The "Threat" of Creationism, by Isaac Asimov

Internet ^ | 1984 | Isaac Asimov

[unspun]

Is it bigotry to call a spade a spade? Or a creationist a creationist or even a Liar a Liar. You sound so liberal in your biogtry accusation. I guess i should have call the Creationist a rational human being but then i would have been lying.

I could hit the "abuse" button here too, but I won't. I'll just repeat it and hold it up. You are calling people who believe that "God created Heaven and Earth" irrational (and possibly non-human).

Very sad. Suggest you broaden your horizons.

[Southack]

"Of course you are no longer trying to defend your proof as I have unmasked it for the logical fallacy that it is. The shame is you'll just move on to some other thread and try to pull off this deception on some other poor souls."

No, I simply asked that YOU show where I made such a claim of your so-called "proof".

And so far, you haven't managed to show where I ever said it or made it.

But that little fact hasn't stopped you from knocking down said strawman as if I really had said it.

So come on Sentis, put up or shut up, in WHICH specific post on this thread did I say that it was incontravertibly proven that God exists?

Surely such a fact will be easy for a mind as scientific as yours to produce, right?! I mean, you won't have to babble-on, try to change the subject, or flee this thread, right? You'll just be able to say "Post # so and so" by Southack made that claim, right?!

I mean, you wouldn't be lying about that claim, would you? I mean, your own argument wouldn't be so flimsy as to have been based upon a false premise, right?!

So come on little Sentis, which specific post # will you cite as "proof" rather than opinion?

[F16Fighter]

"Asimov is right. Your mind is stuck in ancient Middle Eastern mythology."

And Asimov?? Wasn't he stuck in a cheesy 1950s science-fiction outer-space flick?

Scientists demand "proof" of everything -- except regarding the issues of a supposed BB creation of the Universe and a tall tale of evolution taught for years as "fact" that requires such a leap of faith that defies ANYt scientific "probabiliy." Yet somehow then "proof" isn't important in the least, and "assumptions" conveniently become a more than adequate substitute.

While science cannot accept the existance of an extraneous dimension of time, space, and spirit of which is completely impervious to the universal physical or material law, it does indeed exist.

[Sentis]

I didn't say any such thing I said i should have but I would have been lying. your being as touchy as any Liberal I have ever encountered. Do I believe creationists are irrational. Yes I do for the most part. Is it a crime for me to think this? Are you accusing me of a Thought crime? Is the free Republic George Orwell's 1984.

No one will take what I said as abuse as I didn't call anyone anything. I said I would have been lying if I made that comment. It was a truthful statement.

Quit taking every little thing as an insult. You make me sad in that you can't take even the smallest amount of criticism without shouting abuse. Broaden your Horizons.

[unspun]

It's one thing to be bigoted, it's another to be redundant.

[Sentis]

As you have misquoted me several times i will restate what I said.

I said and I quote "I don't see how your argument proves the existence of God"

Your posts clearly presupposes that there is a god and I quote you "That's just gibberish. Base 4 math is an order of magnitude of complexity GREATER than Base 2 (i.e. Binary) math. Yet show me where Binary programs form without Intelligent Intervention and THEN we'll be able to discuss whether the vastly more complex Base-4 instructions in DNA could even potentially be formed without Intelligent Intervention.

But the burden of proof is on you. Where is that mystical non-intelligence-formed Base-2 software program?!

After all, I can show PLENTY of examples of such software that has been made WITH intelligent intervention (so I've done my burden of proof - that leaves you out in the cold again)..."

Here is one of several places where you imply that God exists because you can see no evidence which suggests he doesn't.


You have twisted my words and used what is at best Double speak because I never stated what you accuse me of stating. These supposes that you are lying about what I stated in my post and as I quote what i said everyone reading this knows you are twisting my words.

[beavus]

While science cannot accept the existance of an extraneous dimension of time, space, and spirit of which is completely impervious to the universal physical or material law, it does indeed exist.

Riiiiight. Of course it does. In fact, I think I'll buy a 12 pack and go there tonight.

[balrog666]

While science cannot accept the existance of an extraneous dimension of time, space, and spirit of which is completely impervious to the universal physical or material law, it does indeed exist.

Gee, if it doesn't intersect the physical or material universe, how would you know it exists? And why would anyone care if it did?

[tophat9000]

Simple forms of life came into being more than three billion years ago, having formed spontaneously from nonliving matter

OK? ...Now how is this more rational argument? Spontaneously creation of the universe and live from nothing?

How is this a more rational argument that creation is from a predating intelligent force?

Evolution only explains how a living thing may be forced to change & improve to go on …. it done not explain spontaneously creation of things

[captain11]

I don't know whether there are other universes besides this one or not but if there are any terms like "separated by hundreds of billions of years, and by regions of emptiness many times the size of our universe" just don't make sense.

Then let me explain. Our universe is theorized to be roughly fifteen billion years old. It is theorized to be expanding, and at an increasing rate of volumetric enclosure, like a balloon. This leaves two possibilities--that it will either continue this way indefinitely, or it won't. If the former is true, it implies that there is absolute void beyond the current boundary of our universe, into which our universe expands. If you don't admit this, then it is impossible to meaningfully say that our universe is expanding--at all.

It also implies, if you argue for indefinite expansion, that there is an infinite supply of this void. This void is the emptiness I allude to above, and it provides ample housing for as many universes as you care to define, and as large as you care to make them. This addresses the first of your things that "don't make sense". The fact is, if our universe is expanding, then by definition there are regions of void where it currently isn't, but which our universe will expand to occupy in the future.

If there is an infinite supply of void for this (or any) universe to occupy, then by definition, there could exist another universe, or many other universes, separated by gigantic expanses of void, so extensive that no two universes would intersect, even a quadrillion years after the genesis of any of them (intersection of universes is not out of the question, of course, but we'll leave that aside for now).

If, on the other hand, our universe will stop expanding at some point, say 20 billion years from now, then a further set of possibilities come to the fore. Our universe could remain that maximum size forever, shrink somewhat, shrink completely back to the speck from whence it theoretically came and disappear into oblivion, resume growth at some point for reasons unknown, oscillate between the maximum size and some other size...the possibilities are endless.

For the sake of argument, let's go with the "universe shrinks back to a speck and disappears into oblivion" argument for now. Total elapsed time, 35 billion years of expansion, 35 billion years of contraction back to oblivion, 70 billion years total elapsed time from the "big bang" that hatched it.

Then what? Does our hypothetical "speck" lie dormant in the void, ready to explode back into existence for no reason whatever, just like last time? No, you say? Why not? It did it once, why not again, 23 billion years after contraction back to a nothing. Come now, why, precisely isn't this possible? What factor prevents this, what great cosmic governor to ensure that one, and only one occurrence of that "big bang" trick occurs, ever. What's the matter, is this nature thing a one trick pony?

Oh, and the bigger problem. If, as postulated by the "big bangers", there simply was nothing prior to the "big bang"--no time, no space, no anything, just void, that presents an even bigger conundrum, doesn't it. Infinite void, with nothing in it, is the ultimate stable state. There is no reason whatever, absent God, for that state to change--ever. It is the ultimate equilibrium. Yet, the evolutionists and arrogant (subset of) astrophysicists would have you believe that some manifest destiny, something literally outside of nature, caused nothing to transition into something.

Either that, or you must argue that the nature of nature is to create something out of nothing. A neat trick indeed, and one can scarcely imagine something so supernatural as that. At the very least, you'd expect nature to be capable of repeating the trick.

As your for your Physicist friend, bring him on. He'll be in for the philosophical ride of his life.

[longshadow]

Big Bang advocates had been ridiculed for over a hundred years.

When exactly do you think the "Big Bang" Cosmology was first proposed?

(Hint: it wasn't "over a hundred years ago")

BTW, What does Cosmology have to do with the Theory of Biological Evolution?

[jejones]

Well...actually, feather structure is reminiscent of zippers, or perhaps Velcro would be the more accurate analogy. :)

That said, I agree with you that imitation is the wrong word here. To imitate something implies that you already know about the thing you want to imitate. People often come up with techniques found in nature because both people and nature occupy the same universe that works the same way for everybody.

[longshadow]

As your for your Physicist friend, bring him on. He'll be in for the philosophical ride of his life.

Indeed, it is clear from your dissertation it WON'T be a scientific ride.

[balrog666]

As your for your Physicist friend, bring him on. He'll be in for the philosophical ride of his life.

Well, gee, do you want to discuss Physics or Philosophy? If the latter, go talk to Betty Boop and Alamo Girl.

[Arthur McGowan]

Anyone who asks this question has not grasped the point yet. This is not a scientific enquiry but an ontological enquiry. Any "designer" that needed a designer would be a finite being, susceptible to detection by some scientific method. Thus, it would not be the answer to the question: Is there something OUTSIDE of the universe and inaccessible to our direct experience that is responsible for the things that are accessible to experience?

[Arthur McGowan]

Once again, where did you get the idea of a 'Creator' independent of your decision, without any evidence, that there is one? There is no 'proof' of anything, other than what exists exists. Anything else is a Assumption, an Assertion without Proof, a Begged Question, a Smuggled Premise.

Not true. Here is the argument: If everything that exists is like the things that we can experience--i.e., finite and contingent on something else--then there could be nothing. But there is something. Therefore, there exists something which is real, but escapes our experience, and is infinite and not contingent on something else.

There is no begged question here. But it is necessary to ponder the question: If EVERYTHING that exists is contingent on something else, would there be ANYTHING?

[jejones]

Sigh. Only intelligent entities make silicon wafers for ICs. Should we infer an intelligent creator from snowflakes and diamonds?

If a process occurs in nature, then on what do you base the claim that only intelligent entities can be shown to be responsible for that process?

[BMCDA]

You seem to think that the universe expands into a void like a bubble in a box but this isn't the case, space-time itself is expanding. And no cosmological theory I am aware of suggests that there is such an ominous void you mention in your post.

[jejones]

In a way it is, just as it's nonscientific to refer to "weighing" something when you're determining its mass, and atheists who speak Spanish, Russian, and English still say "adios," "spasibo," and "goodbye" despite the words' religious origins. OTOH, I'd say there's not a lot of point to coming up with a circumlocution for "sunset" and "sunrise."

[Southack]

"Your posts clearly presupposes that there is a god..."

If my posts lead you to that conclusion, then fine, but they don't "presuppose" that conclusion per se (although from my perspective the preponderance of DNA programming evidence seems to point that way).

I see that you've backed away from your claim that I was saying that god's existence was proven.

That's progress, even for you. Perhaps one day you'll even be able to discern the difference between "preponderance of evidence" from that of "proven". Surely that point of distinction ins't too subtle, even for you.