You’ll never believe….
…how this prominent atheist physicist shot himself in the foot! Click here to see!
The tease to a shocking/heartwarming/tear-jerking story seems to be the way to go these days. Did it work?
Actually, this story is neither shocking, heartwarming, nor tear-jerking. But it is revealing. Lawrence Krauss is a theoretical physicist and professor at Arizona State University. Anyone who has listened to him lecture on or debate topics related to evolution and the origin of life knows the disdain he has for theists and proponents of intelligent design (ID). He takes no pains to hide it. He is extremely arrogant in his assertion that evolution is a proven and the only possible explanation for the multiplicity of species, intransigent in his insistence that all life and existence has or will someday have a natural explanation, and dismissive of anything suggestive of a supernatural cause for the origin of life as “b******t.”
So, I thought it quite interesting that in a recent debate with noted philosopher and Christian apologist William Lane Craig, Krauss actually used and affirmed the ID argument when answering a question from the audience. He was asked if there was one thing that would convince him that God exists. He said there was and that he had stated it before. The proof for Krauss would be, “If I look up at the stars tonight and they rearrange to say ‘I am here’…”
Well, that would be incredible, wouldn’t it? Each star lining up in such a way as to convey a specific message. Not as incredible, however, as the specified, complex message found in a simple, one-celled amoeba that even famed scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins has described as having as much information in its DNA as 1,000 complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. In a very real sense, DNA itself can be said to be the message that Krauss said would convince him. “This has intelligence behind it. I exist.”
Naturalists can’t have it both ways. They can’t debunk the theory that intelligence is required for the complex instructions we see in just a single cell, and yet maintain that a message in the stars would be evidence for God. Wouldn’t you agree?
Seems to me Professor Krauss has a few holes in his argument. And his foot.
“and yet maintain that a message in the stars would be evidence for God. Wouldn’t you agree?”
No. Because one is vague and open to interpretation due to a metaphor (dna=information), and the other would be clear and objective.
It’s interesting how the so-called evidence for a god is never clear and objective.
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Hi there, Not. I’m not sure I understand your distinction. Both DNA and a hypothetical lining up of stars to form an understandable message, assuming you know the language, convey information by a precise ordering of components…nitrogen bases in one, stars in the other. Are you saying that the directions in DNA are “vague and open to interpretation”?
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Yes. Because DNA is not really information…that’s a metaphor we use to understand it and what it does. You can claim it points to your god, but nothing about it is anywhere that specific or cut and dry.
A message in the stars specifically saying “Hi, this is Thor and I happen to be the one true god” or something similar would be clear and unimpeachable.
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Well, I’m not a scientist neither, but it seems to me that denying that DNA is really information is a semantic ploy to avoid the obvious. The nature.com site describes DNA as containing “the molecular instructions for life.” How is that not information?
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“How is that not information?”
How is that not a metaphor?
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And more importantly…why does the god you believe in shy away from being literal and clear in the stars?
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Notascientist, do you think information is ever a real thing, or is it merely a label and a metaphor? What would be an example of something that is actually information?
You’ve called Krauss’ s star challenge “clear and unimpeachable.” Do you know about the problem of Boltzmann brains and fluctuation observers that arise from thermodynamics and inflationary stages? Penrose has supplied odds: 1 in 10^(10^123) that an orderly universe as large we observe comes into being. The problem is, it is much more probable that we should be observing a tiny pocket of order, say the size of our solar system, where “I am Yahweh and I am here” is painted on an interstellar gas cloud by chance. Krauss’ illustration is an incoherent metaphor itself.
Given this challenge, how do you distinguish intentionality from pure randomness?
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