And some people say there's no God..........

[Victor Faraday]

Last night just before bed, I looked out over my deck, and there over the middle of it, was the most magnificent spider web ever devised, shining in the spotlight. This wonder appeared perfectly circular and was about the size--and very much resembled-- a

33 rpm phono record, with very precisely placed circular strands close together with perfect symmetry. I still am not sure how this little master builder anchored this creation; must've been the hedge on one side and the chimney on the other, and maybe the deck; but all this stuff was a good ways off, and the masterpiece was hanging a good 8 feet over the deck. Another amazing thing is that we had a heavy rainstorm not 3 hours earlier, so this beauty was designed and built in less than 3 hours.

So here we have a creature, with a brain maybe the size of a grain of sand, and likely less than a year old, building something any civil engineer would show with great pride. I got up to pee around 3 a.m., looked out, and it was already gone.

-- Vic

[John Jacobson]

It is not the equivalent of a civil engineering project though, being much much simpler. All the spider needs to do is jump back and forth between anchor spots a few times and then walk around the perimeter with the prior strands to the same side of it's body.

Very simple rules can create the appearance of complexity, much the way language and the international monetary system exhibit complexity even though they have no master designer.

[R. Pierce Butler]

"Victor Faraday" wrote in news:JmZEg.12269$ [e-mail]:

Do you still look for clouds that remind you of various things like birds, your favorite deity, etc?

[Rob Brown]

OK, please continue. You had a point to make? What you've written so far describes something I see variations of all the time at my rural home. Beautiful, interesting, and natural but not magic or supernatural. So, how *exactly* do you get a god, whatever that is, from a spider and it's web? Offer something other than warm, fuzzy prose. I like that stuff and it has it's place, but not as proof of what you suggest it proves. Rob Brown

[Tough Tonto]

Wonderful, but what does a nice spider web have to do with some people saying "there's no God"? Do you think spiders somehow resemble little gods?

[Ron Baker, Pluralitas!]

I looked up into the sky and saw a nice cloud.

And some people say there is no Osiris.

-- rb #2187

[Samuel W. Heywood]

He is making the point that spiders are superbly intelligent designers, despite their very tiny brains.

Sam Heywood

-- Message handled by Pine, Version 4.62

[ZenIsWhen]

All I note, which is also the REALITY of the thing, evidence of a spider and a web. Obvioiusly this spider, "with a brain maybe the size of a grain of sand" has one over on you!

[Chris H. Fleming]

... so the gods have tiny brains?

[Samuel W. Heywood]

I just knew that some very smart people would draw that conclusion.

Sam Heywood

-- Message handled by Pine, Version 4.62

[Les]

That's nothing. Water can create mighty valleys, waterfalls and deltas. It is around us, it penetrates us and binds the galaxy together. Let the force be with you. Live long and.. oops sorry wrong one.

When 'cool' water can make beautiful icicles and mighty glaciers.

When 'hot' it can disappear and just 'float away into clouds'. Now that's real cool man.

Wonderfully creative yer water is. Yet not one single brain cell anywhere.

This post was inspired by a thunderstorm that is fast approaching as I type. It sounds quite agitated too.

Les Hellawell Greetings from YORKSHIRE - The White Rose County

[GoDrex]

oh don't be so hard on yourself - I'm sure your brain is bigger than that

[Pastor Kutchie]

A few months ago, I was taking a train uptown to see my friend. The train slowed down as it approached the first stop and stopped halfway into the station. Another train was stationary on the down track short of the end of the platform.

Eventually we pulled fully into the station and passengers were able to embark/disembark. The train left the station, but soon after, it stopped in a tunnel for 15 minutes. The current had been turned off, the driver explained, because of an 'incident' at the previous station.

Later it transpired that the down train had had a 'jumper'. Well, a sitter, in fact. He'd climbed down just before the train pulled in and sat on the track far too late for the inevitable to be prevented. The current on the down line had to be turned off for 4 hours while tranport police looked for the sitter's head, which a fox had ran off with.

[Wolf Kirchmeir]

By the same reasoning, water molecules must be superbly intelligent designers, since they arrange themselves into snowflakes.

Design, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

[Uncle Vic]

Once upon a time in alt.atheism, dear sweet Victor Faraday ( [e-mail]) made the light shine upon us with this:

You sound like that video with Kirk Cameron and his sidekick explaining how bananas were created to perfectly fit into a human hand. LOL. I can name a few other things that were probably not created to fit into a human hand, but nonetheless do.

[Dan J.S.]

My dad, who is a chemical engineer, had a hard time believing in God. Then he started studying quantum physics, and other complex sciences (he has a PhD). He has turned extremely religious. Claims there is no way that 'accidents' created the things that he studies - especially things on atomic levels. As a matter of fact, this is not so uncommon amongst scientists. They somehow get a lot more religious the deeper in science they get. Very interesting stuff.

[Uncle Vic]

Once upon a time in alt.atheism, dear sweet ZenIsWhen ( [e-mail]) made the light shine upon us with this:

They certainly have one over on my daughter. A tiny little spider can make her scream her lungs out. I tried to explain, out of the many thousands of species of spider, only two are poisonous and one of those cannot tolerate the climate where we live. Didn't help.

[Rob Brown]

The story about your dad may be true but it proves nothing about science. It isn't even about science. The rest of what you wrote also isn't about science and is at best an unsupported assertion not a "matter of fact". Rob Brown

[Robibnikoff]

Lovely story

Now, where's the god?

[Victor Faraday]

I've got an undergrad degree in physics myself, and I concur. Religion is not science and never will be. It is far beyond that.

Fantastic design without designer is a harder thing to buy into than belief in an Almighty alpha and omega. These atheist types are trying hard to reply in clever & witty ways, but they remind me of hayseeds who see priceless works of art as miscellaneous smearing of paint on a canvas.:)

-- Vic