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.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #58]

Wow. Now that's some denialism! As Barbarian likes to point out, even young-earth creationist organizations acknowledge that evolution occurs, sometimes to the level of taxonomic families (they need it to happen to make their "Noah took representatives of 'kinds'" story work).

So to see you actually say that no population has ever evolved, ever....well, that puts you in a very unique and tiny class of denialists

No they do not. They say that adaptation takes place not evolution. That is why I said Phylum to phylum.

[Jose Fly]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #58]

Wow. Now that's some denialism! As Barbarian likes to point out, even young-earth creationist organizations acknowledge that evolution occurs, sometimes to the level of taxonomic families (they need it to happen to make their "Noah took representatives of 'kinds'" story work).

So to see you actually say that no population has ever evolved, ever....well, that puts you in a very unique and tiny class of denialists

No they do not. They say that adaptation takes place not evolution. That is why I said Phylum to phylum.

So you make up your own definitions of words to suit your needs to where even the emergence of new species or genera isn't evolution. Such is the fundamentally dishonest nature of creationism.

[Miles]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #46]

The "belief" as you put it is based entirely on the results of science. Science not only supports it, but it is also the entire basis of it.

But it has been shown that matter and energy cannot be the cause of the universe because they both need space and constants of nature to exist. If there is no universe then there is no space for matter and energy to exist and there is no reason for the constants of nature. So no, your belief that matter and energy created the universe is not supported by science.

What do you mean by "seen"? Of course no person as lived long enough to physically observe, for example, fish evolve to amphibians because (a) no humans existed when that happened, and (b) it took far, far longer than any human lifetime ... even if you include the ridiculous stories in Genesisof 900+ year old people. Evolution is a formal scientific theory, and rightfully so, because there are enough observations and enough evidence to confirm it. When someone can debunk the overwhelming evidence, it will fail to be accepted. Until then, it remains the best explanation we have for how life diversified on this planet.

That is exactly what I mean by seen or observe. There could not have been enough observations because you just said that no one observed it. No one observed evolution you cannot observe history. The only long-term experiment evolution experiment only produced 12 mutations in 30 years and 70,000 generations. That is not fast enough for evolution to happen.

I don't doubt that some preacher named Jesus was walking around the Middle East 2000 years ago, and that he upset the Romans and was crucified. But the claim that he "rose from the dead" is just an unconfirmed story. To use your own line of argument, who saw this actually happen to confirm it? The empty tomb story, and claims people saw him after the crucification, are not confirmed by anything but hearsay in one holy book. Why it is any more valid than the story of Muhammad taking a night trip to heaven aboard a winged horse-like creature called Buraq, or stories in other holy books.

Paul said that he saw the risen Jesus. Christianity also started in the same city where Jesus was crucified how is that the case, if anyone should know if He was not crucified and rose again, would be those in Jerusalem. No, one else saw Muhammad taking that night trip. No one even said that they saw Muhammad taking that night trip. No one said that they saw the angel that gave Muhammad the Karan also.

The fossil record is evidence ... and fossils can be dated whether you believe it not. They are observations. I do believe it, and the fossil record (among many other observations, genetic support, etc.) proves evolution. I expect your main opposition to it is that it shows humans evolved from a great ape ancestor, that humans aren't anything special in the grand scheme of things, and these contradict religious beliefs based on the bible stories.

It does not prove evolution because it has not been observed. Again why would you believe these researchers and not cosmologists? Because you like what these are saying and you do not like what cosmologists are saying.

Consider:

Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations

.........This is a repost from April 24th, 2010. Watching Speciation Occur is the
.........second in my Evolution series which started with The Curious Case of Dogs


We saw that the littlest differences can lead to dramatic variations when we looked at the wide variety in dogs. But despite their differences, all breeds of dogs are still the same species as each other and their ancestor. How do species split? What causes speciation? And what evidence do we have that speciation has ever occurred?

Critics of evolution often fall back on the maxim that no one has ever seen one species split into two. While that's clearly a straw man, because most speciation takes far longer than our lifespan to occur, it's also not true. We have seen species split, and we continue to see species diverging every day.

For example, there were the two new species of American goatsbeards (or salsifies, genus Tragopogon) that sprung into existence in the past century. In the early 1900s, three species of these wildflowers - the western salsify (T. dubius), the meadow salsify (T. pratensis), and the oyster plant (T. porrifolius) - were introduced to the United States from Europe. As their populations expanded, the species interacted, often producing sterile hybrids. But by the 1950s, scientists realized that there were two new variations of goatsbeard growing. While they looked like hybrids, they weren't sterile. They were perfectly capable of reproducing with their own kind but not with any of the original three species - the classic definition of a new species.

How did this happen? It turns out that the parental plants made mistakes when they created their gametes (analogous to our sperm and eggs). Instead of making gametes with only one copy of each chromosome, they created ones with two or more, a state called polyploidy. Two polyploid gametes from different species, each with double the genetic information they were supposed to have, fused, and created a tetraploid: an creature with 4 sets of chromosomes. Because of the difference in chromosome number, the tetrapoid couldn't mate with either of its parent species, but it wasn't prevented from reproducing with fellow accidents.

This process, known as Hybrid Speciation, has been documented a number of times in different plants. But plants aren't the only ones speciating through hybridization: Heliconius butterflies, too, have split in a similar way.

It doesn't take a mass of mutations accumulating over generations to create a different species - all it takes is some event that reproductively isolates one group of individuals from another. This can happen very rapidly, in cases like these of polyploidy. A single mutation can be enough. Or it can happen at a much, much slower pace. This is the speciation that evolution is known for - the gradual changes over time that separate species.

But just because we can't see all speciation events from start to finish doesn't mean we can't see species splitting. If the theory of evolution is true, we would expect to find species in various stages of separation all over the globe. There would be ones that have just begun to split, showing reproductive isolation, and those that might still look like one species but haven't interbred for thousands of years. Indeed, that is exactly what we find.
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source: Scientific American

I invite all doubters to click on the link above and read more about the evidence for evolution. For those compelled to dismiss the validity of evolution out of hand, enjoy your ignorance in silence.

Thank you.


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[Jose Fly]

[Replying to Miles in post #63]
Yeah but that's not evolution....those populations adapted into new species!

[Miles]

[Replying to Miles in post #63]
Yeah but that's not evolution....those populations adapted into new species!

And how fair is that I ask ya! Tryin' to explain things with more science twaddle. Should be excommunicated or somethin' for pullin' such foolishness. 'ticularly when I've lost my thinkin' cap.

Buford!........ Lilli Bell!......... Ya'll seen my thinkin cap?..............................It's on yur head daddy.............. Ah, so i'tis. .. So i'tis.


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[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #59]

But it has been shown that matter and energy cannot be the cause of the universe because they both need space and constants of nature to exist. If there is no universe then there is no space for matter and energy to exist and there is no reason for the constants of nature. So no, your belief that matter and energy created the universe is not supported by science.

Where are you getting that it is my belief that matter and energy created the universe? They are the universe, but we don't yet know the exact mechanism for how this universe came into existence. Science has hypotheses which some observational support (eg. the Big Bang), but I'm open to whatever is found to be the mechanism if humans ever figure this out, and happy to accept that we don't yet know for sure and it is an open problem. Science supports that viewpoint perfectly well. Why draw premature conclusions?

That is exactly what I mean by seen or observe. There could not have been enough observations because you just said that no one observed it. No one observed evolution you cannot observe history. The only long-term experiment evolution experiment only produced 12 mutations in 30 years and 70,000 generations. That is not fast enough for evolution to happen.

The mutation numbers are wrong as Jose pointed out, but are you claiming that nothing on this Earth or in the cosmos can be deduced unless a human physically witnesses it? That's clearly ridiculous. We'd never have forensic science, or know how the Grand Canyon formed, or countless other exanples of things we can learn without a human actually witnessing it, if this were true.

Paul said that he saw the risen Jesus. Christianity also started in the same city where Jesus was crucified how is that the case, if anyone should know if He was not crucified and rose again, would be those in Jerusalem. No, one else saw Muhammad taking that night trip. No one even said that they saw Muhammad taking that night trip. No one said that they saw the angel that gave Muhammad the Karan also.

Paul had a reported experience on the road to Damascus that sounds awfully hard to believe. And no one actually saw Jesus awaken from the dead and ascend to heaven. By your reasoning (nothing can be confirmed unless a human saw it happen), the resurrection of Jesus woud not qualify as being confirmed. I don't question that people all over the world believe this as part of their religion, but there's no indisputable evidence that it actually happened. The Karan? Did she ask for the manager? The point was that these are stories in holy books. Muslims believe the Muhammad stories just as strongly as you believe the Jesus stories.

It does not prove evolution because it has not been observed. Again why would you believe these researchers and not cosmologists? Because you like what these are saying and you do not like what cosmologists are saying.

What do you mean about not believing cosmologists? That is a strawman. I've never said I don't believe cosmologists.

[Jose Fly]

are you claiming that nothing on this Earth or in the cosmos can be deduced unless a human physically witnesses it? That's clearly ridiculous. We'd never have forensic science, or know how the Grand Canyon formed, or countless other exanples of things we can learn without a human actually witnessing it, if this were true.

In another forum I used to tell ESG that if I were ever on trial for a crime that had no eyewitnesses, I'd want a jury full of creationists. I wouldn't even have to pay for a lawyer...I could just get up and say "Since no one directly observed the alleged crime, no one can reach any conclusions about what really happened." Then the creationist jury would have no choice but to declare "Not guilty!"

[OneWay]

[Replying to OneWay in post #55]

It is my unproven opinion, that the age of the Earth is 4.7 billion years because of meteorite dating.

That is not an opposing argument. You seem to be missing the point of what a debate is. I pointed to meteorite dating as a large collection of scientific measurements made over several decades on hundreds of samples by different research groups using a wide range of isotopes, all of which produce incredibly consistent results. It is not my unproven opinion that these results indicate that our solar system and its planets formed around 4.7 billion years ago. The results of the dating measurements show that. It is not anyone's opinion.

But it would not work on me in a debate.

That's irrelevant, because you're not debating. To participate in a debate you have to present an opposing argument as to why the radiometric dating is wrong, or an argument as to why it is correct but does not show that the age of the Earth is 4.7 billion years. You've presented no opposing arguments of any kind, so you are not participating in a debate.

Blah blah blah and more blah blah blah. No honor. They should make me a moderator
at least I will not cut and run from any debate. Seeing how this is a DEBATE FORUM.

[JoeyKnothead]

are you claiming that nothing on this Earth or in the cosmos can be deduced unless a human physically witnesses it? That's clearly ridiculous. We'd never have forensic science, or know how the Grand Canyon formed, or countless other exanples of things we can learn without a human actually witnessing it, if this were true.

In another forum I used to tell ESG that if I were ever on trial for a crime that had no eyewitnesses, I'd want a jury full of creationists. I wouldn't even have to pay for a lawyer...I could just get up and say "Since no one directly observed the alleged crime, no one can reach any conclusions about what really happened." Then the creationist jury would have no choice but to declare "Not guilty!"

What kills me about that is they'll believe creation accounts

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to OneWay in post #68]

Blah blah blah and more blah blah blah. No honor. They should make me a moderator
at least I will not cut and run from any debate. Seeing how this is a DEBATE FORUM.

It is a debate forum, yet you refuse to debate and instead just whine that the other person is running from the debate. Debates are not one sided. Until you offer up some kind of opposing argument, or refute anything I've said (you've done neither), then it is you who refuses to debate. Offer an opposing argument for why the Earth is not 4.7 billion years old, or present arguments for why radiometric dating is invalid, or why the ages of meteorites doesn't imply an age for our solar system. You got anything? If not ... there's no need to keep posting silly messages like the one above.