24 Apr 16
Originally posted by Ghost of a DukeNo, there is no evidence of a divine being who created the universe because that would destroy the purpose of man having free will to either believe in Him or not. If there was proof of God, then man would not be capable of not "believing" because the facts would be "in his face". Man has to be just as free to not choose God as he is to choose God. That is so that he is fully in charge of his own destiny and he has no one to blame for not having a choice.
There was no intelligent intervention?
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24 Apr 16
Originally posted by SuzianneWhy do you keep making this argument when every time you do it's shown to be clearly
No, there is no evidence of a divine being who created the universe because that would destroy the purpose of man having free will to either believe in Him or not. If there was proof of God, then man would not be capable of not "believing" because the facts would be "in his face". Man has to be just as free to not choose God as he is to choose God. That ...[text shortened]... hat he is fully in charge of his own destiny and he has no one to blame for not having a choice.
not true on every level possible?
Because even you have admitted that it's possible to believe something despite evidence
that contradicts that belief.
And even that misses the bigger point that you never address which is that what your god
supposedly requires is not belief but worship. For which belief is necessary but not sufficient.
Just because a person believes in a gods existence does not mean that they must worship it.
And it cannot be reasonably argued that people have a free and fair choice to worship your god
in the total absence of evidence for your gods existence, when your gods non-existence is
vastly more likely than the converse. In such a circumstance it's grossly unfair and immoral to
punish people for being rational and failing to worship a non-existent being.
Your argument is self admittedly wrong, and clearly utterly unconvincing to anyone but yourself.
So why keep making it?
24 Apr 16
Originally posted by KazetNagorraInterestingly the evidence that there was a time without life is a little sketchy. Our theory is that the planet formed about 4.5 billion years ago and the oldest rocks are about that old. This is based on the age of the oldest rocks found and theoretical models of where the Sun is in its evolution. The oldest material found is dated to 4.4 Gya [1], which puts a lower bound on the age of the Earth - but in itself does not put an upper bound on the age of the Earth.
There is plenty of evidence suggesting that there is life on Earth and plenty of evidence that at one point there wasn't. It stands to reason that it came into being in the interim. And since natural processes are the only ones we can measure we will have to be satisfied with explaining the origins of life through natural processes - or not at all.
The earliest evidence for life is from 4.1 Gya around the time of the late heavy bombardment era [2][3]. So it's not absolutely clear to me that there is empirical evidence that there was ever a time that there was not life on Earth - if one accepts the standard model of planetary formation then common sense would imply there was but this is essentially theoretical rather than empirical.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_dated_rocks
[2] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/10/14/1517557112.full.pdf
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
24 Apr 16
Originally posted by FetchmyjunkGas clouds are unstable against gravitational collapse, there is nothing magical in the process of star formation [1]. What is more the process is observed in what are called stellar nurseries [2]. The universe is believed to be 13.6 billion years old - you can hardly not have heard of the Big Bang theory. The Sun is only 4.5 billion years old, so no one is claiming it has always existed. Depending on what you mean by "always", as far as we can tell, neither has the universe. Science has little to say about deities because of the absence of reproducible evidence.
Oh yes the sun just magically appeared out of a chemical soup exactly the right distance away from the earth so as not to roast all us all alive. Besides, the energy for the sun has always existed right, as has the universe. But it is preposterous to even image that some Deity has always existed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeans_instability
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_formation#Stellar_nurseries
24 Apr 16
Originally posted by DeepThoughtHe said the energy the sun contains. I believe there is a law of conservation of energy, but I do not know if it applies to gravity or the universe as a whole. I have heard that the total energy in the universe may be zero.
The Sun is only 4.5 billion years old, so no one is claiming it has always existed.
24 Apr 16
Originally posted by twhiteheadI could have spent a paragraph explaining how that wasn't surprising since the energy the Sun produces comes from hydrogen fusion, but his argument seemed to hang on these objects always existing, in which case the problem is entropy rather than energy, so I pointed out the apparent finite age of the universe instead.
He said the energy the sun contains. I believe there is a law of conservation of energy, but I do not know if it applies to gravity or the universe as a whole. I have heard that the total energy in the universe may be zero.
The law of conservation of energy follows from Noether's theorem as applied to symmetry under translation in time. So it applies to gravity. Since it's only possible to measure differences in potential energy there's an ambiguity in what the total energy of any system is. In the normal convention field energy is negative is it's possible for the total energy of the universe to come out as zero, but I'd be wary of reading too much into that. There's no reason to suppose that energy is conserved at the very beginning since time isn't homogeneous there.
24 Apr 16
The idea that time did not exist without the universe is simply due to the fact that Stephen Hawking said the following:
At this time, the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe, would have been on top of itself. The density would have been infinite. It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang. The universe will evolve from the Big Bang, completely independently of what it was like before. Even the amount of matter in the universe, can be different to what it was before the Big Bang, as the Law of Conservation of Matter, will break down at the Big Bang.
Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them.
Note there's no talk about time *not existing* prior to the universe; he simply says that it is most convenient to begin measuring time at the Big Bang because whatever happened before cannot be measured.
But note that Dr Hawking refers to "before the Big Bang".
How can there be a "before time"?
Only if you define time to begin...at a certain time.
24 Apr 16
Originally posted by AThousandYoungThat may be where you got the idea, but its not where I got it nor many other people.
The idea that time did not exist without the universe is simply due to the fact that Stephen Hawking said the following:
Einstein showed that time is a dimension of the universe and intricately entwined with the space dimensions. Without space there is not time, without universe there is not time.
Now we could define what came before the big bang, if anything did, as a separate universe, in which case, one might say there was time before 'this' universe.
The truth is we don't know a whole lot about the big bang or whether or not there was a before.
25 Apr 16
Originally posted by finnegan
Life could only reasonably be said to arise "at random" if we rely on the many worlds model and argue that among an infinite number of worlds, a world in which there is life must arise by chance, and it is inevitable that we occupy such a world.
However, the relevant scientists do not make that claim. They say life arose when the conditions permitting ...[text shortened]... t ought to make people appreciate what a weak line of argument supports the Creationist deniers.
Anyone who claims to have worked out an explicit probability for life occurring 'at random' or what they really mean 'without the aid of God', is talking nonsense.
Is anyone able to counter this assertion? ie can anyone give a reasonable scenario in which such a probability can be calculation and have useful meaning?
As I have argued and been ignored, there is no useful meaning to your hypothetical probability calculation because it can only be a probability of 1. Life has happened and continues to happen with such extraordinary fecundity that to talk of its probability is absurd. In so far as one needs to explain the presence of life, that must be done with reference to the necessary conditions - such as water say. What is the probability of water on a planet? Well even in our solar system there is water on a few (including moons). So in order to have this conversation in a meaningful way, we have to continue exploring in increasing detail what conditons are necessary for life, and that conversation is not a discussion about random events. Life will never arise on our moon by random chance because our moon lacks the conditions for life. It is an empty conversation with no purpose to it and no useful meaning.
25 Apr 16
Originally posted by SuzianneWhy would your God figure engage in a kind of confidence trick like this and how does it sit with sonship's assertion that your God figure sincerely desires to see all men saved? To make His own revelation honestly and genuinely unbelievable to so many people is surely intrinsically unfair and, with it being impossible for people to somehow "choose" to believe something they simply do not believe, the whole scenario seems mundane rather than divine. This argument of yours sounds like papering over the cracks of something that just does not make sense.
No, there is no evidence of a divine being who created the universe because that would destroy the purpose of man having free will to either believe in Him or not. If there was proof of God, then man would not be capable of not "believing" because the facts would be "in his face". Man has to be just as free to not choose God as he is to choose God. That ...[text shortened]... hat he is fully in charge of his own destiny and he has no one to blame for not having a choice.
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25 Apr 16
5 edits
Originally posted by twhiteheadNo, nobody in the science forum would dispute it.
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If you are so sure that this is a matter of good science and having nothing to do with Theism why don't you demontrate it is nonsense for anyone to apply probability analysis to the the origin of a cell ?
It seems odd to me that you say in essence "Everybody on Science Forum AGREES with twhitehead of course. And I have no need to teach about this there."
Assertion: Anyone who claims to have worked out an explicit probability for life occurring 'at random' or what they really mean 'without the aid of God', is talking nonsense.
Is anyone able to counter this assertion? ie can anyone give a reasonable scenario in which such a probability can be calculation and have useful meaning?
I do not take on confidence that everyone agrees with you that a skeptic of evolution or a theist cannot apply some reasonable probability analysis to the Evolution of a cell problem.
Do only Evolutionists have the right to attempt to apply probability analysis to the origin of a cell ?
Yes or No.