Do you think less of theists intelligence?

I have no idea what intelligence actually is so I can't really say if they are less intelligent. But based on what is usually considered intelligent, I will say that there is no correlation between belief and intelligence. But I will say that the more information that someone can hold inside their brain, the more arrogant they can become (not always), but more information never means, 'more right'. Intelligence, to me, doesn't relate to how correct someone is.

I care more about how someone carry's themselves than how 'intelligent' they are.

Also, if it is a belief than it isn't about a knowing, it is faith based. They can carry on their beliefs while at the same time entertain any idea that is available. Creating new abstractions, learning about others idea, conceptualizing everything under the sun, but at the same time hold on to their faith because for whatever reason, they believe that there is value to it. By them seeing value in the belief, does that make them 'unintelligent?' I don't think so. There is no relation to intelligence and belief. They shouldn't be in the same category, IMHO. I think we lose sight on something deeper going on here than psychological, social, and intellectual conditions. I guess this is why Viktor Frankl's works have always had a hold on me, because he doesn't go down the path of, "lol they have belief, must be dumb guy, derp" or even worse, suggesting that they are confused or veiling their fears.

 

K. Personally I have little time for those who can only argue by telling others that their opinions don't matter. If you want to do science, I'm pretty sure there's a forum for it. If you want to post long articles, deride others for not reading them, then post long excerpts from said long articles, and if you genuinely think that that is conducive to debate, then I'm pretty sure there's a forum for that too. At the moment you're contributing heavily to an unnecessary climate of hostility in what was, for a while there, an interesting thread about belief that had bucked the Atheism forum trend by not quite descending into a godawful Evolution vs Not Evolution shitfest yet.

 

Actually it's not about You per se, it's about your opinion which is not plausible, and my opinion on it.
If you don't have time to read what my opinion of yours is then simply don't read and don't reply to it.

I don't need instructions as to where to post what and what not.
The last I checked it's a free forum and you don't own it.
Mind you that I never contribute to climate of hostility, I love peace and harmony ! (you can browse my posts and see that I consistently refrain from using foul language even when the same used against me and am made a target of personal insults and attacks by those who feel tremendous frustration due to their own intellectual inferiority and lack of ability to defend their views logically).

 

A thousand pardons. Biohysicist Dr. Lee Spetner has written a book challenging evolution in terms of mathematical probabilities and assumptions about genetic mutations, you accept his arguments as definitive, and on that basis consider it appropriate to dismiss natural selection as not a scientific theory, a myth, "a mountain high paperstack of hearsay and wishful fantasy", etc., and assume that therefore anyone who is not impressed with your (or Spetner's? ) case must not even have read your posts. (Since I referred you to a couple of books and you didn't mention them, you must not be reading mine). I still have some reservations.

First, this whole discussion should be taking place on another thread. My initial statement that provoked your series of broadsides concerned Philip Johnson's compartmentalized intelligence, and my puzzlement that a man so intelligent in some areas could believe that his stroke was obviously a wakeup call from God to spend more time with his family. Yes, I mentioned Darwin offhand, and I have contributed to your nongermane discussion of evolutionary theory by continuing to debate you. But if we continue on this thread, we will have hijacked it to yet another discussion of evolution, for which there are already ample threads going on.

Second, whatever you think of the merits of the evidence supporting evolution, to characterize it as "hearsay and wishful fantasy" is unfounded. Hearsay evidence is a legal term referring to second hand information by witnesses who themselves did not observe an event, but are simply relaying things told to them by someone else. It is possible to characterize the case for evolution as being based on circumstantial evidence, since no human was around to observe the various species appearing. But circumstantial evidence is still evidence, and people have gone to death row based on it; and the circumstantial evidence for evolution is impressive. And far from being based on "wishful fantasy" it's based on quite a lot of carefully gathered hard empirical evidence by generations of good, conscientious scientists from a wide variety of disciplines.

Third, some problems with Dr. Spetner. Like Dembski, whom his theory resembles, he seems to have a religious agenda unbecoming a scientist. In the Preface (page ix) he writes: "...I met the evolutionary theory in a serious way, and I found it hard to believe. It clashed not only with my religious views, but also with my intuition about how the information in living organisms could have developed." Seek and ye shall find. He claims that his own theory " as an explanation of evolution, is in fact derivable from Talmudic sources." I think scientists, even those with Ph.D.s, need to understand the distintion between science and apologetics.

Fourth, to be fair to Spetner, he does believe that evolution has happened, but believes that nonrandom rather than random mutations are the driving force. (Chp. 7). But he exaggerates the importance of randomness in neo-Darwinin theory.The Neo-Darwinism does not say that evolution occurred in by purely random processes, but by natural selection, which is by no means random. The natural selection is directed by the environment. By acknowledging that the evolution of life is partly guided by "signals" from the environment, Spetner may be saying the same thing in different language. Neo-Darwinians like Richard Dawkins long ago conceded that even the process of mutation is not non-random. In The Blind Watachmeaker, Dawkins identifies five ways in which mutations are not completely random (pages 305-307). Dr. Spetner makes his probabalistic case by stressing randomness in Darwin's theory and minimizing the constraints of natural selection.

As I understand it, the crux of Spetner's (and your) critique of neo-Darwinism is that random changes cannot lead to useful new information at a rate consistent with the evolutionary time frame. In particular, Spetner claims that genetic duplication is only a change in copy number instead of information content. Yet even exact duplication of a gene increases genetic information by some degree. Duplication requires more units of data to specify. Additional mutations to either copy leads to sequence divergences requiring more data bits to specify. I think selectionist theory and the Brooks/Wiley/Collier theory linking information and evolutionary diversity to entropy provides the best defense for the neo-Darwinians here. Also, Spetner's skepticism concerning macroevolution, while defensible, is a matter of judgment with which I and many scientists differ. I think there are numerous examples of transitional species in the fossil record, and to argue that these are just separate species is, in my opinion, implausible. I think Spetner has raised important issues deserving consideration, but has not yet blown Darwin out of the water, certainly not to the point of justifying your own dogmatic cocksureness. In particular, the idea that there are non-random factors influencing mutations, while posing problems for some evolutionists doesn't seem particularly devastating to me (a Christian), to the point of saying--well, we'll have to throw out evolution and go back to the drawing board. If the non-random factors are naturalistic in origin, I doubt that Darwin would turn over in his grave.

Fifth, science is a process of inquiry, not a set of facts. Evolutionary theory has met the criteria of a scientific theory by developing a set of refutable hypotheses which seem to account for the available evidence (not hearsay or fantasy) from a variety of fields of science. If you or Dr. Spetner believe you have found a flaw in evolutionary theory, by all means put it forward and publish it in peer reviewed sources for others to examine.(Hip Forums doesn't count). Spetner has chosen to publish his work in a popular book for a general audience instead of a peer-reviewed scientific journal. I wonder why. You may be right about neo-Darwinism, in which case he and/or you may be famous for refuting Darwin. At minimum, you can make a lot of money on the creationist and/or ID lecture circuits. But you still will not have shown that evolution by process of natural selection was never a valid scientific theory, any more than Einstein's theories of relativity showed that Newton's physics was not valid scientific theory.

Sixth, your exalted opinion of your own brilliance might be somewhat distorted. Egoism, narcissism, and intellectual arrogance can lead to faulty judgments, and you might consider the possibility that such is the case in your recent posts. For example, this gem: "Now, if instead of being a great genius as I am and writing brilliant posts as I do, if instead I started to write incoherent, stupid posts and propagate inherently false and illogical ideas, would my doing so for entertainment purposes be grounds to discourage any reasonable person from concluding that it was plain stupid (and sharing their opinion too)." Is there anything besides Spetner's opinions that you can point to for your case against evolution? Spetner, like Dembski, Behe, and you, does not simply put forward an argument against natural selection but proceeds to bray about what fools the generations of scientists were for believing such a farfetched piece of fiction. Dembsky and Behe have not fared well as their claims and arguments were exposed to scrutiny by the scientific community. Whether or not Spetner and you will do better remains to be seen.

If you have anything further to say on this subject, take it to one of the forums on evolution and we can continue.

 

You don't have to be impressed with anything. But if you make claim you are obliged to prove it. I wasn't even supposed to quote Spetner or attempt anyway to disprove a claim that theory of evolution is scientifically valid one.
I did it almost as a favor and also, to substantiate my own conviction that theory is invalid.
It is one who makes the claim who is also obliged to prove it.
You don't have "reservations", but you make a claim that theory of evolution is a valid one.
Now you either prove it or you have no claim.

There is only one way you can prove it - prove it!

But that's exactly what you do.
All I see is you defining to me what the definition of hearsay is, all the while what you actually do is rely on someone else saying/writing that theory of evolution is a valid theory.
Now, where is your evidence? What is your argument? Where is your proof?

Well, if you have followed my posts you would see that I brought as an example a Big Bang theory which I consider to be scientifically valid one ( even though, understandably, there was no human around to witness it).
So, contrary to some of my opponent's wishes and hopes I am not so lacking in knowledge as to not know and understand what the definition of valid theory is.

When you say there is circumstantial evidence to support theory of evolution, don't just say there is but present it!
Like what that evidence is it ? Why is it supposed to be considered relevant evidence to support your claim and etc.
Otherwise all you write is an empty rhetoric.

See above.

Yeah, and just because you say it is "based on quite a lot of carefully gathered hard empirical evidence" you think I will believe you just because you say so?
Where is that empirical evidence you refer to ? What is it? How many times do I have to repeat these questions before you actually respond?

That's a classic example of ad hominem argument.
By definition ad hominem argument is "an argument which links the validity of premise to a characteristic or belief of a person advocating the premise".

Whatever Dr Spetner claims in any other context , or if there is any similarity of some other claims he makes with anyone else's claims on different subject, those other claims (whatever they might be) do not invalidate his quantitative analysis of the Darwin's theory of evolution and proof that odds are impossibly long for events to have occured as Darwinist hoax perpetrators would wish us believe.

Once again I must conclude that you do not read any of my posts but you are simply repeating the same mantra all along ("It is valid theory because it is valid and it is wrong to claim it is invalid when even New Darwinists claim it is a valid theory. To be fair to Spetner we have to say that Spetner hiself says there is validity to the premise of theory , he just disputes it's randomness ...." duh )

ONCE AGAIN read post # 89 from the thread I gave you link to, where I quoted Spetner.
I will specifically re-quote part of it , so you have another opportunity to finally read it.


"For the grand process of evolution to work, long sequences of “beneficial” mutations must be possible, each building on the previous one and conferring a selective advantage on the organism. The process must be able to lead not only from one species to another, but to the entire advance of life from a simple beginning to the full complexity of life today. There must be a long series of possible mutations, each of which conferring a selective advantage on the organism so that natural selection can make it take over the population. Moreover, there must be not just one, but a great many such series."

I couldn't care less if Darwin turns in his grave or rubs his hands in a glee.

As to real origins of species there is no doubt in my mind that it's naturalistic, for nothing in existence can by definition be unnaturalistic.

Now the crux of argument against Darwin's theory is as follows:

For the grand process of evolution to work, long sequences of “beneficial” mutations must be possible, each building on the previous one and conferring a selective advantage on the organism. The process must be able to lead not only from one species to another, but to the entire advance of life from a simple beginning to the full complexity of life today. There must be a long series of possible mutations, each of which conferring a selective advantage on the organism so that natural selection can make it take over the population. Moreover, there must be not just one, but a great many such series.

The chain must be continuous in that at each stage a change of a single base pair somewhere in the genome can lead to a more adaptive organism in some environmental context. That is, it should be possible to continue to climb an “adaptive” hill, one base change after another, without getting hung up on a local adaptive maximum. No one has ever shown this to be possible.

Now one might say that if evolution were hung up on a local Maximum, a large genetic change like a recombination or a transposition could bring it to another higher peak. Large adaptive changes are, however, highly improbable. They are orders of magnitude less probable than getting an adaptive change with a single nucleotide substitution, which is itself improbable. No one has shown this to be possible either.

Moreover, as I have noted in my book, the large mutations such as recombinations and transpositions are mediated by special enzymes and are executed with precision - not the sort of doings one would expect of events that were supposed to be the products of chance. Evolutionists chose the mechanism of randomness, by the way, because we can’t think of any other way beneficial mutations might occur in the absence of a law that might govern them. Genetic rearrangements may not be really random at all. They do not seem to qualify as the random mutations Neo-Darwinists can invoke whenever needed to escape from a local adaptive Maximum.

Evolutionists can argue, and rightly so, that we have no way of observing long series of mutations, since our observation time is limited to a relatively short interval. Our genetic observations over the past 100 years are more like a snapshot of evolution rather than a representative interval in which we can search for the required long series of changes. But our inability to observe such series cannot be used as a justification for the assumption that the series Darwinian theory requires indeed exist.

or this:


Quote:
"Spetner: The theoretical argument is the following. Evolution requires a long series of steps each consisting of an adaptive mutation followed by natural selection. In this series, each mutation must have a higher selective value than the previous. Thus, the evolving population moves across the adaptive landscape always rising toward higher adaptivity. It is generally accepted that the adaptive landscape is not just one big smooth hill with a single Maximum, but it is many hills of many different heights. Most likely, the population is on a hill that is not the highest in the landscape. It will then get stuck on a local Maximum of adaptivity and will not be able to move from it. This is particularly likely because the steps it takes are very small - only one nucleotide change at a time. The problem is compounded by the lack of freedom of a single nucleotide substitution to cause a change in the encoded amino acid. A single nucleotide substitution does not have the potential to change an amino acid to any one of the other 19. In general, its potential for change is limited to only 5 or 6 others. To evolve off the “dead point” of adaptivity, a larger step, such as the simultaneous change of more than one nucleotide, is required. Moreover, the probability is close to 1 that a single mutation in a population, even though it is adaptive, will disappear without taking over the population (see my book, Chapter 3). Therefore, many adaptive mutations must occur at each step.

The hypermutation in the B cells does this. It achieves all possible single, double, and triple mutations for the immune system, which allows them to obtain the information necessary to match a new antigen. Ordinary mutations, at the normal low rate, cannot add this information - even over long times. I shall explain why. Consider a population of antigen-activated B cells of, say, a billion individuals. In two weeks, there will be about 30 generations. Let’s say the population size will remain stable, so in two weeks there will be a total of 30 billion replications. With a mutation rate of 1 per 1000 nucleotides per replication, there will be an average of 30 million changes in any particular nucleotide during a two-week period. The probability of getting two particular nucleotides to change is one per million replications. Thus in two weeks, there will be an average of 30 thousand changes in any two particular nucleotides. There will be an average of 30 changes in any three particular nucleotides.

How many generations, and how long, would it take to get a particular multiple nucleotide change in a germ cell to have an effect on Neo-Darwinian evolution? Here, the mutation rate is about one per billion nucleotides per replication. Let’s suppose we're doing this experiment with a population of a billion bacteria. Then, in one generation, there will be an average of one change in a particular base. A particular double base change has a probability of one per quintillion, or 10-18. To get one of these would take a billion generations, or about 100,000 years. To get a triple change would take 1014, or a hundred trillion, years. That is why a long waiting time cannot compensate for a low mutation rate. I've given numbers here for a laboratory experiment with bacteria. Many more mutations would be expected world-wide. But the same kind of thing has to happen under NDT with multicelled animals as well. With vertebrates, for example, the breeding populations seldom exceed a few thousand. Multicelled animals would have many fewer mutations than those cited above for bacteria".

or this:


Quote:
Originally Posted by comment by reader of Spetner's book
On the statistical side of the argument, Dr. Spetner shows that even if information-gaining mutations did happen, Neo-Darwinian Evolution would still be a statistical impossibility. Using mutation rate, number of births per evolutionary step, number of steps in a species transition, and selective value of the mutations, he calculates the chance of a new species forming to be 2.7 x 10^(-2739), which is more than 2,000 orders of magnitude smaller than the chance of flipping 150 coins and having every one come up heads (which has the odds of one in 1^45). Because our minds cannot comprehend such small odds, Dr. Spetner does a good job of giving some relation to compare these odds to. For instance, the chance of all four players in a hand of bridge each being dealt 13 cards of one suit is one in about 160 billion (1.6 x 10^11), which is still trillions of times more likely to happen than a new species forming, according to his calculations. And that is the odds of just one species forming! Think about all the thousands of species there are. This is supposed to have happened thousands and thousands of times! You would have to multiply the 2.7 x 10^(-2739) by itself once for each species on earth (present and past). The odds are so mind-blowing it amazes me that people ignore this fact.




The point is that his theory is scientifically invalid and you do not appear to understood Spetner's argument against it.

Of course. That's why some people do question validity of Darwin's theory of evolution.
But dogma preachers have irrational faith in Darwin's theory and keep saying it is a valid theory. Well, guess what? Dogma is not scientifically valid theory.

See above.

Of course I am a great genius and every time I read my own posts it just reinforces my confidence and further demonstrates how far superior my intelligence is to average Joes who keep posting some total nonsense and repeat it as a mantra, without producing any plausible argument to support their claims.

Sure, let's do that

 

Fine.

 

this whole thread is lol

 

No I don't, it's not a matter of intelligence, it's a social issue more than anything. We allow parents and schools to drill this stuff into the heads of children too young to resist what they're being told by authoritarian figures.

 

Now that we're back on track, I can share a few thoughts on the OP's original post. I'm a believer, which I suppose makes me an inferior intellect, but my beliefs don't rest on what I've read in a book. I think scripture should be taken seriously, but not literally, and I read literature from other religions and atheism, as well as Christianity.

To me, belief in a Higher Power is a useful working hypothesis, supported by substantial evidence, bringing together converging data from a variety of sources, including reason, intuition, and personal experience--specifically: (1) the anthropic principle, or "fine tuning" of the universe; (2) the origin of life; (3) the phenomenon of human consciousness; (4) common coincidences of everyday life that seem "uncanny"; and (5) personal religious experiences involving strong intuition of a spiritual presence. I know that naturalistic explanations could be given for each of these. I could give them myself with one hand tied around my back. Like physicist Paul Davies, I think the God hypothesis satisfies the principle of Occam's razor. But I could be wrong. That's why I conceptualize my beliefs as faith, defined by Martin Luther as a "joyful bet". Is that stupid?

I take fellowship every couple of weeks (alternating with my Christian services) with a freethinkers group consisting mostly of atheists and agnostics. I love that group, but I do find the scientism a bit hard to take. By scientism, I mean the belief that science has answered or will answer most of the important questions facing humans. I have great respect for science, but it has its limitations. It's the best way we know to obtain reliable knowledge, our gold standard for propositions we can be confident about. But in my opinion, that in itself can be a limitation if it is accompanied by the notion that any belief that cannot meet the tests of rigorous scientific methodology must be dismissed or held in abeyance. Science will never, in my opinion, provide us with knowledge of ultimate meaning, since it tends to avoid subjects that don't lend themselves readily to rigorous testing. We can put such questions aside, and content ourselves with the stuff and gadgets science provides. Or we can take a chance with beliefs that are less rigorously supported, in the knowledge that we may be and probably will be wrong in some or most of our conclusions. I choose to do the latter.

The debate I just went through with Jumboli (above) was frustrating but also useful to me in making me aware of the importance of at least a degree of faith in everyday life. In his latest post, Jumboli, among other things, argues that evolution is based on hearsay. In clarifying this, he charged that I relied on books for my knowledge about evolution and that is a form of hearsay evidence, which I suppose it is. I confess I have not dug up any fossils, conducted any lab experiments, studied any living animals, etc., to form a conclusion that evolution by process of natural selection is a valid scientific theory. I have faith that the scientists who collected the actual data, published the results in reputable scientific journals, subjected it to peer review and replicative testing, are accurately reporting their findings. That is faith, although it seems to me to be reasonably necessary to function in the world. Santayana talks about the necessity for "animal faith", a rudimentary willingness to rely on our senses, believe that there is a world out there we are interacting with, etc., even though it is theoretically possible we could be wrong. I'm willing to take that leap, and I'm willing to go farther than science would in taking the leap of reliance on substantial evidence falling short of scientific proof for my belief in other things, as well, on matters of politics, religion, an social interactions. So go ahead: insult my intelligence.

 

i certainly do think less of them in terms of rationality, logical reasoning, psychological balance and ability to cope with life.

 

4--- majority of all potential coincidences actually never happen. what you see in the form of these everyday ones constitute a very small percentage (easily much under 1%). so this is no 'proof' of any supernatural stuff.
1--- it's true the constants of nature being what they are make the life on this planet possible. again this does not prove any supernatural entity fine tuning them, but simply that one constant followed from the other and eventually the situation was able to sustain itself for a long enough period of time for life to emerge. it's not so hard to imagine that being the case, rather than bringing some imaginary X into the equation that we don't have any need for in the first place.
2-- do you mean the appearance of first nucleic acids out of the primordial soup on earth? that's the origin of life. and it's not yet known how it came to be. not knowing the reason does not mean there is no rational reason.
3-- again you have the need to have the answers for everything. you can't live with uncertainty. it's true science is not yet able to explain all the things found in nature. that does not mean some god is the explanation for those things. there were once times when volcano eruptions were god's work. now science has long explained them. and in time, so it will do with human consciousness and origin of life.
5-- how 'bout "personal delusions" and "psychotic breaks"? that's a more accurate name for what you are describing.

yes it is stupid. in my opinion most ppl are religious because they have a need for something supernatural, mystical, unexplained, not because they think their religion holds true. and it's ironic that at the same time they can't stand that mysticism and have the need to have an explanation for it -- the X, the god, the UFO-s, the destiny and what not. the god only comes into play because of the inability of those individuals to stand that uncertainty. instead of admitting "i don't know" they say "i know. it's god/destiny/UFO/etc". and, yes, such a resolution is utterly stupid and cowardly.

 

Heh. Belief or non-belief is a philosophical decision which each person will have to make for themselves. There's nothing stupid about looking at the world and feeling it to be likely that there is a God. Nor is there anything stupid about thinking it's very unlikely. I am personally and agnostic, but I can see where both sides are coming from. At the end of the day, the only people whose intelligence I think less of are the ones that have to shove their beliefs down other people's throats: holier-than-thou theists and smug, intellectually-elitist atheists. There are a lot of these on this forum, especially the latter, and all they do is derail interesting discussions with their copy/paste ego wars. It's time for all of you people who think you're so enlightened to grow the fuck up, or leave the serious discussion to the people who have.

 

I'll take these in the strange order you address them:

4. You introduced the word "proof"--a term I would never use. I'm just presenting considerations that lead me to bet on God. Can you prove that any so-called coincidences are really that? (not that you have to).

2. No, I mean life, not mere nucleic acids. Nucleic acids store life's software; proteins provide the hardware. But the two can support each other only because there is a highly refined communication channel between them: the genetic code, whether DNA or RNA. How did that come about? Scientists still can't put their finger on what it is that separates a living organism from other chemical processes. Matter tends to be passive, responding to external forces, like the proverbial "dead cat bounce'. Live cats are a different story in terms of autonomy and predictability, as any cat lover knows. What physical properties of chemicals confer autonomy on living organisms? As you say, it's not known how life came to be. We could settle for that, or we could speculate. Many on this forum speculate that it somehow came from the "primordial soup", Haldane's term from the 1920s that is now considered somewhat archaic in science. Even in a simple organism, DNA contains millions of atoms, and the precise sequence among them is crucial for making an organism. The odds against even a simple protein happening by chance alone are something like 10 followed by 40 thousand zeros to one! So I speculate that it had a different origin, and leave open the possibility of intelligence. Why rule that out?

3. I only need answers that relate to my personal sense of meaning. It certainly would be stupid to fall to our knees before the God of Gaps any time an unexplained event appears, and there are sound reasons why scientists should prefer naturalistic explanations to supernaturalistic ones. But those reasons have more to do with policy than with ultimate reality. If I waited for scientific proof before forming an opinion about anything, I'd probably be dead before science came up with an answer to most of the questions that I consider important in life. Science tends to address questions that lend themselves to rigorous testing, which is the gold standard for producing reliable knowledge. But science, especially "hard science", isn't particularly good in answering questions about meaning, especially ultimate meaning, for one thing because most scientists (in their role as scientists, not polemicists like Dawkins) wouldn't touch such questions with a ten foot pole. In answering questions about meaning, I either have to suspend judgment, which by definition would lead to a meaningless life, or use some of the cruder tools at the disposal of the human intellect: intuition, reflection, intelligent betting, etc. We know that when we use such means, mistakes are inevitable. I'll take my chances.

5. "Accurate". Is there scientific proof for that characterization, or are you just relying on a hunch? (that's a compliment, not a putdown). As one who is prone to religious experiences, I suppose I'm not in the best position to tell whether I'm psychotic or not. The experiences I've had are "religious experiences" primarily on the basis of self-interpretation. Like everything else, they're subject to other interpretations: psychotic break, delusion, suggestion, brain chemistry, etc. As I've often said before, my own experiences are easily explained in naturalistic terms, and would seem unremarkable to a naturalistic observer. I was wrestling over the solution to a human relations problem involving how to deal with co-workers, and particularly apt bible verses came to mind that changed my way of looking at the world and people from then on. Saint Augustine also was grappling with a probem, when he heard children chanting "Read" and took this as a message from God to turn to the Bible, which he opened to a passage he considered to be a relevant answer. Dr. Francis Collins, geneticist and evangelical Christian, saw a waterfall that reminded him of the Trinity. I'd say experiences like this should be kept on a short leash and evaluated in the context of the totality of other factors bearing on credibility--intuition, reason, and evidence. But if they lead to meaningful insights, I wouldn't dismiss them as psychotic or delusional jut because they didn't happen to us.

People are religious for a variety of reasons. To reduce them to common pattern and offer a simplistic materialistic explanation serves a need explain things in scientific terms--even though the science in this context is pseudoscience. Your explanation provides the illusion (delusion?) of certainty and enables you to explain away, put down, and dismiss phenomena that would otherwise complicate your world.

 

Overwhelming majority of human beings are egregiously stupid creatures, regardless of what they claim to believe or not to believe.
Ergo I think less of almost all of the people's intelligence, without discrimination of theists or atheists.

 

We know that. You've said it often enough before.

 

You need to hear the truth again lest the lies that you hear during the week overcome.:cheers2:

 

2. i don't remember the exact number but, yes, the odds for that first protein's birth are estimated to have been slim. but don't you see that introducing intelligence into the subject would complicate this situation even more? it would make it even less probable. the chance of one protein coming into existence --slim. the chance of one protein coming into existence as a result of actions of another complicated intelligent being ---slim*1000000000 (an artificially chosen number here). not only do we now have to explain away with that first protein which is a task in itself, but we also have an intelligent life form to explain.

3. if by meaning you have in mind 'meaning of life' and the likes then --- big news -- who says life has a meaning before you define it yourself? and why do you even need there to be such a meaning in the first place?
also -- why do you need to form an opinion about everything? and --- if you take it upon yourself to form an opinion on a subject that is not yet fully understood, then by artificially deciding in favor of one certain approach -- the one that has never had anything to do with science at all (and this is a scientific debate) -- you are distorting the subject matter.
so -- unless you know how that first protein came to be your life is meaningless? this is exactly why i think religious ppl have defective logic reasoning. there are an infinite number of questions/problems in the world. you'll never answer even a considerable part of them. you'll never possess that knowledge. none of us will.

5. it has been proven in laboratory that the so-called 'religious experiences' are neurologically the same as schizophrenic episodes. both have excess dopamine in the brain's mesolimbic pathways during their episode/"experience". both are analogous in their nature.

my explanation does not imply to have certainty in other matters as those already scientifically confirmed. you, on the other hand, have the need to fill in the blanks everywhere, as i already pointed out. you don't know how exactly that first protein came to be so in order not to have an answer you rally to god. it's not an argument, it's a personal need to have a safety net, not to feel insecure, not to have to deal with the existential fear of dying, not to deal with life as a human being but as something potentially more.

also, ppl are born atheists. at birth none of us has a religion. in order for your own religious affiliations to have any weight (for yourself) you should first analyze how it is you came to be religious and whether it's not a complex or some other psychological defense/escape mechanism. i say this because for most religious ppl i've come in contact with their religion is nothing more but a means to avoid dealing with/facing the real problems in life. in my opinion that disqualifies their religious arguments because they are explaining things the way they want them to be, not the way they perceive them to be. in that case they should be using the verbs 'wish', 'want', 'desire'; not 'think', 'know'.

 

I think your logic is faulty here. If you see something highly improbable happening, that would support the conclusion that it probably didn't happen by chance. One way we know of that things happen not by chance, particularly if they seem to be highly ordered and well put together, is that they happened by intelligent design. There are other possible explanations to consider. Once the phenomenon of life is under way, natural selection kicks in. There may also be non-randomizing factors we aren't taking into account or aren't aware of. And I agree that saying an intelligence was involved raises a host of other questions. But I don't think you could reason that any of these, including intelligence, would increase the improbability of the event. Otherwise, chance would be the only explanation we could give for anything.

 

see this is where we part ways. to me, if something is highly improbable and still takes place it doesn't draw any associations with an intelligent design. to me, that is just a coincidence. i acknowledge that random and intended actions of everybody and everything on this planet are bound to interact with each other in unforeseeable ways -- coincidences. it would be anomalous if they didn't.
conspiracy theorists are another group according to whom these coincidences are the result of an intelligent design. ring any bells?

actually, we don't know whether intelligence would raise or lower that probability. i can agree with that.

i find it all remarkable and amazing as well. and i never had the need to introduce a term of god/supreme being into it. not once. as i grew up my mom showed me the bible (i even went to sunday school a few times). she told me i could read it but it was up to me what to make of it. i had the complete freedom, as a kid, to contemplate life and make my own conclusions. it is because of that freedom that i hold these observations and conclusions i made applicable. at least for myself.

if you're interested one of the books to check out is Fred Previc The Dopaminergic Mind in Human Evolution and History.

how do you know it's the same if you've never tried drugs?

now you're just quoting me and turning it around. first --- religious belief requires a choice or habit. since atheism is a lack of religion it's what we're all born with -- with no religion. that's what i meant. it's the realization of atheism or understanding that one fits the description by the current local conditions in thought that comes later on in life.
"to avoid dealing with certain disturbing experiences" ---- or lack of any such experiences. you're just saying that to counteract my example, right? i haven't met anybody for whom atheism was a complex. and i'd like to think that statistically, with all the atheists i've encountered in my life i would have stumbled upon at least one...

i get what you're saying. but i have the same appreciation of life without god. why would i need it then? that's how this argument can be turned around.

 

I have no intention to get into the dialog between you and Okiefreak , but I would like to make a specific note in regards to your statement.

Keep in mind that I am NOT a proponent of Intelligent Design , I simply maintain that there is nothing but myths when it comes to explanation of origin and development of species and Darwin's theory is no different in this regard from ancient myths of Creation of Hindus, Babylonians, Greeks and etc.

When you say "to me, if something is highly improbable and still takes place it doesn't draw any associations with an intelligent design", well, that part I will not debate. But when you add "to me, that is just a coincidence" you indeed abandon critical, scientific thinking and employ wishful one instead.

There is a thing called Probability Theory and it is empirically testable one btw.
( For quick reference see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_theory )

If you have evidence of someone having amassed $100 trillion dollars of fortune in a matter of few years and if you have no plausible theory whatsoever to explain how that person got so much of wealth, you can hardly write it off as "probably he was extremely lucky playing cards in Las Vegas , kept winning one hand after another, doubling on every single bet he made and winning 24/7 for the time spent there. All this must have been a mere coincedence , just because there is no other way in my imagination to come up with any other explanation how it could have happened".

There most certainly is an explanation for anything that exists, including the explanation of how it came into existence and became what it is over the time.
Just because we don't know something yet (or may never be capable of knowing) doesn't mean that any wishful thinking can rightfully be accepted as a valid explanation of how it happened.