Arguments and empirical evidence that god(s) exist

Nothing "moves" DNA in any direction! And natural selection has no effect on DNA, it has effect on the group of the organisms.

You were already told about the mutation process - this is the reason DNA changes. Mutation is caused by the natural factors - sunlight, soil radiation levels, water quality, climate, types of food consumed etc etc. And in many senses mutation is random and result is also random - so natural selection only separates successful mutations from unsuccessful.

Belinda clearly said that any intelligent being (to whom the code is addressed according to you) appeared many millions years LATER than DNA, so to whom the code was addressed when the dinosaurs were living here instead of us? We just came down with the last shower! If the God (do you mean God?) was sending this message to us, then he is a crap of a mailman, as this was the longest going letter ever possible! Why a perfect being, a Creator would be wasting millions of years on creating and killing out the useless brainless animals for the purpose to end delivering this message to us, 200,000 years after we appeared on the planet???

Nothing "moves" DNA in any direction! And natural selection has no effect on DNA, it has effect on the group of the organisms.

You were already told about the mutation process - this is the reason DNA changes. Mutation is caused by the natural factors - sunlight, soil radiation levels, water quality, climate, types of food consumed etc etc. And in many senses mutation is random and result is also random - so natural selection only separates successful mutations from unsuccessful.

You are defining successful in a particular way as if it would seem quite unextraordinary that organisms would continue to increase in complexity over time, but you haven't explained why that would be an inherent part of the process. Why wouldn't they merely remain at the same level of sophistication and merely become different in some way even if they did mutate? Or why didn't all these variations merely cease to exist? Why did that initial DNA structure have within it the potential for infinitesimal variety and development when typical inorganic compounds have comparably limited possibilities for how they will iterate.

the code is addressed according to you) appeared many millions years LATER than DNA, so to whom the code was addressed when the dinosaurs were living here instead of us? We just came down with the last shower! If the God (do you mean God?) was sending this message to us, then he is a crap of a mailman, as this was the longest going letter ever possible! Why a perfect being, a Creator would be wasting millions of years on creating and killing out the useless brainless animals for the purpose to end delivering this message to us, 200,000 years after we appeared on the planet???

Billions of years are only a relatively long span of time. For human beings it may appear to be an incredible period, but for an eternal consciousness, that may not be the case. It may be a mere blink of an eye to God. I don't pretend to see cosmic time spans from God's point of view. What is important to you may not be so to a being with infinite intelligence. He can afford to take his own sweet time and certainly isn't accountable to you for how he spends it, even if you are a genius chemist. What you think you know may in fact be minuscule.

Thinking we have all the answers at this stage of the game may not be such a wise position given that we really don't know all that much about anything, even if we have convinced ourselves otherwise.

Nothing "moves" DNA in any direction! And natural selection has no effect on DNA, it has effect on the group of the organisms.

You were already told about the mutation process - this is the reason DNA changes. Mutation is caused by the natural factors - sunlight, soil radiation levels, water quality, climate, types of food consumed etc etc. And in many senses mutation is random and result is also random - so natural selection only separates successful mutations from unsuccessful.

You are defining successful in a particular way as if it would seem quite unextraordinary that organisms would continue to increase in complexity over time, but you haven't explained why that would be an inherent part of the process. Why wouldn't they merely remain at the same level of sophistication and merely become different in some way even if they did mutate? Or why didn't all these variations merely cease to exist? Why did that initial DNA structure have within it the potential for infinitesimal variety and development when typical inorganic compounds have comparably limited possibilities for how they will iterate.

the code is addressed according to you) appeared many millions years LATER than DNA, so to whom the code was addressed when the dinosaurs were living here instead of us? We just came down with the last shower! If the God (do you mean God?) was sending this message to us, then he is a crap of a mailman, as this was the longest going letter ever possible! Why a perfect being, a Creator would be wasting millions of years on creating and killing out the useless brainless animals for the purpose to end delivering this message to us, 200,000 years after we appeared on the planet???

Billions of years are only a relatively long span of time. For human beings it may appear to be an incredible period, but for an eternal consciousness, that may not be the case. It may be a mere blink of an eye to God. I don't pretend to see cosmic time spans from God's point of view. What is important to you may not be so to a being with infinite intelligence. He can afford to take his own sweet time and certainly isn't accountable to you for how he spends it, even if you are a genius chemist. What you think you know may in fact be minuscule.

Thinking we have all the answers at this stage of the game may not be such a wise position given that we really don't know all that much about anything, even if we have convinced ourselves otherwise.

The complexity of the organisms is increasing, but the organisms are only the colonies of that very primary living cell. The cell itself is Life, all the rest is its forms. The increase of complexity is clearly evolutionary, as the "smarter" one survives with a better chance, and the survivor has an opportunity to leave the siblings. The primary cell evolves much slower than the colonies of it, the mice and homo sapience are made from the same cells. What the primary cell does, it learned how to diversify its functions, so the initial amoeba is now appearing as a blood cell, nervous cell, tissue cell etc - but the sense remains the same, it changes these roles within the colonies, not by itself. As a separate cell it remained the same protozoa as it was billions of years ago. All the complexity of human thinking is no more than the evolutionary result of competition for survival.

As for god, I am not prepared to discuss who God is and how the world looks from God's intellect - because before me starting to do this I need an evidence that this God objectively exists. As we all know, such evidence to date has not been provided, so practically there is nothing to discuss here. If you have such empirical evidence at hand, you can feel free to produce it, most likely Mankind would be very grateful - but until this is done, you are de-facto referring to your personal fantasies, based on 3000 yo myths of late Bronze Age. I hope you would understand what I mean - with all my respect to religions, they are not able to prove anyhow that the God they worship and describe is existing anywhere in this world.

OTavern wrote

Crystals are self copying because of some basic facts about molecular structure; DNA is more than self- copying it tends towards improvement, complexity and diversity not mere self- copying. What moves DNA in that direction? Natural selection only partly explains how it happens not why it should have in the first place.

True. But what sort of 'why' is your 'why'? One may ask 'why did the landslide block the railway track?'Answers would include geological ones or degradation of landscape by tree destruction to which one may object 'but this is part of the explanation how the landslide occured, not why it occurred.'


If the latter objection is made the implication is that some agent intended the landslide to happen.Some pre-Enlightenment minds think that the landslide is a punishment for human or even animals' bad behaviour.But no, the landslide is fully explained by reference to
causes that exclude final cause that is, intention, advance planning, blueprint.

Natural selection is like a landslide in that it is a process that owes nothing at all to final cause, with no remainder that is inexplicable by natural selection.

Natural selection is up for falsification like all scientific theories. Any falsification would be empirical and not metaphysical.

OTavern wrote

Crystals are self copying because of some basic facts about molecular structure; DNA is more than self- copying it tends towards improvement, complexity and diversity not mere self- copying. What moves DNA in that direction? Natural selection only partly explains how it happens not why it should have in the first place.

True. But what sort of 'why' is your 'why'? One may ask 'why did the landslide block the railway track?'Answers would include geological ones or degradation of landscape by tree destruction to which one may object 'but this is part of the explanation how the landslide occured, not why it occurred.'


If the latter objection is made the implication is that some agent intended the landslide to happen.Some pre-Enlightenment minds think that the landslide is a punishment for human or even animals' bad behaviour.But no, the landslide is fully explained by reference to
causes that exclude final cause that is, intention, advance planning, blueprint.

Natural selection is like a landslide in that it is a process that owes nothing at all to final cause, with no remainder that is inexplicable by natural selection.

Natural selection is up for falsification like all scientific theories. Any falsification would be empirical and not metaphysical.

Okay, let's go with your analogy. The dawning of life on earth is like a landslide. There is no need to bring in intention or look for a "why" cause for a landslide blocking a roadway. Let the how answers suffice!

The only problem is that the dawning of life on earth is not like a landslide. It is more like a landslide that didn't just happen one time due to a series of convergent events, but from the first time it happened, this particular landslide did something that no other landslide that we know of ever did. It replicated itself. It somehow knew that when its episodic existence came to an end, that would be it, so to live on as a landslide, this particular one picked itself up and replicated itself - it came down the mountain again and again in series. Within the first generation of life dawning on earth, that little event also somehow "knew" that to continue its existence it would need to replicate itself and not only that but also that it would need to set itself up to allow itself to continually adapt to meet new situations as they arose.

This is not like a landslide crossing a railroad track. It is more like a landslide crossing a track, realizing it had done something no other landslide had ever done, so it regenerated itself before its rumbling down the mountain came to an end; but not only that, with each successive occurrence it continually morphed itself to some degree so that if the track was somehow moved or repaired, it changed with the parameters, so to speak, the newest iteration of the slide would meet the ever changing challenge of crossing the track by adapting to the new course the meandering track would take. This track, like the challenge of survival, didn't remain on a fixed path, but was continually changing in its parameters. The recursive landslide in anticipation of the changing track, continued to alter itself and regenerate so that over several billion years of succession, it became so altered and sophisticated in its nature that it no longer resembled its initial self. In fact, within several billion years, the landslide actually developed a conscious, intelligent personality that could actually figure out the possible diversions the track might take in advance and planned ever more complex strategies to compensate and meet the challenge.

So Belinda, you are correct, if the phenomenon of the evolution of life were as seemingly mindless as a landslide blocking a railroad track, I would not hesitate to agree with you that a simple "how" answer would suffice.

Clearly, however, the evolution of life on this planet is nothing like a landslide, but more like a landslide (if you care to press the analogy) that seems to anticipate, compensate, replicate and adapt with each successive generation of itself. Such a landslide, would definitely require a "why" explanation. Why the heck would simple matter act in such astonishing ways?

Unless of course, you do not have even an inkling of the incredible miracle that the dawning of life truly is.

To be honest, when I hear from the Creationists I just want to puke - probably the result of the recent 2000 years of lunacy. Your subtle hints that the life was created by God do not sound less archaic because you are using the words and terminology, established by the Atheistic science. What else can you offer if not DNA - Genesis 1? et cum spiritu tuo, amen

Why the heck would simple matter act in such astonishing ways?



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For a creationist ATavern is a good arguer who points up the weakness of my landslide scenario.

I also like the feeling that fires ATavern's

Unless of course, you do not have even an inkling of the incredible miracle that the dawning of life truly is

'Miracle' is a word that is used poetically as well as religiosly. Poetically, I do celebrate, wonder and marvel at the miracle of life. Religiously speaking I deplore miracles because they are not true and religion should be true.

DNA replicators are natural, ask a chemist.Natural in this sense means that no supernatural agency needs to make DNA.

To be honest, when I hear from the Creationists I just want to puke - probably the result of the recent 2000 years of lunacy. Your subtle hints that the life was created by God do not sound less archaic because you are using the words and terminology, established by the Atheistic science. What else can you offer if not DNA - Genesis 1? et cum spiritu tuo, amen :roll:

You sound like someone bereft of answers. Perhaps you need to clear out something that is blocking your mental faculties from seeing clearly. Maybe you need a good cathartic experience to release you from your mental fixation. Go for it then - have a puke - see if you are any the better off for it.

Anyone who thinks that up until their own dawning in the evolutionary process, all prior human thought has been lunacy, must have an ego the size of a cow. It may be your ego you are trying to dislodge from your bowels.

The primary cell evolves much slower than the colonies of it, the mice and homo sapience are made from the same cells. What the primary cell does, it learned how to diversify its functions, so the initial amoeba is now appearing as a blood cell, nervous cell, tissue cell etc - but the sense remains the same, it changes these roles within the colonies, not by itself.

A few posts back Belinda mentioned something about intelligent agents using blueprints in planning and that these are evidence of design. This comment of yours is interesting because it points to a kind of blueprint being used in the universe and in evolution. Within a single individual creature the variation of cells into blood cells, nerve cells, etc., is a very similar model to the evolution of diverse creatures from the first simple living organisms found on earth. The development of each complex organism from its conception to maturity follows the same model of development as the whole evolution process does. Why should one model the other like it clearly does. It is as if they have the same blueprint.

Come to think of it the cosmological unfolding of the universe follows the same model from singularity to diversity. Poignant how the point of conception of the universe is even referred to as the big bang. Rather Freudian, don't you think?

Go ahead now, talk to Ralph on the big white phone.

OT, we do have different educational backgrounds, and what fascinates you, fascinates me not. For you the life is a miracle, and for me it is a natural formation based on the electrical polarisation, possible in the compounds of the element Carbon and on its ability to form the long chains.

The views, you are advising me to accept or try are based on the myths of Bronze Age and medieval superstitions, and for me to accept them I first thing have to ignore and forget all what I learned before. You are still a modern person of 21st century, so I hope you would be able to finally find out that we are no longer living in the caves. The progress is irreversible, and hardly you would be able to persuade the contemporary people to destroy the power stations and return to the wax candles, as this is where accepting Creationism leads. You yourself would be the first to refuse abandoning the modern conveniences and return to manually milking your cow and ploughing the earth for a daily piece of bread. It is the lack of your personal living experience which pushes you to saw off the very branch you are sitting on, as you would sure have no computer or telephone if the Creationism again takes over.

All what we today have is a product of Materialism, achieved in the last couple of centuries after the leading minds came to the final conclusion that there is no God. Religion gave us absolutely nothing practically usable, and if we now return to it, then the Mankind would simply die starving, as Creationism also means no agricultural machinery, no fertilisers, no advanced food-processing technologies, no nothing, only riding the donkeys among the burning bushes. Practically you are allying with the ayatollahs who also want all the world to live "naturally", like thousands of years ago.

OT, we do have different educational backgrounds, and what fascinates you, fascinates me not. For you the life is a miracle, and for me it is a natural formation based on the electrical polarisation, possible in the compounds of the element Carbon and on its ability to form the long chains.

The views, you are advising me to accept or try are based on the myths of Bronze Age and medieval superstitions, and for me to accept them I first thing have to ignore and forget all what I learned before. You are still a modern person of 21st century, so I hope you would be able to finally find out that we are no longer living in the caves. The progress is irreversible, and hardly you would be able to persuade the contemporary people to destroy the power stations and return to the wax candles, as this is where accepting Creationism leads. You yourself would be the first to refuse abandoning the modern conveniences and return to manually milking your cow and ploughing the earth for a daily piece of bread. It is the lack of your personal living experience which pushes you to saw off the very branch you are sitting on, as you would sure have no computer or telephone if the Creationism again takes over.

All what we today have is a product of Materialism, achieved in the last couple of centuries after the leading minds came to the final conclusion that there is no God. Religion gave us absolutely nothing practically usable, and if we now return to it, then the Mankind would simply die starving, as Creationism also means no agricultural machinery, no fertilisers, no advanced food-processing technologies, no nothing, only riding the donkeys among the burning bushes. Practically you are allying with the ayatollahs who also want all the world to live "naturally", like thousands of years ago.

Apparently your mind wandered a little off topic there. Asking why things are the way they are does not lead to all the implications you seem to have been brainwashed into believing. Science is very good at exploring the mechanisms behind the workings of the universe. I feel no compulsion to dismiss all that knowledge. However, science is not set up to explore the why of things. You feel a need to make these mutually exclusive, I don't. You are as narrow minded and bigoted in your approach as the theists you conjure up in your imagination. I see no need to dismiss all the scientific knowledge of the past several hundred years. The universe is a fundamentally intelligible place. Science presumes that even the aspects that are a mystery to us still will also be intelligible. I am not clear how my insistence that we do not yet rule out intelligent design as the reason behind that intelligibility makes me a lunatic. My suspicion is that your narrow insistence that intelligent design cannot be behind the intelligibility found in the universe and your silly associations with living in caves and ayatollahs makes you less than fair minded and the fanatic in this discussion.

Fundamentally, the difference between us is that I see the hand behind the workings of the universe as a creative, artistic force - the universe is a composition that goes far beyond a feat of engineering with ingenious and sublime elements of artistry and imaginative creativity. A creative hand is and has been at work in every moment of evolution.

Your view, it seems to me, is that the universe is more like a mechanical contrivance that required no creative hand - a mechanistic device that just happened to show up 13 billion years ago, for no reason that we need to concern ourselves with because it is sufficient for you to know how it works, not why it is in the first place.

We have come across this incredibly complicated contrivance in the middle of nowhere. You have only one desire - to find out how it works. My question is why is it here to begin with? You scoff and sneer that my query is simply a waste of time because it keeps us from finding out how this thing works. Your attitude us one of a thief who has discovered the contraption and have squirreled it into your own private domain to dismantle it and usurp all you can from it. My thought is that this mysterious contrivance points beyond itself. You can't accept that.

You remind me of a dog whose owner points at a morsel of food but the dog comes and licks the owner's hand because it cannot comprehend the idea of symbols. Some things point beyond themselves to greater realities - but only if you open your mind to the possibility that they do.

Furthermore, my suspicion is that there is a psychological reason for why you cannot accept a superior intelligence behind the universe - because that threatens the idea you have of yourself as the highest form of intelligence on the planet. Why else would you resort to such supercilious sneering rather than intelligent rebuttal of my points?

Being rude to the opponents only points to the absence of intelligent argumentation, as rudeness means frustration and dissatisfaction on emotional level, while for winning a discussion intellectual superiority is required!

If you think you know the way how to explain the world better than science does, you first of all need to demonstrate its practical output, which you yourself achieved by using it. This must be very simple if your approach really works. Just create something useful which science in principle cannot create.

By suggesting that the Universe had a Creator you are not discovering any Americas or inventing any bicycles. You are simply repeating like a parrot what various shamans were saying for the entire history of Mankind. Your philosophical position is not a novelty, but a deja vue.

You certainly can dismiss the essentialness of Practice, but then you need to start your speeches with warning the listeners that they are not supposed to expect from your ideas any practical result. There is only one alternative - to demonstrate this result first, and then only to explain to the intrigued and stunned Mankind which superior philosophical approach caused this astonishing result!

In the absence of either a disclaimer or a result, all you are doing is producing noise.

Nothing "moves" DNA in any direction! And natural selection has no effect on DNA, it has effect on the group of the organisms.

You were already told about the mutation process - this is the reason DNA changes. Mutation is caused by the natural factors - sunlight, soil radiation levels, water quality, climate, types of food consumed etc etc. And in many senses mutation is random and result is also random - so natural selection only separates successful mutations from unsuccessful.

You are defining successful in a particular way as if it would seem quite unextraordinary that organisms would continue to increase in complexity over time, but you haven't explained why that would be an inherent part of the process. Why wouldn't they merely remain at the same level of sophistication and merely become different in some way even if they did mutate? Or why didn't all these variations merely cease to exist? Why did that initial DNA structure have within it the potential for infinitesimal variety and development when typical inorganic compounds have comparably limited possibilities for how they will iterate.

Man, observing the shere complexity of his environment, made a classic assumption...that whatever causes that complexity must be even more complex. This assumption has followed man down thru history as one form of theism or another. Sometimes it is wise to question these assumptions themselves. For instance, we observe, (and you admit), how simple chemical combinations over time, and under specific, (and often, but not always),random conditions, converge and become more complex...naturally. Thus the initial assumption that the observable complexity necessitates an even greater complexity to account for the observation loses steam in direct proportion to the amount of new data gathered to support simple-to-complex cause/effect relations. Complex > complex is not only counter-intuitive but illogical when we consider the processes themselves. Then, making a basic human error even more erroneous, to posit this extreme complexity to be equivalent to something supernatural, and therefore incomprehensible, is to admit scientific failure ere we even get started. Then, to add insult to injury, to point at science's inability to render the incomprehensible comprehensible, and claim this as further evidence of the initial assumption...borders on lunacy.

But, the theist objects, science does not answer the big "why" questions. Why should matter process itself, unaided, from the simple to the complex? Why should sentience emerge from this process refinement? This "gap" in man's knowledge is then stuffed with cosmological and telelogics to compensate for the ground lost to empirical sciences in the arena of the hows, whens, wheres, and whats. The big "whys" are the theists last frontier.

Unfortunately, again the classic theistic assumption of complexity necessitating greater complexity, does not follow logically. There are a host of alternative assumptions available, all of which easily account for the tool of evolution as the means of explaining the simple to complex precursors to sentience. Cosmologically the universe is more likely infinitely regressive and potentially eternal. Big bang theoretics, though very popular, have been falsified on numerous fronts, necessitating the invention of things like dark matter, dark energy, inflation, etc. to sustain the mis-interpretation of data. It is becoming increasingly more apparent that the amount of matter/energy scattered throughout the universe is better accounted for via a series of local bangs or galaxy creating events at different times all over the universe. The theoretics supporting an expanding universe are also beginning to flounder as observations made by those expensive toys in space are not producing the desired data to support said hypothetics. The doppler effect believed to be inherent in redshift theoretics is falling by the wayside to a new, more functionally consistent, theory that greater redshift indicates age of galaxies rather than distance and velocity. An eternal, steady but dynamic equilibrius model of the universe has already been used to make successful predictions that were later verified observationally...something BB cosmology has yet to accomplish. With infinite time and process refinement, macro-evolution from heavy elements to sentience has far greater odds than an incomprehensible deity, as the most elegant and reasonable explanation for reality as we experience it.

the code is addressed according to you) appeared many millions years LATER than DNA, so to whom the code was addressed when the dinosaurs were living here instead of us? We just came down with the last shower! If the God (do you mean God?) was sending this message to us, then he is a crap of a mailman, as this was the longest going letter ever possible! Why a perfect being, a Creator would be wasting millions of years on creating and killing out the useless brainless animals for the purpose to end delivering this message to us, 200,000 years after we appeared on the planet???

Billions of years are only a relatively long span of time. For human beings it may appear to be an incredible period, but for an eternal consciousness, that may not be the case. It may be a mere blink of an eye to God. I don't pretend to see cosmic time spans from God's point of view. What is important to you may not be so to a being with infinite intelligence. He can afford to take his own sweet time and certainly isn't accountable to you for how he spends it, even if you are a genius chemist. What you think you know may in fact be minuscule.


Cosmic time spans, as you call them, are not favourable to theistic inventions. If the universe is indeed infinitely regressive, having no beginning, (as you posit your god to be), then a creator god or purposeful existence of sentient life falls unceremoniously by the wayside as having any explanatory power for life as we know and experience it daily.

Thinking we have all the answers at this stage of the game may not be such a wise position given that we really don't know all that much about anything, even if we have convinced ourselves otherwise.

Likewise, filling in the gaps with a god does not reflect any great wisdom or dedication to truth either. Even if we have convinced ourselves otherwise.

Why not

Man, observing the shere complexity of his environment, made a classic assumption...that whatever causes that complexity must be even more complex.

I am with you so far.

This assumption has followed man down thru history as one form of theism or another.

Not being a theist myself I disagree with your assumption. Theism is and can be innate, since ancient man and ancient time, man has in every culture prophesed without teachings, that there is a god or goddess or ultimate force. History proves your assumption unjustifiable.

Sometimes it is wise to question these assumptions themselves

Likewise, sometimes I question how philosophy ended up being science? It isn`t science. It has a branch called science.

random conditions

Random isn`t logical, random is unverifiable

I must go now, but I will return to address the rest of your posting whynot, as it is valid in some ways and invalid in others, but shows the differences in the way I see it to the way you see it, and the will to make this a productive not a deductive difference.

Whynot - it is not only the theists end up bathing in big "why's" but also the answers they are trying to offer have miserable practical sense. Their appeal is directed mostly to irrational and subjective matters like consciousness or morality, through which they suggest to make changes in the objective reality. It is the same old "Conscience defines Matter", but only in yet another disguise.

In my view in the historical past these irrational theories were reflecting the searching nature of a human, who cannot live in peace without constantly asking "why?"; but in our days when we know that to clean the floor one must use not a prayer or a slave but a vacuum cleaner or a steam mop this just becomes a form of a fraud, as by trying to build up a team of the apostles they seem to be only looking for establishing a personal income. This is just another form of the same struggle which the multiple churches carry for the sources of tithe. The best paid is the one who talks more persuasively!

Man, observing the shere complexity of his environment, made a classic assumption...that whatever causes that complexity must be even more complex. This assumption has followed man down thru history as one form of theism or another. Sometimes it is wise to question these assumptions themselves. For instance, we observe, (and you admit), how simple chemical combinations over time, and under specific, (and often, but not always),random conditions, converge and become more complex...naturally. Thus the initial assumption that the observable complexity necessitates an even greater complexity to account for the observation loses steam in direct proportion to the amount of new data gathered to support simple-to-complex cause/effect relations. Complex > complex is not only counter-intuitive but illogical when we consider the processes themselves.

Kindly provide an example of this outside of processes of evolution since that would be begging the question at issue here.