Why I have to Know God Exists
Offline (1) The universe had a beginning
(2) Life only comes from life - this is a scientific fact that is observable and testable.
(3) Life has never been proven to come from non-living matter. No one has ever observed the spontaneous generation of life drom non-living matter in nature, nor has any laboratory experiment replicated it. It is just as unscientific to say that life naturally arose from dead matter as to say men naturally rise from the dead.
(4) Since 1, 2 and 3 are true, life itself could have no baginning, and must have predated the physical universe which we do know from the current astronomical data/ big bang cosmology did have a beginning.
(5) Any being that lived outside the universe or lived before the universe existed, must be God, for no natural being could survivie without an invironment in which to live. This must be a self-sustaining, self-suffient being. Since there is no such thing in nature, it must be supernatural.
Now, I'd like to see who will prove any of the premises upon which this conclusion is drawn to be wrong.
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Hi Daley.
There is no proof the universe had a specific beginning. It could have been oscillating.
There is no proof of life coming from a supernatural event and no evidence of anything supernatural ever happening.
There are rocks about 4 billion years old with no life in them and rocks three billion years old containing life. This suggests abiogenesis happened here on earth.
Life is comprised of carbon atoms. You'd assume these atoms are non-living - or at least as non-living as carbon atoms tend to be. No atom is 'alive'.
Since one, two and three are blank assertions you'd assume that life can only exist in this universe - the only universe it has ever been observed in.
Anything that exists outside the universe is an assertion that has no basis in reality and cannot be imagined from our location.
Is there an 'outside the universe'?
No one will ever know.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
And beginning = god?
And proven false. Scientists have created artificial life. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5409946/scientists_create_artificial_life_a.html it is a relatively new field in science but based on our understanding it is possible to create life with nothing but chemicals and it is not inconceivable that hundreds of years from now humans will be able to create complex life from chemicals.
Since 2 and 3 are false and 1 is irrelevant your conclusion is worthless.
That is kind of like saying that any being that lives underwater is God since we can't live underwater. Bow down before the holy Billy Bass. IF there is a being that lives outside and before the universe it is simply a new natural being worth studying. To assume that we know everything that is natural is absurd and assuming that anything we do not understand today is supernatural is equally absurd. Just because there might be some living organism we don't understand does not imply a god in any traditional sense of the word. Especially an all knowing, all powerful creator.
Done. Your premises are false and even if they were true your conclusion does not follow.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Atheistextremist, you claimed the universe may not have had a beginning.
If the universe is of infinite age, then the matter in it is of infinite age and cannot be dated, thus, its impossible for one set of rocks to be 4 billion yrs old and another 3 billion yrs old, if all the rocks of the planets and stars have always been around. The fact is that Edwin Hubble and others have shown that the universe is expanding, we have streached wavelengths resulted from galaxies moving farther apart, and the 1964 discovery of radiation remaining from the big bang by astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.
You seem to suggest that if the oldest rocks contain no life, then life sprang from lifeless rock. That is not science. Science is based on the observable and testable. It must also make predictions that are also testable and falsifiable. In nature, living things come from previous living things. No one today observes a living cell spontaneously emerge from carbon atoms alone. In fact, even the smallest forms of life are extremely complex and cannot funtion unless many important parts of the organism, and the outside support systems were already present simulataneously at the beginning, which denys evolutionary claims of development from the simple to the complex by pure chance-mutation/natural selection. Here's an example:
DNA contains the blueprints for protein construction. But, the information cannot be retrieved or copied without the assistence of proteins. So, which came first in getting life started? The proteins (the chicken) or the DNA (the egg)? It is a scientifically observable and testable hypothesis to say that life comes from previous living things, therefore, life on earth came from previous life, wheather you wanna call it God, aliens from another galaxy, or whatever...But we do know from nature that living things have the ability to produce living things. We do not see in nature (without the interference of intelligent man) living organism randomly springing from non-living matter.
All of my points remain unrfuted.
Except for the way Beyond Saving crushed them.
Did you even read beyond saving's reply? He ripped your points apart.
Science flies people to the moon, Religion flies people into buildings.
Beyond Saving, Silver,
I loved that article you sent me. It so proves creation that I have to break it down for you:
Opening headline:
"After 15 Years, Scientists Led by Craig Venter, Create a Living Organism in the Laboratory"
Notice, this is not something that happened "naturally," intelligent designers "created" this thing, just like people create cars and airplaines and works of art, cause they knew that living things don't just happen. It takes an intelligent mind to put it all together. But we shall see more as we go on...
"Using four bottles of chemicals and a computer, scientists at laboratories in Maryland and California, led by genome pioneer Craig Venter, succeeded in creating life -- a bacterial organism."
Wow, life itself is so complex you need a computer to get it started. I wonder what kinda computer was used to get the first living cell? Hmmmm. Since computers didn't exist yet, I'm sure it must have been an intelligent mind. Let's see...
"But how had they done it? According to Venter, by creating genes for the artificial organism "from four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information on a computer."
You see, nature can produce patterns, like ripples in the sand by the waves of the sea, but it can't produce information that carries meaning. Such is the product of a mind. Notice they had to use information on a computer. What do you think is the original source of the information contained in the cell, or even the DNA itelf? How did it get there?
As scientists began to decode the human DNA molecule, they found something quite unexpected—an exquisite 'language' composed of some 3 billion genetic letters. "One of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century," says Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash., "was that DNA actually stores information—the detailed instructions for assembling proteins—in the form of a four-character digital code" (quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 2004, p. 224).
It is hard to fathom, but the amount of information in human DNA is roughly equivalent to 12 sets of The Encyclopaedia Britannica—an incredible 384 volumes" worth of detailed information that would fill 48 feet of library shelves!
Yet in their actual size—which is only two millionths of a millimeter thick—a teaspoon of DNA, according to molecular biologist Michael Denton, could contain all the information needed to build the proteins for all the species of organisms that have ever lived on the earth, and "there would still be enough room left for all the information in every book ever written" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1996, p. 334).
Who or what could miniaturize such information and place this enormous number of 'letters' in their proper sequence as a genetic instruction manual? Could evolution have gradually come up with a system like this?
Unless nature has a mind, it's impossible for me to see how you can ignore the factually scientific statement that information of complexity that carries meaning is the product of a mind, is not known to occur randomly, and thus must have come into the DNA from an intelligent source. In fact, DNA has a language, and language, all languages, morse code included are products of intelligent minds. Somebody in lab had to manipulate things to get this living cell; it didn't just spring into being by throwing four chemicals together; and I'm arguing that the scientists in the lab are doing the same thing God did on a different level - in other words, who is it that orginally put the four chemicles together, and used a computer and other advanced technology to CREATE the first cell? It doesn't occur naturally. What they did in that lad was not evolution, nor natural selection, it was CREATION! My point exactly...
The CRUNCHER in the argument is that they DID NOT START WITH NON-LIVING MATTER! Oh no!!!! They used LIVING bacteria and hijacked it with synthetic DNA. The original bacteria was alive. Isn't backteria a living organism? Maybe you should go on youtube and listen to what they said about their own work first before you restrict yourself to the sensationalism in this article you sent me. And even if they didn't, all it would prove is that once again, life is DESIGNED by intelligent CREATORS just like we see in nature every day. Those scientist are intelligent beings, whose brains are very complex. So, again, we are moving from the complex to the complex, not from the simple to the complex as in evolution. What you need to how me is one example of life arising from non-living matter whithout the aid of an intelligent source. This you cannot do! They didn't just put four chemicals together and watch...They manipulated them, to CREATE what they wanted. You know this, don't you? So again, your logic fails.
(1) The universe has a beginning
(2) Life come from life
(3) Life does not arise naturally from non-living matter
(4) Thus, life predates the universe, for all life came from previously, which came from the first life, which could not come from non-living matter
(5) This life has to be supernatural; why? Becuse by definition, natural is that which operates within the laws of the physical universe. Any thing outside or independent of of the universe, not needing an environment in which to live would have to be supernatural.
Yeah, making life is extremely complicated. So what? How does complicated = god? It is extremely complicated to make a hurricane or rain too but not impossible. The point is that having a preexisting life form is not a necessity to create life. It is easier for us to copy lifeforms just like when we clone it is easier to use an existing egg. That doesn't mean it is a necessity. It simply means that our understanding and technical skill is rudimentary. There is no reason to believe that there is anything impossible about creating even a complex being from scratch, the only question is how. You can't say that life can't come from "non-living" matter because it can and we can imagine how it might be possible.
And what basis do you have that life does not operate within the laws of the physical universe? I'm not a science freak but even I can tell that your knowledge of science is lacking. Our "laws of physics" is simply a model to help us understand the universe and still not 100% understood. Basically, you are simply making the argument that since science does not yet explain everything there must be a god. Your logic is faulty. At one time science couldn't explain rain. Science is the ongoing discovery of our universe and how it works. To presume that science can explain everything that is natural today and anything we don't understand must be supernatural is ignorant.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
I never argued that complicated equals God, but I did argue that:
(1) information which is complexed and carries meaning has one known source in nature, that is, the mind! I am appealing to a natural source of information, you are appealing to one that doen't exist in nature. Language doesn't happen by accident. jumbling letters doesn't give you words. The the genetic language of DNA is so precise that the average mistake that isn't caught is only one error in every 10 billion letters. If a mistike occurs in one of the more significant parts of the code in our genes, it usually casues disease like sickle-cell anemia. Yet, the most professional typist on earth couldn't come near making just one mistake per 10 billion letters! Impossible. There is simply no way this complex system evolved the Darwinian way.
Michael Behe, biochemist and professor at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University says:
"Consider a step-by-step list of [genetic] instructions. A mutation is a change in one of the lines of instructions. So instead of saying, "Take a 1/4-inch nut," a mutation might say, "Take a 3/8-inch nut." Or instead of "Place the round peg in the round hole," we might get "Pleace the round peg in the square hole"...What a mutation cannot do is change all the instructions in one step - say, [providing insructions] to build a fax machine instead of a radio." (Darwin's Black Box, 1996, p.41) We therefore have a complex genetic code that has been majestically designed with information that can only come from an intelligent source. You have to explain the orgin of the information; we do know that a mind produces information, random chance does not! Consider this quoted section from "DEBUNKING EVOLUTION" by John Michael Fischer, 2006-2010, www.newgeology.us
"Cells are made of proteins, and everything that goes on in a creature involves proteins interacting with each other. Proteins are generally 50 to 2000 amino acids long; a typical one has about 300 amino acids.1 Ribosomes are molecular machines that build proteins in all cells, using messenger RNA as the template. Here is an overview of how a bacterial ribosome "translates" RNA into protein. Every protein in bacteria is made this way.
From: Schmeing, T. Martin, V. Ramakrishnan. 29 October 2009. What recent ribosome structures have revealed about the mechanism of translation. Nature, Vol. 461, pp. 1234-1242.
A protein is not just a long ribbon of amino acids strung together from the DNA pattern. It folds itself into a 3D structure.
Diagram of a folded protein
Origami
The temperature and chemical concentrations must be right for it to fold correctly, and many proteins get help from special proteins called "molecular chaperones". Chaperones can keep proteins separated from each other while they are folding, prevent mistakes in folding, and even unfold mistakes to give the protein a second chance to get it right. After helping one protein fold, a chaperone will go help another one fold.
in this artist's illustration." --Science News, December 1, 2007, Vol. 172, p. 342
Making and folding proteins goes on continuously throughout the body. Misfolding can lead to more than proteins that don't work. In humans, bunches of them (aggregates) can lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, or sickle cell. "Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severely that all function is lost."1 All proteins stick (bind) to other molecules. But each can bind to only a few of the thousands it encounters. "An average protein in a human cell may interact with somewhere between 5 and 15 different partners."1 Their shapes fit each other like a hand in a glove. "Proteins can form enormously sophisticated chemical devices." "The most impressive tasks are carried out by large protein assemblies formed from many protein molecules." "Each of the central processes in a cell... is catalyzed by a highly coordinated, linked set of 10 or more proteins."1 The parts of a cell where proteins are made (ribosomes) are themselves made of many different proteins. "The complexity of living organisms is staggering."1 In the face of this breathtaking complexity, evolutionists have tried to find the basic things necessary for a cell to function. So far they have found 17 general categories1:
1. Alberts, Bruce, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, Peter Walter. 2008. Molecular Biology of The Cell, 5th edition. Garland Science, New York.
Each category requires many proteins. All have to be in place and working together or the cell is wrecked.
So evolutionists have to believe that for each protein, pure chance laid out long strings of amino acids that fold themselves into the exact shapes needed to interact with other specialized proteins and, where needed, get help from chaperone proteins which themselves appeared by chance. The necessary proteins cannot be invented one at a time. Either they are all there, ready to work together, or nothing happens and they disintegrate. Yet even if it could design proteins, mutation-natural selection would only work on one at a time sporadically over many years. Considering just the complexity of proteins, the notion of creating them with mutation-natural selection is as silly as asking someone to build a television set with a spoon and a toothbrush. If Darwin had known what we have learned about proteins, he probably would have abandoned the theory of evolution."
(2) Since life comes from previous life, and this is both (a) observable and (b) testable, and also we do not (a) observe life springing from non-life in the natural world, and (b) no one has done it from scratch without using living material, it logically follows that that it is more scientifically credible to say that life on earth got here from a previous life than to say it came from dead matter! You are projecting a theory, I am presenting a fact of the natural world!
(3) The universe had a beginning, life did not. Thus, life predates the universe, which leads back to God, a being totally self-sufficient. This is irrefutable.
Finally, if you read my post again you will find that I never said life doesn't operate within the laws of the physical universe. What I did argue, is that nature itself refers to the laws of the physical universe an all that is in it obeying those laws. Therefore, any being that is independent of the physical universe, that does not need this physical environment for existence, is by definition supernatural. Since life cannot be proven to come from non-living matter, life must have always existed. But the universe did not! So this means that life predates the universe...What kind of life would predate the universe? What kind of life can exist outside of nature? Isn't nature the physical universe itself? Only a supernatural entity!!!
Let me as you this, how pausible is the resurrection of a dead man? If its not palusible, why isn't it? I would argue, that if a living being, giving life back to a non-living being (which is moving from life to life) is impossible or even implausible; then life coming about from dead non-living matter is even more implausible! At least with God we have a source of the original information and power necessary for life, all the progamming etc. Not so with the prebiotic soup of evolution.
Another one of those cut-and-paste threads ?
Two can play that :
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
Unanwered questions:
(1) If the universe has no beginning, shouldn't the rocks of the stars and planets be of infinite age? Since no material has ever been found of infite age suggests a beginning. I haven't seen a response to this.
(2) The DNA contains the instructions for making proteins. But the info can't be retrived and translated without the aid of prote iins, so, which came first? Am I to believe that they both evolved independently at the same time? The chances of that are so small we can dismiss it as a childish myth. No response yet to that.
(3) Show me one example of life arising from non-life naturally. Oh, yeah, some scientist made a cell in a lab...Nope! They took previously LIVING bacteria and decorated it. Also, an intelligence was invloved in putting it together. It certainly didn't happen naturally. Not a good example of chance mutation or natural selection, is it? Again, no reply. None that makes sense.
(4) I'm using the model that living things come from already complex living things. Since this is true, is it not scientific to say that life on earth came from another form of life even if it isn't earth bound?
(5) The universe has a beginning, I think I sunk that one in. No more takers? We'll see.
(6) Information that is complex and carries meaning has one known source, the mind. The info in the cell, DNA, etc is too complex an specific and meaningful to not be the product of a mind. How does blind chance create a language? How did the programming get into these tiny organisms in the first place? What is the known scientific origin of information? To even postulate a chimp that knows and understands the english language alone is rediculous, and yet, the chimp has a brain. How less likely that blind forces, with no brain, no reason, no purpose not direction could postulate by chance the whole library of information to create life? No aount of unguided chance sould mix letters into words. We know that.
Let's see who will take this on. I'm a serious theist, and I'm claiming that belief in creation is the belief in what happens on a daily basis in the natural world - humans create buildings, cars, books, machines, etc, and living plant produce more plar living mants, mammals produce other living mammals, etc. Life begets life is a proven fact! Where are the facts for the spontaneous generation of life from dead matter? It's not found in nature today. Why did it stop happening? Cause it never did, and its not scientific! The resurrection of Jesus has better chance of happenin than that.
If all the Christians who have called other Christians " not really a Christian " were to vanish, there'd be no Christians left.
And you are willing to believe some random dudes from the past when they say a man in the sky did everything. GG
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
What you are doing here is called spin. Or its a failure to integrate information. Or its a reflection of other problems.
Your irrational statement above ignores that the formation that made up the rocks is what is dated not the matter in the rocks themselves. Theory suggest that the matter we observe today was born out of the 'big bang' approximately 14 billion years ago.
If everything was compressed in a single singularity expanded over time and eventually compressed once again the atomic particles we know and love would be torn apart.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Rest assured I read those silly rebuttals to IC and my response will be comprehensive and will not be a cut and past.
Wow! So its the formation of the rock that is dated? Interesting, so, this means the rock wasn't eternal right? If it formed it couldn't be eternal. Now, let me ask you, did the earth form as well? What about the other planets in our solar system? And if they did, how do you know they did? If they didn't what reasons do you have for assuming they didn't? Do you agree or disagree that we are in an expanding universe?
Yay !
So you slept through Junior High Science? Or they didn't have it where you went?
The rock has been around longer than we have and will be long after.
Eternal is not something I grasp. What does eternal mean? Oxford disctionary defines it as - lasting or exists forever. How can you know?
I have no understanding of what all the matter of the Universe would be compressed all together, what do you call it? Some of the stuff that would make up the rock would be squished in that compression somewhere.
You really should have paid attention in your science class or gone to a school that had one instead of the God made it all version
Well you could be a bad dream being projected into my Matrix cylinder. Otherwise, I seem to observe that I'm on a planet that I have been all around. Though it could be a real exceptional version of "The 13th Floor".
If the planets didn't form then you aren't here asking stupid questions.
The Universe is currently expanding based on the data we observe. Whether or not it contracts remains to be observed. See - http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/inflation_010429.html
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
I'm well aware the universe is expanding but from what? Are we in a dual oscillating universe? Does the universe expand and then suck back into a single dense point and then expand again? Does it expand through a point and re-expand in reverse? Does the universe have a boundary? We do not know. But we can nevertheless observe a universe governed by natural laws with no god in it. If you disagree, please provide proof of a supernatural event or deity that is verifiable by repeated experiment.
Is the universe eternal? It could be. We know that the energy/mass equation of the universe is constant. We know energy cannot be created or destroyed - that it only changes its form. Regardless of the mystery surrounding the universe's origins, geochronology is possible. The subatomic particles formed during and after the proposed big bang no longer exist though their echo exists in the form of the primary forces of the universe. We can't date these. But we can date rocks on the earth using radiocarbon dating or isotopes like Samarium 147, which has a half life of 100 billion years. That's more than sufficient for our needs.
Most the matter in the solar system was formed by stars - as you know Daley, stars convert hydrogen into fun things like oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and helium. We'd been in a bit of a pickle without any of these, wouldn't we? I find it endlessly entertaining when some monkey child insists life sprang from rocks. Please provide a reference to any scientific paper that claims this ever happened.
You claim rocks are the only chemical repository on the earth. What about the oceans? What about the atmosphere? Life is made of carbon atoms. It's really very simple, even if the cellular systems and systems of cells they go on to create are complex. We take our oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and residual hydrogen and through natural processes like oxidation and lightning and vulcanism we get other neat things to play with. These would be ions and complex molecules like carbon dioxide, phosphate, acetate, sulphate and nitrate. It's a real chemistry set we have going on here. Still want to insist life sprang from rocks or is your brain working now? Do we understand the process of abiogenesis? No, we don't. But is life made of all these earthly molecular compounds and no others? Yes, Daley, it is.
The oldest rocks found on earth are 4.3 billion years old and they have no life in them. Yet archeobacteria are present in rocks that are 3.5 billion years old. They are very simple and very robust forms of life. Where do their ancestors live? In geothermal springs and around undersea geothermal vents. That's interesting isn't it? A rational person would conclude that many moons ago conditions around some undersea thermal vent were sufficient to allow RNA molecules to form DNA and for life to evolve.
No one here is not going to agree that abiogenesis is a huge mystery. It is a mystery. But it's not the sort of mystery you are spouting. Your insistence that if natural forces did not lead to the formation of the universe and the appearance of life then a supernatural god did it is a false dichotomy. Your universal boundary is arbitrary. Your subjective creation of an exo universal reality in which god is hunkered over his ant farm in an environment that could only be born by a supernatural deity is ludicrous.
You cannot say science is concerned with falsifiable evidence and use this as a weapon against us when your mysterious god defies all known laws. You worship an imaginary god whose greatness is restricted even by your Isaac Asmiov-like brain. I dare say, Daley, you think evolution never happened and that fossils were put there by satan or laid down in mudstone when a couple of the smaller ships in Noah's Grand Fleet went down off the Scilly Islands.
It's obvious life formed slowly and that it started simply and became more complex. Consider that eukaryotes contain a parasite bacteria inside them - the structure we call the mitochondria, that cells use to power themselves. Eukaryote cells form the basis for multicellular life yet these same cells are an almalgam of two life forms. Why is this so? Design or evolution?
Free form single celled organisms make up more than half of the earth's biomass. They communicate, they live in colonies, they cooperate with those genetically closest to them, they evolve furiously, they are in constant competition with each other and the viruses that plague them. They exchange genes laterally and vertically. They even sacrifice themselves for one another. Interested yet?
Given there are 100 times more bacteria cells in and on the human body than there are human cells inside the human body, it's not too much of a stretch to consider the possibility that symbiosis between single celled organisms could lead to simple multicellular life forms evolving to exploit niches, escape predators, or at the behest of parasites. Simple multicellular forms that through the same processes evolved to form the higher orders of multicellular life until your magnificent personage came into being.
The alternative to the natural order we see before our eyes, Daley, is an undefinable, unprovable deity who you insist, on the basis of no evidence, did the deed.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
What it comes down to is that daley has to believe God exists because his arguments fall apart and his security blanket goes away if God doesn't exist.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Nicely put, Atheistextremist but I'm not sure Daley is worth the calories you expended.
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"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
So you agree, daley?
I'm guessing it's just epic fail with the quote function, like so many other copy/paste and hit and run theists.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Ok so I am not going to play catch up really here, since everyone else is doing a great job at this, however I must say the following two things, 1 what created god if your assuming that god is some intelligent being and that all life requires a creator. 2 the moment you use Mr Behe in your argument, you pretty much have lost the argument, this is the same Mr. Behe that was laughed out of court and who's arguments in court, ruled that there is no scientific merit for intelligent design theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe#Dover_testimony ) and ID theory isn't a theory in the scientific sense, his version, astrology is a theory.....in science however it has to be proven and tested and re-proven and re-tested by various peers, until the explanation stand and it becomes a scientific theory (and explanation for an observed or tested event/phenomena that has been tested and proven to be true) or it is proven false and we start all over again trying to come up with a proper explanation the mechanism of the event/phenomena observed.
Mr. Behe's irreducible complexity, that also has been shown false, but I will let you do the research on that one.
What fascinates me is that he pointed to the ability of scientists to recreate life in a laboratory as evidence of a divine being. The problem with this is that using the same logic the fact that I can wave a fan to generate wind means that there must be divine beings waving giant fans to produce the jet streams and such. It's a very poor analogy, not to mention that if mankind is truly able to produce life forms in a lab that would kind of imply that there isn't some divine force in making life, you just need the right materials.
You cannot conclude 4 from 3 because it would be an argument from silence. Just because it has never been observed does not mean it has never happened. At least there is circumstantial evidence that it did happen through the Miller–Urey experiment.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
I suspected the same but I still hold out hope for human sanity.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
I agree, I was almost sad to see such a nicely written piece directed at this type of poster.
But excellent non the less.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.