See this blog post I just wrote, that you’re reading right now? This blog article is proof of the existence of God.
| Before you read/watch/listen to “If You Can Read This I Can Prove God Exists,” read THIS first. (700 words – 2 minutes) – then come back and continue reading. Thanks. |
Yeah, I know, that sounds crazy. But I’m not asking you to believe anything just yet, until you see the evidence for yourself. All I ask is that you refrain from disbelieving while I show you my proof. It only takes a minute to convey, but it speaks to one of the most important questions of all time.
So how is this message proof of the existence of God?
This web page you’re reading contains letters, words and sentences. It contains a message that means something. As long as you can read English, you can understand what I’m saying.
You can do all kinds of things with this message. You can read it on your computer screen. You can print it out on your printer. You can read it out loud to a friend who’s in the same room as you are. You can call your friend and read it to her over the telephone. You can save it as a Microsoft WORD document. You can forward it to someone via email, or you can post it on some other website.
Regardless of how you copy it or where you send it, the information remains the same. My email contains a message. It contains information in the form of language. The message is independent of the medium it is sent in.
Messages are not matter, even though they can be carried by matter (like printing this email on a piece of paper).
Messages are not energy even though they can be carried by energy (like the sound of my voice.)
Messages are immaterial. Information is itself a unique kind of entity. It can be stored and transmitted and copied in many forms, but the meaning still stays the same.
Messages can be in English, French or Chinese. Or Morse Code. Or mating calls of birds. Or the Internet. Or radio or television. Or computer programs or architect blueprints or stone carvings. Every cell in your body contains a message encoded in DNA, representing a complete plan for you.
OK, so what does this have to do with God?
It’s very simple. Messages, languages, and coded information ONLY come from a mind. A mind that agrees on an alphabet and a meaning of words and sentences. A mind that expresses both desire and intent.
Whether I use the simplest possible explanation, such as the one I’m giving you here, or if we analyze language with advanced mathematics and engineering communication theory, we can say this with total confidence:
“Messages, languages and coded information never, ever come from anything else besides a mind. No one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind.”
Nature can create fascinating patterns – snowflakes, sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalactites. Tornadoes and turbulence and cloud formations.
But non-living things cannot create language. They *cannot* create codes. Rocks cannot think and they cannot talk. And they cannot create information.
It is believed by some that life on planet earth arose accidentally from the “primordial soup,” the early ocean which produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells.
But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to answer the question, ‘Where did the information come from?’
DNA is not merely a molecule. Nor is it simply a “pattern.” Yes, it contains chemicals and proteins, but those chemicals are arranged to form an intricate language, in the exact same way that English and Chinese and HTML are languages.
DNA has a four-letter alphabet, and structures very similar to words, sentences and paragraphs. With very precise instructions and systems that check for errors and correct them. It is formally and scientifically a code. All codes we know the origin of are designed.
To the person who says that life arose naturally, you need only ask: “Where did the information come from? Show me just ONE example of a language that didn’t come from a mind.”
As simple as this question is, I’ve personally presented it in public presentations and Internet discussion forums for more than four years. I’ve addressed more than 100,000 people, including hostile, skeptical audiences who insist that life arose without the assistance of God.
But to a person, none of them have ever been able to explain where the information came from. This riddle is “So simple any child can understand; so complex, no atheist can solve.”
You can hear or read my full presentation on this topic at
http://evo2.org/ifyoucanreadthis.htm
Watch it on video:
http://evo2.org/perry-speaks/perryspeaks.html
Matter and energy have to come from somewhere. Everyone can agree on that. But information has to come from somewhere, too!
Information is separate entity, fully on par with matter and energy. And information can only come from a mind. If books and poems and TV shows come from human intelligence, then all living things inevitably came from a superintelligence.
Every word you hear, every sentence you speak, every dog that barks, every song you sing, every email you read, every packet of information that zings across the Internet, is proof of the existence of God. Because information and language always originate in a mind.
In the beginning were words and language.
In the Beginning was Information.
When we consider the mystery of life – where it came from and how this miracle is possible – do we not at the same time ask the question where it is going, and what its purpose is?
Respectfully Submitted,
Perry Marshall
Full Presentation and Technical Details (please review before posting questions or debates on the blog, almost every question and objection is addressed by these articles):
–“If you can read this, I can prove God exists” – listen to
my full presentation or read the Executive Summary here:
http://evo2.org/ifyoucanreadthis.htm
–“OK, so then who made God?” and other questions about information and origins:
–Why DNA is formally and scientifically a code, and things like sunlight and starlight are not (Please read this before you attempt to debate this on the blog!!!):
http://evo2.org/blog/information-theory-made-simple and http://evo2.org/faq/#code
-The Atheist’s Riddle: Members of Infidels, the world’s largest atheist discussion board attempt to solve it
(for over 4 years now!), without success:
Where Did Life And The Genetic Code Come From? Can The Answer Build Superior AI? The #1 Mystery In Science Now Has A $10 Million Prize. Learn More About It, Here – https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0
Hi Perry
I would humbly like to suggest that your argument is both simplistic, misguiding and approaches from completely the opposite direction to that which yields the correct answer. You postulate that because all higher level codes that we know of come from a brain or some form of consciousness, therefore so must low-level codes and since there was/is no brain available to create low-level codes such as DNA and RNA, it is proof of a creator.
I would suggest that the trillions of organic reactions that eventually resulted in the formation of RNA yielded, by chance (and this can’t be disproved), the very first form of code or basic communication. This is quite a rare event but completely feasible that it happened by pure chance on our planet under the right conditions billions of years ago. The first code, therefore, did not require God. It required a giant, hot lab full of carbon compounds mixing it up in a firestorm of organic chemistry. I would like to add that the chances of this happening, although remote, are completely within the realms of possibility.
Once that code to replicate had been initiated by pure chance, it performed like clockwork until it mutated (happens every day in our imperfect genetic world) and then mutated again and again, changing the code/language/instructions every time. This meant that multiple languages formed, DNA formed, more complex communication evolved. Still no God required. Just chemistry, hot, juicy chemistry in a big test tube called Earth.
From there things went nuts for billions of years and even a cursory reading of the literature on evolution should convince a rational, impartial, thinking person that we are simply the end result of an amazing and frenetic fight for survival, driven by the economic scarcity of organic material in a closed system, all the while with communication developing at a rate required for said survival along with other things such as beaks and fins and lungs and scales and bones and billions of others. So amazing is this process, in fact, that the notion of creation, God and the bible start to seem too simplistic, too anachronistic and completely inadequate to fully explain what is now being observed every day. I would go further and state that to place God in the unknown, thereby deeming it acceptable for the unknown to stay unknown, we are being rather lazy. That’s right, sorry to repeat it here but…lazy, lazy, lazy. Science and its discoveries are hard, painstaking and often thankless work. Religious explanation is tantamount to quitting, accepting of the unknown instead of pushing to understand and discover. Every time science reveals more, religion gets defensive and retreats to a yet darker corner only to get the light shone on its laziness yet again and again and again.
Back to your premise then and we can see that from the bottom up, communication is simply evolving at the same rate as the organic organisms that use it to their advantage and come out on top of the natural selection pile. It came about simply and randomly and now looks complicated but viewed in incremental improvements since the dawn of time, it is actually quite unremarkable that we have codes and language. Bacteria have it, plants have it, mammals have it and all organic forms of life have it…they survived because they did and it evolved along with them and still does. How differently do we communicate now to how people communicated 10, 20, 100, 500, 1000, 25000 years ago? Evolution in progress; visible and documentable.
Why don’t rocks communicate or water or any inorganic matter…for that matter? 🙂 Because they are not replicating. They are not part of the silly race, the game called life. They do not replicate, therefore they do not need communication. It is meaningless to talk of communication for inorganic compounds or structures. It is equally meaningless (dare I respectfully say lazy again?) to allocate the initial formation of replication and thereby communication to some arbitrary intelligence called God while there is another, simpler and more elegant explanation on the table.
So, I would respectfully like to repeat that communication and codes formed by chance at the basic level of organic chemistry and have evolved to what we see today and certainly not the other way around as you have suggested. No gods required in the explanation.
We have 100% inference from everything that is known about linguistics and computer science that all codes are designed.
Do you have evidence to support the claim that this happened by chance?
Have you ever seen any code occur by pure chance?
Do you have any statistics or mathematical models to support this assertion?
How would someone show that your hypothesis is true or false?
Scientific laws involve formulas, very precise patterns and predictable, repeatable experiments, correct? Why should I consider your argument to be a scientific argument? Does it invoke any laws or appeal to any specific kind of order or systematic, testable explanation?
Hi Perry
I shall answer you in point form:
We have 100% inference from everything that is known about linguistics and computer science that all codes are designed.
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No. Nature shows us codes that have evolved in RNA and DNA that are still evolving today, therefore your very first premise is false. All codes we see today are NOT designed. Higher level codes such as language appear to have been designed by higher level organisms but these too are evolving. Codes are linked to life. They are one. Why do you put the one before the other. Life and codes sprang into being together – by chance or by God. Why do we need God when chance will suffice?
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Do you have evidence to support the claim that this happened by chance?
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Do you have any evidence to suggest that it didn’t? Do you even have anything besides the bible (a single book of dubious origin with no literal relevance today) to prop up your theory that a god created life? A feeling perhaps? Something you can’t explain with current thinking so lets call it God? I propose that in the event of a deadlock on proof, random chance without having to construct a deity out of thin air wins as the simplest explantion. I have more evidence to suggest that it COULD happen by chance than you have to suggest that God swooped out of the heavens and made it happen. That is pure speculation. Chance is backed up by chemical probability, lab tests and observation.
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Have you ever seen any code occur by pure chance?
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Yes. All of them.
What about dress codes and trends? Often a mistaken or poverty-related decision to combine a new style of clothing sparks a trend that pervades our memepool. It was not designed but evolved by chance. By mutation in fact 🙂
Yes. New words that humans make up by mistake that gain popularity – slang. To speak of design is misleading here. Language evolves. It has no central designer.
All of these things show a evolutionary aspect and not a design aspect. This evolutionary principle holds in all the examples right back to DNA and RNA. It is simple and elegant and explains all codes of all types. Why would you want to ignore this possibility if you had an open mind?
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Do you have any statistics or mathematical models to support this assertion?
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Mathematics is simply a language to describe what is happening in our physical world. There are multitudes of mathematical models showing the evolving of species, populations, RNA, DNA. They are of no relevance here but they do exist and a Google search will find them for you. To try and block logic by placing the burden of proof by mathematical model is simply side-stepping the empirical argument in logic and taking refuge behind reams of meaningless data in an effort to preserve your irrational indoctrination.
Do you have any mathematical models to prove that chance did not start life, that God exists or to prove any of your assertions?
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How would someone show that your hypothesis is true or false?
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What hypothesis? It is all peer-agreed scientific fact right back to reason for the initiation of life where we are faced with a simple question:
Did life and therefore codes spring into existance by chance, via the hand of God or because a purple tick did a jig in another dimension? None can be DISPROVED but by chance is by far the most likely based on WHAT we know for sure. The rest, including God is pure conjecture and can be lumped squarely in the category of the purple tick and is almost equally unlikely. On a sliding scale of likelihood, chance due to chemistry is completely plausible, possible and, in fact, likely when you give it billions of years. “God did it” is a simplistic and lazy assertion by those too arrogant to say “we don’t know but we are still looking”.
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Why should I consider your argument to be a scientific argument? Does it invoke any laws or appeal to any specific kind of order or systematic, testable explanation?
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Yes. It invokes the known scientific fields of statistics, genetics, evolutionary biology, chemistry, geology, physics and many more.
Your argument, on the other hand is based on what exactly? The fact that codes exist (which you erroneously attribute to outright design instead of incremental evolution) and therefore there is a God…QED? That is barely a statement of the problem, let alone proof of anything. Couple that to the fact that codes are completely explicable when viewed from an evolutionary standpoint from RNA right through to human language and you have a much more viable and robust alternative to your giant leap. A reasonable, thinking person must concede that chance COULD have sparked it off and the rest is simple evolution.
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One final point. I would like to use your logic to prove that evolution is fact. Human languages evolve (this can’t be denied. I have seen it happen in my short life). All creatures communicate in some form and language or communication is therefore a critical facet of every being. Since one characteristic (language) of all creatures is known to evolve over time, sometimes even in our short lifetimes, why not other characteristics (We have the fossils to prove it anyway so we know it is true)? We have gone from grunts to speaking, to poetry to rap. Our ability to communicate evolves. Evolution is therefore something inherent in all living things. They have all displayed the ability to evolve. Therefore evolution is fact…QED.
Same level of logical leap.
1. Show me demonstrable origin of a naturally occurring code.
2. We have abundant evidence that codes originate by intention and never by chance. Chance is information entropy which is noise. Claude Shannon defined this in his 1948 paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” If you have a counterexample please present it.
3. You can show my hypothesis is false by responding to #1.
4. Your statement that “It invokes the known scientific fields of statistics, genetics, evolutionary biology, chemistry, geology, physics and many more” is sleight of hand. Show me a naturally occurring code. See the specification at http://www.naturalcode.org
5. Yes, I completely agree, evolution is a fact. See http://evo2.org/evolution-untold-story/ and http://evo2.org/mathematics-of-dna/
RNA is a naturally occuring code whether you reject in in point 2. of your rules or not (which is completely ridiculous btw. How can you reject examples because you don’t know where they came from?). It likely occured by chance and spawned all other codes that you know of hence the appearance that codes are “designed” by lifeforms. You reject the only likely answer for no good reason at all. If the origin of RNA is fuzzy and therefore rejected, what about God? He is much more fuzzy and by the same rules should also be rejected as an explanation. Not so? If the criteria for rejection is lack of information then God goes out with RNA.
I am naturally occuring and I can create codes. I therefore satisfy (3.) since I completely reject your notion that lifeforms may not play this game just because we don’t know for certain where they come from. Thats not a rule you get to make. We are naturally occuring. I am RNA and DNA and codes. I get to play.
Thats all there is to it actually. You think RNA was created, I think it likely happened by chance.
You go backwards from today’s codes, I go forwards from the original code. This is not a debate or an issue of proof. It is an issue of selecting which event is more likely to have spawned the first code and hence all others – God intelligence or organic chemistry. We know one exists for sure and it ain’t God.
I ask then simply, why could organic chemistry NOT have spawned RNA by chance and therefore all other codes in an evolutionary manner? Why does it HAVE to be God? At best you can cast doubt on chemistry and leave the door open for God but you can never eliminate simple chemistry as a viable option.
My counter-example to Claude Shannon’s paper is simply statistical. In all the entropic noise, you will eventually and briefly “hear” a signal if you listen for billions of years. If that signal “sticks” like organic chemistry does and begins to replicate, it only needs to happen once and life begins. The rare outcome created out of noise becomes a source. Statistically, an outcome will materialise eventually if all random chance options are worked through. That outcome may be a code with no particular reason for existing at all. Why not?
Claude Shannon was referring to digital comms theory and not chemistry specifically. The basic notions of information theory are similar but the manifestation is completely different. The transient nature of electromagnetics are completely different to the physical attributes of chemical reactions. A rare and desired electromagnetic outcome like hearing something recogniseable in noise will not manifest but will pass, much like seeing a face in smoke or a cloud. A rare and desired chemical outcome will manifest and stay, much like seeing a face on Mars or on a rock formation. Subtle difference but it completely explains why we are chiefly chemical and not electromagnetic. Chemical code embodiments such as we are can manifest, electromagnetic can’t.
You therefore may use Shannon’s work to try and describe your theory but ultimately it applies to digital comms and not to chemistry. Chemistry adds another dimension that Shannon’s noise-signal work, as it applies to your theory, did not cover at all.
“In all the entropic noise, you will eventually and briefly “hear” a signal if you listen for billions of years.”
Prove it, either empirically or statistically, your choice.
Codes in DNA are isomorphic with codes in Information Technology and to argue otherwise will get you nowhere. See http://www.naturalcode.org and Hubert Yockey’s work.
Perry, your one line answers simply end up posing the same questions back at you:
Prove it you say; prove that it did not I say…and so on. So who does the burden of proof lie with? I say you because I am not claiming to know anything for certain yet you are. Your answer lies in the very things you have outlawed in point (2) for no good reason. They are the ultimate proof of naturally occuring codes yet you will not allow for the possibility that DNA formed by chance in Earth’s chemical lab. Why not? You cvan’t ask for something naturally occuring and then outlaw all things natural. Of course nobody will find a compliant answer. Its like me asking you to show me a rock that is not a rock.
So, proof. Ok. I can catagorically state that if you were left to fiddle with a combination safe for an infinite number of years with a finite number of combinations and a finite number of numbers (which models the chemical states and elemenst available on early Earth), eventually, with bleeding fingers you would stumble, unknowingly and by chance onto the simple combination that opens the safe. Empirical enough for you? No maths required. Simple as that. Once that has happened, it turns out we both agree on how species, codes and language evolved from there.
The isomorphism between DNA and IT codes does not dictate the manifestation of the patterns but rather the similar relationship in coding. Same fundamental code, different application/outcome. Looking deeper, it simply points to an underlying influence of DNA coding within us, the species that developed IT coding – no mystery there. That by no means proves where DNA came from. Back to God or Chance, Perry, God or chance. And Chance beats God every time for probability, especially when we have billions upon billions of years for Chance to act.
I will take a response of “prove it” or “show me a naturally occuring code, excluding DNA because that disproves my theorem so it can’t be allowed” as a capitulation from your side and an inability to look beyond the proof paradox. I allow for God. I just give God a much lower statitical probability of being the cause than chemical chance because Chance explains it all without God. For you it is 100% God yet you can’t prove it and you allow for nothing else. Your mind is closed, you will not see. Only a truly indoctrinated person would not allow for Chance. Pity.
DNA is a complex multi-layered code. It has checksums, redundancy, error correction and repair mechanisms. It has objects, modular components and changes its structure based on inputs from the environment.
Every major university in the world has a computer science department that considers the complex tradeoffs involved in designing codes. We have 100% inference to design in the genetic code. And very sophisticated design at that.
We have 0% inference to random chance. Thus design is a scientific answer. Random chance is an anti-scientific answer. Science is about systematic processes, not luck. Chance itself is by definition a non-systematic explanation.
Thus we literally have infinitely more inference to design than chance – the ratio is 100% divided by 0%.
Sigh…
When you do things like divide by zero: “Thus we literally have infinitely more inference to design than chance – the ratio is 100% divided by 0%”–reply to goitman
And say things like: “Information is immaterial. Case in point: It can be in the form of pits on a CD, North/South domains on a hard drive, pulses of light, pulses of electricity. But it’s still the same information.”–reply to goitman
It’s really hard to give you the benefit of the doubt that you have even a passing knowledge biochemistry, biology, chemistry, physics, astrophysics, special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorems, cryptology, Information and Communications Theory…
…or even basic 5th grade math and science where we all learned that you can’t divide by zero (it’s UNDEFINED, which is not the same thing as infinity) and that light and electricity (i.e. electromagnetism a.k.a. energy) is every bit as material as tables and chairs (E=MC^2 ring any bells) and, I would say, hard drives and “pits” on a CD. A physical change is made to a physical surface to put information on a CD. DVD Burners do not work by using magical fingers of pure light (and even if they did, we just established that light is, in fact, physical).
Maybe you noticed the same root word in both PHYSICs and PHYSICal. THis isn’t an accident. By definition, anything that PHYSICs can tell us, is PHYSICal. That’s not to say the things that physics treats doesn’t change (it’s still an open question whether or not e.g., biology is reducible to physics), but as soon as PHYSICs talks about it, it’s become part of the PHYSICal world. The story of the atom demonstrates this very thing more lucidly than anything.
Now, maybe you mean something different than physical when you say immaterial…but I really don’t know what it can be.
Either your really not paying attention to what you say, which is somewhat disrespectful to those of us who are trying to seriously engae you on an academic level in that you don’t think we’re important enough to warrant a carefully considered answer free of division by zero…or you really have no clue what your talking about, which is equally disrespectful in that you parade around claiming to be competent in your use of the crown jewel acheivements of our most advanced intellectual endeavors all the while dividing by zero.
Even if you’re right about this entire website, I think it’s clear that it would be by the sheerest accident and not really at all related to anything you’ve done. Sort of like the discovery of pennicillin. Except that Alexander Flemming was really a biologist…You’re just starting to sound like zero dividing zealot.
In any case, I find it very hard to play a game when you change basic rules like “Don’t divide by zero” and “E=MC^2” on a whim.
So Scott, is it really necessary for me to spell out “limit (100/x) tends towards infinity as x goes to zero” like a mathematician would, for you to understand what I’m saying?
Am I really to believe you have no idea what I mean?
Or am I just making you uncomfortable by challenging your assumptions about reality?
I’ve got a question for you.
Does “Romeo and Juliet” exist?
In what sense does it exist?
Question #2: What did the founder of cybernetics Norbert Weiner mean when he said “Information is information, neither matter nor energy”?
When I say that information is immaterial what I mean is that biology cannot be reduced to physics. Because information is always created top-down, not bottom up. It always originates with intent. With free will.
And as I recall you never responded to my argument that overturns Hume’s 200 year old argument. Have you found a naturally occurring code?
Science is not a game of “why couldn’t X have happened?” Science is a discipline of testing and evidence and repeatable experiments.
You are deriving your premises from your conclusions. How do you know that RNA is naturally occurring? How do you know that you are naturally occurring? My friend, this is not the Infidels website. You don’t get to just assume anything you want and argue without presenting proof.
Present your evidence.
Perry, Science is exactly a game of “why couldn’t X have happened” – that is called a hypothesis or a theory. Then comes the long slog of either proving it did or it did not. “Why can’t man fly like a bird” – slog, slog, slog…wow he can! “Is it possible that the atom could be split?” – yikes it can! Oops Perry, Oooops.
Infidels? You kidding me right? Are you seriously this tribal and this far back in the stone age?
I will take that as your capitulation. When you resort to what you believe to be name calling and refuse to answer the simplest of questions posed, it can only be because you have no further answers. This debate is over. You clearly have nothing more to add of any value.
Perhaps you are unaware that one of the largest atheist websites is http://www.infidels.org.
If you have a hypothesis, then test it and come forward with your results. I’m asking for a naturally occurring code. All you need is one.
Last point on “Chance” – You all speak as if chance is simply that. A whim, a possibility, a meteor hitting you on the head while you are parking your car. Chance or Probability is an integral part of our physical world. It can be modelled and calculated. It permeates equations and theories and mathematics. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle, statistics (what is the chance that if I throw dice I will get a number etc) and quantum mechanics in general all have chance or probability as a key element. Chance is not something to be ridiculed as unknowable or unproveable. It is measurable and quantifiable. Casino’s make a living off of it and in fact in this case Chance turns out to be more predictable than people and they lose their money to it over and over again when you look at the overall picture.
So, when I say that life could have evolved by CHANCE, I am saying that the PROBABILITY that life and therefore codes emerged from hot mixture of chemicals containing ALL the essential elements needed to create amino acids and eventually RNA and then DNA is not zero. Thats all you need to be able to say to keep it alive as an option.
Over and out.
I’m glad you understand chance. Thank you for making this comment.
What I’ve been asking you to do is show us a statistical model that shows that there is a reasonable probability of codes emerging from a hot mixture of chemicals. I’ve been debating this topic online for 6 years – the comments you see on this website are only the tip of the iceberg – and I’ve never seen one anywhere.
Like I said, give us either an empirical or mathematical model. I’m not aware that one exists.
I can go one better than a simple, untested, theoretical mathematical model. The link below will take you through the basics of the Miller-Urey experiment where the models you long for were developed and then they went one amazing step further…they actually created amino acids and higher level building blocks of RNA and DNA in a closed lab environment simulation of the real conditions on earth during the early years after the Big Bang. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
The work is on-going with more and more amazing results showing that the PROBABILITY of life spontaneously developing due to Earth’s early conditions is possibly even higher than initially thought.
Lets look at that carefully. A number of scientists since the 1950’s have repeatably created the amino acids and other proteins required for the genetic code in a closed system simulation. Not only do your models exist but they have been applied, tested and…here is the total kicker…found to WORK!
For more details, contact the University of California, San Diego where these experiments are ongoing and mathematical models are used aplenty to predict the positive outcomes that are being achieved.
I’m not arguing with you about the chemicals (although I would be tempted to). I’m quite familiar with the Miler-Urey experiment. I’m asking the question of where did the genetic code come from? The Urey experiment says nothing about the origin of codes.
And you haven’t answered my question. No mathematical model here.
What exactly do you mean when you say “here is the total kicker…found to WORK!” ? What does “WORK” mean?
If you search, I believe you will find that the mathematical models you think exist, don’t.
I’m not asking you to let me think for you – I’m asking you to apply the same standards of skepticism to the alleged origin of life experiments as you do about theology.
One other thought, Goitman – I realize I may sound adversarial at times and if I do I apologize. I hope that we can have a forthright and unhindered conversation.
Perhaps you believe that to receive God in your life is to take on some hideous form of slavery. I can only imagine what kind of experiences contribute to that kind of expectation. I’ve had my own negative experiences with religious people too, you can be sure of that.
Jesus had more than enough battles with religious people himself. And that’s essentially because he saw things differently: “Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
Perry,
It totally baffles me how they cant see how religous they can get and how much blind faith they are able to exersize and not even see it when they WANT to believe something. Life MUST have came by chance therfore **Life and codes sprang into being together.** Theres not a shred of evidence for that religous statement!
All that has EVER been KNOWN is life comes from life, yet they still opt for their religous beliefs and then accuse us of not being “scientific” and using blind faith. I really dont get it. I guess God meant it when He said.. “thinking themselves wise they have become fools.” And I dont say that to ridicule, merely as a fact stated by the Almighty Himself. Whats true is true.
John,
Just keep asking them questions – keep asking them to demonstrate that what they’re saying is true. Questions don’t have an expiration date. I know it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but those questions very often burn in their minds for years. Keep asking them to present evidence.
When you throw a stone into a pack of dogs, the one the yelps is the one that got hit.
Will get to your other questions as I’m able.
P.S.: Isaiah 44:18. Ask for the ability to un-smear eyes.
Perry, I see your bookish exterior belies a militant and threatened man that resorts to implied violence in a very unchristian-like manner. Stones and dogs, eh? Infidels. Refusal to look at another view. False constructs (2.) to prove dodgy theories. Inability to look at other options. Unbending, inflexible and rampantly Christian and proud of it no doubt.
The picture gets clearer and it is not pretty, my friend. This is not an academic place, it is a nasty little club.
I am out of here. You guys have reminded me how much I miss the company of peaceful, enlightened free thinkers. So long and good luck with your theory. Honestly hope you find meaning in it.
Forgive me John but you appear easily baffled…
I am here allowing for the possibility of God creating DNA but stating that it appears that chance and chemistry are a better explanation in an honest debate.
You are here waffling on about truth and mouthing off bible verses in one breath and asking for scientific proof in another like you actually know what you are talking about. When somebody allows for your viewpoint and asks for you look at theirs and you do not, you are, by definition, astigmatised and blinded by your faith. You have nothing to add and it becomes a discussion in which you are trying to convert instead of presenting an actual argument that holds water.
Even if you removed all organic matter, absolutely nothing exists in the universe by “chance” and the rules don’t change. Let me put it another way the capability for consciousness and code existed at the very emerging of the universe. Even if we didn’t exist the capability would still exist. The rules of the universe don’t simply change to accommodate life.
Even if you don’t believe in God, you can’t say intelligence and code came from “chance”. That would be like saying helium reacts with anything by chance. Now I will admit, if you want to take the stance that the capability existed in the same way anything else existed, that is fine argument against God, but if life were to evolve on other planets it would do so in a same or similar manner that it does it here, there is nothing chance or ‘random’ about it.
Why does the capability for consciousness in the universe even exist, why does it serve a PURPOSE when absolutely nothing else in the universe does. Atheists are so obsessed with the process, that they forget the latent rules of the universe allowed it to happen, it was not an experiment gone awry.
I just want to make a quick note because I said something that might lead to confusion. I talked about purpose, now purpose is an identification from organic life, but let explain further. The sun as far as I am aware, and I could be wrong, has no internal purpose apart from existence. Organic life is the only substance that I am aware of that has a purpose or drive, and that is the drive not to die.
Move your hand, and think about what is going on, on an atomic level. You are voluntarily moving atoms through space. Your table can’t do this, the sun can’t do this, organic life is the only thing that has the capability of voluntarily moving atoms. Now taking this even further, we can potentially be capable of moving, affecting or interfering with every atom in the universe. Everything else simply reacts, and we can cause reactions, and this capability had to exist in the universe a priori.
Hello goitman,
**I am here allowing for the possibility of God creating DNA but stating that it appears that chance and chemistry are a better explanation in an honest debate.**
Chance and chemistry appears to be a better explanation according to what exactly? You and materialist have developed an aparatus of investigation that only seeks and accepts material explanations. Chance is the ONLY available answer to you. It had to happen that way. How is that honest or even scientific?
The logic is really simple, of chance and intelligence, only one is empirically KNOWN to be sufficient to produce digital code, instructions, plans and programs and thats Intelligence, not chance, now or ever in the past.
If trying to explain the past, one shouldnt invent exotic causes of the sort we have NEVER seen in operation, but rather we should invoke causes that are KNOWN to produce the effects in question. Lyels way of saying this, is we should be looking for PRESENTLY acting causes. So the question is, what is the PRESENTLY acting cause of digital code? We know of ONLY one, intelligence! So we are not arguing from our ignorance but from our KNOWLEDGE of causes and effects!
And before you say at best that leaves us with alien or human intelligence etc.,I suggest you go over the material on this site which goes into great length why finite intelligence is also excluded. Whic still leaves intelligence as the only known cause left…so the logic follows it must be an uncaused intelligence, which ironically fits the biblical description of God.
Pure chance is invoked by several commentators as a plausible mechanism for the origin of life. This assertion can be readily investigated mathematically by using the laws of probability. However, given the generally accepted age of the Universe (c. 13 billion years), the mathematics indicate that pure chance is as near to impossible as makes no difference. In the 30s, thoughtful evolutionists such as Julian Huxley realised this and felt that there must be some force in the Universe which drove it towards life and evolution.
Anyone who seriously contends that pure chance is the mechanism of the origin of life should first prove mathematically that it is feasible.
I could not find the reply by goitman on the subject of chance but I would like to comment on it.
This is a perfect example of irrational religious beliefs, of burying one’s head in the sand because they do not want to believe they are created and therefore owned by their creator,
The casino’s do not deal with chances that have been caluculated to be so unlikely that to believe it must have happened is not rational such as winning the lottery every week for a thousand years by finding the ticket on the sidewalk someone dropped.
It is a perfect example of pseudo-science as well. Most people who deal with this subject are aware that 10 to the 50th is the mathematical level of obsurdity, the point at which an events likelyhod in the supposed 20 billion year history of the universe is deemed impossible.10 to the 50th is as an absudly small a number compared to the odds evolutionists themselves have given to evolution as it is absurdly huge when looked at rationally.
Holding out hope as you say is the worst case of special pleading I have yet heard. Mr. Perry and I disagree on many things but on this point you have lost and refuse to admit it.
Evolution is impossible, it has no methodology, it is blind religious faith that ignores science and simple logic,not to mention truth.
In the beginning God created is the most scientific statement a person can make, there is no other possibility.
Ed,
I have the deepest most profound respect for Jesus. I admire him, accept all of his instructions as valid, and coincidentally live by most of them.
Yet I am not accepted as a Christian for 2 simple reasons.
1. My understanding is that all living creatures are children of God, and that Jesus was an outstanding and exceptional son of God, who accurately and faithfully presented (in a nutshell) the purpose of life. It is clear that he was very intimately connected with God and fully surrendered to His will. (Qualities that I am struggling in some small way to emulate).
He is definitely god-like,
He can definitely be worshiped the same as God in all respects, because he is imbued with pure devotion for the Lord.
But he is not God even though he is one with God in everything that he thinks, speaks and does.
2. My understanding of John 14.6, is that Jesus was using the immediate present tense in Aramaic, and I fully agree that he WAS the only access to The Father for those people at that time.
Because of his very special status (called shaktavesha avatar in Sanskrit) he can (and I am sure he does), continue to give shelter and entrance to heaven for all those who sincerely and rigorously follow his instructions. However there is just too much evidence outside of Christianity, for me to accept that there is no other process for approaching the Supreme Absolute; that there never has been, and that there never will be.
Put succinctly.
He is a very special son of God, but not the only one, and he never becomes God.
He is powerful enough to give salvation and redemption to whomsoever he chooses whether or not they accept him into their life, but he does not have the monopoly on liberation from this world.
For these two reasons I am not accepted by the majority of Christians as being a good Christian.
I am very happy that you love Christ and have a sense of humor. With those two attributes alone, you should have no trouble navigating a safe course through the ocean of suffering that is engulfing this world at an ever-increasing rate.
May you be always filled with pure thoughts, and may the Lord fulfill all your desires in such a way that your love for Him grows unchecked.
Om tat sat.
Perrari.
I have spent over 40 years playing with astrology and for half of that time I believed my job was to fix people by offering advice. It just seemed that this is what people expected of me.
Now I see that whatever someone else does with their conscious awareness is none of my business, and advice is the great invalidator when it is assumed that someone else does not know how to make the best choices for their own lives.
Instead of astrology teaching me methods of prediction it taught me that people will always surprise you as they take whatever influence comes into their lives as they make a mockery of predictions. Of course, sometimes the prediction itself, in a persons “space”, will be a self fulfilling prophecy.
Some folks know more than I do and can tell me what God thinks and what God will do with me, but I cannot concern myself with those opinions when it is my relationship to God that is all that I can comprehend, if that.
I have sat in meditation and reached out to the source of all that is and raised my vibration to be consciously in the presence of this omnipotent energy and it was pure joy and a lot more. But the moment I tried to name it, to put any kind of definition to it, it was gone. In those sessions I made a few attempts to put a name to God sitting in that high energy state and all with the same results.
To my mind, God does not compute, but He is real to me never-the-less. Because I cannot define God I simply have to have faith and accept my experiences of love and joy without being able to convince anyone else of my reality.
These days I sit in meditation/prayer and explore my love for God and it always comes from the heart, not the head. Maybe I am not spiritually advanced enough to love God with all my mind, or all my soul… so I practice.
I do not want anyone telling me what is real for me and what isn’t, nor do I care to take on that responsibility with another’s life. God forbid. But of course, He doesn’t. We are all in spiritual kindergarten and it could be for fun, instead of fighting.
Concept and religion are close cousins, experience and spirit likewise.
And yes, I love science for its discoveries, and I love analyzing more than I do emoting, but others may see my life differently than I do. Gee, should I worry about that?
Very eloquently put Ed.
Do you have ANY ideas on how to convey this understanding to others and give them a similar experience?
Yours,
Perrari
Perrari,
My experiences are only concepts to someone else. And when I express my experiences they so easily end up as a concept to be argued about in the minds of others.
I know of no way to teach spiritual tools of awareness to a mind that is not in agreement to learn in an experiencial setting. Even when a student is in agreement to acquire awareness the experiences can bring up for them a great deal of resistance. The spiritual mentor is on the receiving end of this resentment and anger as the student struggles to alter their awareness.
You can teach a class of 50 students an analytical exercise and not have anger thrown at you, but teach awareness with spiritual tools so a person can alter their own lives through awareness and you had better have the ability to deal with the energy a few will throw at you.
The difference is between concept and experience.
Here is an example:
We so believe in right and wrong that it becomes second nature to us to accept the words of Eldrige Cleaver when he said, “You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem.”
This sets up a dichotomy and it doesn’t matter which end of the spectrum you are on, you are stuck in the dichotomy. Growth is held captive inside the dichotomy whether the dicotomy is “right/wrong”, “good/bad”, spirit/atheism or “Male/female”, to name a few.
When spiritual awareness gives you the ability to move beyond any dichotomy how does your body react? And can you watch your body react? And can you choose to act – or must you just react?
A spiritual mentor needs to create an environment that is supportive and safe so that students can deal with their own awareness without being invalidated in their process of experiencial learning, all of which is unique to themselves.
How this can be conveyed through any other means I have no idea, but it is powerful and life altering in increments that are not unlike quanta.
Ed
Summary of chapter one-The Biblical Case for an Old Earth.
In the preface he presents himself as fair and open minded and then never acknowledges a single creationist for his/her achievements in science or mention that such even exist. He does mention the liberals such as Ross . Unless I missed something in the entire chapter if one was unaware that there are scientist who are Biblical creationist , that believe Genesis as written ,nothing would have changed. One would get the impression only theologians hold to the young earth view.
He makes a huge deal out of Galileo and his view of the situation is identical to the secularists. Never is there any mention of the fact Galileo and Newton were staunch creationists nor that Newton was a theologian and part time scientist and still considered the greatest scientist in history.
Galileo got in trouble for stabbing his friend Urban the Eighth in the back and claiming his theories were facts and only he was capable of explaining the science. He shot himself in the foot but that is another story.
I found the long winded story about Joshuah’s long day to be a red herring and on page 14 he insinuates some Christians today deny the earth moves.
He is obviously trying to weaken scriptural authority in the mind of the reader
He said “most’ accept that it moves. I will write him and ask him who does not, I find that a very odd thing to say .
o
decided to investigate what Luther and Wesley actually said because so many of Ross’s followers claim Augustine believed in millions of years I cannot accept anything they claim about church history without checking.
This is what i found:
LUTHER AND SCIENCE
Donald H. Kobe
Donald H. Kobe is professor of physics at the University of North Texas.
Luther was open to the authentic scientific advances of his age [5]. He appreciated the mechanical inventions of his day.
He accepted the use of medicine in treating disease and is quoted as having said [6],
He goes on to say that the whole premise of this disparaging look at Luther was based on an offhand remark recorded by one of his students 20 years after his death.
Does It Make Sense for Us to At Least Look at Scientific Data when Interpreting Scripture?
Martin Luther, we are told, once wrote, “This fool Copernicus wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy [by claiming that the Earth spins on its axis and that the Earth revolves around the Sun]; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth.”
Holzmann obtains this statement from the Unitarian heretic Alan Hayward (whose arguments in favor of millions of years clearly had a strong influence on Holzmann). Hayward in turn had resorted to a secondary citation from History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), written by the strident anti-Christian polemicist Andrew Dickson White. However, White misleadingly failed to mention that, far from a sustained strong opposition, Luther’s only recorded comment on the issues is a single off-hand remark (hardly a concerted campaign), during a ‘table talk’ in 1539 (four years before the publication of Copernicus’ book). The Table Talk was based on notes taken by Luther’s students, which were later compiled and published in 1566—twenty years after Luther’s death. Luther actually said:
‘Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Jos. 10:12].’
Holzmann, like his mentor Hayward, failed to cite the parts I have italicized. These show that a major reason for Luther’s objection was Copernicus’ challenging the establishment and common sense for its own sake (as Luther saw it). At the time, there was no hard evidence for geokineticism (the idea that the earth moves).
I would say the way Luther was presented, as an ignorant man against all science is not true and just because he did not leap on to the idea with both feet the story he denounced Copernicus or disrespected him is simply not true and had no bearing whatsoever on this subject.
Something Snokes also ignores is that Ross who he holds in such high esteem is heavily influenced by the Christadelphian physicist Alan Hayward.
In case you are unaware they deny Christ is God.
The attacks on John Wesley came from such ‘reliable” sources as the “History of Warfare between Science and Religion” and the same sources claimed all protestants were anti-Science . Snokes gets many of his arguments from atheists although i am sure he does not realize it.
Westley and Luther were both hated for their stand against evolution .
Luther was one of histories greatest theologians and a hero of the faith , to mock him like that to sell an idea I find most distasteful. I will give Snokes the benefit of the doubt that he has been misled but that should never have happened. No mention was made of his stand on creation, only an attempt to belittle him as far as I can see.
,
Mr. Haas, Jr., is professor of chemistry at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts.
The author thanks Diane Blake, Russell Bishop, and Susan Pletica for a critical reading of
an early draft of the manuscript. Two anonymous reviewers gave helpful advice. Allison
Taylor, curator of the Wesley Chapel archives, gave generous assistance. The Gordon
College Faculty Development Plan provided a travel grant.
1 David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature: Historical Essays on the
Encounter Between Christianity and Science (Berkeley, 1986 ). This multiauthor work
argues that neither conflict nor harmony adequately characterize the relationship.
2 Andrew Dixon White, History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom, 2 vols.
(New York, 1895 ).
3 James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to
Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, 1979 )
and Edward B. Davis, “Newton’s Rejection of the Newtonian World View: The Role of
the Divine Will in Newton’s Natural Philosophy,” Fides et Historia 22 ( 1990 ): 6-19, are
representative of the new historiography.
-378-
Divinity at Cambridge, would complain that Methodists considered that
“human learning was rather an impediment than otherwise.”4Tobias Smol
let charged that Wesley “bitterly inveighed against Newton as an ignorant
pretender who presumed to set up his own ridiculous chimaeras in opposi
tion to the sacred philosophy of the Pentateuch.”5 Nine decades later, Leslie Stephen
( 1881 ) would write “we…see in Wesley that aversion to scientific
reasoning that has become characteristic of orthodox theologians.”6 In 1890
cleric Charles Kingsley found Wesley’s “personal religion unfavorable to a
sound and scientific development of natural philosophy.”7
To hear these people talk all Christians were enemies of science .
Either way it has no bearing on whether the Bible teaches a young earth or not.
The fact he failed to mention that Newton and Galileo were staunch creationists and never mentioned a single modern creationists scientist , in fact never mentioned that any creationists were scientist is not in harmony with his claims of wanting a fair and open minded debate . Most do not realize there are tens of thousands of modern scientists that accept Genesis as written so if he mentions Ross and ignores that fact he exposes himself as a man with an agenda . Even Darwin presented both sides of the argument, so far he has failed to acknowledge any qualified people even exist on the other side of the issue.
I wonder if that will change before the book is finished?
No modern creationist uses the appearance of age argument as Dr. Morris did but he acts as if they do.
He mentions the arguments of secular archeologist’s over dates and implies all Christian’s were forced to change their interpretation of the Bible because of them, that is not true. It is not true they are reinterpreting the Bible and not true all Christians agree. Even the secularist at Cambridge are pushing for a re-dating of Egyptian Dynasties by at least 2 and a half centuries that will make the evidence at Jericho fit the chronology and the same with the Exodus. One does not interpret history books, you either accept the history or reject it.
It will be interesting to see how the story progress but for now all I see is a liberal bias toward Biblical authority and an apparently deliberate attempt to give people the impression that no real scientist believes in a young earth . I find his insinuation that a young earth creates a conflict between science and the Bible to be unscientific as it is un-biblical. There can be no conflict between operational science and the Bible and there is none. Only between the Bible and secular interpretations . When he said he would have never come to the conclusion the earth was old if he had never studied science and then brought up electrons and protons etc. I found that less than open lets say to be polite. The Bible does actually mention these kinds of things but certainly not in any detail whereas the chronology of the universe is covered in great detail.
Trying to use the Psalms as he did was rather obvious. Genesis is written in the historical narrative and Psalms is mostly poetic. They are both true but Genesis, as are all of the books of Moses are is literal history. All liberals simply ignore that Hebrew is a complex language and there is no gray area when it comes to the literary style difference between the books written in the historical narrative and those as poetry etc.
dear perrari :
maybe the God that you create can lie but the one that created you cannot.
The argument so called asking if God can make a stone too heavy to lift is not an argument at all. God is not the author of confusion, the statement is illogical.
Atheists use it all the time . It is noteworthy that the same arguments are used by those who deny God altogether and those say all religions are true, go figure?
You have no convictions about anything if you claim that all religions are the same and naturally you dislike anyone who does have them. There is no logic in saying that because different people are certain they are right that none of then are. Perhaps you should try politics, one minute you say everyone is right and the next the opposite.
Who gave you this secret knowledge of which parts of which religions are true?
Never heard of a Hindu or atheist flying a hijacked plane into a building, have you? It seems reality is not your bag.
I will never have any respect for a person who stands for nothing. Fear and respect are 2 different things and I do not fear death so you waste your time with these statements.
You are the one who started the nonsense that asking which god is like asking which sun, to call that infantile would be unfair to infants, it is just bizarre .
Jesus Christ was the God-man, His human side is Jewish, that does not make God a Jew anymore than it makes Mary the mother of God.
Are you that confused or are you just being obstinate? I have made it clear I believe there is one God and one true religion, your statement accusing me of believing everyone has a different God is nonsense. To believe that the same being loves the Jews loves the Jews dead is not rational.
An atheist explained this well:
All the non-Abrahamic religions disagree over the character of God so they can all be dismissed out of hand. Of the remaining Islam is obviously a 7th century copycat of Judaism and Christianity mixed with Arabic animism so it can be dismissed out of hand as well. That leaves Orthodox Judaism and Christianity and the only significant differences between them are the dietary laws and who Jesus of Nazareth was.
Or mine which is they are the only religions thta teach the ex-nihilo creation of matter and you end up with the same question, who was Jesus. To claim He was a wise man makes one as mad as He was if He was not God .
Many try to deceive themselves that is true because they do not wish to bend the knee nor accept they were created and therefore owned by your creator.
Your beliefs about spiritual maturity are simply imagination.
As far as Christians not being blameless you miss the point. Christianity is blameless
. If evolution is true Stalin was correct, murdering millions of his own people was not better or worse than mowing the grass. If evolution is true murdering Aborigines for Museum curios is not morally wrong.
When those Muslims flew those planes into the Twin Towers and the other 273 million murders in the history of Islam were committed by those following the teachings of Mohammad.
The people who committed atrocities in the name of Christianity were disobedient to Christ. It makes no more sense to condemn Christianity for the actions of those who claim to be Christians than to disband all law enforcement because some police are crooks are get rid of all doctors because some are charlatans.
And as far as your spirituality you deliberately ignore the wonderful things Christianity has done such as abolishing slavery , creating the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals , starting the Red Cross and the vast , vast majority of Charities in the world. The very word charity means Christian love and if the Christians stopped being charitable charity would cease to exist for all practical purposes. The most generous and charitable nation in the history of the world is also the Greatest Christian nation on earth .
When Christians carried their Bibles to school from 1925 until 1960 we produced twice as many Nobel Prize winners as the rest of the earth combined .
Modern science flourished in Post -Reformation Christian Europe.
All the major Universities for most of the last 500 years were founded by Christians,
When you are telling yourself how spiritual you are ponder this fact , the most giving people on earth are conservative Christians and the least are young liberals. If you wish to verify that read :
Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compasionate Conservatism Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why It Matters [Hardcover]
Arthur C. Brooks
Perhaps we should end this conversation , I see it going nowhere.
Dear Forrest,
I am a disciple of H.H. Sarvabhauma Maharaja, who was himself initiated into the Brahma Madhava Gaudiya sampradaya by H.H Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami.
Whatever I have spoken I have learnt from him, the Vedic scriptures and scriptures in pursuance of the Vedic version from which he teaches, most notably, Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, Mahabharat, the Upanisads, Vedanta Sutra, Brahma samhita, Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bhavagavat, Manu Samhita and the Puranas.
a short summary of some of what I have learnt.
There is one God.
He existed before creation and will continue to exist after destruction.
All 8,400,000 species of life were created by Him and not by evolution.
There are 2 broad categories of energy, matter and spirit.
Matter is dead, spirit is alive. They both come form the Supreme Lord, and He is the master, controller and enjoyer of both.
All energy both spirit and matter is eternally subordinate to the Supreme Lord who alone is independent.
There are 33 million assistants to the Lord called devatas or demi-gods. They are subordinate to the Supreme Lord and manage universal affairs on His behalf. They originate from the Lord; are empowered by the Lord; and are dependent upon Him. They are not God, for they cannot award salvation but they are vastly more powerful than human beings on this planet. (there is a process to become one for those interested)
In order to help lost souls return to Him the Lord has 7 different categories of avatars who come at different times and places to instruct.
One such category is Shaktavesh avatar and they are empowered humans who are sent by the Lord, and appear simply to carry out the will of the Lord. They frequently posses mystic siddhis with which they can perform ‘miracles’
The Vedic literatures describe many such avatars.
There are several processes for attaining God consciousness (salvation), jnana yoga, karma yoga, astanga yoga, but the highest of them all is Bhakti Yoga, where the aspiring candidate follows a strict set of rules and regulations under the direction of his spiritual teacher called sadhana bhakti, and thus attracts the mercy of the Supreme Lord.
We are within one universe out of millions. The universes are created, maintained and destroyed continually by the inconceivable potency of the Supreme Lord who does it effortlessly through His different energies.
The billions of universes are created from the Mahatattva which is all matter in it’s subtle form, produced by Karanadaksayi Visnu, a plenary expansion of the Lord, Who then enters within each universe as the next expansion of the Lord called Garbodaksayi Visnu, Thereafter as Ksirodaksayi Visnu the Lord enters into the heart of every living creature and into every atom, and between every atom.
All Visnu expansions are full manifestations of Godhead that appear for different functions and thus assume different forms suitable for those purposes. There is no more difference between Them, than there is between you in a suit, or pyjamas, or a track suit, or shorts, or your underwear. You are the same person whatever your appearance.God doesn’t need to change His clothes, He can expand Himself as an identical form, and then perform a different function as that expansion.
More than this I cannot speak at present without sanction from my spiritual master.
To keep this brief I have not included the sanskrit texts and references to support whatever I have written, but will be happy to supply them upon request.
take care,
Perrari.
Was there a Stone Age? Does the evidence support that idea?
My view is no, there is absolutely no evidence of sub human hunter gatherers living in caves , Some people live in caves today and we don’t consider them sub-human. The Neanderthals often lived in caves that were dug out in quite intricate arraignments that required a good working knowledge of complex math and superior tool making and they made super-glue , musical instruments , buried their dead, cared for the sick, and held religious ceremonies.
Until recently it was a given with secular archaeologist that the first peoples were mostly subsistence hunters with no knowledge of agriculture. Now we know that many of the so called “People who Time Forgot” are people who became separated from agricultural societies and lost the ability to farm.
The assumption negatively affected the science as archaeologist almost never bothered to look for evidence of grain milling on tools. Now that someone dropped the evolutionary bias long enough to do some real science the evidence is clear the earliest people from around the world made flour.
When a bias gets as entrenched as evolution science suffers , The Bible says that the first people were intelligent, grew crops, made musical instruments and were skilled in metallurgy. Despite the fact we keep finding more evidence this is true those who reject the Bible seem unaffected by the science they hold as the highest form of truth. Go figure?
http://creation.com/stone-age-flour
Forrest:
Really? There is absolutely no evidence for a Stone Age? And Neaderthals were humans? In all due respect, by rewriting history to match your young earth theology, you get bad & even goofy history and science. For instance, as a young earth creationists, you are forced to accept:
1. The Middle or Later Stone Age (from 2.9 M years ago) applied to apes (maybe) but not humans.
2. As such, all bipedal hominids (upright on 2 legs) before ‘modern human’ were really ‘apes’ (including H. hablis, H. ergaster, H. afarensis, …)
3. That Neanderthals are, in fact, modern humans – but – they did not live 150,000 to 30,000 years ago, but less than 4000 years ago (to correspond to the ‘flood’).
4. That they had to be on Noah’s Ark since the dispersion of humans didn’t take place until after the flood.
5.That, as ‘human’, Neanderthals dispersed to Europe & elsewhere after the flood and the ‘Tower of Babel’ about 4000 years ago.
6. That the removal of all Neanderthal DNA evidence in the human genome took place in the last 4000 years. (This sounds like super-hyper evolution).
Please don’t accuse scientists for not looking at the evidence when you propose this sort of stuff.
The dawn of human civilization was a dramatic event that occurred ~40,000 years ago that included music, spiritual expression and advances in agriculture, including flour. Yes, evidence for grain goes back that far.
Note: A example of YEC ‘rewritten’ theory of Neanderthals can be see in a AIG article (2010) by Anne Habermehl. She conveniently leaves out all dates since they would conflict her presuppositions.
Jim Runyon
Perry,
I was looking through you FAQ’s. I wonder if you could clear up the statement I found in you communications 101 faq.
What does this mean “As you see here, a code is a sequence of symbols that has specific meaning. DNA has a four-bit alphabet, the bits are A – C – G – T. Three bits come together to form a letter called a “triplet” or “Codon.” The Codon GGG is an instruction to make Glycine.
It’s very important to understand that GGG (three Guanines in a row) are not themselves Glycine. They are symbolic instructions to MAKE Glycine.”
You should really fix that because its wrong. Read Genes IX by Ben Lewin.
So far as I know my statement is correct. GGG itself is not Glycine; GGA itself is not Glycine; GGC itself is not Glycine. All three are instructions to make Glycine. If this is erroneous please provide a link elaborating on this point.
Open any basic biology book or look at wikipedia and see how protein synthesis occurs.You should have checked your facts! I did provide a ‘link’ read Genes IX by Ben Lewin. It’s a little out of date, by a year or two but it is still informative. Go and discover for yourself. Pay particular attention to the tRNAs.
Watch this video and you can see the RNA get fed into the ribosome and it goes right back out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=983lhh20rGY The base pairs (ie GGG) are read by the ribosome, they are not stripped off and used. I quote:
“Code for each amino acid is read off 3 letters at a time and matched to 3 corresponding letters in the transfer molecule. When the right transfer molecule plugs in, the amino acid it carries is added to the growing protein chain.”
The same thing is represented somewhat differently here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvYEqGb7XN8&feature=related
If you watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5vH4Q_tAkY&feature=related you can clearly see that the materials in the RNA are never physically transferred into the polypeptide; rather they cause matching external molecules to come into place, get built and then sent to their destination.
So Perry is that the same thing as making Glycine? What you said “They are symbolic instructions to MAKE Glycine.” Not the same thing is it? Glycine is attached to the tRNA isn’t it? Not made, but added to the growing protein chain.
Glycine is made in another metabolic pathway.
The question was always whether you understood protein synthesis. Based on what you wrote I didn’t think so. Thanks I hope you learned something!
I joined word press only to make a comment to you sir.
I have no wish to be part of this community or have anything to do with you, mainly due to the fact that you are an individual who seems to get his jolly’s on attacking different beliefs and opinions. And you seem determined to think that Atheist are the only people who do not believe in a god of some kind. This sight was posted on a recent news article and I felt that I had to, at the very least, hear your opinion.
Therefore… You have failed to answer the proper question.
You have sighted a lot of theory, and have (just like others who push GOD on to those who don’t believe) stated that because you say it is so, and you say that logical design means that a mind created all of this, and that only intelligence has language for communication, that there has to be a GOD.
I have heard similar arguments, I have had debates and discussions with religious leaders, and I have even brought up my question to a Jesuit Physics. None of them could argue my question, or show proof that god exist.
Yes even a catholic Cardinal had no proof. And niether do you. Sorry but you don’t have proof, you have your opinion, you do not have proof.
Is what is written in the bible proof that any of those people written about existed? No
Is what is written in the bible proof that God exist? No
The bible, the Torah, the Quran, The Khuddaka Nikaya or Dhammapada, are all nothing but story books with some good moralistic values. But they are not proof. Just as your theory is not proof, But a lot of fast talk and confusing ideas that a layman would not understand, but because of your delivery of the subject matter he will buy into it. Just like people have bought into religion for centuries, a good sales pitch.
So a question for you to contemplate, and this is coming from a non-believer and I am no atheist. I am a free thinking human, with my own fate and destiny controlled by me, no one and nothing else.
If there were no human’s, would God exist?
Think about it with an open mind, not a religious one. Think about the fact that if there was no one to believe in cream cheese would it exist? Yes it is the same question, and it will have the same out come.
You have failed to prove that God exist, but it was a very nice lecture, and your PDF’s are well written.
But please remember. We all have the right to choose how we believe. And not everyone who does not believe in god is an Atheist.
Ray
hello.
i have a big question” what will happen when we die?”
i’ve been studying hard through these years, at university,school…
what will happen after i die?
i’ll loose every thing that i’ve done?
what will happen for my soul and my mind?
what will happen for our souls an our minds, when we die?
[…] that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. Perry Marshall You can argue this point here if you want but its been a number of years to no avail […]
@Perry – Thank you for your replies on Twitter… I’m a long time fan of your adwords advice, and understand you attend Strategic Coach as well. I’m very interested in your perspectives here, and would love to hear your thoughts on my questions below. Fair warning, I can sometimes come across a little direct and harsh, but that isn’t my intent. I am sincerely interested in finding answers wherever they may be found, so please feel free to challenge me right back.
—
On this website’s FAQ page, you explain that God is outside of the system, just as John Grisham is outside of one of his novels. This is an argument I used to make while holding onto my religious upbringing – though in the context of “a programmer designing a computer system”. It seemed to work on many levels and I found it quite compelling.
The problem with this idea is it breaks the very rules that you suggest are holding back other explanations. No matter how you explain Gods existence in this manner, the argument necessarily strengthens the no-God theory with every supporting statement.
If God exists outside of the rules of our universe, or transcends the rules in some way, why couldn’t the formula/code/language of our evolutionary process do the same (being delivered to our planet via asteroid, local evolution, another dimension, etc.)? If God’s genetic make-up evolved, why couldn’t our arguably simpler code have evolved? If God’s code didn’t evolve and simply existed forever, why couldn’t ours have? If God’s code came together in a different dimension or under different rules, why couldn’t ours? I would strongly argue that any possible reason could and should be considered for the building blocks of our own formula/code/language.
Why extend these transcendent/rule-breaking freedoms to God and not to the evolutionary process of information/genetics/code that make up human life?
The minute we are willing to break the rules for confirmation bias of a complex God – these altered rules must be considered for our own direct origins. Life on earth represents the only objectively verifiable form of intelligent life, so this is not about burden of proof or even about fair consideration for both sides… its about applying the logic to objectively verifiable life forms – before trying it on theorized mystic/supernatural beings that would be arguably more complex than ourselves.
I found it contradictory that you ended this Q/A point by stating that “all purely materialistic answers to the origins question blatantly violate the laws of physics”. Assuming this is can be verified, why do you not hold the very foundation/origin of your “God” to this same standard… or vice versa, open materialistic answers up to the same transcendent/rule-breaking possibilities you seem to generously provide for the God theory?
All things considered, I don’t see a reason to add the enormous complexity of “God” into the equation of life. Again, any argument that attempts to strengthen Gods existence necessarily strengthens the possibility of our own existence without a God, removing the requirement for such a complex God in the first place (defeating the “proof” factor presented on this website).
I am very much open to being challenged, and would love to hear your answers to my questions and concerns above. Thank you for taking the time to read this… I look forward to your response.
Rick,
Glad to have you here, thanks for posting.
1. God is not complex. God is simple. God is infinite and indivisible and not composed of component parts. The Old Testament says that, the New Testament says that, Aquinas’ Via Negativa says that, Augustine said that, and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem infers that – see http://www.perrymarshall.com/godel/
2. The best answer to this line of questioning is Gödel’s theorem, per the link above. I encourage you to read through the comments too, because others have asked almost identical questions. I’ve patiently and carefully answered them.
Essentially you either choose infinite regress or you need a point of origin that is fundamentally different than that which follows – because the universe cannot explain itself. The reason God is not infinite regress is precisely that God is simple. God is not a system of component parts.
3. You asked:
“If God exists outside of the rules of our universe, or transcends the rules in some way, why couldn’t the formula/code/language of our evolutionary process do the same (being delivered to our planet via asteroid, local evolution, another dimension, etc.)? If God’s genetic make-up evolved, why couldn’t our arguably simpler code have evolved?”
God did not evolve. God is perfect and God is outside of time. Evolution happens inside of time. Richard Dawkins’ straw-man description of God says he evolved, but no Jewish or Christian theologian would agree with that.
Your question about why the formula/code/language of our evolutionary process couldn’t violate the rules of the universe or transcend them is implicitly antithetical to the scientific method. It does exactly what you’re accusing me of doing. Even if you’re not going outside the universe with this question, you’re still going outside of science. Which reinforces my original statement.
This is really saying “If theists can step outside the rules of science, why can’t materialists?”
Theists admit that we have no logical choice except to eventually step outside of those rules. Materialists violate the definition of materialism when they step out of science. They’re practicing metaphysics while telling you they’re not.
4. More about a “complex God” – The traditional Jewish greeting to the day is “Hear O Israel, the Lord God is One” which is an affirmation that God is simple not complex. Again, this idea of a complex God is an atheist straw-man argument. It doesn’t come from theology.
Antony Flew was the world’s leading atheist philosopher for 50 years. A vastly more qualified scholar than the Four Horsemen or any of the new atheists I’m aware of. He became a deist in 2004 and wrote a book called “There Is a God.” I highly recommend you study it closely. He lays out his arguments with great care, explaining why and how he gave up atheism after defending it for decades. Over 50 years he saw the chasm of what science is unable to explain grow wider. The apparent design of DNA played a big part in his decision.
Greetings, Perry. Long time no hear 🙂
(Sorry for long post. You know, it’s me)
“God is not complex. God is simple. God is infinite and indivisible and not composed of component parts.”
How Do You Know That? In which logic is the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being simple? What is so simple on this being feeling full scale of human emotions (as colorfully documented by Old Testament)?
What kind of Simple(TM) are you talking about?
Or is it God of Antony Flew: “inoffensive, inactive and not good by definition”?
Do you know what such a deist’s God is?
1) Irrelevant.
2) Metaphor.
3) Unusable for your argument.
Godel does not help you out here. Actually, what Godel tells you is “YOU DON’T KNOW!”
Well, do it. Be honest. Admit you don’t know and you cannot know.
And because you cannot know, your claim is just an act of plain faith, most likely completely detached from reality. Why “most likely”? Because outside the circle (i.e. in your imagination) there can be far more things that are false than things that are true. By definition.
I believe there is no God outside the circle.
You believe there is one.
Both our faiths are equally improvable and equally vacuous. And with equally zero validity.
Still, it is far more likely that there is NO God! By definition. Learn to read your Godel.
We need faith, true. But don’t give up your reason for it! Why is it that the only way you can keep your faith is becoming irrational? This is not what Godel is about!
Faith Is No Reason! Faith cannot establish or prove any “external/objective truth”, and all “internal/subjective truths” are equally valid/invalid/useless metaphors.
Great to hear from you. The comment function on the website was broken and I didn’t know it, but didn’t mind cuz I’ve been busy. I hope to reply to some of your other posts in more detail. And of course you’re always welcome here.
Flew would not agree with you that God is irrelevant, or metaphorical, or unusable here. Read his book and we can discuss his arguments in detail.
I do not know, nor did I say I know; I have only inferred. But I do have 100% inference. God as I have defined him fits the constraints of Gödel’s theorem.
Patrik, do you believe there is (a) something outside the circle, or (b) nothing outside the circle?
Perry, I am a bit disappointed. You don’t seem to have learned a thing.
I admit that I do not know this as an observed fact. But based on everything that we do know, the only logical source of information is a conscious being.
False, if by “source”, you mean sender (and you do mean the sender, we both know that). Information can be created by receiver without the sender knowing it. I explained this to you, and you keep ignoring this.
So the only systematic explanation that remains is (5) a theological one.
Still joking, huh? Not so funny this time.
I am not going to repeat myself, you *sure* know what I mean. Let’s move on.
But I do have 100% inference. God as I have defined him fits the constraints of Gödel’s theorem.
Inference is a tricky business in logic.
Your inference is contaminated with your bias. (We all have this problem, of course.) You select your data so that you can infer what you want to infer. You freely reject anything that lowers the power of your inference just to reach 100%. Therefore, your inference have a great chance to be invalid.
For example, I have 100% inference for the following hypothesis (but this inference is not enough for me to believe it, though I thing it is more likely to be true that all your theology):
Our macro cosmos is build (on micro level) from quantum stuff and on quantum laws. This microworld is a very different place compared to our every day macroworld experience.
All our macroworld intuitions and inferences fail in microworld.
I think it is possible that our own universe is just like a Higgs bozon in a bigger, surrounding, parent universe.
We may not be able to observe or detect such a “parent” universe.
In the parent universe, completely different macroworld laws may be active and all that we perceive as normal, everyday gravity, might be just a quantum fluctuation to a parent universe.
I could go into more details but why would I do it?
I have 100% inference for this, just like you. Also, there’s a science history that supports this view. (You remember? Humans thought the Earth is the center of the universe. Then we found solar system. Then Milky Way. Then galactic clusters. Why should it stop here?)
And my hypothesis invalidates your inference, if you know what I mean.
Again, I don’t believe this hypothesis. But I think it is possible. Inference is valid. But there are many valid inferences that cannot be simultaneously true.
How do we decide which one is more likely? And which one is less likely? Using your biased data selection?
Patrik, do you believe there is (a) something outside the circle, or (b) nothing outside the circle?
I freely admit that I am *damn* busy working out what the hell is going on *inside* the circle. There is a lot of work to be done here, a lot of questions to be answered, a lot of natural laws to be found…
Also, I am aware that all these *inside-the-circle* findings may alter my *outside-the-circle* inferences. So I am not in a hurry to infer anything outside the circle.
I don’t care what is outside the circle, especially because it is unknowable. Unlike you, I am not busy dreaming out and selecting at will all those possible fancy attributes that PossibleOutsideCircleDeity(TM) may have.
When I am done *inside* the circle, I may be interested in the *outside*.
Long way to go, though.
In other words, you and people like you, continuously imposing singularities and unknowable mysteries, objecting reductionism and denying naturalism and materialism, you just stand in the way.
Just being honest, sorry. To me, you offer no added value. I thought you did. But you don’t. You are just an obstacle, misleading otherwise intelligent people to the dead-end trap of your cognitive illusion.
Patrik,
For the benefit of those who aren’t privy to our prior conversations could you re-state how a receiver can create information without a sender knowing it?
You said, “I think it is possible that our own universe is just like a Higgs bozon in a bigger, surrounding, parent universe.” Perhaps we’re a universe inside a universe inside a universe. Do you think there is an infinite regression of universes, or is there an outer edge?
In what way do you have 100% inference for this?
If you are not interested in what is inside the circle, and if you don’t know enough about it to know what is outside, then would you describe yourself as an agnostic?
I carefully read through each of your points here, and also found Godel’s theorem very interesting. It’s something I think we’ve all vaguely pondered in the past, but I’ve never seen the concept broken down like that… it really gets me thinking. Thank you for sharing.
While I fully agree this opens the door to the possibility of a creator, I cannot see how it verifies the existence of a God or establishes that such a being is required.
NOTE: Our discussion can easily get out of control as there are so many interesting points being made on both sides, but I’ll try to stick to a few significant items. Please let me know if I am dodging or missing one of your major points as that is not intended.
The significant flaw I see is the method by which you reach your conclusion… and I quote:
A. “Notice than when you move from the smaller circle to the larger circle, you have to make assumptions that you cannot 100% prove.”
B. “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.”
C. “Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.”
How does A not destroy the statement made in C? It very clearly states that such assumptions cannot be proven, yet you are using this logic to “prove” the existence of God.
Furthermore, suggesting “God” is outside the circle is a flawed argument…
“Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove.”
If you can “prove” there is a God as you state, there must be a circle around him.
Even if we conclude we will never draw a circle around everything, there is no reason to conclude God is outside the circle. As a conscious being, he would absolutely require a circle drawn around him (to validate his existence and to “prove” him as quoted above). This circle might as well be directly around the formula on which our life originated, rather than adding the extra step of an intelligent and willful being. The added complexity of “God” is not only un-provable, but it is also un-necessary based on your own logic.
If you are simply redefining “God” to be the formula or set of rules that guided our evolution – this would seem to be a play on semantics rather than actually proving the idea of a biblical God with a master plan, a will of his own, intelligence, capacity to create codes/languages, and a plan to “create us in his image”. The amount of selective reasoning required for reconciling these ideas, it seems to me, is truly astounding. Furthermore, it doesn’t address the inherent flaws listed above.
I cannot reach your conclusion. Am I missing something?
When I say
“Notice than when you move from the smaller circle to the larger circle, you have to make assumptions that you cannot 100% prove”
I am using the word “prove” to refer to the formal definite mathematical process of deduction. Deduction is moving from larger circles to smaller circles. Like going from the postulates in geometry to proving equilateral triangles.
Once you have taken things as far as you can go with deduction, any progress beyond requires induction. Induction is not proof, it’s inference to that which is likely or necessary for your other deductive constructs to hold together. My point C “Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being” is an inductive inference.
I admit that I do not know this as an observed fact. But based on everything that we do know, the only logical source of information is a conscious being.
So I haven’t proven a conscious Prime Mover deductively, I have only shown that based on all that we do know, a conscious Prime Mover is the only logical available explanation.
I did not deductively prove there is a God. I could never accomplish that because I cannot draw a circle around God. The best I can do is infer whatever is outside the biggest circle.
In my personal opinion, the step of an intelligent and willful being would not be required if the universe were just blind matter and energy. But we have life and the language of DNA – a very sophisticated language at that, and consciousness. Language so far as we know only is created by consciousness and we are all intimately familiar with the exact process we use to construct new languages. It’s extremely deliberate and intentional.
Again this is induction not deduction. Almost all scientific reasoning that produces principles like entropy, gravity, etc. is inductive.
I submit to you that there is no “selective reasoning” here at all; it is standard, straightforward logical inference.
Here is my assessment of the current state of things…
It seems your interpretation of Godel’s theorem is being used to simply validate inductive reasoning. This essentially opens a trap door in which anyone can introduce a seemingly logical argument, through inductive reasoning, that doesn’t actually prove anything definitively (you seem to have acknowledged the lack of certainty in your last post).
The moment we begin to present very specific inferences from the vast array of possible outcomes that result from unlocking inductive reasoning… the result becomes irrelevant. Progress is not made, and confirmation bias is set free to reach a multitude of preconceived conclusions. You have simply chosen one very specific inference of the many that are possible… and then proceeded to close the gap between inference and proof – at least in how you present the argument.
Here is a very quick example of a possible alternative conclusion: All living things objectively require information/language/code, therefore outside the largest circle is a code/language/formula that drives all progress/information. You might respond “but all codes/languages/formulas require an intelligent being with intent – based on inductive reasoning” and I would respond “all intelligent beings with intent require code/language/formula – also based on inductive reasoning”. We are left without progress, because the inductive reasoning loophole lets you choose between the chicken and the egg.
If you chose to define this code/language/formula as itself being “God”… this is where I argue it requires a vast amount of selective reasoning to reconcile this view with anything resembling a religion “God” that is loving, intelligent, created us “in his image”, has intent and will, etc.
—
Closing the gap between inference and “proof”, especially when based on inductive reasoning, is a dangerous path to go down. Based on listening to your audio commentaries, watching your videos, and reading some of your comments… you sincerely identify the negative impacts of expressing certainty when one cannot be so certain. I think we would both agree that if a scientist were to say he has “proof that no God exists”, it would hurt his credibility, indicate some level of intellectual dishonesty, and be a disservice to his readers.
We are both marketers… it’s very easy to fall into the trap of overstating facts to increase the effect they have on an audience. However, I feel very strongly that such claims, from either side of the debate, are a hinderance to progress. As such, I would encourage you to leave it to your readers to close the inference-to-proof gap if they so choose. “Proof” is not a word that should have multiple meanings – especially in the scientific community.
I just realized I don’t ask a lot of questions in this post, but please don’t take that as an indication of me not being open to having you challenge me right back. I am starting to form conclusions from our discussion, but am still open to changing my perspective if presented with new data. Do you see a flaw in my logic or see a way in which I am mis-interpreting your logic?
P.S. – My wife is very exited about a career in adwords/analytics, and she is working on our companies adwords campaigns to try things out. There may come a time in the future where we both travel down to participate in your round-table discussions… I very much look forward to meeting you if this ends up happening. You’ve got a brilliant mind both in advertising and in the application of logic/reason, and while I certainly hope we can continue the debate here on the blog… I think a face-to-face discussion would be very interesting as well.
P.S.S. – I look forward to your reply to my main post above.
The technical questions you are raising are addressed here quite well, I think:
http://evo2.org/infinite-chasm/
You are right, in our experience, consciousness requires code and code requires consciousness. It’s a chicken and egg problem because there is no known path from inert matter to consciousness. Anyone who tells you there is, is doing sleight of hand with you.
Closing the gap between inference and proof is exactly what science, logic and rational investigation is all about. You are welcome to reject inductive reasoning if you want, but then all of science goes out the window. (And by the way all arguments against inductive reasoning are inductive.)
There’s an element of your response that sounds a just little like panic. I apologize if I’m misreading you but it’s almost like you’re saying “Hey wait just a minute, you’re using logic to prove God and that’s not possible.” Well I’m doing exactly what atheists have been asking theists to do all along, which is back up my statements with reason and logic and scientific evidence. I’m being excruciatingly clear about what I can prove deductively and what I have to infer.
And I am not using “marketing language” to make my points or sneak past your defenses. I am using the rigorous terminology of a logician.
In the exact same sense that science has “proven” entropy, gravity, etc., I have proven God. To be precise, entropy and gravity are not proven, they are inferred, as are all scientific laws. Based on what we do know, we can be just as certain that DNA is designed as you are that your toast will grow cold when you take it out of the toaster.
If you choose, you can posit that language precedes consciousness. I would not agree with that, but in the case of any human growing from embryo to adult, that is our experience. OK, so then let’s say language must exist before life and consciousness can exist. Then it becomes all the more interesting that John 1:1 says “In the beginning was the WORD and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
Rick, if you can use reason and logic according to fair rules to arrive at any other conclusion besides mine, I invite you to present all the evidence that is at your disposal. Bring it to the table and let’s examine it. Let’s see if any other explanation has empirical support.
You made reference to formerly having had religious belief and rejecting it. I submit to you that the theologians were right all along and the atheists used slick salesmanship and sleight of hand to convince you that God was illogical. If you set emotions aside and follow the logic, God is a necessary starting axiom in order for a logical universe full of language and consciousness to exist. It’ll take me a little longer to get to this, but I believe I can also show you that God is a necessary starting axiom in order to have an inviolable, objective definition of human rights.
In any case I’m glad we’re having this conversation. And yes it would be good to connect on a professional level too.
I am not rejecting inductive reasoning. I am rejecting a conclusion that I find to be a flawed implementation of inductive reasoning. One in which an alternative contradictory conclusion is also reached, but is ignored.
The claim of panic isn’t justified, I can assure you. If you had an air-tight argument for some definition of “God”, I would gladly accept it as such… and the conversation would move on to attempting to clarify that definition with any knowledge available to us. The common religious misconception that people leave the church out of spite, out of rejection of a power above themselves, or to simply escape some of the negative aspects of organized religion – doesn’t apply here. I am simply seeking knowledge, learning, and understanding – that’s all.
I acknowledge that you are being “excruciatingly clear” about what you can prove here in our follow-up discussion, but the title of this page is still “If you can read this sentence, I can prove God exists”… and I think its fair to say most people will misinterpret that (wither that was it’s intentional or not). In my view, “proof” should have no contradicting argument that is grounded in the same inductive reasoning.
Technically speaking, you may be meeting the same standards that science uses to prove entropy, gravity, etc, but with one significant difference. Your argument doesn’t include, disprove, or discount the fact that similar inductive reasoning can reach a completely different conclusion. The fact that there is “proof” (achieved by your same inductive means) that contradicts your inference doesn’t appear to be factored into your final conclusion.
In other words, if you can use inductive reasoning to argue the egg came first OR the chicken came first… is it really fair to state “I can prove the egg came first”? This seems intellectually dishonest to me… even if it meets some technical standards. All you have proven is it is possible that the egg came first AND that it is possible the chicken came first. Neither is “proven”, but both are possible conclusions of a necessarily flawed argument.
Morever, its not just the order we are debating… it’s the fact that the egg (language/information/code) might directly hatch a different kind of chicken (the building blocks of our life rather than some all-powerful being). If we use your inductive reasoning to prove the “egg” came first, we are then left to determine if God was the result (and then he created another language/information/code for our existence)… or if the original language/information/code for our intelligent life was the result. This is where Occam’s razor would seem to suggest the path directly to us (the only objectively verifiable form of intelligent life) is more probable and that having God as an un-necessary intermediary adds no value to the equation.
I get the strong sense you’ve dealt with these arguments many times before (far more than even the questions/comments in response to your blog), and I can appreciate that. You are clearly very confident and sincere in your position. I can assure you I feel the same way.
Perhaps it is subjective, but I can’t help but think your level of certainty may be keeping you from addressing the fundamental flaws in your argument – beyond simply stating that they meet scientific requirements (again, ignoring that contradictory inferences can still be reached using the same inductive reasoning).
In addition to responding to the above message, can you give me a clear yes or no answer for your thoughts on this: If two contradictory conclusions can be reached using the same inductive reasoning – is it fair to claim one is “proven”? If so, why?
Rick,
If two contradictory conclusions can be reached it doesn’t mean one is proven, or right, or wrong. We can only assign some level of likelihood to each.
The reason that we can infer that consciousness comes before code and not the other way around is that to create a new code from scratch always, in our experience, requires us to make a free choice about symbols. Consider how humans do something that animals do not: create languages from scratch.
When we design codes we have to decide whether 1=on and 0=off or 1=off and 0=on.
In the case of DNA not only the four letter alphabet but also the relationship between codons and amino acids has been made. And not only that but the redundancy scheme that maps 64 codons to 20 amino acids, and the fact that it is optimized to minimize errors to a 1:1000000 degree of perfection. To a communications engineer like me this is an incredibly elegant design.
We have always observed consciousness invent new codes but we have never actually observed codes making consciousness. This is a vital distinction because cells themselves behave as though they are conscious. Bacteria have more linguistic ability in terms of editing their own DNA than any other creature except humans. Bacteria also communicate to each other using syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and words like “me” and “you” and “us” and “them.” Cognitive activity appears to drive biology at even the lowest known levels. There is an infinite chasm between life and non-life. See this amazing TED video at http://evo2.org/intelligent-bacteria/
We actually do not know what creates consciousness. We do know that conscious beings cause quantum entanglement and that beliefs and expectations actually shape reality. The book “Biocentrism” by Robert Lanza makes a very strong case that consciousness precedes even matter itself.
The fact that “1” can be on OR off and a choice must be made is proof that consciousness is first required to create even the simplest code. Computer codes do not in any way shape or form generate consciousness. We have no reason to take any other position until we observe a naturally occurring code.
Thus we have airtight inference to design. There are 5 possible interpretations of what this means:
1) Humans designed DNA
2) Aliens designed DNA
3) Random and spontaneous events create codes
4) There must be some undiscovered law of physics that create codes
5) The genetic code was Designed by a Superintelligence, i.e. God.
(1) requires time travel or infinite generations of humans. (2) could well be true but only pushes the question back in time. (3) may be a remote possibility, but it’s not a scientific explanation in that it doesn’t refer to a systematic, repeatable process. It’s nothing more than an appeal to luck. (4) could be true but no one can form a testable hypothesis until someone observes a naturally occurring code. So the only systematic explanation that remains is (5) a theological one.
Your comment is in the queue at pm.com but this requires a more careful answer so be patient and I’ll get to it. Super busy this next week.
“If two contradictory conclusions can be reached it doesn’t mean one is proven, or right, or wrong. We can only assign some level of likelihood to each.”
I agree, so how do you conclude you have proven God? I understand you would argue your inference meets some sort of scientific standard, but it’s quite clear that the presence of a directly contradictory conclusion makes this argument flawed. I don’t believe theories like gravity or entropy have similar inferred contradictions.
“We have always observed consciousness invent new codes but we have never actually observed codes making consciousness.”
It seems you are basing your entire argument for consciousness being required for codes on the notion that we have objectively verified that consciousness creates “codes”. However, we have never observed it create the types of self-improving codes that you use to make your inductive reasoning. Earlier you mentioned “slight of hand” – that seems relevant when noting your interchangeable definitions of words like “codes”… or even “proof” for that matter.
You’ve noted this several times in your presentations… we do not create codes that are capable of self-improvement… I think one example went like this “we don’t have something like MSDOS that turns itself into Windows Vista”. You’ve also strongly argued we will never create Artificial Intelligence because when we create “codes” they simply follow the exact rules we determine (you stress how these codes are extremely different from the ones driving our evolution). Therefore, it would appear your inductive argument is fundamentally broken – because by your own logic, no form of consciousness has ever been observed creating a self-replicating, self-improving, and self-sustaining code like the one you argue is at the heart of our evolution.
Just as you say “We actually do not know what creates consciousness”, I would argue “we actually do not know what creates self-replicating, self-improving, and self-sustaining codes”… because we certainly haven’t observed consciousness doing that, and you have made the argument we never will.
In fact, I think its fair to suggest that these self-replicating, self-improving, and self-sustaining codes actually do create consciousness, or at very least pre-date it, as they did come before every form of consciousness we can objectively verify.
“1) Humans designed DNA – requires time travel or infinite generations of humans.”
Agreed, but I don’t see how this argument doesn’t apply to a God that would also require such codes/languages/information.
“2) Aliens designed DNA – could well be true but only pushes the question back in time.”
Again, I don’t see how this argument doesn’t get applied to God.
“3) Random and spontaneous events create codes may be a remote possibility, but it’s not a scientific explanation in that it doesn’t refer to a systematic, repeatable process. It’s nothing more than an appeal to luck.”
This appears to be a “God of the gaps” argument (when we arrive at #5) instead of a definitive rejection of this option.
“4) There must be some undiscovered law of physics that create codes – could be true but no one can form a testable hypothesis until someone observes a naturally occurring code.”
Again, a distinct possibility… even if we aren’t able to verify this yet. Leading into the next point, this too seems to be a rejection in favor of a “God of the gaps” argument.
“5) The genetic code was designed by a Superintelligence, i.e. God… the only systematic explanation that remains is a theological one.”
How is this argument any different than your rejection of humans or aliens? 1, 2, and 5 are all refuted by the same reasoning… all three beings require code, language, and information. This is the chicken and egg example all over again, and it seems my points above reject any reason to conclude consciousness is the origin of a self-replicating, self-improving, and self-sustaining code like that driving our evolution – which was your primary reason for preferring the inference of God over a contradictory inference that self-improving codes came first.
Do you still believe you have proof of God? If so, what is it? How does your inference of God overcome the contradictory inference… that self-improving code/language/information pre-dates all objectively verified forms of consciousness?
Rick,
The codes themselves are not self-evolving. It is the intentional activity, the “self” of the cell, that evolves the codes.
In this respect, biological evolution is very much like evolution of human language and technology. Genomes are like Linux: They’re acted on by intelligent agents (cells) which modify their code according to linguistic rules. Only intelligence, by making choices, can overcome information entropy and create new information where it did not exist before.
And yes, we absolutely have experience of codes evolving by the actions of sentient beings. You experience this yourself when you write a Google ad. You exercise natural selection when you test it.
Regarding your comments on my points:
1 – God is non-physical. According to Gödel’s theorem whatever is outside the circle is immaterial. And as I said, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
2 – God is uncaused. As I said something HAS to be uncaused and nothing in our physical universe is uncaused. Entropy proves that the universe is not infinitely old. The Big Bang indicates that it had a definite beginning.
3 – Randomness explanations are Gap arguments too, but they’re actually worse. They should at least be repeatable but they’re not, thus contradicting scientific standards. Empirical criteria do not support “random accident” explanations for the origin of life.
4 – I wholly respect a person who embraces #4. Actually, having been presenting this in public for six years, so far as I can tell, #4 is currently the only way out. You can choose #4 and be an agnostic, and still be completely honest with the facts. But I do not believe it is possible to hold an atheist position and be honest with the facts.
5 – Do you mean to suggest that saying “humans designed DNA” isn’t a problem?
Having gone through all of these points, we’re still faced with this fact:
1. The pattern in DNA is a code
2. All codes we know the origin of are designed
3. Therefore DNA is designed
Design is when conception precedes embodiment. Therefore life had to exist as an idea before it existed physically.
My definition of God deals with the chicken and egg problem elegantly. The chicken and egg problem remains a big problem for atheism, because language is always associated with intelligence. All codes we know of that were created from scratch came from conscious beings.
Do you have direct inference to any other explanation?
It appears you are shifting your position from our origins being complex self-evolving codes to cells that are essentially concious and making decisions on their own behalf. This change is negating your own argument of the codes being such a vital part of the equation, and stating that the creator simply started these basic forms of conciousness – cells. They could have developed their own codes from humble beginnings, so there is no more need for “God”. If we want to explain their origins… the conversation is no different than trying to explain our own beginnings (literally, its the same debate all over). It seems you are sacrificing the major premise of your own argument, that codes need a designer, in order to somehow keep the idea of “God” alive, but this change from human complexity to cell complexity is a big step backward for your argument.
This begins to show how the chicken and egg concept could have been a progression rather than one or the other. These points still stand: we don’t know the origins of self-evolving codes (if you choose to use this for the origins of cells) and we don’t know the origins of consciousness (for ourselves, a God, aliens, or even cells). Any argument to bring God into the picture without evolution/origins still runs into “primum movens” idea like a brick wall, because no matter how you simplify the concept of “God”… he is still a system that requires a circle around him. Even if you say he is magically “uncaused” – this argument necessitates the possibility that our own humble beginnings were uncaused. Simply put: every time you find a reason or excuse to allow God to ignore the rules of science, we MUST consider the same possibilities for our own direct evolution.
Lets review the entire debate thus far, because I think the issue can be boiled down to several major points. Please read each of these carefully, as I think each point is critical on their own:
1. Your argument that God is outside the system, based on your interpretation of Godel’s theorem, breaks itself. In plain english, the theorem states that in order for something to be “proven” you must be able to draw a circle around it, but once you draw a circle around it – it requires an outside system. You replied “I am using the word “prove” to refer to the formal definite mathematical process of deduction”, but then went on to explain how your actual conclusion is based on “inductive” reasoning and how “induction is not proof, it’s inference”. You adjusted your stance from “proven” to “inference”, but continue to use the words “proof” and “proven” regularly… indicating this exchange didn’t actually affect your conclusion or the way in which you announce your certainty.
2. You freely extend transcendent rule-breaking freedoms to God, and argue that materialists can’t reference these freedoms – even to form a counter argument. This is selective reasoning – even if it’s dressed up under some arbitrary limitations you put on science. Essentially this amounts to punishing science for prudence, reason, and critical thinking… and extending rule-breaking options to theists because they prefer to jump to conclusions rather than waiting for scientific evidence. Its as if you suggest theists have a monopoly on pondering possibilities outside of the scientific framework, and that nobody else can consider them – even to point out blatant contradictions.
You said “Theists admit that we have no logical choice except to eventually step outside of those rules”, and then proceeded to explain how “materialists” have essentially boxed themselves in. This is using science and reason when it benefits you, and dismiss it when it doesn’t… a political argument that erodes intellectual honesty. If you believe you are making a logical argument, then why can’t others point out logical contradictions in your selective inductive reasoning? If they can, why do you choose to ignore these alternatives when defining your stance as “proven”?
The scientific community may be held back by prudence when considering new transcendent rules, but one can certainly play the inductive reasoning game in order to form a counter-argument to someone already doing so. You can’t simply change the rules and then state that others don’t have a right to consider the same options when countering you. Not only is this selective reasoning… it’s arguing to support a confirmation bias, not to make real progress in knowledge or understanding.
3. I pointed out that any argument that suggests our consciousness needs to come from designed codes also applies to any God (based on your own formula of inductive reasoning). Whatever logic you then use to explain Gods existence necessarily strengthens the argument for our own direct evolution. If Gods code/dna/information/language has existed forever or evolved somehow, there is no reason to conclude our code couldn’t do the same. As pointed out in (6), all self-replicating, self-improving, and self-sustaining codes pre-date all objectively verified forms of consciousness and intelligence. You can re-define this code itself as being God, but that would only indicate a willingness to put confirmation bias and selective reasoning over consistency in your definition of God (with a master plan, a will of his own, intelligence, capacity to create codes/languages, a plan to “create us in his image”, and mountains of biblical and theological references that contradict this definition of God).
4. Your selective use of biblical and historical records solidifies my view that your reasoning is heavily driven by confirmation bias. Simple quotes like “Hear O Israel, the Lord God is One” or “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God” could be taken to mean many things, but you choose to draw definitive interpretations to support your predetermined conclusion. This is a classic example of confirmation bias at work. Do you think the creation story is allegorical, noah and the ark is a parable, and the mountains of fundamental flaws and contradictions in scripture are irrelevant? It takes extraordinary selective reasoning to attempt to validate the existence of a the theistic depiction of a God. I think this video is relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvRPbsXBVBo and would recommend this one too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iClejS8vWjo
5. You’ve admitted that your inductive reasoning can be used to reach a completely contradictory inference. However, this doesn’t appear to have any affect on your final conclusion or statements of “proof”. It seems to me that inductive reasoning is only reasonable when it arrives at what can be considered the strongest conclusion. If you have contradictory inferences on the table, any one result is not proven as you admitted: “If two contradictory conclusions can be reached it doesn’t mean one is proven, or right, or wrong. We can only assign some level of likelihood to each”. Again, I must ask, why do you still claim “proof” while these contradictions are present?
6. You use different definitions of “codes” interchangeably to form a flawed argument that is already based on selective inductive reasoning. I pointed out that we have never witnessed consciousness creating self-replicating, self-improving, and self-sustaining codes. Your own arguments against our ability to create Artificial Intelligence or other self-improving codes supports this… in fact, you argue we never will create such codes/languages/information. The result is a collapse of your entire argument that consciousness pre-dates self-improving codes, and instead… shows that self-improving codes pre-date all objectively proven forms of consciousness. Once the distracting wordplay is removed – the momentum of the argument swings in the entirely opposite direction. If your view was based on objective reason, it would seem your position should now be that you have “proof” God does NOT exist. I wouldn’t suggest this is proof of this conclusion, but I’m referencing your level of certainty while asserting that consciousness came before code (to highlight your clear bias).
7. I pointed out that you were closing the gap between inference and proof for your readers, and you suggested “closing the gap between inference and proof is exactly what science, logic and rational investigation is all about.” Correct, but you don’t use science, logic, and rational investigation to close the gap. By your own admission (1) the gap is not closed, so simply stating your case is “proven” is closing the gap without a reason. Continuing to claim you have proven God is intellectually dishonest, and it does a disservice to readers that take your claims at face value.
8. You listed five options (human design, alien design, random events, an undiscovered law of physics, and God) as possible sources of the complexity of our genetic code. Again, this entire argument fails to make any progress over our previous exchange (3). Humans, aliens, and God require self-improving code/language/dna to exist, based on your flavor of inductive reasoning – consciousness and intelligence require code/language/dna. As indicated in point (6): all self-replicating, self-improving, and self-sustaining codes pre-date all objectively verified consciousness and intelligence. Thus, however improbable, we must either consider the unclosed doors of options four and five (random events or an undiscovered law of physics), or perhaps wait for another option we are not yet aware of. We have absolutely no reason to conclude there is a God, let alone that he is the source of these self-improving codes. Neither through deductive or inductive reasoning after considering point (6) above.
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As far as “atheism” goes… it is not the stance that there is “no god”. There are two issues at work here. First, as far as a “God”-like being goes, we are simply waiting for objective evidence. I don’t “believe” there is no God – I simply ignore the concepts of faith and belief… and wait for solid evidence to support such an idea. This is the natural “default” position of the human mind. To not simply accept something based on myth, faith, theistic upbringing, or other unproven means… nor to take such pre-existing beliefs and assume they are accurate until proven wrong.
On the other hand, we take a look at theistic beliefs, rituals, and scripture… and see the blatant flaws. This is not “disbelief” or anything to do with an assertion that there is no God. It’s simply identifying these mystic accounts to be massively flawed, contradictory, and inaccurate. Any moral lessons that may be included are drawn out using subjective reasoning and all the included horrible moral lessons are dismissed by this same subjective reasoning. Again, this is not “belief” or based on “faith”… but rather simply an unbiased review of how theists manipulate and subjectively use scripture to strengthen their existing ideas, morals, and desires.
I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to debate this with me, but it’s getting to the point where progress is not being made. I can reach no other conclusion but that you are heavily motivated by a deep confirmation bias – likely rooted in your theistic upbringing. The debate should have ended with any one of the points listed above. While your replies are elegant and well thought out, they don’t address the fundamental flaws. I simply cannot see how a truly objective mind can define something as proven when the stated inference is built entirely upon selective inductive reasoning, assumptions, and logic that ignores known contradictions. You are welcome to present new information, but aside from that, I don’t see value in debating this further.
If its comforting or easier for you to make a personal conclusion that God exists – you are welcome to do so. It’s absolutely possible other intelligent beings like a God may exist (I’m not just saying that, it is absolutely possible), but we certainly don’t have a reason to consider God “proven” or to announce to the world that the issue is settled. As of this point… I am convinced such arguments are, knowingly or unknowingly, rooted in confirmation bias and slight of hand logic.
I think what frustrates me the most is that I hear your disapproval for those that announce certainty around the non-existence of God, and how they overstate their claims. Yet, after having this careful debate of the available facts, it is plain to see that we cannot objectively confirm such a being either. You can choose to focus on gaining knowledge, insight, and understanding through the framework of science… OR to engage in one side of a destructive propaganda war that makes no actual progress. One is a sincere interest in finding answers while the other is a sincere interest in fighting for a pre-existing belief that, as of yet, cannot be proven or disproven.
I will respond in detail when I can. I’m up for another extremely busy week so it may take a while.
In the meanwhile, please provide a non-theistic account for the origin of codes and consciousness, supported by observation and/or direct inference. I’m particularly interested in how atheism gets around the chicken-and-egg problem. Option #4 is always available to you. See http://evo2.org/faq/#bestargument – I offer skeptics some insight into how to stage a counter-argument.
Perry, I don’t think you read my reply yet. I indicated that unless the major flaws in your argument are addressed, there is little reason to continue the debate. I don’t claim to have answers to the origins of consciousness or self-evolving codes. Such answers are not yet within a solid framework of understanding.
My whole point is that such a claim cannot be based on anything but selective inductive reasoning… which I find to be a pointless exercise in confirmation bias (sort of like a “pick your path” game). I don’t see the point of making these arguments as, once we consider the obvious alternatives, they simply amount to the assertion of guesswork under the guise of a scientific statement. You seem to be trying to force me into the “I can prove there is no-God” camp, but I’ve repeatedly stated that this is not my position.
If our goal is true understanding – such flawed inferences are a distraction. If our goal is to prove pre-existing beliefs, such inferences are still contradictory to other possibilities, and therefore only achieve their goal if we are willing to ignore the many available contradictions. No matter how eloquent such an argument is made – it does not further actual understanding. Its only purpose is within a propaganda war where both sides are claiming to know what is currently unknowable (and criticizing each other for making such baseless claims).
If we are to be intellectually honest with the current state of human understanding, we cannot claim to know there is or is not a God. This is not meant to be a destructive statement, as the current trends indicate we may one day have answers. Instead, it is simply an assessment of our current understanding and it’s current limitations.
I don’t share your desire to claim “proof” or assert answers that cannot yet be confirmed by a solid framework of understanding. My personal goal is to attempt to look at these things from as unbiased a view as is possible, and that necessitates looking at the facts first and reaching conclusions second. Right now, the facts don’t definitively support a solid conclusion. However, I am most interested in continuing to keep up with modern understanding to see where it takes us.
1. I have been explicitly clear that I have inductively proven the necessity of a designer.
2. I am not punishing science for prudence, reason, and critical thinking. I am outlining the limitations of the scientific method. Anyone is welcome to muse on what exists outside of science. I again invite you to come forward with any kind of positive statement that attempts to answer the questions I have raised. Thus far you’ve not been willing to do so. I am not trying to be hard on you. But one has to wonder, if there are myriads of other possibilities, what are they?
You said, “If you believe you are making a logical argument, then why can’t others point out logical contradictions in your selective inductive reasoning? If they can, why do you choose to ignore these alternatives when defining your stance as “proven”?”
Please outline these alternatives. If I have made logical contradictions, point them out.
3. “I pointed out that any argument that suggests our consciousness needs to come from designed codes also applies to any God”
Cells themselves appear to be conscious in some sense. So in biology, codes do not create consciousness. Our experience is that consciousness comes first, codes come second. I asked you a question which you have not answered:
Which came first, the video camera; or the TV; or the code they use to communicate?
4. You are accusing me of confirmation bias simply because I refer to the Bible. I think this is merely your own confirmation bias against the Bible. As though my arguments become invalid simply because I do this. I am willing to defend what I say, with our without the Bible. I am still waiting for you to advocate a position on what any of these other possibilities are, that I am ignoring.
Rick, can you show me a code that does not come from intelligence?
6. I have been absolutely consistent in my usage and definition of the word codes. If you disagree then explain when and where.
8. You are deliberately re-defining God to fit your requirement of rejecting the possibility of God existing, and you are for some reason rejecting the most fundamental definitions that Judeo-Christian theology have always used. I would invite you to consider that theologians are not as stupid as atheists believe they are, and that these definitions are in place because they’re logical.
It seems that your argument against my position is that I have a theistic upbringing, therefore I cannot be objective, therefore my arguments are illogical.
I have made it clear that the only logical possibility for the origin of the genetic code is either an undiscovered law of physics or a metaphysical being. You have not offered any alternative. Thus I am not using “selective inductive reasoning” because there is no alternative that I have failed to consider. You are welcome to embrace the undiscovered law of physics option.
The existence of God cannot be proven, but that’s not a problem unless you need proof to believe in God, or you need a lack of proof to not believe.
I am amused by all the comments that explain what God is thinking, or doing, when all that is being expressed is what any individual believes to be God’s intent, or purpose.
What is the difference between a concept and an experience?
Both are based on subjective values and both are turned into a belief that is subjective. There’s no problem there either. But the real difference is that a concept is not as real to us as an experience is.
Proof is limited to the material world, and even then it is a difficult matter (no pun intended). For example, along comes the World Wide Web with its virtual environment and we come to realize that proof does not exist on the web. A computer monitor showing a cup of coffee does not prove that the cup and coffee are real – it’s just an image.
What happens with people when they use the web is that there is a psychological shift in values, whether this is a conscious shift in values, or not. In a material world we can have proof, sort of, when we examine our purchase for colour, dimensions and texture, among other sensual criteria for proof. But no such proof exists on the web. We cannot be absolutely convinced or provided with proof that what is displayed on a computer screen is proof. The shift in our values while on the web goes from needing proof to needing to trust. We trust that we will receive the very thing we think we are buying, but we have no proof of that.
The whole concept of God is a virtual reality in which there is no proof. There is only trust as a value that we hold dear to our hearts. If our trust is based on logical thinking then we limit our perspective because the values we share through emotion and intuition are excluded.
Does the lack of proof prevent us from having trust and beliefs? Obviously not. Proof is not needed for any of us to continue living our lives and believing that which we choose to believe. What we experience may change our beliefs, but the lack of proof never will. And there is a lack of proof for the really big choices we have. Therfore, it is our subjective choices that we choose that are based on trust, not proof.
In this way one belief is as good as another, and so the real question becomes… “Why would we not choose a belief that held the greatest possibilities?”
So, as catchy as the heading is for this blog it misrepresents itself as there is no proof that God exists other than what we experience in our heart. And I cannot prove to anyone what my heart’s intelligence holds as true.
Speaking of the heart’s intelligence, are people aware that recent medical research shows that our heart is made up of over 60% of neuron cells? The same type of cells our brain uses to give us intelligence. Furthermore, the heart is the first organ to be formed in the fetus, and I suspect that it is the heart’s intelligence that decodes the instructions of DNA. It appears to be a daunting task for a logical brain to decode DNA, not to mention that the brain is formed later in the process of gestation.
It has been said that logic is a better servant than a master and that the heart is a better master than a servant.
Derek Paravicini is an example of a human life with a brain that has no logical capabilities, but with a heart that guides him with an amazing intelligence. Although he cannot learn to tie his own shoes his music on the piano is astounding.
So take heart, life is not all about logical perceptions and a search for proof. I say that if you are going to have faith then have a heart. There is no need to change your mind about anything, but a change of heart will do just fine.
Nice post Oldstyle, but you leave out the most significant point that God can prove His existence to whomsoever He chooses. In Bhagavad Gita He describes very clearly what types of people can understand Him, and what types of people He is forever a mystery to , and what types of people have no concept of Him whatsoever. There is proof that God exists, but it lies with Him and He awards to those that qualify themselves as per His directions in assorted scriptures. One simply has to follow His instructions and He will come hurrying forward with all the proof you need.
Perrari, perhaps a definition of proof is required, so I offer mine.
Proof is something akin to mathematics where the equation cannot be disputed logically and where the answer is always the same. One and one equals two.
In spite of science and logic having invalidated intuitive phenomenon, they too, look to make predictions because that is a form of proof. When a body of science can accurately predict then this becomes proof.
But I say there is no such thing as proof except in the logical and analytical aspects of the human brain. Beyond that there is no proof or need of proof, there is just experience.
God reveals Himself everyday, but we have no proof that we can show to others. And that is the only reason for proof – to show others.
What God gave us, instead of proof, is faith. Proof is static and dead information that never changes, and if a new science or experience changes the old proof it was not proof in the first place.
If we had proof, by my definition, that God exists we would have no need of faith and we would have no need to develop faith as a means of creating for ourselves.
People have faith in themselves and in their ideas and they do not require proof before creating what so many others have said was impossible. Proof does not help us nearly as much as having faith, and having faith in ourselves is the place to start.
I have faith in that I love God with all my heart and mind and soul, and what I experience is love. I feel love, and love is God. I need no proof, and I am pleased that proof is not a substitute for faith.
My opinion is, how did evolution create males and females if evolution actually did occur? Evolution states that organisms started off with a common ancestor. That means one. That means that there was no Male-Female reproduction. That also means that organisms didn’t lay eggs. The first organisms are single celled organisms and those multiply. Think about it, those really aren’t complex at all. Those don’t have reproductive systems. That would mean if they mutated body parts, them and body parts would multiply. And all animals would and humans would multiply without reproduction. Meaning no sex. Think about it for a monment. How could nature know that animals needed male organs and female organs to reproduce? It wouldn’t. That would mean that only once, and accidentally, different element, protiens, maybe even atoms would have to occur, once, and then after that they would die. There wouldn’t even be a multiplication process. There would just be accidental beings and those would die. Meaning there wouldn’t even be time for evolution to occur. Evolution makes no sense at all what so ever. Do you see what I’m saying? Birds lay eggs, humans have sex. Single celled organisms multiply. There’s no way in hell evolution could completely change an organisms form or producing it’s own kind. Is that what the bible was talking about when he said proof of existence could be found in science? I mean the only explanation coould be GOD for creating HE + SHE = THEM. I mean it’s so precise: Girls= Boobs for milk, Vagina for reproduction, They have periods, and their insides are also different. Where as Men have penises and prostates. I mean how could stuff like that just randomly happen? I mean it’s like male and female are too far different and complex for them to be the same, but at the same time their too much alike for them to be different. See what I’m getting at is. Evolution makes it so there’s only one gender: MALE. You see it all the time- The monkey turns into a man. You NEVER EVER EVER!!!! See the mutation of single cell, male and female while females lay eggs, then males and females and sex. I mean that might just the biggest missing link in the history of time. I’m only like 15 and I don’t know anything about creationism or evolutionism or whatever you call it. But it’s obvious that evolution is impossible. There’s too many mising links. Like how male and female were created from there only being one gender, how all the forms of production like laying eggs, sex, and even plantlike reproduction could occur. I mean I could see it there were only male on the planet. But I love women and evolutionists I just want to say that you can’t keep females from the argument. Now I may not know much about either story, but I’m never going with the side that says women were never created. You can further try to explain this information and answer will be fully appreciated. Now I don’t have anything against evolution. I’m just saying I don’t understand it. Just saying.
Besides. If everything was a common ancestor…How come we can’t have sex and reproduce with everything?..
Hi Perry!
I’ve been impressed by your efforts to explain God through science, and I must say that you have been successful in doing so. Many people of course still won’t like to believe in Him because they would think that it is ‘absurd’ to believe in a God.
But I want you to clear my doubts about one thing, how can we believe in a God of Christianity or Islam (who unlike the God of deists continuously interacts with the universe), if we consider the Many World Theory or other theories like it to be true? It is the most disturbing theory that I’ve ever come across. I hope you’ll like to help me out.
And once again I must say you are doing a great job,a and no doubt you are successful.
And to all those who start debating over on this site whether Quran is the God’s book or Bible is the word of God. I think its no use to prove each other wrong. First of all we are all theists, and the first priority of all of us (Christians, Muslims, Jews) should be to show the right path to atheists and agnostics.
This 52-second clip from guardian.co.uk/science/video/2010/may/20/craig-venter-new-life-form
verifies that living cells are complex computer systems with real hardware and genomic software.
This clip is embedded in commentary on the “artificial genome” at scienceintegrity.net/SynthesizedGenome.aspx
http://vimeo.com/21193583