Prove that God exists

[Final-Fan]

padib said:

Final-Fan said:

Well, although historians can possibly confirm or disconfirm certain hypotheses, it's not the same.  You can't form an opinion about whether Shakespeare really wrote his plays and then go out and do an experiment to prove it wrong. You can only hope that documents surface shedding more light on the subject, or examine various existing documents to let experts try to come to consensus on an educated guess.  That's all they're doing with the Pauline letters, even if they are fairly confident in their guess.  It's a respectable field, but it doesn't offer the same certainty science like physics does.  Studying the history of evolution is sometimes a little bit of the same detective game (archaeology), but one of the differences is that they have much much more evidence to play with.  

I want to give you props for actually looking into what I wrote (not that you didn't normally, you always do, but I'm looking at others on the secular side). I'd like it to serve as an example.

Now I agree that evolution plays the same detective game (archaology, geology, history, etc.) and has more evidence to work with (here I'll slide in "as much as creationism does", since they work off the same data). However, the nature of the game is the same. That's why bolded, though true, is double-edged.

Also, though the study of origins has more data to work with as you mentioned, there are parts of the theological study that goes beyond simple he-said she-said (history). This theological exercise takes into account lexical analysis, grammatical analysis, dates, times, places and people, and statistics (the ones I can recount). So thought it falls under one category "history" for all suits and purposes, you can also gather from there linguistics, mathematics and forensics. The two italicized are also largely used in the study of origins. I hope I didn't bore you with this, I just want to show you how over-rated and under-rated some things are so as to give us a better grasp on the scientific values of the various fields (in this case Theology versus Study of Origins). Without going too deeply into the debate I hope you see where I'm coming from.

The hostile witness thing is a decent point, but it fails because it doesn't show anything but that people generally believed that the stuff happened almost two centuries later.  And keep in mind that people were more superstitious and credulous about the supernatural.  Notice also that your sources disagree.  The Talmud says he was hung.  If it is wrong there, how can you rely on it for the other information?  

So, I just want to keep things separate. The hostile witness is a tool in history to give more value to one source than another given a certain topic. Given their hostile view to the topic at hand, they would be less prone to sugar-coating, claiming proponents of the topic, or giving a positive view of the topic. However, they could also be prone to giving a negative view of the topic which doesn't correspond with the reality of things and they could falsify other parts of the topic to their ends.

As for my point, which makes use of the hostile witness argument, it goes beyond them believing that the stuff happened. It goes far beyond believing and the time is much tighter than 2 centures. To recall, here are the records and their dates:

Josephus AD 93

Mara bar Sarapion sometime btw 73 AD and the 3rd century

the Talmud 70–200 CE

Lucian 2nd Century AD

Celsus around 180 AD

Tacitus 116 AD

Pliny the younger c. 112

Suetonius c. 69–140

Now remember, Jesus alledgedly died 33AD. That means that, for instance, suetonius is at best only 36 years later and at worst 100 years later. Pliny the younger is only 80 years later. Josepus, only 60 years later. For that period, these are staggeringly close records. Next, you have the fact that these historians are from very different backgrounds and regions, of different levels of faith and superstition.

From Wikipedia:

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire.

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius (ca. 69/75 – after 130), was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the earlyImperial era.

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61 AD – ca. 112 AD), better known as Pliny the Younger, was alawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educated him.

Mara bar ("son of ") Serapion, sometimes spelled Mara bar Sarapion was a Stoic philosopher from the Roman province of Syria. He wrote a letter in Syriac to his son, who was also named Serapion.^[1] This writing is said to be one of the earliest non-Jewish, non-Christian references to a historical Jesus.

Titus Flavius Josephus (37 – c. A.D. 100),^[2] also called Joseph ben Matityahu (Biblical Hebrew: יוסף בן מתתיהו, Yosef ben Matityahu),^[3] was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War which resulted in the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

The Talmud (Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד talmūd "instruction, learning", from a root lmd "teach, study") is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record ofrabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history.

What you describe about the bacteria eating citrate is not possible.  You don't have a gene telling you not to eat grass and dirt; it just doesn't sustain you.  Your body can't turn that into energy to keep you going.  (At all for dirt; efficiently enough for grass.)  

I think final-fan, as honest as you are, here is a case where you logic blocks due to your a priori (your predisposition to disbelieve what I'm trying to tell you). To counter-point, I'll simply restate what you told me earlier hopefully you'll see where I'm getting at.

 

  Did you know they watched bacteria that are famous for not eating citrate turn into bacteria that  love to eat it? 

Keep in mind that to understand my point above that I'm trying to demonstrate (that the lacking of the gene to eat citrate not be a cause for non-sustainability), you need to understand that devolution does not only imply loss of information, but also a shuffling around of things without increased complexity, a modification of something maybe with minor loss of complexity but not necessarily a full loss of function. In other words, it's somewhat the mirror image in that evolution is the same, only that when there is a change it is upward rather than downward. It's like seeing yourself in the mirror. Where a scar was on the left before, it is now on the right, but everything else in the image is virtually the same. Lateral and upward becomes lateral and downward. You have the same theory, to understand devolution just flip it upside down. Or, if you also see devolution as fact, to understand my view simply erase the upward arrow (which I don't believe as fact). With that, the below can be revised (italics):

Devolution alleges that changes can only take place via loss of information, i.e. not adding or simply changing things.  This does not hold up to reality.  For instance, in the E. coli experiment there have been so many mutations that if devolution was how bacteria changed over time there would be nothing of them left by now!   

Also note that, as evolution, devolution accepts that the parent species survive in parallel.

I'm not saying that loss of information isn't among the evolutionary processes; it is.  The fusion of two of our chromosomes into one, which is a difference between us and the other apes, could be considered loss of information IMO.  But it certainly isn't the only process.  

@italics. Good, I'm glad to hear it. That is a phenomenon I am certain to be factual. With the whole sentence I can agree. I'd just like to look into the whole fusion of chromosomes thing. I don't see that as a devolution but as a design reuse, but that's just my view.

 

I say it's bullshit because after billions of years of devolution there would really be nothing left.  Also, things that mutate/evolve faster should have much much much less information in their DNA since they should be losing it faster; but that's not the case AFAIK.

 

That's why the logic is a little circular. To break out, you need to consider the alternative that the universe may not be as old as it appears to be, given other pieces of evidence. Also, how would you define inbreeding after the evolution of a species into a new one? Also note that devolution, the way I understand it, does not lead to a new species, but to a different form within a species. For intance, different breeds of dogs fall into devolutions of a more complex and gene-rich parent dog. They are different breeds, but all within the same species. How would evolution account for inbreeding phenomena after a new evolution of one species into a new one? How does evolution account for the phenomenon that hybrids just as mules or ligers can't procreate? How does evolution handles the impossible inter-species breeding? How are those boundaries defined in evolution? This for me is one major hole in the theory.

Devolution only works as long as it makes positive changes.  If devolution hurts the organism, the devolved individual is not as likely to succeed and make an impression on the future population.  Babies born with no heart die.  The rationale behind eugenics was to take this a step further and actively prevent subpar individuals from reproducing, thereby improving future populations because only the better ones were able to contribute.  We only don't do that because it's cruel, and too subjective.  Anyway, that's why devolution doesn't overwhelm evolution as a force of change, even if it has more of an effect on every generation (which I don't know). 

I think devolution mostly works with inbreeding. To recall, imbreeding:

Inbreeding is the reproduction from the mating of two genetically related parents. Inbreeding results in increased homozygosity, which can increase the chances of offspring being affected by recessive or deleterious traits. This generally leads to a decreased fitness of a population, which is called inbreeding depression. Deleterious alleles causing inbreeding depression can subsequently be removed throughculling, which is also known as genetic purging.

I'm not sure of this, but I believe inbreeding even leads to sterility after a certain degree of inbreeding. In other words, I don't believe devolution works to a point where babies would be born with no heart. If we were at that point in history all remaining humans would probably be sterile. :)

In the creationist scenario, the gene pool would have been much larger in the past to support inbreeding to a certain degree, but nowadays it is completely unsustainable. As a matter of theology, incest was only forbidden as of Moses, never prior. So yes, Adam's offspring did inbreed. Gross? Yes to us now, but then it was natural. Obviously in terms of genetics the matter has changed, and socioligically it follows. Again, theologically speaking, God forbade it as of Moses (which in turn affects society's view of it today by indirection, along with other things such as the generation of genetic monsters literally speaking).

All in all a great post, but I believe there may be some misconceptions on devolution, inbreeding and the surrounding topics. In the mean time, I'll be reading this:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucbhdjm/courses/b242/InbrDrift/InbrDrift.html

Why is it double-edged?  My point was that although in SOME cases they both rely on educated guesses (very well educated depending on available info), the study of evolution does NOT rely only on that.  I don't see what's double edged about this.  It also changes the nature of the game when this is the case, and the game is also different when the evidence available is orders of magnitude greater. 

And, no, they don't work off all the same data.  Or more precisely, the data is available to both sides but is not utilized by both sides.  For example, archaeologists can examine the fossil record to see how organisms apparently changed over time and rose and fell with the environmental changes etc.; creationists attempt to shoehorn the same evidence into compatibility with the story of the Great Flood, with much less success. 

On the other hand, the writings of 1st-3rd century Mediterraneans are of little import to the study of evolution. 

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It was not apparent before that you were claiming all those sources as hostile witnesses.  I was not impressed by what I saw in the Sarapion letter; I didn't read the others. 

In what way do these sources go "far beyond" believing the events happened? 

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No, I don't see at all.  It's not the SAME bacteria, it's their mutated descendants.  And the change wasn't sudden, it seems to have been a series of mutations that were only neutral at first, not beneficial, then slightly useful for citrate, then fully useful. 

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Yes of course I didn't mean the species would disappear, I meant if you could only evolve/devolve by losing pieces of your genetic code then you'd obviously have organisms with less and less DNA as time went on.  The faster they changed, the less they'd have, and NONE OF THIS IS TRUE.  Granting that you don't stipulate the same time scale in the past that science is aware of, you should still admit that this should even be the case for the historical past, and it's not there, either.  We have access to prehistoric bacteria and they don't have way more DNA than modern bacteria in general. 

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Mules and ligers are from parents sufficiently speciated that the differences cause the offspring to be ... wrong.  Dogs and cats can't interbreed, right?  Well, lions and tigers are closer, just close enough to produce offspring, but different enough that there are problems with them.  Once lions and tigers become different enough they won't be able to do it at all anymore. 

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"Gene pool" There is actually an interesting article about this:  http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may99/926380864.Ge.r.html

But really if you're going to go with literal Bible interpretations, i.e. the human race is literally all descended from two individuals, then as the link notes you're also stuck with the Flood, which is just not supported by the data at all.