God doesn't seem to exist!

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The concept of God has progressed? The Bible was written in the bronze age by goat herders. That's over 200 years ago. Some real fine progress...

No I don't think you did. How about I modify it slightly; Without entropy we would not have complexity.

Now that we appear to actually agree on a fundemental piece of science, would you like those lectures on Origins of Life.

Its not only that other elements needed to form that prevented the earth and life existing 12 billion years ago, there is also the situation that the unverse was far to violent for anything to be stable. You could argue that a certain amount of entropy was required to even out energy states to a point where complexity could form, instead of being obliterated before it had a chance to get going.

Is this all you have to say? By the way, I think you mean't to say 'over 2,000 years ago', not 200 (yes, I'm extremely pedantic and fussy, so get used to it).

Who cares about religion or the Bible? Not me, and I did not discuss either of those topics, so what you are presenting here is the proverbial straw man assault. The concept of God, not the Bible or any other archaic religious text, has evolved over time. Why should this fact surprise anyone?

Yes, the universe had to wind down (so to speak) and pass through the earlier stages (ex. the inflationary period, the formation of the first stars) first before anything truly interesting, from our current perspective, could occur. By that stage the overall level of entropy had already increased. The Origins of Life lectures - yes, if it's available online and you can provide a link I'm not a biologist so they may help to clarify a few things.

So Lintar, let me puzzle this through. You deride much of science as nonsense fed to a gullible/naive/ignorant public. Yet it would appear that you accept the contemporary understanding of an expanding universe, that is many billions of years old. In essence you accept that the universe has "evolved" into the state it is today. You accept that the energy needed for complexity comes via the mechanism of entropy. So far it would appear that we are in furious agreement.

Now I am not sure how you view life on this planet. I understand you believe that some form of being purposefully created this life from outside the universe. What form did this life take? Was it fully formed as we see it today or did it start as single celled organisms? Ie do you accept evolutionary biology or some form of intelligent design similar to baraminolgy?

It is not my intention to try to befuddle the naïve with obscure formulas and opaque equations. That is a business proper to advertising and marketing con-men. I will propose the principles involved as ordinary, lucid people have always, almost intuitively, known them based on a practical experience of reality. Here it is again; not for your information, Arty, as I know that you simply ignore the implications.

Entropy.

The best (most succinct and precise) definition (description) of entropy is as it occurs in the "Second Law of Thermodynamics"; "All ordered systems, left to themselves tend toward maximum randomness and lowest energy (potential or differential)". That means that order naturally tends to degenerate into randomness (disorder) and energy potential tends to dissipate into a uniformity without potential because there's nowhere of lower potential left to go to...

Because energy must be dissipated in the maintenance, or sustaining, of an orderly system some con men with an ideology to sell will try to pretend that the energy consumed in the process creates the order. A sly mental trick.

Let's propose some practical examples to illustrate the process.

Most mothers like to have an orderly home. Order in her home requires:
1. An intellect to conceive the order.
2. The will to want the order.
3. The capacity, or power, to implement, or bring about, the order.

Now, that poor Mum who has been toiling away for years to install and maintain the order suddenly finds herself confronted by a clever-dick progeny who's been to school and learned that energy spontaneously creates order. SmArty tries to convince Mum that letting off a bomb (great release of energy) in the middle of her expertly managed domain, will spontaneously create order and she'll never have to tidy up again. Good luck with that one Smarty.

Or let's lift great weights to great heights. An intellect comes up with an idea of a crane to do the job. Skilled minds and hands divert energy and materials to make the machine using entropy in every step of the process. Smarty, with the benefit of his recently acquired great insights, comes along and proclaims that because the energy to build and operate the crane comes, ultimately, from the Sun then the Sun built the crane. Now, I just happen to know for sure that Central Australia gets lots and lots of solar energy but not one giant crane has ever spontaneously appeared in the desert.

Oh well, counters SmArty, "that only applies to non-biological systems. Energy applied to biological systems creates an increase in order and complexity opposed to entropy". SmArty has never heard of the "Law of Morphology"*** (which is really only entropy applied to biological systems) which says, simply, that "the more complex an organism and the more often it is reproduced, the more likely it is that something will go wrong in the process".

So, the thousands of generations of Drosophila (fruit flies) that have been subjected to every imaginable radiation "stimulus" to produce "sped up" "evolution" have only ever produced some wreckage of their DNA or genome... not one super-human spaceman.

Ultimately, untold thousands of generations of diligent and wise housekeeping Mums are in tune with reality... the SmArtys are not.

Order is a product of Intellect, Will, and Life.

*** the Law of Morphology has apparently been eliminated from "newspeak" by the "Ministry of Truth" in the last 40 odd years but the principle still holds.

I will not look around for "you know a maths paper, or a physics paper outlining how the accepted understanding of entropy driving complexity is wrong" because you know as well as I do that anything not convenient to your ideology is edited out of mainstream publication and you will summarily dismiss anything else as per your previous intellectual integrity demonstrated.

Here's another fella who, rather succinctly and diplomatically, challenges nonscience "orthodoxy".


http://www.principia-scientific.org/tra ... grows.html

It is your judgement that living "consistently and honestly" as a materialist involves those things. First of all, does believing only in natural causes and not God make me a materialist? I'm not not sure how stringent the definition is. In any case, there is absolutely no reason why believing only in natural causes and not God should make me think of everyone as mindless automatons. It is your belief that God is necessary for mind, love, justice, morals etc., not mine. So don't try to pin its opposite on me. Just because you think God is necessary for those things doesn't make it so.

And what would living "honestly and consistently" as a materialist really mean? This isn't a religion so there are no lifestyle rules that must be adhered to. If I love my daughter then I am breaking a consistency rule and must therefore be a deist even if I don't admit it? That is just plain incorrect.

Love is beyond materialism.


A materialist would in all honesty consistently dismiss anything not sanctioned by the scientific method.
They would reject herbal medicine and would prefer their medicine to be synthesized in a lab.
They would reduce anything esoteric to be mumbo jumbo
And when faced with irrefutable truths they would only concede if said truths have been verified by the scientific method. Breech position of babies being treated with moxibustion on the BL67 acupuncture point is but one example: http://aim.bmj.com/content/early/2013/0 ... 012-010288
And even then...


Lab-produced artemisinin depends on a stable bond whereas the plant itself uses unstable bonds. Wouldn't surprise me if this rigidity is what has allows malaria parasites or the mosquito itself to have adapted and developed immunity?
An honest and consistent material determinist would never entertain that idea...



There is no free will, only the will to want. We are at the mercy of our neurochemistry. DD was diagnosed at 6 with weeks with a wood imbalance. I asked a taoist monk wether balance ever could be achieved if one is born with congenital imbalances. He smiled in a wry kind of way
For the rest 2 words, Hun and Po http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hun_and_po (there's better links than that but i really should do something more constructive now )

Too ineffable? Then perhaps the strawman is to equate atheism with materialism.




Plants are part of the material world.
Here we have another straw man: the declaration that people who turn to science rather than religion for answers on how the world works also assume that all questions have been answered and therefore anything not consistent with previous research must not exists. Wrong. Scienve is a tool for discovery and as such scientists accept that there is much still to be discovered and that new research will overwrite old.

You like them straw men don't you know?
Lost my post and the thought so will keep it short...

Did I make a declaration?
Or did you interpret what i said as one
It was just my thoughts that materialized in passing.

Science is a tool for the few and a commodity for the masses... it offers marketable products for the masses to acquire that will satisfy their wants and needs.
The real tool is the mind.
It wants to explore, discover and experience.
It fooled Descartes when it had him believe that he 'was' because he could 'think'. Or allowed him to twist it so he could justify his own existence. Meaning he fooled himself...
Me on the other hand is not so easily fooled. I can think because I am.
I AM THOUGHT. I can't stop thinking. It wears me out on bad days and enlightens me on good ones.

And I couldn't care less what the Aristotlean logic has to say about that, it never really made sense to me. Academically I was once told I had promise but needed discipline. LMFAO. In other words I am allowed to think as long as I obliged by their rules of what constitutes logical thinking.

I have said 'strawman' quite a lot in my last several posts. But that's because they keep being used.



You made a declaration. Here it is:


continuing on...


Here^^ you have mixed up science with technology.


Think whatever you want. I don't care. But when you say, for example, "they would reject herbal medicine and would prefer their medicine to be synthesized in a lab" I will call out your assumption with "plants are part of the material world". This idea that a materialist wouldn't turn to plants is unfounded and goes pretty much against the history of medicine. It is correct that a materialist would want to use the scientific method to check the efficacy of the plant remedies rather than just take the word of an herbalist. But this doesn't mean they think the herbalist is lying. There are probably thousands of papers in the PubMed and ncbi databases that do just that. What do you think the lab synthesized drugs are based on?

Lab synthesis allows for quantity, purity and dose regulation. But a giant chunk of manufactured pharmaceuticals had their genesis in plants, animals, fungus and bacteria. And when quantity, purity and dose regulation aren't an issue, the original plant is fine. I grow an aloe vera in the kitchen window for light burns.

No more than my thoughts materializing. It's rare occasions I can put my thoughts into words. And even rarer I can rephrase them in similar fashion without re-reading what I actually wrote.





So what you saying? Am I commiting some form of heresey or what?
Science is the tool, technology is one of the end products. The masses really aren't interested in theorethical science. To them it's entertainment. The interest in scientific programs on television has risen no doubt with the coming of computer graphics but how many would stay interested if it were some eccentric professor explaining it? Ask the masses what they think of CERN and you will get many blank stares.
It's the herd mentality and I seem to be immuum from it. And have been as long as I can remember.





And that my friend, is what my Cockney mate would call a cop out. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cop+out

Didactically delivered glib assertions about who wrote the Bible and why are completely irrelevant to the philosophical (scientific) logical necessity for an uncaused first cause that is intelligent, wilful and powerful enough to create the order that we see as physical reality... without even going near metaphysical realities.

The diabolical egomania that creates false gods that pamper, justify, serve, some hedonistic ideology is not in the slightest way indicative of the intelligence, power and will that causes all order.

God does not "seem to exist" if you arbitrarily declare one, or all, of these manufactured "deities" to be synonymous with the cause of everything but Himself.

I'd better stop now while I can avert the urge to be brutally honest.

Oh, be brutally honest...

No, this is completely wrong. I don't believe that much of science is 'nonsense', and I don't know where you got that idea from. The point I raised about abiogenesis was that, as it is currently conceived, it cannot account for how life began. That's it.

Yes, the two are not the same, but are there any atheists who are not materialists as well? If there are I have yet to meet them.