Toni L,

<<Sorry, what was that you were saying about abusive ad hominems? Because I'm pretty sure that resorting to calling people dicks via hyperlink comes under that heading.>>

Thank you Toni for catching me out here. I appreciate your drawing it to my attention. Please accept my apologies.

Not_Now.Soon: Well I'm getting close to saying (as you thought I was) "I've had enough of this". But I can see that you really are trying to understand how order can arise from disorder. Unfortunately, at this stage it is very hard for me to continue the discussion here because of the word limits, also typing things is a slow form of communication, and lastly because I'm not the best at explaining things.

But I will try to clear up something that you seem to be stumbling over. Perhaps the real problem you have is that you are only focusing of the order/complexity around you that you see, but are ignoring the disorder. Some reasons you (and many people not trained in the physical sciences) might do this is because:
1) The disorder is mainly microscopic. Most of the disorder around us manifests itself as heat in stuff. Heat is basically the disorderly vibrations/movements of the atoms/molecules that stuff in made up of. You cannot directly see this motion to the native eye so you tend not to appreciate it when looking at nature.
2) Some of the substances that are most disordered are invisible (as well as the disorder being microscopic anyway). This is especially true for the atmosphere around us. The air is invisible to us but it is extremely disordered because it is a gas.
3) When we are able to see disorder at the order of scale that our eyes can detect our brain naturally biases us not the notice it. For example, here is a picture of a bear standing mid stream catching a jumping fish during the annual North-American salmon run: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5907599/Stunning-image-grizzly-bear-guzzle-salmon-wins-Brit-snapper-international-photo-contest.html. What people most notice when looking at this photo is the bear and the fish which are extremely ordered/complex things, what that they ignore is the water in the river which when compared to the bear is very disordered.

--continued below ---

--from above --

So in general the natural world is extremely disordered but we don't appreciate it. It may seem that the life creates more order than disorder- but with finer unbiased observation you will actually observe that for any given bit of order that arises due to life, in the process of creating it will have created vastly more disorder overall.

That unfortunately is about as far as I can practically go here. So what I recommend at this stage is that you either:
1) try to learn to the about Entropy from text-books (not from popular general public awareness books about science but actual textbooks with equations). I don't know you level of maths you've learnt but this will require you to know calculus (especially partial derivatives) if you seek to learn it below a superficial level.
or, 2) find someone who is prepared to talk to you face to face and can answer your questions. There would be a lot more progress if you call talk face to face with someone who's knows their physical science since they can give you immediate feedback to questions/objections you raise.

Dear Ozpen,

Mate it is not good looking up these definitions if you are not going to take the time to understand them.

Even the person whose arguments earned the description of twaddle from me did not consider the remark abusive.

How is it that you can use the terms like god-haters and Christophobic with gay abandon yet claim me associating you with a more toxic brand of Christianity is ad hominem?

And please don't claim I'm doing this because you are Christian, I'm doing it because the version of Christianity you are touting is indeed toxic. I submit the vast majority of Christians would not consider the Corona Virus as God's punishment for anything.

If you had left it at your title “Why does the good God allow COVID-19?” we would probably be having a civil discussion but you didn't did you.

As I said you asked; “We need to see God in natural disasters, including Covid-19. What is he trying to say to rebellious Aussies who are kicking Him out of their lives?” thus elevating God's involvement from passive to an active agent. This is offensive to most thinking people and flags you as fringe.

NNS is correct as this conversation has gone from silly to absurd.

Look mate, I have no problem with anyone coming in here and saying 'it is my belief that God is real, and he was responsible for all creation, and Jesus is part of the Godhead, and together they make decisions on whether to intervene on things like a virus' but when you blindly state it as indisputable fact you should expect to get called out on it.

People have every right to employ logic to determine the veracity of something you purport to be indisputable fact. There is a high degree of absurdness which is created when people attempt to assert metaphysical 'truths' in order to explain things like the Corona Virus especially when the science around virology is so advanced.

Prefacing your statements with “I believe...” will certainly make for a less confrontational discussion.

OzSpen,

Not_Now.Soon has created a discussion on General under 'What is Life?' so that we can debate the scientific and religious views of life.

He did it to take the heat off you.

Mr Opinion,

<<Again how is me attacking your ARGUMENTS rather than attacking you PERSONALLY using ad hominem?>>

The post I made that you're complaining about stated: <<For God's sake mate, cut the crap.>>

There you go again with another Ad Hominem (Abusive) logical fallacy, http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Ad-Hominem-Abusive

'Cut the crap' is attacking me personally!