Giving up Cubing for Lent

[adimare]

I honestly believe that it cant have been some cosmic chance that enabled us to exist, to be having this argument. Sure its plausbible that the earth and all the planet and planetoids could have been created 'on accident', but then for one of them to have the conditions required to sustain life would decrese the already miniscule chance. But then for life to actually evolve makes that chance much smaller.

Have you sat down and calculated what the chances you speak of are? Sound like you have if you're so sure that they're miniscule. We're not talking about the chance of life appearing on Earth, we're talking about the chance of life appearing on any planet. The current number of stars calculated to exist in the observable Universe is \( 10^{22} \), let me write that down for you, that's 10.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 stars. It's currently believed that most of these stars have at the very least one planet orbiting them. Do you really think that the odds of life are so tiny that we should believe it impossible to occur given these numbers?

And sure Darwinism can explain some mutations that would enhance an organisms survival ability, but mutation never produces new information, it only depletes it.
it went:
wolf => chihuahua
not
chihuahua => wolf.

Where are you getting this from? Do you really think that people who have devoted their entire lives to evolutionary related investigation have overlooked something as simple as this?

Here, http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/dawkinschallenge.htm

Ok now i did a bit more research and i found a scientific law that says exactly what i just did.

Its the Second law of Thermodynamics, or the law of Increased Entropy: (source: http://www.allaboutscience.org/second-law-of-thermodynamics.htm)

"While quantity remains the same (First Law), the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time."

The 2nd law applies to closed systems. The Earth is obviously not a closed system, the increase of entropy that takes place in the sun as it discharges useful heat towards the Earth more than covers any decrease in entropy that takes place in evolution. Trying to use the 2nd law of thermodynamics to disprove evolution is like trying to use it to prove that it is absolutely impossible to solve a Rubik's cube.

 

[d4m4s74]

just because the earth wasnt here doesnt mean nothing else was, the bible talks about the creation of the earth not the creation of the entire universe.

genesis 1:14

 

[jms_gears1]

It does have something to do with evolution....
Its proof that time is the enemy of complexity....

also I was more looking for a substantial source to site when i made that statement....

while this is obviously a creation-biased site ill still give the link:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html#Why%20methods%20in%20general%20are%20inaccurate

The bottom line is, any type of method that trys to date the earths existence, by nature, whill be horribly inaccurate.

The reliability of creationist sources is often questioned because those who write them are not always experts in the areas they write about. But I believe that their message is true, namely, God created the universe, the earth, and all that is in it, God created life on earth recently, and the earth since then has experienced a major catastrophe.

So he values the message they carry above the fact that they are not experts in their field? I can hardly be bothered to read the rest of the page.

I don't care about the source (wiki or not), I care about the fact you had to research the second law of thermodynamics, and that you applied it hilariously badly.

So then what field are you an expert at?
I think the term expert in the authors message meant that they do not have a degree in that subject, versus not knowing what they are talking about. Just because you didn't formally learn something, does not mean you know nothing about it.

secondly, now your just being belligerent, Ive stated this multiple times now, The point was to say that time is the enemy of complexity.

also again i was looking for a source to cite, that backed me up, before i just threw it out there. And my applications works, and works very well for my point.

 

[jms_gears1]

just because the earth wasnt here doesnt mean nothing else was, the bible talks about the creation of the earth not the creation of the entire universe.

genesis 1:14

>.> oops,

 

[Kirjava]

athiests are the people to smart to blindly believe but not smart enough to look at all the evidence of intelligent design. Look around what evidence do you see that theres an intelligent design? everywhere, everything thats not man made screams of a designer.

*YT vid*


And before I hear "This can't've happened by chance, it's so unlikely". SOMETHING had to happen, it just so happens that THIS happened. The basic premise of evolution is only that present day species have evolved from primitive ancestors. Evolution does not require that this had to occur by chance. Something with superior vision is more likely to survive than something without => converges towards good vision.

If everything was created by a designer, he's certainly not intelligent. Why is our immune system so weak?

I honestly believe that it cant have been some cosmic chance that enabled us to exist, to be having this argument. Sure its plausbible that the earth and all the planet and planetoids could have been created 'on accident', but then for one of them to have the conditions required to sustain life would decrese the already miniscule chance. But then for life to actually evolve makes that chance much smaller.

You're surprised that life evolved in a place where conditions enable evolution?

This is like saying that you roll an 10000 sided die and when it lands on 1337 it must have had intervention by the magical sky wizard, because it couldn't have landed on that by chance, 1/10000 is just too unlikely. But it had to land on SOMETHING, and it'd be a 1/10000 chance whatever it landed on.

... magical sky wizard really?

I'd say that's an accurate description.

Yes it had to land on something, but the theory of evolution would be more akin to the die landing on a side with no numbers.

...no it wouldn't? All sides have numbers, it's impossible to land on one without one. It has to land on SOMETHING.

Its not a fixed chance for all outcomes, the percentage chance for each possible outcome of the Big bang theory, are all horribly skewed.

The die doesn't have to be a fair die for my point to be correct.

And sure Darwinism can explain some mutations that would enhance an organisms survival ability, but mutation never produces new information, it only depletes it.

I think you should watch the video again. This is a willfuly ignorant statement.

that is not an ignorant statement. that video suggests that information is added however mutation depletes the information.

How does mutation 'deplete' the information? What we see here is mutations gradually adding complexity to a species.

it went:
wolf => chihuahua
not
chihuahua => wolf.

Why does a chihuahua have 'less information' than a wolf? Because it's smaller?

because it serves no purpose at all. Other dogs such as beagles are hunting dogs, they are bred for their unique bark and their ability to track.
Dachshunds are bred to dig and bark.

What do chihuahuas do?

This is crazy naive. Purpose != information. I was going to write unique assets that chihuahuas have that wolves don't, but I really shouldn't need to.

This paragraph you wrote also exposes your ignorant ego centric view of the world.

aside from that, it was more of an example to explain what i was talking about. I think my point was clear.

I know what you're talking about, and your example should show how silly you are being.

Ok now i did a bit more research and i found a scientific law that says exactly what i just did.

Its the Second law of Thermodynamics, or the law of Increased Entropy: (source: http://www.allaboutscience.org/second-law-of-thermodynamics.htm)

"While quantity remains the same (First Law), the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time."

I'm pretty sure you're regurgitating information you discovered on a creationist website. You think that because you're now using 'Science' that it has to be accepted.

Your application of science is incorrect.

It is true that any natural process contained within a closed system will distribute its energy in such a manner that its entropy will increase over time. This is essentially what the Second Law of Thermodynamics attempts to define.

However, the earth is not a closed system. There is an external body of heat that has been affecting this planet for some time now.

It's called the Sun.

The point was, evolution could not create the complexities that are present in the world today. Because time is the enemy of comlexity,

Ok, so now you realise that your appliction of the laws of thermodynamics is incorrect, you'll simply switch to a new argument and claim this is the point you were trying to make. Which it wasn't.

Time may very well be the enemy of complexity. Good job that we've had a lot if it.

the Sun doesnt have anything to do with evolution.

Are you being serious? Did you even read what I wrote about entropy?

while the 50k mark is to long for what I as a christian believe

If you believe the universe was created <50000 years ago....

Light from stars we can see in the sky would take longer than this to reach us. We're looking into the past.

if you think that the earth was created >50k years ago...

just because the earth wasnt here doesnt mean nothing else was, the bible talks about the creation of the earth not the creation of the entire universe.

I see that someone has already addressed this. It also invalidates another point you made in this post.

 

[MichaelP.]

I honestly believe that it cant have been some cosmic chance that enabled us to exist, to be having this argument. Sure its plausbible that the earth and all the planet and planetoids could have been created 'on accident', but then for one of them to have the conditions required to sustain life would decrese the already miniscule chance. But then for life to actually evolve makes that chance much smaller.

You're surprised that life evolved in a place where conditions enable evolution?

This is like saying that you roll an 10000 sided die and when it lands on 1337 it must have had intervention by the magical sky wizard, because it couldn't have landed on that by chance, 1/10000 is just too unlikely. But it had to land on SOMETHING, and it'd be a 1/10000 chance whatever it landed on.

I think this argument is pretty sensible and should end the "odds are against us" argument.

 

[Lt-UnReaL]

The bottom line pretty much is: It's irrational to believe in something that has no evidence for it. Believing in God takes the same logic as believing in a big purple monkey awesome spider superman batman nintendo 64 killing machine that's 1000000 ft tall. They both have no evidence for their existence.

And if someone comes back with "that's what faith is for", or something...why would you devote your entire life worshipping and following something that you don't even know is true?

 

[jms_gears1]

The bottom line pretty much is: It's irrational to believe in something that has no evidence for it. Believing in God takes the same logic as believing in a big purple monkey awesome spider superman batman nintendo 64 killing machine that's 1000000 ft tall. They both have no evidence for their existence.

And if someone comes back with "that's what faith is for", or something...why would you devote your entire life worshipping and following something that you don't even know is true?

Evidence is subjective, in that you can interpret it how you like.
I believe as i stated above, that the very existence of this earth, of the universe, is proof that their is a sentient, intelligent designer.

 

[Muesli]

The bottom line pretty much is: It's irrational to believe in something that has no evidence for it. Believing in God takes the same logic as believing in a big purple monkey awesome spider superman batman nintendo 64 killing machine that's 1000000 ft tall. They both have no evidence for their existence.

And if someone comes back with "that's what faith is for", or something...why would you devote your entire life worshipping and following something that you don't even know is true?

Evidence is subjective, in that you can interpret it how you like.
I believe as i stated above, that the very existence of this earth, of the universe, is proof that their is a sentient, intelligent designer.

Prove it. I see no evidence.

 

[d4m4s74]

The human eye proves the designer is nowhere near intelligent, he must have been drunk when he designed it

and the platypus, was probably made up right after inventing weed

 

[jms_gears1]

The bottom line pretty much is: It's irrational to believe in something that has no evidence for it. Believing in God takes the same logic as believing in a big purple monkey awesome spider superman batman nintendo 64 killing machine that's 1000000 ft tall. They both have no evidence for their existence.

And if someone comes back with "that's what faith is for", or something...why would you devote your entire life worshipping and following something that you don't even know is true?

Evidence is subjective, in that you can interpret it how you like.
I believe as i stated above, that the very existence of this earth, of the universe, is proof that their is a sentient, intelligent designer.

Prove it. I see no evidence.

Prove what?
That I interpret the existence of the universe as proof that there is existence in god?

The human eye proves the designer is nowhere near intelligent, he must have been drunk when he designed it

and the platypus, was probably made up right after inventing weed

How does the eye prove the designer is nowhere near intelligent?

and i like platypus's...
but why would you say anything about them?

 

[Muesli]

The bottom line pretty much is: It's irrational to believe in something that has no evidence for it. Believing in God takes the same logic as believing in a big purple monkey awesome spider superman batman nintendo 64 killing machine that's 1000000 ft tall. They both have no evidence for their existence.

And if someone comes back with "that's what faith is for", or something...why would you devote your entire life worshipping and following something that you don't even know is true?

Evidence is subjective, in that you can interpret it how you like.
I believe as i stated above, that the very existence of this earth, of the universe, is proof that their is a sentient, intelligent designer.

Prove it. I see no evidence.

Prove what?
That I interpret the existence of the universe as proof that there is existence in god?

"...is proof that their is a sentient, intelligent designer."

Prove that. You made a statement, back it up.

 

[d4m4s74]

How does the eye prove the designer is nowhere near intelligent?

and i like platypus's...
but why would you say anything about them?

okay, the human eye.

I quote Richard Dawkings (no worse then quoting a creationist forum)

"Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away, from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light. Yet this is exactly what happens in all vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel over the surface of the retina to a point where it dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called ‘blind spot’) to join the optic nerve. This means that the light, instead of being granted an unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually, probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer)."

 

[miniGOINGS]

@Innocence: If you believe in a literal 7-day creation I assume you also believe the world is ~6000 years old. In that case, would you say (using evidence from the Bible) that humans and dinosaurs coexisted at some point, or that dinosaurs never existed and the fossils are forgeries?

Isn't the Behemoth mentioned in the bible with the tail the size of a tree? Same with Leviathan...

 

[qqwref]

And sure Darwinism can explain some mutations that would enhance an organisms survival ability, but mutation never produces new information, it only depletes it.
it went:
wolf => chihuahua
not
chihuahua => wolf.

You don't wanna go here. The wolf -> chihuahua evolution was done by humans using selective breeding. There are actually a great deal of species and subspecies which do not exist in nature and have been selectively bred by humans - many breeds of cat and dog, and many types of fruit, such as the standard supermarket banana. (In fact, using selective breeding, which is essentially controlled evolution, has improved a huge number of fruits from their natural form.)

Evidence is subjective, in that you can interpret it how you like.

Evidence is subjective in the same way a book is. There are many interpretations, but a great deal of them are simply wrong.


Anyway, about intelligent design... if you believe the designer was so intelligent, why are there so many problems with our species (to choose just one)? How come we have an appendix? Why are there so many genetically transmitted diseases? What's up with everything (heart, eyes, ears, joints, etc etc) deteriorating with age? Why do wisdom teeth so often come in crooked? Why is it so easy to break a collarbone? I could go on. What I'm saying is that there may be a lot of things that look like they must have been designed by an intelligent being, but there are also a lot of things that look like whoever designed them was an idiot. The only reason to have a vestigial organ like the appendix is because there's no evolutionary advantage to not having one. To me, the "God did it" hypothesis explains very few of these issues, while the theory of evolution can explain pretty much all of them.

 

[Deleted member 2864]

And if someone comes back with "that's what faith is for", or something...why would you devote your entire life worshipping and following something that you don't even know is true?

Most don't devote our lives to faith. We have other things to do other than worship.

And in case you weren't aware, there isn't any theory about how life was created that is concrete enough to be considered true-no-matter-what-end-of-story. Devoting to any of these theories could very well be "wasting your entire life."

You can't be sure that whatever you believe is true, science-based or not.

Anyway, about intelligent design... if you believe the designer was so intelligent, why are there so many problems with our species (to choose just one)? How come we have an appendix? Why are there so many genetically transmitted diseases? What's up with everything (heart, eyes, ears, joints, etc etc) deteriorating with age? Why do wisdom teeth so often come in crooked? Why is it so easy to break a collarbone? I could go on. What I'm saying is that there may be a lot of things that look like they must have been designed by an intelligent being, but there are also a lot of things that look like whoever designed them was an idiot. The only reason to have a vestigial organ like the appendix is because there's no evolutionary advantage to not having one. To me, the "God did it" hypothesis explains very few of these issues, while the theory of evolution can explain pretty much all of them.

Please explain why life created by an intelligent being would have to be perfect. Perhaps that if life was created, the creator's intention was to not be perfect, to deteriorate, and to die out.

 

[qqwref]

:fp

That's not what theory means in a scientific context. Fail.

Also, scientific theories don't require that you devote your life to them. The theory of evolution doesn't say that all believers need to spend an hour every week praising Darwin. Religion does that kind of thing, though.

 

[Muesli]

Evidence is subjective, in that you can interpret it how you like.

Evidence is subjective in the same way a book is. There are many interpretations, but a great deal of them are simply wrong.

Haha! I approve whole heartedly of this sentence.

The only real thing that bugs me about christianity is that they take the bible so literally, yet it assumes that every animal on earth lived within walking distance of Noah's house. At this rate, Harry Potter will be a religion in 2000 years.

 

[Deleted member 2864]

:fp

That's not what theory means in a scientific context. Fail.

Also, scientific theories don't require that you devote your life to them. The theory of evolution doesn't say that all believers need to spend an hour every week praising Darwin. Religion does that kind of thing, though.

Meh, maybe you're right. In fact, you're probably right. 1 1z ju5t t3h pr3t33n

But I didn't say scientific theories require that you devote your life to them. Just like I said you don't have to devote your life to a religion, I also meant that you don't have to devote your time to science. Ltunreal said:

And if someone comes back with "that's what faith is for", or something...why would you devote your entire life worshipping and following something that you don't even know is true?

...To which I replied that you don't spend your life worshiping. When did I say that you have to devote your life to a scientific theory?

Also, last time I checked, an hour a week isn't your whole life. It's not like I live in a church. I go to school and learn math, language, and (yes) science. I go outside. I eat out. I go to the mall. I hang out at home.

 

[Mike Hughey]

How come we have an appendix?

Sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine. Claiming an organ is vestigial is something that our current level of science is not ready to proclaim. We do not have a sufficient knowledge of how the body works to be able to claim that we know for sure an organ is vestigial. That's because a "sufficient knowledge" would have to be almost complete, and we still have some organs which we are very far from understanding the exact workings of (such as the brain). Perhaps in a number of years, we'll be able to proclaim that something is vestigial, but for now, our knowledge is insufficient for that.

With regard to the appendix, here and here are links to a differing opinion. Honestly, it seems that they also don't have enough information to be sure the appendix is not vestigial - it still may be. I'm still not ready to bet my life savings that the appendix is not vestigial. And it certainly doesn't rule out the possibility that there are other vestigial organs. But at least there is still valid scientific disagreement on the issue for the appendix.

My interest is purely personal and selfish - I don't want someone taking out my appendix unless it's absolutely necessary, since I think it's possible it may be helpful to me. (Although I will be happy to have it taken out if I ever need to. )