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Author | Topic: Moral Argument for God | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
So when complexity reaches a certain level, it is unattainable by intellegence and can only come about by random chance and acidental mutation which prove beneficial to the unit? Yes.
So is mutation and chance superior to intellegence? You forgot about selection, but yes, chance and selection are superior designers to intelligence, according to the evidence. That's why so many engineers are turning to genetic design models that employ chance and selection instead of designing things directly.
How can something that is running on cause and effect be hyper creative? I don't understand the question. Cause and effect?
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ramoss Member (Idle past 641 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
I don't think that is the case.. However, there is a big differnece between life (a self replicating self catalyzing set of chemical reactions), and a cpu.
The CPU analogy you used is not valid, since a computer is not self replicating. The chemicals that make up life are. Therein lies the difference.
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1533 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
crashfrog writes:
When complexity reaches a certain level, and can only come about by random mutation and chance and selection. Ha Ha Crashfrog. yes.Reduce the argument against intelligent design into one sentence. Only one problem: 1. The fundamental laws of nature and the universe that allow the processes of increased complexity could be the design elements themselves. What better way to insure ever increasing complexity than to design a system that is self regulating and self designing according to ever changing conditions just like those genetic engineers you are mentioning. ![]()
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ramoss Member (Idle past 641 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
It could be.
There, of course, is no evidence that it is. It also is totally unneeded for there to be an 'intellence' behind those algorthims.. they stand on their own, naturally. You can keep on pushing back, and saying 'what if , what if'. Some things can never be either proven or disproven. Most of those are just totally unneeded.
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5937 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
1.61803
The fundamental laws of nature and the universe that allow the processes of increased complexity could be the design elements themselves Since the intelligent design theory certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by positing an intelligent designer. requires that anything of great complexity requires that there must be a designer behind it {as in your "design elements"} then we are left with the puzzle of what designed the designer since,it is reasonable to assume,that the designer is of even greater complexity. So,if we ask what designed the designer necessary to support your hypothesis, and,continuing on in like fashion ad infinitum, what designed the designer of the designer of the design,we quickly see the absurdity of the position.
What better way to insure ever increasing complexity than to design a system that is self regulating and self designing according to ever changing conditions just like those genetic engineers you are mentioning. But,in designing a system,we then need to ask the mechanism by which this was accomplished,since,in order to place a pattern in nature it seems necessary to place constraints upon the degrees of freedom of the system that the laws of nature reflect. The existence of the mechanism would proceed again,as with the designer,as a consequence of its complexity,into absurdity. For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.
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AdminJar Inactive Member |
Getting way OT but that is an interesting concept I'd love to discuss with you sometime.
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CK Member (Idle past 4157 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
Which is something I've been discussing recently elsewhere (if it's the bit I'm think of - the infinite regression and the "uncaused causer"). There is a discussion in there about 1) the universe and why doesn't ID say it created itself and 2) why Occam's razor goes "BOOOOOOOOOOOO" to ID.
You want to propose something Sidelined so we can discuss it?
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tsig Member (Idle past 2938 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
3. Given the above, it is necessary that God exists if society is to have stable standards of morality. So god exists so that humans may have morality?
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tsig Member (Idle past 2938 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
I agree that we are animal, non-humans do not have morality, and that having morality makes us superior. Being superior, because we have morality and consciousness, to the rest of the animals suggests, to me, that there must be a god. So we are superior because we have morality and we have morality because we are superior. We exist so god must exist?
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5937 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Charles Knight
You want to propose something Sidelined so we can discuss it? Sounds good to me. Let me collect the thoughts to establish the topic and I will try to propose it tonight or tomorrow.
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Lizard Breath Member (Idle past 6725 days) Posts: 376 Joined: |
That's why so many engineers are turning to genetic design models that employ chance and selection instead of designing things directly That's right. Engineeers (designers) are turning to a superior designed model for inspiration to create something in a new dirrection. But there still is a designer in the middle of it. Why don't I see hyper-creativity in action today with the living species. The best arguement that I have heard is that for Autistic children actually being the beginning of a new species of humanoid. The way that I have heard it, they are a transitional species to a new totally separate new species.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
But there still is a designer in the middle of it. What, just because he's there in the room? You're telling me that just the proximity of intelligence in the room somehow magically inflects the processes of natural selection and random mutation with intelligence? How the hell does that make any sense?
Why don't I see hyper-creativity in action today with the living species. Probably because you're not looking for it. How many biology journals do you read a week? I'm going to need some kind of context in regards to your search for hyper-creativity before I'm going to give credence to the claim that you haven't been able to find it.
The best arguement that I have heard is that for Autistic children actually being the beginning of a new species of humanoid. The way that I have heard it, they are a transitional species to a new totally separate new species. That's stupid. My guess, from interviews with autistic persons, is that while you and I have brains specialized for language and social interaction, they have brains specialized in other ways. Sometimes tey make it work, and sometimes they can't.
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: True.
quote: Not really. The tendency to follow such principles was selected for. Those who could not keep from breaking such principles would tend to not enjoy the protections of the group as they would be less welcome in the group, and would certainly be less apt to mate and pass on their genes if they were not accepted into the group. We see such principles in higher primates, like chimps. There are fascinating experiments regarding fairness and reciprocity which show that such social behavior is not shown by humans alone.
Page Not Found The question of whether human aversion to unfair treatmentnow shown by other primatesis an evolved behavior or the result of the cultural influence of large social institutions like religion, governments, and schools, in the case of humans, has intrigued scientists in recent years. The new finding suggests evolution may have something to do with it. It also highlights questions about the economic and evolutionary nature of cooperation and its relationship to a species' sense of fairness, while adding yet another chapter to our understanding of primates. "It looks like this behavior is evolved it is not simply a cultural construct. There's some good evolutionary reason why we don't like being treated unfairly," said Sarah Brosnan, lead author of the study to be published in tomorrow's issue of the science journal Nature. Capuchins (monkeys) who witnessed unfair treatment and failed to benefit from it often refused to conduct future exchanges with human researchers, would not eat the cucumbers they received for their labors, and in some cases, hurled food rewards at human researchers. Those actions were significant. They confirmed that not only did capuchins expect fair treatment, but that the human desire for equity has an evolutionary basis. So, clearly, no god needed. Just evolution.
quote: Of course, we agree.
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 780 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
Wish I had seen this sooner... My two cents:
I agree that this cannot be an argument that God exists... though it might be an argument that the existence of God in the minds of the populace is necessary for a stable society.
I think the draw of this argument is that it leads the Atheist to look like someone who supports Hitler and rape, since it pushes him to say that there is no objective standard of morals. Well, it leads the atheist to reveal himself as someone who has no logical basis for condemning Hitler and rape. The problem is that without God, there is no logical basis for imposing morality on anyone. You cannot say that anyone ought to do anything. Sure, you can say that what Hitler did was not in the best interests of the humanity, but who can say that looking out for the human race is the right thing to do? If there is no God, right and wrong are just as you stated human creations for practical purposes, just like your sneakers. You can take them off whenever you feel like, and no one can has any logical grounds to tell you that you ought to put them back on. Of course, if you're a smart girl, you'll keep them on because that way you won't cut your feet on glass, you'll walk farther faster, and people won't give you wierd looks. If we ask "why" about everything we do, we will eventually come down to either two answers: "because that's what God wants, or because that's what we want" Asking why does God want it is silly because what is, is simply what is. It's like asking why must red be red or the sky blue. Asking why we want it will most likely lead us back to some explanation of evolutionary origin, which carries no intention, and therefore no reason. So... If you are an atheist you have no logical reason to be outraged at anything that is "wrong" and say what anyone "ought" to do. Any outrage you feel is the result of conditioning plus an evolved response designed to improve the survival of the human race. You may decide that what you and others want is in the best interests of society and possibly yourself, so you decide to make rules and play by them, but since the whole thing has no objective foundation, you should feel no obligation to abide by these rules. Any motivation to abide by these rules can only stem from your own desires and knowledge of consequences. If you are a logical purpose driven person, you will be forced to ask "why" even of your own desires and realize there is no answer, and therefore become a nihilist, or if you could care less about purpose, then you can accept your desires for what they are, evolved characteristics and milk the pleasure out of life by fulfilling desires when you get the chance. If you believe in God as the creator and sustainer, then good and evil, right and wrong, are just one more aspect of reality. Sure, they may have evolved with time, but just because we evolved with time, this doesn't make us any less real. We are what we are, and good and evil is what it appears to be. All subjective experience is as real as anything else. So doing right or wrong becomes an area of reality to explore rather than a purposeless tool for survival. Lying goes from a behavior with long term detrimental effects to society and to your ability to fulfill your desires to an immediate attack on this reality of Goodness and Truth and a destruction of yourself and your connection to It. This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 07-25-2005 12:00 AM
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
I think what the argument actually shows is that Christians are opposed to morality. Every time the argument comes up, all Christians try to do is to knock down any possible basis for morality. They don't actually offer a viable alternative. Worse we often have the egotistic and anti-human arguments of the sort proposed by Lizard Breath which actively rule out any real morality.
As for Hitler, I need hardly remind you that the Bible endorses an example of ethnic genocide. It is easier for an atheist to condemn Hitler than it is for a Christian who seeks to follow the Bible as a moral guide.
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