>Rather, I am curious to see whether or not atheists >would conclude as I would--"Aha, we are/were >not alone". Did you suspect an atheists response might be different than a theists response to a house on mars? If so, why might you suspect that? Thanks JB
>In response to your riddle, I must say that the riddle is >flawed. One of the presuppositions is that evil exists. >How can evil exist if there is no source for moral law? I have never understood why the theists insist that the only source for moral law is a god. (actually, I do understand...never mind). >What gives humans the concept of good and evil if >there is no absolute right and wrong? Relative right and wrong is a far better source for the concept of good and evil(though with a far different meaning that from the theists). Absolute right and wrong is such a joke on a practical level...just watching all the absolutists explain away their inability to stick to their absolute is a comedic orgy. JB
Where does even relative right and wrong come from? A rat does not conduct itself based on what is relatively right or wrong. It just does what it does. Why then is there a relative right or wrong for humans? When someone decides to murder someone, why do we consider the victim to have been violated? I would think that the response would be, "Sorry, pal, that's the breaks..."
The reason I posed this question is to find out what conclusions people would come to if something like a house were found on mars. My assumption is that people would conclude that there must be other beings out there, because how else could a house be constructed? A house would offer clear, but ultimately circumstancial, evidence of intelligent design. Therefore, I would expect fairly universal acceptance that there must have been some being that made the house. An anthropologist, upon uncovering an arrowhead or other implements/tools, can confidently deduce that those items were deliberately made and not products of chance. If one firmly believes that life exists as a product of sheer cosmic luck, I would guess that one would also be very open-minded to the notion that the hypothetical house on mars came to exist without anyone to build it. Over eons, it is certainly more likely that bricks could be formed and mortared together, windows installed, and shingles nailed to the roof--on their own, than for life to have come into existence out of nothing. Entire cities would have to pop up on their own, and it would not come close to the long odds of anything(even a "simple" bacterium) coming to possess life from "primordial soup". At least buildings are inanimate and are constructed of raw materials that could perhaps be whipped up in a perfect storm. I find it interesting that modern-day evolutionists have abandoned the concept that we evolved first from bacteria-or other single-celled organisms, which then evolved into more complex, and "higher" species. They cannot reconcile the old concept with the 2nd law of thermodynamics--that things do not achieve more and more ordered states on their own. Rather, the opposite is true. They now claim that all species are equally evolved, and that there is no progress in evolution. I stumbled on these quotes on a webpage about the 2nd law of thermo: All extant species are equally evolved. â Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, 1995 (11) There is no progress in evolution. â Stephen Jay Gould, 1995 (12) We all agree that there's no progress. â Richard Dawkins, 1995 (13) The fallacy of progress â John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, 1995 (14) 11. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What Is Life? Simon and Schuster, 1995. p 44. 12. Stephen Jay Gould, [interviewed in] The Third Culture, by John Brockman, Simon and Schuster, 1995. p 52. 13. Richard Dawkins, [interviewed in] The Third Culture by John Brockman, Simon and Schuster, 1995. p 84. 14. John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, The Major Transitions in Evolution, W.H. Freeman and Company Limited, 1995. p 4 (title of chapter 1.2). This sounds very much like a creation account of the world--only they can't bring themselves to say it. They would have us believe that all species evolved independently. Think how much more that complicates the big leap from non-living to living. Not only did one organism come to possess life from nothing, and then all subsequent organisms evolved from the original living thing; every different species also experienced this amazing condition of all the right things falling into place, and thus came to life. The existence of life is circumstantial evidence for intelligent design. It is a bigger leap of faith to accept that life came about as product of chance than to have been created by something.
>Over eons, it is certainly more likely that bricks could >be formed and mortared together, windows installed, >and shingles nailed to the roof--on their own, than for >life to have come into existence out of nothing. Wow, I'll have to get back to this (coming dinner party), but I find it unbelievably LESS likely that the house appears than a life form (even intelligent life). With the lone house there is no process by which "survival of the fittest" comes into play and thus no evolution. You are using an extension of the "hand grenade amongst a pile of watch parts" argument and it just doesn't hold water. Later (fun topic btw.) JB