Does a God of ANY KIND exist?

[Tyranitar freak]

God isn't real. Look at all the shat happening to the Earth. Even if "god" is some sort of jackass, I think he would help people out at some point if he was real.

 

[Music Dragon]

God isn't real. Look at all the shat happening to the Earth. Even if "god" is some sort of jackass, I think he would help people out at some point if he was real.

Actually, that's not necessarily true. If God were almighty, he could always - always - make the world a better place. Any attempts to improve its quality would ultimately be futile, regardless of how benevolent he is; he'd always be infinitely far away from the best of all possible worlds, since his very nature prevents such a thing from existing.

 

[ErNo]

Greetings. This being one of the most popular threads in “serious”, with nearly 50,000 views, it came as a pleasant surprise to me that so many members are (or were, depending on if they are still here) so interested in a topic as fundamentally theological as this. What wasn’t pleasant was so many of the responses. There were a lot of dismissive responses, a lot of sarcastic responses, a lot of incomplete responses, a lot of unsupported responses, etc.. There were some somewhat reasonable responses as well, but those too ended in disappointment. This is because I’ve read every response on this massive thread, and not one person said, “You know what, good point. You’ve convinced me into being an atheist/theist”. I haven’t even seen an argument that ended in a civilized agree to disagree scenario. But that was ten years ago. As I chip in to this age old argument, I will make an attempt to provide new insight into my beliefs and why they should be believed. If you’re a theist who believes God exists and want a way to prove it, this is for you. If you’re an atheist desiring a better way to criticize God, this is also for you.

To start things off, allow me to disclose where I stand. I believe the Bible and accept it as the ultimate moral authority. I believe its historical accounts, and of course, I believe in its God. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. My parents weren’t very zealous about it, but they and my school played a part in my religious upbringing. Back then, I didn’t care much for it. I didn’t so much as wonder if what I was taught actually true. Eventually, I began to take things more seriously and look for answers. So I thought about it. I consulted experts. I read my Bible front to back. I saw what atheists had to say. After a fair amount of research, I found my answer. Not only did I know why God is real, but I know which God is real. I’ll debate the Bible’s credibility with you if you want, but for now, I want us to focus on whether or not a God “of any kind” exists.

I would like to introduce (or remind) you all of the first-cause argument. This is the argument asserting the necessity of an “uncaused cause” of all subsequent series of causes, on the assumption that an infinite regress is impossible. I say “assumption”, but really there is a diverse set of solid evidence. I don’t want this to drag on for too long, so I’m only going to cover the implications of the second law of thermodynamics. This well-established scientific law states that the quantity of energy within a closed, isolated system (like the universe) remains the same, though the amount of usable energy deteriorates gradually over time. For example, it’s estimated that the sun will explode in a few billion years after it reaches a certain loss of energy, an event known as a supernova. That being the case, the universe as we know it could not have existed forever. Researchers date the origin of the universe to be 14 billion years at the most. It is also indisputable that whatever did create the universe must have had power beyond our imagination, as there are countless stars and planets. While that in itself is not necessarily proof of God’s existence, it does at least make it more reasonable than proposing that fairies or the flying spaghetti monster exists, as so many atheists insinuate to the contrary. Anyway, I have more evidence than that. According to Tom Hammond, author of “What Time Is Purple?”, "Take living cells and the biological proteins that compose them. If we consider just one simple living cell consisting of only 250 short proteins, and those 250 proteins each consist of only 150 amino acids (they can consist of up to 30,000 amino acids), the odds that these 37,500 amino acids (250 proteins x 150 amino acids) could all arrange themselves into a sequence where the cell could actually function is only one chance in 10^41,000 (that's a one followed by 41,000 zeros)." He adds, "Even if the universe were 14 billion years old..., there hasn't been nearly enough time for 10^41,000 attempts at anything.“ He cited his source at the end of the booklet: "Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 213”. Furthermore, “To put into perspective how large a number 10^41,000 really is (that's the number of random attempts 37,500 amino acids would need to produce just one living cell), consider that there are an estimated 10^80 atoms in our entire universe. Even if we allowed every atom in the universe one trillion (10^12) atomic interactions per second for 14 billion years (approximately 10^18 seconds), we'd have only 10^110 interactions (10^80 x 10^12 x 10^18=10^110)." Remember, he is using absurdly conservative estimates over a single simple cell. And that’s not even the half of it. Need I point out how Jupiter shields earth from asteroids, how the color of the sun makes its light compatible with photosynthesis, how gravitational factors would make life impossible if even slightly off, and several other factors that “happen” to make earth so specially attuned for life? These improbabilities would not apply to intelligently guided design. All things considered, it’s unreasonable to assume there was no guiding force behind life’s origination and development, and that this force did not have the power of a god. “Who created God, then?”, some of you may riposte. God didn’t need to be created. He existed at least as long as time itself. An infinite regress goes beyond philosophical limitations. In other words, if the past were infinite, the present would never get a turn to exist. To summarize: “Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.” –Isaac Newton

You know, I’ve noticed something. I’ve seen dozens of atheists criticize God, and not one of them ever had anything good to say about Him. And I don’t just mean “He doesn’t exist”; even when they get into the hypothetical notion of his existence, they have done nothing but cherry pick the most bitter protestations they can think of. Just to give a few examples, here are some quotes: “… a magic sparkly man in the sky who came from nothingness and then proceeded to create everything in some bored whim, whilst also demanding that his creations worship him and suffer for faults in his design, whilst giving no proof of his very existence to his followers, and sending any who dare defy him into a fiery pit of death and nastiness for faults in his design…”, “… God being a total dick, allowing the Holocaust (and the World Wars in general), massive natural disasters, and deadly pandemics like the Black Death and AIDS to spread”. I wish people would criticize Him like Butterfree does her movies, pointing out the bad AND the good in light diligent research about the God in question. In addition, many theists paint God as this perfect being, one who always does good and nothing unpleasant without a reason you shouldn’t disagree with. These theists could learn a thing or two about criticism as well. As for myself, I’m not one of those people. I’ll be completely honest with you, I don’t agree with everything God allows. If I were in His shoes, I wouldn’t have allowed the Black Death, the holocaust, eternal damnation, or anything of the sort. But I’m not God. None of us are. I don’t get those individuals who deny God’s existence on the grounds of the pain in the world. That’s like saying, “fire doesn’t exist because it kills people”. Besides, God isn’t all bad. The same God who allows people to die is the same One who allows them to live in the first place. Your life may not be perfect, but it is still a precious gift, and the vast majority of us take so much joy in having sons, daughters friends, and family even though we know they will experience hardship just like us and someday die. When hardship comes, do not use it as an opportunity to blaspheme God. Remember all the good he didn’t owe you, and overcome the demons that tempt you. He deserves better than a strictly derogatory tirade whether you look at Him from a fictional perspective or not.

 

[Butterfree]

Thanks for contributing a thoughtful response, albeit to an extremely dead old thread!

The first cause argument is of course in no way new. The thing about it as an argument for God is that most things are caused by simple physical processes and interactions, not by any kind of conscious agent. By itself, arguing that the universe has a cause in no way implies that this cause involves some kind of entity, much less that such an entity would have any of the attributes conventionally attributed to gods of any kind. The only reason imagining a conscious entity creating the universe sounds intuitive and likely to us is human biases - the same sort that cause people to imagine intentionality in simple coincidences, or little kids to answer 'why' questions about the natural world with purposes rather than causes. In reality, baselessly positing the existence of a conscious agent as the cause of something is an incredibly complex proposition and needs proportionate justification.

The argument regarding cells and proteins is a variation on the old "hurricane in a junkyard assembling an airplane" argument, and it's a fundamentally misguided and ridiculous strawman. Absolutely no one claims all the complex proteins in a cell just happened to assemble themselves at random; that would be absurd. The entire point of evolution is that evolutionary processes are incremental. A million monkeys typing on a million typewriters would take far longer than the age of the universe to randomly type up a Shakespeare play, but if each word is erased if it isn't the correct next word of the play, they'll get there pretty quickly. (That specific example, of course, requires top-down oversight, deciding whether the word is correct - but Darwin's great insight was that you don't need any top-down oversight for great incremental complexity to evolve, just different variations varying in how likely they are to be able to reproduce.)

As for the fine-tuning argument - yes, our planet is suited to life, which is very unlikely. But as you rightly noted yourself, there are a lot of stars and planets in the universe; it's not at all unlikely that some of them should happen to feature favorable conditions for life. And obviously we're writing this on one of those planets, rather than one of the myriads more inhospitable ones that could never sustain life! This doesn't imply intelligent design any more than you could retroactively argue that the chances of your ancestors all just happening to get together and have these particular sperm cells combine with these particular eggs to make you prove someone must have consciously directed them to do so.

In short, I've seen all of these arguments many, many times before and I don't find any of them at all convincing.

As to why atheists often don't have much good to say about God - there are various reasons behind this, but suffice it to say most people arguing atheism on the internet simply aren't there to objectively review the pros and cons of a hypothetical God. Most would consider this kind of beside the point; after all, the hypothetical pros and cons of a god have no bearing on whether or not such a god exists. For a lot of people, being scathing is entertaining - negative reviews just poking fun at something's faults are pretty popular content on the internet (and before the internet: I believe you can buy a book of just Roger Ebert's one-star reviews of movies). Poking fun at what society at large holds sacred is also a popular subject of comedy in general, because the toeing of the line and dancing around subjects popularly considered taboo is something that tickles our laugh instincts. All in all, I don't think it should be all that surprising.

I do admire your consistency in maintaining that God is flawed and not necessarily moral, and I'm very curious how you came to the conclusion the first cause of the universe is not just a conscious agent but the specific God described in the Bible. I've always been interested in having these sorts of discussions with people who are willing to seriously grapple with the questions.

 

[ErNo]

And you have my gratitude as well for your own thoughtful response. It may be a dead, old thread, but you get use to stuff like that when you’re a ghost. XD

I can agree that the first-cause argument doesn’t mean much on its own- it was just a way for me to ward off “who created God” questions. That’s why I included the cosmological and fine-tuning arguments. The fact that the universe is so expansive does imply, to at least some extent, that the cosmic singularity had the power conventionally attributed to gods. But there’s more to deities than power. If intelligence and purpose can’t be factored into the equation, there is not much reason to consider a god or gods were responsible. Thus, the fine-tuning argument was introduced. I didn't promise new insight in the sense that I was going to deliver newly discovered information; I merely meant I would provide evidence that this thread never addressed.

You misunderstand. The argument isn’t referring to Darwinian evolution, it’s referring to Precambrian abiogenesis. There is no “natural selection” in nonliving matter and physics, so we must consider the probability of the first organism’s existence in light of the conditions that hypothetically unguided matter and physics would allow. Proteins, if you didn’t know, are the simplest building blocks of life and are necessary to the structure and function of every cell and virus. Proteins are made with amino acids, but as Hammond mentioned, they have to be arranged in just the right order to be compatible with life. In spite of taking the minimum number of amino acids and proteins required for life of any kind to exist, the odds of those formations happening by chance are beyond absurd. Not even the vastness of the universe (10^80 atoms) coupled with one trillion atomic interaction per second can come close to producing life in the liberal estimate of 14 billion years our universe has existed. Technically, extremely improbable things happen all the time. But the difference between life and your analogy is that life stands out. If you let your cat trample all over your keyboard and you got something like, “ehifd2uh52kdl6jdfue” you wouldn't think much of it even though it was clearly very improbable that those particular characters would arrange themselves in that particular order. But if it typed something like this paragraph, it would be unreasonable to assume that the cat did it on accident- even in light of the evidence that no other life form except humans seemed smart enough to do so. DNA is very much an advanced form of information, and its existence should not simply be dismissed as if it were just one of those improbable coincidences. I shouldn’t have to reinforce it with facts about the external fine-tuning in our universe, but I did it anyway. Here’s another quote from English philosopher and mathematician Isaac Newton: “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”

To be fair, poking fun at God is quite “besides the point” as well. I might even say it seemed disrespectful or flippant in the context of the discussions. The fact that some people deny God’s existence on the ground of the pain in the world doesn’t help clarify the intentions. But regardless, I apologize for any misunderstandings and will try harder “get the joke”, so to speak.

Technically, God is moral and unflawed by His own standards. But I’m sure that’s not what you were talking about. Thank you, I suppose. I’ll tell you why I believe the Bible, but first I would like to resolve our discussion about if a God exists at all. Are you satisfied with the evidence?

 

[Superbird]

I’ve seen dozens of atheists criticize God, and not one of them ever had anything good to say about Him. And I don’t just mean “He doesn’t exist”; even when they get into the hypothetical notion of his existence, they have done nothing but cherry pick the most bitter protestations they can think of. Just to give a few examples, here are some quotes: “… a magic sparkly man in the sky who came from nothingness and then proceeded to create everything in some bored whim, whilst also demanding that his creations worship him and suffer for faults in his design, whilst giving no proof of his very existence to his followers, and sending any who dare defy him into a fiery pit of death and nastiness for faults in his design…”, “… God being a total dick, allowing the Holocaust (and the World Wars in general), massive natural disasters, and deadly pandemics like the Black Death and AIDS to spread”. I wish people would criticize Him like Butterfree does her movies, pointing out the bad AND the good in light diligent research about the God in question. In addition, many theists paint God as this perfect being, one who always does good and nothing unpleasant without a reason you shouldn’t disagree with. These theists could learn a thing or two about criticism as well. As for myself, I’m not one of those people. I’ll be completely honest with you, I don’t agree with everything God allows. If I were in His shoes, I wouldn’t have allowed the Black Death, the holocaust, eternal damnation, or anything of the sort. But I’m not God. None of us are. I don’t get those individuals who deny God’s existence on the grounds of the pain in the world. That’s like saying, “fire doesn’t exist because it kills people”. Besides, God isn’t all bad. The same God who allows people to die is the same One who allows them to live in the first place. Your life may not be perfect, but it is still a precious gift, and the vast majority of us take so much joy in having sons, daughters friends, and family even though we know they will experience hardship just like us and someday die. When hardship comes, do not use it as an opportunity to blaspheme God. Remember all the good he didn’t owe you, and overcome the demons that tempt you. He deserves better than a strictly derogatory tirade whether you look at Him from a fictional perspective or not.

The fact that some people deny God’s existence on the ground of the pain in the world doesn’t help clarify the intentions.

I've actually found the story UNSONG to be really insightful with regards to the paradox that is omnibenevolence. To paraphrase the conclusion it draws - If we're to take the first few words of Genesis literally, then we know that God, after creating the world/universe, "saw that it was good". But the bible says nothing about whether this was the only world, or what God's definition of 'good' is.

Spoiler: UNSONG, which, in the end, postulates that

God created every universe that is good, and we live in only one of those.

---

Taking that into account, I still fundamentally disagree with your argument for intelligent design. I'll concede that it's possible God existed at the point when He created the universe (we have no better answers for where it came from), but the universe as it stands behaves so uniformly, and so randomly, that I find it impossible to believe that there's an intelligent force still directing it all. I consider myself Deist, accordingly.

For more recommended reading, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. Your argument for intelligent design (or rather, the first-cause argument) loses a portion of its strength if we abandon the premise that the current state of humanity isn't the goal state of the process. There's nothing in particular that separates humans from anything else in the universe - no laws that we break. So why consider ourselves to be the end of the story, rather than the middle?

 

[ErNo]

I've actually found the story UNSONG to be really insightful with regards to the paradox that is omnibenevolence. To paraphrase the conclusion it draws - If we're to take the first few words of Genesis literally, then we know that God, after creating the world/universe, "saw that it was good". But the bible says nothing about whether this was the only world, or what God's definition of 'good' is.

Spoiler: UNSONG, which, in the end, postulates that

God created every universe that is good, and we live in only one of those.

---

Taking that into account, I still fundamentally disagree with your argument for intelligent design. I'll concede that it's possible God existed at the point when He created the universe (we have no better answers for where it came from), but the universe as it stands behaves so uniformly, and so randomly, that I find it impossible to believe that there's an intelligent force still directing it all. I consider myself Deist, accordingly.

For more recommended reading, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. Your argument for intelligent design (or rather, the first-cause argument) loses a portion of its strength if we abandon the premise that the current state of humanity isn't the goal state of the process. There's nothing in particular that separates humans from anything else in the universe - no laws that we break. So why consider ourselves to be the end of the story, rather than the middle?

The only reason there’s a paradox is because people postulate that God is omni-benevolent as either an exaggeration or a lie intended to give people more hope. The Bible never says everything God does is pleasant to humans, or that we are always going to get what we want. When God saw his creation was “good”, he probably just meant that there was no sin in it and/or that it gave him pleasure to create what he did. I’m not going to assume there is a multiverse, as there is no evidence for it.

I don't know what God's endgame is- or if he even had one. But I don't see how use having law-breaking characteristics would prove anything about "the end of the story" anymore than it would prove we are in the middle of it.

 

[Butterfree]

And you have my gratitude as well for your own thoughtful response. It may be a dead, old thread, but you get use to stuff like that when you’re a ghost. XD

I can agree that the first-cause argument doesn’t mean much on its own- it was just a way for me to ward off “who created God” questions. That’s why I included the cosmological and fine-tuning arguments. The fact that the universe is so expansive does imply, to at least some extent, that the cosmic singularity had the power conventionally attributed to gods. But there’s more to deities than power. If intelligence and purpose can’t be factored into the equation, there is not much reason to consider a god or gods were responsible. Thus, the fine-tuning argument was introduced. I didn't promise new insight in the sense that I was going to deliver newly discovered information; I merely meant I would provide evidence that this thread never addressed.

You misunderstand. The argument isn’t referring to Darwinian evolution, it’s referring to Precambrian abiogenesis. There is no “natural selection” in nonliving matter and physics, so we must consider the probability of the first organism’s existence in light of the conditions that hypothetically unguided matter and physics would allow. Proteins, if you didn’t know, are the simplest building blocks of life and are necessary to the structure and function of every cell and virus. Proteins are made with amino acids, but as Hammond mentioned, they have to be arranged in just the right order to be compatible with life. In spite of taking the minimum number of amino acids and proteins required for life of any kind to exist, the odds of those formations happening by chance are beyond absurd. Not even the vastness of the universe (10^80 atoms) coupled with one trillion atomic interaction per second can come close to producing life in the liberal estimate of 14 billion years our universe has existed. Technically, extremely improbable things happen all the time. But the difference between life and your analogy is that life stands out. If you let your cat trample all over your keyboard and you got something like, “ehifd2uh52kdl6jdfue” you wouldn't think much of it even though it was clearly very improbable that those particular characters would arrange themselves in that particular order. But if it typed something like this paragraph, it would be unreasonable to assume that the cat did it on accident- even in light of the evidence that no other life form except humans seemed smart enough to do so. DNA is very much an advanced form of information, and its existence should not simply be dismissed as if it were just one of those improbable coincidences. I shouldn’t have to reinforce it with facts about the external fine-tuning in our universe, but I did it anyway. Here’s another quote from English philosopher and mathematician Isaac Newton: “In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”

To be fair, poking fun at God is quite “besides the point” as well. I might even say it seemed disrespectful or flippant in the context of the discussions. The fact that some people deny God’s existence on the ground of the pain in the world doesn’t help clarify the intentions. But regardless, I apologize for any misunderstandings and will try harder “get the joke”, so to speak.

Technically, God is moral and unflawed by His own standards. But I’m sure that’s not what you were talking about. Thank you, I suppose. I’ll tell you why I believe the Bible, but first I would like to resolve our discussion about if a God exists at all. Are you satisfied with the evidence?

You completely missed what I was getting at with the monkeys on typewriters analogy. I was trying to illustrate a point about incrementalness. If the monkey types tens of thousands of words by banging on the keyboard and we then check if the result is a Shakespeare play, of course it won't be. But if we try to have the monkey write the play incrementally - it types one word and only proceeds to the next if that one word is correct, otherwise retyping the word - then the picture looks very different. The astronomical odds against the monkey typing a Shakespeare play, or the cat typing out a coherent paragraph, only exist because we're expecting a large, complex whole to randomly come together all at once. If instead the monkey proceeds in smaller steps, and an outside process erases any errant steps - well, then the final outcome isn't unlikely at all!

I understand what proteins are, and yes, I was also talking about abiogenesis. Your argument presupposes that the non-intelligent design view says the combinations of complex proteins that we see in life today just happened to arrange themselves together by chance. But this is not actually what anybody is postulating! Life didn't begin with the building blocks of a modern cell just randomly happening to form a cell. Do you really think every modern scientist who doesn't believe in intelligent design (a fringe theory that never had any kind of serious traction except with people who already believed in God and wanted to justify it) is simply too stupid to realize that that's very unlikely? If you read in a book that all of mainstream modern science believes something that's obviously and on the face of it untrue, based on simple and undeniable mathematics, it's worth pausing and considering whether maybe the book isn't correctly reporting what all of mainstream modern science believes.

Instead, life would've begun with simpler self-replicating molecules. And the moment you've got self-replication with some chance of mutation, you get evolution - an incremental process, capable of slowly generating complexity from simplicity. In particular, it's commonly hypothesized that RNA preceded DNA; you can read more on theories and research on this here.

So no, I'm afraid I'm still not satisfied with the evidence. This is an old and well-refuted argument based on false premises.

As for Isaac Newton, he was a very smart guy, but he also preceded the theory of evolution (the first convincing scientific account of how great complexity could come into existence without conscious design) by some 200 years, so his incredulity on the matter is quite irrelevant.

(I'm still interested in your take on believing the first-cause God is the Biblical God, though! Even if I don't buy your premises there, I'd still like to hear your reasoning.)

 

[ErNo]

You completely missed what I was getting at with the monkeys on typewriters analogy. I was trying to illustrate a point about incrementalness. If the monkey types tens of thousands of words by banging on the keyboard and we then check if the result is a Shakespeare play, of course it won't be. But if we try to have the monkey write the play incrementally - it types one word and only proceeds to the next if that one word is correct, otherwise retyping the word - then the picture looks very different. The astronomical odds against the monkey typing a Shakespeare play, or the cat typing out a coherent paragraph, only exist because we're expecting a large, complex whole to randomly come together all at once. If instead the monkey proceeds in smaller steps, and an outside process erases any errant steps - well, then the final outcome isn't unlikely at all!

I understand what proteins are, and yes, I was also talking about abiogenesis. Your argument presupposes that the non-intelligent design view says the combinations of complex proteins that we see in life today just happened to arrange themselves together by chance. But this is not actually what anybody is postulating! Life didn't begin with the building blocks of a modern cell just randomly happening to form a cell. Do you really think every modern scientist who doesn't believe in intelligent design (a fringe theory that never had any kind of serious traction except with people who already believed in God and wanted to justify it) is simply too stupid to realize that that's very unlikely? If you read in a book that all of mainstream modern science believes something that's obviously and on the face of it untrue, based on simple and undeniable mathematics, it's worth pausing and considering whether maybe the book isn't correctly reporting what all of mainstream modern science believes.

Instead, life would've begun with simpler self-replicating molecules. And the moment you've got self-replication with some chance of mutation, you get evolution - an incremental process, capable of slowly generating complexity from simplicity. In particular, it's commonly hypothesized that RNA preceded DNA; you can read more on theories and research on this here.

So no, I'm afraid I'm still not satisfied with the evidence. This is an old and well-refuted argument based on false premises.

As for Isaac Newton, he was a very smart guy, but he also preceded the theory of evolution (the first convincing scientific account of how great complexity could come into existence without conscious design) by some 200 years, so his incredulity on the matter is quite irrelevant.

(I'm still interested in your take on believing the first-cause God is the Biblical God, though! Even if I don't buy your premises there, I'd still like to hear your reasoning.)

I understood what you meant by incrementalness. You can let your cat type one character on your keyboard every week with access to the backspace key- that still doesn’t make it reasonable to assume it types a coherent paragraph on accident at the end of a few years. What I didn’t understand was the part where an “outside process erases any errant steps”. Evolution only applies when something can reproduce. As far as we know, a half-baked living organism cannot. That’s why I was confused when you brought evolution into this. I was certainly not attempting to passive-aggressively call anyone stupid, so please don’t be offended. The fact of the matter is, one of us is wrong about this and should be corrected. We’re just trying to figure out who that person is. Besides, there are far more theists (and by extension, adherents of intelligent design) than atheists, so unless I’m missing something, I’m pretty sure the theists are the “mainstream” scientists. And that claim about intelligent design not having “any kind of serious traction except with people who already believed in God and wanted to justify it”? I will admit, there are probably more theists out there who believed God before they examined the evidence rather than after. However, I do know of one important exception- former atheist and cold case detective J. Warner Wallace. While technically not a scientist himself, he has done very diligent research into both sides of the theism/atheism debate and is the author of apologetic books defending theism. In addition, he is a popular national speaker and has seen his fair share of debates. One person probably doesn’t count as “serious traction” to you, but his work is well worth looking into. “I am not a theist today because I was raised by believers- I wasn’t. I am not a believer because I was hoping for heaven or afraid of hell-I had no sense of value for either. I am not a theist because I was trying to fill a ‘void’ or satisfy a ‘need’-I felt none. I believe God exists because the evidence leaves me no reasonable alternative”. If you want to see an actual scientist/theist (that did not precede the proposal of evolution), here is a quote from revered German physicist Albert Einstein: “Before God we are all equally wise- and equally foolish”. But that’s beside the point. I was only using quotes to summarize my thoughts, so Newton’s incredulity was very relevant.

I vaguely remember hearing about that RNA hypothesis before. I believe someone by username “Viced Rhinoceros” talked about it in a YouTube video. It’s definitely worth looking into, but a mere hypothesis doesn’t make my argument well-refuted. At best, it just means we should keep an open mind until the hypothesis either becomes unsupported by experiment or advances to a theory. I say “at best” because there are some problems with that hypothesis. For starters, RNA is extremely unstable at high temperatures. In the Precambrian time, the earth wasn't as cooled as it was now, and it would have been more vulnerable to the sun’s radiation. Secondly, phosphate (one of the rarest inorganic chemicals in the universe) is essential in RNA, as a phosphate molecule occurs in every nucleotide. Scientists have been consistently unable to find a natural process capable of harvesting the amount of phosphate necessary for DNA, RNA, or ATP from the Earth’s early environment. Third, there is no reference in my encyclopedia to self-replicating RNA in Precambrian time. "Bacteria lived as long ago as 3 1/2 billion years. Before that, no living things are known". In fact, 3 1/2 billion years is also what geologists date the oldest rocks to be. So even if there was ancient, self-replicating RNA that we haven't discovered yet, it wouldn't have had much time to evolve into bacteria. The smaller the populations, the slower evolution happens. Bacteria are dated to be billions of years older than any other organism discovered except algae, so imagine how long it would have taken the newly formed RNA to evolve into bacteria. I just don't see it happening.

Even if theists are wrong about what the simplest organism could have possibly been, there is still something very important to take into the debate. You've seen quite a few theism arguments, right? Under the presumption that I don’t have to give any specific details, what is your response to theists who bring up the bacterial flagellum?

You’ll get your Biblical evidence soon enough. I want to take this one step at a time. Why are you so interested in the evidence anyway, if not because it might prove the Bible true? This is especially puzzling after all the bitter misunderstandings and disagreements we’ve had in our brief discussion. Knowing my luck, I’m sure you’ve got more to offer in your next post.

 

[Butterfree]

Apologies for taking a while to get back to this!

I understood what you meant by incrementalness. You can let your cat type one character on your keyboard every week with access to the backspace key- that still doesn’t make it reasonable to assume it types a coherent paragraph on accident at the end of a few years. What I didn’t understand was the part where an “outside process erases any errant steps”. Evolution only applies when something can reproduce. As far as we know, a half-baked living organism cannot. That’s why I was confused when you brought evolution into this.

I'm afraid I still don't think you understood what I meant about incremental processes. If the cat just types whatever, of course we're not going to get a coherent paragraph by accident - but if the cat types a random letter, and if it's not correct we just erase the letter and let the cat try again, then it totally will come up with any paragraph we like, though it'll take some time. The key the cat picks is still just as random - but there's an outside process (us) that's applying selection to the cat's random letters, allowing it to make incremental progress based on small random steps, instead of expecting it to make the whole leap to a coherent paragraph purely at random. I threw up a live sample here, where a virtual "cat" will type out a couple sentences from your post in a minute or two. The "cat" is still just picking a letter at random, but each letter is only kept if it's correct.

Obviously this is not literally how evolution works - this is an example designed to illustrate the general concept of how something that'd be astronomically unlikely happening all at once at random can become very reasonable when the random steps are small, and they're nonrandomly selected.

As for evolution, only three things are needed in order for evolution by natural selection to happen:

1. an entity that replicates itself;
2. occasional random errors in that replication (mutations); and
3. the variants created by those errors (mutations) potentially having different rates of subsequently replicating themselves again.

The moment you have these three things, you get evolution - all evolution is is the self-replicators that are better at replicating themselves becoming more common at the expense of the others. You don't need complicated biology; you just need a self-replicating molecule. The Wikipedia article I linked you in my last post to talks a bit about research on relatively small RNA molecules already discovered to be capable of synthesizing others - still unlikely to randomly come together, but a very, very far cry from expecting a fully-functional cell to spring into existence at random.

Besides, there are far more theists (and by extension, adherents of intelligent design) than atheists, so unless I’m missing something, I’m pretty sure the theists are the “mainstream” scientists.

Theists are not at all "by extension" adherents of intelligent design! Intelligent design (i.e. creationism) is not taken at all seriously by modern science; note how the Wikipedia article on intelligent design for example opens by calling it pseudoscientific, with five different sources cited. There are plenty of theist scientists, and many of them might personally believe that God kicked off the development of life on Earth one way or another - but the idea that life on Earth could only have arisen by divine design, as you're trying to argue, is not remotely mainstream.

It's not really terribly relevant that you know about one guy who used to be an atheist and claims he examined the evidence and found himself convinced of theism; there are tens of thousands of people who used to be theists, examined the evidence and concluded there is no convincing evidence for gods of any kind. You would have to make an actual argument for why your guy is right and all of those other people are wrong. I could also namedrop cool scientists and their quotes about why the evidence for God is nonexistent, but that's just an argument from authority, which doesn't really mean anything. I'd prefer if we kept it to actual arguments about the issue.

I vaguely remember hearing about that RNA hypothesis before. I believe someone by username “Viced Rhinoceros” talked about it in a YouTube video. It’s definitely worth looking into, but a mere hypothesis doesn’t make my argument well-refuted. At best, it just means we should keep an open mind until the hypothesis either becomes unsupported by experiment or advances to a theory.

Thing is, I'm not claiming that this is the definitive truth! Abiogenesis is a super interesting, complex topic and the science is not at all settled. I'm only claiming that your argument is flawed. You are the one making a positive claim, that life on Earth indisputably proves God's existence. I'm saying you have not proven that, and the probabilistic argument that you made in particular is a flawed strawman, because nobody thinks that a fully-formed modern cell just arranged itself into existence by random chance. You're the one trying to convince me of something! My claim is only that we don't yet know the specifics of exactly how life arose on Earth, but we've got a pretty good idea of the basic sort of thing that would need to have happened, and there is nothing fundamentally impossible about it.

Third, there is no reference in my encyclopedia to self-replicating RNA in Precambrian time. "Bacteria lived as long ago as 3 1/2 billion years. Before that, no living things are known". In fact, 3 1/2 billion years is also what geologists date the oldest rocks to be. So even if there was ancient, self-replicating RNA that we haven't discovered yet, it wouldn't have had much time to evolve into bacteria.

I'm pretty sure it would be downright physically impossible for individual molecules 3.5 billion years ago to leave traces we could detect today - so unfortunately, we're never going to find direct evidence of the earliest self-replicators. That doesn't mean they weren't there, because there wouldn't be direct evidence even if they were. Evidence of the precise nature of the earliest self-replicators would have to be indirect.

The Earth itself is 4.54 billion years old, so there are about a billion years there for self-replicating molecules to arise and evolve cell membranes etc. (Assuming it happened on Earth, of course! There is also a hypothesis that bacterial life could have evolved on other planets and come to Earth on a meteorite, which is fascinating but of course purely speculative.)

Even if theists are wrong about what the simplest organism could have possibly been, there is still something very important to take into the debate. You've seen quite a few theism arguments, right? Under the presumption that I don’t have to give any specific details, what is your response to theists who bring up the bacterial flagellum?

The bacterial flagellum is generally believed to have evolved from mechanisms for injecting material into host cells, which involve similar proteins. There exist plenty of variants on flagella, possible mutations that leave the flagellum still useful, etc. There's a lot of material online about the evolution of flagella, both scholarly and for laymen; here's one article.

You’ll get your Biblical evidence soon enough. I want to take this one step at a time. Why are you so interested in the evidence anyway, if not because it might prove the Bible true? This is especially puzzling after all the bitter misunderstandings and disagreements we’ve had in our brief discussion. Knowing my luck, I’m sure you’ve got more to offer in your next post.

I'm interested because I think it's interesting! I think your theological takes are fascinating, and while I've heard a lot of attempts to argue for Biblical inerrancy, your view on God is pretty different from anything I've heard before, so I'm interested in how you in particular see this.

I don't think it's necessary that you first convince me that there definitely is a God. I don't think that's very likely to happen at this point, to be honest - evolution, religion and the whole creationism/theism debate was one of my big interests for at least a solid five years of my life, and I think in that time I got a pretty good overview of the arguments being made in favor and the counterarguments against them, which you haven't really strayed from thus far (by all means surprise me!). But I want to hear what you have to say on the Bible anyway! We can suppose for the sake of the argument that there is some form of creator and proceed from that premise.

 

[ErNo]

Theists are not at all "by extension" adherents of intelligent design! Intelligent design (i.e. creationism) is not taken at all seriously by modern science; note how the Wikipedia article on intelligent design for example opens by calling it pseudoscientific, with five different sources cited. There are plenty of theist scientists, and many of them might personally believe that God kicked off the development of life on Earth one way or another - but the idea that life on Earth could only have arisen by divine design, as you're trying to argue, is not remotely mainstream.

I meant intelligent design in the sense that God made life and the universe; not necessarily all of life directly, but perhaps the initial organism that would evolve into all others, as well as the circumstances of fine-tuning (which are far more unlikely and orderly than I went on to address). I don’t know where certain divisions like creationism stand on the “mainstream” scale, but I did not intend for them to be singled out (although, I am an adherent of that division myself). It's not that I deny the possibility that life could exist without God, I just find it more far more reasonable to assume that God had a hand in it.

It's not really terribly relevant that you know about one guy who used to be an atheist and claims he examined the evidence and found himself convinced of theism; there are tens of thousands of people who used to be theists, examined the evidence and concluded there is no convincing evidence for gods of any kind. You would have to make an actual argument for why your guy is right and all of those other people are wrong. I could also namedrop cool scientists and their quotes about why the evidence for God is nonexistent, but that's just an argument from authority, which doesn't really mean anything. I'd prefer if we kept it to actual arguments about the issue.

Wallace wasn't the only person in history to turn to theism like that; he was just an important figure in the apologetics field that I wanted to give a shootout to. As I already mentioned, I never expect you to consider him “serious traction”; that’s why I backed up my claims with evidence (even if you disagreed with it). And no, quoting influential scientists is not necessarily an argument from authority. The only reason I was quoting Newton was to summarize my thoughts in what I considered to be an artistic fashion- nothing more, nothing less. An argument from authority is more like, “Hey, Isaac newton was a theist so theism must be true”. My quote from Albert Einstein was my response to your apparent complaint about me bringing up a scientist who preceded evolution. If I wanted to make an argument from authority, I would have brought up Einstein instead of Newton from the start- but I didn’t. Why? Because I already know that arguments from authority are meaningless. I explicitly mentioned in my previous response that Einstein’s take on the matter was irrelevant. It is both disappointing and discouraging that I continue to be accused of this fallacy.

Thing is, I'm not claiming that this is the definitive truth! Abiogenesis is a super interesting, complex topic and the science is not at all settled. I'm only claiming that your argument is flawed. You are the one making a positive claim, that life on Earth indisputably proves God's existence. I'm saying you have not proven that, and the probabilistic argument that you made in particular is a flawed strawman, because nobody thinks that a fully-formed modern cell just arranged itself into existence by random chance. You're the one trying to convince me of something! My claim is only that we don't yet know the specifics of exactly how life arose on Earth, but we've got a pretty good idea of the basic sort of thing that would need to have happened, and there is nothing fundamentally impossible about it.

That wasn’t much of a strawman, it was more of a premise built on incorrect information about the minimum requirements for an organism. A strawman is when you sidestep the opponent’s argument by replacing it with a more easily countered argument. No one in the thread had argued the RNA hypothesis at the time, so there was technically no argument for me to sidestep. When RNA was brought up, it revealed my argument to be somewhat untrue rather than evasive, per se. But then again, you’re not here for me to lecture you about vocabulary.

I'm pretty sure it would be downright physically impossible for individual molecules 3.5 billion years ago to leave traces we could detect today - so unfortunately, we're never going to find direct evidence of the earliest self-replicators. That doesn't mean they weren't there, because there wouldn't be direct evidence even if they were. Evidence of the precise nature of the earliest self-replicators would have to be indirect.

Since you admit that you don’t know the specifics of how life arose, do you mean to imply that there is no good reason to assume abiogenesis occurred? That any assumption on life’s origins is too premature to be worth having serious faith in? After all, there is also nothing “fundamentally impossible” about intelligent design either. I’m not saying you’re trying to convince me of something; I only mean to ensure your stance is fully understood.

The Earth itself is 4.54 billion years old, so there are about a billion years there for self-replicating molecules to arise and evolve cell membranes etc. (Assuming it happened on Earth, of course! There is also a hypothesis that bacterial life could have evolved on other planets and come to Earth on a meteorite, which is fascinating but of course purely speculative.)

That’s also assuming that Earth was cool enough for the RNA to be stabilized during that time, and that the 3.5 billion year old bacteria are the oldest ones there have been (wikipedia states that there were some bacteria controversially dated to be hundreds of millions of years older than that). I’m pretty confident life didn’t come from a meteorite (AKA, panspermia). Before meteors strike Earth, they ignite the hydrogen in the air and often completely disintegrate. What chance would any bacteria have of surviving the trip? Besides, they’ve never been discovered on meteorites, and we don’t know of any other planet capable of sustaining life. Even if there is another planet out there that could, how would it launch meteorites into space? As with the RNA hypothesis, calling panspermia a valid speculation seems awfully generous at this point in time.

The bacterial flagellum is generally believed to have evolved from mechanisms for injecting material into host cells, which involve similar proteins. There exist plenty of variants on flagella, possible mutations that leave the flagellum still useful, etc. There's a lot of material online about the evolution of flagella, both scholarly and for laymen; here's one article.

That only addresses how a fraction of the flagella could have evolved. There are dozens of essential parts for a flagellum to function. Do you have anything more comprehensive? Something that addresses the evolution of one part at a time?

I'm interested because I think it's interesting! I think your theological takes are fascinating, and while I've heard a lot of attempts to argue for Biblical inerrancy, your view on God is pretty different from anything I've heard before, so I'm interested in how you in particular see this.

The only distinction about my view on God that makes me unique from other believers is I don’t agree with everything He allows. If you’re expecting never-before-seen ways that I demonstrate the Bible’s credibility, you’re not going to see much; almost every piece of evidence I have are from what others have taught me rather than my own self-made observations.

I don't think it's necessary that you first convince me that there definitely is a God. I don't think that's very likely to happen at this point, to be honest - evolution, religion and the whole creationism/theism debate was one of my big interests for at least a solid five years of my life, and I think in that time I got a pretty good overview of the arguments being made in favor and the counterarguments against them, which you haven't really strayed from thus far (by all means surprise me!). But I want to hear what you have to say on the Bible anyway! We can suppose for the sake of the argument that there is some form of creator and proceed from that premise.

I’m not really expecting you to be convinced either. I knew full well when we started this debate that you were a long-time atheist with a satirical sense of humor toward religion. Never really a promising sign. I’ve seen the most scholarly theologians deny God, and equally as scholarly theologians believe Him. As such, I’ve been left to conclude that this kind of belief is not merely an intellectual pursuit. Additionally, I don't see it as a coincidence that atheists always single out the bad when describing God. Regardless of if it is just for laughs (and it often doesn’t seem to be), the context consistently indicates a pejorative opinion. Some have even insinuated that they would deny God regardless of if they knew He was real or not. You’ll never hear them say, “I wish God is real, but...”. You wanted my reasons for believing in the Bible. Well, consider this the first: it earned my trust by giving me a consistent theory for the reason atheists act the way they do (Romans 1:21). You would probably be quick to disagree, but I’d like to establish that this is no longer about persuasion. This is nothing more than an attempt to humor your persistent curiosity. I was planning to give several other reasons, but all of the bitter misunderstandings turned this debate sour. Besides, they’re probably nothing you haven’t already heard. Sorry to disappoint.

 

[kyeugh]

If you want to see an actual scientist/theist (that did not precede the proposal of evolution), here is a quote from revered German physicist Albert Einstein: “Before God we are all equally wise- and equally foolish”. But that’s beside the point.

i don't really plan on plunging into this discussion but i've been following along, and since you refer to this quote again in your most recent post, i feel the need to point out that there's basically no evidence einstein actually said this. here's something he did say, though:

The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this. [...] For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition.

[1][2]

 

[ErNo]

i don't really plan on plunging into this discussion but i've been following along, and since you refer to this quote again in your most recent post, i feel the need to point out that there's basically no evidence einstein actually said this. here's something he did say, though:

[1][2]

I see. Well, here's the source I used. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_100645

 

[Kung Fu Ferret]

Nope