Oh dear, someone posted a Gish Gallop of creationist bullshit that we’ve all seen time and again before, and which has been repeatedly destroyed.
It’s a measure of the indolence of the poster in question, that he didn’t bother to check whether or not his canards had been previously addressed, but I’m used to seeing this from the mythology fanboy crowd, especially the subset thereof that peddles creationist bullshit and lies.
Strap yourself in, Looby Loo, you’re in for a hard ride, with 100g acceleration being the least of your worries.
Crap. Oh wait, you appear to be unaware of relevant research in cosmological physics. Which flushes Kalamity Kraig’s Kalam bollocks down the toilet hard.
The fun part being that I covered relevant research from the cosmological physics literature in a post on the old version of the forums here (at somke point i’ll have to reprise that post on the new version of the forums) and a follow up post to this can be read here.
Those papers are just two of hundreds of scientific papers from the cosmological physics literature, covering pre-Big-bang cosmologies that have no need for a cartoon magic man from a goat herder mythology. Indeed, those papers have some interesting ramifications for the whoe “god” question, which I expounded upon in this post (which again I shall have to move over to the new forum).
Yes, that’s right, what happened before the Big Bang is an active research topic in cosmological physics, and the authors of the various papers in the field regard testable natural processes as sufficient to explain the instantiation of the observable universe - no cartoon magic man needed.
Of course, there are numerous other problems with the Kalam bollocks, but the above should be enough to give the honest, diligent reader serious pause for thought, not least because scientists have established that testable natural processes are sufficient to explain the vast body of observational data obtained over the past 350 years, and as a corollary, have rendered cartoon magic men from pre-scientific mythologies superfluous to requirements and irrelevant.
Moving on, it’s time to deal with this …
Again, bollocks. Oh wait, “fine tuning” is a MYTH. Douglas Adams satirised this nonsense with finesse, in his piece about the puddle, but I also dealt with this in a multi-subject post here, which again I shall have to bring over to the new forums. Scroll down to the part where I deal with two important scientific papers in detail. One of which 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. The other demonstrates that the same would be true, even if we deleted the weak nuclear force from the universe altogether.
Moving on …
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Guess what, Looby Loo? Over 100,000 peer reviewed scientific papers in the field of organic chemistry, document in exquisite detail that the chemical reactions implicated in the origin of life all WORK. I dealt with canards surrounding this topic here (this time on the new version of the forums) and in a grand exposition on the topic here, in which I cited 70 references to relevant scientific publications. Indeed, that exposition needs an update, to take account of the fact that the research has now moved on to experiments with synthetic model protocells, and the journal Nature has several collections of papers devoted to said research:
I also dealt with your infantile and simplistic view of the laws of thermodynamics in this extended post covering several relevant topics. A follow up post contining in the same vein can be read here, and again, I not only cite relevant peer reviewed scientific papers, but provide expositions of the content thereof in depth. Come back when you can match this.
Bullshit. first of all, DNA is the product of well understood organic chemistry, not a conjuring trick by a cartoon magic man. Indeed, the post I linked to earlier, namely this one, also destroys your bullshit about “information”. As for Dembski’s garbage about “specified complexity”, his drivel was shot out of the sky by genuine mathematicians.
Oh, and unguided forces have been demonstrated in the laboratory to be sufficient to perform a range of relevant tasks. In [url=New guy who believes in God - #430 by Calilasseia]this post[/uurl], I link to recent research by Japanese scientists, demonstrating that RNA strands in the laboratory can not only undergo Darwinian evolution, but generate their own molecular ecosystem. I link to four relevant peer reviewed scientific papers devoted to the relevant research.
Moving on …
Bullshit. oh wait, you are aware that there existed a host of lineages before the Cambrian, which were diverse and in some cases had very exotic body plans? Oh wait, I also dealt with this in another previous post here.
Oh, and not only have speciation events been documented taking place in the wild in several hundred, if not several thousand, lineages of living organisms, but scientists have replicated speciation events in the laboratory. Indeed, I devoted several posts to the matter of how speciation works and the relevant research, starting with this post providing citations from the scientific literature, followed by this post covering the operation of speciation, and this post covering the replication of a speciation event in the laboratory.
Bullshit. Most mythology fanboys I encounter don’t know what the laws of logic are.
Oh, and as for the merely asserted "immaterial, you’ve walked into a well prepared tank trap with that one. I’ll lead you through the baby steps right to Ground Zero, shall I? We start with:
Unsupported Assertion #1: your cartoon magic man actually exists.
Unless you provide evidence for this entity, your assertion is safely discardable.
Unsupported Assertion #2: there exists such a quantity as the “immaterial”.
Again, without evidence, this assertion is safely discardable.
Worse still for Unsupported Assertion #2, you have extra work to perform in relation to this assertion, courtesy of:
Unsupported Assertion #3: there purportedly cannot exist material evidence for the “immaterial”
Which means you have the task of devising an entire new methodology for deriving sound inferences about the “immaterial”, AND demonstrating that said methodology is reliable and consistent, without which all you have is hot air. Ex recto apologetic spells don’t count as a “methodology”, and neither does vacuous appeals to “my mythology says so”.
In case you slept through the requisite classes, a genuine methodology needs a proper, well-defined set of rules of inference and deduction, explicitly presented so that the soundness thereof can be determined by others. Once that is in place, you need to demonstrate that your choice of rules of inference and deduction do not generate inconsistencies or contradictions.
Then, you have to demonstrate that your methodology correctly distinguishes between the material and the “immaterial”, and returns correct results EVERY TIME.
Only once you have all this in place, are you in a position to tackle Unsupported Assertion #1. You then have to demonstrate that your methodology not only establishes that a god type entity of ANY sort exists, but that said entity is YOUR PARTICULAR CHOICE of god type entity.
That lot should keep you busy for about a millennium.
In the absence of all the above hard work, you have nothing but the contents of the television in your head to offer.
Moving on …
Bullshit. Over 1½ million peer reviewed scientific papers document in exquisite detail, the evidence for evolution, and I’ve already covered the matter of speciation in depth above. Also, there are numerous examples of de novo gene formation in that literature, including the emergence of antifreeze glycoproteins from a mutated duplicate copy of a trypsinogen gene in Antarctic Notothenioid fishes, a topic I covered briefly in this post.
The huge amount of scientific literature I’ve covered in the above linked posts, refutes this ex recto assertion wholesale.
Oh you are a fine specimen of ignorance, aren’t you?
Someone else beat me to this one, courtesy of this post, but in this post, I cover among other topics, the existence of an abundant scientific literature, documenting the evidence for the evolutionary and biological basis of [1] our capacity for ethical thought, and [2] the motivation to act thereupon[/url].
Here are some relevant papers from said literature:
Characterisation Of Empathy Deficits Following Prefrontal Brain Damage: The Role Of The Right Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex by S.G. Shamay-Tsoory, R. Tomer B.D. Berger and J. Aharon-Peretz, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15: 324-337 (2003)
The Role Of The Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex In Abstract State-Based Inference During Decision Making In Humans by Alan N. Hampton, Peter Bossaerts and John. P. O’Doherty, The Journal of Neuroscience, 26(32):, 8360-8367 (9th August 2006) (full paper downloadable from http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/reprint/26/32/8360
Characterisation Of The Decision-Making Deficit Of Patients With Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Lesions by Antione Bechara, Daniel Tranel and Hanna Damasio, Brain, 123: 2189-2202 (2000) [Full paper available from here: https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/123/11/2189/255844]
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Activation Is Critical For Preference Judgements by Martin P. Paulus and Lawrence R. Frank, NeuroReport, 14(10): 1311-1315 (28th March 2003)
Impairment Of Social And Moral Behaviour Related To Early Damage In Human Prefrontal Cortex by Steven W. Anderson, Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Daniel Tranel and Antonio R. Damasio, Nature Neuroscience, 2(11): 1032-1037 (November 1999)
Damage To The Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgements by Michael Koenigs, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc Hauser & Antonio Damasio, Nature, 446: 908-911 (19th April 2007) (full paper downloadable from Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements | Nature)
Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay by Sarah F. Brosnan & Frans B. M. de Waal, Nature, 425: 297-299 (18th September 2003) [Abstract available here: Monkeys reject unequal pay | Nature]
Primates—A Natural Heritage Of Conflict Resolution by Frans B. M. de Waal, Science, 289: 586-590 (28th July 2000) [Full paper downloadable from here: "http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/dmessinger/c_c/rsrcs/rdgs/peers_social_general/de_waal.science.pdf
Empathy: Its Ultimate And Proximate Bases by Stephanie D. Preston and Frans de Waal, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 25: 1-20 (2001). The full paper is downloadable from here: http://primate.uchicago.edu/empathy.pdf"
Mechanisms Of Social Reciprocity In Three Primate Species: Symmetrical Relationship Characteristics Or Cognition? by Frans B. M. de Waal and Lesleigh M. Luttrell, Ethology and Sociobiology, 9(2-4): 101-118 (1988)
Reconciliation And Consolation Among Chimpanzees by Frans B. M. de Waal and Angeline van Roosmalen, Behavioural Ecology & Sociobiology, 5(1): 55-66 (March 1979)
This is just a small snapshot of the literature. Factor in papers on human brain evolution, such as the various papers covering the ASPM and FOXP2 genes, and the picture becomes clear.
Incidentally, that post deals in addition with the duplicity inherent in “design” apologetics, along with trhis post. Indeed, at some point, I’ll have to expand further on the dishonesty that is the “design” assertion, and why the apologetics involved therein are a mendacious bait and switch in more detail, but for now, I’ll leave everyone with the above …
) Anyway… God had no beginning. He has no end. God has been here longer than INFINITY, and he will STILL be here (or somewhere) long after infinity passes away. Matter of fact, God has been around so long he can count to infinity forward and backward before either one of us can blink. A single day can be like a thousand years to God. And a thousand centuries can be like a single second. (Which could very well explain why some prayers do not get answered on time.) Point being, Kev, if you haven’t figured all this out by now, then I’m afraid there is no hope for you. Hate to be so blunt like that, but there is no easy way to say it. Best of luck to you, buddy.
