Does God exist? (8 Viewers)

[Not-That-Bright]

[creationist asshole] But I've never seen a bird give birth to a non-bird! That's no proof at all [/kent hovind]

 

[c_james]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apathetic_agnosticism

 

[Not-That-Bright]

That's fine imo, as long as the adherant's are against religious belief's which they think are to the detriment of society.

 

[MoonlightSonata]

If you found a watch in a forest, would you say it designed itself & you'll never be convinced otherwise until someone brings its "so called maker" to stand right in front of you?

lol I can't believe people are still arguing things that were firmly quashed on the very first page of this thread:

Claim:

Life looks intelligently designed because of its complexity and arrangement. As a watch implies a watchmaker, so life requires a designer.


Response:

1. Nobody argues that life is complicated. However, complexity is not the same as design. There are simple things that are designed and complex things that originate naturally. Complexity does not imply design; in fact, simplicity is a design goal in most designs.

2. In most cases, the inference of design is made because people cannot envision an alternative. This is simply an argument from incredulity. Historically, supernatural design has been attributed to lots of things that we now know form naturally, such as lightning, rainbows, and seasons.

3. Life as a whole looks very undesigned by human standards, for several reasons:

• In known design, innovations that occur in one product quickly get incorporated into other, often very different, products. In eukaryotic life, innovations generally stay confined in one lineage. When the same sort of innovation occurs in different lineages (such as webs of spiders, caterpillars, and web spinners), the details of their implementation differ in the different lineages. When one traces lineages, one sees a great difference between life and design. (Eldredge has done this, comparing trilobites and cornets; Walker 2003.)
• In design, form typically follows function. Yet life shows many examples of different forms with the same function (e.g., different structures making up the wings of birds, bats, insects, and pterodactyls; different organs for making webs in spiders, caterpillars, and web spinners; and at least eleven different types of insect ears), the same basic form with different functions (e.g., the same pattern of bones in a human hand, whale flipper, dog paw, and bat wing) and some structures and even entire organisms without apparent function (e.g., some vestigial organs, creatures living isolated in inaccessible caves and deep underground).
• As mentioned above, life is complex. Design aims for simplicity.
• For almost all designed objects, the manufacture of the object is separate from any function of the object itself. All living objects reproduce themselves.
• Life lacks plan. There are no specifications of living structures and processes. Genes do not fully describe the phenotype of an organism. Sometimes in the absence of genes, structure results anyway. Organisms, unlike designed systems, are self-constructing in an environmental context.
• Life is wasteful. Most organisms do not reproduce, and most fertilized zygotes die before growing much. A designed process would be expected to minimize this waste.
• Life includes many examples of systems that are jury-rigged out of parts that were used for another purpose. These are what we would expect from evolution, not from an intelligent designer. For example vertebrate eyes have a blind spot because the retinal nerves are in front of the photoreceptors. Orchids that provide a platform for pollinating insects to land on, the stem of the flower has a half twist to move the platform to the lower side of the flower.
• Life is highly variable. In almost every species, there is a spread of values for anything you care to measure. The "information" that specifies life is of very low tolerance in engineering terms. There are few standards.

4. Life is nasty. If life is designed, then death, disease, and decay also must be designed since they are integral parts of life. This is a standard problem of apologetics. Of course, many designed things are also nasty (think of certain weapons), but if the designer is supposed to have moral standards, then it is added support against the design hypothesis.

5. The process of evolution can be considered a design process, and the complexity and arrangement we see in life are much closer to what we would expect from evolution than from known examples of intelligent design. Indeed, engineers now use essentially the same processes as evolution to find solutions to problems that would be intractably complex otherwise.

6. Does evolution itself look designed? When you consider that some sort of adaptive mechanism would be necessary on the changing earth if life were to survive, then if life were designed, evolution or something like it would have to be designed into it.

7. Claiming to be able to recognize design in life implies that nonlife is different, that is, not designed. To claim that life is recognisably designed is to claim that an intelligent designer did not create the rest of the universe.

8. As it stands, the design claim makes no predictions, so it is unscientific and useless. It has generated no research at all.

 

[cheesman]

the way i see it is that if u look at a brick its obvious that someone made it
but for some reason people find it normal that the world just popped out of nowhere
that nothing collided with nothing to create something
the chance of that happening is just riduculous

and just for the record, people seem to think that evolution and big bang all disprove God, well that isnt true.
They may have simply been means that God used for creation, but at the end of the day keep in mind that they are all theories.
And if someone uses evolution to disprove God it doesnt work, because the discussion is about the existence of a god, not neccesarily the god of christianity, not saying that it disproves god.
ive noticed that some people just grab onto to any piece of evidence and just say 'HA! ur wrong", u should all think about all this instead of jumping to conclusions

 

[Not-That-Bright]

the way i see it is that if u look at a brick its obvious that someone made it
but for some reason people find it normal that the world just popped out of nowhere
that nothing collided with nothing to create something
the chance of that happening is just riduculous

and just for the record, people seem to think that evolution and big bang all disprove God, well that isnt true.
They may have simply been means that God used for creation, but at the end of the day keep in mind that they are all theories.
And if someone uses evolution to disprove God it doesnt work, because the discussion is about the existence of a god, not neccesarily the god of christianity, not saying that it disproves god.
ive noticed that some people just grab onto to any piece of evidence and just say 'HA! ur wrong", u should all think about all this instead of jumping to conclusions

Whut-evar.

 

[littlewing69]

the way i see it is that if u look at a brick its obvious that someone made it
but for some reason people find it normal that the world just popped out of nowhere
that nothing collided with nothing to create something
the chance of that happening is just riduculous

We know what bricks are, and know from experience where they come from. We have no such knowledge or experience with the Universe. This point has already been adressed several times. I think the teleological argument is compelling, but you're presenting it very poorly.

Secondly, you talk of the "chance" of the Universe just occuring. Where do you get the odds for this sort of thing--considering we only know (by definition) of one Universe and don't even know where this one came from?! What mathematical data do you have to prove the "chances" of this?

 

[transcendent]

God, they use the same argument with even stupider analogies every single time. Really, really irritating.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

God, they use the same argument with even stupider analogies every single time. Really, really irritating.

Yea, it's like I just post in this thread because i'm too lazy to find a cheese-grater to masturbate with.

 

[littlewing69]

Yea, it's like I just post in this thread because i'm too lazy to find a cheese-grater to masturbate with.

Well put.


It's a shame, because there is significant intellectual depth to both sides of the philosophical debate, IMO.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

It's a shame, because there is significant intellectual depth to both sides of the philosophical debate, IMO.

I agree, I think one side has larger number's with the intellectual depth, but i'd say the argument's can be pretty even.

 

[littlewing69]

I agree, I think one side has larger number's with the intellectual depth, but i'd say the argument's can be pretty even.

Ease up on the apostrophes there


I'm interested in youe thoughts on the "Do believers actually believe" issue you were talking about earlier. I hope the length of my epic rant (I tried to be logical heheh) didn't scare you off reading it.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

I'll read it later, I posted alot about it earlier in the thread somewhere... little tired at the moment, just taking it easy.

Yea I go nut's with apostrophe's just puttin'g them anywher'e.

 

[littlewing69]

I'll read it later, I posted alot about it earlier in the thread somewhere... little tired at the moment, just taking it easy.

Yea I go nut's with apostrophe's just puttin'g them anywher'e.

No worries. Have a good one.

 

[angmor]

this thread continues to come up with the goods. while i cbf to read all of them, its good stuff keep it up

 

[live.fast]

Maybe you can't actually prove God exists or doesn't.

These arguments are all logical. But God could be (and from what we're taught, is) above and beyond logic, as much as He can be in it too - that's the point of an all-powerful all knowing, omniscient God. You won't be able to disprove He exists by saying 'but this scientific theory says this ' - because the theory could always be wrong - and you probably won't find a way to prove He exists either - the point of faith is to believe, even without the proof. God can make 2 + 2 = 5 and He can make squares circles - but the point here is, you'll never find a water-tight proof for He's existence and vice versa. The best you can hope for is that He does exist. If He doesn't, well then, no harm done having tried to do some good in the world anyway. If He does, all the better. But belief is belief - logic is pointless in this case. and so is this thread.

the end.

 

[transcendent]

Are you are necrophiliac? This thread was well on it's way to being dead but you chose to rape it's near dead body. Why? You sick theists can't seem to leave things alone. You continuously try to bother people with all your bible bashing. God you're a nuisance.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

fucking hell

 

[crazyhomo]

Maybe you can't actually prove God exists or doesn't.

These arguments are all logical. But God could be (and from what we're taught, is) above and beyond logic, as much as He can be in it too - that's the point of an all-powerful all knowing, omniscient God. You won't be able to disprove He exists by saying 'but this scientific theory says this ' - because the theory could always be wrong - and you probably won't find a way to prove He exists either - the point of faith is to believe, even without the proof. God can make 2 + 2 = 5 and He can make squares circles - but the point here is, you'll never find a water-tight proof for He's existence and vice versa. The best you can hope for is that He does exist. If He doesn't, well then, no harm done having tried to do some good in the world anyway. If He does, all the better. But belief is belief - logic is pointless in this case. and so is this thread.

the end.

what you're suggesting has a name. pascal's wager

and it's complete crap

 

[gerhard]

dont lie NTB, you know you love it