[Merged]Atheism is a really bogus philosophy

[bwinwright]

It sounds so erudite, but doesn't compute yet..

I gave you an example above of how order can come naturally from disorder without intelligence. It is an example that can be shown in a few seconds. Imagine all the order that can arise naturally given billions of years.

Now as to being absolutely convinced, that's your choice, but when someone is really absolutely convinced, that means that no evidence will sway them. I hope that is not the case with you, because there is plenty of evidence of order arising without intelligence.

Tricky, If I was a hot babe and had just smoked a bowl of some good herb and heard you say such things, I might just have to strip down to my thong and parade around in front of you in my 6-inch heels. You sound so intelligent when you talk this way. However, I just don't agree with this orderliness from non-intelligence stuff.

Imagine this: I take off my wrist watch, totally disassemble it being careful to put all of its separated parts into a paper bag and tie a rubber band around the top of the bag to make sure all the parts stay in the bag, right?

Then, at some later time, I return to my paper bag, open it up, and "boom", all of a sudden there is my wrist watch, totally reassembled and working perfectly again, all of this occurring without "any" intelligent direction. Do you believe this is possible?

 

[Tricky]

Tricky, If I was a hot babe and had just smoked a bowl of some good herb and heard you say such things, I might just have to strip down to my thong and parade around in front of you in my 6-inch heels. You sound so intelligent when you talk this way. However, I just don't agree with this orderliness from non-intelligence stuff.

You can do it anyway if you like. I'm no spring chicken myself.

Imagine this: I take off my wrist watch, totally disassemble it being careful to put all of its separated parts into a paper bag and tie a rubber band around the top of the bag to make sure all the parts stay in the bag, right?

Then, at some later time, I return to my paper bag, open it up, and "boom", all of a sudden there is my wrist watch, totally reassembled and working perfectly again, all of this occurring without "any" intelligent direction. Do you believe this is possible?

Yes, the blind watchmaker analogy. The problem is, it isn't a good analogy, because we know watches are constructed. We can see it being done. However, suppose you took those parts and shook them in the bag for four billion years? Do you suppose that the chances that they might fall together would be greater than if you only gave it a week?

However, I prefer the Yahtzee analogy. Have you ever played Yahtzee? If you have then this will be somewhat repetitive for you. In Yahtzee, you get to roll five dice. The best score you can get is all five dice being the same (a yahtzee!). Now if you've played the game, you know that the odds of rolling five dice the same is incredibly low. BUT, the rule is, you get multiple rolls. If you roll two of a kind on the first roll, you can put those aside, save them, and only roll three dice. If you get another of that kind, you can save it and roll two dice. Now in Yahtzee, you only get three rolls, but you can see that if you got to roll for a very long time then you would eventually get a yahtzee.

Now you could say, "but that takes intelligence". Not really. A very stupid machine could do nothing more than save matching dice.

And this is the way the universe seems to operate. Sure the chance of everything working at once is incredibly low. But heres the thing, if something works, i.e. it lasts a long time or is very stable or can make copies of itself, it is naturally "saved" BECAUSE it is stable. So after many many "rolls", what you will find is a whole bunch of stable stuff that has been put aside. The longer you roll, the more complex the combinations of stable stuff can be. This is not only possible, it is almost unavoidable.

The unintelligent machine (Let's call it The Laws Of Physics) could roll a five-dice yahtzee in about a minute. if The Laws Of Physics saved the "stable" matching dice and kept rolling, it would soon get a whole lot of yahtzees. If The Laws Of Physics rolled dice for a million years, what "Impossible" combinations of matching dice could it get! Trillions? Quadrillions? A googol?

 

[bwinwright]

Unintelligent Direction doesn't compute either

It's called Unintelligent Direction, and it's the driving force behind Evolution and other processes of nature.

Order through Unintelligent Direction:
Heavy stones go the bottom of river beds, light stones to the top.
The river stream that turns from straight to more and more curving with each passing year.
The hair bunnies under my bed (look... if you dare)

Unintelligent Direction almost sounds like a trick. I hear all the order out of disorder, the intelligent out of the non-intelligent stuff, but all of it sounds absolutely crazy. Regardless of appearances, doesn't it all have to be the result of some form of intelligence.

Just suppose, for example, some trillionaire really wanted for a human or group of humans to produce an eagle, you know the bird, without cloning it. This trillionaire wants a totally man-made eagle that can do everything the eagles we see flying around now can do, right? He is willing to pay all expenses, and give you everything you need. All you have to do is get this done within a couple of years, OK? If you succeed, he'll give you a cool trillion bucks.

You can get all the top scientists in the world, pay them billions of dollars, give them everything they ask for, and guess what? They simply can't get it done, can they? Of course not. Even if they could make this eagle do most of the things one of Nature's eagles can do, could they make it sexy enough to reproduce? Of course not.

Therefore, what appears to be order out of chaos, is nothing more than this ineffable omnipresence f--king with you head, right? Of course it is.

Atheists are trying so hard to say that order can exist without intelligent direction, but it just can't be sold. Why? because it's false.

 

[Hokulele]

Pah, that's nothing. I could take off my wrist watch and disassemble it such that no intelligent being could ever reassemble it. Take that intellegently directed order!


ETA: And I were offered a trillion dollars to make an eagle, it would be way cooler than a "natural" eagle. I would give it LASER BEAMS for eyes. That would be frickin' AWESOME!!!!

 

[bwinwright]

Look lets just be totally honest here

You can do it anyway if you like. I'm no spring chicken myself.


Yes, the blind watchmaker analogy. The problem is, it isn't a good analogy, because we know watches are constructed. We can see it being done. However, suppose you took those parts and shook them in the bag for four billion years? Do you suppose that the chances that they might fall together would be greater than if you only gave it a week?

However, I prefer the Yahtzee analogy. Have you ever played Yahtzee? If you have then this will be somewhat repetitive for you. In Yahtzee, you get to roll five dice. The best score you can get is all five dice being the same (a yahtzee!). Now if you've played the game, you know that the odds of rolling five dice the same is incredibly low. BUT, the rule is, you get multiple rolls. If you roll two of a kind on the first roll, you can put those aside, save them, and only roll three dice. If you get another of that kind, you can save it and roll two dice. Now in Yahtzee, you only get three rolls, but you can see that if you got to roll for a very long time then you would eventually get a yahtzee.

Now you could say, "but that takes intelligence". Not really. A very stupid machine could do nothing more than save matching dice.

And this is the way the universe seems to operate. Sure the chance of everything working at once is incredibly low. But heres the thing, if something works, i.e. it lasts a long time or is very stable or can make copies of itself, it is naturally "saved" BECAUSE it is stable. So after many many "rolls", what you will find is a whole bunch of stable stuff that has been put aside. The longer you roll, the more complex the combinations of stable stuff can be. This is not only possible, it is almost unavoidable.

The unintelligent machine (Let's call it The Laws Of Physics) could roll a five-dice yahtzee in about a minute. if The Laws Of Physics saved the "stable" matching dice and kept rolling, it would soon get a whole lot of yahtzees. If The Laws Of Physics rolled dice for a million years, what "Impossible" combinations of matching dice could it get? Trillions? Quadrillions? A googol?

Trickey, you are definitely extremely intelligent. Nobody can string together such an amazing array of words as you just have and not be Mensa material. However, the universe and all the life within it is just too orderly and fantastic to seriously believe it all just happened by luck.

Trickey, this ineffable omnipresence, of which everything consists, including you and me, is just so sophisticated and complex, light years beyond our little limited conscious minds's ability to comprehend, it must be giggling at us right now. We are here doing exactly what we are doing right now for not only our amusement, but for ITS' amusement. We are among the more entertaining too, I'll bet.

Imagine a big brained dude like Albert Einstein devoting the last 30 years of his life to trying his best to prove that everything is UNIFIED. Hell, he couldn't quite get it done. However, he just knew it was so. Damn!

When we get a chance to talk with him, perhaps, we can ask him about it. I think he'll say, "Damn that ineffable oneness is some kind of smart."

 

[ravdin]

Imagine this: I take off my wrist watch, totally disassemble it being careful to put all of its separated parts into a paper bag and tie a rubber band around the top of the bag to make sure all the parts stay in the bag, right?

Then, at some later time, I return to my paper bag, open it up, and "boom", all of a sudden there is my wrist watch, totally reassembled and working perfectly again, all of this occurring without "any" intelligent direction. Do you believe this is possible?

Not possible. There's one tiny snag in your argument, though: we are not wristwatches. It's not a good analogy. If a wristwatch was capable of spontaneously building itself from raw materials in its environment, and building other wristwatches, then maybe you'd have a point. Sadly, wristwatches don't do that- which is why we have to make them for ourselves.

If it makes you feel better, I would stress that none of this disproves the existence of god. For the purpose of this thread, I only care to dispute your argument of complexity by intentional design.

Let me ask you another question, which I'd like you to think about in an intellectually honest way. There is a species of parasitic worm called onchocerca volvulus found in West Africa that matures in the human eyeball. If you are unlucky enough to be infected, it will eventually cause you to go blind. Is this the work of an intelligent designer- a complex organism that can survive in no other way but to bore through a human eyeball?

 

[Furious Coder]

However, I prefer the Yahtzee analogy....
The unintelligent machine (Let's call it The Laws Of Physics) could roll a five-dice yahtzee in about a minute. if The Laws Of Physics saved the "stable" matching dice and kept rolling, it would soon get a whole lot of yahtzees. If The Laws Of Physics rolled dice for a million years, what "Impossible" combinations of matching dice could it get! Trillions? Quadrillions? A googol?

Out of curiousity (boredom), I ran some numbers last night to see how long it would take for 40-50 million molecules of nucleotides to randomly line up into a self-replicating (assuming nearby enzymes) pattern of 40-50 nucleotide long RNA, assuming a million random combinations per second among all the nucleotides. After crunching the numbers, I came up with around 3% of the age of the Earth, which left plenty of time for simple cells to start forming 4 Billion years ago.

So yeah, several hundred million years is a really, really long time. Lots of cool things can happen in that time from just some molecules bumping together.

 

[Furious Coder]

Trickey, you are definitely extremely intelligent. Nobody can string together such an amazing array of words as you just have and not be Mensa material. However, the universe and all the life within it is just too orderly and fantastic to seriously believe it all just happened by luck.

This gentleman just gave you a legitimate and well thought out answer to your question, and you just dismissed him with a hand wave and a backhanded compliment?

Why are you even here, if that's the case? To get us riled up? You're being intellectually dishonest, and it's insulting to the efforts of people who are politely attempting to give you what you're asking for. How rude.

 

[bwinwright]

Maybe it's always been present? It's truly preplexing..

OK, I'll bite. Again.

You say that complexity requires an intentional design by a creator possessing an even greater complexity.

My question for you is: if this is true, then who created the creator? By your reasoning, our creator couldn't exist except by design of a more intelligent and complex meta-creator. But the meta-creator would require an even greater meta-meta-creator... and so on. Reductio ad absurdum.

Do you have a response to this?

Ravdin, you make a very cool point. I have no idea. Possible it always existed. After all, I also believe something can't come from nothing. I've never heard anyone convince me otherwise. There are so many incredible things to consider, right? What about INFINITY? What about the world of the small? The world of the Big? Apparently there is no end to any of it. And folks think all this is the product of some non-intelligence? Wow!

See, it seems that in order for intelligence to exist now, it must have always existed, right? Otherwise, this something we call intelligence would have to be produced from non-intelligence. It just doesn't make sense to me. I agree with Huang Po, Lao-tse, Confuscious, and all those kinds of folks.

 

[Hokulele]

See, it seems that in order for intelligence to exist now, it must have always existed, right? Otherwise, this something we call intelligence would have to be produced from non-intelligence.

Of course intelligence develops from non-intelligence. That is why intelligence requires a brain to develop before it can emerge. For example, is a sperm cell intelligent? An egg? A zygote? A morula? A blastocyst? An embryo?

 

[Tricky]

Trickey, you are definitely extremely intelligent. Nobody can string together such an amazing array of words as you just have and not be Mensa material.

Yuk. Mensa. Bunch of self-important arrogant geeks. I refuse to have anything to do with them.

But I know it was a compliment, so thanks.

However, the universe and all the life within it is just too orderly and fantastic to seriously believe it all just happened by luck.

It is very hard to concieve. It's like trying to count to infinity. But really, the universe is a combination of order and disorder. Look up at the stars in the sky. Do you see a pattern? Sure, you can force a pattern if you try (like ancient astronomers and astrologers did) but to me it looks almost random. If it were really ordered, there would be life on every planet and they'd all be aligned in neat rows.

Also, I'd never lose my glasses.

Trickey, this ineffable omnipresence, of which everything consists, including you and me, is just so sophisticated and complex, light years beyond our little limited conscious minds's ability to comprehend, it must be giggling at us right now.

LOL. Interesting analogy. In the universe, a light year is practically nothing. Light from the nearest star in our galaxy takes 17 years to reach us. Think how long the ones in other galaxies take.

But I know how you feel. It is a common feeling. It is symbolized so well by Walt Whitman.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer​

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

It is natural to feel this way when we become aware of the vastness and complexity of our universe. But think, both of us feel awe. We feel ignorant and uncomprhending and... well... blown away. The difference is, you feel grateful. You seem to want to thank someone. That is polite of you, but it means you must invent a creator to thank. I can feel the same awe without that.

We are here doing exactly what we are doing right now for not only our amusement, but for ITS' amusement. We are among the more entertaining too, I'll bet.

Here, you are anthropomorphizing the creator. You are imagining Him/Her/It with the same sort of sense of humor as we humans have. Again, it is quite a normal thing to do. Wolves probably think the creator is "howling" with laughter.

Imagine a big brained dude like Albert Einstein devoting the last 30 years of his life to trying his best to prove that everything is UNIFIED. Hell, he couldn't quite get it done. However, he just knew it was so. Damn!

There have been a number of threads here on Einstein's religion. As best we can tell, he didn't belive in a creator-type god. His position was much closer to atheism than it is to what you are suggesting. I would recommend you search for those threads though. I don't want to rehash that argument again here.

When we get a chance to talk with him, perhaps, we can ask him about it. I think he'll say, "Damn that ineffable oneness is some kind of smart."

Ah, so you believe in heaven too? Well, it can be comforting. Sadly, like a creator, there's no evidence for one.

Anyway, thanks for the compliments. Be aware that there are a lot of people here who are pretty harsh. From my foreys into Christian boards, I'd say that is not unique to skeptics. Try to keep a sense of humor about it.

Oh, and learn your logical fallacies. It will serve you well.

 

[slingblade]

B, be very careful of "I have to believe," and "I just can't believe" methods of thought.

It's a fallacious form of argumentation, because it simply can't hold up to scrutiny. Argument from incredulity, it's called. Reality doesn't care if your mental vision has all the range of a doorknob, it's still reality in spite of your inability or unwillingness to believe.

Also, if you begin an argument with some form of "nothing you can say will change my mind!" then I, for one, am already done with you. What's the point, if you're unwilling to even consider other possibilities, and if you've also fallen for the notion that I can do anything to your mind with anything I say?

I can't. No one can. Only you can change your mind, and only if you're not afraid of it happening. What would you think of kids who attended school with their fingers stuck firmly in their ears, chanting "la-la-la-la-la!" all day, and then complained they weren't learning anything?

Yeah.

 

[ravdin]

See, it seems that in order for intelligence to exist now, it must have always existed, right? Otherwise, this something we call intelligence would have to be produced from non-intelligence. It just doesn't make sense to me. I agree with Huang Po, Lao-tse, Confuscious, and all those kinds of folks.

I'm afraid that's a cop out. You have stated many times on this thread that you don't accept things that are unimaginable to you. Can you conceive of a being that has always existed, outside of time, with no beginning?

Since the answer is clearly no (this feat is beyond any human reckoning), then why would you reject non-intelligent complexity on the basis that you don't understand it, but accept an creator who against all logic, has always existed?

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Pah, that's nothing. I could take off my wrist watch and disassemble it such that no intelligent being could ever reassemble it. Take that intellegently directed order!


ETA: And I were offered a trillion dollars to make an eagle, it would be way cooler than a "natural" eagle. I would give it LASER BEAMS for eyes. That would be frickin' AWESOME!!!!

Like this?

 

[becomingagodo]

I have been reading up Wittgenstein, and bwinwright I am truly dissapointed in you.

Possible it always existed. After all, I also believe something can't come from nothing.

So point to something?
Say your head or a picture of a dog. Now is that really a dog? As what meaning does a picture have. In what sense can you eliminate a dog from the environment and say that is a dog? In this case isn't everything a dog.

You point to something? and then say nothing can't come from something. However, are you really pointing at something. Take thought for example you look at something and then express it as language. But, then you point at a object and say this is order? In what sense do you mean order.

How can you seperate order from reality? You can look at something and say it has a neat pattern. But, then that is not objective. You can look at a bunch of scribbles and say that is a dog? But its not. You can look at a watch and say that is order, however its not a watch is just langauge.

Finally, you look at nothing and say there must be something. Then you look at a bunch of scribbles and see the world. In reality your just pointing at something and giving it a name. In reality there is no order, just better ways to order stuff and see better pattarns.

And finally you want nothing? In this case I would offer you language. This statement is false? is this really something. As it is not true or false. Nothing itselve has rules, like X is false. In this case for something to be false you need to call it false and point to it, however can you really point to something like This statement is false? as you would be pointing to something that does not exist. Can you show me where to point? You can do nothing. However, that just the act of not pointing. There is no place where there is nowhere, so there must be a place where there is something. And that where everything comes from.

There are so many incredible things to consider, right? What about INFINITY? What about the world of the small? The world of the Big? Apparently there is no end to any of it. And folks think all this is the product of some non-intelligence? Wow!

Show me something infinte? show me something small? show me something big? as you should see these are still concepts based in language and hold no meaning. As numbers don't hold any basis in reality, you can't touch 2 or 4. You can't consider infinty or small or big, as these are just mathematics.

 

[six7s]

Atheists are trying so hard to say that order can exist without intelligent direction

Hi bwinwright,

Your not the first and you won't be the last to assign atheism with such attributes

However, it really is a misleading (aka 'wrong') idea

Sure, many, many atheists are ALSO proponents of the 'order existing without intelligent direction' idea, and I guess most of us here (me included) fit the bill BUT it's not a given

• Atheism simply means 'without thesim'

Furthermore, this is a sceptics forum BUT, again, it's not a given that all sceptics are atheists - although many, many sceptics here (and probably out there in the Real Whirled™) are atheists

• Scepticism simply means 'pursuit of the truth'

...order can exist without intelligent direction, but it just can't be sold. Why? because it's false.

What makes you conclude that 'intelligent direction' is a truth?

I'm sincerely ain't intending to patronise you when I say before you answer, I whole-heartedly recommend that you read up on that link above to 'logical fallacies' and to 'confirmation bias'

 

[Hokulele]

Like this?

Frickin' AWESOME!!!

 

[Tricky]

I've recently been re-reading the novel "Earth" by David Brin. It is a sci-fi book about the near-future with some fascinating projections and tons of real science, in addition to the fantasy of a micro black hole dropped into the center of the planet. Great space opera. But one of the best things about it is the intros to the chapter which are a collection of media-like news blurbs, legends, statistics and scientific prose. The scientific prose is great. Allow me to share one with you.

In the new world's earliest days, there was no one to speak ill of carbon dioxide, or methane, or even hydrogen cyanide. Under lightning and harsh sunlight those chemical merged to stain the young ocean with amino acids, purines, adenylates... a "primeval soup" which then reacted still further, building complex, twisting polymers.

More random fusings would have taken a trillion years to come up with anything as complex as a bacterium, but something else was involved beyond just haphazard chemistry. Selection. Some molecules were stable, while other broke apart easily. The sturdy ones accumulated, filling the seas. These became letters in a new alphabet.

They, too, reacted to form still larger clusters, a few of which survived and accrued... the first genetic words. And so on. What would otherwise have taken a trillion years was accomplished in a relative instant. Sentences bounced against each other, mostly forming nonsense paragraphs. But a few had staying power.

Before the last meteorite storm was over or the final roaring supervolcano finally subsided, there appeared within the ocean a chemical tour-de-force, surrounded by a lipid-protein coat. An entity that consumed and excreted, that made true copies of itself. One whose daughters wrought victories, suffered defeats and multiplied.

Out of alphabet soup there suddenly was told a new story. A simple tale, as yet. Primitive and predictable, but still, a raw talent could be read there.

--copyright © 1990 by David Brin​

 

[ntech]

However, to suggest you do not believe in an intelligence and power which dramatically transcends that of mankind is, to me, ludicrous. Maybe this intelligence and power is really called TOTO or something else. However, to deny that it exists is absolutely ridiculous.

Next time it talks to you let us know. Don’t you have it the other way around? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Got any?

Therefore, call it God, TOTO, or whatever you like..but it "is" here. To deny it is simply insanity. Therefore, you atheists need to be more specific or people will just think you're NUTS!!!!!

I have a TOTO and it’s my toilet. That I know exists. This magic may be here in your mind, but not in mine. And I don’t suffer from insanity. I’m enjoying every minute of it.

 

[The Gnomon]

The Perfect god

I, for one, have worshipped Toto for years. "Rosanna" is a great song.

I pray every day that Toto will bless the rains down in Africa.

For myself, I prefer Crom {the god worshipped by Conan the Barbarian). Crom just doesn't care. Crom doesn't answer prayers, require any behaviors, or othrewise manifest [it]self in the mundane world. The perfect god, if one has to have one.