Hitchens: Is there a designer?

[speakout]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boH_tJ0mCrU

Well I do not know how to deal with you, well you managed to get a good thread closed over what I do not know?

Is it worth dealing with the haters?

 

[Blayz]

Well I do not know how to deal with you, well you managed to get a good thread closed over what I do not know?

Is it worth dealing with the haters?

Who is "you"? everyone else on this board? the moderators that closed your thread?

My advice is it is never worth dealing with the haters. For your own sanity, you should leave this board and never come back.

PS you didn't link to your blog. kudos!

 

[necroforest]

PS you didn't link to your blog. kudos!

Now the healing can begin...

 

[CACTUSJACKmankin]

i dont know why your thread was closed. i for one am always willing to answer questions to the best of my ability.

 

[GoSeminoles!]

The anthropic argument is another argument from ignorance. No, we don't know how the laws of the universe came to be what they are, but this does not mean we will always be so ignorant, nor does it mean someone else created it. All it means is.....we don't know yet.

Reading the history of science is nothing if not an entertaining list of things once thought impossible to learn.

* Disease was once thought to be a divine judgement from God. No one had any hope of actually preventing or curing such afflictions.

* Deities or angels were believed to push the planets around in their perfect orbits. That we could ever understand, test, or even visit such places was absurd.

* Stars were thought to be heavenly beings, campfires of powerful travelers, and other imaginitive things. That they were really giant balls of flaming gas thousands of light-years away was utterly unheardof.

* People actually believed that species just poofed into existence out of thin air. A natural explanation was inconceivable.

In each of these cases we thought the answers could only involve the direct actions of a god. In each case science showed that idea to be wrong. I wouldn't bet the god hypothesis is right on this question either.

ETA: Don't you anti-science types ever get tired of using ignorance as an argument for your position? "Science hasn't explained how X happened, therefore God did it." How come we never see you argue, "Science hasn't explained eclipses, therefore God directs them"? I think I know why -- because science has explained eclipses. There's no ignorance to exploit in such a statement, so that's why you don't use it. What a miserable deity you must have if ignorance is the best argument for his existence.

 

[Vance]

What I really want to know is what your big epiphany was regarding abortion and evolution.

 

[speakout]

^^go to my blog.

Well ,did you notice that no-one is talking about the video?

 

[Vance]

^^go to my blog.

Well ,did you notice that no-one is talking about the video?

Well, a PRATT is just that.

 

[PeterMaclellan]

^^go to my blog.

No. Were not going to go to your blog. Anything that can be said on your blog can be said here, and this forum is not an advertising tool for personal blogs. You have a point to make, you make it here like a big boy.

 

[FishFace]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boH_tJ0mCrUWell I do not know how to deal with you, well you managed to get a good thread closed over what I do not know?

In the last thread you didn't actually ask anything you just, as far as I can recall, told us all that we didn't think. (And never replied when I challenged you to tell me just what you thought about that day - it was yesterday btw.)

Anyway, the fine tuning argument is old, boring, and being discussed somewhere else. If it is infinitely unlikely for the universe to be the way it is, how even more unlikely is it for your God to be the way he is?

 

[NailsII]

Hitchens: Is there a designer?

His answer is loud and clear:
"...with life perched on a knife edge (on this planet only), some designer".
Paraphrased, of course.

 

[flatworm]

Ah, the argument from fine tuning.

Step 1: Observe that something like a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of 1% of the observable universe is known to be habitable by human beings.

Step 2: Conclude we're the reason everything is here.

 

[stevendrake]

mmmmm, How about the likelihood of amino acids (select amino acids) coming together correctly just to form organic material being ann odd of a number followed by 60 zeros. "Case for faith" reference. Created is the only answer because there isn't time enough in any planets life to give credibility, given the odds at work.

 

[stevendrake]

By the way... I agree with us being the reason.

 

[flatworm]

mmmmm, How about the likelihood of amino acids (select amino acids) coming together correctly just to form organic material being ann odd of a number followed by 60 zeros. "Case for faith" reference. Created is the only answer because there isn't time enough in any planets life to give credibility, given the odds at work.

These odds are pretty much just made up, and do not represent any model of evolution used by actual biologists.

Here's a discussion of creationists' usual lies regarding odds of abiogenesis (which, by the way, is distinct from evolution.)

By the way... I agree with us being the reason.

Because a billionth of a billionth of a bilionth of a bilionth of a bilionth of a bilionth of a bilionth of 1% of the observable universe is known to be habitable to humans?

Why not go one step further and believe it's all here, ourselves included, for the benefit of human-specific parasites?

 

[NailsII]

mmmmm, How about the likelihood of amino acids (select amino acids) coming together correctly just to form organic material being ann odd of a number followed by 60 zeros. "Case for faith" reference. Created is the only answer because there isn't time enough in any planets life to give credibility, given the odds at work.

I think you misunderstand the relationship between big numbers.
The universe is around 78 billion light years across and 14.5 billion years old.
It contains more stars than there are grains of sand on every beach on this planet.
If twenty five percent of these had planets, and one thousandth of a percent of them planets similar to earth (in terms of temperature and water content) then you still have a huge number of planets and a massive amount of time - around 2,500 planets in our galaxy alone may fit this criteria.
As life appears to have started quite soon on this little rock, maybe the odds arn't as great as they appear - but let's not get carried away here.
A sloar system capable of supporting life could very well have lived and died out by now (yes, the whole solar system) and now only remains as dust scattered in one small galaxy somewhere.

 

[Adivi]

mmmmm, How about the likelihood of amino acids (select amino acids) coming together correctly just to form organic material being ann odd of a number followed by 60 zeros. "Case for faith" reference. Created is the only answer because there isn't time enough in any planets life to give credibility, given the odds at work.

That number is of dubious methodology; it assumes that all the amino acids would have to come together at once and ignores the fact that earlier life had fewer different acids, that sufficiently long protein chains can self-replicate, et cetera. And as NailsII said, the universe is both very large and very very old.