Oracle Soup

[Anguspure]

Axe, Douglas. Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (Kindle Locations 1413-1439). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Picture a chef presenting a pot of alphabet soup and lifting the lid to reveal written instructions.

Now, ask yourself what would qualify as a satisfactory explanation for what you just witnessed?

Someone having spent a couple of hours in the kitchen arranging the letters would qualify, but that would be bypassing the improbability, not beating it.

My question is, supposing the chef insisted the instructions were formed by nothing more than the process of boiling and cooling the soup, what could conceivably satisfy you that he or she is telling the truth?

I hope you wouldn’t fall for an authoritarian approach. Imagine a team of physicists, all committed to the materialism.

Would you be persuaded if they gave you a series of technical lectures claiming that the physical causes that wrote genetic instructions in primordial soup did their work again in alphabet soup? Surely not.

To stand your ground in the face of that kind of intellectual intimidation, you’d need a simple, unassailable common-sense argument, and that’s exactly what you’d have.

No amount of technical mumbo jumbo can change the fact that it’s extremely improbable for accidental causes to do the work of insight.

If the physicists attribute the instructions in the alphabet soup to “correlative entrainment”— whatever that means— your first question should be “Did this ‘correlative entrainment’ receive any assistance from someone who understood the instructions, or was it a completely unguided physical process?” And if the answer is that it was unguided, your next question should be “Of all the possible outcomes an unguided process might have produced, how was this ‘correlative entrainment’ so fortunate as to achieve such a special outcome— one that looks for all the world as though it was guided?”

There is no credible answer. Insight is absolutely unique, without rival among the mindless
causes to which materialists limit themselves and, as we will later see, not reducible to those causes either.

Being fundamentally unlike insight, physical causes can’t do what insight does in any systematic way.

Sound waves are unlike water waves in their physical substance, but the fact that they’re both waves means they show strikingly parallel behavior in many respects.

Parallels for insight, on the other hand, are nonexistent. The lack of any parallel to insight means that any instance of mindless causes doing the work of insight would have to be a fluke . . . a coincidence. Minor examples abound. Short words do appear in alphabet soup from time to time, not by any mysterious force working in the broth but by coincidence.

A CONSEQUENCE OF THE UNIQUENESS OF INSIGHT
The lack of any parallel to insight means that any instance of mindless causes doing the work of insight would have to be a coincidence.​

 

[Belk]

Axe, Douglas. Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (Kindle Locations 1413-1439). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Picture a chef presenting a pot of alphabet soup and lifting the lid to reveal written instructions.

View attachment 230350​

Now, ask yourself what would qualify as a satisfactory explanation for what you just witnessed?

Someone having spent a couple of hours in the kitchen arranging the letters would qualify, but that would be bypassing the improbability, not beating it.

My question is, supposing the chef insisted the instructions were formed by nothing more than the process of boiling and cooling the soup, what could conceivably satisfy you that he or she is telling the truth?

I hope you wouldn’t fall for an authoritarian approach. Imagine a team of physicists, all committed to the materialism.

Would you be persuaded if they gave you a series of technical lectures claiming that the physical causes that wrote genetic instructions in primordial soup did their work again in alphabet soup? Surely not.

To stand your ground in the face of that kind of intellectual intimidation, you’d need a simple, unassailable common-sense argument, and that’s exactly what you’d have.

No amount of technical mumbo jumbo can change the fact that it’s extremely improbable for accidental causes to do the work of insight.

If the physicists attribute the instructions in the alphabet soup to “correlative entrainment”— whatever that means— your first question should be “Did this ‘correlative entrainment’ receive any assistance from someone who understood the instructions, or was it a completely unguided physical process?” And if the answer is that it was unguided, your next question should be “Of all the possible outcomes an unguided process might have produced, how was this ‘correlative entrainment’ so fortunate as to achieve such a special outcome— one that looks for all the world as though it was guided?”

There is no credible answer. Insight is absolutely unique, without rival among the mindless
causes to which materialists limit themselves and, as we will later see, not reducible to those causes either.

Being fundamentally unlike insight, physical causes can’t do what insight does in any systematic way.

Sound waves are unlike water waves in their physical substance, but the fact that they’re both waves means they show strikingly parallel behavior in many respects.

Parallels for insight, on the other hand, are nonexistent. The lack of any parallel to insight means that any instance of mindless causes doing the work of insight would have to be a fluke . . . a coincidence. Minor examples abound. Short words do appear in alphabet soup from time to time, not by any mysterious force working in the broth but by coincidence.

A CONSEQUENCE OF THE UNIQUENESS OF INSIGHT
The lack of any parallel to insight means that any instance of mindless causes doing the work of insight would have to be a coincidence.​

Ah yes. Why listen to the experts when you can pretend you know everything and it all boils down to common sense?

Odd how common sense never seemed to work in unraveling the secrets of the universe until science started to figure things out.

 

[Kevin Snow]

Short words do appear in alphabet soup from time to time, not by any mysterious force working in the broth but by coincidence.

One thing you got wrong here.

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from Yahweh. ~Proverbs 16:33

But overall a good treatise on the failure of man's wisdom.

 

[Anguspure]

Ah yes. Why listen to the experts when you can pretend you know everything and it all boils down to common sense?

Odd how common sense never seemed to work in unraveling the secrets of the universe until science started to figure things out.

It was the same appreciation of insight and the expectation that rational insight would become apparent from the study of the universe that drove the whole endeavour from the outset.

“Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator." C S Lewis, Miracles, Page 110

“Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself.”
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27.

“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis (New York: Scribner, 1995), 3.

He also has no reason to trust anything he believes, including atheism or evolution.

“Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true,”
C. S. Lewis, “Miracles” The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), Kindle edition.

 

[Anguspure]

One thing you got wrong here.

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from Yahweh. ~Proverbs 16:33

But overall a good treatise on the failure of man's wisdom.

Yes, coincidence is not a kosher word.

 

[pitabread]

But overall a good treatise on the failure of man's wisdom.

Not really. Creationists/IDists can argue that evolution and/or existing hypothesis of abiogenesis are wrong until they are blue in the face. But they have nothing yet to replace it with.

 

[Kevin Snow]

Not really. Creationists/IDists can argue that evolution and/or existing hypothesis of abiogenesis are wrong until they are blue in the face. But they have nothing yet to replace it with.

Allow me to replace it for you. The immutability of the manifold wisdom of God which is built intrinsically into creation is manifested in the rainbow through its seamless transition from one color to the next. There is no difference between them. So also is all creation created without seams. The complexity of life is built up in the image of God and it says here that all things were created through him.

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ~Colossians 1:16

But the nature in which it was made was seamless. This very seamlessness of the variance of life is the crux of the evolutionary theory but it in fact is the complete opposite. These things are spiritually discerned so I would like to ask you, "Why did Yahshua wear a seamless tunic?" The answer to this is spiritual. God makes everything as one thing. So all of life is interrelated. This interrelation you claim to mean that it must have come of its own accord through one simple organism. But this one simple thing that it came from is God and you miss the point entirely.

 

[HitchSlap]

When did improbable become impossible?

 

[Anguspure]

When did improbable become impossible?

When what is improbable is expressed in "fantastically" improbable terms.

When the probability that just one of many millions of events required to bring about the observed effect, occured by coincidence is so vanishingly small that there have not been enough events in the the observable age of the universe to give the event a passing chance of happening even once.

At that point a rational thinker, one without a prior commitment to denial, must concede that even if the event has by coincidence happened once, it certainly has not been repeated by chance over and over and over again.

At that point it must be conceded that the contention that highly functionally coherent systems is impossible to hold, with a straight face at least.

 

[Belk]

It was the same appreciation of insight and the expectation that rational insight would become apparent from the study of the universe that drove the whole endeavour from the outset.

“Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator." C S Lewis, Miracles, Page 110

“Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself.”
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27.

“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis (New York: Scribner, 1995), 3.

He also has no reason to trust anything he believes, including atheism or evolution.

“Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true,”
C. S. Lewis, “Miracles” The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), Kindle edition.

That's nice. Show me how one measures "insight". By what scale is it known?

 

[DogmaHunter]

Axe, Douglas. Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (Kindle Locations 1413-1439). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Picture a chef presenting a pot of alphabet soup and lifting the lid to reveal written instructions.

View attachment 230350​

Now, ask yourself what would qualify as a satisfactory explanation for what you just witnessed?

False analogy. There are no processes like natural selection at play here.
Ignoring all the aspects that makes the evolutionary process actually work, in order to argue against it, does not make a good argument.

No amount of technical mumbo jumbo can change the fact that it’s extremely improbable for accidental causes to do the work of insight.

Unless you have other factors, like natural selection, acting on those "accidents". In which case the seemingly improbable not only isn't improbable - it becomes inevitable.

What you are doing here, is the equivalent of arguing against gravity by pointing to the fact that hammers in the ISS don't fall down.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Allow me to replace it for you. The immutability of the manifold wisdom of God which is built intrinsically into creation is manifested in the rainbow through its seamless transition from one color to the next. There is no difference between them. So also is all creation created without seams. The complexity of life is built up in the image of God and it says here that all things were created through him.

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ~Colossians 1:16

But the nature in which it was made was seamless. This very seamlessness of the variance of life is the crux of the evolutionary theory but it in fact is the complete opposite. These things are spiritually discerned so I would like to ask you, "Why did Yahshua wear a seamless tunic?" The answer to this is spiritual. God makes everything as one thing. So all of life is interrelated. This interrelation you claim to mean that it must have come of its own accord through one simple organism. But this one simple thing that it came from is God and you miss the point entirely.

Preaching your religion and asserting it correct, is not providing an alternative to actual scientific theories.

You didn't explain anything. You just asserted stuff, based on a religious foundation of "faith".

 

[DogmaHunter]

When what is improbable is expressed in "fantastically" improbable terms.

When the probability that just one of many millions of events required to bring about the observed effect, occured by coincidence is so vanishingly small that there have not been enough events in the the observable age of the universe to give the event a passing chance of happening even once.

At that point a rational thinker, one without a prior commitment to denial, must concede that even if the event has by coincidence happened once, it certainly has not been repeated by chance over and over and over again.

At that point it must be conceded that the contention that highly functionally coherent systems is impossible to hold, with a straight face at least.

Evolution isn't a matter of blind improbable chance.
Natural selection is anything but random or chance.

 

[AirPo]

When what is improbable is expressed in "fantastically" improbable terms.

When the probability that just one of many millions of events required to bring about the observed effect, occured by coincidence is so vanishingly small that there have not been enough events in the the observable age of the universe to give the event a passing chance of happening even once.

At that point a rational thinker, one without a prior commitment to denial, must concede that even if the event has by coincidence happened once, it certainly has not been repeated by chance over and over and over again.

At that point it must be conceded that the contention that highly functionally coherent systems is impossible to hold, with a straight face at least.

Then you shouldn't listen to people who don't know what they are talking about. Or are just lying to you.

 

[Kevin Snow]

Preaching your religion and asserting it correct, is not providing an alternative to actual scientific theories.

You didn't explain anything. You just asserted stuff, based on a religious foundation of "faith".

I'm sorry did you miss the fact that these things are spiritually discerned? I give you good food. One that will sustain your soul and lead you to peace, to Yahshua himself and would you not seek this further? You don't seem to understand that the entire theory of evolution is based on the seamlessness of life which God made.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

I'm sorry did you miss the fact that these things are spiritually discerned?

I'm sorry did you miss the fact that you were in the Physical and Life Sciences forum?

 

[HitchSlap]

I'm sorry did you miss the fact that these things are spiritually discerned? I give you good food. One that will sustain your soul and lead you to peace, to Yahshua himself and would you not seek this further? You don't seem to understand that the entire theory of evolution is based on the seamlessness of life which God made.

Claiming "things are spiritually discerned" is not a fact, and claiming such does not give one an epistemic advantage. Everyone of us has access to the same set of facts, and claiming you have a personal relationship with a god/s doesn't give you a leg up.

As for the theory of evolution, I'm quite familiar with it, and I've never once encountered your god at any point.

 

[Kevin Snow]

I'm sorry did you miss the fact that you were in the Physical and Life Sciences forum?

And this is globally the Christian Forums which means in EVERY thread you will find me pointing you to God. This is not just about the physical sciences but how they actually reveal the glory of God.

 

[HitchSlap]

And this is globally the Christian Forums which means in EVERY thread you will find me pointing you to God. This is not just about the physical sciences but how they actually reveal the glory of God.

Frankly, most of us aren't interested in your opinion of "God." What we do value though, is all things science. In fact, you might say it's our duty to point you away from the supernatural and towards the real.

 

[pitabread]

Allow me to replace it for you.

You can't replace science with religion; they're two fundamentally different things.

They can compliment one another, but they can't replace one another.