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In the beginning; some poor poetry to laugh at

Learner said:
It 'even' means that, when you the atheist make those arguments about "magic" i.e. the conjuring or demonic invocations to false gods and images, which is written and condemed by the God of the bible, it therefore means...

....that between ourselves, we are on different defining terms of biblical interpretational understanding, i.e. the atheists equivicational use of the word magic...as being in the "same" context to God granting miracles... is a flawed argument. Simply, because I see your (preferred) argumentative interpretation as conceptually foreign and different to mine. We're not on the same page. I say this also to NoHolyCows.
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What you’re really saying is that you’ve created a private definition of “magic” that exempts your beliefs from criticism while dismissing anything outside that framework as “misinterpretation.” That’s not argument—that’s insulation. You can claim biblical miracles are different from magic because they’re authorized by your God, but that’s circular. You’re defining magic as “false supernatural acts” and miracles as “true supernatural acts”—both are untestable appeals to divine power. The labels differ, but the mechanism is the same: a suspension of natural law through unseen forces. That’s the whole point of the critique.

When atheists compare miracles to magic, it’s not out of ignorance of your theology—it’s a deliberate epistemological challenge. You believe in supernatural intervention. We’re asking how you distinguish it from any other claim of supernatural intervention—be it pagan gods, demons, or spell-casting. If your answer is “Because my book says it’s true,” that’s not evidence—it’s dogma.

So yes, we’re not on the same page—but not because we misunderstand your view. We reject the idea that rebranding divine intervention as “miracle” instead of “magic” makes it immune to scrutiny. You’re welcome to believe it, but don’t confuse your theological definitions with explanatory power. They’re not the same—and calling disagreement a misunderstanding doesn’t make the argument stronger. It just sidesteps the real issue: the lack of evidence and mechanism behind the claim.

NHC
 
NoHolyCows said:
No, we haven’t sat around for billions of years watching stars form—but we don’t need to. Just like forensic scientists don’t need to witness a murder to reconstruct what happened, cosmologists don’t need to personally observe each stage of stellar evolution to understand the process. We have snapshots across space and time—redshift data, background radiation, elemental spectra, and stellar life cycle modeling—that all independently converge on the same timeline. That’s not blind faith; it’s reasoned inference from measurable data.
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And, of course, if the speed of light is finite (and it is, we checked), a sufficiently powerful telescope can observe what the universe looked like at any arbitrary point in the past, at least since the universe became largely transparent, about 375,000 years after the singularity.
 
Materialism arises as an atheistic alternative to religious magic because it is a shared common reality that everyone can experience and discuss. Common ground. Personal experiences that cannot be verified at anytime by anyone all based on that common reality are where we get what is labeled 'magic'.
 
lostone said:
Materialism arises as an atheistic alternative to religious magic because it is a shared common reality that everyone can experience and discuss. Common ground. Personal experiences that cannot be verified at anytime by anyone all based on that common reality are where we get what is labeled 'magic'.
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That’s actually a fair point, and it gets to the heart of why materialism became the go-to framework for understanding reality. It’s not because atheists were just looking to “replace” religious ideas, but because materialism focuses on what we all have access to—shared, observable reality. It gives us common ground. Anyone, regardless of background or belief, can test a claim, see the evidence, and come to the same conclusion. That’s what makes it powerful.

In contrast, things labeled as “magic” or “miracles” are usually personal, unverifiable experiences—no one else can observe them, test them, or repeat them. That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen, but it does mean we can’t treat them the same way we treat facts about the physical world. Materialism isn’t about closing the door on wonder—it’s about keeping the door open to anything that can be shown to be real, for everyone.

NHC
 
Learner said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Learner said:
Yeah sure. Magic performed by individuals is a counterfeit to one who performs miracles (through God), as described in the bible.

Magic and Miracles seen as the same thing confuses the discussion. We're talking from different angles (not that this is really of interest to you (plural)).
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So the miracle of life... which starts inside stars... but not the first ones as they were pure hydrogen/helium combos... but given enough time, future generations of stars would have more "heavier" elements. And more and more elements were being created. A few billion years later... have enough carbon, oxygen, hydrogen to start make organic molecules. Of which we can observe huge clouds of in outer space, just floating there.
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What's interesting with satements like this is: you say we can observe huge clouds in outer space just floating there. To bring up what should be a curiosity with the idea of a few bilion years etc. & etc.. The atheist has their own faith (not religion) taking from the observation of these mentioned clouds... knowing well the process of billions of years has never been observed, to sate-the-obvious.

Jimmy Higgins said:
How many billions of years is it until we don't consider it a miracle before these things get to Earth and hundreds of millions of years later, a self replicating process begins and takes form over a few more billion years?
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What can one say when we can't witness such things?
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You get that we can see back in time thanks to astronomy. We can see older stars, newer stars.
We can tell star / stellar composition based on the results of spectrophotometry.
We have peaked into the nursery of stars and have observed the results of their explosions.
We have detected collisions of black holes within the fabric of space-time.

So back to your "miracles", how long is a miracle supposed to take? That when a quadrillion interactions finally results in one favorable for the start of life, that it is a "miracle", instead of a statistical inevitability?
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
You get that we can see back in time thanks to astronomy. We can see older stars, newer stars.
We can tell star / stellar composition based on the results of spectrophotometry.
We have peaked into the nursery of stars and have observed the results of their explosions.
We have detected collisions of black holes within the fabric of space-time.

So back to your "miracles", how long is a miracle supposed to take? That when a quadrillion interactions finally results in one favorable for the start of life, that it is a "miracle", instead of a statistical inevitability?
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Idiotic arguments from incredulity aside, I very strongly suspect that quadrillions of interactions are not required for life to be a probable outcome, and that the "odds against" one such interaction are vastly overwhelmed by the number of trials ongoing on, on planets orbiting octillions of stars in the billions of galaxies that lie within our ability to detect them.

In fact I'd gladly wager my spot in Learner's god's heaven against my proposition that life is quite ubiquitous throughout the universe. In fact Learner's heaven doesn't sound all that good, and I'd gladly exchange it just for knowing. :)

Life probably doesn't take hold in the vast majority of places where it forms, and probably doesn't last long in most of the places where it does take hold, but billions of years is a long time. "Take hold" and "Last long" could mean hundreds - or millions - of years. it could well be that life is all over the place, but places where life has evolved continuously for billions of years on one ball of rock, could be exceedingly rare.

But life itself seems to be an unavoidable emergent property of matter and energy, as energy condenses into matter, the matter cools and energy gets dispersed.
Only locales with a certain range of entropy levels will support life for long enough that intelligent or technological life may occur, and in cosmic terms, such locales are transient. Our chances of ever observing them outside of earth, are miniscule. But I don't think it will take much longer to find life elsewhere in our own solar system, indicating that the processes that produce it are myriad and common.
 
Requirements for complex life:

Hydrogen+Gravity+Time=Stars
Stars+Gravity+Time=Heavier Elements
Heavy Elements+Gravity+Time=Planets
Planets+Chemistry+Time=Life
Life+Time=Complex Life

None of these things are avoidable, much less "miraculous". If you have enough Hydrogen, and enough time, in an environment in which the four forces of the Standard Model operate, you will end up with life, like it or not.

We know this, because every single step
of the process is simple, reproducable, and observable. And we have reproduced and/or observed all of them.

And nobody is asked to take any of this on faith; Every test and the reasoning behind it has been written down, published, and widely distributed; And then we have offered big prizes, both cash and glory, to anyone who can show any of the tests or reasoning to be flawed, or who can find an elegant solution to any apparent inconsistencies between one test and another.

If there is any specific part of this that you think might be wrong, not only will your concerns be taken seriously (as long as you can articulate them clearly); You can even be given money to test them again for yourself, and if your tests show that our understanding was indeed flawed, you will be given prize money, medals, and accolades.

That's how we got from being Medieval peasants with a leaky cottage on a patch of dirt where we could watch our children die of inexplicable diseases in abject squalor, to being modern peasants with a wide screen ultra HD TV, in front of which we can ignore our children, secure in the expectation that they will reach adulthood and have a good chance of being even wealthier than mum and dad, who themselves have riches that the grandest Medieval kings could not have imagined.

William the Bastard of Normandy (1028-1087), who owned outright the land and people of all of England (and a big chunk of what is now France), plus all of their goods and chattels, and who could demand of them anything he wished, never saw a flushing toilet or soft toilet paper; Never heard recorded music or saw a movie or TV show; Never had a doctor who he could reasonably expect to cure any illnesses or wounds; Never had year round access to any fruits or vegetables he might want to eat. If he wanted to visit a different part of his kingdom, it took him weeks to travel a few hundred miles.

Sure, he threw some great parties, and had an unbelievably good life compared to those of his subjects. But if you or I were forced to live exactly as he did, we would be thoroughly miserable. And the reason we live better than him is science.

He had all the benefits of eight hundred years of Christianity. He had the blessing of the church, he was a devout Christian who prayed and fasted and believed with all his heart. But he couldn't even have a nice hot shower and a cup of tea (or coffee) in the morning.

We have all the benefits of four hundred years of science. And our peasants live better (and longer, and healthier) lives than medieval kings did. William died at 59, having lived longer than average due to his wealth and privilege. He died of illness or injury (two conflicting accounts exist), but it is almost certain that any 59 year old resident in an OECD nation today would have survived whatever it was that killed him. Today, a 59 year old's death from injury or illness is considered surprising.
 
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bilby said:
If you have enough Hydrogen, and enough time, ... you will end up with life, like it or not.
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^ THAT
There are places at points in time that are inimical to life, but I think there are more places at more times in our universe where life's formation proceeds relentlessly. (wherever the four forces of the Standard Model operate)
 
My question of the day...
Is "complex life" redundant? Are there clumps of matter more complex than the same mass of living matter?
 
DBT said:
Where would we be without it? What would the universe look like? Would there be a universe?
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The universe was nothing but space and Population II stars - stars made up almost entirely of Hydrogen and Helium - for a very long time (a few billion years).

Heavier elements, and hence almost all of chemistry, are a more recent phenomenon.

And elements heavier than Helium (which the astrophysicists call "metals") remain a trivial fraction of the universe. Even our own Solar System, with its Population I star, high in metals, is mostly empty space, with the overwhelming majority of the rest being Hydrogen, and the vast majority of the non-Hydrogen being Helium.

As Arthur C Clarke observed, the Solar System contains the Sun, Jupiter, and assorted debris.

So, to answer your questions in reverse order: Yes, there would be a universe; It would look almost exactly like the one we see; And nowhere (because we wouldn't exist).

Complexity is rare. We care about it because it's where we live, but it's not typical of the Universe, or even of the Solar System. It's a similarly distorted perspective as our view of time, where we define eras that get shorter and shorter, the more local they are to us.
 
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