How Can We Best Explain Our Existence ?

[Guest Valk0010]

I have yet to see anything remotely close to proving a christian idea of god. I don't particularly care in all honestly if there is a first cause non theistic god, that created the world yet isn't involved(if somehow atheism was shown to be a inaccurate world view, deism would be the view I would embrace, not Christianity). But you sir, haven't yet to make a justification for more then a first cause.

 

And you also, go on ignoring all the stuff I have said about the moral argument, I would like them addressed. When people ignore there consciousness(can happen, brainwashing can do a lot of it(the USSR had a program for making people atheists too, called society of the godless), or are born without one(as in the case of hitler and the like. That is where you get problems.

 

If there was objective morality, there shouldn't be such a variance in moral action, and views.

 

About value, some of what we value is learned also some is innate. Also some value comes from just needed to value things, to exist, to remain mentally balanced. We have to value ourselves to survive, and violating morals, however defined, can inhibit that value. For example to be promiscuous violates some groups idea of morality, they don't want to deal with the results to themselves and society by promiscuity, so it develops to be against the moral way.

[Guest Dibri501]

I have yet to see anything remotely close to proving a christian idea of god.

 

I think people should start to stop asking for proofs. Proofs do not exist. The right question to be made, is , as the thread title says :

 

how can we best explain our existence ?

 

if not God, whatelse ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Valk0010]

I have yet to see anything remotely close to proving a christian idea of god.

 

I think people should start to stop asking for proofs. Proofs do not exist. The right question to be made, is , as the thread title says :

 

how can we best explain our existence ?

 

if not God, whatelse ?

Then let me change what I said slightly

 

I have yet to see anything remotely close to having the christian idea of god be the best explanation for our existence.

 

I will also ask another question, if your right. What God? There is so many different ones to choose from!

[Guest Valk0010]

Werner Gitt, a Creationist, your going to have to do better then that.

 

This is not about Gitt, but still talks about information theory

Complex, Specified Information

 

In his 1999 book Intelligent Design and other publications, William Dembski asserts that

 

he can prove, from modern information theory, that life and, indeed, the universe,

 

cannot possibly be the result of natural processes and chance. 10 Thus, the argument

 

from design dons yet another set of clothes. However, as we will see, these new duds

 

are almost as transparent as the Emperor's, scarcely hiding the naked creationism that

 

lies below.

 

Dembski derives what he calls the law of conservation of information. He argues that

 

the information contained in living structures cannot be generated by any combination

 

of chance and natural processes. Neither mechanism, he insists, is capable of increasing

 

information.

 

Dembski is inconsistent in his use of the term "information." In his words he

 

implies the common understanding of information as a measure of knowledge about a

 

system. However, when he uses mathematics he defines a quantity of information that

 

is exactly identical to what in information theory is called Shannon uncertainty,11 usually

 

denoted by H:

 

H = -Σn Pn log2 Pn = -< log2 Pn >

 

where P n is the probability for the system to be found in a configuration n and the sum

 

is over all possible configurations. The angle brackets refer to the average.

 

Thus H equals the number of bits that are needed to transmit a signal

 

communicating that configuration, irrespective of the content of the message. In the

 

special case where Pn = P for all n, H = - log2 P, which is the form Dembski uses for his

 

measure of information.12

 

A more conventional definition of information that is consistent with the

 

vernacular use of the term is R = H before - Hafter , the decrease in Shannon uncertainty

 

under the action of some process. If R > 0, information has been gained and fewer bits

 

are now needed to describe the system.

 

In any case, the confusion of sign is not important––just a matter of definition.

 

More important is Dembski's "law of conservation of information," which states that the

 

number of bits H cannot change in any natural process such as chance or the operation

 

of some physical law. As he explains it, "chance and laws working in tandem cannot

 

generate information."13

 

For example, suppose we toss five fair coins in the air. The probability of any

 

specific resulting sequence, say HTTHT, is (1/2)5 . The Shannon uncertainty (Dembski

 

information) contained in that sequence is H = -log2 (1/2)5 = 5. That is, it can be

 

represented by the five bits 10010. (I chose a particularly simple example).

 

No information is gained in this random process. Whatever the initial

 

arrangement of the coins prior to their toss, it also contained five bits of information.

 

However, what about a sequence such as HHHHH? Intuitively it seems that it contains

 

more information than HTTHT. But it does not. In either case, Hafter = Hbefore = 5 and

 

R = 0. However, if we pick up two of the coins (an "act of design," Dembski would say),

 

R = 2 bits of information have been gained.

 

Suppose we specify the sequence HHHHH in advance. Then we have five bits of

 

what Dembski calls specified information. We can just as well specify HTTHT, as long as

 

we do this ahead of time or identify some other characteristic of the sequence that

 

marks it as something other than a random occurrence.

 

Now, five heads in a row, or any specified sequence of five coins, can happen by

 

chance. On average, about one of every thirty-two tosses of five coins will land with all

 

five heads up. However, suppose we do the experiment with 500 coins instead of five

 

and specify that all fall heads up. This would require 2500 = 10150 tosses of 500 coins

 

each, again on average, to obtain 500 heads by chance. Dembski rightly says this is, for

 

all practical purposes, impossible. Even tossing at the rate of once every 10 -43 second,

 

the smallest measurable time interval (the Planck time), it would take 10100 years to do

 

this many tosses. Each of the 10 88 particles in the visible universe doing the experiment

 

simultaneously would take a trillion years to find one case of 500 heads up. Dembski

 

defines 500 or more bits if information as complex and argues that the observation of

 

complex specified information (CSI) in the universe is evidence for intelligent design. In

 

particular, biological evolution cannot be simply the product of chance and natural law.

 

Dembski does not define specificity as precisely as he does information and

 

complexity. In the coin example I gave above, the sequence is specified in advance.

 

However, he cannot leave it at that because then his whole program to detect design

 

after the fact would be defeated. So, as a dubious and dangerous alternative, he allows

 

specificity to be post-determined. An observed sequence might contain some message

 

that is too unlikely to be chance. He uses an example from the film Contact, based on

 

Carl Sagan's novel, in which Jodie Foster detects an intelligent signal from outer space

 

containing the sequence of prime numbers up to 101. Although specificity is rather

 

difficult to define, like pornography you know it when you see it. Dembski's far more

 

dubious claim is that complex specified sequences of information cannot happen

 

naturally. In fact, it is more than dubious. It is simply wrong.

 

Dembski claims to prove that the generation of any information by natural

 

processes and chance is impossible––not just complex specified information. Since the

 

universe contains information, that information must have come about by other means

 

that he labels intelligent design. While he insists that this argument does not depend on

 

any specific theological assumptions, his book unabashedly promotes his interpretation

 

that the design inferred is the work of the Christian god. Indeed, the whole Intelligent

 

Design movement is being more than a bit disingenuous when it claims that it has no

 

religious agenda.

 

The Second Law and Natural Order

 

In statistical mechanics, physicists define the entropy of a system as S = - k Σn Pn logePn

 

where P n is the probability of the system being in a state n and k is Boltzmann's

 

constant. Except for units and the different base of logarithms, we see that Shannon

 

uncertainty and entropy are identical. In fact, S = (k loge 2) H. Indeed, Shannon

 

referred to his quantity H as "entropy," just expressed in bits rather than the Joules per

 

Kelvin units of conventional physics.

 

As is well known, entropy is a measure of "disorder." The Shannon uncertainty is

 

likewise a measure of the randomness in a signal, applied in communication theory.

 

Since the opposite of disorder is order, we associate order with negative entropy or

 

negentropy. Positive information gain R, as in the previous section, is then associated

 

with an increase in order.

 

In physics, the second law of thermodynamics specifies that, on the macroscopic

 

scale of many-body processes (an assumption not always made explicit in lower level

 

text books), the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease. Although Dembski does

 

not admit this in Intelligent Design, his law of conservation of information is nothing

 

more than "conservation of entropy," a special case of the second law that applies when

 

no dissipative processes are present. In fact, entropy is created naturally a million times

 

a day by every human being in earth, each time any friction is generated. Rub your

 

hands together right now and make some entropy.

 

Let me give a simple, quantitative example––the free expansion of an ideal gas

 

covered in freshman physics. If the initial volume of the gas is Vi and the final volume

 

Vf, then the entropy change is ∆S = Nk loge (Vf/Vi ), where N is the number of

 

molecules of the gas. Suppose the gas expands to twice its initial volume. Then ∆S =

 

Nk log e(2), or ∆H = N bits, from which we see that the information decreases (disorder

 

increases) by an amount N bits. Clearly, Dembski information, it is not conserved in

 

this simple, natural process.

 

When Dembski says that information cannot be generated naturally, he seems

 

to be voicing yet another muddled version of the common creationist assertion that the

 

second law forbids the generation of order by natural processes. Like his predecessors,

 

he ignores the caveat "closed system" (or "isolated system" to chemists,who use the

 

term "closed system" differently from physicists) in the formal statement of the second

 

law. Open systems can and do become more orderly by their interaction with other

 

systems. For example, the earth is ordered by the action of energy from the sun. In the

 

process, both the sun and earth lose entropy; but this is compensated by a

 

corresponding gain in the total entropy of the universe, which is the closed system for

 

this purpose. The sun provides for the generation of order on earth, including that

 

contained in living organisms.

 

Whenever a drop of water freezes into an ice crystal we observe the creation of

 

order by a "mindless" natural process. We don't need fancy information theory to tell

 

us that. We can see it with our own two eyes.

 

That comes from this

 

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:MvhUzR6C08EJ:www.infidels.org/library/modern/vic_stenger/stealth.pdf+information+theory&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiO4ome5prYpw-N8yiPrP5Qrj6BVlTwQMn6R3RPu5UwPpeN6pvt7HVbaVBCXd9O5plmv5wpJKGXtJN96Jk79AeDCqpEduLZRd7dCNiYcnyt3YrcNquPMktLV8_wecI0Rz6MvU-G&sig=AHIEtbQEUyjfR_vuJIvuB7g4a57eePz29w

[MagickMonkey]

I have yet to see anything remotely close to proving a christian idea of god.

 

I think people should start to stop asking for proofs. Proofs do not exist. The right question to be made, is , as the thread title says :

 

how can we best explain our existence ?

 

if not God, whatelse ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The big bang theory, abiogenesis, evlolution.... these are all pieces of the puzzle, and we are learning more about the details all the time. However, we will never have an answer that fully satisfies us. However, our incomplete theories about the universe and its origins are much more closer to the truth than any magical explanation can ever hope to be.

 

Like I said earlier, it is better to acknowledge and accept that you can't fully know the truth than to accept a fairy tale as its substitute. It is also better to let the facts form your world view rather than try to force the facts to support your preexisting world view. I think you are trying to convince yourself more than you are trying to convince us.

 

 

[sciencemike]

 

Why could God not live in a timeless dimension ? I don't see any problem with that view.

 

 

This, of course, assumes that God exists in some form of another. Even if this is true, how could we know if he lives in a timeless dimension?

 

Also, why would God choose to live in a timeless dimension? If everything else in our universe proceeds with time then why not God?

 

 

 

What do you suggest as alternative ? The universe was cause of itself ? How could it be, if it did not exist beyond the Big Bang ?

 

 

No, that from what we know we cannot extrapolate our own knowledge of the laws of physics before the Planck Epoch (10^-44 seconds). The universe came into being with physics consistent with the Standard Model after this time period, but it is meaningless to speculate before this interval. There is simply not enough information on high temperature physics to make a credible hypothesis on the nature of the early universe before this period, and there are also gaps in the Standard Model in linking together quantum mechanics and gravitation (this bridge must also be crossed in order to better understand the Planck Epoch).

 

 

Again, that implies that time as we know it existed before the universe was created.

 

Nope, God could live in a timeless eternity.

 

 

But this is speculation and not science. Science explains real phenomenon using empirical methods of theory and observation.

 

 

Eternity is the simultaneous possession of boundless life which is made clearer by comparison with temporal things.

 

This becomes clear when we consider temporal things: whatever lives in time lives only in the present, which passes from the past into the future, and no temporal thing has such a nature that it can simultaneously embrace its entire existence, for it has not yet arrived at tomorrow and no longer exists in yesterday.

 

We cannot be considered eternal: Even one’s life today exists only in each and every transient moment. Therefore, anything which exists in time… cannot properly be considered eternal, for anything in time does not embrace the infinity of life all at once, since it does not embrace the future or the past.

 

Since every intellect understands according to its own nature, and since God lives in an eternal present, with no past or future, his knowledge transcends the movement of time and exists only in a single, simple, unified present.

 

 

Perhaps that is the nature of God. But that certainly doesn't mean that the nature of God is exactly as you described. I could just as easily say that God lives in the past, in the Old Testament days, killing heathens and forcing girls to sleep with their fathers and slaughtering homosexuals for all of eternity. Or God might get bored after a few million years and play around with any number of physical constants (which we have yet to observe a difference). I might not be correct, but then again your assumption might not be correct either. We can only explain what we can observe through processes of reasoning, deduction and induction. There is no concept of "eternity" in science. Time progresses forward in a straightforward manner and all systems must follow the laws of thermodynamics. The universe itself will end in either a big crunch or a big rip or a heat death scenario.

 

 

Yep. What do you suggest as alternative ?

 

 

Just that. The universe came into existence exactly in that manner that I have described and for all practical purposes needs no further information. We exist. In a universe that exists, with consistent physical laws. That way we just live our life, eat, drink, be merry until billions of years now when the universe decides to close up shop when the entropy of the entire universe reaches a global maximum and the party is over.

 

 

Ah the famous anthropic principle, combined with a sound lack of statistical understanding. Just because science cannot explain how our universe developed from first principle does not mean that we must invoke a god to explain it (or "Fill in the Gaps" so to speak).

 

There is no gap to be filled, since we know the improbability of chance to cause a life permitting universe.

 

 

How can we make that claim if we don't know with any certainty that other universes might exist with differing initial conditions? We cannot just simply make the claim that it is improbable from a single data point. Our error margins are therefore 100%, and at that point we might as well be guessing.

[sciencemike]

Besides, any sensitivity analysis on any physical constant would indicate exactly what that site would say, that the universe would not proceed as it is now. But we don't know of any universes that have those particular constants. Physics (our physics) explains our universe, and it doesn't have to explain other possible universes because we don't observe them and therefore don't need to know about them. This is like saying what if Pi is 3 and not the ratio between a circle's circumference to its diameter. The various "what if" scenarios are meaningless in describing our own universe.

 

 

But there was no universe at the beginning, with 1 to 10^500 of chance, a life permitting universe to arise by chance. What makes you believe, chance is a good explanation ?

 

 

Life perhaps may have arisen from another chain of inorganic molecules that wasn't included in that 1:10^500 chance calculation, it may be a lot lower. We are still finding new forms of life that don't operate processes such as photosynthesis.

 

 

I guess you should do it, to learn the very basic that abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution.

 

 

In that paragraph you were mentioning the complexity of eukaryote organisms. This has everything to do with evolution.

 

 

why should this progress happen, in first place ? dead rocks don't need to survive, they are already dead.

 

 

Why did you say that dead rocks needed to evolve?

 

 

Non of which are compelling. Thats why there is a one million dollar price awaiting for the first, presenting compelling explanation of natural origin of the first life.

 

The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible natural-process mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. The explanation must be consistent with empirical biochemical, kinetic, and thermodynamic concepts as further delineated herein, and be published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed science journal(s).

 

Only, no peer-reviewed scientific journal would accept most theological claims as they are complete bullshit from a scientific point of view. The burden of evidence needs to be exceptionally strong for any mainstream scientific journal such as Science or Nature to accept it.

 

 

Miller himself has recognized that Kauffman’s research is not viable and, consequently, he was ‘… unimpressed with any of the current proposals on the origin of life, referring to them as “nonsense” or “paper chemistry.” He was so contemptuous of some hypotheses that, when I asked his opinion of them, he merely shook his head, sighed deeply, and snickered—as if overcome by the folly of humanity. Stuart Kauffman’s theory of autocatalysis fell into this category. “Running equations through a computer does not constitute an experiment,” Miller sniffed. Miller acknowledged that scientists may never know precisely where and when life emerged. “We’re trying to discuss a historical event, which is very different from the usual kind of science, and so criteria and methods are very different,” he remarked.’

 

 

The main problem with that is that the exact initial conditions are not known. And computerized simulations can be very good at predicting physical systems if you know what the hell you're doing: a Monte Carlo simulation can accurately predict particle collisions within a certain margin of error just by following classical kinematic equations and laws of scattering and absorption. This doesn't mean that it can't be proven, it just makes it hard to do so.

 

 

A purely material entity, such as physicochemical processes, cannot create a nonmaterial entity. (Something material cannot create something nonmaterial.)

Physical entities include mass and energy (matter). Examples of something that is not material (nonmaterial entity) include thought, spirit, and volition (will).

 

 

I could just as easily say that thought is the result of synaptic activity caused by the neural network of axons and neurons within the brain, developed as an evolutionary adaptation in order to survive. Pure non-material entities don't exist outside of mathematics.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

I can explain our existence. Chemical reactions. That's what we are, a really complex chain of chemical reactions, that came from prior chemical reactions. In this constant selfreplicating chain that goes back to when we were just chemicals from the deep sea vents reacting with the water above. We're stardust, that's our existence.

[sciencemike]

 

First Law of Information (LI1)

 

Information cannot originate in statistical processes. (Chance plus time cannot create information no matter how many chances or how much time is available.)

There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.7

 

 

Suppose I had a counter that read a 0 or a 1 depending on whether a nuclear transformation occurred in a Cs-137 atom. I monitor a chunk of Cs-137 using a rate meter sensitive to the gamma lines emitted from the Cs-137. I string together the 0's and 1's over time (such that if during a given time interval dt there is no transformation I record a 0 and if so then I record a 1) and save it to a hard disk. This would also assume a 4*pi counter to eliminate any anisotropy. I am creating information from a statistical process. How can you explain this phenomenon with this law? It smells fishy (and not in the good gourmet-restaurant fish type of smell).

 

 

Second Law of Information (LI2)

 

Information can only originate from an intelligent sender

Corollary 18

All codes result from an intentional choice and agreement between sender and recipient.

 

We observe daily a continual input of new information (UDI) from an intelligent source (human beings). At present, on earth, the only new information we have detected being created is from human beings. Careful examination of other systems will determine if there are any other intelligent sources of new UDI.

Corollary 2

Any given chain of information can be traced backward to an intelligent source.

For two people to effectively communicate, there must be some agreement on the language or code that is used.

 

 

No!

 

Information does not require an intelligent sender. What about pulsars? They generate an information-like quantity (pulses of gamma ray bursts) and are completely insentient.

 

 

you got it damn right. But that is exactly , what you assert, when you say, humans with the ability of thinking and expressing themself dilligently arose by chance, through abiogenesis.

 

 

There is a big jump between abiogenesis and our thought processes. Several hundred millions years of life forming and evolving into different shapes and forms.

 

 

http://elshamah.heav...d-t349.htm#1245

 

 

How do you explain where guilt comes from? How do you explain why all people in the world have this feeling called a conscience that seems to tell them that something is wrong, such as murder. How come people feel a heavy weight on their emotions called guilt when they do something wrong, such as lie and steal, and the best thing to do to take the weight off themselves is to tell the truth and/or ask for forgiveness. If God doesn't exist, then how could you rationally explain all that?

 

 

Our social system tells us it is wrong to kill, and teaches us from a young age to feel empathy and remorse. This may or may not have been influenced by religious texts, but it does not require a God for us to feel remorse.

 

 

No Ultimate Value Without Immortality and God

 

If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one’s destiny is ultimately unrelated to one’s behavior, you may as well just live as you please. As Dostoyevsky put it: “If there is no immortality then all things are permitted.” On this basis, a writer like Ayn Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable! Indeed, it would be foolish to do anything else, for life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid. Kai Nielsen, an atheist philosopher who attempts to defend the viability of ethics without God, in the end admits,

 

We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me. . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.7

 

 

Knowledge of the universe can shape and define our morality. Value is a concept created by humanity, we make of it what we will. If I choose to live my life without God and without any form of Godly morality then I should be free to do so. The universe doesn't give a damn so why should I?

 

 

But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there can be no objective standards of right and wrong. All we are confronted with is, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s words, the bare, valueless fact of existence. Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning. In the words of one humanist philosopher, “The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion.”8 In a world without God, who is to say which values are right and which are wrong? Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? The concept of morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. As one contemporary atheistic ethicist points out, “to say that something is wrong because . . . it is forbidden by God, is . . . perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong . . . even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable. . . .” “The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone.”9 In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.

 

 

That's because there is no objective standard of right or wrong. Suppose we are dropped into the Andaman Islands, where none of the humans there know anything about advanced society. They have a sense of right or wrong that are probably completely different to our own. Concepts of right or wrong are relative and culturally dependent.

 

 

 

Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The two are logically incompatible. Bertrand Russell, too, was inconsistent. For though he was an atheist, he was an outspoken social critic, denouncing war and restrictions on sexual freedom. Russell admitted that he could not live as though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste, and that he therefore found his own views “incredible.” “I do not know the solution,” he confessed.16 The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong cannot exist. As Dostoyevsky said, “All things are permitted.”

 

 

All things are permitted but that doesn't mean that we do them. Yes, a diet of aborted fetueses is rich in iron, protein, and amino acids but that doesn't mean that we all eat babies. Just because we are ex-Christians means that we engage in wholesale debauchery (although it may be fun sometimes to just let go and have a few brewskis with the guys).

 

 

But Dostoyevsky also showed that man cannot live this way. He cannot live as though it is perfectly all right for soldiers to slaughter innocent children. He cannot live as though it is all right for dictatorial regimes to follow a systematic program of physical torture of political prisoners. He cannot live as though it is all right for dictators like Pol Pot to exterminate millions of their own countrymen. Everything in him cries out to say these acts are wrong—really wrong. But if there is no God, he cannot. So he makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

 

 

And Dostoyevsky is correct from our own moral compass. Morality is not defined as a single absolute framework, and it is itself inconsistent in the Bible between the New and Old Testaments.

 

 

The horror of a world devoid of value was brought home to me with new intensity a few years ago as I viewed a BBC television documentary called “The Gathering.” It concerned the reunion of survivors of the Holocaust in Jerusalem, where they rediscovered lost friendships and shared their experiences. Now, I had heard stories of the Holocaust before and had even visited Dachau and Buchenwald, and I thought I was beyond shocking by further tales of horror.

 

... He should have gone for the ladder first, pushed others away if necessary in order to survive. But to die for others he did not even know, to give up all the brief existence he would ever have—what for? For the atheist there can be no reason. And yet the atheist, like the rest of us, instinctively reacts with praise for this man’s selfless action. Indeed, one will probably never find an atheist who lives consistently with his system. For a universe without moral accountability and devoid of value is unimaginably terrible.

 

Yes, Nazis are bad. But where was God in that time? All things may be permitted, but someone should stand up to defend genocide of human beings, and the German Catholic church certainly did not do that. If I were a Jew in that time period I would have certainly tried to find some sort of underground resistance in order help prevent such massacres.

 

Do we really need reward or punishment? Is the afterlife really meant to be some carrot on a stick? What if when I die I just don't exist? I wouldn't care about it because the concept of individuality wouldn't exist then. Life's reward is life itself (from a macroscopic point of view), that of procreation and seeing that our species propagates and survives. Or from a microscopic point of view, life's reward is what we make of it.

 

Note: Pfew that was long, had to split up my single reply into 3 posts! And almost got confused with the massive amount of quote tags.

[Guest Valk0010]

 

Fundamental Law 1 (FL1)

 

A purely material entity, such as physicochemical processes, cannot create a nonmaterial entity. (Something material cannot create something nonmaterial.)

Physical entities include mass and energy (matter). Examples of something that is not material (nonmaterial entity) include thought, spirit, and volition (will).

According to Edward tabash, in one of his many appearances of Point of Inquiry, he said that according to his research consciousness has never been seen outside of a brain. So what does that mean for a god. It also means that if a brain is needed for something like consciousness then by some means(I am not a scientist so I don't know the exact stuff of this) then a material process can create a non material entity.

 

Fundamental Law 2 (FL2)

 

Information is a nonmaterial fundamental entity and not a property of matter.

The information recorded on a CD is nonmaterial. If you weigh a modern blank CD, fill it with information, and weigh it again, the two weights will be the same. Likewise, erasing the information on the CD has no effect on the weight.

The same information can be transmitted on a CD, a book, a whiteboard, or using smoke signals. This means the information is independent of the material source. A material object is required to store information, but the information is not part of the material object. Much like people in an airplane are being stored and transferred in the plane, they are not part of the physical plane.

What about being a byproduct, remember we are dealing with biology not technology. And since we are dealing with biology, not technology, any creator analogies between the divine and us, become quite muddled. Also action can cause the creation of things, we cause the action. Information is transferred by biology. Writing is done by hands, read by eyes, and processed by the brain. We create it because we can, and have developed the need for it. And since, while we are on top of the evolutionary food chain, we are still acting on that compulsion to improve, which helps to develop consciousness along, and once consciousness was created so was the information you speak off.

 

The first law of thermodynamics makes it clear that mass and energy (matter) can neither be created nor destroyed. All mass and energy in the universe is being conserved (the total sum is constant). However, someone can write a new complicated formula on a whiteboard and then erase the formula. This is a case of creating and destroying information.

 

Since the first law of thermodynamics states that mass and energy (matter) cannot be created or destroyed, and information (UDI) can be created and destroyed, information (UDI) must be nonmaterial.

The genetic information system is the software of life and, like the symbols in a computer, is purely symbolic and independent of its environment. Of course, the genetic message, when expressed as a sequence of symbols, is nonmaterial but must be recorded in matter and energy.5

 

Indeed, Einstein pointed to the nature and origin of symbolic information as one of the profound questions about the world as we know it. He could identify no means by which matter could bestow meaning to symbols. The clear implication is that symbolic information, or language, represents a category of reality distinct from matter and energy.6

 

While statistical information theory has a quantity called "entropy", it does not have anything equivalent to the second law of thermodynamics. In a general information processing/transmitting system, entropy can freely decrease or increase. There are some classes of information systems in which information can only decrease, for example a deterministic, causally isolated system with discrete states. However (at least in this case) the information loss corresponds to a decrease in entropy. Information theory does sort of have a principle of degradation, but its only applicable in certain situations (which evolution isn't one of). It implies, essentially, that information change is irreversible: information gets more and more different from how it started. In a communication or information storage system, where the goal is to transmit or replay the original message intact, change is necessarily bad, so this corresponds to degradation. In evolution, change is not necessarily bad, so this is not a principle of degradation.

This comes from The counter-creationism handbook, available as a ipod app as well as a book.

 

First Law of Information (LI1)

 

Information cannot originate in statistical processes. (Chance plus time cannot create information no matter how many chances or how much time is available.)

There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.7

What about consciousness which thought and information would be a natural evolution of?

 

Second Law of Information (LI2)

 

Information can only originate from an intelligent sender

Corollary 18

All codes result from an intentional choice and agreement between sender and recipient.

 

We observe daily a continual input of new information (UDI) from an intelligent source (human beings). At present, on earth, the only new information we have detected being created is from human beings. Careful examination of other systems will determine if there are any other intelligent sources of new UDI.

Corollary 2

Any given chain of information can be traced backward to an intelligent source.

For two people to effectively communicate, there must be some agreement on the language or code that is used.[/color][/font]

 

From a intelligent sender, and i would also say creator, your point being? If something can be created it can be used. It is why people say lower level animals only act on instinct, they don't have consciousness at least in the same way we do.

[MagickMonkey]

I'd like to say that Science Mike pretty much fucking ROCKS!!!!

[Ouroboros]

, but as soon as science disprove their precious religion they start screaming "bloody murder!"

 

what exactly is science disprooving ?

Crationism to name one. Healings trough prayer is another.

[Ouroboros]

I'd like to say that Science Mike pretty much fucking ROCKS!!!!

Agree. I'm glad we have people like him and you here.

[MagickMonkey]

The first law of thermodynamics makes it clear that mass and energy (matter) can neither be created nor destroyed. All mass and energy in the universe is being conserved (the total sum is constant). However, someone can write a new complicated formula on a whiteboard and then erase the formula. This is a case of creating and destroying information.

 

Since the first law of thermodynamics states that mass and energy (matter) cannot be created or destroyed, and information (UDI) can be created and destroyed, information (UDI) must be nonmaterial.

The genetic information system is the software of life and, like the symbols in a computer, is purely symbolic and independent of its environment. Of course, the genetic message, when expressed as a sequence of symbols, is nonmaterial but must be recorded in matter and energy.5

 

Indeed, Einstein pointed to the nature and origin of symbolic information as one of the profound questions about the world as we know it. He could identify no means by which matter could bestow meaning to symbols. The clear implication is that symbolic information, or language, represents a category of reality distinct from matter and energy.6

 

DNA can be viewed as information in a similar manner that data on a cd is information, but that's simply our abstract way of understanding it. There is nothing symbolic about dna. It is simply a reflection of the processes that create it. When a meteorite crashes into the earth and leaves a big ass crater, it leaves information. Scientists can "read" the information about the impact by studying the crater and the rocks in the area. If people were to excavate the entire site and build a city there, then much of the information would be erased. This erasable information was created by a natural process and not by some intelligent messenger intentionally trying to convey a message.

[MagickMonkey]

I'd like to say that Science Mike pretty much fucking ROCKS!!!!

Agree. I'm glad we have people like him and you here.

 

Thanks, Ouroboros

[Guest Dibri501]

The big bang theory, abiogenesis, evlolution.... these are all pieces of the puzzle, and we are learning more about the details all the time.

 

The information we already have through science, let us confidently say already, God is the most rational, and best explanation for these phenomenas.

 

 

However, we will never have an answer that fully satisfies us.

 

certainly not, if you aloud only naturalistic answers. These will never satisfy.

 

 

However, our incomplete theories about the universe and its origins are much more closer to the truth than any magical explanation can ever hope to be.

 

chance ? kkk...... you are very credulous..... where is your skeptical thinking ?

 

Like I said earlier, it is better to acknowledge and accept that you can't fully know the truth than to accept a fairy tale as its substitute.

 

God is not a substitute for chance. God is simply the most rational and logical explanation. Wheter your biased thinking permits you to aknowledge it, or not.....

 

I think you are trying to convince yourself more than you are trying to convince us

 

I am already completely convinced.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Dibri501]

DNA can be viewed as information in a similar manner that data on a cd is information, but that's simply our abstract way of understanding it. There is nothing symbolic about dna.

 

How right you are.

 

 

Francis Crick received the Nobel prize for discovering DNA. The following is from the first paragraph of Francis Crick's Nobel lecture on October 11, 1962. Note his use of the word "code" and "information,"

 

"Part of the work covered by the Nobel citation, that on the structure and replication of DNA, has been described by Wilkins in his Nobel Lecture this year... I shall discuss here the present state of a related problem in information transfer in living material - that of the genetic CODE - which has long interested me, and on which my colleagues and I, among many others, have recently been doing some experimental work..."

 

Richard Dawkins at his book The Blind Watchmaker:

 

"Every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer.

 

http://nobelprize.or...cation/dna.html

 

DNA contains a coded representation of all the proteins in the cell. Other molecules such as sugars and fats are synthesised by proteins (enzymes) so their structures are indirectly coded by DNA. DNA also contains all the information required to make the correct amount of protein at the correct time, thus controlling all biological processes from those of day to day life such as metabolic activity to those of embryogenesis and fetal development. The human genome contains 3x109 base pairs of DNA divided into 23 chromosomes which if linked together would form a thread of 1 meter with a diameter of 2 nm. This DNA codes for about 105 different proteins. In fact only about 2-4 % of the total coding capacity in the human DNA is used for coding of different genes, the rest of it probably has other more structural and organizational functions.

 

http://nobelprize.or...e-code/how.html

 

Every living organism contains within itself the information it needs to build a new organism. This information, you could think of it as a blueprint of life, is stored in the organism's genome.

 

When an organism needs to use the data stored in the genome, e.g. to build components of a new cell, a copy of the required DNA part is made.

 

The alphabet in the RNA molecule contains 4 letters, i.e. A, U, C, G as previously mentioned. To construct a word in the RNA language, three of these letters are grouped together. This three-letter word are often referred to as a triplet or a codon. An example of such a codon is ACG. The letters don't have to be of different kinds, so UUU is also a valid codon. These codons are placed after each other in the RNA molecule, to construct a message, a RNA sequence. This message will later be read by the protein producing machinery in the body.

 

Every organism has an almost identical system that is able to read the RNA, interpret the different codons and construct a protein with various combinations of the amino acids mentioned previously.

 

http://www.cosmicfin.../dnanotcode.htm

 

DNA's definition as a literal code (and not a figurative one) is nearly universal in the entire body of biological literature since the 1960's.

If you can provide a empricial example of a code which arose naturally and spontaneously, by chance, you win my argument. All you need is one.

It is simply a reflection of the processes that create it. When a meteorite crashes into the earth and leaves a big ass crater, it leaves information.

 

Of course not. It leaves patterns, which are not information.

 

http://www.cosmicfin...anreadthis2.htm

 

To have information you have to matter and energy and will. Somebody has to decide to create information. Somebody has to write the music. The interesting thing about information is that you can have exact copies of it. You can have an exact copy of a book. I can send you an email and what can you do with it? You can read it on your screen. You can print it out on your printer. You can read it out loud. You could read it over the telephone. You could save it as a Microsoft Word document. You could post it on the Internet as a web page.

The Message is Not The Medium

Does the message change? No. The message is separate form the media that it comes in. That's what information is, and it requires thought. All information requires a thought process, which I will talk about.

So really the fundamental question if you want to frame the fundamental questions of evolution and the origins question. The question becomes:

Can patterns turn into designs?

Can stuff on the left turn into stuff on the right? Is there a natural process that allows that to happen?

And here's the big question:

Is DNA a pattern or is it a design?

The whole argument rests on the answer to that question.

Tonight we are going to answer that question. And when you have designs how do they evolve? I'm going to discuss that towards the ends of my talk.

[Guest Dibri501]

, but as soon as science disprove their precious religion they start screaming "bloody murder!"

 

what exactly is science disprooving ?

Crationism to name one. Healings trough prayer is another.

 

 

 

please show the scientific proof, which disproves creationism.

 

 

[Guest Valk0010]

Come on its not that hard, even if I were to agree with the idea that a creator is the best explaination.

 

How can we say, that the christian god, is the most logical one to explain it all

 

in short

 

What God?

[Guest Valk0010]

, but as soon as science disprove their precious religion they start screaming "bloody murder!"

 

what exactly is science disprooving ?

Crationism to name one. Healings trough prayer is another.

 

 

 

please show the scientific proof, which disproves creationism.

Here is a wierd thought. How about this for a idea

 

If somehow, evolution as a theory is bogus, what makes the myths of genesis right? It could easily have been a clot of blood like muslims believe, or started with the sound ommmm like the hindu's believe. Who says that is has to be made from a bunch of dirt.

[MagickMonkey]

The big bang theory, abiogenesis, evlolution.... these are all pieces of the puzzle, and we are learning more about the details all the time.

 

The information we already have through science, let us confidently say already, God is the most rational, and best explanation for these phenomenas.

 

Not by a long shot

 

 

However, we will never have an answer that fully satisfies us.

 

certainly not, if you aloud only naturalistic answers. These will never satisfy.

 

 

They are much more satisfying than make-believe answers.

 

 

However, our incomplete theories about the universe and its origins are much more closer to the truth than any magical explanation can ever hope to be.

 

chance ? kkk...... you are very credulous..... where is your skeptical thinking ?

 

 

By law, not by chance. Just the same as its not by chance that the ratio of the perimeter of a circle to its diameter is PI, or that the squared root of 9 is 3, or that 2 + 2 = 4;

My skepticism keeps me from believing the details of different theories with 100% certainty. In fact, I know there must be errors, and that new theories must be made to reconcile differences in existing theories. However, we are making real progress towards the truth rather than using mythology as a substitute for a real explanation. We'll always be approaching infinity from the left, but at least we are approaching.

 

 

Like I said earlier, it is better to acknowledge and accept that you can't fully know the truth than to accept a fairy tale as its substitute.

 

God is not a substitute for chance. God is simply the most rational and logical explanation. Wheter your biased thinking permits you to aknowledge it, or not.....

 

I think you are trying to convince yourself more than you are trying to convince us

 

I am already completely convinced.

 

 

Just like to my daughter, magic might be the best explanation for why there are moving pictures on TV. Trust me, biased thinking did not lead to my deconversion. I lost my faith in god inspite of my biases. Like you, I did a lot of mental gymnastics to explain how god could still exist in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I really wanted god to exist. I wanted to spend eternity with loved ones. However, I realized that I cannot wish a god into existence.

 

 

I damn sure hope I didn't screw up the quote tags.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Valk0010]

I just wanted to say something on the use of information in this discussion.

 

Again from the counter-creationist handbook

 

Information is not meaning and does not, per se, imply any special structure or function. Any arrangement implies information; the information is how the arrangement is described. If a new arrangement occurs, whether spontaneously or from the outside, new information is assembled in the process. even if the arrangement consists of shattering a glass into tiny pieces, that means assembling new information. Nothing needs to assemble itself. Evolution and abiogenesis do not exclude outside influences;on the contrary, such outside influences are essential. In abiogenesis, it is observed that complex organic molecules easily form spontaneously due to little more than basic chemistry and energy from the sun or from the earth's interior. In evolution, information from the environment is communicated to genomes indirectly via natural selection against varieties that do not do well in that environment

 

EDIT:Any errors are mine

[MagickMonkey]

Of course not. It leaves patterns, which are not information.

FSM, DAMMIT, YES IT IS!!!! Just like the pattern on the reflective surface of cds are information. Just like the patterns of letters in this post are information. You can infer meaning from these patterns, just the same as you can with man made patterns. It's only a matter of how to read them. This is not a hard concept to grasp.

 

http://www.cosmicfin...anreadthis2.htm

 

To have information you have to matter and energy and will. Somebody has to decide to create information. Somebody has to write the music. The interesting thing about information is that you can have exact copies of it. You can have an exact copy of a book. I can send you an email and what can you do with it? You can read it on your screen. You can print it out on your printer. You can read it out loud. You could read it over the telephone. You could save it as a Microsoft Word document. You could post it on the Internet as a web page.

You DO NOT have to have will to create information. Much information is created by will, but that is not the only way information is created or even how most of it is created. At least not by any half-assed definition for the word information.

The Message is Not The Medium

On some level it is. Above that, it is simply our abstractions.

Does the message change? No. The message is separate form the media that it comes in. That's what information is, and it requires thought. All information requires a thought process, which I will talk about.

No, inferring meaning from a message requires thought, but not creation of the message. BTW, DNA would do what DNA does regardless of anybody thinking about what it does.

So really the fundamental question if you want to frame the fundamental questions of evolution and the origins question. The question becomes:

Can patterns turn into designs?

Yes, we see evidence of that today.

Can stuff on the left turn into stuff on the right? Is there a natural process that allows that to happen?

Weather something is on the left or right is simply a matter of perspective.

And here's the big question:

Is DNA a pattern or is it a design?

The whole argument rests on the answer to that question.

It is a pattern - one that mimics an intentionally created design, but is NOT an intentionally created design. If "read", the "message' of dna points to a half-hazzard set of "design" changes, like the malformed gene for vitamin c in humans and other great apes.

Tonight we are going to answer that question. And when you have designs how do they evolve? I'm going to discuss that towards the ends of my talk

.

 

 

How do they evolve? Random mutations. Most random mutations are bad, and are often eliminated from a gene pool because organisms with malformed genes are less likely to survive long enough to pass their bad genes to future generations. In the case of the shitty vitamin c gene we share with chimpanzees and other great apes, we eat enough vitamin c to compensate. There are no doubt many other cases where mutations are simply harmless. Occasionally, there are good mutations which cause those who have the mutation to have a better chance of surviving long enough to procreate. This is a bit of a simplification, but the idea is not hard to understand.

 

EDIT: I just caught one place where I screwed up a quote tag. Please forgive any other screw ups.

[Guest Dibri501]

Come on its not that hard, even if I were to agree with the idea that a creator is the best explaination.

 

How can we say, that the christian god, is the most logical one to explain it all

 

in short

 

What God?

 

God is the supreme being of the universe. God is a unbodied mind, he is eternal, without a beginning, and without a end, , immutable, Moreover, God is self-existent, nonspatial, nonmaterial, unimaginably powerful, and personal.

This God fits best to the God of the bible

 

 

 

http://vintage.aomin.org/JOHN1_1.html

http://vintage.aomin.org/JOHN1_1.html

 

John 1:1 In the beginning 1 was the Word, and the Word was with God, 2 and the Word was fully God. 3 1:2 The Word 4 was with God in the beginning. 1:3 All things were created 5 by him, and apart from him not one thing was created 6 that has been created.

 

To understand what John is saying, we must delve into the verses themselves and analyze them carefully. We must bear in mind that we are reading only a translation of what John wrote, and hence some mention will have to be made of the Greek language.

 

John's first assertion is that "In the beginning was the Word." Which beginning? Considering the whole context of the prologue, many have identified this beginning as the same beginning mentioned in Genesis 1:1. But most see that the assertion of the Apostle goes far beyond that.

 

The key element in understanding this, the first phrase of this magnificent verse, is the form of the word "was," which in the Greek language in which John was writing, is the word en (the "e" pronounced as a long "a" as in "I ate the food"). It is a timeless word - that is, it simply points to existence before the present time without reference to a point of origin. One can push back the "beginning" as far as you can imagine, and, according to John, the Word still is. Hence, the Word is eternal, timeless. The Word is not a creation that came into existence at "the beginning," for He antedates that beginning.

 

 

 

http://www.everystud...rneys/who2.html

 

1. God is the Eternal Someone. He has always existed and will continue to do so.

 

 

Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

(Psalms 90:2)

 

 

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

(Isaiah 40:28)

 

 

"This is what the LORD says -- Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God."

(Isaiah 44:6)

 

 

But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King.

(Jeremiah 10:10)

 

 

"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am."

(John 8:58)

 

 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

(Hebrews 13:8)

 

 

"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."

(Revelation 1:8)

 

 

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End."

(Revelation 22:13)

 

2. God is invisible.

 

 

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

(John 1:18)

 

 

God is spirit.

(John 4:24)

 

 

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.

(1 Timothy 1:17)

 

 

God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.

(1 Timothy 6:15-16)

 

3. God can be everywhere, yet God is still distinct from us.

 

 

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

(Psalms 139:7)

 

 

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us."

(Acts 17:24-27)

 

4. Anything that can possibly be done, can be done by God.

 

 

"Is anything too difficult for the LORD?"

(Genesis 18:14)

 

 

Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.

(Psalms 115:3)

 

 

"I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please."

(Isaiah 46:10)

 

 

"With God all things are possible."

(Matthew 19:26)

 

 

"For nothing is impossible with God."

(Luke 1:37)

 

5. It is possible for God to "untranscend." He can reveal Himself by taking on a human form.

 

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

(John 1:1, 1:14)

 

 

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

(1 John 1:1-2)

 

 

He [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.

(Colossians 1:15-16)

 

 

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.

(Hebrews 1:3)

 

 

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross!

(Philippians 2:5-8)

 

6. When God untranscends, this is not the whole of Him, and yet it is still Him.

 

 

"The Father is greater than I."

(John 14:28)

 

 

"I and the Father are one."

(John 10:30)

 

 

"Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

(John 14:9)

[Guest Dibri501]

Like you, I did a lot of mental gymnastics to explain how god could still exist in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

please present a better explanation than God for our existence. Do you have any ?