the Hot Big Bang),
• to the present models (the Inflationary Model of the early 1980s, and the Lambda-CMD model of the late 1990s)…

…all these models have only PREDICTED and OBSERVED the Observable Universe.

The Observable Universe is what our technology - past & present - have managed to explain, postulate, predict and observe…so far. But astrophysicists don’t discount the probability that the universe could even be larger, and even older than current estimate. That estimate come from the data releases (in 2013 & 2015) of Planck probe (known as the Planck Surveyor, launched from 2009 to its deactivation in 2013) mapped the CMBR of the universe to be 13.798 billion years.

Planck had a much high resolution instruments than the earlier space telescopes, the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, from 2001 to 2010), and the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer, from 1989 to 1993). WMAP calculations have pointed the universe to be 13.772 billion years, in 2012 data release.

The Hubble Space Telescope (1990, still active at present) calculated the universe with estimates in 1999, between 9 & 14 billion years.

Prior to 1999, astrophysicists have estimated the age to be anywhere between 7 & 20 billion years.

All those estimates are based on observations and calculations, of the “observable universe”. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is the earliest phenomena that can be “observed”, and what are being observed occurred 378,000 years after the initial expansion event - the Big Bang. All that blackness that we observed in the visible light ranges, actually have most interesting information about the early universe, the universe before there were stars and galaxies.

The CMBR maps are images of the remnant heat or energy signatures of decoupled photons that have been highly redshifted towards the microwave spectrum; that heat or energy is called the Black Body Thermal Energy. When it was first predicted by Ralph Alpher back in 1948 with Robert Herman, the black body thermal energy was 5 K (kelvins), but with WMAP & Planck, this is now 2.725 K. Alpher & Herman were the ones who predicted CMBR, which was only discovered in 1964-65 by Arno Penzias & Robert Wilson.

Basically the Microwave Background was the result of the universe was cool enough to form neutral atoms, when electrons bonded with the nuclei of the light elements (mostly hydrogen, as well as helium and traces of lithium), but that also decoupled the photons, those photons are so redshifted that it can only be observed in microwave spectrum.

Those observations have pointed to the Universe. We currently don’t have technology to see beyond the observable universe, so we don’t know how much larger the universe really is, nor do we know how much older the universe is, and WE CERTAINLY DON’T KNOW IF THE UNIVERSE IS ETERNAL!

Those very theoretical models that proposed the eternal universe, are still in the hypothetical phase…there are currently no observations, hence no evidence, that the universe is eternal. We simply don’t know, which would mean these theoretical models are speculative at best.