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To: Modernman
Christians can't even agree on the correctness of this statement.

Christians don't agree on every bit of theology. That's why there are different denominations.

Do you agree with other atheists on everything?

Thinking Christians prefer to concentrate on that which unites us. The things we agree upon are more important than the things we differ on.

163 posted on 01/26/2005 11:20:03 AM PST by Protagoras (No one is fit to be a master and no one deserves to be a slave. GWB 1-20-05)
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To: Protagoras
Do you agree with other atheists on everything?

What makes you think I'm an atheist?

171 posted on 01/26/2005 11:24:01 AM PST by Modernman (What is moral is what you feel good after. - Ernest Hemingway)
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To: All; betty boop; marron; Michael_Michaelangelo
Until an atheist (metaphysical naturalist) can respond with a scientifically or mathematically plausible explanation to every one of the following challenges, I shall assert that atheism is a "religion" whose faith is a rejection of diety in favor of self.

1. He'd have to prove that there was no beginning of space/time, i.e. a "steady state universe". That would disprove all cosmologies since the 1960’s including big bang, ekpyrotic, multi-verse, multi-world and imaginary time. This is of course not possible because the universe is expanding, space/time is finite, there was a beginning, an uncaused cause, i.e. God!

2. He'd have to prove a natural source for information in the universe and then translate it to information in biological life. This does not mean the DNA, but the communications that occur in living creatures - reduction of uncertainty of a molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. [Shannon] It is an action, not a message – i.e. a life force Possible but unexplored causes include harmonics, a universal vacuum field, geometry which gives rise to strings – all of which have a Scriptural root, i.e. God speaking it all into being, Creator outside space/time.

3. He'd have to prove a natural source for the will to live, the want to live or struggle to survive that characterizes life. IOW, self-replication is not enough. In an embryo, if the cells simply self-replicated the result would be a tumor. In life, the cells are organized into functional molecular machines which communicate together striving as one organism to live. Why does the organism have a will to live? Why should the component machinery (cardiovascual, neural, etc.) cooperate to that end?

4. He'd have to explain how the incredibly delicate physical constants, physical laws and asymmetry between matter and anti-matter came to be so perfectly balanced. A slight change one way or the other and there would be no life, or no universe at all.

5. He'd have to explain out of all the possible spatial and temporal dimensions why our vision and mind are tuned to a particular selection of four coordinates – why not three or five, etc.

6. He'd have to explain how biological semiosis arose through natural means. Semiosis refers to the language or symbols of communication in biological life - the encoding and decoding. This has two sides, the language itself and the understanding of it. Where’d it come from?

7. He'd have to explain how functional complexity arose through natural means – why and how molecular machines organized around functions to the benefit of the greater organism. Of particular interest would be the functions which would not work if any part were missing – i.e. cardiovascular without the lungs, nervous system without the brain, etc.

8. He’d have to explain how eyes developed concurrently across phyla – i.e. vertebrates and invertebrates – and why there have been virtually no new body plans since the Cambrian Explosion. Immutable regulatory control genes is all I can think of. But why would they in particular be immutable?

9. He’d have to have a natural explanation for qualia – likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and evil, etc. – consciousness and the mind.


189 posted on 01/26/2005 11:30:46 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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