The Greater Miracle

My only issue with this is that I didn't think of it.- Oni

I did not say that. I only said that x was required for them to exist in the first place, using your example of the vending machine. As I said, it helped clarify your question.

I thought I'd just go back to your original post and try and relate it to the discussion.By your definition then isn't Hume's Maxim as subjective as anyone's else's in this instance. It is my view that abiogenesis by strictly natural processes would be a greater miracle than would abiogenesis due to an external intelligence. I agree that my view is subjective, but I don't see it as any less subjective than the opposite view.

Why would that be? There are billions upon billions of planets in the universe, so if we say that abiogenesis is extremely, extremely improbable, it can still happen once.EDIT: sorry I probably understated the number of planets a bit; in our galaxy alone, there are hundreds of billions of stars. If we assume that on average, each star has one planet orbiting, then we'd have to multiply that hundreds of billions by hundreds of billions of galaxies, which would be astronomically many planets.Edited by lehtv, : correction

Maybe more than once. Who knows? A cell is incredibly complex, as the majority of people on this forum know better than I, and I just think that there was an intelligence required for it to happen. Science may some day come up with an answer of how basic ingredients might combine to form a cell, but I would still believe that it would require an initial intelligence to start the process. I see all of science as being a form of theological endeavour in that it is working at finding out what God has created.

What you would choose to believe, in the face of contradictory evidence, says more about you than it does about science. Again, you are trying to impose your religious belief on science.Science and religion are opposites. Science follows the data wherever it leads, even if it contradicts someone's religious belief.Religious belief is something that is always based on "Trust me!"That "Trust me!" can come in the form of "divine" revelation, scripture, and the like, but it all resolves in the end to some person saying "Trust me!"You wouldn't want to buy a used car from such a questionable source, now would you?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The evidence wouldn't be contradictory. Just as I accept that science has determined a great deal about the evolutionary process. I accept evolution as a process that God created. As I have said ad nauseum, there is nothing in science that contradicts my Christian faith. Not at all. If anything science informs my religious beliefs. They aren't opposites at all. I agree with your statement about science though. Who would that person be? I think it would be more along the lines of convince me. In the end though this stuff has been gone over so many times that I don't see a lot of point in rehashing it all again.

Who? Let's start with Moses and/or his coauthors/predecessors and the contemporary oral tradition which he and/or they may or may not have written down.Would you buy used snake oil from such a pitchman today? Even when they said, "Trust me!"?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Frankly I'm not too concerned about that. This is something written by CS Lewis which is largely how I see scripture.

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Just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth is ... a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other peoples, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology — the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical.

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Miracles Ch 15 CS Lewis

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GDR responds to me:

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As I said, it helped clarify your question.

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No, it didn't. You continued to claim that somehow Y and Z don't interact on their own.Is there anything that happens on its own or is god required for everything?Why is it so difficult for you to provide a straightfoward answer to that question?"Yes, there are things that happen on their own.""No, everything requires god."

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

GDR writes:

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A cell is incredibly complex

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Irrelevant. You are acting as if the cell formed all at once as it currently exists from a pile of rocks and some warm water. A test to see just how well you understand probability:Suppose I have a standard deck of 52 cards and draw one.What is the probability of me having drawn the Ace of Spades?
What is the probability of me having drawn an Ace?
What is the probability of me having drawn a Spade?
What is the probability of me having drawn a black card?
What is the probability of me having drawn a card?Flip side:Suppose I have a standard deck of 52 cards.What is the probability of me having drawn the Ace of Spades assuming I have drawn a card?
What is the probability of me having drawn the Ace of Spades assuming I have drawn a black card?
What is the probability of me having drawn the Ace of Spades assuming I have drawn a Spade?
What is the probability of me having drawn the Ace of Spades assuming I have drawn an Ace?The point is that we cannot confuse the probability of a specific outcome with the probability of any outcome (the first example) and that we cannot confuse the probability of trying to get a specific result all at once with the probability of trying to get a specific result given a lot of other work beforehand that affects the outcome (the second example).The modern cell is the result of a small change from something previous that was not a modern cell but was pretty close to it. Thus, it wasn't that improbable at all.Currently, right now in a single casino in Las Vegas, the cards across all the gaming tables are being laid down in an order so improbable that it exceeds all the atoms in the universe. Just taking 13 decks of cards, shuffling them, and dealing them out results in a probable outcome of that specific result of less than 1 in 10^1600. Are you going to claim that god had something to do with it?

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Science may some day come up with an answer of how basic ingredients might combine to form a cell, but I would still believe that it would require an initial intelligence to start the process.

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Actually, we've got most of the pieces already. And news just came out about how RNA can form.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

GDR writes:

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I accept evolution as a process that God created.

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What if it wasn't? What if evolution happened all on its own?Is there anything that happens on its own or is god required for everything?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

As pointed out by Rrhain, the cell didn't form from any basic ingredients just like that. Here's a good video to watch (from about 3 minutes onward): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg

Clever of you to use the adjective "astronomic[ally]" to describe the number of planets in the Universe.

Choice words, eh?No. Objective evidence as in "I saw it", period. There need not be replication involved, would be nice, but objective evidence simply follows the rules of nature."I saw a meteor" - I can't replicate that, however, meteors have been seen before, so my claim isn't that much of a leap of faith."I saw a man rise from the dead" - I can't replicate that, either. But neither do I have corroborating evidence of people rising from the dead, so my claim would require a giant leap of faith. You have one book who claims miracles occur...?Yet I have 2000 years of documented history that doesn't mention one single miracle. Plus, I have the laws of physics and nature that state they cannot occur.You choose the former? Why? Faith?So which would be the greater miracle, natural processes, or devine intervention? No matter how many times you say atheists have "faith" you are still wrong.Faith is ONLY required when there is evidence to the contrary and none to confirm your opinion. So you apply faith that, in light of all the contradicting evidence, your belief is still right.An atheist simply says, ok, show me the evidence? If you can't produce any we simply reject the claim...no faith required. I'd love to believe you, but you simply lack the evidence to show it is true and not some imagined story...which humans ALWAYS do.We don't have faith, we have a reasonable reason to doubt supernatural claims.Would you say that you have faith that unicorns don't exist?Of course not, you simply have a reasonable reason to doubt the claim that unicorns exist. There is no atheistic view! There is just reasonable doubt to the claims of miracles. You doubt many said miracles from other sources. You also doubt the existence of unicorns, would this be considered a "view"...?We are all athiest to some form of religion, belief or supernatural phenomenon - you simply have faith that one of them is right. I reject them all because I hold to my reasonable doubt and I'm not hypocritical, or bias, to one(many) particular story(ies). If it is a subjective interpretation of a subjective exerience then, in the words of Straggler, it's no better than guessing. The next life...? Try makinig sense in this one first. - Oni

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky