Evolution Primer

[Wiccan_Child]

Lam 3:22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
Lam 3:23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I beg your pardon?

 

[FutureAndAHope]

You are making yourself willfully blind to the truth. For such a thing you could be consumed. But because God is merciful he spares you.

 

[Eudaimonist]

You are making yourself willfully blind to the truth.

Anyone can say this. A New Ager could say that skeptics are making themselves willingly blind to the truth by demanding convincing evidence of haunted houses, but the motivation of those skeptics is to avoid accepting false beliefs.

Why would a God object to someone being cautious about falling into error?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Wiccan_Child]

You are making yourself willfully blind to the truth.

How so?

For such a thing you could be consumed.

'Consumed'?

 

[FutureAndAHope]

I am just humored by the fact you think those things I mentioned were possible by randomm chance. What I said about consumed is not important the fact is that God is merciful.

Lam 3:22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail

Anyone can say this. A New Ager could say that skeptics are making themselves willingly blind to the truth by demanding convincing evidence of haunted houses, but the motivation of those skeptics is to avoid accepting false beliefs.

I did provide evidence I was not asking for some one to accept on faith alone.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I am just humored by the fact you think those things I mentioned were possible by randomm chance.

And I am still wondering why you think God is the only possible explanation for these rather mundane and subjective series of events.

What I said about consumed is not important the fact is that God is merciful.

Lam 3:22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail

Perhaps, but what do you mean by 'consumed'?

I did provide evidence I was not asking for some one to accept on faith alone.

You provided anecdotes. There are any number of mundane phenomena which could adequately explain what people perceive to be a supernatural phenomenon (lightning and the auroras, for instance).

 

[FutureAndAHope]

And I am still wondering why you think God is the only possible explanation for these rather mundane and subjective series of events.


Perhaps, but what do you mean by 'consumed'?

To any one with half a brain can tell those events are not just mundane. Read them again slower. What I meant by consumed is if a person (such as yourself) continually rejects all of Gods evidence then they will eventually (and I am not saying this is what you deserve) end up in hell. Consumed speaks of wrath. It is only becuase of Gods great love that we are not consumed. You, me, any of us.

 

[awitch]

To any one with half a brain can tell those events are not just mundane. Read them again slower. What I meant by consumed is if a person (such as yourself) continually rejects all of Gods evidence then they will eventually (and I am not saying this is what you deserve) end up in hell. Consumed speaks of wrath. It is only becuase of Gods great love that we are not consumed. You, me, any of us.

Your god's evidence sucks and must have a seriously warped idea of what "love" is.

See you in hell, Wiccan_Child.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

To any one with half a brain can tell those events are not just mundane. Read them again slower.

I have. You post the knife story particularly often. If you told a story about a man who miraculously grew back his amputated leg, I'd concede that that smacks of the divine. But hearing voices? Opening the Bible to random verses?

What I meant by consumed is if a person (such as yourself) continually rejects all of Gods evidence then they will eventually (and I am not saying this is what you deserve) end up in hell.

If we don't deserve it, why will we end up in hell? I don't believe in hell, and I genuinely don't see any evidence that God exists. Why would my absence of belief lead me to an eternity of pain and suffering (and, it seems, gnashing of teeth)?

And I've heard the "God doesn't send you there, you choose to go there" line.

Consumed speaks of wrath. It is only becuase of Gods great love that we are not consumed. You, me, any of us.

If God loves us so, why let us go to hell? If I were a loving parent, I'd hardly stand idly by and watch as my beloved children burned for eternity.

(though we seem to be straying from the topic).

 

[dewaddict84]

(though we seem to be straying from the topic).

Meh, it happens. Honestly, after LadyDeflora and Chesterton were answered, this whole thread kinda took a nose dive. Hopefully people read the first post and learned something new. I was kinda expecting more questions about the process I laid out. Or people trying to poke holes in it.

Kinda surprised that applePie felt he needed to bring out a sock puppet to call him away. But I guess he was just advertising his own forum.

ANYWAY, Mr. Hope, I've got some questions for you in an effort to determine the actual divinity of your examples.
1: How often do you cite scripture per day?
2: How often do you open the bible per day?
3: How many pages are in your bible?
4: You're 33 right? So can we assume 23 years of book opening?
From there we can determine the rough probability of your example occurring naturally. I imagine we'll get a rather low probability, but I'll accept anything over one in a trillion to be decent (but not undeniable) evidence for the existence of your god.

 

[FutureAndAHope]

Meh, it happens. Honestly, after LadyDeflora and Chesterton were answered, this whole thread kinda took a nose dive. Hopefully people read the first post and learned something new. I was kinda expecting more questions about the process I laid out. Or people trying to poke holes in it.

Kinda surprised that applePie felt he needed to bring out a sock puppet to call him away. But I guess he was just advertising his own forum.

ANYWAY, Mr. Hope, I've got some questions for you in an effort to determine the actual divinity of your examples.
1: How often do you cite scripture per day?
2: How often do you open the bible per day?
3: How many pages are in your bible?
4: You're 33 right? So can we assume 23 years of book opening?
From there we can determine the rough probability of your example occurring naturally. I imagine we'll get a rather low probability, but I'll accept anything over one in a trillion to be decent (but not undeniable) evidence for the existence of your god.

1. Normally none
2. Normally none, but if I do 4 or five times, on the day in question only once. The times that God answered me he did it on the first try, so I did not need to try again. Some times God does not answer using this method that would account for the 4 tries.
3 verses would be more appropriate I select ,verses not pages so 31,102
4. No I have only been a Christian since 1995 and have only recently started opening to random verses

 

[dewaddict84]

Realize that you can quote a number less then one.
So, for example, you only open the bible once on sunday, that would be 0.14 times per day. Assuming also that you only consider once verse on sunday, and have done this for 10 years, then the probability of you having gone directly to the right page (or verse, or whatever) at some point in your life thus far is 0.0023. Or 0.23% if you will. That's about 1 in 500. Which is rare mind you, but it's certainly not rare enough to
convince me of divine influence. I'd say there's certainly at least 500 people like you looking for answers, so the odds of this happening to someone are really quite good.

Here's the equation for you.
A= scripture cited per day
B= bibles opened per day
C= pages/verses/whatnot in bible
T= days spent doing this
A*B*T/C

If you wish to use this example as a means to convince others, may I suggest you keep a log of all your attempts. If you truly open a random page, I believe your success rate will approach 1 in 31,201. If it's more, staggeringly more, then you have a case for divine intervention and we can talk.

 

[FutureAndAHope]

The following instance of answered prayer, the one in question in the previous post has a probablilty of 1 / 31,201. I did not open up the bible and try for 10 years to get a response, which the statistics from dewaddict84 misrepresent. I opened up once and got a response. Which is one try out of 31,201 verses. There is also another fact that has been neglected and that is the fact of repeating occurences. Each of these stories have an individual instance probability, but together, the probability that all of these things could happen to one person is a staggering probability. Each story is listed with it's estimated probability. Then the total probability is listed below.


One time I thought about sueing some one but felt bad about it because I did not want to give a bad impression about what a Christian is like. So I prayed and asked God to show me clearly what to do. Latter that day I opened my bible at random, selecting a random verse and it opened to 1Co 6:7 "Nay, already it is altogether a defect in you, that ye have lawsuits one with another. Why not rather take wrong? why not rather be defrauded?" So I knew what God was thinking, no lawsuite.

1 / 31,201

One morning I got up and walked into the hall and I heard a voice say "How would you like to be stabbed in the Valley". The Valley was the rough end of town, and the voice scared me a little, I wondered if I had done something to offend God. I had planned to go down to the Valley to ask people out to church as was my habit at the time. In the end I went anyway regardles of the fear. I walked up to the first person I met and asked him if he would like to go out to church. He said to me "I am an atheist, I don't believe in God". I just said "fine", but hoped to change his mind. He then proceeded to unbutton his shirt and showed me scar marks up and down his chest and stomach. He said to me, "I was attacked by a knife weilding man in the Valley some time ago and spent months recovering in hospital, How could God allow that to happen to me". Then I knew why God had said in the morning "How would I like to be stabbed?". God understood this man, but had a good plan for him. Some weeks latter this man came out to church and became a Christian.

Allowing for 2 people with a similar story / Population of Brisbane
2/1,857,594
1/928797

Some time after the second Gulf War an Australian man Douglas Wood was capured by terrorists in Iraq, who made demands for a ransom or he would be executed. I set about fasting and praying for his release, I said to God "You know where he is....tell me". Three words entered my mind ABC, Bizaar and "A-meal". I thought "I am going crazy what has all that got to do with him. Bizaar I though "this is Bizarre". I thought maybe "A-meal" is a town so I searched a map of Iraq for a town of that name, but found nothing that really matched. Some time latter Douglas Wood was freed by US troops who came across his captors. It was not until latter that I actually discovered what the three words ment. I was on a forum libertyunites.us and came across a post by a user called ABC in the post she appealed to the captors to release Douglas Wood because he had gone to a/or the Bazaar and bought food for homless people and had provided them with "A-meal". I believe God saw this action too and blessed Douglas Wood with an escape from his captors.

This one is a bit hard to do as a probability. Realy it is an impossibly large probability. Could use number of posts in the world I guess. Which I have no idea of how many there are. So I will do a very conservative estimate.
1/100,000


At one point in my life I was praying for scientific cures for illnesses like cancer. Because I was on a science kick I thought would it not be fun to create a real life dinosour. I wanted Jesus just for fun to show me how to create a Real Live Dinosaur, he can show us anything you know if he wants, but when I asked him how to start recreating a Dinosaur. Jesus spoke into my head the sentance "I bood", it entered my mind when I was awake, a term I had never heard before. I decieded to look it up on the Internet and I found out the following: You see, the children of Semai are taught from an early age, the concept of "bood." If a parent asks a child to do something and the child replies "I bood," in other words, "I don't feel like doing that," the matter is closed. Bood means gently No.

This one is out of all possible sounds that can be made up by the mind. Which is probably almost limitless. Again I will make an conservative estimate. 1/60,000

One day I was witnessing to a Muslum and he asked me why we ate pork. I used the verse out of the bible which says "It is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man but what comes out of the mouth". After some general discussion I finished for the night. I asked God to give me a verse from the bible to encourage me. I opened the bible at random and selected a random verse. It opened to the exact same verse that I had used with the Muslum. The one about food not defiling. So I knew that God was approving of what I had been talking about.
"What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him "unclean.'"- Mat 15:11

1 / 31,201

(1 / 31,201) * (1/928797) * (1/100,000) * (1/60,000) * (1 / 31,201)

The probability of all events in sequence is = 1/5425116657249582000000000

 

[Wiccan_Child]

The following instance of answered prayer, the one in question in the previous post has a probablilty of 1 / 31,201. I did not open up the bible and try for 10 years to get a response, which the statistics from dewaddict84 misrepresent. I opened up once and got a response. Which is one try out of 31,201 verses. There is also another fact that has been neglected and that is the fact of repeating occurences. Each of these stories have an individual instance probability, but together, the probability that all of these things could happen to one person is a staggering probability. Each story is listed with it's estimated probability. Then the total probability is listed below.


One time I thought about sueing some one but felt bad about it because I did not want to give a bad impression about what a Christian is like. So I prayed and asked God to show me clearly what to do. Latter that day I opened my bible at random, selecting a random verse and it opened to 1Co 6:7 "Nay, already it is altogether a defect in you, that ye have lawsuits one with another. Why not rather take wrong? why not rather be defrauded?" So I knew what God was thinking, no lawsuite.

1 / 31,201

Your statistical analysis assumes that only one single verse out of 31,201 is 'right'. Yes, the odds of of getting one particular verse is 1/31201, but the likelihood of getting any verse that can be subjectively interpreted to refer to any local circumstance, is quite substantial. That you got a verse pertaining to lawsuits is not that unlikely when you consider that fact that you had a lot of things going on in your life, not just that single, short-lived conversation. No matter what verse you picked, you could twist it to fit your scenario.

One morning I got up and walked into the hall and I heard a voice say "How would you like to be stabbed in the Valley". The Valley was the rough end of town, and the voice scared me a little, I wondered if I had done something to offend God. I had planned to go down to the Valley to ask people out to church as was my habit at the time. In the end I went anyway regardles of the fear. I walked up to the first person I met and asked him if he would like to go out to church. He said to me "I am an atheist, I don't believe in God". I just said "fine", but hoped to change his mind. He then proceeded to unbutton his shirt and showed me scar marks up and down his chest and stomach. He said to me, "I was attacked by a knife weilding man in the Valley some time ago and spent months recovering in hospital, How could God allow that to happen to me". Then I knew why God had said in the morning "How would I like to be stabbed?". God understood this man, but had a good plan for him. Some weeks latter this man came out to church and became a Christian.

Allowing for 2 people with a similar story / Population of Brisbane
2/1,857,594
1/928797

To cut a long story short... that's not how probability works. You calculated the probability picking two people in a population who both have a trait (for which there is a 1:928797 chance). But that's absolute nonsense: what you really want is the odds that a) someone would come up to you with a knife, b) they'd start going to church, c) they'd become a Christian, d) you'd hear a voice pertaining to knives.

Your statistical analysis leaves much to be desired, and I'm very surprised even you can't see that.

Some time after the second Gulf War an Australian man Douglas Wood was capured by terrorists in Iraq, who made demands for a ransom or he would be executed. I set about fasting and praying for his release, I said to God "You know where he is....tell me". Three words entered my mind ABC, Bizaar and "A-meal". I thought "I am going crazy what has all that got to do with him. Bizaar I though "this is Bizarre". I thought maybe "A-meal" is a town so I searched a map of Iraq for a town of that name, but found nothing that really matched. Some time latter Douglas Wood was freed by US troops who came across his captors. It was not until latter that I actually discovered what the three words ment. I was on a forum libertyunites.us and came across a post by a user called ABC in the post she appealed to the captors to release Douglas Wood because he had gone to a/or the Bazaar and bought food for homless people and had provided them with "A-meal". I believe God saw this action too and blessed Douglas Wood with an escape from his captors.

This one is a bit hard to do as a probability. Realy it is an impossibly large probability. Could use number of posts in the world I guess. Which I have no idea of how many there are. So I will do a very conservative estimate.
1/100,000

If you have no idea of the data involved, how on Earth can you consider this a "very conservative estimate"? I simply have to point out the utter arbitrariness of it all, coupled with the fact that these odds are nine times less than the previous. Conservative, indeed.

At one point in my life I was praying for scientific cures for illnesses like cancer. Because I was on a science kick I thought would it not be fun to create a real life dinosour. I wanted Jesus just for fun to show me how to create a Real Live Dinosaur, he can show us anything you know if he wants, but when I asked him how to start recreating a Dinosaur. Jesus spoke into my head the sentance "I bood", it entered my mind when I was awake, a term I had never heard before. I decieded to look it up on the Internet and I found out the following: You see, the children of Semai are taught from an early age, the concept of "bood." If a parent asks a child to do something and the child replies "I bood," in other words, "I don't feel like doing that," the matter is closed. Bood means gently No.

This one is out of all possible sounds that can be made up by the mind. Which is probably almost limitless. Again I will make an conservative estimate. 1/60,000

Humans can make tens of thousands of single distinct sounds, and the English language alone has 800,000 words. To take the two syllable sentance "I bood" and infer knowledge of some ancient, divine language, is as inane as the Vicar of Dibley's Alice inferring that her newborn daughter is speaking Old French because she said the word 'goo' (the homonym, 'gue', means 'war' in old French).

Once again, your probabilities are completely arbtrarty, with no prior justification. Tell me, why didn't you go with your previous "conservative estimate" of 100,000?

One day I was witnessing to a Muslum and he asked me why we ate pork. I used the verse out of the bible which says "It is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man but what comes out of the mouth". After some general discussion I finished for the night. I asked God to give me a verse from the bible to encourage me. I opened the bible at random and selected a random verse. It opened to the exact same verse that I had used with the Muslum. The one about food not defiling. So I knew that God was approving of what I had been talking about.
"What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him "unclean.'"- Mat 15:11

1 / 31,201

See above. You're fallacious assumption is that only one verse out of the whole Bible (i.e., 31,201 verses) satisfies the 'winning' criterion.
Moreover, these four anecdotes fall foul of every single rule for analysing testimony (corroboration, plausibility, statistical likelihood, supporting evidence, etc).

As I've said before, even if your stories were true, they still fail to arouse suspicion. You can lambaste me with whatever "You close your eyes to the truth!" claims you want, but please, go through the above. My critique is quite objective.

It always amuses me that theists think atheists don't want to admit an all-loving father-god exists. Because that would be just awful...

(1 / 31,201) * (1/928797) * (1/100,000) * (1/60,000) * (1 / 31,201)

The probability of all events in sequence is = 1/5425116657249582000000000

Even this is wrong: the sequence of events is quite irrelevant.

Oh, and there are 31,303 (+137 unnumbered) verses in the Bible, not 31,201.

I also notice you ignored my previous post (apologies if you're still responding to it at time of post).

 

[FutureAndAHope]

I also notice you ignored my previous post (apologies if you're still responding to it at time of post).

Sorry which post was this.

 

[FutureAndAHope]

Humans can make tens of thousands of single distinct sounds, and the English language alone has 800,000 words. To take the two syllable sentance "I bood" and infer knowledge of some ancient, divine language, is as inane as the Vicar of Dibley's Alice inferring that her newborn daughter is speaking Old French because she said the word 'goo' (the homonym, 'gue', means 'war' in old French).

The word "bood" is not a secretive divine word it is an actual word used by an Asian tribal group to mean "kindly no". It is also not insane God was saying no. He could have simply said "No", but I doubt it would have had the same effect the word bood means "Kindly no". It is nice to know God was responding to me kindly as well as saying no.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Sorry which post was this.

This one (#169). No worries, though.

The word "bood" is not a secretive divine word it is an actual word used by an Asian tribal group to mean "kindly no". It is also not insane God was saying no. He could have simply said "No", but I doubt it would have had the same effect the word bood means "Kindly no". It is nice to know God was responding to me kindly as well as saying no.

My point is that you had to do research: you took these otherwise meaningless sounds and looked around until you found an obscure Asian language in which it fits the context. Can you honestly not see how subjective such a process is? You could take any series of sounds and find a language which fits.

 

[dewaddict84]

which the statistics from dewaddict84 misrepresent. I opened up once and got a response.

I'm really not trying to misrepresent. Each time you open the bible it's about x/31,000 probable that you get the right page if your thinking about x verses that day. But if you've ever opened the bible at random before, then you can't say you've only made one attempt. Indeed, you specifically said you're trying to do this:

Normally none, but if I do 4 or five times,

And that's taken into account in the algorithm. It'll give us a rough estimate for the probability of this happening.

I was going to advise you to log your attempts again, but you know what? Wiccan Child is right. Since you're not usually opening it up with a specific verse in mind, you're going to try and find some way to convert the random passage to have meaning to your current situation.

 

[dewaddict84]

Oh, and the reason I only mentioned the book flipping story is because it's the only one in which we can accurately gauge the probability. Because the probability of dreaming about a knife and then meeting someone with a knife story isn't really something that fits all to well with statistics. You could make a stab at it, measuring how often you dream of things vs how many people have stories relating to them, but that's difficult data to gather and the outcome would be highly suspect. Same goes for the internet browsing story.

And wow. "Bood": via Bood

The word "Bood," is a term of the Wester Semai (a gentle, aboriginal people who live on the Malay peninsula) and translates roughly as "reluctant or shy." It means "not to feel like doing something, for any reason, for example, sickness, shyness, or laziness." Translated into today's language, it is simply one of our fundamental rights, the right to say no.

You reminded me of this rabbit. 8th panel.
Sluggy Freelance
It's a stupendously silly comic, you've been warned.

Regardless of all that, it appears to me that you're looking for, seeking out, and claiming to find, the intervention of god when you run into any coincidences.

And in a desperate attempt to get back on topic, do you have any questions for why evolution may not work? Any step that you don't understand? I'm at your disposal, go for it.