Uncaused Cause Proof

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='mortify' timestamp='1309483123' post='2261348']
Umm, organic molecules don't just organize themselves into self replicating organisms that mutate for the edge. Molecules organizing into an ice cube is VERY different from the molecules organizing a single celled organism. There are many problems with the idea. For one, reproduction is essential to evolution (you need replication for the naturally selected variants to pass on!) and yet, reproduction had to evolve. Interesting! And then their is the issue that the organic slime we all supposedly originate from was photosynthesizing (it's how we explain the oxygen in the atmosphere.) But photosynthesis is a very complex chemical process. It's not like you can have 50% of the chemical equation, because the chemical product at that point is useless. The entire complex process had to be there from the beginning. But how can this be? Very interesting indeed![/quote]

You're saying that something for which there isn't a cohesive theory on yet can't happen. I think you're getting ahead of yourself there.

The first cells was not likely like the simplest cells we have today, as those are already evolved forms, and it is known for instance the celullar wall, made of lipids and proteins, can self organise into some sort of bubble (and has been replicated in labs). It doesn't even need an external agent to do this, but rather does so because of it's intrinsic qualities. Lipids are part hydrophobic and part hydrophilic, which can cause them to take the shape that they do. That's why a knowledge of chemistry and biology is essential.

Are you familiar with the Stanley Miller experiment? It's another to show that simple aminoacids (the building blocks of proteins) will form under the right environmental conditions. Experiments with high speed collisions have also shown that simple aminoacid chains can transform into more complex one. It's compatible with the scenario of the early earth being bombarded with asteroids and stuff. Since rocks poorly conduct heat, it's possible that some of the most common atoms in the universe inside it could've survived and rearranged itself into a more complex organic molecule.

As for photosynthesis, nobody says that it was the first process to happen. Rather some say fermentation or ingestion, depending on the hypothesis. Photosynteses requires the cloroplast, which is itself a "fossil" of an early protocell (the accepted theory says that they were free living cells which were incorporated into ours in a symbiotic interaction - endosymbiosis) analogous to our mitochondria. Both are cases of already advanced evolution and for the purpose of your argument, rather pointless.

As for replicating organic molecules, there's a hypothesis called the RNA world, which says that RNA would have to have arisen before DNA.

And plenty more: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis"]Abiogenesis[/url]

[quote]I'm no dissing evolution per se. It is after all the best model that fits a materialist and naturalist paradigm, and so naturally atheists will defend it. All I'm saying is that it's deficient. Variation, mutation, and natural selection dont explain everything... and can't explain everything...[/quote]

There's still a lot of research going on, in areas such as evo-devo for instance. Not all the details are known.

You make it sound as if evolutionary theory were an atheist's dogmatic creation myth, in the way that you say that we will defend it. I never really got that, because disproving it would surely render a Nobel prize and a place in history. There is plenty of motivation to falsify it.

The thing about evolutionary theory is that it is very falsifiable, since Darwin's day, but since then has only been built upon.

[quote]I don't know who that is. I'm referring to the work of a South African Philosopher of Science and Metaphysics, Errol E. Harris. He wrote an interesting book some 50 years ago called _The Metaphysics in Science_. He's by no means a Christian, and certainly accepts the theory of evolution, but simply say's it's deficient. There is an element it doesn't account for which is necessary to explain reality as we know it. For the dogmatic materialist this will certainly be a problem!

Thank God Catholics have an open mind : )
[/quote]

Dembski is an IDer, and a bad one at that (have you been following debate whether intelligent design/creation science should be taught in schools in the US?) He's one that pops up frequently, with his "information theory", though he doesn't really go into good details on what 'information' is in this context. He also recycled and uses Hoyle's argument against abiogenesis that goes: the odds of a single cell popping into existence is just as low as a hurricane sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a functional Boeing jet...which has been refuted.

50 years ago?

Edited to add: did he say how it was deficient? What is that element?

Edited July 1, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[dells_of_bittersweet]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309389943' post='2260509']
Dells of bittersweet, the historicity of the bible isn't that clear and known as you say it is. I've been listening to a few talks and interviews of the biblical scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman, who is not a theologian but a biblical historian and he says the originals of the bible, like most if not all ancient texts, are lost and that the earliest documents we have were not written by eyewitnesses. Not only that, but there are accumulated errors, small contradictions and entire parts that were added in later copies.
[/quote]

Where to start...sorry for being out of this discussion for so long!

First, no one has made any attempt to refute the proofs outlined for the reliability of scripture in my previous post (note-I highly doubt that you can).

In terms of whether the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, consider the following:

1. The Gospels are written in Hellenistic Greek, a form of the Greek language strongly marked by Hebrew idioms, and employed by Jewish writers, such as Philio and Josephus, as a literary medium in the first century after Christ, but not later.
2. There is a slight change in the writing style of the Gospel of Luke between the infancy narratives and the rest of the Gospel. The infancy narratives, while still containing the basic marks of Luke's writing, contain more Hebrew idioms and phrases. Luke, not a Jew himself, would not have written in this manner, indicating that these chapters are based on the testimony of an eyewitness: the Virgin Mary.
3. The Rylands Papyrus fragment of John's Gospel, found in Egypt and dated to 130 A.D. Unless you want to make the case that this is the original copy of it (highly unlikely), this indicates that the Gospel of John would be decades younger, meaning that it was written within the lifetime of the Apostle John. Even if don't make that assumption, a date of 130 A.D. for the authorship of what is known to be the last Gospel written proves that this Gospel was at the very least based on the oral tradition of the first Christians, which would still be pretty accurate (the same level of accuracy that you would get in American history from the testimony of the sons of the founding fathers). Also, a date of 130 A.D. for what is certainly the last Gospel written puts all the other Gospels easily within the lifetimes of the Apostles.

As mentioned in other posts, good scripture scholarship has taken care of most of the variations between texts. It should be mentioned that none of these variations involve essential details of theology.

Comparing the Gospels to the myths of antiquity is not a correct comparison. They are qualitatively different. As mentioned in my previous post, the Gospels are free from fabulous or legendary material. Jesus' miracles are described in a matter-of-fact way, and Jesus is presented as a real human being who also had a divine nature-he is not presented in the same way that a Greek myth would have, which would have emphasized only the supernatural. "Jesus wept" would not be included in a myth, and neither would passages where he asked for a piece of fish, etc.

In regards to Jesus' mircales, the Gospel miracles always have a purpose to them: Jesus healing a blind man, Jesus curing the Centurion's child, the curing of the woman with the hemorrhage. Jesus' miracles always are a result of the faith of of the people that the miracles are worked for.

What the Gospels do not contain are miracles worked just for the sake of working miracles, which would be common in myths, and are very common in the apocryphal Gospels that were written long after Jesus' ascension and were never recognized by the Church (the "gospels" of Peter, Judas, etc.-all known fakes). One of these accounts includes a miracle where Jesus on a whim created a bird out of dirt, breathed life into it, and then it flew away. Such miracles are not found in the Gospels.

There is also no attempt whatsoever to glorify any one other than Jesus. Many embarrassing episodes involving the apostles are included in full detail (the apostles cowering in the upper room, fleeing when Jesus was arrested, doubting the resurrection, etc.) One example in particular: the women are shown as believing the resurrection before the men-something that would have been highly embarrassing at the time.

Now let's go over some basic evidence for the historical nature of the Gospels:
1. All the church fathers universally attest to the fact that the Gospels were written by the people who claimed to write them-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For example, Papias, an early bishop writing in about 130 A.D., attests to the apostolic authorship of the Gospels. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in 107 A.D., quotes Matthew, Luke, and John in his 7 epistles.
2. The evangelists died for what they wrote. No one would die for a lie.
3. No contemporary sources attempt to deny the accounts of the Gospels, other than claiming that Jesus' body was stolen (I won't get into it here, but that particular theory is indefensible). The Jews ascribed Jesus' miracles to majical arts.

[dells_of_bittersweet]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309494705' post='2261420']
You're saying that something for which there isn't a cohesive theory on yet can't happen. I think you're getting ahead of yourself there.

The first cells was not likely like the simplest cells we have today, as those are already evolved forms, and it is known for instance the celullar wall, made of lipids and proteins, can self organise into some sort of bubble (and has been replicated in labs). It doesn't even need an external agent to do this, but rather does so because of it's intrinsic qualities. Lipids are part hydrophobic and part hydrophilic, which can cause them to take the shape that they do. That's why a knowledge of chemistry and biology is essential.

Are you familiar with the Stanley Miller experiment? It's another to show that simple aminoacids (the building blocks of proteins) will form under the right environmental conditions. Experiments with high speed collisions have also shown that simple aminoacid chains can transform into more complex one. It's compatible with the scenario of the early earth being bombarded with asteroids and stuff. Since rocks poorly conduct heat, it's possible that some of the most common atoms in the universe inside it could've survived and rearranged itself into a more complex organic molecule.

As for photosynthesis, nobody says that it was the first process to happen. Rather some say fermentation or ingestion, depending on the hypothesis. Photosynteses requires the cloroplast, which is itself a "fossil" of an early protocell (the accepted theory says that they were free living cells which were incorporated into ours in a symbiotic interaction - endosymbiosis) analogous to our mitochondria. Both are cases of already advanced evolution and for the purpose of your argument, rather pointless.

As for replicating organic molecules, there's a hypothesis called the RNA world, which says that RNA would have to have arisen before DNA.

And plenty more: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis"]Abiogenesis[/url]



There's still a lot of research going on, in areas such as evo-devo for instance. Not all the details are known.

You make it sound as if evolutionary theory were an atheist's dogmatic creation myth, in the way that you say that we will defend it. I never really got that, because disproving it would surely render a Nobel prize and a place in history. There is plenty of motivation to falsify it.

The thing about evolutionary theory is that it is very falsifiable, since Darwin's day, but since then has only been built upon.



Dembski is an IDer, and a bad one at that (have you been following debate whether intelligent design/creation science should be taught in schools in the US?) He's one that pops up frequently, with his "information theory", though he doesn't really go into good details on what 'information' is in this context. He also recycled and uses Hoyle's argument against abiogenesis that goes: the odds of a single cell popping into existence is just as low as a hurricane sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a functional Boeing jet...which has been refuted.

50 years ago?

Edited to add: did he say how it was deficient? What is that element?
[/quote]

You have no verifiable theory for how life could have arisen and taken the form of a self replicating cell.

The Stanley Miller experiment was performed in an environment now known to be greatly different from the early earth. Similar experiments fail when using the elements actually present at that time.

The first cell pops up almost as soon as an environment that would support it began to exist, leaving very little time for an long evolutionary process.

I'm not an expert on this field so I won't go into any more detail here, but I thought I would share those two pieces of info.

[dells_of_bittersweet]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309482010' post='2261333']
And I would dismiss what people like Dembsky (a mathematician who tried to calculate the odds) without even looking at what he has to say. The Boeing in the junkyard argument has been refuted ages ago, and people who insist on it have close to no knowledge of biology or chemistry.

Dawkins explains it well in his videos or in his book the Blind Watchmaker.
[/quote]

You're dismissing the Dembsky argument without presenting the evidence.

The Blind Watchmaker is a great book with a huge problem: it gives causal powers to chance, a non causal force. Chance in and of itsself is not capable of causing anything. Chance is the mathematical odds of something occuring. When we speak of the odds of a pair of dice rolling a 12, we say 1 in 36-but that's not what causes the 12 to come up. The chance of a 12 can not occur unless someone is rolling the dice. In the same way, chance can cause anything in the universe unless someone or something is there to proverbially role the dice.

[Socrates]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309473689' post='2261244']
Okay, I'll look into it. Though a crime reporter...



The cosmological constant is one that has to be accurate to quite a few decimal places, otherwise not even stars would form out of dust clouds, which would mean no other heavier atoms and consequently us. All serious cosmologists and physicists I've watched on YouTube or read about say that the universe is fine tuned, but it has a slightly different meaning than how apologists use it. Hawkings would be one of them (who recently publicly "came out" as an atheist.)

I think it's complicated for science to be able to find evidence for a creator, and so maybe that's why Hawkings didn't venture into that then. God of the gaps isn't really an answer unless it can be shown.

As for your example, when you put it that way, yes, but you're using human designs that we know have been designed and have a purpose, and the same logic that applies to those might not apply to the universe. Complex things can self organise by themselves without external intervention, such as snowflakes. As for the rules that make that configuration possible, it's a big question mark to me, I don't know. The universe could be like a big [url="http://www.google.com/search?q=medieval+map&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=614&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=YvYMTq_ABoO6tgf5ls3wDQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBUQ_AUoAQ#hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Mandelbrot+set&oq=Mandelbrot+set&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=undefined&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=375l832l0l1l1l0l0l0l0l225l225l2-1l1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=e8a3dd5a2924e8f5&biw=1024&bih=614"]Mandelbrot set[/url], in which a complex thing comes from a very simple equation, but set up in such a way that complex results are possible.
[/quote]
So looks like everyone can agree that the universe must ordered and "fine-tuned" in a very precise way in order for it to function or exist.
For me (and many other "theists") this is very powerful evidence for a Creator.

It seems the atheists simply want to avoid the question of a Law-giver behind all the laws that govern our universe and its truly remarkable configuration.

And I don't think the question of a Creator behind the whole thing is about a "god of the gaps," but rather the big question of where it all came from to begin with - not to mention the even more central philosophical question of Being itself.

[Socrates]

Mortify and others have dealt well with this, but I thought I'd add a few comments.
[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309415851' post='2260713']
I trust his judgement more than I would an apologist, because he claims to be an agnostic. Contrary to some other agnostic scholars, he claims that Jesus was actually a historical figure and not a myth so he doesn't look like someone on either extreme to me.



Did Paul mention the miracles of Jesus? Though really, it's not a point I want to get into right now.[/quote]
Paul certainly mentions many times Jesus' greatest miracle - His Resurrection. He certainly does not deny any of Christ's miracles while He was on this earth, and was a companion of the other Apostles who personally witnessed Christ.




[quote]I don't know. But he based it on criticism, and once again, I'm more inclined to take his word for it than somebody else's who claims that each gospel was written by the person whose name it is under. Biblical collage seems to be an established fact. [/quote]
Yet there's no solid evidence for it.


[quote]You know what they say...strive to be open minded but not so open minded that your brain falls out.

Those Biblical miracles do go against known natural phenomena.. . [/quote]
Um, that's why they're called miracles. A true miracle is an event that falls outside of and can't be explained by the workings of nature. A true miracle can only be worked by the power of God, Who created nature, and thus can defy natural physical laws if He chooses.

The miracles were to show Christ's Divine power to the people. A man being God went against the entire grain of Jewish thought, and would not be lightly accepted by a devout Jew - and all Jesus' original followers were Jews. The miracles were necessary to convince them, and they would not accept Christ as Messiah and God, much less risk their lives for this belief, had they not witnessed these miracles.

The atheistic denial of the possibility of miracles is a philosophical bias, and its logic is circular (Miracles cannot happen because God does not exist. Because we know there can be no miracles, we know there can be no God.)

And if, as you suggest, Jesus Christ was merely a talented illusionist, like David Copperfield, using magic tricks to fool the people into following Him, then He was a fraud and deceiver of the worst kind - especially as following such foolery would lead His followers to their deaths. Jesus would be a truly evil and despicable man - but that is incompatible with what we know of His character; His great love and mercy and sublime moral teachings.

There's really no middle ground - either Jesus was in fact God and Savior, or either He was a great liar and fraud, or His followers who wrote of His miraculous deeds were liars and frauds - and inexplicably were apparently were all willing to go to their deaths in order to perpetuate the fraud.

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='dells_of_bittersweet' timestamp='1309531501' post='2261553']
Where to start...sorry for being out of this discussion for so long!

First, no one has made any attempt to refute the proofs outlined for the reliability of scripture in my previous post (note-I highly doubt that you can).

In terms of whether the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, consider the following:

1. The Gospels are written in Hellenistic Greek, a form of the Greek language strongly marked by Hebrew idioms, and employed by Jewish writers, such as Philio and Josephus, as a literary medium in the first century after Christ, but not later.
2. There is a slight change in the writing style of the Gospel of Luke between the infancy narratives and the rest of the Gospel. The infancy narratives, while still containing the basic marks of Luke's writing, contain more Hebrew idioms and phrases. Luke, not a Jew himself, would not have written in this manner, indicating that these chapters are based on the testimony of an eyewitness: the Virgin Mary.
3. The Rylands Papyrus fragment of John's Gospel, found in Egypt and dated to 130 A.D. Unless you want to make the case that this is the original copy of it (highly unlikely), this indicates that the Gospel of John would be decades younger, meaning that it was written within the lifetime of the Apostle John. Even if don't make that assumption, a date of 130 A.D. for the authorship of what is known to be the last Gospel written proves that this Gospel was at the very least based on the oral tradition of the first Christians, which would still be pretty accurate (the same level of accuracy that you would get in American history from the testimony of the sons of the founding fathers). Also, a date of 130 A.D. for what is certainly the last Gospel written puts all the other Gospels easily within the lifetimes of the Apostles.

As mentioned in other posts, good scripture scholarship has taken care of most of the variations between texts. It should be mentioned that none of these variations involve essential details of theology.

Comparing the Gospels to the myths of antiquity is not a correct comparison. They are qualitatively different. As mentioned in my previous post, the Gospels are free from fabulous or legendary material. Jesus' miracles are described in a matter-of-fact way, and Jesus is presented as a real human being who also had a divine nature-he is not presented in the same way that a Greek myth would have, which would have emphasized only the supernatural. "Jesus wept" would not be included in a myth, and neither would passages where he asked for a piece of fish, etc.

In regards to Jesus' mircales, the Gospel miracles always have a purpose to them: Jesus healing a blind man, Jesus curing the Centurion's child, the curing of the woman with the hemorrhage. Jesus' miracles always are a result of the faith of of the people that the miracles are worked for.

What the Gospels do not contain are miracles worked just for the sake of working miracles, which would be common in myths, and are very common in the apocryphal Gospels that were written long after Jesus' ascension and were never recognized by the Church (the "gospels" of Peter, Judas, etc.-all known fakes). One of these accounts includes a miracle where Jesus on a whim created a bird out of dirt, breathed life into it, and then it flew away. Such miracles are not found in the Gospels.

There is also no attempt whatsoever to glorify any one other than Jesus. Many embarrassing episodes involving the apostles are included in full detail (the apostles cowering in the upper room, fleeing when Jesus was arrested, doubting the resurrection, etc.) One example in particular: the women are shown as believing the resurrection before the men-something that would have been highly embarrassing at the time.

Now let's go over some basic evidence for the historical nature of the Gospels:
1. All the church fathers universally attest to the fact that the Gospels were written by the people who claimed to write them-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For example, Papias, an early bishop writing in about 130 A.D., attests to the apostolic authorship of the Gospels. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in 107 A.D., quotes Matthew, Luke, and John in his 7 epistles.
2. The evangelists died for what they wrote. No one would die for a lie.
3. No contemporary sources attempt to deny the accounts of the Gospels, other than claiming that Jesus' body was stolen (I won't get into it here, but that particular theory is indefensible). The Jews ascribed Jesus' miracles to majical arts.
[/quote]

I'll look into those, can you point out a serious preferably agnostic scholar who says that the writers of the Gospels were not anonymous?


[quote name='dells_of_bittersweet' timestamp='1309532101' post='2261560']
You have no verifiable theory for how life could have arisen and taken the form of a self replicating cell.

The Stanley Miller experiment was performed in an environment now known to be greatly different from the early earth. Similar experiments fail when using the elements actually present at that time.

The first cell pops up almost as soon as an environment that would support it began to exist, leaving very little time for an long evolutionary process.

I'm not an expert on this field so I won't go into any more detail here, but I thought I would share those two pieces of info.
[/quote]

There is no one theory of abiogenesis, I'm not making the claim that we know how life happened from non life with as much certainty as we know about evolutionary theory for instance.

The Stanley Miller experiment shows that organic molecules and aminoacids can arise from non organic substances. Even though it doesn't really support one hypothesis, it shows that such things [i]can happen[/i] and therein lies the value. Aminoacids have also been found on objects from outer space, which leads credence to the idea that such occurrences are actually probable.

Actually there are people saying that life actually happened very quickly once the right conditions were in place (I'll look for sources to support this) but evolution depends on environmental factors, so I don't see "how leaving very little time for an long evolutionary process" plays into anything. For instance, simple organisms could've been around for a billion years before there was enough oxygen in the atmosphere for the cambrian explosion, when all sorts of more complex organisms came into existence. Favourable environment which in turn influences non random natural selection can take a long time to occur.


[quote name='dells_of_bittersweet' timestamp='1309532525' post='2261564']
You're dismissing the Dembsky argument without presenting the evidence.

The Blind Watchmaker is a great book with a huge problem: it gives causal powers to chance, a non causal force. Chance in and of itsself is not capable of causing anything. Chance is the mathematical odds of something occuring. When we speak of the odds of a pair of dice rolling a 12, we say 1 in 36-but that's not what causes the 12 to come up. The chance of a 12 can not occur unless someone is rolling the dice. In the same way, chance can cause anything in the universe unless someone or something is there to proverbially role the dice.
[/quote]

Dembsky himself isn't very clear with what he means by 'information theory', presents DNA as if it were like a computer code without presenting evidence.

As for odds:

I'm not sure what you mean by evolution and chance and how it argues against because natural selection is not random, only mutation and permutation of DNA are. He and others like him that use that argument don't take the non chance factors into account, and the "memory" involved, such as organisms maintaining favourable mutations, with offspring having a higher chance of inheriting those favourable mutations and in turn passing it on to theirs.

Also since people look at our current evolved stage and say it couldn't happen (when the whole idea of evolution is going from the bottom up), allow me to do the same and say that the odds of us happening are 100%.

If scientists who specialise in the research of abiogenesis don't claim to know what happened with a sufficient level of certainty, how can Dembski (with less than highschool knowledge on the subject I would assume based on what he says about evolution) claim that it's near impossible? He's been refuted time and again.

Edited July 1, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1309540004' post='2261625']
So looks like everyone can agree that the universe must ordered and "fine-tuned" in a very precise way in order for it to function or exist.
For me (and many other "theists") this is very powerful evidence for a Creator.

It seems the atheists simply want to avoid the question of a Law-giver behind all the laws that govern our universe and its truly remarkable configuration.

And I don't think the question of a Creator behind the whole thing is about a "god of the gaps," but rather the big question of where it all came from to begin with - not to mention the even more central philosophical question of Being itself.
[/quote]

I know that theists and deists see it as evidence for a conscious and purpose-driven intelligent capable of planning and designing a universe where intelligent beings can exist, but that's a leap of faith, and well...you have to have faith.

I just can't wrap my head around such a being could be simple, and therefore the first cause in infinite regress or the unmoved mover.


[quote name='Socrates' timestamp='1309541162' post='2261631']
Um, that's why they're called miracles. A true miracle is an event that falls outside of and can't be explained by the workings of nature. A true miracle can only be worked by the power of God, Who created nature, and thus can defy natural physical laws if He chooses.

The miracles were to show Christ's Divine power to the people. A man being God went against the entire grain of Jewish thought, and would not be lightly accepted by a devout Jew - and all Jesus' original followers were Jews. The miracles were necessary to convince them, and they would not accept Christ as Messiah and God, much less risk their lives for this belief, had they not witnessed these miracles.

The atheistic denial of the possibility of miracles is a philosophical bias, and its logic is circular (Miracles cannot happen because God does not exist. Because we know there can be no miracles, we know there can be no God.)[/quote]

Well of course it's a bias, but the real problem here is the source of miracles. If we don't believe in god, it's not through presenting extraordinary happening such as miracles as evidence that's really going to change that, at least not for me, until I see a verifiable miracle happen myself.

If such a thing were to happen, the the miracle would have to be shown to go against nature in some way, because otherwise it would be a natural almost extraordinary discovery.

[quote]And if, as you suggest, Jesus Christ was merely a talented illusionist, like David Copperfield, using magic tricks to fool the people into following Him, then He was a fraud and deceiver of the worst kind - especially as following such foolery would lead His followers to their deaths. Jesus would be a truly evil and despicable man - but that is incompatible with what we know of His character; His great love and mercy and sublime moral teachings.

There's really no middle ground - either Jesus was in fact God and Savior, or either He was a great liar and fraud, or His followers who wrote of His miraculous deeds were liars and frauds - and inexplicably were apparently were all willing to go to their deaths in order to perpetuate the fraud.[/quote]

I used the example of illusionists to show that people can replicate things that could look like miracles, and that people can fall for them. I actualy see people as a species to be very psychologically fallible, and my skepiticism with miracles is similar to what I said about the telephone game earlier. That's assuming that the bible is actually historically accurate and not part legend, though from what I've come across, people recorded history a bit differently back then.

[mortify]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309494705' post='2261420']
The first cells was not likely like the simplest cells we have today, as those are already evolved forms, and it is known for instance the celullar wall, made of lipids and proteins, can self organise into some sort of bubble (and has been replicated in labs). It doesn't even need an external agent to do this, but rather does so because of it's intrinsic qualities. Lipids are part hydrophobic and part hydrophilic, which can cause them to take the shape that they do. That's why a knowledge of chemistry and biology is essential. [/quote]

Umm, yea, I agree. Nothing you said here went against anything I said. We can point to natural laws as the cause of snow flakes and "protocells" (and btw, you don't need a lab, I made them in high school bio... nothing special)

[quote]Are you familiar with the Stanley Miller experiment? It's another to show that simple aminoacids (the building blocks of proteins) will form under the right environmental conditions. Experiments with high speed collisions have also shown that simple aminoacid chains can transform into more complex one. It's compatible with the scenario of the early earth being bombarded with asteroids and stuff. Since rocks poorly conduct heat, it's possible that some of the most common atoms in the universe inside it could've survived and rearranged itself into a more complex organic molecule.[/quote]

Stanley miller is middle school biology. Look, let's say the assumptions he made about the early atmosphere were right, and that aminoacids were being produced at the strike of a lightning bolt. What significance does that make if the amino acids aren't part of an integral whole? If they can't serve as the building blocks to life? Let me put it this way. If I went back in time and gave an early hominid a bowl of alphabet soup. What does it matter if the letters in the bowl happened to spell out a word I could recognize? The word translates nothing to cave man. Why? Because content and meaning precede letters, or put more simply, language precedes writing. So if I have amino acids, and they happen to form a chain, what does it mean if that chain contains no content, not actual language to construct something... I'm afraid if I go any further I'll be delving into metaphysics, just think about what I said: What gives the chain of amino acids any meaning.

[quote]As for photosynthesis, nobody says that it was the first process to happen. Rather some say fermentation or ingestion, depending on the hypothesis. Photosynteses requires the cloroplast, which is itself a "fossil" of an early protocell (the accepted theory says that they were free living cells which were incorporated into ours in a symbiotic interaction - endosymbiosis) analogous to our mitochondria. Both are cases of already advanced evolution and for the purpose of your argument, rather pointless. [/quote]

I wasn't talking about the evolution of a chloroplast in a plant cell. I was talking about the fact that the oldest living organism known, the "protocells" you refer to, where already living off a very complex chemical process. A chemical process like this can't evolve in stages, since the by product at an earlier stage does not produce what the organism needs. If it has no benefit to an organism, why would it be retained? Furthermore, how could something like this evolve by mutation? The process would have to exist as a complex whole from the beginning, but how is this possible? How can we have a complete chemical process coming from nowhere? This is where natural explanations start running to a halt, and some other explanations are necessary.

Let me put it into perspective. Here is a simplified diagram of photosynthesis which inovlves about 100 molecules. This is what the protocells some 3.4 billions years managed to spontaneously engineer:

[img]http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/img/oxford/Oxford_Chemistry/0192801015.photosynthesis.1.jpg[/img]


The Engines of photosynthesis, Photosytem I and Photosystem II:

[img]http://library.thinkquest.org/C004535/media/photosystem.gif[/img]



Ok... so going back to your original point. I get that natural laws can account for hyperphillic-hyperphobic mollecules alligning into a bubble, but can they account for what is shown about? I mean really, is it that hard to tell?


[quote]As for replicating organic molecules, there's a hypothesis called the RNA world, which says that RNA would have to have arisen before DNA.

And plenty more: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis"]Abiogenesis[/url][/quote]

It's funny, I suspected you were reading along as this stuff was coming up. Just for the heck of it I wikipedia'ed "photosynthesis" and what do you know, the points your raise are right there! Nothing wrong with reading into a topic of course, I just wouldn't use wikipedia as primary source.

The problem with reproduction evolving is that it's a necessary for evolution.

[quote]You make it sound as if evolutionary theory were an atheist's dogmatic creation myth, in the way that you say that we will defend it. I never really got that, because disproving it would surely render a Nobel prize and a place in history. There is plenty of motivation to falsify it. [/quote]
The thing about evolutionary theory is that it is very falsifiable, since Darwin's day, but since then has only been built upon.

I wouldn't make a caricature of it by calling it a "creation myth." Like I said before, I'm not dismissing evolution per se. You can look at a fossil record and see that there is a general trend of more complex organisms coming from simpler ones. The issue I and many others have is that saying natural selection, mutation, and reproduction are the sole ellements to evolution. There are many things that are virtually impossible to explain using this model. Sure, someone out their holding on to the old Darwinian view is bound to figure out some clever speculation, but it still doesn't solve the problem. So basically, the current evolutionary model is deficient, and that's all I'm saying.

[quote]Dembski is an IDer, and a bad one at that (have you been following debate whether intelligent design/creation science should be taught in schools in the US?) He's one that pops up frequently, with his "information theory", though he doesn't really go into good details on what 'information' is in this context. He also recycled and uses Hoyle's argument against abiogenesis that goes: the odds of a single cell popping into existence is just as low as a hurricane sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a functional Boeing jet...which has been refuted. [/quote]

Not familiar with the whole debate to be honest.

[quote]50 years ago?[/quote]

And still as good as the day it was published! The issues he brings out are still issues today, and that's why his book is relevant.

[mortify]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309555350' post='2261743']
I'll look into those, can you point out a serious preferably agnostic scholar who says that the writers of the Gospels were not anonymous?[/quote]

What's interesting about asking who wrote the gospels is that it's a recent question. There is a very early consensus about the fact that Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John wrote gospels, and these particular gospels always had the same names attached to them (without dispute!) Taking Luke as an example, it's hard to conceive that he could have intended his gospel to be anonymous since he wrote it to a personal patron! Clearly the person who received his gospel knew Luke wrote it. In the ancient world books were hard to come by, so the patron Theophilus would have read it, and then passed it on to his close friends and family. If Luke's name wasn't on the text it self, it would have been passed on orally. When his gospel was copied, the name would have carried with it. This actually isn't as uncommon as one might think. No surving work of Lucian's _Life of Demonax_ contains his name as the author, but he wrote in the first person and people obviously knew he wrote it. Now, I personally believe even if we uncovered an ancient preserved Gospel with Luke's name in the title, some scholar would then suggest it were a forgery!

Point is, if you don't want to believe it, nothing will convince you!

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='mortify' timestamp='1309571886' post='2261883']
Umm, yea, I agree. Nothing you said here went against anything I said. We can point to natural laws as the cause of snow flakes and "protocells" (and btw, you don't need a lab, I made them in high school bio... nothing special)[/quote]

I'm aware of that, but unfortunately I don't know all the details of how those building blocks assembled themselves. The whole idea behind self organisation is to look at something's intrinsic properties. snowflakes are special in the way that their crystal ice molecules arrange themselves into complex patterns without the need for someone to place them in their ordered spots. Some arrangements are not random in certain conditions.

[quote] Stanley miller is middle school biology. Look, let's say the assumptions he made about the early atmosphere were right, and that aminoacids were being produced at the strike of a lightning bolt. What significance does that make if the amino acids aren't part of an integral whole? If they can't serve as the building blocks to life? Let me put it this way. If I went back in time and gave an early hominid a bowl of alphabet soup. What does it matter if the letters in the bowl happened to spell out a word I could recognize? The word translates nothing to cave man. Why? Because content and meaning precede letters, or put more simply, language precedes writing. So if I have amino acids, and they happen to form a chain, what does it mean if that chain contains no content, not actual language to construct something... I'm afraid if I go any further I'll be delving into metaphysics, just think about what I said: What gives the chain of amino acids any meaning.[/quote]

Back to self organisation, his experiment yielded 11 of the the 20 aminoacids from non living compounds. One of them was glycine, which when reacted with CH[sub]2[/sub]O in water will produce ribose, which is one of the building blocks of RNA, which it itself is a succession of the same parts arranged in a certain order. It's that order of the parts that determined which proteins will be encoded.

One of the main problems is getting at which self replicating molecule came first, because that could say loads about what might have happened. There are simpler ones than DNA and even RNA too, which are made from to a larger or lesser extent, the same building blocks, which some variations unique to them.


[quote]I wasn't talking about the evolution of a chloroplast in a plant cell. I was talking about the fact that the oldest living organism known, the "protocells" you refer to, where already living off a very complex chemical process. [u][b]A chemical process like this can't evolve in stages[/b][/u], since the by product at an earlier stage does not produce what the organism needs. [/quote]

Do you know that that's actually the way it evolved?

[quote]If it has no benefit to an organism, why would it be retained? [/quote]

Evolution works with what it has, builds upon and changes what it has, and if some manifestation of some genes or gene doesn't cause a loss which would make the organism less favoured for selection and reproduction, it can be retained.

[quote]Furthermore, how could something like this evolve by mutation? [/quote]

[url="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1360138500018318"]This [/url]link (a bit more serious than wikipedia) says:


[u]Molecular evidence for the evolution of photosynthesis [/u] [b][quote]Robert E. Blankenship[email="blankenship@asu.edu" ][sup][img]http://www.sciencedirect.com/scidirimg/entities/REemail.gif[/img][/sup][/email][/b]

Dept of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Center for the Study of Early Events in Photosynthesis, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1604, USA

Available online 15 January 2001.

[b]Abstract[/b]
Photosynthesis is a complex metabolic process that originated on the early Earth. Recently reported evidence based on the molecular evolutionary analysis of the chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway suggests [color="#FF0000"]that the photosystem in the anoxygenic purple photosynthetic bacteria is the most ancient known[/color], and that the [color="#FF0000"]photosynthetic apparatus in the oxygen-evolving cyanobacteria and relatives was the most recent to appear[/color]. This and other evidence indicate that photosynthesis has had a complex and [u]nonlinear evolutionary history[/u] [color="#FF0000"]and that different parts of the photosynthetic apparatus have distinct evolutionary origins.[/color]

[b]Author Keywords: [/b]Photosynthesis; Evolution; Cyanobacteria[/quote]

So in other words they would swap genes that had evolved for different purposes...non linear evolution.

Unfortunatly I couldn't access the rest of the article but basically it breaks down the whole two systems into different independent pathways, which could've served other purposes before it evolved (non linearly) in the earliest organisms which would do what we recognise as those more complex metabolic systems.

[quote]The process would have to exist as a complex whole from the beginning, but how is this possible?[/quote]

Again, do you know that? It's perfectly plausible that it could be a tweaked system.

[quote]How can we have a complete chemical process coming from nowhere? [/quote]

Metabolism of already evolved organisms.

[quote]This is where natural explanations start running to a halt, and some other explanations are necessary.[/quote]

Supernatural explanations?

[quote]Let me put it into perspective. Here is a simplified diagram of photosynthesis which inovlves about 100 molecules. This is what the protocells some 3.4 billions years managed to spontaneously engineer:

[img]http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/img/oxford/Oxford_Chemistry/0192801015.photosynthesis.1.jpg[/img]


The Engines of photosynthesis, Photosytem I and Photosystem II:

[img]http://library.thinkquest.org/C004535/media/photosystem.gif[/img]



Ok... so going back to your original point. I get that natural laws can account for hyperphillic-hyperphobic mollecules alligning into a bubble, but can they account for what is shown about? I mean really, is it that hard to tell?[/quote]

You'd have to wait a few years probably, but I'm not going to say that they can or can't without actually knowing. Abiogenesis is partly a mystery.

Edited July 2, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='mortify' timestamp='1309571886' post='2261883']
It's funny, I suspected you were reading along as this stuff was coming up. Just for the heck of it I wikipedia'ed "photosynthesis" and what do you know, the points your raise are right there! Nothing wrong with reading into a topic of course, I just wouldn't use wikipedia as primary source.[/quote]

Wiki is good because they summarise topics well, and provide some other sources. Though if wiki doesn't answer your question, google is one of the best inventions around...

[quote]The problem with reproduction evolving is that it's a necessary for evolution. [/quote]

Reproduction is a word used for organisms, but when dealing with abiogenesis, first came [i]self replicating[/i] molecules, such as RNA, which is what the RNA world hypothesis is about. Even simpler molecules self replicate such as other hereditary chains (PNA and TNA) and weird proteins such as prions. The evolution of sex is a separate issue, and has nothing really to do with abiogenesis.

Once a self replicating hereditary chain came into existence, then I guess something very much like the evolutionary process of orgainsms would happen to molecules and eventually proto cells.

Which hereditary chain came first is the biggest mystery I think.

I don't know if you followed the sensation that was Nasa's "discovery of an alien lifeform" that happened a while back, which wasn't an alien lifeform from outerspace but an extremophile which had substituted the phosphate sugar of the molecular 'backbone' of it's DNA for arsenic and was still able to carry out its basic functions (though it didn't grow as much as when its DNA was normal)...I thought it was quite extraordinary.

[quote]I wouldn't make a caricature of it by calling it a "creation myth." Like I said before, I'm not dismissing evolution per se. You can look at a fossil record and see that there is a general trend of more complex organisms coming from simpler ones. The issue I and many others have is that saying natural selection, mutation, and reproduction are the sole ellements to evolution. There are many things that are virtually impossible to explain using this model. Sure, someone out their holding on to the old Darwinian view is bound to figure out some clever speculation, but it still doesn't solve the problem. So basically, the current evolutionary model is deficient, and that's all I'm saying.[/quote]

Evo-devo is one growing hypothesis that tries to explain macroevolutionary change.


[quote]And still as good as the day it was published! The issues he brings out are still issues today, and that's why his book is relevant.[/quote]

Can you name a few?


[quote name='mortify' timestamp='1309574288' post='2261919']
What's interesting about asking who wrote the gospels is that it's a recent question. There is a very early consensus about the fact that Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John wrote gospels, and these particular gospels always had the same names attached to them (without dispute!) Taking Luke as an example, it's hard to conceive that he could have intended his gospel to be anonymous since he wrote it to a personal patron! Clearly the person who received his gospel knew Luke wrote it. In the ancient world books were hard to come by, so the patron Theophilus would have read it, and then passed it on to his close friends and family. If Luke's name wasn't on the text it self, it would have been passed on orally. When his gospel was copied, the name would have carried with it. This actually isn't as uncommon as one might think. No surving work of Lucian's _Life of Demonax_ contains his name as the author, but he wrote in the first person and people obviously knew he wrote it. Now, I personally believe even if we uncovered an ancient preserved Gospel with Luke's name in the title, some scholar would then suggest it were a forgery![/quote]

Well, I haven't seen anybody say that the whole gospels are forgeries just because they are collages or anonymous. Also, when Bart Ehrman was speaking about his book, he used the word "forgeries" more to do with people submitting documents as someone else to gain more credibility. The actual content of those documents would have to be historically analysed I guess. Someone can submit an article to a newspaper and sign it using a pseudonym, but that's not the main issue when it comes to credibility of the content.

[quote]Point is, if you don't want to believe it, nothing will convince you![/quote]

With this I agree.

-
Edited to add-

Here's an interesting link, going into the RNA world hypothesis:

[url="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/replicatingrna/"]http://www.wired.com...replicatingrna/[/url]

I couldn't access Gerald Joyce's article itself, or even its abstract, which is in the journal 'Science'. beaver dam internet connection!

Edited July 2, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[Socrates]

[accidental duplicate post]

Edited July 4, 2011 by Socrates

[Socrates]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1309556515' post='2261750']
I know that theists and deists see it as evidence for a conscious and purpose-driven intelligent capable of planning and designing a universe where intelligent beings can exist, but that's a leap of faith, and well...you have to have faith.[/quote]
I think looking at such an elaborately ordered, fine-tuned, and functioning universe and saying it just randomly popped into being, or created itself, requires an even bigger leap of faith - or should I make that "leap of atheism"?

It's like if a complex and advanced spaceship landed, it would be rational to assume that somebody intelligent designed and built it, even if I did not know who it was - humans, aliens, whatever.

Saying the spaceship was it's own cause or the result of random processes would not be a satisfying or intelligent explanation.


[quote]I just can't wrap my head around such a being could be simple, and therefore the first cause in infinite regress or the unmoved mover.[/quote]
Most of such objections to the existence of God seem to come from an insistence on conceiving of God as some kind of material, physical thing, when that is not at all what God is.

And any God a limited, finite creature such as ourselves could wrap our heads around wouldn't be much of a God.

And if there is a God (First Cause), there is no infinite regress. I find the whole idea of infinite regress or a self-created universe philosophically absurd.



[quote]Well of course it's a bias, but the real problem here is the source of miracles. If we don't believe in god, it's not through presenting extraordinary happening such as miracles as evidence that's really going to change that, at least not for me, until I see a verifiable miracle happen myself.

If such a thing were to happen, the the miracle would have to be shown to go against nature in some way, because otherwise it would be a natural almost extraordinary discovery. [/quote]
There are a number of well-documented miracles which defy any easy natural explanation. I am well aware of atheist objections to them, though I find them unconvincing. I don't really have time to go into the whole debate right now.

There are also a slew of bogus and dubious "miracles" out there. The Church is reluctant to declare any miracle to be worthy of belief, and doesn't require belief in any of them besides those essential to the Faith.
God generally performs miracles very rarely, and prefers not to force Faith on people.

Of course, by definition, a miracle is an exceptional event, and cannot be duplicated in the lab, and thus defies the scientific method.


[quote]I used the example of illusionists to show that people can replicate things that could look like miracles, and that people can fall for them. I actualy see people as a species to be very psychologically fallible, and my skepiticism with miracles is similar to what I said about the telephone game earlier. That's assuming that the bible is actually historically accurate and not part legend, though from what I've come across, people recorded history a bit differently back then.
[/quote]
Say what you want, but I don't think the early Christians were stupid enough to risk everything and give up their very lives for either deceptive magic tricks or unfounded rumors.
It seems at least someone would have given up the whole hoax rather than face persecution and death.

But then, I know that's where you and I disagree.

Edited July 4, 2011 by Socrates

[dairygirl4u2c]

course martrydom in islam is big, but that doesn't mean islam is true
jus sayin

that the apostles were recorded as having been crucified for their religion, i'd say is pretty telling, though, cause they were said to have seen Jesus etc
i guess it's possible that there were people who just went for drama attention and said they saw em and were crucified. i wonder how verifiable it all was, with witnesses of people who knew the apostles etc and the social web of that time and place. the theory of drama attention would require that the bible gospels etc were put together to verify conventional wisdom of a hoax, and then put together into bible form in a way to only make concrete that false conventinal wisdom.

im just tangenting, never mind me

Edited July 4, 2011 by dairygirl4u2c