LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Oh hey, this thread has popped to life again, months later.
1. My argument is that as the material sciences have developed in breadth and depth of understanding, they have made it increasingly clear how absurd the idea that life could arise without some form of intelligent designer is.
Every complex machine we see on the macro-scale comes about because some form of intelligent life created it. The machinery of life, just on the cellular level, is obscenely complex. The simplest explanation for how such a complex thing could come about, is through an intelligent designer.
Why do atheists so stridently reject the most obvious explanation for how life came about? To quote Richard Lewontin, outspoken atheist and evolutionist:
"Evolutionists ... have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. "
The only arguments other than this I've heard for why Intelligent design is not an acceptable theory for the origins of life, is ad hominem tirades and appeals to authority.
2. By admitting this: "No, it's just proven an increasing pain in the ass to actually get numbers because as it turns out we don't know how the shit we have works. Since we don't know how the present operates, we cannot actually construct a meaningful hypothesis of how it came to be. This is exceedingly basic "we don't know""
You are admitting that evolution is not a matter of established fact, it is instead a matter of supposition at absolute best. The problem is, that's before you start taking actual scientific evidence into account.
When evolution was first popularized in Darwin's day, the cell was barely known to exist. How it worked and how complex it was, people had no clue. And yet, Darwin himself still commented on how sophisticated life was made it seem improbable that it should arise through random chance.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
Cells are more complex than they first looked. They have many separate specialized internal structures, and generally speaking without any one of those structures, the cell dies. IIRC there's one or two that the cell can briefly survive without, but it still messes it up but good. This meant that life was more complex, and the idea of it arising and then evolving through random chance became less likely.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
It turns out that what goes on inside of those cellular structures is also incredibly complex. Like, stupidly mind-bogglingly complex, to a degree that modelling what happens in a single cell structure is very difficult even with modern computing. It's still not fully understood how all of these processes work. This made it all the more improbable that random chance could work as a source of life.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
Turns out that when you do protracted mutation studies on things with short lifecycles like flies, there are hard limits to just how much they can mutate before becoming uttely nonviable. Further, basically all substantial mutations decrease the viability of the life form, not increase it. At absolute best, you get something that makes it more specialized for dealing with a specific thing (like how sickle-cell anemia increases resistance to Malaria), but causes it to be much less viable in general.
There has not yet been a single clear cut laboratory example of 'this mutation has caused this life-form to be measurably more robust and survivable.' You get an unending roll of failures though; on the whole, this made random chance more improbable as an explanation.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
Turns out that the amount of information involved in epigenetics, protein synthesis and identification, and any number of other cellular functions that life literally cannot exist without is even more complex than we thought, and more complex than things like DNA. The amount of complexity you need to cross over as a minimum bar to have a viable life form increased by hundreds of zeros.
Every single time scientific understanding of biochemistry improves substantially, evolution becomes less and less credible as a theory of the origins of life much less speciation.
There's a pattern here. Why do atheists and evolutionists refuse to recognize it? Ask Richard Lewontin or the dozens upon dozens of 'scientists' who deliberately created hoaxes as 'proof' of evolution.
Evolution is taught as hard fact in essentially every public school in the western world. I'd have to check textbook by textbook to have an idea of what it's like now, but back when I was a kid and in my teens, 'life arise from the primordial soup' was certainly taught, and I've been given no impression that's not what is taught now.
Generations now have been inculcated into the religious dogma of hardline atheists during their formative years, and it is taught as hard truth, at best with a sop to 'we called it a theory,' but it's always 'This life form lived X million years ago,' 'The Dinosaurs lives X-Y million years ago,' never as 'it is hypothesized that.'
Atheists absolutely claim completeness, and cloak themselves in the cultural authority of science to try to back that up, while simultaneously aggressively and militantly running other religions out of the public square while subjecting them to all kinds of defamations, ad hominem, and slander.
Just the book title 'The God Delusion' by Dawkins tells you a great deal about the attitude of the hardline atheists, not to mention the things they've done in pursuit of cultural dominance.
Or the theories they've spun, like eugenics, 'scientific racism,' etc, etc.
If these 'scientists' were interested in filling the gap of 'where did life come from?' then 'An intelligent being designed it' would be an explanation on the table for reasonable consideration as an answer. Instead, hardline atheists not just reject the possibility out of hand, but relentlessly attack and often mock anybody who suggests it, claiming it is 'unscientific.,'
Intelligent Design of life is just as scientific as Intelligent Design of The Model T Ford, the F-35, or the keyboard I'm typing with right now.
What it isn't, is adherent to the presupposition of absolute materialism as the only acceptable worldview.
Also, as a note, any request for absolute proof of a negative is inherently unscientific, because it is beyond the means of science to conclusively prove a negative. Just another way that hardline atheists use bad-faith argumentation to try to shut anyone who doesn't adhere to their worldview out of the argument.
Yes, Omniscience is a property attributed to a supernatural being, that is a being that is beyond natural limitations. I do understand how that works.
Not sure what this is supposed to have to do with anything. Is it indicating that you want to go down the 'useful information' discussion trail?What definition of "complexity" are you using? Because I'm pretty damned sure that the definition used by probability is about the pure convolution of the thing completely irrespective of usefulness. The most "complex" book is the densest and hardest to describe mass of pure randomness, not an intricate treatise, because the treatise has patterns that make it more likely. The most "complex" physical systems are turbulences larger than the Sun.
This is both putting words in my mouth, and admitting that evolution is a matter of faith, not science.No, it's just proven an increasing pain in the ass to actually get numbers because as it turns out we don't know how the shit we have works. Since we don't know how the present operates, we cannot actually construct a meaningful hypothesis of how it came to be. This is exceedingly basic "we don't know", and you just fucking can't stand ever doing anything but inserting "therefor God", despite never having any positive evidence in favor of God, just very large improbabilities of the mainstream alternatives that don't satisfy you.
1. My argument is that as the material sciences have developed in breadth and depth of understanding, they have made it increasingly clear how absurd the idea that life could arise without some form of intelligent designer is.
Every complex machine we see on the macro-scale comes about because some form of intelligent life created it. The machinery of life, just on the cellular level, is obscenely complex. The simplest explanation for how such a complex thing could come about, is through an intelligent designer.
Why do atheists so stridently reject the most obvious explanation for how life came about? To quote Richard Lewontin, outspoken atheist and evolutionist:
"Evolutionists ... have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. "
The only arguments other than this I've heard for why Intelligent design is not an acceptable theory for the origins of life, is ad hominem tirades and appeals to authority.
2. By admitting this: "No, it's just proven an increasing pain in the ass to actually get numbers because as it turns out we don't know how the shit we have works. Since we don't know how the present operates, we cannot actually construct a meaningful hypothesis of how it came to be. This is exceedingly basic "we don't know""
You are admitting that evolution is not a matter of established fact, it is instead a matter of supposition at absolute best. The problem is, that's before you start taking actual scientific evidence into account.
When evolution was first popularized in Darwin's day, the cell was barely known to exist. How it worked and how complex it was, people had no clue. And yet, Darwin himself still commented on how sophisticated life was made it seem improbable that it should arise through random chance.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
Cells are more complex than they first looked. They have many separate specialized internal structures, and generally speaking without any one of those structures, the cell dies. IIRC there's one or two that the cell can briefly survive without, but it still messes it up but good. This meant that life was more complex, and the idea of it arising and then evolving through random chance became less likely.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
It turns out that what goes on inside of those cellular structures is also incredibly complex. Like, stupidly mind-bogglingly complex, to a degree that modelling what happens in a single cell structure is very difficult even with modern computing. It's still not fully understood how all of these processes work. This made it all the more improbable that random chance could work as a source of life.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
Turns out that when you do protracted mutation studies on things with short lifecycles like flies, there are hard limits to just how much they can mutate before becoming uttely nonviable. Further, basically all substantial mutations decrease the viability of the life form, not increase it. At absolute best, you get something that makes it more specialized for dealing with a specific thing (like how sickle-cell anemia increases resistance to Malaria), but causes it to be much less viable in general.
There has not yet been a single clear cut laboratory example of 'this mutation has caused this life-form to be measurably more robust and survivable.' You get an unending roll of failures though; on the whole, this made random chance more improbable as an explanation.
Then scientific understanding expanded.
Turns out that the amount of information involved in epigenetics, protein synthesis and identification, and any number of other cellular functions that life literally cannot exist without is even more complex than we thought, and more complex than things like DNA. The amount of complexity you need to cross over as a minimum bar to have a viable life form increased by hundreds of zeros.
Every single time scientific understanding of biochemistry improves substantially, evolution becomes less and less credible as a theory of the origins of life much less speciation.
There's a pattern here. Why do atheists and evolutionists refuse to recognize it? Ask Richard Lewontin or the dozens upon dozens of 'scientists' who deliberately created hoaxes as 'proof' of evolution.
Putting words in my mouth again.You literally argue "if you do not have a perfect intermediate example, you are wrong":
This is absolute nonsense.Do you have any meaningful definition of what this would look like? Do you actually have any concept of what the in-between would indicate? Do you actually have a fucking clue what the steps along the way would be? Because the big issue with abiogenesis that causes you to reject it is that nobody in the sciences does, when science never claimed that kind of completeness to begin with.
Evolution is taught as hard fact in essentially every public school in the western world. I'd have to check textbook by textbook to have an idea of what it's like now, but back when I was a kid and in my teens, 'life arise from the primordial soup' was certainly taught, and I've been given no impression that's not what is taught now.
Generations now have been inculcated into the religious dogma of hardline atheists during their formative years, and it is taught as hard truth, at best with a sop to 'we called it a theory,' but it's always 'This life form lived X million years ago,' 'The Dinosaurs lives X-Y million years ago,' never as 'it is hypothesized that.'
Atheists absolutely claim completeness, and cloak themselves in the cultural authority of science to try to back that up, while simultaneously aggressively and militantly running other religions out of the public square while subjecting them to all kinds of defamations, ad hominem, and slander.
Just the book title 'The God Delusion' by Dawkins tells you a great deal about the attitude of the hardline atheists, not to mention the things they've done in pursuit of cultural dominance.
Or the theories they've spun, like eugenics, 'scientific racism,' etc, etc.
Classic atheist straw man. 'You're just trying to shut down scientific inquiry,' also called the 'god of the gaps.' It's a thought-terminating cliche, among other things, and you seem to have pretty thoroughly fallen for it, unfortunately.You insist that because there is such a gap right now, there absolutely must be God in there, without any positive proof of that hypothesis. Your "proof" has always been just screaming that science is wrong because it's unlikely or has something missing, not any hard disproof that it cannot be right. But the science looks at a gap, and works on filling it. Just because we don't know now, does not mean we cannot know, that's the whole point of science.
If these 'scientists' were interested in filling the gap of 'where did life come from?' then 'An intelligent being designed it' would be an explanation on the table for reasonable consideration as an answer. Instead, hardline atheists not just reject the possibility out of hand, but relentlessly attack and often mock anybody who suggests it, claiming it is 'unscientific.,'
Intelligent Design of life is just as scientific as Intelligent Design of The Model T Ford, the F-35, or the keyboard I'm typing with right now.
What it isn't, is adherent to the presupposition of absolute materialism as the only acceptable worldview.
Also, as a note, any request for absolute proof of a negative is inherently unscientific, because it is beyond the means of science to conclusively prove a negative. Just another way that hardline atheists use bad-faith argumentation to try to shut anyone who doesn't adhere to their worldview out of the argument.
If you really want to talk probability, "omniscience" requires indescribably infinite components, owing to the proofs for cardinalities beyond countable infinities, and even the trivial uncountables like the real numbers. Any time there is a property included in that that is not certain, the probability goes down, and there are indescribably many properties to become improbable. And that's one part that must be accepted axiomatically, because it literally cannot be proven positively.
Yes, Omniscience is a property attributed to a supernatural being, that is a being that is beyond natural limitations. I do understand how that works.