Scientific Reasons for God

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by ghost7584, Jan 27, 2005.

  1. ghost7584 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    374
    Scientific Reasons to believe in God:
    The laws of probability will tell you that this universe with all of its ordered complexity, could not have come into being by chance. To have that much order and complexity, the universe had to be designed by an intelligent creator. There is enough coded information in one human chromosome to
    fill a small library of books. This had to be designed by an
    intelligent creator.
    The probability against that happening by chance is very
    very high. It's like giving a chimpanzee a typewriter and letting him hit the keys at
    random. The probability against his being able to type a small library full of books by hitting keys at random is so high that for all
    practical purposes you can consider it impossible.
    Because of this, there are some scientists and mathematicians who are forced to
    believe in the existence of God by logic alone.
    In order for a single cell to live, all of the parts of the cell must be assembled before life starts. This involves 60,000 proteins that are assembled in roughly 100 different combinations. The probability that these complex groupings of proteins could have happened just by chance is extremely small. It is about 1 chance in 10 to the 4,478,296 power. The probability of a living cell being assembled just by chance is so small, that you may as well consider it to be impossible. This means that the probability that the living cell is created by an intelligent creator, that designed it, is extremely large. The probability that God created the living cell is 10 to the 4,478,296 power to 1.
    [The probability of this was calculated by Fred Hoyle, famous astronomer and mathematician.]
    There are no existing physical rules, that have been observed by science, that indicate that ordered complexity can evolve by random chance occurences. In Science there is an observed law of entropy. In all natural occurences in science, the amount of disorder increases. In other words, the physical laws that are observed in nature lead to more disorder; they do not lead to ordered complexity.
    The only thing observed to cause more complexity is an intelligence, of some sort deliberately assembling something together.
    Example: A pile of building materials stacked in a pile is hit by a tornado. When the pieces come down, they do not assemble themselves into a house. They just fall into a more disordered pile of building materials. An intelligence must deliberately assemble the materials into a house to get ordered complexity.
    God created the ordered complexity in the universe. There are no observed scientific processes that can account for it happening by itself.
    Natural selection has not been observed to cause one species to change into another new species, only into a new breed or subspecies of the same animal. Fish do not change into amphibians; amphibians do not change into reptiles; reptiles do not change into mammals. Natural selection cannot account for the origin of the different species. There are a million missing links in the fossil record as it has been found. The intermediate stages that would be necessary for fish to become amphibians, and reptiles to become mammals, have not been found in the fossils. The fossils show evidence that all of the species were originally created by God and they did not evolve into one another.
    "Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance
    of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic
    molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is
    insensibly different from zero"
    - Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3

    "No matter how large the environment one considers, lfe cannot have had
    a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on
    typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the
    practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough
    to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and
    certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong
    attempts. The same is true for living material"
    Ibid., p.148

    "The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the
    chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is one one part in
    (10^20)^2000 = 10^40000, an outrageously small probability that could
    not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If
    one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific
    training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth [by
    chance or natural processes], this simple calculation wipes the idea
    entirely out of court"
    Ibid., p.24

    "Any theory with a probability of being correct that is larger than one
    part in 10^40000 must be judged superior to random shuffling. The
    theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a
    probability vastly higher than one part in 10^40000 of being the correct
    explaination of the many curious facts discussed in previous chapters.
    Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not
    widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological
    rather than scientific."
    Ibid., p.130

    "All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn
    out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it."
    - Lee Spetner, "Not by Chance"(Brooklyn, New York: The Judaica
    Press,Inc.) p.138

    "It appears that the neo-darwinism hypothesis is insufficient to explain
    some of the observations that were not available at the time the
    paradigm took shape. ...One might ask why the neo-darwinian paradigm
    does not weaken or disappear if it is at odds with critical factual
    information. The reasons are not necessarily scientific ones but rather
    may be rooted in human nature"
    - Christian Schwabe "On the Validity of Molecular Evolution", Trends in
    Biochemical Sciences, July 1986, p.282

    "The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the
    proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them
    in any sort of evolutionary series" - Ibid. p.289

    "Thousands of different sequences, protein, and nucleic acid, have now
    been compared in hundreds of different species but never has any
    sequnces been found to be in any sense the lineal descendant or ancestor
    of any other sequence." - Ibid. pp. 289-290

    The God of Israel is God. The Word of God is the King James version Bible. What God wants you to do is in the King James version New Testament.
     
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  3. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    [deleted long quote]
    *************
    M*W: Welcome to sciforums. Somehow I must have missed all the scientific evidence for God. Could you please prove how the citations you've quoted allude to the existence of God.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 1, 2005
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  5. Godless Objectivist Mind Registered Senior Member

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    4,197
    Theres no order in the universe; hence this is a common flaw of theists thinking that everything has order. Fact is the Universe is chaotic.

    Buy the book; have a nice read: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/4374.html

    Nuf Said!.
    Godless.
     
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  7. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    9,199
    ghost,

    There is no precedent for anything having been created outside of an evolutionary process. Based on direct observations we can see that those items with the greatest complexity take the longest to evolve and in an infinite universe time is not a limitation.
     
  8. fahrenheit 451 fiction Registered Senior Member

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    323
    welcome ghost, I would go back and revise you thinking.
    it's already been said, but I to would like to see the evidence, for such assertions, thank you
     
  9. duendy Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,585
    whenever one proposes a 'designer' of the universe, we are back with the image of the male 'God' making 'his' universe as though from OUTSIDE
    This is old-fashioned (ie., patriarchal)

    read the CHAOS book, that's much more hip.
    the CREATION is both transcendental AND immanent. think positive negative and earthed. Nature Is Intelligence
     
  10. Prester John The voice of Reason! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    125
    Ok so what created god ?
     
  11. Yorda Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,275
    What do you mean!?? No one created god. He's the creator, you know, he's not creatED.
     
  12. Zero Mass Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    298
    Also, read the blind watchmaker by richard dawkins. somebody on sciforums turned me on to it and it helped explain a lot of naive questions about evolution. It even adresses the "monkey typing shakespeare" argument and puts it down.

    The idea behind the blind watchmaker is putting an end to the idea that life was a product of intelligent design, but instead relied completely on random chance and the laws of evolution.

    -ZERO MASS
     
  13. Silas asimovbot Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,116
    Lets blow the straw men down. And, ghost7584, you actually need to know something about science before you can make remotely sensible claims about what science proves. Leaving aside the fact that whatever science proves is by definition not God - since science explores the explorable and explains the explicable. If something is explicable (by some previous scientifically testable source or cause) then it isn't God. Maybe the start of the Universe was by God - in which case it will be impossible for Science to determine the exact cause of the Universe. If it is not impossible for Science to determine the exact cause of the Universe, if in other words the creation of the Universe becomes inevitable due to the laws of physics, science will again have disproved the God theory - but the God theory is untouchable by science anyway. You can then say, "who or what created the laws of physics?" to which you can suggest that God created the laws, or that the laws just are, or (as in my case) that the laws are at root due to the absolutely immutable (not even by God) laws of Mathematics.

    The first item and the second item are different issues. The Universe with its supposed ordered complexity is in fact quite chaotic. The problem arises that the laws of physics appear to be fine-tuned to allow for the creation of a Universe that is almost flat - ie that doesn't re-collapse immediately or just expand into nothingness. It requires a flat universe to create stars and planets and to have sufficient time for the evolution of intelligent life. So how can that low probability incident have come about, then? But the answer, taking full congizance of the laws of probability is that there are an infinitude of different Universes with different values for the various constants and which cause different laws of physics to apply - in an infinitude of Universes there has to be one in which the laws are correct, (in fact many many of them) - there cannot possibly be a non-valid Universe in which we would evolve to debate the matter; we can only evolve in those Universes in which the conditions are right. And so, the probability argument does not stand up.
    The fact that scientists and mathematicians believe in God is not a valid argument for the belief in God, as they themselves would tell you. Those of us who do not believe frequently have reached this position as a revolt against blind acceptance of "authority". True rationalists will not turn to other authorities just because they are supposedly espousing the same world view, ie scientists. One of the greatest writers on science and rationality and a thorough debunker of all nonsense, is nontheless a Deist: Martin Gardner. With all due respect to everything he has taught me, I do not follow him to his final acceptance of a God.
    Fortunately the operation of Natural Selection is in fact the diametric opposite of "random chance" which is why proteins etc. evolved without the necessity of an enormous dice roll. An individual mutation is random - whether it is good or bad for the organism is not random. The chances are that the mutation will be bad for the organism, but even a rare event will occur occasionally - and a mutation which was beneficial for the organism will survive to be passed on. This has nothing to do with randomness, I'm sure you will agree. The question is not if a beneficial mutation will occur, it is only a question of when. And beneficial mutations by definition will survive, and consequently will act cumulatively. I see no reason why this process would not have applied to the very first chemicals that were self-replicating to eventually "evolve" into a working cell.
    But in fact not, because that is a nonsensically small chance for any kind of molecule to spontaneously generate - and complex amino acids have already been formed using just gases available on the primordial earth and an energy source. If it was that unlikely, Urey and Miller's 1952 experiment would never ever have worked.
    Another "authority figure" - a firm atheist, by the way, and someone who hated the very concept of the (now accepted) Big Bang Theory, because it possibly opened the door for a God.
    I've just been arguing this with Woody. The entire system must be considered when calculating the amount of energy involved. In this case, a small localised decrease in Entropy (the formation of complex molecules leading to Life etc) occurs under the lash of energy from the Sun. The total entropy of the whole system (which includes all the energy from the Sun which bleeds off in all other directions apart from the tiny angle subtended by the Earth) is what you should be accounting for when calculating the entropy of the system. If you put put hydrogen and oxygen gases into a container and apply an input of energy, you will create water. This is an increase in "order" caused by a higher temperature - and yet no violation of the laws of thermodynamics has resulted. If it wasn't for local decreases in entropy evidenced simply by the stars and the formation of the Earth, there wouldn't even be a Universe for us to talk about!
    I suggest you read actual science books as opposed to Creationist literature. Science may be wrong about the ultimate answer, but please don't pretend that it hasn't advanced rational explanations for nearly everything in the Universe, and is still seeking the answers. That is the job of science - to find the rational explanation. God is a priori not a rational explanation, so science does not advance God as an explanation. Neither does it do so for that which Science has currently no explanation (for example the ultimate Origin of the Universe). It carries on looking on the assumption that a rational, non supernatural explanation can be found - and in the meantime we find out many other useful things about life and the Universe around us.
    Evolutionists will tell you that it would not be expected for species to be seen to evolve within our normal human lifespan, or even over the entire length of recorded human history. The evidence for evolution has nothing to do with seeing species evolve in front of us. Starting with fossils of dead creatures which share characteristics with those still living, and seeing how less developed fossils always precede more developed fossils in the record is a point in evolution's favour. Nobody expects there to be anything other than huge gaps in the record, and evolution is still the best theory to account for the development and obvious filial relationships between species. In the last century, Gregor Mendel discovered genetics and the digital form that characteristics take. This was a vindication of evolution. In the early 20th century, the theory of natural selection was vindicated again by the develpment by RA Fisher of mathematical genetics. He showed that if natural selection was true, this would result in specific mathematical laws regarding how species develop (for example, how a species with sibling-sex taboo will develop with roughly equal number between the sexes, and how a species which uses sibling sex to procreate inevitably leads to a preponderance of females - since this is what we observe, evolution and natural selection are vindicated).

    The absence of evidence does not in fact constitute evidence that God created the individual species. The gaps in the fossil record was explored thoroughly by Darwin himself, and again he was able to maintain the justification of his position.

    The rest of your post was citations from dubious authorities. Hoyle is praised and respected for those parts of science he advanced and got right. He is not praised or respected for those parts of science he got wrong. You know someone else who actually suffers from the same thing? Albert Einstein. The scientific establishment accepts and makes use of his great discoveries in the fields of relativity and quanta. It does not take any notice of his divergence from the standard model of quantum mechanics because he is considered wrong on those points. Hoyle, incidentally, was an astronomer, so his authority is not respected as far as biological sciences anyway. The other book makes statements about molecular biology that I suspect are outright lies. In any case, since Dawkins was able to write The Blind Watchmaker several years after the Christian bloke in 1986, and continues to argue the same points, as do all other molecular evolutionists would seem to imply that they simply don't accept his evidence as evidence.

    And here it is. Never mind accepting the word of God from Bible text, it has to be one particular (far from perfect) translation made just short of 400 years ago (in fact 400 years ago today, the translators were busy at work - it started in 1604).
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2005
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Isn't this argument from incredulity? Like Dawkins wrote, their argument is that the universe is more complicated than they can imagine, therefore it is the product of an intelligent entity. That only speaks to your lack of imagination.

    There is nothing scientific about Ghost's reasoning. Of course, it would be extremely unlikely for a fully formed DNA molecule, much less an entire cell to pop into existence spontaneously, but THAT'S NOT THE WAY IT HAPPENED!

    The probability of organic chemistry in the Earth's early ocean forming a runaway chain reaction is almost 100% In fact, it may have happened more than once. Even chemical reactions can have the property of heredity, and evolve without DNA. DNA came later, cells came later -all built upon previous layers of "complexity" (everything is complex, or... everything is simple, depends how you look at it).

    but,

    There is a scientific reason for God, or rather, an evolutionary explanation for the success of religion. Basically, people believe religion because they are bred to. Religion is a mental enzyme that serves as a catalyst for making more religious people. Every generation becomes more adapted for belief, and the "sheeple gene" becomes more and more common.



    That may or may not be true (no way to prove a negative), but scientifically, it's a cop-out. If you want to believe in God, fine, but don't pretend to justify it through science.
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2005
  15. Prester John The voice of Reason! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    125
    Of course, the complex universe must have a creator, whilst the more complex god doesn't. Thers logic for ya.
     
  16. water the sea Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,442
    Those are not "scientific reasons to believe in God". What you are trying to argue for is God by inference.

    True, we can infer a God, but I am sure that nobody would really, heartily pray to such a God, that, at best, has the status of a philosphical construct.

    The God, even in that Bible version that you postulate as the one and only right one, is said to love people.

    Now, since when can a God by inference (=a philosophical construct) love?
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Obviously life evolves into a God at the end of the universe, then acts as the designer of the next one.
     
  18. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
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    This would also explain the political careers of Adolf Hitler and George Bush.
     
  19. Nasor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,231
    Uh, no. I’d suggest you go read a physics book and come back when you know what entropy actually is.
     
  20. scorpius a realist Valued Senior Member

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    1,350
  21. Godless Objectivist Mind Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,197
    Men.

    G.
     
  22. ghost7584 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    374
    Prester John

    Ok so what created god ?

    Exodus 3:13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
    Exodus 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

    Well, how would you interpret that? Maybe - I exist that I exist
    Is that the answer to your question?
     
  23. ghost7584 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    374
    itopal

    Genesis 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that [are] not clean by two, the male and his female.

    There were plenty enough to do the offering and have some left over. 7-1=6.

    "Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance
    of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic
    molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is
    insensibly different from zero"
    - Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3

    "No matter how large the environment one considers, lfe cannot have had
    a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on
    typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the
    practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough
    to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and
    certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong
    attempts. The same is true for living material"
    Ibid., p.148

    "The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the
    chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is one one part in
    (10^20)^2000 = 10^40000, an outrageously small probability that could
    not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If
    one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific
    training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth [by
    chance or natural processes], this simple calculation wipes the idea
    entirely out of court"
    Ibid., p.24

    "Any theory with a probability of being correct that is larger than one
    part in 10^40000 must be judged superior to random shuffling. The
    theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a
    probability vastly higher than one part in 10^40000 of being the correct
    explaination of the many curious facts discussed in previous chapters.
    Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not
    widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological
    rather than scientific."
    Ibid., p.130

    "All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn
    out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it."
    - Lee Spetner, "Not by Chance"(Brooklyn, New York: The Judaica
    Press,Inc.) p.138

    "It appears that the neo-darwinism hypothesis is insufficient to explain
    some of the observations that were not available at the time the
    paradigm took shape. ...One might ask why the neo-darwinian paradigm
    does not weaken or disappear if it is at odds with critical factual
    information. The reasons are not necessarily scientific ones but rather
    may be rooted in human nature"
    - Christian Schwabe "On the Validity of Molecular Evolution", Trends in
    Biochemical Sciences, July 1986, p.282

    "The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the
    proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them
    in any sort of evolutionary series" - Ibid. p.289

    "Thousands of different sequences, protein, and nucleic acid, have now
    been compared in hundreds of different species but never has any
    sequnces been found to be in any sense the lineal descendant or ancestor
    of any other sequence." - Ibid. pp. 289-290

    There are no existing physical rules, that have been observed by science, that indicate that ordered complexity can evolve by random chance occurences. In Science there is an observed law of entropy. In all natural occurences in science, the amount of disorder increases. In other words, the physical laws that are observed in nature lead to more disorder; they do not lead to ordered complexity.
    The only thing observed to cause more complexity is an intelligence, of some sort deliberately assembling something together.
    Example: A pile of building materials stacked in a pile is hit by a tornado. When the pieces come down, they do not assemble themselves into a house. They just fall into a more disordered pile of building materials. An intelligence must deliberately assemble the materials into a house to get ordered complexity.
    God created the ordered complexity in the universe. There are no observed scientific processes that can account for it happening by itself.

    Isaac Newton, the scientific genius, and founder of physics, was a Christian believer and a Bible scholar. He rightly believed that God created the scientific laws that he was discovering.
    Newton was probably a greater scientist than you will ever be, and he believed in God and Jesus. Don't try to hide behind science to back up your atheism.

    Manuel, Frank. The Religion of Isaac Newton.
    Manuel, Frank E. The Religion of Isaac Newton . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. ISBN 0-19-826640-5.

    "About the time of the End, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the prophecies, and insist on their literal interpretation in the midst of much clamor and opposition."
    --Sir Isaac Newton
     

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