Intelligent Design

katzenjammer · January 15, 2009, 8:12pm

[quote]ephrem wrote:

i know there is no divine subtext to the beliefs people hold so dear.
[/quote]

You KNOW this do you? Where’s your proof? Or, is this a central dogma that you accept upon faith?

[quote]…since when are you bothered by proof?

[/quote]

What on earth makes you think I don’t care about proof. Now answer the fucking question assclown.

The rest of your post is psuedo-psychological drivel and not even worth responding to. What you can’t understand is that your little secular & psychological “system” evidences a great deal of faith and unprovable assumptions - just like traditional religions.

katzenjammer · January 15, 2009, 8:16pm

[quote]ephrem wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Until scientists can account for how everything came out of nothing, however, the supposition that God is behind it all is just as plausible as any other narrative.

Unless, as already pointed out, matter and energy have always existed.

^^ this, of course, is not a fact either.

…i rest my case…

[/quote]

Wow, you have proof that it has! If you are in possession of such proof, the nobel prize for physics is yours. Congrats!

forlife · January 15, 2009, 8:32pm

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Unless, as already pointed out, matter and energy have always existed.

^^ this, of course, is not a fact either.[/quote]

It is supported by the evidence from which the first law of thermodynamics was derived.

I’m not even asking you to accept it as fact, simply to honestly admit the real possibility of it being true, and hence the possibility that there is no magical fairy tale being floating in the sky.

John_S1 · January 15, 2009, 8:35pm

[quote]forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Unless, as already pointed out, matter and energy have always existed.

^^ this, of course, is not a fact either.

It is supported by the evidence from which the first law of thermodynamics was derived.

I’m not even asking you to accept it as fact, simply to honestly admit the real possibility of it being true, and hence the possibility that there is no magical fairy tale being floating in the sky.[/quote]

So your asking him to have faith in it huh?

katzenjammer · January 15, 2009, 8:45pm

[quote]forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Unless, as already pointed out, matter and energy have always existed.

^^ this, of course, is not a fact either.

It is supported by the evidence from which the first law of thermodynamics was derived.

I’m not even asking you to accept it as fact, simply to honestly admit the real possibility of it being true, and hence the possibility that there is no magical fairy tale being floating in the sky.[/quote]

It is quite possible that matter and energy have always existed. We don’t know. We may never know. And anyway, I’ve never said otherwise. Of course, this doesn’t preclude the existence God.

At any rate, all science rests upon axioms. Is this true or false?

Finally, as I stated above, true faith always requires - REQUIRES! - the existence of doubt. Otherwise, it isn’t faith - but a certainty.

forlife · January 15, 2009, 3:54pm

[quote]John S. wrote:
So your asking him to have faith in it huh?[/quote]

No. Faith is believing something is true, without evidence to warrant that belief.

I’m asking him to sincerely accept the possibility of it being true.

John_S1 · January 15, 2009, 8:57pm

[quote]forlife wrote:
John S. wrote:
So your asking him to have faith in it huh?

No. Faith is believing something is true, without evidence to warrant that belief.

I’m asking him to sincerely accept the possibility of it being true.[/quote]

Um so your asking him to have some faith in it. You can try and re word it all you want its what your asking him to do.

katzenjammer · January 15, 2009, 4:00pm

[quote]forlife wrote:
John S. wrote:
So your asking him to have faith in it huh?

No. Faith is believing something is true, without evidence to warrant that belief.

[/quote]

I don’t mean to be nitpicky here - but actually, no one’s faith is without “evidence” - it’s just not evidence derived from controlled experiments and so on.

Yes, that’s a kind of faith. John S. is correct.

entheogens · January 15, 2009, 9:11pm

[quote]forlife wrote:
It is supported by the evidence from which the first law of thermodynamics was derived.

I’m not even asking you to accept it as fact, simply to honestly admit the real possibility of it being true, and hence the possibility that there is no magical fairy tale being floating in the sky.[/quote]

Yeah, but even the law of thermodynamics requires some leap of faith. It requires us to believe that the matter and energy have always existed and that the laws of physics as we know them have always been there. There’s a metaphysical assumption implicit there. And hasn’t the work of Prigogine thrown some doubt on the law of Thermodynamics?

Also, there are more sophisticated ideas about God than some fairy tail being floating in the sky. What about the notion that God/Spirit is immanent?

I haven’t been following this thread, even though I created it. As I said in the beginning there is science which is good at quantifying physical reality and has been very succesful. But are there things that cannot be quantified that exist?

Obviously, if there are, then science wouldn’t be able to prove them. My point is that science may be able to tell us something about reality but not the whole truth.

Now, what I don’t like about CERTAIN religious people (note, I said CERTAIN, not ALL) is when they try to make their religious beliefs pass as science, i.e. the world was created 4000 years ago, animals haven’t evolved, every animal we see today has existed since the creation and they were all on Noah’s ark). Excuse me, that’s not science. And, it seems to me that those ideas are just plain dumb.

I get really angry when I see a subset of Christians who think that such ideas should be on given equal air time in classrooms, just because fundamentalist Christians believe they are true. Why not let zoroastrian mythologies, or some pagan mythologies be taught in the classroom, too?

Some fundamentalists will answer that question by saying that we are a Christian nation. BULLSHIT. First of all, the truth wouldn’t be beholden to Christians even if the nation were, however, the United States was founded upon Enlightenment values. Try telling Benjamin Franklin he was a Christian.

Even the idea, brought up earlier, that the world is built upon some kind of aesthetic design (the golden ration, etc) is not science. Now, when I say that it is not scienctific, that does not mean necessarily that it is not TRUE.) Such ideas should be presented in a theology class, or maybe even a philosophy class, but not a science class.

forlife · January 15, 2009, 9:11pm

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
It is quite possible that matter and energy have always existed. We don’t know. We may never know. And anyway, I’ve never said otherwise. Of course, this doesn’t preclude the existence God.

At any rate, all science rests upon axioms. Is this true or false?

Finally, as I stated above, true faith always requires - REQUIRES! - the existence of doubt. Otherwise, it isn’t faith - but a certainty.
[/quote]

No true scientist would be free of doubt. It’s people that claim to know the truth and refuse to consider other options that are dangerous.

John_S1 · January 15, 2009, 9:16pm

[quote]forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
It is quite possible that matter and energy have always existed. We don’t know. We may never know. And anyway, I’ve never said otherwise. Of course, this doesn’t preclude the existence God.

At any rate, all science rests upon axioms. Is this true or false?

Finally, as I stated above, true faith always requires - REQUIRES! - the existence of doubt. Otherwise, it isn’t faith - but a certainty.

No true scientist would be free of doubt. It’s people that claim to know the truth and refuse to consider other options that are dangerous.[/quote]

You just described yourself.

Cockney_Blue · January 15, 2009, 9:19pm

The argument of something being created from nothing is a misnomer.

The big bang theory is not ‘first there was nothing and then it exploded’

It is, ‘matter existed in one state and then during an event now commonly known as the big bang it changed to a different state that rapidly expanded to form today’s known Universe.’

Current theories that hold a lot of weight are that what we refer to as the big bang was actually a localised quantum level expansion of a far larger multiverse.

You could think of it as a bubble of CO2 appearing in your coke. The CO2 didn’t just burst into existence from nothingness, it changed from a dissolved state to a gaseous state.

If you want to get really freaky, at a quantum level you can observe matter bursting into existence in a laboratory.

Conservation of energy is maintained because what you are actually getting is a matter/anti-matter pair. So the net Energy is zero.

Some really odd shit starts happening once you look at things down to the quantum level. For anyone interested in this kind of thing I would recommend Gribbons In Search of Schrödinger?s cat serious as a good primer.

forlife · January 15, 2009, 9:32pm

[quote]John S. wrote:
You just described yourself.[/quote]

I’ve said several times that I am an agnostic, not an atheist. I think one of the myriad god myths could theoretically be true, or none of them may be true. We’ll find out once reliable evidence is available, but to date no such evidence has been forthcoming.

ephrem · January 16, 2009, 12:01am

[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
ephrem wrote:

i know there is no divine subtext to the beliefs people hold so dear.

You KNOW this do you? Where’s your proof? Or, is this a central dogma that you accept upon faith?[/quote]

…lol @ assclown! You know how brainscans show how certain stimuli provoke increased brainactivity in specific areas of the brain? Not only visual and audible stimuli, but also meditation increases activity in specific areas of the brain: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Meditation-Increases-Attention---A-Brain-Scan-Report-22539-1/

…this proves that the way the brain processes activities/stimuli determin how we perceive reality. This also means that prayer [which is a simple form of meditation], a large gathering of like minded people or simply contemplating divinity, urges the brain in a way to supply you with corroborating experiences.

These experiences follow the input and are not proof of god, but are proof of the brain doing what it does best, creating reality for you…

…beliefs work the same way. Often repeated, beliefs nest in the brain and the brain facilitates those beliefs by giving you [through the stimulation of specific areas of the brain] experiences that validate those beliefs.

You are now trapped in a feedbackloop of your own doing, and this still doesn’t prove the existence of anything divine…

…i do admit that our reality playes out it’s drama in a very limited spectrum. There is so much more we can’t perceive with our senses, and it would be illogical to suggest that what we can’t perceive cannot influence us. I think that much of our extraordinary experiences, that in our minds prove there’s something divine outthere, is simply information outside our range of perception that manipulates our perception slightly.

I also think it’s a suspension of reason to conclude that this must be god, because that explanation, god did it, does not explain anything at all…

…anyway, if i still have your attention, which i doubt and i don’t blame you (-: you believe what you will, and i’ll have my say about it, so carry on!

ephrem · January 16, 2009, 12:04am

[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
The argument of something being created from nothing is a misnomer.

The big bang theory is not ‘first there was nothing and then it exploded’

It is, ‘matter existed in one state and then during an event now commonly known as the big bang it changed to a different state that rapidly expanded to form today’s known Universe.’

Current theories that hold a lot of weight are that what we refer to as the big bang was actually a localised quantum level expansion of a far larger multiverse.

You could think of it as a bubble of CO2 appearing in your coke. The CO2 didn’t just burst into existence from nothingness, it changed from a dissolved state to a gaseous state.

If you want to get really freaky, at a quantum level you can observe matter bursting into existence in a laboratory.

Conservation of energy is maintained because what you are actually getting is a matter/anti-matter pair. So the net Energy is zero.

Some really odd shit starts happening once you look at things down to the quantum level. For anyone interested in this kind of thing I would recommend Gribbons In Search of Schrödinger?s cat serious as a good primer.
[/quote]

…a voice of reason a like a warm bath on these boards (-:

John_S1 · January 16, 2009, 7:12am

[quote]ephrem wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
The argument of something being created from nothing is a misnomer.

The big bang theory is not ‘first there was nothing and then it exploded’

It is, ‘matter existed in one state and then during an event now commonly known as the big bang it changed to a different state that rapidly expanded to form today’s known Universe.’

Current theories that hold a lot of weight are that what we refer to as the big bang was actually a localised quantum level expansion of a far larger multiverse.

You could think of it as a bubble of CO2 appearing in your coke. The CO2 didn’t just burst into existence from nothingness, it changed from a dissolved state to a gaseous state.

If you want to get really freaky, at a quantum level you can observe matter bursting into existence in a laboratory.

Conservation of energy is maintained because what you are actually getting is a matter/anti-matter pair. So the net Energy is zero.

Some really odd shit starts happening once you look at things down to the quantum level. For anyone interested in this kind of thing I would recommend Gribbons In Search of Schrödinger?s cat serious as a good primer.

…a voice of reason a like a warm bath on these boards (-:

[/quote]

It does not surprise me in the least that you would agree with this ass clown. You two are made for each other.

ephrem · January 16, 2009, 4:26pm

[quote]John S. wrote:
ephrem wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
The argument of something being created from nothing is a misnomer.

The big bang theory is not ‘first there was nothing and then it exploded’

It is, ‘matter existed in one state and then during an event now commonly known as the big bang it changed to a different state that rapidly expanded to form today’s known Universe.’

Current theories that hold a lot of weight are that what we refer to as the big bang was actually a localised quantum level expansion of a far larger multiverse.

You could think of it as a bubble of CO2 appearing in your coke. The CO2 didn’t just burst into existence from nothingness, it changed from a dissolved state to a gaseous state.

If you want to get really freaky, at a quantum level you can observe matter bursting into existence in a laboratory.

Conservation of energy is maintained because what you are actually getting is a matter/anti-matter pair. So the net Energy is zero.

Some really odd shit starts happening once you look at things down to the quantum level. For anyone interested in this kind of thing I would recommend Gribbons In Search of Schrödinger?s cat serious as a good primer.

…a voice of reason a like a warm bath on these boards (-:

It does not surprise me in the least that you would agree with this ass clown. You two are made for each other.[/quote]

…when on the other side we have people who are:

irrational
driven by emotion
without compassion for everyone outside their clan
unable to look beyond their programming
violent
agressive
easy to manipulate
willfully ignorant
materialistic
mysoginists
sufferers of the ‘Otto’ complex

…then i’d rather not be a part of your world (-:

Cockney_Blue · January 16, 2009, 7:13pm