Posted on 03/19/2010 4:56:11 PM PDT by chessplayer
My FRiend I believe that you are one asking for proof of God and when the evidence is put in front of you there is the claim that it is not enough.
Let me lay out the points again:
1. Nature is too complex to have evolved by chance. Even my atheist friend who runs a research dept and teaches molecular biology at a major medical school agrees to this.
2. Scripture tells us who that designer of this complex system is, God.
3. Scripture is a reliable source because it's veracity has been established by the fulfillment of prophesy, witnesses statements to supernatural events and most importantly the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
Well said!
K: Is that a "fact?" Each one of us is an example of "impossible odds" made possible.
Yes
Science is also highly politicized and funding for research does not allow for unorthodox ideas to be pursued.
The best example of this in our discussion is the origin of the species. Science really doesn't know. They can argue about how life adapted to it's environment after it existed, but the initial creation can't be explained.
Every THEORY about how life began when tested has failed. Science is so politicized and married to one orthodoxy (evolution) that scientists would rather argue that a more intelligent race that had evolved earlier than us seeded our plant with life rather than accept the objective evidence. This is why the "outliers" are the ones who come up with the breakthroughs not the establishment.
YUPPERS INDEED.
Oh, so now the opinion of an atheist 'counts' when it agrees with your religious preusppositions? Conveniently. As if your atheist friend is a final authoirty on this...LOL!
Nature is too complex to have evolved by chance
Says who? Who can definitively make such a statement? You?
Scripture tells us who that designer of this complex system is, God
The acceptance of any the scriptures is a matter of choice, not a proof.
Scripture is a reliable source because it's veracity has been established by the fulfillment of prophesy, witnesses statements to supernatural events and most importantly the resurrection of Jesus the Christ
Oh, yeah, the "prophesies," depending how you read (into) them. That's not a proof either.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
Am reminded of the oft cited monkey and typewriter and infinite time . . .
They conveniently forget . . .
IF the monkey ever stumbled upon a word or 3 . . . gibberish would VERY quickly reign again.
‘Tis the same with the building blocks of life and the rest of creation.
“Once upon a t*&^^%#09—_)(*)97097ou&*^^%@!oiu[qoihjh908756r”
Usually those who fund research want something believable or reasonable and above all practical. Who is going to fund something like research how to bend spoons with your mind, or alchemy trying to make gold out of ordinary metal? It's a dead end.
The best example of this in our discussion is the origin of the species. Science really doesn't know. They can argue about how life adapted to it's environment after it existed, but the initial creation can't be explained.
Religion doesn't explain it either. If offers fantastic stories it claims to be true and must be believed.
Every THEORY about how life began when tested has failed
We have come a long way from the days when diseases were caused by "demons," and "cured" by passing shadows, or anecdotal miracles. At least our lives are a little more comfortable, and easier thanks to science.
If we left everything to religion, we would still be living in the 1st century chasing "demons" out of lepers.
This is the same activist/journalist Lisa Miller who wrote the incendiary (and ridiculous) cover story on how the Bible supports gay marriage. This is not the first time Miller has bashed the Catholic Church in a column in 2010. Just two weeks ago, she was raging against the American Catholic bishops standing in the way of ObamaCare. There, she also declared the Catholic leadership was incapable of standing as a moral example....Are you proposing Ms. Miller as some kind of authority on the questions we've been discussing?That’s Lisa Miller’s theology: homosexuals are refreshingly normal, while clerical celibates are freakish.
Folks can read up on her HERE and make up their own mind about the lady's qualifications.
"Then why did you speak of an object having a "particular form?" If the form is not acquired, then did the object always have it?"
Energy transforms from one form to another. Consider the 3 particles: an electron, a positron and a gamma ray photon.
Now consider a couple of interactions that result in transformation. The pair can annihilate with the simultaneous appearance of a photon that is the equivalent energy to that of twice of either of the particles, or the sum of the energies of both particles. The energy transforms as a result of interactions consistent with the properties of the energy and the particulars of the interacting forms in their prior state. Each and every interaction also includes interaction with the vacuum energy the energy of this world emerged from. That vacuum interaction is the reason for the unification of the electromagnetic-weak force at 100Gev, then for the electromagnetic-strong at ~1015Gev.
"You seem to suggest that "Objects must transform according to the law of conservation of energy." (I just loved that "must.")"
Yes, they must. Basically, if energy were not a constant, then it would be an instance of A≠A, where A is not an object that is consistent with itself. IOWs, the universe, which is energy, would be inconsistent with itself and could not exist.
I gave you Noether's theorem and the Ward-Takahashi identities before. They state that if there is a spacial, or time symmetry in the system, then there are conserved quantities. Simply, if one changes the position of some object in time, the change in energy(Lagrangian) is zero. By those same theorems, momentum is conserved after a change in spacial position and angular momentum is conserved for rotations.
"Which would seem to indicate you believe form is an emergent property which depends on the assembly of parts.
Electrons, positrons, quarks, gluons and photons have no parts. Assemblies with emergent properties are baryons, black holes, frost, frogs, people...
"such assembly is spontaneously produced under the law of the conservation of energy. "
The assemblies happen and are driven by the properties of the fundamental particles(energy forms) that make up the assembled object. The conservation laws just require that the energy not change at any point in the process.
"But where did the law of the conservation of energy come from? Is it, too, a spontaneously emergent property of the universe? Or it is the other way around:"
Neither. In order for something to exist, it must be consistent with itself. IOWs A=A always. Never A=0 at some time, then A≠0 at some t+dt. "universe is the manifestation of the law? It seems to me it can't be both. But if the latter, where did the law come from? I.e., what is its cause?
Yes, otherwise the universe would contradict itself as in A≠A. That means in could not exist.
Religion can explain everything, but can not predict anything.
Your acknowledgment of the existence of the supernatural is a step in the right direction. Keep walking that path.
But it seems you miss the point: How do universal laws come into existence in the first place? Why is it the nature of energy to be a conserved constant?
I asked a similar question before: Are physical constants and natural laws emergent properties of nature, or is nature the "emergent property" of "pre-existing" physical constants and natural laws? If the latter, where did the laws and constants come from? And why are they intelligible to human beings?
If the former, what was the universe "doing" before the emergence of its "governing" laws? How does one explain the movement from universal disorder (ataxia) to universal order (taxia) on purely naturalistic grounds? On what evidence?
For that matter, how does one explain mathematics on purely naturalistic grounds?
It seems pretty clear to me that neither natural laws/constants nor human beings can be the emergent end-points of a blind material process. How can anything in particular come into existence absent a first and final cause?
Final cause answers the question, "Why are things the way they are, and not some other way?"
The physical processes you describe, while essential to "thingness" in nature, do not reach to this question. Or so it seems to me.
Turtles lay hundreds of eggs, yet in any given nest there may be not one offspring that will survive to return and procreate. Some souls revel in their demise. Let them alone and move on to those asking genuine questions. God is not angered by questioning, but we have it on good authority that He will not always contend witht he wicked.
For refusing to acknowledge some mortal's version of what God is?
Why you folks continue to indulge this self-righteous naybob's ego is hard to figure
What could be more self-righteous and egotistic then to pretend to be a (self-appointed) spokesperson for God himself?
The poster enjoys insulting folks of faith and exploits with glee mischaraterization of any negative response to his insults
how do you know what I enjoy?
Let them alone and move on to those asking genuine questions.
And who decides what is a "genuine" question? The self-appointed, self-rigthoeus, God's press secretary?
God is not angered by questioning, but we have it on good authority that He will not always contend witht he wicked
Ah, there is always that warning to stifle open inquiry into any man-made "official truth."
No I am not. I wanted to get someone's opinion on her statistics. But since we talking about her, why are there so many different versions of what heaven is supposed to be like, and where does "New Earth" and "New Jerusalem" fit in? Are they part of heaven? Also I thought no one goes to heaven until the resurrection of the bodies. So, when Christians say that such and such is "in heaven" what exactly do they mean?
Also what do Christians say regarding her claim that only one in five people who "died and came back" seem to have experienced a Near Death Experience?
Why would religious people strive to 'uncover' anything? isn't the Bible enough? Besides, the NT states that all you have to ask and it will be revealed. You don't need to research, dig and uncover. Are all the answers to be found in the Bible? Isn't what's in the Bible exactly and as much as God wanted us to know? The Bible only commissions that believers preach the Gospel and baptize.
Exactly, a closed system, that perpetuates itself, where nothing can be added or subtracted without changing what it is.
IOWs A=A always. Never A=0 at some time
In other words, an eternal system.
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