The stumbling block for atheists.

[Nithavela]

On the subject of ID, do you think the term, 'retro-engineering', should be abandoned, in favour of 'retro-happenstance' ?

I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you?

 

[Nithavela]

You people need to get it into your heads once and for all. Empirical knowledge is not the be-all and end-all of all human knowledge. Very, very far from it. Do you even realise that in earning your living from quantum mechanics, the very paragon in its success of all physical theories, and indispensable to almost all of modern manufacturing industry, you are battening on the work of men of imagination (a quality Einstein explicitly rated higher than the intellect), who could accept paradoxes/mysteries repugnant to human reason, and use them as springboards to further discoveries anything but repugnant to reason. In other words, 'science', properly so-called, in all its glory and all its desperate, desperate limitations.

 

[Speedwell]

I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you?

"Happenstance" is his sardonic characterization of random variation and selection.

 

[Nithavela]

"Happenstance" is his sardonic characterization of random variation and selection.

Still got no idea.

Is he playing semantics on reverse engineering and transcribes that onto evolution?

 

[Subduction Zone]

You mean like the great Christian and deist scientists who have virtually monopolised significant, indeed, major, scientific discoveries ? Wake up, Christmas. The notion that you people are rational is beyond laughable. You are a very termpory extremely aberrant anomaly, who owe your power today solely to the mulitinationals and their billionaire malefactors, who do not want their money-making endeavours subject to any moral constraints, whatsoever.

The only reason that that was the case, and please note the "was", is because we simply did not know any better. A vast majority of the people were Christian or deist. You have no point here at all.

The Chinese and the Indians today provide some of the world's most brilliant scientists, and yet, though the Chinese even invented printing centuries before Christendom, both lost any interest in science, due solely to their non-Christian cultures. Christians, on the other hand, believed in a God who made man in his own image, and as He was a law-maker, the law-maker, they expected to see the physical order subject to rational laws, accessible to reason, and pursued their scientific quest with pertinatious diligence. The mainstream eastern religions either viewed the physical world as illusory (not too far from the truth, ultimately), or socially-oriented. They could still see through your simplistic, 'Lego' reductionist, classical physics as the ultimate reality. You atheists would never have dsicovered quantum physics in a million years. Literally.

Oh please, why do you keep making such silly remarks? By that time many of the scientists were already atheists. Einstein would be an atheist by today's standards. Science itself is "atheistic" in nature. None of the great discoveries of science invoked a god at all that I know of. In fact even clear Christian scientists appealed to God only when they did not have an answer.

 

[Speedwell]

Still got no idea.

Is he playing semantics on reverse engineering and transcribes that onto evolution?

No, I think he is contrasting them. Something can be "reverse engineered" only if it has been "engineered" (i.e. intelligently designed) in the first place. Thus the product of random variation and selection cannot be "reverse engineered." That is, we cannot infer our way back to universal common ancestry because the process of evolution is chaotic. I think that's what he means, anyway.

 

[Nithavela]

No, I think he is contrasting them. Something can be "reverse engineered" only if it has been "engineered" (i.e. intelligently designed) in the first place. Thus the product of random variation and selection cannot be "reverse engineered." That is, we cannot infer our way back to universal common ancestry because the process of evolution is chaotic. I think that's what he means, anyway.

Okay, understood (still makes no sense).

 

[Kenny'sID]

No. You appear to have completely misread my post.

Nope, I think I pretty well got it right, it was one frail attempt, and most people would know better than to try to pull something like that..

And atheism isn't a 'practice', it's simply not having belief in a god or gods.

OH, please, it's practicing unbelief. And how you can see that terminology as important enough to bother to disagree with, is beyond me, unless of course you are trying to divert attention from what you did say.

Your turn.

My turn? lol. You can't seriously believe I'm going top get into some long winded back and forth over something like this?

If it ain't natural, it's supernatural, so if you have no natural explanation for the beginning, what's left. Again, ridiculous argument, and until you have proof it's otherwise, don't even bother, and neither will I.

Forming hypoteses is different from making stuff up.

It could be, but hypothesis, or guess work, coupled with Atheist scientists with agenda, we can easily end up with "made up"....easily.

Either way, it's not fact.

 

[Nithavela]

OH, please, it's practicing unbelief.

Do you consider not collecting stamps a hobby?

If it ain't natural, it's supernatural, so if you have no natural explanation for the beginning, what's left.

A natural explanation that we do not know, yet.

Once, man believed that thunder and lightening were caused by the gods making a ruckus.

 

[Speedwell]

If it ain't natural, it's supernatural...

There is no reason whatever why it cannot be both. The identification of a natural cause for a phenomenon does not rule out divine causality.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Nope, I think I pretty well got it right, it was one frail attempt, and most people would know better than to try to pull something like that..

Nice argument...

OH, please, it's practicing unbelief. And how you can see that terminology as important enough to bother to disagree with, is beyond me...

OK, so by that argument, you must 'practice' unbelief in all the thousands of god and religions that aren't the ones you believe - in fact in everything you don't actually believe... can't you see how useless (i.e. stupid) that viewpoint is?

 

[Kenny'sID]

Do you consider not collecting stamps a hobby?

Did you consider that, I don't care?

A natural explanation that we do not know, yet.

Once, man believed that thunder and lightening were caused by the gods making a ruckus.

So that's the explanation of natural being the cause over super natural?

The "don't know" will work well enough though.

 

[Nithavela]

Did you consider that, I don't care?

If you don't care that your arguments make no sense, I can see no point in conversing with you.

 

[Kenny'sID]

There is no reason whatever why it cannot be both. The identification of a natural cause for a phenomenon does not rule out divine causality.

Nice argument...

OK, so by that argument, you must 'practice' unbelief in all the thousands of god and religions that aren't the ones you believe - in fact in everything you don't actually believe... can't you see how useless (i.e. stupid) that viewpoint is?

So your first reply is to say "nice argument" on the one thing that deserves argument, when at least my argument was one...where "nice argument" is not.

Then, even after my pointing out just what you were doing, you dwell on some senseless argument about a term in order top redirect the attention?

In one way or another, this is some classic stuff.

 

[Kenny'sID]

If you don't care that your arguments make no sense, I can see no point in conversing with you.

Now you're just making things up, but I do agree with the last part, and if I were you, I would have never conversed over that to begin with.

This has turned into a thread of hide the somewhat serious with the petty because we have no defense for our comments.

That equals at least a measure of entertainment but even that aspect is dwindling fast.

Bye.

 

[Freodin]

As I said in a previous post, one of the main points why, after all these years, I still cannot claim to "understand" Christians (or other theists) is that the second I think I have figured out one of them, another pops up and tells me "Oh, no, this isn't what I believe at all!".

So if I try to figure out the OP in light of the other posts that have been made here by other Christians, I need to come to the conclusion that atheists are atheists because they cannot see that there might be more to reality than what senses can detect.

That leads atheists to believe in other totally made up and undetectable, supernatural stuff, which they do accept as reality even if it cannot be detected by senses.

Basically what Kenny and others are saying here is: you are not better than me. Your stuff isn't better or more reliable than mine. All of that is ridiculous and potentially non-factual.

So perhaps if dysert could come back and explain why we should accept his non-detectable stuff over our non-detectable stuff...?

 

[Speedwell]

So perhaps if dysert could come back and explain why we should accept his non-detectable stuff over our non-detectable stuff...?

As a Christian who believes in my undetectable stuff, I don't understand why it should be "over" your undetectable stuff.

 

[Freodin]

As a Christian who believes in my undetectable stuff, I don't understand why it should be "over" your undetectable stuff.

Depends on the undetectable stuff and the consequences of believing or not believing, I guess.

 

[dysert]

As I said in a previous post, one of the main points why, after all these years, I still cannot claim to "understand" Christians (or other theists) is that the second I think I have figured out one of them, another pops up and tells me "Oh, no, this isn't what I believe at all!".

So if I try to figure out the OP in light of the other posts that have been made here by other Christians, I need to come to the conclusion that atheists are atheists because they cannot see that there might be more to reality than what senses can detect.

That leads atheists to believe in other totally made up and undetectable, supernatural stuff, which they do accept as reality even if it cannot be detected by senses.

Basically what Kenny and others are saying here is: you are not better than me. Your stuff isn't better or more reliable than mine. All of that is ridiculous and potentially non-factual.

So perhaps if dysert could come back and explain why we should accept his non-detectable stuff over our non-detectable stuff...?

I haven't left. I just don't want to get into a spitting contest. To read that you agree there's non-detectable stuff is a good thing I think.

 

[Speedwell]

I haven't left. I just don't want to get into a spitting contest. To read that you agree there's non-detectable stuff is a good thing I think.

which means you were wrong in your initial assumptions about atheists. They don't deny the existence of non-detectable stuff, they just see no need in taking it into consideration until they detect it.