wyzaard

One reaction might be favored over another... I would say that the existance of living creatures confirms this.

The slim possibility that you were speaking of has turned out not to be slim; as natural laws have not been shown to have been broken, now or in the past, the biochemical possibilities seem to be in the favor of life given ample material, energy, and time.

If YOU would like to unnecessarally add additional entities, then provide a salient alternative model and back it up.

The nature of whatever metaphyscial possibility actually exists, along with whatever effect 'it' might have on the physical world, is not present knowledge.

The first is a default: we are here, and natural laws appear to be functioning just fine... to say that they didn't at some point is a HUGE leap that YOU need to provide need for, provided that that is even possible to do given our perspective constriants. The second is actually an emperical question to some extent, given that multiple universes explains the manifestations of numerous physical laws, but indeed it is borderline... but it's not permanently clouded, however.

How so? This process it NOT linear. The energy and material go back into the mix for another go around, this time having skipped a few steps in the process!

You really need to strip, painfully, the teleological baggage off of your assumptions concerning this process as scientists explain it. Behe's 'mousetrap' it is not.

If he cannot realize that WE place our epistemological frameworks upon the world, then he's a pretty lost cause; we only 'see' information because WE are doing the quantifying and catagorizing.

And again... making emperical-to-metaphyscial leaps is the business of oracles, not scientists.

ANY metaphysical schema can underlie ANY physcial world... and none of us possess the meta-perspective needed to breach the wall between appearance and actuality.

I ask: does your explaination make a falsifiable, bounded, cohesive, amending, fruitful, and useful contribution to the scientific epistemiological convention?

ID theorists cannot do any of these with their quasi-god.

lee_merrill

Hi Wyzaard,

Well, that would be the anthropic principle, based on assuming that naturalism is really true.

And which calculation do you mean? I do need more specifics.

I am actually basing my conclusion on what we know now, and you are the one adding additional entities! How, specifically(!), did a chemical soup produce all the right-handed (or left-handed) molecules necessary for life? That is another astonishing difficulty for abiogenesis, one link with the wrong type of molecule in it spoils the result, and in nature it is difficult to get around a 50-50 mix of left and right-handedness. But all the parts of critical molecules have to be the same in this aspect, for them to work at all.

Saying "It must have happened" doesn't prove your scenario of how it happened!

Life being most improbable is, however a conclusion from present knowledge. But we are indeed here, as you point out, which demands an explanation. The more we know, the less likely it seems that we got here by chance. The probability of having just one earth-like planet anywhere in the universe is now quite small, in Hugh Ross' estimation. Problem upon problem, and all reducing the already extraordinarily small probability.

Then if there is evidence for a designer, on other grounds (such as fulfilled prophecy--which is present knowledge), I think we may reasonably conclude we have a good candidate for who (and thus how) it all got started.

The anthropic principle is also saying that it's probable that natural processes did it. That is a huger leap. And if there is someone with a claim to knowing the future (just rebuild Babylon to disprove this claim!), then the ID view is not so huge a leap.

I have also been healed, after praying, several times, that also reduces the leap to less than huge. It seems there is Someone really there.

Who also wrote a book starting "In the beginning..."

Well, you need to tell me how a protein loses amino acids! In a chemical soup, composed of just those amino acids. That I'm not sure of.

How did all those amino acids get there, by the way? The conditions for making all these amino acids do not (alas) coincide. Another problem for the abiogenesists.

Um, Hubert Yockey does not believe in a designer.

And what is the strong anthropic principle if not (bad) metaphysics?

Certainly we don't! But maybe a Designer could move from the other side of the wall, in fulfilled prophecy, in healing, in other ways.

Sure it does!

Just rebuild Babylon, you will have disproved my conclusion. If a next attempt fails, like Saddam Hussein's latest venture, we will have more good evidence that someone is preventing this.

Then perhaps we should inquire into what they may be about, what else they may have done or be doing in the world.

Regards,
Lee

John A. Broussard

How do you account for the fact that many, many people are healed without praying?

How do you account for the fact that many, many people are not healed after praying?

How do you account for the fact that many, many people with a missing limb know that praying won't heal them and so they don't pray?

I look forward to you answers to the above.

lee_merrill

Prayer is not machinery, John...

"Even if all the things that people prayed for happened -- which they do not -- this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable "success" in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something more like magic -- a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature." (C.S. Lewis)

Regards,
Lee

John A. Broussard

Thanks for the reply, though you answered only one of the questions I asked, namely:

"How do you account for the fact that many, many people are not healed after praying?"

And your answer just says there's no guarantee the prayer will work because god knows best

Care to try this one next?:

"How do you account for the fact that many, many people with a missing limb know that praying won't heal them and so they don't pray?"

wyzaard

As natural laws have been shown to have been fuctioning quite consistently, and living systems are bopping along just fine, YOU need to show that at some time they did not, or presently do not in relevance to these reactions for there to be any hint of necessitating some sort of supernatural explaination or another..

Lots of material on this planet, a big sun pouring energy into the system in question, plus lots of time, PLUS the fact that living systems currently bop along just fine without supernatural agency, renders any supernatural explaination superfluous at best.

Many clays have been found to have catalytic properties for one-sidedness, as well as many active enzomatic isomers that act as 'knitters'. All in accordinance with natural laws already observed. Now supernatural entities on the other hand...

Scientific models are never 'proven', they are simply confirmed to a reasonable degree or not given alternate possibilities and the bounds of the inquery... neither of which ID has fit the bill.

And yet, natural laws appear to be in order... so, it simply appears as though we were lucky, and another possibility given other possibilites was not (such as sentient gas clouds). Luck of the draw... which by the way, doesn't mean we are any more 'special' than any other possibility... jsut because we think we're special doesn't mean we are.

Which seriously screws up your thesis even further... say this universe as is was a deliberate creation. Who says WE are the intended objects of interest, IF one exists at all? Perhaps this creator likes white dwarfs or styrofoam cups... or was just warming up for creating another BETTER universe than ours?

False. No one has shown such 'present knoweldge' as anything more than self-referential heresay.

False. ANY physical universe could have ANY possible creator with ANY set of motives. You have yet to show any empirical-metaphysical corralative, perceptible link.

Ummm... you're slipping away here...

Or you have psychic powers. Or you are mistaken. Or... anything else, natural and/or metaphysical.

So you say. But...

You're thinking of this too linearly. There are LOTS of things in that soup, lots of reactions leading to other reactions.

"But what about" arguments get really old, especially when it's usually carried back before space-time and all natural law. At that point... why not say a sound 'dunno'?

The WAP makes no claims, it only dismisses a few silly metaphyscial necessities.

How would we know that's what it is? This is a problem dealing with our limited range of perception and verification.

Given the geographical position of Babylon, that it hasn't been the most stable landscape is not a matter of prophesy, but of historical inevidebility.

Jack the Bodiless

Good grief.

Lee, why are you still dragging the FAILED Babylon prophecy around, and the FAILED "Egypt will never rule other nations" prophecy, and the UNPROVEN "there will always be Jewish people" (more properly, the UNREMARKABLE "there have been Jewish people thus far"), and ignoring the other FAILED prophecies...

If we SHOULD believe in your God because of "fulfilled prophecies", why can't you present even ONE genuinely remarkable and genuinely fulfilled prophecy?

...But, please, do it in the Biblical History & Criticism forum.

John A. Broussard

Lee tried it there, failed and gave up.

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Well, natural laws do not prove naturalism! Just as arithmetic laws do not prove that all the world is arithmetic. And how about an immense improbability, based on just those natural laws? Doesn't that have relevance, showing that natural processes, as far as we know, did not produce that result?

Um, that is not a calculation...

That's right! Also polarized radiation from certain stars. Yet the effect is still not strong enough to guarantee one type of molecule in a needed concentration, by any means. This is still a problem which has not been resolved...

Are also observed! As in fulfilled prophecy.

What does that do by way of disproving fulfilled prophecy, though? The motive we inquire into if we become satisfied that there is Someone there, and this is not a hypothetical universe, we have to take what we do see here in forming our conclusions.

Well, a real, testable, falsifiable prediction does have metaphysical implications, does it not? And is quite perceptible.

What we need is the alternative that is most probable, though. It is possible that we (luckily) just all appeared two seconds ago! In a quantum fluctuation, with perceptions of a history that isn't really real. But that is not a good explanation, because it is so improbable.

Maybe the creator has a book out? There might be further indications and explanation there.

Well, how is my comment not to the point? There is a huge leap in abiogenesis, and also good evidence for a supernatural agent, in fulfilled prophecy, thus lessening the ID gap.

But again, we need to know what is most probable. That is how we can sort out possibilities.

Not in the talk.origins soup! That is part of the problem, by the way, the proposed primordial soups all tend to degrade various critical needed components, as well as various desired resulting products.

But this is based on present knowledge! This is not a speculation, saying that these needed components came about is what is the speculation here.

And isn't the strong anthropic principle a "what about" argument? It's just exactly that.

The weak anthropic principle says "nature-did-it", after chiding (invalid) theist arguments that just say "God did it"! With no evidence in either case. The strong anthropic principle (which was what I was talking about here) postulates many, maybe infinitely many parallel universes, with no evidence. That's not only bad metaphysics in both cases, that's bad physics.

I would again say we could try and evaluate what is most probable here. I agree that there will be no sure and certain proof. But I can't give you a sure and certain proof that I have eyeballs in my head!

But what do you mean by an unstable landscape? If Saddam had not tried to attack other countries, if he had not been so violent, I think he could well have rebuilt Babylon, as he intended. Yet he, and Alexander the Great, both failed...

Um, it's not rebuilt.

They actually haven't...

What do you mean, unproven? Of course, a forever prophecy cannot ever be said to be finally fulfilled, but then it is falsifiable, and Hitler tried, and he also failed.

I can't present one because I have three! Actually, I have more than three.

Is fulfilled prophecy not good evidence for the existence of God?

I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader...

Regards,
Lee

John A. Broussard

By now you may have become aware that it's difficult to convince some people that a prophesy has been "fulfilled", especially when it's a vague, amorphous, Nostrodamian type which you seem to love. Such unfulfilled prophecies are not very good evidence for the existence of God.

However, as I've pointed out several times before, praying to god to have an amputated leg restored and being able to watch the stump grow back into a useful limb (we could record it on TV) would be VERY convincing.

On the other hand, the fact that people never even pray for that kind of miracle is certainly negative evidence that:

1. They really don't believe in god.
2. The god you keep talking about doesn't exist.