Saturday 21 July 2007

I Believe in "God"

There is of course, the belief in the monotheistic God(s)... of which Judaism, Christianity, Islam - et al, are all prime examples, of where such beliefs are held.

Such Gods, are of course, based on a supernatural speculation, of a 'force' existing outside of nature. Moreover, there are those of more literal 'mind-sets', that seem to believe in such a God; as a man-like being, sitting on a golden-thrown, somewhere up in space, looking down on Earthly beings and their behavior, ready to dish out punishments and rewards. This would be funny, apart from the fact that children's minds are inculcated with this nonsense.

A belief in a supernatural God of monotheism, such as that of Christianity, holds up the premise, that universal laws of nature, can be suspended and they are suspended to allow miracles to occur. Now a miracle does not merely mean the unusual. A miracle means something that is specifically impossible, under the normal laws of physics. For a a miracle to occur, the laws of physics would have to be suspended.

If someone wins the lottery and they are mystically minded, they may well shout 'miracle' ...But because of probability statistics, someone somewhere was likely to win, it just happened to be this individual. So, winning the lottery is not a miracle, it is just statistically unlikely, for any one particular individual and when one does win, it is falsely seen as miraculous.

The true definition of what miracle means, is often misappropriated... Thus, we get incidents in the media, of individuals been dragged out alive from under rubble after an Earthquake and people shout - "it's a miracle" ...But the fact of the matter is, that hundreds, if not thousands, may die in an Earthquake of force 8.0-8.9 Richter Scale magnitude. Is it really a miracle, that some people get pulled out alive? - rather, it is statistically probable that some would.

A similar phenomena occurs with telephone calls, when someone thinks of a person, the phone suddenly rings and it's that person. Again, this is simply a law of probability, there are millions of phone calls made everyday, statistically, it is not surprising that every now and then, someone somewhere will be thinking of a person, just before they phone.

So, the God of the old testament, is a supernatural speculation and believers, rely on the belief in miracles, as a distinct possibility. No evidence has ever been produced for such apparent miracles of course. To believe in the miraculous, one first has to suspend the belief, that the laws of physics are universally applicable at all times and one must believe that God can trump such laws; as 'he, she or it' sees fit.

Now moving on, from the supernatural God(s) of monotheism, I can move on to say: that I do hold up the possibility of another sort of 'God' within the universe. But as I will explain in a minute, the 'God' I'm talking about has no supernatural claims attached to it.

Imagine an advanced civilization in another galaxy, say 100 years more advanced than human beings, now imagine an advanced civilization that is 10,000 or even 100,000 years more advanced than us. This speculation has been put forward by the inventor and futurist Ray kurzweil. This idea was also put forward by Dr. Frank R. Wallace in a manuscript called The Neo-Tech Discovery.

Now, if the laws of physics are constant and universal, throughout the universe, such advanced conscious beings would have to obey the same laws of physics as us. But, if we ever met them, we may be tempted to call them Gods and kneel before them. By the same token, imagine an individual in the Dark Ages, being brought forward to the technology of the 21st century, such an individual would be awestruck by mobile phones, television, the Internet, space flight and what would they make of Quantum Physics. To such a person, we would seem God-like.

So perhaps there are 'Gods' of the universe. But they only seem Godly because of their steps-ahead in technological progress... Indeed, perhaps they are so advanced that they have merged their biological selves with the very technology they use.

Imagine the God of the Old Testament next to a civilization of biological beings, who are say, one million years more advanced than us, their technology would surely be mind-bogglingly astronomical and could out compete any geocentrically minded supernatural God, in terms of instilling wonder and awe.

Now, there is of course, a major difference in believing in a supernatural monotheistic God on the one hand and an advanced civilization of conscious beings, who only seem godly from our primitive perspective on the other hand. The God of the Old Testament relies on belief, bound up in faith and has no connection to anything knowable in reality, indeed, it presumes a being that can defy the known laws of that reality. The speculation of an advanced 'God-like' species out in the universe, is simply drawn from a known premise: we know that conscious beings exist, us... and therefore it is not unreasonable to speculate other conscious beings, may possibly exist in the universe and they may well be more advanced than us, even far more so. Thus, one cannot prove that such advanced conscious beings exist, at least not at our current level of technology, but one can speculate.

On the other hand, one cannot point to anything in nature that could lead one to speculate a supernatural creator, that works somewhere outside of nature. Indeed, let us just suppose for a minute, that such a being did exist... The point is, that one could never prove it, even if it were true... To know God one would have to step outside of nature to know, one would have to suspend the same laws of physics, that theists claim can be suspended through miracles.




How I make money from this article and how you can make money too. Please Click here to email me! Please do not remove 'permission' from body of email.

* Evidence-Blaster Software
o Discover the ultimate Internet and Windows history cleaner!

6 comments:

Guitanguran said...

"On the other hand, one cannot point to anything in nature that could lead one to speculate a supernatural creator"

Although I would argue that nature itself is proof enough of Intelligent Design, let me suggest DNA as proof positive. When you consider DNA consists of only four chemical bases, and the proper arrangement of them can produce a tree, a fruit fly, or a human being, its complexity is a given. Consider the makeup of DNA for a human being is about 3 billion of these bases arranged in a certain way. Now as the U.S. government explains it, "... information in DNA is stored as a code...".

That's it.

If we look at 'code' as its commonly understood, it is simply another word for 'language'. Now, we certainly can use telescopes and microscopes to discover patterns in nature, but language is another thing altogether. Language requires intelligence to create it. The more developed the language, well you get the picture. I know of no language that has spontaneously sprung up out of nowhere, and I've studied a couple.

So...

What you're dealing with here is the language of creation. Now, you can say that DNA evolved in and of itself, but evolution can in no way explain the code itself, or where it came from. I submit that believing in a Creator for DNA is alot less far fetched than any explanation you can come up with.

See, didn't even crack open a Bible. But that's where your trouble lay. Its not about just a creator. Its about the God of the Bible. Most of the objections, the crass remarks, the insults, and put-downs are aimed squarely there, not at some impersonal creative entity's existence, or lack of.

Why?

The God of the Bible holds you accountable. The God of the Bible deals solely with absolutes of right or wrong. Denying the existence of such takes you off the hook. Not wanting to take the blame, well that's human nature.

Craig Secularman said...

Well yes, you can argue that nature itself is proof of Intelligent Design. But argument is not proof. Proof relies on evidence.

Professor Michael Behe made claim for design through the Bacterial Flagellum. His argument was torn apart by Professor Kenneth Miller in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover School area district trial. Indeed, Behe, admitted on the witness stand, if one let Intelligent Design in the science classroom, one would also have to allow astrology... Members of the court room apparently burst out laughing.

Of course there is design in nature.... But it is design through the slow process of Evolution by Natural Selection.

I'm sorry but you are in error. It is true that DNA consists of only 4 'letters' and yes you are also correct in saying it is digital. But you are in error in your assumption that this combination of 4 letters in a sequence, is all there is, to combine to make flies, mice, cats, people or whatever. Lets take a sequence of four numbers, say on your cashpoint card pin.... How many potential combinations of numbers would a thief have to got through, to get your number? ...It would be about 10,000 different combinations. But this assumes that the combination is simply linear and flat and one can only combine those four numbers with one another. But DNA is more like multiple combination locks, you've seen the one's with wheels on, which you can spin in different combinations, here's one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_lock

Now a combination lock with only 4 dials, would have 10,000 combinations. Now human DNA is more like 23 combination locks (chromosomes) with 4 positions each, in the female and the same for the male, all consisting of 4 digits. Now I don't know what the actual number of combinations is, but I do know that it is astronomically large, easily large enough for flies, mice, cats and people. Indeed, the combinations are so astronomically large, that there is plenty of room for ''Junk DNA ...something we all carry.'

I think the number would be something like this.... If each combination lock of 4 digits had 10,000 combinations, then it would be:

10,000 x 10,000 x10,000 x 10,000 x10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000 x 10,000

...So, that is 23 chromosomes representing 10,000 combinations. It is a huge number and that is just from the one sex partner, introduce sex and you have 23 x 10,000 x 23 x 10,000

Now, simply by saying that the sequence of DNA bases leads to complexity, is not proof that such complexity requires a designer. Indeed, Evolution by Natural Selection does not deny complexity, it is exactly what it predicts, simple chemicals, recombine to make more complex chemicals and so on, sooner or later the complexity would leading to very simple carbon life forms, over time ramping up in organic complexity, which then recombine to make more complex organisms and so on. What is needed as Richard Dawkins has said, is a gradual ramping up effect. It is multiples of complexity recombining through time and there has been ample time for evolution to start from simple chemicals, to move from this to perhaps, some kind of RNA, and from RNA to DNA and so on. Now we do not know what the original sequence of events were that led to the first organisms.... But, what does not help, is to say we do not yet know, therefore God must of done it... in saying that you have answered absolutely nothing. A more honest approach is to simply say, we don't have all the answers yet. But many theists feel, that because we cannot yet answer every scientific question, that is proof positive that where there are gaps in our knowledge and one should therefore presume a God. This is just sloppy thinking.

Intelligent Design is Creationism. It's just dressed up with a scientific sounding name, to lend it credibility. It has been called Creationism in a Tuxedo.

Guitanguran said...

"Professor Michael Behe made claim for design through the Bacterial Flagellum. His argument was torn apart by Professor Kenneth Miller in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover School area district trial. Indeed, Behe, admitted on the witness stand, if one let Intelligent Design in the science classroom, one would also have to allow astrology... Members of the court room apparently burst out laughing."

Red Herring. What I'm reading there is a 14th amendment argument of 'equal protection under the law', however flawed in that case. I can't help it if Professor Bebe came to a gunfight with a letter opener by equating intelligent design with astrology.

The math lesson was appreciated, but it brings up a point about what happens with DNA If we're to go backwards and get down to the most elemental biological form at the 'beginning', we're not talking about alot of information compared to what's needed for a human being. But, according to your argument the information eventually becomes complex enough to get here from...there. Looking at microevolutionary processes, that are actually observable (we weren't around for the big bang, so we don't know enough about macro)there's no 'net gain' of information as part of the process. If anything, information gets 'lost' in the process. Considering nothing currently observable coincides with what would have to happen on a macroevolutionary scale, I'd call your notion, a "stretch".

"Now we do not know what the original sequence of events were that led to the first organisms.... But, what does not help, is to say we do not yet know, therefore God must of done it..."

Lets play with that for a second. Lets take a more down to earth (heh) example, like the Empire State Building. Never met the designer or had contact with him in any way. Never saw the original plans for the building he designed. Lot of complexity involved with the finished product. Yet, I can take the tour (which I did on my honeymoon some years ago) and understand it just didn't spring up out of nowhere. It didn't start out as a palm frond lean-to to combine spontaneosly with a mud hut, and sponaneously combine with a tee-pee, further to combine with a log cabin and so on to come up with an eventual skyscraper. That's macroevolution the way you're selling it. Rather, somebody, some person that I've never seen nor talked to, designed that building. That's how it got there.

There again, its never about what you and I can argue, ever how much amusement there is in mental jousting. Its about having to be accountable to God. Atheism, agnosticsm or any other 'ism' is in current vogue is just another way of avoiding that accountability, at least in the short run.

Craig Secularman said...

I'm sorry, but no... The red herring is yours. It would be context dropping to say that the Intelligent Design proposition was thrown out of court just because of Behe's "astrology statement". There were at least 4 major reasons, why Intelligent Design was thrown out of court, as a proposition to be taught in science classes, alongside Evolution by Natural Selection:

1) The scientific evidence produced by Professor Kenneth R. Miller (who by the way, happens to be religious himself), who showed with absolute scientific proof positive, that the Bacterial Flagellum, that Behe made claim for Intelligent Design, was not intelligently designed. Miller has also published an excellent book (which I've read (you can see my review of it on this Blog), which presents the same evidence of why Bacterial Flagellum is not Designed. You can also watch a video lecture given by Miller about the trial on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

Note: If you read my review of Miller's book ('Finding Darwin's God', you may notice that I am not so anti-religious as maybe you think I am... While I do think the World would be better off without religion, I could happily live alongside moderates who keep it to themselves and don't feel the need to bully and coerce others.

2) Also in the court case, the dishonesty of the board members who were trying to force Intelligent Design into the science curriculum, even an astonishing account of one of the board members burning a child's mural, on evolution.

3) The testimony of Barbara Forrest, who was called as a witness for the plaintiffs and was the most feared witness against the Intelligent Design proponents... Indeed, the lawyers tried 'every trick in the book' to prevent her testimony. She showed that the Intelligent Design is a totally political ploy, built round a document called the 'Wedge Strategy' produced by Phillip Johnson of the Discovery Institute. Barbara Forrest showed that this document was deliberately created for political (not scientific) purposes, to get creationism taught in science classes. Barbara Forrest co authored a book with Paul R. Gross (which I've also read) called 'Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design". This book completely and utterly dismantles the Intelligent Design arguments, with reasoned argument. Because the Wedge Strategy was so convincingly torn apart, the Discovery Institute have had to abandon it.

4) Michael Behe who I have previously mentioned: an American biochemist and an advocate of Intelligent Design, admitted on the witness stand, that he has not had one scientific paper, on Intelligent Design peer reviewed in even one respected scientific journal.

Your 'macro' argument is itself a red herring, again in a Blog on this site, I have already explained the difference between macro and micro evolution, there really isn't one. Macro evolution is just a convenient concept, to explain multiples of micro evolution over time.

Now I don't know what your religious position is, you never said... But you next comment is the kind of thing a Young Earth creationist like Kent Hovind would say and it is also the kind of lawyer speak that Phillip Johnson uses, he puts forward basically the same arguments as Hovind, but he uses more "sophisticated" lawyer language, to make it sound more convincing and if one knows nothing about science, it is convincing, but it is really just Creationism... Now you said:

"Lets play with that for a second. Lets take a more down to earth (heh) example, like the Empire State Building. Never met the designer or had contact with him in any way. Never saw the original plans for the building he designed. Lot of complexity involved with the finished product. Yet, I can take the tour (which I did on my honeymoon some years ago) and understand it just didn't spring up out of nowhere. It didn't start out as a palm frond lean-to to combine spontaneosly with a mud hut, and sponaneously combine with a tee-pee, further to combine with a log cabin and so on to come up with an eventual skyscraper. That's macroevolution the way you're selling it. Rather, somebody, some person that I've never seen nor talked to, designed that building. That's how it got there."

This is straight out of an Intelligent Design/Creationism 'text book' ...But it is not a scientific argument. It has nothing to do with Evolution by Natural Selection and it is the same complexity argument as Paley's watch. That argument was put to rest after Darwin. No scientist takes it seriously. But what creationists do, is to constantly say, lets debate the controversy. There is no controversy over Evolution by Natural Selection... The 'debate the controversy' demand comes from Creationists not scientists. But again you are using the 'leap of faith' proposition, you are saying, we cannot fully explain first cause, therefore, God or an Intelligent Designer did it.... This gets us nowhere. Once you postulate a designer, you have answered absolutely nothing, you just end up with an infinite regress, who designed the designer and who designed 'it' and so on. Also, a designer who could design such complexity, would have to be far more complex than the design, just as a watchmaker is far more complex than a watch... The only way out of this quandary and the only explanation that works is Evolution by Natural Selection.

Atheism is a 'current vogue' you say? ...I have been an atheist all my life, well at least from the age I grasped its meaning... I hope you wouldn't suggest its a current vogue for me too. In any case, I do not agree that it is the "current vogue" ...I wouldn't be suprised that the many atheists who are now 'coming out' were mostly closet athesits anyway, they haven't suddenly lost their religion, they weren't religious in the first place. The reason that they are now coming out so forcefully, is because the current religious climate of extremism demands it.

What has suprised both Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins on there book tours, is the positive response they get, they have come to the conclusion that atheists are far more numerous than people think.

To quote Dawkins on his comments of his reading of the God Delusion at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia on October 23, 2006

You can watch the video here:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,303,Reading-of-
The-God-Delusion-in-Lynchburg-VA,Richard-Dawkins--C-SPAN2

...QUOTE

"Many of the questioners announced themselves as either students or faculty from Liberty, rather than from Randolph Macon which was my host institution. One by one they tried to trip me up, and one by one their failure to do so was applauded by the audience. Finally, I said that my advice to all Liberty students was to resign immediately and apply to a proper university instead. That received thunderous applause, so that I almost began to feel slightly sorry for the Liberty people. Only almost and only slightly, however." ...Richard Dawkins

END QUOTE...

Guitanguran said...

Got alot of fish swimming around in this discussion, eh? In terms of the trial, you make an interesting statement.

"The scientific evidence produced by Professor Kenneth R. Miller (who by the way, happens to be religious himself), who showed with absolute scientific proof positive, that the Bacterial Flagellum, that Behe made claim for Intelligent Design, was not intelligently designed."

You mentioned in an earlier post, "Now we do not know what the original sequence of events were that led to the first organisms...." Well now, either Professor Miller knows something the rest of us don't with his "absolute scientific proof positive" about bacterial flagellum, or he doesn't. Can't have it both ways, can we?

As to the politics of school boards, that's just it, politics. I can't speak for the motivations of others when it comes to what a school board decides is approved curricula. In terms of someone wanting I.D. as a foot in the door for religious instruction, particularly of one religion, that violates the 14th amendment(Thats assuming that kind of motivation was explicit, or not). Either have them all included, or none. Can't have that both ways there, either.

"Macro evolution is just a convenient concept, to explain multiples of micro evolution over time."

You never addressed the point of DNA not actually 'increasing' in micro evolution. Now if DNA is often lost or a the very least not increased as a result of microevolution, simply multiplying the instances of microevolution as you say should logically have us going backwards, not forward.

Mr. Dawkins. Well, I'll have to consider what he has to say at another time. But I'll try get to it.

As to my religious position, you've obviously not paying a whole lot of attention to what I've said up to this point. Surely you can guess.

Craig Secularman said...

That was not the point of my comments on tha Bacterial Flaggelum and it was not the point on which it was brought up in the court case either. The Bacterial Flagellum was produced in evidence, because Behe made the 'scientific' claim that its bilogical structure was far to complex to be reduced to that of a less complex earlier organism (a bit like a watch, if you take a part out, it will not work). Miller proved conclusivley that it not only could work, but how it naturally evolved from less complexity and without intervention of a 'neccessary' Inteligent Designer'.

This has nothing to do with your comment: 'events were that led to the first organisms' ...That is abiogeneis and not Evolution by Natural Selection'. Evolution by Natural Selection, has nothing to say about first causes, it simply shows how things go once they get going and not how they got going in the first place.

Creationists often also seem to be nieve, as to how far on, scientists are in understanding abiogenesis. We know far more than Creationists make out, either because they are deliberately avoiding the issue, or they are just plain ignorant...

Read: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html


As for the motivation, being explicit or not, yes it was absolutely, I should of mentioned that as a point. It was a specific political ploy. This was reavealed in court by Barbara Forrest, the ploy was through a document that outlined their plans to get Intelligent Design; into science classes. This is all outlined in Forrest's book.

I have addressed the complexity issue, in another post, but here it is again:


As to your point on DNA... again, sorry I really do yawn at these claims from Creationists, I keep thinking they would have come up with some new arguments by now. Again this is a claim of Creationists and not scientists. New information through recombination of genes is created all the time and leads from less complex to more complexity. This is not a problem for Evolution and is perfectly explainable.Creationists claim that Evolution by Natural Selection is just a theory of chance and thus random mutations can only lead to lost information. This is just plain wrong. If Evolution by Natural Selection was just a theory of random chance, then of course it could not work.

The point is that it is not just evolution of random mutations, but it is evolution by 'Natural Selection... Natural Selection is the antithesis of chance. The random mutations are guided by natural selection. For example, if white mice and black mice are running round, on a light colored terrain next to a volcano, the black mice will be more prone to been eaten by hawks, because of poor camouflage compared to the white mice and thus, more genes for white mice get passed on through the gene pool, than for black mice, increasing information for white mice, through the gene pool. Now suppose the volcano erupts and the ash and lava flow darkens the terrain. Now the white mice are more vulnerable and the genes for black mice increase in the gene pool, an increase in information for black mice. The so called loss of information claim, used by Creationists only works based on their claim that Evolution is just a theory of chance.... But it is not, it is Evolution by 'Natural Selection'.