True, but at least we showed lurkers how transparent her arguments were.
True, but at least we showed lurkers how transparent her arguments were.Let's hope.
A2E probably didn’t want to stay too long because she was afraid our arguments would be better than hers. A few years back we had a rash of this kind of thing. It transpired that the Youth Pastor of some church had fired up his students to visit Atheist websites. It was like a homework assignment for them, so they made a few posts without really responding to anything, then quietly went away. I expect they were surprised that we actually did have answers. Their stereotype of atheists is that we’re so arrogant we can’t admit the possibility that we could be wrong.
TO EVERYONE: Notice that several skeptics have now shown up in the thread with nothing resembling a credible explanation for why the first 60-discovered elements on the Periodic Table are so precise. So precise are they that they are referred to in the scientific world as "LAW."They are also referred to as "universal constants", iow. This is how they function, regardless of any "outside interference".
I am waiting for a skeptic to explain how the precision among the first 60-discovered elements could have resulted from accidents or by spontaneous means.I think it has something to do with electro-magnetic properties of particles.
ALTER2EGO -to- LOIS L: You mean the imprecisions caused by wicked humans who have chosen to ignore Jehovah's instructions and have chosen to abuse the environment because of their greed for more profits, causing the following: 1. Heavy use of fossil fuels that have caused global warming, which, in turn, results in melting of the ice caps. 2. The melting of the ice caps, in turn, has resulted in devastating floods where none previously were. 3. The melting of the ice caps has caused the ocean waters to rise and swallow up various Pacific islands where people once lived and is threatening to swallow other Pacific islands. 4. Global warming has resulted in more powerful and therefore more deadly hurricanes. 5. Humans have ruined the environment with pesticides, which kill off insects that are vital to the health of the soil. 6. Humans have spilled oil in the sea and killed off wildlife and sea creatures. 7. Humans have purposely and illegally dumped waste materials in the ocean and destroyed sea creatures. 8. Humans have ruined land and sea with plastic and other useless materials that they had no business creating from the get-go. And that is just a tip of the iceberg. I have not even touched the moral decay of humanity that has resulted in all types of diseases--because humans have refused to follow Jehovah's guidelines.God must have really messed up when he created humans. No perfection there!
You are complaining about the consequences of wicked human behaviors--the same wicked humans who reject Jehovah's instructions, found in his inspired word, the Judeo-Christian Bible. Most humans have misused their God-given free will and have chosen to abuse themselves and the environment. And then you blame the consequences of their behavior on the Creator.Well God created them that way, no?
Obviously, you brought up the above in an attempt at evading the issues raised in my OP, namely, how 60 different elements could be precise by accident. Exactly when will you or another skeptic provide the answer to that question?Because it was not by accident!! It was pure mathematics of physical properties behaving in specific ways. And for your information, 60 different elements is wayyyyyyyyy off. It was only four (maybe five) elements which were created during the Inflationary Epoch ("in the Beginning"). All the other elements were created later due to cooling, gravity, electromagnetic charges, novae and super-novae. While this was a period of chaos (everything happening all at once) the results were governed by the universal constants and the other elements emerged naturally from this energetic soup.. All very mathematical, because that is the way particles function, with mathematical precision. wiki:
The majority of atoms that were produced by the Big Bang are hydrogen, along with helium and traces of lithium. Giant clouds of these primordial elements later coalesced through gravity to form stars and galaxies, and the heavier elements were synthesized either within stars or during supernovae.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang and
The expansion is thought to have been triggered by the phase transition that marked the end of the preceding grand unification epoch at approximately 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang. One of the theoretical products of this phase transition was a scalar field called the inflaton field. As this field settled into its lowest energy state throughout the universe, it generated a repulsive force that led to a rapid expansion of the fabric of space-time. This expansion explains various properties of the current universe that are difficult to account for without such an inflationary epoch. It is not known exactly when the inflationary epoch ended, but it is thought to have been between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the Big Bang. The rapid expansion of space meant that elementary particles remaining from the grand unification epoch were now distributed very thinly across the universe. However, the huge potential energy of the inflation field was released at the end of the inflationary epoch, repopulating the universe with a dense, hot mixture of quarks, anti-quarks and gluons as it entered the electroweak epoch.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflationary_epoch The stuff we are made off did not exist yet until a few billion years later.
Thanks for the logical and informed response.
Lois
TO EVERYONE: Notice that several skeptics have now shown up in the thread with nothing resembling a credible explanation for why the first 60-discovered elements on the Periodic Table are so precise. So precise are they that they are referred to in the scientific world as "LAW."They are also referred to as "universal constants", iow. This is how they function, regardless of any "outside interference".I am waiting for a skeptic to explain how the precision among the first 60-discovered elements could have resulted from accidents or by spontaneous means.I think it has something to do with electro-magnetic properties of particles.ALTER2EGO -to- LOIS L: You mean the imprecisions caused by wicked humans who have chosen to ignore Jehovah's instructions and have chosen to abuse the environment because of their greed for more profits, causing the following: 1. Heavy use of fossil fuels that have caused global warming, which, in turn, results in melting of the ice caps. 2. The melting of the ice caps, in turn, has resulted in devastating floods where none previously were. 3. The melting of the ice caps has caused the ocean waters to rise and swallow up various Pacific islands where people once lived and is threatening to swallow other Pacific islands. 4. Global warming has resulted in more powerful and therefore more deadly hurricanes. 5. Humans have ruined the environment with pesticides, which kill off insects that are vital to the health of the soil. 6. Humans have spilled oil in the sea and killed off wildlife and sea creatures. 7. Humans have purposely and illegally dumped waste materials in the ocean and destroyed sea creatures. 8. Humans have ruined land and sea with plastic and other useless materials that they had no business creating from the get-go. And that is just a tip of the iceberg. I have not even touched the moral decay of humanity that has resulted in all types of diseases--because humans have refused to follow Jehovah's guidelines.God must have really messed up when he created humans. No perfection there!You are complaining about the consequences of wicked human behaviors--the same wicked humans who reject Jehovah's instructions, found in his inspired word, the Judeo-Christian Bible. Most humans have misused their God-given free will and have chosen to abuse themselves and the environment. And then you blame the consequences of their behavior on the Creator.Well God created them that way, no?Obviously, you brought up the above in an attempt at evading the issues raised in my OP, namely, how 60 different elements could be precise by accident. Exactly when will you or another skeptic provide the answer to that question?Because it was not by accident!! It was pure mathematics of physical properties behaving in specific ways. And for your information, 60 different elements is wayyyyyyyyy off. It was only four (maybe five) elements which were created during the Inflationary Epoch ("in the Beginning"). All the other elements were created later due to cooling, gravity, electromagnetic charges, novae and super-novae. While this was a period of chaos (everything happening all at once) the results were governed by the universal constants and the other elements emerged naturally from this energetic soup.. All very mathematical, because that is the way particles function, with mathematical precision. wiki:The majority of atoms that were produced by the Big Bang are hydrogen, along with helium and traces of lithium. Giant clouds of these primordial elements later coalesced through gravity to form stars and galaxies, and the heavier elements were synthesized either within stars or during supernovae.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang andThe expansion is thought to have been triggered by the phase transition that marked the end of the preceding grand unification epoch at approximately 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang. One of the theoretical products of this phase transition was a scalar field called the inflaton field. As this field settled into its lowest energy state throughout the universe, it generated a repulsive force that led to a rapid expansion of the fabric of space-time. This expansion explains various properties of the current universe that are difficult to account for without such an inflationary epoch. It is not known exactly when the inflationary epoch ended, but it is thought to have been between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the Big Bang. The rapid expansion of space meant that elementary particles remaining from the grand unification epoch were now distributed very thinly across the universe. However, the huge potential energy of the inflation field was released at the end of the inflationary epoch, repopulating the universe with a dense, hot mixture of quarks, anti-quarks and gluons as it entered the electroweak epoch.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflationary_epoch The stuff we are made off did not exist yet until a few billion years later.
The stuff we are made off did not exist yet until a few billion years later.I'm pretty sure it didn't take that long. All my astronomy books are packed for our move to Colorado next week. Give me a minute while I google it.
A2E probably didn't want to stay too long because she was afraid our arguments would be better than hers. A few years back we had a rash of this kind of thing. It transpired that the Youth Pastor of some church had fired up his students to visit Atheist websites. It was like a homework assignment for them, so they made a few posts without really responding to anything, then quietly went away. I expect they were surprised that we actually did have answers. Their stereotype of atheists is that we're so arrogant we can't admit the possibility that we could be wrong.I became an atheist when I was sitting in church at 12 years old. I had never heard of the word atheist either. I sat there looking around at everyone else wondering if they were really believing what they were hearing.
A2E probably didn't want to stay too long because she was afraid our arguments would be better than hers. A few years back we had a rash of this kind of thing. It transpired that the Youth Pastor of some church had fired up his students to visit Atheist websites. It was like a homework assignment for them, so they made a few posts without really responding to anything, then quietly went away. I expect they were surprised that we actually did have answers. Their stereotype of atheists is that we're so arrogant we can't admit the possibility that we could be wrong.I became an atheist when I was sitting in church at 12 years old. I had never heard of the word atheist either. I sat there looking around at everyone else wondering if they were really believing what they were hearing. Blue, I really relate. I still have trouble believing that they really believe it. But, that eventually became something that doesn't matter in the end. What they act on is what matters.
Think back to when you were very young. Did you believe in Santa Claus? If not, did your friends believe? What process did your thinking go through from belief to disbelief?
Funny that when I was only four or five it didn’t even occur to me to correct my friends’ beliefs, but, as I’ve said before, having a very healthy ego, I also didn’t correct the adults who told me about Santa Claus because I just thought they were too dumb to realize it was a fairy tale. :lol:
Occam
This thread is about whether or not precision in the natural happened by accident or whether it required the intervention of the Intelligent Designer aka Jehovah.You have provided no evidence the precision in nature required a designer. Show that and I'll discuss it with you. Even if you could prove the universe required an intelligent designer that would not prove the designer was Jehovah. Of course I did. Who do you think you are fooling with that line? The modus operandi of atheists is to simply deny evidence when the evidence points to Jehovah. Most atheists are rational people. They are not blind to the precision seen in our fine-tuned universe. They simply refuse to give credit to Jehovah for what clearly is not the work of humans. A rational person knows that repeated instances of precision among the same types of things cannot be as a result of accidental or spontaneous events. Why not? Because repeated instances of precision among the same types of things requires planning and deliberation. The reverse of that is things that happen by chance aka accidents or even spontaneous events. Accidents produce undesirable results and spontaneous occurrences do not allow for planning and deliberation. DEFINITION OF "ACCIDENT": "a nonessential event that HAPPENS BY CHANCE and has undesirable or unfortunate results." (Source: Websters New Collegiate Dictionary) DEFINITION OF "SPONTANEOUS": "Spontaneous means unplanned or done on impulse." http://www.yourdictionary.com/spontaneous A rational person recognizes that even a stick of crayon requires a creator (a human being, in this instance). Similarly, a rational person knows that the computer they are using did not create itself, that it required the intervention of intelligent beings to first create all of the various parts and to then put all of the various parts in the right place so that the computer can function. So when that same "rational" person turns around and defies logic by insisting our fine-tuned universe--against which the computer looks like child's play--must have somehow created itself, the only thing at play at that point is intellectual dishonesty.. In my OP, I used the example of the first 60-discovered elements on the Periodic Table. Each of those 60 elements are precise and are all interrelated with one another. So much so, that scientists were able to accurately predict the characteristics of missing elements that at the time had not yet been discovered. 60 different elements that are all precise and are all interrelated could only have come into existence by two (2) different means, as follows: 1. Intelligent design aka deliberate intervention by an intelligent being; OR 2. Accidental events (which give "unfortunate" or "undesirable" results). QUESTION #1 to DarronS: If the elements on the Periodic Table were "nonessential" or "undesirable" or "unfortunate" (accidental events) or happened without planning (spontaneous events), how is it that each element, in and of itself, is precise and interrelated to all of the other elements? Alter2Ego
A2E probably didn't want to stay too long because she was afraid our arguments would be better than hers. A few years back we had a rash of this kind of thing. It transpired that the Youth Pastor of some church had fired up his students to visit Atheist websites. It was like a homework assignment for them, so they made a few posts without really responding to anything, then quietly went away. I expect they were surprised that we actually did have answers. Their stereotype of atheists is that we're so arrogant we can't admit the possibility that we could be wrong.What are you talking about? I have not gone anywhere. I debate at other websites and can only spend a limited amount of time at each one. Besides, I have a life off-line. And what arguments did any of the skeptics here present against my OP? ANSWER: None. All I got was the usual "I don't believe God did it" routine. Nobody here has presented a credible explanation for why 60 different elements are each precise and why all 60 are interrelated. The reason for that is obvious: the atheists have no explanation. They are forced to accept the fact that the natural elements on the Periodic Table are the work of the Intelligent Designer aka JEHOVAH. They must accept it, although foolish pride will have them refusing to admit it. Alter2Ego
As I said A2E, even if the precision in nature required a designer there is no evidence that designer was the god of the Bible.
Nobody here has presented a credible explanation for why 60 different elements are each precise and why all 60 are interrelated.Even if no explanation exists, that is not evidence for nor lends credibility to your claims. The claim 60 different elements are precise and all 60 are interrelated is an observation. It proves nothing in itself.
The reason for that is obvious: the atheists have no explanation. They are forced to accept the fact that the natural elements on the Periodic Table are the work of the Intelligent Designer aka JEHOVAH. They must accept it, although foolish pride will have them refusing to admit it.You need to demonstrate the existence of an intelligent designer and you need to demonstrate that the attribute of precision requires a designer. Until you prove those two claims, you have no valid argument. For example, water very precisely fills any kind of water tight cavity. That is not design, it is merely physics.
Crayons don’t compare to universes. We only have this one physical universe to study. A crayon is surrounded by our modern world full of humans who create things. If we hadn’t observed ourselves creating things, then we wouldn’t make that connection that it was probably one of us who did the creating. Or if we found a crayon on Mars, we’d start looking for how that got there. But the universe was here long before we came into it and became conscious of it. “Random” and “spontaneous” do not mean that elements will just pop into existence with no explanation or no connection to all the other elements. In fact, quite the opposite has happened. It started with a lot of hydrogen and eventually we got stars and those created an incredibly powerful furnace that cooked up a bunch of other elements. Of course they are interrelated, each came from a reaction of others.
The only thing I haven’t explained here is where it all came from in the first place. But saying that is Jehovah is an argument from ignorance. You can look that up, learn about, learn why your argument fails and then switch to learning about this amazing universe, instead of making stuff up.
Precision or complexity is not evidence of inteligent intentions or the consciousness of anything at all. Precision and complexity are evidence that precision complexity exist, not much more. A make believe inteligent designers is an astronomical leap to an notion that is in now way indicated by precision and or complexity. It’s the same as saying that which we cannot explain is obviously the work of the Easter bunny.
I am pretty sure everyone here except the OP is aware of the fallacy of her argument. The “fine tuned universe” is an old argument which is easily discredited. The conditions of the universe weren’t created this way so we could exist. We exist because the conditions of the universe allowed are such that we can exist.
Throw a bunch of grass seeds across a parking lot and come back two weeks later. Most of those seeds will have died but a few will have sprouted blades of grass in places where there was just the right amount of dirt, perhaps a crack in the black top, just the right amount of water and not too little or too much sun. If you were that blade of grass you could use the OP argument and say that someone had to have dialed in all the conditions for you to exist otherwise if any of those things had been off by just a little you would not be here, but none of that is true. No one created the perfect condition for that blade of grass to grow. Grass just grew where the conditions were perfect.
If the constants were different than they are we would simply not be here to ask these questions. Sentient being arise where the conditions exist by chance to allow sentient beings to arise in whatever form that might take
As I said A2E, even if the precision in nature required a designer there is no evidence that designer was the god of the Bible.Well, the ones who posit "intelligent design" don't necessarily say it is the god of the bible, though it is probably their intention to make that argument eventually. The idea of precision in the universe is a red herring. People see precision because they see certain characteristics and and deem them precise. (Confirmation bias) There is plenty of imprecision to be answered for, but IDers don't want to consider imprecision or admit it exists. They've got an agenda to support and an argument for imprecision would undermine it. Lois
Here are all the arguments I’ve had heard directly from people who have interacted with me about connecting “god must have done it” to the actual God in the Bible:
- Well, it’s just a couple steps from one to the other. He never told me what those steps are.
- I have to accept that it is possible that we live in a computer simulation where what we believe is controlled by the programmer(s). If I can’t accept that possibility, the conversation couldn’t move on.
- Because the creation story in Genesis is closest to what the cosmologist say relative to other creation stories.
- Something about morality.
- I’m not open minded. That’s not an argument but apparently they had given up and went that direction.
In the thousands of discussions about “a creator”, I have never heard anyone define the actual and verifiable properties of such an intelligent being and its motivation for creating the universe in general and humans in particular. Apparently the creator did not anticipate that all of its creations are now extinct and almost all modern organisms are a demonstrable result of evolution.
Here are all the arguments I've had heard directly from people who have interacted with me about connecting "god must have done it" to the actual God in the Bible: 1. Well, it's just a couple steps from one to the other. He never told me what those steps are. 2. I have to accept that it is possible that we live in a computer simulation where what we believe is controlled by the programmer(s). If I can't accept that possibility, the conversation couldn't move on. 3. Because the creation story in Genesis is closest to what the cosmologist say relative to other creation stories. 4. Something about morality. 5. I'm not open minded. That's not an argument but apparently they had given up and went that direction.I think believers created ID because they couldn't rationally support the god of the bible, especially in debates with skeptics and atheists--such as Richard Dawkins and others. So for the sake of argument, they took out as many of the characteristics from the god of the bible they could think of that atheists and skeptics objected to and decided to argue over god-lite, the Intelligent Designer, an easier deistic god. They thought that if they could get skeptics to accept the idea of a god-lite they could move in for the kill using the big biblical guns later. They wanted to get skeptics and atheists to say they could accept ID. I think the vast majority of IDers are believers in the biblical god, but try to use ID as a trap. It doesn't work, of course, but they'll keep trying. I don't know anyone who is an actual believer in an Intelligent Designer without the biblical characteristics. Lois