Evidence of God's Design

[Guest]

Ugh. This is turning into the "Proud to be an american" thread. Enough said. All it needs is G&USA&C.

[Izzy]

Now I don’t think IZZY put forward very good arguments mostly due to personal attacks but hambone neither have you. I will try to remain more civil with my comments.

Haha, yeah dude. That's because this is at least the 20th religios debate on this site since my joining, the second in a week involving hambone. I'm sick of it. Your new, so your going to have fun, but unreality, dawh, octopuppy, ADParker and I have done this in The Athesist Discussion, The Christian Discussion, and I the drug debate actually turned into a religious one, along with the abortion debate, oh and then there was the "Does God Exist?" thread, along with the "Is There An Afterlife" and the "Proud to be American thread". I can't be bothered to do this anymore, which is why from now I'm going to ignore the wackos (Hambone, who I think is just a troll anyone. I know who you are. ) , and.. just.. chill. Haha.

Look up the Athesist Discussion, I think I joined in like ten or twenty pages from the end. I'm not in the mood to look up old posts or retype them.

[unreality]

Yes.....if you want to say that there is evolution; there is.....I know about it all...But Evolution can just be a way of God 'designing & creating' the earth? It makes enough sense to safely say that......

I like the way you think EDM. You're fusing your faith with the reality of the situation; God planning the process of evolution seems like the most elegant and 'godly' way to 'design' everything if I was a god.

Some times I consider myself a deist, which means that a god set in motion the universe but then had no further interaction with it. Its only interaction was to initially create it, you might say. Then again the whole point is that that doesn't matter. Still an atheist/agnostic at core. But i'm not anti-theist. I think it's reasonable for a religious person to conclude that god set in motion the natural processes. (As long as you don't think the earth is 6k years old i'm cool with you :lol: )

Hm, the very things you saw that make you have faith in God are the things that make me want to learn more about biology. All that stuff, arising out of a genome encoding only about thirty thousand genes (and of course a bunch of non-protein-coding regulatory elements that shouldn't be short changed). It's remarkable how well that little program works. But to me a genome seems less like evidence of a vastly more complex creator and more like an example of how intricate and beautiful emergent properties can be.

agreed. Sure you can look at all this fascinating complexity (billions of years to reach this point in evolutionary history - some people don't get how long that really is, how long it takes for these things to happen) and just write it off "prometheus crafted me out of clay" or "god designed me from dirt" or whatever religion you follow. OR, you can actually try to explain them. To figure out how these emergent complexities can occur. Chaos from order. It's a fascinating subject

No one is born into Christianity. There are a lot of religions of the earth Izzy I know and have learned about most all of them. The one that is TRUE is the God of Abraham. I don't need to prove to anyone what I know or have learned about other religions. The others are false a lie. Only one God Loved you enough to send his son to die for You. Allah, wants your son to die for him.

again your ignorance of other religions astounds me. You have very little knowledge of what it actually means to be Muslim, let alone Buddhist or any other.

By the way have you heard of 'Buddha Boy'? It's pretty cool stuff. But I'm sure you'll cast it away as a "fabricated miracle", not real. And of course it probably is. But then don't be surprised when stuff you think of as "miracles" turn out to be just as fabricated

[EDM]

oh....thanks unreality.....

i don't think that earth is 6k , yet i don't think that the earth was simply there or it's only a few yrs old or anything; as far as i'm concerned, the universe is God's creation and he IS......we can't comprehend it as we are not of that level; no one is. We all have an excellent functioning brain (talking about the average person here...), but no one has the capacity to comprehend everything in life; it's not possible to learn everything and remember it accurately or understand it very well for the remainder of our lives; we grow old, we lose our memory, we stop functioning the way we used to, etc.

So basically, the fact that God just 'IS' is not completely comprehensible, but that's where faith and belief comes in........it's the same as finding out that someone is going to die unless the proper rare blood type is found and there doesn't seem to be any hope of finding a match for the person.......faith and hope that the match will be found usually ends up suddenly with a person being the match........

that's all i'm saying......( i think i just deviated slightly....)

and please don't bug hambone about the Muslim bit; he got it, ok?........

and Izzy; if you're sick of discussing this, why don't you just stop? there are others who are willing to discuss it.........(just curious as to why you keep commenting if you're not in a proper position to do so...... )

[Izzy]

The same reason The Wildhearts are Sick of Drugs but do them anyway?

Umm. No dude. There is no faith or praying involved with the blood match. Here in Florida (and I think most of the USA?) The Red Bus comes to high schools and students are encouraged (and even offered extra credit as an incentive and missing a class) to go donate blood. There are millions of blood donors (I'm not 16 yet and myself have donated twice, lmao), a match is undoubtedly going to be found. O- is a fairly common blood type, and it's the universal donor, so EVERYONE can accept it. Hospitals stock up on this stuff, so if someone doesn't know their blood type and needs a transfusion, there's no problem. No god or luck involved, it's science. If there was a god, we'd all have the same blood type and this sort of thing wouldn't be a problem.

In fact, if you recall my post in the American thread (I think it was in there, it was one of these), you'll see that praying actually has nil effect on the outcome of a situation.

Edited July 10, 2010 by Izzy

[EDM]

what about the miracles that have happened?

(i've been a witness to one myself, although it was not a very great thing.....personal thing).....

[Izzy]

Like.. what? We all live pretty..chill.. lives for the most part. The occasional coincidence that will seem like a miracle will happen, and we will call it a miracle, but it isn't really. I choose to think the world is governed by entropy and chaos, and the occasional cool thing (like Seth McFarlene, creator of Family Guy, missing his plane and not dying in 9/11) happens, you choose to think this is divine intervention. If you're right, God has favorite, and is mean (like Seth McFarlene, total atheist, hilarious, but makes fun of everyone) surviving 9/11 but a bunch of innocent people dying. Seth calls it a miracle, other people think otherwise. There is no such thing as divine intervention.

[EDM]

hmm.....maybe not for you, but it's definitely there for the majority of the world.....

[Izzy]

The majority of the world thought everything revolved around the Earth and Copernicus and Galileo were ostracized because of it. In the 1800-1900s, the majority of the world thought slavery was alright. The majority of the world feels its okay to spray chemicals in the air as long as they do it to themselves too (smoking), a while ago, the majority of the world women shouldn't have the right to vote. The majority of students think it's "cool" to fail a test. The majority of people in jails in the US are Christian. I sure do love being part of the majority.

Say no to peer pressure kids.

[EDM]

is it wrong for the majority to believe in peace rather than war? or in love rather than hate? or in hope rather than hopelessness? or in the positives instead of the negatives? or in faith rather than doubt?

question: do you believe in the existence of the Devil?

Edited July 10, 2010 by EDM

[Guest]

Quag, Okay what or which part have I not been clear enough on. First of all this thread started in "What happens after you Die" or something like that. You need to go back and read some. I don't claim everyone will or wants to believe in or on any god's (little g) so they live to what they think is okay for them. Fine got that point. I I Let me say it again I believe in an all knowing all powerful God. What you believe is your decision. You want proof of something ask me I'll try to give you the most scientific logical answer you will be able to digest.

[Guest]

Lmao.. I'm sorry, but your "knowledge" of the world astounds me.

OMG. I FIGURED IT OUT. YOU ARE A TROLL. I mean, your username does mean "A bad perforerm, esp. with a black accent." I think I know who you are, mah gansta homie. I refuse anyone.. can.. be.. this silly.

You have learned nothing, which is why unreality one upped you in the other thread so hard.

YEAH. THANK YOU GOD FOR SENDING YOUR SON WHICH WAS ALSO YOURSELF TO DIE FOR ME FOR THE SINS YOU ALLOW TO BE COMMITED, WHILE ACTUALLY KILLING YOURSELF, SO YOU'RE COMMINTING SUICIDE, AND ALLOWING THE PERSECUTION OF JEWS SO MANY YEARS LATER. I LOVE YOUUUUU, YOU SADOMASOCHISTIC BASTARD.

Omf.. You know the suicide bombers are cults, not following the way of Islam, recruiting young orphans and brainwashing them to do their dirty work, right? Read the Koran, it's almost identical to the Bible. It says suicide is wrong. Also, I recall God telling Abraham to kill his only son Isaac, and Abraham was going to do it when God was like "No bro, it was only a joke!" Nice dude, eh?]

No, you weren't born into it, neither were you born into beliving in Santa. You just didn't get over it when you turned 5.

What no one told you Santa is real too.

[EDM]

What no one told you Santa is real too.

oh, yeah .....i thought i'd forgotten something.....

Izzy, Santa Claus is a fictional character based on the real Santa Claus who was a saint named Nicholas who lived long ago......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

Edited July 10, 2010 by EDM

[Guest]

The theory of evolution suggests that all living things on

Earth have come into being through accidental, random natural

processes that began with a primeval mass of subatomic particles

and radiation billions of years ago. Further, evolution states

that life formed spontaneously from non-living inorganic matter

and, through chance and random good mutations, life gradually

evolved from a "simple" cell into the remarkable diversity of

plant and animal life, as well as humanity. Evolution is taught

as a fact, not as a theory, in the universities and high schools

throughout the world. Although Charles Darwin popularized the theory

almost 150 years ago, it remains just that--a theory--because the

scientific evidence required to prove it has never been found.

The only thing holding the tattered theory of evolution together is

the powerful desire of millions of people to hold on to the notion

of evolution, regardless of its scientific weakness, because the

alternative is unthinkable to its believers. The only logical

alternative to evolution is obviously the theory that a supernatural

being--GOD--purposefully designed and created the Universe and man.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth!

Next will be Scientific reasons to Reject Evolution

[Izzy]

oh, yeah .....i thought i'd forgotten something.....

Izzy, Santa Claus is a fictional character based on the real Santa Claus who was a saint named Nicholas who lived long ago......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

Yeah. And Jesus was real too. He was a messenger of peace 2010 years ago. ..Then we idolized him and turned him into an imaginary god. Oh the similarities.

[Guest]

One of the most basic of all scientific observations is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This fundamental law of science states that the total amount of usable energy throughout the Universe is constantly decreasing. This law is fundamental in science because scientists have never found a single exception to this observation. Okay guys this must mean, unless you can find what scientists have not that the Universe must have been created at some point in time and has been running down ever since. This means that the "steady state" theory of some early evolutionary scientists that the Universe has always existed is false.

The first problem of evolution that must be faced is this: Where did the Universe and its massive energy come from and when did it begin? It is ILLOGICAL to believe that the Universe accidentally came into existence out of nothing and out of random chance. The only logical conclusion is that the Universe was purposefully created with intelligent design and supernatural power by some Being who exists outside of the Universe, space, energy, and time itself. That Designer must be God.

The second fundamental problem faced by the theory of evolution is the absolute impossibility that life was spontaneously generated by chance from inanimate or non-living inorganic elements. The evolutionists account for the chance development of life from non-living matter by imagining the the Earth's primitive oceans and atmosphere in the distant past ( In a Universe without any life) were composed of an unusual chemical mixture the call "prebiotic soup." Look it up. In other words, they suggest that the oceans and atmosphere on the primitive Earth were accidentally composed of every single one of the essential chemicals and that some energy source, possibly lightning, stimulated these unlikely chemicals to bond together over billions of years by pure chance to spontaneously generate life from non-living material. How CRAZY IS THAT? But if you don't believe in a Creator YOU HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE.

The words of Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, an eminent British scientist: "One of the earliest questions that was raised in connection with the primordial soup was deciding whether at any early stage in the Earth's history, if there was a situation when the Earth's atmosphere was not of its present character, that is, was REDUCING [without free oxygen] rather than oxidizing. We looked at this rather carefully, and we decided that the Earth's atmosphere was never of the right character to form an organic soup...we published this in a book under the title of 'LIFECLOUD'...Geo chemists and geologists have now come round; they now go on to say the the primordial soup had to be imported from outside...THERE'S NO WAY IT COULD HAVE DEVELOPED UPON THE EARTH...The organic soup itself is not such a marvelous thing. It is a prerequisite for any biological activity to start; that's certainly true. But it doesn't follow that if you have an organic soup it could get life started...And when we looked at the probabilities of the assembly of organic materials into a living system, it turns out that the improbabilities are really horrendous, horrific in extent and I concluded along with my colleagues that [this] could not have happened spontaneously on the Earth...There's not enough time, there's not enough resources and there's no way in which that could have happened on the Earth."

If the atmosphere contained free oxygen, as most scientists believe, the the oxygen would have combined with the amino acids, which would make them useless to the process. However, FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUEMENT, lets imagine the the impossible actually occurred by chance, producing the soup. But then what are the odds against the spontaneous generation of life developing accidentally from this "prebiotic soup"? Biologists have calculated that the odds against these chemicals spontaneously generating organic life by chance, according to Dr. Wickramasinghe, are only one chance in 10, to 40,000 The odds are equal to 1 followed by 40,000 zeros! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? To put this in perspective, scientists have calculated that the total number of atoms existing throughout the known Universe of 50 billion galaxies (each containing hundreds of millions of stars like our Milky Way) is only 10 to 74. That is a 1 followed by 74 zeros.

Please!

IN THE BEGGINING GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. gen 1-1

[andromeda]

The words of Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, an eminent British scientist...

Did the lady offer a better explanation?

I'm curious...

[plasmid]

When it comes to knocking evolution, I feel I have to step in. I get upset when people dis my profession. Particularly if they're drawing scientific conclusions from some fables about a spirit who came to earth and healed the lepers and the insane by driving out the demons that caused their illness. Fables which, as EDM even pointed out, don't explicitly exclude a figurative interpretation in which God set in motion the process of evolution as the means through which he created the various forms of life... it would be perfectly understandable to simplify that part of the story in order to convey the main point since people 2000 years ago wouldn't have been able to grasp such concepts.

On a molecular level, my colleagues and I use evolution as a scientific tool. If you want to find out how HIV will evolve resistance to antiretrovirals, culture it in the presence of subtherapeutic concentrations and see how it evolves. On a larger scale, I think I put it fairly succinctly in a past post:

Bran, on Apr 27 2009, 09:05 PM, said:

[some rubbish cut for brevity] Why is only the theory of evolution only in schools? It has more holes in it than a Dutch dam made of Swiss cheese. For more info about the spiritual world, see the book of Revelations.

Plasmid:

Please inform the new swine flu that it could not possibly have evolved and therefore does not exist.

Perhaps it will listen to your reasoning and be convinced to stop killing people.

Maybe you'll concede that viruses and bacteria can evolve resistance to antibiotics, but assert that humans could not have evolved from apes? The 1% difference between the human and chimpanzee genome (implying a roughly 0.5% difference between modern humans and chimps when compared to their last common ancestor) doesn't honestly seem that daunting, particularly if a majority of that is due to expansion or contraction of gene duplications. Expansion of gene duplications doesn't even take evolutionary time periods to happen. Examples are fragile X syndrome and Huntington's disease, both caused by expansion of repeated DNA elements on the X chromosome that can show expansion of repeat lengths and worsening of disease expression that's noticeable even from one generation to the next as the repeats are expanded in carrier women.

If you still think that God created man, which form of man did he create? Homo habilis, homo ergaster, homo erectus, homo neanderthalensis, or homo sapiens? And why did evolution stop at that point and require divine intervention to take over?

If the issue is not with evolution but with abiogenesis, then that's fine. Theories abound, but there has been no demonstration yet that self-replicating complex particles along the lines of the "RNA world" hypothesis can be generated from early-Earth conditions. To say that it would be impossible seems a bit premature though.

Finally, about the second law of thermodynamics, it does not say that more complex things cannot arise from simpler things. It simply says that the entropy of a closed system will increase. You can be inside a box with a bunch of clay can sculpt it into an aardvark if you like, the entropy of the clay will have decreased, but as long as enough energy was converted to heat in the process, the net entropy of the box would have increased to satisfy the second law. And when it comes to the beginning of the universe, it might sound very strange to hear this coming from a scientist, but I don't think the second law of thermodynamics necessarily applies. To rehash an old post again (yes, we seem to revisit these topics a lot):

Since Bran and Izzy were alluding to this, I hope it's not off topic.

Regarding the origin of the universe, I'd always been taught the second law of thermodynamics as a probabilistic concept. There is no fundamental "force" driving entropy to increase, it only increases because a system will be most likely to adopt a state with maximum degeneracy.

To bring that slightly closer to English, if you have a bunch of gas particles bouncing around in a room, there isn't a "force" keeping them evenly distributed. They only end up being evenly distributed because the probability of having all the gas particles move to one side of the room at the same time is infinitesimally small. The same concept applies to chemical reactions. Any reaction at the molecular level can theoretically go either in the forward or reverse direction. It's just that one direction often ends up being favored because of the resultant energetic and entropic change.

There is a point to all of this physics rambling. If the second law of thermodynamics is based entirely on probabilities and the assumption that you will never realistically see any highly improbable reactions taking place in your lifetime (such as matter spontaneously being created in a reaction that is the reverse of annihilation) then would the second law not really apply in an empty universe where you quite literally have all of eternity to sit around and wait for a big bang to spontaneously happen?

I don't mean to mislead anyone into thinking that this is a generally accepted scientific explanation for the beginning of the universe. It just seemed reasonable to me. I'm just posting to try to find out if anyone who really knows a thing or two about physics has ever heard of an argument along those lines and could tell me if it's even theoretically credible. That at least would provide a possible scientific explanation for the origin of the universe that doesn't involve a god.

This theory is called "creation ex nihilo" and has a history of at least 25 years in physics. It is one of many theories for the origin of the big bang not yet proven or disproven.

Edited July 11, 2010 by plasmid

[andromeda]

Did the lady offer a better explanation?

I'm curious...

OK... first of all I made a mistake, it's a dude.

Second, he did offer an explanation, I just looked it up, it's right HERE.

The problem with his theory is that 3,8 billions of years ago there was no ozone layer. The UV light would destroy the microbes/organic molecules that would be brought to the earth by comets. To create ozone you need molecular oxygen, and "back in the days" billions of years ago, you needed photosynthetic organisms to create molecular oxygen. Life, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, was most probably generated in a small niche with the optimal conditions for a self replicating organism to be created, ON EARTH!

The probabilities that he is mentioning are a bit off too in my opinion. I think that those numbers are much lower due to the fact that atoms have tendencies to join together with some other particular atoms depending on their chemical properties.

[Guest]

As difficult as it is to believe, the scientific evidence is now overwhelmingly in support of the conclusion that the entire "ascent of man" from ape-man to modern humans is one of the greatest scientific frauds in history. Just because you make a lie your choice or line of work does not make it true. No offence.

The Piltdown Man 1 and 2 or Ramapithecus or Java Man or Nebraska Man maybe Lucy or Homo erectus: Peking Man, Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man. From what I have scene and researched all can and have been explained.

Edited July 11, 2010 by hambone

[andromeda]

As difficult as it is to believe, the scientific evidence is now overwhelmingly in support of the conclusion that the entire "ascent of man" from ape-man to modern humans is one of the greatest scientific frauds in history. Just because you make a lie your choice or line of work does not make it true. No offence.

The Piltdown Man 1 and 2 or Ramapithecus or Java Man or Nebraska Man maybe Lucy or Homo erectus: Peking Man, Neanderthal Man, Cro-Magnon Man. From what I have scene and researched all can and have been explained.

Link please

[Izzy]

I feel like stepping in a bit, before Hambone gets all "If men did in fact evolve from apes, why are there still apes?" on us. I'm having a "Woah, I slept through this class but actually recall stuff" moment.

In divergent evolution, a species is reproductively isolated from part of that species, and due to different environmental pressures, individuals in the species better adapted to the new environment will evolve. For example (entirely hypothetical), say there is a species a bit like the modern giraffe, but with a much shorter neck. A natural disaster occurs, causing a herd of this species to separate. In one environment, the food is on the floor, and these "giraffes" need to strain their necks to reach. In another, the food is high in the trees, so the "giraffes" with the longer necks will be able to reach it. The "girraffes" unable to reach food will die. Over time, mutations occur (I'm assuming you understand basic 6th grade cell theory ), and the "giraffes" able to reach the food in their respective environments will thrive and reproduce, creating more "giraffes" like themselves. Many generation later, in population 1 you have short legged "giraffes" with bendable knees able to easily eat food on the floor while in population 2 you have your standard tall, long necked giraffe. Somewhere else, you probably still have the original creature, chillin' in the environment it was before the environment pressure that separated them.

Convergent evolution is the opposite (two different species come together and become more similar because of they live in an same environment). An example of this would be the long tongue evolved by butterflies, some moths, and hummingbirds to suck the nectar from flowers. Different animals need to accomplish the same task, and therefore evolved analogous structures - that is, structures that are similar to each other in function, but different in structure. This would suggest that the animals do not share a common ancestor. Very different from homologous structures, such the human arm, whale flipper, and bat wing. Like.. in this picture:

The similarities suggest a common ancestor. However, convergent evolution has made these "arms" adapt and suit the environments for which they are necessary.

So, lol, I think you can see how easily we could have evolved from apes?

Now, you're saying "But Izzy, where did the first cell come from?"

Well, the dude that did the experiment with the steak and the flies (Redi? Maybe?), Louis Pasteur, and some other dude disproved spontaneous generation. However, the state of the Earth was much different a few million/billion years ago. Pretty much what happened (be happy, I'm summing up a super boring two hour long film for you): An asteroid containing Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and..something else hit the earth, and the impact caused them to bind together, forming amino acids, the basic building blocks for life. This was eventually proven in a lab by taking a chunk of asteroid and smashing it in an enormous collider. From here, you get simple simple simple prokaryotes, feeding off of the environment, getting bigger, competing, and growing. Certain ones feed off of different things, others on other, and they're different. Eventually, a bigger prokaryote consumes a smaller prokaryotes, this smaller prokaryote being mitochondria in animal cells and chlrorplasts in animal cells. ..And... tada, embiosymbiosis, and we have our first cell! The rest is self explanatory, really. ..If you believe in evolution. Which you don't. Making this a waste of time. However, it's scientifically sound, while nothing you say is, so I'm happy.

Why couldn't I remember this crap on my exam? ...Umm. Sorry if that doesn't sound.. super sound. Trying to remember things from freshmen bio. >_>

[Guest]

In February 1992 an article in the Scientific American magazine noted that evolutionists have a new bizarre theory panspermia. Some of the evolutionary scientists who admit that life could never have spontaneously evolved on Earth have made a novel suggestion that either the prebiotic soup or Lifeforms themselves evolved elsewhere and were brought to Earth in the distant past from another galaxy. I don't think this is science at all more like science fiction! If mathematical probabilities make evolution impossible on Earth, then the same extraordinary odds make evolution impossible in any other galaxy or Universe, no matter how many billions of years scientists imagine they have.

This intellectual desperation of the scientists reveals two important facts.

1. Evolution is finally collapsing due to the total absence of evidence in its favor and the problems with the theory that life evolved by chance.

2. The desperation to accept any alternative variation in the theory to support evolution reveals the real motive for holding on the this discredited theory.

The desire to escape the consequences of the alternative--the creation of life by a supernatural Creator--God

[Guest]

Link please

Sorry andromeda, it is one of plasmid's links, just that it was a very long one and did not want to attach

[Izzy]

^ Hook me up wit' sources to yo' statistics broski.

Do you have any idea why we need a new flu shot every season? Here, here's a multiple choice question for you.

a) God is evil and tries killing us with knew things when his first plan fails

b) The virus is mutating (aka EVOLVING), and we need to defend ourselves with something capable of handing this new version of the virus

c) New viruses appear spontaneously, it's just a coincidence that they cause similar effects

d) None of the above, I'm an idiot

...

(..Or am I thinking of bacterial diseases..? I know viruses can't reproduce outside of their host cell.)