by MegaDude 22 Replies latest jw friends
In light of the debate going on, I enjoyed this article in the Dallas Observer that talks about, among other things, why one of the world's foremost atheists, Antony Flew, came to believe in God. Believers and atheists alike will find it interesting.
Teaser:
http://www.dallasobserver.com/2007-05-03/news/god-in-the-details/
Does any body on the creationist side ever get that posting some that claims to be science or atheist proof ever bother to peer review things before they say them.
Peer review not nessesary being a buddy but, a person with credentials in said field.
Roy Abraham Varghese has a God equation. It is self-evident. He sees it in a grain of sand. He sees it in bees, especially bees. By rights, bees shouldn't fly. The haphazard way in which they beat their wings simply shouldn't haul their pot-bellied bodies aloft. But they fly, hovering and reversing over bluebonnets and bachelor buttons. Bees flout the laws of physics and aerodynamics, a puzzle that perplexed scientists for 70 years. "How is it that they can do that?" he asked in a 2005interview at Perry's Restaurant while smacking on bites of filet mignon. "The fact that these insects can do this..." Varghese trailed off.
Bees flout the laws of physics and aerodynamics,
No they very much obey them.
a puzzle that perplexed scientists for 70 years. "How is it that they can do that?"
These creatioinist scientist much not watch discovery channel. I have seen why and how so many times it sickens me.
Varghese trailed off.
Cheif Wiggums does this a lot we he is stumped by reason. So does grampa simpson for no reason other than old age.
Roy Abraham Varghese, theistic apologist and god-bothering author from the "Institute of Metascientific Research", was recently interviewed by the Dallas Observer. Varghese is widely credited as "the man who won over Anthony Flew", and is now currently working on a book called "There Is A God" with Flew.
Varghese is an interesting character because his contention is that without a meta-intelligence, all science devolves into incoherence if you drill-down deep enough, or pull back far enough.
It's a lot of pseudo-scientific nonsense of course, a philosophically slick update to the theistic evolutionist's mantra.
More below the fold...
[Varghese] "Information precedes its manifestation in matter," he writes. Matter and energy are merely vehicles of all information in the known universe. "The next breakthrough is realizing that the foundation of it all is intelligence," writes Varghese. "Implicit in all its phases of discovery is the greatest insight of modern science: Everything is intelligence."
This intelligence is clearly visible, Varghese says, in the phenomenon of protein folding, the process by which proteins self-assemble from different sequences of 20 standard amino acid molecules. These proteins, which assume precise structural or functional roles in the flesh, are assembled at a rate of roughly 2,000 per second in every cell in the body (save for sex and blood cells) from thousands of these acids. The process is so complex, Varghese says, citing Scientific American, that a supercomputer programmed with the precise rules for protein folding would take billions of years to generate one final folded protein from 100 amino acids. Schroeder says chemical laws may explain the sugars, bases and phosphate components of DNA but not its rich information content.
Victor Stenger, author of "God: The Failed Hypothesis" argues that Varghese's philosophy is easily refuted. He notes that the "laws" of physics are not really "laws" at all - but rather they are human inventions. Arbitrary guidelines that we create to help us describe our observations.
Mathematics is also a human construction, not a universal truth. It's an arbitrarily-constructed tool that we use to help us observe the universe.
[Stenger] "The most fundamental laws of physics are not restrictions on the behavior of matter, rather they are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behavior."
"There is no reason that we can see now, from the study of the brain, that would require you to introduce any immaterial element."
But the best part of the article came on the last of 6 pages. Varghese employs the age-old "what about bees?" argument a lot. He says that it is a mystery that will never be solved, and uses it as "evidence" that is mystical over-arching meta-intelligence exists. In fact, he uses it with the author of the Dallas Observer article.
But the closing paragraph sums it all up for me:
[link] Still, it seems wise to remain open to the unexpected strangeness of science. Just two months after that 2005 lunch meeting at Perry's where Varghese rhapsodized on the wonders and mysteries of hovering bees, researchers from the California Institute of Technology and University of Nevada Las Vegas announced a startling discovery based on evidence from high-speed digital photography and sophisticated robotics. After 70 years of confounding confusion, scientists had finally unraveled the secrets of bee flight.
Heheh... Science is not a religion or a dogma. It is a process and a tool that we use to observe and record our universe and discover reality. It is a dynamic and constantly-moving process.
Deciphering The Mystery Of Bee Flight ( see link )
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060111082100.htm
Bees have evolved flight muscles that are physiologically very different from those of other insects. One consequence is that the wings have to operate fast and at a constant frequency or the muscle doesn't generate enough power," Dickinson says.
"This is one of those cases where you can make a mistake by looking at an animal and assuming that it is perfectly adapted. An alternate hypothesis is that bee ancestors inherited this kind of muscle and now present-day bees must live with its peculiarities," Dickinson says.
It would seem the word "never" is never a good word to say when speaking of your beliefs, whether atheist or believer.
Hi MegaDude. Nice read. Great conclusion.
I wonder
how wonder
and wonder at wonder
can be quenched with one word
be it god
or intelligenceor wonder.
5go Interesting that very idea of flight of heaviear than air machines was "Perr_Reviewed" and denied for 3 yaars until those "pear-reviewers" themselves saw the machine. Interesting if Einstain would be able to publicise his works on Relativity if he would be peer-reviewed by Nutonian scientists who believed in absolutes of time and space? See you can't promote relativity theory if you are reviewed by ones who believe in static universe. You can't promote scientific theories of Intelligent origins of everything if PeerReviewers blindly believe in Philosophical Materialism. But what is nice with science is that it does not care about what ppl believe, it just goes... slower or faster but it rolls over any ideology and faith based restrictions of ANY kind.
"Varghese says the foundation of the matrix is the God equation: God must exist and cannot not exist. In other words, for anything to exist at all, something must have always existed. This primal essence cannot possess any limitation because then it would necessarily require a source that transcends such limitation. And so on, without end, back to God."
> This is semantic jibberish, nothing more, nothing less. It answers no questions, and does not prove the existence of some particular "deity", much less a "catholic" style god creature that Varghese worships. He seems to consider "god" some "primal essence"? OK, so what? You can call the universe whatever you like, you can name it whatever you like, that does not impart upon it a "personality" or even a self-contained "will".
> This statement is just silly: "for anything to exist at all, something must have always existed"
>OK, PROVE IT. What does he base this assumption on? How does he know, with complete, unerring certainty that "something" cannot arise from what we consider "nothing"? Can "nothing" even be? An obvious response is that the universe has simply always existed. Now, why does a "god" even NEED to be included in this context? Events randomly happen, we already know this. We know the atomic and subatomic constituents of the universe and have a reasonably good understanding of the space-time universal fabric. None of these phehomena "require" some active force to keep in motion, they follow their own, self-imposed mechanisms.
Finally, he betrays his own intellectual bankruptcy with his final words: "And so on, without end, back to God"....again, this strange god-creature seems to keep popping into his conception witn neither rhyme nor reason! Why "back to god", why not "back to the universal constant" or "back to entropy".....both are equally valid "words" to throw in, and both are equally speculative. Again, like all similar "philosophers" attempting to apply scientific reasoning to prove the existence of some god-entity, we are left only with empty rhetoric, and cute, warm and fuzzy little stories about bumble-bees.......gee, sorta sounds like......a "Watchtower" article?
5go Interesting that very idea of flight of heaviear than air machines was "Perr_Reviewed" and denied for 3 yaars until those "pear-reviewers" themselves saw the machine.
Ok asside from the mispelled words. what evidence do you bring to prove you know what the heck you are talking about.
Despite Lilienthal's fate, the brothers favored his strategy: to practice gliding in order to master the art of control prior to attempting flight with a motor. The death of British aeronaut Percy Pilcher in another hang gliding crash in 1899 only reinforced their opinion that a reliable method of pilot control, not elusive built-in stability, was the key to successful—and safe—flight. At the outset of their experiments they regarded control as the unsolved third part of "the flying problem". They believed sufficiently promising knowledge of the other two issues—wings and engines—already existed. [10] The Wright brothers thus differed sharply from more experienced practitioners of the day, notably Ader, Maxim and Langley who built powerful engines, attached them to airframes equipped with unproven control devices, and expected to take to the air with no previous piloting experience. Though agreeing with Lilienthal's idea of practice, the Wrights saw that his method of balance and control—shifting his body weight—was fatally inadequate. [11] They were determined to find something better.
Wright 1899 kite: front and side views, with control sticks. Wing-warping is shown in lower view. (Wright Brothers drawing in Library of Congress)
Based on observation, Wilbur concluded that birds changed the angle of the ends of their wings to make their bodies roll right or left. [12] The brothers decided this would also be a good way for a flying machine to turn—to "bank" or "lean" into the turn just like a bird—and just like a person riding a bicycle, an experience with which they were thoroughly familiar. Equally important, they hoped this method would enable recovery when the wind tilted the machine to one side (lateral balance). They puzzled over how to achieve the same effect with man-made wings and eventually discovered wing-warping when Wilbur idly twisted a long inner tube box at the bicycle shop. [13]
Other aeronautical investigators regarded flight as if it were not so different from surface locomotion, except the surface would be elevated. They thought in terms of a ship's rudder for steering, while the flying machine remained essentially level in the air, as did a train or an automobile or a ship at the surface. The idea of deliberately leaning, or rolling, to one side either seemed undesirable or did not enter their thinking. [14] Some of these other investigators, including Langley and Chanute, sought the ideal of "inherent stability," believing the pilot of a flying machine would not be able to react quickly enough to wind disturbances to effectively use mechanical controls. The Wright brothers, on the other hand, wanted the pilot to have absolute control. [15] For that reason, their early designs made no concessions toward built-in stability (such as dihedral wings). They deliberately designed their 1903 first powered flyer with anhedral (drooping) wings, which are inherently unstable, but less susceptible to upset by gusty sidewinds.
Funny history does not agree with your statement.
Kid-A
> This statement is just silly: "for anything to exist at all, something must have always existed"
>OK, PROVE IT. What does he base this assumption on? How does he know, with complete, unerring certainty that "something" cannot arise from what we consider "nothing"?
I agree that the statement sounds as if his idea is fact, but how do you know it isn't correct?
Does anyone have proof that something can exist WITHOUT something BEFORE it? If so, what....and can it be proved?
My personal feeling ( which don't mean squat) is that anything material must come from a source. To say the universe has always existed with all it's material matter and having absolutely NOTHING before it is proposterous. Hey, did I spell proposterous right?
Gumby
An obvious response is that the universe has simply always existed.
Prove it.
Since you haven't been in existence forever, you can only ASSume this is the case.
Warlock
