The "something can't come from nothing" argument

[1robin]

Just kidding me me spelling is even worse?

By the way: my point is that naturalism explains why we have disagreements. And with "we" I include theists too. Because there isn't any moral giver.

1. It is at least as good and probably more consistent with our denial of moral truth than it's non-existence that we disagree.
2. Disagreement cannot ever indicate that truth does not exist. Since there is almost no issue which does not have massive disagreement your conclusions would annihilate 99% of what is believed to be true about science, history, legality, etc.....

Ok, but then the designer forgot to design commonality for what concerns morality. Or, at least, for a big part of them. And to say that commonality implies common design is begging the question. For I could say that no commonality implies more than one design and be a happy polytheist.

No he trumped it all by giving us all a moral conscience. That is why we all believe certain things are wrong even if we disagree on what they are. Agreeing some things are wrong only requires God to exist, picking which ones are gets in our way, is inconvenient, and restrictive so the principle is almost universal but it's conclusion may have a 20% range of disagreement or so. However almost no one acts as if secularism is actually true. We almost all grant certain moral truths, this is not only consistent with God it depends on it. So history as sorted as it is, is not on your side.

Well, even if my ipad was broken it could serve as a moral giver. All you have to do is declare that the common morality emanates from it, whereas the not common ones does not. You can also use it for prayers: it will answers them positevely with the same frequency.

Your ipad never had the capacity to ever create moral truth. You might as well look at a ruler to judge speed. I don't care what shape it is in it will never produce a moral fact that was not true before it existed. God is exactly the opposite. There is not even a fractional equality here. My source is the moral locus of the universe, yours can never, ever, produce morals it's self. This is circling the drain of irrelevance. The same way biological brains can't produce morality silicon brains are morally impotent as well causally speaking.

Even if it was a fringe, it accounts for what we observe. The competition doesn't. There is not a universal concept of "now" because there is not a universal concept of "simultaneity". Different observers have different presents. You can do experiments that prove that. So, that little we know is sufficient to adios tensed time.

I simply disagree. Tensed time predicts exactly what I find to be true, except for a few grey areas which are no more in your corner than mine. You may think you adios tensed time but I guaranty you still act as if it was true but that is a little more abstract than morality.

Ok. But going from relationship to faith looks a bit like a downgrade, doesn'it?

Probably but I think the well grounded person should have both. I started with spirituality and progressed to academia. Maybe one day I will have proper ratios of both. The bible certainly suggest we acquire both. I may just be in my intellectual phase at this point. But none of this is relevant here.

Here is the example I was looking for. The time between the first coming and the second is an actual infinity.

What? If your talking about Christ it is not only finite but signs are given to indicate it is close. Many have occurred, a few are left. Nothing allows infinity in the equation that I can think of. I of course do not know the day but every indication exists to suggest we have less than five hundred years left. I mean we are in the final spasms of revelation currently. It's myriad of predictions have either occurred in detail or are in the staging phase and can be seen.

Well, I was joking, too. i was born again myself, so I know how it felt. Same you all feels. Now, I am waiting to be dead ... again, lol.

Dang-it. The claim you just made is about the most irrational claim I am aware of. Can you elaborate? Every single time I hear it, after a post or two of questions it becomes apparent it was a flawed premise, but I have to allow it in the next case regardless. You claim to have been born again and saved by Christ, correct?

i lost context. Skip.

I concur.

The kern does not change. We all come from fish (not necessarily tuna). Unless it is Ok for you to belong to a fringe, in this case

The Kern? What does that mean, maybe it's a Swedish thing? I am not really in a fringe. Most the of the US (I have no idea about abroad) is very reluctant to believe we are descendant of fish, and even those that do are in such deep faith territory as to be a fringe of certainty, regardless. IOW the claims about our coming from fish has such a high degree of un-know ability I would not feel compelled to go long lock stock and barrel if everyone agreed with it. I am far more justified in going along with the billions of claims to the miraculous. Those are knowable.

Ok. I believe that time is not tensed the same way I believe the sun curves time-space in its neighborhood. I will stop believe both of them when relativity will be found to be wrong.

It is not necessary to show relativity wrong to adopt (or I should say not reject) tensed time. Scholars who are trained in relativity also accept tensed time. I see we have gone full circle from theoretical physics, then history, then a little theology, then right back to theoretical physics. I find it bizarre the only place your side's claims find purchase in the least understood areas. I think there are very few who really understand relativity and even less the quantum, and no one concerning the multiverse. It is just not a place where I feel certainty lies, and if there was certainty there would still be few that could acquire it. If you were managing a Quantum project what percentage of the population would be hirable for the science part you think?

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

Well, it does end debate. And I also don't know how it could be wrong. i think it not true...not even wrong.

Your premise does not support your conclusion. I do not like divine command theory, yet I find it to be flawless, so have adopted it. Now that has symmetry and consistency where yours did not.

I don't see how picking a location can turn the rest of the points into a finite set. How many of them are there? Anf if they are finite, what prevents me from picking a location between two contigous ones? I think this brings more absurdities.

I did not say a location. I said a value that has relevance to the proposed infinity. For example if you said that ruler was infinitely long (or as you have said that any two points are infinitely far apart) then it you must assign distance values to any units you use to prove it to be the case, but the moment you assign real values to them they instantly are of no use in finding a infinite. IOW you must show any two points have an infinite number of finite sections within them. You will never ever do that with real values in a real world. You have an unusual habit of crediting models or abstract ideas with more reality than what they represent. You seem to think an abstract infinite number of points in your head that you invent to place between two points have something to do with distance or length. They don't.
The instant you make them into real things with real dimensions they instantly return a finite distance value. You think your speculating about crossing an infinite number of potential abstract points equates to an infinite distance and it does not. The same would be true of any units, for any measurement, at any place in the real universe. You can't even show they possibly existed in the singularity and it only gets worse from that point on.

This is easy. You can use one simple projection operation.

Your confidence and proclamations of what no one has ever done nor ever could do in the actual world is quite bizarre. Produce the thing instead of telling me you easily could have. I want an actual infinite. It does not even have to be infinite just potentially so. Not an idea but a reality that exists. Its no wonder multiverse found such a home with you.

Well, apart from the infinity of points in an interval of space, all of space could be infinite. If you ask the average cosmologist, she will tell you that we know space is flat, but we don't know if it is infinite. She will never tell you: we know it is finite because concrete infinities cannot exist.

There is no actual infinity of points with any actual size. The infinity of points exists as an idea and pertains to abstract math not reality. I do not think the average cosmologist is a female, do you? Not that I care one way or the other. As long as I do not have to depend on a women to carry me out of a battle zone I don's care what they do. Regardless the moment you make that point a reality you instantly make it of finite dimension and your span only contains a finite number of them. So no infinity is crossed, no actual infinity has been found, you still have produced what I requested. You ought to let it go because you never will.

Now, you might ask: how is it possible that the same scientists who postulate a moment in time in which the Universe is very small and finite, are not sure whether it is infinite?

I think the overwhelming bulk of scientists would say the universe is finite as well as everything in it. Of course many scientists especially in this modern grant driven dynamic do not stop at what can be actually found, but will venture anywhere either money or attention can be had. I really have no problem with them doing it but what they produce out there in that speculative void of faith should never be claimed as mainstream of reliable. That is where we really go wrong.

The anwer to this riddle is left as a simple exercise.

There is no riddle I can see. There is only what could be true of an idea and what has shown to be true of reality in every single observation ever made.

This is not an out, lol. No sane person would object to abstract infinities. And I already made an example of infinities in nature. Unless you prove to me that an interval of space does not contain infinite points without the ability to add one all the time. But if you want, we can use the heavy weapons of quantum electrodynamics and Feynman integrals over the (infinite) stories of a particle.

If they want reliable concrete realities they most certainly would object to abstract exercises. If I am dying of cancer, I do not want a theory about how a cancer drug could work, I want one that does. If I am an investor I might find a very reliable theory worthwhile, only if I am an academic would abstract concepts have more relevance than reality. You have not made a reference to any actual infinite. Or of you did I completely missed it. There is not one known to the entire scope of human experience.

Stupid comment from my side. Skip.

Skipper deployed.

Still. I prefer this than being teleported in the past. I might be selfish, but i would not exchange threats of global extinction for an expected average 30 years of life for me and my kids.

What you prefer is not relevant to the issues at hand. Interesting discussion maybe but not persuasive here.

I might consider being teleported to the time when people lived 600 years or something, though, as long as I get a ticket for that big boat

I rarely do this but despite Holly wood screwing up the most simplistic scripture for about the millionth time in the interest of prophets you might want to see Noah. It is not accurate but might provoke interest. I know quite a few middle aged people who have no interest in taking on a decade or two of the most unproductive and least secure years of our lives. I think about 70 is the average. The way our SS and Medicare is being expended it might be more merciful to not live from 70-9?. Regardless this is a bit off topic.

Well, if you believe that, i hope I will never be able to prove you wrong. Let's hope that the temple will be finished by then (did they start already?). You know, to reduce God's risks of entering a contradictory deadlock. Sorry guys, the temple is not there yet, or has been destroyed by a Hamas rocket (if they are not stupid that is where I would aim). I cannot help you, for I cannot contradict my prophecies

No, worse than money they have that awful Mosque to deal with. It will take a miracle to even begin but we are far closer than we were. If God exist I do not suppose chronology will impede him.

By the way, I am for the more secular side, obviously. I actually think Israel is a bit too soft. If Liechtenstein threw rockets to Switzerland or Germany, it would probably cease to exist (without God's help).

Todays Israel is extremely secular. Liechtenstein nor Switzerland are not at the spiritual vortex of a war between Satan and God. Whatever dynamics apply other places don't seem to work in Israel. Looking at Israel's history and especially many of the most important stats in modern times and you will quickly see that something unusual is going on with the Jews. I can give you endless lists of stats hat show them at the top per capita in just about every meaningful statistic there is despite having to spend more per person on defense than any other nation on Earth. Whether good or bad they are extraordinary, but I would argue for good in about 90% of cases.

 

[idav]

The Kern? What does that mean, maybe it's a Swedish thing? I am not really in a fringe. Most the of the US (I have no idea about abroad) is very reluctant to believe we are descendant of fish, and even those that do are in such deep faith territory as to be a fringe of certainty, regardless. IOW the claims about our coming from fish has such a high degree of un-know ability I would not feel compelled to go long lock stock and barrel if everyone agreed with it. I am far more justified in going along with the billions of claims to the miraculous. Those are knowable.

Faith based claims are not knowable or else then it isn't faith based. The scientists studying this stuff didn't just make a guess and say, oh humans come from fish. No there is tons of evidence for it, people wouldn't just make that stuff up.

Creationists want evolution to work intelligently but it does not. If evolution were intelligent, we would have several humanoid intelligence's from mammals and other types of species. Since it seems so difficult to get the degree of intelligence as found in humans, it appears evolution is not doing it intelligently. Else we would have several highly intelligent kinds instead of just apes and humans.

 

[1robin]

Ok.

Ok^2

I am in the same percentage that covers the scientists studying these issues. They might have missed the note that they are losing their time.

They are wasting time regardless. Evolution even if true is the most unproductive theory ever. You do not need it for anything except to argue about. Your appealing to popularity despite it having doomed so many in the past. However since popularity is a common foundation I will not reject it as your side does with claims I make whether they rely on popularity or not. I personally find the popularity about what has been experienced meaningful but about an idea not so much.

I don't know. Maybe tuna fish like to ingest prophets like Jonah. Maybe your sickness was caused by one of those, who knows? - I was being, or trying to be facietous -

Oh I get it. Sort of. Whatever happened to Jonah was a very rare exception. The bible says God specially prepared a fish for the roll, so appeals to the rule just do not apply. What sickness do you reference? Did you hear ISUS destroyed Jonah's tomb? I don't care, but why would they do that? I doubt he was ever in it.

A finite Universe? Are you sure it is finite? And that it comes from nothing? Whatever "coming from" means in the context of cosmology.

No I am not sure but I have almost al evidence in my corner.

Still willing to get that one way ticket to the past?

Depends. I would have some caveats I think. I would take 1940 US to 2000+ US any day.

Unknowable knowledge? How can it be knoweledge if it is unknowable?

I am not being semantically rigorous here. I meant data that exist but is not available for view.

I am not aware of a lot of aqueducts in ancient Israel.

They exist and are some of the oldest but I did not list them. You can still see them today if you want. My family went there and they actually toured them.

So, if everybody is rebelling against God, then I am rebelling too. How am I paying this?

It depends on many things how evident the price is. Despite what you may think almost every aspect of your life has been enriched by Christianity. You may not have lost things because of that that would be lost if it was not the case. For example without God humans are not equal so slavery can't be condemned by fact, human life has no actual sanctity so you get abortion, etc...., Morals once untethered to objective foundations are as flawed as human history shows. If that is not enough then just look at Stalin's Russia where religion was eradicated as much as anywhere in history. Is the cost not obvious? Plus if we fast forwarded a hundred years you may very well have lost everything God comes with. No love, no peace, no meaning, no purpose, possibly not even any existence. I hope that does not occur but I have no reason to doubt it will. Currently most of what you would lack in Sweden would be things you would not admit exist like true piece, true eternal hope, and true spiritual security.

Spiritual problems? Can you make an example of a spiritual problem?

Separation from God is probably by far the worst of them. Everything else flows from that.

Good to know that popes communication channel with God is not disturbed. Do you really think God would really say something so silly? This is in the same league of using garlic to fight vampires.

Actually it was probably luck as the Popes are no examples of revelation constancy. They excommunicated each other far to much to believe that. I just gave some interesting historical details without any conclusion.

Take your time.

I am actually staling hoping you will forget it. These issues take a lot more time than they deserve and usually wind up with my having to just grant scientific claims I cannot meaningfully evaluate. For example a crystal was said to be maximum entropy by physicists. I have no idea why. I do want to remind of at least one explanation that will account for hydrological sorting. Nature can create less than equilibrium complexity. I believe you will find I stated that long before your example. I did not state it but when I asked for examples I was thinking of the type or level of complexity life exhibits.

It is photoshop. It is meant to represent introspection, lol.

Maybe atheism is the Photoshop of reality.

Burned out by thermodynamics?

Yeah, pretty good language use, eh.

Forgotten. Until you use it as an argument, again.

I am sure I will. I am my own worst enemy.

So, how do you contemplate the possibility that all scientists might have missed obvious violations of it?

I didn't. I did not have to guess when Einstein says that thermodynamics is the most immutable natural law in existence.

I hope you indulge my humor but you remind me of that guy driving against the traffic on the NJ turnpike and asking himself why everybody else is driving in the wrong direction.

If over the horizon behind me Godzilla was smashing cars as fast as he could it might be accurate. Almost al science is on my side. It is only in the most ambiguous and little understood areas where I find anyone going the other way and it is far less traffic than you describe.

Ok.

Just the unreliability of applied science alone causes me to lose sleep on a nightly basis. If we can get it to work here and now so often I have almost no confidence in details about what occurred a billion years ago.
No one who works in applied science should have much confidence in theoretical science until it has become applied for decades or more.

It is very clear what mathematics to use.

I am not a quantum physicist but that is what they claim to be true. Let me ask you this. If a benzene atom disappears from location A and another appears in location B and if we assume they are related then what mathematics is used? All the math I was taught says that makes no sense, not that I think it does not occur.

The problem with that is that pure randomness seems to exist. At least it seems to give evidence of it by showing interfering patterns of all different, equally probable, possible paths of a particle. And you do not need to be MIT to know that.

Where does it exist and how could you know if it did? It does not exist in any random number generators, at any casino, in any instrument? I think your getting thought experiments and reality confused again. I feel an appeal to the deep end of science on it's way.

A. Guth is also an author of the tehorem. For some reason, he believes today that the Universe is eternal.

Actually I think that has been resolved the other way around. I have heard how it transpired but not for a while. Regardless Guth does not cancel Vilenkin and Vilenkin has made his views far more emphatically than Guth. Vilenkin went through most of the alternate hail Mary theories and specifically defeated them one by one. I only wished to show my side is intellectually grounded as well as yours if not vastly more so.

Well, you should say that you believe that. Wrongly. Arrows of time are set by thermodynamics conditions. And what does "beginning" mean without an arrow of time?

That may be true. There may be some faith involved but it's necessity is minute compared with it's opposite.

Well, you are subdividing it the moment you mention STDs as a reason against it. For natural born lesbians who do not mess around with men seem to be immune from all that.

Not unless I restricted it by that. I literally cannot post all the ways homosexuality is bad. In fact many of them I heard from a Navy Corpsman and would not state in public to begin with. I limited nothing but used it only as an example among countless others.

By the way, do you think that honosexuality is a choice?

I think so but do not know. I have heard massive studies that suggest both conclusions and gave it up for now as it is to politically charged to get reliable data from. I ran into one unexpected view. That it was un-chosen but still a genetic flaw. Had to do with chemical flaws in a women who has multiple kids.

My point. What is morally acceptable depends on culture and time. These separation between Israel and the rest of the world plus old and new covenants just confirms that.

That is horrible. How can murder be right. If it can then why was Hitler wrong, would he have been right in another time. The foundations for morality are either objective or non-existent. Your talking more about legality or ethics and just about everyone separates the two from morality, from the Hebrews and Greeks to Lord Lyndhurst.

Ach. Those pesky 21st century life saving sensors. I wonder what that pope would have done when all fire sensors go off, lol..maybe you will never get sick either if you stay put, who knows?

This one in particular has gone off so often for no reason that no one cares any more. I only had to go so I could put on a F-15 cranium I have laying around. I never even thought fire for a second. I used to work on them and they malfunctioned at least a thousand times more often than performed as advertised. I am not against them but am against science having a reputation it does not deserve.

 

[1robin]

And so can any moral person whether he believes in some god or not.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't need to refer to your god or any god in particular for moral people to understand that what it says is moral and correct. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It never fails. If you review the maybe 1000 posts I have made about morality I mention over and over again the fact that even when spelled out up front with directions how to avoid it the atheist is going to make a epistemological response to an ontological point. I nor any of my debating hero's can seem to form any weapon that can stop them. Oh well, let it be.



Both I and an atheist can think murder is wrong. I have never claimed otherwise and that is what your response suggests but it has nothing to with what I claim. I claim that only given God is do not murder morally true. An atheist can invent that code by preference or opinion but unless God exists it is not true. I can posit it as an absolute fact in my world view. So I would be justified by fact and the atheist would be guessing without any hope he could ever be right because there is no right to be unless God exists. Now this is not that bad if you have a atheist who happens to hold a moral standards similar to what God makes true, but when he invents an alternate moral view like Stalin did then without God Stalin's view is just as right as the atheists because both are opinions based in preference and no objective standard exists to judge. Do you see the difference between ontology and epistemology? One is about how I arrive at a conclusion and the other is about whether that conclusion is true.

 

[1robin]

Faith based claims are not knowable or else then it isn't faith based. The scientists studying this stuff didn't just make a guess and say, oh humans come from fish. No there is tons of evidence for it, people wouldn't just make that stuff up.

That is not exactly accurate. Faith is a reasoned conclusion. Most of what we all believe is faith. The difference is whether we admit it or recognize it. A large portion of my physics text was faith based reasoned conclusions. Nothing wrong with that. I also use faith as a label as common ground with others and most of my belief is faith but the primary claim is not. The core claim of Christianity is salvation based on Christ existence through being born again. Now that one I know. Or at least I am certain of it as anything else I think.

Creationists want evolution to work intelligently but it does not. If evolution were intelligent, we would have several humanoid intelligence's from mammals and other types of species. Since it seems so difficult to get the degree of intelligence as found in humans, it appears evolution is not doing it intelligently. Else we would have several highly intelligent kinds instead of just apes and humans.

If I was a strict creationists I would not care what evolution is said to do. However most of us are not. We are hybrids of some type. I include evolution and creation but I have no way to determine where they end or start except for some initial things like abiogenesis. Regardless I never expect natural law to act as if it had intent and I know of no one who does. That is the problem we find with it. It seem to require intent which it would not without God. I will give an analogy. If a person won a lottery you would say the were very lucky but it is just math or probability, someone was going to win. If the same man won every lottery ever had every sane human would instantly think agency, intent, and intelligence is behind it. I do not know how it occurred but that would never happen without intent. That is how see evolution. It exists but as whole only intent makes it sensible.


Just yesterday I heard a study about just the probability to get a human from another primate. I am not a biologist but they were. It was numbers worse than I had ever heard of. It was on the order of 1 in 10^120,000^140,000,000.

 

[metis]

I wonder what the odds would have been 50 years ago if someone proposed that on this date at this time on the "internet" on a "website" entitled "Religious Forums" on a thread entitled "The 'something can't come from nothing' argument" with I having the screen-name of "metis"?

The point is that just because something seemingly has long odds doesn't amount to much of anything, especially that once it happens, the odds are then 1:1.

 

[Sapiens]

You can't look at the odds retroactively and draw conclusions, something had to happen,that has a probability of 1.0, something did happen, that has a probability of 1.0, what did happen, however unlikely when view prospectively, it is what happened, with a now probability of 1.0.

 

[ArtieE]

An atheist can invent that code by preference or opinion but unless God exists it is not true. I can posit it as an absolute fact in my world view. So I would be justified by fact and the atheist would be guessing without any hope he could ever be right because there is no right to be unless God exists.

OK, I am an atheist and I find everything in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be morally correct. But I would like to have that confirmed by your God since without that confirmation I would only be guessing. So please get us this confirmation from your god preferably in writing.

 

[Sapiens]

If your God can't manage normal writing, I'll take stone tablets or a burning bush, or a youtube video.

 

[idav]

That is not exactly accurate. Faith is a reasoned conclusion. Most of what we all believe is faith. The difference is whether we admit it or recognize it. A large portion of my physics text was faith based reasoned conclusions. Nothing wrong with that. I also use faith as a label as common ground with others and most of my belief is faith but the primary claim is not. The core claim of Christianity is salvation based on Christ existence through being born again. Now that one I know. Or at least I am certain of it as anything else I think.

If I was a strict creationists I would not care what evolution is said to do. However most of us are not. We are hybrids of some type. I include evolution and creation but I have no way to determine where they end or start except for some initial things like abiogenesis. Regardless I never expect natural law to act as if it had intent and I know of no one who does. That is the problem we find with it. It seem to require intent which it would not without God. I will give an analogy. If a person won a lottery you would say the were very lucky but it is just math or probability, someone was going to win. If the same man won every lottery ever had every sane human would instantly think agency, intent, and intelligence is behind it. I do not know how it occurred but that would never happen without intent. That is how see evolution. It exists but as whole only intent makes it sensible.


Just yesterday I heard a study about just the probability to get a human from another primate. I am not a biologist but they were. It was numbers worse than I had ever heard of. It was on the order of 1 in 10^120,000^140,000,000.

Evolution seems to have intent because lifeforms do. At some point life had intent but not in the beginning before abiogenesis? If not since the beginning then when? Everything that acts does so for reasons. To say nature doesn't have intent is to say nature doesn't use cause and effect, causes are the reasons, the intents.

 

[1robin]

Evolution seems to have intent because lifeforms do. At some point life had intent but not in the beginning before abiogenesis? If not since the beginning then when? Everything that acts does so for reasons. To say nature doesn't have intent is to say nature doesn't use cause and effect, causes are the reasons, the intents.

No, evolution seems to have intent because it defies astronomical goal orientated odds over and over and over. It has nothing to do with creatures having intent. When something hits a bulls eye so small you can not see it in a universe of possibilities only the irrational would not suspect intelligent intent. Abiogenesis is one of the most astronomically improbable events possible. It has been said by many secular scholars to be less likely than throwing a dart and hitting an intended single atoms on the other side of he universe. Even with intent that is almost impossible. I drew on no references to actions in my argument, only results that only come as the result of them. Evolution put a trillion arrows in the bulls eye from across the universe. In fact it did so without any evidence for a bow or arrows existing to begin with. Is that best explained by agency or random luck?

 

[1robin]

If your God can't manage normal writing, I'll take stone tablets or a burning bush, or a youtube video.

I am sure you do so already.

His only guarantee was pure revelation. No creedal statement I ever heard guarantees human copying. Regardless compared with any similar work of any type the bible surpasses them in every category by astronomical orders of magnitude. Despite your having no reason to demand human scribes be perfect you reject it's approach to being near perfect anyway without another example of that from human agency of any kind. I can get specific but in general on a 1 - 1000 scale (1000 being perfect) of being textually accurate the bible is a 950 and number two is at best 400 (this would be the history of the Peloponnesian wars) and number three is so low as to be negligible. How do you explain that by human agency alone? Faith arguments are not certainties. They are to the best explanation. I submit that divine agency best explains the almost divine accuracy of even human agency for this ancient text alone. Can you beat it?

 

[1robin]

OK, I am an atheist and I find everything in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be morally correct. But I would like to have that confirmed by your God since without that confirmation I would only be guessing. So please get us this confirmation from your god preferably in writing.

No, you find it agreeable to you. You have no potential to judge it's correctness because you have no objective standard to compare it to.

Give me the list of the declarations and I will see what I can do. I also need the foundations that group used as humanism is founded in many way in Christianity. I need they say X is moral and they know this by Y to do as requested.

 

[1robin]

I wonder what the odds would have been 50 years ago if someone proposed that on this date at this time on the "internet" on a "website" entitled "Religious Forums" on a thread entitled "The 'something can't come from nothing' argument" with I having the screen-name of "metis"?

The point is that just because something seemingly has long odds doesn't amount to much of anything, especially that once it happens, the odds are then 1:1.

Are you suggesting this would still have occurred without intelligent agency and intent? That was not even a coherent attempt at the non applicable sharp shooter crutch. I will wait for you to make it at least coherent before I show it has no application what so ever.

Just for your benefit I will illustrate AGAIN my analogy. If a man won a lottery everyone would think well it was improbable but someone had to win. No tricks, no intent necessary, no agency. However if he won them all no sane person would not instantly yell cheat and assume agency was a necessity. Yet you are doing just that and what is more your saying that the rest who are crying foul are mathematically unjustified and fallacious. Keep digging until you hear Chinese I guess.

 

[1robin]

You can't look at the odds retroactively and draw conclusions, something had to happen,that has a probability of 1.0, something did happen, that has a probability of 1.0, what did happen, however unlikely when view prospectively, it is what happened, with a now probability of 1.0.

So if you flipped a standard coin and it landed on it's edge 1 billion times in a row you would think nothing extraordinary happened? If so I need you to visit my casino. If you went to Herod's and played roulette and it came up on OO for a thousand spins in a row would you suspect agency or think everything was just what probability alone would predict? I have exhaustively showed why these half hearted attempts to support irrationality by appealing to the sharp shooter fallacy are abhorrently flawed and have no application. Please review them or look them up. Or look up multiplicative probability theory.

 

[Sapiens]

I suspect (at least on the basis of your posts) that my course work in statistics, probability, and exploratory data analysis is a bit more sophisticated than yours. What you are missing is that statistics are only meaningful apriori. They are only useful for predicting likelihoods of future occurrences since they are independent of all past trials. A past track record of a billion landings on the edge in a row or a thousand "00" spins just tells me that the game is fixed, not that probability theory is wrong.

I see no use of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, half-hearted or any other way.

 

[idav]

No, evolution seems to have intent because it defies astronomical goal orientated odds over and over and over. It has nothing to do with creatures having intent. When something hits a bulls eye so small you can not see it in a universe of possibilities only the irrational would not suspect intelligent intent. Abiogenesis is one of the most astronomically improbable events possible. It has been said by many secular scholars to be less likely than throwing a dart and hitting an intended single atoms on the other side of he universe. Even with intent that is almost impossible. I drew on no references to actions in my argument, only results that only come as the result of them. Evolution put a trillion arrows in the bulls eye from across the universe. In fact it did so without any evidence for a bow or arrows existing to begin with. Is that best explained by agency or random luck?

Evolution works in a way that trial and error will always correct the intent. I could shoot a hundred arrows at a target and only the ones that land have an effect. The ones that miss obviously have no intent cause they missed.

 

[Sapiens]

No, evolution seems to have intent because it defies astronomical goal orientated odds over and over and over. It has nothing to do with creatures having intent. When something hits a bulls eye so small you can not see it in a universe of possibilities only the irrational would not suspect intelligent intent. Abiogenesis is one of the most astronomically improbable events possible. It has been said by many secular scholars to be less likely than throwing a dart and hitting an intended single atoms on the other side of he universe. Even with intent that is almost impossible. I drew on no references to actions in my argument, only results that only come as the result of them. Evolution put a trillion arrows in the bulls eye from across the universe. In fact it did so without any evidence for a bow or arrows existing to begin with. Is that best explained by agency or random luck?

This is horse pucky, there are at least four ways (from Sunday) that your claim jumps the tracks:

The calculation of odds assumes that the protein molecule formed by chance. Biochemistry is not chance, rendering your calculated odds, from referenced sources, meaningless. All biochemistry produces complex products which interact in complex ways. For example, complex organic molecules are observed to form in the conditions that exist in space, and it is possible that they played a role in the formation of the first life (Spotts, Peter N. 2001. Raw materials for life may predate Earth's formation. The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 30,2001).

Your unreferenced calculation of odds assumes that a protein molecule must take one certain form. However, there are innumerable possible proteins that could promote biological activity. Any calculation of odds must take into account all possible molecules (not just one protein) that might function to promote life. The one that "succeeds" is just chance, but that does no raise the odds, it lowers them.

Your unreferenced calculation of odds assumes the creation of life in its present complex form. The first life would have been much, much simpler.

Your unreferenced calculation of odds ignores the fact that innumerable trials would have been ongoing simultaneously.

 

[Sapiens]

I am sure you do so already.

His only guarantee was pure revelation. No creedal statement I ever heard guarantees human copying. Regardless compared with any similar work of any type the bible surpasses them in every category by astronomical orders of magnitude. Despite your having no reason to demand human scribes be perfect you reject it's approach to being near perfect anyway without another example of that from human agency of any kind. I can get specific but in general on a 1 - 1000 scale (1000 being perfect) of being textually accurate the bible is a 950 and number two is at best 400 (this would be the history of the Peloponnesian wars) and number three is so low as to be negligible. How do you explain that by human agency alone? Faith arguments are not certainties. They are to the best explanation. I submit that divine agency best explains the almost divine accuracy of even human agency for this ancient text alone. Can you beat it?

Sure, Tom Clancy, Alexander Kent, C. S. Forester, Bernard Cornwell or George McDonald Fraser all wrote pure fiction that was built around real events and would rank way above 950.