Serious The Atheism/Agnosticism thread

[HBK]

I told my mother about how I felt 2 months ago and she reacted by doing just that while yelling "This is a house of god!". So I pretended that it was just a phase and that I now have complete and renewed faith in god.

 

[Nosferalto]

I told my mother about how I felt 2 months ago and she reacted by doing just that while yelling "This is a house of god!". So I pretended that it was just a phase and that I now have complete and renewed faith in god.

wrong thread bro. use this one:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/2013-2014-soccer-football-thread.3485926/page-55#post-5091181

 

[Blue_Tornado]

I told my mother about how I felt 2 months ago and she reacted by doing just that while yelling "This is a house of god!". So I pretended that it was just a phase and that I now have complete and renewed faith in god.

You think there's any way to make your family open up a bit? At least enough to not break ties with you if you're fed up? (or it's not that bad)

Need to aim for a compromise here.

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

I told my mother about how I felt 2 months ago and she reacted by doing just that while yelling "This is a house of god!". So I pretended that it was just a phase and that I now have complete and renewed faith in god.

How did you pretend you have renewed faith? Did you just say a few sanctimonious words or did some pious gestures. Did you show some enthusiasm in attending Mass or doing a complete Rosary?

I guess I am "blessed" that my parents are not that religiously devout (they usually do not go to Mass anymore) and I could be an intellectual independent agnostic while I was an agnostic. The negative side, of course, is that I do not receive much spiritual support from my parents when I am now a Catholic.

 

[Shiruba]

I guess I am "blessed" that my parents are religiously apathetic and I could be an intellectual independent agnostic while I was. The negative side, of course, is that I do not receive much spiritual support from my parents when I am now a Catholic.

As someone who had that support, I would not say it's inherently a good thing. Having parents that're deeply endowed in the faith tends to mean that you're more secure and relaxed in your beliefs, and not nearly as likely to question them - something that's happened to a huge portion of western-born people, simply due to this being the "de facto" religion of the Aryan race - it has, of course, spread beyond that since its inception.

The thing is, having parents also entrenched in a particular mindset - not even necessarily religious - tends to slow if not outright stop [depending on the "outside" influences available] personal intellectual growth, as there is nothing to challenge that belief, and even ridiculous arguments just seem "right" because you've never thought about or had to defend them - this is shown well enough in that recent Political Correctness thread, where the poor OP was more or less verbally gangraped for his poorly thought-out arguments, simply because his usual company would either not bring such a thing up, agreed with him if it was, or had just as poor of an argument as he. A lot of people never have that chance, which is why I'm led to believe that rural communities tend to be more conservative than bigger, more populated and connected areas - the people all tend to be similarly-minded, and rarely have outsiders appear, much less voice their opinions and make ground with them.

tl;dr while support is cool, i'd say having parents of a differing opinion helped you a lot to become a critical thinker and not just a mindless sheep, and was the lesser of the two "evils"

 

[shade]

that's the point

These people who are like "Lol@ God. Creation is so dumb!" are just laughable. The world around us is nearly infinitely complex. We just found out there's a second programming language hidden within DNA. People who say stuff like "God should have done it this way if there really was a God" are just pompous blowhards.

i didn't say that, i said an omniscient and omnipotent deity could and should be able to create a faultless system. its pretty much in the definitions of omniscient and omnipotent. either way its not laughable, creation is dumb.

 

[mattj]

Why would they have to be able to create a faultless system? Why wouldn't it be like everything else we see around us, give and take, a benefit here with a drawback there in order to best function. Why should everything be perfect, by whatever definition of perfect or flawless you arbitrarily chose?

 

[shade]

Why would they have to be able to create a faultless system? Why wouldn't it be like everything else we see around us, give and take, a benefit here with a drawback there in order to best function. Why should everything be perfect, by whatever definition of perfect or flawless you arbitrarily chose?

i feel like you don't understand. the abrahamic god, as far as im aware, is omnipotent and omniscient. this means it knows everything and it can do anything. creating a faultless system falls under the umbrella of everything.

a lot of what we see is not 'a benefit here with a drawback there in order to best function'. if there is a drawback, by definition the thing in question isn't function best. furthermore, oftentimes in biology there are drawbacks without benefit i.e the giraffe nerve i explained earlier, or the appendix in modern humans.

as for why everything should be perfect, why not? you don't design something with the intention of being faulty, if this deity that you claim toiled over the creation of this universe did indeed do the things professed, surely he would want it to be done to the best of his ability. and like i mentioned earlier, due to him being all-knowing all-powerful, the best of his ability IS perfect. there are countless things on this planet that do all harm and no good, what kind of god would design these into his treasured creation?

i don't really see your argument here man

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

As someone who had that support, I would not say it's inherently a good thing. Having parents that're deeply endowed in the faith tends to mean that you're more secure and relaxed in your beliefs, and not nearly as likely to question them - something that's happened to a huge portion of western-born people, simply due to this being the "de facto" religion of the Aryan race - it has, of course, spread beyond that since its inception.

The thing is, having parents also entrenched in a particular mindset - not even necessarily religious - tends to slow if not outright stop [depending on the "outside" influences available] personal intellectual growth, as there is nothing to challenge that belief, and even ridiculous arguments just seem "right" because you've never thought about or had to defend them - this is shown well enough in that recent Political Correctness thread, where the poor OP was more or less verbally gangraped for his poorly thought-out arguments, simply because his usual company would either not bring such a thing up, agreed with him if it was, or had just as poor of an argument as he. A lot of people never have that chance, which is why I'm led to believe that rural communities tend to be more conservative than bigger, more populated and connected areas - the people all tend to be similarly-minded, and rarely have outsiders appear, much less voice their opinions and make ground with them.

tl;dr while support is cool, i'd say having parents of a differing opinion helped you a lot to become a critical thinker and not just a mindless sheep, and was the lesser of the two "evils"

Well, the producers of the video and the actors themselves do not seem to know anything philosophical and scientific outside of the realm of hackneyed Christian apologetics that only serves to reaffirm their faith. In the real world, even though I am autistic and relatively reclusive, I know people do not directly challenge the Christian faith in such an audacious and direct way. The video portrays "two champions of the faith" being able to defend it from a hyperbolic "angry atheist" (whose arguments are strawmen) with rather trite apolgetics; real atheists and agnostics would be able to competently present a case that casts some credible doubt on the existence of a benevolent God.

 

[mattj]

shade:

I know there's a lot of talk about the God of the Bible being "quote-unquote-omniscient" and "quote-unquote-omnipotent", but neither are based on anything Biblical. They're just simplifications that many people find easier to convey. Why must a universe created by the God of the Bible be "perfect" by any definition? There's no Biblical precedent for it. And I don't see any compelling reason why even if the God of the Bible could, why he should. I mean, if we're talking about whether or not drawbacks preclude the God of the Bible from having created the universe, you might want to keep in mind that at least according to the Bible he plans on melting the whole thing and creating a new, better one.

As for the drawback and benefit bit, many of these systems may not be perfect under some hypothetical, supposed universe that I guess you could imagine, but under the universe we see around us, its just about as close to perfect as it could possibly get. Even from a completely secular, non-religious view, these systems couldn't function the same way without those drawbacks within this universe, under the laws that happen to govern it.

And maybe if you were some powerful, intelligent deity you might want all the pieces to fit together perfectly. But what's to say that the God of the Bible would want that? What's to say he's even capable of that? What if he likes it the way it is? What if he really didn't care enough to make everything as smooth as it could hypothetically be? Why should he?

I mean, if this boils down to "You think that things could have hypothetically been done better, but you don't have any specific examples", I'll drop this because there's really nowhere to go from there. Its just your opinion vs mine. But any example anyone can bring up of "This should have been done better" has a reasonable, secular, non-religious explanation for why it is the way it is within this universe that we happen to actually live in.

 

[shade]

oh, i am not that well-versed in bible studies. if the god of the christian faith isn't viewed as omnipotent and omniscient i will drop that part of my argument.

the essence of your argument above is the cliché 'god works in mysterious ways' and i agree, there is nowhere we can go from there.

i already named two examples of things that could have been done better lol (recurrent laryngeal nerve etc). however, there are numerous specific examples of failures in evolution: i'll requote this paper http://answersinscience.org/EvolGreatestMistakes-NewSci 081107.pdf (i find the RuBisCo example particularly interesting). also, to find any more examples of 'stuff that isn't good', you only need to look at viruses and disease e.g carcinogens mutating our oncogenes and causing cancer, the UV light from the sun (which god supposedly put on this earth for fuel) being so dangerous to us etc. you believe god made this happen, do you think god is just a dickhead?

also @ calm mind latias, that video was really bad. but i get the feeling you know that? im not 100% on the context you posted it in.

 

[HBK]

How did you pretend you have renewed faith? Did you just say a few sanctimonious words or did some pious gestures. Did you show some enthusiasm in attending Mass or doing a complete Rosary?

I guess I am "blessed" that my parents are religiously apathetic and I could be an intellectual independent agnostic while I was. The negative side, of course, is that I do not receive much spiritual support from my parents when I am now a Catholic.

I apologised to her and then to god and pretended to feel very guilty. I think that the thought of her son becoming an anthiest was so horrifying that she was just relieved that she had managed to "save" me before it was too late.

You think there's any way to make your family open up a bit? At least enough to not break ties with you if you're fed up? (or it's not that bad)

Need to aim for a compromise here.

No, they're very old fashioned and are set in their ways. It's impossible.

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

I apologised to her and then to god and pretended to feel very guilty. I think that the thought of her son becoming an anthiest was so horrifying that she was just relieved that she had managed to "save" me before it was too late.



No, they're very old fashioned and are set in their ways. It's impossible.

I really do not support deception, but it is so hard for a young adult to live independently these days, and I do not want you to experience the wrath of your mother (and fortunately I have not experienced that based upon my religiously orientation as a teenager and young adult).

My inquiry was concerned that for someone as devout as your mother I am surprised that she would accept a verbal sign of repentance as confirmation of your faith. Were you Confirmed?

 

[mattj]

Nah, nah. It's not that God works in mysterious ways at all. Its that under the laws of this universe what we see around us is usually as good as its going to get.

The recurrent laryngeal nerve is actually exactly what I'm talking about. "What kind of a God would create a giraffe with such a ridiculously long (15 foot) nerve to connect two parts of the body that are mere inches apart?! Obviously giraffes couldn't have been created!" There's this idea that "I could have created it better". In fact, neither you, nor anyone else could have. As Grey's Anatomy says concerning the RLN:

“As the recurrent nerve hooks around the subclavian artery or aorta, it gives off several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives off branches, more numerous on the left than on the right side, to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the esophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibers of the trachea; and some pharyngeal filaments to the Constrictor pharyngis inferior.”

I'm sure "lol this nerve is supposed to go from here to here but it loops waaaaay around here" sounds better, but in fact, that nerve does a heck of a lot more than you admit it does. Maybe you would have designed it to go from point A to point B in 15 inches, but it's 15 feet long in Giraffes and does multiple jobs at once.

Which is the superior design? Show me a giraffe with a 15 inch RLN and we'll compare them. Oh wait, they don't exist and you have no clue whether or not it would be better. Athiests 1 God 0 obviously.

just ridiculous

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

also @ calm mind latias, that video was really bad. but i get the feeling you know that? im not 100% on the context you posted it in.

I know it is really bad (and that is understatement), and I would be ashamed if I actually used those arguments. The context was the video's apologetics reflects seems to originate from the "entrenched mindset" Shiruba referred to; it does not adequate address credible secular philosophical and scientific objections to the existence of God that one would be exposed to if one goes outside of their circle of faith and expand his/her intellectual horizons. The video dismantles non-existent strawmen, and it leaves a bad impression about the quality of Christian apologetics.

 

[shade]

mattj - huh, way to ignore the rest of my post and focus on the recurrent laryngeal nerve and then quote. i get the feeling you have no idea what it means anyway, you've just copy and pasted a post that sounds vaguely scientific. from my research i have only found that it innervates muscles involved in vocal movement i.e arytenoid muscles. if you could point me in the direction of scientific articles that state that it serves other functions then i would be most willing to accept your argument that it is perfect how it is. i will openly admit that i am not 100% of the exact mechanics behind the rln and am willing to accept what you say if there is the literature. however, your way of dealing with things you cannot really explain is to ignore, misinterpret or claim the arguments are ridiculous. EDIT: originally i thought you quoted the tv series lol so this is why this might not actually make sense and might be worth ignoring till ive had time to research further

however, i would like to ask you something, because i am interested in the answer. if you do not believe in evolution, why is the obvious answer the christian faith? why have you put your money on this god? surely you must accept it is because of the environment you grew up in? if you were born in pakistan, would you not be a follower of the quran?

 

[mattj]

The second sentence of the wiki article says:

It also supplies sensory nerves to the larynx below the level of the vocal cords, gives cardiac branches to the deep cardiac plexus, and branches to the trachea, oesophagus and the inferior constrictor muscle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve

There are quite a few other things it does other than solely controlling the larynx. If you want to argue that a hypothetical separate 15 inch nerve could do the job better, I guess you're free to have that opinion. But don't act like you have any evidence at all to back up such a claim. Meanwhile the 15 footer does the job just fine, along with multiple other jobs all rolled into one device. Me personally, accomplishing multiple simple tasks with one tool seems like the better way to go, but to each his own I guess.

Now take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The claim has been made that the RLN serves one purpose, and that it could not be designed because it takes such a circuitous route. It has been shown that the RLN does not serve one purpose, but rather serves myriad purposes all along that route. That claim is bunk. The same thing can be repeated for literally any claim of "poor design" that can be brought up. Either you can look at the objection yourself and realize "Hey, this can't be right. Here's why." (as in this case "Are you SURE it serves only one purpose? Whoops no. Turns out it's a finely crafted multi purpose tool.") Or you can google "answer to _____ objection" and half a dozen guys will have already worked it out. What does that mean to you? What does that mean for these arguments that claim design is impossible in general?

If you'd really like to know why I'm convinced that Jesus Christ is the God of the universe and that the Bible is his Word, I'm happy to share, but that's really a whole 'nother can of worms.

 

[Jorgen]

I've always figured vestigial organs were a stronger argument against intelligent design than stuff like circuitous nerves that, while fulfilling some purpose, are thought to be "bad" designs. For example, whales have these useless hip bones floating around, separate from the rest of their skeleton. It doesn't really make sense to have these pointless structures there if whales were designed from the outset to be best for their niche, because, I mean, they're pointless. But it makes more sense if you consider a stupider evolutionary explanation whereby there was no pressure to select against these unused hipbones, but there was pressure against the limbs that articulated with them, so the hips just stayed when the legs went away.

Even then, this seems kind of weak as a counter-example (at least to versions of ID that accept evolution), because there's no way to definitively say that some intelligent designer didn't intend for those hip bones to remain present because whales might need to make use of them later in response to future selection pressure. Meanwhile, there's evidence of parallel evolution (e.g., similarities in the eyes of octopuses and humans) and the notion that many structures are "optimal" for their function, both of which could intuitively be explained by some underlying design principles guiding it all.

The real beef I have with ID (even the versions that accept evolution) is that it just kinda reeks of magical thinking and doesn't seem to exist for any purpose outside of framing things in a way to validate religious beliefs. It just smells fishy to assume the necessity of some transcendent, intelligent being whose main (and apparently sole) influence on the world is optimizing each plant/animal/prokaryote etc. for its ecological niche, largely because it raises a ton of questions about the nature of this being that, while necessary to make predictions, can't really be tested due to that pesky/convenient "transcendent" property.

 

[Blue_Tornado]

I really do not support deception, but it is so hard for a young adult to live independently these days, and I do not want you to experience the wrath of your mother (and fortunately I have not experienced that based upon my religiously orientation as a teenager and young adult).

My inquiry was concerned that for someone as devout as your mother I am surprised that she would accept a verbal sign of repentance as confirmation of your faith. Were you Confirmed?

Blind faith does not equal knowledge of that faith.

I'm interested in mattj's backing of the Bible. Maybe when I'm home.

 

[billymills]

Since this thread doesn't seem to be following any real direction, I'll bite.
I'd like to know why you're convinced that Jesus Christ is the God of the universe and that the Bible is his Word. (also: why capitalize Word but not his?)

And just to cover my bases: try to break your argument down as far as possible, to concepts that you take a priori. Chances are I won't have the same core ideals as you, but if you can state them outright, I may at least understand your position.

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

I've always figured vestigial organs were a stronger argument against intelligent design than stuff like circuitous nerves that, while fulfilling some purpose, are thought to be "bad" designs. For example, whales have these useless hip bones floating around, separate from the rest of their skeleton. It doesn't really make sense to have these pointless structures there if whales were designed from the outset to be best for their niche, because, I mean, they're pointless. But it makes more sense if you consider a stupider evolutionary explanation whereby there was no pressure to select against these unused hipbones, but there was pressure against the limbs that articulated with them, so the hips just stayed when the legs went away.

Even then, this seems kind of weak as a counter-example (at least to versions of ID that accept evolution), because there's no way to definitively say that some intelligent designer didn't intend for those hip bones to remain present because whales might need to make use of them later in response to future selection pressure. Meanwhile, there's evidence of parallel evolution (e.g., similarities in the eyes of octopuses and humans) and the notion that many structures are "optimal" for their function, both of which could intuitively be explained by some underlying design principles guiding it all.

The real beef I have with ID (even the versions that accept evolution) is that it just kinda reeks of magical thinking and doesn't seem to exist for any purpose outside of framing things in a way to validate religious beliefs. It just smells fishy to assume the necessity of some transcendent, intelligent being whose main (and apparently sole) influence on the world is optimizing each plant/animal/prokaryote etc. for its ecological niche, largely because it raises a ton of questions about the nature of this being that, while necessary to make predictions, can't really be tested due to that pesky/convenient "transcendent" property.

Consider the Darwinian explanation that you consider to be "stupider". Why do I as an empiricist accept this explanation over intelligent design? Well, one knows from aggregated experiences of the scientific community, that is from observations and experiments, that Darwinian evolution is universally operative through the biological world: no population is not static relative to its environment. Indeed, any population with heritable genetic variation in fitness (defined relative to the members of the population in a specific ecological niche) would undergo natural selection, and one can infer that many extant biological traits of a given species are the cumulative consequences of the selection process that the ancestors of the population experienced. You are correct that there is no definite way exclude intelligent design, and epistemically, one has to make an inductive assumption, based upon scientific experience, that natural selection operates in the past on the ancestor of whales. This is a key assumption. and there is no necessary reason why would it be true. Yet, one justifies this assumption on the solely basis of experience, as sensory experience, to an empiricist, is the primary means one attains knowledge about the world, even though one cannot have any direct experience about the past evolutionary history of a species.

Evolution is indeed a historical question, and the explanation may be seen as quite vacuous, since it does not list the specific selection pressures that the whale lineage historically experience, as it just appeals to the general processes of natural selection and the absence of selection pressure to remove the hip bones. Similarly one can also ask why does one accept kinetic theory as a reasonable model of the molecular behavior of gas molecules. Note that kinetic theory is an "explanation" for observed macroscopic phenomenon. It is not merely a recitation of empirical relations such as the proportionality of temperature and volume of a gas under the same pressure (Charles's law); it explains why Charles's law should manifest itself in the light of our understanding of the world. Kinetic theory makes a few reasonable assumptions about their behavior -- such as they exhibit Newtonian mechanical behavior, are point particles that take up no volume, and have no intermolecular interactions -- that one cannot directly experience. (These assumption are currently regarded by scientists as literally false, but we regard them as practically reasonable because the kinetic theory can model the behavior of gas under most conditions.) For one's crude personal senses, one cannot observe these putative properties of gas molecules.

But how does one accept that kinetic theory provides a reasonably accurate account about the behavior of gas molecules? The epistemic justification of kinetic theory is based on abductive reasoning, since one do not possess knowledge a priori the behavior gas molecules nor could we directly verify these properties by directly observing them. Kinetic theory makes non-trivial predictions based on these assumptions about more observable macroscopic phenomena. Essentially these predictions are a translation of the microscopic behavior of the gas molecules to the macroscopic realm. When these predictions are observed in a scientific experiment, it supports but does not prove, that the underlying reason for the observed phenomena is the existence of gas molecules that exhibit Newtonian mechanics. This is actually a formal fallacy called "affirming the consequent", since even though the observation conformed to the expectations of kinetic theory, it does not exclude other possible models that are compatible with the observations. Since there are numerous instances (that outnumber the exceptions) of gases that exhibit behavior that complies with kinetic theory, one can induce that most gas molecules (even those not subject to the attentive eyes of scientists) exhibit the microscopic behavior ascribe to them by kinetic theory. Indeed, an epistemic inquiry of the nature of scientific knowledge does not provide a confutation of philosophical skepticism as there remains some philosophical (even though they are not scientific or practical) grounds for skepticism even for the most established scientific theories.

Unlike the past selection pressures that acted upon whales, scientists can get a fairly quick "confirmation" of kinetic theory by carefully conducting a scientific experiment with the appropriate instruments. Scientists cannot reconstruct conditions to investigate rigorously the evolution of the whales. Charles Darwin formulated his theory of natural selection on the basis of his experiences as a naturalist, such as his Voyage on the Beagle when he experience the diverse flora and fauna of the world, and he noticed interesting regularities through nature, such as variance of the beaks of the various birds of the Galapagos as adaptions for the specific habitat of their respective island. Due to their geographic proximity and physiological similarity, he thought that these species of birds originated from a similar common ancestor whose descendents migrated different islands and subsequently were subject to different selection pressures. To support his principle of natural selection operating in nature, Darwin noted similarities from the science of selection domestic breeding as the initial population had variation in the trait of interest, and in subsequent generations, the population exhibited more of the desirable trait because members of the population that had more of the desired trait were artificially granted more favorable mating conditions and had more offspring. Based on the more observable conditions of domestic breeding, Darwin reasoned that an analogous process operated in nature where it could not be scrutinized as easily by scientists due to the scope of the biosphere and the time required for the necessary adaptions, because there would also exist population variation and fitness differences. From these observations, Darwin made the more grand and universal conclusion that many of the traits of all biological species, including and especially humans, were derived from the process of "blind" natural selection. The key point that Darwinian evolution is not based on the direct experience of the various histories of the biological species of Earth, but it is constructed from inductive inferences in the light of human experience.

Now, the next question is that why should an empiricist reject teleological explanations. Darwin supported his theory by adducing his personal experiences and the documented observations by other naturalists; Darwin and other naturalists had sense experience of natural relations (such as the geographic proximity of the birds of the Galapagos), and Darwin's experiences from his personal observations and reading made powerful impressions on his mind that led him to formulate the theory of natural selection. In other words, the theory of natural selection was ultimately the fruit of human experience, not from derivable from a priori reasoning alone. And thus the theory of natural selection is thus epistemically subjected to the limitations and follies of human experience. Now do humans have strong sense impressions or ideas derived from these impressions from observing the world that one can credit specific traits of natural objects to be the work of an intelligent designer? Certainly, one does not observe the influence of a supernatural designer intervening in the realm of biology in any way to produce intricate traits, and therefore one cannot acquire any sense impressions about the designer's work on biological creatures. To the contrary, we know houses are intelligently designed objects because we have observed the processes of house construction, and saw that it involves the plans of an architect and human laborers to assemble it. We then can appeal to human experience and the principle of induction to come to the conclusion that a particular house involved human design, even though one does not possess direct experience of that house's origins. But we cannot do this for something such as the bacterial flagellum due to its dissimilarities with human constructed objects; the only "evidence" of the intelligent design of the flagellum is one's lack of experience about the flagellum's origins and insufficiency of one's mind to conceive of a plausible naturalistic origin. Because of the insufficient sensory impressions and ideas about the activity of an intelligent designer, one cannot credible promote a theory of intelligent design on the basis of human experience. Scientists reject intelligent design and supernaturalism in the sciences in general, not due to some a priori commitment to naturalism, but due to the success of naturalism in science.

 

[Ides_of_March]

Did they threaten to kick you out if you didn't go or something?

Not every atheist is vindictive towards their religious family members. I went to a mass and breakfast on thanksgiving with my family out of respect for my family heritage. Call it pointless, but even my anti-theist sisters went with us out of respect. Family isn't about making a statement every time you can. It's about finding ways to come together. It requires very little of us and would mean the world to them after all.

 

[HBK]

I really do not support deception, but it is so hard for a young adult to live independently these days, and I do not want you to experience the wrath of your mother (and fortunately I have not experienced that based upon my religiously orientation as a teenager and young adult).

My inquiry was concerned that for someone as devout as your mother I am surprised that she would accept a verbal sign of repentance as confirmation of your faith. Were you Confirmed?

Yes, I was confirmed two years ago.

 

[Shiruba]

But hasn't "adaptation" in this sense also been created "artificially" by humans in their own time, as well, and is thus capable of being observed? Forgive me if I misunderstood your meaning, CML, it was a lot of text, and I even needed to pop open dictionary.com.

The capability of breeding two mutated creatures together to create more young that retain those genes isn't exactly something that's never been done before - ever consider what animal breeding is? Hairless cats, for example, aren't exactly typical in nature; these are the result of breeding programs to create that certain "look" and capture it in the offspring. Humans aren't really capable of editing the genetic code for certain specific traits, certainly not when this practice began. The notion of a mutation occurring randomly due to the inaccuracies of genetics being copied, and then attempting to retain them due to selective breeding is very similar, no? The biggest difference is that, with humans, all we care about is that it looks good or is useful in some way, and may even hinder the animal's chances of survival, like dogs and cats with a pushed in face, who find it difficult to breathe correctly. The principles, however, remain identical - the creature with the mutation/adaptation manages to breed and pass its genetics on to the next generation, which causes speciation and eventually full-scale evolution if it does not die off first.

How can this be refuted unless you're going to clearly defy what we have done and continue to do, unless I am missing something very crucial here?

 

[capefeather]

Every theist complexity argument I've seen reeks of rationalization and a refusal to examine every option. The fact is, observations in biology are pretty clear that there is no grand purpose in evolution. Why is it that foxes have evolved to hunt rabbits, yet rabbits have evolved to evade foxes? Is God an indecisive fellow? Before you answer that... Why even have predator/prey dynamics? Why create systems where living things are inflicted with so much suffering? Even the early Israelites, in their little monotheism experiment, had a lot of trouble with the many conflicting "purposes" they saw in the world. Thus, they ended up inventing an adversarial figure who grew from a minion of God (e.g. Job) to a supervillain (Revelations). I'm not impressed by your ability to explain a "flaw" in "design", nor am I impressed by your ability to imagine that there is an explanation. Anybody can do that.

But enough about all that. The MAIN beef I have with complexity arguments is that they prey on people's poor understanding of probability, as well as their ignorance of how complexity arises from simplicity. As someone who's taken a few math and physics classes, I find it so unfortunate that people fall for this over and over again. If only they knew! Well, let's at least give you a taste.

Consider the family of quadratic equations on the complex numbers:

Q_c(z) = z^2 + c

We're going to look at what happens when Q_c is iterated, i.e. Q_c^n(x) as n gets bigger and bigger. We call the resulting sequence (Q_c^n(x)) the orbit of x under Q_c. It turns out that you'll get wildly different results just from slightly altering x or c. The so-called Julia sets are derived from just asking whether these orbits go arbitrarily far away or stick to some region. It's hard to explain in a forum post, but please, try investigating this matter for yourself! You might learn something cool!

But maybe you want something less abstract. Let's consider the double pendulum. Really, the only stuff you need to know to understand this system is:

• free-body diagrams
• trigonometry
• differential calculus

Yet the motion of a double pendulum is unpredictable. A slight change in the initial position and/or velocity results in completely different paths. It's seriously mind-blowing if you think about it.

Now, you might look at a graph showing the path of a double pendulum, and you might see patterns. You might see a face. It's like how people look up at the sky and see things in the clouds. The problem is, those patterns don't mean anything. They're all in our heads. Our brains function by seeing patterns in things to identify them easily. Unfortunately, this leads to illusions and all kinds of cognitive biases. The advantages probably helped us a great deal with surviving long enough to develop agriculture, but in this day and age, it hinders us when we try to look at things objectively and rationally.

So, in case you didn't get all that: Complexity is not remarkable. The fact that simplicity gives rise to complexity is remarkable. Anybody can spot patterns. We're built to spot patterns. That says nothing about what they mean, if indeed they mean anything at all. And you still haven't even come close to showing that your specific God is totally the real deal and we should care.

Some more links that elaborate on some of the stuff I've talked about:

• An Alien God
• It *could* just be coincidence
• The Evolution of Satan in the Bible
  
• Iteration of quadratic polynomials
• double pendulum

And one of my new favourite videos, which is tangentially related to some of the stuff that's been said in this thread:
Betting on infinity