Arkansas inflicts child abuse on its school children

[Bear Wild]

Lol, none of which explains why these systems work in the first place. Hence, the need for a designer. Why does the evolution crowd always make up this silly scenario where God visits and interferes? He is never not involved. He never takes his hands of his creation.

Given the humans evolved through evolution is more than enough evidence that what you call a designer is the product of evolution. The fact that there are other organisms that "design" things such as bower birds, Caledonian crows and apes indicates that this process is an evolutionary product of the increasingly complex brain which is also an evolutionary product. You of course have no evidence there is a god and absolutely no evidence that a god is influencing the genetics of life. There are many gods out their which have meaning to people but with no natural evidence for any.

The sad thing is when you say he is never no involved then he takes the responsibility for enormous suffering in the world. A god that creates cancers for people to suffer and die. What kind of god do you really believe in. How uncompassionate of a god do you believe in?

 

[Wildswanderer]

Your "god of the gaps" campaign is at serious risk of getting eliminated entirely as we the humans learn more about the reality we reside in.

Again, it's not god of the gaps. There are no gaps where God is not present.
And I see the exact opposite thing happening. We understand less and less the deeper we go.

 

[McBell]

Again, it's not god of the gaps. There are no gaps where God is not present.
And I see the exact opposite thing happening. We understand less and less the deeper we go.

You very clearly indicated it is the god of the gaps.
You even reinforce it with the above post...

 

[Wildswanderer]

The fact that there are other organisms that "design" things such as bower birds, Caledonian crows and apes indicates that this process is an evolutionary product of the increasingly complex brain which is also an evolutionary product.

The fact that animals design things proves that they were designed. You have circular reasoning. A complex brain that designed itself. Really? If you see any other machine, you aren't going to imagine that it happened by random causation. But your own body and brain did?

 

[McBell]

A complex brain that designed itself. Really?

Now all you need to do is show that the brain was in fact designed.
And since it has been not only pointed out, but shown that complexity does not require design....

 

[Wildswanderer]

You very clearly indicated it is the god of the gaps.
You even reinforce it with the above post...

You don't understand what god of the gaps is, then.

 

[Bear Wild]

The fact that animals design things proves that they were designed. You have circular reasoning. A complex brain that designed itself. Really? If you see any other machine, you aren't going to imagine that it happened by random causation. But your own body and brain did?

So you cannot see the difference between living things that are self perpetuating and non-living things that worked influence by living things but in themselves cannot reproduce. This difference is so basic to biology that without this simple understanding you could never grasp the complexities of living things. No wonder you cannot grasp even simple concepts of evolution when you have no understanding of the biology of living things. A watch is made and designed by humans and can tell time but it cannot reproduce, alter its structure, or create new variations. It is not alive. Life can reproduce, create variations and change in time. Until you understand this critical knowledge you will always be in the dark about evolution and your arguments will be hollow and meaningless.

 

[Wildswanderer]

So you cannot see the difference between living things that are self perpetuating and non-living things that worked influence by living things but in themselves cannot reproduce. This difference is so basic to biology that without this simple understanding you could never grasp the complexities of living things. No wonder you cannot grasp even simple concepts of evolution when you have no understanding of the biology of living things. A watch is made and designed by humans and can tell time but it cannot reproduce, alter its structure, or create new variations. It is not alive. Life can reproduce, create variations and change in time. Until you understand this critical knowledge you will always be in the dark about evolution and your arguments will be hollow and meaningless.

Life would have no capability to reproduce life unless someone designed it to do so. I have plenty of experience with the miracle of life, and with childbirth and animals being born, and with living in the natural world. Much more than 90 percent of the population.
Life isn't an entity. It can't create on its own. The fact that you speak of life this way shows your circular reasoning. Life produces life, but only if there's a first cause and only if it's a guided system. To propose that life came from non-life is just gooblygook.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Again, it's not god of the gaps. There are no gaps where God is not present.

It is though. God of the gaps is the exact argument you are attempting to use. We've all seen it many times before.

And I see the exact opposite thing happening. We understand less and less the deeper we go.

How on earth did you come to that conclusion?

 

[SkepticThinker]

The fact that animals design things proves that they were designed.

No, it doesn't.

You're not very good with this reasoning stuff.

You have circular reasoning. A complex brain that designed itself. Really? If you see any other machine, you aren't going to imagine that it happened by random causation. But your own body and brain did?

Wait, who is saying the brain designed itself?

 

[Wildswanderer]

No, it doesn't.

You're not very good with this reasoning stuff.



Wait, who is saying the brain designed itself?

What is the other option in a naturalistic world? You are saying everything designed itself, by random causation.

 

[Wildswanderer]

It is though. God of the gaps is the exact argument you are attempting to use. We've all seen it many times before.

God is in everything. There's nothing he doesn't hold together. There's nothing for him to interfere with, because he's never absent. Why is that hard to understand?

 

[SkepticThinker]

God is in everything. There's nothing he doesn't hold together. There's nothing for him to interfere with, because he's never absent. Why is that hard to understand?

It's hard to understand your claim because you haven't demonstrated it in any way at all. You've just asserted it as fact and skipped the important part of demonstrating it to be true.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

This is why I prefer science - scientists can demonstrate the veracity of their claims.

 

[SkepticThinker]

What is the other option in a naturalistic world? You are saying everything designed itself, by random causation.

No. Why do you think the only alternative is that things "design themselves?"
I'm not even sure what that means.

 

[NewGuyOnTheBlock]

Jerry Coyne — a staunch defender of Darwinism, says that “natural selection cannot build any feature in which intermediate steps do not confer a net benefit on the organism."

This comment actually supports Evolution, if you understand the comment. It means that every trait passed down, including their intermediaries, must provide the species a survival advantage. This is because if it does not provide a survival advantage, the trait will be removed from the gene pool through natural selection. The fact that you actually believe that this statement somehow refutes or discredits evolution is evidence that you do not understand evolution.

Through random mutations, new traits or differences in traits are expressed (random mutation); after which. if the traits do not provide a survival advantage, those carrying that trait are less likely to survive, thus removed from the gene pool; but those carrying traits are more likely to survive, thus passing their genes down to successive generations (natural selection).

Honeybees and pollinizing plants share a symbiotic relationship; thus mutations that assist the survival of the pollinizing plants benefits the honeybee (which increases the likelihood of the survival of not one species, but both species) -- thus "symbiosis in evolution".

There are only (2) reasons why you fail to grasp, accept, internalize these very simple processes: (1) Failure to understand; and if that is the case, let me recommend for you a couple YouTube series who will help you understand, and will help you understand from the perspective of someone who was indoctrinated into Creationism. (2) incredulity. This, I can't help you with; it is a personal battle with which you must struggle, if you choose to do so.

Both of these series are excellent and I highly recommend them as necessary viewing for any creationist.

 

[Wildswanderer]

This is why I prefer science - scientists can demonstrate the veracity of their claims.

Not when it comes to the past or the future.

Now as far as God:
The Bible says that there are people who have seen sufficient evidence, but they have suppressed the truth about God. On the other hand, for those who want to know God if he is there, he says, "You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you."

The earth is perfect in every way for human habitation. Course if you want to believe that's a coincidence, you can suppress the evidence and believe that.

The human brain processes more than a million messages a second. Your brain weighs the importance of all this data, filtering out the relatively unimportant. This screening function is what allows you to focus and operate effectively in your world. The brain functions differently than other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people.


If you want to believe it developed by random processes, you certainly can do that, but it takes a lot of faith in... something that is highly improbable.

Robert Jastrow, an agnostic, stated, "The seed of everything that has happened in the Universe was planted in that first instant; every star, every planet and every living creature in the Universe came into being as a result of events that were set in motion in the moment of the cosmic explosion...The Universe flashed into being, and we cannot find out what caused that to happen."

Scientists have no explanation for the sudden expansion of light and matter, and where the energy came from.

All of the sciences--molecular biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc.--hinge on the consistent laws of nature.

How is it that we can identify laws of nature that never change?

Did these laws just come into existence by themselves?

"The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence."
(Dr. Emily Baldwin)
Physicist Paul C. Davies: "…to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws…”

Richard Feynman, a (Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics,): "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle."


In every cell of our bodies there exists a very detailed instruction code, much like a miniature computer program.

DNA is a complex, arranged program telling the cell to act in a certain way. It is a full instruction manual.
If you want to believe that just happened, you can, but I think you're stretching the limits of the possible.

I could go on and on, but the question isn't so much about the evidence, it's whether you want to accept the evidence.

 

[NewGuyOnTheBlock]

The earth is perfect in every way for human habitation. Course if you want to believe that's a coincidence, you can suppress the evidence and believe that.

No it's not. Only a small percentage of the earth's water is drinkable and only a small percentage of the surface is suitable for sustaining human life. When it comes to the rest of the earth, which is suitable (but not perfect) for human habitation, you have the cause and effect reversed. Through random mutations within populations, traits were introduced or improved upon; and those traits which were acquired through random mutations provided populations with a survival advantage within the environment. The world was not created to be a suitable environment for human habitation; we evolved to be suitable to inhabit our environment.

 

[metis]

Not when it comes to the past or the future.

Now as far as God:
The Bible says that there are people who have seen sufficient evidence, but they have suppressed the truth about God. On the other hand, for those who want to know God if he is there, he says, "You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you."

The earth is perfect in every way for human habitation. Course if you want to believe that's a coincidence, you can suppress the evidence and believe that.

The human brain processes more than a million messages a second. Your brain weighs the importance of all this data, filtering out the relatively unimportant. This screening function is what allows you to focus and operate effectively in your world. The brain functions differently than other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people.


If you want to believe it developed by random processes, you certainly can do that, but it takes a lot of faith in... something that is highly improbable.

Robert Jastrow, an agnostic, stated, "The seed of everything that has happened in the Universe was planted in that first instant; every star, every planet and every living creature in the Universe came into being as a result of events that were set in motion in the moment of the cosmic explosion...The Universe flashed into being, and we cannot find out what caused that to happen."

Scientists have no explanation for the sudden expansion of light and matter, and where the energy came from.

All of the sciences--molecular biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc.--hinge on the consistent laws of nature.

How is it that we can identify laws of nature that never change?

Did these laws just come into existence by themselves?

"The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence."
(Dr. Emily Baldwin)
Physicist Paul C. Davies: "…to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws…”

Richard Feynman, a (Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics,): "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle."


In every cell of our bodies there exists a very detailed instruction code, much like a miniature computer program.

DNA is a complex, arranged program telling the cell to act in a certain way. It is a full instruction manual.
If you want to believe that just happened, you can, but I think you're stretching the limits of the possible.

I could go on and on, but the question isn't so much about the evidence, it's whether you want to accept the evidence.

As a theist and a scientist, the truth of the matter is that one can only posit Divine creation as a popular hypothesis but not a "scientific hypothesis" because it lacks objectively-derived evidence to indicate that it could be true.

 

[Wildswanderer]

No. Why do you think the only alternative is that things "design themselves?"
I'm not even sure what that means.

It means random causation, no engineering, no intelligence behind anything, just life springing from nothing. That's all you have.

 

[Wildswanderer]

No it's not. Only a small percentage of the earth's water is drinkable and only a small percentage of the surface is suitable for sustaining human life. When it comes to the rest of the earth, which is suitable (but not perfect) for human habitation, you have the cause and effect reversed. Through random mutations within populations, traits were introduced or improved upon; and those traits which were acquired through random mutations provided populations with a survival advantage within the environment. The world was not created to be a suitable environment for human habitation; we evolved to be suitable to inhabit our environment.

Um if that were so, we would not be here. For the first billion years what happened before we adapted? " We all died of course." That's how dumb that theory is.