Life From Dirt?

[Brian2]

It is? How? Where? What evidence?

I have posted this before. If you cannot see how from this then you cannot see it.

 

[Brian2]

Why are you so desperate to have some purpose imposed upon you from some outside agent?

I would argue how things work are the most important questions we can ask about the world around us.

Both how things work and why they and we are here are important in their own way and can be obtained in different ways.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I don't know. We all just believe what we believe.

I hope that by "we", you really mean YOU and other people "of faith".
Because I most certainly do NOT "just" believe.

If someone believes a certain interpretation of the Bible just because that is the interpetation that can be debunked, that is just a play interpetation, and shows a desire to debunk the Bible than to see if the Bible is true.

Why do you ignore what I just explained to you about bible interpretations? I'm fairly confident the vast majority of atheists will agree with me there.
We atheists do NOT have an "interpretation" of the bible. We respond to the interpretations of bible believers. And yes, we are well aware that there are many many many different interpretations.

In fact, one might even say that there are about as many interpretations as their are christians.

Personally, I don't even care that much what the bible actually says. I care about what people believe when having these conversations.
I respond to claims. Anything other would be arguing a strawman and I actively try to not do that.

I do it in the opposite direction. If what appear to be facts means that the Bible is wrong I look for a different interpretation.

Yep.

You just acknowledged your dogmatic bias.
When facts show my beliefs wrong, guess what I do... I drop the beliefs. I don't try and clinge to them by "re-interpretation".

If there is none them the Bible is just wrong.

The evidence shows that this is not true.
The evidence shows that when you feel like you can NOT "re-interprete" the bible, then you assume the facts to be wrong.
As you do with solid established science like evolution theory. Argueably the best supported theory in literally all of science.

 

[Brian2]

Then it's not a reliable pathway to truth. Anything can be believed on faith.

True, we can end up believing rubbish but it is our only option in finding anything other than how the physical universe works.

 

[Brian2]

Why are you so desperate to have some purpose imposed upon you from some outside agent?

I would argue how things work are the most important questions we can ask about the world around us.

Both how things work and why they and we are here are important in their own way and can be obtained in different ways.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I was talking about this video:

Dr Tydell narrates bacteria animation - Google Search

I just intuited design. You might call it incredulity that it happened any other way.

Inuition is like common sense.
It only gets you so far. It can only deal with things you already know and understand. It can't tell you anything about what you don't know and understand.
When improperly applied, it will only result in false beliefs. Like it does in this case.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Both how things work and why they and we are here are important in their own way and can be obtained in different ways.

You keep repeating your claims and keep avoiding answering questions about them.

I can only repeat: what makes you think there is a "why" in the first place?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

True, we can end up believing rubbish

It's not merely an option.
It's as good as certain that you'll end up believing rubbish.

but it is our only option in finding anything other than how the physical universe works.

As Fox Mulder used to say: "I want to believe...."

 

[Brian2]

That's the only kind of reliable evidence there is. What good is it if it's not verifiable?

No good for you if you want certainty in all you believe I suppose.

Which god revelated itself to us and how do you know this?

You're right, I don't like faith because it's not a reliable pathway to truth. Anything can be (and is) believed on faith. It's not a reason for believing. It's an excuse to give when you don't have good reasons and good evidence for believing something, as you've demonstrated to us on many occasions.

The Bible God has revealed Himself to us throug Jesus. I know this by faith in God and His Word and what I seem to have learned in my years as a Christian.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No good for you if you want certainty in all you believe I suppose.

Not "certainty". Rather "rationality".

The Bible God has revealed Himself to us throug Jesus. I know this by faith in God and His Word and what I seem to have learned in my years as a Christian.

"know by faith" is a contradiction in terms.

 

[Brian2]

Science is more than speculation. When the science gets man to the moon and back or conquers polio, it has been confirmed as correct.

What's pure speculation are myths and unfalsifiable god claims.

I did not say science is not a good thing. Parts of it are speculation however.

We don't say that maybe biblical creationism is accurate, but if a god didn't create the kinds, maybe they evolved. We say that they evolved, and if there's a god, that how it did it.

That it all evolved from one life form is speculation.

Yes, and all but biblical literalists agree that those myths have been falsified, although they eschew language like debunked, refuted, and error. They like to say allegory and metaphor, but myth is neither as I explained (you didn't comment): "Incidentally, a myth is not an allegory or metaphor. The latter are specific literary forms which myth doesn't meet. They include substituting symbols for known people, objects, and events. Myths don't. They attempt to explain the unknown with free speculation." When you ignore comments like that, I assume that you either couldn't understand them, never looked at the words, or felt that you couldn't offer a counterargument.

That is one definition of myth I suppose. Myth does not always mean untrue however, it can mean a true story told in allegories or metaphors. That can also be other genres such as apocalyptic writing.

Also, the Hebrews clearly understood the seventh day to be a literal day that their god commanded them to emulate spending at rest.

God divided the creation into 6 days of work and 1 day of resting from work. God knew that would be good for us humans.

They are indistinguishable. We decide that something exists when it is detected.

If that is true then I must have detected it, but not by science.

I wonder why you think you're qualified to make the comment you did. I'm pretty sure that you know very little of what the science explains and the evidence it offers in support of those claims. That history is known in tremendous detail. Do you understand this graphic?

I sort of understand the graphic but also know it is speculation. It may be true, but may be not true, even if the maths is correct.

You're only looking at part of the problem. The alternative is equally counterintuitive - that time and existence had a beginning. As I see it, whatever the original substance of reality was, it either never began to exist or came into being uncaused from nothing. Unless you can think of another possibility, then whatever is the case, it seems that it must be one of these. Either by itself sounds ridiculous and fit to dismiss out of hand as you have done with one of them. But eliminating either without a sound argument generates a non sequitur, an unjustified leap of faith.

Time could come in and out of existence. God moves or does something and time exists. God stops and exists in timelessness.
Why can't a God cause the universe to exist?
How can anything that needs time to exist in, be infinitely old if it means that we would not be at this point in time yet?

That became a self-fulfilling prophecy when, in the 20th century, people made it happen knowing what was redicted.

It does not matter if it came about that way or not, it is prophesied and it has happened.

What I said is that empiricism is the only path to knowledge. Did you want to disagree? Maybe you don't mean what I do with the word knowledge.

You seem to know the history of the universe so I guess your standard for what you call knowledge is not high.

That's all you. You frame discussion as attack. You could learn a thing or two from those who you demean - from their demeanor. Nobody describes the faithful in such language, and we aren't offended by their beliefs or their disagreement with ours. When they get called out, it's for things like what you're doing here, and I will again now.

I've commented on your dehumanizing language, but as usual, there's no evidence you saw that - no comment on it, and no change in behavior. So, I guess you need to read this again: Using insect language is done specifically to dehumanize. It's what Hitler and now Trump have done with the use of the word vermin.

I've done it myself: "I wonder what insects that were in the shape of human beings and had the gift of language would do that the Republicans wouldn't do - a sort of a men-in-black scenario. What won't a MAGA Republican, which is 90% of them, do because it is immoral or un-American to him?"

And, I've referred to the Trump offspring as his larvae. My purpose in both cases was to demean these people and express moral outrage and contempt for who and what they are. How about you now?

All I did was say how I feel and what it feels like from my pov. You are projecting. But of course I don't feel lovey dovey about the flood of posts that overwhelm.
What does flood language imply I wonder?

You say that like it's a good thing. If something can only be believed by faith, it shouldn't be believed.

I say it like it's hard work to debunk all the BS that is spouted about the Bible. For some of us with faith that is just part of having that faith.

 

[Brian2]

Just to add here, general relativity itself provides a third answer, namely that the four-dimensional space-time manifold 'just is'. The manifold cannot itself be subject to time because time is a direction through it and not even one, unique direction either, all time-like directions will be seen as time from some frame of reference. It cannot, if this is the correct view, have 'come into being', there is no version of time, no time dimension along which this could have happened.

This sort of graphic appears in many articles about the BB:

This is a picture of a three directional object. There are, necessarily, a lot of simplifications that have gone into turning the mathematical model of four-dimensional space-time (which is non-Euclidean) into a three-dimensional object in Euclidean space, so there is much about it that shouldn't be taken seriously, but often is. However, there is one thing about it that very often isn't taken seriously but really should be. That is that it is an object. You can imagine being handed the three dimensional model and holding it in your hands. Now if you were to wonder how the model was made, would you be concentrating in the bit labelled 'Big Bang' at one end?

I would suggest, that you obviously wouldn't be. And that's what people should take seriously.

If general relativity is broadly right (and we can't be sure until we have unified it with quantum field theory), then, any talk of it "coming into existence" at the BB is nonsensical. If there is a reason for its existence at all, then you'd be looking at the problem in entirely the wrong way.

This is actually the case regardless of whether the BB means that the universe is finite in the past directions through it or not. Also worth noting that some hypotheses suggest that we can extent time 'back' through the BB but that it reverses its direction. Both directions away from the BB would be pointing in future directions.

Even if all this is wrong, it is logically self-consistent, and so cannot be dismissed as a possibility.

It doesn't seem reasonable if cause and effect are seen as meaningless.

 

[ratiocinator]

I just intuited design.

Intuition is very, very unreliable. This is easily shown even in fairly simply, everyday situations, like the Monty Hall problem or meet Mary. It gets even worse when we try to apply it to fundamentals. Relativity is counterintuitive and quantum mechanics even more so, you they work. They are telling us that human intuition is very blinkered.

This really isn't a surprise. It evolved to keep our ancestors safe in their environment, there is no reason at all to think it should be applicable to fundamentals.

 

[ratiocinator]

It doesn't seem reasonable if cause and effect are seen as meaningless.

Cause and effect is about the relationships between events* in space-time. It isn't even universally applicable in that setting and it loses all meaning when we talk about a cause for space-time. How can cause and effect work without time?

---

* In this context an 'event' is a point in space-time.

 

[Brian2]

What sort of evidence do you have, may I ask? Would you mind posting the links to your evidence if you've posted any or all of it in this or other threads? I'd appreciate it because I know it wouldn't help me to have to sift through all of your posts to discover the relevant ones. I've posted what I believe to be evidence for my spiritual beliefs and why I'm an agnostic who believes in the potential of gods existing, but I'm not convinced. I'm not an atheist, though.

And, because I asked you to offer links to your posts, specifying what evidence you have, I'd like to reciprocate by providing links to my posts.

I explained why I'm an agnostic in this post: Can we change our mind about what we believe?

I explained why I'm a spiritualist and why I believe that the supernatural phenomenon I've experienced since I was six years old is real in these posts:

(1) Post #61: Where are the Dead?

(2) Post #2,691: Life From Dirt?

(3) Post #2,623: Life From Dirt?

I don't have any evidence like you have or may be suggesting.
I believe in non human spirits and in human spirits. I don't know how much human spirits might be allowed to roam on the earth after death because I believe most of them end up in sheol/hades the place of the dead spirits until the resurrection and those who die in Christ, go to be with the Lord and then also are resurrected when Jesus returns.
When I speak of evidence for God and the supernatural I am referring to people like yourself and to the experiences of people in the Bible and to nature and that it seems to be designed.

 

[Brian2]

Reason, logic and maths are objective and unambiguous. If they end up in different places for different people, some people are making errors in their reasoning, logic or maths.
(And most people are notoriously bad at reason, logic and maths.)

Maths should end up in the same place for everyone but when it comes to reasoning and logic, people start in different places and have different presuppositions and so can end up in a different place.

 

[Brian2]

Reason, logic and maths are objective and unambiguous. If they end up in different places for different people, some people are making errors in their reasoning, logic or maths.
(And most people are notoriously bad at reason, logic and maths.)

Maths should end up in the same place for everyone but when it comes to reasoning and logic, people start in different places and have different presuppositions and so can end up in a different place.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That it all evolved from one life form is speculation.

Genetic facts aren't speculative.

 

[Brian2]

I sincerely doubt that. How would you properly test its tenets?

I'm not sure what you mean by tenets.
Different people have different expectations so I can't answer for everyone.
For me, if I follow what I perceive God is saying and good comes from it them I am further convinced.
If it seems God is answering prayers I am further convinced.
If I see answers to questions where I thought none existed, I am further convinced.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

nature and that it seems to be designed.

Here's an honest and interesting question for you....

What are the criteria by which you think you can "detect" design in things of unknown origins?