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Author Topic:   Who designed the ID designer(s)?
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 188 of 396 (616698)
05-24-2011 2:41 AM
Reply to: Message 187 by intellen
05-23-2011 11:52 PM


Re: A form of faith
The intellectual force of your argument is equaled only by its lucidity of expression.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 187 by intellen, posted 05-23-2011 11:52 PM intellen has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 189 by intellen, posted 05-24-2011 2:48 AM Dr Adequate has replied
 Message 201 by intellen, posted 05-25-2011 4:13 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 190 of 396 (616705)
05-24-2011 3:35 AM
Reply to: Message 189 by intellen
05-24-2011 2:48 AM


Re: A form of faith
No, you don't know what you are saying.
Yes I do. I have an unequaled capacity for understanding myself. It's downright uncanny. It's almost as though myself and I are the same person, so great is the instinctive bond of sympathy between us.
If you can see all of my videos in YOUTUBE explaining the new Intelligent Design, then, maybe you will know what I'm saying. But for now, I will call you lazy.
If you do not wish the people on these forums to know what you have to say, then not posting it on these forums is a good step in this direction. But you could have achieved the same result more economically by not posting anything at all.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 189 by intellen, posted 05-24-2011 2:48 AM intellen has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 221 of 396 (617090)
05-25-2011 8:18 PM
Reply to: Message 213 by intellen
05-25-2011 5:20 PM


Re: Still a form of faith
The experiment about egg and tissue paper and how I detect intelligence.
What is this thing with the egg and the tissue paper? Please explain.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 213 by intellen, posted 05-25-2011 5:20 PM intellen has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 229 by New Cat's Eye, posted 05-26-2011 10:17 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 239 of 396 (617376)
05-28-2011 12:34 AM
Reply to: Message 238 by SavageD
05-27-2011 6:48 PM


Re: Who designed the designer?
So to answer your question, we simply do not know [...] if the designer(s) themselves needed to be designed in the first place.
You would, then, accept the possibility of complexity without design?
Perhaps they (or it) did not require any point of creation. It's like this, no one claims that nothing existed before time. Creationists say a god existed before time (he required no creation), while atheists say that matter existed before time (as well as the existence of infinite universes)...It all comes down to whose correct.
I've never heard an atheist say that matter existed before time; and the question of how many universes there are would not receive a uniform answer from all atheists; certainly I've never known an atheist with the temerity to assert that the number is necessarily infinite. (It could be, who can say?)
Both concepts are hard to swallow but when you realize that life & this universe are here either by chance, or through creation (no alternative choice) ...
Yes there is: necessity. For example, when I note that bricks always fall down and not up, I attribute this neither to coincidence nor to the unseen hand of an intelligent being.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 238 by SavageD, posted 05-27-2011 6:48 PM SavageD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 240 by SavageD, posted 05-28-2011 11:47 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 241 of 396 (617403)
05-28-2011 3:59 PM
Reply to: Message 240 by SavageD
05-28-2011 11:47 AM


Re: Who designed the designer?
Yes I would accept the possibility of complexity without design, but only when it comes down to 'the first cause' of the universe, as pointed out earlier.
But there is no reason why it should be possible only in that case. Once you have admitted that something complex enough to design the whole universe could exist without having a designer, then I see no basis for denying that that is at least possible also in the case of the things we see around us, all of which are (by your reasoning) less complicated than your hypothetical designer.
They do not have to say so out rightly but, atheist do believe that matter existed before time.
If you want to know what atheists think, you would do better to ask some atheists instead of making stuff up.
I, for example, am an atheist, and I do not even find the phrase "before time" meaningful.
If the universe began with a bang, your going to have to assume that something banged. Like wise if you assume that there was a universe before this one, your also going to have to assume that matter was already present to create that universe.
You know, "matter" is a technical term, it doesn't include everything that has existence. (It would not, for example, include the standard God of the theists.)
Also, if I'm not mistaken, there is a new theory which suggests that two membranes of other universes made contact with one another to form this universe. If this is the case then two other universes would have had to exist before these two to create other universes, thus making the number of universes infinite.
Even if all atheists believed in this collision of universes idea, which I do not because I've barely heard of it, then the deduction that you ascribe to them would not necessarily follow. After all, there is a theory that I was produced by two people having sex, but although I accept this theory I do not deduce from it an infinite number of people.
Really, you should not be so free in ascribing views to atheists. First you make up what we think, then you figure out what you, not we, would deduce from the views that you ascribe to us, and then you generously attribute these deductions to us too.
I take it that this is your stance as to why you believe that the universe is here by chance...
Then you should read it again, since I do not subscribe to that belief (nor deny it) and was explaining why not.
If you do not attribute the universe to coincidence or creation, then what is your stance? Why couldn't bricks fall up and not down?
The immediate answer to that is that gravity is an attractive and not a repulsive force. As to the cause of this, that too might well be a matter of necessity rather than chance.
When I observe an order universe such as galaxies, planetary seasons, the various laws of physics (gravity for instance) etc which holds together everything we know as the universe, I am forced to believe in a creator.
You are not forced to, you choose to. There is no reason either a priori or a posteriori why the reason for the universe should be possessed of a personality.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 240 by SavageD, posted 05-28-2011 11:47 AM SavageD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 256 by SavageD, posted 05-29-2011 10:13 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 281 of 396 (617550)
05-29-2011 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 256 by SavageD
05-29-2011 10:13 AM


Re: Who designed the designer?
Hard to see why you would regard the phrase "before time" as meaningless since it's always mentioned when considering the formation of the universe. Time had to have a starting point, so there is a period before & after time.
No, look, "before" and "after" and "during" and similar words are all about relations between times. If something was "before time", that would have to be a time before time, which makes no sense. It's like saying "downwards from the center of the Earth", or "north from the North Pole"; it's syntactically well-formed but semantically vacuous.
You lost me here, are you saying that matter can refer to nothing?
No, I'm suggesting that perhaps something can be not matter and still be something rather than nothing. For example, God is traditionally conceived to be an example of such a thing, as is the soul. Or in physics under some definitions gauge bosons don't count as matter, though they definitely exist.
Fair enough, you do not believe in an infinite number of universes. I guess all atheists do not 'believe' in the same 'theories'.
But I can't help but wonder, which theory do you accept regarding the existence of this universe?
I don't. That is, I accept the Big Bang theory and would wager a small sum on the Inflationary Hypothesis, but for more ultimate questions than that I don't believe that we are in a position to supply answers.
lol, I wasn't asking you how gravity functioned...On the other hand, are you saying that gravity is here simply because it was necessary?
I say it might be. If we knew how the Universe came into being, we might find that there was no option but that gravity should exist and work the way that it does.
By analogy, since we know how snowflakes form, we know why they must have sixfold and not fivefold symmetry; we need attribute this neither to chance nor to the preferences of Jack Frost. If we knew how universes form, we might be able to see with the same clarity why gravity must exist and work the way it does, but we don't so we don't. On the other hand, we might find that it could have been some other way, and is the way it is due to the fall of some cosmic dice (so to speak).
Why don't you just admit it, your taking the position that everything in this universe is here by chance.
I do not "admit" to taking the position that you ascribe to me because I have not in fact taken that position, as you can see from my posts, in which I question that position.
It is abundantly clear that things which do not happen with intelligent direction do not necessarily happen by chance as the only other option. Some things happen because there's nothing else that could happen. (Indeed, some people would question whether anything truly happens by chance, and would assert that chance is simply the name we give to events whose causes are too complicated for us to predict the effects of. But I am now straying from the topic.)
Of course I chose to, was I Claiming otherwise?
You said that you were "forced" to. But you are really under no such necessity.
... as for your last point, I'm not certain where your getting at. My position is simply that this universe was created, what does personality have to do with it?
In order for the cause of the universe to be a designer, it would have to be something like a person, would it not? If the universe was created by a set of unthinking physical laws, we wouldn't call that a designer, would we?
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 256 by SavageD, posted 05-29-2011 10:13 AM SavageD has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 376 of 396 (623819)
07-13-2011 5:22 PM
Reply to: Message 373 by bob123
07-12-2011 9:24 PM


Re: What happened before that?
If you're not even interested in the question that this forum is all about, why did you register here? Was it some sort of accident?
As for your argument, such as it is, it is obviously flawed: because as it stands it is not just an argument that I can't find out about the distant past, it's also an argument that I can't find out what happened five minutes ago.
Yes, as you say, any 6 year old can always legitimately ask: What happened before that?, but that does not in any way thwart my ability to find out what happened five minutes ago, and to do so to a degree of certainty that cannot reasonably be described as "all conjecture".

This message is a reply to:
 Message 373 by bob123, posted 07-12-2011 9:24 PM bob123 has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 389 of 396 (648996)
01-19-2012 5:43 PM
Reply to: Message 379 by Energy
01-19-2012 10:12 AM


Re: What happened before that?
So, the answer to a question does not need to be explained in itself to be acceptable.
Quite. Every three-year-old has discovered that if you go on asking "why?" for long enough, eventually you exhaust the knowledge of your parents. But this doesn't invalidate all the answers given before you reach that point.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 379 by Energy, posted 01-19-2012 10:12 AM Energy has not replied

  
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