magicfan101
Warlord
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Berkley pulls no punches against creationist. its determined to stomp us out.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IVAandreligion.shtml
Evidence for creationism, Part 2.
- Thread starter negZero
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Berkley pulls no punches against creationist. its determined to stomp us out.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IVAandreligion.shtml
Berkley pulls no punches against creationist. its determined to stomp us out.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IVAandreligion.shtml
Do you read anything you link too? You can believe in religion, evolution and think that creationism is crap at the same time.
sophie
Break My Heart
Berkley pulls no punches against creationist. its determined to stomp us out.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IVAandreligion.shtml
That's right, one of the top rated Universities in the world has a personal vendetta against God, which is clearly why the article you linked says exactly the opposite.
It's also, clearly, why they host people like this to give guest lectures.
Link to video.
Brian Shanahan
Permanoob
To further this I would like to quote Ken Miller a Catholic biochemist, on creationism:
[advocates of intelligent design are] "rejected by science because they do not fit the facts, and having failed religion because they think too little of God." Quote from Life Ascending by Nick Lane p. 298 n.7 to Chap. 6. (words in square brackets are my paraphrasing)
Askthepizzaguy
Know the Dark Side
1. There doesn't need to be a lawgiver.
Your argument proving there is a God is because.... there must be one?
2. Laws of physics so constant that they break down because of heavy concentrations of the gravitational force? Some universe, God.
3. You're more than welcome to believe that God created itself but then you must concede that there is no purpose to why God exists.
Through psychic powers, magic, and voodoo? Real scientific.
"Design" hasn't been proven, therefore it doesn't prove a creator.
The logic you presented me is NONEXISTENT.
- Complex things exist
- ??????
- They must have been designed!
There is no middle step. You're just declaring that complex things need a designer, which is your opinion and not substantiated by any evidence and all of science thus far.
I really wish you wouldn't even mention the word logic until you know what it means. It doesn't mean statements of opinion. It means there's something connecting the opinion to the facts. You have no connective argument.
No no no, you're still not getting it.
"God of the Gaps" doesn't mean science is meaningless because there are gaps in science.
"God of the Gaps" means it is fallacious to assume that because science doesn't yet have the ability to explain 100% of the universe through observable, testable theories, that does not mean they can never do so without invoking God, and it does not mean that the default position is God.
That's, again, like saying Zeus throws lightning at us when he's angry, if we don't understand how lightning works.
It's fallacious and you should know better than to invoke such nonsense in an argument. Shouldn't you?
Demonstrate how anything about this Creator is capable of being known. I didn't say believed on faith, I said KNOWN.
You don't know it's "his" word. KNOWN, not opinion, not belief. Known.
You cannot seem to separate what is real from what is imaginary. You show me the Bible, I see a flawed book written by hateful, bigoted men with very very limited knowledge, containing no moral truths that an atheist three year old wouldn't instinctively understand already, filled with lies and contradictions.
I don't get the impression from reading it that I am being filled with awe because of the overwhelming genius of a perfect omniscient writer. It's nothing but a story book to me.
Until you prove otherwise, that's exactly what it is. In your opinion there's something more to it. But there's zero evidence that there is something more to it.
It's most certainly not a fact that the Bible is true. I can rattle off a list of things that are false by contradiction alone, let alone all the stuff it gets wrong science-wise and logic-wise. Basic, basic logic doesn't hold up inside the wondrous "Bible".
Nature existed before the Bible was written. Morality did too.
No no no.
No.
You don't know what evidence is.
"I can turn the faucet on. That proves evolution is true."
See? No connecting logic. I'm citing something that has nothing to do with anything.
That's what you're doing.
Science is NOT consistent either, it changes and adapts, unlike religious faith.
So, admit that what you just said was total nonsense.
Science being consistent would be evidence of science being consistent. It would not be evidence of life on Mars. Nor go-go Girls from Planet Vaginalon XXIV. Nor would it prove that Santa Claus is real.
It most certainly does not provide ANY ANY ANY ANY evidence of Creation.
That's why you don't understand what evidence is. Because you don't know how evidence is supposed to relate to the theory at hand. You consider everything in the universe evidence of creation because you do not discriminate between relevant information and irrelevant information, evidence in favor or evidence against, or evidence that's totally neutral.
You state something which may or may not be factual, and with no connecting logic, state like a fact that it proves Creationism.
That's why you don't understand science. You don't get the underlying concepts. You've demonstrated such by totally missing the most fundamental aspects of science whenever you post here.
Incorrect, everyone did not know God at one time in history. There are ancient cultures around the world that did not record a "high" God, and many which recorded thousands of gods.
I can dig up some more on Norse mythology, Greek mythology, asian beliefs.
A monotheistic faith is a relatively recent invention of man.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Monotheism#Early_History
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Zoroastrianism
There were plenty of other religions around before then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism
And that's the "oldest LIVING religion", there were other beliefs which have now gone the way of the dinosaur, and hopefully someday, Young Earth creationism.
And you know what's amazing? Stuff like that never happens. Holy poop on a stick, doesn't that mean your argument is ineffective?
"If God proved himself to you, you'd know he was real. Therefore he is."
Imagine if all the stars in the sky spelled out for you that God wasn't real. Wouldn't that prove to you that he wasn't real?
Cleverly, stuff like that doesn't happen, rendering that argument silly.
What is it with all these non-arguments and illogical statements and other outrageous nonsense? Can't I get someone to actually argue science with me for a change, and do it well?
Convenient. Neither can the Great Fire-Breathing Leprechaun, I guess he must be proven fact too, because there's no evidence of him and no way to test him scientifically.
That guy is also beyond creation. But I know he's real because I've seen leprechauns before, on boxes of Lucky Charms. Therefore he's as real as Jebus.
God cannot be tested means he's not part of science. So, you can't teach creationism as science. Brilliant!
"Design" hasn't been proven, therefore it doesn't prove a creator.
You do realize DNA "programs" itself, right? There's no dude typing at a computer?
You know how it does that?
Through the evil mutations you're convinced will destroy us all.
Therefore, you're either convinced God is trying to destroy us all with degrading DNA, making him a genocidal freak (evidence of other genocidal behavior can be found in the Bible, for those who believe....
) or, he's not a very good designer, or.... or.....Maybe the mutations are natural and allow progress to happen, and don't require a programmer.
Amazing!
See, you haven't discounted that possibility by stating "The universe is designed!" (not a fact) "Therefore, it must have a designer!" (not a fact).
You ever see the Grand Canyon? Sometimes there are rocks sitting on top of really thin structures, and it looks like a God put them there. You know how they got there?
They were already there. Wind carved out the rest of it, naturally, without any interference by an outside force.
If you knew nothing about it you'd say "SEE, PROOF OF GOD RIGHT THERE!!! Only a giant, powerful being could do that!!!" but in reality, the air can do it. Caused by heat from the sun, which allows for temperature changes in the air, which causes it to move because of differences in pressure and density.
No painter needed to paint the landscape. No programmer needed for DNA to evolve. The leprechaun on the lucky charms box doesn't exist.
Stating that he does exist because the universe looks designed to you, is an opinion, and it lacks connecting logic, and is not even remotely close to proven, or fact, or science at all.
You're entitled to have beliefs, but this is a scientific debate, which requires evidence and logic, and you haven't demonstrated any connection between any evidence you've presented and the conclusions you've drawn. There is zero connecting logic.
That.... is why you fail.
You don't believe you have to use logic and reason, you think you can just state your opinion as fact. That doesn't work in a scientific discussion. That is why you fail.
Given the bit about the 'random chance universe', I think magicfan meant something different than what you're being critical of here. Not that it means magicfan understands science any better.
I think what was meant was that the stuff scientists look at is consistent.
i.e. the Earth is in a stable orbit, that can't just happen by random chance.
life has evolved to the point where we can make digital watches, that couldn't just happen by random chance.
Every single water molecule we've ever looked at has 2 hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom, no way is water consistency so consistent just by random chance.
The orbit of the moon is exactly the same as the rotation speed of the moon, which means the same side always faces the earth. That's an incredible coincidence, it didn't just happen by random chance.
Any sort of industrial process that relies on some sort of scientific theory, that only works if the theory always applies, if doing the same stuff on Tuesday gives you the same result as it did on Monday. And there's no way that always happens just by random chance.
Which boils down to the same argument, and it does start with some actual logic:
The universe has all this awesome stuff. (true)
This awesome stuff wouldn't happen, wouldn't continue to happen if we were in a 'random chance universe' where rules were just guidelines that might or might not apply on a given day. (also true)
Here's where we diverge. The intellectually curious look at the first two bits, conclude that things aren't random, that there's underlying rules, and wonder if they can maybe work out what the rules are. Newton, Darwin, Curie, Fleming, plenty of others have taken that path and come up with some amazingly useful stuff.
The non-curious, the willfully ignorant, the intellectually dishonest people who preach creationism, they conclude that since things aren't random, since the only source of non-randomness in this random universe is god, that means goddidit.
They don't tend to voice the argument on most topics. I'm yet to hear a creationist insist that the moon being tidally locked to earth couldn't happen at random, therefore gravity, which is just a theory, is proven wrong, and the moon orbits the way it does because god calibrated it. I'm yet to hear a creationist refuse to walk through his creationist museum to watch the dinosaurs & humans play together on the grounds that the building might fall down, since the engineering science that went into its design doesn't hold in a random universe. But I keep on hearing it about evolution, because that's the one that's got obvious consequences, is really counter-intuitive, and in direct contradiction to the bible. With geology being the second favourite for similar reasons.
One group sees ignorance as an opportunity to learn, who finds awe in understanding something. One sees questioning ignorance as somehow undermining the awe they find in not knowing, the awe they find in attributing stuff to the deity who designed it. It teaches people, encourages people to rejoice in ignorance, to be proud of finding stuff that's too complicated to understand, because the more stuff you don't understand, the more awesome the god who fills all those gaps appears.
OK, how about this. Since the moon was formed, in a collision with the earth some 4+ billion years ago it has been getting further from the earth. It just happens that in the relatively small slot of a few hundred thousand years that intelligent life has been around it has just got to the point where it exactly covers the sun during a total eclipse. If we had evolved just 1 million years earlier we would not seen the corona in the full glory we see it now. In a few hundred thousand years it will not be big enough to fully cover the sun and we would not be able to look at the eclipse at all.
This startling fact has had 2 effects:
1) Ancient man was amazed and frightful of this beautiful and terrible event. This drove him (and her) to explore his spiritual side and come closer to god.
2) It gave scientists in this age an amazing coincidence to demonstrate the existence of a creator.
This startling fact has had 2 effects:
1) Ancient man was amazed and frightful of this beautiful and terrible event. This drove him (and her) to explore his spiritual side and come closer to god.
2) It gave scientists in this age an amazing coincidence to demonstrate the existence of a creator.
Spoiler :
logarithm64
Omnipotent Space Lizard
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This can be paraphrased as:
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_
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Whilst I respect your beliefs, how does a co-incidence prove the existence of a deity? I will admit that the world we live in is awesome, but could you please elaborate on your logic as to why amazing things require a designer? Or at least explain why this is a...
To make myself more scientific:
H0:
A moon size object is required for complex life to develop, and the exact position of that over the last 4 B years does not matter. The moon to be as close to the size of the sun only happens for 2 million years (I have tried and failed to check this). Intelegent life could have happened any time between 2 billion years ago and 2 billion years in the future.
H1: God made it so the moon covers the sun while intelegent life occurs.
Given H0, the chance of intelegent life occuring while the moon covers the sun it is 1 / 2000. As medical trials usually use 1 / 20 (100 times less stingent) that is very very weak evidence that H1 is true.
The main problem with this argument is that it is made post priori (? after the event). This of course completely invalidates the probabalisic aproach. One has to consider the number of other celestial events that would not kill us all but would come close to the glory of a full ecipse (you need 100 to get to the 5% medical trial level). I cannot think of one.
Can you point at a better "Evidence for creationism" in this thread?
I am not saying this is good evidence when deciding how to live your life, it is very very weak evidence. There is some good evidence out there for that, for example the unproven theory that smoking is bad for you. This is many many orders of magnitude weaker than that, but IMNSHO better than any that has been presented in this thread.
Brian Shanahan
Permanoob
If I played the lottery I would have 1/8,145,060 odds of winning the jackpot. 1/2000 based on the size of the known universe are very short odds indeed.
No unfortunately I cannot, but the fact that yours is the best doesn't make it any less horribly bad, sorry.
I do not like the word bad (when appied to my thoughts). If you changed your post to say weak (or very very very weak) I would agree with your post 100%.
[EDIT] Bad is not a word you use in scientific discourse. You either say wrong (logically, and point it out) or something like weak.
Probably you shouldn't use 'better' either, but instead use stronger. But you do use better. If we're discussing whether your evidence is better, then the answer is it's not, it's as bad as the other supposed evidence in the thread. If we're discussing whether it's stronger, then it's not, it's as weak as everything else in this thread.
If you were using something based on good logic, then we could call it a very very weak argument. But since you're using something based on no actually valid logic at all, calling it a bad argument seems appropriate.
It's the same proof as the banana argument. Here's a coincidence that's really cool and not very likely. Therefore, god set it up just so it would appeal to us.
It's the same proof as calling the Southern Cross a deliberate message from god. Here's a coincidence we find aesthetically nice. So nice, in fact, that both Australia & NZ stuck it on their flag. There's heaps of other ways those 5 stars could be arranged, none of which we'd find so interesting. It's actually set up to look like religious iconography! Therefore goddidit.
The god of the gaps argument at least takes something that isn't random in order to claim goddidit. You're taking something completely meaningless to do exactly the same. Which certainly doesn't make an already rubbish argument somehow stronger or better.
Brian Shanahan
Permanoob
Ok if you want me to rephrase my response then I'll try. Even though your arguement is not quite as weak as the previous arguements "God did it. Science can't prove God so he must be real" I have shown above how incredibly weak your arguement is. A 1/2000 chance in an area the size of the known universe is a certainty many times over. The moon covering the Sun also has very little impact on the survivability of the species (as evidenced by the survivability of all species when the moon was a different size). The moon's main advantages are 1) soak up asteroid impacts (not completely successful), 2) regularlise the rotation period of the Earth and 3) influence the seas in the form of tides.
Oh yes, it is also entirely possible that humanity is not the only intelligent species to have evolved on Earth. With the passage of deep time and the effects of plate tectonics and Earth's weather system, most every sign of intelligent life will have been wiped clean off the surface of the planet. The only likely evidence of humanity to existe in 1m years if we were to be wiped out tomorrow would be the lunar landers and maybe the deep space probes. So even the basic premise of intelligent life evolving at the point the moon was the right size in the sky to fulfill the eclipse phenomena we see every year is pretty much a bad assumption.
Actually now I have sobered up I can accept that bad is a reasnoble description of this evidence.
Indeed, that is the point. It is not nessasery that the moon just covers the sun, but it does. If it was then the anthopic principle would rule this out as evidence, and the argument "A 1/2000 chance in an area the size of the known universe is a certainty many times over" would apply. As it is we are only aware of one intelegent species capable of science, and that one has to explain that the moon just covers the sun. You can call it a 1 in 2000 coincidence, and to be honest that is reasnoble as it is only 1 in 2000 and we are doing the analysis post priori, but a pretty big coincidence it is.
I am glad we agree that it is very weak evidence however, and I think we are pretty much in agreement about the extent of that weakness.
I am not sure how relavent this is, as the existance of other intelegent life does not matter to the argument whether it is seperated by time and / or space. Without evedence however I do not belive this. The increased concentrations of many materials in many locations I believe would be identifiable far into the future. I am thinking cities (with their concreate, steel and polutants) and nuclear waste dumps.
Cu Chulainn
The Unoriginal
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Incorrect. The main problem is that it is an absolute non sequitur. There is no way to logically get from "The moon, as viewed from the earth, is the same size as the sun." to "therefore a god exists"
Spoiler with my previous reply: here
Spoiler :
My logic is layed out. If one can statistically dismiss H0 then one needs something like "a god exists" to replace it. Where is your issue with it?
Cu Chulainn
The Unoriginal
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The argument is irrelevant to the position of the moon. You could just as easily make the same argument for any position of the moon as the optimal position is subjective.
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
In the infinitely random universe something like a total eclipse is likely a common thing.
Yes, but we have it, and only 1 in 2000 civalisations like us do. Why? It could be chance, but we have already beaten most of the varacies of chance (or else we would not be here). This one does not stop us being here.
[EDIT]
The is no other possition of the moon that would cause such a spectical. Nor can I think of any other arangment of celstial bodies that would get close to the majesty of a total eclipse.
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