The Science that led me away from Atheism.

[Sanoy]

I am bemused. I have not been "triggered", whatever that means...
1. You are fully entitled to your opinions.
2. You are fully entitled to your faith.
3. Your opinions and your faith take no skin off my nose, so they would certainly not "trigger" me. Or put differently, I am not offended by your views on evolution. Disappointed, yes. Offended, no.
4. Nevertheless, your statment of your views on evolution were in the form of an argument. You have still failed to explain why you feel it was not an argument, even though it had the form of one.
5. Rejecting evolution because it seems implausible to you is an example of the logical fallacy Argument from Incredulity. Base your rejection of evolution upon your faith. That is perfectly fine. Don't reject it on the basis of your own lack of information/undestanding about the theory and the evidence.

It was not in the form, or intent of an argument. It was not any more an argument than the statement I like choclate ice cream. It was not an argument.

You can believe it to be an argument if you want, but you will be wrong. The definition of argument requires a purpose, so my statement that it wasn't an argument should have been sufficient for you from the first post. That I have a contrary experience than you does not give warrant to assume the statement of my experience is an argument. Being open minded to another persons world view rather than taking it personally will help avoid that mistake in the future. I suspect you do that in your real life anyway, but people come here pre-triggered, looking for a fight, Christians and A's alike. Everyone needs to just un-trigger themselves before they log on. Coming on triggered looking for fights and seeing them everywhere is just a poor use of ones time, especially Christians.

I never even mentioned evolution, you read that in from your own pretriggering.

 

[Tayla]

I wanted to do this for awhile and put the evidence that led me away from Atheism. The scientific evidence.

Yes, you have summarized the issues very succinctly. Atheists generally ignore all of this by assuming materialism. They dismiss any argument referencing anything non-material by claiming "it *is* material". Hard to take it seriously.

 

[HitchSlap]

Yes, you have summarized the issues very succinctly. Atheists generally ignore all of this by assuming materialism. They dismiss any argument referencing anything non-material by claiming "it *is* material". Hard to take it seriously.

What do you mean by "assuming materialism"?

 

[Ophiolite]

It was not in the form, or intent of an argument. It was not any more an argument than the statement I like choclate ice cream. It was not an argument.

You can believe it to be an argument if you want, but you will be wrong. The definition of argument requires a purpose, so my statement that it wasn't an argument should have been sufficient for you from the first post. That I have a contrary experience than you does not give warrant to assume the statement of my experience is an argument. Being open minded to another persons world view rather than taking it personally will help avoid that mistake in the future. I suspect you do that in your real life anyway, but people come here pre-triggered, looking for a fight, Christians and A's alike. Everyone needs to just un-trigger themselves before they log on. Coming on triggered looking for fights and seeing them everywhere is just a poor use of ones time, especially Christians.

I never even mentioned evolution, you read that in from your own pretriggering.

Please stop assigning motivations and emotions to me that are not present. It is discourteous, against internet etiquette and possibly against forum rules.

Your constant reference to triggering, improperly assuming I take your worldview personally, and the general tenor of your posts suggest you think an argument is a heated disagreement. You are certainly doing your best to make this one. I'm not biting.

Thank you for your time. I regret you are unable to recognise an argument when you make one. I'm done with you.

 

[theQuincunx5]

Quantum Mechanics is weird. Stochastic processes that occur in conjunction with rather simple rules of chemistry can lead one to disbelieve an outcome if one ignores the basic chemistry. Ergo: atheism is wrong.

The logic seems pretty impeccable to me.

 

[theQuincunx5]

Yes, you have summarized the issues very succinctly. Atheists generally ignore all of this by assuming materialism. They dismiss any argument referencing anything non-material by claiming "it *is* material". Hard to take it seriously.

Well, to be fair in relationship to the chemistry stuff they assume that the chemical rules which work on a daily basis for any of a huge number of things we rely on probably work in other situations as well.

So when someone talks about the folding of proteins it is important to remember that all that immense complexity comes from a few simple rules related to bond angles and hydrogen bonding attractions.

But looking at the final product and realizing you have to do a lot of calculation to understand it doesn't make it any less the product of some relatively simple straight-forward rules.

And interestingly all these chemicals are pretty physical in nature. (I am unaware of any spirit chemicals...unless you mean "spirits" as in alcohol.)

 

[pitabread]

Yes, you have summarized the issues very succinctly. Atheists generally ignore all of this by assuming materialism.

Did you read the entire OP? Because most of what the OP wrote really has nothing to do with inherently assuming materialism or not.

In fact, pretty much everything he posted re: biology is either based on incorrect premises and/or speculative opinion (e.g. claiming all life is "irreducibly complex"). As an argument for a creator though, it's weak sauce.

 

[Astrophile]

I've heard things like, how the moon and the earth would have to have touched or have been in the same place, say a million to a hundred million years ago based on the data that we have, and the earth would have had to been touching or in the sun, based on the same kind of data, ect, ect..

All this is wrong. The recession rate of the Moon is 3.82 cm per year. Since the distance of the Moon is 384,400 km, if the recession rate was constant, it would take ten billion years (or more than twice the age of the Earth) for the Moon to recede to its present distance. In the last 100 million years, the Moon has receded only about 3800 km; this is not much more than the Moon's own diameter and it is only 1% of the Moon's present distance.

The story about the Sun shrinking so that a few million years ago it was large enough to engulf the Earth is based on observations of the solar diameter reported by John Eddy and Aram Boornazian in an abstract presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 1979. These observations seemed to show that the Sun's radius was shrinking at 5 feet (1.5 metres) per hour, or one astronomical unit in 11 million years. These observations later turned out to be incorrect; there is no evidence for any significant variation in the size of the Sun - see Is There Evidence for a Young Earth?.

Finally, the abbreviation for et cetera ('and other things') is etc., not ect.

 

[Tayla]

What do you mean by "assuming materialism"?

The scientific method is based on materialism, that all of matter is material, that the universe upon which science investigates is only material, not spiritual.

 

[Tayla]

Did you read the entire OP?

Yes I did. Very long. Took a long time.

 

[Astrophile]

I wanted to do this for awhile and put the evidence that led me away from Atheism. The scientific evidence. And I felt that this post should stand on its own. To my knowledge I don't know that this is out there in one place and there maybe be some things that are not out there.



So for me it started with Quantum Physics. As I studied QP I began to become uneasy. I was seeing something that didn't match my world view. There was too much interconnectedness and well something bigger afoot. The Dual Slit experiment was the first problem for me as I began to see what looked like intelligent interaction between the matter/energy (depending on your interpretation and what is being tested) and the observer. I began to talk to physicists about this and was shocked at the responses. They didn't like this line of questioning at all. Because they knew it led to an outside intelligence. They assured me that it was all mechanical but that raised even bigger problems. If as most physicists believe and most people that study QP that its all mechanical from Quantum to Macro then we have a direct and necessary link between consciousness and matter. Which presents a huge problem in the creation of the universe. How do you get something form nothing without a conscious agent present? Then there is entangled particles that can transmit information instantly to the other side of the universe with ease. And what does this information do? It can reverse the spin on an electron on a dime. This is an amazing amount of energy from no where that can not be accounted for. And of course then there is the problems of Quantum Tunneling. For an Atheist all these things are problems. This is why many scientists didn't like these ideas when presented with them. Which brings us back to the beginning of the Universe.

I don't understand Quantum Physics and I don't intend to get into an argument about it. However, it seems a very long step between seeing 'what looks like intelligent interaction between matter/energy and the observer' and believing in a God who insists that people who work on the sabbath day must be killed and who kills 185,000 Assyrian soldiers because they have invaded the country that belongs to his chosen people.

I order for things to evolve into different life forms you would need new proteins and new protein functions along the way. The best way to explain this would be that a new protein fold is the most basic change we would expect to get a new life form generally. And so work has been done to see what this would take. Without boring you with the details the math works out like this 1 in 10^77 for a new protein fold for an average protein (150 amino acid length) and 1 in 10^90 for a very small brand new protein (90 amino acid chain).

Can you explain how this follows from Quantum Physics?

 

[Astrophile]

The star constellations tell the entire story of the coming of a spiritual saviour; these are what the wise men in the Bible understood when They said They saw His sign in the stars!

You may believe this, but in sixty years of learning about astronomy (twenty of them as a Christian) I have never heard this story about the spiritual meaning of the constellations. Astronomers who have studied the history of the constellations have concluded that they were invented in about 2000 BC, probably by the Sumerians and the Babylonians.

 

[HitchSlap]

The scientific method is based on materialism, that all of matter is material, that the universe upon which science investigates is only material, not spiritual.

So how does one investigate the spiritual?

 

[pitabread]

The scientific method is based on materialism, that all of matter is material, that the universe upon which science investigates is only material, not spiritual.

What is "spiritual"?

 

[W2L]

So how does one investigate the spiritual?

With ones heart

 

[W2L]

What is "spiritual"?

Love is spiritual

 

[pitabread]

Love is spiritual

So "spiritual" is a physiological response?

Cupid's chemistry

 

[W2L]

So "spiritual" is a physiological response?

Cupid's chemistry

No, that would be carnal/natural, which is temporary like this world is, but love abides forever.

 

[pitabread]

No, that would be carnal/natural, which is temporary like this world is, but love abides forever.

You still haven't defined what it is.

 

[HitchSlap]

With ones heart

The heart is a muscle that pumps blood.