₦airaland Forum

huxley:
Sin - is a meanless word in my worldview. But in the theistic worldview, it is a contravention of god's will.

Really Huxley? So you mean that there are no things which are inherently and naturally wrong. Such as Genocide?

The holocaust was okay, in your view, and so was the 9/11 bombing of the WTC?

If these things are wrong, what makes them wrong?

1. Human Laws

2. Natural Law (any thing anti-nature or anti-life)

bawomolo:
there are problems with your statement. why can't it be argued the universe always existed?

Are you familiar with the continuing expansion of the Universe? Please take a moment to study the Theory of the Big Bang - The Universe did not always exist, ok?

bawomolo:
why does the universe have to be created but this deity can't be created?

Did anybody (even God) create numbers? Go figure.

bawomolo:
what if the universe itself is the first cause (the universe is God)?

GBAM! So you have accepted that God exists (since he is the Universe).

@ Mantraa, really we needn't waste much time on the Evolution Argument, because i accept Evolution in principle.

Let me ask you this:

If a Deity exists, how do you expect HIM to create:

1. By instant magic OR

2. Activating an evolutionary process cognisant of the laws of biology, chemistry and physics.

For me, the second is more probable and for this reason i just dont see that the TOE in anyway discredits the existence of an Ultimate Deity.

Chrisbenogor:
Deep Sight,
Maybe there is too much gray areas between us and I will like to address it, I do not know it all, I am not above mistakes , I asked you to take a trip down all my posts I have apologized to people before but never for what I believe in, or never for airing my own views. A trip down this thread will also reveal that I only posted natural disasters, it was when David came along I asked him if he believed that his God created the malaria parasite. If you did not get my point or you felt what I was posting is out of line, simply point it out and say hey we are talking about this and that and I think what you said falls under the category of this or that. Then we can move ahead to strike common ground, when I first joined this site I thought I would get brownie points for talking down on people, I have learned though over time that true david and I are on opposite sides of the divide but I honestly believe he is being honest in what he says he believes in. It does not make him Unperceptive to me, it just shows me that we will never always see things the same way.
I have a favorite quote that says there is what I believe , there is what you believe, and there is what really is, depending on the method we choose, knowing what really is is a big task that has befallen man today. It was sad to see you running around as though you would get a kick out of me saying oh deep sight I grovel at your feet of wisdom because I wanted to hear what you had to say, I was really really really really disappointed today but that is life we live we clash we move on.

On a final note, I just hope you sit back and ask yourself what do these threads achieve? We peat ourselves against each other and we fight page after page after page, in the end we all walk away licking our wounds and thinking well I got the better of him today, but will noetic or abuzola ever see things my way or your way, I guess never. So why waste the pages haggling about it? Maybe you should start raising issues that affect us daily, like religious tolerance, what should be accepted and not and trying to help us find common ground where we can relate with one another. Just a personal thought.

As i said, earlier, i am truly and comprehensively sorry about my misbehaviour.

Sefago, you have not come back with the stronger arguments you promised.

We give thanks always.

@ Godson, dont be naive. That explanation was only dished out as an afterthought. Remember that the scandal raged for weeks before they eventually came up with that cock and bull story.

So what would you say about the fact that Bishop Oyedepo of Winners Chapel has now ordered a second private Jet?

I am sure you will be happy to defend that as well?

^^^ No, dont get it wrong, its not supposed to be beautiful to predators! Mantraa said, the pattern could look like eyes, which will scare off predators.

So i showed him patterns that do not look like eyes, let's wait for him to rationalize the purpose of that pattern as well. Get it now?

bawomolo:
The problem with your beliefs is that they are full of many assumptions that you expect to be taken as fact.

Show me one assumption i have made, and i will give you $200, 000.

M_Nwankwo, please help with these questions.

1. The place of the authour of the Grail Message within the Trinity if any (is he the Holy Spirit?)

2. Who is Parsifal? Is Parsifal God? Is he perhaps the highest image of God? Is he part of the Trinity or is the Trinity Embodied in him?

3. What's the relationship between Jesus and the Authour of the Grail Message?

4. Do Parfisal & Jesus worship the father? If they do, can they be called God?

bawomolo:
umm how do you know this?

Nooo, It was Mantraa that stated that the patterns on the back of the 1st butterfly were designed to scare predators since they look like eyes, and that that was natural selection at work. . .

So i am just showing him that natural selection cannot explain all types of patterns, for example, the 2nd butterfly above, beautiful simple patterns, nothing that could scare off a predator. . . se you get?

Here's the butterfly i referred to above. Nothing that looks like eyes, yes? Thus its beauty cannot be ascribed to natural selection, yes? Also will you deny that there are many beaultiful creatures in the world the patterns of which serve no biological or defensive purposes?

mantraa:
@deepsight
The selection process that causes the patterns we see today in life is evolution by natural selection over millions of generations, not plain chance.
This is a mistake that a lot of people make when first trying to understand how evolution works.

I have no problem with Evolution - although it is yet to be fully validated by the fossil record, i still think it makes some sense, so no trouble here.

mantraa:
Simply put. Using your analogy of the square dots. If each square dot was a life, but in the centre of the square the life had a less chance of surviving and reproducing as the life around the edges, then eventually over generations the life in the centre would become extinct and  only the life at the edges would survive, hence the square formation. You can observe this in life all around you.  99% of all life on this planet has become extinct and are still being made extinct through natural selection. millions of slight mutations are constantly taking place in all life forms and most of them lead nowhere but the 1% of mutations that help that lifeform survive and reproduce are passed on to the next generation etc etc. Times this by a few billion generations and you have your butterfly's wings, considering the life span of a typical butterfly. A lot of butterfly wings look like eyes which can confuse predators, thus helping the butterfly to survive. The butterflies that did not evolve these patterns could not reproduce because were eaten.

Nice, nice, nice, but the trouble is that you are fully aware that a great many butterflies do not have any patterns that resemble eyes at all, and you will struggle to present any defensive purposes which their patterns serve. Thus it emerges that the argument about defensive purposes is not wholistic. What would account for the patterns of butterflies that cannot be categorised as such. (For the avoidance of doubt, i will post one shortly)

mantraa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution

"The evolution of the peppered moth over the last two hundred years has been studied in detail. Originally, the vast majority of peppered moths had light colouration, which effectively camouflaged them against the light-coloured trees and lichens which they rested upon. However, because of widespread pollution during the Industrial Revolution in England, many of the lichens died out, and the trees that peppered moths rested on became blackened by soot, causing most of the light-coloured moths, or typica, to die off from predation. At the same time, the dark-coloured, or melanic, moths, carbonaria, flourished because of their ability to hide on the darkened trees.

Since then, with improved environmental standards, light-coloured peppered moths have again become common, but the dramatic change in the peppered moth's population has remained a subject of much interest and study, and has led to the coining of the term industrial melanism to refer to the genetic darkening of species in response to pollutants. As a result of the relatively simple and easy-to-understand circumstances of the adaptation, the peppered moth has become a common example used in explaining or demonstrating natural selection to laypeople and classroom students."

I am not sure you properly absorbed this. It indicates only the dissapearance of one kind of a species, nothing more.

For example, if we have short dogs and tall dogs. The short dogs cannot run fast and so are eaten by predators. Only the tall dogs remain, and they continue to flourish. The short dogs did not evolve into the tall dogs: they simply died out, leaving the tall dogs to continue, ok?

If you read that wiki article again, you will see that this is what happened: not a transformation of the light moths to dark moths, but a dying-off of the light moths, leaving the dark moths.

Pentecostals sha!

Let's look at it this way.

You have in your hand a clump of fifty pebbles.

You begin to throw them all on the floor such that they form random patterns on the ground. Such as these dots below.
. .     .  .  
.  .  ,     .
.  .   . .  .
  ,   . .  .  
.   .  .

You gather the pebbles and fling them on the floor over and over again, endlessly. They continue to form scattered random patterns of any description.

I realized this morning, that even if you fling those pebbles on the floor a  zilliion zillion times, you will never, not in all eternity, have them form something like this:

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 .                         .
 .                         .
 .                         .
 .                         .
 .                         .
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And yet this is a fairly simple pattern. But it evinces great linear order, precision and structure. If you think this is a wrong argument, you try spending the rest of your life throwing pebbles randomly on the floor. If you ever come up with the square above, i will either give you $200, 000 or have you arrested as a con artist.

You will never get the square above.

This is why very complex patterns which show particular hallmarks of linear design, can scarcely be attributed to chance.

I am tired of stating this:

Religion may very well be warped, and i am certain that it is.

It's stories are many times contradictory myths and sometimes deliberate falsehoods.

How in the world does that translate to mean that a mighty Deity does not exist?

But if you have perhaps a magnet beneath the floor you are throwing the pebbles on, that magnet could polarise them and organise them in straight bands of Positive and Negative lines, thus creating the square. Do you understand that such a force, such a magnet inherent within the substance of existence itself, is what we refer to as the uncaused cause. . . God?

Krayola:
@ deepsight. I apologize for that rant. But your "i'm so smart and y'all are just silly" demeanor was gettin on my last nerve. Abeg no vex.

You are welcome to believe whatever you want and make arguments for it. But you should not, imo, pretend that u have all the answers. No one does. There are several other possibilities, some of which make more sense than your uncaused cause theory.

14 billion (or whatever billion it is)years is along time, We know tooo little about what is going on. "I don't know" is the most honest answer to most of the questions we have. We just don't know. What registers to u as obvious isn't so obvious to the rest of us. I've heard arguments for the existence of God that are pretty convincing. Your's isn't, to me. But then I know what convinces we might be garbage to you,so I won't suggest u're being silly, or need to go back to school, for not agreeing with me. Everyone here wants to have a good debate. . . but u're not goin to get away with being rational only when it is convenient, and dogmatic the very next instant.

Thanks man, much appreciated.

Chrisbenogor:
I don't bloody care, go to my profile and read all my posts on this website , I never hesitate to admit I am wrong. You are fairly new to this website so you cannot pull wool over my eyes just yet, I see through you bro I really do.
You can just imagine oh, this guy always gets on my nerves, if he is not saying 0 + God = Universe he is saying that butterfly wings = intelligent uncaused cause. Very very shallow lines of argument, he just wants to play double agent, have a field day when huxley is attacking noetic and yet comeback here to be david's pal.
Sometimes I just think that if brains were dynamite he would not have enough to blow a wig off his head.

Chris - i apologize. I was out of order. For a moment there, i really felt like: i have never said a word about goodness or mercy, or the abrahamic God, so why will this fellow be using the existence of evil to debunk the existence of a prime mover. . . it really got under my skin, but i guess i was wrong to speak that way: I am sorry.

Deep Sight:
1. Butterfly wings are about patterns. Patterns are what even mathematics uses to arrive at precise conclusions. But we will come back to that.

Yes, let me return briefly to my Butterfly wings, the thing for which you have all slaughtered me. Perhaps i can explain the reasoning better like this.

Somebody along the thread (Dudu4space, i think) said that since time is eternal, everything that can happen will happen, without the need for the existence of God.

That was actually a very brilliant thing for him to say, although i did not admit it at first. But the problem with his statement remains -

Wait for it -

Butterfly wings! Hang on, don't get out the knives yet. . . i will explain. . .

Let's look at it this way.

You have in your hand a clump of fifty pebbles.

You begin to throw them all on the floor such that they form random patterns on the ground. Such as these dots below.
. . . .
. . , .
. . . . .
, . . .
. . .

You gather the pebbles and fling them on the floor over and over again, endlessly. They continue to form scattered random patterns of any description.

I realized this morning, that even if you fling those pebbles on the floor a zilliion zillion times, you will never, not in all eternity, have them form something like this:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And yet this is a fairly simple pattern. But it evinces great linear order, precision and structure. If you think this is a wrong argument, you try spending the rest of your life throwing pebbles randomly on the floor. If you ever come up with the square above, i will either give you $200, 000 or have you arrested as a con artist.

You will never get the square above.

This is why very complex patterns which show particular hallmarks of linear design, can scarcely be attributed to chance.

If you go back to the butterfly image - observe closely a number of things:

1. It has dots of colors that repeat themselves with absolute accuracy on each wing, each in perfect symetry with the corresponding color dot on the opposite wing

2. It has three circles on each side, each containing a coiled pattern

3. It has two orange bands on the top side of each wing, perfectly repeated in symetrically on each side

4. It has three lines of a wavelike pattern at the bottom of each wing and these flow symetrically across from one side to another.

5. It has a curved white rainbow again repeated with perfect symetrical precision on each side.

Brothers, it will be a cold day in hell, before any one of you could convince yourselves that all that is the product of chance.

It seems quite clear to the rational as well as perceptive mind, that no random effect could ever have come up with the butterfly wings.

That is cast in stone reasoning, gents.

Not even an eternity of throwing random pebbles would produce that (apologies to Dudu).

Dear brother, you will find many presumably clever people on this forum who will insist that the universe popped out of their arses, rather than concede to the existence of a Deity.

Ogaga, so if Abuzola falls in love with your 9 year old daughter, you will allow him to parcel her off to paedohile-heaven in mecca?

Krayola:
But someone who points at a butterfly's wings as an indicator of an "utimate intelligent uncaused cause" is?  U, my friend, are the new NL king of Dogma!! your own na even remixed dogma. The height if irrationality. U are a pretty ignorant dude. I think it needs to be said. U're a dumb fukc!!

That was intended as an insult!

Saying someone is yet to go to school and in the same post talkin some self righteous shit about not wanting to insult people. Are u really this dumb or are u just faking it? your arguments are beyond silly. That grail message u have read is making u feel like some intellectual champ, abi? olodo!!

You, i entirely pardon. You have always been a gentleman, and so you are entitled to burst your banks. Especially when you have some justification, haven seen me pour angry invectives on Chris.

So you, i will not be mad at, notwithstanding your invectives.

You, i will respond to, and rationally only. Never a bad word for you.

  1. Butterfly wings are about patterns. Patterns are what even mathematics uses to arrive at precise conclusions. But we will come back to that.

  2. What staggers me in the arguments put forward by Chris is the fact that he, and you all, are fully aware that i have never sought to prove the existence of a "good" abrahamic God. Thus pointing to natural disasters and plagues, is just shocking, when we are talking of an uncaused cause. You may have noted that although i have in my arguments attributed intelligence to God, i have never attributed "goodness" to that cause. This is because i believe in duality and that includes both good and evil.

I may have flown off the handle this morning, but men, i just could not believe that obvious planetary convulsions necessary for balance, would mean that the universe had no cause. . . especially considering that i have never said anything about a merciful, good, abrahamic God.

It made me feel no body has been listening properly, and thus that i have been wasting my time.

P.S. The Grail Message is a good book, but not my creed o. There's much in it that's bunkum as well.

Dude, i take no offense at your words.

[quote author=Tudór link=topic=328706.msg4615301#msg4615301 date=1253976129]That is really LAME. You painted a picture of a beautiful and orderly world "intelligently" designed for purpose. A simple look around shows you the not so beautiful and chaos and all you can say is "go back to nursery school". I laugh!
Why don't you tell us the beauty and intelligence behind earthquakes and tsunamis.[/quote]So you too will tell me you are not aware of the balancing that such natural disasters deliver in nature?

You too will tell me that even watching Discovery channel has not shown you how necessary predators are for a balanced ecosystem?

You too will join the excommunicated Chrisbenegor in imagining the earth as a toy, and not a balanced cosmic body needing all the balancing forces of winds, volcanic eruptions, predators, etc to maintain its existence?

Tudor - because i am fond of you only, i will give you ONE chance to admit that this is a crappy line of reasoning!

Especially when you are ALL aware i have not sought to prove the existence of the "good" Abrahamic God!

I give you one chance only, and that means ONE post, otherwise i will realize that we simply are not on the same wavelength in terms of basic reasoning powers.

@ Chris - am not going back on my vow - i will not address anything you say on this forum again, unless you see and admit your big goof.

german007:
@deepsights

Sir Can you please identify yourself and Tender your evidence and status.


Who are you, What are your belief's and ideologies.

What are your definitive characteristics?.



Many Thanks

Quite simply everything around us evidences an intelligent origin to existence. I believe such a cause exists, and would therefore categorize myself as an empirical and intuitive deist.

I am not interested in the concept of God espoused by the Abrahamic religions.

Atheists:
You might need to read about the big bang theory it explains how the universe as a we know it was created. It also explains about formation of stars and planets

Big bang, fine. No problems with that.

But what caused it? ? ? ?

If you can answer that question, i promise to give you $200, 000 of my own money to further your studies.

davidylan:
that is your opinion . . . you could equally ask why God created man with a limited lifespan, why not let us never die so by now the world would be so choked up we'd be looking for extra space to live on . . . sorry but that's just how stupid your argument sounds. I guess logic flies out of the window when it comes to arguing God.

Back to your issue - the same God who created the malaria parasite also created measures by which man could adequately deal with it. The europeans and Americans and even asians have developed measures to completely eradicate mosquitoes from their countries. It is not God's fault that AFricans are completely useless.

What else? Shall we blame car companies for creating the car that causes accidents on the road? What of the aircraft that kills all on board when accidents occur? Should we prohibit the rain since it causes flooding in some areas? Why did God even create the sun when he knew some would die of heat stroke?
Lets get rid of wind, too many deadly tornadoes.
We dont need soil, people are buried alive digging wells.
God must have been a bad guy when He created lions, didnt He know they were powerful enough to kill humans?

What else have i left out chris? I'm sure we can find a way to blame God for the pencil too.

David, you did very well to rationalize this for Chris, but honestly, you should not have bothered. Any body who can point to fatalities in the world as an indicator that there is no Ultimate Intelligent Uncaused Cause is really yet to go to school. Especially considering that this thread never said anything about the Abrahamic God per se.

I certainly will never be responding to any points raised by him again, unless and untill he openly admits what a silly line of reasoning this particular one has been.

@ Chris, the argument about fatalities in the world is so empty that i am not going to address it.

For the first time you have raised a point, i am deeply sorry to say, is not worthy of a nursery school child.

Bros, no insult intended o, but i really mean it when i say i can't believe anybody could pursue such an infantile line of reasoning.

Remember - no insult intended - don't like to insult people.

ok, i dey wait

please noetic, can you keep one of those virgins for me . . .

o, damn, i forgot i prefer experienced women. . .

Yes, they can become men. Only as an individual event. But have a look at the whole world in context and see how customised for purpose it is?

I am off for tonight, i'll just leave y'all with a picture of one of the things you claim did not require an intelligent designer -

duduspace:
Some people also claimed to see a face on the moon, (the work of natural forces in operation on the moon changing the moonscape) and said they had seen the face of god. If eternity is timeless as most people claim then anything that can happen will definitely happen and maybe, just maybe what we know in the present is simply an event within a limitless sample space. But yu wouldn't be willing to accept that would you? for the simple reason that it would make "Randomness" become the god that you are desperately seeking.

What's so random about these, especially when they all appear in one customised world fit for living things: spiral DNA, red blood cell clotting, the planetary water cycle, the botanical-planetary respiratory cycle, the cross-continental migration of new born birds, and the patterns on the back of a butterfly.

Random?

Think again.

Yes, if eternity is eternity anything that can happen will happen, but a customized set of happenings strung together will indicate a mind at work not randomness, no? Because in your argument, there would be individual happenings strung every where, not a lucid organized happening, no?

Krayola:
haha. . deepsight, u claim to have beef with dogma but your assertions are IMO no less dogmatic than anyone else's.

"look at this beautiful picture. . .it is sooo beautiful and amazing that is must have been created by a supreme being" And u insist anyone that doesn't agree with this your reasoning is lost. . .

It's a lot of fun watchin u do your thing.

No i don't imagine any body lost - but i find the thought that "there is no thought for the patterns on a butterfly's wings" quite staggering. Just as staggering as i would find it if anyone told me the mona lisa painting evolved from a pre biotic soup. It has even less hallmarks of design than the Universe has.

Krayola:
It is a possibility.

what's the next step?

Am fine with you accepting that. I want Tudor and Mantraa to stop running away so fast, and come back here to accept that its a possibility. And they must.

Once they do, they will have to explain why they have spent so much time ridiculing those who chose that possibility as the most logical to them, and specifically show me other possibilities which definitely make this particular possibility stupid.

RIGHT, MANTRAA & TUDOR - I CHALLENGE YOU TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION:

SINCE YOU BOTH SAY: WE DO NOT KNOW -

Then: ALL POSSIBILITIES SHOULD BE KEPT OPEN RIGHT?

DO YOU DENY THAT CREATION BY A SUPERNATURAL DEITY IS ONE OF THE POSSIBILITIES?

WILL YOU STATE THAT EVERY OTHER POSSIBILITY SHOULD BE KEPT OPEN, BUT THIS SINGLE ONE SHOULD BE SHUT?

IF, SO, FOR WHAT REASON MUST WE CONSIDER CHANCE, ALIENS, FORCES, EQUATIONS ETC, AND KICK OUT THE POSSIBILITY OF A DEITY.

I NEED TO KNOW IF IT REMAINS A POSSIBILITY WHICH SHOULD BE LOOKED INTO.

NO EVASIVE ANSWERS PLEASE.