Chance vs Intelligent design

[Brian2]

It is a strawman because you are pretending I make that claim, while I don't.






I don't need a response.
I have no need to defend claims that I'm not making.

When presented with a strawman, all I need to do is point it out.

OK we agree, chance does nothing.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

We live our little unintended lives and disappear and so what.

Yes, very possibly so. That seems to be the fate of most of reality - trees, stars, rivers, clouds. It's not difficult for me to accept that that might be the way it is. Reality is there for us to discover, not dictate.

We need a God to account for the parameters and the order and design and life and all those things we have in us that are not accountable any other way

No, we only need the laws and materials of physics. Adding gods adds nothing but something else that isn't accountable for in any way at all. You just add this god to your worldview and thing that that explains reality. If that god is real, its existence is inexplicable.

you use the rules of science and ignore evidence that points to a God but which cannot be tested empirically.

That's an incoherent thought. Evidence is what is evident to the senses, and is therefore empirically testable. The idea that one has evidence that isn't evident is incoherent.

In fact it is not even evidence for you.

If I can sense it, it is evidence for me.

You have a faith that empirical thinking is the way to get there and I look at all the evidence without automatically dismissing it.

Empiricism is the only path to truth. Ideas not derived from experience and testing are just guesses. You are the one with faith, not me. You look at the evidence and see what you have chosen by faith to believe it indicates. Believing is seeing if you let it be.

The prediction of the time of the Messiah's coming and what He would do is there in Daniel and other places and it is not necessarily there so that everyone would know exactly when it would happen and what exactly He would do (even though some knew it was about the right time and what He would do) but it was there mainly so that people could look at it afterwards and see that it had been predicted.

That's what makes the prediction so human. It lacks the specificity that only something with superhuman prescience could provide. It also lacks the specificity of scientific prophecy.

 

[Brian2]

Yeah, I actively try to not make bare claims with no evidence.

You should try it sometime.

I find that we all have our faith claims.

 

[Brian2]

No, we only need the laws and materials of physics. Adding gods adds nothing but something else that isn't accountable for in any way at all. You just add this god to your worldview and thing that that explains reality. If that god is real, its existence is inexplicable.

That we only need to laws and materials of physics is a statement of faith even if you might like it to be factual.
I don't need to explain everything like for example, God. God can give answers for all everything even if humans will never be able to.

That's an incoherent thought. Evidence is what is evident to the senses, and is therefore empirically testable. The idea that one has evidence that isn't evident is incoherent.

Some, actually most people find evidence for God even though it is not empirically testable. God is not of the universe, testable. God is immanent but transcendent at the same time.

Empiricism is the only path to truth. Ideas not derived from experience and testing are just guesses. You are the one with faith, not me. You look at the evidence and see what you have chosen by faith to believe it indicates. Believing is seeing if you let it be.

I don't find the idea of me having faith to be a criticism. I also don't believe just because I have guessed.

That's what makes the prediction so human. It lacks the specificity that only something with superhuman prescience could provide. It also lacks the specificity of scientific prophecy.

A Messiah who fulfills, on reflection, over 100 prophecies given over 1500 years is pretty good.
Critical thinking no doubt does not accept such a thing but accepts the idea that the story of Jesus was made up to fit the prophecies, and ignores the fact that many of the prophecies are not about the Messiah's life but about events that will happen outside, around the Messiah's life and show that Jesus was the true Messiah.

 

[Heyo]

Some things are that simple, esp for people who believe God created everything.
How do you see it?

What is your answer when questioned who created that statue?

 

[Alien826]

A first cause is a first cause. We can't go back indefinitely to earlier and earlier causes, that would mean we would have to go back forever and if we did that we could not be at this point in time yet. Forever is a very long time.
I don't think that natural causes has an explanation. But there are a lot of educated guesses all competing for the chance to be the winner.
Why do you think that natural causes seem to be doing pretty well.
Actually I see it as one of those questions that science can never answer for sure.

Agree on infinite regression, and agree we don't have an explanation using natural causes, or supernatural causes either for the same reason (infinite regress) that you cite.

What I said was "Given the existence of the universe though, natural causes seem to be doing pretty well as an explanation", by which I meant that natural causes are doing well in other areas.

Incidentally, I don't think that rules out god/s so long as you don't insist that they must have created the universe, be eternal, and so on. A god could (logically) be part of the universe, having been created at the same time, or developed over a period of time, or whatever.

If I were looking for a god, I would look inside the universe, now. Anything else would be of little consequence anyway.

 

[Alien826]

I strongly disagree.

there is every chance we will learn why something exists. Most everything that exists can already be put into some sort of context no matter how wrong we are except for time itself. Perhaps there is simply a relationship between time and energy. Perhaps this is a natural relationship and possibly it's the means by which God operates but we have no way to know at this time because our ignorance of most things is near perfect. How can unknown natural causes be said to be doing pretty well as an explanation?? We are merely seeing what we expect and believe. Since everything is explained by our beliefs we have a greatly inflated estimation of what we actually do know.

The natural causes we know about explain things we know about very well. It's a supposition that as we discover new "things" that will continue, but a reasonable supposition I think. Unless you tend to bet on horses with 33-1 odds?

We will never be able to prove or disprove the existence of things you believe are "supernatural" or travel back in time but we can certainly come to format how anything came into existence given sufficient time to invent hypothesis and experiment. Some questions are far beyond reductionistic science but I doubt that applies to this question.

I'm not sure what you are saying. We can determine it using scientific methods (hypothesis and experiment) but not "reductionistic" science (what ever that may mean)?

 

[Wandering Monk]

Right down to every atom, cell and seed, the universe is extremely finely tuned that it all has to be in perfect measure for life to exist at all.

No, not really. The vast expanse of space is nearly all hostile to life.

 

[gnostic]

Agree on infinite regression, and agree we don't have an explanation using natural causes, or supernatural causes either for the same reason (infinite regress) that you cite.

What I said was "Given the existence of the universe though, natural causes seem to be doing pretty well as an explanation", by which I meant that natural causes are doing well in other areas.

Incidentally, I don't think that rules out god/s so long as you don't insist that they must have created the universe, be eternal, and so on. A god could (logically) be part of the universe, having been created at the same time, or developed over a period of time, or whatever.

If I were looking for a god, I would look inside the universe, now. Anything else would be of little consequence anyway.

There have never been any god existing, before humans, and since every religions and cults and spiritualities are of human constructs, it is far more probable that the various deities are manmade or of human inventions, basing their gods their superstitions either as personification of nature (eg sun, moon, sea, rivers, mountains, rain, storm, etc) or that god’s resembling humans (eg that of human rulers with sceptre, crown & throne symbolizing power of monarchs, or that of human shepherd or that of a mother, etc), or that of depicting god as part human & part animal (eg the falcon-headed Horus or Ra, ram-headed Khnum, or cow-headed Hathor, or the winged goddess Artemis or Nike, etc).

Genesis 1 say, god made humans to resemble like him, but more likely humans created god in human’s image.

Even in the Bible, there have been imageries of angels with wings of some birds, or head of some sorts of animals, while the rest of bodies are “human” in form.

In Ezekiel 1, there are the four living creatures, most likely archangels or seraphs, with four wings and feet of calf, and weirder still each angel had one head with four faces, that of man, lion, bull & eagle.

Only humans would create god that resemble themselves, as being human-like, or that of animals that exist on Earth.

There are plenty of evidence that deities are all man-made.

 

[cladking]

The natural causes we know about explain things we know about very well. It's a supposition that as we discover new "things" that will continue, but a reasonable supposition I think. Unless you tend to bet on horses with 33-1 odds?

If we understand gravity so well then why don't we understand what causes it or how to turn it up or down? We think we understand many things but do not. We know we don't understand many fundamental things. But we see what we believe so we can't even see our own ignorance and we rarely even notice that every scientist has a different model and that in some instances none of these models explain observation. We don't see anomalies, we see what we believe.

I'm not sure what you are saying. We can determine it using scientific methods (hypothesis and experiment) but not "reductionistic" science (what ever that may mean)?

The nature of a tool determines what jobs it can do. A shovel might be used to dig a ditch or turn a screw but it can't be used as a vice or socket wrench. Reductionistic science is a mere tool which reduces things to experiment in terms of assumptions and definitions can determine the speed of gravity or the composition of the earth but it can't be used to make predictions in chaotic systems or to study the undefinable or anything else that can't be reduced to experiment and defined. Many things science appears to study aren't really studied at all because science has no meaning whatsoever outside experiment and definitions and some things can't be or have not yet been defined. Despite this obvious truism most people believe that things like "Evolution" and anthropology are well understood. We think we can understand change in species without defining consciousness or the nature of ancient people without any knowledge of any individual thinking or even his brain to study.

These things apply across the board in every branch of science. But far worse is we want to try to explain things in terms of one experiment when every experiment applies to everything at once just as every single thing in reality is intertwined in time and affects everything else in reality in the here and now! Just as an individual learns to exclude almost all stimuli as an infant in order to make sense of his world we exclude almost everything we know and every way in which things interact in order to make sense of it. Science does the same thing by reducing all of reality to an experiment so one tiny part of reality can be observed. And we usually see none of this because we are each living our beliefs rather than our knowledge. We have no choice because this is the way language programs our brains now days. It gives us strange ideas about the nature of life and consciousness which simply are not true but some might apply only to our species (homo omnisciencis) and only from limited perspectives.

It is possible that neither "random" nor "intelligence" even exist. Such things may never be soluble by modern science. Obviously some things seem to be random and some intelligence seems to exist but no experiment can show these because terms aren't even definable and probably never will be.

 

[cladking]

But far worse is we want to try to explain things in terms of one experiment when every experiment applies to everything at once just as every single thing in reality is intertwined in time and affects everything else in reality in the here and now!

Remember the butterfly in China causes a hurricane seven days later by having an effect in the here and now. This effect is tiny but it affects not only gross things like the speed of the air under its wings but it even has a concurrent (small time offset) tidal effect in Florida. Reality is most highly complex and we choose not to see it. It is confusing so we study hurricanes and try to predict their behavior. We try to reduce complexity to what we can understand.

 

[George-ananda]

Read that sentence out loud. Note the word "john CLAIMS"


Claims require evidence. Claims are not evidence.

Eyewitness Evidence is evidence (not proof) to me. Get it?

 

[cladking]

Eyewitness Evidence is evidence (not proof) to me. Get it?

Evidence for one specific interpretation can be wholly distinct from evidence for another interpretation. Even perspectives that share the same evidence can interpret that evidence differently.

We can not separate reality from our beliefs and knowledge.

 

[Alien826]

There are plenty of evidence that deities are all man-made.

I agree.

 

[Nakosis]

My wife can do a lot of damage and loves to do it when we are pulling things down. She is like a rock hurtling through space. She is not so good at the building side of things however. And if I had 1000 wives that would probably make the building side 1000 times worse without a lot of luck.

Yes humans can be pretty adapt at willful destruction.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Eyewitness Evidence is evidence (not proof) to me. Get it?

What eyewitness evidence? If you think that the Bible has that you would be mistaken. None of the Gospels are eyewitness evidence nor do they appear to be based upon them. Paul was never an eyewitness. So what evidence are you talking about?

 

[George-ananda]

What eyewitness evidence? If you think that the Bible has that you would be mistaken. None of the Gospels are eyewitness evidence nor do they appear to be based upon them. Paul was never an eyewitness. So what evidence are you talking about?

?? Who was talking about the Bible?? I was talking about modern people seeing ghosts.

 

[Subduction Zone]

?? Who was talking about the Bible?? I was talking about modern people seeing ghosts.

That is very very weak "eyewitness evidence". People are easily fooled. That is the sort of thing that can be recorded. Why can't people record such events?

And remember, seeing involves the eyes which involves light. If it is a real even then it should be recordable. If people are merely making errors based upon pareidolia then those observations cannot be recorded because they never happened.

 

[George-ananda]

That is very very weak "eyewitness evidence".

So your now stating that it is indeed EVIDENCE. That's the point I was arguing.

As for the strength or weakness, I would judge each person and situation separately. Some could be compelling.

 

[Subduction Zone]

So your now stating that it is indeed EVIDENCE. That's the point I was arguing.

As for the strength or weakness, I would judge each person and situation separately. Some could be compelling.

No, it is not the sort of "evidence" that is of any use. It may justify more research, but it is nowhere near enough to justify a belief. A belief based upon such weak evidence is irrational.

Do you understand that there are different levels of evidence? Some cannot be considered in certain circumstances. For example hearsay is not allowed in a court of law. But hearsay can be enough to justify an investigation by the police. They would need stronger evidence than that to charge someone, but if someone tried to bring up hearsay in a court of law the judge would shut him down.

The point is that you do not have enough evidence to justify a belief.