@kellyjay said
A mindless process has no creative power to build something functionally complex, or even to preform something not functional but very specific where probabilities are largely stacked against it.

If you walked into a room and there were 100 coins on a table all having heads facing up. If I told you I flipped them all, and they each landed on heads in a row, see! Would y ...[text shortened]... nto it instructions. Telling the difference between intent and true mindless should be easy to spot.

Most people have no feeling for just how long billions of years is.

@kellyjay said
So you believe in meaning in the universe?

I understand that God 'to you' brings meaning to the universe and that a universe 'to you' therefore that has no God, has no meaning. But that is a child's logic Kelly.

Was the universe designed? No. Is the universe an amazing place bursting at the seams with awe and meaning? Absolutely. It's just not the meaning 'you' assign to it. Humans find their own meaning.

Continuity itself has meaning, species struggling to evolve, survive and reproduce.

@kellyjay said
I think there is a lot to that, we all may not see what another person does. Do you think we can impart meaning to another?

Yes. That's what it is to be human and not a rock.

@suzianne said
Most people have no feeling for just how long billions of years is.

The length of time doesn’t really matter if what is being proposed is not actually possible the way people assume it did. Sadly with most the complexity and functionality complexity we see in the universe, they intuitively look to a bottom up explanation, assuming chance and necessity, instead of a top down design, bottom up is mindless by default.

So it has more to do with worldview compliance and when they see in their view an upside down explanation they reject it out of hand, and many times it is with a scoffing rejection, and it can be directed at a person not the reasoning being offered.

@kellyjay said
The length of time doesn’t really matter if what is being proposed is not actually possible the way people assume it did. Sadly with most the complexity and functionality complexity we see in the universe, they intuitively look to a bottom up explanation, assuming chance and necessity, instead of a top down design, bottom up is mindless by default.

So it has more to do w ...[text shortened]... it is with a scoffing rejection, and it can be directed at a person not the reasoning being offered.

Given enough flips, 100 coins could all land heads up. Laws of statistics do not represent any force or compulsion making coins fall heads or tails; they only represent averages without specifying how many "enough to get 100 heads" would be. That is why time matters, because it guarantees enough flips to get 100 heads, eventually.

Billions of years is not a quantity any human can get his mind around. Suffice to say, billions of years are enough for anything to happen which can happen, somewhere, in a universe consisting of billions and billions and billions of galaxies.

@kellyjay said
Not due to me, there is a very huge common villain to many here, so any possibility He may be acknowledged as real causes a united front. Because acknowledging God would change absolutely everything in the universe, so it is not a little thing, making it completely understandable.

Do you think it is Satan the villain who is causing people here to forum a “united front” against you, because you’re a true Christian?

@pettytalk said
KellyJay is a miracle worker. Alone he manages to bring together fierce opposing dueling forces.

I'd say he's a catalyst. The Vatican has a patent on determining whether a miracle has occurred.


😆

@kellyjay said
So you believe in meaning in the universe?

“Meaningfulness” is entirely subjective kellyjay.

Some people see “meaning” in tea leaves, others in the patterns of star distribution, others in numerology, others in ancient manuscripts.

I personally find meaning in understanding the world, life and the universe through the lens of an ancient manuscript and my belief in a God.

You?

@divegeester said
“Meaningfulness” is entirely subjective kellyjay.

Some people see “meaning” in tea leaves, others in the patterns of star distribution, others in numerology, others in ancient manuscripts.

I personally find meaning in understanding the world, life and the universe through the lens of an ancient manuscript and my belief in a God.

You?

I could hardly fail to disagree with you less. Some people see meaning in dreams and visions.

As Freud famously said about dream interpretation, there is no such thing as the objective ultimate meaning of a dream, which it is the job of the therapist to tell his patient what it is. The job of the therapist is to introduce the patient to a vocabulary for interpreting his own dreams, and 'meaningfulness' is achieved when the patient shows a favorable response to whatever interpretation he has arrived at.

Same goes for reading tea leaves, tarot cards, astrology, or the Bible. You get introduced to a symbolism, and 'the meaning' is not some objective ultimate Truth waiting in metaphysical wonderland to be revealed. 'The meaning' is arrived at when the 'patient' shows a favorable response he can live with. The priest is a kind of soul therapist for the parts of you Freud cannot reach.

I would merely add that a subjective meaning which only one person sees is probably going to die with that person. Shared meanings are the really interesting ones; that presupposes some kind of collective subjectivity and, at the very least, a common agreed-upon vocabulary or symbolism. Aye, and there's the rub ...

@kellyjay said
Is the universe information-rich?
Can we study meaninglessness and get meaning out of it?

Kelly, you believe things which defy reason, logic, empirical investigation, and common sense. Is it any wonder to you that you get pushback on it?

Apparently you believe the story of a great flood and that all the animals we see on the planet today were on board a boat. Have you ever really thought about how many species there are, and that they could not possibly have fit on a boat, when no zoo in the whole world, with acres and acres of ground, contains more than a tiny fraction of the world's species?

Buffalo, oxen, elephants (African & Indian), wildebeasts, elk, moose, caribou, antelopes (there are three subfamilies and ten tribes), gazelles (14 species), gorillas, orang utans, bonobos, chimpanzees, every other ape and monkey species, lions, tigers, jaguars, cheetahs, cougars, lynxes, leopards and snow leopards, domestic cats, domestic dogs, dingos, gerbils, squirrels, zebras, snakes, lizards, spiders and scorpions, ants and beetles (do you realize that 900,000 species of insects have been cataloged, and many entomologists think there might be as many as 30 million species we haven't named yet? I'll knock off half of them from Noah's Ark, since some of them could fly), moles, voles, gophers, rats, mice, ermines, weasels, marmots, skunks, racoons, giraffes, rhinos (black & white), hippos, (we'll leave off amphibians, penguins, otters, and beavers, they can swim), brown bears, black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears (weigh up to 3,000 lbs. each), racoons (did I mention racoons?, cute but feisty), armadillos, hedgehogs, rabbits, hares, pikas, shrews (no, not my wife), flightless birds (ostriches, etc.), lemurs, sloths, llamas (no, not Tibetan ones), alpacas, kangaroos, wombats, long-nosed bandicoots, koalas, tasmanian devils, western long-beaked echindas (egg-bearing mammals), Malayan tapirs, yaks, wolves, hyenas, pangolins, anteaters, capybaras, porcupines, coyotes, foxes, horses, ponies, (we're not sure about bigfoots), gaurs (a bull can weigh up to 3,300 lbs.) boars, camels (bactrian and dromedary), and aaaardvaaaarks (my personal favorite) ... seven specimens of each the Bible says. All of them, on board a hand-made boat at sea for many months.

Do you expect a rational person to believe they all fit on a boat and that Noah and his family had the resources to feed them all for many months at sea? What do you think all those creatures ate? Seaweed and fish?? An entire Japanese fishing fleet with heavy machinery couldn't haul in that much food every day for months! And what about the daily effluent?? A zoo with bulldozers not could push that much waste matter overboard. Wake up! It's a story, not a historical account of something that really happened.

And now, what meaning do you draw from this story? That's the question here, not whether it's true or really happened or God said so.

Ark Encounter Theme Park KY:

https://arkencounter.com/about/

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I understand that God 'to you' brings meaning to the universe and that a universe 'to you' therefore that has no God, has no meaning. But that is a child's logic Kelly.

Was the universe designed? No. Is the universe an amazing place bursting at the seams with awe and meaning? Absolutely. It's just not the meaning 'you' assign to it. Humans find their own meaning.

Continuity itself has meaning, species struggling to evolve, survive and reproduce.

Meaning is something that can only occur in life as it's assigned, it isn't a materialistic phenomenon, it transcends the material world. EVEN YOU transcend the material world with a transcendent meaning each time you write out something you are thinking about, manipulating some part of the [to use a common term the natural world] to arrange some part of it, so your meaning is displayed by those with the ability to understand you. There is meaning all over this world!

Your denial of the design in the material world is the meaning you may feel is an accurate representation of the universe, but fine-tuning where the galactic material sizes coupled with strong forces of that keep the universes running like clockwork, and the sub-atomic molecular part of the universe with weaker forces underpins it all isn't something chaos could throw together, it is too good.

@moonbus said
Kelly, you believe things which defy reason, logic, empirical investigation, and common sense. Is it any wonder to you that you get pushback on it?

Apparently you believe the story of a great flood and that all the animals we see on the planet today were on board a boat. Have you ever really thought about how many species there are, and that they could not possibly ...[text shortened]... r really happened or God said so.

Ark Encounter Theme Park KY:

https://arkencounter.com/about/

Suggesting something like evolution can explain life is not common sense, it doesn't even address life's beginning if you avoid abiogenesis and I'm the one who you think deserves pushback. You described a level-checking feature in life, then denied level checking, others here have said life looks designed, but that is only an illusion so they say.

Neither you nor they can accept what is right in front of your faces, and you want to tell me what you think, is factual, that happened in your opinion millions of years ago!? I'm supposed to believe you, you have not shown yourselves competent to make such proclamations as far as I'm concerned about things in the here and now to bother with what you think occurred way back then.

You want to condemn stories in the scriptures because in your worldview they could never happen, but that is the point, it is because they happen your worldview is the one that doesn't line up with reality, other like-minded people agree with you. That is just the herd that refuses to accept reality with God as creator, but that is as far as it goes, consensus for consensus's sake is not a measure of truth. All explanations about reality need to be able to cover every aspect of it, and you refuse to look at some portions because you have NOTHING.

@divegeester said
Do you think it is Satan the villain who is causing people here to forum a “united front” against you, because you’re a true Christian?

Liar

@kellyjay said
Meaning is something that can only occur in life as it's assigned, it isn't a materialistic phenomenon, it transcends the material world. EVEN YOU transcend the material world with a transcendent meaning each time you write out something you are thinking about, manipulating some part of the [to use a common term the natural world] to arrange some part of it, so your ...[text shortened]... erse with weaker forces underpins it all isn't something chaos could throw together, it is too good.

Yes, we get that 'how things got here must be by design' is the vocabulary you have chosen for interpreting meaningfulness into your life. You don't have to defend that choice. Just don't expect everyone else to buy into all the impossibilities you believe in.

@moonbus said
Yes, we get that 'how things got here must be by design' is the vocabulary you have chosen for interpreting meaningfulness into your life. You don't have to defend that choice. Just don't expect everyone else to buy into all the impossibilities you believe in.

It isn't the impossibilities I believe in, my beliefs don't produce or create all of the possibilities that could occur but don't so life is here.