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-- there is no G-d? religion is bull? read this and I DARE YOU TO ARGUE :)
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there is no G-d? religion is bull? read this and I DARE YOU TO ARGUE :)
lets see if any of these people that laugh when I base things on G-d and religion can back up their laughs, or are, as we expect, full of SHIT!
Does the intricate design of the universe serve as evidence for the existence of God?
Imagine walking in the desert and coming across two small stones in close proximity to each other. Most probably, you would think nothing of it. Two stones randomly sitting beside each other is no big deal.
You continue your walk in the desert and stumble upon three rows of stones piled up in a brick-layer fashion. Chances are you would quickly surmise that someone was here and arranged these stones in this manner. It didn't just happen.
You continue your walk and happen to find a watch lying in the middle of the desert. Would you suspect that a windstorm somehow threw these pieces together and randomly created a watch?
Somebody made that watch. It didn't just happen. Design implies designer.
DID THE UNIVERSE HAVE A DESIGNER?
The intricacy of design in our world is staggering -- infinitely more complex than a simple brick wall or a watch. Dr. Michael Denton, in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" describes the intricate organization of nerve cells in the brain [pp. 330 - 331].
There are 10 billion nerve cells in the brain. Each of the 10 billion cells sprouts between 10,000 to 100,000 fibers to contact other nerve cells in the brain, creating approximately 1,000 million million connections, or, 10 to the 15th power.
It is hard to imagine the multitude that 1015 represents. Take half of the United States, which is 1 million square miles, and imagine it being covered by forest, with 10,000 trees per square mile. On each of the 10,000 trees, which are on each of the one million square miles, there are 100,000 leaves. That's how many connections are crammed inside your brain. And they're not just haphazardly thrown together. They form an incredibly intricate network system that has no parallel in the industrial world.
Imagine walking by that in the desert! The natural response when perceiving design of such mind-boggling complexity is to conclude that there must be a designer behind everything who created it. None of this just happened.
RANDOM WRITING SAMPLE
Rabbeinu Bachya, in his major philosophical work "The Duties of the Heart" [10th century] presents this argument in the following manner:
Do you not realize that if ink were poured out accidentally on a blank sheet of paper, it would be impossible that proper writing should result, legible lines that are written with a pen? Imagine a person bringing a sheet of handwriting that could only have been composed with a pen. He claims that ink spilled on the paper and these written characters had accidentally emerged. We would charge him to his face with falsehood, for we could feel certain that this result could not have happened without an intelligent person's purpose.
Since this seems impossible in the case of letters whose formation is conventional, how can one assert that something far subtler in its design and which manifests in its fashioning a depth and complexity infinitely beyond our comprehension could have happened without the purpose, power, and wisdom of a wise and mighty designer? ("The Duties of the Heart," The Gate of Oneness, Chapter 6)
The two most common objections to this argument go as follows:
The argument is too simple. There seems to be a big jump from concluding that someone must have made rock formations in the desert to concluding that there is a Creator who must have made the universe.
What about evolution? Over a very long period of time everything could have come about as a random occurrence! With millions of years to play around with, isn't it possible for some kind of order to emerge just by chance?
Let's address these two objections.
ADDRESSING ARGUMENT NUMBER ONE
The principle "design implies designer" applies across the board, whether the designer is a Bedouin nomad piling rocks in the desert or the Infinite Source of all existence. Intellectually it is the same logical process. In fact, there is more reason to assume a designer in the latter case since the level of design is much higher.
Simplicity is not an inherent fault in an argument. Perhaps the reason why some people take issue with this application of logic is due to the accompanying consequences.
Since the Bedouin doesn't make any moral demands on our life, there is no resistance to drawing the logical conclusion that someone designed that rock formation. But when the conclusion points to God, cognitive dissonance kicks in, creating an instinctive opposition to what one perceives to be threatening. [See the previous article in this series: "Seeing the Elephant"
When the interference of cognitive dissonance is removed, what is the objective standard of design that we need to see in order to conclude something was created? What we need is a control experiment that determines this threshold of design in a case that has no threatening consequences. "The Obvious Proof", a book by Gershon Robinson and Mordechai Steinman, delivers a compelling presentation of the design argument, and describes such a control experiment involving millions of people concluding the necessity of a designer.
The laboratory consisted of theaters across the globe that showed the film "2001: A Space Odyssey." In the film, American scientists living in a colony on the moon discover during a dig the first evidence that intelligent life exists on other planets. What did they find? A simple monolith -- a smooth, rectangular slab of rock. The Americans keep this significant discovery secret, afraid of the widespread culture shock and social ramifications this would have without proper preparation.
Thousands of film critics and millions of moviegoers went along with the film's basic assertion, agreeing that intelligent creatures other than man must have created this smooth, rectangular monolith. It didn't just randomly appear. Free from all emotional and intellectual bias, in the comfort of darkened theaters with popcorn in hand, people unanimously agreed that a simple, smooth slab with a few right angles was conclusive proof of intelligence.
When the conclusion does not point to God, everyone realizes that the simplest object can serve as the threshold of design, the point at which one concludes an object could not have come into existence by random accident. The universe, infinitely more complex than a monolith, had to have been created.
WHAT ABOUT RANDOM EVOLUTION?
Given enough tries over a long period of time, isn't it possible for complex structures to emerge randomly? After all, with sufficient trials even improbable events eventually become likely.
Robert Shapiro, a professor of chemistry at New York University, uses a national lottery to illustrate this point ["Origins", Bantam, p.121]. The odds of winning the lottery may be 10 million to one. Winning would be incredibly lucky. But if we were to buy a lottery ticket every day for the next thirty thousand years, a win would become probable, (albeit very expensive).
But what are the odds of life coming about by sheer chance? Let's take a look at two examples to get a sense of the odds involved in random evolution.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, writes in his book "A Brief History of Time":
It is a bit like the well-known horde of monkeys hammering away on typewriters -- most of what they write will be garbage, but very occasionally by pure chance they will type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets. Similarly, in the case of the universe, could it be that we are living in a region that just happens by chance to be smooth and uniform?
Well could it be?
In response to Hawking, Dr. Gerald Schroeder, a physicist, calculated the odds of monkeys randomly typing an average Shakespearean Sonnet in his book "Genesis and the Big Bang." He chose the one that opens, "Shall I compare you to a summer's day?"
There are 488 letters in the sonnet ... The chance of randomly typing the 488 letters to produce this one sonnet is one in 26 to the 488th power, or one in 10 to the 690th power. The number 10690 is a one followed by 690 zero's! The immense scale of this number is hinted at when one considers that since the Big Bang, 15 billion years ago, there have been only 10 to the 18th power number of seconds, which have ticked away.
To write by random one of Shakespeare's sonnets would take all the monkeys, plus every other animal on earth, typing away on typewriters made from all the iron in the universe, over a period of time that exceeds all time since the Big Bang, and still the probability of a sonnet appearing would be vanishingly small. At one random try per second, with even a simple sentence having only 16 letters, it would take 2 million billion years (the universe has existed for about 15 billion years) to exhaust all possible combinations.
Robert Shapiro cites Nobel laureate Sir Fred Hoyle's calculation of the odds of a bacterium spontaneously generating [p.127]. At first Hoyle and his colleague, N. C. Wickramasinghe, endorsed spontaneous generation, but reversed their position once they calculated the odds.
A typical bacterium, which is the simplest of cells, is made up of 2,000 enzymes. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe took the probability of randomly assembling one enzyme and multiplied that number by itself 2,000 times to calculate the odds of a single bacterium randomly coming together. Those odds are 1 in 1040,000. Hoyle said the likelihood of this happening is comparable to the chance that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."
These are the odds of just a single, simple cell, without which evolution cannot even get started. Never mind the odds of more advanced compounds like an organ or all the enzymes in a human being.
Shapiro writes:
The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle.
For all intents and purposes, an event with the probability of 1 in 1040,000 qualifies in real-world terms as impossible.
SOME THINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLE
Imagine you are the presiding judge over a murder trial. Ballistic tests match perfectly with a gun found in the possession of the accused. The odds of another gun firing the bullet that killed the victim are let's say one in a billion.
The defendant claims that it is a sheer fluke that his gun happens to match the ballistics tests and that there must be another gun out there that is the real murder weapon. "After all," he says, "it is a possibility."
The defendant's fingerprints are found all over the victim's body. He claims there must be another person out there who happens to have astonishingly similar fingerprints. Again, it is possible.
There are also eyewitnesses who testify to seeing a man gunning down the victim who looks just like the defendant. The defendant claims there must be another person out there in this big world who looks just like him, and that man is the real murderer. After all -- it's not impossible.
You are the judge, and you need to make a decision. What do you decide?
In the pragmatic world of decision-making, odds this high are called impossible. One needs to weigh the evidence and come to the most reasonable conclusion.
Does the universe have a Creator? Look at the design, look at the odds and look honestly within. Where does the more rational conclusion lie?
For further exploration: http://www.2001principle.net/
what do you have to say? this provides overwhelming evidence that there is a G-d that exists. and if so, then a=b=c=d=e=f=cyrusking is a monkey
ok, cool
now the real challenge
1. make everyone who reads this thread read all that
2. get them to believe all that
i mean no disrespect, btw
"you can get a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink"
listen, the truth is out there, if people want to hide in their shells and not become one with the truth, they will be left out of reality and suffer the consequences 
if their arguments are worth anything, when a challenge against their slander stands up, they gotta knock it down, or else its checkmate on their intellectual beliefs.
simple as that
honestly though its already been proven who is right and who is wrong here, but like the arab terrorists, they just don't let up, keeping up with their crap spewing 
well said
but in the vein of descartes, you have to respect those who let doubt fill their mind for it is that which makes us human
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Perfect_Cheezit well said but in the vein of descartes, you have to respect those who let doubt fill their mind for it is that which makes us human |
| quote: |
this is the point of existence, to doubt, then question, and find answers. It is the absolute reason to our being. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Perfect_Cheezit case in point to expand on that, where can we draw the boundaries between doubt and pointless cynicism? when can we know for certain that something like religion can be accepted as fact? When does doubt become something nagging, holding us back instead of propelling us forward? |
I wish it were the case that people's opinion could be swayed by reason alone, that factual evidence would be the basis for belief. Religion is what is wrong in todays world, it's a disease, it infects the minds of the dumb and ignorant, what's worse is the disease is not terminal.
In the past religion may have had some credibility, a way for despots to control the idiot masses, add 5000 years and you have an insidious corrupt money hungry facade. Propaganda / marketing / spreading the faith, it's all the same bullshit, only the simplistic of mind fall for it.
Christianity / judiasm / islam / hindu: They are all a pathetic amalgamation of retired religions, a syncretic blend of past forms of faith that have failed. The only reason these conceptual ideologies are still in business is that they threaten their drones with "eternal hellfire" in case they leave.
If there was no such thing as Satan (or its equivalent in other religions) would there even be religion in todays world?
I believe Robert Heinlein has provided us with some very good insight into what places of worship will be like in the future. Pubs, Poker Machines and Prostitution. The only difference between churches now and his speculative view of churches in the future, is that now the christian church is a brothel were seedy old men can sodomise underage boys. I bet Robert didn't see that one coming.
Man created god in his own image
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Perfect_Cheezit case in point to expand on that, where can we draw the boundaries between doubt and pointless cynicism? when can we know for certain that something like religion can be accepted as fact? When does doubt become something nagging, holding us back instead of propelling us forward? |
]
| quote: |
| Originally posted by tathi Man created god in his own image |
Ok, let's analyze the first part of your post, and that is the existance of a god. You are saying that the fact universe is organized and it exists is an evidence of a god. But what you're doing here is attempting to explain one unexplainable entity by making up another unexplainable entity and saying it created the first one. You can't explain how the universe came to be, so you're saying it was made by a supreme being. The thing is, you simply can't explain how that supreme being came to be, just as you can't explain how the universe came to be. Basically, you can go on forever like that, and explain that supreme being's creation as a pet project of an even more supreme being. Maybe the universe is a pet project of some supreme being, who knows, but that doesn't bring us any closer to the real answer. When you think of such an idea, it seems like you're moving in solving the puzzle one step further each time, but what you've done is you've just created an infinite loop whose ultimate solution is nowhere closer than it was before.
Now, you may limit yourself to just one supreme being, or a god. So when you look at the universe, you see it has no reason or logical purpose, and therefore you attribute its existance to some sort of higher purpose that we aren't able to understand. But what is the purpose of the creator of the universe? It has no purpose. It just is. So why is it so acceptable for you to have a purposeless uberentity that simply existed forever and which created this universe with a purpose, while it is impossible for you to accept the probability this universe itself existed forever and had no purpose at all?
And now about the second part of your post which deals with evolution. While the first part was understandable, because there'ss no way to definitely prove you're right or wrong, the second definitely isn't very intelligent. Yes, it is true that the likelyhood of a human being emerging from nothing is basically equal to zero. But, let's look at it from a different point of view. There are 9 planets in this solar system, there are more than a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. The number of galaxies that are out there we don't even know. Since we've recently discovered that stars usually have many planets, that's about a trillion planets in our little galaxy alone. Now, let's come back to our own little planet. It's almost certain that out of such a vast number of planets, some will have conditions and materials needed for life to emerge. Now, the only thing that is needed for life is to have some sort of self-replicating molecule, or in our case the first DNA or RNA. As soon as such a molecule appears, if it has enough resources around itself, in a very short time the world will be covered with those molecules. Some of them will have mistakes in them that will prove to be fatal, while some will be neutral or beneficial. Since our planet is pretty big, and it is also full of nutrients needed for life, imagine how much molecules that is. It's somewhere along the lines of 10^40 (my quick approximation). And all that is needed is that some of those molecules interact between each other in a right way. Those interactions are infact not that uncommon, as some discoveries have shown that some clouds of gas in the universe contain large amounts of amino acids. What that means is those reactions needed for life are quite common because those molecules react well with each other. Now, let's say your article is correct and the odds for a bunch of those molecules coming together really are 1 040 000 to one. That's one in 10^6. Since there are 10^40 molecules out there, that chance is pretty likely. And the 747 analogy is quite wrong. You see, molecules don't connect in completely random ways. If you put together same molecules under same thermal conditions together, you'll get the same result each time. If you put 747 parts together and mix them up, you'll get a different shape each time.
From that point on, evolution is no longer a random play, as your article seems to suggest. The reason why species are improving at a staggering rate is natural selection. Without it, it would truly be unbelievable that a human, or any higher animal evolved. Infact, it would all dissipate and we'd sooner or later devolve to the primordial ooze we came from, because harmful mutations are much more common than the positive ones. But when you have the constant struggle for life and death, the situation is a little different. Those species with even minor edge over the others will be greatly rewarded, while those with even the slightest defects will most likely perish. Imagine an antelope that runs 10% slower than other antilopes. It's not such a large difference, and yet it will be eaten as soon as the first lion attacks the herd.
If we look at our brain development, we see the same thing. There are many more people with mental diseases and handicaps than there are geniouses. And yet those few geniouses will procreate, while the idiots most likely won't. Now, we do know for a fact that mutations are happening. On average, a child has about 10 mutations in its genetic code that aren't inherited neither from the father, nor from the mother, but are instead created by an accident. Most are neutral, many are negative, and only a few show improvement over the original DNA. However, only the neutral and improved will be able to procreate further. Therefore evolution is infact directed by external forces, but those forces are not divine, they're of rather logical nature. Here's an interesting thing that's soon gonna be on the Discovery channel that proves my point. This guy whose name I forgot was working on the AI systems and multiprocessor interaction. He made a test in which a computer simulation connected the processors in a random way. Many of those systems were flawed or didn't work, many were just as good as the original versions, but a few showed improvement over the original human made design. Now since there's an external force choosing which of those systems should be multiplied (natural selection/benchmark results), only the best systems will remain while the bad ones will soon be forgotten.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by tathi I wish it were the case that people's opinion could be swayed by reason alone, that factual evidence would be the basis for belief. Religion is what is wrong in todays world, it's a disease, it infects the minds of the dumb and ignorant, what's worse is the disease is not terminal. |
| quote: |
In the past religion may have had some credibility, a way for despots to control the idiot masses, add 5000 years and you have an insidious corrupt money hungry facade. Propaganda / marketing / spreading the faith, it's all the same bullshit, only the simplistic of mind fall for it. |
| quote: |
Christianity / judiasm / islam / hindu: They are all a pathetic amalgamation of retired religions, a syncretic blend of past forms of faith that have failed. The only reason these conceptual ideologies are still in business is that they threaten their drones with "eternal hellfire" in case they leave. |
| quote: |
If there was no such thing as Satan (or its equivalent in other religions) would there even be religion in todays world? |
| quote: |
I believe Robert Heinlein has provided us with some very good insight into what places of worship will be like in the future. Pubs, Poker Machines and Prostitution. The only difference between churches now and his speculative view of churches in the future, is that now the christian church is a brothel were seedy old men can sodomise underage boys. I bet Robert didn't see that one coming. |
| quote: |
| Man created god in his own image |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Ok, let's analyze the first part of your post, and that is the existance of a god. You are saying that the fact universe is organized and it exists is an evidence of a god. But what you're doing here is attempting to explain one unexplainable entity by making up another unexplainable entity and saying it created the first one. You can't explain how the universe came to be, so you're saying it was made by a supreme being. The thing is, you simply can't explain how that supreme being came to be, just as you can't explain how the universe came to be. Basically, you can go on forever like that, and explain that supreme being's creation as a pet project of an even more supreme being. Maybe the universe is a pet project of some supreme being, who knows, but that doesn't bring us any closer to the real answer. When you think of such an idea, it seems like you're moving in solving the puzzle one step further each time, but what you've done is you've just created an infinite loop whose ultimate solution is nowhere closer than it was before. Now, you may limit yourself to just one supreme being, or a god. So when you look at the universe, you see it has no reason or logical purpose, and therefore you attribute its existance to some sort of higher purpose that we aren't able to understand. But what is the purpose of the creator of the universe? It has no purpose. It just is. So why is it so acceptable for you to have a purposeless uberentity that simply existed forever and which created this universe with a purpose, while it is impossible for you to accept the probability this universe itself existed forever and had no purpose at all? And now about the second part of your post which deals with evolution. While the first part was understandable, because there'ss no way to definitely prove you're right or wrong, the second definitely isn't very intelligent. Yes, it is true that the likelyhood of a human being emerging from nothing is basically equal to zero. But, let's look at it from a different point of view. There are 9 planets in this solar system, there are more than a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. The number of galaxies that are out there we don't even know. Since we've recently discovered that stars usually have many planets, that's about a trillion planets in our little galaxy alone. Now, let's come back to our own little planet. It's almost certain that out of such a vast number of planets, some will have conditions and materials needed for life to emerge. Now, the only thing that is needed for life is to have some sort of self-replicating molecule, or in our case the first DNA or RNA. As soon as such a molecule appears, if it has enough resources around itself, in a very short time the world will be covered with those molecules. Some of them will have mistakes in them that will prove to be fatal, while some will be neutral or beneficial. Since our planet is pretty big, and it is also full of nutrients needed for life, imagine how much molecules that is. It's somewhere along the lines of 10^40 (my quick approximation). And all that is needed is that some of those molecules interact between each other in a right way. Those interactions are infact not that uncommon, as some discoveries have shown that some clouds of gas in the universe contain large amounts of amino acids. What that means is those reactions needed for life are quite common because those molecules react well with each other. Now, let's say your article is correct and the odds for a bunch of those molecules coming together really are 1 040 000 to one. That's one in 10^6. Since there are 10^40 molecules out there, that chance is pretty likely. And the 747 analogy is quite wrong. You see, molecules don't connect in completely random ways. If you put together same molecules under same thermal conditions together, you'll get the same result each time. If you put 747 parts together and mix them up, you'll get a different shape each time. From that point on, evolution is no longer a random play, as your article seems to suggest. The reason why species are improving at a staggering rate is natural selection. Without it, it would truly be unbelievable that a human, or any higher animal evolved. Infact, it would all dissipate and we'd sooner or later devolve to the primordial ooze we came from, because harmful mutations are much more common than the positive ones. But when you have the constant struggle for life and death, the situation is a little different. Those species with even minor edge over the others will be greatly rewarded, while those with even the slightest defects will most likely perish. Imagine an antelope that runs 10% slower than other antilopes. It's not such a large difference, and yet it will be eaten as soon as the first lion attacks the herd. If we look at our brain development, we see the same thing. There are many more people with mental diseases and handicaps than there are geniouses. And yet those few geniouses will procreate, while the idiots most likely won't. Now, we do know for a fact that mutations are happening. On average, a child has about 10 mutations in its genetic code that aren't inherited neither from the father, nor from the mother, but are instead created by an accident. Most are neutral, many are negative, and only a few show improvement over the original DNA. However, only the neutral and improved will be able to procreate further. Therefore evolution is infact directed by external forces, but those forces are not divine, they're of rather logical nature. Here's an interesting thing that's soon gonna be on the Discovery channel that proves my point. This guy whose name I forgot was working on the AI systems and multiprocessor interaction. He made a test in which a computer simulation connected the processors in a random way. Many of those systems were flawed or didn't work, many were just as good as the original versions, but a few showed improvement over the original human made design. Now since there's an external force choosing which of those systems should be multiplied (natural selection/benchmark results), only the best systems will remain while the bad ones will soon be forgotten. |
but for now just point you to this article... give it a read and await further discussion from my end!
further reading..
this is long, but it helps bring in new angles and some interesting points to consider on this subject
An M.I.T. physicist takes a look at Darwin, the fossil record, and the likelihood of random evolution.
At the basis of the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution lie two basic assumptions: that changes in morphologies are induced by random mutations on the genome, and that these changes in the morphology of plant or animal make the life form either more or less successful in the competition to survive. With nature's selection, evolutionists claim to remove the theory of evolution from that of a random process. The selection is in no way random. It is a function of the environment. The randomness, however, remains as the basic driving force that produces the varied morphologies behind the selection.
The question is: Can random mutations produce the evolution of life?
Because evolution is primarily a study of the history of life, statistical analyses of evolution are plagued by having to assume the many conditions that were extant during those long gone eras. Rates of mutations, the contents of the "original DNA," and environmental conditions -- all these affect the rate and direction of the changes in morphology. And these are all unknowns.
One must never ask what the likelihood is that a specific set of mutations will occur to produce a specific animal. This would imply a direction to evolution, and basic to all Darwinian theories of evolution is the assumption that evolution has no direction. The induced changes, and hence the new morphologies, are totally random, regardless of the challenges presented by the environment.
PROTEIN COMBINATIONS
With this background, let's look at the process of evolution. Life is in essence a symbiotic combination of proteins (and other structures, but here I'll discuss only the proteins). The history of life teaches us that not all combinations of proteins are viable. At the Cambrian explosion of animal life, 530 million years ago, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved.
It is no wonder that Scientific American asked whether the mechanism of evolution has changed in a way that prohibits all other body phyla. It is not that the mechanism of evolution has changed; it is our understanding of how evolution functions that must change to fit the data presented by the fossil record. To use the word of Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, it appears that the flow of life is "channeled" along these 34 basic directions.
Let's look at this channeling and decide whether or not it can be the result of random processes.
Humans and all mammals have some 50,000 genes. That implies, as an order of magnitude estimate, some 50,000 proteins. Now, it is estimated that there are some 30 million species of animal life on Earth. If the genomes of all animals produced 50,000 proteins, and no proteins were common among any of the species (a fact we know to be false, but an assumption that makes our calculations favor the random evolutionary assumption), there would be (30 million x 50,000) 1.5 trillion (1.5 x 10 to the power of 12) proteins in all life. (The actual number is vastly lower).
Now let's consider the likelihood of these viable combinations of proteins forming by chance, recalling that, as the events following the Cambrian explosion taught us, not all combinations of proteins are viable.
Proteins are coils of several hundred amino acids. Take a typical protein to be a chain of 300 amino acids. There are 20 commonly occurring amino acids in life. This means that the number of possible combinations of the amino acids in our model protein is 20 to the power of 300 (i.e. 20 multiplied by itself 300 times), or in the more usual 10-based system of numbers, 10 to the power of 390 (i.e. the number one, followed by 390 zeros!).
Nature has the option of choosing among the possible 10 to power of 390 proteins, the 1.5 x (10 to power of 12) proteins of which all viable life is composed. In other words, for each one correct choice, there are 10 to power of 378 wrong choices! With odds like that, it is amazing that our bodies ever get it right.
Can this have happened by random mutations of the genome? Not if our understanding of statistics is correct. It would be as if nature reached into a grab bag containing a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion proteins -- and pulled out the one that worked.
And then repeated this trick a million million times.
This impossibility of randomness producing order is not different from the attempt to produce Shakespeare or any meaningful string of letters more than a few words in length by a random letter generator. Gibberish is always the result. This is simply because the number of meaningless letter combinations vastly exceeds the number of meaningful combinations.
With life it was and is lethal gibberish.
ABRUPT MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES
Nature, molecular biology and the Cambrian explosion of animal life have given us the opportunity to study rigorously the potential for randomness as a source of development in evolution. If the fossil record is an accurate description of the flow of life, then the 34 basic body plans that burst into being at the Cambrian comprise all of animal life till today. The tree of life which envisioned a gradual progression of phyla from simple forms (e.g. sponges) on to more complex life (e.g. worms), and then on to shelled creatures (e.g. mollusks), has been replaced by the "bush" of life in which sponges, worms, mollusks and all the other 34 phyla appeared simultaneously. Each of these bush lines then developed (evolved) a myriad of variations, but the variations always remained within the basic body plan.
Among the structures that appeared in the Cambrian were limbs, claws, intestines, and eyes with optically perfect lenses. These exploded into being with no underlying hint in the fossil record that they were coming. Below them in the rock strata (i.e., older than them) are fossils of one-celled bacteria, algae, protozoans, and clumps known as the essentially structureless Ediacaran fossils of uncertain identity. How such complexities could form suddenly by random processes is an unanswered question.
It is no wonder that Darwin himself, at seven locations in "The Origin of Species", urged the reader to ignore the fossil record if he or she wanted to believe his theory. Abrupt morphological changes are contrary to Darwin's oft repeated statement that nature does not make jumps.
Darwin based his theory on animal husbandry rather than fossils. If in a few generations of selective breeding a farmer could produce a robust sheep from a skinny one, then, Darwin reasoned, in a few million or billion generations a sponge might evolve into an ape.
Yet the fossil record did not then nor does it now support this theory.
The abrupt appearance in the fossil record of new species is so common that the journal "Science," the bastion of pure scientific thinking, featured the title, "Did Darwin get it all right?" And answered the question: no. The appearance of wings is a classic example. There is no hint in the fossil record that wings are about to come into existence. And they do, fully formed.
We may have to change our concept of evolution to accommodate a reality that the development of life has within it something exotic at work, some process totally unexpected that produces these sudden developments. The change in paradigm would be similar to the era in physics when classical logical Newtonian physics was modified by the totally illogical (illogical by human standards of logic) phenomena observed in quantum physics, including the quantized, stepwise changes in the emission of radiation by a body, even as the temperature of the body increases smoothly.
PRE-PROGRAMMED LOWER FORMS
With the advent of molecular biology's ability to discern the structure of proteins and genes, statistical comparison of the similarity of these structures among animals has become possible. The gene that controls the development of the eye is the same in all mammals. That is not surprising. The fossil record implies a common branch for all mammals.
But what is surprising, even astounding, is the similarity of the mammal gene that controls the development of eyes in mollusks and the visual systems in worms. The same can be said for the gene that controls the expression of limbs in insects and in humans. In fact so similar is this gene, that pieces of the mammalian gene, when spliced into a fruit fly, will cause a wing to appear on the fly.
This would make sense if life's development were described as a tree. But the bush of life means that just above the level of one-celled life, insects and mammals and worms and mollusks separated.
The eye gene has 130 sites. That means there are 20 to power of 130 possible combinations of amino acids along those sites. Somehow nature has selected the same combination of amino acids for all visual systems in all animals. That fidelity could not have happened by chance. It must have been pre-programmed in lower forms of life. But those lower forms of life, one-celled, did not have eyes.
These data have confounded the classic theory of "random, independent evolution" producing these convergent structures. This similarity is so totally unsuspected by classical theories of evolution, that the most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal in the Untied States, "Science," reported: "The hypothesis that the eye of the cephalopod [mollusk] has evolved by convergence with vertebrate [human] eye is challenged by our recent findings of the Pax-6 [gene]... The concept that the eyes of invertebrates have evolved completely independently from the vertebrate eye has to be reexamined."
The significance of this statement must not be lost. We are being asked to reexamine the idea that evolution is a free agent. The convergence, the similarity of these genes, is so great that it could not, it did not, happen by chance random reactions.
FOSSILS IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES
The British Natural History Museum in London has an entire section devoted to the evolution of species. And what evolution do they demonstrate? Pink daisies evolving into blue daisies; small dogs evolving into big dogs; a few species of cichlid fish evolving in a mere few thousand years into a dozen species of cichlid fish. Very impressive. Until you realize that the daisies remained daisies, the dogs remained dogs and the cichlid fish remained cichlid. It is called micro-evolution.
This magnificent museum, with all its resources, could not produce a single example of one phylum evolving into another. It is the mechanisms of macro-evolution, the change of one phylum or class of animal into another, that has been called into question by these data.
The reality of this explosion of life was discovered long before it was revealed. In 1909, Charles D. Walcott, while searching for fossils in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, came upon a strata of shale near the Burgess Pass, rich in fossils from the Cambrian era. Over the next four years, Walcott collected between 60,000 and 80,000 fossils from the Burgess Shale. These fossils contained representatives from every phylum that exist today (except one). Walcott recorded his findings meticulously in his notebooks. No new phyla ever evolved after the Cambrian explosion.
These fossils could have changed the entire concept of evolution from a tree of life to a bush of life. And they did, but not in 1909. Walcott knew he had discovered something very important. But he could not believe that evolution could have occurred in such a burst of life forms ("simultaneously," to use the words of Scientific American). This was totally against the theory of Darwin in which he and his colleagues were steeped.
And so Walcott reburied the fossils, all 60,000 of them, this time in the drawers of his laboratory. Walcott was the director of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. It was not until 1985 that they were rediscovered (in the draws of the Smithsonian). Had Walcott wanted, he could have hired a phalanx of graduate students to work on the fossils. But he chose not to rock the boat of evolution.
Today, fossil representatives of the Cambrian era have been found in China, Africa, the British Isles, Sweden, Greenland. The explosion was worldwide. But before it became proper to discuss the extraordinary nature of the explosion, the data were simply not reported. It is a classic example of cognitive dissonance, but an example for which we have all paid a severe price.
At this point we must ask the question, what has produced the wonders of life that surround us? The answer may be implied by those very surroundings. In that case the medium would be the message!
spice it up
to add some flavour here,
guys for every time you see the word G-d appear anywhere here, take out our subjective understandings of the meaning of the word, and replace it with
'ABSOLUTE PERFECTION LACKING NOTHING'
because in essense we can only understand this about G-d, that G-d is ABSOLUTE PERFECTION, and LACKS NOTHING.
so therefore, echange the word G-d for PERFECTION LACKING NOTHING, and see the results of our discussion when you do that...
big difference eh?
| quote: |
| from my clear understanding, judaism was around way before the other mentioned religions, and is also the spiritual base for both christianity and islam. Both religions are 'hybrids' based of the old bible given to the Jews at Mt. Sinai. Once people changed around the original bible and the laws of it, resulting in both christianity and islam, a manmade aspect came into being. Even though there is some truth to what they say, the eventuality of corruption became evident within the middle ages as the church began to take over europe, and as we even see in modern day, the islamic leadership is all religious, and they say what they want, and the people believe what they say. This is not true observance to the word of G-d. this is observance to the word of MAN. TOTAL CORRUPTION, which is worth nothing in the eyes of any intellectual. So we do have an agreement on this. |
Re: further reading..
| quote: |
| Originally posted by DJBARON this is long, but it helps bring in new angles and some interesting points to consider on this subject An M.I.T. physicist takes a look at Darwin, the fossil record, and the likelihood of random evolution. At the basis of the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution lie two basic assumptions: that changes in morphologies are induced by random mutations on the genome, and that these changes in the morphology of plant or animal make the life form either more or less successful in the competition to survive. With nature's selection, evolutionists claim to remove the theory of evolution from that of a random process. The selection is in no way random. It is a function of the environment. The randomness, however, remains as the basic driving force that produces the varied morphologies behind the selection. The question is: Can random mutations produce the evolution of life? Because evolution is primarily a study of the history of life, statistical analyses of evolution are plagued by having to assume the many conditions that were extant during those long gone eras. Rates of mutations, the contents of the "original DNA," and environmental conditions -- all these affect the rate and direction of the changes in morphology. And these are all unknowns. One must never ask what the likelihood is that a specific set of mutations will occur to produce a specific animal. This would imply a direction to evolution, and basic to all Darwinian theories of evolution is the assumption that evolution has no direction. The induced changes, and hence the new morphologies, are totally random, regardless of the challenges presented by the environment. PROTEIN COMBINATIONS With this background, let's look at the process of evolution. Life is in essence a symbiotic combination of proteins (and other structures, but here I'll discuss only the proteins). The history of life teaches us that not all combinations of proteins are viable. At the Cambrian explosion of animal life, 530 million years ago, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved. It is no wonder that Scientific American asked whether the mechanism of evolution has changed in a way that prohibits all other body phyla. It is not that the mechanism of evolution has changed; it is our understanding of how evolution functions that must change to fit the data presented by the fossil record. To use the word of Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, it appears that the flow of life is "channeled" along these 34 basic directions. Let's look at this channeling and decide whether or not it can be the result of random processes. Humans and all mammals have some 50,000 genes. That implies, as an order of magnitude estimate, some 50,000 proteins. Now, it is estimated that there are some 30 million species of animal life on Earth. If the genomes of all animals produced 50,000 proteins, and no proteins were common among any of the species (a fact we know to be false, but an assumption that makes our calculations favor the random evolutionary assumption), there would be (30 million x 50,000) 1.5 trillion (1.5 x 10 to the power of 12) proteins in all life. (The actual number is vastly lower). Now let's consider the likelihood of these viable combinations of proteins forming by chance, recalling that, as the events following the Cambrian explosion taught us, not all combinations of proteins are viable. Proteins are coils of several hundred amino acids. Take a typical protein to be a chain of 300 amino acids. There are 20 commonly occurring amino acids in life. This means that the number of possible combinations of the amino acids in our model protein is 20 to the power of 300 (i.e. 20 multiplied by itself 300 times), or in the more usual 10-based system of numbers, 10 to the power of 390 (i.e. the number one, followed by 390 zeros!). Nature has the option of choosing among the possible 10 to power of 390 proteins, the 1.5 x (10 to power of 12) proteins of which all viable life is composed. In other words, for each one correct choice, there are 10 to power of 378 wrong choices! With odds like that, it is amazing that our bodies ever get it right. Can this have happened by random mutations of the genome? Not if our understanding of statistics is correct. It would be as if nature reached into a grab bag containing a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion proteins -- and pulled out the one that worked. And then repeated this trick a million million times. This impossibility of randomness producing order is not different from the attempt to produce Shakespeare or any meaningful string of letters more than a few words in length by a random letter generator. Gibberish is always the result. This is simply because the number of meaningless letter combinations vastly exceeds the number of meaningful combinations. With life it was and is lethal gibberish. ABRUPT MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES Nature, molecular biology and the Cambrian explosion of animal life have given us the opportunity to study rigorously the potential for randomness as a source of development in evolution. If the fossil record is an accurate description of the flow of life, then the 34 basic body plans that burst into being at the Cambrian comprise all of animal life till today. The tree of life which envisioned a gradual progression of phyla from simple forms (e.g. sponges) on to more complex life (e.g. worms), and then on to shelled creatures (e.g. mollusks), has been replaced by the "bush" of life in which sponges, worms, mollusks and all the other 34 phyla appeared simultaneously. Each of these bush lines then developed (evolved) a myriad of variations, but the variations always remained within the basic body plan. Among the structures that appeared in the Cambrian were limbs, claws, intestines, and eyes with optically perfect lenses. These exploded into being with no underlying hint in the fossil record that they were coming. Below them in the rock strata (i.e., older than them) are fossils of one-celled bacteria, algae, protozoans, and clumps known as the essentially structureless Ediacaran fossils of uncertain identity. How such complexities could form suddenly by random processes is an unanswered question. It is no wonder that Darwin himself, at seven locations in "The Origin of Species", urged the reader to ignore the fossil record if he or she wanted to believe his theory. Abrupt morphological changes are contrary to Darwin's oft repeated statement that nature does not make jumps. Darwin based his theory on animal husbandry rather than fossils. If in a few generations of selective breeding a farmer could produce a robust sheep from a skinny one, then, Darwin reasoned, in a few million or billion generations a sponge might evolve into an ape. Yet the fossil record did not then nor does it now support this theory. The abrupt appearance in the fossil record of new species is so common that the journal "Science," the bastion of pure scientific thinking, featured the title, "Did Darwin get it all right?" And answered the question: no. The appearance of wings is a classic example. There is no hint in the fossil record that wings are about to come into existence. And they do, fully formed. We may have to change our concept of evolution to accommodate a reality that the development of life has within it something exotic at work, some process totally unexpected that produces these sudden developments. The change in paradigm would be similar to the era in physics when classical logical Newtonian physics was modified by the totally illogical (illogical by human standards of logic) phenomena observed in quantum physics, including the quantized, stepwise changes in the emission of radiation by a body, even as the temperature of the body increases smoothly. PRE-PROGRAMMED LOWER FORMS With the advent of molecular biology's ability to discern the structure of proteins and genes, statistical comparison of the similarity of these structures among animals has become possible. The gene that controls the development of the eye is the same in all mammals. That is not surprising. The fossil record implies a common branch for all mammals. But what is surprising, even astounding, is the similarity of the mammal gene that controls the development of eyes in mollusks and the visual systems in worms. The same can be said for the gene that controls the expression of limbs in insects and in humans. In fact so similar is this gene, that pieces of the mammalian gene, when spliced into a fruit fly, will cause a wing to appear on the fly. This would make sense if life's development were described as a tree. But the bush of life means that just above the level of one-celled life, insects and mammals and worms and mollusks separated. The eye gene has 130 sites. That means there are 20 to power of 130 possible combinations of amino acids along those sites. Somehow nature has selected the same combination of amino acids for all visual systems in all animals. That fidelity could not have happened by chance. It must have been pre-programmed in lower forms of life. But those lower forms of life, one-celled, did not have eyes. These data have confounded the classic theory of "random, independent evolution" producing these convergent structures. This similarity is so totally unsuspected by classical theories of evolution, that the most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal in the Untied States, "Science," reported: "The hypothesis that the eye of the cephalopod [mollusk] has evolved by convergence with vertebrate [human] eye is challenged by our recent findings of the Pax-6 [gene]... The concept that the eyes of invertebrates have evolved completely independently from the vertebrate eye has to be reexamined." The significance of this statement must not be lost. We are being asked to reexamine the idea that evolution is a free agent. The convergence, the similarity of these genes, is so great that it could not, it did not, happen by chance random reactions. FOSSILS IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES The British Natural History Museum in London has an entire section devoted to the evolution of species. And what evolution do they demonstrate? Pink daisies evolving into blue daisies; small dogs evolving into big dogs; a few species of cichlid fish evolving in a mere few thousand years into a dozen species of cichlid fish. Very impressive. Until you realize that the daisies remained daisies, the dogs remained dogs and the cichlid fish remained cichlid. It is called micro-evolution. This magnificent museum, with all its resources, could not produce a single example of one phylum evolving into another. It is the mechanisms of macro-evolution, the change of one phylum or class of animal into another, that has been called into question by these data. The reality of this explosion of life was discovered long before it was revealed. In 1909, Charles D. Walcott, while searching for fossils in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, came upon a strata of shale near the Burgess Pass, rich in fossils from the Cambrian era. Over the next four years, Walcott collected between 60,000 and 80,000 fossils from the Burgess Shale. These fossils contained representatives from every phylum that exist today (except one). Walcott recorded his findings meticulously in his notebooks. No new phyla ever evolved after the Cambrian explosion. These fossils could have changed the entire concept of evolution from a tree of life to a bush of life. And they did, but not in 1909. Walcott knew he had discovered something very important. But he could not believe that evolution could have occurred in such a burst of life forms ("simultaneously," to use the words of Scientific American). This was totally against the theory of Darwin in which he and his colleagues were steeped. And so Walcott reburied the fossils, all 60,000 of them, this time in the drawers of his laboratory. Walcott was the director of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. It was not until 1985 that they were rediscovered (in the draws of the Smithsonian). Had Walcott wanted, he could have hired a phalanx of graduate students to work on the fossils. But he chose not to rock the boat of evolution. Today, fossil representatives of the Cambrian era have been found in China, Africa, the British Isles, Sweden, Greenland. The explosion was worldwide. But before it became proper to discuss the extraordinary nature of the explosion, the data were simply not reported. It is a classic example of cognitive dissonance, but an example for which we have all paid a severe price. At this point we must ask the question, what has produced the wonders of life that surround us? The answer may be implied by those very surroundings. In that case the medium would be the message! |
The thing that intrigues me with this whole debate is why so many intelligent design people make the leap from the idea that the ordering of the universe begs creation, and then leap out into the "therefore a religion at some point must have been right, God must have an interest in us" and any number of other far out conjectures.
I'm not completely willing to rule out intelligent design because looking at the fundamental order and nature of the universe the possibility is undoubtedly there, but to take the leap that there's an afterlife, a caring God, a "right" religion, or anything related is much too far for my tastes.
And if ID can only prove that some force built the universe, aren't we left at the same point? Is it really reassuring to think that the universe was created if we still have to acknowledge that the creator doesn't give a rip about humanity?
I mean, frankly, it seems like we're at the same point, we still have to make our own meaning for our lives, and this is all we get. So *why worry*/concern ourselves with the question?
To the Bible Topic. TO whomever Renegade quoted, let me tell you something.
The christians arose from the church that Jesus wanted to establish here on earth, which was the correct one. ( This is for the Christian believers ). As for what I know and understand, is that for the Jews Jesus was more like a rebel and liar.. right?? .. OK.
Moises stated out the 10 commandments, something that both jews and christians share... and before that, there were many signs given, as well written by the many profets the first coming.. and to what it seemed for Christians, Jesus. After that, the Roman Catholic Church rose up.. and they made some other versions for the Bible, I dont know their names, but those may be the corrupted versions that you are talking about.. but! there is the Original version which has been kep unchanged, which is the Bible used by all Christians Religion, and theres the one used mostly among Caholics.. but the Universal Bible is not corrupted nor unchanged as you mentioned. After the Roman Catholic church established, there were many branches that came from that same church to where other churchs form. My religion didnt come from the Catholic nor is near related ( Im from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.. some may know them by nick name, Mormons ).. Anyways, just wanted to point that out. No hard feelings
| quote: |
| Originally posted by CortexBomb The thing that intrigues me with this whole debate is why so many intelligent design people make the leap from the idea that the ordering of the universe begs creation, and then leap out into the "therefore a religion at some point must have been right, God must have an interest in us" and any number of other far out conjectures. I'm not completely willing to rule out intelligent design because looking at the fundamental order and nature of the universe the possibility is undoubtedly there, but to take the leap that there's an afterlife, a caring God, a "right" religion, or anything related is much too far for my tastes. And if ID can only prove that some force built the universe, aren't we left at the same point? Is it really reassuring to think that the universe was created if we still have to acknowledge that the creator doesn't give a rip about humanity? I mean, frankly, it seems like we're at the same point, we still have to make our own meaning for our lives, and this is all we get. So *why worry*/concern ourselves with the question? |
hehehe.. imagine there is one, just imagine, and you just didnt care and did all sorts of bad things.. your screwed he, unless you repent. LoL but still, if you believe or dont believe.. religion brings many answers to the questions you just asked, really.. in fact, theres many proofs/prophecies in the Bible that have come true.. so I dont know. Eitherway, I always respect a persons belief, and always intrigues me to see what do they believe in or what.
WOWOWO
this is the BEST DISCUSSION I'VE SEEN EVER ON THIS BOARD!!!
AMAZING!!!!!! FINALLY TRUE INTELLECTUALISM UNFOLDS!!!!!!!!!
i will do some responding hopefully tomorrow good stuff on this thread! I will write tommorow PEACE!
lol
Glad to see you're happy, DJBARON
| quote: |
| Originally posted by DJBARON this is the BEST DISCUSSION I'VE SEEN EVER ON THIS BOARD!!! AMAZING!!!!!! FINALLY TRUE INTELLECTUALISM UNFOLDS!!!!!!!!! |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LiquidX So you have a clue, and end up in heaven hehehe.. imagine there is one, just imagine, and you just didnt care and did all sorts of bad things.. your screwed he, unless you repent. LoL but still, if you believe or dont believe.. religion brings many answers to the questions you just asked, really.. in fact, theres many proofs/prophecies in the Bible that have come true.. so I dont know. Eitherway, I always respect a persons belief, and always intrigues me to see what do they believe in or what. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by CortexBomb I completely respect people's right to be religious, on the micro level it's reassuring, it gives people an artificial extended family (as Vonnegut would say), and it can give some much-needed purpose to the grind. I have a problem with it on the macro level, whatwith all the wars and bloodshed it's caused over the years, but this is really straying off topic. My whole point was simply that even *if* ID was an indisputable concept (which is most assuredly isn't) it wouldn't prove anything other than the existence of a fundamental unknowable force. Perhaps that force is conscious, perhaps it isn't, but it still isn't giving us divine revelation or anything like that, and as such I don't see how it's getting us anywhere to argue about it if we agree that the end result is fundamentally the same. If someone could prove that God(dess)(s)/etc. has an interest in humanity, has a reason to care about worshippers, is particularly focused on us, or any of the other major points of most religions then we'd have something to discuss, but ID in and of itself doesn't do any of this. If all we're hoping for is agreement on whether or not the universe was created at some point, that seems as though it's not getting us anywhere of note. Not to say that I don't enjoy discussions about ultimately pointless abstractions, I am a philosophy major after all |
.. and yes, I always have many questions.. theres also those who pray.. and actually feel comfort when something is true.
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