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How does on deal with the teleological argument?

davidtaylorjr said:
I'm not missing any point, I'm telling you it's not possible.
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Actually patterns from random events can occur given enough time. You are merely defining things as "impossible" in order to advance your conclusion of magical beings as the only possible solution to be had.
 
davidtaylorjr said:
I'm not missing any point, I'm telling you it's not possible.
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just to make sure we're on the same page before i give up, using the Rubic's Cube example, do you believe it is impossible to solve the cube with random moves over a long enough period of time?
 
shagg said:
just to make sure we're on the same page before i give up, using the Rubic's Cube example, do you believe it is impossible to solve the cube with random moves over a long enough period of time?
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No, as I have explained, but those random moves are being controled by an intelligent being of some sort. That is my point. You can't separate the two. There is an intelligent being that is doing the action and causing it to happen. The teleological argument has to do with the existence of God, and your arguments do nothing to refute that.
 
davidtaylorjr said:
No, as I have explained, but those random moves are being controled by an intelligent being of some sort. That is my point. You can't separate the two. There is an intelligent being that is doing the action and causing it to happen. The teleological argument has to do with the existence of God, and your arguments do nothing to refute that.
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Do i need to define random for you? or are you arguing that the moves aren't really random because either a person or god is controlling them? do you believe random is possible? Is it the fact that the hand making the random move is attached to an intelligent being? I'm not suggesting the cube will solve itself since it can't move itself. Someone/thing has to execute the random move. But the move itself is random, much like airplane parts in a giant cement mixer move in random directions. Hell, call them arbitrary moves or even pre-determined-yet-seemingly-random, it still doesn't cause any problems with the theory itself.
 
shagg said:
Do i need to define random for you? or are you arguing that the moves aren't really random because either a person or god is controlling them? do you believe random is possible? Is it the fact that the hand making the random move is attached to an intelligent being? I'm not suggesting the cube will solve itself since it can't move itself. Someone/thing has to execute the random move. But the move itself is random, much like airplane parts in a giant cement mixer move in random directions. Hell, call them arbitrary moves or even pre-determined-yet-seemingly-random, it still doesn't cause any problems with the theory itself.
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No I am not arguing against random, but what I am saying, that is a poor argument to prove that there is no creator, it still points to a designer of some sort.
 
davidtaylorjr said:
No I am not arguing against random, but what I am saying, that is a poor argument to prove that there is no creator, it still points to a designer of some sort.
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so do you agree that any given pattern can emerge from random changes given enough time? I'll be happy to discuss the theory's merits and implications (or lack there of), but i need you to commit to a yes or no position with regards to this question first.
 
shagg said:
so do you agree that any given pattern can emerge from random changes given enough time? I'll be happy to discuss the theory's merits and implications (or lack there of), but i need you to commit to a yes or no position with regards to this question first.
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I don't think that any given pattern can emerge, no. For instance, I don't believe that there is a common ancestor between us and apes. I do believe in micro evolution within a species though.
 
davidtaylorjr said:
I don't think that any given pattern can emerge, no. For instance, I don't believe that there is a common ancestor between us and apes. I do believe in micro evolution within a species though.
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patterns emerging from randomness and common ancestry between humans and apes are as related as protons and trees.

I'll try again.

If i flip a coin, it can be heads or tails. grant me the assumption this is random (I acknowledge the arguments that say otherwise based on per-determinism).

I flip 2 coins, i could get heads/tails heads/heads tails/heads or tails/tails, 4 possibilities

3 coins, 8 possibilities.

If i flipped 3 coins and was looking for all heads, i would probably have to do several attempts to get that result, or pattern. I might get it on the first try if i was lucky, but the odds are 1 in 8 that any given flip would be all heads.

what if i had 10 billion coins and was looking for all heads? Is it impossible or just incredibly unlikely?
 
shagg said:
patterns emerging from randomness and common ancestry between humans and apes are as related as protons and trees.

I'll try again.

If i flip a coin, it can be heads or tails. grant me the assumption this is random (I acknowledge the arguments that say otherwise based on per-determinism).

I flip 2 coins, i could get heads/tails heads/heads tails/heads or tails/tails, 4 possibilities

3 coins, 8 possibilities.

If i flipped 3 coins and was looking for all heads, i would probably have to do several attempts to get that result, or pattern. I might get it on the first try if i was lucky, but the odds are 1 in 8 that any given flip would be all heads.

what if i had 10 billion coins and was looking for all heads? Is it impossible or just incredibly unlikely?
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Of course, that is possible. Not an equal argument, but possible.
 
davidtaylorjr said:
How are you defining time?
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Do you feel there is a certain number of years left before we run out of time or do you believe there is no upper limit on time, and that the years will continue to roll by forever?
 
shagg said:
Do you feel there is a certain number of years left before we run out of time or do you believe there is no upper limit on time, and that the years will continue to roll by forever?
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Earth time will end when the earth is destroyed. However, time itself would be eternal if I am thinking the same way you are.
 
obvious Child said:
I wouldn't say that evolution is chance. It's not chance that a particular phenotype is favored in a certain environment. That's not chance at all. It's chance in that mutations cause the creation of new genes, but the active selection of these genes either for success or failure is by all means, not chance. Mammals survived the Cretaceous Extinction event because they had genes that coded for certain traits that were very much favored over their reptilian competition (aside from the transitional dino-birds, crocs and alligators).

What I'm saying is that there is a huge range of possibilities for what God considers "right" and the process itself of getting could be part of being "right." Many religions have stories of struggles to achieve greatness. What's to say that Evolution is not one of these struggles? That life must go through eons of struggling to achieve what God wanted and that the process of struggling is what makes the end being right. God can't simply just plop down the right ending because the travel is so essential.

I think it's seriously arrogant to believe that mankind is what God wanted from the start as what is "right." It's possible, but we don't know.

I had this conversation a year or two back about God and perfection. Basically my logic was that perfection is the absence of flaws. For God to be perfect, it has to be free of flaws. Thus, God's will is free of flaws. And what is free of flaws cannot willingly create imperfection. Thus, God is only capable of creating perfection. Thus, we see this world as anything but perfect and therefore God cannot be perfect if he created it. Someone pointed out that our definition of "perfect" may be wrong and the conglomeration of what we perceive as flaws may in fact be what perfection actually is. God intended it to be perceived as imperfect because that was part of being perfect. Not sure I buy that argument, but it's relevant here in that we are assuming we know what perfection, or in this case "right" is when we do not.

Ultimately, trying to define something that exists outside of logic is futile, but it does make for some provoking ideas.
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It does indeed make for some provoking ideas. I myself, am an agnostic. The Christian understanding of god seems too limited but then the concept of god period seems so fanciful I just can't quite buy it. Hope that doesn't offend you.

You are right about defining or even discussing the concept of the existence of god, seems it usually comes down to the limitations of humans making it impossible to grasp something so vast vs the leap of faith on the part of believers. Still interesting conversation though
 
davidtaylorjr said:
Earth time will end when the earth is destroyed. However, time itself would be eternal if I am thinking the same way you are.
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I believe you are, and I'm going to take that as you believe time is infinite.

ok, so to bring it all together:

Time is infinite.

Any given pattern can emerge from random changes given enough time.

It then follows that a watch, a 747 passenger airplane, 10 billion coin flips all being heads, and absolutely anything else you can think of as far as physical material patterns goes will occur at some point in time with absolutely no guidance whatsoever.
 
and thus the watch needs no watchmaker, over time an infinite number of watches will be made through random chance.
 
davidtaylorjr said:
Then where do those atoms come from? How did they get here?
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Now we're to the point where we could go back and forth in regression, from atoms, to sub atomic particles, sub sub atomics, sub sub sub atomics, etc. I prefer to skip to the end and address the theoretical "smallest particles of matter" that everything is built from. Where did these come from? They were created during the Big Bang, theoretically. Atomogenesis i suppose it would be called, although Google wants to link that to Pangenesis and Darwin.
 
shagg said:
Now we're to the point where we could go back and forth in regression, from atoms, to sub atomic particles, sub sub atomics, sub sub sub atomics, etc. I prefer to skip to the end and address the theoretical "smallest particles of matter" that everything is built from. Where did these come from? They were created during the Big Bang, theoretically. Atomogenesis i suppose it would be called, although Google wants to link that to Pangenesis and Darwin.
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But where did the material that created the Big Bang come from? See how that works, you can't keep explaining radom variations if there was nothing there to begin with. You can't get something, from nothing.
 
davidtaylorjr said:
But where did the material that created the Big Bang come from? See how that works, you can't keep explaining radom variations if there was nothing there to begin with. You can't get something, from nothing.
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I understand, and agree the regression is difficult to stop. We reach a point where our knowledge becomes thin and incomplete. We've essentially re framed the argument to "The sub atomic particle and the sub atomic particle maker". The thing is, most people are willing to accept the existence of sub atomic particles without a designer, as they are incredibly simple in design. You now have to commit to the position that matter, and by extension the universe, is not possible without god. This is a whole different argument, and Occam's Razor is against you there.
 
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