Yes, both are intended to describe the history of what happened, as best as the authors can make out. They didn't go into it trying to create a dramatic piece of fiction.

Hinduism sort of did. I haven't read the original language version so I missed out on a lot of poetry features in the Bhagavad Gita but the story as I read it went more or less like a story my grandfather would tell about some distant relative or other. It had a little less of the side notes he'd put in but the Gitas are formal writing so that's to be expected.

Well yes, over time don't you think we would learn how better to accomplish that in our writing? Around the birth of written language how could you expect people to already be as good at storytelling as we are after centuries of formal education and critique driving people to find better ways of using language?

I was being silly, it's only Abra telling me that.

Oh right, I had something to say there but forgot what it was as I was going along.

People get upset when I break down their subjective view. I've also been told I should try to understand it so I guess people would be saying that they want me to know about it but not do anything with that knowledge.

Science has been aimed at the objective precisely because you can deconstruct it. With the subjective if they disagree that's it. Either you're forced to just say flat out "not everyone agrees" or throw out people's opinions. I haven't heard any good criteria for what opinions to throw out because nobody wants to admit they'd do that but opinions like "the holocaust didn't happen" probably deserve to be thrown out.

I solve the problem by not letting anyone's opinion weigh in. They're opinions and nothing more. If anybody has a case for their opinion they can make it and I'll weigh that but the opinion itself is exempt; I only evaluate the reasons behind it if anyone shares them, but that's objectivity so...

So why aren't we treating the eternal universe like a serious idea? It's sure a lot closer to what I've been talking about than "random nonsense."

Meow, how big an area are we talking? If I stood next to mew would there be design around there or not? Do we work like magnets that cancel each other out?

So about the question? How is the designer playing by rules before having made any rules?


Not in the context we've been using the word. "Random nonsense" and "not done with intention" are very different concepts. The definition doesn't say that things done without intention are random, that would be like saying that after you become a celebrity in Hollywood you must be a giant ball of gas undergoing nuclear fusion (star.)

Sky: Actually doesn't care about subjectivity. It's there without it. If someone doesn't think bullets can kill them that doesn't stop a sniper round from tearing through their grey matter.

You could be picky and say the bleeding is what killed them but we all know what caused the bleeding, though it didn't need us to know for it to happen.

They have everything to do with each other. Haven't you seen Sky saying that the meaning of my life is up to God and that in designing our universe there is nothing that was not God's intention? Haven't you seen Abra telling me that without a designer I can be nothing but random nonsense?

Well of course you understand that. You're an atheist.

They clearly are not and refuse to understand how there could be any meaning without God.

Ya. I already mentioned nihilists. I don't particularly like even talking to those people often.

Well in calling me random nonsense I'm basically being told my thoughts are not real.

I know that, I'm just revolted that they have the audacity to tell me I'm not.

You should come over to this side of the fence and help me explain that to Abra and Sky n_n

I've already got enough purpose to tide me over for now. Maybe I'll get some other purpose later in life but for now I have enough.

And we write differently than our grandparents did. Why should we think that the way we do it is somehow "more conscious" than what they did instead of just that the way people use language changes over time?

It's just an opinion, you can't say it's wrong and I'm sick of you trying to.

Here's a phrase that works: Either life was the purposeful result of intent or it was not the purposeful result of intent.

Happenstance does not mean a lack of intention.

Well I guess I should probably throw out a definition here as well to ask if we've even been talking about the same thing:
Chance: the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled.

Is that it?

No, it tells you there's a pattern. That it's the very opposite of random.

I used the word stochastic quite awhile ago. If you know what that word means then you know I understand that.

Without design there are other possibilities that "random nonsense." You threw enough of a fit that I wouldn't go into the philosophy of this but how can anyone do that without first establishing what we're looking at.

I am telling you that we have a very non-random pattern of sense to the universe and that it didn't have to come from God.

Then call it a fork in the road and take a minute to understand that I'm talking about a road that splits off and goes in a different direction than either of those.

Unintentional design, but I'm not supporting that either.

Scarecrow argument fallacy. Nobody here is telling you that our universe is random nonsense.

Because you say so?

You can't deconstruct the subjective. If you could it would be objective.

How does a creator get to be the last turtle? We create thing but we needed many turtles to explain where we came from.

But if you say the creator is the last turtle isn't that the same as saying it just got there by chance? As the final step there could not possibly be any reason it got there, else that reason would be another turtle and we'd need who knows how many other turtles to explain it.

Or at least that's how it would have to work the way you've described things.

That's understandable.

But it does lead to the quest of "If you don't know how to recognize anything that is not a design how can you say it's not all around you?"

But people made sports and such. There are rules you follow to play that game. We're talking about the origin of rules.

Or we're not and the designer is just some turtle in the middle and we've not yet even begun to talk about if there must be one or not.

Nope. Never said or implied anything even remotely like that.

What I am saying is that as far as I’m concerned, there cannot be anything that God didn’t do on purpose, by the very definition of God.

(Noting that the terms “God” and “designer” are exactly synonymous in this context.)God yes, designer no. We could potentially create a universe and not intentionally control every aspect of it.

Well, “meaning” is entirely subjective, so there is no way I can answer that for you. Your life may or may not have meaning to you and it may or may not have meaning to a creator. That’s up to you and the creator to determine, each for themselves.And if I don't have a creator?

My objection is in your saying that anything without the intention of God behind it is happenstance.

I'm probably getting pretty close to telling you for the hundredth time that "it just happened" is not what I've been saying. It's really disgusting how you can't let life have any meaning unless it's got the meaning you want it to have.

What else could it mean?

I've been getting to know you guys for closing in on two hundred posts now. (And as large as they are you might as well count most of them as two or three posts.)

Actually I was quoting him
He's telling me that if I don't believe I had a creator I can only believe that I was an meaningless accident. We've been reworking the meaning of happenstance in the last few pages and with what we're using now there is no way it could not mean that.

I was doing that for awhile but stopped when abra started chopping up what I said so much. I was mostly keeping it together because I responding to four or five of his posts at a time.

I'll try and reply to you and sky in separate posts I guess.

Good so far.
And you lost it. You can't compare the subjective because you can't show it to others. You can't evaluate it because it's an opinion.

The subjective isn't useful to anyone but the subject.

Explain to me what's subjective about math. Last time I checked 2+2=4 without any room for anyone thinking differently. Logic has aimed to get away from the subjective since it's inception as subjectively making someone look bad devalues their arguments when that doesn't actually address any of what they've said.

I'm really thinking you don't understand what subjective and objective mean.

Do these definitions match what you're talking about:
Objective: 1. not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion.
2. being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject
Subjective: 1. pertaining to or characteristic of an individual; personal; individual: a subjective evaluation.
2. placing excessive emphasis on one's own moods, attitudes, opinions, etc.; unduly egocentric.
3. relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from a thing in itself.

Only if we're using them to say how reality works. If somebody believes that there's not a designer but you believe there is what do you do?


But it doesn't. You just said that it starts from laws outside the universe. How do laws outside the universe add another turtle any more than a creator outside of it?

I'm asking what would look like "not-design."

The phrase was meant to describe the point of playing a sport (such as basketball,) but there are definitely other reasons people play them.

Others do not have that problem.

Look at that thing you cut out of my post:

I don't even know what to say.


So you're seriously telling me that anything with a beginning that God didn't do on purpose is random? That my life is meaningless?

Well I submit that this is solely because of your own inability to take some things seriously or accept a conflicting viewpoint without ridiculing it.

But the coins wearing out and falling off of the pants as the designer did things with intent has just as much intention as dropping the coins without particularly choosing which way they should land.

I throw people's names into their quotes each time I switch posts (maybe missing a few,) and I thought that would be enough. Do you have any better ideas?

I'm saying that that they're two different things. You can use both in a lovely mix to arrive at your position (but as you're only presenting your opinion you've no need to show us the science and philosophy that are your reasons for holding it,) but they are different kinds of points.

It is similar to the distinction between known and unknown. We know something or we don't and it doesn't make any sense to act like we know something when we do not or to act like we do not know something that we do.

I resent that. How dare you tell me I'm not a philosopher.


It would. The universal consciousness part of what you believe doesn't mesh so well with the laws of science though- you've got the speed of light limiting the speed information can be transferred, energy being required to have any impact on matter such as the contents of your skull (and because it has to translate into charged ion flows and electrical currents we'd be able to see that indirectly,) and so on. You can hold out and hope that one day people find some special type of force or energy that accounts for that but at current it classifies as a spiritual belief, whether you want to call it spirits or not.

Uhhhhhhhhh.

Depends on how you want to use that word. Some definitions of belief mean "to know" while others are specifically require that you not know it.

No. Well maybe where you originally posted that but not here. Faith is ok and a useful thing to a lot of people. So long as they don't think, no, "believe" that their faith needs to be forced on others I've got no reason to want to take it away from them.

But personal experience isn't worth very much to anyone but the person that experienced it. If you've looked at many court trials you'll know that we have to throw out a lot of testimony because what the person thinks they saw is incompatible with what we know happened (such as them describing a taxicab that doesn't look like taxis anywhere in the state they were in.)

Our personal experiences are not a record of what happened. They're a narrative we build and we'd never know how often we throw in details that weren't really there if not for the lengths other people have gone to to show that we do that.

I personally spend a lot of time thinking about how I shift my memories around.

Well no. I'm just asking that if you go beyond just sharing your opinion that you not use fallacies. The great Greek philosophers took to time to do big set ups to show why you shouldn't use use them (though we've added some since then,) so if you want to call yourself a philosopher you should really step lightly in terms of those.

If you hadn't written this elsewhere I'd be pretty annoyed about being described that way when I've pointed out particular fallacies so often.

My experiences are hallucination. I don't rely on them if I know better.
Yours probably are too.

They're an alright starting point but you need to confirm them with something else.

Of course, there's the other option of accepting all experiences as fact but then if anyone has experiences contrary to yours there's a major problem. I avoid that because I don't want to say my experiences are superior to someone else' by virtue of my having experienced them- I'm not better than other people. Definitely different but our worth as humans is the same.

Subjectively I think you're wrong, ignorant, illogical, and intellectually deaf. That's nasty though so I try not to let it influence my behavior and I go an awfully long way to try and silence it in my thinking.
With objectivity you have a chance to show you're better than that.

I've had something like the opposite of that and I've met a ghost.
*I was four or so and my parents filled in the details differently than I did so there's big subjective disagreement with what happened. Because I can't build a consistent picture of it I try to stay agnostic on the matter.

Here's one: no beginning. Our universe has existed eternally.

Not popular but it's another option. Look up the history of Big Bang theory if you'd like to see some of the other stuff people have posited throughout the years.

Isn't the same thing true of starting from an external designer?

So basically you're saying that there is no possible (or even impossible,) set up we could see that wouldn't look like a design?

Are you saying that the designer is competing against other entities in a test of skill?

The regular designer arguments don't say squat about how the designer did it either.

Isn't the external intelligent intentful designer sky na abra have been promoting a ridiculous example that can't really be taken seriously?

Or are you saying that popularity is what an option requires to "not be ridiculous"?


Whaaaat?

You defined intelligent design as anything that results in a universe that has intelligence. Your definition was loose enough that a very rare happenstance cause that could result in us would count as intelligent design.

Is it any wonder why I am fighting that definition?

But why seven instead of twelve? What was the determining factor that made them come up as one number instead of another?

I'm glad you understood the dice analogy though. Feel like the first time you've said anything that followed from what I said.

But with the universe as the product wouldn't it be better to compare the universe to a single face on the dice (or a combination of faces on several dice)?

You've been saying all along that the universe seems to have had a starting condition that would automatically produce life. If we're rolling dice all the time isn't that saying that you get life from chance as long as there are a lot of chances?

I brought up the combination of quarks resulting in those particles in the first place. Wouldn't it be fair to say that I was talking about the dice back when you were stuck on the roll?

Well now it's starting to feel like you're taking things I've said and labeling them as your own ideas. I'm not sure if I should be flattered at the mimicry or annoyed at the plagiarism.

Well actually no, I can't let you get away with saying that right after you brought up the inflation theory. With you way you've described the dice and the combinations of their faces none of that was present in that first planck's length of time- to keep the metaphor alive you'd have to say that some other set of dice set up that set of dice but it get's convoluted at that point.

You've yet to tell me why dice without a creator should have poorly defined faces or anything of that sort.

Show me the writing.


There's just one tiny problem with the copies thing: light. We see the light from galaxies billions of light years away from us. In infinity you can easily get another Earth surrounded by copy galaxies in all directions... except that that's actually the problem. We see light a great distance away so if you swap perspectives those things so far away are getting light from us. You've gone into quantum issues enough that I shouldn't need to bring up that the photons interacting with matter impacts it but for the sake of making sure everyone else can follow there it is.

So we have some effect on everything we can see that changes it. It should be obvious that likewise all of those things have some effect on everything they can "see" and so on. So there can't be copies of us because we change them by existing.

Now, I'm going to admit that all of that is a lie but the reason I've said it is that I want you to explain why it's false. There's a fairly obvious problem as you go through it and the way you point it out will be useful for me in knowing how to talk philosophy with you.

But you're presented two options where the creator was involved. Obviously there are many other things we can alter about this. Perhaps the coins were on a table and fell off of it. Perhaps the coins "fell" up into the sky. Perhaps the coins were not dropped but used in a transaction.

And how do we know they are coins at all? Do they have some country motto printed onto them or faces of leaders and prominent historical figures? Perhaps these "coins" were the material the pants were made of and some came off from wear and tear as the figure intentionally went about some sort of business.

Come now, do you really think he understood that that phrase meant something other than "where quarks are"?

You know that's not what we're talking about. You've tried to define the designer out of intelligent design so that people can't continue to fight you. As that's the topic of this thread the only person who gets to determine what context intelligent design was said in would be creativesoul.

I'll make it simple with an example: Let's say I ask how many stars someone has seen. One person starts listing off celebrities but then someone else buts in with
"Star –noun
any of the heavenly bodies, except the moon, appearing as fixed luminous points in the sky at night."

He doesn't get to decide what I was talking about. Maybe that's it or maybe I meant celebrities. If I didn't indicate which one at the start then you have to ask me to find out.

Because you desperately need to do missionary work to convert people to your cause. Going out and preaching to people that don't like what you're saying feels rewarding to you and your ego wants you to look like you've taken on all challengers.

Oh, but I guess this has as little to do with what was said as that question you just asked.

You mean that thirty year old idea that we've already discounted because we know inflation cannot be the Higgs field as Guth thought?

And all this time you've been telling me science doesn't explain those things :roll:

The trick is really just detecting it if are making them. It's not like you go accelerating different particles or try different speeds- you just get the same particles going as fast as you possibly can and then hope your detectors got a good enough view of the fireworks.

As I've said I'm answering science with science. If someone would present some philosophy I'd go into philosophy.

I care about what's right and I've got the integrity to admit if I'm wrong. I'm a humanist so I care about what other people think for their sake, not my own.

If you'd like to not read any of what I've said then sure -_-;

Now you see, this is an actual example of an ad hominem.
"You're saying there's no designer but you're not people and we laugh at you."

That's got nothing to do with the subject (though I hope creative shrugs off petty insults as easily as I do.)

Well I'm too lazy to fight people I agree with today but as I've said they've got really weak philosophy so you probably shouldn't expect them to either.

Protip:I'm egging some people on so maybe they actually will.

That's not a good objection. Why can't there be other laws outside of the universe?

Actually I think that's a question of "why be so roundabout about it? Shouldn't the designer just create matter in a single step?"

This does at least throw out the option of the designer having taken any hand in assembling the legos. It would require that anything assembled from legos did so by, well, effectively shaking a box full of them. From the starting point in the oppositions statements we can thus throw out all arguments in the form of "tornado going through a junkyard" and such but yes, that leaves us at the start of the argument, aside from someone's inconsistencies.

I think you're expressing too many views at once there and it's a mess for it. Maybe consider narrowing your scope?

What a pain! I can't even grab posts to get them in nice quote format.

Well, I guess I'll just bump myself up to the current page. Probably won't have missed anything really.

Didn't I post that phrase recently?

Well anyway I've been holding back because I can tell you're the type that gets less receptive as people yell at you. I'm not sure what's most effective with SKY as he hates most of what I say no matter the tone but Abra is definitely not receptive to calm description as this was a big competition to him from the get go.

But I'm sure you guys don't appreciate my psychoanalysis so moving on,

You keep saying things like "well it's proven now." That's just as good as saying you have scientific evidence and is really saying you have a lot more than that.

I want to be convinced. I just don't let myself be convinced by fallacies.

Really, I like the mental exercise of having a different reality thrown at me. Without it my world view gets stale and stops growing. It's easier for me to improve it when someone comes along and turns my world upside down and that's a bit difficult to handle but I think I'm up to the challenge.

You certainly act like you're trying to win people's votes on the matter.

Argument requires reasoning. Otherwise you might as well just see who can call the other person the dirtiest word.

I hope you genuinely understand. I've found that most people who act as you have are unable to keep themselves from trying to knock down any alternative views they see around them and don't ever find out how to change that about themselves. It's a real delight to see people overcome that expectation but it's certainly a rare event.

Oh no, I'm not going to hunt you down or anything, I just didn't expect that you would leave the thread and since we were both going to stay you either admit you're wrong, have it shown that you're wrong, or you start coloring in the lines and making some sense instead of flipping between saying "this is flawless science" and "I've been talking philosophy." You leaving so you don't have to suffer through any of those option is definitely a viable alternative but most people consider that akin to pronouncing your opponent the victor anyway so there's really not much you can do if you want to avoid that.

Actually that's me being sarcastic. I know damn well that people don't get phased by loses an argument on the interweb.

How can I quote mine them out of context? Unlike you I leave the whole post in tact.

Do I smell a No True Scotsman fallacy in the making?

ANY intelligent person can just go visit the Brian Yoder's Fallacy Zoo site and read what the fallacies I've mentioned are and then judge for themselves if what you've done is really what I've called you on. ANY not-so-intelligent person can do it.

So really it's only busy, lazy or disinterested people who will have any question about which of us has been dishonest or ignorant.

I'd say this is a bad situation for you but instead I'm going to ask people to visit the site (or wikipedia or really just toss "fallacy" into google and click whatever pages come up,) and say if they think so.

Actually I don't really mind you. I spoke a bit unclearly here but I only care about showing your arguments for what they are. You're being a bit of an obstacle to that but I expected that walking into this.

You really need to get creative to give you the ok before you get to go equivocating intelligent design with intelligence itself.


http://www.goodart.org/fallazoo.htm
It's not very long and it will show you most of the common fallacies.
Alternatively you could just copy and paste any particular fallacy I've named into google and find an explanation of it in a snap.

If it's not your logic can be sound but your argument will collapse should the premise be found to be false.

Since we've already had some solipsism dragged into this topic that is effectively the format all things take.
If reality is more or less as we view it and the Earth and Venus and Sun are real then we have seen shadows on Venus and we cannot have nice circular orbits for the planets thus the Earth goes around the Sun, to paraphrase something I went into many pages ago.

Could be is a very important modifier.

Congratulations on no fallacies so far.

Well no, they would be emergent properties.

Picture a chess board. All of the pieces are quite simple. Chess strategy is not a property of any of the pieces but only comes about when the are put together in a unit- the game of chess. Chess strategy is as real as, say Democracy, but you obviously can't describe Democracy in terms or atomic interactions- trying to work on such different scales is effectively meaningless to us.

Now, you can probably tell that the properties of atoms or various quantum particles are essential for something like democracy or chess strategy to ever come about but the properties come from many pieces and aren't at all visible to us looking at the single units.

Again with the "nobody gets to have opinions but me" hullabaloo.
-_-

Haven't I been asking you that for pages and pages? So far you've said something about 100 atoms magically indicates it but I haven't worked out if that's science or philosophy so I don't know where else to go with it.

If I didn't know better I'd say this was shaping up to be a non-designer argument.

If you'd actually stick to that line of thinking there wouldn't be so many problems between us.

The default isn't about playing favorites. It's about not having anything that doesn't need to be there.

It's not a conclusion. I've already told you that it's the starting point.

Now please stop trying to treat my view like an opposing religion.

"We've concluded" doesn't match with "for him, that's all that matters."

Do any of you understand what fallacies are?

I'm referring to all of the sciences put together without a creator from outside of "the box" having any involvement in it.

I guess, to condense it down to a single phrase, I'm talking about order without intention.

When people told me it wasn't possible for my opinion to be right.

I'm not particularly fond of people flipping between "it's just my opinion" and "well it's proven now" anyway though so even if you had been agreeing with me and doing that I'd call it if I saw it.

That is what Abra has been saying. I tell him it's neither of his options and he tells me if it's not a designer then it's random chance no matter how much I protest. If he would actually pose a philosophical argument for why it must be that way we might get somewhere but he is behaving as if he is some higher authority and we just have to accept that without explanation.

He is very much telling me that I don't get to choose my own opinion. Just look and it's visible whether you delve into the psychology of it or not.

You should probably look at what Abra has actually been saying. You're against using the term creator but he's all for it and has very much posed his view as exactly that.

He refers to all of existence as "God's dirt" and insists that our universe couldn't have any kind of order if a supreme being hadn't personally made it so. This isn't even compatible with what Sky has been talking about because the "where are all the failed universes" question necessarily means that you can have physical rules that can result in order if combined appropriately and that it should be possible for all combinations to exist but with the caveat that that's only an idea until we start finding other universes.

You three would really be at each other's throats if you didn't view each other as support to help you appear as the majority in here.

Do you worship that consciousness we are all connected to?

If you count faulty evidence then I agree. There's no legitimate evidence though, or would you like to list all of your arguments again so I can tell everyone which fallacies they fall into again?

Science or philosophy? You really can't go jumping back and forth between the two so frequently.

Can you present a single piece of evidence without using fallacies?


But for pages and pages you've been insisting that it is the argument that everything around us is random. I much prefer this newer stance of yours though so I will request you stick to it.

You're confusing when we use it with what it is.

-

Almost all of my posts are rather huge. Why do you keep dropping the majority of what I say? I would think it was to make it look like you're saying ten times as much as I am but I'm in the interest of not just saying that I'm open minded but actually giving people the chance to present a case for themselves,
so here you go~

But it doesn't really work. What you must mean is that it is something you are willing to accept.

But you shouldn't. As we heard awhile ago humans are mortal. Dogs are mortal. Dogs are humans.

Now abra has been arguing in the form of A then B, B only if A and that would work much better but I'm disputing the B only if A part. He's constantly swapping between whether he's talking about science of philosophy though as if to make things so difficult to follow that anyone chasing him would veer off into a canyon or something.

It's ok though. He's much easier to follow when you realize the bulk of his argument is "my argument is awesome." It gets a bit repetitive telling him that it's not and that I've answered all of his science questions with science while he hasn't formally posed any philosophy questions but if I keep at it he'll either do that or look like an idiot when it becomes clear to everyone that he's not able to. I personally prefer the first option but at least the second would give some closure to this and I could get back to just talking to you and JB.



Sorry, Sky, unless you accept what "works" for Creative you'll forever be deemed to be an illogical person by him. Or like the original Hindu people I will, gasp, have an effect on his thinking as I continue to show how formal logic works and that it's a good thing.
*They had their civilization taken over by barbarians but their culture conquered the barbarian one from within.

This thread wasn't about establishing proof for not-creation. I've only gone on about how atoms work to try and teach you what a false dilemma is and why it's fallacious,
you sh_t for brains narcissist.

Now, you already get how ad hominems aren't real arguments. That's what fallacy means. As I've said all of your arguments for a designer are easily identifiable fallacies. They aren't arguments for your position any more that the italicized thing there was an argument for mine.

I sank your battleship and you can say that you wanted the water in there all you want but it won't make it real.

It's odd how you recognize that knocking down arguments on "your side" doesn't amount to a win while you've been doing exactly that and declaring victory from the start. By odd I of course mean ironic but I'm trying to be subtle about pointing out your personality flaws because I don't have anything against you; I just want to show that your arguments don't hold water and that's got nothing to do with who you are as a person, or at least not within the confines of this thread.

Well yes, definitely. Solipsism is philosophy so it can't be wrong but it's definitely a weak and useless philosophy.

No intention behind it? Ok, I don't have any problem with saying that. We've definitely got at least some intelligence on at least one rock in this galaxy so that's all the criteria right there.

Too bad that's never what people mean by ID though.

That's very nearly what JB has been saying. If she'd just drop that surrogate god out of the picture she'd have...
well, a worthless position that doesn't really say anything. Not wrong but definitely weak.

I'm not so prideful that I couldn't argue that but I feel it would be too great a tangent for this thread and honestly I don't think you have the philosophical maturity to make it interesting.

Computers aren't intelligent. Why should anyone care about how they photons at you from their screens?

If not intelligent that means it would essentially be automatic and as the argument was that there is no intelligence period that means your caring about it is equally automatic. As non-intelligent beings any "why should" question would be irrelevant. It all becomes do or do not.

So for anyone following this loosely it's ironic how he takes this supposed designer for granted while he levies these complaints against anyone who opposes him.

He doesn't seem to care about being a hypocrite though as he just brushes anything he can't handle under the rug and returns to his habitual argument while declaring it even better than it was before.

Bull.
You're constantly saying "I think chance is the only alternative and chance is ridiculous so there must be design." Never all in one sentence but most of you posts progress in that order and the longer ones loop back to further pick at random chance like it's the only possibility besides creator.

Radioactivity is the reason we don't commonly see atoms larger than 92 protons. If not for radioactivity then the energy of a supernova exploding would be the reason we didn't see higher because it takes more and more energy as you count up and the biggest supernovae are rarer than common sized ones (gasp!) so you'd see fewer of the largest ones.

Now I'm focusing on relative amounts because you've used the term abundance. I've had a little more than an introduction to astronomy so I know exactly what "abundance of the elements" refers to.

Nonetheless this is still an explanation for why you wouldn't see infinitely big atoms. Maybe if proton scale particles were irreducible you would see some truly tremendous particles at the centers of black holes but because of that neutron rebound in supernovae we'd have been largely left at iron and you'd be asking why there were only 30 atoms (Iron is number 26.)

And without any particular energy required to stick another proton into a nucleus? Well then we would see atoms just continue on up to arbitrarily large numbers but even then we would see fewer of the larger ones because of the 10 marbles in a jar thing I explained.

And if elements we just irreducible themselves and you had no particular order to count them in? Well f_ck, that's too different from our universe for me to even stab at how many we should see. It would depend entirely on what made an atom a different element but by this point we've stripped all the properties of an atom away to nothing.

It doesn't explain the physical constants but you're radically opposed to the current attempts at figuring those out and nobody here is enough of mathematician to understand that explanation anyway.

Other fields, however, do explain why. Usually in simple math.
Survival of the fittest? Well when you know fitness is measured in reproductive success then it's obvious that those who make lots of healthy babies keep their genes around while people who make only sickly or no babies do not. Those that don't survive aren't, gasp, still around years later.

Or are you going to insist that I explain why having something come to an end should mean that it doesn't continue? I don't think anyone else would agree with you if you tried to say that a non-designed universe shouldn't have any continuity.

What science doesn't do is tell point to a single thing and say it is the explanation for everything.

But hey, if you want to insist that science doesn't explain anything fine. Big deal. It's not like there is anything else that explains anything.

Part of describing cause and effect necessarily involves explaining things.

Because anyone that disagrees with you is just too stupid to understand? Yawn, I've heard better people rattle on about that.

From my perspective it's been more like your cat trying to convert me to the religion of the magical food dispensing hand. Free petting in the afterlife.

You've been insisting you've got solid science in all the posts I had been replying to so I stayed on that track. If you want to talk philosophy let's do it. Present your argument.

JB and you are talking about very different things. You just stick the same title on them so you consider each other allies.

And you keep saying that you see something that couldn't be anything but the work of a designer. Admit that you don't see anything that conflicts with a universe that had no designer and I'll gladly lighten up about that.

Sort of. Science is the business of working things out backwards every time you don't get a chance to watch it happen yourself. We've watched quite a bit happen and in the fields you scoff at they're trying to work backwards from those things. After we've worked backwards far enough and have potentially figured out the earlier step we go about trying to duplicate it or otherwise check for it in ways we hadn't yet and if we confirm it people throw parties because they just got themselves a big check from an investor that will pay for them working on another step.

So in a sense it takes what already exists for granted but only until it's relatively able to work out why that exists. Turns out the thing before it gets taken for granted for awhile but then people start scratching at that to try and figure out what's under it and so on.

Of course, if we could just start at the beginning and watch everything from there we'd do it in a heart beat but we can't so we're stuck taking the long route of figuring things out backwards.

I can see a larger picture than that. There is at least as much folly in calling it the act of a celestial father figure.

Are you willing to argue that 5+7=12 is evidence of a creator? There are infinite numbers, if it's all just chance why should those two added up just equal one number when they could equal infinite numbers?

I've just been responding to you on the terms you laid out. Present some philosophy and I'll jump right on that train.

Life has the nature it does because atoms have the nature they do because of the four fundamental forces having the nature they do because of, maybe, strings having the nature they do because of membranes having the nature they do and so on. Is your best argument against this that "it's not a religion"?

Oh the irony~

Well no, I don't think mufflers and such assemble themselves (and besides, most of the parts have the name of the manufacturer stamped onto them.)

It's just adorable watching you go through the motions of this argument as if you're talking to someone else who has made different arguments.

Oh I know that. Because of the Calabi Yau manifold and vibrational quanta. I don't understand those well enough to simplify them a whole lot for everyone but they'd be the reasons those particles are as they are.

Ultimately it goes back to stuff like how combining ten marbles into on unit gives you fewer units than if you left each marble as it's own unit.

You seem a bit behind the times. It's time to move that goalpost back.

You haven't asked any mature questions about them. I'm not going to be so condescending to tell you that I know what you meant to ask and go on about that. Ask me questions that actually ask about these things and I'll go into it.

I'm going to give you a check plus anyway because although this argument is basically against the limits we had ten years ago at least you didn't overshoot by two or three decades like most of the people I see arguing this sort of thing.

Well, if you want to point to the fossil record and complain about a gap and then when someone shows you a creature that fits in the gaps through a bigger fit because now there are two gaps, one on each side of it...

Just keep moving that goalpost~

I'd say don't watch it because the author wrote it to be an *******. Seriously, he was pissed off about the Narnia books having some themes similar to the Bible so he decided it was propaganda and then instead of working to unraveling the propaganda he just wrote counter propaganda that was a whole lot less subtle.

Or don't watch it because the main character is a completely unlikable brat who only does anything good randomly against everything the rest of her behavior has established or because the evil organization that's supposed to be the Church doesn't pose a threat so much as a nuisance...[/rant]

No, it shows a problem in rules that were laid out.
Do you even pay attention to what's happening or just look for baseless ways to declare that I've lost the argument?



It's awfully dirty to hang around saying "I'm just explaining my view point. It's only an opinion" and then declare that you've won an argument.

Which is it? Are you arguing or are you just letting people know WHAT you think? Choose one and stick with it.

By that logic God or any original designer would be impossible.

Should I take this as support for the naturalistic origin side of this discussion?

Ooh, but you're not saying you've got any proof for design. *ghost noises*

False dichotomy fallacy. You can't pretend there aren't more options and knocking down one doesn't prop your up. It doesn't matter if you're dealing with science of philosophy here; the fallacy is invalid in both.

So please, give us an argument for any of this without fallacies?


I've been trying to be relatively nice to you but that post deserves a dunce cap. Each and every thing in this thread presented as "evidence" has be fallacious.

It's not "I see no evidence of intelligent design" but rather "Ok, that's not evidence in science of philosophy. Can you show me anything else?"


An argument not based on fallacy would be just lovely.



It feels a lot like being advertised to. "If I hear about those penis pills just a few tens of thousands of times surely I'll eventually decide to buy some!"

So you're saying we need to find some omnipresent-creative-consciousness dung?
Well I guess that would work but how would you tell designer dung apart from regular animal dung? Eye patterns carved into it?



You quote mine too much. It is an intellectually filthy practice.


And I'm sure your ego is as overblown as it is simply because of the rarity of people who have taken both classes.

Your philosophy is weak and your science is bad. With me around you can't dodge the danger in one by moving into the other and if you keep trying to I'm going to hound you until you're trapped in a corner and, well, basically humiliated.

Thanks for insisting that your science was fine for pages and pages before admitting that we had been in philosophy though. I absolutely love watching people change their point so they don't have to admit they were wrong.

I think the that the good people get a second life that lasts forever kind of devalues the first life to them. Not everyone but definitely a lot of people.

If you accept the evolution thing it's worth noting that we're less promiscuous than chimps.

The go forth and multiply thing seems like kind of a lazy alteration thing though. We've got really low fertility and there are tons of animals out there that have almost guaranteed chances of getting pregnant every time they have sex. Knowing that it is possible to set a body up like that why wouldn't they have the ovaries and uterus do something similar? Just making three times as many eggs and ovulating three times as often in the same menstruation cycle would boost fertility a ton.

Isn't it obvious? If his opponents ever fail to answer a question they automatically lose because the quality of the explanation doesn't matter here- it's just warring religion where whoever explains the most wins and hes gone and declared that the word creator always works as an answer.

It was nice of him to make that post about how the pink elephantic smooge doesn't explain anything though so anybody with the capacity to see how little the word creator/designer actually explains shouldn't be swayed.