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To: Lexinom
The order of the universe does not point to a lawgiver.

That's irrational, and points out how atheism is religious in nature.

Again: Why should we assume that an atom or energy quanta or whatever fundamental building block is able to decide that it wants to do something other than what's built into it by its nature in the first place? Everything we know about the world tells us that the ability to act in a way that doesn't seem to directly flow from the constituent parts' previous positions & velocities takes a complex, partially chaotic/partially organized system - like a brain.

But atoms & molecules (as far as we know) don't have brains. So why should an atom or a molecule ever behave in opposition to the physical laws of nature? You don't need to postulate an external traffic cop, nor legions of angels to yell "Gee" or "Haw" at the molecules when they stop to smell the photons.

Your default assumption, IMO, is completely backwards. (Flip the battery terminals. Then you'll be thinking right. :-)

I will go out on a limb and assume that you, like me, are a fairly intelligent person in a technical field. You might be familiar with tri-state electronics. Atheism is not the high-Z state. It is the zero state, and theism is the one state (reverse them if you like).

To use another example, atheism is the absence of a check in your browser's "settings" checkbox. It is not the checkbox grayed-out - that is the fallacy of pretended neutrality. No one approaches the subject from a neutral perspective.

Hmmm... well then I think religious mysticism is like assuming that an unconnected CMOS input actually improves a digital circuit's performance because it's tapping into "higher truths" for its input. :-)

Atheism is the logical conclusion of Darwinism.

That is just plain false, at least in my case. Evolution never contributed into my atheism. It does, of course, hurt specific assertions about the details of creation put forth by various religions. But if God exists, and is this all-powerful, all-knowing person living in this timeless realm, I can only imagine that he's been utterly alone, and utterly bored for an infinite length of time, and he knows he's fated to remain utterly alone & bored for an infinite length of time in the future.

To such a God, the best hope he can have for some companionship or entertainment is to create a vast (by our standards) universe with the maximum capacity to surprise him. Evolution fits right in with such a universe, and I think that such a god would create precisely the kind of universe that's capable of such a complex process as evolution.

575 posted on 08/21/2006 3:28:31 PM PDT by jennyp (WHAT I'M READING NOW: your mind)
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To: jennyp

"Evolution fits right in with such a universe, and I think that such a god would create precisely the kind of universe that's capable of such a complex process as evolution." Beautifully stated. And I agree because I choose to start with the premise of a Creator. Everything that follows is wondrous, don't you agree?


579 posted on 08/21/2006 4:03:56 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: jennyp
You're creating straw dogs here. Nowhere did I speak of "will" of atoms, etc. Not sure where you are getting that. AND... they operate according to orderly principles. Things in the universe operate in a predictable manner - to the extent we understand these principles. There is no point in pursing that point of argumentation further except to highlight your words "what's built into it by nature in the first place."

Even our ability to make such distinctions as "order" and "chaos" bolsters the point of some idea of order and chaos. What we see as "chaos" is merely many items behaving according to said principles (i.e. what you've stated is "built into it by nature") in too great a volume or in too complex a path for our finite minds to process.

583 posted on 08/21/2006 4:25:51 PM PDT by Lexinom
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