Prove that God exists

[Final-Fan]

padib said:

Final-Fan said:

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.  

To elaborate, certain processes in study for the topic of origins are things of the past. Examples of these are fossilisation, global catastrophies, dating, rates of change (as an example the development of chalk beds used as a challenge to creationists), plate tectonics, astronomical movements, other variables in the universe and the variable versus constant debate. All these examples, though they don't embody all the processes required by a naturalistic worldview on origins, all these example have in common that to understand them we need to extrapolate what we see today to events in the past. Already that is a source of doubt. Add to that cases where we need to use from the past (fossils, strata, ...) to understand the past itself. That is clearly the same work as the history and theology exercise I was refering to, so in that case it is 1:1 double-edged. Whatever you claim for history applies to those studies, be it positive or negative. That's how it's double-edged.

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. 

You're not a malicious poster in any way, but I want you to know that here you twisted my words, even if not voluntarily. My definition of "working off the same data" is just basically saying that they have a pool of data they can pull from, irrespective of how they pull said data and construct their understanding of it. Your belittlement of creationst study of said data does little to further the debate. I can understand you see it that way, but you're wrong. For example, I know there are challenges to the Flood theory, it doesn't make me hide the facts, rather it makes me want to look into them even more. No shoehorning involved.

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

I don't get what this has to do with anything. Creationists don't study the historicity of Jesus for origins, but only for their personal faith and the relevance of their beliefs (such as this topic).

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.  

Is it that much to ask, after I watch 10-minute videos of guys bashing creationist arguments? Who's being non-commital here? And then they blame Christians for not being thorough in their approach to science... Anyway the thing about the Sarapion letter is that it is written to his son so no pretense there. The writer is also a stoic, which shares in certain Christian values  but also contrasts in other areas : Stoicism (Greek Στοά) is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics believed that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.^[1]

I find it hard to tell whether Stoics were all stiff upper-lipped or if some had a more sober way to approach their lifestyle, but it's certainly difficult to reconcile "turn the other cheek" with their "beyond pain" mentality. That's apart from the theological differences with Christianity (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism#Stoicism_and_Christianity)

So what about it especially didn't impress you, do you not see Jesus in his account of the wise king? I'll repost it here for debate:

Mara was a Syrian Stoic.^[120] While imprisoned by the Romans, Mara wrote a letter to his son that includes the following text:

For what benefit did the Athenians obtain by putting Socrates to death, seeing that they received as retribution for it famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, seeing that in one hour the whole of their country was covered with sand? Or the Jews by the murder of their Wise King, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them? For with justice did God grant a recompense to the wisdom of all three of them. For the Athenians died by famine; and the people of Samos were covered by the sea without remedy; and the Jews, brought to desolation and expelled from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. Nay, Socrates did “not” die, because of Plato; nor yet Pythagoras, because of the statue of Hera; nor yet the Wise King, because of the new laws which he enacted.^[121]

Composed sometime between 73 AD and the 3rd century, some scholars believe this describes the fall of Jerusalem as the gods' punishment for the Jews having killed Jesus because they infer that Jesus must be "the wise king" referred to by Mara.^[120]

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

I provided the timelines for you and the backgrounds of the writers. Assuming they are lucid and take their statements as truth, then there are two options: either they believe what they wrote, or they know what they wrote. Some being professional historians, others being philosophers, some even being senators, others rabbis, all writing between at best 36 years after his death (Suetonius) to 100 years on average, at worst 170 years after his death. Most of these writers alive in the generation of those alongside christ, or the 2 to 3 generations following. Beyond reasonable doubt these writers knew they were talking about a quite recent event that was fact.

Just one example:

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

The guy was probably 60 when he was done writing his account, being familiar with word of events that happened only 23 years before he was born. That's like some kid 60 years from now talking about a NES that came out in the 1980s. Would you consider it a fact, especially when he's a video game historian and other historians of different background his age or some even older mentioned the system in one shape or another shortly before or after he did? Yeah, I know I would. And that's today, back then it was even more credible because you don't get such close records of events in those times. We're even lucky to have this material concerning Jesus.

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.  

Define it as you like, a new species or a new race, the fact is that one is descendant of another. Did it involve an increase or a decrease in genetic complexity, I would argue a decrease given what we've OBSERVED in science to date (eg observed genetic mutations). @italics. And when did I say the change was sudden? Again, my understanding of devolution is like the mirror image of your understanding of evolution, I don't see how my prior description was unclear... whether the change is useful or not, natural selection will sort that out.

"it seems to have been a series of mutations" It seems doesn't it. I bet. That's obviously how they want it to seem. Ask them to give me the data, not their apriori-affected interpretation of it. Anyways whether that's true or not is completely irrelevant, as again natural selection will do what needs to be done to filter only the fittest. It gives the illusion of evolution but that's not how nature works. Nature just causes mutations, whether it's progressive or not is not part of the process. It's just mutations, some may be more drastic than others. Then, natural selection does its job.

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.  

@bolded -> precisely.  @no format -> you're correct, I don't stipulate the same time scale in the past that science is "aware" of. @italics -> dating in the creationist framework is not the same as that of the long-age framework. What you might consider prehistoric, the creationist may consider very young. As a matter of fact, most creationists only consider the universe to be 6000 years old. They use history, archaeology, theology (genealogies in the bible), astronomy, geology and other fields to come to that reasoned conclusion. I won't get into that but you understand my view on the prehistoric bacteria, though you might not agree with it. Also, a genetic parent may coexist with its child.  Another thing you need to remember is that at the flood, only individuals of the original gene pool were taken into the ark (2 of each kind for animals, 8 humans, and other numbers I can't remember). If you took all the humans on earth and made a genetic mix of all of them, you would get a little less than what noah would have been like (I say les due to ethnic cleansing and  genetic mutations, and other reasons for loss of genetic density in the human gene pool). Then realise that Noah was 1 out of a huge population of humans (the bible mentions that humans live up to 900 years, some almost a thousand, and that they had many children, like in the 30s). The gene pool was severely restricted at the flood. That's why the genetic breakdown happened at the flood, after Noah, since he only held a part of the original gene pool.

But even then let's take the case where that bacteria was 6000 years old. I don't see bacteria following the same pattern as that of humans and mammals genetically speaking. I mean what would inbreeding mean for bacteria, just as a preliminary question. I think for bacteria it's not as much about breeding but about duplication. In other words their mutation comes from duplication. I believe it's a different process altogether and the rules of inbreeding don't apply to bacteria, but I may be wrong. Anyway all that to say that the genetic density argument was more pertaining to dogs, cats, humans, birds, apes, etc.

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.  

What do you mean by their offspring will be "wrong"? @bolded -> I didn't say they can't interbreed. I said that if they did produce offspring, that offspring would be sterile. I get the sense that you're not reading my replies or paying attention to them. @italics -> you're referring to the incompatibility of their reproductive organs? That's how I would see it at least.

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

Yep, that makes alot of sense. I don't know how much of that takes into account the article I provided to you though, here for ref: 

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

So here you mean the fact that Noah is a restriction of the original gene pool and that only his 3 sons and their wives were the genetic constituants of today's human race, as I mentioned earlier right. To be honest, and fair, I agree I need to look into it further. I'm not a geneticist nor a biologist, but it is my understanding that still at that time the mutations were less likely and that they may not have caused defects at the time but rather morphological differences such as those we see between brothers and sisters. That's my understanding of it at least and leads me to embrace the Babel account as well, where all the races of the earth broke off from one original race (that of the children of Noah). The mutations leading to morphological differences would account for the possibly rapid raciation that happened at Babel. It's just an explanation. Whether it fits the data or the realm of possibilities is not my forte, but it is my basic understanding of the past and I'm quite convinced that's how it happened. I do concede though that my depth of knowledge in Genetics and microbiology is very limited. I will look into it more if you have links do post them.

You might want to look at this: http://creation.com/historical-adam-biologos

You included this in what you bolded:  "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."  I was confused because that is NOT double edged.  It is a limitation of the "historical analysis" that archaeology and theology both do, but other science is not subject to that limitation, and there is no counterpart for that in theological studies.  But insofar as there IS a limitation that applies to both sides, yes, although it is worse for theologists becuase there is less evidence for them to work with. 
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Well, yes, going after the historicity of the Flood etc. would be kind of going off topic, I admit.  Nevertheless, though you may have a spirit of honest inquiry, the evidential claims of groups like Answers in Genesis are unfounded. 

If you're interested in seeing and answering objections, as you say, you may be interested in this link:  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
But I won't belabor the point. 

As far as "twisting your words", apparently you weren't clear.  But it seems you meant what I meant, so it doesn't matter. 
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The "Wise King" having enacted laws?  Sounds garbled at best if it's supposed to refer to the Jesus we're familiar with.  That does nothing to show me that the Bible we ended up with is accurate to what people saw back when it actually happened.  Since that is apparently supposed to be representative of the quality of evidence you are presenting, and since it was a rather large document that I had to sift through to find the unmarked 5% of relevant data, I decided not to spend my time similarly combing all the other links for similarly unimpressive results. 
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Even over 6000 years, this would be very observable if I am not mistaken, and it just is not happening.  If we disregard bacteria, there are still fast-reproducing sexually-reproducing species like mayflies or whatever, and ancient insects (whether 6000 years old or 60 million) just DO NOT HAVE the vastly larger genomes your theory would predict.  (AFAIK.) 
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Well, IIRC they're mostly sterile, and ligers (or is it tigons?) have an out of whack growth process in that they never stop growing.  That kind of "wrong". 

I don't mean that Tab A doesnt' fit into Slot B anymore, but that you stop getting any result from the union. 
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