An argument foe Grand Design, maybe?

[Melchior]

Actually, that is not a description of Watts. Everything he says is self evident. There is nothing about the soul, God ...
The video "atheist spiritualiyy" shows that. Even a materialist can accept everything. Watts says.
Here is just one example of what he says (I am using an example from the "atheist spirituality " video.). There are nominalists and realists. Reality however is both. We join one of two camps. Prickly vs goo. Rigid order vs flow. Reality is not one of those it is prickly goo
The grid we impose on reality is not reality.
Reality is not mental (Idealist) nor is it physical. Those are mere labels. Meaning is the process of referring. The meaning of this is that. Reality does not refer to something outside itself.
I found those videos to be more then the simplistic platitudes on Oprah. However, I will admit that they do not convey even a fraction of what Watts reveals in his books.
PS: I hope you are not confusing Alan Watts with Alan Watt. Alan Watt is a bit too new age for me.

I have no idea what people mean by 'spirituality' unconnected with some sort of belief in supernatural entities. The root 'spirit' is there, after all.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Spheres:

You mean to say, "for existence of the only form of life we're aware of," surely.

Nope. I mean things like this: that if the strong and weak forces in the atom were different, it would fly apart or collapse. The precise balance they have keeps the darn thing together. So if some fine-tuning variables were not very precise, there would be no life at all -- unless you can conceive of life existing without atoms.
Nope, you're phrasing that, as if for one to make it. Which is not a given! You try and stack the deck, with your god, before we start. There is no such thing as fine tuning, as it calls for a tuner. You have a mental block that prevents you from understanding chance, and that mental block, in your case, is called religion. Chance means exactly that, "chance."

"chance [chans, chahns]
noun
1. the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled: often personified or treated as a positive agency: Chance governs all." --dictionary.reference.com--

That with billions for stars in billions of galaxies the CHANCE that the particular combination of elements that just by chance allowed for this particular life to exist, was arbitrary, random, chance.

And you're missing the point. Having "conditions for life" doesn't give us "life." How life suddenly "emerged" from entirely non-living matter is one of the profound mysteries of Evolutionary biology...and that's pretty much universally conceded by Evolutionary biologists themselves. No one has the foggiest notion how it can be done. That's why they call life an "emergent property": because we have no clue how it could happen, and we can't produce conditions for it at all. "Chemistry" doesn't do it for us.
I saw a documentary that in fact did create some of the beginnings of life, where have you been.

But it really wouldn't matter anyway, because the facts surrounding the origin of life on planet earth and us of today are separated by 3.5 "billion" years +(PLUS):

"Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds. The earliest life on Earth arose at least 3.5 billion years ago,[6][7][8] during the Eoarchean Era when sufficient crust had solidified following the molten Hadean Eon. The earliest physical evidence of life on Earth is biogenic graphite from 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks found in Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from in Western Australia.[10][11]" --Wikipedia--

Did you read that? They found "biogenic graphite!" Do you know what graphite is? look no further than your pencil. Yes graphite is a crystallized form of carbon, I, a carbon based life-form say, to another one.

Finally, "conditions" don't just spontaneously create life. If you buy yourself a dog house, that doesn't mean a dog comes with it. It just means you have a dog house, so if any dogs ever appear you'll have a place to put them. But how you're going to get a dog is going to be entirely unrelated to the presence or absence of your dog house.
And this is probably the single most stupid thing you've ever said. At least that I've read. As it proves you have absolutely no concept of time, specifically 3.5 billion years +(plus).

And your answer to this shall prove it, without seeking reference material, tell me, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

S.O.B.

One of the cool things about using "chance" as an explanation for phenomena is that chance can be calculated using a known set of mathematical principles. That's what makes it a potentially useful scientific explanation.

We know that these principles are valid. Casino owners use them to make scads of money, provided by gamblers who ignore the math.

However, if the principle of chance is invoked as an explanation for something but the numbers are not calculated, the explanation is just bullshit. You might as well invoke God, or a gang of tooth fairies by way of explanation.

So I invite you to perform a simple calculation-- the likelihood of a single small 900-base pair human gene being assembled according to Darwinian principles, i.e. random chance.
Here, you're being a fool, forgetting the quantity of time involved, as if to say that DNA has not evolved as well, which it has. Your argument is to forget evolution and jump from stage one of DNA evolution to stage 100 trillion, you have no real logic here.

To simplify this calculation we can make some modifications to the real problem. For example, we will forget about how a gene must grow in length by the insertion of three base-pairs, a complete codon, and pretend that it can grow one base-pair at a time without being tested in a real biological environment.

Then, there is the nasty problem of end-caps, the codons at the beginning and end of a gene that are essential to its proper translation and production of a specific protein molecule. We will pretend that the end-caps are (randomly, of course) added to a gene after it is fully assembled.

This implies that the random changes to the growing DNA strand will occur at the highly reactive terminal points, and that the finished gene cannot be tested by "natural selection" until it is fully assembled and capped.

These assumptions are highly favorable to Darwinian principles. They are also highly unlikely. Perhaps this will compensate for the fact that several codons will code for the same amino acid.

To make things easy for you, the relevant equation from probability theory is simple: P = n exp p. (n to the power p). "n" is the number of events to be included, which in this example is 900. "p" is the probability for one event. There are four different base-pair possibilities, so the probability for any one of them is 1/4, or 0.25. "P" is the net probability.

I invite you to perform this simple calculation, thus putting some real numbers behind your assertions. See what you think of the result. Don't be shy about sharing the result of your calculation, but please don't actually write out every zero appearing after the decimal point-- use the same crude form of exponential notation as above-- i.e. "exp" means that the next value is an exponent.

Then, just for fun, calculate the net probability for the random assembly of a complete 23,000-gene human genome. To simplify this work, feel free to use the 900 base-pair gene size, although the maximum size of a real gene is 1500 and the average is around 1200. Let us know how the result fits your common sense understanding of reality.

If you need help with the reality part of your scientific evaluation, a comparison might help. You'll find that the commonly accepted scientific standard for "absolutely impossible" is 10 exp -40.

Greylorn

Your argument takes only that, which cannot be 'known definitely,' that supports your case, stating it as a given, while simultaneously doing the opposite to that which defies your case. As with most people that "cannot know" the past, you fail to see that your argument undermines your own argument. Typical with people that try and build explanation around their own 'belief' system, and not the other way around, which in fact is the only proper way to proceed.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Spheres:

Got that dog yet?

Call me when you do.

I'll just call you the fool of time, which firmly puts you in your place!

[SpheresOfBalance]

Obviously, the past is hard to pin down, 'equally', for all those that seek it's counsel. It's hard for a finite being of 100 Earth years, if extremely lucky, to fathom billions of years, especially if no evidence of it lasts. The argument simply becomes, 'ones best guess,' pure supposition, speculation, on both sides of the argument. Which is why I hate those types of arguments. They leave both sides looking like fools. Unless of course science can prove otherwise.

Any argument that says, "because scientists can create portions of life/life in an environment, much like it's believed to have been, billions of years ago, is no necessary proof that it happened like that," is correct. However, it doesn't mean that it didn't either. What it does mean is that it's possible for the universe to bring constituents together so that portions of life/life can be started and eventually evolve into what we are. All one has to do is look at the universal odds that the required constituents can eventually come together, which is easy. That is if one can actually fathom the size, diversity and time of the universe. Most can't, because we only live 100 years, if we're extremely lucky.

It's a relative time/size issue.

[raw_thought]

Actually, that is not a description of Watts. Everything he says is self evident. There is nothing about the soul, God ...
The video "atheist spiritualiyy" shows that. Even a materialist can accept everything. Watts says.
Here is just one example of what he says (I am using an example from the "atheist spirituality " video.). There are nominalists and realists. Reality however is both. We join one of two camps. Prickly vs goo. Rigid order vs flow. Reality is not one of those it is prickly goo
The grid we impose on reality is not reality.
Reality is not mental (Idealist) nor is it physical. Those are mere labels. Meaning is the process of referring. The meaning of this is that. Reality does not refer to something outside itself.
I found those videos to be more then the simplistic platitudes on Oprah. However, I will admit that they do not convey even a fraction of what Watts reveals in his books.
PS: I hope you are not confusing Alan Watts with Alan Watt. Alan Watt is a bit too new age for me.

I have no idea what people mean by 'spirituality' unconnected with some sort of belief in supernatural entities. The root 'spirit' is there, after all.

Then watch the video "atheist spirituality ". Buddhists are spiritual. However, they do not talk about anything supernatural. When I was in Thailand (my wife was in the Peace Corp and speaks fluent Thai) a Buddhist monk told me that all the worship stuff and God stuff is Buddhism interpreted by a particular culture. The Buddha ( which means "very wise MAN") only said that the ego (the self as separate from the rest of reality ) is the source of suffering and an illusion.

[Greylorn Ell]

Just so you all know...

Modern Buddhism is merely a collection of heresies, heavily polluted by Christianity, that have pretty much retired Siddhartha Gautama's unique original and straightforward metaphysical ideas.

Believing in Hinduism at the outset, the Buddha fully accepted the idea of reincarnation. With that background, here are his core beliefs.

1. There are no Gods, no creators. The universe is entirely a natural phenomenon.
   
   He'd have been happy with Big Bang theory and Darwinism.
2. He believed in biological evolution, and concluded that animals and their brains became increasingly complex with each evolutionary step. This process culminated with the human brain, which became so complex that it gave rise to what modern psychologists would call an "epiphenomenon," the human soul.
3. This soul often becomes sufficiently powerful and conscious to persist as an independent entity after the brain's death. However, it is not a natural part of the world. It does not belong here, and there is no place for it to go. The soul's only recourse is to enter a new brain while it is young and yet to develop an epiphenomenal soul of its own. So that's what it does, i.e. reincarnating, often with memories of what it imagines to be its previous life.
   
   (Has anyone out there watched "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or its own many incarnations?)
4. Because the soul is unnatural and does not belong here it will never be happy, no matter how often it reincarnates. It is doomed to a perpetuity of miseries unless it can find a way out of the reincarnation cycle.
5. The Buddha's way out was to meditate, a practice designed to allow the soul to see itself as separate from the brain it inhabits. If the soul becomes proficient at this, upon the body's death it can fully recognize itself for what it is, and extinguish its consciousness instead of reincarnating, in effect, putting itself out of existence.
   
   This is the state of nirvana which literally means extinguishedness.
   
   Definition 1 from the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary:
   "the final beatitude that transcends suffering, karma, and samsara and is sought especially in Buddhism through the extinction of desire and individual consciousness."

You're all welcome!
Greylorn

[raw_thought]

I agree! I should have mentioned that the "atheist spirituality " video can be found in my ""Alan Watts" thread. You can find it there.

[raw_thought]

"People are scared to empty their minds fearing that they will be engulfed by the void. What they don't realize is that their own mind is the void."
Huang Po
My favourite haiku is,
Look children
Hailstones!
Lets rush out!

[Melchior]

Then watch the video "atheist spirituality ". Buddhists are spiritual. However, they do not talk about anything supernatural. When I was in Thailand (my wife was in the Peace Corp and speaks fluent Thai) a Buddhist monk told me that all the worship stuff and God stuff is Buddhism interpreted by a particular culture. The Buddha ( which means "very wise MAN") only said that the ego (the self as separate from the rest of reality ) is the source of suffering and an illusion.

I do not understand 'spirituality' at all, unless you mean that term 'belief in spirits'. Other than that it makes no sense to me.

[raw_thought]

True spirituality is the absence of concepts.
Even the concept "God".
God (by definition ) is ineffable.
To believe in God is to reify the ineffable. Make it mundane.

[Melchior]

True spirituality is the absence of concepts.
Even the concept "God".
God (by definition ) is ineffable.
To believe in God is to reify the ineffable. Make it mundane.

I do not understand 'spirituality' at all, unless you mean that term 'belief in spirits'. Other than that it makes no sense.