Hey again.
 

I'm only going to respond to your points really briefly and then I have to go to bed (I have school tomorrow and it's 11:40 where I'm at). I promise I'll try to respond in more detail later.

1. I'm not going to even address the 2LOT right now because that would take way too much time.

2. Of course I know that we also propagate our genes through sex, I expected that to be a logical given. Yes I know that by choosing who we have sex with we can pass on certain genes and not pass on other ones. What I am talking about is a series of random mutations that are adaptive, active, and must be at least semi-functional (or else they serve no purpose but to be a hindrance). On top of that they must occur over and over again.  Please do not imply that I am not familiar with the theory of evolution at more than just face value. Even Darwin himself realized that the mathematical probabilty of this happening in ONE species was astounding (I'm not, as some theists do, suggesting that Darwin later believed in God or creation), let alone in creation itself. Unfortunately I feel that some people have already closed their minds to the idea of a God and then simply hear what they want to hear.

Couple the mathematics with the fact that

3. We still cannot explain what caused the components of the big bang, or what caused them. I know you realize that if you do chose to go down that path (of asking, not of atheism), you will have to eventually admit that something came from absolutely nothing, which is impossible (not improbable) if you are a scientist. Not only has it been proven (see Louis Pasteur earlier), but it goes against common sense.

and I believe that atheism does in fact take way more faith than to believe in God . To believe in God we simply have to accept his answer on how he (and we) got here and accept the fact that we are not going to understand some of the things he does (however,the beautiful thing is, I believe, when we get to heaven we'll be able to ask him). As an atheist you have to accept just as many things with equal amounts of intellectual weight to them on the basis of faith, with no answer of how some of them occured.

I do have to go to bed now, but I will try to respond tomorrow, and feel free to email me at [email protected] if you want to talk more in private.

P.S. Again, if I said anything in my post that you feel ridiculed you or was insulting, please let me know..

Except that adaptive mutations once they occur are not on a massive scale, like growing a third arm fully functioning, or that eyes need lens to function (which I assume you didn't bother to read the links regarding the eye as it gives a very detailed explanation about the gradual evolution of the eye) It's on a smaller scale usually, something such as in humans, such as for example more strength (as a family in Austria, if I remember reading correct and once I have time to search for it I will, who's son was born with enhanced strength which doctors are studying which gene got activated for this enhanced strength). But it's those mutations that survive which might get mutated further down the road due to selective environmental pressures.

Nope don't need to, as you simply asked the beginning of this universe, not the beginning of energy/matter 2 different things altogether. With that said energy has always existed in one form or another, why not just say energy and on a quantum level causes are random, no prior cause required, god after all if your going to use this logic that everything needs a creator, needs a creator, and saying that he doesn't is called special pleading. God can't be the exception to the rule, otherwise hey so can energy then (and it kinda does at this point as energy cannot be created nor destroyed). The only people to advocate really that anything comes from nothing are theists, most scientists that I have read about or spoken to do not agree that everything came from nothing.

that's great that you believe that, but you have to make special pleading, massive leaps of logic, and ignore all the evidence to the contrary for god to exist. For me that takes a lot more faith than trying to understand the natural world. I will take the I have no answer for it now and might never have an answer than the illogical, impossible god. I take improbability over impossible. I hope I don't come off to sarcastic or insulting either.

Except that any original 'cause' need not be anything but the tiniest possible energy fluctuation, the sort of thing which triggers radioactive decay all the time. 

There is no absolute boundary between species - two lineages of life-forms are classified as separate species based on a number of items, inability to interbreed being an important one, but not the only one. There are species which form a 'ring' such as certain bird families around the Arctic circle. If you look at the birds sufficiently far apart they seem to be clearly separate species, although obviously closely related.  Neighboring families are not clearly identifiable as separate species, and if you progress around the ring comparing such neighboring families you will never find clear species boundaries.

New species do not arrive as a jump. The offspring of one species will never look any more different from their parents than normal, even if some of their distant descendants do eventually come to be very different.

Typically they arise when two groups from a single species become separated in some way, say onto two separate islands or deep valleys so that they no longer interbreed significantly, and slowly drift apart genetically by an accumulation of small changes, due to small differences in the two environments plus the basic random genetic drift which we know happens. Eventually they will be recognizable as separate species. This is what Darwin observed in the Galapagos, and one of the things which started him thinking about how new species could arise.

Any small mutations in one generation that are significantly harmful will obviously be filtered out as those offspring fail to reproduce, so harmful mutations will never persist. This allows the neutral and beneficial mutations to accumulate, until they build up to the point where they present some significant advantage to the creature. Sometimes it just requires a significant change in the climate or environment that gives some particular variation a major advantage, which will cause that version to become the dominant form.

It's more than that. 

You need to provide a coherent definition for God; otherwise, the claim is meaningless. You also need to provide positive evidence for God instead of simply relying on God of the gaps arguments. Even if there is no alternative explanation, it does not follow the the current explanation is correct.

Overall entropy in an isolated system increases over time. The Earth is not an isolated system.

Of course not.  

A mutation is a just mistake in genetic replication. The mutation would occur almost instantly.

I think you're confusing mutations with evolution in general.

You're not making any sense. Mutations, by themselves, cannot produce speciation.

Most mutations are neutral.

I'm not sure, if we include all organisms, whether beneficial or harmful mutations are more common, but it depends on the environment and circumstances.

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html

Even a seemingly subtle and mundane mutation can make a difference in the right environment, such as a small change in color or height. 

Duh.

Even a single harmful mutation can lead the victim's demise through natural selection, but this means that its genes are not passed on. This is why life doesn't go extinct, and evolution can continue.

I guess you haven't really bothered with how evolution actually works and still assume that a dog should be able to give birth to a different species all together in one shot. Not gradually over generations. The Austrian example is that, it's a change, a possible beneficial mutation, if it continues on should the boy one day have children, if the child dies before this occurs then this mutation is filtered out. However the boy is still human.  A different species could appear 100's if not 1000's of generations later with the accumulation of various different mutations that are beneficial to it's survival for it's environment. We as a species are transitional species, to what who knows.

To give you an idea of the time line we are dealing with here, from the first mammals to the first primates we are talking about 191 million years it's been estimated between what is considered the first appearance of mammals to the appearance of the first primates.  From the aquatic fishes and species to mammals about 100 million years. New species do not evolve from one generation to the next, but a gradual evolution over many many many generations. Which is where your thinking is going completely wrong on the mechanics of evolution.

Many mutations do kill the organism. Many mutations, however, do not. Mutations are either harmful, benificial, or neutral. Most mutations are to introns and do nothing at all to an organism. The remainder are mostly neutral in that they have no effect on the organism's survival. Then there are mutations that simply kill the organism right away. Then there are mutations which have a measurable affect on the organisms performance -- either positive or negative.

The precise point is that "a series of mutations over time" that led to a dead lineage would not be selected for. These organisms would die before they could reproduce, so their genetic diversity is not passed on through the species. Only the organisms which just so happen to NOT die, and just so happen to be able to reproduce end up passing on their genetic variation. Of these, DIFFERENCES in reproductive ability lead to a TREND, in which organisms which produce more offspring end up representing more and more of the population in each generation -- until practically the entire population is made of high-producers.

Now imagine this algorithm running for thousands and thousands of generations, and in each generation we have tiny, minute mutations which DO NOT kill the organism, and which, on a whole, lead to BETTER REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS in a given environment. What we have is an optimizing algorithm, in which the POPULATION of animals approaches optimal survivability in their environment. Now, imagine that along with this optimization algorithm, imagine that this population of organisms is moving about in the environment, and encountering NEW CHALLENGES. Imagine that the environment is changing over time. Then, the algorithm is optimizing for DIFFERING conditions over time. This leads to radically different subsets of the population, often living in different areas, or with different niches, which eventually, after many thousands of generations, become a new species.

Tisk, tisk. Poor form again. Some people just don't learn...

Ad homenim. In other words, irreleant.

OK, Space-time. Got it.

OK, you don't know. Got it.

I'm guessing you refer to this statement:

Soo... by tiniest, i'm guessing you don't mean spatial, right? Since space-time is ineperable?

Got it. Small fluctuation outside of time. What kind of fluctuation? A quantum fluctuation?

So delta E multiplied by delta t approximately equals h over two pi r?

So change in energy multiplied by change in time... wait, energy produced time, right?

To quote wiki, "a quantum fluctuation is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space."

By "point in space", i'm guessing they mean spatial...

Of course, vacuum fluctuations, as defined by wikki,  "Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space even when devoid of matter (known as free space." is no improvement.

If we are positing space (for the vacuum to occupy) then why are we not positing time? Since space and time are inseperable? Now, if either space, time or space-time were to approach zero, or infinity; then how exactly have you expalined their occurance at all, without begging the question? It looks as if the origin is neither a quantum fluctuation nor a vacuum whatchyacallit, because they both require space to fluctuate in, which is precisely what we are trying to derive from said equations.

Now if one were to maintain the fluctuation theory, they would have to demonstrate how any given fluctution of energy existed without time or space. That is, if it were a scientific theory, some empirical or mathematical extrapolation would be necessary to elimnate t whilst maintaing E.

What sort of scientific theory are you referring to bobspence1? Could you provide a link?

EDIT: Formatting, spelling.

Nice try but no Will was referring to this statement from bob regarding......the process of mutation and selection in regards to evolution

The reference was to this part of your reponse:

So you responded to what was clearly referring to evolution, ie talking about 'mutation and selection', with a discussion on quantum level causes? You are one confused dude.

You 'guessed' that 'mutation and selection' was what was being referred to by 'tiniest possible energy fluctuation', etc????

Ok put that bit of confusion aside, your actual response to the quantum fluctuations was:

First, 'tiniest' means just that - the smallest magnitude of energy variation, as in Planck scale. Nothing requiring 'outside of time' as such. 

I am assuming time. Do you really have such poor comprehension skills?? Your whole confused response seems based on assuming that I was arguing a fluctuation occurring outside space and time, which has nothing to do with my argument.

I am simply pointing out that any assumption from first cause which assumes that the ultimate 'cause' for the Big Bang or anything else need be nothing bigger than the smallest possible energy twitch, which is at the Planck Scale.

From that same Wikipedia article you referred to:

which is precisely the sort of thing I was referring to. I am just suggesting that they could also have been involved in triggerring the BB itself. 

We don't actually know the details of the origin of the BB of course, I am just pointing out that original causes for such events need only be this sort of thing, IOW, the very opposite of a 'God' thing, so 'First Cause' arguments are totally without merit as attempts to 'prove' God.

This is just a god of the gaps argument, and a poor one since it uses outdated examples.

Your second point about first cause is also faulty.  It assumes that magic is an appropriate answer for something humans will probably never know, and it also assumes that it helps your case.  Even if you could prove a supernatural first cause (if you can, you will win a Nobel prize), it doesn't say anything about intelligence or point to *your* god in any way.

I'm reading "The Greatest Show on Earth" right now, by Dawkins.  Really good so far.  I was raised in a fundamentalist home, with a fundamentalist young-earth education, so I never really learned about what evolution really meant until I was an adult.  It was incredibly mind-opening when I found out that evolution had been totally misrepresented over my entire education.

Why should you apologize for something YOU did not do? If we were that thin skinned as atheists this site would ban anyone who blasphemes us.

Even my Christian friends at work make comments about me burning in hell and think I have more in common with Hitler. If I took everything personally that everyone ever said about atheists, much less me, I WOULD go on a killing spree.

Humans in general need to understand, and even politically correct atheists don't understand this. WE ARE ALL CAPABLE OF THE SAME RANGE OF HUMAN EMOTIONS.

We don't have to like each other. That is an unrealistic utopia for any side, atheist or theist. WHAT IS realistic is that we can accept that we are all human. We all want love, shelter, food, a job and the ability to bitch about things we don't like.

What I expect, and I cant speak for all atheists, is not for you to vent at my label, or criticize my label, or blaspheme my label. What I would want from you, as I would want from anyone making any claim on any issue is EVIDENCE.

Having said that, YOUR GOD as portrayed in the bible is vengeful, especially in the OT and Revelations. Even the Jesus character demands that you abandon those who don't follow him.

Think about this. Strictly from a psychological example.

If someone demanded that you follow them would you without asking questions? If I said you could jump off the Empire State Building without any parachute, would you do it?

I don't serve anyone. I communicate with others and consent to our interactions. Slaves serve, God does not ask for consent which makes him a slave master.

You are merely back peddling from the rightfully frightening litteral tribal interpretation the west has to back away from if it is to remain civil.

If you want to start from scratch and claim a good and just god, you have to give up the Abrahamic concept. This is a dictator who records your every move and expects you to kiss his ass forever.

Are you talking about my links?

First of all, you requested examples of beneficial mutations, not speciation. I just provided examples, numerous examples.

Second, lol, of course it's still the same species. A single mutation, even in the simplest microorganisms, is rarely sufficient. At the very least, you'll need to wait for the new trait to spread through part of the population and that portion of the population to split off.

Third, your response suggests that you're defining species differently? Do you agree with official biological classifications: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species?     

It's weird, isn't it? The media culture really encourages the legitimization of ideas like "something from nothing" and "the odds of life evolving are 150 gazillion to one!" Pure nonsense seems to hold the imagination much better than reliable fact. (I suppose that isn't so weird after all.)

What you wrote just then sounds good. It is stil a moot point though, since it adresses the person, not the problem. Emotive rhetoric can be a good source of psychological persuasion in an argument etc etc but yadda yadda..

My pet rat died yesterday, so I appologise, I was overly grumpy.

Lol, forgive me for cutting out the garbage. The short answer is yes. If you are making the claim that the following proves God does not exist:

(&@#(r/w-24)``(&*&*&*7)

...without explaining it, well done. Don't expect anyone else to share your enthusiam though. It is almost committing an informal fallacy - an appeal to authority, without anybody being able to object because they have no idea what i'm saying. To insist that it all adds up, so just believe me is definitely an appeal to ignorance, which of course is a fallacy.

Yes, I did.

Bob:

Can you at least support your claim independently? Give me a break here, you're using this argument against the existence of God, If this were reversed, you would expect nothing less than substantial evidence. Your ideas are creative, but I find they lack conviction. The consequences of such extrapolation from flux theory need attention, and when I question, I get insulted. Can (space)time exist before the BB, what type of energy condensed or fluctuated (there are several types), "tiny" without space-time loses all meaning, how do you extrapolate those two equations past (or including) time? If all that is needed to begin a universe is a tiny fluctuation and tiny fluctuations are happening every millisecond, everywhere, why is there not millions of universes being created? Etcetera. In terms of raising more questions than you have solved, you win.

God raises less.

The selections you chose to quote continue to be confusing - surely you don't wish me to explain to you what a scientific hypothesis is?

Just in case,from the New Oxford American Dictionary:

"a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation;

in Philosophy: a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth."

To repeat, I was not really proposing anything specific as an origin of the Big Bang, just pointing out that there is no need for the ultimate cause to be anything beyond the an extremely tiny energy fluctuation. 'Tiny' in this case refers to the measure of energy, not of length or time, such as the energy of a particle, which is a separate property from its size or the time for which it has existed.

There are several speculations on the origin of the Big Bang: at least one matches the general idea I had in mind - see here: Chaotic Inflation Theory.

Several are outlined here.

As to why there are not millions of Universes being created; first of all, there very well could be, we would not necessarily be able to detect them since they would be expected to each form there own closed system. But the idea is that since these fluctuations are inherently statistically random, only the largest such fluctuations are proposed to potentially initiate a 'Big Bang' singularity, so they might well be extremely rare.

'God' may well raise less questions numerically but they are extremely large and unanswerable ones, like where the Hell did God come from or Why would he exist?

It seems pretty basic that the a priori probability of a simple random field of minimal energy is more likely to either just exist or come to exist than a fully formed infinite, all-powerful sentient being - that is the key comparison.

Great minds think alike. Of course, fools seldom differ. (I miss The Kids in the Hall.)

I don't think science can possibly disprove the existence of god; it can merely leave less and less room for god to be effective. God is simply not a question that is addressable by science.

If god is disproven, it will be philosophy that does so. I'm pained to say that, as I have increasing disdain for philosophy. But, most of the arguments against the existence of god are philosophic in nature: there's HisWillness's metaphysical question of the incomplete or incoherent nature of god, and my question of the epistemic failure of god, and so on. (That's not even talking about the big boys, like Bertrand Russell. That's just homegrown stuff.) There is the current failure of any theistic philosophy that can stand up to much scrutiny, William Lane Craig notwithstanding.

Anyway, I'm more interested in pursuing scientific inquiry than disproving a god who grows more impotent every day. Part of that is defending the scientific ontology from straw-man versions of it, such as that presented by jumbo1410.

Something from nothing, indeed.

Actually, I was trying to say that we are mostly ignorant as to the origin of the universe. We know much of the way the universe evolved over time, after the first few picoseconds, but we are completely ignorant of how the universe actually began.

Second, to understand virtual particles (and, by analogy, the flux origin hypothesis), you have to understand that virtual particles don't just create themselves. They are not "something from nothing." There is something there at the base of the universe, which manifests as vacuum energy. This is the ground state of a vacuum. Quantum fluctuations within this vacuum energy cause particles to pop in and out of existence. They come from the vacuum energy, which is not nothing. I hope this clears up the "something from nothing" issue.

But really, any origin hypothesis is simple speculation at the moment. That was my original point. Science is not claiming knowledge it doesn't have. To say that atheists believe in "something from nothing" is patently false. Most of us here have no "belief" in the origin, and we're waiting for evidence to help clarify how the universe came to be.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether we believe matter and energy came from nothing. Even assuming that does turn out to be the leading hypothesis, so what? It's still much easier to believe that unorganized matter and energy came from nothing than to believe that god came from nothing. Or it's easier to believe the universe has always existed in various forms than to believe god has always existed. It just makes more sense.

I believe this transcends Will's definitional issues with god (which is really a metaphysical issue -- fundamentally, there seems to be no coherent, complete concept of a god).

It's not just "no knowledge in god." It's "no knowledge from god." The assumption of god presents an unworkable epistemology. Once you assume an omnipotent, omnipresent, omnitemporal entity such as god, you lose all basis of knowledge. God can do literally anything, and is by definition beyond our understanding. As god can interfere at any point, inductive logic falls by the wayside. Deductive logic fairs no better: if god can change the rules at any point (and has, according to most books purporting to be by or about god), logic itself is not universal.

Then there's the problem of observation. There are direct problems, such as god messing with the universe at any point (say, any creation myth at all), and so observations mean little except as a method of watching god at play. Then there are the bias issues, in which simple belief in god (and the absurd belief one understands god, at least a little) skews observation and interpretation. (This last one doesn't need god to exist; the effects of it are everywhere.)

Ultimately, it comes down to a simple problem of our ability to know. Take a look at the conflict between evolution and the fundamentalists who believe the universe is only 6,000 years old. This is a stark example of the massive epistemologic fail of theism. And that's just belief. If god really existed, and really interfered with the universe as told in the Bible, then everything would be dependent on our understanding of god. Which, as you can see by the many different Christian sects (let alone the other religions in the world), we have no consensus.

About the only options left are the gods of Spinoza or Spong -- a pantheistic god of nature, or a panentheistic god of morality and emotion. Neither of these gods are really omnipotent, and they don't interfere in the universe. Rather, for Spinoza, god is the universe (or the universe is god); for Spong, god is the driving ideal of the goodness in human nature.

I was going with a literal interpretation. As soon as you move into a figurative interpretation, you could always say, "One of the leading hypothesis on the origins of life states that crystalline regularity in dried clay provided a template for organic molecules to form longer chains, creating life, leading ultimately to man."

The common makeup of man does not fit with the common definition of mud. Nor is the common definition of cell equivalent to the common definition of rib. As written, the Adam/Eve creation myth raises unanswerable questions. Which, in my mind, makes them worthless.

We are working with different values of "truth," it seems. There is certainly the ability to gain insight into our past, into ourselves (perhaps), and maybe even insight into nature. But that insight is not inherent in the words, or the tale. Rather, it's inherent in us, and is provoked by the tale.

And here's where the epistemic failure of god becomes apparent. You can invoke god, but does it provide us any real information? You say the literal tale of Adam and Eve is bollocks (and I agree), and then rationalize it by saying god knows everything, and can do anything.

Another Christian will say the tale is literally true, and claim that god knows everything, and can do anything.

How do you judge the truth of either proposition?

Heh. That's kinda funny. Thanks.

I also learned some great things in my private school. My favorite has to be that not only did dinosaurs and humans live at the same time, but all the stories about dragons were true, because dragons were really dinosaurs. That was priceless. There was also a video we watched once where we were told that you could send your social security card back to the government and then you would never have to pay taxes. I'm not sure why we were watching that video or what the actual thrust of the video was (I don't even think it had to do with taxes or the government or anything close to those subjects). The things I learned at that school. Bizarre.

Regarding the apology, don't worry: we're used to it. Regarding this, the meat:

"The chances of that combination occurring just once is so astronomically high that for all statistical purposes it is impossible. The chances of it happening over and over again are about the same (as my philosophy teacher said) as winning the lottery 150 million times in a row."

If you play the lottery a billion times per second, over the span of a billion years, you will eventually win it much more than 150 million times in a row. This is what the creationist fails to understand. You don't win 150 M out of 150 M attempts. You win 150 M in a row out of 150 Trillion Trillion attempts.

It is statistically inevitable.

Thank you for being diligent and sincere enough to look it up though, it shows how dedicated you are to the topic.

I was using the word "Flux" as shorthand for "fluctuation". By "fluctuation" theory, I mean either (or both) vacuum fluctuation or quantum fluctuation as a theory of origin. I was not aware that "Flux" had some other context, or that fluctuation theory had an official title. It is all news to me.

However, the converstion assumed the former definition and progressed accordingly without any misinterpretation, so the aforementioned quote really is an irrelevant quibble. I am not "making it up", I just can't be bothered writing "vacuum fluctuation or quantum fluctuation (or both) as a theory of origin" every time I want to refer to it. If it makes it easier, I will say VFT or QFT when in the context of origin theory.

I was reading over Aedus' thread and found bob's rhetorical question. "Where would such an 'energy field' 'come from'? Same place 'God' came from. Or maybe it was just always there, just like 'God'."

And in this thread:

I've got a lot to research before I continue. Thanks for your time thus far.

Nigel knew what I meant, and I just want to restate that it was not interpreted by you guys as anything other than "fluctuation." But seriously, is this really a major issue?