The Science that led me away from Atheism.

[FormerAtheist]

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



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



We had nothing but a quantum field and the laws of relativity and that was enough to produce massive amounts of energy and mass. And before this energy and mass there is no time. So we have something that can not be tested in a lab that exists outside of time and space that creates everything? Sounds like God to me. At this point if you believe this you yourself are just a hop skip and jump away from a "God" you just call it something different. But you still have the consciousness problem. We know that we have only witnessed consciousness creating consciousness. We have never seen otherwise. We have never seen anything but life give rise to life. And so we are asked to accept on faith that it happened somehow without an outside intelligent agent for the first and only time and then everything else changes forever after that. Once again sounds like "faith" sounds like "God".



But that is not the real problem.



The real problem is in the math.



In order for things to evolve into different life forms you would need new proteins and new protein functions along the way. The best way to explain this would be that a new protein fold is the most basic change we would expect to get a new life form generally. And so work has been done to see what this would take. Without boring you with the details the math works out like this 1 in 10^77 for a new protein fold for an average protein (150 amino acid length) and 1 in 10^90 for a very small brand new protein (90 amino acid chain). To do this once if there was only once chance would be impossible as expressed by math done that calculates that beyond 1 in 10^40 is considered impossible. But there would be trillions of lifeforms that can have a go at it. But how many? Well the math has already been done on that and that works out to 10^40 total lifeforms since the dawn of life on this planet till now. That is everything from your dog and you to some pond scum. So after you work the math it comes to this problem. If everything single life individual life form that has ever existed on this planet had one unique try at solving the combinatorial problem you would still be left with a 1 in 10^37 chance at solving a new protein fold. The combination inflation gets worse though. Remember we are not talking about doing this once. Ohhhh no. We have to do this every time we need a new protein fold. Now you may say wait. Not all different protein functions have different folds. This is true but you still have the problem of brand new proteins and their math problems. We have over 10,000,000 proteins that we have estimated so far. It is also estimated that 10-20% of these are orphans or completely different. So now you are saying that we would have to go through the lottery with a chance of at least 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion in 1 chance .... not once but over a million times just for the orphans. The real odds then just for proteins to overcome this would look something like this:



1 in 10^74000000 now this is a very very big number. We have only 10^80 particles in the known universe. We have nothing that we can actually compare to the that protein number because nothing exists that can be counted close to it. Your asking me at this point to accept that you could win the Powerball lottery a trillion times in a row ... take a break on your fat yacht then do it another trillion times and repeat this process millions of times.



I was on board the atheist train until I began to see this problem. If you ask me to accept by faith that we could do 1 in 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion feat once. I will accept it. Because my belief was that "God" was too crazy so we are here so some how it happened. And even though its crazy unlikely it happened. It must have happened and did so without a "God". But when you ask me to accept that we have to go through that crazy lottery millions of times then I have to leave the reservation.



I debate atheists all the time not because its a hobby but because I like to test my beliefs. One of the questions is always where is the proof? But then what proof are you looking for? Are you looking for a glowing sphere in some undiscovered desert that will talk to you and grant you 3 wishes? Are you looking for a magic piece of toast? Something you can measure in the lab? If that is what you looking for then don't you think that would make the thing your looking for illegitimate to the task it must've done? How can something so simple that is trapped in our universe and subject to our laws be able to create something as massive as the universe? We are trapped in a box. What is inside this box can not be created by something in the box. In order to get a universe you need something more powerful then it. And yet as atheists we all believe in something similar by different names. We believe something existed outside of time and space and created everything out of nothing. I don't think that you should be able to directly measure "God" that would denigrate the very existence of such a being but I do think you can detect what this entity has done. Its in the math of the universe.



And now on for another problem that began to seriously trouble me. The irreducibly complex argument. We have all heard it before. Of course and most atheists myself will dismiss thinking that it has already been debunked. There have been answers to this argument but I am not sure they would qualify as debunking. We know of the classic examples the flagella motor, the eye, the blood clotting system. By the way the blood clotting system seems out of reach but I do not want to travel down this path. Rather I would suggest that all of life is irreducibly complex. When we get down to the cellular level its all interdependent with multiple chicken and egg problems that defy imagination. When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency and do so with such ease that the host organism doesn't even think about these processes. From converting sunlight to chemical energy to converting chemical energy to mechanical energy we see design on steroids. We see a technological sophistication that is beyond our civilization as if put here for our amazement by an advanced alien civilization. I know of no single life form that either A. does not have irreducibly complex systems within itself or B. does not rely upon some other life form that does. I am beginning to suspect that all of life needs all of life and is therefore all interdependent. Such a grand system where you can go from molecular to planet scale and find connectedness and interdependence defies any other explanation then .... GENIUS.

 

[pitabread]

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

I would like to see the math for this. Especially given this seems like your typical abiogenesis-is-improbable-because-of-mistakenly-assuming-the process-is-entirely-random type of calculation. Which of course nobody does.

Rather I would suggest that all of life is irreducibly complex.

That seems to be stretching what Behe originally suggested way beyond its original definition, which was functionally specific. And pretty easy to demonstrate that the above statement isn't true given what we know about evolution, mutations, and their change on an organism's physiology while still producing a viable organism. In fact, this seems to contradict many creationist views on life.

When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency

We do? I mean, look at basic digestion and the amount of waste product that entails. Doesn't seem like a 100% efficient system.

Now if we could eat without pooping on the other hand...

I am beginning to suspect that all of life needs all of life and is therefore all interdependent.

Life has definitely evolved a certain interdependence on other life forms. That's a result of life evolving within an ecosystem.

But mass extinctions also show us that it's possible for large numbers of species to disappear and life still continues on in one form or another. So clearly not all lifeforms need all other lifeforms to survive.

 

[Speedwell]

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



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



We had nothing but a quantum field and the laws of relativity and that was enough to produce massive amounts of energy and mass. And before this energy and mass there is no time. So we have something that can not be tested in a lab that exists outside of time and space that creates everything? Sounds like God to me. At this point if you believe this you yourself are just a hop skip and jump away from a "God" you just call it something different. But you still have the consciousness problem. We know that we have only witnessed consciousness creating consciousness. We have never seen otherwise. We have never seen anything but life give rise to life. And so we are asked to accept on faith that it happened somehow without an outside intelligent agent for the first and only time and then everything else changes forever after that. Once again sounds like "faith" sounds like "God".



But that is not the real problem.



The real problem is in the math.



In order for things to evolve into different life forms you would need new proteins and new protein functions along the way. The best way to explain this would be that a new protein fold is the most basic change we would expect to get a new life form generally. And so work has been done to see what this would take. Without boring you with the details the math works out like this 1 in 10^77 for a new protein fold for an average protein (150 amino acid length) and 1 in 10^90 for a very small brand new protein (90 amino acid chain). To do this once if there was only once chance would be impossible as expressed by math done that calculates that beyond 1 in 10^40 is considered impossible. But there would be trillions of lifeforms that can have a go at it. But how many? Well the math has already been done on that and that works out to 10^40 total lifeforms since the dawn of life on this planet till now. That is everything from your dog and you to some pond scum. So after you work the math it comes to this problem. If everything single life individual life form that has ever existed on this planet had one unique try at solving the combinatorial problem you would still be left with a 1 in 10^37 chance at solving a new protein fold. The combination inflation gets worse though. Remember we are not talking about doing this once. Ohhhh no. We have to do this every time we need a new protein fold. Now you may say wait. Not all different protein functions have different folds. This is true but you still have the problem of brand new proteins and their math problems. We have over 10,000,000 proteins that we have estimated so far. It is also estimated that 10-20% of these are orphans or completely different. So now you are saying that we would have to go through the lottery with a chance of at least 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion in 1 chance .... not once but over a million times just for the orphans. The real odds then just for proteins to overcome this would look something like this:



1 in 10^74000000 now this is a very very big number. We have only 10^80 particles in the known universe. We have nothing that we can actually compare to the that protein number because nothing exists that can be counted close to it. Your asking me at this point to accept that you could win the Powerball lottery a trillion times in a row ... take a break on your fat yacht then do it another trillion times and repeat this process millions of times.



I was on board the atheist train until I began to see this problem. If you ask me to accept by faith that we could do 1 in 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion feat once. I will accept it. Because my belief was that "God" was too crazy so we are here so some how it happened. And even though its crazy unlikely it happened. It must have happened and did so without a "God". But when you ask me to accept that we have to go through that crazy lottery millions of times then I have to leave the reservation.



I debate atheists all the time not because its a hobby but because I like to test my beliefs. One of the questions is always where is the proof? But then what proof are you looking for? Are you looking for a glowing sphere in some undiscovered desert that will talk to you and grant you 3 wishes? Are you looking for a magic piece of toast? Something you can measure in the lab? If that is what you looking for then don't you think that would make the thing your looking for illegitimate to the task it must've done? How can something so simple that is trapped in our universe and subject to our laws be able to create something as massive as the universe? We are trapped in a box. What is inside this box can not be created by something in the box. In order to get a universe you need something more powerful then it. And yet as atheists we all believe in something similar by different names. We believe something existed outside of time and space and created everything out of nothing. I don't think that you should be able to directly measure "God" that would denigrate the very existence of such a being but I do think you can detect what this entity has done. Its in the math of the universe.



And now on for another problem that began to seriously trouble me. The irreducibly complex argument. We have all heard it before. Of course and most atheists myself will dismiss thinking that it has already been debunked. There have been answers to this argument but I am not sure they would qualify as debunking. We know of the classic examples the flagella motor, the eye, the blood clotting system. By the way the blood clotting system seems out of reach but I do not want to travel down this path. Rather I would suggest that all of life is irreducibly complex. When we get down to the cellular level its all interdependent with multiple chicken and egg problems that defy imagination. When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency and do so with such ease that the host organism doesn't even think about these processes. From converting sunlight to chemical energy to converting chemical energy to mechanical energy we see design on steroids. We see a technological sophistication that is beyond our civilization as if put here for our amazement by an advanced alien civilization. I know of no single life form that either A. does not have irreducibly complex systems within itself or B. does not rely upon some other life form that does. I am beginning to suspect that all of life needs all of life and is therefore all interdependent. Such a grand system where you can go from molecular to planet scale and find connectedness and interdependence defies any other explanation then .... GENIUS.

An interesting story, but I think it is not quite complete. The math and the irreducible complexity business in particular are old creationist arguments long since debunked and despised even by many devout Christians. Where did you get them? I think there must have been some other impetus to your conversion which you have not told us of.

 

[FormerAtheist]

An interesting story, but I think it is not quite complete. The math and the irreducible complexity business in particular are old creationist arguments long since debunked and despised even by many devout Christians. Where did you get them? I think there must have been some other impetus to your conversion which you have not told us of.

"Irreducible Complexity Business" has not been debunked I have been observing the thread on that on this forum by a very intelligent poster here goes by ID. And there were many intelligent ID style posts there. I have tried not to get into the debate because then I have to respond on too many threads and that is difficult for me because of time. I have yet to see anything coming close to an argument that has any weight ... anything resembling a chance that can explain how you will get a blood clotting system through evolution. Or any of the other irreducibly complex systems. Simply put there is no scientist that knows how a cell could form with all the necessary components.

As far as the math that's easy and easy to find. For example:
Blanco, Angrand, and Serrano, "Exploring the Conformational Properties of the Sequence Space Between Two Proteins with Different Folds: An Experimental Study".
The studies have been done by scientists. Interestingly as a geeky side note some of this was predicted by a mathematician (atheist) who predicted that the math would end up looking as bad as it does.
No one. And I mean no one disputes the math. The math was done by mostly atheists with the exception of Behe and Axe but they are accomplished scientists and even if you discount them because of (well whatever) no one disputes the math it was in fact predicted.

 

[Speedwell]

"Irreducible Complexity Business" has not been debunked I have been observing the thread on that on this forum by a very intelligent poster here goes by ID. And there were many intelligent ID style posts there. I have tried not to get into the debate because then I have to respond on too many threads and that is difficult for me because of time. I have yet to see anything coming close to an argument that has any weight ... anything resembling a chance that can explain how you will get a blood clotting system through evolution. Or any of the other irreducibly complex systems. Simply put there is no scientist that knows how a cell could form with all the necessary components.

As far as the math that's easy and easy to find. For example:
Blanco, Angrand, and Serrano, "Exploring the Conformational Properties of the Sequence Space Between Two Proteins with Different Folds: An Experimental Study".
The studies have been done by scientists. Interestingly as a geeky side note some of this was predicted by a mathematician (atheist) who predicted that the math would end up looking as bad as it does.
No one. And I mean no one disputes the math. The math was done by mostly atheists with the exception of Behe and Axe but they are accomplished scientists and even if you discount them because of (well whatever) no one disputes the math it was in fact predicted.

If you like, and as you express a wish not to argue about it we will let it go. But that was not the main point of my post.

 

[Halbhh]

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



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



We had nothing but a quantum field and the laws of relativity and that was enough to produce massive amounts of energy and mass. And before this energy and mass there is no time. So we have something that can not be tested in a lab that exists outside of time and space that creates everything? Sounds like God to me. At this point if you believe this you yourself are just a hop skip and jump away from a "God" you just call it something different. But you still have the consciousness problem. We know that we have only witnessed consciousness creating consciousness. We have never seen otherwise. We have never seen anything but life give rise to life. And so we are asked to accept on faith that it happened somehow without an outside intelligent agent for the first and only time and then everything else changes forever after that. Once again sounds like "faith" sounds like "God".



But that is not the real problem.



The real problem is in the math.



In order for things to evolve into different life forms you would need new proteins and new protein functions along the way. The best way to explain this would be that a new protein fold is the most basic change we would expect to get a new life form generally. And so work has been done to see what this would take. Without boring you with the details the math works out like this 1 in 10^77 for a new protein fold for an average protein (150 amino acid length) and 1 in 10^90 for a very small brand new protein (90 amino acid chain). To do this once if there was only once chance would be impossible as expressed by math done that calculates that beyond 1 in 10^40 is considered impossible. But there would be trillions of lifeforms that can have a go at it. But how many? Well the math has already been done on that and that works out to 10^40 total lifeforms since the dawn of life on this planet till now. That is everything from your dog and you to some pond scum. So after you work the math it comes to this problem. If everything single life individual life form that has ever existed on this planet had one unique try at solving the combinatorial problem you would still be left with a 1 in 10^37 chance at solving a new protein fold. The combination inflation gets worse though. Remember we are not talking about doing this once. Ohhhh no. We have to do this every time we need a new protein fold. Now you may say wait. Not all different protein functions have different folds. This is true but you still have the problem of brand new proteins and their math problems. We have over 10,000,000 proteins that we have estimated so far. It is also estimated that 10-20% of these are orphans or completely different. So now you are saying that we would have to go through the lottery with a chance of at least 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion in 1 chance .... not once but over a million times just for the orphans. The real odds then just for proteins to overcome this would look something like this:



1 in 10^74000000 now this is a very very big number. We have only 10^80 particles in the known universe. We have nothing that we can actually compare to the that protein number because nothing exists that can be counted close to it. Your asking me at this point to accept that you could win the Powerball lottery a trillion times in a row ... take a break on your fat yacht then do it another trillion times and repeat this process millions of times.



I was on board the atheist train until I began to see this problem. If you ask me to accept by faith that we could do 1 in 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion feat once. I will accept it. Because my belief was that "God" was too crazy so we are here so some how it happened. And even though its crazy unlikely it happened. It must have happened and did so without a "God". But when you ask me to accept that we have to go through that crazy lottery millions of times then I have to leave the reservation.



I debate atheists all the time not because its a hobby but because I like to test my beliefs. One of the questions is always where is the proof? But then what proof are you looking for? Are you looking for a glowing sphere in some undiscovered desert that will talk to you and grant you 3 wishes? Are you looking for a magic piece of toast? Something you can measure in the lab? If that is what you looking for then don't you think that would make the thing your looking for illegitimate to the task it must've done? How can something so simple that is trapped in our universe and subject to our laws be able to create something as massive as the universe? We are trapped in a box. What is inside this box can not be created by something in the box. In order to get a universe you need something more powerful then it. And yet as atheists we all believe in something similar by different names. We believe something existed outside of time and space and created everything out of nothing. I don't think that you should be able to directly measure "God" that would denigrate the very existence of such a being but I do think you can detect what this entity has done. Its in the math of the universe.



And now on for another problem that began to seriously trouble me. The irreducibly complex argument. We have all heard it before. Of course and most atheists myself will dismiss thinking that it has already been debunked. There have been answers to this argument but I am not sure they would qualify as debunking. We know of the classic examples the flagella motor, the eye, the blood clotting system. By the way the blood clotting system seems out of reach but I do not want to travel down this path. Rather I would suggest that all of life is irreducibly complex. When we get down to the cellular level its all interdependent with multiple chicken and egg problems that defy imagination. When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency and do so with such ease that the host organism doesn't even think about these processes. From converting sunlight to chemical energy to converting chemical energy to mechanical energy we see design on steroids. We see a technological sophistication that is beyond our civilization as if put here for our amazement by an advanced alien civilization. I know of no single life form that either A. does not have irreducibly complex systems within itself or B. does not rely upon some other life form that does. I am beginning to suspect that all of life needs all of life and is therefore all interdependent. Such a grand system where you can go from molecular to planet scale and find connectedness and interdependence defies any other explanation then .... GENIUS.

It's wonderful to begin to think God exists, because then you can seek Him. Seeking with all of our heart, we can find Him. Jesus told us:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you... "

You'll want to know more and more He says. The gospels of Luke and Matthew are very good places to begin to hear His words, and soon John next. Here's a good site for online reading:
Luke 1 NIV

His words are better than any thing.

Welcome brother!

 

[Jjmcubbin]

. When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency and do so with such ease that the host organism doesn't even think about these processes. .

Cellular respiration is about 45% efficient. You should know this if you've studied physics. Even a Carnot's engine isn't 100% efficient.
Photosynthesis has an efficiency of about 35%.

EDIT: Grammar.

 

[DogmaHunter]

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



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



We had nothing but a quantum field and the laws of relativity and that was enough to produce massive amounts of energy and mass. And before this energy and mass there is no time. So we have something that can not be tested in a lab that exists outside of time and space that creates everything? Sounds like God to me. At this point if you believe this you yourself are just a hop skip and jump away from a "God" you just call it something different. But you still have the consciousness problem. We know that we have only witnessed consciousness creating consciousness. We have never seen otherwise. We have never seen anything but life give rise to life. And so we are asked to accept on faith that it happened somehow without an outside intelligent agent for the first and only time and then everything else changes forever after that. Once again sounds like "faith" sounds like "God".



But that is not the real problem.



The real problem is in the math.



In order for things to evolve into different life forms you would need new proteins and new protein functions along the way. The best way to explain this would be that a new protein fold is the most basic change we would expect to get a new life form generally. And so work has been done to see what this would take. Without boring you with the details the math works out like this 1 in 10^77 for a new protein fold for an average protein (150 amino acid length) and 1 in 10^90 for a very small brand new protein (90 amino acid chain). To do this once if there was only once chance would be impossible as expressed by math done that calculates that beyond 1 in 10^40 is considered impossible. But there would be trillions of lifeforms that can have a go at it. But how many? Well the math has already been done on that and that works out to 10^40 total lifeforms since the dawn of life on this planet till now. That is everything from your dog and you to some pond scum. So after you work the math it comes to this problem. If everything single life individual life form that has ever existed on this planet had one unique try at solving the combinatorial problem you would still be left with a 1 in 10^37 chance at solving a new protein fold. The combination inflation gets worse though. Remember we are not talking about doing this once. Ohhhh no. We have to do this every time we need a new protein fold. Now you may say wait. Not all different protein functions have different folds. This is true but you still have the problem of brand new proteins and their math problems. We have over 10,000,000 proteins that we have estimated so far. It is also estimated that 10-20% of these are orphans or completely different. So now you are saying that we would have to go through the lottery with a chance of at least 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion in 1 chance .... not once but over a million times just for the orphans. The real odds then just for proteins to overcome this would look something like this:



1 in 10^74000000 now this is a very very big number. We have only 10^80 particles in the known universe. We have nothing that we can actually compare to the that protein number because nothing exists that can be counted close to it. Your asking me at this point to accept that you could win the Powerball lottery a trillion times in a row ... take a break on your fat yacht then do it another trillion times and repeat this process millions of times.



I was on board the atheist train until I began to see this problem. If you ask me to accept by faith that we could do 1 in 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion feat once. I will accept it. Because my belief was that "God" was too crazy so we are here so some how it happened. And even though its crazy unlikely it happened. It must have happened and did so without a "God". But when you ask me to accept that we have to go through that crazy lottery millions of times then I have to leave the reservation.



I debate atheists all the time not because its a hobby but because I like to test my beliefs. One of the questions is always where is the proof? But then what proof are you looking for? Are you looking for a glowing sphere in some undiscovered desert that will talk to you and grant you 3 wishes? Are you looking for a magic piece of toast? Something you can measure in the lab? If that is what you looking for then don't you think that would make the thing your looking for illegitimate to the task it must've done? How can something so simple that is trapped in our universe and subject to our laws be able to create something as massive as the universe? We are trapped in a box. What is inside this box can not be created by something in the box. In order to get a universe you need something more powerful then it. And yet as atheists we all believe in something similar by different names. We believe something existed outside of time and space and created everything out of nothing. I don't think that you should be able to directly measure "God" that would denigrate the very existence of such a being but I do think you can detect what this entity has done. Its in the math of the universe.



And now on for another problem that began to seriously trouble me. The irreducibly complex argument. We have all heard it before. Of course and most atheists myself will dismiss thinking that it has already been debunked. There have been answers to this argument but I am not sure they would qualify as debunking. We know of the classic examples the flagella motor, the eye, the blood clotting system. By the way the blood clotting system seems out of reach but I do not want to travel down this path. Rather I would suggest that all of life is irreducibly complex. When we get down to the cellular level its all interdependent with multiple chicken and egg problems that defy imagination. When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency and do so with such ease that the host organism doesn't even think about these processes. From converting sunlight to chemical energy to converting chemical energy to mechanical energy we see design on steroids. We see a technological sophistication that is beyond our civilization as if put here for our amazement by an advanced alien civilization. I know of no single life form that either A. does not have irreducibly complex systems within itself or B. does not rely upon some other life form that does. I am beginning to suspect that all of life needs all of life and is therefore all interdependent. Such a grand system where you can go from molecular to planet scale and find connectedness and interdependence defies any other explanation then .... GENIUS.

Gigantic argument from incredulity, sounds like.

 

[Neogaia777]

What would be the conclusion of a completely objective/neutral, non-colored, very intellectually honest point of view on the subject of science and God...?

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

Also, that nearly all science is based on cause and effect, yet no cause for creation, or the universe... Law of thermodynamics, ect... I can't remember what else, but there are others some having to the problems involved in (process of) the ToE as it is currently thought of and known anyway...

I don't know though, and i don't exactly know where I stand on these things...? What do you guys think...?

And try to be completely intellectually honest please...?

I've also heard that if one is completely intellectually honest, that there is almost "nothing certain", at this point...? But oh how we love things that "seem" certain, and are very stubborn and hard-headed when it comes to letting go of those supposed certainties, that may not be so solid or certain, cause oh how we hate uncertainty or being uncertain...

But that is where I am currently at...

God Bless!

 

[Neogaia777]

What would be the conclusion of a completely objective/neutral, non-colored, very intellectually honest point of view on the subject of science and God...?

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

Also, that nearly all science is based on cause and effect, yet no cause for creation, or the universe... Law of thermodynamics, ect... I can't remember what else, but there are others some having to the problems involved in (process of) the ToE as it is currently thought of and known anyway...

I don't know though, and i don't exactly know where I stand on these things...? What do you guys think...?

And try to be completely intellectually honest please...?

I've also heard that if one is completely intellectually honest, that there is almost "nothing certain", at this point...? But oh how we love things that "seem" certain, and are very stubborn and hard-headed when it comes to letting go of those supposed certainties, that may not be so solid or certain, cause oh how we hate uncertainty or being uncertain...

But that is where I am currently at...

God Bless!

I always use to think that the ToE was so very solid and certain, but now just don't know...?

If you take and equal dose of both sides perspectives or points of view and their evidence, and be completely intellectually honest, with no pride involved, can you really come to any or very many completely solid certain conclusions, for certain...?

God Bless!

 

[Project Panda]

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



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



We had nothing but a quantum field and the laws of relativity and that was enough to produce massive amounts of energy and mass. And before this energy and mass there is no time. So we have something that can not be tested in a lab that exists outside of time and space that creates everything? Sounds like God to me. At this point if you believe this you yourself are just a hop skip and jump away from a "God" you just call it something different. But you still have the consciousness problem. We know that we have only witnessed consciousness creating consciousness. We have never seen otherwise. We have never seen anything but life give rise to life. And so we are asked to accept on faith that it happened somehow without an outside intelligent agent for the first and only time and then everything else changes forever after that. Once again sounds like "faith" sounds like "God".



But that is not the real problem.



The real problem is in the math.



In order for things to evolve into different life forms you would need new proteins and new protein functions along the way. The best way to explain this would be that a new protein fold is the most basic change we would expect to get a new life form generally. And so work has been done to see what this would take. Without boring you with the details the math works out like this 1 in 10^77 for a new protein fold for an average protein (150 amino acid length) and 1 in 10^90 for a very small brand new protein (90 amino acid chain). To do this once if there was only once chance would be impossible as expressed by math done that calculates that beyond 1 in 10^40 is considered impossible. But there would be trillions of lifeforms that can have a go at it. But how many? Well the math has already been done on that and that works out to 10^40 total lifeforms since the dawn of life on this planet till now. That is everything from your dog and you to some pond scum. So after you work the math it comes to this problem. If everything single life individual life form that has ever existed on this planet had one unique try at solving the combinatorial problem you would still be left with a 1 in 10^37 chance at solving a new protein fold. The combination inflation gets worse though. Remember we are not talking about doing this once. Ohhhh no. We have to do this every time we need a new protein fold. Now you may say wait. Not all different protein functions have different folds. This is true but you still have the problem of brand new proteins and their math problems. We have over 10,000,000 proteins that we have estimated so far. It is also estimated that 10-20% of these are orphans or completely different. So now you are saying that we would have to go through the lottery with a chance of at least 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion in 1 chance .... not once but over a million times just for the orphans. The real odds then just for proteins to overcome this would look something like this:



1 in 10^74000000 now this is a very very big number. We have only 10^80 particles in the known universe. We have nothing that we can actually compare to the that protein number because nothing exists that can be counted close to it. Your asking me at this point to accept that you could win the Powerball lottery a trillion times in a row ... take a break on your fat yacht then do it another trillion times and repeat this process millions of times.



I was on board the atheist train until I began to see this problem. If you ask me to accept by faith that we could do 1 in 10trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion feat once. I will accept it. Because my belief was that "God" was too crazy so we are here so some how it happened. And even though its crazy unlikely it happened. It must have happened and did so without a "God". But when you ask me to accept that we have to go through that crazy lottery millions of times then I have to leave the reservation.



I debate atheists all the time not because its a hobby but because I like to test my beliefs. One of the questions is always where is the proof? But then what proof are you looking for? Are you looking for a glowing sphere in some undiscovered desert that will talk to you and grant you 3 wishes? Are you looking for a magic piece of toast? Something you can measure in the lab? If that is what you looking for then don't you think that would make the thing your looking for illegitimate to the task it must've done? How can something so simple that is trapped in our universe and subject to our laws be able to create something as massive as the universe? We are trapped in a box. What is inside this box can not be created by something in the box. In order to get a universe you need something more powerful then it. And yet as atheists we all believe in something similar by different names. We believe something existed outside of time and space and created everything out of nothing. I don't think that you should be able to directly measure "God" that would denigrate the very existence of such a being but I do think you can detect what this entity has done. Its in the math of the universe.



And now on for another problem that began to seriously trouble me. The irreducibly complex argument. We have all heard it before. Of course and most atheists myself will dismiss thinking that it has already been debunked. There have been answers to this argument but I am not sure they would qualify as debunking. We know of the classic examples the flagella motor, the eye, the blood clotting system. By the way the blood clotting system seems out of reach but I do not want to travel down this path. Rather I would suggest that all of life is irreducibly complex. When we get down to the cellular level its all interdependent with multiple chicken and egg problems that defy imagination. When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency and do so with such ease that the host organism doesn't even think about these processes. From converting sunlight to chemical energy to converting chemical energy to mechanical energy we see design on steroids. We see a technological sophistication that is beyond our civilization as if put here for our amazement by an advanced alien civilization. I know of no single life form that either A. does not have irreducibly complex systems within itself or B. does not rely upon some other life form that does. I am beginning to suspect that all of life needs all of life and is therefore all interdependent. Such a grand system where you can go from molecular to planet scale and find connectedness and interdependence defies any other explanation then .... GENIUS.

There's so so much we haven't figured out about our universe, but we've pretty much figured out there's a God?

Come on, be rational.

As a species we are barely out of nappies, but we understand the will of the creator so so well.

I don't think so.

 

[Neogaia777]

There's so so much we haven't figured out about our universe, but we've pretty much figured out there's a God?

Come on, be rational.

As a species we are barely out of nappies, but we understand the will of the creator so so well.

I don't think so.

We might not be able to conclude that, (that there is a God, that he exists, ect...) if He (God) had not so clearly shown himself to us and made/makes himself (his existence and his will) known to us so very, very clearly...

Now, are there a lot of "other things" we may not, or maybe even cannot know about God...? Sure there are/is... but not his existence or his will for us on this earth... Those two things are all too clear...

(His will is for us to love BTW) (and for us to enjoy this life and live in relative peace and harmony with one another, ect, that comes from love) (In case you din't know or were wondering)...?

God Bless!

 

[Neogaia777]

There's so so much we haven't figured out about our universe, but we've pretty much figured out there's a God?

Come on, be rational.

As a species we are barely out of nappies, but we understand the will of the creator so so well.

I don't think so.

And I really don't like to or mean to be cruel or blunt, but...?

I suspect you (and others like you) have some kind of "personal problem" with God, I suspect anyway...? or maybe with the whole idea of a God maybe... But, either way, it's a bit difficult, and even a little bit ridiculous, to have these kind of problems, (feelings and passions and issues) toward or with someone, who you say, does not exist, isn't it...

(sorry)...

God Bless!

 

[Project Panda]

And I really don't like to or mean to be cruel or blunt, but...?

I suspect you (and others like you) have some kind of "personal problem" with God, I suspect anyway...? or maybe the whole idea of a God maybe... But, either way, it's a bit difficult, and even a little bit ridiculous, to have these kind of problems and issues with someone, who you say, does not exist, isn't it...

(sorry)...

God Bless!

I believe in a creator, but it's not a God.

 

[Neogaia777]

I believe in a creator, but it's not a God.

Who (or what maybe?) is it (or he or she maybe?) then...? (And I ask you cause I'm intrigued)...

God Bless!

 

[Project Panda]

Who is it then...?

God Bless!

Well if it takes life to create life, then it's life.

 

[Neogaia777]

Well if it takes life to create life, then it's life.

What kind of life created life (or us) then...?

God Bless!

 

[sfs]

I began to talk to physicists about this and was shocked at the responses. They didn't like this line of questioning at all. Because they knew it led to an outside intelligence. They assured me that it was all mechanical but that raised even bigger problems. If as most physicists believe and most people that study QP that its all mechanical from Quantum to Macro then we have a direct and necessary link between consciousness and matter.

There is no evidence at all that consciousness plays any role in QM. There's a big hint there: if physicists don't like what you're saying about physics, the problem isn't likely to be with the physicists.

Then there is entangled particles that can transmit information instantly to the other side of the universe with ease.

Entangled particles cannot transmit information instantly. In fact, this even has a name: the "no-communication theorem".

 

[tas8831]

I In order for things to evolve into different life forms you would need new proteins and new protein functions along the way.

Why "new" proteins and new functions?


Cytochromes exist in pretty much all multicellular eukaryotic animals, and they all are recognizable AS cytochromes and they all perform the same function.

Creationists like to make these kinds of claims as if they were 100% agreed upon and factual. But they are typically only partly true.

Without boring you with the details the math works out like this

No - bore us. Show us your math and be prepared to justify the numbers you used in this paraphrasing of Axe and pals' claims.

 

[tas8831]

When we see functions in nature that operate at near 100% efficiency and do so with such ease that the host organism doesn't even think about these processes. From converting sunlight to chemical energy to converting chemical energy to mechanical energy we see design on steroids.

"Overall, aerobic respiration converts about 40% of the available energy of glucose into ATP."


"Due to losses at all steps in biochemistry, one has been able to get only about 1 to 2% energy efficiency in most crop plants. Sugarcane is an exception as it can have almost 8% efficiency. However, many plants in Nature often have only 0.1 % energy efficiency. "


Creationists LOVE their superlative hyperbole.