afdave
Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006
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| Quote | | When they say "things people build" they mean j u s t t h a t (there, was that right?). |
No, Faid that is close, but not exactly what they said ... they did not say "things people build." Talk Origins said "things that look like what people build."
| Quote | But what is intelligence? Does an intelligent thing necessarily have to have any or all of these qualities:
1) Desire, wants, will
2) Foresight
3) Memory
4) Awareness of itself
5) Creativity and originality
6) Sensory organs
7) Perceptions
8) Communications
Evolution has some of those qualities, memory, creativity and a form of communication.
But evolution lacks others, like foresight, self awareness and desire. The animals it creates has some of them, but not the system that is evolution.
Does your God have all those qualities?
What does a system have to have to be called intelligent?
What SETI is looking for is something close enough to us we might talk to it. Do you talk to God? |
Sure I do. You all could probably guess that I at least imagine that I communicate with God -- it's a well known claim by Christians and others -- of course I'm talking about prayer. But I have no proof to offer you of the sort you would be looking for to prove that He hears me. All I can do is offer evidence that "ET" is out there somewhere because in biological machines, we have exactly the kinds of things SETI is looking for (and apparently T.O. acknowledges this). I can point to the finely tuned universe and show you that Someone probably set all those parameters. I can look at the phenomenon of a universal "moral code" and conclude that "Someone probably created this moral code" (C.S. Lewis -- I will get into this shortly), and I can show how the Laws of Relativity make it conceivable that someone could "live outside of space and time" (even though I don't understand how this works). And this is about as far as I can go with just observations of nature. After that, I will get into "religious books", then my reasons for commencing an investigation into one particular "religious book" -- the Christian Bible. Then we will begin getting into some of the stuff you all keep asking about -- age of the earth/universe, evidence for the Flood of Noah, the changing of languages, the historicity of the Bible, the Messianic prophecies and the prophecies of Daniel regarding the nations of the world, and the amazing accuracy of human nature description of the Bible. We will deal with philosophical questions about God -- the problem of evil in the world, and we will look at some perceived Bible difficulties, among other things. Here is an overview of my approach:
(1) Observe nature and draw inferences: this only gets us so far, i.e. we conclude that there is an "ET" (or ET's) out there who is a Super-Intelligent Engineer, this ET might possibly live outside of space and time, and this "ET" might be the originator of this stange, universal "moral code" which we observe. So we hold these thoughts and move through the rest of the process.
(2) If we accept (1), then we can make some predictions, one of which would be: "This 'ET' probably can communicate to humans." How? Dunno, but there certainly are a lot of competing claims out there -- many "prophets" and "holy books" claiming to be speaking for God or Allah or whoever. Could any one of them stand up to scrutiny? So we compare some "holy books" and investigate the claims. We focus in particular on the Christian Bible. Why would we waste our time on this? Well ... several good reasons. We have reason to believe that the Christian Bible is unique among "religious books" for some pretty big reasons. Former agnostic Josh McDowell gets into this in "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I will explain some of these later, but it's enough to say for now that I have a convincing case for at least taking the time to honestly investigate the claims of the Bible.
(3) I begin investigating the Bible and I find many weird things. But I know from experience that often times truth is stranger than fiction, so I keep investigating. One by one, the supposed "difficulties" in the Bible keep falling as I learn more. By the time I am done investigating the historicity of the Bible, its amazing predictions and fulfillments, the evidence in favor of Genesis 1-11 as actual history, its accurate description of the human condition, and other factors, there is not anything sensible to me to conclude except that some Unseen, Incredible Mind somewhere caused this book--the Bible--to be written.
(4) This is the end of the evidence that I can detect with my senses. From this point forward, I have no choice but to make a "leap of faith" in some direction. My choices are to A--do nothing B--reject the evidence I have just discovered or C--put 2 and 2 together and make what appears to me to be only a small "leap of faith" and conclude that the "Mind" that superintended the writing of the Bible is the same "Mind" that created the wonders of Nature. Is this so unreasonable?
(5) Risk analysis. Having walked through this entire process, I now am faced squarely with the claim from the Bible: "Believe me and spend eternity with me when you die." (God supposedly speaking) or "Don't believe me and spend eternity separated from me. It's your choice, Dave. I won't force you. I have given you abundant evidence for My existence. If this evidence is not enough, what evidence WOULD be enough?" I have to choose, and it basically boils down to risk analysis. Which of the two possible choices seems less risky?
(6) And so I did choose. I chose to believe the Bible based on what I considered to be overwhelming evidence in favor of believing it. To me, it appears to be sheer folly to go against such evidence as I have seen.
(7) Now that I have made that choice, all I can tell you is that I am a changed man. Ask my wife. I know this is not scientific evidence. That stopped after Point 3. I can only tell you that I used to be interested in myself only. I have not become perfect (I'm too cocky and too smart-alecky among other things), but there is now a new force for good within me which many times overcomes my selfish desires--the Bible tells me that this is the Spirit of God which apparently comes and somehow "dwells within" believers. Now I genuinely care for others as well as myself and it really doesn't bother me much if people make fun of me. I have a very single minded goal in life -- to be used by my Creator for His purposes during my brief stay here on this earth. I don't know what those purposes will be during the next 40 or so years that I may have left. But right now I have a (God given?) desire to share with others the truth that I have found. They may reject it and I understand that. It's OK. Everyone has to make their own choice. But I would be remiss if I held this information to myself. Not only am I a changed man, but I can also tell you that the native people my dad worked with in Brazil are changed people. When he went there in 1950, they numbered less than 400. They were killing each other and their own babies and openly spoke about the time when they would all be gone. They asked my dad who he would preach to when they were all gone. But my dad persisted in showing them the truths in the Bible in spite of unspeakable personal difficulties. After 5 years, the chief made THE CHOICE that I speak of and the whole group turned around. Today they are a happy, productive people. Their population has blown through 3000 and is growing rapidly. They now know how to read and write, give medical care, speak Portuguese and many other productive things. They are even traveling to other villages who used to be in the same predicament as them and helping them. It is truly amazing! You can get the two books which tell the story of my dad on Amazon.com: Christ's Witchdoctor and Christ's Jungle both by Homer Dowdy.
| Quote | Ok half a dave no problem.
You will have us all 100% convinced if you produce your god and say a phone number we can speak to him, he does speak English doesn't he? Old English or New English BTW? Should be no problem for you since you have 100% certainty. how much time do you need? |
I would turn this around and ask, "What would it take to convince you that the God of the Christian Bible exists and is really as He is described there?" I'm serious. What would it take?
| Quote | Dave, did you read the SETI article? Because it completely contradicts your point! What SETI is looking for is something that resembles what people would design, not what some purported "creator god" would design.
We have a very good idea of what something created by a civilization would look like, because we know firsthand what civilizations build. We have no idea what an "intelligent designer" (in the sense that the creationists mean it) would build, because we have no idea what the "intelligent designer" is like.
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T h e o b j e c t i v e c r i t e r i o n f o r r e c o g n i z i n g i n t e l l i g e n t d e s i g n i s t o l o o k f o r t h i n g s t h a t l o o k l i k e w h a t p e o p l e b u i l d.
Yes, Dave. What people build. Not what supernatural intelligences build. Do you see the distinction? |
Yes. I see the distinction, but why limit ourselves to searching for ET's that are like human "people"? Why would we not entertain the possibility of a Super-human of some sort. Are we really so narrow minded that we rule out the possibility of some advanced life form out there somewhere? And maybe this life-form has no physical body. Why do we think that having a physical body is some sort of advantage? I would actually think NOT having a physical body would be much better--my idea of what a spirit might be (if there is such a thing) is quite fun indeed. Imagine being able to walk through walls and not having to go to the doctor (sorry Faid), or be able to "beam" ourselves instantly to other parts of the universe and actually survive because we need no oxygen! I think this would be fantastic! And I think it is entirely possible and actually quite probable that there really is an "ET" out there who may in fact be more like a "Mind" with no body--a spirit, if you will, who made all these "artifacts" we find here on earth. And this has nothing to do with "religion" for me, which is why I place this in the category of science. I consider myself to basically be a sort of private SETI researcher. And my idea of how this "Mind" did it was basically that he created a perfect environment for life--the Cosmos and Earth--then placed a relatively small number of "biological machines" on Earth, which in turn diversified into the many species which existed before the Flood. A similar thing happened after the Flood -- i.e. a relatively small number of "kinds" diversified into the present diversity that we see today. I think some people think that I think God created each individual species. I do not think this. I think God basically created the original "kinds" each with their own unique DNA software, then He basically "let the software run" and let the free spirits attached to the minds of the "human biological machines" have free choices to do as they would do.
| Quote | And more to the point, Dave, you have to admit that basically nothing biological really looks like anything humans would build. Does a bat's ear look anything—anything at all—like a human-designed radar receiver? Does a bird's wing bear anything but the most superficial resemblance to a plane's wing? Does a mitochondrion look like anything humans have ever built?
You've been stating as if it's a fact that biological structures look like something humans would build, but it's far from true. Look around, Dave. Take off your creationist spectacles and really look at things. |
Actually, I think that many, many things we find in Nature strongly resemble things humans would build. The difference that I observe is that they have a much higher degree of sophistication than our technology. They do appear to me to be, in fact, the "products of an advanced civilization." We all know the Bill Gates quote about DNA being software which is far advanced beyond our own software. I think he should know. And if you think about it, much of our technology already existed in Nature before we invented it. Airplanes are a perfect example. Nature had airfoils and propulsion systems before we did. Nature had vision devices before we did. Nature had "radar" before we did. Nature had submarines before we did. Nature had "robot arms and legs" before we did. Nature had food production factories before we did (plants). Nature had chemical factories before we did. Nature had assembly lines before we did. Nature had under-water breathing apparatus before we did. Nature had chemical "light sticks" before we did (fireflies). Nature had computing systems before we did (brains).
And Nature still has many things which we do not have. Dupont has studied gecko feet to understand how the adhesive works. Scientists are studying molecular machines and now are making nano-machines themselves. I constantly read about scientists observing Nature and trying to mimic it. This is great stuff! I love it! But it highlites the fact that Nature has technology far, far, far advanced beyond our own in every direction we look. If this is not evidence for and "advanced civilization" somewhere that produced this, then I don't know what is.
Many people have this strange (to me) idea that natural "technology" is somehow fundamentally different that man-made technology. Maybe it has some "vital force" or something that makes it different. Someone mentioned that it is "blobby" or something and this means it is in a different category.
I would submit to you that it is only different in degree of high-techy-ness. Other than this there is no difference at all in the physical bodies of plants and animals that we see to man-made technology. They all use the same atoms from the same periodic table as human engineers have access to. What we really observe is a brilliant software system residing in an ingenious arrangement of molecules which in turn are nothing more that atoms arranged just so, and we call this a cell. Because of the sophistication of the DNA software, cells have the ability to assemble raw materials and thus grow into organisms as diverse as giant redwoods and horse-flies.
Do you deny this?
| Quote | | This is similar to the 'if people copy nature nature must be designed' thread they had at UD a couple of weeks ago. Can you come up with a good reason why this makes any sense? Because I certainly can't think of one. |
Yes. It makes total sense and is very intuitively obvious to me. And people like Bill Dembski are trying to reduce it to mathematics so not only will it be intuitively obvious, but it will also be rigorously provable. (I'm not saying Bill's there yet ... I don't know much about his stuff)
| Quote | Which leads back to your earlier point. Yes, maybe there is Someone out there who designed this. I personally don't believe that, but I don't claim it's impossible. But "looks designed" is not really evidence for this Someone. "Looks designed, therefore maybe is designed" is just a hypothesis.
Now what you need to do is make and test some predictions. Let me get you started:
IF Someone designed all this, THEN I predict I should see X. HOWEVER, if I see Y, that would be evidence that Someone did NOT design all this.
Can you supply objective specifics for X and Y? If so, your concept of Someone may be testable. Otherwise, not. |
I agree that it is only a hypothesis and never will be provable. Put I do make predictions. See my steps above. (and there are more besides this)
| Quote | Do you want people to admit that the teleological argument is a strong indication of a designer?
or
Do you want us to admit that the teleological argument is a proof of God? |
The former.
| Quote | It certainly IS possible to disprove the qualities normally associated with God. For instance, omnipotence is self-contradictory and, therefore, cannot exist (que "the rock" question). Similarly, omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive: if we humans have free will, then God cannot know what we're going to do before we do it. Furthermore, ignoring those two contradictions, God cannot know that a disaster is going to happen and have the power to stop it and still be benevolent/morally perfect for allowing it to happen.
What says you about this, Dave? |
PuckSR answered for me very well.
OK? There you have it. If no one has any more questions about these items, we will move along.
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A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
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)
). What do you think is artificial, dave? A cactus in the desert, or a steel upright pipe? And which is more complex? Hmm. 
*disappointment* 
