'Knowledge' of Existence

[Oncedeceived]

Fitting with reality is the bare minimum requirement of an explanation. It is not a strength by itself. Your worldview is absolutely not parsimonious. You admit it yourself. You say if Christianity is true, then God has been observed in the person of Jesus Christ. You don't need to go any further than that, because you're already working under the premise that Christianity is true so you've already gotten to the conclusion you wanted. Still, you continue on to say that Jesus was observed historically, and therefore God has been observed. But you can only say God has been observed under the assumption that Christianity is true. And if you're going to go that far, you've already made a giant assumption. One way or the other, your paradigm is based on a giant assumption, and that's one giant assumption more than mine. You have to eschew parsimony if you're going to take up the full Christian worldview.

A simple explanation of God is parsimonious, much more so than all the assumptions that one must make in a atheistic worldview. I work under the premise of Christianity being true due to my knowledge of God's existence, so I don't assume anything really. While I understand that you don't think it is true, you have to understand that IF and I use IF because you don't agree that Christianity is true, but IF Christianity is true it explains the universe and the reality in it very cohesively. If you find something that is not cohesive within the Christian view you should point that out, provide a critique of how reality doesn't comport with the paradigm. If I allow that you worldview is true, not saying it is true but allowing it to be true; I can see that the paradigm doesn't comport with reality. You claim that comporting to reality is truth. Now you claim that comporting to reality is a bare minimum requirement for an explanation. So truth or hardly a requirement for explanation? Like I said before you make numerous assumptions, so I don't know how you then claim I have a giant one and one more than you do. That is simply false.

Well, meaning and purpose are subjective, and information isn't indicative of design by itself, so I don't think that's a good definition for design either. I agree that we have a limited ability to define and recognize design, so that's why I don't find arguments from design very compelling.

Meaning and purpose are subjective? Is it subjective that DNA contains specific information for a purpose? Is it subjective that the exact range of fundamental constants has no purpose or information? Why would information not be indicative of design? Explain? I understand you don't find it compelling but If Christianity is true it is compelling. It confirms that God had intelligent life as a goal from the beginning of the universe.

How? Explain.

It is a matter of probability. I'd rather not get into all of that. It just adds one more thing to this already long discussion.

I do want to ask you again by the way what your problem with a universe from nothing is? Could you answer that one?

Truth is that which comports with reality. Where else would you go for truth than directly to reality?

See above.

Truth, as in a statement that comports with reality? I create statements all the time. When they comport with reality, they're true.

Do you create the truth behind the statements?

There's also no evidence to confirm that it's impossible. Your point? If we do find the evidence confirming that's how consciousness is created, it would follow that other known species who have similar neural structures would show similar signs of consciousness, and as far as I know that's actually the case. You have no evidence that other known species do not have consciousness. I can't believe you're actually taking pride in using a blatant god of the gaps argument.

It is a gap in your worldview not mine.

Subjective awareness.

So you would agree that it is subjectively experiencing roughly what it feels like to be thinking, reasoning, or being?

The gaps are there at face value, no need for any paradigm. You're offering up your paradigm with no gaps as though that's a strength, when in reality that's a very old and well-recognized fallacy that you don't seem to recognize.

One paradigm has the gaps whereas the other doesn't. There are no gaps unless we assume atheistic materialism.

 

[gaara4158]

I understand your worldview is an atheistic naturalism. If that is incorrect, please let me know what I have wrong.

My worldview is agnostic atheism/nontheism. I am defending nontheistic materialism (and at points, naturalism), as in the primacy of matter, against your dualistic Christianity, even though I don't necessarily believe materialism is true. Taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of both paradigms, I find materialism to be the more reasonable one to take provisionally if one must choose. For the record, I'm not opposed to neutral monism either, but to keep things simple I'm sticking to materialism.

What disturbed me was that you listed the observations of life coming from life and intelligence from intelligence to be evidence against my worldview, but I can't for the life of me see how that would be the case. Even hard atheistic naturalism acknowledges that life comes from life. That doesn't mean that life cannot also come from non-life, and intelligence from non-intelligent components.

First of all, what I am doing in our conversation is providing a look into two different worldviews. Taking each worldview, discussing what each view holds to and what evidence is supportive of each. The Christian worldview hasn't got gaps. The worldview explains very cohesively what we should see in reality if it is true. We have a Personal all powerful Intelligent Being who claims to have existed eternally, that has created a universe in which He desires beings created in His image to exist. There is evidence that supports the universe having a purpose towards creating that life. There is evidence within that life itself which shows purpose and engineering towards a goal. The worldview explains why there is this universe, why there are laws that govern this universe, why there is intelligent life and why the universe and life show purpose. On the other hand if we take what the atheistic naturalism holds we don't see what we should see if it is true. We don't see it being cohesive with reality. It has gaps in explanations of what we see in reality. These gaps are in its own worldview, not that of Christian worldview. The point which I continue to try to show is that the Christian worldview is more cohesive and coherent than the atheistic naturalism worldview. If you don't hold that to be your worldview, I guess I've been beating a dead horse so to speak.

I don't know how it continues to get past you that this is still just god of the gaps. I know your worldview has answers to all the big questions in life; it's historically been the role of religions to provide those answers. My point is that you have no evidence for those answers. Your argument in favor of your worldview is that it has answers (we can debate whether they're actually cohesive and coherent answers, but not now as I'd really like to shorten these paragraphs of ours) and naturalism does not, and therefore your worldview is more reasonable. That is a logical fallacy. An answer with no evidence is no better than no answer at all. "God did it" carries exactly the same explanatory power as "Just stop asking."

This is begging the question. You are claiming that since the pen and paper exist then it explains the pen and paper but it doesn't explain it at all. The first problem isn't that the mechanism hasn't been identified but that it doesn't have any explanatory power at all.

No, I have readily admitted multiple times that under my worldview, we have never demonstrated the exact mechanisms behind consciousness and abiogenesis. I have completely relinquished the possibility of scoring points for explanatory power in these fields because I am confident that you cannot do so either. We are not comparing the explanatory power of my explanation vs. yours. We are examining the explanatory power of, and evidence for, your explanation. I have not seen any. This puts your explanation at the same level as no explanation at all, so what makes it reasonable to believe?

The second problem which I feel is more important is that you have to assume a mechanism exists to explain each and every element in the material realm. You would need a mechanism to explain the existence of the universe, the existence of life, existence of intelligence, and the existence of the LOL. There is no reason to believe that all of these elements of reality are explained by only one mechanism, so the number of unexplained elements in the worldview far outnumber the ones I make to explain the Christian worldview. In fact, the Christian worldview there is only one, and that is only if you assume that Jesus was not God. The fact that in the Christian worldview we do view Jesus as God and that He did as well, brings us to a most coherent and cohesive worldview.

I also already acknowledged this. You seem to be missing the fact that while you do have one single explanation for all the things I would have to assume separate, yet-undiscovered explanations for, you have to assume that there doesn't exist such an explanation for each of those things. When we itemize each of our assumptions, yours mirror all of mine in the negative, and your initial assumption of the Christian God's existence is not mirrored in the negative on my end. I don't assume God doesn't exist. I just don't assume he does, and I see no reason to do so. So, when all our assumptions are counted up, you're left with one more than I am, and it's a big one.

One, you claim that yours has fewer assumptions but as I said above, there are many assumptions in yours compared to one in mine and one only if you disregard Jesus as being God. As far as materialism having a better track record, what would that be? That material is material? Darwinian evolution is a very simplistic explanation that has recently been shown to be insufficient to explain the evolutionary processes of life. To claim that evolution is a materialistic only premise is incorrect as well. The evidence supports an engineering and purpose within life that shows an inward intelligence that is not explained by materialism alone or atheistic materialism anyway. Regardless, in the Christian worldview we see intelligence written all over the cosmos, within life and in our own intelligence. That makes sense in my worldview but it doesn't in yours.

Yes, the existence of material gives materialism a better track record than Christianity, because material has been demonstrated to exist and God has not. There is no evidence supporting intelligent design, but there's a whole other subforum for that discussion. I thought you said you accepted evolution?

Modern Science was based on Theism. The assumptions that Science takes on faith are those set forth by Theism. Science in its earliest form was based on those assumptions that the universe was uniform, intelligible and invariant. The early scientists didn't just believe in God but because of that belief it predicted that the universe would have laws that we could learn about, that because of that belief we could comprehend the universe and understand how God created. Newton said, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.” And, "From this fountain (the free will of God) it is those laws, which we call the laws of nature, have flowed, in which there appear many traces of the most wise contrivance, but not the least shadow of necessity. These therefore we must not seek from uncertain conjectures, but learn them from observations and experimental. He who is presumptuous enough to think that he can find the true principles of physics and the laws of natural things by the force alone of his own mind, and the internal light of his reason, must either suppose the world exists by necessity, and by the same necessity follows the law proposed; or if the order of Nature was established by the will of God, the [man] himself, a miserable reptile, can tell what was fittest to be done.
Science wasn't modeled to put the supernatural outside of the realm of that which we can detect. Science was modeled to show more in line with how God did it. Predictions based on God being the Agent of the creation were successfully shown through experimentation and methodology, knowing that the universe would flow laws and those laws were invariant as is God.

Newton also believed in alchemy. I am not in the least bit interested in the personal philosophical/religious beliefs of early scientists. I am interested in what they contributed to the collective knowledge of humanity. If you can provide something like a God that has been demonstrated to exist by scientific methodology, that would be the time to quote and name-drop. Until then, you need to stop with this absurd line of argumentation that science is somehow on the side of Christianity because many early scientists were Christians. If that's the kind of thing that sways you, you should look into the origin of algebra. By your logic, it supports Islam.

Evolution has evolved. The theory has evolved. It is no longer based upon the simplistic view of Darwin. If it hadn't evolved it would not have allowed horizontal transfer, it would not have allowed punctuated equilibrium nor would it have allowed symbiosis and now genetic engineering. Yes, life had to come from non-life but I don't believe that it is due to a process devoid of purpose, goals or intelligence. I think that life shows purpose, goals and intelligence.

You were trying to demonstrate that evolution was unfalsifiable (since you know I accept evolution and have purported falsifiability as a virtue granting explanatory power) by saying that it has changed since its original inception. It changed precisely because the elements of the theory that had to be amended were falsified. I've already given an example of how the entire theory could be falsified, but just because that hasn't happened doesn't mean it's not falsifiable in principle. So your point falls flat.
You can believe that life arose from a process with purpose, goals, and intelligence, but what evidence do you have for all that?

No, it isn't looking back, the Bible predicted that the universe had a beginning. When it was written, it was thought that the universe was eternal. It wasn't until the Big Bang hypothesis did we learn scientifically that the universe had a beginning. The Bible predicted that there were laws that governed the universe, we didn't find that scientifically for thousands of years either. The Bible predicted that the earth was hung on nothing, at the time everyone believed that the earth was supported by something. The Bible predicted that the stars were innumerable and at the time without telescopes people thought the stars could be counted. The Bible predicted paths in the sea and they were discovered by Matthew Fontaine Maury. There are others as well.

The Bible also describes the Earth as having four corners and a water dome above it. It describes four-legged insects, gives incorrect breeding instructions for goats, and says that hares or rabbits chew cud. The Bible is pretty hit or miss with the claims it makes that are falsifiable. There's nothing terribly impressive about any of the biblical claims you're talking about, and most of them are just wrong. Stars being innumerable is pretty intuitive to anyone who's seen the night sky without light pollution. But far from innumerable, scientists estimate that there are 9*10^21 stars in the universe. So the scientists (namely, Ptolemy) were right, just off be a factor of 10^19. There are no laws governing the universe. Laws of physics are descriptive, not prescriptive. It's understandable that people back then would think there were, though, because there are obvious patterns in the behavior of the world around us. The Earth is neither hung, nor is it surrounded by nothing. It's in space, spinning and rotating in orbit around the Sun, so that's wrong too. Science has still not shown that the universe had a beginning, only that there is a point in the distant past beyond which the equations by which we understand previous states of the universe output strange infinite values. There is nothing we can say about the past preceding that. That doesn't make it the beginning of the universe. Psalm 8:8 doesn't predict actual paths in seas. Any route taken by a seafaring vessel can be called a path. This is the only point that isn't completely wrong and it's incredibly weak. Noticing a trend?

You think that pixies and Zeus explain everything?

Easily. Ask me a question, I'll answer "Zeus did it." Simple, elegant, cohesive. Zeus can do anything, you see.

Yes, someone could easily design rocks that look like they are naturally-occurring but that would only mean we didn't recognize they were intelligently designed. Yet, if they were stacked in a large triangle made of millions of them, would we recognize that there was nothing to explain their arrangement except for intelligence.

Identical rocks forming large shapes only stands out from nature because it's not something we've ever observed in nature. You're trying to extend this principle to all of nature, and it doesn't work because we have nothing to contrast nature with to determine if it is designed or not.

Just like we can modify and arrange the numbers and ranges for different theorized universe the same can be done for life. Different life forms can be hypothesized in different universes and what they find is that life is very unlikely to have developed within them.

Depends which universes you're talking about. Other universes produced by other configurations of the cosmic constants would actually produce more life. There's really no telling how many configurations could allow for life because there's no clear definition as to what forms life can possibly take.




This is eating up all my free time. We really need to cut this down. I'll get to the rest tomorrow.

 

[gaara4158]

Double post

 

[gaara4158]

A simple explanation of God is parsimonious, much more so than all the assumptions that one must make in a atheistic worldview. I work under the premise of Christianity being true due to my knowledge of God's existence, so I don't assume anything really. While I understand that you don't think it is true, you have to understand that IF and I use IF because you don't agree that Christianity is true, but IF Christianity is true it explains the universe and the reality in it very cohesively. If you find something that is not cohesive within the Christian view you should point that out, provide a critique of how reality doesn't comport with the paradigm. If I allow that you worldview is true, not saying it is true but allowing it to be true; I can see that the paradigm doesn't comport with reality. You claim that comporting to reality is truth. Now you claim that comporting to reality is a bare minimum requirement for an explanation. So truth or hardly a requirement for explanation? Like I said before you make numerous assumptions, so I don't know how you then claim I have a giant one and one more than you do. That is simply false.

I find that the Christian worldview is too plastic to be falsified, so instead of trying to disprove it with an element of it that doesn’t comport with reality, I aim to demonstrate that it’s not a strong position by demonstrating its lack of explanatory power and evidence. You, on the other hand, are trying to say that my worldview is falsified because it hasn’t been proven. That’s not how that works. Either of our positions may or may not comport with reality. Neither is proven nor disproved. If you’re going to say mine doesn’t comport with reality, I expect to see your proof.

Meaning and purpose are subjective? Is it subjective that DNA contains specific information for a purpose? Is it subjective that the exact range of fundamental constants has no purpose or information? Why would information not be indicative of design? Explain? I understand you don't find it compelling but If Christianity is true it is compelling. It confirms that God had intelligent life as a goal from the beginning of the universe.

Meaning and purpose are subjective. There is no purpose in DNA, only function. There is no inherent purpose to the values of the fundamental constants, only consequences. Information is non-indicative of design because we find information in things we do not know are deliberately designed. To infer that those things are designed is fallacious. I understand that once you assume Christianity is true, all these things seem compelling, but we’re not examining the Christian worldview from within, we’re examining both our worldviews as objectively as possible from a neutral, skeptical position.

It is a matter of probability. I'd rather not get into all of that. It just adds one more thing to this already long discussion.

I do want to ask you again by the way what your problem with a universe from nothing is? Could you answer that one?

I’m glad to drop a section from this. The problem with a universe from literally nothing is that it’s incoherent. Philosophical “Nothing” cannot be acted upon, cannot change, cannot produce anything, and cannot be the origin of anything. It cannot even be described as existing. It’s like dividing by zero. Silmarien and I went over this briefly a few pages back.

Do you create the truth behind the statements?

This is a quirk of language. What you mean to ask is whether I create the reality behind my statements, and the answer is obviously no, but we colloquially use the phrase “there’s truth behind that statement,” which is misleading as to the nature of truth. As soon as I make the statement, a truth has been uttered. I wouldn’t say I created the truth, but I created the statement. The reality was already there. Together they created truth.

So you would agree that it is subjectively experiencing roughly what it feels like to be thinking, reasoning, or being?

To varying extents, sure. Qualia is an element of subjective awareness.

One paradigm has the gaps whereas the other doesn't. There are no gaps unless we assume atheistic materialism.

That’s not a strength for your paradigm unless there’s actual evidence supporting the truth of the answers your paradigm provides.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I find that the Christian worldview is too plastic to be falsified, so instead of trying to disprove it with an element of it that doesn’t comport with reality, I aim to demonstrate that it’s not a strong position by demonstrating its lack of explanatory power and evidence. You, on the other hand, are trying to say that my worldview is falsified because it hasn’t been proven. That’s not how that works. Either of our positions may or may not comport with reality. Neither is proven nor disproved. If you’re going to say mine doesn’t comport with reality, I expect to see your proof.


Meaning and purpose are subjective. There is no purpose in DNA, only function. There is no inherent purpose to the values of the fundamental constants, only consequences. Information is non-indicative of design because we find information in things we do not know are deliberately designed. To infer that those things are designed is fallacious. I understand that once you assume Christianity is true, all these things seem compelling, but we’re not examining the Christian worldview from within, we’re examining both our worldviews as objectively as possible from a neutral, skeptical position.


I’m glad to drop a section from this. The problem with a universe from literally nothing is that it’s incoherent. Philosophical “Nothing” cannot be acted upon, cannot change, cannot produce anything, and cannot be the origin of anything. It cannot even be described as existing. It’s like dividing by zero. Silmarien and I went over this briefly a few pages back.


This is a quirk of language. What you mean to ask is whether I create the reality behind my statements, and the answer is obviously no, but we colloquially use the phrase “there’s truth behind that statement,” which is misleading as to the nature of truth. As soon as I make the statement, a truth has been uttered. I wouldn’t say I created the truth, but I created the statement. The reality was already there. Together they created truth.


To varying extents, sure. Qualia is an element of subjective awareness.


That’s not a strength for your paradigm unless there’s actual evidence supporting the truth of the answers your paradigm provides.

gaara, I think I need some information on how you view certain things to help us along with this discussion.

1. What do you consider evidence?
2. How do you determine what is evidence and what is not?
3. What standard do you use to determine what evidence is?
4. How did you arrive at how you determine evidence?

I am not sure I'll be able to get back to this today but I am very interested in finding out how you view this and I think we can minimize the length of our posts as we both are using a lot of time in this discussion. Thanks.

 

[gaara4158]

gaara, I think I need some information on how you view certain things to help us along with this discussion.

1. What do you consider evidence?
2. How do you determine what is evidence and what is not?
3. What standard do you use to determine what evidence is?
4. How did you arrive at how you determine evidence?

I am not sure I'll be able to get back to this today but I am very interested in finding out how you view this and I think we can minimize the length of our posts as we both are using a lot of time in this discussion. Thanks.

Now you’re asking the right questions!

1. Evidence is empirical data that supports one hypothesis over another.
2. Anything can be considered evidence, it’s just a matter of what constitutes good evidence vs. bad evidence.
3. Good evidence is demonstrable, is predicted by the hypothesis it supports and contradicts the predictions of other hypotheses, including the null hypothesis.
4. This is what I recall from my research in science and epistemology.

 

[Oncedeceived]

My worldview is agnostic atheism/nontheism. I am defending nontheistic materialism (and at points, naturalism), as in the primacy of matter, against your dualistic Christianity, even though I don't necessarily believe materialism is true. Taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of both paradigms, I find materialism to be the more reasonable one to take provisionally if one must choose. For the record, I'm not opposed to neutral monism either, but to keep things simple I'm sticking to materialism.

What disturbed me was that you listed the observations of life coming from life and intelligence from intelligence to be evidence against my worldview, but I can't for the life of me see how that would be the case. Even hard atheistic naturalism acknowledges that life comes from life. That doesn't mean that life cannot also come from non-life, and intelligence from non-intelligent components.

If you consider Abiogenesis you believe I assume that life came from non-life. All I am saying is that in a purely materialistic view, this has never been observed nor has it been shown scientifically to be possible. In the Christian worldview it is logical to have life because it came from life. God is a living Being. So no gap in the Christian worldview. Abiogenesis is logical with a living Being, Life giving life. Intelligence from non-intelligence from a materialistic worldview has no grounding. How does non-intelligent matter become intelligent in the materialistic worldview, it has never been observed nor has been scientifically shown to be possible. In the Christian worldview, Intelligence comes from intelligence. There is an intelligent agent which gives rise to intelligence. There is no gap in the Christian worldview. Both of these elements of reality make much more sense in the Christian worldview. We have evidence that life comes from life and intelligence comes from intelligence.

I don't know how it continues to get past you that this is still just god of the gaps. I know your worldview has answers to all the big questions in life; it's historically been the role of religions to provide those answers. My point is that you have no evidence for those answers. Your argument in favor of your worldview is that it has answers (we can debate whether they're actually cohesive and coherent answers, but not now as I'd really like to shorten these paragraphs of ours) and naturalism does not, and therefore your worldview is more reasonable. That is a logical fallacy. An answer with no evidence is no better than no answer at all. "God did it" carries exactly the same explanatory power as "Just stop asking."

Here we need to answer those questions I asked in my earlier post. What is evidence and so forth. I have not once claimed the "God did it" answer without showing support for that assertion. God did it doesn't stop anything. That is what I was saying about Newton and other scientists that began Modern science. They started science with the assumptions that God did it.

No, I have readily admitted multiple times that under my worldview, we have never demonstrated the exact mechanisms behind consciousness and abiogenesis. I have completely relinquished the possibility of scoring points for explanatory power in these fields because I am confident that you cannot do so either. We are not comparing the explanatory power of my explanation vs. yours. We are examining the explanatory power of, and evidence for, your explanation. I have not seen any. This puts your explanation at the same level as no explanation at all, so what makes it reasonable to believe?

Again this statement will be better addressed once I know what constitutes evidence for you and so forth.

I also already acknowledged this. You seem to be missing the fact that while you do have one single explanation for all the things I would have to assume separate, yet-undiscovered explanations for, you have to assume that there doesn't exist such an explanation for each of those things. When we itemize each of our assumptions, yours mirror all of mine in the negative, and your initial assumption of the Christian God's existence is not mirrored in the negative on my end. I don't assume God doesn't exist. I just don't assume he does, and I see no reason to do so. So, when all our assumptions are counted up, you're left with one more than I am, and it's a big one.

Yet un-discovered explanations are not certain to have discovered explanations. I could clearly claim God hasn't revealed Himself to everyone undeniably...yet. However, there is more supportive elements in reality that presuppose God vs. the elements in reality that presuppose atheistic materialism or your atheistic worldview.

Yes, the existence of material gives materialism a better track record than Christianity, because material has been demonstrated to exist and God has not. There is no evidence supporting intelligent design, but there's a whole other subforum for that discussion. I thought you said you accepted evolution?

Why would material not exist under the presupposition of God's existence? Material doesn't demonstrate anything other than material exists.

Newton also believed in alchemy. I am not in the least bit interested in the personal philosophical/religious beliefs of early scientists. I am interested in what they contributed to the collective knowledge of humanity. If you can provide something like a God that has been demonstrated to exist by scientific methodology, that would be the time to quote and name-drop. Until then, you need to stop with this absurd line of argumentation that science is somehow on the side of Christianity because many early scientists were Christians. If that's the kind of thing that sways you, you should look into the origin of algebra. By your logic, it supports Islam.

I just can't believe that you keep harping on this and still manage to miss the point. It wasn't that they just happened to be Christians and did science. They did science in the modern Scientific model due to their Christian beliefs and so do scientists today. The model is based on the faith provided by Christianity.

You were trying to demonstrate that evolution was unfalsifiable (since you know I accept evolution and have purported falsifiability as a virtue granting explanatory power) by saying that it has changed since its original inception. It changed precisely because the elements of the theory that had to be amended were falsified. I've already given an example of how the entire theory could be falsified, but just because that hasn't happened doesn't mean it's not falsifiable in principle. So your point falls flat.
You can believe that life arose from a process with purpose, goals, and intelligence, but what evidence do you have for all that?

I don't think they have been falsified, the new phenomena has just been added in.
I will provide that after you answer the questions on evidence. It might surprise you.

The Bible also describes the Earth as having four corners and a water dome above it.

It describes the four directions. You might be interested to know that there is a dome that surrounds the earth.

Scientists Find a Huge, Star Trek-esque Invisible Dome Around Earth

It describes four-legged insects, gives incorrect breeding instructions for goats, and says that hares or rabbits chew cud.

Do you honestly think that people of that time didn't know that grasshoppers had six legs? Have you not heard of selective breeding? Have you heard of cecotrophy?

The Bible is pretty hit or miss with the claims it makes that are falsifiable. There's nothing terribly impressive about any of the biblical claims you're talking about, and most of them are just wrong. Stars being innumerable is pretty intuitive to anyone who's seen the night sky without light pollution. But far from innumerable, scientists estimate that there are 9*10^21 stars in the universe. So the scientists (namely, Ptolemy) were right, just off be a factor of 10^19.

Kornreich used a very rough estimate of 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. Multiplying that by the Milky Way's estimated 100 billion stars results in a large number indeed: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, or a "1" with 24 zeros after it (1 septillion in the American numbering system; 1 quadrillion in the European system). Kornreich emphasized that number is likely a gross underestimation, as more detailed looks at the universe will show even more galaxies.How Many Stars Are In The Universe?

There are no laws governing the universe. Laws of physics are descriptive, not prescriptive. It's understandable that people back then would think there were, though, because there are obvious patterns in the behavior of the world around us.

Cosmologist Sean Carroll comments, "A law of physics is a pattern that nature obeys without exception."1

Scientists today take for granted the idea that the universe operates according to laws. All of science is based on what author James Trefil calls the principle of universality: "It says that the laws of nature we discover here and now in our laboratories are true everywhere in the universe and have been in force for all time."2

There's more. As scientists record what they observe, most often they are not just using words and paragraphs. The laws of nature can be documented with numbers. They can be measured and computed in the language of mathematics.

The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. The speed of light measures the same 186,000 miles per second, no matter if the light comes from a child's flashlight or a star that's galaxies away. Mathematically, there is an exact speed of light that doesn't change.

The Earth is neither hung, nor is it surrounded by nothing. It's in space, spinning and rotating in orbit around the Sun, so that's wrong too.

Yes, I know. At the time of this writing it was thought that the earth was supported by something. That was the point. Just because it doesn't say space, rotating around the sun means it didn't go into detail.

Science has still not shown that the universe had a beginning, only that there is a point in the distant past beyond which the equations by which we understand previous states of the universe output strange infinite values. There is nothing we can say about the past preceding that. That doesn't make it the beginning of the universe.

Translated into statements about the real universe, I am describing an origin in which space itself comes into existence at the big bang and expands from nothing to form a larger and larger volume. The matter and energy content of the universe likewise originates at or near the beginning, and populates the universe everywhere at all times. Again, I must stress that the speck from which space emerges is not located in anything. It is not an object surrounded by emptiness. It is the origin of space itself, infinitely compressed. Note that the speck does not sit there for an infinite duration. It appears instantaneously from nothing and immediately expands. This is why the question of why it does not collapse to a black hole is irrelevant. Indeed, according to the theory of relativity, there is no possibility of the speck existing through time because time itself begins at this point. Paul Davies What came before the big bang?

Psalm 8:8 doesn't predict actual paths in seas. Any route taken by a seafaring vessel can be called a path. This is the only point that isn't completely wrong and it's incredibly weak. Noticing a trend?

That is what Matthew Fontaine Maury took from it.

Easily. Ask me a question, I'll answer "Zeus did it." Simple, elegant, cohesive. Zeus can do anything, you see.

Where did you come to this conclusion and what do you use to support that?

Identical rocks forming large shapes only stands out from nature because it's not something we've ever observed in nature. You're trying to extend this principle to all of nature, and it doesn't work because we have nothing to contrast nature with to determine if it is designed or not.

I think we can expand on this but I don't have time right now.

Depends which universes you're talking about. Other universes produced by other configurations of the cosmic constants would actually produce more life. There's really no telling how many configurations could allow for life because there's no clear definition as to what forms life can possibly take.

You are claiming that there is no way to determine this but it can be.

This is eating up all my free time. We really need to cut this down. I'll get to the rest tomorrow.

I know right!

 

[Chriliman]

I wouldn’t say I created the truth, but I created the statement. The reality was already there. Together they created truth.

You created the statement that reflects the reality/truth that was already there, IOW, from a Christian perspective you are a reflection or image of God. God being the reality/truth that was already there before you.

 

[Tinker Grey]

You created the statement that reflects the reality/truth that was already there, IOW, from a Christian perspective you are a reflection or image of God. God being the reality/truth that was already there before you.

Does not follow

 

[Chriliman]

Does not follow

Well, it follows to me, so you’ll need to explain why you think it doesn’t follow so we can determine the disconnect.

Are you hung up on calling God the reality/truth that exists apart from yourself? Do you even believe there’s a reality/truth that exists apart from yourself?

 

[Tinker Grey]

Well, it follows to me, so you’ll need to explain why you think it doesn’t follow so we can determine the disconnect.

Are you hung up on calling God the reality/truth that exists apart from yourself? Do you even believe there’s a reality/truth that exists apart from yourself?

You created the statement that reflects the reality/truth that was already there, IOW, from a Christian perspective you are a reflection or image of God. God being the reality/truth that was already there before you.

The thought that a statement reflects a reality that was already there does not lead to the idea that we are a reflection of a god that was already there. It might express your beliefs as an analogy, but the one idea doesn't follow from the other.

You still have to demonstrate that there is a god, that he created us, that he created us in his image. Analogies aren't evidence of anything but how the thinker's mind works.

 

[gaara4158]

If you consider Abiogenesis you believe I assume that life came from non-life. All I am saying is that in a purely materialistic view, this has never been observed nor has it been shown scientifically to be possible. In the Christian worldview it is logical to have life because it came from life. God is a living Being. So no gap in the Christian worldview. Abiogenesis is logical with a living Being, Life giving life. Intelligence from non-intelligence from a materialistic worldview has no grounding. How does non-intelligent matter become intelligent in the materialistic worldview, it has never been observed nor has been scientifically shown to be possible. In the Christian worldview, Intelligence comes from intelligence. There is an intelligent agent which gives rise to intelligence. There is no gap in the Christian worldview. Both of these elements of reality make much more sense in the Christian worldview. We have evidence that life comes from life and intelligence comes from intelligence.

I sympathize with you wanting to say that we see life coming from life and intelligence from intelligence, God is alive and intelligent, and therefore life and intelligence coming from God is a more coherent worldview than supposing they could emerge from material alone. The problem is you’re basing your argument on empiricism, and if you’re going to do that, you can’t postulate something that’s not empirically demonstrated as one of the premises in your argument. That’s why I’ve continually pointed out to you that no, we don’t see life coming from non-life, but we also don’t see God. But at least we see non-life out there doing things that could conceivably result in life emerging, even if we’ve never seen the event itself occur, and that’s more than we can say for God.
Another problem with injecting God into an argument based on life only ever coming from life and intelligence from intelligence is, if God is alive and intelligent, then did he, too, come from intelligent life? If he is exempt, then you admit that exemption from this rule is possible and you must give up your premise that life only comes from life. If you don’t think he is exempt, you are invoking an infinite chain of gods and god-creators. How can you escape this dilemma without special pleading?

Thankfully, this covers many of your subsequent responses, so as usual I’ll be skipping a few and you can bring up whatever you feel merits further response. Note that I actually did answer your evidence question in the post preceding the one I’m responding to.

I just can't believe that you keep harping on this and still manage to miss the point. It wasn't that they just happened to be Christians and did science. They did science in the modern Scientific model due to their Christian beliefs and so do scientists today. The model is based on the faith provided by Christianity.

This is my response every time you bring it up because it’s true. You’re begging the question. In the middle of an argument about whether a belief in God is required to make sense of reality, you present as evidence your presupposition that a belief in God is required to make sense of reality. It doesn’t matter if early scientists shared your position when they developed scientific methodology. That position is completely immaterial to the reliability of scientific methodology. Scientists have to assume that the universe is rationally intelligible. They are not required to adopt an explanation as to why it is, although some do. It's very important you recognize this.

It describes the four directions. You might be interested to know that there is a dome that surrounds the earth.

Scientists Find a Huge, Star Trek-esque Invisible Dome Around Earth

See what you're doing? You're taking vague scriptures and matching them vaguely with scientific articles and calling that a fulfilled prediction. No one predicted that's what was meant by "firmament" until you did, just now. This is what I mean by retrofitting.

Do you honestly think that people of that time didn't know that grasshoppers had six legs? Have you not heard of selective breeding? Have you heard of cecotrophy?

I don't have to explain how the Bible got insects wrong, you do. Selective breeding is one thing, trying to get speckled goats by having breeder goats copulate in front of speckled rods is another. Cecothrophy is not the same thing as chewing cud. Yet another stretch to make it work. If you have to stretch "predictions" like this, what's the point of having them?

Kornreich used a very rough estimate of 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. Multiplying that by the Milky Way's estimated 100 billion stars results in a large number indeed: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, or a "1" with 24 zeros after it (1 septillion in the American numbering system; 1 quadrillion in the European system). Kornreich emphasized that number is likely a gross underestimation, as more detailed looks at the universe will show even more galaxies.How Many Stars Are In The Universe?

Your article cites the figure I provided, but at best it appears scientists disagree as to what a good estimate of the number of stars in the universe would be. Given the obvious fact that the stars appear innumerable (far more innumerable than the descendants of Isaac, as it turned out) to the naked eye on a clear night, is it really necessary to attribute this Biblical claim to divine revelation rather than common knowledge?

Cosmologist Sean Carroll comments, "A law of physics is a pattern that nature obeys without exception."1

Scientists today take for granted the idea that the universe operates according to laws. All of science is based on what author James Trefil calls the principle of universality: "It says that the laws of nature we discover here and now in our laboratories are true everywhere in the universe and have been in force for all time."2

There's more. As scientists record what they observe, most often they are not just using words and paragraphs. The laws of nature can be documented with numbers. They can be measured and computed in the language of mathematics.

The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. The speed of light measures the same 186,000 miles per second, no matter if the light comes from a child's flashlight or a star that's galaxies away. Mathematically, there is an exact speed of light that doesn't change.

Carroll also comments, "I don’t feel the need to grant the laws of nature any coercive properties. They’re a description of what happened."
The word "law," like many everyday words used in a scientific context, is confusing. Sean Carroll and indeed most scientists, even the theists, agree that the laws of nature are not the cause of the patterns we observe in nature. They are descriptions of those patterns. The fact that people recognized patterns while the Bible was being written is no surprise.

The Bible doesn't predict a mathematical structure to the universe. In fact, it predicts some mathematical structures incorrectly. It calculates Pi to be 3. We now know it's an irrational number (so much for neat, mathematical structures) closer to 3.14.

Yes, I know. At the time of this writing it was thought that the earth was supported by something. That was the point. Just because it doesn't say space, rotating around the sun means it didn't go into detail.

The Earth being supported by something wasn't believed by scientists, only by other religions. Scientists were already demonstrating that the Earth was somewhat spherical by that time.

Translated into statements about the real universe, I am describing an origin in which space itself comes into existence at the big bang and expands from nothing to form a larger and larger volume. The matter and energy content of the universe likewise originates at or near the beginning, and populates the universe everywhere at all times. Again, I must stress that the speck from which space emerges is not located in anything. It is not an object surrounded by emptiness. It is the origin of space itself, infinitely compressed. Note that the speck does not sit there for an infinite duration. It appears instantaneously from nothing and immediately expands. This is why the question of why it does not collapse to a black hole is irrelevant. Indeed, according to the theory of relativity, there is no possibility of the speck existing through time because time itself begins at this point. Paul Davies What came before the big bang?

From Ethan Siegel, The Big Bang Wasn't The Beginning, After All
"The conclusion was inescapable: the hot Big Bang definitely happened, but doesn't extend to go all the way back to an arbitrarily hot and dense state. Instead, the very early Universe underwent a period of time where all of the energy that would go into the matter and radiation present today was instead bound up in the fabric of space itself. That period, known as cosmic inflation, came to an end and gave rise to the hot Big Bang, but never created an arbitrarily hot, dense state, nor did it create a singularity. What happened prior to inflation — or whether inflation was eternal to the past — is still an open question, but one thing is for certain: the Big Bang is not the beginning of the Universe!"

We can quote theoretical physicists back and forth all day, but that's not going to settle anything. The fact is, the point isn't settled. It's premature to say the Bible's "prediction" of a universe from nothing has been confirmed.

That is what Matthew Fontaine Maury took from it.

Anyone can take whatever they want from it, and that's the problem.

You are claiming that there is no way to determine this but it can be.

There are possible, more natural configurations of the fundamental constants that would result in more life, as we know it. There's no telling what other forms of life could be permitted by other configurations.

 

[gaara4158]

You created the statement that reflects the reality/truth that was already there, IOW, from a Christian perspective you are a reflection or image of God. God being the reality/truth that was already there before you.

God as reality sounds like pantheism.

 

[Silmarien]

God as reality sounds like pantheism.

Not quite. Traditional theism identifies God as the principle behind all of existence, that which is maintaining everything else in being, but distinguishes between God and contingent reality, i.e., those aspects of reality that could have failed to exist, presumably including ourselves and the universe. God is still reality itself in a strong sense, though--you could very easily say that the universe is less real than God.

Pantheism, in contrast, requires the collapse of the distinction between God and contingent reality. This is done either by equating God with the universe or with the self.

Things get complicated when we toss panentheism in the picture, though. God is the universe, but is also ultimate reality beyond the universe. Perhaps it's really just an incoherent combination of theism and pantheism.

(Calling us reflections of God sounds more like Hinduism than Christianity to me, though, and strikes me as a really strange interpretation of humanity as the image of God, so I'm not sure where exactly @Chriliman is going with this.)

 

[Chriliman]

The thought that a statement reflects a reality that was already there does not lead to the idea that we are a reflection of a god that was already there. It might express your beliefs as an analogy, but the one idea doesn't follow from the other.

You’re right, it works as an analogy. Our statements can accurately reflect reality in a similar way as our way of being can accurately reflect God(the principal behind all of existence) as @Silmarian so eloquently put it

The question is: how can we know this principal behind all existence? Christianity’s answer is Christ and his way of enemy loving which involves exposing evil or wrongs, but also expressing forgiveness and offering peace. That’s why we refer to Christ as the perfect impression or image(Son) of God and we follow his way.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I sympathize with you wanting to say that we see life coming from life and intelligence from intelligence, God is alive and intelligent, and therefore life and intelligence coming from God is a more coherent worldview than supposing they could emerge from material alone. The problem is you’re basing your argument on empiricism, and if you’re going to do that, you can’t postulate something that’s not empirically demonstrated as one of the premises in your argument. That’s why I’ve continually pointed out to you that no, we don’t see life coming from non-life, but we also don’t see God. But at least we see non-life out there doing things that could conceivably result in life emerging, even if we’ve never seen the event itself occur, and that’s more than we can say for God.

And I sympathize with you wanting to say that even though we see life only coming from life, and intelligence from intelligence that you can not accept that empirical fact and must then even without the empirical evidence, empirical evidence that you say you require, claim that we can "conceive" life from non-life. You can conceive anything you wish, but facts are facts. What would we see in the world if God exists? We would see life coming from life and intelligence from intelligence and that is empirical fact. The empirical evidence supports that life came from life and intelligence came from intelligence. Those empirical facts support God but do not support atheistic materialism.

Another problem with injecting God into an argument based on life only ever coming from life and intelligence from intelligence is, if God is alive and intelligent, then did he, too, come from intelligent life? If he is exempt, then you admit that exemption from this rule is possible and you must give up your premise that life only comes from life. If you don’t think he is exempt, you are invoking an infinite chain of gods and god-creators. How can you escape this dilemma without special pleading?

Christian theology has as its foundation that God is an infinite being that was not created. There needs to be no chain of beings as God is the only un-created eternal Being. It can't be special pleading when the worldview holds such a belief as its core.

Thankfully, this covers many of your subsequent responses, so as usual I’ll be skipping a few and you can bring up whatever you feel merits further response. Note that I actually did answer your evidence question in the post preceding the one I’m responding to.

I'll go back later and see if there was anything of importance to me that you left out. And yes, I saw it..thank you.

This is my response every time you bring it up because it’s true. You’re begging the question. In the middle of an argument about whether a belief in God is required to make sense of reality, you present as evidence your presupposition that a belief in God is required to make sense of reality. It doesn’t matter if early scientists shared your position when they developed scientific methodology. That position is completely immaterial to the reliability of scientific methodology. Scientists have to assume that the universe is rationally intelligible. They are not required to adopt an explanation as to why it is, although some do. It's very important you recognize this.

True, scientists do not adhere to any creed that they owe their ability to do science to God or the Christian worldview. Although, it is true, and if one wishes to ignore that or stick their head in the sand to do science then by all means it is possible.

See what you're doing? You're taking vague scriptures and matching them vaguely with scientific articles and calling that a fulfilled prediction. No one predicted that's what was meant by "firmament" until you did, just now. This is what I mean by retrofitting.

I'm sorry but I had to laugh out loud on this one. For decades probably longer, atheists have used this dome thing as something ridiculous and proving the Bible wrong. Now you turn it around and claim that it doesn't mean dome. Typical to say the least. It was the same way with early atheists claiming the Bible was wrong about liquid being in the creation of the universe because they claimed it would be too hot for water to exist and it would be gas. The Bible had that prior to the discovery of the "perfect liquid". The materialist's gaps are being closed and the Bible seems to have had it right all along.

I don't have to explain how the Bible got insects wrong, you do.

Common sense would do the job.

Selective breeding is one thing, trying to get speckled goats by having breeder goats copulate in front of speckled rods is another.

That was just ritual. It was the separation and breeding practice itself that is what is at issue.

Cecothrophy is not the same thing as chewing cud. Yet another stretch to make it work. If you have to stretch "predictions" like this, what's the point of having them?

I didn't say this was a predicition. It isn't a prediction in fact. It was an observation that was spoken of within the Bible.

Your article cites the figure I provided, but at best it appears scientists disagree as to what a good estimate of the number of stars in the universe would be. Given the obvious fact that the stars appear innumerable (far more innumerable than the descendants of Isaac, as it turned out) to the naked eye on a clear night, is it really necessary to attribute this Biblical claim to divine revelation rather than common knowledge?

Perhaps not, but it is accurate.

Carroll also comments, "I don’t feel the need to grant the laws of nature any coercive properties. They’re a description of what happened."
The word "law," like many everyday words used in a scientific context, is confusing. Sean Carroll and indeed most scientists, even the theists, agree that the laws of nature are not the cause of the patterns we observe in nature. They are descriptions of those patterns. The fact that people recognized patterns while the Bible was being written is no surprise.

What happened? They are happening, everyday, everywhere and at all times. The universe obeys the laws of gravity, whether we describe them or not.

The Bible doesn't predict a mathematical structure to the universe. In fact, it predicts some mathematical structures incorrectly. It calculates Pi to be 3. We now know it's an irrational number (so much for neat, mathematical structures) closer to 3.14.

I am not a mathematician but this was shown to Chuck Missler:

Numerical Values

The Hebrew alphabet is alphanumeric: each Hebrew letter also has a numerical value and can be used as a number.

The q has a value of 100; the v has a value of 6; thus, the normal spelling would yield a numerical value of 106. The addition of the h, with a value of 5, increases the numerical value to 111. This indicates an adjustment of the ratio 111/106, or 31.41509433962 cubits. Assuming that a cubit was 1.5 ft.,3 this 15-foot-wide bowl would have had a circumference of 47.12388980385 feet.

This Hebrew "code" results in 47.12264150943 feet, or an error of less than 15 thousandths of an inch! (This error is 15 times better than the 22/7 estimate that we were accustomed to using in school!) How did they accomplish this? This accuracy would seem to vastly exceed the precision of their instrumentation. How would they know this? How was it encoded into the text?
Chuck Missler

The Earth being supported by something wasn't believed by scientists, only by other religions. Scientists were already demonstrating that the Earth was somewhat spherical by that time.

The earth's shape was not what was being discussed. It was hanging on nothing remember?

From Ethan Siegel, The Big Bang Wasn't The Beginning, After All
"The conclusion was inescapable: the hot Big Bang definitely happened, but doesn't extend to go all the way back to an arbitrarily hot and dense state. Instead, the very early Universe underwent a period of time where all of the energy that would go into the matter and radiation present today was instead bound up in the fabric of space itself. That period, known as cosmic inflation, came to an end and gave rise to the hot Big Bang, but never created an arbitrarily hot, dense state, nor did it create a singularity. What happened prior to inflation — or whether inflation was eternal to the past — is still an open question, but one thing is for certain: the Big Bang is not the beginning of the Universe!"

We can quote theoretical physicists back and forth all day, but that's not going to settle anything. The fact is, the point isn't settled. It's premature to say the Bible's "prediction" of a universe from nothing has been confirmed.

Nothing has been confirmed but..."one thing is for certain: the Big Bang is not the beginning of the universe!" Now how is that certain when you just provided something that doesn't confirm it didn't?

Anyone can take whatever they want from it, and that's the problem.

It would have been a problem if it had turned out untrue. As it was, it was true and changed shipping from then on.

There are possible, more natural configurations of the fundamental constants that would result in more life, as we know it. There's no telling what other forms of life could be permitted by other configurations.

What empirical evidence do you have that shows that there are possible, more natural configurations of the fundamental constants that would result in more life, as we know it, or other configurations?

 

[cvanwey]

And I sympathize with you wanting to say that even though we see life only coming from life, and intelligence from intelligence that you can not accept that empirical fact and must then even without the empirical evidence, empirical evidence that you say you require, claim that we can "conceive" life from non-life. You can conceive anything you wish, but facts are facts. What would we see in the world if God exists? We would see life coming from life and intelligence from intelligence and that is empirical fact. The empirical evidence supports that life came from life and intelligence came from intelligence. Those empirical facts support God but do not support atheistic materialism.

Christian theology has as its foundation that God is an infinite being that was not created. There needs to be no chain of beings as God is the only un-created eternal Being. It can't be special pleading when the worldview holds such a belief as its core.

I'll go back later and see if there was anything of importance to me that you left out. And yes, I saw it..thank you.


True, scientists do not adhere to any creed that they owe their ability to do science to God or the Christian worldview. Although, it is true, and if one wishes to ignore that or stick their head in the sand to do science then by all means it is possible.


I'm sorry but I had to laugh out loud on this one. For decades probably longer, atheists have used this dome thing as something ridiculous and proving the Bible wrong. Now you turn it around and claim that it doesn't mean dome. Typical to say the least. It was the same way with early atheists claiming the Bible was wrong about liquid being in the creation of the universe because they claimed it would be too hot for water to exist and it would be gas. The Bible had that prior to the discovery of the "perfect liquid". The materialist's gaps are being closed and the Bible seems to have had it right all along.


Common sense would do the job.

That was just ritual. It was the separation and breeding practice itself that is what is at issue.

I didn't say this was a predicition. It isn't a prediction in fact. It was an observation that was spoken of within the Bible.


Perhaps not, but it is accurate.


What happened? They are happening, everyday, everywhere and at all times. The universe obeys the laws of gravity, whether we describe them or not.

I am not a mathematician but this was shown to Chuck Missler:

Numerical Values

The Hebrew alphabet is alphanumeric: each Hebrew letter also has a numerical value and can be used as a number.

The q has a value of 100; the v has a value of 6; thus, the normal spelling would yield a numerical value of 106. The addition of the h, with a value of 5, increases the numerical value to 111. This indicates an adjustment of the ratio 111/106, or 31.41509433962 cubits. Assuming that a cubit was 1.5 ft.,3 this 15-foot-wide bowl would have had a circumference of 47.12388980385 feet.

This Hebrew "code" results in 47.12264150943 feet, or an error of less than 15 thousandths of an inch! (This error is 15 times better than the 22/7 estimate that we were accustomed to using in school!) How did they accomplish this? This accuracy would seem to vastly exceed the precision of their instrumentation. How would they know this? How was it encoded into the text?
Chuck Missler


The earth's shape was not what was being discussed. It was hanging on nothing remember?


Nothing has been confirmed but..."one thing is for certain: the Big Bang is not the beginning of the universe!" Now how is that certain when you just provided something that doesn't confirm it didn't?


It would have been a problem if it had turned out untrue. As it was, it was true and changed shipping from then on.


What empirical evidence do you have that shows that there are possible, more natural configurations of the fundamental constants that would result in more life, as we know it, or other configurations?

Sorry to chime in, but I have two specific questions for you...

1. If it turns out that the universe is in fact eternal, then doesn't the necessity for a 'creator' fall by the waste side, and become a fallacious, or even partially vacuous, notion? At best, one could then argue for a 'change agent', in the big bang model or other...

2. If it turns out that life can stem from non-life, then doesn't the claims for intelligent life creating intelligent life, fall by the waste side, and become a possible fallacious notion?

I gladly admit I've explored both sides, and am undecided in my own conclusions. But I do tend to think that science has much more to discover, and maybe even has more things currently undiscovered, verses things actually discovered - thus far. So to make assumptions and accusations, as I repeatedly see some do, becomes or appears fairly presumptuous indeed.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Sorry to chime in, but I have two specific questions for you...

It is your thread. You can chime in anytime, on any thread I believe since this is a public forum.

1. If it turns out that the universe is in fact eternal, then doesn't the necessity for a 'creator' fall by the waste side, and become a fallacious, or even partially vacuous, notion? At best, one could then argue for a 'change agent', in the big bang model or other...

I guess it would depend on what you mean by eternal. Such as, in multi-universe eternal or what? Evidence supports that space, time, energy and matter all came into being and were not in existence when we go as far back as we can in time. So you would have to explain what you mean by eternal.

2. If it turns out that life can stem from non-life, then doesn't the claims for intelligent life creating intelligent life, fall by the waste side, and become a possible fallacious notion?

How would one go about determining that life could come about by non-life? Even if we somehow get life to spring forth from non-living matter it wouldn't be from non-intelligence. We've been working on this for a long time. Even if we could determine the way life actually came into being materialistically, that doesn't mean that it just arose in the same way it did when first life appeared.

I gladly admit I've explored both sides, and am undecided in my own conclusions. But I do tend to think that science has much more to discover, and maybe even has more things currently undiscovered, verses things actually discovered - thus far. So to make assumptions and accusations, as I repeatedly see some do, becomes or appears fairly presumptuous indeed.

Don't you tend to claim that whatever has been discovered is evidence for whatever element or phenomena you are discussing? Do you think that is presumptuous?

 

[cvanwey]

I guess it would depend on what you mean by eternal. Such as, in multi-universe eternal or what? Evidence supports that space, time, energy and matter all came into being and were not in existence when we go as far back as we can in time. So you would have to explain what you mean by eternal.

Great question. Because quite frankly, to even try to conceive of 'no beginning' boggles my brain to no end.

Just as so with the theory of relativity, as yet it is proven time and time again in sorts. And yet, I'm vexed to the workings of it all to this day...

So let's go with the basic intention of 'there never was a beginning'... If such a model was demonstrated 'true', the assertion of a creator would seem irrelevant, wouldn't it?

How would one go about determining that life could come about by non-life? Even if we somehow get life to spring forth from non-living matter it wouldn't be from non-intelligence. We've been working on this for a long time. Even if we could determine the way life actually came into being materialistically, that doesn't mean that it just arose in the same way it did when first life appeared.

The beauty about this line of questioning is that we will not live long enough to verify such results. Evolution requires many many many repeated life cycles, prior to any deviations apparently. So if abiogenesis is 'true', to watch it in action, to await any changes, might take many many many lifetimes to peer review.

Don't you tend to claim that whatever has been discovered is evidence for whatever element or phenomena you are discussing? Do you think that is presumptuous?

I'm sure I'm not perfect. I'm just asking, as this particular claim is a rather LARGE one, wouldn't you agree? To assert something in which there clearly exists no founded conclusion, on practically any level?

You are asserting Yahweh specifically. This is huge, in my estimation.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Great question. Because quite frankly, to even try to conceive of 'no beginning' boggles my brain to no end.

Just as so with the theory of relativity, as yet it is proven time and time again in sorts. And yet, I'm vexed to the workings of it all to this day...

So let's go with the basic intention of 'there never was a beginning'... If such a model was demonstrated 'true', the assertion of a creator would seem irrelevant, wouldn't it?

I assume you mean the Creator of the Christian faith? What we do know is that all the matter, energy, time and space came into being at a point in our universe's past. What isn't known is what came right before inflation. So our universe actually did have a beginning and it has been demonstrated. The singularity is more of a headache for scientists than for theists. Even if there were no singularity in the model that doesn't do away with the fact that all space, time, matter and energy came into being for our universe and didn't exist prior to it. As far as the Creator goes, if one is to take the literal reading of Genesis and it was determined the universe didn't have a beginning it would be a conflict and would not comport with the scientific data and the Bible. That is why Lawrence Krauss and other atheist scientists would like to find a way to show that there is something rather than a real nothing.

The beauty about this line of questioning is that we will not live long enough to verify such results. Evolution requires many many many repeated life cycles, prior to any deviations apparently. So if abiogenesis is 'true', to watch it in action, to await any changes, might take many many many lifetimes to peer review.

So you are under the assumption that non-life will somehow arise life again on this planet?

I'm sure I'm not perfect. I'm just asking, as this particular claim is a rather LARGE one, wouldn't you agree? To assert something in which there clearly exists no founded conclusion, on practically any level?

You are asserting Yahweh specifically. This is huge, in my estimation.

There are few things that are completely known or have a founded conclusion. With the existence of God, there are wide spread elements that point to that conclusion, in many areas of life and study. Like I've said, I find it much more reasonable and the evidence much more comports to the Christian worldview than atheistic naturalism. Reality fits best when based on an Intelligent Agent at its foundation.