04 Jul 19
1 edit
@KellyJay
So, to clarify, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe alone, and Earth is the only one with life on it?
@ghost-of-a-duke saidNFW
@KellyJay
So, to clarify, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe alone, and Earth is the only one with life on it?
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Since Fred Hoyle was an atheist and opposed the Big Bang theory on the grounds that it was too creationist (he coined the name in an attempt to ridicule it) I find your quoting him to attempt to support your argument bizarre.
I don't think any genetic fallacy renders his insight insignificant.
I know he was not a theist. But he had the sense to recognize that the universe appears to have anticipated our arrival.
What's strange is you reluctance to see it.
Me:
I don't think God is a dummy not to account for what needed to happen. They were the most pristine humans. And I don't assume they were as easily plagued with our modern day problems on this side of the fall of man.
DeepThought:
This is what I mean by ad hoc arguments. You need this pristine state to last at least until the time of Noah as there would have been a huge bottle neck there in every animal species.
I did notice that the longevity of humans dramatically begins to drop off soon after the flood.
If you reason along excluding the wisdom of a purposeful Creator, you might jury rig the possibilities up front so that other speculations are to you "ad hoc".
Since you are committed to seeing human life as purposeless lucky accident, that world view permeates your reasoning.
In cheetahs there was a bottle neck a few thousand years ago to the extent that every member of the species can act as an organ donor to every other one. This is not the case in any other species that I know of. This demonstrates that no such bottleneck took place in Humans, in particular, and all other species, in general, all that recently.
If you insist on a young earth this is fine.
I said nothing about the age of the earth.
Actually I believe in a Destruction / Reconstruction interpretation of Genesis 1:1,2. Some call it derisively a "gap theory."
The interval of time between "In the beginning" and when the earth was seen by the seer as empty and void is unspecified.
I don't insist on a young earth or the universe not being billions of years old. I did however ask about soft tissue in fossils supposedly 60 millions years of age. "Maybe not as OLD as we thought" might lean towards a more recent presence of these now extinct animals.
Saying "maybe these dinosaurs displaying soft tissue now are less ancient" does not lock a person into 6,000 year old universe.
But your account is not falsifiable, any problem with it is just explained by God being omnipotent. You have untestable hypotheses so the statements involved are unscientific.
I think ID can be the inference to the best explanation yet fall short of saying the identity of the Intelligence.
How testable is your claim that one species of animals gave birth to another species ? This has never been observed by testing.
Fruit flies with extra wings or finch beaks changing shape do not qualify for macro evolution. So if lack of test-ability is an issue you need to apply it to macro evolution.
04 Jul 19
@kellyjay saidSorry, I'd meant to reply to this a while ago. The philosophical basis for my statements about what is scientific or not comes from Karl Popper. Essentially his system is based around a sentence along the lines of:
I wouldn't go so far as to say unscientific, the part that is scientific acknowledges that it couldn't happen unless there was divine intervention, confirming it was an act of God. Which is what we have to say when all such types of events like those mean, only God could.
So saying this is an event could only take place because God did it, doesn't disprove God, it only shows that if done, God did it.
For a proposition to be scientific it must be falsifiable.This means that theories which are readily modified with ad hoc additions make for bad theories, from this point of view. Ideally a theory would be fragile, in the sense that if it is wrong it is easy to prove it wrong.
The reason I think that the Intelligent Design Theory for the Origin of Species is unscientific is because its claims are essentially untestable and therefore unfalsifiable. As we saw above any statement such as: "A population with less than 20 individuals would not be viable due to inbreeding problems." is explained with ad hoc claims about the stability of DNA changing after the flood, or whenever it's meant to have become unstable, with the antediluveans immune to inbreeding. With God, for his own reasons, managing the process so it looks to modern science as if the World is a few billion years old with natural selection taking place. This basically stops the whole thing from being science.
What is more "it", if "it" is evolution by natural selection, is on pretty firm ground, the objections of the Creationists don't do enough damage to natural selection being able to produce all the known species in a few billion years. If "it" is abiogenesis, then I don't think that that's been convincingly ruled out. Since there isn't a standard narrative to rule out yet.
A more interesting argument would be that the theory of the Origin of Species due to evolution by natural selection is itself not the most easily falsified. There's experiments with drosophila, but I don't know if they're sufficient to falsify it.
04 Jul 19
@sonship saidSee the above post. I think this is my clearest statement so far as to why I think ID is unscientific. There's a mechanism for macro-evolution, in other words changes in forms, rather than just micro-biological stuff. Also speciation at the behavioural level has been observed in drosophila exposed to different laboratory environments. My background's in physics, which has less of a problem with falsifiability, the theories lend themselves to it more readily, so I can't really comment on how to go about falsification attempts on the components of the theory of natural selection.
@DeepThought
Since Fred Hoyle was an atheist and opposed the Big Bang theory on the grounds that it was too creationist (he coined the name in an attempt to ridicule it) I find your quoting him to attempt to support your argument bizarre.
I don't think any genetic fallacy renders his insight insignificant.
I know he was not a theist. But he had th ...[text shortened]... r macro evolution. So if lack of test-ability is an issue you need to apply it to macro evolution.
04 Jul 19
@ghost-of-a-duke saidYour correct, you did say "almost certainly abound" my bad!
How does that figure? - Galveston said, 'there is not another planet that is even close to our planet earth that could even start to keep a human alive.' While I said, 'hospitable planets almost certainly abound.'
Which one of us is asserting something definitively?
04 Jul 19
@ghost-of-a-duke saidYou seem to reject a creator with huge numbers in favor of God doing a work, so why would you then turn around and say there is life else where due to large numbers?
@KellyJay
So, to clarify, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe alone, and Earth is the only one with life on it?
@deepthought saidI don't believe religious faith and science are the samething, but that said because they are different, but that doesn't automatically mean one is right the other is wrong. It means they approach truth from different perspectives. Truth doesn't change because it is accepted revelation or discovered through study.
Sorry, I'd meant to reply to this a while ago. The philosophical basis for my statements about what is scientific or not comes from Karl Popper. Essentially his system is based around a sentence along the lines of:For a proposition to be scientific it must be falsifiable.This means that theories which are readily modified with ad hoc additions make ...[text shortened]... lsified. There's experiments with drosophila, but I don't know if they're sufficient to falsify it.
Evolution isn't on firm ground by natural selection if you are suggesting it started at abiogenesis and through time with the first living creature evolved into all the life we see today. If I grant you the miracle at the beginning of life to carry on just to discuss evolution, what you can show are only are small changes in anything already here, that is it. To take anything beyond that is a grand assumption and not science if we play by your rule book.
You cannot show in life, or anywhere else for that matter, new features that do very complex work supporting other new features doing different complex work all arising out of anything unguided without intention, as would have to have happen in life moving from the simple to the more complex. You take a computer program, start changing the code without intent, it will be non-functioning in short older, it will not turn itself into a new improved operating systems for you PC simply because you work on it a very long time.
When looking at the fossil records you see different species appear and disappear in what are called different time periods, they are fully formed and other creatures appear and disappear in other so called time periods, these sudden appearances don't show life changing in small ways over time.
My largest complaint besides the creation of something new without a purpose behind it is, where are of the additional lifeforms that should be here today, all of those that are not quite human, not quite ape, not quite dog, not quite bird, not quite catfish, not quite tree, and so on. We see very distinct life here, not a long line of not quite, which we should see if life were slowly changing over time. When a change happens there isn't an automatic death of an older model, it would have to happen with cause they were not able to survive for some reason. The older models or generations would still be here if there was no reason for them to die. Since if they could survive they would, there should be plenty still be living today. There would be no need to look at fossils if only small changes were really occurring over time, where are all of them for every lifeform running around today?
I think the creation story narrative seems to be the best explanation for life as we see it today and a host of other questions, about the universe itself from where did it all come from, what is the meaning in life, where are we going, and so on.
05 Jul 19
@ghost-of-a-duke saidAccording to the Bible it says that Jesus is the 1st of all creations. The bible explains the sequence of all the steps of creation after Jesus. Genesis explains these steps very clearly.
@KellyJay
So, to clarify, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe alone, and Earth is the only one with life on it?
It does mention the creation of all the stars in heaven but not once does it mention any other life forms other then all the angels in existence.
God gave us the Bible which teaches mankind many things about himself, his son, the angels and his creations both in heaven and on earth, but it does not mention any other life forms anywhere in the universe. Humans are clearly said to be the last things he created with Adam and Eve .
Now the bible also says that sometime in the future that "new scrolls will be opened".
We have no idea what they are going to contain, what they will say or what new things we will learn. Maybe someday there will be other life forms on other planets, but at this time God is not telling us anything other then what we need to know now.
05 Jul 19
@kellyjay saidPlease supply your long list of claims more extraordinary that your claim of the existence of god or gods.
Because, you say so? What claim is more reasonable to that you feel is better? Oh wait you have no explanation.