666...the Devils Moving Average

Sorry, but I agree with Alan Sandage. He was Hubble's protege and Hubble was adamantly non-speculative. Sandage said that we will eventually "reach a wall that science cannot go beyond."

I believe all these matters will always have a certain subjectivity and interpretation to them. We will always have to rely on seeking with an element of "blind faith" as you like to put it.

But, again, that's my whole point: at least I am willing to admit that. In my opinion, it is a sign of arrogance if you cannot at a bare minimum admit the seeming unknowns in your own belief system...

 

A father figure to protect them from this frightening world


Someone who gives their lives meaning and purpose


Something that stops death being the end


To believe that they are an important part of the universe, and that some component of the universe (God) cares for and respects them

 

And, by the way, each of us can only provide evidence for our beliefs - not proof as you well know. I did provide evidence (on page 117), but you did not respond. I showed that the origin of life by natural/random means is nothing more than wishful thinking.

And you and I know both know that if the first life on earth was not brought about by natural random processes, then there is only one alternative: life was brought about my non-natural, non-random processes.

Is this proof? No. Is it strong evidence? Yes.

 

Stereotyping. I suppose all atheists refuse to believe in God because they're heathen mongrels who want to live with no moral absolutes? C'mon - petty attacks are a distraction from the scientific and logical issues on the thread.

 

not empty stereotyping; this is psychology and it's real and it motivates!

 

I agree that psychology is real, but when it gets right down to it, it doesn't matter about the psychology. Is Alan Sandage's personal psychology better than Einsteins? Is Einstein's better than Hoyle's? Is Hoyle's better than Paul Davies? Is Davies better than Hawkings?

All these great men of cosmology made huge discoveries and all had widely disparate paradigms. Most importantly, we are forever indebted to their cosmological work and discoveries. It's the facts that matter the most and the ISSUES.

Are you going to throw out George Ellis' work because he is a South African Quaker and might get a "warm fuzzy" since he believes in a "father figure"? Are you going to take away Charles Townes' Nobel prize in physics since he is a believer and his personal psychology doesn't match yours?

Besides, you're still avoiding a HUGE point: it is NOT primarily Christians who are spearheading the alternative cosmological movements! You can eliminate all the Christians and traditional theists and you still have the same movement.

Why? Because the same anomalies exist in traditional materialism. Materialism has tremendous difficulties explaining all the issues that I have brought to the foreground in the last few pages.

Again, it's the issues that matter...

 

hey darkhorse, good to see you again.

Thanks for the clarification. I did feel that maybe there was a more subtle angle to your truly flying analogy than that which I read from it, your response confirms I wasn't wrong.

I understand you are saying (may I put it in these terms) there must be a downside in order that it is possible to know what the upside is. In the context of this thread and specific problems with religious certitude, I do not see any essential argument to reach such a conclusion.

I see axeman has successfully argued most rationally and succinctly, a sensible requirement that anything humans set above their own human standards, should at least come up to a basic understanding of what humanity considers reasonable standards, given the circumstance of life and human awareness, if for no other methodological intent than to be reasonable.

For a God to ignore this reasonableness and further - stand aside, in the face of what is manifestly needless pain and suffering, simply on the guess or assumption by religious apologists that 1. this God exists in the first place although there is no substantial explanation or evidence of it and 2. that it has some greater understanding above humanity's, although there is no evidence of any.....requires blind faith.

To diminish the standards set by humanity in that way, where a human being who stood aside in the same circumstances would be brought to book under socially enforced standards, is irrational unreasonable - and I would say - just plain wrong.

As far as 'religious' is concerned, and indeed as a norm, I would suggest a painless (ie non suffering) world would be both preferable and comprehensible. and for religion itself, less contradictory.

It is because of the conditions as they are, that there is suffering and pain, but consciousness which comes to terms with the astoundingly strange circumstances it finds itself in does not have too much of a problem imagining a world in which things were so arranged that suffering was not a necessary contingent on the ability to appreciating well being. A world where suffering and pain is not caused arbitrarily, unnecessarily. But if it occurred would ONLY be by the hand of mankind itself. This way suffering could still be known of, but avoidable.

Such a state of affairs might be one step ( a very tiny one) toward argument for postulating greater mythical beings, but circumstances as they pertain certainly provide strong and overwhelming evidence against the idea of a 'loving' God, even if one existed.

From reading many of your posts darkhorse, I have always considered and valued your contributions. You hold the dubious honor of being in my fav section for a most poetic and poignant description of market movement. That the presence of rationality and logic is displayed within your posts, to my mind is unquestionable. I remain confused however as to why you are apparently content to enthusiastically eject it all when doing God stuff.

 

Science / astrophysics / Cosmology has great benefits over theism as a reason for things, by having its theories and conclusions based upon sound and observable substantial evidence. Big Bang is one such substantial theory. To say cosmology is therefore based only on a "faith" in the same way religion is based only on a (blind) faith is obviously incompatible and incorrect .

At this tiny fraction of a second when the cosmos 'inflates' into existence, there now exists astonishing detail on how the universe works. t-0 to 10-34 of a second is a very small place for a God of the Gaps to sit. Only a comparatively short time ago he had an 'infinite universe' to claim as his own.

It does not follow that "faith" has to be an imaginary belief in a metaphysical deity.

Having faith in something does not necessitate in any way an association with unsupportble notions of gods or God. A faith based upon material and substantive evidence is far more useful to understanding.

 

Your "fact" does not read sensibly. Cells as far back as 3.5 billion years OK but... "These 300 million years were a period of intense bombardment ¨ ?? what does that mean ? It looks like it is YOU who is in disarray here.

Do you mean to suggest during the 3.5 billion years when life was estimated to have come about, 300 million of those years were subject to either continuous or sporadic asteroid bombardment, of which AT LEAST 30 were life exterminating?? So according to your "facts".... for 90% of the 3.5Billion years there were NO such 'life exterminating impacts'

Furthermore and using your data, during the 10% of remaining time, how many of the "AT LEAST 30" life exterminating impacts" do you know destroyed ALL life forms, ALL cell forms (including [deep] sea) and All bacteria??

May I suggest to you that none of them would.

Just what "coaxing from the greatest biochemists on the planet¨ are you referring to?? This sounds like false argument by erroneously constructed headline

Would "coaxing from the greatest biochemists on the planet¨ include the Nobel prize winners Altman and Cech's work on catalytic RNA which showed the capability of molecules replicating on their own without enzymes assisting was possible. Are you seriously saying this amounts to "zero propensity for self-replication" ??

Do the self replicating RNA polymerase mutations not account for self-replication ?? and doesn¡'t the subsequent Evolution of such molecular mutation describe very effectively the "self-organization¨ ???.

That doesn't seem to make ANY sense. You say Earth's atmosphere has been "highly oxidizing¡¨ ?? What is that???

Are you confusing this obscure statement with the science which supports primitive bacteria can't live in oxygen and you stretch this to somehow - life could not therefore have started on earth without intervention from a supreme being or something.??

But there are similar anaerobic bacteria alive today which live in low oxygen environments ie swamps, ponds and mud etc. There is no reason to assume similar first life cellular forms didn¡'t, or couldn¡'t have same or similar metabolic processes.

Or do you mean oxygen entered the atmosphere and eventually was abundant enough to form the ozone layer ?.....

But this is what would have made life n possible on Earth, This heralded the 'Biological Era' It was the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere itself which kicked off eukaryotic cell development, a most significant step in the creation of life

This is the "kiss of death" for amino acid self-assembly¨

The Early self replicator molecules had a sequence of 32 amino acids, The simplest bacteria today has 400 . Genome are now seen to encode 4300 proteins, each of which consists of 100 to 1000 amino acids Your "highly oxidizing earth's atmosphere" does not appear to be impairing large protein development.

Forgive my noticing this shoeshineboy, but there are a lot of 3's cropping up in your stuff (3.8 billion years, 300 million years, AT LEAST 30 and 30 MILLION times) .Isn't all this just juggling a lot of simplistic sound bite assumptions ,mixing them all up and trying to assert it is now science proving something or other.?? That is not what science is for you know .

OK I rescind for the benefit of doubt on the 30’s theory as we are now in the world of the 10’s

Morowitz did no such thing . His work was connected with thermal equilibrium, such circumstances have never come about on planet earth. His presentation was about establishing a fact to do with entropy and had nothing to do with odds of life coming about on this planet.

You have brought up this ‘fantastic odds’ argument earlier, perhaps a different explanation might clarify.

It appears to me that the idea you want to instill in this thread is that the building blocks of life (molecules / RNA DNA / amino acid sequences....whatever combinations) could not ‘self assemble’ due to the enormous odds of perfect order coming from random events. (At this point I will ignore the notion that life is necessarily a perfect order of things).

Creationist use the argument over and over that Amino acid sequences - RNA molecular mutation - cannot occur purely by chance due to some ridiculous high odds against, for instance "10 to the 100,000,000,000" . Therefore an external Creator controls or determines the ‘perfect order’.

Yet simple Chemistry shows the nonsense of this math and the silliness of its assertion. The math used here by Creationists is quite simply faulty and bogus.

Here’s why....
There is room for 8 electrons in each Atom. Atoms are always trying to attain stability from holding 8 electrons.
Oxygen has 6, Hydrogen has 2. They are readily and strongly attracted to each other as 6+2=8 electrons.. This is very sound reason why there is so much water on the planet and why life forms are made up in large proportion of it. .Of the billions and billions of Atoms available over a period of billions and billions of years, this is not a random arrangement.... but an inevitable one. What has become basic chemistry and simple example shows how suitable Atom candidates seek to bond with each other in preference to bonding with other Atoms which would be offering less than 8 electrons as a result. A form of Natural Selection at the earliest stages. Religious apologists and Creationists not so long ago were demanding only God could know of such things.

It’s fallacious (is that illegal in some states? ) to misuse giant numbers as some sort of cosmic wheel of chance. There are ‘10 to the countless 00000’s’ against you being born, yet there ARE extremely high chances that there will be birth. You’ve won the biggest lottery there could ever be, against countless numbers of other individuals that would have been born had you not been conceived in their place. And purely by random chance of 1 particular sperm bonding with one particular egg against all the other countless numbers of combinations in the equation which did not. This big number math is being used falsely though, as there were always ‘odds on’ a birth would come about, but its only you who is making the condition that it must be you. Countless billions of 0000’s of potential life (people) never got their chance of consciousness. Nature is apparently indifferent that it is you who won it, Yet it seems Nature’s odds are overwhelmingly in favour of life and overwhelmingly life is inevitable given the circumstances. Individual youness though is overwhelmingly not. inevitable - nevertheless you DID make it against ALL your odds of "10 to the 100,000,000,000" (and add a stack more 000000000’s) !!

An enzyme with a sequence of 32 amino acids whose individual amino acids are attracted and bond only with the next suitable amino acid in its chain is not chance. It appears that it is an overwhelmingly inevitable sequence given the circumstances of the universe. That such an enzyme goes on to self replication and mutation also rather dramatically explains, how Evolution kicks in at the very earliest stages of life.

Not so long ago there was no explanation of such events and everything was thought only to have a God Almighty reason for its occurrence. But these things have been found to have natural materialistic reasons for occurring, offering up substantial supporting evidence and explanations, - not divine ones. There is no real reason to expect further knowledge yet to be discovered will have anything other than natural explanations of a similar kind.

 

nice rebut stu, keep up the good work