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VCVIking,
I find your backpedaling quite comical.
The AiG, a leading proponant of creationism, website has an artical you should read entitled "Arguments Creationists Should Not Use". It spells out the reasons for not using certain false and dishonest arguments, so you don't have to get caught in them and embarassed by atheists like me. There is a section in that creationist article dedicated to using that exact quote, in the same way you did.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp
I also leave the possibility of gods existence open. I never said he doesn't exist. It cannot be proven either way, but this does not mean that the chances are 50-50. I'm quite certain that the chances are stacked against the existence of a god, so although in a very technical sense I am an agnostic, I label myself atheist.
And, it is very disrespectful to anyone who reads your post to propogate misunderstanding by misquoting out of context. I don't believe that you intended it in some benign way. As a matter of fact, I find it very hard to believe that you have ever read it in it's original context, The Origin of Species, and would bet that you gleaned it from another web site, completely unawair of what you were doing until I pointed it out. Of course I cannot prove it. Even if you intended it to lead to some round about, convoluted distinction between Darwin's agnosticism or atheism (which should be noted you made no mention of your original post), it is undeniably irrisponsible to misquote, out of context.
You owe an apology.
I did in a very short summary thereafter. I can appreciate you would like a whole worldview presented, but I also specifically said I wanted to keep it short, for two reasons really: 1) It takes time to source material, and I think we are both aware that every source has a respetive counter or rebuttal and 2) By providing a complete picture, I will no doubt cover numerous things you disagree with, which will land us right back where we started in a sort of powder-keg post war. The material is certainly out there should we both wish to read it, and that is really the point of this, being exposed to different beliefs.I think you should give me your own ideas. Take your time.
Recall two things. First, we are talking about an intelligent designer, not specifically God. Secondly, the simplest explanation is likely the correct one. All one needs to do, really, is to show that the universe in it's current state is an impossibility - at least, it's probable but to the impossible degree. That everything within it functions so perfectly at such specific tasks and that in order for this universe to exist in this state, it was either an incredible set of chances or it was designed. The simplest explanation, is designed.I read the argument though, and noticed that it is an arguement against the big bang, not an argument for God. There is a huge defference. This is truth by false dichotomy. Even if the big bang is totally disproven, that will not make any more likely, the existence of god.
I rarely post in GA, as I find the people there unfriendly and not even remotely interested in finding the truth, just in being right. I appreciate you wish to pursue this, and this is as good a place as any as it keeps out third parties from posting.Either way, I think you should start a new thread, and actually make your own case for the existence of a creator. I also would like for you to specifically acknowledge that this creator argument, although vastly more reasonable, has nothing to do with the bible, and therefore no bearign on our previous conversation.
Out of interest, if I show you an article and you have one that refutes it, what makes it more acceptable than my source? If the articles were reversed, then what? This is the specific reason I kept my post short on what I believe, and as light as possible else we get into these powder-keg arguemnts. If I see two groups of people, identical in the general sense of the word and the only difference between one and the other is their belief in God and they active prayer during the study, and the people who prayed had better results than those who did not, what do I conclude?I think this is te third or fourth time you have made this claim without backing it up. The first time, I refuted it, and linked sources. Prayer has by no means been proven to cause healing.
Natural selection isn't a guided process though. What is it guided by, what gives it direction? Nothing! Guided implies there is an end goal. God guides us, He has an end goal. Natural selection doesn't guide us, there is no end target, no end goal no intent.You're right. If I were to say that the biological diversity on Earth had no guided process, I would be claiming pure random chance. I'm not making that claim though, so you are building a straw man to argue against.
Natural selection is very ordered, but it is not guided and it is all based on chance mutations.It is quite ordered, but that doesn't have anything to do with god.
It's not about God remember, just an intelligence.I know the intelligent design (creationism in a cheap suit) arguement. It doesn't hold water. You are saying that the probability of all this amazing complexity occuring through random chance is incredibly slim. You are right. But the way you use that to come to the god conclusion is flawed for three main reasons:
1) Statistical improbability is based on complexity and order. The more of each, the less probable. Since we are very complex and ordered, we are very improbable. Anything that could create the universe, would have to be very much less probably even than us. A god with a conscioness capable of planning the universe is just about the least statistically probable, very complex and ordered, thing you could imagine.
It's by no means the only argument ID has, but it is one road they take - I don't think they claim that if evolution disappeared, then God would appear though. It doesn't work like that.2) Intelligent design goes about "proving" god by attempting to disprove evolution.
Exactly.Disproving evolution does not prove god any more than having the wrong idea is better than having no idea.
We aren't trying to disprove evolution though, merely point to an intelligent force guiding it to a goal.The complexity demands a conscious creator theory doesn't disprove evolution at all. It's just bad logic.
That's incorrect, the other planets and galaxies are required for life on this planet. If the universe formed in any other way, it would comprise mainly of thermal radiation - or it would have collapsed in on itself.---a)There is very strong evidence that the universe has been around for billions of years and that there are zillions of planets. Let's make an analogy here. It would be rediculouse to bet that you will get dealt a royal flush if you only get one chance. But imagine a zillion poker players being dealt cards for billions of years straight and you're chances are almost certain.
It's lovely to imagine, but it certainly hasn't ever been replicated, in fact, that's really the problem right there. We seemingly know how all these things happened, yet attempts to recreate 'life', have failed, utterly and wholly. Sure, we can work with what we already have, but we cannot create it at all.---b)Life as we know it didn't spontaneously appear this way. That would be amazingly improbable. It first started with the vastly more probable accident, of bilipid molecules randomly forming around simple protines. Given a little time and the periodic table of elements this is not hard at all to imagine.
Yes, and that's awesome. Again though, you argue things which have no bearing on God or an intelligent designer. Biology is fantastic, but the events that lead to these things happening are so minute, to make it all but an impossibility if not guided with intent.This doesn't constitute life, but it is a self replicating molecule with heritable traits. Natural selection can happen here. So these molecules given just a few years could create uncountable numbers of themselves, each duplication a chance for natural selection to ad complexity, slowly gradually, each step a logically acceptable transition from the very simple to something slightly more complex. So you can see that the initial random leap from inanimate to replicating molecules is more like being dealt two-pair than the royal flush that a human is, but we still have zillions of players being dealt hands for billions of years. Each time a molecule replicates we get more and more players gradually and smoothly moving up the mountain of complexity.
No it doesn't, but in the same vein it also puts a stick in the spoke of your argument that God, isn't.I don't need to prove that the big bang theory is true, I'm just arguing that god isn't. You can disprove any popular theory you want; this doesn't mean that by defacto god must be the answer.
My argument is presented in a far better format with sources on any number of Christian theology and apologetic sites, why do you wish me to regurgitate it here.If you decline to rebut or even comment on my position, and don't wish to explain yours, we have no place to go from here.
Oh, ok.I was going to criticize your last post, as I'm sure was expected, but it seems a waste of both of our time.
Absolutely, I never doubted you had not searched a great deal yourself.I have come to a greater respect for how you have reached your conclusions. I think ultimately you have reached the wrong ones, but that is inconsequental. The important matter is that you have really searched yourself to find those answers. I will give you that, and hope that you see the same in me.
Honestly? No idea. There was a time when I thought it was under 10000 years, a time when I thought it was 4.5 billion years old and a time when I was somewhere inbetween. Currently I am leaning less towards the 10000 years, and more towards a greater number, what that is I am unsure however. The question, really is a monstrous one, at that.Before I close up, I would like to know how old you think the world is. I mean if you are really pressed to come up with a number, or at least ballpark figure, how many zeroes? I won't dispute it. I am just curious.
I think something that is true of any worldview, is that there is an emotional attachment to it. We don't like to admit it, but after I read a book recently, it seems impossible to deny (for me at least anyhow). I'm not about to point fingers at others and tell them likewise, but I certainly feel to a degree, we are all attached to our beliefs.I have very much enjoyed this discussion, but I feel it is time for it to end. We will never agree, but we have at least learned about each other. You have humored my interrogatins, despite the fact that you truly believe logic cannot prove god and been rather skilled in your argumentation. I get the distinct impression that the conclsions you draw come down to that internal, emotional, intangeable place at the center of you.
Thank you for this discussion. I will admit I learned that some things I thought are actually incorrect, and that pride got the better of me at few points, and that was my failing. I really enjoyed this and I would hope that you post more in this forum, perhaps with some easier questions though, or maybe not easier, but smaller.I think without that awe of nature and beauty, neither of us would be passionate about our sides of this god question. Weather or not we draw the same conclusions, we both have drawn reasons for those conclusions from the depths of who we are. I will leave it at that.
I went through Sunday school, and attended church every sunday for about the first ten years of my life. I have read the Bible...
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