Time To Grow Up. There Is No Greater Purpose.

[positive atheist]

You couldn't squeeze an amoeba into 55 gallon drum.The fact is you have no clue as to what X is, i.e, how life came into existence, nor do you have anything to disprove that Good initiated it. But go ahead and gullibly swallow that "unprecedented data" is coming in. LOL

There are numerous theories being worked on as we speak. There is the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis which is supported and partially proven true by the Miller-Urey experiment. There is the "genes first hypothesis" which believes first life forms were self-replicating nucleic acids, such as RNA. A related theory is the RNA World Theory which believes RNA was the first genetic material because it is a widely believed that RNA ribozymes could, potentially, catalyze a chemical reaction to copy itself. If this is true, then from that one fact alone evolution could take over from there and whamo! life has begun. An alternative to the genes-first hypothesis is the metabolism-first hypothesis, which suggests that self-sustaining networks of metabolic reactions may have been the first simple life and this may have led to the formation of the first simple lipids (fats), which happen to be what cell membranes are made of and which are known to spontaneously self organize (think about what happens if you pour oil into water, it spontaneously forms into little blobs). Another good theory is that the basic molecules were formed in space and fell to earth in meteorites. In just the last 100 years several meteorites have fallen to earth that contained complete amino acids which are the building blocks of life. This is absolutely amazing. According to NASA Could the Blueprint for Life Have Been Generated in Asteroids?

All DNA and RNA, which contains the instructions to build and operate every living being on Earth, contains five informational components, called nucleobases. Until now, scientists scouring extraterrestrial samples had only found three of the five. However, a recent analysis by a team of scientists led by Associate Professor Yasuhiro Oba of Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan, identified the final two nucleobases that have eluded scientists.....“We now have evidence that the complete set of nucleobases used in life today could have been available on Earth when life emerged,” said Danny Glavin, a co-author of the paper at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

There is your X. And I have a clue about it. In fact I have several good clues. Please list what research is being done right now to prove that god created life on earth. I am waiting.

 

[positive atheist]

JAG Writes:
The Dead Old Single One Cell Suddenly Came To Life . . .

You have no Empirical Evidence that your original ancestor
was at one time a dead one-celled speck that lived in the
Primordial Slime and then later begin to pulsate with life.

Pulsate , , just a slight boom , , boom , , boom , , ,

I mean the one-celled speck was not always alive --so there
was a time when Old One-Cell was as dead as a door nail , ,

, , , but , , , ,

, , lo and behold , , ,

, , ,Old One Cell at some point became alive and it began to pulsate.

Then Time Passed.

After awhile Old One Cell, increased to the size of a pecan.

Then later on Old One Cell increased to the size of a baseball.

Then to the size of a Chicken.

A chicken , , ,

Then later on as Time Passed Old One Cell has now become a Toad Frog.
{or What Ever You Claim It Became}

But Old One Cell did not remain a Toad Frog.

On no.

Old One Cell eventually became a Chimp.

Then as time Passed a "scientific miracle" occurred , , ,

Here it comes , , ,

Old One Cell now at last has become "a Ronald Reagan"
and "a Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

And all that up there happened due to , , ,

~ natural selection
and
~ :random mutation
and
~ atoms and molecules wiggling around
and
~ chemical reactions taking place . . .

, , , and all that was produced by

~ unthinking non-intelligent Time
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Chance
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Matter , , ,

, , which produced a , ,

~ highly complex Human Brain

~ and a highly complex Human Eye, and

~ a highly complex Fully Functioning Human Body

So?

So if you believe all that up there, then you are a Great Man Of Faith
and you believe in the Religion Of Evolution.

My view is It requires MORE faith to believe in all that up there, than
it requires to believe in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He
gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have Eternal Life."

Best.


JAG

Burp


Scot me up Beamy.



[][]

My view is It requires MORE faith to believe in all that up there, than
it requires to believe in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He
gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have Eternal Life."

If god gave his one and only son I am returning him for a refund. I want my money back.

Lets start with the Law Of Truly Large Numbers. Prove that this is false. The odds of winning powerball are 1 in 292,201,338. This means it is nearly impossible for any one person to win. I ran the numbers the other day and with 3 drawings a week if you started playing when you were born and lived to be 100 you would be able to play about 15,600 games. This is why playing Powerball is a bad idea. You get 15,600 tries and the odds of you winning are 1 in 292,201,338, which basically means the possibility of you winning even in 100 years is zero. You are better off saving your money. And yet on January 13, 2016 with the jackpot at $1.5 billion three people won. How is it possible that an event which is nearly impossible at any time happens 3 times at once? Because with enough trials even the highly unlikely, even near impossible becomes likely and even certain. Studies show that when about 1 billion tickets are sold the odds of any one person winning are almost 100%. I say with the size of the universe and the amount of time and the incomprehensible number of possible trials, even though life occurring by chance is unlikely, it becomes highly likely and almost certain.

Prove The Law Of Truly Large Numbers is false.
Explain how on January 13, 2016 with the jackpot at $1.5 billion three people won powerball although the odds against it are 1 in 292,201,338.

 

[stiggy wiggy]

There is your X.

Until your X can be recreated in a lab, that is until you have empirical evidence that life can naturally emerge from inanimate matter, you've got nothing, zip, zilch, zero.

If god gave his one and only son I am returning him for a refund. I want my money back.

What a stupid comment. Why would you expect a refund for something you never paid for in the first place?

Explain how on January 13, 2016 with the jackpot at $1.5 billion three people won powerball although the odds against it are 1 in 292,201,338.

Uh, because three people picked the winning number. Or maybe it was rigged. Either way, an inanimate rock will never come alive. You atheist live in fairy land.

 

[positive atheist]

Until your X can be recreated in a lab, that is until you have empirical evidence that life can naturally emerge from inanimate matter, you've got nothing, zip, zilch, zero.

What a stupid comment. Why would you expect a refund for something you never paid for in the first place?

Uh, because three people picked the winning number. Or maybe it was rigged. Either way, an inanimate rock will never come alive. You atheist live in fairy land.

Until your X can be recreated in a lab, that is until you have empirical evidence that life can naturally emerge from inanimate matter, you've got nothing, zip, zilch, zero.

Totally false. Progress is being made on many fronts. The Miller-Urey experiments, empirical evidence created in a lab, created complex molecules of life (in this case, amino acids) from simple chemical reactions. Spontaneous self organization has been observed in nature and in a lab. The X will be recreated in a lab and your weak god will take another big step backwards as science marches forward. After you lose the "God created life" show you are really running low on ideas. Maybe you can come up with something new. How about "God was the creator of crayons. Crayons can't just pop into existence out of nowhere. Right?"

So you are going to give me the list of research being done right now to prove god created life on earth. Don't forget to include lab work and empirical evidence. According to your standards "Until your god creating life can be recreated in a lab, that is until you have empirical evidence that god can cause life to naturally emerge from inanimate matter, you've got nothing, zip, zilch, zero." List your research.

positive atheist said:

Explain how on January 13, 2016 with the jackpot at $1.5 billion three people won powerball although the odds against it are 1 in 292,201,338.

Stiggy wiggy said:

Uh, because three people picked the winning number.

I am going to be nice to you and say nothing. Just let that stand for all to see.

 

[vbj]

Not quite. To me the only evidence we have points to us being accidental. We have no evidence anything was behind accidental chain of events.

There are ways to test if something is an accident.

 

[vbj]

Stop telling me what we should be able to do. If you are that sure we can do it, then finance an experiment to do so. Be aware however, that there's no possible way of excluding divine influence, because it's compatible with every possible scenario. That being the case, what's the point? Your "should be able to" in practice is impossible. If the theist contention is that four billion years ago God moved a carbon atom 2mm to the right, then frankly, I'm not interested. A God so ineffable that he cannot be detected obviously, is just not worth bothering about.

I'm not the one with the model for how humans got here. Pretty disingenuous for you to tell me to engineer something that I didn't fabricate as if you don't trust your own model.

Theists can't just pull out divine intervention when results are not in their favor, they still have to give a logical intent. If the process that put humans here was tampered, that's because the intent was to put humans here. If theists say God messed with a test of that process they need to give good reasons why.

 

[vbj]

To be honest I am very suspicious about what your point is. You seem like a "back door theist". You come here, you're asking many questions, demanding evidence. You are clearly implying some kind of deity but when this is pointed out to you, you deny it. And while all this is going on you slip god in the back door.

I answered all your questions about my original post. Then you gave me a large amount of information and I took you at your word. It turned out nothing that you gave me was true. Thomas Verney who you offered as an expert turned out to be a theist who never actually has done any research on planaria (or anything else as far as I can tell) who believed minds exist outside of brains, and was a psychiatrist, not a neurologist nor biologist. The NIH study I linked to, I don't know if you read it, explained how planaria sometimes regrow brains with previous memories, it explained how this happens, and it didn't involve memories outside the brain, plus the 3 people who did the study were all neurobiologists who did actual research. Nothing you gave me supported any of your claims that minds exist outside of bodies.

Now you seem to want to just ignore the fact that what you offered as evidence turned out to be nothing. Now you want me to wade through another pile of evidence. I watched the 20 minute Donald Hoffman video which you suggested "[has] made arguments about cognition outside the brain,". The video has nothing to do with that. In the video he argues that human perception can't be relied upon to give us information about reality. What was the point of having me watch the video? I looked at the Monica Gagliano article. Although she claims to have evidence that plants can engage in cognition she never says how. Almost nothing she is saying is new. All of this started in the 70's with the book The Secret Life of Plants (1973) by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. I remember farmers were playing Beethoven to their crops. Then there was What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz, originally published in 2012 (I read both books when they came out). Chamovitz is much better than Gagliano and I suggest you read that book for a realistic understanding of plant intelligence. You won't like it though because it admits plants don't have minds. A review of What a Plant Knows in Audubon Magazine, July–August 2012 stated

Gagliano is doing nothing but repeating work that was done decades ago but she is anthropomorphizing plants and she admits no one agrees with her and she cannot get funding and was thrown out of the university where she worked when the government refused to give her any more money to investigate wether plants can think like humans:

This woman thinks she is being treated unfairly because nobody will give her money to find out if plants have minds, if they can think, or if they have a memory of a vacation to Cape Cod 2 years ago! So here we are again, with you providing "evidence" that doesn't support the idea that minds exist outside of brains. So, again, what is your point? Are you a christian? Are you a new ager who thinks there is some kind of Universal Mind animating the universe? What religion are you? Why won't you be up front like everyone else here and simply state what you believe?

I am an atheist and believe there is no god. See how simple that is. Try it.

If you watched the Hoffman video you would have seen him say that brains and neurons don't cause perceptual experiences and behavior. Then he goes on to say something external, like a machine or network of agents (he doesn't want to offend the audience with the G word), causes conscious experiences. I don't agree with everything said but those are his words. In fact, Hoffman was asked here the question what happens when we die.

If you read the Gagliano interview you would have read her say that plants can learn and remember but she doesn't know how yet. She's working on it instead of spamming internet forums with assertions.

I don't agree with all their conclusions but they put their names and reputations on the line. Can you explain what the mind is and how it's produced? If you know the answers go ahead and publish your papers and post the links here.

 

[Temujin]

JAG Writes:
The Dead Old Single One Cell Suddenly Came To Life . . .

You have no Empirical Evidence that your original ancestor
was at one time a dead one-celled speck that lived in the
Primordial Slime and then later begin to pulsate with life.

Pulsate , , just a slight boom , , boom , , boom , , ,

I mean the one-celled speck was not always alive --so there
was a time when Old One-Cell was as dead as a door nail , ,

, , , but , , , ,

, , lo and behold , , ,

, , ,Old One Cell at some point became alive and it began to pulsate.

Then Time Passed.

After awhile Old One Cell, increased to the size of a pecan.

Then later on Old One Cell increased to the size of a baseball.

Then to the size of a Chicken.

A chicken , , ,

Then later on as Time Passed Old One Cell has now become a Toad Frog.
{or What Ever You Claim It Became}

But Old One Cell did not remain a Toad Frog.

On no.

Old One Cell eventually became a Chimp.

Then as time Passed a "scientific miracle" occurred , , ,

Here it comes , , ,

Old One Cell now at last has become "a Ronald Reagan"
and "a Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

And all that up there happened due to , , ,

~ natural selection
and
~ :random mutation
and
~ atoms and molecules wiggling around
and
~ chemical reactions taking place . . .

, , , and all that was produced by

~ unthinking non-intelligent Time
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Chance
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Matter , , ,

, , which produced a , ,

~ highly complex Human Brain

~ and a highly complex Human Eye, and

~ a highly complex Fully Functioning Human Body

So?

So if you believe all that up there, then you are a Great Man Of Faith
and you believe in the Religion Of Evolution.

My view is It requires MORE faith to believe in all that up there, than
it requires to believe in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He
gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have Eternal Life."

Best.


JAG

Burp


Scot me up Beamy.



[][]

The evidence, overwhelmingly supported evolution. There's no evidence whatsoever for creation, kinds, a young earth, intelligent design or any of the other garbage that evolution deniers choose to prefer. You are an ignoramus scoffing at scholars, which makes your post ridiculous and funny, but not on the way you intended. The laugh is on you.

 

[Temujin]

I'm not the one with the model for how humans got here. Pretty disingenuous for you to tell me to engineer something that I didn't fabricate as if you don't trust your own model.

Theists can't just pull out divine intervention when results are not in their favor, they still have to give a logical intent. If the process that put humans here was tampered, that's because the intent was to put humans here. If theists say God messed with a test of that process they need to give good reasons why.

I trust the model, which has been well tested. You are ignoring the fact that no result of any test can disprove God. You are demanding that scientists test their model for something that is untestable. Can you think of anything that would show definitively that God did not interfere? Unfalsifiable hypotheses are worthless. They predict nothing. The strength of evolution is that if it was wrong, it would be very easy to falsify. Yet it hasn't been. Every single observation that fails to falsify evolution, and there are hundreds of thousands of not millions of them, strengthens it as a theory. There's nothing, as in zero, that suggest divine input. That's as God a refutation of the divine input as it is possible to get.

 

[Temujin]

There are ways to test if something is an accident.

No, there are not. There are ways to tell that something was not an accident. So far, they have come up with nothing. There's no way to determine definitely that evolution was an accident. The not an accident idea is unfalsifiable, and therefore of no use to anyone.

 

[positive atheist]

If you watched the Hoffman video you would have seen him say that brains and neurons don't cause perceptual experiences and behavior. Then he goes on to say something external, like a machine or network of agents (he doesn't want to offend the audience with the G word), causes conscious experiences. I don't agree with everything said but those are his words. In fact, Hoffman was asked here the question what happens when we die.

If you read the Gagliano interview you would have read her say that plants can learn and remember but she doesn't know how yet. She's working on it instead of spamming internet forums with assertions.

I don't agree with all their conclusions but they put their names and reputations on the line. Can you explain what the mind is and how it's produced? If you know the answers go ahead and publish your papers and post the links here.

Do you agree with the following 2 statements:

1. If it is true that consciousness is not fully explained that provides no evidence god exists.

2. If it is true that the origin of life on earth is not fully explained that provides no evidence god exists.

 

[Howie]

There are numerous theories being worked on as we speak. There is the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis which is supported and partially proven true by the Miller-Urey experiment. There is the "genes first hypothesis" which believes first life forms were self-replicating nucleic acids, such as RNA. A related theory is the RNA World Theory which believes RNA was the first genetic material because it is a widely believed that RNA ribozymes could, potentially, catalyze a chemical reaction to copy itself. If this is true, then from that one fact alone evolution could take over from there and whamo! life has begun. An alternative to the genes-first hypothesis is the metabolism-first hypothesis, which suggests that self-sustaining networks of metabolic reactions may have been the first simple life and this may have led to the formation of the first simple lipids (fats), which happen to be what cell membranes are made of and which are known to spontaneously self organize (think about what happens if you pour oil into water, it spontaneously forms into little blobs). Another good theory is that the basic molecules were formed in space and fell to earth in meteorites. In just the last 100 years several meteorites have fallen to earth that contained complete amino acids which are the building blocks of life. This is absolutely amazing. According to NASA Could the Blueprint for Life Have Been Generated in Asteroids?

There is your X. And I have a clue about it. In fact I have several good clues. Please list what research is being done right now to prove that god created life on earth. I am waiting.

The difficulty for you is, there were no scientists around at the beginning.

 

[positive atheist]

The difficulty for you is, there were no scientists around at the beginning.

How is that a difficulty?

 

[Howie]

How is that a difficulty?

A foundational requirement of science is first-hand observation.

 

[bigthinker]

The difficulty for you is, there were no scientists around at the beginning.

and there were no Christians, no Jews, no Muslims, no chiropractors or anyone else around at that time.

 

[positive atheist]

A foundational requirement of science is first-hand observation.

I don't think that is true at all. Almost everything we know about space and the universe has never been observed first hand. So it is with geology, paleontology, quantum physics. Almost the entire ocean floor has never been seen. Almost the entire interior of the earth has never been seen. The interior of tornados has never been seen (except by unfortunate people caught in one). No one has ever seen hail form in a thunderstorm. I could go on.

I don't know why people assume there exists only one origin of life. There may have been 1, 10, or 1000 ways life could have formed on earth. Of course this would increase the probability that it happened by chance even greater. But let's assume tomorrow some scientist creates the basic building blocks of human life in a laboratory. Boom! The problem is solved. But how do we know that is the way it actually happened? Maybe there are 1000 different possibilities and the way it actually occurred was one of the other possibilities. Do we stop looking? Since no one was there to see it we'll never know for sure but finding just one way proves it could have happened. We are talking about such huge number of possibilities even if we prove 50 ways life could have formed on earth that doesn't mean that the way it happened was one of those ways. Of course tomorrow if some scientist creates the building blocks of life on earth in a laboratory and it is consistent with what we know about the conditions that existed on earth at the time life began then that would make it even more likely and if nothing else it proves it is possible.

 

[Howie]

and there were no Christians, no Jews, no Muslims, no chiropractors or anyone else around at that time.

Observation is a key part of science.

Christianity is learned through Revelation and history recorded in scripture.

 

[Howie]

I don't think that is true at all. Almost everything we know about space and the universe has never been observed first hand. So it is with geology, paleontology, quantum physics. Almost the entire ocean floor has never been seen. Almost the entire interior of the earth has never been seen. The interior of tornados has never been seen (except by unfortunate people caught in one). No one has ever seen hail form in a thunderstorm. I could go on.

I don't know why people assume there exists only one origin of life. There may have been 1, 10, or 1000 ways life could have formed on earth. Of course this would increase the probability that it happened by chance even greater. But let's assume tomorrow some scientist creates the basic building blocks of human life in a laboratory. Boom! The problem is solved. But how do we know that is the way it actually happened? Maybe there are 1000 different possibilities and the way it actually occurred was one of the other possibilities. Do we stop looking? Since no one was there to see it we'll never know for sure but finding just one way proves it could have happened. We are talking about such huge number of possibilities even if we prove 50 ways life could have formed on earth that doesn't mean that the way it happened was one of those ways. Of course tomorrow if some scientist creates the building blocks of life on earth in a laboratory and it is consistent with what we know about the conditions that existed on earth at the time life began then that would make it even more likely and if nothing else it proves it is possible.

Only one being was present at the creation.

 

[vbj]

I trust the model, which has been well tested. You are ignoring the fact that no result of any test can disprove God. You are demanding that scientists test their model for something that is untestable. Can you think of anything that would show definitively that God did not interfere? Unfalsifiable hypotheses are worthless. They predict nothing. The strength of evolution is that if it was wrong, it would be very easy to falsify. Yet it hasn't been. Every single observation that fails to falsify evolution, and there are hundreds of thousands of not millions of them, strengthens it as a theory. There's nothing, as in zero, that suggest divine input. That's as God a refutation of the divine input as it is possible to get.

And you're ignoring the fact that I never proposed a test to prove God exists, which is silly. The test is simply to check if human origin was tampered or intentional, like how weather can be tampered by seeding clouds. Not a test of evolution or whether God exists. If results show human origin did not happen by chance, and natural explanations are ruled out, people can then argue whether God, aliens, time travellers, etc. were involved.

If someone does not want to be convinced there is always a rationale regardless of evidence. Theists can always pull out divine intervention. Atheists can always pull out aliens, time travellers, or something other than an omni-creator. Pantheists can always pull out the will of the universe. Agnostics can always remain unconvinced.

 

[vbj]

No, there are not. There are ways to tell that something was not an accident. So far, they have come up with nothing. There's no way to determine definitely that evolution was an accident. The not an accident idea is unfalsifiable, and therefore of no use to anyone.

If a guy walks into a casino and wins $10k the casino will congratulate him. That is like an accident, something that happens by chance. If he wins again next week, and the week after, and again and again for several weeks, the casino will send security and the police after him. They suspect that he didn't get those wins by chance but that he intentionally did something to win every visit. The boundary between chance and intentionality, in this example the number of wins in a row before a person is suspected, is not clear cut. The casino will do some analysis first, and if they determine the wins are intentional, go after him.