If not the WT/JW relgion where else are 'we' to go? Why not atheistic/scientific philosophical naturalism?

by Disillusioned JW 99 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    Saying God, a god, or some unknown unspecified intelligent designer entity designed and created something is not a useful idea nor an informative one, unless the person promoting such an idea also says how the being/entity did such (with the idea being testable) - other than by saying by the supernatural or by magic. In contrast the scientific naturalists often state how they think various things (or events) came to be (or took place), or they try to find out how they came to be (or took place). They offer useful ideas - most of which can be tested to at least some extent. But no human has ever truly conclusively demonstrated something supernatural as taking place, nor has any supernatural being (such as God or a god or an extraterrestrial being ['alien'] or an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence) literally revealed himself/herself/itself to any human (despite what the Bible says).

    Hypothetically speaking, if God (or a god or an extraterrestrial being ['alien'] or an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence) exists he/she/it does not communicate with any human, and does make himself/herself/itself visible (or in any other way detectable) to any human, or allow himself/herself/itself to be studied by scientists (or any other human). As a result, the of concept of God (or a god) is useless as an explanation for anything.

    SeaBreeze, thought freedom and truth matters to me. They are part of why I left belief in creationism, in God, and in the supernatural, and became convinced of scientific naturalism. Interestingly (from the perspective of what you said to me about thought freedom) after I told a co-worker today why I no longer believe in God and the supernatural she told me that I exercised my freedom to change my views.

  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    Correction: Where I said "supernatural being (such as God or a god or an extraterrestrial being ['alien'] or an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence)" I should have said "supernatural being (such as God or a god) or an extraterrestrial being ['alien'] or an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence".

  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    Regarding intelligent design (and UFOs/UAPs) the wierd news story at https://www.science.org/content/article/pentagon-ufo-study-led-researcher-who-believes-supernatural might be of interest. The article is called the following. 'Pentagon UFO study led by researcher who believes in the supernatural: Critics dumbfounded by reality TV star Travis Taylor's position as “chief scientist” '

    Consider also the news story located at https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1119941103/astronomer-searches-ocean-extraterrestrial-meteor-alien-life-avi-loeb called "An astronomer thinks alien tech could be on the ocean floor. Not everyone agrees".

  • Sea Breeze
    Sea Breeze

    DJW,

    Here is a science paper that not been refuted. It is by Dr. Sanford, a world renowned Cornell geneticist. In it he lays out the impossibility of mutations and natural selection to account for anything other than destruction.

    He had to have extremely liberal parameters (like population sizes and number of offspring) to get the evolution model to produce even one genetic word of 8 characters. His research shows that it takes 18 billion years (longer that the supposed age of the universe) to get even one 8 letter word from an unintelligent, naturally selected process.

    Of course, proteins require many, many genetic words to create a new protein. So, here we have real science by a world-renowned geneticist that shows the impossibility of mutations and natural selection to account for hardly any useful information from a scientific naturalism point of view.

    Dr. Sanford addressed the prestigious National Institutes of Health and presented his research in the video below. Time Stamp 20:00 is about where he delivers the conclusions. But, the whole video is very informative and explains why evolution cannot work from a genetic point of view..... which is what evolution is all about.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mfn2upw-O8&ab_channel=StandingForTruth

    For comparison, if you go to the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) website you'll find the following question:

    How do you know if you’ve detected an intelligent, extraterrestrial signal?

    Answer? "the existence of coded information on the signal"

    So, on one hand, scientific naturalists accept an intelligent source if they detect even one small coded message from radio waves emitting from space, But when confronted with the 1,206,980 printed pages of coded DNA information in the human genome, they say this is formed by an unintelligent combination of chance and natural selection, which has already been scientifically demonstrated to be impossible.

    So, how are regular people supposed to react when they see this breath-taking level of hypocrisy among scientific naturalists?

    Why would anyone who cares about truth want to adopt this kind of worldview that displays these kinds of thought regulations?

  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    Sea Breeze, have you seen the science fiction movie from the year 2000 called "Mission to Mars"? I have watched it a few times (and I own a DVD of it). I think you would appreciate the movie, considering what you wrote in your most recent post of this topic thread and considering your referring readers to the "Information Enigma" video.

    A considerable portion of the content of your most recent post of this topic thread is quite interesting to me. As a result I read a portion of the article by Dr. Sanford about his theory and formula pertaining to mutation and natural selection. What Sanford said in the abstract of his article sounds impressive to me (thus far, at least) and his scientific credentials are very impressive. If I were to read the entire article much of it would probably be challenging for me to understand, since I did not major in science and due to the technical nature of much of the scientific article. The article also has a differential equation and my college course in differential equations was a very difficult course, thus I likely would difficulty following the mathematics (largely pertaining to what Sanford calls nearly neutral mutations [or something to that effect]). I searched online to see if anyone has written criticisms of Sanford's article but I found no criticisms (at least thus far) of it.

    As a result of being impressed by the above, I later watched much of the Enigma video and parts of it impressed me also. I also read a considerable portion of the article located at https://scienceleadstogod.org/information-enigma-where-does-information-come-from/ , which apparently is a transcript (but with typos) of the Enigma video.

    I intend to comment further in a later post about some of what you said in your most recent post of this topic thread.

  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    I noticed that The Information Enigma video (which Sea Breeze referred to) disagrees with young earth creationism (including the idea of a young biosphere) in a few ways, but that it is in harmony with old earth creationism and an old biosphere. That is because of the following. [Note, that besides watching and listening to the video, one can also read the transcript which is at https://scienceleadstogod.org/information-enigma-where-does-information-come-from/ .]

    The Information Enigma says the Cambrian explosion began 530 million years ago and that is lasted for perhaps ten million years (both in agreement with geologists, except that geologists now say it began about 541 million years ago instead of about 530 million years ago). Notice it says the following.

    "Until 530 million years ago the oceans of the early Earth were almost completely void of animal life.

    Then, within a geologically brief span, of perhaps ten million years, the waters were suddenly alive teeming with a riot of complex animals representing most of the major animal body plans that have ever existed on our planet, know today as the Cambrian Explosion."

    The Information Enigma says that life has been in existence on Earth for at least 3.5 billion years, for it says "Throughout the 3,500 million year history of life on Earth ....".

    The science fiction movie called "Mission to Mars" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_to_Mars ) teaches intelligent design - by ancient Martians. It says that ancient intelligent technologically advanced Martians (whom the movie says had some anatomical resemblance to modern humans) seeded multi-cellular life onto Earth (and that the Earth already had unicellular life at that time) at the start of the Cambrian period by using some DNA which was based upon that of life on Mars. The movie said such brought about the Cambrian explosion. The movie also teaches evolution for it says (or at least visually represents) that the life on Earth evolved over the ensuing hundreds of millions of years, resulting in the species which exist today on Earth - including humans.

    One of the main characters in the movie discovers that there is coded information in a radio signal from a formation located on Mars (that which is called the "Face") and that the code is that of DNA which is entirely the same as human DNA except for not including the last chromosome. As a result, he realizes that some former intelligence on Mars had encoded the radio signal and that it was a message to humans. [The Wikipedia page about the movie says the following. "A projection of a humanoid Martian lifeform reveals that the native Martians evacuated the planet in spaceships, one of which was sent to seed Earth with DNA, intending to create life that could one day land on Mars and be recognized as descendants."] That type of argument is basically the same which Sea Breeze used on page 6 of this topic thread when he said the following.

    'For comparison, if you go to the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) website you'll find the following question:

    How do you know if you’ve detected an intelligent, extraterrestrial signal?

    Answer? "the existence of coded information on the signal"

    So, on one hand, scientific naturalists accept an intelligent source if they detect even one small coded message from radio waves emitting from space, But when confronted with the 1,206,980 printed pages of coded DNA information in the human genome, they say this is formed by an unintelligent combination of chance and natural selection, which has already been scientifically demonstrated to be impossible.'

    I currently intend to make another comment regarding the intelligent design idea of DNA indicating intelligent design.

  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    If a radio transmission is discovered to contain coded DNA information then those who made the discovery know that the transmission was made by means of technology, and thus also ultimately by an intelligence, since the unintelligent part of nature never makes such. But finding coded information in DNA in biological beings is a different matter. That is because we know that biological beings replicate and that they all include genetic material (whether DNA, RNA, or both) and their genetic material undergoes mutations, including sometimes beneficial ones. However, since some humans are now genetically modifying living biological organisms and thus creating new varieties of organisms, those humans are thus to some degree intelligent designers and the organisms partly produced by them are thus to some degree intelligently designed. That thus slightly weakens the claim of atheistic scientific naturalists that none of the life which ever existed on Earth prior to around 1990 CE were intelligently designed. But there is no conclusive evidence that an extraterrestrial intelligence (whether a machine, a biological organism, or an alleged supernatural being) has ever interacted in any way with planet Earth. Thus, atheistic scientific naturalists still have a strong argument/claim that none of the life which ever existed on Earth prior to around 1990 CE was ever intelligently designed (or the product of intelligent design).

  • Sea Breeze
    Sea Breeze
    If a radio transmission is discovered to contain coded DNA information then those who made the discovery know that the transmission was made by means of technology, and thus also ultimately by an intelligence, since the unintelligent part of nature never makes such. But finding coded information in DNA in biological beings is a different matter. That is because we know that biological beings replicate

    Your reasoning is not based upon the replication, but based on the replication mistakes. Let's make that clear.

    999,999 copying mistakes that are harmful to possibly 1 that may be beneficial or neutral. You need coded words to make changes. This has been shown by geneticists to be impossible. Stop repeating otherwise. Alternatively, you could write a peer reviewed paper that refutes Dr. Sanford; or just get over it. Genetic copying mistakes is a dead end in explaining anything except destruction.

    And yet, if naturalists receive even a short coded message from outer space, they will be announcing that they found evidence of an intelligent source!

    Not interested in that kind of hypocritical thought restriction.

  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    Sea Breeze, of course I know it is also based upon replication mistakes, for I said (in words which you did not quote) "... and their genetic material undergoes mutations, including sometimes beneficial ones." It is also based upon replication of those portions of the codes which were copied accurately. Both are needed.

    Though you are telling what to do, you have no control over me. You can't muzzle my speech. Perhaps you want to act like the governing body of the JWs. Like them you reject evolution and believe in Yahweh, Christ, Holy Spirit, Satan the Devil, angels, demons, and supernatural miracles.

    Believe in magic and spirits as much as you want, but as for me I will continue to know that naturalism is true. I chose to believe in reality - not superstition.

    I am not being hypocritical (at least on this matter). What I am saying is well grounded in science. Yes Sanford, a type of young earth creationist, does not believe in biological evolution and he thinks he found a disproof of biological evolution. But I am not convinced he is correct in that matter. I have confidence in many of the claims of evolutionist literature written by scientists (some who are Christians) which specifically disprove numerous claims of creationists, including of intelligent design proponents.

    In this paragraph I am addressing readers in general, but to the exclusion of Sea Breeze (for I have no hope he will change his creationist views). Readers, I invite you to read the article located at http://blog.rongarret.info/2020/05/a-review-of-john-sanfords-genetic.html . The article is called 'A review of John Sanford's "Genetic Entropy" '.
  • Disillusioned JW
    Disillusioned JW

    Today I purchased an ex-library (from a sale at the local library) copy of the book called A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss Lawrence.

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