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Theres no one here huff that has enough physics to discuss what you want.
You refuse to engage items which are outside of physics. No problem, just doesn't make sense in this forum....I will send you a link so you can learn something.
He has all the physics and engineering-astromony you are asking for.. Engage if you are interested in progress which is related to your style of research. ( new book re a God idea and forum link for discussion ) Proceed with caution, one of the most articulate, talented, fully capable individuals Ive read. If you get on his bad side, and challenge without knowledge...make no sense ect...as in waste peoples time...he will chop the head off , quickly, efficiently with no effort and a variety of creative tools.
....if you are only interested in arguing, then thats another story
I was a physics major in college, before I switched to psychology. By the time I switched, I had completed enough course work to earn a physics minor, so that is what I have. I have confidence that I can understand the level of physics you'd or your friends would use to justify or explain how you think god did/does whatever he is credited with.
I always engage the theories of theists who try to offer an explanation for how god does whatever they credit him with. MysticPhD put forth his synthesis, I began critiquing it, had to take a break, but I will return to it soon to finish critiquing it. I give him credit for at least trying, which is way more than most theists do. I like entertaining alternative ideas. My only real issue with Mystic is he doesn't treat his ideas as just a possibility to consider, he, with oozing hubris, naively declares he knows he is right and looks down his nose at the rest of us, which makes him look very foolish.
All I am left with right now is the question what is the purpose of this thread?
It seems to me some atheists sole purpose is to continue patting themselves and each other on the back, cuz those foolish theists can't prove God exists!
If this thread is a debate about "proof", then yeah, it's not the right thread for me. I've made it clear (in other threads) how I feel about that. Carry on!
See post #58 and #66 for the purpose of this thread.
There is no way logically to proceed from a premise of non-existence to a predicate of existence.
I do not have a premise of non-existence. I believe the multiverse exists; this is not non-existence. Essentially, life is nothing more than a complex sustained chemical reaction. Life ends when the chemical reaction is interrupted and stops. Chemical reactions have been around as long as atoms and molecules have been around. Life isn't the creation of something out of nothing, it is simply a specialized subset of chemical reactions.
So, you have failed in this attempt to show that a natural explanation is illogical.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Do you know what pro forma means?
I am familiar with the term especially in the legal sense.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
It is a trivial exercise to produce a formal syllogism that proceeds from a premise of consciousness as an existing characteristic of the universe to a predicate of consciousness as a characteristic of life on earth. It is completely logical.
It is logical, but we have no reason to accept your first premise that consciousness is an existing characteristic of life on earth. What I was asking you to show was that my position is illogical, which you have failed at so far.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Yours is the illogical one. IOW logic is NOT on your side and cannot be the basis of your constant appeals to logic for your position.
You can say that until you are blue in the face, but it isn't true and you have failed to show that it is true.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
::Sigh:: If life is NOT a characteristic of reality itself . . . it cannot become a characteristic of any component of reality through logical reasoning. THAT is creatio ex nihilo.
It is not creatio ex nihilo. Repeated for your convenience: Essentially, life is nothing more than a complex sustained chemical reaction. Life ends when the chemical reaction is interrupted and stops. Chemical reactions have been around as long as atoms and molecules have been around. Life isn't the creation of something out of nothing, it is simply a specialized subset of chemical reactions.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
As long as they use some form of "self-organizing" or "self-reproducing" or "emergent" as part of their explanation imputing a mysterious "survival" impetus . . . it will NOT be an explanation . . . it will be a pseudo-scientific charade.
Atoms are in close proximity will all by themselves organize into a more complex form, namely, molecules. How are they able to self-organize? It has to do with electrostatic attraction and covalent (and other) bonds created by atoms sharing valences. So, molecules form by themselves, chemical reactions form by themselves. Although it may be improbable for the kind of complex molecules and chemical reactions involved in life to begin all by themselves, it is not illogical.
I am still not exactly sure what consciousness is or how it works, but if and when we discover a natural explanation for it, it will not involve creating something out of nothing, just as life doesn't either. We know that matter does organize itself into more complex forms. We know life becomes more complex through evolution by natural selection. There is nothing illogical about this.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
I react to condescension . . . I do not possess it autonomously.
You have got to be kidding me. Do you want me to go through the threads and show you that you were the first poster to post something condescending? I acknowledge that there are atheist posters here who are also condescending. And I do not rule out that they may have struck first on some occasions. But, I know in our discussions you are the one who starts that crap. You did pretty well for a couple of months recently, so I know you can control it, but you are quickly getting as bad as you ever were again.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
As much as it irks you to acknowledge, I have what is for me indisputable and umistakable personal evidence of what I claim to KNOW. That you have not or cannot or will not obtain independent confirmation of it is NOT my problem.
I have addressed this before and have nothing new to say here on this.
I do not see any problem with the fact that God created the heavens and the earth.
The mechanism used in creating the heavens and the earth is not clear to scientists, atheist or theist.
I am responding to this post out of order because I can do it quick before I head to work.
I have always acknowledged that it is within the realm of possibility that a god of some sort created the heavens and the earth. But, since the mechanism is not put forward, we do not have an explanation. We must have the step by step mechanics before we can say we have an explanation. That is why, "God did it" is not an explanation and does not explain anything. See my post #58.
I'm still waiting for you to explain how the concept of a creator does not explain it all.
As I have said many times, I acknowledge that it is possible that maybe there is a god of some sort that created the universe. Physicists currently don't know where the Big Bang came from. We have no natural explanation as of yet. Too many theists gloat over that and say in essence, "you don't have an explanation, but we do, God did it". The point of this thread is to show that although we don't yet have a natural explanation, you don't have an explanation either. "God did it" is not an explanation. Unless you can tell us step by step how God did it, you haven't explained how the universe came to be. All you have done is blamed/credited something we don't even know exists with doing it.
It is akin to us finding a dead person and me "explaining" their death by exclaiming, "You killed her". That is not an explanation. I haven't explained the person's death at all. We don't yet know whether the person died of natural causes or if someone caused it, let alone that it was you that caused her death. I don't score a point for being able to explain something you can not, because my "explanation" isn't an explanation at all. And neither is "God did it"; it is only the illusion of an explanation; it appears like it explains something but it doesn't. Theists don't score a point on us because they can explain something we cannot, because they haven't explained anything.
Arguing against a type or form of Engineer... toward the obviously engineered universe is
UNEDUCATED
The universe is not "obviously engineered". Natural forces do act to pull things together into greater forms of organization and complexity. It does not take an engineer for atoms to come together into molecules. It does not take an engineer for dispersed matter in a nebula to be pulled together by gravity to form stars and planets. It does not take an engineer for evolution by natural selection to produce the great diversity of species we see today.
Not all theists claim God is comprehensible... please go read some Pseudodionysius or other church fathers. God in his essential nature is unknowable, which is why Christians must have faith that Jesus Christ is the self-revelation of God (that we cannot know God outside of God revealing Himself). This is why many Christians reject or downplay natural theology and philosophy.
Religious language is not necessarily facts about God as much as a system of thought to purify the mind so that one can intuit reality directly and clearly free from selfish passions that blind us. "God is loving so that I may be loving", "God is good so that I may be good", and so on. Trying to understand religious language, accepting it as flat facts, can often be problematic, but religious language is always contextual within a community, in this case withing the Christian community, the Church.
"God did it" most certainly is an explanation that is at least meaningful to some people, if one also assumes that this same God was present in Jesus Christ redeeming the Creation to himself. Otherwise, yes, "God did it" may be trivial or empty. But that is not what most religious apologists are intending. God of course is a mystery that doesn't give us a final answer, but being drawn into this mystery hopefully helps us to see life in terms of the sacred and luminous.
The thread is an attack on a straw man because "God did it" is not an explanation .
Thank you for acknowledging that I am correct in the point of the original post: "God did it" is not an explanation. It is not a straw man either, for we see this exact statement put forward by theists all the time, even in this very thread, some theists want to argue that "God did it" is an explanation.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
. . . it is a statement of fact a priori concerning the state of our reality. IOW . . . it just is. "Nature did it" is also NOT an explanation.
"God did it" is not a fact. And I have been consistently saying "Nature did it" is not an explanation either.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
. . . . the difference is it cannot account for life, consciousness or intelligence because if it has those characteristics it would be God.
We do not know that nature will not be able to account for abiogenesis, consciousness and intelligence, I bet it can and will as we learn more.
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