Half of European men share King Tut's DNA

[Plane]

The Moon is simply big enough to blot out the Sun in an eclipse. It might do so if it were a bit smaller as well.

   Nope, the size and distance is exactly right.

    When the eclipse is total , the sun disapears and the Corona becomes visible.


   I do not think that this co-incidence proves anything, and I don't accept that the lack of any particular coincidence you may want proves anything either.

     If I pointed out that your neck and the neck of a mouse or the neck of a Giraffe would each contain exactly seven vertabra and seven is a very mistical number , would you think I had proven something?

       I can't see you accepting something like that as proof of much , much as you should not expect me to accept the lack of icecream mountains and root beer springs as proof of anything.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The moon was much closer several billion years ago.

[Plane]

The moon was much closer several billion years ago.

    Yes, the tides must have been spectacular when the moon and the oceans were new.

      But during the era of human existence tides have been manageable and the Moon has taken up exactly equal space in the sky that the sun does.

      Since you regard neatness to be the proof of Gods work, this and several other neat coincidences ought to give you better faith than I have.

      Unfortunately I think that neatly put together phenomena are everywhere and do not necessarily prove anything. Soap bubbles form perfect flat planes and straight lines perfect hexagons squares and perfect spheres. This doesn't prove that soap bubbles are made by mathematical genius does it?

         When a natural phenomenon forms a pattern too complex for me to ken , I cannot see the order but accept the possibility that the order is greater than I can perceive.   When I see butterflies passing by I can't really tell that they are all going to a little forest in Mexico to aggregate till they load the trees to bending over.  When I see horseshoe crabs wrestling on the beach I can't really tell that they have been doing the same thing since before there was a dinosaur and the moon was much larger in the sky.

       When I do understand a pattern I take the understanding as a blessing, all Wisdom is originally Gods own property, he bestows it as he pleases. It is lovely when something I never understood before snaps into focus. This is a great age in which to live while discovery is practically constant and media has grown the ability to be searchable.

        Things that seemed without order are being discovered to have subtle orders that were never obvious .

How could the appearance of disorder to us ever prove that there is no God?

Wouldn't this be arrogantly making the claim that we already understand all possible order?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am not saying that the disorder of the universe proves that there is no God, just that is suggests that any that exists does not seem to care much about neatness and/or perhaps one that is not omnipotent. Perhaps only semi-omnipotent.

A totally omnipotent God could clearly make pi a whole number. The ability to do ANYTHING is absolute. Perhaps omnipotence is not possible.

Some say that the Earth is so perfect it proves that God has to exist and also must be perfect. I believe that the rather large amount of disorder in the Universe refutes that argument.

On the other hand, I do not see this as a refutation that there was a creator. As I see it, there is insufficient proof: maybe there was, maybe not. And of course, perhaps he did pop into this part of the Universe and has since left the building.

[Plane]

  I would like to see your proof that the Universe has any disorder anywhere in it.


   Since this would have to include your proof that all possible order is humanly understandable I don't expect your reply to be swift.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am thinking that the presence of exploding supernova suggests disorder.

The orbits of the planets are not perfect circles. The planets themselves are not perfectly spherical. And there is the disharmony previously pointed out about the orbit of both the earth and Moon.

Sun spots indicate that the Sun is not a uniform temperature. Jupiter has that huge red spot.

Cancer is hardly a sign of perfection.

The universe is only minimally orderly. If it were only a tad more disorderly, it would fly apart entirely in a totally disorderly manner.

[Plane]

I am thinking that the presence of exploding supernova suggests disorder.

The orbits of the planets are not perfect circles. The planets themselves are not perfectly spherical. And there is the disharmony previously pointed out about the orbit of both the earth and Moon.

Sun spots indicate that the Sun is not a uniform temperature. Jupiter has that huge red spot.

Cancer is hardly a sign of perfection.

The universe is only minimally orderly. If it were only a tad more disorderly, it would fly apart entirely in a totally disorderly manner.

  Each of these things are easy to contradict, as I will in the next post.

    But more important , if you found an example that I could not contradict you might be merely pointing at a system more complex than either of us is able to understand even though perfectly orderly.

   How unlikely indeed is it ,that I might not understand something?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Order and disorder are easy to detect, just as light and darkness are.

Any light means that something is not totally dark.

Any disorder means that something is not totally orderly.

If you say that God's order looks like disorder, I say, no it means that God's order is disorder. You can say that God has a reason for disorder, but you cannot deny that disorder exists.

 

[Plane]

I am thinking that the presence of exploding supernova suggests disorder.

  Large stars are the forges of heavy elements, these elements seldom escape the heart of a star unless by supernova, if there were no supernovae there would be no us to ponder them.

The orbits of the planets are not perfect circles. The planets themselves are not perfectly spherical. And there is the disharmony previously pointed out about the orbit of both the earth and Moon.

  All orbits , however elliptical, sweep a virtual triangle with a vertex at the center of the orbit and corners on the orbit at the begginning and end of a time period, with each time period no matter what length period of time period you choose. Any equal period of time will sweep a triangle of equal surface area.  Unless examined in these four dimensions this order is not evident.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_motion
Soap bubbles are perfect spheres so are soap bubbles proof of divine intervention?

Planets are spheres within pretty small error percents , would you be happier on a planet that had no mountains? Would the planet be more perfect for you if we were on a mirror polished surface?  "perfect" spheres do exist in Gods universe, but God doesn't seem to be doctrinaire that all shapes be simple.

Sun spots indicate that the Sun is not a uniform temperature. Jupiter has that huge red spot.

Why do these examples of solar and planetary weather strike you as blemishes? The great red spot is a cyclone at least three hundred years in duration, sunspots are clues for our understanding of the solar magnetic engine. Would a featureless planet or a homogeneous Sun be better in some way? Simplicity is nice when you find some but it need not be universal.  Look at a color picture of Jupiter , the thing is beautifull.

Cancer is hardly a sign of perfection.

The universe is only minimally orderly. If it were only a tad more disorderly, it would fly apart entirely in a totally disorderly manner.

 Each of us is composed of a billion or so cells each cell is complex enough itself to defy explanation in volumes and these interdependent cells form systems and networks which are dynamically complex,and yet most of us experience many years of harmony within this aggregation .  WE do not understand quite why we are not always cancerous , or how some Whales , creatures of millions of billions of cells ,can live for centuries .
Just one Cell can loose discipline and become the rogue progenitor of a cancerous growth  how is discipline so tight that humans can last decades and turtles or whales can last for centuries and trees can last for thousands?  We do not understand how such organisation over such scales is accomplished. Why arn't we all cancerous at early ages?  Every day you last your body will exibit more organisation that all human endevor put together has ever accomplished in all time.

In Scripture God promises you that you will only have to die once , the longer you avoid one danger the more likely any other danger becomes for you. If there were no cancer as someday there may not be, you must find some other sort of death.

    The Universe has a lot going on at every scale we have ever been able to examine we have found structures , from filiments composed of galaxies lined up in great curves to quanta of energy barely traceable as existing. Do we know why we exist in a universe that is so observable?  No we don't, but we discover orginising principals all over the place. At no time has any proof been found that all things can be understood , nor that all things are systematic, one would have to understand all possible order to prove such a thing, one would have to be God to reasonably make the attempt.

[Plane]

Order and disorder are easy to detect, just as light and darkness are.

Any light means that something is not totally dark.

Any disorder means that something is not totally orderly.

If you say that God's order looks like disorder, I say, no it means that God's order is disorder. You can say that God has a reason for disorder, but you cannot deny that disorder exists.

     I can no more deny that disorder exists than you are able to say that order is not universal.

     Neither of these are reasonable arguements!

       Both require Gods own understanding of what order is possible , which I posit neither of us has .

[Xavier_Onassis]

If there is no God, then God's understanding is imponderable because of his nonexistence.

You might as well ponder Darth Vader's motives.

[Plane]

If there is no God, then God's understanding is imponderable because of his nonexistence.

You might as well ponder Darth Vader's motives.

   That doesn't dodge the idea that your understanding is less than omnicient.

     So any perception of disorder is not proof that order is imperfect, untill the person perceiving the disorder can be certain that he understands all possible orders.

      Do you understand all possible sorts of order?

[Xavier_Onassis]

How many white crows must one find to prove that the statement "All crows are black" is incorrect?

I say one.

There is only ONE way things can be in order. Any disorder, however minor, means that the order is imperfect.

There are many ways in which things can be out of order, but there is only ONE way they can be in order.

[Amianthus]

There are many ways in which things can be out of order, but there is only ONE way they can be in order.

There are many ways of putting things in order as well. Take books for example. They can be arranged via the Dewey Decimal system, or alphabetical by title, or alphabetical by author, or alphabetical within publisher. You can also order them by size, by thickness, by color of the cover.

There is no limit to the ways things can be "in order".

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am not talking about sorting things in different ways, I am talking about the functionality of the universe. A universe in which things operate with the greatest possible degree of harmony would be a perfect universe. One in which comets and asteroids collide and stars blow up is less than perfect.