Newton, Einstein, Naturalism, and Walking Fish- Naturalism vs Supernaturalism. Put up or Shut up!!!

by whereami 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  EntirelyPossible

  ... or, what Sizemik said.
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  dark angle

  Thank you sizemik for that. ill post that and see what will be his reaction.

  @ EntirelyPossible,

  Exactly what i told him. i said:

  could the other explanation be magic and miracle?

  he said: knowing that DNA dissolves in water poses a major threat to the popular probiotic soup. Evolution theory needs a fixing.

  me: all scientific disciplines are constantly being fixed, improved, & reorganize to accommodate newer data based on experiments( such endevour makes science solid & stronger as time passes). Its not evolutionary theory that needs to address the problem you pointed out. Its another branch in science dealing with the origin of life, Abiogenesis.Google is our friend.

  He then made a joke:

  Q: How did our universe begin?
  Religion: God did it.
  Science(atheist): No, its chance!
  Religion: Read the bible, God did it.
  Science(atheist): Read our books, it's all chance and randomness.
  Religion: The bible is divinely inspired and is accurate.
  Science(atheist): No it has flaws, our books are more accurate..ahh..soon..yes we have faith it will be accurate soon.
  Religion: Now both of us has faith..its even.

  Me:

  In quest for a proper answer in nature, beliefs or strong beliefs, are null and irrelevant in science. what matters is evidence and what it most probably imply. In fact, new fields of study in science such as Abiogenesis, string theory, ect ... their findings are probationary in nature & are finely educated guesses until more observation, validation & test gives it more credit (or discredit). Science has the habit of increasing the precision of its theories in time. that is not faith, it is an observable fact.Faith requires no evidence, testability, & observation. that dialogue is colloquial.

  Those were some of our discussion. But i don't seem to have an answer to his first question about solubility of DNA & RNA
• 

  dark angle

  here's his rebuttal (in blue, mine in black) about my post above:

  From an agnostic point of view that dialog is entertaining and fascinatingly true. Atheists are using science to discredit the belief of a God, while religion is using it too as evidence of God's existence. I posted that DNA and RNA will di ssolve in water and needs enzyme to replicate, while enzyme needs proteins produced by living organisms..so another chicken and egg puzzle for evolution. For me abiogenesis is an excuse for those evolutionists who wants to avoid being questioned on the origin of life. If the concept of evolution in a whole requires so many different biological theories, how is that superior to the theory of intelligent design? Religion says God did it. And scientists who believed in God pushed on to what they're doing "examining with excitement the works of God". So I still find no reason to replace the intelligent design with another..not yet.

  me: First of, ID doesn't prove God at all. what ID is struggling to show is that there must be intelligence behind earths biological life. If there's intelligence to be found then God is one of the valid options to consider. However, careful o bservations of "design" structures of living organism and organs does reveals many fundamental flaws. eg. the light sensitive cells found in humans (& mammals) are facing backwards and the nerves are blocking light coming in. Other creatures has their light sensitive cells facing forward and nerves are behind the cells, not blocking light, thus providing them with optimal sight & configuration. google is agin useful for us. you can read it more here:http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-not-so-intelligent-design-of-the-human-eye/

  2nd, Intelligent Design, does not offer any useful advancement & prediction on the application of science:"ID seeks to redefine science in a fundamental way that would invoke supernatural explanations, a viewpoint known as theistic science . It puts forward a number of arguments, the most prominent of which are irreducible complexity and specified complexity, in support of the existence of a designer.[4] The scientific community rejects the extension of science to include supernatural explanations in favor of continued acceptance of methodological naturalism,[n 3][n 4][5][6] and has rejected both irreducible complexity and specified complexity for a wide range of conceptual and factual flaws."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design. ID though quite convincing for religious people in its arguments, is a pseudo science since it is vain attempt to rescue the bronze age idea of theism.

  3rd, Scientific fields are highly specified disciplines, each specializing on a particular field. Evolutionary theory deals on how life diversifies, it deals about the mechanisms of how life evolves. eg. Natural selection,Biased mutation, Genetic drift, Genetic hitchhiking,& Gene flow. Essentially it only covers existing life, it seeks to explain how life got to be so diverse. Evolutionary theory, therefore does not explain the origin of life, but explains the origin of species (or speciation) .On the other hand, Abiogensis deals with the start of life, sometimes called chemical biology. in other words it is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose. wiki does better in explaining this. :) So where Abiogenesis ends evolution starts. thats the difference. Of course these theories are not viewed as divinely inspired or the ultimate truth like religious claims. rather they are, within our current understanding, the best solutions humans ever created that can be argued, tested, verified, improved and can produce measurable advances in applied science.http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/evolution-in-medicine/

  Him: ty for the links. But can you see what is common among so-called scientific articles? Their line of thinking will mislead many people, especially to those who are still doubting who's right and wrong, in this case atheist and theist.
  A qout e from the Human eye link: "The most obvious design flaw of the retina is that the cellular layers are backwards. Light has to travel through multiple layers in order to get to the rods and cones that act as the photo-receptors. There is no functional reason for this arrangement – it is purely quirky and contingent."
  Notice the last sentence, what is he to conclude that there is NO functional reason for this arrangement?I might agree with him if he is more humble by saying like "we still don't know the reason" or "presently we cannot find any reason" instead. Tonsils were considered before as useless. The human eye is working pretty well for us ever since..just look at what we have achieved so far because of it. Of course our eye is not designed like the CCTV camera, or an HD Cannon, but it's working pretty awesome. An eagle's eye is very powerful one, but when one biologist will examine it and say it is flawed, then I find that rather funny. Those videos and articles posted are very informative. But at the same time one must not forget what Ecclesiastes 12:12 says. true, but I would rather see this differences as "trade offs" not flaws. Me: not so fast.. you have briefly know the non optimal configuration of eyes.Of course you will feel "its working pretty well". its all we have experienced. But the human eye can only see 3 fundamental colors. other creatures can see more colo rs than we do. The eyes of the octopus has its nerve fibers optimally configured, (it's placed behind the receptors, not in front of it, thus not blocking light coming in) and can see much more clearer than we do. Its a little odd that a creator would give humans the crowning achievement of his creation a less than optimal eye. :) hehehe maybe He knows its not fun to see on Xray.. and saying its pretty working well, is not anthropocentric..many animals are way superior to humans in certain ways..like the octopus mentioned. It's clearly a trade off hahahhahaha.seriously though. the more i read and study, the more i see a pattern. that the complexity that we see today, that thrilled us, that aroused our curiosity, was in fact a gradual, step by step, improvement of previous designs. if we can rewi nd back to the past, we can see, how the gradual ramp of improvements occur in biological life, and eventually in the most distant past, around 3 billion years ago, life ultimately was very simple in form. Equally important , we can see also the extinct species, designs that were unsuccessful to cope with the challenges of the environment. also interesting, the extinct designs are more numerous than what is alive today! They look like failed experiments.Now for those who believe on a God designer, this is a real problem. How can an all knowing God create mistakes? why does he make simple lifeforms at the start? why not make full blown complex creatures at once as the bible says? To me this is a very serious flaw of the Bible or perhaps of our understanding of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_events nice timeline! how did prokaryote evolved into eukaryote?
  " The difference between the structure of prokaryotes and eukaryotes is so great that it is sometimes considered to be the most important distinction among groups of organisms." Personally i don't know that yet. there are more qualified web pages that discuss that evolution. My point however is to show that the overall idea of Evolutionary theory fits well with observable fact, or with reality as disclosed by the f ossil record, genetics, biology etc... that life began simple and gradually became as complex as today. If the account of the mythical creation were true, we should see complexity right at the beginning, we will also see perfection in designs, we will not see extinctions of species and Mass extinction events. I must accept what is true, regardless how painful it is to disregard my cherished belief. I also must see reality without the the lense of religious influence to accept nature and the truth it tells. i found this. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0/endosymbiosis_03 BTW, its interesting that on the link you gave about Prokaryote, Wiki has explained how its evolution occurred. you just need to look down a little more. Also, i can't find any reason why you say "its a trade off". Trade off for what? why create an ultimate creature with some trade offs? Why make humans inferior to animals in some aspects? after all, the scriptures say we are in his likeness/image. are Gods' senses inferior to animals as well? This looks like a very shaky speculation. "An eagle's eye is very powerful one, but when one biologist will examine it and say it is flawed, then I find that rather funny." Its not the eagles eye being shown to be flawed. its the Human eye, having blind spots due to design flaws.n erves blocking vision. its like a camera with wires crossing the lense! That is funny! also, when creationist, the bronze age followers, argues against evolution, they end up questioning the origin of life. plain silly and ignorant! its like asking & discrediting a dentist because he cannot help treat a cardiovascular patient. that is funny! I almost forgot to state that we believe Adam and Eve to be perfectly created, perfect mentally & physiologically, and that they resemble the image of God. That for me as a very compelling argument that the "trade off" solution doesn't fit well with the stone age creation idea. but it did put my head in a spin for a while. Moreover, the DNA & RNA problem you pointed out does not necessarily equates that creationism is wright. It just shows that the answer is not yet known, at least to us, and that there must be a natural explanation for that brilliant question. A miraculous explanation will be a dead end and cannot foster imaginative and critical thinking to further our understanding of the hidden laws of nature. (supposing of course that this problem was not already solved by science, perhaps we just need to search further in this regard)

  No response after this yet.
• 

  EntirelyPossible

  Tell him a)it's prebiotic soup and b)the conditions weren't just water. There were hot vents, other chemicals, energy being introduced. The addition of minerals and other chemicals has been shown to slow or prevent the degradation or organic compounds and c) RNA is now routinely manufactured in labs in the presence of water, so it is clearly not impossible.
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  dark angle

  Fine points, i will post those. thanks.
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  sizemik

  Perhaps on a more basic level you could point out that solubility is not the same as destruction.

  Using sugar as an illustration . . . ask him what happens when it dissolves . . . then ask him what's left after the water is subsequently evaporated.

  Also . . . intelligent design is NOT another scientific theory . . . it's about as far away from scientific theory as you can get.

  You're doing pretty well actually . . . it's not the weight of your argument that's lacking.
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  dark angle

  Thank you sizemik. Just trying to help my brother out.
• 

  hooberus

  me:

  First of, ID doesn't prove God at all. what ID is struggling to show is that there must be intelligence behind earths biological life. If there's intelligence to be found then God is one of the valid options to consider. . .

  2nd, Intelligent Design, does not offer any useful advancement & prediction on the application of science:"ID seeks to redefine science in a fundamental way that would invoke supernatural explanations, a viewpoint known as theistic science. It puts forward a number of arguments, the most prominent of which are irreducible complexity and specified complexity, in support of the existence of a designer.[4] The scientific community rejects the extension of science to include supernatural explanations in favor of continued acceptance of methodological naturalism,

  If, God potentially is one of the "valid options" to consider, then shouldn't the "scientific community" not "reject" him even as an option?
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  dark angle

  Thanks for pointing the irony out.

  The first qoute, the one that you underline was my opinion, my own idea if there should be design to be found.

  the 2nd quote you pointed out was the quoted statement from Wiki about ID. Its the reason why it looks incongruent.

  Interesting irony nevertheless. :)
• 

  botchtowersociety

  DNA and RNA dissolve in water, so there could not even be water in the evolutionist's primeval soup. Sounds like a major threat to the theory.

  That is just a really ignorant question to ask. Dissolving in water does not mean a DNA or RNA molecule breaks up into its constituent atoms. Sugar dissolves in water, but sugar retains its molecular configuration after dissolving. Dissolved sugar is still sugar. Dissolved salt is still salt. Dissolved DNA is still DNA.