I was an Atheist. Now, not so much.

[Turbo SS]

hey, hideous.

however did you manage to be a catholic in oklahoma?

nowadays with the central americans, there lots more than there used to be, but for the most part oklahoma is as southern baptist as it is possible to be.

You have said already but I havent read the rest of this thread past what i am quoting above, but where in OK are you from?

I am from Oklahoma as well.  We have a few private catholic schools in my city.  My best friend is Catholic.  There are also many Jewish families in my city as well.  I understand what Hideous was going through though. Except I started out as the opposite.  I went to a non denominational school and converted, believed with my whole being in the Jesus stuff and as I grew older gradually realized it was all B.S.  Ironically, reading the Bible was a big part of  undoing of my faith    But now I deal with it.  Most of my friends are christians and I am a closet atheist.  The only person who knows in real life is my wife. 

[nogodsforme]

and the fact is not all evidence is scientific,

Nope, not true at all.  All evidence IS scientific, or it is not evidence.

That is really not true.
ev·i·dence? ?/??v?d?ns/  Show Spelled [ev-i-duhns]  Show IPA noun, verb, -denced, -denc·ing. 
noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
3. Law . data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.

That would seem to make stories told by someone as evidence , more so when backed up by another.

So if I was in court being charged for murder, and the court had a witness that said they saw me do the crime, that would be evidence. If  the court had two , three, or more witnesses then would not the evidence be more believable? It would seem that the more witnesses they had the more reliable and believable the story/evidence would be. Or is the court system of the world wrong in their belief? Just wondering.

Eyewitness testimony is actually the weakest form of "evidence". People lie, are coerced, are mistaken, see what they think they are supposed to see, etc. In basic psychology classes, students learn how easy it is to fool people with illusions, misdirections, distraction, etc. into thinking they saw what they didn't or to miss something very obvious. In court the most powerful evidence is still scientific, ie DNA from blood or saliva,or physical objects like fingerprints, hair, bone fragments or human remains.

Millions of Muslims believe in the eyewitness testimony of Muhammed and his companions, as recorded in the Quran. I am assuming that you don't think these millions of Muslims constitute enough evidence for you to become a Muslim.

[Brakeman]

and the fact is not all evidence is scientific,

Nope, not true at all.  All evidence IS scientific, or it is not evidence.

That is really not true.
..
So if I was in court being charged for murder, and the court had a witness that said they saw me do the crime, that would be evidence. ..

A barking dog is evidence, even if you don't know what the dog is saying. All witnesses are scientific evidence, but not necessarily evidence for the proposition.

If you are standing in court lying through your teeth about a car accident, you are evidence that the floor in the courtroom can support your weight, that you are alive and that their is oxygen in the courtroom. It is all scientific evidence. Your words are also scientific evidence but we may not be advanced enough scientifically to adequately judge the evidence to find truth. When we do find evidence that you are lying, your witness is impeached, but your evidence is still there waiting for a better interpretation.

[kevinagain]

You have said already but I havent read the rest of this thread past what i am quoting above, but where in OK are you from?

I am from Oklahoma as well.  We have a few private catholic schools in my city.  My best friend is Catholic.  There are also many Jewish families in my city as well.  I understand what Hideous was going through though. Except I started out as the opposite.  I went to a non denominational school and converted, believed with my whole being in the Jesus stuff and as I grew older gradually realized it was all B.S.  Ironically, reading the Bible was a big part of  undoing of my faith    But now I deal with it.  Most of my friends are christians and I am a closet atheist.  The only person who knows in real life is my wife. 

hey turbo

i was born in purcell, in mcclain county on the south canadian river south of OKC. purcell is an old railroad town and was the crossing place where the residents of the chickasaw nation could ride over to the other side of the river to get drunk with the palefaces. my mother remembers driving to the river as a child and then hiring a man with a team of mules to pull the car through the water to the other side when they wanted to go to town.

everybody that i knew in oklahoma was either southern baptist or pentacostal-- starched shirts or holy rollers. i'm obviously wrong about the presence of the catholics there, but i honestly have no memory of catholicism there. but i haven't lived in oklahoma in a lot of years, and it's a different place now than i remember.

oklahoma can be a tough place to be a non-believer, because it's taken for granted. i was an atheist during all the time i lived there, and i recall the assumptions that went with the term. lots of luck.

[Historicity]

Don't stereotype the Hispanics[1].

My city in Florida has several Iglesias Pentacostales.

Then again, using what MagicMiles/Vandertok would use as logic, maybe the membership is all Pentacostals who are Anglos but study Spanish and just want to practice.

1.

too much

[jss]

2. <snip> I still don't see how we evolved "upward". <snip> - why would it ever, just left to nature, evolve to a higher state? It is already the very most "fit for survival" form that life can take.

I know you and Lucifer agreed to "higher complexity" instead of "upward" so it is to the higher complexity I will attempt to call your attention to.

What is more stable or strong...one piece of solid metal or several pieces of metal welded together? On a cellular level we are  like galaxy clusters compared to single celled organisms. You[1] seem to view the theory of evolution as a continual "improvement". I do not see it this way.

You tried to create a word "anti-entropy". There is no such thing. There is entropy, but there is no word which describes an opposite effect. There is no evidence of an opposite effect.

1.	And others

The opposite of entropy is syntropy or negentropy.  It's the exportation of entropy in order to keep a system's entropy low and yes, there is evidence of such an effect.

On a cosmological level we have the theory that everything was ONE. We use words like "bang" and "expand" to described why everything is no longer ONE. However those words are not entirely accurate in my estimation. According to observation, the universe is breaking down into it's constituent parts. Nothing is being "created".

On our terrestrial level. We have the theory that the first life was LUCA. We use words like "evolve" and "natural selection" to describe why everything is no longer LUCA. However those words are not entirely accurate in my estimation. We are breaking down into more complex[2] forms of life.

Entropy is the natural state of our reality. Sure, from our tiny little perspective it may look like life is a creative process

However, life is frantically clinging to it's tentative existence, and getting weaker and weaker as it burns up it's energy struggling to survive. That's how I see evolution.

2.	Therefor weaker and more fragile

That might be how you see evolution, but it's an inaccurate perception.  The original argument was the standard violation of thermodynamics garbage.  We invalidate this easily by informing him that the Earth is not a closed system and thus the second law can go take a hike.  The Earth takes in oodles of energy and its entropy is not increasing (at least in the biosphere), it is in a thermodynamic balance constantly buffeting this way and that as it both gets bombarded with energy and radiates energy away.

The difference between the amount of (useful work) energy acquired by the biosphere and that exported as disorder is called thermodynamic free energy.  There is plenty of thermodynamic free energy to allow living systems to survive, thrive and thus evolve.   There is no constant, slow downward spiral nor will there be.  Excepting global catastrophe, the amount of thermodynamic free energy will potentially increase over time as the sun's output increases up until the point where the environment is no longer suitable for life as we know it (somewhere around 1B years from now).

[jss]

oops

[Mr. Blackwell]

The opposite of entropy is syntropy or negentropy.  It's the exportation of entropy in order to keep a system's entropy low and yes, there is evidence of such an effect.

In a living system, you are correct. However, syntropy or negentropy are highly specialized concepts that seem to only apply to local settings.

Are you suggesting that the entire universe behaves as a living system[1]? I ask because from what I have just read, I gather that entropy is just part of a continuing cycle that never burns out, therefor entropy as it is currently defined does not exist.

Am I understanding you correctly?

1.	Thus everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is intrinsically connected?

[Jake]

Heya, hideousmonster!     I read your testimonial and just wanted to say that I find your process respectable.

I'm an agnostic atheist myself and while I might disagree with various points you might make, that's not what I'm here to comment on.   Your testimonial evidences a great deal of thought.    Changing views, sampled perspectives; gives the impression that you're thinking, and not merly thinking, but thinking from as informed a basis as you can manage.

None of us can claim (truthfully) a truly informed basis about what does or doesn't exist beyond whatever we convince ourselves is plausible or implausible as determined by whatever evidence we attribute the winning value to, and I respect thinking about it more than I ever will anybody's absolute claims one way or the other.

So, kudos for that.   You're not pretending to know things you don't.    for what it's worth, which may be absolutely squat...I approve of this testimonial!

Cheers!

[jss]

The opposite of entropy is syntropy or negentropy.  It's the exportation of entropy in order to keep a system's entropy low and yes, there is evidence of such an effect.

In a living system, you are correct. However, syntropy or negentropy are highly specialized concepts that seem to only apply to local settings.

Are you suggesting that the entire universe behaves as a living system[1]?

1.	Thus everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is intrinsically connected?

No, I'm suggesting that free energy applies to the biosphere which is what the original point was about ("anti-entropy" in an open system as it relates to evolution).

I ask because from what I have just read, I gather that entropy is just part of a continuing cycle that never burns out, therefor entropy as it is currently defined does not exist.

Am I understanding you correctly?

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in a finite closed system is always increasing.  It's unknown if the universe is a finite closed system, but if it were, then yes entropy would be increasing.  Entropy is not energy, it is order or non-homogenous work-energy (i.e. the ability to do "work"), it's the loss that occurs when work is performed (or an analog in Information Theory).  If the universe is indeed a finite closed system then while the total amount of mass/energy is conserved, the total entropy is ever increasing until eventually all that is left is a homogenous distribution of mass/energy ("heat death").

Think of it like a battery connected to a generator with its output connected back to the battery, all in a completely isolated box.  The battery spins the generator while the generator recharges the battery, but the charge is always a little less than the load induced by the generator so that the battery slowly runs out.  The difference between the induced load and the recharge is entropy; it's lost in this case as heat -- that is, energy that is no longer available to run our little contraption.  Once the battery is depleted the generator can never run again unless we open the box and transfer some entropy.  Creationists like to complain that evolution is like the machine in the isolated box; entropy should always increase and thus species can never become "more ordered."  There are a number of problems with this, but the easiest rebuttal is that the biosphere is not an isolated box so the second law doesn't apply.