Have I "debunked" God's existence?

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;169739 wrote:

Krumple, you really should go and look at the Amazon entry for Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life by Hubert P. Yockey. (I've made it easy for you.) Now Yockey is NOT a Design Theorist. He devotes a chapter to that topic. I think his philosophical or religious outlook could be described as agnostic. But this book cannot just be thrown out. It is a very, very hard argument, and it is supported by a lot of empirical evidence. So don't do what you accuse all the creationists of doing, and ignore the argument because it conflicts with your conclusions.

I already know what the book is about, and it is flawed. His main argument is that DNA can not develop from proteins. The problem is, we have already successfully constructed RNA out of inorganic compounds. If DNA can not be a product of proteins than we just reverse engineered the building blocks for DNA.

His other flaw is that he insists that you can not go from small units of information to large units of information. He suggests that it must be the other way around. But he is wrong, you can actually go both ways with information. You can go from simple to complex and back to simple. You can go from a large assortment of symbols to a smaller set and return to a larger set. In fact we do it all the time.

2 Replies

@Diogenes phil,

Prejudice speaks louder than words, I know.

Krumple;169759 wrote:

His other flaw is that he insists that you can not go from small units of information to large units of information.

Nor does he engage in these spurious types of throwaway lines consisting of a sentence or two containing vast generalizations. And I am sure he would also not characterize a tightly reasoned book based on a very firm theoretical foundation in a couple of sentences. That would indeed be reprehensible. But then, he is an actual scientist.

0 Replies

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;169757 wrote:

thanks. I am out here in no-man's-land, between the trenches, shells flying overhead. Dangerous but exhilarating.

I can relate to that. It's good that we don't all agree, really, but even better when we agree on this.

0 Replies

@Krumple,

Krumple;169732 wrote:

The way you are looking at it is completely skewed. I'm not even sure if it is worth explaining the course of bird evolution to you because it is documented. They don't just all of a sudden develop all the traits at one time. Not to mention there were flying dinosaurs without feathers.

Documented? What was documented? The process that scientists think might have happened in reptiles' evolution into birds? Doesn't sound like much empirical evidence is there. And if they didn't develop the traits all at once, how could the reptiles survive lacking any of them? Featherless underdeveloped wings (relating it to the dinosaurs) would be nearly as useless/cumbersome as partially feathered underdeveloped wings.

Krumple;169732 wrote:

Once again, you are approaching the problem from a static mind frame. You only see the function of the wheel barrel and call it functional only if it has a wheel. Minus the wheel, it no longer is a wheel barrel, it is instead, a barrel. I guess you just can't come up with a use for a barrel.

WE can certainly find uses for a barrel. But this where the analogy falls short: neither the wheel barrel nor the barrel are living things. If there were an organism that once had mechanism for movement (and then lost it), I guess other life-forms could store stuff in its motionless body...but that wouldn't do much good for the organism that lost the movement. It would meanwhile be helpless, unable to reproduce, flee from danger, or even eat (unless food came to it). It would not survive. Maybe it would eventually become something else if it did survive, but I don't see how it could.

Bottom line: the mousetrap and wheel barrel analogy are good for demonstrating IC, but only up to a point. Mousetraps and wheel barrels do not possess the same dynamics and requirements as living things do.

0 Replies

@Krumple,

Krumple;169759 wrote:

I already know what the book is about, and it is flawed. His main argument is that DNA can not develop from proteins.

But you missed the point why all of biology and genetics accepts Yockey and Gamov's discovery that DNA is in fact a genuine code beyond simple chemical reactions. You missed the fact that biology accepts the principles of Information Theory to map the transcription process.

Krumple;169759 wrote:

The problem is, we have already successfully constructed RNA out of inorganic compounds.

Cite please. And from an actual peer reviewed paper if you would be so kind. No more YouTube adhoc soundbytes please.

Certainly you're not speaking of Miller's work. That's a far cry from constructing RNA. And there are so many issues regarding just getting the amino acids, purines and pyrimidines as well. None the least of which is the lacking essential ingredients of methane and ammonia in the early earth atmosphere. And the timings and temperatures are way off basis to represent anything remotely possible without sentient intervention.

But I'll play along and allow a simple high school level experiment to account for the building blocks of life. It's still just building blocks. It's a medium without a message. That's not RNA. I does not account for the infusion of Information into the system.

You'd have better luck with the Murchison Meteorite theory than Miller.

And certainly you're not speaking of abiogenesis? That's a theory remember. It is far from a proven mechanism. And it is rapidly loosing support.

Only one of the ribozymes necessary to allow for this appear in nature. Another has been created in the lab (yet I doubt the authenticity of a synthetic ribozyme), and two others needed to complete the theory don't even exist.

While no natural ribozyme is known that can utilise a nucleoside triphosphate for polymerisation, considerable advances have been made using synthetic ribozymes

Abiogenesis does not account for the huge chasm between the laws of Physics and the laws of Information. It can get us the building blocks, possibly, (I'm really trying to be lenient here) but it cannot provide the Info necessary to program for living organisms. That requires a code. And all codes come from a mind.

Challenge the theory to its own gigantic conjecture that base pairs definitely strand in the soup. Then clarify how the quaternary code appeared without reference to a synthetic ribosyme produced in a lab. A synthetic ribosyme will never do.

That's why ****** Orgel (renowned Abiogenesis proponent) said: the self-organization of the reductive citric acid cycle without the help of "informational" catalysts would be a near miracle.

Shall we leap to believe in miracles? It requires an Informational Catalyst. And those only come from sentient authors.

But let's go ahead and take a leap of faith and start with Martin Line makes a great case in A Hypothetical Pathway from the RNA to the DNA World, but in the end still warns us that:
"The pathway proposed is not intended to represent reality""a formidalbe conceptual leap""If support for some of these steps can be shown, final resort to an intelligent creator for the origin of life (Gibson, 1993) may yet be premature"
The Math behind Abiogenesis is a rework of the Infinite Monkey Theorum. I've given you the building blocks, just like the Monkeys were given an alphabet. But there's not enough time since the Big Bang to even come close to writing 130,000 character sentence. , and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."
This is from their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys

There are only 10^80 number of atoms in the entire universe, and the smallest know DNA chain is 500,000 characters long. The math doesn't support it. Believing that Info can arise without a sentient mind is believing in miracles.

Krumple;169759 wrote:

His other flaw is that he insists that you can not go from small units of information to large units of information. He suggests that it must be the other way around. But he is wrong, you can actually go both ways with information. You can go from simple to complex and back to simple. You can go from a large assortment of symbols to a smaller set and return to a larger set. In fact we do it all the time.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of Information. Information is independent from the medium that expresses it. German takes 30% more symbols than English to represent the exact same amount of Information.

"Falling down the mountain" means the exact same thing as "山落下" and "caduta la montagna" and "πτώση κάτω από το βουνό".

The essence of Information is Non-Physical. The number of bits required to represent it is Physical. Don't confuse Code with Information. They are not the same things. Code is physical. Information is non-physical.

I can represent the same exact essence of Information with "P". One symbol, but the Info doesn't change. Yockey is correct to acknowledge the principles of Information Theory. The fact is you cannot get more Info from less Info unless a sentient mind interacts with the less Info and authors additional Info.

"Information is information. Not energy and not matter. Any materialism that does not allow for this cannot survive in the present".
Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics p147.

1 Reply

@QuinticNon,

QuinticNon;169831 wrote:

Cite please. And from an actual peer reviewed paper if you would be so kind. No more YouTube adhoc soundbytes please.

Life’s First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory | Wired Science | Wired.com

---------- Post added 05-28-2010 at 01:48 AM ----------

Klope3;169813 wrote:

WE can certainly find uses for a barrel. But this where the analogy falls short: neither the wheel barrel nor the barrel are living things. If there were an organism that once had mechanism for movement (and then lost it), I guess other life-forms could store stuff in its motionless body...but that wouldn't do much good for the organism that lost the movement. It would meanwhile be helpless, unable to reproduce, flee from danger, or even eat (unless food came to it). It would not survive. Maybe it would eventually become something else if it did survive, but I don't see how it could.

Bottom line: the mousetrap and wheel barrel analogy are good for demonstrating IC, but only up to a point. Mousetraps and wheel barrels do not possess the same dynamics and requirements as living things do.

I find this incredibly funny since it was not my wheel barrel analogy and now you are trying to use it against me? As if I didn't know that a mouse trap or wheel barrel were not living things. It is obvious that this whole discussion has absolutely no concern for biology, chemistry or science. It is all about defending your theology.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;169855 wrote:

I find this incredibly funny since it was not my wheel barrel analogy and now you are trying to use it against me? As if I didn't know that a mouse trap or wheel barrel were not living things. It is obvious that this whole discussion has absolutely no concern for biology, chemistry or science. It is all about defending your theology.

I am merely trying to "debunk" the refutation of it that you are offering. It may seem like I am trying to use it against you personally, but actually I am more trying to refute the example of 5-part vs. 4-part mousetraps in general.

It's about defending theology only in that I'm defending something I believe is true. You've been trying to defend what you believe is true this entire time, as well (I believe at one point you called yourself a "fundamentalist atheist"). But you can't discredit what I'm saying just because I have a certain set of beliefs. Just like you, I'm arguing against what I believe is false information.

I do believe there is a theistic God that created the universe, complex life, and morality, and that this God has been and still is active in the world. But I also believe that there is proof and logic to back this all up. My beliefs may sound immediately ludicrous to some, but only because they have presupposed that everything must have a NATURAL cause alone. This, as I see it, is biased science.

1 Reply

@Diogenes phil,

If science can create life, why is a cure for the cold so elusive?

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@Klope3,

Klope3;169873 wrote:

I do believe there is a theistic God that created the universe, complex life, and morality, and that this God has been and still is active in the world. But I also believe that there is proof and logic to back this all up. My beliefs may sound immediately ludicrous to some, but only because they have presupposed that everything must have a NATURAL cause alone. This, as I see it, is biased science.

Alright fair enough, but at the same time, what you refer to as evidence or proofs for the existence of this god, I however; do not see any evidence. You might say the universe itself is that proof, but that is not proof. Give me something substantial to go off of and I might be able to enter into discussion with you.

---------- Post added 05-28-2010 at 05:03 AM ----------

jeeprs;169878 wrote:

If science can create life, why is a cure for the cold so elusive?

Just because one aspect is understood does not mean that all aspects are equally known or understood. One aspect might help but it does not mean that you would understand everything about the entire biology.

I am surprised that you would even make a question like that. To me your question is nothing different thank asking, well since this person took an anatomy class then they should understand the anatomy of all things living. That simply is not the case because not all anatomy is the same. Sure there are similarities but how those systems work can be completely different.

I am this close to :brickwall: because you can't even see the absurdity of your own question.

If you want to know why it is so absurd, what if they do cure the common cold? You would just come up with another excuse.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;169882 wrote:

I am surprised that you would even make a question like that. To me your question is nothing different thank asking, well since this person took an anatomy class then they should understand the anatomy of all things living. That simply is not the case because not all anatomy is the same. Sure there are similarities but how those systems work can be completely different.

I am this close to :brickwall: because you can't even see the absurdity of your own question.

If you want to know why it is so absurd, what if they do cure the common cold? You would just come up with another excuse.

Not at all. You believe that the fact that scientists are able to emulate some of the processes that appear similar to one or another aspect of what we suppose early life to have been, shows that therefore we are somehow able to explain the origin of life and the subsequent development of species. In fact there is no reason to think that this is a complete biological theory at all. There are enormous gaps in the theory. I am not one of the contributors who is arguing for a creationist view. However I am arguing against the idea that the scientific explanation is anywhere near complete or comprehensive. I do not accept the materialist view that life arose as a consequence of...well, what exactly? A chemical reaction? What is life, exactly? Even in its simplest form? We don't know. Accordingly, I am saying, there are people who claim we have some insight into the origin of life, 4 billion years ago, but with regards to many common facts of biological science, concerning matters that are quite near to hand, we are still in the dark. So I think that they are still engaged in wishful thinking, and a lot of it is driven by ideology rather than science.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;169899 wrote:

Not at all. You believe that the fact that scientists are able to emulate some of the processes that appear similar to one or another aspect of what we suppose early life to have been, shows that therefore we are somehow able to explain the origin of life and the subsequent development of species.

No, I never went outside the term "theory". I am not proposing that this is what happened and all things considered outside of it are wrong. I am saying that since this is possible you can not rule out that RNA could have developed completely randomly. This is proof that you can get RNA to form and the process is not very difficult to do. All you need is some moisture, and the inorganic compounds, time and heat. All of which were more than likely to be around.

jeeprs;169899 wrote:

In fact there is no reason to think that this is a complete biological theory at all. There are enormous gaps in the theory. I am not one of the contributors who is arguing for a creationist view. However I am arguing against the idea that the scientific explanation is anywhere near complete or comprehensive.

Yeah but gutting it before it has finished the story is just as bad. Just because there might be missing data sets or aspects of the experiments have not been conducted yet does not mean it is complete invalid.

jeeprs;169899 wrote:

I do not accept the materialist view that life arose as a consequence of...well, what exactly?

I laugh every time you use materialists in your arguments. Why don't you just call them atheists? Because if you really want to get down to the core of the materialists, you are one yourself. But what you are really referring to is not materialism at all, but instead the holders of how life originated. You opt for a supernatural one where as I do not. I have absolutely no problem accepting that life can arise from the most simplest of means because that is how chemistry works.

jeeprs;169899 wrote:

A chemical reaction? What is life, exactly? Even in its simplest form? We don't know. Accordingly, I am saying, there are people who claim we have some insight into the origin of life, 4 billion years ago, but with regards to many common facts of biological science, concerning matters that are quite near to hand, we are still in the dark. So I think that they are still engaged in wishful thinking, and a lot of it is driven by ideology rather than science.

I'll admit that some of it is pure speculation without any testing being conducted. I will also admit that I to see that we are still in the dark ages as far as science is concerned. But from my perspective I see you doing just the opposite. You propose that since science can't determine these things then there must be a more supernatural explanation. Or that life is just too "magical" to have happened naturally so there must be an agent of some kind working the strings. That to me is even worse speculation than a scientist who comes up with an untested theory.

So really your own accusations are what you are doing yourself. Where is your evidence that life is not naturally arising? Where are you experiments? What do you have to back up your theory?

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;169759 wrote:

The problem is, we have already successfully constructed RNA out of inorganic compounds.

Yes, that indeed is a problem. And a huge one, but not for ID or IE proponents.

Your Wired Magazine article is more adhoc. It is not the Sutherland paper and doesn't even bother to offer a link to it.

Be a good Joe and support you friendly neighborhood geneticist by purchasing the original paper here. Or be a schmuck like me, and download it for free here.

All Sutherland demonstrates is that the spontaneous formation could be guided to do so with intelligent intervention. The experiment was guided, (with purification steps) and although Sutherland suggests that the same conditions could have been present in early earth, there are numerous issues against his assessment...

As Sutherland fully admits: "Our worry is that it may not be right."

And this is not a fully functioning RNA molecule. The adhoc of the Wired article and others is very misleading.

"Dr. Sutherland said he had not yet found natural ways to generate the other two types of nucleotides found in RNA molecules... If all four nucleotides formed naturally, they would zip together easily to form an RNA molecule..."

Dr. Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University, said the recipe "definitely does not meet my criteria for a plausible pathway to the RNA world." He said that cyano-acetylene, one of Dr. Sutherland's assumed starting materials, is quickly destroyed by other chemicals and its appearance in pure form on the early earth "could be considered a fantasy."

From the Royal Society of Chemistry:
'Although as an exercise in chemistry this represents some very elegant work, this has nothing to do with the origin of life on Earth whatsoever,' he says. According to Shapiro, it is hard to imagine RNA forming in a prebiotic world along the lines of Sutherland's synthesis.'The chances that blind, undirected, inanimate chemistry would go out of its way in multiple steps and use of reagents in just the right sequence to form RNA is highly unlikely,' argues Shapiro. Instead, he advocates the metabolism-first argument: that early self-sustaining autocatalytic chemosynthetic systems associated with amino acids predated RNA.

From the Free Library:
Ferris points out that this advance is not the whole picture. "It's not as simple as putting compounds in a beaker and mixing it up. It's a series of steps. You still have to stop and purify and then do the next step, and that probably didn't happen in the ancient world."

From Access Research Network:
What, then, has been achieved? The researchers have synthesised both pyrimidine ribonucleotides (but not the purine ribonucleotides). As Van Noorden described it, they have "shown that it is possible to build one part of RNA from small molecules". They have not formed RNA molecules; they have not addressed the chirality problem, they have not generated any biological information and they have not made RNA do anything of biological significance, let alone become clothed with a membrane and undergo replication.

From Evolution News:
As far as being relevant to OOL, the chemistry has all of the usual problems. The starting materials are "plausibly" obtainable by abiotic means, but need to be kept isolated from one another until the right step, as Sutherland admits. One of the starting materials is a single mirror image for which there is no plausible way to get it that way abiotically. Then Sutherland ran these reactions as any organic chemist would, with pure materials under carefully controlled conditions. In general, he purified the desired products after each step, and adjusted the conditions (pH, temperature, etc.) to maximum advantage along the way. Not at all what one would expect from a lagoon of organic soup.

And finally, from Sutherland's own paper: You'll have to download it.
"...the issue of temporally separated supplies of glycolaldehyde and glyceraldehyde remains a problem..."

And that's why purification in a lab demonstration will not satisfy conditions of a pre-biotic earth scenario. Sutherland unwittingly supports intelligent intervention to explain the OOL.

1 Reply

@QuinticNon,

QuinticNon;170043 wrote:

All Sutherland demonstrates is that the spontaneous formation could be guided to do so with intelligent intervention. The experiment was guided, (with purification steps) and although Sutherland suggests that the same conditions could have been present in early earth, there are numerous issues against his assessment...

He has made other predictions that were found to be inaccurate. One being the famous ice core samples where air bubbles were formed in the ice as layers of snow compacted preserving the trapped air for thousands of years in the polar ice sheets. By taking core samples and testing the chemical properties of the trapped air pockets, we have determined that at some point in earths past, the amount of oxygen in the earths atmosphere was far lower than it currently is. This is a very crucial discovery because it suggests that something had to have occurred to raise the O2 levels dramatically. We now know what that source was.

It seems rather absurd to reason that if the universe was created for humans, why all the indirect steps to get there? It would be like wanting to get some pet fish but instead of buying a fish tank, sand and water filtering system you go out and buy bird seed instead. Totally unrelated to your goal to get fish as a pet. The most indirect route as possible is evident to have occurred.

Not only that but if 99% of all things that have ever lived on the Earth have gone extinct, what is the whole point in creating them just to have them go extinct? Seems rather absurd to create these things especially if humans were the point to create the universe in the first place. Humans have never even seen a vast majority of these other life forms, so what was the point in making them? Some of these form of life are so insignificant as well.

On top of that, why create such a massively large place if humans take up less than 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the space? The rest of the universe is absolutely hostile to human life. Seems like quite a waste to make something so large if it's not going to be used for anything.

Once you take in all the factors of what we do know, it seems incredibly absurd to think that there was some intelligence behind it. Just the make up of the human anatomy is by far less than ideal. If I had a crack at it, I definitely would not have designed it in the way that it currently is. It is incredibly inefficient and prone to very simple life threatening problems. It would be like designing a beam to support a building but instead of making it out of high tensile materials you used something with the worst tensile strength to handle the task.

So if there is any "intelligent" agent behind the creation of everything, it is far from being a great designer if you ask me. It just doesn't hold up and only a person unwilling to acknowledge these sorts of details would ever believe it.

1 Reply

@Diogenes phil,

What seems logical to me seems quite illogical to my dog. And there is no hope of ever changing that. He cannot know what I know. And I cannot hope to ever explain it to him either.

"Why can't I chase the rabbits?" he asks impatiently. "Because there are automobiles that can hurt you." I answer. "Why can't I chase the rabbits?" he asks impatiently...

Perhaps your answers lie in Middle Knowledge.

What can a dog know of the ways of Man? What can a man know of the ways of God?

1 Reply

@QuinticNon,

Krumple;169882 wrote:

Alright fair enough, but at the same time, what you refer to as evidence or proofs for the existence of this god, I however; do not see any evidence. You might say the universe itself is that proof, but that is not proof. Give me something substantial to go off of and I might be able to enter into discussion with you.

This is, sadly, what it sometimes comes down to in the end: a disagreement about what constitutes as real, viable evidence. This part is little more than a yes/no argument, and it could potentially go around in circles. It's sort of hard to provide evidence supporting what evidence is. If we can't agree that the aspects of the universe (including the things on Earth we use for even commonplace experiments) constitute as evidence, then the discussion might be over.

QuinticNon;170057 wrote:

What can a dog know of the ways of Man? What can a man know of the ways of God?

Thank you for adopting my analogy; it must mean I'm on to something. Smile

(I don't *think* I got it from an outside source.)

0 Replies

@Diogenes phil,

Quote:

What seems logical to me seems quite illogical to my dog. And there is no hope of ever changing that. He cannot know what I know. And I cannot hope to ever explain it to him either.

"Why can't I chase the rabbits?" he asks impatiently. "Because there are automobiles that can hurt you." I answer. "Why can't I chase the rabbits?" he asks impatiently...

Yes, but you still manage as the higher intellect to make your demand known--"Thou shalt not chase the rabbits!"--even though trying to make the dog understand the details of why may beyond the dog's grasp, or more likely beyond your ability to make yourself understood. He can understand getting hit by a car is bad, but you are not able to let him know why you stop him. In the same way understanding God is beyond our human unaided grasp, but making himself known is perfectly within the power of an omnipotent being.

If God had expectations and was just unable to make them known, having those expectations would be futile and God would be limited by our human limitations.

0 Replies

@Krumple,

Krumple;169905 wrote:

I am saying that since this is possible you can not rule out that RNA could have developed completely randomly.

Philosophically speaking, what is the point of the argument? Why is it significant that RNA did, or did not, develop 'randomly'?

Let's ask ourselves: in what other field of scientific endeavor is the hypothesis that something 'developed without a cause' significant? Generally speaking, science places a premium on causal analysis, on understanding why things happen the way they do. So to say that something as momentous as the development of RNA happened 'without cause' is not, I think, a scientific statement at all, but an ideological one, with many philosophical consequences.

The only reason the argument is given any significance is because of what it is denying, that is, that life was an act of special creation by the Deity. The entire Darwinist paradigm also is very much a product of liberal individualism, it that it suits the ego to belief that life arises for no reason. This is a deep irrationality at the heart of secular atheism. It is defined by what it denies. The Darwinism is biological theory, no more, no less. It is not a philosophy of life, nor a complete account of the nature of human being.

---------- Post added 05-29-2010 at 09:35 AM ----------

Krumple;170048 wrote:

Just the make up of the human anatomy is by far less than ideal. If I had a crack at it, I definitely would not have designed it in the way that it currently is. It is incredibly inefficient and prone to very simple life threatening problems. It would be like designing a beam to support a building but instead of making it out of high tensile materials you used something with the worst tensile strength to handle the task.

So if there is any "intelligent" agent behind the creation of everything, it is far from being a great designer if you ask me. It just doesn't hold up and only a person unwilling to acknowledge these sorts of details would ever believe it.

I do read this argument here and on the other forums from time to time: look what a mess the place is, if God designed it, he must be a klutz.

This idea is so profoundly mistaken that it is almost impossible to know where to start criticizing it. But I will have a go.

Having spent thousands of pages denying that the existence of an intelligence can be inferred on the basis of the wonder of nature, you then switch tactics and say 'anyway nature sucks. Species die out, people get sick, we get hereditary diseases, most of the universe is just empty space, what kind of crap God is it that would make a world like this?'

I think if there was a name for this view it would be called 'the argument from adolescent petulance'.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;170160 wrote:

I think if there was a name for this view it would be called 'the argument from adolescent petulance'.

I would call it something more like "the argument from the standard of perfection," since in order to claim that things are poorly designed, one must first allow for a universal standard of perfection. Something is only imperfect when compared with something that IS perfect. If someone (especially a materialist) says that things are designed things poorly, that person is indirectly admitting the existence of some free-floating (since "God doesn't exist") standard of good design. I don't think a free-floating standard of perfection is made of anything material, so the argument comes back to slap the materialist in the face.

At the core it's not really a refutation but instead an opportunity to give a :poke-eye: to God. And that doesn't solve anything.

0 Replies

@Diogenes phil,

not to mention the fact that in all the traditional faiths and philosophies, 'The World' was always understood to be imperfect and that the place or 'realm' where there was no suffering and no death is what the religious disciple aspired to reach.

0 Replies

@Krumple,

Krumple;170048 wrote:

So if there is any "intelligent" agent behind the creation of everything, it is far from being a great designer if you ask me.

I must admit to wavering back and forth between Theism, Deism, and what I call Truism. I never remain a Deist for too long though, having far too many personal interactions with this strange being, or beings, to comfortably ignore my experiences.

However, as far as "design", I do not suppose there needs to be any reason why humans actually look as we do other than the processes of natural selection guided by controlled mutations. There doesn't necessarily need to be any interaction with the original designer beyond the initial information catalyst that got it all started. We very well may could have turned out looking like dung gnats, albeit very smart little dung gnats.

Yet my personal perspective of a G being has evolved beyond what typical Theism can offer. Though I have studied in depth all the great religious texts of the world, I propose, as Dawkins does, that if there be a G being, that it must be more incomprehensible than any ReligiGod offered to humanity by the great three or more established doctrines.

For me, and not you or anyone else I suppose, the concept of Truth as a sentient agent is what intrigues me the most. An interdisciplinary study of science, math, philosophy and religion has presented me with one overriding contiguous foundation of what a G being must be like. That being:

God = Truth = Information

Satan = Deception = Entropy

What church shall I attend to discover more about this mysterious being?

My G is a Linguistic one, consisting of the immaterial essence of Language. It is the message behind the medium. Code is the doorway to invite that G into our physical realm of existence. We are made physically manifest through the essence of meaning underlying our genetic code "And the Word became flesh". And beyond that initial infusion of Information, we continuously make ourselves, as sentient authors ourselves, to create further our own essence with every Word we speak, fulfilling the notion of "In His image".

There is more. But I'd wager you have a hard enough time digesting this. And force feeding you further only causes choking. One must request more when that same one is ready for another bite. Small bites help digestion. And Truth is earned, though freely attainable to all who wish it.

---------- Post added 05-28-2010 at 10:58 PM ----------

cluckk;170094 wrote:

"Thou shalt not chase the rabbits!"--even though trying to make the dog understand the details of why may beyond the dog's grasp, or more likely beyond your ability to make yourself understood.

Surprisingly, after 8 or more years of patience, Pitch has learned to follow my lead as to when chasing rabbits is appropriate or not. Some instances such as open fields have demonstrated to him that there are appropriate times to chase rabbits, and therefor toppling the perceived commandment of "Thou shalt not..." in all circumstances.

cluckk;170094 wrote:

He can understand getting hit by a car is bad, but you are not able to let him know why you stop him.

No, I cannot make him aware of why any more than I can make him aware of why I care for him. His ways are not my ways. Yet in time, we touch upon the ways of each other, and find a union of essence amidst the connections.

cluckk;170094 wrote:

In the same way understanding God is beyond our human unaided grasp, but making himself known is perfectly within the power of an omnipotent being.

Making one's self known is much different than making one self's ways understood. Pitch knows of me. But he cannot ever truly know me.

Unfortunately, in our realm of existence, Perception is often King. In this life, my mission is to overcome that deception of perception, and reject it for the Satan that it is. Failing to do so is the birth of Dogma. I end up chasing my own tail, devouring myself for nourishment. What can eat itself and live?

cluckk;170094 wrote:

If God had expectations and was just unable to make them known, having those expectations would be futile and God would be limited by our human limitations.

I propose that the human condition IS the expectation of GTruth. We will understand the expectation at the very moment when we understand ourselves.

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Have I "debunked" God's existence?

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