How to Destroy an Athiests in a argument! (Updated with poll)

[allenmaher]

Allfreedom99 wrote:
"Yes, we have the ability to understand the realities and processes by which our universe operates. If we have the ability to understand physics, mathematical equations and therefore that is what has led us to what we know and understand today about how the universe operates then one must address where we obtained the ability for that knowledge."

More precisely we have the ability to model based on observations of how our universe operates. The model is not the reality (hence the pipe reference). The axiom in science is that all models are wrong, but some are useful.

"In the beginning of the universe if one uses evolution as the basis then the calculations in order for our life forms to eventually have the ability to understand our universe and how it operates was surely present. If it wasn't then none of us in our current abilities would be here today. In the Science community's current explanation through mathematical calculations, energy, time, development of matter, ect everything we see now came about. But the very tool of mathematics must take intelligence to understand it."

A couple of problems here, mathematics is another model, an awesomely useful and logical one, but still not a part of the reality of things. Secondly the processes in the universe, like evolution are not deterministic, if you wind the clock backwards and replay time you will not get a duplicate of the universe as it exists now. Evolution in particular is random mutations with non random selection processes, it is unlikely ever to repeat the same way twice.

"Therefore, the ability for us to have intellect, knowledge and ability to understand the use of mathematics would mean that intelligence must have existed at the start of the universe in order for us to have the ability of thought process today. Intelligence can't be created by a mathematical process. Intelligence is what allows us to understand the use of mathematics/physics and therefore unlock the processes of our universe."

At the beginning of the Universe things were considerably different, In fact the formation of hydrogen was a big deal, after several solar birth death cycles you had more complex forms of matter. Which through planetary formation that was a byproduct of our sun's formation (the big planetary accretion disk) led to a primordial earth. (sorry for the 10 billion year fast forward) The evolving complexity of chemistry led to an RNA world in which chemical solutions to problems were heritable, which led to a DNA world with stored chemical solutions (random mutation selected for non randomly). Fast forward a few more billion years and you start to get multicelularity another long stretch and you get primordial nervous systems. That happened in the last 0.5 billion years. It is only in the last 350 million years that anything approaching animal levels of intelligence have existed, The reason is simple, intelligence is the ability to use electrochemical interconnections of neurons to store and evaluate data, to perceive more than just simple stimuli. The intelligence you are referring to is the painting of the pipe, not the pipe. It is a physical byproduct of really complex evolution of chemistry over very long times through non intelligent means. It is not the other way around.

We then went on to create math and other things like circular reasoning. Some things are more useful than others. ;-}