Dan S de Whatever: << So Michael, am I correct in hearing you say evolution theory is not a certainty but only 99.999%? >>

Sounds about right to me.

Michael,
I can well relate to your last post. I can understand you not wanting to put a percentage figure on some of these bigger questions considering our incomplete knowledge. But you still hold your ground with a certain confidence, claiming that the evidence favours your position.

Fair enough. I’d do the same. But this prompts me to try and define the word ‘faith’ considering how much we will never know. Holding to a position in the face of incomplete knowledge is one definition of faith. Like one Biblical definition: ‘faith gives us assurance about things we cannot see,’ ‘faith is the conviction of things not seen,’ ‘faith is being certain of what we do not see.’

I disagree with the assertion, so often stated, that given enough time (billions of years) anything can happen. Scientific thinking encourages us to observe occurrences that actually do happen, and note what we actually see. And we note that some things occur more readily, and are a lot more likely, than others. Certain complex chemical alignments are just not seen to neatly arrange themselves without direction.

With regard to evolution, atheists never claim they hold their position with anything like faith. Nevertheless, carry as they do a type of self-enchanted self-confidence.

To say that a creator god must itself have a creator begins an infinite regression. Such a regression is not feasible. There must be a first cause that brought the space-time continuum into being and set cause and effect relationships into motion.

If the notion of an eternal god is unacceptable to atheists, why can they accept another type of uncaused first cause? Generally the atheist will accept that matter (and energy) made everything and nothing made matter. For them, matter is the uncaused first cause.

Evidence points to a creative intelligence beyond our own. If you ask who made this god, I can’t find another answer than the one you don’t want. Sometimes an answer acceptable for the kid in Sunday school is also profound enough for the philosopher. God is the uncaused first cause.

Just to be fair to Francis Crick:

"Outside biology, we do not see the process of exact geometrical replication, which, together with the

replication of mutants, leads to rare events becoming common"

and

"biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved"

"Physicists are all to apt to look for the wrong sort of generalisations"

All of these from Francic Crick's retrospective "what mad pusuit" 1988.

Lying for god, Dan?

Robert Shapiro who holds that metabolism (of the sort modelled by Prigogine) predates RNA.

Dan *really* thinks his stuff prefers his explanation? Is he so desperate? Should we go look it up?

Dan even clutches at the fred hoyle position, Dan should (if honest, which as a christian apologist he is not) look up the references himself.

What about it Dan? A Student-life-type approached me in a tute last week with approximately your argument. I told her she will get no marks on the current assignment unless she went and looked up why her assertion was wrong. She has paid for her education (or her parents), so I gave her a starting reference. I have no reason to believe you deserve such accommodation, find your own. Why you are *wrong*, that is. She, like you, needs a much better basis for faith if you expect me to "respect" it.

In the meantime, like runner, you discredit christianity by taking juvenile positions. Catch up.

Here's a suggestion, when a single sentence suggests a conspiracy to you, don't bite. You and runner may think there is a global atheist conspiracy, let slip by such snippets as you are able to glean from wieland et al... but there isn't, and wieland et al aren't smart enough to inform you usefully.

Oh yes: Does misprepresenting the views of great scientists glorify your god, or show him to be satisfied by the products of liars? Just wondering. Will enough lies get you into heaven? or just make the church and and it's dependents more comfortable?

Rusty

Dan is correct about the infinite regression being bollocks, but let's look closer.

Dan's problem here is that he does not want to acknowledge where the infinite progression started. It did not start with atheists asking "who made god?". It started with the assumption that all complex things are designed and built, therefore "god".

If "god" is "special" and does not need a creator, why? On what do you base this beyond the fictional phrase "god does not need one"?

Why just the immediately superior level of godhood? why *not* three or twenty-eight? Given the lack of evidence of even one, there is no basis for your assertion.

On the other hand,

The universe *does* exist. We don't need to invoke a fictional one just as a talking point. It's here. In addition, it contains matter which *does* self-organise into simple forms with only energy and time. For instance, the classical sub atomic particles form atoms *all by themselves*. Given only ultraviolet radiation, organic monomers can and do form directly from gaseous atmospheres. and so on.

Matter as an uncaused first event is much more satisfactory than "god" as an uncaused first event. The "matter" need not be differentiated, in fact may be indistinguishable from energy. Just about the simplest instantiation of mass/energy possible is what physicists propose.

Our own little experiments show that enough energy transforms matter into other types of matter, that matter can be destroyed to make energy and that much smaller particles do just form matter. We
*understand* some of the processs by which matter can become more complex.

So, a sequence of development that is dependent on a *simpler* first cause (say one lump of hot degenerate matter) requires less explanation.

Dan, your assertion of god as an uncaused first cause is as bollocks now as when Aquinas suggested it.

It is *not* good enough for philosophers, and it most certainly is *not* good enough for kids either.

Who made "god" dan?

Here's the answer *you* don't want to hear: Somebody made it up, just like all the other fictional gods.

Catch up, dan.