Okay, you got me curious me with this one. What did you mean by that? And what did you mean by your brain is wired differently, or is it too hard to explain? I guess I'm also asking, because I have many friends (most really) who could absolutely care less about the origin of the universe, cosmology and the like. (Of course, I have many other friends if you say the phrase "speed of light" they come out of the woodwork like ants.) Any discussion of the subject would leave them in a nearly catatonic state within minutes. And with still others any such discussions actually aggravate them. But, anyway, I've always had some difficulty understanding the thinking therein - any light you want to shed would be much appreciated...
You cannot base any such thing on a few years of research like that. You are treating the supernatural as if it is a "force" or "energy". The supernatural comes from living entities. I cannot emphasize this enough. You do not tell them what to do - they tell you. You do not ask them to perform little tricks for your laboratory experiments - they tell you what to do and when to do it. This is the same for a Christian. The Christian gives his life to God. He or she does not tell God what to do and when to do it. God tells them. Miracles happen when God wants them to happen. Before I was a Christian, I scared myself half to death with the occult. That was actually one of the driving forces for my becoming a Christian. I know you probably won't believe me, but I can only say I have no doubt that there is a dark side to the spiritual life as well as its counterpart. I'm not trying to be cryptic - well yes I am - but I have told virtually noone about it and don't intend to as I never want to encourage anyone to go into the occult. (If I told you about it, it is almost a cookbook approach. I can almost for sure guarantee you "success" since it involves leaving yourself "vulnerable" is all I will say. Again, you must yield yourself to an entity and I HIGHLY, HIGHLY don't encourage you to do that.) You should be thankful every morning that your experiments were unsuccessful. Someone was watching out for you...
" The supernatural comes from living entities." An unsupported claim. "You do not tell them what to do - they tell you." An unsupported claim. " You do not ask them to perform little tricks for your laboratory experiments - they tell you what to do and when to do it." An unsupported claim. "Miracles happen when God wants them to happen. " an unsupported claim. [snip stuff about the occult] "You should be thankful every morning that your experiments were unsuccessful. Someone was watching out for you... " An unsupported claim. Now your really sounding like a voo doo priest. Let me tell ya something. I have ZERO fear of any of this stuff. It hasn't been proven real, and I have no reason to believe it is. I don't even fear your god. Not one bit. I don't fear satan, or any other mythical figure either. I don't fear them for the same reason I don't fear werewolves or vampires. There simply isn't a reason to believe in any of them. That said.... I can stand here and call god every dirty word I can think of. I can stand here and insult him in every way I can possibly imagine. Guess what? NADA will happen. I can challenge him to strike me dead. Nothing will happen. Even if he existed, why would I care about such a powerless god? Whatta wimp! Same goes for voo doo priests, or satanic worshipers. Let them cast whatever "spells" they wish. I could care less. I'll just laugh, and continue on with my life as they waste their energies. Don't believe me? I'll take the challenge. Round up as many paranormal spell casters as you wish and challenge them to bewitch me. Hehehehe.... There is no reason to believe anyone is looking over me. Another unsupported claim. peace axeman
Okay, okay, you're a big, tough guy...excelsior and all of that...now let's get back to the more objective.
Let's get down to some #s - that hopefully will be a little less emotional for us. We both love #s, right? Let's take a simpler example than the above. Let's take the reptile to bird transition. We both know that virtually every aspect of a reptile has to be completely altered in order to change into a bird. Bone density, bone configuration, skeleton, scales to feathers, feet to claws, tail to bird tail for flight, flight instincts, tree dwelling instincts, care for the young, circulation, heart beat, vision, motor skills, warm bloodedness, muscle reconfiguration, digestion, migratory skills, lung oxigenation, visual acuity, and on and on. (A biologist could come up with several more major structural and biochemical examples as well I feel confident.) Everything must radically change. Now a car probably has around 10,000 parts so let's give evolution the benefit of the doubt and conservatively estimate that a bird has around 1,000 parts (and we both know this is WAY too low - it should be at least as much as a car!) each of which requires a 100 good mutations. And let's say for each 99 bad mutations there's 1 good mutation. (Again, that's much better than real mutation rates in real creatures.) And let's say the average lifespan for these missing links is 1 year and that it takes generally 25 years on average for the mutation to propogate significantly throughout the species. If you add it up: that's 250 million years. And this is only if the mutations happen serially in the EXACT order necessary to sustain life (and if my ridiculously favorable-to-Darwin estimates are true). For example, if the bird develops wings before hollow bones, it will be easy prey, i.e cat food. If the bird develops wings but does not have the altered muscular structure or rapid heart rate, etc., etc. it will not be able to sustain flight. So this is not a Watchmaker argument. This doesn't mean there's a low probability - it means it can't happen. Why? Because secular archaeologists estimate the time for this to be < 10 million years! Plus, you and I both know that if we did a probabilistic study the time for this to occur would be in the billions of trillions of years. And please don't give me a pat answer. It is a problem and this is what great Darwinist minds such as Gould have struggled with. Of course, Gould still believed in evolution until his dying day, but nevertheless, he had the intellectual honesty to say that this was problematic. From what I've seen Darwinism does not have a mechanism to explain this problem. But if you've seen a recent paper on this, let me know...
************************************************** Your basic argument is this: Anything complex MUST have a creator Man is complex -------------------------------------------- Therefore: There must be a creator, for man Now this begs the question. The creator you are claiming is even MORE complex than any human. So WHO created your creator??? And who created your creators creator? And so on..and so on. Your argument of complexity goes into an infinite loop. It has serious problems. To be more formal, it looks like this: Anything complex MUST have a creator The creator is EXTREMELY complex -------------------------------------------- Therefore: There must be a creator, for the creator This is your exact logic. So I ask you.... do you believe your creator has a creator? And what about his? Do you believe in an infinite number of creators? *********************************************** As I'm sure you know, physicists now realize that the universe was created in at least 9 space dimensions and 1 of time. We know that for every effect, there is a cause. This would allow for this First Cause to be outside of our space time dimensionality of course and therefore the Creator would not have to be created (since it would have occurred in a second dimension of time).
Once again you have switched to attacking evolution instead of supporting intelligent desing. I am already hypothetically rejecting evolution. Intelligent design must still STAND ON IT's OWN. What your saying below, is that since evolution is impossible, creationism therefore must be true. We all know that is not that case. peace axeman
I don't think you understand what "9+ space dimensions" means. Care to elaborate? Explain WHY the universe being created in 9+ space dimensions and 1 time dimension allows you to conveniently claim that a first cause can occur "outside" of our space time dimensionality. Please describe what "outside of our space time dimensionality" even means. Explain what these physicists mean by "created". And please cite some physicists who claim this. peace axeman
That's fine. We can save evolution for a "rainy day". But the problem is of course that w/o evolution there is no only remaining choice. So we both now that it is germane to the discussion, but I will be Humble and Lovable and won't "go for the jugular"...
Cosmologists universally accept now that the universe was created with at least 9 space dimensions and one time dimension. 6 of these space dimensions folded into the 3 dimensions of the universe during the first 10 to the -34 seconds of the Big Bang. In In 1968-1970 Roger Penrose , Stephen Hawking and one other astrophysicist whose name escapes me, wrote a series of papers that were dubbed "the Space/Time Theory of Relativity". What they did was make the following assumptions: 1. Relativity is true. 2. Use the boundary conditions of our current universe. What they then did was essentially run back relativity to time t=0. What did they find? Time was created. Hawking went around for several years boasting that he was "the man that created time". Apparently it hit him one day what he was saying and he stopped . He of course realized that he was describing God or at least a First Cause outside of our space/time dimensions. Ironically, it was as much this theory as any other that catapulted him into fame and yet he has spent the rest of his career trying to disprove it. I'll write more later. I've got a meeting...