Found this online today. Fascinating!
It brings into question the practice of abortion.
“The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go– the complexity of these, the mathematical models of how these things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension. Even though I’m a mathematician, I look at this with a marvel of how did these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us. It’s a mystery, its magic, its divinity.”
-Alexander Tsiaras
httpv://youtu.be/fKyljukBE70
Your thoughts?
Scientists are discovering intelligence at the most basic levels, as this video shws. Eschel Ben-Jacobs of Tel Aviv narrates video on scial networking bacteria.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/smart-swarms-of-bacteria-inspire-robot-design
No mistakes? Really? How many “mistakes” does nature automatically abort? How many are still being born to spend a miserable life of incompletness and sometimes gortesqueness?
I’ll grant you that most infants who make it are reasonably complete and wholesome. However, I should have had a neice about fifty years of age now who was born a blue baby and didn’t survive past five. Being born to WWCG parents didn’t help her any, and the genetic problem was cut short with her generation, but a lot of imperfection showed up in her birth.
Gotta say more. Obviously this is a rant for intelligent design with the suppostition that there has to be a super intelligent designer or god.
That’s great simplistic thinking but doesn’t address the obvious question of who, what or how did the super designer come to be.
The universe has apparently existed 13 plus billion years and the solar system about 6 of those 13. It’s been evolving from apparently pure hydrogen to the tremendously complex universe of multiple elements all that time. We know how those elements are created in exploding stars. We can see the progression of life from simple to increasingly complex through the fossil record which preserves some of the details. Much we have to guess at.
Just because my finite mind balks at understanding how it all transpired over the eons doesn’t mean some anthropomorphized “big daddy” somewhere in the ether of infinity did it. If the creation has to have an originator, so does the originator. As for me, I’ll keep placing my bets on quantum physics giving the ultimate answers.
As to abortion, I’m neutral. It’s a personal decision and I’m going to mind my own damn business.
Let’s see, physics. How about Paul Davies, respected author and physicist?
Davies is a physicist and cosmologist. Looking at an “infi nite” universe(Inflationary universe, Many Worlds theory, etc) is what he calls a “”Blunderbuss theory”. If the universe is bio-friendly, we are not helped by being told that all possible universes exist. Given time and number, life had to exist. This, hwever you wish to look at it, is just another verison of the question “If God created the universe, who created God?” Science seeks to eliminate God, but then says, given enough time and infinity, we were bound to appear. They can’t answer their own question, so they put it on a shelf, an infinite shelf.
I personally have no uise for christianity, or any organized religion, and I have said so many times. I( have also pointed out the logical truth of Matthew 24:23. If any man says to you, Lo, here is Christ, believe it not. I have shown why that statement is logically correct.
IOW, if people insist o n following a man, any man, any doctrine, in spite of the plain and simple warning attri buted to Jesus himself, who is to blame? If ther is a God, then God is to blame. But we can see that in Isaiah 45:7, or Amos 3:6, or Romans 11:32, or Romans 11:7, or Matthew 13:11, or Romans 9:16-22, or 1 Corinthians 1:27-29.
Shit happens. God created it that way. You believed a man inspite of the direct and obvious warnings to the contrary. It took you yeasrs of suffering before your bullshit detector puicked up on it.
Whether you believe in God or not, do you change history? No. Shit still happens. Paul went to great lengths to show that there simply exists no decision procedure by which we may get from “here” to “God”. No person can perform any ‘works” to show any special favor. Can’t be done.
That correspnds to truth. Does that make the ID people correct? Hell no. There is no need to follow any person who makes such claims.
The simple fact on quantum physics is this: there is no way to arrive at a complete answer by quantum physics, due to Heisenberg;’s uncertain ty principle. There is no way, from an oser vation POV, that we can ever sufficiently measure reality to completeness, nor can we ever develop any aximatic formalization suitable for number theory that puts all truth in one package. This is a more recent discovery in mathematicas dealing with differences of representation from a mathematical POV, but even that does not explain the realization that life from bacteria to humans shows intelligence, like it or not. For every argument you can show why there is no God, I can show a stronger arguiment why there is.
“For every argument you can show why there is no God, I can show a stronger arguiment why there is.”
Perhaps stronger from your point of view, not mine. If the universe is too complex to have arisen without a creator, that creator had to be even more complex.
“Perhaps stronger from your point of view, not mine. If the universe is too complex to have arisen without a creator, that creator had to be even more complex.”
Precisely, and since the universe is more complex than we can comprehend, which can be shown from develop ments in computer programming, qua ntum computers and information theory, we could no mor e begin to uderstand the mind of a creator than we can the universe itself, which takes us to Romans 8:7. Any attempt to obey, underastand, or organize under such a creator can only result in a near infinity of religious ideas a bout God, whuich are just the same as the results of Romans 8:7. Does that make any POV superior? Not at all, since any such attempt to represent God can o nly result in exactly the results we see today, with perhaps a million or more different religious ideas.
This leads us directly to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24:23, that we should not follow any man who says “here is Christ, or there”. Consequently, your argument has proven key statements of the bible to be correct.Since you argue that a God who creates the universe would be even more complex, there is no reason to assume such a God would not be all knowing, which is what Paul has statred again, in Romans 8:29-30, in regard to our choice or non-choice regarding God, and THAT leads logically to Romans 9:16-22, which says there is no pssibility f making such a choice. By your own conclusions, you merely comnfirm key statements regardi ng God and the bible, which go to great le ngths to show that we cannot make such choices anyway, so all POVs are irrelevant. Since the bi ble corresponds to your own statement, it is correct until proven otherwise.
Al,
Its not if a God exists. Its about the wonder of the development of a human life.
If a god exists, “it” would be nothing that we can fathom. Hence the god of Gerald Flurry and the rest of the minions does not exist. Religion as in ancient days tries to explain the unknowable by contributing it to a god.
If there be a “creator” (if you want to call “it” that) it is not seeking the worship of the “created.”
We exist by some external source beyond us, the same force that relates to the link Ralph put up above. What is behind it? Don’t know, and I really don’t care. I am, therefor I exist.
Religion has nothing to do with creation. Religion is, an invention of men to explain away the unknowable and to ensure that life continues after death.
Religion is about hope and driven by fear. At least in some people. Not all religion is bad. It serves a purpose of cohesion within societies.
Now, that I can agree with wholeheartedly. The reason I identify myself as an agnostic atheist is pretty well summed up in your comment. The term seems contradictory, but I’m trying to express exactly what you stated so well. Language has its limitations in stating exactly what one means.
I was just reading through a book by the eminent philosopher Antony Flew, who was an atheist for most of his life, but then on examination of new u nderstanding within genetics and other disciplines, has decided there is a God after all. In fact, that is the title of his book, “There IS A God”. The preface to the book contains names of the autors of the “new atheism”, such as Dawkins, whom I highly admire for his stand, and Daniel Dennett, whom I’va also read, as well as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchen’s whose attacks are not o n the existence of God so much as they are attacks on organized religion.
This has been my stance si nce the late 70s, that organized religion, ALL organized religion, is false. All arguments presented by the “new atheists” are arguments with which I can agree, as they are sound arguments. But this also proves what I have said for many years: we do not have the knowledge of proving/disproving the existence of God, but we CAN challenge all human authority that claims to represent that God. I believe in God, but not religion.
As to the question of abortion, assuming one believes in God, what choices are to be made? Depends on your idea of God. If, for example, you believe that God is all knowing, then he already knows which baies will be aborted, and the causes of those aortions in advance, which obviously would make God responsible for such decisions. So, is God all knowing, or is God not all knowing? Each argument brings with it a whole context of conclusions on which human minds can never agree. If God all knowing, then our decisions in that regard will not change his perfect knowledge, so the decisions are known by the mind of God. That is, all algorithms, all processes on which decisins are made, exist within God’s mind, meaning we are pretty much “doomed” to do whatever we do.
OTOH, if God doens’t know what choices we will make, but holds us responsible for those choices, it seems he should have given evidence of both his authority and power for us to take care of such situations. All religions that act “in God’s stead”, therefore, must conclude that God is NOT all knowing, as they must assume their authority to act in God’s name.
And that brings us to the next question: which authority? Who has the right and the authority to refuse us personal decisions? If they can’t prove such authority, then obviously they don’t have such authority, and clearly Jesus and Paul hace shown there is no such authority in Matthew 24:23, and Romans, chapter 8 and 9.
But what of law? Commion law holds, under Blackstone, that no legal decision can be made un til the fetus moves and shows signs of life, or proves that it will never live. IOW, there is no legal authority whatever that can act UNTIL the fetus shows signs of life(or not).
According to Constitutional law , established by Chief Justice Marshall in “US vs Aaron Burr”, THE SUPREMES HAVE NO GENERAL JURISDICTION OVER COMMON LAW. If they have no such jurisdiction, they cannot overrule state decisions regarding abortion, since “due process’ which is clearly defined AS common law by Justice Story amd other justices, remains under jurisdiction of the states by virtue of the 5th Amendment.(Also see commentary of St George Tucker on common law and the constitution).
The decisio n in Roe v Wade is partially correct. SCOTUS cannot act to prevent abortions, but SCOTUS neve had such authority in the first place. Only the states have that right under 5th Amendment provisions. “Nor (shall any person) be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” which is clearly defined as due process, and that is clearly reserved to the states.
Since in regard to God, “congress shall make no law…” each state can rule in that regard as its constituents wish. This would mean that some states may approve abortio, others will not, but common law forids ANY legal decisio n to be made until the fetus shows signs of life. By both 1st Amendment and common law provisions, neither congress nor SCOTUS can make a ruling on abortion, since common law places the life of a fetus strictly as a “gift of God”. Congress shall make no law… neither common law nor federal law can make judgements on “God’s will”, but common law restricts all such actions until AFTER “God’s will” is shown by the life/death of the fetus.
This leaves medicine in the position of extending “God’s will” by technology. This creates an entirely new perspective on the idea of “God’s will”. If technology and the creativity of the human mind permits us to extend life beyond former limitations, is that “God’s will”? If so, then abortion is not to be permitted. But then, neither is war. Strangely enough, “God’s will” falls under the extended power of “man’s will”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHIz-gR4xHo
Above is a nice study of Bayes’ Theorem to show why there is no God. Very well done, and atheists wil enjoy it. However, it merely supports the points I have made all along.