Intelligent Design

You've got it backwards; you care about the Fibanacci sequence because it is so ubiquitous in nature. The sequence itself is merely a description of pattern created with the alphabet of numbers; we arrive and notice some patterns, we assign alphanumeric characters to map onto those numbers, and then we call this set of characters "The Fibanacci Sequence". You then look at everything and are struck by amazement at how this sequence is everywhere, but it's a bit like saying "If there is no Design, then how come everything has a temperature?"

Wiki: "Sacred geometry ascribes symbolic and sacred meanings to certain geometric shapes and certain geometric proportions.[1] It is associated with the belief that God is the geometer of the world."

There is nothing sacred about geometry except what you chose to worship. You could say that temperature is sacred, and ask how there can not be a creator if sacred temperature is present everywhere.

Why is DNA different from anything else in the cosmos? It's a self-replicating molecule. There is no more imprint of intelligent design on DNA than there is in a puddle of water; on one level, both are incomprehensibly complex arrangements of matter and energy, but that is exactly what the cosmos is about.

DNA exists because we as organisms evolved from DNA incrementally and you now stand here, a DNA-based living organism, marvelling at how DNA exists. "I don't understand it, therefore it must be God"; this is all really a god of the gaps argument, and argument based not on evidence, but on ignorance.

 

a god of the gaps might never be completely invalidated, but it is a weak argument, because as time goes by, as long as people explore and advance the methods of exploration, little by little, gaps get filled.
maybe a god triggered the big bang. may a god wrote the code we call evolution. but would a god have to have personally crafted every species on every planet that has life in order to be a god?
no. i don't think anything would have to have created everything just to be big, friendly and invisible, which i don't really see a god as having to be anything else in order to be a god.
the idea that every living thing would have to have been individually crafted, simply runs counter to observable reason. observable unintelligent flaws of design do not, and are observable everywhere.

 

I think "big friendly and invisible" is an acceptable description of a 6 year old's imaginary friend. The problem is when adults structure their lives and societies around this friend, and wage war over who's friend is really real.

 

they just need to realize that everyone's 'imaginary friends' are the SAME imaginary friend/s, as the case might be. making an excuse of it, is really just the same as making an excuse of anything else.
best description i could come up with, for something that may or may not exist, doesn't have to in order to, and no one actually knows anything about anyway.

yes i believe everyone's imaginary friends are perfectly capable of being real, just not that they're at war with each other, nor that morality has anything to do, with taking sides between them.
the whole 'dark side of the force' is something humans have invented, as is the idea that the 'light side' has to be flawless infallible good.

who's to say a 'six year old's imaginary friend' isn't as god as there is god to be? cats and other friendly terrestristral non-humans can observe and respond to them, so why not?

 

1) Go to Mecca or Rome and tell the nice people there that God is actually your 6 year old daughter's imaginary friend and see what their reaction is; you would be far more offensive to them than an atheist.

2) Citation needed

 

1 i make no such contrary assumption
2 needed for what? and why?

why must one assume an invisible friend can only be imaginary just because it was told by a six year old?
why would a book not have been written by bull shit artists, just because they wrote it a long time ago?
why assume just because it was written by bullshit artists, that they might not have been motivated by the highest and most noble of reasons?

fanatics being fanatics proves nothing. only that fanaticism itself is a treat to everyone, no less so no matter how much they, the threatened, may love or hate logic.
you cannot avoid causing harm by denying reason, and there is no morality without the avoidance of causing harm.

 

I believe many, a vast majority, of people in the world follow the gods of the Roman economy--probably many others as well.

Simply because the gods of the Roman world, the gods they worship were not just literal figures or statues. It was not this simple. The Romans were not stupid people or mindless to worship willy-nilly iadimant objects without ties to reality. These figurines represented more, they represented the mechanics and workings of their world; it's ideas and philosophies that shaped it's policies of government--and even economy. The Romans bound to these objects and abstracts the facets of their cultural workings.

Interestingly enough, the western world today lays it's foundation on Rome.

The book The last Two Million Years Of Man

Many ignorantly follow a slew of the roman gods.

Mercury is the Roman god of financial gain. "Mercury was also considered a god of abundance and commercial success...Archeological evidence from Pompeii suggests that Mercury was among the most popular of Roman gods.The god of commerce was depicted on two early bronze coins of the Roman Republic..."

The gods held the minds of the culture and were represented in this abstract way.

Truly the roman gods are worshiped today...may of us die trying in our service to the Roman god mercury.

How did commercial succes come?

By the virtue given to mercury which was: [SIZE=110%]"God of financial gain, commerce, messages/communication, travelers, boundaries, luck, trickery and thieves"[/SIZE]

[SIZE=110%]Truly we mirror the same methods in the economic systems today.[/SIZE]

 

The universe is self-designing and whether or not the entire system of the cosmos has a unified sense of self is a complete mystery. You might say it doesn't design anything with intention, but then our free will itself is an illusion and do we truly design anything with intention, or is everything just the inescapable order of the cosmos? So I say that as much as anything is really being designed, the universe is designing itself.

Obviously the universe has a mind, as we are not distinct from the universe and have minds. A universe with a design in mind is 100% happening as we speak, in my opinion. With this happening, I don't see ideas such as the ubiquitous whole of the universe possessing some sense of self as being that far fetched. It has developed a sense of self, albeit a self that doesn't immediately recognize its sentience as being what it is like for the universe to possess sentience.

For the universe, existence is deeply personal. I tend to see a deeper underlying order in the universe of which this deeply personal aspect isn't a mere trifling fluke. I think this personal aspect is as concrete a reality as the laws of physics. In other words I think the universe is eternally and always deeply personal. As we experience time flowing from one moment to the next our personhood seems transient, but I don't think the laws and the nature of the universe is something that is transient. I think it's possible a fourth dimension exists in which everything is permanent.

 

Well, everything in existence ages. The sun ages too, and a time will come when it becomes a red giant and finally a white dwarf.

The universe too, which began from the big bang and in a process of expansion, after a period of time, will start contracting into the big crunch.

So you can see everything in this universe subject to change and ageing without exception.

 

no, there is species of jellyfish that is immortal.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/immortal-jellyfish-does-it-really-live-forever

http://immortal-jellyfish.com/

 

Some people look at complex designs in nature, think that they appear to have been made by an intelligent mind, and make the irrational leap of logic that this view is a truth that should be accepted by all people. Their conclusion can be neither proven nor dis-proven.

I think it's highly unlikely, but I can't absolutely prove that I'm right. It remains an interesting theory that people can discuss endlessly.

Evolution makes a lot of "mistakes" (for lack of a better word) but it tends to erase them. Genetic mutations are random, and are therefore more likely than not to make an individual inferior to its peers. If one time out of 10,000 mutations, the difference provides a survival and/or reproduction advantage, that mutation is likely to be passed down and eventually become dominant in the gene pool, often ultimately replacing the old "standard" completely after many generations of breeding. We see this happen rapidly in simple species with short life spans, such as bacteria.

Can anyone reasonably claim that disease-causing bacteria are undergoing a continuous intelligent design process in order to punish humans? If so, what is the mechanism by which this is being done? Researchers can observe that individual bacteria cells mutate randomly, due to the presence of chemicals and natural radiation in the environment, and the mutated cells fail to thrive unless the resulting changes give them an advantage in their habitat. Foreign chemicals and radiation (mostly solar) cause changes to key materials within the cell that govern reproduction. We can watch this happen in a lab.

Surviving traits that appear to be evolutionary mistakes are simply random changes that neither improved nor diminished an individual's survival and reproduction chances, and eventually spread throughout the species population.

Breeding groups that become physically isolated from each other evolve in different directions, because they don't share access to the same random mutations, and their survival circumstances are not identical. Different breeds/races within a species can become separate but similar species, if left alone long enough.

We can logically think through all this, but that isn't proof that the process itself had to be created by a logical mind.

 

part of the problem is we filter shit through our conceptions of "mind", "intelligence" etc.

without wanting to get to into it in this thread, one big obstacle, IMO, is the paradox. human minds often bang into a wall when confronted with a paradox and we strive to resolve it in any means,when often the best thing is simply accept that we don't know.
The paradox in this question is one of an impersonal god/creator who just set things in motion and allows them to progress as the laws of nature dictates
and there is the personal God who meticulously engineered everything and maintains control and interaction with it's creation.
IMO it is both.

What my experiences, intuition and reading has brought me to is the idea of a creative force or energy that is source for everything in the universe. It is a very much like the first idea of God above, a non-involved momentum driving things as they evolve. As systems evolved and life arose and evolved, the expression of this energy begins to take a different flavor, determined by the abilities of the specific biological entity. As evolution drives the development of higher functioning/cognitive entities, the expression takes on a more "personal" and "involved" flavor.

in that I can find resolution to many seeming disparities between different beliefs systems and find that core fundamental concept in them all.
resolve the paradox and it ain't so hard.

and it isn't because of some grayhaired guy in the sky directing things, it is merely the natural progression of an energy that can not be contained and must evolve, create and experience.

again, my opinion, always tentative and subject to revision, not asking anyone to agree or whatever.

 

They are still not immune to predation or diseases which consumes most of them anyway.

Also this has only been observed in the laboratory and never in their natural habitat.

 

Uh, uh, grasping...at...straws....
disease and predators have nothing to do with your assertion that EVERYTHING in the universe ages and dies.
how do know about anything in the universe beyond our minuscule piece of it, are you an astro-biologist or are you talking out your ass?
how do you know what "consumes most of them" are you a marine biologists specializing in them or are talking out your ass?

also there is no reason to assume that the process does not occur in the wild.

 

Hey dude. Other than cute jellyfish, gimme something else that is immortal !

And your scientists have mentioned that they have not been able to study jellyfish in their natural habitat properly. only in laboratory conditions without predators or disease causing conditions.

Anyway cute jellyfish will also die when the sun expands to red giant , taking over the sun and mars and other planets. And if jellyfish had evolved to intelligent sentient beings who can create spacecraft and escape to other planets, they will still face doomsday in the big crunch when all energy and matter in the universe get concentrated in a single point as it was during the big bang.

My sympathies.

 

LOL..... grasping...at...straws



ps. the "big crunch" is merely a theory, same as the "big bang", so.........
but then again you think a manipulative crook, fake, rapist and generally disgusting human being was some friggin' enlightened saint, so your powers of discernment, judgement and rational thought fall seriously into question.

 

Nothing on earth can outlive the earth itself, or the sun, which does not have an unlimited supply of hydrogen or any other infinite energy source.

 

as we understand things thus far.
but life leaving Earth is a possibility.
for all you and I know there could be bacteria or other microbes living in Voyager 1 or 2 as we speak and if this planet died, it wouldn't have any impact on it, for one example.

 

Even more likely, a dormant virus on board that could become active again under the right conditions.

 

That doesn't make sense,how can an immortal jellyfish only be observed to be immortal in finite laboratories?