Sven

You have problems with lee? Just go to BC&H and observe bnfiii and most recently mata leo.
I've never seen such content-free ramblings.

And Sauron, who still discusses with them, is certainly the king of patience. :notworthy

Sven

Do you mean the temporal shield, suggested by jdlongmire?
This was certainly a nice joke! Especially since it sucked (the air out of the temporal bubble)!

fast

For those theists who realize that they cannot substantiate the claim that God exists has no rational basis to hold the claim as true. To me, this is a separate and distinct matter as to whether they claim that they believe God exists. Some of them recognize the difference between knowing and believing, and many that conflate the two meanings will still be believing and not knowing, so I say we need to maintain our defensive posture of being armed and ready, but don't fire out "prove it" until they "say it".

Remember, this all started with seebs saying that "atheists haven't proven their case", and they haven't. We can't possibly prove it to the standard required. I don't buy into all this "implicit" talk. Let him explicitly say, "God exists", then you can come out gun's blazing, but until then, you cannot disprove the claim. We don't have to PROVE anything. We only need to show that their claims have not been evidenced as true.

Biff the unclean

Please make up your mind. Either we cannot disprove the claim or there is no claim to disprove.

fast

Sorry about that--I meant, "[...] disprove the claim [stated by seebs]."

To restate:

If a person says, "I believe that God exists", then let's not treat that as an implicit claim that "God exists," for there are cases where the former do not imply the latter. A theist should not be held to implicit claims, for they may not indeed be implicit in even the majority of cases, let alone all cases.

I believe the stolen money is in my co-workers shoes, and that is true, for I do BELIEVE that to be the case, but I dare not make the claimed assertion that that is in fact the case, for I do not know that that claim is true, but I do know that the claim is true that I believe it so.

Once I claim God exists, then I am accountable to THAT claim.

Biff the unclean

Only if they are schizophrenic.

Then we are back to you calling the majority of Christians being duplicitous, double-talking weasels again who want to have their cake and eat it too.

If no claims are made then there can be no response.
Since God exists as nothing more than a claim with no actual God to even hang the word God on then we cannot pretend that the claim evaporates between assertions.
If an Atheist, such as myself, declares that there is no God then the only reply these fantasy Christians of yours could make would be …�God? What’s a God?� If they know what the word means then the claim must already have been made.

Once you label yourself a Theist you make yourself accountable to that claim.

Naked Ape

Wow, do you expect us to believe that this wacky notion that Crick banged out in 1973 is somehow accepted by the scientific community at large? Pull the other one.
You see, the thing is, in science, you can't just proclaim shit, you have to back it up with proof. Claims without proof are more what you find in religious indoctrination.
There is a page called Problems with Panspermia here, if you are actually interested.
In regards to this particular theory, yes.
Seriously, do you think you can win with such weak kung fu? Google has the answer to your silly questions about this marginal theory, it took me a good solid 20 seconds to find the quote above.
I am curious. Has the fact that this thread revolves around the burden of proof completely escaped your attention? Crick did manage to pull off a Nobel prize for his work on DNA, largely because it was a little better thought out than his origin theories. If directed panspermia was the best he had, we would all be saying "Francis who?" now.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

fast

Hmmm. I think it's starting to come through.

If I say, "I believe God exists," then the third word becomes the point where I'm implicityly asserting an actual referent to the term, and the fourth word just clarifies the implicitness of it.

whiskey the hedonist

It isn't that simple. The word believe, in this context, can have two meanings. The first is to "accept as true." If I believe the earth is round, I accept as true the statement "The earth is round." If I believe that god exists, I accept as true the statement "God exists."

However, the word believe can also mean "to consider likely", so you may merely accept as likely the proposition that "God exists." or, from a Xian perspective, consider it likely that Christ died for our sins, or consider it likely that in the beginning, the FSM created a tree, a mountain, and a midget.

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Well, you are asking me to believe that what looks like a wall in a movie really is a wall. Made of granite stones! I don't think so, again, why didn't the archaeologists object, if he rebuilt the city on the ancient site? And where did all these magnificent buildings go? And the huge wall, 300 feet high?

Reconstructing one of the wonders of the world would probably be photographed in more than just a silent movie...

Yes, that was my definition, since the walls were very characteristic of Babylon. However, 5,000,000 inhabitants would overturn the other prediction, that Babylon would never be reinhabited, so you may seek to reinhabit Babylon, and never mind about rebuilding it!

Well, if I predict that you will never say blibbit, then you can make my prophecy fail by saying at this moment, "Blibbit"! A prediction that some event will never happen can indeed be overturned, and at any time, if it is within human power.

This is surprising to hear, do you not think that if Hitler had gotten this bomb first, he would have been in a position to carry out all his threats? And Einstein thought the Manhatten project was urgent...

Well now, how on earth would Egypt ruling other nations not invalidate this prophecy? This is plain as plain. I shall reply by quoting RGD! "Same as above"...

Well, no, I only insist that Jagella must refute Orgel and Crick, in order to substantiate his claim of victory, for the proposals of special creation and of special seeding of life on earth by intelligent agents are similar, as far as Jagella's arguments are concerned.

Well, I was actually requiring Jagella to refute this! I of course, don't subscribe to this view, so I'm not especially motivated to argue about this, my point was only that Jagella needs to address these scientist folks, because of his claim.

Yes, and so did Antony Flew! It seems that the naturalistic origin of life is simply implausible, which is why a scientist who discovered DNA might think it could not happen via abiogenesis on earth. So how is his view here refuted? You have to show that such abiogenesis is probable. I have a back-of-the-envelope here, that I post occasionally:

So let's start by making codons, that's how life makes proteins. Now there are three letters in the alphabet of codons, with 4 possibilities for each letter, and we need 20 codon groups, one for each necessary amino acid, plus one "stop" codon, and there are a bunch of duplicates, and a total of 64 codons in all. So to assemble each codon we have a probability of 1/(4^3), and let's say there are 64/21 duplicates for each codon, or 3.05, so we have the probability for each codon is 3.05/64, or about 0.05. Then the probability of our 21 codon groups is 0.05^21, or about 2 chances in 10^28.

Now we have to put our codons to work, and we need about 250 gene products at a minimum, each of which needs at least 110 amino acids or so, so now we have a probability of ((0.05^21)^110)^250, which is about 2 in 10^751,250.

Now there are different variations of each protein, so let's say that we only really need 20% of the 110 amino acids instead, then we get 1 in ((0.05^21)^22)^250, or about 1 in 10^150,250.

And let's say we can substitute one thousand possible completely different, interchangeable proteins for each designated protein in our estimate. Then we have ((0.05^21)^22 * 1,000)^250, or about 2 in 10^6080.

Now if we have 100 billion squared stars, with 1/1,000,000 chance of a proper planet in each star, that's 10^14 planets, and lets allow 10 billion years, with 10^50 interactions per year on each planet. Then the probability is 10^74 / (2 * 10^6080), or about 2 in 10^5949, overall, which is tiny indeed.

So no proposed amount of cosmic primordial soup, working night and day, for billions of years, is at all likely to make even one set of gene products, from codons, scattered over all the planets in the universe, anywhere in the universe.

Regards,
Lee