Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[YoursTrue]

Yup you are saying, but so what. I can say I went to the moon last week.

Old manuscripts of the book of Genesis show water, vegetation, and animals came about in that sequence.

 

[Pogo]

Old manuscripts of the book of Genesis show water, vegetation, and animals came about in that sequence.

Wow, growth preceded motility, I neer wood ha thunk et.

 

[YoursTrue]

As you and @leroy have been told innumerable times, no we don't have the video but we know start and endpoints and in this case with some more study we can assemble a pyramid. Your complaint that we don't have the video has to be contrasted with your explanation of Poof the Magic dragon dunnit. We know far more than you do if going by mechanistical information. Motes and Beams?

Not getting into a discussion of pyramids yet but seems clear to me that humans moved the pyramids even though we (humans) can't figure how yet. Same with Stonehenge, still a mystery. But (to me) clearly although astounding, it was done by human hands. I believe someday we will find out. The oldest manuscripts of Genesis say that there was Earth, water, then plants, followed by fish and other animals.

 

[YoursTrue]

Wow, growth preceded motility, I neer wood ha thunk et.

Well, thanks for discussion. Take care.

 

[John53]

What a first cell is remains a mystery despite two requests.

 

[Pogo]

Well, thanks for discussion. Take care.

Well I should give you credit for finally giving me some idea of what your alternate understanding of abiogenesis is. Water, vegetation, animal is by far more detail than anyone else has provided.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

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

So you don't give evidence and thus it is irrelevant in regards to your claim about God.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...

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.

We agree. Now I don't know @ratiocinator take on your claim.

 

[leroy]

It can have a reason, as I've said repeatedly, but your temporal arguments and options no longer apply, and we can ask for the reason for your God.


.

How are you defining reason ?

 

[ratiocinator]

Well is a continuous curve the sum of an infinite set of parts, or can it be divided into an infinite set of tiny parts.
I actually don't remember which way Leibniz and Newton argued it, but no, not entirely serious, but it is a diversion from some of the other "arguments" here.

Okay, take differentiation, most people who've ever studied it will know that if y = x², then dy/dx = 2x, but why? We are looking for the gradient of the curve y = x² at a single point, but a gradient is how much y changes as x changes, but neither change at all at one point, so we'd have 0/0 which is meaningless.

The approach is to start with a small change and then see what it approaches as we make the change smaller,

So, if we designate a small change by δ, then we have a gradient δy/δx. For y = x²,

δy/δx = ((x + δx)² - x²)/δx
= (x² + 2xδx + δx² - x²)/δx
= (2xδx + δx²)/δx
= 2x + δx.

Now, we can easily see that as we make δx smaller and smaller, the value approaches 2x.

Still haven't deciphered your sig

eta
There exists chi such that? am I at least on the road at all?

It would take a rather long post to explain, but this is what it is:

Axiom of infinity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ratiocinator]

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

As I keep explaining, the universe didn't start to exist, so your justification is wrong. And I didn't think I actually said that you were using special pleading, just that if we ditch time-based causation, and go to reasons, then we could ask the same of any God, and any excuse would be special pleading.

You seem to be unable or unwilling to get that the universe didn't start to exist, regardless of whether its past is infinite or not, so we haven't got that far yet.

 

[ratiocinator]

How are you defining reason ?

Is this that hard? I mean some explanation as to why the space-time (or any God you propose) exists. It's more about delving down, than going back in time to look for causes, for example,

Why does water have the properties it does?
Because of the chemistry of the water molecule.
Why do the molecules have those chemical properties?
...
Eventually you'd get down to quantum mechanics, then we don't really know.

The problem then is that if you posit a God to explain the existence of the universe and physical laws, we can still go on and ask why God exists...

 

[leroy]

I don't have a problem with any of that except that we do understand the mechanism in the main.

Well that (the 3 points) is all I am saying ....as you can note nothing controversial was said.....

Why do you not do the same for me and my arguments/claims?

I dont disagree with any of your claims on this topic (from this line of comments)

That's special pleading right there. Why do those properties matter in this context?

Because unlike God the universe begin to excist .... ths is a relevant difference given that premise 1 begin the KCA is limited to things that begin to excist ..... and this exception is not limited to God....anything that didn't begin is inmune to the conclusion of the KCA.... therefore no SP

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Is this that hard? I mean some explanation as to why the space-time (or any God you propose) exists. It's more about delving down, than going back in time to look for causes, for example,

Why does water have the properties it does?
Because of the chemistry of the water molecule.
Why do the molecules have those chemical properties?
...
Eventually you'd get down to quantum mechanics, then we don't really know.

The problem then is that if you posit a God to explain the existence of the universe and physical laws, we can still go on and ask why God exists...

Like the bold one.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Well that (the 3 points) is all I am saying ....as you can note nothing controversial was said.....

I dont disagree with any of your claims on this topic (from this line of comments)




Because unlike God the universe begin to excist .... ths is a relevant difference given that premise 1 begin the KCA is limited to things that begin to excist ..... and this exception is not limited to God....anything that didn't begin is inmune to the conclusion of the KCA.... therefore no SP

How do you know that the deduction is sound and that all the premises correspond to objective reality as such.
Look up sound for logical deductions if you have to.

 

[gnostic]

OK, thank you. I'll try again. Maybe I'm just not expressing myself well enough. So I'll try again. Let's see -- do you think scientists know how the first living cell came into existence? Maybe there are dead cells, I suppose there are.

We - as in biologists, particularly those in paleontology field, so i probably should use word “they” instead of “we” - so, I will begin again.

They already know that earlier phylum, orders and classes of the domain Bacteria, have existed billions of years before animals and plants and fungi.

Fossilisation of microorganisms of Bacteria and of Archaea are much harder to find, but they do exist, fossilised in microbial mats of stromatolites. Stromatolites are layers of sedimentary formations.

Among the oldest Precambrian stromatolites are found in Greenland and in Western Australia, as the oldest evidence of life. Because there were no free oxygen molecules in the earlier atmosphere - the prebiotic atmosphere - these bacteria & archaea would have been of sulfide-reducing microorganisms, meaning they were anaerobic organisms, that don’t required oxygen for growth and energy. They differed from most modern bacteria and archaea, as many of them are now aerobic.

The oldest stromatolites are about 3.7 billion years old.

What they don’t know yet, was how these cells in the first place. Biologists already know that every cell contained at the very least 4 essential biological macromolecules are nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates & lipids. Abiogenesis is as much as about these macromolecules.

That‘s what Abiogenesis are for, a hypothesis that would provide insights how the earliest cells form.

Abiogenesis required knowledge in chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, bacteriology, atmospheric chemistry, geochemistry, and anything else related to any of these fields.

 

[leroy]

Is this that hard? I mean some explanation as to why the space-time (or any God you propose) exists. It's more about delving down, than going back in time to look for causes, for example,

Why does water have the properties it does?
Because of the chemistry of the water molecule.
Why do the molecules have those chemical properties?
...
Eventually you'd get down to quantum mechanics, then we don't really know.

The problem then is that if you posit a God to explain the existence of the universe and physical laws, we can still go on and ask why God exists...

If something ether God or the universe or anything else "just is" .... would you consider that it has a reason?

With "just is" I mean the oposite of contingent

Is this that hard?

Yes it is hard to "guess" your own personal definition of words....
This is why I am asking

 

[shunyadragon]

No, Egyptians did it…….we just don’t know how

I have followed the research over the years and I believe we have a good explanation of how the Egyptians built the pyramids. All the questions have not been resolved, but ramps and other features found in the pyramids show the basics of using a ramp system used in the pyramids. Specialized carving and other crafts communities have been found near the pyramids.

 

[ratiocinator]

If something ether God or the universe or anything else "just is" .... would you consider that it has a reason?

With "just is" I mean the oposite of contingent

Obviously, if something genuinely 'just is', then it wouldn't have a reason. It would be a 'brute fact'.

And if you're about to bring in the idea of a 'necessary entity', I've had that argument a number of times and nobody has yet managed to make it make logical sense.

You might be interested in this: Why Is There Something, Rather Than Nothing? (pdf)

Of a 'necessary entity', the key point it makes is:

"The skeptics seem to be on firm ground; as Hume emphasized, there is no being whose non-existence would entail a logical contradiction, and we have no difficulty in conceiving of worlds in which no such being existed."

 

[ratiocinator]

Because unlike God the universe begin to excist ....

Yet again: if general relativity is a good model (and it has a perfect track record to date), then, no, the universe did not begin to exist, regardless of if it is past finite.

I should perhaps also point out, that as we get further and further back towards the supposed singularity, our theories get less and less reliable because we reach energies that are impossible to reproduce, and eventually both quantum theory and general relativity will become significant and we don't know how to unite them yet.

Hence, whether the universe is past finite is a wide open question that we simply don't know the answer to. All we have are tentative hypotheses.

So, even assuming a finite past is no more than speculation.