Addressing Misconceptions of Christianity on PWI

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
201

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

Right, the fact that your god was only putting him to the test and maybe “fooling around a bit”, that makes the story loving.

Still a very, very, very fucked up story. You have to do a whole lot of equivocation to make that anything but fucking evil. Although, I’m sure you’re up to the task.
[/quote]
It may have been a little mean, but it was not a story of God asking Abraham commit child sacrifice. Which is what you claim and I refuted.

Whoptie do. God has not been detected by scientific measures? I am underwhelmed. Is this what these books taught you? Technically, if you want to get nitty gritty, your simply introducing another strawman, but I’ll let it stand in that I love discussing science in the realm of cosmology. Science not detecting God doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. Science tells us many things about the world but the scientific method simply ends the process of discovery once a correlation is established and a conclusion draw. Science, tells us only of the physical world, anything outside of that, is beyond the scope of science. So is would make sense that science cannot discover that which sits outside of it’s realm.
Further, technically speaking, even science itself is a contingent existence. And science is a metaphysical construct.
Since science deals with

Also, as for ‘other gods’, there’s evidence for them, people have made statues and wrote stories and all kinds of stuff to demonstrate their existence. So that’s actually evidence, whether it’s valid evidence or not is another matter, but evidence it is. Whether they exist or I don’t really care. I am only concerned with the Creator of existence, that on which all existence depends.
I cannot prove one way or another that those other gods exist or not, but I can prove they are not the creator the non-contingent being. They just simply don’t make that claim.
That claim is all I am interested in. Proof for it, is existence itself…Didn’t that Hitchens guy cover that?[/quote]

The cool thing about science is, that it’s real whether you believe in it or not.[/quote]

Deductive reasoning is more real that science will ever hope to be. [/quote]

Who made god?
[/quote]
By definition, God cannot be made, one. Two, the argument doesn’t dicuss the making of God, it discusses the making of everything else. If something made God, God wouldn’t be God, what made him would be.

Science does not seek truth. Science looks for correlation. Philosophy seeks truth. Religion doesn’t seek obedience it seeks communication. You are slaying strawmen at an astounding rate. Please tell me you have something better to go on then false notions of what you think something is??

202

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]Pat wrote:
And science has spent most of it’s history being wrong.[/quote]

When science is proven wrong, it is done so by science itself.

Science seeks truth, religion seeks obedience.
[/quote]

I don’t think so. Science seeks FACT. Religion and philosophy seeks truth, of the universal bent. The two ideas are separate. Oh i get what you’re trying to say very well, and there’s a component of truth to the “obedience” thing. But that’s the wrong statement to make about science. Science seeks the “how” more than the “why”.

Pat’s right about the history of science, but then that fact goes for politics, philosophy, religion, economics, and most other fields as well. I don’t think his statement says what he wants it to either frankly.[/quote]

Philosophy is exempt as it’s constantly tested and retested. True deductive arguments can with stand any and every test. Math is the same way. The equations still work no matter how much you work them.
History is hearsay, The absolute closest we can get is a 2nd person account. We rely on people of the past to be telling us the truth. If we are really, really lucky, we can correlate with some archaeology.

203

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

And science has spent most of it’s history being wrong.[/quote]

What’s your point?[/quote]

It’s a strange thing to put you faith in. Many theories today will go by the wayside tomorrow. Further, science is merely reactive, it deals with things that already exist and tries to interpret.
Science can tell us a lot about the physical world, but stretching it beyond the scope of that makes it less and less reliable.

204

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Atheism is the only true belief (or lack of belief). Every religion is only a result of being told from others what to think and believe.[/quote]
So tell me is it a proposition one holds to be true or just a physiological state?[/quote]

I don’t expect most atheists to get that religion isn’t the result of brain washing… This idea that the Christian experience is either a collective lie, or a collection of mass stupidity based on group-think is a position I expect them to hold. I mean, it’s a stretch to think that about 2 billion people are delusional and/ or stupid. Because if it’s just that, then it’s unreasonable, and it’s an easy dragon to slay. This I can only imagine is the catalyst to the hubris, arrogance and apparent smugness of the typical atheist. They have been programmed to dismiss us as dumb or crazy. The fact there is no basis in fact, does not seem to stop this misconception.

Again I have to exclude Kamui from this as he has not expressed this view in anyway and does not dismiss the whole Christian experience.[/quote]

Atheists are programed to no such thing. Believers are the ones who are programed from a very young age, just as their parents were, just as heir parents were, just as their parents were. See how that works? [/quote]

No, that’s some deluded bullshit you choose to believe it has no basis in real actual fact. It’s just a hubris on the part of atheists to believe something like that. All kids are a product of their environment to some degree. Being raised a certain way does not mean that all people who don’t think like you are brainwashed robots.[/quote]

If you think that you’re immune to social programming, you’re badly mistaken. Why aren’t you a muslim? A Buddhist? A Hindu?
[/quote]
Not anymore than you are… You’re not special because you read some books that told you to be atheist and everybody else it stupid.

You just don’t understand the argument. Show the fault. Oh I should just take your word for it? I don’t think so. If there is a fault, prove it. Shouldn’t be hard right?

Cultural programming doesn’t mean that people don’t know what they are talking about. Your an example of it. You read a few books and now your an atheist. I am not impressed with your methodology. You’re an emotive atheist, not a logical one. Second, you act just like every other atheist I have ever dealt with, arrogant, dismissive, and full of yourself. Just like every other atheist. So you are just like you everyone else. No different and certain no more enlightened with the garbage arguments you’ve made so far, space aliens and a mean God.
Here is your argument:
God in the bible was a big fat meany, there fore he must not exist.

I can tell you haven’t read the bible because you don’t know shit about it. It’s a fool proof method. People who pull the same out of context verses that is available on every atheist propaganda doesn’t mean you’ve read it. Having opened if up a few times doesn’t mean you’ve read it.

205

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.[/quote]

And soon you will come to realise that the chance of life evolving spontaneously in such an immense and vast universe has a pretty high probability too.

[i]Excellent![/i]
[/quote]

It has a really, really, really low probability actaully. But while intelligent design has some compelling aspects it’s not usable argument and hence I don’t. It doesn’t solve the issue of causation.
Just because I am not impressed with a particular argument that doesn’t mean I am going to suspend basic logic.[/quote]

Even with those really low odds the number of opportunities for it to happen are large enough to bring it up. Given an area the size of a square mile there have been more chances than the number of nano seconds since the beginning of the universe for life to spontaneously occur (on just earth alone). My guess is that it didn’t happen just once either.

206

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.[/quote]

And soon you will come to realise that the chance of life evolving spontaneously in such an immense and vast universe has a pretty high probability too.

[i]Excellent![/i]
[/quote]

It has a really, really, really low probability actaully. But while intelligent design has some compelling aspects it’s not usable argument and hence I don’t. It doesn’t solve the issue of causation.
Just because I am not impressed with a particular argument that doesn’t mean I am going to suspend basic logic.[/quote]

Even with those really low odds the number of opportunities for it to happen are large enough to bring it up. Given an area the size of a square mile there have been more chances than the number of nano seconds since the beginning of the universe for life to spontaneously occur (on just earth alone). My guess is that it didn’t happen just once either.[/quote]

That’s my problem with the intelligent design arguments, you cannot verify everything.

207

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

Bullshit, of the lowest grade.

Your argument for god’s existence is based on your faith, which is based on nothing more than feelings. You have no quantifiable proof of any god. Your faith is crap, as all faith is, since it needs no proof of anything in an effort to believe in anything. Dawkins is spot on when he rails against the concept of faith as dangerous. It teaches us to believe in what’s not real, and THAT, is a problem for the human race.
[/quote]

If it were based on faith, you could refute it, it’s not it’s based on pure logic. If you can refute it, I will personally send you a cookie. I will present the argument in a link, because I written is so many times, I can’t do it any more…
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

This is the cosmological argument of which you are unfamiliar. All your rantings and calling it bullshit, doesn’t make it so. It just means you can’t refute it or beat it.

The argument is really a form of argument, as this article explains. It’s a good overview of the argument without getting to technical.

The Kalam argument I already agree is garbage, the argument from contingency (3.1) is what I am claiming and defending. It’s not a perfect form of the argument, but it’s good enough.

By the time your done, you should be able to see why I said the I can make a better argument for God than you can for yourself. Only your ego can prevent this epiphany. [/quote]

Ahh, but I don’t have to refute it, it’s already been refuted by persons smarter than you or I. Your argument from contingency relies entirely on your god being magically immune from this infinite regression. Guess what that takes?..a leap of faith. Your argument from contingency requires the denial of true contingency…which is “no cause”.
[/quote]
LOL! It’s never been refuted hoss. Infinite regression is a logical fallacy, it’s a logical impossibility. Pinning your hopes on a logical fallacy not being one, just once is ridiculous. It’s a fallacy because it necessarily begs the question which makes it circular. Regrssions cannot be infinite, it’s a logical impossibility.
So yeah, you do have to prove it wrong because nobody every has. If it were, people like Lawrence Krauss and Hawking would not still be fighting to find the elusive ‘something from nothing’ in physics. Nice try. But being dismissive, doesn’t mean shit.

I actually read that part in the book store, it was pathetic. He didn’t refute shit, but he was awful proud of himself. If I remember correctly he was arguing against the Kalam argument, which I would consider a strawmen since everybody already knows it’s weaknesses. He didn’t touch the argument from contingency…Go on, print his refutation, I show you what’s wrong with it…

You don’t understand the argument. That’s not my fault.

Oh cry me a river, you’re whining about how mean God is in the OT is hardly compelling. Refute the argument, I don’t need scripture to prove God exist.[/quote]

See above. Apparently you don’t need logic either, all you need is a wee bit of faith, and faulty deductive reasoning.

Getting back to Dawkins book, he makes another great reference to the fact that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. He goes on to quote Karen Owens:

Can omniscient god, who
Knows the future, find
The omnipotence to
Change his future mind?
[/quote]

Once we establish existence we can discuss nature. Nothing, doesn’t have a nature.

208

[quote]pat wrote:

It’s a strange thing to put you faith in. Many theories today will go by the wayside tomorrow. Further, science is merely reactive, it deals with things that already exist and tries to interpret. [/quote]

It’s strange to put your faith in science because it regularly changes and things get disproven? Oh please. Have you ever been to a doctor, do you eat food, are you aware we put a man on the moon, do you wear glasses? All these things are science in action. There is good reason to rely on the findings of science and you know it. Secondly, as we progress, the overturning of long standing scientific models decreases greatly. The chances of us one day overturning the theory of gravity or finding out our understanding is very wrong for instance, is close to none.

There isn’t a problem with science, it’s with you. You’re expecting firm, true, authoritative answers to questions because that’s what religion offers. Religion is unchanging, it says “god did it!” and that’s all you ever need to know.

This need, this intense curiosity we have with not knowing is what drive scientists to find answers. Scientists are ever trying to approach that truth, but we’ve come to understand with our failings and our limited knowledge that all science is tentative. They aren’t absolute truths. Your religious mindset has made you expect to get absolute answers because that’s what your religion tries to give you. I never understood why the answer “I don’t know” is so uncomfortable for some theists. As if not having the answer to everything somehow means science falls short.

Everything in science comes with an asterisk beside it that says: based on the best and most current data available. Tell me something pat, doesn’t this asterisk come along any statement of fact you make to other people? Therefore, is it reasonable to expect a statement from a scientist to not come with such a caveat?

[quote]pat wrote:

Science can tell us a lot about the physical world, but stretching it beyond the scope of that makes it less and less reliable.[/quote]

You can’t really know what happens outside of the physical world, it’s pretty much all a wild guess. There is no good reason to even believe a spiritual world exists.

Even many philosophical or epistemological arguments come with huge unsupported assumptions.

209

Here I found the Dawkins counter argument… He does both. But as it stands his argument is lousy in that he formulates the argument this way.
Aquinas said infinity doesn’t exist.
Infinity exists, and hence and infinite regress is possible.

The big, huge problem here isn’t the infinity part, it’s the regression part. Regression isn’t infinate because it begs the question at some point and becomes circular. It necessarily posits that at some point, the thing is responsible for itself. This is circular and bad argument construction. Infinity does exist, but not everything is infinite, regressions are one of those things that are necessarily finite.
This isn’t even complicated philosophical notions. These are the basics of logic and reasoning. His counter argument relies on a circular reasoning, not being one, just once. Even if it’s a really big circle, it’s still a circle.

http://www.bigissueground.com/atheistground/ash-againstcosmological.shtml

210

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.[/quote]

And soon you will come to realise that the chance of life evolving spontaneously in such an immense and vast universe has a pretty high probability too.

[i]Excellent![/i]
[/quote]

It has a really, really, really low probability actaully. But while intelligent design has some compelling aspects it’s not usable argument and hence I don’t. It doesn’t solve the issue of causation.
Just because I am not impressed with a particular argument that doesn’t mean I am going to suspend basic logic.[/quote]

Even with those really low odds the number of opportunities for it to happen are large enough to bring it up. Given an area the size of a square mile there have been more chances than the number of nano seconds since the beginning of the universe for life to spontaneously occur (on just earth alone). My guess is that it didn’t happen just once either.[/quote]

That’s my problem with the intelligent design arguments, you cannot verify everything.[/quote]

What would you think if one day scientists could recreate the optimal conditions for life to form, and we were able to observe it happen without actually creating it ourselves? By optimal I mean occur spontaneously in a reasonable amount of time vs billion years.

211

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

It’s a strange thing to put you faith in. Many theories today will go by the wayside tomorrow. Further, science is merely reactive, it deals with things that already exist and tries to interpret. [/quote]

It’s strange to put your faith in science because it regularly changes and things get disproven? Oh please. Have you ever been to a doctor, do you eat food, are you aware we put a man on the moon, do you wear glasses? All these things are science in action. There is good reason to rely on the findings of science and you know it. Secondly, as we progress, the overturning of long standing scientific models decreases greatly. The chances of us one day overturning the theory of gravity or finding out our understanding is very wrong for instance, is close to none.

There isn’t a problem with science, it’s with you. You’re expecting firm, true, authoritative answers to questions because that’s what religion offers. Religion is unchanging, it says “god did it!” and that’s all you ever need to know.

This need, this intense curiosity we have with not knowing is what drive scientists to find answers. Scientists are ever trying to approach that truth, but we’ve come to understand with our failings and our limited knowledge that all science is tentative. They aren’t absolute truths. Your religious mindset has made you expect to get absolute answers because that’s what your religion tries to give you. I never understood why the answer “I don’t know” is so uncomfortable for some theists. As if not having the answer to everything somehow means science falls short.

Everything in science comes with an asterisk beside it that says: based on the best and most current data available. Tell me something pat, doesn’t this asterisk come along any statement of fact you make to other people? Therefore, is it reasonable to expect a statement from a scientist to not come with such a caveat?

[/quote]
Wait, Raj, you said you knew this argument? What is the ^^ God of gaps bullshit then? I just said science is fallible, not that it’s not a great, awesome, wonderful tool. I like science very much. I am not a creationist. I believe most of what science tells us. I have issues when people expand it beyond it’s scope, but I like it very much.

[quote]

[quote]pat wrote:

Science can tell us a lot about the physical world, but stretching it beyond the scope of that makes it less and less reliable.[/quote]

You can’t really know what happens outside of the physical world, it’s pretty much all a wild guess. There is no good reason to even believe a spiritual world exists.

Even many philosophical or epistemological arguments come with huge unsupported assumptions. [/quote]
Again, I thought you knew the argument? I even gave you a very good link complete with counter arguments. If you are going to say something is wrong or flawed, then make damn sure it is. The argument from contingency is rock solid and never has been disproven. Like that Dawkins guy, he had to rely on a logical fallacy to make it work, which doesn’t work. If you start with a faulty premise, your whole argument falls apart.

212

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.[/quote]

And soon you will come to realise that the chance of life evolving spontaneously in such an immense and vast universe has a pretty high probability too.

[i]Excellent![/i]
[/quote]

It has a really, really, really low probability actaully. But while intelligent design has some compelling aspects it’s not usable argument and hence I don’t. It doesn’t solve the issue of causation.
Just because I am not impressed with a particular argument that doesn’t mean I am going to suspend basic logic.[/quote]

Even with those really low odds the number of opportunities for it to happen are large enough to bring it up. Given an area the size of a square mile there have been more chances than the number of nano seconds since the beginning of the universe for life to spontaneously occur (on just earth alone). My guess is that it didn’t happen just once either.[/quote]

That’s my problem with the intelligent design arguments, you cannot verify everything.[/quote]

What would you think if one day scientists could recreate the optimal conditions for life to form, and we were able to observe it happen without actually creating it ourselves? By optimal I mean occur spontaneously in a reasonable amount of time vs billion years.[/quote]

Creating conditions for life, isn’t the same as giving life. If they gave something life, then I would be very impressed. I gotta run…

213

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.[/quote]

And soon you will come to realise that the chance of life evolving spontaneously in such an immense and vast universe has a pretty high probability too.

[i]Excellent![/i]
[/quote]

It has a really, really, really low probability actaully. But while intelligent design has some compelling aspects it’s not usable argument and hence I don’t. It doesn’t solve the issue of causation.
Just because I am not impressed with a particular argument that doesn’t mean I am going to suspend basic logic.[/quote]

A short and interesting article on this very subject that refutes, in a logical way, the low-probability assertion.

214

[quote]pat wrote:

Wait, Raj, you said you knew this argument? What is the ^^ God of gaps bullshit then? I just said science is fallible, not that it’s not a great, awesome, wonderful tool. I like science very much. I am not a creationist. I believe most of what science tells us. I have issues when people expand it beyond it’s scope, but I like it very much.[/quote]

I was mostly reacting to your faith in science and everything in it eventually falling to the wayside comment. I’ll admit that part of my answer was in response to comments made in the 298 million year old forrest thread.

[quote]pat wrote:

Again, I thought you knew the argument? I even gave you a very good link complete with counter arguments. If you are going to say something is wrong or flawed, then make damn sure it is. The argument from contingency is rock solid and never has been disproven. Like that Dawkins guy, he had to rely on a logical fallacy to make it work, which doesn’t work. If you start with a faulty premise, your whole argument falls apart.[/quote]

The link you sent me says the first cause doesn’t need to be from a god and that god isn’t part of the cosmological argument per se.

215

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

Wait, Raj, you said you knew this argument? What is the ^^ God of gaps bullshit then? I just said science is fallible, not that it’s not a great, awesome, wonderful tool. I like science very much. I am not a creationist. I believe most of what science tells us. I have issues when people expand it beyond it’s scope, but I like it very much.[/quote]

I was mostly reacting to your faith in science and everything in it eventually falling to the wayside comment. I’ll admit that part of my answer was in response to comments made in the 298 million year old forrest thread.

[/quote]
I am pretty different from a lot of my theistic counter parts. I approach things differently.
As far as the ‘God of gaps’ thing, that’s not really been used since pre-Jesus. Yeah, some people still think it individually, but it’s not been a practice of theistic intelligencia for centuries.

[quote]

[quote]pat wrote:

Again, I thought you knew the argument? I even gave you a very good link complete with counter arguments. If you are going to say something is wrong or flawed, then make damn sure it is. The argument from contingency is rock solid and never has been disproven. Like that Dawkins guy, he had to rely on a logical fallacy to make it work, which doesn’t work. If you start with a faulty premise, your whole argument falls apart.[/quote]

The link you sent me says the first cause doesn’t need to be from a god and that god isn’t part of the cosmological argument per se. [/quote]

Good job… You are correct. It asserts a ‘Necessary Being’, an ‘Uncaused-cause’, Prime Mover, etc. Now, think about what it means to be that… For something to act without influence, it must either possess something or be something like a will, which would indicated some degree of consciousness or a purity of consciousness. When I say the cosmological argument tells us things about the necessary being, those are the things I mean. Based on the argument alone, you know the ‘thing’ must be eternal, uncaused or non-contingent, there can only be one, and it must be able to act with out being acted upon in anyway.
Now if you approach the argument in another way, say like Kant (who claims his argument isn’t the cosmological argument, but it’s using morality or goodness as it’s first premise) gives us another insight into what kind of properties this thing must be like. Assuming Kant’s version is also correct, you can add ‘goodness’ and ‘morality’ to the mix of traits. Then you can bring in the ontological argument which is a whole other ball of wax, and deals heavily in metaphysics, you get some more traits you can attach.
Now, you cannot call ‘it’ ‘God’ without having some notion of what ‘God’ is or what a God concept must contain. But a traditional God concept necessitates that God has at least all of the traits posited by the cosmological argument. It’s the overlaps that are indicative.

216

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.[/quote]

And soon you will come to realise that the chance of life evolving spontaneously in such an immense and vast universe has a pretty high probability too.

[i]Excellent![/i]
[/quote]

It has a really, really, really low probability actaully. But while intelligent design has some compelling aspects it’s not usable argument and hence I don’t. It doesn’t solve the issue of causation.
Just because I am not impressed with a particular argument that doesn’t mean I am going to suspend basic logic.[/quote]

A short and interesting article on this very subject that refutes, in a logical way, the low-probability assertion.
[/quote]

It doesn’t refute the low probability assertion, it’s looking at one aspect rather than the seemingly infinite possibilities. The fact that this universe came out of that bang, it’s probability was calculated at 1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s a quintillion). So even in the scope of this really, really big universe, that’s still a really, really low probability. Second, having the components or life and it being alive are 2 different things. To truly count a probability like that you need to know what ‘life’ actually is. We know it’s more than the electro-chemical and mechanical affects biology displays, but we don’t know what ‘it’ is. Trying to find out how something came to be, without knowing what it is a difficult prospect at best. Sure in this universe, the components of life are probable in high quantity, but life itself we don’t know.

217

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

A short and interesting article on this very subject that refutes, in a logical way, the low-probability assertion.
[/quote]

It doesn’t refute the low probability assertion, it’s looking at one aspect rather than the seemingly infinite possibilities. The fact that this universe came out of that bang, it’s probability was calculated at 1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s a quintillion). So even in the scope of this really, really big universe, that’s still a really, really low probability. Second, having the components or life and it being alive are 2 different things. To truly count a probability like that you need to know what ‘life’ actually is. We know it’s more than the electro-chemical and mechanical affects biology displays, but we don’t know what ‘it’ is. Trying to find out how something came to be, without knowing what it is a difficult prospect at best. Sure in this universe, the components of life are probable in high quantity, but life itself we don’t know. [/quote]

How can you even calculate such a thing. The nature of the singularity before the BB is unknown.

I will bet you that within our lifetime, say another 50 years or so, we will see the birth of artificial intelligence. Perhaps then we’ll prove that life arises due to complixity just by nature.

Ofcourse that will never explain the singularity itself, and we’re right back at beliefs, lol.

218

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

A short and interesting article on this very subject that refutes, in a logical way, the low-probability assertion.
[/quote]

It doesn’t refute the low probability assertion, it’s looking at one aspect rather than the seemingly infinite possibilities. The fact that this universe came out of that bang, it’s probability was calculated at 1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s a quintillion). So even in the scope of this really, really big universe, that’s still a really, really low probability. Second, having the components or life and it being alive are 2 different things. To truly count a probability like that you need to know what ‘life’ actually is. We know it’s more than the electro-chemical and mechanical affects biology displays, but we don’t know what ‘it’ is. Trying to find out how something came to be, without knowing what it is a difficult prospect at best. Sure in this universe, the components of life are probable in high quantity, but life itself we don’t know. [/quote]

How can you even calculate such a thing. The nature of the singularity before the BB is unknown.

I will bet you that within our lifetime, say another 50 years or so, we will see the birth of artificial intelligence. Perhaps then we’ll prove that life arises due to complixity just by nature.

[/quote]

It wasn’t calculated before, it’s the during and I forgot who calculated it, some theoretical physicist, but I forgot who is was, some lady. You know them, bunch of comedians…

And contingencies…

219

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:<<< it’s just a part of their culture and upbringing, and from a psychology standpoint that’s powerful stuff. >>>[/quote]If you only had any idea how thoroughly this does NOT apply to me. Or a huge percentage of the people in my inner city Detroit church. Some of the strongest most faithful believers I know had the exact opposite upbringing. We have a guy who is a family member of the people who run the biggest mosque in the state which is in Dearborn on Ford road. http://image59.webshots.com/459/5/48/89/2378548890069705609mXPCpI_fs.jpg He was a Muslim apologist until his mid twenties. Had many many converts to Islam.

He preached Easter service at my church last year. The man is filled utterly with the living Christ and gave up EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY on this earth that was important to him and rendered himself unable to return to his home country without being killed. His family has disowned him and has not spoken to him in a couple decades. Clearly his culture and upbringing have made him what he is today.
[/quote]

Wouldn’t you say that’s another example of culture, the culture that this man has assimilated himself into, effecting this change? It would seem to me that this man is already someone with a proclivity towards belief, apparently in a strong manner. I realize that Dearborn and the Detroit area has a very large Muslim population, but it’s still a minority population at least comparatively. Christianity is without question the dominant belief in Michigan, the United States, and the west.

I believe that my point still stands, which is why Pat is dodging the question as to why he was not born a Muslim, Buddhist, etc. A large determining factor in what god you worship and how you may go about that worship, is GEOGRAPHY.

220

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:<<< it’s just a part of their culture and upbringing, and from a psychology standpoint that’s powerful stuff. >>>[/quote]If you only had any idea how thoroughly this does NOT apply to me. Or a huge percentage of the people in my inner city Detroit church. Some of the strongest most faithful believers I know had the exact opposite upbringing. We have a guy who is a family member of the people who run the biggest mosque in the state which is in Dearborn on Ford road. http://image59.webshots.com/459/5/48/89/2378548890069705609mXPCpI_fs.jpg He was a Muslim apologist until his mid twenties. Had many many converts to Islam.

He preached Easter service at my church last year. The man is filled utterly with the living Christ and gave up EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY on this earth that was important to him and rendered himself unable to return to his home country without being killed. His family has disowned him and has not spoken to him in a couple decades. Clearly his culture and upbringing have made him what he is today.
[/quote]

Wouldn’t you say that’s another example of culture, the culture that this man has assimilated himself into, effecting this change? It would seem to me that this man is already someone with a proclivity towards belief, apparently in a strong manner. I realize that Dearborn and the Detroit area has a very large Muslim population, but it’s still a minority population at least comparatively. Christianity is without question the dominant belief in Michigan, the United States, and the west.

I believe that my point still stands, which is why Pat is dodging the question as to why he was not born a Muslim, Buddhist, etc. A large determining factor in what god you worship and how you may go about that worship, is GEOGRAPHY.
[/quote]
Your committing whats called the genetic fallacy, look it up.

This Freudian argument is really cliche as well as it can apply atheism since naturalism seems to be the rage these days.