The Dishonesty Of "Design" Apologetics

Debate Room
121

NeutralZone said:

Of course they do indeed work as well as possible. Your denials will not change that reality.

Humans have done their best to pollute the earth and destroy the ozone layer, true enough, but how do you explain away Earth’s position to some of the planets around it that actually protect Earth and life on earth?

In fact, nobody can explain how Big Bang, which is nothing more than a theory about expanding space, resulted in the appearance of planets. The millions of planets in the universe each have separate gravitational fields that keep them within their own orbits and prevent them from crashing into each other. Big Bang theory is unable to explain why certain planets work to the advantage of earth because Big Bang theory relies upon spontaneous, unguided events or outright accidents.

The earth is a prime example of precision, as noted below.

EARTH IS THE RIGHT SIZE:
Not only is earth the right size, its location in our solar system is beneficial for life on earth. If earth were slightly larger, its gravity would be stronger, with the result that hydrogen–a light gas–would not be able to escape the gravity of a bigger earth. The accumulation of hydrogen would kill all of us. At the opposite extreme, if earth were slightly smaller, life-sustaining oxygen would escape and surface water would evaporate. In this case, we would die from dehydration.

EARTH IS AT THE RIGHT LOCATION:
The earth is at an ideal distance from the sun, as noted by the following scientific sources.

SCIENTIFIC SOURCE #1:
Both astronomer John Barrow and mathematician Frank Tipler studied “the ratio of the Earth’s radius and distance from the Sun” and concluded that human life would not exist “were this ratio slightly different from what it is observed to be.” (Source: The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, copyright 1986, Oxford University Press)

SCIENTIFIC SOURCE #2:
Earth is at an ideal distance from the sun, as noted by Professor David L. Block in his book. He wrote:

“Calculations show that had the earth been situated only 5 percent closer to the sun, a runaway greenhouse effect [overheating of the earth] would have occurred about 4000 million years ago. If, on the other hand, the earth were placed only 1 percent further from the sun, runaway glaciation [huge sheets of ice covering much of the globe] would have occurred some 2000 million years ago.” (Source: Our Universe: Accident Or Design? by David L. Block (1992)

According to Atheist Religionists, what I just quoted above is simply the result of accidents or spontaneous events.

DEFINITION OF “ACCIDENT”:
“a nonessential event that HAPPENS BY CHANCE and has undesirable or unfortunate results.” (Source: Websters New Collegiate Dictionary)

DEFINITION OF “SPONTANEOUS”:
“Spontaneous acts are not planned or arranged, but are done because someone suddenly wants to do them.” (Source: Collins Dictionary)

122

@NeutralZone, what would change your mind?

123

I cry “Bullshit.”

Cosmologists have never claimed that the Universe appeared out of nothing. The Big Bang is the beginning of our current presentation of the Universe, which is quite different from saying that the Universe popped into existance from nothing.

And–if God created the Universe–then where does God come from?

If God has always existed, then why not skip a step and decide that the Universe has always existed?

Or–if God’s origin is an unanswerable question, then why not conclude that the origin of the Big Bang is an unanswerable question?

Besides, virtual subatomic particles are popping into and out of existance all of the time.

And even if God made the Universe . . . there’s no reason to believe that God still exists. Maybe the act of making the Universe was fatal to God.

Or maybe God (or gods) created the Universe, but just not the Judeo-Christian (or Abrahamic) God. Maybe is was the gods that the Jivaro tribe in the Amazon worship that created the Universe. Maybe is was a god that is worshipped by the aliens who inhabit the 4th planet on a star halfway across the Galaxy.

Also, why is it perfectly reasonable to believe that the Universe will exist forever into the future, yet it “goes against common sense” to suppose that it existed infinitely into the past? Do you not see a double-standard here?

We may not understand what created the Big Bang, but just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean that we automatically should claim God. If we satisfy ourselves by claiming God every time we don’t understand something, then women would still be dying from childbed fever from doctors not washing their hands.

A lack of knowledge doesn’t automatically mean God.

124

Oh fuck: More inane crap of the same ilk. Tell you what, I’ll pray for you. Let’s see if that has any effect whatsoever. I’m betting it doesn’t.

1 Like
125

Already dealt with the fact that “fine tuning” is a myth.

This peer reviewed scientific paper demonstrates that stellar nucleosynthesis and organic chemistry would remain essentially unchanged, even if key physical constants varied by as much as five orders of magnitude.

This peer reviewed scientific paper demonstrates that the same would be the case, even if we deleted the weak nuclear force from the universe wholesale.

“Fine tuning” is a fantasy that lying creationists cling to, in a desperate, failed and frankly mendacious attempt, to prop up the even more laughable fantasy that “Magic Man did it”.

Once again, the dishonesty of “design” apologetics is on full display. “Design” apologetics is lies all the way down, with well-known baits and switches endemic thereto. We are here for no other reason than the laws of physics permitted our emergence, and the relevant physically permitted interactions took place.

We weren’t poofed into existence by a cartoon magic man from a Bronze Age mythology, and neither was anything else we observe. Instead, several million peer reviewed scientific papers document in exquisite detail, the evidence that testable natural processes, involving well-defined entities and interactions, were responsible, and that said testable natural processes are SUFFICIENT to explain the vast body of observational data obtained over the past centuries. As a corollary, cartoon magic men from pre-scientific mythologies are superfluous to requirements and irrelevant. Only scientifically illiterate morons and lying ideological stormtroopers for primitive religious doctrines imagine otherwise, and imagine is all that they do.

126

Another of your infantile bare faced lies.

Item one: the origin of the universe isn’t the remit of “atheists” (the first of your many lies), but the remit of scientists, in particular cosmological physicists. Who have presented several models for this, two of which I’ve discussed in some detail here.

Item two: cosmological physicists do NOT postulate that the universe “happened by itself”, this is another duplicitous creationist strawman caricature and blatant lie you’re regurgitating. Instead, they postulate that testable natural processes, involving well-defined entities and interactions , were responsible.

Once again, you’re talking out of your arse. And it’s obvious that you haven’t “debated” atheists in the past, but merely harangued them with your lies as you’ve done here.

Bare faced lie. See above.

More bullshit and lies from you.

Oh wait, I’ve already devoted column inches here to relevant cosmological physics developments. A particularly apposite example being Steinhardt and Turok’s braneworld collision model, which possesses three elegant features, viz:

[1] It eliminates the singularity problem from standard Big Bang cosmology;

[2] It provides a mechanism for donating energy to the newly instantiated universe, facilitating matter synthesis;

[3] It includes a testable prediction, centred upon the power spectrum of primordial gravitational waves generated in the newly instantiated universe by the collision process.

Indeed, [3] above is one of the strong motivating reasons why scientists have laboured diligently to develop working gravitational wave detectors, precisely so that they can test this prediction. The moment that test is performed, and a power spectrum matching the prediction made by Steinhardt and Turok is found, they walk away with a Nobel Prize.

However, even if it turns out that they’re wrong, this doesn’t validate infantile and cretinous fantasies about a cartoon magic man waving its magic todger about and poofing things into existence. There are other cosmological models waiting in the wings for their turn at testing, it so happens that the Steinhardt and Turok model is the most likely to be tested in the immediate future, and is first in the queue.

An alternative model proposed by Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog, which I’ve also devoted column inches to, is, if anything, even more devastating for the fantasies of Magic Man fetishists, because it proposes that the laws of physics themselves may be evolvable. Again, I’ve devoted some column inches to that model here, and by doing so, rendered all of your above assertions risible lies.

127

He did precisely the opposite, and pointed out you have an empty bag, do you really imagine anyone will find such dishonest semantics at all compelling?

No, it isn’t. you have failed to demonstrate your premise, and your conclusion, as we see here, is also unsupported by any objective evidence, leaving you with the same circular reasoning fallacy we have seen countless apologist try to peddle before.

Hell there are huge swathes of this planet that can kill us quite easily. This tired old canard is no different than asserting that someone must have fine tuned a puddle, as that is the only explanation of why the water fits it perfectly. They are getting precisely backwards, evolution through natural selections has fine tuned life to match its environment, not the other way around.

Irony overload, since you’re the one denying scientific facts, and inventing false ones.

Woohoo, the it’s just a theory canard, go to Hiroshima and tell them atomic theory is just a theory. Oh an that is another argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.

I doubt it, as your creationist spiel is relentlessly dishonest, either way I could not care less, since not believing your unevidenced claims for a creator deity, does not necessitate I provide any alternative, to claim otherwise is yet again an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.

Where id d you deity come from btw? How is it possible? How did it create anything at all? I’d bet my house all you have are unfalsifiable claims and begging the question fallacies.

128

So what, American courts don’t have global autonomy to redefine words, and they have no autonomy over me at all, or by extension anything I do or do not believe. However unlike your chosen superstition, we can easily and objectively test your claim.

I don’t believe in any deity or deities, but I do not hold a belief that no deity exists, I am therefore an atheist. It seems you, and the US courts, are wrong.

Indeed, as outlined in the 1st amendment, this doesn’t make atheism a religion. Again we can easily test this:

Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods. I hold no such belief, but nor do I believe any deity or deities exist. Since atheism is defined as
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods, it seems I am an atheist, what were the odds, you’re wrong again.

I found this in wikipedia:

“Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.”

CITATION

So you can’t apply the narrowest definition universally, ironically you can apply the broadest definition (quoted from the dictionary above) to all atheists, since even those who make a claim and thus hold a belief, that no deity exists, must by extension lack belief in any deity or deities.

I’ll help you out, as your grasp of language is woeful, essential that something can be X, does not infer it is always X. You’re basically using a false equivalence fallacy. Would you like a link explaining the fallacy, as even Googling simple word definitions seems beyond you?

See you are trying to apply this specialised sense universally, that’s your error, and the false equivalence fallacy. maybe a remedial class in English comprehension might help you reason beyond facile, irrational, and erroneous absolutes?

See, his beliefs, this cannot be projected onto all atheists, without the majority being excluded, myself included in that exclusion of course, again this has a false equivalence fallacy as its core. You’re confusing atheist with atheism, and they’re not the same.

See, you’re making the same error in reasoning again, this is a specific case, the definition is only being used to clarify 1st amendment rights, as we can see above, and from any dictionary, this is not the broadest definition, and would exclude the majority of atheists.

Did you miss that word I’ve emboldened in your quote, or is this mendacity rather than ineptitude in your reasoning?

How many universes were in your test group, to establish your subjective claim? Can we see your metric for measuring how well a universe works, what are you comparing it to, where are your calculations, has your work been peer reviewed? Only your nuh uh, argument isn’t very compelling, given you ignored the objections Cognostic raised.

We perceive precision in nature, this doesn’t evidence design, only objective evidence can demonstrate design, and of course we never ever see designed things occurring randomly in nature.

This gets a so what, it’s your subjective superstitious and unevidenced conclusion people are rejecting, not the scientific facts you’re wrongly citing as evidencing that superstition. again then design is established by objective evidence, not by simply pointing to something, and blithely saying, wow that’s complicated, it must have involved unevidenced and inexplicable magic.

Another so what moment, firstly atheism is just the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, it need not involve any claim or belief, and thus it is irrational to insist it must provide an alternative to your unevidenced superstition. Secondly random events can be demonstrated to produce complexity, try rolling some dice randomly, and watch for complex patterns of numbers to emerge, as they inevitably must. Lastly, while it is likely true that random events were involved, no one I suspect is suggesting the universe’s evolution is entirely random, I seriously doubt physics is entirely random, or that psychists believe it to be.

If you want to convince me that an unevidenced deity is involved, using inexplicable magic, then you will have to objectively evidence such a deity exists, or is at least possible, this is the very lowest bar for credulity you’d have to achieve. Though you are of course free to set as low a bar for credulity as you like, you can believe the moon is made of cheese, if that makes you happy.

129

My question is this.

If this supernatural being exists and is capable of all sorts of miraculous feats of fine tuning, isn’t it reasonable to ask that he communicates with his creatures more than just once every two thousand years and that he do so in our own language?

And please don’t say “That’s not how god work.” without providing tangible evidence that the external supernatural god is really out there and that he, she or it has designated you as his PR guy…

:wink:

1 Like
130

A reasonable question, and another reasonable question that remains unanswered is, if a deity exists that is both omniscient and omnipotent, why would it need to fine tune anything?

Ah, but appealing to mystery is the only arrow in their quiver. You can’t dent a rationale that would declare a baby falling ten feet onto concrete, and surviving unharmed, must be a miracle, but then when a baby falls ten inches, and fatally injures itself on the corner of a table, blithely shrug their shoulders and claim god is mysterious.

2 Likes
131

End of discussion. You began with “if.” We go nowhere until we can say… “Since.”

1 Like
132

Just to state the obvious; not everyone gives a tinkers curse for what your Supreme Court rules or does not rule.
You do not seem to to comprehend that the world is made up of many nations, all with their own courts, languages, customs and none of them give a shit about the rulings from your country.
Even less shits are given about the ridiculous time and effort spent in litigation for something that is better handled by a secular bureaucracy.

Take a look at the Oxford English Dictionary…it explains and defines the word atheist and atheism. No lawyers needed…or any gods.

2 Likes
133

How do we know that? We have a single point of reference. Citing references doesn’t change the fact that we have a limited amount of data and drawing conclusions, especially definitive conclusions is foolhardy. For all we know, there might be a different form of life that works on a different set of operating conditions. This is where the fine-tuning arguement falls apart!

134

Just like a puddle fits the water in it exactly, creationists are hilarious fair play. If the parameters of the planet exactly match the life that emerged, that’s obviously why that type of life emerged, and it’s an objective fact that life evolves to match its environment, there is no objective evidence that the environment was created for life. or that life was created, none, nada niente, lets try it in Welsh… dim byd o gwbl

Overwhelming objective evidence it evolved, not one shred it was created, that’s a slam dunk for any objective person.

1 Like
135

I fail to see how Atheists fit into this definition.

no
no516×270 16.7 KB

Atheists don’t worship anything. They don’t practice a religion at all. They don’t worship a god. They don’t follow any religious traditions. Not like Monotheists or Polytheists do. I think the word you really mean is irreligionist.

yes
yes528×244 16.5 KB

136

Others have commented on this already, but I’m going to add something here that you’re with er unaware of, or are pretending isn’t applicable for the usual duplicitous creationist apologetic reasons.

In October, the Europa Clipper mission is due to be launched. The purpose of this mission, is to discover if there are clues pointing to the possibility of indigenous life forms extant in the subsurface ocean of the Jovian moon Europa. Scientists have long suspected this moon to be a candidate for the presence of indigenous life forms, even if those life forms are only simple protocells or marginally more advanced than this. Should the Europa Clipper mission return data increasing confidence in the requisite hypothesis, this is going to be another nail in the coffin of your mendacious and infantile “fine tuning” assertions.

There’s a second location in the Solar System that’s a candidate for indigenous life, namely the Saturnian moon Enceladus, which too has a subsurface ocean. That one is considered a candidate for a more substantial mission in the future, but even so, tantalising hints have already been obtained, when ejecta from Enceladus was subject to analysis by the Cassini-Huygens mission. That data indicated the presence of a subsurface ocean with substantial dissolved salt content and the presence of several interesting organic molecules, including molecules that are implicated in some prebiotic amino acid synthesis experiments.

Now I’ve again devoted column inches to both bodies here, though in my case. I stated that I would actually be more excited to learn that a fully functional prebiotic RNA world was present on one of those bodies than actual indigenous life, because finding this on either Europa or Enceladus would destroy lying creationist apologetics about prebiotic chemistry once and for all. But I digress.

The point is, that these two Solar System bodies are well outside the so-called “goldilocks zone” of the Solar System. Furthermore, any prebiotic RNA world or indigenous life there will be driven by geothermochemistry similar to that occurring around hydrothermal vents on Earth, as the two bodies are too far from the Sun to benefit from photosynthesis, and in any case the subsurface oceans of both bodies are covered by several kilometres of ice, and hence in eternal darkness.

For that matter, future data from Mars may well indicate that it too possessed indigenous life in the past, which again will bring into question the uniqueness of Earth in this respect, to even before we consider exoplanets such as those in the Trappist-1 system.

But of course, all of this can be put aside while noting one basic fact. Namely, that the cartoon magic man from your sad little Bronze Age mythology, is asserted to be capable of anything, simply by invoking the requisite magic poofing. Including arranging for living organisms here on Earth not to need a common chemistry as a basis, because, after all, we’re talking about magic here, and anything is possible with magic.

Indeed, there was no reason for your cartoon magic man to base life upon organic chemistry at all. Your cartoon magic man could have employed anything, including entities that didn’t involve the laws of physics at all. Which would actually have been more convincing than using the same chemistry we use to make plastic toys.

So, why was your cartoon magic man restricted to using organic chemistry for the purpose, when it could have just poofed magic life forms into existence not reliant upon any physical entities? After all, last time I checked the details of the doctrine associated with your Bronze Age mythology, placing restrictions upon what your cartoon magic man can do is purportedly blasphemous. Though I’m minded to note that major global denominations, as opposed to the fringe lunatic outfits that have multiplied in the USA like bacteria in warm tuna salad (© P. J. O’Rourke), regard American corporate creationism as a heresy.

So on several grounds, including those already mentioned in earlier posts, your assertions can be tossed into the bin, and indeed are tossed into the bin by millions of Christians across the planet. Indeed, your brand of creationism has less to do with hermeneutics than finance, as it was expressly brought into existence by corporate entities that extract a lucrative income from the gullible rubes that said corporate entities sell their lies to. Corporate entities that also involve themselves in politics in a manner egregiously violating separation of church and state, and which have managed to buy political favours from a major political party in pursuance of said egregious violation.

Indeed, the Duplicity Institute explicitly stated its aims in this regard in the infamous Wedge Strategy document, which called for the replacement of science with Christian mythology, while several of its mouthpieces openly align creationism with the worst excesses of fuck-you right wing capitalism.

Several of us here have been placing creationism under a microscope for decades, stretching back all the way to the sleazy outpourings of arch-charlatan and professional liar for doctrine Henry Morris in the 1970s, this noxious individual being almost single-handedly responsible for shaping the foundations of American corporate creationism for the best part of 30 years.

But of course, none of the facts ever sway the keyboard warriors of creationism from polluting large swathes of the Internet with their lies.

2 Likes