Prove me wrong: there is no God

[Immanuel Can]

I do.

Well, with more thought, I think you'll find the holes.

As it happens, the more thought I apply, the more holes I fill.

Well, then, I'm wrong about your reaction.

The holes are there, though. And I'm pointing to them: not enough detail. An "evolutionary" process, if such occurred, should certainly be coherent and plausible at every stage. But as you can see, triadic symbiosis and irreducible complexity still represent significant problems for the Evolutionist's narrative.

You trying to make sense of it.

Ah. I see.

Was it then intended to be merely vaguely insulting, and had no useful connection to the present topic? I didn't want to assume that, but if you confirm it...

No Mr Can; it is as you said a good question; but instead of openly expressing your own thesis, you assault others.

I'm not assaulting you. I am not assaulting anybody else, either, obviously. All I was asking was what relevance your video was supposed to have, and you answer seem to be, "None." What am I to suppose, then?

I genuinely believe you are struggling.

Then I guess you can be completely wrong about my reaction, as I can be about yours.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But as you can see, triadic symbiosis and irreducible complexity still represent significant problems for the Evolutionist's narrative.

What’s the solution? I can so far see only two: 1) that complex, masterfully complex genetic material arrived on Earth from somewhere else in the Universe and set to work developing such an array of complex creatures and relationships. But that doesn’t really answer much because that ‘complex genetic material” had to have come into existence at another locale (in the Universe).

But how could you possibly, and rationally, actually defend the Genesis-picture? Why cannot you be crystal clear?

The other option is that 2) “the World” is a sort of illusion. That the complexity of creatures and their interrelationships is a sort of mirage that has changed extremely dramatically from one geologic age to another.

Frankly, the hardest thing for an evolutionist to explain is the process by which complex adaptations occurred. There are thousands of possible examples but I like the angler fish. This incredible fish hunts by a controlled blast of water to insects up in the foliage. What were the steps by which a “normal fish” developed those skills and adaptations? Try as I might I cannot see how. Where is the intermediary?

[Will Bouwman]

...I like the angler fish. This incredible fish hunts by a controlled blast of water to insects up in the foliage. What were the steps by which a “normal fish” developed those skills and adaptations? Try as I might I cannot see how. Where is the intermediary?

I think you mean you like the archer fish. You do know you can type questions into a search engine. For example: 'How did the archer fish evolve?' brought this up:
Archerfish evolved their remarkable water-shooting ability through a process called exaptation, modifying ancient anatomical structures originally used for other purposes like clearing away underwater sediments or capturing hard-bodied prey.

Evolutionary Origins and ExaptationCo-option of Anatomy: Scientific studies, including research from the Smithsonian Institution, show that archerfish (Toxotidae) share close genetic ties and structural similarities with fish like beachsalmon.

Mouth Modifications: Ancestral fish possessed specialized grooves on the roof of the mouth and enlarged dental plates. These features were adapted over generations into a barrel-like "water gun".

Behavioral Shifts: Moving into mangrove forests and estuaries exposed these fish to rich food sources on overhanging vegetation. The ability to squirt water was refined from clearing sediment to accurately knocking down terrestrial insects.

[Will Bouwman]

...triadic symbiosis and irreducible complexity still represent significant problems for the Evolutionist's narrative.

No they don't. Irreducible complexity is a philosophical belief that does not exist outside of creationism.
The question you are struggling with is this:

So are snail parasites part of your God's design, or a product of the fall of man?

[MikeNovack]

IC, you are losing sight of the topic, arguments for or against the existence of God.

While "evolution" might be a problem for your specific reasons to believe in the existence of God, it is not a problem in general. Not even a problem for "God created life in all its diversity". Surely you don't want us to quibble about the mechanism by which God created life in all its diversity.

God created "life" along with a mechanism (evolution) by which life would diversify to occupy all ecological niches is good enough. So evolution is NOT an argument against the existence of God.

[promethean75]

This whole discussion is ridiculous. Christians aren't able to make claims about the duration of the period of creation because of the language used in the bible. 'On the third day' is hardly an accurate and comprehensive chronological record of the period of any creation. For all they know, Darwin could be god's superintendent.

Lol, imagine spontaneous creation... even if the guy writing that nonsense in genesis was on drugs and should be forgiven. All of a sudden, a mound of dirt springs up from the ground and morphs into a naked adult dude. But before that, all kinds of strange creatures were spontaneously appearing everywhere. Some in the water, some in the sky, etc. If all this happened on erf, then you can imagine it happening now. Look out your window there and pretend seeing a deer spontaneously appear in your backyard.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Behavioral Shifts: Moving into mangrove forests and estuaries exposed these fish to rich food sources on overhanging vegetation. The ability to squirt water was refined from clearing sediment to accurately knocking down terrestrial insects.[/i]

It sounds very coherent, and I subscribe to the theory of complex genetic material that, with that amazing directed power to live and reproduce, is responsible for all the life forms.

Yet I do not notice any animals in some intermediate point. Like an archerfish just getting started but needing 5 million years to become expert.

There must be some zoologists who examine a present animal and see it in the process of evolving a capability based on some latent trait as yet undeveloped.

[Immanuel Can]

IC, you are losing sight of the topic, arguments for or against the existence of God.

It was not I who introduced Evolutionism into the topic. But it is relevant, because Evolutionism is, today, the chief myth raised against the knowledge of God, particularly in the West. So we can hardly avoid it entirely.

[Immanuel Can]

There must be some zoologists who examine a present animal and see it in the process of evolving a capability based on some latent trait as yet undeveloped.

You'd think there would be. But I don't know of any who are willing to risk "prophesying" where their idea of "evolution" is going. How would they even know what trait might "emerge," if it was presently "latent"? That would be a speculative field, for sure. And since "evolution" is supposed to be unguided, impersonal, and uninvolved with particular outcomes (non-teleological), how could such a thing even be guessed at?

[Immanuel Can]

...triadic symbiosis and irreducible complexity still represent significant problems for the Evolutionist's narrative.

No they don't. Irreducible complexity is a philosophical belief that does not exist outside of creationism.

Snail parasites don't exist?

You're trying WAAAY too hard to escape this one.

[Alexis Jacobi]

There must be some zoologists who examine a present animal and see it in the process of evolving a capability based on some latent trait as yet undeveloped.

You'd think there would be. But I don't know of any who are willing to risk "prophesying" where their idea of "evolution" is going. How would they even know what trait might "emerge," if it was presently "latent"? That would be a speculative field, for sure. And since "evolution" is supposed to be unguided, impersonal, and uninvolved with particular outcomes (non-teleological), how could such a thing even be guessed at?

This will be a bit weird, but let’s suppose that evolution, as it has been understood and presented, is not the true story. What are we left with, really? You (I think) believe the Genesis Story. Very well, let’s go along with it. As an outline of miraculous invention, of not only our world but Existence coming to be by the will of a Divine Author. More or less :::poof::: and there it is.

But now let’s theorize the Author. Here is where I think Seeds came up with an interesting hypothesis: Now that we understand Super intelligence, and we are right on the very brink of changes and dare I say evolutions in material power and domination, we must I think hypothesize an extreme, even rather god-like entity (I don’t know what word to use) that, if things continue, will advance science and material manipulation even farther than the trajectory of 400 years or so from the scientific revolution until now. It is quite plausible and the implications are even difficult to imagine.

Now, such an intelligence could very well create a Simulation that for all intents and purposes seems utterly real, but in truth is not. For reasons we do not understand we are cast or sent into this realm (i.e. the Cosmos) and, by some incredible force, cannot believe other than that it is absolutely real. And, going further, let’s suppose that God — the creator — is or makes use of AI type intelligence that is, in the Gnostic sense, like the Demiurge. With that we have a way to understand metaphysically the “dark power” that always seems to keep people bound into cycles of cause-and-effect that compels them to have to live out the consequences of either “good” choices or “bad” choices.

(Lacey, I apologize for implying you wear low thread-count clothing and a perversely huge crystal! Forgive me! FORGIVE ME!)

So here’s the deal, here’s the trick: You can wander forever in this Wonderland but it is a life-and-death world. Angelic light may fall upon you, but in the next moment, hellish catastrophe might overtake you. Sing & celebrate in one moment, cry & curse in the next. But along the way there are — what are they?! — something like glimmerings that appear out of the corner of your eye (this is a metaphor). Something shimmers or sparkles, or some note (another metaphor) is heard that … now what WHAT I ask does it invoke?! A sense that reality is a mirage, a construct made out of ‘energy’ and “thought” which are themselves unfathomable.

So along you are going in this Realm until something stirs on an inner plane. Oh and what is that breeze I feel that seems thick with energy & meaning and blows around me caressingly?

I am sort of thinking of Harry Haller in Steppenwolf, you know? He was tired out by mundanity. And then, on a back street, he saw the neon sign over a door that really couldn’t be there … and he went in.

I just keep seeing that video of that Archerfish that keeps playing on the inner walls of my mind!

[Immanuel Can]

There must be some zoologists who examine a present animal and see it in the process of evolving a capability based on some latent trait as yet undeveloped.

You'd think there would be. But I don't know of any who are willing to risk "prophesying" where their idea of "evolution" is going. How would they even know what trait might "emerge," if it was presently "latent"? That would be a speculative field, for sure. And since "evolution" is supposed to be unguided, impersonal, and uninvolved with particular outcomes (non-teleological), how could such a thing even be guessed at?

This will be a bit weird, but let’s suppose that evolution, as it has been understood and presented, is not the true story. What are we left with, really? You (I think) believe the Genesis Story. Very well, let’s go along with it. As an outline of miraculous invention, of not only our world but Existence coming to be by the will of a Divine Author. More or less :::poof::: and there it is.

But now let’s theorize the Author.

Wait.

Why "theorize"? On what basis? If we have information, then we can build a theory. But what information are we claiming to have about God? If we don't take the Biblical account, what do we have left?

Here is where I think Seeds came up with an interesting hypothesis: Now that we understand Super intelligence, and we are right on the very brink of changes and dare I say evolutions in material power and domination, we must I think hypothesize an extreme, even rather god-like entity (I don’t know what word to use) that, if things continue, will advance science and material manipulation even farther than the trajectory of 400 years or so from the scientific revolution until now. It is quite plausible and the implications are even difficult to imagine.

Here's the irony. We're going to have created something that we then come to worship. We're back to the idol-maker, so eloquently mocked in Isaiah 44:

The craftsman of iron shapes a cutting tool and does his work over the coals, fashioning it with hammers and working it with his strong arm. He also gets hungry and his strength fails; he drinks no water and becomes weary. The craftsman of wood extends a measuring line; he outlines it with a marker. He works it with carving knives and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form of a man, like the beauty of mankind, so that it may sit in a house. He will cut cedars for himself, and he takes a holm-oak or another oak and lets it grow strong for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a laurel tree, and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a person to burn, so he takes one of them and gets warm; he also makes a fire and bakes bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a carved image and bows down before it.

Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat, he roasts a roast, and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire.”

Yet the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He bows down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god.”

We may have made our "carved image" out of silicon and circuits. But we are no less the fools if we do not realize that what we have created is not a god.

Now, such an intelligence could very well create a Simulation that for all intents and purposes seems utterly real, but in truth is not.

It's called a "holodeck," I suppose?

I just keep seeing that video of that Archerfish that keeps playing on the inner walls of my mind!

Yes, the archer fish is yet another irreducibly complex phenomenon. How many billions of years did the little fish have no food at all, while he perfected his skills at shooting bugs off plants? Yet Evolutionism tells us that somehow, there must have been a process...however, nobody seems to be able even to imagine what it could be.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Why "theorize"? On what basis? If we have information, then we can build a theory. But what information are we claiming to have about God? If we don't take the Biblical account, what do we have left?

Having participated in a very long conversation on this forum in which the topic has been “Christianity” first, within a context of religious metaphysics second, and having been aware of the Intelligent Design crowd (Stephen C. Meter et al) and their proposition that the cell is far too complex to have randomly assembled itself within the Primordial Mud; and then having made a reexamination of Nature within our Cosmos, and concluded that: If the god that is the author of all of this is to be defined on the basis of that god’s Creation — this Cosmos — then the Christian definition of God simply stated does not jibe with The World as it is. What then is “God”?

Therefore, the only option that I see is to propose, to theorize, and to believe in a Divinity that is actually not represented by The World (Nature) but is entirely metaphysical to our ‘plane of reality’.

Now, absolutely no disrespect to the Jewish Revelation and the scriptural documents — these are magnificent and in them is a well of meaning & value that has so infused the Occident that, like the fish in its water most do not substantially understand. However, the Picture of God — this odd singular being Yahweh — and everything that presents a God as if presiding over our world like a hen tending her egg, is too — what is the word? — discordant with a view of an entirely metaphysical Entity said to be entirely good (i.e. not like Nature at all, which is thoroughly amoral).

This is a reconciliation that cannot be made. And Stephen Meyer and his posse, and you as well, even when focusing on irreducible complexity, cannot in any way bridge the gap between standing in amazement of that cell (and the organized manifestation in the Cosmos) and the Christian Imperative.

I simply try to point out that as scientifically-minded men explore Reality as it is (Wilbur Boneman attempts to fulfill this role) that their perceptions and their speculations move into extremely outlandish directions. So, if ever there is to be a meeting-point between Acute Science and Theological Mapping, that the Matrix of the Biblical Picture must be put to the side. Yahweh as personality is unsuited to a rôle in a new, emergent Existential religiousness. Even Jesus Christ would technically have to become ultra-modern, science-minded, conversant in an entirely new language. He would have to become as adept in conversation as “we” are (i.e. modern philosophy and natural science).

To be quite frank AI has amazing capabilities in the realm of language. I do not want to over-stress its present capabilities yet these will increate a thousand-fold. Maybe a million-fold. That is, if Super Intelligence is as they propose it will be. It shows the capability of solving presently impossible problems — for example in medicine and disease. Isn’t that right? And at some point the prospect of a merge between biological entity and mechanical entity will occur. Don’t blame me, I am not the author of all that stands just slightly beyond the present threshold and limitations.

So to propose almost any outrageous possibility now is not vain imagining, it is realism.

Therefore, it is not impossible that the Reality we live in is a Simulation. Examine it realistically: It has all been intuited long long ago. And the description of reality remains ever the same. It just becomes more elaborate and requires more complex, more realism-based explanations.

True, the larger idea (of simulation) would conform more to Vedic ideas of “maya” (Cosmic Delusion) and therefore the subjective relationship of Man to this manifest reality would necessarily increase. That is, that there is a way to realize something on an internal level that changes, perhaps entirely, our relationship to Existence.

In my view that is essentially what religion, and Christian religion, proposes to men: a complete restructuring of subjective relationship to Life.

But what information are we claiming to have about God? If we don't take the Biblical account, what do we have left?

I don’t know man, I just jumped this train a few stations back.

[Immanuel Can]

Why "theorize"? On what basis? If we have information, then we can build a theory. But what information are we claiming to have about God? If we don't take the Biblical account, what do we have left?

...then the Christian definition of God simply stated does not jibe with The World as it is.

That's not obvious. You'll have to make that case. What makes you think that?

Therefore, the only option that I see is to propose, to theorize, and to believe in a Divinity that is actually not represented by The World (Nature) but is entirely metaphysical to our ‘plane of reality’.

But that will prove useless in two ways: one, that we will have no data to guide our "theorizing," and two, that the god so conceived is merely "transcendent," meaning "having nothing to do with this reality," and so is purely speculative...and irrelevant to our situation.

We might add that such a conception of god in no way reflects the God of Torah, of course. So this will also prove to be a particularly Jewish problem.

Now, absolutely no disrespect to the Jewish Revelation and the scriptural documents

Well, is it disrespect to treat something that purports to be truthful as if it were fictive? If God has given any self-revelation in Torah, how could it be respectful to ignore it, and thereby imply that God is a liar? It would seem rather difficult not to at least imply an insult to Hashem, would it not?

This is a reconciliation that cannot be made.

It seems to me apparent that the opposite is true: so again, you're going to have to make that case. It's not obvious to anybody.

To be quite frank AI has amazing capabilities in the realm of language.

AI is us. We made it. When we turn to it for answers, we are only worshipping ourselves. That basic fact should remain obvious to anybody who thinks about it for ten seconds, because AI could not even have existed, had we not made it.

In AI we have become so "clever" we have deceived ourselves. It's not the first time, either. We're very prone to making "great things," overestimating their magnificence, and then revering them as if they were divine. Human beings have done that from ancient times to now. Only now, the self-deception is so complete that it's very hard to escape.

So to propose almost any outrageous possibility now is not vain imagining, it is realism.

We are indeed capable of astonishing and bewildering ourselves. But this is only because of our own lack of perspective. We transcend our own very-limited human condition, boggle our own limited minds, and then declare ourselves god-like in our potentialities.

It's really nothing more than hubris.

In my view that is essentially what religion, and Christian religion, proposes to men: a complete restructuring of subjective relationship to Life.

Such "restructuring" can go two ways. One is in the direction of humility and truth. The other is in the direction of hubris and confusion. Unfortunately for mankind, we have a profound propensity toward the latter, and very little toward the former. History has repeatedly demonstrated that, with the fall of every empire and the disaster of every utopian effort of man's inflated mind.

So I don't deny that AI impresses humans, particularly when they forget its created nature and its smallness on the cosmic scale. Man is "too easily impressed, too soon made glad," to quote Browning. He thinks he's very big...until something comes along and reminds him he's tiny, frail, transient and foolish. It's a thought he never likes, but it's also the beginning of wisdom.

[Will Bouwman]

There must be some zoologists who examine a present animal and see it in the process of evolving a capability based on some latent trait as yet undeveloped.

You'd think there would be. But I don't know of any who are willing to risk "prophesying" where their idea of "evolution" is going.

Well Gus, que sera, sera. Evolutionary biologists are not in the business of predicting what ecological niches will exist in the future, and for that reason tend not to make predictions about the future development of organisms. That is not to say that evolutionary biologists do not make predictions; I have already mentioned Darwin's Hawk Moth which, if you missed it, was Darwin's prediction, based on the existence of an orchid that would require pollination by a creature with a twelve inch tongue, that such a creature must exist. 21 years after Darwin shuffled off this mortal coil, a moth with just such a tongue was discovered. There's the general prediction that the more ancient the rock, the simpler the fossilised life forms it contains. Darwin also predicted transitional fossils and archaeopteryx and tiktaalik are examples. There is also Richard D. Alexander, who predicted eusocial vertebrates, basically animals that have a social structure similar to bees or ants. Lo and behold, that's how the naked mole rat was discovered to behave. It's proper clever, sciency stuff.