Evidence that "Atheism" is not a sound belief (2 Viewers)

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You started a thread telling others why they are wrong, and then tell them they can't even define what they are. Yes, absolutely calling SlyPokerDog arrogant. I had dense in there also, but I know sometimes you miss things, so thought I would point it out again. Anyways, good luck to you in your quest to show others you are right.
 
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You started a thread telling others why they are wrong, and then tell them they can't even define what they are. Yes, absolutely calling SlyPokerDog arrogant. I had dense in there also, but I know sometimes you miss things, so thought I would point it out again. Anyways, good luck to you in your quest to show others you are right.

It amazes me that you take such an offense on this thread... I see your posting style on other topics; with many people telling why others are wrong; yet you don't call them arrogant. Once again, you are being hypocritical again.

Look at the political threads, even threads on certain players sucking. There are disagreements there. Maybe you need to bash on them as well?
 
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That's actually not hypocritical, but I you can re-define words however you want, clearly.
 
That's actually not hypocritical, but I you can re-define words however you want, clearly.

And I can re-edit your words however I want.

Muhahahahahahaha!

And I can be as hypocritical as I want.
 
You are taking an agnostic approach. I have already said that I have no problem with that approach. It's the true definition of atheism. I think that's why you and others debating me aren't seeing the forest through the trees. Because if you don't believe in god because you just don't isn't logical thinking. There has to be a reason. Reason equals evidence in your life or by sciince that supports that belief.

Saying your agnostic is fine. Saying your atheist isn't.

You are getting stuck on arguing word definitions again. Have you read any of my posts regarding the original, intended definition of agnosticism? (Look up Thomas Huxley, in particular where he defines agnosticism not as a "creed". but as a "method".) Can you at least recognize that many folks call themselves both agnostics AND atheists, since the two are not mutually exclusive under their most general definitions? Can you acknowledge that everyone who calls themselves "atheist" on this board (except for one) agrees that the existence of God is a possibility, however remote? Can you consider revising your strict definition of "atheism" to fit the beliefs of those who actually call themselves atheists?

If your goal is simply to say "those who think they can disprove God are wrong", you could save a great deal of time by simply repeating what we have said over and over: "you cannot prove a negative". One can never prove the nonexistence of ANYTHING. And you ESPECIALLY cannot prove a negative when we are discussing a massless, unmeasurable, spiritual being that obeys no known natural laws. Your God is safe from disproof! We all (well, almost all...) agree!
 
You are getting stuck on arguing word definitions again. Have you read any of my posts regarding the original, intended definition of agnosticism? (Look up Thomas Huxley, in particular where he defines agnosticism not as a "creed". but as a "method".) Can you at least recognize that many folks call themselves both agnostics AND atheists, since the two are not mutually exclusive under their most general definitions? Can you acknowledge that everyone who calls themselves "atheist" on this board (except for one) agrees that the existence of God is a possibility, however remote? Can you consider revising your strict definition of "atheism" to fit the beliefs of those who actually call themselves atheists?

If your goal is simply to say "those who think they can disprove God are wrong", you could save a great deal of time by simply repeating what we have said over and over: "you cannot prove a negative". One can never prove the nonexistence of ANYTHING. And you ESPECIALLY cannot prove a negative when we are discussing a massless, unmeasurable, spiritual being that obeys no known natural laws. Your God is safe from disproof! We all (well, almost all...) agree!

I don't have a problem with the agnostic belief. I think that's a sound belief. I just think Atheism isn't sound unless they have proof that God doesn't exist. I think it's funny that so many take offense to this thread; when in reality this is only on atheism. It would be like arguing to me that my God isn't sound because of what the Buddhists think.

The reason why Atheism morphed into Atheist-Agnositc is because Atheism is not sound. Pure and simple.
 
I don't have a problem with the agnostic belief. I think that's a sound belief. I just think Atheism isn't sound unless they have proof that God doesn't exist. I think it's funny that so many take offense to this thread; when in reality this is only on atheism. It would be like arguing to me that my God isn't sound because of what the Buddhists think.

The reason why Atheism morphed into Atheist-Agnositc is because Atheism is not sound. Pure and simple.

OR... because you are using limited and overly narrow definition of atheism that very, very few would even attempt to defend, let alone subscribe to.
 
OR... because you are using limited and overly narrow definition of atheism that very, very few would even attempt to defend, let alone subscribe to.

Don't be too sure Trip. Look around in other forums. Hell even go to http://www.atheists.org and see how they feel without a shadow of a doubt, God does not exist.

Maybe there are few in this forum that are debating me like you, crow, and denny that are true agnostics. I think many others are like Maris, but they don't want to publicly state it. Basically the ones calling me an idiot; and acting ignorant are the ones that are 100% sure there is no God. Because if they truly do believe that; then they will think I'm an idiot.

It's probably frustrating to most because these first 7, and a few others added mid stream can't be argued scientifically. Something Atheists boast they have on their side. When you actually have questions that have been proven by science (biology and physics), philosophy, or math questioning there could be a possibility that there is a designer; it should have a decent debate.

You know damn well Trip that science hasn't given evidence that life has been created by non-life; even when there could have all the primordial soup of the universe.

Also, many think of DNA not as code; because that would need a programer. Now how logical is that? DNA itself; not even a living organism is incredibly improbable to design from nothing.

There are many other questions just having the right primordial soup to happen by chance.

So I will stick to my points and know they are sound questions. If people think I'm arrogant, then so be it.
 
OR... because you are using limited and overly narrow definition of atheism that very, very few would even attempt to defend, let alone subscribe to.

Don't be too sure Trip. Look around in other forums. Hell even go to http://www.atheists.org and see how they feel without a shadow of a doubt, God does not exist.

Maybe there are few in this forum that are debating me like you, crow, and denny that are true agnostics. I think many others are like Maris, but they don't want to publicly state it. Basically the ones calling me an idiot; and acting ignorant are the ones that are 100% sure there is no God. Because if they truly do believe that; then they will think I'm an idiot.

It's probably frustrating to most because these first 7, and a few others added mid stream can't be argued scientifically. Something Atheists boast they have on their side. When you actually have questions that have been proven by science (biology and physics), philosophy, or math questioning there could be a possibility that there is a designer; it should have a decent debate.

You know damn well Trip that science hasn't given evidence that life has been created by non-life; even when there could have all the primordial soup of the universe.

Also, many think of DNA not as code; because that would need a programer. Now how logical is that? DNA itself; not even a living organism is incredibly improbable to design from nothing.

There are many other questions just having the right primordial soup to happen by chance.

So I will stick to my points and know they are sound questions. If people think I'm arrogant, then so be it.
 
If you truly believe that your points -- every single one of them -- haven't been soundly refuted, then there really is nothing more I can say in this thread. Every single one of your points is interesting philosophically, but not a single one of them holds any water scientifically, despite a valiant effort on your part.

I'll say it again: theists are the only ones claiming to have all the answers. The rest of us have no problem with mysteries, and aren't afraid to say "I don't know" in the face of insufficient information.
 
If you truly believe that your points -- every single one of them -- haven't been soundly refuted, then there really is nothing more I can say in this thread. Every single one of your points is interesting philosophically, but not a single one of them holds any water scientifically, despite a valiant effort on your part.

I'll say it again: theists are the only ones claiming to have all the answers. The rest of us have no problem with mysteries, and aren't afraid to say "I don't know" in the face of insufficient information.

You know math. Was my improbability point accurate?
 
Which starting assumptions?

You are operating under the assumption (and it's a BIG assumption) that the only possible mechanism other than God for the formation of patterns in the world is the random motion of individual particles. All of your calculations are based on this assumption.
 
You are operating under the assumption (and it's a BIG assumption) that the only possible mechanism other than God for the formation of patterns in the world is the random motion of individual particles. All of your calculations are based on this assumption.

Trip I'm using the theory of all the particles in the known universe. You can say other factors could be involved, but what others are out there? I am using the information that is known science. Using theory that hasn't been tested don't apply. You know this.
 
You are getting stuck on arguing word definitions again. Have you read any of my posts regarding the original, intended definition of agnosticism? (Look up Thomas Huxley, in particular where he defines agnosticism not as a "creed". but as a "method".) Can you at least recognize that many folks call themselves both agnostics AND atheists, since the two are not mutually exclusive under their most general definitions? Can you acknowledge that everyone who calls themselves "atheist" on this board (except for one) agrees that the existence of God is a possibility, however remote? Can you consider revising your strict definition of "atheism" to fit the beliefs of those who actually call themselves atheists?

If your goal is simply to say "those who think they can disprove God are wrong", you could save a great deal of time by simply repeating what we have said over and over: "you cannot prove a negative". One can never prove the nonexistence of ANYTHING. And you ESPECIALLY cannot prove a negative when we are discussing a massless, unmeasurable, spiritual being that obeys no known natural laws. Your God is safe from disproof! We all (well, almost all...) agree!

This. With 40,000 zeroes after it.
 
If you truly believe that your points -- every single one of them -- haven't been soundly refuted, then there really is nothing more I can say in this thread. Every single one of your points is interesting philosophically, but not a single one of them holds any water scientifically, despite a valiant effort on your part.

I'll say it again: theists are the only ones claiming to have all the answers. The rest of us have no problem with mysteries, and aren't afraid to say "I don't know" in the face of insufficient information.

This, too. With 180 zeroes after it.
 
Trip I'm using the theory of all the particles in the known universe.

Pardon the language, but what the hell does this mean? :D

There is no "theory of all the particles" out there, unless you are inventing one yourself right now. What your calculations are doing is taking a huge soup of particles, then jiggling them up every fraction of a second and checking to see if life has spontaneously formed anywhere.

Jiggle. Any life yet? No.

Jiggle. Any life yet? No.

The natural world is FULL of patterns that form quickly and spontaneously just from simple laws and known interactions. Some of those patterns are incredibly complex, and NONE of them would happen as they do using the raw "random soup" model that you are trying to jimmy into the discussion. So you tell me: with so many examples of patterns that form much, much faster than a purely random model would indicate, how do you justify using this random model for examining the formation of the first organism?
 
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Pardon the language, but what the hell does this mean? :D

There is no "theory of all the particles" out there, unless you are inventing one yourself right now. What your calculation are doing is taking a huge soup of particles, then jiggling them up every fraction of a second and checking to see if life has spontaneously formed anywhere.

Jiggle. Any life yet? No.

Jiggle. Any life yet? No.

The natural world is FULL of patterns that form quickly and spontaneously just from simple laws and known interactions. Some of those patterns are incredibly complex, and NONE of them would happen as they do using the raw "random soup" model that you are trying to jimmy into the discussion. So you tell me: with so many examples of patterns that form much, much faster than a purely random model would indicate, how do you justify using this random model for examining the formation of the first organism?

His math doesn't jiggle up the particles every fraction of a second. It assumes only one particle can do something each fraction of a second.

Like someone said, GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).

It is precisely because nature jiggles many combinations of particles at the same time each fraction of a second that all known things in the universe were able to form. Nature's experiments happen with an unimaginable amount of parallelism. His math implies Nature must have run one experiment at a time, serially.
 
Maybe there are few in this forum that are debating me like you, crow, and denny that are true agnostics. I think many others are like Maris, but they don't want to publicly state it. Basically the ones calling me an idiot; and acting ignorant are the ones that are 100% sure there is no God. Because if they truly do believe that; then they will think I'm an idiot.

I certainly don't think you are an idiot. You have a wealth of knowledge about other topics I know little about. All knowledge is valuable, especially to me.

Unless god(s) appear(s) in a physical sense for all to see, or we find his corpse, there will never be proof of his existence. Those who choose to believe in god(s) have their own reasons for doing so, just as I have my reasons to conclude beyond any doubt in my mind he does not exist.
 
2012-02-02-Argument-from-Personal-Incredulity.png
 
Good comic. And see that key quote "I have bucketfuls of empirical evidence to support my claims". That is the census of many atheists. Yet when asked to present some; they call out "unicorn". :MARIS61:
 
I certainly don't think you are an idiot. You have a wealth of knowledge about other topics I know little about. All knowledge is valuable, especially to me.

Unless god(s) appear(s) in a physical sense for all to see, or we find his corpse, there will never be proof of his existence. Those who choose to believe in god(s) have their own reasons for doing so, just as I have my reasons to conclude beyond any doubt in my mind he does not exist.

Coolest post you've written in this thread. Rep'd
 
Pardon the language, but what the hell does this mean? :D

There is no "theory of all the particles" out there, unless you are inventing one yourself right now. What your calculations are doing is taking a huge soup of particles, then jiggling them up every fraction of a second and checking to see if life has spontaneously formed anywhere.

Jiggle. Any life yet? No.

Jiggle. Any life yet? No.

The natural world is FULL of patterns that form quickly and spontaneously just from simple laws and known interactions. Some of those patterns are incredibly complex, and NONE of them would happen as they do using the raw "random soup" model that you are trying to jimmy into the discussion. So you tell me: with so many examples of patterns that form much, much faster than a purely random model would indicate, how do you justify using this random model for examining the formation of the first organism?

Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

Two approximate calculations give the number of atoms in the observable universe to be close to 10^80.

So you disagree that there isn't 10^80 number of atoms in the universe?
 
Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe



So you disagree that there isn't 10^80 number of atoms in the universe?

1) In the OBSERVABLE universe. You are aware that nobody has ever seen an edge, right?

2) But let's assume for the moment that what we see is all we get. Explain to me how this number constitutes a "theory of all the atoms", including every possible molecule and every possible interaction between them. Show all your work. Don't skip any steps.
 
1) In the OBSERVABLE universe. You are aware that nobody has ever seen an edge, right?

2) But let's assume for the moment that what we see is all we get. Explain to me how this number constitutes a "theory of all the atoms", including every possible molecule and every possible interaction between them. Show all your work. Don't skip any steps.

1.) Um yeah! I know that; which is why I said "Observable Universe" in the first place. You are aware that the Earth is not even the size of a spec of sand to even the "observable" universe? So the improbability is sound.

2.) I already shown the work on the original point. You didn't read it? Want me to copy and paste it again? You also want the quotes from some very important minds in math and cosmology? as well?
 
Here you go trip.

Okay so here is point #7


7.) Is there enough time and matter in the Universe?

ON MATHEMATICAL PROBABILITY: "Life cannot have had a random beginning... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10 to the 20th) to the 2,000th = 10 to the 40,000th, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup" (Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space [Aldine House, 33 Welbeck Street, London W1M 8LX: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981).

Hubert Yuckey, an information theorist, argues that the information needed to begin life could not have developed by chance; he suggests that life be considered a given “quantity,” like matter or energy. He and some other mathematicians have challenged evolutionary biologists with the extreme improbability of the origin of life by chance chemical reactions, and of the improbability of the origin of all known species by random mutations. If the real “units of life” are bits of information (that is, the messages coded on DNA rather than the DNA molecule itself), evolutionary biology may take quite a different turn in the future.

Nobel Laureate Francis Crick writes, “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have been satisfied to get it going.”

Now keep in mind that I bring up creation of life “living organism”; not to debunk evolution. I am just using the probability of creating just “one living organism”. From that point; you can just assume that evolution may have had its natural process.

What we’ve learned is that you can make a “amino acid” type soup; with electricity, dust, water, etc. So all the components of life could realistically be present. But you can have all the parts to make life; but in order for life to exist; these parts must come together perfectly. So given the number of possible amino acids for even the simplest living cell, I’ve read from various math scholars the chances of life forming is around 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power.

Biochemist Charles Thaxton, mechanical engineer Walter Bradley and geochemist Roger Olsen in their book The Mystery of Life's Origins calculate the chance formation of life from non-life as 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power.


The entire universe, has 10 to the 80th power of atoms available (including the estimate of dark matter, because before it was estimated at 10 to the 79th power)

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1998-10/905633072.As.r.html

And given this basic run down of time and matter; it is put out like this.

Planck time (~ 5.4 × 10 to the -44 seconds power) is the unit of time in the system of natural units known as Planck units. Current established physical theories are believed to fail at this time scale, and many physicists expect that the Planck time might be the smallest unit of time that could ever be measured, even in principle.

So, now we simply multiply:
13.7 billion years = 13,700,000,000 years.
31,557,600 seconds per year
x Planck time.

In scientific notion:
Years = 1.37 x 10 to the 10th power

Seconds = 3.1 x 10 to the 7th power
Planck time = 5.4 x 10 to the 44th power number of parts of a second.
To multiply, you simply multiply the first numbers, and add the exponents.
1.37 x 3.1 x 5.4 = 22.9
10 + 7 + 44 = 61

So, we get 22.9 x 10 to the 61st power number of times in the entire age of the universe, or:
2.3 x 10 to the 62nd power number of times in the age of the universe.
Now, we multiply that, by the total number of atoms, which is 10 to the 80th power.

Simple, add the exponents: 62 plus 80 = 142.

2.3 x 10 to the 142nd power represents the maximum number of "atom level" events that can take place in the entire universe, over 13.7 billion years.
An event that would require hundreds of thousands of molecules made up of atoms and thousands of amino acids made up of molecules would mean that you would have thousands and thousands of times fewer chances, of course, so the number of chances for life forming from molecular amino acids would be far less, perhaps a million times less, or perhaps only by 10 to the 7th or 9th power, but we can work with the higher figure.

Again, a low minimum number of chances needed for life forming at random are about 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power.

And a high maximum number of chances in the universe is only 1 in 10 to the 142nd power.

To get the actual odds then, we merely subtract the exponents.
40,000 minus 142 = 39,858.

In other words, the total number of chances available in the entire universe didn't help increase the possibility of life forming without a creator.

We actually need to use standard scientific notation rounding standards to take that number and round it right back up to 40,000 again, because the original number, 40,000 is accurate to only one digit, so the final number must be rounded back to one digit.

And if you think that you may come up with the argument that life could be given by some meteor or anything else in the universe; keep in mind that I factored the entire universe being the primordial amino acid soup. That cannot be a factor.
 
And let's put another wrench in the cog. Just the human body has 10-50 trillion cells.

And that's just the human body. We are talking about millions of species of life; including trees, single celled organisms, insects, etc. We are talking about a very complex life force on this planet. Take this same approach to all the life on this planet; and give the 2 billion years it would have taken to get us to where we are now; and the probility increases insurmountably.

You can still believe in evolution; but one has to question it all happened by chance. The programs would have to be met. The routes to evolution would still need "fine tuning". These are very logical questions that question why I think there was a designer involved.
 
I read the post earlier Mags. The math is not the problem -- it's your (or whomever's) justification that is faulty. You are multiplying estimated particles in observable universe by number of Planck times occurring so far, then comparing that to an estimation (note: ESTIMATION) for life developing through COMPLETELY random shufflings.

Again, I ask you: what justification do you have for eliminating the possibility of specific mechanisms leading to self-replicating molecules much faster than this random method suggests, in the same way that hydrogen bonding naturally leads to water crystals? Why is PURE RANDOMNESS the only thing you will accept other than the direct hand of God?
 

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