How is there reality without God?

[EarthScienceguy]

Neils Bohr
"No Phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." Or another way to say this is that a tree does not fall in a forest unless it is observed.

The only way for there to be an objective reality is if God is the constant observer everywhere.

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler: "It is wrong to think of the past as 'already existing' in all detail. The 'past' is theory. The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present."

God is everywhere so He can observe everywhere and produce objective reality.

[Diogenes]

Neils Bohr
"No Phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." Or another way to say this is that a tree does not fall in a forest unless it is observed.

You appear to understand Niels Bohr's thinking about as well as you spelled his name. It's 'NIELS.'
Bohr had this to say about God:

"A statement about religion in the loose notes on Kierkegaard may throw light on the notion of wildness that appears in many of Bohr's letters. 'I, who do not feel in any way united with, and even less, bound to a God, and therefore am also much poorer [than Kierkegaard], would say that the good [is] the overall lofty goal, as only by being good [can one] judge according to worth and right.'"

Aaserud & Heilbron 2013, pp. 159–160, in a footnote from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

You also appear to misunderstand Wheeler, completely. In fact he referred to his ideas as "the Participatory Anthropic.
"Wheeler called it the Participatory Anthropic* Principle. It goes something like this. The answers we get from posing questions to Nature depend very much on the questions we ask. Principle."


_______________
*Anthropo, "human"

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #0]

You're missing the point. I'm making NO claims about how the universe came into existence ... none, nada. Humans don't know the answer to that problem but have some hypotheses that are still being tested. You're somehow taking that position and creating scenarios that I supposedly believe when I've made no comments on how I think the universe came about other than that we don't know yet.

I understand the point that you are trying to make. But if you believe that humans will one day know then that is a faith statement. You have faith that humans will. You have faith that it will be a materialistic solution.

It is not a "faith statement" ... if I never learn how the universe came into existence it will have no impact on my future. If someone figures this out it will also have no impact on me or my future. How is the mechanism for some event that happened billions of years ago going to impact me or anyone else. It isn't.

Did you think that we just popped into existence? But whatever. There is no materialistic solution so I will let be in your make-believe world.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #90]

That's right, my view is that we currently don't know how the first life on earth arose. That's why there are multiple research programs seeking to figure it out.

Like I said you believe that life just popped into existence. Here go back to your belief in tinker bell and such. Because the problem goes beyond the first life on Earth. As you learned earlier.

• "Paleontologists now increasingly recognize that “jumps” between species, without intermediates, are not simply the result of an incomplete record. Niles Eldredge, an evolutionary paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, puts it this way with Ian Tattersal: “The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history — not the artifact of a poor fossil record.”

• Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admitted: “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”

If you want to believe in Magic unicorns and the such you are free to so man.

Good, then we can dispense with any claims about amounts of "genetic information".

Wow! you do not believe in genetic information. Are you sure you took classes in biology? This is way outside of mainstream science. Here is a biology class that you can take to help you if you want to learn more about it. https://www.udemy.com/course/biology-10 ... 49e280d07b

We've been over this already. You're dishonestly making up your own definitions of words and expecting everyone else to go along.

Wow! you do not believe in adaptations either. Here is that class in biology again. https://www.udemy.com/course/biology-10 ... 49e280d07b It looks like there is a holiday sale going on right now.

First error....humans didn't evolve from chimps, humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor that was neither human nor chimp.

Wow this from the person that does not believe in genetic information or adaptations. OK.

Would it be more than one 1% difference or less? Or don't you know?

You've been corrected on this error multiple times now (you're confusing novel mutations with strains), yet you keep repeating it. If you can't fix such a simple mistake, I can't help you.

Why don't you take your biology course first and then get back with me.

As you learned before the reason why this is.

• "In 2000 and 2004, protein scientist Douglas Axe published experimental research in the Journal of Molecular Biology on mutational sensitivity tests he performed on enzymes in bacteria. Enzymes are long chains of amino acids which fold into a specific, stable, three-dimensional shape in order to function. Mutational sensitivity experiments begin by mutating the amino acid sequences of those proteins, and then testing the mutant proteins to determine whether they can still fold into a stable shape, and function properly. Axe’s research found that amino acid sequences which yield stable, functional protein folds may be as rare as 1 in 1074 sequences, suggesting that the vast majority of amino acid sequences will not produce stable proteins, and thus could not function in living organisms.
  
  Because of this extreme rarity of functional protein sequences, it would be very difficult for random mutations to take a protein with one type of fold, and evolve it into another, without going through some non-functional stage. Rather than evolving by “numerous, successive, slight modifications,” many changes would need to occur simultaneously to “find” the rare and unlikely amino acid sequences that yield functional proteins. To put the matter in perspective, Axe’s results suggest that the odds of blind and unguided Darwinian processes producing a functional protein fold are less than the odds of someone closing his eyes and firing an arrow into the Milky Way galaxy, and hitting one pre-selected atom. Douglas A. Axe, “Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds,” Journal of Molecular Biology, 341: 1295-1315 (2004); Douglas A. Axe, “Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Conservative Amino Acid Changes on Enzyme Exteriors,” Journal of Molecular Biology, 301: 585-595 (2000)."

• Evolutionary biologist in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Science. acknowledges that “simultaneous emergence of all components of a system is implausible.”

• Likewise, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne — a staunch defender of Darwinism — admits that “natural selection cannot build any feature in which intermediate steps do not confer a net benefit on the organism.”

• Even Darwin intuitively recognized this problem, as he wrote in Origin of Species:
  
  If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

The problem is you have a fundamental ignorance of the subject you're attempting to debate and you refuse to correct even the most basic of errors.

Yea, about that biology course again.

I have not made any conclusion. I have simply quoted researchers. So which researcher does not know anything about biology?

Dude, I just showed you a tree of life. For you to now deny that any exist is the height of delusion.

Dude you might want to listen to the people that are actually doing the research about this. And stop your delusional belief about there being a tree of life.

Like these

• ‘For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life,’ says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. ‘We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality,’ says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change. ~ Graham Lawton, “Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life,” New Scientist (January 21, 2009)

• Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the ‘true tree,’ not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree. ~ W. Ford Doolittle, “Phylogenetic Classification and the Universal Tree,” Science, Vol. 284:2124-2128 (June 25, 1999).
  Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirts – also known as tunicates – are lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren’t chordates. ‘Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another,’ Syvanen says. ~ Graham Lawton, “Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life,” New Scientist (January 21, 2009).

• Many biologists claim they know for sure that random mutation (purposeless chance) is the source of inherited variation that generates new species of life and that life evolved in a single-common-trunk, dichotomously branching-phylogenetic-tree pattern! But she dissents from that view and attacks the dogmatism of evolutionary systematists, noting that ‘[e]specially dogmatic are those molecular modelers of the ‘tree of life’ who, ignorant of alternative topologies (such as webs), don’t study ancestors.’ ~ Lynn Margulis, ‘The Phylogenetic Tree Topples,’ American Scientist, Vol 94 (3) (May-June, 2006).

So which one of these researchers is wrong and why would that be the case?

[William]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #91]

“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.~ John Wheeler”

This means, that without consciousness to observe it, the universe is not a real phenomena.

Agreed?

[William]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #93]

"Paleontologists now increasingly recognize that “jumps” between species, without intermediates, are not simply the result of an incomplete record. Niles Eldredge, an evolutionary paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, puts it this way with Ian Tattersal: “The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history — not the artifact of a poor fossil record.”

See also;

Eocene layers of mysterious origin
and
The Silurian Hypothesis

[Jose Fly]

Like I said you believe that life just popped into existence.

Seriously? I just told you my view is that we don't know how life first arose, and you reply by lying about what I said?

Wow! you do not believe in genetic information.

And yet again you lie about what I said. All I did was ask how you define and measure it and note that if you can't, that precludes you from making any quantitative claims about it.

Wow! you do not believe in adaptations either.

And that's not what I said at all, so once again you are lying.

Wow this from the person that does not believe in genetic information or adaptations. OK.

And you repeat the lies.

Dude you might want to listen to the people that are actually doing the research about this. And stop your delusional belief about there being a tree of life.

What the heck is wrong with you? I just showed you a tree of life, yet here you are claiming none exist. That's so delusional, it's hard to fathom.

So which one of these researchers is wrong and why would that be the case?

You're making multiple errors here, but given the above (persistent lying, fundamental errors that you refuse to correct) I see no point in trying to explain any of it to you.

I suppose your posts do serve as a good illustration of the inherent dishonesty behind creationism though. If you have to repeatedly lie, redefine words, and ignore your own errors to advocate it, your position is very likely wrong.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #92]

I understand the point that you are trying to make. But if you believe that humans will one day know then that is a faith statement. You have faith that humans will. You have faith that it will be a materialistic solution.

For the very simple reason that materialistic explanations have succeeded in huge numbers of cases and the track record is excellent. As time goes by, humans learn more and apply that knowledge to unsolved problems and eventually solve many of them. It has happened far too many times to ignore. On the other hand, supernatural explanations (eg. gods) have NEVER been confirmed ... the track record of success is virtually zero. So expecting that humans will solve a problem vs. a god being shown as the correct solution is a far more reasonable position to take. Track records count, and gods so far are batting zero.

Did you think that we just popped into existence? But whatever. There is no materialistic solution so I will let be in your make-believe world.

"Popping" into existence is exactly what you are proposing. An imaginary god being just "created" everything (including humans) by simply willing it to happen. A materialistic explanation says that some process over a long period of time (evidently several hundred million years) involving resident molecules, chemistry, photons from the sun, heat, etc. resulted in more complex compounds that eventually combined into replicating molecules and then some kind of initial "life."

The fact that we can't reproduce this in a lab or describe every detail of the process in no way means it didn't happen this way ... it just means we don't yet know the details. It is an unsolved science problem. Fortunately for mankind, we aren't just throwing in the towel like they did many centuries ago and assigning anything we don't understand to the actions of imaginary god beings (at least most of us ... the tiny number of remaining YECs seem happy to continue that lazy approach).

[otseng]

Dude you might want to listen to the people that are actually doing the research about this. And stop your delusional belief about there being a tree of life.

What the heck is wrong with you? I just showed you a tree of life, yet here you are claiming none exist. That's so delusional, it's hard to fathom.

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[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #97]

For the very simple reason that materialistic explanations have succeeded in huge numbers of cases and the track record is excellent. As time goes by, humans learn more and apply that knowledge to unsolved problems and eventually solve many of them. It has happened far too many times to ignore. On the other hand, supernatural explanations (eg. gods) have NEVER been confirmed ... the track record of success is virtually zero. So expecting that humans will solve a problem vs. a god being shown as the correct solution is a far more reasonable position to take. Track records count, and gods so far are batting zero.

Well, this is certainly a statement of dogmatic faith. Most scientists up until recent times have been Christians or have believed in Christian doctrine. So what track record are you speaking of?

"Popping" into existence is exactly what you are proposing. An imaginary god being just "created" everything (including humans) by simply willing it to happen. A materialistic explanation says that some process over a long period of time (evidently several hundred million years) involving resident molecules, chemistry, photons from the sun, heat, etc. resulted in more complex compounds that eventually combined into replicating molecules and then some kind of initial "life."

You have no evidence of this. Science points to a sudden beginning of both life and the universe. So what evidence do you have for your belief?

The fact that we can't reproduce this in a lab or describe every detail of the process in no way means it didn't happen this way ... it just means we don't yet know the details. It is an unsolved science problem. Fortunately for mankind, we aren't just throwing in the towel like they did many centuries ago and assigning anything we don't understand to the actions of imaginary god beings (at least most of us ... the tiny number of remaining YECs seem happy to continue that lazy approach).

This is nothing more than another dogmatic belief statement that is based on no evidence.

Like what? Like I said earlier most scientists until recent times have had Christian beliefs.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #99]

Well, this is certainly a statement of dogmatic faith. Most scientists up until recent times have been Christians or have believed in Christian doctrine. So what track record are you speaking of?

The religious beliefs of scientists is irrelevant. Newton was religious, as was Plank, Maxwell and many others. This has no bearing on their scientific results. Do you somehow think that because Newton was religious his results in mathematics, physics, mechanics optics, etc. are more or less valid because of this? These are completely unrelated ... F=ma does not depend on anyone's religious beliefs. Newton was also a practicing alchemist, and those results failed because they were wrong ... his religious beliefs had nothing to do with that either.

The track record I'm talking about is the huge number of problems science has correctly solved in virtually field of endeavor (mathematics, physics, biology, geology, chemistry, etc. etc.). Solutions to many problems are what eliminated god explanations. We know Helios is not pulling the sun across the sky in his chariot, and Zeus is not causing lightning and thunder, and some angel is not controlling the wind (as was just claimed in another S&R thread, believe it or not). The successful track record of science is enormous.

You have no evidence of this. Science points to a sudden beginning of both life and the universe. So what evidence do you have for your belief?

And you have no evidence of a god being doing anything (or even existing). So in that regard we're even, but some kind of abiogenesis event is much more likely that a god explanation because we do have molecules, heat, photons, lightning, etc. and we know chemistry proceeds when things like this interact. This is the evidence that makes it at least plausible and not completely pulled from thin air like gods.

Like what? Like I said earlier most scientists until recent times have had Christian beliefs.

Which has zero to do with their scientific results. It is an irrelevant point.