894 replies to this topic

[Michael Hardner]

Isn't that the whole point? Of course it's illogical. It's totally absurd that the universe would start that way!
That's what evolution and BIg Bang is trying to tell us. In fact the odds are better that Charles' watch would be put together that way than that of the universe.

It's illogical to say we don't know ? I think it's more illogical to say that an unproven factor absolutely did create all of this.

[betsy]

It's illogical to say we don't know ? I think it's more illogical to say that an unproven factor absolutely did create all of this.

You're right that we don't know....meaning you and I. But cosmologists have shown that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe had a beginning. The popular theory for so long was the universe has always been there, but they abandoned that notion in the face of the overwhelming evidence against it.

As to the watch analogy is meant to show the absurdity of life beginning from nothing on its own. My mistake. It of course applies to the beginning to life, not the beginning of the universe. That is not to say that the universe and life didn't begin together relatively speaking.

[Michael Hardner]

You're right that we don't know....meaning you and I. But cosmologists have shown that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe had a beginning. The popular theory for so long was the universe has always been there, but they abandoned that notion in the face of the overwhelming evidence against it.

I think you're talking about the big bang.

As to the watch analogy is meant to show the absurdity of life beginning from nothing on its own. My mistake. It of course applies to the beginning to life, not the beginning of the universe. That is not to say that the universe and life didn't begin together relatively speaking.

There's no "from nothing". They don't know what happened to cause the big bang, but that's not to say there was nothing before the big bang.

Again - we don't know. Some believe ancient tales of a omnipresent God who set it all up. They have no evidence, only faith. Others prefer to believe evidence.

[Jack Weber]

Betsy is the internet's answer to that wild-eyed dude who stands on the street corner and hands out Jack Chick tracts.

The easiest way to be left alone is to just take one, nod and smile, and move along quickly.


-k

What are "Jack Chick" tracts??

Are they tracts of land?

[dre]

As the title declares, this topic refuses to go away.

We really need a facepalm icon...

[Wild Bill]

What's illogical about the analogy?

Well, for a start, that watch did NOT come to happen in a quick explosion. We had the explosion and it took about 11 BILLION YEARS of things coming together to make that watch happen!

Moreoever, while the creation of life took the larger first part of those 11 billion years, once it happened things were no longer entirely random. Some things work better than others once the groundwork has been prepared. Once mankind came on the picture, things started to develop at a HUGELY faster rate! We went from sundials to inventing that watch within a couple of hundred years, because there were all sorts of people all over the place busy inventing and developing all the pieces necessary to make that watch.

This is MUCH different than your analogy paints!

There are other points to argue as well but those aren't the real issue anyway. It's been my experience over the years that those who favour Intelligent Design are guilty of trying to have things both ways, eating their cake and having it too. That's just illogical.

Why do I say that? First of all, virtually all of them are not just trying to prove the existence of God. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant to how the Universe came to be and how it works. It is what it is and we may never be capable of understanding all of it. The existence of God is not necessary to explain it. He may have started it all off or it may have been random chance. The result is the same.

No, what the proponents of Intelligent Design seem always to be pushing, once you scratch the surface of their arguments, is a literal acceptance not just of their Faith but of their interpretation of their Bible. They don't just want God to be accepted as real and the Creator of the Universe. They want it accepted that he did it the way THEY say He did! No evolution, no dinosaurs, just Adam and Eve chomping apples in some mythical garden.

This idea of telling God how he did his works has always struck me as incredibly arrogant and presumptuous! A bunch of people barely out of the caves, wearing skins and scratching their asses come up with some stories to explain how the universe came to be and a few thousand years later their descendants are still taking it as truth and gospel!

If someone wants a discussion solely and only about the possibility of a Prime Mover I could enjoy it. What I can't abide is someone who really just wants to use that idea to get his foot in the door to justify his collection of tribal myths and fantasies that outright contradict the evidence that Science keeps discovering every day!

Science does not contradict ANYTHING on how a God may have created the Universe and set up its Laws of Operation! The only contradictions are with what some people chose to believe in ADVANCE of those discoveries!

To put my own views more succinctly Betsy, although I personally am a 'devout agnostic' I can get along with someone who believes in a God just fine!

What I can't abide is someone who rejects the continuing unfolding of evidence as to how the Universe began and endures because he feels that his simplistic little book of myths has given him all the answers, somehow making it unnecessary for him to actually learn any Science, Math or Physics!

It's no shame to be ignorant or math challenged, but it is a shame to use some prop to be arrogant!

[dre]

That whole big bang thing is just so far fetched!

We need a reasonable expanation! Like...

A cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...



Say WHAT?

Edited by dre, 30 January 2011 - 02:26 PM.

[BubberMiley]

What are "Jack Chick" tracts??

Are they tracts of land?

They're very entertaining little comic books that are conveniently left lying around on buses and in restaurants or handed out by true-believers.
I used to collect them in my youth. My favourite was the Dungeons and Dragons one.
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

[Mr.Canada]

Perhaps God created the big bang theory for us to better understand Him and His work.

Serving God is the reason for our existence, everything else is sin.

Edited by Mr.Canada, 30 January 2011 - 02:45 PM.

[Wild Bill]

Perhaps God created the big bang theory for us to better understand Him and His work.

Serving God is the reason for our existence, everything else is sin.

Did you read my post? Maybe He did, maybe he didn't. We don't know.

Doesn't matter, 'cuz that's not the real argument the Intelligent Designers are pushing anyway. They reject the idea of a Big Bang for one reason only - it contradicts the stories from Genesis that they've already chosen to believe.

The "Church of the Presumptuous Assumption", if you like.

[Jack Weber]

Did you read my post? Maybe He did, maybe he didn't. We don't know.

Doesn't matter, 'cuz that's not the real argument the Intelligent Designers are pushing anyway. They reject the idea of a Big Bang for one reason only - it contradicts the stories from Genesis that they've already chosen to believe.

The "Church of the Presumptuous Assumption", if you like.

I reject the Big Bang theory because of the odds in the Cosmic Casino...

Sucker bet....

[dre]

I reject the Big Bang theory because of the odds in the Cosmic Casino...

Sucker bet....

The odds are actually seem excellent to me, and I would wager that theres billions of other life forms in the universe that were also created the same way.

Mostly though I reject creationism because its intellectually lazy. Science in this area is certainly lacking, and humans are no better equipped to understand these things, than a fish whos entire universe is an aquarium is. I guess to them the relatively gigantic and omnipotent beings that they can see moving around on the other side of the glass must be "god".

But it represents our best efforts to actually do the hard work required to maybe one day understand more, instead of just lazily declaring... "it must have been god".

If theres some sort of consciousness involved then maybe one day well figure that out, but in the mean time all you have is very wild guesses that arent really based on anything besides what some other humans told you.

[dre]

Perhaps God created the big bang theory for us to better understand Him and His work.

Yup! Perhaps red headed midget amputee riding a bright orange tricycle did too!

Serving God is the reason for our existence, everything else is sin.

Preposterious. Thats an entirely human construct thats relatively well understood. Whether or not a diety exists we know that human religions, and the various aspects and mythologies involved are bunk. We know what human religions are, how theyve evolved, and why they form. If there IS a conscious entity driving the universe then it most certainly has nothing to do with any human religions which again are entirely human constructs that we have a habit of inventing.

[CANADIEN]

Genesis... what a wonderful METAPHOR on the origin of the Universe and our own...

Edited by CANADIEN, 30 January 2011 - 04:03 PM.

[betsy]

Well, for a start, that watch did NOT come to happen in a quick explosion. We had the explosion and it took about 11 BILLION YEARS of things coming together to make that watch happen!

Moreoever, while the creation of life took the larger first part of those 11 billion years, once it happened things were no longer entirely random. Some things work better than others once the groundwork has been prepared. Once mankind came on the picture, things started to develop at a HUGELY faster rate! We went from sundials to inventing that watch within a couple of hundred years, because there were all sorts of people all over the place busy inventing and developing all the pieces necessary to make that watch.

This is MUCH different than your analogy paints!

There are other points to argue as well but those aren't the real issue anyway. It's been my experience over the years that those who favour Intelligent Design are guilty of trying to have things both ways, eating their cake and having it too. That's just illogical.

Why do I say that? First of all, virtually all of them are not just trying to prove the existence of God. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant to how the Universe came to be and how it works. It is what it is and we may never be capable of understanding all of it. The existence of God is not necessary to explain it. He may have started it all off or it may have been random chance. The result is the same.

No, what the proponents of Intelligent Design seem always to be pushing, once you scratch the surface of their arguments, is a literal acceptance not just of their Faith but of their interpretation of their Bible. They don't just want God to be accepted as real and the Creator of the Universe. They want it accepted that he did it the way THEY say He did! No evolution, no dinosaurs, just Adam and Eve chomping apples in some mythical garden.

This idea of telling God how he did his works has always struck me as incredibly arrogant and presumptuous! A bunch of people barely out of the caves, wearing skins and scratching their asses come up with some stories to explain how the universe came to be and a few thousand years later their descendants are still taking it as truth and gospel!

If someone wants a discussion solely and only about the possibility of a Prime Mover I could enjoy it. What I can't abide is someone who really just wants to use that idea to get his foot in the door to justify his collection of tribal myths and fantasies that outright contradict the evidence that Science keeps discovering every day!

Science does not contradict ANYTHING on how a God may have created the Universe and set up its Laws of Operation! The only contradictions are with what some people chose to believe in ADVANCE of those discoveries!

To put my own views more succinctly Betsy, although I personally am a 'devout agnostic' I can get along with someone who believes in a God just fine!

What I can't abide is someone who rejects the continuing unfolding of evidence as to how the Universe began and endures because he feels that his simplistic little book of myths has given him all the answers, somehow making it unnecessary for him to actually learn any Science, Math or Physics!

It's no shame to be ignorant or math challenged, but it is a shame to use some prop to be arrogant!

You should cite your sources. Most of us have already read Dawkins et al. The mantra is becoming tiresome. If they're not prepared to provide reasonable evidence that God does not exist, they should at least provide reasonable evidence to support their theories as to how the universe and life did begin. It's really not my concern whether they believe in God - what they believe doesn't change the truth. But atheists should accept the fact that their god - science - is turning on them. he is showing them that the universe did begin. It hasn't always been there. he even lets them call it the "big bang."

As for the evolutionary theories, they would've been dropped a hundred years ago had atheists not been so determined to avoid God. Just come up with a viable theory to explain how life began, never mind God. That's all that's required of atheists.