Guest opinion; Dr. Tim Ball
Most of the loudest and most vociferous responses to my last article were predictable. Several topics trigger immediate, irrational, and emotional responses. The mention, or at least the questioning, of Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory, is one of them. All I got was arm-waving and references, but not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory. This is the same response you get when you ask for empirical evidence to prove the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW).
There is another parallel between the two. Many call AGW a hoax, but it is not, partly because a hoax has a humorous component and there is nothing funny about the deception and its impact. A real and very effective scientific hoax involved the obsession with proving Darwin’s theory. It is called the Piltdown Man Hoax after the quarry in which the event occurred. As a traditional hoax, it was designed to prick pomposity, to underscore the weakness of unjustified and arrogant claims, to open eyes closed by obsession. The irony is the victim of the hoax, Charles Dawson, was determined to find the so-called ‘missing link. He sought the empirical fossil evidence that would provide the final link in the evolution of man from apes.
Dawson was so obsessed with his search and the belief that such a fossil existed that he was easy prey. It is this kind of blind obsession that is the sad situation with all those arm-waving supporters of Darwin’s theory. What is amazing is that the academic and professional world of museums and societies believed Piltdown for 41 years. There were doubters, but they were brushed aside. Eventually, in 1953, the hoax was revealed when it was shown that the Piltdown skull comprised a cleverly aged mandible and some teeth of an orangutan and the cranium of a human.
A major problem with this search for human ancestry is the entire fossil record more than 1 million years old fits on a dining room table. It is as sparse as the data for anthropogenic warming. However, this is only one part of the entire problem of determining evolutionary theory from the fossil record.
Estimates indicate that on average it takes 15 million in a species for one to survive in the fossil record. How many of today’s species will show up in tomorrow’s record? Don’t forget that is in species that have parts that can become fossilized. A remarkable discovery put this entire issue into perspective in a quarry called the Burgess Shales. This is on the boundary between the Canadian Provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Ironically, the original discovery by Charles Walcott occurred in 1909 before the Piltdown hoax. He recognized the importance of the discovery because it consisted of soft-bodied creatures that rarely survive in the fossil record. Unfortunately, the full significance of these fossils was not recognized until 1962 when Alberto Simonetta re-examined the fossils and realized the full extent of their significance.
Today, we are no further ahead because we have no idea how many species exist on our planet. Of course, that does not prevent the fanciful speculators who will do what Mark Twain said,
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Consider the fact that we don’t know how many plant or animal species exist. A 2011 estimate said approximately 8.7 million, 6.5 on land and 2.2 in the ocean. This sounds definitive until you learn that the error range is ± 1.3 million. In a recent ten-year span more than a million new species were discovered. How many remain undiscovered? PLoS Biology suggests,
“…a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.”
In 2012, a story appeared with the headline, “One Million New Plankton Species Found.” The expedition led by Dr. Chris Bowler was actually looking at the uptake of carbon dioxide in the oceans. Bowler said, “It’s the first time that anyone’s done this expedition looking specifically for plankton life, and that’s why we found so many.” How does that change the formulae for CO2 cycles in the Earth’s system?
It is not just about small species. There are stories all the time.
• 2010 report said, “30 unknown species found in Ecuador’s highland forests by a team of U.S. and Ecuadorian researchers,”
• 2010 report said, Over 200 New Species Found In Papua New Guinea. The lead scientist said, there are, “large areas of New Guinea that are pretty much unexplored biologically.”
• 2012 report “New species of monkey identified in Africa.”
The importance of the Burgess Shales event entered the public awareness with Stephen Jay Gould’s book, “Wonderful Life” and a cover story in National Geographic. The discovery pushed the origin of the earliest species back 50 million years before the previous estimates. It also seemed to indicate a different evolution scenario than the Darwin tree of life. It suggested that there was an explosion of life with a multitude of species most of which became extinct. In other words, it was a decreasing number of species, not increasing. By the way, it was Darwin who likened his ideas to a tree. In his comments on Alfred Russel Wallace’s work he said, it was nothing new and “Uses my simile of a tree (but) it seems all creation with him.” But more of that later.
I was always disturbed by the number of biology students who didn’t know the definition of species. The Oxford English Dictionary provides this definition.
A group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g., Homo sapiens.
That sounds clear and concise, but it is not the case even among today’s species. It is even more difficult in the fossil record. For example, we know that mules and horses cannot produce viable offspring. If we found such similar species in the fossil record, there is no way of knowing. How many other natural hybrids exist today or in the fossil record?
The designation of species originated with the system of classification developed by Carolus Linnaeus and known as the Linnaean System. Classification systems are a wonderful idea for trying to make sense out of a plethora of data. The trouble is, like all structures, they are rigid and fail to accommodate new discoveries. The classic example that challenged the Linnaean system was the Platypus. Not surprisingly, and appropriate to our story, many scientists considered it a fake and a hoax. Just like with Piltdown some believed an Asian taxidermist sewed a beak onto a water-dwelling mammal. The reality is the Linnaean Classification is a fanciful, arbitrary rigid system that determined most thinking about evolution.
Some of the more fanciful, such as birds evolving from dinosaurs illustrate the problem (Figure1).
There is no empirical evidence to support this supposition. A good deal of this is based on the fact that some creatures look alike. This is clear in the case of humans and apes (Figure 2).
I don’t mind being descended from a gorilla. They are better than some of the relatives I have, however, many people do. That resentment speaks to the issue Darwin knew about but never dealt with effectively.
Alfred Russel Wallace published a paper on natural selection in 1858, a year before Darwin’s Origin of Species. Some say it pushed Darwin to publish. Others say it caused Darwin’s supporters to push for publication. Wallace’s paper challenged Charles Lyell because it opposed his idea that species were immutable.
The ongoing Wallace and Darwin debate is not over the idea of natural selection. It focused on the place of humans in the pattern of evolution. Wallace publicly supported Darwin’s work. In 1889, he published a book titled, Darwinism. His differences with Darwin emerged from a different area, the large gap between humans and all other species, especially apes. He said a theory must include an explanation for that difference and Darwin evolutionary ideas didn’t. Darwin tried to address the issue twelve years after Origin in his book The Descent of Man. He failed. He did not explain how humans are superior to every other species. His ideas led to the satire about how if you had a number of chimpanzees working on typewriters they would eventually type Shakespeare’s plays (Figure 3).
Figure 3
Former genetics professor David Suzuki provides a good example of the bizarre thinking when he said,
“Economics is a very species – chauvinistic idea. No other species on earth – and there are may be 30 million of them – has had the nerve to put forth a concept called economics, in which one species, us, declares the right to put value on everything else on earth, in the living and non-living world.”
He is incorrect about the number of species. He is wrong about putting a value on things. All animals put a value on everything. Can I eat it? Only humans put other values on things. No other animal could even think of a concept like economics. Instead of realizing that humans are achieving success and adaptability better than any other species, as Darwin suggested, he considers these as failures. He doesn’t even see the philosophical contradictions in his view.
The question is what is really behind all of this illogic and attacks on anyone who questions Darwinism or the prevailing wisdom of his Evolutionary Theory? The gap between humans and any other animals is one of them. It is so great Wallace had the audacity to introduce the idea of what we now call “intelligent design.” His challenges are part of the questions today that speak about the origin of the Universe. The problem for Darwin and the Big Bang theory people is that the ultimate question remains. Who or what created the material for the bang and who triggered it.
Then there is the problem of accurate dating. I recall at a conference on the fur trade, a historian presented a paper about a sequence of events he claimed changed the pattern of exploration. His sequence derived from entries in the Hudson’s Bay Company journals prior to 1752. He didn’t know that in September of that year the government removed eleven days to the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Hubert Lamb devoted a large section of his Volume 2 Climate Present, Past and Future to discussing the methods, limitations, and importance of both absolute and relative dating. The problems exist across all attempts to reconstruct the past, from climate to fossil records.
Incorrect dating makes any attempt to determine cause and effect impossible. Relative dating is when you have a specific date for a known event and can say whether something occurred before or after. Absolute dating is when you have a specific natural measure such as rate of conversion of radioactive material from one form to another. The two most common are radiocarbon and Potassium/Argon (K/A) dating. This has caused problems in climate reconstructions before. For example, the Milankovitch sequence indicated ice conditions in a region of Alaska then radiocarbon on fossilized trees indicated they were growing at the same time. This was a major reason why Milankovitch, who was initially accepted, was later rejected. In my early career mention of Milankovitch immediately triggered derision. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that I attended a conference and Milankovitch was mentioned and nobody reacted. climate conference. Of course, it turned out the fancy new ‘scientific’ measure of carbon dating was wrong because it assumed a constant rate of solar energy output. As recently as 2012 a new calibration method developed to provide more accurate reconstructions. Then, in the first week of June 2018, we learn,
Archaeologist Sturt Manning and colleagues have revealed variations in the radiocarbon cycle at certain periods of time, affecting frequently cited standards used in archaeological and historical research relevant to the southern Levant region (Israel, southern Jordan and Egypt). These variations, or offsets, of up to 20 years in the calibration of precise radiocarbon dating could be related to climatic conditions.
The problems with K/A dating are more profound, especially for the fossil record. A study in Hawaii gave an age for rock of 2.3 ± 0.3 million years. I don’t care about the specific age except that it is relatively recent geologically. What troubles me is the ± 0.3 million years. That is 300,000 years or a full error range of 600,000 years. How much happened in the last 600,000 years? Of course, as you go back in time the error increases. A one-million-year error range is not unusual.
It is interesting that when you search the web for information of accuracy of geologic dating methods, several appear that are sponsored by religious groups. Some specifically identify themselves as creationists.
I am not arguing for creationism, but it appears to influence science so that there is irrational and blind determination to confirm Darwin’s Theory. Ironically, we witness belief in the environment and AGW taking religious, blind belief, positions. So it is with Darwin. The minute you even raise the topic you get hysterical arm waving responses, with no empirical evidence to support their position.
People outside of science have warned about these irrational reactions. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, speaking through his character Sherlock Holmes wrote,
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
Alternatively, as Mark Twain said,
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
Oh my goodness! snip. I just shut up now.
I’m sorry, I just couldn’t.
There is no need for “anyone”, or “anything” to “create” the material or trigger the bang. These kind of questions can be posed because humans, due to our limited mental power, are unable to pose the right questions, those that have an answer.
My own thinking goes along the lines that the universe exists and is what it is, because it doesn’t have any option to not exist. In particular, whatever the ‘reason’ (which is probably not a very good word for this purpose) for its existence is, there is absolutely no worse explanation than a bit superhuman-like ‘thingy’ with the properties of a god of a certain religion. It doesn’t explain anything, just makes the problem more complex as then you need to explain both the god and the rest of the universe.
In all, ‘who triggered the big bang’ is philosophically speaking one of the worst rhetoric questions ever posed.
The evolution is now much more than Darwin’s idea. And I don’t quite believe you were not arguing for creationism. What you in fact did, was exactly that.
The one thing that separates humans from other creatures is the possibility of evidence-free conjecture. For example, if we accept that God created everything, we are left with the problem of how God came into being.
Suppose that we accept that the world is supported on the back of a turtle. What supports the turtle? Another turtle … it’s turtles all the way down.
Which is arguing for the previous post “…the worst rhetoric questions…”
To say what created the Creator assumes that time and space are absolutely required. How do you deal with the eternal and omnipresent when you arbitrarily require locality in a temporal universe?
The monotheistic religions assume a deity that transcends time and space. Just because someone refuses to accept these terms doesn’t make the assertion false.
Looked at in a different way, if you knew that you existed in a simulation, and your entire universe was a part of the simulation, what questions and evidences would you seek from that which transcends and is facilitating the simulation?
The assertion is not so much false as it is absurd. What does it even mean to “transcend time and space?” This are nothing more than a way for the religious to sound sophisticated while avoiding having to admit that they haven’t the slightest idea what they’re talking about.
For example, physicists come up with a theory, the “Big Bang” to try to explain the existence of the universe we can observe. The theory raises lots of questions. And the religious say they can explain the Big Bang. They say, “God did it!” But if you ask them what God is, they can’t tell you. They get all metaphysical about it and claim it’s “a spirit.” So you ask, “What’s a spirit?” “Well, it’s this thing that transcends space and time.” “It’s a life force.” “God is love”, etc.
But these are all place holders for, “I don’t know.”
Why can’t they drop all the nonsense and just say, “I don’t know.”
Why do protons and electrons attract each other? Fundamentally, they do but we don’t know why. Science is based on physical behavior for which we have no explanation, just observations.
Sorta what St. Thomas Aquinas said about God.
“…transcend time and space…” was perhaps a poor choice of words, maybe a better selection would be “unbounded by time”. This is how I believe we can still have free will, but still be guided by God, because at any point we make a decision, God is unbounded by time and thus already ‘at’ the consequences of your decision, there is no doubt, no guessing, because He is there. Quite a mind-boggling concept, but actually easier to grasp than the Theory of Relativity, perhaps.
“The assertion is not so much false as it is absurd. What does it even mean to “transcend time and space?” ”
Hmm . . let’s hold that question for a bit . .
“For example, physicists come up with a theory, the “Big Bang” to try to explain the existence of the universe we can observe. The theory raises lots of questions. And the religious say they can explain the Big Bang. They say, “God did it!” ”
Who said that? Did you actually hear/read some “they” say it? Or merely conjecture/imagine/conjure someone saying it? . . outside of actual space and time ; )
They should say “I don’t know” but that is not in itself empirical evidence that they are wrong.
Peter: I don’t know. But if I believe, I’m good with that. For those who don’t believe, an occasional “I dunno” would be helpful.
What does it mean to transcend time and space?
It means that a being which could create the spacetime continuum of our universe, would have to exist independently of it.
You might dispute the existence of such a being, but the logic behind the concept of its independence from its creation, is fairly straightforward.
“Just because someone refuses to accept these terms doesn’t make the assertion false.”
Likewise, just because someone asserts nonsense we don’t have to accept it.
God didn’t ‘come into being’ at all. He Himself said He has always been. He called Himself ‘the I am.’ The problem with our understanding is that God exists outside our universe of understanding, which is always finite. God exists in the infinite – the timeless. He created all things and is therefore more complex and powerful than all things. If we cannot understand His realm, then it is only logical that we will never understand Him.
Too complex. I cannot sense God. I can sense the universe (or at least part of it) It is less complicated if you settle on the idea that the universe is self sufficient and self existent. Proposing a creator as an explanation does not help. It is turtles all the way down, like commieBob says.
Revelation is the manner in which God makes Himself known as well as man’s natural \apprehension that something greater is out there. It’s called Natural Law and it is why human societies ‘invent’ religion. Then you get to Christ and C.S.Lewis “Mere Christianity” in which he declared that Christ is either Who He said He is or stark raving mad. See Blaise Pascal for your choices. The ID people(Behe, Meyer, Axe et al) are very good at deconstructing the simplistic errors of neo-Darwinism. Darwin, Marx and Freud all seemed geared to deconstruct Western civilization and its basis in Christianity. If you don’t believe in evil please read “Hostage to the Devil” – you might have second thoughts.
Also, I suggest ‘A wind swept house’, by Maliki Martin.
Proposing a creator may not help develop a scientific understanding, but neither does disregarding the conservation of matter and energy, which would be required for the universe to be self existent.
There may be an explanation which involves only natural processes, but it all still had to come from somewhere.
We are just lucky that whatever that original source was, it got divided into such a perfect balance, that we can mathematically model the behavior of the universe, without having to account for it.
I am is a he? Does “I am” have male equipment. That sounds sort of silly.
How do you know He has always been and what he called himself? Did He tell you?
“it is only logical that we will never understand Him.”
So we will never understand that he didn’t come into being, called himself “I am”, exists in the infinite, and the various other things you pretend to understand about him.
You are exactly correct in all of the things you have said about your God. I know this because my GODD# exists in a realm that encompasses your God. And my GODD# actually made your God, but did not tell him. So your God decided he had always existed and was all powerful and called himself “I am”. I am so proud of my GODD# for being humble enough to not correct yours. My GODD# came first and is actually (as far as I know) the largest turtle of all and the bottom-mostest.
Why would god be ‘he’ or ‘him’? Why would god have sexual differentiation? Does god reproduce god? How many gods are there?
God is “He” because in English the masculine noun includes both masculine and feminine when the sex of the person referred to is unknown. In other languages God could be “She” or “It” if that noun included both sexes – or non-sexed – persons.
One may conclude that the same occurs in Hebrew where God is referred to as “Father”. But you would have to get a philologist – or whatever, to consider whether this conclusion is correct or not.
In Latin, Egyptian and Greek, Gods are multiple and have sexual differentiation.
No. The Christian JHWH is a he, father and a son, and a spirit capable of and willing to making virgins pregnant.
For me, the whole idea sounds crazy. Why would a world-creator, eternal spirit have a sex? That’s a biological, evolutionarily explainable thing gods definitely wouldn’t need.
I can assure you, our dog Penny is very much capable of ‘evidence-free conjecture’.
~¿~
Indeed.
I’ve always felt that earth is an electron in a stable orbit around a nucleus of an atom that is part of molecule that is a constituent of a universally large dog turd.
And nobody can prove me wrong!! LOL
Earth has a negative charge?
Dr Deanster
My contention for many years.
That is the beauty of metaphysical propositions.
No one can prove you wrong.
Doc Deanster: I can’t prove you right, either, but sometimes I can smell it.
>>
I’ve always felt that earth is an electron in a stable orbit around a nucleus of an atom that is part of molecule that is a constituent of a universally large dog turd.
<<
The attempt to compare a planet orbiting a star to electrons “orbiting” a nucleus leads to major problems. If an electron orbited the nucleus, it would instantly lose all its energy and crash into the nucleus. Therefore, electrons do not orbit the nucleus. The model of an atom as a tiny solar system is wrong to begin with.
However, you’re on the right track, but not thinking big enough (or small enough). Try visualizing the entire Universe as a quark in a much larger universe. That would mean that quarks in our universe would each contain tiny universes of their own.
So like turtles, it would be quarks all the way down AND quarks all the way up. Try to prove THAT wrong!
Jim
Dr Deanster
I’ve always felt that earth as similar to an electron in a stable orbit around a nucleus of an atom that is part of molecule that is a constituent of a universally large bird dog’s brain that pinched a universally large turd on the neighbor’s lawn.
“if we accept that God created everything, we are left with the problem of how God came into being.”
If we accept that God created everything (which would include time and space
as we understand them), we can recognize that as to the supposedly left over problem we are incapable of understanding the question, much less the answer.
Those who blindly support evolution just to oppose the idea of creation, don’t recognize/comprehend that there are some questions that are and always will be beyond our ability to answer.
And, that has been mathematically proven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems
No. Gödel was mad, but his incompleteness theorem is just about writing mathematical laws and proofs.
Everything is mathematical.
The old argument which makes no sense. There is no ‘created’ if there is no time.
For anything to create anything else, there has to be time for the creator to start with. So the problem can’t be solved this way.
A simpler explanation is, that time just exists and reasons for its existence are logical. The reasons don’t do, but just are. In your terms, the god is not personal. But that would an oxymoron, because your God is a person.
You got it backwards. I find support for evolution because I’m not making myself blind by supporting a specific religional dogma called creation.
“There is no ‘created’ if there is no time.”
You’ll face that conundrum whatever dogma you prefer. Your fallacy here is argumentum ad lapidem.
What? I just said timeless god doesn’t create. You need time to have someone creating, and more time to put it in past tense.
Universe may exist without an actor acting in time. So you have a fallacy there.
I object, Hugs. If God created time (which would be a reasonable assumption) then God’s timelessness would by default subject time to God, not the other way around.
No matter your point of view, there is a singular point at which time comes into existence. So, you always face the question of, how did the process of time come into being when there was no time in which to launch it?
We are like blind men fumbling in the dark, and you are insisting that there is no such thing as sight, based on the fact that none of us can see.
While there might be scientific means of exploring what came before the Big Bang, that question is still largely speculative.
According to all models of the BBT, spacetime started inflating at the Big Bang. It’s not just time, but spacetime which was “launched”. Gravitational waves show that spacetime, or something like it, exists.
Doppler radar and GPS demonstrate the coupling of space and time well enough, not to mention a whole slew of other applications. You don’t need to appeal to the recent confirmation of gravitational radiation to sell the concept.
Inflation generally refers to the accelerated expansion of Guth et al., which is not a feature of all BB cosmologies. But, if you don’t buy an initial singularity, you then are just trading one conundrum for another, to wit, how can an entropy governed universe have no beginning or end?
Lets look at things the way they are currently in our universe and see where things go from there. Based on the “best” science, the universe started as a singularity with infinite mass/energy. E=mc^2. It started expanding in what is known as the “big bang” and went from infinitesimally small to gargantuan in a matter of seconds. I think it is tiny fractions of a second, but seconds would encompass that smaller value as well, since it did not shrink immediately after. It then inexplicably stopped this rapid expansion (inflation) abruptly, and has been instead growing very very slowly, but at an ever accelerating pace.
This ever accelerating pace pretty much today is arguing that the universe will never collapse back into an infinite mass/energy singularity. Thus, this is a one off event, never to be repeated.
Now they say we are not the center of the universe as people believed we were long long ago. But they say that the expansion in every direction of us is perfectly uniform. That space is stretching uniformly around us, which causes a red shift. They can calculate the distance to a galaxy tens of billions of light years away from us based on the red shift. They say that the Universe is about 13.7 billion years old, and we can see out to about 13.3 billion years, the furthest galaxy known.
How is it that in every single direction we look, things that are 13.3 billion years away from us are inflating at the same rate away from us? This would only make sense if in fact we were directly in the center of the universe. Because if we were anywhere else, anything closer to the center of the universe would appear to be receding at a slower pace than those things that are further away from the center of the universe. And we can see pretty far out, such that there would most certainly have to be a measurable difference.
The universe doesn’t have a center.
I could name a politician* who evidently believes in an egocentric universe in which the planets, galaxies, etc., revolve around his posterior.
* possibly not the one you’re thinking of
I’d recognize Hillary by that description.
A pretty good description of ANY politician! Particularly once looking for one of the top jobs. Anybody who actually wants to be POTUS should probably be disqualified from standing. Douglas Adams had a great take on this in the Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. The Galactic legislators would pick people at random, give them options and evidence and ask them to make a decision. No money, no big house, no public adoration, no pension.
Those of us in central Virginia know exactly where the center of the universe is. It is Ashland, VA, a few miles north of Richmond along US 1 and I-95, and for many years has been known as the Center Of The Universe (COTU). The assumptions and arguments in the above post are every bit as presumptuous as those of the good folk of Ashland, who, after all, are close enough to the Center Of Things to know what they are talking about.
John,
I stand corrected.
ADS
Good comments!
Since I was a teenager sixty years ago, I have never bought into the Big Bang theory. I always favored Fred Hoyle’s arguments against it.
Cosmologists have a lot of explaining to do. What form does Dark Matter take? How is Dark Energy generated – remember E=MC squared? Inflation – faster than light speed?
Fred Hoyle’s ideas might be reconsidered when pondering the existence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. He also said that the cosmic background radiation is not proof of the Big Bang as many like to claim.
Fred may have had some quirky ideas but that does not dissuade me from respecting him as a theoretician.
There is nothing wrong with a preference for Hoyle’s cosmology – if you understand and have weighted the evidence against it. If you choose to only consider only the arguments and data favoring Hoyle and can’ retain the arguments of his critics, then you are suffering from confirmation bias. To refresh your memory, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_State_theory
Partisan social media (like this website) and regular media are filled with propaganda designed to enforce your current beliefs. In this post, Dr. Ball is trying to recruit the religious belief of some to reject the basic tenets of AGW.
The existence of Dark Matter has nothing to do with whether the universe is expanding or in a steady state. We’ve known for more than a half-century that stars at the edge nearby galaxies are moving too fast to be held in stable orbits by the mass associated with the visible stars in the galaxy. Bringing Dark Energy and Hoyle together could be interesting.
It has to do with the wrong application of Kepler’s laws. With a 4million solar mass object at the center but 800 billion+ solarmasses around it, the Kepler rotation curve for a planetary system (90% mass at center) is of course violated. 26 stars are confirmed to orbit the supermassive object as expected.
It gets worse : Surprise Discovery Shows We Have Been Totally Wrong About The Size of Andromeda Galaxy https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.03949
Bonbon: In sure you realize that the consensus position is that the mass of galaxies calculated by rotational speeds is larger than estimated by the visible light emitted. As best I can tell, the paper you cite refines the rotational mass of Andromeda, but doesn’t contradict the consensus position. (If it did, the news that the Andromeda galaxy doesn’t contain dark matter would have reached the popular scientific media immediately.) People have been studying this problem for many decades, so I expect evolutionary, not revolutionary, refinements. If I understand paragraph (ii) correctly at the end of the paper, the visible mass of the galaxy is about 1/10 of the mass deduced by rotation.
The presence of dark matter has also been inferred by other methods. It would be nice if our picture of the universe weren’t complicated by the presence of dark matter (and dark energy). As Feynman says:
While we are being empirical, unless you are sure there are no more and never will be more such singularities ready to pop, you can not say “Thus, this is a one off event, never to be repeated.” Until we know what caused this one we cannot say it will be the last or even that it was the first.
Quite right., We cannot even say that the sun will rise tomorrow with any certainty.
Oh BTW causality is a property of a universe – not something that causes a universe…
Everything we see is on the surface of an Nth dimensional expanding balloon. Since everything on the surface of the balloon is symmetrical to each other, no matter where you are on that surface, you would always observe that you seem to be the center.
On the balloon’s surface, light travels along the surface and nothing goes inside or through the balloon. But since our observation is limited to the 3rd dimension, we don’t observe light to curve. This is similar to how we observe ourselves living on the surface of the Earth. For most of us, the Earth is flat until we ride a boat or plane or a spaceship and see Earth in a different point of view.
How is it that in every single direction we look, things that are 13.3 billion years away from us are inflating at the same rate away from us? This would only make sense if in fact we were directly in the center of the universe.
Er no. Consider say blowing up a balloon, having covered it with inkblots representing stars. You will find that from any position on the balloon, it looks like all the other positions are receding from you at a rate proportional to their distance from you.
So you just imagine the universe to be a 5 dimesnional hyperballoon, and it all makes perfect sense.
Paul Sarmiento & Leo Smith
Are you guys even remotely serious? Magical Dark Matter and Magical Dark Energy are enough to make current “science” absolutely no better than religion with respect to empirical evidence based knowledge. And you two want to argue that the entirety of the universe is a two dimensional balloon surface that is being blown up?
Well, thank you for making my religious beliefs that much more rational looking to the God haters in the world.
The Tap (God that fills holes) always emerges in these discussions. No, the limits of current science do not mean you should start filling the holes with religious mortar. It is ok to say I don’t know. Dark matter is a question posed, that does not have yet an answer. Many are working on it.
Why would I imagine there are holes in any of it? If God is all powerful as I know him to be, then his method would be flawless.
I have no problem investigating his creations to the greatest depth for which you can.
My faith does not need any evidence. Any evidence you present, if acceptably robust, just simply fills in the voids of my understanding of his method.
There is not even the tiniest bit of evidence that we are smeared on the surface of a sphere. That thought requires faith. I would argue an insanity level of faith. All the three dimensional stuff we see is really just 2 dimensional!
Surely you jest!
That Earth is an oblate spheroid, with lumps, is an observation, ie scientific fact. No faith required.
A singularity? Really? So a mathematical concept started the universe! A singularity cannot exist by definition of the idea. Infinite mass? Please tell us what that can mean, another mathematical concept rather than a physical reality! Zero size? That is simply 1/infinity! Try using English, it tends to prevent this nonsense!
You probably meant ‘infinite energy density’, but even that is just wrong mathematics for the masses. We don’t know all details, far from it. Never will know all. But what we *do* know, is already spectacular.
Spot on.
The only reason so many people feel there must have been someone who “created the material for the bang and … triggered it” is because they have trouble getting their head around the concept of infinity: The material was always there. It’s been there forever. No one had to create it.
…because they have trouble getting their head around the concept of infinity: The material was always there. It’s been there forever. No one had to create it.
Except that in my conception of God, it is He that has always been there, so in my case, I don’t have a problem with the concept of infinity. What’s your explanation for my belief?
What’s your evidence for the proposition that the material “was always there”, had “been there forever”, and that “[n]o one had to create it”?
“What’s your explanation for my belief”
You are delusional.
If I was to expand a belief that, I have fairy’s or trolls at the bottom of the garden, I would be definitely be considered, a nut job, crazy, insane or even delusional and eventually taken away by the “men in white coats”. A delusion is a false belief that is based on an incorrect interpretation of reality.
Instead of saying, I don’t know the answer to, “whats the answer to life the universe and everything” (pun intended). People invent constructs to get around the “I don’t know”, (why? maybe because they do not want to be considered ignorant, or to save face) and this includes, religion, big bang theory and even ‘global warming’.
You cannot prove the existence of ‘god’ and I cannot prove that god does not exist.
c’est la vie
Regards
Climate Heretic
You are delusional.
But at least I’m rational. Nice ad hominem.
You cannot prove the existence of ‘god’ and I cannot prove that god does not exist.
You mean belief or not is by faith?
That’s kind of my point…see farther down.
Not an ‘ad hominem’. Because I’m stating a fact. When people experience delusions or hallucinations there is some loss of contact with reality. One of the signs of delusional belief in a person is: “they’re very resistant to being challenged, no matter how inconsistent they are with reality.”
You ‘sycomputing’, have amply demonstrated that in your reply to me.
‘You mean belief or not is by faith? ‘
No, my statement means exactly what it means. Its not a matter of belief or faith, it’s a matter of fact.
I suggest that you watch the video link about religious delusions, in another post that I made.
Regards
Climate Heretic
Delusions and hallucinations are what we all do all the time.
Except that when we share them with enough other people, we all get together and call it ‘the real world’…
The delusional or hallucinatory element is not the problem. Its the dysfunctionality of them that is the problem.
No, calling someone delusional because you don’t like their worldview foundation is definitely an ad hominem, definitely a personal attack, and in this case not a fact, just your arrogant, smug opinion
Actually, it need not be ad hominem, it could be one answer to the question, “What’s your explanation for my belief.” Of course there may be others, but you have been unable to disprove that one so far. 🙂
Actually, it need not be ad hominem…
Except that it was in this particular OP’s context:
“If I was to expand a belief that, I have fairy’s or trolls at the bottom of the garden, I would be definitely be considered, a nut job, crazy, insane or even delusional and eventually taken away by the “men in white coats.”
Delusion at its best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVuw1wEuaAQ
Regards
Climate Heretic
You say, quite rightly: “You cannot prove the existence of ‘god’ and I cannot prove that god does not exist.” Therefore you can not prove sycomputing is delusional – it is only your belief that they are (while we are being empirical).
I’ve got no evidence for it – I was just suggesting it as a possible idea. However, the idea that some sort of sky fairy made all of this is, to me, laughably daft.
BTW Why is God always assumed to be male? The pussy hat brigade won’t be happy.
You can certainly dismiss the idea of a “sky fairy” on the ground that it is certainly absurd. Do you hold alternative ideas to a similar test of absurdity?
Matter and energy from nothing. Time starting itself up in a universe where there is no time. Fine tuning by accident. Have you ever tested those for absurdity? How about biogenesis, despite its mathematical impossibility? Acceptance of Materialism, despite the findings of quantum mechanics. The Cambrian explosion, the lack of transitional fossils… The list goes on an on.
Why is God always assumed to be male?
God … most powerful … male … reasonable logical assumptions, if someone is into that.
(and besides, he has a long flowing white beard, so female is unlikely)
We sing hymns not hers?
That may be, but you have to take it on faith. You can provide no evidence for that conjecture.
that’s ok. i’m here now – and i brought you the reductio ad absurdum you crave!
get this thru your head: there is no such thing as nothing.
how did you ever miss something so simple?
because you have accepted a lie.
this is the correction. try to administer it to yourself:
A = A the law of identity. existence exists. a thing is itself.
-A != A the law of contradiction. nonexistence is null. nothing contradicts itself but a lie.
THE LAW OF THE EXCLUDED MIDDLE:
it’s one or the other- it exists or it does not. there is no ‘supernatural’ netherworld. that fantasy is false.
your lie is full of holes…lol
What is a “concept”, is it something?…or is it nothing?…how could it be measured, if it is something?
(and being aware of it, “the concept”, what could mean?..should it be taken in faith, or it is faith in some way?)
Just asking….
whiten….perfect example is the number zero. It certainly is a “concept”, but isn’t it the concept of nothing?
what do your pixels say?
your condition is called ‘concrete bound’ and the person so afflicted struggles with high level abstractions such as logic.
A concept is what we think the world is, when its really something at a completely different level.
So your existence, the world, the big bang, Michael Mann’s underpants – these are all concepts.
whereas in reality all there is is ‘whatever is the case’ the unknown and unknowable reality we presume causes all or experience to happen.
If the world is like a computer, concepts are like what is on the screen…as distinct from the billions of logic circuits and the power supply that are in fact what its all made of….
The law of the excluded middle is not valid in the world of quantum mechanics. That is, prior to opening the box, Schrodenger’s cat is both alive and dead.
That is, prior to opening the box, Schrodenger’s cat is both alive and dead.
Which is why such a feature of QM is somewhat useless in reality. In truth, the cat is still one or the other, you just don’t know which. Prior to opening the box, you have a “Null” value, e.g., empty data fields in an SQL database.
A value of “Null” doesn’t invalidate excluded middle in a practical environment, as is evidenced by the fact that your SQL db needs to be consistent if it’s to be trusted. Once your data field is populated, it had better not contradict another one with a different answer for the same question. If your environment isn’t consistent, why should I trust it?
sycomputing, are you advocating trinary logic? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_logic
No. I’m advocating practical application in the real world.
In the real world (as per your request) there is a sequence of bits in every SQL data field. One program can interpret it as “null” another could interpret as something else. So “null” is an actual real bit pattern. Likewise a QM wavicle has wave or particle properties depending on how you interpret what you are looking at.
One program can interpret it as “null” another could interpret as something else.
But in neither system will it be interpreted as the other, i.e., it won’t be “null” and “~ null” at the same time in the same system. Otherwise the system would contradict itself and be useless would it not?
Likewise a QM wavicle has wave or particle properties depending on how you interpret what you are looking at.
I don’t follow your logic. It would seem the QM wavicle is something else entirely from an SQL null value. You’ve argued the former is whatever you interpret it to be, but the latter seems rather to be an object of finite definition.
But in neither system will it be interpreted as the other, i.e., it won’t be “null” and “~ null” at the same time in the same system. Otherwise the system would contradict itself and be useless would it not?
No.
Consider this
Its got orange bits, and not orange bits.
And that makes it MORE useful than if it JUST was all orange.
And that makes it MORE useful than if it JUST was all orange.
I can’t see the image…FF is complaining about a security certificate error…don’t know what you’re referencing but it sounds like properties of something.
Regardless, whatever it is that isn’t “JUST” all orange, it’s there is it not? It’s not ~there (null) and there (~null) at the same time in the same system for the same question is it?
No, you are advocating total denial of the evidence of quantum effects.
Are you sure that’s what I’m doing Leo?
Is that objectively true or “disney” true?
I see that passed you by completely.
Along with all of quantum physics, upon which the computer you are reading this on depends for its operation…so FSVO ‘useful’ quantum physics is very useful indeed.
I see that passed you by completely.
You’ll be sure to be patient with me while I try to catch up won’t you Leo?
You’ll be patient?
While I try to catch up?
I think Einstein thought so, but I think he was wrong on that. What really happens is described by the quantum mechanics. I have only superficial knowledge on that, despite actually studying physics in a university.
I’d say our observations are ‘real’, and the quantum behaviour is ‘complex’, and there is a mapping between the behaviour and the real observable variables that is considered statistical. What it really is, is a subject of a heated discussion, but the Einstein’s position is commonly seen impossible to be consistent with measurements. Also, the mathematics is not really questioned, only how we should think about it.
About ternary logic; there are cases where it is valid. It is not either or, rather different logics describe different frameworks that can apply to things, or then may not be applied. The binary logic applies to some cases, but you must be careful to not trust you choice of logic necessarily is the right one. “I’m lying now.”
Mathematics is a ‘creation’ from one side, creation of the person who described the invention. It is also a ‘finding’, something that just exists and which a mathematician writes down as accurately as it can.
I think Einstein thought so, but I think he was wrong on that. What really happens is described by the quantum mechanics.
Disagree. In this case QM “describes” nothing at all, but rather quite conclusively derives within itself a contradiction. Any system wherein a contradiction is derivable is logically inconsistent and should be distrusted until the inconsistency is fixed.
Hypothesis: If I leave this cat in this box long enough, it will die.
Experiment: Cat in the box.
Confirmation: Open the box.
When I open the box, only 1 of 2 possibilities will ever occur, no matter how many times I open the box. This regardless of who and where they are in the world that opens their box to test my hypothesis, into infinity and beyond (see what I did there…wove in a Toy Story reference? Hah! I made a funny!):
1) the cat will be dead
2) the cat will be alive
That is the definition of the scientific method. Felix said so, by golly!
If you want to play with “sky fairies and unicorns,” that are derivable within the QM system, then by all means go ahead and play with QM, but aren’t you then guilty of hypocrisy when you criticize me for believing in God?
SchrödInger…
All hail Schrodinger
yeah, well once i put Schrödinger’s cat in a clear plastic box and Schrödinger’s dog in another one so they could see each other.
i haven’t decided what happened yet. so it hasn’t. that’s disney’s second law.
disney’s first law is ‘wishing makes it so’
disney’s first law is ‘wishing makes it so’
Indeed.
I notice Leo making an awful lot of objective truth claims lately when his own belief system denies the notion of objective truth.
Don’t you contradict yourself, Leo?
So the singularity was self-existent and eternal? Sounds like Pantheism to me. How very religious.
By the way, we theologically inclined times don’t have a problem with the concept of infinity. It is integral to our understanding.
In the limit religious and scientific explanations are all (one presumes) attempting to explain the same things so their explanations must ultimately have extremely similar properties.
Both the Big Bang and indeed the Act of Creation arise from an error in our thinking, that the Universe as we understand it, is a product of causality, rather than the other way around.
Once you understand that Time and its progeny, Causality are just ways in which we struggle to come to terms with our experience of memory…and realise that apart from distinctly dodgy memory we have no real reason to even suppose that Time exists at all…
Eastern mysticism is far better at just saying with a nice degree of enigmatic humour ‘the Tao is that which exists through itself’ .
I..e the underlying substance of everything is just there because its just there, and the rest is all the mental bollocks we go through trying to make sense of it, which ultimately cannot be done.
If a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it, in quantum interpretations it doesn’t make a sound.
The distinction between what is, and what we are aware of, starts to get called into such question that the existence of a world independent of our conceptions of it is being sorely tested.
We live in interesting times
If a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it, in quantum interpretations it doesn’t make a sound.
But in the non-Disney (i.e., real) world, when we place a recording device in the forest we can confirm (after an unnecessary $100,000 gov’t grant study, no less) what we already knew using our own common sense.
There’s a sound…
Because that’s what happens when trees fall in the real world…
They make…a sound.
How do you know?
It is more a problem around the concept of time than around the concept of infinity, me thinks.
Unfortunately for your point, is that it has long been proven that you cannot have an infinite collection of finite objects. Otherwise, you get absurdities such as 1day=1week=1month=1year. If your point is true, you better have a replacement for Einsteins theories because if they are true (and they are to the best of our knowledge) then space, time, and matter have not always existed. It was the overwhelming evidence that Einstein’s theories were true which led to the “Big Bang” theory.
Or worse, they have trouble getting their head around the concept of causality, that its not an inherent property of the real world, just a way of looking at how one thing follows another in (subjective) consciousness…
There is no need for “anyone”, or “anything” to “create” the material or trigger the bang.
The “Argument from Need” ends up being less than convincing in my view. From the idea that something isn’t “needed”, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it doesn’t exist. I don’t need any number of things to exist, yet they certainly do, e.g., some new species of animal that will be discovered in the near future, as Dr. Ball has already pointed out.
These kind of questions can be posed because humans, due to our limited mental power, are unable to pose the right questions, those that have an answer.
This seems like the “Argument from Authority” fallacy in reverse. You’ve presupposed that because we’re too stupid to do so, we haven’t asked the right questions yet. But how will you prove that unless you first prove God doesn’t exist? Aren’t you forced to presuppose by faith that God doesn’t exist for this argument to be true? If so, why is your faith better than mine?
Those who present the idea (Creator), seem to think that it is needed. I can’t prove your God nonexistent for some good logical reasons. But I can point out it is unnecessary for a certain reason. Was it Newton who also applied this attitude, though he was apparently believing in a Christian manner?
I see, you want to find a logical error in this. No, this is rather my humble opinion on trying to improve the badly understood ‘Big Bang Theory’ with a Creator.
I don’t think I need a proof to point out we have not solved the existence of the universe, so my point is there. We seem to be too simple. And there is a good reason. A creature that lives inside the very complex universe is so much simpler than the universe that it is only natural it has difficulties in understanding the whole, which contains itself.
I can’t prove your God nonexistent for some good logical reasons. But I can point out it is unnecessary for a certain reason.
Then at best it would seem you’ve just restated the “Argument from Need” into the “Argument to Unnecessary,” in which the case the original objection moves along as well. Simply because something isn’t necessary, it doesn’t follow it doesn’t exist.
Prior to germ theory, it wasn’t necessary for germs to exist in the minds of men in order for them to posit some alternative reason (note: the wrong reason) for why they were dying from disease. The same is true for your argument. You simply just might not have enough information to make an informed decision about the existence of God.
In fact, I would argue you make my point for me in your argument re: the complex universe and difficulties understanding the whole. Naturally, if the created thing is attempting to understand that which created it (God), there would by definition be difficulties in doing so.
I don’t think I need a proof to point out we have not solved the existence of the universe, so my point is there.
Your point isn’t there for the same reason it wasn’t before. Maybe we have solved the origin of the universe by positing that God built it. Your assumption that God didn’t is still just that, i.e., a belief by faith.
Why is your faith better or more logical than mine?
It’s the same problem either way. Either the universe is eternal and there is no uncreated creator, or there is an uncreated creator who created the universe. Seems to me that you have to pick your faith one way or the other.
Seems to me that you have to pick your faith one way or the other.
Exactly.
Ye have to taaayke it on faaayth, me boy.
@Rich: True, true. Both are beliefs, not science. The question is which belief best fits the evidence? The philosophy “scientism” which undergirds modern science rules out any explanation which cannot be empirically proven (i.e. by the scientific method-data->hypotheses->theory->expermient… etc.) History of ***ANY*** type including Paleontology, geologic history, and Beginnings is Forensic Science; The study of non-repeatable events. If one doesn’t believe in a Supreme Being (notice I did not say a god) who brought this space/time continuum into existence then one is forced to believe that the universe (space, time and matter) brought itself into existence. A belief which Steven Hawking espoused a couple of years ago, for which he was rightfully ridiculed by his peers.
Well its possible for nothing to create everything. For some values of nothing and everything.
But of course you are completely wrong in ]your binary logic.
“If one doesn’t believe in a Supreme Being (notice I did not say a god) who brought this space/time continuum into existence then one is forced to believe that the universe (space, time and matter) brought itself into existence.”
One is not forced to believe anything. Especially when one understands that the words and concepts expressed above are completely inadequate to represent the world of either science or religion.
My advice to you is to read my long response to Tim Ball, and understand that the map is not the territory, and that there is no way to understand the ultimate objective truth, only less than adequate maps of it.
No, not at all. You don’t have to posit a creator for things we currently do not know or understand. Sure Big Bang throws up questions. So what? Why claim those questions are utterly insolvable just because currently we can’t?
Nah. Too simplistic. Too many assumptions.
Particularly egregious is te extrapolation of the concepts of time and causality beyond the Universe of which they are components.
‘The ‘creation of everything there is’ is a meaningless statement.
Creation implies something before to do the creating.
So nothing (or only nothing), can create everything there is…
Nah. Too simplistic. Too many assumptions.
Creation implies something before to do the creating.
So nothing (or only nothing), can create everything there is…
Don’t you contradict yourself? Haven’t you made an assumption that there was “nothing” at some point? If you have, how many assumptions are you allowed before there’s “[t]oo many”? If say, you’re allowed one (as you’ve done here), or a few assumptions don’t you contradict yourself again by being “[t]oo simplistic”?
Also, your assumption appears to be a faith claim. If it is, why is your faith claim better or more rational than mine, e.g., if I claim there was always something, i.e., ~nothing?
My goodness what a mess you’ve made here Leo…don’t you agree?
🙂
I don’t think these are the only two options, but I don’t either think faith is a word to apply when I say merely my opinion which I can’t show evidence for.
What’s worse, is that you represent these two as they were symmetrical starting points. They’re not symmetrical, nor they are starting points.
I don’t think these are the only two options…
If I understand the argument correctly, it goes something like this: “Either God exists or God doesn’t exist.”
What’s the third option?
…but I don’t either think faith is a word to apply when I say merely my opinion which I can’t show evidence for.
If you make a truth claim for which you have no evidence, by what other method do you believe your truth claim to be true, if not by faith?
The third option is: Probability (God exists) = .5 and Probability (God doesn’t exist) = .5
..
Which is exactly like the problem of a photon being either a wave or a particle.
You’re giving God a 50/50 possibility to exist? So, like Schrodinger’s cat, if one was to observe that there was a God, it would resolve God into existence.
Well, there was this one guy about 2000 years ago who spoke with God.
I don’t give any chance, but it is a formally unprovable fact.
Besides I think many people with faith are better when they’ll keep their faith.
His followers said he was the God, and that the God was his father, and they were the same God. I stopped paying attention after that. There’s a limit on how much theology you can digest.
The third option is: Probability (God exists) = .5 and Probability (God doesn’t exist) = .5
Ok, so you’re saying there’s a 1 in 2 chance that God exists. In other words, either God exists or God doesn’t.
That doesn’t appear to be a third option at all?
Which is exactly like the problem of a photon being either a wave or a particle.
No, by definition, the problem of a photon “either” being a wave or a particle is “either” it is or it isn’t.
sy, here’s a brand spanking new word for you to add to your vocabulary. Once you add it, you can then develop the concept that it denotes: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indeterminant
..
Then you might comprehend trivalent logic systems.
Keith:
When you’ve sufficiently convinced me of your case against my current belief system, I’ll be happy to look at something else to replace it.
🙂
First, logic systems are not a “belief system.” Second, I know better than to argue against what someone “believes.”
sy, you asked for a third option, I just provided one of them for you.
sy, you asked for a third option, I just provided one of them for you.
You didn’t. You just recouched the original proposition into the same proposition, only this time with probabilities.
That’s not a new option, it’s the same option described a different way.
Or if it is a new proposition, why is it?
Let me put it better terms……the third option requires you to reject the law of the excluded middle. That is the basis of your objection. (A and ~A) is not false by definition in trivalent logic.
…the third option requires you to reject the law of the excluded middle.
Thankfully it doesn’t. I can reject your system entirely using the same language and evaluate it in mine.
(A and ~A) is not false by definition in trivalent logic.
1) Then it sounds like your system says, “God both exists and does not exist at the same time.”
I reject the premise as a contradiction. If I have to reject the fact that contradictions are false, then I have to reject truth as false. If I have to reject truth as false, then I’m stuck where Leo is.
No one should want that.
First, logic systems are not a “belief system.”
Mine is.
Second, I know better than to argue against what someone “believes.”
Fair enough. Take care!
Both gods exist and gods don’t exist give multiple options. The universe can be eternal or it can be closed with time as its feature. Gods may create a subuniverse or just be observers. But gods can’t bootstrap the system so that you’d get an explanation. From that theory you get just a refuge, permission to stop searching for answers.
I don’t have faith in my opinion. I don’t know enough nor understand the question well enough for that. It is just that Ball is wrong on available options.
I think explaining the universe requires some seriously hard maths, and will be hardly possible for humans. It could be possible with future tools and cross-diciplinary philosophy. But I’d not bet on that.
Hugs; “But gods can’t…”
Once limited it ceases to be (a) god.
Omnipotence is an absolute.
(and includes the possibility of self creation)
No he didn’t.
Hugs …. just for discussions sake …. you say it is what it is ….. God said to Moses …. I Am. God is simply an existence, just like the universe. Thus, the Bible is correct when it says that before anything … I Am. .. the whole Alpha and Omega stuff. AND … Since time is relative, as in being able to fast forward your favorite movie, and dimensions are endless, and as you said …. pp. we humans are limited by our limited mental abilities, …. it’s as likely that God is the sum of all being as it pertains to reason right along with the inorganic particles that, just so happen exist in a manner that allows for interaction and “creation” of all elements and molecules that can exists.
Bottom line, God is as likely as not. The receiver that can detect and comm7nicate with God exists in the creative realm of thought. Until science can create a machine that literally reads your thought out of thin air (I’m not talking about a machine that requires wires be connected to your head) … and can distinguish from whom a particular thought arose, there can be no empiric data to prove or disprove the existence of God, and thus that is why the existence of God remains outside of the realm of science.
So for now, we will have to rely on the human brain to detect God. Those who insist God doesn’t exists will continue to “believe” in so called scientific theories that are no more provable than the existence of God.
To qualify as scientific, theories have to be based upon observations and hypotheses tested by making falsifiable predictions. No faith required, only doubt.
The God hypothesis is not testable, so isn’t scientific. It requires faith.
There are very few people who have ever claimed that they can prove the existence of God.
I don’t know how many tried to prove the existence of God, but the effort was central to the main philosophical and theological tradition in the Western world for about 600 years. The most famous attempt was that of St. Thomas Aquinas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism
But even in the last century, Catholic thinkers were still at it:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/508540/pdf
Newton spent many years trying…
Felix For evidence see Jesus’ predictions of his death and resurrection, supported by the historical record of eye witnesses who saw and reported those events. Those prophecies are the hypothesis that God exists with the consequent confirming evidence. See William Lane Craig on the resurrection evidence. There is no alternative basis for the big bang / creation. https://www.bing.com/search?q=william+lane+craig+resurrection&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IENAE2&pc=EUPP_
“Felix For evidence see Jesus’ predictions of his death and resurrection, supported by the historical record of eye witnesses who saw and reported those events. Those prophecies are the hypothesis that God exists with the consequent confirming evidence.”
All written well after the fact. There’s no way to verify.
Oh dear. Not very scientific.
And evidence doesn’t confirm theories, it only disproves them
So a bunch of people with little to no understanding of modern biology and how the human body really works are credible witnesses when it comes to explaining the physical state of a man’s body? Laughable.
BTW The gospels are highly unreliable, being as they are full of contradictions https://infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html
A Computational Model/Theory somewhat analogous to Conway’s Game of Life, and employing strong AI for a sentient universe:
With no beginning is the Word – the ‘Software’ – the Cellular Automata Rules – upon which all other higher rules and laws of physics are an outgrowth.
With no beginning is Matter/Energy/Space – the ‘Hardware’ – in which the Software virtually exhibits its existence.
With no beginning is Time – which simultaneously updates the Universe with each succeeding chronon.
Just as a normal living human has a brain which, as it matures, is capable of being aware of its own existence through biochemical processes in a finite neural net; I conjecture that the omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient ‘mind’ of God has always inhabited the infinite Universe overseeing his/her/its objectives.
Thus:
God is the Universe.
The Universe is God.
… no need to separate ‘science’ and ‘religion.’
Science and religion are separate because they use totally different methods of “knowing” reality.
Philosophically, your own awareness of existence is not scientifically testable. Each person can only vouch to him-herself of their own sentience. I am aware of my own existence – all other beings could just be non-sentient simulants in my environment. However I have faith, via strong analogous interactions with other beings, that they too are sentient – but there is no way to test/prove this – partly because implementation of sentience itself in the strong AI sense is currently unknown.
God is the Universe. The Universe is God. Or Energy is the Universe. The Universe is Energy.
I don’t believe God IS the universe; as the universe is matter and energy and not terribly intelligent. It is more likely that the universe resides INSIDE God. Thus he is all ever-present.
Even God couldn’t explain where he came from. So I think it’s a bit tough for us to speculate on such things.
If God were omniscient, He would presumably know whence He came.
But surely He has no beginning, or what’s the point?
Greg; “Even God couldn’t explain where he came from.”
God didn’t explain where he came from – not quite the same thing.
“The problem for Darwin and the Big Bang theory people is”
No problem. There is no evidence to use to test any postulate so its no longer science. The only evidence there is for no God is smugness.
“The only evidence there is for no God is smugness.”
Where is the evidence FOR god. “Evidence for no God” is a silly statement.
Do you appreciate how much science is faith? The greatest evidence for God is the thinking behind this argument. If we were primitive cells bumping heads in a primordial soup I might be tempted to agree with you
If I could.
What part of science is faith?
There is no evidence of God, and that’s just the way that God wants it.
For faith to have value, He must remain hidden.
The conception of Gog of biblical authors evolved toward this understanding. First God instructed Adam and Eve personally, then escorted them out of the Garden. Later, He still walked with Abraham under the terebinth trees. Later still, He talked to Moses via burning vegetation and delivered commandments out of storm clouds atop Mt. Sinai. But eventually the realization that”to see God is to die” dawned.
And since that point, God has remained hidden, except for the prophets’ claims that He intervened in history, unseen, when His people ticked him off.
Apart from you don’t have a cyclotron or one of the many other expensive bits of equipment to gather data independently, me thinks you would struggle to even prove that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System even if you didn’t record the movement of the planets yourself.
Maybe Felix. Here’s another possibility. For our love / friendship to have value it must be freely given. If God revealed himself directly that free choice or free will would be taken away (how could you not do the will of God once you knew him?).
Imagine the crushing, endless loneliness before creation and then ask “Why would God create? What’s it all for? Why am I here?”. After an eternity on your own imagine the gifts you would bestow on new friends / lovers – the latitude you might give such precious companions when they (repeatedly and painfully) disappoint – the sheer delight when they use your gifts to create something beautiful of their own (however insignificant in the great scheme of things).
All of which would mean so much less if God were empirically proven.
On te contrary there is considerable evidence for no God of the sort described by a typical Christian.
Take intelligent design. Frankly the human body is way worse than any Microsoft software. Mixing up the urinary and reproductive tracts and putting the waste disposal next to them is the sort of idiocy only a socialist government could come up with.,
Then sharing the same passageway with food and breathing so people can choke to death is beyond belief stupid.
And passing it all off as evidence of a Purpose beyond our Understanding is just a total cop out.
I mean they had to introduce Sin to explain why life is so full of pain and suffering…and then we are supposed to assume that its all our fault, when if God had has his thinking cap on he wouldn’t have made Sin possible in the first place.
No, if God exists and He made the world, he is either completely uncaring or a stupid incompetence sadistic son of a bitch who doesn’t deserve any respect al all.
+1000
Spot on, Leo.
A supposedly loving god who lets children die horrific deaths? Ridiculous.
PS A variation on your (superb) comparison to socialist central planning:
“Why do we know God was a civil engineer?”
“Only a civil engineer would put the leisure park by the waste outfall”
You say “…the universe exists and is what it is, because it doesn’t have any option to not exist.”
Next you’ll be saying “it has to be CO2 because I can’t explain it any other way.”
Easier just to say “I don’t know”
I don’t know. I admit I don’t know. But if you ask, it appears the university exists, and there maybe is some logic behind it. And what I think is that when (if) we find out how come, then the logic just shows there is no other option than that the universe exists. This we would call a theory of everything. I think I have heard this term somewhere?
This is a very simple description how explanations emerge. And if we are intelligent enough, that is possible. Where would you place the God then? The point is, we don’t know, but that is not a reason to postulate a God.
I think temperature has many components, so don’t go there.
I think I know where you are coming from here Hugs. Descartes aside the universe does exist and (QM aside) it can’t both exist and not exist. I would only ask that you stay open to the possibility “when (if) we find out how come” that the answer is God.
Folks will always have a problem with God- which is eternal, all-powerful, all knowing from which our universe came via a big bang or otherwise.
We can form a concept of God, but as humans we can’t form a complete idea because God is not a part of the universe. All our knowledge is only part of the universe. This brings to mind Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem, and Turing’s halting problem. While aimed mainly at mathematics, logic and algorithmic processes they suggest the real possibility that there are ideas we can concieve that we can’t prove.
There are things we can never know or prove. When faced with that people turn to beliefs which can be made but exist only in an individual mind.
The author gratuitously challenges a well proven theory using the banal arguments of creationists, while denying the obvious source of his evolutionary skepticism and denying the overwhelmingly vast array of proof of evolution … And then conflates his science denialism with the very real science that is the bulwark of AGW skepticism???
The author could not possibly harm the science of AGW skepticism more than he has with this post. No thinking person need ever pay any attention to this flake again.
You put it so harshly. You know why I snipped my first slip?
You are also right on all accounts. That’s why I was so devastated. Why was that written?
I believe the point was that the reactions which arise, when the limitations and unresolved questions surrounding Evolution and The Big Bang are brought up, are characteristic of a belief being challenged, instead of a scientific theory being criticized.
Science isn’t supposed to need emotionally charged personal attacks in order to defend it.
Yes, this is the first cause argument in the end. There must be a first cause… and that will be God.
The first thing every philosophy student learns is that this argument depends on a premise that cannot be shown to be true, which is then used to derive a conclusion which does not follow from it.
The most sophisticated of Acquinas’ five proofs is the one from necessity and contingency. Though it too fails, even if correct, to establish the nature of the necessity that it argues must exist.
Here is one possible answer to ‘who triggered the big bang’. In keeping with the worst rhetorical questions theme (:
Pastafarianism Automated Creationism
A controversial theory of Pastafarianism that has been adopted by many believers since the theory of Evolution was first put forward, is that of Automated Creationism. This theory proposes that the Flying Spaghetti Monster designed a process by which all of creation would come into existence through natural progression, initially triggered by Him in one significant event, called the Big Boil*. Such natural progression would also serve to mislead scientists, something that causes the Flying Spaghetti Monster much delight. Due to its similarity to the much touted Big Bang Theory, this proposed version of the universe’s creation received much popularity among Pastafarians who sought to accommodate both scientific and religious opinion, as the Big Boil denies neither faith nor science. The theory also received benign acceptance by the majority of the scientific community.
The orthodox Pastafarian sect, however, labeled this theory as a heresy supported only by weak and disloyal disciples, and in the interest of peace and harmony began a long-running crusade of intimidation and harassment. This crusade was tempered in later years by the influence of more sympathetic leaders of the faith who felt that, rather than condemning the divisionists as evil, they should instead be seen as victims of their own weakness of spirit and thus prone to the evil influence of science. Accordingly, compassion was shown to them and their souls cleansed by means of beheading.
The last known mention of Automated Creationism by a high-profile Pastafarian in a public forum was allegedly made in 1936 by the prophet Barry Foster, who had begun to consider the merits of the theory late in his life – specifically on his last day of life, which ended shortly after leaving the aforesaid public forum.
NOTE: The Big Boil Event took longer than He expected until He created salt and added it to the mix. This initiated the Big Boil and also explains why the sea is salty. Rituals Failure If done wrong, Godzilla may appear instead of Flying Spaghetti Monster. Please call 911 123-789 for help, they will fly it to Japan.
http://flyingspaghettimonster.wikia.com/wiki/Pastafarianism
And oh yeah, the angels dancing on the head of a pin discussion and other such nonsense can start here.
Oh, Wait…
With all of that spaghetti, I thought he was going to work in the origins of string theory!
Now, that is funny!
Except that it has now morphed into M Theory.
Maybe M for marinara sauce.
Ironically, we witness belief in the environment and AGW taking religious, blind belief, positions. So it is with Darwin. The minute you even raise the topic you get hysterical arm waving responses, with no empirical evidence to support their position.
Hear Hear!
Go get ’em (again) Dr. Ball!
seconded.
And for a little dogma rattling in physics, try this site:
https://www.physicsmyths.org.uk/
Many thanks!
Great site, thanks.
For some time now, I have questioned whether “survival of the fittest” combined with genetic mutations is the sole mechanism for evolution. I still think evolution is plausible, but I do not think we have all of the mechanisms understood. How do behaviors find their way into an organism’s genetic make-up? Just asking.
It’s called epigenetics, read up on it. It’s a hot topic.
It’s an oversold topic based on very small studies.
Behaviors are most certainly under evolutionary control.
http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BIO48/16.Evol.Behavior.HTML
To the extent that behavior has a genetic basis, it’s necessarily subject to evolution.
Behavioral adaptation develops from within an organism and is epigenetically transmitted to its offspring. Darwinists and all the other evolutionists insist external stimulus “orders” the mutations or adaptation.
For example: the platypus supposedly developed all of it’s characteristics in response to external stimuli. That stimuli caused adaptation. Either the stimuli sorted the mutations (helpful mutations survive to be passed on to the offspring) or more simply as Darwin thought, the struggle for survival caused the helpful characteristics to develop and evolve.
It is wildly improbable that the platypus casually was conjured into its present form, shape and function by external stimuli. Venomous mammalian claws, in only the male? The female lays eggs and lactates & nurses without teats? The duckbill? Marsupial? What did the platypus evolve from?
It takes a greater act of faith to believe external stimuli “created” the platypus than to believe the platypus created itself. What can’t be denied is the design.
You don’t understand evolution in general and apparently have never studied mammalian evolution in particular.
Darwinian evolution, ie evolution by means of selection, which means differential reproductive success based upon variation, doesn’t “order” anything. If by “external stimulus” you mean changes in the environment, then OK.
The platypus is a holdover from when all mammals still laid eggs. It and its monotreme kin survived on Australia because that continent split off from Gondwanaland before placentals arrived there. Since marsupials can’t live in the water, or else their joeys would drown, monotremes managed to hold onto that niche on Australia. Everywhere else, they were replaced by placentals.
Similarly, on Australia, marsupials radiated into niches elsewhere occupied by us placentals.
You didn’t explain the male’s venomous claws or his unique bifurcated, four-headed penis which is used only for sex. But continue, very interesting science you present, all these facts about the evolution of male & female platypus.
“A Camel is a Horse designed by a committee”.
Joking aside, the marsupial/mammal parallel evolution on continents seperated by ocean is something very like our good technological ideas being tried out again and again. Looks like the platypus was a test case.
Via biological mechanisms such as the interactions of hormones, neural transmitters, brain structures anspd so on. Learning to walk us hard wired into our brains, so why not fighting over sex?
Well ist not survival of the fittest. Its elimination of the totally dysfunctional.
Otherwise why else would we have democrats, liberals and greens?
Natural selection ensures that this is the worst of all possible worlds, in that an even worse one simply couldn’t exist. 🙂
All the better to “Hear Hear” you.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/05/01/20/3FD173B000000578-0-image-m-20_1493667321126.jpg
Except that Darwin is not a matter of blind belief at all.
Its a reasonable plausible hypothesis that hasn’t been disproved.
Firm believer in creationism over evolution. Everything that evolution presents as a pattern of from goo to you would also support a creator version.
How dare you buck the consensus.
Surely you must agree that since Darwin, we don’t “need” a creator any longer, hence we’re allowed to dismiss with prejudice the case for Him!
Yes but you can’t dictate the methods God chooses.
ADS, so you prefer the easy, snap your fingers version, instead of scientific inquiry to find out what really happened.
Nice strawman you have there.
We all have the same evidence, there just happens to be a disagreement on the required assumptions. The Creationists have the benefit of not having to constantly change their assumptions as scientific inquiry updates what we know about the world around us.
For example: adaptation. Its evidence that can be seen, measured and to some degree understood. Creationists state that “each reproduces after its own kind” and that is exactly what the evidence continues to prove. Evolutionists make contrary claims but the evidence produced only supports Evolution if certain unsubstantiated assumptions are used to interpret this evidence. (e.g. Uniformitarianism).
One of the take-aways from this mini-series of articles is that AGW seeks to refute Uniformitarianism in order to push forward its own predictions. So for the misotheists, which is more sacred Evolution or AGW? Pick one.
Please define “kind”. Thanks.
There is no genetic barrier that keeps one species from evolving into a new species, or from higher categories evolving, ie genera. families, orders, classes, phyla, kingdoms or domains. Transitions from one such category to another abound, based upon every possible line of evidence, without any evidence against these factual observations.
Every prediction of creationists has been shown false. There is no evidence whatsoever supporting the repeatedly falsified, antiscientific religious doctrine of creationism, which is as faulty theologically as scientifically.
If you truly believe that there is evidence in favor of creationism, please provide it. Thanks, again!
“Transitions from one such category to another abound, based upon every possible line of evidence, without any evidence against these factual observations….If you truly believe that there is evidence in favor of creationism, please provide it.”
Back at ya, Felix. Where’s the evidence of one species “evolving” into another?
And not your tired old 1995 link to a confused mish-mash that does not show any such thing.
Thanks.
Kent,
You’ve been shown numerous instances. What good will it do to show more, if you don’t read them, or say they’re only “traits”, not new species? If the new species is interfertile, but can’t produce fertile offspring with its parental species (one or more), then it’s a new species, but the strictest definition.
Not just new species, but new genera have been made in the lab, as I already showed you.
Yet again, here’s the instance cited by Tty of an observed speciation event from the 1870s:
http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-1680
As noted, most plant species probably arose in a single generation, via whole genome duplication. If even half did so, that’s about 150,000 instances of new species arising from existing species.
Hybridization also can make new species from old in a single generation. It has been repeatedly observed. In the case of South American butterflies, the hybridization observed in the wild was repeated in the lab.
Same with nylon-eating bacteria. The simple point mutation which turns sugar-eating bacteria into nylonophages in the wild has been recreated in the lab.
I could go on endlessly, but you’re not subject to persuasion based upon evidence. It’s obvious that you want to remain ignorant, which is sad, since it would be easy to educate yourself:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(08)01268-2.pdf
Felix,
Each time you arrogantly assert that others are not reading your links, I’ve reported to you what your “evidence” actually shows–and none show evidence of “evolution.”
The “Observed Speciation” link is nonsense. It shows nothing of the kind.
You link to an article about a new variety of water grass is not “evolution” observed.
Changes in “ploidy” are NOT “evolution” of a new species.
The Origin of the Species theory of evolution posits one species becoming something else altogether–a chicken becoming a lizard, or vice versa. And that there are “missing links” between the various species that will be soon discovered and prove the theory.
For example, the “common ancestor” of gorillas and man was a different species. Not a different variety of gorilla or man, but a different species. Gorillas are different species from man. The theory posits that gorillas and man “evolved” from the common ancestor, with many (?) missing links in between.
Please provide evidence of one species “evolving” into another?
I’ve repeatedly given you instances. You just can’t handle the truth.
Changes in ploidy most certainly is evolution. Clearly you have no clue what evolution is.
When a plant doubles its genome, it usually becomes a new species, ie breeding only with members of its own species and not its parental species. How many times does this need to be explained to you?
Please state specifically (!) which instances from the 1995 link and other examples I’ve provided you you find faulty and why.
You won’t because you can’t. All you can do is hand-wave, deny and go “Na-na-na-na-na! I can’t hear you!”
Your take on evolution is absurd. Your lies are ridiculous.
Clearly you’ve never studied it, nor obviously read Darwin or any other biologist.
Evolution doesn’t say that a chicken will turn into a lizard. It says that chickens and lizards descend from a common reptilian (diapsid) ancestor.
Chickens and crocs are archosaurs, one branch of the diapsid line. Lizards belong to another branch, the lepidosaurs, with snakes and tuataras.
Felix,
Are you familiar with the psychological phenomena of “Projection?”
When you start with your ad hominems, please look in the mirror first!
Your repetitions of sources provides no evidence of one species becoming another species.
The “reference” you linked to multiple times, in the last discussion is here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html#part5
You appear to think he reports on observations of species “evolving” into different species. It is not what you think it is.
Take at random one of the pitiful “examples” he thinks proves “observed speciation.” How about, “5.6 Flour Beetles (Tribolium castaneum)”
What did the “observed speciation” in this case actually mean? Hold on, here comes the proof of evolution we’ve been waiting for!
Heavy and light beetles had preferences for mating with others of similar size! Or something…..!
“Positive assortative mating on the basis of size was found in 2 out of 4 experimental lines.”
Or at least in 50% of the cases! Yeah! There it is! Flip a coin, and a big beetle may mate with a little beetle–or–it may mate with another big beetle!
His examples are all of this quality and value.
Again, check your source. It is total nonsense.
Only by semantic games can he even convince himself that he’s talking about “speciation.”
That’s hand-waving attempts to obfuscate bunkum. Sorry. But it’s not evidence.
The theory of evolution does NOT predict that Flour Beetles will prefer mating with others their own size!
The theory predicts that mutations will spontaneously create new species–completely different species from the original species–uniquely adapted (survival of the fittest) to their environment.
In case you’ve forgotten the theory, here’s Darwin’s “Tree of Life:”
http://dc37.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/humanities/gabriel/DTP/treelife.jpg
This clearly shows the theoretical transmorgrification of a hypotehtical proto-fish into chickens, frogs, and humans, among other species.
Maybe you don’t like the plain talking–but the theory requires one species (proto-fish for example) to change into completely different, and vastly dissimilar species.
Any evidence for that?
Thanks.
“Back at ya, Felix. Where’s the evidence of one species “evolving” into another?
And not your tired old 1995 link to a confused mish-mash that does not show any such thing.”
Sounds like you won’t accept any evidence.
Gosh, Jeff, can you provide any?
Check out Felix’s “evidence.”
It’s weak beer. No evidence of a species becoming another species. Just evidence of micro-evolution, changes in a species–beetles that might (or might not!) prefer to mate with beetles their own size!
How about the most studied species in the history of science? The fruit fly?
Must be thousands of generations of fruit flies studied in the lab. Thousands of spontaneous and induced mutations. Weird appendages growing out of heads.
Has there ever been a new species created from these fruit fly experiments? Any observation of a fruit fly laying eggs that hatched into house flies? Or any other species?
Here’s UC Berkely’s pitiful grasping at straws on how fruit flies might “evolve” in the future:
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_45
And Florida State’s prediction that fruit flies will be a new species–40 million years from now!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170809140249.htm
It would be great to see evidence.
Please share!
Thanks.
This is the problem with Crevo discussions. Both side don’t share the same domain language, and the Evos are too arrogant to even care.
In this case, the red herring is “define ‘kind'”. Creationists didn’t invent that word, “kind” is the English word chosen to represent ‘miyn’ in the ancient Hebrew. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t map to the 20th century taxonomy, but its pretty much universally understood that a cat is a different ‘kind’ than a horse or sparrow (except to the Evolutionist). So blathering on about transitioning between one arbitrary unit of taxonomy to another defined in the world-view of the Evolutionist isn’t helping to build that bridge either.
Furthermore, moving goal-posts is not really an honest way to keep a discussion amiable. In point “no evidence supporting…” is very different than “evidence is consistent with”. In this case the claim “after its own kind” has not been contradicted by any available evidence. That is, we don’t see one kind bringing forth a different kind. Evolution, OTOH, makes this a bedrock part of their faith yet we get hoaxes as proof.
Now if Evolutionists concoct a system of taxonomy that is based on their world-view, so that species differentiation can still be of the same kind but can also be attributed to variation which everyone agrees takes place, we still have the same evidence that are consistent with the claims (sans any links from one kind to another), but still have a gulf between both parties because the domain language and the assumptions differ.
So you can claim that evolution is true, but it doesn’t negate Creationism because your evidence requires a different set of assumptions and a different standard of measure.
Calling it a strawman doesn’t make it one.
“The Creationists have the benefit of not having to constantly change their assumptions as scientific inquiry updates what we know about the world around us.”
You call that a benefit? I call it ignorance, seemingly willful.
Creationists constantly change their story.
Whenever new discoveries fill gaps in the history of life on Earth, they say, “Ah-ha! Now you have two gaps where before they was just one!”.
Except that eventually even those gaps get filled, as with Gish’s claim that no protomammal with two different jawbone-skull attachments existed. Then such fossil animals with both the “reptilian” and mammalian jaw joints were found, in which the rear little jawbones were already used for hearing. Egg-laying mammals in which these bones had moved into the middle ear had previously been found.
What story do we change? The fact is that until you hand us verifiable evidence of witnessed and recorded evolution in which the new organism has new and never before present in the species DNA which produces an improved new never before possible in that species function, you have not proven evolution in the least bit.
But lets say that you do provide said such new positive DNA with new positive functionality. As a believer in God, I would just see it as a miracle, and move on.
But you have yet to provide said evidence, and you likely will not be able to in my lifetime. I am all for the science, study the stuff all you want. It will never change my view that there is God.
Breeding one species of life repeatedly aiming to accentuate a certain characteristic of that life which is already present, but maybe not frequently present, or present in high degrees is not evolution. That is just simply selective breeding.
Antibiotic resistance is not evolution. It is just simply the result of killing off bacteria that is not resistant and giving more room to grow for those that are resistant. The DNA to be resistant was always there, but because it came at a cost with no benefit it used to be the rare variation to present upon division. Now, after having the non resistant bacteria wiped out, they are becoming more and more dominant. Take away the medication, and after a while, the ones that expend the extra energy to be resistant will return to being the tiny minority.
You are dead wrong on every singly ignorant creationist talking point lie.
1) I’ve provided hundreds of thousands of instances in which speciation has been observed in the wild and made in the lab, or both. In every instance, the speciation is thanks to genetic changes. The evolution of novel DNA with new species is also abundantly evident in the record of life on Earth.
No miracles required. Just nature.
Your argument is from ignorance. Because you’ve never seen it happen and have been told by professional liars that it hasn’t happened, you’re totally gullible and fall for such blatant falsehoods.
2) Clearly, you don’t know what evolution is, ie descent with modification. In the lab we make new species all the time, and observe it in the wild. For sexual species, that means that the new species can’t produce fertile offspring with the parental species.
3) Microbes evolve DNA resistance. That’s simply a fact. Some microbial populations do already have defenses against some antibiotics, because our early antibiotics were often based upon naturally occurring substances, which the microbes’ ancestors encountered in the soil, air or water.
But the evolution of novel resistance, ie new genetic material, has also been observed over and over again. It’s a fact. Genomes aren’t engraved in indelible stone. They change in every generation. Indeed, they do so in individual organisms during their lives.
How can you fall for the absurd lie that DNA doesn’t change? It can’t help but do so. If you want to inject God into the history of life on Earth, which is an antiscientific endeavor, but feel free, then blame Him for designing DNA and RNA to be able to change so easily.
Evolution also works so as to conserve genetic material essential for basic biochemistry.
No one is asking you not to believe in God. The fact of evolution and every other scientific fact says nothing about the existence or lack thereof of God. Why is that so hard to understand?
Nature works without continuing divine intervention. But you can insert God into the history of the universe at any point you want. It’s just not science. The belief in God isn’t subject to the scientific method.
For “singly”, please read “single”.
On the evolution of novel structures and functions:
Evolutionary novelties
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209019459
Instances of evolution of novel features, including as a result of selective pressure and random mutations:
http://listverse.com/2011/11/19/8-examples-of-evolution-in-action/
Nothing prevents us from investigating the creations of God and learning from them. As an engineer I think I have a firm handle on inquiry, no finger snapping explanations needed.
As a believer in evolution, a semi science based direction of inquiry, the burden of evidence is upon you to prove beyond doubt that it is and that it is not driven by a behind the scenes God. Like I said, everything that evolution presents can also be attributed to creationism.
Look at it as if our universe is an immense game. 30 years ago the characters written into games were very basic and very limited. Over time they grew in complexity and abilities. They did not do this through evolution, but through creationism.
Now move on to our “future” AI dreams with computers and spooky action at a distance quantum computing running these AI “games”. We could create a world for the AI to live in, it might start off limited. We might have enough time to individually converse with each AI in the beginning. We would have upgrades. We could control the speed of “time”, we could shut it down and start it up without any ability of the AI to know. We might make them self replicating and dynamic in nature. We would certainly want them to have an environment that challenges them. What is the point of AI if we cannot make it learn and advance. And we would watch them grow and keep track of them. We might even want to limit their lifespan to prevent build up of errors from corrupting them beyond the point of repair. Each would grow from the last. And if they go off the desired path, we would destroy them individually or in large numbers.
So, think about that, we could, in the next 30 to 100 years create a universe from nothing, and inflate it into position in a near instance. Turn it on. It would be significantly less than what our universe is. But I read an article about a 4k color TV. It can show so many colors on so many pixels that there are more images possible on the color tv than atoms that exist in the entirety of the known universe. 8,251,200 pixels with 68,719,476,736 possible colors per pixel. Who says the universe God resides in is not as much advanced from our universe as our universe is from the the potential universes we could create? Or even vastly more so.
I believe in God without evidence, and no evidence has been shown to make God impossible.
That’s right. No evidence can show God impossible, since the belief that He exists isn’t subject to the scientific method.
However it’s not true that the religious belief in creationism and the scientific fact of evolution both equally well explain the observed history and function of life on Earth. Creationism explains nothing, nor can it explain anything. Evolution explains everything, or offers the potential to do so. Creationism is supernatural, thus (false) religion. Evolution is natural, hence genuine science.
OK, then explain everything.
The universe is supernatural. Everything from a nothing in an instant.
Magical invisible matter to hold galaxies together
Magical invisible energy to push galaxies way from one another at an ever accelerating rate.
Experiments show that a photon can go back in time in order to decide if it wants to present as a wave or a particle.
The universe is not analog, it is digital, there is a Planck distance that is the smallest distance possible to have any meaning.
Subatomic particles magically appear and disappear.
The difference between the human and the next animal on Earth is orders of magnitude different. We have near absolute control of our environment which allows us to live on nearly any point on the surface and many below it. If even for short periods of time. And even into outer space all the way to other heavenly bodies.
I said that evolution explains biology, not cosmology, although obviously the universe evolves, too.
The difference between humans and other animals is not orders of magnitude different. Please show how you quantified that difference.
In terms of biomass, many other species outweigh us. Microbes can survive in outer space where humans can’t, even with space suits.
Explain everything biological then.
My arguments above are just showing that religion is not the only supernatural thing people believe in.
Biology for instance…
Based upon the size and age of the universe, and the sheer number of chemical reactions required to produce the first living organism, let alone the number of living organisms that would die off long before they were perfectly attuned to reproduce long enough to really start off long surviving life, there just has not been enough time for it to have actually occurred.
That is chemistry, physics and mathematics in action. The chances of having already having life in the young universe we have is too small to even contemplate.
That we are here with even just single celled organisms let alone unimaginably advanced life such as us humans is supernatural.
Felix: “Creationism explains nothing, nor can it explain anything.”
It does not try to explain; but I think this might be the time to point out that Creation and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. Creation is unfinished.
“the burden of evidence is upon you to prove beyond doubt that it is and that it is not driven by a behind the scenes God.”
The first burden of evidence is to show that there is a behind-the-scenes-God who may or may not be driving the process.
The second burden of evidence is to show that this God is, in fact, driving the process.
Burden of evidence usually falls on the positive claim. “God didn’t do it is a negative claim”, so no burden to prove it. Only when the negative claim goes against a pretty well supported claim (yes, I know that is vague) is there a burden of proof on the negative.
There is no supporting evidence for the “God did it” claim.
I admit my belief is based upon faith. I have nothing to prove to you. If you chose to give up the possibility of eternal life in heaven because you argue that science disproves God, that is a choice you make. God cannot be disproved, just as he cannot be proven to exist, unless he decides to reveal himself.
I have had no special events in my life to make me know there is a God. I have seen no miracles that force me to believe in him. I ask for no such evidence. At the end of the day, you believe or you do not.
But, arguing evolution is real and that is how all life after genesis progressed. There is your positive claim. Since evolution requires the creation of new physical features or cellular functions which never existed before, all you have to is provide the evidence of said new DNA coming from where it was impossible before. Should be simple. Evolution argues that since the start of life on earth there have been 5 billion species that have gone extinct. Since the Earth is less than 5 billion year old, that means that we should see a new, unique, never before seen, species. Every single year. You should look harder. Much harder. And find that event that happens every single year, where one species becomes another.
You should also be able to create a sterile environment with the chemicals of life and have it eventually spontaneously erupt with new life. That new life of course would have to be completely foreign to the DNA life that we all love and experience today… Funny that with controlled experiments where you can make the most life forming friendly environment [possible that evolutionists have never been able to accomplish it. The problem with the formula of life is that the environments in which the components of life can occur are hostile to one another. You need a protective shell that lets the good things in, the bad things out, and is able to be grown once form, and divided. You need the worker parts inside. And you need coded molecules. Which is why life is a miracle. There is no single environment in which the piece parts of life can be created simultaneously and be able to come together, and then be programmed instantaneously such that they can reproduce.
Without a way for that spark of life to happen, that leaves a creator beyond the universe we live in to have started it. And of course, if he started it, and evolution does actually happen, that is due to his initial programming of a language of life. DNA.
You have a large amount of work to prove evolution, and even if you do prove evolution, then you have to prove that life can start on its own in a singular environment or group of attached environments that mix at the edges, and that such an environment or group of environments was possible on Earth 4.3 billion years ago.
Then, and only then can you credibly challenge my belief in God, and it still would not disprove him. It would just simply be a challenge. Because now I can just argue that he set up those environments to make it happen and see what went on.
To truly shake my belief you would basically have to trace back genetically and with physical evidence the path from me to what ever monkey species we supposedly evolved from after having proven evolution and genesis.
As I keep pointing out and you keep failing to notice, no one is asking you to give up a belief in God. The fact of evolution says nothing at all about God.
Science technically doesn’t “prove” things, although that term is sometimes used colloquially.
I’ve showed you instance after instance of the evolution of novel genetic changes leading to functional differences in new species. That’s evolution.
If for some warped religious belief you can’t handle the truth, that’s your problem. You’re free to be happy being lied to by blasphemers who tell you that God is cruel, incompetent and deceptive, as the evil creationist Creator must be.
Evolution is a fact, going on around us all the time. Our own bodies show its effects. But if ignorance is bliss for you, great.
You’re lucky that scientists recognize and use the fact of evolution to improve life on Earth.
“If you chose to give up the possibility of eternal life in heaven because you argue that science disproves God, that is a choice you make.”
I don’t argue that science disproves God. But why should making that argument exclude the possibility of eternal life in heaven? I cannot see a logical connection there. If you can, please expound it.
In the meantime, recall that Buddhists reject the idea of a creator God, but believe that all life is eternal and each being is continually reborn in various realms until that being attains enlightenment.
“But, arguing evolution is real and that is how all life after genesis progressed. There is your positive claim.”
And I will let the experts on evolution argue for it. It is not my argument.
“that leaves a creator beyond the universe we live in to have started it.”
The fact that you cannot imagine any alternative means of starting life does not show that there is no alternative.
And, as I pointed out above, Buddhists do not believe that life started.
“Then, and only then can you credibly challenge my belief in God, and it still would not disprove him. It would just simply be a challenge. Because now I can just argue that he set up those environments to make it happen and see what went on.”
And still without supporting evidence for that claim.
To educate yourself I would recommend some of the videos of Aron Ra. On the downside they can be lengthy.
https://m.youtube.com/user/AronRa/videos
Or more briefly this: https://youtu.be/18YwBwIK_no, or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK3O6KYPmEw&feature=youtu.be
Sorry but that doesn’t work. We have strong evidence that the mechanism is mutation and strong evidence that mutation is random.
Random means no creator.
Unless you can show that it’s not mutation that drives evolution or that mutation is not random, you are obviously wrong.
“not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory”
There are some things you just can’t convince some people of, so why bother?
CO2 and evolution are similar in this one way. So I will shut up about evolution, almost.
But turn it around, how would you prove creationism?
The concept of “proof” is valid in mathematics. In science or anything but mathematics, it’s not that easy.
Even in religion, how do you prove God exists? or doesn’t? Or heaven or hell?
But turn it around, how would you prove creationism?
Even in religion, how do you prove God exists? or doesn’t? Or heaven or hell?
You can’t.
Hence, the question becomes, “Why is your faith better than mine?”
When you have evidence, it’s not faith any more.
You have demonstrable evidence that God does or does not exist?
I’m interested!
You are asking for Jeff Alberts to prove a negative? Go on!
You are asking for Jeff Alberts to prove a negative? Go on!
Well I wasn’t thinking specifically along those lines.
Are you making the claim that one cannot prove a negative? If you are, that claim is in itself a negative, in which case, not provable under your own assumptions…
:-p
nope
it is the contrapositive of “anything that exists can be proven’
bone up on the logic, mate.
“You have demonstrable evidence that God does or does not exist?”
Nice spin. I was speaking of evidence for Evolution. Therefore it’s not faith. It’s an ongoing investigation, instead of “I already know everything”.
I was speaking of evidence for Evolution. Therefore it’s not faith. It’s an ongoing investigation, instead of “I already know everything”.
It can’t be both at the same time, i.e., either evolution is “an ongoing investigation,” or it isn’t faith (and therefore, you “know everything”).
“It can’t be both at the same time, i.e., either evolution is “an ongoing investigation,” or it isn’t faith (and therefore, you “know everything”).”
Bafflegab.
An observation supporting a theory that supports a theory that supports a …. etc.
That is not evidence.
Mann observed the flooding in Houston and claimed it was evidence Man’s CO2 caused it.
Exactly, Jeff. If the evidence for a god existed, there would be no need for the armies of sycophants who make their living from the donations of believers.
I believe in Darwin’s theory, because it is logical, & matches the evidence we see around us. The decoding of our genetic inheritance in DNA has, for me, provided the proof of this theory.
However, even before that, I could not accept that any god would have the patience to create the vast number of life forms that exist on earth, especially those that we are continually finding living in seriously extreme environments. If god created all of nature, why would he bother to also create single celled creatures that live in rocks hundreds of metres underground? Or viruses that can dry out for hundreds, even thousands of years, & then return to life when conditions are suitable?
Another ungodly creation is radioactivity, the driving force that makes our planet habitable? Can any creationist give a plausible explanation of how an omnipotent god came up with that idea, when it can also be explained as a natural process occurring in stars which have simply grown to massive sizes under the force of gravity when enough raw material is available nearby?
The big bang theory, & most of cosmology are another matter entirely (no pun intended). Humans might be better served by accepting that the universe as we see it exists, & keeps getting bigger because we keep developing instruments that can see further. 2000 years ago the Romans thought that the sun was a fire carried in a chariot across the sky. Today? ….
The fiery chariot was before the Romans, at least during the Empire.
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