Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[cladking]

As an example, there is no evidence to support the claim that all change in all living things is sudden. I can't find any sense in claiming that in defiance of the facts.

Yet sudden change is the only thing observed. Life, death, birth etc etc... Dogs arose from wolves so fast that we don't even remember it

What has NEVER been shown is a gradual change in any species and much less that such an unevidenced gradual change was caused by survival of the fittest. Evidence suggests we are misinterpreting the fossil record. Without the existence of gradual change there is no basis for a belief in "survival of the fittest".

Attacking Darwin for having the temerity to live and work the 19th Century as if he had some choice in the matter doesn't make sense. It doesn't say anything about the theory or offer a valid reason to reject it.

But attacking me because Darwin was ignorant and superstitious makes perfect sense.

Unrealistic demands that every apple be exactly the same in order for them to be counted I find laughable.

It seems a lot of something from nothing.

And I suppose you believe all apple sauce is the same as well. A corporation can simply get a million apples and make 20,000 gallons of apple sauce. That's what machines are for. There will be no sauce made from cores, and peels and no one will notice worms or insecticides in the product.

The reality is things sort themselves naturally. No matter who or what machine picks the apples the first picked will be different than the last or the middle. There will be apples left on the ground which the deer will eat after they ferment. There will be debris all up and down the supply chain and apples and bits in various stages of destruction and decomposition will remain in the machinery which may or may not be cleaned before the next batch. The best apples from the sunny side of the tree will end up in the mix as surely as little green apples growing low on the north side.

Any human being can count apples but that doesn't make the total meaningful. It has no effect on the price of apples or applesauce. It has no effect on the taste or nutritional value of any apple anywhere. You can't make a macintosh out of a hedgeapple any more than a purse of a sow's ear. Bees don't count apple flowers and relay the number in their waggle dance but if they don't attend to the big picture there might be no apples to count come fall.

 

[cladking]

Bees don't count apple flowers and relay the number in their waggle dance but if they don't attend to the big picture there might be no apples to count come fall.

Maybe without the apple that fell on Newton we'd be living like it's 1699.

 

[cladking]

Maybe without the apple that fell on Newton we'd be living like it's 1699.

And his epitaph could never have been written;

"Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726."

We count apples to our own detriment.

Specialization works but it has led to a world with bad apples comprising contaminated applesauce and leading corporations which control government. It has led to waste and inefficiency as well as the widespread belief in miracles like that Newton could only have been born on Christmas day. It has led to a virtual dismissal of his work in alchemy and looking away from his work on translation.

Counting apples is a very worthy endeavor for specialists but who today even searches for the big picture outside of mathematics?

We owe everything to a bee that could see the big picture.

 

[cladking]

We owe everything to a bee that could see the big picture.

This IS the reality. Reality is far more highly complex and improbable than any miracle ever reported or imagined.

The reality is a butterfly in China blew a bee off course such that it stumbled upon apple blossoms and it communicated the experience so that an army of bees created Sir Isaac Newton. You can keep your science fiction and omniscience because I have some grasp of the improbability of reality. Having this grasp tells me I know nothing at all. It tells me that Darwin et al are just spouting a lot of simplistic nonsense on the same order of they mustta used ramps. It tells me that all hypothesis MUST be tested by experiment and that ALL theory is always tentative. It tells me to be suspicious of everything we take for granted because even common sense is dependent on assumptions.

It tells me that reductionistic science can be modified with computers using natural science based in logic rather than experiment.

It tells me there's a lot of history in the Bible and all the writing from sun addled bumpkins going back to 2800 BC.

Reality can't happen but it does every day. Deal with it. Denying the obvious because it is uncomfortable is not going to result in progress.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Sudden change is not universally observed for all change in all living things. Change is observed to vary in length. A cherry-picked list of things that are wrongly thought to be sudden or made so by purposefully using some plastic definition of sudden that is rendered useless for being so plastic is not evidence that all change in all living things is sudden.

I'm not even clear why someone would argue a position that is so easily and obviously falsified by the evidence and common sense. That persistence has not been shown to make any sense.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I believe many of these posts that just amount to claims without evidence and support, while being offered as fact, can be summed up as "nothing to see here".

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Kind of interesting claim that Egyptologists are bad for calling ancient Egyptians sun-addled and stinky-footed bumpkins (I don't believe they have), but OK to call scientists from 19th Century Europe that. And all because science uses logic, reason and evidence and cannot accept empty, unsupported claims based on what someone wants to believe about the world around us.

 

[shunyadragon]

Yet sudden change is the only thing observed. Life, death, birth etc etc... Dogs arose from wolves so fast that we don't even remember it

What has NEVER been shown is a gradual change in any species and much less that such an unevidenced gradual change was caused by survival of the fittest. Evidence suggests we are misinterpreting the fossil record. Without the existence of gradual change there is no basis for a belief in "survival of the fittest".

Science has shown billions of years of evolution, beyond any doubt, and you make the choice to ignore it

But attacking me because Darwin was ignorant and superstitious makes perfect sense.

We're attacking you, because your ignorant

And I suppose you believe all apple sauce is the same as well. A corporation can simply get a million apples and make 20,000 gallons of apple sauce. That's what machines are for. There will be no sauce made from cores, and peels and no one will notice worms or insecticides in the product.

Sort of meaninglessly true but not relevant

The reality is things sort themselves naturally.

True by natural evolution caused by changing environments.

No matter who or what machine picks the apples the first picked will be different than the last or the middle. There will be apples left on the ground which the deer will eat after they ferment. There will be debris all up and down the supply chain and apples and bits in various stages of destruction and decomposition will remain in the machinery which may or may not be cleaned before the next batch. The best apples from the sunny side of the tree will end up in the mix as surely as little green apples growing low on the north side.

Any human being can count apples but that doesn't make the total meaningful. It has no effect on the price of apples or applesauce. It has no effect on the taste or nutritional value of any apple anywhere. You can't make a macintosh out of a hedgeapple any more than a purse of a sow's ear. Bees don't count apple flowers and relay the number in their waggle dance but if they don't attend to the big picture there might be no apples to count come fall.

More meaningless trivia.

 

[John53]

Kind of interesting claim that Egyptologists are bad for calling ancient Egyptians sun-addled and stinky-footed bumpkins (I don't believe they have), but OK to call scientists from 19th Century Europe that. And all because science uses logic, reason and evidence and cannot accept empty, unsupported claims based on what someone wants to believe about the world around us.

And anyone that disagrees with them is attacking them. Seems some people forget it's ok to disagree on a debate forum.

 

[shunyadragon]

This IS the reality. Reality is far more highly complex and improbable than any miracle ever reported or imagined.

The reality is a butterfly in China blew a bee off course such that it stumbled upon apple blossoms and it communicated the experience so that an army of bees created Sir Isaac Newton. You can keep your science fiction and omniscience because I have some grasp of the improbability of reality. Having this grasp tells me I know nothing at all. It tells me that Darwin et al are just spouting a lot of simplistic nonsense on the same order of they mustta used ramps. It tells me that all hypothesis MUST be tested by experiment and that ALL theory is always tentative. It tells me to be suspicious of everything we take for granted because even common sense is dependent on assumptions.

It tells me that reductionistic science can be modified with computers using natural science based in logic rather than experiment.

It tells me there's a lot of history in the Bible and all the writing from sun addled bumpkins going back to 2800 BC.

Reality can't happen but it does every day. Deal with it. Denying the obvious because it is uncomfortable is not going to result in progress.

More foolish mythological trivia. Maybe D movie theme about butterflies and honey bees taking over the world.

 

[cladking]

Kind of interesting claim that Egyptologists are bad for calling ancient Egyptians sun-addled and stinky-footed bumpkins (I don't believe they have), but OK to call scientists from 19th Century Europe that.

Again, I believe superstition arose at the 'tower of babel". Ancient Language didn't even have a word that meant "thought", or "belief", or "superstition". Just as you can't build a pyramid without infrastructure or invent levitation ray guns without science and its infrastructure you also can't create religion, beliefs, and superstition without that infrastructure. I don't know why linguists and anthropologists et al don't understand such simple truisms or why they failed to notice the lack of vocabulary and breaking Zipf's Law but they still failed. It is a simple fact.

Since science is still ignorant of virtually everything and we are superstitious it's certainly accurate to say Darwin was ignorant and superstitious. We are very little better today and no less superstitious. Linguists are bad for not noticing the anomalies of ancient writing and not because they are ignorant and superstitious; this is our nature. Homo omnisciencis circularis rationatio. You don't blame the bee for stinging and you don't blame a man for superstition.

An Egyptologist can say three or four times in every paragraph that the Egyptians lacked any technology to lift stones other than ramps and that they believed in many Gods. This is just the way it is.

And all because science uses logic, reason and evidence and cannot accept empty, unsupported claims based on what someone wants to believe about the world around us.

Science uses only a methodology, definitions, axioms, and experiment. "Logic, reason, and evidence have absolutely no role in science other than the formulation of hypothesis and only individuals form hypotheses; not "science".

 

[shunyadragon]

Again, I believe superstition arose at the 'tower of babel".

Again? . . . The Tower of Babel is superstition and mythology

Ancient Language didn't even have a word that meant "thought", or "belief", or "superstition". Just as you can't build a pyramid without infrastructure or invent levitation ray guns without science and its infrastructure you also can't create religion, beliefs, and superstition without that infrastructure. I don't know why linguists and anthropologists et al don't understand such simple truisms or why they failed to notice the lack of vocabulary and breaking Zipf's Law but they still failed. It is a simple fact.

Your posts are devoid of simple facts.

Since science is still ignorant of virtually everything and we are superstitious it's certainly accurate to say Darwin was ignorant and superstitious. We are very little better today and no less superstitious. Linguists are bad for not noticing the anomalies of ancient writing and not because they are ignorant and superstitious; this is our nature. Homo omnisciencis circularis rationatio. You don't blame the bee for stinging and you don't blame a man for superstition.

An Egyptologist can say three or four times in every paragraph that the Egyptians lacked any technology to lift stones other than ramps and that they believed in many Gods. This is just the way it is.

Mindless name calling does not overcome your intentional ignorance of science and history.

Science uses only a methodology, definitions, axioms, and experiment. "Logic, reason, and evidence have absolutely no role in science other than the formulation of hypothesis and only individuals form hypotheses; not "science".

More misrepresentation of science

 

[shunyadragon]

Maybe without the apple that fell on Newton we'd be living like it's 1699.

You are living like it is 1000 BCE

 

[gnostic]

You are living like it is 1000 BCE

No, he preferred any time BEFORE 2000 BCE…but the further back in time, the better, like 40,000 years ago.

@cladking believes that the Palaeolithic Homo sapiens, who drawn abstract geometric or graphic symbols on cave walls, were all scientists.

 

[ratiocinator]

Sorry for delay, been busy with real life...

Given that you haven’t address my argument for why I think you argument fails (the archer example and the red greed balls example) ………….I will assume that you grant my objection

As I said, I have addressed it and if you can't see it by now, you never will.

Ok but even if you are correct the issue is that you are misrepresenting theist apologetics…………………….nobody except for very very very naïve theist claims “we don’t know therefore God did it”

I never said anything about "we don't know, therefore God did it."

Well we have to make our best guess based on what we have today……

Not if we don't have any evidence for any particular explanation, we don't.

…..what alternative do you suggest? Be skeptic about everything until we get absolute knowledge about everything?

False dichotomy and a stawman. I never said anything about "absolute knowledge".

All I am saying is that if you affirm that there are better explanations than design for say the fine tuning argument

I'm not really saying that there are better explanations, we don't have enough evidence to even make an educated guess.

It's maybe easier to think of more objections to design than the others and there are always the things we haven't thought of at all, that simply aren't on your list (or anybody else's).

 

[Eli G]

So explain to me: how did God create the universe?

The Bible says in Isaiah 40:26 that God's dynamic energy is so vast and His power so awe-inspiring that the stars heed His call.

Scientists have discovered that matter is concentrated energy. Theoretically, this means that if a person has all the necessary conditions to be able to concentrate as much energy as necessary and possible, that person could produce atoms and molecules.

That person is our Creator.

 

[ratiocinator]

Scientists have discovered that matter is concentrated energy.

No, they have not.

 

[AppieB]

The Bible says in Isaiah 40:26 that God's dynamic energy is so vast and His power so awe-inspiring that the stars heed His call.

Scientists have discovered that matter is concentrated energy. Theoretically, this means that if a person has all the necessary conditions to be able to concentrate as much energy as necessary and possible, that person could produce atoms and molecules.

That person is our Creator.

Well, you're saying he is powerful and all and could produce atoms and molecules. But how did he do it?

 

[Eli G]

Well, you're saying he is powerful and all and could produce atoms and molecules. But how did he do it?

Am I supposed to tell you how God created the Universe with his energy and power?

 

[AppieB]

Am I supposed to tell you how God created the Universe with his energy and power?

If not, then it's not much of an explanation.