IceNine said:

Ok,

Begin.

Persian said:

One line...

Where there is design there must be a designer.

Both a pair of pliers and a computer are tools.

If one admits that it took a designer to make the pliers
(a conclusion that no rational person would deny), it follows with even greater force that it required a designer
to make the computer, since the computer is much more complicated than the pliers.

Using reasoning, it can be established that if the lesser (the pliers) requires a designer, the greater (the computer) absolutely demands a designer. Again, this is simple logic.


In making our case for the existence of God, the Grand Designer, we have examined numerous examples of His handiwork throughout the Universe.

The design inherent in the Universe itself, and in the
living things that it contains, cannot be ignored or explained away. The Universe, plants, animals, and
man were not conceived accidentally by “father chance” and birthed by “mother nature.”


Yet some would have us believe that is exactly what happened—and they will go to almost any
length to avoid the implications of the design in nature that demands a Designer.


Why?

Persian said:

Hey man that's sacraligious!

I'm all

yamomma said:

Thanks!

I have taken 489,000 philosophy courses though and have heard these arguments a billion and nine times...

I cannot possibly go through that giant list and refute all the arguments, as I am at work... but, there are certainly very convincing counter-arguments to each of them.


"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." - Issac Newton

"Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses." - Ernst Mach's Principle of Economy

"This is an interesting example of the fact that even scholars of audacious spirit and fine instinct can be obstructed in the interpretation of facts by philosophical prejudices." - Einstein


When you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the simpler solution is better. Adding a god into the equation only adds to the causes and begs the question "where did god come from?" thus making the problem even less soluble.

Adding to the chain of causality by inserting god is to insert untestable, unprovable conjecture into the search for truth and is not only scientifically unsound, but it is also of unsound reason. We cannot know the existence of god, therefore inserting him into equations is the equivalent of balancing the world on a stack of turtles.

yamomma said:

I love you!



I am a Mac man, myself!!!

Seriously,

This was posted soley for icenine as something to debate, as well as a "resource guide" for others that are interested in this particular subject.

Those that know me, know for a fact that I'm not a bible thumper (Lord knows I've had pleanty share of that) nor do I push any ideas, philosopy, etc. on anybody as absolute fact.

I do however love to see another's reaction to discovering things that I too have come accross to see what unique conclusions they may come up with.

Cause everyone's been known to be wrong. Espessially me.

This is obviously a universal question that everyone ponders from time to time.

IceNine said:

My job got me the new G-4 with the 22 inch display.

SWEEET!

For those that haven't seen it.
Prince.org is "like... friggin' huge!"

IceNine said:

I love you!



I am a Mac man, myself!!!

[/quote]


Final Cut Pro 3 and Photoshop 7 on OS X took a little time getting used too, but with the dual processing, it friggin' screams!

Rendering video was never so fast!

yamomma said:

LUCKY!!!

Damn, I would love to have one of those amazingly expensive, but very cool monitors...

Okay, back to the task at hand

For anyone who wants to debate, my reply to this topic is:

I have taken 489,000 philosophy courses though and have heard these arguments a billion and nine times...

I cannot possibly go through that giant list and refute all the arguments, as I am at work... but, there are certainly very convincing counter-arguments to each of them.


"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." - Issac Newton

"Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses." - Ernst Mach's Principle of Economy

"This is an interesting example of the fact that even scholars of audacious spirit and fine instinct can be obstructed in the interpretation of facts by philosophical prejudices." - Einstein


When you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the simpler solution is better. Adding a god into the equation only adds to the causes and begs the question "where did god come from?" thus making the problem even less soluble.

Adding to the chain of causality by inserting god is to insert untestable, unprovable conjecture into the search for truth and is not only scientifically unsound, but it is also of unsound reason. We cannot know the existence of god, therefore inserting him into equations is the equivalent of balancing the world on a stack of turtles.

I gave them about a 15-20 page essay (hint, hint see above) on how all this equipment would save them money rather than hiring outside advertising agencies to do the work for them.

Which is true.

But still,
My people would rather sign off on it than read it.

But the topic was to establish evidence for the existance of God.

Not philosophies.

You would really have to read it.

I don't expect you to now or even today. But I'd really like to read your input on the above evidences.

The tread should still be here for a while.
If not, I'll upload the peice to my server next time I'm at my studio. I do not have FTP access at work.

And I'm not at my studio every day like before my son was born. (and I'm cool with that)
[This message was edited Thu Oct 24 7:37:51 PDT 2002 by yamomma]

I love this article. I would love to download it and keep it for myself. Frank, if you have this, please e-mail the whole thing to me at jasondodson_inc@yahoo.com. Did you see my little short essay that I wrote about love? It is posted in the musicians forum.


Also, as I have said before, I try not to dive into the theology of either side of the coin, I simply just believe what I believe, and I believe it for myself, and I don't try to go on the offensive unless I am personally attacked mentally or physically on the basis of what I believe. I am not a relativist, but I do believe that everyone should respect each others individual belief structures, but I also believe that these things should not invade the structure of law and government. If a government is in place that is supposed to protect the rights and beliefs of ALL, then a personal belief system should not penetrate that government operation.

Thanks for the great dialogue folks!

David Hume refuted all of this some hundreds of years ago in his 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'. Please see:

http://www.anselm.edu/hom...ch/dnr.htm

A little antiquated in style, but precise and to the point.

It is crushing of such muddled telelogical nonsense.

meejaboy said:

David Hume is one of my all-time favorite philosophers! He was great!!!

"Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" is absolutely a must-read.

Another GREAT book by Hume is "Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals." This is a bit more dense to read, but it is absolutely brilliant!

Darwin anyone?
http://www.literature.org...f-species/

yamomma said:

Hume absolutely kicked ass, there is no doubt about it. Though I must admit, that despite his appalling prose style and terrible argumentation, I am more of a John Locke man myself.

There is more to sink you teeth into when dealing with such an ill-organised thinker. Hume was so clear and precise, that there is never any doubt what he meant. Locke's ambiguities are more taxing and, I think, more pleasing as a result.

IceNine said:

What's needed are distilled ideas, not every idea everyone ever came up with, piled on top of each other. What you present is more of a survey of the various viewpoints, and not something that can be argued against directly. Just skimming it, I found various points which are ridiculous. There are many sub-debates within the grand question, and any one of those deserves it's own treatment/thread.

Just my 2 pennies; I recognize this post had its own purpose for yomamma/Ice beyond my own reaction.

meejaboy said:

You gotta love Locke too... the father of British empiricism and all that. I am a fan of him as well...

I think that I should at least suggest one book for all of those out there who are interested in philosophy but have not gotten into it yet.

Try this one:

"A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell.

http://search.barnesandno...0671201581

IceNine said:

Russell is simply not accessible to the layperson. I recommend "The Story of Philosophy," by Wil Durant

http://www.amazon.com/exe...86-3575837

I gotta say Yomomma, Icenine said he's taken a billion philosophy courses, which definitely makes him more knowledgable in Philosophy than myself. I've only taken 2 (but I was really into them ).

Anyways, it doesn't matter how many you took, because these arguments were all covered in my first year introductory course. When I came on here, I thought there was something kind of neat, not just standard old Cosmological and chances stuff.

Aquinas made assumptions that he regarded as true, then disregarded later.

For one (and I'm using laymans/lamemans terms), how is it that the Cosmological argument states that there can be no infinite series, or things lasting for an infinite amount of time (ie: all things have causes, no infinite series, something had to cause the first cause, so it must have been God), yet disregards the fact when referring to God himself. By his theory, shouldn't God have a cause?

As for the molecular structure of man, yes, the odds that we evolved in the exact way that we did is extremely low. As a matter of fact, I've heard it compared to that of throwing a trillion pieces of paper through a huge fan, and assuming they land in the exact right order. But the fact is, this doesn't prove God's existence in the least. If one were to go back to the fan comparison, the fact of the matter is, if you throw the paper through the fan, while you may not be guaranteed that they will fall in one particular order, you will be guaranteed they will fall in some order. Any order they fall in is a one in a million shot (I use one in a million in the cliche sense ), but there is a 100% chance they will fall. It is possible, our evolution could have led to some different variations on what we've become, but that doesn't prove anything.

Now you had so much freaking stuff there, that there is no way I am touching all bases of it. I want you to know that I am not taking a side, I'm either a skeptic or an agnostic depending on the day of the week, but I did want to point out that your theories prove nothing. Keep in mind these theories have been around, and very popular I might add, for a long time. It's not as if they've gone overlooked by this world's society, until you, by some miraculous discovery, just came upon them. They have been studied, analyzed and critiqued time and time again.

Also, it's not as if anyone wouldn't want to believe in God, at least in the Christian sense. I mean, seriously, the idea of eternal life, where we are eternally happy (in whatever way we consider happiness), is something every single person would like, I should think. But just because it would be nice, doesn't equate it to be the truth. It could be a way of people rationalizing their own mortality as a way of being less fearful of it, but it's truth still remains unproven.
[This message was edited Thu Oct 24 9:19:22 PDT 2002 by savoirfaire]

I think the overall point of all of Yamomma's posts is this:

The exact, same procedure used to establish scientific theories---theories which many of us take as being reasonable, logical and as making sense--can also be used towards establishing the theory of a purposeful design to the universe...the only reason for not thinking or doing so is because there is an already existing bias against the possibility of the universe being intelligently designed...not because it doesn't make sense scientifically...

The other night at bedtime, after we had read a Bible story and prayed, my oldest daughter, Chara, aged 8, fired a series of questions at me which came from her innermost being. "How do I know if creation is true? In fact, how do I know if there really is God I've never seen Him. The girl next doors' teacher believes in evolution. How am I supposed to know?" Appreciating her questioning spirit, I promised to do a set of creation "experiments" with her that weekend, and her excitement grew as the weekend approached.

When the time came, I presented her with a series of four grocery sacks, each to be examined in turn. I explained that God no longer creates as He did during creation week (Gen. 2:1-4, Ex. 10:1 1, etc.), but that if He has created we ought to be able to tell it by observing the things He has made. By way of analogy we discussed how to tell if a person had "made" (i.e., created) something. She determined that a human "created" object would be designed, it would have some purpose, and it would require some intelligence to make it.

The first sack contained a series of rocks, several from the driveway, and a piece of polished marble, a rounded turquoise, a stone arrowhead, and a concrete brick (i.e., man-made "rock"). She methodically examined each one, correctly identifying those with design, purpose (even though she didn't always know the specific purpose, she knew it must be there), and underlying intelligence. The next sack was a similar array of wood, several pieces quite rough, a twig, a tongue depressor, a wooden button, and a carving. Again, she could easily discern the evidence for "creation."

Next she examined a stack of paper. One page was blank; one had random blobs of paint on it, neither showing human intelligence. A page of scribbling was correctly identified as of human origin, for although it was a mess, it was not something that could "just happen." Next were a page from a magazine and some of my own sloppy artwork. Then came a note from me expressing my love and support for her in her quest. She was getting the point. There is a difference between things that are purposefully made and things that just happen.

Next, I showed her pictures of animals and plants from a biology book, and explained how each living thing is made up of many complex cells, which were also shown. At a smaller scale, I explained the DNA code, which was both pictured and sketched, which contains more information and design than is in all the books in San Diego put together. All of that information must be read and followed for each cell to continue living. She recognized that such marvelous design could only come about if designed by someone very intelligent-more intelligent than any of today's scientists.

The last sack contained several more driveway rocks (granite, with no fossils), several rocks with fossils in them, a dried sea horse and sand dollar and a flower. Her questions were answered, all living things are the handiworks of a creator, and even nonliving rocks accomplish a wonderful purpose, for without them there would be no place to live.

There may be other questions or times of doubt ahead for her, but I am sure she will never forget the conclusions she reached that day. No amount of "education" will convince her that order can naturally come from disorder.

Very interesting Universe. I really like how you presented your case, and that's an honest statement. I don't buy into it, but I could see how it could clarify your religious perspective to your 8 year old child.

Order and Disorder are relative terms. The ideas of chance are orderly, and they still apply to the creation of things.

If I flip a coin, we can draw the conclusion that there is an equal chance of that coin landing heads or tails. Moreover, if I were to flip the coin more and more times, the number of heads, and number of tails would continue to show up closer to 50/50. This is obviously an order, yet is not also chance?

And furthermore, what is order, what is disorder? We only perceive what normally happens as order because we haven't seen it any other way. If we were to create a situation where our general rules were different, then the rules of this world would be considered to be in disorder.

Once again (see previous post), not taking sides.

Had to skip one for the white background
[This message was edited Thu Oct 24 11:07:47 PDT 2002 by yamomma]

yamomma said:

?

wellbeyond said:

So True! U R the f*cking man!

Anyway, Ice...how is it explained scientifically that very literate and specific prophesies from religious sources have been fulfilled and are continuing to be fulfilled to this day. (and those from scientific sources are not)

yamomma said:

?[/quote]
Yeah, BUT, it CANNOT be refuted that the earth has not always been like this...it has been shown all the changes the earth has undergone since its...beginning