Supernatural information supplier

Percy, Put them all together - they are fashioned by nature formed - but there actual origin was caused by God, ex nihilo. You claim to believe in God so you must agree. If you believe in God - then the cause of ALL these things, far back enough in time - was God. These natural phenomenons have a natural origin in that they are naturally explained, but the universe containing and causing these things, was caused by God. So in essence, all these things have a supernatural origin. Who's he? Oh - science. What - you believe men have all the answers. *Oh*!.........you think science has the last word? *Ah* - now I get it.

Hambre - read what I said again.I said people aren't stupid enough - I refer to the majority of the world - who do believe in something beyond the natural. You see, they would be stupid to dismiss God. So, they aren't stupid enough to do that, for many reasons, including that of naturalistic explanation for everything. This doesn't make you stupid - it makes them not stupid. *Tee hee hee*So people who by majority - believe, would be stupid to then not believe, and ignore all the things that testify to God. That's all I meant.It might have looked like I was implying unbelievers are then stupid - but I referred to the majority of people - not unbelievers. I should have been clearer.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 11-17-2004 05:24 PM

If you think that than you misunderstand the history of religious beliefs and of man uncovering natural explanations. But I doubt you really misunderstand. Taking the example of lightning, I think you know very well that man once attributed lightning to the anger of the Gods. They believed lightening had a divine origin. They definitely did not believe what you imply here, namely that the lightning had a natural origin but that God was ultimately responsible because he created the universe "in the beginning."So your argument fails to address the original point. Independent of whether you or I believe the ultimate cause of the universe is God, the history of divine explanations for mysterious phenomena is that every resolved pheonomological mystery has found a natural explanation, and not a single one has found a divine explanation. Now you're putting words in my mouth. I've often said things like, "There will always be things science doesn't know," probably in threads you've not only read but participated in, so you really do know I don't believe what you just said. I actually believe the universe is far too complex a place for us to ever know everything.But I *did* cite a long list of phenomena, Mike, that were once thought divine in origin but turned out to have natural causes. You can believe that the information in the genome had a divine origin if you like, but as I've just shown, the history of such beliefs has an exceptionally poor track record.--Percy

Look at this in another context; People(believers) just aren't stupid that they would think that there is no God.This is, that they themselves aren't stupid - not that an unbeliever is.If they were to hear naturalistic explanations after walking with God, and noticing things attributable to him, and then conclude there is no God, after answered prayers etc.. then I think they would not be too clever.This is what I meant concerning this topic - but I should have made this clear, I thought people would then realize what I meant through what I was saying in that post, and my others - that surely to dismiss everything as answered by science completely - is arrogant aswell.

Percy, this is a bit inductive though. That big list of preconceptions of what was once thought of as divine, is like me saying that I thought all socks were blue - but I've only ever found white ones - so there is no blue socks. I still put my stock in blue socks. Basically, my point was - that all these phenomenon can be formed naturally - but their eventual origin is still God.You say you believe , yet you place most emphasis on science and disregarding supernatural belief - or saying it has a poor track record. I don't get that.

Sure. This is science. Remember tentativity and all that? Remember that you can't prove a negative? We'll never be able to exclude the possibility of the divine, but there is no evidence for the divine at this time. Sure, and that's fine, as a matter of faith. Just recognize that as a matter of science (and I hope we're talking science, here) you have no evidence, and so not a leg to stand on. I know that was your point. And as I explained, this is irrelevant to the point you were attempting to respond to about all phenomonological mysteries resolving on the side of natural causes. You can offer this rebuttal as often as you like, but it's still irrelevant to my original point. I believe as a matter of faith. I understand based upon evidence and reason.You're like me in that you believe as a matter of faith, but your understanding keeps encountering conflicts because you've got certain preconditions, derived from your religious beliefs, that you insist the universe meet. You'll have to take the universe as you find it. You can have faith all you like that earth is 4500 years old or that God created DNA with all information for all species already present, but belief in God requires none of these things.--Percy

Percy, in another thread - you attribute God as a concept of human thought. Are you sure you believe? Well, strictly speaking - I wasn't talking science or faith - I was talking logic.If we say that God makes lightning - and find out it's of the natural, and so forth with the rest of your list, - we only find white socks, when we thought we'd find blue. But does that mean there is no blue? You see - man and his science are like a policeman searching around at night with a torch, - his view is limited, he's looking for a criminal, but he only finds pavement with his torch.I think you'll agree as your previous posts indicated, - that man has limited knowledge. Accumulated facts and theories so far, might not say God is there, but no evidence doesn't evidence no God. But you make out they are first and foremost, natural in origin, making out it's like, 15 nil to science against God. As long as you know it's an optical illusion - cos God made all of those things possible. Well, I don't know. Maybe we are similar in a way - only I've never heard you defend God at all. If you want the atheists to claim the universe according to their own knowledge - fair enough.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 11-17-2004 08:18 PM

Esteban replied: "However, it's clear from our morphology and our genetics that we're tinkered from the same materials as every other life form on Earth. The additional "information" necessary for our big brains and agile hands came from countless iterations of the DNA copying process, not the purposeful insertion of info by a great celestial programmer."Genetics only take us back a couple of hundred thousand years to a hominid named "Lucy". The fossil record only shows similiarity at some levels; you can't really say which animal is descended from which by viewing it. And this idea that countless copying of DNA will produce complexity such as big brains and agile hands is where you really lose me. That is putting a whole lot more power into a fairly simple process than I am willing to assign it.

Hey Ned, you replied: "Ah, I see, you're not actually talking about information at all. It is something else that you're after."Yes, I think it is information I am after. We may not be on the same paqe, but we are definitly in the same chapter. You are right, and I completely misspoke, in that taking away BP does not always imply a loss of functionality. Information does not imply function, but function always implies information behind it.You also said: "(However, back to the original example, if a BP being lost really did remove some "function" then the adding of the same BP would, obviously (I hope) add some "function". Since either of them are possible mutations it demonstrates that a mutation can add a "function" (whatever that is)."Function would be adding a body part or some structure that enhances the creature at some level. Sorry I haven't been around long enough to have seen any of these examples.

You replied: "Going back to the pool ball analogy, you then think that God had to move the balls closer to the pockets and interfere with the natural laws he created?"It is an interesting analogy, and maybe not fully what you intend because the balls themselves, the table, the pockets, the side rails, etc. SCREAM design.And likewise, for me anyway, does a cosmos that comes out of nothing, and then on one little tiny planet, life erupts and progresses to this complex, self-concious creature called man. Did God set up an initial set of laws and constants that provided for life's inevitability? Absolutely. Was He involved alot, alittle or not at all along the way? Don't know how we can know that just by studying bones and chemicals.

Hey Percy,You replied: "So in your mind, if there is something that science has yet to explain, then there are two possibilities: divine origin or natural origin."Good stuff, by the way. I think the basic problem is, scientists explain how a thing works (fire for instance) and then assume that that should be enough for the rest of us. It doesn't explain how fire came to be in the first place; ie, why are certain things combustible and why do we find it so convenient to cook with.You also said: "Naturally this argument can go round and round."Ah, there is the crux of it. If we were to find a spaceship of sorts that had been traveling towards earth for eons, unmanned. And inside we learned that this spaceship was the product of an earlier spaceship which had been made by an earlier one etc, so that as the materials broke down new ones were put in place, etc., scientists would explain it by describing the inner workings and how the spaceships had pieced each other together, etc. The rest of us would say, "Wow, who sent it?"I have been a casual observer of science for some forty years now. The creationist does argue from incredulity many times, but shouldn't we be incredulous? Back in the days of Carl Sagan I really believed that science would eventually explain it all. That given enough time the beginnings of all things would succumb to scientific theory.I now think the momentum is the other way; as more and more amazing discoveries come to light, science gets further from truly explaining the origins of the universe, life and man. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.Science would be able to break my proverbial spaceship into gears and levers and switches and the materials and say "see, that explains it" while the rest of us would wink and nod and say, "right!"This message has been edited by dshortt, 11-18-2004 05:10 AM

dshortt,We're getting a little off the topic here. Proto-humans were around millions of years ago, but I'm not just talking about the human species. Our genes bear witness to common ancestry with all other life on Earth, and I assume that's not what's being debated here. The question is whether the "additional information" that allowed humans to evolve was due to supernatural intervention.The point about "agile hands" is pertinent here, because the Hox genes that control the development of the human hand are the same that control the development of wings in bats, fins in cetaceans, and paws in other land mammals. The cumulative changes in the DNA of our lineage, sculpted by natural selection, are exactly what accounts for the human hand.If you're "not willing" to assign such power to the mutation-selection machine without the benefit of divine tinkering, you share this fear with others. Again, we run up against the dilemma of intelligent design: how much waste and cruelty can we recognize in the workings of Nature and still assert that there's a divine order to the process? And are we ignoring a lot of evident purposelessness in our mad search for things that look intentional?regards,
Esteban Hambre

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And this idea that countless copying of DNA will produce complexity such as big brains and agile hands is where you really lose me. That is putting a whole lot more power into a fairly simple process than I am willing to assign it.

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Wind, water and sand will grind a mountain flat. Thats how powerful simple processes can be.

Hi Dshortt,You mentioned the holes in our knowledge regarding the origin of the universe, life and man in Message 37, and here you make reference to how science continually discovers just how little we really know. But it would be incorrect to conclude that finding new and unexplored scientific relams means that the holes in our knowledge are becoming larger. Yes, the more we learn, the more we discover previously unsuspected phenomena, things we never even suspected existed. As science learns it uncovers more and increasingly subtle layers. It's like discovering entire unsuspected universes. But even though the vistas are more vast than ever imagined, our scientific understanding and knowledge are continually growing and the gaps diminishing.What you're doing is filling in the ever diminishing gaps in our knowledge with the divine. As the gaps become smaller (though more numerous), there is less and less room for the divine. Looking at current trends, where once God was the explanation for all natural phenomena, IDists have now limited his role to microbiological structures and DNA. The God of thunder and lightning has been reduced to the God of nucleic acids.If history is any guide, God is doomed to have an ever diminishing role in the physical universe. But modern Christian theology has no need to hold to the beliefs of prescientific nomads, and there is no reason why Christianity should continue to supervise the retreat begun in earnest around Galileo's time. God's realm is the spiritual. It may have suited prehistoric psyches and needs to ascribe physical events to gods or God, but if science has taught us anything spiritual it is that God lives in our hearts and minds and not in natural phenomena.--Percy

Well, let's think this through. If I can express the same thing differently this time, what I actually said was that inexplicable and capricious nature was a constant influence upon the evolving homind brain. And I'm a product of that evolutionary process. Therefore it makes perfect sense that I believe in God, doesn't it. I can have my spirtual cake and my science cake all at the same time. My spirtual belief in God derives from faith. And my understanding that my faith derives from my evolutionary past comes from evidence and reason. Like I said before, you can offer this as often as you like, but it is still irrelevant to my original point, which is that you have no evidence. When I reminded you of tentativity and that we can't prove a negative it was to agree with you that you *are* thinking logically, and that science *does* agree with you that the possibility of divine origin cannot be excluded. But look at the table again back in Message 43 with its 20 or so natural origins and no divine origins. I didn't bias that table. I didn't purposely leave out all items that have been shown to have divine origins. The fact is nothing has ever been scientifically shown to have a divine origin. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero.In other words, the important point isn't that you can't exclude the divine. Of course you can't. In science you can never exclude anything. Even falsifications can be falsified, so nothing is ever permanently falsfified.The important point is that you haven't gotten a single supporting shred of evidence for the divine origin of anything. Once again, are we talking science or faith? Read the reply I just posted to Dshortt. If you want to know that God's responsible for everything as a matter of faith, I have no argument with you. But if you claim this as a matter of fact then I'll have to see your evidence. God needs no defending. What you're actually defending is your own vanity that your beliefs are correct. I'm surprised to see you wandering into the "us versus the atheists" territory. Science is not atheistic. Uncovering evidence and developing theories that contradict the beliefs of a prescientific people is not anti-religious or atheistic. Belief in God does not require one to believe that ancient spirtual writings are literally true.--Percy