Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Charlemagne]

If I have to choose between a God who offers redemption and a Nogod who offers both natural and supernatural hells, guess which I will choose.

You don't think many atheists would choose the same thing. It's not about choosing one over the other. It's not like a game show where you see the prizes behind the two doors.

Actually, life is like a game show. All our choices are followed by the risk of gains or losses.

[Belindi]

If I have to choose between a God who offers redemption and a Nogod who offers both natural and supernatural hells, guess which I will choose.

You don't think many atheists would choose the same thing. It's not about choosing one over the other. It's not like a game show where you see the prizes behind the two doors.

Actually, life is like a game show. All our choices are followed by the risk of gains or losses.

Life was not a gamble for Jesus and others who were so generous they gave their time, energy and life for others.

[EricPH]

So-called 'intelligent design' is an attempt by religious believers to use pseudo science to prove that God exists.

Evolution and nature is used to try and prove there is no God, re the many posts in this thread.

[Charlemagne]

So-called 'intelligent design' is an attempt by religious believers to use pseudo science to prove that God exists.

Belindi, tell us if you think these quotes have Einstein using the pseudo-science of intelligent design to prove that God exists:

Albert Einstein, Physics Nobel Prize

“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”

And again, on a later occasion, Einstein said “… everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a Spirit vastly superior to that of man.”

[Belindi]

So-called 'intelligent design' is an attempt by religious believers to use pseudo science to prove that God exists.

Evolution and nature is used to try and prove there is no God, re the many posts in this thread.

I've not read any posts that try to prove God does not exist. There are posts from unbelievers but none of them, that I can recall, try to prove God does not exist. Actually I think it's impossible to prove something does not exist.

What unbelievers often do is show there is no need that Nature be intentionally designed.

[Charlemagne]

Atheists like to point out weird sayings in the scriptures. You will never see them pointing to these kinds of weird sayings.

Niels Bohr, Physicist Nobel Prize

“Scripture and Nature agree in this, that all things were covered with water; how and when this aspect began, and how long it lasted, Nature says not, Scripture relates. That there was a watery fluid, however, at a time when animals and plants were not yet to be found, and that the fluid covered all things, is proved by the strata of the higher mountains, free from all heterogeneous material. And the form of these strata bears witness to the presence of a fluid, while the substance bears witness to the absence of heterogeneous bodies. But the similarity of matter and form in the strata of mountains which are different and distant from each other, proves that the fluid was universal.”

Genesis 1: 9: “Then God said: Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear. And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared.”

[Charlemagne]

"The usual objection to intelligent design from within the scientific community is that it suggests God as the Intelligent Designer. This is forbidden. However, intelligent design introduces no such thing unless anyone is intent on identifying the source of the designer as a deity. What intelligent design does, for example, is ask how complex organisms could arise by chance from inanimate matter. There is no theory that explains or proves such a likelihood, and all the evidence goes against chance rather than in its favor. If the theory of intelligent design stops at that point, it is entirely scientific, since we can detect by observation and deduction when things are designed and when they happen by chance. Intelligent design could be explained as well by an advanced alien creature seeding the earth with life as it can be explained by a deity doing as much. Indeed, intelligent design was the first supposition of Francis Crick when he discovered DNA and suggested that, based on its complexity, life could not have arose from inanimate matter without being designed and possibly left on earth by aliens from outer space." Crick, being an evangelical atheist, of course could not imagine the alien creator might be God. But Crick only pushed the diellma farther back to who designed the intelligent design of the aliens themselves.

[Belindi]

"The usual objection to intelligent design from within the scientific community is that it suggests God as the Intelligent Designer. This is forbidden. However, intelligent design introduces no such thing unless anyone is intent on identifying the source of the designer as a deity. What intelligent design does, for example, is ask how complex organisms could arise by chance from inanimate matter. There is no theory that explains or proves such a likelihood, and all the evidence goes against chance rather than in its favor. If the theory of intelligent design stops at that point, it is entirely scientific, since we can detect by observation and deduction when things are designed and when they happen by chance. Intelligent design could be explained as well by an advanced alien creature seeding the earth with life as it can be explained by a deity doing as much. Indeed, intelligent design was the first supposition of Francis Crick when he discovered DNA and suggested that, based on its complexity, life could not have arose from inanimate matter without being designed and possibly left on earth by aliens from outer space." Crick, being an evangelical atheist, of course could not imagine the alien creator might be God. But Crick only pushed the diellma farther back to who designed the intelligent design of the aliens themselves.

Living forms don't arise "by chance" . Living forms arise because of natural laws.

[Charlemagne]

"The usual objection to intelligent design from within the scientific community is that it suggests God as the Intelligent Designer. This is forbidden. However, intelligent design introduces no such thing unless anyone is intent on identifying the source of the designer as a deity. What intelligent design does, for example, is ask how complex organisms could arise by chance from inanimate matter. There is no theory that explains or proves such a likelihood, and all the evidence goes against chance rather than in its favor. If the theory of intelligent design stops at that point, it is entirely scientific, since we can detect by observation and deduction when things are designed and when they happen by chance. Intelligent design could be explained as well by an advanced alien creature seeding the earth with life as it can be explained by a deity doing as much. Indeed, intelligent design was the first supposition of Francis Crick when he discovered DNA and suggested that, based on its complexity, life could not have arose from inanimate matter without being designed and possibly left on earth by aliens from outer space." Crick, being an evangelical atheist, of course could not imagine the alien creator might be God. But Crick only pushed the diellma farther back to who designed the intelligent design of the aliens themselves.

Living forms don't arise "by chance" . Living forms arise because of natural laws.

A law is something that you can measure, predict, or repeat in nature.
Abiogenesis was neither measurable, nor predictable, nor is it now repeatable.

[Belindi]

"The usual objection to intelligent design from within the scientific community is that it suggests God as the Intelligent Designer. This is forbidden. However, intelligent design introduces no such thing unless anyone is intent on identifying the source of the designer as a deity. What intelligent design does, for example, is ask how complex organisms could arise by chance from inanimate matter. There is no theory that explains or proves such a likelihood, and all the evidence goes against chance rather than in its favor. If the theory of intelligent design stops at that point, it is entirely scientific, since we can detect by observation and deduction when things are designed and when they happen by chance. Intelligent design could be explained as well by an advanced alien creature seeding the earth with life as it can be explained by a deity doing as much. Indeed, intelligent design was the first supposition of Francis Crick when he discovered DNA and suggested that, based on its complexity, life could not have arose from inanimate matter without being designed and possibly left on earth by aliens from outer space." Crick, being an evangelical atheist, of course could not imagine the alien creator might be God. But Crick only pushed the diellma farther back to who designed the intelligent design of the aliens themselves.

Living forms don't arise "by chance" . Living forms arise because of natural laws.

A law is something that you can measure, predict, or repeat in nature.
Abiogenesis was neither measurable, nor predictable, nor is it now repeatable.

That's not a sufficient definition of law.There are laws of nature/science that will stand until and unless the current paradigm changes. Alleged miracles break known laws and cannot be explained.
The advent of RNA and DNA is probably not a miracle but a fact of nature.

[EricPH]

What intelligent design does, for example, is ask how complex organisms could arise by chance from inanimate matter. There is no theory that explains or proves such a likelihood, and all the evidence goes against chance rather than in its favor.

Random mutation is not the answer, because that depends on unguided chance, hence the most logical explanation is God

[Belindi]

What intelligent design does, for example, is ask how complex organisms could arise by chance from inanimate matter. There is no theory that explains or proves such a likelihood, and all the evidence goes against chance rather than in its favor.

Random mutation is not the answer, because that depends on unguided chance, hence the most logical explanation is God

Random mutations are caused but we don't know the cause. It is unlikely that mutated genes are miraculous.

[Charlemagne]

"The usual objection to intelligent design from within the scientific community is that it suggests God as the Intelligent Designer. This is forbidden. However, intelligent design introduces no such thing unless anyone is intent on identifying the source of the designer as a deity. What intelligent design does, for example, is ask how complex organisms could arise by chance from inanimate matter. There is no theory that explains or proves such a likelihood, and all the evidence goes against chance rather than in its favor. If the theory of intelligent design stops at that point, it is entirely scientific, since we can detect by observation and deduction when things are designed and when they happen by chance. Intelligent design could be explained as well by an advanced alien creature seeding the earth with life as it can be explained by a deity doing as much. Indeed, intelligent design was the first supposition of Francis Crick when he discovered DNA and suggested that, based on its complexity, life could not have arose from inanimate matter without being designed and possibly left on earth by aliens from outer space." Crick, being an evangelical atheist, of course could not imagine the alien creator might be God. But Crick only pushed the diellma farther back to who designed the intelligent design of the aliens themselves.

Living forms don't arise "by chance" . Living forms arise because of natural laws.

A law is something that you can measure, predict, or repeat in nature.
Abiogenesis was neither measurable, nor predictable, nor is it now repeatable.

That's not a sufficient definition of law.There are laws of nature/science that will stand until and unless the current paradigm changes. Alleged miracles break known laws and cannot be explained.
The advent of RNA and DNA is probably not a miracle but a fact of nature.

Abiogenesis is probably not a fact of nature, as Francis Crick himself suggested.

[Charlemagne]

Carl Sagan, Atheist Astronomer

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

Genesis 1:3 "Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

This reference to light is he first light in the universe, not the light derived from the sun. How is it the author of Genesis is not divinely inspired several thousand years before modern science caught up with him?

Niels Bohr Physicist, Nobel Prize

"Scripture and Nature agree in this, that all things were covered with water; how and when this aspect began, and how long it lasted, Nature says not, Scripture relates. That there was a watery fluid, however, at a time when animals and plants were not yet to be found, and that the fluid covered all things, is proved by the strata of the higher mountains, free from all heterogeneous material. And the form of these strata bears witness to the presence of a fluid, while the substance bears witness to the absence of heterogeneous bodies. But the similarity of matter and form in the strata of mountains which are different and distant from each other, proves that the fluid was universal."

Genesis 1: 9: “Then God said: Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear. And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared.”

[EricPH]

Random mutations are caused but we don't know the cause. .

Tricky, when we talk about evolution, because random mutation happens in stages. How did millions or billions of cells become three percent of a skull. How did millions more cells randomly become five percent of a skull, etc? What benefit is five percent of a skull for natural selection to work on?

When you keep asking these types of questions, random mutation seems less probable as an answer.

It is unlikely that mutated genes are miraculous

Agreed, if God made it so, they would be planned and within God's power to do.