PS 99% Of religion is a racket to make money or enslave people with lies. I totally agree that organized religion is a major cause of suffering. Let anyone be free to choose what they believe or don’t believe. I’m certain religion will be banned and wiped out soon. Can’t wait for the day.
There is a major contradiction in what you just said! “Let anyone be free” – and yet “banned and wiped out?” Come on, mate! At very least, make up your mind!
No contradiction at all in what i said. Just that you didn’t catch the meaning of my statement. Let me help you; i mean to express that i’m sure, i’m convinced, i’m in the knowledge that religion will come to an end. It will be banned and it’s powerbase swiftly destroyed. I did NOT express that I have anything to do with it. Sorry if i wasn’t clear, but i believe in God but at the same time am disgusted with (false) religion. There’s so much bloodshed, exploitation, abuse and corruption by organised religion. For example child abuse in the RC church and the world wide cover up. No wonder people are angry and wary of religious persons. If there exists a God of truth and love, it follows He will deal with the current situation. So i’m not contradicting as i’m glad i enjoy freedom of faith in my country, however i expect a judgement to come as i believe the bible.
PS I’m not worried at all about that judgement and the swift destruction of (false) religion. Can’t wait for the day. I know where i stand and i take heed of the warning.
Well, okay… I wasn’t clear on what you meant…
For my part, I would emphasize the “free to believe” aspect, and eschew the “banning” aspect. The government should neither support nor undermine religious freedom. If people want to believe in their Nice Big Sky Guy, they should have that right, and I will support it.
If a bunch of people get together and select a High Priest, and decide to do whatever he says, well, okay, that bothers me a little, but how can I really go about preventing them? Any “cure” would be worse than the “disease.” So long as they don’t try to conscript me into their hierarchy – so long as they don’t throw stones at me if I eat catfish or mow my lawn on Tuesday – I don’t figure it’s my place to break up their little sewing circle.
You are looking for evidence of God, but say it must be testable, and that others can repeat the test. A similar type of request is for “proof,” which you didn’t ask for, because even science can’t provide a “proof” of anything. A proof is a mathematical thing, which can’t be applied to science. So you say testable and repeatable. But at least some things in science aren’t testable/repeatable. Show me testable evidence of macro-evolution or abiogenesis. I suspect you accept these as scientific truth, but they aren’t testable. Actually, I found this site and thread trying to find evidence of macro-evolution. Someplace on the web (I don’t think it was this thread) someone made a statement ridiculing evolution using an example of a certain animal coming from another, and someone replied that WAS ridiculous, since that example wasn’t in the theory. So I’m trying to find what the theory actually says is the path from single-cell life to humans and what evidence there is. But if I require it to be testable, like you, then I assert there is no evidence. There is no test to repeat to verify the theory. So by your standard, there is no evidence of God and there is no evidence of macro-evolution.
So let’s open this up and look for any scientific evidence, not just repeatable testable evidence. What is evidence of God that would be acceptable to science in the same way as evidence for macro-evolution? Note that these are not mutually exclusive. If God exists, that does not mean he didn’t use evolution to “create” life. The evolution vs. creation discussion is separate, but related. Creation requires that God exists, but evolution could be with or without God.
The best scientific evidence for the existence of God that I have found is here: If You Can Read This, I Can Prove God Exists
This describes it much better than I could. At the end of the first part, it states “To the extent that scientific reasoning can prove anything, DNA is proof of a designer.” If you aren’t going to accept his argument, be specific on what is wrong with it. This is a scientific argument, using the science of information theory, which is my part of my field.
Another kind of acceptable evidence should be experiences. If you were to experience God first hand, you would accept that as evidence. The Bible itself shows miracles, which were meant to reveal God. But I assume you reject it is as fiction, so then that isn’t evidence. Would you accept modern stories more easily? You have to enter an email address to download the pdf from here: http://www.guideposts.org/free-ebooks/mysterious-ways-9-inspiring-stories-show-evidence-gods-love-and-gods-grace These 9 stories are called “things unseen” or miracles in the file, but I would put them in 3 buckets of 3:
- The stories that may have been God’s influence, or may not have been. It isn’t that unusual. In this thread someone mentioned a wind that came at the right time, which would be in this category also.
- Stories that don’t violate the laws of physics, but seem so improbable to be mere coincidence, so is at least very likely to be God at work.
- There are 3 of the stories that just can’t be explained, and I would call a miracle. One of them is a woman calling for help for a baby in a pool. The author was the only one to hear it, and when he asked people closer to her why they didn’t respond, they said they didn’t understand her Spanish. The woman spoke no English and the author did not understand Spanish (he heard English). Explain that with the laws of physics.
Here’s a site that talks about scientific study of prayer: Plim Report Welcome
Not possible? Care to expand on that? If something isn’t possible, then that would be proof and this whole debate could be put to rest.
So the flying reindeer and visiting every home in the world in one night isn’t grandiose?
I gave you evidence for design above. If there is an “astronomical” difference in evidence, care to point to some? And as I’ve been saying, this is for macro-evolution. I do not want to see anything about bacteria getting resistant to antibiotics, or even anything on natural selection, which is valid. I’m talking about the changes to turn one species into another.
Science doesn’t PROVE anything. So how is it proven that everything written came from another human? (I’m not suggesting otherwise, but since you said it is proven, explain.) And what is the proof that the global flood did not happen?
paul32, just a bit of friendly advice, you might be better served to start a new thread to deal with your points and questions. People are less likely to come to an older thread that’s on its 13th page unless they’ve been posting to it all along, you’d reach more eyes if you start a new one. YMMV.
For macroevolution, that is testable. Evolution makes predictions about what fossils we will find, what they will look like, and where they will be. So far, all the data we have confirms the theory of evolution. On the flip side, evolution could be falsified, and people have been trying to falsify it for about 150 years, but it’s never been done. Find me a fossil rabbit in pre-cambrian age rocks, that would do it.
That’s a crap argument. The person who wrote that page is not very familiar with information theory. Besides being “part of your field,” have you actually studied it? I’ve had university classes in information theory, and many of the folks on this board have as well. Further, people who are the experts in it reject the claims on that web site. Sure, mutations are like random noise, but a data set that’s the result of random noise being added actually has the maximal amount of information in it. So randomness thrown into an evolutionary process provide the information that natural selection can then work with. Someone who is actually familiar with information theory would know this.
No, probably not. A subjective experience shouldn’t convince anyone else, and it shouldn’t even convince me. Like Feynman said, science is the method you use to keep from fooling yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
I didn’t read your glurge link, but surely you can realize that a crappy anecdote isn’t persuasive evidence of anything.
Sure, we have museums full of fossils that document the change in species over history. You should visit one sometime.
The problem here is what is meant by testable. For many things, the event itself cannot be repeated, but the evidence left by the event can be repeatedly examined. For instance the Big Bang is not going to happen again for our study, but things which the theory predicts we should find, like the background radiation, can be.
For evolution once DNA was discovered we could predict that the DNA of different species would differ proportionately to their distance in terms of relationship as determined by their physiology and the fossil record. That has been found to be true. I won’t discuss “macro evolution” because there seems to be a lot of definitions of that term depending on your views, and I want to find out yours. Speciation of course has been directly observed.
You need to define God and what your model of God has done. Theistic evolution says that God intended us to come out just like we are, and invisibly interfered to make it so. It is unfalsifiable, but has no predictive power. If you believe that God worked as described in the Bible, then this God has been falsified.
Pretty feeble. Code in terms of DNA is a metaphor. It is really just a mapping for protein synthesis. The specific arrangement of DNA for a species of course evolved, and we know how that happened. I’ve taken information theory also, hell I used to work in a lab across from Claude Shannon’s office. Information theory, correctly understood, does not support God. In fact it rather refutes it. If God is omniscient, this knowledge would take a lot of bits to store - where are they?
Let’s take the Flood. The Bible story leads to some direct predictions of what we should find. For instance, there should be no unbroken cultural record across the supposed time of the Flood. If you go to the Met in New York, you will see Chinese ceramics that are clearly related to each other which extend well before the flood was supposed to happen. While many cultures have flood legends, they are all different. There is no fossil record of deaths in the flood. And geology is against it. God stopped the Sun for Joshua - no one else on Earth noticed. There were supposed to be earthquakes and the dead walking at the time of the resurrection (or is it crucifixion - whatever.) No one in Jerusalem saw fit to write it down.. So the testable miracles are all floppos. And miracles are common ways to impress readers. Parson Weems had Washington heaving a dollar across the Potomac only 200 years ago, which would have been a miracle if it happened.
Sorry, anecdotes are anecdotes. When you look more closely these vanish into thin air. We need more hard evidence than this. Did you know that in the 1890s people all over the country saw cigar shaped airships, and even spoke to the pilot, who was from New England? As good or better evidence than for any of your stuff, even better than for UFOs. But it never really happened.
And you don’t understand coincidences well. As pTerry says, million to one shots happen nine times out of ten. Weird coincidences are inevitable given enough chances.
If I remember the last scientific study of prayer experiment, the prayed for got sicker. Whoops. And we know that monarchs, who got prayed for more than anyone else, had shorter life expectancies.
Santa did not create the world, and does not send us to heaven or condemn us to hell. He just brings presents. If he were God, he could just poof them into existence under the tree. Wouldn’t need elves either.
Again, what do you mean by macro-evolution? If it is a species diverging from a parent species so that they can no longer interbreed, we have lots of examples. Rats in California and rats in Boston from the same breeder even speciated after being separated. Once that happens there is nothing to stop them from diverging more. I trust you don’t mean dogs mutating into cats - that is just ignorant.
We know that everything written we do see came from other humans. Even the Bible came from humans - they were just supposedly inspired. If you want to demonstrate otherwise you need to provide lots of evidence. Now, if Genesis was totally accurate about the way the universe was actually created, that would be very interesting. But it is actually just what you’d expect from priests living 2700 years ago who didn’t have a clue about cosmology. Wouldn’t it be inspiring if the more we found out about the world the more the Bible was supported? But actually the more we find out about the world the less the Bible is supported. That should be a clue.
Bingo.
Some interpretations of God are impossible: specifically, the ones that include the word “infinite” in any concrete category. Infinitely powerful, infinitely knowing, infinitely loving, etc.
“Infinity” is not defined, nor definable, for concrete items. Even a God cannot live an infinite number of years, nor travel an infinite number of miles.
Scale him back, call him “Mighty,” and I will retreat to mere agnosticism. But the instant you decide that God is “infinite,” you have defined him right out of existence.
(And it doesn’t matter, anyway! If God has the power of 10^800 supernovas, that’s finite…and still so vast as to be functionally “infinite” for any useful purpose.)
This right here is your problem, there is no such thing as “Macro” or “Micro” evolution.
Funny, Macroevolution: Its definition, Philosophy and History says it does:
In evolutionary biology today, macroevolution is used to refer to any evolutionary change at or above the level of species.
Right, so I guess you need to give me the example. With that definition of macro-evolution, I really mean a bigger evolution, but don’t know what supposedly happened. So dogs don’t turn into cats, but what did happen? What is the “path” from the first living cell to humans?
Yes, I’ve studied it. Let’s just talk about the information theory, not biology. You actually think noise adds information? Noise corrupts information, and therefore limits channel capacity. Random noise is not information. Channel coding is designed to work in the presence of noise. Find me anything in communications that likes added noise.
Here is a less biased explanation of the differences between micro and macro evolution, complete with good examples of both.
So, lots of micro’s a macro make.
Pretty much.
Evidence for God? Creativity. Where does it come from? Even Christopher Hitchens had to concede that Creativity wasn’t something that one could measure in scientific terms. There has to be some sort of Divine mechanics. Creative thought just doesn’t materialize out of Thin air, that isn’t rationale.
So although there are lots of reasons to reject organized religion, I’ve yet to read an argument from an athesist that gives credibility to a man made rationalization for Creativity.
God Of The Gaps again? That’s just the lazy way out.
You’re mixing up the concept of the information carrying capacity of a communications channel, and the amount of information that is in a set of data. You had originally asked about the information contained in the DNA data set, but you’re objecting based on Shannon communications concepts, and those just don’t apply to this question.
Imagine you have a set of data with X bits of information. If you want to communicate this information to somewhere else, you need a channel, and the channel will have a capacity of the number of bits per second that it can carry. If you add noise to the channel, it will have a lower capacity and will take longer to communicate the X bits of information, but that has nothing to do with the question here, which is the number of bits that are in X in the first place.
You asked how mutations can increase the amount of information in a data set. Here’s how. Let’s say you start with some data file, such as a large text file. If you ask how much information is in that text file, it will be quite a bit smaller than the file space that it takes up, because text is usually very compressible. Let’s call the amount of information in this text file X bits.
Now imagine modifying that text file - you take a section of its data and substitute randomness. Does this modified data file have more information than the original, or less? The answer is that it almost certainly will have more information, because randomness is unpredictable and can’t be compressed, and will therefore take longer to communicate over any given channel.
That’s how adding randomness can increase the information content in a set of data.
It’s not for me to prove GOD or the divine exists. It’s up to the naysayers to prove where Creativity comes from.
No, that would be evidence for Muses.
It would rather be evidence for polytheism instead of the god featured in the bible.