Evolution Vs Creation

[Captain Muppet]

ChrisGB said:

Captain Muppet said:

ChrisGB said:

Engineer1 said:

ChrisGB's God is almost indstigishable from there not being a God for all the input he has in the universe since started it, it's just Chris belives he exists.

The God of classical theism accounts for and makes possible every event, all rationality and all meaning. I guess in a fundamentalist-atheist universe none of those things matters much though?

You missed out a word. "The God of classical theism might account for and make possible every event, all rationality and all meaning." Or he might not. It might be Thor doing it. Or Odin. Or Moby, my dead cat. Or any other thing we can't provide any evidence of. Aliens maybe.

Pick the story you like the most and pretend it's that, no one will mind, just so long as you're willing to admit that when there is no proof either way you can't really be sure.

Any one of them refutes atheism.
If you can show Thor, or any other except the god of classical theism, is pure act, then I'll convert.

Just get out the tippex and write "Thor" instead of "God" in your texts that prove the existance of God. Job done.

[IainT]

Captain Muppet said:

But if god doesn't tweak things every so often but gets the desired end results just by tweaking the start conditions then the science is the same. No observable difference.

But we're not describing the Christian god anymore are we? That's the description of an uninvolved 'deist' deity. The god that kicks things off at some singularity event (big bang) and then leaves it all to get on without it's input isn't distinguishable from base nature. Indeed that god and natural process are synonymous with one another but at greater complexity so should be discounted.

[ChrisGB]

Captain Muppet said:

ChrisGB said:

I don't hold that god intervened miraculously to turn non-life into life. Like all scientists I have no idea how that happened. I knowstrongly suspect from arguments for gods existence that it happened because god creates and sustains everything.

I corrected that for you.

Unless of course your arguments for their being a god doen't also work if you replace the word "god" with "magic floating hamburger creature who wears a Gas Monkey Garage t-shirt and hates gerkins".

Again if you can show what the arguments for god prove is a hamburger, I will convert. This seems to be a significant missing of the point, though a nice rhetorical flourish.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Captain Muppet said:

But if god doesn't tweak things every so often but gets the desired end results just by tweaking the start conditions then the science is the same. No observable difference.

I can pot two balls off the break in pool, whether I meant to or not doesn't change the laws of motion, just how the other players feel about the game.

When you break in pool, do you know where the balls are going to be 15 minutes into the game and 25 shots later. If you do, then clearly the game is rigged, and it's not pool as we know it.

[Captain Muppet]

DickyC said:

Explain the gerkin thing to me again.

If you stick one up you bum but don't like it you aren't gay, even if you keep doing it.

[im]

What will God's role have been when and if we find evolution at work in the seas below the frozen surfaces of Europa, Pluto or anywhere else in the Universe?

[xRIEx]

ChrisGB said:

xRIEx said:

ChrisGB said:

xRIEx said:

ChrisGB said:

durbster said:

ChrisGB said:

blissful ignorance of the fact that this scientism is blatantly and obviously not possibly true, because scientific method is just a method, not some idea or meta-method that can prove itself. To justify believing in scientism, you need to engage in rational thought and get into philosophy and metaphysics to work out how it could be that this method gives all truth.

Or you could merely look at the computer you're typing this guff on, and the internet which allows people from all corners of the globe to join together and develop RSI from relentlessly facepalming while reading this thread.

Science has proved itself over and over and over. The scientific method has done more for mankind than any religion ever has.

Book a flight on your smartphone, get on the plane, fly to Australia and then explain to me how science is "just a method".

But this is ridiculous! Of course science has given us technological advances, of course. There is nothing anti-science in anything I have written.

But there is plenty against this brain-dead silliness insisting without any possibility of demonstrating it, logically or empirically, that scientific method is the ONLY way of knowing (scientism) or that matter is the ONLY thing that exists, or that nature is ALL there is, or that EVERYTHING is reducible to atoms or strings etc. These are all patently false yet believed in blindly as the default cultural positions of many Westerners.

The fundamentalist error is to then say : therefore this method is the ONLY way to know ANYTHING, which is easily refuted - prove it using scientific method! Whoops!

Know. Knowledge.

Can you show me one single thing that can only be known by a method other than the scientific method, and cannot be shown by the scientific method?

Err:
1.exactly the quality of my feeling when I read your post and the private associations it has for me, reminding me of the taste of bad apple juice from the 80s, or whatever it might be. Unavailable to scentific method, and to any ideology piggy backing on that third person method (scientism, materialism, naturalism, eliminativism, reductionism), available to first person perspective only.
2. Scientific method can't show that thoughts are about something, final causality can.
3. Scientific method can't show that formal thinking is purely material, hylemorphism can show it isn't.
4. Scientific method can't show that there is no other type of knowledge, philosophy can show there is.
5. Scientific method can't show that there is the God of monotheism, logic and philosophy, eg. In prime mover argument, can.

You have demonstrated absolutely nothing. Again.

Come back when you have proof.

Demonstrated nothing? I've given you five examples of knowledge you can have that scientific method can't give you. Please show me how (4 above) scientific method gives you knowledge that there is no other sort of knowledge?
Show me how you know what something feels like from scientific method, the way you do if you experience it first -person.

No, you've demonstrated nothing. What you have done is typed some words on your keyboard and clicked the 'Submit' button.

All you can actually say in the cases of your 5 examples is that scientific methods haven't yet proven or disproven any statement. Anything that can be known must be demonstrable. Anything else is conjecture.

In terms of number 5, if a monotheistic god had actually been shown, demonstrated, categorically, why is there even doubt left? Your 'arguments' prove nothing.

[Captain Muppet]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Captain Muppet said:

But if god doesn't tweak things every so often but gets the desired end results just by tweaking the start conditions then the science is the same. No observable difference.

I can pot two balls off the break in pool, whether I meant to or not doesn't change the laws of motion, just how the other players feel about the game.

When you break in pool, do you know where the balls are going to be 15 minutes into the game and 25 shots later. If you do, then clearly the game is rigged, and it's not pool as we know it.

I was simplyfying the entire process of evolution in to just one shot, you set it up and play it, whether you meant to get the end result or not doesn't change anything about the shot or the outcome.

Taking multiple shots is like God tinkering with evolution while it's happening. If god tinkers with it it isn't evolution, it's god having been wrong about the start parameters. A god that tinkers with a simulated evolution process is a god who made a mistake, and therefore isn't a god.

[Engineer1]

Captain Muppet said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Captain Muppet said:

But if god doesn't tweak things every so often but gets the desired end results just by tweaking the start conditions then the science is the same. No observable difference.

I can pot two balls off the break in pool, whether I meant to or not doesn't change the laws of motion, just how the other players feel about the game.

When you break in pool, do you know where the balls are going to be 15 minutes into the game and 25 shots later. If you do, then clearly the game is rigged, and it's not pool as we know it.

I was simplyfying the entire process of evolution in to just one shot, you set it up and play it, whether you meant to get the end result or not doesn't change anything about the shot or the outcome.

Taking multiple shots is like God tinkering with evolution while it's happening. If god tinkers with it it isn't evolution, it's god having been wrong about the start parameters. A god that tinkers with a simulated evolution process is a god who made a mistake, and therefore isn't a god.

So you are taking the fact the universe was perfect for us to evolve as proof of god, just as likely is the fact we exist because the universe is able to support us.

[Moonhawk]

Captain Muppet said:

A god that tinkers with a simulated evolution process is a god who made a mistake, and therefore isn't a god.

A god that tinkers is also a god that can change - which isn't a pure act since pure acts cannot change (so we are told).

In fact any interaction god has with the universe after the initial kick start would necessarily involve a change on behalf of the god.

[Captain Muppet]

IainT said:

Captain Muppet said:

But if god doesn't tweak things every so often but gets the desired end results just by tweaking the start conditions then the science is the same. No observable difference.

But we're not describing the Christian god anymore are we? That's the description of an uninvolved 'deist' deity. The god that kicks things off at some singularity event (big bang) and then leaves it all to get on without it's input isn't distinguishable from base nature. Indeed that god and natural process are synonymous with one another but at greater complexity so should be discounted.

Yes, the Christian God does seem not to exist. But then there is enough mutually contradictory stuff about their god in their bible to discount the whole idea anyway.

[Captain Muppet]

ChrisGB said:

Captain Muppet said:

ChrisGB said:

I don't hold that god intervened miraculously to turn non-life into life. Like all scientists I have no idea how that happened. I knowstrongly suspect from arguments for gods existence that it happened because god creates and sustains everything.

I corrected that for you.

Unless of course your arguments for their being a god doen't also work if you replace the word "god" with "magic floating hamburger creature who wears a Gas Monkey Garage t-shirt and hates gerkins".

Again if you can show what the arguments for god prove is a hamburger, I will convert. This seems to be a significant missing of the point, though a nice rhetorical flourish.

Again, tippex out "god" in your proof and write in anything else. If there are alternatives that can also be true then the proof isn't a proof.

[Captain Muppet]

Engineer1 said:

Captain Muppet said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Captain Muppet said:

But if god doesn't tweak things every so often but gets the desired end results just by tweaking the start conditions then the science is the same. No observable difference.

I can pot two balls off the break in pool, whether I meant to or not doesn't change the laws of motion, just how the other players feel about the game.

When you break in pool, do you know where the balls are going to be 15 minutes into the game and 25 shots later. If you do, then clearly the game is rigged, and it's not pool as we know it.

I was simplyfying the entire process of evolution in to just one shot, you set it up and play it, whether you meant to get the end result or not doesn't change anything about the shot or the outcome.

Taking multiple shots is like God tinkering with evolution while it's happening. If god tinkers with it it isn't evolution, it's god having been wrong about the start parameters. A god that tinkers with a simulated evolution process is a god who made a mistake, and therefore isn't a god.

So you are taking the fact the universe was perfect for us to evolve as proof of god, just as likely is the fact we exist because the universe is able to support us.

Yes, if there is a god it makes no difference.

Also I'd be grateful if no one misinterprets anything I've ever said as an argument trying to prove there is a god, as I'm neither insane or a charlatan.

[durbster]

Engineer1 said:

So you are taking the fact the universe was perfect for us to evolve as proof of god, just as likely is the fact we exist because the universe is able to support us.

Except the overwhelming majority of the Universe is not able to support us. Far from it - it's completely deadly to us.

If the Universe was designed for us, why have we just been given this wafer-thin skin over the Earth? A few miles up or down and we're dead, in a Universe that's incalculably massive.

[Moonhawk]

durbster said:

Except the overwhelming majority of the Universe is not able to support us. Far from it - it's completely deadly to us.

To be honest - the majority of the earth is too. We are not well adapted (biologically speaking) to survive in the oceans, in deserts or in the polar regions for example. Those environments make up the vast majority of the earths surface.

Even if we discount the fact that a god may have made an almost infinitely large universe that we can't use - he hasn't even given us the ability to utilise the majority of the planet we do live on.

Seems kinda a waste to me.

[Gaspode]

Moonhawk said:

To be honest - the majority of the earth is too. We are not well adapted (biologically speaking) to survive in the oceans, in deserts or in the polar regions for example. Those environments make up the vast majority of the earths surface.

Even if we discount the fact that a god may have made an almost infinitely large universe that we can't use - he hasn't even given us the ability to utilise the majority of the planet we do live on.

Seems kinda a waste to me.

Plus if he designed us, why on earth did he use such a poor basic framework, and why did he deprive us of many of the advantages enjoyed by other animals? If were up posed to be Gods chosen, Why is it we don't get to lick our own balls, or in as fast as a Cheetah?

[Moonhawk]

Gaspode said:

Plus if he designed us, why on earth did he use such a poor basic framework, and why did he deprive us of many of the advantages enjoyed by other animals? If were up posed to be Gods chosen, Why is it we don't get to lick our own balls, or in as fast as a Cheetah?

Any why oh why didn't he give me a bigger willy.............smaller, I meant smaller.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Yeah...newts are pond life, and even they can grow back lost limbs.

Tsk....thanks for nothing God.

[ChrisGB]

IainT said:

ChrisGB said:

theism of the sort Anthony Flew came to accept

I think it's quite likely that your chum Feser cites this chap with full knowledge that Flew's conversion was probably manufactured by those taking advantage of his illness.

Of course you would have to plead Flew was somehow not thinking straight, otherwise having the most famous of atheists who knew something about philosophy converting to theism would be a huge blow to the credibility (?) of thinking man's atheism.
But I guess you haven't read Flew's own annoyance at people making exactly the suggestion you're making?
On what basis except prejudice can you claim to know his motivations better than he states?

[ChrisGB]

Captain Muppet said:

ChrisGB said:

Captain Muppet said:

ChrisGB said:

I don't hold that god intervened miraculously to turn non-life into life. Like all scientists I have no idea how that happened. I knowstrongly suspect from arguments for gods existence that it happened because god creates and sustains everything.

I corrected that for you.

Unless of course your arguments for their being a god doen't also work if you replace the word "god" with "magic floating hamburger creature who wears a Gas Monkey Garage t-shirt and hates gerkins".

Again if you can show what the arguments for god prove is a hamburger, I will convert. This seems to be a significant missing of the point, though a nice rhetorical flourish.

Again, tippex out "god" in your proof and write in anything else. If there are alternatives that can also be true then the proof isn't a proof.

Then you haven't actually read a proof. There is no mention of God. What is proved is something that coincides with the attributes of God as understood in monotheism, which we call God. If you want to accept this thing proved, purely actual, immaterial, eternal, unique, origin of all causality, etc then by all means use another name, you are still accepting classical theism.
But once your objection is more than just a name change, then you have invented something that has nothing to do with the proofs so is of little interest in talk of theism / atheism.