a must watch truly amazing

It gets worse. 😆

Well, here's the thing. All Gods from all religions [that I'm aware of] are also fictional characters. And they're not ruled out by science. They're ruled out by logical contradictions. However, the universe need not be rational -- that's merely my belief system. So, in an irrational universe, any and all could be true.

Science is useful in that you can use it to make predictions. One can say that religion is useful in that it gives [at least some] people comfort. Also, "objective fact" changes. A flat earth used to be "objective fact". The Earth being at the center of the universe also used to be "objective fact". With science, the facts change as new observations are made and new models are created to explain the observations.

On the other hand, religion doesn't change. But what portions of any given religion people choose to believe/ignore are a function of society and personal prejudices. For example, for a Christian, was the world created in 7 days or is that just a metaphor? Well, it depends on which Christian you ask. Is it OK to divorce? Well, Jesus said no, but Christians say yes. Etc., etc., etc.. And I don't mean to pick on Christianity, here -- the same is true for all religions (again, that I'm aware of).

Perhaps. But the main point here is that I'm not discussing whether or not God exists. I'm saying that the conclusion of the video, that to say that the biological motor is an amazing product of nature and explainable by natural laws and that "God did it" are not equally valid. The former is far more useful than the latter. Even if someone from the "God did it" crowd said that God created the laws of nature, that doesn't add any value -- it just tells people that they believe God created everything and has nothing of utility to say about the biological motor.

Now, if there were a religious text that went into detail about how God created a biological motor, then that would be a different story. And who knows? Maybe someone wrote a book like that, and all someone has to do is cite that book as their bible and say, "Yeah, God did it -- it's spelled out in this bible". 😉

Whether or not you believe God exists has no bearing on wonder of the biological motor. If you say, for example, that God is amazing in that God created laws of nature that allowed such a thing to exist, that's fine, but it has no direct bearing on the biological motor itself. That would be like someone saying that Simone Biles is amazing because of her parents, or her grand parents, or all the way back to Adam and Eve, or because of God. Doing so is a terrible disservice to all the hard work she put in to become such an accomplished gymnast. Sure, her parents played a role, as did her grandparents, all the way back -- but each step back you take, you get further from saying anything meaningful about how great of a gymnast she is.

If you give God the credit for the biological motor, then you give God the credit for every single thing and event in the entire universe and for all time. But "believers" are not keen to step up and praise God for the creation of the nuclear bomb. Physics, on the other hand, is not selective based on human values -- everything that can be explained with physics, good, bad, or neither, is attributed to the laws of nature. And, no, "we" cannot explain how the laws of nature arose (at least, not yet, but probably never), but neither can the religious explain where God came from or why God does what God does. As to the former, saying "God is the First Cause", well, save yourself a step and say, "The Laws of Nature are the First Cause". But neither statement gets you anywhere.

dprevived.com/t/a-must-watch-truly-amazing/6099/post/82321/

You are being hypocritical here or at least contradicting yourself because later on you posted:

dprevived.com/t/a-must-watch-truly-amazing/6099/post/82349/

where the "none of them" included God.

Your opinions posted in this thread are based to a large extent on your belief that God does not exist even though in the first quote you said our beliefs don't figure into it.

You can't have it both ways and say other people's beliefs don't come into it but your beliefs do. Trying to have it both ways shoots the credibility of your opinions clean out of the water.

That is a rinse and repeat of your earlier opinion and I posted why one's beliefs can be relevant.

We disagreed on that point.

In any case, earlier you said our beliefs don't come into it but you are using your belief that God is not real to influence your opinions and so exclude Him from any possibility of having been involved directly or indirectly (as described earlier) in things humans cannot explain.

OK.

Let me be more specific. No, I do not believe in God, so, obviously, for me "God did it" is nonsense. However, I am not praising physics, either. I am amazed by this biological engine, and would like to understand how it works as a process of Natural Laws, but I'm too lazy to pursue it. If I were to pursue it, however, I might find that there was some contradiction with my understanding of physics and how it works. By working through that apparent contradiction, I would either learn something new or I would find some inconsistency in physics that needs to be fixed (akin to how Einstein came up with General Relativity and the Quantum, although, of course, unlike Einstein, it would not be me doing the fixing of the physics 😁).

So, again, I take this all back to the utility of saying that this biological motor is amazing either because "God did it" or because "Physics" -- neither gets you anywhere aside from telling people your belief system. Either stop with "Amazing!" or take the extra step to figure out how it works in more detail using the paradigm of your choice. Plenty of famous physicists believed they were learning about the "Mind of God" when pursuing physics. Nothing wrong with that motivation. But none of them just up and said "God did it" or "Physics" about anything they were pursuing -- they put in a lot of effort to figuring it out.

To say any believer in God gives Him credit for every single thing and event in the entire universe and for all time is just plain nonsensical. Can you post a link to anyone who has ever claimed that?

Like many believers in God I believe God created the universe (Big Bang) and everything in it (not necessarily all events involving humans) either directly or indirectly through the laws of physics, nature, biology etc etc etc He defined. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that everyone is obliged to believe in God and follow Him.

Every human through all of time has had the choice to either follow God's teachings and examples or to totally ignore them. Over the 000s and 000,000s of years since God created humans He has slowly given us the resources and ability to discover new technologies and all sorts of things over time. Now, whether humans choose to use those technologies for the betterment of all humankind or for self serving purposes is everyone's choice to make.

At the end of the day no-one can conclusively prove the existence or non-existence of God. It comes down to faith whichever side of the fence one falls on.

The way I look at is that I assume those who choose to not believe in and follow God hope with all their fingers and toes crossed that God does not exist when their turn comes to leave this planet because if it turns out there is a God eternity is a hell (pun intended) of a long time to spend in hell for having stuffed it up for a microscopically short 80 years or so, on average, here on planet earth.

I remember one time listening to a priest speaking where he described the Bible as - Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

Whether someone chooses to follow the Bible or not is their personal choice to make.

🫣😊

That's fine and your belief that you based your opinion on. So our beliefs do come into the opinions we form even though you tried to say earlier that they don't. As I said, you were at least contradicting yourself if not being totally hypocritical.

I do believe in God and so I do see how God is at least indirectly involved if not directly involved as described earlier.

I would appreciate it if you would quote what I said that led you to that [false] conclusion. Surely not what you quoted above, 'cause that doesn't support what you just said at all. Let me be more specific: I don't believe in a God, so saying "God did it" is nonsense. But that isn't proof that there isn't a God or that God didn't do it. It just means that for me, the statement is nonsense. However, let's say "God did it". Well, how do you know? Faith? That's entirely different than if I said it was a result of Natural Laws and then demonstrated how the biological motor came to be. But, of course, there would be questions I could not answer (even if I were the top biophysicist in the world) -- at the very end, presuming the "God did it" person could understand all of what I explained, they would just throw out their "Where did the Natural Laws come from?" trump card and smugly declare, "See? Like I said, God did it!"

And what does that do for you more than someone who claims the biological motor is proof that aliens designed biological machines and seeded the Earth with them?

This post:

dprevived.com/t/a-must-watch-truly-amazing/6099/post/82353/

I am not convinced aliens exist and so I would believe their opinion to be inaccurate just like you believe that God did it is nonsense because you say you do not believe in God.

dprevived.com/t/a-must-watch-truly-amazing/6099/post/82356/

You mean where I said:

Our beliefs don't figure in to it -- it's what we can objectively demonstrate.

and

I believe none of them [God, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny] are real (although I do believe there are aliens), but I can't prove it either way.

If so, what did I say that contradicted those and how is that hypocritical?

So, both "God did it" and "Aliens did it" are equal in value, and accepted or rejected based on one's personal belief system. Now, what if someone said, "It's just the laws of nature in action" and then proceeded to explain how natural processes made the biological motor possible? Would we go down the rabbit hole until we reached "But where did the Natural Laws come from?" and then conclude that this explanation was no better than "God did it" or "Aliens did it"?

I explained in the post I linked to with 2 examples of your posts in that linked post.

This is another rinse and repeat of your earlier opinions after which I explained where and how I believe the laws of physics, biology, nature etc etc etc were defined by God.

We disagreed on that point as well 😀

It's called a figure of speech Danno. I made my point. You deflect and ignore it. Too close for comfort?

You are again straying off-topic.

As I said, if you need to be taken seriously practise what you preach and stay on topic. Telling lies about other people's names is clearly going off-topic.

But thank you for your opinions. You don't get to decide how people interpret what you post. Even an inaccurate and childish figure of speech can be a lie and off-topic.

Fantastic stuff, I was captivated right to the end. Some very complex things were presented in a way that was quite easy to follow.

Pity this thread got bogged down with religion. The science of the video is far more interesting.

GreatBustard first brought up the religion aspect of the video in the second post of this thread.

dprevived.com/t/a-must-watch-truly-amazing/6099/post/82280/

Why must you shit on every thread that comes your way? You are nothing but a nuisance with your obsessive need to reply and have the last word. Learn to use this forum a bit more sensibly please.

Don found an incredibly interesting video, that was well worth watching. Just like a couple of weekly threads, here, your disruptive behaviour has ruined the thread.

Just stop being disruptive please.

Why not practise what you preach and ignore my posts like you said you do and suggested others do the same if you need to be taken seriously.

GreatBustard first raised the religion aspect, not me.

It takes two to tango. I replied with my opinion as anyone is entitled to do and GB didn't want to let it go so he continued the discussion.

GB had the option to let it go after I posted my opinion in reply to his but he chose to not let it go and so it went on.

I can't take you seriously when you don't practise what you preach and resort to stupid attempts to insult usernames by calling them arseholes, stupid and pig ignorant.

Nigel, I have been posting screenshots of your posts, as I am entitled to do, and so your credibility and opinions when you can't handle being disagreed with make you look immature and childish to many people, including me.