“If you can read this sentence, I can prove God exists”

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Posted in Day 4, Information Theory | 1,237 Comments

 
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1,237 Comments

Ridge says:
September 19, 2009 at 12:17 pm

We will take the assumption of intelligent design and of a higher conscious energy.

1.) Relative to the human, why would he subjugate himself to this conscious energy that he cannot even prove personally for him/herself and would have to rely on external argument or other documents to prove the same?

2.) How necessary is it that man should worship this conscious energy or “God”? When he was perfectly at home with his/her life and surviving prior to the knowledge/indoctrination that such conscious being exists or that such conscious being created the first DNA?

3.) Is worship necessary at all? Aren’t egoists only in need of such? I don’t see any other creature in need of such or practicing the same.

4.) Why is it that 95% of all devout theists act inordinately and exactly the opposite of the faith they endorse? How come, the results of their behavior and actions are simply not attuned with how their godly books counselled them to be?

5.) Why would this “god” ever have any need for money? Unless, of course, he also invented the monetary system and slavery…and mass hypnosis/manipulation/early childhood programming.

6.) Since, he/she is an energy, why the need to write the message down? Messages can be transmitted without the need for pen and paper. What if I lack the ability to read, or was programmed to understand the language it was written in? Does that make me damnable or worthless to this “god”?

Perry Marshall says:
November 22, 2009 at 12:00 am

Ridge,

I believe that all human beings intuitively know that God is real. It’s why atheists are more strident than people of any other conviction (I can assure you, this is the case) — because they’re in denial.

I don’t think that human beings are “perfectly at home” with their life. I think all human beings are frustrated.

If God is real then He is worthy of worship.

I disagree that 95% of theists are hypocrites. There are many but it’s nowhere near 95%. BTW with all these institutions like St. Jude’s Hospital or St. Luke’s orphanage etc etc – thousands of them – I’m just wondering…. where’s the Frederick Neitzche children’s hospital? Where’s the Ayn Rand orphanages? Where’s the Bertrand Russell fund for cancer research? Where’s the Richard Dawkins child sponsorship fund for hungry children in Africa?

God doesn’t need money. But institutions that take care of the poor and the sick and the disadvantaged certainly do.

You don’t need to be able to read to know that God is real. You just need to look at the hand at the end of your arm, and recognize that no one has ever seen a structure that functional occur randomly… Ridge, do you have direct empirical evidence that things as functional as your hand occur randomly?

Daniel Asige says:
September 23, 2009 at 5:04 am

I’m an IT (information technlogy ) student but wiht particular intrest in physics and religion. I’m 21 years of age.
I was particulary interested on this topic. I read Hugg Ross’s article ( the one posted 1994on the scientific evidence of the existence of God.)

However there is a place where he says that God “creates time”. In my view i think time is measure just like distance and cannot be created. I also think that measurements being just what we consider constants to help us compare magnitudes of different sizes is a creation by man to help him understand and learn effectively.
I would very much appreciate your response.

Perry Marshall says:
November 22, 2009 at 12:05 am

Einstein figured out that time is linked to the expansion of space and when you wind it backwards, it goes back to a zero point at the beginning of the big bang.

So time is not an absolute. It is situational, it’s a dimension. There is such a thing as “outside of time.”

Salem AlSalmy says:
September 27, 2009 at 4:01 pm

Your arguments are interesting. Information comes for a Soul.So far, we humans are not able to create a soul. I do not believe that we will ever be able to. This step of making an alive thing from nonalive materials is the key,

I know God exists because I have read the Quran (Holy Book of Muslims) and it challenged humans to make a Soul and so far we failed. we are not even close to this kind of knowledge.

Also, is it possible that Prophets did not really exist? their miracles did not exist either? Is it possible that all reports we just lies that humanity decided to pass down from generation to another? I think that human kind caanot agree to pass lies of this scale. So they did exist and they were an alive proof that God existed.

Back to the Quran. In the Quran, God talks directly to human kind. I am amazed how He talks with extreme confidence. He tells us that we will be alive in the same manner as how a ground becomes green when rain falls on it. We in our graves are like seeds of plants that later become trees (full of life), The way God talks in the Quran is enough prrof for me. It is so unique in many ways.

Regards,

Salem

asis says:
September 30, 2009 at 12:41 am

i think if we want to prove the Gods existence me must look to his writen message the KURAN. if he is alive there must be signes about his existence. i want to discuss some of them.
in KURAN has writen that the IRON had come from sky or space. 1500 years ago there was no astronat or scientist to improve that. so this information was coming from out of our world.
or about mountains root. in KORAN it says the mountains are like a stake, like a pale on the earth.
the informations like thees are making men to think about existence of the great lord. the GOD. the ALLAH

kevin says:
September 30, 2009 at 12:39 pm

The very idea that DNA is not a code as insisted upon by the Atheists who frequent the Church of Chance does’nt even agree with their own Scientists (Holy Men) . Everywhere you see posted on the net where some Atheist is insisting that once the Geneticists decode the entire genome, then we’ll know for sure that the information they find will prove evolution. What are they decoding if it’s not a code ??? What information are they looking for if it’s not real information ???

what? says:
October 2, 2009 at 3:10 pm

I don’t want to get into every single mistake you made in this presentation (like for example forgetting that 95% of human genome is junk and that it’s not 3 billion letters but 3 billion pairs of letters, though those are only details) so I’m only going to point out one that strikes me the most.
You said that:
“This is the core problem with a naturalistic philosophy of materialistic science: Matter and energy all by themselves cannot produce information.”

This statement is clearly wrong and truly misguided. You use a lot of analogy to state your case so allow me to use one myself, I’ll use an example as a question.

Do you agree that an infinite string of 0 and 1 will at some point make anything we want? From “Romeo and Juliet” to a Windows installation disc that you yourself mention in the presentation? If so, the ones and zeros can be easily changed into adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine in this example and ‘infinity’ can be easily changed into near infinity in the awesomely immense universe and you end up with matter and energy creating information.

If you have any counterarguments feel free to respond.

Perry Marshall says:
October 2, 2009 at 4:26 pm

The Junk DNA hypothesis is obsolete. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/junk-dna/ Or Google it.

There is no infinite string of 1′s and 0′s.

And in the last 13 billion years there are not enough random events in the universe to generate even one paragraph of English text, let alone 750MB of DNA code.

Mike Minnich says:
October 2, 2009 at 4:49 pm

Your case is faulty in many ways, first off you’re not specifying any sort of structure for this infinite string, so an elementary example of a string your describing that violates your point is a simple alternating sequence: 01010101010101010101010101010101… ad infinitum. That infinite string of ones and zeros carries virtually no meaningful information. And if, as I suspect, you’re speaking of random strings it’s still not the case that you’d expect to see any particular structure arise, even within an infinitely long string let alone a finite string which you later constrain yourself to. For instance, the odds of getting a particular sequence that is only a few hundred bits long is staggering and since it takes two bits to specify a nucleobase and there are thousands of nucleobases in even the shortest plasmids the odds of randomly deriving that from nature are so slim that it’s hard to take an argument for mere randomness as a rational one. I think that’s ultimately Perry’s point here, and on that I absolutely have to agree (though not without caveats).

Joseph A. says:
October 7, 2009 at 9:22 pm

Perry,

Great site, but I was wondering – have you heard of this? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090829091049.htm – And if so, what are your thoughts on it?

Thank you.

Perry Marshall says:
October 17, 2009 at 9:22 am

It doesn’t in any way explain the origin of the genetic code.

mireya gaona says:
October 8, 2009 at 5:18 pm

God is a minute point of metaphysical energy like a star and resides in Nirvana, the world of sweet silence beyond the milky way, called by hindus Paramdham, Shantidham or heaven by the christians. It is like a world of golden red light where there are no bodies, no matter either. It is the 5th dimension of consciusness. The souls there, are in a stage like the seed of a plant. That seed can be expressed only when it takes a human body, in the planet earth.
That seed will be seated behind the eyes in the middle of the brain and by the process of thinking will made the body function.
God is conscient energy but will never take a human body to experience matter as human souls. God will comunicate with human souls through the mind but it will be easy to understand Him,Her,It when human souls vibrate in the same level like God. Body consciousness and negativity separate us from God. To know more about it see http://www.bkwsu.org in the course of Raja Yoga
Good luck.
Mireya (gmireya@gmail.com)
I am here to live a process of spiritual transformation according to time (only in the confluence age) and God´s wish. OM SHANTI!

F. Charles Blank says:
October 13, 2009 at 5:55 pm

Hello, I am new to this scence, but from what I have gathered so far, I get the impression that much of the thought relating to DNA coding and randomness implications being conveyed here, has been strongly contested in the Forum at this WEB location:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=135497

Where can I find responses that are very specific to the objections that have been put forward in that particular Forum?

F. Charles Blank

Perry Marshall says:
October 17, 2009 at 9:10 am

Charles, I have thoroughly addressed all of this at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/infidels – see the links on this page and study them carefully. I am not aware of any significant objection that has not been addressed on these pages.

Moa'yad Matta says:
October 15, 2009 at 2:36 am

Dear Perry,
What is the difference between an old animal and a new one? Example, an old dog 500 years ago and a new one. Do they have different biological or chemical composition?! Do they carry different information?! Nowadays, you can teach a dog to perform a certain job. You give it this knowledge by induction or by training. This doesn’t mean that it carries information because these information have no meaning if you do not use them or discover them. Man discovers the data or whatever and gives it the definition or the meaning without the need of a Creator. Thank you.

Perry Marshall says:
October 17, 2009 at 9:00 am

So if information comes only from man (which is not true according to communication theory) where does man’s ability to create information come from?

Fred Blank says:
October 17, 2009 at 6:01 am

Hello, I recently visited your WEB site looked it, over and subscribed to your email list. Emails are being received. Subsequently I have visited the Infidels WEB site referred to, and find that they now have a summary at the beginning that points to a number of posts which seems to clearly indicate this debate that has been running a long way short of falling in favour of Peter Marshall. And to make matters worse there is now a Cosmicfingerpuppets.com WEB site that is capitalising on the mileage coming from the Infidels site, in their favour. My question is, how is a layman like myself ever expected to believe that Peter Marshall has got the case thoroughly sown up on his side, when I note he is no longer responding to many of the rebuttals that have been put forward? It is all very confusing.

Regards,
Fred C.B.

Perry Marshall says:
October 17, 2009 at 8:56 am

Fred,

If you understand information theory – which is really not all that complicated – you can evaluate every single statement for yourself. I explain basic communication theory at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/information-theory-made-simple/

Have the patience to learn and THINK AND DECIDE FOR YOURSELF.

Perry

Fred Blank says:
October 19, 2009 at 5:01 am

Sorry Perry, I hadn’t realised that you had already responded to my enquiry, so I posted like question again, just a moment ago. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to comprehend information theory, being among the uneducated ‘common folk’ of life. I get the general drift, then I read some of that stuff on the Infidel’s WEB site and come away quite confused, moreso when and Athiest associate writes to me and claims that every substantive claim by yourself as been comprehensively refuted, many times by different people. I have read through much of the infidel’s stuff and must admit that it also seems a bit that way to me also, consequently I haven’t replied to my athiest associate yet. He is an old work associate that I worked with for many years and we continue to correspond in a friendly manner. I would like to be able to find good counter cases against those main post that are being promoted on their front page.
Regards, Fred C.B.

Perry Marshall says:
November 14, 2009 at 3:11 am

Fred,

To my knowledge I have addressed every single objection. Yes there are all kinds of people saying I’ve been thoroughly refuted. But my friend this is REALLY simple stuff:

1. The pattern in DNA is a code. (Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is throwing 60 years of science in the garbage can)

2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. (Look up the definition of a code, understand what a code is – nobody can think of a code that wasn’t designed)

3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. (that is simple inductive reasoning, based on what we know, not based on speculation.)

My friend it really is that simple. Nobody has refuted any of this. They have only obfuscated it. If your friend cannot explain this to you then don’t believe him.

I truly believe that any person with a high school education is capable of understanding this. If you know what a code is, you have this thing figured out. It’s SIMPLE. It’s black and white and exact.

amos otieno says:
October 17, 2009 at 9:33 am

Why are we always required to believe in the existence of the GOD the creator if so does exist ? Some guys who seem to know more about God are trying to convince God does exist and they are everywhere in every color and attire, suddenly the pandemonium breaks and the WARS FOUGHT is about who is truthful. There seem to be a problem with the view that a grown up has to be convinced God does exist… if God is there, what is not there? Conversely , if God is not there there, what is there anyway? What seem to be the PROBLEM is why a baby cries for the attention of the mother , does it debate about the supposed being there of mom, no , just cry and somebody caring suddenly appears!

Perry Marshall says:
November 22, 2009 at 12:11 am

Amos,

I am asking you to believe in God based on reason and logic through the articles on my website, not based on coercion.

Does God answer prayer? See Stories of miracles & answered prayer:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/travelogue/india/june-12/

Sanrow says:
October 18, 2009 at 1:32 am

I feel there is no need to discuss the existence of GOD.God is a possible strength in actual weakness.It is the faith in GOD which makes the world to run and if there is some justice (Dharma) present in this world is due to the people who believe/fear of GOD.

Mike Minnich says:
October 18, 2009 at 11:36 am

I find it curious given your assertion that the most horrific wars the world over have always involved religion very directly. In actual fact religious conviction appears to act just like any other ethnic identifier, that is primarily for the purpose of delineating social boundaries which are frequently used subsequently to decide who is and is not worthy of various humanitarian considerations. Consider the differences between popes and war loving dictators… at the most important levels (action) I’m unaware of significant differences until very recently. Consider the impropriety of the current existence of the state of Israel, particularly in light of the fact that Judaism preaches humanitarianism. Consider the tensions which lead to the splitting of Pakistan and India and which currently act as a strong influence on the politics of the region. Consider the conquests of the Americas and how poorly the indigenous religions faired compared to the religions of the invaders. Such events fill history nearly to the brim, and as such your comment seems entirely unfounded. Faith in G-d if anything tends to have an inverse relationship to establishing social justice, not a direct one. Why justice systems arise in religiously contiguous regions seems to actually be more to promote economic activity with neighbours that cannot be conquered and to punish (often brutally) heretics (which here includes murders, rapists, thieves, political adversaries of the ruling party, homosexuals, etc.) than anything else. So in the end it really all seems to be much more about status than justice.

Perry Marshall says:
November 22, 2009 at 3:42 am

Mike, I’m not sure that I said the most horrific wars always involved religion.

I think your whole statement here is extremely subjective.

There is no doubt that religion is perhaps one of the most divisive elements in history. At the same time it is objectively true that the bloodiest regimes in history have been those ruled by atheists. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot come to mind.

And I think you’re neglecting to give credit where credit is due – there are many religious groups that serve the poor, build hospitals and medical clinics and fight for social justice. If you haven’t met any religious people involved in such endeavors I would be happy to introduce you to some.

Mike Minnich says:
November 22, 2009 at 10:02 am

You don’t think atheism is a religious point of view?

Perry Marshall says:
December 6, 2009 at 12:24 am

I think atheism is a religion, and atheists are the most zealous of any sect I have encountered.

Fred Blank says:
October 19, 2009 at 4:44 am

Hello, If I go to this link: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=135497&page=1 which appears on your page headed, “The Atheist’s Riddle: 30+ Skeptics Attempt To Solve It” there is a number of posts placed in summary form on the first page. When they are accessed, they give the impression that the Athiests have dealt you a trump card. There appears to be no response to indicate otherwise. Has the issues that they have raised against your claims been answered/addressed elsewhere? Your comments will be much appreciated.
Thank you. Fred C.B.

Jasper Jansen says:
October 23, 2009 at 3:52 am

But E-Mails are simply a large combination of 1′s and 0′s, they are immaterial, yes. But the thing they are made of, is material. I mean that the computer is the material thing that creates the e-mail in 1′s and 0′s, a.k.a. bits. There’s nothing special about something like that:
-The PC makes the 1′s and 0′s into an e=mail, and your pc screen shows it to you in letters and numbers.

If you have a reply please mail me back!

Gary Estes says:
October 23, 2009 at 6:20 pm

What!!!

Look at particle physics, the nuclear force, and gravity?

Jesus was a fraud…not the Messiah. Matt. 5:17-20 and Gal. 5: 4 These two can’t even agree.

Implying God exist because scientific laws work? Really!!!

If God came from another time space… where did time space come from?

You speak of the Hebrew verb, BARA; to speak into existence out of nothing. Where did nothing come from…as dark energy?

saji joy says:
October 27, 2009 at 3:05 am

hi,
You had stated in one of your teachings that earth is the only habitable planet. In that case what about the findings made by Chandrayaan (indian ) that there is water on the moon and that naturally implies that Moon can be made habitable. Just like a few decades ago scientists believed that moon is inhospitable for occupation by human beings due to the lack of water and other things required for habitation, will it not be likely that one will find other planets or natural satellites of other planets which contain water like the moon or maybe support either intelligent life forms or primitive ones.?
thanks and regards
saji joy

Atef Aziz says:
October 27, 2009 at 8:39 am

hi dear perry
you and i are on the same line in thinking about the new scientific discoveries and the relation between this and faith and i as a moslim like to tell you a very short translation of quran which talks about the big bang theory more than 1400 years ago so i believe in you and i believe in the one true GOD
(surah 21 verse 30):
Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth Were joined
together (as one Unit of Creation), before We clove them asunder? we made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?

Tizazu says:
October 28, 2009 at 8:58 am

Dear Parry!
you and a lot of people believe in God . when did people started believing in God?
And why?

Perry Marshall says:
November 22, 2009 at 12:26 am

I think people have believed in God since the very beginning.

Ahmed Abdou says:
October 30, 2009 at 3:41 pm

“Iqra’a” … The first word of Quran to be sent from God to prophet Mohammed; It means “Read” … Information, the code, the message … It’s all in information, It is the pathway to knowing the creator … So, read and believe.

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