Why faith?

[QUOTE="drgrady"][QUOTE="Atrus"][QUOTE="Silver_Dragon17"]

Pencils are wood and iron. . . . .the universe and all that is in it is organized, and so perfect that there is no way it can be coincidentally designed. . . . . stop mocking my beliefs.

quiglythegreat

The above is not a sound argument. You assume that the organization of the universe requires a supernatural divine agent. The anthropic principle is a natural and explanatory means of showing how such a universe can be conceptualized without having to assume the existence of some baseless supernatural entity to be responsible for it.

The idea that the universe without God was designed by "chance" is false. A naturalist worldview does not mean that things occured from chance, and as humans it is the basis for any effective means of knowledge. A supernaturalist worldview ascribes to intuition and revelation, two methods which are not only imprecise but have been consistently wrong.

Then anthropic principle does not remove randomness from creation (unless you define randomness in a way I've never before heard). It is merely observation of what it takes to sustain life, and it can either work with a Creationist view or without. Some see the complexity of the universe as proof of divine creation while others see it as proof of science over religion, but it is ultimately inconclusive.

That is what I was saying.  It neither proves or disproves either viewpoint.

[QUOTE="drgrady"]

Yes, so long as we do not fully understand the universe, there is a slight possibility that spontaneous generation or whatever else you believe could have happened. However, that still relies on randomness. All the systems working together to create and sustain life is still randomness. I'll admit that we don't have a full understanding of how the universe came to be or how life created, but regardless of how everything worked together in the galactic scale (which would be largely chaotic after an event like the big bang), the molecular scale would still be extremely chaotic and rely on chance.

Atrus

No, it isn't randomness. Randomness means things happen without a relationship to the overall systems. The creation of life however would be a systematic synthesis of all the probabilities. If the smallest system was capable of producing life, and the system above it produced the smaller system, then that larger system contains the lifebearing probability. Taken all the way up, it means the Universe has the probability to produce life, which of course it did in our scenario. Thus the universe is attuned to the possibility of life. Why? We don't know yet and there literally are dozens of naturalistic scenarios which rely on evidence that are more likely than a supernatural one that has none. 

What if the universe was one in a series of stable universes each holding the same constants for life because they are static for all stable universes? So after n universes of like ours without life, one managed to get one and we are that one. Of course we have to be that one because there is no other way to reflect on it. Or perhaps every universe like ours has produced life and this is the only way universes are structured. Or perhaps Universes themselves spawn universes and only a subsection of universes contain the properties for life and that our 'lineage' is prone to life.

In addition, I would like to address the idea that chaos cannot produce order. Chaos and order enjoy a net relationship, and less chaos produce more order and vice versa. Out of chaos comes order and nothing happens by chance. If life occured on this planet it wouldn't be because it just appeared. It will appear as an effect of the systems that surround it's instantiation. Unless things start popping out of nowhere without being caused by the interaction of systems, this naturalistic view is the only sensible one.

So do you believe that there is no such thing as randomness in anything?  From your arguments it would seem that you have no respect for probability or statistical analysis.  I generally despise statistics because a statistical analysis almost always leaves some probability of an alternate outcome, but I can still see the usefulness of such a tool.  So to completely ignore the probability of an event happening does nothing to further our knowledge and produces nothing better than a supernatural theory.  Also, your "what if" paragraph is laughable at best.  While I have nothing against that line of reasoning in itself, I find it incredibly amusing that you are trying to prove how unsubstantiated religion is when you are talking about an unlimited number of alternate universes that are all stable and have the same constants that would allow life to be formed.  How is that in any way a more informed or educated belief than believing in a divine creator?  In blindly viewing the universe like this, you are completely ignoring probability.

Your view on the relationship amongst systems could just as easily be used to describe a relationship of chaos.  If each of the smallest systems has some level of chaos, and each larger system has some level of chaos, then the system as a whole works together to produce a greater level of chaos than any of the individual systems.  Whether you look at it from the perspective of order or of chaos, it doesn't change the probability that a set of events will happen.

Chaos and order do have a relationship, but it is completely illogical to say that "out of chaos comes order".  It is out of a lack of chaos that we have order, and very few systems naturally become more orderly over time.  When they do become more orderly (say water freezing into ice), it is because they lose energy and entropy, but when you redefine a system to include the surroundings where that energy is going, the whole system becomes more chaotic.  Even the term "entropy" is used to define chaos (and the propensity for spontaneous action) on a molecular level, which would be a form of randomness.

If life occured on this planet it wouldn't be because it just appeared. It will appear as an effect of the systems that surround it's instantiation. Unless things start popping out of nowhere without being caused by the interaction of systems, this naturalistic view is the only sensible one. Atrus

I would also like to point out that I never suggested that things pop out of nowhere.  Both the creationist view and naturalistic view require some degree of this "something coming from nothing" mentality (either the Big Bang or a divine creator), but since it is a point where neither side has any real evidence, I will ignore that.  However, a naturalist view does rely on spontaneous generation (even if you don't like the terminology).  Yes, that concept relies on conditions to be right and all the components to come together in the correct form to produce the cell structure, but that does not remove the randomness from it.  We also have never found any way of producing life in such a cell structure, so there is an inprobability that is impossible to even evaluate.  So I fail to see how your naturalistic approach is the only sensible one when it really doesn't provide anything but more speculation as to why and how we are here.

If there's a tornado coming you run into a storm cellar or take cover. You don't(or rather shouldn't) stand there and wonder why the tornado just splattered you ascross the country side. So, why do people think heaven and hell works different? Is it cuz those people don't know that sin is basically rejecting the shelter? That you're turning your back on God when you do sinful things? He's given you free will, so he won't manually make you accept Him. And what do some people think God is supposed to do to prove he's real more than he already does? Rearrange the stars to say "God exists!!!!"

I simply can't imagine that the special design of the universe wasn't a design at all but something that occured randomly. We have observed that no two snowflakes are exactly alike, that doesn't sound like something random to me. Common sense tells me that. I mean c'mon na, if life was random how the hell could we even have formed the principals(laws) of science that was discovered in experiments in which events do NOT occur randomly? I mean basic fundamentals of math is based on predictability. This universe we live in has an order, a pattern, it works on unseen rules humans were aware of for thousands of years. That, to me, points to the existance of some being creating this order, these patterns, the rules that say things fall down when under another bodies gravity. Which is yet another reason it makes me laugh when people try to disprove God's existance using the same science He gave us. *rant over*

Aww man, I swore to myself I was gonna stay out of these kinda threads...

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"][QUOTE="cory4513"]Prove Cinderella and Snow white arent real

cory4513

They are...they were created by Disney to make money. Would be foolish of me to prove they aren't real.;)

I take it all you can do is put down the beliefs of others but can provide no substantive argument as to why.

Because they blindly believe with out proof 

Do you have proof that the Big Bang happened or that life was spontaneously generated on earth or that we evolved from single-celled organisms?  Or you are welcome to state what you actually do believe if it is something other than these things and provide proof of what you believe.

If there's a tornado coming you run into a storm cellar or take cover. You don't(or rather shouldn't) stand there and wonder why the tornado just splattered you ascross the country side. So, why do people think heaven and hell works different? Is it cuz those people don't know that sin is basically rejecting the shelter? That you're turning your back on God when you do sinful things? He's given you free will, so he won't manually make you accept Him. And what do some people think God is supposed to do to prove he's real more than he already does? Rearrange the stars to say "God exists!!!!"

I simply can't imagine that the special design of the universe wasn't a design at all but something that occured randomly. We have observed that no two snowflakes are exactly alike, that doesn't sound like something random to me. Common sense tells me that. I mean c'mon na, if life was random how the hell could we even have formed the principals(laws) of science that was discovered in experiments in which events do NOT occur randomly? I mean basic fundamentals of math is based on predictability. This universe we live in has an order, a pattern, it works on unseen rules humans were aware of for thousands of years. That, to me, points to the existance of some being creating this order, these patterns, the rules that say things fall down when under another bodies gravity. Which is yet another reason it makes me laugh when people try to disprove God's existance using the same science He gave us. *rant over*

Aww man, I swore to myself I was gonna stay out of these kinda threads...

Eman5805

Who made god? 

[QUOTE="Eman5805"]

If there's a tornado coming you run into a storm cellar or take cover. You don't(or rather shouldn't) stand there and wonder why the tornado just splattered you ascross the country side. So, why do people think heaven and hell works different? Is it cuz those people don't know that sin is basically rejecting the shelter? That you're turning your back on God when you do sinful things? He's given you free will, so he won't manually make you accept Him. And what do some people think God is supposed to do to prove he's real more than he already does? Rearrange the stars to say "God exists!!!!"

I simply can't imagine that the special design of the universe wasn't a design at all but something that occured randomly. We have observed that no two snowflakes are exactly alike, that doesn't sound like something random to me. Common sense tells me that. I mean c'mon na, if life was random how the hell could we even have formed the principals(laws) of science that was discovered in experiments in which events do NOT occur randomly? I mean basic fundamentals of math is based on predictability. This universe we live in has an order, a pattern, it works on unseen rules humans were aware of for thousands of years. That, to me, points to the existance of some being creating this order, these patterns, the rules that say things fall down when under another bodies gravity. Which is yet another reason it makes me laugh when people try to disprove God's existance using the same science He gave us. *rant over*

Aww man, I swore to myself I was gonna stay out of these kinda threads...

cory4513

Who made god? 

Who made God? Simple. I don't know. I'd need a full understanding of the limits and origins of His existence, as well as knowing that such a limit exists in the first place, and I'd just don't have that level of understanding and knowledge.

Faith is the principle on which religion is based. There is no replacement for it. The whole point of religion is that you believe despite no proof, i.e. you have faith that God exists.JJ4545

"Believing in something you can see isn't faith, it's an observation."

[QUOTE="JJ4545"]Faith is the principle on which religion is based. There is no replacement for it. The whole point of religion is that you believe despite no proof, i.e. you have faith that God exists.Eman5805

"Believing in something you can see isn't faith, it's an observation."

What? We can't see God. Therefore that is meaningless. Nice try though. 

[QUOTE="Eman5805"]

[QUOTE="JJ4545"]Faith is the principle on which religion is based. There is no replacement for it. The whole point of religion is that you believe despite no proof, i.e. you have faith that God exists.JJ4545

"Believing in something you can see isn't faith, it's an observation."

What? We can't see God. Therefore that is meaningless. Nice try though. 

I thought I was saying the exact same thing as you, only in different words.

Guess not...

[QUOTE="JJ4545"][QUOTE="Eman5805"]

[QUOTE="JJ4545"]Faith is the principle on which religion is based. There is no replacement for it. The whole point of religion is that you believe despite no proof, i.e. you have faith that God exists.Eman5805

"Believing in something you can see isn't faith, it's an observation."

What? We can't see God. Therefore that is meaningless. Nice try though.

I thought I was saying the exact same thing as you, only in different words.

Guess not...

Oh. I guess I mistook you for one of those GS Atheism-is-teh-bestest! people. Sorry about that. 

So do you believe that there is no such thing as randomness in anything? From your arguments it would seem that you have no respect for probability or statistical analysis. I generally despise statistics because a statistical analysis almost always leaves some probability of an alternate outcome, but I can still see the usefulness of such a tool. So to completely ignore the probability of an event happening does nothing to further our knowledge and produces nothing better than a supernatural theory. Also, your "what if" paragraph is laughable at best. While I have nothing against that line of reasoning in itself, I find it incredibly amusing that you are trying to prove how unsubstantiated religion is when you are talking about an unlimited number of alternate universes that are all stable and have the same constants that would allow life to be formed. How is that in any way a more informed or educated belief than believing in a divine creator? In blindly viewing the universe like this, you are completely ignoring probability.

Your view on the relationship amongst systems could just as easily be used to describe a relationship of chaos. If each of the smallest systems has some level of chaos, and each larger system has some level of chaos, then the system as a whole works together to produce a greater level of chaos than any of the individual systems. Whether you look at it from the perspective of order or of chaos, it doesn't change the probability that a set of events will happen.

Chaos and order do have a relationship, but it is completely illogical to say that "out of chaos comes order". It is out of a lack of chaos that we have order, and very few systems naturally become more orderly over time. When they do become more orderly (say water freezing into ice), it is because they lose energy and entropy, but when you redefine a system to include the surroundings where that energy is going, the whole system becomes more chaotic. Even the term "entropy" is used to define chaos (and the propensity for spontaneous action) on a molecular level, which would be a form of randomness.

drgrady

On the contrary, I hinge on probability as do most people. The balance of probabilities is one factor that dictates our decision making. However, you are confusing randomness with magnitudes of probability, and so you're support of probability does not intefere with what I said, though you're equating probability with randomness does. Pure randomness has an equal probability assinged to everything. A synthesis of all the probabilities is not random. A random event can be a probability, a probability does not have to be random.

As far as the 'what if' proposals, they are all derived from data currently known about the universe and have been conjectures as to the nature of this universe. Equating them with religious belief is nonsense because unlike religious belief they have a framework of knowledge and understanding with which to make them. It is not a blind view in any regard whereas religion does not have anything other than intuition and revelation as sources of information, methods which are consistently incorrect. 

Chaos+Order= 1 and out of chaos comes order. The less chaos the more order; and it's only out of chaos that the amount of order can be distributed from. If Chaos and Order= .5 then the only way more order can arise from is out of that held by Chaos. In a system that is wholly chaotic, the only change that can be produced is one toward order.  Entropy is also the net change within a closed system for which I outlined the relationship at the beginning of this paragraph and used as a framework for my point.

He won't reveal Himself to anybody, because then that would not be faith. Sorry.

Silver_Dragon17

How convenient. Ever consider that maybe He didn't reveal Himself because He isn't real? 

I would also like to point out that I never suggested that things pop out of nowhere. Both the creationist view and naturalistic view require some degree of this "something coming from nothing" mentality (either the Big Bang or a divine creator), but since it is a point where neither side has any real evidence, I will ignore that. However, a naturalist view does rely on spontaneous generation (even if you don't like the terminology). Yes, that concept relies on conditions to be right and all the components to come together in the correct form to produce the cell structure, but that does not remove the randomness from it. We also have never found any way of producing life in such a cell structure, so there is an inprobability that is impossible to even evaluate. So I fail to see how your naturalistic approach is the only sensible one when it really doesn't provide anything but more speculation as to why and how we are here.

drgrady

The naturalistic view does not believe that something came out of nothing. Currently, science is trying to determine the origins and nature of our Universe from multiple viewpoints be it in string theory or General Relativity.

What lends the naturalistic view more credence is that it uses a framework that is much more precise than religion in order to postulate what might have happened based on naturally derived probabilities. It doesn't make up unevidenced entities which have no probable scenarios as being the explanation. 

Under the framework, science has drawn back the universe to one plank time after the Universe began, the point at which time started to tick. Going back before time itself is obviously a difficult problem, but even that is being worked on as people try to determine the extent of the universe in multiple dimensions to perhaps describe a mechanism that is infinite and uncaused. A self-contained non-sentient mechanism that is capable of spawning universes.

Religion is philosofy for the uneducated, faith is a form of insanity imo.Eddie-Vedder

:|:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Why do I believe in God? Because I don't have enough FAITH, and that's what it is, to not believe in Him. Atheism is a religionand nothing more. They like you to think it is just reason and science. Science can't prove God doesn't exist. Even if evolution were true, and there's no science to prove it is(NONE), that still doesn't prove God doesn't exist. And to be an atheist one still has to explain away the supernatural which is a fact. No matter what religion you are there IS supernatural things that reason can't explain.
maheo30

No science to prove evolution huh?

What about

1) fossil evidence

2) bio-geographical Evidence

3) anatomical evidence

a. Vestigial limbs and organs

b Morphology

c. Development 

4) Molecular evidence

a. Endogenous retroviruses

b. Protein functional redundancy

c. Human Chromosome #2

5) Thousands of Peer reviewed papers dealing with evolution.

6) Countless books published on the subject

7) Self funding applications based on evolutionary theory.

Shall I go on or be more specific?

How about you go educate yourself and try again...

Why do I believe in God? Because I don't have enough FAITH, and that's what it is, to not believe in Him. Atheism is a religionand nothing more. They like you to think it is just reason and science. Science can't prove God doesn't exist. Even if evolution were true, and there's no science to prove it is(NONE), that still doesn't prove God doesn't exist. And to be an atheist one still has to explain away the supernatural which is a fact. No matter what religion you are there IS supernatural things that reason can't explain.
maheo30

Why do I believe in God? Because I don't have enough FAITH, and that's what it is, to not believe in Him. Atheism is a religionand nothing more. They like you to think it is just reason and science. Science can't prove God doesn't exist. Even if evolution were true, and there's no science to prove it is(NONE), that still doesn't prove God doesn't exist. And to be an atheist one still has to explain away the supernatural which is a fact. No matter what religion you are there IS supernatural things that reason can't explain.
maheo30

What supernatural thinga? 

[QUOTE="Eddie-Vedder"]Religion is philosofy for the uneducated, faith is a form of insanity imo.Eman5805

:|:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

I agree with his statement 

[QUOTE="Eman5805"]

[QUOTE="Eddie-Vedder"]Religion is philosofy for the uneducated, faith is a form of insanity imo.cory4513

:|:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

I agree with his statement

Or maybe He has revealed Himself but you still won't believe. As Romans 1:20 says, "For from the creation of the world the invisible things of Him are CLEARLY seen, being understood through the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are WITHOUT excuse." You can read all of Romans 1 for more. The bible teaches men suppress the truth about God and I've never met an atheist that convinced me they believed like they do because of evidence. I have always come away from an atheist thinking the bible is exactly right.
maheo30

God has never reveiled himself, and i will never believe in 2000 year old broze aged book 

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." Ben Franklin

This about sums it up for me.

The bible teaches men suppress the truth about God and I've never met an atheist that convinced me they believed like they do because of evidence. I have always come away from an atheist thinking the bible is exactly right.
maheo30

Or maybe He has revealed Himself but you still won't believe. As Romans 1:20 says, "For from the creation of the world the invisible things of Him are CLEARLY seen, being understood through the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are WITHOUT excuse." You can read all of Romans 1 for more. The bible teaches men suppress the truth about God and I've never met an atheist that convinced me they believed like they do because of evidence. I have always come away from an atheist thinking the bible is exactly right.
maheo30

A part of this lies in the fact that people who read the bible have no historiographical context.

For instance was Jesus born in the reign of Herod or during the time of Qurinius' census?

There is no evidence for a Jewish exodus from Egypt, or a large Jewish presence in Egypt, or an Egyptian prince who was given the Hebrew name Moses by an Egyptian princess.

Why is it the Abrahamic god of the Jews, Christians and Muslims shares so much with Canaanite polytheism? A system which today we call dead and false. 

Why is it that only certain texts out of a larger body of work was put into the bible?

Who wrote the gospels?

Did Jesus really exist? Why is there no record of Herod killing babies?

People claim this to be an "atheistic" case. If so then why did one of the largest seminars on the existence of Jesus full of theologians and historians conclude that:

Jesus did not perform any miracles and was not resurrected. That the empty tomb was a fictional event, that his father was human, and that he was killed by the Romans for inciting the public rather then being labelled a king of jews.

People who read the bible have next to no idea that what they read is a translated work which in some versions has been altered to preserve consistency of belief rather than what is actually being said in the original. The bible is a very good source for discrediting the bible and what is contained within.

Not paid attention to science? No one has ever seen the black stallion produce a timber wolf, i.e. macro-evolution. NEVER! I don't need to go any further than macro-evolution. In order for evolution to be true trillions of cells, each one more com plicated than any city in the world, would have to suddenly evolve all at once into I'll say a female species. Then you need for it to happen again and somehow evolve into a male. Now how evolution knows to evolve into a male you can't explain. And they have to evolve in the same time period otherwise the info is lost. This is rhe ridiculousness of evolution. I don't have enough fiath to believe in all that. Evolution is a religion. Macro-evolution has never been proven. NEVER! They point to micro to prove macro. Chemical hasn't been explained either. How do you get all those chemicals in the table? Evolution has no explanation except for pure fantasy. But that is religion not science.
maheo30

That's why I'll never be fully religious.SolidSnake35

You worship Jessica Alba you Englander you!

[QUOTE="SolidSnake35"]That's why I'll never be fully religious.NicktehImperial

You worship Jessica Alba you Englander you!

He's allowed that right.

Alba is less like a religion to him and more like a drug.

And he.....he is my drug.....:oops:

Not paid attention to science? No one has ever seen the black stallion produce a timber wolf, i.e. macro-evolution. NEVER! I don't need to go any further than macro-evolution. In order for evolution to be true trillions of cells, each one more com plicated than any city in the world, would have to suddenly evolve all at once into I'll say a female species. Then you need for it to happen again and somehow evolve into a male. Now how evolution knows to evolve into a male you can't explain. And they have to evolve in the same time period otherwise the info is lost. This is rhe ridiculousness of evolution. I don't have enough fiath to believe in all that. Evolution is a religion. Macro-evolution has never been proven. NEVER! They point to micro to prove macro. Chemical hasn't been explained either. How do you get all those chemicals in the table? Evolution has no explanation except for pure fantasy. But that is religion not science.
maheo30

Oh god could u first go read On the origin of the species before you spew out bull? 

[QUOTE="maheo30"]Not paid attention to science? No one has ever seen the black stallion produce a timber wolf, i.e. macro-evolution. NEVER! I don't need to go any further than macro-evolution. In order for evolution to be true trillions of cells, each one more com plicated than any city in the world, would have to suddenly evolve all at once into I'll say a female species. Then you need for it to happen again and somehow evolve into a male. Now how evolution knows to evolve into a male you can't explain. And they have to evolve in the same time period otherwise the info is lost. This is rhe ridiculousness of evolution. I don't have enough fiath to believe in all that. Evolution is a religion. Macro-evolution has never been proven. NEVER! They point to micro to prove macro. Chemical hasn't been explained either. How do you get all those chemicals in the table? Evolution has no explanation except for pure fantasy. But that is religion not science.
cory4513

Oh god could u first go read On the origin of the species before you spew out bull?

Not paid attention to science? No one has ever seen the black stallion produce a timber wolf, i.e. macro-evolution. NEVER! I don't need to go any further than macro-evolution. In order for evolution to be true trillions of cells, each one more com plicated than any city in the world, would have to suddenly evolve all at once into I'll say a female species. Then you need for it to happen again and somehow evolve into a male. Now how evolution knows to evolve into a male you can't explain. And they have to evolve in the same time period otherwise the info is lost. This is rhe ridiculousness of evolution. I don't have enough fiath to believe in all that. Evolution is a religion. Macro-evolution has never been proven. NEVER! They point to micro to prove macro. Chemical hasn't been explained either. How do you get all those chemicals in the table? Evolution has no explanation except for pure fantasy. But that is religion not science.
maheo30

How many logical fallacies can you fit in one paragraph? All I see are Straw men, arguments from ignorance and personal incredulity... 

Seriously your understanding of evolution is pathetic. I suggest you read a book and stop regurgitating that creationist nonsense before you look even more ignorant. 

The old 'a dog never gave birth to a cat' argument is ridiculous and just proves you do not have a clue. I wish creationist would evolve their silly arguments...

Darwin pointed to micro. Just because you want to believe micro proves macro doesn't make it true. How does evolution explain the Dolphin's sonar? Huh? It can't!
maheo30

True faith cannot be taught, only learned. Thats my undestanding of it.KrayzieJ

one of the wisest things I have heard in a while.

Darwin pointed to micro. Just because you want to believe micro proves macro doesn't make it true. How does evolution explain the Dolphin's sonar? Huh? It can't!
maheo30

Running out of arguements? 

Darwin pointed to micro. Just because you want to believe micro proves macro doesn't make it true. How does evolution explain the Dolphin's sonar? Huh? It can't!
maheo30

Echolocation-Bats-Dolphins

"The blind Watchmaker" by Dawkins talks about echolocation in bats as well.

I love it when creationist just throw out all kinda of examples they think disproves evolution hoping something will stick.

 Edit: Hell, I didn't even search for scientifically peer reviewed papers but im willing to bet there are plenty.

Not paid attention to science? No one has ever seen the black stallion produce a timber wolf, i.e. macro-evolution. NEVER! I don't need to go any further than macro-evolution. In order for evolution to be true trillions of cells, each one more com plicated than any city in the world, would have to suddenly evolve all at once into I'll say a female species. Then you need for it to happen again and somehow evolve into a male. Now how evolution knows to evolve into a male you can't explain. And they have to evolve in the same time period otherwise the info is lost. This is rhe ridiculousness of evolution. I don't have enough fiath to believe in all that. Evolution is a religion. Macro-evolution has never been proven. NEVER! They point to micro to prove macro. Chemical hasn't been explained either. How do you get all those chemicals in the table? Evolution has no explanation except for pure fantasy. But that is religion not science.
maheo30

Not paid attention to science? No one has ever seen the black stallion produce a timber wolf, i.e. macro-evolution. NEVER! I don't need to go any further than macro-evolution. In order for evolution to be true trillions of cells, each one more com plicated than any city in the world, would have to suddenly evolve all at once into I'll say a female species. Then you need for it to happen again and somehow evolve into a male. Now how evolution knows to evolve into a male you can't explain. And they have to evolve in the same time period otherwise the info is lost. This is rhe ridiculousness of evolution. I don't have enough fiath to believe in all that. Evolution is a religion. Macro-evolution has never been proven. NEVER! They point to micro to prove macro. Chemical hasn't been explained either. How do you get all those chemicals in the table? Evolution has no explanation except for pure fantasy. But that is religion not science.
maheo30

But its completely plausible to you that a superior being made man out of thin air, and then women out of a human rib? Interesting. 

[QUOTE="drgrady"]

So do you believe that there is no such thing as randomness in anything? From your arguments it would seem that you have no respect for probability or statistical analysis. I generally despise statistics because a statistical analysis almost always leaves some probability of an alternate outcome, but I can still see the usefulness of such a tool. So to completely ignore the probability of an event happening does nothing to further our knowledge and produces nothing better than a supernatural theory. Also, your "what if" paragraph is laughable at best. While I have nothing against that line of reasoning in itself, I find it incredibly amusing that you are trying to prove how unsubstantiated religion is when you are talking about an unlimited number of alternate universes that are all stable and have the same constants that would allow life to be formed. How is that in any way a more informed or educated belief than believing in a divine creator? In blindly viewing the universe like this, you are completely ignoring probability.

Your view on the relationship amongst systems could just as easily be used to describe a relationship of chaos. If each of the smallest systems has some level of chaos, and each larger system has some level of chaos, then the system as a whole works together to produce a greater level of chaos than any of the individual systems. Whether you look at it from the perspective of order or of chaos, it doesn't change the probability that a set of events will happen.

Chaos and order do have a relationship, but it is completely illogical to say that "out of chaos comes order". It is out of a lack of chaos that we have order, and very few systems naturally become more orderly over time. When they do become more orderly (say water freezing into ice), it is because they lose energy and entropy, but when you redefine a system to include the surroundings where that energy is going, the whole system becomes more chaotic. Even the term "entropy" is used to define chaos (and the propensity for spontaneous action) on a molecular level, which would be a form of randomness.

Atrus

On the contrary, I hinge on probability as do most people. The balance of probabilities is one factor that dictates our decision making. However, you are confusing randomness with magnitudes of probability, and so you're support of probability does not intefere with what I said, though you're equating probability with randomness does. Pure randomness has an equal probability assinged to everything. A synthesis of all the probabilities is not random. A random event can be a probability, a probability does not have to be random.

As far as the 'what if' proposals, they are all derived from data currently known about the universe and have been conjectures as to the nature of this universe. Equating them with religious belief is nonsense because unlike religious belief they have a framework of knowledge and understanding with which to make them. It is not a blind view in any regard whereas religion does not have anything other than intuition and revelation as sources of information, methods which are consistently incorrect. 

Chaos+Order= 1 and out of chaos comes order. The less chaos the more order; and it's only out of chaos that the amount of order can be distributed from. If Chaos and Order= .5 then the only way more order can arise from is out of that held by Chaos. In a system that is wholly chaotic, the only change that can be produced is one toward order.  Entropy is also the net change within a closed system for which I outlined the relationship at the beginning of this paragraph and used as a framework for my point.

Ok, so let us assume that there is no such thing as "randomness".  What do we gain?  The idea that despite all odds, everything worked out so that life could form?  So what's new?

Of course, the "what if" proposals have been "conjectures as to the nature of the universe.  There have been numerous conjectures about our origins, and most have been based on observations, but that doesn't mean that they are any more credible.  Likewise, many people have claimed to see angels or speak to God or have some form of supernatural experience, so any conjectures involving the supernatural are still based on observation.  That doesn't mean they are credible.  By creating an argument where there are an infinite number of universes, you are using pure fantasy with no observational evidence to circumvent a statistical analysis.  Furthermore, you seem to be agreeing to some extent that randomness is a factor if you rely on an unlimited number of universes that all hold the same "life constants" in order to produce one that actually holds life.  If randomness was not an issue, why would any of the universes differ from one another given they were created the same way, had the same starting material, and started with the same "life constants"?  Ultimately, if the output isn't the same for every version that has exactly the same inputs, then randomness is a factor.  Sure the different systems work together to produce a given output, but why would they not work together in the same way each time unless there was randomness?

And the wonderful "Chaos+Order= 1" lesson is fun, but doesn't add to or change anything that I said.

[QUOTE="drgrady"]

I would also like to point out that I never suggested that things pop out of nowhere. Both the creationist view and naturalistic view require some degree of this "something coming from nothing" mentality (either the Big Bang or a divine creator), but since it is a point where neither side has any real evidence, I will ignore that. However, a naturalist view does rely on spontaneous generation (even if you don't like the terminology). Yes, that concept relies on conditions to be right and all the components to come together in the correct form to produce the cell structure, but that does not remove the randomness from it. We also have never found any way of producing life in such a cell structure, so there is an inprobability that is impossible to even evaluate. So I fail to see how your naturalistic approach is the only sensible one when it really doesn't provide anything but more speculation as to why and how we are here.

Atrus

What lends the naturalistic view more credence is that it uses a framework that is much more precise than religion in order to postulate what might have happened based on naturally derived probabilities. It doesn't make up unevidenced entities which have no probable scenarios as being the explanation. 

Under the framework, science has drawn back the universe to one plank time after the Universe began, the point at which time started to tick. Going back before time itself is obviously a difficult problem, but even that is being worked on as people try to determine the extent of the universe in multiple dimensions to perhaps describe a mechanism that is infinite and uncaused. A self-contained non-sentient mechanism that is capable of spawning universes.

But isn't the concept of a beginning of time a "something from nothing" viewpoint?  From whence did this dimension of time come?  And even string theory and general relativity don't explain from whence everything originally came.  They add to the possibilities of how the universe developed but they still rely on matter and energy coming from nothing (or a mysterious unnamed source that has never been observed... hmm... sounds a little like faith and creationism...).