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Author
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Topic: Is there a god?
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SpikeSpiegel
BlabberMouth, a Blabber Odyssey
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posted November 17, 2003 17:04
god doesnt exist. if (s)he/it did (s)he/it would have smitten us all down for dragging out this thread so far.
on a side note: anybody want to make wagers on how long it does continue?
ask zorro length?
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its been a while
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tmr255
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posted November 22, 2003 06:13
God, as the masses see it, is silly and childish in my opinion, people for many years have always put this strange sense of importance on themselves and their actions and surroundings, always neglecting that we are not only mortal but specks and insignificant to the universe’s processes as a whole. If a person is locked in a cage for its entire life does its soul not matter? What is a soul, if your born with just a brain stem do you have one or not? (that has happened and they kept the thing alive for a few days) I don’t really believe in a soul per se.
My current realization of god is more described in the little things, like why did ecto plasm decide to grow DNA? Please explain a virus? Why a rose has thorns? It’s a plant, it does not think as we know it. How does a moth know what eyes look like, a butterfly, just random patterns of evolution? I don’t think so, if you explain everything with evolution and random anomalies in DNA, I’d say we would have all been killed by the biggest ant in the world by now, or a blob type of thing that eats all. =)
What I’m getting at is I think there is some sense of awareness in the universe and in all things. The relationships between elements and any living or half living things (virus) are just too perfect in my mind to explain with randomness. So I’d say sure there is a god but by no means is my mess of neurons and false perception of awareness anything to god. I came, I’ll reproduce, and I’ll decompose. I don’t need a deep meaning for my existence to enjoy the world around me and live in it.
I can go on forever on specific topics/rants but I’ll stop. =)
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Cap'n Vic
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posted November 22, 2003 09:32
quote:
Originally posted by tmr255:
I can go on forever on specific topics/rants but I’ll stop. =)
Please do.
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(!) (T) = 8-D
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Xanthine
Solid Nitrozanium SuperFan!
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posted November 22, 2003 09:35
/me sees the words "virus" and "DNA" and can no longer resist.
My current realization of god is more described in the little things, like why did ecto plasm decide to grow DNA?
Because RNA is too unstable.
Please explain a virus?
Becuase it can be. THerefore, it is. Life is like that.
Why a rose has thorns?
So things don't eat it before it can spread some pollen and seeds.
It’s a plant, it does not think as we know it.
You think natural selection is concious?
How does a moth know what eyes look like, a butterfly, just random patterns of evolution?
Not so much random as selected for.
I don’t think so, if you explain everything with evolution and random anomalies in DNA, I’d say we would have all been killed by the biggest ant in the world by now, or a blob type of thing that eats all.
We still could be. It ain't over.
Life is not perfect. Amazing, but not perfect. I wouldn't call it designed. But that doesn't mean there is no God.
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And it's one, two, three / On the wrong side of the lee / What were you meant for? / What were you meant for?
- The Decemberists
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dragonman97
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posted November 22, 2003 09:36
/me puts a post in here, therefore this thread will hopefully die again (it's one of those times when it's good to be a 'killer of threads').
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There are three things you can be sure of in life: Death, taxes, and reading about fake illnesses online...
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MonikaTheOnlyOne
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posted November 22, 2003 15:53
God doesn't care about this conversation. Has anyone realized that? If we are really worried about our faith, we should talk to him directly. (You call that prayer) ![[Beard of Peter Gabriel!]](graemlins/beardofpetergabriel.gif)
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Monika
I can't depend on your hate to define my love
Am I strong enough to love your soul?
Love doesn't care to receive what it gives
Bleeding compassion to extreme
Love stretches out to die for its enemies
Hey you, I love your soul!
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tmr255
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posted November 22, 2003 18:15
quote:
Originally posted by Xanthine:
Because RNA is too unstable.
Becuase it can be. THerefore, it is. Life is like that.
I'd agree, obviously life is the end result, so it can be.
Why a rose has thorns?
So things don't eat it before it can spread some pollen and seeds.
It’s a plant, it does not think as we know it.
You think natural selection is concious?
Yeah to a degree, by no means in the sence of our conciusness, but I'd say there is selective mutation along with random mutations.
...just random patterns of evolution?
Not so much random as selected for.
My point is with random selected through the usual thinking of being eaten (your a bad mutation) to reproducing (good mutation), you'd think there would be a lot of silly leftovers. The optimization in mutations is what I'm geting at, everything is so specialized, why don't ants have 20 legs, I can boil it down to what came first the chicken or the egg. If the ant did not suceed with 20 legs what did he not suceed at? how was a task/method predefined for the ant to fail at.
...or a blob type of thing that eats all.
We still could be. It ain't over.
Totaly agree =)
Life is not perfect. Amazing, but not perfect. I wouldn't call it designed. But that doesn't mean there is no God.
I'd say its amazing and perfect, whats your definition of perfect? chaos is order and order is chaos, our philisophical principles have a way of canceling each other out. I don't call it design either, but pretty close. as a earlier post made a point about the ratio of electron to nutron being 1/1837 otherwise things would be difficult. I say the same goes for life, if lifes ratio is no perfect things would be very diffrent, so many things have to be just right in our brains to facilitate this sense of thought. But I can be wrong, maybe everything is just random selection but at the same time I don't have a blob trying to eat me in my room yet.
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The Famous Druid
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posted November 22, 2003 19:10
quote:
Originally posted by tmr255:
If the ant did not suceed with 20 legs what did he not suceed at? how was a task/method predefined for the ant to fail at.
In evolution, there's only one task, making babies.
20-legged ants failed at the task of making more 20-legged ants, that's why we don't see any today.
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sconzey
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posted November 23, 2003 11:55
Ugh, people!
This thread has been around for as long as I have been posting on this forum... I first came across it when someone linked to it from a thread I started (I find myself...) and somebody keeps ressurecting it every time it dies...
Dammit...
Even so...
I believe there is no way we can prove or disprove God's existence directly, since, if he did exist, he must do so outside of our universe...
I think overall it is better to assume that God exists and try to prove he doesn't than to assume he doesn't exist and prove he does... I mean, its Pascal's Wage...
The one niggle I have with God being non-existent is Evolution.
The mechanism for Evolution is natural selection yeah?
The thing is, as far as I know, natural selection is only a mechanism for selecting the best from information that already exists, not creating new information.
So mutations in DNA create the information? Cite me one example of a mutation that has been shown to increase genetic information... Not that is benificial... An organism can have a benificial mutation due to a loss of genetic information, for instance, in a snake a loss of information to create the hormone controlling venom production. This would make the snake more toxic but it is caused by a *decrease* in genetic information.
If you manage to do that, you should go tell Prof Dawkins... When asked, he couldn't think of one.
The thing is that without intelligence, there can be no increase in genetic information... and therefore no evolution...
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"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."
--Isaac Asimov
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Xanthine
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posted November 23, 2003 12:35
Okay, it's Sunday, I'm not that anxious to go into evolutionary bio, but by definition genetic information has increased. It has to have. Humans have genes that yeast don't have. We have more DNA than fruit flies too. Oddly enough, we have a smaller genome than corn. Even more oddly, the bulk of our genome (and the corn genome) doesn't seem to be there for any particular reason, beyond the fact that it can be there without causing any harm. Where did it come from? Beats me. Somewhere, obviously, but I don't know where. There are some known mechanisms (retrovirus anyone?) and some theories, but beyond that..../me shrugs.
I could, of course, dig up my notes from Eukaryotic Genomes, but that would require more effort than I feel like expending on this poor thread.
Edit: a thought just occured to me. First of all, you can sometimes get a base added into a sequence, and that shifts the reading frame so a new protein is made. Good thing? Probably not. But it could be, under certain circumstances. Also, Down's syndrome is the result of having an extra chromosome (ie, too much information). While this mutation is deleterious, you could have a scenario where a piece of chromosome got shuffled around/duplicated and actually did something GOOD. Rare, but possible. There are also some known disorders, such as Huntington's Disease, that are the result of having more repeated sequences in a gene than ought to be there. Oh yeah, and cancer cells have a endency to have more information than they should (I used to volunteer in a cytogenetics lab...I saw some really fscked up karyotypes). Mistakes happpen in the replication of DNA and the division of cells. Like the deletion mutations, most are bad, but some are good.
I really need to get out more. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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And it's one, two, three / On the wrong side of the lee / What were you meant for? / What were you meant for?
- The Decemberists
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dragonman97
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posted November 23, 2003 14:11
Hehe...meanwhile I did just get out, and I was reading about just this very matter ![[Wink]](wink.gif) . (e.g. the fact that a single missing letter may have a minimal effect on the DNA.) It's particularly interesting that a change of merely 4 letters is the main cause of someone blood type - then again, changing 4 bits in a piece of data could have a radical change as well (either in ASCII or binary, where both cases would most likely appear as corruption, and not be coherent). Anyway, this is all really frivilous matter for me to be posting, since this is not at all my forte (well, except for the bit stuff :-P).
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There are three things you can be sure of in life: Death, taxes, and reading about fake illnesses online...
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sconzey
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posted November 24, 2003 11:00
Ummm... I know evolution requires an addition of information... That was the point of my post.
My question is where did that information come from?
Note: An increase in data does not equate to an increase in information... e.g. d sfasdghuf hqewuihot7 4y3ouhdflsjsday5o34 qasdfjksdn ajk th8o7341qlsdaljkqer851 4p39 8hdfajnlw k85 p9341hgfjdagkjrofyagbsd ogfsd was me banging my head on the keyboard. A dramatic increase in data, but no new information.
I am not asking for theory, I am asking for science. Show me some evidence.
Edit: Rewrote last paragraph.
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"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."
--Isaac Asimov
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The Famous Druid
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posted November 24, 2003 13:20
quote:
Originally posted by sconzey:
Ummm... I know evolution requires an addition of information... That was the point of my post.
My question is where did that information come from?
Note: An increase in data does not equate to an increase in information... e.g. d sfasdghuf hqewuihot7 4y3ouhdflsjsday5o34 qasdfjksdn ajk th8o7341qlsdaljkqer851 4p39 8hdfajnlw k85 p9341hgfjdagkjrofyagbsd ogfsd was me banging my head on the keyboard. A dramatic increase in data, but no new information.
I am not asking for theory, I am asking for science. Show me some evidence.
Edit: Rewrote last paragraph.
Ok, here's some evidence.
The above 'mutation' contained 4 real words, 'hot' 'day' 'dag', and 'bsd'.
Simply remove the rest via natural selection.
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If you watch 'The History Of NASA' backwards, it's about a space agency that has no manned spaceflight capability, then does low-orbit flights, then lands on the Moon.
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Xanthine
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posted November 24, 2003 16:30
![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif) TFD!
You're right sconzey, it had to come from somewhere, but I've seen a little too much biochem to believe there was any divine intelligence behind it. THere are some truly ass-backward metabolic pathways ticking away inside you right now, and if there was a brain behind it, they'd be a whole lot more sensible.
Evolution neither proves nor disproves the existence of God. It does, however, place some limits on God's involvement in life.
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And it's one, two, three / On the wrong side of the lee / What were you meant for? / What were you meant for?
- The Decemberists
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sconzey
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posted November 25, 2003 14:44
That was not my point... Even though it did contain those words, and they were real words, they did not make sense in the context. There was no increase in information.
My request is simple, a documented example of a mutation that causes an increase in genetic information.
It is all I ask.
Edit: I may not be a biochemist and I'm sure you know a whole lot more about it than me, just when you say something is non-functional, or stupid, remember the appendix.
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"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."
--Isaac Asimov
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Xanthine
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posted November 25, 2003 15:41
I forgot the appendix. I tend to...unless I see someone who's got a severe stomachache. But I picked the thymidine synthesis pathway becasue it's found in EVERY LIVING THING. It's functional, but that doesn't make it any less bass-ackwards. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Okay, since I finished the paper that has consumed my life for the past ten days or so I went ahead and did a lit search (because I'm too lazy to dig up my class notes) on the evolution of genomes. The most recent hard as stone, documented example of something brand spanking new cropping up in a genome and establishing itself as a feature of the species is the arrival of P-elements in fruit flies. P-elements are jumping genes; they're kinda like DNA parasites. They replicate and insert themselves into new places. Some of these places are not good for the fly, and it almost wiped out the common fruit fly. But the flies found a way to deal. This all happened within the lifetime of some of the more decrepit profs you'll see around a university campus.
Anywho, here's an answer to your question. Here's a link to the full text . Let me know if you can't get in. I went to the site via my school's library system. Maybe you can do the same if the link isn't happening. Or drop me a PM and I'll e-mail the .pdf if you're that interested. Or I can just wait until it's available on the free site (in a couple weeks, when the next issue comes out). I haven't read the whole thing so I don't know how technical it is, but if you get stuck somewhere, drop me a PM. There's a chance I might be useless as this isn't really my field though. Here's also a review article that might help. This link will take you to a table of contents, but I think you know what you're looking for. Given that it'a s review, it should be less technical. Again, if you're having problems, drop me a line and I'll send you a .pdf. You, can, of course, also do this yourself at PubMed as well. Just enter your search term and go. It recognizes Boolean terms as well. The search itself is free, but not everything you'll turn up is online or available for free online, so you may have to just print the citation and visit the library. Seek and ye shall find. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Hmmm, there's some pretty sexy stuff in this issue of Science. Thanks for giving me the kick to go take a look!
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And it's one, two, three / On the wrong side of the lee / What were you meant for? / What were you meant for?
- The Decemberists
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The Famous Druid
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posted November 25, 2003 16:16
quote:
Originally posted by sconzey:
That was not my point... Even though it did contain those words, and they were real words, they did not make sense in the context. There was no increase in information.
Well, as it happens, it was a hot day here in oz. The first 2 out of 4 words made sense in my context, your mileage may vary.
My request is simple, a documented example of a mutation that causes an increase in genetic information.
Well, I've got one.
Last year I started peeing blood. The doctors asked if I was in pain, and I said 'no', which surprised them, as everything else pointed to it being a kidney stone, but they normally hurt like fsck. So, they tested for all sorts of less likely problems, and only after those had come back negative did they check for a kidney stone. They found one, 19.5mm of kidney stone to be precise, which is at the larger end of the scale.
So, why wasn't I in the excruciating pain that's normally associated with these things?
Because kidney stones usually block the ureter (the tube that connects the kidney to the bladder), pressure builds up behind the blockage, causing the intense pain. It turns out that I've got 2 ureters, so the pressure didn't build up, and I had no pain.
Of course, you may argue it's not a 'documented' mutation (no-one has done a DNA sequence for me and both parents) or that 'more of the same' doesn't qualify as an 'increase' in genetic information, or whatever. If all else fails, you still have the 'Jehovah did it by magic' defence. Enjoy.
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If you watch 'The History Of NASA' backwards, it's about a space agency that has no manned spaceflight capability, then does low-orbit flights, then lands on the Moon.
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Xanthine
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posted November 25, 2003 16:56
Damn it, why do other people get all the fun mutations? All I've got is a bad alcohol dehydrogenase. No fun there. Spontaneously bad too. I seem t be the only one in the family who doesn't drink becase she fscking can't.
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And it's one, two, three / On the wrong side of the lee / What were you meant for? / What were you meant for?
- The Decemberists
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The Famous Druid
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posted November 25, 2003 17:09
quote:
Originally posted by Xanthine:
Damn it, why do other people get all the fun mutations? All I've got is a bad alcohol dehydrogenase. No fun there. Spontaneously bad too. I seem t be the only one in the family who doesn't drink becase she fscking can't.
I'm a scot, intolerance to alcohol would be a fatal mutation for me.
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If you watch 'The History Of NASA' backwards, it's about a space agency that has no manned spaceflight capability, then does low-orbit flights, then lands on the Moon.
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csk
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posted November 25, 2003 17:27
quote:
Originally posted by The Famous Druid:
quote:
Originally posted by Xanthine:
Damn it, why do other people get all the fun mutations? All I've got is a bad alcohol dehydrogenase. No fun there. Spontaneously bad too. I seem t be the only one in the family who doesn't drink becase she fscking can't.
I'm a scot, intolerance to alcohol would be a fatal mutation for me.
Living in Australia doesn't help either ( this page makes an interesting read - Australian alchohol consumption per capita is supposedly higher than the UK). Then again, lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Ironically, /me is only a light drinker. Way to bring down the average...
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Xanthine
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posted November 25, 2003 17:58
TFD: I'm part Scot and part Irish. And part French. I mean really, WTF??
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And it's one, two, three / On the wrong side of the lee / What were you meant for? / What were you meant for?
- The Decemberists
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The Famous Druid
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posted November 25, 2003 18:24
quote:
Originally posted by Xanthine:
TFD: I'm part Scot and part Irish. And part French.
Does that mean you can't decide which part of you hates the English the most ?
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If you watch 'The History Of NASA' backwards, it's about a space agency that has no manned spaceflight capability, then does low-orbit flights, then lands on the Moon.
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Xanthine
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posted November 25, 2003 18:36
Well, I'm part English too. And part Canadian. And part Norwegian. So I can have a nice little war all by myself. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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And it's one, two, three / On the wrong side of the lee / What were you meant for? / What were you meant for?
- The Decemberists
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dragonman97
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posted November 25, 2003 18:43
Well, reading the last couple of comments, I couldn't help but appreciate the irony, as I said to Xanthine "Oh, thank God this thread has degenerated again..."
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There are three things you can be sure of in life: Death, taxes, and reading about fake illnesses online...
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csk
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posted November 25, 2003 18:50
Oh, I don't know that it's degenerated that far. After all, Jesus turned water into wine, so the Christian God can't be terribly anti-alcohol.
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6 weeks to go!
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