Science Refutes God: Lawrence Krauss 12/05/2012
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On the fundamental question--evolution or creation?--Americans are on the fence. According to one survey, while 61% of Americans believe we have evolved over time, 22% believe this evolution was guided by a higher power, with another 31% on the side of creationism. For some, modern science debunks many of religion's core beliefs, but for others, questions like "Why are we here?" and "How did it all come about?" can only be answered through a belief in the existence of God. Can science and religion co-exist?
Science Refutes God Lawrence Krauss, Michael Shermer, Ian Hutchinson, Dinesh D'Souza
It's embarrassing to me as an intelligent human that we're having debates like these, as if there were anything to debate. Early indoctrination or weakness following personal loss are the main avenues for the devoutly religious to reproduce their beliefs in a future generation. Most children who weren't force-fed religion before adulthood would, I believe, rarely become religious. I'd bet that in two generations religion would no longer be a driving force in the greater population. The best way to get someone's brain to reject common sense or reality and embrace whatever you want is to get them very young and start the brainwashing early. When I was a child I also believed that Santa Clause circled the Earth and distributed presents to every child in one night, and this was as real to me as Jesus and God's truth. Turns out he wasn't real. Who'd have thunk?
When I started working as a professional programmer, making unsupported statements on any subject to my coworkers only served to make me look like an idiot. So I started studying, to better refute their arguments. Unfortunately, the more I studied, the more I had to bend my mind and close my eyes to the horrors and inconsistencies of the Bible. Finally I had to admit that there was not a single piece of viable evidence that proved God was real. So why would I still waver and hold onto some of my previous religious conviction? Pascal's Wager, I'm ashamed to admit.
The fear of burning in eternal torment can be very gripping, especially after it's been hammered into you from a young age, and it's very stressing. To think you might spend eternity in hell because you made the wrong choice is daunting. But finally I came to the conclusion that Pascal's Wager was a fool's game, and incorrect at it's core. If I only profess to believe to cover my bases, how could I still expect to gain entrance to heaven? And if I don't believe, why would I spend my life hypocritically acting as though I do? As I said, it's a fool's wager, and deeply flawed as an arguing point. Also, I had to ask myself how I could resolve the image of a loving and just god that would condemn me to an infinite and horrific punishment for a finite crime?
At the base of it all, I told my deeply religious family that I didn't believe anymore, because there wasn't a single reason I should. What about the Bible, they asked? Aside from the fact that it makes many of the same claims every other religion has in recorded history? Well, since it's a series of manuscripts written long after the actual events and then assembled and voted on by the Catholic church to decide what actually belonged in it, this immediately made it suspect. Aside from that, there are so many errors in the Bible that it can't possibly be described as the inerrant word of anyone, much less a perfect all-powerful deity. Out of respect for their feelings, I did not mention the fact that I found the content of the Bible to be horrific. Just reading the story of Job and the story where God sent bears to tear apart a group of young boys for ridiculing a man's baldness should make people wonder about the perfect and just God they worship, and those stories are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I also found the idea that two of every creature that breathed through their nostrils could survive a planetary flood on a boat to be stupid beyond words. Getting just the animals on the boat would be impossible, but even if you could, transporting 40 days of immediate food and then lots more for the time it would take for more food to grow (flood killed everything) is likewise ludicrous. And this completely disregards the amount of time it would take to feed and clean up after these animals. An entire army of hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions couldn't feed every animal on the Earth in a single day, much less one man and his family. These stories would be children's fables and fiction horror stories in any other book, but for some reason billions of people have based their life decisions on it. And I think the reason remains, as it always has, to be fear. Fear of death, fear of the unknown, and fear of the unjust. Belief in God is supposed to bring eternal life, and God will supposedly provide all the answers. If you're wronged in this life, don't worry! God will get them for you. Feels sort of good when you're not in a position to fight back, but it isn't truth. And that's where this debate and others like it fail. As has been stated before, a debate doesn't establish truth, it only establishes who made a better case in the eyes of their audience. This is why the scientific method doesn't include a panel of voters to decide on the truth of a claim. Testable, repeatable evidence is required for that.
I suppose you are lucky to be blessed with such intelligence.
Did you know that people like Galilei or Newton proposed a higher being in their publications?
0range0wnage "I suppose you are lucky to be blessed with such intelligence.
Did you know that people like Galilei or Newton proposed a higher being in their publications?"
Did you know that Newton also believed in alchemy? Newton was a genius, no doubt, but that intelligence doesn't somehow give him, Galileo, or anyone else authority on deities.
And I'd love to see ANY peer-reviewed scientific paper published in ANY respected scientific journal that contains ANY reference to a "higher being" in its findings.
There's a reason why creationists, when pressed for evidence of their claims, instead start attacking evolution - there is no evidence that supports the creation myth. There's quite a lot that contradicts the biblical creation myth, but not one bit that supports it. I'll demonstrate what I mean. If you think you have any evidence at all that supports the myth of creation, reply and share it. I'll be astounded to the soles of my feet if you post anything except an attack on some scientific theory, because to date this _has never once happened_. Creationists seem to think reality is a two-model problem, and if they disprove other things, creation suddenly becomes true. In order to argue a position, you must have positive evidence for your claims.
William Snell I will do no such thing, as I am not a creationist. :) In fact, I am a fellow scientist.
I was just pointing out that having the debate of a the existance of a higher being should not be embarrassing to you. Science does not disprove god, and greater minds than us obviously were not so sure about it either. According to N. Tyson, even today and in the highest circles of elite scientist, only 90% are atheists.
0range0wnage "I will do no such thing, as I am not a creationist. :) In fact, I am a fellow scientist."
I'm not a scientist. If you mean you're a fellow scientist of the likes of Newton, then I still don't really care. If you were refuting or supporting something to do with a field of scientific study, then it would be relevant.
"I was just pointing out that having the debate of a the existance of a higher being should not be embarrassing to you."
What is embarrassing to me are the poor arguments for theism, and the prevalence of creationism in the US. Having roughly 40% of the population of a developed nation believe the world was created magically 6000-10000 years ago is embarrassing. It's infuriating to have boards of education pushing this crap.
"Science does not disprove god, and greater minds than us obviously were not so sure about it either. According to N. Tyson, even today and in the highest circles of elite scientist, only 90% are atheists."
The drop in theistic beliefs as education levels increase is interesting, but has no effect on the truth of theistic claims. Arguing this point from either side would be an argument from popularity fallacy.
I make no conclusive statement about the existence or non-existence of any god(s), unless by their own definition they can't exist. I state that evidence provided for the existence of any god is far below what would compel belief. When you made the snarky comment about my intelligence and followed that with a statement that some brilliant minds believed in supernatural things, and included this in their publications, I felt compelled to inform you that smart people believing something does not make that belief true.
TheIronwil "When you made the snarky comment about my intelligence and followed that with a statement that some brilliant minds believed in supernatural things, and included this in their publications, I felt compelled to inform you that smart people believing something does not make that belief true. "
I never claimed it did. They both ended up being wrong. Modern Science can explain what they could not.
However, smart people considering something over the course of hundreds of years shows that there is indeed "something to debate".
Btw, my comment was supposed to be humbling, not snarky. However you are free to interpretate the following as snarky:
Perhaps you should not make such bold claims if you are this insecure about your intelligence.
Generally, if something falls into the category:
If it is true, then we CAN prove that it is true.
If it is false, then we CANNOT prove that it is false.
Then it makes sense to assume that it's false and attempt to prove it true.
The problem with these videos is that the UPLOADER only includes the part of the debate which HE/SHE agrees with..... No doubt, I'm an atheist and I agree with Krauss, however it make sense for us to also listen to the other side... Especially if we want that side to listen to us..... Just a thought...
Ali Art But you know this... Let others know that the other side has no rational argument.....The point is to teach the ignorant, not the wise.
Because it's the part that's right
+Chirag Shah he is trying to deceive. u people don't know the basic math. u cant start from -1, by starting from -1, that means u used to have something or there is something that already exist that u can gain. u cant explain universe w/o supernatural, only supernatural can be eternal or create something from nothing.
HELENO HENZO
Totally agree with you.
If you’re going to take the explicitly “scientific” route and assume that codified knowledge is the only knowledge of value the best you can honestly and logically be is agnostic. Because we just don’t know and probably never will. The fact is sophisticated theists are also atheists when it comes to the god that Dawkins and Krause propose to deny. Dawkins interpretation of the poetry, metaphors including symbols and history contained in ancient texts is as bigoted and literal as the most irrational evangelicals. Focusing on the fundamentalism within religion and ignoring the obvious political factors rather than grappling with the sophisticated logical truths related to morals and ethics contained in philosophy, theology and theism is intellectually dishonest. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Dawkins and Krause confirmation bias beggars belief when you consider their credentials. Dawkins and Krause church of “Scientism” makes claims that no other religion has ever condescended to make. The claim that “philosophy is dead”. The most circular and self refuting statement in the history of knowledge and genetic epistemology. Equally, “Scientisms” power and popularity including its priests ignorance and intolerance of other religions sets a very worrying precedent. Even eminent secular philosophers and scientists are concerned by Dawkins nihilistic philosophy. It seems we’ve forgotten what happened under communist Russia’s anti religious “Scientism” experiment.
90 million men, women and children starved to death or murdered in the name of atheism.
All the best.
" who explained how you were fooling yourself?"
I'll add, I was seeing a psychiatrist at the time (15 yrs ago) and after 2 yrs getting nowhere I had my spiritual experience with God, walked in and explained my truth to the doctor.
He was stunned and kept asking who I had been talking to because he couldn;t get through to me all that time.
He knew what I told him was my truth and it did set me free.
Never saw him again, he was very happy for me.
The societal "purpose" of psychiatry and the many psychiatrists, among whom are utterly insane quacks as well as enlightened and compassionate people, is to enable the people who comprise any given society to maintain being fully "functional" in the tasks that society deems necessary for social AND individual mental health. AND THAT IS "VALIDATED" THEREFORE BY THE CONTINUED PRODUCTIVITY, COHESION, AND SENSE OF BELONGING of the culture and those folks who inhabit it. Psychiatry is nothing more than a mechanism to assuage a human's concerns about their worth and belonging. When human beings start to falter in maintaining societal expectations and their continued productivity, that faltering causes them to become further unproductive and therefore conflicted about their life and its "meaning." Psychiatry is, simply put, the efficiency engineer in the factory of human existence. So putting any "supernatural" expectations upon psychiatrists to "grant" you "meaning" to your life is similar to looking for your car mechanic to explain the need for speed you feel you deserve to resume when your auto breaks down. It's a classic apples-and-oranges "fruitless" pursuit of "meaning." OF COURSE, any spiritualism promoting charlatan will "convert" you to any belief that salves your multitude of perfectly naturally unanswerable questions - unanswerable for now, that is. Give rational human science another 500 years and just like we now know that microbes not demons are what make water deadly, soon enough the human mind (an extremely rare congregation of molecular structures in this vast chaotic universe) will eventually answer why it is that "good" people fail while "evil" people succeed! Check in with me 500 years hence to congratulate me for accurately predicting the future of humanity, okay?
Lawrence Krauss, such a brilliant man1
1) Excerpt: "Still, since the publication of A New Science of Life Sheldrake's idea of morphic resonance continues to be widely regarded as pseudoscience."
Excerpt: Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis is discredited by numerous critics on many grounds. These grounds include the lack of evidence for the hypothesis and the inconsistency of the hypothesis with established scientific theories.
(continued)
This example is exactly what I was talking about : the complexity of the algorithm generating those cars is greater than the complexity of the car that will ever emerge from it.
If you want to generate a feature, you have to program it in the fitness function. There will never be an unexpected new feature more complex than what the programmer wanted to produce.
Kinesin is a great example of how something doesn't need to have any sort of decision-making capability. The behavior it shows "in response to stimuli"? That is purely a factor of its molecular structure.
It's just a more complicated version of "If I put oil and water together, they separate" - the oil and water don't decide that they don't like each other, they act as they act because that's the mindless outcome of their shapes interacting.
It's scientific to ask for verifiable evidence.
It's dogmatic to ask for verifiable evidence for god.
Alan Guth - "Since the negative energy of a gravitational field is crucial to the notion of a zero-energy universe, it is a subject worth examining carefully. In this appendix I will explain how the properties of gravity can be used to show that the energy of a gravitational field is unambiguously negative. The argument will be described [in the appendix] in the context of Newton's theory of gravity, although the same conclusion can be reached using Einstein's theory of general relativity."
There is an interesting alternative I learned about today, by the way - in plants, you CAN get a new species by hybridizing two related but distinct species, through a process called "allopolyploidy". It's complicated but fascinating stuff.
Very-brief explanation: Plant A has 6 chromosomes. B has 10. They hybridize to plant C. With 3 from A and 5 from B, C is sterile (3-5 can't match up) - but if C doubles the chrom. from each parent, then C becomes a new species that can't breed with A or B.
1) Excerpt: Evolution is being put to practical use in industry and widely used on a DAILY basis by researchers in medicine, biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics to both formulate hypotheses about biological systems for the purposes of experimental design, as well as to rationalize observed data and prepare applications.
Excerpt: Belief in creationism is inversely correlated to education; only 22% of those with post-graduate degrees believe in strict creationism.
(continued)
The importance of clean water. Not all animals were classified as clean for food. Precautionary regulations governed the handling and disposal of dead bodies. Quarantines acted as barriers against the spread of contagious diseases. Sewage disposal by burying excreta was a sanitation requirement far in advance of the times. The requirements of frequent bathing and the washing of clothes were also beneficial provisions in that nation’s code of laws as was hand washing.
Also did you look at that animation, "The Inner Life of the Cell"?
What do you make of the dude walking down that rope?
"Spontaneous generation" may be a label for an obsolete notion but the common meaning of "spontaneous" is "coming or resulting from a natural impulse or tendency; without effort or premeditation; natural and unconstrained; unplanned".
The ICR article mentions A. afarensis' shoulder blades, not its hands or feet at all.This may be news to you, but it's possible to be fairly well-adapted both for tree-climbing and bipedal movement; humans still fit that category now.
To quote the researcher who found the shoulder blades, Dr. Alemseged: "While bipedal like humans, A. afarensis was still a capable climber. Though not fully human, A. afarensis was clearly on its way."
Clinging to a belief dogmatically makes a fundamentalist, all christian fundamentalists and atheists cling to the old testement, the operative word is "ALL". Thats 100% without fail.
Crais is not a pseudo-intellectual, he's published original arguments for God's existence in over 200 peer-reviewed academic journals of philosophy
"and generate unexpected features "
Every feature a GA produces IS unexpected because it's not predictable. The only thing "expected" is the range of possibilities. In a simple environment with limited possibilies like on the website, obviously it will always produce some kind of car.
In the real world, it's a build up of molecules and the possibilities of what kind of working stuff can be build through genetics is quite immense.
My sentence was not clear.
Indeed you will have a different outcome each time, but the outcome is never more complex.
The wheels are programmed, the links are programmed, the environment is programmed, and the fitness function also. All the possible cars produced never exceed the complexity of the software behind it.
To prove evolution, we need a very simple algorithm that would be able to reprogram itself and generate unexpected features and eventually a fully intelligent "lifeform".
If these regulations were used even in modern times millions of lives would have been saved. Even the scientists did not know the benefit of theses regulations for combating diseases, until fairly recently.
The point of the debate wasn't to prove those things during the debate, it was to say that the proof existed (if you actually research it) and to conclude based on that.
It's actually ironic that science was made, originally, to prove god. The geologists tried to find the ark and other biblical references, the alchemists tried to find the philosopher's stone, which, at the time, was believed to be a material proof of god, etc.
You take this bacteria, you put it in nylon, and the result of it being able to digest nylon is deterministic. Or antibiotic resistance : you put a colony of bacteria in repeated contact with antibiotic, you know what the result will be.
Another point : why would a life form become more complex, since more complex forms of life are much less resilient ? It's against the natural selection pressure.
The primary methods by which we identify what's designed are by comparing things with naturally occurring objects as well as identifying mechanisms by which such a thing could occur.
There are rock formations once believed to ONLY be explainable by human (or some other being's) activity/design even though we had no clue who might have made them....but growing understanding of geological processes, chemistry and physics revealed those formations can and do occur naturally.
"If there was literally nothing, how could a universe with a beginning come about?"
The greatest minds of our day are working on this as we speak and you expect to get this question answered in a youtube comment?
FYI: a universe from "nothing" is a hypothesis. One of many competing ones to explain the origins of the universe. And contrary to the "god-dun-it" idea, there are actual physical models that make a universe from "nothing" scientifically plausible.
Yes the fur coat is the way temperature was regulated.
The yolk sac is a membranous sac attached to an embryo, providing early nourishment in the form of yolk in bony fishes, sharks, reptiles, birds, and primitive mammals. It functions as the developmental circulatory system of the human embryo, before internal circulation begins.
.
Creation and science are the same thing.The reason many say the bible and science are at odds, is that they do not know science and they do not know the bible. This is not the information age it is the misinformation age.
In the scientist's case, it takes many years of schooling and peer pressure, to get then to believe what the scientist are saying. The scientist have proved that spontaneous generation of life does not happen, but at the same time that is what they say happened.
Octopuses see in stereo, too, and no, the blind spot has nothing to do with peripheral vision. The blind spot exists entirely because the human retina is built facing backwards - light-sensing cells in the back, with blood vessels (which we have to see through) feeding them from the front. Those blood vessels then all go through the retina in the same place - the blind spot.
Octopus retinas are built right side round, with the blood vessels behind the light-sensing cells - so no blind spot.
QUOTE: " I believe in a Creator, doesn't that make more sense than thinking that Our Universe just happened out of thin air?."
Doesn't that make more sense than thinking that the "Creator" just happened out of this air? Sticking a Creator in there doesn't answer anything, it just allows you to evade the question.
"Spontaneous generation" in the sense of "rotting meat generates flies" is not at all the same thing as "chemical abiogenesis", which is what modern biologists believe happened - and have good evidence to support their ideas.
My definition of atheism is the standard one, used by philosophers. So, rather than boring with my definition, I'll just quote the Encylopedia of Modern Philosophy definition "“According to the most usual definition, an atheist is a person who maintains that there is no god. In contrast, an agnostic maintains that it is not known or cannot be known whether there is a god.”
That;s the textbook definition.
"It's a knowledge based on credulity in things non-empiricle"
Now for the third part of my questions. How is this knowledge as useful as empirical knowledge?
"I can not agree that spiritual or philosophical knowledge is useless or inferior to science I can only agree that it has a different purpose"
So what is this different purpose? And how is equal in superiority/usefulness to scientific empirical knowledge?
2) Excerpt: Morphic resonance is also seen as lacking scientific credibility for being overly vague and unfalsifiable. Further, Sheldrake's experimental methods have been criticised for being poorly designed and subject to experimenter bias, and his analyses of results have also drawn criticism.
So, your PSEUDO-scientist has drawn criticism from numerous scientists who see his effluvium for what it is.
5) Excerpt: Evolution is a theory AND a fact. Facts are the world's data. Theories are ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Stephen Jay Gould, Evolutionary Biologist
"your critic is NOT claiming god exists in debate."
He;s claiming that God does not exist, which is a claim to knowledge that requires justification.
Physicists who claim that strings do not exist, carry the same burden of proof as those that claim they do, although neither can prove their case (because if they exist, strings are too small to be detected by any conceivable human experiment)
Lawrence Krauss wrote a whole book trying to disprove the existence of strings.
No the God hypothesis is probably the hardest and most complicated idea to accept. The fact that there could be a 'being' on a different plane to us which we CANT explore? Pretty hard to imagine. Whats boring is whenever people use evolution as the answer for everything. I not once said evolution is incorrect. And it was scientists who have said the universe had a beginning. As a result, there was a 'time' before in which nothing existed.
One obvious and simple one is not drinking alcohol. Its not allowed in Islam, and actually isn't in Christianity, but they still do it anyway. Alcohol related costs in the UK are 6 billion pounds. It also is bad for you, and acts as escape from real life. Not having sex before marriage. Stops emotional trauma, the spread of disease and reduces the amount of heartbreak from cheating etc.
materialists have moved the goalposts many times, most educated atheists are just fighting to keep the ideology of materilaism dominant, hence why it causes so much anger and rage
ZZ/ZW chromosomes are also used in many reptiles. What it looks like in this case is that the last common ancestor of all mammals and all birds (and all dinosaurs) was a reptile that used ZZ/ZW; the X/Y system that modern mammals use arose after the platypus' ancestor split off from the mammal tree.
3) Excerpt: The level of support for creationism among relevant scientists is minimal. Only 700 out of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists gave credence to creationism in 1987,[21] representing about 0.146% of relevant scientists. Darwin Dissenters represent about 0.0157% of the US biologists that existed in 1999.
Even the 700 "creation scientists" are SPLIT among DIFFERENT invisible magic men from DIFFERENT religions who allegedly created the universe.
(continued)
I miss the refuting part
all I picked up from krauss here was "science can show us that a universe can come from nothing" but I didn't pick up an explanation for that statement
There certainly would be defined animals, because as you yourself mentioned with the "liger" bit - no animal can breed with another animal too different from itself. That's what we generally use "species" to mean in the first place.
The first cell neither had the capability nor the need to produce bone. It existed a mind-bogglingly long time before the first vertebrate's parent's parent's parents were born, spawned or (more likely) hatched.
I like to use the principle of the black box : you isolate the organism and the algorithm from any outside source of information.
If you are trying to simulate abiogenesis with genetic algorithms, you cannot have an extremely complex algorithm, from which you would transfer information to the specimen, that would be cheating. The fitness function has to remain simple physical laws. And the algorithm has to be simple enough, or else the first cell could never appear by chance.
The offspring of finches will always be finches...but they can be something new, too. That's how cladistics works - we classify animals based on what group their ancestors were part of.
Birds are birds, but they are also dinosaurs. Whales are whales, but they are also mammals. When a new group is formed, they're still members of the ancestral group.
"You can have 120 species of Finches but they are all Finches. None become Pigeons."
That's right. The offspring of a Finch will always be Finches till the end of time. Evolution can chance its DNA in radical ways, but the offspring will always belong to the Finch branch of the tree of life. Again, this is completely in line with evolution and you're trying to disprove it with a counterexample that is firmly in the creationism camp.
Oh that was a mistake, I didn't realise I made it, and the correction you made was exactly what I meant to say. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Regardless, just because you reject any spiritual existence, or just because anyone rejects it is in no way proof it doesn't exist. This is what I meant with 'science cant discover *everything*' (corrected). There is no evidence to support a lack of spiritual existence, but indeed there is no evidence supporting its existence.
It's not dogmatic to ask for evidence. It's dogmatic to assert something as truthful when you have no evidence to support the claim. Furthermore, it's delusional when you are faced with a vast amount of contrary evidence, yet continue to persist without any supporting evidence.
What does it mean to understand and explain a physical phenomenon ?
It's the equivalent to reduce it to A+B = C, nothing more, and then we can simulate it on any computer.
The problem with conciousness is that if it is "understandable" in this way, then we can recreate conciousness on any PC computer, which is absurd.
Also, we can't even test it, because a philosophical zombie is indistinguishable from a human with conciousness.
And yet conciousness exists.
If there was no moment, then life never happened. There has to be a moment.
Psalm 139:13-16
Darby Translation (DARBY)
13 For thou hast possessed my reins; thou didst cover me in my mother's womb. ....16 Thine eyes did see my unformed substance, and in thy book all [my members] were written; [during many] days were they fashioned, when [as yet] there was none of them.
This verse is talking about God reading the instructions before any body parts were developed yet. At the moment of conception.
Exactly. You would have to say no and you refute yourself.
"'Making sense' and 'fact' are not always equals"
I'ld even say that more often then not, they aren't equal.
"LIFE can't just come about, when there is no life"
I don't know. And you don't either.
There was a time that we said the same about planets. "planet don't just come about, when there are no planets". And then we learned about star formation and gravity and understood that planets pretty much are inevitable.
"Have scientists yet been able"
BOOM - argument from ignorance. Thanks for making my point.
Incorrect.
I'll keep saying this until you understand it: Evolutionary theory does NOT predict that a finch will become a pigeon. Something that already exists cannot become something else that already exists.
A finch population CAN - not "will", but CAN - become something new, something that we don't yet have a name for. That population will still be called finches because they are descended from finches, but they will be different from any finch living today.
And they still won't be pigeons.
That is high and low AIR pressure. The winds aren't composed of "energy" - they're composed of moving air molecules. Those molecules possess energy, but are not energy themselves.
Fundmaentalist religion is about a personal god by definition. In popular speech and writing the word "god" is assumed to refer to a person with an ego, will, desires, et al., not an impersonal process.
Scientist are now looking into the 'big bang' now as a rapid expansion. The more they learn the more they are proving creation.
Like I said science and creation are the same thing. So power into energy can create matter. And we can now see how that matter, can cause, energy stars and galaxies move and interact.
God needs an explanation. The creation tells us a lot about him. The original purpose for man and how it will be restored, also tells us many things.
The reason God chose a nation, is to show how he deals with humans, even though they rejected him. The bible was written about the people of that day but is for the people of our day.
So we can get know a lot about him.
"Where on earth did it come from then, if there was no 'third party' influence"
Building blocks of organic matter coming together forming a replicating molecule by whatever means isn't "from nothing" in ANY sense of the word. Just like a planet forming from leftover material orbitting a star isn't a planet forming from "nothing". It forms out of material that exists and is present.
The "knowing" comes from the properties of the molecules comprising the kinesin - and the properties of those molecules come from the way that elemental physics works. If the universe were set up differently, it might require different arrangements of elements to act like kinesin - but there would still be some way to set up a molecule that would show interesting behavior, even without any "designer" involved.
A simple starting system with simple rules can lead to incredibly complex behaviors.
I used to think it was NOT the case that religion was the enemy of science. After all science arose in a religious milieu and nearly all the early scientists were at least deists. Science certainly refutes some religious dogma and removes the materialist need for a god but it doesn't answer a person's sense of the numinous so refutation is not annihilation. Religion adjusts to accommodate material truth not without some kicking and screaming. Religion evolves to suit the environment.
Excerpt from Wikipedia on Sheldrake: "Scientists who have specifically examined the idea of morphic resonance have called it pseudoscience, citing a lack of evidence supporting the concept and its inconsistency with established scientific theories. Some critics express concern that his books and public appearances attract popular attention in a way that has a negative impact on the public's understanding of science."
Your example appears to be a PSEUDO-scientist.
"Do you think kinesin has a brain?"
Yes a simple brain not a complex brain. Kinesin is a moclecular motor which is a nanomachine which produces movements or outputs in response to specific stimuli or inputs. The Human brain at it's simplistic levels functions this same way. We could put forward the proposition that Kinesin are therefor a type of simple brain function within a micro-ecosystem. It would be theoretical but it would be based on observation from the scientific method.
"The fact that everything has a pattern really should be enough for people to believe in God"
What patterns are you talking about?
And how does that validate belief in a god?
The most important part of that is "of philosophy", a discipline which, on its own, amounts to nothing more than revving the engine of the mind without any rubber meeting the road.
The very reason philosophy (rather than science) is so popular among apologists is that it can be used to argue nearly anything without actually demonstrating it in any practical way. No evidence required, just logical gymnastics.
and Craig's arguments for god are flimsy even by philosophical standards.
Incorrect. As I said, a platypus' eggs are NOT identical to reptile eggs; they are similar.
A platypus' bill looks like a duck bill at first glance, but it is built differently under the skin and is used for a different purpose.
It's not composed of different parts put together at all.
It was discovered 61 years before Darwin published his book, and was thought to be a confusing hoax BEFORE evolution was conceived of - evolutionary theory explains why it exists very well indeed, thank you.
The scientist think now that the 'big bang' was not an explosion ,but a rapid expansion.The scientist say energy can be converted into matter. The bible says God is power( energy). So that energy is not nothing. The scientist do not know anything before energy, but also say something had to always be in existence. Also both the scientists and the bible says there was a beginning to the universe.
So science and creation are the same thing.
It was the scientist in that day that thought the earth was flat. The bible writers said it was a circle, the word used also means round. Where does it say they thought it was flat? The interesting thing about this is that, the bible writers lived on the circular part where as the scientists lived on the flat part. Where did you get the 20mile distance from? And direction was the circular part, and if you rotated your view is it still circular?
I'm fairly sure even the clergy wouldn't tell you we have direct evidence for god and religion. That's why it is called a "faith". If we had evidence it would be called "science".
The paragraph rejecting Bigfoot's existence certainly does apply to God-and that's why we do not have comparably good reasons to reject God's existence.
Because you'd have to show that, if God existed, we'd expect to have more evidence than the evidence we have, from the beginning of the Universe out of nothing, to the life, death and resurrection of Christ and the existence of objective moral values (affirmed by most ethicists) yet inexplicable if there's no transcendent source of morality
The interesting thing about interpretations is that, in the bible's case it interprets itself, in many places. That is why the bible says their is no interpretation except by God.
So the people back then did not know very much science, except what they could see and deal with every day. But what God did was give them info about cleanliness , and quarantining or some info on the earth and stars, and some if it on life. That info stands today, even under the science known today.
Fractals are deterministic, the "game of life" is deterministic, there is no increase of information since all of it is contained in the initial parameters. The only other option is random processes, but you never get lucky 3 times in a row, when the odds are one against a trillion.
If random processes could produce life, then we would observe it everywhere we look, and some sort of structures would grow out of dead matter all the time.
You are right. The hypothesis is that life arose spontaneously. The Theory of Evolution does not deal with the origin of life. However there is certainly a process of evolutionary development in the origin of life. Simple molecules combine to form complex molecules which go on to form even more complex molecules that at some point become self regenerating.
A bird would never be a lizard; I said dinosaur. Those are two different things.
Tigers and lions are already different species - pick up any biology book and it will tell you that once two populations have diverged far enough, there's no return.
You get a new species when two populations of the same species wind up separated - by geography or other means - and then the populations diverge, evolving in different directions. There are no "limits" there.
No, the question of "who" is assuming a "who" was involved in the first place. Its assuming a conclusion before the questions are even asked...which is entirely unscientific.
The REAL question is "how did this happen?" and following the evidence where it leads whether a "who" is found anywhere in the equation or not....not assuming there must be a "who" before the investigation even begins.
"That's right. The offspring of a Finch will always be Finches till the end of time" So what I said is correct. If Finches do not become anything other than a Finch, then there is no 'evolution'. All you would have is Finches.
God has historically been the answer for all that we do not understand. The problem is that once you answer the question with God, it is forbidden to make further enquiry. He is an Integration Blocker. If we lived our lives by the word of God, we would still be in the Dark Ages. You just have to look at the Muslim world to see how religion suppresses and represses free thought and freedom
2) Excerpt: James McCarter of Divergence Incorporated states that the work of 2001 Nobel Prize winner Leland Hartwell which has substantial implications for combatting cancer relied heavily on the use of evolutionary knowledge and predictions. McCarter points out that 47 of the last 50 Nobel Prizes in medicine or physiology also depended on the use of evolutionary theory.
Apparently these scientists are utilizing a figment of imagination for medical advancement.
(continued)
Ah i just saw this comment. The golden ratio for one thing. The fact that we have 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes etc. We (creatures) are almost all symmetrical. Patterns on flowers (what on earth in evolution would cause all of them to each have their own patterns?). How do we HAVE the ability to evolve?
"just because we CANT discover something doesnt mean it isnt there."
Absolutely correct...
But here's the million dollar question...
If we can't discover it... how could we ever know?
For example... let's suppose for a second that we live in the Matrix. Theoretically this is perfectly possible and all the science in the world could never find out.
How could we know?
Is it rational to believe the idea of the matrix if it's impossible to find out and if no evidence at all exists?
The part you're not understanding is even if that separate population of cats diverges sufficiently to become a new species, its still a felid. A new species BY DEFINITION is not completely distinct from its ancestors...only partly.
Just like when that branch of a tree splits into two branches it is not separating from its parent branch. Its still a part of it and every branch that grows from it will always be part of that parent branch.
This is how evolution works.
3) Why would a designer be required? Many animals run because over time they've developed the biological and morphological capacity to do so as it was advantageous in certain environments. Ask yourself why a designer would give such speed to the cheetah but not to her supposed favorite children (us).
Also, cheetahs are endangered both because of their succeptibility to disease, high cub mortality and decreasing ability to compete for food in their shrinking habitat. Great design there, eh?
"just because we CANT discover something doesnt mean it isnt there".... perilously close to celestial teapot territory my friend...
From science and what the bible says about creation. The fact that life has to be created. When you look at the universe, this is not a destructive explosion, it was a creative rapid expansion.
The scientist say energy can be converted to matter. They know of nothing before energy. But they acknowledge that something had to always be in existence.The bible says God is power ( energy), it also says, God was always in existence.
How did these writers know that the universe had a start?
Science and creation are nowhere near the same thing. One is a methodology for reliably examining the universe and ourselves while the other is an entirely untestable magical claim about how everything came into existence.
The problem is that Krauss takes his theories, which are referred to as nothing more than "plausible hypothesis" by other scientists in his field, and then present it as pure certainty.
He fails to adress the whole information aspect of the problem and then states "science disproves God".
It just happens that he doesn't specialise in information theory, and just make baseless claims affecting a field that is not his own field of research.
If a scientist can't know anything before energy then the evidence-based response to anything pre-energy is "I don't know". This doesn't mean you get to make stuff up about pre-energy occurrences.
The scientific term "energy" means something entirely different from pseudoscientific attempts to hijack it by spiritualists.
That things that exist started to exist is a general observation of human experience & so it's not surprising that any mythology would refer to things beginning (all tend to).
@Chuck Martin
You said "...but he didn't tell us where life came from, and neither has science."
Well, no one knows with 100% certainty where life originally began...but there isn't any valid evidence it was one of thousands of invisible magic men.
Also, evolution is a FACT and the theory only describes the FACT...just like gravity or electromagnetism or radioactivity or homeostasis. Religious believers adhere to ancient books about talking animals and foliage...that's the problem.
Jeremiah 10:12
World English Bible
12 He has made the earth by his power, he has established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding has he stretched out the heavens:
Romans 1:20
World English Bible
20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.
There is no excuse not to know, about creation.
Materialism is an affirmative claim. The burden is on you here.
I always ask people who uses the argument of "something from nothing" of God (who is outside of space and time) how they jump from a Deistic God to a Theistic God who cares what we do, who has different rules for half of human species who communicates with human beings through Angels or other apparitions like a burning bush, or changes natural laws especially at the time where science was still weak. I always accept for the sake of argument the possibility of a Deistic God.
And we would be able to write a simple algorithms, then add some random part to it, and it would produce structures more complex than the algorithm itself. This is impossible in reality.
What "scientist" from the time insisted the earth was flat?
In fact as early as the 6th century BC great thinkers like Pythagoras were speculating about the world's spherical shape and circumference and people like Eratosthenes in the third century BC were attempting to calculate and measure it.
The bible quite clearly states the earth was flat and this is even represented in religious artistic renderings throughout history.
"A Lion and Tiger can have a Liger.( only in a zoo)It can even have offspring ( but it is so weak it needs constant care.) But that is it. That is the limit."
No. Not only isn't it the limit, it has very little to do with evolution. You'd realize this if you'd looked at your example. You're taking two species and trying to make a third by joining them. Evolution OTOH, is a process that creates diversity via recursively branching single existing species.
"I'm not allowed to see that there are things beyond our understanding! "
Read that statement again. Something should strike you as odd.
It's not that it isn't allowed... it's that it is impossible... by your own admission.
CORRECTION:
" how life just came to be WITHOUT aid from..."
"Do NOT mix science with any type of faith, atheist, theist or any other,"
Do NOT pretend as if atheism is a "faith". You need faith to be a theist. You're an atheist if you have no such faith.
Also, do NOT pretend as if agnostic is some kind of third option between atheism and theism. It's not. It deals with a different type of question.
(a)theism is the answer to "do you believe god exists"
(a)gnostic is the answer to "can you know if god exists".
NOT THE SAME!
Its not "one philosopher" the Encyclopedia reflects the broad consensus of the philosophical community today.
The definition I gave you already encapsulates the position you just described. An agnostic is a person who maintains that he does not, or cannot know, if God exists.
"Unbelief" is not an opinion-it's a mental state. For example, squirrels, cows and rabbits (and unborn foetuses) "lack belief" in God, but we don't call them atheists. Atheism is a view.Lack of belief is a mental state.
"There will never be an unexpected new feature more complex than what the programmer wanted to produce"
The programmer produces nothing. The programmer only implements an algorithm that tweaks the dataset during replication/reproduction that describes the model. The selection process then keeps what works and discards what doesn't.
If the programmer knows what the goal is, he wouldn't need the algorithm.
If you don't know what you're talking about, it's best to keep silent.