Why bother with God? (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, May 23, 2011, 04:28 (4932 days ago) @ David Turell


> > As for the eye, Hubble was a much better eye than the human eye. It can see Gamma, UV, "normal" light, Infrared, and microwave light. (IE, the entire spectrum of light.) We can deliberately choose bands. We can set its precision arbitrarily, and further, it was built to be built upon. (It was modular.) In comparison, the human eye sees only a tiny segment of light, and detects peripheral motion. 
> 
> Of course Hubble is a machine. The eye has life. I'd rather be the eye just to throw consciousness into the equation. And .Hubble has no free will. -Free will and consciousness have nothing to do with the eye--you're pulling a red herring here. All eyes in nature are automata--they do one thing, transform light into a signal. Hubble performs an identical function. From a design perspective, we don't need to consider the machinery interpreting the signal, because that is a different component altogether. -The question raised by many atheists, is that we can (and do) have *better* eyes. In every functional category, Hubble is superior to the human eye. -
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> > (Abiogenesis, etc...) 
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> Abiogenesis will never be solved. Even if some scientist creates a form of living matter, no one can ever know if his way is the real way.
> > -This is identical to saying "Because we found an equation that describes projectile motion, that equation doesn't solve the problem of motion because we can't be certain some other equation was used to describe the impact that caused Uranus to flip its side." You're using selective Agrippan skepticism. The identical argument could be used against your deity vs. Horus. Or Chronos. Hell, even Christ could be taken as superior to your disembodied consciousness, because at least Christ had eyewitnesses! (There's nuance, subtext, a tiny bit of sarcasm, and undertone here... interpret before responding... I said that to make you dig.)-It is true that if we discover abiogenesis that we won't know if it is THE mechanism. But that said, we also didn't know the mechanism for urea until Friedrich Wöhler manufactured it. That single discovery launched organic chemistry in the first place...-You're right--if my logic is followed and they invent life in any way, it probably won't be THE way. But when you find A way, then you can begin to constrain the problem; work backwards towards life as we assume it was 4.5Bn years ago. I won't make any fanciful predictions, but if the constraints can be pulled back to 4.5Bn years ago, it won't really matter anymore if you decide to be an Agrippan skeptic or not. Man will have an answer, and that will be enough for almost everyone. It'll be written down like the "Big Bang," as something that happened and "this is how." Literalist theists will boo and hiss, agnostics will nod and then say "But--" and atheists will win a major coup de grace.-
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> Here is a lecture by James Shapiro, in which he imputs much more control over changes by individual cells than most scientists have stated. Warning, he is a terrible lecturer, but his material is fascinating. This is taking epigenetics far beyond neoDarwinism.-A little late for me now, but if it's not heavy on pictures I can listen to it tomorrow morning at work. 
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> http://vimeo.com/17592530

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"