- Joined
- 31 May 06
- Moves
- 1795
Originally posted by FetchmyjunkYou [according to your posts] believe in at least one god which means that you do not
I too lack belief in the existence of gods. Yet in am not an atheist.
in fact lack belief in the existence of gods.
The singular being contained within the plural.
I normally write it out in full to avoid this kind of stupidity.
As you demonstrate it's a necessity when dealing with you theists.
Originally posted by Ghost of a Dukethat has to be the worst analogy I have ever had the misfortune to chance upon. It fully deserves to be mocked.
A theist and an atheist are in the jungle, when they are suddenly charged at by a hungry lion. Now the theist, believing in the absolute power of God, stands tall and prayers to God to rescue him. He is immediately eaten.
Meanwhile the atheist logically assesses the situation and decides to play dead. However, when he notices the lion is still comin ...[text shortened]... t we don't do is put our faith in an unproven absolute that results in our ultimate destruction.
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Originally posted by twhiteheadops i forgot i was in the midst of a hyperpedant whose entire contribution to the forum seems to be a marked propensity for nitpicking, let me rephrase it for you Wendy, 'that happens to be the worst scenario I have had the misfortune to chance upon, it fully deserves to be mocked, happy twboofhead? good, now you can go your merry way collecting as many nits as your heart desires.
And you fully deserve to be mocked for thinking it is an analogy. It isn't.
Originally posted by robbie carrobieI'd miss you sir like I miss lime green flares, quirky but never really in fashion or socially acceptable.
Hiding from what? Wendyism and boofheadery, I think not, although going into semi-retirement does appeal but you would only miss me.
Is comparing you to lime green flares analogous?
Originally posted by googlefudgeExcept that you know watches are designed be people, they are man made things, and that watch stands out on the beach because it is a designed man made thing surrounded by natural non-man-made [or designed] things.
Ahh, but therein lies the rub.
We are of course in Paley's Watchmaker Argument territory or a teleological argument...
You walk along a beach and see a watch lying on the ground and from examining it you determine that
it's complexity and intricacy implies and requires a designer...
Except that you know watches are designed be people, they are ...[text shortened]... and
assuming the conclusion you are trying to prove... It's simple word play and nothing more.
You assume that it is only possible for man made things to be designed. What about the complexity of the human eye, brain, etc. More complex than a man made watch.
Originally posted by FetchmyjunkNo, he doesn't. You assume he does. He never said he did.
You assume that it is only possible for man made things to be designed.
What about the complexity of the human eye, brain, etc. More complex than a man made watch.
What about them? Complexity doesn't demonstrate design. And if you had followed his argument, then your belief is that everything is designed and thus even simple things must be designed, so complexity doesn't even suggest design. If your beliefs are true then there is no way of identifying that something is designed (because they all are).
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Originally posted by robbie carrobieThe day begun much like any other, Robbie donning a silk salmon dressing gown and giving his plump face a quick wipe over with a damp rag fashioned from a pair of old underpants. (Origin unknown). Wobbling into the lounge section of his bedsit, Robbie laboriously mounted the marble stallion he used in place of a chair. Before logging into RHP he ensured he had all his essentials close at hand, six family sized kit-kats, his own version of the Bible written in red crayon, a slab of lard, a book of ‘Lame Putdowns’ and a jar of vegan friendly picked eggs.
ops i forgot i was in the midst of a hyperpedant whose entire contribution to the forum seems to be a marked propensity for nitpicking, let me rephrase it for you Wendy, 'that happens to be the worst scenario I have had the misfortune to chance upon, it fully deserves to be mocked, happy twboofhead? good, now you can go your merry way collecting as many nits as your heart desires.
Much to his dismay he discovered his hypocrisy had been fully exposed in the forums and his plucked chickens had come home to roost. Cracks began to appear in the stallion beneath his corpulent posterior, as he bounced up and down like a petulant child stuffing as many pickled eggs into his mouth as humanly possible. And then, in an instant, it was over. Robbie fell from his high horse, egg all over his face.
Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk: "Because what you believe about your origins will shape your worldview and ultimately affect your morals and your entire outlook on life. It will answer what I view as the 4 most important questions about life. Who am I? And what happens to me when I die?"
First, I would dispute that belief has all that much influence on one's worldview. You're putting the cart before the horse. Those so-called 'core beliefs' are little more than rationalizations after the fact--your outlook on life was formed before you could formulate it as a set of 'core beliefs'. You gravitated to just those 'core beliefs' because they fitted your outlook, your temperament and your cultural milieu, and they 'confirmed' for you in cognitive form what you already felt in your guts.
Second, the four most important questions for you maybe, but not for me...
"Who am I?" Not who you think you are, and therefore not determined by anything answerable to core beliefs either. Who one is is not a state of mind.
"Where do I come from?" From between my mother's legs.
"What is the purpose of my existence?" Existence as such has no purpose. If it did, it would not matter to me. I have purposes; existence just is.
"And what happens to me when I die?" You die.
I suppose it's really what, if anything, happens to you after that that interests you, but that's not what your post said.
The idea that what happens to you after you die has anything to do with what you believed in life is absurd. Not even those who believe in a Last Judgment can seriously believe that; if there is a Last Judgment, what will be judged is the quality of your soul, not the credulity of your mind.
- Joined
- 31 May 06
- Moves
- 1795
Originally posted by FetchmyjunkBasically what twhitehead said.
Except that you know watches are designed be people, they are man made things, and that watch stands out on the beach because it is a designed man made thing surrounded by natural non-man-made [or designed] things.
You assume that it is only possible for man made things to be designed. What about the complexity of the human eye, brain, etc. More complex than a man made watch.
I didn't and don't assume that only man-made things could be designed. [you could, just as an example,
have alien-made, or robot-AI-made things]
The point was that we know that a watch is designed because its a man-made thing that WE designed
and made... Not because it's 'complex'.
And you are not even getting your own sides [flawed] argument right.
Because the claim of ID is not that complexity indicates design, but "irreducible complexity" does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
The idea being that certain complex systems are 'irreducibly complex' in that if you remove or change any one
component the whole system fails and thus the entire apparatus would have to have evolved simultaneously
[a mathematically absurd proposition] and thus the system couldn't have evolved by small iterative changes
and thus must have been designed.
However, not only has no such 'irreducibly complex' system ever been found in biology, but the very concept is deeply
flawed.
Because it turns out that it is in fact perfectly possible to evolve systems that are today irreducibly complex via
natural selection. And I will outline a scenario by which this could happen [not of my own invention by I read it
so long ago I cannot remember the source to credit it]...
We have a single cell organism that requires nutrients A and B from it's environment.
And has corresponding seperate mechanisms for dealing with both nutrients A and B. [mA and mB]
So nutrient A is harvested by cell mechanism mA and nutrient B is harvested by cell mechanism mB.
Nutrient B is very common, but nutrient A is very rare, and acts as the primary limiting factor on the growth of this organism.
Now one day one of these single cell organisms has a mutation in some redundant piece of cell architecture
mechanism C [mC] which can take Nutrient B and turn it into Nutrient A.
This organism now has a huge advantage because it can now extract all the nutrient A it needs from the readily available
nutrient B that surrounds it, and so this new improved single cell organism dominates and wipes out the older ones
by out competing them for nutrients.
So all these organisms now have the cell mechanism mC that turns nutrient B into nutrient A.
Cell mechanism mA which extracts the rare nutrient A from the environment is now pretty superfluous and offers little
benefit to the cell as nutrient A is so rare and all the cells need for it comes from cell mechanism mC.
And what's more there is an energy cost in reproduction for building this unneeded mechanism.
So at some point, when a cell reproduces [divides] and an error is made that causes that cell not to have cell
mechanism mA, not only does that error not kill that cell, but it gives it a small advantage in reproducing because
it costs less energy.
So these new cells out compete the older ones and so after some time all the cells lack mechanism mA and so
can only extract nutrient B from the environment and must manufacture all the required nutrient A with mechanism mC.
But wait! What we have now is [supposedly] "Irreducibly Complex".
The cells require nutrients A and B to survive, but can only extract nutrient B and must produce nutrient A.
According to the ""theory"" of irreducible complexity it's too improbable that the cell could have evolved the mechanism
for extracting nutrient B and for manufacturing nutrient A simultaneously, and the cell cannot survive without both,
so it's 'irreducibly complex' and thus must have been designed...
Except we just saw how it evolved that way via natural selection during which process at no point did two changes
have to happen at once.
Now reality tends to be much more complex than this example, but in just the same way every single time creationists
have proposed some mechanism that is supposedly 'irreducibly complex' and thus must have been designed it has
been shown that there are pathways by which it could [and did] evolve naturally with all the components being useful
at every step.
The eye being one of the first suggested 'irreducibly complex' organs and that was disproved by Darwin himself.
It's a really really bad and discredited argument.
Originally posted by googlefudgeBut that won't stop them from continuing the same scam.
Basically what twhitehead said.
I didn't and don't assume that only man-made things could be designed. [you could, just as an example,
have alien-made, or robot-AI-made things]
The point was that we know that a watch is designed because its a man-made thing that WE designed
and made... Not because it's 'complex'.
And you are not even getting ...[text shortened]... and that was disproved by Darwin himself.
It's a really really bad and discredited argument.