A good reason to improve our understanding of these things don't you think? I certainly don't have all the answers and to pretend to . . . so what are you saying? . . . everything is so complicated there's no point in even trying to understand it? I don't get your point.
Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.
by nicolaou 122 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Terry
Let's almost change the subject by changing the RESULT of the subject, okay?
Who is HAPPIER in life? The person who KNOWS (thinks they know) somebody (God) is in charge of the universe...or...the person
who KNOWS (thinks they know) there is nobody (God) in charge except blind forces?
Would you rather be HAPPY and wrong or UNHAPPY and right?
Before you answer.....
Happy life based on delusion is still Happy life.
No all of the above may seem rather beside the point in such a discussion of "Design" and refuting belief. But, personally, I think
information without context is useless.
The old man spending his last few days in a hospital bed who believes he is going to join his loved ones in heaven cannot help but be
in a better state of mind than the old man dying without any belief in an afterlife.
I think we can agree that being RIGHT is beside the point in those precious moments.
In the final analysis, we are EMOTIONAL creatures because we FEEL about what we THINK.
We are actually able to change how we feel by changing how we think.
Can we blame humanity for coming up with ideas that make them happy about dying?
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sizemik
Who is HAPPIER in life? The person who KNOWS (thinks they know) somebody (God) is in charge of the universe...or...the person who KNOWS (thinks they know) there is nobody (God) in charge except blind forces?
Fair question Terry . . . except you left out one category . . . the one who thinks there is inadequate proof to make a decisive commitment to either . . . and is more than happy in life or death, to make allowance for the unknown.
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Terry
Who is HAPPIER in life? The person who KNOWS (thinks they know) somebody (God) is in charge of the universe...or...the person who KNOWS (thinks they know) there is nobody (God) in charge except blind forces?
Fair question Terry . . . except you left out one category . . . the one who thinks there is inadequate proof to make a decisive commitment to either . . . and is more than happy in life or death, to make allowance for the unknown.
Well, Nature abhors a vacuum. We FILL life with meaning.
We find it difficult to commit to mere nothing.
It is easier to be AGAINST somebody else's something than our mere nothing.
So, I doubt a person can actually attach HAPPINESS to the vacuum of "allowance for the unknown."
Usually, we just make something up and try to prove it is correct. (Filtering.)
Think of the example of the couple who go together for years without commiting to marriage.
Marriage is officially commiting to the "other" with a promise of fidelity to that one, exceptional thing.
NOT commiting demonstrates little and robs the relationship of everything that carries "meaning."
The couple who does not commit and the couple who does commit are different sides of the same coin.
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nicolaou
Hoffnung, you are asking questions and following the debate, I wish more believers were like you. As for the anthropic principle being 'bollocks', well it's a hypothesis and one with merit.
But look at it this way. Non-believers like myself would love to find the answer to the question; 'How did life begin'? We don't have an answer yet but at least the Anthropic Principle has been offered up for discussion. I find it promising, after all it only needs to explain the tiniest, simplest most rudimentary spark of cellular life and evolutionary theory successfully takes over from there.
For believers on the other hand the answer to the question; 'How did life begin'? is far more complex. Your 'original life' isn't a dirty, microscopic smudge of cells, it's an awesome, all-powerful, super-intelligent, universe-creating, GOD!!
You are of course, free to call the Anthropic Principle 'bollocks' but at least you've been offered a possible explanation for the origin of life. To the best of my knowledge the same offer has never been made by religious folk to explain god's existence.
Good luck with your journey . . .
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bohm
PP:
With so many egg heads on show this evening, doesnt it all boil down to faith ?
no, it boil down to evidence.
Faith in the obvious ,design,
step 1: assert blind belief not based on evidence in the conclusion. claim this is obvious (oh how convenient...).
The human brain is by far the most complicated living machine that has ever existed, with more nueral connections, than all the supercomputers ever made,
computers contain no neurons.
and most here say CHANCE,
look. noone say chance. Most say evolution, and a few say creation. NOONE SAYS CHANCE! Moreover, YOU know nobody propose chance, I know that YOU know nobody propose chance, so why are you telling such an obvious untruth?
It seem endlessly queer to me that you imagine your God look down on you from the sky and are happy that you are telling such an obvious untruth simply to score a point in a debate.
Or rather, to make yourself feel better because you have said something you think sound superficially smart, while we both know you are simply spreading propaganda which do not represent anyones belief.
Im sorry if i sound hard, but you got to understand that unless you are willing to take the other side serious to the point you will not claim he/she believe things that you know are not true, you cannot be expected to be taken serious either.
If i went about claiming you did not believe in eg. mutations, sexual recombination or said something equally inane, well, eventually it would make you think i was being delibrately stupid for saying a thing i knew not to be true just to make you look silly.
yet WE as mini gods spout of here as if we had the answers.
no, when we look at the evidence, it suggest the brain evolved, and we go with the evidence over blind faith. Its that simple.
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Hoffnung
What happened when this "one chance in a billion" took place?
What were the chemical, fysical, electrical, thermodynamic processes behind it? Why is nothing spontaneously like that ever duplicated in a lab?
energy transportation is not the same as life. The spontaneous formation of a complicated molecule like DNA, however small the chance of this happening, does not bring anything to life.
one chance in a billion explains nothing. It's a theory like the designer theory with it's own merits and problems. up for everybody to believe or to reject, usually depending on your agenda and religious or atheist past and present beliefs.
I lost my religion. I have no agenda. I just want to know.
Before I forget, I would like to thank Nickolas for taking the time to give us the excerpt out of Dawkins book.
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Hoffnung
The reason I am in favor for the designer theory, is that I am a technician and have come across many complex systems. When I compare these with the systems in nature, every logic thinking vibe in me is obliged to see a great designer behind it all. Mere coincidence does not create or design anything, definitely no complex life systems.
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Nickolas
Mere coincidence does not create or design anything, definitely no complex life systems.
And you are absolutely right.
I do perceive that you are an honest seeker, Hoffnung. Sometimes, and I know this from frequent personal experience, something can be staring me in the face and I cannot see it. I stare back at it while it patiently stares at me and it is still invisible to me. However, if I persist, over time I will almost always perceive a glimmer of it and then I am prodded on to see more. An outline forms and then comes basic understanding from whence greater understanding manifests itself. And then I invariably wonder why I was unable to see it in the first place.
Chance speaks to statistical probability. If one operates from the basic principle that it is very, very, very improbable that life spontaneously generated as a self replicating protein molecule, he is left with two options. Chance and God. If not God, then what is the probability that all the conditions of which you speak that are prerequisites for supporting life, let alone generate it spontaneously, could exist at all? The anthropic principle posits that that probability cannot be zero, since we are here. But we must acknowledge that it still must be a very, very small probability indeed. So, we ask ourselves the question are there sufficiently diverse states of matter in the universe, or even in a tiny portion of it like the Milky Way, such that that tiny probability just might be satisfied, and we have to answer yes. We may never be able to replicate those conditions in the laboratory, anymore than we can replicate the conditions of anything that requires the scale of a solar system to replicate.
It is correctly argued from a statistical perspective that chance, within the context of the evolution of living organisms, is not a feasible solution. It would be almost infinitely improbable, virtually zero. Nor, however, is God a feasible solution, because from a statistical perspective God redoubles the problem. If it is statistically improbable that a complete butterfly came into existence by chance, it is even more statistically improbable that God (who must be a very complex being, almost infinitely complex) came into existence by chance. The only feasible solution ever offered for the existence of complex life is slow evolution through natural selection, starting with very simple beginnings and the accumulation of small, slightly improbable, changes. I could almost capitalise those two words, Natural Selection, because here is where there is a glimmer of understanding to be found. The first thing that needs to be understood about natural selection is it is the very opposite of chance. Start there.
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sizemik
Interesting to read your response Terry. But we are not interpreting each others words.
Well, Nature abhors a vacuum. We FILL life with meaning.
I was referring to belief in God . . . not life having meaning. Allowance for the unknown as regards the existence of God is not the same as a vacuum for me. My life is full of meaning
We find it difficult to commit to mere nothing.
I am committed to a great many things. Not committing to a stance on whether or not God exist doesn't translate into being committed to mere nothing
It is easier to be AGAINST somebody else's something than our mere nothing.
I'm not against anybodies anything, just because I might put what I understand or percieve alongside their something. Comparing current understandings, albeit different, helps me to progress my understanding . . . and maybe theirs. It doesn't require a committed belief or an adversarial approach to achieve this necessarily. Being committed by belief without substance and defending a weak argument dogmatically is a hindrance when the mind is closed on the matter.
So, I doubt a person can actually attach HAPPINESS to the vacuum of "allowance for the unknown."
I make a generous allowance for the unknown . . . and endeavour to know more of course, but I am also very happy . . . and don't attach the two' or make one dependent on the other. Happiness isn't reliant on knowing everything for me.
Usually, we just make something up and try to prove it is correct. (Filtering.)
I guess you may mean forming a hypothesis and then testing it's validity? . . . yes, I do that. Through seeking known facts and understanding the current thinking of others . . . some real gems can be found in the minds of other men. Imagination is also a wonderful tool. I refrain from making commitments to beliefs however . . . and prefer to work with liklihoods based on known facts which is a constantly evolving process. Learning and progressing in understanding is a journey for me . . . rather than a destination.
I don't consider commitment in a marriage relationship to be fully compatible, as a metaphor for commitment to a belief in the existence of God, for a whole host of reasons.