In “Believers: Make your best case for God,” we had a number of interesting discussions. It had about 650 comments (and still counting)! Thanks to everyone who participated.
One question that remained unanswered is why one religion should be believed over another. Commenter James quoted Sam Harris at length when challenging a Christian to make a case why Christianity is more believable than Islam. It makes excellent points:
Consider: Every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian. And yet you do not find their reasons compelling.
The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. Muslims believe this as fully as you believe the Bible’s account of itself. There is a vast literature describing the life of Muhammad that, from the point of view of Islam, proves that he was the most recent Prophet of God. Muhammad also assured his followers that Jesus was not divine (Koran 5:71-75; 19:30-38) and that anyone who believes otherwise will spend eternity in hell. Muslims are certain that Muhammad’s opinion on this subject, as on all others, is infallible.
Why don’t you lose any sleep over whether to convert to Islam? Can you prove that Allah is not the one, true God? Can you prove that the archangel Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave? Of course not. But you need not prove any of these things to reject the beliefs of Muslims as absurd. The burden is upon them to prove that their beliefs about God and Muhammad are valid. They have not done this. They cannot do this.
Can you?
Muslims are simply not making claims about reality that can be corroborated. This is perfectly apparent to anyone who has not anesthetized himself with the dogma of Islam.
The truth is, you know exactly what it is like to be an atheist with respect to the beliefs of Muslims. Isn’t it obvious that Muslims are fooling themselves? Isn’t it obvious that anyone who thinks that the Koran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe has not read the book critically?
Isn’t it obvious that the doctrine of Islam represents a near perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. Understand that the way you view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way I view all religions.
Every believer should be asking questions like this if they are really seeking after truth. Yet I have never heard a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps someone will enlighten us on this post.
Update: It appears James was quoting Sam Harris. No wonder I liked it so much! But when quoting other authors, please make sure to say so — otherwise it is considered plagiarism. I’ve updated the post to reflect this.
An excellent comment but I have read it (or something very similar before). I have a feeling it may be from Sam Harris’s book “Letter to a Christian Nation” but as I don’t have a copy to hand, perhaps someone can check.
Great comment though.
I agree with James’ comment completely. Having said that, the text of his comment sounds a lot like the words from Letter to a Christian Nation (by Sam Harris).
Whether Harris said it before or not, it’s something that should be repeated as often as possible. Unfortunately religious people in general tend to be pretty ignorant when it comes to religion – theirs and others.
It’s doesn’t just sound like Harris…it IS Harris. It’s verbatim from Letter to a Christian Nation. I agree entirely with the statement but he should have cited the source.
In my high school World Views class, I started asking myself these questions (I was a devout Christian at the time), I believe that it was ultimately these questions that started my deconversion process.
One of my favorite quotes:
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Stephen Henry Robers (1901 – 1971)
That was a wonderful extrapolation of the old line about how if Xtians understood why they don’t believe in Zeus, they’d understand why atheists don’t believe in God.
It’s impossible to debate the vality of someone’s religion. When a person believes in something that cannot be proven, it is very easy for them to validate it. You get the “I believe it because it’s true” or “because the (insert any religious texts here) tells me so” response.
The contradiction happens when a person discredits every other religion with logic and reason that would discredit their own beliefs. The same rules rarely apply when one validates their own religion.
Part of the problem is that “God” is a title not a name. It needs to be pointed out that Christians don’t believe in God, they believe in a specific god named Yahweh (YHVH). This is an important disctinction when comparing him to such others as Zeus and Apollo or the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
@Alex
I think it’s slightly more subtle than that. If you have faith that whatever version of god you care to name exists and has a certain set of attributes then it fairly easy to then use logic and reason to validate your own beliefs. So from I believe in the Christian god you can the move to the Bible is the word of god and on to the flood actually happened. Logically this must be true if you have the fixed and therefore unchallengeable belief that your version of god exists. Logic and reason can also be applied to disprove other religions as they do not have the benefit of the assumption that their version of god exists.
Saying the above yes it does come down to “because it’s true”. The only question I have is how many believers really think and question their own faith more than just “I believe because I do.” I’m not particularly convinced that the religious posters here are in any way representative of any but a small proportion of believers.
It’s easy for Christians to counter this question, because they are masters of circular reasoning and self-deception. The primary way they do this is by simply saying, “I believe Christianity is the correct religion because I KNOW it is the correct religion,” or “I KNOW the bible is the infallible word of god therefore Christianity is the one true religion,” or “I KNOW the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins,” or similar variations of the same circular self-referential non-sequitur nonsense.
I find that very few Christians are willing or even capable of giving Christianity the same objective examination that they give to all other religions*. Certainly not the more dishonest and/or fanatical Christians.
*And many of them DO examine other religions, some in great detail. My wife was once a member of an evangelical cult, and they would regularly hold “comparative religion” classes at their church. She said that the church would invite representatives of other faiths to appear at the church and give a lecture about their religion. The audience would politely smile and nod and clap, and when it was all done and the rep of the other religion had left, they would spend the following several hours laughing at, mocking, and subjectively “disproving” the other religion while reveling in how correct their own was.
because of the fact that, when it comes right down to it, religion evolved to help us have more self control, i feel no need or desire to prove that my God is superior than anyone else”s, or anyone else’s lack of a God.
if you believe in jeezis, that’s fine. if you believe in buddha, wonderful. if you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, more power to you, if you don’t believe in any gods at all, that’s fine too…
just don’t (and this is the important part) include me in any fantasies that you have about whether or not your “god”, or lack thereof, is superior to mine.
I read the link to the page where the challenge was made and you state:
“not one has presented plausible evidence for their belief in God, the Devil, the Bible being written by God, or Jesus being born of a virgin and rising from the dead”
Plausible means likely. Okay. So tell me again the mathematical odds (the likelihood) that evolution (not necessarily Darwinian but all branches or schools) would or could result in the life forms and civilization we now know.
Right, the mathematical odds are almost too large to calculate. There are links to pages if you are interested in getting those odds, interestingly the links are to pages of non-believers in the field of science that reject evolutionary theory based on many causes, mathematical odds being one. So one’s belief in “evolution” of any school would be called implausible.
However, as an atheist you believe the implausible. You defy your own standard. Interesting.
Yes you have artifacts, yet so does the believer.
Quite interesting.
The great intellectual divide is not between theists and athiests but between “I know that I know” systems and skepticism.
Jabster–
I was a Christian for 33 years. From my experience, there are three types of christian believers. Those who question god and seek answers, those who have questions but are afraid to seek answers, and those who blindly believe everything without question. I’m not sure which type of religious posters are represented on this site.
My previous post is an oversimplification, but true. The only thing I would add is the use of personal experience to prove a god’s existence. Justifying a belief because of and answered prayer or a warm and fuzzy feeling they equate to the presence of god.
@Alex Guggenheim
Well why don’t you toss a coin 100,000 times and then work out the probability of getting that exact sequence of coins tosses again.
Question-I-thority,
to reinforce that idea, most organized religions think that other flavors of their own religion are wrong, let alone other types of religions.
For example, Shi’a vs. Sunni, protestant christianity vs catholisism, etc.
I always assumed it was more to deal with familiarity than being able to back it up with anything solid.
I mean, how come god only picks people who grew up in a pentacosal household for glossolalia, rather then say breaking it out in the middle of a catholic mass?
I believe that people think “their” religion is the “right” one for the same reason they think their kids are smarter or better looking then yours…it is just what they know and anything else (especially anything strikingly different), just seems wrong to them.
I wish more christians would just be blatantly honest about it and say “I believe because I believe,” and leave it right there. Doesn’t the bible say “faith is what pleases God”? Except that faith alone is not enough to convince a great many of us because it leads to questions like the title of this post. And so there is a need for “evidence,” or “reasons to believe”, which leads to the *huge* apologetics movement. But like I used to tell friends and family after my de-conversion: “If you have faith, you don’t need evidence. If you have evidence, you don’t need faith.” They never really bought it. Who knows, maybe they just *like* running around in circles, intellectually.
Even if you’re right, that doesn’t imply that evolution doesn’t happen, but that humans don’t exist.
“Right, the mathematical odds are almost too large to calculate.”
Well, I’m afraid this is deceptive. The problem here is to remember that there was no pre-selected outcome. That means that the probabilities against any particular outcome are not really meaningful.
Let’s try the analogy of a deck of card. You draw one card. The odds of picking, say, the ace of spades in 1 in 52. The odds of picking another card and getting the king of spades is 1 in 52 X 1 in 51. Draw three more cards and get the next three spades and the odds come out to 1 in 311,000,000+. Pretty unlikely.
However, what are the odds of drawing five cards and getting … five cards. 1 in 1. You’re drawing five cards, you’re going to get five cards, end of story. The above hand in unlikely only because we’ve stated at the outset that we want five specific cards in a specific order.
We atheist don’t believe that evolution was specifically trying to draw a hand that added up to humanity. However, once you had reproduction and heredity, you have evolution. You’re going to end up with something.
wintermute
Plausible means likely. Okay. So tell me again the mathematical odds (the likelihood) that evolution (not necessarily Darwinian but all branches or schools) would or could result in the life forms and civilization we now know.
Even if you’re right, that doesn’t imply that evolution doesn’t happen, but that humans don’t exist.
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But it does mean someone is believing the IMPLAUSIBLE while demanding plausibility for the beliefs of others.
RE: “We atheist don’t believe that evolution was specifically trying to draw a hand that added up to humanity. However, once you had reproduction and heredity, you have evolution. You’re going to end up with something.”
Precisely. The probability of us being here is 100%, because, well, we’re here.
Alex, I answer your implausibility argument here:
http://unreasonablefaith.com/2008/09/16/the-futility-of-invoking-a-designer/
Summary: However improbable an event is, it becomes more improbable if you invoke a designer. A infinitely complex being is by definition infinitely improbable. So if you use that argument against evolution, which is certainly in the realm of probability in our size of universe, then you have to use it against your belief in God, which is infinitely improbable.
I can not understand how people can still try to deny evolution.
Not only does it pass the common sense test, this is something that you don’t have to take someone’s word for, you can prove it to yourself, in your home with fruit flies or fast growing micro organisms.
I do get how macro-evolution (or more specifically morphological transformation from one species to another), might be a little tougher to deal with, but the fundamental theory is just flat out provable.
I would think that it would be a primary requirement for a religion that wants to grow, to not have tenets that force a prospective convert to ignore things they can actually see with their own eyes.
VorJack
“Right, the mathematical odds are almost too large to calculate.”
Well, I’m afraid this is deceptive. The problem here is to remember that there was no pre-selected outcome. That means that the probabilities against any particular outcome are not really meaningful.
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The problem with your claim and a rather unscientific one is that pre-selected outcomes need not be established in historically evaluating the odds of its occurrence.
Secondly, you treat “evolution” as the outcome. That isn’t what is being argued, it is the process. You fail to make the distinction. The outcome is evidence for EVERYONE that something occurred. That is the only fact, you assume the process is fact and attempt to invalidate any calculation of its impossibility or possibility.
You see society today as we all do, with only artifacts of the past and the best you can do is “interpret” them. Hence you don’t know the outcome of something (evolution) because what exists you are already assuming IS the outcome. We don’t know that life, as we know it, is the outcome of evolution, it is still a theory and not a fact therefore values can and should and are established in the scientific community of its likelihood or unlikelihood.
Daniel Florien
Alex, I answer your implausibility argument here:
http://unreasonablefaith.com/2008/09/16/the-futility-of-invoking-a-designer/
Summary: However improbable an event is, it becomes more improbable if you invoke a designer. A infinitely complex being is by definition infinitely improbable. So if you use that argument against evolution, which is certainly in the realm of probability in our size of universe, then you have to use it against your belief in God, which is infinitely improbable.
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Your problem here is that your pursuit doesn’t deal with the evolutionist requiring plausible reasons for those believing in God or creation while holding to the implausible himself.
Are you suggesting that the evolutionist is more right for holding to what you describe as a less implausible belief simply because the insertion of an infinitely complex being makes the improbably higher? Do you know the threshold for a 0 likelihood without a complex designer is already met in development of odds for evolution? So the best you can do is say the God believer is more 0 than the 0 evolutionist? Is this really your argument? While killing your opponent you slaughter yourself.
As to the assertion that an infinitely complex designer produces a default infinite improbability, I take issue with that and maybe for another day.
Daniel,
I would also add that the implausibility argument breaks down altoghter if you frame it in the context of designing life on earth as opposed to all life and everything else in the universe.
I someone does not assume that all life everywhere started at the same time, then there is nothing precluding a pre-existing adequately complex designer from designing us, or more specifically designing the kernel that evolved into us.
We are simply evolved humans and are not far from being able to do that very thing ourselves.
@Alex Guggenheim
You have mis-understood what is being said. If your argument against evolution is that it’s to improbable to have occurred it does not therefore make sense to say this means that an even more improbable event occurred.
You ask for the odds of evolution producing the set of lifeforms we see; that is not arguing that evolution is unlikely; it’s arguing that the outcome of evolution (that is, humans, chickens and E. coli) are unlikely. The fact that, if we replay the tape of life, we’re exceedingly unlikely to get humans again has absolutely no bearing on whether or not evolution happens. The least flawed conclusion you can draw is that humans don’t exist. But we have fairly strong evidence that they do, so the statistical implication is clearly false.
What are the odds that the huge number of fossils that we see would all line up into nice, neat trees of chage over time, just as evolution predicts, if evolution wasn’t actually happening? What are the odds that all of the molecular phylogenies would line up in exactly the same way, if not for evolution? (if we deal with a mere 20 species, there are 8,200,794,532,637,891,559,375 different trees we can construct. What are the odds that 20 unrelated phylogenies on those species would all produce the same tree?) What are the odds that the thousands of physically observed instances of speciation, both in the lab and in the wild, are such wild misinterpretations of the data that they are all worthless? What are the odds that every single measurement of relatedness we can think of are all wrong in such a fashion that they all give the exact same wrong answer?
What are the odds that you know more about this topic than everyone who’s ever actually gone out into the field and studied the evidence? Than everyone who’s ever devoted decades of their life to figuring out what’s really going on?
How about this, Alex?
Your parents each contributed 23 chromosomes for you. The odds of them having contributed the exact ones they did is 1 in 2^23 = 1 in 8,388,608. So, given your parents having a child, that is the odds that that child would be you (not counting the less quanitfiable environmental factors). But, of course, given your grandparents having children, there was a 1 in 8,388,608 chance that each of your parents would be born. So your odds of being born go down to 1 in 6*10^20, or so. If we go back another generation, you’re only 1 in 3*10^48 likely.
Does this mean that human reproduction is fundamentally unbelievable? Is this example any more contrived than an ex post hoc exacmination of the odds that humans as a species would evolve?
wintermute
What are the odds that you know more about this topic than everyone who’s ever actually gone out into the field and studied the evidence? Than everyone who’s ever devoted decades of their life to figuring out what’s really going on?
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What are the odds that by attempting a hail Mary pass and trying to disqualify anyone who does not meet this suddenly essential criteria for discussing the subject you also disqualify yourself and any argument you advance? 100%
Evolution isn’t implausible because you think it is. That isn’t the standard of implausibility.
The fact is, the mechanics by which evolution function are well documented, and laboratory observed in countless studies. We see active evidence of ongoing evolution all around us. We find a fossil record that again and again matches our expectations based on evolutionary theory.
Evolution provides data from which we can make useful predictions. Predictions based on evolutionary theory are used every single day in epidemiology, and they work. Evolution also makes falsifiable claims about the way biology works. Claims that are tested and re-tested and re-tested, always leading back to the fact that evolution is the most likely explanation for how biodiversity arose.
Name even one useful prediction that creation makes, or even one falsifiable claim that it makes, and you will be doing better than every other ‘creation scientist’ on earth.
Is it more implausible that a known and documented mechanism allowed complex molecules to evolve into every more complex life forms, or that the Baal of rivers and storms that the proto-Hebrews decided to claim as the only true god is the actual creator of the universe and everything in it?
You can decide it’s that second one, but you can’t demand that anyone take you seriously.
That’s not a hail Mary pass, that’s simple intellectual honesty, by the way. Something you are entirely lacking in, Alex.
Missed this one, sorry.
In scientific parlance, “theory” and “fact” are very different creatures, not rungs on a ladder. A fact is an observation. “Humans and chimps share a common ancestor who lived 5,000,000 years ago” is a fact. They are dull and lifeless things. A theory, on the other hand, is a body of explanation that makes sense of a large number of facts. In order to progress from an idea to a hypothesis to the lofty heights of being a theory, an explanation has to demonstrate, not only that it explains all the known facts, but that it also successfully predicts new facts yet undiscovered. If something reaches the level of being a theory, it basically means that only crackpots and people who don’t understand the facts think that it might be wrong (at least in the broad strokes; there are always rough edges to be tidied up).
If our current theory of gravity is right (that would be the general theory of relativity), what are the odds that our solar system would take the form it did? What are the odds of eight planets, instead of six or nine? If the odds of me getting a cold last Wednesday evening are infinitesimal, what does that say about the odds that the germ theory of medicine is correct?
wintermute
How about this, Alex?
Your parents each contributed 23 chromosomes for you. The odds of them having contributed the exact ones they did is 1 in 2^23 = 1 in 8,388,608. So, given your parents having a child, that is the odds that that child would be you (not counting the less quanitfiable environmental factors). But, of course, given your grandparents having children, there was a 1 in 8,388,608 chance that each of your parents would be born. So your odds of being born go down to 1 in 6*10^20, or so. If we go back another generation, you’re only 1 in 3*10^48 likely.
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Having abandoned your previous hypothesis I am offered this, I see. Okay. The problem here is that the odds you speak of are specific arrangement and outcome odds, meaning this formula views not whether I would be born but whether the exact same arrangement of my DNA could or would occur producing the identical person. We know those odds. Each chromosome carries its unique stand of DNA which transmits our hereditary traits. The odds are not whether I would be born, the odds for that are quite high. Conception and birth odds are very reliable. The odds of which you are talking about are arrangement odds to produce an identical person. No such thing has ever been observed in humans or animals. Monozygotic twins of course share DNA arrangement but that is not due to separate spontaneous results but an arrangement already established that is exported to the new twin.
Stop confusing him with data. His faith is stronger than facts.
“What are the odds that by attempting a hail Mary pass and trying to disqualify anyone who does not meet this suddenly essential criteria for discussing the subject you also disqualify yourself and any argument you advance? 100%”
This, by the way, is only in your own mind, Alex. The same place that all of your arguments make sense and have merit. From the outside, his point was entirely valid, and you come across like a moron.
Again.
wintermute
…it is still a theory and not a fact…
Missed this one, sorry.
In scientific parlance, “theory” and “fact” are very different creatures, not rungs on a ladder. A fact is an observation. “Humans and chimps share a common ancestor who lived 5,000,000 years ago” is a fact.
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I am astounded. You assert “a fact is an observation” and then assert that humans and chimpls lived 5,000,000 years ago is a fact. Tell me again who observed this 5,000,000 years ago?
Ty
you come across like a moron.
Again.
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Ah yes, the argument of a seasoned one.
If I don’t understand a topic, I generally assume that the consensus of people who do understand it is correct. The stronger the consensus, the more correct I assume it is. I know nothing about Swahili grammar (for example), so I don’t go around trying to prove that everyone with PhD’s in the subject must be wrong because, you know, what are the odds that that exact language would exist with those exact rules?
If you want to actually demonstrate that everything scientists believe on a topic is wrong, don’t you think it would behove you to go out and look at the evidence, so that you know what you’re arguing against? Do you really think that your little armchair gedankenexperiment is going to have the same weight as the millions different lines of evidence that all point in the same way? Of course, given that you’ve wilfully decided that you’re never going to expose yourself to that evidence, how would you ever know how massively unlikely your opinion is?
I honestly have difficulty understanding how someone can deliberately choose a false sense of smug superiority over understanding, but there seems to be plenty of evidence that it happens…
Well, the ancestors, for one. But, rather more recently, it’s been observed through the many consilient lines of evidence: fossil remains, anatomical analysis, genetic and molecular phylogenies. It’s a fect just as much as it’s a fact that the Earth goes around the sun (and not vice versa), even though no-one can physically see that happen.
Once again, feel free to actually look at the science before you pretend you know it’s all false.
Oh, and seeing as you’ve now read many, many replies to you “it’s unlikely” argument, do you still think it’s a good argument? Can you critique any of the replies, or are you just going to ignore the argument and refuse to admit you’re wrong?
The ‘improbability argument’ is immaterial. We are here. Someone is wrong about improbability suppositions.
Guggenheim: “I am astounded. You assert ‘a fact is an observation’ and then assert that humans and chimpls lived 5,000,000 years ago is a fact. Tell me again who observed this 5,000,000 years ago?”
Please don’t be astounded; just realize that Science can “observe” indirectly, as well as directly.
On another note—assuming for sake of argument that evolution is “implausible” or “false”, or a big conspiracy, or whatever other pop’ apologetic one would care to employ…..how do we go about testing/falsifying the “Genesis” hypothesis, which is neither a scientific fact, nor a scientific “theory”? In other words, how do we *know* that “Creation by Yahweh” is the default explanation?
@wintermute
“gedankenexperiment” well that’s my learn something new for the day task complete.
… and now I’m off to create a version of creationism bingo!
@boomSLANG
“In other words, how do we *know* that “Creation by Yahweh” is the default explanation?”
… because the Bible says that “it was god that done it” so it must be true.
No, not abandoned, but supplemented. I’m quite capable of holding two thoughts in my head at once. You might like to try it, sometime.
And you’re wrong. You asked us to calculate the odds, not of some kind of life evolving, but of “the life forms and civilization we now know” evolving. So the appropriate analogy is not to your parents have some kind of child but of having a child exactly like you. And you’re right, the odds are so astronomically long, that if your parents have a million children, there’ll never be another one exactly like you. But the point is that if we were to rewind your parents’ lives to just before you were conceived and ran it again from there, it’s staggeringly unlikely that you would have been born. And the child that would have been born instead would have been equally unlikely.
If we turned the tape of life back a few tens of millions of years, it’s equally staggeringly unlikely that humans would come to exist. But on this pass, we did. Not because we were likely, but because we were possible, and no less likely than any other outcome.
Once again, you are not actually arguing against evolution. You have given no reason to believe that evolution can’t happen, or is unlikely in itself. You have only suggested that evolution is unlikely to produce the exact set of species we see today. And you’re right. But that no more makes evolution impossible than any given deck of cards makes shuffling impossible, or your existence makes human reproduction possible.
Beyond the fact that it led to an outcome that can seem unlikely when measured from an ex post facto position, do you have any actual reason to believe evolution doesn’t happen? How do you square this with all the actual, naked-eye, realtime observations of evolution that are happening around the world?
@Guggenheim
Can you show us these links?
I think your misunderstanding of what a “theory” is, and of evolution, has proven itself.
Getting back to the original topic, let’s assume for your sake that evolution really is just a process that we don’t know happens, and that we can assign probability to. As boomSLANG just asked, do you have reason to assign a higher probability to God did it? And even your god?
wintermute
Well, the ancestors, for one. But, rather more recently, it’s been observed through the many consilient lines of evidence:
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Oh so you have spoken to these ancestors eh? LOL This evidence you claim are the artifacts you find and because of YOUR interpretation you deem them to be supportive.
It is the interpretation of the findings, not the findings themselves upon which evolution is built. And interpretation of data is quite a game.
But again, which ancestor did you speak to or which one’s writings did you find that documented this 5,000,000 year ago existence? No last name, just a first name.
Guggenheim
First, he didn’t say that humans and chimps lived five million years ago. He said they had a common ancestor.
The remains of several of these ancestors have been found, as have several in between, and pretty well “speak” for themselves.
@Alex Guggenheim
If you disagree with the interpretation the experts make, perhaps you can find sources of reputable experts who also disagree. I’m sure if your position was sound there would be many who would recognize that. If you search for those sources and don’t find many (or any) then please be honest enough with us to admit it when that occurs.
On one hand, there are artifacts, scientific experiments, repeatable techniques.. on the other, there is the belief in the supernatural. I’m afraid your not going to do with by arguing in terms of probability.
Sorry, that should be ‘do much’ not ‘do with’.
Alex,
what would you consider to be compelling proof of evolution?
I mean you can actually observe it on a micro scale.
You can witness it in action right before your eyes.
Is the larger issue of “coming from monkeys” the sticking point, or is it that the timeline of evolution goes against normal christian doctrine?
I am not being rude, I am just curious as to what, from your own personal experiences, would make you deny something that you can actually see, in real time?
Feel free to provide another explanation that explains the data even half as well. And if you use “God musta gone done it”, you’re going to have an uphill battle. But, of course, you refuse to look at the evidence, so you have no idea what you’re trying to explain, do you?
Of course, because of the argument you’ve chosen, you’re going to have to explain why the odds of God making all the animals exactly the way they are, and not in some slightly different form is greater than the odds of evolution creating them; and God has fewer constraints on him, so he could have made horses with wings, or humans with a genetic code completely unrelated to that of other animals, or ants the size of cows. Don’t you think it’s terribly unlikely that he just happened to choose this specific pattern?
I admit I was being flip when I pointed out that our ancestors could observe themselves. But we have observed those ancestors. Both literally in the bones-in-the-ground sense, and through far more subtle and far more convincing lines of evidence based on things like the relative similarity of various genes and proteins. I’m honestly surprised that you can not be aware of this, and still think yourself informed enough to overturn 200 years of scientific thinking. Please, read a book on the subject. Understand why everyone here is laughing at your proud ignorance. I mean, if you’re right and evolution is just a sham, what do you have to lose? It can’t be that you’re frightened you might just find out that it actually makes sense, can it?
McBloggenstein
@Guggenheim
Getting back to the original topic, let’s assume for your sake that evolution really is just a process that we don’t know happens, and that we can assign probability to. As boomSLANG just asked, do you have reason to assign a higher probability to God did it? And even your god?
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Assume for my sake? I reject evolution so you aren’t assuming anything for my sake. You mean let’s assume for the sake of not having to debate its merits that it exists but we don’t know how. Okay sure, let’s pretend you believe it but don’t know how. Great. Now let’s not pretend and in the world of reality accept the fact that a probability value for evolution can and has been many times, produced. Okay.
Do I have a reason to assign a higher probability that God did it and even my God?
Yes. I will provide one of many reasons, mathematical that is. Take the postulates (partition) The whole is equal to the sum of its parts and the (substitution) A quantity may be substituted for its equal in any expression.
God is a quantity. That quantity is the sum of the universe. As we know it the universe is infinite (it may be it may not be in reality but we can only speak of what we know and right now what we know is that the universe is infinite).
All parts of the universe come from a certain origin or whole or else they could not be parts, whether you believe in a “big bang” or a “divine decree”. If they are not parts of a whole then they are either part of another universe or eternal and not related in that way to the rest of the universe which speaks to a nature outside of science and more toward…yes the divine. So they must be parts of a whole since you certainly don’t want to admit to an eternal existence or alternate universes where parts of the present universe exist but aren’t really parts of it. That would be nutty talk.
How many parts are we adding? Innumerable. The whole cannot be lesser the the sum of its parts and if you assert it is, you challenge even basic physics and math. So be it.
The sum of the whole, while innumerable can be recognized in value since we know the dynamics of some of its parts which are fantastic in both marco and micro organization and complexity.
I assign a higher probability for divine creation because evolution says that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Divine creation at least is compatible with this simple base math postulate.
Remember this is the most elementary of reasons and only one of many. This is not thesis land where I am writing 45 paged papers. I will assume you understand our responses have to have some truncation due to the nature or commenting. But hopefully this will provide something for you to at know I understood your question whether you agree with the premise or not.
wintermute
Of course, because of the argument you’ve chosen, you’re going to have to explain why the odds of God making all the animals exactly the way they are, and not in some slightly different form is greater than the odds of evolution creating them; and God has fewer constraints on him, so he could have made horses with wings, or humans with a genetic code completely unrelated to that of other animals, or ants the size of cows. Don’t you think it’s terribly unlikely that he just happened to choose this specific pattern?
_______________________________________
Patterning is a benchmark of design by deliberation.
Alex,
Nearly everyone that post here does not believe in god.
However, even the most hardened atheist would change that tune on the spot if he (she?) showed up.
They all have something that would be compelling proof for them of the existence of god.
So what, for you, would be compelling evidence that the theory of evolution is true?
grapeape
Alex,
what would you consider to be compelling proof of evolution?
I mean you can actually observe it on a micro scale.
You can witness it in action right before your eyes.
Is the larger issue of “coming from monkeys” the sticking point, or is it that the timeline of evolution goes against normal christian doctrine?
I am not being rude, I am just curious as to what, from your own personal experiences, would make you deny something that you can actually see, in real time?
_________________________________
You’re not being rude you are coming closer in the argument which benefits us both.
I don’t argue with the with micro-evolution but the term is misleading. Micro-evolution is the adjustment of ALREADY existing genetic information. Certain features of all beings modify over time but not because, as macro-evolution asserts that NEW genetic information is being introduced but because already existing genetic information is recalculating its limited arrangement.
Micro-evolution is not the basis for macro-evolution, species change. While they share the same word, one is not the platform for the others.
If micro-evolution was the platform for macro-evolution, because it occurs so constantly in life forms, we would also see cases of macro-evolution. We don’t.
grapeape
Alex,
Nearly everyone that post here does not believe in god.
However, even the most hardened atheist would change that tune on the spot if he (she?) showed up.
They all have something that would be compelling proof for them of the existence of god.
So what, for you, would be compelling evidence that the theory of evolution is true?
_______________________________
I’d say a talking monkey but I have some neighbors that might qualify, heh heh.
To say what would be compelling truth is difficult for this reason. Not because I would not accept it but because it might be that usually in cases like this such changes are progressive and not immediate in their transition.
To be honest though, I am not so certain I am the best candidate for such a conversion. By that I mean I have, for 20 something years, repeatedly explored the topic and studied it. My conclusions aren’t green. And just because they have some time behind them does not make them right, that isn’t my point. My point is usually younger ponies are more easily convinced. But also because I respect my own integrity and the integrity of my own mind that regularly has revisited and modified beliefs so my conclusions and certainties aren’t borne from mild sentences of reading FUNDY science books. Thanks for asking.
P.S Do you know any talking monkeys? I mean beside the one from the episode of Futurama that had him with the hat.
Alex,
“Micro-evolution is not the basis for macro-evolution, species change.”
In fact species (probably shouldn’t get people started on the definition of species) change has been directly observed in both plants and animals.
“If micro-evolution was the platform for macro-evolution, because it occurs so constantly in life forms, we would also see cases of macro-evolution. We don’t.”
I can’t tell the future, but we might look at ourselves and say that we observe an intermediate form between a monkey and a “future humanoid”.
The “macro” part of macro evolution refers to time, not size. By definition we would probably not be able to witness it in a normal human lifetime.
Alex,
“To be honest though, I am not so certain I am the best candidate for such a conversion.”
I am not an avowed atheist.
And I would never try to “convert” someone to something I believe, in fact I believe that it is the root of a lot of our modern problems.
I asked honestly because it seemed from your previous posts that you outright ignored observable fact and tried to stump the evolutionists on a technicality.
Your last post makes me think differently, that you have a well thought out idea of how you believe everything fits together.
I am very interested in hearing it.
New ideas, or points of view, at least for me, are not something to be afraid of.
“P.S Do you know any talking monkeys? ”
see George W. Bush….
done and done.
Alex – I liked the little summary about innumerable fantastic things (a bit of an oversimplification, I know). I particularly admire how you used flights of language to disguise a divide by zero error.
On the idea that macro-evolution doesn’t exist because it can’t generate new information, you realize that we’ve actually seen that happen in multiple organisms? In fact all the mechanisms that could cause micro-evolutionary changes to accrue into macro-evolutionary changes (ugly terms, but never mind) have been demonstrated; they’re not speculative ideas, they’ve actually been observed. So if you still contend that macro-evolution doesn’t happen, then you have to explain the as-yet undiscovered mechanism that can recognize when an organism has wandered too far from it’s Platonic ideal and stops it changing any further. What’s your candidate for that?
@Alex
You don’t say so directly, but am I correct in assuming that
you claim evolution can’t produce increasingly complex organisms?
And can I also assume you regard evolution as an entirely random process?
trj
@Alex
You don’t say so directly, but am I correct in assuming that
you claim evolution can’t produce increasingly complex organisms?
And can I also assume you regard evolution as an entirely random process?
___________________________________
Micro-evolution does not produce NEW genetic information. Complexity might be increased such as taking a circle and making a figure 8 with the same line. That is an essential distinction (forgive the elementary illustration but you get the point I hope).
Micro-evolution is NOT exclusively random and is observed with a high degree of purpose at times its occurrence is also random, I don’t know if there is a panoramic documentation of which occurs when and how often.
It is macro-evolution that requires a predominant degree of randomness in its formula which mathematically I reject, if not for other reasons.
I am going to have to take a break for a bit. Thanks to everyone. Well, if George Bush is a monkey, come see me in 4 years and tell me about our new President.
Ever heard of Ryan Leaf? Yeah, he was just inaugurated.
“P.S Do you know any talking monkeys?”
To be clear—a talking monkey would convince you that macro-evolution is valid, would it? Fair enough. Would you then accept, in lieu, a talking donkey? It’s only one letter off, and surely, such a specimen constitutes a “transitional form”..i.e.. a member of the horse family that can reason with and communicate with homosapiens using modern language.
Thus, if you were presented with a donkey that speaks the human language, say Hebrew, I couldn’t imagine you’d be shocked…. as we are told such things are possible right in the Christian doctrine(so it must be true). Yet, such a thing – if it actually exists/existed – points to transitional forms, just as you suggest a “talking monkey” would. A bit of quagmire, I’d say.
@Alex
Your definitions don’t hold up.
A mutation that introduces a change, even when the total amount of genetic material is unchanged, is new genetic information.
This happens all the time when the parents’ genes are recombined into new offspring. Parts of DNA are inserted in the “wrong” places, inversed, copied, deleted, or simply mutated individually. This happens at an individual (and thus purely “micro”) level. How can you claim this doesn’t constitute new genetic information?
Micro-evo. has no “purpose” as you claim, but I suppose you’re talking metaphorically about expected results, so I’ll leave it at that.
Macro-evo. doesn’t require a “predominant degree of randomness” since it’s exactly the same mechanisms at work. The micro/macro distinction is purely arbitrary.
No, it isn’t. And the specific pattern that we see is certainly not. No class of manufactured goods shows the same pattern of relationships as we see in living animals.
Well, you don’t. People who actually go out and look at the evidence do see cases of macroevolution everywhere..
Bwahahahahahahahahaha!
Thanks for that. It’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Suppose you have a genetic sequence that reads AGGTACGTC. Suppose you then get a duplication mutation, so that it reads AGGTACGTCAGGTACGTC. Suppose that, at some later time, there’s a couple of point mutations so that it now reads AGGTACGTCAGGTTCGTT. Does this represent an increase in information? Also, just to be clear, are we talking about Shannon information, Korbyzski information, or some other definition?
Someone who’s cracked open a high-school biology textbook, let alone spent 20 years studying the subject should have no problem answering that, let alone finding examples of papers that have definitively found an increase in genetic information. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html has several examples, if you’re unsure.
@Alex
Regarding your cosmic argument for God.
That’s simply an assertion on your part. It serves as both your premise and your conclusion which is just sloppy reasoning.
So you’re assigning a perceived quality as proof of divine creation? I don’t follow you.
Huh? How does evolution say this?
Maybe you should rephrase your entire cosmic argument, because it’s not at all clear what you’re trying to say.
Alex, like wintermute said, I doubt that your studies have included actual information theory. Otherwise, you’d see that your claims concerning information are simply false, both in a strictly mathematical model and from a general colloquial point of view.
You might find this useful:
http://recursed.blogspot.com/2009/01/test-your-knowledge-of-information.html
As well, your appear to be unaware that randomness does indeed constitute information (probably because you make the common mistake of thinking information implies order). In fact, the degree of randomness is directly proportional to the information content.
You should take a look at this:
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/08/why_is_randomness_informative.php
If you want to use the angle of information theory to attack evolution you should at least get the theory right.
They’ve pretty obviously not included any actual biology, chemistry, palaeontology, geology, or any of the other sciences that touches on evolution. I can believe he’s spent 20 years reading Creationist apologetics like Morris, Brown or Hovind. But actually looking at what the people he’s criticizing think; not a chance. He’s not going to take the chance that he finds out that he’s wrong.
Guggenheim
Yes, for your sake. I said this in an effort to get back to the main topic, which I am interested in reading some responses to. We would assume for your sake because most others here recognize that evolution is widely held to be true, based on overwhelming evidence. Which is more than I can say for the alternative that you are implying, which is based on a creator.
None of your statements had anything to do with why your god is the right one, but only had to do with divine creation.
The “nobody was around to witness it” argument is certainly getting stale.
I suppose we can’t be sure the Roman Empire existed either. After all, nobody alive today witnessed it. And we can’t rely on the historical evidence, because “that’s just a point of interpretation”.
Ad nauseam.
Anyone seen any arguments as to why my relgion is better than yours yet?
My religion is better than yours, because I worship Chuck Norris.
I bet you that’s going to be the best argument here.
I have not met a single christian who was willing to consider this question, but in reverse: why is another religion more valid than mine? They will always start off with the premise that theirs is the one valid one and proceed to argue for it. Yes, this does seem like scientific inquiry, having a hypothesis first then finding evidence for it, but it is needless to describe the difference between the christian (or most christians, at least) and the scientist.
I’m glad though, that the christians who comment here at least want to discuss, debate and defend their faith (well of course, otherwise they wouldn’t be writing at all). I’ve met many christians who won’t even bother, who think that to be ‘intelligent’ is a ploy of the devil, that logic is a ploy of the devil, that scientific fact is good but when used against faith is yet another cunning ploy of the devil.
Years back I tried to discuss my doubts about christianity with my mother. I got as far as far as two sentences before she said ‘I just can’t argue against your logic and intelligence’, and she shook her head in a broken hearted fashion (for my being ‘lost’, not for her stunning disillusion) and left the room.
Anybody like to share their experiences with trying to discuss a lack of faith with a christian loved one?
Alex Guggenheim:
So tell me again the mathematical odds (the likelihood) that evolution (not necessarily Darwinian but all branches or schools) would or could result in the life forms and civilization we now know.
Evolution is a stochastic process (i.e. one that contains a random element) that has been occurring for several billion years. As has been amply demonstrated by previous comments the fact that you seem to think that the probability of a particular outcome of such a process has any relevance to whether or not the process has actually occurred says a lot about your understanding of both stochastic processes and probability.
Probability arguments against evolution are beloved by ID\Creationists because they are so easy to manipulate. Just make a few invalid assumptions in your premises and hey presto come up with a preposterously large number that ‘disproves’ evolution.
Unfortunately for the ID\Creationists not only are the flaws in such arguments clearly evident but in science empirical evidence trumps theoretical calculations every time, so even if a meaningful figure could be put on the ‘probability of life having evolved’ it would hold no sway against the huge amount of evidence from comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, the fossil record and molecular phylogeny. Oh, and the fact that evolution has been observed.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.
Alex
At the risk of drawing open old wounds in this discussion, I would love for you to answer a question I have put to creationist/ID proponents with no satisfactory answer.
It is continually claimed that Micro exists but not Macro. Well where then is the boundary? Please can you supply specifics. For instance; I hear tell that a wolf, fox, poodle, great dane and a pekinese are all “Dogs” and therefore they are an example of Micro no matter how different they look and that polar, grizzly, brown etc are bears and therefore not dogs.
How do you then explain fossils of creatures from around 14 mya called Amphicyon who resembled both bears and dogs but we find no fossils recognisible as a whole dog or whole bear much before this period ? Are we to believe that a “creator” allowed the Amphicyons to go extinct then created the first “dog” and “bear” 15mya?
The same could be said of all creatures, the morphology changes the further back in the fossil record one searches with species closely resembling the species both before and after but nonetheless with small tell-tale differences rather than wholesale changes. Are we to understand from your side that the “creator” creates new species or kinds or whatever term you wish to use, constantly over the years each time another kind goes dies out? If this is the case do you have evidence of this instant creation happening today – or at all?
If this creator does this, why does it do so using blueprints from the previous species but no dramatic changes; we don’t have tree-dwelling octopuses or seven limbed elephants or whatever our imagination can counjour.
Whuiskas
I have not met a single christian who was willing to consider this question, but in reverse: why is another religion more valid than mine?
____________________________
Either you read Christian literature very little or get out and about rather seldom.
wintermute
They’ve pretty obviously not included any actual biology, chemistry, palaeontology, geology, or any of the other sciences that touches on evolution. I can believe he’s spent 20 years reading Creationist apologetics like Morris, Brown or Hovind. But actually looking at what the people he’s criticizing think; not a chance. He’s not going to take the chance that he finds out that he’s wrong.
____________________________________
I habitually digest secular apologists not religious ones though with a few I have read for the sake of having a frame of reference. Your assumptions only make you look ASSumptive.
“Do I have a reason to assign a higher probability that God did it and even my God?
Yes. I will provide one of many reasons, mathematical that is.”
None of your statements had anything to do with why your god is the right one, but only had to do with divine creation.
_____________________________________
True I didn’t address that. Science and math only provides evidence of divine creation and not of a “specific” creator by name. Hence no amount of science and math can identify by name the creator.
Now, if you are willing to consider sources other than science and math for measurement and qualification, then I can offer you reasons for my believing my God is the creator. If not then we are at in impass.
impasse
wintermute
Bwahahahahahahahahaha!
Thanks for that. It’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
______________________________________
I understand your nervous laughter to ward of anxiety, I have seen it in people before.
wintermute
No, it isn’t. And the specific pattern that we see is certainly not. No class of manufactured goods shows the same pattern of relationships as we see in living animals.
___________________________________________
We in fact see a far more complex pattern, an elevated system and you are suggesting what? That more sophisticated patterns come from unsophisticated sources, i.e. randomness, chance and less sophisticated patterns from deliberate design? This is your claim?
Okay, my replies are limited today, sorry. Busy day I will attempt to return for more fun.
@Alex Guggenheim
“I habitually digest secular apologists not religious ones though with a few I have read for the sake of having a frame of reference. Your assumptions only make you look ASSumptive.”
Can you post some links and/or references to those that you’ve read and some further explanation as to the reasons that you believe their standpoint to be untrue?
Could you also define what you mean by “secular apologists” as it’s not a term I’m familiar with?
Alex Guggenheim:
Micro-evolution does not produce NEW genetic information
Whoever told you that was either lying or they didn’t know what they were talking about.
Probability, information and making up definitions of ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ evolution, you really are going for the full gamut of the standard ID\Creationist canards, and none of this even addresses the topic of the thread, well done.
wintermute has already posted an example that shows your statement to be nothing but mall informed bluster. However we don’t even need to go to the extent of a gene duplication followed by a point mutation to refute your bogus claim.
If you are talking about Shannon Information then for a genome the information content is proportional to the log of the number of base pairs in the genome, thus a gene duplication itself adds Shannon Information.
If you are talking about Kolmogorov Complexity then the information content is measured by the length of the shortest algorithm that can produce the base pair sequence. In this case the information content can be increased by a single point mutation that either changes, adds or even deletes one base pair.
For example, consider a simple genetic sequence:
ATATATAT
A point mutation changing the second base pair results in:
AAATATAT
This does not change the amount of Shannon information but does increase information as defined by Kolmogorov Complexity.
In fact even a point deletion, say of the fourth base pair, resulting in:
ATAATAT
Results in an increase in information as defined by Kolmogorov Complexity.
It beggars belief that you claim to have repeatedly explored the topic and studied it for twenty years yet make claims that are so utterly and fundamentally wrong.
@Alex Guggenheim
Alex, your misconception here is that evolution is a random process (it isn’t.) I suspect the links you mention (but don’t cite) make the same mistake.
The “artifacts” of evolution can be independently verified, the artifacts of religion can’t. Typically when a religious artifact is examined (such as the Shroud of Turin,) fraud is uncovered.
The theory of evolution is the best explanation of the facts available.
Confusing the everyday definition of “theory” with the scientific one is a standard misrepresentation by creationists.
Sounds good but doesn’t make any sense.
Assuming for a minute science actually provides evidence for a creator, you’re still screwed, since you don’t know which of many mutually exclusive religions to follow. It seems the usual approach is to follow the religion your parents forced on you and hope the supposed god gives you an “A” for effort.
Assuming for a minute science actually provides evidence for a creator, you’re still screwed, since you don’t know which of many mutually exclusive religions to follow. It seems the usual approach is to follow the religion your parents forced on you and hope the supposed god gives you an “A” for effort.
________________________________________
Science doesn’t have to point a specific “creator”. Take the initial creation of our present universe as forwarded by some, it is the result of an immense explosion creating all of its present parts. Guess what? That’s right, the best science can do is “interpret” their findings and claim what happened and not its specific cause. Because you cannot provide a specific cause you are screwed? Right. Wrong.
Just as not identifying through scientific means a “specific” creator but understanding deliberate design points to one doesn’t screw anyone. Again, the debate of who that creator is, is beyond the intention of the measures and qualifications of science.
It appears YOU’RE the one screwed since all your determinations and considerations in life are limited to science and math.
We see a very specific pattern; the pattern of nested heirachies, in which all items are a modification of part that exist above them in the tree. No class of manufactured goods shows the same pattern. For example, a human hand, a horses’ foot, a dolphin’s flipper and a bat’s wing all use the same bone stucture. If a human designer were to sit down and attempt to create limbs to solve all these different problems, why would they begin with the same structures? When we build jet engines, we don’t take a propeller engine, shrink the propeller down to uselessness, re-shape the ignition chamber so it can act as a turbine (but leave the spark plug in there), and so on. Anyone who suggested this would be the proper way to go about it would be laughed at.
That is because designers, unlike evolution, are not constrained to work with what already exists; they can come up with novel structures. And if a structure works well in one place, they can port it wholesale to an otherwise unrelated product – a designer could have seen how well the bird wing worked, and given bats the exact same wing, rather than building a less efficient wing based solely on parts already existing in the mamallian toolkit.
The pattern we see in nature is exactly what we’d expect to see, if evolution happens, and is uttlerly bizarre if they were deliberately designed by an intelligent agent. We do not see this pattern in any design environment, and its presence is good reason to believe that living things were not directly designed, but evolved organically. Of course, this doesn’t rule out a divine creation, but it does require that the creator is deliberately trying to fool everyone into thinking that evolution is true.
And of course sophisticated patterns can develop from simple rules acting upon randomness. I’m sure your “twenty years of study” have covered emergent behaviour in far more detail than this comment allows, so I’ll just assme that you know you sound like a crazy person when you make claims like that (or that there’s no non-random component to evolution).
Simplicity is a hallmark of good design. Living things are far more complex than they could be, with many unneccessary points of failure. therefore, if we are allowed to compare living things with human-designed objects, the hypothetical designer was clearly an incompetant bodger. On the other hand, if “his ways are mysterious” and “we can’t know why he chose XYZ”, then comparisons to human design is pointless, as he’s clearly not making the same choices we are.
@Alex Guggenheim:
Science doesn’t point to any creator.
If Allah is the cause and you worship the false god Yahweh you could be in a lot of trouble.
Not true. If there was scientific evidence of your creator, then its characteristics could be determined.
Simplicity is a hallmark of good design. Living things are far more complex than they could be, with many unneccessary points of failure
______________________________________
Tell me again the life you have created and why points of failure along the lines of its existence make it invalid as a created life? Oh yea, we cannot create life.
I can’t build a plasma TV, either, but if I owned one that would randomly change channels, had the volume buttons wired in backwards, had a power button small and recessed so you need a paperclip to turn it on, and had a stand that couldn’t support its weight very well, I’d feel quite justified in declaring that was poorly designed. I don’t feel the need to be able to personally build a device from scratch in order to point out obvious flaws than need to be fixed; do you?
Oh, and by the way, we (meaning human beings) can create life.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9005023/
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/04/02/a_quest_to_create_life_out_of_synthetics/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
So that’s another false claim to add to your tally. Should we assume that you’re dangerously uninformed on the subject, or deliberately lying?
I think I can sum this up nicely in a few lines:
Alex Gugenheim:
Blah blah blah god exists.
No links, no rational argument (see “the universe is all of god and vice-versa), and a pile of long words to disguise an argument that boils down to, as far as I can make out:
“God exists.”
“You can’t talk to a billion-year-old monkey, can you?”
“There’s no such thing as evolution because nothing changes because it’s all God!”
“So THERE!”
“You’re an idiot!”
I don’t believe in gods, but I could surely believe in trolls.
wintermute
I can’t build a plasma tv
________________________________
Correct but many people can…no one has yet created life. Your equivocation fails.
Metro
I think I can sum this up nicely in a few lines:
Alex Gugenheim:
Blah blah blah god exists.
No links, no rational argument (see “the universe is all of god and vice-versa), and a pile of long words to disguise an argument that boils down to, as far as I can make out:
“God exists.”
“You can’t talk to a billion-year-old monkey, can you?”
“There’s no such thing as evolution because nothing changes because it’s all God!”
“So THERE!”
“You’re an idiot!”
I don’t believe in gods, but I could surely believe in trolls.
__________________________________
Are you so easily reduced to temper tantrums> Good grief get a hold of yourself at least for your own dignity.
You believe that no-one has created life? Doesn’t that mean that life was not created?
See? I can use illogical gotcha’s too. Were you really too scared to read the links I provided about scientists actually producing life in a laboratory? Are you just going to pretend that it doesn’t happen?
Besides, the point is that I can identify flaws even without knowing the details of the manufacturing process. I can tell the difference between good design and bad design, and animals (not least humans) have some terrible design flaws that would have forced a product recall in any human-run factory on the planet.
As you believe that it’s impossible to evaluate a design that humans are incapable of producing, you have no opinion on whether or not animals (such as humans) are well designed or not?
Do you have any comment on the actual evidence for evolution yet, or are you still burying your head in the sand?
Topic: “Why is your religion more valid than another?”
Theist: Because evolution is false!!
FAIL.
Guggenheim(Xian guest): “Again, the debate of who that creator is, is beyond the intention of the measures and qualifications of science.”
i.e….I cannot prove my religion to be the Absolute, Universal Truth it claims to be.
FAIL.
The end.
Alex.
One of the strengths of Evolutionary Theories are their ability to explain facts and make predictions as people have pointed out.
Of course we would all agree that you are free to dissent from the accepted ideas but rather than simply highlighting the alleged flaws, perhaps you would be kind enough to do what no theist ever seems to do and that is give your explanation for the myriad of facts built up over generations of scientific endeavor. Facts like I pointed out above. Why is the fossil record layered to look like there are slow gradual changes in morphology over time?
Or why do whales, humans, kangaroos, bats etc all share the same bone structure in their limbs as well as having live suckling young, breathing oxygen and fur (at least vestigial in the case of whales)?
Why do the vast majority of humans – even those with excellent eyesight- need glasses to read by their mid-40s?
How about: why do marsupials only exist in Australia and with one exception in the South American fossil record?
Even; how have bacteria evolved the ability to consume Nylon, a man-made material which did not exist until the 20th century?
Evolutionary Theory provides explanations for these and almost everything we know about the natural world, explanations which are at least plausible, testable and fit with what we know about other disciplines.
In the absence of any better explanation (even remotely plausible, testable or fitting), why should we not accept it?
You’re not just an atheist, you’re a secular humanist. Stop deceiving people.
@Daniel-
That was mine and James’ initial discussion. Like most, Sam Harris has no idea who Jesus really is and therefore is unable to pose the right questions.
As I have stated (to much ridicule and scorn) the problem is with the definition of the word truth itself. When you comprehend this, you will see how unfounded Sams comments really are….from this (truthful) perspective.
So here we go…again. Truth is not a set of beliefs, dogma, or even some doctrine but rather truth is literally a…Person, Jesus Christ. I AM…the TRUTH…literally. So now when I know Truth (Himself) personally and inwardly I also know what truth is…not. Therefore I have no desire to seek after…False, for I know truth and truth has set me free, just like Truth said He would.
Who do men say that I am?? What was Peter’s response and how did Jesus say that Peter came to this conclusion?
What will we do with this man who is called the Christ?
Sam is wasting your time, your days, years, literally. The fool has said in his heart there is no God.
Truth is not found in any religion but in Christ alone and He is love.
JC
@John C: But you haven’t answered the question. Why is the truth a person? How can you know that? Why is it Jesus over Muhammad or Joseph Smith or Buddha?
@Daniel-
Who are you? Do you know yourself to be…yourself? In this same way (just like He said we could) this is how I know Christ to be Truth.
Or do you not know that our very bodies are the temple (dwelling place) of Truth?
JC
Alex Guggenheim
“Either you read Christian literature very little or get out and about rather seldom.”
Hmm…well of course I could be wrong, but since you read so much christian literature and get out so much, if you could kindly name/link me to just one book or article written by a christian that lists down reasons why another religion, say Taoism, is more valid, more believable, more plausible than christianity, and ends off by saying that christianity is still the “true” religion.
“Truth is not a set of beliefs, dogma, or even some doctrine but rather truth is literally a…Person, Jesus Christ. I AM…the TRUTH…literally.”
Hmm…sounds like a made up truth…literally
“So now when I know Truth (Himself) personally and inwardly I also know what truth is…not.”
But of course! Cuz he’s in yer heart!
“Who are you? Do you know yourself to be…yourself? In this same way (just like He said we could) this is how I know Christ to be Truth.”
Alex Guggenheim’s assertions are intelligible compared to this.
@ John C
“So here we go…again. Truth is not a set of beliefs, dogma, or even some doctrine but rather truth is literally a…Person, Jesus Christ. I AM…the TRUTH…literally.”
And we know that’s true, because he is the truth, literally, and he says it is, so it must be! The logic is flawless!
@John C:
So how does one go about verifying that your personal subjective feeling is correct? All we can say is John C thinks he knows the “real truth.”
Guggenheim: “I don’t disagree. The claims of God doing something, whether favorable or not whether to eliminate misery or increase pleasure, are many by many types of people.”
Yes, limited to those who believe in “God”, of course.
Now…..can the Theist offer evidence that it is in fact their respective “God” that is fulfilling their wishes? No, not other than insisting that it is so, which you have really become quite good at around here.
Guggenheim: “[Christians] aren’t the authority as to whether God did something or not, I don’t care how many times they claim to be a born again, are saved, love Jesus and so on.”
Astonishing. So, you evidentally have the “authority” to tell other believers that they don’t have the “authority” to speculate on the “mind of God”. Well, pardon me, but I find that ‘slightly’ hypocritical. If we are to believe you over some other believer simply because you self-elect yourself as an authority on the subject, then there’s nothing stopping them from saying “Guggenheim” has it all wrong, and that we should take them on their word for the same “reason” you want us to take you on your “word”…i.e..”because I said so”. Time and time again, illustrating the subjectiveness of religious belief—-not just “Christianity”—but ALL religious belief. Thanks for solidifying my position on this matter.
Guggenheim: “Such claims does not elevate a person to license to use God’s name as the source of some event.”
Boy-o-boy, that makes an awful lot of wrong-minded “Christians”, doesn’t it?(rhetorically asked)
Guggenheim: “But let’s take the second half of the concern. What if God really does do something? What if he really did remove misery from someone? Great.”
More speculation. Here, let me try—what if “God” really DID sit by and do nothing as a young girl was being raped in the middle of the night by her drunken step-father for 4 months straight? What “if”? The problem is, you cannot rule one “if” in, and the other “if” out, without erecting a blatant double-standard. Again, if we are to believe that “God is Sovereign”, and/or, that “God is incomprehensible to our limited human intellect”, then you are implicitly arguing that there is a “good” reason for this child’s suffering. Please get it through your noggin—I don’t buy this proposition. “Good” definitely exists outside of your “God” concept.
Guggenheim: “That is suppose to be an indictment on God because he does not do it[alleviate human suffering] universally?”
No, it’s not “an indictment on God”, because I don’t %#$@ing believe in “God”. Let’s review: I’m arguing under the *pretense* that the “God” in question exists, and I’m simply asking for some CONSISTANCY in what you and your constituents propose on the *behalf* of your respective versions of your “God”…that is, if you expect me to believe what you are proposing. ‘Get it? Understand—from my POV, it is more rational to simply believe that, statistically, “good” and “bad” things happen to anyone who lives in a Natural Universe. To inject a “Divine” overseer into the equation simply creates more problems than it solves, especially when that overseer presumably sees EVERYTHING(is “omnipresent”); knows EVERYTHING(is “omniscient”); is ALL-GOOD(omnibenevolent); is all-powerful(is “omnipotent”), and is….ha, ha… “Just”? “Just”? Please.
Guggenheim: “****Yes, it is understandable in YOUR finite mind that you do not understand the decisions and acts of an infinite God and end up at a point of judging him and abandoning any consideration of him.”
This is remarkable disclosure, and I hope you won’t mind if I hold you to it.
Okay, if it is “understandable” in my “finite mind”, then swell. Then I shouldn’t be blamed, and/or, persecuted, and/or, held accountable for not exceding the limitations that I’m stuck with. No infinitely intelligent being would create a fish with gills, and then blame it for getting wet. (Of course, “intelligent” is a key-word here)
Guggenheim: “But that is not due to his failure but yours.”
WRONG; it’s ultimately NOT my “failure”. See here****, above. Read it, and reread it, until you get it through your skullcap that I didn’t choose to have a “limited mind”.
___________________________________________
Jabster: “@wintermute/boomSlang
“Amazing it’s got to the ‘[god] works in mysterious ways’ already and we can;t hope to fathom his mind.”
Yes, “amazing”, as in, amazingly predictable. Contradictions, question-begging, and double standards out the kazoo. Par for the course, actually.
Peace.
Aka James who made the post
Oh, I’ve been offline for a few days and just noticed this post.
Daniel I’m sorry for not quoting in this case.
I accept that it is plagiarism taking Sam Harris’s words from his books in this way. The only defence I have is that I have in the past tried to reference quotes when I do that and that seems to loose the impact in a particular discussion. I have tried to make the same kind of points many times, but its hard sometimes to stay calm and write with the skill and patience that Sam Harris has. I’m sure like myself many people here are just by now super tired with the same arguments being repeated over and over, and I post other places as well so to save time I have certain things I cut and paste, from a variety of sources. Although not in this case but i usually mix up words with my words so is hard to quote.
In the end the kind of people that wont read these books are the people that need to read it the most, so I hope that it will help to enlighten people, by posting the arguments on threads.
That particular one that you have made as a topic is probably what I consider to be the best knock down answer to a believer…. There really is no way that one can excuse there own belief while using evidence to not believe another belief system. I glad you singled that out… Credit to both you and Mr Harris!!!
Religion is very strange the way people take comfort in grouping together and yet believe totally different gods or versions of the same God. I really wish there was a way to make religious believers realise how alone they really are in exactly what they believe. They all band together under something like Christianity, but in the end if you put 1000 random Christians in a room and they started the hammer out what “version” they believed it would be a complete mess of what is metaphor, virgin birth, versions of heaven and hell, creation, young earth creation etc, and I doubt you would find even 2 who believe 100% everything the same when you get down to all the 100s of fine points.
THEY WILL NEVER CHALLENGE EACH OTHER OUT OF FEAR OF BEING CHALLENGED THEMSELVES
Its almost like a Tarot card reader believing their ability and validating it because someone else believes they can read tea leaves.
I really think believers take false comfort in statistics like 34% (Or whatever it is) of the world is Christian………. BUT really on every individuals version of religious TRUTH 99.999999% of the world disagrees with their exact version & joins all the non believers in each case.
John C…. That is your reality……. It doesn’t matter how much you go on about Jesus…… You have such a unique belief, so far removed from other believers in Jesus that you are alone….. Even your closest believers friends will not agree with you about everything.
To finish with a quotes along the same lines…. Unknown sources
“When one person suffers from delusion it’s called insanity….”
“When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”
“Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well—by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God.”
James…… (Written having just got back from pub) hope it makes sense %)
“Written having just got back from pub”
Umm.. oh.. OH! A “pub”! I get it, you’re from Europe, and 6-7 hours ahead of me. For a second I thought you were sloshed at 2:14pm, as your comment time says. Hehe.
Good comment. It doesn’t seem we got any good answers besides basically:
1) I feel God (Yahweh/Allah), therefore I know he exists.
2) The Bible/Koran tells me it’s true, therefore it’s true.
I am English, but Europe is coooool…….. Im a Scuba Dive Instructor working in Thailand ;)
@Restless D-
They called Him crazy…too! I’ve been crazy now for nearly a quarter century and it keeps getting better and better.
There is a life D, there is a life.
JC
Well, I’m a Christian, and having only just found this place, I have several points to add here.
As a Christian, I believe in evolution, the big bang, and all manner of other scientific principals. We need be clear that creationism and other such matters are not the core of Christianity, but rather of the philosophy of Biblical Literalism. I do not follow this as it is based on several illogical assumptions which the mind God gave me will not allow me to accept.
To the original point of the post that spawned this discussion, I do not hold my religion to be more valid than any other religion.
I recently made a post on my blog here:
http://slev.livejournal.com/236761.html
[/shameless self-promotion]
Looking at the world logically, and as a Christian (Christ taught us to treat others as we would have them treat us), I must respect all the many and varied religions out there. Alas, those that believe that their religion is the best and the others are all automatically sinners, are not really following the teachings of Jesus to my mind.
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@ Slev
“I do not hold my religion to be more valid than any other religion.”
Define “Valid”
The only truth one can draw from that statement is you don’t know what it is like to REALLY believe in God. You may think you do, but you do not……. Not if you are not CERTAIN you are even believing in the correct God.
“I must respect all the many and varied religions out there. ”
This is EXACTLY the problem attitude with religious moderates. Making statements like that is exactly why the world is so messed up, and becoming such a dangerous place. Really pause for reflection on what you are implying here:
“I must respect all the many and varied religions out there. ”
You are part of the power base for the fundamentalists who murder people, kill abortion doctors, fly planes into buildings, and people who are trying to drive the human race to Armageddon as they believe it is required to bring the second coming of Jesus.
Respect indeed……..
Without people like you who defend varied religious belief all these fundamentalist would be revealed for the nutters they are and could be safely locked away. As long as there are millions like you, evil megalomaniacs, will by sheltered while preaching hate and destruction under your protection.
Seriously consider that until you give up your delusion, millions like you will:
NEVER BE ABLE TO ADEQUATELY CONDEMN RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM
To do so you would have to accept that your dearly held personal religious “version of the truth” is no more likely to be true then anyone else’s……. No matter how extreme.
Slev: “As a Christian, I believe in evolution, the big bang, and all manner of other scientific principals. We need be clear that creationism and other such matters are not the core of Christianity, but rather of the philosophy of Biblical Literalism.”
If you are suggesting that the Christian philosophy is something other than the Absolute, Universal unchanging “Truth” it claims to be, then you are in a minority. By your own admission, if *select* parts of the Bible are not to be taken “literally”, then it becomes very obvious that discerning between said document’s “literal” Truths, and its “poetic” truths, is dependent upon interpretation. Thus, we can never be absolutely sure of any of its contents, including whichever passages you decide are “the core”.
Good day.
boomSLANG: “If you are suggesting that the Christian philosophy is something other than the Absolute, Universal unchanging “Truth” it claims to be, then you are in a minority.”
Rather I dare to suggest that the nature of that truth is misrepresented my a vocal minority, it’s character corrupted by politic and it’s purpose twisted by hubris.
The core of Christianity is love, forgiveness, tolerance, compassion and understanding.
Further, God gave me a mind that I might use it, rather than following blindly what I am taught. If God did, for example, create the world in six days, he did so with the appearance that it was not. Thus, such knowledge has no practical purpose when the appearance of creation by natural process gives us much information on how the world we live in works.
Restless D:
You seem to have read into my proposition items which where not covered by it.
I may respect people’s beliefs, but their actions would be another matter. I cannot condone any action that would move this world towards hell, rather than the heaven I seek to make here.
This is much akin to Voltare’s principals on free speech, abet of differing bent.
As a Christian I would also work against agents of hate, intolerance, and so on. I am working towards creating a utopia here in this very place, the new Heaven and new Earth.
Just because I support the Freedom of Conscience does not mean I support the philosophies extremist groups espouse nor their actions should they act on this.
I posted some thoughts on this some time ago here: http://community.livejournal.com/xtianfarleft/921.html
Further you state that since I cannot claim certainty, I have no faith. Had I certainty, I would have not faith, but knowledge. Since I have not certainty, I must have faith in that I cannot know, in order to believe.
@Slev
“Rather I dare to suggest that the nature of that truth is misrepresented my a vocal minority, it’s character corrupted by politic and it’s purpose twisted by hubris.”
… but this is the core of the problem. You’ve decided what the truth is from the same basic ‘evidence’ that others have decided a different truth exists. Why do you think that your version of the truth is any more valid than any other?
The question thus is as to the nature of your perceived “validity”.
I base my beliefs on a number of personal criteria. The religion and denomination I have chosen to be a part of reflect best my intangible experiences of the divine, along with my morality and philosophy. It is in short the “best fit” for me.
It does not, for what it’s worth, claim to be the only correct religion. It does not even claim to have all the answers, but rather states itself as a guide for finding those answers.
Religion is thus a little like music – each person looks for something different, and finds beauty in different things. While I find beauty in say, “Heartache” by Jesu, my Mum would not see that beauty, to her it’s a boring, depressing racket. We have the same evidence, but opposite conclusions.
Where evidence is subjective there can be only opinion and belief.
If this answer is insufficient for you, then I would need to know in more detail your definition of the word “valid” in this case.
@Slev: “Alas, those that believe that their religion is the best and the others are all automatically sinners, are not really following the teachings of Jesus to my mind.”
And yet Jesus explicitly teaches that non-believers (in Yahweh) will go to hell.
@latsot: “And yet Jesus explicitly teaches that non-believers (in Yahweh) will go to hell.”
That’s one interpretation, yes, all be it one not shared by all Christian sects. Plus in some traditions there is a difference between sin and non-belief.
To put it another way, my former house-mate once proclaimed his dad was “Very religious and not very Christian”, while I am “Very Christian but not very religious”.
An act of intolerance is not an act of love, and hence is against the teachings of Jesus. I can *respectfully* disagree and, in an appropriate forum, make my views know, but I do not have the right to badger people.
If you point out to most extremist Christians quotes such as “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” and “Treat to others as you would have them treat you”, they often become nervous and upset. These are specific teachings of Christ that are very difficult to interpret in multiple ways and hence form what should be a core oof Christian behaviour.
@Slev: “That’s one interpretation, yes, all be it one not shared by all Christian sects. Plus in some traditions there is a difference between sin and non-belief.”
I’m sure there are, but in every translation of – for example – the tares of the field business I’ve seen, it seems Jesus is not happy about non-believers. ‘Ha’, he says, “they might THINK they are getting away with it, but they’ll burn in hell”. He spends quite a long time ranting about hell and how bad it is and how many people are going to end up there.
But I’m not going to argue with you about random quirks of phrase in the NT. Surely it’s enough to remember that Jesus – without any ambiguity I can see – endorsed every stroke of the law put forward in the OT.
You seem to be cherry-picking.
@latsot
While it is true Jesus taught that faith was all-important, faith in the Abrahamic deity is not necessaraly what he was talking about.
Further, there are several passages I could dig out & quote where he does away with previous traditions, including circumcision, keeping kosher, and so on.
This is why Christians do not follow the “Holiness Code” laid out in the old testament, save a few “fundamentalists” who tend cherry-pick elements of it to uphold, rather than upholding the entire thing.
@Slev
“While it is true Jesus taught that faith was all-important, faith in the Abrahamic deity is not necessaraly what he was talking about.”
yeah, sure. The supposed son of the Abrahamic god wasn’t concerned with the worship of that god.
“Further, there are several passages I could dig out & quote where he does away with previous traditions, including circumcision, keeping kosher, and so on.”
I’m guessing the circumcision thing is the thing from Acts, right? It’s been a couple of decades since I read it, but I seem to remember it was Peter, not Jesus who said some stuff against circumcision.
Ah, what the fuck, I really don’t care, forget it.
@latsot: “Ah, what the fuck, I really don’t care, forget it.”
LMFAO!!
@slev
“LMFAO!!”
Oh you find it funny? I don’t. I’m sick of the obscurantist, more-truthier-than-thou patronising haze that even the supposedly modestly religious seem to see the world through.
I’m not at all sure I do care about particular believers’ views on their own holy book, partly because they tend to be even more ignorant of what it actually says than I am and partly for the obvious reason.
It’s interesting that you didn’t address any of the other points I made. There are other people reading afterall. Perhaps they do care about your opinion on this non-subject. Why not give them a treat?
@Latsot:
Well, since you ended with your humorous comment, I understood the conversation was over for you and hence declined to continue and moved on. If I misread your intent then I apologise.
Re: Jesus and worship of the Abrahamic God: This is a discussion between Christian sects, not all of which hold the divinity of Christ to be central to his teachings and a few which don’t even hold it as necessary, let alone an essential truth.
Those who fall towards not holding this central would typically state something akin to the view that God has many faces and each face is understood in many ways, as we are human and imperfect in our understanding.
Re: Circumcision: While Jesus did speak against this, him speaking personally is found only in apocryphal texts which may not be recognised and/or endorsed depending on the church.
Christian views on the OT laws and strictures vary, but are by-and-large, not taken as literally as one might suppose.
To be clear, I’m no expert on the text. I still have a lot to read both within the Bible and in the apocryphal text. I’m likely to make mistakes, to er being Human.
However, I do recognise that many of conviction are not like this. There are many and vocal of those who pre-suppose they are correct and argue without logic, whether they be Christian, Atheist, or whatever.
Too many though tar all of a certain allegiance with the same brush. Many see the other as the stereotype: The fundie/evangelical/conservative-Christian, the illogical/religion-hating/intolerant-Atheist, or whatever else. These are propagated by the actions of the vocal minority, but come to represent the mainstream in the eyes of many.
I came here to answer a question about the religion I follow, and I cannot answer for all of Christianity in its many and broad variations.
The denominations of the sects of Christianity number in the hundreds, if not thousands, or likely more. From minor variation to sweepingly different,
This is much like “Atheist” is defined in the dictionary as “Someone who believes God does not exist” would apply equally to an Animist, a Scientologist, and a Materialist, all of whom would have wildly divergent views on how the world works.