ISIS

I know hw you feel. In a way I envy the religious as they don't fret like Dylan Thomas about "Going raging into the night". It would be great to believe that when things get to the ultimate bad, daddy will be there to fix it.
However when you read the posts by believers here and their rationalisation of why they believe I start thinking about white coats and treatment.
How someone can simultaneously function at a high level in our complex logical world, yet be an ardent believer is truly beyond me (not just a figure of speech).
Good luck and I wish you all the best but not for me.

Annachie wrote:Time to get me a copper helmet and a grounding wire.

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This is starting to turn into "GOD EXISTS". Watch out or this thread will get Ducck'd too.
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Gentlemen! You can't fight in here - this is the War Room!

I can't see the days = epochs idea either. There are too many facts against it. At least two theories, consistent with present physics, exist that would allow a literal seven days, if outside intervention is not ruled out.



Name one. I seriously do wish to know how you can get from the Big Bang to a universe inhabitable by humans in a mere seven days without completely violating several laws of physics.

One) The assumption is commonly made that the universe is infinitely large. If this assumption is wrong, Einstein's theories result in a situation where in an expanding universe, gravitational effects cause time near the center to be much slower than the outer edges during the early stages of expansion. Calculation shows that in such case, anything within 5% of the center would have extremely large ratios compared to the outside, the exact amount depending on the size of the universe. So far no one has figured out any way to test this, but it does not violate any currently accepted laws of physics.

BTW, no current laws of physics have been able to explain any beginning for the universe, infinite or not. The currently accepted laws do require a beginning. Ref: the three laws of thermodymnamics, simplified to: 1) You can't win, 2) you can't even break even, 3) you can't get out of the game. I can't be an atheist because I can't believe in miracles without a cause.

Also, the suggestion was made about possible Duckking of the thread. Perhaps we should discuss the Islamic viewpoint instead. FWIR, this is that Allah's will is arbitrary and responsible for all things. If someone is a sadist, it is Allah's will. If someone is a a good person, it is Allah's will. Because Allah is arbitrary, there is no requirement for him to put the good person in paradise or punish the bad person. The only way to be sure of paradise is to die in jihad. But Allah is not required to do even this.

This contrasts with the Biblical view of a real universe, created and sustained by God, but otherwise independent except when there is a miracle or judgement. At the extreme, the Islamic view would seem to be that everything that occurs is a miracle. The situation in the Safehold series between OWL and Nahrman-in-the-machine reminds me of this semi-independence, except for the obvious point that OWL is part of the machine and Nahrman came from outside it. Note that miracles seem to obey laws after the changed situation - it would have needed a miracle for a never-failing barrel of meal and cruse of oil, but not for the digestion, etc. I Kings 17

What forum are we in? Ah...censorship at it's finest is still alive and well!

Imaginos1892 wrote:This is starting to turn into "GOD EXISTS". Watch out or this thread will get Ducck'd too.
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Gentlemen! You can't fight in here - this is the War Room!

If there is a God, I suspect he read "Spell my name with an S".

I also think that ISIS, like many fanatics actually, completely missed this.

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Daryl wrote:...My theory is that most people are fundamentally decent but there are a percentage of evil ...

People are fundamentally "Neutral/Selfish" with a desire to be seen as "good". Most ISIS terrorists see themselves as "good" and "doing Allah's work". they don't see the evil. There are those few who truly are "evil" and few who truly are "good" the rest just go one way or the other as the think is best for themselves. some are influenced to good because "it's better for me/I get more" and others are influence to evil because "others get away with it". or because someone convinces them it's not evil (as the case of most terrorist - being lead to evil by truly evil people who tell them it's "god's will")

Are Clinton's ex-people trying to get Trump elected????

The out of touch foggy bottom dwellers at State are demanding that Obama attack Assad! Now I'm not a fan of his, and he is definitely a bad guy by any definition. But as far as Syria goes, Assad is far far down the list from ISIS on the level of threats we should take action against. (Actually, I don't think it is our job to take action against Assad period. That is the job of the people of Syria and perhaps their neighbors. We are not responsible to taking down every bad guy on the planet, there are just too many leaders equally as bad as Assad and frankly many who are far worse.)

MAD-4A wrote:

Daryl wrote:...My theory is that most people are fundamentally decent but there are a percentage of evil ...

People are fundamentally "Neutral/Selfish" with a desire to be seen as "good". Most ISIS terrorists see themselves as "good" and "doing Allah's work". they don't see the evil. There are those few who truly are "evil" and few who truly are "good" the rest just go one way or the other as the think is best for themselves. some are influenced to good because "it's better for me/I get more" and others are influence to evil because "others get away with it". or because someone convinces them it's not evil (as the case of most terrorist - being lead to evil by truly evil people who tell them it's "god's will")

From:

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christiner ... sletterad=

Human rights advocate, Jacqueline Issac, said the mother told them she would pay, but asked for a “few seconds” as her daughter was in the shower.

The jihadis reportedly refused to wait and lit the house with a torch immediately.

Both the mother and her daughter managed to escape the burning house, but the child died from her fourth degree burns a few hours later.

Ms Issac told the Daily Express: “The daughter had fourth degree burns and the mother took her daughter, scrambling, doing anything to save her.

“She rushed her to the hospital and her daughter died in her arms.

“The last thing her daughter said was: ‘Forgive them’.”

Daryl wrote:I know how you feel. In a way I envy the religious as they don't fret like Dylan Thomas about "Going raging into the night". It would be great to believe that when things get to the ultimate bad, daddy will be there to fix it.
However when you read the posts by believers here and their rationalisation of why they believe I start thinking about white coats and treatment.
How someone can simultaneously function at a high level in our complex logical world, yet be an ardent believer is truly beyond me (not just a figure of speech).
Good luck and I wish you all the best but not for me.

Annachie wrote:Time to get me a copper helmet and a grounding wire.

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

If you can explain how information of the functional complexity needed for life can have anything except intelligent design as a sufficient known cause, please do so. There are some scientists who would love any alternative. Have you read about the recent research showing how the DNA is organized? This raises the calculated complexity by a minimum of two orders of magnitude. It was already (for a very simplified form of life that might not even work) running at 1 in 10^41,000 power, while the possible nuclear events in a 16 billion year universe of the radius and mass density we can see calculates to 10^139 power. But what are a few thousand zeros between friends


The ID theory does not require God. You could assume that someone in the future is going to invent a time machine, come back, and set it all up. (You would also need to include the fine tuning of the universe.) You may recall Hogan's story, "Thrice upon a time." with a universe that had physics which caused it to reset itself. Of course, that would still beg the question of any sufficient cause for the functional information, both of the universe and life.

Whenever evaluating anything, it is best to set up a reiterative method which includes in the process the two steps of 1) comparing present sufficient causes with past events, and 2) re-examining your own axioms. Neither of these is at all easy to do


PS. What got through to me was Isaiah 53:4>6. At present, I'm obeying I Thessalonians 5:21>22

DDHv wrote:If you can explain how information of the functional complexity needed for life can have anything except intelligent design as a sufficient known cause, please do so. There are some scientists who would love any alternative.

Selection pressure plus molecular self-organisation plus lots and lots of iterations. Evolution can produce clocks from hands/rods, gears, ratchets and springs.

DDHv wrote:Have you read about the recent research showing how the DNA is organized? This raises the calculated complexity by a minimum of two orders of magnitude.

Where is the evidence that DNA started out this complex? Also...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA#Evolution wrote:Building blocks of DNA (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules) may have been formed extraterrestrially in outer space.[146][147][148] Complex DNA and RNA organic compounds of life, including uracil, cytosine and thymine, have also been formed in the laboratory under conditions mimicking those found in outer space, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites.

DDHv wrote:The ID theory does not require God. You could assume that someone in the future is going to invent a time machine, come back, and set it all up. (You would also need to include the fine tuning of the universe.)

You just replaced the question "who created the creator" with a bootstrap paradox. I don't think this is much of an improvement. Besides, with equal authority I could assume that the universe was created last thursday with all memories and artefacts from before being part of the creation. Of course in the absence of actual evidence, this is an equally worthless assumption.