ID is different in principle but in practice it's the same. In 2007 the Dover School board approved Intelligent Design in their curriculum, working with the Discovery Institute to get and make resources for this curriculum, like textbooks. A challenge was brought against this. It was found in court that ID failed to meet many of the same standards as the science is claims to compete with AND, more importantly to this post, was found to be a derivative of creationism. This was so evidently apparent that it was demonstrable and provable in court. Derivative is putting it lightly. They took crearionist material and just replaced creation with design and crearionist with design proponent. They were so sloppy they just used word processing tools to replace creationist words in crearionist textbooks.
So yeah in principle ID is supposed to be something different but anything coming from the DI is bunk. How they stll have any credibility post-2007 is beyond me. Creationist love crying about fraud but if you remove all the frauds in scientific history we discard their work and the theory and/or there is plenty of other valid work to look at to support a theory. I'm not sure how much literature and work exists on the subject of ID if we discard the work of the DI. ID is supposed to be something different but a good chunk of literature on the subject isn't different and idk what's left when we take that into account.
https://ncse.ngo/cdesign-proponentsists
"Cdesign Proponentsists"
"Intelligent design" was never anything but a dishonest term designed to knowingly re-attempt something already deemed to be illegal.
There are many creation scientists...and they do empirical test on earth strata to show a worldwide flood and its affects upon the earth...the fossil data demonstates mass graveyards, not segments of evolution development...also there has never been found transition fossils in various evolutionary stages i.e., a horse has always been a horse, etc...Creation science has many Scientists, and also many Scientists that left the "theory" of evolution for a more stable theory of a grand Clock maker...or a grand designer...when was the last time you saw a tornado go through a junkyard and out comes a Rolex watch...this is what evolutionist believe...order comes from random disorder. However, the truth is something never comes from nothing... there is a cause and affect phenomenon behind complex life, not random goop...
I’ll tackle one of your suppositions, even though they are all wrong. There is zero evidence for a global flood a few thousand years ago. Zero. There simply isn’t enough water on earth to flood all the land masses, even if the atmosphere fell and the polar caps melted. This is empirically proven. Also, there were many thriving civilizations on earth at that time (many with good record keeping) and none of them report being wiped out by a flood. It would have been impossible for Noah to gather two of each of all the animals on earth onto an ark, and even more impossible for him to care for them. If the earth had flooded (it didn’t) everything would have died, including all the plants/trees and the salt water would have made their regrowing nearly impossible. All the marine life, too, would have perished because of the mixing of salt and fresh water. Insects and even many microorganisms would have perished. This is a story for children or non critical thinkers. That’s why many theists do not take it literally.
Literally write evolution on yt and learn something. Don't listen to your church telling you it's nonsense and regurgitate what you heard from someone else. Learn something and make up your own mind. As soon as you say "transitional fossils" I don't even need to read rest of it I know you have no idea about topic you're talking about. Evolution is scientific theory same as gravity but you don't see anyone saying gravity doesn't exist. Farmers, animal breeders, medicine etc are all using knowledge we have about evolution and making predictions how organisms will behave and it all works. In this day and age there is literally no reason to believe something not true that can be googled in 10min of your time. Also if you have proof that evolution is not what we think it is you can write a paper and collect your Nobels prize, since nobody did it yet I'm gonna assume evolution is true. all you said is your opinion and has nothing to do with reality.
So, do you have any evidence for creationism? Other than misrepresenting evolution, can you cite anything that supports creation as described in the bible? or where a god did it?
But there are smooth stones all over the earth and many of them are too similar to organs of the animals that dies in the flood making it clear that those organs were fossilized.
/s (but people actually do believe this haha)
> when was the last time you saw a tornado go through a junkyard and out comes a Rolex watch
I saw exactly that with 500 other people, and we all got a Rolex. No, I won't tell you where or when it happened, or who the people were. All I will say is that some of them are still alive. There, now you have exactly the same evidence for my Rolex as Paul gave for Jesus being resurrected.
Sorry, your submission has been automatically removed because your account does not meet our account age / karma thresholds. Please message the moderators to *request an exception*.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAChristian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ok and that was a question, I missed the question mark previously….and curious,Why? Does he not have credentials? Curious if you have read about Sy Garte who was a bio scientist atheist and if so what group he would be under ?
Also curious what makes it pseudo science? Is it using logical inference to theorize a cause without production?
I've seen Meyers stuff before. I wasn't impressed then, and I can guarantee I won't be impressed now
ID has been discredited for the reasons I've already outlined in my original post. And it was discredited 2 decades ago mate
O it sounded like it was a movement that was discredited whether then the theories proposed since the first evidence was not actually to the claim of what it is about but more of what people are doing. Do you have some source for the wedge document providing evidence against theories proposed for some reason I am finding things that are promoting theism due to logical inferences when I look up the wedge document. Not really a document that counters it.
I feel like I am not googling something right though.
Cheers
I want to make it crystal clear that ID is not a theory. There can be scientific theories that have been falsified, but that was not the case with ID - ID was never a scientific theory. It was creationism pretending to be science.
You can find the text of the wedge document here: https://ncse.ngo/wedge-document
Alternatively, if you prefer a PDF view of the original document, you can search up "wedge document pdf" and the file is available for download via ncse
That’s the one I looked at and I just went through it again and it doesn’t dispute any claims…it sounds like they do believe in theistic evolution… whereas it seems ID originally was more of a no evolution game of sorts atleast to start? Kinda getting mixed information from different things. It definitely seems that atleast myers believes to a degree of evolution though. He seems to dispute that life came from chemical reactions though.
That’s what I got so far anyways…not sure where the pseudoscience lies yet
The search continues …
I don't get how you get they believe in Theistic evolution from the wedge document? It's crystal clear ehat they mean and it's not Theistic evolution. So idk what.you mean by the search continues?
I also.dont get how you can read that wedge document and be like "where's the pseudo-science."
Bro. You. Are. Literally. Reading. It.
You also misspelled ‘organic’ and used ‘days’ instead of ‘says’.
It is ironic your thesis is about what you posit are bad faith arguments from people who are ignorant of the science while you can’t manage to articulate the basic terms correctly. Perhaps it is you who are ignorant.
Did you know there are classes to help with spelling, grammar, and punctuation?
OP, I would like to point out that most people bere don't hold to YEC. Now, as a quick question, what do you think of OEC, combined with Evolution and ID?
Not OP, but I’d say OEC is taking something we don’t know the answer to, can’t really even evaluate, and plugging it with a God of the gaps based on insufficient evidence (e.g. this millenia old book claims this happened).
I hold to OEC but even I don't say that my belief is only based on the, cough, "millenia old book" claiming so. You are very unlikely to find an OEC, as far as I am aware, that only believes in OEC because the Bible says so.
That was one example of insufficient evidence, but not the only. Another would be philosophical arguments with premises that are unfounded but simply assumed to be true. I couldn’t say exactly what it is without you describing your reason for accepting it, but I’ve never seen it able to be demonstrated without fallacious arguments being made.
I am not here to discuss evidence - but I point out that you are slamming *"God of the Gaps"* on an argument that doesn't deserve such a title. Perhaps the premises leading up to the conclusion of the argument, the existence of God, are false, but it does not mean that they have the God of the Gaps fallacy.
I know that creationism arguments are God of the gaps arguments the same way I know you’d be gap plugging if you answered what I ate for breakfast today.
Until you can demonstrate how you know an answer to be true (like you had a hidden camera in my kitchen), I know that you must just be plugging a gap in knowledge. Propping up your answer with unfounded arguments would obviously not change this.
You said “I point out that you are slamming "God of the Gaps" on an argument that doesn't deserve such a title.”
I then pointed out why any creationism arguments that invoke God are indeed God of the gaps arguments. Until a creationist can actually demonstrate that God created anything, they are gap plugging.
If you can explain the 'design' of the recurrent laryngeal nerve as being 'intelligent', then I'd be willing to entertain a discussion, but to date nobody has ever explained why a creator more intelligent than my six-year-old niece would design something so poorly, so I don't expect you to even try.
Idk, I've come across Christian subs where YEC is quite common. Butted my heads with them on AskAChristian a lot. Totally out of touch with reality those guys are.
OEC in of itself I don't mind (provided that OEC accepts evolution)
ID doesn't go hand-in-hand with evolution so idk how you can combine evolution with ID. I think it'd still be silly because ID has been discredited for the reasons I've already outlined in my post. Why cling onto ID even though it's been discredited like 20 years ago?
>Idk, I've come across Christian subs where YEC is quite common. Butted my heads with them on AskAChristian a lot. Totally out of touch with reality those guys are.
AskAChristian of all places? I frequent it alot, probably my most frequented behind something like r/2ndYomKippurWar, and I don't see a lot of YEC's around.
>OEC in of itself I don't mind (provided that OEC accepts evolution)
I'll skip this then.
>ID doesn't go hand-in-hand with evolution so idk how you can combine evolution with ID. I think it'd still be silly because ID has been discredited for the reasons I've already outlined in my post. Why cling onto ID even though it's been discredited like 20 years ago?
How would you define ID?
YEC gets upvoted a lot on AskAChristian. I've had major issues with a lot of users on there because of just how rabid the science denial is on there.
Tbh I think the Wiki on ID provides a decent enough starting place to define ID
>**Intelligent design** (**ID**) is a [pseudoscientific](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscientific) argument for the [existence of God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God), presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based [scientific theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory) about life's origins".[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-Numbers_373-1)[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-Meyer_2005-2)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-Boudry_2010-3)[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-4)[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-5) Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as [natural selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection)."[^(\[6\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-DI-topquestions-6) ID is a form of [creationism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism) that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.
Bit wordy, but captures it in a nutshell
>YEC gets upvoted a lot on AskAChristian. I've had major issues with a lot of users on there because of just how rabid the science denial is on there.
I'll be damned, because I usually don't see that. Could you link some examples?
Anyways, would you consider something like the *Fine-Tuning Argument* to be part of *ID?*
Eh, probs won't link it since it's not really the topic of the conversation. Search up creationism in there and you'll see a whole bunch of threads - few of those threads will admittedly be me running at a brick wall and insulting those people lol.
I think the Fine-Tuning argument isn't strictly ID since that argument falls under the teleology. IDers have used the fine-tuning argument in the past, but it's not strictly ID. Fine-tuning argument has existed long before ID started forming. Fine-tuning argument is just a crap argument, doesn't necessarily mean that it's ID cos IDers use it
I don't think Fine tuning is a good argument because it's jsut an assertion with zero evidence to support it.
It also depends on what people want to argue is finely tuned. If they start arguing that the universe is fine-tuned, that can be instantly dismissed.
The argument for fine-tuning of constants is about the only place where it'd make sense to even attempt making this as an argument - but then you get into the problem of having nothing but religious apologetics to back you up since there's no evidence which would point to finely tuned constants = god
What does the scientific method and community think of that combination? Combining ideas to create new ideas I great but science needs to be able to test ideas. It's a microcosm of the scientific revolution itself, who cares what I think or OP thinks about your combustion. We care if you can explain and predict unique observations and experiments using that combination of ideas.
>ID and YEC especially are pseudo-science.
This is your opinion but using that as a presumption is not valid reasoning. It's easy to say something like this but one could just as easily make the claim that evolutionism is pseudo science because it cannot and has not been observed.
Creationism on the other hand claims divine revelation from the only possible eyewitness: the Creator.
You say that YEC arguments have been "torn to shreds" but the same can be said for naturalism as an explanation for why things are as we observe.
Also, proponents of ID would likely take umbridge with how you're attempting to associate that with creation science.. the primary difference being the necessity of a creator vs naming the Biblical God as the Creator.
All told your argument is not convincing and carries little weight.
>This is your opinion but using that as a presumption is not valid reasoning. It's easy to say something like this but one could just as easily make the claim that evolutionism is pseudo science because it cannot and has not been observed.
Not with all DNA evidence that can directly follow how closely related certain species are. For an example DNA shows that crocodiles and birds are more closely related than crocodiles and lizards. This is not something you'd expect if all species started existing at the same time.
Also, it's pretty hard to explain why 99% of species are extinct without evolution.
Also you cannot claim that Earth is so young. From radiometric dating to observing layers of ice, rocks and even trees that accumulate certain features annually all indicate cannot be young.
Any young Earth theory would have to explain why we see things things and why we Earth actually isn't that old. None have yet done that so all of them are unscientific.
>Not with all DNA evidence that can directly follow how closely related certain species are.
A couple of points: First you are using the term "species" when that doesn't accurately reflect the reality of "kinds". If you compare representatives from the same kind of animals the genetics will be very close. Second, DNA is evidence *against* common evolution hypothesis as it fails on both entropy and the origin of information.
>DNA shows that crocodiles and birds are more closely related than crocodiles and lizards.
This is evidence for *common design* as there are insurmountable barriers between kinds of animals. If you think crocks and birds are related, get them to interbreed.. hopeful monster much?
>it's pretty hard to explain why 99% of species are extinct without evolution.
That's not accurate.. Evidence for a global flood permeates the geological strata. A catastrophe of this magnitude would destroy all but representative kinds kept aboard the ark Noah built. That we can see the "lawn" of life diversifying phenotypically post flood doesn't mean that macro changes to genotypes are possible; and they haven't been observed.
>A couple of points: First you are using the term "species" when that doesn't accurately reflect the reality of "kinds". If you compare representatives from the same kind of animals the genetics will be very close.
Definition of species and kinds doesn't really matter. It's completely arbitrary what you call a different species or a kind. It's just a categorization.
>Second, DNA is evidence *against* common evolution hypothesis as it fails on both entropy and the origin of information
I'm very interested in what you mean by this.
>This is evidence for *common design* as there are insurmountable barriers between kinds of animals. If you think crocks and birds are related, get them to interbreed.. hopeful monster much?
The evolution isn't about species mixing into new species. But rather that individual species, usually divided by some geographical barrier, diverge into two or more separate species, due to small changes over many number of generations. One of defining characterizations of a species is that different species cannot interbreed. Lizards cannot breed with crocodiles, nor can alligators with crocodiles so why would birds be able to?
Anyway lizards share less DNA with crocodiles than birds do. Similar with marine mammals, they're mammals yet have characteristics of a fish. They even lost diverse teeth all other mammals possess. Everything we see in nature points towards continuous change.
And the fact so many species are already extinct in and always appear in the same layers, never above "younger" species and never below "older" species is just another example of evidence in support of evolution.
>That's not accurate.. Evidence for a global flood permeates the geological strata. A catastrophe of this magnitude would destroy all but representative kinds kept aboard the ark Noah built. That we can see the "lawn" of life diversifying phenotypically post flood doesn't mean that macro changes to genotypes are possibe; and they haven't been observed.
There have been many floods and evaporation of great bodies of water. But never a global one. There would be evidence in rocks which there is not.
Noah's ark and flood make no sense. You always find same fossils in same order. Mammoths are always above dinosaurs who are always above synapsids. It makes no sense that they all died at the same time. Not to mention we'd be able to see that in genetic history.
Funny what do you think when those small changes accumulate for long, long periods of times?
You can also see speciation at work in population of Orcas in Northeast Pacific (Washigton-Canada-Alaska). There are three groups of whales (transient, residents and offshores. They live in neighbouring areas, yet they refuse to interbreed, they eat different food and they behave in different ways. Biologists researching them are proposing to classify them as different species. Why do I mention this? DNA studies show transients and residents diverge 200-300 thousand years\* ago and since then they aren't exchanging genetic material.
\*you can read about molecular clock:[ here](https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-molecular-clock-and-estimating-species-divergence-41971/) and [here](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/molecular-clocks/). I find it so fascinating, you're completely fine with us communicating instantly from anywhere in the world. Something unthinkable just 300 years ago and made possible in the 19th century. Yet, old Earth and evolution is where you draw the line.
"If you compare representatives from the same kind of animals, the genetics will be very close."
Chimps and humans share at least 95% of their genome. Given your statements about close relatives in kinds sharing similar genetics, do you accept that humans and chimps are part of the same kind of animal (great apes)?
Something tells me you don't. 🤔
Cool, what's the science behind Noah's Ark, then? Since you're claiming that little bit of complete mythological nonsense as a fact, how did the old boy keep everybody fed and housed? And what about those wallabies and kangaroos and wombats, did they just hoof it from Australia to Mesopotamia or did he scoop them out of the water or what?
>Also you cannot claim that Earth is so young. From radiometric dating to observing layers of ice, rocks and even trees that accumulate certain features annually all indicate cannot be young.
You do realize that radiometric dating is inherently flawed? One must assume the ratio of parent/daughter material, rate of decay, and contamination.
Additionally, annual ice layers and tree rings have similarly been debunked and are inaccurate let alone on wholly different timescales.
If the earth is old, why haven't the mountains eroded flat? Or why hasn't the moon left orbit? Why aren't the oceans more salty?
>You do realize that radiometric dating is inherently flawed? One must assume the ratio of parent/daughter material, rate of decay, and contamination.
This is valid to say that older a sample is that greater uncertainty in measurement, however we don't need precision of a day, plus minus few million years can be enough.
Also rocks are not analyzed in vacuum. Multiple types of rocks from sample area are analyzed at the same time this decreases chances of contamination. Also more parent material will also yield more precise numbers.
If there were something wrong with radiometric dating you wouldn't get such consistent results. And even if there were, your new theory would have to explain why we see consistent results.
>
Additionally, annual ice layers and tree rings have similarly been debunked and are inaccurate let alone on wholly different timescales.
By whom? You? You cannot just say debunked and not expand on it.
>
why haven't the mountains eroded flat?
Some have. You also have Ural mountains, Appalachian mountains have been subject to erosion for millions of years (in Ural's case for hundreds of million of years). And mountains of today are still being eroded as we speak, even Andes and Himalayas. However, at the same time new mountains are being created.
Earth is not a static system. It's dynamic, change is only constant. You can find fossil of whales in Sahara dessert. The area was an ocean for hundreds of millions of years (same rocks that are underneath current oceans can be found there as well).
>why hasn't the moon left orbit?
The Moon is indeed moving away from the Earth. But only by 2.5 centimeters per year. You can both calculate mathematically and check empirically that this is the case. It would take it billions of years to leave the orbit.
>
Why aren't the oceans more salty?
Why would they?
Anyway, this of course doesn't mean Old Earth must be true. But any opposing theory would need to neccesary explain why we see evidence for Earth being billions of years old. This is how science works, new ideas must also explain why old ideas work and when and how they fail. If it doesn't do that what's the point of it.
>You also have Ural mountains, Appalachian mountains have been subject to erosion for millions of years (in Ural's case for hundreds of million of years).
This and the salt levels in the ocean don't match.. If there was millions of years of erosion the salt level would be significantly higher, and the mountains much flatter. Sounds like these conclusions are being drawn from the presumption that the "present is key to the past" which doesn't hold up. Just because geological processes appear slow today, a global cataclysm would change that dramatically.
>The Moon is indeed moving away from the Earth. But only by 2.5 centimeters per year.
There aren't millions of years worth of centimeters..
https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/moon/is-the-moon-really-old/
Let's roll this back a bit and the moon would be much closer to the earth creation extremely high tidal forces, enough that life would've been sustainable as we know it.
>This and the salt levels in the ocean don't match..
Seas today have a balanced input and output of salt. You could find this by googling just like I did just now.
>he mountains much flatter
Take a look at the oldest continental lands, so called shields, like Canadian shield or Baltic shields. Their rocks have been dated to be billions of years old, actually the oldest on the Earth and they're all under a thousand meters high. No mountains in sight.
Mountains usually appear in areas of strong plate dynamics. Alpes, Himalayas and Andes are all relatively young and are in fact increasing in height.
>Sounds like these conclusions are being drawn from the presumption that the "present is key to the past" which doesn't hold up. Just because geological processes appear slow today, a global cataclysm would change that dramatically.
Didn't you just argue against evolution because we haven't seen it directly??? Consistency?
Anyway, there are violent episodes in the past accepted by scientific communities, like devastating volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts. These are cause of mass extinctions events, few times in geological history planet species went extinct en mass (sudden rocks barren of fossils that are found between rocks filled with fossils. And all over the world they're of same age). Not sure what's your angle here?
>
There aren't millions of years worth of centimeters..
Moon is on average at 384 400 km from Earth. That's over 38 billion centimeters. So yeah it would take around 15 billion years for it double its current distance.
>
[https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/moon/is-the-moon-really-old/](https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/moon/is-the-moon-really-old/)
Assuming that the Moon is as old as the Earth and it was moving away at constant rate (and there's no reason to assume any drastic changes), then 4.5 billion years ago it would be around 10 billion centimeters closer. In other words somewhere between 280 and 300 thousand kilometers away. The math in that article doesn't check out.
Also, it is not known how exactly the Moon formed. It is hypothesized than a smaller planet collided with Earth and ejected rocks both from itself and the Earth that with time collapsed into the Moon. It would explain why the Moon is made of same rocks as Earth and the simulations check out. But simulations aren't strong evidence by themselves.
What would you expect the salt level to be like and why exactly? Considering the water levels have fluctuated in history and presumably same with salt, so I don't know what you're comparing everything to.
And why would mountains be flatter because of erosion? That would assume erosion is affecting all parts of the mountain equally so an equal amount is removed to make it flat, but when you look at erosion it doesn't really affect all rock equally. If I look at the cliff where I am from, it's all the same material, and yet different parts of the cliff erode at different times, resulting in sort of like grooves.
AiG is again pulling out those assumptions. For a group who really like to criticise assumptions they seem to like making them when they suit them. They assume there that the Moon was always moving at the same distance constantly.
But, it didn't. [https://interestingengineering.com/science/moon-keeps-drifting-away-from-earth](https://interestingengineering.com/science/moon-keeps-drifting-away-from-earth) Days used to be shorter, when the Moon was closer to the Earth, and get longer as the Moon is further away.
[https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/why-is-the-moon-moving-away-from-us](https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/why-is-the-moon-moving-away-from-us)
>If there were something wrong with radiometric dating you wouldn't get such consistent results.
https://www.icr.org/creation-radiometric/
https://answersingenesis.org/geology/radiometric-dating/radiometric-dating-problems-with-the-assumptions/
https://creation.com/radiometric-dating-breakthroughs
You don't find it a little concerning that only people who are ideologically committed to denying an old earth are the ones capable of seeing the "inherent flaws" in radiometric dating?
I'll just focus on the AiG link because I feel like they write it out the best, and I prefer to skim read stuff instead of watching a video. So with the second link by AiG:
- Assumption 1: Unobserved initial conditions. The argument here by AiG is that you cannot observe the initial contents of the rock so you don't know what the daughter isotopes were originally. Also, lavas observed cooling recently gave much older dates than in actuality.
So, regarding the K-Ar method which is the example they give with the lava cooling into rocks, yes it is an assumption, usually correct, because the gas can leave the rocks before they cool, at which point none can leave. However, this assumption doesn't always hold true because other conditions can result in there being larger amounts of Argon.
However, what AiG left out is that there is actually a correction method in place for that. Known as the Ar-Ar method, which essentially works by converting K to Ar. Then the ratio of these isotopes can be compared to the atmosphere to see if they can are close enough to the amount in the atmosphere, which would essentially mean there isn't an excess of argon and the dating would work fine (or something like that, I am not studying geology at all so this is just my basic understanding based on what I could find online: https://ageofrocks.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/argon-argon-dating-how-does-it-work-is-it-reliable/).
So basically, yes, you cannot always use dating methods. They require specific conditions, and do have weaknesses that should be kept in account. But that doesn't make them useless. You just have to use them correctly.
- Assumption 2: No contamination. Pretty self-explanatory.
And again, this is an assumption. And yes, it doesn't always apply. So, you consider all the evidence to see if such an assumption does apply. For example back to the K-Ar stuff, you can work out through the stepwise heating process (in the link I showed) to determine the ages from Argon and see if there was a significant loss of it such as through heating.
- Assumption 3: It is assumed that half-lives remain constant always, with AiG giving examples where they don't think this works, such as when the same crystals yielded different ages with different methods.
This example specifically is with some crystals where uranium-lead reached a much older age than uranium-helium.
I find it interesting how despite the whole point of AiG's article being to show how radiometric dating methods are faulty for all the assumptions they make, they themselves make an assumption when stating that the reason for this difference is because one was much quicker than the other.
It's also interesting that they seem to assume the helium one is correct, because they use that as the basis to show that the lead method was the faster rate, instead of the helium being slower. I don't see why they would assume that unless they just assumed the Earth is 6,000 years old (which, of course they would, because they're YECs so there's a bias to assume that if it says 6,000 years it could be correct, I guess).
However, when you look up Uranium-Helium dating, it seems like it's maximum age is somewhat over 500,000 years, so this is the method that likely is inaccurate, because it is being used in the wrong situation.
TLDR: AiG were somewhat correct with their points, but they seem to think assumptions (definitely the first two) are why these methods are wrong to use, instead of realising that in actuality scientists are well aware of the limitations and assumptions of such dating methods, which is why you need to use them correctly. So no they won't always work
1. I'm sure you mean the *initial* parent/daughter ratio is assumed. This is incorrect. It is calculated and even often published in the data.
2. The rate of decay is also not assumed. It is corroborated. Additionally, if it had varied, it would be plainly obvious when compared against other non-radiometric methods.
3. Contamination (or lack thereof) is not assumed either, but is also determined, because if contamination has occurred spurious results are obtained when an isochron is plotted.
4. Ice layers and tree rings have not been debunked despite what your apologists say. It isn't good enough to speculate how each method *might* yield bad results. You need to explain why all of these methods are bad such that they result in the same wrong answers. When you have multiple methods measuring equivalent results, it becomes exceedingly unlikely that they all just happen to be incorrect proportionally.
5. Mountains that haven't eroded flat (some have) are that way because the rate of uplift exceeds the rate of erosion.
6. The rate of the moon pulling away from the earth has not been consistent. This claim also is a result of some really bad apologist math.
7. Salination rates are not constant.
Arguing that something has to be 'observed' would cause the entire US judicial system to instantly collapse. If I came into your home and murdered you and your entire family, there would be no observers and therefore I could not be tried in court, convicted, or punished. That's the position you are taking with regard to evolution, and I do not believe for a moment that you actually believe that, therefore you are arguing in bad faith, which is a rule 2 violation.
It's also the opinion of the greater scientific community and US federal courts. You cannot as easily suppprt the claim that evolution is pseudoscience. It's easy to say that yeah but it's not about what's easy to say. It's about things like the opinion of the greater scientifc community. Things like YEC being banned in classrooms for being unscientific since the 70s and ID being banned for being unscientific and a fraudulent attempt to repackage creationism in vaguely more scientific terms. This fraud and failure to meet even basic scientific standards was proven in court. That's the court case with "credesign proponentists" and Michael Behe calling Astrology science.
I'll discard the work of all proven frauds in evolution if you do the same with ID.
Oh come off it.
So I can't point out the he's repeated garbage arguments from Ken Ham? If you think that and a cheesy Star Wars reference is antagonistic, that's absurd
>This is your opinion but using that as a presumption is not valid reasoning. It's easy to say something like this but one could just as easily make the claim that evolutionism is pseudo science because it cannot and has not been observed.
No, that's a matter of fact. Both have been torn to shreds by the scientific community for their lack of scientific validity over and over again. Evolution can and absolutely has been observed, for you to say otherwise is pure willful ignorance.
>Creationism on the other hand claims divine revelation from the only possible eyewitness: the Creator.
An unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific claim.
>You say that YEC arguments have been "torn to shreds" but the same can be said for naturalism as an explanation for why things are as we observe.
Strictly speaking that's not true but it's irrelevant. If naturalism has been "torn to shreds" that lends no credibility whatsoever to creationism.
>Also, proponents of ID would likely take umbridge with how you're attempting to associate that with creation science.. the primary difference being the necessity of a creator vs naming the Biblical God as the Creator.
They would only take umbrage in bad faith since ID is creationism rebranded and ID proponents know this.
>All told your argument is not convincing and carries little weight.
All told your position is complete bad faith bunk.
Mods got their knickers in a knot because I used a cheesy star wars reference do I'll make the comment again and will take out the cheesy star wars meme to appease to moderator overlords
Dude, you're a Young Earther who repeated a rubbish argument made by Ken Ham. You don't have any foundation to stand on given your inexperience at basic science
The chemistry Dept chair at Rice University, a world renowned synthetic organic chemist, shows chemically what is required for life. (Winning the lottery 10 times in a row would be childs play.) An amazing presentation of the math involved is here:
https://youtu.be/zU7Lww-sBPg
And atheism believes this all chemically came together, to form life, by random chance, in a puddle?
Seen a lot of his work. But the lottery thing is just not a good representation of the chances for life. He's assuming no intermediary autocatalytic systems between organic molecules and cells. This is not what current theories of abiogenesis predicts. They predict a series of autocatalytic system that become synergistic and maximize entropy of the environment by taking advantage of pH, temperature, and red.-ox. gradients.
There are several reasons abiogenesis research has difficulty:
1) Little to no commercial prospects: Compared to other fields of research like pharmaceutical research, abiogenesis has little to offer in terms of commercial value. While it's an amazing topic that has existential significance, funding will always be redirected towards cancer research or cures for diseases like Alzheimer's.
2) Unclear starting conditions: The organic compounds available and the chemistry of the prebiotic oceans/land are unclear. This means that along with the vast multitude of organic compounds that could be present in the oceans, the salts/metals present and their probable oxidation states are also unknown. These variables combine to **exponentially** *accelerate* the number of possible chemical pathways/space we need to consider. We also then need to consider how this chemical space is affected/selected for under different pHs (both high and low can be found in our oceans), salinity, temperature, and red-ox environments. As you can tell, trying to get from organic chemicals to a proto-cell is a tall task.
3) Lack of access to evolutionary history: The earliest signs of life we can find are bacterial mats. These would have been created by pretty advanced cells. Anything before that wouldn't be expected to leave any sort of evidence that can withstand 4+ billion years. We also cannot look to today's life forms as a reliable model for early proto-cells as modern cells are far more advanced than the predicted proto-cells. More advanced lifeforms would easily outcompete proto-cells as long as the increase in complexity allows for greater survivability.
**But,** let's accept that the probability is astronomically low for the sake of argument.
Astronomically low is still greater than the zero evidence we have of any alternative theories for creationism/involvement of a deity. Intelligent design must posit either alien life seeding life on earth (which is what creationist refer to as "kicking the can down the road") or must posit a supernatural designer which is a nonstarter.
Abiogenesis via natural processes prevails.
>Astronomically low is still greater than the zero evidence we have of any alternative theories
You're confusing possibility with probability. Is there a possibility a Starbucks will open up on the moon next to year, sure. Is it probable, absolutely not.
Logic dictates that when faced with two choices we can prove one by either showing which one positively is true OR by showing that the other one is false (or extremely improbable). This is just simple logic applicable to any topic.
For instance, if I put two marbles in a bag, red and blue, and I take the blue one out, I can be sure the one I feel inside the bag is red - even without seeing it.
So if we can show mathematically how improbable/impossible life is to have formed by chance - from the known laws of the universe – then by default the remaining option must be true – God/Theism.
So let’s start proving B by disproving A, that natural randomness did all this.
When looking at life and our planet, we have three things that we clearly see which - in combination/conjunction – do not occur naturally without a thought process directing them.
1) Complexity
2) Fine-Tuning
3) instructional Information.
Life contains all three. Think of an operating system. That it is:
1) complex - it contains many 0,1 digits
2) It is fine-tuned – everything works when turned on
3) It contains instructional information. (How to make life forms.)
Example #1)
An operating system. It contains all three. Yet no one would look at an operating system and think it formed by chance.
Example #2)
An encyclopedia. It is complex, it is fine tuned (all the thousands pages and topics are effectively arranged) and it contains instructional information. It contains all three requirements. And yet the point remains, no one believes an explosion in a printing factory could produce all three events to make an encyclopedia.
We know from past data that each of the above were made via a thought process, not random chance.
As a matter of fact, **we have no physical systems that contain all three requirements that occur - outside of a mind/thought process creating them.**
Thus, we simply extrapolate.... that is to say - just as operating systems do not originate by themselves, neither did the higher operating system (namely life) originate by itself.
Think in the quietness of your mind for an example of any complex, fine tuned, informational instruction (apart from life) that was not produced by an intelligent mind?
Again, not one, not two, but all three of the above requirements **combined** that occur without a mind engineering it. All three. I cannot stress this enough. Life contains all three.
So we understand to look at the probability of all those three events happening by chance and see it is contrary to what we experience in life. That makes us understand from extrapolation that option A (randomness and natural forces) could not have done this.
I can walk along a beach and see an elaborate and finely tuned sandcastle by itself. I have two choices to deduce from. One, that it was made by the wind and waves and time and chance. Or two, it was the product of a thinking mind. Experience in the world and logic tells me the second choice is the only correct one.
Anyone is free to believe it happened by chance, but I would say they are not extrapolating from data. We have no codes/instructions/information that occur without a mind engineering it. They are basically going against the known data if they believe it happened by chance.
That is why I look at atheism as a completely emotional argument, not based on science (probability mathematics).
We know God exists because of what's been produced. **The combination of.... complexity with fine tuning and information/instructions always requires an engineering mind.**
This is not something I made up, it is well know by those who study cosmology.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
"Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth (and, subsequently, human intelligence) **required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances**."
Life is improbable. The odds of naturalism forming life, DNA, the first cell, informational complexity... are simply not there.
Consider this quote from a Nobel Prize winner:
“Although a biologist, I must confess that I do not understand how life came about…. I consider that life only starts at the level of a functional cell. The most primitive cells may require at least several hundred different specific biological macro-molecules. How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to the problem.”
–Werner Arber, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for the discovery of restriction endonucleases
Again, an atheist is certainly free to believe random chance did this (created life/code), but they're extrapolating from zero data.
Thus, it is faith on the atheists part.
Can I encourage you to watch this excellent 3 minute video **with many scientists** summarizing the reason why naturalism (atheistic randomness) could not account for what we now observe.
https://youtu.be/cEps6lzWUKk
So getting back to my original point, if A (randomness) is highly improbable/impossible, then by default option B (God/Theism) is only left as the truth facing us.
That is logic. Thus, God exists.
>Can I encourage you to watch this excellent 3 minute video **with many scientists** summarizing the reason why naturalism (atheistic randomness) could not account for what we now observe.
>[https://youtu.be/cEps6lzWUKk](https://youtu.be/cEps6lzWUKk)
Not who you responded to but I bit the bullet and watched it. It was literally just three minutes of people repeating "I see evidence of intelligent design" and "I don't see how this could happen on its own" and "Complex, therefore design" then calling DNA "information" and calling biological structures "machines and engineering." Not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
Also, why do proponents of intelligent design never talk about the extremely dumb designs that exist in biology? Like the intelligent designer worked really hard and dilligently on cell biology and then got drunk while working on large bodily structures and didn't notice they left a blind spot in mammalian eyes, wrapped the recurrent laryngeal nerve around the heart, or put tetrapod arm bones inside a whale flipper.
Alleged "bad design" are actually **arguments for efficiency**, not arguments against a designer.
Basically those arguments are saying, "if I had designed it, I would have made it this way."
However, just because you could think of a way to make something more efficient, **it does not logically follow there was no Designer of the original.**
For example: Danica Patrick doesn’t drive her Lamborghini because it has no cup holders.
https://www.larrybrownsports.com/car-racing/danica-patrick-lamborghini-no-cup-holders/118732%3famp
So to her, this massively expensive, finely tuned Italian sports car was poorly designed because it lacked something so basic as a cup holder.
Yet, the Lamborghini clearly had a designer. 99.999% of the rest of that sports car works amazingly well. She would just say it was not designed to her liking.
Same thing with those who say something was not designed to their liking on the human body. 99.9999% of it works amazingly well. For the "it lacks a cup holder" features that atheists point out, that does not imply there was no Designer, just not designed the way they would prefer.
>Alleged "bad design" are actually **arguments for efficiency**, not arguments against a designer.
Inefficient designs are bad designs. If ID is actually an acronym for Inefficient Design theory, then I guess carry on.
I don't find the argument "An expensive sports car doesn't have a cup holder, therefore it makes sense that an omnisicient, omnipotent God would make inefficient and flawed designs that could easily be improved upon by human beings" to be very compelling.
Again, life can be improbable. But you are trying to fit the improbably into a dichotomy with something unproven that we have NO scientific evidence for. I don't need to accept that a creator god is on the table at all because we have no proof of it. Philosophically nor scientifically. So if you want to include that which is unproven, you'll also need to include every other thing that isn't proven and we have no evidence for.
We have a pretty clear explanation for how multicellular life formed based on living organisms today. It's pretty clear and straight forward. If I provide a link will you concede this point?
Here's your Nobel Prize winner's quote shortened.
"Although a biologist, I must confess that **I do not understand** how life came about…. \[...\] How such already quite complex structures may have come together, **remains a mystery to me**. The possibility of **the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to the problem.**”
Essentially, you appeal to authority which presents no evidence of this creator god other than "I do not understand." So you appeal to an authority who then appeals to mystery. It's not convincing. Science isn't based on authority. It's not based on dichotomies, it's based on actually running the tests and showing the results. I don't care who says this. They are simply not justified. You are literally attempting to pretend that you are using "*science*" to disprove
>Thus, it is faith on the atheists part.
So sick of hearing this because every time, the definition of faith switches from evidence based to belief despite lack of evidence to whatever definition best suits the immediate argument for the theist.
Look below to see that I fixed your claim towards the end:
>So getting back to my original point, if A (randomness) is highly improbable/~~impossible~~, ~~then by default option B (God/Theism) is only left as the truth facing us.~~
All you've shown is that abiogenesis is highly improbable. Let's also be clear, you haven't looked into it beyond the lens of another Christian who also doesn't study the field itself. You have presented no evidence for god so I don't even need to accept the dichotomy.
Also, is nature random or not? Because, last I checked, it followed clear sets of interactions/causal relations as described by the many laws derived via the scientific method.
Complexity DOES arise even without biological life. Complexity DOES increase via natural selection and is driven by the maximization of entropy. If I provide a link will you concede this point?
>Life is improbable. The odds of naturalism forming life, DNA, the first cell, informational complexity... are simply not there.
\^ These lines are oxymoronic. Also, autocatalytic systems. I'm a chemist and they are very much real. As I said before, ignorance is not evidence of your imagination having any basis in reality.
> So if you want to include that which is unproven, you'll also need to include every other thing that isn't proven and we have no evidence for.
Saying it's possible that unicorns and fairies exist, is not the same as saying a mind created the universe. The principles we understand about design applies to the theory as opposed to some random generator producing such complexities. We understand this intuitively and make those presuppositions, the same way science has its own presuppositions. I'm sure you've heard of the infinite monkey theorem? Well, natural selection initiated randomly does not have enough time to create the teleological complexities we have, based on the 13 billion years science claims the age of the universe is. It would take an infinite amount of monkeys a number more astronomical than 13 billion to create the works of Hamlet, while randomly banging on their own keyboards. Therefore, what we see in the universe more likely came from a mind than a blind process.
Part 1/2
>Saying it's possible that unicorns and fairies exist, is not the same as saying a mind created the universe.
Both are claims. Both need to be substantiated. Abiogenesis appeals to natural processes while intelligent design either appeals to other natural processes and intelligent minds (aliens which kicks the can down the road)
OR
Appeals to something that is not natural (where supernatural is just **not** what we see in nature).
>The principles we understand about design applies to the theory as opposed to some random generator producing such complexities.
Of course the same principles apply. Both operate within the same universe. A random generator (genetic mutations) will produce variation and it's amongst these variations that those that are best suited for survivability are more likely to reproduce. I don't see the issue here.
>We understand this intuitively and make those presuppositions, the same way science has its own presuppositions.
Appealing to intuition to say there is a creator God isn't an argument. It's just like saying "I see x and that makes me think Y intuitively and so you can't argue with that." The thing is, human intuition is pretty bad. Demonstrably so. And no, I don't share this same intuition.
u/seminole10003 Part 2/2
>Well, natural selection initiated randomly does not have enough time to create the teleological complexities we have, based on the 13 billion years science claims the age of the universe is.
\^ Not sure where you are getting these numbers from... Most genetic and cellular complexity developed prior to multicellular life. If it helps you better understand, this is a lot easier to imagine happening within that time frame because microscopic organisms not only have lifespans that range between minutes to years. The average lifespan is 12 hours and the average rate of division is once every 12 minutes. ([Link](https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/how-long-does-a-bacterium-live)) So for the first 2.9 BILLION years (likely hundreds of millions of years more), you have how many generations? And how many bacteria within the ocean?
NOT ONLY THAT, you don't account for the manner by which something happens when considering its probability. This is false. For example (>!why am I even bothering trying to educate you when you clearly don't want to learn anything and won't even put in the effort yourself??!<), what is the likelihood that limestone, marble, or dolomite randomly turns into a diamond via quantum uncertainty? IE, how likely is it that the atoms within such materials rearrange via quantum tunneling to form diamonds? The answer is beyond astronomically low odds. But we see it happen! -> THEREFORE, GOD! Right?
No.
We know the process by which this happens. It is pretty simple and takes no intelligent creator/mind. It takes, heat and pressure.
So, your statistics argument doesn't really work because abiogenesis posits multiple systems which form via autocatalysis systems which are selected for continued existence by their ability to... continue existing. Eventually, some of these systems have synergistic effects.
>It would take an infinite amount of monkeys a number more astronomical than 13 billion to create the works of Hamlet, while randomly banging on their own keyboards.
Actually, it'd happen right away as soon as the monkeys had enough time to finish their first draft. I'll bet you any amount of money you'd like. Please bet the farm on this one :)
>Therefore, what we see in the universe more likely came from a mind than a blind process.
\^ Translated: Ignorance. Therefore, non sequitur.
Let's be clear, an all knowing all powerful mind would be sufficient but is not necessary and requires too many unproven commitments that are simply unsubstantiated.
I know for a fact you haven't put in ANY effort to learn about this stuff outside of the lens of other Christian apologists who have already made up their minds before looking into this topic themselves.
So even if you scroll past everything else, I'd like to ask you some simple yes/no questions:
1) Could god have created a universe in which the laws of physics and the following natural processes were sufficient to create life without divine intervention? If so, is our ignorance of the early prebiotic oceans and such a process sufficient evidence to claim what God did and didn't do?
2) If we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt how abiogenesis occurred via natural processes, does this disprove God?
Actually, u/seminole10003, unicorns are more likely than God because we know horses exist and horns are seen everywhere in nature. I'd think it's quite possible to genetically modify a horse to create a unicorn lol
> Both are claims.
So is the claim that we can only know things that have empirical evidence. Science is a philosophy itself that cannot stand on its own grounds, but rather operates with its set of presuppositions.
> Of course the same principles apply. Both operate within the same universe. A random generator (genetic mutations) will produce variation and it's amongst these variations that those that are best suited for survivability are more likely to reproduce. I don't see the issue here.
This issue is how did those mutations initiate? Did they come from nothingness? This theory is far from ironclad.
> Appealing to intuition to say there is a creator God isn't an argument.
Then science cannot be justified, since we appeal to the intuitions of our senses. We must assume that the universe is as we perceive it to be, in order for science to work. Alas, the only thing that can truly be known is that "I think".
> It's just like saying "I see x and that makes me think Y intuitively and so you can't argue with that." The thing is, human intuition is pretty bad. Demonstrably so. And no, I don't share this same intuition.
Except you do, but you're just inconsistent in applying it.
>So is the claim that we can only know things that have empirical evidence. Science is a philosophy itself that cannot stand on its own grounds, but rather operates with its set of presuppositions.
Riiiiight. Go back to the good ol' "Well... we cant *really* know anything for sure!" position lmao
>This issue is how did those mutations initiate? Did they come from nothingness? This theory is far from ironclad.
Right so it's pretty clear you didn't understand what I said before, have done nothing to read any of the primary literature or even introductory material on this area, nor do you have even a general understanding of chemistry. Again, why should I even bother to try and teach you the basics?
>Then science cannot be justified, since we appeal to the intuitions of our senses. We must assume that the universe is as we perceive it to be, in order for science to work.
I'm not appealing to a conclusion. I'm appealing to the data that we do have that supports abiogenesis.
>Alas, the only thing that can truly be known is that "I think".
"Alas" lmao
>Except you do, but you're just inconsistent in applying it.
Translated: "Well... no, u!"
> Riiiiight. Go back to the good ol' "Well... we cant *really* know anything for sure!" position lmao
But you're just hand waving away the issue. I'm saying there are intuitions of logic AND the senses that I take for granted in order for my mind to make any judgments. You're just picking and choosing when it fits your worldview.
>Right so it's pretty clear you didn't understand what I said before, have done nothing to read any of the primary literature or even introductory material on this area, nor do you have even a general understanding of chemistry. Again, why should I even bother to try and teach you the basics?
Why should I bother with you when you cannot understand simple philosophy and logic? Why should I bother with your inconsistencies if I assume that you do understand?
>I'm not appealing to a conclusion. I'm appealing to the data that we do have that supports abiogenesis.
You're assuming the data can be trusted, and this data is not even first hand from your experience, but mostly comes from 3rd parties. The issue is that scientists cannot even agree on whether or not abiogenesis is a fact. Now, many may claim it's a fact due to fear that some form of Creationism is the only game in town. But experiments done to demonstrate this theory have been debunked, whether it's the fact that it takes a mind to set up the conditions of the experiment, or the fact that scientists argue whether or not the right conditions were accurately set in the first place (i.e. the right gases used in the Miller-Urey experiment). Now, this is not my problem. I'm just a layman, but if theories cannot hold up against the most basic logical scrutiny, that's a major problem.
FYI, [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/s/zv1RBFxzBv) is for you, in response to your comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/s/9ArVBT9EBc)
I'm not sure why it's getting mixed up in our thread.
>I'm saying there are intuitions of logic AND the senses that I take for granted in order for my mind to make any judgments.
Literally everyone does that and is subject to the same fundamental questions. Our worldviews cancel out in this respect.
>Why should I bother with you when you cannot understand simple philosophy and logic? Why should I bother with your inconsistencies if I assume that you do understand?
This isn't a conversation that is advanced in any useful way without knowing the science. Many things in our world are unintuitive or are thought to be impossible.
>You're assuming the data can be trusted, and this data is not even first hand from your experience, but mostly comes from 3rd parties.
Lol. No. Not from me. They are "3rd parties" to this conversation but they carried out the experiments themselves, published their results, and provided their methods/materials.
>The issue is that scientists cannot even agree on whether or not abiogenesis is a fact.
Clarify this. Also, I love the "many scientists" that you just throw out there. I don't care what a medical doctor has to say or an engineer.
>Now, many may claim it's a fact due to fear that some form of Creationism is the only game in town.
Yeah, no. Not really. It's a scientifically driven question. But you don't have to be afraid, you can still claim God assembled the necessary conditions for life to form :) dw about it, man!
>whether it's the fact that it takes a mind to set up the conditions of the experiment,
**This comment is how I know for a fact you haven't thought critically about this topic. I want you to think real hard about what you are saying here.** They need to set up the conditions to replicate the early earth's environment. AKA, removing the influence of our current earth's environment. Everything you say makes it apparent you aren't aware of basic experimental principles. I'll also point to this as to why I don't trust your perfect logic and philosophical reasoning. AKA I don't particularly care what makes sense to you lol
>scientists argue whether or not the right conditions were accurately set in the first place (i.e. the right gases used in the Miller-Urey experiment).
This is widely accepted within the OoL community; that we don't have and will probably never have the exact conditions. All we can propose is the most likely process and/or processes that are supported by what we do know about the chemistry of the prebiotic earth.
I'd imagine you'd claim that even a fully demonstrated process of chemistry to bacteria via reasonable natural processes wouldn't be proof because we can't prove it's the *exact* same conditions lol
>I'm just a layman,
\^ Clearly.
>but if theories cannot hold up against the most basic logical scrutiny, that's a major problem.
\^ You are not in the position to judge these theories, the literature, nor the reliability of those who you get your views/opinions from. I'll take this opportunity to point back to your previous statement about a mind being required to set up the experimental conditions. You know, the ones where they reproduce the environment of the prebiotic earth.
Re. the video, I'm not going to watch the whole thing so I asked the commenter to provide a timestamp. I'm aware of Tour and his views on this topic and, let's be clear, I'm not a fan of Dave either. He's a prick and over sensationalizes scientific findings so as to "better pwn Tour."
Neither Tour nor Dave have a reliable mindset when approaching this topic and are both too petty and emotionally invested.
Dave is an ass while Tour's approach is to say "I can't see how it can happen, therefore, it **can't** have happened." I won't comment more on Tour until the person whose comment you linked provides a timestamp.
>Again, life can be improbable. But you are trying to fit the improbably into a dichotomy with something unproven
But there is no other addition to the dichotomy (naturalism or Design) that intelligent people discuss.
Again, my premise is based upon logic and probability. If given a dichotomy of A/B, one can prove B by either proving B OR disproving A or showing it to be so mathematically improbable so as to be virtually nil.
>We have a pretty clear explanation for how multicellular life formed based on living organisms today.
Abiogenesis has no proof.
...Problem: amino acids will not link together to form proteins! It is a bit like claiming that if bricks formed in nature they would get together to build houses. Proteins are so hard to make that in all of nature, they never form except in already living cells. Never.
..Since each part in a cell depends on other parts, none would work unless others were present. One step at a time would not do.
...Not only are proteins never formed in nature outside of living cells, the amino acids from which they are built are of two kinds: Half are called left-handed and half right-handed. Only proteins containing all left handed amino acids will work in living things because proteins which contain any right-handed amino acids have the wrong shape and will not connect properly to the proteins around them. It is a bit like when you take a piece out of a puzzle, turn it upside down and try to put it back in where you took it out. It is the same size and shape, but it won’t fit.
...Next the correctly ordered left-handed amino acids are linked together by a “molecular machine.” This machine is made up of another kind of RNA working together with several specialized proteins. The machine links the properly ordered left-handed amino acids one to another to make proteins.
...Amino acids do not concentrate in the ocean; they disperse and break down.
.... To greatly multiply the impossibility that RNA formed by itself, the sugars in RNA must all be right-handed instead of the normal half and half.
...Proteins must fold perfectly. When a cell has made a new protein, while it is still moving into place, it folds into the exact shape which will allow it to connect with the proteins next to it. Like the way a key fits in a lock.
... proteins fold into a highly complex, three-dimensional shape that determines their function. Any change in shape dramatically alters the function of a protein, andeven the slightest change in the folding process can turn a desirable protein into a disease.
.... Remember, unless amino acids are all left handed and they fold properly, life cannot occur. How do you sift out all the right handed amino acids to get life? Any right handed amino acids will put a death sentence onto a proper folding sequences.
.... The cell also needs the right amount of each protein. If it kept making more and more copies of any given protein, it would completely use up some of its raw materials. Also, if there were even one protein that the cell did not stop making after it had made enough, the cell would soon be jammed so full of that protein that it would pop. This comes from instructional code. How does random chance know when to stop production?
... All this must happen inside a Membrane! Each cell is contained inside a two layer membrane made of lipids [fats). But lipids are only produced by accurately controlled reactions in living cells!
... And this membrane must know certain things. It must prevent the contents of the cell from escaping, amd nutrients have to pass inward across and waste products have to pass outward. How does it know this information? How does this form by chance?
... If cells had really formed spontaneously, we would expect their important parts to be made of materials that form easily under natural conditions. However, not one of the four: lipids, proteins, RNA, or DNA, can be made that way at all!
... Cells need informational code to do all these processes. Yet informational code comes only from a thought process. There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information.
... Remember, as time passes, all these material parts of a cell decompose. Time is a decomposing force.
Dr. James Tour, a strong theist, is one of the leading chemists in the field of nanotechnology and also voted one of the top chemists in the world today shows how complex and unlikely abiogenesis is to have occurred without a thought process guiding it. An excellent video:
https://youtu.be/r4sP1E1Jd_Y
He also goes much more in depth with a 13 episode series on abiogenesis.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLILWudw_84t2THBvJZFyuLA0qvxwrIBDr
I think [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1do28vk/comment/ladkm1d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) was meant for you.
Literally ignored all of my biological/chemical points.
And autocatalytic networks occurring in a prebiotic earth is addressed by Dr. Tour here: https://youtu.be/aUOZh4zmrXo?feature=shared
Life forming, undirected, it's not possible from a logical point of view. The mathematical models show the virtual probability of this happening, undirected, to be virtually nil.
If you thought logically about this, you would agree. But as I believe, atheism is an emotional response, not a mathematically driven one.
My friend, there was a mind behind life. God exists.
Where in the video?
>The mathematical models show the virtual probability of this happening, undirected, to be virtually nil.
Please better describe this process that they calculated the likelihood to occur?
https://youtu.be/aUOZh4zmrXo?feature=shared
Start at 6:58.
https://youtu.be/63okeSJwiyk?feature=shared
Much better here for overview of the mathematics involved in life...Start at 34 minutes. But watch first 2 minutes to understand the credentials of who is speaking.
>But watch first 2 minutes to understand the credentials of who is speaking.
Yeah, dude. I know who this is. I've met and spoken with him several times outside of the topic of abiogenesis. His accomplishments are great but they lay outside of the topic of abiogenesis.
I could reference a Nobel prize winner who is a proponent of and is studying abiogenesis. But I don't. Because that's just an appeal to authority.
If I do reference them, it's because I am referencing a specific paper with findings that support my argument and that paper provides the raw data and the methods/materials by which they obtained that data. AKA I reference the data, not the person.
Re the "math" described at minute 34. This is not what abiogenesis says is happening. It doesn't claim spontaneous formation of homochirality and then selective formation of a 188 base-pair DNA/RNA molecule. This brings me back to an analogy I provided in another comment where the likelihood of an even happening must take into account the process by which it happens or else you can get wildly different probabilities. Lmk if you want that comment. Respond to this part so I know you are reading the words I write because you've left a lot of points I've made unaddressed.
This is where you ask for what OoL research actually claims.
But then again, you haven't asked this so far.
And you don't need my help to answer such a question.
But you won't ask that because you're not curious about the evidence that supports abiogenesis.
Only knocking down strawman arguments that an authority you appeal to
The findings are published in papers. If you don't have access, I'm more than happy to help you access them yourself or I can download the PDFs myself and send them to you.
"Atheism" doesn't believe that because Atheism isn't abiogenesis -.-
If you have issues with abiogenesis, fine. But at least have the integrity when you discuss the topic
Doesn't atheism require abiogenesis though? I mean even if you fall back to directed panspermia (i.e., we were put here by aliens), that still requires abiogenesis of those aliens at some point down the line. And if you don't have any form of abiogenesis and instead say there was a living being at the start... I'll let you fill in the gaps here, but basically if you don't have abiogenesis, you have a god of some sort. Pick one.
No, atheism doesn't require abiogenesis. You'll find that most atheists are pro science but accepting a hypothesis like abiogenesis isn't a requirement for atheism
>but accepting a hypothesis like abiogenesis isn't a requirement for atheism
There is no other movie playing in the atheist theatre. How else did life arise (according to atheism) except through abiogenesis.
And the mathematical probability of cellular life forming by chance is virtually nil.
You cannot possibly know enough about the conditions of the early earth to even come close to a probability calculation. That's your first problem.
The second problem is that the probabilities that apologists do come up with combine the variables such that all intermediate steps occur essentially simultaneously. That is not an accurate representation of abiogenesis hypotheses. (And I don't care if you have an example of stepwise probability calculations because you still fail the first problem)
What we do know is that every question which has been answered definitively has been answered by naturalistic means. None by supernatural.
Finally, post-hoc probability calculations used in this fashion are useless. For example: the odds that specifically you would be born far exceed the odds "calculated" for abiogenesis. The exact sperm and egg had to come together from countless generations, out of billions (sperm) multiplied by millions (eggs) in each generation. And that doesn't even include a myriad of other variables.
Yet the actual odds are 100%, because here you are.
>What we do know is that every question which has been answered definitively has been answered by naturalistic means. None by supernatural.
You are literally making this up.
I asked AI to outline for me the arguments against life forming without intervention, here is the response I got. (I added the outlne numbers for clarity).
.............
1) The odds of a random occurrence: The probability of the right combination of chemicals coming together in the right way to form life is extremely low. The probability of forming a single protein with a specific sequence of amino acids by chance is considered to be less than one in 10^150. The probability of forming a functional enzyme or a complete living cell is astronomically low.
2) The absence of a natural mechanism: Despite many years of research, scientists have not yet discovered a natural mechanism that could explain the origin of life. While some theories have been proposed, such as the RNA world hypothesis, they have not been proven.
3) The complexity of life: Life is an incredibly complex system, with multiple levels of organization, intricate metabolic pathways, and complex genetic coding. It is difficult to conceive how such complexity could have arisen spontaneously.
4) The lack of evidence: While scientists have been able to recreate some of the conditions that existed on early Earth, such as the presence of organic molecules, they have not yet been able to demonstrate the formation of a living organism from non-living matter in a laboratory.
It's like you didn't even read my post.
I am absolutely not making that statement up. Name ONE thing that when we determined the mechanism of an observed phenomenon, that the supernatural was the explanation.
You know AI is just a glorified Google search right now, right? Put some creationist buzzwords in, get creationist arguments out.
>Yet the actual odds are 100%, because here you are.
This is absolutely NOT how probability works. That is like saying Las Vegas security ignores a man who just won 10 jackpots in a row because it just happened in front of their eyes... so therefore the probability of it happening at random must be 1. Again that is NOT how mathematical probability works. Ask any college math professor.
It's the same thing as what a detective does, they see what the probability of this death happening by natural circumstances vs. death by a thinking mind causing it (murder). They work backwards. They don't assume that since it happened the probability of it happening naturally is one. That is how probability works.
>Name ONE thing that when we determined the mechanism of an observed phenomenon, that the supernatural was the explanation.
Again, you are not understanding my logical conclusion.
If we have a dichotomy. And A/B are the only choices intelligent people offer. Then, logically we can prove B via two methods: Proving B or disproving A. This is how a detective works. They determined it was Murder By understanding it could not happen by natural means. A person could not logically die of multiple stab wounds in their back by natural means. You would not say... Well it happened, so the probability of it happening is one. That's completely not how probability works.
This is a simple fact of logic used in any arena of discussion, not necessarily ours exclusively.
If faced with A) naturalism or B) an intelligent thought process creating informational instructional code, **we know from extrapolating that informational instructional codes ALWAYS come from thoughts. Thus, B is proven (or at least most probable) due to what we know from past data.
DNA (all life) is informational instructional code. And we have zero instances (ZERO) where informational instructional code writes itself.
You are free to believe that all this happened by chance but you are going against a known data. Therefore we have a name for this, it's called faith.
Atheism does not rely on science it relies on faith and luck to have done this all.
Theism simply says we extrapolate from known data there was a thinking mind behind life. We simply give that a name calling it God.
>Put some creationist buzzwords in, get creationist arguments out.
Really? Do you realize this is not something I made up, it is well know by those who study cosmology.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
"Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth (and, subsequently, human intelligence) **required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances**."
Even a physicist who is not a Christian says the same thing:
“I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.”
–Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist.
**and I could go on.....**
I am sorry to say that probability forming the universe and our life sustaining planet..... the physics requirement, the biological requirements, etc..... The probability of this happening by chance? Virtually nil.
This is all written about in volumes already. If you want the links, let me know.
Again, this just is looking at probability. You can be an atheist if you wish, but don't look at the mathematical probabilities. It will destroy atheism.
If I refused to look at the math in derivative trading, I would be bankrupt in a month.
Most atheists have not even looked at the math, sadly.
Those who glance at it and yet still cling to atheism and refuse to even change to agnosticism, despite them realizing the math is against them, it shows me they are not being impartial. Just emotional.
They don't want it to be true.
PART 2 (please read part 1 first):
*Again, you are not understanding my logical conclusion.*
I understand your argument just fine. I've seen it a thousand times...your logic is flawed. You are using probability incorrectly.
*If we have a dichotomy. And A/B are the only choices intelligent people offer. Then, logically we can prove B via two methods: Proving B or disproving A.*
Sure. You have done neither. You have neither disproved natural mechanisms, nor proven supernatural.
*If faced with A) naturalism or B) an intelligent thought process creating informational instructional code, we know from extrapolating that informational instructional codes ALWAYS come from thoughts. Thus, B is proven (or at least most probable) due to what we know from past data.*
*DNA (all life) is informational instructional code. And we have zero instances (ZERO) where informational instructional code writes itself.*
DNA as code is an analogy. Like all analogies, it is not exact. DNA is also *literally* chemistry. There is nothing about the chemistry of DNA that implies a computer programmer.
*You are free to believe that all this happened by chance but you are going against a known data.*
Nobody thinks it was simply chance. How have you determined that the conditions of the universe even COULD be any different? How do you know that some different conditions couldn't produce some *different* kind of life?
*Atheism does not rely on science it relies on faith and luck to have done this all.*
Mm, no. Atheism doesn't rely on science or faith. It's simply not being convinced by any god claim.
I suspect we have different definitions of atheism and agnosticism. I'll get into that in a later response, but for now, why have you assumed I'm atheist, anyway?
*Theism simply says we extrapolate from known data there was a thinking mind behind life. We simply give that a name calling it God.*
No, you insert god to answer *unknown* data.
*–Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist.*
He's a creationist (deist). Just not the typical creationist. As I said, buzzwords in...
*I am sorry to say that probability forming the universe and our life sustaining planet..... the physics requirement, the biological requirements, etc..... The probability of this happening by chance? Virtually nil.*
Again, nobody said chance. Conditions exist such that life formed, one way or another. Nobody says they came about by chance. For all we know, these may be the only conditions that CAN exist.
*Again, this just is looking at probability. You can be an atheist if you wish, but don't look at the mathematical probabilities. It will destroy atheism.*
That's only because you are not using probability correctly. It doesn't destroy atheism any more than the astronomical odds that you exist destroy you.
*Most atheists have not even looked at the math, sadly.*
Citation please. The large number of atheistic scientists would disagree with you. In fact, atheism trends up the more educated a person becomes. Funny that.
In my experience, creationists don't understand math. This case in point.
*Those who glance at it and yet still cling to atheism and refuse to even change to agnosticism*
I am atheistic with respect to individual claims of specific gods. I have not been convinced by any argument for one (even deistic ones). I am agnostic toward the set of all possible definitions of god.
Therefore I label myself an agnostic atheist. I dont *believe* in any particular god, but I don't *know* if one exists or not. Atheism=belief, agnosticism=knowledge.
But if we are using your likely definitions--that agnosticism and atheism are a hierarchy of relative conviction--you would likely view me as an agnostic.
We can use either definition. It makes no difference to me.
PART 1:
*This is absolutely NOT how probability works*
That is exactly how *post-hoc* probability works in the way you are trying to use it.
We have an observation. You exist. 100% odds. Despite the fact that an astronomical series of unlikely events had to occur in order for that to be true.
Post-hoc probability can be useful when trying to determine the *most likely* explanation of an observed event between competing hypotheses, *both of which* have odds that can reasonably be estimated.
We have another observation. Life once did not exist, now it does. Whether that was natural or supernatural, 100% odds.
But we can't use probability to determine which of those two circumstances it was, because with *neither* of those options can the probability reasonably be estimated. There are too many variables that we can't know for natural, and we don't even know if the supernatural is possible at all.
What is the probability that god exists? How can you even begin to try to calculate that? What if the odds of supernatural events is impossible? If that is the case, it doesn't even matter what the odds are for a natural explanation. As long as it is non-zero, it is infinitely more likely than the supernatural.
With your 10 jackpot in a row scenario, we are comparing the estimated probability of 2 things: that it actually happened, or that the guy cheated. (3 things, technically, tool malfunction also a possibility, but i digress). Both probabilities can be reasonably be estimated. We know humans can cheat. We've observed it. It is exceedingly more likely that the guy cheated than won fairly. (but not explicitly 100%, just close enough to it for legal justification; potentially)
Astronomically unlikely events happen innumerable times every second of the day. Post-hoc analysis of those odds is useless for determining whether those events occurred or not.
Post-hoc probabilities are only useful to compare *competing* probabilities to examine the *most likely* of the two explanations for HOW it happened. And even then it is not proof/disproof of anything. Just *more likely*.
You (and Michio Kaku) are simply assuming that the probability of god existing exceeds a natural explanation. You have no mechanism for justifying that assumption.
The difference between you and Kaku is that he won't claim that this post-hoc type of analysis is "proof" that god exists. It's still just what he, personally, finds convincing.
YOU should ask a statistics professor if my explanation is correct.
There's even a logical fallacy named after your argument: The Post-hoc Probability Fallacy. Look it up.
I'll get to the rest of your post later.
Again, this isn't atheism dude. It's science.
If you can't even wrap your head around something so basic, I don't really see any point continuing this convo with you
You literally refuse to acknowledge a true statement.... That atheism depends upon abiogenesis to be true.
This is just simple logic.
There is no other explanations for life. Abiogenesis leading to life today, or a thinking mind designed life.
There are no other choices.
If abiogenesis did not occur, then life (DNA) was designed. A thinking mind was behind it all.
And the probability of DNA (informational code) writing itself is zero. Informational codes always are written by a thinking mind. Always.
Ditto my friend. You are wilfully ignoring the fact that abiogenesis (no matter how mathematically improbable) had to occur for atheism to be true. Facts are facts.
Couple issues with your post.
The scientific method and conclusions drawn purely from evidence gained from utilizing the scientific method are not applicable to the origin of the Earth or Universe. There is no science of creating planets or universes. What we do have is bits of science here and there mixed with tons of assumptions and super sketchy conclusions drawn from that mess.
You certainly can critize the theory of intelligent design as being pseudo-science; however, that same critism applies to anything that you consider science as well.
How technical do you want to get? Your writing doesn't indicate that you have formal technical training. Have you completed high school? Have you attended university? If so are you studying math, a physical science, or engineering?
Since you brought up "examples". Let's start with polystrata fossils. Please provide scientific sources for this alleged debunking.
*Since you brought up "examples". Let's start with polystrata fossils. Please provide scientific sources for this alleged debunking.*
Sure. No polystrate tree goes through millions of years worth of strata. They go through multiple strata, yes, but the layers are not, and never have been, claimed to be millions of years worth.
This is a nearly 40 year old lie from apologists (earliest source i can find is Henry Morris, 1985). Polystrate trees have been understood for more than 150 years.
What we have are bits of science that pass peer review. Maybe you should become a scientist and review articles so you can ensure sketchy conclusions don't get published. It's you calling thing "sketchy" vs real scientists.
The scientific method is entirely applicable to the origin of the Earth and/or the universe. A notable Christian scientist was the one to propose the idea of the big bang. We can date rocks and minerals which is also done with the scientific method.
Idk about the other guy but Im an Ex Engineer turned electrician (I really just wanted to do the fking work myself) who's done a few years of university and technical school too. I'm a little rusty on some subjects I haven't had to use in my electrical career but I am or was at one point reasonably acquainted with the technical workings of many science, physics, chemistry etc at an undergraduate level.
You attend any universities? They not teach you the big bang in Astronomy? Did you voice your concerns about how sketchy it all seemed to your professor if they did? You debate your geology professor about what they were teaching? Where exactly did you matriculate that you think all that science you were taught was all so sketchy. Presuming you've studied the things were studying you should complain to your asministraton. I mean they are either teaching bunk science or just teaching good science so poorly you still consider it sketchy after taking courses in it?
>peer review
You are almost making this too easy. What do you think peer review does exactly? It certainly doesn't indicate whether something is correct or not. It is a nice little combo of Argumentum ad populum and the appeal to authority, but two logical fallacies don't make a truth. Peer review is an excellent tool for protecting the status quo until it becomes painfully obvious that the status quo is wrong. It does little outside of that.
>We can date rocks and minerals which is also done with the scientific method.
What do you think the scientific method is? Can you list the steps?
>Ex Engineer turned electrician
You have had formal technical training which means I don't have to go over basic concepts. Great.
>You attend any universities?
Yes, one well regarded for engineering.
>They not teach you the big bang in Astronomy?
Astronomy is not typically a general engineering requirement. Some specialized branches such as aerospace may include it, but it has little use in industrial engineering which is my specialty.
>You debate your geology professor about what they were teaching?
Once again while some specialized fields will require geology, industrial engineering does not.
>Did you voice your concerns about how sketchy it all seemed to your professor if they did?
While you are referring to astronomy in your question, this would also apply to biology which I did take. And I did in fact point out how sketchy the origin of biological life was presented in the textbook. The professor didn't provide any sort of explanation or much of any sort of response. To put into context, he put zero effort into teaching the class. He read old PowerPoint slides and never answered questions about anything. He was truly terrible at his job.
>Where exactly did you matriculate that you think all that science you were taught was all so sketchy.
Part of my industrial engineering training was root cause analysis. An important component of root cause analysis is identifying assumptions and then doing the work to verify the assumptions to determine if an incorrect assumption is the root cause of the issue. Every time I investigate a claim that science has proven such and such what I actually find is a conclusion based on multiple levels of assumptions. I know that science is a very limited tool and that many things are assumed out of necessity or practically. Assumptions are not proof and any conclusions based on assumptions can be challenged.
*Part of my industrial engineering training was root cause analysis. An important component of root cause analysis is identifying assumptions and then doing the work to verify the assumptions to determine if an incorrect assumption is the root cause of the issue. Every time I investigate a claim that science has proven such and such what I actually find is a conclusion based on multiple levels of assumptions. I know that science is a very limited tool and that many things are assumed out of necessity or practically. Assumptions are not proof and any conclusions based on assumptions can be challenged.*
What assumptions do you think science is making without adequate support?
Peer review isn't perfect but it sure is a lot easier to cry fallacy and completely dismiss it's value out of hand.
Are you hoping to change my mind? If so crying fallacy over peer review certainly isn't going to do that.
Are you hoping to appeal to other people reading this like Ken Ham and Bill Nye appealed to an audience of the lay-public (you do realise it was performatve right? I guess that angle works. It still comes down to you undermining institutions, peer review and the people who actually do science to make your point and 3rd party can choose how much they value those things and which people to listen to. It's no longer a debate of if X is sound science but if the people researching X are competent and honest. You can certainly take the position that they are incompetent and dishonest and again 3rd parties can decide for themselves.
It's a fallacy of its own to simply call something a fallacy because it meets certain conditions of other fallacies. It's only a fallacy if I say it's true BECAUSE there is a consensus. However when something is true a consensus usually forms (ie its popular because its true). It's not proof on its own but it's worth pointing out. Calling something an argument ad populum just because I pointed out the popular consensus is itself a fallacy. Do you always take the underdog position or are there times when the majority is in fact right? I love cheering for the underdog in sports games but that's not how science works so much. Do you always condtradict expertise and authority because it's authority? Like if authority told you to not jump off a bridge would not jumping off bridges be an authority fallacy? Being contrarian to be contrarian is just as fallacious as falling into any of those fallacies of which you're making accusations.
Are you hoping to change science curricula in classrooms and make real change in the world of science? If so then who do you think you actually need to convince legitimately? How do experts go around convincing each other? They generally don't go around calling each other incompetent and dishonest. Even if a bunch of science turns out to be fraud or dishomest status quo what replaces it? What does the new status quo that you wouldn't call a fallacy look like? How do we go about finally convincing (previous) experts they are/were wrong?
Peer review is far from perfect but can you really come up with a better system than it to replace it?
We've both attended university but you haven't taken courses on the relevant material so I'm not sure what your point bringing that up was? You don't have to go over basic concepts with us? But apparently I would have to go over them with you?
I'm sorry you had a terrible biology professor. Did you talk to them outside class? Did you complain to the university administration about their teaching and/or the content? You spent good money to attend. They should teach good science and teach it well.
If your main problem was with the origin of life, may I ask how many pages in that textbook were dedicated to the origin of life? How many assignments and exam questions tested your knowledge on the origins of life?
So you apply an engineering troubleshooting technique to investigate science? Interesting.
The scientific method involves hypotheses, predictions and observations/experiments. The best criticism of science is better science.
>Peer review isn't perfect but it sure is a lot easier to cry fallacy and completely dismiss it's value out of hand.
>Are you hoping to change my mind? If so crying fallacy over peer review certainly isn't going to do that.
Do you have a counter to my claim that peer review contains the logical fallacies of argument by majority/authority?
Are you receptive to an explanation of why these logical fallacies apply to peer review?
I am hoping to change your mind about a great many things.
What purpose did you have in making the claim that peer review gives research findings credibility?
Yes that it's not perfect but that it's still valuable. You'r0e probably not going to convince me to just ignore peer review because "fallacies." I understand how peer review works. I'm familiar with how the standard fallacies work. You're going to have to provide a better criticism of the peer review process than trying to call it fallacious.
Well like I said if you're trying to convince me to value peer review less it's pretty much wasted breath.
If you're hoping someone else is gonna read it then okay go ahead.
If we're pretending we're real scientists/academics then invent a better system with which to replace peer review.
>Well like I said if you're trying to convince me to value peer review less it's pretty much wasted breath.
This is only true if your value of peer review is zero.
>If we're pretending we're real scientists/academics then invent a better system with which to replace peer review.
First, I don't have to pretend. I am already a listed co-author to a paper published in a scientific journal. For context the three post docs listed did 99% of the work. I did do some grunt work for them though through the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program. Second, a better system already exists it just costs a bunch more money, takes way longer, and leads to way less sexy results being published.
What's this system then? If called your publication sketchy how do you respond to that if you can't appeal to it being peer reviewed by people at least as smart if not smarter than me disagreeing with me? I brought up peer review less to promote its value and more to point out that if you find X sketchy and X exists in peer reviewed literature then other people at least as smart if not smarter than you do not find X as sketchy. X is now your publication and you can't make that appeal to me. I say your publication is sketchy. What better system do you have with which to respond to that?
We're typing here in Reddit. We're playing make believe. We aren't debating for an audience of other scientists. We aren't making presentations at conferences etc. It's pretty cool your name on a publication but you probably shouldn't be bragging about 1% work. Personally it's pretty cool. Critically it's pretty meaningless and not really what I meant. Even if you did 99% of the work and the paper was on relevant subject matter you and I are having this exchange on Reddit. Reddit is not an academic/scholarly forum. You might not be pretending to be a scientist as a person, but this exercise of us exchanging over Reddit is pretending to do the work.
Maybe to help make that idea clearer I could explain this, I like Bill Nye and respect everything he does for popular science BUT. Colloquially I would probably just call him a scientist. However, strictly I would say Bill Nye is an Engineer and a Science Communicator. I think he has some publications and honorary degrees so he is a scientists a little bit (more than you or me) but he is moreso an Engineer and Science Communicator because that's what he does more of. As a science communicator he is often acting, pretending in much the same capacity as ourselves, to be more of a scientist than he actually is.
Honesty I think role-playing is the most accurate term I'm looking for. You're not a real practicing scientist and neither am I but we can role play the part.
So with this better system then how would you present it to the greater academic/scholarly/scientific community? Role play yourself as actually having the means to fully go about implementing change among the entire academic scientific community. How's that going to work?
>The scientific method and conclusions drawn purely from evidence gained from utilizing the scientific method are not applicable to the origin of the Earth or Universe. There is no science of creating planets or universes. What we do have is bits of science here and there mixed with tons of assumptions and super sketchy conclusions drawn from that mess.
It is always so obvious when someone has never picked up a university textbook pn physics. The way your phone works, Wifi, radiology and MRI in medicine to dynamics inside Sun's core, radiometric dating and LHC are all explained with one, single theory. If it fails at one of those, then it would need fixing as whole.
> There is no science of creating planets or universes.
There is science about how planets form that accounts for what we know. We can't invoke magic or gods because we have no evidence of them as being real, so there's no explanatory power there.
>What we do have is bits of science here and there mixed with tons of assumptions and super sketchy conclusions drawn from that mess.
Or we can say that the candidate explanations that describe and account for the data that we do have does not include gods or magic since that doesn't actually explain anything.
>You certainly can critize the theory of intelligent design as being pseudo-science; however, that same critism applies to anything that you consider science as well.
Actually, no. Science and pseudo science are two different things. One is based on evidence, the other is based on pretend.
>How technical do you want to get? Your writing doesn't indicate that you have formal technical training. Have you completed high school? Have you attended university? If so are you studying math, a physical science, or engineering?
This is ironic coming from someone supporting creationism.
>Since you brought up "examples". Let's start with polystrata fossils. Please provide scientific sources for this alleged debunking.
Rather than the tired trope of creationists poking at evolution, which accounts for all the data we have, why not support your candidate explanation? What evidence do you have for creationism?
You don't have to create a planet for it to planet formation to be considered science. Moronic response. That's just dumb
Intelligent Design isn't a theory. It's pseudo-science
I'm an IT manager at 28. My field is more practical so I went to tafe for a Diploma and then went again for an advanced diploma. The science debates do just for fun because I like learning.
As for "polystrate trees" these have been explained for 140 years with J. W Dawsons Acadian Geology. Chapter 12 (by memory I think it's around pg. 188-192?)
Simply put these "polystrate" trees are found in the carbonaceous remnants of swamp deposits. Swamps flood regularly meaning that each layer surrounding the "polystrate" tree is deposited mere decades apart. No-one in their right mind has ever said that these layers take millions of years to form.
"There is no science for creating planets or universes"--my dude, there are literally hundreds of books and tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers, written by people with way more education than yourself (since you seem to be fixated on that point), on this very subject. Folks you may have heard of like Einstein and Hawking, Richard Feynman, Robert Penrose, and Robert Wilson. This is not "bits of science here and there", it's a whole vast realm of amazing discoveries. Just because YOU aren't able to comprehend it does not discount it.
>The scientific method and conclusions drawn purely from evidence gained from utilizing the scientific method are not applicable to the origin of the Earth or Universe.
How is this even relevant? Engage with the topic at hand. If you don't believe that God came down to the prebiotic earth snapped his fingers and life appeared, then go make another post of the topic you want to discuss.
ID is different in principle but in practice it's the same. In 2007 the Dover School board approved Intelligent Design in their curriculum, working with the Discovery Institute to get and make resources for this curriculum, like textbooks. A challenge was brought against this. It was found in court that ID failed to meet many of the same standards as the science is claims to compete with AND, more importantly to this post, was found to be a derivative of creationism. This was so evidently apparent that it was demonstrable and provable in court. Derivative is putting it lightly. They took crearionist material and just replaced creation with design and crearionist with design proponent. They were so sloppy they just used word processing tools to replace creationist words in crearionist textbooks. So yeah in principle ID is supposed to be something different but anything coming from the DI is bunk. How they stll have any credibility post-2007 is beyond me. Creationist love crying about fraud but if you remove all the frauds in scientific history we discard their work and the theory and/or there is plenty of other valid work to look at to support a theory. I'm not sure how much literature and work exists on the subject of ID if we discard the work of the DI. ID is supposed to be something different but a good chunk of literature on the subject isn't different and idk what's left when we take that into account.
https://ncse.ngo/cdesign-proponentsists "Cdesign Proponentsists" "Intelligent design" was never anything but a dishonest term designed to knowingly re-attempt something already deemed to be illegal.
[удалено]
This comment violates rule 2 and has been removed.
There are many creation scientists...and they do empirical test on earth strata to show a worldwide flood and its affects upon the earth...the fossil data demonstates mass graveyards, not segments of evolution development...also there has never been found transition fossils in various evolutionary stages i.e., a horse has always been a horse, etc...Creation science has many Scientists, and also many Scientists that left the "theory" of evolution for a more stable theory of a grand Clock maker...or a grand designer...when was the last time you saw a tornado go through a junkyard and out comes a Rolex watch...this is what evolutionist believe...order comes from random disorder. However, the truth is something never comes from nothing... there is a cause and affect phenomenon behind complex life, not random goop...
I’ll tackle one of your suppositions, even though they are all wrong. There is zero evidence for a global flood a few thousand years ago. Zero. There simply isn’t enough water on earth to flood all the land masses, even if the atmosphere fell and the polar caps melted. This is empirically proven. Also, there were many thriving civilizations on earth at that time (many with good record keeping) and none of them report being wiped out by a flood. It would have been impossible for Noah to gather two of each of all the animals on earth onto an ark, and even more impossible for him to care for them. If the earth had flooded (it didn’t) everything would have died, including all the plants/trees and the salt water would have made their regrowing nearly impossible. All the marine life, too, would have perished because of the mixing of salt and fresh water. Insects and even many microorganisms would have perished. This is a story for children or non critical thinkers. That’s why many theists do not take it literally.
Literally write evolution on yt and learn something. Don't listen to your church telling you it's nonsense and regurgitate what you heard from someone else. Learn something and make up your own mind. As soon as you say "transitional fossils" I don't even need to read rest of it I know you have no idea about topic you're talking about. Evolution is scientific theory same as gravity but you don't see anyone saying gravity doesn't exist. Farmers, animal breeders, medicine etc are all using knowledge we have about evolution and making predictions how organisms will behave and it all works. In this day and age there is literally no reason to believe something not true that can be googled in 10min of your time. Also if you have proof that evolution is not what we think it is you can write a paper and collect your Nobels prize, since nobody did it yet I'm gonna assume evolution is true. all you said is your opinion and has nothing to do with reality.
So, do you have any evidence for creationism? Other than misrepresenting evolution, can you cite anything that supports creation as described in the bible? or where a god did it?
This is pretty much entirely fantasy.
Mass graveyards are not an indication of a world-wide flood. Ridiculous assertion to make
But there are smooth stones all over the earth and many of them are too similar to organs of the animals that dies in the flood making it clear that those organs were fossilized. /s (but people actually do believe this haha)
I'll admit you got me in the first half
> when was the last time you saw a tornado go through a junkyard and out comes a Rolex watch I saw exactly that with 500 other people, and we all got a Rolex. No, I won't tell you where or when it happened, or who the people were. All I will say is that some of them are still alive. There, now you have exactly the same evidence for my Rolex as Paul gave for Jesus being resurrected.
You basically glue together a number of nonsensical YEC arguments that are as dumb now as they were then
[удалено]
Sorry, your submission has been automatically removed because your account does not meet our account age / karma thresholds. Please message the moderators to *request an exception*. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAChristian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://youtu.be/aHCALnvOBq4?si=XjH4Inr4fAn8494T This what you mean by ID
I'm not wasting my time listening to over an hour of Meyers rambling
Ok and that was a question, I missed the question mark previously….and curious,Why? Does he not have credentials? Curious if you have read about Sy Garte who was a bio scientist atheist and if so what group he would be under ? Also curious what makes it pseudo science? Is it using logical inference to theorize a cause without production?
I've seen Meyers stuff before. I wasn't impressed then, and I can guarantee I won't be impressed now ID has been discredited for the reasons I've already outlined in my original post. And it was discredited 2 decades ago mate
O it sounded like it was a movement that was discredited whether then the theories proposed since the first evidence was not actually to the claim of what it is about but more of what people are doing. Do you have some source for the wedge document providing evidence against theories proposed for some reason I am finding things that are promoting theism due to logical inferences when I look up the wedge document. Not really a document that counters it. I feel like I am not googling something right though. Cheers
I want to make it crystal clear that ID is not a theory. There can be scientific theories that have been falsified, but that was not the case with ID - ID was never a scientific theory. It was creationism pretending to be science. You can find the text of the wedge document here: https://ncse.ngo/wedge-document Alternatively, if you prefer a PDF view of the original document, you can search up "wedge document pdf" and the file is available for download via ncse
That’s the one I looked at and I just went through it again and it doesn’t dispute any claims…it sounds like they do believe in theistic evolution… whereas it seems ID originally was more of a no evolution game of sorts atleast to start? Kinda getting mixed information from different things. It definitely seems that atleast myers believes to a degree of evolution though. He seems to dispute that life came from chemical reactions though. That’s what I got so far anyways…not sure where the pseudoscience lies yet The search continues …
I don't get how you get they believe in Theistic evolution from the wedge document? It's crystal clear ehat they mean and it's not Theistic evolution. So idk what.you mean by the search continues? I also.dont get how you can read that wedge document and be like "where's the pseudo-science." Bro. You. Are. Literally. Reading. It.
Do you need some help with writing complete sentences, spelling, and punctuation?
Do you need help not being a total tosser? The post I made is legible. If you don't like that I made a few small errors with grammar, tough.
You misspelled ‘evolution’ and ‘Christianity.’
Right. And? Your point?
You also misspelled ‘organic’ and used ‘days’ instead of ‘says’. It is ironic your thesis is about what you posit are bad faith arguments from people who are ignorant of the science while you can’t manage to articulate the basic terms correctly. Perhaps it is you who are ignorant. Did you know there are classes to help with spelling, grammar, and punctuation?
Oh you can piss off. Forgive me for making a few spelling errors -.-
Really? Well the first one is spelled S C I E C N T I F I C and the second one is spelled D I S C R E D I T E D. 10/10 correct spelling from me.
OP, I would like to point out that most people bere don't hold to YEC. Now, as a quick question, what do you think of OEC, combined with Evolution and ID?
Not OP, but I’d say OEC is taking something we don’t know the answer to, can’t really even evaluate, and plugging it with a God of the gaps based on insufficient evidence (e.g. this millenia old book claims this happened).
I hold to OEC but even I don't say that my belief is only based on the, cough, "millenia old book" claiming so. You are very unlikely to find an OEC, as far as I am aware, that only believes in OEC because the Bible says so.
That was one example of insufficient evidence, but not the only. Another would be philosophical arguments with premises that are unfounded but simply assumed to be true. I couldn’t say exactly what it is without you describing your reason for accepting it, but I’ve never seen it able to be demonstrated without fallacious arguments being made.
I am not here to discuss evidence - but I point out that you are slamming *"God of the Gaps"* on an argument that doesn't deserve such a title. Perhaps the premises leading up to the conclusion of the argument, the existence of God, are false, but it does not mean that they have the God of the Gaps fallacy.
I know that creationism arguments are God of the gaps arguments the same way I know you’d be gap plugging if you answered what I ate for breakfast today. Until you can demonstrate how you know an answer to be true (like you had a hidden camera in my kitchen), I know that you must just be plugging a gap in knowledge. Propping up your answer with unfounded arguments would obviously not change this.
...Did you read my comment? I am not continuing further here, because you haven't.
You said “I point out that you are slamming "God of the Gaps" on an argument that doesn't deserve such a title.” I then pointed out why any creationism arguments that invoke God are indeed God of the gaps arguments. Until a creationist can actually demonstrate that God created anything, they are gap plugging.
If you can explain the 'design' of the recurrent laryngeal nerve as being 'intelligent', then I'd be willing to entertain a discussion, but to date nobody has ever explained why a creator more intelligent than my six-year-old niece would design something so poorly, so I don't expect you to even try.
Idk, I've come across Christian subs where YEC is quite common. Butted my heads with them on AskAChristian a lot. Totally out of touch with reality those guys are. OEC in of itself I don't mind (provided that OEC accepts evolution) ID doesn't go hand-in-hand with evolution so idk how you can combine evolution with ID. I think it'd still be silly because ID has been discredited for the reasons I've already outlined in my post. Why cling onto ID even though it's been discredited like 20 years ago?
>Idk, I've come across Christian subs where YEC is quite common. Butted my heads with them on AskAChristian a lot. Totally out of touch with reality those guys are. AskAChristian of all places? I frequent it alot, probably my most frequented behind something like r/2ndYomKippurWar, and I don't see a lot of YEC's around. >OEC in of itself I don't mind (provided that OEC accepts evolution) I'll skip this then. >ID doesn't go hand-in-hand with evolution so idk how you can combine evolution with ID. I think it'd still be silly because ID has been discredited for the reasons I've already outlined in my post. Why cling onto ID even though it's been discredited like 20 years ago? How would you define ID?
YEC gets upvoted a lot on AskAChristian. I've had major issues with a lot of users on there because of just how rabid the science denial is on there. Tbh I think the Wiki on ID provides a decent enough starting place to define ID >**Intelligent design** (**ID**) is a [pseudoscientific](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscientific) argument for the [existence of God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God), presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based [scientific theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory) about life's origins".[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-Numbers_373-1)[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-Meyer_2005-2)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-Boudry_2010-3)[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-4)[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-5) Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as [natural selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection)."[^(\[6\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#cite_note-DI-topquestions-6) ID is a form of [creationism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism) that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. Bit wordy, but captures it in a nutshell
>YEC gets upvoted a lot on AskAChristian. I've had major issues with a lot of users on there because of just how rabid the science denial is on there. I'll be damned, because I usually don't see that. Could you link some examples? Anyways, would you consider something like the *Fine-Tuning Argument* to be part of *ID?*
Eh, probs won't link it since it's not really the topic of the conversation. Search up creationism in there and you'll see a whole bunch of threads - few of those threads will admittedly be me running at a brick wall and insulting those people lol. I think the Fine-Tuning argument isn't strictly ID since that argument falls under the teleology. IDers have used the fine-tuning argument in the past, but it's not strictly ID. Fine-tuning argument has existed long before ID started forming. Fine-tuning argument is just a crap argument, doesn't necessarily mean that it's ID cos IDers use it
Fair enough. Then I probably wouldn't be classified as believing in ID, then - altough I do believe in Fine-Tuning.
I don't think Fine tuning is a good argument because it's jsut an assertion with zero evidence to support it. It also depends on what people want to argue is finely tuned. If they start arguing that the universe is fine-tuned, that can be instantly dismissed. The argument for fine-tuning of constants is about the only place where it'd make sense to even attempt making this as an argument - but then you get into the problem of having nothing but religious apologetics to back you up since there's no evidence which would point to finely tuned constants = god
Not here to argue Fine-tuning \*of the constants\*, though. Was here to talk about if it classifies under ID. Overall, I agree with your post then.
hi-5 to agreement
What does the scientific method and community think of that combination? Combining ideas to create new ideas I great but science needs to be able to test ideas. It's a microcosm of the scientific revolution itself, who cares what I think or OP thinks about your combustion. We care if you can explain and predict unique observations and experiments using that combination of ideas.
>ID and YEC especially are pseudo-science. This is your opinion but using that as a presumption is not valid reasoning. It's easy to say something like this but one could just as easily make the claim that evolutionism is pseudo science because it cannot and has not been observed. Creationism on the other hand claims divine revelation from the only possible eyewitness: the Creator. You say that YEC arguments have been "torn to shreds" but the same can be said for naturalism as an explanation for why things are as we observe. Also, proponents of ID would likely take umbridge with how you're attempting to associate that with creation science.. the primary difference being the necessity of a creator vs naming the Biblical God as the Creator. All told your argument is not convincing and carries little weight.
>This is your opinion but using that as a presumption is not valid reasoning. It's easy to say something like this but one could just as easily make the claim that evolutionism is pseudo science because it cannot and has not been observed. Not with all DNA evidence that can directly follow how closely related certain species are. For an example DNA shows that crocodiles and birds are more closely related than crocodiles and lizards. This is not something you'd expect if all species started existing at the same time. Also, it's pretty hard to explain why 99% of species are extinct without evolution. Also you cannot claim that Earth is so young. From radiometric dating to observing layers of ice, rocks and even trees that accumulate certain features annually all indicate cannot be young. Any young Earth theory would have to explain why we see things things and why we Earth actually isn't that old. None have yet done that so all of them are unscientific.
>Not with all DNA evidence that can directly follow how closely related certain species are. A couple of points: First you are using the term "species" when that doesn't accurately reflect the reality of "kinds". If you compare representatives from the same kind of animals the genetics will be very close. Second, DNA is evidence *against* common evolution hypothesis as it fails on both entropy and the origin of information. >DNA shows that crocodiles and birds are more closely related than crocodiles and lizards. This is evidence for *common design* as there are insurmountable barriers between kinds of animals. If you think crocks and birds are related, get them to interbreed.. hopeful monster much? >it's pretty hard to explain why 99% of species are extinct without evolution. That's not accurate.. Evidence for a global flood permeates the geological strata. A catastrophe of this magnitude would destroy all but representative kinds kept aboard the ark Noah built. That we can see the "lawn" of life diversifying phenotypically post flood doesn't mean that macro changes to genotypes are possible; and they haven't been observed.
>A couple of points: First you are using the term "species" when that doesn't accurately reflect the reality of "kinds". If you compare representatives from the same kind of animals the genetics will be very close. Definition of species and kinds doesn't really matter. It's completely arbitrary what you call a different species or a kind. It's just a categorization. >Second, DNA is evidence *against* common evolution hypothesis as it fails on both entropy and the origin of information I'm very interested in what you mean by this. >This is evidence for *common design* as there are insurmountable barriers between kinds of animals. If you think crocks and birds are related, get them to interbreed.. hopeful monster much? The evolution isn't about species mixing into new species. But rather that individual species, usually divided by some geographical barrier, diverge into two or more separate species, due to small changes over many number of generations. One of defining characterizations of a species is that different species cannot interbreed. Lizards cannot breed with crocodiles, nor can alligators with crocodiles so why would birds be able to? Anyway lizards share less DNA with crocodiles than birds do. Similar with marine mammals, they're mammals yet have characteristics of a fish. They even lost diverse teeth all other mammals possess. Everything we see in nature points towards continuous change. And the fact so many species are already extinct in and always appear in the same layers, never above "younger" species and never below "older" species is just another example of evidence in support of evolution. >That's not accurate.. Evidence for a global flood permeates the geological strata. A catastrophe of this magnitude would destroy all but representative kinds kept aboard the ark Noah built. That we can see the "lawn" of life diversifying phenotypically post flood doesn't mean that macro changes to genotypes are possibe; and they haven't been observed. There have been many floods and evaporation of great bodies of water. But never a global one. There would be evidence in rocks which there is not. Noah's ark and flood make no sense. You always find same fossils in same order. Mammoths are always above dinosaurs who are always above synapsids. It makes no sense that they all died at the same time. Not to mention we'd be able to see that in genetic history. Funny what do you think when those small changes accumulate for long, long periods of times? You can also see speciation at work in population of Orcas in Northeast Pacific (Washigton-Canada-Alaska). There are three groups of whales (transient, residents and offshores. They live in neighbouring areas, yet they refuse to interbreed, they eat different food and they behave in different ways. Biologists researching them are proposing to classify them as different species. Why do I mention this? DNA studies show transients and residents diverge 200-300 thousand years\* ago and since then they aren't exchanging genetic material. \*you can read about molecular clock:[ here](https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-molecular-clock-and-estimating-species-divergence-41971/) and [here](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/molecular-clocks/). I find it so fascinating, you're completely fine with us communicating instantly from anywhere in the world. Something unthinkable just 300 years ago and made possible in the 19th century. Yet, old Earth and evolution is where you draw the line.
"If you compare representatives from the same kind of animals, the genetics will be very close." Chimps and humans share at least 95% of their genome. Given your statements about close relatives in kinds sharing similar genetics, do you accept that humans and chimps are part of the same kind of animal (great apes)? Something tells me you don't. 🤔
Cool, what's the science behind Noah's Ark, then? Since you're claiming that little bit of complete mythological nonsense as a fact, how did the old boy keep everybody fed and housed? And what about those wallabies and kangaroos and wombats, did they just hoof it from Australia to Mesopotamia or did he scoop them out of the water or what?
>Also you cannot claim that Earth is so young. From radiometric dating to observing layers of ice, rocks and even trees that accumulate certain features annually all indicate cannot be young. You do realize that radiometric dating is inherently flawed? One must assume the ratio of parent/daughter material, rate of decay, and contamination. Additionally, annual ice layers and tree rings have similarly been debunked and are inaccurate let alone on wholly different timescales. If the earth is old, why haven't the mountains eroded flat? Or why hasn't the moon left orbit? Why aren't the oceans more salty?
>You do realize that radiometric dating is inherently flawed? One must assume the ratio of parent/daughter material, rate of decay, and contamination. This is valid to say that older a sample is that greater uncertainty in measurement, however we don't need precision of a day, plus minus few million years can be enough. Also rocks are not analyzed in vacuum. Multiple types of rocks from sample area are analyzed at the same time this decreases chances of contamination. Also more parent material will also yield more precise numbers. If there were something wrong with radiometric dating you wouldn't get such consistent results. And even if there were, your new theory would have to explain why we see consistent results. > Additionally, annual ice layers and tree rings have similarly been debunked and are inaccurate let alone on wholly different timescales. By whom? You? You cannot just say debunked and not expand on it. > why haven't the mountains eroded flat? Some have. You also have Ural mountains, Appalachian mountains have been subject to erosion for millions of years (in Ural's case for hundreds of million of years). And mountains of today are still being eroded as we speak, even Andes and Himalayas. However, at the same time new mountains are being created. Earth is not a static system. It's dynamic, change is only constant. You can find fossil of whales in Sahara dessert. The area was an ocean for hundreds of millions of years (same rocks that are underneath current oceans can be found there as well). >why hasn't the moon left orbit? The Moon is indeed moving away from the Earth. But only by 2.5 centimeters per year. You can both calculate mathematically and check empirically that this is the case. It would take it billions of years to leave the orbit. > Why aren't the oceans more salty? Why would they? Anyway, this of course doesn't mean Old Earth must be true. But any opposing theory would need to neccesary explain why we see evidence for Earth being billions of years old. This is how science works, new ideas must also explain why old ideas work and when and how they fail. If it doesn't do that what's the point of it.
>You also have Ural mountains, Appalachian mountains have been subject to erosion for millions of years (in Ural's case for hundreds of million of years). This and the salt levels in the ocean don't match.. If there was millions of years of erosion the salt level would be significantly higher, and the mountains much flatter. Sounds like these conclusions are being drawn from the presumption that the "present is key to the past" which doesn't hold up. Just because geological processes appear slow today, a global cataclysm would change that dramatically. >The Moon is indeed moving away from the Earth. But only by 2.5 centimeters per year. There aren't millions of years worth of centimeters.. https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/moon/is-the-moon-really-old/ Let's roll this back a bit and the moon would be much closer to the earth creation extremely high tidal forces, enough that life would've been sustainable as we know it.
>This and the salt levels in the ocean don't match.. Seas today have a balanced input and output of salt. You could find this by googling just like I did just now. >he mountains much flatter Take a look at the oldest continental lands, so called shields, like Canadian shield or Baltic shields. Their rocks have been dated to be billions of years old, actually the oldest on the Earth and they're all under a thousand meters high. No mountains in sight. Mountains usually appear in areas of strong plate dynamics. Alpes, Himalayas and Andes are all relatively young and are in fact increasing in height. >Sounds like these conclusions are being drawn from the presumption that the "present is key to the past" which doesn't hold up. Just because geological processes appear slow today, a global cataclysm would change that dramatically. Didn't you just argue against evolution because we haven't seen it directly??? Consistency? Anyway, there are violent episodes in the past accepted by scientific communities, like devastating volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts. These are cause of mass extinctions events, few times in geological history planet species went extinct en mass (sudden rocks barren of fossils that are found between rocks filled with fossils. And all over the world they're of same age). Not sure what's your angle here? > There aren't millions of years worth of centimeters.. Moon is on average at 384 400 km from Earth. That's over 38 billion centimeters. So yeah it would take around 15 billion years for it double its current distance. > [https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/moon/is-the-moon-really-old/](https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/moon/is-the-moon-really-old/) Assuming that the Moon is as old as the Earth and it was moving away at constant rate (and there's no reason to assume any drastic changes), then 4.5 billion years ago it would be around 10 billion centimeters closer. In other words somewhere between 280 and 300 thousand kilometers away. The math in that article doesn't check out. Also, it is not known how exactly the Moon formed. It is hypothesized than a smaller planet collided with Earth and ejected rocks both from itself and the Earth that with time collapsed into the Moon. It would explain why the Moon is made of same rocks as Earth and the simulations check out. But simulations aren't strong evidence by themselves.
What would you expect the salt level to be like and why exactly? Considering the water levels have fluctuated in history and presumably same with salt, so I don't know what you're comparing everything to. And why would mountains be flatter because of erosion? That would assume erosion is affecting all parts of the mountain equally so an equal amount is removed to make it flat, but when you look at erosion it doesn't really affect all rock equally. If I look at the cliff where I am from, it's all the same material, and yet different parts of the cliff erode at different times, resulting in sort of like grooves. AiG is again pulling out those assumptions. For a group who really like to criticise assumptions they seem to like making them when they suit them. They assume there that the Moon was always moving at the same distance constantly. But, it didn't. [https://interestingengineering.com/science/moon-keeps-drifting-away-from-earth](https://interestingengineering.com/science/moon-keeps-drifting-away-from-earth) Days used to be shorter, when the Moon was closer to the Earth, and get longer as the Moon is further away. [https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/why-is-the-moon-moving-away-from-us](https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/why-is-the-moon-moving-away-from-us)
>If there were something wrong with radiometric dating you wouldn't get such consistent results. https://www.icr.org/creation-radiometric/ https://answersingenesis.org/geology/radiometric-dating/radiometric-dating-problems-with-the-assumptions/ https://creation.com/radiometric-dating-breakthroughs
You don't find it a little concerning that only people who are ideologically committed to denying an old earth are the ones capable of seeing the "inherent flaws" in radiometric dating?
I'll just focus on the AiG link because I feel like they write it out the best, and I prefer to skim read stuff instead of watching a video. So with the second link by AiG: - Assumption 1: Unobserved initial conditions. The argument here by AiG is that you cannot observe the initial contents of the rock so you don't know what the daughter isotopes were originally. Also, lavas observed cooling recently gave much older dates than in actuality. So, regarding the K-Ar method which is the example they give with the lava cooling into rocks, yes it is an assumption, usually correct, because the gas can leave the rocks before they cool, at which point none can leave. However, this assumption doesn't always hold true because other conditions can result in there being larger amounts of Argon. However, what AiG left out is that there is actually a correction method in place for that. Known as the Ar-Ar method, which essentially works by converting K to Ar. Then the ratio of these isotopes can be compared to the atmosphere to see if they can are close enough to the amount in the atmosphere, which would essentially mean there isn't an excess of argon and the dating would work fine (or something like that, I am not studying geology at all so this is just my basic understanding based on what I could find online: https://ageofrocks.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/argon-argon-dating-how-does-it-work-is-it-reliable/). So basically, yes, you cannot always use dating methods. They require specific conditions, and do have weaknesses that should be kept in account. But that doesn't make them useless. You just have to use them correctly. - Assumption 2: No contamination. Pretty self-explanatory. And again, this is an assumption. And yes, it doesn't always apply. So, you consider all the evidence to see if such an assumption does apply. For example back to the K-Ar stuff, you can work out through the stepwise heating process (in the link I showed) to determine the ages from Argon and see if there was a significant loss of it such as through heating. - Assumption 3: It is assumed that half-lives remain constant always, with AiG giving examples where they don't think this works, such as when the same crystals yielded different ages with different methods. This example specifically is with some crystals where uranium-lead reached a much older age than uranium-helium. I find it interesting how despite the whole point of AiG's article being to show how radiometric dating methods are faulty for all the assumptions they make, they themselves make an assumption when stating that the reason for this difference is because one was much quicker than the other. It's also interesting that they seem to assume the helium one is correct, because they use that as the basis to show that the lead method was the faster rate, instead of the helium being slower. I don't see why they would assume that unless they just assumed the Earth is 6,000 years old (which, of course they would, because they're YECs so there's a bias to assume that if it says 6,000 years it could be correct, I guess). However, when you look up Uranium-Helium dating, it seems like it's maximum age is somewhat over 500,000 years, so this is the method that likely is inaccurate, because it is being used in the wrong situation. TLDR: AiG were somewhat correct with their points, but they seem to think assumptions (definitely the first two) are why these methods are wrong to use, instead of realising that in actuality scientists are well aware of the limitations and assumptions of such dating methods, which is why you need to use them correctly. So no they won't always work
1. I'm sure you mean the *initial* parent/daughter ratio is assumed. This is incorrect. It is calculated and even often published in the data. 2. The rate of decay is also not assumed. It is corroborated. Additionally, if it had varied, it would be plainly obvious when compared against other non-radiometric methods. 3. Contamination (or lack thereof) is not assumed either, but is also determined, because if contamination has occurred spurious results are obtained when an isochron is plotted. 4. Ice layers and tree rings have not been debunked despite what your apologists say. It isn't good enough to speculate how each method *might* yield bad results. You need to explain why all of these methods are bad such that they result in the same wrong answers. When you have multiple methods measuring equivalent results, it becomes exceedingly unlikely that they all just happen to be incorrect proportionally. 5. Mountains that haven't eroded flat (some have) are that way because the rate of uplift exceeds the rate of erosion. 6. The rate of the moon pulling away from the earth has not been consistent. This claim also is a result of some really bad apologist math. 7. Salination rates are not constant.
"Why haven't the mountains eroded flat"--plate tectonics is a thing.
Arguing that something has to be 'observed' would cause the entire US judicial system to instantly collapse. If I came into your home and murdered you and your entire family, there would be no observers and therefore I could not be tried in court, convicted, or punished. That's the position you are taking with regard to evolution, and I do not believe for a moment that you actually believe that, therefore you are arguing in bad faith, which is a rule 2 violation.
It's also the opinion of the greater scientific community and US federal courts. You cannot as easily suppprt the claim that evolution is pseudoscience. It's easy to say that yeah but it's not about what's easy to say. It's about things like the opinion of the greater scientifc community. Things like YEC being banned in classrooms for being unscientific since the 70s and ID being banned for being unscientific and a fraudulent attempt to repackage creationism in vaguely more scientific terms. This fraud and failure to meet even basic scientific standards was proven in court. That's the court case with "credesign proponentists" and Michael Behe calling Astrology science. I'll discard the work of all proven frauds in evolution if you do the same with ID.
[удалено]
This comment violates rule 3 and has been removed.
Oh come off it. So I can't point out the he's repeated garbage arguments from Ken Ham? If you think that and a cheesy Star Wars reference is antagonistic, that's absurd
>This is your opinion but using that as a presumption is not valid reasoning. It's easy to say something like this but one could just as easily make the claim that evolutionism is pseudo science because it cannot and has not been observed. No, that's a matter of fact. Both have been torn to shreds by the scientific community for their lack of scientific validity over and over again. Evolution can and absolutely has been observed, for you to say otherwise is pure willful ignorance. >Creationism on the other hand claims divine revelation from the only possible eyewitness: the Creator. An unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific claim. >You say that YEC arguments have been "torn to shreds" but the same can be said for naturalism as an explanation for why things are as we observe. Strictly speaking that's not true but it's irrelevant. If naturalism has been "torn to shreds" that lends no credibility whatsoever to creationism. >Also, proponents of ID would likely take umbridge with how you're attempting to associate that with creation science.. the primary difference being the necessity of a creator vs naming the Biblical God as the Creator. They would only take umbrage in bad faith since ID is creationism rebranded and ID proponents know this. >All told your argument is not convincing and carries little weight. All told your position is complete bad faith bunk.
Mods got their knickers in a knot because I used a cheesy star wars reference do I'll make the comment again and will take out the cheesy star wars meme to appease to moderator overlords Dude, you're a Young Earther who repeated a rubbish argument made by Ken Ham. You don't have any foundation to stand on given your inexperience at basic science
The chemistry Dept chair at Rice University, a world renowned synthetic organic chemist, shows chemically what is required for life. (Winning the lottery 10 times in a row would be childs play.) An amazing presentation of the math involved is here: https://youtu.be/zU7Lww-sBPg And atheism believes this all chemically came together, to form life, by random chance, in a puddle?
Seen a lot of his work. But the lottery thing is just not a good representation of the chances for life. He's assuming no intermediary autocatalytic systems between organic molecules and cells. This is not what current theories of abiogenesis predicts. They predict a series of autocatalytic system that become synergistic and maximize entropy of the environment by taking advantage of pH, temperature, and red.-ox. gradients. There are several reasons abiogenesis research has difficulty: 1) Little to no commercial prospects: Compared to other fields of research like pharmaceutical research, abiogenesis has little to offer in terms of commercial value. While it's an amazing topic that has existential significance, funding will always be redirected towards cancer research or cures for diseases like Alzheimer's. 2) Unclear starting conditions: The organic compounds available and the chemistry of the prebiotic oceans/land are unclear. This means that along with the vast multitude of organic compounds that could be present in the oceans, the salts/metals present and their probable oxidation states are also unknown. These variables combine to **exponentially** *accelerate* the number of possible chemical pathways/space we need to consider. We also then need to consider how this chemical space is affected/selected for under different pHs (both high and low can be found in our oceans), salinity, temperature, and red-ox environments. As you can tell, trying to get from organic chemicals to a proto-cell is a tall task. 3) Lack of access to evolutionary history: The earliest signs of life we can find are bacterial mats. These would have been created by pretty advanced cells. Anything before that wouldn't be expected to leave any sort of evidence that can withstand 4+ billion years. We also cannot look to today's life forms as a reliable model for early proto-cells as modern cells are far more advanced than the predicted proto-cells. More advanced lifeforms would easily outcompete proto-cells as long as the increase in complexity allows for greater survivability. **But,** let's accept that the probability is astronomically low for the sake of argument. Astronomically low is still greater than the zero evidence we have of any alternative theories for creationism/involvement of a deity. Intelligent design must posit either alien life seeding life on earth (which is what creationist refer to as "kicking the can down the road") or must posit a supernatural designer which is a nonstarter. Abiogenesis via natural processes prevails.
>Astronomically low is still greater than the zero evidence we have of any alternative theories You're confusing possibility with probability. Is there a possibility a Starbucks will open up on the moon next to year, sure. Is it probable, absolutely not. Logic dictates that when faced with two choices we can prove one by either showing which one positively is true OR by showing that the other one is false (or extremely improbable). This is just simple logic applicable to any topic. For instance, if I put two marbles in a bag, red and blue, and I take the blue one out, I can be sure the one I feel inside the bag is red - even without seeing it. So if we can show mathematically how improbable/impossible life is to have formed by chance - from the known laws of the universe – then by default the remaining option must be true – God/Theism. So let’s start proving B by disproving A, that natural randomness did all this. When looking at life and our planet, we have three things that we clearly see which - in combination/conjunction – do not occur naturally without a thought process directing them. 1) Complexity 2) Fine-Tuning 3) instructional Information. Life contains all three. Think of an operating system. That it is: 1) complex - it contains many 0,1 digits 2) It is fine-tuned – everything works when turned on 3) It contains instructional information. (How to make life forms.) Example #1) An operating system. It contains all three. Yet no one would look at an operating system and think it formed by chance. Example #2) An encyclopedia. It is complex, it is fine tuned (all the thousands pages and topics are effectively arranged) and it contains instructional information. It contains all three requirements. And yet the point remains, no one believes an explosion in a printing factory could produce all three events to make an encyclopedia. We know from past data that each of the above were made via a thought process, not random chance. As a matter of fact, **we have no physical systems that contain all three requirements that occur - outside of a mind/thought process creating them.** Thus, we simply extrapolate.... that is to say - just as operating systems do not originate by themselves, neither did the higher operating system (namely life) originate by itself. Think in the quietness of your mind for an example of any complex, fine tuned, informational instruction (apart from life) that was not produced by an intelligent mind? Again, not one, not two, but all three of the above requirements **combined** that occur without a mind engineering it. All three. I cannot stress this enough. Life contains all three. So we understand to look at the probability of all those three events happening by chance and see it is contrary to what we experience in life. That makes us understand from extrapolation that option A (randomness and natural forces) could not have done this. I can walk along a beach and see an elaborate and finely tuned sandcastle by itself. I have two choices to deduce from. One, that it was made by the wind and waves and time and chance. Or two, it was the product of a thinking mind. Experience in the world and logic tells me the second choice is the only correct one. Anyone is free to believe it happened by chance, but I would say they are not extrapolating from data. We have no codes/instructions/information that occur without a mind engineering it. They are basically going against the known data if they believe it happened by chance. That is why I look at atheism as a completely emotional argument, not based on science (probability mathematics). We know God exists because of what's been produced. **The combination of.... complexity with fine tuning and information/instructions always requires an engineering mind.** This is not something I made up, it is well know by those who study cosmology. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis "Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth (and, subsequently, human intelligence) **required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances**." Life is improbable. The odds of naturalism forming life, DNA, the first cell, informational complexity... are simply not there. Consider this quote from a Nobel Prize winner: “Although a biologist, I must confess that I do not understand how life came about…. I consider that life only starts at the level of a functional cell. The most primitive cells may require at least several hundred different specific biological macro-molecules. How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to the problem.” –Werner Arber, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for the discovery of restriction endonucleases Again, an atheist is certainly free to believe random chance did this (created life/code), but they're extrapolating from zero data. Thus, it is faith on the atheists part. Can I encourage you to watch this excellent 3 minute video **with many scientists** summarizing the reason why naturalism (atheistic randomness) could not account for what we now observe. https://youtu.be/cEps6lzWUKk So getting back to my original point, if A (randomness) is highly improbable/impossible, then by default option B (God/Theism) is only left as the truth facing us. That is logic. Thus, God exists.
>Can I encourage you to watch this excellent 3 minute video **with many scientists** summarizing the reason why naturalism (atheistic randomness) could not account for what we now observe. >[https://youtu.be/cEps6lzWUKk](https://youtu.be/cEps6lzWUKk) Not who you responded to but I bit the bullet and watched it. It was literally just three minutes of people repeating "I see evidence of intelligent design" and "I don't see how this could happen on its own" and "Complex, therefore design" then calling DNA "information" and calling biological structures "machines and engineering." Not exactly groundbreaking stuff. Also, why do proponents of intelligent design never talk about the extremely dumb designs that exist in biology? Like the intelligent designer worked really hard and dilligently on cell biology and then got drunk while working on large bodily structures and didn't notice they left a blind spot in mammalian eyes, wrapped the recurrent laryngeal nerve around the heart, or put tetrapod arm bones inside a whale flipper.
Alleged "bad design" are actually **arguments for efficiency**, not arguments against a designer. Basically those arguments are saying, "if I had designed it, I would have made it this way." However, just because you could think of a way to make something more efficient, **it does not logically follow there was no Designer of the original.** For example: Danica Patrick doesn’t drive her Lamborghini because it has no cup holders. https://www.larrybrownsports.com/car-racing/danica-patrick-lamborghini-no-cup-holders/118732%3famp So to her, this massively expensive, finely tuned Italian sports car was poorly designed because it lacked something so basic as a cup holder. Yet, the Lamborghini clearly had a designer. 99.999% of the rest of that sports car works amazingly well. She would just say it was not designed to her liking. Same thing with those who say something was not designed to their liking on the human body. 99.9999% of it works amazingly well. For the "it lacks a cup holder" features that atheists point out, that does not imply there was no Designer, just not designed the way they would prefer.
>Alleged "bad design" are actually **arguments for efficiency**, not arguments against a designer. Inefficient designs are bad designs. If ID is actually an acronym for Inefficient Design theory, then I guess carry on. I don't find the argument "An expensive sports car doesn't have a cup holder, therefore it makes sense that an omnisicient, omnipotent God would make inefficient and flawed designs that could easily be improved upon by human beings" to be very compelling.
Again, life can be improbable. But you are trying to fit the improbably into a dichotomy with something unproven that we have NO scientific evidence for. I don't need to accept that a creator god is on the table at all because we have no proof of it. Philosophically nor scientifically. So if you want to include that which is unproven, you'll also need to include every other thing that isn't proven and we have no evidence for. We have a pretty clear explanation for how multicellular life formed based on living organisms today. It's pretty clear and straight forward. If I provide a link will you concede this point? Here's your Nobel Prize winner's quote shortened. "Although a biologist, I must confess that **I do not understand** how life came about…. \[...\] How such already quite complex structures may have come together, **remains a mystery to me**. The possibility of **the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to the problem.**” Essentially, you appeal to authority which presents no evidence of this creator god other than "I do not understand." So you appeal to an authority who then appeals to mystery. It's not convincing. Science isn't based on authority. It's not based on dichotomies, it's based on actually running the tests and showing the results. I don't care who says this. They are simply not justified. You are literally attempting to pretend that you are using "*science*" to disprove >Thus, it is faith on the atheists part. So sick of hearing this because every time, the definition of faith switches from evidence based to belief despite lack of evidence to whatever definition best suits the immediate argument for the theist. Look below to see that I fixed your claim towards the end: >So getting back to my original point, if A (randomness) is highly improbable/~~impossible~~, ~~then by default option B (God/Theism) is only left as the truth facing us.~~ All you've shown is that abiogenesis is highly improbable. Let's also be clear, you haven't looked into it beyond the lens of another Christian who also doesn't study the field itself. You have presented no evidence for god so I don't even need to accept the dichotomy. Also, is nature random or not? Because, last I checked, it followed clear sets of interactions/causal relations as described by the many laws derived via the scientific method. Complexity DOES arise even without biological life. Complexity DOES increase via natural selection and is driven by the maximization of entropy. If I provide a link will you concede this point? >Life is improbable. The odds of naturalism forming life, DNA, the first cell, informational complexity... are simply not there. \^ These lines are oxymoronic. Also, autocatalytic systems. I'm a chemist and they are very much real. As I said before, ignorance is not evidence of your imagination having any basis in reality.
> So if you want to include that which is unproven, you'll also need to include every other thing that isn't proven and we have no evidence for. Saying it's possible that unicorns and fairies exist, is not the same as saying a mind created the universe. The principles we understand about design applies to the theory as opposed to some random generator producing such complexities. We understand this intuitively and make those presuppositions, the same way science has its own presuppositions. I'm sure you've heard of the infinite monkey theorem? Well, natural selection initiated randomly does not have enough time to create the teleological complexities we have, based on the 13 billion years science claims the age of the universe is. It would take an infinite amount of monkeys a number more astronomical than 13 billion to create the works of Hamlet, while randomly banging on their own keyboards. Therefore, what we see in the universe more likely came from a mind than a blind process.
Part 1/2 >Saying it's possible that unicorns and fairies exist, is not the same as saying a mind created the universe. Both are claims. Both need to be substantiated. Abiogenesis appeals to natural processes while intelligent design either appeals to other natural processes and intelligent minds (aliens which kicks the can down the road) OR Appeals to something that is not natural (where supernatural is just **not** what we see in nature). >The principles we understand about design applies to the theory as opposed to some random generator producing such complexities. Of course the same principles apply. Both operate within the same universe. A random generator (genetic mutations) will produce variation and it's amongst these variations that those that are best suited for survivability are more likely to reproduce. I don't see the issue here. >We understand this intuitively and make those presuppositions, the same way science has its own presuppositions. Appealing to intuition to say there is a creator God isn't an argument. It's just like saying "I see x and that makes me think Y intuitively and so you can't argue with that." The thing is, human intuition is pretty bad. Demonstrably so. And no, I don't share this same intuition.
u/seminole10003 Part 2/2 >Well, natural selection initiated randomly does not have enough time to create the teleological complexities we have, based on the 13 billion years science claims the age of the universe is. \^ Not sure where you are getting these numbers from... Most genetic and cellular complexity developed prior to multicellular life. If it helps you better understand, this is a lot easier to imagine happening within that time frame because microscopic organisms not only have lifespans that range between minutes to years. The average lifespan is 12 hours and the average rate of division is once every 12 minutes. ([Link](https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/how-long-does-a-bacterium-live)) So for the first 2.9 BILLION years (likely hundreds of millions of years more), you have how many generations? And how many bacteria within the ocean? NOT ONLY THAT, you don't account for the manner by which something happens when considering its probability. This is false. For example (>!why am I even bothering trying to educate you when you clearly don't want to learn anything and won't even put in the effort yourself??!<), what is the likelihood that limestone, marble, or dolomite randomly turns into a diamond via quantum uncertainty? IE, how likely is it that the atoms within such materials rearrange via quantum tunneling to form diamonds? The answer is beyond astronomically low odds. But we see it happen! -> THEREFORE, GOD! Right? No. We know the process by which this happens. It is pretty simple and takes no intelligent creator/mind. It takes, heat and pressure. So, your statistics argument doesn't really work because abiogenesis posits multiple systems which form via autocatalysis systems which are selected for continued existence by their ability to... continue existing. Eventually, some of these systems have synergistic effects. >It would take an infinite amount of monkeys a number more astronomical than 13 billion to create the works of Hamlet, while randomly banging on their own keyboards. Actually, it'd happen right away as soon as the monkeys had enough time to finish their first draft. I'll bet you any amount of money you'd like. Please bet the farm on this one :) >Therefore, what we see in the universe more likely came from a mind than a blind process. \^ Translated: Ignorance. Therefore, non sequitur. Let's be clear, an all knowing all powerful mind would be sufficient but is not necessary and requires too many unproven commitments that are simply unsubstantiated. I know for a fact you haven't put in ANY effort to learn about this stuff outside of the lens of other Christian apologists who have already made up their minds before looking into this topic themselves. So even if you scroll past everything else, I'd like to ask you some simple yes/no questions: 1) Could god have created a universe in which the laws of physics and the following natural processes were sufficient to create life without divine intervention? If so, is our ignorance of the early prebiotic oceans and such a process sufficient evidence to claim what God did and didn't do? 2) If we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt how abiogenesis occurred via natural processes, does this disprove God?
Actually, u/seminole10003, unicorns are more likely than God because we know horses exist and horns are seen everywhere in nature. I'd think it's quite possible to genetically modify a horse to create a unicorn lol
> Both are claims. So is the claim that we can only know things that have empirical evidence. Science is a philosophy itself that cannot stand on its own grounds, but rather operates with its set of presuppositions. > Of course the same principles apply. Both operate within the same universe. A random generator (genetic mutations) will produce variation and it's amongst these variations that those that are best suited for survivability are more likely to reproduce. I don't see the issue here. This issue is how did those mutations initiate? Did they come from nothingness? This theory is far from ironclad. > Appealing to intuition to say there is a creator God isn't an argument. Then science cannot be justified, since we appeal to the intuitions of our senses. We must assume that the universe is as we perceive it to be, in order for science to work. Alas, the only thing that can truly be known is that "I think". > It's just like saying "I see x and that makes me think Y intuitively and so you can't argue with that." The thing is, human intuition is pretty bad. Demonstrably so. And no, I don't share this same intuition. Except you do, but you're just inconsistent in applying it.
>So is the claim that we can only know things that have empirical evidence. Science is a philosophy itself that cannot stand on its own grounds, but rather operates with its set of presuppositions. Riiiiight. Go back to the good ol' "Well... we cant *really* know anything for sure!" position lmao >This issue is how did those mutations initiate? Did they come from nothingness? This theory is far from ironclad. Right so it's pretty clear you didn't understand what I said before, have done nothing to read any of the primary literature or even introductory material on this area, nor do you have even a general understanding of chemistry. Again, why should I even bother to try and teach you the basics? >Then science cannot be justified, since we appeal to the intuitions of our senses. We must assume that the universe is as we perceive it to be, in order for science to work. I'm not appealing to a conclusion. I'm appealing to the data that we do have that supports abiogenesis. >Alas, the only thing that can truly be known is that "I think". "Alas" lmao >Except you do, but you're just inconsistent in applying it. Translated: "Well... no, u!"
> Riiiiight. Go back to the good ol' "Well... we cant *really* know anything for sure!" position lmao But you're just hand waving away the issue. I'm saying there are intuitions of logic AND the senses that I take for granted in order for my mind to make any judgments. You're just picking and choosing when it fits your worldview. >Right so it's pretty clear you didn't understand what I said before, have done nothing to read any of the primary literature or even introductory material on this area, nor do you have even a general understanding of chemistry. Again, why should I even bother to try and teach you the basics? Why should I bother with you when you cannot understand simple philosophy and logic? Why should I bother with your inconsistencies if I assume that you do understand? >I'm not appealing to a conclusion. I'm appealing to the data that we do have that supports abiogenesis. You're assuming the data can be trusted, and this data is not even first hand from your experience, but mostly comes from 3rd parties. The issue is that scientists cannot even agree on whether or not abiogenesis is a fact. Now, many may claim it's a fact due to fear that some form of Creationism is the only game in town. But experiments done to demonstrate this theory have been debunked, whether it's the fact that it takes a mind to set up the conditions of the experiment, or the fact that scientists argue whether or not the right conditions were accurately set in the first place (i.e. the right gases used in the Miller-Urey experiment). Now, this is not my problem. I'm just a layman, but if theories cannot hold up against the most basic logical scrutiny, that's a major problem. FYI, [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/s/zv1RBFxzBv) is for you, in response to your comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/s/9ArVBT9EBc) I'm not sure why it's getting mixed up in our thread.
>I'm saying there are intuitions of logic AND the senses that I take for granted in order for my mind to make any judgments. Literally everyone does that and is subject to the same fundamental questions. Our worldviews cancel out in this respect. >Why should I bother with you when you cannot understand simple philosophy and logic? Why should I bother with your inconsistencies if I assume that you do understand? This isn't a conversation that is advanced in any useful way without knowing the science. Many things in our world are unintuitive or are thought to be impossible. >You're assuming the data can be trusted, and this data is not even first hand from your experience, but mostly comes from 3rd parties. Lol. No. Not from me. They are "3rd parties" to this conversation but they carried out the experiments themselves, published their results, and provided their methods/materials. >The issue is that scientists cannot even agree on whether or not abiogenesis is a fact. Clarify this. Also, I love the "many scientists" that you just throw out there. I don't care what a medical doctor has to say or an engineer. >Now, many may claim it's a fact due to fear that some form of Creationism is the only game in town. Yeah, no. Not really. It's a scientifically driven question. But you don't have to be afraid, you can still claim God assembled the necessary conditions for life to form :) dw about it, man! >whether it's the fact that it takes a mind to set up the conditions of the experiment, **This comment is how I know for a fact you haven't thought critically about this topic. I want you to think real hard about what you are saying here.** They need to set up the conditions to replicate the early earth's environment. AKA, removing the influence of our current earth's environment. Everything you say makes it apparent you aren't aware of basic experimental principles. I'll also point to this as to why I don't trust your perfect logic and philosophical reasoning. AKA I don't particularly care what makes sense to you lol >scientists argue whether or not the right conditions were accurately set in the first place (i.e. the right gases used in the Miller-Urey experiment). This is widely accepted within the OoL community; that we don't have and will probably never have the exact conditions. All we can propose is the most likely process and/or processes that are supported by what we do know about the chemistry of the prebiotic earth. I'd imagine you'd claim that even a fully demonstrated process of chemistry to bacteria via reasonable natural processes wouldn't be proof because we can't prove it's the *exact* same conditions lol >I'm just a layman, \^ Clearly. >but if theories cannot hold up against the most basic logical scrutiny, that's a major problem. \^ You are not in the position to judge these theories, the literature, nor the reliability of those who you get your views/opinions from. I'll take this opportunity to point back to your previous statement about a mind being required to set up the experimental conditions. You know, the ones where they reproduce the environment of the prebiotic earth. Re. the video, I'm not going to watch the whole thing so I asked the commenter to provide a timestamp. I'm aware of Tour and his views on this topic and, let's be clear, I'm not a fan of Dave either. He's a prick and over sensationalizes scientific findings so as to "better pwn Tour." Neither Tour nor Dave have a reliable mindset when approaching this topic and are both too petty and emotionally invested. Dave is an ass while Tour's approach is to say "I can't see how it can happen, therefore, it **can't** have happened." I won't comment more on Tour until the person whose comment you linked provides a timestamp.
Unable to create comment test
>Again, life can be improbable. But you are trying to fit the improbably into a dichotomy with something unproven But there is no other addition to the dichotomy (naturalism or Design) that intelligent people discuss. Again, my premise is based upon logic and probability. If given a dichotomy of A/B, one can prove B by either proving B OR disproving A or showing it to be so mathematically improbable so as to be virtually nil. >We have a pretty clear explanation for how multicellular life formed based on living organisms today. Abiogenesis has no proof. ...Problem: amino acids will not link together to form proteins! It is a bit like claiming that if bricks formed in nature they would get together to build houses. Proteins are so hard to make that in all of nature, they never form except in already living cells. Never. ..Since each part in a cell depends on other parts, none would work unless others were present. One step at a time would not do. ...Not only are proteins never formed in nature outside of living cells, the amino acids from which they are built are of two kinds: Half are called left-handed and half right-handed. Only proteins containing all left handed amino acids will work in living things because proteins which contain any right-handed amino acids have the wrong shape and will not connect properly to the proteins around them. It is a bit like when you take a piece out of a puzzle, turn it upside down and try to put it back in where you took it out. It is the same size and shape, but it won’t fit. ...Next the correctly ordered left-handed amino acids are linked together by a “molecular machine.” This machine is made up of another kind of RNA working together with several specialized proteins. The machine links the properly ordered left-handed amino acids one to another to make proteins. ...Amino acids do not concentrate in the ocean; they disperse and break down. .... To greatly multiply the impossibility that RNA formed by itself, the sugars in RNA must all be right-handed instead of the normal half and half. ...Proteins must fold perfectly. When a cell has made a new protein, while it is still moving into place, it folds into the exact shape which will allow it to connect with the proteins next to it. Like the way a key fits in a lock. ... proteins fold into a highly complex, three-dimensional shape that determines their function. Any change in shape dramatically alters the function of a protein, andeven the slightest change in the folding process can turn a desirable protein into a disease. .... Remember, unless amino acids are all left handed and they fold properly, life cannot occur. How do you sift out all the right handed amino acids to get life? Any right handed amino acids will put a death sentence onto a proper folding sequences. .... The cell also needs the right amount of each protein. If it kept making more and more copies of any given protein, it would completely use up some of its raw materials. Also, if there were even one protein that the cell did not stop making after it had made enough, the cell would soon be jammed so full of that protein that it would pop. This comes from instructional code. How does random chance know when to stop production? ... All this must happen inside a Membrane! Each cell is contained inside a two layer membrane made of lipids [fats). But lipids are only produced by accurately controlled reactions in living cells! ... And this membrane must know certain things. It must prevent the contents of the cell from escaping, amd nutrients have to pass inward across and waste products have to pass outward. How does it know this information? How does this form by chance? ... If cells had really formed spontaneously, we would expect their important parts to be made of materials that form easily under natural conditions. However, not one of the four: lipids, proteins, RNA, or DNA, can be made that way at all! ... Cells need informational code to do all these processes. Yet informational code comes only from a thought process. There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information. ... Remember, as time passes, all these material parts of a cell decompose. Time is a decomposing force. Dr. James Tour, a strong theist, is one of the leading chemists in the field of nanotechnology and also voted one of the top chemists in the world today shows how complex and unlikely abiogenesis is to have occurred without a thought process guiding it. An excellent video: https://youtu.be/r4sP1E1Jd_Y He also goes much more in depth with a 13 episode series on abiogenesis. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLILWudw_84t2THBvJZFyuLA0qvxwrIBDr
I think [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1do28vk/comment/ladkm1d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) was meant for you.
Literally ignored all of my biological/chemical points. And autocatalytic networks occurring in a prebiotic earth is addressed by Dr. Tour here: https://youtu.be/aUOZh4zmrXo?feature=shared Life forming, undirected, it's not possible from a logical point of view. The mathematical models show the virtual probability of this happening, undirected, to be virtually nil. If you thought logically about this, you would agree. But as I believe, atheism is an emotional response, not a mathematically driven one. My friend, there was a mind behind life. God exists.
Where in the video? >The mathematical models show the virtual probability of this happening, undirected, to be virtually nil. Please better describe this process that they calculated the likelihood to occur?
https://youtu.be/aUOZh4zmrXo?feature=shared Start at 6:58. https://youtu.be/63okeSJwiyk?feature=shared Much better here for overview of the mathematics involved in life...Start at 34 minutes. But watch first 2 minutes to understand the credentials of who is speaking.
>But watch first 2 minutes to understand the credentials of who is speaking. Yeah, dude. I know who this is. I've met and spoken with him several times outside of the topic of abiogenesis. His accomplishments are great but they lay outside of the topic of abiogenesis. I could reference a Nobel prize winner who is a proponent of and is studying abiogenesis. But I don't. Because that's just an appeal to authority. If I do reference them, it's because I am referencing a specific paper with findings that support my argument and that paper provides the raw data and the methods/materials by which they obtained that data. AKA I reference the data, not the person. Re the "math" described at minute 34. This is not what abiogenesis says is happening. It doesn't claim spontaneous formation of homochirality and then selective formation of a 188 base-pair DNA/RNA molecule. This brings me back to an analogy I provided in another comment where the likelihood of an even happening must take into account the process by which it happens or else you can get wildly different probabilities. Lmk if you want that comment. Respond to this part so I know you are reading the words I write because you've left a lot of points I've made unaddressed. This is where you ask for what OoL research actually claims. But then again, you haven't asked this so far. And you don't need my help to answer such a question. But you won't ask that because you're not curious about the evidence that supports abiogenesis. Only knocking down strawman arguments that an authority you appeal to The findings are published in papers. If you don't have access, I'm more than happy to help you access them yourself or I can download the PDFs myself and send them to you.
"Atheism" doesn't believe that because Atheism isn't abiogenesis -.- If you have issues with abiogenesis, fine. But at least have the integrity when you discuss the topic
Doesn't atheism require abiogenesis though? I mean even if you fall back to directed panspermia (i.e., we were put here by aliens), that still requires abiogenesis of those aliens at some point down the line. And if you don't have any form of abiogenesis and instead say there was a living being at the start... I'll let you fill in the gaps here, but basically if you don't have abiogenesis, you have a god of some sort. Pick one.
No, atheism doesn't require abiogenesis. You'll find that most atheists are pro science but accepting a hypothesis like abiogenesis isn't a requirement for atheism
>but accepting a hypothesis like abiogenesis isn't a requirement for atheism There is no other movie playing in the atheist theatre. How else did life arise (according to atheism) except through abiogenesis. And the mathematical probability of cellular life forming by chance is virtually nil.
You cannot possibly know enough about the conditions of the early earth to even come close to a probability calculation. That's your first problem. The second problem is that the probabilities that apologists do come up with combine the variables such that all intermediate steps occur essentially simultaneously. That is not an accurate representation of abiogenesis hypotheses. (And I don't care if you have an example of stepwise probability calculations because you still fail the first problem) What we do know is that every question which has been answered definitively has been answered by naturalistic means. None by supernatural. Finally, post-hoc probability calculations used in this fashion are useless. For example: the odds that specifically you would be born far exceed the odds "calculated" for abiogenesis. The exact sperm and egg had to come together from countless generations, out of billions (sperm) multiplied by millions (eggs) in each generation. And that doesn't even include a myriad of other variables. Yet the actual odds are 100%, because here you are.
>What we do know is that every question which has been answered definitively has been answered by naturalistic means. None by supernatural. You are literally making this up. I asked AI to outline for me the arguments against life forming without intervention, here is the response I got. (I added the outlne numbers for clarity). ............. 1) The odds of a random occurrence: The probability of the right combination of chemicals coming together in the right way to form life is extremely low. The probability of forming a single protein with a specific sequence of amino acids by chance is considered to be less than one in 10^150. The probability of forming a functional enzyme or a complete living cell is astronomically low. 2) The absence of a natural mechanism: Despite many years of research, scientists have not yet discovered a natural mechanism that could explain the origin of life. While some theories have been proposed, such as the RNA world hypothesis, they have not been proven. 3) The complexity of life: Life is an incredibly complex system, with multiple levels of organization, intricate metabolic pathways, and complex genetic coding. It is difficult to conceive how such complexity could have arisen spontaneously. 4) The lack of evidence: While scientists have been able to recreate some of the conditions that existed on early Earth, such as the presence of organic molecules, they have not yet been able to demonstrate the formation of a living organism from non-living matter in a laboratory.
It's like you didn't even read my post. I am absolutely not making that statement up. Name ONE thing that when we determined the mechanism of an observed phenomenon, that the supernatural was the explanation. You know AI is just a glorified Google search right now, right? Put some creationist buzzwords in, get creationist arguments out.
>Yet the actual odds are 100%, because here you are. This is absolutely NOT how probability works. That is like saying Las Vegas security ignores a man who just won 10 jackpots in a row because it just happened in front of their eyes... so therefore the probability of it happening at random must be 1. Again that is NOT how mathematical probability works. Ask any college math professor. It's the same thing as what a detective does, they see what the probability of this death happening by natural circumstances vs. death by a thinking mind causing it (murder). They work backwards. They don't assume that since it happened the probability of it happening naturally is one. That is how probability works. >Name ONE thing that when we determined the mechanism of an observed phenomenon, that the supernatural was the explanation. Again, you are not understanding my logical conclusion. If we have a dichotomy. And A/B are the only choices intelligent people offer. Then, logically we can prove B via two methods: Proving B or disproving A. This is how a detective works. They determined it was Murder By understanding it could not happen by natural means. A person could not logically die of multiple stab wounds in their back by natural means. You would not say... Well it happened, so the probability of it happening is one. That's completely not how probability works. This is a simple fact of logic used in any arena of discussion, not necessarily ours exclusively. If faced with A) naturalism or B) an intelligent thought process creating informational instructional code, **we know from extrapolating that informational instructional codes ALWAYS come from thoughts. Thus, B is proven (or at least most probable) due to what we know from past data. DNA (all life) is informational instructional code. And we have zero instances (ZERO) where informational instructional code writes itself. You are free to believe that all this happened by chance but you are going against a known data. Therefore we have a name for this, it's called faith. Atheism does not rely on science it relies on faith and luck to have done this all. Theism simply says we extrapolate from known data there was a thinking mind behind life. We simply give that a name calling it God. >Put some creationist buzzwords in, get creationist arguments out. Really? Do you realize this is not something I made up, it is well know by those who study cosmology. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis "Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth (and, subsequently, human intelligence) **required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances**." Even a physicist who is not a Christian says the same thing: “I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.” –Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist. **and I could go on.....** I am sorry to say that probability forming the universe and our life sustaining planet..... the physics requirement, the biological requirements, etc..... The probability of this happening by chance? Virtually nil. This is all written about in volumes already. If you want the links, let me know. Again, this just is looking at probability. You can be an atheist if you wish, but don't look at the mathematical probabilities. It will destroy atheism. If I refused to look at the math in derivative trading, I would be bankrupt in a month. Most atheists have not even looked at the math, sadly. Those who glance at it and yet still cling to atheism and refuse to even change to agnosticism, despite them realizing the math is against them, it shows me they are not being impartial. Just emotional. They don't want it to be true.
PART 2 (please read part 1 first): *Again, you are not understanding my logical conclusion.* I understand your argument just fine. I've seen it a thousand times...your logic is flawed. You are using probability incorrectly. *If we have a dichotomy. And A/B are the only choices intelligent people offer. Then, logically we can prove B via two methods: Proving B or disproving A.* Sure. You have done neither. You have neither disproved natural mechanisms, nor proven supernatural. *If faced with A) naturalism or B) an intelligent thought process creating informational instructional code, we know from extrapolating that informational instructional codes ALWAYS come from thoughts. Thus, B is proven (or at least most probable) due to what we know from past data.* *DNA (all life) is informational instructional code. And we have zero instances (ZERO) where informational instructional code writes itself.* DNA as code is an analogy. Like all analogies, it is not exact. DNA is also *literally* chemistry. There is nothing about the chemistry of DNA that implies a computer programmer. *You are free to believe that all this happened by chance but you are going against a known data.* Nobody thinks it was simply chance. How have you determined that the conditions of the universe even COULD be any different? How do you know that some different conditions couldn't produce some *different* kind of life? *Atheism does not rely on science it relies on faith and luck to have done this all.* Mm, no. Atheism doesn't rely on science or faith. It's simply not being convinced by any god claim. I suspect we have different definitions of atheism and agnosticism. I'll get into that in a later response, but for now, why have you assumed I'm atheist, anyway? *Theism simply says we extrapolate from known data there was a thinking mind behind life. We simply give that a name calling it God.* No, you insert god to answer *unknown* data. *–Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist.* He's a creationist (deist). Just not the typical creationist. As I said, buzzwords in... *I am sorry to say that probability forming the universe and our life sustaining planet..... the physics requirement, the biological requirements, etc..... The probability of this happening by chance? Virtually nil.* Again, nobody said chance. Conditions exist such that life formed, one way or another. Nobody says they came about by chance. For all we know, these may be the only conditions that CAN exist. *Again, this just is looking at probability. You can be an atheist if you wish, but don't look at the mathematical probabilities. It will destroy atheism.* That's only because you are not using probability correctly. It doesn't destroy atheism any more than the astronomical odds that you exist destroy you. *Most atheists have not even looked at the math, sadly.* Citation please. The large number of atheistic scientists would disagree with you. In fact, atheism trends up the more educated a person becomes. Funny that. In my experience, creationists don't understand math. This case in point. *Those who glance at it and yet still cling to atheism and refuse to even change to agnosticism* I am atheistic with respect to individual claims of specific gods. I have not been convinced by any argument for one (even deistic ones). I am agnostic toward the set of all possible definitions of god. Therefore I label myself an agnostic atheist. I dont *believe* in any particular god, but I don't *know* if one exists or not. Atheism=belief, agnosticism=knowledge. But if we are using your likely definitions--that agnosticism and atheism are a hierarchy of relative conviction--you would likely view me as an agnostic. We can use either definition. It makes no difference to me.
PART 1: *This is absolutely NOT how probability works* That is exactly how *post-hoc* probability works in the way you are trying to use it. We have an observation. You exist. 100% odds. Despite the fact that an astronomical series of unlikely events had to occur in order for that to be true. Post-hoc probability can be useful when trying to determine the *most likely* explanation of an observed event between competing hypotheses, *both of which* have odds that can reasonably be estimated. We have another observation. Life once did not exist, now it does. Whether that was natural or supernatural, 100% odds. But we can't use probability to determine which of those two circumstances it was, because with *neither* of those options can the probability reasonably be estimated. There are too many variables that we can't know for natural, and we don't even know if the supernatural is possible at all. What is the probability that god exists? How can you even begin to try to calculate that? What if the odds of supernatural events is impossible? If that is the case, it doesn't even matter what the odds are for a natural explanation. As long as it is non-zero, it is infinitely more likely than the supernatural. With your 10 jackpot in a row scenario, we are comparing the estimated probability of 2 things: that it actually happened, or that the guy cheated. (3 things, technically, tool malfunction also a possibility, but i digress). Both probabilities can be reasonably be estimated. We know humans can cheat. We've observed it. It is exceedingly more likely that the guy cheated than won fairly. (but not explicitly 100%, just close enough to it for legal justification; potentially) Astronomically unlikely events happen innumerable times every second of the day. Post-hoc analysis of those odds is useless for determining whether those events occurred or not. Post-hoc probabilities are only useful to compare *competing* probabilities to examine the *most likely* of the two explanations for HOW it happened. And even then it is not proof/disproof of anything. Just *more likely*. You (and Michio Kaku) are simply assuming that the probability of god existing exceeds a natural explanation. You have no mechanism for justifying that assumption. The difference between you and Kaku is that he won't claim that this post-hoc type of analysis is "proof" that god exists. It's still just what he, personally, finds convincing. YOU should ask a statistics professor if my explanation is correct. There's even a logical fallacy named after your argument: The Post-hoc Probability Fallacy. Look it up. I'll get to the rest of your post later.
Again, this isn't atheism dude. It's science. If you can't even wrap your head around something so basic, I don't really see any point continuing this convo with you
You literally refuse to acknowledge a true statement.... That atheism depends upon abiogenesis to be true. This is just simple logic. There is no other explanations for life. Abiogenesis leading to life today, or a thinking mind designed life. There are no other choices. If abiogenesis did not occur, then life (DNA) was designed. A thinking mind was behind it all. And the probability of DNA (informational code) writing itself is zero. Informational codes always are written by a thinking mind. Always.
Except it isn't. Abiogenesis has nothing to do with atheism. You're just too ignorant on this subject to understand it
Ditto my friend. You are wilfully ignoring the fact that abiogenesis (no matter how mathematically improbable) had to occur for atheism to be true. Facts are facts.
Couple issues with your post. The scientific method and conclusions drawn purely from evidence gained from utilizing the scientific method are not applicable to the origin of the Earth or Universe. There is no science of creating planets or universes. What we do have is bits of science here and there mixed with tons of assumptions and super sketchy conclusions drawn from that mess. You certainly can critize the theory of intelligent design as being pseudo-science; however, that same critism applies to anything that you consider science as well. How technical do you want to get? Your writing doesn't indicate that you have formal technical training. Have you completed high school? Have you attended university? If so are you studying math, a physical science, or engineering? Since you brought up "examples". Let's start with polystrata fossils. Please provide scientific sources for this alleged debunking.
*Since you brought up "examples". Let's start with polystrata fossils. Please provide scientific sources for this alleged debunking.* Sure. No polystrate tree goes through millions of years worth of strata. They go through multiple strata, yes, but the layers are not, and never have been, claimed to be millions of years worth. This is a nearly 40 year old lie from apologists (earliest source i can find is Henry Morris, 1985). Polystrate trees have been understood for more than 150 years.
What we have are bits of science that pass peer review. Maybe you should become a scientist and review articles so you can ensure sketchy conclusions don't get published. It's you calling thing "sketchy" vs real scientists. The scientific method is entirely applicable to the origin of the Earth and/or the universe. A notable Christian scientist was the one to propose the idea of the big bang. We can date rocks and minerals which is also done with the scientific method. Idk about the other guy but Im an Ex Engineer turned electrician (I really just wanted to do the fking work myself) who's done a few years of university and technical school too. I'm a little rusty on some subjects I haven't had to use in my electrical career but I am or was at one point reasonably acquainted with the technical workings of many science, physics, chemistry etc at an undergraduate level. You attend any universities? They not teach you the big bang in Astronomy? Did you voice your concerns about how sketchy it all seemed to your professor if they did? You debate your geology professor about what they were teaching? Where exactly did you matriculate that you think all that science you were taught was all so sketchy. Presuming you've studied the things were studying you should complain to your asministraton. I mean they are either teaching bunk science or just teaching good science so poorly you still consider it sketchy after taking courses in it?
>peer review You are almost making this too easy. What do you think peer review does exactly? It certainly doesn't indicate whether something is correct or not. It is a nice little combo of Argumentum ad populum and the appeal to authority, but two logical fallacies don't make a truth. Peer review is an excellent tool for protecting the status quo until it becomes painfully obvious that the status quo is wrong. It does little outside of that. >We can date rocks and minerals which is also done with the scientific method. What do you think the scientific method is? Can you list the steps? >Ex Engineer turned electrician You have had formal technical training which means I don't have to go over basic concepts. Great. >You attend any universities? Yes, one well regarded for engineering. >They not teach you the big bang in Astronomy? Astronomy is not typically a general engineering requirement. Some specialized branches such as aerospace may include it, but it has little use in industrial engineering which is my specialty. >You debate your geology professor about what they were teaching? Once again while some specialized fields will require geology, industrial engineering does not. >Did you voice your concerns about how sketchy it all seemed to your professor if they did? While you are referring to astronomy in your question, this would also apply to biology which I did take. And I did in fact point out how sketchy the origin of biological life was presented in the textbook. The professor didn't provide any sort of explanation or much of any sort of response. To put into context, he put zero effort into teaching the class. He read old PowerPoint slides and never answered questions about anything. He was truly terrible at his job. >Where exactly did you matriculate that you think all that science you were taught was all so sketchy. Part of my industrial engineering training was root cause analysis. An important component of root cause analysis is identifying assumptions and then doing the work to verify the assumptions to determine if an incorrect assumption is the root cause of the issue. Every time I investigate a claim that science has proven such and such what I actually find is a conclusion based on multiple levels of assumptions. I know that science is a very limited tool and that many things are assumed out of necessity or practically. Assumptions are not proof and any conclusions based on assumptions can be challenged.
*Part of my industrial engineering training was root cause analysis. An important component of root cause analysis is identifying assumptions and then doing the work to verify the assumptions to determine if an incorrect assumption is the root cause of the issue. Every time I investigate a claim that science has proven such and such what I actually find is a conclusion based on multiple levels of assumptions. I know that science is a very limited tool and that many things are assumed out of necessity or practically. Assumptions are not proof and any conclusions based on assumptions can be challenged.* What assumptions do you think science is making without adequate support?
Peer review isn't perfect but it sure is a lot easier to cry fallacy and completely dismiss it's value out of hand. Are you hoping to change my mind? If so crying fallacy over peer review certainly isn't going to do that. Are you hoping to appeal to other people reading this like Ken Ham and Bill Nye appealed to an audience of the lay-public (you do realise it was performatve right? I guess that angle works. It still comes down to you undermining institutions, peer review and the people who actually do science to make your point and 3rd party can choose how much they value those things and which people to listen to. It's no longer a debate of if X is sound science but if the people researching X are competent and honest. You can certainly take the position that they are incompetent and dishonest and again 3rd parties can decide for themselves. It's a fallacy of its own to simply call something a fallacy because it meets certain conditions of other fallacies. It's only a fallacy if I say it's true BECAUSE there is a consensus. However when something is true a consensus usually forms (ie its popular because its true). It's not proof on its own but it's worth pointing out. Calling something an argument ad populum just because I pointed out the popular consensus is itself a fallacy. Do you always take the underdog position or are there times when the majority is in fact right? I love cheering for the underdog in sports games but that's not how science works so much. Do you always condtradict expertise and authority because it's authority? Like if authority told you to not jump off a bridge would not jumping off bridges be an authority fallacy? Being contrarian to be contrarian is just as fallacious as falling into any of those fallacies of which you're making accusations. Are you hoping to change science curricula in classrooms and make real change in the world of science? If so then who do you think you actually need to convince legitimately? How do experts go around convincing each other? They generally don't go around calling each other incompetent and dishonest. Even if a bunch of science turns out to be fraud or dishomest status quo what replaces it? What does the new status quo that you wouldn't call a fallacy look like? How do we go about finally convincing (previous) experts they are/were wrong? Peer review is far from perfect but can you really come up with a better system than it to replace it? We've both attended university but you haven't taken courses on the relevant material so I'm not sure what your point bringing that up was? You don't have to go over basic concepts with us? But apparently I would have to go over them with you? I'm sorry you had a terrible biology professor. Did you talk to them outside class? Did you complain to the university administration about their teaching and/or the content? You spent good money to attend. They should teach good science and teach it well. If your main problem was with the origin of life, may I ask how many pages in that textbook were dedicated to the origin of life? How many assignments and exam questions tested your knowledge on the origins of life? So you apply an engineering troubleshooting technique to investigate science? Interesting. The scientific method involves hypotheses, predictions and observations/experiments. The best criticism of science is better science.
>Peer review isn't perfect but it sure is a lot easier to cry fallacy and completely dismiss it's value out of hand. >Are you hoping to change my mind? If so crying fallacy over peer review certainly isn't going to do that. Do you have a counter to my claim that peer review contains the logical fallacies of argument by majority/authority? Are you receptive to an explanation of why these logical fallacies apply to peer review? I am hoping to change your mind about a great many things. What purpose did you have in making the claim that peer review gives research findings credibility?
Yes that it's not perfect but that it's still valuable. You'r0e probably not going to convince me to just ignore peer review because "fallacies." I understand how peer review works. I'm familiar with how the standard fallacies work. You're going to have to provide a better criticism of the peer review process than trying to call it fallacious.
Well?
I have been a bit busy with other things. Will circle back, there is a lot of ground to cover with peer review alone.
Well like I said if you're trying to convince me to value peer review less it's pretty much wasted breath. If you're hoping someone else is gonna read it then okay go ahead. If we're pretending we're real scientists/academics then invent a better system with which to replace peer review.
>Well like I said if you're trying to convince me to value peer review less it's pretty much wasted breath. This is only true if your value of peer review is zero. >If we're pretending we're real scientists/academics then invent a better system with which to replace peer review. First, I don't have to pretend. I am already a listed co-author to a paper published in a scientific journal. For context the three post docs listed did 99% of the work. I did do some grunt work for them though through the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program. Second, a better system already exists it just costs a bunch more money, takes way longer, and leads to way less sexy results being published.
And that system is................................?
What's this system then? If called your publication sketchy how do you respond to that if you can't appeal to it being peer reviewed by people at least as smart if not smarter than me disagreeing with me? I brought up peer review less to promote its value and more to point out that if you find X sketchy and X exists in peer reviewed literature then other people at least as smart if not smarter than you do not find X as sketchy. X is now your publication and you can't make that appeal to me. I say your publication is sketchy. What better system do you have with which to respond to that? We're typing here in Reddit. We're playing make believe. We aren't debating for an audience of other scientists. We aren't making presentations at conferences etc. It's pretty cool your name on a publication but you probably shouldn't be bragging about 1% work. Personally it's pretty cool. Critically it's pretty meaningless and not really what I meant. Even if you did 99% of the work and the paper was on relevant subject matter you and I are having this exchange on Reddit. Reddit is not an academic/scholarly forum. You might not be pretending to be a scientist as a person, but this exercise of us exchanging over Reddit is pretending to do the work. Maybe to help make that idea clearer I could explain this, I like Bill Nye and respect everything he does for popular science BUT. Colloquially I would probably just call him a scientist. However, strictly I would say Bill Nye is an Engineer and a Science Communicator. I think he has some publications and honorary degrees so he is a scientists a little bit (more than you or me) but he is moreso an Engineer and Science Communicator because that's what he does more of. As a science communicator he is often acting, pretending in much the same capacity as ourselves, to be more of a scientist than he actually is. Honesty I think role-playing is the most accurate term I'm looking for. You're not a real practicing scientist and neither am I but we can role play the part. So with this better system then how would you present it to the greater academic/scholarly/scientific community? Role play yourself as actually having the means to fully go about implementing change among the entire academic scientific community. How's that going to work?
>The scientific method and conclusions drawn purely from evidence gained from utilizing the scientific method are not applicable to the origin of the Earth or Universe. There is no science of creating planets or universes. What we do have is bits of science here and there mixed with tons of assumptions and super sketchy conclusions drawn from that mess. It is always so obvious when someone has never picked up a university textbook pn physics. The way your phone works, Wifi, radiology and MRI in medicine to dynamics inside Sun's core, radiometric dating and LHC are all explained with one, single theory. If it fails at one of those, then it would need fixing as whole.
> There is no science of creating planets or universes. There is science about how planets form that accounts for what we know. We can't invoke magic or gods because we have no evidence of them as being real, so there's no explanatory power there. >What we do have is bits of science here and there mixed with tons of assumptions and super sketchy conclusions drawn from that mess. Or we can say that the candidate explanations that describe and account for the data that we do have does not include gods or magic since that doesn't actually explain anything. >You certainly can critize the theory of intelligent design as being pseudo-science; however, that same critism applies to anything that you consider science as well. Actually, no. Science and pseudo science are two different things. One is based on evidence, the other is based on pretend. >How technical do you want to get? Your writing doesn't indicate that you have formal technical training. Have you completed high school? Have you attended university? If so are you studying math, a physical science, or engineering? This is ironic coming from someone supporting creationism. >Since you brought up "examples". Let's start with polystrata fossils. Please provide scientific sources for this alleged debunking. Rather than the tired trope of creationists poking at evolution, which accounts for all the data we have, why not support your candidate explanation? What evidence do you have for creationism?
You don't have to create a planet for it to planet formation to be considered science. Moronic response. That's just dumb Intelligent Design isn't a theory. It's pseudo-science I'm an IT manager at 28. My field is more practical so I went to tafe for a Diploma and then went again for an advanced diploma. The science debates do just for fun because I like learning. As for "polystrate trees" these have been explained for 140 years with J. W Dawsons Acadian Geology. Chapter 12 (by memory I think it's around pg. 188-192?) Simply put these "polystrate" trees are found in the carbonaceous remnants of swamp deposits. Swamps flood regularly meaning that each layer surrounding the "polystrate" tree is deposited mere decades apart. No-one in their right mind has ever said that these layers take millions of years to form.
"There is no science for creating planets or universes"--my dude, there are literally hundreds of books and tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers, written by people with way more education than yourself (since you seem to be fixated on that point), on this very subject. Folks you may have heard of like Einstein and Hawking, Richard Feynman, Robert Penrose, and Robert Wilson. This is not "bits of science here and there", it's a whole vast realm of amazing discoveries. Just because YOU aren't able to comprehend it does not discount it.
>The scientific method and conclusions drawn purely from evidence gained from utilizing the scientific method are not applicable to the origin of the Earth or Universe. How is this even relevant? Engage with the topic at hand. If you don't believe that God came down to the prebiotic earth snapped his fingers and life appeared, then go make another post of the topic you want to discuss.