Re: Any Christian Electronic Designers Here?

On Wed, 20 May 2009 14:28:45 -0500, "RogerN" <regor@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"Jon Kirwan" <jonk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:r4b815trgacrjahchljnlsunv4b30ppevh@xxxxxxxxxx
On Wed, 20 May 2009 08:56:56 -0500, "RogerN" <regor@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
<snip<
Scientists were creating life from scratch? So that proves life can be
CREATED by intelligent design! Do you have other evidence you would
like
to submit to support creation?

You wrote that before you managed to take a different tack and find
the "10 years out" part and then accuse DfromBC of being mixed up.
Here, you were embracing the idea and then using it as an
argumentative tool for your own side. In the light of the above
abbreviated exchange plus this, it appears you'd like to have things
both ways. In other words, you aren't interested in dispassioned
analysis, but in winning an argument and getting someone else to
accept it. I don't find that a very productive attitude.

Partly I'm just having fun with DfromBC as he is also doing with Christians
with this thread.

I guess I get that.

On the other hand, at the time DfromBC was telling me
that scientists were making life from scratch, I hadn't googled it, but what
scientists can create doesn't mean it can happen by nature, scientists are
reverse engineering life and making modifications. I can reverse engineer a
bolt and nut, and cut one on my metal lathe, but I have a tough time
believing that you can show me a 1/4-20 UNC bolt and nut that was a result
of nature.

Okay. Let me just take this on its face.

You are _able_ to recognize _design_ in a bolt or nut _because_ we
humans designed them. We are able to take everyday experiences and
our own feeble design skills and put the two together and see design.
I see design in a screw, because I know what the problems are and why
the design came about. We have NO capacity to recognize _design_ from
those we know nothing about.

Suppose you pick up a small pebble. Is it designed, or not? Do you
have a way of knowing? Perhaps to an alien race, which goes about
making pebbles as a matter of routine and salting planets with them,
they'd see it immediately as one of their own designs. Perhaps, they
would look at some subtle feature you can't easily notice but they can
-- for example, it may have a very precise ratio of certain isotopes
in it that would be a dead give-away to them. But you don't know.
Because you don't know how _they_ design things or for what purpose.

We can recognize OUR designs because WE design them.

How does a god design a universe? Do you imagine you have ANY CLUE at
all about that? Are you a god? Have you seen other universes and
compared them? Do you know what the design criteria might be? What
problems were being solved, and how?

No.

What is so obvious is that we are terribly, terribly ignorant. We
only know a very few things about the world. Unless we can grasp more
of what problems are faced in designing life, designing a universe,
etc., then how can we possibly figure out how to recognize design even
if it is staring us in the face?

We need to work on the research required to begin that trek. We can't
say we will ever get to such a point, but it is possible to start
considering small steps in the right direction. As I mentioned, CSI
is a possible area of research. Perhaps we may be able to take the
smaller step of understanding better how life works and what things
cannot possibly work under the current circumstances and begin to get
an idea of what _design_ might look like versus mutation with random
selection processes. Frankly, I don't think the research will be
fruitful. But if it isn't even pursued, it's dead certain it won't
be.

In other words, man does a lot of things that aren't duplicated
in nature, you get cars from making them, not mining them. After I searched
on Google, I found where scientists created new life forms, but not where
scientists created life. It would be much more impressive is scientists
could cause life without creating it, set up an enviroment and observe
abiogenesis taking place.

Well, one thing is absolutely certain. We will never be able to go
back and see. All we can do is come up with an increasing number of
possibilities. Was a time there were NO possibilities, at all. Our
science was too far behind what was needed. At least, today, we have
a few possibilities which need more vetting. And probably still more
other ideas yet to come, we can hope. Observation is important,
though, and the discovery of certain spectra from gas clouds has
contributed some of that. More will follow there, too. These things
will bound some ideas and suggest others.

I'm interested to see if the right combination of chemicals becomes a living
thing. If my understanding is correct, a dead cell is chemically the same
as a live cell, what makes it alive?

That is simply because you conflate things too much. We know a lot
about the differences. A dead cell may have had its cell membrane
ruptured, for example. Or the ionic balance in a membrane reversed
by, say, nothing more than a little extra sodium or potassion ions.
They are NOT exactly the same. If you need to understand the
difference, you need to understand the details of what makes them
tick. You luckily live in a time (sadly, most of my life I didn't)
when the tools and knowledge in this area are growing exponentially.
Not ALL the answers are known. But our ignorance does not excuse you
equating the two and thereby implying something more. We're just
ignorant of some things (the exact details of how proteins fold in
certain ways, for example.) But what else is new? I certainly
wouldn't argue from ignorance that god must exist. Why do you?

<snip>

'Faith' in god, as DfromBC bluntly puts it, simply has NO evidence.
It's not "a lot" or "some." It's "none." None, at all. Zero. Nada.
This is an important issue.

<snip>>
Jon

This is where it depends on what you consider evidence.
<snip of bible quotes>

Perhaps. If you are willing to be selective about it, any belief is
supportable. The problem here is that you are NOT being comprehensive
in the evidence you weigh. Not one of "my evidence" versus "
yours."

I have read the bible quite thoroughly. I include it along with a lot
(to me) of training in theology to place it in a still larger context.
And beyond that, a lot of science as well. I don't want to get into
some argument about "look at this set of evidence here" versus "look
at that set, over there." It goes nowhere. You could reasonably
conclude the Earth is flat, if you are willing to be selective about
it. You need to take in the WHOLE PICTURE as we understand it today.
That doesn't mean something new might not arrive. (Perhaps that CSI
research?) But the point is that a comprehensive view that weighs ALL
of the available evidence today weighs far more heavily in favor of
natural causes. Better yet, existing evolutionary theory makes
quantitative predictions about situations that, at the time, hadn't
yet been obvserved and that when those observations came about they
conformed to what theory said about it. This is pretty remarkable,
really.

It's not proof, obviously.

Jon

P.S.
You must keep in mind that I don't accept the assertion that biblical
scripture is handed down from god or is anything other than produced
by humans. You need to keep that in mind. I don't mean to suggest
that some miracles couldn't have occurred or that some god wasn't
involved. I just mean to say that nothing in scripture is anything
other than normal humans living at the time with normal understandings
then of the world around them interpreting, at best. And I allow
completely for all the other range of human motivations and biases, as
well -- including lying, building up stories to make them more
memorable or more interesting, etc. I don't assume anything new. Why
should I? More pointedly, the world is also filled with OTHER
scripture as well. If I should take your scripture with some unearned
authority, why shouldn't I also take theirs as well in that same way?
And, then finally, who is to say anyone got any of this right -- even
if there is a creator or god or miracles? Christianity holds no
unique claim, here.
.

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