First Cause cannot prove god.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
Ed: (on breeding striped and spotted cows in Genesis)
As I stated to LP that was a supernatural event and not a treatise on genetics. There are no passages in the bible about genetics.

lp: If that bit of genetic engineering is a miracle, it is not presented as one in the Bible; in fact, it's only one example of an old bit of folklore: maternal impressions. Lamarckism has been around much longer than poor old Lamarck.[/b]

While Jacob was showing a lack of faith by trusting in an old wives tale, God had promised to bless him and God keeps his promises.


Ed:
Maybe creation week occurred 15 billion years ago or maybe the processes of Genesis 1:1 took 14 billion years or more and then creation week occurred. The bible doesnt say how long it took for God to create "the heavens and the earth".

lp: Very ingenious. But it would be easier to regard Genesis 1 as comparable to the Earth's four corners in the Book of Revelation.

No, Revelation is apocaplyptic literature, Genesis is not. Also, four corners just means all four geographic regions. It does not mean that there are actual corners on the earth.



Ed:
A global flood which gradually overcame first the sea and then the land explains the primary order of major groups in the fossil record (sea to land)just as well as macroevolutionary theory. ...

lp: Flood Geology is long-discredited sauropod dung. There is zero evidence for anything like Noah's Flood in the last 400 million years -- at least. It would have left some big mixed-up sediment deposits, which are simply not found. Instead, the sediment deposits form nice layers with specific fossils, which correlate nicely across the globe. Ed, I suggest that you study some geology before sounding off on this subject.

Maybe not, given that the flood only lasted a year, if it occurred 400 million years ago there may not be much evidence left after millions of years of erosion and etc. If you mix different soil types in jar full of water and shake it up the soil granules nicely segregate into strata. Just like the flood. Go ahead try it sometime with your children.

lp: Furthermore, Genesis 1 gets a lot of the appearance order just plain wrong; it states that flying animals came before land ones, and that angiosperms (fruit trees, etc.) came before land animals.

Their position in the fossil record could be because of their greater ability to avoid the flood. And fruit trees usually occur in the lower elevation ecosystems so it would expected that land animals would be further up in the strata.

lp: Also, the sea-to-land order is a natural result of origin in bodies of water; living on land requires lots of adaptations to slow down water loss while doing gas exchange with the air. Thus, sea before land qualifies as a lucky hit.

Maybe, maybe not.


Ed: (on divergence from some long-ago ancestor)
Such a reason for the diversification of language cannot be discovered just by studying language itself.

lp: On the contrary, it is a reasonable extrapolation from the recorded history of human languages. I suggest that you try comparing Latin and the Romance languages some time.

No, you misunderstood. I was referring to the act of God of changing the languages. This would not show up in an extrapolation of historical languages.



Ed:
From a biologist's perspective viruses are obviously not alive. Only to those not very familiar with biology think viruses might be alive. The 7 main characteristics of life from BIO 101 are:
1. Living things are highly ordered.
2. Living things take energy from their environment.
3. Living things respond actively to their environment.
4. Living things are adapted to their environment.
5. Living things develop (development is not the same thing as change).
6. Living things reproduce themselves.
7. The information that each organism needs to survive, develop, and reproduce is segregated within the organism and passed on to its offspring.


lp: These 7 attributes describe viruses multiplying inside their host cells; outside those cells, viruses are inactive.

No, viruses are not highly ordered. They are just a fragment of DNA in a protein coating. Viruses do not take energy from their environment. Also viruses do not develop. So viruses only have four of the characteristics of life so most of the evidence points to them not being alive, given that the 3 that they lack are some of the most important.



Ed: (on Louis Pasteur)
In other words he disproved abiogenesis.

lp: Sheesh, Ed, what will it take to show you that Louis Pasteur had done no such thing? Here's an analogy:

Let's say that you are concerned with the color of crows. Every one you have ever seen is black, but only one white crow is necessary to show that this is not a universal rule. Louis Pasteur is like a careful birdwatcher in your neighborhood who only records the colors of well-illuminated crows in full view. But he has not seen all the world, and there might be some distant place where there are some white crows.

Well maybe he didnt disprove it, but in conjunction with all the modern evidence discovered against abiogenesis, his work is one more strike against it.


Ed:
No, theoretically anything is possible, but some theories are more logical than others and claiming that somehow the impersonal can produce the personal is illogical.

lp: You haven't explained why, Ed.

Because it has never been observed throughout all of human experience.



Ed:
Persons have a mind, will, and conscience, non-persons don't.

lp: However, mind, will, and conscience develop as each individual grows; does a fertilized egg cell have any of these?

It has them in potential form. And in addition it contains a complex languagelike code(DNA), which throughout all of human experience only minds have produced complex codes.



Ed:
I am referring to the ultimate cause not the process by which the effect was achieved. God may have guided or intervened at times in evolution to produce persons and part of that guidance may have resulted in animals that have aspects of personhood.


lp: Extraterrestrial visitors or time travelers could also have done that. And many of the features of Earth life could be due to their limited powers and even fallibility ("Why did you make Earth life dependent on something rare like phosphorus?" "Putting phosphorus in nucleic acids seemed like a good idea at the time.").

Extraterrestrials or time travelers are personal beings also, so the ultimate cause's characteristics would still stand.

lp: If there is any positive evidence for any such designing going on. Which there isn't.

Actually there is, see above about the existence of a complex languagelike code.


Ed: (responding to Rimstalker's list of Biblical atrocities...)
All human beings have an innate desire to rebel against the true God.

lp: This is so harebrained that I'm at a loss for words. I'm a creator of programs, and I try to make them faithfully obedient. As to free will, read what Jesus Christ said about removing parts of one's body that lead one astray. By extension, if free will causes wicked behavior, then get rid of it.

Free will doesnt cause wicked behavior, humans using their free will cause wicked behavior.



Ed:
God probably was rescuing the babies from going to hell before their later more serious behavior kicked in as adults raised in a barbarous society.

lp: It might be better to keep people from creating "barbarous societies". I do that all the time with all the software that I create.

That would take away our freedom.



Ed:
The destruction of animals was an unfortunate side effect of man's rebellion against God.

lp: As if God was not capable of saving them. :-P

Of course, he was capable of saving them but in order to show to man what horrible things sin can result in he allowed it to happen.


Ed:
God was demonstrating the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion. The prophet was God's representative on earth, it is as though they were mocking God himself.

lp: So God has a skin thinner than Kleenex?

No, that is the way the universe is ordered, rebellion against God usually has serious natural and supernatural consequences.


[b]
Ed:
No women were taken as playthings by hebrew soldiers. They became wives of hebrew soldiers because being a single woman in ancient times was basically an invitation to be raped or dying from starvation. So by becoming their wives they were given safe and secure lives with food and the chance to have children in a more humane society than the one they had lived in.

lp: What an absurd fantasy. That's like saying that the Japanese armed forces in WWII had done a favor to some 200,000 "comfort women" by giving them employment and protection in exchange for them sexually servicing Japan's troops. Does Ed agree?
</strong>

There are major differences between being a wife in ancient Israel and involuntary prostitution. The ancient jews had to conform to the golden rule for one big difference.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Maybe not, given that the flood only lasted a year, if it occurred 400 million years ago there may not be much evidence left after millions of years of erosion and etc. If you mix different soil types in jar full of water and shake it up the soil granules nicely segregate into strata. Just like the flood. Go ahead try it sometime with your children...

...Their position in the fossil record could be because of their greater ability to avoid the flood. And fruit trees usually occur in the lower elevation ecosystems so it would expected that land animals would be further up in the strata.
Ed, this is a REPETITION of what I said earlier on this subject:
Again, repeating this claim doesn't make it true.

Ed, let's see how your theory addresses the following issues:

1. The complete separation of dinosaurs and modern mammals. No dinosaur, not even the fastest of them, made it past the 65 million year point. With the exception of a few rodentlike critters, not a single mammal failed to make it: not a single cow, sloth, rhino, anteater, elephant. Even GRASS managed to run to higher ground: not a single blade of grass or spore of grass pollen was left behind with the dinosaurs.

2. The extension of this separation into the oceans. Where the dinosaurs stopped, so did the great marine reptiles: plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs, mosasaurs. Not one of them got past this barrier, and not a single marine mammal failed to make it: not a single whale, dolphin, manatee, walrus.

3. The faking of the geological evidence. An unbroken series of annual ice layers in Greenland and Antarctica, and sediment layers in lakes (varves), undisturbed for hundreds of millennia. No trace of the massive runoff channels which the waters of the Great Flood must have carved out. Delicate structures carved by millions of years of wind erosion in places like the Grand Canyon, which couldn't possibly survive in torrents of water.

4. From the Bible's genealgies, the Great Flood happened around 2500 BC. We have written records from civilizations before and after this date: civilizations unaffected by the Flood (and written in languages unaffected by the Tower of Babel incident a few centuries later).
..."Fruit trees usually occur in the lower elevation ecosystems", but GRASS does not??? And even grass pollen grains all fled to higher ground???

Ed, it is perfectly obvious to everyone else here that you have LOST this argument. So why do you continue with this BS?

I suspect that you know that the whole Flood story is basically crap, and you're continuing this head-in-the-sand denial to hold back the terrible reality that's about to crash in on you: the knowledge that the Bible is false.

You've been living in a dream, Ed. It's time to wake up now.

[LinuxPup]

Not that this has to do with the First Cause argument, but anyways, I guess I would disagree with both of you. I believe the Bible's flood story, but I don't think that it covered the earth. Not only because of the lack of physical evidence, but because the Bible leans towards a local one. Psalms 104 says that the waters would not come back to cover the face of the earth after Day 3 of creation. One of the better explanations of a local flood interpretation of Genesis is found here:
<a href="http://www.reasons.org/resources/books/genesisquestion/gq18.html" target="_blank">http://www.reasons.org/resources/books/genesisquestion/gq18.html</a>

I really suggest reading it.

[lpetrich]

LP: But it would be easier to regard Genesis 1 as comparable to the Earth's four corners in the Book of Revelation.
Ed:
No, Revelation is apocaplyptic literature, Genesis is not. Also, four corners just means all four geographic regions. It does not mean that there are actual corners on the earth.


What difference does being "apocalyptic literature" make? But all the translations I've seen say "corners" instead of "regions". And it also states that angels were holding back the winds, so no wind was blowing.

However, we now know that winds are produced by other causes, such as some parts of the Earth being hotter than others.


Ed:
Maybe not, given that the flood only lasted a year, if it occurred 400 million years ago there may not be much evidence left after millions of years of erosion and etc.


However, humanity simply did not exist back then -- there are no human remains except in VERY young rocks (young by geological standards), and the older such remains have a suspiciously half-simian appearance.

And if that flood had not left much evidence, then that is conceding that Noah's Flood was the cause of essentially none of the rocks.


If you mix different soil types in jar full of water and shake it up the soil granules nicely segregate into strata. Just like the flood.


However, there is a lot of ordering that simply does not fit into the single-flood theory. For example, the Grand Canyon has a variety of rock types in no special order; sandstone, limestone, and shale alternate in rather irregular fashion. And to claim that it is all due to a single flood directly contradicts the claim earlier that Noah's Flood had left little evidence behind.


LP: (fruit trees, then flying animals, then land animals)
Ed:
Their position in the fossil record could be because of their greater ability to avoid the flood. And fruit trees usually occur in the lower elevation ecosystems so it would expected that land animals would be further up in the strata.


Ed has just contradicted himself, because what he claims would require ALL the sediments of the last 300 million years or so to be due to Noah's Flood. Furthermore, there are plenty of slowpoke marine animals, like clams, in high layers.


Ed:
No, viruses are not highly ordered. ...


In a relative sense, perhaps; depends on what counts as being "highly ordered."


Ed:
No, theoretically anything is possible, but some theories are more logical than others and claiming that somehow the impersonal can produce the personal is illogical.
lp: You haven't explained why, Ed.
Ed:
Because it has never been observed throughout all of human experience.


As have many other things whose existence is inferred. Ed, I don't see you kvetching that Laurasia or Gondwana or Pangea or Rodinia have never been observed.


Ed on egg cells: And in addition it contains a complex languagelike code(DNA), which throughout all of human experience only minds have produced complex codes.


However, DNA -&gt; protein is actually a rather simple sort of code: 3 nucleic-acid bases -&gt; 1 amino acid. But regulation and development control are much more complicated.

And if a mind had done it, how can we be sure that it was not an extraterrestrial visitor that had done it? How can we be sure that no other place in the Universe is inhabited?


Ed:
Extraterrestrials or time travelers are personal beings also, so the ultimate cause's characteristics would still stand.


However, time travelers can be part of a closed causal loop; they can cause their own existence.


Ed:
Free will doesnt cause wicked behavior, humans using their free will cause wicked behavior.


But free will enables it.


Ed:
God probably was rescuing the babies from going to hell before their later more serious behavior kicked in as adults raised in a barbarous society.
lp: It might be better to keep people from creating "barbarous societies". I do that all the time with all the software that I create.
Ed:
That would take away our freedom.


I don't care; you are dragging in irrelevancies.


Ed:
The destruction of animals was an unfortunate side effect of man's rebellion against God.
lp: As if God was not capable of saving them. :p
Ed:
Of course, he was capable of saving them but in order to show to man what horrible things sin can result in he allowed it to happen.


An omnipotent being could save Itself a lot of trouble by creating entities incapable of sinning.


(On Midianite "Comfort Women"...)
Ed:
There are major differences between being a wife in ancient Israel and involuntary prostitution. The ancient jews had to conform to the golden rule for one big difference.


There was no serious enforcement of that rule, however.

This reminds me of one clergyman's response to Tom Paine on this subject -- that those young ladies were not going to be used for "immoral" purposes, but would instead become slaves, to which, he claimed, there was no ethical objection.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless:
<strong>
Ed: helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings. Therefore the cause must also be sufficient to produce those things also.
Rim:More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Ed: Ok, give an example where helium and hydrogen were empirically observed producing a living thing.


Let's try a few more examples of this fallacious argument.

Ed (hypothetically): Granite is inadequate to produce a twelve foot tall statue of Woody Allen.
Rim (hypothetically): More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Ed (hypothetically): Ok, give an example where granite has been empirically observed being carved into a twelve foot tall statue of Woody Allen.


Another:

Ed (hypothetically): A hammer is an inadequate weapon to assassinate a President of the United States.
Rim (hypothetically): More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Ed (hypothetically): Ok, give an example where a hammer has been empirically observed to kill a President of the United States.

Another:

Ed (hypothetically): A volcano is inadequate to produce a mountain like Vesuvius, even over millions of years.
Rim (hypothetically): More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Ed (hypothetically): Ok, give an example where a large mountain has been empirically observed being formed by a volcano over millions of years.

Jack: Ed, just because something hasn't been observed, that doesn't mean that it cannot happen! There are no known obstacles to the carving of a statue of Woody Allen, the killing of a President with a hammer, the formation of a volcanic mountain, or the evolution of humans on a planet formed from elements formed in stars formed from hydrogen and helium.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that these things cannot happen. If you wish to declare that such things are impossible, YOU must provide a REASON for this.
</strong>

Granite by itself IS inadequate to produce a statue. You need an intelligent creator. A hammer by itself IS inadequate to kill a president, it needs an intelligent murderer. Now volcanic activity utilizing simple geologic laws CAN produce a mountain without an intelligent creator. And in fact has been empirically observed doing so. Personal beings cannot be produced by any known natural laws and in fact have more in common with a carved statue and a planned murder with a hammer. And in both those cases an intelligence is required, and they are extremely simple compared to personal being, so therefore a personal being requires an intelligence even more so.

[Ed]

Originally posted by HRGruemm:
<strong>
Originally posted by Ed:
No, two rocks under a tree cannot be at the same place at the same time and in the same relationship (Law of Non-contradiction) whether or not a human is thinking about it or even whether any humans exist.

HRG:However, 1 mole of oxygen and 1 mole of nitrogen can be in the same place, since, unlike rocks, these gases will mix at any ratio. IOW, your statement about rocks is an empirical statement about the physics of rocks, and by no means an example of the law of non-contradiction.

The latter of course is based on the semantics of "and" and "not"; because of their truth tables, "A and not-A" always yields "false", whatever the truth value of A. It is that simple.

HRG.
</strong>

I am afraid you are confusing the structure of a solid as compared to a gas with laws of logic. The Law of Non-contradiction applies to both solids and gases. I could very well have used the example of one molecule of oxygen and one molecule of nitrogen under a tree. They cannot be at the same place at the same time and in the same relationship. I just used rocks because they are little easier to visualize. So my statement still stands that the laws of logic are part of the universe and are not made up by humans.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Granite by itself IS inadequate to produce a statue. You need an intelligent creator. A hammer by itself IS inadequate to kill a president, it needs an intelligent murderer.
And hydrogen and helium need the operation of various physical principles (gravity, nuclear fusion, chemistry) to produce a personal being. But not intelligence: all known intelligence is the end product of millions of years of evolution. If you wish to argue otherwise, please give an example of intelligence that has been observed to arise without evolution (even computer "artificial intelligence" is a product of OUR evolution).

Can a hammer kill a President if it falls off a high shelf?

Is a pretzel adequate to kill a President? Must it be planted by an Al-Quaeda terrorist to be effective?
Now volcanic activity utilizing simple geologic laws CAN produce a mountain without an intelligent creator. And in fact has been empirically observed doing so.
No mountain comparable in size to Vesuvius has ever been observed to form from a volcano. You're taking about "micro" mountain-building: "macro" mountain-building has never been observed, and is therefore impossible. Standard creationist logic.
Personal beings cannot be produced by any known natural laws...
Evolution, Ed. EVOLUTION. We already know (from computers) that evolutionary algorithms can solve problems intelligently. Evolution is sufficient to produce personal beings.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Jack the Bodiless ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
[QB]
Ed: As I stated to LP that was a supernatural event and not a treatise on genetics. There are no passages in the bible about genetics.

Rim: Just as there are no passages specifically on the Trinity, but you claim they are "implied?" We actually have very good examples of the Bible, as interpreted by standard Xian theology, indirectly contradicting genetics. For example, the idea that two humans, father and daughter, no less, sired the entire human race 6,000 years ago.[/b]

Actually there is evidence that we all descended from one woman, ie mitochondrial Eve. Again as I stated before, the scriptures do not tell us WHEN humans were created.



Ed: Maybe creation week occurred 15 billion years ago or maybe the processes of Genesis 1:1 took 14 billion years or more and then creation week occurred. The bible doesnt say how long it took for God to create "the heavens and the earth".

Rim: Sure it does: six days. Ed's fuzzy "day-age" arguments not only contradict themselves, but also betray just how desperate he is to salvage the Bible in the face of empirical evidence. He can't be serious about man being made six days after the BB, or that each "day" could be a billion year span and that the events in them are actually consistant with the evidence. If so, his crippling ignorance shines through as a beacon of stupidity to be avoided by thinking people everywhere. If Ed, or any other Xian, hopes to convince people of the Bible's relevance in a time when "revelation" is not longer the dominant paradign for finding out how the Universe works, he'll have to try harder. I doubt he will, though.


It is possible that there could be billions of years between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2.


Ed: A global flood which gradually overcame first the sea and then the land explains the primary order of major groups in the fossil record (sea to land)just as well as macroevolutionary theory.

Rim: Let's put aside the fact that this is pure, unadulterated horseshit that anyone with half a
brain cell and a knowledge of geology rightfully turns their nose up at. Let's unsheath good ole Occam's razor.
The Global Flood involves the entire surface of the Earth, up to the tallest mountains, being covered in water. Some questions arise: Does Ed know how much water would be required to do this? (Hint: A huge f___ lot!) Where the hell did it come from? Where the hell did it god? It sure as hell ain't here today! These questions can only be answered with supernatural non-explainations, and therefore get shaved away.

No need for the crudities and obscenities. That is a sign of a shallow thinker. Some scientists have proposed that there was a vapor canopy over the earth prior to the flood or that the water came from under the earth's crust.

Rim: For the education of the lurkers, here's a tiny list of problems with the Global Flood story. I hope someone gets something out of this. Ed probably won't bother to click on it, as knowledge gets in the way of his ability to make ignorant, unevidenced assertions.

I have looked at it and most of them can be reasonably explained.


Ed:
Such a reason for the diversification of language cannot be discovered just by studying language itself.

Rim: Here, we see Ed cowardly avoiding the issue of how modern linguistics is in no way compatible with the Tower of Babel story. It's too bad he doesn't have the balls (no offence to all the fine lady debaters here who don't engage in such shoddy practices) to deal with the actual thrust of my argument, and must instead misdirect the focus of the debate.

Modern linguistics says that there was originally one language, so does the scriptures. The fact of God causing the diversification of language cannot be discovered by studying language alone.



Ed: See my post to LP.

Rim: See him dismatle it piece by piece with logic.

Well he has yet to do it.

Ed:
&lt;Snip his definition of life&gt;

Rim: I'd like to know where you sourced that list. I don't recall a standard definition of what life is being issued by any conference of biologists. Further, this definition seems rather vague. Life must "develop," but that's not the same thing as "change?" That's a new one on me! (That is, that "development" is not "change") This seems to mark bacteria as non-living. After all, once a bacteria is spawned by mitosis, it doesn't "develop." It just goes around eating until it splits as well. Perhaps a concrete definition of "development" is in order, but I won't hold my breath. I know how hard it is for you to actually define something.

The list came from my old college Biology 101 textbook. Development is change but change is not always development. Yes, bacteria do not really develop, but I am not saying that some living things do not have every single characteristic, just most of them and nonliving things do not have most of them.


Ed:
In other words he disproved abiogenesis.

Rim: I suggest you carefully study the actual work of Louis Pasteur before twisting around his actual experimental results.

Well maybe disprove is too strong a word but it is just one piece of the evidence against abiogenesis.


Ed:
No, theoretically anything is possible, but some theories are more logical than others and claiming that somehow the impersonal can produce the personal is illogical.

Rim: Here we see Ed nitpicking to avoid the issue. I know full well about the open nature of "possibility," and I think Ed knows I know this. But by deliberately ignoring the eliptical nature of my statement, he can misrepresent my position with a needless nitpick and make me look the fool. I wonder why Ed feels the need to engage in such dishonest tactics... maybe it's because he knows how much his argument is failing.

Huh? How am I being dishonest? Some atheists erroneously believe that christians think that there is absolutely no possibility at all that God may not exist, I was just trying to correct that misperception.

Rim: Just to make sure you have no wiggle room, Ed, let me restate my counter-argument:

Ed: "It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point."

My respose: It is not irrational at all, as it is logically possible for something (i.e., the "impersonal," or a woman) to cause or produce something which is its opposite (i.e., the "personal," or a boy). Therefore, since it is both logically and theoretically possible for the impersonal to produce the personal, and since you have yet to actually define those things and show why there is a causal/developemtnal barrier between them, you have absolutely no argument whatsoever. So stop being a g__d__ pussy and pony up to my actual arguments.

No, your personhood is more fundamental than your gender. And since a woman with the help of a man's sperm is quite sufficient to produce a boy.
Your analogy fails. You need to provide an example where something is produced from something else that does not contain what is sufficient to produce that effect. Such an event would disprove the Law of Sufficient Cause thereby disproving my point. But of course, disproving the Law of Sufficient Cause would destroy science.

Ed:
Persons have a mind, will, and conscience, non-persons don't.

Rim: Please define these things, specifically, "will" and "conscience." The first is vague, the second's existance is in question.

Will is the power by which the mind decides upon and directs its energies to carry out an action, even actions that go against physical needs and desires. Your conscience is what helps you to determine right and wrong and makes you feel guilty when you violate it.

Ed:
See above about Mr. Pasteur.

Rim:See above about mirepresenting the actual findings of science through willful ignorance.

See above the softening of my words.

Ed:
I am referring to the ultimate cause not the process by which the effect was achieved. God may have guided or intervened at times in evolution to produce persons and part of that guidance may have resulted in animals that have aspects of personhood.

Rim: This is irrelevant. The fact that we don't have a sharp, fast-and-clear distinction between "personal" and "impersonal," but rather, we have varying levels or "shades" between them, and the fact that the more "primative," in an evolutionary sense, an animal is, the less "personality" it has, seems to suggest that "personality" is highly evolvable, and requires no divine assistance.

No, because more personality requires more genetic information, but natural selection by mutation is inadequate to increase information given that all studies so far show that mutation either maintains the status quo or results in a loss of information.

Rim: I also wonder about your views on evolution, specifically, why you seem to be comfortable invocing theistic evolution when convienient, day-age creationism when that's useful for you, and YEC literalism when put into a corner. Why don't you stick to one belief and stop arbitrarily adopting one or the other when it suits your fancy? How about some consistancy?

Because my post is primarily about the existence of the Christian God and the rationality of believing in him, not HOW he created the universe and life. Such a discussion belongs on another thread and I dont consider it of extreme importance.

Ed:
Nothing can be proven with absolute certainty except your own existence and that only to yourself.

Rim: More of Ed's classic nitpicking and misdirection. I wonder how much longer he can keep this up? I wonder if he knows, deep down in inside, that I meant "proof" beyond a reasonable doubt, that is, scientific proof, something with evidence to support it. Maybe he knows that he can't do this, and is stalling for time...

Well, Ed, consider yourself smoked out. Put up or shut up.

No, I was assuming that you like many atheists erroneously think Christians are claiming that they can prove God with absolute certainty.


Ed:
Just saying it is false doesn't mean that it is.

Rim: Of course not, you silly little jackass. But why it's so obvious to me that if you can't prove something irrational, it really isn't, and why this simple fact is not obvious to you baffles me. Oh, wait. The stupidity. Never mind.

I think I have shown it irrational or at the very least not as rational.


Ed:
Who said God is amoral? I said God has a moral character. In fact the foundation of morality is God's character. That is the point of my moral arguement.

Rim: No, it's lame-brained obfuscationism. Tell me: is God beyond the jurisdiction of his own morality?

I am not sure what you mean, please clarify.

Rim: Up next is an example one of the saddest spectacles in the world: theists trying to justify the barbarous, immoral actions of their monstrous, evil god. It's like the child of an alcoholic father making excuses for why his dad beats his mom and won't get a job. Except, whereas the child's situation is merely pitiable and tragic because an actual father exists to be rationalized, the theist's situation is also laughable, becuase their Middle-Eastern mythological sky-warrior Father God is a fiction. How truly sad, and funny, it is to see adults trying to justify the actions of a mythological villain as if he were a real being!

How do you determine what is immoral, barbarous and evil? Atheism does not provide a rational basis for making such judgements.


Ed:
All human beings have an innate desire to rebel against the true God.

Rim: Prove it, and then prove its relevance. And yes, just so you don't pussy out of this one again, that's "prove beyond a reasonable doubt, with evidence."

The evidence is the ignoring and rebelling against his moral law throughout all of human history.


Ed:
God probably was rescuing the babies from going to hell before their later more serious behavior kicked in as adults raised in a barbarous society.

Rim: This is one of the worst cases of cognitive dissonence I've ever seen. Only someone so blinded by their idiotic faith could see having a fetus ripped from it's mother's womb as "rescue." I'll bet Ed considers himself "pro-life."

Hey, doofus, why doesn't this omnipotent, all-merciful god try to, I don't know, reform the "barbarous" society they were living in, instead of annihilating it? Frankly, the idea of having your soldiers rip open the wombs of pregnant women is as barbarous as anything I can think of.

God NEVER commanded his people to rip babies from the wombs of pregnant women. This was done by the Assyrians.

Ed:
The destruction of animals was an unfortunate side effect of man's rebellion against God.

Rim: Ed seems to be unaware that "side-effects" are the result of fallible, limited beings trying to achive one goal, and mistakenly enacting another. I wonder if Ed really has such low esteem for his God's intellect as to presume that he didn't know before hand that innundating the entire Earth was going to kill an awful lot of animals, some with partial personalities.

No, he probably allowed it to show the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion against God's moral law so that man would never consider doing it again.


Ed:
God was demonstrating the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion.

Rim: ...which he surely would have know was going to happen anyway, and could have prevented entirely, right? I mean, you don't have to be omniscient to know that when you make something both mysterious and forbidden, kids (Adam and Eve) are going to want to play with it...

Adam and Eve were not kids, they had fully developed moral consciences, they knew what they were doing was wrong.
This is the end of part I of my response.

[Jack the Bodiless]

No, because more personality requires more genetic information, but natural selection by mutation is inadequate to increase information given that all studies so far show that mutation either maintains the status quo or results in a loss of information.
Ed, how many times must I point out that this claim is a LIE?

It is not true.

It is false.

It is bogus.

It is a creationist invention.

It is bullshit.

It is a fairytale.

It is factually incorrect.

It just ain't so.

Geddit?

[Jack the Bodiless]

Actually there is evidence that we all descended from one woman, ie mitochondrial Eve. Again as I stated before, the scriptures do not tell us WHEN humans were created.
It is inevitable, given the fact of common descent, that we will all have a shared female ancestor at some point (and, indeed, a shared male ancestor). Family trees converge as you go back in time. But neither of these individuals are the first woman or man, simply the most recent common ancestor of all in the group.

But the scriptures DO tell us when humans were created. The genealogies clearly indicate 4000 BC or thereabouts (the only uncertainty being the date of Solomon's temple, known to within 50 years or thereabouts). It's amusing to watch the mental gymnastics of apologists trying to wriggle out of what the Bible clearly states.
Some scientists have proposed that there was a vapor canopy over the earth prior to the flood or that the water came from under the earth's crust.
The weight of the water is the same whether it's in liquid or vapor form. You're talking about a surface atmospheric pressure of many tons per square inch in the pre-Flood world, and searing heat generated when it falls. Noah and his family would be crushed, then poached. I suggest you learn some physics.
Modern linguistics says that there was originally one language, so does the scriptures. The fact of God causing the diversification of language cannot be discovered by studying language alone.
The diversification of languages was a gradual branching process similar to biological evolution: there was no "Tower of Babel incident".
Rim: I suggest you carefully study the actual work of Louis Pasteur before twisting around his actual experimental results.

Well maybe disprove is too strong a word but it is just one piece of the evidence against abiogenesis.
No, it isn't. Abiogenesis cannot possibly occur under the conditions in Pasteur's experiment. This is like claiming that the non-flammability of concrete is evidence against the existence of fire.
Huh? How am I being dishonest? Some atheists erroneously believe that christians think that there is absolutely no possibility at all that God may not exist, I was just trying to correct that misperception.
Many Christians DO insist that there is absolutely no possibility at all that God may not exist. They're a minority, perhaps, but they exist.
Your analogy fails. You need to provide an example where something is produced from something else that does not contain what is sufficient to produce that effect. Such an event would disprove the Law of Sufficient Cause thereby disproving my point. But of course, disproving the Law of Sufficient Cause would destroy science.
Given that we believe hydrogen, helium and various natural interactions ARE sufficient to produce "personal beings", why should we "provide an example where something is produced from something else that does not contain what is sufficient to produce that effect"? This makes no sense.
How do you determine what is immoral, barbarous and evil? Atheism does not provide a rational basis for making such judgements.
Neither does aSantaism, aleprechaunism or adragonism. These are the rules of human societies. Their "rational basis" is that societies need such rules in order to function.
I wonder if Ed really has such low esteem for his God's intellect as to presume that he didn't know before hand that innundating the entire Earth was going to kill an awful lot of animals, some with partial personalities.

No, he probably allowed it to show the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion against God's moral law so that man would never consider doing it again.
The gratuitous slaughter of innocent bystanders during assassinations was known as "termination with extreme prejudice" by the Mafia. Maybe they got the idea from the Bible.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
Actually there is evidence that we all descended from one woman, ie mitochondrial Eve. Again as I stated before, the scriptures do not tell us WHEN humans were created.


I'd be surprised if Ed knows what a mitochondrion is or how genetic drift works. Because all existing ones having a single ancestor at some point in time is a result of genetic drift.

There have been estimates of what is the minimum population necessary to allow Human Leukocyte Antigens to retain their diversity (these indicate to white blood cells that a cell is not to be attacked, and are selected for diversity as a result of parasites adapting to resemble one or another of these). Geneticist Francesco Ayala and his colleagues estimate that the HLA complex diverged over the last 30-60 million years, and that humanity's ancestral populations have seldom gone below about 1000 individuals.

Also, Ed's remarks about the Bible are evasive. Why isn't he honest enough to acknowledge errors in it? I'm willing to acknowledge that "virgin birth" is a misnomer for some legendary divine impregnations, and that some of Lord Raglan's hero criteria are probably incorrect or misleadingly stated. But I don't see anything similar from Ed about his favorite book.


Rimstalker's rather profane rejection of Flood Geology deleted)
Ed:
No need for the crudities and obscenities. That is a sign of a shallow thinker. Some scientists have proposed that there was a vapor canopy over the earth prior to the flood or that the water came from under the earth's crust.


Ed is very prissy, isn't he? A vapor canopy would have pushed the Earth's atmospheric pressure way up, and where in the Earth's crust would that water have come from?


Ed:
I have looked at it and most of them can be reasonably explained.


Ed ought to go over to Evolution/Creation and write a point-by-point rebuttal to the Flood-Geology criticisms.


Ed:
Modern linguistics says that there was originally one language, so does the scriptures. The fact of God causing the diversification of language cannot be discovered by studying language alone.


Ed has not told us where "modern linguistics" is supposed to be claiming that. Yes, I want a chapter-and-verse quote.


Ed:
Well he has yet to do it.


Like how am I supposed to have failed?


Ed:
Your analogy fails. You need to provide an example where something is produced from something else that does not contain what is sufficient to produce that effect. ...


And how does one determine that?


Ed:
No, because more personality requires more genetic information, but natural selection by mutation is inadequate to increase information given that all studies so far show that mutation either maintains the status quo or results in a loss of information.


Poor Ed has never heard of gene duplication and polyploidy.


(Rim: Ed seems to believe in theistic evolution, day-age creationism, and young-earth creationism simultaneously)
Ed:
Because my post is primarily about the existence of the Christian God and the rationality of believing in him, not HOW he created the universe and life. Such a discussion belongs on another thread and I dont consider it of extreme importance.


However, Ed's jumping from position to position is very evasive and self-contradictory. One wonders if he'd claim that Jesus Christ was a myth if that would help him win an argument.


Ed:
The evidence is the ignoring and rebelling against his moral law throughout all of human history.


If I was an omnipotent being and that was something I cared about, then I'd ensure that all of humanity was physically incapable of misbehavior. From this perspective, what is so great about free will if it leads to sin? Also, consider what Heaven is supposed to be like -- does anyone ever commit sins in Heaven? If Heaven is a sin-free realm, then that demonstrates that such a realm is feasible.


(Rimstalker on the mass murder of animals in Noah's Flood...)
Ed:
No, he probably allowed it to show the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion against God's moral law so that man would never consider doing it again.


Stupid. I'd make everybody physically capable of misbehaving.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
[QB]Ed:
The prophet was God's representative on earth, it is as though they were mocking God himself.

Rim: They were kids! Little children, not a thought in their head for what the consequences of their actions are! This only further demonstrated what a stupid, short-tempered asshole the Xian god is. Hey, I just mocked god! I wonder where all the she-bears are... why was this "punishement" only inflicted once?[/b]

No, they knew who he was and who he represented. And they were probably teenagers not little kids. The reason that you are not punished immediately is because the ancient hebrews were held to a higher standard since they were God's chosen people.



Ed: No women were taken as playthings by hebrew soldiers. They became wives of hebrew soldiers because being a single woman in ancient times was basically an invitation to be raped or dying from starvation.

Rim: Wow. Just stunning. One wonders why god wasn't so concerned with women being single and alone when he ordered the Hebrew soldiers to massacre the women's families and friends. More half-assed thinking from the cog-dis mind.

In the long run their life would be much better in a more morally advanced society. Women were treated better in ancient Israel than other societies at the time.


Ed:
So by becoming their wives they were given safe and secure lives with food and the chance to have children in a more humane society than the one they had lived in.

Rim: And I'm sure those women were just thrilled to have the "privilage" of marrying the murderous bastards who just killed their families and destroyed their homeland. They must have lept into the arms of their "liberators!" Say, did the term, "keep them for yourselves," which is what God instructed the Hebrews to do with these virgin girls, mean "marry" back then? I've learned soemthing new today! What a "humane" society those lucky girls got to live in!

Of course, there would have been some resistance at first, but as I said above in ancient times a woman who had a husband was in a very priviledged position. Also, many probably saw the superiority of the Jewish society. Yes, later on in the passage that I assume you are referring to they mention that if the men decide to divorce them they cannot sell them as slaves.


Ed: And part of what makes you a person is a mind, will and conscience. Now do you understand?

Rim: I'll bet Ed has a tough time keeping up witht he flow of and argument, as he does all things that require the expediture of mental energy. To refresh him, let's look at this sequence of replies:

Ed: "Personal has two meanings... it relates to a being it is something that has a mind, will, conscience, emotions, and etc. "

Me: "...what, exactly, does the term 'etc.' refer to?"

Ed: "Etc. refers to the other things that make you, you. "

Me: "So vague and mysterious!"

Ed: "What's wrong? You don't know who you are? Is what makes you you, vague and mysterious?"

Me: " No, your defining personal in such a obfuscated and shallow way is 'vague and mysterious.' You really think including 'what makes you you' in the definition of 'personal' is a logical argument against the 'personal arising from the impersonal?'"

Ed: "No, I am just trying to help you to understand what a person is. You are a person and therefore what makes you you is also what makes a person."

Rim: It seems that Ed's definition of "personal" is "whatever make a person, a person." I've long since put away any hope of him seeing what circular, illogical bullshit his arguments are, but it should be painfully obvious to any lurkers now.

Just because we cannot fully define something (you are right personhood is somewhat mysterious)
does not make it circular or illogical.

Ed:
Yes, and inferences about the cause of the universe are based on evidence from the universe.

Rim: ...which, in spite of your willful ignorance of how the Universe is the limit of our observational abilities, you have yet to provide. This becomes tiresome, Ed. Let me suggest that your replies to me be actual logical arguments, not pithy one-liner assertions.

I have used logical arguments, the Law of Causality and its corollary, the Law of Sufficient Cause.


Ed: No, two rocks under a tree cannot be at the same place at the same time and in the same relationship (Law of Non-contradiction) whether or not a human is thinking about it or even whether any humans exist.

Rim: Ed seems to be a bit confused here. Actually, "stunningly ignorant" is the better description. Perhaps it would do him well to look into the electromagnetic force, so he can discover what prevents two rocks from occupying the same space. Although, this would cripple his ability to argue from his own ignorant confusion of physics and logic.

It doesnt matter if it is two rocks or two atoms, the law still applies. The laws of logic are more fundamental than the laws of physics. Without the laws of logic you cannot even discover the laws of physics.

This is the end of part II of my response.

[lpetrich]

Rimstalker on the boys torn to bits because they had made fun of Elisha's baldness:

Ed:
No, they knew who he was and who he represented. And they were probably teenagers not little kids. The reason that you are not punished immediately is because the ancient hebrews were held to a higher standard since they were God's chosen people.


Ed seems very itchy and punitive. And I'm not sure I wish to get into an argument over the precise translation of some Hebrew word. Apikorus? Devnet?


Rim on women forcibly married to Israelite soldiers:

Ed
In the long run their life would be much better in a more morally advanced society. Women were treated better in ancient Israel than other societies at the time.


Actual evidence other than the presumption of the Bible's moral perfection: {}

And I'm sure that being a Comfort Woman for the WWII Japanese armed forces was a great employment opportunity (sarcasm).


Ed:
I have used logical arguments, the Law of Causality and its corollary, the Law of Sufficient Cause.


Which don't really say much -- can one determine a priori what is and is not "sufficient cause"?


(supposedly universal law of non-superposition)

Ed:
It doesnt matter if it is two rocks or two atoms, the law still applies. The laws of logic are more fundamental than the laws of physics. Without the laws of logic you cannot even discover the laws of physics.


However, two waves can easily occupy the same position, and two gases can easily interpenetrate.

Ed is mistaking a property of certain physical objects for a fundamental logical principle.

[ February 01, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
[QB]Ed:
No, UBB requires an intelligent mind therefore it is rational to assume that you have one.

Rim: Idiot. Do you really think these one-liners serve as actual refutations? Give me one good reason why an effect must share the properties of it's cause. I don't care how you like to twist words around, that is your argument.[/b]

I never said that an effect MUST share the properties of it's cause. I said that the cause must be sufficient to produce the effect. It just happens in the case of persons the cause does share the some of the properties of the effect.


Ed:
God has to use anthropomorphisms in order explain what he is like to humans, he is a spirit and does not have a physical body.

Rim: Ed completely ignores god's instruction, yes, instruction, to Moses to look not at his face, but his ass. This is not convienient anthropomorphizing for us to understand, otherwise there'd be no danger.

Since we know from Christ and Isaiah that is God is a spirit and does not have a body, what passed by Moses was his Glory. His glory refers first and foremost to the sheer weight of the reality of his presence. But Moses would not be able to endure the spectacular purity, luminosity and reality of staring at the raw glory of God himself. So God placed his "hand" over Moses face and then lifted it to let him see the aftereffects of the passing of his glory and in fact the hebrew term used usually translated as "back" can mean aftereffects.


Ed:
I am not sure what passage you are referring to, but the part of the actual reason God may have told them to cover their latrine was to prevent disease. In addition to demonstrating that God expects absolute moral purity. And stated that the smell was an offense in order not to confuse them with a treatise on pathogens transferred from human waste.


Rim: Ed ignores the simple, logical explaination to intorduce germ theory to the mythological writings of a people (and, if Jesus is any guide, a God) who considered evil spirits to be the cause of dissease.

Huh? Christ never said that evil spirits cause disease.

Rim: The passage is Deuteronomy 23:12-14. The reason for covering the dumpings of the soldiers was not because God didn't like the smell, as I thought. It was because God was walking among them and didn't want to "see" any unclean thing. Just goes to show how easy it is to hide something from God's "sight."

No, the act of excreting waste represented sin and was therefore unclean. So by covering it you were symbolically removing your sin and uncleaness and taking it away from God's "sight".

This is the end of part III of my response.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>Ed:
After you reach this point then you try to communicate with this God and he confirms his existence by experience.

Rim: Funny, I've had just the opposite experience trying to "communicate" with him; that is, no "experience" at all. This pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo is not very effective evidence, Ed. It also does nothing to counter my point.[/b]

Well its the next step after demonstrating that it is rational to believe the Christian God exists. Experience is evidence for many things. Such as how do you know your wife loves you? You know it from experiencing it.


Ed:
Ok prove it wrong.

Rim: It's amazing that someone can be so blisteringly dumb as to ask someone to "disporve" something he hasn't even proven. Let's try to get this straight, numb-nuts: your assertions are not correct until proven otherwise, they must be proven before anyone has any obligation to disprove them. Arguing from ignorance and through circular means don't cut it.

They have been proven as well as almost anything. As I stated before throughout all of human history only persons have produced the personal.


[b] Ed:
Fraid so if you want to have any type of discussion.

Rim: It seems Ed is agreeing with me that he must prove his unfounded, ignorant, and logically absurd assertions before anyone has any obligation to disprove them. It makes me wonder why he hasn't tried harder. Ed, I'm tired of beating around the bush with you. If you can't display in your response that you understand the concept of burden of proof, and how you are the one who has it, that I will write you off as an idiot with brainpower too low to even bother arguing with, as I'm sure countless others have already done.
</strong>

How could they be logically absurd when all I have used is the laws of logic?

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
quote:

LP: (on the Trinity...)
Even worse: this was something decided by various official Church Councils, and there would be some nasty squabbles over such things as whether the Father and the Son have the same essence (homoousia) or similar essences (homoiousia).
Ed:
Yes, there was some disagreement over the biblical data but these men were being guided by the holy spirit to the most true to the biblical data position.


lp: Guidance presumably including such methods of settling arguments as one faction showing up early for a meeting and locking out rival factions.[/b]

Sometimes Christians don't act Christlike and yet God still uses them to find his truth. God can bring good out of evil.


LP on the Talmud as stating that JC's father had a name that sounded something like the Greek word for "virgin".
Ed:
Thereby confirming the scriptures that there was something unusual about Christ's birth. While it doesnt confirm his virgin birth, it is evidence that the jews were trying to refute something unusual about his birth.


Ed:
There is big difference however, two of the gospels were written by people who actually knew and lived with him. ...

lp: Says who? It's generally thought that the Gospels date some decades after when Jesus Christ had been executed, if there had been a historical Jesus Christ.

Many scholars. Even if they were written 3 to 5 decades after his death some of the disciples could have still been alive given that probably most of them were in their teens or 20s.



Ed:
... As far as Pilate goes, one slightly out of character decision strongly influenced by his wife whose opinion he may have greatly admired doesnt qualify as totally distorting his personality. Having the Romans not stop the killing of an innocent man when they easily could have is hardly letting them off the hook.

lp: Which begs the question of why the Jewish authorities had needed the Roman authorities to do their dirty work when they could simply have stoned Jesus Christ to death.

Only Roman authorities could mete out capital punishment. It was against Roman law for non-governmental entities to do so.


LP: (one original language)
Noam Chomsky claimed no such thing; he claimed that human languages have a shared "deep structure".
Ed:
A shared deep structure means it is very likely there was one original language especially if there was one point of origin for humans, which most of the evidence points to.

lp: However, we could have some brain wiring that leads us to create this deep structure.

Yes, but as long as all humans create that structure with their brain wiring my statement still stands.


[b]
Ed:
Propositional communication, ie verbal language is one the aspects of humans which makes us personal. No other creature can communicate propositionally.

lp: So what? Can fertilized egg cells use true language?
</strong>

Potentially, yes.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
I never said that an effect MUST share the properties of it's cause. I said that the cause must be sufficient to produce the effect. ...


A grand-sounding principle that does not really state very much; it does not tell us anything about whether a cause is capable of producing an effect.


(Rimstalker on some Biblical theological anthropomorphism...)
Ed:
Since we know from Christ and Isaiah that is God is a spirit and does not have a body, what passed by Moses was his Glory. ...


Very ingenious.

And I must say that I've known of less anthropomorphic deities.


Ed:
Huh? Christ never said that evil spirits cause disease.


However, in the Gospels, he is represented at performing exorcisms of wicked demons.


Ed:
No, the act of excreting waste represented sin and was therefore unclean. ...


How is that supposed to be the case?


Ed:
After you reach this point then you try to communicate with this God and he confirms his existence by experience.

Rim: Funny, I've had just the opposite experience trying to "communicate" with him; that is, no "experience" at all. This pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo is not very effective evidence, Ed. It also does nothing to counter my point.

Ed:
Well its the next step after demonstrating that it is rational to believe the Christian God exists. Experience is evidence for many things. Such as how do you know your wife loves you? You know it from experiencing it.


However, people have had experiences with many theological entities that Ed would no doubt consider fictional; how does one distinguish the real thing from a fake?


Ed:
They have been proven as well as almost anything. As I stated before throughout all of human history only persons have produced the personal.


But the Universe is MUCH older than humanity, and a lot can happen in that time. Consider volcanoes. There are only two volcanoes that have ever been seen to originate in historical times, Jorillo and Paricutin, both in Mexico. Does this mean that the origins of all the other volcanoes is an unsolvable mystery?


Ed:
Sometimes Christians don't act Christlike and yet God still uses them to find his truth. God can bring good out of evil.


God is a remarkably inefficient being, it would seem.


Ed on JC's execution:
Only Roman authorities could mete out capital punishment. It was against Roman law for non-governmental entities to do so.


Where is that from? And I'm sure that Pilate would not have objected to the Jewish authorities stoning JC to death.

[Waning Moon Conrad]

Originally by Ed

<strong>But Allah is a pure unity and the universe is a diversity within a unity, therefore Allah can be eliminated as the likely cause of the universe.</strong>

But J.S. Bach was only one man (a pure unity)and his body of work is a copious amount of fugues, gigues etc within one body of work, (a diversity within a unity) therefore (drum roll now please) Bach could not have composed his music.

But J.S. Bach was only one man (a pure unity} whilst his Passacaglia in C minor is many notes forming one piece of music and hence a diversity within a unity therefore Bach could not have composed his Passacaglia in C minor.

But Bert of Morwell (east of Melbourne) is only one potter blah blah blah etc and his wheel is only one wheel blah blah etc therefore blah blah blah etc couldn't have made all of those pots etc etc blah blah.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>Ed,


You know those blasted Jews, if they attempt to disprove a supernatural claim there must be a conspiracy to hide a mysterious or supernatural event. There is nothing at all indicating that they took the claim seriously, in fact it’s quite implausible to suppose that this is the case. Their aim was clearly to attack the memes, the belief in miracle claims made of Jesus. (It was, after all, competition.) [/b]

Implausible? Hardly. If they didnt take it seriously why did they invent the typical skeptical/atheist response. Trying to explain a supernatural event with some kind of natural "explanation".

[b] Syn: It is certainly possible that the Jews could have believed something supernatural had occurred. Even if this were the case - all evidence points against it - superstition and delusion are ubiquitous throughout history amongst all cultures and simple biology is enough to account for a pregnancy.
</strong>

If it occurred by simple biology and everybody knew it, then what would be the point in trying to counter the story.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>Ed:
Laws can produce some complexity but it is not specified and they cannot produce information. And life has both.

Dat:...don't you get what he's trying to say here? Natural algorithms prove conclusively that complexity can arise from simplistic laws; even on a lesser level, we can see AI formulating quite an advanced level of intelligence - in typical Ed fashion, I would tell you to go and read more on this subject.
</strong>

As I stated before life is more than just complex, it is specified complexity and contains a complex linguistic code (DNA) which is only known to come from an intelligence. AI proves my point, who created AI? Intelligent personal beings of course! :D

[Ed]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>
Ed: Laws can produce some complexity but it is not specified and they cannot produce information. And life has both.
...(later Ed wrote)
Specified complexity is highly improbable events that also fit some independently identifiable pattern. DNA is a complex codelike language, such a thing has only ever been produced by an intelligence.

Syn: I’m sorry, I still don’t understand what you mean. “Independently identifiable” patterns formed by totally blind process not only exist, they are ubiquitous. “Information”, functional information being formed by totally blind processes is also very, very common. For example, it occurs in DNA, being produced by radiation or chemical interference. Even though you have presupposed that DNA is the product of intelligence (a contention at odds with the current scientific knowledge), information creating mutations are directly observed on a regular basis.
</strong>

You are assuming what you are trying to prove. Radiation or chemical interference have never created DNA. You have to demonstrate that before you can claim it. And after DNA has been created, so far research on penecillin resistant bacteria has shown that all mutations either maintain the status quo or result in a loss of information.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Syn: I’m sorry, I still don’t understand what you mean. "Independently identifiable" patterns formed by totally blind process not only exist, they are ubiquitous. "Information", functional information being formed by totally blind processes is also very, very common. For example, it occurs in DNA, being produced by radiation or chemical interference. Even though you have presupposed that DNA is the product of intelligence (a contention at odds with the current scientific knowledge), information creating mutations are directly observed on a regular basis.

You are assuming what you are trying to prove. Radiation or chemical interference have never created DNA. You have to demonstrate that before you can claim it. And after DNA has been created, so far research on penecillin resistant bacteria has shown that all mutations either maintain the status quo or result in a loss of information.
Ed, are you doing this deliberately? He didn't claim that radiation or chemical interference created DNA, he claimed (correctly) that it creates INFORMATION within DNA. This has been demonstrated, it HAS been proved. And no amount of lying about this will make it go away.

[Datheron]

Originally posted by Ed:
<strong>

As I stated before life is more than just complex, it is specified complexity and contains a complex linguistic code (DNA) which is only known to come from an intelligence. AI proves my point, who created AI? Intelligent personal beings of course! :D </strong>

:rolleyes:

Ed, the crux of the matter lies in the fact that complexities can arise from simplistic rules. Do we need intelligent beings to transcribe these rules? Not particularly; that's why they're called "simple" (as supposed to say, complex).

And speaking of which, when has DNA been shown to only come from intelligence? The process of transferring DNA is evident in every single lifeform; they are, by your admission, "intelligent". Do you see the fallicious argument?

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>

Why don't you do some study of cellular automata, such as Conway's Game of Life? I'm sure that there are lots of sites on that subject, and on artificial life in general. So go and search the Internet; I cannot hold your hands everywhere.</strong>

Artificial life proves my point not yours, ie they are designed!

[Ed]

Originally posted by turtonm:
<strong>Yes but if you compare the gospels to mythological stories there are major differences in style. There are no overblown, spectacular, childishly exaggerated events. Nothing is arbitrary. Everything fits in. Psychological depth is at a maximum. In myth it is at a minimum. In myths such spectacular external events happen that it would be distracting to add much internal depth of character. It is also done with an incredible economy of words. Myths are verbose, the gospels are laconic.

I don't know what gospels you're referring to, but in the gospels I know, all sorts of mythological nonsense happen. In Mark; people walk on water and feed crowds, cast out demons...in Matthew; a star shows the birth of the messiah, the mother is a virgin, jesus dies and is resurrected, tombs open and the dead walk about; in Peter, the Cross talks; in the Apocryphon of John, a youth changes into an old man and then into a slave, and so on. Of course, in John, a Jewish crowd tells a Roman governor that he'd better execute a jewish man so that he'll be a friend of Caesar (that to me is probably the weirdest thing in all the gospels).

Michael</strong>

There were some christian mythologies that came into existence and you mention two of them the Gospel of Peter and the apocryphon of John, which are both forgeries. But if you actually read them and compare them to the canonical gospels you will see major differences like the talking cross. What purpose does a talking cross serve? None. That is one of the major differences between myth and the gospels, everything fits. Another example of myth that shows what the gospels would like if they were myth is the story of Apollonius of Tyana. Read it and you will see the major differences. The jews probably tell him that because Jesus was claiming to be king of the Jews and therefore may have represented a threat to Caesar, so by killing Jesus he was helping Caesar eliminate a threat.

[lpetrich]

Originally posted by Ed:
<strong>
Artificial life proves my point not yours, ie they are designed!</strong>

The only "design" involved was the creation of the "laws of nature" and perhaps some selection of the initial conditions of a run. And the "laws of nature" can generally be stated in very simple terms. Much less than some artificial-life creations can.

Ed, why don't you visit some artificial-life Internet sites and experiment with some a-life software?


Ed:
<strong>
That is one of the major differences between myth and the gospels, everything fits.
</strong>


If one uses enough imagination on them, I suppose. I wonder what the great theological significance could possibly be of turning water into wine or walking on water or cursing a fig tree or driving some demons into some pigs.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
Ed:
"Big" crowds in a small backwater on the fringe of the Roman empire hardly qualifies as famous.

lp: Apologetic absurdity. From the looks of it, he had been very popular in that part of the world, and the interesting question is why Josephus does not discuss him in nearly as much detail as some other self-styled prophets, like someone who had claimed that he could knock down the walls of Jerusalem with one word.[/b]

Read a good book about Josephus. All scholars agree that he was trying to please both his own people and his captors the Romans in his writings. Since Jesus was a controversial figure that reflected negatively on both, it makes sense that he would not dwell on him.

lp: Also, why not appear to the Roman Emperor himself? That's what I would do if I was a ruler of a Universe as gigantic as the one that we live in.

If God did everything that we thought he would, he would not be God.



Ed:
Since the gospels were already circulating to the churches in oral form and possibly parts were in written form, there was no need for Paul to spend much time in his letters on Christ's earthly ministry. Paul's calling was to provide Christ's follow up teachings to his earthly ministry.

lp: Which is absolute horse manure. Since the Gospels were written, there has not been a single Christian church, as far as I am aware, that views the Gospels as essentially irrelevant, which is what you are claiming that Paul had done.

No, what I am saying is that why should he be redundant and rehash things that have already been covered. In his writings he talks about moving beyond the baby milk of the gospel and onto the meatier parts of God's truth.

lp: Earl Doherty in The Jesus Puzzle has a really funny imaginary conversation in which Paul acts as if many of the details of Jesus Christ's life are unimportant.

See above.


Ed on Josephus:
Actually his reference to Jesus and his brother James is not controversial at all.

lp: Says who? Josephus's alleged comments are tiny compared to the amount of space he had given other self-styled prophets.

Josephus scholars. See above why he probably didnt spend much time on Jesus.



Ed:
Also given that the was an innocent man unjustly killed by leaders of the jews and the Romans, and Josephus trying to balance his reputation to both groups it is unlikely he would spend a great deal of time on such a controversial figure.

lp: Pure idiocy. He'd have been very willing to discuss JC if that had been the case, though I doubt that he would have felt very sorry for JC.

See above about why he was between a rock and a hard place and read a good book on him.



Ed:
Copying errors usually occur in names or numbers because there are usually similar spellings of other words in hebrew and greek in personal names and numbers more so than in other words.

lp: Some of these "copying errors" are much more serious. And what kind of god would sit back and let His Word get corrupted???

Name one.



Ed:
Yes but if you compare the gospels to mythological stories there are major differences in style. There are no overblown, spectacular, childishly exaggerated events. Nothing is arbitrary. Everything fits in. ...

lp: This reminds me of how some Muslim apologists brag about how the canonical accounts of Mohammed's life do not depict him as a miracle-worker. Furthermore, Ed makes no effort to demonstrate this claim.

Read one of the apocryphal gospels like the gospel of Peter and compare it to the canonical ones and you will see MAJOR differences.

lp: And as to literary style, there is also the important question of why the JC of the Gospels fits the Mythic-Hero profile so well (see a thread in Biblical Criticism & Archaeology on this subject).

All human heroes have some basic similarities,ie good deeds, good family usually and etc. So it is very easy to find some superficial similarities but look deeper and the differences are substantial.

lp: So what makes the accounts of Jesus Christ's life so much different from those of:

Romulus and Remus

Raised by wolves as compared to raised by a normal happy jewish family. No similarity. Twins as a compared to one man. Founders of a city as compared to a rabbi. Not very many similiarities to me!

Hercules - Performs deeds through physical strength, compared to teaching truths about life and occasionally performing deeds through the power of the creator and not to show off but to help people in need. Not many similarities that I know of.

Moses - Normal birth, versus virgin birth. Raised by gentile aristocracy as compared to raised by happy middle class jewish family. Died after living to incredibly old age compared to dying a sacrificial death to help others. Not very many similarities to my mind.

Krishna- dont know enough about him to compare.
The Buddha- raised in wealthy family and remained fairly wealthy thru life. No unusual circumstances with his birth or death as compared to Jesus.



Ed:
... The hebrew term for "heavens and earth" means all that physically exists. ...

lp: In Eddian Hebrew, perhaps, but not in the Hebrew that other Hebrew speakers use; neither Apikorus nor Devnet seem to support this interpretation.

What else could it mean?? What else is there besides the heavens (outer space, planets, stars, etc.) and the earth?

[b] lp: Also, an omnipotent being would have no trouble issuing a message in unambiguous language. Or very nearly unambiguous language.
</strong>

All of the essential teachings of the scriptures are not ambiguous at all.

[lpetrich]

Ed:
Read a good book about Josephus. All scholars agree that he was trying to please both his own people and his captors the Romans in his writings. Since Jesus was a controversial figure that reflected negatively on both, it makes sense that he would not dwell on him.


This is an absurd apologetic fairy tale. The same could be said of some of the other self-styled prophets that Josephus describes.

[qote]
lp: Also, why not appear to the Roman Emperor himself? That's what I would do if I was a ruler of a Universe as gigantic as the one that we live in.
Ed:
If God did everything that we thought he would, he would not be God.
[/quote]

Don't be stupid, Ed. Consider the way that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have been handling the recent India-Pakistan confrontation -- by sending delegations to both countries's governments instead of by sending obscure revelations to peasants in out-of-the-way places in those countries.


lp: Which is absolute horse manure. Since the Gospels were written, there has not been a single Christian church, as far as I am aware, that views the Gospels as essentially irrelevant, which is what you are claiming that Paul had done.
Ed:
No, what I am saying is that why should he be redundant and rehash things that have already been covered. In his writings he talks about moving beyond the baby milk of the gospel and onto the meatier parts of God's truth.


Where does he do that? Quote chapter and verse. Ed, I marvel at the disrespect you have for your very own Bible.

And I'd love for Ed's pastor to do something like what Paul had supposedly done -- say "we all know the Gospels, therefore let's put them aside." I'm sure that Ed would join all the other parishioners in stomping out in disgust -- or even lynching that poor man of the cloth.

Consider Acts -- Paul did not describe much of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, such as his miracle-working or many of his teachings or who sentenced him.


lp: Some of these "copying errors" are much more serious. And what kind of god would sit back and let His Word get corrupted???
Ed:
Name one.


The Biblical God, it would seem. Not to mention other deities who seem to have consented to having their "revelations" rewritten.


Ed:
All human heroes have some basic similarities,ie good deeds, good family usually and etc. So it is very easy to find some superficial similarities but look deeper and the differences are substantial.


Ed, can't you read? Why don't you check out the Jesus-Christ-as-mythic-hero thread in BC&A? He fits the Lord Raglan profile extremely well. He had an unusual birth, some wicked leader tried to kill him when he was a baby, he was raised in some other place, he triumphed over some enemy, he was rejected by his followers, he died an unusual death atop a hill, etc.

However, most "real" people fit the Lord Raglan profile only poorly.


lp:
Romulus and Remus
Ed:
Raised by wolves as compared to raised by a normal happy jewish family. No similarity. Twins as a compared to one man. Founders of a city as compared to a rabbi. Not very many similiarities to me!


Romulus and Remus were the sons of a god (Mars) and a virgin, and a wicked king tried to kill them in their infancy. Of these two, Romulus eventually killed Remus, leaving only one of them. And Romulus was the founder of a city that eventually ruled a big empire, comparable to founding a big religion. He even disappeared into a cloud and rose up to heaven to be worshipped as the god Quirinus.


Ed:
Hercules - Performs deeds through physical strength, compared to teaching truths about life and occasionally performing deeds through the power of the creator and not to show off but to help people in need. Not many similarities that I know of.


Hercules was the son of a god (Zeus) and a woman, and his mother-in-law, Hera, tries to kill him in his infancy by sending some snakes after him. Unlike most other mythic heroes, the baby Hercules triumphs over that threat, killing those snakes. Also, when someone gave him a cloak that agonizingly poisoned him, Hercules decided to die a more dignified death, preparing a funeral pyre for himself on top of Mt. Oeta. But he was seen rising up into heaven soon after.


Ed:
Moses - Normal birth, versus virgin birth. Raised by gentile aristocracy as compared to raised by happy middle class jewish family. Died after living to incredibly old age compared to dying a sacrificial death to help others. Not very many similarities to my mind.


However, the Pharaoh tried to kill him when he was a baby, and he was raised in what was effectively a different country. He later returned to his people and liberated them, triumphing over the Pharaoh. Also, the Biblical God said that he would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land, and he died a mysterious death on top of Mt. Pisgah.


Ed:
Krishna- dont know enough about him to compare.


He was the son of some royalty, and a wicked king tried to keep him from surviving infancy. He was raised in a different land by foster parents, and he eventually triumphed over that king. And as to teachings -- can anyone say the Bhagavad Gita?


Ed:
The Buddha- raised in wealthy family and remained fairly wealthy thru life. No unusual circumstances with his birth or death as compared to Jesus.


Read some Buddhist Scriptures some time -- there were lots of miracles surrounding his conception and infancy. And his father tried to keep him from his career from spoiling him, with little ultimate success. He then goes on a quest for enlightenment, and afterwards, shares his discoveries.


Ed:
... The hebrew term for "heavens and earth" means all that physically exists. ...

lp: In Eddian Hebrew, perhaps, ...
Ed:
What else could it mean?? What else is there besides the heavens (outer space, planets, stars, etc.) and the earth?


It could simply mean "heavens and earth". Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.


lp: Also, an omnipotent being would have no trouble issuing a message in unambiguous language. Or very nearly unambiguous language.
Ed:
All of the essential teachings of the scriptures are not ambiguous at all.


All the doctrinal splits and controversies and holy wars suggest otherwise.

[Waning Moon Conrad]

It seems that Christians don't just have a monopoly on truth, they know more about Buddhism than Buddhists do.

Suddenly I find from a Christian that the Buddha Shakyamuni remained at least reasonably wealthy all his life.

I suppose it serves us Buddhists right for prancing about making smug and ignorant assertions about how Jesus of Nazareth was the son of a used camel salesman in Caesarea and was hanged by the neck for claiming to be a Babylonian rain god.

[ February 07, 2002: Message edited by: Waning Moon Conrad ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>
Ed: PE was developed to prevent the falsifiability of macroevolution. It conveniently assumes speciation only occurs where fossils are not left. Presuppositions and intent often color the interpretation of data so Darwin's intent definitely is not independent of its validity.

Syn: Punctuated equlibrium is a theory meant to explain the distribution of morphological variation, NOT the density of fossil finds.

The fossil record appears to have been layed down by the accumulation of new layers of matter on the surface of the earth over the old. Amongst the matter and sediments that clutter the earth’s surface at any given time are living things. Under certain circumstances, the form of an individual animal is preserved through the process of fossilization.

Of course this process will occur more in some places than others, more during a certain time than other times and only a tiny minority of species ever survives in fossil form. For this reason, the fossil record cannot give us the remains of every individual creature that ever lived. Fortunately, we have enough fossils to establish clear morphological trends over time. We can (approximately) track the growth and decline of a prolific species.

As a result of studying this information, it has become clear that animals do not change (morphologically) at the same rate all the time. Sometimes the population is very quickly replaced by a variety of mutant, sometimes (as in sharks) they stay very similar for many millions of years. Let me again emphasize that the evidence used is NOT only trends in how MANY fossils we find. The question, and this remains true whether we have thousands of fossils spanning 2 million years or only a few dozen over the same time period (although more data enables you to get a clearer picture of the situation, more pixels so to speak), is at what rate changes in form take over.[/b]

Why is it the places where speciation occurs at a faster rate and no fossils occur systematically at major genuses and families, so that there is no record of transitions for those groups?


Ed: There is empirical evidence that contradicts atheistic evolution.

Syn:What does evolution have to do with atheism other than filling up positions previously occupied by gods and demons?

Because that is why Darwinian evolution was developed, to have an explanation for life without referring to God. And mutation and natural selection replaced guidance and design. But God could very well have used guided evolution to create humans and other living things. This is called theistic evolution.


[b]
Ed: The firing squad represents the high probability against all the parameters of the universe being right to produce life.

Syn: Yes indeed, up in the sky there is a giant, huge roulette wheel (or something analogous in the sense of being a random event) which choose whether the universe would be made right for life or not. We also assume that only a few slots in this giant roulette wheel in the sky will permit life. Ok, so the reasoning goes, “what better to explain the unlikely selection of a life-bearing universe than someone who FIXED the giant wheel so that it would choose life. God exists, QED.

This argument falls because we have no method of judging how unlikely the universe is- we don’t know how it was created, whether the pull of gravity truly independent of the weak nuclear force.

We do know that we are here asking the questions and if the roulette wheel did not select a viable universe, we would not have known about it.
</strong>

No, we can calculate probabilities that some of the major characteristics of the universe would be what they are and thereby produce life, and they are astronomical.

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
[QB]
LP:
According to all the archeological evidence, they had worshipped several deities before the single-god faction got really big in the time of the Babylonian Exile.
Ed:
Depends on what time period the archeological evidence came from. ....

lp: All the period before the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests.[/b]

Except during the Exodus, there was always at least a small minority of idol worshipers in Israel until the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests. The archaeological record is consistent with this as well as can be expected in a very imprecise science.


Ed:
Ancient hebrew terms are much broader than many similar english terms, ...

lp: Pure excuse-making. Sufficiently imprecise language can be used to prove essentially anything.

I am afraid it is not an excuse, it is just a fact of the hebrew language.



LP:
I suggest that you go to some site like <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org</a> some time -- geologists are not the ignoramuses that you seem to believe they are, Ed.
Ed:
I never said that they were ignoramuses. Just that some of their assumptions are unproven. The order of the fossils fits a flood moving from sea to land just as well as macroevolution.

lp: Ed, I wonder if you have ever seriously studied the fossil record. And the geological timescale. Remains of our species are only found in the topmost sediments, those within the last 50,000 - 100,000 years or so; there are some ancestral and offshoot species before that which look somewhat simian -- and the farther back one goes, the more simian they look. But even the oldest ones found to date are something like 4 million years old, which is a tiny fraction of the Earth's age.

"Simian humans" is a very subjectively loaded term. Many early Darwinists thought blacks and aborigines looked "simian" and therefore placed them lower on the evolutionary scale than whites. And yet blacks and aborigines are living today.



lp: If there was anything like Noah's Flood, it would have shown up as unmistakable sediment layers -- and a mass extinction. But there is zero evidence of such a flood.
Ed:
Not if the flood was in the very distant past (in other words erosion could have erased some evidence over long periods of time) and its duration was only a year. The evidence may not be that great. But there is evidence of hydraulic catastrophe in many fossil beds. I am not saying that the entire fossil record is the result of the flood.


lp: There is abundant evidence of floral and faunal continuity in many of our planet's landmasses that clearly indicate that a worldwide flood had not occurred in the last 100,000 years ago -- at least.

Given that the flood only lasted a year and the great resilience of living things, it very well may not have stood out in the billion year geologic scale.



Ed:
I think the ecological-compatibility hypothesis and natural dispersion support my point.

lp: Ed, are you really serious about that statement?

Yes, the animals after the flood dispersed according to their ecological compatibility.

End of part I of my response.

[Jack the Bodiless]

No, we can calculate probabilities that some of the major characteristics of the universe would be what they are and thereby produce life, and they are astronomical.
No. Nobody can do this. There is insufficient data to perform such a calculation. We can estimate some of the effects of (for instance) a 1% change in the speed of light, but there is no means of determining the probability that it will have this value.
Except during the Exodus, there was always at least a small minority of idol worshipers in Israel until the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests. The archaeological record is consistent with this as well as can be expected in a very imprecise science.
Translation: there is no evidence that anyone wasn't an idol worshipper. :rolleyes:
"Simian humans" is a very subjectively loaded term. Many early Darwinists thought blacks and aborigines looked "simian" and therefore placed them lower on the evolutionary scale than whites. And yet blacks and aborigines are living today.
It's really quite simple, Ed. In the older layers of hominid fossils, there are ONLY creatures resembling upright chimpanzees. Later, there are ONLY creatures resembling humans with apelike heads and a brain capacity halfway between humans and chimps. These are followed by a continuous range of intermediates leading to modern humans.

There was no Adam. There was no Eve.
Given that the flood only lasted a year and the great resilience of living things, it very well may not have stood out in the billion year geologic scale.
If it happened since the evolution of humans, it would DEFINITELY have stood out. There has been no mass extinction since the demise of the dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago, when the most advanced mammal was a beaver-like critter.
Yes, the animals after the flood dispersed according to their ecological compatibility.
Nope, they didn't. Not only is this obviously wrong even if there WAS a Flood (different creatures occupying equivalent niches on different continents), but THERE WAS NO FLOOD ANYHOW.

Ed, you have a great deal of learning to do. And, so far, you haven't shown any sign of beginning your journey. Until you do, you are wasting everyone's time.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
lp: Here's a nice article on this question:
<a href="http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/price_20_1.htm</a>

Ed: There is not a shred of hard evidence for this theory. It is pure speculation.

lp:Read the article -- it makes a good case for Moses being a mythical feature.[/b]

I did, that is why I said what I did. There is no hard evidence that he is mythical.



Ed:
No, as I stated above Allah can be eliminated as the likely cause of the universe because he is a pure unity and the universe is a diversity within a unity and therefore cannot be as adequately explained if allah was the cause.

lp: Actually, Allah is described by Muslims has having numerous attributes, such as being merciful and compassionate; that suggests a diversity within a unity.

No, those are just characteristics of the being's individual personality. I am referring to the being's very nature and essence. Personality is part of that, but nature and essence is deeper.



Ed:
.. In fact, empirical evidence presupposes logic. The question is how did it get there?

lp: So it's possible for God to make 2 + 2 = 5 if he wants to?

No, even God is bound by logic. What I am saying is that we cannot even recognize empirical evidence without logic.



Ed:
There is no possibility of empirical verification of events in the past and yet we still make extrapolations based on logic. The same thing applies to "outside" the universe.

lp: Such "reasoning" ultimately leads to solipsism of the moment.

Huh? My view is exactly the opposite of solipsism.


Ed:
Essence varies according to what the thing is. The essence of galaxies is stars and gravity, ie black holes.

lp:However, Ed does not give any procedure for recognizing which objects have the same essence and which ones have different essences.

The procedure is called "science".


Dat: ... We notice, for example, that there is a great diversity of plants. Is this then any surprise if we theorize that they came from a common ancestor, and evolved through time in different environments? We don't need some mystical explanation muddled in some "law of sufficient cause".
Ed:
We do if we want to go beyond a common ancestor and on to the ultimate cause. Most people have a natural curiousity to go beyond what you seem to want to do. ...

lp:Why this obsession with some supposed "ultimate cause"?

All truly great scientists want to know what the cause of things are, including the universe.



Ed on Punctuated Equilibrium:
PE was developed to prevent the falsifiability of macroevolution. It conveniently assumes speciation only occurs where fossils are not left. ...

lp: However, if each species-to-species jump was the result of a special creation, then there must have been thousands, if not millions of special creations over the hundreds of millions of years of geological time. This was a common view in the early to mid 19th cy.; the last big-name biologist to support special creation, Louis Agassiz, had supported that view.

No, the gaps in the fossil record are between genuses and families. I have never denied that microevolution has occurred.


lp: One of Charles Darwin's great achievements was to make a convincing case for evolution; this enabled biologists to say "Forget it!!!" to all those special creations.

And in a few cases, transitions between well-established species have been found, so they are not absolutely nonexistent.

No undisputed transitional forms between genuses and families have been found.



Ed:
This theory IS consistent with reality and observation. There is empirical evidence that contradicts atheistic evolution.

lp: Atheistic? Is there a non-atheistic kind of evolution that is supported?

Yes, evolution could have been guided by an intelligent designer, it is called theistic evolution.



Ed:
... The law of sufficient cause just states that the cause must be adequate to produce the effect. ...

lp: And how does one determine that?

Research and study of the effect.

[b]
Ed on the Big Bang:
Once you go beyond the formation of stars, everything is pure speculation and goes against the laws of logic.

lp: And how is that supposed to be the case?
</strong>

Because more complex entities require more than just natural laws.

[lpetrich]

(an article claiming that Moses had been mythical...)
Ed:
I did, that is why I said what I did. There is no hard evidence that he is mythical.


I wonder what Ed would consider "hard evidence" here.


(Allah having lots of attributes...)
Ed:
No, those are just characteristics of the being's individual personality. I am referring to the being's very nature and essence. Personality is part of that, but nature and essence is deeper.


Whatever would constitute rigorous definitions of "personality", "nature", and "essence" -- how does one distinguish personality from non-personality and one nature from another and one essence from another?


lp:However, Ed does not give any procedure for recognizing which objects have the same essence and which ones have different essences.
Ed:
The procedure is called "science".


And how is it supposed to be doing that?


Ed:
No, the gaps in the fossil record are between genuses and families. I have never denied that microevolution has occurred.


Please list some of those gaps. If they exist, you should have no trouble listing them.


Ed:
No undisputed transitional forms between genuses and families have been found.


Horse manure. Look at equine fossils some time -- an excellently-preserved bit of fossil record.


Ed:
Because more complex entities require more than just natural laws.


However, there are lots of counterexamples. I will give only one. A homogeneous gas cloud is unstable beyond a certain size, the Jeans radius. I will now derive it in a very hand-waving fashion, ignoring the precise values of numerical constants.

Imagine a cloud with density rho and radius r. It has mass M ~ rho*r^3. Imagine that it changes size by a factor x.

Its gravitational self-energy is GM^2/r; its change with a size change is - (GM^2/r)*x

Its internal-pressure energy is P*r^3, and a change in it is (rho*a^2*r^3)*x where a is the speed of sound in the cloud.

The combined effect is (rho*a^2*r^3 - G*rho^2*r^5)*x -- if the multiplier of x is positive, then the cloud will have a "bounce" and be stable; otherwise, it will collapse under its own weight. And the minimum size for doing so is the Jeans radius, which is

r ~ a/sqrt(G*rho)

Let's see if Ed can follow this reasoning. Since we all know how supersmart he is, we expect that he should have no trouble doing so.

[Jack the Bodiless]

lp: Actually, Allah is described by Muslims has having numerous attributes, such as being merciful and compassionate; that suggests a diversity within a unity.

No, those are just characteristics of the being's individual personality. I am referring to the being's very nature and essence. Personality is part of that, but nature and essence is deeper.
So now you claim to be intimately familiar with the "very nature and essence" of Allah? A deity who (according to you) doesn't even exist?

Ed, it's perfectly obvious that you're just making up this crap on the spot. Isn't it time to admit that this whole thread is just a joke?

[Ed]

Originally posted by Datheron:
<strong>
Ed: What randomness we must see? No, the laws of logic are intrinsic to the human mind. Without them we cannot even think or communicate with language. They were confirmed and expanded with empirical evidence but they were not conceived by empirical evidence. In fact, empirical evidence presupposes logic. The question is how did it get there?

Dat: The randomness that we see is evident in the stars - uniformity for the most part, but a lot of random scattering of stars and material that keep it from being completely uniform. On a smaller scale, the Uncertainty Principle is certainly enough to prove that randomness/chaos exists.[/b]

It just appears random because there are so many different factors that effect the positions of stars that we cannot predict where they will end up. The same applies to the uncertainty principle, we dont know all the forces and factors that effect subatomic particles therefore we cannot predict their position, and therefore their position appears random.

Dat:As for the laws of logic, I dunno how you manage to make these grandiose claims. Given a baby at birth, why is it that its language, vocabulary, and skills of reasoning improve with time, which is precisely the period that it needs to receive external input, i.e. sensory perceptions, observation? Can you detail which parts of logic are intrinstic, and which were expanded? Do you have any evidence for any claim that you make thereafter?

They improve with time because he doesnt know how to use his reasoning skills and also all his neurons are not fully connected. So as time goes by as his brain grows he can utilize more of his reasoning skills and abilities. I am not an expert on brain theory so I dont know which laws of logic are intrinsic and which are expanded later on.


Ed:
There is no possibility of empirical verification of events in the past and yet we still make extrapolations based on logic. The same thing applies to "outside" the universe.

Dat: You're equivocating here again. Can you think of any good reason, any boundary, perhaps, that we should come to to stop extrapolating into the past? I would say the ultimate boundary is the BB, which makes sense. By the same token, is there also a boundary in space which we know signicificant differences occur (i.e. boundary)? Oh, why yes, the boundary of the Universe.

No, why should we stop at the boundary of the universe? I dont believe in any boundaries when it comes to science. The only boundaries to knowledge I believe in are in the areas of morality. There is no reason learn about immoral behaviors.



Ed: Essence varies according to what the thing is. The essence of galaxies is stars and gravity, ie black holes.

Dat: Ergo, you have proven my point at just how meaningless your definition of "essence" is.

How is that meaningless?



Ed: We do if we want to go beyond a common ancestor and on to the ultimate cause. Most people have a natural curiousity to go beyond what you seem to want to do. This curiousity was also a common characteristic of great scientists of history like Galileo, Newton, and Pascal.

Dat: Curiosity? Sure - but does that prove or even provide evidence that such things beyond what we know really exist? What if I'm curious as to who made God? Suddenly, God isn't God anymore!

How do YOU KNOW that such things are beyond what we can really know? Since there is only one primary effect, ie the universe, there is no need for more than one primary cause. Also since God is a cause and not an effect he does not need a cause.



Ed: PE was developed to prevent the falsifiability of macroevolution. It conveniently assumes speciation only occurs where fossils are not left. Presuppositions and intent often color the interpretation of data so Darwin's intent definitely is not independent of its validity.

Dat: Then we can attack those interpretations of data, if we can indeed show a link of bias and invalid interpretation. Note that with all science, once we leave the data, we must spectulate; we then strive to find further evidence to support that spectulation, which makes it into a hypothesis.

And extrapolative theories into the past are the most susceptible to speculations, biases, and presuppositions.



Ed: This theory IS consistent with reality and observation. There is empirical evidence that contradicts atheistic evolution.

Dat: Atheistic evolution...wow. Any chance of explaining where that came from, your reasoning, and your "evidence"?

Well there are two main types of evolution atheistic and theistic. Atheistic evolution is guided purely by random mutations and natural selection, while theistic evolution is guided by an intelligence utilizing some natural selection as long as it is moving in the right direction. The evidence against atheistic evolution is that neither random mutations nor natural selection have been shown to be able to produce all the characteristics of living things especially DNA, a complex languagelike code.



Ed: No, the effect is not the mirror image of the cause. The law of sufficient cause just states that the cause must be adequate to produce the effect. Since God is a personal being with a moral will. So the personal beings that he created also have a moral will that unfortunately usually chooses evil.

Dat: Not so simple, I'm afraid. God has a moral will, but within that moral will lies both good and evil. It is impossible for God to be wholly good, and still have a "will", for then he would have no ability to do evil, which violates the choice necessitated by what we mean by "will".

No, God's moral will only contains good. So while he has a moral will, ours is in some ways more free, because we can choose evil, God cannot. A another way of looking at it is that free will is the ability to choose what we want to do. Since sometimes we want to do good and sometimes we want to do evil, we sometimes choose either one. Since God only wants to do good, that is all he ever has chosen or will choose.



Ed: Once you go beyond the formation of stars, everything is pure speculation and goes against the laws of logic.

Dat: Oh, so now it's the formation of stars. Fine, you can play this little game of ignorama with someone else, as I'm bored with educating you on the BB anyway. Care to show how they contradict the laws of logic? Ah, thought not.

Mainly it is the theories regarding the origin of life that go against logic, ie complex languagelike code coming from non-intelligence and etc.


[b]
Ed: The firing squad represents the high probability against all the parameters of the universe being right to produce life.

Dat: No crap. However, we don't know whether there was a firing squad. All we see is a mess on the ground, and we have never seen any such mess before in our lives. Therefore, we cannot assume that a firing squad hit this thing, for there is no comparison as to what would happen, say, if the firing squad missed.

Ya know, Ed, whenever I see one of your posts, I paint this image in my head not unlike the hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings smoking a pipe. In your case, though, you must be smoking something spectular, for it has robbed you of all rational and convincing thought. As such, enjoy yourself on this thread.
</strong>

No, we are seeing that the firing squad missed because we are still alive. If it didnt miss then we would not be here. The question is why did they miss? If given the odds against us being here, something happened so we are meant to be here. Just like the firing squad missing on purpose.

[ February 13, 2002: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
Ed on dogs out of the chihuahua-wolfhound size range...:
After thousands of generations over hundreds of years it seems the mutation would have appeared by now especially given natural selection directly guided by the breeders.

lp: However, too-small or too-large dogs may be awkward in some way; large dogs sometimes suffer from Congenital Hip Dysplasia, suggesting that they are not completely adapted to their large size. There may be various body systems that may have to be reshaped to work well at a different size, especially a large size.[/b]

Maybe, but wolves are larger than those dogs and they dont get CHD. And dogs are basically domesticated wolves. But there are other examples of built in blocks to variation with other organisms besides dogs.



Ed:
Also given that so far all mutations studied result in a loss of information it is unlikely for that to occur.

lp: A load of dinosaur dung. Many mutations are changes in a nucleic-acid base, which keep the original amount of information. And while some larger-scale mutations are deletions, some others are gene duplications and even whole genome duplications. Gene duplications allow both the original and the copy to evolve in different directions, thus increasing the effective amount of information. And gene-sequence research has uncovered an abundance of evidence of gene duplications.

Gene duplications result in either maintaining the status quo or a loss of information. Please provide an example of the original and copy evolving in different directions.

lp: As to how this can happen, consider the process of cell division: the chromosomes have to be duplicated before the cell can split in two. If, by some accident, the cell goes back to normal without splitting, it will have two copies of all its original genetic information, becoming "polyploid".

And "polyploid speciation" is considered an very common mechanism for the the emergence of new species of plants.

Yes, but these species only differ in minor ways, ie such as larger flowers and fruits. They are not members of a new genus or family. This is just an example of microevolution not macroevolution.


Ed:
How? It fits very well with a flood moving from sea to land. Slow moving invertebrate organisms would be buried first and faster moving and more intelligent land mammals and humans would be buried last.

lp: This is absolutely worthless sauropod dung. Shellfish are found in all ages of strata; how was a Cenozoic clam capable of moving to higher ground while a Carboniferous dragonfly was not?

There are freshwater clams living in mountain streams and lakes so it is expected that they would be found at all levels. Dragonflies are found at all levels, there is basically no difference between a carboniferous dragonfly and modern dragonflies.

lp: Furthermore, there is a steady turnover of species over geological time, which is apparent from their neat layering in the rocks. If nothing else, all this layering could not have been produced in a single flood, unless it was an extremely contrived flood.

I never said that all of the strata was produced by the flood.



Ed: Actually, there are definitely some things that animal minds can not do. They cannot reason abstractly, and they do not have a true will or a moral conscience.

lp: What makes you so sure of animals' mental capabilities, Ed?

I am not certain but all the evidence points to my statements being correct.

lp: Social animals certainly act as if they have a conscience; consider how bees in a hive don't indiscriminately sting each other. And their heads can't contain much gray matter.

There is no evidence that bees can choose to do otherwise, which is required for a moral conscience. The evidence points to them being preprogramed not to sting each other.



jtb: And yet humans evolved from apes, which evolved from monkeylike critters, which evolved from critters resembling modern lemurs, which evolved from critters resembling rodents (yes, we have the fossils, and the DNA analyses showing how the modern examples are related to each other). Therefore your statement that "only persons can produce the personal" is false.
Ed:
Such a sequence has never been empirically observed occurring.

lp: Have you ever observed God creating anything, Ed?

No, but we HAVE observed persons creating the personal. And my view is just a rational extrapolation of that fact.

[b]
Ed:
But anyway I am referring to the ultimate cause ...

lp: Why this obsession with some supposed ultimate cause?
</strong>

It's called scientific curiousity!

[lpetrich]

First, I'm disappointed that


Ed:
It just appears random because there are so many different factors that effect the positions of stars that we cannot predict where they will end up. The same applies to the uncertainty principle, we dont know all the forces and factors that effect subatomic particles therefore we cannot predict their position, and therefore their position appears random.


Although that interpretation is reasonable for the random positions of stars, that is simply not the case for quantum phenomena; there have been efforts to test for the presence of "hidden variables" (essentially what Ed proposes), and there is no sign of them.


Ed:
Also since God is a cause and not an effect he does not need a cause.


Pure assertion. And if everything has a cause, that includes Mr. G. In fact, there must be a super-God to cause God, a super-super-God to cause that super-God, etc. ad infinitum. Furthermore, God looks like a very complicated entity, and according to the Argument from Design, must have been designed. Thus implying the existence of a super-God. And a super-super-God. Etc.


Ed:
And extrapolative theories into the past are the most susceptible to speculations, biases, and presuppositions.


Such as the theory that the Bible has an abundance of literal truth?


(Me on Congenital Hip Dysplasia, evidence for dogs not being well-adapted to large size...)
Ed:
Maybe, but wolves are larger than those dogs and they dont get CHD. And dogs are basically domesticated wolves. But there are other examples of built in blocks to variation with other organisms besides dogs.


I don't see how CHD is an impenetrable barrier, because if enough generations pass, some mutations will appear that help dogs be large very easily. As an existence proof, consider felines. A full-grown domestic cat is about the size of a lion or tiger cub. Yet lions and tigers don't show much evidence of troublesome hip disorders or similar diseases. So if the common ancestor of the felines was the size of a domestic cat, as is likely, then the ancestors of lions and tigers had grown larger over time, with maladjustments being smoothed out as the animals grow.


Ed:
Gene duplications result in either maintaining the status quo or a loss of information. Please provide an example of the original and copy evolving in different directions.


Ed shows gross incomprehension. Gene duplications INCREASE the amount of information available; it takes more bits to describe the genes after copying than before copying. Ed, try this experiment: take a file, measure its total number of bits, copy it, and then measure the total number of bits in the resulting two files. Did that number increase or decrease?

Having gotten those two files, notice that you can manipulate them separately, with changes in one not being reflected in the other. Ed, if you choose to do this experiment, you'll be teaching yourself a bit of genetics, so why not?

And there are big loads of evidence of gene duplication in the history of life. I will give only a few of them:

Most vertebrate hemoglobin consists of a protein tetramer containing two "alpha" subunits and two "beta" subunits; all of them have one iron/porphyrin (heme) group each. One can find molecular family trees with the alpha and beta sequences -- and one finds that they diverged from a common ancestral sequence not long before the divergence of the shark and a group containing the bony fish and the land vertebrates. So some long-ago fish had suffered a duplication of its hemoglobin gene, with the two copies then evolving to produce the familiar tetramer.

Hemoglobin-gene duplications have happened more than once; human fetuses have a special variety of hemoglobin that is recognizably related to the adult variety.

Also, homeobox genes, which specify front-to-rear patterning, are likely duplicates of some ancestral gene; comparison of fruit fly and mouse homeobox genes indicates that mice have 4 sets of homeobox genes, each of which corresponds with the fruit-fly set, though the mouse genes have some drop-outs.


(Polyploid speciation...)
Ed:
Yes, but these species only differ in minor ways, ie such as larger flowers and fruits. They are not members of a new genus or family. This is just an example of microevolution not macroevolution.


Ed, what would make you conclude that some new species represents a new genus or a new family?


Ed:
There are freshwater clams living in mountain streams and lakes so it is expected that they would be found at all levels. Dragonflies are found at all levels, there is basically no difference between a carboniferous dragonfly and modern dragonflies.


Ed, your hand-waving is totally unreasonable. Freshwater clams are usually relatively small compared to many marine clams.


(Me on the fossils' neat layering...)
Ed:
I never said that all of the strata was produced by the flood.


Ed, all I've seen from you are evasions and contradictions. You claim that essentially all fossils are sorted hydrodynamically, and then you claim that Noah's Flood yielded only a small amount of the sediment in the geological column. Do you have a real position, or do you prefer to jump to whatever position it is expedient for you to take?


lp: Social animals certainly act as if they have a conscience; consider how bees in a hive don't indiscriminately sting each other. And their heads can't contain much gray matter.
Ed:
There is no evidence that bees can choose to do otherwise, which is required for a moral conscience. The evidence points to them being preprogramed not to sting each other.


So what? You are conceding that it is possible to be programmed to act virtuously.


lp: Have you ever observed God creating anything, Ed?
Ed:
No, but we HAVE observed persons creating the personal. And my view is just a rational extrapolation of that fact.


By Eddian standards, we have not even observed that, since we do not create new members of our species in the way that we create many of the objects around us. Instead, what happens is that new members of our species grow from single cells -- fertilized egg cells -- that are produced from the merger of some special body cells (sperm and egg cells). And these cells show no signs of mind or will or conscience or whatever other attributes that Ed is likely to consider "personal". Thus, a certain kind of non-personal entity can produce a personal entity, simply by growing.


Ed:
But anyway I am referring to the ultimate cause ...
lp: Why this obsession with some supposed ultimate cause?
Ed:
It's called scientific curiousity!


And why should a bunch of semiliterate goat herders be supposed to have the final word on this subject?

[Ed]

Originally posted by Rimstalker:
<strong>

Better than that, they display many of the characteristics of intellegnece, even very advanced technology. Consider how termites living in large mounds build them so the sun doesn't heat them up to much, and with complex tunnels to the underground. They essentially invented air conditioning. Maybe those ants that herd aphids to collect their honeydue should tell us how they invented ranching. Or how about the leafcutter ant's invention of agriculture? If growing fungus isn't a good enough example of farming, then consider the "magic gardens" that South American rainforest natives never pick fruit from because of enchantment? Small sections of forest floor will only grow a few types of plants, and the natives believed that it was under a black magic spell. Explorers looked at the area and discovered that certain ant species cut down any other type of plant at the sapling stage that they dont need to live. those little guys must have a green mandible to keep such great gardens.</strong>

All of these examples have the earmarks of instinctive behavior that is built-in or programmed into their brains. They were not developed by abstract reasoning except by the Person Who programmed them!

[Ed]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless:
<strong>Ed:
No, I am referring to his essence and nature. He is a single unified personal being. Being able to handle multiple concepts is a characteristic of a single person. Of course theoretically, it is possible for him to create the universe but when studying the characteristics of the universe they fit the Christian God better as the sufficient cause because of his unified yet diverse nature and essence.

Jack: What are these alleged properties that indicate the Christian Triune God, now that we have established that it's quite possible for Allah to produce a Universe containing multiple entities?[/b]

The Christian God is unified in his divine nature but diversified in his person.


Ed: From what I have read, the Brahman is ultimately all there is. It appears as though there are other beings and things but ultimately they are just an illusion. All is One. All is a unity, the diversity is an illusion. Ask your local hindu scholar.

Jack: The unity isn't uniform, or there wouldn't be anything within it. Even illusions are really illusions, they partake of reality. In Hinduism, the apparent complexity of the Universe may mask an underlying unity, but the appearance of complexity is still there, just as the appearance of complexity is obviously real in the physical Universe despite everything consisting of a handful of different types of particle and only three forces at work between them (strong, electroweak, gravitational: physicists are still trying to reduce these still further).

The non-uniformity is an illusion if ultimately everything is One. And they cannot partake of reality because there is no reality if all is just the manifestation of one entity. In a universe created by a Triune God the diversity and complexity are not an appearance, they are real and that is the how it is in this universe.


Ed: Yes, but there are huge differences stylistically speaking between the gospels and mythologies. See my earlier post to lp above describing the differences.

Jack: I thinkit would save everyone a great deal of time and frustration if, rather than trying to reply to every person here as if the others hadn't said anything, you try to follow the flow of the debate and address the issues. It should not be necessary for me to reply to this, because another poster has already done so. Here is what turtonm has already said:

"I don't know what gospels you're referring to, but in the gospels I know, all sorts of mythological nonsense happen. In Mark; people walk on water and feed crowds, cast out demons...in Matthew; a star shows the birth of the messiah, the mother is a virgin, jesus dies and is resurrected, tombs open and the dead walk about; in Peter, the Cross talks; in the Apocryphon of John, a youth changes into an old man and then into a slave, and so on. Of course, in John, a Jewish crowd tells a Roman governor that he'd better execute a jewish man so that he'll be a friend of Caesar (that to me is probably the weirdest thing in all the gospels)."

Jack:So this issue has already been addressed, and the claim that the Bible does not include "childishly exaggerated events" is refuted. I could also add much of the Old Testament: the parting of the Red Sea, just about everything relating to the Great Flood, and so on.

Read a real myth or one of the apocryphal gospels and the differences becomes obvious.


Ed: There is a Law of Biogenesis, read "Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology" by P. Medawar and J. Medawar. Actually YOU ARE claiming that bacteria came from thin air, with maybe a little soup mixed in.


jack: Pasteur's principle is nothing more than the common-sense observation that complex organisms (and a bacterium is a relatively complex organism) don't just pop out of thin air. It simply does not address the formation of self-replicating molecules in the primordial soup. It isn't some sort of "anti-abiogenesis law".

It may not be a law but it is evidence against abiogenesis, given that abiogenesis claims that life can come from non-life.


Ed: Actually the chimps that use sign language have a very limited vocabulary and do not use syntax, which is required for abstract thought and true language. Also chimps show no signs of a true will or a moral conscience.

jack: Define "true will". Even dogs have a "moral conscience", it's a characteristic of social animals. For that matter, define "abstract" thought.

A true will enables one to overcome natural needs and desires such as food. Only humans can choose not to eat when they are hungry. Dogs do not have a moral conscience. Dogs cannot choose to not attack fellow pack members, they just do it instinctively, ie they are programmed not to. Abstract thought is the ability to reason about things that may not exist in the physical universe or that you may not have experienced and yet you can still reason about it and make logical deductions about it.

[b]
Ed: No, but there IS evidence for a pre-existing living personal creator.
jtb: This would be headline news if it were true. I suspect your standard of what constitutes "evidence" differs from mine.
Ed: The evidence is the existence of the universe with personal beings within.

Jack: As you failed to establish any requirement for a personal God to produce anything whatsoever, this claim remains void. Again, you're not following the issues. </strong>

I didnt say he was required to produce anything, but we can study the effect, ie the universe, and make rational deductions about what could bring about such a universe with personal beings in it. And that is what I have done.

[lpetrich]

First off, I wish to apologize for not completing an earlier posting. I had wished to ask what opinion Ed has of my derivation of the Jeans Mass. This is significant in this discussion because it provides a very good demonstration that a seemingly low-complexity material (homogeneous gas) can spotaneously produce higher-complexity material (lumps of collapsing gas).


(Rimstalker on termite air conditioning and ant gardening, weeding, and herding...)
Ed:
All of these examples have the earmarks of instinctive behavior that is built-in or programmed into their brains. They were not developed by abstract reasoning except by the Person Who programmed them!


What makes you sure that there wasn't more than one "designer"? If these abilities had been designed this seems like the work of multiple designers to me. And why was none of these designers capable of giving termites the ability to directly digest wood? Or else willing to do so? Those termites would be more efficient termites if they could; they would not have to have lots of wood-digesting intestinal microbes.


Ed:
Read a real myth or one of the apocryphal gospels and the differences becomes obvious.


Please be more explicit than that. Just because you've made yourself believe in one set of miracles and not some other set does not make those miracles fundamentally different from all the others.

[Ed]

Originally posted by HRG:
<strong>

This is only one facet of "quantum behavior" and no less governed by the basic indeterminacy of physics at the quantum scale than the examples I gave.

That we don't see direct evidence of virtual H-2/anti-H-2 etc. pairs is quite understandable: at the energies necessary to create those pairs (some Giga-eV), any molecule would be torn to shreds since their binding energies are a few eV (electronvolts).

Regards,
HRG.</strong>

And it is the one facet that if literally true, would destroy science.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Synaesthesia:
<strong>Ed:
After thousands of generations over hundreds of years it seems the mutation would have appeared by now especially given natural selection directly guided by the breeders. Also given that so far all mutations studied result in a loss of information it is unlikely for that to occur.

Syn: Ed, specific counter-examples have been proffered to refute the claim that all genetic changes are deleterious. Are you trying to be disingenuous or are you merely not reading the thread? [/b]

I didnt say that all genetic mutations are deleterious. I said that they either maintain the status quo or they result in a loss of information, which in the short term may not hurt the organism's survival and may in fact enhance its survival, but in the long term stops macroevolution dead in its tracks. This has been demonstrated in studies with penecillin resistant bacteria. They have a mutation that protects them from penecillin but it is accomplished with the loss of a genome's function.


[b] Syn: Secondly, as was explained at length to you without acknowledgement, there IS no gene controlling size. It’s not a matter of waiting for a size 15 mutation to come up. Many, many other characteristics have to fall into place to larger or smaller animals to survive.
</strong>

I never denied that, but given the small difference in size that breeders have tried to accomplish I would think that it would be quite easily done unless there was something built into the animal that is blocking such a thing. And also all those other characteristics that are needed for one minor change to an animal demonstrate the high improbability that relatively minor evolutionary events can occur.

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
Ed:
Yes, but there are huge differences stylistically speaking between the gospels and mythologies. See my earlier post to lp above describing the differences.

lp: Ed, you have NEVER described those differences in detail. In fact, I've pointed out how Jesus Christ's biography strongly follows a "Mythic Hero" profile assembled from the life of various other legendary figures. By comparison, Mohammed and Charles Darwin are much worse fits.[/b]

Yes, I did. And I also recommended reading a real myth or one of the apocryphal gospels like the gospel of Peter (which is a real christian myth) and you will see MAJOR differences. If you don't see the differences yourself you are not a very observant reader and there is not much more I can do for you. I showed in another post how all the similarities of the Mythic heroes with Christ are very superficial and that if looked at deeper the differences are quite significant.


Ed:
There is a Law of Biogenesis, read "Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology" by P. Medawar and J. Medawar. Actually YOU ARE claiming that bacteria came from thin air, with maybe a little soup mixed in.

lp: That is a reasonable generalization for PRESENT-DAY CONDITIONS. However, in the absence of life, it is expected that an abundace of prebiotic chemistry to flourish, allowing some organism to get started. The reason that such chemistry does not flourish on the present-day Earth is because it has a tendency to get eaten by existing Earth microbes, many of which have no trouble living off of simple organic molecules. IIRC, Charles Darwin had pointed out that difficulty long ago.

Actually conditions are much more conducive to life today rather than the so-called hypothetical early earth conditions, ie protective ozone layer, abundance of oxygen and carbon dioxide, much less volcanism, and etc.

[b] lp: So I don't see the point of screaming that life cannot come from non-life. And even if the ancestor of all present-day Earth life had been introduced from outside, it does not falsify the Earth's great age or its abundance of geological evolution.
</strong>

I never said it falsified the earths great age and in fact the scriptures dont give an age of the earth so that point is irrelevant to our discussion. I am not sure what you mean by "geological" evolution but I assume you are referring to "biological" evolution. And in fact there is not an abundance of evidence for biological macroevolution in the fossil record and even less so in the laboratory.

[Datheron]

Ed, Ed, Ed...when will you learn? I'm not even remotely close to a biologist or a pre-historian, but even I know why your arguments are faulty. This:

<strong> Actually conditions are much more conducive to life today rather than the so-called hypothetical early earth conditions, ie protective ozone layer, abundance of oxygen and carbon dioxide, much less volcanism, and etc.</strong>

...is basically a load of crap, because the friendly conditions for us are hardly friendly conditions for life. If you look at microorganisms, I think lp will tell you that oxygen kills a majority of organisms, and UV was a potent source of energy. In either case, I'm not sure how you call yourself a biologist, Ed, when even the more remedial of University introductory astrobiology classes has material to disprove your point.

And no, Ed, I'm not answering any of your posts. I find it quite boring to have to go over the same things over and over again, especially when it's apparent that you're just going to respond with one-liners. As such, I now only respond to you when I find things amusing - tadbits such as the above.

[lpetrich]

Ed on quantum-mechanical indeterminacy:
And it is the one facet that if literally true, would destroy science.


However, all that is necessary for being understandable is for that indeterminacy to follow regular statistics. Which quantum-mechanical indeterminacy does.


Ed:
I didnt say that all genetic mutations are deleterious. I said that they either maintain the status quo or they result in a loss of information, ...


How are substitutions and additions and gene duplications "losses of information"? Ed, explain why that is the case; you have evaded doing so for a long time.

Substitutions result in the same length of gene, while the others result in increased length -- which means more information necessary.


Ed on describing the Gospels' differences from "real" myths:
Yes, I did. And I also recommended reading a real myth or one of the apocryphal gospels like the gospel of Peter (which is a real christian myth) and you will see MAJOR differences.


I still don't see the difference.


Ed:
I showed in another post how all the similarities of the Mythic heroes with Christ are very superficial and that if looked at deeper the differences are quite significant.


Ed, point that out. I've never seen you challenge my Lord Raglan scoring of him. You've never tried to demonstrate that he scores only 0 or 1 or 2 instead of 18 or 19.


Ed:
Actually conditions are much more conducive to life today rather than the so-called hypothetical early earth conditions, ie protective ozone layer, abundance of oxygen and carbon dioxide, much less volcanism, and etc.


Just because Ed would be asphyxiated in a few minutes if he went back to the early Earth in a time machine does not prove that no organism could possibly have survived back then. That is because there are many present-day microbes that survive under similar circumstances.

In fact, use of oxygen gas is a late add-on in metabolic pathways, as comparative study shows. It is the first step in full-scale photosynthesis, and the last step in respiration -- a step that was apparently invented several times. All the rest is oxygen-free, and in fact, many organisms have enzymes that scavenge wayward oxygen byproducts, like catalase and the peroxidases.

Furthermore, being oxygen-free is helpful for prebiotic synthesis; Urey-Miller experiments simply do not work in atmospheres such as ours, though they have limited success in neutral atmospheres (nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water) and great success in reducing atmospheres (ammonia, methane, hydrogen, water). It had been thought half a century ago, on cosmochemical grounds, that the Earth's early atmosphere was reducing, but it is nowadays thought to have been neutral.

However, hot springs and hydrothermal vents release hydrogen gas, which can make them reducing; furthermore, their rocky structures can serve as convenient catalysts. Thus, such hot springs are a likely place for the origin of the first microbes long ago.


Ed:
And in fact there is not an abundance of evidence for biological macroevolution in the fossil record and even less so in the laboratory.


What do you consider macroevolution, Ed?

[Jack the Bodiless]

Ed:

I didnt say that all genetic mutations are deleterious. I said that they either maintain the status quo or they result in a loss of information, which in the short term may not hurt the organism's survival and may in fact enhance its survival, but in the long term stops macroevolution dead in its tracks.
I've givn up trying to point out that this is a lie, you're obviously never going to listen. However, since we've long since left the real world and entered a realm where truth and falsehood don't matter, I can make up any number of similar "facts":

1. The preface to the Bible is the first recorded instance of the phrase "this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead...".

2. According to the Gospel of John, the last words of Jesus on the Cross were "It was a JOKE, you morons!".

3. Genetic analysis has shown that not all humans are descended from apes, as previously believed. Many of America's "Bible Belt" fundies are actually descended from a recently-discovered prehistoric American relative of the Howler Monkey.
Syn: Secondly, as was explained at length to you without acknowledgement, there IS no gene controlling size. It’s not a matter of waiting for a size 15 mutation to come up. Many, many other characteristics have to fall into place to larger or smaller animals to survive.

I never denied that, but given the small difference in size that breeders have tried to accomplish I would think that it would be quite easily done unless there was something built into the animal that is blocking such a thing. And also all those other characteristics that are needed for one minor change to an animal demonstrate the high improbability that relatively minor evolutionary events can occur.
Domestic dogs show a huge range in size: what other animal varies bwtween a Chihuahua and an Irish Wolfhound between adults of supposedly the same species? So you're attempting to argue that evolution is bunk because there's none smaller than the smallest or larger than the largest. If the smallest was the size of a mouse and the largest was the size of a pony, this would not affect your argument in the slightest, you'd simply move the goalposts.
Yes, I did. And I also recommended reading a real myth or one of the apocryphal gospels like the gospel of Peter (which is a real christian myth) and you will see MAJOR differences. If you don't see the differences yourself you are not a very observant reader and there is not much more I can do for you. I showed in another post how all the similarities of the Mythic heroes with Christ are very superficial and that if looked at deeper the differences are quite significant.
No, this "significance" is all in your head. Fairies don't exist, no lizards breathe fire, the dead don't get up and walk about, seas don't part to let armies through. No "major" differences.
And in fact there is not an abundance of evidence for biological macroevolution in the fossil record and even less so in the laboratory.
Evolution is fact, and that includes "macro" evolution. If you wish to pretend otherwise, here is a challenge: give a definition of "macro-evolution" as a process which is fundamentally different from "micro-evolution" and which has never been observed. If it isn't "a lot of micro-evolution over time", then what exactly IS it? (hint: beneficial mutations have been observed, increased information has been observed, speciation has been observed).

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
lp: There is enough bogosity in Matthew and John to suggest otherwise.
Consider the mob who wanted Jesus Christ dead; they said "May his blood be upon us and all our children" or something like that. Now when has a lynch mob ever claimed that there was something wrong with the death of its intended victim?

Ed:
I am not sure exactly what you mean, but the reason they said that was probably because they were so certain that his death was justified. ...

lp: If so, then they would have said "Good riddance!!!"[/b]

That is basically what they were saying in different words and they were so sure that they were right that they threw in a curse on themselves if they happened to be wrong.


lp: Also, John makes Jesus Christ stay in Jerusalem much longer than the Synoptic writers do; and in John, JC's temple temper tantrum does not provoke the Jewish authorities the way it does in the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).
Ed:
You will have to provide some specific verses as far as your first comment goes. And given that none of the gospels is written in chronological order. There is evidence that Christ cleansed the temple twice, probably the second one led to the provocation.

lp: I shouldn't have to summarize the Bible for you. And how were the Gospels not written in chronological order? Chronological order the default order for storytelling everywhere that I know of, with departures explicitly indicated, as in flashbacks.

I don't know of anywhere in John where he makes Jesus stay in Jerusalem longer than the synoptics. In ancient times biographies were not usually written in chronological order.

lp: And it's curious that Jesus Christ is never described as having had two temple temper tantrums -- only one.

While it is not explicitly described that way, there is evidence in the text for it having occured twice.



Ed:
No, it looks more like Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phelogon, amd Mara Bar-Serapion.
lp: Most of which are ambiguous, secondhand, or controversial. Josephus's reference is often thought to be a forgery.

Ed:
The only one that is ambiguous is bar Serapion, and yet given that no other known person who claimed to be king of the Jews was formally executed it strongly points to Jesus.

lp: Here's a word-for-word quote about that "wise king" from the Mara bar Serapion letter:

What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given.

This seems more like a moralistic fable than real history; Pythagoras was never executed by his fellow citizens of Samos, and that "wise king" could easily have been someone other than JC. For more, see this critical discussion

No other Jewish king that was considered wise was executed by his own people. Solomon died of old age and etc.



Ed:
Josephus' reference to Jesus and his half brother James has never been considered a forgery or controversial. And in the more controversial passage, only the references to him as Christ and his resurrection have been considered later insertions.

lp: Ed must only be familiar with the Josh McDowell genre of apologetics; among serious scholars, those passages are much more controversial.

No, Dr. Louis Feldman, professor of classics at Yeshiva Univesity states regarding the passage about his half brother, "Few have doubted the genuineness of this passage." And this man is not a Christian.



lp: And I wonder if Ed enjoyed reading those references -- some of them view early Christianity as some sort of bizarre cult.
Ed:
I did enjoy reading them because they made my point and they are evidence of the fulfillment of Christ's prediction that his follwers would be hated by the rest of the world.

lp: Some "prediction" (sarcasm).

Nevertheless it was fulfilled.



lp: Paul had nearly zero interest in the putative historical Jesus Christ. Which has led some to conclude that JC was a myth; see <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.com" target="_blank">http://www.jesuspuzzle.com</a>
Huh? You're kidding right? Paul stated that his preaching was meaningless if Christ had not historically risen from the dead. He didnt spend much of his letters reviewing Christ's life on earth because it would have been redundant with the gospels already definitely circulating verbally and probably parts were also circulating in written form.


lp: Earl Doherty has done a good job of exposing the absurdity of that position in his book "The Jesus Puzzle"; according to him, it was a heavenly Christ that had lived and died, in the fashion of a deity in a pagan mystery cult. Also, the Gospels have been the favorite "source" on Jesus Christ ever since they were written; Paul's ignoring them suggest that they had never been in existence when he wrote, and very likely that a historical Jesus Christ, if any, had been far from the JC of the Gospels.

It is extremely unlikely and in fact irrational for Paul to have emphasized the importance of Christ's resurrection if it had occurred in heaven! That means he never was a living human and never was truly dead if he only lived in the heavenly realm and a resurrection in that realm is meaningless. That position is far more absurd than the traditional understanding! Paul would also ignore the gopels if all the churches were already very familiar with them and the evidence points to that fact. Especially if he felt his mission was to move them beyond the milk and on to the meat of Christ's teachings and this is in fact what he says in his epistles. And as far as Jesus' historicity, the historian Dr. Otto Betz says "No serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus."



lp: Such evidence does not prove anything about JC; does the existence of mosques indicate that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet?
Ed:
It does if it is in combination with other evidence. And in Christ's case there is other evidence.

lp: The same can be said of Islam; what's the difference?

No, there are major historical errors in the Koran and also allah as creator of the universe can be shown using the law of sufficient cause to be inadequate as the cause of the universe.



lp: Why don't you study their views directly? The mainstream view is that the Big Bang can be traced back to a quantum-gravity era, from which we cannot proceed any further with any confidence.
Ed:
Of course they are not going to proceed any further because they will branded as that horror of horrors, a theist!

lp: How so? There are much better reasons, such as having to explain where a Universe-designer being had come from. According to the Argument from Design, such as being would have had to be designed.

No, not if that being is a cause and not an effect. Also, given that there is only one primary effect ie the universe, using Occam's razor we only need one primary cause.

lp: And the most one can cough out of the the Big Bang is some kind of very distant deist god. Not one who inspires sacred books and answers prayers.

No, by studying the characteristics of the universe, ie its diversity within a unity, the existence of personal beings that communicate verbally, and etc., the deist god can be shown to be logically insufficient to cause this universe.



LP:
There is a story of someone in Genesis making some solid-color cattle give birth to spotted and striped cattle by showing them sticks with striped painted on.
Ed:
That was a supernatural event not a lesson in genetics.
lp: How is that supposed to be the case?

Ed:
From the context, why do you think his father in law got so angry? If it was just an ordinary genetic occurence it would not have alarmed him.


lp: Genesis 30: Jacob accepts employment caring for Laban's cattle and sheep and goats, distinguished by being solid-colored; Jacob gets to keep all the spotted and streaked ones that appear in the flock. So Jacob decided on a trick to breed some ones that he could keep; he shows some of Laban's cattle some striped sticks when their offspring are getting conceived. Those cattle have a lot of spotted and streaked offspring, which Jacob keeps for himself, as per the deal.

This story is a classic bit of pre-Mendelian folklore called "maternal impressions"; it is not treated as anything miraculous, because maternal impressions are generally not considered miraculous.

You still have not explained why Laban was so upset. If he considered it a regular occuring event he would not have reacted the way he did.


[b]
LP:
I do think that there is reason to believe that our species' ancestral population had had a single language, but that does not confirm the Tower of Babel story of the origin of different languages. What happened is that this original population split up as it spread, and different populations changed their languages in different directions -- something that's been abundantly observed in historical times.
Ed:
It confirms the basic outline of the theory of language. I.e. that all languages come from a single source. This is contrary to many earlier theories about language.


lp: WHAT earlier theories???
</strong>

At one time it was thought that language had multiple origins.

[lpetrich]

Ed on the anti-JC lynch mob in Matthew:
That is basically what they were saying in different words and they were so sure that they were right that they threw in a curse on themselves if they happened to be wrong.


Which is atypical behavior of lynch mobs; the usual view of lynch mobbers is that their victims deserved their fate, not that the lynching is a black mark on their records.


Ed:
I don't know of anywhere in John where he makes Jesus stay in Jerusalem longer than the synoptics. In ancient times biographies were not usually written in chronological order.


Says who, Ed?


lp: And it's curious that Jesus Christ is never described as having had two temple temper tantrums -- only one.
Ed:
While it is not explicitly described that way, there is evidence in the text for it having occured twice.


What evidence? Temple temper tantrums were thought worth writing about; if JC had had two such TTT's, then that would have been in all the Gospels, not none.


Ed:
The only one that is ambiguous is bar Serapion, and yet given that no other known person who claimed to be king of the Jews was formally executed it strongly points to Jesus.
...
No other Jewish king that was considered wise was executed by his own people. Solomon died of old age and etc.


Read the actual letter. It contains lots of unhistorical things, and the execution of some "wise king" could have been one of them.


Ed:
Huh? You're kidding right? Paul stated that his preaching was meaningless if Christ had not historically risen from the dead.


Which is consistent with the view of Christ as being a divinity without an earthly career.


Ed:
He didnt spend much of his letters reviewing Christ's life on earth because it would have been redundant with the gospels already definitely circulating verbally and probably parts were also circulating in written form.


A laughable view; he would have thought the Gospels worth discussing if he had heard of them; I wonder if Ed would enjoy it if his pastor took that approach to the Gospels.


Ed:
... And as far as Jesus' historicity, the historian Dr. Otto Betz says "No serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus."


What kind of argument is that? There is always a first time.

But I would not be surprised if Mr. Betz considers much of the Gospels to be mythical. The Virgin Birth reminds me of the numerous pagan divine impregnations, for example.


Ed:
No, there are major historical errors in the Koran and also allah as creator of the universe can be shown using the law of sufficient cause to be inadequate as the cause of the universe.


Being omnipotent, omniscient, and sentient is enough capability for creating a Universe.

Also, the Bible also has historical errors; check the Biblical Errancy section of this site.


lp: ... There are much better reasons, such as having to explain where a Universe-designer being had come from. According to the Argument from Design, such as being would have had to be designed.
Ed:
No, not if that being is a cause and not an effect. Also, given that there is only one primary effect ie the universe, using Occam's razor we only need one primary cause.


Correction: only one primary effect directly accessible to us. Our Universe could be a bubble in a super-Universe.


lp: And the most one can cough out of the the Big Bang is some kind of very distant deist god. Not one who inspires sacred books and answers prayers.
Ed:
No, by studying the characteristics of the universe, ie its diversity within a unity, the existence of personal beings that communicate verbally, and etc., the deist god can be shown to be logically insufficient to cause this universe.


Ed, you have done nothing to demonstrate your position other than make unsupported assertions of impossibility.

OTOH, the idea of creation by a deist god suggests something interesting about that entity: that entity must be capable of easily comprehending quantum gravity and elementary-particle physics. So that entity must be very unlike us.


Ed:
You still have not explained why Laban was so upset. If he considered it a regular occuring event he would not have reacted the way he did.


Most cows aren't shown spotted sticks when they are conceiving calves.


Ed:
At one time it was thought that language had multiple origins.


By who?

[Ed]

Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
Ed:
No, see my post about the difference between mythologies and the gospels.

lp: I still don't see the difference. Check out the thread on Jesus Christ as a Mythic Hero in Biblical Criticism & Archeology -- Jesus Christ fits Lord Raglan's profile remarkably well. By contrast, Mohammed (for example) seems like a real person. So should we convert to Islam?[/b]

See my post where I show the similarities are superficial.



Ed:
I didnt say that they are absolute proof. They are just one part of the huge obstacle against abiogenesis. There are major problems with most of the origin of life scenarios.

lp: I will concede that there is much that is poorly understood in this field. But I don't think that abiogenesis has been convincingly ruled out, at least not yet.

The key words are "not yet", it is looking weaker every year.

[b] lp: And compared to Ed's credulity regarding the Gospels, that is choking on gnats while swallowing camels.
</strong>

There is more evidence that the gospels are historically accurate than there is for abiogenesis.

[lpetrich]

Ed on Jesus Christ as a Mythic Hero:
See my post where I show the similarities are superficial.


Then why don't you score him on Lord Raglan's scale?


lp: I will concede that there is much that is poorly understood in this field. But I don't think that abiogenesis has been convincingly ruled out, at least not yet.
Ed:
The key words are "not yet", it is looking weaker every year.


I don't see how this is supposed to support any theological hypotheses; this could support planting of the ancestral organism by extraterrestrial visitors or time travelers.


Ed:
There is more evidence that the gospels are historically accurate than there is for abiogenesis.


I disagree. Can two statements that contradict each other both be true at the same time? I wonder why a great logician such as Ed continues to ignore that principle regarding the Bible.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless:
<strong>
...sigh...

Ed, this is bunk. And no matter how often you repeat it, it will remain bunk. Hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang IS sufficient to produce personal beings! We now understand the key stages in sufficient detail to see how it can happen.[/b]

No, there are major gaps that have never been adequately explained. And for which there is no hard evidence. They are: going from nothing to something, i.e. the cause of the BB, going from non-life to life, and going from the impersonal to the personal. No adequate naturalistic explanation has ever been found to bridge these huge gaps. Of course, evolutionists have come up with many "just so" stories but provide no empirical evidence to back them up other than historical extrapolations.

[b] Jack: Therefore your statement that "no form of unguided impersonal process could do so according to the law of sufficient cause" is refuted. What you're saying is equivalent to "factories cannot produce automobiles because factories aren't mounted on wheels". A wheeled vehicle can be produced by a non-wheeled structure, just as an intelligent being can be produced by unguided evolution: to argue otherwise, you must demonstrate that the mechanism isn't up to the task, not simply declare that it's impossible just because the created entity has something that the creating mechanism lacks.

Evolution sure looks like a "suficient cause" to me.</strong>

No, you have misunderstood the law of sufficient cause. Factories are adequate to produce automobiles because they are guided by intelligent beings (human factory workers and automobile engineers), so my point is not refuted. Because by looking at characteristics of life and personal beings plainly require an intelligence, ie DNA a complex languagelike code. In any other circumstance the finding of such a code would immediately be recognized as a product of intelligence. But because it is in "nature", an intelligent cause is automatically ruled out without any rational basis for doing so.

[Ed]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless:
<strong>Ed:
I guess I should have qualified my statement. What I should have said is that mutations either result in a loss of information or a maintenance of information. However neither of these things will produce macroevolution. For macoevolution to occur, especially the development of more complex morphologies, an increase in information is required. And all the experimental evidence shows that this has not occurred.

jack: No, this is an outright creationist lie. There is no theoretical barrier to the creation of information, and plenty of experimental evidence that it does indeed occur. Where are you getting this claim that "this has not occurred"? From a creationist website? Such claims are invented, Ed![/b]

No, from studies on penicillin resistant bacteria.

[b]
Ed: In fact, if more than one duplication of a genome occurs a loss of information is likely to begin to occur. For example sentences are similar to genomes. Take the sentence "See Spot run." Say "run" is duplicated. "See Spot run run." What is "run run"? You maybe could say that you understand it as run faster. But if another run is added it eventually becomes unintelligible. And results in a net loss of information.


jack: You have a very strange notion of how genomes work. Each "word" codes for the creation of a specific trait. For instance, "See Spot run" could produce something required for vision, one which causes spots to appear on the animal's coat, and one which makes the legs more suitable for running: "Spot run See" would be just as good. With "See Spot run run", the creature still has the same number of traits, it's just that one is now coded twice. This can become "See Spot run rur": a meaningless change, but it's OK because the essential traits remain ("See Spot rur" would have been fatal, as the critter would be unable to run: a harmful mutation eliminated by natural selection). This can then become "See Spot run fur": a critter that can see well, has camouflage spots, can run, and has a furry coat for insulation.
</strong>

No, genes work in concert with other genes in the
genome, just like word order in a sentence. So a genome like "Spot run see" would result in a loss of information because the genes would not be transcripted in the proper sequence.

[Vorkosigan]

If I closed this thread, it would be a mercy killing....it's hard to believe it's still going on.

Why don't you guys take this over to E/C? I'm closing this thread, and copying the last post to E/C.

Michael

{Added by Pantera: After two more months and another 250 posts this thread is still going ove in E/C <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000275&p=" target="_blank">here</a>}

[ April 13, 2002: Message edited by: Pantera ]</p>