Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

[_Tarski]

What say you about the following excerpt, professor?

I say, look how unsurprising that there exists a guy who wrote an article for a religious journal that wants to assure us that despite the HH model there might still be a God. (Yes, there might)

I think the importance of the HH model for theology is overblown. It all comes out of the fact that Hawking made some quip about there being nothing for a creator to do. But, really, the atemporal block universe picture even with singularities undermines the importance of the idea of "first" cause where "first" is taken a a temporal notion. If one can say that a no-boundary HH universe could just exist uncreated without logical problem then it can also be said for a space-time with singularities--after all the puzzle should be invariant under time reversal and one only need recall that black holes are singularities that we can live with.
If one is willing to just accept the initial conditions as part of the package or if one posits that all initial conditions are realized for some universe, then either way there is no logical demand for a creator.

The guy in the article doesn't seem to realize that space and time are unified in relativity in a sufficient sense with or without the Hartle-Hawking complex spacetime trick.

Ask yourself this, why is a singularity in the future less demanding of a creator than a singularity in the past?
Ask the same thing about low entropy.

There is a really good book called "Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point"
by Huw Price which really challenges our intuitions about past and future and shows how we keep smuggling in unspoken assumptions. It is hard to summarize but I can say that since reading it I notice alot of arguments that people often make about the begining of time no longer seem sensible to me.

But I keep on wondering this: Why should a creator be an omnipotent and intelligent God?

[_marg]

Don or Kevin, I have to do some reading on history of science before responding to the notion that Christianity is responsible for modern science..the weather is too nice to currently spend much time on it..but I'll eventually address it.

[_mikwut]

Science does owe a debt to Christianity and the two do share an affinity in initial presumptions regarding reality. I think John Hedley Brooke's Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 1991) is the best I have read regarding the issue. Of course the issue is complex and without a completely unambiguous answer.

regards, mikwut

[_Kevin Graham]

Give it up Milkwut, you're never going to win. This is why I have tried to disengage these conversations. I always come back when I find out EA uses below the belt tactics to get me back.

These guys wll appeal to as many science fiction theories as they need to, in order to hold out for plausibility that God isn't needed. What science currently tells us doesn't seem to interest them as much as what they hope science might tell us one day. HH, multiverses, you name it. Anything is worth discussing except God. Why? Because they are adherents to naturalism. Pure and simple. This is why I said t is pointless to discuss, because we come from different premises. They refuse to acknowledge it too.

EA will name-drop until he is blue in the face, trying to convince you you're a creationist or whatever it is he needs to make you. For Tarski, HH is the bomb, even though it receives very little support in the scientific community. He explains all professional criticism as a matter of religious bias, but he doesn't want to accept the fact that Hawking's era is almost over and he has done very little for a man of his reputation. The man's sole reason for coming up with this theory is so he can get rid of the need for God. He said it himself, that current BB cosmology makes a creator sensible. Since he doesn't like the God idea, he wants to invent a universe with qualities that would make God superfluous. Aside from his inflated IQ and physical disability, you don't hear much about his actual accomplishments. We just think that because he is so smart, surely he's on the edge of producing something truly ground breaking. So Tarski is holding out for him to turn Big Bang cosmology on its head, and we're all supposed to bow down in reverence to him, despite the fact that the HH theory has very little evidence and support.

EA criticizes the wiki as an objective source for the term creationist, but he doesn't present a definition other than his own which is entirely arbitrary. We're just supposed to live with that and deal with his ridiculous labeling jobs. They're not interested in holding themselves to equal standards and they sure as hell aren't interested in acknowledging the Christian influence in science.

Wait for marg do her research on the Christian influence in science. Hell, EA and Tarski only have their jobs because the Catholic Church invented the University.

Anyway, try to have fun with this. Because I assure you they'll never treat you seriously, or with respect.

[_Some Schmo]

Our consciousness, creative abilities, rational faculties, our unique sense of moralty/altruism, our advanced intelligence, etc. We are clearly the pinnacle of creation. [emphasis added]

Wow. When you read your own words back, they don't smack you as being even a little pretentious? There's this entire universe out there, billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, with possibly billions of planets out there inhabited by various forms of life. And yet homo sapiens is clearly the pinnacle of creation?

I don't think this is at all clear. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask for some good evidence that homo sapiens is clearly the pinnacle of creation.

I thought the exact same thing, Sethbag, but I've read dart making this dubious assertion before, so it wasn't very surprising (to me).

What stood out for me in this instance was the fact that through this entire thread, dart's been arguing that he's not a creationist... but apparently, humans are the pinnacle of creation.

If he's not a creationist, what does that mean? Humans are really good at creating stuff?

LOL

[_Sethbag]

I don't have to be the kind of atheist who must believe that a God absolutely cannot, and does not, exist. If, for example, someone wants to say that a God exists who snapped his fingers and then the Big Bang happened, OK, fine, but that's still meaningless. Since this universe began, if indeed it did begin, it has operated on principles which are naturalistic, and for which no God is required to explain any of it.

It's a very long way from being able to claim that a God might have initiated the Big Bang, to presuming to know that this God is intelligent, omniscient, a personal God, who knows you, and cares for you, and wants you to know about Him so much that he has put you into a universe that looks like it runs without him, and in which there hasn't yet been so much as a single scrap of evidence found that he exists.

But it's more than just this. It seems once a person admits that there's no "scientific" reason preventing a God from having snapped the Big Bang into existence, they all of a sudden know his mind and will, what he wants you to say each day, how many times to say it, what he wants you to eat, or not eat, or drink, or not drink, with whom he wants you to copulate, and how, and with whom you definitely should not copulate, and the ways in which the guy who snapped the Big Bang into existence does not want you to copulate.

Sorry guys. I'm not nearly as well read as EAllusion and Mikwut on this issue, but frankly, there's simply nothing there, in terms of a deity who might or might not exist, that deserves to be believed.

Sorry Mikwut, and Kevin, and any other theists in this thread, but there it is. You've got nothing that deserves to be believed.

[_mikwut]

Hello Sethbag,

I have enjoyed your reading posts. You said,

Sorry Mikwut, and Kevin, and any other theists in this thread, but there it is. You've got nothing that deserves to be believed.

Seth, I have often said I am under no illusion I will take any atheist off their white horse, particularly the sort as yourself who has been mislead, deceived and hurt by of all things a religion. With that said, yes I do. If nothing else hope alone is a meaningful and satisfying category for belief and discourse and carries intellectual integrity along with it. I am not selling Seth, I am not that naïve, but your bolstering my personal position if "hope" cannot even withstand your respected positional brand of disbelief.

my best regards, mikwut

[_Sethbag]

Hope? Hope in what? I hope I don't get laid off in the next few months as my company is swallowed up by another, but I very much doubt that's the type of hope you are talking about.

A lot of LDS hope that when they die that some spirit essence of them will survive, and that it will exist in a place where the recognizable spirit essences of all of their deceased loved ones will also be. They hope that at some point in the future a new physical body will be created for them, that this spirit essence will combine with that body into a perfect physical form, patterned after the one they have now only perfect and without the flaws they now have. They hope that they will be judged worthy, and that they will flash the secret handshakes to the angels that stand as sentinels at the gates of Heaven, the angels will let them in, and they will become gods, and populate entire future universes with their own spiritual offspring, all while enjoying the society of, and worshiping, and being happy and blessed in the company of Jesus, and his dad named Elohim, and the other turtles all the way down.

And there's not a scrap of evidence that any of this even exists. And lots of reasons to regard those who claimed to "reveal" all of this to us as being non-credible.

The 19 hijackers hoped for 72 virgins in Paradise when they hit the wall at 500 mph. Was there hope really a net positive, either for their own lives, or for anyone else in the world?

At what point does "hope" cross over from being a helpful, and mostly harmless emotion, into being full-fledged delusion?


Mikwut, what is it that you hope for? How does this hope help you in your life? Those are two serious questions, and I will not mock your answers.

I will tell you what I hope for, now that I've learned that the hope preached by the shamans, witch doctors, and religious imposters has proven to be nothing more than pipe dreams.

I hope that my current improved diet and exercise program will succeed this time, and I'll lose some weight and get in better shape, so I can live longer and more enjoyably.

I hope I get accepted into the Masters program in German at ASU in the next couple of months. I just graduated from Boston University with a Masters in Computer Science, and realized that I don't feel done yet, and would love to study more in German, the subject in which I received my Bachelors degree from BYU.

I hope my daughter gets into a good university in a year and a half.

I hope that I will be a better father and husband, and a kinder human being to those with whom I come into contact.

I hope that humanity will learn how to live with each other in peace and stop killing each other.

I hope that false religious paradigms that enslave peoples' minds and motivate them to set themselves up in opposition to others, and foster hate, distrust, and enmity amongst people will fail and go the way of the Dodo.

I hope that when I die I feel like I've accomplished something with my life, and left behind people whose lives I will have influenced for the better, and who will remember me fondly.

I have no illusions that when I die any aspect of my consciousness will continue to exist. I can't say I'm OK with that, but I'm learning to accept it, because I have no choice, really. I can hope all I want that I have a spirit that will continue in existence, but there's a lot of reason for me to suspect that I don't have such a spirit, and that when my cells stop metabolizing, that's it. It's not what I wanted when I was a faithful LDS, but in a way I'm still glad I now know that the LDS version of reality is fiction. It's wishful thinking, self-delusion, equivalent to belief in Santa Claus, leprachauns with pots of gold, etc.

Maybe Truman Madsen was happier facing his death than I'm likely to be when it's my turn, but look at the cost. Sure, he led a "good" life according to LDS teachings, and has legions of fans, loved ones, etc. But look at what he had to make himself believe in order to get all of that. He had to submit his mind to the myth of Joseph Smith, accept Joseph's wicked deeds as good and virtuous, and then propagate this hagiographical Joseph worship to his co-religionists. I used to love Truman Madsen's Joseph Smith tapes. I listened to them eagerly, and thought Joseph Smith was the greatest guy. Now I realize that looking at Joseph this way is about the same kind of thing as the Scientologists who go around praising the name of L. Ron Hubbard, when the rest of us know he was an imposter, and a manipulator, and an opportunist of the worst kind.

I'm still trying to understand how the concept of "hope" motivates someone to accept and believe things about Life, the Universe, and Everything, on insufficient evidence. Please help me see your view on this. Whether I accept it or not, at least I'll understand where you're coming from.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Anyway, try to have fun with this. Because I assure you they'll never treat you seriously, or with respect.

I've seen the naturalists in this thread respond to mikwut in a very different way from how they respond to you, Kevin. Do you think this might have something to do with the fact that you continually shout arguments cribbed from creationist sources, expecting us to take such awful thinking as gospel?

[_Some Schmo]

Anyway, try to have fun with this. Because I assure you they'll never treat you seriously, or with respect.

I've seen the naturalists in this thread respond to mikwut in a very different way from how they respond to you, Kevin. Do you think this might have something to do with the fact that you continually shout arguments cribbed from creationist sources, expecting us to take such awful thinking as gospel?

You're asking dart to look at himself honestly. I wouldn't hold your breath. It's akin to asking him to let his head explode.

I've been making the point for quite some time that I treat dart the way he treats others, but he doesn't/won't see it (I pretty much do that with everyone here, actually). After a while, I just decided, "Meh... who cares?" It's not like he's really worth convincing of anything.

(I'm still chuckling to myself about the "lots of tornados through lots of junkyards" comment. If that doesn't demonstrate his fundamental lack of understanding, nothing does. hehe)





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