The existence of God argued rationally

[Seeker]

The singularity existed for some time before exploding and therefore causality still applies.

If time=change, and the singularity=non-change, then it is contradictory to say that "non-change existed for some change". So, the singarity couldn't have been non-changing. Just as the universe was "always", change was always, i.e. for all time, i.e. for all change (a nice example of A=A). You can't combine change and non-change in the same contextual frame - it is a contradiction to do so (btw, to turn to God as a way to explain the contradiction is another nice example of A=A, namely, God=contradiction). To say that all change must be preceded in time by some other change is a truism, so it is logically correct that time/change was forever. Since we're here, and change exists, it always existed. The universe was always - and was always changing. If you think the Second Law poses a problem to that understanding, then the problem is with the Second Law (or your understanding of the Second Law). In any event, we don't need God in this picture - all God provides is the "change preceding change", which doesn't require God, since change was always.

[TickledPink]

Forgive me, I want to re-read some of your remarks and make a more considered response. I'll update this shortly.

Edited June 26, 2009 by TickledPink

[The Wrath]

Atheism does not mean "absolute certainty that there is no God." Look at the etymology of the word. A=without. Theism=belief in God. Atheism=without belief in God. I am perfectly comfortable using the phrase "there is no God," for the same reason I am comfortable saying that there is no Santa Clause. Both are arbitrary claims and I don't need to be able to disprove them in order to dismiss them with a wave of my hand.

[softwareNerd]

Atheism does not mean "absolute certainty that there is no God."

The way you use the term "absolute certainty" is a pointless term. It cannot describe anything. For instance, consider some adjective like "blue". If everything in the world was blue, it would be meaningless to ask: "is that blue?" (Arguably, in such a situation, we would not even have a term like "blue".)

So, what you're really saying in your post has nothing to do with God or any other specific claim. Instead, you're making a broad philosophical statement of the "Existence exists" type, and stating that you are not absolutely certain of anything at all. There is no other reasonable way to interpret your post.

Also, since you're not an Objectivist, it would help if you point that out in posts that make such sweeping statements. Otherwise, you're helping confuse some newbie.

Edited June 26, 2009 by softwareNerd

[The Wrath]

Uhh...that isn't what I meant, nor is there anything in that post that makes it reasonable to think that that's what I meant. I meant only that it is impossible to prove a negative and, therefore, people who describe themselves as atheists seldom claim to have absolute proof that there is no supreme being.

Edited June 26, 2009 by The Wrath

[Jake_Ellison]

Atheism does not mean "absolute certainty that there is no God."

I can't imagine any way in which this could be interpreted as a true statement. Atheism is exactly the belief that there is no God. If you're not certain that something without a definite identity can't exist, then what could you possibly base the claim that God doesn't exist on?

I think you're interpreting atheism as simply the denial of specific religions, which can be shown to be arbitrary. But that's not atheism: atheism, for an Objectivist, absolutely is the belief that there's no "being" outside existence, which is omnipotent, omniscient and without identity. Not a Catholic God, and not any other thing that is God-like.

[bluey]

Uhh...that isn't what I meant, nor is there anything in that post that makes it reasonable to think that that's what I meant. I meant only that it is impossible to prove a negative and, therefore, people who describe themselves as atheists seldom claim to have absolute proof that there is no supreme being.

Proof isn't the same as certainty. I assume you're absolutely certain that there is no Santa Clause, but I doubt you have absolute proof that he doesn't exist - unless you have some way of seeing the entire North Pole all at once or something (and even then it would only constitute proof if you could enable anyone else to make that same observation). Atheists are absolutely certain that god doesn't exist, and the question of absolute proof is irrelevant to that certainty.

[TickledPink]

Okay.

Much of your argument is contingent upon fallacious (culturally derived) conditions of existence.

1. We have no way of knowing whether or not the universe is a closed system; given the interjections of string theory, it is highly unlikely that the universe is a closed system.

2. As JMeganSnow pointed out, "They don't call it "space-time" for nothing." I might add to this, time is NOT constant (as Einstein proved) and is therefore very dissimilar in actuality to our cultural, or popular understanding of time: as a unit of measurement. If rulers were of varying length, or alternatively changed shaped due to environmental considerations (like speed), what meaning would the measurement of a "meter" have?

3. Keeping that last bit in mind, notions such as "beginning" and "end" are entirely contrived! They are fabricated, human, conventions which have no reconcilable place in nature (this is probably due to the historically social, human, experience of death). You yourself have agreed that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and yet you insist upon a beginning and an ending (which is reflective I believe of your misunderstanding of time) of the universe? I feel as though you might be better served in your endeavor to understand cosmology, were you to understand time as an unreliable and fluid machination of the universe, rather than as a box into which it must uniformly and neatly fit.

4. The scientist in me balks at the severe limitations of our own sensory organs and their subsequent inability to interpret reality accurately. If you disagree with this premise, then I defy you to explain color blindness (or blindness for that matter), varying notions of hot and cold (which are relative), and most especially the relative experience of time.

Enough with the numbers...

Onto evolution! Evolution is, quite literally, adaptation over time. We refer to this process as selective pressure, because of the pressure an environment exhibits on an organism. Someone mentioned earlier the similarity in eyes, and how remarkably profound that statement is!

But it doesn't stop with eyes... look at the basic skeletal structures of mammals (or other organisms for that matter). All spines, at least to my knowledge (including fish vertebrae), are sectional (which by the way enables an animal to flex... turn, which is why they are not singularly rigid) and appear in much the same arrangement, uniformly featuring an atlas which joins the spine to the skull. Look how many species have skeletons, period! Why would we all (at least mammals and reptiles) have similar skeletal structures were it not for our enduring similar selective pressures? Indeed... if there were a creator, what would preclude a greater, or more imaginative diversity, why the uniformity of purpose and function? I think this reflects a social habit we westerners are typically fond of; which is the tendency to perceive difference rather than similarity. Perhaps it is a biological function; nevertheless we often categorize objects based on presumed discrepancies, imposing distinctions where the natural environment has otherwise failed to. (The rain falls on the reptile and the avian alike!)

I believe what frustrates the majority, when it comes to evolutionary theory, is again the troublesome notion of time. We're talking a loooooooooong time here. Billions of years in fact. Imagine how incredibly vast the universe is, and then consider that it took only 14 billion years, roughly. When you consider the fact that earth is 4.5 billion years old and that life began to evolve appx. 3.8 billion years ago, the notion of accounting for such a "diversity" of life on a single planet in regards to the diversity present in say our universe, is substantially less difficult to grasp, intellectually speaking.

Furthermore, evolutionary theory is probably one of the more certain of modern science's claims. Merely look at the difference between heirloom corn, and that corn which is sold today in the local markets. That occurred only in the matter of a few decades! This is classic Mendel.

My apologies for any sarcasms, or smartassedness. I truly hope this helps.

TickledPink

P.S. The Wrath, you are quite right... I should be ashamed of my Greek. In any event, while human renderings of "God" have often proven arbitrary, they do not through their absurdness refute the possibility of a creator's existence. I guess what I hoped to imply by my remark is that many who are Atheist, or who claim Atheism, do seem to project an air of certainty. While I agree with you so far as similarly not wishing to base my life upon "arbitrary" doctrines, I am somewhat reluctant to be assured of such an entity's non-existence.

[bluey]

...while human renderings of "God" have often proven arbitrary, they do not through their absurdness refute the possibility of a creator's existence.

Can you give an example of a non-human rendering of "God"? Or a human rendering of "God" that is non-arbitrary? Or any evidence that "human renderings of "God"" are indeed renderings (which implies that a being exists to be rendered) rather than random conjecture?

[softwareNerd]

Uhh...that isn't what I meant, nor is there anything in that post that makes it reasonable to think that that's what I meant.

Well, think through what is meant by certainty.

Do you also claim not to be certain that Harry Potter is not real in some sense? Suppose I say it describes some real-life person who really lives in a wizard world that we are unaware of but was revealed to Rowling, and even she does not understand that her fiction is really a magical implant. Are you going to reply that you are an A-potter-Realist and cannot be certain I'm not stark raving mad?

[JeffS]

"Natural" means the entire set of things which exist. "Supernatural" means something outside of the set of things which exist. Something "supernatural" is by definition something which does not exist. It doesn't matter if it's "physical" or observable with current technology. You are literally saying that something may exist which doesn't exist but we just don't know about it yet. God either exists - is something specific - or does not. Supernatural does not mean merely "outside of the scale or range of human observation" as you suggest in the above quote. That is why we can confidently say that there is nothing supernatural - because nothing exists which doesn't exist.

I don't understand why the debate doesn't end here. Really, is anything more needed?

Supernatural is that which does not exist.

The concept "god" is a concept of a supernatural being.

Therefore, the referent for "god" does not exist.

That's just a first stab at a simplified proof for the non-existence of God (or any god so defined). What are its flaws?

[bluey]

I don't understand why the debate doesn't end here. Really, is anything more needed?

Supernatural is that which does not exist.

The concept "god" is a concept of a supernatural being.

Therefore, the referent for "god" does not exist.

That's just a first stab at a simplified proof for the non-existence of God (or any god so defined). What are its flaws?

It's because people who don't understand what they're talking about constantly equivocate. They go back and forth between "God is unobservable, unknowable, undefinable yet inherently meaningful to human existence" and "God is potentially knowable though currently unknown, potentially observable though as yet unobserved, and potentially definable if only we had a chance to find, observe and describe it". They conveniently leave out the fact that the second definition, even if it weren't 100% arbitrary conjecture, would still leave you with a being who is completely irrelevant to human life and utterly meaningless except as a historical artifact or perhaps - someday - after all those "potentials" come to pass - at most, a national security interest or something. God is either supernatural, powerful, and non-existent; or natural, currently speculative (imaginary), and of absolutely no moral significance even if some being fitting that [non-]description were discovered someday. So you end up with the majority of North Americans holding some conflated mixture of these two imaginary possibilities and the rest is ... modern political history.

[TickledPink]

Can you give an example of a non-human rendering of "God"? Or a human rendering of "God" that is non-arbitrary? Or any evidence that "human renderings of "God"" are indeed renderings (which implies that a being exists to be rendered) rather than random conjecture?

Neanderthals are known to have buried their dead, co-habitated with Homo-Sapien-Spaiens, and may very well have had, by extension, "deistic" leanings. Perhaps we picked the habit up from them, for that matter. Who is to say?

I would venture to state that animistic practices are not necessarily "arbitrary", because they are based upon the seemingly natural observation that all objects, however infinitesimal, are (atomically) interrelated and possess some form of "life force", "spirit", or "energy". I am as reluctant to dismiss, off-offhandedly, that interpretation of reality as I am the optimistic existentialist's.

I meant "rendering" in the sense that one renders a view of a person, say... onto a canvas when painting, as a portrait of what THEY see. There are many "portraits" or renderings of God therefore. There are as many interpretations of the possible divine as there are painters, in this horrid analogy, and as is the case with the abstract... often times what we render we have in fact "seen", though not in reality. Anytime you visualize something which does not exist in reality (such as in the case of Plato's theory of forms... ick) you are "rendering" something which is pure conjecture.

I'm disappointed that in all of that, you elected to nit pick my use of the term render.

Oh well,

TickledPink

Edited June 26, 2009 by softwareNerd
Added quote-tags around quoted text

[nanite1018]

Lethalmiko, you obviously do not know much about science and haven't studied much about it. I would suggest looking up wikipedia articles, or better yet, picking up and reading these books at your local library:

"Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku (not necessary, but its a good primer on modern physics)

"The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene (by far the best two books on modern physics, including the origin of the universe, that I have ever read).

Anything by Carl Sagan, he was one of the greatest popular science writers ever. I suggest "The Dragons of Eden" (evolution) and "Cosmos" (everything, its amazing).

If you read all those and still think that intelligent design is a valuable theory, or that science is inept at explaining the origin of the universe, then there is nothing I (or anyone I think) can do. Everything I would say to refute your objections would be drawn mostly from those books anyway. Happy reading!

[Trebor]

Atheism does not mean "absolute certainty that there is no God." Look at the etymology of the word. A=without. Theism=belief in God. Atheism=without belief in God.

Several posters have taken issue with his statement; however The Wrath is correct.

Atheism is simply the absence of the belief in the existence of god; it is an absence of theist belief.

"Theism" and "atheism" are descriptive terms: they specify the presence or absence of a belief in god. If a person is designated as a theist, this tells us that he believes in a god, not why he believes. If a person is designated as an atheist, this tells us that he does not believe in a god, not why he does not believe.

There are many reasons why one may not believe in the existence of a god: one may have never encountered the concept of god before, or one may consider the idea of a supernatural being to be absurd, or one may think that there is no evidence to support the belief in a god. But regardless of the reason, if one does not believe in the existence of a god, one is an atheist; i.e., one is without theistic belief.

In this context, theism and atheism exhaust all possible alternatives with regard to the belief in a god: one is either a theist or an atheist; there is no other choice. One either accepts the proposition "god exists" as true, or one does not. One either believes in a supernatural being, or one does not. There is no third option or middle ground.

Atheism; The Case Against God p. 8; Chp. 1 "The Scope of Atheism"; Section 2 "The Meaning of Atheism"

Properly considered, agnosticism is not a third alternative to theism and atheism because it is concerned with a different aspect of religious belief. Theism and atheism refer to the presence or absence of belief in a god; agnosticism refers to the impossibility of knowledge with regard to a god or supernatural being.

The term "agnostic" does not, in itself, indicate whether or not one believes in a god. Agnosticism can be either theistic or atheistic.

Atheism; The Case Against God p. 10; Chp. 1 "The Scope of Atheism"; Section 3 "Agnosticism"

Atheism may be divided into two broad categories: implicit and explicit. (a) Implicit atheism is the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it. ( Explicit atheism is the absence of theistic belief due to a conscious rejection of it.

Atheism; The Case Against God p. 13; Chp. 1 "The Scope of Atheism"; Section 4 "The Varieties of Atheism"

Every child born is an atheist, an implicit atheist. They do not have a belief in god, but they are not consciously rejecting the existence of god. Nor are they making any claims as to certain knowledge of the non-existence of god.

[Jake_Ellison]

Several posters have taken issue with his statement; however The Wrath is correct.

Atheism is simply the absence of the belief in the existence of god; it is an absence of theist belief.

Every child born is an atheist, an implicit atheist. They do not have a belief in god, but they are not consciously rejecting the existence of god. Nor are they making any claims as to certain knowledge of the non-existence of god.

Grown men inevitably do make claims on the existence or non-existence of God. Since we're not all newborn children, I don't see how an atheist is someone who "makes no claims about God". We do make such claims, it's silly to define an atheist as someone who ignores or never heard of the idea "God".

Objectivism addresses God, and we declare we are atheists as a consequence of it. If we had never heard of God, we wouldn't have had the word atheist.

[Trebor]

Grown men inevitably do make claims on the existence or non-existence of God. Since we're not all newborn children, I don't see how an atheist is someone who "makes no claims about God". We do make such claims, it's silly to define an atheist as someone who ignores or never heard of the idea "God".

Objectivism addresses God, and we declare we are atheists as a consequence of it. If we had never heard of God, we wouldn't have had the word atheist.

I agree, it is silly to define "atheist" as "someone who ignores or never heard of the idea of "God"?

Atheism is a broad category. It refers to any and all who do not have a belief in the existence of god. It matters not why a person does not believe, nor what age they are. If they do not believe in the existence of god, then they are atheists. If they do believe, they are theists.

Do you think that there's a third alternative?

[softwareNerd]

Trebor, The definition of atheist was not in contention anyway.

[Trebor]

Trebor, The definition of atheist was not in contention anyway.

Okay; glad to know.

[Presty7]

I always thought the universe was cyclical. There is only so much matter/energy and that is recycled through a sequence as follows.

*NB I am not a scientist but this makes sense to me...

Singularity ->Becomes unstable -> Big Bang ("creation" of the universe) -> expansion (the stage we are in right now) -> entropy -> collapse (Matter is drawn together by gravity) -> Singularity... Lather-rinse-repeat...

If I'm not right off my rocker with this it seems to me that it is a closed system but one which has a life cycle. The saying is that nature abhors a vacuum, I think it also hates stagnation.

And with a limited amount of matter, could it be possible to one day see the return of this universe?

I also have entertained the thought of a cyclic universe.

[lethalmiko]

Now we are getting somewhere with this debate!

BIG BANG

The Wrath said "the Big Bang emerged from a singularity that existed for a tiny fraction of a second." No matter how small this time was, it still was time elapsing. In any case, there is still the problem of how the singularity came to exist. If there was no "before" the singularity, does it mean there was no universe until the singularity "manifested"? There is a book (a collection of seven lectures) by Stephen Hawking called "The Theory Of Everything: The Origin And Fate Of The Universe". In the fifth lecture on pages 84-85, he says something very interesting:

"... why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion to just avoid recollapse? If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size. On the other hand, if the expansion rate at one second had been larger by the same amount, the universe would have expanded so much that it would

be effectively empty now."

The immense precision of the Big Bang is food for serious thought. A mere coincidence or an act of God? Incidentally, Hawking proposed a theory that has time having no boundary (like a sphere) but he had to use what he called "imaginary time" for this theory to work. He even suggests that perhaps imaginary time is the real time and what we think is real time is just an invention.

EVOLUTION

According to this theory, more complex life forms emerge from simpler ones over long periods of time. It is believed by Evolutionists that life began in the oceans as single cell organisms that evolved into more complex life forms which finally ended up as terrestrial animals and then birds with insects somewhere. Life beginning in water necessarily implies that fish, whales, sharks etc., came first before lions or eagles. Which is why I talked about fish (or if you wish, some other water based ancestor) turning into elephants. In order for life forms to become more complex over time, there has to be an alteration of genetic structures in very significant ways. All examples that people give of evolution in progress are simple minor changes within species. Transformation from one species to a different one has never been proved. I would like anyone to please give me any information that shows intermediate fossils in the evolution process. For example, I would like to read about fossils showing the transition from reptiles to mammals or mammals to birds.

DNA

This is an extreeeeeeeemely complex molecule made up of elements such as Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, etc. in exact sequences of atoms (hence the term "genetic sequencing"). DNA polymers contain millions of molecules and according to Wikipedia, "the human genome has approximately 3 billion base pairs of DNA arranged into 46 chromosomes". No scientist has successfuly synthesized DNA in a lab and created life. And all this with extremely carefully controlled conditions of temparature, pressure, quantity of base elements, etc. (as opposed to the more chaotic natural conditions). All life comes ONLY from existing life.

EARTH HISTORY

The beginning of the Earth was initially some hot ball of gases that cooled down to molten liquid and finally soil on its fringes (the center is still molten). An atmosphere and water were formed and at some point the planet was habitable. In nature, elements necessary for life such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen tend to be stable molecules like O2 and H2 or combined with other elements to make other compounds.

THE ARGUMENT

I would like to invite any of you to explain or theorise how life could have started without some kind of "intelligent manipulation" of natural base elements. Please explain how something as enormously complex and precise as DNA can be created in the earth from any natural processes you care to name. Bear in mind that even the simplest one-celled organisms have enormously complex and very precisely sequenced genetic structures.

GOD & THE "SUPERNATURAL"

Accepting the existence of God does not mean you sign over your life to him or obey any religious crap thrown at you by self-proclaimed spokepersons. For me, the existence of God is merely to answer the questions of the origins of the universe and life on Earth (or any other planet that has life). So it matters whether he exists or not for the same reasons the causes of anything are. As to whether God is an alien, can we communicate with him, can we observe him directly, etc., those are secondary issues.

Bluey said "the universe is the location of the set of things which exist". I have no problem with this idea and the idea of God existing within the universe, even in some other possibly non-physical dimension. However, what if the universe existed as infinite "empty space" with God in it? And then God created matter and energy and life? Removing infinities from God does not mean he is therefore impotent to create. Omnipotence is NOT a necessary prerequisite for the ability to create atoms or life.

As for me being challenged to demonstrate my theories or else they won't be given serious consideration on this forum, that is simply ridiculous. Does everything have to be empirically observed for it to be taken seriously? Did Einstein do any tests to prove Relativity? Does every hypothesis have to be proved in a lab before it can be discussed? Are all the theories discussed on this forum (e.g. oscillating universe) provable and if not therefore not worth discussing?

And who says no one has ever done serious research into the paranormal? Speaking of this aspect, I would like an explanation for magic. I have personally observed it live and also watched shows of magicians like David Blaine and David Copperfield who have done some rather physically impossible things like leviation in full view of audiences, and live shows on TV. Blaine even does "street magic" which cannot easily be rehearsed or set up in advance. I have watched documentaries on TV of people with "special abilities". e.g. a certain man (can't remember his name) was able to say what someone would write on a piece of paper in another room without any special equipment. He did many other (documented) amazing things and was so successful at his craft even oil companies hired him and paid him tons of money. He apparently had a gift of finding oil reserves as he flew over land in a helicopter. Don't tell me all those greedy oil companies that paid him are just a bunch of crackpots with money to waste on stupid things that don't work.

TIME

I asked some very important questions about the nature of time which have not been adequately addressed by any of you. For example, the "time is the same as distance" hypothesis. Lack of change does not mean there is no time as Seeker suggested. Imagine a vaccum sealed spaceship that is stationary in space. Can anyone rationally claim that time is not elapsing inside the spaceship since we cannot see any changes taking place? Time may be forever but I am not sure about change. Moreover, if time is just an invention of humans and does not exist, then it does not matter anyway.

THE UNIVERSE

For anyone to claim it is not a closed system is to deny the obvious and to throw out all our scientific knowledge on this issue. In Thermodynamics, anything that is not a closed system necessarily has what is called "surroundings". i.e. anything OUTSIDE that system constitutes surroundings. So, does anything exist outside the universe?. If String Theory claims that, then it is absolute balderdash.

TickledPink claims that if rulers are varying in length or differently shaped, then it renders distance meaningless which is false because a ruler is not what determines distance nor the units of measurement. Distance, although an invented concept can be measured by many tools.

ENERGY AND MATTER

TickledPink further says "energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and yet you insist upon a beginning and an ending". This is true of the current state of the universe but it does not mean that this was always true. Suppose God created energy and put it into the singularity and left nature to take its course. If you say energy had no beginning since it cannot be created by God, you are back to the Entropy problem. Moreover, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that "The change in the internal energy of a closed thermodynamic system is equal to the sum of the amount of heat energy supplied to the system and the work done on the system". We already know the total mass-energy in the universe is finite but it has not yet been exhausted. The internal energy of the universe continues to change with work still being done up to now, despite infinite time passing which is a consequence of the "no beginning theory".

OCCAM'S RAZOR

This principle is not a scientific law nor is it an axiom. Violating it is not the end of the world. An explanation that has more entities may actually be the correct one. Show me why this is impossible in reality.

MISC

To claim that science has answered the questions of the origins of the universe in a satisfactory way, to the exclusion of the possibility of a creator is absolute nonsense. Why do eminent Physicists like Hawking still spend so much time grappling with these questions if the answers are so simple? Indeed why are there so many theories and counter theories in Cosmology with books written everyday about it? There are probably as many String Theories as there are scientists discussing them.

Edited July 3, 2009 by lethalmiko

[themadkat]

You are throwing a lot of junk out here at once, my friend. The truth is that a "god of the gaps" is no God at all, and I'm not exactly sure why you seem to have this psychological need to believe in an intelligent creator. I'm only going to address one part of your post, as it happens to be my areas of expertise and the others are not.

EVOLUTION

According to this theory, more complex life forms emerge from simpler ones over long periods of time. It is believed by Evolutionists that life began in the oceans as single cell organisms that evolved into more complex life forms which finally ended up as terrestrial animals and then birds with insects somewhere. Life beginning in water necessarily implies that fish, whales, sharks etc., came first before lions or eagles. Which is why I talked about fish (or if you wish, some other water based ancestor) turning into elephants. In order for life forms to become more complex over time, there has to be an alteration of genetic structures in very significant ways. All examples that people give of evolution in progress are simple minor changes within species. Transformation from one species to a different one has never been proved. I would like anyone to please give me any information that shows intermediate fossils in the evolution process. For example, I would like to read about fossils showing the transition from reptiles to mammals or mammals to birds.

I'm sorry to say but your ignorance is showing here. First off, you don't really have a firm understanding of biological history of the tree of life. The fact that life began in water does NOT imply that fish, whales, and sharks came before lions and eagles. There was also not one smooth transition between water and land. It may have happened multiple times but the "major" transition where vertebrates became terrestrial for the first time and it stuck was in an ancient group called the lobe-finned fishes (as opposed to most of the fish you are commonly aware of which are ray-finned fishes). Even today there are living fish, such as lungfish, that can leave the water and travel on land to get to another body of water. Mind you, this is not a fossil, this is a LIVING organism that exists in Africa in habitats where pools of water are seasonal. As to your prior example, sharks were the earliest in that sequence from which arose fish, and then land animals. Whales are an example of an animal that actually has its origins on land and subsequently returned to the oceans, as all mammals originally occupied land. What eventually became eagles probably evolved concurrently with the return to the water of what eventually became whales. As for lions, what we identify as the modern lion is actually a fairly recent arrival, only about 2 million years old. In other words, human ancestors became bipedal before lions ever existed.

I'm not really sure what you mean by simple minor changes within a species. If you have minor changes through time, plus tons of time, just what do you expect to happen, exactly? Evolution isn't even necessarily all that slow. Certainly in microorganisms it can occur on the scale of weeks (we're talking major changes like metabolic pathways). With bigger animals you can see fairly dramatic change on the scale of tens of thousands of years. What constitutes "proof", to you, of a "transformation" of one species into another? Things are what they are. The law of identity applies to organisms and species just like anything else. It really depends on your definition of species when something is "different enough", but the truth is that these lineages are continuous. An organism does not wake up suddenly one day and find that it is something else.

And then there is the "transitional forms" canard. Transitional is a relative term. No animal wanders around living its life thinking "gosh, I'm a transitional form, not a real species". Transitional between what and what? Australopithecine apes were "transitional" between ancestral chimpanzees and modern humans but that does not imply that they weren't their own species with their own unique characteristics and lifestyles. But you can clearly see that some of their traits are what you would call "intermediate" between other great apes and modern human anatomy, while others are completely unique to this group of animals. Going back farther, the ancestors of what would become mammals were extremely small and meek reptiles appearing as early as the Triassic period (200+ million years ago). That is your "transition" between reptiles and mammals, and the change progressed slowly over the entire Mesozoic era until mammals were fairly well differentiated by the Cretaceous and had their major adaptive radiation after the K-T boundary when the largest reptiles, i.e. dinosaurs, were gone. As for your second example, your ignorance is showing again. There is no connection between mammals and birds. They are completely separate lineages altogether. Birds arose directly from reptiles, most likely from raptor-type dinosaurs. In fact, many scientists now theorize that feathers were a feature of certain dinosaurs. Not modern feathers, of course, but I guess what you could consider "proto-feathers", very thin and wispy like down. They secondarily evolved warm-bloodedness, independently of the mammal clade. So the last common ancestor of birds and mammals would be some random dino from all the way back in the Triassic. They haven't been in the same lineage for 200 million years. Tell me, what would you call Archaeopteryx?

You've got something of a Platonic view of species and this is part of your problem. There is not some ideal "kind" that every organism falls into. Classifying life is messy and complicated. The goal of systematics is to "cleave nature at its joints", so to speak, such that our conceptual divisions reflect real and significant differences in reality to the best of our knowledge. But that does not make the classifications themselves somehow more real than the animals. You're better off thinking of each group as just another lineage and family in one giant tree of life.

As I said, this is not the only problem with your post by far, but as far as I know I'm the only evolutionary biologist on the board so I felt like I should be the one to respond to this section.

[JeffS]

I would like to invite any of you to explain or theorise how life could have started without some kind of "intelligent manipulation" of natural base elements. Please explain how something as enormously complex and precise as DNA can be created in the earth from any natural processes you care to name. Bear in mind that even the simplest one-celled organisms have enormously complex and very precisely sequenced genetic structures.

I don't know. (Thank you, John McVey!) But I do know it was a natural process. That is, however it started it started because of some cause based in reality. How do I know this? Because if it didn't start in reality, it started in non-reality. Non-reality, by definition, does not exist. It is impossible for something which does not exist to cause anything.

For me, the existence of God is merely to answer the questions of the origins of the universe and life on Earth (or any other planet that has life).

And you don't know how life began either. But rather than admit that, you consign it all over to God - a supernatural (i.e. outside of nature, outside of reality) being. You throw up your hands and say, "I give up! I can't find the answer, so I'll pretend the answer is this impossible being. I can stop thinking now." Blanking out the fact that your answer is epistemologically impossible. It's not just impossible by known laws of nature - it's impossible based in the fundamentals of knowledge. You blank out the fact your answer, rather than actually solving the problem, merely moves the problem to a new locus: How did God begin?

Your answer is egregious not because some people disagree with you. It's offensive because it negates Man's ability to have any knowledge about anything. It tells Man, "You can't know this, so you can't know anything. Your mind, your reason, is not up to the task of living, so you should just stop. Stop thinking. Stop asking questions. Stop looking for reasons. Stop looking for answers. Thinking is ineffective. Questions are too hard to answer. Reason is directed. Answers are beyond you."

No, thank you.

[bluey]

THE ARGUMENT

I would like to invite any of you to explain or theorise how life could have started without some kind of "intelligent manipulation" of natural base elements. Please explain how something as enormously complex and precise as DNA can be created in the earth from any natural processes you care to name. Bear in mind that even the simplest one-celled organisms have enormously complex and very precisely sequenced genetic structures.

The question is, how could some kind of "intelligence" that is composed of nothing but "empty space" exist in the first place, before matter or energy or life existed (according to you, a couple paragraphs down ... does that mean you're saying that god exists but isn't alive?)? Do you have a satisfactory explanation for that? Or any evidence that it is at all the case? Because even if we can't explain how or why existence exists, we do know unequivocally that it does exist, and that's basically what you are denying by arguing that the existence of every single known existent in the existing universe is contingent on the existence of some completely unknown and theoretical third party.

GOD & THE "SUPERNATURAL"

Accepting the existence of God does not mean you sign over your life to him or obey any religious crap thrown at you by self-proclaimed spokepersons. For me, the existence of God is merely to answer the questions of the origins of the universe and life on Earth (or any other planet that has life). So it matters whether he exists or not for the same reasons the causes of anything are. As to whether God is an alien, can we communicate with him, can we observe him directly, etc., those are secondary issues.

Bluey said "the universe is the location of the set of things which exist". I have no problem with this idea and the idea of God existing within the universe, even in some other possibly non-physical dimension. However, what if the universe existed as infinite "empty space" with God in it? And then God created matter and energy and life? Removing infinities from God does not mean he is therefore impotent to create. Omnipotence is NOT a necessary prerequisite for the ability to create atoms or life.

Why, why, why?? Is there some reason why you need to know how life began or the specific chemical details of the origin of the universe? If those questions were answered next week, with papers and proof and all the explanations you're asking for, how would your life be any different? Why do you think you need to personally possess information that you can't possibly have plans to act upon, and why is it any comfort to you to explicitly make up some storybook explanation that you know isn't true, because you just made it up, in order to stop asking?? You know it's okay to ask or not ask these questions, right? You know that it's entirely possible and acceptable for you to take some concrete actions to help find the answers if you're interested, right? You know that regardless of what the answers are, they're out there to be found, right? So if you're so interested, go find them! If you're not interested and just want to stop thinking about it, then by all means go ahead and never think about it again! There's no imperative that says that every person who's ever had a spark of curiosity about the origins of the universe must continue to harp on the subject until they're able to make themselves "believe" a particular explanation. If you care, go find out! If you don't, go do something more fun! It's okay!

As for me being challenged to demonstrate my theories or else they won't be given serious consideration on this forum, that is simply ridiculous. Does everything have to be empirically observed for it to be taken seriously?

No, not to be taken seriously as conjecture or art or dreamy imaginings. But you need to decide whether you're talking about science and asking for a scientific answer, or whether you're talking about imagination and asking for a more interesting story than "god did it". Because "god did it" has proven to be a compelling story, one you can tell to children without using big words or complicated concepts - kinda like saying the stork just dropped off your new baby brother. The only difference is that we do pretty much know how babies happen - but even before modern reproductive science, they still knew storks didn't have anything to do with it. If it's just the story you're interested in, you may not find what you're looking for. If it's fact you're interested in, then yes, observation and other sciencey stuff is what's going to get you there.

And who says no one has ever done serious research into the paranormal?

Yeah, TV is pretty impressive. I turned it on today and saw this guy wearing tights who could fly! Seriously shook my belief in gravity.

As for actual research into the paranormal, have a look at this here. Either no psychic in the world has any interest in making money from their "talent", or it's total bullshit.

To claim that science has answered the questions of the origins of the universe in a satisfactory way, to the exclusion of the possibility of a creator is absolute nonsense. Why do eminent Physicists like Hawking still spend so much time grappling with these questions if the answers are so simple? Indeed why are there so many theories and counter theories in Cosmology with books written everyday about it? There are probably as many String Theories as there are scientists discussing them.

Again, no one has made this claim. You don't need science to exclude the possibility of a creator - at least not the possibility of any creator that would actually be a satisfactory answer to the questions you're asking. By which I mean, even if we found some sort of alien creator of this part of the universe, science could still go ahead and try to find an explanation for his existence - even if we found god, sooner or later we'd still be back to wondering about the big bang. Whatever the answer is to life, the universe, and everything, if it's going to be found then it's more likely to be by scientific means than by regular people just racking their brains without regard to the context of what life and the universe actually are. If you just want to settle at some answer and stop thinking, you're better off with "42" than with "god".

[fountainhead777]

these religion and God topics are getting annoying but man I am totally up on my simple proofs for God's nonexistence. I wonder why people crave an irrational and impossible answer to questions of creation.