by juandefiero 375 Replies latest jw friends
God does exist . . . but only as a pernicious thought virus in the minds of believers.
There is no proof for the actual extra-cerebral existence of God. That is why religionists invented the concept of faith.They tell you it's virtuous to be credulous and sinful to be skeptical. Thus they make a virtue out of folly and they demonize wisdom and sound philosophy - and that's how we end up with a world of religious quackery.
Slimboyfat: Convergence in evolution and the apparent inevtabilty of consciousness is something to make you wonder if there is a reason for existence.
I am not sure what you mean by "convergence in evolution". Are you saying that because the end product of evolution is a mind that can think, imagine, deal with abstract concepts etc, is potential evidence that the whole process was planned or designed?
I think he means that evolution often discovers similar solutions to challenges.
Flight has evolved at least 3 times and eyes numerous times.
It isn't evidence for any sort of design or purpose. It's just probability and natural selection.
Lenski's experiment demonstrated this point very powerfully...
Juan,
Why are you asking for evidence about the existence of God?
If you are happy being an atheist there is not need to question God's existence.
Kate xx
Yes sort of, but it doesn't need to include a God. Neo-Darwinian ideology suggests that evolution is completely directionless: non-random selection for survival from random variation. Some argue that if we rewound history and let it play out again that life would develop down completely different paths. But reality shows that evolution tends toward similar forms all the time. It seems to have a deeps structure.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/8-uncanny-examples-convergent-evolution
Intelligence itself seems to be the natural result of the process, not a random freak. So what does that tell us? What does it mean if the universe is actually built in such a way as to result in a brain which can understand it?
Of course another possibility is that we don't understand it but merely think we do.
This is a good explanation of the idea and the two different views of the evolution of life forms.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26857-tape-of-life-may-not-always-be-random/
ALL experiments that have been carried ARE causal. In other words one has to create a vacuum to measure these events. The creation of the vacuum is causal.
Sorry, didn't have time to get back to this until now. Yes experiments are causal, but empty space need not have a cause if we're operating under the assumptions you've laid out. Empty space, by definition, is not physical, and therefore can exist without cause - playing by the same rules as your hypothesized intelligence. By Occam's razor we can see that the supposition of preexisting nothing is much simpler (therefore probably more likely) than a preexisting intelligence of infinite complexity. Really, as far as base assumptions go, they're opposite ends of the spectrum.
Another fact you're missing here is that the experimenters that pull a vacuum in order to study quantum fluctuations, not to generate then. Empty space is literally everywhere and all of it is teeming with particles bursting into existence without cause. In fact it appears that most of the mass of the things you interact with everyday comes from the quantum fluctuations of empty space. So while the vacuum has a cause, it is not the cause of the virtual particles that burst into existence from nothing. They literally have no cause.
Current evidence currently points to the big bang. The red shift and cosmic background radiation are the two strongest evidences for this. Corroborative to this is also the Hubble constant. No other theory has such strong support.
Current evidence points to the fact that the universe is expanding from a single point of enormous density. My point was that there are a number of possible, mathematically consistent, explanations for what happened prior to the big bang to cause it. Not all of these require our universe to have burst into existence at that time. If you're interested, I highly suggest you read a book on cosmology. Or you can PM me for some Cliff's notes I guess.
Because it is not physical it therefore must be ex Nihilo. And if that is the case, the strongest idea is God.
Also the argument is logically consistent and uses material implication.
You're still making a huge leap to get to an extra-physical intelligence. A leap, I might add, that needn't be made. All evidence points to the possibility of something from nothing (and in fact the total mass-energy of our universe is zero, supporting the idea that this is what happened) and the early universe appears to have been without intelligent order, which is what you'd expect from a scenario like this.
Furthermore, you have yet to demonstrate any reason why a first cause needs to include some intelligence. Since it is possible to come up with explanations without this, I see no reason to complicate things.
So can I have my $500 now?
Sorry, nope. Even if you were on to something, I don't think you've satisfied the original poster's requirements for evidence of god.
