The Origin of Life: Evolution vs. Design [Full Debate]
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- Michael Ruse and Fuz Rana square off to debate the question "Are natural processes sufficient to explain the origin and the complexity of the cell?" Moderated by Craig Hazen, and recorded live at the University of California, Riverside.
Sponsored by Biola University's Christian Apologetics Program, The Well Christian Club at UCR, and Come Reason Ministries.
“I’d rather have unanswered questions than unquestioned answers.”
1, a question, 2, a closing argument
i guess im asking randomly but does anyone know of a method to get back into an instagram account??
I stupidly lost my password. I appreciate any assistance you can offer me
@Emmitt Zahir instablaster =)
Evolutionism is full of those .
@@patrickkparrker413 Those what? Oh, you talking about true facts, I agree with you on that fact dude.
I find it odd how Rana _is_ convinced of Evolution by Natural Selection as a means of explaining how very simple single-celled organisms evolved into the stunning diversity of life seen today and throughout time...but he simply cannot believe that organic compounds themselves became that first single cell...without referring to a cosmic _person_ who did it. But, think about it: If we did *_not_* have the theory of Natural Selection...then the mystery of how a single cell literally became ALL the organisms we see today would seem *impossible* and surely the work of a god. But...once we understood how it _actually_ happened, it finally all made lucid perfect sense. If Rana accepts that 1 single cell can in fact turn into EVERYTHING we see today _purely_ through natural means...how is it that the evolution of organic compounds to a single cell strikes him as impossible??
Its the time issue. The proposed billions of years is not enough time for random mutations to add up to the complexity of the cell and the interactions between cells.
@@natee8573 How do you know? And with enough molecules and time, of course it's possible. Sure, it may be unlikely that something works, but the more molecules we have the more chances we have of something working out. And then those continue.
Let's say people believe that there was or is a designer. Who designed the designer? And how many designers ?
Well actually I've done a bit of research on ID and actually it's just a rebranding of creationism. It's an attempt to make it sound more scientific so it can be taught in the science classrooms. The book on ID, pandas and people, is very similar if not almost exactly the same to earlier creationist books. Most people who believe in ID would disagree with you're first statement.
Abiogenesis is impossible at any level. Spontaneous generation was disproved hundreds of years ago.
so just as a start evolution is not a theory that describes anything about the "origin of life" so the entire premise of the discussion is invalid. The field of "biogenesis" studies the origin of life, and there is no firm conclusion from this field at this point.
...The atheist's opening statement ADMITS....admits that the cell looks designed????.....Debate ends....Creation wins.
The fact that something looks designed does not mean it is. That was the point. It is about finding out whether or not what seems to be the case actually is the case, and of course then the answer to the question of design would be "no."
...a 7 ft. long DNA strand...is not designed ???...that holds a universe of information???...that is in each of 100 trillion cells in the body...???...I beg to differ...
Lonnie Christopher Of course you can differ in opinion or intuition, but it's about what you can find evidence for. Simply saying design is obvious to you doesn't mean anything to me.
Your posts have not "accidentally" fallen from the internet sky......they are EVIDENCE of design......What is the probability that your last message accidentally got typed ?????....that is evidence.....
Lonnie Christopher I agree. Our common background knowledge tells us that posts on the internet most likely don't happen accidentally. I don't know how that relates at all to the evolution of the cell, though.
In my opinion, science is just discovering how God did things. 😊 this was a very respectful debate and enjoyable to listen to. I pray Dr. Ruse comes to know his creator and finds salvation in Jesus. ❤️✝️
think its more we are finding out jesus probably never existed...we know yahweh was the caananite wind god who had a wife fathered kids and when jews left their ancestors the Canaanites evolved from being human to more god like though it took the jews 400 years droping other gods to just yahweh.....even hebrew is the Canaanite language.....nothing in judaism is original to them...its all borrowed or stolen from other cultures
@@paulrichards6894 99% of scholars, both Christian and non-Christian will tell you that Jesus of Nazareth was a real human who walked the earth 2000 years ago. He’s literally one of the most documented persons in history.
@@Becca_Lynn 99% of Christian biblical scholars...... were the same people who said moses was a real person...turns out he was not....there is far too much money in jesus to rock the boat
@@Becca_Lynn a priest to the vatican wrote a book you can google him saying jesus was a myth....he was quickly shut up and retired...
@@Becca_Lynn where is this most documented...there is ZERO evidence for jesus OUTSIDE of the bible....you can't use the bible to prove the bible....the gospels were written 40 or 50 years later in a different country in a different language
"Some of the details of the natural explanation are unknown therefore we should reject this idea, let's assume God did it instead". "How exactly did God do it?" "God works in mysterious ways".
It's hard to believe there are still people in this world that think that magic is real.
"I can't understand it, so .... whatever I make up is true!"
Only magic could produce a coded information processing system using blind and mindless processes.
@@sombodysdad Hey, kid! Here is some attention for you. :-)
@@lepidoptera9337 Maybe you should get a brain.
@@sombodysdad I actually have a PhD in physics, kid. ;-)
@@lepidoptera9337 Thanks for sensibly adressing all the arguments.
This has the be the first debate that I have seen where the debaters were actually respectful toward each other. Well done gentlemen.
lol, this grey bearded man thinks hes inteligent, maybe but he as no common sense wbu lol
Thank you for noticing and noting this fact.
A quality too often absent
@Un Passant
Y don't know. It is revelation from Almighty Allah to all humans. Allah says :
... These are verses of the book , that which is revealed unto thee from they Lord is the Truth,but most of mankind believe not".
( Qur'an,13:1)
Like this in many verses Almighty Allah has mentioned that this book is from Allah:
The revelation of the book wherein there is no doubt is from the Lord of the Worlds".
( Qur'an,32:1)
It is in the interest of mankind to believe in Almighty Allah and to submit to Him and believe in His last and final messenger Mohammad
(pbuh).
Read the Holy Qur'an.
They always end up talking about the nature of God, which is completely outside of the intended focus.
Because they are BOTH evolutionists - if God said he took 6 days to create everything, then that is exactly how long he took.
Why try and force fit this into fantasy of billions of years? In fact the question you should be asking is why did He even take 6 days.....
Evolutionary change by _natural_ mechanisms can be observed. Please show us _your_ "designer', whom you claim to be _orchestrating_ it all. (even though he/she/it doesn't seem to be needed for it)
I will flip this around. You want us to show you God. I would like to show anything beyond microevolution. Simply assuming it so because we observe small changes is not sufficient. Show me proof that an animal of one kind (ie a dog) produces (or came from) a non-dog. It is a big mountain to climb.
Or show how information is added to a gene to improve an organism, or how the complex organism came to be formed, or how the codes were formed within DNA, or how chirality works, or.....etc etc.
@@kalebredick9591 No such thing as a kind, do you mean species? micro and macroevolution are both the same things. Both are evolution, one is just further along than the other is all. But they are not separate things. After so many small changes some species no longer resemble each other. You simply do not have a good understanding of how evolution works.
Evolution doesn't attempt to explain the origin of life.
You speak of evolution as if it's an entity in itself. "Evolution" doesn't attempt to explain anything because it is a figment of the imagination. A theory within the minds of men who refuse to acknowledge the truth of our origin.
Micro evolution is apart of life, yes, but macro is an idea of the mind.
Aspire7 That's like saying you believe in minutes but not days.
Why are there 30,000 different species of spiders?
+Joe Giuffre
You can't use logic (minutes in a day) to define a fallacy. There is evidence for how many minutes are in a day. There is no (empirical) evidence for animals mutating into another.
There's no doubt that there are a variety of different kinds of animals, but that's no evidence for them changing into another animal over time.
30,000 different species of spiders is a model of adaptation. They're still spiders, no matter how much time you give them. Same with snakes, birds and so forth. They have a built in genetic code designed for adaptation.
Aspire7 But one minute doesn't change into a day. It takes many minutes.
Those spiders aren't the same species.
They can't mate with each other. That's the definition of macro evolution.
There are 30,000 different species of spiders.
There are 5,000 different species of mammals, of which humans are one.
Using your logic, humans have evolved from earlier forms of mammals.
That's good enough for me.
Joe Giuffre
Using my logic, humans have evolved from earlier forms of mammals? Haha, that's cute (and religious). The ole swicheroo...
That's your logic my friend, but if that's good enough for you, it's good enough for me. Your faith is amazing.
This was a set-up to allow intelligent design proponents to more easily present their errata on naive audiences. Several things are indications of this:
1) It's at BIOLA University.
2) Professor Ruse is a philosopher, not a biology scientist, and is notoriously quirky & easy to "bum rush" in debate when defending evolution, despite it being his philosophical specialty area.
3) the molecular biologist is an Intelligent Design "gritter", somewhat equivalent to a well trained pool hustler.
It's the only strategy the Creationists have left now that gene science & DNA has put the nail in the coffin of evolution deniers.
Yeah, well welcome to TH-cam, where the lazy and idiots like to watch videos that support their beliefs rather than doing any actual research or work on learning truths.
I wish, now that I'm older and wiser, that I spent my youth actually learning in school and going onto uni and studying further :(
I studied up to a masters in science and graduated with honors. I have a job and serve people. You can do that without college.
Immortal, there is so much you can do online. Regarding degrees or not. Stay teachable…keep learning all of your life
Learning is wonderful but please don't feel you missed out on any genuine learning in school. The majority of what's taught in school is provable deception. All these supposedly "scientific" theories have absolutely no scientific evidence supporting them:
1) Macro-evolution (theory that one kind of life form can evolve into a new kind)
2) Heliocentric theory (outer space)
3) The theory of gravity (the theory for WHY heavy objects fall down)
4) Globe Earth theory (All independently verifiable evidence shows Earth's surface does not curve)
And many more... especially related to health and medicine.
Geocentric Flat Earth is reality, not Heliocentric Globe Earth theory & we didn't evolve from any animal. Heavy objects fall down due to relative density & buoyancy with the downward vector caused by incoherent electrostatic acceleration.
There is no new virus and there's no need to get the jab... those ideas are promoted by corrupt Scientism, not real science.
The general idea of Materialism is false but functional as creating the illusion of this reality with physical rules in which nothing is actually "real" but the experiences we have within it are.
You are not your body, you're much more than that. No one really "dies" or "suffers" in this game we're playing. Guard your thoughts carefully as they're much more powerful & consequential than we've been taught to believe. Choosing love over fear is #1 most important thing you can do.
I don’t know how old you are, but I went back to school at age 40. I remember sitting in school at community college wondering if I could actually do it. Now I am on the last semester of graduate program getting my masters in applied behavior analysis. It’s never too late, trust me, I know.
@@lightbeforethetunnel I'd be interested in seeing one of those proofs, if you have it available. (At least, I interpreted your second sentence to mean that there is proof that some of those ideas you listed are deceptions; if you meant that they are deceptive yet still provable, then perhaps I misunderstood your point.) Could you also explain what you mean by "scientific evidence"? I would like to better understand your view, since according to the definition of scientific evidence that I normally use, there is quite a bit for at least several of the ideas you listed.
Modern science with all its advancements cannot yet explain every single question about how the universe and life came into existence, so a book written by unknown hebrew shepherds 2000-3000 years ago must be the answer... -Creationists
Vardaris ... Well, we often hear from evolutionists, " best explanation". Goose and gander come to mind.
Science explains hardly anything bud, that's the problem.
John Gallagher Science has answered many questions
@@omnipepper3665 Not any of the big ones. In my research I have noticed that science is more describing reality than answering questions.
John Gallagher Like what?
Wow, so the whole argument for god here is "It's not currently known how the first self replicating "cell" came to be, therefore god."
How poor an argument is that?
Science Quotes
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
- Albert Einstein
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.”
- Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist)
Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry
I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28
“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. You see,” Davies adds, “even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life-almost contrived-you might say a ‘put-up job’.”
- Dr. Paul Davies (noted author and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Adelaide University)
“...how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.”
- Professor Steven Weinberg
(Nobel Laureate in High Energy Physics [a field of science that deals with the very
early universe], writing in the journal “Scientific American”.)
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
- Isaac Newton
(“General Scholium,” in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac
Newton. 1687)
16O has exactly the right nuclear energy level either to prevent all the carbon from turning into oxygen or to facilitate sufficient production of 16O for life. Fred Hoyle, who discovered these coincidences in 1953, concluded that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.”
- Hoyle, Fred. “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16
(for more of these coincidences click here)
“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one… Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.”
- Christian de Duve. “A Guided Tour of the Living Cell” (Nobel laureate and organic chemist)
Probably the leading paleontologist alive today, Simon Conway Morris, the scientist who discovered the significance of the Cambrian explosion of animal life, writes in his seminal book, Life’s Solutions, that he is “convinced” that nature’s success in the lottery of life has “metaphysical implications.”
“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.”
- Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy) Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”
- Professor Freeman J. of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
- Max Planck
(founder of the quantum theory and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century)
“...The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system: it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet…could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written…”
- Dr. Michael Denton (Australian microbiologist)
“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”
- George Ellis (British astrophysicist) Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30
“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.”
- John O’Keefe (astronomer at NASA) Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.”
- Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics) Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
“It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.”
“It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
-Anthony Flew
Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater
“It has occurred to me lately-I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities-that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from non-living matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality-that stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals. In them the universe begins to know itself.”
- George Wald, (Noble laureate and professor of biology at Harvard University) wrote this in an article entitled “Life and Mind in the Universe” which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology, symposium 11 (1984): 1-15.
“There is a wide measure of agreement which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter-not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown, exist as thoughts.”
- Sir James Jeans knighted mathematician, physicist and astronomer who helped develop our understanding of the evolution of stars, wrote this in his book The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge, 1931).
“As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?”
- George Greenstein (American astronomer) Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic, Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. (New York: William Morrow, (1988), pp. 26-27
“What turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animated being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences?”
- D.R. Hofstadter
“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”
- Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics) Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
“When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident.”
- Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 Astronaut)
“A life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.”
- John Wheeler (American physicist) Wheeler, John A. “Foreword,” in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. vii.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
- Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, co-discoverer of the radiation afterglow (Quoted in Walter Bradley, “The ‘Just-so’ Universe: The Fine-Tuning of Constants and Conditions in the Cosmos,” in William Dembski and James Kushiner, eds., Signs of Intelligence. 168)
“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”
- Carl Sagan
(From an introduction to “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking)
“As long as you are occupied with the mathematical sciences and the technique of logic, you belong to those who walk around the palace in search of the gate… When you complete your study of the natural sciences and get a grasp of the metaphysics, you enter into the inner courtyard and are in the same house as [G-d the King].”
- Moses Maimonides
“This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth… [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
- Robert Jastrow (God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption ... For myself, as no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneous liberation from a certain political and economic system, and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
Science Quotes
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
- Albert Einstein
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.”
- Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist)
Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry
I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28
“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. You see,” Davies adds, “even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life-almost contrived-you might say a ‘put-up job’.”
- Dr. Paul Davies (noted author and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Adelaide University)
“...how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.”
- Professor Steven Weinberg
(Nobel Laureate in High Energy Physics [a field of science that deals with the very
early universe], writing in the journal “Scientific American”.)
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
- Isaac Newton
(“General Scholium,” in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac
Newton. 1687)
16O has exactly the right nuclear energy level either to prevent all the carbon from turning into oxygen or to facilitate sufficient production of 16O for life. Fred Hoyle, who discovered these coincidences in 1953, concluded that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.”
- Hoyle, Fred. “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16
(for more of these coincidences click here)
“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one… Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.”
- Christian de Duve. “A Guided Tour of the Living Cell” (Nobel laureate and organic chemist)
Probably the leading paleontologist alive today, Simon Conway Morris, the scientist who discovered the significance of the Cambrian explosion of animal life, writes in his seminal book, Life’s Solutions, that he is “convinced” that nature’s success in the lottery of life has “metaphysical implications.”
“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.”
- Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy) Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”
- Professor Freeman J. of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
- Max Planck
(founder of the quantum theory and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century)
“...The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system: it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet…could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written…”
- Dr. Michael Denton (Australian microbiologist)
“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”
- George Ellis (British astrophysicist) Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30
“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.”
- John O’Keefe (astronomer at NASA) Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.”
- Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics) Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
“It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.”
“It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
-Anthony Flew
Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater
“It has occurred to me lately-I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities-that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from non-living matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality-that stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals. In them the universe begins to know itself.”
- George Wald, (Noble laureate and professor of biology at Harvard University) wrote this in an article entitled “Life and Mind in the Universe” which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology, symposium 11 (1984): 1-15.
“There is a wide measure of agreement which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter-not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown, exist as thoughts.”
- Sir James Jeans knighted mathematician, physicist and astronomer who helped develop our understanding of the evolution of stars, wrote this in his book The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge, 1931).
“As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?”
- George Greenstein (American astronomer) Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic, Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. (New York: William Morrow, (1988), pp. 26-27
“What turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animated being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences?”
- D.R. Hofstadter
“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”
- Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics) Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
“When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident.”
- Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 Astronaut)
“A life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.”
- John Wheeler (American physicist) Wheeler, John A. “Foreword,” in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. vii.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
- Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, co-discoverer of the radiation afterglow (Quoted in Walter Bradley, “The ‘Just-so’ Universe: The Fine-Tuning of Constants and Conditions in the Cosmos,” in William Dembski and James Kushiner, eds., Signs of Intelligence. 168)
“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”
- Carl Sagan
(From an introduction to “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking)
“As long as you are occupied with the mathematical sciences and the technique of logic, you belong to those who walk around the palace in search of the gate… When you complete your study of the natural sciences and get a grasp of the metaphysics, you enter into the inner courtyard and are in the same house as [G-d the King].”
- Moses Maimonides
“This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth… [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
- Robert Jastrow (God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption ... For myself, as no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneous liberation from a certain political and economic system, and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
Science Quotes
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
- Albert Einstein
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.”
- Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist)
Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry
I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28
“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. You see,” Davies adds, “even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life-almost contrived-you might say a ‘put-up job’.”
- Dr. Paul Davies (noted author and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Adelaide University)
“...how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.”
- Professor Steven Weinberg
(Nobel Laureate in High Energy Physics [a field of science that deals with the very
early universe], writing in the journal “Scientific American”.)
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
- Isaac Newton
(“General Scholium,” in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac
Newton. 1687)
16O has exactly the right nuclear energy level either to prevent all the carbon from turning into oxygen or to facilitate sufficient production of 16O for life. Fred Hoyle, who discovered these coincidences in 1953, concluded that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.”
- Hoyle, Fred. “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16
(for more of these coincidences click here)
“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one… Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.”
- Christian de Duve. “A Guided Tour of the Living Cell” (Nobel laureate and organic chemist)
Probably the leading paleontologist alive today, Simon Conway Morris, the scientist who discovered the significance of the Cambrian explosion of animal life, writes in his seminal book, Life’s Solutions, that he is “convinced” that nature’s success in the lottery of life has “metaphysical implications.”
“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.”
- Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy) Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”
- Professor Freeman J. of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
- Max Planck
(founder of the quantum theory and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century)
“...The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system: it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet…could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written…”
- Dr. Michael Denton (Australian microbiologist)
“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”
- George Ellis (British astrophysicist) Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30
“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.”
- John O’Keefe (astronomer at NASA) Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.”
- Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics) Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
“It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.”
“It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
-Anthony Flew
Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater
“It has occurred to me lately-I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities-that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from non-living matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality-that stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals. In them the universe begins to know itself.”
- George Wald, (Noble laureate and professor of biology at Harvard University) wrote this in an article entitled “Life and Mind in the Universe” which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology, symposium 11 (1984): 1-15.
“There is a wide measure of agreement which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter-not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown, exist as thoughts.”
- Sir James Jeans knighted mathematician, physicist and astronomer who helped develop our understanding of the evolution of stars, wrote this in his book The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge, 1931).
“As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?”
- George Greenstein (American astronomer) Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic, Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. (New York: William Morrow, (1988), pp. 26-27
“What turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animated being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences?”
- D.R. Hofstadter
“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”
- Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics) Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
“When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident.”
- Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 Astronaut)
“A life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.”
- John Wheeler (American physicist) Wheeler, John A. “Foreword,” in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. vii.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
- Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, co-discoverer of the radiation afterglow (Quoted in Walter Bradley, “The ‘Just-so’ Universe: The Fine-Tuning of Constants and Conditions in the Cosmos,” in William Dembski and James Kushiner, eds., Signs of Intelligence. 168)
“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”
- Carl Sagan
(From an introduction to “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking)
“As long as you are occupied with the mathematical sciences and the technique of logic, you belong to those who walk around the palace in search of the gate… When you complete your study of the natural sciences and get a grasp of the metaphysics, you enter into the inner courtyard and are in the same house as [G-d the King].”
- Moses Maimonides
“This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth… [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
- Robert Jastrow (God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption ... For myself, as no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneous liberation from a certain political and economic system, and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
Proof of the Birth of Jesus
The greatest argument against Christianity would be the fact that Jesus never lived. If the birth of Jesus did not occur, then of course, the Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus did not occur. And if there is no resurrection, then death has not been conquered. If death has not been conquered, then sin has not been conquered and we are all doomed. Without the birth of Jesus, Christianity is just another religion based upon legends and myths.
Many argue that the only proof of Jesus' birth is the Bible. And they go on to argue that the Bible is just a book of myths and legends. There is historical, archaeological, and the study of logical reasoning that disproves that the Bible just a book of myths of legends.
If the Bible is true, then Jesus birth, Crucifixion, and Resurrection are true. Some will argue that you can't trust the Bible because it was written by those who believed in Jesus. If you use this argument regarding biographies and history books (this is what the Four Gospels are like), you see how foolish it is. Many biographies are written by people who loved the person they are writing about, but we do not question their validity. There are those who write about history who have their prejudices but we do not deny the facts that are in their books. Read on the Validity of the Bible.
However, in this section on the Birth of Christ, we will cite sources that are outside of the Bible to prove that Jesus Christ was known to be a real person and not just a fable. This is only a small amount of information-go to the Books Section to obtain much more information on the Historical Evidence of the birth of Jesus. Also, we have a great amount of material discussing the Resurrection of Jesus. If He was resurrected, he obviously was born.
The very enemies of Christianity claimed that he lived--and that he performed miracles! Early Jewish documents such as the Mishnah and even Josephus--as well as first-century Gentile historians--such as Thallus, Serapion, and Tacitus--all testify that the one called Christ lived in Palestine and died under Pontius Pilate. As the British scholar, F. F. Bruce put it, "The historicity of Christ is as [certain]. . . as the historicity of Julius Caesar" (NT Documents, 119). If they document his death, then he had to have been born.
It needs to be understood that some of the writings were hostile to Christianity, but still documented the historical fact of Jesus.
JOSEPHUS-Jewish Historian
Josephus, Jewish historian (AD 37-100) wrote of Jesus:
"About this time appeared Jesus, a wise man (if indeed it is right to call Him man; for He was a worker of astonishing deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with joy), and He drew to Himself many Jews (many also of Greeks. This was the Christ.) And when Pilate, at the denunciation of those that are foremost among us, had condemned Him to the cross, those who had first loved Him did not abandon Him (for He appeared to them alive again on the third day, the holy prophets having foretold this and countless other marvels about Him.) The tribe of Christians named after Him did not cease to this day." (Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63 )
Most scholars agree that the statements in italics were added later by others, most likely Christians. However, there has not been any dispute regarding the accuracy of his statement regarding the crucifixion of Jesus, which means he had to have been born.
TACITUS-Gentile Historian
Tacitus, a Roman historian, in his Annals, c. AD 115, describes the Roman
Emperor Nero's actions after the great fire of Rome, c. AD 64:
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
Annals 15 -44
” Mischievous Superstition”.
Exitiabilis is the latin word for mischievous. It means destructive, fatal, deadly. So it would seem that what tacitus actually said was it was “a destructive or fatal or deadly superstition”. He was calling Christianity evil. So, it is obvious that he was not a Christian, thus he would not be sharing about the death of Jesus to support the fact that there was a historical Jesus that was killed by Pontius Pilate. Note that Tacitus is not referring to the death of the Jesus as supersititon but the practice of Jesus’ followers.
A famous historian, reputed in his own days as being extremely careful and factual, Tacitus would not have been prone to writing about a movement without first checking the Roman archives to see if he could not get the most accurate report possible. He wrote his history of Rome covering the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian, that's 14-96 AD. He used earlier works by historians cross checking them with each other. He sought to verify his facts, something unusual in the writing of the time. He clearly has bias as he hated Domitian and wasn't a great fan of Tiberius, but this would have no bearing on mentions of Christ.
Some say that Tactitus also wrote about Hercules so his works are not valid. Read our response to this accusation.
Suetonius-Gentile Historian
Another Roman writer who shows his acquaintance with Christ and the Christians is Suetonius (A.D. 75-160). It has been noted that Suetonius considered Christ (Chrestus) as a Roman insurgent who stirred up seditions under the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41-54): "Judaeos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes (Claudius) Roma expulit" (Clau., xxv).
Phlegon-Gentile Historian
"Phlegon mentioned the eclipse which took place during the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and no other (eclipse); it is clear that he did not know from his sources about any (similar) eclipse in previous times . . . and this is shown by the historical account of Tiberius Caesar." Origen and Philopon, De. opif. mund. II21
"And with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place ...” Origen Against Celsus
The historical character of Jesus Christ is also attested by the hostile Jewish literature of the subsequent centuries. His birth is ascribed to an illicit ("Acta Pilati" in Thilo, "Codex apocryph. N.T., I, 526; cf. Justin, "Apol.", I, 35), or even an adulterous, union of His parents (Origen, "Contra Cels.," I, 28, 32).
References
There are many Jewish writings that show traces of acquaintance with the murder of the Holy Innocents (Wagenseil, "Confut. Libr.Toldoth", 15; Eisenmenger op. cit., I, 116; Schottgen, op. cit., II, 667), with the flight into Egypt (cf. Josephus, "Ant." XIII, xiii), with the stay of Jesus in the Temple at the age of twelve (Schottgen, op. cit., II, 696), with the call of the disciples ("Sanhedrin", 43a; Wagenseil, op. cit., 17; Schottgen, loc. cit., 713), with His miracles (Origen, "Contra Cels", II, 48; Wagenseil, op. cit., 150; Gemara "Sanhedrin" fol. 17); "Schabbath", fol. 104b; Wagenseil, op.cit., 6, 7, 17), with His claim to be God (Origen, "Contra Cels.", I, 28; cf. Eisenmenger, op. cit., I, 152; Schottgen, loc. cit., 699) with His betrayal by Judas and His death (Origen, "Contra cels.", II, 9, 45, 68, 70; Buxtorf, op. cit., 1458; Lightfoot, "Hor. Heb.", 458, 490, 498; Eisenmenger, loc. cit., 185; Schottgen, loc. cit.,699 700; cf."Sanhedrin", vi, vii). Celsus (Origen, "Contra Cels.", II, 55) tries to throw doubt on the Resurrection, while Toldoth (cf. Wagenseil, 19) repeats the Jewish fiction that the body of Jesus had been stolen from the sepulchre.
So significant is Jesus in man's history that the Encyclopedia Britannica has 20,000 words in describing this person, Jesus. His description took more space than was given to Aristotle, Cicero, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed or Napolean Bonaparte. Why would there be so much material on a man who was never born?
Here is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica concerning the testimony of the many independent secular accounts of Jesus of Nazareth:
These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.
Jesus is recorded as a fact, as is His death, burial and missing body in the Reader's Digest Book of Facts, 1989.
Elaine C Do u ever think on ur own ...... EVER. Do u have any arguments of ur own that lead to a god that u cant copy and paste.
Dr. Fuz Rana's four points:
1. No one has successfully explained a natural origin of life to me, therefore God did it.
2. Prebiotic chemistry has successful id demonstrating chemistry building blocks, but that doesn't count because it doesn't work outside the lab without testing for millions of years in a 'natural' environment, therefore God did it. (oh, and it looks designed, aka, the watchmaker argument).
3. Work in synthetic biology affirms, because I said so. Therefore God did it.
4. Watchmaker argument, although debunked, is still valid because I have added more complex details. Therefore God did it
In summary, he makes claims. Provides no evidence. Demonstrates he does not understand the other side's arguments. And concludes God did it.
Sad.
Anyone else extremely bothered by the woman who called the Big Bang “evolution’s miracle”? When will people get it through their head that biology and cosmology are completely different?
That's some Kent Hovind level derp right there
Two of the worst theories ever created are the Big Bang theory & Evolution theory. Neither are worth the paper they are written on.
A B yeah but a man walking on water is legit
@@atleastimnotgae2124 Your disbelief does not mean it never happened. Witnesses documented that it did happen--so, whatever you think is really your limitation. More importantly, is that your response is a deflection because even you don't believe evolution is true--but you put up with the fraud because you despise the consequences of the truth.
Evolutioners pretend their beliefs are 'scientific fact'--when pressed to show compelling/convincing proof or evidence & a cogent explanation for verify their purported 'evolution is a scientific fact'--they can only produce half-baked evidence that no sane, intelligent, honest, rational, & informed person would ever consider to be valid/true--you know--except for atheists & other nitwits--they don't require such information to believe & falsely promote their 'fact' claim lies.
They would have us believe we evolved from microbes to mankind & our ancestors crawled up out of the seas & eventually morphed into mankind--which is pure fiction/rubbish. Tossing in unlimited time also doesn't result in their myth being a reality--it just results in lots of time.
A B expansion of universe - observed. Background microwave radiation - observed, gravity waves - observed. BBT is THE current theory for good reason, there is data to support it.
Nothing much until around 10:40
"I think your saying that through trial and error the cells keep what was beneficial to life." Not quite. The cells had no decision in the process, they just churn out options constantly. If some worked they got carried to the next generation and had new options (populations evolve remember) and if those offered benefits (which vary on circumstance - thus diversity of species not one giant homologous organism) they were passed on.
James Shapiro has laid out the basis for natural genetic engineering pretty well in Evolution 2.0. The Nobel Prize was awarded in 1983 to Dr. Barbara McClintock for her work which demonstrated the genome is a read write organelle of the cell. Jumping forward to the maturation of epigenetics, systems biology and so forth, at this point saying the cells had no decision in the process is a perspective which science hasn’t held for easily 50 years or more.
I love Dr. Ruses' lumberjack appearence, mixed with the posh accent. Delightfully entertaining.
Intellectual luxury is defined by articulation/sophistication of argument and not accent.
@@stinksterrekerinski4450 Well Creation lost out the gate then. All they have is a God they can't even prove exists. lost cause if you ask me.
@@jerrylong6238 Can't prove to who? You? I can prove God exists to me and that's all that I'm expected to prove it to. I can tell you how to prove it to yourself but I feel that would be wasting my time and yours considering your attitude.
Humility goes a long way...much further than your pride...parading around like you know something but you have no clue how to prove it to yourself.
You will learn...hopefully.
@@peli_candude554 Lol what a load of garbage. Something that you “can only prove to yourself”. LOL That’s useless by definition, so who cares? And yes, you’d be wasting EVERYONE’s time. Then the “humility”, “parading around”, “like you know something”. Yeah, that’s how SCIENCE WORKS, it doesn’t give a shit about your attitude, it works HARD to PROVE TRUTHS. No one has any need or time for YOUR self indulgent internal fantasies about how things work.
@@peli_candude554 It all comes down to pride
I think Dr. Rana was attempting a proof by verbosity fallacy. The setting is intelligently designed, indeed: lay audience, proffesor of the philosophy of science who understandably assumes the discussion will not be technical as an opponent, and him - an expert on biochemistry who invokes technicality constantly. And them false analogies... everywhere. Blind watchmaker, information system optimization, researches "proving" intelligent agency, Kekule´s case as an evidence for divine inspiration. A subtle take on naturalistic fallacy arriving infallibly at 0.59 (beautifully rebutted though, in my view). And much more.
Transcribed into a written form, it can all be deconstructed, piece by piece, on all levels. That promises enjoyment. Moreover, the civility of them both contributes to this discussion being even more pleasant.
mary me?
Faz is my boy, but I was also looking forward to him debating a biologist too.
I agree completely with you, Lenka. Also, Dr. Rana near the end compares science's claim that solutions to today's "unsolvable" problems are just yet to be solved problems by naturalistic methods is the same type of "faith" if you will that creationists believe in. In other words when we say well we just haven't figured that out yet, we are no better then the ID proponents saying it was God. I have to disagree vehemently with that idea. We have demonstrated by all the we know in science and all the problems we have solved in science today so far that there is a precedent that we can solve these problems. With the age of reason manifesting only a few hundred years ago, this is the blink of an eye, (or maybe a few blinks), on the scale human existence. There is no precedent that creationism is the solution to anything, or provides us with any new useful knowledge or explanations.
You only consider it a verbosity fallacy because you don't understand the scientific basis for his argument.
@@TheErik150x boy, the replication crisis identified in 2011 that has only been getting worse, was not kind to this comment
We are descended from slime there is no God, if you don't like it too bad!
Peter Perfect
4 years later --> men are women!! If you don't like it, too bad!!
The only STUPID QUESTION is the one that is not asked;
2:10:20 - Common, just say it. God fucked up. We're the BETA version. What you're describing is the equivalent of a "bug" in a program.
And that belief is fine! I actually support that belief way more than the god of the bible. You cannot equate them, since it says in the book itself that good is ALL good.... a "bug", or "suffering" is NOT GOOD...
Is it to satisfy an ultimate goal for god? then what is that goal?... If you answer "i don't know", then you definitely should seek the answer. Because I'd answer "To watch us, and see what happens"... That's FINE.. But don't tell me that the god of the bible is THAT god, cause at SOME level, we have to take the bible literally.
Life on earth "Could be an experiment being conducted by a grad student from Andromeda just to see what happens!' Brilliant line and that is what I take away from this lively give and take! Well done gentlemen! We will never KNOW IT ALL! Have a piece of cheesecake occasionally and be compassionate to each other! LAUGH AND LOVE and be grateful to be alive! PEACE!
When he said that, my first thought was "quite possibly! But who created the Andromedans? They obviously must have come somewhere. Where they evolved? And what faraway aliens made the Andromedans for their own grand school studies".
We all believe this:
In the beginning there was something that had NOT been created. And that increased thing that always was, went on to make everything else. The question is, was that uncreated thing a sentient being or not.
Natalie James ••••
Here s the question that bothers me : Why do they teach our kids big bang and evolution theory in school, and yet those same State controlled public schools haven't taught the science of classical logic for more than a century?
Is it because they want to enlighten us?
"The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it." -Voltaire
"Their central dogma is the immortality and transmigration of the soul. A doctrine which they regard as the finest incentive to courage, since it inspires contempt of death."
-Julius Caesar, "The Commentaries", regarding the spiritual beliefs of the ancient Druids, 51 B.C.
Here's an argument for the existence of God that you may enjoy.
Premise #1: The universe was created by either a directed (intelligent) or undirected (random) process .
Premise #2: The proposition that the universe was created by an undirected (random) process runs squarely against numbers that are so astronomically improbable that we can not reasonable entertain them as a possibility .
Conclusion : It is therefore a practical certainty that the universe was created by a directed (intelligent) process.
"A high degree of probability is often called 'practical certainty.' A reasonable man should not refrain upon acting upon a practical certainty as though it were known to be true. In England, for instance, it is customary for a judge, at the trial of a person accused of murder, to instruct the jury that an adverse verdict need not be based on the belief that the guilt of the prisoner has been ' proved ', but upon the belief that the guilt has been established ' beyond a reasonable doubt .' To be ' beyond reasonable doubt ' is to have sufficient evidence to make the proposition in question so much more likely to be true than to be false that we should be prepared to act upon the supposition of its truth. Many of our most important actions have to be performed in accordance with belief of such a kind."
-L. Susan Stebbing, "Logic in Practice", (1934) pages 98 and 99 ••••••••••
The following is a quote of Dr Frank Turek, taken from a debate between Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens on TH-cam. ••••
"This is sometimes called the teleological argument for design.
Not only did the universe explode into being out of nothing , it did so with extreme precision . In other words, the big bang was not a chaotic explosion. How incredibly precise was it? Atheist Steven Weinberg put it this way. He said, "life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values." There are dozens of these quantities . One of them Steven Hawking identified was this: He said that if the expansion rate of the universe changed by one part in a hundred thousand million million, a second after the big bang , we wouldn't be here . The universe would not have expanded, or it would have collapsed back in on itself, or it never would have created galaxies . That's how precisely designed the big bang event was.
Not only was the big bang event precisely designed , so are many constants about our universe right now . If you change the gravitational force by one part in ten to the forty , we wouldn't be here . What's one part in ten to the forty? Illustration : Take a tape measure ; stretch it from that back wall to the front wall ; in inches. If you set gravity at a particular inch mark on that tape measure, and moved the strength of gravity one inch in either direction proportionally , we go out of existence . But the problem is that the tape measure doesn't go from that wall to this front wall; it goes across the entire known universe . You change gravity that much , across the entire known universe, and we don't exist .
For you Navy people out here, (I was in the Navy many years) think of an aircraft carrier , like the John Stennis or the Ronald Reagan, which displaces a hundred and ten thousand tons ; has a runway on it that is about three lengths of a football field ; has five to six thousand people on it ; several stories high. If you were to change the weight of that aircraft carrier by less than a trillionth the weight of one electron , it would be uninhabitable , if the aircraft carrier was the universe . That's how incredibly designed the universe is."
@@williamspringer9447 Wrong. Just be cause the numbers may be large, it does not stretch to impossibility. Neither does the fact that our extremely limited knowledge of the immense universe does not currently know of any other forms of life make ours more or less probable. And the fact that this type of life occurred here is simply due to the circumstances of what existed here - NOT that it was created specifically for this type of life. See hole:puddle
We VERY CLEARLY F know there is no invisible dude in the clouds. Grow up. omg.
I agree regardless of what's true this world could use more compassion and love always. I'll tell you one thing I do know. Us humans, even the animals. Us living beings. We're here on earth with each other.
We should remember that every living being is deserving of respect and love. All living things feel and experience. Life's hard enough. We need to uplift each other as fellow earthlings. As fellow living beings.
Love your post!
Congrats to both gentleman for an honest and respectful debate.
On this issue, both sides cannot be respectful, because one side is wrong:
Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death
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What the creationist doesn't get is; no matter how unlikely a given natural explanation is, it will always be more likely then a miraculous explanation, which by definition is not likely at all, as a result of no prior probability.
@ SayNoToDogma Would you define what you mean by 'miraculous'? Would you consider the unguided emergence of life from non-life to be miraculous? How about the emergence of the universe from nothing? Is natural universal common ancestry miraculous? How about a gilled fish developing lungs through unguided random processes? The naturalist explanations are founded on miraculous events.
Dave Biddle Are you being coy and playing word games? I am quite sure you know that a man coming back from 1 3/4 hours of being dead, and living a normal life thereafter, has had a miracle. I'm quite sure you know that for surgically removed small intestines to be restored after prayers is a miracle. If you want to get into denial about that and say "Well, that's not my definition of a miracle" what can I say? You miss out. And if you continue on that path you miss out on more than you can imagine. The people who experienced their miracles didn't miss out however.
That's all I have to say as I have no time for games.
You need to start saying no to dogma. Then maybe you will think a little clearer about this. Before any understanding of the history of religion and the significance and meaning of its literature, you might want to start without narrow assumptions. The question as to whether or not Darwin's theory is viable is the question as to whether or not a workable explanation has been given for the argument against intelligence in nature. You are confusing argument with assumption. You believe there has to be a "natural" explanation therefore you see the idea of intelligence guiding natural forces as miraculous. Why don't we do what good scientists should do and keep an open mind and investigate the evidence?
So are you trying to avoid the fact that natural processes are undeniably unlikely to have created (no pun intended) what we see today? You can assume that the natural processes are more likely, but you have 2 problems. 1) You haven't proven that the natural processes are correct. 2) You haven't negated or proved God wrong.
It makes sense of you start from the notion there's an allpowerful, all-knowing/seeing and always been present gawd. Then evidence isn't important to you, cos you can explain or explain away ANY- and EVERYTHING with the delusional concept of gawd....
Even if it could demonstrated or proven that life began here on earth by some form of
" MIND " or " First Cause " agency , it most certainly is NOT this god agency called " yahweh " described in the
O. T. ( torah ) bible ! This described ancient Bronze Age shaman invented god agent is infinitely TOO SMALL to have created anything , let alone the Infinite Cosmos we experience ourselves in !
It really is idolatrous the way these people of the book worship a provincial human god.
"This is not a god of the gaps argument"
-proceeds with god of the gaps argument.
Adam Courtney •••
The intelligent design argument is based on logical inferences from from hard scientific evidence .
Have you ever wondered why they teach our kids big bang and evolution theory in school,and yet those same State controlled public schools haven't taught the science of classical logic for more than a century?
Do you think it's because they want to enlighten us ?
Here's an argument for the existence of God that you may enjoy.
Premise #1: The universe was created by either a directed (intelligent) or undirected (random) process .
Premise #2: The proposition that the universe was created by an undirected (random) process runs squarely against numbers that are so astronomically improbable that we can not reasonable entertain them as a possibility .
Conclusion : It is therefore a practical certainty that the universe was created by a directed (intelligent) process.
"A high degree of probability is often called 'practical certainty.' A reasonable man should not refrain upon acting upon a practical certainty as though it were known to be true. In England, for instance, it is customary for a judge, at the trial of a person accused of murder, to instruct the jury that an adverse verdict need not be based on the belief that the guilt of the prisoner has been ' proved ', but upon the belief that the guilt has been established ' beyond a reasonable doubt .' To be ' beyond reasonable doubt ' is to have sufficient evidence to make the proposition in question so much more likely to be true than to be false that we should be prepared to act upon the supposition of its truth. Many of our most important actions have to be performed in accordance with belief of such a kind."
-L. Susan Stebbing, "Logic in Practice", (1934) pages 98 and 99 ••••••••••
The following is a quote of Dr Frank Turek, taken from a debate between Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens on TH-cam. ••••
"This is sometimes called the teleological argument for design.
Not only did the universe explode into being out of nothing , it did so with extreme precision . In other words, the big bang was not a chaotic explosion. How incredibly precise was it? Atheist Steven Weinberg put it this way. He said, "life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values." There are dozens of these quantities . One of them Steven Hawking identified was this: He said that if the expansion rate of the universe changed by one part in a hundred thousand million million, a second after the big bang , we wouldn't be here . The universe would not have expanded, or it would have collapsed back in on itself, or it never would have created galaxies . That's how precisely designed the big bang event was.
Not only was the big bang event precisely designed , so are many constants about our universe right now . If you change the gravitational force by one part in ten to the forty , we wouldn't be here . What's one part in ten to the forty? Illustration : Take a tape measure ; stretch it from that back wall to the front wall ; in inches. If you set gravity at a particular inch mark on that tape measure, and moved the strength of gravity one inch in either direction proportionally , we go out of existence . But the problem is that the tape measure doesn't go from that wall to this front wall; it goes across the entire known universe . You change gravity that much , across the entire known universe, and we don't exist .
For you Navy people out here, (I was in the Navy many years) think of an aircraft carrier , like the John Stennis or the Ronald Reagan, which displaces a hundred and ten thousand tons ; has a runway on it that is about three lengths of a football field ; has five to six thousand people on it ; several stories high. If you were to change the weight of that aircraft carrier by less than a trillionth the weight of one electron , it would be uninhabitable , if the aircraft carrier was the universe . That's how incredibly designed the universe is."
@@williamspringer9447 thank you for your response. It was very interesting, but I believe you only further demonstrated my point.
How would a theologian determine the difference between something that is truly supernatural and something that is natural but just outside of our current realm of scientific understanding? Spoiler alert: they can't. The universe is not only stranger than we know, it's stranger than we *can* know.
Is gravity a "guided process"? I ask this question because it seems creationists believe the only alternative to a guided process must be randomness. But, gravity is not random. We know exactly what happens when we let go of something we're holding: it falls. This natural constant allows us to make observations and predictions with repeatable results.
If the theory of gravitation were somehow disproved, would the new answer automatically be that angels have been pulling objects towards the earth at 9.81 meters per second squared, OR, is "we don't know" an acceptable response until further study can be done?
The answer is obvious. So, when ID proponents attempt to poke holes in evolution, why do they think this lends ANY credibility to their own position by default? I'm sorry, but you need to support your own position.
While saying "Just look around you, everything has the appearance of design!" is an interesting thought experiment, it all falls apart if you think about it for more than a minute. Take the watchmaker argument for example: When we look at a watch we know that it was designed because we have other watches to compare it to and we understand that human hands designed the watch for a specific purpose. Yet, under the intelligent design model there is nothing in the universe that has not been "created". You could say the entire universe is the watch. But how do they know that? There is no other universe, no other watch, that we can compare it to. As far as we can know for sure, any purpose the universe may have is subject to human interpretation... bottom-up, not top-down.
We understand design by comparing it against things that are naturally occurring. What other natural universe can we compare ours against to determine if it was in fact designed? We can't. It's all baseless speculation, which is why it's so hard to take creationism seriously.
There is always some kind of fallacious reasoning involved when appealing to the supernatural. Bayesian probability is the most dishonest of all apologetic attempts because it plugs in variables for which we have no precedent or parallel to reference. For instance, if you have a six-sided die, you know you have a one in six chance of rolling a 4. The probability changes with the number of sides you add. If you flip a coin 100 times and each time it lands on heads, what are the chances it will land on heads the next time? The answer is always 50/50. There is only one universe that we know of... a one-sided die. No calculations can be made for things that we know have only occurred once. It's even worse for events that have never happened before, such as a resurrection.
The simplest illustration to describe the big bang is if you were to pack everything that exists inside the universe into something the size of a small brief case, and it's about to fly open. This includes all matter, space, time, physics, causality... everything our human brains have knowledge of resides inside of this brief case. We then ask the question, "what was outside the brief case?" Now, you claim to know the answer based on inferences as if our realm of understanding inside the briefcase also applies on the outside. This is not only something we don't know, but CAN'T know. Yet these theists scoff as if this is such an easy problem to solve. It is most certainly the equivalent of, "Hey, look at these things scientists haven't figured out yet. This is where God lives!" Well, I gotta tell you, God's house is getting smaller and smaller with every discovery.
Shouldn't the fine-tuning argument be more of an argument against a powerful creator? The greater miracle would be if the universe were not fine-tuned, yet allowed for life anyway. It seems the very fact that the universe must meet certain specifications strongly suggests that God had no other choice but to design it this way, thus is bound by certain external restrictions and is therefore not all-powerful. Furthermore, knowing that life only exists in the tiniest fraction of 0.0000000000000001% of the universe makes the fine-tuning argument quite silly.
Finally (as if there aren't enough holes in this argument ready) the very idea that the universe is fine-tuned says nothing other than... it is fine-tuned. Plugging in a god explanation to explain what we do not yet understand doesn't really have much explanatory power other than, god did it. It doesn't say anything about how it happened. There is no way to objectively verify this claim by testing, making predictions, and most importantly, it is unfalsifiable.
If humans remained satisfied with the idea that Zeus threw down lightning from Olympus we never would have discovered electricity.
Sometimes the most honest answer is "I don't know" because it gives us permission to explore and investigate what the real answer is.
Now, let's talk about a universe from "nothing" for a moment. If you ask the question, "WHAT is nothing?" you have immediately defeated your own argument. "WHAT" implies something. Nobody knows how to approach the subject of "nothing" without applying a contradiction in terms. Consider this: could "nothing" ever EXIST? Obviously, the answer is no. Therefore, there is no reason to think there could ever BE or has ever BEEN "nothing", ever. It can be soundly argued that everything that begins to exist is a rearrangement of pre-existing fundamental particles. When you began to exist, did you emerge from nothing? Of course not. You were a rearrangement a pre-existing fundamental particles.
Creationism tends to project its own faults onto science only to continue pushing the same circular argument routing back to a preconceived conclusion.
Science gathers data and attempts to arrive at the best conclusion it can based on the data, with as little bias as possible. Religion, however, holds to an unchanging presupposed conclusion and selectively tries to use whatever data it can to confirm that presupposition. This is not only the wrong way to form models of reality, it is dishonest. Stating as fact that which is not evidently true is no different from lying.
Furthermore, when science makes new earth shattering discoveries, religions must reshape or reinterpret their doctrines in order to make things fit. I am not aware of a single instance where science has been forced to change because of a religious discovery. Maybe I'm unaware of it... Please, name one scientific discovery that was later abandoned in favor of a supernatural explanation ... Just one.
Adam Courtney •••
Thank you for the very thoughtful and carefully reasoned comment. I disagree entirely of course. In defence of my argument for the existence of God I only find it necessary to say this:
My premises are true. I could support them with mountains of evidence .
And my conclusion logically follows .
But of course , it's not really my argument . It represents the wisdom of the ages, and the belief of thousands of years of humanity's finest minds.
I think that your trust of the scientific community is misguided . Nine out of ten Americans still believe that man walked on the Moon, even though there is zero reliable evidence that it ever happened. Read Inventing the AIDS Virus by Dr Peter Duesberg, with introduction by Nobel prize winning scientist Dr Kary Mullis; then you'll see the scientific community for what it truly is .
Have you ever wondered why they teach our kids big bang and evolution theory in school,and yet those same State controlled public schools haven't taught the science of classical logic for more than a century?(The Underground History of American Education by John Gatto)
I guarantee you that if our government thought that making us believe in Zeus would make us twice as productive and easier to control , they would be teaching Zeus in our public schools right now.
Our government has turned its back on Christianity because atheism makes better drones . They can't have hundreds of millions of heavily armed ignorant peasants running around thinking they have a soul and there's a God. That could get ugly. That's the stuff revolutions are made of.
"The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it." -Voltaire
"Their central dogma is the immortality and transmigration of the soul. A doctrine which they regard as the finest incentive to courage, since it inspires contempt of death."
-Julius Caesar, "The Commentaries", regarding the spiritual beliefs of the ancient Druids, 51 B.C.
There are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics, so increasing complexity from lifeless
chemicals to complex living cells in a pre-bionic world is a clear violation of the 2nd law.
@@rdhallmansr 2nd law applies to a closed or isolated system. Earth is constantly receiving energy from the sun. You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Perhaps do some research from sources that are not religious propaganda, because it just makes you sound like an uninformed parrot.
Fuz Rana opening speech
science has many hypotheses for origins, each have problems which is why they are in the hypothesis category. I will now spend lots of time pointing out why these hypotheses are in fact hypotheses because they each have problems. therefore god did it, at this point I'd like to explain that sciences hypotheses have problems. in summation god did it because science only has hypothesis.
Creationist are coming to the conclusion of intelligent design because the mechanism they are viewing under the microscope points to that. You act as if these highly educated scientists aren't doing any independent research at all. The system of a living cell is an enclosed system. Chemistry and the conditions of the early earth or the "hypothesis" of what the early earth was like, just doesn't create life. If scientists are interfering within a scientific experiment that automatically gives a win to intelligent design. Science has to prove life can take chemistry elements left alone in the atmosphere untouched can assemble itself into a living cell. Saying the phrase "millions of years" is a cheat and load of crap. DNA is why Creationist accept intelligent design, not because scientists can't prove life created itself
Pound4Pound •••
Have you ever wondered why they teach our kids big bang and evolution theory in school, and yet those same State controlled public schools haven't taught the science of classical logic for more than a century?
Do you think it's because they want to enlighten us?
@@pound4pound380
I've been trying to use intelligent design to explain apples falling from trees. So far I got some encouraging results. I got this idea after viewing the mechanics of apple's falling from trees. Now you know why I'm eager to peruse this idea but I hit a wall here. I want to experiment or simply consider what intelligence is and how it can exist or do anything without any know form of existence. But I can't do experiments until physicists give up on explaining the apple falling from the tree. They just keep using the phrase "mass under the influence of gravity" but that's a cheat and a load of crap. What's next I suppose chemistry is a thing too huh.
Besides inferring how the apple falls is an automatic win for intelligent design.
Being amazed and impressed by something that we don't understand should give us an incentive to investigate and obtain more data which might help us overcome our distress by developing better theories. Giving up and saying, well God explains it, does not explain anything. When I studied Engineering at Loughborough University, at no point was God used to explain something, it was always a natural explanation.
tedgrant2 I absolutely agree with you.
Yeah thats cool. But humans are light years away from engineering. You cant compare the two. What you learned had nothing to do with evolution or intelligent design.
The burden of proof is on you. The Bible has claimed and has been accepted as the historical record of the universe for millenia.
Argotha I don’t know who has accepted the bible as historical, maybe to Christians. There is no evidence that supports any aspect of the bible.
Giving up is saying a living cell created itself with DNA and RNA built in it and the cell can replicate itself. Saying that statement is giving up. Especially if you have zero evidence to support your claim. I'm more interested in finding out what designed us at this point. I don't care if it an superior alien race or intelligent beings outside of our dimension. I want to know who designed DNA. Because natural chemical substances don't create living cells at all
Phylogenetics has proven evolution true over the last few decades and intelligent design died of embarrassment after the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial of 2005. Why debate any more?
if a christian asks "where did the universe come from?",I'll answer "your question implies that you claim that the universe was created by god. so, where did god come from??".
if a christian asks "where did the 1st thing come from?",
i'll answer "your question implies that you claim that the 1st thing was created by god. so, where did god come from??".
if a christian claims "life must come from life.",
i'll respond "so the life of god came from what??".
if a christian claims "the eye is so sophisticated that it must have been created by an intelligent designer.",
i'll respond "god is more sophisticated than the eye, 2 the point of bein' able 2 create it, so he must have been created by an intelligent designer.".
if a christian claims "the cell is so complicated & so sophisticated that it must have been created by an intelligent designer.",
i'll respond "god is more complicated & more sophisticated than the cell, 2 the point of bein' able 2 create it, so he must have been created by an intelligent designer.".
if a christian claims "a watch must have been created by humans.",
i'll respond "1st, a watch is created from things that already exists on earth, this is different from your claim that god created the universe out of nothin', & 2nd, how about a rock or a bird, must it have been created by humans??".
So it would (according to you) start somewhere and over time grew into a more noticeable form of the organ. So give examples all over the planet of the millions of people who have these new organs forming all over their bodies today which are in different stages. For example - that early eye as you say would have been almost unnoticeable but an intermediate compared to todays present eye would have been definitely noticeable. There should be all kinds of new things developing that you can see. So please provide some of the examples of newly developing organs.
Your statement has one very serious flaw. You will never see some organ developing where you can claim it will have a given function within 10 thousand years. You will never see half formed features or organs, ever. Evolution has no future goals, it does not work like that. Every structure that is evolving has a current use in the present. So no you won't see new things developing. That statement goes against evolution by making it seem it has some end game.
Example: Human identical twins each have unique DNA by the time they are born. The DNA is very close, but it is not identical. What is your explanation for the divergence? Mine is
random' mutations.
@@globalcoupledances This is not an answer, a cheap excuse, a cover for ignorance.
question to old-earth creationists: if each "day" in genesis is millions of years, and the sun was created (or,started shining on earth) 1 days AFTER the plants were created.. how did the plants survive exactly?
So, are you saying, even today, that if a plant doesn't get sunlight for a day, it dies? And are you saying the creator of everything was not able to sustain the plants for a day? Or, did you forget, as ALL atheists do, that the first words of God were, ''let there be light and there was'' just before the first day of creation began? Atheists should please stop their deceitful tactics of lies.
the earth was formed (not created, because the creation of the earth was at the beginning which time is unknown) in 24-hours day periods ONLY and not in thousands of years like Muslims now claim about their incoherent Quran. The Holy Bible does not talk about the time the earth was created (not formed).
@@ingodwetrustgachatuber2747 __ The Intelligent Design proponent on stage is an Old Earth Creationist, which means he thinks each “Day” represents a long period of time (e.g., millions of years).
Listen at around 54:58 to hear the speaker say it for himself. Old Earth Creationism is an indefensible position and the ID proponent is sadly a compromised Christian.
Life, the universe, and everything was Created by God in six literal days about six thousand years ago (give or take a few years).
The Earth is not billions of years old - that’s utterly absurd. God did not Create man through a process of death and suffering. That’s also patently absurd.
God's light
That opening joke about the webcams went over like a led balloon lol.
For fuck’s sake, how many times does this need to be said? Evolution is not about the “origin of life”! It is about how life CHANGES!! If you want to debate about the origins of life, talk about abiogenesis!
Happily Secular another evolutionist denying abiogenesis is part of evolution
Is Science imposing a limit on Intelligence by stating that Intelligent Design was not used in creating this Universe? Does this mean that Intelligence is not capable of designing a Universe? If Intelligence is capable of designing a Universe then how would you tell the difference between a Universe that used Intelligent Design and
one that did not? What would be the litmus test?
Well stated! Nothing can't make everything!
yes, because 'obviously', if A causes B, then B mustve caused A. thats the genius of christian research XD
Sorry but I am lost???
yeah, i bet...
Thanks for the clarification. :)
Jesus suffered horribly, He died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, and He arose to Great Glory. There is so much proof of the Bible being historical documentation and the prophecies are occurring right before our eyes.
Like the 4 blood moons!
No there is not a lot of proof for the Bible being very accurate historically.
Niklas Wikstrom Lets get this straight.
Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible: An Outline
Archeology consistently confirms the Bible!
Archaeology and the Old Testament
• Ebla tablets-discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place names in the Patriarchal accounts are genuine. In use in Ebla was the name "Canaan," a name critics once said was not used at that time and was used incorrectly in the early chapters of the Bible. The tablets refer to all five "cities of the plain" mentioned in Genesis 14, previously assumed to have been mere legends.
• Greater proportion of Egyptian words in the Pentateuch (first five books) than in rest of the Old Testament. Accurate Egyptian names: Potiphar (Gen.39), Zaphenath-Paneah (Joseph's Egyptian name, Gen. 41:45), Asenath (Gen.41:45), On (Gen. 41:45), Rameses (Gen. 47:11), Oithom (Exodus 1:11).
• Finds in Egypt are consistent with the time, place, and other details of biblical accounts of the Israelites in Egypt. These include housing and tombs that could have been of the Israelites, as well as a villa and tomb that could have been Joseph's.
• Confounding earlier skeptics, but confirming the Bible, an important discovery was made in Egypt in 1896. A tablet-the Merneptah Stela-was found that mentions Israel. (Merneptah was the pharaoh that ruled Egypt in 1212-1202 B.C.) The context of the stela indicates that Israel was a significant entity in the late 13th century B.C.
• The Hittites were once thought to be a biblical legend, until their capital and records were discovered in Turkey.
• Crucial find in Nuzi (NE Iraq), an entire cache of Hittite legal documents from 1400 B.C. Confirm many details of Genesis, Deuteronomy, such as siring of legitimate children through handmaidens, oral deathbed will as binding,the power to sell one's birthright for relatively trivial property (Jacob & Esau),need for family idols,such as Rachel stole from Laban, to secure inheritance, form of the covenant in Deuteronomy exactly matches the form of suzerainty treaties between Hittite emperors and vassal kings.
• Walls of Jericho-discovery in 1930s by John Garstang. The walls fell suddenly, and outwardly (unique), so Israelites could clamber over the ruins into the city (Joshua 6:20).
• In 1986, scholars identified an ancient seal belonging to Baruch, son of Neriah, a scribe who recorded the prophecies of Jeremiah (Jer. 45:11).
• In 1990, Harvard researchers unearthed a silver-plated bronze calf figurine reminiscent of the huge golden calf mentioned in the book of Exodus.
• In 1993, archaeologists uncovered a 9th century B.C. inscription at Tel Dan. The words carved into a chunk of basalt refer to the "House of David" and the "King of Israel." And the Bible's version of Israelite history after the reign of David's son, Solomon, is believed to be based on historical fact because it is corroborated by independent account of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions.
• It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon's palace was discovered in Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded in the palace walls! Even more, fragments of a stela (a poetic eulogy) memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself.
• Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, king of Babylon, named in Daniel 5. The last king of Babylon was Nabonidus according to recorded history. Tablet was found showing that Belshazzar was Nabonidus' son.
• The ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah have been discovered southeast of the Dead Sea. Evidence at the site seems consistent with the biblical account: "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah-from the Lord out of the heavens." The destruction debris was about 3 feet thick and buildings were burned from fires that started on the rooftops. Geologist Frederick Clapp theorizes that that pressure from an earthquake could have spewed out sulfur-laden bitumen (similar to asphalt) known to be in the area through the fault line upon which the cities rest. The dense smoke reported by Abraham is consistent with a fire from such material, which could have ignited by a spark or ground fire.
Archaeology and the New Testament
• The New Testament mentions specific individuals, places, and various official titles of local authorities, confirmed by recent archeology. Luke sites exact titles of officials. (Titles varied from city to city so they are easily checked for accuracy.) Lysanias the Tetrarch in Abilene (Luke 3:1)-verified by inscription dated 14-29 A.D. Erastus, city treasurer of Corinth (Romans 16:23)-verified by pavement inscription. Gallio-proconsul of Achaia (Greece) in A.D. 51 (Acts 18:12). Politarchs ("city ruler") in Thessalonica (Acts 17:6). Chief Man of the Island on Malta (Acts 28:7). Stone Pavement at Pilate's headquarters (John 19:13)-discovered recently. Pool at Bethesda- discovered in 1888. Many examples of silver shrines to Artemis found (Acts 19:28). Inscription confirms the title of the city as "Temple Warden of Artemis". Account of Paul's sea voyage in Acts is "one of the most instructive documents for the knowledge of ancient seamanship."
• Census of Luke 1. Census began under Augustus approximately every 14 years: 23-22 B.C., 9-8 B.C., 6 A.D. There is evidence of enrollment in 11-8 B.C. in Egyptian papyri.
o Problem: Historian Josephus puts Quirinius as governor in Syria at 6 A.D. Solution: Recent inscription confirms that Quirinius served as governor in 7 B. C. (in extraordinary, military capacity).
o Problem: Herod's kingdom was not part of the Roman Empire at the time, so there would not have been a census. Solution: it was a client kingdom. Augustus treated Herod as subject (Josephus). Parallel-a census took place in the client kingdom of Antiochus in eastern Asia Minor under Tiberius.
o Enrollment in hometown? Confirmed by edict of Vibius Maximus, Roman prefect of Egypt, in 104 A.D. "...it is necessary for all who are for any cause whatsoever way from their administrative divisions to return home to comply with the customary ordinance of enrollment."
• Opinion of Sir William Ramsay, one of the outstanding Near Eastern archeologists: "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length...In short, this author should be placed among the very greatest of historians."
• Diggers recently uncovered an ossuary (repository for bones) with the inscription "Joseph Son of Caiaphas." This marked the first archaeological evidence that the high priest Caiaphas was a real person. According to the gospels, Caiaphas presided at the Sanhedrin's trial of Jesus.
External References to Jesus and the Christian Church.
• Josephus. Born to priestly family in A.D. 37. Commanded Jewish troops in Galilee during rebellion. Surrendered, and earned favor of Emperor Vespasian. Wrote 20 books of Antiquities of the Jews. Refers to John the Baptist (killed by Herod) and to James, the brother of Jesus (condemned to death by stoning by the Sanhedrin). He referred to Jesus in his Antiquities 18:63. The standard text of Josephus reads as follows:
"About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When he was indicted by the principal men among us and Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him originally did not cease to do so; for he appeared to them on the third day restored to life, as the prophets of the Deity had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him, and the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day." (Josephus-The Essential Works, P. L. Maier ed./trans.).
Although this passage is so worded in the Josephus manuscripts as early as the third-century church historian Eusebius, scholars have long suspected a Christian interpolation, since Josephus could hardly have believed Jesus to be the Messiah or in his resurrection and have remained, as he did, a non-Christian Jew. In 1972, however, Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem announced his discovery of a different manuscript tradition of Josephus’s writings in the tenth-century Melkite historian Agapius, which reads as follows:
"At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day."
Here, clearly, is language that a Jew could have written without conversion to Christianity. (Schlomo Pines, An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its Implications [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971.])
According to Dr. Paul Maier, professor of ancient history, "Scholars fall into three basic camps regarding Antiquities 18:63: 1) The original passage is entirely authentic-a minority position; 2) it is entirely a Christian forgery-a much smaller minority position; and 3) it contains Christian interpolations in what was Josephus’s original, authentic material about Jesus-the large majority position today, particularly in view of the Agapian text (immediately above) which shows no signs of interpolation. Josephus must have mentioned Jesus in authentic core material at 18:63 since this passage is present in all Greek manuscripts of Josephus, and the Agapian version accords well with his grammar and vocabulary elsewhere. Moreover, Jesus is portrayed as a 'wise man' [sophos aner], a phrase not used by Christians but employed by Josephus for such personalities as David and Solomon in the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, his claim that Jesus won over “many of the Greeks” is not substantiated in the New Testament, and thus hardly a Christian interpolation but rather something that Josephus would have noted in his own day. Finally, the fact that the second reference to Jesus at Antiquities 20:200, which follows, merely calls him the Christos [Messiah] without further explanation suggests that a previous, fuller identification had already taken place. Had Jesus appeared for the first time at the later point in Josephus’s record, he would most probably have introduced a phrase like “…brother of a certain Jesus, who was called the Christ.”
• Early Gentile writers, referred to by Christian apologists in 2nd century.
o Thallus-wrote a history of Greece and Asia Minor in A.D. 52. Julius Africanus (221 AD), commenting on Thallus, said: "Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness [during the crucifixion] as an eclipse of the sun-unreasonably, as it seems to me [since the Passover took place during a full moon.]"
o Official Roman records of the census, and Pontius Pilate's official report to the Emperor. Justin Martyr wrote his "Defense of Christianity" to Emperor Antonius Pius, referred him to Pilate's report, preserved in the archives. Tertullian, writing to Roman officials, writes with confidence that records of the Luke 1 census can still be found.
• Roman historians
o Tacitus-Greatest Roman historian, born 52 A.D., wrote a history of the reign of Nero in 110 A.D. "...Christus, from whom they got their name, had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberias was emperor; and the pernicious superstition was checked for a short time only to break out afresh, not only in Judea, the home of the plague, but in Rome itself, .. " (Annals 15:44)
o Suetonius-AD. 120. In his Life of Claudius: "As the Jews were making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome."
o Pliny the Younger-Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, wrote the emperor in A.D. 112 about the sect of Christians, who were in "the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day, before it was light, when they sang an anthem to Christ as God."
Niklas Wikstrom Is there any confirmation of Biblical events from written sources outside the Bible?
Campaign into Israel by Pharaoh Shishak (1 Kings 14:25-26), recorded on the walls of the Temple of Amun in Thebes, Egypt.
Revolt of Moab against Israel (2 Kings 1:1; 3:4-27), recorded on the Mesha Inscription.
Fall of Samaria (2 Kings 17:3-6, 24; 18:9-11) to Sargon II, king of Assyria, as recorded on his palace walls.
Defeat of Ashdod by Sargon II (Isaiah 20:1), as recorded on his palace walls.
Campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib against Judah (2 Kings 18:13-16), as recorded on the Taylor Prism.
Siege of Lachish by Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:14, 17), as recorded on the Lachish reliefs.
Assassination of Sennacherib by his own sons (2 Kings 19:37), as recorded in the annals of his son Esarhaddon.
Fall of Nineveh as predicted by the prophets Nahum and Zephaniah (2:13-15), recorded on the Tablet of Nabopolasar.
Fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (2 Kings 24:10-14), as recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles.
Captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in Babylon (2 Kings 24:15-16), as recorded on the Babylonian Ration Records.
Fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5:30-31), as recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder.
Freeing of captives in Babylon by Cyrus the Great (Ezra 1:1-4; 6:3-4), as recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder.
The existence of Jesus Christ as recorded by Josephus, Suetonius, Thallus, Pliny the Younger, the Talmud, and Lucian.
Forcing Jews to leave Rome during the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41-54) (Acts 18:2), as recorded by Suetonius.
Niklas Wikstrom Fossils of sea creatures are found in rock layers high above sea level. This is just one more evidence of the truth of God’s Word.
If the Genesis Flood, as described in Genesis 7-8, really occurred, what evidence would we expect to find? The previous article in this series gave an overview of the six main geologic evidences for the Genesis Flood. Now let’s take a closer look at evidence number one.
After we read in Genesis 7 that all the high hills and the mountains were covered by water, and all air-breathing life on the land was swept away and perished, the answer to the question above should be obvious. Wouldn’t we expect to find rock layers all over the earth that are filled with billions of dead animals and plants that were rapidly buried and fossilized in sand, mud, and lime? Of course, and that’s exactly what we find.
Six main geologic evidences for the Genesis Flood
Introduction: Geologic Evidences for the Genesis Flood
Evidence #1. Fossils of sea creatures high above sea level
Evidence #2. Rapid burial of plants and animals
Evidence #3. Rapidly deposited sediment layers spread across vast areas
Evidence #4. Sediment transported long distances
Evidence #5. Rapid or no erosion between strata
Evidence #6. Many strata laid down in rapid succession
Marine Fossils High above Sea Level
It is beyond dispute among geologists that on every continent we find fossils of sea creatures in rock layers which today are high above sea level. For example, we find marine fossils in most of the rock layers in Grand Canyon. This includes the topmost layer in the sequence, the Kaibab Limestone exposed at the rim of the canyon, which today is approximately 7,000-8,000 feet (2,130-2,440 m) above sea level.1 Though at the top of the sequence, this limestone must have been deposited beneath ocean waters loaded with lime sediment that swept over northern Arizona (and beyond).
Other rock layers exposed in Grand Canyon also contain large numbers of marine fossils. The best example is the Redwall Limestone, which commonly contains fossil brachiopods (a clam-like organism), corals, bryozoans (lace corals), crinoids (sea lilies), bivalves (types of clams), gastropods (marine snails), trilobites, cephalopods, and even fish teeth.2
These marine fossils are found haphazardly preserved in this limestone bed. The crinoids, for example, are found with their columnals (disks) totally separated from one another, while in life they are stacked on top of one another to make up their “stems.” Thus, these marine creatures were catastrophically destroyed and buried in this lime sediment.
Fossil ammonites (coiled marine cephalopods) like this one are found in limestone beds high in the Himalayas of Nepal. How did marine fossils get thousands of feet above sea level?
Marine fossils are also found high in the Himalayas, the world’s tallest mountain range, reaching up to 29,029 feet (8,848 m) above sea level.3 For example, fossil ammonites (coiled marine cephalopods) are found in limestone beds in the Himalayas of Nepal. All geologists agree that ocean waters must have buried these marine fossils in these limestone beds. So how did these marine limestone beds get high up in the Himalayas?
We must remember that the rock layers in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges around the globe were deposited during the Flood, well before these mountains were formed. In fact, many of these mountain ranges were pushed up by earth movements to their present high elevations at the end of the Flood. This is recorded in Psalm 104:8, where the Flood waters are described as eroding and retreating down valleys as the mountains rose at the end of the Flood.
The Explanation
There is only one possible explanation for this phenomenon-the ocean waters at some time in the past flooded over the continents.
Could the continents have then sunk below today’s sea level, so that the ocean waters flooded over them?
No! The continents are made up of lighter rocks that are less dense than the rocks on the ocean floor and rocks in the mantle beneath the continents. The continents, in fact, have an automatic tendency to rise, and thus “float” on the mantle rocks beneath, well above the ocean floor rocks.4 This explains why the continents today have such high elevations compared to the deep ocean floor, and why the ocean basins can hold so much water.
There had to be two mechanisms for the sea level to rise. First, water was added to the ocean. Second, the ocean floor itself rose.
So there must be another way to explain how the oceans covered the continents. The sea level had to rise, so that the ocean waters then flooded up onto-and over-the continents. What would have caused that to happen?
There had to be, in fact, two mechanisms.
First, if water were added to the ocean, then the sea level would rise.
Scientists are currently monitoring the melting of the polar ice caps because the extra water would cause the sea level to rise and flood coastal communities.
The Bible suggests a source of the extra water. In Genesis 7:11 we read that at the initiation of the Flood all the fountains of the great deep were broken up. In other words, the earth’s crust was split open all around the globe and water apparently burst forth as fountains from inside the earth. We then read in Genesis 7:24-8:2 that these fountains were open for 150 days. No wonder the ocean volume increased so much that the ocean waters flooded over the continents.
Second, if the ocean floor itself rose, it would then have effectively “pushed” up the sea level.
The Bible suggests a source of this rising sea floor: molten rock.
The catastrophic breakup of the earth’s crust, referred to in Genesis 7:11, would not only have released huge volumes of water from inside the earth, but much molten rock.5 The ocean floors would have been effectively replaced by hot lavas. Being less dense than the original ocean floors, these hot lavas would have had an expanded thickness, so the new ocean floors would have effectively risen, raising the sea level by more than 3,500 feet (1,067 m). Because today’s mountains had not yet formed, and it is likely the pre-Flood hills and mountains were nowhere near as high as today’s mountains, a sea level rise of over 3,500 feet would have been sufficient to inundate the pre-Flood continental land surfaces.
Toward the end of the Flood, when the molten rock cooled and the ocean floors sank, the sea level would have fallen and the waters would have drained off the continents into new, deeper ocean basins. As indicated earlier, Psalm 104:8 describes the mountains being raised at the end of the Flood and the Flood waters draining down valleys and off the emerging new land surfaces. This is consistent with much evidence that today’s mountains only very recently rose to their present incredible heights.
The Ocean Floor Rises
MARINE LIFE ORIGINALLY LIVES IN THE OCEAN (top)
Marine creatures obviously live in the ocean (A). For these creatures to be deposited on the continents, the sea level had to rise.
THE OCEAN CRUST IS HEATED AND EXPANDS (middle)
(1)During Noah’s Flood molten rock was released from inside the earth and began replacing the original ocean crust. The ocean crust was effectively replaced by hot lavas. (2)Because of the hot molten rock, the ocean crust became less dense and expanded. (3)The molten rock displaced and pushed the original ocean crust below the continent. (A)The sea level rose more than 3,500 feet (1,067 m) and marine creatures were carried onto the continent, buried in sediments, and fossilized.
MARINE LIFE REMAINS ON THE CONTINENT
Toward the end of the Flood, the ocean crust cooled and the ocean floor sank. As the waters drained off the continents, the sea level would have fallen, leaving marine fossils (A) above sea level on the continents.
Conclusion
The fossilized sea creatures and plants found in rock layers thousands of feet above sea level are thus silent testimonies to the ocean waters that flooded over the continents, carrying billions of sea creatures, which were then buried in the sediments these ocean waters deposited. This is how billions of dead marine creatures were buried in rock layers all over the earth.
We know that the cataclysmic Genesis Flood was an actual event in history because God tells us so in His record, the Bible. Now we can also see persuasive evidences that support what the Bible has so clearly taught all along.
In the next article in this special geology series, we will look in detail at the geologic evidence that plants and animals were rapidly buried by the Flood waters described in Genesis 7-8.
Andrew Snelling holds a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Sydney and has worked as a consultant research geologist to organizations in both Australia and America. Author of numerous scientific articles, Dr. Snelling is now the head of the Research Division at Answers in Genesis.
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Footnotes
1. R. L. Hopkins, and K. L. Thompson, “Kaibab Formation,” in Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd ed., eds. S. S. Beus and M. Morales (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 196-211. Back
2. S. S. Beus, “Redwall Limestone and Surprise Canyon Formation,” in Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd ed., eds. S. S. Beus and M. Morales (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 115-135. Back
3. J. P. Davidson, W. E. Reed, and P. M. Davis, “The Rise and Fall of Mountain Ranges,” in Exploring Earth: An Introduction to Physical Geology (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997), pp. 242-247. Back
4. J. P. Davidson, W. E. Reed, and P. M. Davis, “Isostasy,” in Exploring Earth: An Introduction to Physical Geology (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997), pp. 124-129. Back
5. A. A. Snelling, “A Catastrophic Breakup: A Scientific Look at Catastrophic Plate Tectonics,” Answers April-June 2007, pp. 44-48; A. A. Snelling, “Can Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Explain Flood Geology?” in K. A. Ham, ed., New Answers Book (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2006), pp. 186-197. Back
That aside, there is an amazing magnitude of order in the Universe, for example solar systems, including ours. This order in itself could not exist without the seemingly incredible fine tuning of all the cosmological constants.
Is god aware or ask also himself if where he comes from? This question will be infinite if we are aware whether god or human being.
That's the point. The only locations where life will emerge in the first place to ponder questions like origins of life is where the conditions are already conducive.
But some ppl take it farther than that, and go on to say that: the arrangement MUST have something to put it together...that something MUST be a single conscious being, and that conscious being MUST be the deity of the religion they have chosen.
They say it's silly that ppl think simple fundamental particles can just pop into existence or always existed, but at the same time want ppl to accept that a complex, conscious god-thing just popped into existence or always existed.
Mind games is all I see.
@@lawlaw295 I am not one for creation ex nihilo as per monotheistic beliefs, but if we are to be honest, it's not even close to as philosophically absurd as believing in the Big Bang theory, which presupposes that everything in an instant came from nothing, or further ideation of a multiverse (more religion).
To me, it's still a bona-fide mystery. If anything, I lean towards the metaphysics of the ancient Greek emmanationists (Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus).
@@lawlaw295 Check out a TH-cam channel, Theoria Apophasis. Ken Wheeler has some pretty interesting ideas to this effect. Highly recommend.
@@AdilJustinTheriault Well those persons who are saying that the Big Bang says that everything popped into existence from nothing need to be called out for misrepresenting the theory of cosmic inflation (which is what ppl call the big bang).
The religious guy are on a totally different planet.
I love these gentlemen. Opposite poles but so proper both of them.
May not be the best title, considering Evolution has nothing to do with the Origin of life
Yes it dooooes, lil boy!! Replication, errors, selection.
RNA world hypothesis is an example.
You can't avoid the darwinian mechanism, since it's the only mechanism capable of doing anything you want.
Except orgins of species definitely apply to living species. Orgin means the very beginning. I hate when you guys say that.
@@pharoahakhenaten6630 origin of species is entirely different than origin of life. Evolution explains the origin of species because it describes how the many species have arisen from other species, but it says absolutely nothing about how life as we know it came from non-life. It says nothing whatsoever about the origin of life, and to claim it does is to set up a straw man just so you can feel like you've won something no one is arguing.
@@lauroneto3360 The theory of evolution makes no claims whatsoever about how non-life created life. It only refers to the changes in the proportions of biological types in a population over time. I don't know why you would insist that it claims to explain Abiogenesis, but it does not. Now, the word evolution is used quite often in its colloquial form (i.e. the evolution of language), so if you're using the term that way then the point is moot as you're not even talking about the theory, just using the word loosly.
@@thcknast abiogenesis incorporates evolution (as it is defined). Random changes and natural selection as the producer of more complex novelties. That's the point here.
Debates like this bring up interesting questions about the nature god, questions the religious seem oddly uninterested in answering. For example, why would god hide its creative abilities in such a way?
So men search God out, building character
@@jacobhodge7402 yeah, the whole “mystery” thing is absolutely the language of con men. (The writers of the bible and consequent religions)
Rana was impressive. He wasn't reading from a prompter of sorts. From my view, both Evolution and ID need a 'miracle' of sorts. A God outside of 3D and something from nothing are equally void of proof. If you've ever stumbled through Hawking's "The Grand Design" even he states, "Because the laws of gravity exist," or something to that effect, he is effectively starting from something. Seems then it could be said, "Because God exists.....
The thing is that you fail to see in these experiments is that they were intelligently designed and defiantly not in conditions that would have existed in nature... as a matter of fact the molecules used in these experiments were carefully and painstakingly created and then inserted into an place conducive to replication.
Assuming you could recreate primitive earthlike conditions in an earth-sized lab, it would take ~1 billion years for life to emerge. Is that the experiment you are proposing?
I just wonder: is there new debate on the topic uploaded, now is 2018?
Kent hovind has debates on his channel
Every Creationist / ID proponent in any of these debates: "We don't know exactly how this happened = God done it. Sorry, I don't actually have any real arguments part from biblical references and arguments from ignorance."
On the other hand, atheists just add the time as in ``long ago`` to anything which means both are flawed which is expected in these debates.
Vlado S It's not about atheism, science looks at what we can see around us, for example in geology, plate tectonics, radiology etc. and extrapolate to try to figure out how old the Earth is. So no, they/we do not simply add time on randomly - so how is it a flawed argument?
All Life requires information. Information only comes Intelligence.
Every Darwinian I've seen in debates, leans on cartoon drawings (made in error) of 3 "transitional forms"....that simply show extinct species....and say, "...see....see...there are the transitional forms".....and I'm yawning......
Lonnie Christopher Then you can't have seen many debates
FUZzing out on his arguments
1. Since we haven't to date explained the origin of life, WE NEVER CAN. Argument from Ignorance anyone???
2. Homo Polymer is impossible... er, um, "virtually impossible", which last time I checked means POSSIBLE.
3. Let's quote Leslie Orgel (nothing in the world like a good old Argument From Authority: who the f*ck is Leslie Orgel?): it would be a miracle if RNA ever appeared on earth. There's only 2 WAYS TO READ THIS. OK, which is it? Is she saying, so MIRACLES ARE IMPOSSIBLE, OR, she's simply saying the more logical, "it's SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER improbable for RNA to appear ON EARTH. DUH, yeah, that's why we had an entire Universe filled with Galaxies, filled with Stars and filled with Goldilocks planets for it to HAPPEN ON ONE OF THEM. See, if you point your finger at the winner of the LOTTERY, it's easy to understand how improbable for HIM to win. But if you put all the LOTTO ENTRANTS in a cornfield in Iowa, you'll instead say, "well SURE, one of these WILL WIN, RIGHT?"
Things that are IMPROBABLE on YOUR planet, look a lot more probable to happen SOMEWHERE in a Universe filled with Galaxies, filled with Stars, filled with habitable planets...'
But, hey, thanks for pointing me to Orgel: I'm going to hang on to "Orge's 2nd Law: Evolution is cleverer than you are."
4. Catalysts must move to different mineral sites: it's "VIRTUALLY impossible". Ditto then on that being POSSIBLE.
5. Membrane first scenaries: "requires EXACTING..." uh, in other words POSSIBLE...
Can't waste any more BRAIN CELLS or TIME on an ENDLESS STRING OF ARGUMENTS FROM INCREDULITY.
C'mon scientists, can we just get on down the road and CREATE LIFE IN A LAB? I definitely want to hear these clowns have to say, "well WTF do we say now?"
This has been one of the best debates I have ever watched in terms of the behavior of the participants. Both are highly educated men that bring up evidence and facts. They never- if not never than very rarely- resort to fallacy, "bible thumbing", emotional appeal, ext. They not only treat each other with dignity, but show a great deal of intellectual respect for their opponent's position.As an aspiring intellectual, I was deeply moved by their performance especially on a subject such as this
Yes
Glad to hear that I guess I'm in for a treat.
If you are defending an invisible sky daddy there are no facts. WAKE UP.
You still did not show any opinion!
@@emilianv3169 .
Interesting to note, Ruse's questions to Rana are about Biblical interpretation and theodicy, not science. I would have liked to hear the conversation stay on the topic at hand.
That's a well known modus operandi.
You didn't really expect a philosopher to actually concede anything, did you?
Theologos •••
Intelligent design theory can be logically defended , while scripture not so much. It is wise in a debate to focus on the weakest elements of your opponents argument , if your intention is to persuade your audience .
Have you ever wondered why they teach our kids big bang and evolution theory in school,and yet those same State controlled public schools haven't taught the science of classical logic for more than a century?
Do you think it's because they want to enlighten us ?
Here's an argument for the existence of God that you may enjoy.
Premise #1: The universe was created by either a directed (intelligent) or undirected (random) process .
Premise #2: The proposition that the universe was created by an undirected (random) process runs squarely against numbers that are so astronomically improbable that we can not reasonable entertain them as a possibility .
Conclusion : It is therefore a practical certainty that the universe was created by a directed (intelligent) process.
"A high degree of probability is often called 'practical certainty.' A reasonable man should not refrain upon acting upon a practical certainty as though it were known to be true. In England, for instance, it is customary for a judge, at the trial of a person accused of murder, to instruct the jury that an adverse verdict need not be based on the belief that the guilt of the prisoner has been ' proved ', but upon the belief that the guilt has been established ' beyond a reasonable doubt .' To be ' beyond reasonable doubt ' is to have sufficient evidence to make the proposition in question so much more likely to be true than to be false that we should be prepared to act upon the supposition of its truth. Many of our most important actions have to be performed in accordance with belief of such a kind."
-L. Susan Stebbing, "Logic in Practice", (1934) pages 98 and 99 ••••••••••
The following is a quote of Dr Frank Turek, taken from a debate between Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens on TH-cam. ••••
"This is sometimes called the teleological argument for design.
Not only did the universe explode into being out of nothing , it did so with extreme precision . In other words, the big bang was not a chaotic explosion. How incredibly precise was it? Atheist Steven Weinberg put it this way. He said, "life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values." There are dozens of these quantities . One of them Steven Hawking identified was this: He said that if the expansion rate of the universe changed by one part in a hundred thousand million million, a second after the big bang , we wouldn't be here . The universe would not have expanded, or it would have collapsed back in on itself, or it never would have created galaxies . That's how precisely designed the big bang event was.
Not only was the big bang event precisely designed , so are many constants about our universe right now . If you change the gravitational force by one part in ten to the forty , we wouldn't be here . What's one part in ten to the forty? Illustration : Take a tape measure ; stretch it from that back wall to the front wall ; in inches. If you set gravity at a particular inch mark on that tape measure, and moved the strength of gravity one inch in either direction proportionally , we go out of existence . But the problem is that the tape measure doesn't go from that wall to this front wall; it goes across the entire known universe . You change gravity that much , across the entire known universe, and we don't exist .
For you Navy people out here, (I was in the Navy many years) think of an aircraft carrier , like the John Stennis or the Ronald Reagan, which displaces a hundred and ten thousand tons ; has a runway on it that is about three lengths of a football field ; has five to six thousand people on it ; several stories high. If you were to change the weight of that aircraft carrier by less than a trillionth the weight of one electron , it would be uninhabitable , if the aircraft carrier was the universe . That's how incredibly designed the universe is."
@@williamspringer9447 I mean, the rate we believed the universe expanded at was recently discovered to be wrong and the issue with your argument and amny arguments against atheistic views is the idea of a beginning, when that's not what science believes it is, they believed it was the earliest point we could find evidence for and couldn't know what happened before that, but now there is a theory called conformal cyclic cosmology, advanced by Roger Penrose, who found evidence of an older universe through hawking points and the energy radiated from the black hole discovered(he also assisted in that) that theorizes that the universe is an infinite cycle of expansion then compression and decay and each iteration is began with "bing bang" removes removes the idea that something had to create the universe, and if you are unable to believe that the universe just always existed, why are you able to believe that for a creator and not what has been physically observed?
@@williamspringer9447 Same nonsense bill. Doesn’t get anymore valid by reposting it.
the religious professor here is not stupid, he is good, but u could see how religion can poison great healthy minds in him ..
The skeptic/atheist must sneak religion into the conversation because it proves their point? "The cell looks designed!" I like that one. He never answers the question: why does it look designed?
The Origin of Life is called Abiogenesis and is not part of the Theory of Evolution and Origin of Species.
But if this does not work creatards will move the goal posts back to the Big Bang and 'where did the nothing come from that exploded' [ a straw man argument].
***** See the evolution of the universe on wikipedia, then stop making theses false claims.
sam cross The Theory of Evolution is Biology. Origin of Species.
*****
www.baylor.edu/biology/index.php?id=77368
Apparently Free Hub deleted all his comments so I can't even recall what the fuck his point was or what the counter points were.
Thats not a straw man argument.
When the student asked about completing the rna strand why did I think of 2 covid vaccine’s utilizing mRNA?
I don't know, why did you? 😅
@@biddiemutter3481 Probably because it’s the closest thing that fits reviewing public info/life to this day? Were you really looking for a response? I don’t think there’s a true answer.
@@kaltrex9465, no not really. .. sorry
@@biddiemutter3481 Might want to ask yourself why you asked
These two were so respectful and this made this debate amazing to listen to. It didn't devolve into rude arguing and this is a perfect example for others to fallow.
I see what you did there
PS 137, and many other places, shows Yaweh's great love of destroying, killing and torturing children to death. See also the great flood, passoever, etc. If you respect this baby killing monster, you don't deserve respect or rudeness, you deserve to not exist.
this debate was over 200 years ago
Did Michael Ruse talked for the first 31 minutes without saying anything ?! He should try politics. He is a natural.
"If you say the flagellum is designed you run into trouble because there are many types"
Really?! WoW ! That is some kind of logic there!
If you say the electric engine is designed you run into trouble because there are so many types of engines: steam engine, oil engine, etc. Maybe if i spout non sequitors for half an hour with a posh british accent i can convince people to see my way even though i dont even dream of touching the debate's subject.
What evolved first; the stomach that holds the food, the stomach acid that breaks down the food, or the layer on the stomach wall that stops the acid from eating through the stomach? If you suggest a unison evolving process, how did the organism not die off from lack of functioning during the "incredibly long process" that's needed for developing the functions needed to even be self-sustaining to survive that long process?
you know that evolution take milions if not billions of years to make the biome you know right now, do you think in your right state of mind tha t we will be the same a thousand years ahead? or we would evolve
If you want to explore this topic further look into how single celled heterotrophic organisms metobalise. Look into human cells and how they digest. Look into digestive system of hydras, worms, molluscan and so on. Stomach and the entirety of digestive system evolved from simple lysosomes, ferments, citoplasm and digestive vacuoles which evolved from even simpler predecessors. All bodily systems that mamals and birds have came from simpler analogues of our ancestors.
@@Alathea123 we are the same thousands of years, we have no reason to believe we will not be the same twice the thousands of years.
You need to study evolution a WHOLE LOT MORE, chief. The end processes that we see now are all built up in tiny steps, not all at once. Get the basic concepts correct before you try again.
@@outofthebox7 Wrong.
If life is created in a lab creationists will say it strengthens the watchmaker argument.
I just dont understand why people follow reality in their everyday lives so perfectly. Jump and you fall (gravity), speak and your hear sound (particle vibration), etc. Clearly there is an understanding of the laws of the universe here. If you jump and float away, on Earth that is, then you are defying the laws of the universe. Suddenly everything we know makes no sense anymore, right? Well that can't happen, we know it can't happen so we suggest that it will never happen therefore its not possible and not believable.
So how come when it comes to the bible stories that are told, that in most cases defy the laws of the universe, are actually taken literally and your morals about the laws of the universe are thrown out the window? Like c'mon, so something becomes believable.. Are you going to say "oh because its believable it doesnt matter about the laws of the universe".
Well no thats not how the world works. I understand evolution is only seen in small terms but it defines what happens in long term.
Im not one with enough background or knowledge in evolution biology but i understand enough that evolution isn't a creation of man, its an observable understanding of the natural way of life. Open your eyes people and get out of your religious bible bubble. Im sure its hard to change your thought of the world after being forced and brainwashed into religion but things change. Deal with it lol.
We dont know yet but science is working on the answer. Science does not stoop down to the ignorance of religion and say "i dont know therefore god". That makes no sense what so ever. No proof = no existence. We are working on evidence to further support the big bang theory and the string theory so one of them are no longer a theory.
You cannot prove anything jacob. You have no idea so your standing at "i dont know". Work on knowing like science is, the bible will never know it is a pathetic source for religion. End of story.
Here is a very important part of your rant that you should understand "I understand evolution is only seen in small terms but it defines what happens in long term". K. So, you admit that you can't observe the long term evolution. This is any evolution above the micro level. Micro is the change within a kind of animal. For example, dogs of different size, shape, hair length, and so on. No one has ever observed macroevolution: a change from one kind of animal to another. So, you just assume it true. This is the key point. You can't say assumptions are facts without the proof of it happening. You certainly implied it without even being skeptical of it, yet then you say 'Evolution isn't a creation of man, its an observable understanding of the natural way of life". Well, you never observe the 'long term' evolution. So, does that then go out the window with creationist belief? Science HAS to be directly observable, testable, and provable. So, anything that can't be observed (ie macroevolution) is by YOUR definition nonscientific.
Kaleb Redick •••
Arguments are scientific when the high priests in the white lab coats say they are. Nine out of ten Americans still believe that man walked on the Moon,even though there is zero reliable evidence that it ever happened.
If you want any part of the truth , you should verify for yourself that what you believe is inferred from factual premises and the result of sound reasoning.
Late to the game here.. did you fall for the new Covid religion
So they put up a big name in Christianity Fuz Rana from Reasons to Believe against a so called athiest who isn't a scientist (he has a philosophy degree) and who is a controversial figure in evolution theory...
Yay, let's make this debate as one sided as possible, Mr Rana against an idiot...
Michael Ruse needs a personal relationship with Jesus Christ the Son of God. If he thinks this life is it, the joke is on him because there is nothing to this life. We are here one day and the next second we could die. This life is worthless without Christ.
Your life is worthless without Thor.
wayne b
Albert Einstein Quotes on Spirituality
I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; It is the source of all true art and science.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
God does not play dice with the universe.
God is subtle but he is not malicious.
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books--a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.
The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.
Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to form in the social life of man.
wayne b
Science Quotes
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
- Albert Einstein
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.”
- Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist)
Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry
I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28
“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. You see,” Davies adds, “even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life-almost contrived-you might say a ‘put-up job’.”
- Dr. Paul Davies (noted author and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Adelaide University)
“...how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.”
- Professor Steven Weinberg
(Nobel Laureate in High Energy Physics [a field of science that deals with the very
early universe], writing in the journal “Scientific American”.)
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
- Isaac Newton
(“General Scholium,” in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac
Newton. 1687)
16O has exactly the right nuclear energy level either to prevent all the carbon from turning into oxygen or to facilitate sufficient production of 16O for life. Fred Hoyle, who discovered these coincidences in 1953, concluded that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.”
- Hoyle, Fred. “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16
(for more of these coincidences click here)
“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one… Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.”
- Christian de Duve. “A Guided Tour of the Living Cell” (Nobel laureate and organic chemist)
Probably the leading paleontologist alive today, Simon Conway Morris, the scientist who discovered the significance of the Cambrian explosion of animal life, writes in his seminal book, Life’s Solutions, that he is “convinced” that nature’s success in the lottery of life has “metaphysical implications.”
“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.”
- Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy) Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”
- Professor Freeman J. of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
- Max Planck
(founder of the quantum theory and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century)
“...The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system: it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet…could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written…”
- Dr. Michael Denton (Australian microbiologist)
“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”
- George Ellis (British astrophysicist) Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30
“We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.”
- John O’Keefe (astronomer at NASA) Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.”
- Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics) Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
“It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.”
“It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
-Anthony Flew
Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater
“It has occurred to me lately-I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities-that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from non-living matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality-that stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals. In them the universe begins to know itself.”
- George Wald, (Noble laureate and professor of biology at Harvard University) wrote this in an article entitled “Life and Mind in the Universe” which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology, symposium 11 (1984): 1-15.
“There is a wide measure of agreement which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter-not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown, exist as thoughts.”
- Sir James Jeans knighted mathematician, physicist and astronomer who helped develop our understanding of the evolution of stars, wrote this in his book The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge, 1931).
“As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?”
- George Greenstein (American astronomer) Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic, Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. (New York: William Morrow, (1988), pp. 26-27
“What turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animated being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences?”
- D.R. Hofstadter
“When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”
- Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics) Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
“When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident.”
- Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 Astronaut)
“A life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.”
- John Wheeler (American physicist) Wheeler, John A. “Foreword,” in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. vii.
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
- Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, co-discoverer of the radiation afterglow (Quoted in Walter Bradley, “The ‘Just-so’ Universe: The Fine-Tuning of Constants and Conditions in the Cosmos,” in William Dembski and James Kushiner, eds., Signs of Intelligence. 168)
“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”
- Carl Sagan
(From an introduction to “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking)
“As long as you are occupied with the mathematical sciences and the technique of logic, you belong to those who walk around the palace in search of the gate… When you complete your study of the natural sciences and get a grasp of the metaphysics, you enter into the inner courtyard and are in the same house as [G-d the King].”
- Moses Maimonides
“This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth… [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
- Robert Jastrow (God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption ... For myself, as no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneous liberation from a certain political and economic system, and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
wayne b Thor is a Myth as you know. God is a reality which I can for sure show! ☺
wayne b You can "bow down" to Thor for now and see what he does for you;eventually every knee will bend to the True God who created all Things!
Does the intricate design of the universe serve as evidence for the existence of God?
Imagine walking in the desert and coming across two small stones in close proximity to each other. Most probably, you would think nothing of it. Two stones randomly sitting beside each other is no big deal.
You continue your walk in the desert and stumble upon three rows of stones piled up in a brick-layer fashion. Chances are you would quickly surmise that someone was here and arranged these stones in this manner. It didn’t just happen.
You continue your walk and happen to find a watch lying in the middle of the desert. Would you suspect that a windstorm somehow threw these pieces together and randomly created a watch?
Somebody made that watch. It didn’t just happen. Design implies designer.
DID THE UNIVERSE HAVE A DESIGNER?
The intricacy of design in our world is staggering-infinitely more complex than a simple brick wall or a watch. Dr. Michael Denton, in his book “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis” describes the intricate organization of nerve cells in the brain [pp. 330 - 331].
There are 10 billion nerve cells in the brain. Each of the 10 billion cells sprouts between 10,000 to 100,000 fibers to contact other nerve cells in the brain, creating approximately 1,000 million million connections, or, 10 to the 15th power.
It is hard to imagine the multitude that 1015 represents. Take half of the United States, which is 1 million square miles, and imagine it being covered by forest, with 10,000 trees per square mile. On each of the 10,000 trees, which are on each of the one million square miles, there are 100,000 leaves. That’s how many connections are crammed inside your brain. And they’re not just haphazardly thrown together. They form an incredibly intricate network system that has no parallel in the industrial world.
Imagine walking by that in the desert! The natural response when perceiving design of such mind-boggling complexity is to conclude that there must be a designer behind everything who created it. None of this just happened.
RANDOM WRITING SAMPLE
Rabbeinu Bachya, in his major philosophical work “The Duties of the Heart” [10th century] presents this argument in the following manner:
Do you not realize that if ink were poured out accidentally on a blank sheet of paper, it would be impossible that proper writing should result, legible lines that are written with a pen? Imagine a person bringing a sheet of handwriting that could only have been composed with a pen. He claims that ink spilled on the paper and these written characters had accidentally emerged. We would charge him to his face with falsehood, for we could feel certain that this result could not have happened without an intelligent person’s purpose.
Since this seems impossible in the case of letters whose formation is conventional, how can one assert that something far subtler in its design and which manifests in its fashioning a depth and complexity infinitely beyond our comprehension could have happened without the purpose, power, and wisdom of a wise and mighty designer? (“The Duties of the Heart,” The Gate of Oneness, Chapter 6)
The two most common objections to this argument go as follows:
The argument is too simple. There seems to be a big jump from concluding that someone must have made rock formations in the desert to concluding that there is a Creator who must have made the universe.
What about evolution? Over a very long period of time everything could have come about as a random occurrence! With millions of years to play around with, isn’t it possible for some kind of order to emerge just by chance?
Let’s address these two objections.
ADDRESSING ARGUMENT NUMBER ONE
The principle “design implies designer” applies across the board, whether the designer is a Bedouin nomad piling rocks in the desert or the Infinite Source of all existence. Intellectually it is the same logical process. In fact, there is more reason to assume a designer in the latter case since the level of design is much higher.
Simplicity is not an inherent fault in an argument. Perhaps the reason why some people take issue with this application of logic is due to the accompanying consequences.
Since the Bedouin doesn’t make any moral demands on our life, there is no resistance to drawing the logical conclusion that someone designed that rock formation. But when the conclusion points to God, cognitive dissonance kicks in, creating an instinctive opposition to what one perceives to be threatening. [See the previous article in this series: “Seeing the Elephant”
When the interference of cognitive dissonance is removed, what is the objective standard of design that we need to see in order to conclude something was created? What we need is a control experiment that determines this threshold of design in a case that has no threatening consequences. “The Obvious Proof”, a book by Gershon Robinson and Mordechai Steinman, delivers a compelling presentation of the design argument, and describes such a control experiment involving millions of people concluding the necessity of a designer.
The laboratory consisted of theaters across the globe that showed the film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In the film, American scientists living in a colony on the moon discover during a dig the first evidence that intelligent life exists on other planets. What did they find? A simple monolith-a smooth, rectangular slab of rock. The Americans keep this significant discovery secret, afraid of the widespread culture shock and social ramifications this would have without proper preparation.
Thousands of film critics and millions of moviegoers went along with the film’s basic assertion, agreeing that intelligent creatures other than man must have created this smooth, rectangular monolith. It didn’t just randomly appear. Free from all emotional and intellectual bias, in the comfort of darkened theaters with popcorn in hand, people unanimously agreed that a simple, smooth slab with a few right angles was conclusive proof of intelligence.
When the conclusion does not point to God, everyone realizes that the simplest object can serve as the threshold of design, the point at which one concludes an object could not have come into existence by random accident. The universe, infinitely more complex than a monolith, had to have been created.
WHAT ABOUT RANDOM EVOLUTION?
Given enough tries over a long period of time, isn’t it possible for complex structures to emerge randomly? After all, with sufficient trials even improbable events eventually become likely.
Robert Shapiro, a professor of chemistry at New York University, uses a national lottery to illustrate this point [“Origins”, Bantam, p.121]. The odds of winning the lottery may be 10 million to one. Winning would be incredibly lucky. But if we were to buy a lottery ticket every day for the next thirty thousand years, a win would become probable, (albeit very expensive).
But what are the odds of life coming about by sheer chance? Let’s take a look at two examples to get a sense of the odds involved in random evolution.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, writes in his book “A Brief History of Time”:
It is a bit like the well-known horde of monkeys hammering away on typewriters-most of what they write will be garbage, but very occasionally by pure chance they will type out one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Similarly, in the case of the universe, could it be that we are living in a region that just happens by chance to be smooth and uniform?
Well could it be?
In response to Hawking, Dr. Gerald Schroeder, a physicist, calculated the odds of monkeys randomly typing an average Shakespearean Sonnet in his book “Genesis and the Big Bang.” He chose the one that opens, “Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?”
There are 488 letters in the sonnet ... The chance of randomly typing the 488 letters to produce this one sonnet is one in 26 to the 488th power, or one in 10 to the 690th power. The number 10690 is a one followed by 690 zero’s! The immense scale of this number is hinted at when one considers that since the Big Bang, 15 billion years ago, there have been only 10 to the 18th power number of seconds, which have ticked away.
To write by random one of Shakespeare’s sonnets would take all the monkeys, plus every other animal on earth, typing away on typewriters made from all the iron in the universe, over a period of time that exceeds all time since the Big Bang, and still the probability of a sonnet appearing would be vanishingly small. At one random try per second, with even a simple sentence having only 16 letters, it would take 2 million billion years (the universe has existed for about 15 billion years) to exhaust all possible combinations.
Robert Shapiro cites Nobel laureate Sir Fred Hoyle’s calculation of the odds of a bacterium spontaneously generating [p.127]. At first Hoyle and his colleague, N. C. Wickramasinghe, endorsed spontaneous generation, but reversed their position once they calculated the odds.
A typical bacterium, which is the simplest of cells, is made up of 2,000 enzymes. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe took the probability of randomly assembling one enzyme and multiplied that number by itself 2,000 times to calculate the odds of a single bacterium randomly coming together. Those odds are 1 in 1040,000. Hoyle said the likelihood of this happening is comparable to the chance that “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”
These are the odds of just a single, simple cell, without which evolution cannot even get started. Never mind the odds of more advanced compounds like an organ or all the enzymes in a human being.
Shapiro writes:
The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle.
For all intents and purposes, an event with the probability of 1 in 1040,000 qualifies in real-world terms as impossible.
SOME THINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLE
Imagine you are the presiding judge over a murder trial. Ballistic tests match perfectly with a gun found in the possession of the accused. The odds of another gun firing the bullet that killed the victim are let’s say one in a billion.
The defendant claims that it is a sheer fluke that his gun happens to match the ballistics tests and that there must be another gun out there that is the real murder weapon. “After all,” he says, “it is a possibility.”
The defendant’s fingerprints are found all over the victim’s body. He claims there must be another person out there who happens to have astonishingly similar fingerprints. Again, it is possible.
There are also eyewitnesses who testify to seeing a man gunning down the victim who looks just like the defendant. The defendant claims there must be another person out there in this big world who looks just like him, and that man is the real murderer. After all-it’s not impossible.
You are the judge, and you need to make a decision. What do you decide?
In the pragmatic world of decision-making, odds this high are called impossible. One needs to weigh the evidence and come to the most reasonable conclusion.
Does the universe have a Creator? Look at the design, look at the odds and look honestly within. Where does the more rational conclusion lie?
I had high hopes for professor Rana as I am a staunch creationist. His opening statement was convincing and challenged the origin of life theories currently promoted in academia. When challenged on Genesis 1 and the days mentioned, Rana struggled to justify his position that the days somehow represent ages or long spans of time. It was embarrassing especially since his opponent rightly saw thru Rana's weak defense of the day age hypothosis. Note, the audience chuckled at Rana's discomfort as he sorta hemmed and hawed in his poor response. It is clear from scripture, both from the writer of genesis and from the words of Christ, that God made all the creation in 6 literal days. And if one takes the time to do some math, using the various genealogies contained therein, you get an age of the earth I the six thousand range. Not 4.5 billion years.
For once, I actually agree with a creationist.
And no. The age of physical items is not defined by following the text of a single book. Sorry, wrong.
You come across as a thinking person so let me ask you a question. By what authority or with what knowledge do you simply brush away all the evidence that points to the world being 4.5bn years old? And let me ask you a second question - this one hypothetical: if you had never heard of the Bible, would you be equally dismissive of the evidence pointing to an older world?
"You cannot appeal to hypothetical solutions that have not been discovered in order to solve a problem."
YES, IT WAS THE CREATIONIST THAT SAID THIS IN Q&A!!!!
Adam Courtney •••
People who believe in an intelligent designer , based on the overwhelming evidence, do not necessarily subscribe to the beliefs of organized religion.
Have you ever wondered why they teach our kids big bang and evolution theory in school,and yet those same State controlled public schools haven't taught the science of classical logic for more than a century?(The Underground History of American Education by John Gatto)
I guarantee you that if our government thought that making us believe in Zeus would make us twice as productive and easier to control , they would be teaching Zeus in our public schools right now.
Our government has turned its back on Christianity because atheism makes better drones . They can't have hundreds of millions of heavily armed ignorant peasants running around thinking they have a soul and there's a God. That could get ugly. That's the stuff revolutions are made of.
P.S.
There is overwhelming reliable evidence to prove the existence of God, regardless what government stooges say.
"The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it." -Voltaire
"Their central dogma is the immortality and transmigration of the soul. A doctrine which they regard as the finest incentive to courage, since it inspires contempt of death."
-Julius Caesar, "The Commentaries", regarding the spiritual beliefs of the ancient Druids, 51 B.C.
@@williamspringer9447 let me guess, you're a young earth creationist Christian
Raiyyan Siddiqui•••
Have you ever wondered why they teach our kids big bang and evolution theory in school,and yet those same State controlled public schools haven't taught the science of classical logic for more than a century?
Do you think it's because they want to enlighten us ?
Here's an argument for the existence of God that you may enjoy.
Premise #1: The universe was created by either a directed (intelligent) or undirected (random) process .
Premise #2: The proposition that the universe was created by an undirected (random) process runs squarely against numbers that are so astronomically improbable that we can not reasonable entertain them as a possibility .
Conclusion : It is therefore a practical certainty that the universe was created by a directed (intelligent) process.
"A high degree of probability is often called 'practical certainty.' A reasonable man should not refrain upon acting upon a practical certainty as though it were known to be true. In England, for instance, it is customary for a judge, at the trial of a person accused of murder, to instruct the jury that an adverse verdict need not be based on the belief that the guilt of the prisoner has been ' proved ', but upon the belief that the guilt has been established ' beyond a reasonable doubt .' To be ' beyond reasonable doubt ' is to have sufficient evidence to make the proposition in question so much more likely to be true than to be false that we should be prepared to act upon the supposition of its truth. Many of our most important actions have to be performed in accordance with belief of such a kind."
-L. Susan Stebbing, "Logic in Practice", (1934) pages 98 and 99 ••••••••••
The following is a quote of Dr Frank Turek, taken from a debate between Frank Turek and Christopher Hitchens on TH-cam. ••••
"This is sometimes called the teleological argument for design.
Not only did the universe explode into being out of nothing , it did so with extreme precision . In other words, the big bang was not a chaotic explosion. How incredibly precise was it? Atheist Steven Weinberg put it this way. He said, "life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values." There are dozens of these quantities . One of them Steven Hawking identified was this: He said that if the expansion rate of the universe changed by one part in a hundred thousand million million, a second after the big bang , we wouldn't be here . The universe would not have expanded, or it would have collapsed back in on itself, or it never would have created galaxies . That's how precisely designed the big bang event was.
Not only was the big bang event precisely designed , so are many constants about our universe right now . If you change the gravitational force by one part in ten to the forty , we wouldn't be here . What's one part in ten to the forty? Illustration : Take a tape measure ; stretch it from that back wall to the front wall ; in inches. If you set gravity at a particular inch mark on that tape measure, and moved the strength of gravity one inch in either direction proportionally , we go out of existence . But the problem is that the tape measure doesn't go from that wall to this front wall; it goes across the entire known universe . You change gravity that much , across the entire known universe, and we don't exist .
For you Navy people out here, (I was in the Navy many years) think of an aircraft carrier , like the John Stennis or the Ronald Reagan, which displaces a hundred and ten thousand tons ; has a runway on it that is about three lengths of a football field ; has five to six thousand people on it ; several stories high. If you were to change the weight of that aircraft carrier by less than a trillionth the weight of one electron , it would be uninhabitable , if the aircraft carrier was the universe . That's how incredibly designed the universe is."
@@williamspringer9447 I must reject the premises of your argument from the outset.
Is gravity a "guided process"? I ask this question because it seems creationists believe the only alternative to a guided process must be randomness. But, gravity is not random. We know exactly what happens when we let go of something we're holding: it falls. This natural constant allows us to make observations and predictions with repeatable results. The laws of physics are consistent, unguided, but also not random.
If the theory of gravitation were somehow disproved, would the new answer automatically be that angels have been pulling objects towards the earth at 9.81 meters per second squared, OR, is "we don't know" an acceptable response until further study can be done?
The answer is obvious. So, when ID proponents attempt to poke holes in evolution, why do they think this lends ANY credibility to their own position by default? I'm sorry, but you need to support your own position.
There is always some kind of fallacious reasoning involved when appealing to a supernatural cause for anything, particularly because the supernatural is so ill defined and unfalsifiable. Bayesian probability is the most dishonest of all apologetic attempts because it plugs in variables for which we have no precedent or parallel to reference. For instance, if you have a six-sided die, you know you have a one in six chance of rolling a 4. The probability changes with the number of sides you add. If you flip a coin 100 times and each time it lands on heads, what are the chances it will land on heads the next time? The answer is always 50/50. There is only one universe that we know of... a one-sided die. No calculations can be made for things that we know have only occurred once. It's even worse for events that have never happened before, such as a resurrection.
How would a theologian determine the difference between something that is truly supernatural and something that is natural but just outside of our current realm of scientific understanding?
DJ A-BOMB •••
The premises of my argument are true.
Premise #1 is self-evident .
Premise #2, I could support with mountains of evidence.
The conclusion logically follows.
“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.”
-Ilya Prigogine, chemist-physicist, recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry
"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.
The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2,000 = 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. In terms of complexity, an individual cell is nothing when compared with a system like the mammalian brain. The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibers by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 10^15 or a thousand million million. Numbers in the order of 10^15 are of course completely beyond comprehension. Imagine an area about half the size of the USA (one million square miles) covered in a forest of trees containing ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree contained one hundred thousand leaves the total number of leaves in the forest would be 10^15, equivalent to the number of connections in the human brain! Despite the enormity of the number of connections, the ramifying forest of fibers is not a chaotic random tangle but a highly organized network in which a high proportion of the fibers are unique adaptive communication channels following their own specially ordained pathway through the brain. Even if only one hundredth of the connections in the brain were specifically organized, this would still represent a system containing a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on Earth."
-Professor Francis Crick, awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA
“From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 Mev energy level in the nucleus of Carbon 12 to the 7.12 Mev level in Oxygen 16. if you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? Following the above argument, I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”
-Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge Astrophysicist, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections
“Perhaps before going further we should ask just how probable is it that a universe created by randomly choosing the parameters will contain stars. Given what we have already said, it is simple to estimate this probability. For those readers who are interested, the arithmetic is in the notes. The answer, in round numbers, comes to about one chance in 10^229.”
-Lee Smolin, American theoretical physicist, "Life of the Cosmos"
They say evolution doesn't even try to discover the orgin of life yet your guys God Charles Darwin wrote a book called "Orgins of Species".
🙇♂️ Orgin means at the very beginning or start.
Craig Hazen has "preacher hair" so there's already a bias.
The best Rana got to is that an intelligent agent started everything off, but that could be an alien race. He never got to even a Deistic god let alone a Christian god. His strategy was simply tear down what natural science has gotten us so far and not once did he show that it must be supernatural.
wow infinity.getting to see some of what is beyond is magnificent.my theory the creator made us through him that he is who we are.i believe in the holy spirit,grace goes through us.
👉🤔🙏❤️ I CAN RELATE TO WHERE YOUR COMING 😉🦋🙏 FROM 😃🙏🙂👈🏽👉 I KNOW THE PEOPLE DEBATING I BELIEVE THAT IT'LL BE A VERY RESPECTFUL DEBATE 🙂😉☕🌹👈🏽
Dr. Rana's argument is rather transparently based upon upon the shaky premise that; - if it takes a team of intelligent beings to unravel the processes of natural generation, it follows that it must have been designed by an intelligent agent ?
This is a big jump in assumption and therefor really just a "God of the gaps" arguement.
It could be said following such reasoning that; as it required a massive effort by a genius to produce a Beethoven symphony it must have been pre constructed by a magical being. Otherwise where did it come from ?
To each their own. Agreeing to disagree is a reasonable way to conclude our discussion.
As we say in my religion, JazakAllah Khairyn
Micheal Ruse got owned. He had not scientific arguments to refute with.
Michael Ruse actually used a number of scientific counter- arguments..for example, he pointed out how the issue of long-chain polymers adhering to mineral surfaces can be resolved in salt water conditions.
I realize your comment is 6 years old but I'm stunned that you could say Michael Ruse had "no scientific arguments to refute with." because that statement is demonstrably false by the very same video you are referencing.
Greetings, my friends, this is Pastor Mike. I've seen so many of these debates and I've read a great deal of commentary. It seems to always follow the same patterns of exchange. Neither side really listens to the other side and in nearly every case the worldviews remain intact. In commentary there's a lot of name calling and insults which, my friends, isn't the way to address such issues. It's O.K. to engage the issues being discussed but, we should avoid attacking the person stating their position on the issues. You can probably imagine the kind of flack a person gets when they have the title "Pastor" in front of their name. I've heard it all. I'm not sure yet whether or not I will comment on this debate video. Well, take care and Best Wishes or GOD Bless, whichever fits your worldview. Pastor Michel (Mike) Benjamins, Jr. 11-14-16 @ 1:12 A.M.
To be clear, evolution doesn't attempt to explain the origin of life.So the title is silly.
They teach of angel wings and morals while hiding their incisors
Go ahead and comment Pastor Mike. I would love to know what you think. 🤔
@@gfujigo Greetings, this is Pastor Mike Benjamins, Jr. Of Oregon [May 30, 2021]. The following narrative is one of the numerous written responses I have published. It may not precisely respond to a specific video or debate but, it generally creates a glimpse into my views:
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ORIGIN OF LIFE, How Life Started on Earth: FROM THE PASTOR: For the record, Yes, I do seriously believe in the Biblical Creator-GOD and His Word. If you nonbelievers opt not to believe as I do,.... have at it. I would visit you from the glory of GOD's Kingdom but, I may not be able to find you in the expanse of nothingness and nonexistence which some believe follows this earthy, fleshly existence. We must all take the responsibility and live with the consequences of our choices (like an adult). Here we go again, nonbelievers regaling us with stories of "solid science" victories and accomplishments. Just one thing, however, we do not get to ride on the coattails of solid science in order to pass off bad science or no science at all (faith-based scientific beliefs or "Scientism") as if it were solid science, often riding on the strength of credentialism alone. Balderdash is balderdash, my friends. I do not believe that the Biblical GOD is superior to any other real gods because, there are no other real gods. Man(kind) may behave as if he were a god but that does not make him one. Yes. science has come up with studies and facts, that's true. But, science has also been hijacked by, let us say, those who have imaginations run amuck and exercise powers they have not truly earned, to bring us some of the worst hypothetical models trying to float on a solid science life raft. Now, as to mixing science and GOD, that is inevitable. The reason is that GOD is the Creator and, when we study His Creation we end up discovering His Creative Hand. We've already gone down that road with the complex genetic information existing in the DNA molecule. Not long ago, I wrote:
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"Hello again, this is Pastor Mike. All this debate about "Mean-Old Acids" [Amino acids] doesn't really get us anywhere.
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If I understood my studies correctly, No matter where amino acids are discovered outside of a living cell, they will not link together to form proteins outside of an already living cell. That is the basis of the principle of Biogenesis. Thus, it supports creation by an intelligence. Moreover, only proteins containing all left-handed amino acids will work in living things. It is akin to a puzzle with the picture side up. If one turns a puzzle piece over, it will not fit. The amino acids that form, without an intelligence, are both right-handed and left-handed which is problematic for Abiogenesis. In the Miller-Urey experiment, the amino acids were half LH and half RH. Correctly ordered LH amino acids are linked together by a molecular apparatus (protein manufacturing machine) inside the already living cell, driven by the complex genetic information (instructions) already existing in the DNA molecule.
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As to amino acids forming life wherever there is water, outside a living cell, that doesn't work either because, as I understand it, the amino acids tend to disperse in water. Thus, this whole business of amino acids somehow forming a living cell by Abiogenesis, over extremely long periods of time, is just about impossible (as the mathematics, quoted as "10 to the 159th power" appears to indicate). We may then conclude that the so-called organic soup of the primordial pool of pond scum, is no substitute for the protein building mechanism existing inside an already living cell. I'm afraid that these facts that relate to the Biogenesis model are compelling in the face of Abiogenesis proponents.
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Thus, the notion that life arose from matter alone, abiogenesis style, without a creative intelligence involved, which I claim to be the Biblical GOD, in a chemistry to biology fashion, cannot be sustained. Various scientists can put forth a hypothetical model, which exists as a scientific belief hoping to be proven but, it is a far, far cry from being a fact. Scientific "guesses," relying heavily upon the strength of credentials alone, are not to be mistaken for cut-and-dried solid science. An educated guess is still a guess, not a fact. I will be keeping an eye on what science comes up with but, meanwhile, we should understand that claims of abiogenesis in the far distant past constitute an alleged event that no man can have observed. Pastor Mike. 2-18-17 @ 6:33 P.M.
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This is not a comment or reply intended for a specific individual, even though some statements were inspired by individual commentary. It is simply a statement made by me for anyone and everyone. I am not inviting debate or argumentation, which I will not engage in. The information people seek is out there if one cares to look. In future statements, I may or may not opt to cite points and authorities. Take care. Pastor Mike. 2-25-17 @ 2:40 P.M.?
@@gfujigo I posted a reply/comment on 5-30-21. It is fairly detailed. It's hard to believe I posted my original statement four years ago. Anyway, it may be under [hidden] replies to my first statement. From: Pst. MBJR. 5-30-21 @ 7:23 P.M. Oregon Time. All my standard rules and disclaimers apply.
We are designed (so to speak) by our environment . But not literally designed by a being. We are a reflection of the environment. Its not up the the environment to conform to us but rather the opposite. We must evolve to fit the environment. We design ourselves. And we are responsible for our own design. What might be a good design today may not work well tomorrow as the environment changes. The fact that chance is a factor in evolution doesn't mean chance is the only factor. There are many factors involved. But to say we are designed by a god is short sighted. And even if we were
" designed by a god" that design must change and evolve.
You're right about artificial genetic engineering, I observe it each day in my lab. But one time I came across an unwanted (random) point mutation. If you wish so I can send you the chromatogram.
Abiogenesis isn't proven, yet... as is gravitation. Neither am I saying that it is proven. But it's worth a shot, trying to unravel and understand the mysteries that are the origin of life.
Not being a rhetorical jerk wasn't that difficult, was it? Chapeau.
its simply to weird to argue this with out good knowledge of it
@fartpoobox ohyeah "shouldn't question" (without "be") and "people's knowledge" (possessive apostrophe). Humility my friend.
The label of this debate is entirely misleading! I was looking forward to hearing Fuz Rana defend his statements about design. Instead Michael Ruse says "I don't disagree with you it could be designed." Conceding the point almost from the very beginning!!! Then goes on an anti-Christian rant, how disappointing. Admittedly I quite watching when it became apparent Michael had no intention of actually engaging to the advertised topic, instead choosing to debate the Bible. A field Michael's credential for are not discussed, nor does it seem that Fuz qualifications lend to a public debate of the hermeneutics of the Bible.
What I would like to state is that due to human bias is it's easy to misunderstand the written word, and very difficult to correct that misinformed understanding. An idea that plays out throughout the internet every flipping day! Those misunderstandings don't come through more then 2000 years of cultural change and a translation(which honestly requires slot of education to understand). By the time I choose to stop watching, Michael had only behaved in a way which I would consider a serious discredit to atheist, and scholarly debate!!! (though I will admit I am assuming, given their credentials, that this debate was suppose to be about evolution vs intelligent design. Not who designed the cell, or the biblical understanding of that.)
+Richard Peterson I mean, there is no conclusive answer regarding how life could have originated. All we know is that there is no evidence of a god performing magic. We don't see the laws of physics breaking (since that is impossible). So I don't know what you expected the argument to be. But if science doesn't have an answer to the question, its not going to make up an answer for the debate, it will simply point outthe many errors of alternative hypotheses (and that is a very generous description of so called creation), and science will continue to work on the problem. A simple google search would tell you, "science does not yet have the answer to abiogenesis." So if you were expecting an answer, then you wasted your time. Instead, take it as the reason why science is continuing to work on abiogenesis hypotheses. Other hypotheses have absolutely no supporting evidence (like the existence of a god for one thing).
The so called laws of physics have been broken at lease once. The whatever started everything moving, it's self had to be unmoved. To suggest otherwise is folly, to ignore entropy is to ignore the very laws you assume to govern the universe. Beyond that there is all kinds of evidence that those laws may be altered. Rather then engage such evidence, many these days just use the ad-hominid attacks to ignore. Enviably such discussions are fruitless, since they deteriorate ultimately into circular logic of trying to use science to probe it's fundamental assumption. Reductive Materialism or rather the assertion that everything is material or some variation on that theme.
Actually what I had expected was for two professionals debate and to remain in their chosen field of study! Addressing the question that was advertised. Instead the little I watched could have been found in any internet Theist vs Atheist forum poor biblical understanding, insulting and posturing! Much like how I expect this conversation started would continue and so is about to end! Rather the attempting to emulate the associated discussions, in a futile and irrational attempt to discredit each others world view. When nether of us has any respect for the rational faculties of the other (cause of the anonymity on the internet). I will simply wish peace be with you, and go enjoy my life instead!!
So what unmoved cause caused the movements of a god? Saying god created everything answers nothing and begs a more difficult question of where did god come from. Why is there evil in the world. Why did he make us so poorly. Gallbladders and appendixes become inflamed and kill people, yet the lack of both do not shorten lifespan. So why do we have them? Of course, they do have functions, but the functions do not outweigh the risks which is why they are removed so frequently. These things are suggestive of evolution. Imperfect, but remarkable nontheless. A perfect god would create a perfect world, not a chaotic universe. He wouldn't set the Milky Way on a collision course with Andromeda. He wouldn't allow asteroids to hurl themselves toward us. God does not exist.
Forgive my disinterest there is nothing I haven't heard a dozens of times before in your statement. First assuming God has a origin assumes he exists in space and time. This is not what I think, and is sadly just a reassertion of materialism. In a transparnt attempt to side step the uncaused cause problem inherent amongst materialistic world veiws! Which I do not share with you so it's not my issue thanks.
Evolution really is only a problem for those who do not recognize that their are different ways to interpret the bible. This again is not an issue for me! I prefer to let the natural gospel help inform me about the scripture.
This leaves the only really good objection atheist raise. The problem of suffering, this has several flaws. Basicly breaks down in to an emotional appeal based on wish fulfillment of a God who would not allow suffering. Ever heard of tough love? This is the God we see Biblically! Peter the most loved apostle was also the one God and Jesus was the hardest on! The Jews God's chosen people have been the most abused. I promise you that is the God I believe in. I have suffered consistently, and every time I do, for me is opportunity to climb up next to Jesus and get closer to God! Which is how I know he exists and has love for me! Cause he shares my cross! No I'm not masochistic I just don't have a societies limited and unrealistic idea of love being sunshine, rainbows and unicorn farts! Inspiring Philosophy is right about "How America Destroyed the Gospel"! God is not some kind of vending machine. He's is alot more complex then the simplistic grade school veiw of an old man sitting on a cloud granting wishes.
Good Day to you sir! Peace be with you!
You were the one suggesting an unmoved mover. My point is whatever created the universe, it exists outside the universe since it did not exist to live within prior to its existence. Thus, whatever created the universe could easily be called god. I'm fine with that. However, there is no evidence that the god that created the universe is sentient. It could be inanimate. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that god has intervened beyond the creation of the universe. However, there is PLENTY of evidence that the god YOU worship from the Bible is man's invention. There is no science or moral within the bible that a mere man could not have come up with on his own. And often, its just the opposite, ONLY men could have come up with such morals.
Designer hypothesis is where science turns into meta science. If there is a necessity for super-naturalistic explanations, the scientific method of hypothesis testing itself will be breaking down, thus throwing the whole discussions out of the window of science. Of course it is entirely possible there is a naturalist alien designer(s) or society which pre-seeded earth, but it is silly to worship or equate them with god(s). Maybe it is Celestial Arishem??? Lol.
I'm a atheist....swear to god
I love the conversation that is happening. When Dr. Ruse and Dr. Rana talk at the table, this is truly more of a conversation than a debate. Also, that Dr Rana explains the "made" of Day 4 concerning sun, moon, and stars. It's like saying ... "The manufacturer made Michael Ruse's shirt". Yes they made his shirt ... but not on the day of the debate ...
Dr. Rana claims Genesis the sun was made visible to a hypothetical earthbound observer on the fourth day. And that 'day' means an undefined long time. He hypothesis is in response to creation of the Sun following the creation of the Earth being demonstrably false. Yet he provides no evidence of the revealing of the Sun. He doesn't even provide a mechanism of how the Sun was hidden and then revealed. I find Rr. Rana's arguments from ignorance unconvincing.
Well, to be fair, I guess from your perspective it's no more fanciful than believing in Design theories. Personally, I find it extremely difficult to imagine that something so incredible and fine tuned as our Universe could just arise from nothing, spontaneously.
If we go back to people's minds 2000 years ago, in the time of Jesus. These people think that today's human being is a god who can fool today's technology. But we know we are not God, but this technology was the result of our brain's evolution. Somehow, if we're at the center of evolution, that another humanoid species on Earth evolves in other directions like the angels, maybe they're looking at what we were doing 2,000 years ago, but we can't understand them and we call them gods also.
Get a king James 1611 English bible no copyright free ask me and I'll send one for your whole family to read the true god willingly preserved true account of history focusing on the most important person in all of time Jesus Christ of Nazareth. From first day to revalation our story is there the story of man creation of God
God is science. The Bible is science, history, and prophecy.
Where do you get all of these gigantic cut and pastes of lies from? They are just so wrong about so much.
Boy oh boy, ever Bible thump?
ID is UC.
Intelligent Design is an Unnecessary Complexity.
Absolutely and we are never alone.
"But the very hairs of your head are all numbered."
I would put money on the vast majority of creationists in this comment section coming from either Africa, the middle east, or the USA......basically locations known for their poor education systems and overly religious populations
36:50 - Nobody KNOWS exactly what conditions existed in the early earth 3 billion years ago. The claim made around this point is absurd.
And again in his second point at 39:00 - Even IF we KNEW exactly what the conditions were in the early earth, there's nothing to suggest that we could replicate that environment with our current technology.
The experiments he explains as needing the "hands of the researcher" were only meant to test the possibilities given the basic building blocks. They are putting together one piece of a very large puzzle. What he's expecting would be equivalent to building a Lamborghini before we even developed the first wheel, or thinking Michael Faraday should have been able to build a computer in his day.
God wins 💥
How so?
29:52
That look is priceless! "Don't you dare take away my bacterial flagellum they're the best I've got damn it!"
the bible written for pre illiterates and not scientific people has today? his he mad? since when where the people back then thick? They had Pythagoras Plato Egyptians building what we cant build today! They where very scientific and the bible is so complex and is scientific,,the world was described as being hung on nothing and a circle,they knew about hygiene before we followed principles of hand washing and treatment of sewage..the skin of our teeth that we only knew of this century and the exact steps from the big bang to the appearance of man in the correct order and lots more but ppl dont read it properly , mainly cos its too hard for the so called clever modern man to follow..they just get by reading a road map ! he talks crap lol
I always find it amazing; the person arguing from the position of science always begins by telling the audience where their expertise ends, but the creationist will not hesitate to criticize something they know nothing about.
Creationism goes hand in hand with dishonesty
@@logicalatheist1065 really? How so?
@@weeklydaily4775 You have to Lie to support it.
@@logicalatheist1065 which lie do you have to say?
@@weeklydaily4775 what?
I didn't hear a single argument for abiogenesis in Michael Ruse's ENTIRE 20 minute presentation.
ChristianMetalFan100 well he's also not a biologist, so..
@@robertoesquivel4447 and theres still no evidence that abiogenesis created the life we evolved from, its a hyopotheses, based on probabillity......but dont tell the creatards...theyll make it into " atheists say theres no gawd!!!!",
Fantastic! Thank you Fuz Rana. Simply great enlightment!
It amazes me how a scientist can possibly still believe in God. They’re grasping at straws by trying to fit God into science. The impossibility of God is staggeringly foolish.
I'm an early earth creationist but always enjoyed Michael Ruse's presentation.
If you enjoyed the atheist position, how can you be a believer? The two are opposites.
Fuz is seriously going to credit a dream for the benzine molecule. The scientist had been working on it for ages and the 'dream' was simply his mind working it out in a relaxed state. It does not change methodological naturalistic processes because he still had to do all the normal tests to back up the dream's interpretation. The dream itself was worthless without the tests.
False
God designed the laws and axioms of physics and beautiful theories and science are the result.Yes, you can be both religious and a fan of science.
Saed Abumokh No, you really can't. Newton once uttered a statement similar to yours - when he had determined that the solar system had to be constructed by God. Today we know better - because people with a scientific mindset decided to look past the "God" labeled line Newton had drawn in the sand.
Gnomefro"No, you really can't" oh but I am.
Saed Abumokh Hear,hear.
Saed Abumokh I admire your cake eating abilities, but Gnomefro has made an excellent point: in what way are you any different to Newton and why?
Saed Abumokh prove it!!! Don't embrace science and then make assumptions that your God is the designer you MUST demonstrate that your God is the designer!!!!! End of story
Fuz paraphrased: "Look at all these things that are similar to what humans can create yet I assume that we can never create those things so god, and something about irreducible complexity bla bla." Pretty bad argument.
Michael Ruse is fantastic. A true educator and a gentleman. A rare breed.
Believing life had no Creator is like believing an airplane can fly on its own.
ByRTD yO Sure, there may be a creator. That is certainly in the realm of possibilities (although a deeper discussion may reveal it to be superfluous compared to other possibilities). However, we all know that you aren't a deist. You believe in an anthropomorphic, male entity. And there is no serious defense for that position. Especially in the face of innumerable other religions that made claim to similar beliefs and have all but been snuffed out by humanity's maturing sensibilities.
Nate Buhar I am a theist. i don't believe in religion or in an male entity God but i do believe in an all powerful Creator who created life and the cosmos and cared enough for us and gave us free will and existence.
ByRTD yO I see, sorry for the presumption. So do you believe that the Creator interceded through abiogenesis? That's what your comments regarding information would seem to imply.
lol @ autopilot
Maletero37 You still need someone to press the button you idiot.
"Where does the information come from?"
Why can't he just admit he has no effing clue?
He does have a clue, creationists just won't accept it because it's too simple, boring and doesn't fit their origins myth. Information *about* DNA, inside human minds, comes from humans labeling biomolecules as information, which can be done for anything in the universe. Any physical attribute, measurement or property can be *used as* information, regardless of where it came from. I can use a rock as a hammer, weapon, or paperweight, or even information about the geological processes of the rock, but that usage does nothing to change the rock's origin.
@@ja31472 your explanation is very weak.
We all know dna has information.. ask an atheist who is a scientist.
So take the bull by the horns and quit bitching
@Anthony Maurice "Chemists can copy genetic information"
What they are recreating is a natural process. What they are copying is molecules that are being *used as* information, just as ink molecules are used as information when you write, just as *any physical property or measurement can be used as information* by an observer. The information exist in the mind, not on the substance you philosophical fool. Go back to school and pass the courses you failed.
"Chemists can copy genetic information"
Physics does this with no intelligent input or consciousness. Physics is the driving cause of all DNA replication, and all other processes in this universe, including all processes in your brain that creates intelligence.
Ask any neuroscientist.
Ask a doctor how unintelligent natural laws grew you from unconscious, unintelligent spec of inert bio-molecules to conscious, semi-intelligent adult that believes in fairy tales.
That's the thing.. Evolution being true (micro or macro) doesn't have to prove the Bible wrong. In fact: I think it explains the biblical account of creation quite nicely. God made man from the dirt/earth... NASA and everyone will now tell you we are made of (star) dust, like the earth, and like the scripture says. It doesn't end there, either. Keeps growing my faith the deeper I look! 🎤
You have a bottle of champagne that looks utterly still. You pop the cork. Where did all these bubbles come from? I don't know, so God must have made them.
If intelligent design was a scientific theory then it would be disprovable. If you believe intelligent design is a scientific theory, they what would disprove it?
If intelligent design isn't a scientific theory then it's not really intelligent, it's just rote belief.