A challenge for atheist (From Youtube)

[leroy]

Hi Leroy. I realize that you are battling Sheldon. I don't have any interest in defending Sheldon, but the old biology major in me did find this thing you wrote interesting.



I think that's very likely true. Even the simplest prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) are almost fantastically complex when one gets into their detailed molecular biology. So the chances that they popped fully formed out of some "primordial soup" seems to me to be vanishingly small. That suggests that they are descendents of simpler precursers that no longer exist today (why?). If we speculate about what those hypothetical precursers might have been like, we get to things that probably don't deserve the title "living thing", such as naked chemical replicators (nucleic acid strands?) without cell membranes or any sort of protein synthesis or energy metabolism.

In other words, I hypothesize an extended period of chemical evolution that proceeded the advent of biological evolution, in which the structure and machinery of the simplest cells was hammered out.



Yes, I think that's true of what we can tell of the history of life on Earth.



Yes, that's my working assumption. I can't really say that it's something that I actually know, it's more along the line of an explanatory hypothesis. It's the best explanatory hypothesis that I know at this point, certainly the best at not raising more questions than it answers. (Explanations seek to reduce the unknown to the known and not multiply the unknowns.) It seems to be consistent with a huge body of observed evidence, from the fossil record to comparative genomics. But it isn't "proven" in any apodeictic (logically necessary) sense.



It's probably wrong to say that natural selection has a "preference". That's anthropomorphizing things. But I do think that evolutionary processes tend towards greater complexity as time goes on.

If a chemical replicator is able to form many different chemical permutations, and if some of those permutations increase the ability of the replicator to successfully replicate and other permutations reduce that ability, then subsequent iterations/generations will increasingly display the successful permutations. These kind of changes are cumulative, they add on each other. That's how I imagine the first cells appearing.

Then if all the cells are doing is reproducing, new changes that enhance the reproduction will tend to accumulate. We see that with the bacteria and archaea, which have continued evolving down to the present. Their new innovations have generally been metabolic, the appearance of an amazing variety of new metabolic pathways that enable them to exploit new habitats.

That growing complexity needn't happen at a steady rate. We might see evidence that it doesn't in the "Cambrian explosion" (or the preceeding Edicaran period, where the plant and animal lines seem to have diverged and large multicellular organisms make a sudden appearance.) Cells had been living in colonies since the very beginning and colonies provided some advantages. But at some point developmental biology took off (stem cells) and the genetic code began to code sequential functional differences in the cells being reproduced as particular genes are turned on and off in order. So we start seeing organisms composed of organized functional collections of differentiated cells. And once the new innovation of developmental biology was in, we have multicellular life, Life 2.0, and we see a sudden explosion of new complexity: body plans, organs... the earliest ancestors of arthropods, molluscs, annelids, chordates all make a sudden appearance.



It's not really a matter of "proof". All evolutionary theory is is an explanatory hypothesis. Evidence for it consists of how well it makes sense of what is observed in all of the biological sciences, from molecular cell biology to biogeography.

Thanks for sharing.


So i guess my point is :
Natural selection aims at survivability and reproduction

Natural selection doest aims at complexity


So why do we see an increase of complexity?

To me the answer is simple, Natural selection is not responsible for the increase of complexity there most be an other mechanism. .... or perhaps ancient life on average is as complex as modern life.

 

[leroy]

Yahweh, Allah, Zeus and Krishna are obviously fictional.

Maybe , but you are claiming to have such knowledge therefore you have a burden proof. (That is the point of the Op)

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

First : you didn't answer the question , you are suppose to show that stablishing God as the cause of the universe violates oor understandimg on how the universe works.....(like in the case of alchemy where if true this would violate our understanding of how chemistry works.

It's not so much the existence of God that would violate our understanding of how the universe works; it's the idea of God doing, well, anything.

Take solar system formation: we have good, strong evidence and theory about how gravity formed the solar system. The implication of this is that to the extent gravity was responsible, nothing else was responsible... including a god magically proofing the solar system into existence.

Second: you are basically saying that first i have to stablish the existence of God and then you will consider arguments for the existence of God. Honestly don't you see the circularity of your reasoning.

Nothing circular about it; it's just calling question-begging out for what it is.

You're still able to argue for God by building up a solid body of empirical evidence (or you would be able to, if you had the evidence). The only arguments I'm saying don't work are the ones that are irrational crap anyway.

How do you know that ? How do you meassure "possibility"

The Drake Equation is one attempt at it.

There is no known mechanism for how the big bang could have occurred, nor for what created dark energy or dark matter, nor for how the pyramids in egypt could have been build.

So should we reject all that stuff just because we don't know the mechanism? Or is it case where this only applies to ideas that you personally dont like.

Most of the things you described are conclusions, not explanations.

A solid body of empirical evidence tells us that spacetime expanded from a initial starting point; "Big Bang" is just the shorthand name given to this starting point.

And dark matter and dark energy are - again - supported by solid bodies of empirical evidence. And again: they're shorthand terms. They really just mean "the things that make celestial bodies move the way we observe them to move" without the baggage that comes with a term like "God."

As for the pyramids, I'm not sure what your point is. The pyramids exist, so they got there somehow.

The point is that you can stablish the existence of something (or some event) even if you dont know the mechanism.

Yes... through empirical evidence, which you don't have for God.

Using your logic:
You cant conclude that the man Got rich because ge won the loterry untill you stablish
1 that there is a lottery available in that specific place/time
2 that he bought a tiket
3 that he chose the correct numbers.

If you dont stablish all that, then Alchemy is the default answer for why he became rich.

This seems to represent your logic. Can you note the flaws of this reasoning?

You don't understand my logic. I'm not going to engage with you on your analogy.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Thanks for sharing.


So i guess my point is :
Natural selection aims at survivability and reproduction

Natural selection doest aims at complexity


So why do we see an increase of complexity?

To me the answer is simple, Natural selection is not responsible for the increase of complexity there most be an other mechanism. .... or perhaps ancient life on average is as complex as modern life.

If you're asking this sincerely, I suggest you read "Full House" by Stephen Jay Gould. He explains the mechanisms involved in clear language.

 

[Sheldon]

There is no known mechanism for how the big bang could have occurred, nor for what created dark energy or dark matter, nor for how the pyramids in egypt could have been build.

You sure about that?

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[Yazata]

What would be fundamentally wrong if we say “God is the cause of the universe?” (or any other thing commonly attributed to God?)

That's how natural theology has long defined 'God', dating back to the ancient Greeks. I don't see anything wrong with it. It's certainly traditional within Christianity, we see it in Aquinas who adapted earlier arguments dating back to Aristotle.

This kind of theology defines 'God' as whatever the answers might be to a collection of the most fundamental metaphysical questions. God is the 'first cause', God is (or at least explains) the ultimate 'ground of being' (whatever it is that ultimately exists and can't be reduced to something even more fundamental), God is the 'source of cosmic order' (the source for logic and mathematics, the reason the laws of physics are what they appear to be) and ultimately God is the reason why existence exists in the first place, the answer to why there is something rather than nothing.

I should point out that despite all their bluster, atheists are no better able to answer these kind of questions than the theists. The atheists have typically responded to them by insisting that the questions are meaningless (the logical positivists etc.) or by simply announcing our universe and the principles that it seemingly embodies (the laws of physics etc.) are givens that require no further explanation.

What we have here defines what the word God means in this kind of theology. There's no need to determine whether or not God exists before natural theologians are allowed (by whom? atheists?) to use the word 'God' in this way.

Moving on from how the word 'God' is used, to whether or not God exists...

The existence of the universe seems to be self-evident. The idea that events have causes and those causes in turn have causes is widely accepted, particularly by those who argue for determinism against free-will. Physics is based on mathematics and on mathematically formulated laws. There's little dispute about any of these things. So if we accept reality as it's currently conceived, the definition of 'God' up above, along with something like the principle of sufficient reason (for all X, if X exists/occurs, then a sufficient reason for X also exists) then it's trivial to concoct a logically valid proof for the existence of God.

Of course this only delivers a very abstract and Deistic style God, in which God is reduced to whatever fulfills a set of metaphysical functions. It isn't clear that this kind of God has anything even remotely to do with the God of the Bible or Quran. It isn't even clear that it's a suitable object of human worship. One can also question the principle of sufficient reason. But doing that will weaken the foundations of natural science which seeks to explain things (how are birds able to fly?) rather than accepting them as givens (it's simply the nature of birds to fly!).

This is perhaps the best argument for God that I know of and what's more, I think that it's what motivated Anthony Flew (once the atheist's atheist) to become a self-proclaimed "Deist" later in his life.

 

[lukethethird]

That's how natural theology has long defined 'God', dating back to the ancient Greeks. I don't see anything wrong with it. It's certainly traditional within Christianity, we see it in Aquinas who adapted earlier arguments dating back to Aristotle.

This kind of theology defines 'God' as whatever the answers might be to a collection of the most fundamental metaphysical questions. God is the 'first cause', God is (or at least explains) the ultimate 'ground of being' (whatever it is that ultimately exists and can't be reduced to something even more fundamental), God is the 'source of cosmic order' (the source for logic and mathematics, the reason the laws of physics are what they appear to be) and ultimately God is the reason why existence exists in the first place, the answer to why there is something rather than nothing.

I should point out that despite all their bluster, atheists are no better able to answer these kind of questions than the theists. The atheists have typically responded to them by insisting that the questions are meaningless (the logical positivists etc.) or by simply announcing our universe and the principles that it seemingly embodies (the laws of physics etc.) are givens that require no further explanation.

What we have here defines what the word God means in this kind of theology. There's no need to determine whether or not God exists before natural theologians are allowed (by whom? atheists?) to use the word 'God' in this way.

Moving on from how the word 'God' is used, to whether or not God exists...

The existence of the universe seems to be self-evident. The idea that events have causes and those causes in turn have causes is widely accepted, particularly by those who argue for determinism against free-will. Physics is based on mathematics and on mathematically formulated laws. There's little dispute about any of these things. So if we accept reality as it's currently conceived, the definition of 'God' up above, along with something like the principle of sufficient reason (for all X, if X exists/occurs, then a sufficient reason for X also exists) then it's trivial to concoct a logically valid proof for the existence of God.

Of course this only delivers a very abstract and Deistic style God, in which God is reduced to whatever fulfills a set of metaphysical functions. It isn't clear that this kind of God has anything even remotely to do with the God of the Bible or Quran. It isn't even clear that it's a suitable object of human worship. One can also question the principle of sufficient reason. But doing that will weaken the foundations of natural science which seeks to explain things (how are birds able to fly?) rather than accepting them as givens (it's simply the nature of birds to fly!).

This is perhaps the best argument for God that I know of and what's more, I think that it's what motivated Anthony Flew (once the atheist's atheist) to become a self-proclaimed "Deist" later in his life.

I think the short answer to What would be fundamentally wrong if we say “God is the cause of the universe?” is that that is question begging. Even if we had a clear definition of what God is it wouldn't suffice because inquiring minds would want to know how he did it. We don't know why something rather than nothing and it may not be knowable for all we know. Some people, whether atheists or not realize we don't know while some cannot except that, they just have to fill in the blank. I think organized religion exploits our belief system, it takes advantage of what can't be known and offers answers and promises for a fee.

 

[Sheldon]

Thanks for sharing.


So i guess my point is :
Natural selection aims at survivability and reproduction

Natural selection doest aims at complexity


So why do we see an increase of complexity?

You just explained why, obviously in those instances complexity was an advantage to surviving lone enough to reproduce.

To me the answer is simple, Natural selection is not responsible for the increase of complexity there most be an other mechanism.

Contradicting over 162 years of scientific evidence, derived from global scientific scrutiny, is not very compelling, especially since it is just an unevidenced assumption.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

That's how natural theology has long defined 'God', dating back to the ancient Greeks. I don't see anything wrong with it. It's certainly traditional within Christianity, we see it in Aquinas who adapted earlier arguments dating back to Aristotle.

If Aquinas really did think that "God" just meant "the cause of the universe," he wouldn't have written an entire book of arguments for why God is the cause of the universe.

 

[setarcos]

Life on planets or moons other than earth, Gods and the angels reside in the heavens, outer space, aliens.

I understand you now.
In the Christian perspective. The abode of God and his angels...(heaven) isn't merely the space surrounding the earth. While those beings may interact with the physical realm they originate from a supernatural realm that is not physical. Traditionally, if your talking about (ET's), "aliens" are confined to the physical or some dimensional plane of existence. In any case God does not hold his existence in or is confined to the physical realm. The heavens spoken of in scripture have differing layers of meaning depending on who or what is being discussed.

 

[leroy]

Yo



Contradicting over 162 years of scientific evidence, derived from global scientific scrutiny, is not very compelling, especially since it is just an unevidenced assumption.

It most be some sort of secret knowledge because scientists are not aware of it.

Besides you already agreed with me on this statement, you even accused me for making a straw man for suggesting otherwise.

So which one is it?

Do you affirm that NS is responsible for the average increase in complexity ? (yes or no)?

 

[leroy]

It's not so much the existence of God that would violate our understanding of how the universe works; it's the idea of God doing, well, anything.

You comprared "God is the cause of the universe" with Alchemy, so please expalin how does that analogy hold.

The Drake Equation is one attempt at it.

My question is that under what basis you concluded that the existence of Aliens is “not very unlikely” …. I have no problem with Aliens………; my issue is that you appear to be “super skeptical” about God and you seem to be very flexible about aliens.

Most of the things you described are conclusions, not explanations.

what is the difference between a conclusion and an examplanation?

A solid body of empirical evidence tells us that spacetime expanded from a initial starting point; "Big Bang" is just the shorthand name given to this starting point.

And dark matter and dark energy are - again - supported by solid bodies of empirical evidence. And again: they're shorthand terms. They really just mean "the things that make celestial bodies move the way we observe them to move" without the baggage that comes with a term like "God."

As for the pyramids, I'm not sure what your point is. The pyramids exist, so they got there somehow.


Yes... through empirical evidence, which you don't have for God.

Yes yes ,but earlier you said that that you object to God because there is “no mechanism”. So do you now admit that this particular objections flawed?

 

[Sheldon]

It most be some sort of secret knowledge because scientists are not aware of it.

So you're saying the theory of evolution is not an accepted scientific theory then? When did that happen, I can't find anything on any news channel about this paradigm shifting event, almost as if you made it up. Have you ever heard of "Project Steve"? It might help you understand that science has already dealt this particular creationist canard a fatal blow.

Besides you already agreed with me on this statement, you even accused me for making a straw man for suggesting otherwise.

So which one is it?

What statement? Agreed where?

Do you affirm that NS is responsible for the average increase in complexity ? (yes or no)?

Natural selection is one significant mechanisms that drives species evolution, if that is what you mean.

 

[leroy]

So you're saying the theory of evolution is not an accepted scientific theory then? When did that happen, I can't find anything on any news channel about this paradigm shifting event, almost as if you made it up. Have you ever heard of "Project Steve"? It might help you understand that science has already dealt this particular creationist canard a fatal blow.



What statement? Agreed where?



Natural selection is one significant mechanisms that drives species evolution, if that is what you mean.

I am not talking about evolution, I am talking about “complexity”

1 Do you agree that modern life is on average more complex than life in the past? (say 3 billion years ago)….. yes or no?

2 If yes ….Do you affirm that the mechanism of random variation + natural section is responsible for this average increase in complexity? (if yes can you provide a source?)

 

[leroy]

And? If they had any other values then whatever those values produced would have been impossible if those values had been different. So, the whole argument reduces to a mere tautology. A triviality. If my parents did not mate that day, at that temperature, in that position relative to gravitational field, same with their parents, and their parents, etc. I would not be here. So? Did someone tune my parents, and their parents, and so on, to produce me?



And again, if the values had been different, and produced something called X, that can arise only with those values, what does it mean to say that the Universe has been tuned for X?

Whatever the values are, that Universe would be tuned to produce things that can only arise with those values. Ergo, the whole argument is just a tautology. Like wondering why all bachelors are not married.

But I agree that it is the strongest argument for God

Ciao

- viole

Your analogy doesn’t hold, if your parent’s would have mate at some other point, someone else would have been born.

This would be analogous to “If gravity would have been 1% stronger” some other life would have evolved, but this analogy}y is false, in such a universe everything would have collapsed in a black hole shortly after the big bang.

To put it this way, if you observe an arrow hitting the center of a bulls eye, would you conclkude design? Or would you say “hey if something like the angle, speed, distance, etc would have been different the arrow would have hit another spot, so there is nothing special about hitting the center of a bull’s eye.

Just ask yourself a question, if the FT of the argument is just the triviality and tautology that you seem to suggest, then why are so many scientists impressed by it and even proposing wild theories like multiverses, or cosmical evolution to try to explain it?

 

[leroy]

If Aquinas really did think that "God" just meant "the cause of the universe," he wouldn't have written an entire book of arguments for why God is the cause of the universe.

Part of his book is an explanation for why “cause of the universe” and “God” are synonymous. And quite frankly I haven’t seen any scholar disputing that conclusion, all we see is you tubers and internet atheist disputing such conclusion.

 

[leroy]

I think the short answer to What would be fundamentally wrong if we say “God is the cause of the universe?” is that that is question begging. Even if we had a clear definition of what God is it wouldn't suffice because inquiring minds would want to know how he did it.

“How he did it” is a separate question, you can establish that Egyptians made the pyramids, even if you don’t know how they did it

The claim that God is that cause of the universe logically follows from a series of premises that are alleged to be true, how is that question begging?

, they just have to fill in the blank. I think organized religion exploits our belief system, it takes advantage of what can't be known and offers answers and promises for a fee.

Theist arguments are not “fill in the black” they are based on premises that may or may not be true, and arguments for the truth of the premises are usually given

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Part of his book is an explanation for why “cause of the universe” and “God” are synonymous.

Which wouldn't be necessary if they were actually synonymous.

Here's how it would work if they were:

"By 'God', I mean 'the cause of the universe,' whatever that may be."

And quite frankly I haven’t seen any scholar disputing that conclusion, all we see is you tubers and internet atheist disputing such conclusion.

If you haven't seen any, then maybe read a bit more.

"There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times."

- Bertrand Russell, "A History of Western Philosophy"

 

[viole]

o put it this way, if you observe an arrow hitting the center of a bulls eye, would you conclkude design? Or would you say “hey if something like the angle, speed, distance, etc would have been different the arrow would have hit another spot, so there is nothing special about hitting the center of a bull’s eye.

The problem of this reasoning is that the bull's eye has been painted after the fact. And that is why the entire fine tuning argument is an instance of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.

No matter how the initial conditions were, they were bound to constitute a fine tuning of whatever they generated. Change a little bit any of those constants, and they would have generated something completely different. Tautologically. That life was the a-priori goal, is the painting of the bull's eye afterward. An unsupported assumption.

Anyway, as I said, even if I accept, as a discussion's premise, that life needs some explanation, then even in this case, there are naturalistic alternatives that explain the "tuning" equally well. Ergo, that argument cannot be used to prove the existence of a conscious and intentional agent. For the simple reason that it has alternatives whose conclusions lead to the exact contrary.

Ciao

- viole

 

[leroy]

Which wouldn't be necessary if they were actually synonymous.

Here's how it would work if they were:

"By 'God', I mean 'the cause of the universe,' whatever that may be."

The argumetn si more like:

1 The cause of the universe necessarily has to be timeless, space less, immaterial, with causal powers, personal etc.

2 Something timeless, space less, immaterial, with causal powers, personal etc sounds a lot like God. ………..its hard to even imagine something with all those attributes that wouldn’t be label as “God”

Its pretty much like saying that the cause of the first computer “necessarily” was a “non computer”…. If you establish that computers have a cause, then this implies the existence of a “non computer” with the ability to create a computer and that exists independently of computers....

If you haven't seen any, then maybe read a bit more.

"There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times."

I didn’t say that there are no scholars that dispute Aquinas in some particular points…. I said that nobody disputes the particular claim that “Cause of the universe = God”