Atheists Call 9-11 Memorial Cross "Grossly Offensive"

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Cerpin Taxt

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
11,940
542
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Where is the evidence?

It would appear you don't know what evidence is and how it works, but it is literally all over the place. Evolution I'd a more complete theory than quantum mechanics, but (giving you the benefit of the doubt, here, although not without reservation) you don't believe in Jesus-particles mediating the gravitational force, do you?

Now, about those questions I asked you... ?
 

ThinClient

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2013
3,977
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The point is that you're never going to accept the supernatural conclusion because you're presuppositionally against it. A man could grow a new arm right in front of you and you'd be like "god of the gaps" "god of the gaps" we don't know how that happened but we're working on it.

A supernatural conclusion requires supernatural evidence.

Order, complexity, the universe itself, that's all natural physical evidence.

You can't point to natural evidence to support a supernatural conclusion.



If a man grew a new arm in front of me, I certainly wouldn't claim god. The initial claim would be "I don't know, but we'll find out eventually" and then we'd go on with the discovery process using the scientific method.
 

ThinClient

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2013
3,977
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He tells a story about secretion of mucus creating a rudimentary lens. Look if you like this story who am I to argue with you? To me, its a fairy tale.

Note, he isn't talking about extant eyes he's talking about a fictional eye that lived happily ever after.

You didn't pay attention to the Mollusk examples, did you.
 

buckshot24

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2009
9,916
85
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A supernatural conclusion requires supernatural evidence.

Order, complexity, the universe itself, that's all natural physical evidence.

You can't point to natural evidence to support a supernatural conclusion.



If a man grew a new arm in front of me, I certainly wouldn't claim god. The initial claim would be "I don't know, but we'll find out eventually" and then we'd go on with the discovery process using the scientific method.
In other words, you agree with everything I wrote. Thanks.

Out of curiosity what would be an example of "supernatural evidence"?
 

buckshot24

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2009
9,916
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It would appear you don't know what evidence is and how it works, but it is literally all over the place. Evolution I'd a more complete theory than quantum mechanics, but (giving you the benefit of the doubt, here, although not without reservation) you don't believe in Jesus-particles mediating the gravitational force, do you?

Now, about those questions I asked you... ?
I don't particularly like you. TC and I are becoming fast buddies though.
 

buckshot24

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2009
9,916
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I'll give you all the nucleotides/amino acids you ask for and I'll even allow you an environment where all of them wouldn't dissolve quickly (which is mutually exclusive in some cases, ie. an impossible environment) and allow that all of the molecules are the proper chirality (handedness). I'll even allow that you manipulate the environment in totally unrealistic ways. You'll never get self replicating molecules. If you don't like the DNA/RNA first theory of life then I'll give you the same level of "parts" and let you manipulate the environment in totally unrealistic ways.

Saying life is decreed (or whatever you said) because there are the same elements in life as there are in the environment is retarded.
 
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buckshot24

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2009
9,916
85
91
Whenever I see Neil Degrasse Tyson I think of Sinbad.

sinbad_tyson.jpg
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
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On that note, I have often wondered how the religious community would take it if we do some day discover life on another planet.

I haven't seen anything Biblical pointing to life on another planet, so I think it will be wholesale Biblilcal abandonment at that point if intelligent, fully functional beings were ever contacted.

But then what defines "life" -- it can't even be agreed upon now what a life really is, or what is the spark that brings us to life.
We didn't even the scientific know-how to even spot exoplanets until a few years ago, despite having humongous telescopes in space, but once we figured out the "trick" to it, suddenly we started discovering hundreds of exoplanets in close proximity of our own.

You're right, but I think conditions have to be extemely specific (if we're using earth as an example) Being even 1 percent closer to our Sun would spell disaster, and as little as 5 percent further would also freeze us out. I don't think we have hardly any wiggle room for to thrive (as we currently know it), IMO.


I imagine that in a decade or two we'll have narrowed down which planets nearby have similar conditions to our own, that would allow for life forms such as ourselves to thrive, and from there try to narrow down which of those planets has sent some kind of communication signal (keeping in mind that if we go by current general relativity, these messages would be thousands of years old).

I started a thread in the DC sometime ago discussing this very thing -- planets a few thousand lightyears away does seem to be good candidates.
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,851
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I haven't seen anything Biblical pointing to life on another planet, so I think it will be wholesale Biblilcal abandonment at that point if intelligent, fully functional beings were ever contacted.

That's interesting; I wonder how other members of the various religious communities would view the event? I also wonder if intelligent life on other planets had a similar religious ideal, would they view the earth beings as inferior if they encountered us?

But then what defines "life" -- it can't even be agreed upon now what a life really is, or what is the spark that brings us to life.

True - by some definitions of life, flame would be considered alive. By other definitions of life, a virus isn't alive. I guess the entire definition of life is still in debate, especially after the discovery of these humongous viruses that were found recently that have 2300 genes:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013...t-carries-2300-genes-that-are-new-to-biology/

You're right, but I think conditions have to be extemely specific (if we're using earth as an example) Being even 1 percent closer to our Sun would spell disaster, and as little as 5 percent further would also freeze us out. I don't think we have hardly any wiggle room for to thrive (as we currently know it), IMO.

They have ways of detecting the basic makeup of chemicals via spectral analysis; as long as the general pattern matches our earth, then that would imply that the conditions to create life may be present. Of those worlds, how many actually sprung up life, and of the ones that sprung up life, which ones have life forms similar to ours, would be the tougher questions. We could find a planet that looks to have the exact same chemical makeup as earth, only to find it's only inhabited by fungus, or something along those lines.

Also there are some fungus spores which are so tough that they can literally survive the vacuum of space; this has given rise to postulation that spores have the possibility of piggybacking comets and other such objects from one planet to another.

I started a thread in the DC sometime ago discussing this very thing -- planets a few thousand lightyears away does seem to be good candidates.

The galaxy is humongous and radio waves take more and more power to have enough energy to convey a message, since by nature the energy disperses the more farther out you get. I think Tesla was onto the right idea in using massive bodies of material to convey messages to other planets; for example if an alien civilization was using the pulses of a sun or other such massive object to send messages, they wouldn't have to use much power, they would just have to modify the power output of an existing source.

While manipulating a sun seems ridiculously impossible to us humans, it's conceivable that an alien civilization of sufficient technology could do it; the science fiction term "dyson sphere" came from the idea of an alien civilization using an entire sun as an everlasting power source (solving all energy problems within a solar system for the life of the sun, so for a few billion years).
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
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That's interesting; I wonder how other members of the various religious communities would view the event? I also wonder if intelligent life on other planets had a similar religious ideal, would they view the earth beings as inferior if they encountered us?

I don't disagree with the rest of your post, this is interesting to me:

Actually, life can survive the most extreme and seemingly uninabitable conditions here on earth, so life should be relatively easy to find throughout the Universe, IMO, if we could actually set foot on another planet. Intelligent life, maybe not so easy... but life should be.

Me, I'd be shocked, personally, but I don't know how'd I react as far as my beliefs are concerned. But "on the fence" believers would certainly abandon the Bible, while hard-core believers would have to be pulled from it.

Personally, I think the Universe is competely barren. It's so darn hostile, bathed in radiation... you can die within 15 seconds if competely exposed to the vaccum of space, unless we find a planet with a habitable atmosphere.

Most planets we've found are super-sized Jupiters, close to stars, so we really so far, have a limited selection of planets.
 

Juddog

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2006
7,851
6
81
I don't disagree with the rest of your post, this is interesting to me:

Actually, life can survive the most extreme and seemingly uninabitable conditions here on earth, so life should be relatively easy to find throughout the Universe, IMO, if we could actually set foot on another planet. Intelligent life, maybe not so easy... but life should be.

Me, I'd be shocked, personally, but I don't know how'd I react as far as my beliefs are concerned. But "on the fence" believers would certainly abandon the Bible, while hard-core believers would have to be pulled from it.

Personally, I think the Universe is competely barren. It's so darn hostile, bathed in radiation... you can die within 15 seconds if competely exposed to the vaccum of space, unless we find a planet with a habitable atmosphere.

Most planets we've found are super-sized Jupiters, close to stars, so we really so far, have a limited selection of planets.

The super-sized Jupiters were just easier to spot because of their size. Keep in mind that the entire idea of exoplanets wasn't confirmed until literally a few years ago, and it wasn't until this year that we found our first earth-like planet, on January 7th:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KOI-172.02

Then again that planet is probably inhabitable, but it shows that the process is starting to get refined; this entire thing is extremely new. The first time an expoplanet was officially confirmed was in 2003, so the entire process is only a decade old. In the course of the past 10 years, they have moved from one confirmed exoplanet to 942 confirmed exoplanets, and the total number of exoplanets is currently estimated to be in the area of 150 billion - in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

Keep in mind that there are hundreds of billions of known galaxies; if other galaxies are similar to ours, that means that there are an incredibly large number of planets out there. Based on the fact that we have discovered an earth-like planet (that most likely can't foster life yet, but still we found similar conditions), out of a limited number of a few hundred, then even if earth-like planets were one in a thousand that would still leave us with billions of billions (e.g. quintillions) of earth-like planets in the universe.

The odds are staggering that life exists out there besides our own. I find it highly unlikely, based upon the ability of life on this planet to adapt, that life doesn't already exist elsewhere in the universe. Even if the odds of an earth-like planet with the right conditions were one in ten thousand, that would still leave us with billions upon billions of earth-like planets. Given the humongous number of earth like planets out there, just out of sheer odds, I would say the odds are vastly in the favor of alien civilizations.

Think about how much humanity has advanced in the last century alone; we went from very basic cars to advanced vehicles like the Bugatti, put up satellites orbiting around our planet, came up with nuclear bombs, microwaves, robots, drones, AI, computers so advanced we can fit 128 GB on a single phone in the palm of our hands, etc.. Imagine how advanced tech will be yet another hundred years from now, or a thousand, or a million. Chances are that there are species out there that have existed longer than the entire planet Earth, given that there are other exoplanets out there billions of years older than ours.

In such a climate, of a vast network of super advanced aliens, we'd seem like a pretty damn backwards batch of bacteria in comparison. It's kind of like when you think of a bacteria trying to communicate with you; you just don't bother, because it's so small and insignificant - I'd imagine in terms of a universal scale, humans are that bacteria trying to communicate with a giant, or in other words our entire thousands of years of civilization no more equivalent than mold on a piece of bread to a more advanced species.

Our entire concept of individuality might seem alien, in and of itself, to cultures that have had a million years + to evolve and have a consciousness that hops from one body to the next.

The fact that we only figured out how to even see exoplanets literally ten years ago shows how backwards we are as a species, when you think of the idea of another species that had sight and contact with other exoplanets for a million years or more. More likely than not, the universe is chock full of intelligent life forms, waiting for humanity to get with the times and reach out across the vast distances of space using another method than what we have limited ourselves to.
 

Retro Rob

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2012
8,151
108
106
The super-sized Jupiters were just easier to spot because of their size. Keep in mind that the entire idea of exoplanets wasn't confirmed until literally a few years ago, and it wasn't until this year that we found our first earth-like planet, on January 7th:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KOI-172.02

Then again that planet is probably inhabitable, but it shows that the process is starting to get refined; this entire thing is extremely new. The first time an expoplanet was officially confirmed was in 2003, so the entire process is only a decade old. In the course of the past 10 years, they have moved from one confirmed exoplanet to 942 confirmed exoplanets, and the total number of exoplanets is currently estimated to be in the area of 150 billion - in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

Keep in mind that there are hundreds of billions of known galaxies; if other galaxies are similar to ours, that means that there are an incredibly large number of planets out there. Based on the fact that we have discovered an earth-like planet (that most likely can't foster life yet, but still we found similar conditions), out of a limited number of a few hundred, then even if earth-like planets were one in a thousand that would still leave us with billions of billions (e.g. quintillions) of earth-like planets in the universe.

The odds are staggering that life exists out there besides our own. I find it highly unlikely, based upon the ability of life on this planet to adapt, that life doesn't already exist elsewhere in the universe. Even if the odds of an earth-like planet with the right conditions were one in ten thousand, that would still leave us with billions upon billions of earth-like planets. Given the humongous number of earth like planets out there, just out of sheer odds, I would say the odds are vastly in the favor of alien civilizations.

Think about how much humanity has advanced in the last century alone; we went from very basic cars to advanced vehicles like the Bugatti, put up satellites orbiting around our planet, came up with nuclear bombs, microwaves, robots, drones, AI, computers so advanced we can fit 128 GB on a single phone in the palm of our hands, etc.. Imagine how advanced tech will be yet another hundred years from now, or a thousand, or a million. Chances are that there are species out there that have existed longer than the entire planet Earth, given that there are other exoplanets out there billions of years older than ours.

In such a climate, of a vast network of super advanced aliens, we'd seem like a pretty damn backwards batch of bacteria in comparison. It's kind of like when you think of a bacteria trying to communicate with you; you just don't bother, because it's so small and insignificant - I'd imagine in terms of a universal scale, humans are that bacteria trying to communicate with a giant, or in other words our entire thousands of years of civilization no more equivalent than mold on a piece of bread to a more advanced species.

Our entire concept of individuality might seem alien, in and of itself, to cultures that have had a million years + to evolve and have a consciousness that hops from one body to the next.

The fact that we only figured out how to even see exoplanets literally ten years ago shows how backwards we are as a species, when you think of the idea of another species that had sight and contact with other exoplanets for a million years or more. More likely than not, the universe is chock full of intelligent life forms, waiting for humanity to get with the times and reach out across the vast distances of space using another method than what we have limited ourselves to.

While I read through and completely agree, I think it would be prudent that we don't assume we are not alone, particularly in the face of having next to zero observable evidence.

I would say this would also create sort of a Firma paradox, and why we haven't been contacted yet, of life is presumably common and intelligent.

The earth, as of now, is extremely atypical -- I honestly don't think we can know unless we can prove that the earth isn't a special planet as it seem.
 

ThinClient

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2013
3,977
4
0
You're right, but I think conditions have to be extemely specific (if we're using earth as an example) Being even 1 percent closer to our Sun would spell disaster, and as little as 5 percent further would also freeze us out. I don't think we have hardly any wiggle room for to thrive (as we currently know it), IMO.

Actually, earth is on the outer edge of the GLZ and the GLZ is a LOT more than 1% wide. We can't get much farther AWAY from the sun, but we have a surprising amount of wiggle room with how close we can get.

It's not 1%.

However, keep in mind that we're still talking billions of miles. 1% is HUUUUUUGE. An AU is 149,597,871 KM so 1% of that is 1.5 million KM. That's a ridiculous amount of room. It's like.... eight times the distance to the moon to reach the outer edge of the GLZ.
 

Cerpin Taxt

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
11,940
542
126
I haven't seen anything Biblical pointing to life on another planet, so I think it will be wholesale Biblilcal abandonment at that point...
Have you seen anything Biblical pointing to quantum entanglement? If not, why wasn't there wholesale abandonment after the results if the EPR experiment?

... if intelligent, fully functional beings were ever contacted.
How would you know they're "intelligent"? What does "fully functional" mean? What does a "less-than-fully functional organism" look like?