The Blind Atheist

[Urban Ranger]

Hi Lincoln!

You even get your audience wrong. Your target should be evilutionists, which incidentally include lots of your fellow Christians.

[Immortal Wombat]

Hi Lincoln!

[Lars-E]

Welcome back, Lincoln.

So how do Thai women compare to Western women?

[Natan]

Hi Lincoln. Good to see you around again.

[lightblue]

Creationists. Bah, always the same arguments, never any proof...
I've just read the first few chapters of your text:

Just because you don't understand it yet, doesn't mean it needed an external force to drive it.

Retrotransposons, LINEs etc are generally thought to be the remainders of old retroviral infections. Just look at any retrovirus and you'll see LTRs. And yes they do act as agents of mutation, and regulation. That doesn't mean they were stuck there on purpose. It just means that chance dictates that some insertion events will have a positive effect. This also means that all individuals where it was integrated in a less opportune place will have died, and failed to pass on their genes.

If you look for design, you can find it. However, the simpler solution is taking into account the time and number of generations that have passed before that what you see now is available. You have read Dawkins, so you know the example of the photosensitive patch that goes on to become an eye, gaining advantage after advantage.

Large-scale mutations also happen, generally after mutation of homeobox genes (for example we can mutate flies so that they have legs on their head instead of antennea). These are nearly always extremely detrimental, though at some point (maybe a one in a trillion chance) something good will come of it. If this gives a selective advantage it will remain in the population.

There's no God, no creator being. There's just chance and a hell of a lot of time. You say that the statue can't wave, however if you had a billion statues and watched them over billion years one of the hands will wave. I know believing in evolution isn't pretty, in that all the failures fall by the roadside, but it is far less delusional than believing in a creator.

I'll keep it at that for now, but bring me more arguments and I'll crush 'em.

[ThePantaloonDog]

I read skimmed a few chapters I realized that this was closely related to the book by Michael Behe called Darwin's Black Box . The trouble with hs arguments and your is that just because we don't understand it does not mean that it may not have happened. Behe also pissed me off by constantly disregarding mathematical models on the chances of evolution by saying that mathematical models don't actually state how it evolved (because we don't know).

[Caligastia]

Hi Lincoln!

[Lincoln]

Well hello everyone! Glad to see some old familiar faces and some new one too.

For a starter the objections posted so far prove one thing for certain: You haven't read the book yet. I am certainly not reiterating Behe's arguments. And I am not making a case against evolution either although I do mention it as an incidental distraction because atheists invariably seem to rely on it. This connection will cut me off in a minute so that is all for today.

God bless you all (even the atheists)!

[Lincoln]

For those short of time try the chapter on intelligent intervention (I think it is ch 5) and I will get bact to you when I can. . .

[Goingonit]

The website is bunk. It relies on morality to contradict reason. Hmm, sounds to me like religion!

Religion has many positive aspects, but that doesn't mean that it's a good source for truth.

[DinoDoc]

Hi, Lincoln.

[Lincoln]

Hi DinoDoc buddy. Thanks for your comments Goingonit. I don't think you have read the book either. Because the morality issue is also just an incidental point I made along the way. Get back to me when you have read more of it. Read the objections section for somewhat of a summary and also the Conclusion. I really have to go now. I can't believe this connection lasted for more than 5 minutes.

[DinoDoc]

How do you like teaching anyway? Is it just like you thought that it would be?

[Goingonit]

Originally posted by Lincoln
Hi DinoDoc buddy. Thanks for your comments Goingonit. I don't think you have read the book either. Because the morality issue is also just an incidental point I made along the way. Get back to me when you have read more of it. Read the objections section for somewhat of a summary and also the Conclusion. I really have to go now. I can't believe this connection lasted for more than 5 minutes.

While I will make no claim that the evidence is invalid, the site is (quite obviously) working from the postulate that God did create life. Thus, anything that does not absolutely contradict that hypothesis is taken to de facto support it. The basic thesis is, "Intelligent design was necessary because we do not know how life would have happened otherwise." This is in violation of Occam's Razor: some supreme being tinkering with Hydrocabon molecules to create life is not what one would automatically assume if one didn't know how life started. The arguments made in the conclusion are also tautological in nature:

It didn’t work you say? Oh, too bad. You have just helped to prove that God must exist. Oh, you did create life? Sorry for the misunderstanding. You have just helped to prove that intelligent intervention is necessary for the creation of life. Why? Well you are the one who translated the information into an appropriate code aren’t you? Wasn’t it you who subjected the strand of the now intelligently coded DNA to experiments that you devised?

However, that doesn't mean that creationists are wrong; it just means that the argument is undefendable by logic alone and is thus metaphysical in nature, and impossible to argue based on science.

[Lincoln]

Goingonit,

You are correct that the site does precede from the conclusion that God must exist but that is only after it is shown by evidence that he must exist. Then I build upon that evidence. The evidence that he must exist is found in the communicative instructions that are found in DNA and also in the intricate machinery of even an early biological organism. This was not Behe's argument although his assertions certainly add to the evidence. He was assuming that evolution was already working. I am concentrating on the beginning itself.

information laws require a mental source in order to provide true communication and not just abstract "information" that some like to define to avoid the issue. There is true communication within the machinery of life. It is absurd to conclude that life is an exception to established information law. An intelligent mental source must exist unless it is proved that the information laws are not in effect.

DinoDoc,

I really don't like teaching English because it is really too irrelevant (Moduls, helping verbs, etc. etc.) but I do like interacting with the Thai people. It can be quite fun.